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Chapter 19

"What...?" Eris stared at Niall with a mixture of terror and confusion.

"You know exactly what you did," Niall said thickly, pinning her against the wall. "I should smash your face in for this!"

"Then explain it to the rest of us," Toast insisted, trying vainly to separate the two of them. "Because I'm not seeing how she's responsible." Niall glared at the protogen venomously and then turned back to the struggling lizard.

"You loaded my panther up to the hilt with those stupid f***ing safeguards!" he snarled at her. "You made sure that he'd collapse like a bag of f***ing noodles if he ever attacked a Synth. And now look what's happened! Look what you did! Your blind stupidity has killed us all!"

"But he is an alien!" the lizard protested, terrified. "A violent stranger from a violent world! He's a war robot! We had to protect the public!"

"Well congratulations, because you've just done the exact opposite!" the fox yelled. "All the people on all your planets will now suffer as slaves or science experiments for a mad tyrant!
"All your happy, peaceful Synths will be turned into gun-toting lobotomised zombies... And all because you wanted to cripple my friend!" he sobbed. "I hope you're f***ing proud of yourself!"

"Please, sir, recriminations are pointless," Toast said, placing a gauntleted hand on Niall's metal shoulder. "Can we fix your robot?"

The armoured fox slumped a little and released the lizard woman. "You're right, Toast," he said, forcing himself to remain calm. "The Emperor will win if we fight among ourselves.
"Though I might remind everyone that Lautrec didn't trust Eris before. Now she has made that problem a hundred times worse. Assuming we can recover him at all."

"Boss, I am still here," the stricken cyberjag pointed out. "I may not be able to move, but I can hear every word you're saying. You 'Cubi always say 'It seemed like a good idea at the time', right? Well, for all my bitching and sniping about it... Eris is right.
"Fact is, I am a warrior robot on a planet far more civilised than Furrae. They needed some kind of insurance policy against a barbarian like me, and the fact that it's backfired... Well, that's just unfortunate. She can't possibly have foreseen me needing to fight an army of Evil Death Synths."

"That's very magnanimous of you, Lautrec, but it doesn't solve the problem," the fox said testily. "I meant it... Without you, we are in serious trouble."

"Listen, boss, it's not the end of the world," the panther insisted. "You're a military-spec android yourself, and Eris can't shut you down. Plus, you've got a bunch of protogens who've been un-lobotomised sitting around with no idea what to do. And you can make more! If I'm out for the count, you can still use them as an army!"

"But they're unarmed," Niall pointed out. "Maybe we can have Quirk unlock an armoury, but let's face it... Without weapons they'll be sitting ducks. Realistically we need your help to get them weapons in the first place!"

"Quirk has weapons caches looted from people he's shot," Lautrec pointed out. "We'll probably need more, but it's a good start."

"That is a good plan," Toast said. "But we must be careful. They know too much about our movements, and we need to find out how. Meanwhile - unlocking the cat robot. What do you need for that?"

"A remote," Niall said. "A diagnostic device that connects to Lautrec's supervisor board. I brought one with me, but it has been captured. Also, unlocking him is a protected function and I bet anything you like that smarty-pants here has changed the code."

"...Yes," Eris admitted. "I'm sorry. We were only trying to protect the public from a potentially-dangerous warrior robot of unknown provenance. Could you not override it, though? I'm sure you have built some emergency backdoors into his systems."

"Yes," Niall said, calming down somewhat. "But we'd have to strip him down to get at the reset port. If it comes to that, we'll have to beg Bob to send him back to our universe for an overhaul. And we'll all be dead or captured before Jakob or Dorcan can complete that level of repair."

Toast looked at the policewoman with polite interest. "I don't suppose you brought this device with you?"

"I didn't," she said. "I was about to go off-duty, and besides, with Lautrec and Xerian missing, what would be the point?"

"So that leaves two options we can practically take," the protogen said. "Looking for Niall's remote and hoping that our friend here remembers the code... Or fetching a remote from the planet."

Niall spun around. "Toast..." he said. "Do you mean to say that you know how to operate the transporter?!"

"No," the protogen said. "The teleporter was not part of my basic training. I suspect they feared I might use it to escape. But our ranks have swelled lately, and I have been talking to our recruits and refugees. Oram does know."

The fox suddenly started as he realised Xerian had been very quiet. Looking around anxiously, he saw the red draconic android sitting in a corner, head in his hands.

"Xerian," Niall said, kneeling down. "You must forgive me. I've been so concerned about Lautrec's condition that I haven't given a thought to you. How are you holding up?"

"Bad," the Synth said, voice warbling slightly. "Quirk warned us... But I didn't believe it... Didn't want to believe it! Corrupted Synths... How could they do such a thing?!" he wailed.

"You're afraid that 'Zuki is one of them, aren't you...?" Niall said gently.

"Yes," Xerian sobbed, and curled up into a foetal position. "What if he's one of the ones who a-attacked us?! What if we've h-hurt him?! What if he s-starves, locked in the cupboard?! And if he's been affected, will we ever be able to get him to snap out of it...?"

"I wish I could give you an answer to that," Niall said softly. "But I honestly don't know."

"Frankly, I suspect he is elsewhere," Quirk said, looking up from the task of polishing his long gloves. "Toast is right that they know more than they should. Looks like I'll have to go a-hunting," he hefted a sniper rifle and checked the charge level it.

"Don't," Xerian protested. "Please... try not to k-kill anyone!"

"I'm going hunting cameras," Quirk said. "Or hidden listening devices. It's quite possible they've been repairing them, especially now we've suddenly jumped up the Emperor's list of priorities. So I'm just going to look for those and blow away any I find."

Xerian nodded. "You were saying that 'Zuki might not have been..." he couldn't finish the sentence.

"The Emperor and his buddies will know from my cyberspace enquiries and the assault team we shot up, that we are looking for a specific Synth, and now they will even know the abduction date. From that point on, it has only been a matter of time before they connect the dots.
"Of course, there is a risk that the Emperor will join the dots up wrong and decide we are engaged in some kind of gang warfare," he shrugged. "He's a fruitloop so he might assume that our aim is to kill the Synth we find because they stiffed Xerian in a drug deal."

Niall, Eris and Xerian stared at the protogen as if he had gone completely insane.

"It's not likely," Quirk added hastily. "Though to be fair, given our success in taking out even his crack troops and officers... The idea that his men have abducted a gang of hardened criminal thugs by mistake isn't as far-fetched as you might think."

"I guess that's true," Niall admitted.

"What I was trying to say is that the Emperor isn't exactly a rational actor, so we can't assume anything. But, my money is on him correctly deducing that Xerian is trying to rescue his mate. And even if he assumes, against all evidence, that Xerian is out to murder 'Zuki, it still puts us in the same position - that he is clearly valuable to us - alive and intact - and the Emperor will know it.
"Our hypothetical Druglord Xerian can't take vengeance on a corpse, and Real-World Xerian will make overthrowing the Emperor his number one priority if anything has happened to his true love."

Toast nodded. "I agree. The fact that the goons were lying in wait beside his pod speaks volumes to me... If 'Zuki is missing, it seems most likely that the Emperor has taken him as a hostage. Or at least as bait."

* * *

"I say we take the plasma gun and finish this," Quirk said. "We've got an bunch of mooks to distract everyone, and if any of them get killed, they'll just get taken back into the surgery units anyway. Let's just melt his brains and call it a day."

"What about Lautrec..?" Niall demanded. "How is murdering the Emperor that supposed to fix him?"

"With that evil bastard out of the way, we'll get a lot less resistance from the others," Quirk pointed out. "We can teleport Xerian and the others back to the planet. Then, once he's safe, that Bob creature can return the pair of you to your homeworld so Lautrec can be unlocked."

"That sounds far too much like 'Kill him and let god sort it out'," Niall sighed. "I would still prefer to have a peaceful solution, if only for the sake of Xerian's sanity."

"There's a time and a place for morality," Quirk said, sounding exasperated. "And it isn't while your planets are being invaded! You have to stop that emergency first, by any means necessary! Then, and only then, is it safe to let the wheels of justice do their thing."

"I have never been fond of that line of reasoning," Niall said. "Emergency situations may need emergency measures, but at the same time... It's very authoritarian.
"Corrupt officials love emergencies! They're a great excuse to make themselves rich, or to have their rivals executed as communist heretic traitors or something.
"No. The due process of law is a shield against that evil, and cannot be lightly thrown aside. But even ignoring that, there is something else which concerns me greatly."

"Oh?" Quirk asked irritably.

"It's just one minor point to clear up before you get too kill-happy," Niall said. "As I understand it, you've been out for the Emperor's blood for quite a while, correct? In all that time, have you ever considered that the Emperor may have wired the Vengeance to explode if he dies...?"