Echo-1 The Whale

17: The Brick

Dr. Death signaled. He wanted us to follow him down, attach our ships to the hull, and spacewalk onto the rust bucket ship hiding in the jet stream of the Banga. I was amazed for a moment that I understood all his hand signals so clearly. The tactical uploads really had their benefits. He signaled again to maintain radio silence and not to fire.

We flew in formation down the slope of the sphere and up over the rising bulkheads to the edge of the engines, then veered to the port side and out around the thrusters. We came up under the ship to what appeared to be an entry hatch. I was about to clamp the landing gear onto the bottom of the ship when it started to open. No light came out, but it was big enough to take our ships in. Death signaled for local scans only, not to feed results to Banga computer, and to disengage connection with Banga array.

My scan of the rusty ship showed it was an old Varan design, with a massively reinforced hull made of an unknown semi-organic type of metal. Which explained all the rust. It had three decks and a good size cargo hold that took up half the interior. The front half held living quarters on the bottom, some kind of science lab on the second floor, and the ship's control room on top.

I activated the lights on my fighter, even though I had excellent night vision. We flew in and the doors closed behind us. We paused in a large airlock and after the outside doors closed the inner doors opened into the cargo section. Readings indicated the atmosphere was breathable with higher levels of nitrogen and oxygen. It was a cavernous space. A bit like being inside an amphitheater but with all the lights off. I climbed out of my fighter and left the twin robots behind to mind the ship. Death was standing near a doorway with his oversized assault rifle in hand, doing his best impression of a human tank. I supposed I looked like a smaller more human-looking blue tank.

"They weren't supposed to arrive until tomorrow, I'm assuming this is the ship." X opened her suit and jumped down to the ground in her more natural naked state.

"Don't, we don't know for sure." Death was always cautious.

I was looking around in the darkness. The top of the space appeared to be lined with trees.

"I hear animals." X was smiling and running about in the dark. "There are monkeys in here, up in the trees!"

"Get back in your armor Lieutenant, that is an order."

She only glared at him for a second before she straightened him out.

"You don't give me orders, Sergeant, I give you orders."

The door behind Dr. Death opened shining a bright light beam into the cargo hold. Mind you, this was a big door, you could drive a truck through it. And standing in the doorway was a robot of such stature that it went toe to toe with the human tank. It was actually a little bigger than him with a single red orb electric lightning storm of an eye, huge square shoulders, bulky arms, and thick four-fingered hands. It walked on thick stubby legs, like tree trunks, and had no feet. It was entirely made of the same rusty material as the outside of the ship.

"Klastorn. Ragstam."

It stepped through the door giving commands in an unknown language. I wished I could have accessed the ship's computer to find out more about it. Death spun around raised his weapon only to have it knocked out of his hand. He jumped forward and the two metal giants locked together. I had a momentary childhood flashback to Rock'em Sock'em Robots. I wondered if they would knock each other's block off?

Both seemed indestructible, a ridiculous tumbling wrestling match ensued. I stepped back getting out of the way. They crashed around on the floor, wailing on each other with huge fists, though both were so armored they did no damage to each other. The sound was maddening. There were monkeys in the trees that lined the top of the cargo hold and they all started to howl. The sound was deafening. The two had nearly become one mass of camouflage and rust with an occasional flash of red pulsing light from the robot's eye. I moved around them, made my way over to Dr. Death's gun, and picked it up. I took aim and waited for a clear shot.