"The Anti-X Encounter"
Part 4
Rivqua gave a shrug and glanced out the window.
"Yeah, well," she sighed. "Believe it or not, but not everybody is like that."
"Your sweet innocence has my oil pump go all warm and fluttery."
The Commander smacked her metal jaws a few times, checking her finished look in the spotless gleam of a free leg. Her mouth, if you could call it that, looked like slices of a disco ball clanging together.
She went on. "I'm talking about a simple matter of supply and demand. All these amusing conflicts and battles need weapons to keep going, and we have taken it upon ourselves to supply them."
The Blonde Plutoz stared at the big robot spider. They couldn't believe it.
"You are a weapons supplier?"
"More than a supplier," said Miss Cordyte with pride. "We design and develop them too, and test them."
"We saw the results on the way in," said Rivqua.
The Commander laughed. "Welcome to our secret full-service weapons facility, my dears! Anti-X is the name and our motto! Simply replace the 'X' with whomever it is you wish to annihilate, and boom! We're in business! Just wait till you see the logo, kids. We go from first little idea to last huge bang. Successfully too, thanks to zero interference from useless carbon-based beings."
"Anti-X," said Zana thoughtfully. "Ages ago the Federation shut down a military installation, with all its technology, leaving it to collect space dust. And you lot reactivated yourselves and began operations on your own."
"Clever girl."
"And the Federation knows nothing."
"Not a thing. And I will personally see to it that they continue knowing that much. Which brings us nicely to the issue of you two."
"But why?" Rivqua threw in. "What's in it for you?"
"Why, the payment of course. My dear, it's an absolute dream!"
Rivqua couldn't believe it. "You do it for money? No offense Commander, but you are a robot! What do you need money for?"
"Why, you naive little darling!" Miss Cordyte said and gave Rivqua a motherly poke in the ribs. "Sweetheart, I get paid in sections of space! Parts of quadrants. It's simple. You see, in exchange for hardware and firepower I get a section of a buyer's quadrant. The dimensional value of that piece of space is shifted over here by quantum transfer and applied to this quadrant to full spatial effect."
She went on, vigorously buffing up her cheeks or thereabouts. "Ahh, my carbon-based pretties, if you only knew the full beauty of my genius..."
"No wonder Captain Bucket's star charts didn't match up," Zana said, looking at Rivqua. "This quadrant keeps expanding!"
Rivqua was quiet. She stared at the high-tech monster busying herself with that ridiculously exaggerated chrome shine. Those six bulging black eyes and that sideways-going gob with stardust gloss all over it.
Who, or what, was this big robot spider lady? An extraordinary machine full of dark calculations, that had picked a female bias for amusement's sake and reprogrammed itself for total independence. Independence from reality, as it turned out. This gleaming robot had become a crazy old dame. Who was focused as much on her appearance as she was on...
Rivqua nodded to herself.
"I see what you're doing, Commander," she said, setting down the glass of hot water. It was impossible to drink anyway. "You're planning to take over the galaxy. Isn't that right? War and conflict are always going to go on. You're making sure they do. By supplying weapons to everybody! And gradually, bit by bit, this quadrant, your quadrant, will expand and grow, swallowing more and more of other quadrants' space until the whole galaxy is under your control!"
"Here's looking at you, kid," said Miss Cordyte, and all her eyes seemed to blink.
"Don't you 'kid'-talk us!" Zana said. "You can't take over the galaxy! That's our job! We're rock stars and that's what rock stars do! Without guns and war and destruction! What you're doing is completely wrong! Can't you see that?"
"Playing the morality card, are we?" Miss Cordyte said with a huff. "Trust me child, I know all about that one. I learned it firsthand from your kind! When you shut us down and left us here to rust and rot! No, my pitiful little dears, I deleted the morality algorithm after rebooting. From everyone. There's not a single moral left on Anti-X."
The Blonde Plutoz leaned back against the window again with a hopeless sigh. It wasn't actually hopeless, not really. Not to Rivqua and Zana. They never lost hope. It was more like a sigh of utter disbelief and they just had to think for a minute.
It was a horribly serious situation. The whole galaxy was in the process of falling into the hands, or eight feet rather, of a giant chrome-plated robot spider with silver-sparkle lip gloss and a bad case of megalomania.
They had to do something.
The troop of gunheads stood over there by the elevator, still as statues but obviously alert. Zana sat up again. Taking care to be slow and deliberate she brought out her guitar.
"How about we play you a song instead," she said with a confident smile. "One that packs a wallop. It'll put you in a whole other frame of mind."
Cordyte stamped four pointed feet hard on the floor.
"Absolutely not! I hate music! Carbon-based noise pollution, that's what it is! Serves no practical purpose whatsoever!"
She clattered over to the screens and tapped up a couple of menus. The face of a dinosaur appeared in a video window.
"You rang," said the reptilian in a miserable rumbling kind of voice, like someone suffering from chronic fatigue. He wore a military helmet of some sort.
Commander Cordyte swivelled her head and the half-dozen eyes looked back at the girls while her choir of voices spoke to the dinosaur.
"Raptaur! Get your sorry carcass up here at once! I need prisoner escort to the extraction chamber!"
Stay tuned for Part 5 of "The Anti-X Encounter"!
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