The Dangers of Saving a Life

Chapter 24: Max, Milo, and Kwin

Hock note: Score two for Professor Aidan and his student army. They shut down Captain Max in her walking tank and they knocked one of Axion's battleships out of the sky. However, while they were distracted, Dr. Chocka prepared to execute the infant Cale Vals. 

This chapter features a point of view from Captain Max, Milo Skart, and Kwin Vacker.

Captain Max couldn't believe her eyes. An expensive battleship had been knocked out by the criminal and his felons. They didn't even have the sense to put the ship down where it wouldn't hit anything. Instead, it veered toward Mendeleev Hall, skittering along the roof, one of its guns catching and jacking it, smashing the nose into the lip of the building. From there, the entire ship peeled over the back edge, crumbling to the ground. They sucked its juice and didn't care what happened to it. They didn't care if it smashed into one of their own school buildings. They didn't care if they destroyed their own college.

Max's tank had already shut down. The joystick no longer moved it forward. In frustration, she jerked the stick around in circles. Nothing. The display, too, was dead. She was blind as well as impotent.

But Axion held everything under its control. Even if her tank didn't operate, even if battleships crashed to the ground, even if everything failed, Axion was still in charge. As proof, symbols flashed through her goggles. Axion monitored the situation inside Newton Hall and relayed the information to her through the symbols. She couldn't read a lot of it, but she immediately recognized the symbol for control, and it filled her with confidence. It knew everything. It controlled everything. It planned everything. The felons would get their punishment. 

She sat in the dark for only a few moments when First Citizen Aubrey's face appeared in her goggles, thoughtful, introspective, and confident. Her visage immediately put Max at ease. "Don't worry Max. This was expected. Everything is going according to plan." Then Aubrey's expression turned keen. "Prepare for the final attack."

Hock note: Aubrey Probo is a main character in the novella, Trust in Axion, available on Amazon. This novella chronicles the story of how Axion first infiltrated and conquered the earth. 

After Aubrey signed off, Max opened a hatch above the cockpit of the stalled tank. She climbed up on top where there was an observation deck. There she could easily see Newton Hall with her own eyes. She wanted to watch as Axion blew Professor Criminal off the earth.

* * *

Milo Skart heard a distinct wail. He certainly wasn't a mother and Cale Vale wasn't his child, but he could still hear the difference in the sound—the tone, the intensity, the cry. The baby was in trouble. There, across the large and open room, he spotted Dr. Chocka.

Instinctively, he reached through the Drommel. He found the energy of the wand and squeezed it tightly. Then he sprinted across the open floor between himself and Professor Aidan's corner office where Dr. Chocka threatened the infant.

Dr. Chocka whirled around, his mouth flying open, his eyes going wide. Milo felt the doctor's force in that other place shoving him back. He pushed harder but that force pushed him back just as hard. Dr. Chocka knew how to use the energy? Of course he did. He was a specialist in dark energy, wasn't he? Why shouldn't he know how to wield it?

As Milo reached the doctor, he spotted the glinting silver rod in the doctor's hand reflecting the globes of light overhead. The baby squirmed in the fat white arms of the nursemaid, frightened of the bushy man pointing the wand in his little face.

Although Milo physically chopped at the doctor's arm holding the wand, he couldn't knock it out of the doctor's grasp. Dr. Chocka's other arm punched Milo back away from him. At the same time, Dr. Chocka shoved Milo back in the other place, the Drommel.

"You stole him," Dr. Chocka said, spitting out the words. "You had no right to take him. He didn't belong to you. He belongs to Axion."

"You're going to kill him," Milo said.

"His mother broke the law. He is poisoned with the energy. Dark energy must be eradicated. He must be executed. That is the law."

Milo held his ground, shoving the doctor back just as hard in the Drommel. He didn't let go. He wouldn't back down. "He's a baby. He's done nothing wrong."

They went back and forth like that, Milo reaching for the wand, Dr. Chocka shoving him back, Milo holding his ground, and then reaching again, at the same time jostling each other in the Drommel dimension. All the while the infant cried.

"Please refrain from roughhousing in front of the baby," the nursemaid said sternly, shaking a finger at them from one of its six arms. Meanwhile, its other arms gently rocked the infant.

* * *

Kwin Vacker's victory dance got interrupted by the roar of many engines. Battleships dropped from the sky in chaotic, irregular bursts, massive and sleek, powerful platforms of weapons and thrusters. Their placement didn't match any kind of pattern. She couldn't make any sense of it. They were completely unpredictable.

Some battleships landed on the green space between Newton and the dormitory towers. Others touched down outside of Feynman and Yukawa halls. Still others dropped beyond the architecture dome. And they landed everywhere else, too.

Tanks walked out of their holds on six massive legs, large square headlights, cannons beneath the lights. There were too many to count. As soon as she stopped one, five more appeared elsewhere. Their legs pounded divots into the green ground cover, making a slimy mess, spewing green clods into the air, the ground getting churned and kicked up beneath their fat metal paws. They surrounded Newton from below.

Other battleships hovered in the air and released squadrons of flying mygs from their holds. The military robots gathered like storms of insects filling the air. They appeared so thick that she couldn't see the dormitory towers anymore. They swarmed so heavy she couldn't even make out the circular building next door to Newton. Night seemed to fall across the campus. Each of them carried gamma rifles in their spindly arms, the guns all aimed at their top floor, ready to fire.

She staggered backward. Her own cry mixed with the shouts and screams of the others behind the window. There was no way they could stop all that firepower coming so fast and at such chaotic intervals. They were finished.