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Silence was death's lament.
It was like the whole system had held its breath... exhaled... and then expired, with not so much as a bye or leave.
Bob opened his eyes. It was over.
It seemed so... wrong, somehow. Like there should have been a huge explosion, or... *something*. But there was nothing. It made it twice as bad. He sighed, and looked around, assessing the damage. The debris of Enzo's generator lay strewn about the sector.
A vidwindow suddenly appeared in front of him, startling the sprite from his melancholy state. Phong looked highly agitated. The picture seemed a little fuzzy; as if the signal was being jammed.
"Bob! Megabyte's forces are attacking the Principal Office! We need you here now!"
No wonder it was quiet, he realised - they were in a sector too far away from the PO to have seen the chaos. Megabyte planned this well.
He nodded. "Dot and I'll be right there. What's your current status?"
"Megabyte managed to somehow tap our power reserves and drained them enough to prevent shields being raised. We are on minimal power and - "
A background explosion threw the elderly sprite out of sight.
"Phong!" Bob yelled.
The image crackled, fizzed and finally disappeared. Dot and Enzo joined the Guardian as he closed the vidwindow, a dark look on his face.
"We were right, Dot," he said. "Megabyte snared us like nulls, and he's going for the Principal Office right now!"
She nodded. "Let's get going."
He agreed, but as they turned to go, he stopped. "Wait," Bob said. "I need a nano."
"Bob, we can't waste time..." Dot trailed off, realising as she saw what he was looking at. Or rather, who.
She was sitting some distance away, with her back to the trio.
"I won't be long," he said.
Her knees were drawn to her chest, arms wrapped around them as she stared blankly ahead. Bob stood behind her at what he figured was a respectful distance. He tried to find the words to say -
"Leave me alone."
The words were clipped, firm. He looked pained.
"I'm sor - "
"Just leave me the frag alone, Bob."
Her tone had a forceful, bitter edge. He didn't need to see her face to know that she meant it. She'd put up her own personal firewall, and nothing was going to get in. Or out, for that matter. He sighed, and walked back to Dot and Enzo. Dot looked at him enquiringly as he approached. He shook his head. She nodded.
"Let's go," she said.
Bob and Enzo compiled their zipboards. Dot reached for the disk on her belt, then realised suddenly that she didn't have one anymore. Bob saw her hesitate.
"Dot? Where's your zipboard?"
Dot looked sheepish, and glanced in the direction of the machinery she'd helped destroy. Bob followed her gaze, and saw the remains of her zipboard embedded in a now-defunct generator. He grinned wryly. "Well, that's original," he said. Dot blushed. "Need a lift?"
***
Chaos engulfed the trio as they approached the Principal Office. The CPU's were scattered, disorganised in their desperate defence. The Principal Office's shields had been compromised, the dome blackened and charred from multiple hits. The Guardian assessed the situation.
"This is bad," he muttered. "This is very bad."
"Whoa," Enzo declared, his eyes like plates. "Megabreath's got us surrounded!"
Dot peered over Bob's shoulder from her precarious perch on his zipboard.
"Is there any way to get inside?" she asked.
"I can try establishing communications," he said, fiddling with Glitch. "I'm hoping they'll have barricaded themselves in." He muttered, and fiddled again. "Finally... Specks! Where's Phong? Is he OK?"
Dot craned her neck to see the image on Glitch's screen. It was fuzzy, crackling with static, but it was better than nothing.
"He's all right, sir," the binome replied, "But we could really use your help in here."
Bob nodded. Dot spoke up from over Bob's shoulder.
"I'll help coordinate the CPU's from inside, Specks. Just have those stats ready for me as soon as I get there."
"We're low on resources and power, ma'am, but I'll see what I can do."
"I know I can count on you," she said confidently.
"Yes, ma'am!" The binome saluted, and the communication ended.
'I'll stay out here with the CPU's," Bob said, eyeballing the mayhem around them. "Glitch and I'll hold them off as long as we can."
"Right." Dot nodded, and the three headed towards the Principal Office.
***
Dot Matrix smoothly took charge of ops as soon as she entered the war room, Enzo in tow.
"Specks! What's our current situation?"
The binome tapped his readout screens, which flickered erratically in the drab emergency lighting. "Almost half our CPU's are down. Somehow Megabyte managed to drain the Principal Office's energy reserves to almost nothing, so we're functioning on emergency power only..."
Dot's eyes narrowed. So that's where he got the energy to create that Game, she thought. Double whammy.
"Right," she said, and donned her glasses to inspect her own console. Its tactical displays fizzed and popped. Dot wasn't in the mood for this. She set her jaw, and gave the display a sharp thump with a balled fist. It whined in protest, then cleared. "Better," she muttered. "OK. Give me an open channel to the CPU's, STAT."
"Yes, ma'am!"
"Dot?"
She turned from her station. "What is it, Enzo?"
"This is really bad, isn't it?"
She saw the young sprite's anxious face, and sighed, drawing him to her in a tight hug.
"It'll be all right. I promise."
"You're on, ma'am."
Dot sniffed, then twirled Enzo's baseball cap as she pulled away from him.
"Chin up, kiddo," she smiled. Enzo nodded, but didn't move from her side. She turned back to the console, and slid immediately into her no-nonsense combat mode. She quickly assessed the tactical displays, and began relaying commands. "All right! Alpha squadron! Form square at these co-ordinates - G4 by H9! Beta squadron, file behind. Omega, Delta, I want you to support the flanks. Move it!" She threw a glance at Phong, who looked somewhat dazed but otherwise all right. "Phong, do we have any more units we can mobilise? At all?"
The elderly sprite rolled over to her, adjusting his glasses.
"We have everything movable in the air, my child."
Dot chewed her bottom lip. "I think it's time we got some *immovable* things out there as well. Patch me through to the maintenance bay, Specks."
***
Bob dodged the gunfire, retaliating with short energy blasts from his keytool. As a rather rapid burst of fire unleashed itself from the opposition, he ducked behind a downed CPU briefly to allow Glitch to recover for a nano. Dot seemed to have the CPU's in a true defensive formation now, which gave him the chance to think about their options. Shielding was down. They were outnumbered in the air, but that had never stopped them from winning before. The Principal Office was in bad shape, though. Shields offlined nanos ago, over half the CPU's disabled, the power reserves at critical levels...
He shook his head, unwilling to admit defeat. But where *was* Megabyte in all this, anyway? For that matter, where were Hack and Slash? He frowned. This still wasn't adding up. One of Megabyte's ABC's suddenly screamed past behind him, smoke billowing from its crumpled bonnet as it crashed to the ground. He chanced a quick glance around the defunct CPU, looking towards the Principal Office.
Towing drones were being attached to defunct CPU's by the maintenance crews, then set on autopilot and sent off into the fray. More targets to occupy the enemy, or at the very least, get them to trip over themselves. From the looks of it, that last crash had been a direct result of just such a tactic. It would work, provided their own CPU's didn't get tripped up as well.
A bolt hit his makeshift shield, forcing him to duck. Bob waited a split-nano, then chanced a look over the CPU to see if the shot had been intentional or not. Then his eyes widened.
"Uh-oh."
***
"Dot! Phong!"
Bob came running into the war room. Dot looked up from her console, frustration evident on her face.
"What's going on out there?" she asked, thumping her display again as it flickered. She sighed. "We just lost our visuals again."
"Trouble. *Big* trouble."
The Guardian called up a vidwindow. The picture was full of static, but after a nano Dot could see what he was talking about. Outside the Principal Office, three large ABC's mounted with heavy-duty missile launchers were taking up position.
"If they hit us with just one of those, this place'll be pixel dust!"
"What an astute observation, Ms. Matrix."
The sprites turned to see the vidwindow that had just appeared in the middle of the war room. Dot's expression hardened.
"Megabyte."
End Part 9