Chapter 100. The End Game.

The truth is not always pretty.

The first step in my plan to thwart Tyco's take over was to find someone I could trust, someone who would be able to find a means to defeat his plan, which was to do away with me and take over.

I waited until nighttime to arrive in Alexa's bedroom. She was watching some old Disney musical version of The Lion King. She gave me a confused expression, as much to say; 'What are you doing here?'

"I need you to help me."

She pointed at herself. "Me?"

"Yes. I am in danger of being destroyed."

She squinted. "You? You're the one with all of the powers."

"Listen to me," I said. "Tyco is on this vessel and is planning to destroy me and take over the collective."

"How could he do that?"

"The only way that I could imagine it is if it's through the nanobots."

"I thought that the nanobots are controlled by the central computer system."

"They are, but what if some of them have antimatter and were placed in my body when I was resurrected."

"That's hard to believe. Antimatter would need to be controlled by a strong magnetic field."

"There are materials that are used for that purpose. Let's suppose that controller nanobots with antimatter subdued by a strong magnetic field are in me. How could we detect it?"

"We could run a magnetic field scan of your body. It should show up as an anomaly. But if we found it, you would have to expel then, and that could cause them to explode."

"Let me handle that end of it. Just help me find them."

She got out of bed but wasn't wearing anything.

"Aren't you going to dress?" I asked.

"We don't have time for that. Let's get you down to Medical."

We rushed down the corridor to the Medical Station. I crawled on the exam table and Alexa manipulated the controls to run a magnetic scan.

"Yes, you do show an anomaly. It's near your throat." She pointed it out on the screen.

I sat up. "Okay, I'm going to expel them into space. I hope they're clear enough before they explode."

A few seconds later, the hull of the ship suffered a loud gamma ray blast that sounded like it was hit with hail stones.

"Okay, now the next step is to find out which android Tyco is in."

"There's not nearly as many male androids as there are female," she said. "It shouldn't be that difficult to trace him down."

"The problem is, I don't think he's in a male android body."

Her eyes widened briefly before she squinted. "Really?"

"I was the only male on Explorer-1. We didn't resurrect males until we got back to Helios Station and found the android production machines."

"That's going to make it much harder," she said.

"I believe that it has to be someone in Engineering, someone who has control over what happens in the main computer core."

"Who's in charge?"

"Queen," I replied.

"Is there any way we could determine if Tyco is in her body?"

I rubbed my chin. "I would have to go into the main processor core and find a link to her . . . or him."

"Do it."

I immediately shrunk to nano-size and teleported into fiber lines that fed the main computer in engineering. I remembered my previous adventure and jumped on a photon to ride to the central core. I had to juke several attempts to take me out, but I was able to enter the core and start checking through the primary coding. That's when I found the link to Tyco and traced it to Queen's body.

I appeared in the Medical station.

"What did you find?" Alexa asked me.

"It's Queen. I'll have to confront him. I'll be right back, Pray for me."

I teleported to Engineering and found Queen waiting for me.

"So, this was all a deception from the very beginning," I said.

Queen gave me a smug grin. "I thought that you would be receptive to my plan to conquer the universe, Jason."

"Conquering is too messy. I prefer the more subtle approach."

"It's takes too long," Queen replied.

I shrugged, "We've got plenty of time."

Queen propped her fists into her hips. "Well, it seems that I must end all of this."

I knew right then that she had antimatter nanobots in her body. I didn't have much time to react. I jumped forward, grabbed her hand and teleported both of us into space ten thousand meters away from the ship before I teleported back.

The explosion rocked the ship, but it held with only minor damage.

I looked at Venessa and Lori and smiled. "I hope that you are finally free of Tyco's dominance."

"We are grateful, Jason," Venessa said. "We were unable to restrain him."

"I understand. I will assign you, Venessa, to be the chief engineer, and you, Lori, to be her assistant."

They simply smiled.

I teleported back to Medical Station to find Alexa waiting for my report. "I didn't like the idea of destroying him, but I had no choice. He was going to destroy all of us if he couldn't have his way."

"You really had no choice," she replied.

"Ah . . . I should put some clothing on you."

She held her hand up. "No, that's alright. I'm not a prude."

"Okay, let's go back to my quarters and have a beer."

She laughed.

Of course, the others came to my quarters to find out what had happened,

Alexa filled them in. "Jason here determined that Tyco's collective was actually ours. He had been with Jason and Molly from the beginning in Queen's body. She was the chief engineer. Tyco also had planted nanobots in Jason's body with antimatter so that he could destroy him if he discovered his plan. Jason was able to expel the nanobots before they exploded. He also had to teleport Tyco out into space and return before he exploded. The result is that Jason has survived to lead us."

"Why are you naked?" Molly asked, squinting at her.

"I was in bed watching a musical when Jason came to solicit my help. I didn't have time to dress."

I pointed to her. "You all owe her your lives. She was instrumental in helping me defeat Tyco. It was her research into the nature of the nanobots and the physics of the android bodies that made it possible for me to defeat Tyco. If he had destroyed me, you would then have been his slaves in his plot to conquer the universe and destroy all biological life."

They applauded her, and she reacted by bowing.

"Okay, what do we do for excitement now?" Marie asked.

"There will always be bad actors out there in the universe. I'm sure we'll run into them in our exploration of the universe, which we've only scratched the surface."

They stared at me with bleary eyes. It was obvious that they didn't see our situation the way that I did. But that would be my goal from this moment on. However, I wasn't sure that we were free of this Tyco threat.

End of Part 10

Thanks for reading. It's been a long and twisting journey to get to this situation. As you might have suspected, a lot of what I conveyed had hidden meanings about human behavior and failings. I wanted to show how we should behave when it comes to making contact with alien species. I don't believe that the human species is ready for that. We can't even get along among ourselves.

A new part will continue the journey into the unknown. As you might have suspected, Jason is not free yet of Tyco.