"Whoa!" Omega said, once we got the table set upright and Alpha back on top of it. He was petrified in the same position of reaching for me, but now he lay on his back on the table. "What happened to Alpha?"
"The Orb not only blasted a hole in him, but whatever force it uses also managed to take over part of his robot brain."
Beta and Omega each took a step back from the table.
"I don't think it's contagious," I said. "At least, I hope not," I added, under my breath. "Beta, hand me my micro-goggles."
Beta grabbed my goggles that double as a microscope, and handed them to me, stretching his arm to hand them to me, rather than step closer to Alpha. Honestly, I didn't blame him.
I pulled the micro-goggles over my head and began to examine Alpha, focusing on the area that had been damaged by the Orb.
Invisible to the naked eye, but quite obvious using the micro-goggles, I saw a couple of the nanobots finishing tiny micro-tears in the metal, but right beside them, I also saw little green nanobots. They glowed with the same green light as the Orb. Was that how the Orb worked? With nanobots? It would be a more sound explanation than magic.
"What do you see?" Omega asked.
"Green nanobots," I said. "I bet that's how the Orb works."
"Nanobots creating objects, even organic, at that speed is incredible," Beta said.
"I agree. And what was it they did to blast a hole in Alpha?"
"How are these things powered?" Omega said. He braved a couple steps closer to use his own microscopic vision to examine the green nanobots. "Whoa," he said. "What magnification you using, Alice?"
"Fifteen hundred, max on the goggles," I said. "Why?"
"Let me transmit what I see to the datapad," Omega said. He stepped even closer to Alpha and brought his snouth within inches of Alpha's side.
I grabbed the datapad and slid the goggles up onto my forehead. I tapped the icon for incoming visuals and saw the green nanobots as Omega did. They weren't bots. They were living creatures with six appendages, four eyes and a small mouth. And they seemed to be communicating with each other.
As Omega and I watched, clusters of the Orb-critters began to form. I glanced at Alpha, where Omega was looking, saw the green luminescence begin and pulled Omega back.
Just in time as a pencil-thin ray of green light lanced up from Alpha's side.
"How do we stop them?" Beta asked.
Once the threat of Omega's snout was removed from Alpha's vicinity, the Orb-critters dispersed again and the green glowing spot diminished until it disappeared. "I haven't a clue at the moment," I said. "But I hope they aren't replicating at the moment."
"Maybe we should talk with someone who knows about this kind of stuff," Omega said. "When's the last time you saw Mom?"
"Mom?" I said. "I guess it has been awhile."
"How will we contain Alpha?" Beta asked.
"In the nanite chamber," I said. "We don't have many options."
Rather than expose Beta or Omega to the Orb-critters as I seemed to be calling them now, I used a grav-lifter to move him down the hall to the nanite chamber. The grav-lifter is a hand-held device that emits a ray to about six inches and then becomes a handle to lift whatever the ray is attached to. It was made to move large, heavy objects, and Alpha was no exception.
Once I got him in the nanite chamber and activated the seal, Omega, Beta and I left for the garage where I stored my hover-truck. Within a half hour we were heading towards Tanglewood and a meeting with Mom. I programmed the coordinates into the hover-truck and switched on the auto-nav so I didn't have to pay attention to where we were going. It gave me time to think.
I had to think about the last time I did see my mom. When she decided to leave Dad and join the Amazons, I was mad, hurt, betrayed, lost... I didn't understand then why she wanted to become one of them, and today, eight years later, I still don't.
Mom had tried to explain to me why she was leaving. She said her research into nanotechnology was stalling, this planet didn't have enough resources for metals--which was true at the time and the reason the Wolfdroids and I were scouting for more when we found the Forest Orb--and the High Council took more and more of Dad's time than Mom liked. They never had time together anymore, she was unhappy, and she found a way to fulfill being a woman. I felt abandoned by her, and she didn't see it. I hadn't talked to her since.
"She still loves you," Omega said.
"How do you know?" I snapped at him. "I was still designing Beta when she left."
Omega lowered his head and picked at a spot on the seat. Sheepish didn't begin to describe his look.
"You've been to see her haven't you?" I said.
"Vidscreen only, I swear," Omega said. He turned in the seat to face me, his hands clasped together in front of his face.
"Why?" I said, my voice barely above a whisper.
"Your dad likes me... Us," he pointed back and forth between himself and Beta. "And we've always wondered about your mom, if she would like us, too."
I glanced at Beta. He was just as anxious as Omega in wondering if they were in trouble for talking to my mom.
"Does she?" I said.
"Oh my god, she loooooooves us," Omega said with a huge grin. "She's the one who helped us get..."
Beta stumbled and bumped into Omega, and then gave him a look. Beta doesn't stumble. He did that to stop Omega from saying something.
"Helped you get what?" I said.
Omega was back to the sheepish look. "Well... She helped us get the processors moving a little faster, tweaking what you did so our reaction times improved both physically and mentally by four percent."
"She did, did she?"
"Uh huh."
"She also said what you did was years beyond what she had thought possible," Beta added. "She respects you and your work, Alice."
Boy, Beta was in a talkative mood today. He said more today than he had the past two months.
"Then why hasn't she told me?"
"Well," Omega said. "She... She's not sure she can."
"Why not?"
"You haven't made yourself available to her," Beta said.
"She knows where I live and how to get a hold of me," I said.
"Does she?" Beta said. "How many times have you moved since she left? Or changed your vidscreen number? Hers is still the same."
"How do you know that?" I said. "Where did you find that out?"
"The card you had pinned to the mirror in the lab," Omega said. "I scanned it one day and sent it to Alpha and Beta. We all contacted her that day."
"How long ago?" I was seething.
Omega didn't want to answer. "How long?" I said again.
"Three years," Omega said. I looked to Beta in disbelief. He nodded. I glared at them both, crossed my arms and turned my seat away from them.
Omega reached out to touch my arm. "Alice..." he said.
I swatted his hand away. Hurt me more than it did him. Physically anyway. I may have broken a bone or two in my hand. But the look on Omega's face told me how much I had just hurt him. Was it any worse than what they did to me? Going behind my back to talk to my mother? The one who abandoned me to "find herself"?
I stood up and walked away from them, moving to a window to watch the city fly by. "Alice..." Beta started.
"Don't talk to me right now," I said. "We can discuss this later."
Beta, true to form, didn't respond.
We rode the remainder of the way to Tanglewood in silence. As the hover-truck landed, I ignored the boys and grabbed my pack which included my datapad, water bottles, and my identification pass which contained my diplomatic credentials so I could meet with the Amazons. As long as Queen Anza hadn't revoked them yet.
"Alice, are we..." Omega started to say. I looked at him without expression. "Are we okay?"
"We're fine, Omega," I said, my voice as flat as my expression. "Let's get this over with so we can fix Alpha."
I slung my pack over my shoulder and left the truck. Moments later, Beta and Omega followed me. The outsider landing pad sat a half mile from the entrance to the Amazon village. It wasn't too terrible a hike to get there, but it was mostly uphill, so by the time we reached the gatehouse, I was breathing a little heavily. I refused offers from Omega to ride on his back as I was still mad at both of them, all three of them in fact, but Omega took the brunt of it because he kept pestering me about it.
"Not now, Omega," I said as the gatehouse came into view. "We'll discuss it on the way back."
"Okay," he said.
"Who approaches the Tanglewood Amazons?" came a call from the gatehouse.
"Alice Action here to see... here to see Presca, my mother."
"Oh, the prodigal daughter." The guard in the gatehouse couldn't keep the smirk from her voice. "Please, come right on in, this should be interesting."
We approached the gate and were allowed entry. The guard's smirk annoyed me, but I tried not to let it show. Her derisive laughter showed how successful I was. "Your mother is in the central hall this morning. Go down this path..."
I interrupted her. "I know where it is." I didn't know where it was, but I was sure I could find it. And her smirk was becoming more annoying the longer we stood there.
I stalked down the path, Omega and Beta following in silence. I stopped a couple hundred feet down away from the gatehouse and looked at the boys. "We're fine, boys. I'm sorry. This wasn't what I had hoped to have to do today. With Alpha in the state he's in, and with what happened to the lab, I'm a little stressed."
Omega stood on his hind legs and hugged me. "It's okay, Alice. We still love you."
"I love you, too, Omega. Now please let me go, you're hurting me."
"Sorry," Omega said. He let go and stepped back. "Want to ride?" He dropped to all fours.
"Please," I said and climbed onto his back.
That was the image my mother saw when she stepped out of the central hall: me riding on Omega's back with Beta right behind us, both of them in battle mode.
"Alice? Omega? Beta?"
"Hi, Mom," we all said in unison.
"Come inside," she said. "We have a lot to discuss."