In a Galaxy Far, Far AwRy

Book 9: Those We Left Behind

Liam Gibbs

IN A GALAXY FAR, FAR AWRY book 9: THOSE WE LEFT BEHIND

Copyright (c) 2021 Liam Gibbs

All rights reserved.

This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

As awesome as this book is, it’s a work of fiction. I know, I know. We were all hoping, but it just ain’t gonna be. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s freaky imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblances to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely bonkers and coincidental. In other words, sadly you can’t get Schizophrenic’s autograph.

ISBN 13: 978-1777139629

First printing: April 2021

{ PLOT DEVICE PUBLISHING }

The Story So Far...

This stupendous, amazing, spectacular, not-at-all-overhyped comedy/science-fiction series can be found in the following parts:

Book 1: Serial Fiction Sideshow, available in the hearts of one and all

Book 2: Home Sweet Home Invasion, available in the hearts of one and all

Book 3: Technophobia, available in the h—you’re starting to see a pattern here, aren’t you?

Book 4: Armageddon Trigger Finger, available in...hey...your heart. And one and all’s too.

Book 5: The Genetic Equation, available blah blah blah.

Book 6: Power Tool, not available. Just kidding. Totally available.

Book 0: The Story So Far, you know the drill.

Available on the Author’s Super-Awesome Site

Book 7: The Lesser of Two Egos

Book 8: Untitled of Attitude Adjustments

Book 9: Those We Left Behind

Book 10: Metaphor for Life

Book 11: Oh, Crock, Here Comes a Meteor!

Book 12: His Kingdom Come

Book 13: A Wolf in Sheep’s Armor

Book 14: Man Versus Machine Part 1 of 1

Book 15: Our New Hiring Policy

Book 16: Life Like Broken Glass

Book 17: The Church of Steeple

Book 18: Blood Bunny

Book 19: Disease of Behavior

Book 20: The Paper Tiger’s Yardstick

Book 21: This One Has a Dancing Gibbon

Book 22: My Brother’s Captor

Book 23: Marching Orders

Book 24: We, Robots

Please visit www.inagalaxyfarfarawRy.com for more information.

Other Stuff the Author Spewed Out

Maybe check out these other things ’cause they’re superfine too!

Not So Superpowered, available at tiny.cc/nssuperpowered

Three Flash Fictions, available upon request from the author

Random limericks, available in bathroom stalls

Your Favorite Table of Contents

Book 9: Those We Left Behind

Chapter One: From Whence We Came

Chapter Two: Pies PIs

Chapter Three: Cause for Celebration

Chapter Four: Mining Expedition up the Nasal Grotto

Chapter Five: Rise and Shine

Chapter Six: Trouble’s A-Brewin’, and Trouble Sucks

Chapter Seven: Can’t Work with ’Em, Can’t Work without ’Em

Chapter Eight: Like an Internal Affairs Enema but without the Thrill of Conquest

Chapter Nine: Prisoner by Programming

Chapter Ten: Whole Grain or White...or Does it Matter?

Chapter Eleven: Unleash the Hounds

Chapter Twelve: Get a Move On

Chapter Thirteen: Taste the Rainbow

Chapter Fourteen: Should Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot

Chapter Fifteen: Search and Annoy

Chapter Sixteen: And One and Step and Two and Dip...

Chapter Seventeen: Tea, Crumpets, and Cat Darts—Invitation Only

Chapter Eighteen: None of Your Business

Chapter Nineteen: This Chapter Not to Be Taken on an Empty Stomach

Chapter Twenty: Out of the Infinite Loop of Dictated Thinking

Chapter Twenty-One: Such Sweet Sorrow

Chapter Twenty-Two: And the Rest Is History

Chapter Twenty-Three: Technology Is Mean

Chapter Twenty-Four: Now...About That Toast

Chapter Twenty-Five: The Perfect Crime

Chapter Twenty-Six: Hidden in Plain Sight

Appendices

About That Guy Whose Book You Read Once

Connect with the Series

This Isn’t Even My Final Form!

The following story ain’t professionally edited. I know, I know, why am I inflicting this on you?

For cool reasons.

Professional editing, covers, and the whole shebang takes money. And creating appendix material takes time. The In a Galaxy Far, Far AwRy series has been steadily seeing new releases, but they’re release at the rate of one per year, while they’re written at a rate of one every nine months or so. Do the math. The series will never catch up.

The author, awesome brain that he has, only ever wanted to share these stories with the world.

Money wasn’t ever a goal. I know by offering these books for free—professionally packaged or not—I’ll be losing money. I honestly don’t care. Since releasing the books free of charge yet without the “professional” look, I’ve found the stress of running this whole series has gotten much manageable. This leaves me with more time to do what I set out to do: write the stories and share them.

I still attend trade shows and comic conventions and sell the books there. Each book will, eventually, be given the professional touch. But, while we’re waiting, all I want to do is share these.

If you see something ain’t right, or something you want to comment on, please feel free. Think of yourself as a beta-reader: a pre-reader of something unreleased. Voice your thoughts at liamgibbs@inagalaxyfarfarawry.com. Until the book gets professionally released, I consider it a work in progress.

So what you’re reading here is the book without the professional touches. I’ve edited this book a dozen times or more, and so I believe it’s as polished as I can get it. I feel comfortable letting you see it. It will one day be professionally edited. One day. But until then, know that you’re reading what I believe to be as polished as I myself can get it.

Enjoy!

Or don’t. I really have no control.

Chapter One: From Whence We Came

January 4, 9093. 6:25 a.m. (Galactic Standard Time). Seventeen years ago.

The day he had met him would forever threaten the galaxy, but it started as every day at Intergalactic Protection started: with bad food.

“What inedible garbage is this?” Intergalactic Protection’s Private Matross Legion, one of few soldiers from the Trioxidillian species, hung out his tongue. He forked around some of the swill he was eating: gray goop the cookbots had decided was safe to eat. He was afraid to add salt for fear his soup might bubble. The cookbots had again confused cuisine with slug food. Or maybe food with slugs mixed in. It was slug food, though, so one way or another, the term fit.

He dropped his fork with a clatter against the bowl’s edge. The fork didn’t seep into the swill as much as became swallowed. At least something around here was eating. Legion hadn’t tasted a decent meal since he’d joined Intergalactic Protection a few months ago to help peace relations with this galaxy and its neighbors. Hold on. That wasn’t true. He had protected the people at Unholy Pizza Pandemonium, and they’d rewarded him appropriately. He’d had trouble gripping his Marsek pistol after that meal, though, since they were low on wet naps.

He surveyed the cafeteria, estimating the number of soldiers who stomached this mess. Not many. At crowded tables arranged in dashed lines, whoever wasn’t green skinned had turned green, and those who were green had turned yellow. That morning’s paintball exercise didn’t help him figure out which was which.

Here in Intergalactic Protection’s grimy mess hall, IP’s soldiers had gathered for their thrice-daily gorging. The sweat-stinky bodies and the sardine crowdedness didn’t make Legion feel comfortable, but he never complained. The military outfit had given him the chance to do some good. He served with pride and, often, nose plugs.

Yeow! Pincer-intense fingers clasped his skull and smashed it into his tray. Swill splashed his hairless scalp and splattered up his noseless nostrils. He choked, and a spark of pain diluted his thoughts but only briefly. He removed his face from the tray, getting an eyeful of the advertisement on its surface: Indigestion Outlet.

“Sgt. Garchel, sir.” With no more love than he felt for the meal oozing off him, Legion greeted the military goon who had pounded down his face.

“My favorite target. How’s it hanging, Six Ball?” Garchel snort-laughed over his shoulder at that invisible entourage of yes men he always imagined following him. He had no friends, so he made them up.

Garchel was an eel-faced military thug whose only service in life was to antagonize anyone within odorizing distance of his armpits. He’d flunked the police force’s final exam four times and so resorted to relying on his daddy’s contacts to get accepted into the military.

“How’s the food?” Garchel crammed Legion’s face into the swill again and mashed it around. Legion choked some in, which burned his nostrils. He clutched at Garchel’s wrist to snap it off. Just for kicks. It would serve as a nice lead-in to ripping out his tongue. Legion liked breaking the ice, though he preferred breaking it over Garchel’s head.

“Food tastes as terrible as you look,” Legion said before he forced his face out. The food had muffled the words. He swiveled around on the bench and stood, heels clacking together. “Sergeant.”

Garchel ignored him. He instead focused on the goop still hanging off Legion’s breast. “Hey, Six Ball, nice jewelry.” He tossed another snort over his shoulder. He looked entertained. His imaginary friends must have duh-huh’ed.

“It’s a service medal, you shaved orangutan.” Legion enjoyed the insult. Intergalactic Protection usually didn’t allow him to speak this way to a superior officer, but he’d mentioned their sponsors to the buying public twice this week. He threw Garchel’s dried hand off him. His fingers squeezed into a fist, which he aimed at Garchel.

“That’s shaved orangutan, sir. I mean, you’re the shaved orangutan.”

The hubbub in the mess hall dispersed. Everyone was watching.

Garchel leaned closer, his thuggish smile still engraved on his amphibianlike lips. His gasoline-reeking breath wafted from his mouth. “You want to make this into isomething, Pvt. Six Ball? I outrank you. Let it go, jerk-punk.” Garchel smacked a fist down on Legion’s tray and thundered off. “Get back to your cat food. That’s an order.”

Legion scowled at Garchel. He wanted nothing more than to squash that slope-browed brute underneath a large military transport. A Fireball would do. Being a starship, it was a heavy enough mil-tran to squash his ego.

Legion sat after Garchel exited the mess hall. Another figure fell into the seat across the table. A meal tray clattered onto the table, covered in that same swill and indigestion advertisement. The man beamed at the slop as if never having laid eyes on a better meal. Maybe not: Legion didn’t recognize him from the pizza mission.

“Nice of that guy to make eating easier for you. Now you only have to lick the food off your face,” the newcomer said before burying his attention in his meal.

His peach-pinkish hue identified him as a Terran. Legion was thankful for his own green Trioxidillian skin, not that color with which genetics had saddled Terrans. Those Terran nostril hairs also repulsed Legion. One point for hairlessness.

“Make sure to finish your meal, because dessert is cinnamon rat tails by Shrewd Recipes. Yum yum!” the station’s haunt control said from a public address speaker. A wall flashed a mural advertisement for those rat tails. Legion cringed. Why must he hear about some product of less consequence to Legion than this meal? These haunt controls, voice-command-to-action software that made their installation location seem haunted, were getting pushier. They made the “ghosts” in this mess hall now look like advertising’s biggest douche bags.

The Terran across from Legion chuckled. “Those ads are fun. Or maybe that’s the hallucinogens in the food talking. They make me feel like a unicorn’s stool sample.”

Legion regarded this Terran. The man wore a purple-splotched shirt that could have been either decorative or just juice stains. With this came a pair of maroon pants, a belt studded with fake light-bullet casings, and a shoulder brush big enough to scour his bathtub...if the cleaning robots didn’t clean them daily.

Legion scraped his fork on the table. The Terran’s head sprang up with a goofy grin. “Hola,” the newcomer said before slogging another slag of slug into his open craw.

“Hola.” Legion decided to smile back. “I guess.”

Legion watched the private, his lipless mouth slightly agape. The newcomer happily forked into his mouth another lump of gray mass. Wasted effort since he could guzzle the stuff down. He slopped another glob into his mouth and sucked that down as if slurping a noodle.

Legion’s stomach roiled. He pushed away his bowl, still with Garchel’s fist print carved into the tray. “You want mine?”

The newcomer stopped his slurping and looked up. His hands advanced on Legion’s tray. “Mu doh mott dish?”

Legion reached across the table and removed the fork from the newcomer’s mouth. “Say that again?”

The newcomer took back the fork and plugged his mouth again. “Mu dome—”

“Without the fork.”

The newcomer removed the fork and indicated Legion’s slop with it. “You don’t want this?”

“As much as I want a stomach pump.” He double-checked the slop. “Huh. Actually, right now, I wouldn’t mind a stomach pump.”

The newcomer grabbed Legion’s bowl and scooped the rest of its contents into his own. “Thanks. I need my macronutrients: protein, carbohydrates, and papier-mâché.”

“Nice outfit, circus dunce.” From another table, someone laughed at the newcomer. Another cadet passed and slapped the newcomer on the head, which caused him to slam down onto his rattling plate. The newcomer recovered.

Legion checked the newcomer’s getup. He was a first-level private, Legion deduced from the insignia on his breast pocket, but his nametag used some ugly color combination that made an impossibility of reading it. Purple on black? Did Crayola design that? Ah, apparently so. Their logo ran down the newcomer’s shirt sleeve.

Legion tapped the table to get the newcomer’s attention. “You know, you can catch major crock for not wearing the standard uniform...though you’re safe around Halloween.”

“Hey, Six Ball.” Garchel thundered up to their table and slammed a boot onto Legion’s empty bowl. The bowl flipped into the air and crashed against the table’s edge. “I forgot. I wanted to grab your jewelry for my girlfriend.” Garchel guffawed. Legion was unaware he’d told a joke. Perhaps he was still giddy from managing to dress himself this morning.

Garchel sneaked a chuckle over his shoulder at his ghostly cronies, so Legion swept a hand at the surroundings. “Garchel, who are you laughing with? Where’s this make-believe entourage of yours? You have no friends, and the only reason you’re in the military is because your father is the colonel in charge of the thermal-terrain regiment, and even he thinks your aim is as useful as your wit. Sir.” Pretty sure he’d plowed through all his insubordination freebies.

Garchel’s face bunched up. “What was that?” He grabbed at Legion’s hair, then remembered Trioxidillians were hairless. He reached for the nape of Legion’s uniform and yanked him closer. This old routine again. Legion stifled a yawn.

Garchel cackled. “Six Ball, I take crock from my superior officers, not pansy privates. I certainly don’t take it from you. You want a piece of me? Let’s bring this outside. I’ll tie your pretty antennae into a green pretzel aaallll the way down to where they meet your covered ears.” He flicked the cupped opening at the tip of one of Legion’s antennae.

“Psst.” The newcomer pressed his fork onto his plate, causing a grating scrape, and leaned across the table. “He called your antennae pretty. You should say thank you.”

“He said pretzel. He was comparing my antennae to his thinking.”

“What?” Garchel’s jaw bulged with forced breathing. Apparently he had no more ideas for which of Legion’s body parts he’d twist into junk food. Maybe he was annoyed that, next month, MaxSport was forcing IP to demilitarize women. At least the real women. Who knew what would happen to those in his imaginary throng?

The newcomer stood with a half-moon smile. “Garchel,” he read from the ogre’s nametag. The slop hadn’t given him fuzzy vision like it had Legion.

The newcomer stuck out his hand for a shake. His glove winked in the light. “I’ve been trying for years to convince people I’m awesomely insane, but I never laughed with my imaginary friends. Not even Dangly-Eyed Darryl, and he loves a good joke.”

Garchel stood dumbfounded. He observed the newcomer’s hand as if it had bathed in liquid nitrogen. Finally his face became cast-iron fury. He threw Legion away and flared his nostrils at the newcomer. That gassy odor puffed from his mouth. “Don’t talk to me ever again, freak-nut.” He stormed off.

A light panel hovered in for a closer shine. Legion relaxed, straightened his uniform, and flashed a smile at the newcomer. “Thanks for putting that idiot in his place.”

“Put him in his place? That guy is a social-class achievement in super fantasticness!” the newcomer with no fashion sense said. “And if a freak-nut is a chocolate-covered almond, he’s my new best friend. I love freak-nuts.”

Legion extended his hand across the table. This man was a Terran, and Legion would offer a Terran’s greeting: by swapping hand bacteria. Should he sneeze on his hand first? “I’m Private Matross Legion, seventh brigade of the forty-eighth infantry unit.”

Their hands met and shook. Legion noticed the newcomer’s gaudy glove, something like a cybernetic contraption adorned in clashing paint splotches, razor claws, and an advertisement on its wrist for Safe-T First Knives. “That’s funny. I’m in forty-eight-slash-seven, too. What is forty-eight divided by seven, anyway?”

“Really?” Legion’s head snapped back. “Our squad added new recruits?”

“Only me. The captain said I’m special enough for a whole Olympic squad. I’m Lowensland. Private George Lowensland.” He inhaled another forkful of glop and spoke through it. Impressive that he kept his blobs of food from choking back up the pipes. “They’re installing latent technology in this base. Or so I hear. L-tech stuff is awesome with a capital o. And then ‘some’ after it.”

“It’s about time, too. It’s supposed to make things a lot easier.” Legion’s smile curved even more. “Wonder if it ever messes up.”

Chapter Two: Pies PIs

January 15, 9110. 2:09 p.m. (Galactic Standard Time). Right freaking now.

Reef sat uneasily. It wasn’t right to sit in this particular chair in front of this particular desk with this particular coffee stain on this particular pant leg, but he did. Actually, the coffee stain and pant leg were okay. The back cushion jutting out at him wasn’t, though. He examined the desk that wasn’t his that drowned under a swath of datasheet computers he’d never activated that contained information he wasn’t privy to, and he examined a collection of someone else’s things in an office not belonging to him overlooking a view that showed Power Plant laser-painting “Stormtroopers Go Home” on the parking lot asphalt again.

Reef felt a chill trickle through the office and squirmed. Every moment spent in this chair felt as wrong as if he’d slipped into someone else’s skin, and although the insane, self-resurrecting Kamikaze liked throwing old layers of his own over Reef, that statement still rang only half true. This was all Legion’s. This office, this desk, this chair, this monstrous mess of datasheets. Well, it had been Legion’s until yesterday when a Good Guy starship, hijacked by Bad Guy Plaster, rammed into him at takeoff speed at the wreckage of the Great Stellin Fusion Station yesterday. Now this office was Reef’s. Intergalactic Protection had this morning instated him as the new Good Guy leader. A hasty move. Not their brightest, but Reef could list stupider ones...like that advertisement deal with the Andromedan Mafia. Well, at least that deal had saved General Maurhauzer two broken kneecaps and a pair of cement gloves. Then again, cement gloves could only improve his aim.

Reef grew colder when he thought about the duty he now carried. The Good Guys, who currently had a roster of ten, routinely battled Asinine’s army of thousands. Legion slumbered in a coma, suffering a fractured spine, his lifeline slowly dwindling to a standstill—and Intergalactic Protection refused to pay his hospital bills even though Legion had accepted IP’s offer to extend their medical plan to the Good Guys. With the high cost of medicine, the Good Guys couldn’t afford the bills themselves. So Legion rotted in a hospital, waiting for an inevitable death that would come maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow, maybe the next day. Maybe already.

Other Good Guys were indisposed: Burnout and Smithereens were guarding Legion...as if he’d wake up. After yesterday’s stunt driving, Kamikaze wasn’t going anywhere. Ace Spandex was taken hostage when Plaster hijacked that starship. Their robot pilot Car Alarm was no more than a dented central processor. Harrier was down by one wing and unconscious. And when the crock was the always comatose Null planning to pitch in?

“How the piss did you manage this, Legion?” Reef snatched up an active datasheet—flung it at a framed picture of Legion. The frame careened off the shelf and cracked on the ground. “How did you keep Kamikaze from killing everyone, keep Asinine from overwhelming your common sense, keep Power Plant and Franchise from unleashing their panda strike team? And why the piss was I left with it?”

Reef stomped over to the picture and grabbed it. He threw his arm back to launch it again when the still caught his eye: Legion, Bad Guy leader and ex-platoonmate Master Asinine—whose head was replaced by a cutout smiley face—and their deceased mutual friend Sopher. Legion had mentioned Sopher from the days before Asinine had become a traitorous killer but evidently not before developing his faux-pas fashion sense. Was Asinine wearing a bicycle tire as a belt? A bold statement.

He placed the frame facedown on its shelf and flipped over the others. He wouldn’t let anyone watch him screw the Good Guys into the ground, even pictures. Especially with his singed eyebrows still growing back.

He reached for the last picture but hesitated after he noticed, etched into the frame’s auburn corner, an Alaphan cross. Legion’s religion. What a crock. How much had Alaphus helped when Plaster had bulleted their own starship across Legion’s spine? None, because fables didn’t protect. Well, they offered hope. They also offered lamps at half off, according to the flyer on the back of the frame.

Where Legion had hope, Reef felt alone. His eyes caressed his flask that leaned against the pile of datasheets. And then he felt it come. The It. It started with subtle shakes in his hands, which traveled along his arms, into his should—

His hand darted for his flask and unscrewed the cap. He took a long swig—crock, he needed that oaken nectar—waited a second, then decided another guzzle wouldn’t hurt. He slid the flask into a pocket after replacing its cap. And now his breath smelled like gym socks. He took another swig, anyway. Sweaty gym socks.

Just a few swigs. Just a few to subside the shakes. The It—that terrible demon thing that came about whenever he needed a calming shot—subsided with it. He breathed. Air tasted sssoooo good right now. Nobody understood how much he needed his secret swigs. What was the problem if the It kept his shakes in check?

The haunt control buzzed, or maybe that was Reef’s fuzzy head. He felt the lack of alcohol in his bloodstream. Needed a swig of bourbon to calm his jitters. The physical and psychological ones. “Entities Power Plant and Franchise have arrived. If you haven’t already, take a couple of Hennigan’s Tolerance Shots. When Power Plant’s addiction to raw cookie dough causes mass hysteria in the streets, remember Hennigan’s.”

Reef put the picture down. “Control, acknowledge. Cut the ad and let them in. I already swigged my tolerance shot.” Even the haunt control knew Power Plant and cookie dough made a caustic combination.

The door to Legion’s office slid aside. Reef preferred l-doors, but Legion had forbade l-tech on the station. Sliding doors were yesteryear. Most l-tech came from Letchtech, so maybe Legion had it in for that company. Then again, the Good Guys used Letchtech gabbers, pea-sized communication devices that fit in your ear. Everything here sat on the wrong side of MC Escher’s logic.

Jeff and Jacob, Power Plant and Franchise to the public, stood in the gap. Power Plant burst into the office, nose-diving onto the brown carpet that the haunt control had cleaned since he last nose-dived into it when the Mongolian Yurts won Super Bowl 7143. The carpet got dirty again, this time with mucus and blood. And a bit of cookie dough. The Neapolitan of Power Plant smears.

Power Plant’s wiry body jackrabbited up. He hooted and mopped the blood from his nose with a sleeve and a sniffle. He spun around at Franchise, who entered with more charm. “Ya sees dat? Dat stuff I smeared across the floors is worth ten bazoollion times the arts and crafts at that paintings gallery. I shoulds get paid the big money too.” He checked his handiwork, his lips twisted up. “I’s Pickeeso.”

“Picasso,” Franchise said. “Pickeeso is a pizza joint.”

“I means Pickeeso.”

Franchise examined the stain on the carpet and wiped at it with a slim shoe. “You’re right. It does look like a pizza.”

Oh, boy. “Dare I ask why diving onto the carpet was necessary this time?” Reef said this from a safe distance in case Power Plant had any ideas of a repeat performance.

“No, you don’t dare. That’s what’s best for us all.” Franchise cracked his knuckles and took his usual seat at Legion’s desk. He rested his slender ankles on the desktop and its mess of datasheets. Must his usual seat be Legion’s?

Reef smacked his feet off the desk. “Other side.” When Franchise fluttered his eyelashes at Reef, any care Reef had about where he sat vanished. “You know what? Sit wherever you want. Just don’t do that eye thing again.”

Franchise did that eye thing again.

“Anyway, I called you to Legion’s office because—Jeff, you can smear your nose across the carpet, but leave the walls alone—I have a mission for you. The viewscreen is off limits, too.”

“S’not me. S’my nose.”

“Jeff’s nose, the viewscreen is off limits, too.”

“It say ‘achoo,’ which is ‘gotcha’ in noses language.”

“Great.” Another tingling hazed through Reef. He wasn’t cut out for dealing with every Good Guy...or with Asinine...as Legion was. “You’ve heard about our situation, I’m sure.”

“Yes, and the whole thing makes me want to punch a homeless guy.” Franchise’s nostrils flared and he smacked a fist into his palm. “Ow.”

“I’m also sure you’ve heard our manpower is low. So I need you two right now on your best behavior. Anyway, this is like a repeat of October’s mission where you both crashed a Good Guy starship into enemy territory, but I need you two—crock, it sounds as if I pulled this out of a toilet—I need you two on a stealth mission to the Bad Guys’ headquarters. Jeff, remember what I said about the wall.”

“I ’members nuffing.” Sigh. Power Plant’s maturity defect didn’t make dealing with him any easier. Especially when he used his nose as a paintbrush.

Despite their low manpower, Reef was sending half of Legion’s available team into a Bad Guy nest of bees. He needed his flask again badly: his stomach felt like the inside of a rollicking funhouse. “I’ve briefed Abioye on this mission. He’ll act as field leader, and Mabel will pilot. Jacob, you’ll navigate. A Fireball will be your transport because this might turn ugly, so you might need the firepower.”

“Is my bigs brother okays wit’ dis?” Power Plant asked. He checked the gashes he’d received yesterday along his hip and knee. His impact suit’s painkillers took care of the jabbing ache, and the healing putty had sealed the gashes well. Now only nasty scabs remained. Too bad healing putty couldn’t regrow Reef’s singed eyebrows.

“I’ve spoken with Mark. He’s aware of this mission.” Reef had considered not gabbering Power Plant’s older brother, Burnout. Burnout was guarding Legion off site in case of an assassination attempt. But Reef thought this mission was important enough to notify Burnout, lest Burnout retaliate angrily for not being informed.

Franchise’s slender body had blanched to stark white. He stopped kneading his knuckles under his thumb, a silent stutter shaking his lips. He whipped to his feet and his hand brushed Legion’s desk. His stutter found voice. “A...a mis-s-sion? To Station Z-z-zilch-ch...Zilcho?” His thick tongue melded his words.

“Yes, the Bad Guys’ headquarters. The object of your mission...is Ace Spandex.”

“Really?” Power Plant whirled around, his nose tracing snotty lines across the viewscreen. He smacked against the wall and something cracked. His hands zipped to his nose. “Ow! For freakings sake, that’s like a punches to my nostril. Be careful whatcha do arounds a wall.” He doubled over onto a set of golf clubs Reef had never seen Legion use. The nine iron made a hole in one into his mouth.

“We’re looking for Ace?” Franchise asked. “You think the Bad Guys have him? Locked up at their station?”

“Well, he isn’t baking pies with Braindead’s mother.”

Power Plant unplugged the nine iron from his mouth. “But what ifs he is? We should goes eat some pies. Ya know, just fer investigitation digesticitation.” He and Franchise high-fived over the prospect of pie.

Franchise had forgotten his fear of the mission. Pies stuffed his attention. “Yeah, pies. Apple or...or...watermelon. Do they make watermelon pies?”

Power Plant whipped the club aside. “Ifs they’s don’t, we makes ’em makes ’em.”

Reef said, “I’m only weighing the facts. The same Fireball that struck Legion, the same Fireball in which we had imprisoned Plaster and that new Bad Guy, was where Ace was. Now Ace, the Fireball, and those two Bad Guys have been missing since yesterday.”

Reef continued over Power Plant and Franchise’s celebratory high-fiving. He shouldn’t have mentioned pie: Power Plant was drooling. “Station Zilcho is hurtling away from us, but our stolen starship is still sending us beacons, so we know where it is. It will take you six hours to arrive. Your primary objective is extraction: bring Ace home.”

“Primary objective? There’s a secondary objective?” Franchise stopped high-fiving Power Plant. Power Plant hadn’t caught the cue to stop. He palm-mashed Franchise’s face.

Reef studied the carpet, noting Power Plant’s smeared bodily fluids. His tingling sensation dulled into a lightheaded fuzziness. “Ace’s capture is too high of a risk. He’s an information source the Bad Guys can use against us.”

“But what’s the secondary objective?” Franchise returned Power Plant’s high-five face mash by elbowing him in the forehead.

Reef’s insides grew frostier. He wasn’t fit for this job, not like Legion. “I have orders from IP. If you find Ace and are unable to bring him home, for whatever reason, then to protect our secrets”—his eye leaked a tear—“you’re to kill him.”

Power Plant and Franchise stopped. Their jaws stretched long with shock. They fell so silent that Reef swore he heard dust settle.

“Huh?” peeped Franchise as if trying to go unheard.

Reef looked away. His words clotted in his throat. “You heard me. Kill him.”

“Oh.” In a spiritual deflation, Power Plant’s enthusiasm for pie evaporated. “And his birfday’s comings up.”

“Jeff, his birthday’s in eight months.”

“Still...”

Like when meeting loved ones before their execution, a somber mood swallowed Legion’s office. Franchise perked up and pasted on a manufactured smile. “Yeah, but TGIF.” He nudged Reef’s side with an elbow. Nudge, nudge. “Am I right?”

“It’s Saturday,” Reef said.

Chapter Three: Cause for Celebration

What news! Master Asinine tossed festive streamers into the air. He sent a fist smashing through a mirror in a fit of drooling glee, then reared back to examine the shards in his talking glove. The glove would have murmured discontent, but its batteries were dead. It was annoying, anyway. It cheered “wahoo” whenever he waved at someone or gave IQ 23 a thumbs-up for mixing an exceptionally tasty fruit punch. And don’t even get him started on his puppet shows.

He leaped and smacked into a wall blissfully. Make that painfully. Here in the Bad Guy Wreck Room, among equipment that no longer functioned, doodads that no longer blinked, teen pop songs that no longer played, and finger paintings he no longer saw in the scant light, he punched the air with a whoop—whooped the air. He danced a jig. Then he tripped over a couch and spilled onto the ground. Ouchies.

The electricity was all but sucked dry from Station Zilcho. Thanks to their visitor/prisoner Luzimoss detonating the station’s power cells last month, nothing here functioned. The Bad Guys, the largest criminal organization in the galaxy, now saw by only vanilla-scented candlelight. Still, Asinine felt victorious. He had sent four of his Bad Guys—Plaster, Master Asinine Sucks, Ice Cream Headache, and Scapegoat—on a mission to the Great Stellin Fusion Station to steal a little juice until they could come up with a more permanent solution. And he had just received word from Bad Guys Plaster and Master Asinine Sucks that, within the hour, they would return to headquarters. With a chlorine-scented air freshener! But that wasn’t what exhilarated the reddest of Asinine’s white blood cells. Oh, no no no. Well, they were bringing Space Cow home, so that exhilarated him a bit.

No, what excited him—what gave him that zany feeling from his hairs straight to the tips of his elfin boots with those curls that never coiled properly after the first wash—was that they had starship-smacked Legion, his archenemy. Legion was in criticous care. And, if criticous meant what Asinine thought, Legion w—

No, it probably didn’t mean a kraken was slowly digesting him.

No matter. Asinine’s bubble would not burst. The only person standing between him and galactic domination lay dying—rapidly—and all because no one could pay his medical bills. Intergalactic Protection themselves refused to foot the cost. Awesome fasmatastic.

“Yes!” He leaped and kicked a tasseled fuchsia boot. The boot accidentally flung off his foot and punted his bodyguard, Braindead, in the forehead. Not much of a bodyguard if he couldn’t deflect a boot. “Fantastic! Super colossal! Uhm...awesome stupendous! Lieutenant, while Braindead’s picking himself up off the floor, throw up some other wow exclamations to express how grand I feel.”

Stationed at the room’s minibar, Bad Guy second-in-command Lieutenant IQ 23 electrified to attention. The head-sized question marks on his helmet wobbled at his temples with squeaks. The spotlight was on him. It was out of power, but it was on him. “Uhm...uh...contigulous.”

Huh? Asinine faced his lieutenant with humdrum eyes. “Contigulous? This is not a bar mitzvah, Lieutenant. I thought I instructed you to practice this sort of thing.”

No matter. Nothing would weigh down Asinine’s mood. Even Station Zilcho’s total power outage couldn’t break him. He whooped the air with one fist, then the other, alternating to beat an invisible wall and unintentionally knock down a lit candle. “Yes, yes, yes, someone put out that candle fire, yes.” He reached out to a side table where sat a bowl of minty freak-nuts, grabbed some, and swallowed. Mmm, chocolaty goodness. And with the added flavor of dripped candle wax.

Now, to business. He swung around, which fanned out his mirror-shingled kilt. With kilt envy, IQ 23’s expression sagged, but his was still on backorder.

Asinine found an l-chair in its inactive state. Its holographic outline would have indicated its position so someone wouldn’t miss when they sat, but it was unpowered. Asinine found one of the two regular chairs and parked his bum-bum. His eyes narrowed at IQ 23 with an evil glare. “Lieutenant, I need you to snoop some snooping. Our time to strike is now, and now is our time to strike.” To emphasize the parallelism of his cool sentence, he sprang up and whooped the wall and...Actually that was the gargoyle creature Appetite’s bone-studded knee. And it stung. He shuffled the chair over a step so, when next he gave in to the urge to whoop, he’d hit what he wanted: that ugly flower vase.

Appetite shuffled off to eat more carpet. That gargoyle-faced, monolithic beast, as speechless and blank-brained as it was, at least served as a good garbage dump when it ate its way through anything. Literally anything.

“We need to find Legion’s location. He’s probably laying low in some cheap motel or perhaps the county circus, taking in a show or two. I’d lay low after smacking into a starship.” Asinine wrung his chin. “Perhaps Disney on Ice...or something named after someone who hasn’t won more Best Documentary awards than I have.”

“Sir, after smacking into a starship, I think he’s in a hospital. His spine was fractured. He’s in critical care, after all. That’s a medical term.”

Oh. “Your logic confuses my cockeyed irrationality, Lieutenant, but very well. Starships do get angry at people’s spines. Okay, make some calls, tell some lies, and weasel your way into some information about where he’s staying. Then we will swoop in for the kill.”

Asinine blurted a maniacal cackle and reared a whooping fist back—“Appetite, you moron, I was about to whoop that thing you’re eating. And vases should be enjoyed with ketchup.”

Something above them clicked with the banality of a haunt control giving a status update. It was the haunt control giving a status update. Ah, Station Zilcho’s only remaining functional program, it refused to die like a stubborn zombie hippo. Good thing he’d rerouted power to get it going after it quit. “Two Bad Guy entities have returned,” the haunt control said. Asinine hated having its ramble mode set to “terse,” but he didn’t know how to switch it to “puke information continuously.”

“Control, acknowledge. More information, please.”

“Entities Plaster and Master Asinine Sucks at Nothing”—Asinine’s computer rewording of that infuriating name—“have returned with entity name not inserted in database in stolen transport name not inserted in database.”

“Good. Control, acknowledge. Page entity Plaster to—”

Something slammed against the locked door, rattling it. A muffled grunt wafted through the air. “Ah, freakin’ power outage. Now I gotta smooth out my face skin.”

Asinine waited. Then knock, knock.

“Who’s there?” Asinine asked.

“Plaster,” a gravelly rumble said, followed by an under-the-breath curse word.

Plaster? Wait a second. Asinine’s one steadfast rule was to never invite in building material made of cement and sand. “Plaster who?”

“Plaster, the Only Guy You Know Whose Skin Looks Like Wet Plaster!” the gravelly voice cannon-fired.

Lieutenant IQ 23 leaned closer to Asinine. “Psst. Sir, now may not be the time for outdated and monotonous humor.”

Asinine stood. “Very well. Control, acknowledge. Whoever that is, let him, her, or it in.”

Unpowered, the door didn’t fade. With a metallic squeal and one-two-three jerks, the door wrenched aside a crack. Salmon pink fingers probed through and yanked the door open the rest of the way until Plaster barged in. He slammed a knee on the wall, leaving a viscous squish. His salmon skin looked grayish and smelled charred.

“Oh, that Plaster,” Asinine said.

With the hypermutation of constantly melting and constantly replenishing skin and a face like a honey-dressed skull, Plaster looked like a brawny wax statue. He pointed a meaty finger at Asinine and kicked aside a chair that sat in his wrathful way. His face resembled an angry skeleton. His flesh dribbled wads of tissue on Asinine’s Wreck Room carpet. “You!”

“I agree. Me.” Asinine flattened his hands on his tie-dye T-shirt.

Plaster’s dragonlike rage closed the distance. A brick-thick fist rammed into Asinine’s face. Holy crock, that was impolite.

“Ow!” Asinine shrilled through a network of fingers he hoped would dull his nose’s throbbing heat. “Thanks a lot. Now I need my ice-pack nose guard. Lieutenant, fetch me my awkward fashion statement.”

Plaster crunched his hands around a coffee table and whipped it against the Wreck Room’s wrestling ring. Its glass-top shattered against a vat-sized salad spinner. Asinine wasn’t sure why he kept a salad spinner in his Wreck Room, but it had flashing lights, so it fit the decor.

Asinine flinched at Plaster’s face, the same face that heaved forced breathing through his grid of teeth. The melting monstrosity needed a chill pill with extra chill. “Where’s this Good Guy I hear you have?”

“Shove the freakin’ Good Guy. I’ve had it wit’ your idiot plans puttin’ me at risk. You had me suckin’ electricity outta a power station with a freakin’ cable. A cable! Your plan blew the station t’ junk, an’ we got trapped inside, breathin’ metallic air an’ hopin’, prayin’ to al-pissin’-mighty Alaphus we’d find a way out before dyin’ o’ air poisonin’. Me an’ Master Asinine Sucks—whose media name is freakin’ spot on—escaped...barely...and took an entire freakin’ day to fly home, but who knows what happened t’ Ice Cream Headache and the Hunchback o’ Notre Zilcho. Poor hunchy’s cleanin’ his nostrils in Heaven right now ’cause o’ you”—he grabbed Asinine’s collar and flung him back—“an’ your cockamamie plans.”

“Well, if you feel that way, I’m sure we can—”

“Shut up, ’cause I ain’t finished chewin’ you out.” Plaster’s hand shot to his side and grabbed a pistol. He whipped it up at Asinine’s throat, then angled it down, training it on Asinine’s kneecaps as if deciding where to fire a bullet first. “An’ I ain’t puttin’ up wit’ ya anymore. How ’bout I shoot out your feet and then your freakin’ hands and top it off wit’ your neck? How’s that for a master plan? How’s that sound to you?”

“Okay, but I’m trying to keep my kilt wrinkle free.”

“Crock your freakin’ kilt. You got somethin’ to say for yourself?”

“Just one word: Lieutenant, open the snake pit.”

Plaster’s anger dissolved. His slimy cheeks slackened. “Crock, I forgot that was there.”

Lieutenant IQ 23 swung aside a lever under the minibar’s counter. Beneath Plaster’s feet, a section of the floor dropped. As if anvils weighed down his ankles, he plummeted and slammed the back of his head against the trapdoor. A bellow plummeted with him, echoing everywhere.

“You know,” Asinine said to IQ 23, “I used to have a slide leading into that thing, but no one wanted to play on it.”

Asinine loomed over the hole, making certain not to spill through its open maw into the snake pit. Well, not that that would be bad since a relaxing swimming pool waited below. But he’d overchlorinated it. Never underestimate a swimming pool that burned your eyes like bad contact-lens solution.

Plaster choked out some pool water. He thrashed about in a splashy tantrum. “You know, usually gravity’s cool, but sometimes it pulls crock like this that crockin’ macks me off.”

Asinine waved jovially to a Plaster he couldn’t see. The lights down there were out, and every candle Asinine had dropped into the pool had died. “Welcome to my snake pit, Plaster. Right now forty thousand rattlers are wading around, determining what unmentionable of yours they should chew on. Threaten me? Come up in my turf, get all up in my face, threaten my kilt, hurt my feelings? I don’t think so. I had this pit designed for just such an attack. Good thing I finally got to use it.”

Lieutenant IQ 23 joined him at the hole. “Congratulations, sir. This Mutiny Pool finally came in handy. You can cross that off your list of a hundred things to do before you die.”

“Boy, if there’s anything that gets my throttle up, it’s mutiny. I hate mutants.”

Plaster grunted, splashing around. The brute’s anger sizzled with more chemicals than a pharmaceutical company produced. Another splash. “What the piss? These snakes are dead.”

Hold up. The snakes were what? Asinine funneled his mouth and aimed it at the trap door. “They’re dead?” Ask a question. Good call. Best way to pry out answers.

“Yeah, they’re dead. There’s a million snakes in this swimmin’ pool, all belly up and floatin’. Snakes can’t breathe underwater, ya idiot.”

Asinine flopped a hand at the hole, at Plaster. “Doesn’t matter. They’re plastic, anyway. But they have that new made-in-wherever smell to them. Ahhh, rubber.”

“Sir, we should leave.”

“You hear that, Plaster? I have to leave. I have tea time with my book club in an hour. Enjoy the swim. Control, acknowledge. Close snake pit. And give Plaster some music to pass the time. Perhaps my Too Kool for Skool and Proper Spelling teen pop library. Now, Lieutenant, what book is this month’s choice, and how quickly can I cram through the Cliff’s Notes?”

“Sir, there are no Cliff’s Notes to Horton Hears a Who. And we should put out that candle fire now.”

Chapter Four: Mining Expedition up the Nasal Grotto

Reef seated himself across the vinyl-sheeted refectory table from the two captured Bad Guys. The seat’s cushion shushed through the tomblike cellblock.

Ice Cream Headache had the hyperability to inflict her namesake on any victim. So she wore a hyperstasis chip on her head because Reef had grown tired of brownie fudge bursting his brain. The hunchback Scapegoat sat beside Ice Cream Headache, dampener gloves encasing his hands. The hyperability on the Good Guys’ file for Scapegoat specified he was a blame magnet, but the gloves prevented him from picking his nose. Besides how disgusting that habit was, he got his super annoyance from something. Might as well be those tiny green lumps he dug from his twin nostril caves.

“Anything?” Reef asked Sixth Sense.

“No. Sorry. Uhm. Still nothing.” Sixth Sense, the Good Guys’ newest recruit, pushed his thumb-thick glasses up his nose with fingers hidden in a shirtsleeve too long. The team’s mind reader grunted with another failed exertion at reading the thoughts of these two prisoners.

Sixth Sense doubled as the prisoner interrogator. With most Good Guys indisposed, Reef made sure Sixth Sense remained on base. What Reef’s questioning couldn’t uncover, Sixth Sense could hopefully scan from the Bad Guys’ minds. Well...Ice Cream Headache’s mind. Everything out of Scapegoat’s said, “Pick, pick, pick, pick, pick.” Unlike the hunchback’s speech, Reef guessed Scapegoat ordered the sentences of his thoughts properly, but who actually knew?

Reef had a purpose here, but it wasn’t ruminating over disgusting habits. He wanted Sixth Sense to read anything from the Bad Guys’ minds, put the new recruit’s eidetic memory to use, make some connections in that perfect brain of his.

Reef pounded a fist on the table that separated him from the two prisoners. He almost leaped at the Bad Guys. “Look, just tell me Station Zilcho’s defense parameters. We’ll let you off with a lighter sentence.”

Ice Cream Headache sneered. The tiny plastic icicles that lined her sleeves and legs shook. With her mind, she tried to thrust a few flavors of pain at Reef, but right now that option was turned off. She bolted forward in her chair. “I’m saying nothing until I consult with my lawyer. And Bad Guys tend not to have lawyers. So we might be here a long time.” She sat back and flicked her raven hair aside with a nod. “You have a magazine?”

“Lawyer time long for Scapegoat not, master, yes yes,” the dead-air-on-the-brainwaves Scapegoat said. He always mangled his sentences.

“Well, tell me something.” Reef had exhausted every trick in his training here. He was no prisoner interrogator. Legion had requested, not long ago, to add an actual interrogator to the team. No go. The big boys at IP hadn’t seen the use.

Sixth Sense pushed his glasses up his nose again since they had slid down, his eyes vague behind those thick lenses. “Well. Uhm. I’m afraid I’m getting nowhere.”

“I think you’re right.” Hot hopelessness flashed through Reef. How the piss had Legion run this place and kept track of who won Kamikaze’s death pools? Maybe he was a robot.

The chubby Scapegoat said, “Code nine access two our seven is three blender for.” Marvelous. Even if Reef could parse the access code from that word jambalaya, who knew what was the proper order?

Reef rubbed his eyes. Ugh. “Why the crock would we need access to a code-protected blender? We have our own, you know. And you don’t need a code to use it.”

“Blend you can milkshake, master, yes yes.”

“Blend we can milkshake. Well, that’s great.” To Sixth Sense, he asked, “Have you pried anything out of their minds?”

Sixth Sense massaged his buzz-cut temples. The effort had apparently given him a throbbing headache. And a finger up his nose. “Know don’t want you Scape—” He removed the finger and regarded it, realizing where it had dug. His face soured and he flicked away the ore he had mined. “Sorry. Ugh. Yikes. Got to keep Scapegoat out of my head. Anyway. Uh, you don’t want to know what he’s thinking, yes yes.”

“We’ve covered it: pick, fling, pick, fling, pick. And fling.”

“Uhm. Yes. And Ice Cream Headache has something...installed...in her brain that prevents me from reading anything. It’s like a telepathy screen. All I can find is ‘This Device Adheres to Strict Manufacturer Policies’ and episodes of Ripley’s You Can’t Possibly Be That Gullible or Not.” He set his forehead in his hand. “Reruns.”

Reef stood. He approached the wall and kicked. He wanted to blame this situation on Scapegoat except the hunchback’s blame hyperability was off. How the piss had Legion handled this? The interrogations, the combat, the emergency situations...and whatever Power Plant caused after lunch. He faced the ceiling. “Legion, wake up.”

The haunt control clicked, and a drum roll crinkled off the cellblock’s dungeonlike stone walls. “And now, the moment you haven’t been waiting for because you didn’t know it was coming, please welcome Intergalactic Protection entity Gervix Invard!” A stadium cheer gushed from the public address speaker. “Also, receive two months of Game Show Broadcast Direct free with the purchase of extra absorbent Push It Tampons. Not as disgusting as it sounds to people who don’t know what a tampon is.”

Reef banged his head on the wall. Might as well. He was already leaning against it, and compared to his conversation with Scapegoat, this yielded more progress.

“Control, acknowledge. Who is Gervix Invard, and why is this the moment I’ve not been waiting for? And erase all advertisements with the keywords bloody and disgusts Reef. That includes ads from Urinary Race Tract’s Infectious Go-Karts.”

“Where the education is fun!” the haunt control said.

“In fact, erase anything in the bodily-function category. And answer my question.”

“Gervix Invard, Intergalactic Protection’s Internal Affairs division, you can believe that.” Huh? The haunt control had adopted a sharp, high-pitched tone...and hadn’t tried to convince him of the extra absorbency of Push It Tampons.

Reef checked the cellblock door and—whoa. A short, orange-skinned man of the Gharalgian alien race wearing a blinding orange suit stood at the entrance. He had spoken that last line. Reef hadn’t even heard him enter. He had simply...appeared. Reef asked, “Who—”

The Gharalgian flashed identification that Reef recognized as an Intergalactic Protection badge. His stark blond hair sparkled in the light when he looked around. “Is this how you conduct prisoner interrogations? With rookies...in this cellblock? Someone royally crocked up when they nominated you leader, you can believe that.”

Invard approached, and a pungency of cologne wafted out in palpable waves. Like an attacking spider’s pincers, his tongue flickered out and licked his lips. His hands skittered over his suit to hand-iron it.

The man shoved Reef aside and barged through to the interrogation table. His eyebrows angled down in the middle like an evil car salesman’s.

“You. Terran.” He snapped his fingers at Sixth Sense. Sixth Sense flashed to his feet, and his diminutive body knocked over his chair. His impact suit, as always, looked a size too large. Invard swept two fingers at the Bad Guys and pointed to Sixth Sense. “Lock these prisoners back in their holding cells. Until I’ve had time to check things around here, I want them secured.” Sixth Sense bolted away to tend to the Bad Guys, so Invard snapped his fingers at Scapegoat. “You. Also Terran. Stop trying to pick your nose with Intergalactic Protection property on.” He snapped a finger at Reef. “You. Also Terran as well. I want a report in my hands in—”

“Excuse me. You. Gharalgian.” Reef pushed forward. “Why are you here?”

Invard, the Gharalgian in question, sharpened a look at Reef. Realization wiped across his eyes. “Nobody told you? And where are your eyebrows?”

“Nobody told me what?” Reef almost flashed this Invard a leer but couldn’t look directly at that suit without his sunglasses. His eyes burned. “And tone down your outfit.”

The intruder squeezed a knob on his breast pocket to dull his suit from fireside orange to matte cantaloupe. “Well, then I’m pleased to be the bearer of bad news. I’m here to investigate the Good Guys, you can believe that. Associated with this rundown crap factory are a number of less-than-stellar issues, and I’m here to ensure things are operating according to Intergalactic Protection’s standards. Speaking of less-than-stellar issues, what is”—he recited from memory—“Kamikaze’s Cavalcade of Cadavers?”

“Less-than-stellar issues?”

Invard raised a hand that held an inactive datasheet. A transparent red rectangle. it glinted in the light. “All described in this.” He extended a finger to count. “One: you refuse sponsorship funding through Intergalactic Protection. Two: everything else you’ve managed to botch up.”

Reef snatched away the datasheet. Rude, but being polite to this meddler didn’t interest him. He spread the datasheet over the interrogation table and thumbed the maroon activation icon. The paper-thin datasheet hardened, clouded to an opaque white, and trumpeted its boot-up into a display of extended words in microscopic print. Reef would assume it was legalese. He didn’t have a magnifying glass, though, so he couldn’t be sure.

He scanned the display. “Ah, clip art.”

“That’s clip art with a vengeance, you can believe that.”

“There’s a category for vengeful clip art? I guess so, judging by how this zombie is stabbing a skull in the eye sockets with a cobra.”

Invard checked the datasheet. “And the bulleted list is marked with images of actual bullets. Intergalactic Protection has cataloged your organization’s indiscretions in that inventory of four hundred eighty-seven items.”

“Four hundred eighty seven? Ha. That’s it?”

“We tried to top five hundred, but we couldn’t itemize Power Plant’s hijinks into individual blunders.” Invard hand-ironed his suit’s breasts again.

“Try harder next time. He’s counted at least nine hundred himself, which surprises me because he doesn’t know what nine hundred means.” Reef’s attention returned to the datasheet. He found a magnification icon, which he pressed a few times. The words expanded with a ballooning bloomp to a legible size.

Invard smacked the table. “Thank him specifically for my presence here. His and Franchise’s transport crash on their covert mission called our attention to this animal house. You will find the Good Guys’ indiscretions ordered chronologically, but we can order it alphabetically, by threat level, or by severity of resulting stench.”

“Resulting stench is unnecessary. I already know which of Smithereens’s bombs tops that list.” Reef scrolled down the list, his eyes dancing across the datasheet, his heart thundering with every finger tap on an icon. Oh, crock. Would he face criminal charges? And which of Mabel’s cats was Corporal Meowsers?

“I’ll leave you for a moment with that problem. I can begin my investigation once you direct me to your office.” He puffed out his chest and stepped toward Reef as if to intentionally invade his personal space. “I can shut down this entire operation with a single thirty-second call and run all of you into the deepest trenches of the Alcatraz Meteor Belt where you’ll be sentenced to hard labor. And if I find you even slightly uncooperative, well”—Invard leaned closer and turned his back to everyone but Reef—“your past may have a nasty way of becoming public. Do—not—crock—with—me, Mr. Reef.” He turned back, faced the cellblock’s exit. “Now, show me your desk where I can start my investigation into burying this sham organization. This will feel like a sandpaper suppository. Believe me, you can believe that.”

Reef couldn’t believe this! Then again, Invard had said he could.

From behind her cell’s buzzing shield screen, Ice Cream Headache raised a hand. “Burying the Good Guys? That’s some community service I’d like to work off.”

Chapter Five: Rise and Shine

His eyes felt gummy but, with a few attempts and much effort, he managed them open. Yikes! A light panel blared at him only a few feet above his head, screaming with visual violence. He mashed his eyes shut but, with struggle, budged them open again and inched them wider and wider until he could bear to look at the light indirectly. And it was shaped, for some reason, like the Bat Signal. Must be Master Asinine’s.

Good Guy computer expert Ace Spandex grunted to lift his head, though something held him down. Lying on an inertiabed? His arms ached to move—how long had he remained in place?—but he couldn’t even budge them.

Sweat trickled down his eyes. He rattled on the bed but couldn’t...couldn’t...strrrraaaaiiiiin against its hold. NnnnnGGGGGG! Why couldn’t he move?

“Think, think. Calm your breathing. Think.” He roared throatily. His roar echoed, roaring back at him. His limited field of vision revealed only the light panel to which his eyes adjusted and a mustard splotch on the ceiling. Dijon. He was hungry. Ceiling Dijon had never looked so appealing. Well, until he noticed the ceiling salsa.

“Hello?” Someone had to respond. Come on! A few answerless seconds later, he asked again, “Hello? Show yourself. Why am I strapped to this pissing thing?”

A buzz flew closer. Good, good. Someone else was here. The shadows shifted, and the light panel now seemed dim, as if Ace Spandex’s eyes had mechanical apertures. But it didn’t matter. His eyes adjusted. Now he discerned details in whatever object blocked the light. “Made in the Bad Guy Bargain Basement” was written on the object’s underbelly. And was a wine label patching its side?

The thing that blocked the light, a pewter can, clacked together its three-pronged claws. “Ah, Terran, you have finally wakened. If Master were not out buying opera tickets and purchasing gag hot-dog buns for Master Asinine, he would be pleased.” It motioned with one pincer and dipped its body in a midair legless curtsey. “I am Appliance, Lord’s subservient creation, ready at a moment’s notice to perform his unparalleled bidding. My programming also includes dependency issues.”

Ace Spandex slowed his panting, though that swelled his lungs with an ache. He gulped in air. “You’ve got to belong to Mechanism.”

“Belong in every way. He is a veritable genius. For instance, the entire station save the haunt control’s verbal functions is dry of power. The entire station...except this lair, thanks to Lord’s inspiring intelligence.” With a single frontal lens acting as an eye, Appliance’s one-foot-wide cylindrical mass, designed from a canned-snake drone, inclined to view the light panel. “Hmm. Your vision apparatus is functioning, so I will shut off this dreadful gadget.” It extended its claws and clack, clack. Off. The light panel left a shrinking splotch in Ace Spandex’s vision. “I must apologize for the secondhand parts we’ve installed in you. You see, at Station Zilcho, Lord has access to only what is scattered around. Flea markets are no place for surveillance equipment, he opined. My programming tends to agree.”

“My vision apparatus is functioning? What are you prattling about? What have you done to me?” Ace Spandex gushed shallow gasps. The room was dark, but he still made out vague objects. “Answer me!”

“You must be confused.”

“Confused is crocking right.” Ace pressed his forehead forward, held his breath, grunted, squeezed shut his eyes. He still couldn’t break free. “Let me go. Where’s my security bubblegum?”

Appliance bowed. Its pincers clacked, and the inertiabed that bound Ace Spandex rumbled to an incline. In moments he was upright. “You are at Station Zilcho, the headquarters of the Bad Guys and their dreadfully obtuse leader, Master Asinine.”

“Definitely belong to Mechanism.” A nervous laugh blurted from Ace Spandex. Oh, crock, was he screwed.

“Master Asinine showed you around upon your arrival hours ago, pleased he had someone to match wits with on Squads of Up Yours First-Person Shooter Deathmatch. However, after starting the game, he noticed your unresponsiveness. A score of ninety-seven to zero is, for him, not sufficient indication. Therefore, he summoned Lord to tend to you. Lord had expertly, oh-so-expertly deduced you had suffered massive blood loss, so he carried you down here into his inner chamber. He fitted you with machines that restored your lost fluids, mended your broken ribs, and revitalized your all-but-dead brain functions. Lord also uploaded into you encyclopedic knowledge of those dreadful first-person shooter games to enable you to put Master Asinine in his place. Of Master Asinine’s boasts, Lord is awfully fatigued, you see. Nobody cares how often Master Asinine has achieved Zen Deathguru status, though at least he bothers nobody when he becomes one with the pixilated gore.”

“What? What?” Ace Spandex tried tearing his forehead away but couldn’t. His arms were still bound, too. So he wasn’t going anywhere, even to the bathroom and, holy crock, his bladder screamed at him like a restless baby. He began to hyperventilate, causing himself to waver toward unconsciousness. The edges of his feeling grew fuzzy. “Fitted with machines? All but dead? Lost fluids? Functions? And why do I have an encyclopedic knowledge of cryptozoology? Why do I even know what that means?”

Appliance clacked together its pincers again. “I have uploaded into your newly cybernetic brain any information I think useful to Lord. Lord has fitted you with the best he could offer. Increased vitality, increased durability, increased reflexes. He has also excised from you a debilitating phobia of firearms. And one of ventriloquist dummies. You need not rest, you need not even open your eyes. You are a super being among lesser beings. My programming also indicates you may purchase ten deer heads for the price of nine at Taxidermy Tumult—”

“What did he do to me? What did he install in me? Answer me, you evolved cola can!” Ace Spandex tried kicking his legs, tried reaching his arms out. “And why do I have encyclopedic knowledge of wine brewing? What’s the crocking point of that?”

Oof. Ace Spandex’s slender body spilled forward. Probably through some electrical pulse, Appliance had shut off the inertiabed. Ace took his first step in perhaps hours, he guessed by the ache in his muscles...and something whirred in his knees. He blundered forward for the door. He fell at it and pounded his fists. Locked. Like most public bathrooms in an emergency.

“In his sublime omniscience, Lord has enhanced everything you are. The machines that revitalized you from death’s door have injected you with hormones to augment your every facet. You are no longer Terran. You are much more.

“And you now belong to Lord.” Appliance clacked its pincers again.

“What is this?” Ace Spandex patted his head. He pounded his skull. “Do I have encyclopedic knowledge of his bowel movements? Greenish brown with some of last night’s corn?”

“Oh.” Appliance stopped and, for a moment, hung silently. “Well, it seems I uploaded too much.”

Chapter Six: Trouble’s A-Brewin’, and Trouble Sucks

“Hey!” Franchise lifted a foot from the starship’s rivet-lined floor. What was this starship? B-Stratotanker? No matter what, it would never smell the same again. Ugh. He scraped more gunk from his heel, the fourth lump since leaving home. “Mabel, I stepped on another cat. I think this one was Sergeant Stripes or Stripes von Treatsy or Stars McStripes.” He looked up at the older-than-gray Mabel. “Anyway, he has stripes.”

“Which what’s-a-ma-who’s-it is it, you young whatchamacallit?” Mabel said from her position at the pilot’s chair. Her gnarled lips massaged her withered gums. She popped a mint between those lips and went to work on it.

“I don’t know which. He has my footprint on his back if that helps. And a big attitude about it.” Franchise watched the cat hiss off toward the detainment deck to stew. “Cats suck. True story.”

Power Plant approached from the passenger’s deck in his blue-and-yellow media outfit. “S’okay. I musta macked offs eighty o’ dem cats. ’Specially dis one.” He handed Franchise one of the ten or so that had sauntered about the back of the silvery transport. This one regarded Franchise with a keen sense of hostility focused into a glassy-eyed stare.

Franchise dropped it. If the cat slashed up his ankles, so be it, but no way was it touching his new tuxedo T-shirt.

Franchise watched the age-dried Mabel pilot through masses of random space debris in this Fireball starship that smelled keenly of cat urine. Even Power Plant’s pizza-shop-scented spray wasn’t making this place smell like Pickeeso’s triple-onion special. Cat hair caked the passenger deck. Mabel’s fault since this was the starship in which she let her cats dwell freely, her innumerous cats who used anything from the padded pleather passenger seats to Power Plant’s head as a litter box. Several layers of hairballs coated the starship’s cabin. Franchise was certain Mabel had gouged apart the starship’s left wing when carving that three-point turn into their headquarters. And the turn signal still clicked from fifty minutes ago.

A flush erupted from the bathroom in the back. Field leader Pincushion exited a small room, wiping his hands on a towel. “Now that that’s taken care of...” The spiky extensions of his bones skewered out of his dark-brown flesh like a thorny blowfish, making hugs difficult.

He limped, saddled up to the planning table, and dropped the towel on a chair’s back. In his insomniac, no-depth-perception daze, he missed. He unrolled a datasheet and activated it. It smoothed to rigidity. “Okay, let’s check our intel, come up with our entry and exit plans. We need to review our intelligence reports on Asinine’s known arsenals, because I refuse to rush blindly into another clown militia. Those trick flowers didn’t squirt seltzer after all.” He blinked through his daze. “I wish I could sleep.”

A ding chimed from the diagnostic computer at the front of the Fireball. “Franchise, find out what that computer is fussing about,” he said.

“Ands after that, shovels some mores o’ dem cats outs the airlock.” Power Plant tossed Franchise the cat shovel. A cat pounced onto his head with a shrill mew and clawed at his scalp. “Oh, you’s wants a pieces o’ my scalp? Ba-bam!” He jerked his head forward to dislodge the cat, but it clenched its claws. “Ba-bam!” He tried again. “Ba-ba-bam! Get off.” He banged his head against a wall. The cat meowed and dug its claws more deeply.

Franchise reached the diagnostic computer, wiped aside the thicket of cat dander and hairballs, and tapped the monitor to wake it up. He used a finger to scroll down the data listing: fuel reserves, oxygen reserves, amount of Kamikaze’s raw tissue jamming the engine. Everything looked optimal. If any of the starship’s vitals ran low, the diagnostic computer would say so. Of course, it would say so in Spanish since Power Plant insisted everything sounded funnier from Señor Haunt Control.

The cat still capping him, Power Plant rammed his head against another wall and grated it up and down the coarse metal. The cat didn’t budge. It hissed, though. Who knew catnip-scented shampoo served a purpose? Franchise would have to remember to slip more catnip into his friends’ hygiene products.

Franchise scrolled through the list on the diagnostic computer. “Well, we have enough engine lubricant, enough oxygen, the cowcatcher is still attached. And...oh, no.” He reached the bottom of the list and noted the line indicating their battery power. When a reserve was of normal capacity, it displayed in puke green. When low, it displayed in red. This was deep red. Battery power at 19 percent? Franchise’s stomach bottomed out. In the monitor, he saw his reflection, the red lettering washing out his eyes.

“’Oh, no’?” Pincushion asked, his voice a notch higher than his usual deep bass. “What ‘oh, no’? Why is there an ‘oh, no’?”

Power Plant screamed past and slammed into a passenger chair. The cat on his head grappled for his cheek and its tail tightened around his neck.

“Big ‘oh, no.’” Franchise zombie-shuffled from the computer. His blood must have thinned because he felt nauseated.

Pincushion stood, his metal knee squeaking. “What’s the big ‘oh, no,’ brother?”

Franchise’s stomach climbed into his throat. Oh, no. Oh, no. This was bad. This was pissing bad. Without a charging outpost between here and their destination, how the crock would they recharge for the trip home? The closest outpost was Station Zilcho.

As if to taunt them, the haunt control said, “Reservas de la batería en el diecinueve por ciento.” A ding from the rear. “Ariba! Compre más ñames en Yamtastic, mi amigos. Yum!”

Pincushion whipped around at the computer. “What did it call my mama?”

“A migos.” Power Plant slammed his head against the back of another chair. That did nothing to the cat, but it made Power Plant stumble. He was likely to aggravate his healing knee.

Franchise gave a shaky breath. “M-m-ma-mabel?” He reigned in his trembling, breathed deeply. “Mabel, tell me you charged the starship’s battery before takeoff and this thing is lying.”

Mabel swiveled her walker around. Her peach-fuzz chin, a knob at the bottom of her December face, hung to her collarbone. “What did who’s-it what with charging the what’s-it?” Her whistling voice, diluted with age, scratched Franchise’s ears.

“The battery. Did you charge the battery before we left?”

Mabel flung a hand his way. “Ah, ya young who’s-it.” She and her baby-powder odor shuffled her walker toward the rear of the starship. A cat tried desperately to cling to her but fell and sauntered off. “Back in my day, we didn’t need no starship what’s-its. We flapped our arms and jumped.”

“I’s don’t doubts that,” Power Plant said. His cat passenger muffled his words.

Pincushion swiftly, squeakily stood, wearing grim nervousness. On a hobbling knee, he marched down the aisle that separated the two rows of passenger seats but collided with a seat on his way. His insomniac depth perception again. He reached the diagnostics screen. “Mabel, you forgot to charge the battery.”

She lifted a funnel to her hairy ear. “What?”

Pincushion’s voice jilted with each word. “You forgot to charge the battery.”

“What?”

“You forg—Never mind. Franchise, we have three hours until we lose power. How can we solve this?”

Franchise whirled around to check the computer. “Uh, uh, uh, uh, three hours. Let’s see. We can’t. We can’t do anything. We’re going to die because Ms. Daisy forgot her pretakeoff checklist.”

With blood dripping down his scalp and over his nose, Power Plant said, “Hey, mebbe’s we’s can stuff cats in there. They’s can juice it ups. Let’s start with dis one.” The bar with which he tried to pry the cat off his head wasn’t working, so he discarded it.

Pincushion smashed a fist against the wall, kettledrumming a metallic wobble that filled the cockpit deck. “We have maybe three hours of battery power. Franchise, you need to stay aboard. Find a way to repower this starship, or we’re not making it home.”

“Stay aboard? You mean, don’t leave the starship and get killed? Thank you, thank you, Mabel. I bless your doddering, stony old age.” Still ashen, Franchise kissed the floor and then realized one of the cats had peed there.

That funnel zipped up to Mabel’s ear again. “What?”

Like a rhino, Power Plant ducked and charged through several cats in his path to ram his passenger against a wall. He bounced against a chair. “He say you leadings us inta a trap and ya smells like cornstarch, ya forgetful prunes lady. Now pry this cat hat offa me.”

Chapter Seven: Can’t Work with ’Em, Can’t Work without ’Em

July 12, 9095. 11:09 p.m. (Galactic Standard Time). Fifteen years ago.

Private Legion stepped off the Fireball in Intergalactic Protection’s bustling primary hangar bay moments after the starship crunched onto the ground and probably one of the chargebots. Yes, the AI-pilot was that horrendous. Legion checked the landing gear locked into the parking harness. Two chargebots. No record by any stretch but still a good count. But enough was enough. George wasn’t pouring any more Haralsian food into the AI-pilot before takeoff. In a universe where transports experienced indigestion, this one was suffering a gastrointestinal coup d’état.

Private George Lowensland stomped down the access ramp with clanging steps, hopped off midway, and landed next to Legion. His tin-covered breast pocket glinted in the light with his enormous toothpaste-whitened smile. This was his first mission after his three-month service in the shell-shock ward had ended. “Nothing like a smooth ride.”

“You’re right, that wasn’t.” Legion still couldn’t erase the screeching of George’s new Boy Drivel album and its teen pop rhythms from his psyche. “And, speaking of which, no more spooning pasta into the starship’s engine throttle.”

“But Bertha needs her noodle carbs. Hey, hurry up. Some new show’s coming on the broadcast later. Cosmonaut Chimp. Looks like double-stuffed awesome. Oh. Two chargebots. Nice job, Bertha.”

He turned around and patted the starship’s access ramp. A datasheet was taped to his back. Legion removed it. “Vaporize me.” A mean-spirited and clichéd prank by the two passing corporals who snickered. What, were they now in the third grade? Well, Corporal Cody was, but the others had no excuse.

Legion tossed away the datasheet. “Soon some well-meaning bureaucrat will dismantle these transports and give us something that cares what it lands on. Then again, you can probably dismantle it yourself with the crock of gadgets under your bed.”

George placed a hand over Legion’s shoulder. “Who knows what I have under there? Something bit me, so I stopped checking. Might have been the pocket calculator. Ooh, maybe a radioactive one. I’ll gain the proportionate hyperability of a regular pocket calculator and travel the galaxy solving crime.” He clenched a fist and lowered his voice ominously. “Solving it for the square root of x.”

“Just imagine,” Legion said. Maybe George’s self-hypnosis tricks were working.

“Nice uniform, fashion diva. Go fall into an ionizer.” Corporal Sengalich shoved past George. The side-view mirror on George’s helmet clanged into the starship.

George shot a sideways glance at the passing Sengalich as if to shout something back. His hand inched toward his pistol. “I don’t have to take your crock.”

Legion put a hand over George’s pistol. “George, don’t do anything stupid. They’re only trying to get a reaction. Not worth it.” He eased George’s pistol out of its holster and decided to hold it for now. “We’ll talk about this later.” He and George slapped their fingertips together twice, their version of a high five.

Private Randall Sopher descended the access ramp, holding and studying a datasheet. Sopher, who insisted on being referred to by last name, had joined IP a month after George, a few months after Legion, but Legion couldn’t remember a time without either of them. Garchel had made Legion want to go AWOL more than a dozen times, but since George’s and Sopher’s arrivals, his time with the military had climbed from AWOLerific to bearable to livable to enjoyable. Even when George forgot to use mouthwash. Legion waved the odorous breath away. Pureed sardines for lunch again.

A twist in his lips, Sopher reached the foot of the ramp. He whacked his datasheet with the back of his hand, the Alaphan cross on his necklace bobbing against his collar. “That’s it. No more betting on the dodgeball finals. I’m out another hundred moolahs. The Mongolian Yurts let the Logistican We Are of More Robust Health Than the Members of Other Teams and Will, Therefore, Vanquish Those Teams trounce them again.”

“I hear they have more robust health than the...than the...uh...” George threw up his hands. “I knew where that sentence was going when I started it.”

“I’m wondering if the Yurts have stock in those Logistican egoists. Almighty Alaphus’ll give old Sopher a break one of these days. He has to. I have a vacation coming.”

Legion didn’t subscribe to the almighty Alaphus thing, so he expected no break. “Forget the dodgeball finals. What we need after a training exercise is to drown our sorrows. Flying to Ceres will take ten minutes. Who’s up for a pint of something we could use as engine lube? A beer at Engine Lube’s?” He already started for the door that led outside the hangar, where waited the civ-trans. George and Sopher would follow. If anything got George’s legs in gear, it was drinking and lubing an engine at the same time.

“I prefer Greasy Wheel’s.” George hopped into a jog that caught him up to Legion. Sopher followed right behind, the results of the night’s dodgeball game forgotten. It was his fault he bet on the Mongolian Yurts. Even George knew better than that, and he thought dodgeball was a sport involving tax evasion.

Even before it finished fading, Legion jumped through the hangar bay’s l-door, more out of fear it would explode than haste. He found himself in the parking lot and—hey, what was that ahead? A thick crowd mobbed around the entrance to the front lobby building of IP headquarters. The mob flocked only forty or fifty feet away, as restrained as dynamite waiting for that match to touch its wick. Most carried picket signs, and those without them launched livid fists. They ruined the soothing scent of fresh sun.

A roar burst through the dense mob: “Ladies, we are the future of the military. We’re brought to you by Freedom Panty Liners, giving you the freedom to line your panties with panty liners. Yes, I realize how ridiculous that sounds.”

George pressed through the l-door behind Legion. Sopher followed and stared ahead. His prepared expression told Legion he knew about this mob. “Female protestors. They’ve tried for two years to convince the military to repeal the decision to oust them. They haven’t made any progress, so they’re protesting right at our front doors now. Nobody ever listens until they start burning men in effigy.”

“That wouldn’t make them heard even if our director wasn’t totally deaf.” Legion watched the mob of women mill like a machine cog. Ruth “Ruthless” Leberge, an old platoonmate, paced among them, her slushy mouth spitting the chant.

George stepped forward. His glinting smile presented itself again. “Maybe we can find dates. Do you think they shave? At least those who aren’t butch?”

Sopher gently tugged George a step back. “George, first, if they’re protestors, they’re butch. I don’t know why that is. It just is. Second, I think the universe of you, but you’d have a better chance at picking up women at a cigar club. Third, you’d have a better chance at picking up women if you weren’t you.”

“Not this time. I special-ordered a surefire dating wizard: the bounty ray gun. It’s the quicker picker-upper.” He padded the contraption at his side.

“George”—sigh—“the short answer is don’t.”

Legion’s stomach twisted. “Ugh. Is that why all those training instructors asked you for your gabber’s calltag?”

“Hey, in the heat of battle, I can’t keep track of whether I’m using my sidearm or influencing my odds of dating.”

The l-door vanished behind them, and a bullish man hastily banged past. Garchel jabbed his shoulders into George to jam through. “Hello, freaks. Nice work at the training exercise...if the objective was getting the instructors to toss out your grading chart and draw up a social calendar.”

“The objective was a ladies’-man-level arsenal.” George went for a high five. Garchel went for a low jab to George’s gut.

Sopher strode to the front. “Garchel, if you’re looking for a fight, George is prepared to give you the most charming pistol-whipping of a lifetime.” His head snapped to George. “George, whatever you do, use blanks.”

“Look, flops, I don’t care what social magic Lowensland’s packing.” Garchel swanked across the lot. He faced the three privates and thumbed himself, strutting backward. “I’ve got some women to woo. Let a winner show you how to sweet-talk a drill instructor. I mean, a protestor.” He scrutinized them from head to toe and snorted. “You’ll obviously never do this yourselves. Later, dweebs.” He guffawed with his imaginary entourage, accidentally ejecting a rope of saliva onto his chin.

George stamped a foot at Garchel’s distancing back, his fingers curled and his breathing snarly. He looked ready to use acupuncture needles on Garchel’s eyes. “I won’t be his punching bag much longer. Or his speed bag. Or his bean bag for that matter.”

“Forget it,” Sopher said to George. “Alaphus doesn’t want you wasting anger on him. It’s not beneficial. Let’s head to Greasy Wheel’s—”

“No, wait.” Legion held up a hand. He just stared at Garchel, that braggart, who strutted up to the protestors. The unheard words he spoke were unimportant to Legion.

Slap. Garchel recoiled. A lobster-red mark blushed his cheek, discernable even from this distance. First Ruthless and then finally the entire army of picketing females stalked closer and bore down like seagulls attacking a morsel of bread. They took turns whacking him with datasheet picket signs and, within seconds, his squeal pierced the melodious percussion. “Not my baby face,” he cried.

Legion smiled. “Okay. We can go now.”

Chapter Eight: Like an Internal Affairs Enema but without the Thrill of Conquest

Reef tucked his whiskey flask back into his inner pocket and hoped Invard hadn’t spotted him sneaking another blissful taste. Just one more nip to help him through these next moments. That was all he needed. He wasn’t dependent. He only wanted something to keep himself steady, level. And Invard had spotted nothing. Good.

Here in Legion’s office, he paced another lap...stumbled. He braced himself on Legion’s desk. Whoa. Heh. Easy. He had to compensate for his swirling lightheadedness.

Invard sat at a small table in the middle of Reef’s pacing circle, perusing his datasheet. Earlier, he’d spent the day entering notes and probably watching video clips of Power Plant playing with fire and Kamikaze playing with whatever Power Plant had set on fire. He’d also downloaded all the information from the Good Guy central database. The database was by now full of nonsensical info about ghost-hunting expeditions: some military brigadier had caught wind that IP headquarters sat on top of a spiritual burial ground. That brigadier coincidentally now wore a straitjacket.

And what about Legion? Would Intergalactic Protection really leave him for dead? Reef stabbed the question out, “Why won’...why won’t IP pay fer Legion’s medicine?” Was that sentence sober or slushed? He was shot enough to misstep, but he should control his slur.

A growl revved from within his soul. He faced Invard. “Legion needs an expensive healing drug or, maybe even by tomorrow, he’ll die. Prisco...Propsco...” He focused and tried again. Not that drunk. “Proscopocal. It’s am expensive spinal-repair acid. Why won’t you help?”

Invard rifled through more files. His response sounded rote. “His office-swap gift at the Boxing Day party was tawdry.”

“Ohhhh, c’mon on. Was a nice sweater.” Fine. Reef had learned not to discuss politics, religion, or gift-giving standards with IP’s suit-and-ties, so he switched subjects. His head still fizzed, but he suppressed his slur. “What exactly do you hope to find here? If it’s to taste our birch-meat sandwiches, you’ve wasted a trip. The commercials make it look juicier than the real thing, and Momentum shingles his toast.”

“I’m not here for sandwiches. Besides, the best ones are the Sawyer Family’s chili dogs.”

Reef gagged. “You know what they put into that, right?”

“No. What?” Invard straightened his suit and leaned back against his chair.

Reef hesitated, stumbled over a word or two. Then...well...“Never mind. Worsening your mood is the last thing I need. At least their sandwiches aren’t as jam-packed with ‘flavor’ as any random mechanic’s oil rag.”

Invard shifted positions. “Anyway, you asked what brings me here. We’ve covered this. Intergalactic Protection is compiling a list of Good Guy screw-ups, you can believe that. And if I have anything to say, that list will stretch from here to...to”—he searched the office, its littered personal contents—“all the way over there. Somewhere.”

“Where?” Reef asked.

“Over there. By the window.”

“That’s the other side of the office. That’s actually not far at all.”

Invard stiffened his lips. “Well, it’s far enough, you can believe that.”

“I’m only saying. You tried to come up with some faraway analogy to say our list of screw-ups will stretch...maybe...thirty or forty feet? That’s not—”

Invard launched from his chair and stabbed a finger at Reef’s cheek. His face drove forward, almost knocking noses with Reef, who banged against the wall behind himself. Invard nailed him with a piercing stare and heavy, balloon-inflating breaths.

“Listen, Good Guy leader Reef. I don’t care about your sandwiches. I don’t care about how far this list of screw-ups will reach or how wide this office is, you can believe that. Frankly, there are few things I care about. My inconsistent bladder control is one. This organization is not. You want to drill me with questions? Be my guest.”

“I asked only one—”

“Why am I here? Your screw-ups are a means to an end. I’ll dig up enough proof that someone should bury the Good Guys as an organization—if you call it organized—under so much history, you’ll make the last episode of Family Happens memorable.”

“But that’s the one where...that’s where...the son crashes the car...I mean...the dad says...” Reef put a hand to his head and swayed on his feet. He wobbled against a cabinet. A hazy sapping of energy whitewashed his body. “You’re right. My crock, what did happen? So the Good Guys will be nothing more than a footnote in a history book?”

Invard smoothed his suit with a hand. “Not even a respectable history book. Probably some hip-hoppin’ high school history book. Or maybe the one where Lowensland got the idea that tree houses are a renewable resource.”

“The Recyclopaedia, you mean. The one made out of aluminum.”

“Doesn’t matter. When I’m finished here, you won’t know what hit you.”

“Yes, we will. You. You hit us.”

A buzz prickled from the public address speaker. Reef prepared for the haunt control in the usual way: by inserting plugs into his ear canals. “Ladies and gentlemen, prepare for the ultimate in prisoner transport, the essential in prisoner detainment, the—”

“Control, acknowledge. Just make the announcement and shut up,” Reef said. Despite the ear plugs, the annoying salesman timbre of the ad program’s voice still assaulted his ears like crashing waves.

“Here comes Devon Wiler! What isn’t coming is Brainwash Pain Relief. One pill makes that headache...and embarrassing memories of your bungled first date...instantly wash away.”

The office’s sliding door opened to reveal a Terran standing like a wall-bodied sentry. The Terran’s suit, a gray two-piece, looked knitted over his skin. As if by mathematical formula, his tie was likewise aligned and so clear cut that touching it could sever a finger. He must have measured his haircut under a microscope, and every breath seemed accounted for by stamp and signature. He bore no briefcase, equipped with only empty hands.

Reef threw up his arms. “Oh, come on. Another visitor? Control, acknowledge. Did someone install a revolving door in our lobby? You know what? Forget it. I don’t feel like hearing an ad for revolving doors.”

Reef removed his ear plugs and lumbered toward this new interloper, who sauntered into Legion’s office. “And who might you be?” Reef asked over the haunt control finishing its ad for revolving doors.

The interloper’s pristine shoes clicked with his step. With a stuck-up turn of his head, the Terran noticed Reef and stopped immediately inside Legion’s office. On a hinged elbow, one of his hands swung out for a shake. Reef frowned at it. “My name is Devon Wiler, and I am Intergalactic Protection’s top prisoner interrogator. I have come to question your prisoners since Intergalactic Protection obviously deems you unable to do so yourself,” he said with a British accent and a hint that he agreed with his bosses. Reef knew the type. These IP red-tape officials thought they were above everyone else. They treated everyone with self-serving arrogance.

“Excellent.” Invard stretched out his hand and marched to Wiler, wearing an amicable smile Wiler didn’t return. Wiler was flicking a finger across his nametag, but he reached out and shook Invard’s hand with a pump so precise it probably followed a trigonometric line. “I’ve heard about you before, you can believe that. Didn’t know you were coming.”

Two bureaucrats. Legion needed to wake up. Reef couldn’t handle two of them. He wanted to duck into a side room, take another swig from his flask. He’d make the room spin, the world buzz with fuzzy sensations, but the world was best that way. It was just better with alcohol. Same with speaking to Car Alarm.

Reef compared the two unwanted gatecrashers. Wiler towered at six foot something while Invard stood shy of five foot six. Wiler’s skin was Terran pink, Invard’s Gharalgian skin a maize. Wiler’s suit was architecturally pressed and measured. Invard’s made Reef’s eyeballs erupt and his brain burn. He’d switched from cantaloupe to a swirling lava lamp lover’s dream.

“So Wiler, you’re a prisoner interrogator?” Something felt slyly illogical to Reef. “Intergalactic Protection refuses to send prisoner interrogators, updated equipment, or Kamikaze’s spare straitjackets. But, as quick as a camera flash, they change their minds and offer us their top interrogator? They didn’t even lift a finger when we’d captured Schizophrenic a couple months back. This makes no sense.”

Wiler stepped forward, his movement purposeful. He shouldered past Reef, knocking him away. Without facing him and without apology, Wiler said, “Much like your lack of eyebrows, it need not make sense, Mr. Reef. Regard yourself lucky they thought it wise to send someone of my caliber. Where is your cellblock?” Straight to business with this guy. “Now, Mr. Reef.”

“I’ll ‘regard’ myself lucky when Kamikaze gets over his Jason Voorhees homage phase. And shouldn’t you know where the cellblock is? And finally”—he rushed to the window—“who else is coming? If the director of IP’s flatulence sciences unit sets foot in here, I swear, by morning you’ll have my resignation.”

Invard said, “Good Guy leader Reef, Dr. Yulandi is not coming. He is clear across the galaxy investigating an illegal refried-beans-smuggling operation, you can believe that.”

“Fine.” Reef clomped toward the door that remained open. “I’ll lead you to the prisoners, even though anyone from IP can just ask our haunt control where it is. It works now, you know. And if you think I want to ask about the circumstances under which refried beans need smuggling, I’m not touching that subject. Let’s go, Wiler.” He shot Invard a venomous glance. “You. Gharalgian. Don’t move until I return.”

Wiler finally looked at Reef, measuring him down...and up...with those icy eyes. “Excellent, Mr. Reef. I must begin my interrogation immediately.” Urgent, were we? Protocol dictated Wiler discuss what Reef had already covered before meeting the prisoners. This data pusher flaunted that protocol recklessly...and yet he acted letter-of-the-law businesslike. Weird.

Reef hotfooted through the door. “Whatever. This way. Pay no attention to the squid bombs in the hallway. We’ll have their deactivation codes once Kamikaze returns from dinner.”

Chapter Nine: Prisoner by Programming

Ace Spandex hopped off his chair, chew-snapping a newfound stick of bubblegum. Menial tasks such as sitting and waiting for umpteen hours would cause the old Ace Spandex to go swinging-from-the-rafters crazy. The new Ace Spandex had just zoned out for six hours and watched Appliance flit about on a few orders from Lord, to whom that whacked-out tiny machine pandered with relentless loyalty. Only for pancakes would Ace Spandex pander. If he guessed, he’d put money on the chance that Lord had installed into Appliance some sort of giddy bootlicker program. Ace Spandex removed his tongue from Lord’s turpentine-scented pair of Goliver leather boots. And apparently in him, too. Gross.

Ace Spandex decided it was time to leave. Sixteen nanoseconds ago, he had felt the luring desire to contact the Good Guys. Before then, strangely enough, he simply hadn’t cared. Even now, this nanosecond, he stood with the intention of finding a communication device. He felt the same blank apathy he’d feel if doodling. Besides, he kept getting stuck with the old maid on his head system’s game.

He threw away Mechanism’s boots on his way to the door. Having no desire to speak a command to the haunt control, he put a hand over the door’s unlocking button and...didn’t press it. Couldn’t. Withheld. He tried again but with the same result. He felt no anger or frustration, and being trapped here didn’t concern him, which itself should have concerned him except he also didn’t feel any concern for his lack of concern. How concerning.

He spat his gum into a trash ionizer after he calculated the required trajectory based on distance, factoring in the ambient breeze. He didn’t need to watch to know his aim was accurate. Who said high school trigonometry never paid off? Actually, that was him. And, technically, it still hadn’t.

He popped another stick of cherry gum into his mouth and pressed his fingertips against the door to interface with it.

Behind him, the doting Appliance clacked its pincers. Ace Spandex’s eyes edged around to check over his shoulder, and his face inched sideways. “Yes, Jeeves?”

“Lord would ask that you remain in this room,” Appliance said.

“Yeah? Lord also ordered me to arrange his wines alphabetically so he can ‘more easily escape the insufferable lack of sophistication of his so-called comrades.’ Also I don’t like him.”

“And yet you completed your wine arrangement task. With exacting accuracy only attainable through Lord’s programming, I might add.”

“You did add.” Ace Spandex reached for the door. “Look, would it help if I said I’m looking for the snack machine?”

“It would not. Lord relocated them to this room.” With a sweep of its pewter pincers, Appliance indicated the flashy dispensers arranged haphazardly in the far area of this lab. “He has a fondness for cheese doodles.”

“And pesticide sponge cakes?”

“Master Asinine’s favorite. It was mixed in with the rest.”

“Whatever. I’m taking a walk.” Really, Ace Spandex needed to call home, but the communication equipment with which Lord had violated the sanctum of his skull would block any attempts. Who would have guessed Ace Spandex would one day handle outgoing call blocking? He wondered if he had call forwarding.

Appliance made no attempt to stop him. Not that the tiny drone could since its body was no more than thin pewter over a lightweight computer processor operating on Letchtech Suck-Up.

Ace Spandex refitted his baseball cap on his head. How strangely it hugged the metal plate over the left side. Without the friction of his hair, it slid on easily. He chew-snapped his gum. “You aren’t going to feed me some line about how Lord needs his newspaper fetched? Wait, does he? I can fetch it for him.”

“I need not do a thing to stop you.” Appliance’s accent had somehow grown more insufferable, thicker with the opinion-bereft devotion of a well-paid butler. “Lord has programmed you to obey. You will not open that door, because Lord has not commanded you to. Also newspapers have been obsolete for seven thousand years.”

“I have a choice. I can leave any time I want.” Ace Spandex’s hand hovered over the unlocking button, and he tried for the door again...but hesitated. He couldn’t bring himself to touch the small plate that would open the l-door, but why? Why? “Why can’t I open this door? Ow, my throat stings.”

He swung around and batted Appliance away. The drone spiraled into a wall and bounced onto a table. It recovered quickly. “No. You are choiceless. With my point proven, I must return to duty. Lord needs his toothbrush cleaned.”

Ace Spandex pounded his head with the heel of his hand. “Choiceless? That’s it. I’m sending him a strongly worded Facebook message.” He squeezed his eyes shut and thought for a second. “Done.”

Ace Spandex tightened his fists. His metal-lined fingers sliced the meat of his palms though he didn’t care. His new blood—a mixture of coolant and lubricant—leaked from the wounds. Somehow, in some way, he’d beat this programming. He set to work, pointing some subroutines in his brain to search for processing loopholes. Every program had one. He’d find a choice function. In the meantime, he’d play more games in his computer head.

“And joke’s on Lord.” Ace Spandex chortled. “I didn’t alphabetize that wine. I slacked off at the end.”

“You did not. Slacking off runs counter to your programming.” Appliance retreated into the darkness of the lab.

“Crock!” He’d kick something, but his programming dictated he respect Lord’s property.

Chapter Ten: Whole Grain or White...or Does It Matter?

Power Plant peered through the starship’s windshield at Station Zilcho. The starship gently settled toward the titanium ground that overlooked an inconspicuous area of the Bad Guys’ space station where Power Plant was sure Asinine wouldn’t bother looking.

“Zit justs me, or we stoppings by this place lots lately? S’like a every-weeks trip now. I shoulds move in on the couch.”

Mabel checked the flight controls through microscopes she called bifocals. Power Plant could tell by how she used a cat as the landing stick that they didn’t bifocus anything. He was better at crashing than landing, but even he knew cats were good for only one thing: peeing on his shoes. Seriously. This was his third pair since leaving home. He lifted his foot. Sticky. Aw, geez. Where was his fourth?

“Nice an’ soft...” Mabel’s voice shushed through her teeth.

“Ain’t nothin’ nice and softs about you,” Power Plant said. “Ya skin so wrinkly, s’like someones make a croissant outta ya arm.”

Pincushion’s head lolled sleepily. “Behave, Jeff. Lie if you have to.”

“Name’s not Jeff, it—ah, no one evers listen.” He pouted. “But it Jeffy.”

Mabel used the cat’s tail to angle the starship down. The AI-pilot was actually landing them, but Power Plant would let Mabel have her fun. Power Plant would have his own soon, because the landing stick/cat was baring its teeth at her.

A k’chunk scraped against the ground, then rubber skidded on metal. A deathly shriek announced the starship’s stop. Smoother than any of Mabel’s landings. “There. You young what’s-its think you can land a whatchamacallit better than me? You’d better go back to the academy, you young whipper-whatsers.” She was evidently unaware she’d earlier peeled the rubber off one of the landing trestles. That was the last time Power Plant would suggest they land at a forty-five degree angle.

“And...we’ve landed,” the haunt control said as if the spirit of an enthused car salesman possessed it. A non-Spanish one, thanks to Pincushion’s insistence that he understand what it was saying. “If you thought that landing was soft, wait till you land in a pile of Vegetative State pillows, half off at your local sweatshop.”

“We’re here.” Pincushion unbuckled and teetered past the seat in which Franchise had silently gone white faced, white knuckled, and white haired. Franchise now sat like petrified wood, his fingers clawed around the arms of his chair. His lap had become a cat’s litter box.

“W-w-w-we’re h-h-h”—Franchise swallowed—“h-h—”

“Here, Jacob. Don’t worry. You stay aboard. Since our battery is almost dry, we’ll need you to set up our takeoff. Got that, brother?” Pincushion reached the front of the starship and clanged into it. He rubbed his head, “ow” on his lips. He shifted to the left and opened the small armory locker. It smelled like cat puke in there.

“Yeah, who else gonna makes my toasts for when’s I comes back?” Power Plant tossed a thumb at Mabel, who he felt sure had once shaken claws with a real dinosaur. “An’ ol’ four eyes can’ts tells difference froms a piece of toasts from a plate. Probably makin’s a jellies sammich outta two cats.”

“Toas-s-st.” Like whistling steam from a ruptured pipe, the word seeped out of Franchise’s mouth.

“You young who’s-its shut your flappin’ whatchamoogers.” Mabel’s lips kneaded her gums. She plucked a mint candy from her handbag and, using rippled fingers, slid it into her craggy mouth. “Jenny MacWilliams is on the telly, so shut up, because she’s got opinions about stuff.” Her floss-white afro rustled with her words. A few seconds later her head lolled back and she began snoring. A cat hopped onto her face for its own nap.

Pincushion rummaged through the armory locker and produced a transparent laser shield that dispersed laserfire like a prism. He tossed it to Power Plant, who caught it. Pincushion grabbed another. He also found a shotgun, reached through its strap, and shouldered it. He shut the armory locker.

Power Plant held up his laser shield. That ridiculous Bad Guy logo adorned the front, an advertisement from his horrible financing deal gone awry. Now, whenever he ducked behind the shield, his goofy face looked through Asinine’s goofier face as though it were a cheap Halloween mask. “Why we’s havings dis for?”

“Why do you think?” Pincushion checked his shotgun for light-bullets. He clacked open its chamber and examined the barrel, probably to ensure it was clear and clean. He stumbled as if his vision swam from sleeplessness. “It’s for hiding behind. We get caught plenty of times in unmanageable crossfire. It’s about time we bought these.”

Power Plant regarded his with aversion. He stuck out his tongue. It didn’t help that Master Asinine’s face was also sticking out its tongue. And having more fun doing it. Power Plant pressed a button on the side of the laser shield, which made him wonder why his laser shield rally-cried a “hussah” when he pressed it.

“Huss-ss-ssah,” melted out of Franchise, who remained as still on that chair as a wax statue.

“An’ Jacob, get on thats toasts. Please. I’s probably be hungry whens—Man, he ain’t movin’ anymores today.”

“Okay, Jeff.” Pincushion looked up at him. “Remember. We might not have been spotted yet. Since the Bad Guys lost all power on this station, it wouldn’t surprise me if we complete this mission undetected. That’s still no excuse for complacency. We—”

“Come where?” Power Plant asked. He lowered his laser shield. “I ain’t goings any placency.”

Pincushion loosened his stance. His metal knee complained. “Complacency.”

“Complaten-wha’?”

“Com—pla—cen—Forget it. Just don’t get sloppy.”

“Just don’ts what-what-what?”

“I didn’t say anything confusing! Brother, if we didn’t both have pasts living on the streets, I wouldn’t know what to do with you.” Pincushion took a palm-sized device from a pouch. “I have a map module. This time it isn’t reprogrammed with, thanks to you, a map of celebrity mansions. On it is Ace’s most likely location. We make our way there, we take him back. If he’s not there, we restrategize. Got that?”

“Only ’bouts four, mebbe five words.”

“Good. You’re improving.” Pincushion looked at Mabel. He noticed her catatonic sleep and the drool dripping from her mouth onto her chair as if dripping from a loose faucet. “Computer, acknowledge. Open access port. Close access port after entities Pincushion and Power Plant have disembarked.”

“Access port open,” the haunt control said, “like your pie port around a mouthwatering slice of Mom’s Week-Old Cherry Pie. The mold isn’t just for decoration. Must be of legal drinking age.”

The access port opened and the ramp descended like a heavy drawbridge. It clanged against the ground. It usually crunched against dirt, but here it hit dust-accrued metal. The sound echoed everywhere.

Pincushion ducked behind his laser shield, his shotgun around his shoulder and a pistol equipped in one hand. He rolled down the ramp, spikes pinging, and took cover behind it. Four cats followed him. The others licked themselves.

Power Plant checked the starship one last time. Mabel was still catatonic, and Franchise hadn’t budged since the haunt control had proclaimed they had pierced Station Zilcho’s atmospheric bubble, that gelatinous boundary that contained its atmosphere. Power Plant was getting worried about Franchise. He hoped his friend would snap out of this. Then again, Power Plant had smelling salts he wanted to try. He only ever used them on his mashed potatoes. Not as appetizing as it sounded.

He sped down the ramp and joined Pincushion, who was studying the map module. “What took you?” was Pincushion’s greeting. He stumbled forward as if falling asleep on his feet.

“Checked Franchise. I thinks we broke him.”

Chapter Eleven: Unleash the Hounds

Mechanism’s nerves were steel, so when his gabber double-beeped at him, he duly retained his masterful composure. It spoke in that dreadfully substandard mannerism that, with each slur, insulted his lofty intelligence. If he could replace this thing’s drawl with his own voice, he would. Alas, no gadget in the universe boasted the storage capacity powerful enough to contain the subtle nuances and emotion of his refined intonation.

“Incoming alert. Incoming alert. Toothbrushes ten percent off at Dynamo Dentistry. Incoming—”

Sigh. He leaned his head into his hand, his elbow on the desk. “Control, acknowledge. Silence your corporate kowtowing and report.”

Oh, joy, it had finally stopped prattling. “Good Guys have landed on Station Mechanism.” His pet name for the dreadfully entitled Station Zilcho.

Humph. As expected. The Good Guys were undoubtedly searching for their companion, that ignoramus Ace Spandex. Or these juveniles were perhaps retrieving a whoopee cushion they had dropped when last they had visited.

Mechanism would not release their friend, his pet project. Not yet. He would instead release the station’s security drones, one of the only pieces of hardware Mechanism had left running. Chatty electronics, though. Mechanism loathed discussing the weather with those locust-inspired travesties but found their dissertations on universal health care intriguing. And, wow, did they know their political science.

“Control, acknowledge. Release the security drones. And have my rose wine iced for my return to my chamber. La danse de la hoité toité should properly inebriate me.” After all, he had to speak with Master Asinine once that erect baboon returned to base.

Chapter Twelve: Get a Move On

Okay, okay, yikes, okay. So here Franchise sat, parked millions of miles from home on this metallic deathbed of a starship, left alone since Mabel couldn’t last two hours without her head lolling back and visiting nappy land. He sat stiffly enough for a fourth cat to take shelter on his lap. The other three were busy sinking their claws into his scalp, his back, and his leg, but this one was considerate enough to simply pee on him. Charming. He now smelled like ammonia. And he was marked territory.

Time to work. He had to monitor the area. Yeah, monitor the area, protect their position, and make Jeffy’s toast. With a hint of cinnamon or, for leaving him alone with the queen of cats, rat poison.

Okay, get to work. Repower this starship. Somehow. Like their military handbook said: put aside all inadequacies and doubts, and focus on the task. The only problem was the handbook didn’t anticipate a limb-locked wimp operating the defense systems. Every textbook example of a pilot bore a striking resemblance to an inebriated Kamikaze, which bore a striking resemblance to a regular Kamikaze.

Okay, okay, he had to calm down. He stood to brush the cats off himself. They wouldn’t budge. They’d taken a liking to their new scratching post. And he’d taken a liking to finally getting to that hard-to-reach spot on his lower back.

A metallic galonk struck the side of the starship on its exterior. Franchise choked on his breath. The sound meant trouble. Or maybe the Space Cow drive-thru Mabel had taken with them at their stopover had finally dislodged.

Franchise calmed his shaking limbs, his doubting fear, his electrocardiograph breathing. With what nerve he could gather, he rose and lurched to the diagnostic computer. “C-c-control, acknowledge. A-activate diagnostic term-m-minal.”

“Diagnostic computer activated,” the haunt control said. “Entity Franchise, your biological readings indicate you could use a bravery lozenge. Available at any local mind-altering drugstore. Stay-awake hammers ten percent off at Yoga Surplus Outlet.”

The diagnostic computer sputtered to life. Franchise used a twiggy finger to scroll through the data it presented. Nothing out of—Wait. A pinprick impact on the rear left of the starship, immediately above a heating valve.

“C-control, acknowledge. Bring up a v-visual on the rear left-t area. And order me some of those bravery l-lozenges.”

A viewscreen blossomed in a horizontal line that slashed across the windshield, then stretched vertically into a nine-by-four-foot rectangle. The viewscreen brightened and showed...oh, no...a locust-shaped security drone pricking small pincers into the starship. A hand fluttered to Franchise’s mouth. These security drones were a step up from the knockoffs used on Good Guy headquarters, Station One. Franchise didn’t know what they were capable of, but that cutting torch attached to one of its pincers didn’t look like a tickling feather. He’d heard only that these drones liked to talk. They chatted about anything: vacation plans, last night’s weather, dance lessons. Did security drones attend dance lessons? Who knew, but they loved to discuss it.

“C-con—” Okay, Franchise needed to slow his breathing. Otherwise he wouldn’t even be able to bark commands and screw this up. “Control, acknowledge. Display overhead layout of surrounding area.”

“Displaying overhead layout. Would you like me to prepare entity Power Plant’s toast?”

The viewscreen switched to an overhead display of the area. Their Fireball starship sat centered in the two-dimensional, wire-drawn layout. Outside, ten or fifteen security drones closed in on it like scavenger crabs attracted to bait.

“Hey, Good Guys!” came a barreling roar from outside. Franchise’s lungs clenched, and he spilled backward to the floor. The two-headed Bad Guy Schizophrenic’s sociopathic left head, Lefty. “If you don’t surrender, I’ll start throwing stuff. In fact, give me five minutes before you come out. My rock-chucking skills need sharpening.”

“Oh, and Good Guys, old chaps.” Was that a security drone talking through an intercom? What the crock? “For a smashing place to rest your feet, visit the white sands at Lucky Suns Resort. They have a tapioca elixir to die for.”

Mabel’s snoring tugged twice. She stopped kneading her lips against her gums enough to rouse from sleep. “Which young who’s-it woke me out of my twelve-hour nap?”

Chapter Thirteen: Taste the Rainbow

Master Asinine strutted through the front l-doors of the hospital as if he owned the place. And why not? He took out a small datasheet, activated it, and scribbled a message to himself: “Steal hospital.” He didn’t know how to steal a building, but he’d once stolen a freaking space station. A space station! Pfft. Come on. Stealing a hospital was child’s play compared to that.

Lieutenant IQ 23 and Braindead followed him in, attracting the nervous eyes of some patients. Finally, in lagged Amaranthia, who fluffed her strawberry blonde hair and checked herself in a name-brand compact. The front doors materialized behind her with a whoomp, which forced her cerise-clothed backside forward a step.

Asinine had come to make sure Legion, his arch-nemesis, would never wake up. Make sure...with a vengeance. Yeah, yeah, the news broadcasts said that, with no one paying his medical expenses, Legion was as good as dead. But Asinine wanted to claim this one. Legion’s death needed a personal touch. A light-bullet would take care of business. Maybe a pillow over the face? Or a good knee-slapper Legion had always claimed would one day melt his brain.

Asinine checked things out. A dark hall to the right ended in puke-green double doors. A triage desk sat in front, behind it a few booths and some clerks. One security guard sat by a table, lazily reading a magazine datasheet. To the left stretched a hallway that led to a room with more cool toys than Asinine’s lawnmower/abacus could count. But not more than his slide rule/bread maker. That thing was decked out.

Asinine drew his pistol. First he aimed at his mouth and pressed the candy trigger. Yum. He fit his finger around the real trigger. He was eager to use it since some patients wouldn’t stop belly-aching: “I feel faint.” “I’m cold.” “I’m missing an arm.” “Someone just shot a Skittle into his mouth” Asinine hated whiners.

Blam. As a warning shot, Asinine blasted a hole through that last whiner’s head. Come to think of it, that wasn’t a warning shot. No matter. Nobody revealed Asinine’s secret make-yourself-happy technique and lived to tell about it.

A nurse screamed and scattered some datasheets into the air. Another fainted. A third threw up someplace Asinine would make sure to never step. Everyone froze, especially the icy nurse at the triage desk (ha, Asinine cut himself up). The flurry of networking busybodies stopped still.

“D-don’t move.” The security guard whipped out a stun gun and bolted to action. His skin leaked a nervous shimmer of perspiration. His hand shook so much that Asinine doubted he’d hit anything he shot at. He’d probably instead hit the light panel floating behind Asinine, an innocent bystander, or perhaps whatever he shot at.

“Sure thing”—Asinine checked the man’s nametag—“Security Rent-a-Force. I won’t move.” He snapped his fingers. “Amaranthia.”

Heh. He waited for Amaranthia to appear and, in a single liquefied movement, slice the man to ribbons. She didn’t, so Asinine snapped his fingers again. Still nothing. Asinine checked over his shoulder. “Hey, Amaranthia.”

Clad in her carnelian bodysuit, Amaranthia held her gabber’s mouthpiece to her crimson-lipstick mouth. She blabbered into it in some bubblegum cheerleader’s dialect with that rising tone that made her every sentence sound like a question. “I was so, like, ‘Are you for real, spazzo? Did you just, like, totally touch me?’ Oh, and Debbie, did you check out how Kenny was totally, like, crushing on you all through algebra class? ‘Can we, like, trade math notes?’ Oh...my...crock. He’s so juicy? Total hawt-ness.”

Asinine waved a hand in her face. “Amaranthia. We have a hit to hit.”

With a finger absentmindedly flicking a scarlet earring, the five-foot-tall Amaranthia rolled her eyes and gave Asinine a haughty scrunch of her nose. “I’m gonna have to, like, totally call you back, Debbie? Yeah, the chief gitch is woofin’ at me? He’s got a serious mad-on for this Legion dude? We’ll go sale-cruising later? Okay. B’bye, chill friend.” Her gabber retreated into its ear bud. She eyed Asinine disdainfully, marched past, and pulled her burgundy facemask over her head. Her cardinal-toned heels clacked on the tiled floor. She actually wore her stiletto heels on a mission? That was okay as long as she did a lot of roundhouse kicking.

She unsheathed her rose-madder sword, swiped it around in a three-sixty, and retreated away. Rent A. Force’s top half separated, bent back, and toppled over. Strings of intestines stretched between the two pieces. Asinine smiled. Someone was earning her Home Despot back-to-school voucher.

Amaranthia wandered back to the door. “Debbie? Hey-hey-hey, I’m back, BFF. Tons of blood? Totally gross? Not touching that? So, anyway, Kenny? Oooooh. Can you say, ‘Yum to the max’?”

Asinine gawked at her. “Why’d you even hang up on her? You know we get charged by the call.”

Lieutenant IQ 23 stepped forward to dispense some of that truth stuff he often used to refute whatever Asinine said. “We actually steal our signals, sir. Mechanism has routed the billing through a number of accounts. The Good Guys pick up the tab.”

* * *

Reef buried his head in the pit of his elbow. Invard held up another datasheet and asked, “And why are we paying for thirty-eight thousand minutes of talk time to a Debbie Larkobee?”

Reef groaned. “Nobody ever figured that out. Invard, didn’t IP send you to investigate things less monotonous than our data work?”

“No, they didn’t, you can believe that.” Invard pulled out the datasheet that detailed Kamikaze’s medical invoices. Not that the self-healer needed medical attention. He just liked overdosing on pills.

* * *

Asinine whipped another glance at Amaranthia but responded to IQ 23. “Doesn’t matter. It’s about principles.” He shook his head and surveyed the onlookers who shielded their eyes from the tomfoolery that red-clad Amaranthia had wrought upon Rent A. Force and his organic insideries. “Hello, everyone. You’ve just witnessed a demonstration of how decisive my forces are and how they flaunt the threat of long-distance charges. I must now ask a question or two. One”—he shot himself with another Skittle—“where can I find the supply closet of rubber gloves? I’m starting a collection. And B, I need the room number of a certain Matross Legion. I...uh...owe him money, you see. Yeah. That sounds plausible enough.

“Oh, and third, are those defibrillators as fun as they look on broadcast? Just asking, because I need a new set of earmuffs.”

Screaming onlookers ducked behind couches or under the triage desk when Asinine waved his pistol nonchalantly. Hmm. No helpful spectators. Very well. He approached the triage desk behind which that expressive clerk had spread his puke. He selected a shock-mouthed woman who stared in motionless dread. “Hi. Can you help me find a friend?” He tapped his gun against the desk’s plastic blotter.

A buzz grew into earshot behind him, conquering the room’s ambiance. Too bad. It drowned out the piped music, a potent rendition of “I Kissed Your Kiss.”

Like thunderclouds bursting open, a loud megaphone voice ruptured the quietude. “GEORGE LOWENSLAND, THESE DRONES HAVE COME TO PLACE YOU UNDER ARREST. TURN YOURSELF AND YOUR FOLLOWERS IN.”

“I kissed your kiss-sss...and got herpes simplllllexxxx.” Asinine loved this song. He looked up to the illuminated ceiling, because in buzzed a squadron of security drones. Ten of them. They beat small wings of magnetic fibers, and six sharp pincers under each gray belly emerged to prepare for battle. Like coyotes surrounding prey, another dozen drones clawed along the hospital’s walls. These rubbed their fore pincers together hungrily.

To accompany these security drones, in scrambled five or six—Asinine could never tell the difference—guards, all wearing gear identical to Rent A. Force’s and, for some reason, all named the same thing: Rent A. Force. They must have been brothers.

Oy. This would throw off his timetable. “Amaranthia and Braindead, dispense with these drones. Lieutenant, push back my acupuncture appointment.”

“Debbie, I’ll have to totally call you back? Sh’yeah. Another murder spree.”

* * *

A clatter from down the hall piqued Burnout’s interest. It was almost undetectable what with the soundproof walls that preserved patient rest and prevented those nasty fraternity hospital streakers from waking everyone in this wing. But this noise clamored louder than what the walls blocked. A bunch of medical equipment dropping? No...a clang...and another. And a scream?

The Special Identity Protection Medical Act, SIPMA, was an act protecting the identities of anyone hiding his or her real name behind a media name. And here in Gaia’s only SIPMA hospital, Good Guys Burnout and Smithereens guarded the comatose Legion from attempts on his life. Legion had no hidden identity, but his medical bills were funneled to Intergalactic Protection just the same. Behind the last door down the hall of SIPMA’s Sanity Memorial wing, his room was easily defended. But it wasn’t impenetrable. At least not to drunk, naked frat meatheads.

Smithereens, in his orange bomber jacket, flanked the left side of the wood-paneled door to Legion’s room. Burnout, in his red/orange/gray media outfit, flanked the right. Legion’s room stood fifteen yards from the closest soundproof filter, a dusty l-door that obscured everything beyond it from view.

Why were they guarding? By morning, Legion would be dead. Still, he deserved better than an attempt at an unceremonious assassination. And now that possibility felt very real.

Burnout swept aside a fiery red lock of hair and checked Smithereens’s confused glance. Another clang—and a blistering explosion—blared through the soundproofing. A tremor shook the hall. The flowerpot on the windowsill shattered on the ground, ruining the message in its leaves that read, “Leaf printing, seven moolahs per word.”

Burnout’s eyes reddened deeper. His genetic quirk of having red eyes was strange enough, but the fact that they grew redder with anger was downright odd. He crooked his head curiously and checked to see if Smithereens knew who was streaking. Smithereens considered the noise, his pudgy belly heaving in...out.

“Eh, don’t look at me, buddy,” Smithereens said. “I didn’t set up the romp for the stomp, that bang for the clang harangue. Still wish I’d thought of it. Eh, guard duty is as dull as dish duty.”

Though both Terran, he and Smithereens were dissimilar. Burnout stood at an imposing six foot four with a build like an anvil-crushing anvil, so his younger brother, Jeff, kept saying. Smithereens, slightly shorter, was an aged and chubby bomb expert with salt-and-pepper hair.

Burnout prepared himself by engulfing his arm in flame. His pyrotechnic hyperability. Smithereens reached around the flab burgeoning over his belt and, from a zipper pocket, produced a small device Burnout assumed was some sort of disc-shaped bomb. If Burnout knew Smithereens, it could be anything from a nail bomb to a fingernail bomb. The good thing about Smithereens and his obsessive-compulsive hobby was that he kept everyone guessing. The bad thing was that he kept everyone guessing.

Burnout stepped forward. He’d felt edgy since letting Reef send Jeff on a mission without him. Though Jeff needed to escape Burnout’s sheltering, those protective, older-brother doubts caused restlessness. So Burnout needed this action. “Stay here. I’ll investigate. I guarantee this is Asinine and his Styrofoam meat press.”

Smithereens placed a hand on Burnout’s shoulder and stepped past him, his boots tapping the linoleum floor. His mustache curled to accentuate his facial wrinkles. From underneath his Good Guy bomber jacket—the one with Asinine’s face on the front raising a sly eyebrow—he produced another disc-shaped bomb. “No, you put your gargantuan muscles away, buddy.”

Gargantuan? Burnout lifted his arm in a test flex—

“I’m antsy in the pantsy, eh. I’ll check out the old panoosh for the skadoosh.” Smithereens coin-flipped one disc bomb in the air. Heads he’d blow everyone sky high, tails he’d blow everyone to kingdom come.

“Fine, but be careful,” Burnout said over another scream that stabbed the obviously broken soundproofing, followed by the growl of a saw blade cutting a wall. “We don’t know how many panooshes there are in those skadooshes. Frankly, I doubt you even know what those words mean.”

“Doesn’t matter, buddy. It’s time for the Smitheral to damage some collateral.” He reached the end of the hall. The door faded. “Buddy, if I don’t come back, eh, tell my sulfur compound I love it.”

“I don’t feel comfortable pouring my heart out to chemicals,” Burnout said. “Kamikaze does, though. Quite a mess to clean.”

Chapter Fourteen: Should Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot

December 31, 9099. 11:51 p.m. (Galactic Standard Time). Eleven years ago.

Corporal Legion risked an over-the-shoulder glance at the disintegrated cityscape behind his rain-soaked cover. And what was his cover? A transport’s fuselage, which was highly volatile. He couldn’t have asked for something worse. One shot would vaporize him, his fellow squaddies, and everything within a five-mile, maybe six-mile radius. That included Sunny Dragon, which wasn’t an option since they made good kung pao.

Legion and the rest of the rain-beaten soldiers were supposed to infiltrate the Gharalgian embassy here on Trioxil. Political insurgents had forced their way in and taken the consulate hostage, their intentions unknown. The insurgents had reprogrammed the embassy’s robot sentries to shoot at anyone who dared approach. They’d also reprogrammed the coffeemaker for double espressos.

Legion gauged his breath and sipped deep gulps of soggy oxygen only when his lungs burned. Those sentries tracked by sound. They could hear heavy breathing even over this ozone-reeking rain. He shivered at the thought, and his feet shook in the mud.

He’d thought lately about applying to military college. Becoming commissioned. Unsticking himself from being a low-level grunt for eternity. Leading these peons instead of being one. He needed to get away from this type of situation.

Most insurgents lay dead, pinged off because of sniper fire, but the three who remained had, at gunpoint, propped up the consulate to a window, the snipers had reported. This mission had gone, like Sgt. Garchel’s social education, hideously wrong.

Cover prevented anyone from seeing the sentries in anything more than snippets. Even the snipers, now with the rain full throttle, couldn’t get a bead on them. They were pinned. Except Garchel. He had a clear bead on them.

The reprogrammed sentries had forced this squad under cover but hadn’t fired for a good five minutes. The smoke still sizzled from their watchful, determined barrels, though if Legion so much as peeped, that sizzling would quickly become a shot-to-the-head barrage...until something hit the fuselage. If that happened...kaboom! Everything would blank in a white void that would erase the squad and that kung pao, much like Legion’s pride had blanked long ago. Pride. He had a vague recollection of having some once.

At least Garchel was close. Only when that buffoon sat by a four-megaton-class explosive waiting to release its payload did Legion appreciate his nearness. A silver lining to every cloud. Oh, and happy new year to him. He checked his rain-splattered watch embedded in his green skin. In about seven minutes, he’d have nobody to kiss on that yearly countdown except maybe his life good-bye.

Thunder clapped again through the soaked air. In a violent gush of grinding ammunition, the sentries attacked the colorless sky, dispatching a few clouds, maybe a bird. They stopped and resumed watching the ground. Their programming told them to ignore at least the paradiddle of rain. Otherwise, this place would degrade into a battle royal. But any leaked sound outside of rain patter would give away the squad’s presence.

Through the rain seeping down his face and the flood tapping his hairless head, Legion saw that George and Sopher had taken shelter behind the tiny remnants of a crumbled building. Garchel hunkered behind them at a civ-tran that someone had long ago gutted and set alight until its carcass smoldered to uselessness. How fitting that Garchel hid behind something vacant and blackened. Legion could turn that into a joke. George would appreciate using it in his comedy stand-up routine. That would bring his joke total to two, but no one counted “rectum...it nearly killed him,” so really it was one.

Next to Garchel hid Corporal Hyvinix, Corporal Sengalich, and Private First Class Yunder, the surviving scraps of their squad. They looked as sheet white as the flat, sunless sky. Not like the Happy Flower billboard, though. That looked blissfully sunny.

Legion’s gabber crackled like popcorn. Quiet! His nerves calmed once he realized the gabber’s static matched the rain patter. The sentries would ignore it. Garchel’s voice blared through it. He was in charge now after First Lieutenant Holden, the only commanding officer since every other platoon was elsewhere involved in peacekeeping operations, had received a bullet to the temple. “Okay, military grubs”—he said with that same official tone whenever he acted as though he knew what he was doing—“these sentries are sight sensitive—”

“Actually no, sir,” Sopher whispered. For comfort, he was clutching his Alaphan necklace like always. Faith. Whatever got him through the day. “They’re sound sensitive. We can boogie around them like interpretive dancing mimes, but the second we make a peep, they’ll turn us into Swiss cheese. So we need to keep it down, sir.”

“Swiss cheese is great,” George said. “It makes a fine gelato topping. It also works as a head plate.” He tapped his skull. “No, really.”

Legion murmured so the sentries wouldn’t hear: “It’s true...sir”—the last word abraded off his tongue as though he were spitting up glass—“I mean, about the sound thing. George, Swiss has nothing on a well-aged Havarti helmet. Too many holes exposing you.”

“Will you armpits shut your useless snakeskin claptraps?” Garchel said. Snakeskin? An awful attempt at a racial slur that missed the mark since neither Legion nor George was Virillian. But whatever. Better not to frazzle Garchel’s Swiss- or Havarti-cheesed brain. “We need action. Someone needs to battle through these sentries. Their cutoff switch is across this field. Reach that, deactivate these things, and we’ll claim glory on this hellhole.” He gestured at Legion with his pistol. “Six Ball?”

“Sir, you can just shoot them out from your position,” Legion said.

Garchel’s head shook violently. “I lead. I’m not exposing myself.”

“S-send Lowensland.” Sengalich’s voice twittered in a shrill pitch. “He’s too much of an idiot to know what’s happening, anyway.”

“Shut up.” His face colored terra cotta, George reeled back a fist, though Sengalich was too far away to hit. His voice almost drew sentry fire. “I’m too much of an idiot to not know what’s happening. Wait, did that make sense?”

Legion had to speak fiercely but maintain quiet. “Sir, from your position, you can hit them. You have a clear—”

“Get out there, you disposable decoy.” Sengalich slapped a fist on the muddy ground. Legion was convinced Sengalich’s dignity was on a daily self-destruct timer.

Legion could strangle Garchel for sending George. To see required a mirror, but Legion had only his watch. He angled it to check the reflection of the insurgents in its face. That revealed little, but he caught the time. Five more minutes to midnight. Would he survive until the new year? Five minutes on the battlefield might as well last as long as civility took to crawl from the depths of Garchel’s thickheaded crock.

Sopher risked a check over his cover at the storm-beaten, trigger-blown battlefield, then ducked and wiped aside his rain-flattened hair. “Sir, you have the most stealth training. You should go. This situation is exactly like the simulators you keep bragging you mastered. Didn’t you pass four of these, as you said, in your sleep?”

“I’m so good I can sleep through doing them in my sleep.” Garchel snorted beside him to an imaginary friend. Yunder turned out to be there, and Garchel looked upset that someone had sat on his pretend playdate. Legion would file that intel in the part of his brain he wanted lobotomized, the part that grew with every conversation.

“Instead of being the decoy, I’d like to see that multitiered naptime thingy,” George said.

“You’ll mess things up for me if I go. Make some oaf-headed sound and get me killed. Besides, I’m squad leader here. I say Lowensland is on deck for a sneak attack.” He sputtered a laugh at his make-believe entourage. “That’s right. I’m throwing my weight around.” His expression snapped to stone, and he whisked his gun at George. “Get out there.”

“What?” George swabbed an ear with his finger. “Sorry. Still can’t hear properly with the baby cucumber I mashed in here. The spinach dip lube helped, but it was like shoving a brick through a doughnut.”

Garchel smacked his forehead. “Crock, you’re such a Master Asinine, you’re no good for anything else.”

“Master Asinine? That’s the highest ranking whatever-that-is ever.”

“Not a good thing,” Legion said. Then to Garchel: “Sir”—ugh, that word again. He wanted to expel his lunch. And it was a good protein ration, too: cardboard and peanuts, still on his tongue—“this is insane. Sopher’s right. You have the training for this. None of us has training with sound sentries except Corporal Tressel.”

“Well, Six Ball, let’s send Tressel in then,” Garchel said almost loudly enough to alert the sentries.

Legion pointed at Tressel. “He’s dead.” Bonehead.

Garchel pounded his breast, which almost triggered the pistol in his hand. “Look, I make the decisions because I’m in charge.” He gestured at George with his pistol, a careless finger still wrapped around the trigger. “Lowensland, shut off those sentries. And be quick about it. Why Crap Works comes on at two.”

Legion kept his voice down, though his detestation warred with his self-control. “This is suicide. Should he have a leprechaun handy?”

George unzipped an arm pouch. He extracted a small baggie and tweezed out a morsel of food. “I need some rations before I go.”

“George, that’s not a ration. That’s cereal,” Sopher said. Soulfully, George looked up at Sopher as if begging for confirmation. “No, it doesn’t stay crunchy in milk.”

Disdainfully, George threw aside the bag. It rolled along the muddy ground, disturbing a puddle—rat-a-tat-a-tat! The sentries raged at it with bullet fire so much that it danced in midair. Some cereal crumbled, but most bounced off the fire murdering it. When the attack finished, the surviving morsels resembled lumps of coal more than whatever Colostomy Crunch shapes were.

George stared wild-eyed at the cereal, at the example of his possible fate. He silently...slowly...carefully rose, hunched, prepared to move. Sopher clamped a hand on his arm. “George, remember: slow and silent.” They locked eyes.

George nodded. “Just the way I fart.”

He sneaked out a few paces and searched the sentries that stood as tall as stop signs and watched as fixedly as paintings. Their singular red eyes, microphones that sought not sight but sound, dotted the middles of their domino-shaped bodies.

Legion watched, daring not to breathe because George had made that fart crack. Was he covering something up? Legion remembered his bean-and-more-bean omelet breakfast. He risked a tiny hiccup of air. Yup. He detected that certain eggy flavor.

At the fringe of his vision, someone stood. Garchel! What was he thinking? On this rocky, drenched terrain, he was liable to make noise simply by moving. Legion shot at the idiot with a “psst,” who returned fire with a lip-curled scowl.

Legion checked George’s position. His friend had entered a seven-foot cement pipe, an unearthed sewer column rotting on the ground. He glared back at Garchel, who spectated scornfully. The staff sergeant stepped forward, perhaps for a better look, and—

His boot splashed a puddle. “Crock.”

George startled forward into a splattering puddle of his own.

Legion’s heart crystallized. Those sentries. They found him. “Shoot wildly and blindly,” one said to the others in perfect monotone. “This barrage brought to you by the Logistican military, who finds no logic in spending money to play an advertisement to those who will soon die. But they did, anyway.”

With a zipper rip, gunfire revved through the silence, trigger-happy sentries gushing out their ammunition in seconds before reloading and burning through the next clip, all poised at a dodge-dancing George.

Legion roared through his gabber and dove for cover behind his fuselage. He hoped the sentries hadn’t heard him or, in one shot, he’d be pasty goo. “Garchel, you just killed George!”

“Kill him,” a bloodthirsty sentry said between light-bullets. “Kill him.”

Legion threw an arm in its direction: told you.

Garchel whimpered. His cover, that burned civ-tran husk, began chunking away, light-bullets pelting it into rusty flakes. Yunder caught a light-bullet through his head and leaned aside where laserfire ate at him like a pecking vulture.

Legion shot out from behind cover. George needed him.

“Matross, I’ll cover you,” Sopher said. Sopher removed his Alaphan necklace and tossed it to Legion. “Take this. Protection. Inspiration.”

Legion caught the necklace, slipped it around his neck. Didn’t argue, no time. The impracticality of using a necklace as a shield, when he considered physics, wind resist—Crock it, just get out there.

He shoved out a Viking roar and tore down the battlefield, struck one-two-three-four sentries in their microphones. He ducked, dove, rolled, banged his funny bone, slid, lunged forw—ow. The funny bone of all things?

“Stay where you are, George!” Legion slid behind a forgotten civ-tran and used his new vantage to fire on another sentry.

Sopher fired from his position.

A sentry’s listener drew a bead across George’s forehead, searching.

George’s mirror-ball helmet jangled. Legion bounded from his cover and fired. One light-bullet hit, but that wasn’t enough. It only jolted the killer automaton. Another shot, then another, and another.

The insurgents burst from the embassy, bickering at each other. Legion took careful aim and one...two...aaannndddd three. They fell and splashed into the mud.

A bullet hit Legion. He gasped, dropped his Marsek...felt nothing though smoke rose from his neck. His fingers jittered to his wound and...what? The bullet had pinged off that Alaphan cross. Sopher’s necklace. It had saved him from a bullet?

The gunfire ceased. All that remained of the universe were Legion, George, that last sentry, and Legion’s prickling funny bone. The sentry took aim at George—Legion reached him.

A flash, a ping! Smoke. A flame choked from the sentry’s body, distorted the air, sizzled from a small blaze. A tiny flame flickered inside its box. Thank crock for cheap workmanship.

Who had fired? His eyes darted to Sopher, whose gun breathed a thin tendril of smoke. George trembled violently but smiled, coughed up an uneasy chortle, then choked like a dying lawnmower. “Holy crock, that was tremendous squared.” His lower lip shuddered. “Matross, you jumped into battle to save me. Th-thanks.” His head flitted around to search for sentries. None remained, and the insurgents were dead. His mouth curled a boastful smile. “I am the Master Asinine.”

“George, that’s not a good thing,” Legion panted out from struggling lungs. He coughed up a chortle, too, but without the lawnmower impression. “You’re welcome. Heh. Let’s just say you owe me. How about when someone’s shooting at me and you feel like running the other way, just remember we’re your friends.”

“My friends. Yeah.” George and Legion high-fived their fingertips twice.

Garchel tromped forward, brave enough to finally leave his cover now that the sentries were dead. His hateful stare zeroed in on George. “Corporal Lowensland, you nearly killed every—”

Legion’s fist shot into Garchel’s face. He shoved Garchel back with steely rage, Sopher’s Alaphan necklace hopping around his neck. “Shut up and listen. Just once shut up and listen. Sending George untrained into this situation is one thing. But you could have pegged them off right from where you sat. The next time you needlessly risk someone’s life, Intergalactic Protection will kick you out so hard, you’ll have to visit a doctor to remove its toes from your anus. And I guarantee that is one pissing expensive surgery.” And there went the rest of his insubordination freebies.

“And it’s not even covered!” George said.

Garchel raised a protesting finger, but Legion swatted it away and stormed off. “I’ll be eating kung pao if you need me. Oh, and have a happy new year. Sir.”

Chapter Fifteen: Search and Annoy

Power Plant wandered ahead to the next barren intersection. Wind whistled emptily through the buildings. No lit signs, no flashing gadgets, nothing. Not even that two-headed monster man Schizophrenic on a building top, chucking boulders. Come to think of it, Schizophrenic used the same method to shoo away pigeons. Power Plant liked watching the right head act stupidly. And he liked watching the left head get macked off at the right head for it. Those two were his favorite show.

“Okay. I think I figured out this station, brother.” Pincushion blinked to stay on his sleepless feet and unburied his nose from the map module squared in his hand. He had slung the shotgun over his shoulder. He still clutched his laser shield, which he used to point ahead and right. “We travel this path and turn right two blocks ahead. Brick’s lab is somewhere in there. And there’s not a prisoner alive that Asinine couldn’t help ordering Brick to festoon with flashing lights and bunny ears. Well, except the one he accidentally lit on fire. He learned a valuable lesson that day about drinking kerosene.”

“No, he didn’ts.”

“No, I guess he didn’t.” Pincushion started down the street but kept close to the curbside with ducking rolls. Power Plant followed. Devoid of power, a space station would allow interlopers to wander around unhindered by anything other than the boulder-chucking defense of Schizophrenic and any throw-worthy mountain. But what did Power Plant have to lose from a crushed skull?

Power Plant trailed Pincushion by only a few yards. Pincushion staggered, having trouble walking a straight line. His trauma-induced sleeplessness wasn’t exactly on Power Plant’s Boxing Day wish list.

Both held their laser shields ready, though Power Plant didn’t know how the shields could help against that mechanical bull Asinine claimed he was raising. He never understood: why a mechanical bull? Was Asinine planning a rodeo competition, or was it some freaky cybernetic experiment Power Plant would want in on?

The buildings looked unpolished, and their haunt control hadn’t cleaned the area in a month or so. All because of the station’s power outage. The air smelled like tainted chlorine. Power Plant attributed that to the decaying atmospheric bubble the nanobots hadn’t moisturized since before the outage. The chlorine burned his nostrils as if it stripped their lining with its acidic odor. Still better than that stuff Momentum pulled out of the oven and called banana bread. He shouldn’t use so much peel.

Pincushion banged into a street curb and stopped rolling. He wore that dumbfounded grimace Power Plant knew as the I-just-talked-to-Power-Plant-and-now-my-brain-is-paste face. He checked the direction from where they had come, then glanced forward, the shotgun clattering on his back. “This makes no sense.”

Power Plant indicated the map module. “Mebbe ’cause ya didn’t switch offs my Tetris game. We coulds walking up a big L block. Turn lefts and we reach a squigglies.” That was where he’d exact his revenge on his nemesis: a square block.

“No, that’s not it. And it’s not my insomnia, either.” He yawned. “Or maybe it is.” He checked the map module, turned it upside down. “I don’t get this at all. It indicates we turn right at the next block where Asinine’s death-trap tar pit is. Then we enter the building at the end of that side alley. But there’s no right.”

Power Plant stuck out both hands. “Lesse. I writes wit’ this hands, so right’s this others way.”

“You have it backwards.” Pincushion’s dumbfounded look swung back to where they’d come and examined the street that stretched ahead. He rechecked the map module. Insight sprouted over his face, and he smacked the map module with the backs of his fingers. “Jeff, did you overwrite the blueprints for Station Zilcho with the plans for the Jefftaria national embassy again? And since when did you find funding for a donkey stable?”

“Oh, yeah. That.” A smile bloomed on his too-slim face. His pride showed in his ridiculous grin and that missing tooth he’d lost last month in a shootout. But Franchise had promised he’d return the tooth when he finished with it. “And name’s Jeffy.”

“I don’t care. You overwrote our extraction path. How do we find our way around now? And why did you give Brick a lab and call it ‘mad wacko experiments room’?”

“For funs. An’ to be polites. I mean, he doings our mads wacko stuffs for us.” Power Plant shrugged. “Figure he wants a rooms for the mads wackoness.”

“With cup holders?” Pincushion’s breathing grew huffier. He rubbed his eyes, his insomnia settling in with a wave of lightheadedness. “Fine. We need to return to the starship. I can’t believe we’re here ten minutes, and already you’ve got us heading toward your ‘toilets for blowin’ up.’”

“That ’cause Jefftaria need thems toilets. For blowin’ up.”

“Jefftaria needs a reality check, but it would probably blow that up, too.” Pincushion pivoted on his heels and, his laser shield gripped tightly in his hand, retraced their path down the street, favoring his one metal knee.

“Man, I knows one Grumpy Gus not gettin’ his Jefftaria passports a’newed. This time it’s got a crosswordings activity.” Power Plant kicked the side of a mortar building, then gawped silently when pain zapped through his foot, up his thigh, and into his hip injury. Holy electrical pain monster! That’d teach him not to wear sandals on a mission.

Power Plant caught up with Pincushion. They weaved around a corner, down a side path, and...and...Power Plant stopped. Pincushion stopped, too. What was that noise, that distant crunch-crunch, as if the hungry rumblings of a jackhammer leaked through from another dimension?

“Jeff, did you weaponize a nutcracker like you’d been planning?”

“Not’s far as I cans unnerstan’ what ya just saids.”

“Then what’s that racket?” Pincushion ventured forward, his map module still clutched in his taut hand, slipping in thin sweat. He slid the module into a hip pouch to free both hands for his shotgun, which he raised and used to lead the way.

He barreled around the corner and swung his arm up-around-down-over, searching the area with a lethal eye. Power Plant jumped out behind him and ta-da, jazz hands—huh? What the crock had happened here?

Their Fireball now suffered a bombardment of boulders. A swarm of security drones buzzed around it. One landed dead center on the windshield. That drone extracted a cutting laser to etch a scorched line across the windshield’s length before it curved back in a broad oval. Still more drones swarmed around the landing gear and began yanking strips of metal off with hooks as thick as bear talons.

“I say, Irving, good chap.” One drone clamped onto the landing gear next to a friend. “I have appropriated a date for this Friday evening with that blender from accounts receivable. A dynamite one, that blender is.”

“Be on your guard, Nigel, old friend,” the other said. “She’s a mite off the tilt, that one. She is not a blender for nothing, after all, if you understand my meaning.”

“Smashing, Irving. I don’t.”

Atop a building stood the Bad Guys’ two-headed goon of security acting like a gouged-open storm cloud that blitzed the starship with gigantic boulders. Strangely enough, he threw them at the Bad Guy logo on one of the forewings. Asinine’s face was the bull’s-eye. Even stranger, he pumped a fist whenever he hit.

Schizophrenic dropped another boulder on the starship like Donkey Kong throwing flaming barrels on fat plumbers. A toothpick bobbed in the Lefty’s mouth. “You like apples? How do you like them apple-shaped boulders?”

Righty hooted. “How do you like them banana-shaped app—”

“Shut up, parrot. You don’t even understand the reference.”

“Leave for five minutes, and Franchise is already throwing a party.” Pincushion teetered forward. He studied the situation unfolding before him, his eyes as white as surrender flags.

Power Plant drew a stick of bubblegum from a pouch. He popped the stick in his mouth but didn’t get why its package said it was watermelon when it tasted like foil wrap. “I betcha Franchise up in theres goin’ crock bonkers. Probably foams coming outta him. At the mouth.” He pointed at his face. “Mouth foam.”

Chapter Sixteen: And One and Step and Two and Dip...

Master Asinine stepped into a narrow hall. The hall began with the door through which he entered and ended in an identical one. Doors lined the left and right walls, light panels scratched the ceiling, and his two goons, Lieutenant IQ 23 and Braindead, lurked behind him. Amaranthia had remained in the lobby to finish things up, gabber her friend about her crushes, and grab some chocolate-covered something from the candy machine since Asinine was running out of ammo.

From behind each door, everything smelled like formaldehyde, much like whatever that crap was at home behind his couch. Asinine needed to spring-clean, but he’d spent his time perfecting a recipe for coffee-cake-flavored coffee. Like what all the cool kids and whatever was behind his couch ate.

He smiled at his junior thugs, so named because he was the senior thug around here. “Okay, junior thugs. Or you two, anyway. Let’s fan out. Lieutenant, you head straight. Braindead, you head straight as well. I’ll keep security on its toes by heading straight but dancing a pirouette because I lost a bet with Mechanism. Let’s roll.”

“Way to pretend you’re keeping security guessing, sir.” Lieutenant IQ 23 flashed a smile.

The two Bad Guy subordinates scurried down the hallway. Asinine danced his best pirouette-curtsy-step-step-dip. Lieutenant IQ 23 tried to follow suit, but his pirouette was no way as graceful as Asinine’s. After all, Asinine had attended those Temptations of the Moon tutelage classes.

Asinine would have people know this wasn’t as emasculating as it looked.

They reached the end of the hall and, in its customary whoomp, the l-door disappeared. With a vigilant pistol, Braindead covered the area, his breath hissing as usual behind the mask that exposed nothing but his eyes through a skinny eye slit. Lieutenant IQ 23 spun in a toe hop so sloppy that a helmet-attached question mark smacked him in the face.

Asinine eased into the combative stance of the arabesque. Lieutenant IQ 23 would be so lucky to have the balance to do the same.

“Okay, team.” Asinine lowered his foot in a quarter-circle pivot that would make envious every swan in that freaking lake. He locked his heel on the safety railing of the hallway and pressed his lower body down to meet it. Ooh, nice stretch. He unlocked his heel and advanced into a deep knee bend. His knees cracked. “Our quarry is only two more hallways ahead, but be on your guard.”

“You’re right, sir.” Lieutenant IQ 23 was checking a card-sized device he had plucked from his breast pocket. “He reportedly has two Good Guys guarding his door.”

“Who cares? Check the rooms for hospital food. I haven’t eaten a good chocolate pudding in years.” He checked his watch. “My mistake. Make that minutes.”

A thin beam blipped through the air and disintegrated a light panel. Another grazed the doorframe, splintering wood and blazing a scorch mark into the wall behind it.

“Take cover! We’re under fire!” Asinine dove away from another blast. He flattened his back against the wall and slid up, hidden behind the doorframe. Lieutenant IQ 23 pressed his back against the opposite wall, hidden as well. Braindead ducked, darted to IQ 23’s side, and pressed against the wall next to his bosom buddy. Another blast hummed past.

“Aw, Braindead.” Asinine threw a flustered hand at the never-speaking Virillian. “Why always with him every time? Come on. Show your boss some amity. Change it up a little.”

Braindead checked IQ 23, his eyes still as blank as apathy. Lieutenant IQ 23 put a hand on his shoulder. “It’s okay. We’ll have plenty of other opportunities to take cover together.”

Braindead strolled across the hallway without so much as a nod, missing laser blasts by oblivious mistake. He took position next to Asinine. Asinine smiled, and a happy tongue wagged out of his mouth. “I knew you’d buddy up with me sometime. See? I’m hip enough to take cover beside, too.” They knuckle-bumped.

The laserfire stopped to allow a voice to shoot out of the break in the din. “Ehhhh, baddies,” came a drawl that stretched the first word out but left the second one as sharp as Asinine’s tap-dancing murder boots. “You ready for the dash for the smash? The attack for the smack crack? Eh, baddies?”

“Lieutenant, the English translation.”

Lieutenant IQ 23 was already on it. He referred to his device, tapping icons on its glowing screen. “There’s no English equivalent here, sir, but if he’s speaking Swedish, he wants to borrow some fleece.”

“Oh.” Asinine took position and fired. “No way is he borrowing my snowflake pullover. Grandmammy knitted that herself.”

“That’s it.” The clatter of a firearm rattled against the floor. “These guns are a waste of taste in the bomb paste. It’s time for a detonation in this station.” Then peace...or it would be if those deranged rhymes would stop echoing through Asinine’s abused mind.

Asinine perked one eyebrow, not smooth-suavely as per usual but quizzically this time. He aimed the eyebrow at his lieutenant, who answered Asinine’s silent “whu-huh” with a “duh-dunno” toss of his hands.

The peace ended. A disc skidded across the floor and flipped over a crease in the linoleum. It slowed to rest at the doorframe where Asinine, Braindead, and IQ 23 took cover. Something clicked and...a white flare! A flash conquered the hallway, annulled sight. It soaked the area, leaking into Asinine’s brain where he stored his frozen-vegetable recipes.

“Lieutenant, fix this!”

Lieutenant IQ 23 smacked against something. “I would, sir, but I can’t see.”

Crock. That was enough. Asinine clenched his pistol and fired blindly because that was the only firing he was good at. A primal roar escaped his deep-gorge throat. He scattered another burst of bullets, hoping he still faced the right direction but not shooting himself in the foot so, hey, it wasn’t exactly the wrong direction.

Something slid to rest at his feet with a tick-tick, what Asinine assumed was either another flash bomb or a broken clock. He flung himself away from the disc—

A fountain of flame and heat showered out. It cleansed his sight again to add a scorching red to his washed vision. Asinine ducked into a room. He deflected off the door and spiraled against a wall.

Shadows came into view, but Asinine extracted a Heal-E-Z pill from a zipper pouch on his arm and swallowed. Shapes, colors, forms, and the pecking cane of the fossil-like man whose room he’d disturbed bled back into his vision.

He launched himself into the hallway, reconsidered, and ducked back in to steal the coot’s yogurt. He burst back into the hallway, a wooden spoon lodged in his mouth and pistachio goop lining his lips like clown makeup. “I love this job!”

He ducked, rolled, and planted himself against a wall. “Lieutenant, lay some suppressive fire and, after that, lay down a bed. I’m taking a nap. Lieutenant? Lieu—”

Oh, no. Lieutenant IQ 23 clutched one hand against a grisly cheek, the other in a three-limbed crawl. The second bomb, an incendiary, had scorched the side of IQ 23’s face and left a raw mound of cobbled flesh across his cheek and temple, flash-frying the hair and that nifty temporary tattoo he’d found in a cereal box. His teeth clamping like a vice, his jawbone peeking through a goopy hole, and blood marking his trail like bread crumbs from the claw-shaped husk of the bomb, he shambled down the hallway.

Braindead looked okay, but Asinine still wouldn’t forgive him for neglecting to bring their apple dumplings, because now he had a craving.

Asinine was already on IQ 23. “Hey”—Lieutenant IQ 23 didn’t react—“Lieutenant”—his ruined face quivered up to make eye contact. Asinine palmed another Heal-E-Z pill and cupped it into the lieutenant’s mouth. “Swallow this. It’s the nontoxic kind. It’s my last, so use it in good health. I mean, use it in...Crock. You know what? Forget I said anything. Anyway, take Braindead, head down to the plastic-surgery wing, get yourself fixed up, then join me in the hospital bistro for bagels. I’ll finish up in about ten minutes with this flash in the pan.”

Lieutenant IQ 23 mustered a nod, ribbons of cheek flapping. Braindead helped him to his feet and both struggled off. Asinine hoped they’d keep their bistro appointment, because now he had bagels on the brain.

Asinine swung out and volleyed a few light-bullets at their attacker, but this accomplished nothing. He checked his pistol’s charge reading. Enough shells to contain fourteen more shots and three more candies, but that was it. He fired twice more.

“Eh, got you in a panic for the frantic,” that mean, mean Terran who owed IQ 23 an apology said.

Asinine rolled to his original place against the doorframe, waited, then swung around and fired another four light-bullets. Where was this guy, anyway? This was no time for hide-and-seek.

Who was he kidding? It was always time for hide-and-seek.

Asinine took a moment to think. Aha. Idea. After he recovered from the idea cramp, he ducked and tweezed the charge dial on his pistol. More bang for each shot. He dialed it to two times the normal blast and his ammo counter dropped from ten shots to five. He dialed again: two. Once more, he charged it, and the warning indicator lit up. Overcharged. And again. And again, until the grip became so hot he used his ducky sneeze hankie as a liner.

He looked up the hallway and caught a flash of movement in the bullet-pecked corner. A voice from his pistol said, “Overcharge warning. Pistol will erupt in—”

“Yeah, yeah.” Asinine spun the pistol down the hallway. It scraped against the linoleum, plinked off a side table, and slid back a few feet. The grip smoldered red, the chamber glowed like a silver beacon of—

The pistol erupted in white light and debris. A scream—“Ahhhhhh, buddy, eh!”—and a thud.

Too bad. Asinine liked the candy in that gun. Still, his other pistol shot Pez, and dulling the loss was the fact that he could still tear a candy tablet from Big Bird’s neck/barrel.

Asinine meandered out from behind his cover and peered down the hall at the damaged corner, at a wrinkled, mustache-wearing Terran who lay against the wall and bled from a head gash, unconscious but not blitzified. And, hey, he finally got to use his Asinine-fake-word-a-day calendar.

Asinine trod down the hallway. He reached the chubby Good Guy and knelt. Heh. “Thought you could out-blast me? No chance.” He thumped a fist against his own chest, which released two solid dongs on his steely breast pocket. “Nothing penetrates the starch in my laundry.”

Five yards down the hallway, the l-doors faded, and in stepped a red-headed, red-eyed soldier, so tall in this light he must have stood at an imposing six feet and ten million inches. So would Asinine. He reached for the size capsules in his utility belt and—Oh, wait, those didn’t exist.

Asinine stood. He sized up the warrior before him, one he’d often met in battle. The warrior carried a heated air that lifted the temperature by several intense degrees. His nostrils breathed with dragonlike fury, his muscles bulged with a bodybuilder’s physique, his face aped that statue of a puma in a staring contest that was all in Asinine’s head.

“So, Fiery, Angry, Red Guy, we meet again.” Asinine scratched his head and tried to recall this do-gooder’s media name. Fiery, Angry, Red Dude, maybe? Fiery, Angry, Red Hombre? No, he wasn’t Mexican. And he definitely wasn’t a woman, so Asinine’s other guess was out.

“No farther.” Fiery, Angry, Red Fill-in-the-Blank’s pitiless gaze dropped for only a second to his companion before it returned. His red irises seared at Asinine, promising violence. “Legion is under my protection.”

Asinine drew another pistol from a second holster. “I have every intention of stepping over your carcass and copping Legion’s chocolate pudding. So touché.” He chuckled. “I spoke French. Hear that? I can threaten in bilingualese.”

Chapter Seventeen: Tea, Crumpets, and Cat Darts—Invitation Only

Franchise scurried from the starship’s wall—oh, geez—to a drone using hooked pincers to peel back a panel. He tripped, smashed into the floor—oh, geez—but panicked to his feet—oh, geez. As if an undercharged starship battery wasn’t a big enough problem, now he had a breach. There went the panel—oh, geez—flung aside along with Power Plant’s hand-drawn picture of Cosmonaut Chimp flinging a—oh, crockity geez—pooperang at his adversary, Schindler’s Endangered Species List. Holy unholy.

Oh crock, this wasn’t happening, oh crock, oh geez. What could he do? Mabel had fallen back asleep, and Franchise was no hefty muscle bag like Burnout, only a thin, moderately short guy with a slight allergy to fish. He rubbed a hand on his face and absentmindedly jabbed a couple of fingers into his mouth and maybe one probed up his nose but who could pay attention because those drones were breaking in and what could he do? Well, he could bite his fingers off. That would take his mind off those drones, though that would invalidate his life insurance. Even so, those drones acted all too eager to sever his fingers, anyway.

He removed his fingers and began cracking his knuckles. He could grab that stale baguette underneath the chair—the one the cats used as a chew toy but wasn’t chewable—and fling it at the drone. But he’d probably inflict more damage to the starship. Or he’d cut himself on the crust.

The drone announced itself by stripping back another screeching panel. It discarded the panel. “Ho ho. Quite exquisite are the furnishings in this starship. I adore the metallic silver against the backdrop of metallic blue. Winston, this reminds me of the color of your eyes.”

Another drone appeared in the opening and examined the interior. “I would agree, Percival, except I have no eyes.” It loomed at Franchise. “Excuse me, sir, but my advertising circuitry would like to ask if you’ve taken advantage of the smashing low prices at Haberdashery Barn.”

One of Mabel’s cats, probably Periwinkle McPawsy, purred at the drone and then sauntered off to the corner, where it licked its own crotch.

“Holy unholy, chatty discount drones.” Franchise banged the heel of his hand against his forehead. He needed to think, think, think or the drones would blab him to death. Should he multiply himself, deal with these things as a self-made team? His heart pulsed painfully and, for a second, alligator teeth of fear raked through his body. No clones. Last time he’d multiplied, a rod had skewered his clone.

A cat scampered up to him. A trickling stream sprouted from it and landed on his boot. Crocking cats. The starship was transforming into Felinania City, and that senile raisin-wrinkled woman of a mayor was sleeping through the siege. Franchise grabbed the cat and heaved it up. “This is for peeing on my lunch and not telling me.” He reared the cat back. The cat reacted by cleaning its side.

“My word,” the Winston drone said. “I believe this feline is gathering fur for a hairball vomit, Percival. We are in for quite the show. Very amusing, I say.”

“Quite, quite, chap. Yet I believe the show has begun, Winston.”

“Eat ballistic cat!” Franchise hurled the hissing cat, who ricocheted against Percival and knocked Winston off the peeled-back opening. Winston swung for dear life, now hanging by only one pincer.

“I say,” Percival said, “that cat was not ballistic at all. And the entity asleep in the rocking chair makes such dreadful snoring noises. Tsk. Winston, care to be programmed to agree?”

“I would, Percival, old chap, but I am attempting not to plummet. Can you process that notion on your own?”

“Right-o. Yes, quite a scrumptious notion. You have missed out, my fellow drone. Mm-hmm.”

“Get off my starship!” Franchise grabbed a tabby and hurled it at the opening. He missed, and later he’d have to explain why it hung from the wall. He won every Saturday’s darts-and-blindfold challenge, for freak’s sake, but he couldn’t throw a cat to save his life.

A buzz to Franchise’s right spat through the uproar, and a cutting blade sliced into the starship’s body. To his left, the same. How many drones were there? Did they all use the same infuriating accent? If they brought scones for teatime, Franchise would throw himself out the starship after shoving Mabel and her dusty, baby-powder smell down the incinerator.

Chapter Eighteen: None of Your Business

Reef had, for a moment, stepped away from Invard. The little man was so obsessed with chasing after disasters in the Good Guys’ records that he hadn’t noticed Reef leaving Legion’s green-and-brown office to ensure everything was on the level with this unwanted visitor, Wiler. Invard also hadn’t noticed that his tie was a contender for Ugliest Fashion Accessory Since the Piano Necktie. And Reef thought Asinine would have gone unopposed in that category at this year’s Uggie Awards.

Thanks to the haunt control, he found Wiler in this cluttered storage room, seated at a desk among a few knickknacks such as that Master Asinine bobblehead doll with a ruined spring where the head had bobbled. Legion’s purchase. Their comatose leader had ripped the head off after Asinine had entered battle armed with a sump pump/squirt gun. Legion had kept muttering that water after that incident lost all palatability.

Wiler was supervising a datasheet that pulsated with a pale green color. Green meant the user must wait for the datasheet to run through some program. It was probably downloading unneeded software updates it nevertheless felt like having. Maybe the Waste More Memory server patch.

Reef hid his whiskey flask in his inner pocket. He’d taken a couple of long quaffs, so he checked his breath. Smelled clean. Good. No trace of alcohol.

“Excuse me, Wiler,” Reef said. “Wiler?”

Wiler sighed. He rubbed a hand through his style-catalog hair and stroked his temple. “With all due respect, I am busy. What is it?” In the darkness, he didn’t turn around, regarding Reef with that arrogance with which IP officials typically treated anyone else.

Reef approached. “Didn’t I leave you with the prisoners? Have you even interrogated them yet?” Reef had never before set foot in this storage room, mostly because it sat down the hall from to the room in which Smithereens kept his arsenal of not-so-childproof and not-so-Power-Plant-proof toys. And the hall sat next door to where Kamikaze slept. Come to think of it, why were those rooms so close together?

Wiler hawk-eyed the datasheet. Its green tint reflected off his software eyes. “No, I have not. I need to first download pertinent information, Mr. Reef. If you were not so needlessly nosy, I could download it without the displeasure of speaking with you and your Good Guy ilk.”

“Ha. You haven’t even come across the ilk. If you had, you’d probably end up missing the left side of your body. Or the right.” Reef reached Wiler. “Take your pick.”

Wiler said his words with stiff syllables, “I select neither.”

“You’re obviously not familiar with Kamikaze’s tendencies.” Reef peeked over Wiler’s shoulder to find out what exactly the prisoner interrogator was downloading. Station schematics and blueprints? Agent records? Training scenarios? Access codes? The files listed at the top of the datasheet looked nothing like what would concern a prisoner interrogator. And why download scans of Power Plant’s fridge doojigger art?

Reef wanted to snatch away the datasheet that sat among a spaghetti serving of forgotten computer wires, but interfering with Intergalactic Protection business would drown him in more hot water than before. “Wiler, with all due respect, why is a prisoner interrogator downloading our”—he read the screen again—“chore schedule? Uniform sizes? Power usage?” His eyebrows would have frowned if they weren’t burned off. “Wiler, I’d say you were using this opportunity to spy on us, but you’re downloading the most ridiculously bland information we have to offer. I don’t know if you want our cafeteria menus as well, but Wednesday is Laughing Gas Lasagna Day.”

“With all due respect, Agent Reef, this is Intergalactic Protection interrogation protocol. Your eyes need not pry.”

“No, but, with all due respect, my head should. I’m unaware of any protocol that requires you to download any of that information. What do Ice Cream Headache and Scapegoat have to do with repairs on our septic tank? Well, they do clog a lot of things...”

Wiler stood slowly but deliberately. He stepped forward, his shoes clicking. He forced Reef back half a step and stood taller to block his view of the datasheet. He loomed almost a foot above Reef, his face as stony as each word he spoke. “Mr. Reef, with all due respect, if I must explain my every action, we will be here all day.”

Reef didn’t know if that was a condescending remark about his intelligence or maybe he was feeling tipsy. Either way, he should feel offended, but this guy’s opinion meant as much to him as designer jeans did.

Reef craned his neck up at the tall Terran and swallowed. “Wiler, with all due respect”—he stepped forward. His foot crunched on a broken hard drive—“I—I...Excuse me.” He lifted his foot, yanked the embedded hard drive out, and tossed it aside. “I know no reason why a prisoner interrogator needs to learn about our”—he checked the datasheet again—“most embarrassing karaoke concerts. You haven’t even interrogated our prisoners yet. And my version of ‘Should I Stay or Should I Go’ was passable.”

“And, Mr. Reef, with all due respect, I will interrogate.” Wiler’s eyes unfocused, as if he thought to convolute a story, twist it to make his actions appear relevant. “However, I must download the information you have collected about our prisoners to understand them. And sifting through every file is a slow process. I must have their information handy on my own equipment so that I may search thoroughly.”

“With all due re—Okay, enough all-due-respecting each other. My with-all-due-respect limit is seven. Anyway, I’m calling your superior. I’m verifying this information download and asking why you haven’t yet even met our prisoners. You’re acting totally against protocol.”

“Fine.” Wiler pinched the gabber from his ear and held it out. “Headquarters would love to hear how you have been imbibing liquor.”

“Wh...How—”

“I smell the wooden scent of whiskey when you exhale, Agent Reef. With all due respect. And I am still curious about your eyebrows.”

“Invard and my past, you and my drinking. Does everyone have something on me? Some crock’s just not fair!”

“Make the call, Agent Reef. I insist.”

Reef considered Wiler’s hand and the tiny bead inside its palm. He considered the risks. The only light panel in the room hovered down as if for a closer look. Reef’s eyes flitted up from the gabber.

“As I said, your drinking problem. My superior would love to hear about your imbibing Yo Nasty McNasty’s Pure Inebria.”

“He would? I mean, you do have that contract with Yo Nasty, so—”

“No, you miscreant, he would not!” Wiler snatched away the gabber and shoved it back into his ear. Good. Reef didn’t think it was sanitary to use someone else’s gabber on account of ear parasites. Also not good for his gag reflex.

Wiler wore a scathing look. “My superior would eject you from this ragtag group faster than you can say, ‘Bottoms up.’ Do not concern yourself. I will interrogate the prisoners in due time and have them securely transferred to the Leavenworth penitentiary. Now, Agent Reef, I have information to scan. With all due respect.” His predatory gaze lingered until he swung around to sit, bumping Reef back with his chair.

“Fine.” Reef retreated to the door, hardly able to see outside the datasheet’s focusing glow. He fixed Wiler with a stare and snapped a finger at the station’s interloper. “I’m watching you. Oh, make no mistake, I’m watching every...single—Crockity crock!” He tripped over a mislaid chair and slashed his calf. His leg jolted with a knifing twinge. “I really have to stop walking backward when I’m ranting.”

Chapter Nineteen: This Chapter Not to Be Taken on an Empty Stomach

“Ha. You got nothing. Wait.” Another wave of smoldering heat lapped Master Asinine’s face, so he dodged aside. He felt his cheek. No injury. Good. “Yeah. Nothing.”

He’d lost his remaining pistol. Rather, he’d tossed it across the hall in an overenthusiastic attempt for the big reveal of his secret weapon, but when he’d grabbed for that secret weapon, he’d realized it was still at home. Sucked to be him. So, fine, his pistol was across the hall and he’d left Old Vengeful the Necromantic Poodle back at the station.

Exhausted, Asinine swung around behind an orderly’s cart. He knew Fiery Angry Red Guy Who Insisted He Be Called Burnout was waiting, fists clenched but alit, flames crawling along his arms but for some reason not singeing his arm hairs.

“Burnout?” Asinine said. The hall sank into funereal silence, redolent of an acrid scent. “Let’s talk. It’s time we figured things out peacefully. You’re pushing your luck with the sprinkler system as it is. So what’ll it take to convince you to step aside and let me and my fantastic, dare I say it, unbelievable red-brown-and-darker-brown suit through to assassinate Legion?”

“No garish color combination will make me step aside.” Burnout shifted his weight with a position-revealing shush. “You’ve come close with this one, though.”

“That’s very nice of you to say. It’s made of nachos.” He snapped a piece off his lapel and munched. Spicy. He was glad he’d gotten the opportunity to change into a practical outfit on the way here, though he wasn’t sure Burnout appreciated waiting for him to straighten his salsa vest.

“So, now that we’re shooting the breeze—I dropped my gun, but otherwise I’d shoot it—tell me something. When we attacked your station with the genetic doohickeys, you were ready to murder Legion.” He coughed up a laugh and, oops, a diced tomato chunk. “You really had it out for him. Now you’re defending him. Why?”

“Seriously?”

Asinine shrugged. “I’m a curious guy. Just ask the clerk in the rat poison aisle at my local grocery store.”

“He saved my brother’s life. Gave him purpose. I looked into my brother’s eyes and saw that Legion had given him the chance to change the universe. Instead of feeling like a screw-up all his life—”

“Like me?”

“—Legion had helped him make a difference, to regard himself as a solution instead of a problem. I’d been looking at Legion the wrong way.”

“Sob story indeed.” Asinine searched the cart for something, any cool-looking, light-blinking, doodad-being object. The best he’d found was some weird shaped catheter—yes, on an orderly’s cart—or this...squirt bottle? He inserted the catheter into the bottle’s mouth. Squirty squirt. No. Not offensive enough. And it had sprayed some bloody, bloodlike blood on his face. The squirt bottle’s label said it was AB positive. If he were a vampire, he’d think this was the tastiest. But he wasn’t, so it tasted uggity.

Asinine chipped off a nacho and dipped it into his sour-cream-and-chives shoulder. He grabbed a mirror from the cart, and checked his sleeves, collar, cheese spread. Good choice on the color scheme. And the imported French chapeau was the centerpiece. He didn’t know what chapeau meant, but it looked like a hat.

The risen heat in the hallway flapped dryly against his face. Burnout’s doing. The Good Guy was angry, though the climb in temperature had stopped since he’d gotten sidetracked.

“Sooooo...you want to hear about my goose collection in an effort to keep you distracted?”

“No. I’m not interested in your ridiculous hobbies. In the least. Chew on that.”

“Oh. Then...” Asinine sprang up and squirted the catheter’s contents across the hall. “Chew on, drink, or otherwise ingest this!”

Burnout caught it in the face, reeled back with an arm blocking his eyes. Asinine pounced over the cart, kicked off it with a clatter, sailed through the air an instant before the wall beside him and the flowery tiles beneath him and the cart behind him burst aflame. Burnout was blind-firing. (Pun. Yes!)

Asinine collided with Burnout. Thrust an arm bone across his windpipe. Slashed up along his chin with an extra crispy sleeve. Broke apart a cheesy shingle of nacho against his forehead. Burnout fell back, flopped against the wall. Asinine landed over him. Rained blow upon blow upon olive on Burnout’s face. “Take this. And this. And some of this/ And...oh, you’ve been out for two punches already.”

Asinine knelt over Burnout’s rag-doll body. Blood followed the contours of the Good Guy’s scars from his nose, down the bruises of his face and cheek, and into the cracked grout between the floor’s tiles.

Now nothing stood between Asinine and Legion, his once-friend-twice-swimming-buddy-now-archenemy. Nothing.

Asinine retrieved his pistol and checked its charge level. Seven shots, six more than he needed to end Legion’s existence. Five more than he needed if he missed because he insisted on banking the shot off a wall.

He sauntered down the hall, stepped through the double l-doors, and turned. Now he stood in front of Legion’s room. His heartbeat sprinted. He held his breath. He reached into his side pouch and grabbed the self-inflatable Get Well Never balloon he’d brought as a gift. It was shaped like a bunny.

So many things he wanted to say. He wished Legion were awake for this. Then again, if he were, Asinine probably wouldn’t be here. Or maybe so. He had a bunion he needed lanced.

He stepped to the door that faded with a chime jingle. He didn’t enter. Not yet. His smile spread so broadly it tired his muscles. “So, Legion. My friend, my enemy, my frenemy. I wish I myself had delivered that vehicular right hook that landed you in this predicament, but I didn’t. So I’ll just have to deal the fatal blow. You see, I never would imagine it coming to this. You, lying in this hospital bed, defenseless. Me, at your bed, a pistol in hand, only seconds from finally liberating myself from this struggle, from the one person preventing me from ruling this galaxy. I would have waited an eternity for this.” He curled his fingers around his pistol’s grip. “It’s over, Legion.”

He stepped through...and saw the blanched expression on the face of the silver-haired woman cowering at the back of her bed, sheets up to her nose and crumpled in her shivering hand.

Asinine’s broad grin became a clumsy smile. “Oops. Sorry. Wrong room.” He shrank back into the hall and sidestepped to the next room. “So, Legion. My friend, my enemy...”

Chapter Twenty: Out of the Infinite Loop of Dictated Thinking

Ace Spandex awoke. He broke the interface with his recharging station, which was strange because he never before used a recharging station. Or maybe he was programmed not to remember. Either way, it was strange.

He grabbed his baseball cap and sprang from his chair. An alert had entered his mind. Intruders, this time not the flock of pigeons that—Oh, wait. It was.

Ace Spandex sat on the rock-hard chair and grumbled. Wait. Another alert. More intruders. Ace Spandex sprang from his seat again and searched the information. The station’s defenses had found a mil-tran in a nearby grid zone. A Fireball, B-Stratotanker. His friends had come! Hopefully Car Alarm wasn’t piloting. Ace Spandex’s ears weren’t cybernetic, and he wasn’t about to return for the add-on. He’d be busy enough uninstalling this software from his mind to keep from searching his database for Lord’s list of favorite laundry detergents. Starch Soft ranked first, but in second came—Wait, he didn’t care.

He checked over his shoulder. Against one wall, an assortment of viewscreens preoccupied Appliance. Something about Lord’s will, Ace Spandex was sure. Maybe fitting a new helmet over that mammoth ego Mechanism carried. Seriously, who else hung a life-sized portrait of himself in his bathroom? And where had he found a smoking jacket big enough to fit around that robotic suit?

Time to leave. This place smelled like the inside of a wine bottle, anyway. He checked his diagnostic screen. All Praise Mechanism had finished uploading and installing. He now admired Lord’s perfect genius at an altogether new level. Exactly the opposite of how he wanted to cap off his day.

He quietly slid toward the door, pressed its button, and...it disappeared. It disappeared! Was he permitted to leave? Had he finally exercised enough free will? He checked his programming for the answer, aaaannndddd...A PROBLEM HAS BEEN DETECTED AT MEMORY BLOCK 0X0000000CF displayed across his mind’s eye. Whatever. The slap across the face was a paperclip computer assistant who appeared and told him he was trying to write a letter, and would he need any help?

Ace Spandex stepped through the door. He stepped forward again and felt no intrusive program circumventing his free will. Yes! He raced down the hall.

He returned, entered Lord’s lab, and whipped his arm across a desk. Computer equipment clattered against the floor and shattered with a glassy outburst.

Heh. Smashy smashy, he thought, running off.

* * *

Excellent. Mechanism drummed his fingers together. He reveled in the message he had just received: Ace Spandex had been deployed as planned. Excellent indeed.

Chapter Twenty-One: Such Sweet Sorrow

December 4, 9102. 12:18 p.m. (Galactic Standard Time). Eight years ago.

A warning claxon? Sergeant Legion jumped away from his military leadership studies. Neck-deep in this stuff had kept him unaware of the real world for four hours.

He exited his barracks and searched the orange-lit hall for any disturbance. The last time a warning claxon had sounded inside Intergalactic Protection was...perhaps never? So it seemed downright preposterous to hear that high-pitched wail undulate here, interlaced with “Tonight’s episode of Cosmonaut Chimp has been brought to you by tonight’s episode of Cosmonaut Chimp.”

“Matross, come on!” Sopher hurried toward and past Legion. Legion hotfooted after him, and both hastened down the hall, Sopher with a finger to his gabber to hear the warning message sent from the base’s haunt control. “The claxon is coming from the primary hangar bay. And the gabber tells me Teletub of Butter now comes with no salt. We’ll pick some up on our way.”

“Right.” If Legion hadn’t forgotten his gabber in his living quarters, he would know this. He reached for his Marsek—it was missing! Where? With his gabber. Argh, how irresponsible. “Sopher, my gun. It’s in my living quarters.”

“What? You’re supposed to have it ready at all—”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. Spare me the handbook quote. You go ahead. My living quarters is only a couple of minutes away. I’ll pick up some butter and join you. We’ll spread it on muffins, waffles, and flax-seed bagels until we’re sick.”

“Hurry!” Sopher sprinted away down the hallway, his Alaphan necklace clutched in one hand. He darted around the corner with diminishing footsteps and was gone.

So was Legion, rounding a bend down the east wing of the hall between living quarters in the barracks, around the corner, left, second door. Right next to George’s, where a datasheet affixed to the door read, “Soldiers Wanted. Losers Need Not Apply, But This One Did, Anyway.” He growled and ripped off the datasheet. Sengalich’s handwriting. He knew, because “losers” was spelled with a u.

Whoa. He watched the Letchtech logo swirl nauseously on his—urk—l-door. He clenched shut his eyes—the claxon, he had to investigate the claxon—charged through the dodgy l-tech—grabbed his Marsek—his gabber—lunged out before the l-door reappeared. Good. The door hadn’t materialized into a gigantic wallaby as George had predicted it would, nay, insisted it should. In fact, George had tampered with the programming to do it but only managed an armadillo with titanium armor and a taste for eating cotton.

Legion barreled through bends and corridors and halls. He raced past some confused personnel and yelled, “Claxon in the primary hangar bay!” He wondered why they didn’t react until he realized he was passing through the Military for the Deaf wing.

He reached the primary hangar bay and planted himself beside the red-flashing door, against the wall. He deposited his gabber into the top of his antenna. The gabber conformed to his antenna’s shape. Its harp startup strummed.

“Control, acknowledge. Describe the situation in the primary hangar bay.”

“The primary hangar bay is the perfect place to hang your new Fintroy Edinburgh paintings, available at the East Pavilion on—”

“Gabber, acknowledge. Not that situation.”

“There is a starship theft in the primary hangar bay. Investigating are entities Corporal Lowensland, Corporal Sopher, and Staff Sergeant Garchel. That status message would have cost less when switching to AT Minus T long distance plan.”

“That wasn’t long distance.”

“Long is a relative term.”

Who would dare attack IP headquarters? Must be the Mercurian Elite Guard. Only they had the firepower. Legion had no protection, and in the hangar, cover lay more than forty yards away. Maybe he could use that butter placard. The ad said their butter could deflect a bullet. He didn’t even have Sopher’s necklace but...the necklace.

Alaphus.

Well, the necklace worked last time. Maybe prayer was worth a shot.

He shut his eyes. Hey, Alaphus, if You’re real, I could, uh...really use some cover. A shield, a flak vest, that placard. Whatever’s good with You. Oh, and give the Yurts a shot this year. Seriously. They’re an embarrassment. Thanks.

Why had the haunt control not mentioned the Mercurians? The Mercurians must have used masking technology. That meant Legion couldn’t ask about their positions. This situation was a crocking nightmare, worse than his dream of running away from evil mime/clown crossbreeds.

He swung around—the l-door vaporized—his Marsek swept the littered hangar bay—no Mercurians—Legion was blatantly in the open—no cover, easy target—lines of transports—found cover—Garchel in a pool of blood—checked his pulse—weak—alive, though—too bad—why was no one else here?—Blazing Gasoline was having a fire sale and didn’t notice the humor in that—thinking in clipped sentences—starship theft?—no transport was active—wait, farther ahead.

Legion rushed forward in a crouch—a shot blasted at him but hit an inactive charging robot. Legion ducked behind the robot. That shot could have eaten through his skull. And how had the shooter missed such a painfully easy target? Had...had his prayer worked? Impossible.

A starship sat on its platform, lit with energy and expelling smoky thruster fumes. Its thrusters ignited for takeoff. George stood on the access ramp and...another gunshot. A body fell, not a Mercurian’s. Clad in an IP uniform, he wore the markings of a corporal. What was happening? Where was Sopher?

“Sopher?” Legion called out. Nothing replied but an echo. “Sopher!”

Legion eyed George on the access ramp. George’s Marsek was smoking. What? Why would George shoot? No Mercurians were around—

No.

Legion swallowed hard. The gabber hadn’t reported any Mercurians because there weren’t any. George was behind the theft. Legion’s throat felt too cottony to let words out, his body too faintly awash to stand without leaning against a transport.

Forget his cover. He stood. “George? George, what’s going on?”

George shook backward. “Matross, what are you doing here?” He averted his eyes. “I’m sorry. I—I...I’ve had it. I’ve had enough of the ridicule, the insults, the wedgies. Actually, the wedgies aren’t bad when they’re not nuclear.”

“You mean atomic.”

“Nnnnooo, I think when they explode, they’re nuclear. But that’s upside the point. I’m sorry, Matross. I’m leaving on this thing. It lands on recharge robots, but I can play Joust on its pilot’s computer. Those two things might be related.”

Legion hurried to the fallen corporal who would have landed facedown on that recharge wire if George hadn’t shot off his face. Better keep that last part out of the eulogy.

Recognition shock-zapped Legion. He knew this corporal. He recognized the necklace’s brass chain around the corporal’s collar. He slid his gun into its holster and sidled up to the corporal to roll him over...but hesitated. He swallowed, shut his eyes. No, not him. It couldn’t be. Legion grabbed a tangle of the necklace. His thumb circled the bullet hole that pecked through the cross. “George, come down. Let’s talk.” Legion flipped the corporal over and...no. This couldn’t happen. He was holding what remained of Sopher. His lungs tugged.

Legion peered up, though so teary-eyed was his vision that he had trouble discerning that murderous, traitorous dog on the ramp. “George, you killed Sopher.” Snaps of sobs compressed his chest. This was his fault. No, no, no. His fault. He should have been prepared. He should have been here to back Sopher up. He should have refused the lentils-and-paisley lunch that now plucked the queasy strings of his stomach.

His brain tumbled with muddled thoughts. He could focus on nothing but that time at the Gharalgian embassy when he had saved George’s life. “George, we’re your friends, remember? Let’s work this out. You don’t have to run.”

“Not this time, Matross.” George stepped into the starship. The starship began rattling, quaking, tilting up to aim at the hangar bay doors. They weren’t open. His typical driving.

“George, come out here. Don’t leave me alone with this. Sopher was your friend. We’re both your friends, remember, George? Come down and we’ll work this out.”

The starship shot forward and erupted through the hangar bay doors. The doors shattered into a maw of misshapen metal. Their remains, twists of rubble, fell from the ceiling and slammed onto nearby starships. One spiral corkscrewed through a wing, emitting a sorrowful wail of torn titanium.

“We’re your friends, Lowensland!” That howl shredded Legion’s throat. Burning toxin curled through his heart. All this was his fault. “We were your friends.”

He stood stiffly and stared at the hangar bay garage door, now merely a serrated opening. He...he couldn’t believe...Why? How could Lowensland have done this? After everything they’d been through, after all the three of them had done...how?

“This rescue attempt has been orchestrated by your local library. Visit us and rack up some late fees today.” Medbots sped in. They swarmed around Legion and Sopher’s body. One who wore a Crash-Test Starships ad separated them, gunning orders at the others: “Stat, stat, stat!” Legion paid them no attention. They’d arrived too late.

Unable to stand, Legion still clutched Sopher’s Alaphan necklace. He’d held onto it this whole time. All his fault. “We were your friends.”

Chapter Twenty-Two: And the Rest Is History

Asinine had finished his monologue. For the seventh time. He couldn’t believe he’d gotten the wrong room that often. Things had grown repetitive, so when he’d found Legion, he had the tolerance for only the abridged version: “Rat-a-tat-tat, yo.”

Now Asinine stood in Legion’s hospital room, the correct one. Finally. He stood among an army of medical equipment, among their beeps, hisses, and chugs. Along one lime-green wall—which tasted less like limes and more like cobwebs—sat two wooden chairs, and behind Asinine was a curtained window that muffled the sunlight outside into a brownish glow.

Flanking Legion’s bed, Asinine’s confetti cannons had spent their goods: stationery snow and a few coiled snakes Schizophrenic had stuffed in. Not paper, either. Those snakes were the real deal. Oh, always ready with a good laugh, that Schizophrenic. A good laugh at Asinine’s expense, mind you, but as long as Schizophrenic stopped stringing him up, he’d consider it gentle-hearted humor.

“So, Legion.” Asinine grew an avid smile. “We meet again. You might be wondering what I have planned for you. Isn’t it obvious?” Asinine watched Legion’s breathing, his chest’s repetitive rise and fall accompanying rhythmic whispers of air. “Hey, I asked you a ques—Oh, yeah, you’re unconscious.”

He ripped out his last gun and traced a path over Legion’s temple. Even now, in a coma, the worry splotches on Legion’s Trioxidillian forehead shone in the soft light.

This would be earth shattering. At first, Asinine had considered popping the intravenous bag that fed Legion and watching the Good Guy starve, but that would take some time. A month or two. He didn’t have the patience to wait that out since he’d forgotten his crossword datasheet. Just as well. He’d gotten stuck on that thirteen-letter word for “leader of a criminal empire.” The toughest puzzles were always near the end.

Giddy delight lava-flowed through his body. He gripped the trigger of his pistol, made sure there remained at least one round. Blast a light-bullet into Legion’s head, the quick and easy method, or spear one through his stomach, let him bleed out? Asinine opted for the quick approach. After all, a nurse could stumble in and ruin his plan by electrical-taping Legion up.

Fine. The head. He checked the gun’s charge reader. He touched the barrel against Legion’s forehead. He held his breath and felt his sinuses tug. He snapped off a barbecue tangy nacho chip and spat one last flat “tee-hee.”

The beep-beep of the cramped room’s soulless machines took over the silence. They worked on Legion, kept him alive in futile iterations. They gasped his air, they prechewed his food, they fluffed his pillow. His sickly face looked withered, one tube up his nose and one stuffed into his mouth. Dried blood had encrusted around his antennae, and from his lips dripped white stuff. Unresponsive and sea green, motionless and dreamless, Legion might as well already be dead. If these machines only knew he had mere seconds left, they would probably not bother.

Something around Legion’s neck caught the light that glinted off Asinine’s pistol. Was that Sopher’s old Alaphan necklace? It dangled. That thing hadn’t left Legion’s neck since...

...since Sopher had died.

Asinine’s mind shot back to the past. His memory clouded everything in pale colors. The year was 9102. After murdering Sengalich and Hyvinix—shots right in their heads—Lowensland rushed to Intergalactic Protection’s primary hangar bay, a pistol in one hand and a datasheet loaded with military secrets in the other. He was ready to sell out to the highest bidder and fund a new criminal organization. He had met a pair of cronies, a Terran who insisted on calling him “sir” and a Virillian who insisted on calling him nothing, who knew a guy prepared to pay a ton of moolahs for these secrets. Lowensland would become chief of splendid stupendousness once he sold this datasheet, and that was splendid stupendous.

He rushed up the access ramp to his starship. He reached the top and—

“George.” A voice behind him. He knew the voice, knew the pattern of footsteps that dinged up the ramp behind him. After all, he played enough Lord of the Dance Dance Revolution to recognize the footsteps.

He whirled around. Sopher stood a few paces away. Lowensland winced. Why him? Wrong place, wrong time, wrong outfit to find him in. What story could he possibly feed Sopher so Sopher would let him stay in their bowling league?

“George, what are you doing?”

“Hey, buddy. I’m not doing anything out of the ordinary right now.” Wait. Reverse psychology might work. “I mean...I am doing something out of the ordinary right now.” Yeah, that’d convince him.

“George, Garchel’s sitting in a lump on the ground. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing. In fact, if you think about how many people want to throttle him, it’s fantastic. But why are you stealing this starship?”

“Maybe I’m just...taking it for a walk.”

“And maybe you’re stealing it.

Quick. He had to think. ”And maybe I’m just taking it for a walk.” Your move, Sopher.

“Okay, we’re going in circles here.”

“Or are we...going in circles?”

Sopher reached out. “I’m sorry, buddy. You can’t go off site with datasheets. I can’t let you leave. Let’s grab a drink, talk this through.”

Lowensland looked from Sopher to Sopher’s hand to the datasheet in his own hand to the other datasheet in his back pocket. He sprouted a phony expression, one that would persuade Sopher as much as if Lowensland wore kabuki makeup and explained himself in a fan dance. Actually, maybe he should have given that a shot.

Lowensland whipped the datasheet behind his back. “Oh, these things? Cosmonaut Chimp episodes. You know how I love that crazy canine.”

“Primate.”

“Prime seven, you mean. Tonight’s episode marks the return of Insanity Manatee. I do not want to miss that must-see event.”

In the distance, the hangar bay’s l-doors dissipated into molecules

Sopher lunged for the datasheet, but Lowensland brought his other hand forward, the one holding the pistol. He tried to deflect Sopher, keep him away, flee into the starship, escape. “Sopher, just leave. Please.” He grunted when Sopher grappled down on him, on the trigger—a shot blasted out and struck a recharge robot. Sopher twisted Lowensland into a stranglehold he knew how to escape but, dag, he liked the lightheaded buzz. It reminded him of his decision-making process.

“George, let Matross and me help. We’re your friends. We’ll fix this.”

“It’s too late.” Lowensland twisted away, but Sopher grabbed his hand and—

Boom!

Huh? Boom? Sopher released the gun, released Lowensland, backed away. Lowensland opened his mouth to offer one last good-bye before...

No. The right side of Sopher’s face was gone. Lowensland choked with cold shock and watched the body drop, sail down, dip in a spread eagle Lowensland had tried at the station’s pool in the no-dive zones. Sopher thudded onto a thick recharge wire. No!

Matross appeared, rushed to the body, rolled it over. His face melted into a look of despondence, then friendship-turned-to-hatred. Lowensland would never forget that look. The short conversation that ensued passed in such a blur that Lowensland didn’t know what he was talking about. But he never knew what he was talking about.

Lowensland dropped the second datasheet, his treason note typed on it. It fluttered to the ground. He escaped into the starship, his eyes soaked, his sinuses plugged but not because of ragweed season. He immediately launched the pistol at a chair and bellowed at the gun, screaming for it to undo its terrible act. He spilled onto the floor and beat his fists against the starship’s padded wall. On a suckitude scale, this had shot straight to ten. He revved up a snotty sniffle that sounded as if he were chewing into a moist apple. “Control, acknowledge. Let’s get out of Dodge. And load up the latest Cosmonaut Chimp.”

Outside, Matross screamed, “We’re your friends!”

Asinine’s mind returned to now, today, 9110. His eyes were teary with nostalgic grief. His old buddy peacefully slept in the hospital bed, sinking into a nonmedicated death. Asinine knew this was his fault even if he hadn’t put Legion here himself.

“You’re right. You’re my friend.” Asinine slipped his pistol into its holster. He stepped forward alongside the bed and squeezed Legion’s fingers, felt the dehydrated skin of Legion’s palm, the pads at the fingertips that felt like a rubbery wet suit. His hand lingered. Unaware he was doing it, Legion tapped their fingertips together twice.

“You’re too good to go out like this.” His fingers lingered on Legion’s. “Get well, friend.”

He approached the door but paused for a final look at Legion. Why couldn’t things be like before? Because Asinine had dug himself in too deep.

“Gabber, acknowledge. Call entity Brick.” He left. “Brick, the funding of Legion’s medical expenses? Whatever SIPMA needs, take it from my personal funds. That’s right. I don’t care how disad...disadventurous...disadvanta...Whatever you just said, I don’t care. Just do it. What do you mean, sheep’s blood isn’t an acceptable currency?”

Chapter Twenty-Three: Technology Is Mean

Finally the datasheet lit from its idle green to its regular opaque white. The information had finished downloading. Ah. The Good Guys’ entire database. He drummed his fingers on his nametag, hitting the w in Wiler. He smiled, having no control over the corners of his lips, and let out a slight chuckle that rebounded off the storage room’s blank enclosure. He followed that up with hand wringing. Yes, hand wringing.

The datasheet blurted a clown’s laugh. “Hey, hey, kids. Now that this download has finished, why not have it imprinted onto datachip at Memory Melee?”

“Quiet, datasheet, or I shall rewrite you as...” He stopped. No, a datasheet lay at the bottom of the technological chain. Curses. “You win this round, datasheet.”

He now had all the information he needed. He pressed the deactivation icon in the datasheet’s upper right corner. The datasheet darkened to clear red and lost its rigidity.

Now, to the holding cells to find his quarry.

Chapter Twenty-Four: Now...About That Toast

Power Plant blasted the closest security drone with a bolt of light to shut it up about last night’s weather. Whether it had rained, snowed, or hailed bazooka fire yesterday, he couldn’t care less—Wait a second. Bazooka fire sounded awesome. He should set that up on Jefftaria.

“Power Plant!” Pincushion tried to yank him behind a brick building. Power Plant dodged his hand, not about to waste an opportunity to use his ultimate death-dealing move: he’d taken off his boot and flung it.

Several drones noticed him, took flight, buzzed out on paper-thin wings. Power Plant would also super-move them. Well, one of them until he reloaded.

“Do or dies time,” Power Plant said when a drone grabbed his blond hair along the scalp. It began cutting with a whirring saw. Shallow cuts, but man did he want to jump off a building just to end the razor-sharp pain. He clubbed a fist into the drone, dropped his laser shield against a curb—useless in this fight—gathered energy between his palms.

The energy spewed forth. Slid through the scalp cutter. A steaming shell now clung to his head. Seared against his skin. Another drone grabbed his impact shirt, plunged its pincers through. It asked him how he felt about today’s stock market. He didn’t care about the shirt ripping, but he’d rather die than discuss stocks.

Pincushion screened his eyes from the sun’s baking glare. “Power Plant—”

“Name’s Je—Wait, that work, too.”

“—turn this way, brother!”

Power Plant spun around. Pincushion rolled on his spikes at him, brought his laser shield up—bashed it across the drone after sleeplessly missing three times. The drone skidded along the ground, clapped a spark. Died with twitching pincer legs. Despite his bad knee, Power Plant rushed to it, crashed a heel down, and dug that heel into its stomach. “Owned wit’ a capital p.”

Pincushion reeled his laser shield around his back, ready for a hefty swing. Another drone buzzed closer. He smacked the drone away, cracking its casing.

Power Plant ducked under a building’s awning for shade, the sun’s glare too much. “Control, aknowledges. Contacts entity Franchise.” With a click and a beep, the gabber went about searching for Franchise’s signal. “And finds me a soda machine. I’s needs sugar.”

The connection went through. “H-holy stupendous. Jeffy? I need help.” Franchise’s voice cracked. Was making toast that hard? “I’ve got six security drones and fourteen cats swarming the starship cabin, and Mabel’s been asleep since four o’clock.”

“She needin’ her beautyings sleep. She’ll wakes up in mebbe July.” Power Plant grabbed a drone and swung it around at a second. The two rammed together.

“G-get me out of here. These th-things are peeling apart the computers. I haven’t-t even had a chance to f-figure out what to do with our power s-situation.”

“Na biggie.” Power Plant loosed a torrent of energy from his lean hands. It popped through the drone he held, spewing mechanical innards across the awning’s vinyl.

“And th-they’re also ripping through your s-seven-legged bug collection.”

Wait, what? His seven-legged bug collection, the largest collection of seven-legged bugs he owned? He’d spent hours plucking the eighth leg off each of those dead arachnids. How dare those drones? New resolve burned his blood. “I’s better not finds a collections o’ six-leggeds bugs in there.”

A bellow gathered strength and rocketed at Power Plant from the buildings above. Now what? “Hey, piss wizards, you ready to give up yet or should I keep chucking volcano excrement at you excrement volcanoes?” shouted that two-headed monster. Power Plant didn’t dignify him with eye contact. The first head looked uglier than the next, which looked uglier than the first, which looked uglier than the last. As impossible as that sounded, the two were involved in an endless cycle of ugly.

Power Plant checked Pincushion’s situation. Dude lay sprawled against a storm drain, handling four drones that tug-of-warred with his short hair. He could take those things with one squeaky knee tied behind his spikes. The drones had the same idea: they’d wrenched his leg back.

At the foot of Schizophrenic’s building, a garage door rattled. Something jammed up against it, then something else. A tremor of chinks and clangs finally ruptured forth. The garage door faded. And out poured—holy crock, Power Plant almost tripped, almost forgot his footing—out poured a tidal wave of security drones. Hundreds!

Power Plant gushed into the air, glided onto B-Stratotanker’s nose cone. He found a good line of sight to that dual-headed endless cycle of unsightly face. The two heads bickered between each other. The pair of them needed more than a little couple’s therapy because, the way Power Plant saw it, divorce was not an option.

Below, the deluge of drones covered Pincushion. He maintained the fight, but in moments the drones overwhelmed him, covered him, smothered him to the pavement.

Another boulder slapped the nose cone inches from where Power Plant stood. He didn’t flinch. Maintained his ground instead. Brought his palms together. Collected light energy between them.

He widened the gap between his palms. Collected more energy in a static-stuffed ball that crackled, raised the hairs on his arms. Another boulder crunched onto the windshield. Didn’t shatter it but definitely ruined its resale value. Power Plant tightened his arms. Hands glowed with energy. Strained to contain—urk—the power that wanted to spew out, explode...everywhere. Muscles...ready to...burst.

Every single ligament...shrieking painfully. He coughed. Blood leaked from his nose. “Hey...two-heads beast o’ ugly.”

The boulder chucking stopped. “What do you want, dipsqueak pipstick?”

“Catch.” Expelled the deluge of energy! Power Plant shot back from recoil, deflecting the blast only slightly. Where Schizophrenic stood, chunks of the building’s corner ruptured into gravel. Boulders spilled out, crunched down the wrecked corner into the street, flattened a signpost. The hailstone destruction caught almost a dozen drones within it.

The train-built, train-wrecked Schizophrenic keeled back and twisted onto the rooftop surface. He recovered and scurried toward an area that survived the blast. A few seconds passed. Then Righty said, “How do you expect us to catch that?”

Lefty snorted. “Rhetorical, you secondhand brain. Rhetorical.”

* * *

Ace Spandex burst onto the sunny street. His programming informed him that the Good Guys had parked only a block away, so he checked left, right, and headed in the appropriate direction. Indeed he smelled B-Stratotanker’s foggy exhaust even now. At this foot speed of 9.4 miles per hour, he would arrive in less than one hundred seconds. He amped his speed to twelve miles per hour, a speed unattainable for most Terrans. So make that eighty-one seconds. Excellent programming by Lord. Maybe one day he’d find the shut-up-and-move function because he was thinking about Lord’s superiority way too much.

Combat clattered ahead. Security drones had been deployed. Ace raced around a wooden kiosk—where he found the familiar sight of the Fireball. He stepped onto a raised median. A security drone ignored him. He aimed a hand, issued a mental command, and the drone flopped onto a bench, not even twitching in its final moment. Ace Spandex spotted Pincushion, who lay against a rusted storm drain fighting an army of drones. Ace killed the drones with his deactivation spell. Pincushion rattled out from underneath, grabbed one drone, whipped it down, then another. He bled from hundreds of cuts that interlaced his impact suit and exposed skin. His eye had blackened, and bruises purpled his body. His fingers couldn’t close properly. His boots were in tatters, and the drones had ripped out his hair in patches.

Ace Spandex was already scanning the starship that had gained a few new holes. Hmph. So this was how the Good Guys treated their starships while he was gone? And who’d have to repair this thing? Him...within a probability of 98.7 percent. Sucked to be Mr. Fixit Cyborg, didn’t it?

Time to stop this damage. Ace Spandex raised his hand again and, as if shooting photons from his fingertips (although that was Power Plant’s hyperability, in wavelengths between 564 and 589 nanometers), he commanded the security drones to cease tearing apart the starship. If they stabbed even one more hole in it, he’d revoke their media input functions. See if they had something to chitchat about after that. Probably about how he’d revoked their media input functions.

The drones stopped. In a unison that looked poetically flawless—though Ace Spandex admitted a one-millionth of a second of fluctuation for receiving signals based on their varying distances—most drones dropped from the starship. Their brittle shells shattered against the street’s pavement and the curb. Ace strode onto one that landed 1.296 feet from him and crushed it under three-hundred eight pounds of pressure and three ounces of grape bubblegum. Another 924 drones littered the area.

Per Ace Spandex’s command, those drones that still functioned went to work repairing and welding the injuries they’d made to the starship.

Though Ace Spandex only saw Pincushion, he sensed Power Plant, Franchise, and Mabel nearby, along with fourteen of Mabel’s cats, three on the wing...now four with the one Power Plant chucked out, the one he chided for “hacking up hairballs all over his boot’s personal space.”

“Ace? Is that you, or am I finally falling asleep?” Pincushion’s voiceprint. Ace Spandex recognized it even without matching its pitch, apa, and resonation to those in his files. With a look of caution and eyes that stuttered awake, Pincushion approached. Why was he wearing two security drones on his spikes? Ace Spandex wouldn’t ask. That didn’t need entering into his database. Of course, neither did the list of Lord’s superior qualities, but lo and behold, there it was.

Pincushion shambled lopsidedly onto the street’s median and reached out to the metal plate covering Ace Spandex’s temple. “What have they done to you?”

Ace Spandex shirked away. “I’m not sure. Nothing about my trip here computes, but my database says I needed to replenish over one liter of blood and my heart rate had lowered to twenty-three to twenty-five beats per minute, but that depends on which minute. So, before I died, Lord replaced some vital tissue that had expired.” Pincushion’s mouth bobbed open with confusion, so Ace Spandex said, “Uhm, I mean, wow, I have no idea. And I don’t have a new database chockfull of Mechanism’s disgusting habits uploaded into my brain. Now let’s board that starship. My scanner says it’s way under its recommended charge. I’ll fix that if you find a place for me to insert my tongue.”

Pincushion stammered out his words in insomniac syllables: “You’re delusional. Let’s bring you home, brother.”

“You’re welcome for the save, by the way.” He figured he’d circumvent Pincushion’s next statement. After all, there existed an 88.1205 percent chance of a thanks coming. And if it turned out none was coming, well...it was the polite thing, anyway. “Let’s get on that starship. I really need new gum.”

“Hey,” came a gruff roar out of Lefty’s toothpick-tweezing mouth. He snorted. “I’m not finished yet. I still have a ton of names to yell at you. Spam clusters. Crocktasticus. Circus freak kings. Walking mad libs. Wait, that’s Scapegoat.”

For some reason, Ace Spandex received a signal: “Project Ace Spandex, activated.”

Chapter Twenty-Five: The Perfect Crime

He flicked his Wiler nametag between his fingers when he entered the cellblock, a tiny space with three holding cells no larger than his private bathroom. An inadequate light panel revealed the stone-bricked room and the drawing of a stick figure with an arrow pointing to it from the words “Stoopid Prisner.” This must have been that boor Power Plant’s artwork. Before that ill-brained buffoon, no one could have guessed genetics could devolve any further. Yet here was society’s example of someone who considered the culmination of technology to be frozen dinners.

The hunchbacked Scapegoat sat in one holding cell on a flimsy cot, drooling into one hand and using the other to excavate for...oh, the hunchback picked it out. Looked like a big one. And now it was smeared on the wall.

He flicked the w of his nametag again. The hunchback could rot for all he cared. The other prisoner, however, concerned him. Ice Cream Headache. With but a thought, this prisoner immobilized any target in sweet, sugary anguish. Usually a chocolate flavor, but she was branching into fruitier tastes. Maybe she should master lemon meringue. Ironically, she was lactose intolerant. Pity.

He flicked his nametag again and approached the moldy holding cell that divided him from the prisoner by a thread-thin, ionizing shield screen. There he paused, watching as the shield screen spilled prisoner data across its surface. The data constantly switched—rap sheet, physical characteristics, hyperability information, bowel contents, level of displeasure at having her bowel contents analyzed—rolling through a series of topics.

The prisoner looked up. Her downcast face remained unchanged though her voice held obvious hope: “Hello.”

He disposed of the Wiler nametag. And smiled. “Oh. Hello.”

* * *

Reef stepped into Legion’s office where Invard still sifted through monotonous data work. Invard’s tolerance for boredom knew no bounds. Reef would have called it quits after a few accounting spreadsheets or an episode of Psychologists of Adventure, but Invard could probably endure a full season of that show without breaking a sweat and somehow still have room for a reality program or two.

So many spreadsheets infused the room with the smell of plastic. “Hey, Invard.” Reef strode over strewn datasheets, around a storage cabinet, into the center of the room where the IP workhorse squatted among piles of who knew what. Maybe he had immersed himself in their toilet logs. Just as well. Someone somewhere had to care.

Invard noticed Reef treading over the large piles of datasheets. Reef unintentionally toppled one over, which made Invard pound the carpet with a red fist. “Nice move. I’d arranged those according to educational value.” Reef couldn’t bring himself to sympathize.

Reef finally reached Intergalactic Protection’s boredom warrior. “I’ve been investigating this Wiler. What he’s doing doesn’t add up.”

Invard combed his suit down, careful to smooth his breast pocket. “If Intergalactic Protection sent him, that means he’s the best, you can believe that.”

“You see, despite that stale catchphrase of yours, I can’t believe that. For one, he told me his shoe size is eleven. No way are that guy’s feet anything bigger than a nine-and-a-half size. Someone’s got shoe envy.”

“Is that it?” Invard ruffled a datasheet before activating it.

“(I wear a size ten.) Anyway, he also said he was transferring the prisoners to Leavenworth. I checked where that was because I’m curious and I want to nail you two for anything.” Reef paused to make sure he had the toilet slogger’s attention. No. Toilet slogging had his attention. Reef snapped his fingers in the man’s face. “Hey. Anyway, Leavenworth was a prisoner outpost for hardened, non-hyperability-based murderers, not the caliber for these two lummoxes.”

“Was?” Invard had caught that key word. He rose from his kneeling position.

“It was decommissioned twelve years ago. Deemed too costly. Now it’s a transit license bureau. Same general ambiance there. That’s the second thing. The third? He was never a prisoner interrogator. He was an investigator like you. Doesn’t that mack you off that you’re slogging through toilet money when he could be? You shot yourself in the foot when you took this job.”

“Keep going.” Invard drummed his fingers on the storage cabinet. He evidently longed to get back to how costly last month’s toilet leak was.

“And the last thing? Wiler was active until four hours ago.”

“Four hours ago?” Invard stopped drumming his fingers. Reef had finally found something more intriguing than toilets. And he’d just thought that with a straight face.

Reef may have sounded easygoing about the whole affair, maybe even looked the part consider his missing eyebrows, but it was fake composure. Inside, his head flashed with every heartbeat. Mostly from the whiskey but also from the situation. And the shot of bourbon for lunch. “Four hours ago, someone found him strangled to death. I’m impressed. The murder weapon was a sticky-note necklace weaved together to have the tensile strength of rope. Must have learned that from some ancient family hand-me-down secret.” His eyes unfocused. “Huh. I should have opened my case with that one.”

Invard shot forward. He bumped the cabinet but paid no mind. “Intergalactic Protection interrogator Wiler is dead?”

“You can believe that.” Reef pointed in the direction of the cellblock. “That man interrogating those prisoners...finally...is not Wiler.” He repositioned his finger. “Actually, the cellblock is that way.”

Pride tingled in Reef for proving something to Invard about the Good Guys, for proving to himself his own worth in handling—

Invard dashed away, kicking up a pile of datasheets and spilling through the swath. Reef followed, and the two of them bolted out of the lobby building, down the street, and into the building that contained the cellblock. Reef elbowed the door release and the door slid aside. Scapegoat sat in the first holding cell. Reef’s heart stopped barraging his breast. Thank his good luck that—

Wait. Ice Cream Headache’s holding cell. Empty. Reef blinked to clear his vision, but it was still empty. “No!” He clobbered a fist into the shield screen of Scapegoat’s cell, which nipped at his knuckle with a crackle.

“Control, acknowledge. Locate entity Wiler. Don’t allow him to leave. And I don’t want to hear advertisements about not allowing people to leave.”

“Too bad,” the haunt control said, “because you’re getting one. Watch for Locksmith, Stocksmith, and Barrelsmith’s new padlocked padlocks on sale wherever you buy ammunition supplies. And now back to our status report. Entity Wiler is off station. This status report was brought to you by Locksmith, Stocksmith, and Barrelsmith’s, whose new padlocked padlocks are on sale wherever you buy ammunition supplies.”

Reef kicked the wall. Crock!

Scapegoat roused in his holding cell. “Ice friend Cream somewhere taken Headache Wiler away, yes yes.”

Invard was already on the gabber with IP headquarters, hand-ironing his suit jacket. He shot Reef a what-did-he-say grimace, to which Reef responded with a no-one’s-ever-figured-out-just-ignore-him-and-he’ll-go-back-to-picking-his-nose frown.

Reef was curious. “Ask IP what his shoe size is.”

Invard swallowed. He’d gotten through. “Intergalactic Protection agent Sheffield? Intergalactic Protection agent Invard here. That Wiler that IP sent. Did anyone check his file?” He waited, but soon his face stretched long with confusion that Reef had observed only on Power Plant after hearing why fire was bad and that he was grounded. “You didn’t send him, I can believe that? So who did you send? Nobody?”

“What?” Reef stepped forward. “They sent nobody? But who came? Who would want to infiltrate Station One? Who can? Asinine is stupider than a goat, so Wiler can’t have been a Bad—Oh.”

Reef fell. He fell hard against the refectory table, which upended. He and the table both toppled onto the floor, but he didn’t pay attention to the stone-smacking shock that hosed through his backside. He focused on nothing, only whispered weakly.

“Mechanism.”

Invard covered his gabber’s mouthpiece and gawked at Reef. “Huh, you can believe that?”

Chapter Twenty-Six: Hidden in Plain Sight

Mechanism had fifteen minutes ago boarded his civ-tran. After he had released Headache, he and the crony had departed hastily out a side door where he had parked this obsolete piece of bric-a-brac, a Letchtech Rapidstar, its controls scratchy and dusted. How positively horrible a contraption. The civ-tran lacked even seat warmers.

Headache now sat in the backseat. With her hyperability dampener removed, she exhaled wintry condensation vapor. The civ-tran attained escape velocity from Station One, and she watched out the window like a bored child on a long trip to Grandma’s house. The stars stretched into entrails of light across space. Now Mechanism and Headache flew en route to a war-tran more powerful than this civ-tran, something compact but capable of faster interstellar travel. Voyaging home would otherwise take eons and, as it stood, the gaps between bathroom breaks were dreadfully unbearable.

Mechanism ruminated over the mastery of his plan: it was merely a matter of strolling into Station One, copying the Good Guys’ database, liberating Headache, and leaving. Simple. After all, who knew what he looked like underneath his robotic suit?

“Thanks,” Headache said. She released her inertia field and leaned forward to rub an ache out of her knee. “I mean, for coming to free me. I thought I’d never leave.”

“You should not thank me.” Mechanism clicked off the air conditioner and its accursed gushing noise. He let the musty transport coast. Now was the perfect opportunity. They had flown far enough from witnesses, so he could talk freely. He could also drop this Wiler charade. That hapless victim was dead, and that origami book had helped create his execution weapon. “Control, acknowledge. Decrease speed to zero knots.”

“Zero knots,” the haunt control said. “Such an easy speed at which to enjoy—”

“A nice ride home without disturbances from the haunt control whose guts I shall tear out.” He thumped his fist on the dashboard computer.

“Exactly what I was thinking.” The haunt control shut its nuisance maker.

Headache looked confused—why stop in dead space?—but let it slide. “Anything in this transport to eat? I’ve had nothing since yesterday but salted paste.”

“You have left me no choice, Headache. With your capture, you jeopardized everything I have striven to attain. And you have gunk in your hair.”

Headache felt around and found the brownish gunk. She peeled part of it out. It stretched far, so she wrapped it around her slender finger and took another length. “That doesn’t exactly solve the food situation. Unless this gunk is peanut butter.”

“Let me ask you, Headache: do you think I entered an enemy base simply to help you escape?”

“About that, I meant to ask why you left Scapegoat behind.” She made a show of searching the backseat as if Scapegoat hid under the cushions. Truth was that that cookie-doughy fool could not hide under a pile of mattresses.

Mechanism revealed a small console with several buttons, something he had fashioned from a child’s toy. It also droned four customizable phrases such as “Eat my shorts.” How inaccurate. One could not eat shorts. Well, technically, he supposed...

“You placed my operation at risk, Headache, forcing me to plan your escape. They would have eventually broken the telepathy screen I had installed in the microchip in your head. What you know must remain safe.” He wagged the gadget in his hand. “You do remember the microchip, do you not? It is the one that, when receiving the proper signal, will electrify your brain. My signals to it would not function inside the jurisdiction of Station One’s haunt control. Therefore, I had to remove you.”

“The microchip...signals...Wait. What?”

“Your death comes with purpose, Headache.” He squeezed the button—

“Butt licker,” the box said. Curses. Absurd child’s toy. He tried another button.

Thousands of volts shot through Headache’s brain. Her face hardened. Her body locked into cement rigidity. Brain cells popped. Veins ruptured. Her mouth clamped shut, her upper teeth biting through her lower lip. Foamy drool frothed from her mouth with blood. Oh, imagine Headache’s headache. The great Frederick Snogbottom would look upon Mechanism proudly.

The torrent ceased. Headache slackened against the backseat like a cheap ventriloquist’s dummy. Her head lolled to the side. Her breathing stopped, but her eyes remained bulged out. A tiny bit of her head smoked where the microchip hid. The transport puffed with the scent of her long, burned hair.

“I regret that your services are no longer needed.” Mechanism leaned over and opened the backseat door. The vacuum dampeners maintained the transport’s air quality for the time Mechanism took to tip Headache’s body out. Ice crackled along Headache’s skin as she sailed away into infinity.

Mechanism shut the door and commanded the transport to resume its course. He also commanded it to silence its ads else the jingles would replay in his head for the entire trip. Leave it to these things to forget his commands.

THE END

NEXT BOOK:

Master Asinine completes his collection of hugs!

About That Guy Whose Book You Read Once

Liam Gibbs knew he was destined to write at age four, when he authored a breathtaking account of a cow who ate grass. The bovine saga failed to catch the public’s eye but earned the budding author parental acclaim. Since those early times, he’s gone on to write the novella Not So Superpowered and humorous articles for various magazines.

A twenty-year veteran of the brutal world of hand-to-hand comic book fandom, Gibbs cut his teenage teeth on titles such as Spider-Man, X-Men, New Warriors, and other Marvel comics.

Gibbs graduated college with a degree in professional writing, which included classes on fiction writing and story structure. He lives on the balmy shores of Ottawa, Canada, where he relaxes by watching staggeringly awful horror and science fiction movies. A health and fitness nut, he shoots lasers from his eyes, uses the word exclusive incorrectly, and once wrestled an exclusive brontosaurus. True story.

That one time I was deep in thought and—Hey, is that ketchup on the ceiling?

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Table of Contents

The Story So Far...

Available on the Author’s Super-Awesome Site

Other Stuff the Author Spewed Out

Your Favorite Table of Contents

Book 9: Those We Left Behind

Appendices

Chapter One: From Whence We Came

Chapter Two: Pies PIs

Chapter Three: Cause for Celebration

Chapter Four: Mining Expedition up the Nasal Grotto

Chapter Five: Rise and Shine

Chapter Six: Trouble’s A-Brewin’, and Trouble Sucks

Chapter Seven: Can’t Work with ’Em, Can’t Work without ’Em

Chapter Eight: Like an Internal Affairs Enema but without the Thrill of Conquest

Chapter Nine: Prisoner by Programming

Chapter Ten: Whole Grain or White...or Does It Matter?

Chapter Eleven: Unleash the Hounds

Chapter Twelve: Get a Move On

Chapter Thirteen: Taste the Rainbow

Chapter Fourteen: Should Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot

Chapter Fifteen: Search and Annoy

Chapter Sixteen: And One and Step and Two and Dip...

Chapter Seventeen: Tea, Crumpets, and Cat Darts—Invitation Only

Chapter Eighteen: None of Your Business

Chapter Nineteen: This Chapter Not to Be Taken on an Empty Stomach

Chapter Twenty: Out of the Infinite Loop of Dictated Thinking

Chapter Twenty-One: Such Sweet Sorrow

Chapter Twenty-Two: And the Rest Is History

Chapter Twenty-Three: Technology Is Mean

Chapter Twenty-Four: Now...About That Toast

Chapter Twenty-Five: The Perfect Crime

Chapter Twenty-Six: Hidden in Plain Sight

About That Guy Whose Book You Read Once