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Chapter 9
Demi's eyes opened into darkness she knew she was still in Daughter,
but where was the shadowy man?
"Demi," the cold voice called out of the darkness. "It's time to wake
up."
Demi suddenly stood up straight as if at attention. She tried to
move, but she was frozen in place.
"What have you done to me?" Demi asked the darkness.
"I have erased your will," the voice answered. "I have made you my
slave, mine to command. You will do what I tell you when I tell you."
"I'll never serve your wicked commands, Darkness spawn!" Demi shouted.
"Oh, but I think you will," the voice responded.
At that moment, Demi began to walk towards the Daughter console. She
tried to stop, but she couldn't. It was if she was trapped inside her
own body. She decided to try shutting down again, but she couldn't
access any of her internal systems.
"Feeling a little trapped, are we," the voice came. "I couldn't erase
your will without rendering you useless thanks to the infernal Palman
engineering. So, I did the next best thing. I subverted you will. I
let you cut me off from your CPU while I trapped you inside. Now I
control you, and I will make you reactivate Daughter!"
Demi was at the console now, interfaced directly into the control
panel. She felt her decryption circuits start to work at deciphering
Wren's codes.
"Stop this you madman!" Demi shouted into the darkness, but only got a
maniacal laugh in reply.
"Hahahahahaha! You call me mad, but you are the one who is truly
blind to sanity. Those wretched Protectors killed off all my friends.
But I am going to bring Terrans back to their former glory. We will
once again be masters of the planets, and I will be their leader! The
world is my oyster, Wah hahahahahaha!"
Demi's systems kept working furiously at decrypting the codes. Wren's
encryption was good, but, given time she knew she would succeed at
cracking it. This was one time, Demi thought, I wish I wasn't so good.
Chapter 10
The sparks faded from Hahn's view. In its place was a room full of
computer equipment and monitors. There was very little illumination
coming from the ceiling, and Hahn could barely see his hand in front of
his face.
"Shore is dark in here," Seno commented.
"Let me just activate my external lights," Wren said.
Wren's lights illuminated the whole room. It took Hahn a while to get
used to the change in lighting, but they were soon following Wren down
a long corridor.
"This hall will lead us through the security section of the facility,"
Wren explained. "Once we get there, we'll probably meet up with
resistance from the kidnappers forces, so be on guard."
"Wren," Gryz asked, "who IS it that captured Demi anyway?" Hahn had
been wondering that himself. In the rush to save Demi, he hadn't
bothered to ask WHO it was that had captured her.
"If I'm right," Wren said, "our kidnapper is a remnant from a past
Algo wishes it could forget. Have you ever heard the story of the
Terran conspiracy?"
Seno and Gryz looked puzzled at the android's reference.
"Wasn't that the plot to destroy the Palmans?" Hahn asked.
"Yes," Wren replied. "The Terrans were the survivors of a race of
beings from a planet called Earth. Over two thousand years ago, the
inhabitants of the planet waged a devastating war against each other.
The two major powers on the planet, a business conglomeration called a
corporation, and a band of resistance fighters battled for the planet.
The corporation had set up devices to control all aspects of Earth's
ecosystems, much like the Climatrol and Plate systems here on Motavia.
When the non-corporate Terrans figured out that the devices were slowly
making them lazy and dependent, they formed a resistance to overthrow
the corp. Led by a man named Damian Thomas, they overthrew the
corporation and began to take back the planet. However, a few of the
corporation's followers, along with it's leader, found a crashed Palman
worldship on their planet's moon."
"But how could that be?" Seno asked. "Didn't the Palman worldships
get destroyed by that old varmint Dark Falz?"
"That's Dark FORCE," Wren corrected, "and, yes, it did destroy all but
a handful of worldships. Only four survived, the Dezolis, the Mota,
the PalmII, and the AlisaIII. The first two landed on the planets they
were named for. The PalmII and the AlisaIII both headed out of the
Algo star system. For over a thousand years, both the PalmII and the
AlisaIII drifted in space, flying towards the closest star system: the
Sol system. However, during the escape from Palma, the Dark Force was
sealed away on the AlisaIII by two heroes, a man named Orakio, and a
woman called Laya. However, a thousand years later, the Dark Force was
able to destroy the PalmII by having the AlisaIII fire its weapons at
the ship. After that, the inhabitants of the AlisaIII destroyed Dark
Force, but the battle sent the ship off course into the path of what is
known as a wormhole. It was a tunnel through space that transported
the AlisaIII to Earth. Unfortunately, with its engines so badly
damaged, the AlisaIII crash landed on the Earth's moon. As a gesture
of good will by the new society created in the wake of the war, the
Terrans rescued the survivors and took the worldship back to Earth.
But the leader of the corporation took the knowledge of the worldship's
construction and built one of their own, called Noah. A hundred of the
loyalists went with their leader to Algo through the wormhole, in order
to find a new homeworld where they could change the planet to suit
their will. When they first arrived, the Profound Darkness was just
about to send another Dark Force into Algo. Knowing this, the Terrans
decided to use the opportunity to rid the worlds of life, so that they
could make them their own. They entered into a pact with the Profound
Darkness to corrupt the acting king, Lassic, to keep down any would be
Protectors. However, as you know, Alis defeated Lassic and Dark Force,
foiling the Terran's plans for domination. However, their leader, who
had been lying in cryogenic sleep, decided that they would trap the
Dark Force in order to use it for their own gain. After Alis defeated
it, the Terrans brought it back to their ship and set about
establishing Mother Brain on Palma. However, about a thousand years
ago, the Terrans sensed that a new Dark Force would be arriving in
Algo, and so they again acted to destroy the Palmans. Fortunately, a
Protector named Rolf and his friends, one of who was your ancestor, Mr.
Kain, destroyed Dark Force, Mother Brain, and all the Terrans. All but
one, that is. The leader of the Terran corporation was hiding in
cryogenic suspension again, and was passed over by the Protectors."
They were approaching the security section now. They immediately saw
the force fields in place at the elevators.
"But you still haven't answered the question yet," Gryz said. "Who is
this man?"
"His name is. . ." suddenly Wren stopped. "Enemy mechs approaching
from our flank."
"Wuz a mek?" Seno asked. He was answered by a blast of laser fire a
few feet away.
"Look out, everyone!" Gryz exclaimed as he reached for his ax. The
group scrambled into action. Wren fired in the direction the laser
came from. Another laser blast shot out of the darkness.
"My Photo Eraser didn't even phase it," Wren shouted. Just then, a
lumbering robot the size of a small building came into view. It had a
chassis mounted on two legs each ten meters in length. On the sides of
the chassis were two arms, both holding what seemed to be rotating
weapons. It also seemed to have boxes with lots of holes in them on
the head.
"Thas a mek?!!" Seno shouted.
"Yes," Wren replied. "Designation, Hellcat class battle mech. A very
popular weapon of the Earth war."
"Wren," Hahn shouted. "Can you do anything about this?"
Wren was already two steps ahead of him. He was at the control panel
of the force field, typing as fast as he could.
"I'll try to take down the force field so we can escape using the
elevators," Wren said. "I need you to hold off our adversary for two
minutes while I crack this code."
Hahn thought the android had to be kidding. They were no match for
this huge war machine. Hahn himself had only a laser dagger to fight
with.
"I'll take his flank," Gryz shouted to Hahn. "You distract him!"
Distract this thing? How, trip it? Of course, Hahn thought, that's
it!
"Gigra!" Hahn shouted, as a gravity well formed at the mech's legs.
The force of the gravity caused the mech to temporarily lose it's
balance, and Gryz took the opportunity to strike. He leaped into the
air and gave an ear splitting war cry. When he came down, the ax was
embedded in the cockpit. Gryz hacked away at the glass, and was soon
inside the control center of the giant.
"Blast," he shouted, "I can't seem to work any of this garbage!"
Suddenly, Seno was up with Gryz, having climbed up the mech's leg.
"Move over, Gryz, ole buddy," Seno remarked. "Let ole Seno take a
try."
Following Seno's instructions, Gryz leaped out of the cockpit and onto
the ground. Inside, Hahn could see Seno working on all the buttons in
the cockpit. It looked like he was pushing them randomly, lost as to
what to do.
As Hahn was watching Seno, he didn't notice the boxes on top of the
mech's chassis turning toward him. They fired what looked like rounded
cylinders at him, trailing smoke.
"Hahn, look out!" Gryz cried and leapt toward the human. He hit Hahn
with all the force of his weigh and momentum, pushing them both out of
the path of the missiles. Hahn tried to get up, but the Motavian was
still covering him, weighing him down. Gryz had been knocked out cold
by the explosion, and Hahn was pinned down.
At this point, the mech began to lumber towards the two Protectors,
aiming to crush them with its weight. Only two meters separated them,
then one. Hahn closed his eyes for the end. . . but it didn't come.
Hahn opened his eyes again and saw that the mech had stopped moving a
foot above his head.
"I think ah got it ta stop!" Seno shouted down to Hahn. Sure enough,
it had stopped all it's functions.
"Good work, Seno," Wren called up to the young mechanic. Wren seemed
genuinely proud of the engineer, totally forgetting what Seno was.
"Thank ya kindly, Mr. Wre. . . eh. . . ennnnn!" The mech was falling
backwards, robbed of all its balance and up on one leg. It crashed to
the ground with a large clang. Wren rushed over and pulled Gryz up,
while Hahn ran over to see if Seno was all right.
"Seno," Hahn called. "Seno, are you okay?"
"Ah ain't never been better, maw!" Seno said, and then collapsed.
Well, at least he would be okay after he got back to the Academy. By
now, Gryz was back on his feet and awake.
"Thanks for the help back there, Gryz," Hahn said. "You saved my
life."
Gryz slapped him on the back, "Forget it. You would have done the
same for me. Besides we're Protectors, and Protectors need to stick
together."
"I don't mean to wreck this moment, guys, but we need to get going,"
Wren interrupted. The field had been disabled, thanks to Wren, and
they needed to get going.
"Oooh, wat hit me?" Seno asked, rubbing a large lump that had formed
on his head.
"Not wat," Hahn replied, "the floor! Ha, ha!"
Seno didn't seem to get it, but that didn't surprise anyone.
They quickly headed toward the elevators and entered.
"Section A01," Wren spoke, and the elevator began to descend. Hahn's
unease was growing. He wasn't claustrophobic, but he didn't like
riding in this elevator. It felt ominous.
"When we get to the bottom," Wren began, "we'll have to get Demi as
our first priority. If she breaks through my encryption codes,
Daughter will be able to reactivate."
"What if Daughter is reactivated?" Hahn asked.
"Then we'll have to destroy this whole complex in order to assure the
safety of Motavia."
Hahn didn't like the idea of having to possibly be buried in this
place. He wished that this would all be over so he could see Saya
again.
Just then, a hissing sound began to come from the roof of the
elevator.
"What's that noise," Gryz asked.
"It's sleeping gas!" Wren shouted. "Cover your noses and try not to
breathe!"
"Hahahaha!" A voice seemed to come from the speakers. "You foolish
creatures are no match for a Terran genius!" As he said this, a spark
shot out of the wall and into Wren.
"Ahhhhh!" Wren screamed, and then fell to the floor, unconscious.
"Wren!" Hahn shouted, but dropped down as the gas started to knock him
out. "Seno, Gry. . .y. . .yz," Hahn tried, but fell on his face. He
thought of Professor Holt and of Chaz and Rika, and all the other
Protectors. And then he thought of Saya, how they were going to get
married and have a family. Then everything went black.
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