Man Versus Machine Part 1 of 1
Date: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00
Publisher: Plot Device Publishing

In a Galaxy Far, Far AwRy

Book 14: His Kingdom Come Part 3: A Wolf in Sheep's Armor Part 2: Man Versus Machine Part 1 of 1

Liam Gibbs

IN A GALAXY FAR, FAR AWRY book 14: HIS KINGDOM COME PART 3: A WOLF IN SHEEP'S ARMOR PART 2: MAN VERSUS MACHINE PART 1 OF 1
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: 978-1777139674
First printing: April 2021

{ PLOT DEVICE PUBLISHING }

Your Favorite Table of Contents

At the Front

Other Books in the Series

Book 14: Man Versus Machine Part 1 of 1

Chapter One: While You Were Away...

Chapter Two: Instrument of Destruction

Chapter Three: Maybe There's a Bicycle around Somewhere

Chapter Four: About as Fun as That Weird Bump on the Back of Your Skull

Chapter Five: Down with the Establishment

Chapter Six: Kill the Competition

Chapter Seven: Nobody Likes the Office Kiss-Up

Chapter Eight: Why the Doorbell Should Be a Joy Buzzer

Chapter Nine: This'll Guarantee Me a Raise

Chapter Ten: Dad, the Important Thing is I'm Okay

Chapter Eleven: It's All in the Wrist

Chapter Twelve: With All His Wits about Him

Chapter Thirteen: What's with This Barrel, and Why Am I Dressed like a Fish?

Chapter Fourteen: Et tu, Number A?

Chapter Fifteen: Welcome Home

Chapter Sixteen: Some Assembly Required

Chapter Seventeen: Thanks for Asking

Chapter Eighteen: You'll Need a Sneeze Guard

Chapter Nineteen: Hear Ye, Hear Ye, Pustules of Thought

Chapter Twenty: Defense Mechanism

Chapter Twenty-One: The Maid-o-Tron Is Gonna Flip Its Crock When It Finds This Mess

Chapter Twenty-Two: Electrified

Chapter Twenty-Three: No More Mr. Nice God

Chapter Twenty-Four: A Slaughter is a Good Enough Ice-Breaker

Chapter Twenty-Five: The Way Things Used to Be

Chapter Twenty-Six: Moving Day

At the Back

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.

Available on the Author's Super-Awesome Site

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

Book 1: Serial Fiction Sideshow

Book 2: Home Sweet Home Invasion

Book 3: Technophobia

Book 4: Armageddon Trigger Finger

Book 5: The Genetic Equation

Book 6: Power Tool

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: To Wake the Deactivated

The Story So Far

Please visit the In a Galaxy Far, Far AwRy site for all these free e-books and 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

In a Galaxy Far, Far AwRy

Book 14: His Kingdom Come Part 3: A Wolf in Sheep's Armor Part 2: Man Versus Machine Part 1 of 1

Chapter One: While You Were Away...

February 7, 9110. 10:13 a.m. (Galactic Standard Time).

"Legion?" An icy shiver played Good Guy Ace Spandex's spine as if his vertebrae were piano keys. He stepped forward, knocking aside some boxes, two bags of foam popcorn, and a dead rat. Make that dead rats. And one in its death throes. Someone from Millie's Diner and Crematorium should pay this place a visit and save on their overhead costs.

Ace stared down at Good Guy leader Lieutenant Colonel Legion's feet, up at the tiny Dalmatian splotches that painted his green-skinned, Trioxidillian forehead, worry splotches that grew on members of his race. The twin antennae that speared out of his flesh-covered ears, the nostrils without a nose, the hairless body. Was this really Legion? Legion was supposed to be comatose with a cracked spine due to being struck by a runaway starship, not here. He was missing the necklace he always wore of his deity Alaphus, testament to his religion. Ace poked his shoulder. Legion responded with a wince and a stare that said Ace shouldn't ask for more vacation time ever.

Military offshoot the Good Guys and criminal organization the Bad Guys waged a long-standing war until yesterday when former Bad Guy agent Mechanism defected and launched his own plan to cleanse the solar system of Renovodomus and then the galaxy of Stratus Cloud. The robotic-armored egomaniac convinced a small army—collectively called his Mechaknights but individually given number/letter codes and clad in similar robotic armor—to act as his enforcers. He first took prisoner all the Bad Guys on their headquarters, Station Zilcho, then moved his battle to imprisoning the Good Guys at their headquarters, Station One. Three Good Guys—Ace Spandex, Power Plant, and Scapegoat—escaped. Mechanism promptly ordered Reef, interim Good Guy leader, to denounce the escapees as public enemies and convince everyone Mechanism had been acting not as a Bad Guy but instead as a Good Guy plant inside the Bad Guys.

After dropping Scapegoat at a hospital, Ace Spandex and Power Plant remained on the run. Mechanism descended on the headquarters of Intergalactic Protection, Good Guy parent military organization, and—surprise, because he was never a Good Guy agent—lulled them into giving him access to their, well, everything. Mechanism's thank-you gift to IP was a slaughter. He now had progressed to the final phase of his plan: enslaving the defenseless galaxy to determine who was fit to live. All in twenty-four hours. The Good Guys had sustained casualties, including Power Plant's older brother, Burnout.

A military transport thundered overhead: a Fireball mil-tran discharged a screaming salvo of light-bullets at a building. The Mechaknights were already descending on the planet. If Ace Spandex's memory was correct, they were harvesting people to determine who was intelligent enough to survive under Mechanism's steelwork rule and who to put on Idiots Say the Most Idiotic Things.

Power Plant leaped forward, and his heel landed in a doughy rat. A Millie's cook definitely had to visit for some recipe ideas. Power Plant didn't notice the humming rat carcass with the glowing belly. He grabbed Legion's shoulders and, with enthusiasm reserved for paint mixers, wrenched Legion back and forth. "Legion, you's awake! Man, I's got newses for you. Someone leaved landmines all overs your floor. Not me. Promise."

Legion wrestled out of Power Plant's not-so-passive-aggressive greeting. "I almost missed you, too, Jeff. Next time, try a more delicate greeting. Maybe a punch in the ribs." He blocked Power Plant's swing. "Too late now."

Ace Spandex swept in front of Power Plant, shoes scraping the dusty floor. Everything smelled like chalk in here. "Mechanism has taken things over. He's convinced the public that Jeff and I are rogue agents. He put the others in stasis." His mood dimmed. "Maybe killed them."

"Mebbe forcefeeded them Momentum's chilis fries."

"That's a regular food, Jeff. Momentum makes chili pies." Ace Spandex said to Legion, "They taste like tainted zebra guts."

"Tainted zebra guts?" Legion scratched a black splotch on his forehead with his padded fingertips. Nobody ever got used to Momentum's weird ideas about food. He was of the Fleeson race, and all Fleesons had a sense-defying palate. "His version of Sunday night dinner?"

"College hazing. We should leave that story in the dark netherworld of my soul. And the front page of the September 9102 college newsletter. You might also want to burn my career portfolio."

A scream erupted from farther down the corridor of buildings outside. A fire cackled into dawn's caramel sky. Glass shattered, a wall-to-wall sound more overpowering than a dinosaur roar. A baby cried in a high squeal.

Legion slipped over to a grease-streaked window and ducked down. "They're rounding people up. I heard Mechanism took Station One, Station Zilcho, and a few wineries."

"And the IP campus on Minerva," Ace Spandex said.

"An' Millie's." Power Plant wiped blood off his knuckles. "They ruins ours perfectly good breakfast."

"That's a few oxymora short of a military intelligence." Legion left the window. "If I know Mechanism, he's taking everyone on the planet systematically. Probably sector by sector. He started here because he's looking for you two. We need to act quickly. We don't have long." Legion slammed his fist through a box to punctuate his sentence. He retracted his fist with murky yellow goop dripping from it. It smelled like rotten fruit and gasoline.

"What's is we's gonna do?" Power Plant punched a box, too. He looked disappointed when his fist emerged with only packing straw.

"First I'm gonna find a sink, wash my hands. After that, we attack. Mechanism took Station One from us. He mobilized it." Legion smeared the yellow goop on a wall. "We need to mobilize it back." A glint in his eye indicated something between hatred and revenge. He hurried to the open door, and Power Plant hopped in line behind him. The two-step Power Plant messed up was unnecessary, especially since he collapsed into a pile of skids. "And, Jeff, seriously zip up your fly."

"But, Legion." Ace Spandex glanced out the window but shirked back when an unearthly explosion serrated the air. He raised his voice so Legion, who had already reached the door, could hear over the barking sounds of war outside. "How can the three of us hope to sneak aboard Station One?"

Legion stopped. He placed his hand on the doorframe. "I have a plan."

* * *

"Your plan sucks." Ace Spandex scratched the fake beard off his chin. Stripes of smelly glue clung to him. "These beards won't fool anybody."

"Sorry. Still messed up from the medication. Just yesterday, I thought drive-thru surgery was a good investment opportunity." Legion tossed away his itchy beard, a braided tangle of silver hair, into a trash ionizer. He wiped his hands on his pants. "The glue on this beard makes my chin itchy."

"I dunno. Dis one make me look smarter." Power Plant finished dabbing his fake beard across his forehead.

Chapter Two: Instrument of Destruction

"Control, acknowledge. Unlock closest door." Scattering through Intergalactic Protection's main campus on Gaia, Reef's sweaty hand speared a squishy fingerprint over a door mechanism to a room marked as the broom closet. Listen to his command or read his fingerprint. Either way, unlock, unlock, unlock. He hammered a fist on it. Come on, unlock! And why the piss did brooms need their own closet?

Mechanism's slaughter of IP raged behind him, above him, around him, everywhere. A torrent of light-bullets scorched the air, misting bodies that splattered blood and tissue against desks, walls, doors, and that chocolate fondue fountain Reef had wanted to try but not anymore because of the blood thing.

Half a body slapped the wall. Reef jittered away and slipped on a sticky puddle of blood. He blundered over an IP officer's eyeless corpse, crawled back to the door—hurry before someone spots you—stupid door—open, crock it! "Control, acknowledge. Open closest door, come on, come on, come on, hurry up"—the door disappeared—"yes!" He fumbled into the depths of darkness, away from the crackling frenzy of the small-arms war outside. The door reappeared.

"Control, acknowledge. Lights to normal capacity." His hand slipped on a broom handle, and his elbow cracked against the concrete floor.

"We will increase the lighting to normal capacity as long as you enjoy the soothing tones of Brain Smash's newest album, Slaughter in Your Brain Stem, courtesy of Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy FM."

The "easy listening" tune crashed through an overhead speaker with umpteen tons per square inch of clamor like rancid death (Reef's best guess at the song's topic). Cats in heat were more easy listening. The lights clicked on to bathe the room in soft green.

Reef stood among bottles of cherry-scented nanocleanser, spare janitorial uniforms, and a few copper rods leaning against the corner. He grabbed a copper rod and swung. Swung again. Using a copper rod to take on the Mechaknights was like Power Plant using flashcards to take on a rocket scientist. Or Power Plant using flashcards.

Reef caught sight of a jug of acid, stuff used to clean drains and what the higher-ups at IP probably sniffed before they concocted battle stratagems. He knocked the jug onto the floor, and its blue liquid sloshed around inside the reinforced plastic. He brought the rod up in both hands and speared the jug. The rod sizzled, and when Reef lifted it back out, its tip had wilted into a point. It smelled like fireplace soot.

He eyed a spray bottle and a plan formulated. Hopefully a good one because, whah, acid fumes were strong-arming his lucidity and, though the pink platypus that appeared by the custodial uniforms was letting him in on a few good tactics, he'd stick with his own ideas.

* * *

With a suctionlike squirt, Number CA yanked at the knife embedded in the gut of an IP stiffneck. Took four seconds to down this military stuck-up, another ten to strangle out his dying scream, another two to decide if he wanted to urinate on the corpse, and another four minutes searching his armor for the fly. Turned out he had every feature but that one, information he could have used before his third cup of coffee.

Number CA's knife caught itself on the corpse's breastbone. Stupid ragged edges. It couldn't cut his baguette properly, but catch on a sternum? Every single pissing time. Number CA propped a foot on the body's waist and shoved down. The knife came free with a bloody slurp. Ooh. And an entrail.

Someone unelashed an unearthly howl. He loved unearthly howls! Then water spritzed his eye slit. Gah. His fingers flittered up to clean off the blue gunk but...was it devouring through the eye slit? It was!

His eye slit had corroded away. "Hey, what the crock." He flicked the blue stuff aside. What death-wishing moron ruined a perfectly good—

A pointed copper rod speared through the gap in his eye slit and crunched through his skull, and he saw only blackness.

* * *

Mechanism cracked Number AO's head into the reinforced outer wall in Intergalactic Protection's armory. "Stand away, fool, lest I sever your oxygen filter next time Number BB consumes bean salad." These fools used contradictory naming, calling themselves the Numbers but using letter codes. They deserved every head smoosh he doled out.

He tromped into the armory and scanned from left to right. Weapons, launchers, antimilitary machines of war, and one or two foul-looking water pistols. They all hummed, alit with vibrant life thanks to the power core of the Blast-o-Matic in the middle of the room. Yes, the Blast-o-Matic's power core, a weapon in itself, now retooled to supercharge any electrical-based weapon within its range, endow it with more destructive power than Bad Guy leader and idiot frontrunner Master Asinine's hypodermic needle casserole.

In the meantime, he spent a few seconds releasing all Good Guys' public identities. Now everyone knew Power Plant was Jeffrey Cooper Abends, Pincushion was Abioye Kofi Iwu, Ace Spandex was Aaron Amir Khouri...and so on. Now the public knew them, and, if revenge was on someone's mind, well...the Good Guys had no identity behind which to hide.

His hand combed across a tank catapult. Warm. So stirring, electrifying. His body felt as if it melted in his armor. That perhaps was because his internal thermostat was stuck three degrees too high. How dreadful for his moisturized skin and perfect arrangement of sweat pores.

He commanded his onboard computer to contact his vast army, present throughout this headquarter of foolish military pursuits. Oh, how he had conquered Intergalactic Protection. "Dear Neanderthals, our hunt is complete. My systems show only scant remains of the militia that once dominated this factory of ineptitude. I now summon you all to the armory. We will soon join our brethren to seize the protohumans of this solar system. Except you, Number HM. Perhaps if you ever hit the broadside of anything, I would trust you with more than a straw and some spitballs. As it stands, I command you to remain four feet away from anything with a higher caliber than a pine needle."

"But we can grab a mosquito crossbow, right?" Number AO leaped forward. Inside his helmet, his tongue probably waggled around so much he caught a few paint chips off his mouthpiece. Mechanism wished he'd ingest fewer lead-based products.

Sigh. "Grab as many animal-related launchers as you wish," Mechanism said, to which Number AO replied with the most cartoonish cackle ever to erupt from a Terran.

Systems registered that everyone had received his message. Excellent. Mechanism deactivated his gabber, the communication device in his helmet, and focused on the whirring, buzzing, singing, glowing superabundance of destructive might before him. With tingling that struck his nervous system like a tuning fork, he stumbled forward. Ha. How jovial that his legs would refuse to function due to the pure exhilaration that tickled him. But he managed his way to the Blast-o-Matic's power core.

He checked the tiny openings on either side of the core's casing, openings he had fashioned into it in his lair while watching the latest episode of Fool Busters. Alas, it was a musical episode. In every life, a little rain must fall.

And, in case a small uprising revolted aboard either Station One or Station Mechanism—his grander name for Station Zilcho—he had, in his flawless, beautiful mind, planned a distraction. A holiday madness program. "Control, acknowledge. Enact the torture of Operation: Deck the Halls." Now—yes, oh yes, oh devious yes—holiday decorations marred every hallway, every room, every pocket of space on those stations. Well ahead of their socially accepted calendar ranges. Such anguish!

On second thought, as far as torture flew, this plan was so lame it didn't even taxi off the runway.

Oh, well, go with it.

The openings on the Blast-o-Matic's casing glowed, a voracious anger waiting to burst through from within. Ahhhhh, yes. Mechanism smiled, placed his hands on either side of the casing, waited for a shock of triumph to vibrate through him, and—

He plunged his fingertips into the Blast-o-Matic's core and, rumbling...shaking...vibrating...singing a corporate jingle for the power company...his bodysuit responded with a cascade of energy, almost as if it cackled at the stars, defied them to reach the lofty levels of power Mechanism now attained: level gadzooks. Vowing to kill whomever named these levels, he loaded a diagnostic program and watched meters climb like missiles blasting out of underground inlets. His display glowed brightly. He felt the power that coursed through him rise to unrestrained heights—level mega-astounding—all thanks to the Blast-o-Matic's enhanced power core. Now he was no longer mere perfection in a robotic bodysuit.

He was a god. He was Alaph—

"Number CC, if you dare aim that tofu-grenade launcher at me, so help me, I will pry out your fingernails and use them on you as suppositories. And do not give me that finger. I have cameras on the back of my head."

Chapter Three: Maybe There's a Bicycle around Somewhere

Bad Guy second-in-command Lieutenant IQ 23 dragged his feet around another chilly corner of Station One. Same bland walls, same bland floors, same bland blah. He never thought he cared about decor, but since his leader Master Asinine attached those wiper blades to ceiling fans to get free dusting, he noticed everything from a casual afghan rug to that gang of mice guarding the conservatory at knifepoint.

He rubbed his hands along his arms to warm up. He had to find their leader. Release him from whatever bondage Mechanism had trapped him in, ensure his safety, make sure he takes his werewolf-metamorphosis pill before the next full moon.

"Braindead? Braindead?" Lieutenant IQ 23 looked behind him for his Virillian-race partner, who moved with less rush than a glacier. "Hurry. Someone might discover us at any moment."

His memory of the reports of Station One's layout didn't fail him. Around the corner, he spotted the Flagstar mil-tran hangar. The Fireball hangar had been empty of all but power conduits and parking harnesses. He checked behind him where Braindead tromped closer, then he glanced ahead at the door that opened into the hangar, the one with a magically lit wreath on it. Boxing Day and everything its folklore figure Bargain Bojango duct-taped under the tree had ended over a month ago, but these flamboyant embellishments littered his vision. And the Easter decorations felt tacky in February. But benefit of the doubt: ten months late or two months early, IQ 23 would let them slide. Not the jack-o-lanterns, though.

His broken hand still throbbing, Lieutenant IQ 23 rushed toward the hangar bay door. He kept it quiet, which was hard when you tripped over a bump in the carpet. And whacked your head on a sconce. And whimpered at the mark on your forehead.

He couldn't find anything to wipe his blood on, so he smeared his forehead against the wall. He would have written "Lieutenant IQ 23 Was Here," but he wasn't that quick of a bleeder. And his handwriting was terrible.

"Braindead, hustle." Lieutenant IQ 23 spun a hand at the mute Braindead. Still no hustle. Someone needed to explain to him the difference between "hustle" and "take your time": five miles per hour.

As silently as a man striding through a library, Braindead sauntered up to the latent-technology door marked HANGAR BAY F. L-tech was a technology in which objects were stored in and retrieved from computer memory, so when Braindead approached the l-door, it sizzled away to allow entry. Boxing Day carols brushed the air. Behind his face mask, he swept the area with a gaze that hid the hostile fire he felt over the capture of their leader...if hostile fire were 90 percent apathy.

Lieutenant IQ 23 gave the sconce a cold eye and whacked it—aye aye aye aye—why use his broken hand? So much cold pain. He vowed to hand the sconce over to the Bad Guy eating machine/gargoyle, Appetite.

He entered the hangar, rubbing the hand. A rush of warm air welcomed him. He maneuvered around Braindead and tiptoed through the short hall that led to the array of Flagstars atop charging platforms in one row of three and one of two. The space marked F-Eagle was empty. This station was Mechanism's now, so IQ 23 almost expected the decaying robot clerk behind the shield screen on his left to come alive and spew four- or five-syllable words that meant nothing to anyone without a dictionary.

If Mechanism had unbalanced their leader's salt intake in any way, IQ 23 would serve Appetite that robot wannabe's helmet on a platter with a garnish of parsley.

Lieutenant IQ 23 eased his uninjured hand onto Braindead's shoulder. "Okay, buddy. Time to put your ace skills to the test."

Braindead pulled two needles out of his pocket.

"Not your ace crocheting skills."

Braindead slid the needles back in and advanced with knocking bootsteps into the grid of Flagstars as precisely organized as squares on a checkerboard. The ace skills in question: climb aboard a Flagstar, take thirty seconds to learn its controls, blast a hole through the roof, and soar to Station Zilcho. Easier than it sounded until IQ 23 tumbled over a fat conduit cable that ran along the floor like gigantic spaghetti noodles. His head hit a menorah. What was with him and tripping?

Braindead spotted the closest Flagstar, the one called F-Stratotanker as revealed by the holographic text hanging above it, and hurried toward it in a military jog. Lieutenant IQ 23 followed but looked like a method actor playing a spider since his last tumble had banged his knee. Every second step was a lance of pain creepy-crawling out his kneecap. Ouch-ah-ouch-ah-ouch-ah-ouch—ooh. A Martin Luther King Day poster collage.

He entered F-Stratotanker. Already inside, Braindead studied the pilot's controls sprawled across the dashboard. Lieutenant IQ 23 wondered how he'd command this junkpile off Station One, but Braindead managed a good start by jabbing a few buttons. Lieutenant IQ 23 leaped into a padded chair and slapped at the inertia-field controls to keep him in place. Be careful of the eject button this time.

Mechanism had better have read their leader his bedtime stories.

"Please be seated," the mil-tran said through a speaker hidden in the rambling of electronics and pipes knotted across the ceiling. "This mil-tran will launch in five seconds. Warning: the engine will flood in six seconds, immediately if you use the mil-tran in flight."

Was it too late to see if the Good Guys owned a hang glider?

Chapter Four: About as Fun as That Weird Bump on the Back of Your Skull

Legion weaved around the boxes of disguise beards to Ace Spandex and put a hand on the computer engineer's shoulder. Ace Spandex's flesh felt like titanium. Weird. Whatever metallic pizza ingredients Ace had learned to love while Legion was comatose still couldn't outdo the ludicrous hospital food he'd ingested. Sardines and onions through an IV drip wasn't anyone's most unorthodox culinary choice, but it definitely topped a few "icky" lists in the children's wing.

"Whatever our plan, we'll need to be quick," Legion said over the racketing explosion that buffeted the cityscape outside. Already the Mechaknights had carved through this area. They'd destroyed houses, obliterated stores, and overturned vehicles like frat boys after a football upset. The oddest thing was their celebratory chest slam.

Legion shifted the weight of the rifle he held. Its tip was digging into his toes, but he reacted to what was going on outside instead. "Hey! Leave that place alone, Midget Mechanism. Destroying my favorite kimchi hangout will have consequences." He thrust a chin at the sole window this beige storeroom offered. "And why does that billboard say, 'The Good Guys, Now with More Corporate Meddling.' This is an altogether new level of anxiety I haven't felt since discovering octopus shotput was a sport."

Ace Spandex swallowed, and something in his throat sounded like a threshing motor even with the heavy-metal warzone blaring its dirge outside. "The corporate meddling you should take up with Reef. The Mechanism clones you should take up with Mechanism."

"An' octo thing shocks pit ya shoulds take up with me." Power Plant stamped a palm on his chest. "Ouch."

"As long as you stop trying to nationalize competitive farting." Legion turned to Power Plant. If he could expect any more mispronounced words, best he should see them coming. "Ace, my plans right now consist of fake beards and real beards. So what have you got? And, Jeff, please zip up. Seriously. It's common etiquette."

From outside, a scream and a gullet of gunfire preceded Ace Spandex's deep breath. Something detonated a building into a calamity of stone and steel. Ace shuddered when the punctuation of its explosion rattled the warehouse. "Okay, let's review." He evaluated the situation with his fingers. "Mechanism took over the galaxy. Imprisoned or killed the Good Guys and the Bad Guys. Only Jeff and I escaped." His hand shifted between himself and Power Plant. "He killed everyone at Intergalactic Protection."

"An' prob'ly everyone else theres, too." Power Plant said.

"And now this." Ace Spandex motioned to the window, to the litany of gunfire plowing down buildings, bridges, skyscrapers, anything in sight. The explosions and destruction rained harder than a monsoon. Everything smelled like burned paper. "He's rounding everyone up in an ethnic cleansing, but replace 'ethnic' with 'stupidity.' Jeff is in serious trouble."

"So where is his base of operations?" Legion asked. "Jeff, don't twinkle your fingers at me like that. It isn't my birthday, and donkey punch gifts should consist of more punch and less concussive blast."

Ace Spandex flinched away from the ch-chunk of a mortar assault gutting a low-rise apartment complex. "His base of operations is Station One. I imagine he's using your military diploma as a hankie."

"Then we need to get back to Station One. And, for that, we need to steal one of our own starships. I imagine they're using only Fireball starships." Legion approached the window once more. He watched one of those Fireballs hose down a highway with a flamethrower from a seventy-foot altitude. "Not easy, but not impossible."

"Wha'?" Power Plant tugged his fly but his finger got caught. At least he was halfway through the learning experience. "How we's gets aboard one o' dem Fireballs and take back Station One just the whatever of us?"

"Not just us." Legion estimated the deteriorating landscape and an escape path that would bring them back to the med-tran he had stolen to arrive here. A fire that hiccupped from a sewage hole blocked his view for a second. "We're getting help."

Ace Spandex clanked forward, crunching overtop a mud-smeared skid in his path. Strange. What skid would collapse under 150 pounds of soda-filled pressure? "So how was the hospital food?"

Legion shrugged. "Not bad. They made muffins from sunshine and unicorn tears."

"What a coincidence. We just came from a diner that made muffins from pancreases and fingernail clippings."

Chapter Five: Down with the Establishment

Finally an indication of where Mechanism had slithered off to. Reef had overheard two Mechaknights mention a summons to the armory and he now hurried there before anybody else arrived. He shoved past that imaginary platypus and groped for the spray bottle he'd hooked into his belt, the rod in his free hand.

The air felt wet with blood. "Control, acknowledge. Indicate route to the armory." Reef shoved past the platypus again. Aquatic loudmouth. Nobody cared about its majestic duck bill.

"You heathen of confusion," said the haunt control, that software that controlled locations through vocal commands so seamlessly that it made things seem haunted. Oh, great, not only did Mechanism have access to it. Over the last few minutes, he'd also programmed it to insult. "You seek to make usage of the Lord's program? You are indeed an intellectual subculture." Yada yada yada, no one compared to Mechanism, blah blah blah. "Please waste not my superior processor on such revolting sentence structure, you dry spell of dignity." And end the affront to Reef...nnnnow. "Also, be a dear and purchase tanning wax, two oak barrels for the price of two." Okay, now.

Fine. Reef would locate the armory the hard way: memory. This kind of thing used to hurt in college, but nowadays he'd had enough practice and abstinence from alcohol to make a decent stab at recollection. Down the hall, around the left bend, second door on the—Wait, that was the men's room. Down the hall, around the right bend, down the stairs—Aha. He'd end up in either the armory or the office-supply closet trying to untangle a jumble of alligator clips.

He snapped into a sprint, ripped down the hall, skidded around the right bend, leaped at the staircase before its l-door dissipated, rubbed the new bruise on his nose, tumbled down the stairs, and threw himself through the chilled hall. The armory...it was...

A clanging concert of weapons banged against stony walls. Down here in the mottled-ceilinged tunnels of the basement, Reef barely discerned the path of acoustics the sounds followed. But his patchwork memory helped. He examined the hallway ahead, passed doors that led to innocuous meeting rooms and storage closets, and felt reassured by the clangs and crashes that grew louder. Around another bend and—

The armory door already lay open. Reef peeked in to spot—crock—he snapped back—his breath froze in his lungs—he pressed against the wall—he wrung his cold rod in both hands—sensations in his stomach took flight—he wished he'd become a plumber instead of a soldier—there was good money in unclogging toilets.

Reef had spotted Mechanism, the contours of whose suit shimmered faintly. He stood over a machine that resembled something ex–Good Guy maniac Kamikaze would like strapped to his back. Two Mechaknights accompanied Mechanism, one of them pumping a fist and holding a harpoon with guacamole grenades jangling around its shaft. That was Reef's best estimate of what it was, but he'd stopped reading IP's weapon catalog after his third bout of night terrors. The other Mechaknight was trying to start a Jet Ski.

A click—no, not a click, but a deafening snap—shot from the room. And humming, like an elegy. The whirring of a drill. What was happening in there?

Reef stole another glance, spotted the Mechaknights preoccupied with their bizarre bargains of death and Mechanism preoccupied with himself. The usual. Reef ducked, zipped into the armory, and stooped behind a rack of dachshund catapults. Really, the catapults were meant for missiles, but when you incited a wiener dog's wrath, the destructive capability was the same.

With the sound of his footfalls hidden under another clackity-clack of Mechanism's machine-shop armor, he slunk to a rack of crossbows—

"Hold on. Think I heard something." One of the Mechaknights stopped.

Crock. Reef hit the deck, grabbed a crossbow that prickled his hand with amplified energy, held it in front of his head. It glowed and hummed. The gongs of Mechaknight boots rang closer...closer...toward Reef's position. Reef's heart hammered so hard he felt it box the arctic-cold floor, and the boots crunched closer, and Reef fed the rod through the crossbow's stock—amazing how it fit, but Reef wasn't about to ask because you didn't question things that could kill you, which was why he barely talked to school crossing guards—and waited for the footsteps to round the rack, and he directed the crossbow up at the Mechaknight, and he squeezed an eye shut, and he sighted his aim, and "Hey, shiny toy," the Mechanism said, and release!—

The rod speared through the Mechaknight's eye slit with a crunch through plastic and bone and organic goop. It emerged from the back of his skull with gray sludge draping the rod's shaft. Bull's-eye. Cheap pun.

"Come to me, debris," Mechanism said. Whatever was going on...was he controlling it?

The Mechaknight collapsed, slaughtering any silence with a hail of bashes and clangs like a train derailment. Reef dived into the next aisle.

"What was that?" the other Mechaknight asked. His harpoon jangled, its guacamole payload threatening to tear asunder the room in a blast of overripe mush. Where was that dachshund launcher when Reef needed something that ate through a weapon's ammunition twenty times its own body weight?

"That, you fool's fool, is the opposition." Mechanism's suit hummed. Good. Reef could track his movement based on the trail of the suit's song. The march of steel feet approached the dead Mechaknight, a radiance of yellow light following the march. And something about it seemed...added? Another deafening snap came from Mechanism's position, revealing him to be the source of the radiance. "Reef must have survived our onslaught above. He has located us. Locate him."

Reef ducked into the next aisle because that Mechaknight was close and he felt rather than heard a drumroll of light-bullets pursue his feet and, at the next aisle, he whipped his hand up and caught—no, blundered a pistol off a rack—attempted again—at the next aisle he snatched up—ow—never hold a tarantula bomb by the spinnerets and his palm stung and, wow, he'd probably wake up with radioactive hyperabilities tomorrow and why couldn't he find a radioactive rhino because he could sure as crock use bulletproof skin. At least the rat-a-tat-a-tat had interrupted the song stuck in his head and...oh, wait, the song resumed.

He ducked-rolled-snatched a...supercharged footstool? Shrugged. Why not? Hurled the thing blindly at the Mechaknight, ducked away, and—"Ow! That thing hurt! There's guacamole grenades, and then there's just plain mean."

"Silence, you meandering nuisance," Mechanism said.

"No. That hurt more than when you punish me for my fear of sneezes." A clatter of footsteps marched toward the door. "I'm taking five."

Reef peeked out from behind the rack and finally caught a glimpse of a glowing Mechanism, who groaned, covered his face with a hand, and raised his other hand at the Mechaknight. He moved so fluidly he could have rehearsed it in a dance studio. A panel on the back of his armor's forearm flipped open, and in the second Reef took to blink, the Mechaknight's head became a red cloud. The rest of the body flopped to the floor, crashed into a rack of weapons just south of the sanity line, and remained there, twitching. Reef had had worse bosses.

"Hope you enjoyed your five." With robotic precision, Mechanism lowered his arm and pulled his limbs into a sentinel's posture. "Reef?" That helmet, that despicable helmet with its icy eye slit, rotated like a tank turret to scan the armory. "Reveal yourself before I hunt you down like a belligerent cur. Ooh. Control, acknowledge. Log insult 'belligerent cur' for later dispensing. Yessss. The king of insults, two-headed Schizophrenic, shall receive a rather extensive letter soon."

Reef sidestepped to the next aisle, every tread like a giant's thudding stomp. He slid his hand along a rack and grabbed a...paddleball. In his mind, he grunted. If this thing wasn't a nuclear paddleball, shame on IP's toys-that-aren't-for-playtime division.

"Reef, if you do not reveal yourself, I will switch to thermal vision and bathe this hall with my ice-cream hose. Licorice-flavored ice cream." Oh, so the Milk Magic Dairy Company had read Reef's suggestion.

Reef hustled along the aisle in a path toward Mechanism he hoped wouldn't end with an ice-cream brain detonation. He wound up his paddleball, glided around a corner straight at Mechanism, and—

Oh, mighty brain-busting crock. Reef couldn't skid to a stop on the smooth surface of the floor, head hit the concrete with a blunt shock, galaxy of stars sparkled in his vision, slid forward, collided with Mechanism's pillar boots, dropped the paddleball on his paddleballs—crock—it wasn't nuclear but it sure packed a gut-twisting punch. He'd had enough kids already, right?

He rubbed his head, his eyes gummy and resistant to opening. Tears of yelping pain distorted the metal goliath that stood above him like a punch-hungry bully. "Well, aren't you tall?"

"Tsk, tsk, Reef. Another miscarriage of skill in your endless series of failures."

"Followed right on the heels of my latest firearms test." A headache swathed Reef's vision, which stretched and yawned as if someone kneaded it like taffy. He wanted to vomit, but he had nothing left to churn up his throat. His vision finally stopped reshaping things, his thoughts stopped slithering in soreness, and he saw Mechanism for what that vicious ethnic cleanser had become.

Another clang and clack. A missile flew out of a weapon rack, unfolded into a flat sheet, shook out its innards, and fused to Mechanism's armor, the same armor that had become an arsenal even without its owner's platoon-stopping wine breath. A pair of wings, built from the remnants of artillery, spread to a span of at least eight feet. Whirring shoulder guns, twin barrels of what looked like weapons packing explosive rounds of exacting revenge, exercised their new ranges of motion. A cape unfurled. A thick tail clomped to the floor, its shaft a chain where every link sprouted a foot-long razor that curved out like a stegosaurus plate. The tail whipped out as if to cleave the wind itself. It slid through a rack of antiaircraft missiles without resistance. Oh, and a twenty-sided die for role-playing combat.

A new metal sheet had separated into two long shafts. These shafts glided down Mechanism's arms and molded into his fingers, shaped themselves into talons Reef's ex-girlfriends probably wished they'd had on breakup nights. Or at least to persuade him of their choice of restaurant.

"Does my new armor impress you?" Mechanism examined the talons that glinted in the overflowing light of the room. "How could it not? Fully customizable, fully augmentable."

"So you can select the desktop background in your onboard computer?"

"I am saving that for version three." Mechanism harrumphed. "In the meantime, meet version two." His hand clacked forward, and an arm panel flipped open. This time it wasn't a needle laser that emerged but a cannon that expanded to a gargantuan size. How the piss could that thing fit inside an arm? Its telescopic column clacked outward until it extended from shoulder to wrist. It glowed as brightly as the rest of the suit. It breathed in gusts, and Reef felt the force it gathered by the hot wind venting from its barrel—

A blast of energy belched out and whitened Reef's vision. One choice—only choice—time for his hyperability—to use some of that energy he'd stored all these years—Reef forced all his strength into an inelastic posture that felt as if he were popping a capillary or taking a majestic dump or maybe both—an uproar of collision, metal and concrete, plastic and glass—a report like a starship bulldozing through a glass house and...

A sharp sizzle zipped through his veins. A snap. Two snaps. Everything smelled like burned cinnamon toast. Gripped in cold nervousness, Reef opened one eye, then the other eye, and examined the ceiling. Two light panels had fused to the mottled ceiling in solidified pools. Wires hung and attacked each other when they swayed within striking distance. They scattered sparks like gardeners scattered seeds.

Reef whipped to his feet and felt a headache, boxing gloves pounding his thoughts. Mechanism lay on the floor, catatonic as though his software needed a reboot. If it used the Letchtech No Glitches This Time We Kinda Promise operating system, it needed a reboot every time Mechanism accessed the frivolity filters.

"Reef?" Mechanism said, not through the helmet's speaker but from inside the helmet itself, muffled and cushioned. "Reef, whatever you have done, I shall rend you limb from limb for it while your feeble consciousness struggles to comprehend anything more complex than a jar of peanut butter."

"Fat chance." Reef hopped over the inert Mechanism, who was trying to kick his suit of armor back into animation. He wasn't sure he could finish Mechanism off, and he had to save the energy he'd stored all these years. Otherwise this revolt would be over.

Despite the racking headache pillow-fighting Reef's brain, he tore into the hall before the congregation of Mechaknights reached the armory. Time to take the back exit and a few hundred acetaminophen tablets.

* * *

How shameful. Bested by a weak-minded simpleton whose biggest claim to fame was eating "the whole thing" at Ribeye's Steak Trough. What had that idiot thrown at him? Reef's Intergalactic Protection employee profile alluded to nothing that could reroute all that power. A knack for calligraphy, yes, but not for this.

Mechanism's system had rebooted some rudimentary functions, though he wondered why his computer insisted a text editor come up before his walk program.

The computer dinged. Lo and behold, his haunt control was up. Fine. "Control, acknowledge. Interface with station's public address system." It smelled like an airtight lunchbox in here. Someone had left an apple to die.

"Public address system interfaced. Now's your chance to call for Shock 'n' Awe's twenty-four-volt jumper cables. Available at—"

"I do not require jumper cables." Mechanism cared not who heard him. "My system will reactivate without primary-school gadgetry.

"Mechaknights, Good Guy agent Reef is escaping. You shall locate and shoot him on sight. Whoever accomplishes this will receive a week free of my lordly dissatisfaction. Number FN, you shall transport the Blast-o-Matic's core to Station Mechanism. Finally, Number B, hurry. You are behind in reaching Station One to kill the Good Guys. And someone—I care not who—begin by murdering the stubborn idiot in Station One's bar bathroom. He has defied me far too long. Control, acknowledge. Cut connection."

The connection clicked to a dead finality. And, oh joy, a crackle of static announced the return of the armor's sight. He was no longer blind. His vision processed the room in a light show of horizontal lines that resolved into a three-dimensional view of the ceiling.

Into the armory buzzed that abhorred creation, Appliance. "Ah, Lord Mechanism, your supremacy still exists. How may I serve your incredible brilliance, my lordship? Are you immobile?"

"Oh, dreadfully good." Upon seeing Appliance, Mechanism wanted to fork out his own eyeballs, but that function had yet to reboot. "This disciple of the great Frederick Snogsbottom feels sublime joy that you have thus far survived, machine. Be still my beating heart valve."

"If you experience heart palpitations, Lord, may I suggest purchasing Shock 'n' Awe's twenty-four-volt—"

"I do not require jumper cables!"

* * *

Crock of all crocks. The intercom transmission echoed through Reef's headache like a knife sliding through his ear. Number B, called to Station One to kill the others? Reef banged his fist on a stone wall. Not on his cheaply crafted watch.

He felt the fused skin, immediately below the knuckles of two fingers. They looked like sheaths of thick plastic. He checked his right hand. The index and middle fingers had melted down. No blood, only an immediate cauterization. That tiny use of his hyperability had taken its levy like a shark bite. Whatever. At least he'd never have to play the piano. Something told him he'd be better with eight fingers than ten anyway.

If he remembered from when the Good Guys called this campus home, the hangar was only a ten- or fifteen-minute run away. He could probably access a Fireball. He'd head home, intercept Number B, free his friends from stasis. And he'd do this all on knees that felt like rubber.

He'd also race up the stairs without tripping and cracking his chin, starting with attempt number two. Make that attempt number three.

Chapter Six: Kill the Competition

Amaranthia, Bad Guy defector and Mechanism's ninja cohort, totally heard the callout pipe through Station One's intercom box thingy stuck to the ceiling of Legion's mondo color-uncoordinated office. The Mechaknights, all twenty of them still aboard Station One, were mobilized. Amaranthia had to act fast. She totally blurred across Legion's office, leapfrogged over the halved couch, and snatched her sword outta the granite bust of some crusty IP bureaustiff.

She left Luzimoss, Mechanism's precognitive slave, in the office and, like, sped off to Station One's MaxSport pub, Alcoholics Unanimous, in the barracks. She had to get to Mechanism's Good Guy interrogation victim Franchise before that ginchy Number FF or that equally ginchy Number Y did anything to him. Because Franchise was hers. Mechanism promised if she passed her trigonometry test. And D plus was still a pass, sucker.

Number FF no longer guarded the opening into the dark nether of the Good Guys' watering hole and its snot-riddled bathroom stalls with smudged limericks and propositions for good times. She totes crammed through the door without waiting for its latent molecules to dissolve into mucho computer dust. The smell of blood and puke winded her like a punch. She recoiled from the blood, ewww, blood, grody.

Past the desolate bar stools—hurry!—between two wooden tables—run!—over the bar—rush!—through the graffiti-smeared bathroom door—no more synonyms!—into the bright bathroom stall that should be dimmer if the Good Guys wanted to hide their urinary misfires. Harrumph. Men.

From inside the middle stall, Franchise's weakened mewing percolated out. His voice wrestled its way out of lips as bloated as gorilla thumbs.

Number Y's mask glared at her. He smelled like rotten fish. "Get outta here, little girl." He almost gave her the finger, but he didn't, like, have the coordination. He finally got up the ring finger. Nice try, goon head.

Amaranthia fired him a demonic look that would totally have had the full effect except for the balloon of a pimple beside her nose. She steeled her jaw, plugged her thumbs into her ears, and stuck her tongue out between her teeth for one supreme raspberry. That'd get these dweebs.

Number FF weaved around Number Y and totally thrust a steel palm into Amaranthia's chest. "Go find a prom date, and let grown-ups handle grown-up business."

"My prom date, like, quit the football team?" Amaranthia's teeth gritted tightly. She shifted them, which sounded like steel unsheathing. "So I cut him in two?" She used that rising intonation in her sentences that made them sound like questions. That should confuse these gitches.

She leaped—midair swing—kicked Number Y aside to keep him occupied—sliced Number FF's hand off—totally flipped over Number Y—landed on the windowsill—spun around to face them—recoiled at Number FF's anguished scream—scribbled "You're a gank" across Number Y's chest with her sword—doofus's arms fell off, still spasming—one arm finally managed to flip that bird.

Number Y tried to clutch his arms but couldn't because...hey...there they lay on the tiles next to the stained remnants of a mondo TP fight. Number FF held a bloody stump that spurted a red bow across her waistline. And Amaranthia's Riviera outfit. Gross! Amaranthia, like, hopped off the windowsill and—one simple thrust—slid her sword through Number Y's abdomen. Crunch. She didn't care about killing the dude, only about shutting him up. He screamed louder than those twins she'd babysat in eighth grade.

He fell as soon as she withdrew her blade. He still twitched, but those shudders ebbed to nothing after the last scarlet pint, like, squirted from him.

Number FF had forgotten her wound, the stump she still clutched to her waist. She stared frozen-eyed at Amaranthia. She managed to remain on her feet, but she flopped against the wall on her good arm.

Amaranthia's sword zipped up and found its place against Number FF's neck, not penetrating, only scratching the armor's segmented rubber rings around that enormous gullet. "Still wanna handle the grown-up business?" She sliced figure eights into Number FF's neck. The rings grated like marbles rubbing together.

Number FF's mask quivered so much she couldn't, like, answer. Fear had rendered her as speechless as a nerd seeking mercy in a dodgeball game.

Crock this crock. She slid her sword into Number FF's neck, pried the sword up, and popped Number FF's head off. If Amaranthia hated anything more than defiant torture witches, she'd like to totally know. Oh, wait. Multigrain bread.

The helmet cracked against a mirror and fell into the sink. The motion sensor found it and spat rusty water over the eye slit. "Don't forget the soap," the sink said.

The ruckus seeped away to leave only Franchise's deteriorated whimpering. Number FF had totally smashed up Franchise, and Mechanism had blown off his knee, so this dude was totally a wreck. Amaranthia approached that cramped middle stall with one mousy Franchise, one headless Franchise clone that Mechanism had totes executed, and some way creative graffiti.

Whoa. Someone had totally eaten Tex-Mex last time this stall was used. Well, used for its intended purpose. She dragged her sword against the linoleum floor. Mom totally told her to never do that because it dulled the tip, but screw her. Mom was, like, always full of naggy advice on how to maintain her killing implements.

She reached the stall's door. Naked, Franchise quivered, pale from loss of blood and body heat, encrusted with wounds that refused to heal, hands clutched on the chain that locked him to the toilet. He looked diluted of soul. His leg looked diluted of kneecap.

Ewww, so much blood. Amaranthia reared a leg back. She sheathed her sword and, like, reached out a hand. "We need to totally bounce if we wanna save your friends from Number B?" And to do that, this dude totally needed about seven hundred tubes of healing putty. "And you know where to find the women's bathroom?"

Chapter Seven: Nobody Likes the Office Kiss-Up

Through a window inside Station One's gray mess hall, Luzimoss spotted the one-winged Good Guy traitor Harrier outside. When Mechanism had launched his attach, Harrier had taken the egomaniac's side. He felt disillusioned since having lost one of his feathery wings due to a forced amputation on a mission.

Harrier wore that mechanized suit with the helmet held under his armpit. He marched past a group of civilian transports toward an entrance. Luzimoss had the hyperability to communicate with himself in different timelines, what he called his knowledge hivemind. Yeah, that hivemind Luzimoss used to predict anything from what property damage Power Plant caused on any given Glazed Everything for Lunch Day—first Monday of every thirty-one-day month, no fail—to the fall of the Mongolian Yurts in both last year's Dodgeball Cup and last year's Ultimate Couponing Pennant, and why, why, why did he bet on those stupid Yurts? He knew they had a mere 14 percent chance of—

Inhale, exhale, inhale a bit less because everything reeked of grease. He banged his head on a table. Lost eighty moolahs last year. Thanks, Yurts.

Since becoming Mechanism's slave, the hivemind was deactivated, only to be awakened when that despicable slave driver needed it. And according to that hivemind, which Mechanism had awakened to gain IP's access codes, Harrier would enter the mess hall soon. His knowledge hivemind had told him another little tidbit of info today before Mechanism had shut it back off. But he needed a knife to act on that tidbit.

Harrier entered on taloned feet that squeaked against the floor. He reached Luzimoss, who stood stationed at the mess hall's exit with arms crossed. Luzimoss's gaze narrowed as the winged turncoat came within sneering distance. When Harrier stepped to the door and their eyes met in a venomous war of stares, Luzimoss spat on Harrier's wingtip shoes. He noted the irony: both wingtips were intact.

Harrier stopped. His last tapping footstep echoed away. His arm stiffened around the helmet. His stare sharpened like a blade on stone. "Have you anything to say to me, chaff?" He sneered as if explaining a knock-knock joke to Schizophrenic's idiotic right-side head, Righty.

"Chaff." Luzimoss issued a chuckle that wasn't meant to impart humor. "Sounding just like your new mentor, Mechanism." He uncrossed his arms and stepped forward. He tried to look Harrier eye to eye but even tiptoe wasn't working. These Mechanism suits were tall. He grabbed a chair, climbed up, and aha, death stare engaged. Well, he couldn't properly slant his eyebrow, but he used his crazy facial tic. And a snort.

"You know, my knowledge hivemind always told me it was Legion standing with the Bad Guys. It was in so many other timelines." He shoved Harrier back, but considering the Mechaknight-Who-Wasn't-a-Mechaknight's weight, it turned into a light push. "Now I know it's you and Mechanism."

"Yes, well"—Harrier stood erect, planting hands at hips—"Mechanism has shown me the way. He shall right what infects this blooming galaxy. This galaxy, this entire universe, suffers the burden of so much disorder it crumbles under its own daftness. You cannot convince me a universe that would allow Kamikaze to hold bull rushes but advertise them as Thanksgiving Day parades is a universe that should proper exist."

"You make a point." Luzimoss heaved out an exhausted sigh. And a breath mint that ticked against a table. Oops. "But do you really want to live a life under that tyrant's law? One where only the smart survive?"

"Tyrant? Mechanism is a visionary. Chaos caused the amputation of my wing. Mechanism knows there is no room for chaos, only control." Harrier waited a beat, his condemnation illuminating his gaze so conceitedly that Luzimoss felt it abrade his skin. Finally, he shoved past Luzimoss, cuffing him with a steel shoulder. "Mechanism will restore that control. You will see."

"I have. It's not a pretty control." Luzimoss said to Harrier's back. And when everyone died, Luzimoss would barricade himself in a dark room with dried fruit.

Chapter Eight: Why the Doorbell Should Be a Joy Buzzer

In this numbing heat wave, everything smelled like rotted wood. Insects sang in the distance. Legion approached the paint-peeled house hidden behind watchman trees, tall grass, and a lawn littered by garden gnomes that looked angry at trespassers. One looked drunk. Another looked shattered in half. That was Legion's favorite.

With Power Plant and Ace Spandex in tow, Legion trod onto the porch and sidestepped a hole where spiders—ugh. Spiders. He lifted his leg and cracked a heel over one that had more hair than a yak. It might have yelped.

"Watch out for nests. If these spiders need to shave, the hornets around here probably carry firearms." Legion glanced at Power Plant. "Jeff, spit that spider out."

"But we's didn't even stops for Space Cow burgers. We's pass it by."

"That wasn't a Space Cow. That was a cow in space."

Ace leaned forward. "You can tell the difference because it had stopped mooing."

Legion wiped his forehead and detected a rotted-turkey stench waft from his armpit. He motioned for Ace and Power Plant to stay at the edge of the porch and strode across the wooden walkway toward the house's front. When he reached the outer screen door, it vaporized into l-tech mist. His innards tumbled around—he feared the dodgy latent technology—and he braced himself. But no danger. He knocked on the door that needed a fresh coat of laser-paint and a retirement party.

Springs squeaked from inside. "Coming." The voice wasn't muffled. The window stood open, but the orange drapes blocked view of everything except for a shadow against them. Legion squeezed a glance through a small tear in the drape. He spotted a glass of iced lemonade on a table with three legs.

The door swung open with a screech, and there stood a silver-haired man with a tweaked mustache and a gut. He wore a smile like a flower blossoming on his weathered face. His cheeks spread.

"Lieutenant Colonel." Brigadier General Patton, dressed in a musty-smelling T-shirt and shorts, clapped his hands together. The T-shirt bore an ad for some sort of topical cream, but after Legion's last experience with that stuff, he wouldn't even rub it on his civ-tran. He scratched himself. The rash was still there.

Patton served as liaison between IP and the Good Guys. He also served as Legion's mentor. He leaned in for a slap hug, and Legion leaned in, too. Both men felt damp with sweat. "Brigadier General," Legion said when they separated.

"It's just Patton now." The silver-haired man, who showed his age around his waist and face but still commanded respect, tweezed his mustache between two fingers to roll one end into a point.

"What do you mean, it's just Patton now?" Ace stepped forward and—crack. His foot burst through a splintered plank. He stomped the dirt below. "Sorry. Hazard of being one hundred forty-three point seven two pounds overweight." He glanced around at everyone's shock, then turtled his neck against his shoulders. "Or so."

Patton regarded Ace Spandex and Power Plant. Power Plant was licking caulking off a post. "Yup. Just Patton. Since the two of you went rogue, IP shut down the Good Guys. They decommissioned me pending an investigation in my involvement. Now I'm just a regular joe. Jeff, that ain't candy cream you're licking, and it's sort of the only thing holding my post together."

"Decommissioned?" Ace anchored his free foot and shifted his weight to step out of the hole. He set his foot carefully down on another plank, leaned over, and—crack. "Sorry. I swear I'll fix this."

Patton waved a dismissive hand. "Don't worry about it. The missus had wanted me to fix this place up for years. Never saw the need after her fingernail cancer took her."

Power Plant kicked a hornet's nest. "Tha's what happen with all my homeworks, an' no ones believe me."

"Sorry. We generally make Power Plant wear a helmet when he thinks in public." Legion stepped away from a spider that had taken out a shaver and went to work on its legs.

"I received my decommission this morning at oh nine hundred hours. When Mechanism slaughtered Intergalactic Protection's main campus and announced he was in charge...well...General Breeng, the guy immediately underneath Field Marshal Hullinger, axed me quicker than someone could tell me."

"I don't see how that could literally be true," Ace said.

Patton shrugged to Legion. "They consider the Good Guys as Mechanism's enabler, an excuse to work under the Bad Guys. and with you gone, I'm superfluous. Funny they'd fire me after they lost more than eighty percent of their soldiers."

"Funny how they lost eighty percent of their soldiers." Legion swatted at a fly buzzing around his ear. "In fact, that's why we're here. Can we come in?"

Patton shuffled aside on legs almost as hairy as a Sasquatch. Legion entered the house, and the heat followed. He felt the passion of the day in Patton's living room, felt the stained carpet with fibers mashed into one thin surface.

Legion sat on the couch that didn't so much sink under his weight as it did deflate and die a little inside. Ace Spandex sat beside him, and the couch choked a squeaky last will and testament. Patton sat across from them on a threadbare chair. Power Plant took position in a corner to examine something that looked like a lava lamp but, in his hands, might as well have been a lamp that spewed lava. And now it was in his hands.

"Jeff, don't touch that." Legion waved a finger up.

Power Plant whirled around. "Why not—" The lava lamp plummeted and shattered on the carpet. "Oh. That why not."

"Sorry about him." Legion folded his hands on his lap. The insects buzzed around his head. "I don't care what those IP idiots decided. You're still a brigadier general. So, Brigadier General, we came here because we need to ask for your help."

"And apparently to damage your stuff." Ace Spandex cringed when Power Plant dropped a snow globe. It didn't shatter, so Power Plant tried again.

"Don't worry about that. It's mostly clutter." Patton sat back. "Well, the porch wasn't, but we're fine as long as our boy doesn't find the fridge doojigger." He smiled and pinched his mustache. "I like my beer cold."

"Well, Brigadier General." Legion considered his words. "You already know Mechanism made a play for this solar system." Something crawled up his spine, and he was sure it wasn't a spider.

"And Jeff and I are on the lam." Ace Spandex buried his head in his hands. "We're fugitives, and Power Plant is a suspected prop comic."

"People thinks I kills my brother." Power Plant smacked his fist into a palm and stomped on the snow globe. "I ain't kill nobody."

Ace Spandex took his head out of his hands. "You killed about a dozen Mechaknights three hours ago. You used a kitchen appliance as an amplifier."

"Oh, yeah. Also a few of 'em terrorists."

"No. Those terrorists were in your action-hero dream."

"Meh." Patton sneered into his mustache-tweaking fingers. "Fugitives? You killed your own brother? I didn't buy that even when Field Leader Reef announced it."

Legion leaned closer, his perspiration squishing under his armpits. "So, sir, we need your help. The three of us can't take Mechanism's army alone. Jeff can't even get out of bed without smacking into a wall."

Patton stopped tweaking his mustache. He leaned back on the chair and propped one ankle on the opposite knee. In deep thought, his eyes looked sunken in their sockets. Finally, he said, "Well...what do you have in mind for me to do?"

"Find a more combat-ready T-shirt," Ace Spandex said. "Without the topical-cream ad."

Chapter Nine: This'll Guarantee Me a Raise

Lieutenant IQ 23 peered through F-Stratotanker's rattling windshield. The mil-tran, its viewscreen monitors riddled with flight diagnostics, now approached Station Zilcho's parking grounds. The trip had taken forty minutes, it had burned almost nine hundred gallons of fuel, and the in-flight movie was Prehistoric Taxidermist. Too bad the trip didn't last longer. The movie had reached only the halfway mark and IQ 23 wanted to know how that caveman planned to stuff all that lethabarb into the sabertooth tiger with an avalanche burying the tiger's front half—oooooohhhhhh. Suppository. Would wonders never cease.

Originally built as a terraforming station, Station Zilcho boasted limited parking—and the spots near the lobby were handicap parking—so few spots usually remained vacant. However, after Asinine had crashed all his go-kart transports, only a few scattered vehicles filled the lot, most of which Schizophrenic overturned when his sports teams lost. "Flipped that crock," Lefty, the left head, would say after an especially hard upset.

Touchdown. The mil-tran crunched onto the ground. It refused to land in a handicap spot because, well, leave it to the Good Guys to own a socially conscious transport. Braindead, seated at the pilot's computer, already grabbed his sidearm. He stood and progressed to the door. Lieutenant IQ 23 could have told him his shoelace was untied, but he doubted Braindead would listen.

Lieutenant IQ 23 met him at the door that hissed open. Everything outside smelled like sulfur and fuel exhaust. "Not sure if you overheard Mechanism, but he left our leader tied up in the Wreck Room. Probably just to infuriate him. Our leader must be going out of his mind." He sniffled. "So many flashing lights out of arm's reach." Braindead offered him a hankie.

After a somber moment, Braindead moved out. He descended the access ramp and circled around toward the lobby's front l-doors, which led up on a four-step staircase. The l-doors invited him in by fading. Lieutenant IQ 23 caught up and followed in.

From here, the Wreck Room's rear door was only a few twists away. Those Mechaknights had destroyed the main door. Both Bad Guys headed toward the left-hand hall that dipped to meet the ground below the elevated lobby. Here usually hung their leader's favorite portraits of himself in heroic poses: one where he'd wrestled his plush alligator, Toothly, another where he'd wrestled a hurricane. Yes, a hurricane. But Mechanism had replaced the portraits with nasty ones of himself. One showed that robotic villain enjoying a glass of wine, mask on, and another on the opposite wall displayed him tearing their leader's hurricane portrait in half, right down to their leader's look of unadulterated self-satisfaction. Lieutenant IQ 23's stomach did the Twist.

They slunk through the door leading to the airfoil, up to the second floor, out and down the hall, around the corner—oh, geez!—Lieutenant IQ 23 scrambled back around the corner and slapped himself against the wall. Braindead read his panicked appearance—the same one he used when he got a three-of-a-kind but didn't want the whole table to know—and stopped.

The air felt stuffier. Lieutenant IQ 23 pointed a thumb at the hallway's corner. His words came out in curt chokes. "A Mechaknight...is...guarding...the door."

Braindead nodded. Fine. Acknowledge that sentence but never acknowledge whenever IQ 23 banged on the bathroom door to ask if Mr. Silence was done. Braindead held his pistol up to his injured shoulder, which didn't seem to bother him. His neck tightened when he pushed out a preparatory breath: time to take care of business.

"Braindead, that gun has no light-bullets. How are you going to defeat the guard?"

Braindead showed IQ 23 his just-you-wait look, which looked exactly like his anything-else face. A brick had more range of expression.

Braindead stepped to the corner as calmly as if entering a deli, except this time he was there other than to stare vapidly when the clerk asked, "Would you like it cut thick or thin?"

"Hey!" The Mechaknight rattled into a readiness IQ 23 could only hear. Braindead raised his hand, his pistol's barrel pinched between two fingers, and flicked it forward in an all-in-the-wrist move IQ 23 found almost unfeasible.

Lieutenant IQ 23 scrabbled around the corner to see the pistol spiral toward the Mechaknight and—crack—stab through his eye slit like a throwing knife. The plastic slit splintered into shards that caved in through the mask.

The Mechaknight howled, trying to claw the pistol free. A shard in the eye slit pinned it down. "Get this thing off, get this thing off, get this thing—"

Braindead wasn't listening. Like a long-jump athlete, he dashed toward the Mechaknight, leaped, and cracked a kick into the pistol. The kick hit paydirt, and the Mechaknight fell, the pistol jammed into his eye socket up to the trigger.

Braindead landed with effortless simplicity. The Mechaknight crashed against the Wreck Room's door, which faded. He tumbled backward in a spill of gears and joints and sprawled against the flower-patterned back of a couch. His arm and leg joints whirred with twitches of death. Blood splashed against the remains of his eye slit.

Lieutenant IQ 23 shrugged. "Okay. Creativity counts. But use extra caution if our leader ever fastens me to his circus pinwheel and asks you to throw knives. You know how excitable he gets around things with target zones." Braindead didn't nod. Crap.

The presence of a guard indicated their leader was definitely here. Lieutenant IQ 23 felt as if his ribs turned to gummy worms.

The Mechaknight's legs had fallen out through the l-door, so IQ 23 strode over them to enter. "Sir?" He checked the room: the minibar, the hatch to the Mutiny Pool, the arrangement of l-chairs ruined in the firefight when IQ 23 and Braindead were captured, the dog-show track. Everything was in pieces. He identified the remains of some things, but the catastrophe of debris here hid everything else in anonymity.

"Sir, are you here?" Lieutenant IQ 23 ventured over a ruined chair and the clone of his leader that still lay dead next to the overturned coffee table.

A cough focused his attention. The cough developed into a sputter, and was that the unmistakable b'cawk of a chicken? Yes, his endeared leader's battle cry!

Oh, horror of horrors. "Sir!" Lieutenant IQ 23 leaped and snatched at their leader, who hung from the ceiling in a web of wires that sizzled at their severed ends and discharged spits of electricity. Shadow draped him, but IQ 23 swore he saw...Yes, a frayed wire splashed sparks over the candy-cane-striped carpet and lighted the bruised and swollen cheeks above it. A bungee cord of drool stretched from the face's lip, and a vine of blood bobbed from his nose. A black eye cushioned their leader's cheek, but the other eye darted around until he found the source of the voice.

"Hey, Lieutenant." Their leader winced at his own words—the bruise on his cheek shimmered purple—but he continued anyway. "Pull up a chair or...well...Mechanism trashed all the furniture, but you can pull up a jagged plank of loveseat debris. Tell me what's been happening. I must have been out for so long. What year is it? Feels like we should party like it's 1999, but I know it's at least..." He tried to count using his fingers, but he mustered only slight twitches, as if he played a gentle scale on an invisible guitar. "Crock. Counting hurts physically. It's at least year two."

Lieutenant IQ 23 rushed around fragmented furniture toward his leader and snatched at the swinging wires. They dodged him and clapped out sparks with the scent of burned metal. He grabbed a wire to yank it free. No such luck. And he pulled an arm muscle. And tripped backward into a ruined child gate they'd purchased to stop their leader from toddling into the piranha pond. "Sir, we'll get you down in the time it takes you to say, 'Get me down.'"

"Get me down." Their leader chuckled, but he winced at the slight laugh. "Liar. You owe me one thousand pushups."

Lieutenant IQ 23 recovered and snatched at the wire again. "Sir, I think if I—"

"Lieutenant?" With the eye not hidden behind a croissant brow, he leered at IQ 23. "I don't brook liars in my organization unless we're playing Got Your Nose. Now...one thousand pushups."

Lieutenant IQ 23 lowered his eyes to the carpet. "Yes, sir." He swept aside a halved end table with his foot. He took position on the ground, favored his broken hand by leaning on the elbow, and began. "One...two...three—"

"Not girly style. Start over."

* * *

Alarm bells chimed in Mechanism's helmet. Oh, bother. What interrupted his conquest now? Was Number GH experiencing problems cleaning his air filter again? If Mechanism had told that oaf once, he had told him a thousand times, merely unsheathe the four-millimeter slot screwdriver in the right index finger's attachment array, unfasten the mouthpiece's eight screws, unbolt the inner casing beneath that, enter the seven-digit access code while being mindful not to engage the self-destruct sequence, and slide the filter out. Mechanism swore the amount of his own genius was matched only by the amount of Number GH's stupidity.

He shut off the alarm to soften the pressure in his ears and scanned the status message scrolling across his helmet's display. Oh. What was this? Someone had entered Station Zilcho's Wreck Room and unattached Master Asinine's harnesses.

Mechanism checked the camera feed. Ah yes, that brainless mouth breather and his reptilian mute had escaped incarceration and now lowered Master Asinine gently to the carpet.

Very well. He ordered his computer to contact Number B. After Number B executed those Good Guys, Master Asinine and his two toadies would perish next.

Chapter Ten: Dad, the Important Thing Is I'm Okay

Reef had taken half an hour to find his way to IP's hangar bay and, luckily, he stumbled upon a batch of IP's old Fireballs. And three or four of them didn't inflict bolting pain when he glimpsed their clashing advertisements. A step up!

Everything in here hummed like Tibetan chanting monks. Reef selected a recharged transport—he could tell which were ready for flight by their glowing footpads—and sprinted up the embarking ramp. He didn't need to acclimate himself to its controls since he drove these things as a Good Guy, but lucky him, he found the one with the condescending haunt-control mod installed. He didn't want yet another voice telling him he was a failure, and quite frankly, it was eerie how the computer nailed his father's tone right down to the note of dissatisfaction about not carrying on the family business. And someone had spilled oil in here.

The flight to Station One lasted about ten minutes. And cost one spilled bag of peanuts thanks to a guy who couldn't perform a lane change to save his life. Some people should require licenses to drive.

Okay, some people should require better licenses to drive.

Now, inside the starship with oil fumes blurring his lucidity, armed with a pistol he'd found in the starship's weapon locker, Reef approached Station One. Through the Fireball's windshield, he watched the station's metal-coated surface draw closer. Upon approach, an assortment of blinking lights resolved into the shape of Mechanism's helmet with a sign under it, "In Me You Trust," and beside that, a smaller sign, "Coffee Shop Manager Needed. Apply Within."

"Control, acknowledge. Slow speed to four hundred fifty knots. Decrease speed to one hundred knots once we pass atmospheric bubble."

"I'm surprised you managed the math, son." The haunt control sighed...or was that an exhaust port? Yeah, nailed that disapproving tone just right. "Fine. I'll adjust speed. But only if you reconsider podiatry school."

"I can't fathom how that class would afford me a better future." Reef kicked the piloting computer. "You make me wish I'd taken the starship with the gambling problem."

"Son, your mother and I only want what's best for you."

Reef tromped back a step. "You know what? You win. I'll consider your foot school if you let me go to Kelly's party on Saturday."

"It's for your own good, son. By the way, someone's firing at you."

What? Reef checked the windshield—a hot puffball of ammunition coughed through the starship's right wing. The starship pitched viciously. Oh, piss.

"Computer, ack—Actually, forget it. Talking to you makes death feel like a short nap." Reef scurried to the computer bay hidden below the semicircular windshield. He leaped onto it, pressed his cheek against the smooth surface of the windshield, and—crock, crock, crock¸ the wing was bathed in flames that cackled with tongues of fire. An engine had collapsed and now trailed its guts across the spacescape. The scent of boiling fuel replaced that of burning oil.

A faint glow, brown at first but brightening to orange when it hit the starship's forelights, drew Reef's attention forward. Reef watched another puffball of light grow closer...closer...and head straight for the windshield!

The starship plunged through the atmospheric bubble, that jellylike container for the station's atmosphere. The resulting hole gelled back together like a droplet breaking water tension.

"Control, acknowledge. Veer somewhere. I don't care where as long as I don't hear about how I'm pissing away my life working in militaries in backwater galaxies instead of making my mom proud."

"Son, just because your mother and I—"

"Dad, I don't need your tough love." Reef dived down and aside in a roll that twisted his shoulder with a toothy feeling of stripped cartilage. He hit a chair. The blast disintegrated the windshield into a blizzard of shards that raked the floor and the chair behind which he hid. A wall of air threw him against the rear, and he slammed into the mangled metal that the blast had created out of the rear thruster assembly. The onrush of air pinned him back.

"I wish I was surprised you crashed the family civ-tran, but—"

"Back in your day, they probably didn't have family civ-trans, computer dad." Reef's cheek flapped against his gums, but if he could speak properly, perhaps the starship's haunt control would have listened. Then again, if it listened like his real father, his words would sound like "blah blah blah."

The starship pitched itself nose up, redirected on that rush of air. Reef pried himself off the steely wall that once divided the rear thruster assembly from the passenger deck. What could he do, where could he go? Find something, anything, a parachute, a jetpack—crock—jump and flap his arms even though the last few times Kamikaze had tried, he'd ended up as a stern warning to others or, in Power Plant's case, straight up inspiration.

The escape pod. Yes! Off to the right, across from the detainment deck. He peeled himself off the ruined wall and crawled along like a man on a ledge. But the air pressure kept buffeting him and revealed that some nasty Mechaknight down there was burning leaves. He'd order the starship to land on top of that idiot, but he didn't feel like hearing the haunt control tell him to visit or at least write once a week.

The short hall that led to the escape pod, right beside the thrusters and cottony smoke of burned fuel, was within arm's reach. Reef squeezed his eyes shut to shield them from the acidic air and lugged himself toward the corner. Now, pushing lengthwise down the hall, the thrust of air worked for him but not that nasty odor of burned leaves. And orange peels. Add orange peels to the rank.

He reached the corner. If he didn't let go of the corner, his arm would pop out. Not a good feeling, though Kamikaze insisted it felt like a birthday hug from Aunt Ethyl. Reef took that figuratively until he'd met the Aunt Ethyl in question, a sand castle of a woman who didn't take "your hug is cutting off my circulation" as a no.

Finger by finger, he removed his grip. He swore he heard the pluck of guitar strings each time he released a finger until, finally, his exhausted middle finger—

The barrage of air bulldozed him down the hall as if he were in freefall. He narrowly missed the sharp opening of the escape pod. He slammed into the pod's leather-padded back, nose in, and felt a deep dent in the cool cushion that would forever hold the imprint of his cheekbones. His drool froze in place. If he survived this crash, he'd draw an eyepatch over the imprint.

"Control—" He had to roll his head sideways to breathe. "Control, acknowledge. Close escape pod."

"Son, I didn't give you permission to borrow the family pod."

"Dad, just do it, or I'll replace you with the soccer-mom mod."

An exasperated groan huffed out of the speakers. Reef couldn't see the door, but he saw shadows shift. The pod's l-door materialized with a wheeze. The drop in air pressure released him, and he gently slid down the leather wall.

"Warning, son. You'll crash the civ-tran in T minus thirty seconds. We're going to have words when you get home, but for now, I think a night in the county lockup would do you some good."

"Eat a magnet. Control, acknowledge. Launch escape pod. Without the disapproving sigh."

A rumble drowned out the haunt control's attempts to make him enroll in medical school. The rumble sounded like an earthquake gaining momentum, but it grew into a lion's roar and finally—belch off. The escape pod blasted out of the starship's clutches. Reef scrambled to the window and beheld a torn street on Station One's surface—crumbled lampposts, graffiti decorating a building. Those Mechaknights sure knew how to make themselves at home.

A spurt of memory erupted into Reef's mind's eye. The Palicomic War on Perseus. The year 9105, a day or two after Boxing Day. Holy piss, the memory winded him like a sledgehammer to the ribs when it punched into his consciousness. Reef—no, not Reef yet, but Devon Holbrek—staggered down a graffiti-riddled city street, a bottle in one hand and, for some reason, a sushi menu in the other. Sushi made him sick, which might explain the puke speckling his camo pants. Then again, so might the alcohol, the rancid odor of cheap cologne, or the measure of his self-respect.

Two kids chased each other across the war-torn street. One carried a stick and whacked the other. Holbrek wouldn't get into it. A woman to the right flapped laundry in the dirty breeze as if cracking a whip. She hung the shirt on a line suspended between two grungy buildings. A dog barked. A kindly tramp was watering flowers with urine. His own special blend.

Someone behind Holbrek approached. Under a half-crumbled lamppost, a platoon buddy named Barney Warwick—

The memory crackled away. In the here and now, the screech of the pod's power ascended and descended. Reef felt the negative momentum generators subdue the force inside the pod to prepare it for a crash: whatever happened outside the pod, the insides would keep still. Reef's stomach wouldn't.

The memory, another shot to the gut. An attack. A rebel mil-tran sliced through the sky, and the whistle of a dropped bomb drew closer, right on top of Holbrek and Warwick. Warwick shoved Holbrek out of the way. Holbrek's head cracked on a curb. The bomb, the size of a basketball, dropped and Warwick scrambled to catch it—caught it. The bomb began glowing, sang a jingle for How Bad Do You Want It Cocaine Drops. Warwick gripped the bomb, sweated, bled from his nostrils. The bomb's glow dimmed, died, but now Warwick glowed, dropped the defused bomb. Wrenched out a scream. Light soaked through his clothes, crackled around him. Silence.

Holbrek sure could use a cocaine drop.

A torrent of energy exploded! It punctured beams of light out of Warwick's body. His mouth gaped open at Holbrek as if pleading for a quick death or a beer funnel. Holbrek, stupid Holbrek, stood and felt the heat of a thousand suns gush into him, torture him like hot wax poured over his body, which prompted the question, "How can women inflict this on their legs?" and then the next question, "Why should I care?" and finally the last, "Because what else have I got to do?"

Holbrek felt nothing but energy bubble through his cells, almost melt his bones, do strange things to that sushi and his concept of edible foreign foods. Finally, like a bladder bursting, nature called: he belched open his mouth, and out vomited not sushi but the torrent of energy he had absorbed. And then the sushi.

Reef watched the action through the escape pod's porthole: the pod clank-crash-smashed across the pavement and peeled into the street. It steamrolled a Mechaknight that Reef hoped was that leaf-burning idiot, but inside the pod everything was as still as a library.

Holbrek felt the energy well out. It kept gushing and gushing and gushing, one minute—two minutes—three-four-five minutes, and at that point, time melted away. He opened his eyes to a pure backdrop of yellow energy, as if he'd gone blind. But instead of darkness, he saw the surface of an undimpled lemon.

Screams. Explosions. And finally, with the energy spent, with sound and thought numbed, with light fading to normal, Holbrek lost consciousness.

When he awoke, everything was a crater. And the resulting amnesia sucked, too.

Reef kicked open the pod's hatch and toppled out. His footing abandoned him, and he tripped onto the pavement, bruised his three-fingered hand. Palms spread on the ground, he heard a Mechaknight say, "There he is. Pants him!"

Great. He hadn't been home more than fifteen seconds, and already the neighbors wanted a word with him. Reef searched his options—checked the street—where was he—on the main strip—outside the barracks—on his feet—run!—through the door—avoid Franchise's living quarters since no one could account for any nasty woodland creatures Power Plant threw in there this time—remember to talk to Power Plant about not weaponizing woodland creatures.

Chapter Eleven: It's All in the Wrist

Woodland creatures were funny weapons. Yup. Funny.

Under a domineering sun that leered like a heat lamp, Power Plant checked the parking lot. Fireball starships flooded it, more than Power Plant could count. "Four...five...six, I thinks...seven...one more 'n seven...two more 'n seven." He was edging toward his limit: eleventy-eight.

Behind him, the baking sun dried the yellowed field. A thousand crickets buzzed their song in the dying brush, and a few birds in the sky cawed. One dropped its load on a Mechaknight's shoulder. Score one for the bird population.

A breeze that should have refreshed Power Plant felt like air released from an oven. Ahead lay the parking lot, two Mechaknights pacing it in patrol. Power Plant instantly narrowed all his emotion into a hate laser. The world dimmed several shades, he heated up several degrees, and those two crockers lit up in his vision like carnival targets.

Power Plant had crept through shoulder-high grass to the curb of the parking lot in which those suited murderers had parked their starships. And, by "their starships," Power Plant meant the Good Guys' starships. First those Mechaknights invaded their home, killed their friends, and probably wet their beds. Now they came rolling around town in their transports? If those dudes broke all the interesting toys in the armory, Power Plant would congratulate them with a meat hook.

"Jeff, get down. You'll give away our position." Ace Spandex tromped through the grass to Power Plant at the curb. He grabbed the younger Good Guy and yanked him down behind a Starcruiser in one of the outer parking spots. "I swear you should need a certificate just to go into public."

Power Plant collared Ace and tried to throw him against the Starcruiser, but that metal body weighed a freaking ton of tons. "Hey, I's justs figurings out which o' these Fireballs we's gonna fly up Mechynism's tailpipe."

"Figuring something out? You think any word with more than two syllables belongs in a medical dictionary."

Legion and Patton emerged and dived against the "sleek and sexy" body—according to the advertisers—of the Starcruiser. The Starscruiser reflected so much heat that the sun had turned it into a skillet.

Legion said, "Jeff, Ace is right. Stay down. And don't use your power as a road flare right now. That's what the experts call 'counterproductive.'"

"Enough chitchat." Patton, now wearing Bermuda shorts and a golf shirt, held his pistol close to his chin. His lips twiddled a mischievous smile. Two fingers on his free hand rolled his mustache back and forth. "Field Agent Abends and I will deal with the Mechaknights. You two, wait here. Field Agent, weapons ready."

Power Plant waded into the grass. "Lemme finds a squirrel."

Ace grabbed his shoulder and yanked him back against the cover of the Starcruiser. He crinkled its side panel with a k-chunk. "Squirrels don't have as much stopping power to a Mechaknight as they do to Franchise."

"Then I's just shoots 'em Mechyknights in the bolts an' nuts."

"You mean just nut—Oh. I see what you're getting at. They're mixed company."

Patton stole a glance over the Starcruiser's hood at the two patrolling Mechaknights. His pistol was ready. His pistol was always ready. His mustache was still tweezed between two fingers. His mustache was always tweezed. It looked cool, so Power Plant tweezed his. Oh. No mustache. Right. Bummer.

"Okay, here's the plan. This pistol can't penetrate those suits." Patton tapped his weapon with his other hand, but that hand returned to his salt-and-pepper mustache. "So, Fld. Agt. Abends, I'll reposition myself behind that Derelict over there with the rear spoiler and the hilarious bumper sticker." He waved his pistol at the civilian transport a few yards away. "I'll draw the Mechaknights' attention my way. That should allow you to build up enough of an energy blast to wallop those metal flatterers into raw ore."

"Psycho elephants?" was Power Plant's response.

Legion leaned away from the scorching Starcruiser. "You're asking the wrong person about your plan. You didn't include shiny objects that clank."

"All that matters is you know what you're doing." Patton scanned the horizon, studied the Mechaknights, measured his path to the Derelict.

"Yeah. I's shoot shiny objects what clanks." He drew energy into his hands.

Patton winked. "Essentially."

"Jeff, without the mix-and-match grammar, do you follow the plan?" Legion tilted forward, careful his antennae extended no higher than the civ-tran's roof. He put a hand on Power Plant's shoulder to affirm eye contact. Power Plant nodded. "Good."

Patton had been watching the Mechaknights pace and timed himself. "It's a go." He launched into a sprint toward the Derelict across the parking lot. He dived—the Mechaknights turned a split second after he collapsed behind it. He cut a nod at Power Plant and sneaked a peak over the Derelict's contoured spoiler. Then he laughed at the bumper sticker.

Legion wore that this-should-go-over-like-a-lead-balloon look of concern Power Plant wore whenever he considered the warning label on a medicine bottle. "You sure about this?"

Too late. Patton stood and waved his pistoled hand. The other hand was smoothing his mustache. "Hey, bipedal trashcans!"

The Mechaknights stopped, and so did their clattering footsteps. They stood at opposite ends of the lot, so one yelled to the other, "Bipedal trash-trans? Is that your mother-in-law?"

The other shrugged. "Uh-i-'unno."

Now Patton waved both hands. "Over here, bucket heads."

Both Mechaknights found Patton. They jerked back at the sight of someone waving his arms as though landing a plane. "Bucket heads? Just because we use these things to make sandcastles, they ain't buckets."

Patton let two shots fly. The pop-pop scattered a few birds. The shots were wide, but they served their purpose because both Mechaknights bounded toward Patton like freight trains. One of those freight trains derailed over a concrete divider.

The Mechaknight in the lead lobbed a shot over the Derelict but missed. The lobber fired another shot, which shattered a window and sent a civ-tran's theft alarm into a screaming fit. The Mechaknight who had klutzed onto all fours sprang to her feet and barreled forward.

By now, Power Plant had gathered enough energy to amass a crackling wad of photons the size of an ostrich egg. But he wanted more. The Mechaknights deserved more. He timed his...Wait a second. Ostrich egg. Great. Now he was hungry.

If his aim were true (it barely ever was—in fact, it lied a lot), he'd melt these Mechaknights into puddles. One...more...ounce...of pressure...against...his palms. Power Plant's teeth fit together into their grooves, pressed down, his arms ached, and if Lobber misfired another shot, a few auto insurance companies were liable to file for bankruptcy. Lobber did misfire. Mechanism couldn't get good help these days.

Power Plant's yellow ball of energy clapped with static anger. But still...more energy. The Mechaknights were almost on Patton. Lobber shot another light-bullet that came close to hitting Patton, which was still closer to hitting the broadside of that barn over there. A barn. Next to a parking lot. City planning rode the short bus sometimes.

Everything ached. Even Power Plant's teeth. He choked. "Jeez, Lobber, ya's couldn't hits a target if you's playin' Russians roulette."

Lobber gestured at Patton. "Get away from there!" His footsteps clonged over the medians and space dividers. "Don't ruin the bumper sticker!"

"Jeff, you'd better do something." Ace Spandex eased a hand onto Power Plant's shoulder. It sizzled from the heat Power Plant emitted. "Something positive, I mean."

"I ain't even knows what positrip mean." Power Plant's teeth almost snapped into each other. His jaws stung.

Ace stomped a foot. "Jeff, come on. You haven't shown this much restraint since you waited for that chocolate factory tour to end!"

Power Plant's nose trickled blood. His eyes felt as if they bled, too. "Jus' wait."

Patton spun aside to avoid laserfire from the converging Mechaknights. One shot singed his shirtsleeve.

"Jeff, this isn't a bathroom bladder dare. Just let it go!"

"Hold up."

"Jeff? You've absorbed so much energy your skin is glowing. It's never done that before."

Finally the moment came. Power Plant released. The energy gushed out of his palms, and he averted himself from the heat that flapped out of the eruption. It sounded like a dragon dousing a wheat field. A full thirty count later—though Power Plant didn't know what a thirty count was any more than he knew what a twenty count was—the energy expired, cut off as sharply as it had disgorged. His palms tingled as though he'd rubbed them vigorously on carpet. He peeked at the destruction he'd wrought and—Holy crock, he'd done that?

His blast had carved a three-foot, cylindrical tunnel through anything ahead of him: both Mechaknights, a row of civ-trans, a mall over there, a national landmark, and if Power Plant's vision were still a cool twenty-twenty, most of the eastern hemisphere.

A lamppost collapsed over a booth in the middle of the lot. The booth's roof disintegrated inward to couch the lamppost, whose bulb chattered a tap dance of sparks. The other end of the lamppost crunched onto the pavement.

Patton had ducked under Power Plant's discharge. His hands covered his head, but when the melee of commotion petered out, when the last transport alarm whirled into silence, when the last dead bird hit the pavement, he stood and uncovered his head. He gave a toothy smile and a thumbs-up. "Saved the bumper sticker!"

Power Plant marched up to the melted remnants of one of the Mechaknights. "That one for Mark an' Jakey an' Smith an' a sammich." He threw his whole body into a kick. "An' alsos my foot. Ow." Those crockheads and their puddled bodies deserved everything they got. And Power Plant's skin wasn't glowing anymore.

Ace Spandex ventured up to Power Plant, who now cradled his foot. "Jeff, I don't care what nasty animal you think you need to throw at me. Don't ever do that in my living quarters."

Power Plant stomped toward one of the mil-trans. "Let's go gets a egg."

Chapter Twelve: With All His Wits about Him

With one arm draped around Braindead's nonbandaged shoulder, Master Asinine reached the three-step staircase that led to the Wreck Room's seating area. He hobbled along on one leg. The other one was probably cracked in several places. If he needed a cast—which no one had needed since maybe the late thirtieth century—he'd ask IQ 23 to sign it, "Get well soon. From that guy who fluffs your morning coffee and brews your pillow," and that statement would have made sense if his coffee were properly fluffed this morning.

His two favorite minions had let him rest on one of the fragmented chairs in the corner of the Wreck Room. After an hour or two, he'd gotten used to the hot bruises, welts, and food poisoning, grabbed a drink, watched a movie, caught up on current affairs—his stocks were down and, oh yeah, Mechanism's thing—and finally he was ready to escape.

"Lieutenant, where is everyone? We need to organize a limbo party." His voice sounded misty, muffled by bruises that flared when he inhaled.

"Not today, sir. We ran out of spinach dip, and the others are still captured aboard Station One. But the bigger issue right now is stopping Mechanism. Do you remember where you left your missile-launcher launcher?"

"I can't remember where I lose all my toys, Lieutenant. That's your job. And, speaking of Mechanism, where can we find that highbrow and his high brows?"

"Last I checked, he was traveling to Intergalactic Protection's main campus to slaughter the soldiers. That was a few hours ago."

Master Asinine grunted when his ribs flickered in pain. "He's probably finished that and moved onto stealing my Popsicles. That's what we call 'grand theft auto.'"

"Sir, I don't think Mechanism has a penchant for salsa-flavored frozen treats."

"Get real, Lieutenant. I baked the onions right in. Braindead, pause hobble." Master Asinine leaned against the frame of the Wreck Room's rear door to catch his breath. "Okay, resume hobble." He threw his arm around Braindead's shoulders, and they advanced into the hall. The lights here washed his vision, so he screened his eyes. "Anyway, our first step is to free the others. Well, maybe not Multipurpose. He'll free himself once he gets wind of what's in store for our Valentine brunch."

"People's hearts again, sir?"

"People's hearts? How inhumane do you think I am?" Master Asinine smote IQ 23 with what he considered his best look, what the French would call l'indigné. "This year, we feast on the hearts of lawyers."

Chapter Thirteen: What's with This Barrel, and Why Am I Dressed like a Fish?

"Wait here, my pretties." Number B shooed a hand at the army of twenty Mechaknights that followed him. The Mechaknights stopped in the center of the large, blank chamber, their revelry of clanking with them, so Number B didn't have to slap them around. Too bad, because his bucket list included slapping a twenty-strong army. This was listed right below slapping a forty-strong army.

The stasis bay was ahead. Number B fixed it in his view, directed himself, and bulldozed toward the l-door quickly enough to crunch his hand into it and tear it off. Oh, today was turning out to be a truly scrumptious day. He felt that rush, that tingle, as if his chest contained kittens chasing balls of yarn. He would kill those kittens and stomp on their yarn.

He tromped into the bay where stood twin rows of twenty man-sized stasis tanks. A rubber hose attached each tank to an elaborate machine that high-density alloy supports bracketed to the ceiling. Of the forty tanks, only eight were filled. Those eight tanks recycled fluid and pumped oxygen through the hoses. The fluid, a blue slosh of goop like carbonated Smurf blood, sluiced around the tanks to wash and moisturize the figures inside. Every few seconds, the hoses would tremble and choke out another spurt of fluid. A hum filled the bay all the way to the back where the Good Guys amassed heaps of junk electronics and a few of what looked like Power Plant's cheap robot knockoffs. Alarm clocks and bicycle wheels? If Number B climbed inside Power Plant's dreams, he'd require years of psychotherapy.

The remaining Good Guys slept in those stasis tanks. Digital displays at the head of each tank identified who slept inside. The first row held Sixth Sense, Withered Old Battle-Axe, Topsy or Turvy—whichever one had survived Lord Alpha's assassination, but the display just read, "Your Guess Is As Good As Mine"—Pincushion, and Ed. The second row held Momentum, Intergalactic Protection Agent Gervix Invard, and Null. Null. Constantly in a coma, that guy was a walking stasis. In fact, his stasis tank had probably livened him up.

Euphoric shock pulsed through Number B from his core right into his sparkly, nail-polished fingertips. Oh, goody goody! He wanted to clap, but he'd set off Lord Alpha's dignity alarm and then have to hear a sixty-minute grandeur-orientation session.

His next few minutes would feel as though he were drinking appletinis from Reef's skull in the Garden of Eden. He checked the digital display that indicated his rifle's charge. Plenty of charge to kill these pansywaists and show Number AV outside you never mess with someone's collection of fairy figurines.

He wandered around to the back row and found Null's tank. If anybody would have no impact in death, it was this inanimate meat bag. Heh. Number B snapped his rifle up. He pressed it against the circular tank, and it squeaked on the clear plastic. He sidestepped around the tank so the shot wouldn't slice through Null and into Invard beside him. No, no, no, that wouldn't do. Number B was intent on slaughtering these lambs one at a time. Okay, okay, maybe one two-fer.

He chuckled at Null, the same Null who had never himself chuckled, never seen sky, never smelled grass, never run through snow, never kicked a soccer ball, never tickled a hedgehog.

Null had no clue.

Number B's shot raked through Null's temple. Curls of red snaked out and fogged the blue liquid that now peed out the tiny hole his light-bullet had punctured. The liquid smelled like window cleaner.

The end of Number B's rifle clattered to the cement floor. His heart, which had pulsated with bursts of blissful giddiness, now churned out black, sterile disappointment. Just one shot? He'd murder these wastes with simple headshots? No. This moment—this execution—required finesse.

"How?" He spoke that word aloud as if one of the Good Guys would answer him. And if they did, he'd freak out.

Number B commanded his onboard computer to open his favorite file, Assassinations and Other Party Games. This would offer him ideas. He flipped to the index at the rear of the book and—ooh, ooh. Disembowelment! No, wait. Decapitation! Or tapeworm garden! Hey, the book had a recipe section.

He ran into this problem every time he consulted the index.

* * *

"Holy anger management, stop using that drill on my very personal zones!" Franchise shot to a sitting position and heaved in a gigantic guzzle of chilly air, and what the piss was this slop, and where the piss was he, and...whoa. Color. He rubbed the slop that felt like melted rubber from his eyes. It dripped off his arm into a waist-deep pool. Why was he in a bathtub? What kind of crazy spa day had he gotten himself into this time?

No drill. No hammer. No sawblade. Not the bathroom. For one thing, he wasn't getting swirlied. So where was he? Franchise hyperventilated more oxygen in-out-in-out. The slop felt lukewarm and milky, but Franchise shivered from the waist up. He blinked haze from his vision. Was this one of Jeffy's pranks?

This was the healing room, lighted in bright yellow. Hollowed out of the floor were four tubs with no edges but circumferences of smaller, brown tiles to separate the tubs from the larger, white tiles. A booth against one wall brightened with computer doodads on an operating bank. A row of plastic windows separated the booth from this chilled and arid room. Also there was a poster of puppies.

Okay, okay. Calm down. What had he—Oh yeah, stripped down to his streaker outfit. Torture. Blood, cuts, gore. Holes. More holes than usual anyway. And his knee. A shattered knee. A—he shivered in the bath, and the slop rippled around him—dead clone with its brains exploded against ugly tile. But nothing hurt anymore. Well, happy freaking birthday to him.

"You totally okay?" A voice. Magical. Sounded like an eleventh-grade angel. Of course, after the ordeal Franchise had endured, anybody who didn't say "for our next DIY project" would sound like a saint.

Glop leaked into his vision. His breathing shivered, and his eyes darted at the voice. Who was it? A figure swam in red shades. He cleared his eyes. A wrinkle of sight like a hallucination resolved slowly into—

"Amaranthia?" Franchise burst back against the edge of this weird bathtub. He shielded his head—oh crock, oh crap, oh piss, oh man, oh everything else—and his stomach retched as if he were hit by a boxing glove attached to a battering ram hooked up to a rocket launcher. "Please don't kill me, please don't kill me"—whimpering—"I've been killed enough times today, and I know that sounds weird, but please don't kill me, and just take that puppy poster and go."

Amaranthia, all one hundred pounds of red fashion, approached the bathtub and squatted by its edge. "I'm, like, not gonna kill you?"

Franchise's head emerged from the shield of his arms like a mouse inching out of its hole. His stomach still quivered in bile. His blood pressure had definitely shot through the roof. "Are you asking me or telling me?" How would he know if he farted in this goop?

Amaranthia rolled her eyes. "Duh? I need your help? Mechanism is totally acting like a gank, all wanting to, like, kill everyone. And that's not good because I get the idea he'll probably kill me once he's done, and then who's gonna shop at all the clothing outlets?" She chewed strawberry gum.

Okay, well, from the smell of this slop, Franchise figured he'd taken a bath in healing gel. And his wounds were gone. Even his shattered knee, wrapped in a bandage of concentrated gel, felt okay to walk on, though stiff. He felt a sharp, cold pang whenever he used his leg, but he ignored it. And his knee's stiffness was probably a brace hooked into his thigh and femur so he wouldn't put weight on the knee until it finished repairing. He'd bathed for maybe an hour or two. So Amaranthia had taken care of him. She seemed okay so far...except for the clash of red she wore. Did she own a single stitch of green?

Franchise scratched his hair. He checked Amaranthia up and down. Her outfit, a rosewood number that clung to her and sounded like swishy linen when she moved, included a katana in one hand. "You want m-my h-help? Against Mr. Mechanical Kill Machine Plus out there?" A hand splashed out of the rubbery slop toward the door that led to the hall. "How c-can I help? I haven't felt this scared since Jeffy told me he needed a hand repairing the cracks in the hyena holding tank."

Amaranthia sheathed her sword in the scabbard looped around her shoulder. She held out her hand and braced her feet. "Get out. We got business."

Franchise raised an eyebrow. "Let me put it this way: I didn't even know we had hyenas."

"Seriously, we need to, like, move?"

"As it turns out, that's a bad idea on account of I'm one hundred percent naked." His hands splashed out of the slop. "And you're wearing stiletto heels. I'm liable to pull you into this melted tire."

Amaranthia stood, crossed her arms, and indicated something behind Franchise. Franchise twirled around to find a towel and a mound of clothes at the head of the tub. One of his impact suits, the outfit IP designed so they could market his likeness. Corporate branding. A new gabber lay on top of the mound.

"Fine. So you grabbed something from my closet. The fact that you found my living quarters is creepy, but at least I've got clothes." Franchise stood, but before he lifted his waist out..."Can you look away? Please?" He spun a finger around.

Amaranthia rolled her eyes again but did as told, her arms still crossed.

This room was so frigid Franchise felt like ice cream. He sprang out and quickly toweled off and whipped into his underwear and into his impact pa—

"Your butt's totally cute." Amaranthia inched her face left just enough to direct her words at Franchise when she said that.

Franchise's second leg was halfway into his pants when he paused. "What?"

A hint of a playful smile tilted Amaranthia's lips. "When it's not sliced up."

Franchise blinked. His leg hung there with his pants up to the knee brace. After a beat, he continued dressing. "Thanks." He felt his cheeks flush. The ones on his face.

He finished dressing, inserted his new gabber, and hurried around the tub to Amaranthia. She spun around and whipped out her sword with a scraping sssshhh on its way out the scabbard. "You ready?"

"Yeah." A normal temperature returned to Franchise. "So what's the plan? Grab a starship and get the heck outta Dodge? Dinner's on me as long as we don't stop off at a certain Burger Wench I've heard about. If we go there, don't order anything on the menu that says 'charbroiled.' They use nukers." He swallowed. "That's not a cute term."

"No way. We got to totally stop that super gitch Mechanism? Or he's gonna so make this solar system into, like, a massive suck-fest?" She swished her sword through the air, and Franchise skittered back to avoid becoming two halves of a whole.

"N-noth-nothing doing." Franchise backed away, and if he'd had a tail, it would have coiled around his legs. He almost tripped into the bathtub, its gunk smelling like rubber. "I'm g-getting out-t of h-here. I saw myself d-die once already. I'm n-not doing it again."

"Really?" Amaranthia scowled at him along the shaft of that really long katana whose glint shimmered down its blade and up Franchise's spine. "You're gonna scam outta here? Power Plant is probably on his way right now, and you're gonna totally skip out on him?"

"Jeffy?" Franchise checked Amaranthia's feet, not because those stilettos had probably hammered more than a few tenders, but because shame broke his eye contact. Scam out of here? Leave his friends? Leave Jeffy? Ace...Hagen...Pincushion...the soda machines?

The door to the hall vaporized, and in clomped a thunderous trail of steps, purpose like an exclamation point in each one. Franchise whirled around and..."Reef?"

Reef gawked at the two of them—his pistol swung up, reported a bang-bang-bang at Amaranthia, Amaranthia backflipped to avoid the gunfire, Reef retargeted, followed her move, Franchise threw himself in front of her as though she were the President of Renovodomus.

"Jacob, out of the way!" Reef reared forward. "She needs a shooting, an English tutor, or a lobotomy. Take your pick, but since I don't see a tutor, your choices are slimming down."

From halfway across the room, Franchise waved his palms at Reef. "No, no, no, you don't understand. Put the gun away. She saved my life."

"The only thing Amaranthia ever saved is the first season of Pimp My Nerd." Reef didn't adjust his sights. In fact, he seemed ready to shoot through Franchise. He stomped toward him.

"Pimp My Nerd?" Franchise dropped his hands. "What the piss are they televising nowadays?"

"Get out of the way, so we can take care of her, find Number B, and stop him from killing everyone." Reef reached Franchise and stopped only a few feet away. Both stood within screaming distance, but Reef looked ready to scream loudly enough to swallow Franchise's upper half and still have room for dessert. "With any luck, he'll start at Invard, but I have the sneaking suspicion Ed's first because Ed's got a baby face and Number B doesn't want competition. What smells like processed rubber?" He sampled his armpit. "Safe."

"Reef, put the gun away."

"Jacob, she killed Smith." Reef's aim looked sloppy. Why was he holding the trigger by the ring finger?

"I'm serious, Reef." Franchise barely moved his lips to pronounce the words that crawled out from between his teeth. He affirmed a stare that could stop heavy traffic or, at the least, an early morning circulation. "She. Saved. My life. From drills, Reef. From drills. If not for her, I would have been someone's Ikea workbench. And I'd be missing a shelf." He stepped forward and wrapped his hand around the smooth steel of Reef's pistol barrel. "So put it down."

Amaranthia stepped out from behind Franchise. Reef's pistol didn't budge, but his eyes bounced between Amaranthia and Franchise. "Did she bribe you with pizza coupons?"

"No," Franchise said.

"A date with her cousin?"

"No."

"Scuba lessons at the koi pond in the atrium?"

"Just because Jeffy tricks me into that doesn't mean everybody can."

"She's the real deal?"

"Yes."

Reef hefted out a breath, stood on the balls of his heels—"I'm gonna regret this"—and lowered the pistol. "Fine. But if she goes ballistic because the humidity is crimping her hair, you get the hairspray ready."

Reef marched to the door opposite the one through which he'd entered. Franchise sprang into a trot after him. "Why are you holding your pistol funny? Where are the rest of your fingers? Reef?"

"Never mind that. We need to stop Number B and his purple-jointed armor from killing everyone."

"How? There are only three of us." Franchise stopped when Reef reached the l-door. It hadn't vaporized yet. Reef hadn't entered its preset vanishing range. "Guarding that stasis bay must be twenty or so odd armored guys who count using the alphabet."

"I have enough charge left for four shots. And Amaranthia can gossip with only so many Mechaknights before their heads explode, and I don't want to mop up the gray goop their skulls leave behind. But we don't have a choice or much time to think."

Franchise tightened his neck. Resolution burned in his gut. No, it was that rubbery gel. He must have swallowed some "bathwater." "I've got an idea." His body felt like wet paper, but he quashed the feeling. No fear anymore. "Time to get over something."

"Your nasty habit of tracking mud through the cafeteria?"

* * *

"And at the end of every episode, someone sleeps with someone else," Number EE said to Number JM. "Very gripping."

Number JM frowned. "I'm not really a fan of telethons."

This massive room outside the stasis bay, holding an army of Mechaknights, was a gymnasium or auditorium blank of detail but a wrapper for a candy bar Number CM had eaten and not shared with anybody. Number EE fired a glare at Mr. Oh Hungry.

The room's door frothed to nothingness, the smell of burned rubber trickling in. The lighting in the adjoining room was dismal, but what Number EE discerned without using his green-pukey night vision was a single figure. The figure, slightly on the underweight side, stumbled in. Alone. Frail. Shaking as if he'd stepped without a blindfold in front of a firing squad. His knees bowed inward.

"I got this one." Number EE raised an arm and bent his hand down. Out clicked a needle laser. His targeting program automatically loaded and displayed a telescopic view in his field of vision. That punk Franchise. When did he escape? Didn't matter. Number EE would blow his head off his scrawny neck and then serve cake.

He fired. The report echoed through the room in a thunderclap, and that punk's head splashed into dust and fragments. The body bounced against the doorframe and flopped onto the floor.

Easy kill. Now, back to thinking about how massive and empty this room was.

But another Franchise stood above the body. Then another. And another. They amassed as a group of four, eight, sixteen. They stood at the door, blinking, analyzing the Mechaknights who confronted them like opposing chess pieces. Not moving, only blinking. One scratched his rump.

They snapped into action! Hooted and charged across the room. One grabbed a Mechaknight and wrenched the helmet back and forth, slammed that Mechaknight against another. The Mechaknight's eye slit split into a design of spider-leg fractures. Number EE leveled his needle laser at this new Franchise...when another darted in. And another. Another and another and anotherandanotherandanotherand—Wait. That last one was a cardboard ad for Franchise action figures.

Too many to tally now. Twenty. Thirty. Fifty. A hundred! The counter on Number EE's onboard computer kept rolling and rolling and why at one point did it use a fraction?

The Mechaknights backed away from the militia of gangly Franchise dopes who gushed in with screams, yells, roars. They launched themselves at the Mechaknights. They slammed Mechaknights to the floor. They stomped, crushed armor under sheer weight, peed. Peed? Yes. Peed.

"What the crock?" Number EE fired at a Franchise. That one flew back, burst apart. Another three surged forth to replace the dead one. Number EE fired again, but another dozen Franchises replaced that dispersed one.

In they flowed like a crushing squall of monkeys. They rammed Mechaknights to the wall, using broken and torn armor parts to batter their way through those still standing. One Franchise juggled severed arm joints and actually managed six of them before an elbow conked him over the head.

Number JM fell under the flattening attack of four Franchises. In seconds, they ripped JM's armor apart using other Mechaknight bits as crowbars and hammers.

Number EE crept into a corner that wasn't so blank and sterile anymore. Blood, oil, and coolant fluids now washed the room. "Mommy."

* * *

A dull thumping approached Number B from a million miles away and bloomed into a barrage of clamor that ricocheted into this stasis bay as if an assembly line somewhere had received a pay cut. Had his guards—those idiots who never shared their candy with anybody but looked delectably dreamy...mmm-hmmmm—fallen?

He had to act fast. And flipping through the c section of his big book of party-time assassinations came up with nothing but "Columbian necktie" and "charades." Could he combine the two? Meh. These guys didn't look as though they were in any condition to guess "two words, first word, first syllable, rhymes with deck."

Okay, simple shooting it was. Poopy. Those Good Guys and their fun-time interloping, always interloping into his fun time. Fine. First up was Topsy or Turvy, whichever had lived. Even a microscopic evaluation couldn't solve the which-is-which guessing game these eye-blistering twins presented. He fired. A bullet sang through the tank and drilled into that crazy midget's temple. Blue liquid spilled out the tank, and red liquid squirted out the head of that affront to vision. Wouldn't you know it? Everything on the inside was colored normally.

He sighted Pincushion. Well, if this guy wanted to be a pincushion, Number B would oblige. His hand wrapped around the rifle's trigger—

"Stop right there," someone behind him said with so much swagger his voice must have owned a two-piece suit. Ooh, how tingly. Number B lowered his rifle, whose barrel hit the floor. A metallic ping reflected around the room. Number B shuffled around in a one-eighty and found...aha. Reef.

The fingers on one of Reef's hands curled at a light panel. The other gripped the air at Number B. Was he channeling some long forgotten ghost, or was he about to perform an interpretive dance of how he'd die in fifteen seconds?

"Reef, Reef, Reef. I have a feeling Lord Alpha would want to relish your death himself, but unfortunately he's not here." Number B smacked his lips. "But your head will make an adorable bowl once I hollow out your skull." Oh, wait. "And plug up the nostrils."

Reef shuddered. "Please, just...don't mention any plans you have for my head."

"Are you here to save everyone? I wear body armor. How do you propose to do that?" Number B whipped his rifle up and back. He fired blindly. "There. I just executed another of your friends."

"You shot a viewscreen." Reef must have sensed Number B's confusion, so he added, "It didn't even work. We chucked it in here to get it out of the way."

Number B glanced behind him. "So what? My question still stands: how can you save everyone?" He tapped his chin with a finger. "Mmmmm?"

"Like this." A zigzag of white electricity crackled from the light panel in jagged stems that twisted around Reef's fingers, curled around his body, and spiraled into his other hand. The light panel flickered, buzzed, dimmed. The electricity scrabbled out of Reef's fingers and enveloped Number B. His onboard computer flashed an error message—HOT DANG, I'M OVERLOADED—its display narrowed down to a single hissing line—and...and...shut down. Doodie nuggets!

"Oh, poo." Number B stood statuesque, blind. He struggled inside his armor, but it pinned him in place. He heard Reef's unhurried footsteps. His bodysuit would reactivate soon, but that dastardly Reef would be long gone. No trophies. No bowls. And on soup night!

Another zap. The sound traveled throughout the room, cascaded over where Number B estimated the tanks stood.

"Stasis tanks overloaded. Opening all stasis tanks," the haunt control said. "And, hey, do yourself a favor and grab some free samples of Viagratronic's quick-setting cement. Now at participating flower shops."

Reef ignored the haunt control's intriguing advertisement. The lemony scent of stasis liquids overpowered the room. And if the clank and whir, beep and flush of those lemony liquids served as any indication, Reef was setting the Good Guys free. No!

"Entity Sixth Sense is revived," the haunt control said.

Number B mustered only wiggling his fingers around in his gloves. He couldn't even form fists. Trapped in his own purple-striped suit. "No, you stupid control!" His voice didn't project out of the speaker. It only echoed inside his helmet, sounding muffled and flat. "Go back to advertising appealing quick-dry binding substances." Ooh, binding.

"Entity Withered Old Battle-Axe is revived. Entity Pincushion is revived." The haunt control, that bothersome creation that should have stuck with Viagratronic ads, rolled down the roster of prisoners, all free one after another until finally it reached that bloodsucking bureaucrat Invard.

"Ta ta, B," Reef said. Number B couldn't hear a wave, but he knew those fingers were twiddling playfully.

"You crocking silly dilly, I'll get you for this!" Number B's screams went unheard. And he needed to fart. What a time for these bodysuits to be airtight.

Chapter Fourteen: Et tu, Number A?

Luzimoss eyed Mechanism among the mess hall's grease-shined tables. Mechanism and all his enhancements. The modeled cannon attached to his elbow joint. The chain gun hanging over each shoulder. The spiked tail. The glint of light in his helmet's crown. The "Free Liposuction Estimates" neon sign pasted across his chest.

Number EY bumped past a few Mechaknights and sidled up next to Mechanism. Her knees locked, and her legs snapped together in a static stance. "Welcome back from your slaughter at Intergalactic Protection, Lord Alpha. We have set up the first series of concentration camps in Eurodona." A hint of delight lilted her voice. "We are already herding citizens. We'll set up the suitability tests and brainwashing booths in two hours. Your throne is back from the shop. And, by throne, I mean toilet...which somehow makes it more fitting."

"The brainwashing video includes footage of Pregnant Horse?"

"Yes, Lord Alpha." Number EY's words included a snicker. Luzimoss wanted to steamroll that snicker out her throat like toothpaste from a tube.

"Good. That show breaks even the hardiest of minds down to its mental components. Now fetch me more of the unworthy. I need someone to shoot while I wait. I so dread boredom."

"Why not download the latest episode of Pregnant Horse's spinoff series, Pregnant Horse Jockey?" Appliance fluttered to him. It clacked its remaining claw and regarded Mechanism with that penetrating eye that never blinked. Luzimoss would make it blink if given the opportunity to pry it out. Yes, he needed anger therapy.

"Hmm." Mechanism put a hand to his chin and drummed his fingers on a table. "Either that or the Yurts' latest ultimate-couponing game. That is an option."

He swung away. His cape clapped across Luzimoss's face. He strolled to the door that led to the hall, and Number EY followed. Luzimoss had to follow, not because he was leashed to this mechanical hatemonger, but because otherwise he'd have to sit through another lecture discussing the merits of remaining within striking distance. He weighed the pros and cons anyway, because the lecturer served fresh-baked muffins.

Luzimoss passed a table with cutlery crisscrossing a dirty napkin. Now was his chance. Prickling sweat breaking out, adrenaline screaming, he swept aside a chopstick and palmed a steak knife. This he slid up his sleeve, under the arm harness of his exoskeleton armor. He skipped the spork. That thing worked only on runny eggs.

Mechanism said, "Ignore my viewing options for now. Number EY, set up the next series of concentration camps. Locate them in Heart Falls, Mascoon. Fill it with those who ride the 'special bus.' That shall serve as an easy conquest. Bulldoze the measuring-tape factory if you must."

"Yes, sir." Number EY clanked off a salute. She rushed away to complete her master's bidding.

Mechanism and Luzimoss reached the mess hall's door. It misted away with so much effervescence Luzimoss swore water spritzed him.

"And Number A—"

"Still within your striking radius, Lord Alpha." Luzimoss's gaze scraped up Mechanism's arm to his helmet.

The lord of arrogance leveled his eyes down. "Number A, if you treat me not with the respect I merit, I will ship you off to a space camp filled with claustrophobics. Do I make myself clear?"

"Clear as day." Luzimoss readied the steak knife by sliding it between two fingers and propping it against his wrist.

"Now, I have need of your hyperability." Mechanism wandered into the hall, away from the salty scent of mustard and soya sauce. "You will use your knowledge hivemind for one specific purpose only." He stopped and propped a finger against Luzimoss's nose. "That purpose is not to once again predict what I will say so that you say the same thing at the same time. Copycatting is not the sincerest form of flattery."

"Power Plant thinks so."

"Power Plant's brain is energized by a bicycle, and the cyclist is legless. Now, your purpose is to predict Intergalactic Protection's remaining involvement. By my calculation, we have abolished only eighty-two percent of their forces."

Luzimoss's vision darkened with ire. He scratched a phantom itch on the metal plate on his head. "Eighty-two and four-fifths. That's if you count the prop-gun unit."

"Nobody does. Anyway, I must know what they might attempt."

"What they might attempt, you callous beast?" Luzimoss felt access to his hivemind again, felt the voices stuff his head like cotton: percentages, odds, probabilities. Mechanism must have reactivated it for an answer. Okay, 87 percent chance now was his time to strike, and he sensed exactly the chink in Mechanism's armor. "They might attempt this!" He jumped—jammed the steak knife between two joints in Mechanism's neck assembly—twisted. Mechanism's neck bent forward—he tried to grapple it—sparks clapped out—motion was slashed to a limited range—wiring had severed—signals couldn't reach his hands—arms hung loosely, swung lifelessly at his hips.

Mechanism clambered around and thrashed a boot at Luzimoss. "You beast, you have sullied my honor. Without movement in my arms, how can I slap my army? I cannot even bring the sultry taste of Rose du cheri to my lips. That was my celebratory wine!"

Luzimoss had already skidded around the corner. He slipped and hit the carpet, a burn gashing along his side. He leaped up and kept sprinting.

"Kill that traitor!" Mechanism said. His Mechaknights blundered to attention and fired, but they only cut a dotted line through the wall above Luzimoss's head. They didn't give chase. Mechanism hadn't ordered them to.

"I will detonate the chip inside your head, you plundered mind!" Mechanism's threats rumbled around the corner. "You and hundreds of thousands of souls will perish!"

Luzimoss backed against a panel window. "I've weighed that. Those souls will die now or later in your concentration camp. Either way, you'll execute them."

"Blast it. He knows me too well." Mechanism floundered into a wall.

"Lord Alpha, my sire." Appliance buzzed closer. That annoying speck clacked its intact pincer. "Let me pry that knife from your neck."

"How, you mosquito at fifty magnifications? You possess not even the grip strength to tie a shoelace."

"I can however tie several balloon animals. All snakes. In case we have need for balloon animals. By the way you are attempting to kick me, I surmise we have no need for balloon animals."

"After him, Mechaknights!" Mechanism stamped his palm into the wall. "I want his intestines draping my neck by the time I have thought of a method to punish you dolts for being dolts."

Luzimoss plucked another object from his pocket. A pistol he'd found earlier. He didn't need his knowledge hivemind to know what to do next. But he had to act before those stomping boots reached him.

He jumped around the corner, couldn't aim for crock with shaking hands, but his exoskeletal armor stabilized him. He squeezed the trigger—punched that light-bullet straight into Mechanism's eye and out the back of his skull.

Mechanism crumpled, the tension in his body disintegrating. He didn't move. He didn't even twitch.

"Lord, Lord, Lord, you cannot die!" Appliance hovered over him with puppy-dog concern. "You are too important to perish now at this clinch moment. Please register my software for an increased level of unbridled panic."

The Mechaknights raced closer, so Luzimoss scrambled away.

* * *

Mechanism could not focus. One eye was ruined. The other eye was still supreme in its genetic perfection, but the right eye hurt as though tiny devils drove pitchforks into the emptied socket.

He was dying. He sensed it even without the progress meter on his helmet's display. It had a Cancel button for some reason.

"Oh, Lord, Lord." That infuriating Appliance hovered over him in all its buzzing stupidity, programmed only to rattle around in flitting flight patterns. Mechanism rolled his eyes. Scratch that. He rolled his eye. How quickly he forgot.

Mechanism's vision waved in pale discoloration. His eye socket choked blood. These were his final moments, and he felt the dementia of dread creep in. Oh, what could he lose? He clicked the Cancel button. Nope. That froze the application.

"Machine, come closer." His voice was nothing more than vaporous murmurs. "Do not grieve. I still function. In fact, shut up."

Appliance buzzed closer like a gnat in his ear. "Oh, Lord. You remain operational. Oh, joy be to this plane of existence. Oh—"

"Machine, if you silence not your prattling, I will spend my last ounce of life rebuilding you into the thermostat in Station Mechanism's sauna that thinks it can predict Multipurpose's bathroom use."

"Yes, Lord. What do you desire, my lord?"

"To reconsider the moment I created you." Blood pooled inside Mechanism's helmet. "Machine, my vitals are fading. My bodysuit will not sustain life much longer. Before I perish, I need you to contact Number RN. Summon him here. This suit still functions, but it requires an upgrade from Brick's lab. I need Number RN to transport this armor to Station Mechanism."

"Yes, my liege. Anything to guarantee your continued survival."

Mechanism's arm spasmed into a chest of drawers propped against the wall. His final throes of life. "Machine, tell me your storage capacity."

"My storage capacity, sire? I am crafted from a hollowed-out canned-snake drone, so I hold in excess of three hundred eighty-two exbibytes. My flattery program fills one-quarter of that, Lord." Appliance flitted around Mechanism's field of vision so unpredictably it made Mechanism sick.

Three hundred eighty-two exbibytes. Mechanism's memories, his personality, his entire self required a few more zettabytes than what Appliance held, but he could stand to lose something. Perhaps gauche memories of gym class.

"After you contact Number RN, machine, I will need to download my essence into your memory. I will need to erase you."

Appliance stopped buzzing. It stopped flitting around like a hysterical moth at a light bulb. It did not even clack that pincer. The ensuing silence was tomblike.

"That computes in all the wrong ways, my liege."

You bet your one beady eye, it does, machine, Mechanism thought. "And I do not require jumper cables."

Chapter Fifteen: Welcome Home

The flight to Station One didn't take long. During the wait, Ace Spandex took the time to defragment his brain. What Terran—what living being—should ever need to defrag his brain? He watched sectors of his knowledge dance into arrangement: the defragmenter fit related memories together, and now he had a clear recollection of crawling home after a college bender and engaging in a heated argument with a pair of shoes. Whatever. That right shoe had it coming.

Power Plant sat in one of the passenger chairs, grumbling and clawing an armrest. Patton leaned against a wall in the back to clean the barrel of the rifle Legion had brought. Both paid attention to only their duties, if you counted Power Plant slowly tearing out an armrest as a duty.

Ace Spandex approached the navigator's chair and sat next to Legion, who piloted the Fireball. The surface of Station One's atmospheric bubble loomed ahead. "What's our ETA, and how do you suppose we'll slip past our own early-warning systems?" Ace asked. The chair made him feel itchy, so he shifted his back off it. Still itchy. Why'd they stuff it with horsehair? His brain was still defragmenting, and now he was flooded with memories of first dates and first slaps. Why couldn't brains just delete some files? Wait a minute, turned out he had a menu option for that.

Legion pecked his fingers along some of the navigation controls. A wire grid unwrapped over the windshield to help him pilot the starship through the bubble. "That's the point of stealing one of their own starships. Our own. Whoever's." He flicked an overhead button, which activated the piloting assistant. He must have still felt groggy from his three-week coma. Otherwise, he would have spoken the command. "They don't even know it's us in here. As long as they don't hail us, we'll reach the ground and avoid Kamikaze's chainsaw obstacle course before these Mechaknights know we're not friendlies."

Ace Spandex placed his forehead on the cold console. "Uh...there's something you should know about Kamikaze." His eyes wandered along a line of virtual pushbuttons on the navigator's console. "We lost him about a week after you hit your coma."

Legion's head snapped to Ace. "We lost one of the most cocksure idiots I've ever known? I planned to shoot him out of a cannon at those Mechaknights. I'm pretty sure he planned to enjoy every minute of that."

"Heh." Ace Spandex lifted his head. "Uh...yeah. He went for...therapy...I guess you call it. Voluntarily."

Legion smiled and returned to poking at buttons. "Now I know you're kidding. Good old Kamikaze. Grab me a cannon, and I've got the gift that keeps on giving."

Ace Spandex let Legion have his delusion. He himself had his fair share, and Power Plant topped the all-time record at 106 when the circus was in town.

The Fireball slurped through the bubble. No incident. Good, because the last incident Ace Spandex was in, the blond guy in the oven used two dozen goons as kindling.

Legion pulled back on the flight sticks, and the starship descended to a landing altitude with a quiet fwoosh. Landing took six minutes—during which the engine flooded—but as gently as a leaf in an easy breeze fluttering to the grass, the starship glided to the lobby—

"Wait." Ace Spandex mentally interfaced with the navigation computer. "We're better off entering through the escape-pod bay. There's a side door. It's less conspicuous than entering through our lobby." He ignored the nasty memory about miniature schnauzers and farming accidents that resurfaced from his defragmentation.

Legion threw his hands away from the flight sticks, and the starship's AI-pilot kicked in to keep them afloat. Good thing. The landing gear hadn't yet extended, and landing gear was the best gear to land with. "Hold up. Since when do we have an escape-pod bay? And they better not have put it right beside the daycare center. If I told them once, I told them"—he counted on his fingers—"four times, escape pods can't crash into diaper stations."

Ace Spandex consulted his brain's calendar function, which now showed markings everywhere to remind him of revolting and sometimes fiery episodes in the bathroom. Delete, delete, delete, delete, he'd remember that one no matter what, delete. "We got them on January twenty-sixth this year. At seven in the morning. The shaking from the construction jackhammers spilled my cereal."

"And since when did IP pony up for escape pod?"

Ace Spandex's breath caught in his throat. He wouldn't broach the corporate sponsorship subject until after Mechanism killed them. "Since something I'll let Reef tell you about."

Legion spied Ace out of the sides of his eyes. "Fair enough."

Ace switched off the AI-pilot and—look, ma, no hands—steered the starship left toward—

Legion's eyes grew so wide Ace swore the Trioxidillian's skin creaked. "Ace, where's your equipment? Did we get headscanners for the starships? Why am I afraid to ask?"

Ace dropped his forehead on the console again. He probably smacked a few buttons that would put the starship in Cygnus X-1's business district. "Oh, and another bit of news." He spoke into the console. "I'm almost seventy-four percent mechanical now. Don't ask."

Legion's lip curled with unease. "Don't tell." He rapped a knuckle on Ace Spandex's head. "Really. Don't tell."

Humming loudly, the starship banked around a building. It guided itself to the escape-pod bay's side door. Thankfully the landing gear extended, or their touchdown would have ended somewhere between fatal and lethal.

"Let's go, boys." Patton tweaked his mustache and hefted Legion's rifle to rest on his shoulder. His eyes lit with the glow of a slot machine on a payout. "Time to bust some mechanical heads and earn some gratuity ice cream."

"Where's be Mechynism's purple number two? Gon' kill dat purple guy up like a midnight cowboy. That make any sense?"

"Reaching," Ace said. "And how do you know his number twos are purple?"

Power Plant stormed out of the starship seconds after the landing gear clicked onto the surface and the access ramp reeled out of its enclosure. Patton followed, Legion exited after. Ace Spandex scurried out last. Once the starship sensed no one was aboard, it closed the access ramp and the port with a blissful jingle from its sponsor.

Legion threw a hand toward the starship. "Okay, don't get me wrong. I'm happy I don't need to avert my eyes from Lowensland's happy-as-a-maniac-at-the-ridiculous-fair grin, but we have a sponsorship deal with Choking Hazard Toys?"

Ace Spandex wrung his hands together. "Yeah. Uh...about that." He accessed his computer after sweeping away a memory about his gaudy elementary-school outfits. "On January twen—"

"Forget it." Legion waved his hand at Ace and hotfooted toward the side door. "As long as I don't walk into a Coffee Grindstorm, I'll be fine."

Ace broke into a trot after him. "Hey, let's avoid the lobby. No reason."

"When we get in, Ace, I need you to work on the haunt control. Bring it back under our command. The rest of us will head to the stasis bay to free the others."

"Right. Got it." A warm wind trickled past Ace.

The pod bay's side l-door was already open, Patton and Power Plant standing in its threshold. With white knuckles and a stampeding pulse, Legion braved through the l-door. "Whoa" shaped his mouth. Ace Spandex knew by the way his back muscles bunched, by the way his posture tightened, what was going through his head: "Who messed with the underground parking garage?" he said.

Ace Spandex sneaked through between Power Plant and Patton. Power Plant's eyes were cascading tears. Ace followed his gaze to the carpet, to what had him so focused. Not pyrotechnics with cheese as history would imply.

There...on the burgundy carpet that still smelled freshly installed...Burnout's body. Nobody had moved him after his death. A hole marred his forehead, and his eyes stared into a panel that coned him in light from ten feet in the air. Power Plant shuddered out a sob, which prompted Patton to slip a hand onto his shoulder. Power Plant inched toward the body and knelt.

Ace Spandex found his lost baseball cap and picked it up. But he didn't put it on. It didn't fit right anymore, so he hooked it onto his belt. He checked his internal clock, examined the footprint depressions on the carpet, and roughed out some estimations. "I'd hate to rush this, but the Mechaknights patrol this hall once every—"

"Give him a minute." Legion watched Power Plant, whose skin had the same bloodless pallor as his brother's.

Ace Spandex nodded and worked a lump in his throat. "Okay. I'll head to the computer tower to access the haunt control." He started for the door.

Before he went far, Legion tapped his shoulder. "L-tech? Seriously? When Reef makes a mess of the station, he goes at it with all his heart, mind, soul, and strength."

"You'll want to stay away from the cafeteria for a month or two." Ace Spandex's head swayed in reconsideration. "Your whole life to be on the safe side."

Chapter Sixteen: Some Assembly Required

In Appliance's dreadful body, Mechanism spiraled into a support column. If navigating through Station Mechanism in this absurd pewter chassis posed a helter-skelter of piloting disasters with two functioning pincer assemblies, steering clear of obstructions with the imbalance that one destroyed pincer caused was as improbable as winning a staring contest with a painting.

Awaiting Number RN, that lummox once known as the Harrier, to pick up Mechanism's bodysuit had cost ten minutes. To the hoi polloi, ten minutes was nothing more than a coffee break or, to his Mechaknights, a single attempt to distinguish which hole of a shirt the neck went through. To Mechanism and his nonpareil acumen, however, a spent ten minutes was an irreversible loss. Ten minutes was a million thought processes, a hundred thousand decisions, four hundred opportunities to turn his nose up at inferiors. Throw in the additional hour to reach Station Mechanism simply to repair his bodysuit and prepare it for what he would install in it, and he would miss executing the first prisoner of his cunning plot to transform this galaxy into what it should be and not the pastry paradise Master Asinine planned.

After Number RN guided the hoversled that bore Mechanism's damaged body, the l-door whirred into existence. Something inside the hoversled rattled with every inch it moved, like a tin can full of bolts clattering inside Mechanism's ear.

Mechanism estimated a twenty-two-minute repair time for the bodysuit's neck construction. Appliance's shameful circuitry slowed his thoughts to the speed of, dare he say it, mere commonfolk. The eye slit and damaged computer connections would require an additional forty-seven minutes. The installation he had planned for his structure of majesty would require fourteen minutes. A total of eighty-three minutes and, wow, was this what living inside a computer felt like? Pop-ups for canine shampoo and canoes carved from bananas littered his vision. No wonder Appliance had gone mad with advertising. If Mechanism were not the untouchable intellect he was, he would be spouting about kitchen upgrades in the time it took one to say, "Some conditions apply. Comes with all you see here. Each sold separately."

"Number RN, bring forth the hoversled." Oh, how dreadful this body's voice sounded. At least he circumnavigated its programmed tendency to speak in iambic pentameter. He must have appropriated its language centers from a preschooler's book.

Number RN heaved the hoversled in all its jangling glory forward.

"Set the hoversled by the assembly line." Mechanism pointed Appliance's intact pincer at the contraption that yawned across the lab's back wall. That contraption was what he had used to construct the Mechaknight bodysuits almost two weeks ago. It guzzled gasoline like Appetite guzzled everything else.

"Yes, my liege." What brainlessness with which Number RN served. He fit right in with the rest of Mechanism's juvenile lepers of thought and the two or three ferret familiars they kept among them.

Number RN dragged the rattling hoversled, which should have glided easily except the brakes were stuck. Why, oh why did Master Asinine allow those stupid generics access to expensive equipment when they were no smarter than window dressing? But, six...perhaps seven minutes later, Number RN made it. (Mechanism would have dragged it in four-and-a-half, four-and-a-quarter if he had not left the juices of his PowerThirst in his other body.)

Mechanism buzzed toward the contraption's controls. He eyed the knob-ended levers, because eyeing was now all he could manage in this machine that was the mechanical equivalent of a "special" child. "You may leave now, Number RN," he said, fixated on the controls. Simple enough. A cutoff switch here, a speed control there, and on the side, a snow-cone maker. How quaint: he could enjoy a snack while he upgraded to rule the galaxy. But deposit one moolah for cherry syrup? What a rip.

Number RN trod toward the l-door, every step a knock that echoed everywhere. Mechanism sensed relief in that disgruntled Good Guy over not needing to suffer discomfort in Mechanism's godly glow. Was it how Number RN remained silent in Mechanism's presence? How he tried to suppress that subtle tremble? No, it was the jittery gait, the facial tics, the feathers of his remaining wing that stood at attention like raised hackles, the bladder the size of a thumbnail.

However, further instruction was required. "Number RN, remain by the l-door." Number RN paused in midstep, so Mechanism explained, "Stand guard. Until I refurnish this armor, I remain plainly vulnerable. Also, I may need you to fetch me a sausage dog. Oh, bother, I no longer possess a mouth."

"Yes, Lord Alpha." Number RN nodded sharply and continued to the l-door.

Now, time to make the best of this situation. Mechanism activated the contraption, which emitted the stench of oil. He directed its claws to remove the Mechanism bodysuit from the hoversled and piloted, ever so gently as only he could manage, the bodysuit onto the monolithic workbench.

Meanwhile, he had an additional task. He traversed through a hierarchy of menu commands in Appliance's insignificant brain, searching...exploring for his failsafe program. There, hidden behind advertisements for odor eaters and odor-eater eaters, plan B. With a thought as subtle as the click of a button, he snapped plan B into action. The machinations of his plot were now underway on Gaia, and Stations One and Mechanism were no longer useful to him. No more useful than Master Asinine's pet rock, except the pet rock at least served a function when Mechanism needed to throw a message through Schizophrenic's window: "Stop eating my expensive mixed nuts or else." So, to prevent anybody from using either station against Mechanism once he vacated them, in no less than three hours, an electrical current would course through them both. It would fry everything, everyone until no computer or brain functioned. Mechanism had to use the rest of the Blast-o-Matic's core. Like the ancient Eskimos, he wasted nothing.

He flicked the button that operated the contraption's decal painter. "I Heart Capital Punishment" would appear on his bodysuit's shoulder if it were the last thing his programming told him to do. And oh, yes. Snow cone. "And can I borrow a moolah?" Mechanism asked before Number RN escaped to his guard position. "Never mind. No mouth."

Chapter Seventeen: Thanks for Asking

"Attention, everyone aboard Station One and Station Mechanism set to die a violent death in T minus two hours, fifty-nine minutes, and fifty-four seconds: your Lord of Awesomeness has activated an electrical bomb on Station Mechanism, and you have two hours, fifty-nine minutes, and fifty seconds to live. Enjoy your last meal at Gastric Fortitude in the Letchtech food court. Don't forget to fill out a comment card at the end of your meal."

In this hallway on Station One, Reef stopped and unslung Ed's arm from around his shoulder. Ed's blood flow still hadn't woken up his legs, so he lurched with uncoordinated missteps. Reminded Reef of drunk people wearing stilts...or drunk people not wearing stilts. Drunk people wearing anything. "Did that pleasantly homicidal haunt control say an electrical bo—"

A flashback. It snapped at him with the sound of static in his mind's ear and pitched him backward through a tunnel of his consciousness. The real world shrank to a pinprick at the end of the tunnel's shaft. His eyes fluttered in half sleep, and he felt as if he'd power-chugged an octane truck of whiskey. Through a straw. Into his nose. His nose burned.

The vision caused him to slam against a glass weapon case. Almost three years ago. Intergalactic Protection bureaucrats blathering about electrical devices. Kept his hyperability empty until a time he needed to fill it. Could use it under no circumstances until then. Couldn't tell anyone. Use would slowly melt him away. Why he no longer had a third nipple. Accountant lying to him: investing in deep fryers wasn't a tax shelter.

The flashback ended and rubber-snapped his psyche back into the present. The hall smelled like chemicals. His back was pressed against the case. He blinked at everyone, and everyone stared back as if he'd tied his shoelaces with his tongue. He contemplated his right hand or, rather, the mottled stump of flesh that ended at his wrist. The right hand had vaporized when he'd redirected that electricity at Number B.

"Did that say what I think it said?" He set Ed down on a bench shoved against the wall. He looked at Momentum, whose expression he read like the top line of an eye chart: yes, in a little under three hours, they were slated to die.

Down the hall, a vent choked. Ed nursed his head in fingers that caressed his scalp. Standing next to him with hands to forehead, Sixth Sense experienced some sort of vicarious headache. Invard sat next to Ed and rocked on his backside. He ducked his head into his hands and mewed something about their electrical bill shooting through the roof. Intergalactic Protection was almost kaput, though, so no one was paying any bill, no matter how many roofs it shot through.

Of them all, only Pincushion and Momentum looked ready to fight. Momentum's injuries had healed in the stasis bay, and now he was hauling Mabel around despite Reef's plan to hide her in the mortuary to skip a few of life's steps.

"A bomb is set to kill us? Who's responsible for that?" Momentum set Mabel on the bench and forced himself on Reef. He'd been distrustful of Reef since almost day one, and now he collared Reef's shirt and heaved him against the bench, which rattled against the wall. Ed skirted aside.

Reef thwacked Momentum's hands away. "You think I'm behind it? I had nothing to do with this."

"Then explain why you have only one hand. What's your hyperability?" Momentum launched himself back at Reef.

Reef batted Momentum aside. "You want me to tell you my hyperability?" He threw his stumped arm against Momentum's throat and rammed Momentum hard against the wall opposite the bench, pinned him down with the arm. Momentum's hot breath tickled his skin. "You really want to know? Because I just lost a hand saving you guys, and I'm quite partial to most of my body parts. I say 'most' because I'm undecided about my pinkie toe since I keep stubbing it on Legion's desk, thank you very much."

He spun away from Momentum, faced Ed, Invard, Sixth Sense, Pincushion. Not Mabel, though. Her caterpillar mustache and kasha aura freaked him out, but you didn't hear that from him. "Fine. Here it is. I absorb hyperabilities. But only one at a time. I couldn't use my hyperability because I had to keep the one I'd previously absorbed to be ready for what I assume is today. Prophecy or something. I think the order came from General Breeng. The first and last time I absorbed anything was from some guy who redirected electricity. He redirected it at me, and I exploded it out, all eight hundred megatons of it. But that's only as much as IP has measured.

"I absorbed his hyperability when he caught an electrical bomb to soak up its emission. He couldn't and shot it at me. Then he died, evaporated just like I'm doing now." Reef paused, and worked a knot down his throat. "He was Barney Warwick. And my real name is Devon Holbrek."

"Warwick?" Pincushion wrung a cocoa finger in his ear. "But he—"

"He caused the Perseus War Hyperability Incident, which forced the enactment of the Hyperability Injunction? No. The military told the media that." That knot in Reef's throat grew. "I caused it. I just didn't know how to control the hyperability I'd absorbed from him—maybe I was drunk or Rage Against the Machine was stuck in my head—so I destroyed nine city blocks." He bobbed his head to one side and added, "And an underground society of mole men."

He thumped the glass case with a fist. "That was six years ago. I haven't used it since because I was told to keep the hyperability I'd absorbed. And three years ago, after my final discharge from IP, they asked me join a 'special team of elite soldiers.' If I did, they'd wipe my records clean. I entered witness relocation and changed my name. They wanted me to keep Warwick's hyperability so I could absorb the output of this bomb."

The haunt control clicked on. "Output that will course through this station in exactly—"

"Not now!"

"No problem. I'll remind you when you have two hours fifteen minutes to live."

"Is that good enough an explanation for you?" Reef dead-eyed Momentum like a bull preparing to charge a matador. "I was under strict orders not to tell you anything because, if you guys knew who caused the Perseus War Hyperability Incident, you'd strip my flesh off, disembowel me, make me eat Momentum's dinner cuisine. Not even Legion knows." He pointed up. "This came from the Powers That Be."

Invard gasped in his Gharalgian high pitch. "Alaphus?"

"You're either a comic genius or an intellectual letdown." Reef leaned against the weapon case and rubbed an eye with his stump. "No. Intergalactic Protection. General Breen."

Invard's tongue worked its way around his gums. Momentum snorted. His insomnia creeping in, Pincushion's eyebrows creased as if he didn't completely get it. Sixth Sense and Ed still looked dazed. Sixth Sense cradled his buzz-cut head in hands hidden in sleeves too long for his arms. His wheezing, an asthma he never got corrected, was fading.

"Look, I'm not asking you to believe me. Someone somewhere foretold this attack and put me in the Good Guys to stop it. And now I know why." He raised his hand up at Station Zilcho where the bomb was. "When that electrical bomb reaches—" Oops. Switched from stumpy to full arm. "When that electrical bomb reaches zero, I need to redirect every ounce of its release elsewhere. Don't know if that'll work. Last time I tried to redirect the energy from a bomb, a lot of people died and I messed up haunt controls for a whole city block.

"So now you know." He whirled at Momentum. "Happy?"

Momentum crossed his arms and turned away. "Whatever."

Reef had to think. Had to think. He propped a foot on the bench and bopped his stump against his forehead. "Okay. Invard and Ed, grab Mabel and hide her in a side room or in heavy traffic.

"Pincushion, Momentum, Sixth Sense, with me. We're headed to Station Zilcho." Reef marched toward the hangar bay. He'd find one of the smaller jalopies—a Flagstar or Momentum could flap his arms and fart—ride to Station Zilcho, and absorb the crock out of that bomb. "Sixth Sense, I need you to scan ahead, let us know when we're about to run into trouble. Pincushion, you and your insomnia are on point. Momentum?" He propped a hand against Momentum's chest. His features molded into a look of chagrin. "Make yourself useful: be a bullet shield."

Reef shoved away and thundered toward the next door. Momentum didn't follow. He only asked, "Why save your hyperability for now? Why not just reabsorb an electrical hyperability every time you use it?"

Reef didn't stop. He wouldn't even dignify Momentum with eye contact. "Because every time I use it, a piece of me melts away."

Chapter Eighteen: You'll Need a Sneeze Guard

A few minutes ago, Ace Spandex had entered the computer tower. In this cylindrical, fifteen-story building, the Good Guys housed the brains that controlled the station. So now Ace Spandex's feet rolled down the stairs to the basement where the Good Guys kept the haunt control. The basement meant cooler air, which meant less money to cool the haunt control, especially since the haunt control's computer required seven hundred fans—ballparked—and three ice ages—not ballparked—to keep it in check.

He barraged through the doorway and stopped short of the blinking, humming circuit boards, all arranged in thirty-two rows spanning the eighteen-foot room that vibrated sweaty life into Station One's haunt control. He lowered his hearing to deaden the sound of the haunt control's obsessive humming. His breathing hopped in a gasp. The high-ceilinged room smelled like tainted well water.

Okay, okay, how do you talk to a haunt control that disliked you before and hated you more now? He twiddled his fingers in the chilly air. Well, first you ask it to forgive you for installing Minesweeper.

He fished a finger into his nose and pulled out a connection wire. He vowed never to show this trick to his bubbe.

Chapter Nineteen: Hear Ye, Hear Ye, Pustules of Thought

Number B's bodysuit booted back up and became mobile once again. Good, because that ripe one smelled like lingering cabbage. Static crinkled like someone was playing with cellophane next to his ear. He swatted at the sound as though it were a fly. Then he remembered he wore a suit equipped with a helmet. Thinking always took getting used to and an upgrade.

The crackle was his helmet's gabber. "Number B," Lord Alpha said over it as if flagging someone's attention from across a packed room. Every nerve in Number B's body stood at attention. His hairs bristled, even the carpet of chest curlies he'd had braided at the stylist early last week.

"Sir, Lord Alpha, sir. What is it you desire?" Number B tested the suit's range of motion. Pivoted his arm, swiveled his head, propped his hands on his knees and stretched, high-marched both legs. Everything whirred.

"First order of business: do you still wear that cheap perfume?"

"Yes, I do. And it is vanilla-scented cologne." He sampled his wrist. Oh, right. Body armor.

"Then cease wearing it. You have for far too long ignored my No Scents Makes Sense courtesy notices. I will now staple them to your forehead. Second order of business: I have as of late...modified...my bodysuit."

Number B clicked his tongue and moaned. "Ohhh, did that include throwing out—"

"Yes, it did, you maturity guessing game. Nobody needs pine-scented air fresheners hanging inside his or her helmet. They interfere with my aiming function, and they tickle my eyebrows. Now listen to my instruction. My modifications are near their endpoint. Once I have completed them, I will maneuver both space stations to a safer orbital distance from Minerva. After that, I must meet you where you are. Those Good Guy interlopers you allowed to escape must be hunted down and murdered. Why I charged you with dispatching them, I will never fathom, since you cannot run even a simple grocery errand without forgetting my crunchy peanut butter with sixty percent less salt.

"As it stands, forty-five surplus Mechaknights remain on Gaia. I will order those Mechaknights back to Station One in case the Blast-o-Matic's power core does not stop the Good Guys. We will use the haunt control to locate and kill each Good Guy before they insurrect. Do you understand me?"

Number B high-fived a light panel. "A hunt. Sir, yes, sir." A giggle tittered out of him, a small one that squeaked when he tried to suck it back in.

"Excellent. And Number B, if you must giggle, refrain from giggling audibly. Those notices I threatened to staple to your forehead can easily be sutured to your mouth. I shall use thread that dissolves into acid."

"Pink thread?"

"No. Black thread. The blackest of black threads from the blackest depths of my blackened heart."

Number B gasped. "The worst depths ever." He slapped a hand to his mouth. Clang. Right. Bodysuit.

* * *

"Attention nimrods and dulled intellects," Mechanism said, to which Luzimoss had to put his hands to his ears. Mechanism had patched into the intercom system on Station One and now used it to offend on a whole new level: everyone at once. Congratulations, because all that remained was doing the same thing over public broadcast like Gonorrheal Estate Services. "I will require some of you to return to Station One. The Good Guys have escaped custody and we will enact a stationwide search-and-destroy mission. If Number B attempts to convince you this is a search-and-tickle mission, you are not to trust him." Luzimoss sensed history behind that statement.

Mechanism's voice bounced through the campus halls like a ball. "My Mechaknights, follow my beacon and meet me where it leads. We are enacting our final assault on the enemy. I will require you all aboard this station, so report to me in one hour. Leave all concentration camps under the supervision of the robots. I would thank you, but I wish not to." Click. The announcement had concluded, and Luzimoss felt the air thin with the absence of Mechanism's syrupy pride. And, not that he would tell "Lord Alpha," but that deluded megalomaniac needed to pluck the paintbrush bristles he called nose hairs.

Okay, now what? As much as Luzimoss loathed the war-festering Good Guys as much as the Bad Guys, as much as they sickened him like a tall glass of muddy water, he needed to help. He accessed his knowledge hivemind, which Mechanism was unable to shut back off due to the bullet in his eye. It said, without the Good Guys, the galaxy had only a 6.18 percent chance of coming out of this with its society, pride, and butt-flap pajamas intact. And Luzimoss would die before he gave up his last butt-flap pajamas. Bathroom convenience never felt so fuzzily warm.

He had to get across the station. That was where his knowledge hivemind told him he needed to go. He checked the hallway. Distant armor clanked against the greenish carpet now stained with red, gray, and whatever color regurgitated oatmeal was. Apple beige? But no Mechaknights. He oriented himself, used his knowledge hivemind to draw a mental map of this military jungle of a station. Two rights, a left, another right, a U-turn to check the floor's fire escape plan...He'd already lost track of his directions, so he trotted down the hallway. Snapped off a table leg as a weapon or a backscratcher because that crazy itch along his spine was sinking its claws in and not letting go.

He passed the first corner, the second corner, rounded the third, burst through a door, and faltered into the parking lot. Day on Station One had sunk to night.

He was moving too slowly. He'd have to hijack a starship and fly there.

He darted around the building and came upon a Fireball mil-tran haphazardly parked nearby. Dodged a shrub and a fenced tree. Hurdled over a median and a homeless man snoring on a bench, which was odd since the nearest civilian district was on Minerva. Luzimoss was curious but refused to bother a man whose beard stretched longer than most people's legs.

The Fireball lay in a hit-or-miss collection of civ-trans ahead of him, as if a giant child had scattered his toy transport set when mommy called him in for dinner. Luzimoss bounded up the Fireball's access ramp and propelled himself at the controls. The controls were password protected, but Luzimoss cracked that irksome barrier using his knowledge hivemind, though Mechanism could stand to use a word shorter than 183 letters. Also maybe something in English. And something Luzimoss wouldn't have to rekey twice.

He had no idea how to pilot a Fireball, but he used his knowledge hivemind and now he did. The tension of his escape made him uneasy about speaking, so he preferred not to use this thing's verbal commands. He punched in a few settings and pressed the go button. No, that was the soft-serve-ice-cream button. Okay, now he pressed the go button. Nope, that gave him sprinkles.

A few attempts later, the Fireball grumbled like an old man waking up to walk the dog and feed it what his weathered vision told him were kibbles but was actually gravel. After initiating liftoff, flooding the engine, clearing the engine, and reflooding it, its thrusters belched out a cloudburst of rage that caused the Fireball to slide forward. It shuffled slowly at first, but soon it picked up gusto. The wing flaps folded, the Fireball lifted off in a drunken sway, and the jalopy decided it best to aim up. And it was anyone's guess how this thing engaged with a flooded engine.

The computer reported the estimated time of arrival at four minutes. Oh, wait. Another engine flood extended that ETA to forty-one minutes. Nice internal mechanics, multimillion-moolah piece of equipment.

Chapter Twenty: Defense Mechanism

Every time a thumping set of footsteps ground past this hideaway, Ed shrank into shadows and clutched a broom handle like a last line of defense. Since he couldn't throw Mabel, it was.

This darkened room felt as musty and cramped as a buried coffin concealing mold behind old silk. That might have been Invard in the back. Ed didn't even know the purpose of the room, but Reef had told him to find a side room to hide in, and he'd found the smallest, most confined side room on Station One. Almost a crawlspace. To scratch his elbow, he'd have to first exhale, or he'd press the activation button on several nuclear arms.

But he had to move. President Abends needed his news datasheet on the double and his coffee double-double on the triple. News datasheet to know which nations to declare war on—those badmouthing the closer of Cosmonaut Chimp season forty-six—and coffee to wage that war and write his name in the snow.

With his heart thumping so hard he felt it in his chin, he sneaked to his feet. He'd scrunched himself into a ball for so long his joints creaked and his knees clicked. He felt a cold ache in his toes.

"Where are you going? They're out there, you can believe that," Invard squeaked in his shrill voice. His hand scrambled up to clutch Ed's pant leg, but Ed yanked away.

"They might need our help. And President Abends needs war juice with a cinnamon stick. And that sounds just like my dorm supervisor that used to let me sleep through fire alarms." Ed eased his hand over the door's unlock button. The door vanished into latent specks. The air in Ed's lungs did the same.

Invard clambered to his feet to follow. He slipped and knocked his chin against a chair stuffed in here for storage.

Ed sneaked a peak at the hall, first left and then right. In his best imitation of a cat burglar, he inched his way right, toward a downed Mechaknight with the helmet removed and the chest-plate hinged open. This was directly ahead of the arenalike room before the stasis bay, so Ed had a feeling Reef had knocked this guy down. Or maybe the Mechaknight had a stomach flu.

"Help me with this guy." Ed rushed to the Mechaknight and considered the chest plate's opening. It was large enough to grab this plump man and drag him out. He clutched the shoulders of the man's sweater—who wore a sweater in a suit of armor?—and hheeeeaavvveeeed him...nowhere. Heavy. He propped his feet against the shoulders of the body armor and grunted, sweated, kicked—

Clanky footsteps. Really clanky footsteps. Coming this way! And their owner was definitely not delivering President Abends's coffee. Ed spun a hand at Invard. "Help me get this guy out, or we'll both be murder victims. I don't want to die until President Abends promotes me to Jefftaria's minister of stinky vegetable exports. That sounds like a really good resume stuffer."

Invard dived at the Mechaknight suit—Number R according to the shoulder stencil—and clutched the right side of his sweater collar. Ed clutched the left, and in tandem, they hauled, gritted their teeth, lugged out this guy who weighed somewhere around a buck ninety plus an aircraft carrier. They managed him out as far as the waist, revealing a bloody hole in his neck.

The footsteps clanked closer.

One more yank, and the suit was empty. Ed slid into the body armor, whose insides felt hotter than mid-July sun, and swung the chest plate shut. The footsteps approached the corner, and Ed's blood pressure doubled. He yanked the helmet overtop. It fit into place, hissed shut, but didn't seal. One of the neck's segments was peeled back.

The suit engaged. It vented cool air through the hips and chest. The suit's computer booted up in three seconds, took another two to load the operating system with a desktop background of a basket of puppies. This guy must have come straight out of the Mechaknight daycare center: the bootup sound was a lullaby.

Ed pounced to his feet, and the hydraulics in the armor's legs made the movement easy. Holy intuitive. Across the screen sprawled a menu detailing the weapons on this walking argument for gun control: melee, short-distance firearms, long-distance firearms, incendiary, clown paraphernalia. Ed would reserve the seltzer flower for Franchise, who had it coming for refusing Jefftaria's bagel-trade agreement.

"Halt!" A bark distinguishable only as the amplified voice of a Mechaknight railroaded down the yellow-lit hall. Ed clunked around to confront the Mechaknight, who threw her arm forward at Invard. On that arm, a double laser flipped open in a blink and a whir. She spoke something no doubt into her gabber. "Found one of them."

Invard shot to his knees and balled his hands together. "Please don't shoot, oh please, you can believe that." He crawled toward the Mechaknight, balancing on his knees while his pleading hands trembled. His pleading made his voice shriller.

"Number R, why have you not dispatched this escapee?" the Mechaknight asked. Ed's onboard computer pegged her as Number HA. She kept her double laser trained at Invard. "You are to terminate all escapees as per Lord Alpha's command."

Ed jerked forward. The air in his suit felt stuffier now. "Uh, I...uhm...we...well...you see...The prisoner wanted to show me how to make waffles."

Invard had coated the floor with shimmering sweat. Ed didn't know a man could leak so much, but that number-crunching, fun-squelching fun cruncher's back resembled a one-lane highway with new paving. His groveling made Ed want to drive a steamroller down that lane. Invard reached Number HA and planted his hands to the floor in supplication. Ed could no longer tell if he was sweating or drooling. Either way, that guy needed to control the waterworks.

Ed felt cold. "Uh...uhm...listen, HA. I'm transporting this captive to—"

And now the babbling. "Pleaseohpleaseohpleaseohplease I...I can...I can help. I can cut twenty percent off your taxes, you can believe that." He choked on a breath. "Maximize Lord Alpha's shoe budget?"

Number HA planted her gun barrel on Invard's temple. Ed moved to react but—

Invard's head disintegrated into Gharalgian fragments of skull, brain, blood, eye, snot, and semichewed carrot if Ed's onboard computer told the truth. Oh, reanalysis: it was now sweet potato. The body slapped wetly against the floor, pulped blood speckling around it like rotten strawberry jam, which was part of the re-reanalysis

Ed couldn't believe it. They didn't want to maximize their shoe budget! He jolted forward—navigated through the weapons system—programmed just like President Abends's Mogwai-feeding test—switched to melee weapons—baton extended from his glove—Number HA slapped it away—it cracked in half—Ed switched to hand-to-hand combat—crunched a fist into HA's neck—the neck assembly sparked and collapsed—HA staggered—one shot?—one shot!—Ed was a champ—pumped an arm—looked around for adoring fans.

Number HA teetered on her locked feet. Her hands were frozen in a defensive block that had helped nothing. When gravity finally took hold, Number HA bowed forward in one rigid roll on the balls of her toes. The floor broke her fall. The floor also broke.

Ed snapped into a sprint. He had to find that coffee machine and prepare President Abends's octuple espresso. Then he had to double that espresso.

Chapter Twenty-One: The Maid-o-Tron Is Gonna Flip Its Crock When It Finds This Mess

Franchise collapsed into a corner in the slaughterhouse outside the stasis bay, propped against the cold wall with legs flopped over a Mechaknight that his bloodthirsty monkey-party duplicates had split in half. Better him than the Mechaknight that a duplicate had ripped apart to play a game of head catch. With himself. Never found the head after that last fumble.

His knee still tingled with hints of adrenaline. He shuddered and bit his lower lip. "Oh man, oh man, oh man, hot dag, but they'd have killed everyone, I had to do it, or else...or else...or else I don't know, but I'm sure it would have been worse than jumping on our beds and filching the rest of my birthday cake. Maybe they left me an icing rose. Jeffy never does."

He cupped a hand over his eyes to shield himself from the massacre real life had become. Massaged his temples to ease the headache caused by creating all those duplicates. Plugged his nose with two fingers because he didn't know what Mechanism pumped through those suits, but Franchise saw sound and he was enjoying high tea with the Mule King.

Absorbing more than a hundred duplicates had taken the fight out of Franchise. His vision swam, and this humming migraine would stick with him for a week. He'd thrown up twice. Never...never had he created and then absorbed so many duplicates at once. Couldn't absorb the dead ones littering the room, some collapsed over Mechaknight bodies, some almost unrecognizable. The Good Guys didn't own a steam shovel, so the solution to cleaning up wasn't obvious.

Amaranthia stretched a leg over a Mechaknight who, like a do-it-yourself project, had a few extra pieces shoved in. She roamed across the room, found a Mechaknight who still thrashed on the tiled floor, and slid her sword through his breastbone. She planted her foot on his shoulder and jerked the sword out with a ssshhh that prickled Franchise's ear and shone in his vision.

"I'm starving?" Amaranthia caught sight of her sword and danced away from the intestine draping it. "Ew. Blood. Blood. Grody. Get it off."

Franchise shot to his feet though his knee complained. His headache flared up. "Seriously? That's all you can say? We just killed more people than Jeffy can count—"

"Fourteen?"

"Eerily close. And you're worried about grabbing a light snack? Is any humanity left in you? I made clones who ripped people apart. I had no idea people's insides came in so many different colors!"

"They woulda, like, totally done the same to you? Geez. Get your head in the game? And we're totally not donesies yet?" Amaranthia cast Franchise a glare from which Franchise blundered sideways a step. He almost spilled over a Mechaknight body twisted at the waist to kiss its own rump. Today he learned his clones had no decency.

An l-door's molecules rippled apart. Oh, crock. Franchise grabbed a Mechaknight arm and prepared a throw. Forget using the arm laser. He didn't care where the trigger was on this thing because you couldn't pay him enough to reach in and work the tendons.

"Stay back! I can shout mean things in kung-fu!" Franchise thrust the arm forward at the shadow in the doorway. "Hee-yah!" He swung the arm. "Kiah!" He swung again. "Dōmo arigatō!" And again. "Other nasty stuff!" One more swing, and he accidentally flung the arm against the wall. It stuck.

Power Plant pounded through the door, tears dried on his cheeks. He stomped over a Mechaknight body without registering the spaghetti cluster of intestines and meatball dressing of heads. His jawline, flexed outward, was barbecue red. He marched across the room toward the stasis bay.

"Jeffy?" Franchise limped across the field of bodies, hobbled past Amaranthia, and engulfed Power Plant in an embrace. Power Plant didn't hug back, as if he didn't know what a hug was. He blinked, stared straight ahead, didn't wonder why he'd stopped stomping, devoid of thought. Consistent.

Franchise pulled away but clutched Power Plant's shoulders. "Jeffy? You in there? You okay? Say something. This isn't science class." He paused for a breath. "I'm sorry about Mark."

Power Plant's eyes shifted, only his eyes. They locked onto Franchise, but Franchise noticed no recognition in there, nothing behind those eyes. Nothing lit up. Nothing in there was his friend.

"Jakey, I thought you's dead."

"I was. I mean...my duplicate was. Don't overthink that. Your forehead might overheat."

A voice boomed through the door. "Seriously, if I have to risk life, limb, and portions of sanity through another l-door, I'm finding my Jeff emergency turtleneck sweater, and what in Alaphus's black, starry universe is she doing here?"

Legion and Patton had arrived, Legion whipping his gun sight up at Amaranthia. Amaranthia had wiped her sword clean of the intestines and now looked ready for battle or a day cruising the mall for cute boys and slim-fit jeans.

"Jacob, get away! She might pop a zit at you. She's done it to me."

Franchise frenzied in the way to shield Amaranthia with arms that waved like those of a dancing octopus. His knee throbbed. "Legion, don't shoot, because I want to live to see the pie expo at the food court. And blocking a line of fire twice in one day has got to earn me a pay raise. Life should not be like this."

Legion strafed to his left, changed his angle of fire, plugged out two light-bullets. Amaranthia swished her sword, blocked one bullet, let the other zip by her right ear. Legion fired again. Amaranthia flipped forward. The bullet whizzed under her feet. She landed. Anchored her feet against a Mechaknight. Bounded forward. Sheathed her sword. Leaped at Legion. Swatted the gun away. Muttered something about Legion totally sucking it. Slammed Legion against a wall.

Before Franchise blinked, her sword pinned Legion's collar to the wall. "I'm on your side, gitch, but if you totally act like a mondo skizz, I'll, like, ram that pistol so far up your nostrils, you'll smell chrome for the rest of the week?"

Legion slapped her hands away. "Jacob, toss me my gun or something with a skill-testing question. No, wait. Recite a Shakespearean sonnet."

Jacob reached for Legion's gun. He picked it up. But he didn't pass it.

"Jacob, her list of offenses is so long, Wikipedia gave it its own article."

Patton stood aside. He folded his arms, smiled, and watched the scene unfold. Somehow he knew who to trust. Wisdom came with bushy mustaches.

Legion averted his eyes. "Amaranthia, you smell like cheap prom perfume. Go chip in on a limo and leave the school chaperones to bust Mechanism's head open."

"She's with us, Legion." Franchise tossed the gun away. It slid underneath a Mechaknight pelvis that, frighteningly enough, had the important part removed. Franchise needed to talk to his duplicates about murder etiquette. "She saved my life. Also, good on waking up from that coma. Timing is everything."

"Saved your life? You buy that? She turned coat on Lowensland. How do you know she won't betray you? Rising tuition makes people do crazy things."

"I have the upper hand. She needs me to sign a late slip for school tomorrow."

"I'm totally not making it to poly-sci in time?" Amaranthia heard a grunt. Without looking, she grabbed her sword and skewered a struggling Mechaknight through the pancreas. The Mechaknight lay still and let his life drip red.

Patton twisted his mustache. "I think we can trust her, Lieutenant Colonel."

Legion bonked the heel of his palm against his forehead. He leaked a sigh of finality and stormed toward the stasis bay. "Fine. But if she goes supernova because the air conditioning dries out her pores, Jacob, you're on your own."

"Do you and Reef coordinate these one-liners beforehand, or are you connected at the brain?" Franchise whirled around at Legion, who was headed for the stasis bay. Waste of time. "Whoa, hey. Reef already freed the others. Legion, they're safe. Momentum's probably salting aluminum as we speak."

Legion stopped. He considered this for a moment. "Where are they?"

"Reef barged through here and said something about stopping a bomb on Station Zilcho. He and the others are headed there now."

Legion waited a breath before bending down to fish his gun out from under the Mechaknight eunuch. "Fine. Then we'll do our part here."

"Chicken out for pizza?"

"We find Mechanism and finish him." Legion regarded Amaranthia, who stood five headless bodies and a detached leg away. "All of us."

"Wit'out me." Power Plant finally clicked awake. He crunched overtop armored corpses toward the door through which he had entered.

Franchise caught his foot on a chin guard when he followed. "Jeffy, the halls are thick with those eight-foot-tall action figures. We gotta stick together. Jeffy?"

Power Plant was ignoring him. He had reached the l-door, which vaporized. He rubbed freshly scabbed knuckles.

"But, Jeffy." Franchise watched him. "Where are you going?"

"I's gonna makes some other help." Power Plant paused in the doorway. He put a hand on the frame and breathed so quietly Franchise heard fluids gurgle out of Mechaknight suits.

"An' name's Jeff." He left.

Chapter Twenty-Two: Electrified

Remarkably easy flying between stations right now. With all the Mechaknights occupied elsewhere, all Reef and the others did was grab one of their own parked starships and fly out.

Now Reef entered what he assumed was Station Zilcho's front lobby. Virillians built this place, and they laid out all their terraforming stations the same: lobby, command tower, sleeping quarters, maintenance garage, cock-fighting arena. What with Station Zilcho's defense system—Brain Painting, Asinine called it, and yes, it had its own how-to broadcast show—Reef was wary of stepping in. Still, he couldn't be that fazed after coming face-to-face with an android version of Asinine warning everyone not to leave personal effects in their vehicles. This place looked so much like a theme park it included its own gift shop. Overpriced, as usual. Reef could find a kids' plastic defibrillator for half the price at Illegalities 'n' Stuff off I-94.

Reef hoofed it to the lobby building and planted himself against the wall immediately outside the main door's vanishing range. He readied his pistol—felt weird to carry it in his left hand—and signaled Sixth Sense by twirling his stump arm. Sixth Sense hustled up and stationed himself on the opposite side of the door under a buzzing light panel.

"Scan the lobby," he lipsynched. He overemphasized it so Sixth Sense could read his lips, but it was unnecessary since Sixth Sense could scan his mind.

Sixth Sense nodded stiffly and—

—burst through the door, screamed a banshee's caterwaul, kicked high, punched low, roundhoused the air, and spat out a one-liner that made Reef question his definition of "moonshine." His skin darkened angry red. He finally calmed, finally glanced around the room after his theatrical charge, and realized they were alone. Perfect calm seeped into the air. The only thing missing in the comparative serenity was chirping crickets.

Reef smeared a palm over his face. He gave himself a moment to allow embarrassment to fade before he wandered to Sixth Sense's side. "Hagen." He cleared his throat and smacked his lips. "I wanted you to scan the lobby."

Sixth Sense's color returned to something that didn't look like the aftereffect of sleeping in a kiln. He adjusted his glasses, but they slipped down his nose. His attack had flared his asthma but only mildly. "Oh. Oops. Heh. Sorry. I thought you said to charge in and attack. Brain still in stasis."

"Charge in and attack? That doesn't even resemble 'scan the lo'—It doesn't even have the same number of syllables!"

Sixth Sense rubbed the back of his head, his eyes puppying at Reef. "Sorry."

Reef searched the room. "No harm done that ear surgery won't fix." He checked the room. The defense systems still slept, and Reef didn't think any Bad Guys remained on the station. Seemed safe here, though Reef couldn't account for Plaster's whereabouts. He'd been missing from Mechanism's captives. Didn't matter. The four of them could take that goon. Crock, ask him to identify the salad fork at dinner, and he'd be out like a light.

Pincushion and Momentum entered.

Reef's hairs stood at attention like compass needles and leaned toward a crinkling discharge of electricity. Good. He sensed where this electricity bomb hid. It wasn't close, but they could hustle there in minimal time. Well, given a bathroom break since Momentum had to hydrate on the way over and now danced the bladder-three-times-its-normal-size shuffle in fast-forward. "Nah, all is good," the speedster kept claiming. Reef never believed him after he'd said that about week-old doughnuts.

"Okay, this might sound weird, but my hyperability is sensing a huge discharge coming from what we'll call east. I—"

"There's no east on this station." Sixth Sense pushed his glasses up his nose.

Reef cocked his head. "Huh?"

"There's no east on this station. Stations don't have artificial poles, so there's no north or south. Station One has them because it's a man-made planet, but this place doesn't. So technically there's no east."

"Okay, thanks for being insufferably smart. The discharge is coming from that door." Reef trotted toward the furthest door down the left-hand hall. He slid through it after it vanished with a derogatory "hrmph." The defenses were off in here, too. The station had probably routed all energy to the electrical-based bomb. Good thing, because Reef didn't feel like dodging defensive laserfire. He hadn't had his morning coffee on account of that prisoner-of-war thing he was being.

They stayed indoors on their path to the bomb: Virillians were big on catwalks, underground tunnels, covered walkways, and no fresh air. A twist to the left, through an airy tunnel, another bend to the right, a stop at a bathroom...wait...wait...wait...Momentum had a big bladder...wait...down the hall, past a statue of Mechanism that baffled Reef's mind—between his genocidal cleansing and media appearances, how the piss did Mechanism find time to erect these things—across a catwalk...

The thickened static in the air meant the bomb was close. It had better be, because according to Reef's shaky calculations, they had less than an hour and forty minutes until this thing vomited out its payload with prejudice. Despite the charge, the station was eerily vacant. What was eerier was passing a stationary spinning tunnel, decorated like a clown's mouth in case you wanted to vomit out your own payload.

Reef stopped and put up a hand to signal the others to stop, too. "Something's not right." He examined the hall, checked both ways twice. "This feels...wrong."

Sixth Sense licked his finger to test the air.

"Feels fine to me," Momentum said.

"Yeah, but you think cough syrup goes with cereal. Anything would feel fine to you."

"Hey." Momentum stomped a foot. "I'm an artist."

Reef squinted at the hall that continued on into a distant rectangle. Nothing specific tipped him off to what he sensed. The air just felt...weird. It smelled of dead pine. "Mechanism set up a bomb with no defenses to guard it? It doesn't sit well in my stomach."

"Like Momentum's PB-and-J oyster sauce," Pincushion said.

Reef held out his palm, and Pincushion high-fived it. Pincushion was now up for a medal of commendation. Reef toed the baseboard. A feeling in his gut squirmed like a pinned worm. He should have taken advantage of the bathroom break as well. "Something is definitely not right. It's as if we're walking into a trap. The bomb is through this door, maybe the next...and we haven't run into as much as a frat house with a spanking machine."

"Maybe it's not pledge week." Sixth Sense pushed his glasses up his nose.

Momentum blurred forward and thrust a finger at Reef. "Are you leading us into a trap?"

Reef pushed Momentum back. "You rang the dinner bell on that PB-and-J disaster, and you have the gall to accuse me of leading you into a trap?" He ventured down the hall toward the door at the end.

"Hey!" Momentum's voice skyrocketed from stabbing hostility to bullhorn antagonism. "Don't walk away from me! You haven't been straight with us since day one, but you expect us to believe you now? How can I know you're not working with Mechanism?"

"Because I saved your life."

Momentum huffed. "Fine. I may not like it, but your story checks out. For now." Momentum's voice thundered with shark-toothed anger. "But if this really is a trap—"

Reef reached the door. It faded with Mechanism's recognizable "hrmph." Before he entered the next section of the hall, he scanned ahead. Nothing. No defenses. At all. What the crock was going on?

"Uh. Uhm. Hey. Reef?" Sixth Sense's voice dithered. He fanned his baggy impact shirt. Reef saw the apprehension in his stance...and heard the thunder of mechanical boots that clanked to attention like a firing squad taking position.

The air now smelled like venting coolant. Crock. Reef turned around. He didn't want to. He knew what he would find, and it wasn't anything for which he'd wished on a falling star. A line of Mechaknights, somewhere between five and infinity, had positioned themselves at the far end of the hallway. Just as Reef's instincts had warned him: they'd walked into a trap that had just sprung.

"Take care of that bomb, brother." Pincushion flexed his metal knee. "We'll handle these guys."

* * *

Reef flew through the door as the Mechaknights released crackling gunfire. At first it sounded like rain on a windowpane, but when they all got in on the action, Sixth Sense ducked and slapped a force field across the width of the hall to block the shots. The telekinetic wall sprouted from his forehead through a pore.

Pincushion and Momentum recoiled from the popcorn assault, but the light-bullets flattened against the force field and pinged harmlessly to the terrazzo floor. On impact, a flash—the illuminative payload—escaped each casing but dispersed through like light through a prism.

The Mechaknights advanced on the barrier. They didn't stop firing, but their ambling told Sixth Sense this attack was systematic. They had advanced to only a few yards away, still unloading as if they could shatter the barrier.

Oh, great. Invasive personalities trickling through his telepathy. What he didn't need right now. A flash of white shot his thoughts and, holy crap, suddenly he had daddy issues. And they vanished. Someone hadn't played enough catch as a kid.

Pincushion rapped a fist on the barrier, dark russet against electric clarity. Dong, dong. "Will this hold?" He flinched when a bullet pecked the barrier in front of his nose. His metal knee squealed.

"Boy. Uh. As long..." Sixth Sense crumpled into a ball and tumbled onto the floor. "As long as they don't come any closer. If they do, I'm in serious trouble, because one of them is a crash-test pilot."

"So this will go over like Kamikaze versus anything that casts a shadow." Pincushion rolled on his spikes against a couch that sat tucked alongside one wall.

"Yes. Repeats of what happened to your laundry room." Sixth Sense stood, but the struggle took three exhausting attempts. And some vomit that made Momentum avert his nose, but so what? Most of the vomit was stuff he'd concocted.

Sixth Sense's concentration blurred at the edges of thought. Unsteadily, he pointed at the barrier that clung weakly to this reality. It already crackled between solid and semisolid.

One bullet took its opportunity. It sped through and clipped Momentum's earlobe. Bits of flesh spattered the waist-high table behind him. A hand shot up to restrict the blood. "Keep that thing up!"

"Then make a decent bouillabaisse!" Sixth Sense managed to spit out despite his gut-burning retches. He scrunched back into a ball. "And take care of whichever of those psychosomatic maniacs has a bad attitude about bouillabaisse." Another retch.

Momentum whirled around at a neck-high glass cabinet with stenciled printing: IN CASE OF ACTION-PACKED EMERGENCY OR PANCAKES. Two shotguns. Sixth Sense considered using one next time Power Plant held...well, he'd just call them holiday parties. And who put Power Plant on the social committee anyway?

"Uhm. Wow. Okay. Just..." Sixth Sense's words struggled out a mouth still stinking of something a cookbook would consider edible by a watered-down definition. "Keep them from getting any closer. Their personalities are invading my head."

"But they can't pass through this thing. So no worries." Pincushion rapped on the barrier again. Momentum tossed him a shotgun, which he caught. He checked the charge reading on the side of the shaft: "plenty o' fun."

"Uh. Okay. Heh. Worries. One of those Mechaknights is a by-day rodeo clown."

"The horror." Pincushion pumped the shotgun to chamber a light-bullet. "I will not brook that kind of rodeo chicanery."

The pain of invading thoughts! Sixth Sense toppled to the side and buried his head under a couch cushion that smelled like fresh microfiber. His thick glasses fell off. Rodeo clown, burger enthusiast, silverware historian. Too many conflicting traits infringed on him. "Aim for the faceplates before the nose-flute player gets any closer." Painfully exhausted, he reeled his legs in and clawed at the armrest.

The barrier failed. Sixth Sense couldn't keep it alive any longer, but he managed to pry an eye open to see Pincushion raise his shotgun one-handed—it inflicted no recoil—and plug a light-bullet into the Mechaknight on the far right. One shot had done the botanical urologist in. But the others still advanced.

Momentum chambered a light-bullet and sent it on its way. It broke apart against a Mechaknight's shin guard but only chipped the laser-paint. Momentum pumped and fired again. Another Mechaknight went down, which left four. One was the rodeo clown who used adult diapers, though, so Sixth Sense's problem was worsening. Good thing he hadn't drunk anything recently, or this couch would need a steam-cleaning.

The initial shock of the Good Guys' return fire passed. The Mechaknights upped their barrage from a light pitter-patter against a windowpane to a raging hailstorm.

Sixth Sense rolled off the couch. Pincushion and Momentum heaved it around until it spanned the hallway lengthwise. Fire from the Mechaknights spat stuffing out its back. So much for the steam-cleaning.

The snapping footsteps stopped. The shooting stopped. Everything stopped.

"Good Guys," one of the Mechaknights said. The collector of ice sculptures. "We'll go easy on you if you give yourselves up. We're thinning out, and the odds of you killing my guitar instructor increase with every shot. Band tryouts are next week."

Sixth Sense dabbed a finger under his nose and drew it back with a fingerprint of blood. He smeared this on the couch and flipped over the cushion.

Telepathically, he scanned the hallway and found thoughts from the remaining Mechaknights. He suddenly wanted to grab some makeup and distract a bull.

Pincushion nodded at Momentum. "On the count of three."

"Wait-wait. I can't get this thing going. Hold the crock on." Momentum's gun was jammed. Or something. He couldn't figure it out, so neither could Sixth Sense.

Pincushion grunted. "The longer we wait, the closer Sixth Sense gets to putting on a big nose and waving at crowds of children. Do you want that?" He affixed a stare. "Do you want that on your conscience?"

Momentum tilted his head at Sixth Sense. "Plus, he's liable to shoot us in the back if those guys have even a single stray thought."

"Shut the piss up and get a hold of yourself." Sixth Sense slapped Momentum across the cheek so hard his palm burned. He immediately recoiled and his eyes skittered to the imperfections in the terrazzo floor. "Sorry. Nose-flute players are testy."

"Time's up." The lead Mechaknight slurped back a chug of mucus. "Open fire."

The bombardment resumed. Pincushion popped up from his cover and fired a bullet into a Mechaknight—no more burger urges—pumped—fired again—pumped—fired again—one left—pumped —

Momentum roared and threw himself up, grabbed a cushion—heaved it—it bounced off Pincushion's head—grabbed the other—Pincushion ducked—

A light-bullet pecked through Momentum's neck. He tossed up the cushion. His hands went for his throat, but the ribboned flesh and mottled hole gushed blood. Anything he spoke came out in sawtoothed clucks. His hands grasped paint smears of blood.

Pincushion fired once more. The last Mechaknight caught it in the faceplate, which shattered apart. Plastic and light-bullet splintered into his eyes.

Pincushion dived to Momentum's side. "Momentum. Stay with us, brother!" He shook Momentum's shoulders, but that only caused blood to arc from the wound.

Momentum choked...his eyes fluttered...and he was gone. Sixth Sense felt his warp-speed, souped-together thoughts fade into a murky morass. Momentum's head dipped...his breathing stopped...the arcs of blood reached shallower apexes.

Sixth Sense's throat tightened as if something in there were yanking on his vocal cords.

Pincushion's voice sounded thick. "No more crème brûlée with tangy mesquite."

* * *

Reef burst into the room. He sensed the electricity as though he smelled a wet thundermammal inside its typical odor radius of sixteen yards, twelve miles during allergy season.

The Blast-o-Matic's core. It sat in its casing dead center in the room, glowing so brightly Reef hesitated to touch it or a finger might dissolve, but he did. Though it felt cool, a heat simmered into Reef's bones, scurried into his marrow with blue charge. His hair stood on end as if he'd eaten one of IP's cat-flavored rations. He hated foreign food.

A tendril of electricity whipped out to ward Reef off. Wasn't going to work. Reef prepared his hands. Rubbed his palm against his arm stub. Took half a step forward. Another. The tendril lashed out and lapped against the ceiling. It painted a gigantic black line across it and carved it in two with an acrid char. Another tendril sliced into a wall.

"Okay, Reef, either let everyone die, or touch Kamikaze's new favorite toy." He felt his pulse in his throat. "So here goes nothing." And stop talking to yourself. And stop thinking to yourself, too.

He grabbed the Blast-o-Matic's casing by its contoured sides, planted his left palm and right stub on it—a burst of electricity ransacked his bones—everything spasmed—his lungs emptied, and a white, hot, blanking, raging, all-encompassing voltage tore apart nerves he didn't even know he had.

He pried open his eyes, but this felt as intense as his bachelor party. Makeup and a tutu. He'd face off against twelve Blast-o-Matic cores before he wore rouge again.

Sweat slicked his palms, and he was surprised he sensed anything other than electricity so hostile his teeth became semiconductors. His eyes popped, or was that just a sensation, but it didn't matter because he couldn't see anything except light so blanking he'd think it were divine if he believed that crock. This thing hurt like piss...but he wouldn't fail. Wouldn't fail anybody. Not this solar system. Especially not his ex-wife Frieda or his kids Silas and Portia. Not again.

His left hand melted to nothing, burned away molecule by molecule until his fingers withered to the first knuckle, to the second knuckle, the third, the wrist. He had to hunch in, and soon both his arms had whittled to their elbows. And his teeth chattered to nubs but not from the electricity. Dispersed the charge away. He smelled charred skin. Crock. Did he leave the water running at home?

He remembered Warwick, remembered what had happened to that guy. They'd found only the top of his sizzling scalp. When he'd absorbed the brunt of that bomb, he'd evaporated. At least Reef was fading measure by measure.

He opened his eyes—guess what, they still existed—and the ceiling split. Whatever sat on the floor above—apparently the storage room for every ridiculous object on Station Zilcho—spilled down. A filing cabinet smashed overtop the Blast-o-Matic but caused no damage. An oak desk slid down the ceiling's incline and cracked into Reef's back, but Reef held steady, now down to the shoulders and knees, but thanks a lot, oak desk, for almost splitting him in half. He always knew a desk job would do him in.

The other half of the ceiling collapsed and crashed onto the floor in dusty chaos. Everything burst apart in a grimy explosion that missed Reef by a sliver. No more shoulders, no more legs. Reef collapsed against the Blast-o-Matic's casing, cried out with no tongue, remained against the trembling thing by a cheek that vaporized. His gums peeled away, evaporated like his torso and cracked vertebrae. Like his lungs, and now he couldn't breathe. Down to the ribs, the heart, the blood. Life faded. He'd melted down to bleached vision and his "No Fatties" undershirt when a full-length mirror sliced into his dissolving skull, and now all he saw before the Blast-o-Matic's death, before his own death, was the ceiling caving in with a roar of clatter—

His brain fizzed out in electric vapor.

Good-bye, Frieda.

Chapter Twenty-Three: No More Mr. Nice God

Legion rushed into Station One's training room where he so often witnessed what his charges called preparation drills, what he called auditions for his personal Hell, and what Power Plant called free expression. He didn't know what scared him more: the free expression or the fact that the IP eggheads knew exactly what Power Plant meant.

What? He squeaked to a halt on the linoleum floor, which caused Patton to blurt into him. It snapped forward a step, a hulking beast who stood nine feet tall and boasted an armament that included elbow-mounted Gatling guns, shoulder cannons, light beamers in its fingertips, and was that a tissue dispenser battling for space on the neck?

Mechanism. Upgraded. Double upgraded. He'd walked into a gun shop and said, "I'll take the works."

A Mechaknight with the letter B on his shoulder stood next to Mechanism, trying to look as tough as his leader but pulling off the image of a runt who'd brought his older brother to fight his bullies for him. He needed shoe lifts to even be in the same police lineup as Mechanism.

"Welcome to your deaths." Mechanism's voice sounded tinnier. He spread the gargantuan wings now affixed to his back. They blocked the light.

"What happened to your voice?" Patton tweezed his mustache.

Mechanism chuckled. "I have disposed of my organic body and have downloaded my essence into the most efficient computer ever built: this." He spread his hands down his torso to showcase himself. "What you see here is all computer, all metal, all instrument. I am now, more than ever, a mechanism."

"Decided to throw something new on?" Legion sidestepped. He perked his chin at the teardrop tattooed to Mechanism's left cheek. "Didn't know the goth look was still in."

Behind Mechanism's legs, a six-inch-thick razorback tail thudded to the ground. "I gathered what was collecting dust in my closet."

"A pair of bell-bottom trousers?" Patton asked.

"Ignore that." Mechanism tore the pants off his temple. "May we do battle now?"

Patton shrugged. "Okay." He darted sideways and fired. The blast sliced into the carrot dangling over Mechanism's head. The wire attaching the carrot snapped off and plinked to the ground. "Ha ha. Lieutenant Colonel, I ruined his snack."

Mechanism pounced forward, dived to his knees, and pumped out one-two-three blasts that ground the wall behind Legion to dust. Legion skittered down and fired back, but his shot went wide and cut into the ceiling.

Mechanism bounded to his feet—the Mechaknight clank-stepped toward Legion—unleashed a horrendous crinkle of rapid light-bullets—Patton ducked behind a row of prop boxes that somehow blocked the attack—sprang up—tweaked his mustache—fired a light-bullet at Mechanism's forehead—left only a ringlet of singed paint—Patton tweaked his mustache again.

Mechanism ran two talons over the ringlet to clear the residue. He chuckled and rolled the talons around his thumb, and a light snowfall of ash fluttered away. "Such a paltry attack. Why throw away your life so recklessly?"

"We didn't have time to ugly up our armor," Legion said. "Nice touch on the spoiler."

Mechanism checked his backside and noticed the item in question, complete with flame decals. "Oh. How quaint. Nice to know it is there before my morning constitutional." He wiggled his moneymaker.

His attention returned to Legion and Patton as if someone had snapped off a distraction, something his ego should do. He wandered to the side. His footstep chinked against the floor. "You two have been a thorn in my side for far too long. Well, you, Legion." He tilted his mask to Patton. "I have only just met you, but I am sure you are a thorny fellow." He gave a resigned shrug. "Perhaps a bit on the mustachey side."

"Yes. Good one, sir." The purple Mechaknight gripped his stomach and guffawed.

"Number B, just...stop...living."

"Yes, sir. I mean...I'm not sure if...uh...If I do, can I get some vacation time?"

Patton stood from behind the box props. Legion did the same from his position on the floor. They and Mechanism sidestepped in circles, hands on weapons, fingers flexed to unleash automated fury. Or perhaps another litany of highbrow insults that would go over Legion's head. Seriously. Last time Mechanism had said "workaday commoner," Legion wanted to download a dictionary into his brain.

"So now what?" Legion asked. His attention never left Mechanism, but that Number B, prancing around like an elf playing a fiddle, was a nasty diversion he hoped years of therapy would help him forget. "We keep pacing until we've worn a circle in the floor to indicate Power Plant's intelligence quotient?"

"Like so many of the lichen I strive to erase," Mechanism said. A fluid sweep brought his arm up and he fired a single shot. "Will you and your mustache just die, old man?"

The shot sailed through the air and sawed into Patton's stomach. Patton dropped his gun, clutched the wound that spat in enthusiastic arcs.

"No!" Legion rushed to Patton's side. He caught Patton before the older man tumbled backward. He lowered Patton softly...or at least tried. Those gratuity snacks had taken their toll. Some spilled out Patton's back pocket onto the floor, unwrapped themselves, and scurried off.

Patton wheezed as though he breathed through a flattened straw. Blood poured out his nose in sprays, painting his teeth, his mustache, his impact suit, the floor and oh no, oh no, oh no, Legion's hands fluttered around the entry wound, he tried to keep Patton elevated, tried to close the hole that acted like a horror movie special-effects hose, and what could he do, why couldn't he stem the flow, why'd he sleep through basic first-aid training, why did that last question answer the one before it? Please, Alaphus, do some—

"Matr...Ma..." That single word trickled out Patton's mouth, but his heaving sucked it back in, and a whistle accompanied the word, and his speech was already thin, but he squeezed the word out, "Matross..."

And the struggle ended. Patton's eyes fell to the left, his breathing stopped. His body felt like a wax statue. Legion waited for some sign of life, a choke...but nothing came. His chest felt as if someone poured lit gas over it. How dare Mechanism?

"You killed him. You coldblooded killed him!"

Mechanism rubbed filth from a fingertip. "I always operate coldblooded."

"You always operate drunk."

Mechanism shrugged. "Well? When his Mechaknights are especially bothersome, a man needs to create his own happy hour."

Legion grappled off Patton's cooling corpse. He gripped his gun with double strength, careful not to pull the trigger with the barrel trained at his toes. He felt partial to his toes.

"Alone?" Mechanism snickered. It sounded like a firecracker through his speaker. "You wish to battle me alone? I apologize for my joviality, but I wear one-inch-thick steel armor with onboard computers, a weapons systems with a software assistant that works well despite being a paperclip and asking, 'It looks like you want to murder somebody. Want me to help?' These onboard computers boast so much military software we added card games to keep things fun. You possess..." He flopped a hand at Legion. "...a toy."

Legion lifted his pistol to check its charge reading. "I'll have you know, this is the finest sidearm IP has to—oh, fantastic. 'For children ages five and up.' It's right there on the grip."

"So...you still choose to fight this alone?"

"Not quites alone," squeaked a childlike voice behind Mechanism. A glow that melded well with the training room's lighting accompanied the voice. The glow gave off a hostile hiss and crackle, like a cobra caught in a bonfire.

Mechanism stepped aside to reveal Power Plant standing behind him. Power Plant's skin, usually light to complement his blond hair, now looked orange around its features, like a sun before its supernova. His lazy Sunday afternoon activity if you replaced "before" with "during."

"Ah, the younger, stupider Abends brother. Still alive despite your half-educated attempts at skydiving." Mechanism ran a hand along his rifle barrel as if polishing it. "I shall rectify that in a moment, you infantile, uncharismatic boor."

"Hey, nobodies calls me unchrazzimatic." Power Plant wielded a bubble of light between his palms. Its energy grew wilder, now the size of a beach ball. It crackled furiously.

"Very well. Let us make this interesting. Control, acknowledge. Summon all remaining Mechaknights. And lights to zero percent."

The lights died with a snap like a shotgun report, plummeting the training room into a void of darkness save for the sparkling light energy that illuminated Power Plant.

Power Plant looked infuriated. "Okay, dat? Dat's why you's mean."

* * *

Harrier had to find Lord Alpha. They had separated sometime after he dropped off the revamped bodysuit of his that included everything from a crossbow to a blooming frozen-melon launcher. If Lord Alpha had retooled that costume somewhere in the vicinity of a kitchen, he probably would have attached the sink.

Harrier knew these lemon-polished halls of Station One so well he could draw a sodding architectural blueprint. If only he had access to the haunt control, he could ask that never-ending commercial break to locate Lord Alpha. But, alas, access was not his. So he forced himself to sneak through—

The door ahead of him jittered to nothingness. Ah, that bleeding loose cannon Number A had arrived. A smile pressed Harrier's crocodile-thin lips against his teeth. Number A would pay for his blooming betrayal. Dearly.

"So, turncoat, you seek to destroy Lord Alpha and his image." Harrier flexed his remaining wing and cracked one set of knuckles. He traded hands and repeated.

"His uneven cheekbones seek to destroy his image. But even you have to know he's not working out for anyone. You think he'll stop after killing the 'unworthy'? No, after that, he'll make everyone wear matching ascots."

Harrier flexed his exoskeletal armor. "We discussed bowler hats in the planning sessions."

"That's a gateway fashion statement. You'll own canes and monocles by the end of the week."

Harrier sneered. "Are you finished talking, wanker?"

"Sure." Number A threw himself forward—dodged left from Harrier's clawed swipe—swung right—landed a blow to Harrier's neck—ducked—uppercut Harrier.

Harrier stepped back and drew a finger to the bruised skin of his neck where Number A's exoskeleton chafed him. "Your hyperability leads you well." He snorted at the bloke and straightened his creaking spine. He would have to do the opposite of his inclinations. And that meant avoiding the waterslide built into the food court.

"This war among Mechanism, the Good Guys, and the Bad Guys?" Luzimoss said. "It will kill a lot of innocent people. You know that."

"I count on it." Though right-handed, Harrier threw a punch left. It was right sloppy but it clouted Number A in the ear. Another jab—this one right—smacked across Number A's cheek. Yes. A way to defeat this self-righteous prat.

* * *

The Mechaknights were coming, the training room was pitch black aside from the flickering ball Power Plant wielded—what he called his gift aplenty—and Legion now wished he'd stopped at a water fountain before he launched this attack.

With two fingers pressed against an ear, Legion said, "Ace." He stabbed the word into his gabber and hoped Ace Spandex's ears weren't ringing on the other end of the connection. He ducked behind more prop boxes that revealed themselves only in the flash of sputter fire from Mechanism's elbow-mounted Gatling gun. And had Power Plant found cover yet? He hoped, because he enjoyed the occasional game of grenade hockey despite not having the heart to tell the little guy the "pucks" were duds and despite said little guy sneaking some live ones in anyway. "Ace, I need you to work on that haunt control just a tad quicker. Live-or-die situation happening. Big problem only if you enjoy my company."

"I'm working on her as fast as I can, but I don't need to remind you she's temperamental. I've taken to calling her a 'her,' and now I'm trying to smooth-talk my way into her back door, and that did not come out right."

"Well...we're fighting blind up here, so enough smooth talk. Women like money and fast cars."

Another blurt of gunfire caused Legion to roll aside. The prop box behind which he hid popped into prop slivers. Legion burst up and threw his toy gun at where he estimated Mechanism hid. He heard a metal-on-metal crack and then, "Curses. Ages five and up? This pedestrian toy hurts adults, too."

Legion couldn't see, couldn't assess where he stood, so he couldn't fish around for Patton's sidearm. He had nothing. Sweat broke on his forehead. He knew those worry splotches on his scalp were growing.

Something snap-clanked like magnetic boots affixing to a metal surface. Mechanism stood above him. He followed the boots up the shadow of legs that he perceived only in his mind, up, up until he imagined where Mechanism's rifle targeted his head.

"You want me to gut Legion?" Number B asked. He stood next to Mechanism, and a playful giggle bubbled out of him. Mechanism's brain must have been ripping itself apart over that hiring misadventure.

"No. There are plenty of Good Guys for you. Legion is mine."

"N-n-no, he ain'ts," Power Plant said. His illuminated ball of energy, four times the size of his head, crackled furiously between his hands. Legion smelled a trace of burned knuckle hair in the breeze.

Legion saw Mechanism's and Number B's forms in the glow of energy—Mechanism pointed a Gatling gun at Power Plant—Power Plant unleashed the energy that stormed forth like a burst dam's discharge—Mechanism ducked aside—Number B wasn't so lucky—the energy sliced through his left arm—vaporized it below the purple elbow—bloody dust splattered across the room.

In the dying glow, Legion saw Number B clutch his arm. He acted oblivious to the pain. He only stomped a boot, which split a crack into the floor. "Great. Now I have to learn needlepoint in a whole new way."

The trace of a malicious smile was evident in Power Plant's words when the boy said, "Wait till's I blows ya other arm off."

* * *

Franchise heard them coming. He knew about the deadened lights in the training room down the hall. Jeffy, who had left him a robotic present—Franchise really needed to learn to stop blindly accepting mail—had told him to stay out here no matter what, because they would soon arrive. So here he stayed, his bones and ligaments locked frozen, his knee encased in its brace, his stomach quivering from fear, and no food for sixteen hours when he often couldn't go half an hour without a ketchup hero sandwich.

Amaranthia stood next to him. "You know what to do?" she said. Or maybe that was a legitimate question. Who knew? Who cared? He had no idea what to do. He was a pilot, a navigator, a pants-peer when Jeffy pulled practical jokes that involved ten-transport pileups. But this...this was an altogether loftier height of stress. The Mechaknights would blast through that silver door, all hundred and something that remained, and he and Amaranthia had to keep them all back. Every. Last. One.

He cracked his knuckles, still felt the pulsing headache from creating that army of clones. "Oh, yeah, totally. No doubt." Oh, crock. He whimpered to prove it. Then he threw up a little in his mouth. At least he kept it inside. Oh, crock. He tasted salty acid. He tried to crack his knuckles again, but they were spent. Oh, crock. He wrung his cold, cold hands together instead and—

BAM BAM! bammed the door. And his headache. Oh, geez, oh, crock, Franchise threw up a little more. More salty acid. The Mechaknights had arrived. "Open up," one bellowed. The door was locked, why was it locked, sweat trickled into Franchise's eye, burned, why was it locked, unlock it and let's get this over with!

Amaranthia hustled to the door, readied her sword. "Those gitches'll totally blast through here in, like, seconds? You ready?"

Franchise swallowed. Nodded no-no-no-no-holy-crock-please-don't-puke-again-his-puke-needed-to-stay-in-just-this-once-no-no-no. "Of course. I got this."

"Fire in the hole!" a Mechaknight said, a stiff proclamation directed away from the door. "Three. Two. (Man, I love counting.) One." Destruction became a sound. The door peeled apart, and a misshapen slice of metal almost severed Franchise's leg. A steam-whistle whine pierced his hearing. Skewers of noise gored his ear drums, and when it faded and he could hear again without pain, someone said—

"It's totally, like, go time, Franchie." Amaranthia somersaulted onto a Mechaknight, spun her sword until she held the hilt upside down, plunged it into the Mechaknight's helmet, backflipped onto the next, carved off his head, slid off and under the next, between his legs, thrust her sword up—ooooooh, Franchise crossed his legs and cupped his hands down there. He'd just gained a new phobia.

Franchise burst into action. A volley of light-bullets sputtered at him, but he dodged aside, popped out a clone, another, and another, all four of them attacked the Mechaknight, ripped off his plating, his weapons, his eye slit, went to town. Attacked the next, more clones popped out, one sailed back on fire, slapped against a wall, disintegrated, left behind a fuzzy outline.

By Franchise's estimate, all the Mechaknights in the Mechanism party had arrived. Maybe one hundred, maybe two, all flooding the long tunnel of hallway that led to this room. Franchise compressed his energy into a roar. "N-now. Car Alarm-m, now!"

Car Alarm burst out of a side closet, clambered into the fray in a rush-job body that Jeffy had patched together in no more than ten minutes. Franchise squashed himself into a ball, and so did his clones. Amaranthia shrugged, cranked the music in her noise-canceling headphones, and resumed her impersonation of a vicious can opener on Mechaknight scalps, MMMBopping.

Almost unable to stand, Car Alarm's rickety body scrambled into position in the audience of stupefied Mechaknights and unleashed furious noise! With Franchise's hands pressed tightly enough against his ears to squash his skull, he only heard the highlights of Car Alarm's assault: beeps, whistles, descending whoops, a breeoop for good measure, anything to stop a Mechaknight or a transport thief.

The assault clawed through Franchise's fingers into his temples. He collapsed onto the floor and felt blood trickle out of his nose from tensing his cheeks so tightly. Someone's panicked voice issued over the intensifying whistle, "Take that thing out!" An eruption, and Car Alarm's cacophony—probably a political tirade in C minor—ruptured into a sizzling garble. Everything cut to sharp silence.

As soon as he wiped away the blood, Franchise promised himself he'd peek. His ears felt fine. No, they didn't. They prickled as if someone twisted a knife in. He opened one eye and examined the room, found Car Alarm, his head carved in two by a light-bullet that had obliterated him into zillions of scattered pieces. Franchise's clones, corpse decorations. The army of Mechaknights, most dead from Car Alarm's karaoke rendition of an opera hit directed forward at them. A few still writhed. And one remained standing, wondering what had happened to all her friends.

Amaranthia strolled up to this remaining Mechaknight and disappeared behind her. A second later, a sword forced its way through her bowels in a screeching separation of metal and tissue. The sword retracted, and the Mechaknight hung there only a moment before she ragdolled to the floor.

"Good. Their roboty costumes totally kept in all the blood? Help me finish off these last gitches before they decide getting up is in their best interests?" Amaranthia toured the room for survivors. "Oh, pretty ring." She pried it off a severed finger.

* * *

Ace Spandex stuck his fingers into the ports of the haunt control's main computer. Brrrr. Cold like this hate witch's heart. He found six slots, so he filled two with one hand and four with the other, and he was interfacing with this man-eating haunt control in under 3.6 seconds. Wait, no. Lag time because it was processing an ad for camel humps. Ace didn't dare ask but the haunt control shared anyway, and what it revealed took his sense of right and wrong, pureed it, and put it on a Space Cow menu as the meal-of-the-week. The free toy inside? His sanity.

Okay, okay. Don't inhale her oil perfume. Just break down Mechanism's control over this thing and switch on the lights. Rein this witch in.

* * *

"You will not stop Lord Alpha," Harrier said. He overemphasized each word.

Beaten to the floor, Luzimoss looked up at the silhouette of the bird man under the light panel above. Ugh, if Luzimoss's knowledge hivemind served as an indication, not only would he suffer a pounding headache after this thrashing, but there was a 57 percent chance Harrier would let a nasty one rip in thirteen seconds.

Luzimoss felt a hot lip developing a bruise. His forearm muscles argued when he dabbed the welt. "Despite him being called Lord Alpha, you still think his intelligence cleansing is the answer? You're stupider than I thought."

Harrier had obviously learned how to play the odds. Luzimoss would reverse that on him. He'd also reverse this underwear when he got home. Sometimes he forgot the little necessities.

There went Harrier's ripe one. A hint of steamed asparagus.

Okay. As achy as his muscles felt, Luzimoss braced himself on a railing and stood. He moved as if he had no elbows or knees. His knowledge hivemind buzzed at him—60 percent chance of a right hook, so he blocked the left—Harrier's inclinations were backward, so Luzimoss anticipated that—74 percent chance of a right kick, so Luzimoss evaded the left—cocked a fist into Harrier's beak—another jab to the iron-plated solar plexus—avoided Harrier's left hook—spun around, grabbed a mirror off the wall—threw it up to block Harrier's left elbow—ducked under a right swing—and readied...readied...crashed the mirror over Harrier's head—again—threw it aside—beat a left, right, left, right, left, left, and, just for kicks, a kick.

Then he opened it up. Using his knowledge hivemind always hurt those around him. He let the energy radiate out in painful waves—cranked it to the top—let it blow Harrier back—take that massive headache—Harrier clutched his head from the extreme agony gripping it—and Harrier careened back against the wall, knocked his head on a hanging lamp. One more blow to Harrier's neck. Harrier slid down, fell into a resting position...and stopped the struggle with a soft caw.

Luzimoss towered over him. He huffed from exhaustion, waited for Harrier to snap up and resume the fight. Nothing. Not even a cluck of pain. Good. Luzimoss spat on him. "I hope you're dreaming of showing up to work with no pants on, you class-system psychopath."

* * *

Mechanism blew a machinegun rat-a-tat-tat at Legion. Legion took cover behind a rack of decommissioned missiles. Maybe using so many decommissioned artifacts of war wasn't a good idea. If even one of these things turned out to be volatile, any of the Good Guys would have found it and used it as a mechanical bull. His money was on Franchise, because that string-along could be talked into anything.

Power Plant skidded to a stop and dived down next to Legion, a rain shower of light-bullets pecking walls, props, decommissioned atom bombs, the shaft of an airfoil—Wait a second. Decommissioned atom bombs? Legion would have had a serious talk about safety infractions with IP's furnishing department if it hadn't been blown to bits hours ago.

Power Plant spat just to clear his mouth of saliva building up. He rubbed the scabs on his tender knuckles. "Lemme throws them decompetition missiles at Mechy an' sees if he's play go-an'-fetch."

"He's not a dog." Actually, that wasn't a bad—Wait. No. Try not giving Power Plant what he wanted for a change. "File that idea under 'maybe.' For now, let's get some lights in here. All I see by the muzzle flashes are things that are most likely decommissioned."

"Legion?" Mechanism grunted. He stood several yards away, somewhere near a stack of steel drums. "You have no escape. Even if you best my somewhat adult Mechaknight lieutenant, I will rip you limb from limb."

"I feel like I drank one too many appletinis." Number B sounded as though he spoke the words out of a roiling diaphragm. His breathing thinned.

"Command your bodysuit to cauterize your wound, and we will attach an elephant trunk to your shoulder upon our return home." Mechanism shifted his weight with a whir of gears and a clank. "Legion, I propose this: the ulterior-decorating scholar, Abends..."

Legion pounded the floor. "I'm sick of hearing about your doctorate, Jeff."

"If you tell that boy not to use his hyperability, we will capture you and allow you to live," Mechanism said.

Yeah, try telling Jeff anything, and you'd get a face full of mashed potato. Legion scratched his head. But with no light, Power Plant couldn't store energy for an attack. "Why isn't Mechanism coming over and drawing bullet art on our stomachs?" Legion asked. He kept his voice low for fear that Power Plant would try that on himself.

Legion snapped his fingers. "Jeff, he doesn't know your hyperability feeds off light."

"He don't knows I feeds off o' red meat an' sugar?"

Legion leaned against a ridged missile. "He thinks you're still explosive. Hold on. That's not accurate. He thinks you're still really explo—You know, there's no way to properly qualify that statement. Let's just say he still thinks you're a threat to safety. No, that still doesn't work."

"Have we a deal, Legion?" Mechanism shifted his weight again. He tapped something—an impatient finger or a rifle—against his thigh.

Stall for time. "Mechanism, this is senseless. Why are you doing this?"

Mechanism sighed. "Is this where I relate to you my plan's raison d'être?"

Legion folded his arms and settled against the missiles. "Why not? I've forgotten what boredom feels like."

"Very well." Mechanism harrumphed. The tapping petered out. "I grew up in an upper-class family, everyone else below me."

"You're full of plot twists, aren't you?" Legion said.

"My family was sublime, ideally bred, separate from the chaff in every way. This was before my mother drank from the toilet. My father educated me on how this galaxy had sunk so low, on how the lower-class bottom-feeders dragged everyone down. Those bottom-feeders are the reason for every misbegotten burden in this galaxy. Look no further than lime-flavored beer for proof."

An overhead vent creaked with air conditioning, so Mechanism paused for a moment, then, "My father worked at a machine plant, assembling devices of war. His manager was a mind-shuffled troll named Grub Floot—no joke—who got his manager job only because his father, Flint Floot—again, no joke—owned the plant. They forced my father to toil with unintelligent peons, masses who could not tell a cocktail from a fine wine."

"Heaven forbid."

"So you see my side." Mechanism sauntered toward what Legion estimated in the darkness was a stack of plywood, which he snubbed with a breath. "The Floots were an overbearing, tyrannical family. One day, Grub Floot mishandled an assembly line, and my father fell victim to his fatal mistake. That assembly line crushed my father, the great Frederick Snogsbottom, and combined him with motorized devices into the form of a man-tank, a flying barge with fisted arms erected from its sides. Not as enticing as it sounds, though it did form the premise for that children's cartoon."

"Man-Tank, the Flying Barge with Fisted Arms Erected from Its Sides."

"I's a big fan," Power Plant said. "Gots a coffee mug, I gots."

Mechanism rapped his knuckles on a metal beam. "I assumed a false name and gained an entry-level job at that plant to ultimately seek my revenge against the Floots. I learned the trade, became designer, and created weapons of mass destruction of my own, including my opus: the maiden version of my Mechanism body armor. I then killed the Floots, ripped them in half and threw their remains into the assembly line to create the first half-man, half-rifle man-rifle. I used it to shoot pigeons off my fence.

"Someone placed the super-moronic Floots in charge of a mechanical plant. Their blunder ultimately cost me my father. Those events cemented in me the reason why the mentally unfit should not live. Every misstep, every gaffe, every oversight, every episode of Gynecologist Pajama Party has its roots in human error, which has its roots in the blithering masses who do not enjoy my exalted level of supremacy. Without those slopsuckers, imagine how efficiently this galaxy would operate. Imagine how effectually things would work without the inane to taint us. My father was right: you inferiors should be erased from the gene pool. Make way for a perfect society."

Legion's gabber clicked on. "Incoming connection from entity Ace Spandex."

"Accept connection." Legion almost barfed the words out. "Ace, glad to hear from you. Things up here just graduated from the trade school of preposterous."

Ace said over the hiss on the gabber, "I got through. Janice is not a cheap date."

"Janice?"

"Never mind. End result is I'll need next Friday off and tickets to the opera. Third row seats. Are you ready for lights on?"

Legion smiled and tapped Power Plant to ready him. To Ace, he said, "On the count of three: one"—another chatter of gunfire sprayed the decommissioned missiles and countdowns were for suckers so forget it—"three. Three!"

With a click like a hippopotamus's jaw snapping shut, the lights burst on and poured across the prop-cluttered room. Mechanism jilted back, an arm covering his eye plate, "what the expletive" likely drawn across his lips.

"Jeff, go." Legion slapped Power Plant's back.

Power Plant leaped over the missiles, dived into a flying dart, and sliced toward the one-armed Number B. He crackled a thin laser beam through Number B's leg, another through the shoulder. Spurts of purple wires and blood sprayed out.

Despite the injuries, Number B timed an attack...thrust out his arm and walloped Power Plant across the forehead. Power Plant corkscrewed into a wall. He dropped and went limp for a moment. Muttering something about how spreadable cheese solved everything, he whirled around and dispatched five fingertip laser bolts through Number B's chest. Number B tumbled back, skidded across the room, and squeaked to a stop against a prop civ-tran.

"What abysmal sidekicks I employ." Mechanism's tail snapped out and wrapped around Legion's arm. He wrenched it back, Legion with it, and Legion felt his ligaments stretch. The razors on the tail segments slid into his skin. Mechanism yanked him in, and he collided with a snapping punch. Twin shoulder guns fired, but Legion unwrapped himself and dropped under the barrage.

Legion jumped at the wall—bounced off—grabbed a pipe—clouted it against Mechanism's head—felt vibrations tickle through his bones. Mechanism staggered aside—rolled out a clip of light-bullets in seconds—one tore across a ripple in Legion's shirt, millimeters from hitting skin—Legion swung the pipe around—cracked it into Mechanism's hip, across the neck—batted off a shoulder gun—crammed the pipe into the hole left behind.

Mechanism chopped the pipe away and marched toward Legion. Legion scampered against the wall and Mechanism reached him and he had no weapons and—urk. Mechanism squeezed his iron-grip glove around Legion's neck, talons prickling the skin. He lifted Legion off the floor. Legion's feet dangled for a kick without leverage. His hands pried at the linkages in Mechanism's titanium knuckles. His neck was on cold fire.

Mechanism retracted his arm, Legion with it, and spoke through clenched teeth as if they engaged in a clandestine conversation. "You and your operatives have decimated my army of Mechaknights. You have defused the Blast-o-Matic's power core. You have interrupted my plans to round up this solar system's imbeciles for cleansing. Now I feel the need to decimate, defuse, and interrupt your life." He smashed a fist through the wall against which Legion was pressed. "How does it feel?"

Legion's world bubbled into a blackened void. His consciousness ebbed like a pulse between his temples. "Peachy."

Mechanism threw him down. "You deserve a more agonizing death."

Legion clutched his throat and tried to wheeze in guzzles of delicious oxygen though his windpipe had swelled. He rolled up along the wall to stand. "Kamikaze used to tell me the same thing."

Mechanism reeled back his fist. "This is for destroying my Mechaknight army." He punched Legion in the face. "This is for interfering with my solar system's cleansing." He bashed Legion's face again. Legion felt skin break, bone crack. "This is for neutralizing my electricity bomb." A hammer blow to the forehead. Legion fell and whacked against the wall onto his knees. "And this is for allowing Space Cow in your installation's food court." An adobe-hard fist to the face.

Mechanism snatched Legion up by the neck again. All sensations in the Good Guy faded except the hot welts on his face. From somewhere outside himself, he felt everything crack. Now miles away, his eyes bulged and his vision failed. Blood and spit dribbled from his mouth, nose, that new orifice he'd call his second nose. He hiccupped out a mouthful of blood and phlegm. Life choked away. Dying...

A gun tapped Mechanism's ear. Legion's mind flew back into his body. He barely mustered the cognizance to notice it, but through a broken chin, a blazing cheek, and another with a pillowing bruise, he saw a nine-inch barrel ready to scramble Mechanism's thinking pattern. Mechanism's fist loosened. Legion fell, his senses rushing back in to color the universe.

"You punch my friend again," Lowensland said, "and I'll install a Space Cow between your headphones."

"Lowensland, you really need to work on making sense." Legion coughed up another cable of phlegm and blood. Oh, and a tooth. Did his job have dental?

He wobbled to his feet. His head was on fire and, if it weren't really on fire, he could cool it down by setting it on actual fire. He clutched his belly. It felt like a spinning roulette wheel.

"No." Mechanism clutched his fists again. "You cannot defeat me. I will not allow it." He whirled around, snatched at Lowensland's firearm but missed. Lowensland yanked back on the trigger, again, again—each bullet spiked through Mechanism's eye plate—again again again—bullets splashed into Mechanism's forehead, neck, eye assembly.

Mechanism staggered back. Whatever hid inside—the machine that was once a man—quivered in a single spasm that rippled through him. Smoke rose from the destroyed eye plate. "You cannot destroy my destiny." In a madness of gears and steel, he crashed to the floor.

Lowensland towered over Mechanism's body and discharged the rest of the gun's ammo into the head. "Blam! Blam! Blam blam! I love sound effects. They're as awesome as noise effects. Blam blam!" With the gun's charge spent, it dry-clicked, so Lowensland dropped to his knees and plunged the gun's barrel into Mechanism's faceplate where one of the light-bullets had cracked an opening. He grated it around the insides.

Mechanism's body armor sat like stone on the gouged linoleum. It now lay smoking, but Lowensland wasn't finished. He yanked a vial of green liquid from his pocket, popped off the cap, and poured the stuff over Mechanism's helmet. It melted through the machinery and exposed the helmet's guts, all blinking lights and disintegrating memory boards. He kicked, stomped, tore at Mechanism's exposed circuits, cracked a foot over Mechanism's acid-weakened crown, crushing it.

"Done yet?" Legion asked. He eyed Lowensland. His former friend looked beaten. Bruises, a black eye, slashed clothes, a limp. What had Mechanism done to him?

By now, Lowensland was panting through the cushions of his lips. "No. Where's your pocket guillotine?"

Legion threw up his hands. For real? "Lost it when the cleaning woman reorganized my kitchen cupboards."

"That's Consuela for you. Then, yeah, I'm done."

Legion, his head still feeling like a furnace plate, diverted his attention to Power Plant. Power Plant held a near-dying Number B against a prop bench, a lighted fist inches from the Mechaknight's face. He panted through his nostrils. Twin streams ran down his cheeks. He hadn't even noticed the fight Legion had endured.

"Jeff, he's neutralized. Let him live. You don't have to do this." Legion swallowed. "Don't go down that road."

"Oh, the revenge road. There's an ice-cream stand there." Lowensland ham-acted licking his fingers one by one until he reached the right ring finger. "Ugh. Dried blood."

"Jeff, let him go."

"Purple guy killeds my brother." Power Plant gripped a chink in Number B's neck construction. His free hand, clutched in a fist, grew hotter, brighter with photons. A nimbus of energy pulsated around it, which he held to Number B's head. Number B whimpered inside that helmet.

"I know he did. Now let him go."

Power Plant scrutinized Number B. His solemn pout, with cheeks that twitched, hardened. His nostrils flared and his lips jammed together. He fired. Number B's head evaporated in a flood of white energy. The headless corpse fell against the prop bench and snapped it in half.

Power Plant turned to the door. He left. An action figure stuck out of his back pocket.

Chapter Twenty-Four: A Slaughter Is a Good Enough Ice-Breaker

The battle clatter in the training room down the corridor had worn thin. Franchise still felt as if he hadn't eaten in six weeks. His stomach grumbled and passed something that sounded like a squeezed fart. Make that twelve years.

He collapsed onto an l-bench that coalesced under him. Good thing for l-tech. If he wanted anything new at this station, it was something to break his fall when he was crock tired of abusing his feet or he needed to duck Jeffy's gerbil missiles.

He rubbed his forehead of the headache bulldozing it and cottoning his thoughts—creating all those duplicates had wrought an agonizing throb—but graceful footsteps brought his attention back to the now. Amaranthia sheathed her sword and trod over the remains of the slaughtered Mechaknights. She kicked aside the ruins of Car Alarm's computer brain. Poor Car Alarm. Less than a month ago, the robot had been smashed apart, its brain the only surviving remnant. Now, repaired only a short while ago, the loudmouthed robot had met its end and shattered its last ear drum. Wait a second, that was a good thing.

Amaranthia sat next to Franchise. "Cleanup crew's gonna, like, totes show up in a few minutes? I already hear mondo sirens coming through the atmospheric bubble?"

"Good." Franchise couldn't muster much else, but he unwrapped his hand from his forehead. "That's what I want to hear. Someone else cleaning up my gargantuan mess."

"I have to totally leave, or I'm gonna, like, sooooo get arrested and also grounded if I make bail."

Franchise clicked to full awake mode. He even ignored his colossal headache. He snatched Amaranthia's arm, careful to be gentle. "I can't let you leave. You're a wanted criminal." Her skin felt warm, smooth.

Amaranthia looked down at his hand, then into his eyes. "You totally think you can stop me?" Her smile flickered.

Franchise considered his hand but didn't let go. He blushed. "No."

"Would you, like, want to even if you could?" Her smile grew. Dimples appeared on her cheeks. Cute ones. She shuffled closer until her side touched his. She smelled like roses.

A smile insisted itself onto Franchise's own lips. "No." He eased his hand away, but something in him wanted to hold it there forever.

"Good." She stood and winked...

She grabbed Franchise and pressed her lips against his and gave him five seconds of Heaven and he melted into her. She pulled away before he registered she was even there. "I totally left my calltag on your gabber when you were in the healing gel." She whispered this into his ear, her breath soft. Then she sauntered off, tossing another smile over her shoulder. "Toodles."

She lingered on his lips with the taste of strawberries. His jelly legs buckled, and he melted onto the bench. He put two fingers to his lips and felt the moisture she'd left. A giggle escaped him. Today was such an awesome day aside from all the killing and stuff.

Chapter Twenty-Five: The Way Things Used to Be

Legion stood on the roof of Station One's lobby building, a trickle of wind tickling his antennae. Bandages filled with healing gel covered his chin, cheeks, and shoulder.

He'd just received word that Pincushion and Sixth Sense had returned from Station Zilcho with Momentum's body. Reef had died when the room housing the Blast-o-Matic collapsed.

Footsteps shushed on the gravel behind Legion. Lowensland, a silhouette in front of the roof access's light, approached. Legion shivered at the l-tech door that warbled shut. He'd never get accustomed to l-doors as long as Power Plant kept removing them to use as skateboard ramps.

He grimaced at Lowensland and spun back around to lean against the railing at the roof's edge. He pretended to watch the parking lot below. He wasn't worried about a shot in the back. If Lowensland wanted to attack, he would only after one of the BYOB alchemy parties to which he kept inviting Legion.

"Your name was on my medical bill at the hospital." Legion shivered in the chilly wind. "You saved my life."

Lowensland leaned against the railing next to Legion. He didn't say anything, just nodded slowly.

Legion examined the stars. Among them was Station Zilcho. After adjusting its own negative gravity generators and unlocking from binary orbit, it was maneuvering itself away from spatial bodies now that it had worked through Mechanism's commands. "They tell me you tried to pay in doorknobs. Fixtures aren't a legitimate currency."

Lowensland spread his hands. "Neither are snake genitals."

Legion tapped a fist on the railing. "You know I can't unhear things you say. Just helping you watch what comes out of your mouth."

He didn't know whether to hug Lowensland or stab his eyes out, shake his hand or rip his head off because of the guilt this criminal—the Lowensland he had trusted long ago—had deserted him with. All the years of defection and abandonment had left him with empty anger and kaleidoscopic thoughts of revenge. To destroy this man would make his life so much sunnier.

But all that came out was, "Thank you for saving my life." His anger flushed away. "Twice."

Lowensland considered the stars. "What are friends for?"

Legion spun away from the railing and shoved Lowensland back. "Just for tonight, I'll let you use that word. Just for tonight."

Lowensland considered this and nodded. "I don't have much time. My lieutenant Lieutenant and my I-don't-know-what-he-is Braindead are charging a transport so we can fly home. Tomorrow is a school day." He reached out with his two forefingers extended, wanted to tap Legion's forefingers. Their old victory gesture from back in the day.

Legion slapped Lowensland's fingers away and jabbed a finger at his nose. The gunshot that killed their mutual friend Sopher, the one Lowensland himself had fired when he defected all those years ago, detonated in his thoughts. "I will stop at nothing to take you down. I will never...ever...forgive you for killing Sopher, for what you do every day you breathe—"

"Pretend I'm in a spearmint chewing gum commercial?"

"—but you helped stop Mechanism. And that's a huge deal. For that, I'm giving you a fifteen-minute head start. So get on your station. Take it far enough away from Minerva that their mutual gravities don't affect each other. Once that head start expires, you're as good as finished. From one 'friend' to another." He stomped a foot into the gravel and poked Lowensland below the Adam's apple. "The offer doesn't extend to your cronies."

Lowensland took the hint. He nodded, regarded Legion with a look of regret, and lurched toward the door. Legion still had no idea why he insisted on wearing snowshoes whenever he walked across gravel at night.

"Lowensland." Legion clutched his bloodied cheek, which throbbed again.

Lowensland stopped at the door, hand on the frame.

Legion considered his words. "You used to be like a brother."

Lowensland didn't smile. He just turned his head slightly. He reflected on something, his eyes lost, a forlorn pout on his lips. "You still are."

And he exited.

Chapter Twenty-Six: Moving Day

Whistles and catcalls shrilled the chalky, three-story cellblock. And a blinking severed arm sailed over the catwalk and splatted down at his feet. The shank still jutted out the elbow socket. Prison brutality at the Stavehill Hyperperson Penitentiary had evidently graduated from shower beatings.

"Move it, defector. Your apartment's four doors down." The prison guards shoved Harrier forward when the former Good Guy paused to consider the sodding arm. "Oh, just to warn you, IP put out a cookbook a little while ago, and one of your own submitted a recipe. Tonight you'll enjoy ice cream à la mode for dinner."

Harrier thought he recognized the smell of charred Neapolitan in the air.

The guards reached his cell. "Control, acknowledge. Unlock cell number two dash fourteen, level B. Lock once inmate number four-six-three-four-four-nine-two enters." The cell's bars undulated until they vanished like the product of a dream. Harrier endured a lashing shove from the guards, who both dressed like sodding clowns because they celebrated Halloween in February in this unholy, ill-governed prison system. Yes, unholy, because if even one of the inmates dressed as a geisha, something was right daft.

A bunk bed stood in his cell. Harrier tumbled into the bottom bunk on a concave net of wire that did not so much squeak as it did shriek in horror. The cell bars reappeared. Behind them, the guards snickered and rattled their batons against them. One fired him a kissy face. How proper.

"Enjoy the next forty years, Four-Six-Three-Four-Four-Nine-Two. I know I will." And that was the easygoing guard who spoke. With that, they left Harrier to bleeding rot.

Forty years. Simpler minds would fathom that an eternity. Harrier would escape in no longer than two. If the solar system—if the galaxy—were to heal, it needed Harrier's help, because somewhere in this prison, Mechanism's remaining suit of armor had been transported. Somewhere. For whatever reasons something of evidence would be stored in a prison, Harrier blooming didn't know. But good thing it had. After all, who else but he would carry on Lord Alpha's vision?

Chapter Twenty-Seven: Who Left This Laying Around?

Mickey scratched his hairy belly. It rolled over his belt an' slipped outta his stained, threadbare shirt to show off his man-girth. He wafted out an alcoholic burp, poked a finger inta his bellybutton, an' checked the pocket lint he dug out. A nice wad. He'd been growin' it for a week now. He put it back.

Widda grunt, he cracked his shovel inta a mound o' rubble that had fell from the floor above. He heaved that aside, wiped his bald head, an' heaved out another scoop o' rubble. Man, diggin' out dis—what'd they call dis thing?—Blast-o-Matic power core, yeah, that was it. Diggin' out dis thing would take hours. If he kept shovelin' this hard, he was gonna work off his gut. Then what would droop offa his belt?

Why that felon Asinine had hired him to dig up this thing, he didn't have no clue. But here he was on Station Zilcho, on his own, workin' up a crockuva sweat. He snorted back some sweet-tastin' snot and crunched the shovel inta the—thud—it hit somethin'. Under th' rubble, that somethin'...shifted? Groaned? What the piss?

He threw aside the shovel, clawed at the rubble, and tossed some o' them rocks aside. He uncovered a guy sleepin' under this crap, all scratched up an'...wearin' Good Guy duds. The guy, almost curled inta the fetal position, stirred an' groaned again.

Mickey bent over. "Hey, man, wake up. You's okay? What's ya's name?"

The Good Guy di'n't open his eyes. So weak an' dirty. His lips all cracked, he said, "I have no idea." Almost sounded like all one word, the way he slurred 'em together like he'd gone toe-to-toe wit' a few pitchers o' Malt Motor Ale.

"Well, don' worry, guy. I'm gonna find you some help." Mickey grabbed another rock and threw it off the man. His belly rumbled. "Afta I eat, anyway. Gots me a Lunchables today."

THE END

NEXT BOOK:

Space Cow introduces its mystery meat quarter pounder...‌with bacon!

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?

Sick of seeing no character art on the IAGFFA web site? So is the author.

But professional art costs money. Help out by donating at http://tiny.cc/iagffa_donate.

The author wants to give you free stuff! For free even!

Join the In a Galaxy Far, Far AwRy army and get an exclusive, free story you can't find anywhere else...just for signing up! How? Mosey on over to tiny.cc/iagffa_army for all the details.

How awesome is that?

For updates and to make sure I'm not eating potato chips for dinner, do yourself a favor and check this series out online. It's the right thing to do.

Get news on it at inagalaxyfarfarawRy.com

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Communicate via homing pigeon at chirp-twiddle-twoo or whatever pigeons say.

Table of Contents

- Your Favorite Table of Contents

- Available on the Author's Super-Awesome Site

- Chapter One: While You Were Away...

- Chapter Two: Instrument of Destruction

- Chapter Three: Maybe There's a Bicycle around Somewhere

- Chapter Four: About as Fun as That Weird Bump on the Back of Your Skull

- Chapter Five: Down with the Establishment

- Chapter Six: Kill the Competition

- Chapter Seven: Nobody Likes the Office Kiss-Up

- Chapter Eight: Why the Doorbell Should Be a Joy Buzzer

- Chapter Nine: This'll Guarantee Me a Raise

- Chapter Ten: Dad, the Important Thing Is I'm Okay

- Chapter Eleven: It's All in the Wrist

- Chapter Twelve: With All His Wits about Him

- Chapter Thirteen: What's with This Barrel, and Why Am I Dressed like a Fish?

- Chapter Fourteen: Et tu, Number A?
- Chapter Fifteen: Welcome Home
- Chapter Sixteen: Some Assembly Required
- Chapter Seventeen: Thanks for Asking

- Chapter Eighteen: You'll Need a Sneeze Guard

- Chapter Nineteen: Hear Ye, Hear Ye, Pustules of Thought

- Chapter Twenty: Defense Mechanism

- Chapter Twenty-One: The Maid-o-Tron Is Gonna Flip Its Crock When It Finds This Mess

- Chapter Twenty-Two: Electrified

- Chapter Twenty-Three: No More Mr. Nice God

- Chapter Twenty-Four: A Slaughter Is a Good Enough Ice-Breaker

- Chapter Twenty-Five: The Way Things Used to Be

- Chapter Twenty-Six: Moving Day

- About That Guy Whose Book You Read Once