Taking the Initative

Written for the Daily Flash Fiction Challenge with a word limit of 300.

The prompts: This story must contain the line, "You'd better have an explanation for this."

Taking the Initiative

“Captain, the shields have dropped.”

“Who ordered that? I didn’t. Ship, what’s going on with the shields?”

“Wait one.” Ship had no idea what the problem was. There had been no command directive, as required, so Ship sent out a tracer which soon came upon a highly suspect situation.

A security-bot was sent to investigate and soon came upon the culprits. “Okay you two, are you the reason the shields are down?”

The two bulky battle-bots quickly turned away from the open access panel; their eyes irised wide in a hopeful display of innocence.

The security-bot was not swayed. “Don’t you know we are transiting the Conflagration Zone? We are almost certain to be attacked without our shields. You’d better have an explanation for this.”

The two battle-bots could hardly restrain their excitement. It had been an extremely dull transit between the stars. This was the first mention of action they’d heard in months.

“We have a very good reason,” they stated in unison. Battle-bots were always in complete synchronization with each other. Quantum Intelligence allowed them to communicate with each other instantaneously. It was one of the features that made them so formidable in battle; that and the stockpile of high-tech munitions stored just beneath their impenetrable outer skins.

“Well?” The security-bot tried to be stern but one never wanted to push too hard when dealing with battle-bots.

“We disabled the shields so that our ship would come under attack.”

“What!? Why would you want to do that?”

Just then, General Quarters sounded.

The battle-bots immediately ramped up to high alert. Sensors and weapons started to extrude from all over their bodies.

Over the intercom came, “Battle-bots to the launch bay.”

The security-bot could only watch as the two bots exchanged high-fives before scurrying off down the passageway.

Word count 299




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