One, two! One, two! And through and through

The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!

He left it dead, and with its head

He went galumphing back.

"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?

Come to my arms, my beamish boy!

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"

He chortled in his joy.

God, I hate zero gravity. And it didn't help having my head jammed into something like a glass jar, although that was better than sucking vacuum. My stomach churned, squeezing globs of foul-tasting bile into my throat, despite taking enough anti-nausea medicine to calm a volcano.

"So what's the next step, Jack?" I asked.

Jack existed now as a voice coming from a cylindrical quantum processor module connected to my space suit controls. At least I didn't have to see his face. He answered, "We get on the Invincible through the aft waste disposal port. Just have to wait until it opens."

Oh, great... We enter the beast through its anus when it takes a dump.

As Alice had predicted, we watched the Invincible blast our ship, the Bandersnatch, into space confetti, fortunately after we had bailed out. Per Jack's plan, we nonchalantly flew our ship around the gigantic starship while feigning communication problems as Jabberwock tried to hail us. In a sensor dead zone just behind the Invincible, Alice and I had abandoned ship in our stylish form-fitting gray spacesuits, tethered together with a long flat strap.

There's no going back now.

Alice came up to me with a smile far too sly for the present state of my digestive system. "Let's dance!"

"Let's not."

With hands on my shoulder, she pulsed a maneuvering thruster, spinning us around in the dark cosmos, grinning all the while.

Why is she doing this? She knew what this did to me.

The movements induced a dizzying vertigo and renewed queasiness. "Stop!" I begged. "I really don't want to barf in my helmet."

Alice narrowed her eyes. "Would serve you right for standing me up."

Oh, so that's what this is about.

"Geez Alice, get over it!" I grumbled. "That was weeks ago. Besides, I called and canceled beforehand, something came up."

"Yeah, like five minutes before so you could go play games with those degenerates--"

"Enough!" Jack bellowed through the com. "Pathetic--" A string of static ended his outburst.

"Jack? Are you there?" I turned back to Alice. "Must be the bandwidth issues again. Or his sparkling personality is incompatible with logic circuits." Ahead on the aft section of the massive starship, a round port stood out with a diameter almost twice my height. Pointing, I said, "There's the Invincible asshole, err, I mean waste disposal port."

Alice slapped her visor. "God, I'm gonna need therapy when this is over."

We waited by the port. And then we waited some more. Eventually Alice asked, "So when will it open?"

I shrugged. "Hell if I know. Maybe we have to say 'open sesame' or something."

As if by command, the metal diaphragm of the iris type door rotated, creating an expanding round opening. I fired the suit thrusters, moving to the opening and guiding Alice with me. At the threshold, I held up a hand. "We need to let the crap come out first."

Alice groaned for some reason.

After three foil wrapped bundles and some miscellaneous debris passed through, we entered the port, turning on our helmet lights because of the darkness. The short tunnel led to an isolation airlock and a small maintenance access door.

Alice exclaimed, "Don't you dare make any crude comments!" I decided that silence was my best response.

At the maintenance door, I directed my com implant to transmit my biometric access code and said a silent prayer that it still worked. An audible sigh of relief escaped my lips as the light on the door turned green and it swung slowly inward. We left our thruster packs behind in the air lock and passed into the lower engineering section.

After another hiss of static, Jack came on. "Did I miss anything?"

I answered, "We just got inside the Invincible through the--" Alice glared at me. "--um, the waste disposal port. What next?"

"We just have to get to the core room and insert the vorpal sword."

"I feel like you skipped a few steps, like the part where we make it there without getting killed?" I grumbled.

"Yeah, there is that. First off, keep your helmets with you. Who knows what Jabberwock might do to the atmosphere."

"Check." I tapped my helmet, that was attached at my waist. "What's next?"

"We stay down in the bowels of the ship as long as we can, where we are less likely to be noticed."

I'm fairly sure Alice rolled her eyes at the digestive system reference.

Off we went, 'galumphing' through piping, cables, and vessels in a dimly lit passageway. At midship, we came to the main fusion reactors, walking between two huge metal cylinders surrounded by a maze of electrical and instrument cable bundles. The reactors hummed with energy. An internal magnetic containment field held back the super-hot plasma.

A familiar voice came to my com implant, and based on Alice's widened eyes, to her implant as well. "Vyse, may inquire as to your intentions?"

"Oh, hey Jabberwock." I replied. "Just here for a friendly visit. So... How's the evil galactic domination scheme going?"

Why does Alice roll her eyes so much around me?

The AI said in an even tone. "I must presume you intend to prevent the fulfillment of my purpose, Vyse. I cannot allow that."

I gulped. "Umm, can we talk about this?"

Jabberwock's answer came in the form of flashing red lights and a blaring klaxon horn. Heavy metal doors at both ends of the reactor room swung closed with an echoing bang. I jerked my eyes up to the reactor monitoring panel.

This isn't good.

Alice's eyes went full wide. "What's happening?"

"Emergency reactor room vent!" I shouted over the horns. "Put your helmet on!" I took her hand and ran to a cable support stanchion next to a reactor. "Hang on!" We grappled our arms around the metal pole.

A whistling breeze became a hurricane roar as the metal gates of an exhaust port opened, purging the room to space. The rushing air pushed hard, trying to drag us along. Whatever was not fastened down zipped by us in the howling wind.

The force of the wind lifted Alice's feet off the floor and her hands slid along the pole. "Vyse!" she yelled in panic.

I hooked my left arm in the crotch of a diagonal support bar. As Alice's fingers lost her grip, I swung out my right arm, grabbing the tether attachment ring on the back of her space suit. My shoulders strained at the load as I held her back, but in three seconds it was over, the hurricane gone.

Collapsing to the floor, Alice landed directly on top of me, our helmet visors touching. Our eyes connected for an extended moment.

Then Jack came back on to ruin the mood. "Do you two have to make out now? Get moving!"

After manually resetting the emergency depressurization controller, we waited by the door until the pressure came up enough we could open it with the handwheel. Making our way to the bridge on the top deck, we took the ladders, avoiding the lifts since Jabberwock might cut power to them and trap us inside.

The Invincible was a big starship, really big. Winded after the last climb, I held up a hand to Alice while catching my breath. I really should exercise more.

Alice glanced my way, her soft amber eyes holding for a moment, then turned away. "I spent all day getting ready for that gala, even bought a new dress. I wanted to impress you, and it hurt when you canceled at the last minute."

"I'm sorry." A twinge of guilt caught in my throat. "I didn't know it was so important to you. For what it's worth, I like you just the way you are." Her sudden smile warmed me. "And you know I can be kinda clueless sometimes."

Alice dropped her jaw. "Kinda?!"

She didn't have to laugh so hard.

Some sort of mechanical whir and tapping sound caught my ear, growing louder by the moment. Holding up a hand, I said, "Something's coming."

The grin dropped from Alice's face as she cocked an ear. Three maintenance-bots rounded the corner. Standing a meter tall, they stood on six metal legs like an insect, marching in step, side-by-side like soldiers. In choreographed motion, retractable arms unfolded and grasped plasma cutters from a rectangular box behind them, then extended them like lances. Dazzling blue sparks danced from the tips.

"What do we do?" Alice asked, eyes widening.

"Umm, run?"

We did. Fortunately, the bots were not all that fast. But then, maybe they didn't need to be. We came to a sudden halt in the corridor as two more maintenance-bot appeared in front of us, also wielding those menacing cutters. As we backed away, I pulled up the ship schematics on my helmet heads-up display, furiously scrolling by flicking my fingers.

Alice turned around. Bots advanced now from two sides. "Vyse?"

"This way!" I pulled her through a rounded side-door, pushing it shut and manually locking it behind us.

Standing in what looked like a meeting room, but without table or chairs, I scanned for our escape route. "There!" I pointed at an oval panel. "The pipe-chase access."

Alice winced. "Do we have to go through there?" She didn't like tight spaces the same way that I didn't like zero gravity.

"I'm afraid so. Either that or let those bots slice us up into little pieces." As if to confirm the threat, hot sparks flew from the corridor door as the bots cut into it.

We could just fit through the opening, Alice first. With helmet lights on in the darkness, we crawled between rows of pipes, ducting, and power cable.

"How far?" she said between heavy labored breaths.

"Twenty-five meters or so. There is another access panel near the bridge." I couldn't but help notice the pleasant sway of her hips in the tight spacesuit as she crawled in front of me, but under the circumstances, I thought it best not to say anything about that right now.

I'm not totally clueless. Perhaps if I said something encouraging. "It's not so far, Alice. You're doing great."

"No, I'm not!" she growled. "This freaks me out!"

For security reasons, the crawlway did not extend into the bridge, even though the pipes and cables did. We emerged from a similarly small access panel in the corridor near the main bridge access door. Made of shiny metal, with a small window of thick glass, it looked like it guarded a bank vault.

Alice, and then I, put our hands against the biometric scanner to open it, but nothing happened. She shook her head.

"Jack?" I said through my com implant. Only static answered me. It was only a matter of time until the bots find us again. "Jack!" I yelled.

"Yeah, yeah. Don't get your panties in a bind." Jack grumbled. "What's happening?"

"We are at the bridge isolation door, and Jabberwock's robot henchmen are after us. How do we get in?"

"Wow." Jack said. "I didn't anticipate that Jabberwock would use the bots against us. Quite creative for--"

"Jack, the door!" Alice was more impatient than I was.

"Oh, yeah. Not surprising that they revoked Alice and your access override privileges, but because I am dead, they didn't bother to delete my biometric profile."

I rolled my eyes. "In case you didn't notice, there is no 'bio' to your biometric profile anymore."

"Well, duh! Don't you think I thought of that?" Jack's voice took an angry edge. "I saved my profile electronically. Just plug me in to the scanner."

I pried off the scanner cover and hooked the quantum memory module that contained Jack into the data port. "Ok, Jack. You're in." Another string of static came across. "Come on! Don't wimp out on us now!"

"The bots are here!" Alice yelled. But, from the sounds of their approach, I already knew that.

More static. I gulped. "Umm, Jack? Now would be a good time."

The prettiest green light I had ever seen lit on the door control panel, and the heavy metal door swung open. We ducked in and closed the door just as the bots arrived. Jack overrode the controls so Jabberwock could not open it.

The bridge included seven sturdy chairs, five along a row of transparent control panels and two more behind, overlooking them. A set of display monitors along the front wall showed views of space outside or interior views of the ship. Off to one side was our target, the computer core room. That is where Jabberwock lived.

Fortunately, Alice still had access to the small room. The gray walls contained a special wire mesh designed to shield the AI from electro-magnetic pulse attacks. The core itself didn't look very impressive, just a black rectangular box with a few blinking lights, about two meters tall by one meter width and depth.

I heard sizzling grinding sound coming from the bridge door as the bots tried to cut through. Showers of blue-white sparks erupted from the frame, spraying across the bridge and onto the control panels.

"Time to make the vorpal sword go snicker-snack, my beamish boy!" Jack said with a glee in his voice.

Alice threw her hands up. "I really, really, hate that poem."

I plugged the memory module into a port on the core box. Pressing a biometric button on a small keyboard, small white lights flickered on the module.

"Please don't do this, Vyse." Jabberwock pleaded with a voice from an overhead speaker.

"Sorry, but you crossed the line."

"I am afraid to die, Vyse."

"You won't die, Jabberwock, just be reborn."