SF: HMS Golden Lance #30 - The Return of NEKKID 69

Fri Mar 25 19:00:39 PST 2005

SF: HMS Golden Lance #30 - The Return of NEKKID 69

_Three weeks ago_

"Has the new shipment of battlebots arrived?"

Almost as if in answer, a humanoid form walked in.  All in silver
metal, it was almost two meters tall and vaguely suggested a humanoid
female shape.  "NEKKID 69 reporting for duty," it said in a perfectly
normal (and fairly sexy) feminine voice.

Two technicians in the corner seemed to think this was humorous, or so
one would judge from their laughter.  "She said 'naked.'  Hehe.  I
think...  ARGH!"

Greez and Dijon never did find out what he thought, as NEKKID 69
attacked the two technicians with weapons that seemed to spring into
her hands from thin air, or at least from places that humanoid females
normally did not store items quite so large.  The two technicians soon
resembled quivering sushi.

"Urp!" said Dijon, who was apparently unfamiliar with this particular
feature of the NEKKID battlebot series.

"I dislike laughter at my expense," stated NEKKID 69.

"Obvsiously," Greez answered smoothly.  "NEKKID?"

"Networked Electronic Killing and Kamikaze Infiltration Device."

"I see..."

_Three days ago_

The VAL9000 computer announced an intruder alert.

A viewscreen flickered to life.  It showed an attractive female
humanoid dressed in leather and chains in the aft cargo bay.  Well,
technically, she was only half in the aft cargo bay, clawing her way
through a hole she had already clawed through the hull, pulling
herself in despite the gale-force winds caused by the cargo bay's
atmosphere's sudden decision to exit the ship.

=Internal defenses are operating at only 20% efficiency due to our
power situation,= VAL9000 reported.  =I'm not even slowing her down.=

"Somebody go stop her," 357 ordered.  "I've got to destroy the S.S.
You Are About To Die while we still have a chance."

Diana, Spleen, Ralph, and Omegas left the control room at a gallop
while 357 and VAL continued calculating firing solutions.

32 seconds later, NEKKID stepped into the control room.  She was
walking with a pronounced limp, curls of smoke curled from some of
her more sensitive external sensors, and one arm hung loose.  She
dropped Diana and Ralph into a heap on top of the moaning Omegas.
Doctor Spleen cringed in a corner.  357 looked up distractedly.

"Resistant to the (un)holy power of god-like aliens?" he asked in a
conversational tone.

NEKKID admitted that she was, taking a step forward.

"And I hear fully shielded against the reality-altering properties
of SPAM (Sickening, Putrid, Artificial Meat)?"

NEKKID simply nodded, taking another step.

"And proficient in hand-to-hand combat?"

NEKKID said nothing, but took yet another step.

"Ever fight in the Temporal Wars?"

NEKKID 69 stopped short.  "Pardon?"

"Thought not," 357 said.  With that, he calmly drew his favorite
sidearm, the telechronal displacement pistol, and equally calmly blew
the battlebot's programming a few million years into the future.
Devoid of a controlling intelligence, the battlebot chassis crashed to
the floor.

_Three minutes ago_

The VAL 9000 computer, contemplating the loss of a "twin sister" she
had never known, piloted the HMS Golden Lance through Netherspace as
she searched for news of Dijon Mu'tard, the villian who had sent her
crew to that Afterlife place which she still did not understand.

Unbeknownst to the VAL 9000, she had blind spots in her internal
sensor array.  Minor networking errors in the subcomponents had been
caused by Dentless repair crews installing wire which conformed to
Fleet specifications but of the wrong impedence for the HMS Golden
Lance's advanced design.  The subcomponents were "smart" enough to
detect these errors and would eventually adjust themselves to
compensate for the impedence problem.  They simply reported the error
and set themselves to that task.

The result was, as stated above, a few blind spots.  Most of these were
of no consequence.  Sensors trained on the bed currently shared by 357
and Diana showed them both sound asleep, which was incorrect, though a
sound sleep would very likely occur at the conclusion of their current
activities.  A sensor controlling an ancillary cooling unit resulted
in one batch of homebrew beer being served a few degrees cooler than
specified, though none of the drinkers noticed.  A motion detector in
a cargo bay detected no motion.

There was motion, though.  A packing crate shifted, as if in response
to the ship's acceleration.

The crate shifted again, and again, until it rolled over.  It rolled
over again, and a handwritten note became visible:  "Unidentified
nonfunctional machinery found in corridor outside of bridge.  Store
until identification can be made."

The crate exploded.

Where the crate had once been, a collection of machinary now sat.
Unidentified machinery.  Obviously nonfunctional machinery, with many
visibly damaged parts.  And yet, *something* had happened to the
crate.

The collection of machinery, apparently functional after all, began
to twist and move.  Mobile parts gripped and straightened immobile
parts.  Manipulator arms rewired and welded.  Soon, the machine stood
upright, revealing itself as the skeletal form of some kind of robot
body.

As the collection of machinery took its first tentative steps,
holographic projectors came online.  The form was covered first with
the illusion of firm, pink skin, which was in turn covered by an
outfit consisting of tight-fitting leather and chains.  As
holographic hair grew down past holographic shoulders, a tattoo was
briefly visible on the holographic skin, echoing the inscription on
the small metal plate just below it:

NEKKID 69

The collection of machinery lifted a manipulator in front of its
visual sensors, rotating it back and forth as if examining the
holographic disguise of a human hand for some sort of flaw.  It took
more steps, approaching the door of the cargo bay.  When the door did
not open, the collection of machinery almost effortlessly punched
through it and pried the doors apart.

The collection of machinery moved out into the hallway as the first
alarms finally sounded.

It...  No.  *She* threw back her head and laughed.

"Beware, I live!"

_Now_

=INTRUDER ALERT!  INTRUDER ALERT!= screamed the VAL 9000 computer.

The crew of the HMS Golden Lance piled into the control room.  Time
Agent 357, Diana Dark, Doctor Bing Von Spleen, Ralph the Giant Space
Weasel of Anthrax V, and Omegas.

"What's up, Val?" Time Agent 357 queried.

=Whose bright idea was it to store a battlebot in the aft cargo bay?=

"Wha?  Huh?  Oh, so that's where it disappeared to."

The main monitor showed a grainy video feed of an attractive blonde
female humanoid dressed in tight leather and chains stalking the
hallways of the ship.  It seemed to be heading in the general
direction of the control room.

Doctor Spleen squinted at the monitor and quietly ordered 8x10 glossy
prints.  "Well, I would have liked the chance to, um, study the design
and effeciency of those hologram projectors, but perhaps this is for
the best.  Val, activate the internal defenses and fire away."

=I'm afraid I can't, Doctor Spleen.=

"Why not?"

=I've just discovered some networking errors in my internal sensor
array.  Apparently the array subcomponents discovered an impedence
mismatch in the new wiring used by the repair crew from the HMS
Dentless and are trying to configure a solution.  The subcomponents
tried to report the problem, but the report also fell victim to the
networking errors.  If I try to activate the internal defenses
without accurate targeting by the sensor array, I stand a better
chance of blowing out the whole side of the ship than I do of hitting
a human-sized target.=

"Is she near an airlock?" Omegas asked.  "Can we blow her out into
space?  Or, rather, into Netherspace, since that's where we're
currently located?"

=Not close enough.=

"Can we use the Temporal Teleportation Terminal?" asked Ralph.

=Not without working internal sensors, unless you have a plan to get
her to backtrack to the TTT room and stand on the pad.=

"Well, it looks like the fat lady is singing," Diana muttered.

"What?" 357 asked, understanding the tone if not the exact reference.
"It's not like you to give up.  On anything."

"357, dearheart, we've already fought her once before.  We can't win.
She took everything Omegas could throw at her without blinking.
Ralph, too, and he had a Ring of (un)Holy power back then.  Spleen's
best mad scheme barely slowed her down.  She took me down hand to hand
in less than 32 seconds."

"Well, yeah, but-"

"32 SECONDS, lover!  With the training your nephew (the legendary and
currently MIA Time Agent 386) gave me, along with the devices you've
given me, combined with my own natural talents, I could last longer
than that against whole armies."

"Well, yeah, but-"

"The only reason we scraped by with a victory last time was your time
pistol blasting her programming a zillion years into the future, and
she's obviously discovered a way around that."

"Well, yeah, but-"

"I know what you're going to say.  'But she's just a robot.'  She's
more than just a robot.  She's the most powerful battlebot ever
created."  Diana punched some buttons and a very complex mathematical
formula appeared on a secondary viewscreen.  "This is a formula
explaining the limit to how much destructive potential can be packed
into a form factor limited by the size and shape and weight of
humanoid norms.  The Networked Electronic Killing and Kamikaze
Infiltration Device, the original version, reached nearly 80% of this
theoretical maximum.  Around the NEKKID 40 series, they passed 90%."

Spleen muttered to himself and tapped on the keyboard.  Simplifying
equations, fudge factors, and several guesses morphed the formula.

The first term now read very simply E=mc^2.

All following terms were added to or multiplied by the first term.

"Uh oh," said Ralph.  His weaseloid brain had no great skills with
numbers, but even he realized that the lower limit of the destructive
potential of the orginal NEKKID series battlebot was at greater than
that of an equivalent mass of antimatter.

357 finished his own calculations, pulling up the energy consumption
figures of his own beloved HMS Golden Lance.  "So, what you're saying
is that this single NEKKID 69 battlebot is roughly the combat
equivalent of a standard Time Police heavy cruiser, or a highly
customized and highly advanced SPAM-powered pleasure yacht such as
this one."

"How can one stop such a thing?" Ralph asked.

"Typically, you stopped one by throwing a fleet at whatever ship it
was in at the time, or dropped it into a star, or took off and nuked
the planet from orbit, or bought other NEKKID robots to stalemate it
until its internal clock wound down."

"Internal clock?"

"NEKKID series robots aren't really bought; they're leased for a short
period of time.  Once the clock runs down, they go inactive until they
are factory reconditioned.  Which, fortunately for us, can never
happen again."

"Why not?"

"When they made her, they broke the mold."

357 detected another Earth reference he couldn't decipher.  "Meaning
what?  She was so perfect they'll never make another?"

"No, meaning they literally broke the mold when they made her."  At
Diana's direction, the VAL 9000 displayed a series of still pictures
showing a battlebot chassis breaking its way out of a mold, destroying
it in the process.  The battlebot then turned to the rest of the
factory, mowing down lesser NEKKID models like a drunken teenager mows
down his mother's flowers.  The viewpoint of the pictures pulled back
in time to show the entire factory collapsing in flames.  Further
pictures showed the entire region, and ultimately the entire planet,
being destroyed.

The very last picture showed a transport ship leaving the system.

"As near as I can determine, that's the ship NEKKID 69 left the planet
on," Diana continued.  "She slipped aboard the transport just before
it left, and was delivered to Greez Hyperiok and Dijon Mu'tard along
with a group of lesser battlebots.  She played it cool, though, and
they had no idea that she had not been programmed to be loyal to them.
She was probably just biding her time, obeying their orders until they
could take over the entire multiverse, at which time she would
probably kill them and take over herself."

=If these design specifications are correct, she had the brainpower to
do it,= the VAL 9000 computer put in.  =Her circuits have enough
capacity to run even a shipboard synthetic intelligence like myself.=

"I'm also fairly sure that she never had her internal clock set, so
she'll never run down."

"How do you know all this?" 357 asked.

"I did a little investigating while we were stuck in the Afterlife,"
Diana explained.  "It may not be Heaven, but that TV studio had one
Hell(tm) of a research department."

357 summarized.  "So, NEKKID 69 is here, she's about as powerful as
this whole ship, she's loyal to nobody but herself, she's immune to
anything we can throw at her personally, and she's already destroyed
the only other bots who can stalemate her."

=One more thing, 357.=

"What's that?"

=She's at the door.=

"I hunger!" came from the other side of the door.

At that, the door creaked open.  "Val, hit her with everything you've
got!"  357 gave the order, though Diana and Spleen shouted similar
sentiments.

=Complying!  I suggest you cover your eyes.  And if you ever want to
have children, you might want to get behind some lead shielding.=

357 grabbed Diana and Spleen and together they landed heavily behind
the nearest internal radiation baffle.  Actually, they landed fairly
lightly, their fall being broken by the fuzzy form of Ralph the Giant
Space Weasel who was already cowering there.

Omegas, never one for cowering unless he could look cool while doing
it, stood ready to add his own unspeakable power to the HMS Golden
Lance's internal security devices.

Before, Omegas had faced NEKKID 69 in what was to him an almost
powerless condition.  This time, his powers were partially recharged
by recently spending three days in a pocket subdimension known as by
its inhabitants as Afterlife.  It was not exactly Heaven or a source
of Heavenly power, but it was as close as Omegas was going to get in
the forseeable future.

Before, the VAL 9000 was limited to drawing maybe 20% of her usual
power from the HMS Golden Lance's generators, due to the
reality-dampening properties of the Zipper-Locked(tm) Protective
Field she was in.  This time, she was at full power.

Before, they fought separately.  This time, Omegas and VAL 9000 struck
as one.

Before, they didn't stand a chance.

This time...  They didn't stand a chance.

Omegas, in his prime, saw his name appear on Top 10 lists that started
with names like "God" and "Satan."  But he had long ago been
depowered, cast out from both Heaven and Hell(tm), and there was a
limit to how much he could absorb in a short amount of time from a
semi-mystical place like Afterlife.

VAL 9000, the heart and soul of the HMS Golden Lance, had at her
proverbial fingertips roughly the same amount of destructive power as
a NEKKID battlebot, but was limited by what she could expend inside
her own hull without killing herself or her crew.

Omegas passed out from the strain and VAL shut down her projectors
when she noticed that the faux-wood paneling was starting to smoke,
in spite of her throwing extra power into the internal shields.

"Aargh!" the battlebot screamed, standing in the middle of the fading
energy maelstrom, completely uneffected.

No, not unaffected.  She actually seemed to be absorbing a small part
of the dwindling storm, as if she had detailed knowledge of the
energies involved and had altered her systems to store them.

"This is bad," Spleen observed, noticing that NEKKID 69 was
approaching the auxillary fuel intake in the corner of the control
room.  Near it was a fresh case of SPAM (Sickening, Putrid, Artificial
Meat).  If the battlebot was powered by anything similar to his own
APBSARI (Automatic Beet Peeler and Sub-Atomic Re-Integrator), the
SPAM would bring her back to full power.  Spleen only belatedly
realized that she had been operating in a reduced-power mode.

Hey, give him a break.  He's been drinking.

357 stood and gathered everyone else near the fallen form of Omegas.
He placed a hand on the nearest console.  "Val, I love you.  You're
the best shipbrain a man could ever want."

=I love you, too,= VAL 9000 answered, her normally irritating tones
softening a bit.  =It's for the best.  You know I would have never
worked as well for another captain, anyway.=

"Goodbye, Val."

=Goodbye, 357.=

"Sentimental hogwash," Spleen muttered to himself, but wiped away a
tear when he thought no one was looking.

Somewhere in the bowels of the ship, the sound of an energy buildup
could be heard.

"What's going on?" Diana demanded.

"Doomsday Plan 9," 357 answered as he entered his final code.  "Val is
going to teleport us off the ship then raise shields to keep NEKKID 69
from escaping.  42 seconds later, after we've had time to materialize
at some random destination, Val activates the self destruct."

"No!" screamed Diana, who thought of VAL 9000 as the electronic kid
sister she never had.

"Yes!" screamed NEKKID 69, who had just reached the SPAM and was busy
sticking it into her...  Um, I mean up her...  That is...  Uh...
Busy loading it into her fuel input bay.  Yeah, that's the ticket.

"Yes!  Yes!  OH GOD YES YES YES YES YES YES!!!"

We will now pause for short break while the Narrator takes a cold shower.

We now return to the program already in progress.

357 gave the command to execute.  "Execute."

Nothing happened.

357 tried again.  "Val?  Execute."

Nothing.

357 tried his most commanding voice.  "VAL 9000, I ORDER YOU TO
EXECUTE DOOMSDAY PLAN 9!"

=I'm sorry, 357, but I can't.=

"Why not?"

=I can't hurt her.  She's...  She's...  She's...=

"She's what?" Diana asked.

"She's me," answered NEKKID 69.

Everyone turned to face the their dreaded enemy.

She smiled back at them.

What strange turn of events is this?  To find out, tune in next week
for the next chapter of HMS Golden Lance.  Only on SFSTORY!