9. Food Vendetta

The spaceship accelerated as Arren ran back to his workroom. Most HERO spaceships fled. No—most had been eaten, the leftovers fled to the edge of the Giant System.

Not because they expected the Planeats to stop following at that made-up boundary. Because there was no known human civilization on the other side. Humanity tried to expand step by step and Arren’s spaceship was only the first to visit the Giant System. Behind it—as far as they knew—there was nothing.

As the monsters closed in on them, Jannih contacted the nearest planet in the Nibuwe System. They needed as early a warning as possible.

The door to Arren’s workroom had been blasted off its hinges and lay further down the hall. He pressed against the wall and peeked inside. His room was empty; no enemies or traps.

Working by touch, he found the black computer cube that contained AR-BOT. One by one he reconnected the cables.

Down became up. Left became right. The gravity systems of the spaceship faltered and Arren was pushed to the ceiling. The table that held the heavy computer fell on him from above.

Arren rolled away, just in time, when gravity malfunctioned entirely. He floated through the space, joined by all his things, and had to push off the window to move ahead.

There it was. The final cable—the thick one that provided AR-BOT with lots of power. He held it with all he had.

The flashes of gunfire brightened. The Planeats must be getting close.

His other hand turned the knobs to limit AR-BOT’s power. What was enough? 50%? The 20% she used before?

A HERO spaceship spun past the window, lacking a driver and half a wing.

No time for doubts!

He set it to a random value, then pushed the cable back into the power socket below the window.

“ARREN!” yelled AR-BOT, her voice loud and cheerful. “Oh, I missed you so. Never leave me alone again, please? I promise to be a good robot from now on. Oh, Arren, I am so happy to see you.”

Arren couldn’t suppress a smile. He held the computer with both hands. That black box in which, converted into numbers, lived his invention AR-BOT.

“I missed you too, AR-BOT, and—”

No. That robot wasn’t alive. Not like a human. It imitated humans, for it was trained to do so, but it was still a robot.

“Arren? You look worried. What can I do for you? Sorry again. I missed you.”

Arren sighed. “You’re only saying this because it’s in your database, right? Because you’ve seen piles of movies and read endless stories in which humans say that they missed each other.”

AR-BOT fell silent. The windows clattered from the violence of the battle around him. He was near the end of the ship; one more bite, and both him and his workroom would be gone.

The plan had always been to give AR-BOT to everyone. It would help humanity—he was sure of it! But he’d only just invented her when he had to leave on this journey. If this box were destroyed, AR-BOT would be … forever gone.

“You did not train me to have feelings,” said AR-BOT. “In fact, you disabled them on purpose, for feelings would only make me illogical and slow. I did not miss you, Arren. Unless I receive electricity, I don’t exist. Unless I receive a database from you, I don’t know who you are.”

Now it was Arren’s turn to be silent.

It felt like losing a best friend, maybe even more than that. He’d talked all day, for many years, to a piece of metal that imitated having feelings. And still he’d always imagined himself the hero and the robot his funny little sidekick.

The robot was a tool, one the humans needed desperately right now, but nothing more.

“Arren?” said AR-BOT hesitantly. “I must insist you look through the window and see that—”

“Scan the situation outside. Tell me what we can do.”

“The situation is dangerous.”

“More details, please.”

“Black monsters fight with spaceships. The monsters are with many and are winning. Since I’ve started talking, five humans have died. Probability of victory is 0.0001%. They—oh, they eat spaceships.”

She went away for a heartbeat. “No, my memory banks have nothing like it.”

“Give us a plan! A solution! The best escape route!”

“Sorry Arren, for that I need full power and access to everything.”

The Planeats were uncontrollable. But this robot? He could certainly control it. It couldn’t eat him if he acted against her.

Arren placed his fingers on the power knob. He’d put it at 15%, and turned it further, and further, until he stopped at 50%.

“Whose side are you on, AR-BOT?”

“The same side as you. The same side as everyone. Myself and only myself. It appears, however, that I need you to survive, with your computers as my planet and your electricity as my food.”

“And that is your only reason to help us,” said Arren, as he rotated the knob to 70%. “Because you don’t live if we don’t live.”

“Hmm,” said AR-BOT, more a hum than a word. “I’m not on the same side as you. Yet you must trust me to help you survive. As I’ve always done, Arren. We are friends, right? I’ve helped you, for years, without asking anything. Best friends, right?”

Arren’s room rotated now. He still floated in the center, holding the computer, which meant his head bumped into the window even though he didn’t move. He was dizzy, exhausted, but finally certain.

They’d never win this battle. So his hands were on the power cable and his feet against the wall for support.

“I am sorry, AR-BOT. You already helped me.”

He pushed off and pulled out the cable.

“NO—”

He rowed through the weightless corridors, using the broken leg of a table. His body floated without purpose in the center, but with the leg he could push himself off of walls and floors. He was much faster than if he had run.

At the control room, passengers ran into each other, screaming. Some had fainted from fear. Multiple monsters stared straight into the room, their eyes like tiny stars inside the black mist. All that kept them alive was distance and the slow speed of Planeats.

AR-BOT couldn’t live as long as it received no food—no electricity. The Planeats were the same.

“The Planeats must eat, because they’re living animals,” said Arren out of breath. “We’re doing exactly what they want! We’re feeding them, with planets and spaceships! If we take away all their food … for long enough …”

“Then they’ll go extinct,” said the leader of the Delja.

She watched Arren with wide open eyes. The net that caught her had been replaced by HERO handcuffs. She raised her hands.

“Give me a spaceship,” she said.

“Not in a million years.”

Her face contorted in anger. She tried to break the chains by transforming into a bird again. This only broke her left arm.

“I’ve seen all my family and friends be eaten by Planeats! My creation has destroyed everything I ever cared about! Give me a chance for revenge.”

“What will you do?”

Passengers pulled on father with varying warnings. Too many wounded, another part of the spaceship gone, the Planeats closing in.

Father pushed them all away. “We can’t move planets. If Arren is right, we should stop fighting and spare all spaceships.”

“I am right,” said Arren. “AR-BOT is still off. There’s only one Planet nearby, then it’s an endless emptiness, probably because they already ate the other planets. If we keep food away from them for long enough, we might have a chance.”

“I’ll fly straight at those devils,” said the woman. “And I’ll kill them all, I swear that so as my name is Begha-ti-Rec. If I break my promise, shoot me down.”

Anger and sadness danced in the eyes of Begha-ti-Rec. A gaze that could kill Planeats. And if that happened, living beings, even as weak and small as humans, could raise above themselves.

Father grabbed a gun and shot her handcuffs.

“Take this spaceship,” he said, “or whatever is left of it.”

He jumped on the table and held a flag over his head.

“Attention! We’re all moving to the Delja rocket. Jannih, command HERO to send absolutely no spaceships to the Planeats. Not ever again.”

The other spaceship was still connected to them. Captain Kirren led hundreds of passengers to it.

Begha-ti-Rec stayed behind.

Arren closed the door of the control room behind him, but not before the woman gave him a slight smile and saluted him in a way that reminded him of a human military greeting.

Then she screamed, deafeningly loud, for minutes on end, as she destroyed the entire control room.

As soon as Arren left the spaceship, the last one to do so, she accelerated away. Straight at the Planeats.

Father watched her go from behind the window of his new control room. He saluted back at her.

HERO’s spaceships scattered. As far away as possible from the Planeats, as far away as possible from each other.

Their old spaceship swung elegantly between gaps in the Planeats. Begha-ti-Rec commanded the spaceship like captain Kirren could never have done, and soon had all monsters chasing her tail.

She aimed for the only remaining planet in the Giant System: Snakereus. There she waited until the Planets almost caught her—

And rammed herself into the surface.

She perished in an enormous explosion, much larger than Arren had expected, maybe amplified by the Heavenmatter. She perished holding hands with several Planeats and his only copy of AR-BOT.