In a Galaxy Far, Far AwRy

Book 7: The Lesser of Two Egos

Liam Gibbs

IN A GALAXY FAR, FAR AWRY book 7: THE LESSER OF TWO EGOS

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: 978-1777139605

First printing: April 2021

{ PLOT DEVICE PUBLISHING }

Your Favorite Table of Contents

At the Front

Other Books in the Series

Book 7: The Lesser of Two Egos

Chapter One: And the Man Leading the Venture Was No More than a Babbling Narcissist

Chapter Two: Power Struggle

Chapter Three: Can't Work with 'Em, Can't Work without 'Em

Chapter Four: Computer Hacker's Hack Job

Chapter Five: Too Little Too Late Too Often

Chapter Six: Like Yoda with Shuffled Flashcards

Chapter Seven: Oh, Crappy Day

Chapter Eight: Thinking in the Shallow End

Chapter Nine: Behind Closed L‑Doors

Chapter Ten: Bomb Cakes Are Chocolate...and Your Favorite

Chapter Eleven: Not Invited

Chapter Twelve: Everyone Loves a Good Golf Joke

Chapter Thirteen: What Now?

Chapter Fourteen: Call and Collect

Chapter Fifteen: The Best Defense Is a Good Offense

Chapter Sixteen: Qualm and a Bomb

Chapter Seventeen: And Now with the Pleasantries Over...

Chapter Eighteen: My Ride Is Here, Yours Isn't Coming

Chapter Nineteen: Back in Business

At the Back

About That Guy Whose Book You Read Once

Connect with the Series

This Isn't Even My Final Form!

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

For cool reasons.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Enjoy!

Or don't. I really have no control.

Available on the Author's Super-Awesome Site

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

Book 1: Serial Fiction Sideshow

Book 2: Home Sweet Home Invasion

Book 3: Technophobia

Book 4: Armageddon Trigger Finger

Book 5: The Genetic Equation

Book 6: Power Tool

Book 7: The Lesser of Two Egos

Book 8: Untitled of Attitude Adjustments

Book 9: Those We Left Behind

Book 10: Metaphor for Life

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

Book 12: His Kingdom Come

Book 13: A Wolf in Sheep's Armor

Book 14: Man Versus Machine Part 1 of 1

Book 15: Our New Hiring Policy

Book 16: Life like Broken Glass

Book 17: The Church of Steeple

Book 18: Blood Bunny

Book 19: Disease of Behavior

Book 20: The Paper Tiger's Yardstick

Book 21: This One Has a Dancing Gibbon

Book 22: My Brother's Captor

Book 23: Marching Orders

Book 24: To Wake the Deactivated

The Story So Far

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

Other Stuff the Author Spewed Out

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

Not So Superpowered, available at tiny.cc/nssuperpowered

Three Flash Fictions, available upon request from the author

Random limericks, available in bathroom stalls

In a Galaxy Far, Far AwRy

Book 7: The Lesser of Two Egos

Chapter One: And the Man Leading the Venture Was No More than a Babbling Narcissist

December 24, 9109. 7:10 a.m. (Galactic Standard Time).

Destruction. Cold, calculated, universe-spanning destruction. Taricoss Kyril loved destruction. Especially the calculated kind, because the word exuded a lust for chaos. And he was planning so much of it.

And maybe some small-time gambling. He needed to make time for his hobbies.

"Destruction, everyone. Cold, calculated, universe-spanning destruction," Kyril said. Wait. Hadn't he already gone over that? Cold, calculated—Ah, whatever.

In this meeting room aboard The Nemesis, this titan-class starship, Kyril had gathered the heads of the six most lucrative crime gangs in Renovodomus. Gathered, collected, assembled. His eyes crept across the other leaders who held such disdain, such scorn, that during this meeting he felt unsure he could restrain them. But Togron's spinach dip helped. He scooped a dollop into another tortilla chip. Tasty, scrumptious, mouthwatering. His doctor said he was allergic to glycerol, but whatever. He splurged at gangland meetings.

"Everyone, I have a proposition of such magnitude that your brains will reel from its mere description. Especially yours, Bob." He grinned, smirked, beamed.

"Control, acknowledge, begin timer, start at four minutes," he said, addressing the starship's voice-command software, so-called because it automated locations seamlessly enough that they seemed haunted. A holographic clock sprang from nowhere and hovered immediately above the table at which everyone but him sat. Four minutes showed on its full-circle display, which began ticking down. "Everyone, you have four minutes to consider my proposition, my plan, my scheme."

He wiped a splotch of spinach dip from his cheek and limped around the table. That limp. Blasted light-bullet lodged into his kneecap years ago. Stung, pricked, needled. The tattoo that covered it didn't help.

Tattoos littered his pink and green skin. Gun sights overlaid bullet scars where he'd gotten shot: once on the shoulder, once on the knee, twice in the gut, and once in the forehead. Slash-mark tattoos crossed his body to represent stab wounds. Trophies of survival.

He swept calloused fingers over the table's mottled surface. Amaranthia, his red-clad ninja, followed at such a plodding distance that backstabbers or panhandlers could accost him without Amaranthia even being within eyesight. Kryil remained clueless why she followed so distantly. Wherever he went, she treated him like a Black Plague–diseased rat at a Pied Piper march.

Kyril had gathered the six biggest leaders of the biggest crime gangs...after that insipid Lowensland had filched the previous biggest six. And, though a mutual goal had collected these leaders, they lashed scorn at each other when eyes met. Hostile, enraged, antagonistic. Like heatseeking missiles in their irises. Heatseeking irises. Heatrises? Hir—He'd wandered off track.

Kyril belonged to a rare Trioxidillian/Terran crossbreed. His jet-black hair grew unevenly, spottily, erratically because of his Trioxidillian's hairless genes battling his hairy Terran ones for dominance. To hide its patchwork, he'd slicked it back but had used so much gel today it had formed a helmet. He hated comb-overs.

Amaranthia sighed behind him. As stealthy as a cat and trained in the deadliest forms of combat, she exuded an intimidation felt by anyone within striking distance. The five-foot ninja stalked like a night predator, knowing exactly how to slaughter her prey with lethal precision—

"What are you, like, staring at, you gitch?" Amaranthia sneered at Kyril from the side table where sat the leaders' guns. "You're totally giving me a creepy vibe? Geez?"

Ah, who was Kyril kidding? She was a high school airhead. She cloaked herself in only the reddest and most fashionable gear. And the strongest perfumes. Not fitting for a supposedly invisible assassin. And she spent way too much time in front of a mirror where she shaped the hair she always concealed under her fabric headgear. And proper assassins shouldn't speak as if asking questions all the time. Stupid rising intonations. She'd seem tolerable if she spent less time worrying about boys and makeup. At least she'd left her jangling jewelry at home.

The leaders watched Kyril close another limping lap around the table. He noted the hanging image still of himself tackling a shark. He deserved to show that off. His victories were well earned.

After Lowensland—well, Master Asinine now—had unceremoniously killed his coconspirators in a bid for sole control, the leaders collected here represented what remained of the powerful crime gangs like stale holiday leftovers. The unwanted stuff. Fruitcake or turkey neck. Still, they represented the nastiest remainders: Kyril led the Marmassat clan, McDougall led the Warhorse clan, Togron led the Larris clan, Bob led the Gaghris clan, Cravinia led the Legionnaires clan, and Stabber led the Stab-Stab-Stab clan. Praglink, leader of the Riggella clan, had been invited, but he was busy practicing for an eye exam.

Kyril interpreted signs of emotion on the leaders' mug-shot expressions as though they were featured on tawdry celebrity gossip rags that were three-quarters full of advertisements. He chugged phlegm up his throat. "Gentlemen"—he nodded at the gray-skinned Cravinia—"and lady, though I still can't understand why you maintain that charade, you sledgehammer-jawed golem—we've put up with Asinine's crock long enough. Put up with his farcical crime gang. Put up with his public airings of that time he bludgeoned McDougall with a cricket bat even though we all know he's an air hockey fan. You see, now is the time to stop all that putting up with. The putting up with of him."

Kyril's pacing drew him to Cravinia, a member of the Logistican race, who knocked her nonsevered hand into his chest. "An inferior chooses to seek audience with a Logistican? Worlds will tear asunder, species will cease to exist." Her fortress-built physique almost bulled into Kyril. Her attitude declared, "Waste not my time." Her masculine bulk declared, "I inject myself with chemicals I should stay away from."

Amaranthia tried to pass her, but she blocked the ninja's path. Amaranthia gave an intolerant huff. "Stop being, like, such a total stooge?" She pulled a throwing star out of her cardinal-colored Gavino leather purse and exhibited it to Cravinia. Obsessed with name-brand products. Even her sword hung across her back in a maroon Kaliod's sheath. And if she once more mentioned her upcoming prom, Kyril would ring her obsessively True Skin–moisturized neck.

Cravinia begrudgingly sank into her chair, as Kyril stopped pacing, stood still, halted. He glanced at the others, all who had remained silent so far except McDougall, whose ravenous lip-smacking enveloped another haggis cracker. His plaid-stained beard never stopped bobbing. All that getup was a con: the goon was only one sixty-forth Scottish. "Everyone, the crime syndicates represented here today have tried for months to best the Bad Guys, but they have tried alone. Foolish, inadvisable, unwise. Here, today, aboard The Nemesis, I will create history. And not the kind of history that meanders around and people read about it and say, 'Oh, what a nice bit of history,' but the kind of history that kicks you in the tenders and makes no apologies."

"Being kicked in the tenders hurts, man." Bob, the gaunt Terran with frizzled hair, Bermuda shorts, and a constant blank expression, threw a hand into the air.

Lips around the table scowled at each other, teeth bared. Cravinia sizzled as if she wanted to spit bile at Kyril. "What arrogance for suggesting a superior such as me can be kicked in the tenders. The dead shall rise and eat the flesh of the living for such a comment." Uppity, unfriendly, antisocial. She also probably found shaving her back difficult.

Stabber engraved slits along his scarred Haralsian arms. Ultramarine slice marks showed on his teal wrists. The funny thing was he wasn't using a knife but a ridiculously long and yellowed fingernail.

"Dude, whoa, I think clouds are ambushin' your head." Bob leaned forward, gazing hypnotically with vein-cracked eyes. He pointed at Kyril but then became fixated on his own pale finger and waved it around loosely, giggling.

"Bob, shut up. And wear socks for once." Kyril resumed his shambling, his squared-off fingers scratching against his five-o'clock shadow. He didn't know if Amaranthia even followed. Or paid attention.

Phlegm built up in his throat again, but he spoke through it. "I'm here to suggest something you'll all find appealing. I've thought this through, scheming to unify us, to end our petty feud, to bring harmony among us. And, if you don't like it, I'm doing it, anyway, so crock off."

He spun at them, which caused Togron to lurch awkwardly for his firearm without using elbows. Togron's dry skin dusted the table in flakes. Bob stamped back with a peeling sandal and, in his drugged stupor, blurted something about feeling sound itself.

"If I may be so bold, gentlemen and pseudo-lady, I suggest this." He poked a finger into the air. "I would like our six crime families to merge into one." He cocked his head to Amaranthia. "How am—" Where was she? "Amaranthia, stop primping your hair. My back needs watching. Someone could backstab it...in the back."

Amaranthia haughtily rolled her eyes and tore herself away from her compact. With a hand, she puffed her exposed strawberry hair. "Well, duh, you grump? It's 'cause you're, like, such a total yawn?"

"This is foolish!" Cravinia opened her mouth so widely Kyril wondered if she were attempting to swallow his head. Her battle-tank build ballooned when she clouted the table with her remaining fist. She tensed her fingers on the table as if to throw it over. "Why should a Logistican such as me involve herself with you and your ridiculous alliance?"

"Because it offers you the chance to use deodorant. Just a suggestion.

"Think about this. Even you, Bob." Kyril whacked Bob across a pale cheek to rouse him. Futile, useless, fun. He slapped again.

Bob reeled back with a ventriloquist dummy's stare. "Whoa. I see motion."

"And it sees you. Imagine, everyone. Asinine has for too long been the laughingstock of the underworld, not only for his terrible obsession with Girl Pop Goregantua's last album. Yet, despite his idiocy, we still haven't crushed him. But guess what?"

Stabber knifed the air with a pastel blue arm. "We're smarter than he is!"

"We're s—" He leered at Stabber. "I didn't mean literally guess. Anyway, united, we won't be pinned under Asinine's oversized and ignorant thumb. Together, we will destroy him and his Bad Guy circus show. And perhaps his magic show, too. He had the army. He had the power. But a three-man crash-land-and-assault job on his space station in October dwindled his army to a fraction of their numbers. Last week, his space station's power core was destroyed, hurtling the station into parts unknown." Kyril smacked his fist into his palm. "Unknown until now. Bob here"—he indicated Bob, who twiddled his forefingers in front of his face and poked his eye—"has discovered the surveyors at the Magellan Station have plotted Asinine's station's trajectory. They know where it is and where it will be. Therefore, so will we. The Bad Guys are in a bad spot, everybody. Powerless, undermanned...located. Bob, as high as a kite, knows the entry codes Asinine typically uses to allow people to list themselves in the haunt-control software he installs. Bob was one of Asinine's Mikazin underlings until, three years ago, Asinine threw him out for eating all the brownies."

"Who knew they were regular brownies?" Bob's bewildered voice cracked.

Kyril's vision glazed in reverie. "Our time is now. Asinine will pay for not including me in his alliance." He cleared the daze from his brain. "Uh, I mean, us. For not including us. This starship, The Nemesis, will be our headquarters."

With a growl, McDougall shifted his weight. His sporran jingled. It always jingled. His mouth opened and spilled out a wad of haggis and bread. "Ye bloomin' numpty, why would we use this midden vessel as our headquarters? It's got a screamin' rooster noggin on its bow. Would look better wit' a wee mermaid." He guffawed and looked around at the others, spraying haggis like a lawn sprinkler.

Kyril rapped a hand across his sporran. "I stole The Nemesis from that fried-chicken outfit, Tarred, Feathered, and Served. We just never removed the head." He pictured the metal rooster head that surrounded The Nemesis's cockpit area. He'd remove that stupid decoration one day.

"Aboot ye new amalgamation." McDougall stuffed another haggis hoagie into his crowded mouth and tipped his plaid sunglasses. "What do ye plan on namin' us?"

"Heh. A media name that strikes panic into the hearts of all who hear it: the Clan of Foul Wind Clan. Whoops. Wait, forget that last 'clan'—"

"The Clan of Foul Wind Clan?" Cravinia scoffed, the tectonic plates of her masculine abs quaking along their fault lines. "An inferior such as you will lead to the destruction of the known universe with such epic nonsense."

"Only one 'clan,' not two—"

In a shrill voice that sounded laced with helium, Togron tried the name on his orange, brittle lips. "The Clan of Foul Wind Clan." His voice creaked like two Styrofoam bricks rubbing together. "That media name sounds like a Boggle mishap. And, pray tell, what is your proposed plan to do away with the Bad Guys?"

"A plan? Already in place, in motion, initiated. I introduce to you Amaranthia, my assassin. Well, not my assassin. She's the assassin I hired. I mean..."

"Whatever, you gitch?" Amaranthia sassed. "Duh. If you're gonna lead crime..." She gave a snooty nod as airy as the bubblegum that stretched from her mouth and twisted around her index finger like a ring. Stomach coiling, spine twisting, intestine clenching.

Togron's lanky body leaned back against his chair. "Might I remind you that, when we defeat Asinine, the Good Guys will willingly replace him as our foes."

Kyril winked. "Amaranthia has been instructed to infiltrate both the Bad Guys' and Good Guys' space stations to abduct their leaders, Asinine and Legion. Left leaderless, those two factions won't stand against our clan of foul wind. Not that their paltry numbers can endure our immense army, but their hyperpeople might be a threat."

"And if I refuse your substandard proposition?" Cravinia said. "What then?"

"By refusing my substandard proposition, you will remain part of the opposition." Hey, that rhymed. "And in organized crime, like in organized business, opposition is crushed under my contemptuous heel." He stamped the steel floor and ground his heal on—crunch. He lifted his foot. Whoops. Cockroach. Wrong place, wrong time, little guy.

"Everyone, by the end of the day, we will destroy Asinine. And, with Asinine, we will destroy the Bad Guys themselves."

Togron raised a hand. "By the end of the day? Is that not a little—"

Kyril's timer dinged. Time had run out. Excellent, outstanding, superb. "Four minutes. Your thinking time has expired. Bob, begin the healing.

"So, everyone, do we have a deal?" He let his words sink in like a hook in the mouth of a lion. A monster hook, mind you, but the hook analogy fit like a round hole in a square peg. Or the other way around. Whatever.

Chapter Two: Power Struggle

"That's the last time I let Luzimoss near this thing, which is likely since he's dead."

Bad Guy honcho Master Asinine regarded the emptied husk that, less than two weeks ago, had served as the power core to their headquarters, Station Zilcho. And his business mumbo jumbo hadn't helped at all. Time to drop that sham like a bad habit. Ah well. Brick had kept mentioning Asinine should have built redundancy into the station's power system, but everything Brick said was redundant.

The station's power core was now peeling metal whose base curled out like clutching fingers locked in a grasp for survival. It once had towered high in a shanty that reached almost sixty feet. Now, with its shrapnel littering the night-lit street, it reached a foot off the ground. The shanty that had housed it was obliterated. Luzimoss had somehow rigged the power core to overload, which had detonated the electricity juggernaut. Things had since worsened because Appetite had stopped by a few times for a snack.

Only two wires now remained plugged in, trying to feed machines they no longer powered. They snapped like drifters fighting over discarded scraps of angel food cake. The wires floundered with each surge, scraping the ground with famished teeth. And now Asinine had angel food cake on the brain.

Asinine usually felt cool wind whipping around him, but, with everything dead, the station was warm and muggy. Even with the power down, the atmospheric bubble at least remained in its tangible state. The Asinine-friendly atmosphere would otherwise have escaped, killing Asinine. No good from a living standpoint.

Scapegoat scuttled somewhere behind Asinine and blabbered who knew what in who knew what language. Braindead stood to Asinine's left and, to his right, Lieutenant IQ 23, who flanked him as always to guard against those overenthusiastic pats on the back Schizophrenic gave him whenever they stood at the edge of a cliff.

Bad Guy science nerd Brick assessed the situation before him and exhaled with frowning lip and fingers to forehead. He appraised the chances of salvaging the power core. Asinine had allowed the brick-coated building-of-a-person to tag along as long as he kept his chimney flue shut. Wishful thinking.

"Well, there goes our paddleball tournament. And our atomic toilets." Crisply, Asinine stood at attention over the core and chopped a salute. "To you, destroyed power core, and the amusing way you made our toilets flush. And swallow my cherry bombs. Ah, my favorite version of a water fountain."

"Without those watery explosions, nothing's been the same, sir. Unfortunately, I don't think there's any way to salvage this power core." Lieutenant IQ 23 showed pity for the core that had given them so many days of joy, so many moments of happiness, so many jolts whenever Asinine licked an electricity panel. So tasty. Or so the stimulation to his brain thought.

Scapegoat passed behind them, scratching at the air. "Flushing good toilet atomic go, yes yes." Sounded as if his grammar had gone toilet atomic.

Like snakes spitting venom, the power core's wires attacked again. The sparks that snapped from those determined wires provided the only light aside from stars above.

"Alas, poor power core." Asinine bent down—

"Sir, rubbing the two wires together won't generate anything but frustration." Lieutenant IQ 23 eased a comforting hand onto Asinine's shoulder.

"I know. I just...wanted to taste it one last time." He straightened his back. "Well, TGIF, then. Lieutenant, what do you suggest we do with our weekend?"

"Well, sir, it's Boxing Day Eve Eve and we have been talking about a group snowshoeing vacation."

"For talked time about vaca-snowshoeing-tion, yes yes."

"Oh, come on!" Asinine leveled a furious glower at Scapegoat. "Splitting words up now? Have you sunk that low? Now you're worse at communicating than he is." Asinine thrust a finger at Brick but still addressed Scapegoat. "And why in whatever-his-name-is's name are you wearing my power costume?"

Indeed, Scapegoat wore Asinine's spiked maroon helmet, jingly shoulder pads, and saffron-and-green body suit. He'd probably stolen Asinine's bunny-rabbit boxers, too.

"He's wearing it because you said it was part of an elaborate plan," Lieutenant IQ 23 said.

"Part of what plan?"

Lieutenant IQ 23's shrug might as well have been an uncertain headshake. "A new dental plan? You said you came up with something last night, then promptly decided to forget it."

"Well, that doesn't do me any good now."

Brick spread his broad fingers. "Mr. Asinine, might we reexamine the quandary more peremptory of our dilemma? I have evaluated the quagmire to which mischance has expatriated our throng. I bemoan to inform you of our hazardous juncture." He lowered his hands to his sides, producing the sound of buildings tipping into each other.

"Brick, stop padding your gobbledygook like a public relations goon." Couldn't Brick keep his mouth shut for one month? Asinine's hand snapped for his pistol. Ending Brick's life would take only one shot, one single shot. Oh, wait...and proper aim. That last thought stifled his spirit. Curse you, lack of skill.

Brick scraped forward. "But, Mr. Asinine—"

Asinine swung around at Brick, almost ramming into that brownstone building's penthouse apartment. "Look here. Unlike you, I can't fit huge words like hazardous into my head, especially lengthwise. They explode my skull. And I don't like when my skull explodes. You know why? Because then my brain explodes, too. And that's not sanitary. As punishment, you owe me a whale. And not one of those lazy humpback one. A killer whale. One that's a trained assassin."

Lieutenant IQ 23 raised a hand. "Actually, sir, you do know hazardous. It's printed on a lot of your food labels."

"Label food lot of printed on, yes yes."

Asinine gawked at Scapegoat. "You mean the total opposite of yes yes: no no. You know what, Scapegoat? I've decided on a decision, and that decision is this whole blown power core thing is your fault."

Brick flicked a finger at the power core. It sparked back, but Brick's thick hide insulated him against the spark, much like his thick head insulated him against the effects of his own ginormous words. "Mr. Asinine, employ sagacity. Take cognizance of my admonition, for it is of topmost importunateness."

Asinine could just shoot himself. "Enough with making your words go toilet atomic. If it'll shut you up, I'll cognicize your admonition all over the place. But once my head explodes all over your face, you'll be sorry, because some will spray into your mouth. And my mind is a terrible thing to taste."

"Sir, I believe several zombies would disagree with you on that."

"Thank you for the compliment, Lieutenant. And sign yourself up for some new teeth. We apparently have a dental plan now."

Brick indicated the aluminum-scented remains of the power core. "Mr. Asinine, the machine that circulates our power has been exterminated. Not only have we a famine of electrical power we can no longer allot to offensive pursuits, but we also have none to function as resistance against interlopers."

"And for the translation?" Asinine faced IQ 23.

"Interlopers function we resistance apportion against none pursuits, yes yes." Scapegoat finished another lap.

"Not that translation. A real one. One that transes the lation. Lieutenant, trans the lation."

"Brick said our station is defenseless, sir. Even the Braindead jack-in-the-box won't operate without something to trigger the springboard."

"Oh, man." No Braindead-in-the-box? The realization hit Asinine like a ton of Brick. Who knew that electrical cord meant it used power? Asinine had to sit but couldn't find a latent-technology chair, maybe because the lack of power kept the station from summoning any l-tech objects from computer memory that it had previously stored. He almost staggered into the ruined power core, but those snaky wires kept him away with a thrashing bite. "And Braindead is the only one who doesn't complain about smashing headlong into battleships. Unless Scapegoat isn't complaining. Who can understand anything he babbles about? Brick, what do you sug—" Bad move. "Lieutenant, what does Brick suggest?"

Lieutenant IQ 23 looked at Brick. "Brick, what do you suggest?"

"Well parroted, Lieutenant."

"Mr. Asinine, I conjecture that we have one remaining prospect. We boast satisfactory power remaining in our space vessels to undertake a move to acquire more energy. Our throng would fare no better than to appropriate additional power cores." Wow. That gibberish would be hellish to keep straight in a game of telephone.

Hands to his hips, Asinine nudged a sliver of shrapnel with a boot. "And having AC/DC perform 'High Voltage' won't work, I suppose."

"It would work as effectively as when we played 'Shake Your Foundations' to bring down the main lobby at Station One, sir. And the members of AC/DC are dead."

"In that case, we need power from an external source. Take this note, Lieutenant: Schizophrenic shall appropriate several hundred cases of PowerChug sports drinks. We'll juice this station up in no time flat."

"Let me remind you, sir, that simply because a product contains the word power in its name doesn't mean it can power the station. And that drink is pure sugar."

"Too bad, because I already sent Schizophrenic on a drink run. He's bringing back Man-Gore Mango." In Asinine's mind, he could already taste the juicy carnage.

"Your favorite flavor, sir."

"Flavor Man-Gore favorite Mango." Scapegoat shuffled by again.

"Fine. Since I don't feel like going myself, dress Scapegoat up in my decoy costume...Wait, he's already in it. Have him sloth by the battery outlet. Several million watch batteries should do the trick."

"An excellent choice, sir. That will service our station in inconvenient, thirty-second chunks that will leave environmentalists begging for mercy."

"And have Braindead hop on that springboard. Just for kicks. We'll launch him into a wall if we have to throw him ourselves."

A smile that could stop a blind man beamed across IQ 23's lips. "The old-fashioned way, sir. Brings back fond memories. I like your thinking."

Asinine matched IQ 23's smile. He tousled the lieutenant's hair, or he at least tried but couldn't get under the helmet. "Anything for my assistant egomaniac. Scapegoat, the spike on my helmet is not for picking your nose."

Chapter Three: Can't Work with 'Em, Can't Work without 'Em

Good Guy leader Lieutenant Colonel Matross Legion guided the Flagstar military transport, his mil-tran, toward ground in the team's space station headquarters, Station One. Below neared the parking lot in front of the entrance to the station's main lobby. He didn't park in the hangar because, well, the station's new software wouldn't let him. He wasn't buying enough of what it was marketing.

He exited the transport and inhaled the crisp air. If the day were genuine, it would have been beautiful. Instead, artificial light accompanied the synthetic oxygen he now breathed. Still not bad. The scent of flowers from a garden was real. It was, nevertheless, tinged with a scorched stench from when Legion had last ordered Power Plant on a mission without older brother Burnout's consent. Burnout had a temper. More precisely, Burnout had a volcanic temper that spewed lava hatred over anything within a two-mile radius.

On pavement still sticky with pink paint, Legion approached the main lobby, limping from the cracked knee he sustained during his fight with Ruthless. The swelling over his eye, slathered with vinegar-smelling healing putty over the last two days, had abated at least enough for him to see. It was now only a black eye over his Trioxidillian green skin.

He spotted a figure by the lobby doors: shocking blond hair, a frame as thin as a cardboard cutout, a blue-and-white impact suit. Legion groaned. Power Plant. And he marched in circles? Why? This better not be his hammer rain dance he said he'd perform. If not for the upcoming ninja fantasy camp to distract Power Plant, Legion felt sure the station by now would have been immersed in the contents of a hardware store.

Legion held a datasheet, a millimeter-thin computer, which he used to mask his face during his approach. It was deactivated, so it drooped with gravity. He squeezed his Alaphan necklace and prayed, Alaphus, please don't let Jeff spot me, please don't let Jeff spot me, I don't want to listen to his thought-for-food that drops into a blender before he gives it voice.

Legion reached the doors, hopefully hiding his face behind the datasheet's semitransparent veil.

"Hey, big boss man," Power Plant said. He kept pacing.

Perfect. Now Legion had to talk Power Plant out of blowing up Station One. That was an eventuality, but he'd rather not deal with it immediately after returning from a meeting with the Good Guys' supervisor, Brigadier General Patton. And letting Power Plant destroy things and assessing the damage later was often easier than conversing with him.

Legion uncovered his face. He tried to read the sign Power Plant held above his head, though the scribbled words clashed with the Bad Guy logo decorating it. "Jeff, I know in the past I've regretted asking this many, many, many"—he sighed deeply—"many times...but what are you doing? Many, many, many..."

"I'm pickings. I mean, picketings. Mebbe both. S'like a work stoppages. Equal rights." He finished another pace. "And name's Jeffy."

"Jeff, to enact a work stoppage, you'd first have to work." So he was picketing. Legion examined the young agent, who circled outside the main lobby alone. The picket sign. The pacing. The stern look. Yup. Picketing. When compared with everything else Power Plant tried, this seemed safe. Of course, operating fusion warheads seemed safe by comparison as well. At least he wasn't setting fire to an ambassador's pants. Last time he'd tried that, he'd instead set fire to the ambassador who wore those pants.

Legion shrugged. "Okay. Let me know when you finish. Oh, and strike has an i in it. And no three." He rechecked Power Plant. "And your sign is upside down." He entered the lobby.

"Hello, entity Legion," greeted the haunt control. "The Gaian Zoo has a surplus of bears and is selling them half off: the lower half. This ad brought to you by the Animal Preservation Society."

Before the doors slid shut behind him, whipped wind scrambled through the lobby. "Hey, hey!"

Ah, Topsy and Turvy, the Good Guys' twin receptionists. Before the flying whirligigs could collide with him, he ducked as casually as if stooping to tie his bootlaces.

A dull thud indicated something had collided with the window behind him. Wait. Not collided. The sound of rubber rebounding off glass met his ears. Topsy—or Turvy, but Legion had long ago abandoned hope of distinguishing between them—leaped over his head and, like a pinball, bounced away. If Legion had commanded the haunt control to open that window, maybe a foot would have jammed itself up Power Plant's work stoppage. Or a head, depending on which end faced out.

Legion kept ducking. Good move. A second body caromed off the window: Turvy's. Or perhaps Topsy's. Who could tell the difference with their Thing 1 and Thing 2 shirts in the laundry? A shame. Those shirts were all that kept Legion from being temporarily blinded whenever he saw the Gemini twins' photo-negative shading.

"Hey, hey, fearless leader—" one said and left a gap for the other to continue.

"—how was your—" The second gave his counterpart the same consideration.

"—outing? Hope it went—"

"—off without a hitch—"

"—did you forget—"

"—Car Alarm again? Double super-barrel-roll recovery!" Both twins dived into a skid. One flipped up, caught the other's shoulders, and landed hands down on his twin's back. They slowed to a stop inches from Legion, whose eyes now screamed for quick deaths because of Topsy and Turvy's color scheme that clashed as loudly as a quilt.

As though hasty movements would send these two spiraling into a trapeze routine using the chandelier, Legion sneaked up a hand that waved like an upside down pendulum. A prickly sensation tingled in his head, the same as whenever he wandered into the shaky territory of telling these two apart. "Hey, Topsy"—he addressed the other—"Turvy. Or Topsy"—back to the first—"Turvy. Do you know where Burnout is? I can ask the haunt control, I suppose, but I'm sick of hearing about my opportunities to bring another animal species to extinction. I'm still afraid it'll start reciting song lyrics since Lowensland might have secretly sprung his Yo Yo, I Drops tha Beats Gonna Hit You in tha Streets Hip-Hop-and-Pop Haunt-Control Mod he threatened to 'wazoozle down my phat rhyme hole.' And I come this way because I've somehow got a sick compulsion to let your weird color combination melt my retinas."

"Ho ho, boss!" one receptionist said. If order dictated anything, Topsy started this adrenalized leapfrog sentence. The one standing on his hands flipped into the air. The other leaped off the lobby's runner carpet and grabbed the former. May Alaphus keep Legion unharmed by whatever gymnastic routine they had planned.

"I think your favorite—"

"—pyromaniac is in—" One spun in midair and locked arms with his brother.

"—the mess hall. Twofold catapult stomp!" The twins slammed onto the carpet feet first, arms and legs extended out diagonally. This ended the stomach-coiling display meant only for vomit gluttons and Kamikaze.

Legion stepped lightly past the circus twins. "Thanks."

* * *

Here in Station One's mess hall, Burnout watched fellow Good Guy Momentum stick out his tongue at the shepherd's pie he'd just tasted. The speedster scraped his tongue against his teeth and spat out specks of ground beef and potato, both of which resembled the stale corn the recipe supposedly didn't include. Maybe it did. That seemed more appetizing than the cockroach eggs growing in the mess hall's salad spinners. Then again, Kamikaze still ate them.

"Tastes like a wet sandbox." Momentum tapped the table to bring up a virtual menu of what the mess hall offered. The shimmering menu hovered at eye level. "No. Wet sandbox isn't on until May."

Though Momentum was Fleeson, and Fleesons had weird ideas about food, this time Burnout agreed. He didn't need to sample the barely edible mess to know how it tasted. He judged by Momentum's dry gags. "Those cockroach eggs aren't ripe enough," he said. Indeed, the stuff smelled like sunbaked mud.

"If only that were the sole problem with this cardboard anticuisine." Momentum swept aside the menu, which dissipated into particles as it sailed away, and wiped his tongue on a sleeve. Deciding that wasn't enough, he grabbed a ketchup dispenser and squeezed it over his mouth. Some got in. Some got in his eyes. He added mustard. He would have added salsa if he'd had a third arm.

Burnout decided against backing away. If he could survive their suicide-enthusiast Kamikaze's piloting skills and his horrid attempts at teaching Power Plant those same skills, a revolting meat-and-potato meal seemed innocuous. Burnout had, after all, tasted the berry-explosion cookies that weren't supposed to explode. On second thought, he backed away from his bowl of parmesan-dusted pasta that bore a similarity to a tangle of rubber hoses.

Momentum grabbed his thermal napkin—it smoked, but the temperature gauge was stuck—and wiped more junk from his tongue. "Holy crock, even the napkins here suck!" he screamed, and several heads turned. He drew a tongue away with cat fur littered on it.

One was Kamikaze's. "What? Are you poisoned? Is there poison? Is it arsenic? The tastiest poison is arsenic. Is it arsenic?"

Burnout stood erectly. His pyrotechnic hyperability radiated heat out of his skin. "It's cat fur, but if it was poison, I'd keep it far away from you!" His voice dropped to a whisper. "I want him dead so badly. I hate when we want the same thing."

Momentum returned to his sleeve and rubbed his mouth up and down it at superspeed as if wanting to gnaw it off.

"Momentum, come on. The food is off your tongue. It doesn't spread."

Momentum tensed his fingers into claws. "How can you know? How can you be absolutely sure? I will never be safe."

"If you hate the food here so much—for crock's sake, stop gnawing on your arm—" Burnout removed Momentum's wrist from his mouth. "If you hate the food here so much, cook your own."

Momentum surmised a pattern of tooth marks on his arm. Resolution dawned on his face. "You know what?" That same resolution arched his brow. "Yes. I'll teach these stupid robots how to make a pie if it kills me. And it might." He wrinkled his nose at a rattling dishwashing robot that stuffed some dirty plates into its maw. "And I'll teach them how to use a few quarts of cleanser sometimes." He stormed over to the cook's counter.

Burnout sat when a click sounded from above. The haunt control. "Entity Burnout, please report to Legion's office following the pine-green line. On your way, try Uncle Marginally Tolerable's Whiskey Shots. Only five for a moolah at any fine binge-drinking hole."

Legion's office? What did that militant want now? "Control, acknowledge. What for?" He scowled at the green line that appeared at his feet and extended out the door.

The haunt control thought for a few seconds, its circuits straining against the putty Power Plant had stuffed in there hours ago to find out if it would catch fire. "Unspecified. Don't forget to get wasted out of your mind tonight with Uncle Marginally Tolerable."

Great. Burnout stood, kicked aside his chair, and stalked toward the exit.

A thunderous detonation exploded from the kitchen like a derailed train. Out of the culinary carnage spewed shards of plates, forks that shot like arrows, and sizzling ingredients. Burnout leaped away from the billows of smoke that puffed through kitchen windows. Hacking coughs. A cookbot emerged from the ashy plumes. Clanging dinnerware. Only one voice rose above the clatter: Momentum's. "Sorry. My fault. Blame that one on my microwave skills."

* * *

Hesitantly, Burnout entered Legion's office. The office door slid shut with a whoosh and the guiding green line faded. Must he talk to his war-brained leader?

"Entity Burnout has arrived," the haunt control said. "Remember to upgrade this software to the bearable version. Will you upgrade now or in five seconds?"

Legion was seated in his desk chair in front of a window now cleaned of the pink paint recently inflicted on it. He mashed a hand against his face. "No. Control, acknowledge. Remind me later to switch off some of your annoying features."

"Entity Legion, you have one pending reminder: switch off some of my annoying features. Also, remember to upgrade this software to the bearable version. Will you—"

"Control, acknowledge. Lower volume to zero."

"Lowering volume to zero."

Legion waited a moment before checking Mark. "Mark, you're here. I'm glad I found you even though I had to go through Topsy and Turvy first."

"Did they use their backward-action shoulder dismount?" Burnout asked.

"Haven't experienced that one yet."

"You got off easy."

"Entity Burnout reports that you got—"

"I heard. And I thought I told you—"

"Lowering volume to zero."

Legion scowled at the public address speaker, which was nuzzled into the corner of the ceiling, out of batting range. "Someone needs to install this stupid thing properly."

"Ace did. You messed with the settings right before he left for vacation."

"Uninstall one ad program and everyone blames you for everything." Legion motioned to the chair on the other side of his desk. "Have a seat."

"I'll stand." Closing any distance between him and Legion made Burnout's muscles tic as rhythmically as a bomb's timer. "What's the emergency?"

"One question first." Legion straightened his back. "Why's your brother on strike?"

"He wants in on the protest action. And I haven't explained to him the difference between a strike and a protest. I'll let you know when he knows." Burnout judged the gap between him and Legion, assessing if he should take another step back.

Legion sat straighter and his mouth curled. "Which side is he protesting, for or against women in the military?"

"Neither. He's protesting that a bunch of complete strangers got to fling stuff at your window but he can't."

"Oh, the injustice. Then why isn't Kamikaze protesting why he can't fling himself?"

"Window pane, bring me the pain!" Kamikaze's muffled chant seeped through the window. Didn't exactly sound like Keats.

Legion slumped in his chair. "And natural balance is restored. Relatively speaking, it'll keep him out of trouble. Anyway, Mark, I need Jeff—"

Oh, crock. Here came the endangerment of Jeff's life. "No more reckless missions involving my brother! If this is another cockamamie scheme to needlessly put his life in serious danger, I don't want to hear about it." Heat flapped from under his shirt.

"No, Mark, it's another cockamamie scheme to needlessly put your life—I mean, it's another cockamamie sch—Look, just once, blow your top after I explain the mission. No, you and your brother will not needlessly risk your lives. I need you and your brother to needlessly risk your lives by having Kamikaze pilot you to the Magellan Station, an asteroid-sized polling station that orbits Gaia at about four hundred kilometers. I've just returned from a meeting with Patton." Legion set his eyes. "We've found the Bad Guys."

Burnout poked his head closer. "Found the Bad Guys?"

"Yes. We lost them after the Luzimoss mission, but the staff on Magellan was able to calculate their trajectory. With Station Zilcho's power now dead, their cloaking device is off. Magellan got updated scans of its surface. The botch-up of the Luzimoss mission tells me we desperately need updated info on Station Zilcho's layout and, after the people at Magellan crop out Lowensland's 'Robot Pirates Land Here for Food' signs, we'll have a relatively inoffensive set of scans. Anyway, the data has a security clearance too high to be sent electronically, so we have to actually fly there to get it."

Burnout firmed his jaw. "You—didn't—hear—me. No." Blazing lines of flame traveled up his cannon arms. "Let IP take this mission. They've never let us directly attack Station Zilcho because they're always complaining they can't assess the risk. Between that surveying mission and almost sending my brother aboard The Bad Guy Starship when they paid their visit, you're constantly underestimating threats, putting Jeff in over his head. Now that IP has found this data, they can take down the Bad Guys."

"That's our job. And this is a reporting mission, Mark, not a combat mission."

Burnout fell silent. A reporting mission? That wasn't so bad. It would distract Jeff from protesting. And he'd get some fresh air. Burnout's heat waned. "No danger?"

"Aside from Jeff being within reach of solid objects, no. You won't even be bringing weapons. That's how safe this mission is."

"You'd better not be underestimating this mission." Burnout chopped the air with a hand that trailed an ashy odor. "But I won't bring Kamikaze. I'd rather walk."

"So would Kamikaze. Through space. On fire. He said so himself. Anyway, I 'forgot' Car Alarm at IP headquarters, so you can't take him. Franchise is your navigator but he's still not good as a pilot, so he's out. He still pilots as smoothly as Lowensland thinks. You know he needs practice when he ends up in the Aries constellation on a doughnut run. Your brother still thinks the Castor star is filled with jelly under all that, and I quote, 'smokin' flame rage.' Today we have a new pilot. Take her, if want. I'd like to meet her before sending her out but, if you'd rather not use Kamikaze, I can wait."

Huh? Had Burnout heard that right? A her? Instead of emanating heat, a flutter of excitement electrified him. He regarded Legion as a scientist observed a new discovery through a microscope. He smiled coyly and hung a hand on Legion's coat rack. He felt the corner of his mouth curl up. "Woman? You mean that protest worked? The station now has...ovaries...and two X chromosomes and color coordination and—"

"And separate bathrooms with a stick figure that wears a dress. Yes, as long as the color pink stays off our windows from now on, I consider it a good move. Besides, we need a woman's touch. I had Ace 'steal' IP's old military records, and I took the person who looked most qualified. She had accolades from a lot of senior brass. Because of public pressure, there was no time for an interview, but she has more experience behind a pilot's computer than a thousand Kamikazes. Imagine someone who doesn't play bumper cars in meteor showers. Here's the mission briefing. It includes her bio." Legion's hand skittered along the clutter that suffocated his desk. He pinched a datasheet between two fingers and held it out to Burnout.

Burnout relaxed. The flames along his arms dwindled to smoke. His lip quivered, his mind helpless to think of what to say. All that came out was, "Oh." He plucked the datasheet from Legion's hand and pressed his thumb on the activation icon.

"No picture in there," Legion said.

"Oh." Burnout's hand and the datasheet dropped to his side.

Legion rose from his seat and approached Burnout. With a growl, Burnout backed away and bumped against the office door. The door slid open, and Burnout stepped into the hall.

Legion stopped approaching. "Your ride leaves in ten minutes, so get your brother before he and Kamikaze think it would be fun to throw Null at my window." Smack. "Again. The haunt control will guide you using the blue line. You'll take transport F-Prowler—"

"Wait, wait, wait. Isn't F-Prowler the one with the engine that floods?"

"Probably."

"We're driving that dilapidated hunk of refuse?" Burnout's fingers clutched the doorframe. He scorched it under his palm and—

"Ta-ta. Control, acknowledge. Lock office door," Legion said.

The door slid shut, but not without the haunt control's announcement: "Shutting the door with Lockdown's Jailhouse Deadbolts. Own yours today."

Burnout banged a palm on the door that clicked shut and locked. His palm seared a handprint on it. "Legion!"

* * *

That red hunk totally slammed a psycho hand on Legion's office door before he stormed off. Macked off to the max. Amaranthia watched his yummy back muscles—cuuuute—before she turned to the door and her target. Too bad her target wasn't that hunk or any other hunk on this cockroach-uggin' space station. And "uggin'" was correctamundo. Brown-and-green walls? Yeeugh, just like her wad of watermelon gum that totally tasted like grape.

The first half of her plan was totally done. To bag the last half, she now had only to unlock this frickin' office. She extracted her lock pick from her red Fanny's pouch and placed it against the door's locking thingy. She'd stolen the fist-sized lock pick from a novelty store, thinking it would do something mondo cool like give her a totally sweet hair-do or explode in that scud Kyril's face. But it only—get this—picked locks. How totally last year. Way to phone it in, Letchtech.

She pressed the lock pick's button. A sharp click penetrated the wall, and the door slid aside. The lock pick said, "That was as easy as saving tons at the Nuclear Fun Factory, where fun explodes in your face. Bomb jackets and shelter supplies half off this week." Why did a lock pick talk? Probably for the same reason Asinine's guns totally included confetti blasters: people were dorkuses.

Legion approached the office window, his back to Amaranthia. "Control, acknowledge. Open window. And I can live without the status report."

"Entity Legion can live without the status report on opening the window. Opening the window."

Amaranthia hopped and grabbed the doorframe's top as totally silently as a trapeze midget in a breeze, super easy in her way awesome Honey Faerber cherry-colored boots. She flipped onto the frame, perched on that half-inch ridge, and twirled her bubblegum around her finger, watching Legion. Legion, like, focused on some wacko outside who was totally yammering on about equal suicide rights. Some other voice joined, saying, "We wanna splotch us-selves all overs ya wall and—huh? Anothers mission? But, Mark, how's I supposed to work-protest when I doing work alls the times?"

Click. The office door relocked. Amaranthia still watched Legion. Not a hunkoid like that red dude but, for a green-skinned military stiff, not a gitchy freako. The worry splotches over the back of his skull looked totally eww though. Especially that splotch with the curly tail and the pig's nose. Yeah, the one shaped like her ex-boyfriend. Grody.

Amaranthia stretched out her leg and tiptoed off the doorframe onto a bookcase. Why couldn't the walls be laser-painted red? They could camouflage her. Oh, well. She burglar-stepped over some award for 9108's Best Agent Whitewash.

Legion was all like, "Hmph." He leaned out the window. "Kamikaze." He waved his arms like a total loon. "The signpost is there for a reason. It wasn't made to go down your throat. And not up that end either."

Amaranthia cat-walked around the scattered awards—snap! She kicked over a portrait marked SOPHER AND LEGION, 9101. What a klutzoid. She choked down a gasp...but Legion didn't notice. Bitchin'.

"And, no, the old drills-through-the-eyes trick won't work on me," Legion said. "It's overused. Take five, then come back with more putrid methods of self-mutilation that have no hope of persuading me to...Wait. What exactly do you want me to do?"

She cartwheeled off the bookcase. Her palms totally stepped onto a table a few feet from Legion's desk, but she soon flipped onto the carpet with her legs spread and her body, like, totally parallel to the floor. She kept her head low and her humungous butt in the air. It had wiggled during that last flip. Totally uncool. She weighed six ounces heavier than last week, so today's chow was water and protein pills. Stupid flabulous butt.

Through the window, a gust of air blew in the fragrance of flowers Legion inhaled with a smile. "No, Kamikaze. Don't quarter yourself on rockets. By the way, you up for poker tonight? I'll bring the snacks and...what? I don't know what Pen Huo Qi is, but I don't feel like Chinese food. Oh. Well, I don't feel like Chinese flamethrowers either."

Amaranthia crawled under the table—total forward-facing limbo contest—that only paper dolls could slide under. Wish she were one. Paper dolls had no ears, so they totally couldn't hear whenever Kyril bugged out.

She snaked from the table to under Legion's desk. Right behind the Good Guy head honcho, she rose mouse-quietly, totally as if floating—BANG!

And thumped her stupid head on the desk's underside. Everything jangled.

Legion spun around...and his arm whipped up to block Amaranthia, who lunged with her fingers in a totally awesome eagle grip. His bone so deflected her fingernail attack, but she scratched his skin.

"Who are you?" Legion sprawled forward with a kick. A black eye blotched his face. And was a cat hopping onto his windowsill behind him? Cats weren't in Legion's info.

Amaranthia arched back, her upper body at a total right angle to avoid the kick. She grabbed Legion's calf and yanked him over his own desk. "Duh. Like I'd tell you? Whatevs." As if he couldn't guess, anyway. What a lame-oid. She was missing Profound Teen Drama Heartache Catastrophe for this?

Amaranthia angled her body sideways. Legion leaped up—slid forward—punched—winced—limped back on a sore leg. Amaranthia blocked with a hand—reached into her cake-hole with her index finger—twisted her bubblegum around. She yawned and avoided Legion, who bent forward with a kick that came as close to hitting on her as that uggin' guy at the mall. She shuddered. That scuzzoid practically had a tail.

"What are you doing in my office?" Legion grabbed her throat. "What are you doing on Station One?" He tightened his grip like a wrench. "Why couldn't you take care of the two fruitcakes outside my window first?" Wow. He sounded totally macked about that last one.

Amaranthia pried his hands from her neck before he stole her totally sharp, way stylish Debner cerise earrings. Totally sharp.

She yanked one off her ear. Pain lit her earlobe, but she blocked it. She sliced up—Legion dodged, the earring tangled in his necklace. She freed it, slashed across his forehead, totally opened the skin. Eww, blood, eww! Barf her out!

Legion stumbled forward. He sleepily blundered over his desk and, like a total spaz, fell to the carpet. Amaranthia stood, ready to go mondo wacko on him. But he didn't move. Out cold. She'd bagged her target. Awesome.

Ewwww-blood-blood-blood-ewww. Amaranthia bounded away from the splatter on the desk and covered her mouth. Total gag-her-with-a-spoon grossness ewwwww.

She examined the toxin that trickled from the tip of her earring. This was so not going back on her ear. She needed a totally new hot pair now. Shopping trip!

Now to kidnap Legion without those Good Guy dweebs noticing. Easy enough. She avoided the blood on Legion's forehead. Total grossness. She hoisted him onto her shoulders—"not with her back but with her knees," her mom always super-nagged. The witch wouldn't even let her date until she stopped assassinating.

Oof. She buckled. Legion's body crushed her to the floor. He was as heavy as some cake-chomping crock nut. She might as well be kidnapping Multipurpose.

Super uncool.

* * *

"Woohoo!" Jeff leaped, "We's going on mission field trip ands a works stoppage stoppage! Almost as cool as ninja fancy camp. Didja bring my juggling chainsaws?"

Burnout felt his eardrum rip in half from his brother's cheer. Ow. He wrung a finger in his ear. "No juggling chainsaws. We're no longer allowed near the circus anyway. Or the hardware store. Or the park, for that matter." Burnout was simply glad Jeff seemed happier about the mission since finding out they'd acquired a new pilot.

"Nah, not my circus/parks chainsaws. I'm asking abouts my everywhere-else chainsaws."

Burnout and Jeff followed the hallway along the azure line that buzzed like a faulty strobe toward the station's Flagstar hangar bay. Burnout held the mission datasheet and guided his younger brother forward with the hand not massaging his ear. "You don't have everywhere-else chainsaws. I grounded you from them for life after the dog pound incident."

"Them horses don'ts needs all six legs."

"They do, and they were dogs. And, not counting the poodle mutants, they had four legs."

Their hallway T-boned another. Franchise shuffled down this one, following a yellow line that crackled like the azure one. His skin looked chalky. He shambled with his head hung. As if he were learning to walk again, each toddle was a hesitation.

"Hey, Franchismo." Jeff leaped again without breaking stride, causing Franchise to spring back. "We's gonna fights up someone today. Find some tree-hugger hippie something guy and wrap a tree arounds him. That's called ironing."

"Irony. And it isn't. Or...maybe it is. I never really kn—Anyway, Jeff"—he looked at Franchise to include him—"Jacob, this isn't a combat mission. It's purely data gathering. We won't even have to barter over tollbooth charges like my brother loves doing."

"Oh." Jeff lost his animation, his fist uncurling and dropping to his side. He stopped and toed an imaginary pebble. "Still gonna punch anyones huggin' a tree."

Burnout gently placed a hand over Jeff's shoulder and directed him forward. "You can wrap a tree around a park bench when we're home."

Franchise's step kindled with hope. He reached Burnout and Jeff. His yellow line met their azure line and both extended in parallel flickering paths. "This isn't a combat mission? As in nobody will beat me up or shoot at me or hurl me into...Wait. Jeffy, are you going to hurl us into a space station again?"

"He learned his lesson last time," Burnout said.

"I learns nothing." Jeff began a prance complete with a head strut.

Burnout booted up the mission datasheet and flipped through its virtual pages. He skipped the mission's briefing—which may or may not involve Legion's careless misjudgment of a mission that would put Jeff at risk—and stopped at the personnel bios. He clicked past his own profile, Jeff's, and Franchise's, and found the page that described their new—female—pilot. The title read, MABEL CLASKEN, NO ASSIGNED MEDIA NAME. PILOT.

He skimmed the sheet. Mabel's bio detailed a quite-unlike-Kamikaze piloting record MaxSport had cut short when the corporation forced IP to purge all female soldiers. At twenty-four, she was too young to be an expert pilot, but whatever. Burnout looked forward to meeting this recruit and keeping her far away from Kamikaze and his walk-in blast furnace.

"We're going to meet our newest recruit," he said, as much a reassurance to himself as it was a statement to the others. "A female."

"Homie say what?" Franchise stopped and perked an eyebrow. He began cracking the knuckles of his left hand. "A female? Someone I finally don't mind looking at? No offense."

Jeff stopped gorilla-bounding down the hall. "Hey, ya looks at me whens I do my racecar stunts."

"That's because you don't use a racecar."

Burnout rewound a few seconds. "Yes, a female. There are so many guys here that Station One could be the site of an Atlas competition. Minus the bulk."

Jeff bounded at Franchise. "Female like he means with two X-mark-the-spot chrome-sumos and colors concentrate and action movie shows and a separates baffroom for all them's stuff."

"And different perspectives," Burnout said.

"Yeah. Up."

Burnout chuckled and continued down the hallway. A billboard ad flashed onto the wall ahead, but he paid it no attention. Same for the cat he stumbled over. Wait. Cat?

The three reached the hangar bay that glowed gold on its left side and cerulean on its right. They entered. Jeff rushed past the sign-out booth on the left. "Times to tomfoolerize!" He tripped over a fat power conduit and rapped his forehead on an access ramp. Another cat came, regarded him, and began licking itself along its paw.

"No tomfoolerizing without proper supervision," Burnout called out. "And no more tomfoolerizing with flammable substances. Smithereens already talked to me about you encroaching on his territory. I'm warning you."

Franchise matched Burnout's pace. "So what's her name? What's she look like? Why'd IP let her accept a job here? Do you think she's interested in guys who multiply themselves?" Having finished cracking the knuckles of his left hand, he moved onto his right.

"Her name is Mabel Clasken. Her profile had no picture. Since investors fund us, not IP, we don't adhere to their hiring policies."

"But we still have IP's medical plan."

"Doesn't matter. Medical plans aren't subject to sponsors, so MaxSport can't tell us who to hire just because IP pays to fix our boo-boos. And I have no idea if the new girl is interested in guys who multiply themselves."

Jeff scampered on ahead. "She prob'ly ain't interested in a you whos can multiply you."

Franchise stomped a foot. "Holy stupendous. But I'm handy. I take out the trash, wash the dishes, and vacuum the floor."

"No. You get Jeff to do all that. And you still find it funny when he washes the vacuum, takes out the dishes, and spreads trash all over the floor."

"Find it funny. You see? Girls dig guys with a sense of humor."

Burnout examined the robot that manned the sign-out booth. Its stripped forearm swung from its elbow, its eye slit was chipped, and it reeked like a musty oil rig. It spoke, but choppy words grated its speech. If Burnout wanted a crackling conversation, he'd watch Smithereens coo to one of his megaton-o'-fun nail bombs.

"Entities Burnout, Power Plant, Franchise, and entity name not inserted in database, you will be operating transport F-Prowler. Don't forget to bring Cancer-B-Gone's Sunscreen Aloe Nine Thousand Divided by the Sum of Its Angles, the only sunscreen with the great taste of coconut."

Burnout skipped the sign-out procedure. He had new recruits to meet. Their first female recruit, only yards away. Nervous nips in his stomach intensified into a squall. He once knew a woman in the gym he used to own who could outspar, outrun, outfight him. He was looking forward to a female sparring partner, because they had different moves and centers of gravity.

He and the others followed the paired yellow and azure lines toward F-Prowler. Ahead, their Flagstar rested atop a twenty-foot-high launch platform. Jeff had already sprung up its access ramp.

Franchise dogged Burnout. "You think she's into video games? Like Slapstick Fighter? Or...or...or Nunchuck Chuck in the Land of Upchuck? You know, the family-oriented massacre-fests with only seventy percent of the computing power dedicated to animating the polygons of blood."

Burnout shrugged. "I knew a girl who played Breeding Hole and Dr. Nutsoid."

Franchise snapped his fingers. "Breeding Hole N. Dr. Nutsoid, the one game I haven't pirated. Wait. Isn't Dr. Nutsoid that guy who opened up a practice with Dr. Giggles?"

Burnout stopped at the foot of the access ramp and steeled himself. "Okay, breathe slowly. Play this as cool as ice." He broke into a military jog to look impressive on his ascent up the ramp. He focused on approaching the ludicrous Bad Guy logo laser-painted above the Flagstar's access port. Franchise emulated his jog but found it harder, especially when he tripped over yet another cat and cracked his chin on the ramp.

Burnout glimpsed his brother standing stiffly at the top. No surprise. His thinking was still too undeveloped for him to know how to react around women, but Burnout wouldn't change him. Not for anything and no matter how often the new haunt control advertised while-you-wait gene splicing.

"Nothing fazes you, Mark. You're a beast among men. A double man. No, a triple man." Burnout reached the access port, adrenaline slipping through him. "This is it. Don't let her intimidate you. She's a lower rank. She's learning from you. She's—

"—eight million and two?" Burnout stopped the military trot, his mouth agape. His head flopped forward on a limp neck.

Shriveled. Ancient. With a last name that rolled off the tongue like a flat tire flopped down a hill, Mabel hunched forward. Her nose hooked down and her eyes peered through telescopic bifocals. A witch's chin jutted from her face, stark-white whiskers spotting it like dead grass. Her ghostly hair was tied into a tight bun. Her raisinette knees poked out from under a flower dress. Withered celery-stalk legs reached down to peeling penny loafers. She smelled like cat fur and baby powder.

Jeff's gaze ping-ponged between Burnout and Mabel. With ham-acting, as if he were unsure, he said, "She a good-lookin' one." He regarded her with an acerbic twist to his mouth. "Right?"

Franchise panted up to the access port. He stopped, stooped, and splayed his fingers over his knees. He sprouted a smile that quickly wilted when he caught sight of the leathered hag. "Holy mother of nature, she's as old as Mother Nature."

"You're...you're Mabel Clasken?" Burnout asked. "You can't be."

"Get the name right," the withered woman said. "Pronounce the c like in calcium or accident. So you're the young who's-its I'm driving to that what's-it station on the edge of whatchamacallit? And why does the what's-it have a who's-it logo on the entry thingamajig?" Her c's whistled thinly through her teeth.

Franchise turned her back to Mabel. "She's ancient to the power of more ancient. She probably already picked out her tombstone." He turned and leered at her up and down. With exaggerated volume, he asked, "What was it like inventing the wheel?"

"You inventeds the wheel?" Jeff rushed over to her. "I love the wheel!"

Burnout inched toward her. The bifocals that perched precariously at the very tip of her nose looked thick enough to examine his cell structure. He waved a hand at her beady eyes. "How many fingers am I holding up?"

"Take those claws out of my what's-it." She tried to bat away Burnout's arm but couldn't reach over her walker.

"Monkeyshanks." Franchise shambled to the navigation computer. "I thought we finally had a girl. Instead we got a mummy."

Burnout stepped back. "Your file said you had only a few years' flight experience. It made you sound young. It said you were twenty-four age cycles!"

"Twenty-four? Ha. Some who's-it left a nine off the end."

"Whu—huh—how—Which end?"

"Why did you replace the pilot's chair with a rocking chair? And where's the navigator's workstation?" Franchise ducked to search the darkness underneath a hollowed section of the navigation computer. "And why does it smell like cat over here? Oh. Must be the half dozen licking themselves in the corner."

Chapter Four: Computer Hacker's Hack Job

Kyril docked his civ-tran in the visitors' parking lot of the Magellan Station. Commonplace, inconspicuous, unnoticeable. Less pronounced than a pureblooded Terran's, Kyril's nose had been broken on three occasions and now resembled a scrunched hourglass. It whistled whenever he breathed somberly, as it did now. Bad for sneaking up.

He swung an arm over his headrest, accidentally batting the dashboard bobblehead doll of himself. Stabber, Cravinia, Togron, McDougall, and Bob sat in the backseat, packed more tightly than commuters in a rush-hour mass-tran. Too tall, Togron had to lean forward, which made his sloping forehead resemble a roof's eave. Stabber eyeballed Bob. Bob's crock-creepy eyes made him look as if he were flying in the clouds.

The front passenger's seat remained vacant: McDougall and Bob had simultaneously called shotgun. An argument between them over who'd called first had deteriorated into a fistfight, so Kyril had proclaimed that no one could ride shotgun until they acted like adults. Diplomatic, reasonable, mature. To be fair, McDougall had actually called, "Brass snaphance firearm with flintlock finish and molded muzzle," but his mouth was so full of haggis that his words came out like a mash of m's along with a few flecks of dip. But that wasn't the point.

"Ready, prepared, geared up?" Kyril cleared his phlegm-ridden throat. He peered at the constricted group in the back. Nobody looked pleased.

"Aye, ready." McDougall rolled his r like a revving motorcycle, which rustled his plaid beard. "But this bampot's elbows are jabbin' me ribs!" His haggis-smeared hands locked around Bob's neck and twisted into a chokehold. He dug his thumbs into Bob's eye sockets. "And he swindled shotgun rights from under me nose!"

"Don't kill him. He knows Asinine's codes! Without them, we won't gain access to his haunt control." Kyril grabbed McDougall's hands to lever his thumbs out. Terrible cohorts, infantile, barbaric.

"Whoa, man, this is not mellowed out at all." Bob flailed his gaunt, needle-pecked arms at McDougall's thumbs. "Get your bad vibes outta my head space, man."

Stabber yanked out a dagger from his shoulder—Kyril wished he wouldn't sheath them in his muscles—twisted it in the parking lot's light, and held it to McDougall's throat. "We've been cooped up in this backseat for four hours. If you don't take your hands off that stoner on three, I'll stab you a new mouth and gouge out your tonsils." He cackled murderously. "Then I'll chop off each of your dip-encrusted fingers and use your fingernails to shave. One."

McDougall's mouth warped with the exertion of digging his fingers further in.

"Two." Stabber's teal skin darkened. His elongated tongue waggled.

Kyril threw up his arms. "For crock, McDougall. Don't make Stabber count two-and-a-half. He told me ten out of seven-and-a-quarter people are workaholics." Idiots, morons, halfwits. How had Asinine crocking worked with his coconspirators? Oh, yeah. He killed them.

McDougall tightened the pressure, looking between Stabber's dagger-sharp expression and Kyril. He issued a roar and threw his grip from Bob's sockets. "Fine, laddies." He flung open the Starcruiser's door, careened out, and slammed the door behind him when Bob tried to follow. Bob's head smacked into the window.

Kyril regarded McDougall through his open window. "You know, you're only one sixty-forth Scottish. The rest of you is French and your real name is Dupuis. Eat a crepe if you want to play the race card."

"Man, that dude needs to chill. An' I need some serious munchies." Bob grabbed a peanut that had sunk between two cushions. "This thing's talkin' to me. What, tiny peanut? You want me to eat you? Okay. Man, I'm freakin' out."

"You have haggis in your eyes." Togron swung open his door. His orange skin reflected the lamplight, brittle flakes of it sprinkling off every time he lumbered a step. His knuckles reached his knees. "But don't clean it. It's funny."

Kyril tilted his head at Bob. "He's right." He tried to clear the phlegm from his voice again. No such luck. "And close your mouth. You look stupid."

* * *

Demaril approached his workstation and fumed through his teeth when he spotted the disarray on it. He sensed something wrong, as if a magnet interfered with the tinfoil hat he wore to keep the voices at bay. He checked his desk: its desktop unit—the computer embedded in his desk's surface—seemed normal, his empty coffee cup still occupied the corner, his action fig—His action figures...positioned as if diving off his desk in suicidal poses that contradicted the smiles on their inch-by-three-quarter-inch faces. Dr. Zookeeper was booting off Cosmonaut Chimp. Their eighty movable parts were meant for ripping off each other's heads in fist-frenzied combat, not suicide attempts. Or last week's cannibalism display. He still couldn't find the head of Lil Chimp, Space Chimp's sidekick. Wait, now he remembered: it was clenched in Dr. Zookeeper's mouth. And there it was again.

Suicide attempts? Cheese and crackers, were his coworkers still in the fourth grade? Well, Jimmy had recently graduated into the fifth, but no one else had an excuse. Poopers. Poopers into his adult diaper.

He snatched up his figures and glimpsed his snickering coworkers, who pretended to look at anything else. "Hilarious, guys," he said in his foghorn voice. Angry sweat collected on his nose and made his glasses slip down. He spilled into his chair and repositioned his hat to sitting mode. Panting broke the laughter he faked. "Har har. Now will you guys please stop this?"

"Oh, Demmy." Twisting a smile, Ferron waved. "We're doing your doll friends a favor. Who wouldn't want to end a barren existence of living on your desk? And, look. Cosmopolitan Chimp is wearing a little freak hat. Just like you."

"That's Cosmon—"

The front door faded. The temperature change fogged Demaril's glasses—when thugs clattered in, holding four double-barreled pistols! A fifth wielded two large sabers that he tore from his blood-sopped back. A sixth flopped along the floor...with raw eyes covered in haggis?

"Freeze, nobody move, stand still!" one thug yelled from a whiskered mouth, phlegm bubbling his voice. His crawling friend froze. "You can move, Bob. Not to scratch your crack, though."

Oh, no, oh, no. Demaril's throat constricted. His tinfoil hat shifted.

Garber whelped and flung aside a stack of datasheets. He tried to take cover underneath a wall. Never thinking with all watts. More of Demaril's coworkers shrank back. They cringed in corners, gasped, shielded their faces.

The unshaven screamer stepped in on a limp. "Everybody, stay organized, ordered, planned. Asinine's humiliation depends on this mission. McDougall, by the window. Stabber, cover that side of the room. Togron, the other side. Bob, go stone over in that corner and bring your sunburn-colored eyes with you. It might not be out of the way enough, but there's no further corner to stone in. Cravinia, I need you at the back door. Watch for lurkers, security guards, and a snack machine." His belly complained, so he rubbed it in response. "Soon, sweetie. Soon."

Bob, so thin he could double as a stick figure, tripped over a datasheet printer. "Wow. The walls are glowin'. Kyril, dude, their lifeblood is pulsin' into my dreams."

Tears washed into the mucus that leaked from Demaril's nose. This couldn't be happening. He wiped his eyes and hoped he had wiped away the interlopers with the tears. They still remained. No no no no no.

The one called Kyril searched the crowd, causing a wave of frightened gasps with his scan. Demaril slunk under a desk when Kyril scanned over to him. No no no, please. No. His heart palpitated at the smile that woke Kyril's lips. Kyril hobbled over. Demaril retreated farther and curled into a ball. He exposed his face only to see Kyril's feet stop at the desk. Kyril's voice creepy-crawled to him from above, "You. Stand. Now."

Demaril wished his body could retreat even farther. His mind had.

"Now!" the voice said.

Demaril snapped up and banged his head on his desk. His hat's tinfoil antennae flattened down, so he straightened them. He scurried out from underneath the desk and clung to a nearby chair. Safe from the voices, but not from these fiends.

"P-p-please leave me a-alone, mister with the weird tattoos." A warm spot soaked through Demaril's diaper and into the crotch of his pants.

Kyril raised his gun as if to pierce Demaril's eye through his glasses. Demaril's hands wrung together and he cringed behind the chair's back. Oh, gosh golly.

Kyril followed his head with the gun. "Access. I need it. Give."

Cheese and crackers and cheese and crackers and— "A-a-a—"

"Access, yes. To the surveying data. Now, immediately, at once."

—and cheese and—Like a mouse flitting through a litter of cats, Demaril's eyes flitted around his coworkers. Only his fingerprint could activate his desktop unit. He stabbed the activation icon with a finger—no! Not stabbed, touched. Not stabbed, please not stabbed, he dared not think that—crackers and cheese and crackers—

The desktop unit awoke with a spinning Letchtech logo that slowed and shrank into the upper left corner of the display. "Letchtech?" Kyril said. "Crocking bug factory. Unreliable, flawed, defective. Should have installed Bubbasoft."

Garber said, "If you kill anyone, kill Demaril, the guy who still wears glasses in this day and age. He's the office go-nowhere. He's also the guy most likely to come in one day with a semiautomatic."

Demaril scowled at that meanie, Garber. He wore glasses because he didn't like eye surgery—and cheese and crackers and—

The desktop unit's menu appeared. Kyril grabbed Demaril's collar—oh gee oh golly oh gee—and Demaril buried his head in his arms. Kyril threw him to his feet and slammed him against the desk. His hat tilted. "Now, load the file detailing the location of Station Zilcho or I'll load it with your nose."

"I'll stab it off," Stabber said. "Less dead weight."

Kyril's grip tightened. "He'll do it. He's studying rhinoplasty. So load up Station Zilcho's location and blueprints or start sniffing through a hole. A hole that isn't a nostril, I mean."

He directed Demaril's feet to the floor, twisted Demaril's left hand back...and yanked it up past the shoulder blades. "Promptly, right now, immediately."

Demaril's shoulder cracked. Ow ow ow. And cheese and crackers and cheese—He let out a choked gasp. "Okay-okay-okay-don't-hurt-me-ppppllleeeaaasssseeee." The warmth around his crotch grew. "Before you kill me, my insurance policy requires me to tell you about Splash Juice's new Bounty Medley."

He one-hand-jabbed the desktop unit's icons, leaving sweaty fingerprints. His thumb squeaked across the screen on which he selected "information," "fourth quadrant," "landmarks," and finally "Station Zilcho." He gulped. "I-i-it's all here."

"Good." Kyril released Demaril's arm. Demaril collapsed and scurried underneath the shadows of his desk.

The unshaven leader tapped his ear where nestled his communication device, his gabber. Out sprang a gabber mouthpiece and earpiece. "Gabber, acknowledge. Contact entity Amaranthia." There he stood and waited for a response. He limped into a nearby l-chair and leaned his elbow against a desk. He drummed his fingers on the desktop unit, which created a cacophony of computer beeps. "What's taking her?"

"She's doing her hair." Togron raised a flaky finger.

"She don't wanna talk, man," Bob said.

"The lass be in the powderin' room," McDougall said. "The screamin' powderin' room!"

Stabber's turn: "She's stabbing someone! What's rhinoplasty?"

"She refuses to answer and hates you all." Garber shrugged to say "maybe." Kyril pointed to him to indicate agreement.

"Her gabber minutes have expired," Cravinia said. Was that beast actually a woman? She raised her arm stub in the air.

"No, ya bessie. She be in the powderin' room takin' a mammoth leak."

Cravinia raised her pistol, flexed her mannish chest, and stamped a foot. Demaril whimpered at this display and ducked further under his desk. "What do you know about women, you red-and-green checkerboard?"

"Ah, havers." McDougall tossed a hand in her direction. "Ya've a face like the back of a bus."

"She's stabbing someone!" Stabber leaped onto a desk, drool flowing from his lashing tongue. His flak jacket shook when he slashed a knife at nobody. "I bet she's stabbing their hearts and their stomachs and chests and appendi—"

"Stabber and everyone who isn't Stabber, shut up. She answered." Kyril stood. "Amaranthia, where were you?" He covered the gabber's mouthpiece. "She was dragging Legion's unconscious body to her mom's station wagon."

"Tell her 'hi,'" Togron said.

Kyril waved a dismissive hand at Togron. "Amaranthia—Okay—all r—Amaranthia, let me talk. I don't care if the humidity is affecting your highlights. We've arrived at the polling station to get Station Zilcho's location." His face soured. "What? Who cares if Stacy's throwing a party later? I've paid you through the whole night. It doesn't matter if all your friends are going. Yes, even if he's there. Oh, well, if he's that cute...Of course I was kidding! Oh, I'm a gitch? Well, you're a vacuum-headed mallrat! Hold on. Gabber, acknowledge. Download on-screen information from closest computer."

Demaril jabbed his head out for a peek. The download took only a second before the gabber's antenna slid back into its bud. Kyril said, "Gabber, acknowledge. Upload data storage to entity Amaranthia. Leave out my hair-metal collection." He scanned the crowd. "Yeah, I'm a fan. Got a problem?"

Another second, and then Kyril sat on Demaril's desk chair. "Amaranthia, you received the data? Good. You have the location. Now find Asinine. What? I am so the boss of you. Look, you want those concert tickets or not? Gabber, acknowledge. Cut connection."

—and crackers and cheese and—

Kyril expelled a heavy sigh. "Teenagers." To his comrades, he said, "We have what we need. Now we leave. Asinine must be brought down." He picked up a glass and crushed it until shards splintered out of his bloodied grip. He added in a whisper, "Brought down hard for not inviting me."

—and crackers and ch—Wait. They were leaving? Really? Demaril had to endure only a shoulder injury? His stomach shot into his throat. He couldn't utter a sound. He felt a sneeze build up but didn't dare expel it, didn't dare remind Kyril of his presence.

But Kyril loomed down at him anyway. Demaril was not forgotten.

—andcrackersandcheeseandcrackers—

"The computers and desktop units. Trash them, destroy them, smash them. Make sure nothing is functional," he said at Demaril though to his allies.

"Then kill everyone here."

—cheesecrackerscheese—Demaril shuddered and his bladder emptied. He gripped his tinfoil hat. Kyril aimed his gun and—

All Demaril heard before fading forever was Kyril singing, "I want to crawl along you like bacteria along filth / baby, baby, rock my stomach lining."

Chapter Five: Too Little Too Late Too Often

Something felt wrong and not because Mabel had split a civ-tran in two when she blindly landed the Flagstar. Burnout examined the polling station's single structure, an aged, one-story work shelter that squatted in the center of a tiny parking lot. His insides coiled. Yes, something was wrong. He knew by the plumes of smoke that smoldered into the air and the fall of confetti ashes that speckled the pavement. Or maybe by his little brother, who rushed out of the Flagstar like a kid barreling into a theme park.

The Flagstar must have downloaded Station One's new haunt control, Burnout guessed by what the ad program announced, "Your kick in the teeth has arrived. Meet the Good Guys, brought to you by the Bad Guys."

"Man, that new pilot fly likes me." Jeff spun around. He whooped a siren call with his arms outstretched like wings, then spat the engine noises of a looming warship. He hit the curb and blundered onto the pavement. His noises fizzled into a crashing sound. Burnout knew he'd get hurt but had decided against silencing him. He hated to quell Jeff's spirit. And sometimes letting him skin something—a knee, a forearm, an internal organ—was the only way he'd learn. He never did, though.

Burnout and Franchise exited the Flagstar amid the whiff of permeated ozone. Franchise launched himself at Burnout and grabbed his collar. "Mark, if you ever let that blind bat fly anything again, we'll all die. I never thought I'd say this, but we need Kamikaze. I swear Mabel clipped at least five buildings out there, and I think she gave the finger to a meteor. Or maybe it was that school bus full of children. Either way she called it Dave. Do not let us back in that flying death trap with her. I fear the worst."

Burnout shook out of Franchise's grip. "I'll think about it when she goes down for her after-knitting nap." He stepped out among the few civ-trans in the parking lot.

Jeff registered the smoke's pungency, so he shielded his nose and mouth with both palms. "Smell like a Franchise fart."

"My farts smell like potpourri, and you know it! I mean, I don't fart!"

What violent monster had charbroiled the inside of that work shelter? Burnout thought of Legion's flippancy about this mission. Time and time again that militant sent Jeff on "safe" missions that turned out perilous. Burnout's anger stewed in his stomach. This data mission felt dangerous. And Jeff was unarmed...on Legion's recommendation.

Jeff stood by the door, in the line of fire of whomever had caused this! Burnout rushed toward him and swept him aside with an arm. "Jeff, I'll enter first. And, Franchise, I'm afraid Jeff's right. They smell nothing like potpourri."

He concentrated on the smoke that billowed from the shattered doors, exercising his will as an elemental over the pyre inside. The flames dwindled to nothing, the heat to cool air. Immediately the burning scent dissipated. With the fire snuffed, he said, "Gabber, acknowledge. Convert to public address mode."

"Converting to public address mode." A mouthpiece arced out of his gabber into his eye. He bent away the mouthpiece stem. "Register for vacation giveaways from Titanic Services, where we've had seven thousand years to think about what we've done."

"No."

"Yes. Right now."

"You're using public address mode?" Franchise's jaw dropped. He lowered his voice. "Does that mean someone might still be in there? Oh, crock. Are we in trouble?" He spilled off the front steps and tripped onto his back, skinning his palms. "Oh man, oh man, oh man." He hawkeyed the door and shuddered.

Burnout covered his mouthpiece. "We're in potential trouble."

"No ways I'm in penshal trouble for this ones." He jabbed a finger at the mess in the station's metal shelter. "We's got proof I ain't. We was flyings here, then we's flies to the store for buy kitty treats, then we's flies to the other store for buy carpet cleaner for kitty pee, then thems truckers chased us whens Mabel crash onta them, then we's stop for eatings at Space Cow, then we's stop in Space Cow's toilets to barfs stuff up. Those toilets can alibi everybody."

"Jeff, take it easy. My gabber is picking you up. Nobody inside wants to hear that toilets can vouch for us. And I'd rather they not know we stopped at Space Cow because you had a hankering for French fries fried in French people. Also, stop sashaying into the line of fire like you're on the album cover of Abbey Road."

Franchise retreated from the entrance. "M-must we announce our intentions to fight them and maybe get killed? I'm sure there's a safer way to live."

"Safers and funniers like a doze-buller!" Jeff bounded onto a curb. "I mean, 'bulldozer.' I mean, let's asplode our way in!"

"We need Station Zilcho's location." Burnout looked from Jeff to Franchise, then back to Jeff, who took cover beside the door. "There's no other option. And we're not announcing our intention to get killed."

"How about announcing our intention to leave?" Franchise scrambled behind the Flagstar for cover. "Order the old coot to go in first. She's lived a long life."

"She's a noncombat agent. She's not supposed to leave the transport."

"Neither am I."

"No one asked you to." Burnout stepped back. He uncovered his gabber's mouthpiece and raised his arms like a surgeon washing before an operation. He turned one over, and both arms gushed into flame like tree trunks in a forest fire. The glow of his skeleton revealed itself below his flesh, flickering along with the flames.

He eyed the entrance. "WHOEVER REMAINS IN THE MAGELLAN POLLING STATION, THIS IS BURNOUT OF THE GOOD GUYS. PLEASE EXIT WITH YOUR HANDS HIGH." Silence took over after his voice's echo died. No one exited. No one revealed him- or herself. Fine. Do this the hard way.

Burnout extinguished one hand and unzipped a shoulder pouch. He grabbed a life scanner disc and squeezed his thumb and index finger around its cookie-sized circumference. As if skipping a stone, he flicked the scanner into the shelter. It clattered to rest, waited a second, and then hummed to activation. Its flickering light illuminated the area but, in moments, it and its glow were done.

"No life or artificial-life signals scanned," his gabber said. Whoever had lit this place aflame had left.

Burnout tapped his gabber's ear bud. The mouthpiece and earpiece retracted and its public address mode shut off. "Okay, Jeff." He motioned to his brother and—huh? Where'd he wander off to? He checked the shelter. Jeff swung his leg through the door. "Jeff, what are you doing inside? You're not supposed to enter until it's cleared!" He deepened his voice. "And you're not supposed to leave the transport," he said to Mabel, who had inched off the Flagstar with the aid of her walker. "And this is a no-smoking station," he said to Small Pain of the Midget League of Wrestling, who lit another cigar. He wore a placard that declared that everyone needed to watch the MLW finals tonight.

"Hey, I smoke 'em if I got 'em. And I got 'em." He drew a match away from his cigar and flicked it aside.

Mabel tottered to Burnout. "No military who's-it barks what's-its at what's-my-name." She swung her handbag up and thumped Burnout over the head. The ribbon candy from her purse spilled over the shelter's front step.

Burnout overlooked her assault and entered the building. Franchise followed but stopped at Small Pain. "Hey, is it true that size doesn't matter?"

Among the reek of the dwindling fire and hot dust, Jeff kicked aside a computer panel that clattered against a desk. "Checks out all's the cool smashed computers stuff." He picked something up. "And this arm."

An arm? A...slaughter? Burnout recoiled at the grisly sight. Employees—surveyors with professorial white hair and depleted hearing—lay mauled and stacked in one corner. At least their torsos were. Their limbs, however, lay scattered in the garbage dump of charbroiled computer parts. But, as grisly as the bodies looked, their faces were discernible. All that stopped Burnout from vomiting was that one of Mabel's kittens had sauntered out of the transport and now purred against his leg.

Savaged, the surveying equipment sat in haphazard shapes of deformed metal, their guts emptied. The data was destroyed.

"I d-don't hear gunshots." Franchise poked his head into the shelter like a turtle peeking out of its shell. He shakily entered. He wrinkled his nose at the pungent stench of dismemberment and destruction. "I-is the danger c-clear? Oh, man. Dead people."

At a plodding pace, Mabel settled her walker forward a step and crept into the shelter. She inspected her roaming cats, one tooth clamping over her craggy lower lip. "Chicken Chow Meow and Neuteronomy, no nosing around the whosamacallits' torn-up what's-its. And Countess Prissy McBottoms, no peeing on them."

"Ooh, reminds me. I wants to sticky-glue a cat to the access port." Jeff grabbed a tabby. "Just 'cause."

Burnout crashed to his knees, not even flinching when he hit the concrete floor. Such—he gulped—such death only Kamikaze could enjoy.

And apparently his brother. "Oh, man!" Jeff pumped an arm. "Franchise, with these peoples parts, we can totally builds up a supa-dupa Frankenstein body. Zombies holiday-caust action! Grabs some of them foots."

Franchise pinched a severed foot and lifted it to his wrinkled nose. "We really should set some boundaries in our relationship."

Jeff discarded the forearm he'd grabbed and picked up a monitor twisted into a spiral. "Then finds computers stuff. We's making a metal zombies holiday-caust."

Burnout reached for a ravaged corpse. Shock attacked his heart. The corpse's face, wearing glasses like magnifying lenses, was locked in an everlasting scream.

Franchise examined the floor, again cracking his knuckles. "Oh, cool. A limited edition, six-armed, DNA-irradiated Cosmonaut Chimp action figure with nine thousand points of articulation. And he comes with a funny little hat."

Chapter Six: Like Yoda with Shuffled Flashcards

Amaranthia watched the dweeb stumble down the lonely street like a drunken goof, similar to Bruce at Connie Daminco's Easter party. This dude at least had no pool of puke at his feet. Her next dorky target. The dweeb scratched the air totally nonstop, as if maybe grabbing something in front of his ugly face.

Amaranthia stuck out her tongue. Yuck. What a dorkus. Spiked helmet and splotchy duds. He'd get laughed out of, like, everything but the chess club. He should try a Gabriel brand leather jacket. Would make him look cooler. And he was a hunchback. Grody with, like, a capital gro-dee. Might as well wear taped glasses and have bucked teeth. Like, o-mi-crock.

A red shadow in the night, Amaranthia totally blurred to the side of a building and pressed against it. She'd be mondo invisible if not for the extra few ounces of blubber making her buttocks stick out like twin sugar bags. Total ugh. Cinnamon rolls were so out of her diet until she totally got back down to like eighty pounds. Totally.

"As dressed up Asinine Master, yes yes. Batteries watch get go now, yes yes," he totally said. Scratch that. He'd so get laughed out of the chess club, too. "Costume eyes burning is, yes yes." And some psycho wards.

Amaranthia rushed up to him—no need to keep her totally fierce prowling ninja moves for this numero uno loser—and put a hand on his shoulder. Whoa. She totally touched this spazz? Grody to the max. She removed her hand and pulled out a Sassy's sanitizing wipe, which smelled like a total lemon kick in the nose. Spazz germs. Barf her out.

The loser looked up at her through space-cadet eyes.

Amaranthia was all, like, "Hey, spazz? You're, like, supposed to come with me—eww. Is your finger up your nose? Total grossness?"

* * *

"Yeah, he was so uncool?" Amaranthia said into her vermillion Benjamin Braeda gabber. "He totally was all, like, 'I wanna, like, be friends,' you know? So I said, 'You can totally step off'? Totally! Nah, I'm flyin' my mom's way ancient station wagon? Just finished a job? Mondo cute redhead at Station One. Mondo cute. No, didn't get his digits. I know, eh?"

Amaranthia flew back to the rooster-headed Nemesis, tapping the navigation buttons, careful not to, like, lose a terracotta Davida nail. They had to totally last until Saturday night.

She'd bagged that Bad Guy spazz to bring him to Kyril as planned, but she hadn't known how totally annoying he was. She should have faked sick today or maybe gotten herself grounded.

"Oh, Debbie, I totally gotta put you on hold? Another call? Yeah, the chief troll. Gabber, acknowledge. Switch connections." Ho boy, this would totally suck.

"Hel-lo." Amaranthia said to her big cheese. She felt a sickly tug in her throat after calling him that. Better than calling him by, like, his name. "Yeah, I caught your spazzola? I totally finished the job, okay? Asinine's acting total mondo weird, too. Duh, of course the infiltration's going fine. I'm on it? Like, wow. Get with it? You know he's totally a nose picker. You didn't tell me that? Total ewww?"

The spazz she'd stuffed into the back seat took his finger out of his nose to mush a few words. "Totally picker I'm nose know didn't you ewww like?"

"You hear that? Well, duh, he talks like a total goat boy? I mean, you, like, warned me he said stupid things, like, all the time? But this dweeb's totally spewing, like, freaked-out stuff?" What a total dud. No way would she let the senior-year class spot her with him. So no stopping by the mall today for that totally bitchin' Frannie Georgerro burgundy dress. "What—ever. Sheesh. Yes, I'm totally on my way back now? Stop gnarlin' at me?"

Click. The chief troll hung up. Whatever. She couldn't stand his snooty yammer-jawing, anyway. Sounded like her grade-nine calculus teacher.

"Are where flying to we, yes yes?"

Amaranthia flipped open the glove box to find a muzzle.

Chapter Seven: Oh, Crappy Day

Shoved from behind, Legion slammed through an l-door. Here-it-came-here-it-came. He sprawled to the ground, helpless to prevent the l-door's impending explosion.

Alaphus, please no! He listened to that awful descending hum of the door's reappearance, unable to shield his face. Instead, the floor shielded his face. And a rough patch of carpet gashed an opening into his cheek. No explosion...but nice fall.

That high school D student calling herself Amaranthia was prodding Legion and Scapegoat down a hallway in an unrecognizable titan-class starship. His limp was worsening, especially after that shove. As far as Legion had gathered, this five-foot ninja, Amaranthia—whose hair he shouldn't "totally even think about touching or else he'd, like, have a sai shoved so far up his poop-hole he'd..." well...something painful followed—had captured him and Scapegoat for concert tickets. The scenario made no sense, but he couldn't complain. After all, he dealt with Kamikaze daily. Sometimes hourly whenever that psychopath got his hands on corrosive materials.

Amaranthia hauled him up, grunting. "Would you totes stop weighing so totally a lot? What are you, like, eight kajillion pounds?"

"Only by Power Plant's counting. Anything over a hundred immediately jumps into the kajillions according to him. I'd also shoot boogers up to twenty kajillion yards away if he were in charge of things. Speaking of boogers"—he thumbed Scapegoat, who had fallen next to him—"why is he here?"

Amaranthia shrugged. "The big cheese said to collect this spazz?" She yanked up the nose-picker-and-licker by the collar with more strain than she had with Legion.

Scapegoat wore Lowensland's latest getup of color-coordination torment: splotchy hues, reflective helmet that concealed his face, the works. A wardrobe designer somewhere was having fun at his expense.

Legion stood. "Can I at least know why I'm here? Or why you're trading me for concert tickets? I lead the Good Guys. Go for cash next time. Up front."

"Shut your hole before I, like, totally cut off your...whatever that nose thing is?"

"That, like, totally answered my question. You've been a great help." Legion now felt it better to remain silent. After all, Scapegoat prattled enough for all three of them.

"Fun having is Scapegoat along in prodding stabbed back." Scapegoat stood and scratched the air. Amaranthia swung a sangria-colored boot into the back of his skull. Finally earning those concert tickets.

They stopped at a door—another l-door!—that vaporized before Legion could shield himself. His body trembled agonizingly...but, as soon as the door disappeared, he calmed. Amaranthia shoved him forward.

Legion slammed into the carpet again and its fibers burned across his face like a concrete slab. Light sparkled in the fringes of his vision. His black eye squealed and the gash in his forehead reopened. He examined the area: a small balcony with three people in the shadows, their outlines visible but their details unannounced. Legion couldn't see whatever hid at the foot of the balcony, but a muffled din grumbled from there like an overworked machine.

"Great work, Amaranthia. You did well," one of the shadows said in a voice Legion recognized but couldn't place. Phlegm bubbled with every word, ringing a bell deep within. In his mind, three synonyms followed that simple statement.

Legion lumbered to his feet. The speaker limped out of shadow and...oh, no. The calloused fingers, the bullet hole tattoos, the scraggly five-o'clock shadow. Kyril.

Cravinia shifted into the light behind him with a glower aimed at Kyril's back. Yellowing teeth peeked from under her scowl, contrasting with her gray skin. Hatred crossed her eyes.

Though Kyril smiled, Legion didn't smile back. At least he wasn't meeting Lowensland. Okay, he couldn't help smiling. But only slightly. As soon as the euphoria faded, he'd change it to a glare.

"Hurry with this charade, Kyril," Cravinia said over the machine rumble. "Some of us have real work to complete. If your farce stalls us any longer, solar systems will spin out of orbit and inflict horrendous genocide upon all inhabitants."

"Why am I here, Kyril?" Legion said as soon as the smile left—no, there it came again. He couldn't deny that happy, no-Lowensland feeling.

On a labored limp, Kyril paced. "You're here becau—What's so funny?

"Sorry. A you're-not-Lowensland, glass-half-full thing."

Kyril's gaze loitered on him, but he soon cocked his head away. "Anyway, to answer your question. I need you and Asinine swept aside. The Good Guys and the Bad Guys are now leaderless, directionless, unguided. Your groups will so easily fall when my clan attacks. And I will take my rightful place as the king of crime. We will, I mean.

"And you, Asinine," he said to Scapegoat. Why the name swap? "You'll regret not inviting me to join your Bad Guy charade. With my help, you'd have risen so much higher. But your reign ends now, and mine begins."

Scapegoat had wandered to one corner of the balcony and now felt along a wall as if scratching its itch. "Begins reign your over mine, yes yes." The grammarian's nightmare scuttled sideways and knocked over a pedestal that held a bust of Kyril himself. The tipped pedestal toppled and crushed the bust underneath itself. "Oops knock I thing over head, yes yes."

"Asinine, I know you're not exactly Alaphus's gift to...well, anything...but get ahold of yourself." Kyril peered over his shoulder at the last unrevealed shadow. The shadow, sprawled over a sofa chair, drunkenly waved his hands around his face. Where did these criminal leaders find their friends? Asylums? "Bob, wake up from your conversation with your own aura. Handcuff these two."

Bob rolled out of the sofa chair and careened onto the floor. "Man, my beak." He rubbed his nose and lazed to his feet. Potato chip detritus crumbled from his open maw, making Legion wonder if he'd learned how to eat from Lowensland, the master of deplorable table manners himself. Or Appetite. Or, heh, Null.

Scapegoat leaned over to grab Kyril's bust, but he flopped onto his stomach from his hunchbacked center of gravity. He knocked the bust over the balcony. "Thing head balcony over rolled, oops oops."

Bob reached Legion and took his wrists so gingerly that Legion wondered if he were massaging them. A pair of hyperstasis handcuffs, handcuffs to nullify his hyperability, clacked around his hands. Legion didn't care to tell Bob he had no hyperability. Bob stumbled over to Scapegoat but fumbled onto the floor in the same belly flop as the hunchback.

"Forget him, Bob. I think he's drunk. You and Togron have a transport to catch. Don't mess this up for me. I mean, for us." With hands at hips, Kyril watched Bob right himself and slog out of the room through the l-door.

"Are you sure it is wise to send Togron and him on this mission alone?" Cravinia asked. "After all, only Bob knows Asinine's haunt-control code."

Kyril locked steely eyes with Cravinia though his gaze drifted to her bushy unibrow. "There won't be any threat. We need everyone else for our assault on Station Zilcho."

"Your scheme will cause planets to collide, stars to implode. They need back—"

Kyril cracked a thick palm across Cravinia's face. "I've crafted this plan perfectly so I can—so we can witness Asinine fall. He'll grovel at my feet. Follow the plan. Never—ever—question me again." Kyril huffed. "Ever."

Cravinia rubbed her stubbed arm against her cheek. She lunged forward and grabbed Kyril's neck.

"I have a question," Legion said, "that is, if you two can stop charming each other. Leaving the Good Guys leaderless by capturing me makes sense. But capturing this guy"—he looked at Scapegoat—"doesn't hurt the Bad Guys. It actually might help them. So why Mr. Graceful? Plan to measure the depths at which the nose can be mined?"

Scapegoat dipped one leg over the balcony railing to retrieve the bust but tipped back against the pedestal. He clonked into a second pedestal, this one holding a statue of Kyril gallantly posing on a horse.

Kyril broke free of Cravinia's distracted grip and bent an eyebrow inquisitively at Scapegoat. "Asinine? What's wrong with you?" He leaned closer to stare straight into the face beneath the reflective helmet that revealed each of his tattoos of ugliness. He lifted the helmet to uncover Scapegoat. "Oh, for crock's sake, Amaranthia!"

Amaranthia snapped to attention with a burgundy glove wrapping around a quarterstaff. "Oh, for crock's sake, Amaranthia, what?"

"You caught the wrong Bad Guy, you valley girl poster child!" Kyril slammed a boot into the nearest object: Scapegoat. "You were to catch Asinine, not this second-rate look-alike. We needed his Bad Guys without a leader and in chaos. Now they're simply without a moron. This was supposed to be my early birthday present to myself."

Legion chuckled. He wanted to grab his bullet-holed necklace and thank Alaphus for this, but his hands remained cased.

Cravinia slapped aside a chair with her remaining hand. "Kyril, this parody you insist on showing will undo hundreds of years of civilization."

"This messes everything up for me." Kyril whipped Amaranthia's quarterstaff aside. "No Too-N-Too-U concert tickets for you. I don't care how much cuter Billy is than Frankie."

"What?" An indignant rush filled Legion. "You mean I'm not even worth concert tickets anymore?" He faced Amaranthia. "I knew you should have asked for cash up front. And I thought Frankie was everyone's favorite."

"Hey, like, that is totally not fairsies? I—" Amaranthia pointed a burgundy glove at herself. She noticed her quarterstaff poking into her rib, so she passed the staff to the other hand. "I so did what you said? This nose picker"—the quarterstaff thrust at Scapegoat and whacked him in the face—"totally fit that lame-o description you gave me? Dressed in duds I sooooo wouldn't be caught dead in, speaking in pure dorkese every time he opened his goober feedhole? And I'm not getting concert tickets? As if. As if to the max of the max! I totally bought a new Yasmin suede purse for it? Ooooh, you so make me want to go totally berzerkies." She stormed into a corner, faced the wall, and crossed her arms. "You're exactly like my mom? 'You totally didn't clean your room, you totally didn't finish your homework, you totally assassinated the ambassador of Andromeda.' I'm so not speaking to you for, like, the rest of the day?"

Kyril gritted his teeth. Almost inaudible over the rumbling machine, he said, "Never hire a student."

Legion agreed. "If you think she's bad, I have a couple of agents you have to meet. Happen to catch last week's When Explosions Explode? There was this planet that isn't there anymore, but...Anyway, the moral is never let a guy who can shoot light from his eyes even look at a fusion reactor."

"The torture of a million souls pains my heart from the mismanagement of this meeting," Cravinia said.

Legion added, "And can I ask about that rooster head around your cockpit?"

"Shut up!" Kyril thundered toward Scapegoat, his pale green skin angering to red. "You're to blame for this screwup. Everything that went wrong today is somehow your fault. You're...you're my new scapegoat."

"Let me introduce you to his media name," Legion said.

"I don't care about his media name. I'm renaming him Scapegoat."

"Name new forgot Scapegoat old name, yes yes," Scapegoat speech-blended.

"Now that I've renamed you, I never again want to see you." He drove a hand into Scapegoat and shoved him down. "Okay, everyone, as of now, you're all ordered to shut up. Since the competition isn't here, I have to gabber him. Gabber, acknowledge. Call entity Bane of My Existence."

"Is that Lowensland?" Legion asked. "Tell him I can't make his ballroom dancing lesson on account of my despising him."

"Asinine." The word slithered out of Kyril's spit-showering mouth. He grunted to clear the phlegm in his throat. "Why are you at home? You're supposed to be here. No, I didn't invite you to a slumber party. Look, we have your lackey. First I have to ask where all that snot comes from. He's been picking it out nonstop. It's like he's farming a mucus culture. Anyway, you can have him back. We don't want him. What do you mean? You have to take him back. No, I won't make sure to walk him twice a day. You take hi—You know what? Forget it." Kyril ripped the gabber from his ear and chucked it at a wall. "What an idiot!"

With slow breathing, the fury on his face melted. "At least my high school ninja brought back one of the leaders. Amaranthia, did you plant the bomb on Station One?" He rolled his eyes. "Sticking out your tongue is not an acceptable answer."

Legion's pulse quickened. "Bomb? You planted a bomb? Where?" Now he wanted to grab his necklace, but not from amusement. He yearned to pray, but his mind raced too quickly.

Kyril suppressed a smile that twitched his lips. "Yes. Don't feel so cocky anymore, do you? A bomb filled with ricin, a highly toxic substance, hidden somewhere on your station. Your Good Guys must be quaking. Fear, terror...uncontrollable panic."

* * *

Kamikaze slapped the black sleeves of his arms around the bomb that beeped in synchronization with his heart. A tear leaked down his cheek and dripped to the ground with the sound of a single harp string being plucked. "Since I lost my beloved speaker, I never thought I'd care for something so profoundly again. But"—he sniffled back another tear—"Insane Beeping Death Bomb, so deeply into my heart have you burrowed, just like a tapeworm." He kissed its single blinking light and rested his cheek against its cold surface.

"You aren't a fan of disco, are you?"

* * *

No! Handcuffed, at the mercy of one of the most unstable criminals in the galaxy, his Good Guys in dire trouble, Legion tried to scramble to his feet, but a line tethered his cuffs to the floor. He rebounded, slipped, and rammed down hard, flaring the ache in his cracked knee. He settled for yelling empty threats. "They'll never let it explode, you know. Some of the Good Guys are almost marginally capable of nearly accomplishing something on a Monday or a Tuesday. Never the weekend, though." His eyes thinned. "But beware manic Mondays."

"Today's Wednesday." Kyril stroked the bullet-hole tattoo above his eyebrow. "Useless, futile, vain. Your fighters aren't even worth the term mockery. All they do is blow up things or try to dismember themselves."

"And one of them is an alcoholic, but so what?"

"Amaranthia, did you leave that bomb in an indiscriminate area?" Kyril asked.

"Uh, well, it's not, like, totally in the middle of a hallway or anything?" Amaranthia averted her eyes suspiciously as if to conceal something.

"You left it in the middle of a hallway, didn't you?" Kyril shook his head at her. "That thing had better kill everyone or I'm reporting you to Labor Watch."

To Legion, he said, "After my ricin bomb kills everyone on your space station, I'll let the haunt control vent the toxin out. I'll then dispose of Station Zilcho through One. For that, I need Station One's haunt-control code from your mind. Cravinia, grab the mindscanner." Kyril smiled, snapped his fingers, and crossed his arms. Cravinia didn't budge, so Kyril snapped his fingers again...and again. "Cravinia, a little get-up-and-go, please."

Cravinia roused. "I could get up, decapitate you for that arrogance, and stuff your head up your—" She turned her back to him, muffling the rest of her threat.

Kyril's smile reappeared. He leaned over the balcony's railing, both arms propped against it. "You see, Asinine is too...obtuse...for the mindscanner to work. Seriously, he wouldn't even remember his own codes, which isn't a problem since Bob knows them. I only need Station One's codes. Heh. I'm so close to conquest, I can taste the sweet, sweet, caramel-filled victory."

Cravinia returned, within her apish arms a metallic bowl about the size of a skull. She fitted it over Legion's head and yanked a leather strap around his chin so tightly it choked. She grabbed the strapped helmet and shoved Legion at Kyril.

Kyril said, "My associates Togron and Bob are leaving to steal a power source with which we will reenergize Station Zilcho after we've taken it for our own. The rest of us leave immediately for that very station."

Legion looked down at the machine below the balcony. No, not a machine but a tremendous—no, a colossal horde of criminals who numbered into the thousands, overstuffing an auditorium's huge seating arena. That rumbling machine was actually conversational babble.

"Once we take over the Bad Guys, all that Asinine has will be mine. Mine and my clan's, I mean. Now...about Station One's security codes." Kyril smirked and stepped toward Legion. He paused, though, and swept a hand at the crowd. "And clear these underlings out of my auditorium. Someone needs to buy groceries."

Chapter Eight: Thinking in the Shallow End

"Nobody move!" Togron squeaked, robotically tromping into Space Cow's missile silo. Space Cow restaurants usually didn't feature missile silos, but attracting customers nowadays required drastic measures. And those measures often included land-to-air missile systems.

Nobody listened to Togron's order. It was high-pitched. Togron said, "Ahem," which, with his helium voice, sounded like a Chihuahua's yip. But he couldn't let Bob do the talking. Bob couldn't fit a sentence together that didn't include interacting with some intangible concept. Right now the stoner floundered around like an out-of-water eel.

"Nobody move!" Still nothing. Crock this. Togron hoisted his rifle—which would have been easier if he'd learned how to bend his elbows—and blew a couple holes in the ceiling. That did the job. He could tell by the screams and the panic-induced urine that trickled from a second-story catwalk onto his head. Warm.

Sending only Togron and Bob on this mission seemed stupid. Kyril needed all their resources to acquire Station Zilcho? He led two hundred thousand criminals and couldn't spare five? Alone, Togron couldn't accomplish this mission, and Bob didn't exactly inspire dread in the silo workers. Maybe shooting a few onlookers would. Or shooting Bob. Nah. That would inspire only applause.

In this rusty silo gawked several people wearing hardhats atop balding heads, steel-toe boots over blistered feet. Some people screamed, someone fainted. Someone else faltered over the catwalk's guardrail and plunged to the ground, snapping his back against a missile tower with a tree-timbering crack. The others froze and shielded their eyes from Togron's sunlight-orange skin. Now everyone watched him. Except Bob. He watched a bug he probably thought resembled an overweight cat smoking a pipe and talking about going mad. Of course, it didn't help that Togron wore no shirt. And that the silo felt cold enough to sharpen his nipples into javelins.

For Station Zilcho to self-destruct, the Bad Guy headquarters needed only four of this silo's ten cells thanks to the enhancers already built into the station's power grid. And each cell weighed only about twenty-five pounds. Bob would do all the lifting.

Togron lurched forward with the brooding appearance his voice always ruined. Each footstep thundered more loudly than the grinding of the power cells. Skin flecks sprinkled off his body. He hated his skin disease. It made his body flake and his skin blush intensely. The emanating static charged his hair more with every step that neared the power cells, drawing each hair out straight. The rifle in his hand scratched the ground. A low-powered laser cutter sat snugly in his other hand.

"I'm here for only four power cells," he said. "If you meet my demands, no one will get hurt other than the fool who flipped over the guardrail and my associate who thinks the floor is a swimming pool."

Bob flapped his sandaled feet and spat a nonexistent stream of water in an arc at which only he gaped stupidly.

Togron fiddled with the laser cutter's intensity dial, difficult with oversized hands. He waddled around a chalk-white missile and over to the closest power cell, which sat chugging on a tower with its nine brothers. He examined its fastening brackets. Easy. Too easy. He dropped his rifle. No one would attack him since they all watched Bob who, with any luck, might soon leap off an imaginary diving board. "Bob, that's concrete you're backstroking on."

Bob had swum out of sight. He now lay in a gloomy corner of the room, cloaked in shadow. Togron should keep track of him, though, since he alone knew the code to directing Station Zilcho's haunt control.

To the first bracket, Togron brought the laser cutter and—zap—the bracket shriveled like a datasheet in a fire. He zapped the second bracket, then the third. He circled around and zapped the last. After he dropped the laser cutter, he dug his daggerlike talons around the power cell. It wouldn't budge at first, but he pressed his talons through its cobalt and wiggled it. When he got back to the office, he'd treat himself to a root-beer float.

"No!" one worker screamed, melodramatically reaching out and wearing a mouth that enveloped over half his face. "Someone has given generously to that power cell through our adopt-a-missile program. Now the people of—What's the label on the side of that cell?"

Togron checked the label. "Concerned Citizens for Peace."

"Now the people of Concerned Citizens for Peace will never see their missile grow big and...You know what, who cares?" His mouth shrank to normal proportions, and he lowered his arm and shrugged. "Still...that power cell's not yours to take. Jerk."

The cell finally came free, its stretched wire connectors popping loose. Onto the next.

Bob still floundered on the shadowed floor. Togron grunted through cracked lips at the embarrassment Bob was too stupid to feel. At least some dignity could be saved at Bob's commendable display of the breaststroke.

From outside, a loudspeaker squawked. "THEY CAME TO YOU ON THE VIEWSCREEN, AND NOW THEY'VE COME FOR YOU. HERE COMES THE LAW! AFTER YOU GET YOUR CROCK KICKED IN, WHY NOT DOWN A COUPLE OF HALLUCINATOR'S PAIN RELIEF TABLETS? AVAILABLE WHEREVER FINE HALLUCINOGENS ARE SOLD." Where had that come from?

The door burst apart! Peculiar since it was an l-door. Its fragments spewed forth but faded before littering the floor. A deluge of smoke flowered where the l-door had been, two figures standing in the doorframe. The brawny figure stood erectly with arms flexed and aflame. The wiry one slapped the brawny one's back. "Man, we's gots ta tries that somewhere at home severals more time. On all the a'splosive spots."

Blast it! Togron recognized the faces in the dissipating wisps of smoke. Burnout and Power Plant of the Good Guys. How had they arrived so quickly? Togron and Bob had been here only minutes.

"That tip-offs is right." Power Plant rushed into the room. "Here's them guys we supposed to fighting alls up. We's Good Guys, so we's help people get beats up."

Burnout stepped forward, the fire traveling along his limbs enhancing the orange of his impact suit. Finally, something brighter than Togron's skin. "Poindexter Togron, this is Burnout of the Good Guys. For transgressions against the planetary union of Renov—"

"I've heard it before." Togron positioned himself behind a cell tower. "Well, not someone using my first name. Thanks for letting that slip. Now I have to kill everybody here. Let that be a lesson: the tongue is the cruelest weapon, Mr. Blabbermouth."

"Name's Jeffy."

"Bob, take this." He tossed the power cell to Bob but missed the stoner's head by an inch. The cell clunked against the ground where Bob was accepting his imaginary championship medal for synchronized stoning.

"Freeze, Togron!" Burnout said. He ignored Bob. Had he even noticed the high flier? Bob hid in such deep shadow that the Good Guys perhaps didn't notice the spectacle. How could they not? He was stepping onto an imaginary podium.

A weathered voice joined those of the first two Good Guys. "Will you young what's-its finish up this thingamabobber and get back on the whatchamajigger? I need to stop by the pharma-who's-it for my prescription of whatever-it-is."

"Mabel, stay on the transport. And stop Catnabbit from rubbing my leg when I'm on mission."

"And learns ta fly and see at the same times!"

Mabel massaged her gums together. "That's not Catnabbit. That's Sillykins, you young whosamacallit. Ya young whipper-what's-its don't learn respect for your elder who's-its anymore. I'm going to go watch my stories." The voice faded away.

Togron lurched aside and snatched up his rifle, tough since he never used his knees. He fired two quick shots.

"Jeff, duck!" Burnout drew a wall of flame, surrounded the two Good Guys, melted the light-bullets. Didn't matter. It gave Togron time to scramble behind a cell tower. Let Bob rescue himself. Maybe the fool could dive under the concrete, hallucinate about an underwater escape cavern.

A buffoon on the catwalk rose onto his tiptoes. "Power Plant, shoot for his head. We'll give you two free slices of mangled cow lover's pizza."

"Yeah," Power Plant said. "Good idea. Head's where alls the fruit fillings is."

"Stay behind me, Jeff. He might fire again. Or his skin might blind you." Burnout stepped closer, trying to find Togron behind the tower. "Togron, get out here!"

A trail of flame consumed the floor beside Togron. Togron wasn't worried. Burnout couldn't light him on fire. He'd destroy the power cells, set off those missiles.

"Die!" Togron stamped a foot. "Fall into a coma and die!"

"He already done the comas bit. But first, you sticks your head out heres," Power Plant said. "I wants pizza of mangled moo-cows."

Togron checked a silo worker. The worker curled into a ball on the catwalk, cowered under the guardrail that prevented concrete swan dives. Togron swiveled the rifle up, squinted through its sniper sight. "Right now I'm aiming at one of the staff. One with an ugly red-and-tan uniform and way too many disposable napkins on hand. If you don't leave me to my business, I'll kill him or her."

"I gonna punch yous in the face with a bus!"

"Jeff, I wish you'd stop telling people that."

"Not so much as yous wishing I stops trying it."

Burnout stepped forward. "I can't let you kill anybody, Togron. Let's remove that rifle from play. You're coming with us. You can be alive...or dead." Confidence dripped from his words.

"What makes you think I'm going anywhere, dead or alive? Well...I am leaving alive. Eventually." Togron hoped he got that right. But why did Burnout sound so confident? Togron's gaze sneaked up the shaft of his rifle...and at the reflection of Burnout's concentrating expression. What was the Good Guy planning?

Oh, no. Togron's stomach plummeted into his bladder. He snatched the rifle from Burnout's line of sight. Too late! It raged into a torrent of fire that snaked down to the trigger guard and over Togron's arm. Togron couldn't decide whether to scream or panic. The rifle exploded! Blew apart his forearm with teeth of shrapnel. The rifle would have been close enough to chew apart his chest if he'd learned to use his elbows. Light-bullets erupted in the carnage and opened heat blisters over his shirtless skin.

"No, brotha, the head!" Power Plant sank to the floor. "Now I can'ts gets my moo-cows pizza. Oh, but this so cool. You's betterest at blowing stuff up on fires."

"I only meant to melt the rifle. I didn't think it would explode." Burnout gasped. But he steeled his expression. "I didn't like that, Togron, but when you threaten lives, I have no choice."

The arm holding the curled remnants of the weapon had detonated. With the weapon dropped, Togron scrambled into the aisle of cell towers, struck the catwalk's support, and rebounded into a missile. He was blind—ribbons of smoke trailed in his face—fire robbed his vision—fell—head cracked on the ground.

Bob had finally sobered. He "swam" to the door and clutched the power cell to his chest, still inconspicuous. Entranced by Togron's engulfed body, he probably wondered why he tasted the fire.

"Bob." Togron choked out a cloud of steam. His smoke-filled lungs didn't have enough room for oxygen. "Bob, run. Bring the cell back to Kyril. It isn't enough, but one is better than none." He watched the stoner actually pay attention.

Bob's head darted this way, that way, any way. He dragged the power cell through the door. The Good Guys didn't notice. The still-connected power cells growled too loudly for anyone to hear the abrasion of Bob's power cell on concrete.

The flames dispersed from Togron unnaturally quickly. Burnout had willed them away. Some flame still licked Togron's head and his lungs had swelled shut. His bright orange skin had boiled to sienna. His vision faded.

"Guy smell like your jerkies beef," Power Plant said.

"You're right." Burnout sniffled. "I'm cutting down."

Chapter Nine: Behind Closed L-Doors

"Attack!" Kyril screamed the command so loudly that the bullet wound on his forehead screamed back at him. He shoved a fist into the air, his mob raging past. That mob closed rank in a stampede toward the loose army of Bad Guy generics ahead.

Kyril had docked The Nemesis in Station Zilcho's hangar bay. Since the station's defenses were unpowered, nothing had stopped him from barging in and launching his takeover. Fitting the rooster's rubbery wattle through the docking doors had proven hard, but he'd managed.

The criminal leaders and their underlings had swept out from there to kill or capture the Bad Guys in systematic raids. Now acquiring the space station loomed so closely Kyril sensed it. He touched the ridged bullet wound on his forehead, the one Asinine himself had years ago dealt him. Asinine would rue not choosing him.

Only eight generics stood ahead with that two-headed goon, Schizophrenic, standing over them like the tallest tree in a forest. Kyril's mob overwhelmed them and beat those red-shirted idiots to the ground.

Schizophrenic needed more insisting. He palmed one hireling's face into another and back-kicked a third. After growing tired of beating the generics, he tried his hand at Kyril's gang. His assault lasted only seconds.

"Excellent, satisfying, outstanding. One of the strongest Bad Guys is down, that two-headed security chief. Or chiefs." Kyril held out his hand to his assassin behind him. "Amaranthia, the checklist please. And, this time, don't tape it to a throwing star and chuck it at my head."

Amaranthia slapped the datasheet into Kyril's open palm. "You so take all the fun outta, like, making your life totally suck?"

Kyril booted up the datasheet and loaded the checklist. "Okay, Schizophrenic...Schizophrenic." His finger scanned down the list of Bad Guys. "Multipurpose...Plaster...Poop-Flinger Bot...Scapegoat. End of the list. Huh. Guess I forgot him." He selected the datasheet's NEW ENTRY icon and traced his finger along the input box. Schizophrenic...entered. "Check."

Over the roar of violence, Kyril said, "Gabber, acknowledge. Contact entity McDougall." The gabber wasn't given the chance to drone its status message before the call connected. "McDougall, how's the takeover of the eastern hemisphere?"

"A beaut!" McDougall said. Haggis sprinkled from his plaid lips, audible even over the gabber. "Already captured Asinine and his two bampots. Now I just have ta squash those generic numpties an' I think we golfed the whole eighteen. Oh, an' I nabbed Poop-Flinger Bot. Was a screamin' fire in me kilt, that galoot. And by the by, do nah take out the bot's cork. He's fully loaded, that one."

"One sixty-forth, you disguised poutine eater. Downplay the Scot act." A devilish grin stole across Kyril's lips. He changed tones. "Asinine, you say?"

"An' Poop-Flinger Bot, I say."

Kyril's heart fluttered, quivered, anticipated. Not choose Kyril? Asinine would soon feel that mistake. "Bring Asinine to me. And tell him to leave his seltzer-squirting flower behind." He tapped the gabber to shut the connection. "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me into the double digits, shame on me."

* * *

An attack detonated on the other side of the l-wall. It sounded to Ice Cream Headache like the bellow of a crowd at ancient gladiatorial arenas during family sacrifice day. Frantic footsteps and screaming. Gunshots. Though fear wrung her insides, her blood rushed and she barreled at the door. She clutched it and dug her fingers into a groove to pry it open—but something yanked at her collar, strangling her. It swept her feet backward, and she sputtered on saliva. She was yanked to the ground. Pain crackled through her body.

Violently, the something hoisted her up and spun her around. She found herself eye-to-eye-slit with Mechanism. Ice Cream Headache sensed the lividness that churned through the speckled mouth plate of Mechanism's exoskeletal armor.

"Remain in this room, you malodorous cretin," Mechanism said.

To alleviate the garroting chokehold, Ice Cream Headache coughed out a puff of condensation vapor. "Did you just call me a smelly square of dried bread?"

A gun blast and a torrential scream rained from outside.

Mechanism dropped Ice Cream Headache. "I called you a smelly simpleton, you smelly simpleton."

"A smelly simpleton?" Ice Cream Headache rubbed her tailbone.

"Since this hideaway appears on no blueprints, no one is aware of its existence. You and I, therefore, remain safe. We will fare no better than those outside if you reveal our whereabouts. Except I will still inspire awe and you"—Mechanism examined Ice Cream Headache—"will seem merely bearable." Mechanism clanked toward the darker side of the room where the orange glow of the flare rods didn't permeate.

Ice Cream Headache dogged Mechanism. "How do you know what's happening? Did somebody tip you off? And why do you say 'awe' five or six times a conversation?" She reacted when another gun report sputtered through the door.

"Because Lord inspires it." Appliance's motor droned louder, and the small robot hovered from shadow. "Lord inspires awe in even the deadest of hearts. In fact, speaking of dead hearts, he inspires awe in corpses long rotting." Appliance clacked its pincers together as if to punctuate its sentence. Its single eye swiveled from Ice Cream Headache to Mechanism. "And, also speaking of dead hearts, Lord, your fridge doojigger is beginning to reek."

Ice Cream Headache's eyes shifted to the stretcher on which Luzimoss lay in a drugged slumber. She was thankful Luzimoss had destroyed the station's power core. Otherwise, the l-door she had rushed toward wouldn't have been stuck in its tangible state. It would have faded, exposing them and this secret lair.

"Is everyone dying out there? What's happening?" Ice Cream Headache asked. Sound couldn't escape the lair, so she was confident her voice went unheard outside over Plaster yelling something about "party crashers overturning his sock drawer" and Brick yelling something about "malefactors of encroachment rendering asunder his foot apparel of—" You know what? Forget it.

"Out there roars a battle impossible to win. An amalgamated crime gang much like the Bad Guys seeks to destroy us. You might call this a hostile takeover if your meager thinking comprehends that. Our numbers are low. Our defenses are nonexistent. Those outside will surely be overtaken in moments. When the pandemonium cools, we shall make our move." Mechanism stood beneath a viewscreen that remained tangible but dead since the power failure. The clanking of his boots was inaudible when compared with the explosion thundering from beyond the door. "For now, we shall wait until the din has died. After, we shall pry open that door and retake what will soon be mine. Until then"—Mechanism shrugged, his shoulder gears whirring—"play with Appliance." Mechanism retreated farther into the darkness

Ice Cream Headache curled her lips at Appliance. Appliance clacked its pincers. "Lord has programmed me with hopscotch, go fish, and tag."

Ice Cream Headache dropped her jaw at Mechanism and flailed an arm at Appliance. "You taught this thing only kiddy games?"

Chapter Ten: Bomb Cakes Are Chocolate...and Your Favorite

Kamikaze moved aside so Reef, Smithereens, and Momentum could bowl into the hallway where the waist-high bomb sat beeping. A tote bag over Smithereens's shoulder contained, Kamikaze hoped, bomb party supplies. If Kamikaze knew Reef, it probably contained defusing equipment. Boring, fun-ruining defusing equipment.

"It's here." Reef swept Kamikaze aside and checked the bomb over. Stinky healing putty coated his brow and burned cheek to heal injuries he sustained while rescuing Luzimoss from the Bad Guys only days ago.

"Yeah. Isn't it great? I was eating Pop Rocks and drinking soda when I found it." Kamikaze knocked on its top. The others scrambled back, their mouths open in ghostly fright. "I wanted to set it off earlier, but I knew you guys would feel upset if I didn't include you, so I waited. Aren't I a friend?" He slapped Reef's shoulder. "Right? A friend?"

Smithereens set down the tote bag and unzipped it. On its side, Master Asinine's face in the Bad Guy logo drooped into a hungry grin.

Kamikaze peeked at the bag to determine its contents. "You brought the party supplies, right? Funny hats? Noisemakers? A bomb cake? With candles made of fuses? Why does everyone always ignore me? Why are you pulling out a scanner? You didn't bring party supplies, did you? I hate you sometimes."

A billboard ad for bomb jackets splashed onto a wall.

Reef wagged a scanner at the bomb, left to right, top to bottom. Kamikaze looked over his shoulder, focused intently on the digital screen. What did it say? "Explosion"? "Super explosion"? "Imminent death"? He doubted these screens showed that level of detail, but he'd settle for simply "death" or "kaboom." Or "silent but deadly." He'd experienced his share of silent-but-deadly bombs and, boy, Smithereens knew how to expel a flatulent onion.

The scanner dinged. Done. Reef read the display, his finger zigzagging down its data. "Ricin. This isn't good. This is definitely not good."

Kamikaze checked the scanner. "But it's not bad either."

Reef examined the walls, the ceiling, the floors. "Vents. This bomb's toxins will circulate throughout the whole station. The location of this bomb was chosen carefully."

Kamikaze pointed his idea finger up. "Okay, here's what we'll do—"

"Here's what we'll do instead. Smith, this is a bomb set to expel about sixteen grams of ricin into a hallway that has three vents. You need to defuse this thing." Smithereens pulled out equipment, so Reef continued, "There are twenty-three people on the station right now. Kamikaze, I need you to guide them outside."

Kamikaze's face melted. "But I want to stay here, make ricin cakes. You know, with that"—his hands made an exploding motion—"explosive taste."

"Get to the lobby entrance and get everyone out. And gabber Legion, tell him what's happening. Momentum, you—"

"Forget it, pal." Momentum shoved Reef back. "You pulled me out of learning to bake chili-filled doughnuts for this? Solve this problem yourself. You probably have the perfect hyperability for this."

The haunt control chimed in, "Chili-filled doughnuts now two moolahs for a dozen at Barbecued Pastries."

Reef tightened his stance as if to strike. But he withheld. "Not now. I'm trying to save lives here, Frieda—I mean, Momentum. Cooperate or we die. I need you to do the same as Kamikaze but at the western entrance. And I wouldn't eat anything you learn to make from the cookbots."

Momentum brought his face to within inches of Reef's. "Not—until—you—come—clean—you drunken sham. What's your hyperability?"

"I'll ignore the stab at my drinking, but if you continue, I'll nail you to the ground. Go." Reef closed the gap between them until their noses dinged each other and their foul breaths mixed. Kamikaze smelled the jalapeno and whiskey from here. Wwwwow.

Momentum held his ground.

Reef overenuncianted for effect. "Drop this right now, Momentum, or so help me I will strap you to this bomb and have Kamikaze film the explosion."

Kamikaze burst forward. "I'll capture the mood just right. I'll set up some lighting, put on some music, and give you ten percent of the videochip sales. It'll be so poignant you'll want to eat your own heart out...which sounds like a good idea for a sequel."

Momentum drew closer to Reef, but Reef refused to give up his position. Both squeezed their hands stiffly. Momentum raised a fist. It tightened. He huffed in preparation to launch.

"Fine." Momentum stepped back, though his icy demeanor didn't melt. His gaze lingered before he stormed off, not zipping away as his speed allowed, as if to make an intimidating exit. "You win. Boozer. But this isn't over."

Kamikaze didn't yet leave. He watched Smithereens remove the bomb's shell. With it removed, he tasted hot ammonia in the air. He tapped his gabber. "Gabber, acknowledge. Contact entity Legion."

"Entity Legion is unreachable."

Huh? Unreachable? Where'd he go? "Gabber, acknowledge. Retry."

"Entity Legion is unreachable."

"Eh, buddy?" Smithereens said over a soft beeping that grew louder and took over the bright hallway. "Buddy, eh...we have problems."

Kamikaze hooted. "I love not solving problems! What is it? Can't defuse the bomb? We're dead and don't know it's already exploded? You ate undercooked ham for lunch?" He circled around the bomb to check out what entranced Smithereens. Ah. The digital display showing the bomb's timer, no longer hidden underneath the shell.

Seven minutes and eighteen seconds.

Oh boy, oh man, oh PQRST, yes. Kamikaze looked from Reef's dumbfounded gasp to Smithereens's. Both were speechless, so he leaped at Reef and shook him by the arms. "Call Momentum back because I'm not fast enough to get the champagne in time."

Chapter Eleven: Not Invited

Kyril hobbled past Cravinia and the bound Legion, headed toward Asinine. His boots clomped in a lopsided rhythm across the auditorium's balcony. Now that Asinine and his lieutenant had been escorted to The Nemesis, the Bad Guy leader could witness how powerful Kyril had grown since ignoring him in the Bad Guy amalgamation. He must be angry, fuming, macked off.

"Lowensland, that gunshot you fired that killed Sopher roars in my head every single day. I'll tear you apart for murdering Sopher!" His hungry teeth gnashing at air, Legion struggled against his cuffs. He tipped off the chair and barreled past Cravinia. Still secured to the floor, he rebounded back into his seat and yelped when he bashed a knee against the floor. His yelp echoed throughout the auditorium.

Kyril slammed an arm across Legion's face. "You sit where you belong. This is my revenge. Underlings, babysit this loose cannon." He gritted his teeth and watched one of the five nearby underlings stand the Good Guy's seat up. Kyril's revenge, not Legion's.

"So, Asinine, finally you're mine. Captured, secured, detained. I had one of your followers earlier. Thought he was you, but he only shares your wardrobe. I felt as if I should blame him, so I renamed him Scapegoat. Get used to the new media name."

"You renamed Scapegoat as Scapegoat?" Asinine's eyes shifted around questioningly. "I don't get it."

Beside Asinine, two of Kyril's thugs held his lowly lieutenant down in an armchair. Both batted away the squeaky question marks that sprung from the lieutenant's headgear. So those ugly question marks were weapons...or at least eye pokers.

Kyril grabbed Asinine's chin. The Bad Guy leader was unable to resist the two underlings restraining his arms. Still, that robot claw attached to his helmet kept snapping at Kyril. "What do you have to say for yourself?"

Asinine chose not to speak, probably because the robot claw now squeezed around his tongue. Kyril grabbed the claw and tore it away. He threw it across the room, and it hit Cravinia.

Cravinia grabbed it and flung it back. "That careless toss could have set back my glorious people ten thousand millennia, you inferior fool! You will surely pay through your hair-choked nose."

Asinine shot a face at one of the goons who held him down. "Whoo. I guess you were the one who caught Poop-Flinger Bot. Do me a favor and make sure he's unloaded." He faced Kyril. "That thing's more trouble than it's worth. Keeps overfilling the laundry machine. Plus that stuff it uses for ammo? Don't know what it is, but I can tell you what it smells like."

His lieutenant leaned closer. "Don't forget its foul table manners, sir."

"It never did learn which was the salad fork."

Kyril slapped Asinine across the face, blushing the Bad Guy leader's cheek with a red handprint. "You should have asked me to join. You would have had it all. The position, the power, the numbers. Your army has dwindled, and your space station is powerless. You lost what little you had. And, in one short hour, you've been overtaken. I did this to you. Me. You're history, the past, long ago. By my count, only Mechanism and Ice Cream Headache are at large. After their captures, Station Zilcho and the Bad Guys will belong to the Clan of Foul Wind."

With a man's growl, Cravinia kicked an empty pedestal. "We are the Clan of Foul Wind Clan. If you insist on saddling us with that senseless second clan, use our full title lest devastation wreak havoc on the crops of several generations to come."

Kyril leaned against a dent on the wall. "The Clan of Foul Wind will take this galaxy and own it. Without your idea to unite, we couldn't have achieved this. Now the Clan army numbers two hundred thousand."

"Two hundred thousand?" Asinine sputtered a laugh. "If you want to scare me, you'd better straighten out your number. Is it two hundred or two thousand?"

Asinine's lieutenant leaned into his ear. His sentence was carried on whispers privy to only those two. Understanding caused Asinine to nod. "Oohhhhhh, I see."

"You idiot." Kyril rammed a fist across Asinine's face, rammed another. Ahhh, a sweet rush suffused his body. So rewarding, gratifying, delicious. "Regret not asking me to join now?"

"Not with that attitude," Asinine said. He blocked another hammer-fist with his cheek. "I do regret swallowing my tooth just now, though."

Legion said, "Kyril, as much as I enjoy watching you tenderize Lowensland's face, just kill him. And, about not being asked to join, you realize he murdered his coconspirators, right? Think about that for a second."

Kyril's ravenous face radiated at Legion. "Just kill him? He excluded me. He earned this torture. I deserved to join as much as Grestlix or Marset or that snaky guy with the lisp name." Kyril grasped Asinine's neck and squeezed. "Asinine owes me!" Wait. His composure had broken. He should loosen up, calm down, behave. He wiped drool from his lips, straightened his back, and fixed his collar. His fist became fingers. "It all should have been mine."

At Asinine's raised hand, Kyril said, "Yes, Asinine, I'd have let you keep the 'Hang in There' poster with the kitty dangling from a branch." Asinine dropped his hand. "Now—"

"Wait. I have another question." Asinine put his hand up again but dropped it. "What about my 'Hang in There' poster?"

"Crock, you have the memory of a goldfish!"

"Not true. I have the memory of twenty goldfish."

Kyril leaned forward for another smack when a wire-thin body dived through the balcony's l-door. As if starving dogs pursued him, Bob bumbled into the room. He crawled a few inches, shook to his feet, and fell down again. His wheezing breath sounded horrendously labored. He checked behind himself, probably noted his glowing footsteps in his madcap vision, and stared at his arms as if seeing them for the first time.

"Bob, what are you doing?"

"Man, my legs are after me! I run an' run an' run but, whenever I look back, there they are, shootin' rainbows into my hair."

"Where's Togron?" Kyril asked. His orange accomplice's absence felt disconcerting, unsettling, disquieting.

"Oh, man, he got himself killed." Bob's arms flailed around his faded T-shirt.

"What? Killed? How? He tried to round a corner but couldn't bend his knees?"

"Nah, man, nah. Those Good Guys showed up blastin' us, and he caught fire in the head." Bob put a finger to his pale lip after he missed and jabbed his rose-madder eye. "Or maybe I saw, man. Saw through his soul."

"Most important, Moonbeam, is if you got our power cells." Kyril wrenched Bob up and threw his pipe-cleaner body into the sofa chair. "Tell me you stole them."

"Power cell's here, man." Bob panted as if having sprinted through a marathon. "Only stole one before the Good Guys showed up. It's in the transport. I parked it in the hangar bay. Your claws are tight, man."

Only one? Crock. One might suffice if he caused a chain reaction. Kyril indicated an underling. "You. Quickly. Grab the cell and bring it here. We need this station's power running again. Once IP learns what we've done, we'll need the station's defenses up until we destroy it."

The underling hurried from the balcony on footsteps that tapped away on the carpet.

Bob called out, "It's in the transport wit' all them psychedelic monsters hangin' around it." He righted himself in the sofa chair. Well, he tried to.

"Keep yourself awake, Bob. We'll need that haunt-control code once the station's power gets restored."

"But those Good Guys showed up"—Bob rotated in the sofa chair to the sound of Kyril driving an elbow into the wall—"they showed up, man, and lit Togron on fire. He's dead, man." Bob began sobbing, but Kyril knew his ham-acted sobbing resulted from his constant high. "He's dead."

The Good Guys. Kyril tramped over to Legion and grabbed his neck. "How could your Good Guys get there so swiftly? I sent only Togron and Bob because it was a quick in-and-out mission. How could they get there?"

From Legion's paling mouth came a strangled response. "I—I don't know. Hey, strangle Lowensland instead. You want revenge on him, remember?"

Kyril threw Legion's neck out of his grip. He cleared his throat, but that failed to clear the raggedness from his voice. "We have a leak, a mole, a rat."

"A whole zoo of stuff," Asinine said. "A leak is a reptile, right?"

Cravinia steeled her manly posture. "That is obtuse. A leak in our midst would boil rivers with blood and swarm the skies with locusts. We would be devastated beyond a number of setbacks for which no counting system is yet invented."

"Uh, boss?" one of the underlings said.

"Shut up. I'm postulating." Kyril rubbed his chin. The Good Guys had been forewarned. A leak was the only way the Good Guys could have arrived in time. Kyril would not let this ruin his retribution.

"But, boss, Legion—"

Kyril snapped his fingers. "A leak working for the Good Guys? No, but a leak working for the Bad Guys. An anonymous Bad Guy tip to the Good Guys, warning them about our plans. Who?" An insight struck him. He eyed Bob, who still sat across the room. "And how did a drunken, high-as-a-kite screw-up like Bob escape? Only a Bad Guy would be experienced enough to escape the Good Guys so easily."

"Boss—"

"Or perhaps the Good Guys had simply ignored him."

Asinine tried to rise from his chair, but the underlings anchored him down. "You know, Kyril, I would have told you if I'd planted a leak. I'm a nice guy like that."

"Bad idea, sir," his lieutenant said. "I think we'll have to review the five z's of ineffectiveness. And may I make a suggestion, sir, since none of the points starts with z?"

"Boss," that same underling said. "Legion has escaped."

Kyril woke from his conjecturing. Impossible. He checked Legion's chair and noticed a pair of hyperstasis cuffs bundled on its empty seat. Im-crocking-possible! Glacial cold gripped him. He grabbed Legion's chair and launched it across the balcony. It bounced off the railing and smacked him in the face. "Crock!"

"Don't worry," Asinine said. "That happens to me when I point my slingshots backwards." Asinine had once again bowed out of the intelligent response.

"The cuffs fell off when you threw him down, boss," his underling said.

"Why didn't anybody stop him?" Kyril limped to the railing and leaned over the auditorium. There. Legion. Escaping down an aisle. He had climbed off this balcony to the highest row of seats in the auditorium and now vanished down a dim bathroom hallway.

"Cravinia, after—" Huh? She was missing. Kyril searched the shadows behind his underlings. "Where is that gray man-goon?" With his bad leg, he kicked Bob's sofa chair. Crocking ow! He clutched his thigh, feeling pain knife along it. "Gabber, acknowledge. Contact entities Cravinia, McDougall, and Stabber."

"Contacting entities Cravinia, McDougall, and Stabber. Seekin—Connections to entities McDougall and Stabber attained. Entity Cravinia is unreachable."

"McDougall and Stabber, Legion has—Stabber, quit st—Put down your hobby knife. I know it doesn't get the job done. That's why they call it a hobby knife. Anyway, Legion has escaped. He's near The Nemesis's auditorium. I need you both to recapture him. Take ten followers each and start searching. He just ducked into the east bathroom hallway. I—No, you won't barge in on anything. We're so close to finishing this. Don't let him get away. Yes, McDougall, the green numpty. And enough with the haggis. You're one sixty-forth Scottish. Also, one of you find Cravinia. She's missing. Gabber, acknowledge. Cut connection."

Kyril inspected Legion's cuffs, which had slid across the balcony when he had launched the chair. Tampered with, tinkered with, compromised. Who had used these cuffs? Bob. Bob had bound Legion, the same Bob who now tested the sofa chair to see if it could sit on him.

Kyril would keep his eye on Bob.

Chapter Twelve: Everyone Loves a Good Golf Joke

Legion limped toward a small room that looked suspiciously like an engine room. The door faded—he'd almost burst through an l-door! After having no l-tech at Station One for so long, he'd forgotten that blasted technology abounded everywhere else. The l-door had already safely disappeared—for now—and voices echoed down the corridor, so he took his chances and dived in. With his momentum, he skidded to a stop.

The starship's thruster energizer sat in the corner, and seven-inch piping webbed the floor in labyrinthine paths. Energy and heat gauges indicated levels Legion didn't care to check. The fuel injector stood beside the liquid nitrogen injector. The clamor, a rumble-hum-clank-buzz-drone, swathed the entire room.

Legion shivered. The engine room for a beast this size needed to be freezing. He hugged his bare arms and rubbed them to keep warm. His breath exhaled in clouds.

Legion had wanted to stay on the balcony. When his cuffs had failed, he'd felt torn between escaping and throttling Lowensland. That killer deserved death, deserved for Legion to pry out his eyeballs. Jealousy had chugged through Legion's blood when Kyril pummeled the snot out of the Bad Guy tyrant. Maybe snot was the wrong word. After spending the day with Scapegoat, he'd had enough of it.

But he had to escape. The Good Guys were vulnerable now that Kyril had leeched Station One's haunt-control code from Legion's mind. He had to do something, assuming they'd survive the ricin bomb.

Kyril's cronies were not far behind. Their voices drew closer. But Alaphus would help him out of this. Did Legion really believe that? He had to. He clutched his perspiration-coated necklace and his finger found the bullet hole that punctured it. He hoped he believed that.

Legion hobbled over a pipe and searched the room with vision still hindered by a subtly swollen eyebrow. Nothing around to use as a weapon. Nothing as a shield. He climbed over another pipe to check behind it—nothing! Unless he wanted to strip a metal sheet from one of the pipes, he was unarmed and defenseless. Not even a jagged soda can. Why? There was always a forgotten can in engine rooms.

Several pipes spanned the ceiling, but evidently The Nemesis had no cooling fans. He couldn't even steal a fan blade. Kyril had upgraded to cooling vents. If only they'd replace that ridiculous rooster head around the cockpit.

"That bampot's around here somewhere." A voice from outside. McDougall's. Once that l-door opened, Legion would die. Not from McDougall. From the l-door's imminent explosion. Blasted l-tech. It was everywhere!

Footsteps approached the room. Legion ducked behind a pipe. He expected shrapnel to rain over him or the l-door to vanish and become a foul-mouthed duck/bear concoction. But the l-door vaporized safely.

"Ah, get goin', ya bloomin' idiot. He ain't in here." McDougall was chastising someone. A hand slapped skin. If Legion knew McDougall, a cloud of dried haggis also came with that slap.

Legion peeked over the freezing pipe and noted a cleaner, less plaid version of McDougall that sulked away, a haggis handprint on his tartan back. Now only McDougall and his caddy remained. Legion wasn't kidding when he called the underling a caddy. The underling actually carried a golf bag.

McDougall and his caddy wandered into the engine room despite what the crime chief had told his haggis-branded golfing buddy. Dark crumbs of saltines speckled his plaid beard. His caddy followed, offering an iron or wood or...Legion checked...burned rubber chicken flopping out the backside of the bag? Oh, wait. Licorice. The black stuff.

"Ah know ya're in here, Legion." McDougall tore off a shred of licorice from the whip he held. "Come on out so we can pound each other ta smears like fine gentlemen." Pound. Smears. Gentlemen. One of those words was out of place. And Legion wished McDougall would chew with his mouth closed.

Legion remained behind the pipe. He hoped his cloudy breaths dissipated unseen. If he sneaked to the next pipe, he could maneuver himself to McDougall's back.

McDougall tore off another stretch of licorice. "C'mon out, ya green spamhead. I wanna ring that noggin." Legion wished McDougall would finish chewing before threatening anyone's life. Or before openmouthed guffawing.

Legion used thick pipes as cover to circle around behind McDougall's caddy. He rose slowly, leaned toward the caddy, and gently...carefully...delicately...slid the heaviest-looking club out of the golf bag. So silently. Got it. The room's frostiness made it feel like an icicle in his hands.

He slowly drew the club back...and cracked the side of the caddy's skull. The caddy collapsed over a pipe and slumped against the l-door. Before Legion reacted or even felt fear, the l-door faded. The caddy collapsed across its threshold, dribbling blood.

McDougall spun around. Twin puffs of breath escaped his nostrils. "Ya wee baldie, ya belted him off his post. Now, get ready for a rammy." He wagged his tongue.

Legion threw up his arms. "Okay, there are themes and then there's overkill. Speak like a regular person and whiten your teeth. And aren't you from a French colony?"

McDougall combed his fingers along his upper lip. "What's wrong with mah teeth?"

"They're plaid." Legion golfed his club in a wide arc, but McDougall blocked. He yanked the club from Legion and swung—Legion arched away—again—Legion ducked underneath. The golf bag—close by—Legion fished another club out. A lot thinner. How was this a fair course? The country club was definitely going to hear about this.

"Ah, a putter. A fine fightin' club...for a wee lass." McDougall swung again, but Legion thrust his club above his head to block the blow. Another swing—McDougall's hefty club smacked at Legion's hip. A shock rang through Legion's leg.

Legion ducked, jammed his putter between McDougall's legs. The fat golfer spat a hoarse cough, dropped his club, and reached for his golf balls. His hip aching, his leg still sore, Legion stood and punched the putting end of his weapon into McDougall's marshmallow gut. McDougall lurched back. "At"—Legion slammed again—"least"—and again—"being—a wee—lass—is—better—than—being—a plaid—stereo—type."

The last slam sent McDougall stumbling over a pipe. His gabber popped out of his ear and rolled aside. He flailed for a heat gauge, an energizer unit, a horizontal pipe, grasped nothing. His back smacked into the liquid nitrogen injector, fracturing a McDougall-sized hole through its glass shell.

McDougall collapsed into the injector. Its hoses dislodged and sprayed a shower of nitrogen around and over him. Nitrogen dribbled down his cap, seeped into his hair. More filled the spare tires around his waist. His plaid beard frosted to a crystallized blue. His face literally froze with shock. His body crackled, stiffened, iced, congealed. Legion would leave the hole-in-one jokes for a much more witless comedian.

Legion didn't throw aside his club. He bent over and stuffed a hand into the golf bag still around the unconscious caddy's shoulder. He retrieved a golf ball, laid it on a dent in the pipe at his feet, and poised his back. He shifted his legs, lined his shot, wiggled his shoulders, reared back...bent his knees...rotated his hips...swung...

The ball ricocheted off the side of a heat indicator, off a wall, and into Legion's temple.

"Give me a break!" Legion threw the golf club into the McDougall ice sculpture and stamped off, not watching the plaid man shatter into glacial shards.

Screw golf.

Chapter Thirteen: What Now?

"I'm curious. Asinine, why'd you betray Intergalactic Protection? I heard it was because your commanding officer deflated your underwater mission floaties, but I want the real answer." Kyril bit into the gingerbread man he'd baked with his own image imprinted on it in hardened sugar. He didn't bother to look Asinine in the face. The has-been would soon be the past. Kyril was the future.

Kyril waited a few moments, but no answer came. Finally he locked eyes with Asinine.

Asinine jolted in his seat. "Oh, me. I thought you were talking to the other Asinine." His expression became unyielding, harsh, pitiless. His robotic stare drilled a hole through Kyril's retinas. Kyril felt a jolt of primal dread. "Why did I betray IP? I'd grown sick of their crock, sick of everyone laughing at me. I'd had enough. They always treated me as if I didn't matter, as if their insults would bounce off. But they wouldn't. Because I wasn't made of rubber." A tear shimmered down his cheek. Sniffle. "I was made of glue."

Was he serious? "Should have stayed with them. Look where you ended up: under my power. Futile, fruitless, pointless. You cold-shouldered me when you joined forces with the others. I could have offered you so much. But it's all mine now, anyway."

"Mazel tov."

"Do you know who tipped off Intergalactic Protection when you formed the Bad Guys? Do you know who their anonymous informant was?"

Asinine gasped. He put a hand to his mouth. "My yoga instructor."

Holy crock. Kyril should have seen that coming. "No. Me, you social parasite. I did it. I tipped them off. I was the one indirectly responsible for creating the Good Guys. You could have had no opposition if you'd only included me."

Kyril bit into his honey-sweet cookie and shambled to the balcony railing. He needed an update on Legion's capture. "Gabber, acknowledge. Contact entity Stabber."

He waited and listened to the gabber's infernal search message. Finally it gave up: "Entity Stabber is unreachable."

What? That status message told Kyril that Stabber's gabber was off. Why? "Gabber, acknowledge. Retry, you crocking tin-can phone."

"Entity Stabber is unreachable. Remainder of command uncalled for."

Kyril threw his cookie aside and aimed a glower at Asinine. He lowered his chin to his collar bone, eyes forward, and broke into an uneven march.

Asinine's lieutenant noted the approach. "Sir, I believe you'll soon be the recipient of a beating."

"Wouldn't be the first time, Lieutenant," Asinine said. "Probably the first time from this gonad."

"You did suffer a good pummeling earlier."

"Technically not a—" Knuckles smacked Asinine across the face. "Ow! Tell your fist not to interrupt me." Another punch. Then another and another. One clocked him over the head. Another clouted his chin. Kyril stopped, so Asinine said, "You missed a spot." Another smack in the cheek. "Got it."

Kyril leaned over Asinine and rested his palms on the chair's back. "So bruised, battered, beaten. You look like the topographical map of a volcano. You must hurt."

"Like bubble wrap wrung in the grip of a bored computer programmer." Asinine's blood drew lines on the floor.

"I can give you healing putty so those bruises never even swell."

"I'd rather have a cookie. I'd enjoy eating your face."

"Simply tell me what's happening to my underlings. First Togron dies on a mission he should have finished before anyone could respond, and now Stabber won't answer me. Only two of your Bad Guys are loose by my count. Where are they?"

"Ooh. Let's pretend we're on that game show. I can ask a friend. My lieutenant might have an idea."

"I'm right here, sir. I'll be on that gabber when you're fighting for the big million, but I'm afraid, at the moment, I'm quite useless."

Asinine shrugged apologetically at Kyril. "Too bad, because he knows a lot about what's going on and where it's at. He earned an A in sixth-grade geography."

Kyril returned to the balcony's edge and jabbed his chin at one of his underlings. "Get the tracker out." He limped back to grab a small device the underling had fished from a pocket. The contraption was the size of a two-inch-thick datasheet.

Too bad he had to use this thing. If Station Zilcho's haunt control were powered up, he'd have used it to locate Stabber once Bob unlocked it. "Tracker, acknowledge. Locate entity Stabber, broadcast when located."

"Locating entity Stabber," the tracker said. A tiny drone with a miniature camera emerged from a slot in the device. It hopped into the air and buzzed off around the corner. To find Stabber would not take long. Another camera drone was searching for those two at-large Bad Guys, but it was coming up empty-handed, with nothing, without result.

Kyril could have watched the camera drone's feed flitting around, but that always left his stomach feeling queasy. Better to wait until it finished searching.

Which didn't take long. Made sense since Kyril had sent Stabber to hunt for Legion not far from here. The tracker already said, "Entity Stabber located," and the feed flickered onto its display.

Oh, crock. Kyril's hairs stood at attention. Stabber's detachment lay arrayed on the floor, arms and legs littered around, heads discarded against walls, flak jackets bloodied and torn. Kyril recognized not one underling in the carnage. His angry breathing quickened again. Butchery, slaughter, pure bloodshed. Savage. This was not Legion's doing. So whose doing was it? Who threatened Kyril's plan?

Asinine would know.

Kyril thundered toward Asinine, clutching the tracker in his clammy hand. He wanted to crush it but kept his rage contained until he stood only inches away. He shoved Asinine's lieutenant over and thrust the viewscreen at Asinine's nose. "What is the meaning of this?"

Asinine frowned in thought. "You mean the dictionary meaning?"

Kyril belted the tracker across Asinine's face. It cracked down its middle but held together. Kyril's nostrils whistled with each huff. He aimed a stare at his underlings. "Who captured Multipurpose?"

One underling stammered for lost words, so Kyril drew a pistol and blew out his forehead. The body stood for a moment, but its limbs collapsed, and it soon followed. Kyril would not brook this confusion.

The report of the gunshot still clapped in the room. Kyril faced the three remaining underlings. "Multipurpose is their only ninja. I found Stabber's contingent sliced apart by a bladed weapon. Fitting, mind you, but not according to our plan. So I ask: who captured Multipurpose?"

"W-w-w-well, we d-didn't completely one hundred percent capture him entirely all the way." The underling twisted his fingertips against each other. "W-we found him asleep on the c-couch, and none of us h-had a crane, a-and he was sopping wet with sweat—I m-mean, sopping wet. So we kind of j-just...l-left him. We s-stole his jelly rolls, though." The underling offered a packaged dessert. "Jelly roll?"

"You left him lying around?" Kyril wanted to dispatch this moron as he had the last, but he quelled the feeling. Wasteful, costly, thriftless, though the underling's stupidity risked all Kyril deserved.

So who had killed Stabber? The leak. Yesss. First, Bob had discovered that the Magellan Station had located Station Zilcho. How? Next, someone had tipped off the Good Guys. How else could they intercept Togron and Bob's raid? Finally, the Bad Guys had been warned about this surprise attack. How else could Mechanism and Ice Cream Headache remain hidden, and how else could the Bad Guys so easily dispatch everyone in Stabber's contingent? And Bob used to work for Asinine before the Bad Guys existed.

Did he still?

"Incoming connection from entity Cravinia," Kyril's gabber said. Cravinia was checking in. He rested an elbow on the empty pedestal. Finally some good news.

"Gabber, acknowledge. Accept connection," Kyril said. The earpiece and mouthpiece popped out of the gabber. "Cravinia, where were you? Everything's going to crock, to certain doom, to...crock." Sigh. Sometimes words were tough to think of. If only crock had a synonym, perhaps a four-letter one.

"Kyril," Cravinia said. The sound of his name exuded cold calculation. Never had a single word so deepened the alarm Kyril felt. "I quit."

Huh? Why? What was her problem? Kyril wanted to ask the question, but Cravinia answered anyway. "As you know, Trioxidillians are below us superior Logisticans. I, therefore, refuse to work any longer with you or your petty comrades. The warriors of my criminal empire are ferrying to a distant asteroid. This asteroid has been fitted with a fusion laser mighty enough to obliterate that puny outpost called Station Zilcho. Until I destroy your pesky power cell, I will remain on Station Zilcho. I will then join my clan. Once Station Zilcho crosses the asteroid's path, we will destroy it."

"You're planning to obliterate your own asteroid?"

"Station Zilcho, you daft idiot. I will destroy Station Zilcho." She grunted. "Your bid for power has become mine. Your plan is infantile, you are motivated only by ego, and two clans in one media name is superfluous."

"For crock's sake, you man-witch, there's only one. Now, come back here. Follow my plan!" Kyril slammed a knee into a wall and kicked away Legion's empty chair. Was she the leak? Impossible. She was attempting to destroy the Clan of the Foul Wind and the Bad Guys.

Cravinia continued, "You will never lead the underworld of this galaxy, as your attempts will inflict unforeseen plagues upon your kind and leave the whipping welts of the mighty across your back."

"How do you know about my welts?" Kyril slammed a foot into Legion's chair again.

"Good-bye," was Cravinia's final word. The connection ended with the gabber's typical message.

A lightheaded tingle washed through Kyril. He supported himself on the balcony's railing. He felt like puking into the auditorium below. Cravinia would not take everything from him. He would not allow it.

"So did the man-witch answer that question about your welts?" Asinine asked.

* * *

Mechanism gave his suit the mental command to disengage the eavesdropping program. He had heard enough of Cravinia's threats...and had caught a few of Master Asinine's choice moronic comments. Lucky Mechanism.

Soon his kingship would be achieved. It would not be much longer that he would force himself to toil under Master Asinine's command. In little more than a month. For now, though, it was necessary. He needed Master Asinine's resources, and how much easier would it be to usurp those resources than from the inside?

"We have work ahead of us. Can you handle it?" Mechanism asked Headache. Was his subordinate up to the task? Headache looked shaken. Why could others not perform to the exacting standards Mechanism could?

Headache shifted in the darkness of Mechanism's lair, disregarding the wires he was hooking into a computer. "We're not sorting Asinine's shoes again, are we? That guy's an adult. He needs to learn the difference between left and right without the labels."

Headache had once again made an inferior guess. Must Mechanism always enlighten these lesser boobs? It provided such little time to ponder his own outstanding merits. "No. I saddled Plaster with that tiresome chore long ago. Our task involves a manned asteroid—and I use the word manned because Cravinia helms it."

Headache snorted a laugh. "Because she's such a butch. I get it."

"Yes. A butch. A manned asteroid nears our space station. If we cannot erect the station's defenses, the asteroid will annihilate us."

"Isn't Cravinia with the—what's their media name?—Clan of the Wind, Earth, Rain, and Fire Clan? She'll destroy her own allies."

"She has disassociated herself. And we must ensure her failure. We must, therefore, connect a new power supply to the station."

"And where can we find this power supply? Last time I checked, the station doesn't take flashlight batteries."

"Far be it for you to scheme on my level, but a power cell has been transported here specifically for repowering Station Zilcho. Not sufficient for a permanent solution, but sufficient for our immediate needs. We will appropriate it. Now." Mechanism left.

Headache followed. "Is the kitchen on the way? The power's out and someone has to eat those frozen caramel bars before they melt. Might as well be us."

Chapter Fourteen: Call and Collect

Still huddled for warmth in the engine room of The Nemesis, Legion tapped the gabber in his ear. It wouldn't have felt disgusting had McDougall not laser-painted it plaid, encrusted it with dried haggis, and worn it in the sweatiest, sloppiest ear this side of an ogre. And it didn't help that McDougall had come under fire from Poop-Flinger Bot.

Legion last remembered sending Burnout on assignment, so he should still be aboard the Flagstar. "Gabber, acknowledge. Contact calltag Burnout-dash-Good-Guys." With a click, the gabber reported a successful connection.

"Burnout?" attempted Legion when the signal had opened.

"Legion?" Burnout's stony voice gritted through the earpiece, seething with every pant. "This mission you sent us on? Data gathering? We arrived minutes after a slaughter. Everything was destroyed. We couldn't learn the location of Station Zilcho. Then some anonymous caller said we were the only ones close enough to stop a power cell robbery. We weren't armed. We were underprepared for combat...on your word. You underestimated the danger you put Jeff in again. Twice today! I told you—"

"Burnout, we'll discuss that later. Right now, I need your help." He shifted his weight to keep his back from freezing against the wall. Already, frost gnawed at it.

Burnout's gabber crackled with static, probably from the sweltering heat wave the pyro exuded. He said stiffly, "My gabber doesn't recognize this signal. Where are you?"

"At the business end of a long day. How's that new pilot working out?"

"Mabel? She—"

"The medias name! Use the medias name!" Power Plant hooted in the background.

Burnout hesitated. "Withered Old Battle-Axe is"—a silent harumph. A harumph with Burnout was never good news—"not crotchety, belligerent, blind, or cantankerous. She's the best pilot ever and she smells nothing like kasha and mothballs. By the way, keep in mind Jeff declared today Opposite Day. Oh, and she hasn't even hit a dog yet. Or seven."

"Eight," Franchise said from a distance. "Oh, wait. Nine now."

"What's it mean, 'can-cank-ous'?" Power Plant asked.

"I ain't cancerous," a December voice carped, revealing a ripened age.

Withered Old Battle-Axe? Legion refused to get to the bottom of that one. First things first: "Listen, you need to contact Reef. Now. There's a bomb somewhere on Station One that will go off at any moment." He paused. "And...uh...I could use a ride home." Nah. He didn't sound needy at all. "Oh, and about the location of Station Zilcho? Track this signal and you'll find it. I'll meet you at the area where your brother and Franchise crashed their transport in October. And do I hear cats meowing?"

Chapter Fifteen: The Best Defense Is a Good Offense

Mechanism held the last wire to the stolen power cell. It looked bitten. Master Asinine had probably stuck it in his mouth. Mechanism would have enjoyed watching that.

He pointed his welding finger at the wire and bonded that wire to the power cell's node. Done, and with masterly perfection. He flicked on the power cell and watched the lights around its chassis blink to life with a quiet hum. How marvelous. He desperately needed time to reflect on his splendor.

Earlier, Mechanism and Headache had sneaked into Station Zilcho's hangar bay. They found a banged-up Express transport a few spots away from the rooster-headed Nemesis and concluded that the power cell hid there. Catching sight of one of Kyril's lackeys lifting it out helped Mechanism come to that conclusion.

The lackey fell with a burrowing light-bullet to the skull. Mechanism grabbed the power cell and, to conceal the theft, the lackey. He hauled them here. Expert magnificence. He would have patted himself on the back, but his armor was in the way. Too bad. And the itch along his spine felt more urgent. No more wool sweaters for him.

He stood, his armor clinking at the knees. He looked at Headache and then behind her at the dead lackey. If he had to expend one more iota of his majestic suit's ammunition on another of these dolts, he would downgrade to a cheaper weapons caliber. As it stood, the only cheaper caliber was ping pong balls. And, yes, he would choose them despite Master Asinine's endorsements of Playmart's Lock-and-Load Suction Darts. Master Asinine would not know a decent weapon if it lopped off his head. And, by then, its orchestral lights would overexcite him anyway.

A rainfall pecked the ground and an emerging breeze trickled through the street. The wind and rain thickened into a storm. A tempest soon fired at Mechanism. Master Asinine must have fooled with the station's weather so he could use his rainy-day fund. Mechanism would erase the storm simulator's command set if Master Asinine yet again left it activated. That rainy-day fund was not there for Master Asinine to toy with.

"The station has power," Mechanism shouted over the drumming rain at Headache, whose soaked clothes clung flatly to her body. "Now we must reboot the haunt control. We have"—he checked his wrist display—"six minutes before we cross Cravinia's asteroid."

"So we activate those defenses and Cravinia's asteroid is history," Headache said, more as a question. She wiped rain from her brow. "Simpler than Asinine's pancake-eating instructions. I mean, who needs hydraulic lifts to eat breakfast?"

The atmospheric bubble had not been moisturized in the ten days since the shutdown. Like the collective intelligence of the galaxy's populace, it was rotting and reeked of ozone. Mechanism's suit indicated that thinned oxygen seeped out through brittle cracks in the bubble. Headache's wheezing corroborated that.

Mechanism regarded the haunt-control malt shop where the haunt control was housed only a few yards in the distance. He checked his timer. Five minutes until Cravinia's asteroid would arrive. Plenty of time. But Mechanism would severely ridicule Master Asinine next time he housed something so consequential in a malt shop. Then again, it was a good idea to kill two birds with one coolant stone.

"Yes, it shall be destroyed," Mechanism said. "However, this cell will provide power for only a few weeks, less because I will route most of its resources to my lair. It is a temporary measure. For now, though, we must activate the haunt control."

"You must activate nothing!" said a voice from above. Mechanism checked the rooftops. There. Cravinia stood atop a roof with rain slipping down her blocky face in buckets. Her arm stump, now poised at Mechanism, sported a large cannon. Her other hand clasped her hip. What useless bravado. Did she actually hope to stand against Mechanism?

"You will never erect the station's defenses. That would lay waste to my people's heritage since the dawn of time."

"Tsk, tsk, madam-slash-sir." A blade unsheathed from a slot on Mechanism's wrist. Its lower half remained embedded. "You have erred most grievously."

Something burst from Cravinia's cannon—Mechanism dived aside—Headache gawked as if spellbound—the ammo tore a chunk from the ground. A slab of debris clouted Headache's temple. She dropped, clutching a bloody gash, and writhed into a ball.

The back of Mechanism's suit opened. A missile launcher extended out and fired. Smoke trailed the missile that shot into the building and gouged out the roof where Cravinia stood. She fell to the ground and smacked onto what sounded like a metal plate in her meaty head. If it was not a plate, Mechanism owed Headache for that wager they had made.

Mechanism's missile launcher retracted. Cravinia leaped up, unfazed, and aimed her cannon. Mechanism dodged aside. He slashed forward with his wrist blade, gashed Cravinia's torso. Though it looked bulky and robotic, Mechanism's suit was far from weighty. What inferior intellect would assume he could not dodge a simple...a simple...Was she firing rocks? She was a butch.

Mechanism looked up to the distant asteroid that approached. Cravinia's asteroid, a small one spanning about seventy thousand kilometers according to his suit's analyzers. A fusion-ball launcher, small only from Mechanism's miles-away perspective, poked out of a canyon on the asteroid. Solar panels spread around the shuttle-sized weapon, each glinting in the starlight like something that would fascinate Master Asinine, something jingly he would bat at playfully.

"My clan approaches." Cravinia splashed her werewolf's feet into the rain-filled groove she had blasted into the ground. She pounced forward, slammed her cannon arm into Mechanism's chest. His software buzzed for a second but recovered. She fired at Mechanism's helmet, fired again, denting but not cracking the titanium-hard material.

"You should have realized my helmet is made of stern material." Mechanism returned Cravinia's favor by slamming her temple. It gonged.

Cravinia grunted. "Exactly like the plate in my head."

"Aha. Headache, I win our wager. You will polish my boots. And with your tongue." Mechanism checked Headache, who rubbed her skull, moaning.

The asteroid loomed only a few thousand miles away and, in short moments, closed the distance to Station Zilcho. Its launcher gathered energy, glowed in eager anticipation. Two solar panels curved inward, making it look wickedly giddy. Mechanism would relish spoiling its mood.

"In forty-five seconds, my asteroid will destroy you." Cravinia smirked.

He had to act quickly. He swung an elbow into Cravinia's eye. He slashed her stomach, chest, hips, cheeks. The chiseling of a winery diagram on her abdomen looked outstanding, even when compared to his honed talents.

Barely cognizant, oozing fluids, Cravinia grasped at his ankle with her remaining hand, smearing blood across it. What an uncouth display. Mechanism would not have this whelp tarnish his suit so. He slashed down...and severed her remaining hand. A banshee's shriek escaped her. The hand bounced away, curled, uncurled, and died. Mechanism crunched a boot onto her skull. He wished she could see his grin under his mask. Actually, no. He had a pimple.

"Twenty-five seconds." Partly concussed, Cravinia sleepily smiled. Her mouth quivered with muscle failure from the cuts crisscrossing her face. "My asteroid has taken position. I may perish, but my clan carries on. Yours, on the other hand, will wallow in the pits of a thousand Hells, breathing fumes from the most wretched of souls with intestinal problems."

"Enough piddle-paddle, she-male." Mechanism looked above and shielded his eye slit from the driving rain. A low rumble seemed to draw closer, though he knew that was impossible through space. The asteroid. Its armed launcher radiated as hotly as a sun.

"You have approximately fifteen seconds, fool." Cravinia laughed. "How will you activate your precious haunt control from this far away?"

"My dear wench," Mechanism said, "you assume I cannot activate it remotely."

He commanded his suit to signal the haunt control: the activation command. "Haunt control is online," a familiar voice resonated through the space station. That voice made Mechanism's heart dance.

Cravinia's face softened. So delectable was her withering mood.

"Control, acknowledge. Activate debris shields and destroy nearby asteroid." Mechanism crossed his arms.

"Debris shields activated. Destroying nearby asteroid," the haunt control said. "This destruction has been brought to you by Kids Aid."

The asteroid hovered closer, its launcher sparkling brightly as if withholding any longer felt like eternal agony. A pool of energy gathered in the center of the barrel.

An armament of gun turrets, howitzers, and mortars around Station Zilcho snapped to life. In a clatter of clacks and snaps, they extended from buildings and towers as though standing at attention and saluting. Each fired a stream of blinding illumination.

The asteroid began glowing, light from within leaking from surface fissures. It exploded! With the brilliance of a sun going supernova, the asteroid expelled chunks that tore into space at rocketing speed. The debris shields vaporized anything that deflected toward Station Zilcho, leaving only the burning scent of rock.

Mechanism had once again proven himself greater. Today would have been scrumptiously unequaled if not for Master Asinine having installed another ad program. Indeed, an ad for Funeral Fiesta flickered onto a nearby building display. He hoped a complementary basket of Happy Hour Homicide's bite-sized grenades was not waiting for him in his quarters. Unless they were almond-butter flavored.

The inferno above died, leaving only the sound of gushing rain. Headache had recovered and still rubbed the nasty gash on her head.

"Feel free to deliver your worst." Mechanism looked at Headache.

"I always do." Headache changed her tone. "You know what I mean." She stepped forward and wrinkled her mouth. She waited for Cravinia to stand.

Cravinia shook off a daze and faced Headache, wobbled, faced Mechanism. Blood and saliva leaked from every gash, every orifice. "Despite Bob acting as your leak, I will ensure your failure." Her cannon assembly clicked dryly at Headache, its ammunition spent though she tried vainly to spend more.

"Bob acting as our leak?" Mechanism refused to dignify her with a masterly snigger. "You could be no further from the truth. You will ensure nothing."

"Ensure this, you smelly simpleton," Headache said.

Blood seeped from Cravinia's pores, out her nostrils, down her wrist stubs. She clutched her head, unable to even howl. Sticky crimson painted her body. Her voice crept from her mouth with her blood. "Such fudge-ripple pain."

"I did not literally mean your worst, Headache," Mechanism said.

Headache shrugged. "Fudge ripple's the new taste sensation."

Mechanism cared not how Headache justified herself. He stepped under an awning for shelter. "Control, acknowledge. Kill all non–Bad Guy entities on station."

"Killing all non–Bad Guy entities." A popcorn rhythm of gunfire clacked through the station, soon joined by the melody of the anguished screams of Kyril's clan perishing one by one.

Mechanism and Headache departed, leaving Cravinia to her fate. Enacting this solar system's enslavement was such tedious work.

Chapter Sixteen: Qualm and a Bomb

Kamikaze watched Smithereens fiddle with the bomb. A screwdriver inserted at a low angle proved useless. The timer still counted down, breathing still shook out tensely, the bomb's beeper still indicated each second's passing, and Smithereens's expression still looked as if he'd wandered into a horse's stable on baked-bean day. Maybe if he angled the screwdriver up. Or jabbed it into his neck.

Kamikaze circled around the bomb to a crazy-looking canister that leaked ricin into a vent chamber. Its seven cousins imitated it. Ooh, it was preparing. What he wouldn't give to stick his mouth on that vent chamber and inhale. But no. No. He would not act selfishly. He would share. His self-help books would otherwise be for naught.

Reef knelt next to Smithereens. He examined the bomb counter with his mouth agape, not with unbridled exhilaration. Same with Smithereens. What had come over these two? They would soon experience the rarest death other than getting squashed to pizza dough and sauce inside a transport compressor. And they weren't ready for that level of death. Neither had died even once. Rookies.

"Kamikaze, now!" Reef fixed Kamikaze with a stare that dripped with urgency. "I need you to usher people out."

"And make them miss this? Oh, no. Nobody would forgive me if they missed the ricin." He grabbed Reef's shirt. "A ricin bomb, Reef. That comes around once every few...months...maybe. At least less often than a choking hazard. And I love poison as much as my bowels do. We both know that."

Reef wrestled free of Kamikaze and shoved him back. His pilot's helmet fell off. "For crock, get a hold of yourself. Have you contacted Legion?"

"What? Why tell him about the bomb? He's as much a sissy about dying as you guys. Plus, he's unreachable."

"Unreachable?"

Smithereens disconnected another of the bomb's panels and started working on whatever hid underneath. "Eh, won't be possible to usher our buddies out. In about three minutes, this bomb blows the lead through the head, buddy."

Reef's features scrunched. "It's a poison bomb, not an explosive."

"The ricin for the slicin'."

"That's reaching."

Kamikaze shrugged. "I thought it sounded pretty good."

Smithereens incised a red wire. He sat frozen, staring at the countdown whose red digits reflected on his oil-glossed skin. Three minutes and five seconds. "Ehhhh, buddies. Not good. If I had a capper for the bapper or a cutter for the rudder, I could take this thing apart in a minute, but I don't have the equipment for this bomb buddy here. Our buddies at IP don't spring for the good bling. All I can reach is this red wire. Anything else and we're waste paste." He reached in with a small laser cutter.

"Doesn't slashing the red wire speed up the countdown?" Kamikaze asked. Oh, bliss! It did!

Reef grabbed the bomb. "No way will we defuse this in time." He hauled it up and, roaring gutturally, threw it aside. It cleared about two feet. Hey! At least let Kamikaze scoot underneath before throwing it.

The bomb crunched against the floor. Half a marble tile jutted up. There the bomb rested, sparking though undamaged. Its countdown still sent heavenly beeps tickling Kamikaze's spine as if his vertebrae were piano keys. The clock had cracked, but its display still worked: three minutes and counting.

"We've had it." Reef sat and folded his arms over his knees. He released an unsmiling chuckle. "I never thought I'd spend my last moment with you two. Well, I always pictured Kamikaze there, since I knew he'd end up killing me."

Kamikaze scrutinized Reef and Smithereens. Smithereens had backed away from the bomb and slumped against the wall behind Reef. Both looked tranquil, resigned to fate. No excitement, no anticipation, not even a dutiful hoorah. Only resolved calm.

Kamikaze clicked his tongue. "You two make me want to yank my own eyes out more so than usual. Who wants to live their whole life? You unappreciative cads don't know a good thing when it's spewing highly toxic substances into your lungs. You don't deserve to die. I'm going to enjoy every last drop of this stuff without you."

Kamikaze grabbed the bomb, which was surprisingly light though that could be because of the adrenaline pumping slipshod through him. He marched down the hall to where a skylight revealed what dwindling fingers of sunlight remained in the station's daytime cycle.

He used his hyperability of flight and blasted into the air. His takeoff charred a sulfur ring into the tiles. He crashed through the skylight, pebbling glass onto his face. He felt a shard impale his tongue. Hmm. Tasted like lemon cleanser. A death appetizer.

He burst through the atmospheric bubble's jellylike membrane, feeling but not hearing the hole he tore that globbed back together behind him. One day, he'd try to choke on that bubble.

The heat of his flight kept him and the bomb from freezing, but he couldn't breathe. No oxygen outside the bubble. He hoped he remained conscious when this thing shot its payload. Those thankless boneheads below could spare their lives. Speaking for himself, he would enjoy this new ricin taste of death. He could even market a cola around it.

Zero time! The ricin spewed a powder cloud at him. In space, he couldn't hear it, but his mind substituted a snap. He choked some ricin out and blinked some from his eyes. Some of the ricin stuck to his cheeks, his nostrils, his tongue. Tasted like chicken.

Good-bye, cruel world, Kamikaze thought. See you in a few.

* * *

"No, not yet," Reef responded to Smithereens. They peered through the skylight at the dissipating chemical cloud. Reef so longed for a celebratory shot of something from Uncle Tolerable. He retrieved Kamikaze's pilot's helmet by the chinstrap. "Leave him up there. Once he comes to, he might enjoy that orbital decay it looks as if he's in."

Chapter Seventeen: And Now with the Pleasantries Over...

"McDougall's not answering, either," Kyril said, his gabber pieces retracting into the bud. His revenge against Asinine was darkening. Aggravating, infuriating, galling!

"Is he stuffing his face with haggis crackers?" Asinine asked. "He'd better not use my haggis processor. The sulfuric acid filter needs replacing." After a beat, he said, "Actually, let him. I'd like to see the melted look on his ugly mug."

His lieutenant grinned. "You can finally use your 'why the long face' line, sir."

"After all these years." Asinine's gaze wandered dreamily. "After all these years."

Kyril retrieved his tracker from the floor. Though it still functioned, it now flopped in two halves. Dilapidated, decrepit, ramshackle. Cravinia had said she would join her clan later, so she still lurked here somewhere. He needed McDougall to dispatch her...if someone hadn't already gotten to him. "Viewscreen, acknowledge. Locate entity McDougall."

"Locating entity McDougall," the tracker said. The last camera drone popped out and buzzed down the length of the balcony, over the railing, and toward the bathroom area. The first drone couldn't locate Mechanism or Ice Cream Headache, and the second still buzzed around those chopped-up corpses, trying to discern Stabber's pieces among the mess. Wasteful, useless, unavailing. Much like any lonely thought rattling inside Asinine's deserted mind.

An image appeared on the cracked tracker. Like its brothers, this camera drone hadn't taken long. It forged into a room Kyril recognized as The Nemesis's engine room. A caddy lay across an l-door, his legs draped over a dented pipe. The drone swiveled up and found a glassy mannequin, half of it sprawled inside the liquid nitrogen injector and half shattered across the floor. The drone zoomed in—

Kyril's stomach bubbled. McDougall was the frosted mannequin, intact from only the chest up. His glassy head sat on the floor. His plaid was blue and white cross-stitching across his body. His sporran had spilled out a collection of haggis crackers and...a picture of his mom? Kyril never figured him for a mama's boy.

First Togron, then Stabber, and last McDougall. And Kyril could no longer trust Cravinia or Bob and his fill-in-the-blank eyes. Kyril was alone. Alone, crock! Well, good. He'd just inherited an army. He could still accomplish his revenge single-handedly. Things may have been shot to crock but he could handle the situation.

One of his underlings took his hand off Asinine's shoulder. "What's—"

Kyril sent a light-bullet punching through his forehead. The underling smacked against the wall behind him and flopped wetly to the floor. Kyril threw all his weight into a primal bellow. "Never take your hand off the enemy! You'll risk everything I've earned! Stupid, dim, obtuse." He punched a wall.

The other two underlings slapped their hands over both Asinine and his lieutenant.

Asinine looked curious. "By the way, I have to ask. With all these criminals around, does your army include a pony? Because that would be fierce. Just don't shoot it in the head."

"Who's out there?" Kyril stamped toward Asinine. He still had a few light-bullets left and pointed one directly at the Bad Guy leader. He slammed a boot onto the chair in the space between Asinine's legs. "Bob was here when both Stabber and McDougall were murdered. Who's threatening my victory over you? Is it Mechanism? Ice Cream Headache? Multipurpose?"

"You obviously don't know Multipurpose very well," Asinine said.

"And where the crock did that underling wander off to with my power cell? And where's my self-congratulatory pizza? I ordered that thing fifty minutes ago."

"And what's with the rooster head on your starship?" Asinine asked. "Looks like that cereal mascot."

"Fried chicken outfit! Can't anybody let it slide? Crock, now I know why Time called you Man-Child of the Year."

"Hey, I'm not the one who allied himself with Time's Woman Who Looks Like a Man of the Year."

"Touché. Now"—Kyril's face and gun leaned closer—"what is happening out there? How were Stabber and his team sliced up when Bob hasn't left this balcony? What happened to McDougall? Tell me, crock!"

Bob roused from the corner, shuffling his weight on the sofa chair. "Multipurpose is the leak. He's got knowledge of everything, man."

"Multipurpose leaks a lot of things, but knowledge isn't one of them," Asinine said.

"An' speakin' o' leaks, where's the bathroom? Oh, wait. Not so urgent anymore."

Kyril's aim whipped around at Bob. "How can Multipurpose be the Bad Guy leak? We know he's a Bad Guy, you idiot."

"Huh?" Bob looked at Kyril's gun.

"Are you the leak?" Kyril hurled the tracker at Bob. It deflected off his floundering arms and crackled onto the ground where it sparked and finally died. "You are. I don't know how you killed everyone from here, but you did!"

Bob slimed off his sofa chair. He stood but fell over. What an oblivious moron. "Hold on. Lemme sit down. We can discuss this, man. Just stop throwin' stuff. Man, you're too macked off. Calm down." A hand wavered in front of his face as if to block Kyril's gaze. Finally he found his footing.

Enough, no more, that was it. Kyril fired a single light-bullet into Bob, separating his frontal lobe into more brain splatter than that underling had produced. Bob spun into the sofa chair and slopped backward. He wouldn't again threaten Kyril's rightful place.

"That was cold," Asinine said. "You're all worked up about this leak thing, aren't you, Mr. Ugly Face?"

Cravinia burst onto the balcony, one of Stabber's murdered underlings—the one Kyril had sent to fetch the power cell—slung over her shaggy back, dead. The underling exuded hot entrails of smoke. Apparently he'd acted as a shield from laserfire. Who had fired at Cravinia?

Cravinia panted. Lacerations crosshatched her face and torso. Though her eyes had shadowed over, her charcoal skin looked several shades whiter.

"Whoa, Cravinia." Asinine recoiled. "You never looked pretty before, but today you aren't even trying."

Cravinia hoisted the corpse off her back. She wore a cannon fitted over the stump of her severed hand and...her other hand...also missing? The cannon assembly stared at Kyril. She shuddered, unable to properly direct her weapon. "Do-o not m-move or millions of your k-kind will perish-sh in rivers of acid."

She noticed Bob's corpse. The corpse looked deflated with his death, as if the bony figure had somehow grown gaunter. "You did not kill Bob." She spotlighted Kyril with her bloodied eyes and pounded the floor beneath a violent heel. She broke into a charge toward Kyril, who sidestepped behind Asinine's lieutenant. "Tell me you did not kill Bob!"

"He was the leak! He risked everything I've worked to accomplish, almost took away my right as Asinine's better successor." Kyril fired a light-bullet into Cravinia's shoulder. The bullet deflected her chiseled shoulder. Still the bull stampeded on legs of exposed muscles.

"This'll be good." Asinine leaned closer to his lieutenant. "I'll put five moolahs on Kyril. I know Cravinia's nasty, but Kyril's really going to town with those head shots today."

"I've got to concur, sir," his lieutenant said. "I would even if I didn't obsessively agree with everything you say."

Kyril fired another bullet from behind Asinine's lieutenant. The bullet missed, but the next splattered into Cravinia's hip. She faltered, but she slammed over the lieutenant's chair, snapping and tipping it. Cheap, shoddy, trashy.

"Your stupidity will cause a skin rash on the posterior of your race! Bob was no leak. Mechanism informed me himself. The Good Guys simply responded quickly at Space Cow, and Mechanism was probably the one who murdered Stabber and his contingent." Cravinia squashed her stumpy arm into Kyril's face. "Bob knew the code to the haunt control. He was the key to your ego-tripping vengeance, and you murdered him. Now we cannot even step outside without the station gunning us down. Without that code, entire galaxies will crumble to dust. Do you understand, you pathetic barbarian? There—was—no—leak!"

Asinine winced and flattened his head against his shoulder. His ear rang. "Okay, okay. No leak. Unlike your feminine genes, we get the message."

Like a sneaky spider, a hand crept over Kyril's mouth. Kyril had been accusing Bob, but Mechanism had been undermining his plan? Impossible, unfeasible, ridiculous. Yet only Mechanism had the intelligence to foresee this invasion. Only he could have ruined Kyril's chance to destroy all Asinine had accomplished. Only he could have forewarned the Good Guys.

And Kyril had killed Bob, the only one who knew Asinine's haunt-control code.

Asinine tried to stand but an underling still held him down. "Cravinia, we got off to a bad start. Truce? Let's shake hands. Heh. Just kidding since you have none."

"Ooooh. She has no hands and you offered to shake, sir," Asinine's bootlicking lieutenant said. The other underling pinned him to his upended chair. "Excellent use of the old social-faux-pas trick."

Cravinia smashed Kyril's face with her stump again. Kyril's vision was fading into blurry color. He still held his pistol, so he fired where he thought her attacking arm was. Fluid sprayed against his face with a wet bang throbbing in his ears.

A howl of torture conquered the room, as loud and real as agony itself. Kyril opened his eyes to see Cravinia's arm fall, severed at the shoulder. Blood and marrow fluid spurted from the wound.

Cravinia pressed the tattered remains of her shoulder against her stump cannon, hunching and staring at Kyril with sullen fatigue. And that hilarious unibrow.

"You're no longer any good to my plan. Revenge is still mine, you gender-bending yeti." Kyril had one light-bullet left. The pistol swung up at Cravinia and a bullet speared forward to say hello to her brain. The Logistican backflipped onto the ground.

Over. Done. Finished. Now only Kyril remained. Fine. He could still usurp Asinine alone. Where was Asinine, anyway?

A boot crunched his nose. He arced backward against a wall. His nose flattened to the left, pressing against his face. His nostrils whistled like wind in a ghost town. Aw, crock. His nose, broken again. He hadn't even yet recovered from when Cravinia pulverized his brains.

His vision cleared to reveal Asinine rubbing a shoulder where the underling had pressed down on him. His lieutenant stood behind him. Free? Both of Kyril's underlings lay at their feet, heads smashed with pieces of the discarded tracker.

"Good job, Lieutenant," Asinine said. "Using the commotion to overpower those guards was a stroke of genius only cartoon characters can pull off."

"Thank you, sir, but I believe there's no need for a recap. Kyril looks as if he doesn't care."

"You can't do this." Kyril spat blood onto Asinine's boot. "You'll wish you'd asked me to join the Bad Guys. This will all still be mine. It will be."

Asinine chuckled. "Lieutenant, leave Kyril to me. And next time we wash these boots, we'll have to pay extra attention to his blood on my toe."

Chapter Eighteen: My Ride Is Here, Yours Isn't Coming

Atop a seven-story building, Legion watched transport F-Prowler approach, sheltering him from most of the windstorm's bulleting rain. He waved his arms to tell the pilot not to land, only to hover. The building looked too weak for F-Prowler's weight.

The starship's hover stabilizers warbled more loudly. The soft glow of those stabilizers faded and brightened with the rhythm of their warble.

If Lowensland lived past today, Legion vowed to return here to exact revenge for Sopher's death. That horrible gunshot hammered his thoughts. One day soon. But today wasn't that day. And tomorrow he had a guitar lesson.

Activated, the station's defenses sought interlopers, but they couldn't find a line of sight on Legion up here. Good. And thank Alaphus this kill command was ignoring inanimate objects such as the Flagstar.

The Flagstar's access port slid open with a suctioning squish that tore off the cat glued onto it. Burnout stood in the door's gap, hands on hips. His face, with a wide-eyed glare, looked as red as Satan's. Legion gulped unsteadily.

The station's defenses tried to target him, but the Flagstar's uneven hover impeded that. Who was piloting, a blind Kamikaze? Maybe a regular Kamikaze. And why did the pilot keep crunching against the building's chimney stack?

Legion reached up to grab Burnout's hand. Burnout didn't reach back.

"You said it was just a data-gathering mission," Burnout hollered over the rain that barraged him like hailstones. His hand lit aflame. He regarded his fingers, watching the fire twist, and looked at Legion. "We showed up at a slaughterhouse, unarmed because you misunderstood the threat. You underprepared us. Jeff could have died. Again."

"Mark, give me your hand." Legion's legs weakened. Maybe he'd rather stay on Station Zilcho. "The one not doused in flame."

A moment passed. Burnout's brows slanted. He squared his posture. He towered over Legion, which gave Legion an uneasy chill. And a good look up his nose.

Finally Burnout's hand extinguished and he reached down. Legion reached up—

Something walloped Legion with a force like a battering ram. He struck the rooftop and rolled under whatever had careened into him. He slid across the sodden roof, drenched, tried to grab something, anything, everything to slow his glide. His bruised leg flashed with hot anger. He found only tennis balls that Lowensland had probably lobbed up here.

His legs plummeted over the roof's eave, but he stopped himself from falling. The station's lasers found him hanging and fired. He swung his legs aside, and the blast grazed his boot. Crossing one arm over the other, he tried to boost his leg up but couldn't. The roof was too slick with rainfall. Stupid Lowensland for choosing a space station with only metallic roofs. Stupid Lowensland for not installing a railing. Stupid Lowensland for being stupid.

Another shot skinned his hip, but he shifted away. The shots were sparse, probably because a single power cell didn't distribute energy quickly enough.

A sopping psycho appeared above Legion with a hysterical smile and a knife glinting in his teeth. Stabber! A throwing star stuck out of his ear. Aside from Lowensland passing a math test, now Legion had seen everything.

Legion grunted, swatted away that perpetually insane visage. His Alaphan necklace dangled shakily. "Kill me and, so help you, I'll fall straight to the ground and die. Don't test me!" Reverse psychology would work one day.

Stabber avoided a laser beam intended for his head and removed the knife from his mouth. "I don't think so." He twitched and grabbed the throwing star that stuck out of his ear. His shattered gabber came with it. He hyperventilated a laugh. "Good. It's out. Heh. She sliced up my crew and tried to kill me with this, but she hit my gabber instead." He flicked his gabber aside, and it plinked into a puddle. He slid the throwing star under the skin of his arm. For safe keeping, Legion guessed.

Legion avoided another swipe. "Cravinia double-crossed you? Where does she find the time to backstab you guys and shave her mustache?"

Stabber thrust the knife at Legion's fingers but narrowly missed. "Keep still."

"And let you cut off my fingers? I've heard better ideas from Lowensland's fashion consultant."

Stabber's python tongue waggled out of his mouth, spraying like a haywire hose. He hacked again and again.

A laser blast struck the wall beside Legion's legs, but he swayed aside. He grabbed a tennis ball and blocked Stabber's next lunge. The knife gored the ball with a tip that poked through the other side. Legion shoved the ball up, bashing the knife's hilt into Stabber's sharp nose. Stabber dropped the knife and cupped his nose, which washed his face with blood in the stormy deluge.

A laser blast carved a hole right below Legion. He grabbed the knife, removed the ball, and used the knife blade as a pick to haul himself onto the rooftop.

The Flagstar still hovered nearby. Burnout couldn't help without likely lighting Legion on fire, and the pilot seemed too unskilled to fire the Flagstar's weapons. Legion was alone in this. Still, he had to only jump, grab Burnout's arm or the frame of the access port, and climb in. But making it past Stabber would be tough.

Recovered, Stabber unsheathed a dagger from his blue leg. "You're going nowhere!" he said over the machinegun downpour. He flipped the dagger between his hands, then charged at Legion with his head ducked down. Legion angled aside to avoid the strike, but Stabber hit. They skidded close to the roof's edge. The knife Legion had stolen spun away.

Legion balled his fists and stamped them into Stabber's back. He felt Stabber struggle to gain leverage. Stabber parried forward to shunt his blade into Legion's leg, his ribs, his neck, anywhere.

This had to end. A knee to Stabber's throat. And again. Stabber sprang back, grabbed his Adam's apple. Legion rushed, leaped, pummeled Stabber's head with both feet. Stabber tried to regain footing on the impossibly slippery rooftop but faltered back, lost one foot over the roof's edge. The other foot slipped on a tennis ball—he dropped, caught his chin on the roof with a brittle crack.

Over the driving rain, Legion couldn't hear Stabber hit the ground. He rushed to the edge. Below lay Stabber with his dagger sticking out of his belly, a tennis ball lodged in his mouth. He breathed without rhythm. Soon his breathing faded with his struggle to stand.

Legion rushed toward the Flagstar, unable to face up from the rain that slicked his vision. He grabbed Burnout's hand, and Burnout hauled him in with one mountainous bicep. Legion stood there, dribbling rain. He felt that compelling urge to tap two fingers with Burnout, his old victory "handshake," but refused the impulse when the sound of Sopher's death shotgunned in his thoughts.

Burnout's fiery irises scorched judgmentally. With a shock, Legion's heart increased its galloping pace.

"Burnout—"

"Look, I get it. Jeff and I are going to see danger. Fine. But that data mission you sent us on? You told us we wouldn't see danger. You underprepared us. No excuse justifies that. That better not happen to my brother again. If you ever—ever—again send us to such a close call without assessing it, I'll use you as fireworks. Do you hear me?" Burnout's hands erupted in flames. A nearby datasheet curled into ashes and disintegrated. "Do you hear me?"

Legion didn't know what to say. Burnout would surely fry him.

Burnout spun around sharply and stomped away. He marched into the navigator's seat next to a Franchise who had frozen from his knuckle-cracking. "Franchise, take us home."

The access port closed to shield Legion from the twisting gale. His muscles melted. He took a passenger's seat, still sopping wet and dripping puddles. He leaned over its arm and into the one beside it. The wet slosh of rainwater seeped into the seat's padding. Power Plant sat in a chair one row ahead.

"So..." Power Plant turned around. Legion got the feeling this conversation would start demented and end absolutely demented. "Did ya get us a souvenirs from ya vacation?"

"Jeff, Station Zilcho isn't a vacation spot, despite what Kamikaze told you."

"Whens I back from ninja fancy camps, I gonna whips it inta a vacation spot."

A bang from behind. The engine room opened and out plodded an ancient woman wrapped in pruned skin. She hunkered over a walker that looked more obsolete than Kamikaze's life insurance. Four cats clung to the walker that the craggy woman used to emerge. One fell, coughed up a hairball, and sauntered away.

"The what's-it in the thingamabob room didn't blink fast enough. So I unplugged the whatchamacallit and put the whatever-it-is into the thingamajig slot. Now it's on fire. I'm going to bed."

Legion checked the clock above the windshield. "It's five thirty in the afternoon!"

The relic wobbled to Legion and slapped him across his carpet-gashed cheek. "Respect your whosamacallits." She snailed off.

Legion rubbed his stinging face. "A merry Boxing Day Eve Eve to you, too. Mark, do you mind putting out a fire in the thingamabob room?" Legion leaned over to Power Plant. "Who was that and why did her palm smell like kasha?"

"Nah, she cool. She tolds me she gonna knit me a bazooka."

Chapter Nineteen: Back in Business

Asinine watched Kyril dive for an underling's discarded pistol. The clan leader swirled around and shoved it forward at Asinine, IQ 23, Asinine, IQ 23, Asinine, back and forth, sweat coating his face. "Don't come any closer!" Why would Asinine want to? The guy stank like an ox.

Using IQ 23's overturned chair as support, Kyril stood and backed toward the balcony exit. His mouth curved into a hook, and a snigger broke free. Asinine didn't get the joke, but if it was the one about that chicken crossing the road, he'd heard it.

Kyril waved the gun at them as if warding away bad spirits. "You're unarmed. Looks as if I have the upper hand. The Bad Guys are mine, you crocking dunce. Mine!"

"You can't have them. I already left them to my lieutenant, and I'd hate to rewrite my will because of all the legal mumbo and the technical jumbo. No way am I about to read something written by a lawyer version of Brick."

Something short bumped Kyril from behind. He swung around and aside. Amaranthia. He gleamed at Asinine and slipped his pistol into a holster. "Asinine, meet my ninja, Amaranthia. Amaranthia, meet your next victims. Kill them, please."

"You doof?" Amaranthia huffed and stepped past Kyril. She unsheathed a ruby-studded katana with that metal shush that scurried up Asinine's spine...in a good way.

Asinine approached Kyril. "You know why I have the biggest criminal org...or...orgeriz—"

"Organization, sir."

"You know why I have the biggest criminal that-thing-he-just-said in this galaxy, Kyril? Because I think things through."

"Think things through?" Kyril almost buckled in hysterics. He looked positively bursting with confidence and real fruit flavor. Asinine would love to crush that confidence. "You halfwit. You don't even think through dressing yourself in the morning."

"As true as that is, I still have the upper foot. And an upper spleen. Any upper limb, really."

Amaranthia directed a lethal eye at Asinine. Asinine followed the ruby shaft of her katana up to its hilt and shrugged at Kyril with a perked eyebrow.

Asinine said, "I always knew someone would come for me."

"No, sir, Mechanism always knew."

"Right, right. So he suggested I put a plan in place. And I did. You wanted to know who your leak is?" He smiled. "Now you know."

Amaranthia spun around and zipped her katana up. It glided through Kyril's neck. Kyril's head stuck for a second, held in place on Amaranthia's blade by his Trioxidillian/Terran blood. He blinked. His jaw quivered with a shudder. That was enough to cause the head to slide down the katana before it leaned to the side and rolled away in thuds. Kyril's body flopped over it.

Amaranthia leaped back from the blood that leaked down her sword, an I'm-so-not-going-there look of disgust on her face. "Ewwww, blood on my rubies?" Her katana fell from her grasp. She fanned her hands at arm's length as if to dry them. "Totally grody, totally grody, totally grody. I'm so not touching that disgusting thing until it's, like, so totally clean? Did I get any on me? Ooooh, I'd so kill myself? Cheez. My katana needs, like, totally new cleaning fluid?" Her mouth puckered in lemon-sucking tightness.

"Steal some from Multipurpose's locker. He'll never use it." Master Asinine stepped up to Kyril's body and gave it a sound groin kick. He kicked its stomach—that felt good—and again. And again and again with increasing strength. Then one final time, breaking a rib that no longer mattered to this headless corpse. He wiped the sweat from his face, his hands braced on his knees.

Lieutenant IQ 23 held a hand to Asinine's arm. "Relax, sir, or you might pull a muscle."

Asinine shrugged. He grabbed Kyril's leg and jerked it once, twice. Nothing tore. "No, Lieutenant, I don't think I can pull one."

"Sir, I believe there's no organ left unbruised. Well, there wouldn't be if he could still bruise."

"You're right, Lieutenant. By the way, how you turned the tables in our favor earlier was masterful. Pure poetry. I believe you've earned this back." Master Asinine reached into a pant pouch and produced a fat chain that dangled an oversized locket.

"My BFF bling." Lieutenant IQ 23 looked as excited as a child on Boxing Day morn having just discovered what Bargain Bojango had duct-taped under the tree. His mouth opened widely enough to fit his fist. "Oh, sir, do you mean it? But I thought the unforgivable sin was drinking straight from the milk carton." He hesitantly took the necklace. "This means so much to me."

"Yes, Lieutenant. Though I prohibit milk-carton straight-out-of drinking, I'm sure." Asinine reached into his pant pouch and produced a matching necklace. He slipped this around his neck. He and IQ 23 bumped knuckles.

Amaranthia grabbed her maroon weapon belt and threw it down. "As if! More blood, ew ew eeeewww. And totally on my stylish Pooker belt? That is so uncool? Total gaggage. I thought I, like, left that stuff totally back at Stabber's massacre? Grody! Does this outfit make me look fat?"

Whatever. Master Asinine exited The Nemesis's balcony and weaved his way out of The Nemesis itself. Lieutenant IQ 23 followed. Asinine asked, "What type of starship is this? A Kingfish? Perfect. Lieutenant, take a memo."

"I would, sir, but I don't have a datasheet. I can scrawl it in blood on my shirt, though."

"No. You'll write over our apple crisp recipe. This is one of those memos I'm going to forget no matter what we do. Besides, your blood penmanship is terrible." Asinine led the way around The Nemesis's titanic side and stopped to study the rooster head that decorated the cockpit and nose cone. The rooster head seemed to be the cockpit, as if a scrunched neck hid between it and the rest of the starship. He flicked the wattle with a single finger. It flopped away but swung back and smacked him in his face. It smelled like chicken guts.

"This Nemesis thing is ours now, Lieutenant. I have plans for this hen/rooster: to make it into a hen/rooster."

"Sir, we've gone over this. A flightless transport defeats many purposes."

"Oh." Asinine examined the height of the starship, then its breadth. "In that case, I have another idea. Notify Brick when we're finished here...if he's still alive."

He cleared his throat and found a haunt-control listener. The haunt control must have rebooted, what with Station Zilcho's power rekindled. Otherwise, Cravinia wouldn't have complained about any commands given to it. "Control, acknowledge. Rescind any existing kill commands."

A cascade of gunfire Asinine hadn't before noticed now stopped. "Commands rescinded. The Intergalactic Laser Association will be macked off. Make it up to them by purchasing ammunition at prices you can afford to go postal on."

"Control, acknowledge. Open viewscreen. Broadcast to everyone on this space station. Play my latest Pouting Hearts mix in the background. And give me a minute. I have to fix my hair." He licked his fingers and combed them over his eyebrows.

"Preparing broadcast. Broadcast begins in one minute. Warning: station's current power resources will cease in fifteen days and four hours."

"Shut up, hauntie. Stick to terrifying people coming out of suspended animation." Asinine cleared his throat again. Kyril's phlegm-ragged voice had made him self-conscious about his own. He gave a quick nod to IQ 23. "Well, we have power and another titan-class starship. Best of all, we have, minus Cravinia's team and all the slaughtered people and the pony Kyril never had, tons of clan members from Kyril's Clan of the Clan, now without leadership or direction. Easy pickings. Control, acknowledge. How many people are on Station Zilcho?"

"There are one thousand eight hundred two individuals on Station Zilcho. There are one hundred ninety-seven thousand eight hundred twelve corpses on Station Zilcho. There are seven wilted houseplants on Station Zilcho since you neglected to water them again. This count comes to you thanks to the Sausage Barn." A viewscreen sprouted before him. "Broadcast beginning now."

Asinine waved at the viewscreen. "Na-nu na-nu." Almost two thousand flunkies across the station, either in crowds or individually, watched him from viewscreens appearing before them. Excellent. "People of Station Zilcho." He leaned closer with a cunning twinkle in his eye. "Meet your new boss.

"And someone find my watering jug."

THE END

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About That Guy Whose Book You Read Once

Liam Gibbs knew he was destined to write at age four, when he authored a breathtaking account of a cow who ate grass. The bovine saga failed to catch the public's eye but earned the budding author parental acclaim. Since those early times, he's gone on to write the novella Not So Superpowered and humorous articles for various magazines.

A twenty-year veteran of the brutal world of hand-to-hand comic book fandom, Gibbs cut his teenage teeth on titles such as Spider-Man, X-Men, New Warriors, and other Marvel comics.

Gibbs graduated college with a degree in professional writing, which included classes on fiction writing and story structure. He lives on the balmy shores of Ottawa, Canada, where he relaxes by watching staggeringly awful horror and science fiction movies. A health and fitness nut, he shoots lasers from his eyes, uses the word exclusive incorrectly, and once wrestled an exclusive brontosaurus. True story.

That one time I was deep in thought and—Hey, is that ketchup on the ceiling?

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Table of Contents

Your Favorite Table of Contents

Available on the Author's Super-Awesome Site

Chapter One: And the Man Leading the Venture Was No More than a Babbling Narcissist

Chapter Two: Power Struggle

Chapter Three: Can't Work with 'Em, Can't Work without 'Em

Chapter Four: Computer Hacker's Hack Job

Chapter Five: Too Little Too Late Too Often

Chapter Six: Like Yoda with Shuffled Flashcards

Chapter Seven: Oh, Crappy Day

Chapter Eight: Thinking in the Shallow End

Chapter Nine: Behind Closed L-Doors

Chapter Ten: Bomb Cakes Are Chocolate...and Your Favorite

Chapter Eleven: Not Invited

Chapter Twelve: Everyone Loves a Good Golf Joke

Chapter Thirteen: What Now?

Chapter Fourteen: Call and Collect

Chapter Fifteen: The Best Defense Is a Good Offense

Chapter Sixteen: Qualm and a Bomb

Chapter Seventeen: And Now with the Pleasantries Over...

Chapter Eighteen: My Ride Is Here, Yours Isn't Coming

Chapter Nineteen: Back in Business

About That Guy Whose Book You Read Once