No hum of a robotic power supply anywhere. No moving shadows along the ground. No white bursts or floating bubbles.
Kevin moved closer to the edge of the hovercar still hovering stationary over their heads. He paused, watching the area again. He could see more trees and sky now, and so far, nothing flying across them.
He froze. What was he doing? Going to go out into the open for the raiding Vordac robots to see him? So far, they’d been safe under the hovercar. They should stay there.
Christy sniffled. He felt her soft hand on his arm where he leveraged his upper body off the pavement.
Right. He needed to get her out of here before the robots came back through looking for the harder-to-find people. Like them, under their car.
Shaking with a terror threatening to take control of him, Kevin studied the area once more. Only then did he quickly move out from under the vehicle.
He didn’t stand up. He didn’t need to with the hovercar’s passenger side-door still open.
He crawled into the hovercar, staying as low as he could. The windows inside allowed more visibility, but not of the entire sky. Still, he could see the Vordac mothership still in the same position where it hovered over the other side of the park next to the high-rises of Central City. Around it flew the black flying dots he knew belonged to the Vordac raiding robots.
He jerked, nearly screaming as something grabbed his leg. He rolled to his side, jerking back, eyes wide…
Only to stare into the wide eyes of Christy.
Good grief. She’d scared him to death.
He beckoned her inside and then crawled towards the front of the hovercar. Christy climbed inside behind him and moved to hunker down behind the middle two seats.
She was in a better hiding place than him. The big front windshield allowed the sunlight to hit him straight on as he slipped in front of the front drivers seat.
He watched the sky, holding his breath. A black dot flew from one side of the park to the other, but made no sign of turning in their direction.
The sky clear, he poked his head up enough to see the console.
A console almost dark. The navigation computer he knew how to use. Even six-year-old Christy did, but it did not respond to his pokes.
He ducked down again, watching the sky. Okay, no navigation computer. The console still had power. There were lights on it. Just one part of the vehicle no longer worked.
Like Nanny-Bot. The Vordac pulse must have done something to it.
To the higher functions only?
Now, that would make sense. Kevin thought it over as he watched another robot fly by, this one closer than the one before.
Far too close. Looked like they were in a search pattern. Yeah, he needed to figure out how to get them out of here. The robots weren’t big enough to stop a hovercar as big as this one. If he could just get it moving, they might be okay.
Lower functions still working. Hovercar with the power to hover. Console still active. Not all hopeless. If he could figure out a way to use those assets.
Like the time his father had to drive it to a repair shop after the primary computer died?
Kevin caught his breath, remembering the controls that had come out of the console so the flight could be made manually. If he could get the controls to deploy, then they wouldn’t need the navigation computer to get away.
He watched the sky again through the windows, trying to remember how his father did it. Something on the console? Or along the side of the console?
He searched along the media console between the two front seats. Nothing there that he could see that might trigger the manual controls.
Nothing along the floor either. Or along the outside frame where it rose off the floor to form the side of the console and side of the window. The lever for popping open the hood definitely wouldn’t do it.
With the skies clear again, he rose enough to look at the console again. From right to left, he searched it for anything that might work. Something other than the text and graphic warnings of the systems no longer working.
A dark moving shape caught his eye. One closer than all the others. One flying through the air.
Flying straight at their hovercar.
TO BE CONTINUED…
YOU ARE READING
Summer Crash (Zerralon 1.1)
Science FictionSummer comes to a crashing end… Ten-year-old Kevin Taggert prefers to stay home with his video games, but his parents insist he join a summer sports program. Exactly on the day the Vordac raid Earth. With his little sister depending on him for prote...
