Chapter 5

It turned out that the spaceport was more heavily guarded than Flash’s private mansion (which takes up 7% of the Dutch military budget). Unigma approached a morose-looking guard while Stuart tried a much more direct approach, that is, climbing over the fence, and ended up getting tasered. While Stuart was busy being in paralysing pain, Unigma asked the morose guard why all these defences were needed.
‘Our commander-in-chief received an emergency signal from Jazz2City,’ began the guard, but he was interrupted when Stuart regained consciousness and began to wail pitifully and then scream more like a man. ‘Apparently the crème de la crème of the rabbit army stationed at J2C got a severe beating from some kinda of mutant giant, white rabbit. We were still confirming the sighting of the giant white rabbit when the emergency signal started telling us that J2C was beginning to get eaten. A whole division of Mystic Legend’s Surgi-accura-strike rocket fighters, stationed here, were sent in, but they fell apart in the middle of the journey to J2C. Now that the eating of J2C is complete, and we know it is complete because the signals ceased to come right after we heard a big sloshing, crashing and swallowing noise, so the government of Carrotus has decided to put all interstellar space stations on high alert, just in case we need to do something drastic.’
‘And that is…’, inquired Unigma.
‘Classified,’ said the guard, who decided to finish Unigma’s sentence for him.
At this moment, an enormous tank slowly rolled past the fence, as if showing off its 50 cm Mega-kaboom-cannon and its Polymorph-deflect-o-armour shields. Strangely enough, it had a license plate at the back, which read: ‘556A – 1st Tank Battalion - J2LC Corps.’. Tank 556A was programmed to guard the perimeter so all it did was go round in circles around the spaceport.
Unigma glanced at the scene behind the fence. He didn’t really understand what was going on, but he did see all the rabbits in radiation suits carrying Geiger counters and running around as if it was April. He also noticed the sirens that suddenly begun to activate throughout the perimeters, as if they were saying ‘please panic because there is no reason for you not to do so’. Looking even further, Unigma spotted a monstrous concrete silo. A hatch was beginning to open with a whirr and allowed a smooth, shiny nuclear-tipped missile, with a big ‘Happy New Year 1998!’ sign written on the side. The missile’s firework-role had obviously been badly neglected.
Somebody, somewhere, had turned a key and pressed a medium-sized red button. The missile began to rumble and its rockets ignited. It took off with the grace of an ascending angel but it would soon begin to descend and propel itself to the ground with the deadliness of an ICBM, which it was.
All the noise was beginning to attract the guard’s attention and he spun round. This was odd, he thought. The classified material had suddenly launched itself into the sky.
‘Well? Now that the missile launch is over, which I assume was the classified event, can you let us in now?’
The guard looked back at Unigma. He glanced at the sky for a moment, as if he was expecting red ICBMs with ‘Happy May Day 1999!’ to rain down from the skies at any moment, but then he realized that most of the former USSR was too busy pulling their hair off at the loss of the Cold War.
Unigma also glanced at the sky, expecting to see a lot of dirt thrown into the air by the nuclear explosion, which happened about now.
The guard’s judgement was put off guard by the shockwave, which was just strong enough and far away enough to reach hurricane level 0.
‘I’m going to have to talk to my superiors first,’ said the guard. Unigma waited patiently while the guard went into the guard booth and picked up the phone.

Chapter 6

Stuart had stopped trying to ruin his voice and break his windpipe. He was feeling numb all over his body and he couldn’t smell anything, no matter how much he sniffed. He did hear the falling dirt, however, and that woke him up.
‘It’s ok, the guard’s in his booth and he’s going to let us in’ answered Unigma to a question he knew Stuart was bound to ask.
‘What’s going on? Is the guard going to shoot us? Are we going in?’ asked Stuart.
Unigma, if he could, would roll his eyes and think that the author must have accidentally switched questions and answers around.
Stuart got up and looked at the thick, steel gate. The guards stepped out of his booth, opened the gate with a clang and closed it with a bang only to see the gate open with a clang, let a giant, horrible-looking and horribly well-armed robot through, and then close with a bang.
Stuart looked up and all of a sudden began to realize that his brains was probably about to be blasted to smithereens if he didn’t say anything and say it quickly.
In a typical, almost human-like, way almost any organism would respond to the threat of the robot, all Stuart could mutter was a few ‘Um…’s and a couple of ‘Er…’s.
The robot began to speak. ‘Welcome to Spaceport Zero-one-one Omega, part of the now non-existant Mystic Legends, inc. I am model 3C, the latest version of the ML Ph34r-m3 battle-droid. We are currently undergoing a business-exchange with J2LC and we are having troubles agreeing to the buying/selling prices. We are sorry for the inconvenience. Please come back later, when the new owner, J2LC, decides to open the spaceport, if at all. Thank you.’ The voice was impersonal, unfriendly and scarily artificial. If this was the robot’s way of acting nicely and respectfully, Stuart would’ve been much more comfortable if it said ‘I am going to pull these triggers and yes, you are right, blast your brains to smithereens’.
‘Er…?’ was all Stuart could think of. Later on, he regretted saying this, thinking that an ‘I see, well, thanks. We’ll be going on and never returning, bye bye!’ would suit the situation much better.
‘I’ll take care of this, Stuart,’ said Unigma and walked, as best as he could, up to the robot. 556A rolled past the fence now and Unigma did his best to point at it.
‘You see that giant tank? That tank is not made by Mystic Legends, but by J2LC corporations. I may not know what J2LC, but what I do know is that that tank is a heck of a lot better fighting machine than you are.’
At this stage, the battle-droid decided to arm its guns, which took a while because he had a lot of them. Its eyes went crimson.
‘We are sorry for the inconvenience. Please come back later, when the new owner, J2LC, decides to open the spaceport, if at all. Thank you,’ the robot repeated. Stuart realized, however, that ML would have no choice in being bought and swallowed by whatever J2LC was. It was either that or…go bankrupt and disappear off the scene.
‘Believe me when I say this: you will get replaced by that tank the instant J2LC takes over and they’ll probably just use reverse engineering on you and turn you into fridges.’ The robot made the mistake of panicking. 15 seconds later, the gate, this time with a robot-shaped hole in it, opened with a clang, let out 556A, closely followed by the guard, and closed with a bang.
It looked at Stuart and Unigma while the guard tiptoed back into his booth.
‘GET THE …BEEP…OUTTA MY SIGHT AND DON’T YOU …BEEP… DARE TO COME BACK!!!’ it said in the nicest, friendliest voice a tank could use. Unigma got blasted off into the distance due to the sheer force of the tank’s sonic powers.
Geez, this tank can roar louder than the Queen, thought Stuart. He decided that he should take care of the tank before looking for Unigma.
‘Er…can we have a look inside the spaceport? We’ve already talked to the guard and he didn’t seem to mind.’
556A’s turret swivelled to the guard booth briefly and then turned back.
‘LISTEN TO ME, YOU …BEEP… PUNY …BEEP… LAGOMORPHIC ORGANISM! I DON’T CARE WHAT THAT OTHER…BEEP… PUNY LAGOMORPHIC GUARD SAID, I’M NOT LETTING YOU IN!’ the tank roared back.
‘We will not leave unless you tell us what is keeping you from letting us, or anyone else, in. This is not a military installation, or at least it’s no longer a military installation now that the missile’s gone, and I know the law for free access to public areas, the law against the law for free access to public areas and the law against the law against the law for free access to public areas.’ Stuart’s legs were about as stable as a dilapidated matchstick model of the Eiffel Tower.
556A let off some steam, which is what usually happened when he needed his 50 zettahertz CPU to go above 5 megahertz. Without a word, unless you count the numerous unprintable phrases he muttered under his breath, he went back into the spaceport. The guard searched the area for any other killer-tanks and went out to explain to Stuart that the tank had only gone in to discuss matters with his superiors (in rank, at least).
The wind, not to be outdone by the tank, roared and blew Unigma back to the spaceport.