D'mok Revival: The Nukari Invasion Anthology

by Michael Zummo

  “We’re not done here yet.”

  “It’s time-release, don’t worry.”

  Mencari cringed.

  “Are we going down there?” Allia said, eyes wide.

  He was about to confirm when Toriko called out, “Wait. A message. No, an alert. Something about a robot found destroyed. Other bots have been dispatched to investigate.”

  “But we didn’t destroy any robots!” Allia said confused.

  Mencari examined the cavern map Toriko pulled up. A targeting symbol converged on a spot deep inside the mine. “According to this, it happened pretty far in,” Toriko said.

  “Things fall in caves all the time,” Allia said, relieved. “It probably got smushed.”

  Mencari frowned. “Regardless, they’re on alert now. We need to be careful. Let’s get the sample and get out of here.”

  Toriko popped her plug and stood. A hologram appeared before her, scanning for routes down to the mine area.

  “There,” she said. “There’s another maintenance shaft, not far from the one we used to get in.”

  He waved a hand forward. “Lead on.”

  They gathered around her to watch the floor layout with the sentinel dots, moving along their programmed paths. On schedule, the hum outside the door grew as the holographic dot approached their position. When the patrol bot had passed safely by, they slipped out of the room and headed toward the maintenance shaft.

  When they located it, they found a ladder leading down a hole to a lighted area below. Nothing seemed to be moving around. Ichini leapt down ahead of the group. The lower they went, the more rumbling they heard from the mining machines. Their descent ended on a metal plateau.

  As Mencari was about to step off the ladder, he noticed a few loose bolts along with scuff marks on the ground. He pointed to them and whispered, “Looks deep, like something heavy’s been dragged here.”

  His eyes traced along the markings as he hopped off the ladder. Allia traced his gaze and found a small side panel, went over to it and crawled inside while Ichini stayed with the others.

  They heard metal clanking, and the sound of something being hit.

  Worried, Toriko called out, “Allia?” When there was no response, she went over to the cubby and peered into the dark. A robot head popped out, causing her to yell and flail backwards. Losing her balance, she hit the floor hard.

  Allia’s laugh echoed from inside the robot’s head before she pulled it from her face. “Look what I found. It’s all busted up, though.”

  Toriko scowled at her. “That wasn’t funny.”

  Mencari looked behind Allia, struggling to make out details in the dark. Strewn across the storage area were the mangled parts of a patrol sentinel. “This isn’t right,” he said. “They’re already looking for one destroyed robot, right? Something else is going on here.”

  He peered farther down the crawlspace. “How far are we from the ore we saw, Toriko?”

  She checked her map. “We’re very close.”

  They made their way down a second ladder, which ended in a room-sized chamber that opened into the mines. Toriko opened the door to reveal piles of ore sitting mere feet from them.

  Mencari looked out, confirming no bots were lurking around. He dashed out to a pile and grabbed a few pieces of the ore. He turned to sneak back to the others.

  Suddenly, the lighting turned crimson, and an alarm began to blare.

  Toriko, Allia and Ichini burst out the door and dashed past Mencari. “Robots coming! Plan B—this way!” Toriko shouted.

  Mencari ran to catch up. From behind, the sound of clanking feet grew closer. Mencari peered back to see a man appear, chased by a huge guardian robot.

  Ahead of them, a wall of sentinels approached. Allia took a defensive stance as Ichini transformed into a beetle-like creature. Mencari activated his hand-phaser and aimed, unleashing a steady stream of low-powered blasts. As Ichini charged, Allia reached to her sides and gripped something concealed under her clothing, drawing out a dark-metal object. As she gripped it, barbed edges flowered from the main shaft, creating small but deadly-looking sabers.

  From behind them, they could hear the stranger attacking the larger robot.

  Relying on the others for defense, Toriko twitched her fingers to summon her holographic cube. In moments, she was hacking the nearest robot using her virtual interface. It suddenly stopped dead. Emboldened by success, she attempted it again on a second. Her face pruned instantly. “Reactive firewalls? Oh Eudora, they’re adapting fast to my hacks!”

  Allia and Ichini double-teamed one of the robots, gashing its critical systems and sending it crashing to the ground. Mencari raised the power of his hand-phaser and fired, destroying the fallen robot and riddling the remaining robots with shrapnel.

  Mencari blasted another, then joined Allia and Ichini against the final opponent blocking their path, easily taking it down. They all turned in time to see the stranger struggling against the giant sentinel behind them. Its massive hand swatted the stranger, sending him reeling. He hit the ground hard and tumbled a few times before his body flopped and was still.

  Mencari fired a few shots into the sentinel’s head, while Allia scampered to the fallen man and helped him to his feet. “He’s breathing, just stunned,” she yelled.

  Ichni morphed back into a tiger-like creature, and ran circles around the large sentinel to distract it.

  Allia suddenly yelled, “Rhysus! Watch OUT!”

  He turned, as to his amazement, a battle-damaged small sentinel streaked past him and engaged the large one.

  “It’s on our side now!” Toriko shouted. “Hurray for hacking!”

  Getting the most from the distraction, Mencari hollered, “Let’s get out of here!”

  Toriko pointed to an open vent. “This should take us back up a level!”

  “Come on!” Mencari said, helping the stranger to his feet and dashing for the vent. Inside, two mining robots were waiting, drills pointed at the group, ready to attack. Mencari used his hand-phaser to take out the first one, while Ichini transformed and used his bladed arms to slice through the second.

  Suddenly, the whole vent began to shake violently, and in the next instant, a mammoth robot hand ripped through the floor. With one jerk, the vent was torn apart like wet paper beneath them, and they tumbled out as the floor gave way.

  Before them stood a guardian robot twice the size of the large sentinel they had been fighting. Its hand raised, ready to strike. Mencari saw Toriko directly in its path. He cried out to her, knowing he couldn’t get there in time to prevent her death.

  In a flash, the man they’d helped barreled into Toriko, knocking her out of the way just as the robot’s arm whooshed by and embedded into the cavern wall next to them. Mencari kicked his blaster setting to maximum. Squealing with charge, he unleashed a barrage of blasts.

  Despite direct hits, the robot only stumbled a few unbalanced steps back.

  “Oh, Eudora,” Toriko shrieked.

  “It’s BIG!” Mencari yelled.

  Slightly stunned by the fall, Allia winced and held her arm. Ichini circled her, ready to protect her.

  A bleep from her armguard drew Toriko’s attention. “Rhysus, it’s Spark. The two scout ships. They’re headed back this way.”

  The man’s head jerked toward Mencari. “You have a ship out there?”

  Mencari nodded.

  “Those scout ships will bring reinforcements!”

  The man spoke with the confidence of knowledge, and Mencari had no reason not to believe him. They had to get out of here, back to the ship and away, or they’d all die here.

  “I’ll use my ship to distract the scouts,” the man said as he fired. “We’ll need to use your ship to get us out of here.”

  Mencari said, “Is anyone on your vessel?”

  The man shook his head. “Autopilot. Cover me a sec, I’ll call it up.”

  Determined to break their attacker, Mencari fired numerous blasts from his phaser. The large guar
dian robot struggled, but remained in a defensive posture against the increased attacks. Smaller robots appeared from down the corridor.

  He needed something more, and fast. Glancing at the stranger, Mencari could see his attention was on his ship.

  He was about to try manifesting one of his own energy attacks, when the robot began to twitch. Mencari looked down, puzzled. The ground beneath his feet began to tremble.

  “The virus activated,” Toriko yelled. “Oh Eudora! The mining bots. I forgot!”

  The stranger looked at her. “What virus?”

  “To make the robots run amuck! They’re gonna tear this place up! When I planted the bug, I thought we’d be gone by now!”

  Another bleep caught her attention. “Rhysus, Spark reports that the scout ships are chasing a new ship that just showed up.”

  The man nodded. “Mine.”

  She nodded back and relayed instructions to Spark, then pointed down the corridor. “I’m calling Spark in! Let’s head to the bay!”

  Mencari and the stranger fired their weapons at the guardian robot’s head, temporarily blinding it. They all followed Toriko’s yelled directions that led them to the docking bay. They entered in time to see their craft whoosh into the docking channel. The guardian robot’s heavy feet clanged behind them.

  Mencari looked anxiously up at the ship, waiting for it to touch down.

  “Come on, come on!” the stranger said, watching.

  The guardian robot entered the bay and came toward them at a fast lumber.

  A high-pitched squeal and a shockwave shattered the air around them. Cracking like thunder, a blast hit the guardian robot. The lights of its eyes faded as a back panel blew off in a shower of sparks. Carried by its momentum, the robot flopped forward, screeching a few feet before stopping. The motionless hulk smoked as the harsh scent of crisping wires clogged the air.

  Toriko turned toward the ship to see Spark barking happily through the main window. “He fired the EM pulse! Good boy!”

  As the ship touched down, the side hatch opened. The others dashed on board and strapped in while Toriko took control of the ship.

  “So you’re the one that left that footprint,” Allia said.

  The man looked over at Allia. “What footprint?”

  Mencari swiveled his head around.

  “When we first climbed down into here, I saw a faint footprint in the dust,” she said. “I knew we weren’t the first ones to go in that way.”

  “And you didn’t tell us?” Mencari said in equal parts annoyance and concern.

  As their ship left the bay, they saw a ship explode in the distance, finished off by the scout ships.

  The man moaned, “Goodbye, baby. You were good to me!”

  Toriko stiffened in her seat. “Uh . . . it was a good decoy, but it looks like those ships are coming back this way!”

  She plotted a course to maneuver through the asteroids and put maximum distance between them and their pursuers.

  Leaving their escape to Toriko, Mencari turned to the man. “Who are you? And what were you doing in there?”

  “You’re Rhysus Mencari, right?”

  “How did—?”

  The man grinned. “Your combat style. Of course, your friends calling out your name helped confirm it.”

  “How do you know about me?” Mencari pressed.

  “Connections. . . ”

  The deliberately aloof answer alarmed Mencari. “You say you know me. You haven’t said who you are.”

  “I’m Liren. And thanks for that rescue back there. If you hadn’t—”

  “We seem to be on the same side. I’d like to know a hell of a lot more about what you know.”

  “I . . . thought I was being careful,” Liren said.

  “We found robot parts,” Allia said shaking her head. “In a service tunnel between the main floor and the mine.”

  Toriko looked up from her console. “And there was a report of a robot found deeper in the mine, destroyed.”

  Liren’s head bobbed. “Yeah, that’s where I got in trouble. That big bot found me.”

  An alarm rang out as their craft banked hard to port and their harnesses pulled tight. Toriko waved away her holographic interface and grabbed the manual controls. “Evasive maneuvers. Sorry, I got it now!”

  “What were you doing there?” Mencari said to Liren.

  “I could ask you that myself.”

  “Fair enough. We have a friend that was attacked when coming through this area.”

  Liren’s eyes narrowed. “A friend?”

  Liren hadn’t been forthcoming about his friends’ names, so Mencari saw no reason to reveal Ujaku’s name. He said, “We wanted to find out what those scouts were guarding here.”

  “You must be mercenaries. Whom do you work for?”

  Mencari laughed. “Ourselves. We’re tracking a race of aliens—”

  “Nukari. Yeah. I know all about them.”

  Mencari looked Liren over. Perhaps his task would be easier than he thought. “Maybe they’re not the secret we thought they were?”

  “No, they do a good job at hiding. I just have some . . . experience dealing with them, that’s all.”

  “Like?”

  “That mine used to be ours. My world has mined these asteroids for millennia.”

  Allia said, “They took it from you?”

  “They start out nice enough. Their ambassador to our world asked to see our facility. To help better their techniques, he said. Once they found what was in the mine, their goon squad took it over.”

  Mencari pulled out a few of the rocks taken from the mined pile. “We took samples to see what they’re taking from the asteroid.”

  “No need to analyze it. That’s tritium.”

  Toriko turned her head slightly, never breaking eye contact with the navigating monitor. “The alloy used in ship hulls?”

  Liren nodded. “We used it for our space fleet. But that’s just what was mined on the upper layers. Down deepest, at the core of the mine . . .” He reached into his ammunition sash and pulled out a few crystals that shone a brilliant blue. “Triset crystals. The energy source. Our homes, personal devices, vehicles, even our space fleet uses it for power. Even some of our weapons.”

  He looked down at Mencari’s hand-phaser. “What powers your phaser?”

  Mencari popped open a small slot to reveal a dull-yellow crystal.

  “Muihtilid. Common.” From his sash, Liren selected a crystal the size of the muihtilid and handed it to Mencari. “Pop this triset in. Keep your feet planted and brace your wrist with the other hand next time you fire. And here’s a spare if you need it.”

  Mencari took the crystal, gazing into it. “You think this is what they wanted? To use it in their weapons?”

  “Weapons, sure, and more—if they find it. I was here to try to determine if they’d reached that part of the mine.” He sighed. “Once they do, fighting them will be a whole lot harder.”

  “Didn’t they see that crystal when they were taken through by your people?” Allia said.

  Liren looked out the porthole. “Not something we advertised on tours.”

  Mencari said, “So . . . have they?”

  “Found the triset, you mean? The tunnels into that part of the mine looked pretty dusty. Don’t think they’ve made it there. Yet.”

  Toriko said, “Uh, just in case it matters. . . their system said they were fifty percent operational.”

  Liren nodded. “Might or might not mean anything. Likely, they replaced our system with their own. Who knows what that means?”

  Another alarm rang out.

  “It’s okay,” she said, “we’re way ahead of the scout ships. They haven’t gained on us at all.”

  Mencari smiled at Toriko. “I forgot to thank you. A little quick on the draw with the virus, but . . . nice work.”

  She smiled as her cheeks turned red. “Thanks. And it looks like the scout ships have given up their pursuit. They just turned back towards the
mine.”

  The ship neared the entrance to the spaceway.

  “Sorry about your mine,” she said to Liren. “I’m sure the robots are tearing the place up right now.”

  Liren laughed. “That’s one less for those Nukari to plunder. I say great job. Keeps the triset hidden too.”

  “Thanks for using your ship as bait for those scouts,” Mencari said.

  Liren shrugged. “If I’d been more careful, I wouldn’t have needed to.”

  “You know, we could use your help against the Nukari. We don’t know that much about them yet and—”

  “I’d like to.”

  “Will you come back with us then?” Mencari said.

  “Can’t. Not now. Have to get back and let my people know what I found.”

  “Ah . . . where should we take you, then?” Toriko asked briefly looking over her shoulder.

  He looked down at his wrist and read a small display. “Actually, follow the ship next to you.”

  “Um. What ship?” She checked her display. “I don’t see anything on the scanners.”

  Liren smiled and pointed out the side window. “That one.”

  A ship pulled into their view range. Stunned, she checked her scanner again. “I— It’s not showing anything! Nothing at all!”

  “You’re not supposed to see it. And it isn’t my ship. These are . . . compatriots.”

  “How did they know how to—?”

  “When I got into trouble in the mine, I called for help. Didn’t think they’d get there in time, but I didn’t know about you guys. So you could say they were coming this way anyway.”

  The other ship sent over a small transport pod to fetch Liren. Before he left, he thanked everyone again.

  “How can we find you?” Mencari asked.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll find you when it’s time...” he added as he stepped into the pod.

  CHAPTER 12:

  Search for Jerin

  A concerned Osuto greeted them when they returned to the asteroid base. “What happened to checking in?”

  Mencari winced. “We ran into trouble. Lots of it.”

  “I gathered that,” Osuto grumbled.

  “Let’s go to the conference room. And get Seigie. We have something she’ll be interested in.”