“Rebel, I’m scared.”

The mini-robot summit had convened on Deck Five, not far from where the small tank had broken off pursuit of the two intruders after a short chase.

“We lost contact with Lieutenant Sutherland’s commlink transponder,” Butterfly added as she hovered overhead. “It must be broken.”

“See? Butterfly thinks so too. We should go help,” Echo said. “We should get Wave and Lunar too, “cause they’re good at stuff like this. Commlinks can’t get broken unless something is wrong.”

“Acey’s orders were to monitor the intership and go to alert condition four, and that’s what we did, so we did good,” Rebel said proudly. The nod at the end was implied.

“Yeah, but we tried to call Acey and she didn’t call us back!” Echo exclaimed. “We should go see. Acey always calls us back. Even when we bother her in the middle of the night with stuff she still calls us back.”

“Dudes and dudettes!” A miniature half-track vehicle rolled up and parked in front of Rebel and Echo. “Blessings to the brethren and awesomeness to all. Wave is here and the party can begin!”

“Hi Wave! Hi Lunar!” Echo said cheerily. “I wish things were better.”

“I think Echo is right. We should go find the bad guys and blast “em!” Lunar said. The rocket-shaped miniature spacecraft hovered overhead, facing Butterfly. His high-tech weapons and freshly painted hull gleamed.

“Are you sure? We should be careful and be sure before we start blasting people. We should ask Acey first,” Butterfly replied. “What if we blast the wrong people?”

“I’m the biggest robot and I get to say!” Rebel said with a tone of finality. The other robots waited while the tank thought it over.

“And I say we go find the bad guys and blast “em!”

“Righteous!” Wave said. If he had hands he would have high-fived the fat little tank. “Echo, let’s go!” The tiny half-track turned and backed up a couple of feet, lowering a ramp. Echo rolled aboard Wave’s vehicle bed and the little gate closed behind her. “Last one there has to build the fire for marshmallows!” Wave and Echo led the way.

Butterfly extended her heavy-lift harness down and energized its magnetic assembly. It clamped against the sides of Rebel’s heavy armor jacket and bolted itself into place. She revved her little engines. Her rotors increased rotational speed and she picked the sturdy little tank up off the floor. Air transport was always preferable to the entire group waiting for Rebel’s relatively ponderous top ground speed of what Wave once described as “slower than January molasses.”

“Echo, use all your little gizmos and be sure nobody is following us!” Lunar said as he floated forward and hovered into formation with Butterfly as her wing. “If you see a bad guy tell me who to zap!”

“Okay!” the little ambulance replied as she activated her ground survey scanners and sophisticated radar.

Acey’s bots rolled and flew in a compact little formation down the Deck Five corridor towards the records lab.