The virgin & the bad boy (Gravity)

B2/Chapter 39/The End

Zhickararie look at me confused. Then Dante woke up and started laughing, finally John did. John let me go and gave me the rail gun with a big surprise.

"I'm sorry," I said to Zhickararie,  "I just wanted to see your face when we did that. It's okay we have it."

I touched the radio in my ear "Did you get that code Vaderman?"

"Sure did" said Vaderman, now able to come through the radio. The storm had blocked him/them but now in the based he had a clear signal.

Dante got up and still bleeding from the fake blood walked over to the control desk.

"Would someone with clean hands help me operate this." he began "tell Vaderman the desk is still unlocked. I might be able to disable all the implants from here."

At this point Zhickararie had his hands in cuffs and his face frozen in shock.

I look to him "oh you thought Dante it was dead? Wrong. You thought that John was a traitor, also wrong. He was a double traitor. You see I knew that the robots would follow protocol and try to get a traitor or spy into my camp. So we gave you one, John. I knew if we did you wouldn't bother getting the second one. We faked up the whole story of him being the jilted lover."

That was true, the old mad command and control robot had told me as such. The best solution I had discussed with Kentro was to get our own traitor before the Invaders got one for us. John was the obious choice, Zhickararie would fall for revenge as a motive.  I had known that John was going to sell the location of my meeting with Han, but not the location of Five-Dogs. Now with this elaborate bit of play acting, we put a recycled remote control implant in Zhickararie's arm. We knew at that point he would suspend any revenge order and quite possibly involve John to double enter the control code in. Basically, he had typed the password into the computer and now we had our hands on it. 

John came over "I died her once, life form. You think you can undo that bud? Sure she didn't want me, and I'm never going to not regret that. But I worked out, if you really love somebody, you can set them free. So sure I don't like Dante" John said looking over to Dante from Zhickararie. "but I know he's the man that makes her happy. And that's good enough for me."

"That plus If I ever do her wrong he's going to kill me for real," said Dante smiling.

"That felt good," said John to Dante. "but credit were credit is due - you acted dying well".

"Your turn next time" spared Dante to John.

"It was a trick?" said Zhickararie.

"He catches on fast doesn't he?" I said to Dante. "You see, I discovered robots to get fooled by tricks too. They see a gun, blood, dead people they come to the same conclusions we do. Then Dante could get close to you without having his hands handcuffed. Once one of us got you with a stab pen and got an implant in you everything else was easy."

"Madam's acting was very convincing," said Kentro "I felt sure you would be distracted."

"The fake death was Kentro's idea. The little pressure from attack and you spill the control codes."

I continued. I walk round the back Control Panel and pick up the blue boxes that had been recording all the digital signals. With that,  they would probably have enough to decode the system."

With that Zhickararie it was taken away.

******************

We watched the rest of the war that day from the comfort of the control room. Millions of robots, millions of human controlled drones attacked thousands of bases. Being robots machines didn't understand the concept of surrender. It wasn't going to be easy but The war of The red planet pretty much went to plan. Vaderman or rather the Central Council of Generals we called Vaderman had planned everything. People evacuated in case domes were struck. Bases were taken, launch fields controlled.

Exhausted after climbing and glued to the news broadcasts we were only able to sit. The secondary team had arrived at the same time as the attack on the upper levels which had brought Kentro to me. Benni and the others with Dante it began to try to figure out how the implant control panels worked.

For the first time since I had landed on Mars, I finally was able to relax.

"So now we have Mars back what do you think can happen?" I said my attention caught by another explosion on the news reports.

Dante shrugged "I don't know. We have been producing war robots for the last year. I don't see us stopping now. We could reinforce Venus perhaps seeing this, Mercury will come in our side."

I was kind of reassured he felt we were on the same side. I watched Kentro running around getting drinks for Benni and Marko. Dante didn't look too happy.

"What's wrong," I said "we should be ecstatic."

"You should be, you've got your planet back. I haven't, my planet is still out there. I worried, I'm not sure what they will do to George and the others when they figure out I defected. I did everything I could to protect them. I realized in the end that I couldn't do anything more to save them" said Dante looking down.

He was tired, we all were. You don't know how strung out you are until it's all over.

"Perhaps we could tell them that Zhickararie sold them out. We could confuse them long enough, to maybe get in and rescue them." I said. Well call me so ridiculously optimistic you can put me out in a rain storm with a fishing net waiting for salmon, but I had hope.

"Coffee madam?" said Kentro handing me a caffeine pill in a cup of hot water.

"I had this weird idea on the way up," I said.

"How weird." said Dante wiping fake blood from the explosive squid on his suit, "Like let's open our presents on Christmas eve weird or I think I'm an aardvark in a man's body weird?"

"Somewhere between the two," I said "I was wondering what happened to Io."

Dante stopped cleaning his fake wounds of blood and looked at me.

"Good question. I know after Bentham took over he issued an executive order stating that Io was a robot and she got sold. I didn't know much else I was a bit.. err upset at the time."

"Well, I wondered. Io manage to get the robots on the Earth to all go on strike. If she wanted to could she possibly get them to go on strike again Yakwim." I said.

John came over he had been watching more of the conflict. The massive world wide attack had begun but it wasn't a walk over. The Earth robot's didn't have anything to do but fight and loose.

"It might work," said John "and if it did it would shorten the war by years."

Kentro came back over "Finding one woman amongst 1.5 billion will be difficult" it said.

"As would getting back to Earth with out being zapped by orbital lasers," said Dante.

Dante was right, I didn't fancy another going heat shield surfing again. 

"Well it's something to think about," I said. "I need a rest but I'll mention it to Vaderman."

****

Within a few days it was obvious we would win against what was left of the Earth forces. After three months or so the last of earth's robots nests were destroyed and the human commanders surrendered. As possibly the only Martain anyone could name as part of the revolution was The Shadow. So as the Shadow I was in demand. I didn't mind too much. Vanderman now known as the Central Council of Generals even helped to restore FiveDogs and gave it to me as 'a sign of the Eye's appreciation'. I had been happy - if I did nothing else with my life, and seriously I didn't intended to, I always had the warm glow of saving a serious number of people from a very rapid arm operation with a 50% chance of ending up dead on the table. The day the last city was taken I remember something Kentro said. It was a week after we had repressurisesed the new bio-dome of FiveDogs. He looked at the new United Eye flag flying hanging fluttering in the breeze from the top of the dome and said.

"The war for the red planet is over. The war for the blue planet has not yet begun Miss.". 

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THE END 

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A/N Scarlett, Dante,  Kentro and others will reappear in part 3. The War for the Blue Planet.