Code Name Firestorm by Simon Cheshire Page A

deliver a sting. We’re going to be discovered!”
    Blackwater’s rubber gloves were held in mid-air by the force field. He could easily reach inside the barrier and work on the speaker, but nothing could get out. He flexed his fingers inside the gloves, then picked up a screwdriver and began to remove the speaker’s rear panel.
    “Does anyone have a brilliant idea at this point?” said Nero.
    None of the other robots answered.
    The back of the speaker lifted off. Blackwater set it down on the table and peered inside the speaker.
    The SWARM robots stared back at him.
    “Well, well,” he said, his eyebrows rising in surprise. “What have we here?”

CHAPTER SEVEN
    For a few seconds, Blackwater was fooled into thinking that the speaker was simply filled with actual insects. He sat back, puzzled, wondering if the speaker had been damaged by some sort of strange infestation.
    “No, no…” he muttered. “That’s a scorpion! And a dragonfly… What on earth?”
    He leaned closer again and poked at the robots with the end of his screwdriver. Their electronic eyes stared back at him.
    “Perhaps if I fly at full speed,” said Sabre, “I can break through the energy barrier?”
    “Negative,” said Nero. “Sensors show it’s almost as powerful as the one at HQ. You’d only bounce off it!”
    To Blackwater, the insects remained still and silent. He prodded at Nero with the screwdriver. “I don’t believe it,” he gasped. “Mechanical! This must be what Drake was on about…”
    The expression on his face slowly turned from amazement to fury. He hopped off the stool and backed away.
    “This proves it!” he cried. “That scumbag has double-crossed me. ‘Stay put and do nothing until I tell you,’ he said. Meanwhile, they’re closing in on me! Well, he can forget our agreement… Firestorm is all mine now!” He chuckled to himself. “I was going to turn him in anyway, sooner or later. Right, first things first… I need to buy myself a little time.”
    He crossed over to his PC and searched through the hard drive for a preprepared video file, then set it to upload.
    “Isn’t there anything we can do?” said Morph.
    “For the moment, no,” said Chopper. “Our cover is blown.”
    Blackwater returned to the force field. He slipped a hand back into one of the gloves and picked up the screwdriver again. With the other hand, he slid a tall, bulbous machine across the table, until it loomed over the force field and the speaker inside.
    At one end of the machine was a long tube. It was attached to the main part of the machine by a set of hinged rods, rather like an office desk lamp. Blackwater twisted the arm around so that the tube pointed directly down at Hercules.
    A large magnifying glass, on a long flexible metal arm, was pulled across the desk too. One of Blackwater’s piercing blue eyes suddenly loomed over the robots, huge and glassy. He prodded the damaged stag beetle with his screwdriver.
    “Very sophisticated little robots, these,” he mumbled. “No wonder they’re kept secret. Not sure even I could make something similar. Hmm, good thing they’re sealed off in here, I bet they’re just packed with communications devices…”
    He poked at Nero and Chopper. “Eh?” he said, raising his voice. He talked to them as if he was a small boy talking to a helpless mouse he’d caughtin a trap. “I’d love to pull you all apart, bit by bit, to see what makes you tick. But I haven’t got time right now, and I daren’t try to keep you or you’ll be buzzing off the minute you get the chance, telling the world where I am. I knew keeping that signal jammer with me at all times was a wise move, you’ll all have been out of touch with your base for ages, thank goodness. Thought I’d be jamming bugs of a different kind, though, eh?”
    He grinned at them. His features looked weird and distorted through the magnifying glass.
    “I bet you’ve got some nasty little weapons, too, hmm? Scorpion,