Shadows of the Future
Chapter Eleven
Sabotage
(Explanations, rating, and disclaimers can be found at the beginning of Chapter One.)
"Okay, listen up, everybody," said Number One, striding into the area and clapping her hands together to get everyone's attention. "We've had reports of the Queen's troops moving in on us in force. Now, we know they can't find their way in HERE," she indicated the Special Zone, "they don't even know that this dimension exists. But for our generator to be able to save the city when we destroy the Queen's power source, it has to be out in the REAL world. Chances are that no matter how deserted the area we choose to pop the machine out into might NORMALLY be, it'll be swarming with soldiers now. So we need to, all of us, be ready for combat. We must be ready to fight and even DIE if need be, but we WILL NOT let all our hard work be for naught! If we hang together, we can save both our OWN world AND Mobius! Are you with me?!"
"YEAHHH!!" came back the resounding cheer.
"How much more time until the machine is in working order?" asked Number One, walking over to it. Most of the rebels, and Sonic, Jolt, and Electra, who had been quickly filled in on what was going on, were working feverishly on it. "It SHOULD be operational now," said Number Six, the robot, in his flat synthesized voice. "But we have not tested it yet."
"We don't have time to test it," Number One shook her head and slung the bandolier of laser-charges that one of the other rebels handed to her over her shoulder. The few who were not working on the machine were retrieving weapons from a secret stash and passing them out to everybody. She slowly tapped the end of her laser rifle against her palm. "We need to move out NOW, before the guards get to our chosen hiding place. Have you got the portal opening device juiced up, Twelve?" she called over her shoulder. The last of the rebels, including even Jolt, was armed now.
Twelve nodded in the affirmative.
"Good. Then dial for a large portal into the back alley behind the police station," she ordered. "All the police should be away, chasing after us, that is," she grinned. "Make it large enough to carry the machine AND all of us, then give it all you've got!"
"WAIT!" called Sonic, holding his hands up for attention. Everyone turned and looked at him. Twelve froze with his paw on the controls.
Something had just occurred to Sonic--even if it was temporarily inert, this WAS a Special Zone, after all, and they had more to offer than JUST Chaos Emeralds! "Number One," he turned to face the pretty-but-strong lady echidna who was beginning to remind him of Sally more and more each minute, "is that machine--" he cocked his head towards the generator "--secure?"
She frowned. "It's bolted to the floor, if that's what you mean. That won't matter to the portal, though."
Sonic nodded. "Good. I want everyone to hold onto a secure part of the machine. Something that WON'T break off if you pull against it with all your weight. What I'm about to do can be rather bumpy and unnerving for someone who's not used to it, or skilled, like I am."
Number One looked at him funny but ordered everyone to do as he had said, then found a spot to hold onto herself. "Now what?" she called as Sonic located a large field of blue spheres and positioned himself near one of its corners.
"Now pull out your orange Emerald," he called back.
"WHAT?!" she demanded. "Are you INSANE? Do you remember what happened the LAST time I--"
"I know," he cut her off, "and that's why I wanted everybody to hang onto something secure. Pull it out."
Reluctantly, she did so.
Instantly, the whole Zone came to life again. The floor began turning beneath Sonic's feet, propelling him straight into the blue spheres whether he wanted to go or not. But he knew how to do this; he was in control. Each translucent, ghostly blue sphere turned into a solid red one as he passed through it, the slightest touch of which would send them ALL back into the real world prematurely without their machine, and with no way to get back. But as he expertly outlined the field of blues, making precise right-angle turns, the whole field turned into Power Rings!
He heard a gasp behind him and smiled to himself as he tackled the next large clump of blues. He didn't go after ALL of them; just the ones that were in a large enough grouping to change. These people must be REALLY naive, he thought, if they haven't seen Chaos Emeralds OR Power Rings before!
He didn't pick up any of the Rings, but left them all sitting there, glittering and spinning, and kept going until he had gotten all the rings to appear that he could. By then the globe was spinning rather rapidly, the turns had gotten frantic-hairpin-scary, and he almost crashed about a dozen times, pulling himself out of it by a millimetre. "Okay," he yelled as loud as he could, hoping that Number One could hear him, as he was SO dizzy by now that he hadn't the foggiest notion where she was, "you can put the Emerald away now!"
She must have heard him, because the sphere's rotation came to a stop. Not a gradual slowing down; an abrupt STOP. Sonic was thrown headlong, about ten feet, into a red sphere.
Which had no effect other than raising a bump on his forehead. The Zone was truly dead again.
But, just as he had hoped, the Rings remained!
"What was THAT all about?" said Number ONe, staggering dizzily over to Sonic.
"Those are Power Rings," he informed her, pointing. "They protect you from getting killed. If you get hit while you have at least one of these--and I mean, hit by almost ANYTHING--you will loose the Ring but not your life. And even then, you have a few seconds in which to recapture your Rings before they dissolve. I figured we could use something like that if we were going into battle against crushingly overwhelming odds."
"We could indeed," said Number One, her eyes lighting up as she strolled over, picked up a Ring, and dangled it on her wrist as a bracelet. It shrunk down to fit automatically. "VERY good thinking, Sonic! We may make a soldier of you yet!"
"I already am one, remember?" he reminded her.
"Oh, yes, that's right, those Freedom Fighters you were telling me about." she replied. In the background, everyone was picking up one Ring each. Because their forces were so small, there were more than enough for everybody. "Are you their leader?"
Sonic grinned. "Me? Nope, I'm just a member. Princess Sally is the leader."
"A Princess?" said Number One, interested. "What's she like?"
Sonic pondered for a moment exactly how to describe Sally to a person who knew nothing about his entire world. He thought briefly of saying that she was a young brown squirrel/chipmunk hybrid, that he thought she was beautiful, that she was his girlfriend, that she was brave, strong, determined, smart, good with technical stuff, agile--but finally said none of these. Instead, he settled on the most simple explanation.
"She's a lot like you."
The young echidna laughed. "I suppose all of us resistance leaders have to share a few personality traits," she grinned. "I'd like to meet her someday, when this is all over."
"I hope you can," said Sonic. They shook hands solemnly.
"Good luck, Sonic." she said.
"Same to you."
"Number One," called Twelve from the direction of the portal-opening device, "everything is ready."
"Then everybody, prepare your weapons," ordered the rebel leader, "and let 'er rip!"
They all popped out into a dark, abandoned alley. It was now the middle of the night, it seemed. How had it gotten that late? Sonic wondered. He must have been in that Special Zone later than he thought....or maybe time just didn't flow quite the same way in there....
"We are ready to activate the generator," reported Number Six, his gleaming metal hands clenched smoothly around his weapon.
"Activate." ordered Number One.
Twelve threw the switch. There was a deep humming sound, which began to rise slowly in pitch, the buttons lit up, the wheels started turning, and...
...nothing else happened.
"WHAT?!" roared Number One, eyes blazing with anger. "Why isn't it running at full capacity?!"
Electra bent over and looked underneath the machine. "There seems to be a part missing that went here before," she reported. "I think it was some kind of power cell."
"The antimatter regulator," groaned Number One, putting her head into her hands. "The hardest to get, and most crucial, piece. Without it, we won't be able to create enough power to safely power one block, let alone the entire city! Who could have taken it?"
They all looked at each other.
"Number Two," said Sonic after a moment. "I haven't seen her for hours."
It was true. The chubby middle-aged brown lady echidna had been mysteriously absent from the scene ever since Number One had arrived and all eyes had turned to her.
"Shirlana" she moaned, so upset that she forgot and used Number Two's real name, "My best friend, my buddy, my partner for all these years! WHY did she have to do this, WHY?!
"Well," she said, straightening up and attempting to look brave despite the obvious tears running down her face, "there's only one thing for it. We'll have to steal another regulator from the same place we got the last one.
"The Launch Base."
* * *
"INTRUDER ALERT. INTRUDER ALERT." intoned the flat, emotionless computer voice, oblivious to all the pandemonium that was reigning around it. Tails awoke wtih a start, almost kicking Amy's sleeping form. The two children had backtracked down the stairs to that balcony they'd found earlier and gone to sleep so as to conserve their energy for nightfall, when they would plan their escape. "Amy," he whispered, "wake up."
The little pink hedgehog rubbed her eyes blearliy and gasped as she saw the scene below. It was nighttime now, all right, but things had HARDLY quieted down! There was an absolute mess of some kind going on down there. People were running back and forth yelling at each other, fires were burning, things were blowing up, and laser bullets were careening through the air. And every now and then, mixed with all the ordinary shouts of panic or anger, came the chillingly unmistakable sound of a death-scream.
"What do you suppose they're DOING?" Tails whispered to her.
"I don't know." Amy whispered back. "But whatever it is, I hope they don't come up HERE."
* * *
"This is it," said Number One, as she, Electra, Jolt, Sonic, and Twelve looked up at a towering monstrosity of an engine. They were not inside The Big Spaceship, but one that was almost as large. "The Red Star Mining Ship Mark 2.0. It needs a massive amount of power to lift off with the tremendously heavy loads it carries. This is the only ship that will have the regulator."
"So let's hurry up and get it," said Sonic, feeling a bit more nervous than he'd care to admit. The battle to get inside the spaceport area had been incredibly fierce. The rebels had fought valiantly, and made a sizeable dent in the Queen's forces, but in the end, they were just hopelessly outnumbered. And it didn't help that Riku-Dari's troops had been prepared for the rebels' arrival ahead of time... "After all," as Number One had said bitterly to the three Mobians earlier, "of COURSE Shirlana would know where we had to go to get another regulator--SHE'S the one who got the FIRST one for us!" Even with the protection of the Power Rings, they had been almost completely wiped out. The five who stood here in this engine room--and the metallic Number Six, who had been left behind to guard the machine--were ALL that remained of the New Radicals. And without the Rings, they wouldn't have gotten even THIS far.
"It's not that easy," said Number One, shaking her head. "See, the regulator is--" she pointed "--way, way up there."
Sonic, Electra, and Twelve stared with their mouths open. "But--but there's no way up there!" protested Sonic. "Except for that fragile little pipe thing! I know you echidnas can climb, but I don't think that'll hold anybody! How did you get it before?"
"We had a ladder," Twelve supplied darkly. "But I don't know how we can get one on such short notice--"
"I can go up there," said Jolt before she quite realised that the words had come out of her mouth. "I can climb almost anything, and I weigh a lot less than anyone else here!"
"That's right," said Electra, remembering the way Jolt had clambered up the walls in Sandopolis. Only a couple of days ago, and yet it seemed like such an eternity! "She can."
"Do it." ordered Number One.
Carefully, gingerly, Jolt started to inch her way up the delicate pipe. It would hold her weight--but just barely. She was so scared she could hardly breathe, and the pads on the bottoms of her paws felt slippery. She wrapped her tail around the pipe for balance, closed her eyes, and took a couple of breaths to steady herself. Come on, Jolene, she told herself in her mother's voice. Her mother was the only one who ever used her true name. Funny, how normally her parents bugged the living daylights out of her, but right now, she wished they were here more than anything else. Jolene Miranda Gonzalez, you climb up that pipe and you climb up it NOW! commanded her mother in her mind. Come on, girl, you can do it. It's no different from when you climb out onto a slender twig way out on the edge of a tree for fun around Knothole! You've done THAT all the time! Now get going!
But it WAS different. It was different and she knew it. Before, in all of her previous life, the most important thing she'd ever had riding on her was whether she picked out the correct outfit for school or not. This--this was scary. The fate of TWO entire worlds had to do with whether or not she could climb this thing!
Finally, somehow, she managed to force her hands to unclench--just a bit--but it was enough to move them further up the pipe--and slowly, gradually, with her heart beating, it seemed to her at the time, about a million beats per minute, she rose up the pipe until she was about 30 feet off the floor.
"STOP!" yelled Number One from far beneath her. Too far...No! Focus! "SEE THAT SILVER CYLINDER THING WITH THE PURPLE BUMP ON THE END? THAT'S IT."
Jolt looked around and found what she was pointing at. "THIS?" she asked, holding it up. She couldn't get it free--it was attached to two wires, a red one and a yellow one. It was also very HEAVY for its size.
"YES," shouted Number One. "NOW, DETACH BOTH WIRES AT EXACTLY THE SAME TIME. THEN ATTACH THE RED ONE TO THAT BLUE BOX ON YOUR LEFT. IF YOU DON'T, IT'LL CAUSE A POISON GAS LEAK AND KILL US ALL."
Oh, great, thought Jolt sarcastically. Like I'm not nervous enough already. Did ya HAVE ta tell me that? But she found the blue box Number One had indicated and, somehow, managed to perform the procedure as instructed. She lifted the precious part in her hand. It was theirs!
"IN HERE!" bellowed the voice of a guard outside the door.
The five animals looked at each other, stricken. There was no other way out. They were trapped and outnumbered.
With a grim look on his face, Twelve raised his laser rifle--by now badly drained--and aimed it at the doorway. "Wait," Number One put a restraining hand on his arm. "There's no point. We'll all be killed no matter what. Let's see if we can't negotiate with the Queen." The words came out of her mouth bitterly. She had little if any faith in negotiating. But it was her duty to try to protect her people by whatever means possible as long as there was a breath left in her body.
As the guards tromped into the room, they were surprised to see four docilely lined-up animals standing there, helpless, with their arms raised.
"We surrender."