In a Galaxy Far, Far AwRy

Book 15: Our New Hiring Policy

Liam Gibbs

IN A GALAXY FAR, FAR AWRY book 15: OUR NEW HIRING POLICY

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: 978-1777139681

First printing: April 2021

{ PLOT DEVICE PUBLISHING }

The Story So Far...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Available on the Author’s Super-Awesome Site

Book 7: The Lesser of Two Egos

Book 8: Untitled of Attitude Adjustments

Book 9: Those We Left Behind

Book 10: Metaphor for Life

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

Book 12: His Kingdom Come

Book 13: A Wolf in Sheep’s Armor

Book 14: Man Versus Machine Part 1 of 1

Book 15: Our New Hiring Policy

Book 16: Life Like Broken Glass

Book 17: The Church of Steeple

Book 18: Blood Bunny

Book 19: Disease of Behavior

Book 20: The Paper Tiger’s Yardstick

Book 21: This One Has a Dancing Gibbon

Book 22: My Brother’s Captor

Book 23: Marching Orders

Book 24: We, Robots

Please visit www.inagalaxyfarfarawRy.com for more information.

Other Stuff the Author Spewed Out

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

Not So Superpowered, available at tiny.cc/nssuperpowered

Three Flash Fictions, available upon request from the author

Random limericks, available in bathroom stalls

Your Favorite Table of Contents

Book 15: Our New Hiring Policy

Chapter One: Apply Within

Chapter Two: Class Is in Session

Chapter Three: The Best Laid Plans

Chapter Four: Makes the Same Sound Falling Over as Your Skull Does

Chapter Five: Makeover

Chapter Six: This Conversation Worked Better in Front of the Mirror This Morning

Chapter Seven: Crash Course in Course Crashing

Chapter Eight: Apply Within because We Don’t Take Resumes Nailed to the Door

Chapter Nine: The New Guy’s Sort of a Douche

Chapter Ten: Never Discuss Salary

Chapter Eleven: Power Struggle

Chapter Twelve: Boozer Friendly

Chapter Thirteen: Office Romances

Chapter Fourteen: Delirium at Its Finest

Chapter Fifteen: Everything but Good Housekeeping

Chapter Sixteen: Yabba Dabba Don’t

Chapter Seventeen: Just a Dip

Chapter Eighteen: Still Riding the Short Bus off the Short Pier

Chapter Nineteen: Warranty Voided

Chapter Twenty: There’s an i in the Spanish Word for Team, So Suck It, Coach

Chapter Twenty-One: Like Bringing the Cat to the Vet’s

Chapter Twenty-Two: You Discussed Salary, Didn’t You?

Chapter Twenty-Three: End of a Long Day

Appendices

About That Guy Whose Book You Read Once

Connect with the Series

This Isn’t Even My Final Form!

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

For cool reasons.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Enjoy!

Or don’t. I really have no control.

Chapter One: Apply Within

January 2, 9110. 8:58 p.m. (Galactic Standard Time). One month and something-something days ago.

Tuskell grunted at the punch, some goopy purple muck that bumbling Bad Guy leader Master Asinine botched together in one of his lame attempts to work anything more complicated than a light panel. Tuskell lifted his glass to the light and checked inside. Blech. Stank like shoe polish. Oh, well. A toast to Master Asinine, the only person who used cooking spray to make whatever this was. A coffee grind floated around in there. Someone had tried to work the Coffinizer again. Three guesses who.

He kicked the table on which sat the punchbowl, an upside-down novelty football helmet. Hrmph. Wiping the punch from his red/brown whiskers, he checked the crowd around this headache-inducing gathering in Bad Guy headquarters Station Zilcho’s party room. This get-together marked the promotion of another generic, that new prick Everyone Except Master Asinine Sucks but Especially Mechanism. Bad Guy upper-ranked agents Lieutenant IQ 23, Braindead, Plaster, the two-headed Schizophrenic punching random dudes in the face, and a tidal wave of generics, the red-shirted grunt workers of the Bad Guys, thrilled around a Rorschach pattern of tables and the remains of one the gargoyle-like Appetite ate to reach the cheese buffet table. Not the cheese. Just the table.

Tuskell chucked his glass and gave an apologetic sneer at the generic he hit, which was the one he intended to hit anyway. That four-foot stump with one arm shorter than the other. And Asinine still stuck him in the outfield at games of whatever sport you used anvils and fence posts in. Tuskell sat in one chair in a grid of forty and swept some cracker crumbs off his jeans. “You know what really crocks my brain about these crackpot promotion parties Asinine throws?”

The dude in the chair next to him lolled forward, chuckled, and let out a belch like a train chugging into the station. Tuskell’s best friend and distant cousin somewhere down the line. “Y’ know wha’, man? This...” Hearthberg, the perpetual pre-, mid-, and postdrunk, lifted a finger but couldn’t keep it steady. “This...uh...” He ripped a laugh that sounded like an asthmatic dog yipping. He was constantly smashed thanks to his absurd special ability, his hyperability, to improperly process oxygen. Nice one, genetic lottery. “I love you, man. You’re aaawweee—”

“Your burps smell like Grandma’s bedsheets.” Tuskell turned to Hearthberg. “Okay, here’s what crocks me. You and me? We worked with Asinine from day one. When he was just George Lowensland, no media name. When we was just the Mikazin clan. When he finally learned to color inside the lines.” Tuskell spat on the floor. Some of it sprinkled the punch. Did he care? Nope. “And we watch promotions for dudes like this Everyone Blabbity Blah Blah Blah Sucks, Brick, that colossal idiot Plaster—yeah, I’m talkin’ about you, you Uggie Award winner—even that schoolgirl Ama...Ima...the red ninja. Crock, our favorite idiot gave that fake ninja Multipurpose a promotion, and that guy can’t walk five feet without snortin’ down a lizard sandwich. And us? Nothin’. Zilch. Double zilch.” He slapped Hearthberg. “Pay attention. I’m venting. Anyway, we’re forced to go to these parties, watch some other dude get promoted and earn a bigger cut...and we’re still generics.” As if to emphasize his point, he slapped his leg. “You know what I’m sayin’?”

“Hey, everybody. Thank y’all for attendin’ my promotion party.” That cud chewer Sucks tipped his ten-gallon hat’s rim to the crowd. He spat some cud into a trash ionizer. Yeah, keep noshing on that brown crap. “I wanna make an announcement that, as of now, y’all can call me by my new media name, Master Asinine Sucks. Thank ya, thank ya, yeehaw.” An unenthusiastic pitter-patter of clapping ensued, scattered around the turpentine-perfumed room.

Master Asinine stopped clapping. “Wait. What’d you say?”

Tuskell sat back. “Call Mensa. Everyone’s a genius here.”

Hearthberg stood but quickly keeled onto the sticky floor. He attempted a singsong round of whatever tune he was slurring.

* * *

February 12, 9110. 3:56 p.m. (Galactic Standard Time). Today.

Same chair. Same turpentine-perfumed room. Same idiotic occasion. But instead of one insane promotion today, they celebrated two. And a new hire. This was a triple-crock day for Tuskell.

First promotion: Bad Aim, a sack of scales that smelled like modeling clay. He scrutinized the crowd of generics through squinted eyes and arms crossed so tightly he looked as if he were posing for a thuggish album cover. And that impact suit, the color of tinfoil. Second promotion: Punch, a nasty mutant hand lopped off at the wrist that somebody performed some experiment on with some chemical cocktail. This hand now stood six feet tall with pointy teeth and fingers like pink dreadlocks. Carpel tunnel syndrome at its worst. With a pipe in his mouth. And the new hire: Brainiac, a Trioxidillian/Terran crossbreed who suffered from head gigantism to the point where she fell over if even a whisper of air trickled through the room. Science had definitely found a way to make everything sicker.

Tuskell sat in a chair that leaned on an uncomfortable angle. To stay seated, he was forced to weigh down on his aching right knee. That was the knee he said suffered from a football injury so he could impress chicks. (Didn’t work.) “See this? See this...party...thing? Whatever they call i—shindig! We’ll call it a shindig since it’d be kind of lame except someone brought gummy bears. Anyway, this shindig? Celebratin’ another promotion for two idiots who swooped in here only a month ago.” Brainiac meandered past him. “Oh, and that big-headed, unibrowed chick Asinine hired at the supermarket because she had a creepy way of picking out honeydews.” He waved a hand at the hideous figure with the pulsating head, and wow, Tuskell couldn’t think of a grosser thing by which to identify her corpse. “Pay attention, Hearthberg. It’s hard to tell if you’re dead.”

Master Asinine took to what remained of the slivered podium after Appetite had eaten it as a midnight snack, which would carry into breakfast, lunch, dinner, tomorrow’s midnight sn—Crock, that thing could trounce a Hobbit in an overeating contest if it’d stop eating the Hobbit first.

Asinine cleared his throat, and the air-stuffing rumble revealed he’d been drinking starter fluid again. “Attention, everyone. I’d like to thank you for coming to our celebration to acknowledge whatever it is our three newly named Trioxidillian immigrants do. I hope it’s not using all the hot water in the shower, or else this is a waste of a good party. So I’d like to propose a toast.” He raised a pistol. “To geometric tortoises and whatever they poop. Sunlight, probably.”

Brainiac knocked her head against a wall and slid to the sticky floor. She righted herself and stumbled into Bad Aim, whose legs were amputated at the crotch. He used a two-foot-wide, humming hoverdisc under his waist to float around. Bad Aim spiraled away and smacked into Master Asinine. Entertainment. Everything science pissed up had a silver lining after all. He’d toast to that.

“Yo, yo!” Bad Aim righted himself. “Watch the silver threads, homegirl.”

Tuskell felt a finger graze his shoulder, so he checked the row behind him. That tap-water-drinking Gunkluss leaned forward in his seat. “Harry—”

“Hey, d’I give you permission to use my name? Apologize. And help me lift Hearthberg off the floor before the Roomba sucks up his lip again.”

“Harry, you complain every single time we watch one of these promotions.” Gunkluss counted on his calloused fingers. “Plaster, Mechanism, Multipurpose—actually, you laughed at that one—Ice Cream Headache. You want to dial it back a bit? Some of us are trying to enjoy the brownies.”

“Yeah, shove another lump o’ chocolate down your mouth. Actually, that smells good. Lemme taste.” He reached out, but Gunkluss slapped his hand back. “Hey, sharin’ is carin’.”

“Anyway, you keep whining about getting passed up. Stop it.”

“Pissin’ right, I keep whining. And I’ll keep keep whining. I got a hyperability as good as any of them halfwit crocks. Plaster just melts. Literally. He just melts. I mean...” A grunt chugged up his gullet. “...melts.”

“But he melts like a boss. And you have the hyperability to blow yourself up? That hyperability you’ve never used but you somehow know you have?”

“Leave my better qualities alone. Yeah, that hyperability.” His internal temperature rose. “I mean...he melts. He’s like a snowman what smells like a fish. I’m passed up for gettin’ a named gig because I threaten to blow up stupid close to Asinine’s juice boxes, an’ Plaster gets promoted because he’s a crayon someone forgot in the sun. And where’s he been lately, anyway?”

Gunkluss finished his brownie and dusted his hands off. “So maybe it’s time you grab life by the haunches and prove yourself.” His chair squeaked as he spun around and gripped its back.

“Stop dry-humping somethin’ every time you talk about grabbing haunches.”

Gunkluss sat. “Stop waiting for your promotion, and show Asinine you deserve it. Prove yourself. Go battle the Good Guys. Sneak behind enemy lines.” He grabbed another brownie and bit soulfully. “Yeah, that’s like a shot of laughing gas.”

“First off, in what universe does a brownie taste like laughin’ gas? In the universe of...brownie-flavored...laughin’ gas? Okay, I admit I’ve had better. Second off, I never before heard anybody say ‘second off.’ Third off, you want to see me promoted?”

“I just want to sing at your funeral.”

“Not much of a union rep, are ya?” Tuskell wrung a hand over his chin and kicked the clanking Roomba away from Hearthberg. “Prove myself. Huh. I think I can handle that. Hearthberg, you up for a prove-ourself mission an’ maybe stop off for fried chicken? Gunkluss, help me flip him so he don’t choke on his own vomit.”

Chapter Two: Class Is in Session

Lieutenant Colonel Matross Legion, Good Guy leader, raised his head from the desk at the front of the theater. He heard the prerecorded clucking from the awful educational video depicting that...uh...well, he’d just call him a Gharalgian rooster with a shark’s head. Yeah, go with that. From memory, he visualized the video of this lab-coated mishmash of DNA who smiled at the camera. Legion would rather visualize a burning building.

On the video, the DNA mishmash straightened that deranged floppy rooster comb—or comb-over—on top of his head. He held a datasheet, a sheet-thin and rigid computer, that he read studiously. His eyes snapped up in fake realization. “Oh. Well, hello, everyone. I didn’t see you there,” the Gharalgian shark/rooster said, his shark’s mouth full of too many razor teeth. He deactivated the datasheet. It sagged when turned off, so he rolled it up and shoved it into his mouth. Legion wasn’t sure that was scripted.

The DNA kaleidoscope smiled, revealing a hint of sadomasochistic giddiness in that expression. “I’m Dr. Wainescoat. I’ve been brushing up on evolutionary science, and I’d love to bore you with some details. So come on into my lab.” He beckoned the viewer forward. Then he cock-a-doodle-dooed.

Legion sat at the head of a forty-seat, beige instructional theater here on Good Guy headquarters Station One. He faced the Good Guys’ five new recruits, ones acquired over the past four days. Intergalactic Protection, the Good Guys’ military parent organization, had already designed their impact suits to bolster their market exposure and had advised them to choose media names within the next forty-eight hours.

The heavily tanned earth elemental called himself Catastrophe. Legion had already hired three or four of those, depending on which news outlet you asked.

Next to him sat Organism, the kid built enough to press iron between his teeth. Seriously. He probably benched the lobby building before eating a rhino each morning.

Beside Organism sat—and Legion couldn’t tell if this was a joke—some intern at Good Guy Power Plant’s fake nation of Jefftaria? No one had briefed Legion on everything that had happened after he’d dropped into that coma from an injury he’d gotten on the field, but this was getting ridiculous. Anyway, this intern, Ed, wore a mechanical suit modeled after ex–Bad Guy Mechanism, one stolen from a Mechaknight, one of Mechanism’s underlings. He chose the media name Incendiary because he’d heard “President Jeff Abends” say the word a hundred times in relation to hobbies.

Beside him sat Plastique, a woman who’d served as an IP soldier years ago until females were demilitarized in a chauvinistic bid for more sponsorship dollars. She was fired, but now she’d returned to active duty with the Good Guys.

Behind everyone sat Tolliver, who had yet to pick a media name. He was the son of a soldier murdered in Mechanism’s assault on IP when that egomaniac had tried to cleanse the galaxy. Intergalactic Protection had insisted Legion wedge him into the Good Guys to help them acquire sponsorship. Something about smoothing IP’s public image over. A media play. And Legion would receive an extra funding kick, forty thousand moolahs he could use to kiss all this new latent technology on Station One good-bye.

Legion couldn’t believe all the latent technology snuck on this station during his coma. L-tech, a technology that summoned and hid objects in computer memory at a user’s behest, was easily corruptible. But the public loved it for some reason. And now it was part of Legion’s bedroom.

Legion now awaited the arrival of only one more recruit, the guy who induced yawning in people by doing it himself first. And great. Now he realized he’d been conned. At least he’d passed on Montage, the woman who fast-forwarded time to train someone in three-second clips. She’d gone insane after hearing “Eye of the Tiger” one time too many.

Legion leaned back on his squeaky chair. And he still had to acquire Luzimoss, someone who shunned the hyperperson spotlight and had declined to attend this video orientation. He’d probably used his hyperability to prejudge this educational film as a botchery of everything good and holy. And how could someone get a rooster and a shark to mate without one dying of asphyxiation? Zoos were sick, sick places.

“You see, my friends.” In the video, which IP forced on all hyperabilitied recruits, the DNA casserole on two legs strutted across a staged laboratory littered with frothing glass tubes and boiling liquids, a few charts and graphs, a Chupacabra skeleton that might or might not be real. What part of the scientist decided he had room to sway that feathered tail around: the Gharalgian, the shark, the rooster, or the eccentric maniac? His ridged feet clicked on the lab floor. Legion wanted to add those feet to a soup broth. Totally normal thought. Totally, totally normal thought.

“Evolution in the Terran body developed what we now call the ‘hypergland,’ which was discovered in the endocrine system by scientists better looking than me since rooster DNA is not flattering.” A rock quarry looked better than him. And that voice, seven million decibels too deafening, scratched Legion’s antennae like a salty razorblade. Probably lifted the skin clean off. Thanks, Gharalgian genetics. “Some lucky people possess what we now call the hypergland. The first person known to have an ability—the first ‘hyperperson’”—he broke out air quotes—“was discovered more than four thousand years ago. He possessed the ability to control birds. His ability, or ‘hyperability,’ was augmented with bread.

“By backtracking through history, we have identified people who we suspect had what we call hypertalents, normal abilities augmented past normally viable limits.”

Organism’s hand crept up shyly. He shook as though he’d met Death, and Death was a rooster crossed with a shark crossed with a Gharalgian. “Uh, Mr. Legion, sir—”

“Wait, wait.” Legion squeaked forward. “I’ve watched this video. The best part’s coming up. And, by best, I mean worst.” He glanced at the video. “Very worst."

The Gharalgasharktarooster reached a desk and dusted a fin over it. Everything collapsed to the floor. “Hyperabilities, including hypermutations and hypertalents, develop when the hypergland is overexposed to certain stimuli in the womb. For instance, a hyperperson overexposed to healing gel might develop the ability to heal faster or more thoroughly than a normal person.

“Fewer than one in ten thousand people possess the hypergland, and fewer than one in one hundred million possess twin hyperglands, or the capacity to develop two separate hyperabilities. Science knows only one person in history to ever possess triplet hyperglands.”

The video wiped away the gumbo of DNA on two ridged legs. In his place was a gray Terran stickman against a flat blue background. The stickman zoomed out to show stickmen of different species mixed into the Terran one: Virillian, Trioxidillian, Fleeson, Gharalgian, others. Lines extended across the footage, connecting these stickmen. The host’s high-pitched voice continued, “The hypergland first belonged to Terrans. Terran DNA was then studied and duplicated in members of other species so those species would develop their own hyperglands—”

“Control, acknowledge. Lights to normal capacity. Pause video, because I think watching any more of this guy’s tail whip across a tangle of glass tubing in the background lobotomizes my soul.” Yeah. That always happened when you watched a video from a company with the byline, “From the studio that brought you the movie adaptation of couches.” That wasn’t a proper noun. Just...couches.

The lights buzzed on, and Legion stood, his chair swiveling lazily. He didn’t need to rue having to rewatch this video. He already rued the fact that Good Guy Franchise was moving into Power Plant’s living quarters after the latter had lost his older brother, Burnout, in Mechanism’s attempted cleansing. Together, Franchise and Power Plant were a never-ending prank war. “Any questions?”

Several hands shot up.

“That have nothing to do with why a shark/rooster is hosting an educational video?”

Everyone lowered their hands. Everyone except one. Legion lifted his chin at the person. “Organism.”

The kid as hard as a bag of hammers timidly lowered his head to study the carpet. “Uh, Alvin is fine. Anyway, so...will I turn into a rooster if I use my hyperability too much? I don’t want to be a rooster. And/or a shark.”

“No, you won’t. No one turns into a rooster, but if you do, blame Power Plant. Somehow he knows your deepest fears and fires them out of a cannon at you.”

Hands shot up again.

“Don’t ask. You’ll learn soon enough. Anyway, IP thought that video should be mandatory learning, probably to promote their main sponsor’s new line of shark cosmetics. I’m not sure how IP thinks that video’s supposed to help anybody. I’m still floored Station One now has a gift shop. The only thing you need to remember is what you learn in field training. And practice using everyone’s media names as per our sponsorship agreement. Except Franchise because we don’t want to acknowledge that he goes into the field. Don’t ask. You’ll learn soon enough.

“Anyway, let’s skip ahead to today’s situation.” Legion double-tapped the Close icon on the cinematic viewscreen on which they’d watched the video. The viewscreen crackled away. “What the media announced about Mechanism’s siege is that it ended with his death and Lowensland’s escape. What the media didn’t announce—what nobody knows—is that Mechanism apprehended the Bad Guys and left four of them on Station One. What does this have to do with you? As probationary members on your first mission, some of you will serve as escorts. Our cellblock isn’t secure enough and has only three cells. And because we’re unable to read anything out of our prisoners’ minds thanks to a mental block Mechanism installed, we’re transporting them to the Stavehill Hyperperson Penitentiary on the planet Gaia, and we need security in case Lowensland tries anything. And thanks to the siege on IP, they can’t offer help right now. Four of you will accompany an away team on this mission, and the other one will leave on the next. Your field leader will be Pincushion, and you’ll also work with Power Plant. Your pilot and navigator will be Franchise, assuming he’s learned to fill two roles at once. We’ll all learn soon enough.

“Any questions that don’t relate to anything you’ll learn soon enough?”

“Yeah. One.” Tolliver grunted. He spat on the foot-flattened carpet and propped his feet on the seat in front of him, bunting Organism in the head. “What idiot came up with this suicide mission? Because I gotta say, butt cork, this type of thinking just got literally half your frigging team killed and the rest shut down.”

“Well, we’re unshut now.” A tingle bled out any energy Legion had. He blinked back the emotion that tried leaking out his eyes. The room grew colder. “Except for the tango classes.”

“And you really think your crazy Lowensland’s gonna make a move on this mission? He’d have to miss the Sandwich Festival for this.”

Chapter Three: The Best Laid Plans

“I’m missing the Sandwich Festival for this.” Master Asinine sighed at the rocky ground. “Been a while since I’ve eaten a good ham-and-mac-and-cheese sammy. Plaster used to make them. Never washed his hands first, though, because what’s the point for him?”

“Is that why you have horns growing out of your scalp?” Punch used his pinky to point at Asinine’s head, where Asinine’s helmet with its long-stemmed umbrella attachment sat. Punch looked freaky enough being a six-foot hand with a face in his palm, but did he have to smoke a pipe while being it?

“I’m having them removed tomorrow. Haircut.”

Those Bad Guys not captured after Mechanism’s galactic bid for conquest—Master Asinine and his junior thugs: Lieutenant I.Q. 23, Braindead, Amaranthia, Bad Aim, and Punch—stood at a cliff’s dusty edge, overlooking a gulley with a single snaking trail and that outhouse Asinine would need later if he drank much more pureed orange stuff. Tasted like water but went down like a hairball. Never one to waste a good hairball, he chugged the rest and threw aside the tumbler.

Asinine had it on reliable authority—some random caller and a gut instinct that might have been bad gas—that the Good Guys would be low-flying a military transport through here in only a few hours. Yes, low-flying through here with the captured Bad Guys and maybe some decent reading suggestions. And so the Bad Guys’ assigned duties? Intercept that mil-tran. Liberate the captured Bad Guys. Grab those reading suggestions. Start a book club. Learn to read books without pictures. Maybe in that order.

And what with Mechanism having juiced up Station Zilcho with enough power to last years, Asinine had everything he needed to launch a full-scale assault against anything standing in his way, especially education, but especially education.

He stretched out his intertwined fingers to crack his knuckles, which hurt when you held a pistol. A breeze picked up his checkerboard tie and flapped it in his face, so he tore the tie off. “So you all know your assigned missions?”

The others nodded. They’d better. He’d briefed them on their assigned duties at least zero times on the trip over. “I’ll go over things anyway.” He smacked his lips. He could use more hairballs. “So here’s plan A. Punch and Amaranthia, I want you two on the south side of this gulley”—Asinine arced two fingers to point across the gulley to the opposite side—“not flipping me the bird for once like right now. Bad Aim, you and I will watch from this side. When those sad attempts at everything pass through here, we’ll smack-attack them. Lieutenant and Braindead, you’re on dinner duty.” He clapped his palms together. “Plan B is we go home and play with each other’s minds. Any questions”—he kicked himself when Amaranthia raised her hand—“that aren’t statements that sound like questions?”

“Yeah, I have two? Okay?” Amaranthia rolled her eyes and grinded pebbles under her boot. The rising intonation in her airheaded speech made everything she said sound like a question. And sound questionable. “One, was there, like, any way you could find out when these supreme gitches are totes buzzing through here?” She checked her watch, which surprised Asinine because she used analog and Asinine had a hard time with digital. “I mean, it’s, like, six o’clock now? Say they’re passing through around midnight or, like, after Judy Delco’s party? What are we supposed to do until then? Map the stars? And two—”

“Two? I counted eight hundred!”

“—how the crock are we, like, supposed to cross this gap thingy? It’s totally eight feet widesies or whatevs?”

“How should I know? Ninja down this side and samurai up the other. Isn’t that how you high-school kids do things? I once saw one of you bake a pie that way.”

“Sir.” Lieutenant IQ 23 crunched over dirt and rocks to reach Asinine at the cliff side. The question marks attached to his helmet bobbed on their springs. The broken hand and cheekbone he’d recently sustained had healed, and he’d removed their bandages. What a clean boy he was. “She makes a good point.” He thumbed the military transport parked behind them. “We’ll need to commandeer our Warbird mil-tran across the gulley if you want someone on the other side. But, unless step two is jumping two hundred feet straight down, might I suggest we watch from the foot of the cliff where we can erect our EMP barrier?”

Asinine shielded his eyes from the mild sun. If he could experience deep thought, he would. Unfortunately, deep thought was something he’d dream of if he could think deeply. “Was that a rhyme, Lieutenant? Did you intentionally drop a phat lyric?”

“He dropped a slick rhyme all up in this hizzouse.” Bad Aim slapped his chest, his scaly, taloned hands almost gouging his tinfoil-like media outfit, the one Asinine let him wear in public only because it was shiny. “He a lyrical gangsta dawg!”

“Sir, uh...” Lieutenant IQ 23’s lips retraced his sentence. “I didn’t rhy—”

“Lieutenant, from now on, you’ll speak in rhyme. It’s about the only cartoon archetype missing from this team.”

“Don’t forget the strong man with the heart of gold.”

“Don’t forget to rhyme.” Asinine smoothed out his red-and-green jeans. “Now let’s fly our bad boy into that gulley. I have to pee my name in the sand.”

Chapter Four: Makes the Same Sound Falling Over as Your Skull Does

Franchise dragged the box along the bumpy floor, staining the carpet runner’s maroon color into the cardboard. He stopped, wiped the warm sweat off his brow, and looked back at his former room’s door. What a freaking long day. One box down, eighty-three more to go. And he had to drag each one next door, a whole fifty feet. At least his knee brace compensated for his injury, but moving in with Power Plant was hard work. Good thing he had a party of hyperability-conjured duplicates lifting all the heavy stuff. Being the original had its perks.

“Control, acknowledge. Unlock closest door,” Franchise said to the haunt control. Haunt controls were computer software installed in buildings or objects that translated voice commands into action, thus named because their automation made places seem haunted. He wiped his clammy brow again. One freaking box. Man, he should hit the gym more often. Or use Dr. Heavy-Handed’s muscle-growth ointment that the haunt control displayed on that wall over there. How did it know? Whatever haunt control Ace Spandex had installed—the one he now called Janice for some reason—Franchise felt telepathically raped every time he daydreamed. Oh, and now the wall advertised daydreaming. What was Total Recall?

Power Plant’s door vaporized, and Franchise peered into the living quarters that coughed warm air. Burnout’s stuff was still here. An orange-and-red impact suit lay on the bed, and a series of free weights rested on a rack in the corner. A poster of bodybuilders overlooked the bed. If that wasn’t downright creepy, it edged there. And Franchise wouldn’t sleep under the other poster showing that one guy who crossed his arms and stared at him with those assuming eyes that said, “You aren’t taking enough protein supplements.”

Power Plant bounded into the hallway so fast Franchise felt wind. “Hey, doomie roomie!” He grabbed Franchise by the shoulders, his tongue almost lolling out. And that grin, like a clown’s mouth you putt golf balls through. The first time Franchise had seen him smile since his brother’s...well, you know...

“I prefer Jacob to doomie roomie. I don’t know what you have planned for me, but I need to ask what ‘doomie roomie’ means.” He peered over Power Plant’s shoulder into the bright room. “I like the term less now that I see what you shoved in here. How long did it take to tape all those nails to that timer?”

“Nev’ mind. This gonna be so awesomes, you moving in.” Power Plant threw an arm around Franchise’s shoulder and showcased the room with a hand sweep. “This Jefftaria, my sides o’ the livin’ quarters—”

“Makes sense considering all the things that are glowing and that shouldn’t be.”

“—an’ that side is...wheres...” His sweep reached Burnout’s side of the room. His exuberance deteriorated like a decaying farmhouse in a tornado. “...wheres...”

“It’s okay.” Franchise slipped a hand onto Power Plant’s back.

Power Plant shook off the feeling, shook off Franchise’s hand. “I’s all good. And that side where I keeps all my stuffs. There’s where we’s gonna string up a buncha doll heads. An’ there’s where the magic happens—”

“Unsettling that you’re pointing at an oven.”

“—an’ you’s sleeps inna closet. If we take out the pull-up bar, you’s totally fits.”

Franchise shrugged. “I’ve been stuffed into smaller spaces.”

“That the only way we’s gonna keeps this place feng shui.”

“Out of the way, butt corks.” Someone rammed past Power Plant and Franchise. Franchise lost his footing and whacked his head against the wall, his tailbone on the baseboard. A clap of pain shot through him. He rubbed his head and peered up at the steamroller that had shoved through. That new guy, Tolliver. The guy who that bodybuilder on the poster wouldn’t judge, who probably took a supplement more often than a breath. He’d moved into the living quarters two doors down from this one.

He slammed a foot into Franchise’s box to clear it aside and didn’t miss a beat as he continued down the hall. The top-heavy box tipped and, with a crunch, reduced all its breakables to a collection of puzzle pieces. Tolliver didn’t even react. He and his perpetual hate glare powered forward.

Franchise gulped. Don’t say anything, don’t say anything, let him go, he broke all your stuff, but don’t say anything. Man, this felt like the same fizzing sensation as whenever he drank too much soda, and he was still eight thousand miles away from the next bathroom. He squeezed shut his eyes and, though he didn’t want it coming, it came anyway: flashes of butchered Mechaknight, a toilet stall he’d never visit again even after drinking twice as much soda. And Amaranthia. Amaranthia who’d rescued him from the longest pee break he’d ever had. The flashes that felt like a blizzard with fangs turned into a flowing summer breeze. He inhaled deeply. Amaranthia.

Screw it. Franchise targeted Tolliver’s back with a hate glare of his own. This guy could beat him into toothpaste, but he was putting his foot down, and he’d feel minty fresh after the beating anyway. “Hey—”

“Shut up, butt cork,” Tolliver said, back still turned. He didn’t even grace Franchise with eye contact. He disappeared out the door.

Franchise and Power Plant watched his shadow on the wall bleed away, that shape that resembled limbs like mountain ranges attached to a pillar. In its place, a copy of Burnout’s poster appeared on the wall, frowning at Franchise with that look that said he wasn’t performing enough squat lateral gonad crunches or some other exercise Franchise couldn’t name.

Franchise checked his overturned box. “What a jerk. He broke all my breakable stuff.”

“Mebbe he didn’t knows breakable stuff broke.”

“I packed my Galaxy’s Best Bullet Magnet mug in there.” Franchise swallowed an angry lump down. “Won that at our paintball tournament.”

Chapter Five: Makeover

Tuskell grabbed a clump of mismatched impact clothes from his closet and tossed the clutter onto his bed. Hearthberg did the same in a sense, if you replace “a clump of mismatched impact clothes from his closet” with “his entire body.” Tuskell should probably clear some clothes off Hearthberg’s face, or he might suffocate.

Tuskell’s living quarters was a windowless basement dwelling with heating that swung from freezing to stifling in one haunt-control command. It bore sparse furnishings: a bed, a bathroom with some scattered toiletries and a cracked mirror, a kitchen area with nothing but a toaster, and a closet that held random scraps of clothing and eighteen red-shirted outfits for generics. Hearthberg lay sprawled on Tuskell’s torn and faded bedspread while Tuskell rifled through his closet for anything he could use to make an identity that didn’t declare him as a red target.

“Okay, buck. Asinine’s with his elite team picking a fight against them Good Guys in an ambush, and we got left behind for dish duty. That ain’t happenin’ again ’cause I’m sick of living in this grungy basement, and I want a new mirror. We should be out there. We should be backing Asinine up, not some gigantic hand and a ninja who can’t pass calculus. So if we’re gonna infiltrate Station One, we need a plan. We’re not gonna just jump in there and mess with the hot and cold settings on their sinks. This has gotta be something big. Something monumental. Something Gunkluss can’t use in a limerick.”

“Why don’ we...” Hearthberg rolled over, flopping aside the shirt and belt that had landed on his face. “Why don’ we...” He hiccupped and extended a finger that drew a vague line in the air. “I love you, man.”

“Holy crock. There’s always one of you at every planning session.” Tuskell scratched the whiskers on his chin. “If Asinine ain’t gonna solve this Good Guy problem himself, we’ll solve it for him. Ain’t that right, buck? But how do we do that?” He held an l-hangar, which he started tapping against his forehead. “How are we gonna do that...how are we gonna do that?”

“We’re gonna...” Hearthberg rolled over and tumbled onto the floor. With his face mashed into the carpet, he said, “We’re gonna...we’re gonna...” He stopped talking to unleash a classy belch.

The haunt control flashed an ad onto the wall: explosive prices at Space Cow. Two all-in-and-the-horns-too burgers for six moolahs.

Then it hit Tuskell. Crock, did it ever hit him. He’d tapped his forehead too hard.

Then an idea hit him. He yanked in a little gasp, dropped the hanger. A tiny idea like a pinhole thought in his head mushroomed into a full-blown scheme so fast he needed to sit. He eased himself into the l-chair in the corner of his living quarters. “I got it.” He snapped his fingers. “I know how we’re gonna do this. Stop singin’ for a second.”

Hearthberg kept singing.

“We’re gonna tell their haunt control to self-destruct the station.” Tuskell rubbed his hands together. “The Good Guys just lost a lot o’ their team. They’re hiring. So we’ll go in as new hires. We only gotta finish our media outfits. We walk in, I show ’em my hyperability, you try not to puke on their shoes, and we’re good as gold. We snoop a bunch, learn the access codes, grab a bite to eat, check the rock memorabilia store. Then we blow that place sky high. It’s almost poetic. You into this, buck? Course you are. You’re too drunk to care.”

Tuskell unfolded a green impact shirt. Orange impact pants? Didn’t work. This outfit had less fashion sense than any of Asinine’s. But those yellow impact pants over there. Yeah. Put them together with that belt that had the fire-emblem buckle. Some yellow rubber suspenders. Goggles from the utility room. A decent haircut. He’d fit right in at Station One.

“Any idea for your media outfit, Hearthberg? We can look at fashionable barf bags.” Tuskell checked his snoring partner tangled in the bedspread he’d dragged with him to the floor. “Aw, piss.” He knelt over and tapped a palm on Hearthberg’s cheek. “Wake up. We’re scheming. Man, if you weren’t my distant cousin, I’d find a new partner in about thirty seconds.”

“A’right, a’right, a’right.” Awakened, Hearthberg clutched the bed but slipped and dragged the rest of the sheets down over him.

“Now we need media names. You know, like Plaster or Mechanism or Multipurpose or something not lame.” Tuskell rubbed his knees, at his feet Hearthberg who still tried to climb Mount Bed. “I explode like a crocking king. You see double at the drop of a hat. So...for me.” He spun his hand in the air. “Exploding...exploding...exploding. Into bits. I explode into bits. Bits...debris...accrual? My name’s Accrual? No. Scraps...” A surge highlighted his nervous system. “Detritus. Crock, yeah. Detritus. And you?” He checked Hearthberg and ran fingers along his whiskered chin. “What about you?”

Hearthberg grasped at Tuskell’s pant leg to join the conversation he was already supposed to be in. “I’m wasted.”

“Your media name is Wasted?”

“I’m wasted.” He raised a fist but it dropped onto his face. “Ow.”

Tuskell stared down at Hearthberg, who had somehow fallen asleep again immediately after that self-punch. The steady rise and fall of his chest accompanied his snoring. “Find some orange juice. I might need you to walk on your own.”

Chapter Six: This Conversation Worked Better in Front of the Mirror This Morning

Legion looked up when Luzimoss, wearing an attack dog’s curl on his lip, entered his office. He motioned for Luzimoss to sit across from him. Harder than it sounded. The room was a warzone of clutter, and whenever he cleaned it, Power Plant insisted on coming in to accomplish whatever task required the word volcanic. Not sure what thought process prompted him to stretch giftwrap over the door, but Legion enjoyed unwrapping his own office every time he entered. And what was that pork stench wafting out of the vent? Okay, one calamity at a time: he still needed to shoo that cat off the ceiling fan without getting scratched up.

“Okay, Mr. Grennard. Can I call you Luzimoss? First off, thanks for meeting me. It’s nice to see you’re still alive despite our mission last month and Kamikaze.”

“Sure.” Luzimoss took his seat stiffly. He crossed his arms and stared at but not through the window. Half his head was covered in metal due to a surgery Mechanism inflicted on him to control his hyperability of communicating with himself in different timelines. At least he’d removed the exoskeleton Mechanism had imposed on him and launched it into space. Species on primitive planets now worshiped it as a new constellation. Everyone else regarded it as space trash.

“Anyway, I called you here for a reason, and that reason is we’d like to offer you a position with the Good Guys.” Legion affirmed eye contact with Luzimoss, his gaze not straying to the cat on the fan who’d decided good hygiene was peeing one moment and licking its own crotch the next.

Luzimoss leaned forward and snorted. He didn’t uncross his arms. “You’re serious? You’re offering me a job here? You have some nerve.”

“You say that, and you still haven’t seen what IP is installing in the food court.”

“Look, Legion...Matross...whatever name you dance around by. Let’s get this straight, okay? I hate the Good Guys. I hate the Bad Guys. Your circus act causes more destruction than any radioactive mishap I can cite. I’d never met you before Monday, but I have it on good authority—myself in other timelines—that you’re a reckless crock. The only reason I’m still on this station is someone bulldozed my apartment since they couldn’t fathom why an outhouse sat in the middle of a field. Really? My place is an outhouse? Didn’t they see the garden out front? It had azaleas! Your team flattened them, but they were there.” Luzimoss stamped to his feet and swatted aside some of the datasheets that had accrued on Legion’s desk. “You know what? Forget it. I’ve been involved in your insane war long enough, and I have no more patience for Asinine’s firearms that shoot out other firearms. I’m out of here.”

Luzimoss spun around and stomped out of the office before Legion could babble a reaction. The l-door materialized, and all Legion heard was Luzimoss cursing the medicine-ball launcher IP had bracketed to the ceiling and then screaming about missing his warnings from himself in other timelines. Intergalactic Protection was trying out different sponsors, and the think tank felt sporty the week they’d signed that deal.

“Good Guy entity Ace Spandex has arrived,” the haunt control said. “Time to upgrade your sleep medication with Sleep Is for Suckers Cough Drops.”

Legion whipped his palms out. “Really? Ace comes, and you offer me sleep medication? What database do you use to make these connections?”

The door faded again, not with its identifying whoomp, but with the cough drops jingle. And the thunk of a launched medicine ball. Legion wrung a hand over his face. Intergalactic Protection upgraded nothing but the annoying stuff. He peeked through his fingers. Case in point, the gratuity drum set he wanted out of his office before Power Plant knew what it was.

Ace Spandex stepped into the office, a forced perk in each burgundy-clothed step that creaked on the floor far louder than any regular Terran’s would. Ace’s smile showed teeth that looked like a paper cutout glued to his mouth. He shoved gum aside with his tongue to say, “You won’t guess who followed me here.” Those words sneaked out his unmoving jaw.

“Someone who can program the haunt control to stop telling me about back-alley tongue splitting? By any chance, did you see Luzimoss out there unconscious under a bunch of medicine balls?” Another thunk.

“I’m-a make sure!” Power Plant hooted and hopped over Luzimoss and into the office. He held one of the medicine balls, which he slammed into a pair of legs that showed through the doorway’s gap. The legs twitched only once.

“Oh, good. The person I wanted here the least is here.” Legion wrung his antennae in his hands. “And he’s holding a live grenade.”

“Don’t worry. He doesn’t know the detonation code,” Ace said.

Legion shot to his feet. “He’ll figure it out. He always knows how to ruin my day and my hallway. It’s innate and very, very impolite with guests around.” He sat, prayed to his deity, Alaphus, that he’d end the day with all his limbs, and motioned for Ace Spandex to take the chair across from him, the same chair Luzimoss had taken before he’d stormed out and met with the sporting goods department of hellfire.

Wiping the hair from his scarred brow, Ace Spandex maneuvered around the disorder in the office, on his heels the youth who had used Luzimoss’s unconscious body as target practice.

Ace took the seat Legion had indicated, tried to shuffle it forward, then realized it was nailed down for no obvious reason. He gave up. “So...what’s new?” He chew-snapped his bubblegum. It smelled like rubber.

“Not sure I can concentrate on our conversation now that I have to avoid the Living Projectile”—Legion kept his eye on Power Plant—“but he’s the precise reason I called you here.”

Ace Spandex’s cybernetic back whirred when he slouched. “Seriously? Whatever he’s done isn’t my fault, and that includes the scissor fight in the atrium. I tried to shake him coming here, but he somehow thinks I’m the reason he’s locked out of the heavy-artillery room. I am, but I have no idea how he knows that. He figures these things out but still ties his own shoelaces together.”

Legion watched Power Plant hop around the office, rip out a corner of the carpet, wrap himself in ventilation hose...The term “ad infinitum” was coined because of him. “This has nothing to—the what fight now?”

“No word of a lie. Actual scissors. Him and Jacob.” Ace gestured at Power Plant, who had become a monsoon of obliteration that crashed into a bookcase. “Him I understand, but they must have had a hammer fight right before to convince Jacob a scissor fight was a smart idea.”

“There’s a special home for imps like Jeff. Anyway, no one’s blaming you for anything. The reason I called you here was because I need to ask you a favor.”

“When favors are related to him, they come with hazard pay.”

“Fair enough. I’ll adjust your income. Anyway, with Burnout passed on, Jeff will need a little...” Legion swayed his head in search of the proper word.

“Euthanasia?”

“Guidance. Let’s keep your idea as runner-up.” Legion fixed his eyes on Ace Spandex. “Next to Jacob, you’re the closest thing he has to family now. Jeff needs an older brother. And I think you’re the best fit. With all that new computer hardware in your brain, you can calculate minimum safe distances whenever he goes into public.”

Ace shook his hands at Legion. “Uh-uh, no way. Plausible deniability is already hard enough to maintain living down the hall from him. What with my duties as your only computer guy, I can’t watch him twenty-four-seven.”

“Ace, listen. It’s not that he needs someone watching him. It’s more he needs direction, supervision. He needs a big brother again. You know, someone to teach him not to drink paint primer just because it’s bubblegum pink—”

The chandelier from which Power Plant swung pulled loose and shattered to the ground.

“—and other self-explanatory things.”

“No, I just...I’m not the big brother type. I’m the wrong man for the job. What about that has-been actor you just hired? He seems like a good shot.”

“Catastrophe? Ace, he sleeps in a tanning bed. And he changed his name to Rock de la Roche after his career picked up. I don’t think he’s the right fit. Besides, Jeff needs that emotional connection. I’m worried about him, not only because he uses my old training pistols as finger puppets. He’s bottling everything up. Did you see him at his brother’s funeral? Not a tear. Not even a frown. He even made a banner for Reef’s funeral. I can tell something is wrong. Since Burnout’s death, he hasn’t even touched the shock therapy kit I got him for Boxing Day.”

“Or the manticore I got him. But that still doesn’t make a difference. Jeff has a way of bouncing back. You’ll see. He’ll be connecting alligator clips to his eyebrows again before next week.” Ace cupped his forehead in his hands. “Please, please, I’m not a big brother. I’m not a father. I just don’t have Burnout’s instinct.”

“I’d ask Jacob, but the scissor fight offers enough explanation why that’s a bad idea.”

Ace Spandex’s irises whirred at Legion. “Don’t make me do this.”

Legion bit the side of his cheek but released it. “No one’s making you do anything. It was a request. But I don’t like how he’s dealing with things. He’s withdrawing. At least get him to open up. Or encourage Jacob to talk to him. In fifteen minutes, he’ll leave on his first mission since Burnout’s death, and I’m worried he’ll do something stupid.”

No longer underneath the calamity of broken chandelier glass, Power Plant held up a stretch of plastic wrap, which he pressed over his face. He collapsed to the floor, suffocating. Legion could tell by the color he was turning.

“Stupider.”

Ace Spandex whipped out of the chair. His jaw worked furiously on his gum. “I’ll see. I’ll...I...I can’t promise anything. Look, I have to go. I have to fix Janice. She’s letting random ads leak into our system, whether they’re sponsors or not. And I don’t need breathing insurance.” He backed toward the door, which vaporized with another out-of-context jingle Legion hoped wasn’t making his ears bleed. “I’ll catch up with you later. Excuse me, Luzimoss.” He stepped over the unconscious body twitching on the carpet outside.

“Who’s Janice?” Legion asked himself. He pinched the cartilage that separated his nostrils. Power Plant was hurting, he knew. He just knew. The psychologists that remained alive at IP had warned him about things Terrans suffered: survivor’s guilt, posttraumatic stress disorder, withdrawal. All the buzzwords. The team was due for a psych evaluation to deal with the seven deaths Mechanism’s assault had wrought. And Legion knew Power Plant was hit the hardest. With the mission team leaving soon, Power Plant was more unpredictable than ever.

“Jeff, poke a hole in the plastic. You need to breathe.”

Still lying on the floor, Power Plant gave a thumbs-up.

Chapter Seven: Crash Course in Course Crashing

“Now lock the prisoner in place using the restrainer ring,” Pincushion said. He stood behind Incendiary, whose name change he’d had taken five minutes to rehearse for public use. Yes. “Logged,” “five minutes,” and “name change,” together in a sentence for the first time. All because Power Plant insisted everyone learn it so Ed, his former secretary of pyromania at Jefftaria, could “do way fierce explosions for legit reals now.” Pincushion would sigh, but not even a heavy outbreath could fix this calamity waiting to combust.

Wow, he’d gotten sarcastic since becoming field leader.

Aboard the Fireball starship codenamed B-Kestrel and recodenamed the Smithereens Memorial Starship, Incendiary was learning the ropes on strapping prisoners into detainment cells. Incendiary was the aforementioned Ed, ex-political student/accessory to pudding-related thefts, now wearing his retooled Mechaknight body suit. That same Incendiary. His suit was colored black, a piercing distinction from its former Mechaknight beige, and it bore red joints instead of its previous navy blue. The faceplate also looked less menacing, with an eye slit that didn’t frown.

Incendiary snapped Master Asinine Sucks into place and hung the cowboy’s ten-gallon hat on a wall. The telling click of the restrainer ring signified Master Asinine Sucks was fastened to his wall for the ride. He was bound in a straitjacket and out cold from the tranquilizers his straitjacket injected into his arm.

Incendiary stood, a clanking racket in every shift of his weight. “That should secure him, Secretary of Prickly Bones Pincushion.” He pumped an arm. “Man, I love saying ‘prickly bones’ and not getting written up by campus security.”

Pincushion massaged the insomnia from his temples. Incendiary referred to the bony spikes protruding from his skin, his hypermutation.

He checked the tranquilizer meters on the straitjacket’s digital arm. “You can drop the officialdom, Ed. I mean, Incendiary.” Maybe he should log more practice time. “Intergalactic Protection employs you now, not Power Plant. You’re technically no longer his intern. Not that you were before. I mean, the first indication should have been when your application asked you to take a cannonball to the stomach.”

“I did.”

“That explains why Power Plant kept calling you a shoo-in. But now you’re a Good Guy, brother. So it’s Pincushion, not Secretary of Prickly Bones or Minister of Shenanigans or even Clerk of Gas-Powered Grenade Trebuchets—”

“That was Earl Smithereens.”

“And what a fitting title that was.” The insomnia was wavering his vision, so he depressed the button on his earlobe to give himself a jolt and wake him up. “But I insist you shorten everything to media names now. And take your seat. We’re about to launch.”

Incendiary obeyed. He clanked off and found a seat where he would probably soon offer Power Plant a caffeine catheter.

Four of the Good Guys’ new recruits were here today and one, Catastrophe, stayed behind on Station One. By the end of the week, Legion planned to divide the Good Guys into alpha and beta teams, Pincushion leading the alpha team and new recruit Plastique leading the beta team once she got up to speed. But for today, Pincushion would lead Power Plant, Franchise, Incendiary, Plastique, Organism, and this unfriendly jerk Tolliver who shoved Power Plant aside whenever the two crossed paths. Tolliver never talked to anyone unless he attached a surly insult to his sentence. He didn’t even look up, seated with his nose in a datasheet.

Power Plant approached him and, before he spoke a word—

“Don’t talk to me. Turn around. Shut your mouth.” Tolliver still didn’t look up.

“Nah, man. Ya’s broke my friend’s breakable stuffs. That was my job. Ya’s gonna apologizes to him.”

Tolliver locked glares with Power Plant and raised a single finger between them. With a crackling whoosh, the air around the finger lit, but the fire didn’t touch his skin. “I gave you three commands. You didn’t follow any of them. So let's start again. Don’t talk to me. Turn around. Shut your mouth. I'll let you pick what order.”

With a glare that soured even more, Power Plant obeyed. “I’s gotta figure out how many red meats I’s gonna eat when we’s done missionin’ up dem Bad Guys anyway.”

Incendiary pulled out a datasheet from wherever these Mechaknight suits had pockets. “I marked you down for eighty, sir. Are you sure you don’t want to up that to eighty-five? I know how hungry you get when you’re finished causing lawsuits on active field duty.”

Power Plant thought, a feat he did only when he’d had enough rest. He nodded no. “I’s plan to sticks fingers in potatoes and light ’em until thems asplode, so I’s busy.”

Pincushion took his seat. These ones felt stiffer than normal. Next to him, Franchise had finished plugging their flight path into the navigation computer. He now occupied himself with piloting directions, poking buttons that beeped back and giving verbal commands as if he knew what to do. Maybe he’d learned something, because the last time Pincushion assumed Franchise knew what to do, he had ended up gathering their starship’s tail section off a farmhouse.

Plastique sat in an l-chair she’d pulled from the passenger section and locked in place next to Pincushion. Alaphus had combined a lithe professional runner with a yoga instructor, stuffed in a few toned muscles, and popped out this fitness machine. Legend had it she performed eighty chin-ups before her breakfast of protein and other protein. Kept her body as slick as oil.

Pincushion asked her, “Did Legion review how to perform a mission precheck?”

Plastique sat rigidly in her chair and flicked aside a waterfall of raven hair. “No, but it’s described in the field leader’s manual, section two dash forty-five, subsection nineteen. I read it forty-two times when I acted as field leader with Intergalactic Protection, and I’ve read it fourteen times since I joined the Good Guys.”

Pincushion raised a cocoa-brown eyebrow. “I guess you can never be too excessive. You specifically.” He tapped Franchise’s shoulder. “And you got our flight path from IP?”

Franchise didn’t face him. His fingers danced over a few more beeping buttons. One button quacked. “Downloaded before I got in, so don’t worry. Our new sponsors insist we do things differently” He lit up something in the red section of the control panel.

Pincushion unlit the button. “No manual gravity regulators. The Gravitator in Station One’s amusement park is destructive enough.”

“Sorry. Wrong button. Won’t happen again.”

“Hey, Jakey,” Power Plant hollered from behind them. “Push the lights-show button.”

Franchise kept button-dancing. “It’s called a weapon deploy button, and we’re not ready for ‘lasers to come outta all sorts o’ cool places.’”

Power Plant tapped Incendiary’s armored shoulder. “It’s the button what makes lasers come outta all sorts o' cool places. Best one at a basketballs game. Press it, Jakey!”

“Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice—”

“Shame can suck it. Lemme fool you twice.”

With a dither of finality in his finger, Franchise pushed the last button. “Dial up your inertia fields, everyone, ’cause we’re taking off in thirty.”

“And turnin’ on the lights show in five.”

“Hey, gotta ask.” Franchise scratched his nose. “Did you hear about those new bloodstream beacons? Doctors inject nanosignalers into your veins. That way, if the Bad Guys capture us, Legion will know where we are. Just...I’d hate to be in their situation without the cavalry knowing where to find me.” He pointed a thumb at the prisoners in the detainment deck. “Bloodstream beacons are future cool.”

Pincushion squeezed one eye half shut. “Are you serious, brother? You want to inject something else into your bloodstream?”

“Might counter whatever Jeffy keeps injecting in there while I sleep.” Franchise’s cheek danced in a tic Pincushion swore he heard crackle. “See? I’m sick of this.”

Pincushion patted his shoulder. “Walk it off. We’re not injecting you with bloodstream beacons.”

Franchise clicked his tongue. “But all the cool militias are doing it.”

“If all the cool militias were getting matching tattoos, would you?”

Franchise daydreamed at the piped ceiling and tapped his chin. “Hey, Jeffy!”

“Yeah, I’s heard!” Power Plant called from the passenger deck where he—

“Oh, for piss.” Pincushion swung around, his metal knee squeaking. It needed lubricant. “Jeff, stop trying to tattoo yourself with your own hyperability. You know you’re impervious to it. The ceiling of this starship isn’t, though, so shut it off before giving me the finger.”

The voice of the Fireball’s haunt control enveloped the cockpit and passenger deck. It used an officialdom reserved only for missile launches, which, if Power Plant piloted this metal behemoth, would be exactly the case. “Launch scheduled for T minus ten seconds. Nine...eight...one hundred forty-six—”

Pincushion pounded a fist on the control panel. It quacked back. “Jeff, did you reprogram the starships again? And, Incendiary, stop tattooing him.”

“Yeah, I reprogram it,” Power Plant said. “It kept thinkin’s eight come after seven.”

“—sixteen, eighty-four, seven hundred six—”

“How long until we launch?”

“Part o’ the funs is the surprise.”

“—pi times area squared—”

* * *

He choked awake. Literally. A string of saliva dribbled down his chin, which he wiped on his shoulder. His tender bullet wound still ached.

Lefty, Schizophrenic’s left head, searched the detainment deck in which he was trapped. His eyes focused with fuzziness he felt in his retinas. He struggled against the straitjacket that tethered him to the wall of his cell. Through his cell’s shield screen, he checked three other cells. Master Asinine Sucks hyuk-hyuked in his sleep in the closest. Next to him was Appetite, the overachieving kitchen raider who currently chewed on a wall and gave no indication it knew what a hull breach was. No straitjacket’s sedative feeder could penetrate his indestructible hide, so the Good Guys left him tied but awake. And next to him was the pasty-white Multipurpose, the obese Bulbosoid who hadn’t woken up since his last eleven-course feast. Schizophrenic suspected Multipurpose didn’t pause between meals long enough to indicate any break. Life was a twenty-four-hour buffet to that lard of lard.

The sedative cocktail Schizophrenic’s straitjacket fed him hadn’t knocked him out. He only felt woozy. He’d built up a tolerance to tranquilizers in his street days. Too many gang rituals. So he’d faked sleep on his way into this detainment deck. But why not escape earlier? Free ride. And, as an added bonus, the straitjacket protected his cracked rib, shot shoulder, and bruised chest.

His itinerary today: escape, kill a bunch of Good Guys, grab a light lunch from Burger Wench, kill the rest, hijack this starship, plow it into the nearest mountainside with Multipurpose aboard, and then fajitas for dinner. He searched the room. No one had sawed off his right head, so that put a damper on things. Other than the cells, the detainment deck remained empty. Nothing he could use to escape. But he’d preplanned this trek. He snorted. He routinely hid adrenaline capsules between two teeth for such an occasion. They lasted days before his saliva dissolved them, so this one should be softened enough. He tongued at the teeth between which it hid.

“Hey, this straitjacket gives me a fashion idea for our lacrosse team,” Righty said.

“Crock, I was hoping to enjoy a few months without you waking up. And, for the last time, we don’t have a lacrosse team.” He clicked his tongue and snorted. “Wish I’d never smashed a netted stick over your head.”

Chapter Eight: Apply Within because We Don’t Take Resumes Nailed to the Door

Tuskell screeched his civ-tran to a stop on Station One’s parking lot asphalt and stepped out. He used the special access spots because of Hearthberg. His friend wasn’t technically disabled, but if his hyperability to get sloshed whenever he breathed didn’t make him functionally incapacitated, somebody needed to change a medical definition or two.

Tuskell grabbed Hearthberg’s arm, slung it over his shoulder, and helped the inebriate limp through Station One’s chiming lobby doors. He noticed the huge commemorative portrait of two creatures whose color scheme would blind anybody or, in Hearthberg’s case, sober him up. Or blind him. Could go either way.

The lobby was so polished Tuskell saw his reflection in the floor. He found Hearthberg a posh microfiber settee and dropped him in. Pant, pant, catch his breath, catch a whiff of Hearthberg’s breath, pant, look around. Intergalactic Planetary flag, potted plants, empty reception desk, blah blah blah. Typical lobby. Oh, and off to the right of the reception desk: a coffee shop.

“Okay, buck, where are we gonna snoop?” Tuskell wasn’t asking so much as thinking out loud, because anything Hearthberg suggested would come hot on the tail of several blithering false starts. “Howzabout the closest place you can crawl to?”

He stretched, felt his bones creak. He rolled his shoulder...and heard footsteps tap the terrazzo floor like high heels. He whirled around. The footsteps were from sneakers attached to bony legs attached to a body draped in an impact suit with sleeves hanging limply off arms and a collar that drooped loosely.

A nerd with half-inch-thick glasses—who wore glasses in this century?—swept a hand through buzz-cut black hair. “Uh. Okay. Hi. Can I help you find something?”

Tuskell pasted on his best play smile. “Yeah. Sure. We’re here to...” C’mon, c’mon, what was the plan? Pizza delivery, cable guys, looters? “We’re here to loot.” Hold on a second.

Sixth Sense. That was the nerd’s media name. The Good Guy who read minds and wore clothes two sizes too large. Tuskell would have to keep his story straight even in his head. His body stiffened. Yeah.

So, anyway, Sixth Sense said, “Loot?”

Tuskell’s fake laugh came out in a spray. “I meant loot for jobs. We’re applying.”

“Uh. Sure. But we’re full on new recruits.” Sixth Sense scrutinized Tuskell over the tops of his glasses. He pushed those glasses up his nose. Tuskell wanted to punch this nerd out, but that was a dead giveaway that he wasn’t here for a job.

Tuskell’s smile grew. He teased his eyebrows. “But we have way awesome hyperabilities. My friend here...” Crap, why didn’t he think this crock through? What could Hearthberg do other than belch out a show tune and puke all over an expensive rug? “My friend, his name’s Julio. And he...uhm...he’s—”

“I’m wasted.” Hearthberg threw a hand at Sixth Sense’s direction and rolled off the settee. He smacked onto the floor. Very convincing.

“He’s got a problem.” Tuskell playacted a snicker. “His body processes oxygen in a funky way. Makes him tell everyone he’s wasted, fall off furniture, and leave me with all the thinking. His hyperability is he shrugs off responsibility every time you say the words, ‘Can you mop up your own sick?’”

“I...uh...okay. Following you so far. His media outfit has a barf bag.”

“And my name is...uh”—he checked the room for ideas—“Stress Ball, media name Detritus. And my hyperability is I get to pick up the pissing slack and grab a nanocleanser mop.” He cracked his neck. “Also, I blow myself up.”

“Blow yourself up?” Behind his owlish glasses, Sixth Sense’s eyes shot wide. “We used to employ a guy who specialized in that kind of thing. I’m not sure how you blowing yourself up will do us any good, though.” He shrugged. “Unless you work in the dance hall.”

“We’ll just go talk to your leader.” Tuskell skirted aside to let Hearthberg crawl across the cool floor and grab the flagpole. He licked it. He probably saw four flagpoles at this point. “Don’t worry. He’ll sort himself out.” Tuskell stepped toward Sixth Sense and clicked his teeth together. “So whaddaya say?”

Sixth Sense stepped back. He raised a hand with one finger extended out his hanging sleeves. “Uhm. Okay. You just stay here, and I’ll get Legion. Please.”

“Nah, I don’t want to trouble you. If you just”—he took Sixth Sense’s hand and purposefully moved it aside—“direct us to him, we’ll be fine.” Behind him, Hearthberg sang misremembered lyrics to “Monster Mash.”

* * *

Sixth Sense took only a minute to direct these two to Legion’s office. He restarted several times since Hearthberg, who suffered from more verbal slurring than Power Plant masticating through a Charleston Chew, insisted on singing the directions to the tune of several Halloween hits. Then something from Easter, which was how Sixth Sense learned Easter carols existed.

And finally Tuskell, with rich memories of high school detention mixed with too much road racing, dragged his friend to the lobby’s bank of airfoils and headed up to Legion’s third-floor office.

“Okay. Uhm. Gabber. Acknowledge. Contact entity Legion.” Sixth Sense’s gabber, that pea-sized communication device nuzzled in his ear, whipped out a mouthpiece and earpiece. He sat on the soft settee that Hearthberg had spilled off. The settee still smelled new. He ran a finger along the seam of the microfiber until the finger touched a droplet of drool. Ugh.

“Seeking connection. Connection attained. Why not try new camel hump countertops? Makes washing dishes feel as though you’re swimming in coarse rivers of camel fat.”

“Uhm. Yeah. Sure. Send it to my—”

“Hagen?” Legion’s voice crackled through the gabber. “If you caught the same ad I did, don’t believe it. I did last year. They keep shipping me the wrong thing, and I’m still not off their call list. You never ever get the stink of llama out of your walls. It’s too late for me. Save yourself.”

Sixth Sense looked up through the mezzanine opening in the ceiling at the exterior wall of Legion’s office. “Okay. Uh. Sure. Anyway, you have two visitors who insisted on meeting you. Tuskell and Hearthberg. One of them blows himself up, and the other one does an amazing job of crawling. Tuskell’s the sober one. They want to apply for jobs.” He settled back in the settee’s warm microfiber.

“Jobs?”

“Don’t trust them. They’re Bad Guys. Well, as much Bad Guy as a generic can be.” Sixth Sense brushed a finger up and down the settee’s fuzzy arm. “They know who I am, so they were careful not to let me glean too much more information. Aside from that, they’re pretty incompetent. Just don’t get close to the one guy’s mouth. Do you want descriptions? I remember them...down to every detail.” True. He pictured them exactly thanks to his eidetic memory. “Anyway, I’ll call some securitybots if you want.”

Legion paused. “Not yet. I rarely get an opportunity to play with generics.”

“So birthday wishes do come true.” Sixth Sense coughed. “Okay, gabber me back if you need a hand.”

“Thanks for the heads-up. Gabber, acknowledge. Cut connection.” Legion’s voice clicked off. Sixth Sense checked the airfoil into which Tuskell had dragged Hearthberg. Dragged was the word to use when someone grabbed your collar and threw you across the lobby.

Chapter Nine: The New Guy’s Sort of a Douche

Since Pincushion had finally gotten B-Kestrel to take off, Power Plant felt that encroaching midmission ennui fingering his itchy limbs. If only he’d brought rotten tomatoes to fling at Franchise. He had to do something since Pincushion had gotten the starship to count properly. He crossed into the passenger deck and sat next to that new guy, Tolliver. Tolliver had the same shtick as Power Plant’s older brother, Mark: he created fire. The only difference was Tolliver wasn’t impervious to his own hyperability thanks to an immunodeficiency, so he couldn’t touch the fire or fly on currents of heated air. And Mark emitted a warm glow while this Tolliver gave off an angry draft. Power Plant should have brought some rocky road to melt under this guy’s armpit. He liked melted rocky road. Didn’t like this guy, though, and it wasn’t the leather jacket the guy had thrown over another chair. The jacket smelled like old salami.

Power Plant sniffled. Better get used to this guy. He watched the punk, who’d sat silently reading a datasheet that covered his face in a black-and-red sheen. If its data explained anything Power Plant was interested in, it probably involved somehow stuffing poultry into a blender. Everybody liked chicken soup once in a while.

He glanced at the cockpit where Pincushion, Franchise, and Plastique monitored the starship as it creaked and soared through its path. Plastique. Now she had a hyperability Power Plant could get behind. Punch stuff and make it blow up? Gotta be careful around those fist bumps, and suddenly Power Plant had a new prank idea for Franchise.

Back to Tolliver. “So you’s the new guy...Tolliver.” His eyes hopped between Tolliver and the datasheet. Some article on ammunition and its effects on shooting stuff. Add some holiday cheer, and it was right up Power Plant’s alley.

Tolliver didn’t respond. He tapped the datasheet’s NEXT PAGE icon, and the article blasted aside to make room for a full-spread ad touting enhanced honeydew melons, the kind that eat you instead. Plot twist.

Power Plant leaned in closer and glanced at the honeydew ad again. Whoever did the honeydew’s dental work was decent. Nice job on the molars. Then again, how would Power Plant know?

“So...you likes food fights?”

“I’m not here to make friends.” Tolliver tapped the NEXT PAGE icon again. The honeydew became more words and fewer pictures. Power Plant’s attention zapped out like a dying light bulb. But Tolliver kept reading.

“Huh?” Power Plant asked.

“I’m here to make money, not friends. So you and your mixed bag of grammar can shove off, butt cork.”

Power Plant didn’t get the hint. The feds said he never did before, so why start now? “Jus’ makes money?”

Tolliver dropped his datasheet onto his lap and stared straight ahead at nothing “What about ‘not here to make friends’ don’t you understand?”

“‘Make.’ And ‘not.’ And the punctuations.”

“The Good Guys crocked up and got half their team and more than eighty percent of IP wiped out. So, to get a good buzz going again, IP put me on the team. See, my dad was one of the soldiers who died during Mechanism’s siege. I’m here as a sympathy ploy, to make the team look favorable again. The more we look favorable, the more sponsors we get, the more money people spend on IP. And I collect a kickback.” Tolliver knocked on Power Plant’s forehead. Ouch. “Can the walnut in your skull process that, butt cork?”

Power Plant rubbed his forehead. He was going to suffer a headache worse than when he tried to taste a comet. “So you’s gotta jus’ makes money? You’s pick a medias name yet? You’s the only one without one still, and IP says, accordin’ to focusy groups, Good Guys wit’ medias names brings a most money. Also Good Guys wit’ Power Plant medias names makes a most collaterals damage.”

“Yeah. I picked a media name. You might not understand it because it has more than four letters.” Tolliver’s attention returned to his datasheet.

Power Plant waited, but Tolliver wasn’t giving up the name. So he leaned in closer. “Yeah?”

“Holy crock, you never stop, do you, butt cork? Yeah. I have one.” He tapped the NEXT PAGE icon again. “Burnout.”

Power Plant’s breath froze in his throat. He silenced himself, barely heard the electronic chitter of the computers in the cockpit or the whisper of the starship. The air tasted as though someone had oversalted it. He tightened his face too much he thought he’d develop a nosebleed. “But tha’s my brother’s medias name.”

“And now he’s worm food. So his media name’s up for hire. There’s already a market behind it, so why waste it?”

Power Plant felt his pulse in his jaw. The air thickened. “Ya can’t do that. He the only one deserve that medias name—”

Tolliver slapped Power Plant across the cheek. Power Plant didn’t even see the slap coming, but he felt the crackling aftereffect. When his attention returned to life, Tolliver’s finger bore down on him. “Look, butt cork. I give exactly no crocks about your brother, and I give fewer crocks about his legacy. It’s not like we retired his jersey. I’m taking the media name, and that’s that. You want to make an issue out of it?”

Behind Tolliver, metal clanked. Power Plant followed a pair of girder legs up to Incendiary’s cross-armed battle body. “Is this guy bothering you, President Abends?”

Power Plant’s teeth shifted. He tried to discern an Incendiary made fuzzy with tears and vision that had never quite corrected after he’d deployed that gas grenade too close to his face. He opened his mouth to say something—didn’t know what, but it’d be monumental...

Mark.

...but he just stormed off. Clutched the Burnout action figure from his pocket in his sweaty hand. Clomped in a beeline toward the detainment deck. It was the only isolated area of this starship aside from his favorite play area, what others called the engine room for some reason. Must have been the engine in there.

“Yeah, you’d better walk away, butt cork.” Tolliver laughed behind him.

Pissing jerk! Power Plant stomped down the hall of the detainment deck, past chambers holding a sedated Master Asinine Sucks and that ninja Multipurpose who should eat fewer pizzas and fewer pizza parlors, past that gargoyle who wouldn’t eat fewer anything no matter how many times you scolded it. Wait. Someone was missing.

A snort chugged behind his ear. He felt the cold points of brass knuckles forcing themselves against his temple. He heard the breathy chuckle that could only have come from Lefty and the tittering laugh that could only have come from Righty or the greeter outside the party supply store at the Spend-a-Lot Mall. Come to think of it, Righty and that greeter were never in the same place at the same time.

“Now let’s wake up these idiots I work with, brain sauce,” Lefty said. The knuckles pressed sharply against him. “Unless you want to make a move.”

“My move is I’s buyings Park Place.”

“I don’t know why I waste my lines on you.”

* * *

The obvious hum of a Fireball whisked against the gulley’s walls. Master Asinine almost tumbled off the boulder on which he perched. Down at the foot of the cliff where he and the others waited for the Good Guys to pass through and where Lieutenant IQ 23 rocked up a mediocre rhyme, Asinine perked his ear. He smelled that distinct scent of ozone that accompanied starships. He double-checked the crackling EMP barrier that would stop the starship in its tracks. He scratched his toe. That mosquito bite felt as if someone were stabbing him with a pine needle.

He scowled at the oncoming rush of noise, that buzzing warble that grew more abrasive every second. Ducking behind the boulder, he scratched that prickling toe again and readied his pistol. The bells he’d tied to his ears jangled. The Good Guys wouldn’t see the barrier until it was too late, and by that time it would be too late. He should also cut off his toe because that persistent itch would distract him all freaking day.

Beside him crouched Bad Aim, who stroked the barrel of his gun. Like Braindead, he was of the mute Virillian species, but he had the hyperability to talk. Yes, genetics gave him the ability to do what everyone else already could.

Asinine leaned toward him. “You ready?”

Bad Aim tapped a fist on his chest. “For sure, yo.”

“Good. Then maybe you’ll hit something instead of wasting all your ammunition.”

Bad Aim whacked his pistol against his boulder. “Quit all y’all frontin’.”

“The sky isn’t a target.”

* * *

Pincushion focused on the winding gulley through which the Fireball threaded. “Veer thirty degrees left,” he said to Franchise and shifted his position on the seat.

“Veering left thirty degrees.” Franchise tilted the steering column left to twist with the gulley. He overcompensated and scratched the Fireball against the cliff wall. Good thing the servicebots at Station One had installed foam padding on the starship’s sides when they heard who was piloting.

“You should watch the aft wings whenever you bank, soldier.” Plastique stood and leaned toward the navigation console. “Piloting manual, section twelve, subsection A, paragraph—”

“He’s doing fine.” Pincushion flexed his leg to work out a kink in his metal knee. “He learned enough about aft wings when he connected with that community shelter.”

“Hey, gullies aren’t orange.” Franchise kept one hand on the steering column and pointed ahead with the other to indicate—

“Holy crock, slam on the brakes!” Pincushion smelled electricity and steadied himself against the piloting computer.

Franchise hurriedly punched a few buttons. Sticking on the brakes wasn’t just one action. It required first lighting the BRACE FOR IMPACT sign, which had become the BRACE FOR ME sign after Power Plant had found that laser pen.

The starship sliced through the orange EMP barrier—lost power—flickering, lights buzzed to failure—air vents clicked to sleep—starship tilted down—chewed into the carpet of flattened dirt—Franchise conked his head against the piloting console—Pincushion did the same, spearing it with a spike—everything died in the cabin—the starship shouldered against a cliff wall—skinned a layer of rock off the wall as though it were sanding it—springs creaked, collapsed under folding pressure—Incendiary slammed against a chair—two landing trestles peeled away—starship skidded into the dirt and crawled to a stop.

Then silence. Dead silence except for Franchise sneezing against the console nobody should ever again touch. He rubbed a nosebleed and flicked away the blood. “There’s nothing I hate more than a crash” He snapped his fingers. “No, that’s not true. I keep forgetting Jeffy’s campouts.”

“What hit us?” Plastique stood and backed away from the windshield, through which the only remaining light in the starship cascaded.

Pincushion assessed the others. Incendiary looked okay though having trouble standing in that clank trap he wore. He moved, so his suit must have had localized EMP shielding. Organism wiped sweat from his eye, his harried expression darting around.

Tolliver sprang from his seat and fired Franchise a red glare. “What the piss did you do?”

“We drove through an EMP barrier. Our starship shut down.” Pincushion gulped. He felt the mild air pressure vaporize. “Someone wanted us stopped.”

“Oh crock, oh crap, oh piss.” Franchise shrank into the corner where the starship’s computer bank met the wall.

“Power Plant, ready the firearms. Power Plant?” Pincushion stepped forward. “Don’t tell me you’re hiding another firecracker in the toilet. How many times do I have to tell you, we might need that plumbing on this trip?”

“President Abends replaced most of our firearms with baguettes,” Incendiary said. “He explained that, whatever stopping power weapons offer, the French can offer better.”

“As long as those baguettes have a firing pin.”

“I’m on it.” Plastique was already at the back, clattering through the armory locker. She emerged with a few pistols and what looked like something you load croutons into. Pincushion would grab that over a firearm any day.

“—oh man, oh frig, oh...” Franchise trailed off. “Huh. I ran out of ‘oh whatevers.’” He blinked at everyone. “Any suggestions?”

“Oh, shoot anything that moves.” Plastique had returned to the computer bank. She punted Franchise’s leg and handed him a pistol. “Balls up, soldier.”

Franchise snatched the pistol from her, fumbled it, poked himself in the eye with his own thumb, and caught the pistol’s mottled grip on the third attempt. He nodded—or perhaps he had the jitters—and stood. “Balls up. Got it. They’re in my throat right now, but I’ll shift them around.”

“I knew we’d need that bathroom.” Pincushion grabbed the pistol Plastique offered. “Our mission is on hold now. We have an assault on our hands. Right now our primary objective is to hold our ground. Incendiary, scan the area, assess our threat.” The lack of air pressure due to the EMP screwed his nerves in knots.

“On it.” Incendiary had a finger to his temple. He refused the pistol Plastique held out to him. His suit was already armed. “Two life forms on the east wall, two on the west wall, two behind us holding bags from Burger Wench, and a cherry bomb in the toilet.”

“I knew it.” Pincushion kicked the computer bank. “Power Plant, I’m cutting you off.”

“Be more specific,” Incendiary said. “From explosives? Coffee? Explosive coffee?”

“Everything. Where is that troublemaking demon?” Pincushion looked around.

“Right here, kick lickers.” A clatter like brass chafing against brass filled the back hall. At the detainment deck, Schizophrenic held Power Plant, an arm around his neck, the other hand crinkling his temple, brass-knuckle implants poking against his skin. Behind him stood Master Asinine Sucks and Appetite. Multipurpose plugged up the rear, which meant he’d oozed down the short hallway from the detainment deck, searching for edible objects. That was Appetite’s job, though. And Appetite seemed ready to fulfill it in terms of that hanging lamp he slurped down right to the chain.

“You serious, you tiny pus weasel?” Tolliver formed a fist. “You can't stop screwing up long enough to avoid being a prisoner in your own mil-tran?”

Pincushion’s arm darted up and flicked his aim at Schizophrenic. “How did you escape?”

“Jakey forgots to hooks my leash up.” Power Plant smiled.

“Him, Power Plant. I’m talking to him.” Pincushion motioned with his pistol.

“Because your bottom-feeding budget doesn’t allow for anything except bargain-store straitjackets.” Lefty snorted. “I’d love to talk shop about military economy, but I’ll be busy twisting your friend’s head off if you don’t toss me your guns.”

Righty squealed. “Twist it off like the top of a bottle?” He clapped, or at least the right hand slapped the air. The left one resisted.

“That actually made sense, brain buster, even if it was by random chance.” Lefty knocked his temple into Righty’s. “Anyway, let’s not get sidetracked. Guns. My Wild West associate is going to hoedown around and collect them. So if you’ll hand yours over, we can go home happy. You can go home dead.”

“I don’t feel so crocking good.” Multipurpose leaned against the wall. The wall took issue by buckling inward.

“Suffer a stroke, creature feature. Over there, though.”

Chapter Ten: Never Discuss Salary

“Control, acknowledge. Unlock closest door,” Legion said after he heard the knock. Janice had reported that two Bad Guy generics had arrived. Janice had offered to pelt the generics with medicine balls, but after Legion had called for a medbot to make sure Luzimoss could be moved, he didn’t feel like repeating the process. Besides, he needed a little fun.

The l-door faded, which shocked Legion’s spine with a sensation like someone tracing an icicle along it. Hazardous l-tech. The l-door was across the office, though. Legion had positioned his desk accordingly after tidying up. Whatever calamity Reef had wrought while Legion lay comatose seemed extra bizarre. Legion was still mulling over how an intact bull skeleton had found its way in here.

“You must be Legion.” A Terran entered with another Terran’s arm slung around his shoulder. The Terran waddled toward Legion’s couch and dropped his friend into it like a bellboy shedding heavy luggage. He huffed and collapsed onto the cushion next to his friend, who seemed unable to focus on anything except a single light panel. The friend grabbed it. Then he spilled onto the carpet.

“So I hear you two are our newest recruits.” Legion stood and hustled toward the couch. A waft of alcohol greeted him like traffic smog.

The awake one stood and shook Legion’s hand. “We heard you had a manpower shortage after Mechanism came through.”

“The staffing department at IP didn’t tell us they sent anybody else over.” Legion sat on a nearby chair, separated from the couch by a coffee table. “They’re usually on the ball about letting us know who’s coming. They’re one of the only departments left operational after Mechanism’s slaughter.”

The drunk managed to slither back onto the couch. He started laughing at nothing in particular. Apparently he’d been enjoying imagined conversations because he asked an invisible friend, “Whaddaya think?” He burped like a wheat thresher revving up. Record books needed to hear about that one.

The sober one’s eyes searched the office. “The staffing dept.”—had he actually pronounced the abbreviation?—“didn’t mention us ’cause we ain’t come from there. Another military agency figured you needed help, so they sent us.”

Legion leaned back on his chair and steepled his fingers. “That’s unusual. They’d go through IP to do something like that. Who was it? The Royal Subdivision? The Terran United Front? The Goon Squad?”

Janice clicked on. “The Bad Guys delivered these two recruits, just like Cork and Screw delivers wine on demand from any of its one hundred locations across the galaxy.”

“Control, acknowledge. I don’t need wine right now.”

“Then cork and screw off.”

“Where’d the haunt control say we’re from?” the sober one asked. The drunk one sang the question but hit a few off-key notes. Somewhere a glass shattered. That somewhere was across the office.

“Uh...it said you’re from the bad military. Don’t worry about it.” Legion waved his hands dismissively. “Tell me about yourselves. Your names, your hyperabilities”—his voice dropped to a mutter—“your favorite Lowensland rodeo event.”

“I’m Stress Ball and this is my friend—”

“I’m wasted.” The drunk one poked himself in eye.

“—Julio. Sorry about his condition. His body doesn’t process oxygen properly. Makes him throw up a lot and crawl along the floor whenever he tries to walk a straight line. You can imagine the traffic tickets stuffed in his glove compartment.”

“I’m sooooo wasted.” The drunk one’s rotten breath backed that statement.

“I’m taking notes.” Legion watched Julio—well, Hearthberg—try to focus his eyes. This was the most entertainment Legion had enjoyed since reading the soup section on a hospital cafeteria menu.

“As for hyperabilities, imagine this.” Tuskell—not Stress Ball—leaned forward and swept a hand across the air. Their surroundings seemed to close in on them as if to listen. Tuskell’s voice hushed to a stage whisper. “You’re in the middle of a jam—”

“Around here we call jams ‘Power Plant found out about our station’s self-destruct sequence. ’”

“—and out of ammunition. Tension’s risin’. Enemy’s closin’ in. You’re runnin’ out of time. What do you do?”

“We tell Power Plant hands off our station’s self-destruct sequence.”

Tuskell’s smile quirked. “You use me.” He leaned back and crossed his legs.

“We use you?”

Hearthberg attempted an Irish chantey.

“You use me. My hyperability”—Tuskell stopped. Was he pausing for effect or taking a breath?—“is I blow myself up. Eh? Imagine that. I rush the enemy. They think I’m bonkers. They think I got a death wish. And suddenly—ka-boom.” His fingers spread apart in a mock explosion that sounded like a fan hissing. “The enemy won’t know what hit tem. They’re history. Call your favorite maid service, because someone’s gotta clean up all them body parts.”

“Yours or theirs?”

“Theirs. I hope.”

“You hope? How many times have you used your hyperability?”

Tuskell slapped his arms over the back of the couch. “Never.”

Legion raised his eyebrows. A giddy tingle crept up his arms. This was too good. “Never? You’ve never used your hyperability? How are you sure you even have one?”

“I feel it. It rages inside me. The power of megatons of explosive guts is chuggin’ around my cardiovascular whatnot. That’s my hyperability: I explode on command.” Tuskell’s grin twisted even more. “My buddy here gets drunk, command or not.”

Legion whistled. “You’d be great in our dance hall. Well, you know we operate with media names around here. One, to protect your real names in public, though Mechanism revealed all ours recently. Two, because IP thinks a personal ‘brand’ is more marketable. So what are your media names?”

Tuskell grinned. He had every response ready. “I explode and leave my own personal detritus around, so my media name is Detritus. My buddy here—”

“I’m sooooo totally wasted.”

“Your friend is So Totally Wasted?” Legion asked.

“Wasted for short.” His arms still hanging on the couch, Tuskell flicked up his hands so emphatically the couch’s material squeaked. “What do you think?”

Never one to let the amusement train derail, Legion opted to go with it. He bounced out of his chair and threw his hand forward at Tuskell...Detritus...Stress Ball...whatever name this guy chose. “You’re hired. When can you start?” These two would buy any bridge Legion sold them.

Tuskell stood. “As soon as ya need us.”

“Great. We’ll kick things off with a guided tour of our station. I’ll have Ace Spandex show you around.”

“No need. We’ll show ourselves around.”

“Nonsense. He’s got a background as a tour guide. Not really, but he needs to get away from viewscreens more often. Gabber, acknowledge. Contact entity Ace Spandex.” Legion’s gabber clicked on when its mouthpiece and earpiece zipped out. “Hey, Ace, you’re showing around that new guy, Catastrophe, right? Well, I’m sending two more new recruits your way.”

“Wait. What?” Ace stammered. “Since when? There’s nothing in Janice about two new recruits. Are you pranking me because of what I said about your cooking?”

“They go by the media names Detritus and So Totally Wasted.”

“Wasted for short.” Tuskell waved a hand at Legion. “It’s not necessary to trouble this dude.”

Legion covered his gabber’s mouthpiece. “It’s no problem. He loves trouble.” Into the mouthpiece, he said, “Can you meet them in the lobby?”

Ace stammered over a word. “Legion, I barely know what you’re talking about.”

“The lobby. I’ll explain in a minute.”

“Are you still on pain medication? You’re still on pain medication.”

“Gabber, acknowledge. Cut connection.” Legion lifted Hearthberg’s arm and wrapped it around Tuskell’s shoulders. “He’ll meet you downstairs. Go, go, go.” He ushered them with hand sweeps.

Tuskell grabbed Hearthberg’s arm—“This ain’t necessary”—and heaved the drunk off the squeaky couch. He hovelled toward the l-door.

Legion stayed away from that latent death rectangle. “Sure it’s necessary. It’s our policy to let total strangers wander around our station unescorted, but in your case, I’ll make an exception.”

He considered rushing to the door and booting Tuskell out, but the Bad Guy generics lumbered through it without his help. Plus...l-tech.

“Happy trails.” Legion waved with a lively smile. The l-door reappeared with another prancing jingle. He tapped his gabber, which pricked his inner ear. This brand never fit Trioxidillians properly. “Gabber, acknowledge. Contact entity Ace Spandex.”

Again, the connection immediately went through. “Legion, what were you talking about?”

“Those two new recruits? They’re actually Bad Guys sneaking around the station. The direct approach on acquiring information about the Bad Guys never works, so let’s turn their own ploy against them. I’d give them over to Sixth Sense, but he says they’re too careful around him, and I don’t want him absorbing their personalities and becoming a drunk by proximity. So play along, show them around. They think they’re going on a guided tour. Just keep them away from anything they shouldn’t see. Show them the lobby, the food court, the praying-mantis moat Jeff dug around the armory building.”

“He went through with that moat idea? I explained to him that praying mantises don’t scare anyone. Also that they drown.”

“Some lessons he has to learn himself. Gabber, acknowledge. Cut connection.” And now Legion needed to figure out how to fire a guy who induced yawning.

Chapter Eleven: Power Struggle

That jerk Tolliver made Power Plant’s blood boil. He tried to calm his raging breath, but it escaped like an out-of-control train. His lungs were ballooning out of his burning chest. He had to apply pressure, or he figured they’d rip through his ribcage. And that would be a fantastical awesome ability, so he stopped applying pressure. Hurry up, lungs.

The Bad Guys had collected the Good Guys’ weapons, even that crouton gun. Master Asinine Sucks had blind-fired two pistols into the air, hooting. Schizophrenic had grabbed one for himself and fed another to Appetite. He’d tried force-feeding one to Multipurpose, but that hot-air balloon screamed he wouldn’t eat it without wasabi sauce and then farted, which meant no one would wander close to him for another thirty minutes. Now Power Plant knew what a quarantine zone was.

The Good Guys sat against the cold computer bank while Schizophrenic attempted contact with whomever was outside. Considering the situation, a safe bet was the attacker was Master Asinine. Then again, Power Plant had macked off enough groups this week, including a few stop-at-nothing day-care centers. Maybe the Good Guys would get stuck in the corner for a timeout.

“Piss it, no one’s answering. And if that isn’t Asinine and we walk outside, they’ll pick us off.” Schizophrenic snorted and threw aside the gabber he had stolen from Pincushion. He swept a hand at Incendiary. “Nice choice of outfits if you like pumping gallons of wine through it just to walk.”

Pincushion stepped forward. “This isn’t going to work out well for you. You know that. Give up, get back to your cells, and we won’t tell anyone about this.”

“Yeah, that’ll happen.” Schizophrenic snorted. “Stay out of this.”

“So what’s the plan, pardner?” Seated, Master Asinine Sucks propped one ankle against the other and fired into the air with a yeehaw. He examined a passenger chair distastefully. “You Good Guys ever saddle your seats?”

Schizophrenic swatted the back of Master Asinine Sucks’s head. “Stop embarrassing yourself. Or just stop embarrassing me. If that’s Tardus Maxiumus outside, the plan is to invite him into this ship of fools. Then we pin the tail on this donkey and go home. I have massage therapy on the thirteenth, and my injured shoulder’s so tense I can compress atoms by flexing.”

Pincushion paled. He leaned over to Power Plant and cupped his hand to his mouth to muffle his words. “If that’s Asinine, we’re done for, brother.”

“Tha’s a good things, right?” Power Plant asked.

“Only if you like riding to Station Zilcho hogtied to the roof rack.” Pincushion screwed his eyes shut. “I forgot who I’m talking to. Look, come up with a distraction that doesn’t require detonating livestock.”

“Hey. You two chuckholes.” Schizophrenic leered at Power Plant and Pincushion. He punted a chair. “No hobnobbing escape plans.”

“Just trading family recipes.” Pincushion’s smile waned with those words, but it returned. “I need ideas for a decent...sunflower seed cake...broth...something or other.”

“Right. And Multipurpose is mostly water weight.”

“Hey, you crocking wanna come over here and crocking repeat that?” Multipurpose stomped forward, but a calf tripped him when his legs swished together. Power Plant smelled burned flesh. “Ooh, ooh. Ninja skin’s so hard to move.”

“Go float in a parade, supersize." Schizophrenic scanned the line of Good Guys, and his eyes stopped at one. Tolliver didn’t break eye contact. “You. Stand up.”

“You, shut up.” Tolliver—because Power Plant refused, absolutely refused to call him Burnout—rested his wrists on his knees and lolled his head against the computer bank behind him.

Schizophrenic stuttered back a step. “Shut up? Nuh-uh. I give the orders here. You don’t feel like following them, I shoot your friends.”

“I care?” Tolliver stood but not because of orders. He swept aside a lock of hair and spat. “Look at me when I’m talking, not at the gargoyle deciding if your belt is a length of sausage links. Yeah, you with the two heads and the gall to show them in public.”

“Thank you,” Righty said. “I like gall. And now I have some.”

“Sit down!” Pincushion said, but Tolliver ignored him. “Sit down before you escalate this situation. That’s an order!”

Tolliver swaggered toward Schizophrenic, his chest flaunted with pomp as though he had something to prove.

“Soldier, listen to your field leader and sit down before you do something stupid,” Plastique said. “You'll likely get us all killed.”

Tolliver kept swaggering. “You come in here. You bark your pretty little orders at me. You pretend you’re the big man. It’s a show. I get it.” He reached Schizophrenic, and the two stood there staring, noses inches apart. “I don’t give a single lick about these rejects behind me. Shoot them. Shoot them all. Start with the butt cork who just lost his brother and won’t stop sniveling about it. Then I’ll destroy you. Not yet. I’ll wait just long enough for the media to show up. Yeah, they’re coming.” He reached out and flicked Lefty in the nose. “And when they come, I’ll kick your crock in front of galactic broadcast. Your mother will watch and cheer me on.” He flared his eyes wider. “You read me?”

Schizophrenic slapped him. “Sit down. You’re useless to me.” He snorted.

Tolliver didn’t react to the slap except to smile. “I’ll wait over there enjoying the anticipation. You’ll forever remember the media name Burnout more than when that pansy before me used it.”

That was it. Power Plant shot to his feet faster than if he flew. “Stops usin’ that medias name!”

Tolliver passed Power Plant and plunged a fist against his gut. Power Plant crumpled to the floor and dry-heaved spit over the metal sheets. Tolliver took his place between him and Organism. “Your brother’s dead. Stop whining about it.”

Plastique leaned over to Pincushion and spoke out of the side of her mouth. “I’m confused. How many Burnouts did the Good Guys have?”

Pincushion shrugged. “Apparently a few.”

* * *

“Okay, men. And whatever you are, Amaranthia. We have them cornered.” Asinine’s smile stretched so widely he had to suppress it to keep his cheeks from warping. “You’re a woman, right?”

He plucked his gun from its hip holster and trekked across the dirt and rocks toward the starship, which sat as lifelessly as the warm desert trail. That comparison would make more sense without the cactus waving at them from off in the distance. Hello, spiky vegetable.

Bad Aim followed. Amaranthia and Punch emerged from behind the family of boulders across the path, Punch puffing on his pipe. He grabbed his pistol from a holster with some pinkie swipe Asinine couldn’t follow even with a flowchart.

Asinine scratched his itchy toe again. “Anyone have any Bite Begone? Or a machete?”

“So what’s your plan, Asinine?” Punch asked. His gigantic hair fingers curled around his face. Maybe he had a rash on his cheek or palm or weird cheek/palm. An anatomy diagram was lacking when it came to Punch. His blushes looked like the aftereffect of a game of bloody knuckles.

“My plan? Again? It’s like I have to come up with one every time we leave the house.”

Lieutenant IQ 23, with Braindead only three steps behind, sidled up next to Asinine. “Sir, it’s always a good idea to have one ready. As they say in chess, ‘Predict your opponent’s move three turns ahead.’”

“You mean I had to bring dice to this thing, too?”

* * *

Franchise squished even further into the computer bank’s shadow. His hands were so slippery they found no friction from the floor. He reflexively wrung those hands together, a nervous act that led to knuckle cracking. First one hand, then the other, then back to the first. Didn’t matter that his knuckles had no more crack. He found soothing comfort in the motion anyway.

His breathing came erratically. His bladder ached explosively. He resolved to hold it because using the bathroom meant sneaking past Multipurpose, who slept in the hall. If that blob could sniff out a single pot roast in his sleep as the news described, he’d inhale Franchise before you could say, “Would you like to hear about tonight’s specials?”

Something clanked at the starship’s wing. Then another clank. Franchise hid his head in his arms to shut the world out, especially that clank-and-ping drumming against B-Kestrel’s sides. But a thunderous clank forced his head out of hiding. Oh, crock. The world heated up. Oh, no-crock-crap, this wasn’t happening because by now he figured by now he should have by now died of stress by now.

Power Plant whipped to his feet and craned his neck at a window. “Is them punks throwin’s rocks?” Tolliver had gut-punched him more than a few minutes ago, so he’d forgotten he was angry. He’d probably forgotten what anger was. His brain routinely dumped a lot of stuff.

“Someone’s firing at us. Who’s firing?” Pincushion grabbed one of Mabel’s cats that had strayed onto the starship. Why couldn’t a litter box stray its way on? He heaved the cat at Schizophrenic. The cat clung to the two-headed brute’s back by its claws. “I asked you a question.”

Schizophrenic didn’t react with pain to the hissing cat. He merely shook it off. “How the piss should I know who’s firing? The cavalry? If it’s Asinine’s cavalry, it’s the army men he invites to his tea parties. Then again, Sgt. Greenpants is a pacifist.”

Franchise mewed. He rocked on his butt. Stop the shooting, stop the shooting, please stop the shooting.

Power Plant now peed out a discrete window. Franchise should have thought of that. Power Plant finished, zipped up, and slammed the window shut. “Is the Sarge a gigantics stupid hand with fangy teeths?”

“You serious?” Master Asinine Sucks marched to the access port, boot spurs jingling, and peered through the circle. He spoke over a rubber squeal: Appetite was dining on plastic tubing. “Aw, man, it is Asinine. An’ they brought Punch.”

Another clank erupted through the starship. A hole bit through the hull and pecked out the ceiling. Franchise flattened his hands against his ears. Hostages, hostile fire, hands with fangs. He pressed his teeth together.

“They brought Punch?” Schizophrenic buried both heads in his hands. Righty split his fingers to stick his tongue out. Lefty snorted. “I’d shoot him myself except we need a fourth for bowling night, and Righty doesn’t count.” He kicked a passenger chair, which Appetite took as a cue to eat it. “I have no idea how that guy was born, let alone how somebody hasn’t high-fived him to death yet.”

“My dad used to do thats to me,” Power Plant said.

Master Asinine Sucks nodded at Schizophrenic. “I thought he was givin’ me the finger once. Turned out he was only sayin’ howdy.”

Another shot poked through the wall and speared the computer bank. A spurt of smoke twisted out in tendrils that dispersed into the air. Franchise gripped his hair. Holy piss!

“You know what?” Schizophrenic tapped his pistol against his chin. “I swore I saw him scratching his own backside, but—”

Franchise lunged out—“Shut up, would you two just shut up”—slipped on the sweat his palms had smeared onto the floor—dived at Master Asinine Sucks—wrenched his arm back—“he’s a giant hand, so get over it”—pressed a finger between the cowboy’s two ulna—grabbed the pistol—whipped it against Master Asinine Sucks’s temple—“would you two stop whining for just one heavenly second”—wrapped an arm around Master Asinine Sucks’s windpipe—“or I swear I’m gonna freak out and roll those spurs over your faces! Now, unless you want Appetite to lick up your brains, hand back our guns!”

He felt his lips stretch. He must have looked like a constipated contortionist. His ears tickled when another shot clanked off the windshield.

Organism leapt out at Appetite. His fingers sprouted forward. Stretched out in Silly Putty tendrils. Interweaved into a net. Slapped against the gargoyle. Pinned it against the wall. It tried to take a chunk out, but Organism’s netting forced its chin up and away.

“Ways to go, Franchise.” Power Plant leapt up. “Let’s high-fives ya t’ death.”

Pincushion stood slowly, uneasily at first. He stepped forward as if testing waters with his big toe. Plastique followed to her feet.

Another gunshot ruptured the starship’s wall beside Franchise.

Pincushion ventured to Schizophrenic, twisted the pistol out of his hand, and jerked back. He gestured at the nearest passenger chair with the pistol’s barrel. “Sit and crank that chair’s inertia field to seven. Now.”

Power Plant leapt up and pumped a fist. “Yeah. And alsos stop ya pet gargoyle from keep eatings all the leaky starship parts.”

Franchise’s gabber clicked. “Incoming connection from entity Amaranthia.”

Franchise’s grip around Master Asinine Sucks’s neck loosened, and his knees bent. He hid his goofy grin behind his arm. “Gabber, acknowledge. Accept connection.” His words sounded as though they came out of a dental patient’s frozen mouth when he said, “Heeeeyyyy. Haven’t heard from you since the slaughter.” He giggled.

“Hiiii, Franchie,” Amaranthia said. Was she chewing bubblegum? “You in that starship we’re totally sieging on?”

“Yyyeeeaaaahh.”

“Awesome. What’s the haps?”

Franchise licked his lips. “Oh, not much. Just...you know...turning the tides of war. Nothing big.” A gunshot crackled, but this time the sound came through the gabber. His index finger twirled around the gabber’s mouthpiece stem. “Is that you shooting at us? That’s pretty hot.”

Pincushion shrugged his pistol away from Schizophrenic. “Franchise, have you been drinking what leaks out of the computer?”

Chapter Twelve: Boozer Friendly

Detritus. Yeah, he liked that media name. It was as if he wasn’t no generic anymore. He strutted down the steps into the computer tower’s basement, pushing a wheelbarrow with Hearthberg—sorry, Wasted—cupped inside. He had found the wheelbarrow nestled in an inlet in the main lobby—probably forgotten from the construction company that built the station—and thank crock he had, because he was sick of Wasted throwing an arm over Detritus’s shoulder and trying to string him into a sing-along of “99 Bottles of Beer.” Wouldn’t seem so bad if Wasted could count in his condition. Or carry a tune.

Now Wasted sang, hallucinating angry visions of demon faces and finding pillars attractive. He’d gotten a Valentine’s date with a support column upstairs, and he was doubling with Gorbathius, the evil spirit of hellfire.

They’d narrowly avoided Ace Spandex in the lobby. They’d slipped out of the building and hotfooted to the station’s western grid where the fifteen-story computer tower stood tall. Now they bumbled down the stone stairs into a basement so clammy it felt as if condensation dripped off the walls. They knew where they were headed. They’d checked the You Are Here signs.

“Wasted, you gotta shut down the singing for a minute. I can’t hear myself try to hear myself think.” Detritus searched left, right, left, right, reading plates on doors and trying to navigate through the cloned hallways for some sign of the haunt control’s bedroom. Wasted stopped singing long enough to rupture his stomach lining with a belch. Then he continued, albeit quieter. Nope, he resumed full-on caterwaul mode.

So now Detritus toured these cold basement halls of stippled concrete in search of the El Dorado of computer rooms, the haunt-control lab. He didn’t ask the haunt control where it hid again. His first few attempts had resulted in it giving the computer equivalent of “scram.” Then it signed him up for a different magazine subscription every time. Now he was the recipient of Aristocratic Nomenclature and Other Codifications, Quarterly Quarterly—which came out monthly for some reason—and Da Boom: Rhinoceros Dances of the Lower Artellagic Constellation. The fact that the haunt control knew who to bill was messed up.

Wasted still sang as loudly as his lungs allowed.

Detritus rounded another corner. He would have congratulated Wasted on hitting that high note, but his ears crackled as though someone shoved drill bits into—

Hold that thought. Hold all the other thoughts, too. Dead ahead, a room with a lit sign above the door: HAUNT CONTROL QUARTERS. He gulped down a laugh and punted Wasted’s wheelbarrow. “Hearthberg, enough with the beatboxing. Ya see that, buck?” He leaned over until his and Wasted’s heads were level, and he pointed down the hall that dragged forward a few meters to that glorious door. “Read the sign...Crock, you probably can’t right now anyway. Frankly, I’m floored you dressed yourself today.”

He pushed Wasted’s wheelbarrow forward. “Up ahead is the haunt control lab. We finally found it, buck. We’re about ten yards from proving ourselves to that circus-in-town Asinine. Once we mess with the Good Guys’ own station, we hightail it home, kick back, and tell our glory story to all those nimrods who couldn’t even come close. We’ll start with his squirmy lieutenant. I want his little question-marked helmet to explode.”

“Ha ha, that queshun-mark guy’s awe...some...” Wasted fell asleep.

They reached the door to the quarters, but it wouldn’t fade. Crock. Breath froze in Detritus’s throat. Double crock. The door wouldn’t open automatically, and Detritus didn’t want to issue the command to open it at the risk of a new subscription to Duck and Lawn Gnome. He had no idea how the two related, but apparently they were similar enough to fill ninety pages a month.

He scanned the doorframe, up the left border, across, and down the right, as if his brain could sprout a clue. Well, what was one more useless article-stuffed datasheet every month? “Control, acknowledge. Unlock closest door.”

“Closest door unlocked.” Oh, man. Oh, yes. It actually listened! “Enjoy your new subscription to Interior Organ Decoration.” Nnnooooooooo...

After Detritus uncurled from the fetal position, he shakily guided Wasted’s wheelbarrow through the door into the humming haunt-control lab. The place smelled like a vial of cologne left in the sun. Rows of blinking circuit boards stretched across the room’s length. Positioned like an orchestra conductor, an input terminal sat on a tall plinth in front of the boards, its monitor at shoulder height.

Detritus spat into his hands and rubbed them together. Okay, okay. “Wasted, how do you tell a haunt control to self-destruct? Any ideas?”

Wasted had woken up, slumped to the other side, and waved a hand in an emphatic gesture. “We shoul...we...I mean...oh, piss. I need a...I got a hangover.”

“I didn’t even know you could get a hangover while you’re still drunk. Anyway, hold on. I just thought of a command. Heh.” He rubbed his hands together again.

“High-five.” Wasted leaned forward with a palm. His high-five wound up as a belly flop onto the floor.

“Take five. Good idea. Control, acknowledge. Self-destruct in fifteen minutes.” He shrugged. Sounded legitimate. A computer translation scrolled across the input terminal’s monitor, so at least it understood something.

“Not on your life. Enjoy your subscription to Chemical Addition and Multiplication at the price of eighteen moolahs, six more than the cover price.”

Crock, proving himself was expensive.

* * *

Ace Spandex stood outside Janice’s door. He’d commanded the haunt control not to fade when he approached and to pipe through whatever commands those two fools issued. This wasn’t for his benefit—Janice broadcasted all orders into his hearing system—but it was for the benefit of Catastrophe, who stood with him.

Catastrophe possessed the hyperability to control natural materials: earth, stone, coal. He looked like an overgroomed and post-prime football player who had fallen asleep in a tanning bed on Monday and woken up on Thursday. His orange-toned skin showed the wrinkles of age, and whatever coconut-scented lotion he’d applied wasn’t smoothing those wrinkles out. His starkly white hair needed a dye job.

He had history as the star of a major hit cop series named Jack Fistbomb, which had lasted eight seasons but had nose-dived and committed suicide sixteen years ago. He’d then enjoyed a stint as a B-movie actor but never regained his stardom. Now that the Good Guys had achieved fame after Mechanism’s defeat, Catastrophe had bought his way onto the team to recover that stardom. Even now, he still retained that hotshot actor’s dementia, all personal grooming, skin oils, and networking with this guy. Even his aura felt oiled up.

“They’re attempting to blow the place up.” Ace Spandex chewed his grape bubblegum. It snapped when he punctured an air pocket.

Even with a soft chuckle, Catastrophe’s voice showed the pomposity of his second-stringer acting history. “The great Catastrophe—which is me—used to put up with paparazzi sneaking around my property aalllll the time. I’ve dealt with nobodies like this before.” He smiled and showed off teeth Ace Spandex saw his reflection in. Yes, he was for real.

“So how did you deal with them?” Ace chew-snapped his gum.

“I called security.” Catastrophe examined his fingernails, huffed on them, and rubbed them on his Hawaiian shirt. “I would not sully my hands forcing them off. Let the commoners do that for me. That’s what my agency paid them for. I was once lunching with Grave Tollock—yes, the Grave Tollock—on the set of Frog Restaurant, and some fans had sneaked into the studio. Security roughed them up and sent them back to their elementary school in a matter of minutes.”

Ace Spandex stopped chewing his gum. “Who is Grave Tollock?”

“Only one of the biggest names in the biz.” Catastrophe winked at Ace. So did the jeweled earring in his left lobe.

“I just did an online search for him. He had bit parts in three movies and an episode of Denihilation. Now he works at a fruit-juice bottling plant. So your shtick is the has-been actor who drops names of people nobody’s heard of? Really? Out of every possibility, you go with that?”

Catastrophe leaned closer and winked again. “One of the biggest.”

* * *

Still nothing, but this would all be worth it once Detritus broke through this thing. “Control, acknowledge. Punch all Good Guy entities in the gonads.” He shrugged at Wasted.

“Command not accepted, but look forward to receiving Head Cheeses of the Silicon Asteroid Belt, now in its eighth successful week.”

Joke was on the haunt control: Detritus wanted that one.

Chapter Thirteen: Office Romances

Amaranthia giggled into the gabber. “Soooo anyway...I, like, mondo gotta go?” She fired a light-bullet at the starship again, but shrugged the blast into the air so she wouldn’t risk totally hitting Franchise or the drink thingy in the Fireball mil-tran. “Asinine’s totally gonna find out I’m, like, on the gabber and double my history homework? Total dragola.”

Franchise clicked his tongue. “Ooookay.” Amaranthia heard his breath hesitate. “Wait. Uh...are you...geez...” He only exhaled, but mutterings of the false starts of several sentences blurted out. “Are you...I mean...” He was panting.

“Am I what?” Amaranthia consciously suppressed her next giggle.

“AreyoufreeonSaturday?”

Amaranthia’s knees melted under her. Had he totally asked her out? “Yeah. I am. For sure.” Her cheeks heated up.

“Can we...can I...I mean...w-would you like to do s-something?”

Totally would she ever! “Maybe. Whatevs. Sure. Like what?” Her goofy smile ssooo made her words gush. She winced and covered her face with her Kiki impact shirt. She sounded like a gitchs.

“I d-don’t know yet. Let me think of something. I’ll gabber you later.”

Yes, yes, yes! “Whatevs.” Yes, yes, yes! “But I gotta go now. Gab at you later, ’kay?” Yes! “Gabber, acknowledge. Cut connection.” Tee-hee.

The gabber totally clicked off. Amaranthia tittered another tee-hee and pretended to aim. Really, she fired above the starship. Sucked to be a bird today. Or any day: birds were exempt from that amazing sale at Lutherania’s. Legal reasons.

“Okay, my junior thugs, treating their starship like a big target isn’t helping.” Asinine, like, lowered his gun and addressed his peeps. “Besides, we’ve probably accidentally hit Multipurpose because...well...look at the odds.”

“So what’s the new plan?” Punch asked, frowning his freaky hand mouth. His spiked tongue slithered around his cherry-colored lips and pointy teeth. He slurped. Way creepy.

Asinine scratched his chin with the barrel of his pistol. It discharged and seared a few whiskers. “Whoa. Close one. Anyway, the plan is we order them pizzas so they have to pay for everything. That’ll teach them petty mischief’s the way to go. Fighting crime doesn’t pay.”

“Oh, my crock, you gitch!” Amaranthia threw a hand at the starship that sat totally lifeless only, like, a few meters away. “How about we just walk in there and totally slice them to lacy ribbons?” Her finger twirled through a few strands of her auburn hair. She smiled and balanced on the heel of one foot. “Except Franchise. We should, like, let him off the hook?”

“Sir, Amaranthia’s right. We have the upper hand. We should move in.” Lieutenant IQ 23 stood behind Asinine, acting as his weirdo advisor and head cheerleader whenever Asinine landed a shot. “Which one is Franchise?”

“But all this pâté will go to waste!” Master Asinine shoved another cracker into his mouth and swept a hand at the table spread behind him. “And we might not have enough manpower to just move in. One of my operatives here is the guy whose hyperability is to talk. Congratulations, champ. Someone remind me why I brought him.” He leered at Bad Aim.

“But, sir, the mission—”

Asinine kicked a rock. “Fine, Lieutenant, fine. The mission. Geez. And I thought I ordered you to speak in rhyme.”

“Okay...uhm...it’s hard. Uh...we should move in, so we can begin.” He raised his eyebrows to ask for validation.

“Six out of ten. So...move in and/or begin?” Hands on hips, Asinine drummed his fingers on his saffron cummerbund. “Nah. Too forward. We’ll combine plans instead.”

“On it, sir. Those Good Guys will rue the day we murder all those double cheese pies one by one.” Lieutenant IQ 23 stammered. “Hope they said their good-byes.” He beamed.

“The humongous delivery tip alone will annoy them to death! Am I right?” Back to Bad Aim. “Seriously, can you projectile-vomit at least?”

* * *

“They’re Bad Guys all right.” Pincushion glanced out the window. Franchise had been talking to somebody, and Pincushion would be crocked if that somebody wasn’t Amaranthia. She pressed her cheek into her shoulder and smiled slyly at Franchise’s position, a smile Pincushion suspected she used whenever she found a sale at the cosmetic counter. But when Pincushion glanced at Franchise, the self-multiplier wore the same smile. And he didn’t wear cosmetics. Oh, piss. Pincushion palmed his face.

Pincushion checked their prisoners. Plastique covered Schizophrenic with two pistols. Organism still pinned Appetite to the wall. Multipurpose’s obesity covered him. Power Plant wore Master Asinine Sucks’s ten-gallon hat and was fitting those spurred boots over his hands. If he’d gotten all that cowboy gear on the right place, Pincushion would suspect he was on drugs. Surprised he didn’t try to eat the—oh, spoke too soon.

Good. The Bad Guys were covered. Pincushion stormed over to Franchise, who kept to himself by the navigator’s computer, hanging a hand off his neck and trying to hide his smile. Pincushion grabbed his arm and pulled him toward the wall. Private conversation. Clandestine words. And he felt sick of holding in this fart. “Franchise, were you flirting with Amaranthia?” Oh, felt good to get it out. Smelled like fish, though.

Franchise’s smile flickered for a second. It reappeared but revealed that Franchise had never taken an acting class in his life. “What—huh—what do you—What are you talking about? Who’s Franchise? What stupid question?”

“Brother, the only time you’ve smiled that way was when you thought that girl at the mall was waving at you, and she turned out to be a mannequin. You are talking to Amaranthia. What do you think you’re doing?” His usual deep voice rose with the question.

Franchise’s mouth opened, and Pincushion was sure he expected to say something...but nothing came out. His cheeks flushed, he took a deep breath. His hands wrung each other. Finally, “Look, if you’re worried about security, I haven’t—”

“It’s not about that.” Pincushion kept his voice low, but he was tempted to yell. His face felt hot. “Okay, it’s pretty much totally about that. I mean...what if you guys meet in combat? How will you react? You could compromise everything, let her go, fall into a trap, blab something.”

“I don’t go into combat. I’m part of the flight crew.” Franchise saw that Pincushion was unconvinced. “Okay, I get it. Just...it’s been a while. A long while. My last girlfriend broke up with me the day after Valentine’s four years ago when I gave her a card with a train that said I ‘cho-cho-chose’ her.” He looked up at Pincushion but kept his head low like an apologetic puppy. “Some things don’t work in past tense.”

“You will deal with this. Understand?” Pincushion flared his eyes. “Make this go away. Today. Now, I need to figure out our situation in here and out there.” He whirled around. His metal knee gave slight resistance. “Power Plant, take the hat out of your mouth. It’s technically evidence.”

* * *

Plastique kept her pistols locked on Schizophrenic’s heads. If Righty attempted another rendition of a dishwasher on rinse, she’d carve those heads new ear canals. Section fourteen of the pissing IP combat manual called for a minimum three-meter clearance between her and her target, but she wanted to get in close and destroy these crockers. Utterly destroy them. Starting with this two-headed clash of personalities. Societal castoffs such as these were why she entered the military, and other castoffs were the reason she got kicked out.

“I have a plan.” Chest inflated, the new Burnout took determined strides across the passenger deck, plowing through chairs. “But it involves killing the little guy.”

“Wh-who’s the little guy?” Franchise squirmed against the computer bank so stiffly it squeaked when he curled up on the floor. Organism’s netting around Appetite slackened. Power Plant cheered and asked how soon they could start the plan.

“No one’s the little guy,” Pincushion said. “Okay, Franchise is a bit twerpy, but we’re not sending him out to die. We’d have to reorganize our coffee runs.”

“I’m really good at grabbing coffee.” Franchise gripped his shirt collar. “Good like a phenom.”

“It’s the only reason we kept him around the first few weeks.” Pincushion took his pistol from his pocket and wrung the barrel in his hand.

“I don’t want to be the little guy,” the sturdy Organism said. He realized his netting had sagged, so he thrust his chin forward and rehardened it. “Please stop trying to chew my arm, gargoyle.”

Plastique slapped Schizophrenic’s right head when it introduced itself to a support column. “I have no idea who would consider you the little guy. Stand three meters back, soldier.” She waved at Organism. “Might stop Appetite from trying to eat your ear.” Organism skittered back. Plastique felt an urge to measure the distance with a datasheet.

“Okay, Good Guys.” A thunderous voice intruded from outside. Asinine’s. Pincushion knew the ludicrous exuberance that dripped off every word even without Boom Boyz playing in the background. Without power to the starship, outside noise leaked through clearly. “We’re storming in for a little powwow. I’m sick of waiting around, and we ran out of elephants in our animal crackers. I’ve eaten enough of them to ingest their souls and absorb their abilities, and now it’s time to ram my majestic trunk straight through your starship’s access port.”

“Sir, you don’t have a—”

“Now, now, Lieutenant. No more of your trunk envy. Let’s pop this starship open and greet out guests.”

Organism’s form loosened. His weightlifter muscles softened. Franchise sniffled. Power Plant checked through the porthole and guffawed. “Action’s comin’!”

Pincushion whirled around. He kept his aim steady but pointed a furious finger at the access port. “No, we can’t allow those Bad Guys in. That would compound our problem. Keep them back at all costs!”

Plastique backed off to the three-meter requisite distance when Schizophrenic’s left head chuckled. Righty chimed in but didn’t look as if he knew what was happening. Maybe he had finally figured out why the chicken crossed the road.

Lefty puckered his lips at Plastique and snorted. “I invited a few friends.” He checked out a window. “Crock. He's wearing his umbrella helmet. This rescue’s off.”

“Seriously, the little guy.” Burnout twirled around. “Only one casualty for now.”

Chapter Fourteen: Delirium at Its Finest

I woke up groggy, as if I’d been living inside my own head. Impossible, though, since I’d have fixed up the place a bit first.

Smelled like chemicals. I blinked out the fuzziness that had set into my sensations. Where the piss was this? I couldn’t move, only twitch. Pinkies didn’t count. And when the other occupant in the chaotic room revealed herself, I rolled my head aside because gag reflexes did count.

I watched that...Trioxidillian? Well, I should call her Trioxidillian, but that unpredictability of veins pulsating on her forehead prompted questions about her membership to any race. Her blue skin darkened into deep salmon around her brow up to her scalp. Patches of hair sprouted from her head like weeds peeking through patio stones.

The creature tromped this way, narrowly avoiding toppling whenever her oversized head swayed. Nice distinguishing feature.

She loomed over me. “Ahh. Good morning, comrade Reef,” the Trioxidillian-in-a-legal-sense said. It wasn’t morning. I had no frame of reference—no windows, no clock—in this humid, brown chamber, but that biological indicator everybody possessed said it was afternoon. “You are awake.”

“I suppose I am.” I smacked my lips. They felt dry, gummy. My throat felt as if someone had stuffed it with hay.

“Otilchno.” Somehow I knew that meant “good.” Though she was mostly Trioxidillian—she had a bit of Terran in there somewhere—she spoke in a Russian accent. A family of Siberian Huskies must have raised her. Weird mix, but some Trioxidillians had accents that closely resembled Lithuanian. Why not Russian, too?

“You are wondering what this is about, da?” the mad scientist said. How could I know she was a mad scientist? Crock, things were weird today. And for some reason I’d kill for some whiskey. And a blindfold if this monster heaved any closer. Definitely a blindfold.

The mad scientist testing my gag reflex winked. Her single eyebrow looked like a dead caterpillar. “Let me explain situation. Control, acknowledge. Prop eenertia bed at ten-degree angle. Record events, primary camera on subject, secondary camera on me, cerebral camera on brainwaves of subject.”

I lurched. Not me, but the stiff inertia bed that held me motionless. It burped to life and raised me from a horizontal position to one nearly vertical. The process took a whopping minute or so, during which time I reprioritized my desire for death versus my desire to see that pulsing head. Death won out.

Behind this mad scientist sprawled a mad scientist’s lab, a scattering of junk Brick had collected. (Who was Brick, and how did I know that name?) The lab looked more like a hangar. Clanking sections of a Kingfish starship hung from hooks, other sections lay scattered, and still others sat on the oil-stained floor. An enormous mechanical rooster head lolled on its side, its waddle flapped over a catwalk. Looked like the decapitated cockpit of Kyril’s old ride, The Nemesis. I never wanted a bucket of chicken again no matter how crispy those wings came.

Like a child hearing a fart joke, the winner of this year’s deranged witch’s laugh award cackled and rubbed her wrinkled hands together. Flakes of skin like grated parmesan cheese fell from her fingers. “Your name, comrade, is—”

“Reef.” I could fill in some blanks now. “First name Silas, born on Gaia on December ninth, 9051, regretting birth starting two minutes ago. I was found in the rubble of some room after sucking the power dry out of an object called the Blast-o-Matic. That was four days ago. I’ve been unconscious until now.” Eye contact with this mad scientist niggled me with fright. I didn’t remember much about myself—only my name, my birthday, and the odd feeling that it was a thin form of the truth—but I did know my gag reflex couldn’t hold out forever. “And your name is Genderfront.” How could I know this crock? “First name Your Forehead Is Pulsating Like a Lung.”

“Otlichno.” She rubbed those hands together again. My eyes burned from looking at her, or maybe it was that light panel behind her. Nah. Her. “Tell more to me.”

“Your name is Hanress Genderfront, media name Brainiac. You were born on Trioxil on December fourth, 9070. You were ridiculed for your stupidity until you were irradiated, causing your intelligence to increase from sixty-two to two hundred seventeen. You gained telepathy, low-level telekinesis, and that pustule you still call a skull. Master Asinine hired you two days ago. You’re his chief mad scientist, Brick’s replacement. He must have a stronger stomach than I do. I have no idea how I know this.”

Brainiac cackled again. “Превосходно. You are aboard Station Zilcho—”

“I swear if that forehead won’t stop breathing at me, I’ll prick it. I’ll need to eat eventually, and I’d love it if my meal stayed down.”

“I can halt hyperability for short while.” Her forehead stopped pulsing. It didn’t deflate, but at least it didn’t inhale. Seconds later, something shut off in my head. A sensation I’d never felt until I’d awoken fizzled out and uncrowded my thoughts. My head cleared to something that felt normal. “You are aboard Station Zilcho, headquarters of Bad Guys. Bad Guys recently suffered attack from tovarich of our own, Mechanism. During attack, you encountered Blast-o-Matic. You stopped Blast-o-Matic from destroying Station Zilcho, but you lost memory in process. Construction worker found you unconscious under much rubble with no idea how you survive burial.”

Something else returned, not from that fizzled sensation but from my own memory. Sucking electricity dry. An explosion of furniture, with ground zero being my spine. Pub crawls. Some guy media-named Power Plant who was completely convinced people read his blog about what came out of his nose. Then a blank until a few minutes ago. Why did pub crawls seem so familiar?

“So why the piss am I here?” I tried to lift myself off the inertia bed, but it still pinned me in place.

Brainiac leaned closer. Please...please don’t lean closer. “You are Bad Guy.”

“What the crock is a Bad Guy? And is there a decent bourbon around here?”

Chapter Fifteen: Everything but Good Housekeeping

Ace Spandex leaned closer to Janice’s door. He didn’t have to because of the signal he picked up, but some of his old habits nevertheless poked through. “They’re still at it. I have to hand it to them. They’re tenacious. And, when I say ‘tenacious,’ I mean, ‘stubbornly stupid.’ But we should get in there. They’re running out of magazines, so soon I’ll have to tell Janice to sign them up for of-the-month clubs. One of them is a magazine-of-the-month club, and I’m not that mean.”

“I’ll get in there and show them a thing or two.” Catastrophe approached the door and flexed his bronze arm. Ace was afraid to visit Catastrophe’s living quarters for fear he’d contract a tan by association. “It would give me a chance to work out the old guns.” Or the old peashooters. “Who’s Janice?”

“Legion said to observe. As long as they’re not breaking through Janice’s security, we’re letting them keep their delusion.” He warily eyed Catastrophe kissing the wrinkly flab he still regarded as muscle. “Wish Legion would stop extending the same courtesy to his own team, though.”

“Look, I know you haven’t worked in the biz for long.” Catastrophe clapped an oversized hand on Ace’s shoulder. Was Ace now infected with grandeuritis? He did get the impression he could eat two eight-ounce porterhouses instead of one. “But letting enemy spies wander around in your headquarters always ends up biting you in the rump.”

Ace stepped away from the door so that Catastrophe’s hand would slide off his shoulder. “What biz? You were never a cop. You only played one on a show. Technically, I’ve worked in the biz longer than you. And do these things follow you everywhere?” He swatted away a thumb-sized floating camera. It spiraled back, but a second later, it was droning in his face again.

“They’re here to capture my action.” Catastrophe smiled at one of the two cameras, his polished teeth sparkling from between his lips. “Control, acknowledge. Capture headshot, and send to listed studio entities.” He finger-shot the camera. A flash and a click later, that smile became puckered lips.

Ace swatted the other camera again. If they stung him and sucked out his blood, he’d call an exterminator. “Do whatever you want as long as you don’t spend an hour and a half in the makeup chair next time I call on you.” He gestured at the door. “I’m going to break things up in there. They’re not giving us any information we can use.”

Catastrophe flexed again. “The guns are still an option.”

“If those are guns, they’re BBs.”

* * *

The odor of burning cologne nauseated Detritus. “Okay, here’s another idea.” This better not add a year’s subscription of Capybara Hand Grenades to Detritus’s now whale-sized collection. At this point, that was about the last magazine left to sign up for. “Control, acknowledge. Shut down waste-disposal function.”

“Control, acknowledge. Rescind command,” someone said behind Detritus. Detritus whirled around and wished Wasted sometimes had the presence of mind to do the same. Ace Spandex. He entered with some newcomer Detritus had never seen before and probably never would again if he didn’t tone down his that color.

“Command rescinded, but entity name not in database would love two years of Door-Swallowing Ninja for half off the doubled newsstand price.”

“You send him that subscription, and I’ll erase your antivirus software.”

“At least take advantage of this week’s special on bloodstream beacons, now with four hundred sixteen fewer side effects. Bloodstream beacons. Because all the cool militias are doing it.” The haunt control sang a xylophone-accompanied jingle.

Detritus faked a smile. “Oh, good. Glad someone showed up. We was acquainting ourselves with your haunt control. It loves its ads.”

“Just be happy we got rid of the pop-ups.” Ace Spandex reached Wasted, who slumped against a wall and raised an invisible toast to whatever he slurred.

“Yeah, but the pop-unders are a pain.” Detritus kicked away a tiny viewscreen that had appeared under his foot a minute ago. It skated across the grimy floor.

Ace stopped the viewscreen under his foot. “So...Legion tells me you two are our newest recruits.” He kicked the viewscreen back. Detritus caught it under his shoe. He detected an edge to Ace’s voice, but he dismissed that as faulty perception.

“Yeah.” Detritus kicked the pop-under back to Ace. “We are. And you are?” He knew who these two were—well, he knew Ace, and the other guy was halfway to becoming an orange—but he played stupid. He was surprised Ace didn’t recognize him. Course, last time they’d met, Ace lay on a slab spurting blood out his neck and mouth, waiting for Mechanism to make him a cyborg. Detritus still smelled the blood in his imagination.

“My media name is Ace Spandex, and this is Catastrophe.”

Catastrophe shouldered forward, holding a datasheet depicting what looked like a profile shot. “Stage name Rock de la Roche.” His finger hovered over the datasheet. Was he signing autographs? “Who can I make this out to?”

“Yyyeah. Heh.” Detritus suppressed a snicker. Okay, not suppressed. “Make it out to anybody you want.”

“Put the autograph away.” Ace picked up the pop-under, examined it, and pursed his lips. “Hmm. Obscure Flesh-Eating Maladies of Andromeda. Nice.”

Detritus coughed. “Hhhhyeah, never heard of it. Some people have weird interests.”

“This is a renewal notice.” Ace tossed the pop-under like a spinning knife.

Detritus caught it and flung it behind his back where it clattered against a circuit board. “So anyway...Wasted and me—Wasted, enough with the singing. No man should know that show tune. Wasted and me was about to check out some other places on this station.”

“You want to check out the...” Ace smiled almost knowingly. “...records vault?”

Detritus leaned closer. “The what?”

“Where we keep all our records on people. Us. Bad Guys.” Ace shrugged. “Homeless people that sneak onto the station looking for cardboard boxes.”

“Records vault, eh?” Now it was Detritus’s turn to smile. “Giddy up.”

Chapter Sixteen: Yabba Dabba Don’t

Master Asinine sighed. Or huffed. Suffed, because everything came down to compromise. At any rate, IQ 23 was cutting off a few years from Asinine’s life just by sheer annoyance. Him and his “that move doesn’t sound practical” mumbo jumbo. Jumbo mumbo jumbo. And he still didn’t rhyme anything.

He kicked a rock aside. “So, Lieutenant, after discussing several plans, we’ve decided we can’t just walk in and shoot everyone like we own the place. And we can’t bombard them with radiation because, as you said”—he broke out the finger quotes because he meant business—“‘the backsplash,’ despite knowing full well I get a big kick out of skin lesions. And you didn’t like the third plan, even though Punch gathered up all these whales.” Asinine swiped a finger at the line of orcas struggling for water behind him.

“It takes effort, goon!” Punch tried to give IQ 23 the finger, but somehow he managed the thumb. Weird how a guy literally made of a hand got that wrong.

A wave of cool air trickled past Asinine. “So, before I come up with another plan and have to sit out the next hour from all the thinking and the thoughts and the thinkery, have you got any advice for me?”

“Well, sir, I don’t believe asking yourself what would Fred Flintstone do is a good start. But we did bring shockwave bombs for a reason.”

“In rhyme, Lieutenant.” Asinine shielded his eyes from the west’s warm evening sun.

Lieutenant IQ 23 struggled, but a sentence finally stammered its way out his lips. “We brought bombs today so we can blow them away.”

“Good enough. Bring on the bombs. And, one last time, you sure we can’t use those whales for anything?”

“A lot of effort!” Punch swatted at IQ 23 but ended up spiraling into the dirt.

* * *

Power Plant slid his cheek against the access port and checked the porthole quickly again. How long were those Bad Guys gonna take to get in here? He’d spotted the Burger Wench lunch bags they held and the boxes they’d feasted out of. Oh, yes, he’d seen them. And he expected leftovers, so hurry up.

He charged his hands with light. They glowed with anticipation and fed the starship a faint yellow spark that painted caricature shadows across the gray siding. In the shadows, Pincushion raised his pistol and aimed at the windshield. If he hit the bag of popcorn chicken, Power Plant would be seriously macked. He freakin’ loved popcorn chicken.

“I freakin’ love popcorns chicken.” He fired a suspicious eye at Pincushion.

“What’s that got to do with anything?” Pincushion asked.

Power Plant left the porthole, marched toward the computer bank, and climbed up. A dead viewscreen, active when the starship had hit the EMP barrier, blocked his line of sight, so he swept it away. It slid down the bank and clattered against the floor. He knee-crawled to the windshield and cupped his hands around his face. Didn’t help. His glowing hands cast enough glare to blind him.

Whoa. A pulse of adrenaline lit Power Plant’s body like a firework. “Guys, check dis out.” He watched Master Asinine, who squatted at the windshield, affixing a device to it. Asinine twisted the device clockwise. “What’s dat things he stick there? We don’t need no more fuzzy dice. Oh, Asinine wavin’ at us. Wha’s up, guy?”

“Power Plant, don’t wave back. It only encourages him to send more singing telegrams.” Pincushion watched Asinine, his pistol pointed at that derelict’s goofy smile. Something jangled. “Since when did he wear bells?”

Plastique leapt over the navigation and pilot chairs to the windshield and knee-crawled to Power Plant’s position. She peered at the object that Asinine slapped with a decisive blow. Numbers lit up on its underside, which faced inward. Numbers. Counting backward. What was with Asinine and his timers? Power Plant was sick of these things, because Asinine always miscalculated and the timer reached zero before the Good Guys arrived and could enjoy a decent metronomic beeping.

Plastique examined the device closely. “This is not good.”

“Is that a bomb?” Pincushion rolled on his spikes across the passenger deck into the piloting deck. “I got tired of timers when Smith set his to music. This is liable to put me over the edge and make me a public danger. Somebody hide all the sharp objects.”

“Hey, ain’t you city slickers gonna cover us?” Master Asinine Sucks kicked a chair. It spun around and clocked him in the chin.

Pincushion thrust his pistol into Franchise’s hands. “Here, brother. If he tries to saddle Appetite up and ride into the sunset, pistol-whip him.”

“Can’t Incendiary cover this cowboy?” Franchise’s voice fluttered. “Since the space-museum incident, I’m tired of shooting paradigms of my childhood heroes.” His head dropped. “I’m so truly sorry, Spaceman Salvador.”

Tolliver bolted to the windshield and rapped his knuckles on it.

“This isn’t a combustible device.” Plastique traced a fingernail along the device’s outline. Her finger squeaked on the windshield. “It’s a GR-five series bomb. A shockwave bomb. It’s got enough yield to spray this windshield across the passenger deck. Think of it as a nail bomb. And it just passed four minutes.”

“Wha’s goin’ on, and hows can I’s makes it worse?” Power Plant asked.

“Holy crock, aren’t you just the end of language as we know it.” Tolliver flicked Power Plant’s ear lobe. Power Plant hopped off the computer bank and raised a lit fist.

“Can we get back to this bomb?” Pincushion bumped between Power Plant and Tolliver to separate them. “Stand down, soldier.” He pinched the button on his earlobe to shoot his insomnia with adrenaline.

“That crazy piss Asinine.” Lefty clicked his tongue. “Always putting his own guys in the line of fire. Hope he enjoys me punching the snot out of him next time I see old blue eyes. Glass embedded in my skin or not, I’ll hammer that spinning bowtie off his neck once and for all.”

“Good day, Good Guys.” Asinine’s voice once again crackled into the starship. “You’ll notice the gift I’ve attached to your windshield. You’re going to love this one. I found the idea in a do-it-yourself class at the Cooking Annex. Anyway, my lieutenant explained to me that I don’t have the elephant bits I thought I had, so we’ll have to explode our way in. More fun. More cleanup after, especially considering blood and guts and loose articles of clothing, but I’ll definitely get a kick out of it. So, in little over who knows how many minutes—maybe one, maybe a million, no one knows—”

“It says on the timer,” Plastique said.

“—that shock bomb will pack so much punch you’ll all wish you were glass-proof. But you’re not. I checked the fun way. People aren’t glass-proof and also need a blood transfusion if the test bomb nicks an artery and you bleed on your favorite cream-colored tuxedo T-shirt. Oh, boy. What I wouldn’t give to stop blacking out.” He cleared his throat. “However, I have a deal for you. We can forego this violent entrance thing. I’ll shut off my gift...if you send out my Bad Guys. But, Good Guys. There’s a but, and it’s a good but, and here’s the but.” His voice deepened, adopted a sinister tone. “You have to send out one of your own with them. Ha. What a catch, eh? I love what I do, and what I do loves me back. Ow. Knuckle bumps with yourself hurt.”

Power Plant glanced at the bomb’s timer. Three minutes and fifteen seconds.

“Crock. One of us has to go out?” Pincushion kicked the navigator’s chair. It spun around and clipped him in the chin. “Ow. Same thing happened to the cowboy, and I still didn’t learn.”

Tolliver clomped to Franchise, who stood near the pilot’s chair. Power Plant wanted to slam him against the computer bank, send him outside with a shoe embedded up his rear hole.

Two minutes and forty seconds.

Tolliver banged past the pilot’s chair and sized up Franchise. Franchise clutched his pistol to his chest and heaved in such a helping of oxygen that he choked. Tolliver said, “You’ll do.” He grabbed Franchise by the neck and lifted him off the floor. Franchise clutched his meaty arm, but that didn’t keep Tolliver from spinning around and marching toward the access port. He shouldered past a shocked Organism, who stumbled against the port. Tolliver ripped him away, still strangling Franchise.

Two minutes and twenty seconds.

“Burnout, don’t do this,” Pincushion said. “Put him down. Now.”

“His media name ain’t Burnout.” Power Plant balled those glowing fists. His fingernails pricked his skin. “Only one Burnout. Ever.”

Two minutes and fourteen seconds.

Plastique still studied the bomb. “The manual doesn’t cover this. How can we turn this fugazi around?”

“I definitely have an idea.” Tolliver raised a hand to the access port. Snarling flame haloed that hand.

Power Plant grunted. Tears welled back. He snorted anger and grief down. His vision glowed with heated light. A scream he hadn’t felt welling up now expelled out his mouth. He bounded toward Tolliver. “I jus’ losts my brother!” Reared back a fist. Timed. Sped his approach. Smacked Tolliver across the cheek. “I ain’t gonna lose my bests friend!” Tolliver plummeted to the metal floor. Franchise’s head knocked against the access port. Power Plant’s other fist smacked Tolliver’s face. “The medias name Burnout’s too goods for you!” Grabbed Tolliver by the ears and whacked his head against the floor. “And you broke Jakey’s coffeeable stuff.”

“Power Plant, no real names on the field,” Pincushion said.

“Soldiers, in one minute and forty-six seconds, it won’t matter what names we use.” Plastique slapped a palm against the windshield. “Remember our gift?”

Tolliver swatted aside Power Plant’s next blow and kneed him in the stomach. Power Plant rolled off and Tolliver leapt to a squat. Power Plant’s world was fuzzy, but he felt a brisk sensation, as if someone were lifting him by the collar. A brick cracked him across the chin. Not a brick. A fist. “Your brother was a butt cork, and I’m glad he’s dead. Means I take his place. Make myself famous.” Tolliver’s lantern jaw bobbed around Power Plant’s woolly vision. Blood percolated out of Power Plant’s nose, oozed from a cracked lip. “And I just changed my mind about who goes outside.”

Power Plant spat a tooth at Tolliver. Blood came with it. The only defined feature in his vague vision was the red digits on that timer. One minute on the dot.

But a wavy pistol jabbed against the back of Tolliver’s neck. Power Plant blinked a few times to set the world back into definition, and he saw Franchise, his teeth biting down on his lower lip. “P-put him-m down.” Franchise snorted in a breath.

Thirty-eight seconds.

Franchise gulped nervously. “Let him go or I swear...”

Tolliver chuckled. “You think you can stop me, flyweight? Think again.”

Twenty-nine seconds.

Schizophrenic plopped down into one of the passenger chairs. He snorted. “Man, what a way to go. I couldn’t pay to watch entertainment this awkward at home. And Asinine’s taking disco lessons.”

“Crock, will you two butt corks shut up and let me fix this?” Tolliver’s fist came up so fast Franchise couldn’t react. It belted Franchise across the nose and drove him into the computer bank.

“Soldiers, we don’t have time for you to act like amateurs.” Plastique monitored the bomb and the action at the same time. “We have twenty seconds to give them what they want.”

“That can’t happen. We don’t negotiate with playtime terrorists.” Pincushion strode toward Tolliver. “Put Power Plant down now or I’ll—”

“You’ll what?” Tolliver’s expression dared Pincushion.

“I’ll kick your crock and make you into a stew for provoking this situation.”

“Fifteen seconds.” Plastique hopped off the computer bank and took cover behind a chair in the passenger deck.

Tolliver dropped Power Plant. “Bring it, porcupine.”

“Ten seconds, guys.”

Schizophrenic whipped out of his seat and grabbed Pincushion’s arm—locked his grip around the wrist—Pincushion dropped his pistol, and Schizophrenic snatched it out of the air—planted it against Pincushion’s head—snorted. “I’m leaving with this pincushion—”

“Is it really an insult when it’s his media name?” Franchise asked.

“—and any Bad Guys he can lift. Multipurpose, you’re crocked.”

Five seconds. “Crock this.” Organism’s finger netting slithered off Appetite—four seconds—he leapt onto the computer bank—three seconds—wrapped his dense arms around the windshield—two seconds—squeezed his eyes shut—one second—bit his lip—

Chapter Seventeen: Just a Dip

Plaster sprawled poolside. He’d gotten used to the smell o’ chlorine over the last month, but he was sick o’ this Mutiny Pool. His eyes had seen light only by the rusty glow o’ one measly candle and the trapdoor whenever that crock-head Asinine remembered to throw food down here. An’ the towel rack was always empty. This place blew.

When Plaster got fed up wit’ Asinine’s stupid crock, he revolted. So Asinine got the drop on him and trapped him down here. That was almost a month ago. Plaster didn’t even know if he was a Bad Guy no more. Crock, he didn’t even know if Asinine remembered he was down here.

Too bad Asinine thought Plaster was a dolphin, or else he’d throw down food other than kelp, chum, and kelp-flavored chum. An’ foam insulation. First time Plaster had witnessed anyone eat foam insulation was when Appetite decided any time was a good time for suckin’ down home renovations. The last time was when Asinine had decided any time was a good time to imitate Appetite’s gastro-destroyin’ dietary habits.

Asinine hadn’t thrown down anything these last few days, and when Plaster realized this, he rationed his chum. But now he didn’t care if he starved. He grabbed another handful o’ chum and mashed it into his mouth. He wasn’t sure if the chum made it in—he’d lost feelin’ in his extremities due to starvation settin’ in durin’ his second week down here—but his tongue tasted crap, so that was a good sign.

Plaster’s head ached, his thoughts frothed. Whoa. He had to settle, rest his head for a second. He smelled somethin’ pungent trickle into his nostrils. If he wasn’t so feeble, if his senses weren’t so freakin’ weedy, he coulda figured out from where that nose-wrenchin’ stench emanated. He stood, but his legs loosened underneath him, and he spilled backward. His head hit a wall, and a strobe light flickered through his entire bein’. Last week, he woulda splattered film all over that wall. Today, wit’ his skin so dry, he sprinkled flakes.

He musta been seein’ things. Musta been, ’cause, when he opened his eyes, after the burst of shock fizzled, he swore a figure was strollin’ around the poolside. The figure strolled so slowly, so leisurely, as if he were enjoyin’ a garden promenade. What the piss for? Everythin’ smelled like chlorine in here ’cept whatever caused that stench o’ death what whitewashed the room just now. Or maybe that was Plaster. He hadn’t bathed since Asinine had trapped him down here ’cause that shower in the men’s locker room didn’t cut it.

The figure, at least seven feet tall wit’ a sleek runner’s build, looked darker than night, like someone had come up wit’ a blacker black. A collection o’ shadows, really, the figure had no seam between his clothin’ an’ skin, an’ them eyes, nose, mouth, an’ ears were slight bumps and ridges. He wore a licorice-black fedora that melded with his head.

Rubber snakes littered the pool area. As powerfully as he could, Plaster whipped one at the figure. His throw made him stumble forward and he spilled across the deck. The snake slapped against the figure but bounced off.

The figure reached Plaster. Plaster kept his eyes rollin’ around the figure’s black feet, toes that merged into one another like he wore thin socks. If so, he was a sucker, ’cause he’d stepped across the spot where Plaster “managed his waste.”

The figure squatted wit’ no sound. No rustle o’ clothes. No creak o’ bones. Nothin’. “Hello, Plaster.” If the Grim Reaper had a voice, it was this figure’s: low, demonic, wit’out emotion or flavor.

Plaster rolled onto his back and felt the stippled deck under him. “Ya here to kill me?” Surprised he remembered how to talk. His voice was so weak, its rasp had fogged.

“No.” The figure chuckled and propped his arms across his knees. “My, you are feeble, so emaciated, your skin so dry. You require a protein-rich diet to replenish your melting skin. Since Mechanism’s assault, your leader has neglected to feed you sufficiently.”

What assault? “Aw, piss. Another one o’ them big talkers wit’ them five-syllable words.” Plaster smacked his lips to keep ’em wet. “Wait. E...ma...ci...a...ted. Yup. Five. That means ya are here to kill me.”

“I am not here to kill you, Plaster. I have need of you. Or, rather, the Almighty Lord does.”

“Oh, good. Ya know who I am. This keeps gettin’ better an’ better. Pass me some chum, would ya? I ain’t had my third square meal yet.”

“Plaster, I can take you away from this. Thanks to the great Lord and the glory due Him, I can liberate you from the constant stench of chlorine—”

“We talkin’ ’bout Alaphus? And if that particular bouquet o’ death is you, you ain’t helpin’.”

The figure stood. He still regarded Plaster with that undefined face. “I can ensure you are never enslaved or incarcerated again. My most righteous Lord has need of your special skills and knowledge. Please join us for a very lucrative endeavor.”

Now Plaster knew this guy was a hallucination. Only in his dreams would someone want him for his knowledge. “Heh. Yeah, sure. Whatever. What’ve I got ta lose? Take me to your imaginary, no-girls-allowed clubhouse in the clouds. Ya can also ’splain to me what the crock a ‘lucrative endeavor’ is. Also why ya smell like a chili dog gone wrong.”

“Excellent.” Though this shadow man had only unclear facial features, Plaster recognized a smile trickle into his expression. “The Lord will be pleased.”

Plaster shifted to stand ’cause, way he saw things, this shadow man ain’t no way was strong enough to haul him outta this pool area. He buckled before he got on one knee. His palm scraped dried flakes over the tiles that read, 2 M / 6.5 FEET / 17 PILED CORPSES / 1 NECK-BREAKING DIVE / FOR EVERYTHING ELSE, THERE’S MASTERCARD.

“Hope ya brought some ’sociates, ’cause I ain’t movin’. Who are ya, anyway? An’ what are ya? An’ take a shower.”

“I am known simply as Blackguard, though I assure you, I am more than a simple rogue. As for your other inquiries, the One who sent me will reveal those answers...in time. Soon all will bow before the great and holy Continuum.” The figure wrapped his black form around Plaster, and the pool area disappeared.

Chapter Eighteen: Still Riding the Short Bus off the Short Pier

Ace Spandex had led these two delusionary Bad Guys through the records vault, through the infirmary where Power Plant had yesterday catapulted test dummies against walls, into the armory where Ace had almost let Wasted hold a bazooka just to see what he’d do with it, then into the shopping district where Wasted had finally found a bazooka. And he still wasn’t entertaining. He just shoved the barrel over his eye and played with the trigger. Too bad it was only a shirt bazooka. Now Wasted wore a tan button-up with a pressed collar.

They now found themselves in the static-charged Fireball hangar bay where Detritus had insisted not once but four separate times that he hop aboard one of the starships and “take its crock all the way to eleven.” Eleven what? If it was miles per hour, good luck. The engine would flood before they got its crock all the way to six.

Catastrophe still pushed autographed memorabilia on Detritus. He held copies of his latest movie from seven years ago, Ravenous Psycho Barber 8: The Psychening. Detritus refused vehemently on the grounds that he hated romantic comedies.

Ace took this chance to step away from the tour group. He bustled past the Good Guys’ three remaining Fireballs with a finger already tapping his gabber bud. The mouthpiece and earpiece zipped out. “Gabber, acknowledge. Contact entity Legion.” His gum had become flavorless, so he assessed trajectory and crosswinds, then spat the gum into a trash ionizer.

“Seeking connection. Seeking connection. Next time you’re in the food court, you will try the new Hypnomeat Burger at Space Cow, now with bacon. You will. Connection attained.”

Ace Spandex’s eyes sneaked around the hangar bay. He saw Detritus on the other end of the hangar trying to avoid Catastrophe’s pushiness. Wasted laughed at something invisible, then threw up on a landing trestle. “Legion, Ace here.”

“Hey, question for you,” Legion said. “Say I call some paramedics to look at Luzimoss, but they don’t come. So I call for more, but they don’t come either. Then more, but they don’t come. So I call a pizza-tran, grab a double-cheese-and-pepperoni, and ask the delivery guy to drop him off at a SIPMA hospital on the way back.”

“You want to know if he’d do it?”

“I want to know what to tip him.”

“How should I know?”

“Just asking. You in for a double-cheese-and-pepperoni?”

Ace mulled this over. “Put Franchise on tour duty next time the Bad Guys send us their two least conspicuous infiltrators.”

“Deal.”

“My turn for questions now.” Ace scratched the mottled scar on his brow and examined the two Bad Guys off in the distance. Now they were explaining to a servicebot why the landing trestle smelled like rotten cheese and rum. He leaned on a Fireball’s parking harness. “What’s our plan for Detritus and Wasted? I don’t know how long I can keep up this act.”

“They’re getting on your nerves?”

“It’s not them as much as Catastrophe. Are you aware he once hosted a documentary with Tuloss Mearican? The Tuloss Mearican?”

“Never heard of this person. I’d ask you to repeat what you just said, but saying his name three times might summon him.”

“I’m told he’s a big-time star in the furniture circuit.”

“Furniture has big-time stars?”

“That’s not the point. Anyway, I’m wondering how risky it is that we’re leading our worst enemies on a guided tour of our facility. They now know our deepest secret: Station One has tennis courts.” Ace stepped aside when a chargingbot clanked along. It went to work on the Fireball against which he leaned. Static caused Ace’s hair to float.

“I wouldn’t worry. As long as you don’t let them in on any security codes or pertinent information, they’re as innocuous as butterflies. This is an opportunity. I need you to glean any information you can from them. Just don’t tell them we know who they are. That way, they’re more likely to slip up. Station One has tennis courts?”

“Why me?” Ace said in a huff to no one.

“Keep them in sight, and don’t tell them the health inspection certificate in the food court is a forgery Power Plant doctored up so nobody would shut down our taco stand.”

Ace watched the two Bad Guys. Detritus now used Wasted’s arm to batter the servicebot against the landing trestle. That didn’t work, so he shoved Wasted’s wheelbarrow into the servicebot. The servicebot crumpled. Wasted grabbed a hose and guzzled the fluid it sprayed out. Fluid splurged down his cheeks.

“Turn on the security cameras in the Fireball hangar bay to see why they didn’t climb too high on Asinine’s ladder.”

“Never mind that. Use your computer brain to read their heartbeats and breathing rhythms. And when their guard is down, start weaseling information out of them.”

“Will do.”

“Start with where Asinine keeps my poker chips. He borrowed them about fifteen years ago and never gave them back.”

Chapter Nineteen: Warranty Voided

—zero seconds. Franchise threw both arms over his head and slid behind a passenger chair. He risked a peek at a flattened Organism, that Atlas competitor now the shape of a rubber sheet, spreading himself over the windshield. The windshield shattered. Shards pecked through Organism’s body, sliced through his back, severed an arm and a leg, ate his neck, speared his abdomen. An explosion of slivers, and ground zero was Organism’s gut. But he contained the salvo.

Organism flopped against the computer bank and rolled onto the floor with a hollow thunk. His muscles lay in a deflated form of the bodybuilder he was before, lips in a weird contour of a mouth, splinters jutting out like porcupine spikes. He coughed. Oxygen wheezed out through the hole in his abdomen as he pried the shard of windshield out. The wound sealed. His detached limbs reached out to fuse with his body.

“Attack, my junior thugs, attack! Aim properly something, Bad Aim, aim properly!” Master Asinine appeared at the jagged gap left in the windshield and leapt through, gun firing, noisemaker squealing, flakes of pâté sprinkling from his chin. “Why don’t junior thugs understand the meaning of ‘attack’?”

“Asinine, I’s gonna cuts off your mouth!” Power Plant leapt forward. His fist reeled back and—

Tolliver clawed him aside at the apex of his leap. “Never send Power Plant to do a man’s job.” His baseball-glove-sized hand clobbered Master Asinine in the chin. Asinine collapsed, but he rammed a kick into Tolliver’s stomach. Tolliver rebounded into a passenger seat, flipped over it, and landed in the one behind it.

Power Plant leapt up. “I gonna kills a fool.”

“Power Plant, work on your battle cry later.” Pincushion head-butted Schizophrenic’s right head.

“Time to swarm this joint.” Franchise shut his eyes—felt the fear bubbling up his stomach and lumping in his throat but swallowed it down—opened his eyes, growled. His forehead ached.

Out popped a clone, exact impact suit as Franchise, more severe expression. Another clone. Another. The four Franchises spread out—one barreled toward Master Asinine Sucks, the second grabbed his spurs, the third locked an arm around Appetite’s neck, and the original wondered if his chicken wrap was still in the fridge doojigger at home because it was the only thought that wouldn’t cause him to reduce to hysterics and barf out his insides. He’d keep that last bit to himself.

No. Stop steering clear. Stop barfing insides. They needed his help. Power Plant needed his help. His chin throbbed. His fists squeezed though he didn’t command them to. His throat tightened though black mold couldn’t affect his allergies in here. His blood boiled though he—crock, the air felt hot.

He hurdled up, caught his foot on a chair, clobbered his chin on the floor. Crock. He blinked. Holy crock.

He hurdled up, bounded blindly at the windshield’s gap, imagined that chicken wrap oozing with succulent mayo, and pounced through. He smacked onto the starship’s nose cone and into somebody who had ideas about infiltrating the starship. And if he still thought about chicken wraps in battle, he needed specialized help.

He threw a punch that clipped a...an earring?

His hands covered his mouth, and he rolled away. “Holy gaggarank, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m extra sorry.” He risked reaching a trembling hand out to Amaranthia, whose ear looked unnaturally red now. “I didn’t mean that. I swear. I was caught up in chicken wraps.”

Amaranthia looked horrified, her face like a wraith’s gasp. One hand clutched a sword, the other an earlobe from which trickled a hairline of blood. That frozen gasp pained Franchise more than the crock-kicking she’d serve him with no succulent mayo. But instead she smiled. And giggled. And took his hand in her delicate fingers, careful of her nails. “Dude, that sounds, like, mondo sad. Chicken wraps?”

Franchise hiccupped a giggle. “What’s worse is it’s been in there four day—”

That fist-shaped Bad Guy bowled onto the nose cone and clipped Franchise in the forehead with his toes. Franchise rebounded and struck the dented metal, his head tingling.

“Hey!” Amaranthia drew her sword. “Watch it, Punch! Your foot just totally bizzclomped my crush—” She stopped, an unformed word trapped inside her. She looked at Franchise, and her smile returned.

“Your what?” Franchise asked, to which Amaranthia responded with a speechless gawp. Still holding her hand, Franchise licked his upper lip. “We should fight...I guess. Keep up pretenses. I mean...if you want to.”

“Okay.” Amaranthia fluttered her eyelashes and slid her sword into its scabbard. She leaned forward and tapped Franchise’s nose with a finger. “I’ll hit gently.”

* * *

Master Asinine swung at Pincushion. That was the third time he missed, but he knew he’d hit once he came within four feet of that spiky guy. “Bad Aim, grab Schizo, and let’s haul tail.”

“I can grab myself, intelligence trainee.” Schizophrenic chugged a punch into Power Plant’s stomach. He leered at Bad Aim. “Thanks, I don’t need the help of the one guy whose hyperability bumps him up to average.” Back to Asinine. “But you’re freaking right. I’m bored, and I haven’t trampled your rose garden in almost a week. Let’s scram.” He stepped toward the access port, considered something, stepped back, and cranked another fist into Power Plant’s gut. “Repeat business.”

Pincushion ducked under a swipe. His fingers clawed at Asinine’s throat, but Asinine would have none of that, nuh-uh, no way, not since that brownie recipe in his new cookbook made it apparent that throat stuff was dangerous.

Pincushion couldn’t find a grip, so he jabbed his pistol up at Asinine’s chin. It reeked of gun polish. “Asinine, call your shenanigans off. We have almost all of your media-named accomplices. Turn yourself in, and we’ll go easy.”

“Not a chance.” Asinine pried the pistol away from his chin, grappling against the arm. The pistol cut his skin, and an ouchie flared up. He needed a shave anyway. “Last time I turned myself in somewhere, I spent four hours trapped in a giant turkey baster.”

Pincushion kept that pistol against Asinine’s chin. “I have no clue what you do with your weekends.”

“After that turkey baster, neither do I.” Asinine took his opening. He thrust a knee into Pincushion’s groin, wagering that nothing in there was spiked because, if it were, Asinine would have serious questions about how this guy walked. Pincushion’s hands shot to his tenders, his pistol fell away, and he curled.

“Check what I found in the crocking evidence locker.” Multipurpose pierced the air with a sai clutched in a fat-swollen hand. He didn’t notice he held it backward. That was probably because his bratwurst fingers smothered it. His sweat-drenched knee buckled. He dropped the sai and sucked air. “Ninja muscles burning. Must have been that intensive workout last week.”

“Hot dogs aren’t free weights, eating-contest idol.” Schizophrenic dodged Power Plant’s uppercut but misread the second attack and suffered a smack to the eyebrow.

Pincushion backed away from Asinine and grabbed a discarded hand towel that had found its way out of the bathroom. He wrapped it around his right hand in thick strips. His covering complete, he challenged Asinine with his stance.

“Okay. Fistfight. Wrapping hands.” Asinine searched the room, checked a chair, examined the hall to the detainment deck, and almost hunted underneath Multipurpose because, if there was anything that deluded ninja couldn’t fit in his parachute-sized Speedos, Asinine’s world would shatter. Aha. He grabbed a steel tube from the floor and wrapped it around...wrapped it...wrap...Okay, no wrapping. He’d use it the old-fashioned way: beat anybody senseless, maybe one of his adversaries.

Asinine batted a test swing and accidentally conked Multipurpose in the knee. The ninja who doubled as a solar eclipse blurted a rough roar, spittle drooling out at the corners of his lips. “You swine turd, you bashed in my highest-kicking knee!”

Schizophrenic tumbled past, Power Plant wringing one of his throats and walloping the other with a fist. Lefty unwrapped Power Plant’s fingers and said, “Hey, Asinine didn’t inflict any more damage to your knee than you inflicted devouring that kiloton of couch stuffing. Crock, blondie, if I knew you’d fight like a granny, I would have put my hair in curlers for this.”

“I’s shows you who’s fight like Mabel.” Power Plant slapped Lefty across his unshaven cheek. He tried to gouge Lefty’s eyes, but his fingernails were clipped.

Pincushion rolled—shot up—parried forward with a punch—Asinine dodged left and swung right—tube glanced against a spike—Pincushion swung another fist—hit Asinine’s ear—Asinine uppercut him, stamped a foot over Pincushion’s toes—Pincushion doubled over—Asinine slammed elbows on—ah, ah, ah. Not so fast. Back spikes. He didn’t want to do anything rash since these were his two favorite elbows.

“Lieutenant, I’m winning this fight. Say something rhymey.”

“He’s prepping the starship for the trip home,” Punch said around his pipe, “and wrapping up the rest of lunch, as per your orders.”

“Hot dangety-dang. We’re eating leftover pâté and chicken bones the rest of the week.” Asinine could taste the rubbery cartilage already.

He swung the tube at Pincushion’s chin. Pincushion fell against the armory locker. Asinine smirked, examined the tube. Heh. He tapped it against Pincushion’s skull. The Good Guy didn’t budge. “Hey, if you won’t fight this one out, I’ll have to give somebody a concussion. Probably not me this time. Probably not.”

Pincushion didn’t even react. How rude.

Light panels blurted on in hissing concert. Life waved across the computer bank. The EMP’s effects on this barge had worn off. Asinine shielded his eyes from the shrill assault of light. He tripped, blundered backward, hit the computer bank, grappled for a handhold to keep from tumbling across a whole row of freaky blinky buttons. His hand skidded across a few, click-clacking them into beeping chicanery. Not good. His eyes followed the trail of lit buttons across the computer bank’s console.

“Warning, warning. Implosion imminent. Warning, warning.”

Pincushion had recovered, and his glower told Asinine this space barge now suffered a serious booboo. “Oh, fine time for the starship to regain power. Asinine, what did you hit?”

“A bunch of stuff. Num Lock maybe?”

Everyone stopped fighting. Sounds of the melee evaporated. Asinine scanned the frozen action. Master Asinine Sucks and the arrogant fire wielder stood in an arrested fistfight. That brawny, stretchy guy and Punch halted their karate kick/punch/face/block struggle. Bad Aim and that military chick stopped trading blows like cards at a magician’s swap meet. The Mechanism lookalike and Braindead were...okay, anybody’s guess, but Braindead had a datasheet up one nostril and out the other. Multipurpose had swatted at three Franchise duplicates, but he grunted and staggered into a side panel. The side panel gave way with a yelp. He struggled, then complained of a shoulder strain and just resigned to staying put. Appetite had eaten through to the thruster chamber, and apparently combustible fluids were now ingestible.

“You hit the manual-gravity regulator.” Pincushion ducked when the starship’s ceiling folded inward with a squeal like speaker feedback. “It’s built only to counter different air pressure. It has three fail-safes and settings Power Plant messed with, and you still found a way to botch it up.”

Asinine lunged forward with an accusatory finger. “My minimum is five fail-safes, and you know that. Besides, not my fault you put your mandible-gravity ragdoll on the dashboard. If it’s that important, make me work for it!”

“Design flaw, I admit!” Pincushion elbowed Asinine in the nose, which was no fair because this fight had switched from hitting mode to yelling mode, not back.

A cataclysm of rending metal coiled Asinine’s ear hairs. The left wing crimped through the wall like a jelly roll. The left side of the starship ransacked through to the center of the passenger deck, bulldozing Bad Aim and Stretcho aside. The access port was now a crumple of misshapen steel. Light panels snapped, shattered, sparkled to death.

“Great. Now I’ve got another Fission Mecca on my hands.” Pincushion ducked underneath a buckling support beam.

“What happened in Fission Mecca?” the Mechanism lookalike asked.

“I’m not allowed to say.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t want another Gretta City on my hands.”

The windshield collapsed like a giant cyclops blinking shut. Asinine pushed himself away from the computer bank. He bumped into Pincushion, who was as immobilized by the starship’s cave-in as he.

Pincushion pressed a palm against his shoulder to stop him. “You idiot.”

“Fine. Me idiot. There goes my plan of taking you all back to Station Zilcho to torture you with crossword puzzles and something my junior thugs call ‘actual torture.’”

“Oh, for Alaphus’s sake.” The military woman threw Bad Aim and his oily scales aside. Gashes in the hull now yawned shut, but she approached the siding with a glowing fist. Outlines of her fingers melded in the contrast of the glow cast against the enveloping darkness. The darkness shrank back, much like a cat slinking underneath a bed whenever Asinine used his kicks-and-giggles air horn.

The fist reached an eager climax. The woman sprang forward and blasted her knuckles into the wall. With a mushroom cloud erupting from her punch, the wall clapped apart. The starship keeled left and slipped off its last landing trestle.

She spun around, her fingers raw and red, and glared fiercely under the dying light panel above her. “Everyone. Get—the crock—out. Now.” The light panel gave its last ounce of life when the tears in the ceiling collapsed into it.

Crap. The drink machine in the back buckled and urinated fizz on itself. And Asinine was so thirsty. A claw of twisted thruster burst through the machine and ripped it in two.

Okay, he wasn’t that thirsty. Apparently Appetite was, though.

* * *

Through the starship’s new fissures, Pincushion smelled dusk air. He ushered Power Plant and the Franchises out a gap in the hull, then grabbed Organism to throw him through the peeled opening. Organism was too beefy to throw. Schizophrenic barged out the hole where the wing had crunched through the wall. Even Multipurpose—even Multipurpose—waddled out after him. Now only Pincushion, Incendiary, Plastique, Master Asinine Sucks, and Appetite remained. Appetite was busy eating through the engine. This gargoyle thing was one hungry crackpot.

Pincushion grabbed Plastique—“Get out, sister”—and shoved her—

“No.” She slapped her palm against the opening to brace her stumble and brought herself face-to-face with Pincushion. “Not until everyone’s safe.”

“No one’s safe if my theories about Power Plant and honey are true. Now...get out.”

“Field leader always exits first. Field leader’s manual section fourtee—”

“Oops.” Pincushion shoved a hand into Plastique’s shoulder blade. She spilled out, bickering numbers and sections and maybe a subsection or two. There went a paragraph. Everyone had at least one strange hobby.

Pincushion whirled around. Had everyone escaped? There stood Incendiary by a row of disintegrated chairs, Master Asinine Sucks in his gloved grip. To his side, Appetite. Pincushion scanned through the mission roster in his head. Everyone else was out. “Incendiary, time to leave.”

“One minute. I still haven’t drawn Jefftaria’s flag on this illegal alien’s face.”

“No. Now, brother!” Pincushion yelled. The starship rocked to the side. Pincushion bounced off the piloting computer and stumbled against the access port. He ducked and rolled out the wing’s opening onto cool dirt. The desert air tasted fresh. He unwrapped himself and slid against a boulder, lungs burning. “Incendiary, get out! Any minute now, that gravity regulator will start affecting things not a part of the starship.”

Incendiary finished slapping Master Asinine Sucks’s face...and the opening through which Pincushion had escaped caved. Incendiary disappeared in the time Pincushion took to gasp.

“Oh, piss.” Pincushion scrambled to the starship. The side panel became an accordion, as if a giant invisible hand squashed it. He pounded his fists against the panel—then jerked away when the canopy collapsed inward. Metal reverberated inside. Pincushion gripped the fold in the side panel to pry it open. Nothing doing. He shouldered the panel, gouged it with spikes, shouldered it again—

A muffled snap echoed out from the starship’s ruined roof. Pincushion teetered on the balls of his feet, knocking into the boulder behind him. He checked the navy blue skies...and a comet erupted from the starship and curved to the cliff’s edge. The comet was a Mechaknight suit holding a cowboy.

The starship issued a chomp whose drama Pincushion had only heard whenever Franchise participated in a watermelon fight. A lot of wasted melon and a lot of sticky pavement, but at least Power Plant had ranked him as grand champion two years running.

The starship’s remaining wing crunched up, slapped the starship’s flank, and molded around its curvature. The curvature didn’t last long, though, because the roof deteriorated like tomato skin in a fire. The landing trestle buckled. The nose cone inverted, caved, belched gears and sparks across the dirt.

The starship was a four-thousand-ton wreckage distorted into a bizarre pretzel the shape of Appetite, who scratched around inside, eating its way out. Try flooding now, engine. Actually, it probably was.

Great. Was Pincushion on the hook for this? Last year he’d misjudged his parking options and...well...who knew that was a handicap spot? Virillian symbols were impossible to decrypt. So were their parking tickets.

He cleared his face of the sweat made colder in the dusk wind. Regulated his breathing. Checked the area for something to lean on, but nothing looked comfortable in this craggy valley trail.

A fist sprouted in his vision and everything became stars and blackness.

* * *

Pincushion choked out a cough. Warm liquid trickled from his ear, his mouth, his nose. Had he bitten his tongue? Wouldn’t be the first time. Last time was when he’d hurried through a taste test of something departed Good Guy and chef wannabe Momentum had cooked. Momentum had called it shepherd’s pie, which didn’t deny the possibility that those mashed potatoes were actual shepherds.

Nighttime had fallen. The moon hung low enough to shimmer off charcoal rocks and immerse everything in a margarine glow. In the distance, maybe thirty yards away, Pincushion spotted Power Plant, Plastique, Organism, and Tolliver. Tolliver swatted Power Plant. Organism moved to intervene, but Tolliver cast a face that made him back away timidly. Pincushion couldn’t see the expression, but it must have been fiery hot. Not literally. Oh, wait. Literally now.

Pincushion would have to step in...but a crinkle at his ear stopped him. He swallowed. Ugh, not this.

“So this fight never ends, does it, brother?” Pincushion didn’t budge.

“Heh. Yeah, I’m like perpendicular motion.” Master Asinine drew back a step but kept his gun positioned at Pincushion.

“Perpendicular motion? You make less sense when you’re holding a gun. If that’s your paperclip gun, that’s proof enough.”

“Give me credit. It’s not the paperclip gun.” Asinine checked the side. “Oh, it is.” He slipped it into a holster and grabbed another from his pocket. “Aha. The light-bullet kind. Glad I brought it now. It was either this or the one that changes crabapples into apple crabs. Should have seen the hilarity at the orchard the other day.”

“Just get on with it.” Pincushion placed his hands behind his head. “Kill me with whatever crazy ammunition you loaded in there. I’m ready as long as it’s not fruit related.”

“Then sucks for you because I just double-checked the label on this gun.” Asinine reaimed. Pincushion felt the click of that gun scurry down his neck and nuzzle in his tailbone.

Pincushion wet his lips and swallowed. “Where are your cohorts?”

Asinine jerked his head at the Warbird above them and repositioned himself until he and Pincushion stood face to face, separated by a few feet. “We’re beating a retreat, so they’re waiting by our mil-tran. I got who I came for, and Master Asinine Sucks escaped your Mechaknight dude.” He paused, his lips moving in rehearsal, and then he said, “There’s no need to pursue this fight any longer.”

Pincushion watched Asinine’s brow twitch with tension. He pinched his response regulator to shoot himself with adrenaline, rid his brain of that insomniac fuzz. “Did Schizophrenic rehearse that line with you?”

Asinine broke into a guffawing grin. “Yeah. He told me he was sick of being around you filch heads, and if I kept this attack up, he’d decorate my stomach. Sounded awesome, but that look in his eye told me not to go for it.”

“That never stopped you before. Remember when he stuck you with acupuncture needles?”

Asinine nodded.

“Those were knitting needles.” Pincushion glanced at the other Good Guys. They remained in the distance. Tolliver held Power Plant in a headlock, polishing a boulder with his face.

“So, if you’re not keeping this fight up, why are we still here?” Pincushion sat on a rock.

“Figured I couldn’t go home empty-handed.” Asinine sat on a rock across the dirt trail, and they both stared at each other like opposing chess kings in a stalemate. The wind gasped.

Somehow Pincushion had to bluff his way out. He didn’t want to see Asinine’s Faberge brick collection. Fake some secret martial arts? Tee-off time was at nine? Come on, think. “You don’t want to capture me.”

“Oh?” Asinine rested his pistol on a knee. “And why not?”

“Nanotracking technology. Thanks to tiny beacons in my bloodstream, Legion can track me across the galaxy. Even if you shoot me, I guarantee I’ll splatter blood all over you. Legion will track your bloodstained armor straight into your egg-relay racetrack. Bloodstream beacons. All the cool militias are doing it.”

“Even the ones that use blowtorches?”

Pincushion shivered in the cold wind. “If you want to take me, go ahead. Kill me if you must. But even though IP is down by eighty-six percent, expect a full nuclear colonoscopy on your doorstep.” Would this work? If not, he’d have to prepare himself for Asinine’s brainwashing: strapped to an inertia bed, eyes pried open, watching home videos of Asinine’s most embarrassing sports bloopers. On the plus side, Asinine made cricket worthwhile.

Asinine tapped the pistol against his knee. He shifted his weight, boots crunching against the shallow gravel. Another ghostly breeze whisked through the dirt trail.

“Stink drats.” He shot to his feet and kicked the boulder on which he’d sat. “Stinking stink drats. Screw technology and its beacon stuff. I mean, sometimes technology’s cool and it gives us magnetism, but then sometimes it gives us bloodstream beacons.” He kicked the air so hard he almost flipped onto the ground. “And, for your information, we converted our racetrack into a salad spinner that operates on hand power.”

Master Asinine stomped across the trail and yanked Pincushion up by the shoulders. He threw Pincushion back against the boulder. If it were possible, Asinine’s eyes would have dimmed with blood. “You’re mine next time. Hear me?”

He sustained one final second of frustrated eye contact...and then released Pincushion. Pincushion toppled over the boulder and careened onto the dirt trail. When he twisted to his feet and hopped over the boulder, Asinine had already scaled up a thin trail etched into the cliff’s face.

Pincushion watched Asinine ascend with grunts and spidery steps until the Bad Guy leader reached the cliff’s head a few minutes later and disappeared. He sighed. Mission failed. The Bad Guys had escaped. The Good Guys’ ride home had imploded into a smoking wad of metal and plastic.

He had to gabber someone. Either he should contact Legion to have him deliver another starship, or the Good Guys would take public transportation home...whenever a mass-tran happened through this lonely python trail. Nope. He didn’t feel like enduring the public’s prejudgmental stares. Time to swallow his pride and call Legion. Swallow it along with the dust that caked his tongue. And out here what animal’s urine tasted like a glue stick?

* * *

The Warbird totally lifted off the ground. Amaranthia stared out the grimy porthole at the landscape that, like, revolved as the Warbird maneuvered itself. She watched the totally dusty ground do its rotate thingy and—

The Good Guys. Below. With Franchise! Her hands stamped onto the grody porthole that sweated condensation. Franchise totes didn’t see her, but even so, her heart skipped, like, a hundred beats. She’d meet with him on Saturday, though. They were so on for Saturday. Valentine’s. She shut her eyes, and Franchise appeared in her mind—

“Okay, everybody, the sooner we get home, the sooner we can enjoy some cement cereal,” Asinine said.

Holy crock. “Way to ruin the moment, gitch!” Amaranthia threw her hands up.

The starship totally shot out of the atmosphere like a javelin stabbing through the air.

“I’m serious. I stole seven boxes from Price Carnage, and it’s just going to set.”

Chapter Twenty: There’s an i in the Spanish Word for Team, So Suck It, Coach

Power Plant clomped off B-Comanche immediately after the access port’s l-door disintegrated into latent dust. And, no, he didn’t want the subscription to Tornado vs. Other Stuff that Station One’s haunt control offered, which meant he had to get his head checked because who wouldn’t want a subscription to a magazine involving intense weather patterns and what they do to anything in their paths?

“Hey, butt cork. Nobody tells me I’m a stupid head without getting the beating of a lifetime.” Tolliver smacked the wall next to the access port and threw his body forward down the ramp. “Come back here when I’m yelling at you.” The words were just fading screams to Power Plant, who faced that crockhat with his back.

Power Plant marched around the short dotted lines of three Fireballs until he reached a support pillar. He punched it. His knuckles flared hotly where he scratched up his skin on the mottled molding. Why did he keep hurting himself on support pillars whenever he felt angry, happy, excited, surprised, sad—

“Hey, I told you to get back here!”

—confused, hesitant, sleepy—

“Are you deaf, butt cork?”

Through the arrangement of starships, Power Plant watched Tolliver surge midway down the access ramp. Pincushion steered himself around the brute and held him back. Didn’t matter. Tolliver shoved him aside. Pincushion grabbed him, and Organism wrapped him in tendrils of plasticlike skin. Held back, he kicked and struggled. “You can’t stay away forever, butt cork!”

Franchise skittered around the disorder of people and hurried down the ramp. He hit the concrete of the hangar bay, running. Without missing a beat, he hopped over a power conduit and made it to Power Plant. He must have recognized that glint in Power Plant’s eye from all those times they played lethal tag, so he knew what was fuming behind that eye. The glowing fists were a good signal, too. Franchise took one of those fists and lowered it. He unwrapped the squeezed fingers but they clasped back together. “He’s not worth it. Come on. Let’s go prove your theory that anything is edible as long as you believe in yourself.”

“B-but he always sayin’s...always sayin’s...” Power Plant choked on a breath. He couldn’t keep his fists tight. His fingers just wouldn’t curl anymore. He slouched, and the energy he’d flexed into his hands fizzled out. The world went fuzzy. Hot tears stood in his eyes. He kicked something that had the shape of a toolbox but sounded like a tin can when it rattled against a servicebot.

“Yeah, I know.” Franchise wrapped him in a hug. Power Plant just stayed there, lived inside that embrace, buried his head in the dark of Franchise’s armpit and let everything spill out. “But what he says doesn’t count because he’s a douche bag.”

* * *

Clear on the opposite corner of the Fireball hangar bay from where B-Comanche had settled, Ace Spandex had watched the exchange. He saw Tolliver stamp his foot on the access ramp.

Ace had wandered away from those two deluded gatecrashers, Detritus and Wasted, and that has-been Catastrophe, who kept alluding to how much of a hotshot he was. Right now he studied himself in a mirror datasheet and finger-combed his eyebrows down. What had the universe come to?

Catastrophe tapped his shoulder. His thick, rounded voice chafed Ace’s ears. “Ace, Detritus and Wasted want to visit the recreation lockers for baseball bats, then return to the haunt control. Don’t know what the two locations have to do with each other.”

“Then remember all those magazine subscriptions and check the definition of retribution.” Ace still watched Power Plant and Franchise. They had sunk to the floor, and now Power Plant shuddered against his favorite walloping pillar. Ace brushed Catastrophe away as Franchise sat with Power Plant. “Take them there, and make them wear archery targets. I’ll be with you after I bone up on how to hold a bow.” He wandered off.

“We wear archery targets around here?” Catastrophe said.

* * *

“Entity Ace Spandex has arrived.” Janice clicked off. She didn’t sell Legion a magazine subscription because Ace had warned her he’d install Electronic Lawnmower, MD if it dared.

“Thanks, Janice,” Legion said before bopping his head for having used that name.

Mission in his steps, Ace Spandex sped through Legion’s office door and straight to his desk. He hadn’t even asked Legion for permission to enter or Luzimoss for permission to march over him.

Legion looked up from his pizza, his jaw working a clump of floury dough.

Ace didn’t sit. “I’ll be quick. First, you should take care of Luzimoss, because that won’t look good come your year-end review.” He’d pushed the words out so quickly he needed to wait for his oxygen chamber to refill. “Second, I’ll do it. Okay? I’ll do it.”

Legion swallowed and licked the flour from his teeth. “First, the pizza guy was no help. Second, come again?”

“I’ll be Jeff’s big brother as long as we never teach him about kerosene.”

“Deal.” Legion dusted flour from his hands. “What changed your mind?”

Ace Spandex was already on his way out. “It might have something to do with sunstroke. I haven’t been outside much today, but Catastrophe’s tanned enough to act as a light source.” He stepped through the door. “Excuse me, Luzimoss.”

Chapter Twenty-One: Like Bringing the Cat to the Vet’s

Master Asinine disembarked the Warbird that had landed with a whorl of dust and pebbles three minutes ago. Heh. Nothing like a good starship landing to scare those wimpy pebbles out of the way. He kicked one for good measure. His clown shoe squeaked, but it liked it.

He stepped to the edge of the cliff and examined the scene of today’s battle. Chewing and screams of metal trickled out of the gulley. Behind him, Lieutenant IQ 23’s boots ping-pinged down the access ramp. He joined Asinine at the cliff side. He hadn’t spat out one decent rhyme today, so he was on suspension. Literally: when they returned home, Master Asinine would rope IQ 23 sixty feet in the air. “Tee hee” didn’t even begin to describe Asinine’s elation. He had to be careful, though. If anything happened to IQ 23, who would iron Asinine’s socks? Their sock-ironing robot couldn’t exactly fix itself.

They stood side by side and stared down the cliff at the Good Guys’ starship debris below. Smelled like oil. “Well...let’s start climbing.”

Lieutenant IQ 23 swept a few strands of hair aside. He needed a cut, but the sock-ironing robot had ironed the haircut robot. “Sir, as I said, we should have landed on the cliff bed.”

“No amount of slick rhyming can weasel you out of suspension, Lieutenant.”

The descent took six minutes and a lot of bad footing. They’d found the same thin path Asinine had earlier followed to leave. The farther they descended, the louder that chewing became until it burrowed right between Asinine’s ears the same way the Squirm family in his tapeworm aquarium did.

The tang of oil was overpowering down here where Appetite sat, chewing on a pipe like it was a pork rib. Man, those Good Guys had strange ideas on how to prepare pork. Not as strange as Asinine’s ideas on how to prepare anything.

Asinine approached the gargoyle who never used a napkin whenever it splashed barbecue sauce, caustic acid, or caustic barbecue acid on its cheek. Hrmph. And here it was progressing onto a nose-cone bolt. Popped that into its slimy mouth without offering Asinine a bite. Worst—buffet—partner—ever.

“Okay, you grocery-store nightmare, time to get back home.” Asinine slipped a mango out of his pocket. In the last year and a half he’d owned this gargoyle, he’d somehow picked up on the fact that Appetite loved mangoes. Must have been the sweet aroma. That was how the Bad Guys kept this glutton from chewing apart their transports: they kept piles upon piles of the stuff aboard. And it ate them, fruit flies, poisonous stowaway spiders, and all.

Asinine whipped the mango around. Appetite lumbered onto its feet and swiped a paw at the fruit, but Asinine kept his game of keep-away alive.

“All right, let’s get home.” Asinine threw the mango up and—clunk. It landed on his head. Appetite shambled to the mango and pawed it. The fruit disappeared in one snorting gulp.

“Great. Now how do we lure him on board?” Asinine looked to IQ 23. He ignored Appetite padding his spiked helmet as if testing its shape to see how it would fit into a mouth. “Appetite, stop being so special.”

Lieutenant IQ 23 shrugged. “To get it on board of its own accord, we find a way without delay.” He offered a sheepish grin. “How’d I do?”

“Too little too late, Lieutenant. And stick to the ABAB rhyme scheme.”

Chapter Twenty-Two: You Discussed Salary, Didn’t You?

Tolliver swaggered into Legion’s office so loudly Legion immediately regretted summoning him. Janice apparently did, too, since it said, “Entity Burnout has arrived. You should get your head checked in the psychic booth at the Fallowbridge Fair, on Gaia until February sixteenth.”

Legion waited until Tolliver dropped into the l-chair directly in front of the datasheet-littered desk. Tolliver propped his heels on the desk, an action that caused a bleep when the computer embedded in the desk’s surface thought he wanted to delete all employee payroll records. “So, did you catch that action out there? The news was all over it. I saved the day. I’m the next hottest thing. How’s that for perfection?” Tolliver was the next hottest thing only because IP had told the media to highlight his contributions. According to Pincushion, he’d antagonized everyone and broken a cupholder.

Legion waited a beat or two. The air conditioner whistled on, and whatever pigeons had stowed away in the vents let loose a chaos of squeaks. They fluttered away. Time to have a talk with the zoo IP contracted to Station One.

Legion said, “About today’s mission—”

“You know the greatest thing about hiring me? I mean, aside from me.” Tolliver swiped his heels off Legion’s desk. A few datasheets went with them, but he didn’t bother to retrieve them from the carpet. “That deal with IP. You receive forty thousand extra moolahs just for having me on this team. So now’s a good time to renegotiate my contract. Anything to drink in this crockhole office?”

Legion barely opened his sneering lips. “Bottled water and pigeon blood.”

“Frigging disgrace.” Tolliver draped an arm over the chair’s back and propped his boots on the upholstery. “Anyway, I’m thinking a thirty-thousand-a-year raise. Weekly massage. Extra time at the gym. Four weeks of vacation.” He rubbed his chin. “Access to the company civ-tran—”

“We have a company civ-tran? I just assumed that remote control pick-up truck with the butane rockets was what IP was referencing in their invoices.”

“You’re a humiliation. You even following this conversation? Command the haunt control to take notes.”

Legion felt something like a blissful buzz tingle in his cheeks. Ohhhh, he’d enjoy this. “How about I fire you...and I don’t tell IP you endangered the mission and almost outright handed over one of our own? How’s that sound?”

Tolliver burst forward on his chair. “You serious, butt cork?”

“As serious as Lowensland is about pizza bagels.”

“We just blew up the Smithereens Memorial Starship. He woulda wanted it that way.”

“Oh, so we should set fire to the Burnout Memorial Starship?”

“Intergalactic Protection stuck me with you chumps because you screw-holed this team into the ground. I’m your best bet for a fresh public image. With that bonus, you can get rid of this l-tech. You fire me, bye-bye bonus. And you’ll live with l-tech forever.”

“That I can live with. When my office door disappeared, I almost didn’t feel the inkling to duck for cover behind a steel curtain.” Legion shifted his jaw. “What I can’t live with is what you’re doing to this team, what you’re doing to Power Plant.”

“It all comes down to that butt cork? He’s not even worth my pinkie toe.”

“You’ll never be half the butt cork he is. And I think you’d better leave.” Legion slammed his fist onto the desktop. Bleep. “Before I make you.” Hopefully Tolliver would listen soon because Legion needed to undo the command that was erasing the rest of the payroll records.

Tolliver’s face flushed crimson. He stood, not with a spurt but slowly, as if he gauged his time. “You—”

“I have no idea who I’m dealing with? I’ll pay for this? I’m making a big mistake? I’ll pick a cliché later.” Legion stood, too, and stamped around the desk until he and Tolliver were chest to chest. Give or take, at least. Legion wished he had a milk crate to stand on, but he assumed his point was made. “I’m correcting that mistake. You know where the door is. You have forty-five minutes to grab your stuff and leave before I unlist you from Janice and she assumes you’re a hostile entity.”

Tolliver stared down at him. He clutched his fingers to his palms so tightly his bones creaked.

“Forty-four minutes and fifty seconds. I promise you a medicine ball attack is worse than it sounds.”

Tolliver didn’t budge. He spoke from his throat. “I’ll make an image for myself on my own. The media name Burnout already has a market. I’ll make my sponsors so much money you’ll beg to have me back on your team. Give it a month.”

“The Good Guys own the media name Burnout. If you use it, we’ll nail you to the wall for copyright infringement.”

“You’ll regret everything, butt cork.” Tolliver moved slowly, but Legion saw the rage locking his joints in a stuttered stride. He made his way to the door—

“Forty-four minutes. And that butt cork Power Plant?” Legion fought the urge to spit at Tolliver. “He’s worth ten of you.”

Tolliver interrupted his enraged tromp. He tossed a heated glare over his shoulder, maintained it a moment, and left.

A blast of pigeon feathers jetted from the vent, and a tinny squawk erupted.

“Janice, acknowledge. Summon either animal control or animal disposal to my office. At this point, I’m not sure which I need.”

Chapter Twenty-Three: End of a Long Day

Power Plant slammed open the door to his and Franchise’s living quarters and—Wait. The door was l-tech. Okay, he slammed open the door in his head. So what? Screw it. He decided he’d slam his fist into the doo—Oh, crock. That hurt a whole twelve on a scale to eight or nine or forty. Why...why...why did he make as much sense as a kids menu at a casino?

That crocker Tolliver! Took Mark’s media name, called Mark a butt cork. Power Plant couldn’t stand that scum bucket any longer. His hand shot out, and it flashed, and a light panel no longer existed. Good thing Franchise wasn’t around ’cause that panel was his.

Crock Tolliver. Crock the Good Guys for hiring Tolliver. Crock the whole lot of everyone! He obliterated another light panel, which left only one.

Power Plant clenched back the tears. His cheeks felt like stone tablets. “Control, ’nowledge. Open dat closet over theres.” He seethed to his closet door. Yanked his backpack out. Hurled it onto his bed. Tore open a dresser drawer. Poured clothes in.

Crock this. If the Good Guys were gonna keep that scumbag Tolliver around...

And another drawer. Then the next. His action figure of Burnout—the real Burnout—landed on top of the anarchy of clothes.

...then Power Plant was outta here.

His backpack full, he barreled to the door of his living quarters. In his head, he slammed it shut again. He punched the wall, which left a scorch mark. That had never happened before, but he was macked this time. And so what?

Good riddance.

THE END

NEXT BOOK:

Scapegoat’s hot new rap single goes triple platinum.

About That Guy Whose Book You Read Once

Liam Gibbs knew he was destined to write at age four, when he authored a breathtaking account of a cow who ate grass. The bovine saga failed to catch the public’s eye but earned the budding author parental acclaim. Since those early times, he’s gone on to write the novella Not So Superpowered and humorous articles for various magazines.

A twenty-year veteran of the brutal world of hand-to-hand comic book fandom, Gibbs cut his teenage teeth on titles such as Spider-Man, X-Men, New Warriors, and other Marvel comics.

Gibbs graduated college with a degree in professional writing, which included classes on fiction writing and story structure. He lives on the balmy shores of Ottawa, Canada, where he relaxes by watching staggeringly awful horror and science fiction movies. A health and fitness nut, he shoots lasers from his eyes, uses the word exclusive incorrectly, and once wrestled an exclusive brontosaurus. True story.

That one time I was deep in thought and—Hey, is that ketchup on the ceiling?

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Communicate via homing pigeon at chirp-twiddle-twoo or whatever pigeons say.

Table of Contents

The Story So Far...

Available on the Author’s Super-Awesome Site

Other Stuff the Author Spewed Out

Your Favorite Table of Contents

Book 15: Our New Hiring Policy

Appendices

Chapter One: Apply Within

Chapter Two: Class Is in Session

Chapter Three: The Best Laid Plans

Chapter Four: Makes the Same Sound Falling Over as Your Skull Does

Chapter Five: Makeover

Chapter Six: This Conversation Worked Better in Front of the Mirror This Morning

Chapter Seven: Crash Course in Course Crashing

Chapter Eight: Apply Within because We Don’t Take Resumes Nailed to the Door

Chapter Nine: The New Guy’s Sort of a Douche

Chapter Ten: Never Discuss Salary

Chapter Eleven: Power Struggle

Chapter Twelve: Boozer Friendly

Chapter Thirteen: Office Romances

Chapter Fourteen: Delirium at Its Finest

Chapter Fifteen: Everything but Good Housekeeping

Chapter Sixteen: Yabba Dabba Don’t

Chapter Seventeen: Just a Dip

Chapter Eighteen: Still Riding the Short Bus off the Short Pier

Chapter Nineteen: Warranty Voided

Chapter Twenty: There’s an i in the Spanish Word for Team, So Suck It, Coach

Chapter Twenty-One: Like Bringing the Cat to the Vet’s

Chapter Twenty-Two: You Discussed Salary, Didn’t You?

Chapter Twenty-Three: End of a Long Day

About That Guy Whose Book You Read Once