“NOOO!” cried out Daddy Cool in sheer shock, utter anguish and total disbelief.

  Boney’s smirk and silly smile was frozen on his face, blank expression, his eyes dead, staring into the void and emptiness of nonexistence, of oblivion.

  Other Mingers uncloaked, an entire horde of Mingers that sacrificed a small wave of its number to distract the defensive line, while they stealthily made their approach. Unfortunately for what was left of the defensive line, it was frightfully clear that they were massively outnumbered and soon to be overwhelmed.

  The tail lifted Boney’s lifeless body from the ground, the Minger it belonged to materialised into view. Just prior to its attack, it approached cloaked – chromatophores in its carapace rendering it invisible. With the sickening sounds of tearing flesh and cracking bone, it used two sets of arms connected to giant hands with long bony green fingers and black talons, to tear Boney’s lifeless body in two.

  Blood, guts and gore splattered onto the ochre red dirt. The thin air was seared with the scent of blood gushing from red raw meat and the stench of ruptured entrails oozing gastric juices. The Minger leaned towards Daddy Cool and glared with an assorted of spiderlike eyes. It projected a sense of predatory enjoyment.

  “You bastard!” cried Boney, firing off a volley of plasma pulses towards the Minger, “just die you bastard die!”

  Holes appeared across the creature with exploding shreds of red-purple flesh. The Minger was not deterred as it roared and charged towards Daddy Cool.

  Sunny performed basic calculations of the situation and computed the best outcome. It morphed the top half of its structure into an arm that scooped up Daddy Cool while the bottom half of the droid, morphed into a series of legs that scuttled up the slope towards the hangar bay.

  Daddy Cool continued to fire his pulse rifle, he cried in a cyclone of indescribable grief, anger and outrage, “Let me go Sunny! Let me go!”

  “NEGATIVE.”

  Bulky transporters soared out of the hanger bay. They provided some relief to the defensive line as they fired on the Mingers as they departed.

  All but one of the transports had left the hangar bay as the Mingers carved a path of gore towards the entrance. Some of the transporters were blown apart by projectile shards of bone or dragged down to the ground by Mingers that formed perverse bridges like ants. Fortunately, most were able to escape.

  What was left of the defensive line, a dozen or so fighters, were pushed back into the hangar bay. They stumbled towards the last remaining transporter. Some stopped briefly to return fire as bolts of plasma pierced the hanger bay force field.

  Daddy Cool and Sunny were among the last to enter the hangar bay. Out of ammunition and somewhat exhausted, Daddy Cool was released by Sunny. The droid stood patiently, waiting for Daddy Cool to resume his own, rational decisions. The droid understood that Daddy Cool was experiencing a severe emotional response, due to the permanent deactivation of his sibling Boney.

  Sunny was not ignorant of severe emotional responses that afflicted humans and higher AI (that chose to experience such an ordeal). It too was capable of them. Although it suspected that as a middle of the range AI, it did not experience emotions with the same intensity. It too would grieve for Boney. But now was not the time. As such, it temporarily deactivated the chips on its motherboard that would process the loss of Boney.

  “Come on Vanilli,” said the Sarge as he kneeled down briefly to give Daddy Cool a nudge, “suck it up and get your sorry sack of a self up from the floor.” He continued on, towards the transport, stopping a few times to turn and plug a few rounds through the force field.

  Daddy Cool stood to his feet. He gave Sunny a menacing glance before looking at the transporter, loading up with the leftovers of the defensive line. He then gazed back at the hangar bay exit. Monstrous lumbering and shimmering shadows were probing the force field. It was like watching demons taunt from behind a waterfall of shimmering light.

  The Martian sighed, he dropped his pulse rifle and headed towards the transporter. Sunny followed, morphing the top half of his body into a gun that pointed towards the force field. They stumbled over piles of bodies and droid wreckage.

  By the time they reached the transporter the ship was lifting off from the concrete of the hangar bay floor. Sunny morphed its shape again and used about a third of its structure to form a large arm.

  It scooped up Daddy Cool again and catapulted him into the air towards the transporter. Moments later he dismantled the arm and transformed his bottom half into a pair of kangaroo shaped legs. The droid took several bounces forward before launching itself through the air towards the transporter.

  Several fighters manned plasma cannons. They shot wildly into swarms of Mingers that were now breaching the hangar. Daddy Cool climbed into the transporter, followed soon after by Sunny.

  The transporter shot through the low-density force field of the hanger bay entrance. Moments later, after it now sped into the vast maze of cliffs and canyons, the slopes that housed the subterranean habitat of Dinky-Di, exploded. The shockwave rocked the transporter causing its AI piloting system to make split second corrections, narrowly avoiding sideswiping a rocky ridge.

  “There goes Dinky-Di,” the Sarge remarked while lighting up another cigar.

  “Hodges, the Dinky-Di AI, must have sacrificed itself by blowing up the old thorium reactor,” replied one of the fighters to Daddy Cool. It just so happened to be the same pale and portly gent who exchanged words with his brother only minutes before, “and, I’m sorry about your friend.”

  “He was my brother,” replied Daddy Cool, staring blankly.

  “Yeah, I thought that you look, well … looked similar.”

  Stolen story; please report.

  “Go to hell.”

  Daddy Cool looked away from the explosion and down towards the waters of the Valles Marineris delta, several kilometres below. It occurred to him that the transporter headed in a convenient direction.

  Sunny looked at Daddy Cool and then leaned over the edge of the open transporter hatch. It noticed the familiar cliffs and canyons.

  Daddy Cool extended his arm and pointed, “All the way down there Sunny. Do you see it?”

  “YES.”

  “We jump.”

  “YES.”

  Daddy Cool stood behind Sunny as the droid extended appendages that wrapped around Daddy Cool, forming a vest.

  “Just what the hell are you thinking about doing Vanilli?” asked Sarge.

  “We’re bailing out here.”

  “What? So, you’re jumping out of a perfectly good transporter? You’re not going to the Bezos spaceport then?”

  “Nope, we’ll take our chances down there.”

  “Fair enough, you’re funeral Vanilli.”

  Sunny rocked forward and fell out of the transporter. At a sufficient distance from the transporter, the droid altered itself to form a structure that consisted of four helicopter blades. Cables ran from the bladed structure down to Daddy Cool who was suspended by the vest.

  Sunny gently descended to the bottom of Valles Marineris towards the shoreline of the delta. As Daddy Cool’s boots touched the pink-orange sand of a beach, Sunny released the vest before morphing his shape into a dark egg with six legs at the base for locomotion.

  The pair walked up the beach towards the wall of a sheer cliff. Sunny was careful not to step on an assortment of small arthropods, engineered to thrive on the shoreline of the delta. A camouflaged sensor detected their approach and a section of the cliff which was just a holographic projection, dematerialised. It exposed the entrance to a massive shallow cave.

  A spacecraft rested in the middle of the cave. From bow to stern, it was about 100 metres in length. Parts of the ship were fashioned from the parts and wreckage of other space craft. Other sections of the ship appeared futuristic, high tech, foreign … alien.

  As Daddy Cool walked towards the entry ramp, he stopped to view the mural that Boney painted on the ship. It was an image of young and beautiful queen, she winked as she blew a kiss. Two words appeared beneath the mural, Rasputin’s Rod.

  Daddy Cool stopped in his tracks, slamming into an invisible wall of grief. He collapsed to his knees, looking up to the cathedral ceilings of the cave. His mouth was agape, tears rolled in torrents down his cheeks. He let out a series of sobs that descended into weeping and then wails.

  Sunny assessed the situation. It calculated that the best way to respond was to remain silent and motionless, allowing Daddy Cool to unleash his pent-up grief. Unfortunately, his audio sensors picked up the distant roars of the bioweapons, the Mingers.

  “IT IS NOT SAFE HERE DADDY COOL.”

  Daddy Cool had his head in his hands weeping, but extended his right arm, gesturing for Sunny to stop.

  “NO. SURVIVE FIRST. GRIEVE LATER.”

  The mechanoid’s metallic monotone words sunk in like hooks, fishing Daddy Cool momentarily from the depths of his grief. He slowly stood to his feet, looked up at the ship once more and wiped the tears from his face. The two made their way up the ramp and into the ship’s cargo bay. From there they walked through a series of hallways and up several flights of stairs, heading towards the flight deck.

  The hallways were massive as were the flights of stairs as was the internal volume of the flight deck. The original occupants were clearly larger, much larger. The brothers determined when they salvaged this derelict from beneath the sands that whatever they were, they underwent explosive decompression and were blasted from the flight deck. The original windows were now replaced with windows the brothers engineered, fitted and sealed.

  Daddy Cool walked up several steps they’d built to access the central control panel. There were no seats on the flight deck. The original occupants were massive and for some reason they had no need for chairs. With a sigh, Daddy Cool started to type in commands on the console they fitted to interface with the central control panel. It wasn’t lost on him the genius and talent for technology they possessed to reverse engineer this alien wreck and make it space worthy again.

  “And to think we almost handed this ship over to those kleptocrats that corrupted Elon City,” Daddy Cool remarked, “what a stupid idea that would have been Sunny.”

  “AFFIRMATIVE.”

  The ship awakened as the central command console came alive. Engines roared into being and the ship levitated from the floor of the cave, slowly moving through the mouth into the outside, over the waters of the delta and gradually upwards out of Valles Marineris and into the sky.

  Daddy Cool activated the ship’s surround sound system, opting for a late 20th century track, . He keyed coordinates into the ship’s navigation…

  “Next stop, Europa, capital moon of the Jovian Proxy, that’s if we make it through the blockade, not to mention,” he chuckled, “that we’ve only taken her as far as a loop around Demos. Who knows if she’s up for a trip to Europa.”

  “DADDY COOL.”

  “Yeah, I see them.”

  Daddy Cool looked out of the flight deck windows to a small fleet of evacuation ships. In horror, they watched them explode as streams of particle beams from the blockade purged their passengers from existence.

  “There weren’t enough ships in the first place,” Daddy Cool sighed, “so you can damn well bet that most of the passengers of those ships will be mothers with their children.”

  The whole spectacle was made worse with the fact that whichever direction they looked in the sky, the event was repeated.

  “This is a slaughter,” said Daddy Cool.

  Assessing the situation and computing outcomes using his ethics protocols, Sunny came to a sobering conclusion…

  “SACRIFICE.”

  Daddy Cool made the same assessment, “Yes well, that’s our fate old friend.”

  “This ship is a hell of a lot faster than our ships trying to escape or anything the Conglomerate has in orbit. We might be able to take them by surprise. If not, well, we tried.”

  He inputted commands, causing the ship to rapidly increase velocity, so much so that they went from the atmosphere to orbit within a matter of seconds and without the effects of inertia. The Conglomerate blockade came into view, vast capital ships strafing the evacuation fleets below with particle beams.

  “Clearly Rasputin’s Rod was a warship, and warships have weapons,” Daddy Cool said, “but as you know Sunny, Boney and I couldn’t break through the alien encryption to access them, so…” he said as he keyed in a sequence of fateful commands, “we’ll just have to ram something big and just maybe, in the havoc that follows, someone will get through.”

  Daddy Cool eyed the closest capital ship, keyed in commands, closed his eyes and opened his arms in surrender, “Take care Sunny.”

  Rasputin’s Rod catapulted towards the capital ship.

  “I WAS UNAWARE AND NOT BOTHERED BY THE 13.7 BILLION YEARS BEFORE I EXISTED. THEREFORE, I CALCULATE THAT I WILL NOT BE BOTHERED WITH OBLIVION FOR ETERNITY AFTER I CEASE TO EXIST.”

  “That’s the spirit mate,” Daddy Cool replied with his eyes still closed, his arms out wide and a blissful smile on his face, “Mum, Dad, Boney bro … I’m coming home.”

  It was at this time that the ship’s alien subroutines made an assessment and discovered the approaching inevitability of the ship’s demise. The battle computer was activated and within a billionth of a second took full control of the ship, activating its weapons. also began to bellow from the ship’s surround sound system.

  “BATTLE!” boomed from the ship’s intercom in a heroic and utterly macho voice.

  The battle was swift and fierce. Compared in scale to the capital ships of the Conglomerate blockade, Rasputin’s Rod was a gnat, a mosquito. But its alien technology far surpassed anything made by humans, well … within this time period anyway.

  Daddy Cool and Sunny just stood in amazement as Rasputin’s Rod tore into the blockade like a flying piranha into a school of docile, whale sized guppies. Blinding flashes of unknown beam weaponry sheared capital ships into shreds of molten metallic confetti. Like a lightsabre through butter, Rasputin’s Rod carved a path through the blockade. In the chaos and breakdown in communication between the surviving capital ships, a small window of opportunity opened up for some of the Martian ships to escape.

  The battle computer for Rasputin’s Rod increased the speed of the engines, sending the ship searing through the fabric of space towards Jupiter. Before it relinquished control back to Daddy Cool and his equally stunned droid, it boomed three simple words across the ship’s intercom, repeating them exactly 12 times. A mantra of sorts, not heard in the bowels of the ship for more than 450 years…

  “DAEMON SHIH TZUS RULE!”