Disclaimer!

Part four of the origin of Mobius series

I apologise to Packbell’s creator as I could not find him to ask permission. (Sorry Bookshire)

Facing them across the smouldering ruins of the blast door was a huge army of robots. They were not the standard SWATbot type, they were slightly larger. They had heavy helmets protecting their heads with a flange to protect the neck. They had facial features which could be described as skull like, but the lower jaw jutted out slightly, showing bottom teeth. They had thick, solid armour plating everywhere else, and the joins were covered in a thick, black material. Leading them was a Robotnik in a huge Robo-suit. He had enough guns and spikes on his person to make a pincushion out of a city. The two groups eyed each other for a few seconds before all hell broke loose.

"Die scumbag!" was screamed out of Michala’s head piece amplifier. He launched himself forward, his double-ended scythe describing a lethal arc through the air. The scythe cleaved one of the soldiers clean in half, the slight spray of hydraulic fluid forming a mist which wreathed Michala in a spectral haze. Like an avenging angel of death he flung himself at the others. The sound of gunfire filled the cavern. The soldier bot guns were more dangerous than the standard and huge bolts of laser fire danced in the cavern. Shells from the wyverns sang through the air like angry hornets. Michala was now embroiled in a melee with a group of troopers. Their guns could not pierce his armour and he used this to his advantage. He smashed the head of one of the soldiers with a clenched fist and head-butted another into submission. Sonic’s gun chattered in his hands as a storm of bolts were flung towards their targets. They mostly ricocheted off harmlessly, but a few hit the unarmoured faces and joints, blowing pieces off. Robotnik’s huge robot struck next. A huge salvo of missiles erupted from the left shoulder. One exploded against Azarlan’s chest, flinging him back against a wall. Another hit the ceiling, tearing a huge chunk away that landed on the prone Azarlan. The other missiles exploded harmlessly against the walls. Robotnik hammered the controls with his fists, his face becoming slightly redder than usual. Michala vaulted over another group of soldiers and barrelled towards the Robot. He hit it hard in the chest, nearly knocking it over. He tore off the front armour plate with a savage roar and smashed his fist hard into the exposed circuitry. Robotnik frantically slammed his robotic arm down on a large red button. The cockpit ejected out and flew off on powerful jets. The small pod left through a hole in the ceiling. The rest of the black company continued to tear through the troopers, until there was almost nothing left to oppose them. Suddenly, Robotnik returned through the hole in the ceiling in his

egg-o-matic, mounted beneath it was a huge laser cannon. Laughing maniacally, Robotnik fired at the surviving human. The beam blasted a hole in his chest and he was knocked to the floor. The other hedgehog ran towards the egg-o-matic, blasting with his assault rifle. A few shots pierced its armoured shell before that member was also hit, the beam blasting a neat hole in his skull. Belching smoke, the egg-o-matic swung slightly in the air before Robotnik grinned and fired the laser at a point on the ceiling. With a groan of tortured rock the ceiling began to cave in. Michala tossed a small metal sphere into the factory beyond the doors before sprinting for the sewer entrance. He grabbed a stunned Bunnie by the scruff of her neck and hauled her out as Sonic streaked before them. Michala and Bunnie dived into the entrance as the roof fell in behind them. Robotnik giggled to himself and floated out of the clouds of choking dust.

"I, am going, to personally, impale that, arsehole, on a, hot iron, stake!" roared Michala between gasps or air.

"What do we do now?" asked Sonic in a panicked voice, he was used to having Sal around when things went wrong like this.

"We reach the surface and get back to Knothole, the charges are primed and the others are dead, we must get away before they detonate."

Michala stood up, blood trickling from a tear in his armour. Sonic watched amazed as the flesh below sealed itself up and the armour began to knit together.

Sally and Amy were frog-marched along a corridor, heavy guns held to their backs. Sally was being followed by Commander Packbell, Robotnik’s android and unofficial second-in-command. The sneer on his face was now tinged with a sadistic smile. Amy was being goaded along by a large lupine creature with white fur. The creature was surprised at her size, nearly as tall as he was, over one and a half times the size of the other hedgehogs he had seen. They reached the door to a cell, Packbell flicked a keycard over a scanner and the door slid open. He planted his heavy combat boot in the small of Sally’s back and kicked her in. Amy instinctively clenched her fists. She was shoved into the next cell. The cell was bare metal and there was absolutely nothing in it. Amy pushed the door with her hands, it didn’t give at all and she could see no locking device on the door. The airvent in the ceiling was too small to crawl out of, and there was nothing else in the room to escape through. She straightened herself up and hit her head on the ceiling, the cell was clearly meant for ‘normal’ anthromorphs.

In the next cell Sally was afraid, she was afraid of capture because of her past experiences. She had been captured and tortured before, before Packbell had been built. It had been Snively and Robotnik who tortured her. A wave of fear passed over her at the memory of that hideous room. She remembered the pain amplifiers and neural shock bands Snively used, and how she nearly gave in when she saw a small rabbits eyes expelled explosively from her skull. Robotnik had used hot branding irons and other simpler methods to squeeze information from his subjects. He had held Sally’s arm in a hot brazier for a few minutes until she passed out with screaming. She looked at her hand, underneath the layer of fine fur on its back it still bore the scars of that day, although their anger had cooled long ago. She shivered again as she remembered the hideous experiments Robotnik had performed on the other inmates. She had seen others partially roboticized and then a hideous ‘living autopsy’ to discover the system trauma. She closed her eyes and shook her head to dislodge the memory of the screaming, that hideous screaming……..

Azarlan hovered on the brink of death. The heavy mass of stone that had fallen on him had split his helmet in half and fractured his chest plate. Luckily his backpack wasn’t damaged, and he was able to breathe the stored oxygen. He tried to shift the huge piece of masonry above him but it was far too large. He strained iron-hard muscles against the offending mass, but he couldn’t muster the strength to move it. His oxygen was beginning to run low, but he had a trick up his sleeve. He had a special ability to reduce his level of consciousness to put him in a state of suspended animation. Slowly his pulse rate began to drop, his body temperature plummeted and his breathing became long and shallow. He continued the process until his massive twin hearts beat only once every two minutes, and his breathing slowed to once an hour. The last thing he remembered was the darkness of the rock, its texture picked out only by his night vision.

The three survivors reached the surface, Sonic jumped out of the sewer grate. He helped Bunnie out before Michala pulled himself to the floor. He raised up and brushed something indescribable off his leg. He looked at the far horizon and the billowing cloud of smoke rising from the wreckage of a tall building.

"Looks like somebody was successful then."

"I thought you threw a bomb in."

"I did, I just hope that it is sufficiently placed to destroy the main units."

"Do you know what that thang Robutnik shot y’all with was, Sugah?" asked Bunnie.

"It looked very much like an anti-aircraft laser we use on our APCs, perhaps Robotnik found one after we left and got it working again."

"What about Sally and Amy?" Sonic Butted in. "If they’ve been successful surely they would be here by now?"

"Yes they should, I’ll get an orbital scan done, the satt-spy makes a flypast in five minutes."

"Oh great, more waiting!"

Snively barrelled along through the air duct. Something was definitely following him. Its fetid stench filled the air behind him as his hands scrabbled on the cold metal. He slammed against the wall of the duct as he took a corner, there was a similar clang as whatever was following did the same. Suddenly the duct collapsed beneath him. The metal below him buckled and tore, pitching him into space. He grabbed a trailing cable in his hands and hung on for dear life. Looking below he saw that he was in part of the water refineries, he had no idea he’d come so far in the endless maze of the air vents and tunnels. He grabbed a passing pipe and hauled himself onto it. The exertion of his flight now presented itself with dizzying blotches of hot red on his vision. Suddenly something fell out of the broken vent. The zombie fell slowly, flailing its arms in wide circles. It splashed into the water below, sending up a spout of water that nearly drenched the panting lackey. The water was deep, and whatever had fallen in did not surface. Snively clung onto the pipe and whimpered, it was one hell of a long way down.

Amy had been busy in her cell. Out of a small compartment in her wrist she had pulled a long stiletto-bladed knife. Her already sensitive hearing, boosted by a cochlea implant, scanned for noise of any electronic surveillance. She pulled a hidden camera off its mount inside the air vent. Her bionic eye relayed off information on the android that had put her in here. It had been a surprise to her that there were actually records on these androids. It turned out that he was an old imperial model, a Bell mark 3. According to the techna-lingo they had ceased production for two reasons: 1. They were prone to lose respect for life, and developed sadistic tendencies, 2. They could easily be disabled by severing the main neural ganglia, located in the neck.

Amy gripped her knife hard as something began walking towards her cell outside. There was an electronic bleep as a card was swiped on a reader. The door slid slowly open. Amy pressed herself up against the wall behind the door. She saw Packbell’s boot as it swung in through the door. She attacked. The android, despite its otherwise amazingly fast reflexes, could not dodge the blade of a highly trained assassin. The stiletto slid cleanly into his neck, just above the collarbone. A short spray of white fluid and an electronic fizzing were the only sounds he made. He dropped. Amy caught him and slid him down slowly. She placed her spiked heel on his head and pressed down hard. Packbell’s neural hardware fell out and smashed. Amy picked up his gun and slid out like a shadow, her suit mimicking its surroundings, making her invisible in the gloom of the corridor. She moved swiftly and soundlessly towards Sally’s cell. She disabled the video cameras as she moved, thankful that the Mobian technology was not as small as that she was used to, and the audio sensors also. She reached a cell which she remembered as Sally’s. She paused. She could smell the stench of fear and distress pheromones in the air. Her olfactory boosters analysed the chemical and fed the information to her brain. Their strength indicated that Sally had been attacked, and it was doubtful that she was alive. Fearing the worst, Amy slid the card across the reader. The door opened slowly, far too slowly. Inside was a horrific sight. Sally lay there on the floor, her breathing rapid and shallow, her eyes glazed and staring fixedly at a point on the opposite wall. But the blood! Between Sally’s legs was a huge smear of coagulating blood, the surface of which cracked and twisted as she shivered.

"Sally!"

Azarlan woke again slowly. As he became more aware he noticed that his surroundings were a dingy cell. His clouded vision cleared slowly. At first all he could perceive were the thick bars at the end of the cell, then he saw the ceiling of reinforced concrete, then the basin on the wall. Finally he noticed that he wasn’t alone, across the cell was another form. It sat huddled up and watched him with fear. Azarlan noticed now that parts of his armour had been removed. They were the pieces that had been damaged when the rock fell on him. He still wore the armoured covering over his legs and arms, the main frame of his armour was intact although the chest plate was missing and thankfully he had his backpack, it contained enough field rations to last a month and many other functions also. Azarlan shook his head to clear out the fog that surrounded his brain. He sat up. The other occupant of the cell scuttled away into the corner by the bars. He looked at it. It appeared to be a racoon, or something similar. It was definitely female, although it was severely emaciated and had lost most of its shape. Azarlan stood up and promptly banged his head on the ceiling. He sat down again and rubbed his head. He rose to his knees and moved towards the trembling figure that huddled in the corner.

"Get away from me Overlander!" she screamed at him.

Azarlan looked at her with a puzzled expression before he remembered that it was the Mobian term for the outlanders that had caused so much disruption to the eastern sectors before they were hounded into the Mobius nebula cluster.

"I would rather not be classed along with those despicable scum." Replied Azarlan, trying not to spit at the mention of the name.

"But- but, y-you’re human?"

"Yes, but that doesn’t make me an overlander. All overlanders are human but not all humans are overlanders."

"But, they killed my dad!" The racoon was whimpering now.

"I have spent the best part of my life in the imperial army, hunting down those who seek to cause hurt to others. The Overlanders were an outcast band, we hunted them through the depths of space to the Mobian nebula, but they escaped into it and we were unable to follow. We now seek retribution for the wrongs of the Overlanders, especially the fiend Robotnik." Azarlan spat as he finished the sentence.

He looked the racoon over. Despite her emaciated condition she was attractive, for an anthromorph. She looked as if she had been badly treated: her left eye was covered in a milky-white film, sure sign of an infection, she had a large open sore on her right leg that glistened with a watery secretion. Her remaining clothes were sparse, consisting of a badly torn crop-top that barely stayed on and a torn skirt that had been knotted like a loincloth around her waist. She was shivering, not so much from fear now, but from the chill draught that pervaded the entire cell. Azarlan unclipped his backpack from the armoured chassis of his suit and opened the top. He pulled out a small blue square of material. He flicked his wrist and it expanded into a large blanket. He wrapped it around the shivering girl and hugged her to get her warm.

"You got a name?" he asked.

"Natalie, my name’s Natalie." She replied.

Amy sprinted down the corridor. Her stiletto heels had retracted to allow her to run faster. Sally was slung across her shoulders and was barely capable of holding on. Amy gritted her teeth and put on an extra burst of speed, her nostrils flaring to take in more air. Her pounding footsteps rang off the steel floor and echoed through the whole corridor, probably the whole building. So much for stealth then.

She quickly checked Sally was still alive as she rounded a turn in the corridor. She was still breathing although she was barely conscious. Amy smashed a fist into the locking mechanism of a door and then pulled it open. She bought her gun off her shoulder and sprinted ahead into the next corridor. She noticed a flicker of movement up ahead and ducked reflexively as a laser bolt streaked over her head. She rolled Sally off her shoulder and sprang sideways as another hit the ground where she was a moment before. Amy back-flipped towards the silhouetted figure and smashed her forearm down hard across the side of its head. It yelped in pain. Amy smacked it a stinging blow across the side of its head which snapped it sideways. The figure dropped. Amy looked closely at it, it was a female cat. Pausing only to bind and gag her assailant and spit in her face she picked up the enervate Sally and continued to sprint towards the outside of the building.

In orbit a tiny sphere of metal turned its lifeless electronic eyes on the tiny blue world spinning lazily beneath it.

"Commencing Scan……………"

Michala waited impatiently for the data to arrive from the Spy-sat. He paced up and down a length of clear tarmac that Robotnik had not yet covered with a sheet of steel. Sonic was even more impatient and had taken to sprinting around the local area (to Sonic that means anything within ten miles) in thirty second long bursts.

"Nothing yet?" asked Sonic.

"No, hang on." Said Michala, raising his hand to his ear.

"What?"

"Amy and Sally are in the prison complex, but it looks like they are in the process of escaping."

"How d’ya mean Sugah?" asked Bunnie.

"Nobody moves that fast if they’re being transferred to a new cell."

"What! Where are they?"

"Just coming out of that building over.." Michala looked at a large building that towered above them. "there."

Amy carrying Sally burst out of a door leading onto a suspended walkway about half way up. Michala flew up to take Sally off of Amy’s shoulders. Amy showed her amazing athletic ability by jumping down, bounding from building to building.

"Sal!" shouted Sonic. "Oh my, what’s happened to her!"

Michala unclipped his gauntlet and felt her head with his hand.

"I think we better get her back to Knothole fast, she’s in a serious condition and a lot of pain. I’ll give her something to keep her comfortable."

Michala pulled a small black cube out of his backpack and adjusted it.

"You’re gonna be okay Sal, you’re safe now, we’ll take you home." Sobbed Sonic as he stroked her head fur.

Michala placed the cube to the side of Sally’s neck. She sighed and her eyes closed, but her breathing became more stable.

"Let’s move." Said Michala, lifting Sally onto his shoulders and beginning to jog in the direction of Knothole.

The Zombie horde had danced a merry waltz of destruction through the now undefended buildings. They tore into research labs and missile silos in a sea of rotting flesh. However, their movements slowed as the sun began to rise in the northern sky and, despite the thick covering of smog overhead, the sky lightened. This continued until the sun was just clear of the horizon. Then a strange thing happened. As the rays of light struck the Zombies they began to evaporate. Great clouds of chill vapour boiled off the shambling hordes and whirled out of the walls and gates back to the forest. The great Dracolich and Unicorn, along with their eerie riders, performed likewise. If anyone was to search the forest now, there would not be the slightest sign of the tortures that had shook the earth.

Natalie was warming to her strange companion. At first she had been terrified, he was over twice her size and probably more than ten times her weight judging by the width of his shoulders. He was human, but not like the Overlanders that had brought Mobius to its knees during the war. He had given her a blanket to help warm her up, and food as well. He gave her food even though he himself took none, it was a piece of dried sausage compressed into a cube. It didn’t look much but it was better than nothing and stopped the gnawing hunger that threatened to split her open. She was fascinated by the complex armour he wore and even more by the backpack which had more functions than a utility knife. Using it the Human, who she found out was named Azarlan, had synthesised water out of the moisture in the air and made her a hot drink. It had been so long since she had a comfort such as that, and found herself feeling grateful to the species that had killed her father and destroyed her home. The human had talked to her, describing why he was here and where he had come from. Natalie had been enthralled by tales of a vast empire stretching across the entire galaxy. It seemed that she had been wrong to tar all humans with the same brush. They had a common enemy, it seemed, in the Overlanders. Although the Overlanders spacecraft had been in most ways primitive (this is compared to the Imperial battle craft) they had had the fortune to escape to Mobius, out of the reaches of the Empire. She had heard this tale and many others, now it was her turn to speak:

"Why does Robotnik keep you down here?" asked Azarlan. "He normally roboticizes people as soon as he captures them doesn’t he?"

"Normally yes, but I’m an exception. My mother was one of the scientists working on the de-roboticizer program in Knothole. Robotnik captured me and my mother when we went on a raid to get some rare chips. Robotnik is forcing her to work on improving his roboticizer design using her knowledge of the de-roboticizer program to make it resistant to it."

"How long have you been down here?"

"About three months, it seems a lot longer though."

"It doesn’t appear that they are looking after you very well either."

"Only Snively and a cat bothers to bring me anything, Packbell and the robots don’t bother."

"Do they hurt you?"

"Only Packbell does, that’s how I got this thing on my leg and lost the sight in my eye." She glanced down at the cleaned and bandaged site of her leg wound.

"What did he do to you?"

"He strapped something around my leg until it went purple, then he scratched it with a razor blade, then he tied me up until it became infected. Every time I tried to bandage it up he would irritate it again so it would become more painful."

"Are there any others like you in these cells?"

"No, there’s only me, they roboticized the last one two days ago. He was a skunk called Johnny, thought he was something of a big-shot. He hadn’t even been to Knothole and he thought himself a freedom fighter. Robotnik enjoyed him being roboticized."

"Aren’t you worried about Robotnik roboticizing you?"

"Anything’s gotta be better than this place, I’d do anything to get out."

"Perhaps we will get out."

She turned to look him full in the face.

"Really?" she asked expectantly.

"I should hope so."

She put her arms round his neck and kissed him. It felt weird to both of them, as one was not used to kissing something with fur, the other one without. She pulled her head back and looked into his eyes, she kissed him again.

The remaining group neared the outskirts of Knothole, Michala had been keeping up a powerful sprint that ate up the distance to the village. Normally a days walk they had managed it in little over an hour. The sun was now above the horizon and the village was just beginning to wake up. Sonic raced to Dr Quack’s hut. He hammered the door with his fists.

"Dr Quack! Dr Quack! Wake up!"

Dr Quack opened the door to his hut.

"What is it Sonic?"

"It’s Sally, she’s badly hurt, we don’t know what’s wrong with her!"

"Where is she now?"

"Michala has taken her into the Space ship, he said he’s got a surgery in there."

Dr Quack raced hot on the heels of Sonic the short distance to the Kestrel.

When Sonic reached it he found Michala had worked fast. Sally was lying on an operating table that appeared to have slid out of the wall. A strange spidery droid suspended from the ceiling was attaching innumerable small pipes to strategic points on Sally. Above her a read out displayed heart and lung activity, along with brain-wave impulses. Sally’s eyes were closed beneath an oxygen helmet that covered her entire head. A bar slid along the top of the display, shining an intense white beam across Sally. It stopped and retracted into the wall when it passed over her head.

"Do you know what’s wrong with her?" asked Dr Quack, puffing slightly from his exertions.

"Computer, complete diagnosis."

A large plan of Sally’s body was flashed up on the overhead display. Parts were highlighted in red and yellow.

"Diagnosis.." came an electronic voice. "Severe organ trauma in abdominal region, damage to cerebral cortex – blood clot detected over visual cortex, rupturing of gall bladder detected, severe intestinal bruising, fractures detected: Lower ribs all fractured, humerus right complex, parietal simple, ulna left simple, radius left simple. Caution, blood pressure dropping below recommended limits."

"Insert required amount of A4 sixty."

A tube extended out of the wall and into Sally’s arm. A thick yellow fluid was pumped in to her veins through it.

"What on Mobius is that?" asked an astonished Dr Quack.

"Welcome to current medical technology. That is artificial blood combined with a healing compound that can be used in cell repair."

"Won’t Sally reject it?"

"No, it’s a Universal Donor type. In a minute, when she’s stabilised, I’ll give her a shot of Symbiotes."

"Please, what are those?"

"I know that Mobius has developed Nano-technology. These are organic Nano-bots designed for specific cell repair."

Michala looked back at the display which was now showing the support metres. A small sign now flicked on in the corner, it read ‘Stable’.

Amy passed Michala an airgun loaded with a canister of blue liquid. He pressed it to a prepared point on Sally’s neck, next to the small black cube. It delivered its contents with a hiss of compressed air.

"Now, there is one last procedure that must be performed if she is to live. Tell me Doctor, have you ever used remote surgery?"

"No."

"Then this is an opportunity for you to learn."

Michala picked up what looked like an old fashioned black laptop. He plugged a three point cable into the wall.

"That injection also contained a remotely piloted vehicle for micro surgery on damaged nerve endings. Sally has sustained a heavy blow to the side of her head and there may be nerve damage. Amy, could you please escort Sonic and Bunnie away, it may be distressing for them."

Sonic and Bunnie were led away. Sonic was forcing himself to hold back tears now, he had to be strong for Sally.

Michala turned to the screen on his black box. He pressed a button and a visual image appeared on it.

"The craft has used autopilot to reach the general area where the blood clot is. Now all I have to do is find it and remove it, then I must repair any damaged nerve cells."

Dr Quack watched fascinated as the image shifted as Michala deftly piloted the craft towards a huge dark mass. Beams of energy shot out of the nose of the craft and struck the clot. It disintegrated into a cloud of small particles. Michala then moved the craft to examine the damage to the nerves. On this scale they appeared like bluish pipes along which sparks of energy pulsed.

"We’re lucky, only one damaged nerve."

A thin strip of metal was stretched between the two ends of the severed nerve and bridged the gap.

"Now, all we can do for now is wait and keep her comfortable. Tell Sonic the good news.