A Wolf in Sheep's Armor
Date: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00
Publisher: Plot Device Publishing

In a Galaxy Far, Far AwRy

Book 13: His Kingdom Come Part 2: A Wolf in Sheep’s Armor

Liam Gibbs

IN A GALAXY FAR, FAR AWRY book 13: HIS KINGDOM COME PART 2: A WOLF IN SHEEP’S ARMOR
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: 978-1777139667
First printing: April 2021

{ PLOT DEVICE PUBLISHING }

The Story So Far...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Available on the Author’s Super-Awesome Site

Book 7: The Lesser of Two Egos

Book 8: Untitled of Attitude Adjustments

Book 9: Those We Left Behind

Book 10: Metaphor for Life

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

Book 12: His Kingdom Come

Book 13: A Wolf in Sheep’s Armor

Book 14: Man Versus Machine Part 1 of 1

Book 15: Our New Hiring Policy

Book 16: Life Like Broken Glass

Book 17: The Church of Steeple

Book 18: Blood Bunny

Book 19: Disease of Behavior

Book 20: The Paper Tiger’s Yardstick

Book 21: This One Has a Dancing Gibbon

Book 22: My Brother’s Captor

Book 23: Marching Orders

Book 24: We, Robots

Please visit www.inagalaxyfarfarawRy.com for more information.

Other Stuff the Author Spewed Out

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

Not So Superpowered, available at tiny.cc/nssuperpowered

Three Flash Fictions, available upon request from the author

Random limericks, available in bathroom stalls

Your Favorite Table of Contents

Book 13: A Wolf in Sheep’s Armor

Chapter One: Such Sweet Sorrow

Chapter Two: The Clothes Do Make the Man

Chapter Three: The Welcome Wagon Has a Lot of Beef

Chapter Four: And the Award Goes To...

Chapter Five: I Got Your Escape Attempt Right Here

Chapter Six Window Shopping

Chapter Seven: What Happens When Men Visit the Bathroom Together

Chapter Eight: The Enemy of My Enemy Is My Friend, Subtract One Ally, Carry the Foe

Chapter Nine: Sleeping on the Job

Chapter Ten: Military Cusses Are Eight Letters Long

Chapter Eleven: It Totally Worked on Future Paper

Chapter Twelve: The Boss Would Like to Have a Word with You

Chapter Thirteen: Don’t Heat the Head Cheese—Literal Term

Chapter Fourteen: Laughing at Yourself Is the Least Worst Medicine

Chapter Fifteen: Ugh, Not These Guys

Chapter Sixteen: Kiss the Cook

Chapter Seventeen: Repeat Business

Chapter Eighteen: Bon Something or Other

Chapter Nineteen: Who Programs These Things?

Chapter Twenty: So That’s Why He Sticks His Tongue in Electricity Panels

Chapter Twenty-One: Military Hand-Me-Downs

Chapter Twenty-Two: There Are Going to Be Some Changes around Here

Appendices

About That Guy Whose Book You Read Once

Connect with the Series

This Isn’t Even My Final Form!

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

For cool reasons.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Enjoy!

Or don’t. I really have no control.

Chapter One: Such Sweet Sorrow

March 14, 9096. 3:52 p.m. (Galactic Standard Time).

The first leg of Jeff Abends and his brother’s escape from abuse should have been the hardest. Tearing them out of their lives, away from an alcoholic father and a verbally abusive mother, should have jarred them. It hadn’t. That nightmarish childhood had suffocated Jeff like a bouncy castle deflating with him inside—don’t ask where he came up with these comparisons—but their escape felt like a rescue squad unearthing him from the rubber rubble. Jeff felt freer than when he’d removed his arm from the snack machine that refused to let him filch that candy bar. Hey, 40 percent more chocolate meant nothing when you matched wits with the hungry jaw of something that vomited out candy.

Jeff stared out the porthole of the groaning train, at trees and roads and buildings that zoomed past as if they had somewhere to go. But those buildings couldn’t go anywhere, and if they could, Jeff would freak out because, man, a walking bowling alley was bound to cause a public incident.

“Jeff, look over here. I’m not finished.” Mark, Jeff’s older brother, held a tray of mud. Two fingers of his other hand scooped up the mud, which Mark smeared over Jeff’s hot bruises. With every stroke of artistry, Mark’s shocking red hair curled over his forehead. His red pupils—a cockamamie eye color—looked like rings of fire.

The two brothers were in a seating arrangement: two rigid wooden benches that faced each other. The benches must have been carved at the end of an exhausting day when the mold-machine guy decided, “Crock it, ’cause I’m outta here.” Jeff hated the mold-machine guy for the pain enflaming his tailbone. The mold-machine guy deserved death for that pain sorcery.

The arrangement of seats fit four passengers, but nobody sat in the other two. In fact, this passenger car was vacant except for a businessman in the front and a punk rock girl behind them, a few others speckling the seats like the audience of a terrible movie. Maybe the foreign film market’s latest travesty...ahem...effort.

The train jostled with each bump over which it slid. It offered rattling for white noise as though performing military drum rolls on the hovertracks.

Jeff winced. “What’s you do this for?” he said after Mark finished painting his cheek.

Every so often, Mark glanced up in case a cop or a galactic agent happened past. The brothers were probably wanted now for the parting gift Mark gave their parents thanks to his fire-based special ability, his hyperability. “I’m hiding your bruises. We’ll need money, so we’ll need to beg. And people pity a dirty kid more than one who looks as though he’s gone twelve rounds with a gorilla. No, you didn’t.”

“Ya means I don’ts have another cool story to tells everybody on the street?”

“Especially not the guy who rants about the people time-sharing his head.”

“Tha’s me.”

“I meant the other guy.” Mark dipped his fingers in mud again. “Anyway, we’ll get more moolahs if people look at you without thinking you fell down a flight of stairs that led into heavy traffic.”

“Like Sunday?”

“Exactly.” Mark applied some mud to Jeff’s forehead. It felt cold, probably because Mark had wet it under the tap in the bathroom at the back of this car. The water had two settings: cold and ultra cold. Jeff preferred the setting that didn’t make him feel as if he were hugging an ice sculpture. Apparently that was neither.

“So wherevers we going, mom an’ dad won’ts lock me inna basement no more, shove bugs in my mouth for dinners?”

The air heated around Mark. His chin bulged. “I promise you. We’ll never see those ogres again.” His muddy fingers curled and jabbed. Jeff winced at the pressure, so Mark said, “Sorry.”

“But I’s got used to them bugs. Spiders is meaty.” Jeff hated their basement. He recalled his years sleeping on its frigid floor against the mottled wall. No pillow, no mattress. It reminded him of the mud Mark smeared across his nose. The pain from his bruise flickered like a camera flash. That bruise wasn’t mom and dad’s fault: Jeff had flipped off the bike Mark had built him. Heh. The things he did on purpose.

“So now we’s on our owns?” Jeff tensed when Mark applied mud to his collarbone. That injury felt tender. Dad had kicked him against a basement step.

“Yes. No parents, nobody to tell you you’re a screw-up. We’re on our own. Jeff, sit still.” Mark studied Jeff’s face for places where the bruises showed through.

A mommy passed, carrying her infant son and wearing a smile bright enough to power a fusion station. She rubbed noses with the boy who responded with a peek-a-boo. A beaming daddy joined them and handed the boy a banana. The boy took it and mashed it in. “Is my little Jeffy hungry?” Little Jeffy puked banana on Daddy’s shirt.

Hmm. Same name as Jeff’s. Happy families named their kids Jeffy.

Jeff reached for the cup of apple juice Mark had sneaked off a serving robot in the boarding car. He downed the remainder, crunched the ice, and slapped the plastic cup onto the tray. Empty, the cup melted and the tray sucked in the goop.

Mark leaned back and examined Jeff. “There. You look like a street bum now, not a punching bag. Ready to beg.”

“Good, ’cause I gotsa wash this muds off my face.” He stood.

Mark pulled him back into his seat. “Washing it off and licking it off are different things. You can’t possibly be that hungry.”

“Tastes better than basement cobwebs.”

Mark glanced into the maroon aisle at a garbage robot rumbling past. He grabbed a half-devoured doughnut from the accrual in the robot’s bin. “Then eat this.”

Jelly filled. And with a napkin stuck to the side! Jeff devoured the doughnut. “Fanks, big brotha.” He’d forgotten to remove the napkin. Fibrous.

“We’ll have to get used to eating stuff like that for a while. We won’t be eating home-cooked meals now.” Mark reconsidered his words. Jeff saw it in his eyes. “Mom and dad sometimes made us eat fireplace soot, so this is still a step up.”

“Can’t waits till we rummage for our first deads cat.” Jeff felt like cheering.

“Set your sights higher.”

He gasped. “Our first deads jaguar.”

Mark smiled. That was his first smile in...days, Jeff estimated. He put an arm around Jeff’s shoulders, a grimy one because neither brother had bathed since yesterday. “Yup. Anyone’s discarded animal carcass is now ours for the taking.”

A fare inspector, an ancient dude from the Trioxidillian race with skin several shades bluer than average, stopped at Jeff and Mark’s pair of seats. The suctions on his fingertips had withered from age. He wore a tag identifying him as Helivoss Yute. He looked at them through lenses and then frowned politely. “Your faces aren’t registered in the database.”

“Our parents bought our fare. We weren’t with them to get scanned.”

“Very well. Do you have proofs of purchase?”

Mark and Jeff hadn’t bought anything, so Mark made a show of padding down his jacket in search of proof. “You know what?” He snapped his fingers. “Our parents have everything. They ducked into the dining car to grab coffee, maybe a breakfast meatball. They’ll be back in five minutes.”

The fare inspector smiled at the brothers. “That’s fine. I’ll come back.”

Mark pasted on his brightest good-bye smile, and the inspector continued on his way. When the inspector drifted into the next car, Mark snapped out of his seat. “Come on. Let’s hide in the sleeper car before he comes back.”

“We’s can makes a fort outta mattresses.” Jeff used the bench’s arm to propel himself into the aisle. His knee still hammered his leg in a hot grip. He would have tried his newfound hyperability to fly, but that always resulted in him clunking his head into anything and everything. Usually everything.

Mark and Jeff rushed into the next car, then the next. They sneaked into the dining car and ducked into a dining booth. The cushions felt nice compared to the hard benches in the passenger car that made Jeff feel as if he were sitting on a craggy boulder. Mark sat in the aisle seat and sneaked peeks at the area. No one was looking. He grabbed two buns and wrapped them in a cloth napkin. The buns smelled like cheap sandpaper, but as long as they didn’t taste like cheap sandpaper, Jeff would consider that a win.

“Jeff, take these.” Mark wrapped Jeff’s hand around the napkin. He stood up and examined the car. “I’m going to look around. Don’t eat the tablecloth while I’m away.”

“Wha? Huh? What goin’ on? Where’s you go?” Jeff’s hands grappled out to Mark. He spilled across the booth’s bench.

“I’ll see if I can steal some tickets in case that inspector comes back.” He still glanced around, and his voice had hushed to the volume of a political assassin’s. The rattling train almost drowned him out.

“You’s gonna leaves me? Mark, don’ go.” Jeff scrambled up. What if Mark got caught? What if he never came back? What if...what if...what if ninjas or zombies or ninjas that zombies had bitten...Jeff couldn’t survive ninja zombies without him.

Mark guided Jeff back into the window seat and took the aisle seat. “Jeff, I’ll be back in a minute. I’m not leaving you. I will never leave you. Don’t ever doubt that.” His eyes were set. “I’m not going anywhere. Do you believe me?”

The thought flopped through Jeff’s brain as if at the mercy of a clothes washer. Jeff checked Mark’s red expression, the throb of that vein in his forehead. “Yeah, I believes ya.” He put on a wan smile.

Mark smiled back. “Good. I won’t take long.”

“’Kay. An’...name’s Jeffy.” He liked that name. He cupped his hand and stared out a porthole over the booth’s table. Buildings and trees and signposts still whipped past.

February 7, 9110. 6:19 a.m. Today. Now. A different setting. Like the salty tear dripping down Power Plant’s cheek, the train dripped from his mind’s eye. Wiped away. A window replaced the train’s porthole. A stretcher replaced the table at which he and Mark had sat. An inert and shallowly breathing Scapegoat replaced the tablecloth. The yaw and rattle of this escape pod replaced the metronomic clatter of the train sliding over hovertracks.

And an empty leather seat replaced Mark.

Emptiness replaced Mark.

* * *

“Jeff?” Someone’s voice. Tinny in the pod’s acoustics. Far away. Hopefully so far away that Good Guy Power Plant didn’t need to sucker-punch the voice’s face to shut it up. “Jeff?” Stupid voice face.

Power Plant stared out the escape pod’s window. His body twitched out in a feeble sob here and there from dry tear ducts, still feeling his brother’s assassination at Mechanism’s hands a few minutes or hours ago.

To enact a grandiose plan to cleanse the galaxy of anyone he thought unworthy, Mechanism had taken control of Bad Guys, the largest criminal outfit in the galaxy, and their headquarters, Station Zilcho, from Bad Guy leader Master Asinine. That control resulted in several fatalities, including Power Plant’s older brother. Power Plant, fellow Good Guy Ace Spandex, and critically injured Scapegoat were the only escapees of Mechanism’s siege on Good Guy headquarters, Station One. The Good Guys were the military organization created to stop the Bad Guys. Now, with them captured, nothing stood between Mechanism and his goals. Mechanism had even convinced the Good Guys’ parent military organization, Intergalactic Protection, and the general public that he was a secret Good Guy agent and that the escapees were murderers and outlaws. With Good Guy leader Lieutenant Colonel Legion in a coma and out of commission, convincing everyone involved a broadcast from interim leader Reef.

“Jeff?” In his burgundy impact suit, computer expert Ace Spandex stood by the bench on which Power Plant squeezed his knees against himself. He shook Power Plant’s shoulder. “Jeff, I can tell you’re awake. Remember that open eyes equals awake. You can’t fool me with that trick even if you fool yourself.”

Power Plant lifted his gaze to Ace Spandex. His gaze felt dead. His body had been wrung of sensation. He hugged himself tighter. Had it gotten colder in here?

“We’re less than two light-minutes away from our destination. At our speed, that’s a couple hours away,” Ace Spandex said. “Thought you should know.”

Power Plant blinked and swallowed. He bit his upper lip. He hadn’t noticed because he was thinking of stuff. Other stuff. He eased his chin onto his folded arms and returned to the window, which was still blank with space, stars, and a robot/Martian war.

“Hey.” Now across the pod, Ace Spandex showed a crinkling bag to Power Plant. “Found this under a bench. A bag of gratuity cookies.” He read the label. “Sandwich cookies. They come in five flavors: tuna fish, ham and cheese. Ooh, chicken salad. What will Dessert Brain think of next?”

Power Plant turned back to the window. He sniffled and shivered.

“Jeff? Jeff, take one.”

Power Plant sniffled again.

“Jeff, you haven’t eaten since we left. Since...since...” Ace Spandex scratched the laser scar on his right brow. “Since you know.”

He dug his hand into the bag and produced a cookie. Turkey club if the smell was any indication. He held the cookie out to Power Plant. “Look, we may be fugitives, but the authorities aren’t tracking us yet. They will once our pod hits the ground, though. And we need to get Scapegoat to the hospital in Beckenridge Square before they realize where we are. So you’ll need your strength.” He got no reaction. “Jeff, your brother didn’t die so you could starve.”

Power Plant eyed the cookie in Ace Spandex’s hand, then Ace Spandex. The cookie stood still, so maybe it wasn’t like all those other gratuities. “Fine.” He snatched the cookie away and downed it in a hungry slurp. The turkey had rotted. “But if I’s grows a fourth eye, it’s be yours fault.”

“You’d need to grow a third. Eyes obey the laws of numbering even though you don’t. And, no, counting the elbow crunches in televised wrestling isn’t good practice.”

Ace Spandex returned to Scapegoat, who’d suffered a stray shot to the gut. Ace grabbed the cloth he’d found in the pod’s bathroom and dipped it into a bucket of tepid water. He wrung out the sopping cloth and replaced it on the plump hunchback’s forehead. Scapegoat’s breathing had shaken a few times since the pod’s departure, but it had regulated in the last few minutes. Scapegoat’s survival still looked questionable. Power Plant swore that unconscious hunchback had reached into his nose and prodded around a few times. Even in unconsciousness...

“Getting Scapegoat into the hospital will be impossible. Just angling him through the door is going to exhaust me.” Ace Spandex sat forward and exhaled. “By the time we land on Gaia, everyone on the planet will be hunting us. We need to lay low. Hide. Find a shuttle out of this galaxy before Mechanism’s”—a noise crunched out his next word—“hits the fan.”

“No.” Power Plant stamped his feet, punched a cushion. “I ain’t layings low. Mech’ni...Mechy...Man, some people’s names is too long. That dude killed m’ brother. He ain’t getting aways widdit.” He smacked the cushion again. “I ain’ts hiding.”

“Well, we sure can’t attack him outright. And we can’t go to the authorities.”

“Yeah. They’s stop givin’ me lollipops around my six or sevenths crazy-neighbor claim.”

“No, they still offered you some.”

“Hey, cherry ain’ts a real lollipops taste!”

Ace Spandex nodded. Something in his neck groaned. Maybe his bones were creaking, but the groan sounded like unoiled metal. He leaned back and sat akimbo on the cushion beside Scapegoat. “Nobody knows Mechanism’s real plan. With Reef’s endorsement, everybody thinks he’s an undercover Good Guy and we’re fugitives. And, if they buy into Choco-Fruit’s claims of real cocoa, they’ll buy into anything. So it’s just us. We need to figure something out. I’ll find a vacant field somewhere and redirect this pod. Then I’ll go online. Post some messages. One raging militant, one conspiracy theorist, someone out there has to believe us.”

“Ya does all this on your gabber?” Their gabbers, those pea-sized communicators that fit inside their ears, were probably deactivated.

“No.” Ace Spandex looked as if he’d been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. “Uhm...I have...other ways to get online. Never mind. Just let me do what I do.”

Scapegoat still breathed as steadily as a life-support machine. In...out...in...out.

Power Plant traced a finger in a circle over the foggy window. “If’n I evers find out who turneds off Station One’s defense and let Mech’nism in, I’s gonna kill them.” His finger jabbed the window. “Oops. Sorry, bug.”

Chapter Two: The Clothes Do Make the Man

Mechanism examined the new full-body armor he wore, rotating one arm over in his vision and then the other. Light across its contours sparkled like gems. Such exquisite perfection he was, such godliness in his intelligence, that which separated him from the very burdensome cockroaches he sought to purge, starting with those who created Sandblast Arctic Summer Breeze fruit juices. What an exploration of oxymora...and malnutrition. If even 1 percent of that poison was actual concentrate, Mechanism would eat his own hair.

He punted the Topsy-or-Turvy corpse, the former Good Guy receptionist twin, that lay on the bloodied boardroom floor, cooling now for a few hours. His foot thumped wetly against its belly. Hrmph. What a waste of space this ex-creature was. Mechanism knew not what species this collision of color belonged to, but even the ugliness suppressors in his eye slit encountered difficulty in dulling the corpse’s battle of pigmentations. And he had designed the suppressors for Master Asinine’s Sunday best and its flashing accessories. No wonder the Good Guys relegated Topsy and Turvy to Station One’s main lobby. Any visitor who could see after laying eyes upon them deserved a medal of commendation.

“Machine,” he said. He instantly regretted it. Now his kowtowing assistant, the mass of metal and circuits named Appliance, would attempt to endear him with another frivolous compliment. Or perhaps it would erect yet another statue on Station One’s welcoming lawn. He curled fingers around his chin. Maybe another tribute statue was in order. After all, right now the public could view only four of Mechanism’s majestic poses.

Appliance, a flying pewter can with a single eye, buzzed out from the shadows of the boardroom table. Had it been examining the bottoms of chairs for the best puckering-up angles? The foot-wide cylinder, fashioned from a canned-snake drone, clacked both its three-pronged pincers. “Yes, Lord Mechanism?” It reflected the light off its pewter form.

Mechanism oozed a moan of delight at his armor. Such excellence he had achieved in its construction. “My new battle armor is, simply put, absolute precision, is it not? Do not answer that. I refuse to sit here these next nine hours listening to your driveling adoration. I have two commands to which you will listen without using the words lord, master, liege, or any other empty verbal genuflection. Also, shut up when I speak. Just once. Please, just this once.”

Appliance buzzed past a light panel and clacked those pincers Mechanism had thought so often of tearing off. “Yes, Lord Mechanism.”

Mechanism sighed. “Or perhaps we will try again after you learn the meaning of ‘shut up.’” Seriously, Appliance needed to lower its subservience a notch. It brownnosed so much that its front end smelled. “Task one: you will assign someone the chore of cleaning this corpse and dumping it in the nearest trash ionizer. Assign Nu—” Oh, he loathed calling his Mechaknight followers by their letter/number contradictory names. Computer spreadsheet error? Idiot error, probably. “Assign Number BZ to it. That menial ham-and-egger used to shovel elephant fecal matter the size of cannons at the Gaian zoo. Cleaning this thing should harken him back to his good old durp-durp days. Are you getting this, machine?”

“Yes, Lord Mechanism. You have equipped me with a memory system so efficient, I have put to shame most pocket calculators that are not scientific.” Appliance attempted to point a pincer inward at its main processor. Its range of motion came nowhere near to allowing that, so it admitted defeat. “If I could tap my processor, Lord Mechanism, I would. But your instruction is all in here. Every last droplet of your divine wishes.” It tried again. “In this thing I use for a brain.”

“Your processor consists of parts culled from the voice chip of a pee-pee doll. Do not feel pride.” Mechanism fixed Appliance with a stare that seemed not to register with that jangle of bolts. The air conditioning whooshed on, and Mechanism wished it would reverse itself and suck Appliance in.

“Task two: now that Number B has placed Reef in a holding cell and the other Topsy-or-Turvy receptionist in stasis with the other Good Guy soldiers, I want him and three Mechaknights to locate the escapees. Inform Number B we have enough prisoners.”

“Yes, Lord Mechanism. Of course.” Though without a mouth, Appliance spoke as if grinning with amusement. By now, after long months of hiding this mechanical claptrap in his private lair, Mechanism could tell when it took pleasure.

“Now, begone.” Mechanism whacked his begone hand across Appliance’s front end, which propelled that farcical gofer out the door. With more practice, he could bank the single-focused lackey against the doorframe. Alas, now was not that time, though he would practice his three-point shot later. For now, he had one last task to assign, but he would assign that personally. It required the finesse only his lexicon delivered.

He directed his bodysuit—with headscanning technology to dispose of needless verbal commands—to contact Number Y. Number Y had, only hours earlier, captured their last on-station quarry, Good Guy Franchise. But Number Y’s gabber kept ringing. And ringing. And ringing. And, of course, ringing. Where was this lower-class heel? Did he not know gabbers were portable? And installed in their helmets?

Finally that armored baboon answered. “Number Y talking atcha.” Mechanism expected a primitive grunt and something akin to armpit scratching, but Number Y had probably taxed himself enough by stringing those blithering words into a greeting. Mechanism wondered if the dog pound would accept him.

Against the right side of the display in Mechanism’s eye slit, a few lines shuddered: Number Y’s pitch, apa, and volume, measured in fluttering meters. A box in the upper-right corner of the display indicated to whom Mechanism spoke. Below that spread a grid of emoticons Mechanism could transmit to this slave. The middle-finger one was a favorite.

“Number Y, I am aware you have located and captured our last target, the self-multiplier Franchise.”

“Yes, I have.” Number Y rumbled a laugh. “I dug him out of a vent. Took two hours and several stactics. I deserve some time off.”

“Fine. I shall grant you one more minute of life if you never again use that horrible word stactic. It’s a tactic or a strategy, not your two-in-one contortion of language.

“Now, here is my instruction concerning this ninny: do not place him in stasis. Seize his gabber and any weapons. Locate an uncomfortable room redolent of misery. Lock him in with yourself and post a guard outside. Starve him, keep him shivering, beat him, reenact prop comic acts. I care not. But he must maintain the idea he has something to lose from defiance. Most important, I wish him able to speak. Other than that and any face-painting whims you might harbor, do as you please.”

Number Y rumbled out another chuckle. “The best news I’ve heard all day.”

The Floots and their intellectually likewise ichor would pay for their atrocities on the superior elite. Oh, yes. Pay indeed.

“Also, prize from him the location of the Good Guys’ wasabi sauce. I have gone far too long without enjoying a decent ethnic dish.” That reminded him to refill his armor’s supply of Tums.

Chapter Three: The Welcome Wagon Has a Lot of Beef

The pod slammed into the ridged farmland like it had a score to settle. It skidded into rows of wheat, spat up a spray of parched dirt, swerved right along an indentation in the grass...and squeaked to a halt. Ace Spandex grappled out of his seat, his legs moaning for motion. They’d remained unoiled for hours, but now that he moved, lubricant flowed into them to shut them up. He wanted to tell Power Plant about his cybernetic features—ones Mechanism had installed in him when he was captured, the ones used to control him until that control was broken—and his role in Mechanism’s attack, but Power Plant’s frowning eyebrows declared now was not the time. Lunchtime didn’t look good either.

Ace Spandex spun the pod hatch’s wheel, and the metal bars that secured the hatch squealed out. But the latent technology hatch was stuck on active and wouldn’t fade. With a jerk, another jerk, and a shoulder bash, he insisted the l-tech hatch open.

A flash of sweltering air gushed in through the l-hatch and slapped his face, burned his eyes. A nighttime muddy color painted the sky. On this southern hemisphere, daybreak never lit the city before one in the afternoon. A few stealthy night hours remained.

“Thank you for flying Letchtech escape pods,” the pod’s haunt control said, living up to its name: haunt-control software automated everything under their power, which made things act haunted. But the pod was a Letchtech product. What the crock did it have to be proud of? “Enjoy your stay. Also, remember to buy every single product Letchtech pushes on you. Letchtech. We could make you give us your money, but we fired our hypnotists.”

Mechanism had probably dispatched his Mechaknight followers already. Ace Spandex guessed by the blinking light on the pod’s control panel that a beacon had signaled those murderers. Mechanism knew Scapegoat was injured, so he’d probably guessed Ace Spandex and Power Plant were headed for the closest hospital run by SIPMA, the Special Identity Protection Medical Act, put in place to treat hyperpeople whose identities were secret and couldn’t be divulged. Not much time remained until those Mechaknights arrived. Ace Spandex vowed to arrive first. Power Plant had said he wanted to arrive earlier than first.

The fiery outdoor gust felt like such a contrast to the conditioned air that had cooled the pod the last few hours. Ace Spandex checked his arm for heat blisters. He saw sweat. Crickets chirped somewhere in the nighttime nether of the wheat field through which the pod had carved its path. Ace Spandex wanted to stick around to see the looks on people’s faces when they spotted these crop circles. Then again, crop circles had gone out of style with cow mutilations. Those zany Trioxidillians.

Ace Spandex activated his infrared vision and scanned the field. Heat signatures signaled underground pockets of air—probably gopher holes—and some livestock gathered in a bean-shaped enclosure. “Looks as though we’re safe. No one around except a few cows. They’re...oh...grazing rocks. Blind cows with no sense of taste.”

He stepped back into the escape pod, out of the passionate heat. His metal-weighted footsteps echoed loudly around the sphere, clomping in his ear drums. Power Plant didn’t react to the sound.

Ace Spandex grabbed Scapegoat and hhhhaaauulllleeddd...hhhiiimmmm...up. Phew. A bag of sledgehammers had nothing on this hunchback. Neither did battleships. He trudged toward the hatch, Scapegoat draped over his hands. “Scapegoat’s vitals are fading, but we’re only a ten-minute walk from the hospital. We need to slip in there fast, drop him off, and get out before Mechanism arrives and you overdose on cafeteria doughnuts.”

Power Plant slammed Ace Spandex aside and pounded out the hatch into the stifling heat wave. His fists glowed with his hyperability’s light energy, crackling at the sleeves of his impact suit. He studied the cows that mooed in conversation and swatted each other with feather-duster tails. He may have finally found an intellectual equal, or at least someone willing to listen to his thoughts on cryogenically freezing Pop-Tarts so future generations could enjoy wild watermelon in pastry form.

He wiped a sleeve over his forehead and peered at the towering wheat that he’d either rummage through or blast to bits. Or detonate if his Facebook likes were any indication.

“Jeff.” Ace Spandex stepped forward. In this still night, the quietude broken only by the occasional honking horn from 1.7 miles north-northeast, his knee joints whirred. He’d lost his baseball cap running through the escape-pod bay. Didn’t matter. It didn’t fit right since Mechanism changed him. Now the heat felt weird on his head. “Jeff?” He angled his chin up to see Power Plant past Scapegoat’s tidal belly. The young Abends, visible in the night only because of his bluntly blond hair and the balls of energy at his squeezing fists, raged into the wheat field. Ace Spandex followed. “Jeff, we need a plan. How can we sneak into the hospital to drop Scapegoat off without getting arrested or shot on sight?”

Power Plant didn’t stop stomping. “We ain’ts sneaking. I’s makings sure thems Mechyknights sees me.” His hands lit a wheat stalk on fire when he tore past it. “C’mon. Longer we waits, more our chances of getting seens is gets smaller and smaller.”

Ace Spandex exhaled a lamenting groan. Power Plant was liable to get them killed. And not in the usual ways. Ace Spandex balanced Scapegoat on one arm and a shoulder and aimed his other hand at the escape pod. Brp-breep. The pod was locked. He scampered into the wheat. “Jeff, remember where we parked: next to rock-eating cows.”

“Mmmooooo.”

“You guys stay out of this. Especially you with the lazy eye.”

* * *

Number B burst into the SIPMA hospital’s baby-blue front lobby. His followers likewise slammed through its double doors, whacking the blue text floating inside the windowed door that read, “Please Keep Noise and Robotic Henchmen to a Minimum.”

The outside heat would have felt stifling if not for Number B’s purple-contoured bodysuit and the comfort food he pumped through its coolant valves. Yummy ice cream. Functional and scrumptious. And nutty.

His glove cracked the door handle, a bar, now broken down its middle, that immediately set to work repairing itself. The doors faded too late now to avoid the damage. The haunt control must have been running a software update, evident when its sensors had slowed to a grandmother-on-a-walker crawl.

The front lobby contained benches against the windowed wall next to the doors. Nurses, aides, patients, and two security guards recoiled from the barging squad. Number B studied the crowd, most of which cowered or shrieked, but a few regarded him and his three charges with shocked gazes that fluttered up and down their monstrous full-body armor. The crowd had hopefully caught Reef’s announcement a few hours ago, knew the Mechaknights were “on their side, blah blah blah.” At the triage desk behind a shield screen that displayed a ticking clock and the words CURRENT WAIT TIME: INTERMINABLE sat a nurse, a toad-bottomed Terran whose hand hovered over the desktop and whose owlish eyes watched Number B. She sat motionless as if frozen in time. A guard’s hand eased onto the holster by his hip. What an idiot. As if that pop gun’s ammunition could penetrate this battle armor. It couldn’t even break through the glitter glue with which Number B had decorated his.

A few patients burst over the lobby couch and cringed among the dehydrated potted plants and a floor heater that dehydrated potted plants. These patients quivered when Number B’s boots tapped against the tiled floor.

Nobody breathed except the guy with the breathing irregularity.

“My citizens of SIPMA.” Number B turned on his bureaucratic charm to soothe this group. Authority required officialdom. He hoped his voice portrayed that. After all, he spoke from the diaphragm.

“We’re not contacting an alien civilization, you craft-supplied savage.” Number OO spread a hand over his face. “And work on eating with a spoon. It’s getting harder to be seen with you.”

“Do not cramp my style, cohort.” Number B didn’t face Number OO. He crossed his arms and flaunted his chest forward. Crowds responded to flashy stances, and this one did so with a wave of gasps and screeches. And one irregular pant.

“Your style is blue-and-white-flower drapes with lace trim because, and I quote, ‘it’s adorable and fuzzily fun.’ And it cramps itself.” Number OO nodded with displeasure. His contours, like those on other Mechaknight bodysuits, were blue, not Number B’s dazzling purple. “And stop humming ‘Ring Around the Rosey.’”

Number B planted his hands on his hips. “Citizens of SIPMA, first and foremost, please ignore my style-cramping colleague. He knows not what he does.” He placed Number OO’s hand in his and slapped the wrist. Clang. “Bad colleague.” Back to the crowd. Performance mode: reactivated. “Second, we have it on good authority that the Good Guy renegades who escaped Station One mere hours ago are headed to this locale. One of their own has sustained injury and requires immediate medical attention. Their escape pod has landed no farther than a ten-minute moonlit promenade away.”

Number OO knocked his head against a support column. “If you need me, I’ll be blending into the background.”

Number B said, “So, please, citizens of SIPMA, stand aside and allow us to apprehend these fugitives before they murder again. You might want to take cover in a bomb shelter. Fret not, however. We have the situation in hand.

“Thank you, citizens of SIPMA. Thank you multiple times.” He turned to the other Mechaknights. “Now, my charges, let us seat ourselves on these...seats. We will loom in the waiting room, for we have much waiting to do. Number OO, fetch us food. There’s a snack dispenser down the hall that sells hickory sticks.”

“They’re not citizens of SIPMA,” Number OO said, watching Number B stroll past his line of sight. “There’s no nation of SIPMA. It’s a medical act.”

Number BT knocked shoulders with Number OO. “At least he stopped smack-talking in the Queen’s English.”

Number B clomped toward the vacated couch. The patients who cowered behind it, peeking out with half-exposed eyes, ducked away in an exhalation of whimpers. Number B sat—the couch grunted under his weight—next to one brave patient who hadn’t leaped behind or into a potted plant. The patient inched away and quivered, temples sweating and pallor blanched. Number B crossed his legs and tapped his gloves against them in a rhythmless beat. “Waiting mode is active.”

Ooh. He flung himself forward to grab the latest issue of Frilly Doily Design from a coffee table. Yes, advice on snowflake patterns and coordinating gradients of white. To his couch-mate, he indicated the datasheet, a paper-thin computer that stored the magazine. “Sorry. Were you reading this?”

* * *

Power Plant stomped up the four steps that led to the double-door entrance of the SIPMA hospital’s main lobby. He squished a discarded grape and maybe—maybe—a hobo’s fingers, but if the hobo wasn’t going to extend the courtesy of asking for change, Power Plant wasn’t going to care. Hobos could at least wake up when company came.

Cracks marred the concrete stairs and grass crept through in thin patches. A graffiti brawl decorated the brick-fronted building—gangs claimed this turf in spray-painted block letters across its face—though an advertisement for that new flick Cake Animator flashed over a few graffitied title deeds. A grasshopper flicked past him.

The heat felt so thick it almost repaved the roads. He wiped sweat off his forehead and some that had leaked into his eyes. New sweat replaced the old.

He threw open the doors—well, he tried, but they disappeared and he whacked his unobstructed hand against the doorframe—and checked behind him for Ace Spandex, who brought up the rear, provided that rear extended four yards back. Slowpoke. “C’mon. We’s needs to hurry up to reach to town.” A welcomed breath of air conditioning cooled the back of his neck and trickled the sweat away.

Ace Spandex tripped up the steps, Scapegoat still in his arms. “Hurry? Explosives Et Cetera doesn’t open for four hours, but the point is moot: we don’t need ballistic piñatas.” He’d use the rusted handrail to negotiate the stairs, but he didn’t have a third arm. Power Plant couldn’t relate. He checked. Crock. Only two arms. So that mutation was a dream.

“Halt, fugitives,” an electronic voice said from behind him. Clanks against the floor drew closer. A click and an elongated whir tickled Power Plant’s ear. He edged his eyes to the side, though the voice and the high-pitched “yippee, look who I caught” that followed had come from behind.

Power Plant felt a gun scrape the back of his skull. The gun threatened to separate his spine from his head in a single flushing blast, so he prepared his fist, which lit with subtle light energy from his hyperability. He packed so much of a punch he’d send that “yippee, look what I caught” into the next octave.

“Halt?” Power Plant said. “I ain’t knows how to halt.”

“I know,” the gunman said. “I’ve read your reports on speed skating.”

Ace Spandex stepped back. He squatted as if to place Scapegoat on the concrete steps, unsure if he should engage in the battle that would soon begin. Nope, he toppled into a handrail, Scapegoat’s unforgiving girth pinning him down.

The gunman behind Power Plant clanked a step closer. “Defuse that fist, fugitive, or I will be forced to feel oh so giddy about detonating your brain.” Despite the note of officialdom, the voice sounded familiar. This was definitely a Mechaknight.

Detonating his brain? Power Plant wouldn’t know that three-syllable word except it had to do with explosions. Good enough for him. But “defuse”? Whatever that meant, he wasn’t de-anything-ing his fist.

“That is it, fugitive. I will say this once more. De...fuse...that...fi—”

Power Plant leaped up/spun around/threw himself away/discharged a blast of light at the Mechaknight behind him. The energy erupted out like a rocketing fart, an air cushion chucked the Mechaknight, smashed him through the wall beside the front door. The hospital vomited a burst of bricks, the Mechaknight crunched out, twirled up-up-down, collided with a civilian transport, caved it in. The Mechaknight remained there, embedded in the hammock of the civ-tran’s roof.

Power Plant remained in midair, ducked a light-bullet, swerved aside from another, veered at the triage desk, grabbed a handful of a nurse’s muffin—blech, berries that tasted like a shoe. No, two shoes.

Light panels above Power Plant seethed with a visual assault. Good. Faster energy recharge. He controlled it, made his discharge more laser, less air cushion. Loaded a blast into his left hand—fired. Blew a hole into a Mechaknight’s neck. The head crumbled off the shoulders. Redirected himself, avoided a blast, checked his attacker, clear line of sight, but a nurse had taken cover under a table behind the assaulter. Couldn’t risk the shot: she was too fat to miss.

Tensed his muscles at the other Mechaknight, charged himself with an overload of energy that made the fingertips feel as if he’d performed spider-handed pushups. “Gonna makes you all look like burned-out toast-it ovens.”

Fired the energy blast and five entry wounds on the Mechaknight blew into five exit wounds, like the five side on a die. The Mechaknight had enough time to examine his wound before he collapsed into a metal heap.

Now the last. Power Plant’s feet hit the ground—he ducked another bolt that punctured a door behind him—his right hand already loaded light energy, glowed and sparkled—he threw his fist forward—aimed—the Mechaknight ducked aside—he aimed again—angle was perfect to miss the hippo of a nurse cowering behind him, and...

There was no noise except a rush of wind. The Mechaknight’s leg popped off and spiraled into the air. It sailed up...slowed its arc...inched into the fingers of gravity, and sailed down. It fell faster, faster, faster until, with a thirsty squish, it splatted against the table under which the nurse hid. The nurse jolted, yipped a scream, and slapped both hands onto her mouth as if she’d spoken a betrayal of faith.

The Mechaknight grunted, panted, screamed, clutched at his leg that wasn’t there, gawked up as if to say, “You owe me an apology.” Power Plant stood and charged toward the blubbering Mechaknight, his stomps clouting the floor. There he stood over the writhing mess of a person, that waste of oxygen who begged with a thin voice and whimpering that sliced up his words. “Please, no, please don’t, grant me mercy, I beg of you.” His hand gripped Power Plant’s leg, the other pressing on his would to staunch the flow of blood it vomited.

Power Plant wished that helmet were off. He wanted to see the desperation in this monster’s face. “Jus’ like you guys shows my brother mercy?” The bones in his fingers felt as though they froze.

He powered up his hand, funneled all energy through that hand, and erased the Mechaknight’s head in a consuming blast. Only mulch and blood remained. And a funky gold mouth plate. Cool. He saw his reflection. He had cookie on his cheek.

Power Plant scanned the whimpering crowd. Some cried, some hugged children against themselves, others looked ready to pick a fight but were unsure how it would end. Someone gnawed a branch off a potted tree. Power Plant took that as an indication of what they served in the cafeteria.

“Is everyone be all rights?” His hand still smoked. The scant hairs on his knuckles had been singed off. So had the admission stamp from the Porharbor Fair.

The l-doors whoomped into mist. Ace Spandex stumbled in, supporting Scapegoat on arms that must have grown tired around when that stray dog had mistaken his leg for a fire hydrant. Better than when that stray rat had mistaken it for a brick of cheese. He managed his way to the side, found an empty stretcher, and eased Scapegoat in. His breathing regulated into jumping jacks of exhalation-inhalations.

Power Plant stood in the middle of the triage room, monitoring for any late arrivals to the Mechaknight slaughter. Ace Spandex headed to the triage desk and guided the floating stretcher, which locked Scapegoat in with straps over his shoulders and waist. It vibrated the faster he pushed it. Budget cuts.

No Mechaknights appeared.

The nurse stared up at Ace Spandex with frozen horror. Ace Spandex said, “This man...hunchback...however you categorize him...needs medical attention. He’s suffered a gut shot. If you don’t act quickly, he’ll die. If you don’t get him into an emergency room right now, he’ll die. I’d operate on him myself but, frankly, I’d do a cleaner job carving a pumpkin.” He slapped Scapegoat’s SIPMA card onto the desk. “Here’s his identification. He’s covered under the Good Guys’ account.”

The nurse tried speaking. Her mouth bobbed open as if she saw the face of the deity Alaphus but couldn’t work her tongue. Ace Spandex leaned closer and whacked the shield screen that acted as a divider between her and patients. “Go.”

The nurse snapped out of her vacant state. Her head twitched and she said, “Control, acknowledge. Summon emergency surgeon to triage room.”

“Emergency surgeon summoned. You could summon faster with Bulldog Vuvuzelas, great for clearing out soccer stadiums and whacking your friends in the face.”

“Good.” Ace Spandex tromped toward Power Plant, and both headed to the lobby’s double doors. Wham. Power Plant smacked into it nose-first. The door needed to wake up.

Chapter Four: And the Award Goes To...

Mechanism felt great disappointment. He cradled his armor’s crowned helmet in his hands. Number B was not even fit to tie his shoes. Well...his boots, but...Actually, he owned a pair of Dante office shoes, but they remained on Station Mechanism, the former Station Zilcho. And, if they were here, Mechanism would wave them in Number B’s unworthy face and say, “You may not tie.” That would get the message across: Number B was a farcical fool.

But that changed nothing. The renegade Good Guys had escaped the SIPMA hospital with nary a scratch. They had dropped off their injured party, and now Mechanism had no lead on where they would next appear. Still, he had a plan to draw them out.

Mechanism had rechristened this room—what once was hospitalized Good Guy leader Legion’s office, a planning room for dismantling the Bad Guys—as his new headquarters from which he would launch the next stage of his plan. The desk sat centered against the west wall, the brown-and-green color scheme, the tomato wallpaper, all was now hi—Tomato wallpaper? Mechanism scratched two fingers along it. A pizza motif. Bold choice, but Mechanism would have opted for elbow macaroni.

Mechanism wanted to sit, but his armor would crush the room’s chairs, and he would collapse onto the carpet. And his armor did not boast antifool protection. So, each step a dull knock on the carpet, he wandered the office, tracing his fingers along a bookcase, an end table, a window frame. Oh, Legion, how your mighty Good Guys have fallen, he thought. Also, in your absence, someone has hung a Grand Theft Ski Lift movie poster.

Mechanism strolled past his wine rack, which he had promptly transported here after securing Station One. A necessary fixture in this room, more crucial to his plan than any of his absurd Mechaknights or their laughable attempts at keeping up with current events. No, a redbook season was not a new era in women’s publications.

Appliance fluttered from its perch on a high bookcase shelf where it hoped Mechanism could not slap him. What a half-brained louse, for it did not realize Mechanism had installed a flyswatter in his suit. “My lord, now that the—”

Mechanism halted in front of Legion’s end table. What a painful voice at this time of day. “Machine, you would sound less insufferable as a tractor running for mayor. I have decided you will now utilize the clown voice mod I installed in you.” He snapped his fingers.

“Oh, boy, kids!” Appliance’s voice adopted a nasal twang that sounded as if someone had torn out that buffoon’s crotch assembly. It yet alleviated not the voice sounding like nails scratching a blackboard to its undercoating. “Now that those pesky Good Guys’re—”

Mechanism’s ears stung. “Old time gangster mod.” He snapped his fingers again. Those who designed the clown mod would perish first, he decided. Well, after the heathen who had fixed his laundry plumbing with two-sided tape.

“Those Good Guys is still on the prowl, y’ shee.” Appliance sounded as if it chomped on a fat cigar and targeted a tommy gun at flatfoots. “They got moxie, shee. We got some sorta plan ta send a chopper squad to bump off those two stoolpigeons?” Appliance clacked its pincers in rapid-fire rhythm as if giving a grifter the big sleep.

With the aid of his onboard translator, Mechanism understood Appliance’s shtick, though the translator needed to use all system resources to muddle through “shee.” Somewhere, a circuit board smoked. He removed his helmet, which hissed as the air seals relinquished their grip on his armor’s collar. Time to alleviate some frustration. He wandered to his wine rack, his helmet under one arm, and selected a bottle corked and sealed in 8902, a vintage year for rose wines. This was a white. Appalling. He replaced the bottle and selected a rose, Du plaines des douches, corked in 8919. Less than a century ago, but it would have to do. He poked his forefinger/corkscrew apparatus into the top, twisted, and opened the bottle with a suctioned pop.

“I have many methods to find those Good Guys, machine. Only one has exhausted itself. Though our escaped Ace Spandex has broken the control I had over him, I observed a posting he wrote on the Intergalacticnet. He has approached several online forums, beseeching others to come forward and aid in halting my plan. When Number B awakens from his...beauty nap...tell him to contact Ace Spandex, posing as a veteran of the Palicomic War. Instruct him to avoid using the phrases ‘I love pink,’ ‘oodles of poodles,’ and ‘wheeee’ of any elongated spelling. He will lure those Good Guys into a secret meeting and”—Mechanism could not resist the saccharine temptation to snicker—“dispatch them.

“And, if he fails again, wax his legs.”

His talented snicker not yet complete, he waited before he tipped his wine bottle and sipped with sophistication. Such a fruity bouquet. A shame it would soon become urine. “And do not look upon me in that way, machine. I have the sneaking suspicion you are preparing to ‘bop me off.’” Perhaps a Terran-era gangster was not the best personality for Appliance. The gangster era’s most famous icon was an overweight buffoon imprisoned on tax evasion who’d died of a pneumonia/cardiac cocktail. The success bus had failed to make a stop that day.

He savored another delicate nip of the rose wine that tantalized his taste buds. “At the same time, these escapees shall not delay our plan. We will move forward. Set a course for Intergalactic Protection’s main headquarters on Minerva. We have”—he could not deny the all-consuming pleasure that emanated from his heart and tingled through his veins—“an appointment to keep.” Also, he felt...giddy.

“Yyyeeeaaaaahhhh, y’ shee?” Appliance clacked its pinchers again like a machinegun firing bursts into a Johnny Law. “We’ll pop that planet full o’ laser slugs. They’ll nevah know what hit ’em.” That gangster mod grew more unbearable with each Johnny Law bopped.

Mechanism almost hurled his wine bottle into Appliance’s one dotted eye. He yearned to twist Appliance’s vocal innards from his soda-can rectum. “What would be the point of having gained the trust of the people of Renovodomus? You're an idiot, machine. When we destroy Intergalactic Protection—arriving in the Good Guys’ own shuttle, no less—Renovodomus will be vanquished forever. We will gain access to Intergalactic Protection’s inner areas and hijack the establishment for ourselves.”

Appliance’s laughter crinkled from its underpowered speaker. “Those coppers are on the spot, y’ shee? We should waste the whole joint instead.”

“Swedish mod, you insufferable beast.”

“Aweenda shmure börk börk börk!” Appliance clacked its pincers and zipped around, probably in search of a chicken to fling.

Mechanism had finished sampling his wine. He stuffed the cork back in, placed the bottle atop Legion’s desk, and replaced his helmet onto his shoulders. He twisted the helmet in place, and it hissed to seal. He did not want to speak this next conversation unmasked. He would use the headscanner to open a broadcast viewscreen to IP’s grizzled field marshal, Ravioss Hullinger at Intergalactic Protection headquarters.

“Opening broadcast viewscreen. Seeking connection. Seeking con—connection attained.”

A viewscreen stamped itself across Mechanism’s vision, blossoming only inches from his helmet. He backed two steps away from the image of Field Marshal Ravioss Hullinger. This was the man in charge. Gaining his attention was a pipe dream on a slow day. Mechanism must have ranked highly on his priority chain. If his background served as any indication, so did tawdry decor.

Mechanism ensured his performance smile oiled every syllable. He was “happy” to talk with this ignorant tool, so he must act the part. “Good evening, Field Marshal Hullinger.”

“Börk börk börk.” Insolent Appliance. Mechanism groaned. Too bad he had not installed a setting to shut Appliance up.

Hullinger’s Trioxidillian skin looked like an aged carpet that had wrinkled from too many harsh feet. He clunked his coffee cup down on the marble desk at which he sat. “Hello, Mechanism.” His eyes wore distrust, and each word came out as if on delay. “I wanted to contact you since Field Leader Reef’s public announcement, but a nuclear food fight broke out at Space Cow’s apple-pie factory. A lot of third-degree burns and some militants who won’t take ‘no thanks, I couldn’t possibly have another bite’ for an answer.”

Mechanism smelled cheap shoe polish off Hullinger though they stood on separate spatial bodies. “It is good to hear from—”

“I hope you will understand my misgivings...field agent.” Hullinger’s mistrust reared its unpleasant head. Hullinger himself merely reared an ugly one. “I’m not even sure what rank you have. You see, we’ve found no record of you working with the Good Guys at all. Even our personnel campus has no idea who you are. And they’ve kept tight records on anyone joining the Good Guys since their suicidalist Kamikaze and a shipment of plutonium slipped through on the same week. So you’ll excuse me if I require a getting-to-know-you period.” Hullinger’s prunelike wrinkles shaded his face in unflattering vertical lines under a harsh lamp. Reportedly, he bathed in antiaging wrinkle cream every eight to twelve hours. It worked about as well as a paper boat hauling bricks.

“For this reason, I am planning an excursion to your campus. Today, field marshal, if that so pleases you. I plan to put aside your misgivings.” This was not a conversation Mechanism could have left to Reef. Every word, every understated nuance, even the body language Mechanism used was chosen for a purpose. Every mannerism contributed to coercing his way aboard that campus. Mechanism’s side of the exchange was nothing short of a masterpiece. So was his pedicure.

“Well, I need to review the effectiveness of thermal devices on fire demons. And tee-off time is at one. Someone has to put that ninth hole in its place.” Hullinger drummed his fingers on his desk. His computer, embedded in the desk’s top, complained with bursts of beeps that somehow sounded like the wail of a single-toothed baby. Mechanism would have found Hullinger’s timetable more impressive if he didn’t know Hullinger was referring to miniature golf. Anybody could putt a golf ball past a windmill.

“Field Marshal Hullinger.” Mechanism injected urgency into his award-worthy performance. “I understand the suddenness of this interruption, but we have much to discuss.” And Mechanism had much to wrest.

Hullinger’s fingers stopped tap-dancing on the desk. He flicked his hand aside like an unpleased restaurant connoisseur. “Fine. I suppose we do need to discuss what you have discovered about the Bad Guys.” A trace of tolerance shaped his brow. “Can you be here in two hours?”

Straight into Mechanism’s trap. “Yes. Of course.” He laced his words with a spirited tone, which would have helped had he not burped his wine. He tasted a fruity burn in his throat.

Appliance barged in on the conversation from above Mechanism’s left shoulder. “Morgy porgy porgy börk börk börk!” It received a dutiful smack that sent it reeling into a conversational arrangement of l-chairs. “Börk.”

“Börk indeed, robotic swine.” Mechanism smiled at Hullinger though the baboon could not see it. “I look forward to our time together. I have...much...to reveal. I will arrive in two hours. Control, acknowledge. Cut connection and close broadcast viewscreen.” The viewscreen vanished with a sliding whir. Such a master thespian Mechanism was.

Now, with that out of the way, Mechanism proceeded. “Control, acknowledge. Cloak station, use astro radar and LIDAR.” He had unfinished business with affairs on this station and could not leave them unresolved. Might as well settle them on the way. “To correct your earlier misunderstanding, machine, we do not want to destroy Intergalactic Protection headquarters. I will not have their weapons of mass destruction wasted on knee-jerk attacks that will avail us not. No, for I instead plan to acquire their resources”—he snatched up a bauble from Legion’s bookcase and crushed it into glassy shards that pricked out from among his fingers—“for my own use. What is most comical is that those unwitting imbeciles at Intergalactic Protection have no idea what remains in store for them.” He rubbed his hands together, grinding glass. “No idea indeed.”

“Börk börk?”

“Sometimes I enjoy not understanding Swedish.”

Chapter Five: I Got Your Escape Attempt Right Here

“Okay, I’ll say this even if you monsters of crock are too petrified. We need to escape.” Lefty, Bad Guy Schizophrenic’s left head, assessed the others littering this densely aired boiler room. Why the piss did a space station need a boiler? He rapped his knuckles on it, and a clang echoed inside its cylindrical drum. It was as cold as the underused yet overtaxed light bulb acting as Righty’s forty-watt thought process. Lefty put his forehead against the boiler to alleviate the heat that washed him from every other direction. The boiler was at least good for one thing, which put it a notch above Appetite.

Here the captive Bad Guys lazed about, trapped in this room with gray laser-paint flaking off the moldy walls, air as syrupy as peanut butter, dust as thick a tomb’s. Two vents hung immediately underneath the dank ceiling, but the molecules of their brass covers were smear-mixed with the wall’s stone, preventing a breakout. Every sound echoed loudly.

Though the Bad Guy generics remained on Station Zilcho, Mechaknights had transferred the Bad Guys from holding cells on Zilcho to here on Station One, and though the two-headed Schizophrenic recognized some of Station One’s layout from his incarceration three months ago, he didn’t recognize this place. Since his visit, Station One had taken corporate sponsorship to new heights, displaying advertisements on where to purchase three H for the price of two times E to the power of seventeen.

Lieutenant IQ 23 rubbed a bandaged and shattered hand, wearing his shoes out by pacing around the concrete floor. Another bandage adorned his broken cheekbone. His Virillian-species bosom buddy, Braindead, watched him flit around like an apathetic tennis judge. Obese Multipurpose slept soundly on the floor, contributing nothing except a roaring snore that ruffled his fat flaps like a hot air balloon failing to inflate. Master Asinine Sucks sat against a wall, his ten-gallon hat hiding his downturned face. And Appetite? Well, no matter where that nine-foot-tall gargoyle found himself, he was at a buffet.

Spiders had taken residence in every ceiling corner and crack in the floor. So many spiders. If any of the social rejects in here rallied those spiders, the social rejects guarding the door outside wouldn’t stand a chance.

“Any of you brain blockages hear me?” Schizophrenic stood and crossed his cannon-thick arms. Most stopped to hear what he had to say. Too bad he’d run out of ideas. That still put him one above everyone else.

“Escape?” Lieutenant IQ 23, generously media-named since twenty-three was surely a few points too high, stopped pacing. The Bad Guys’ second-in-command/hundredth-in-respect blinked, as if disbelieving that Lefty had spoken. At least he stopped wringing his hands.

Lieutenant IQ 23 Give-or-Take really stepped on Lefty’s crock. Lefty grunted at him. “Look, we’re locked in this boiler room with this broken iceberg”—he knocked on the boiler that dripped condensation—“and, still, this room feels like a sweat lodge. They gave us nothing for dinner but a single can of soda, which my dusty-headed partner Righty promptly shook, and no company except you yokels. I haven’t chewed a toothpick in hours. And that door can’t hold a two-headed beast hankering for a head-to-door pounding.” Lefty snorted and thrust his hand at the locked iron door.

Righty squealed through a tiny smile. “I’ll do the pounding.”

“That’s the plan, soft skull.” Lefty cracked his knuckles with the cockiness of a high school bully. “Those suckers think they can keep us locked up, they have another think coming.” Appetite shuffled up and sniffed his arm. Probably thought his sleeve was a chicken thigh.

“Escape is a bad idea.” Lieutenant IQ 23 sat on a rattling pipe and propped his arms on his knees.

“So’s your helmet.” Lefty wiped the cascade of sweat from his forehead and unshaven chin. Crock, it was hot in here even with this refrigerating boiler on the go. “Anyway, they posted two guards out there, and we got six of us in here. Mind you, only three of us are worth a crock in a fight, but the rest of you are good bullet magnets. I say we let Appetite eat his way out—hopefully in any direction but down—and we beat on those guards. We lay low, and Mechanism won’t even remember us in his inauguration speech for king of everything. Let that ego braniac take this galaxy. Better to fit his enormous sense of conceit.”

“No.” Lieutenant IQ 23 jerked his head back and forth like a petulant child told to finish his vegetables. “Escape could enrage Mechanism, endanger our leader.”

“Knew I couldn’t expect much from the guy who plays along whenever Asinine confuses his piloting instructions with a bumper car’s manual.” Lefty rolled his eyes. “Okay, I’ll put it this way. After getting what he wants, public-enemy number one will kill public-incident number one. And we’re next. At least this way only Asinine buys it.” He smacked Appetite away. “I’m not an entrée, you eating-contest shoo-in.”

“Yeehaw, I’m with the crooked two-face.” Master Asinine Sucks stomped a boot on the floor, enraging a spur. “That goney Asinine had it comin’ for a long spell.”

“Even Hi Ho Silver’s in on this, and all he’s good for is sallying up the horses.” Lefty eyed the others. “So, who else is with me?” He didn’t expect an answer from Appetite or Braindead. The only sounds the mute Braindead ever offered were hissing breaths. Lefty imagined conversations with him were as wordy as staring contests. “Multipurposeless, you in? Crock, he fell asleep on his frog sandwich. Looks like it’s just me an’ the town crier.” He shot a glance at the cowboy yuk-yuk.

Master Asinine Sucks tipped his tan ten-gallon hat. “You betcha.”

Lieutenant IQ 23 leaped at Schizophrenic and slammed the blade of his forearm against both of Schizophrenic’s necks. “If Mechanism finds out you’re planning to escape, he could kill our leader as a warning. I won’t let you endanger him.”

Schizophrenic reared back a fist. Brass-knuckle implants peeped out from the skin. Man, he wanted a toothpick. “I’ll endanger who I want.” Lefty ground his teeth. Righty did, too, but not out of anger. He often claimed it was the best way to brush.

Braindead snatched a gun from his holster, stepping between the two. He jabbed the gun barrel at Lefty’s skull. His mask hid his face, all but a chin that said, “Step away,” even if the mouth was short on conversation. Braindead didn’t even react to the pain he must have felt in his gunshot shoulder.

“What the—” Schizophrenic snapped back a step and reaimed his fist. “What moron let you keep that gun in here?”

Braindead said nothing. Long dissertations weren’t his strong suit.

“Get that pop gun out of my face, Super Mime.” Schizophrenic slanted his shoulder forward into a sidestep stance. Braindead didn’t comply, so Schizophrenic’s hand swept up and seized Braindead’s wrist. His fingers dug between Braindead’s bones, and the gun clattered to the floor. Schizophrenic scooped it up.

Lefty read the charge reading on the side of the pistol, a whopping digital goose egg glowing fiery red at him. “There’s no charge in this thing, Silent but Deadly. Did you expect to throw it at them?” He snorted.

Schizophrenic chucked the pistol at Multipurpose, who tugged a snore and almost roused from his dream of stumbling across the Land of Deep-Fried Milk and Sugar-Glazed Honey or whatever he sleepily mumbled about: “Sure, I’d love more mustard on my llama shank.” Lip smack, lip smack, fart. Whatever floated that guy’s elephantine boat.

“Okay, the pistol’s good for whipping at fat slobs. Anyway, Master Asinine Sucks and I are getting while the getting’s good. You ready for a showdown, Hoedown?”

“You betcha.” Master Asinine Sucks stepped to the door and tested it with his fingers, prying at it. No good. He stepped back and reassessed—

The l-door disappeared with a piercing shriek, and in stomped a mechanized guard with “CW” laser-painted on his shoulders. The open door revealed a stony hallway that distended forty or fifty feet away, intermittent light panels setting the path aglow. The other guard, Number BM, poked his head in. Playing cards lay strewn on a table.

Number CW brandished a miniature cannon. “Look, the door’s not that thick. We hear everything you say. If you try to escape, I’ll hollow out your skull and make it a bird feeder. I’ve got the know-how. I subscribe to Barbarian Craft and Quilting.” He stomped away, and the door reappeared, the shriek of its return echoing in the cavernous boiler room.

Lefty blinked. An image of that cannon adding holes to his skull seemed almost less pleasant than staying here with IQ 23. He could take those turd ’tards, but not unarmed. Fine. “Okay, Hyuckleberry, maybe we’ll wait on the escape plan.” He retreated to the far wall and sat.

“Good.” With his small eyes, Lieutenant IQ 23 followed Schizophrenic. “Sit there and think about this next time you—”

“Shut up and have a drink.” Schizophrenic tossed IQ 23 the soda can, which he tried to catch with his uninjured hand but missed. It banged his fingertips and slapped onto the floor. Lieutenant IQ 23 snatched it up and, angling it away from his face...slowly...sssslllooowwwwllllyyyy drew back the tab with the tips of his bandaged fingers. Nothing but a sizzle. He angled the can at his eye—

A belch spewed out and splattered IQ 23’s head. The bootlicker stood there with candy water fizzling down his chin.

“Time delay, you toady,” Lefty said.

Chapter Six: Window Shopping

An overheated, overexerted robot man, Ace Spandex stopped in the wheat field to which he had returned after Power Plant had slaughtered—Man, he slaughtered those Mechaknights, downright massacred them! Hot enough to light a fire, wind whistled a gush that trickled through the rustling stalks. Cows rustled the grass, and a bell clanged. From far away, sirens and civilian-transport horns rubber-hosed into the field. Also a civ-tran’s car alarm. It reminded him of Power Plant’s attempts at singing. “Singing” was a thinly stretched word sometimes.

Crock, this dry heat sapped his energy. His shoulders sagged, his arms hanging like slabs in a slaughterhouse. He felt as if he were basted with maple syrup inside an oven. Again, another of Power Plant’s attempts. Somebody should find him a more rational hobby. Or counseling.

After shredding through the wheat field a few paces behind, Power Plant caught up. The rabid heat revealed itself in the sweat stains drooling under his armpits. “Why’s we stoppin’?” Light energy overfilled him and made his eyes glow angrily. He looked ready to gnaw through Ace Spandex’s gut.

“Just...stand over there.” Ace Spandex waved Power Plant away and shrank back a step...and heard a ding. He put a finger to his ear, wary to keep Power Plant in sight. “The message I posted yielded a hit from a...Seliross.

“Who hit what yields post?”

“I...I...Never mind.” Ace shrugged a hand at Power Plant. Almost blabbed about the cybernetic implants. Not a smart move.

He read the message. A picture accompanied it: this Seliross could use a good shave. Or a weed whacker. “Seliross even has access to weapons.”

Power Plant searched the distance and wiped the sweat off his forehead with an arm. He shifted around to see past wheat stalks surrounding a barn. “This on a billboards or somethin’?”

Ace stepped away from a cow who had ventured close. “Seliross wants to meet.”

Power Plant put his finger to his ear. “You hearings dis? Man, I only ever hears ringing.”

“So stop using plastique as ear plugs.”

“Then stop blastin’ ya musics at me.”

“First, if the lyrics are ‘Entity Power Plant, report for combat duty,’ it’s not music. Second, that’s still not a good excuse to use plastique. Third, yes, I’m sure that’s still not a good excuse to use plastique. Anyway, Seliross wants to meet tonight. At a diner near the hospital, which is close to him. The diner opens at ten. Problem is the public thinks we’re fugitives at large.”

Power Plant whacked his fist into his palm. “We’s needs disguising.” He pinched the paper fold of fat below his rib-ridged chest, then whacked his palm again. “And I ain’ts large.”

Ace Spandex stepped back. “You’re shockingly correct. I never thought I’d see the day.” A cow mooed. “Neither did Bessie.”

“Neither’d I. What’s we talkin’ abouts?”

“The fact that somebody of mild intelligence has replaced you. I’d ask, ‘Who are you, and what have you done with the real Jeff,’ but I prefer this version. Anyway, the sun won’t rise for another two hours. Where can we find disguises that don’t look like cheap Halloween costumes? Everything is closed.”

Power Plant stomped toward the edge of the wheat field through the trail he had pioneered. A shimmering column of sweat boldfaced his spine. “That’s what lookin’ ’round’s for.”

Ace Spandex followed Power Plant but kept a few paces behind. He skittered aside whenever Power Plant snatched a wheat stalk and burned it to ash.

They tromped to the city, hiding in shadow and skulking only beside windowless buildings. They traveled close to exhausts in the pavement that blew cold air. Some stank like sewage. Wherever a traffic camera hung, they blocked their faces, and Ace Spandex only twice needed to slap Power Plant to keep him from sticking his tongue out at them. Make that three times. No, four.

They soon found a toy store. Ace Spandex monitored the street. Good thing nobody shopped around this district at nine in the morning because of shifted daylight hours.

Power Plant zapped the panel window in the storefront with a sparkling light show. The l-window dissipated in a fizzle. Holy piss! Ace Spandex’s heart valve pumped into double time. He ducked back and glanced around for lurkers. Any alarm the store used didn’t activate. Good, because Ace Spandex didn’t want Power Plant pantsing the police or filling their law-trans with golf balls or whatever a nothing-to-lose Power Plant would do. Topping Ace Spandex’s guess list was forcing people to eat liver and onions at gunpoint.

“Hey, Jeff.” Ace Spandex edged a shaky hand onto the broken window. His eyes skittered around for people. “Take it easy.”

Asserting eye contact with Ace, Power Plant kicked a skewed fragment out of the window frame. Ace darted a step away to make an easy break in case someone happened along.

Power Plant kicked the window frame again. A shard snapped off and spun across the floor until it bumped against a display of rejected He-Man figures: Stinkor, Stinkor, and Stinkor with bent packaging. Power Plant’s next kick cleared a gap wide enough to sneak in through.

Nobody in the store. Ace Spandex still felt a quiver. He found an ad that projected itself onto a wall. “You couldn’t smash this ad for Hypno Heroes? When I was a kid, these things crept me the crock out. Didn’t help that the commercials spellbound my parents into buying me them for eight consecutive birthdays.” He shivered at one character’s vulture eyes, which made him feel like a child trapped in haunted woods. “Their guns were real water pistols, though. Everything has a plus.”

Power Plant’s hissing breaths grew louder.

“Okay, just get in before someone spots us. Go, go.” Ace Spandex swept another glance across the hot street.

With a testy grit on his face, Power Plant ducked into the store. Ace followed. Slaughtering a bunch of Mechaknights in a hospital, breaking and entering. What came next, sawing the head off a statue? If the statue in question was one of that goon who enacted the galactic services tax, Ace Spandex was in.

Though it smelled like cheap die-cast metal, the store’s air felt sweetly cool, a relief after the melting heat outside. Moonlight spilled only four or five feet through the windows. Anything beyond that was a covert collection of racks and cash registers. Ace Spandex switched his optical spectrum from normal to night vision, which painted everything in fluorescent green. The toy store’s front display held groups of stuffed animals, “stuffin’s” as Power Plant called them. Here were lions, there tigers, nearby bears. Oh, my. Better than the festive display of clowns to the left of him and jokers to the right.

“Hey, dis way. I found crap. Crappy crap.” Behind the stuffed animals and between two shelving units that held the scant remains of a half-off sale of dolls—the top half, apparently—Power Plant rushed into the darkness, only a glowing pair of swinging hands to show his position.

Needed to finish this quickly. Ace Spandex rushed away from the storefront window to get out of sight. At any moment, the police could arrive and bust up their revolution. They needed to grab these disguises and run. Quickly. Mmmaaayybbbeeee stop for a candy bar at the sales registers.

Now hidden in the shadows of the store’s rear, Ace Spandex breathed easier.

Power Plant hunched over a tub that looked like a castle turret in the darkness this far from the window. The datasheet pinned to the tub read a glowing “Grab Bag of Costumes: Gigantic Freaking Sale! Go Nuts on This Crap!”

Ace checked the tub’s contents: cubes of holographic costumes. Someone could pin a holocostume’s cube to his shirt and press the button to transform into whatever character the cube’s data held. Ace Spandex had used one once at a zombie convention, but the data was corrupted: he came out as a disinterested cubicle dweller. Same thing, metaphorically speaking.

Power Plant dug through a jangle of plastic as if he scooped up water. He grabbed a cube and pinned it to his impact shirt. He activated it, and in a whistling whir, his body became someone else’s. Ace Spandex pinned a cube to himself. He activated it and looked up at who Power Plant had become.

“Oy, this is ridiculous. We’d look less conspicuous in a to-scale costume of Cthulhu.” In the yellow, flickering glow of Power Plant’s hands, he checked his reflection on a shelving unit’s semipolished surface. He bonked the heel of his palm against his forehead, ducked back into the bin, and scraped around for another cube. Might as well grab a handful just in case. Everything smelled like a potpourri of plastic and metal.

Power Plant flung out his hands. “Quit complaininatin’. What wrong?”

Ace Spandex’s head reemerged. “Jeff, you’re me. I’m you.”

Power Plant’s expression screwed into something that tried to hide his confusion. It didn’t work. However, he did a good impression of being confused when asked if he preferred paper or plastic for those times when hemp wasn’t an option.

“Letchtech marketed our likenesses. We’re holograms of each other.” Ace Spandex noticed the ranks of action figures on a rack to Power Plant’s left. He noted the packaged Reefs, Pincushions, Burnouts, even Car Alarms. And Car Alarm came with “ear-rending screech action.” Double exclamation point. “I really need to look at that contract Reef signed. Now I know why our physicals required toenail clippings and a lock of hair.”

Power Plant snatched up a packaged figure of himself and read the back. “Hey. I gots a official fan club.”

“Come on. If this store has any silent alarms or motion cameras, we should get out of here. I picked up enough cubes in case one of us turns out to look like Null. And the idea is to stay incognito, so stop waving at the security cameras.” Ace Spandex stuffed a few cubes into his pocket. He left two out and offered one to Power Plant. Power Plant stamped his breast to deactivate the Ace Spandex cube, which he tore off. He took the other cube and placed it on his impact shirt. Ace Spandex replaced his own with the last cube.

Power Plant dropped his figure and glanced at the rack holding the others. With a sniffle, as if he were squeezing back a gush of tears, he grabbed a Burnout figure. He wiped his eye and slid the figure into a pocket.

He shoved past Ace Spandex and clomped away. “Now we’s leave.” He crushed the Ace Spandex holocostume cube in his hand and hurled it aside.

Chapter Seven: What Happens When Men Visit the Bathroom Together

Mechanism approached the “holding cell,” which was really the bathroom of Station One’s pub, which itself branched off behind two abodes in the barracks. Number Y’s brilliant choice.

Mechanism moved past the Mechaknight that stood guard, Number FF, a leg propped up on the door that led to room 110, the plaque on the door reading NULL. Appliance followed, the annoying claptrap that it was. At least it did not attempt any Swedish monologues.

Her arms crossed and her face focused on the pristine ceiling, Number FF looked bored. How bored could she be? Mechanism had installed Pong on these suits. She could watch a visual representation of her brain activity bleep back and forth between two paddles. What could be more fascinating for an imbecile? Perhaps Mechanism should have sprung for a set of keys dangling from their helmets. Hrm. Decision made. Wave two of the Mechaknight bodysuits would include dangling keys. And perhaps squeaky toys.

His ninja operative Amaranthia followed him, wearing a skintight rosewood ninja outfit and cerise footwear. Her stare looked as cold as the blade of her red-hilted katana that etched a line on the floor with every stride. She nursed an airy piece of gum that had been cherry or watermelon but smelled more like radish and goat cheese now. Whenever Mechanism asked her a question, she called him a gitch and rolled her eyes. She would therefore not receive her allowance this week.

From behind the pub’s door, something struck meat, crunched bone. A muffled bellow followed.

Mechanism stopped at the door. “How is our prisoner?”

Appliance clacked its pincers. “Da dungi dungi doo. Aweenda shmure.” Clack clack clack. Why, why, why must it function?

Number FF whipped her leg off the door and stood at attention. “Lord Alpha, sir, the prisoner is still alive as per your stactics. Number Y’s been raking him through the coals, though. I can’t tell you if that’s literal or not. He hauled a bag of something that smelled like sulfur in there. Could have been a We’re Not Telling Burrito from Space Cow.”

Mechanism smelled a trace of the lingering sulfur. “Well, did it cluck, oink, caw, or moo?”

“No.”

“Therefore it was not a Space Cow burrito.” Mechanism approached the door, the sounds of his footsteps drowned under another slap and scream. The scream sounded as if it had burrowed out from behind a gag.

“Control, acknowledge. Unlock closest door and relock door after I enter.” Mechanism hoped the haunt control listener had heard his decree over the crunch of bone or snap of cartilage. A shriek rose so highly and loudly it sounded like a train whistle. All aboard.

The door vanished and the haunt control attempted to sell Mechanism a spa treatment from a lioness. He set himself a reminder to buy one as a birthday gift for that uncouth Schizophrenic. Late, but December’s gifts were bought.

“Come along, my vapor-headed sword weaver. We have a favor to ask.”

“Yeah, whatever, you gitch?” Amaranthia managed to mutter that sentence without a single chew of her overspent gum. She still had not dropped that rising intonation she used that made most of her sentences sound inquisitive. “I better not miss today’s Token High School Chick Versus the Totally Unhip Administration? Today, Token’s taking on her principal? He, like, mondo has it coming because he’s bald and loves conformity.”

Mechanism ignored this girl whose intellectual level fell under that of Master Asinine’s nuclear-powered toothbrush but above that of Master Asinine. He tromped through the neon-lit bar, along the wooden counter and squat stools, past the sign that read, “Free Sterilized Beer in Unflushed Toilets”—how clever to juveniles—and into the back where the bathrooms were situated. A palpable aura of piss and blood replaced the bar’s flavor of liquor and cleaning agents, so undeniable that the piss and blood seemed to grease the three mirrors by the bare lavatory station. Oh. Scratch “seemed to.”

Mechanism found Number Y squatting at a men’s room stall and holding a hammer, peen pointed outward. His other hand held a drill. A small l-ledge hung on a nearby wall at elbow level. This ledge held their captive’s gabber, which Mechanism took.

Mechanism spotted bloody legs, but the rest of the body hid behind the stall’s orange divider. Number Y dropped the hammer and hustled aside, against the wall where the haunt control displayed advertisements for—and Mechanism guessed their victim did not appreciate—hammers. Mechanism liked this haunt control.

A bazaar of tools lay on the tiled floor: an electric prod, a hedge clipper, a spork, a blender, a cigar guillotine, another spork because one could never have enough sporks, and fake vomit. No, wait. Real vomit. Or...Well, those bits of potato looked authentic.

“Stand aside.” Mechanism rammed toward the stall and shoved Number Y farther away. Amaranthia followed and fired the Mechaknight a stiff glower. Perhaps Number Y was a gitch.

“Ba boog mor gishni,” Appliance said. Mechanism gave it a sidelong glance...then a swat across the eye.

Mechanism swung open the stall’s squeaky door and examined the filth that adorned the walls. Someone had waged a battle in here, using for ammo something appropriate to the location except a touch on the dark green side.

What interested Mechanism most, however, was the gangly, pale mass of welts and wounds chained to the toilet by one limp wrist and sprawled on the floor in a gashed jumble left naked to further demoralize him. Only the gagged face remained unscathed save for a crescent puff around the right eye and some minor cuts. The cowardly Good Guy Franchise.

Amaranthia gasped through her fingers. She swallowed, and that repugnant gum went down. Good. Now purchase something feasibly palatable, you SAT bottom-feeder.

“He is able to speak?” Mechanism asked Number Y. Depending on Number Y’s response, Mechanism might allow him to live.

Somewhere water tapped against a sink.

“Of course, Lord Alpha. As you requested.”

How dreadfully boring. Number Y would live this day. Oh, well. Perhaps the sap would earn death by overly fluffing Mechanism’s footrest pillow. There yet remained hope.

Mechanism squatted and cupped Franchise’s chin in his hand. The prisoner looked drunk from torture, so Mechanism ungagged him and slapped him on the cheek. A light slap lest that jaw break. Mechanism would require it in a moment. “Awaken.”

His brown crew cut bathed in filth, Franchise blinked awake. One eye opened as if he swam out of an alcohol binge. The other eye was too swollen. “Wh-h-hut?” He looked around, noticed Number Y and Mechanism, and slammed against the back wall with its chipped tiles, between the toilet and the stall divider. He degraded into a sobbing mess. “No, no, no, no, don’t hurt me, please, no, no—” The rest of his words slurred into an undistinguishable morass. Mechanism doubted Franchise was reciting lyrics from “If You’re Happy and You Know It.” Besides, he was in no shape to clap his hands, stomp his feet, or snap his fingers. Mechanism would help with the last.

“Franchise, I have need of your help.” Mechanism watched Franchise continue nodding, continue blubbering, slide up the wall in an effort to press harder against it though he could barely stand. He had not heard Mechanism. Oh, bother. “Number Y, I require his attention.”

Number Y squeezed the trigger on the drill.

Franchise screamed at the electric whir and blocked his face with his free hand. He curled into a ball, his toes pressed against the floor and his heels against the wall adorned with the words, “We Would Like to Remind You That a Clean Bathroom Benefits Us All. Please Exercise Proper Aim.”

“Jacob.” Mechanism caught a glint of recognition in this coward’s eyes. Yes, the use of real names was instrumental in establishing a connection. “Your name is Jacob, is it not? Jacob, I require your help. And so do your friends. If you help me, I will set you free.”

Franchise’s blubbering eased. Mechanism smiled.

“We have made progress. Excellent. Jacob, are you hungry? Cold? I see my Mechaknight has punished you very enthusiastically. Drill holes in your palms. Cuts along your arms and legs. A nasty gash in your collar. And he drew a skull-and-crossbones on your cheek. Someone was evidently kicked out of tattoo school.”

Franchise stiffened his lower lip, shuddered out a single sob.

“You must feel as though a swarm of bees flows through your intestines. Jacob”—Mechanism clapped his hands together, the gabber trapped between his gloves—“I shall free you. Right now. I shall return your clothes. I shall order the finest meal your food court offers: melty fries...with gravy.” His head bobbed in concession. “Or perhaps we shall order out.

“My point, Jacob, is I shall make the pain vanish. I have access to healing gel—much more effective than healing putty, and it does not reek of vinegar—that will erase those cuts, those abrasions, even the drill holes...in one hour. One hour and it will be as if Number Y had never heard of a drill.”

“It’s like I thought it was a metaphor for a fluffy bunny rabbit.”

“You see? A fluffy bun—Excuse me a moment.” Mechanism cocked his head at the psycho behind him. “Cretin Y, that barely scrapes the edge of making sense.”

After a beat, he returned to Franchise. “Jacob, I need you to make a call for me. We are now traveling to Intergalactic Protection’s main installation on Minerva. Once there, we will conquer the base, utilize its weapons and resources to enact the final stage of my plan. In a mere two hours, no one will stand a chance. I will own Stratus Cloud, and you may stand by my side. However, my plan suffers from a...monkey wrench, if you will: your friends Jeff Abends and Aaron Khouri. Power Plant and Ace Spandex. They have evaded me, and I know not where they will next appear. Convince them to return home. Give them up. Take back your gabber and live like royalty. Refuse my bargain”—he indicated Number Y with a sideways nod—“and you become this handyman’s dream come true. The choice is yours.” He presented Franchise with the gabber. “Oops. Dried poo.” He dusted the gabber. “There. Brand new...ish.”

Franchise sniffled back some mucus. As soon as he did, blood found its way out his purpled nostril. That gabber gripped the eye not hiding behind a cushion of tissue. He stared down as though to melt the gabber with his brain, regarded it as if it were the most hateful thing ever created.

“Speakerphone mode, please,” Mechanism said.

The know-nothing snatched up the gabber and, his soul hungry for relief, slapped it into his ear. His hand shook so much he needed to try twice. He shrank away, still jittering as if he sat in a meat freezer. “Gabber, ack-cknowledge. C-contact entity Power Plant, speakerphone mode.” The headwear shot out. “Alaphus, f-forgive me for what I’m gonna d-do.”

Mechanism smiled and stood against the stall’s divider. “Excellent choice. Number Y, once Jacob completes the call, have him bathed in healing gel. Serve him our finest ham right down to the curly tail. If no apple decorates that pig’s gluttonous mouth, your eyeballs will take its place.”

The call connected. “This be Pow-Pow Plant. Who dis is, say yo’ stuff.”

“Jef-f-ffy, is th-that you? Is that really y-you?” Franchise’s face softened with tears. So did his voice. The stone grit he had worn before now wadded at his twitching cheeks. He screened his eyes in shame.

“Jakey?” A gasp crinkled through the connection. “Jakey! You’s okay? Aw, man, I’s so worried.”

Ah, sweet success. Mechanism smiled. Power Plant’s response sounded like something more bereft of thought than any gem Amaranthia ever blurted out. “Duh, I’m backwoods stool water, durp,” or whatever kids today said.

“Jef-ffy.” Franchise snorted mucus back. His shoulders convulsed. The betrayal playing across his feeble mind was evident in his every shake. “Jeff-fy, listen to m-me.”

He unshielded his eyes, and the shame that had dominated them vanished, replaced by resolve that he aimed at Mechanism with hate so overt Mechanism felt attacked. His fear clicked off as though someone had flicked a switch. “Jeffy, you have to warn IP at Minerva because they’re in trouble and Mechanism is gonna destroy them in two hours and—”

Mechanism leveled his needle laser—fragmented Franchise’s head into a shower of liquid. A roaring blast and a squirt filled the bathroom stall.

The gabber bounced out from the headless debris. Mechanism viewed it as he would a bug...and crushed it under his heel. He regarded the mess. Hmm, unexpected. Strange, even curious, the effect the bullet had caused, but he would figure that out later.

“What a gitch.” Mechanism shoved past Amaranthia. A gasp of horror splashed across her, focused on the curious result of Mechanism’s shot. She looked ready to vomit, flecks of the Good Guy’s gore speckling her front. She was oblivious to the blood. “Amaranthia, Number Y, leave this accrual here. Let us prepare for our war with Intergalactic Protection. And contact Number B with the Good Guys’ position. At least that brief communication allowed me to track their gabber signal.”

Appliance clacked its pincers. “Numbi numbi numbi—”

“Machine, I never imagined your insufferableness was multilingual.”

* * *

“No!” Power Plant banged his hand against a brick wall. He tore his gabber out and burned it to a smoldering pea with light energy. “No, no, no, no!” With every punch against the wall, he bloodied his knuckles more.

He swung around and blew a torrent of light at a lamppost. The lamppost disintegrated, along with a pile of garbage and a few stray cats fishing for dinner among the orange peels and discarded bodies. He hurled another beam of light at a parked civ-tran, another at—

Ace Spandex sacked him and they slammed against the sidewalk. He bonked his head on a sewer drain but rolled over and flattened Power Plant out. Ace...ugh...must have weighed eight thousand badouble tons. His fingers dug into Power Plant’s wrists, his knees crunched against Power Plant’s legs. The weight stung Power Plant’s limbs.

Power Plant threw Ace Spandex off. Ace Spandex rolled against a curb. “Jeff, you need to stop. I know you’re macked off, but the Mechaknight massacre...the random property damage...trying to give me wedgies. You’re going to announce our position or, at least, owe me a new pair of briefs. So calm down.”

“I always calm!” Power Plant kicked a trash ionizer that jingle-belled all the way down the smoky alley.

Ace Spandex stood and swept off some pebbles. “Always calm? You almost blew apart the ceiling in the food court after you tasted key lime pie for the first time—”

Power Plant punched the wall again. “I calm right now—”

“—you forced us to use the warranty on all our cooking appliances—”

“—I always keepin’ my cool—”

“—maybe if we cut down on your sugar intake—” Ace Spandex rubbed his chin.

“—but them Mechyknights is mean—”

“—or maybe stop you from drowning in the Letchtech ball pit—”

“—they ruins up everythings—”

Ace Spandex shrugged. “—would cut down on a lot of your hallucinations—”

“—an’ everythin’s bads now, everything’s ruined—” Specks of spittle flaked from Power Plant’s mouth.

“—then again, I like hearing about the disemboweled specters—”

“—theys attack us. Theys makes us leave ours home. Theys probably sleeps in my bed—”

“—and I don’t know where you get your ideas on water sports from, but wherever it is, it’s a dark and lonely place—”

“—theys kill Smithy an’ all his cool toys that no one letted me play with. Theys kills Mark on me—”

Ace Spandex crossed his arms. “—definitely no more sugar for you—”

“—an’ now theys kill Jakey!” One last heaving, seething pant. He felt as if his ribs had become shattered glass.

Ace Spandex knocked back as if a sledgehammer hit him with vengeance. He took an eternity to blink, another for his midsection to slouch. His face blanched, he sat on the curb, next to the sewer drain, a rage billowing from his core into his face like a bubbling volcano. Or maybe he had gas. The two looked alike.

“They killed Jake, too?”

“An’ Jakey tells me Mechy’s gonna takes over IP at Minerva in two hour.”

Sirens warbled into earshot. From the east. Or maybe the south.

Ace Spandex wiped his eyes, blinked back a tear. “We need to find a hiding place and warn IP.” He launched himself off the curb and tromped down a side alley. “I’ll flay that self-serving maniac myself.”

Power Plant shot up after him and matched his stomps. “Then we’s eat a light brunch.”

Chapter Eight: The Enemy of My Enemy Is My Friend, Subtract One Ally, Carry the Foe

Reef slouched on the cot that felt as rigid as a closed coffin. In Station One’s cellblock, he sat trapped behind the one active shield screen that divided his cell from the rest of the area. The place smelled dank, dusty, even moldy. He swore a fan whooshed on somewhere, but this cellblock housed only three cells, a riot control booth straight ahead, and an array of seats in the middle. No fan. Also no food. Crock, his belly felt like a blender left running. Didn’t help that the Mechaknights who guarded him had eaten rib-eye steaks and whipped potatoes. Right in front of him. With lip-smacking and nom-nom-nom sounds. They could have spared him one drop of sauce or, at the least, wiped their mouths clean and muffled their belches.

Only two Mechaknights remained here, Number PC and Harrier, the Good Guy who abandoned his post in favor of Mechanism’s uprising. With the hypermutation of feathered wings, Harrier had lost one wing recently and became jaded because of it. Now wearing a getup that consisted of hydraulic cables and a harness around his torso, Harrier zigzagged around the room, pacing. He didn’t meet Reef’s eyes. He looked here, over there, at the haunt control listener, at the refectory table among the chairs, even at the two ants fighting over a leftover fiber of steak. But not at Reef. Never at Reef.

Reef stood and approached the shield screen that wouldn’t allow passage. He touched it, which caused his fingers to burn with a static shock. The screen complained in a buzz until he removed his hand.

“Harrier.” Reef watched, but Harrier didn’t respond. Still, he knew Harrier heard him. “Harrier.” Louder, but still no response, though the servicebot that had delivered Number PC’s coffee flinched and spun in a tight circle. “Harrier!”

“Hey, shut up.” Number PC sprang out of his seat. His coffee cup splashed hot mud on his suit. He calmed, sat down, and tried to sip. Couldn’t maneuver the cup past that chin plate. Inside his head, Reef laughed. He enjoyed the small triumphs.

But he still called to Harrier—“Hey, crock-faced birdbrain”—via the direct route.

Number PC removed his helmet and set it on the table. He sipped his coffee and unleashed a burst of coughs. He stuck out his tongue. Score one against the guy who couldn’t read “Caution: Contents May Be Hot” on the rim of a cup.

Harrier turned with a snap of his neck. His nose, usually a sharp point, looked more like a beak than ever before. The shadows on his face snarled with him. “What...the sodding crock...is it...Reef?” Only his mouth moved. His jaw remained still.

Reef shrugged with his hands. “What happened? What’s changed in you?”

“What do you mean?” Harrier peered down the bridge of his nose at Reef.

“Why side with Mechanism? He’s out to destroy Renovodomus, then Stratus Cloud. Also, you need a breath mint. The vodka’s coming through.”

“What has changed in me?” Harrier’s British accent sounded strong in his anger. His eyes flared. Embers burned behind them. He poked his shoulder forward and pointed at his wing’s nub. “This. This has changed. I lost a blooming wing. It is an appendage, and I lost it. Control, acknowledge. Deactivate shield screen.”

The shield screen that separated Reef from his former friend died in a quiet crackle. Harrier stamped forward, which sent Reef reeling back. His skull hit the stone wall behind him. A fireworks show flashed in his vision. When Reef opened his eyes, Harrier’s nose was inches from his. The vodka in his breath smelled vile.

“I lost a wing for this farcical team of wankers...and for what?” Harrier slapped his palm on the wall, an inch from Reef’s ear. “So that Jeff could continue to pierce electricity panels with his tongue and Momentum could live under the impression that moss burgers are a blooming delicacy? You Good Guys have caused more chaos in Renovodomus, more disorder and ruin, than you care to heed. Mechanism provides order. He has set forth on a path to regulated rule. He promises control. The Good Guys”—Harrier stepped away, eyed Reef up and down, and spat a mirthless laugh—“promise slapstick humor.”

“Good slapstick or bad slapstick?”

“Good slapstick is a myth!” Harrier stomped away. He lifted his arms to slap the cellblock’s door as it slid open, but Station One now used latent technology. Instead, he stumbled through and careened into the bright hall outside. Snap. “Crock.”

The l-door reappeared with a whoomp over Harrier’s long-winded curses, but the intent was clear: Reef was a bleep bleep bloop whoomp.

But the shield screen remained inactive.

And the Mechaknight noticed. His coffee-holding hand hovering over the table, Number PC sat rigidly in his chair, engaging in a staring contest with Reef. Almost as easily as Good Guy telepath Sixth Sense read minds or Power Plant read picture books about oink pigs, Reef read Number PC’s expression: could the Mechaknight shout the command to reactivate the shield screen before Reef burst out and clobbered him?

Reef squared his body with the opening. Number PC’s eyes thinned. Reef bunched his legs at the calves. Number PC set his cup down. The thunk of the cup on the table was the only sound in the room aside from the clashing swords of those dueling ants.

Reef shot forth, leaped out the cell, grabbed the table—ooh, light and portable—spilled the coffee. Number PC scrambled from his chair—“Aw, crock—”

Reef swung the table at Number PC, and steel met skull in a crack, and Number PC careened back and flopped over the chair and landed on his stomach, and Reef leaped over the chair with the table held high and slammed it down so hard the wallop vibrated up his arms in a victory jig.

The table fractured in half. Reef collapsed, propped on the half he still held. He heaved uncontrollably, his body slipping down the tabletop until he crumpled to the stone floor. His eyes shut from exhaustion, and feathers of sleep tickled his mind—

Wake up. Reef tore himself off the table and scampered to the riot booth. Come on, come on, there had to be a gun somewhere, and he reached into one cupboard, another, another—yes. A pistol. He grabbed it and scurried to the cellblock’s door. He tripped onto the floor from weakened legs but threw himself up again. If Mechanism were attacking Intergalactic Protection, Reef needed to warn them even though their sponsors insisted packing foam was edible because it came in peanut shapes.

Chapter Nine: Sleeping on the Job

Whoa-huh-whu-where-wuz-he-hrrrrk. Number B lurched awake. He smacked his lips, then smacked his arm against his face to wipe his eye slit dry. What had woken him? Maybe the wailing law-trans approaching from two or three miles away...according to the squiggly line in his display’s adorable sound sensor.

He shook his head to dispel the cobwebs of sleep. His purple glitzy display jostled as if he sat at the epicenter of a metropolitan earthquake. He swung his legs out of the hammock he’d crunched into the civ-tran, a two-door jobby from Road Masticator.

Time to contact Lord Alpha. Number B flew through his computer commands, set up the call, and waited for a response.

Lord Alpha took no time to answer. “Woken from your beauty sleep? I have need of your services. Or is it time to reapply your makeup?”

“No, I reapplied my makeup before I...I mean...it’s time to reapply your makeup.” He winced. Not good. “Lord, sir.” There. That would smooth it over.

“Excellent retort, rube.” Lord Alpha’s jaw shifted. “Listen. Hours ago, the Good Guy known as Ace Spandex—please do not repeat that media name in superior circles—beseeched outsiders to help quell my rightful seizure of this galaxy. You will pose as a willing aide. Gain his trust. Agree to meet him and Power Plant. Slaughter them.”

“No need for that stactic.” Number B hopped out of the civ-tran’s concave roof and rubbed his hands together. But he stopped himself. “I mean, no need to gain their trust. I will slaughter them, melt their skin off their bones. After all, their friend destroyed my favorite key chain. But I’m checking this message, and someone has already contacted them. They’re to meet in two hours at a nearby diner. A cute place called Millie’s, where the waitstaff wears light pink aprons with lace and the apple pie—I swear—the apple pie is to die for. I had it once.” He puckered his lips against his pinched fingers. “Splendid with a touch of—”

“Number B, every day, I must convince myself not to punch you in the face.”

“Yes, my lord, convince away.” Masked behind the approaching sirens and buzzing of bugs, his words blurred into each other. “But stay away from Millie’s quiche.”

“Oh, I wish you came equipped with a self-destruct button,” Lord Alpha said. But anger vanished, and Number B sensed a smile tickle Lord Alpha’s lips. “The diner is excellent news. I will rush some Numbers to aid you. Activate your beacon and meet them three blocks from the establishment.

“And return with a slice of apple pie.”

Chapter Ten: Military Cusses Are Eight Letters Long

This unbearable heat. The grass nearly sizzled in it. Ace Spandex wiped the clammy sweat from the laser scar on his brow. The heat almost overheated his coolant system, but it did mess with his ability to replay that song stuck in his head.

Ace Spandex and Power Plant had found a hiding place from which to warn IP. Away from the escape pod in the wheat field and the area where Power Plant had received Franchise’s gabber call, they had settled in this meadow. It lay two miles east of the wheat field, beside a fenced area for horses. Power Plant’s idea, so score one for him. Hey, if the Mechaknights found them, they could escape. As always, Power Plant had backed his decision with an argument that made sense only in his whirlwind mind: if there was one thing he had learned from public broadcast, it was that horses were excellent getaway animals. If there was anything he didn’t learn, it was how to ride a horse. One step at a time, Power Plant.

His scraped knuckles already healing, Power Plant stabbed his finger into his sweaty ear. No gabber. He stabbed his finger into his other ear. “Gabber, ’knowledge. Cont—”

Ace Spandex threw up cautionary hands. “Whoa, whoa, whoa.” He flopped a hand at the horses. “Not you. Go about your horse business.” Back to Power Plant. “You’re going to warn IP? Maybe the news should come from someone who remembered you destroyed your gabber.”

Power Plant must have inhaled a hot draft because he coughed. When he recovered, he said, “Gimme your gabber. I call dem.”

“No.”

“Why? What the problem wit’ dat?”

“If that last sentence is any indication, dat the problem wit’ dat.” A salty drip trickled off Ace Spandex’s lip.

“Yeah? So you’s gonna calls them? You’s be all, like”—Power Plant hopped into a jittery impression of Ace Spandex, complete with dancing arms—“’Duh, duh. Hey, guys, yous gotsa leave there ’cause Mechynism gonna do stuffs an’ he probably use a bazookas what shoot two-head sharks. I’s a nerd what like comic books and pizza and video games. Duh, duh.’”

Ace Spandex put his hands to his hips. “Really?” He gave Power Plant the stink eye. Or the crook eye. One of the eyes. “That’s how I act? Out of comic books, pizza, and video games, what do you not like?” He put a hand up. “I’m not asking. And at least learn the name of the guy we’re warning them about.”

He gave Power Plant the attention of his back. In his computer’s eye, he navigated through his menu system. He selected Communications, clicked on Gabber, and selected Intergalactic Protection’s entry on the Entity list. He commanded his gabber to mask its signal. In case this ended poorly, he didn’t want to reveal their position. He turned off subtitles: they were set to Urdu, and he couldn’t switch it.

In flashing blue text, the status message in his eyes read, “Seeking connection.” An old-fashioned ringtone sang in his mind, interrupted only so Smoke Signal Communications could play a jingle about switching for faster data transfer. Finally, “Connection attained.”

Crock, this intolerable heat just got hotter.

Field Marshal Ravioss Hullinger’s face stared into the screen that appeared in Ace Spandex’s eyes. He sat behind a desk, and behind that stood a red wall with flags saluting proudly in front of it. The center flag bore the Intergalactic Protection insignia, but it drooped to make its stars look like a glowering face.

Hullinger’s appearance, a deep-green Trioxidillian hue in his cheeks, embodied the definition of hostility. One fist crumpled a datasheet, the other clutched the desk as if to flip it. He sat inflexibly. “You’ve got some nerve, Khouri. You and Abends killed two Good Guy agents—one of them his own brother—then assume to call me?” He stamped a palm on his desktop. The computer inside it replied by telling him a drink order would arrive in fifteen seconds. “Control, acknowledge. Cancel the crocodile’s blood. While you’re at it, delete it from the menu. Nobody here is a reptile vampire.”

Ace Spandex’s computer projected his own image over the video conversation, so he knew Hullinger saw him. He said, “Sir, if you’ll listen—”

“I can’t track your signal. Where are you?” Hullinger threw aside the datasheet, and it uncurled with a snap. “Look. If you degenerate pisses give yourselves up, we’ll go easy. If not, expect a full military strike straight up your wazoo, and you can bet it won’t include the plush tanks, you turncoats.”

“What he sayin’?” Power Plant asked. The dark spots under his armpits were growing larger.

“He’s cussing us out.” Ace Spandex shifted his weight. “You mostly.”

“Are you talking to Abends? Tell that reckless, sorry excuse for a soldier—”

“Sir, Power Plant is a reckless excuse, but he’s rarely sorry about it. But that’s not the point. I’m calling because Mechanism—”

“We’re done here.” Hullinger jabbed his finger on the desk, which ordered another pint of crocodile’s blood. “If the next words out of your mouth aren’t ‘We agree to turn ourselves in and enjoy a nice flogging,’ expect a complete military lobotomy. And I don’t threaten lightly. I put the fear of Alaphus in Alaphus. This conversation is over.”

“How is you talkings to him with no gabber stuffs?” Power Plant flapped his hands around his head. “Stuff goes arounds here, y’ know.”

Ace Spandex stepped away. “Please, sir. Mechanism isn’t who he says—”

“Have it your way. Control, acknowledge. Cut connection.” Hullinger faded out.

And that was it. The status in Ace Spandex’s vision read, “Connection cut.” Hullinger was gone. His desk was gone. Intergalactic Protection’s flag was gone. The opportunity to switch data providers was gone. Everything...gone.

Ace Spandex dropped down on a rock. He hung his head in his hands with defeat. Cold dread coated his throat down to the pit of his stomach. “He didn’t believe me. He didn’t even give me the opportunity to warn him. They’re dead now. Everybody at IP is dead.”

“No!” Power Plant stomped the grass. “It ain’ts over. No ways Mechynism gonna kill my brotha, kill Jakey, and wins. That’s, like, cheatin’ at paintballs or beings a bad sport at paintballs or malpractice...at paintballs.”

“Jeff, Mechanism isn’t a paint combat medic.” Ace Spandex reconsidered that. “Well, he did do a fine job on me.”

Power Plant stamped his chest. A gravelly voice glazed his words. “I ain’t let it happen. We goes to this diner. We meets this guy who contact you. He helps us get to IP before Mechy.” He tromped away, but he tripped over a groove in the meadow. “Ow. Pissin’ dippy holes always be underfoot.”

Chapter Eleven: It Totally Worked on Future Paper

Schizophrenic banged on the door, causing a thunderous gong to fill the dank room from top to bottom. Lieutenant IQ 23, that spastic lapdog who’d never said “no, sir” in his leg-humping life, dropped to a crouch and prodded his fingers into his ears. He made sycophants look like backstabbers.

Lieutenant IQ 23 unfolded when the sound petered out. He turned his nose up at Schizophrenic. “You’ll endanger our leader.”

“I endanger him every time I take a dump, Deputy Doorknob.” Lefty didn’t even face the doorknob in question. If he had, he could have contracted an idiot rash. He checked Righty, who chewed the caulking he’d torn from the boiler as if it were bubblegum. Righty smiled, and the rubbery stuff flicked out like an infant’s tongue. Okay, too late on that idiot rash.

A rhythm of clanking footsteps approached the door. Lefty snorted and hid behind his shield: Appetite. If that gargoyle thing could deflect attacks from Asinine’s yellow-snow launcher—which had horrendous splash damage—it could languidly stand in the way of whatever those Mechaknights used as their weapon of choice.

Master Asinine Sucks, who uglied his face into a sneer, didn’t gear up as much as a lasso or yodel. That guy was straight cannon fodder, but if he brought Schizophrenic one step closer to a good night’s sleep, Lefty wouldn’t argue.

The l-door played its shriek sound-bite, faded to latent mist, and—

“Preposterosa, now!” Schizophrenic shoved Appetite’s quarterback bulk at the luckless Mechaknight, a Number BM who should have spent time honing his reflexes instead of his crazy eights skills.

Appetite blundered into Number BM and knocked him down. Schizophrenic barreled into the hall, hearing a distinct crack when Appetite clawed into Number BM’s helmet. He glanced down at Number BM, whose armor buckled, snapped, popped under Appetite’s immensity.

Number CW snapped up, grabbed his pistol—Schizophrenic rammed an elbow into his faceplate. The kowtower smashed backward into a wooden table that disintegrated into chunks of firewood.

Schizophrenic scooped up CW’s gun, Master Asinine Sucks scooped up Number BM’s, and Appetite scooped up a hefty helping of a Mechaknight armor’s shoulder joint. That all-you-can-eat nightmare would be back for seconds on BM’s posterior joint any second now.

Schizophrenic hustled down the brightly yellow hall, his reflection shimmering in the lemon-scented floor. His adrenaline caused him to spring on his hulking boots. He gestured to his cowboy ally. “Sucks, cover the back and try not to crap on a cactus.” He needed to assert his voice over Number BM’s rattling screams.

“Reminds me. I gotta find the lil’ cowpoke’s room.”

“I don’t care how little your cowpoke is. Just cover the rear. Appetite might want dessert.” Schizophrenic checked his gun’s charge reading. Plenty of ammo. He spotted a camera down the hallway, so he hoped the cavalry wasn’t watching. Who was he kidding? Bring those armor-plated suckers on.

A final crunch silenced Number BM. Schizophrenic expected Appetite, the universe’s stupidest cannibal, to have devoured a jugular. Instead, he’d eaten through the armor’s speaker. He hadn’t even reached the chewy center. Come on, that was where all the juice was. Or oil, he judged by what spurted out of the severed hose that whipped Appetite in the face.

The thing that passed for Mechanism’s right-glove man buzzed around the corner. What was that motor oil container’s name? Apparatus, Appliance, Apple Snack? Well, who was Schizophrenic to judge someone named after a fruit? It banged into Righty’s nose. For that, Lefty wanted to shake the three-clawed thing that passed for its hand, but instead he reached out and bashed it across the thing that passed for its face. The thing that passed for its voice module said, “Gorka neubi dunga—”

It fell. Schizophrenic crunched a heel soundly on one of the contraption’s claws. The claw snapped into pieces, sending the contraption into contraption conniptions. “Börk börk börk—”

“Okay, whatever freak-fail language that crankshaft passes for, you need to shut the crock up. Sounds like a special-needs kid had a powwow with your grammar checker.” He kicked Apple Snack. Apple Snack spiraled into the wall and hung there, fastened into the new hole it had punched. If Letchtech’s ads were anything to believe, science would fix the wall up and bury that metallic backscratcher inside two inches of dry rot and baseboard.

“Börk börk!”

Master Asinine Sucks slid past Schizophrenic, but he paused to slam his spurred boot into the fruit stain, Apple Snack. “Learn English, ya bull-ridin’ muleskinner.”

Lefty eyed Master Asinine Sucks. “Likewise, mutton-puncher. I’m starting to wish my head had a built-in autodestruct sequence.”

Master Asinine Sucks reached the end of the corridor...and stopped. His face exploded in a gasp, and he backed away from the corner. Thick clanks, sounding like a jammed eighteenth-century typewriter, marched after him. He gawked up...up...as if Rootin’ Tootin’ found a ceiling fan fascinating.

A Mechaknight clomped around the corner. No, not a Mechaknight. The man himself. Mechanism.

“You wish to rescue your leader? I left him to rot in his Wreck Room. Good luck traveling there.” Mechanism’s helmet twisted the hall’s bright yellow light into Lefty’s eyes. Lefty threw up an arm, but somehow the light slipped around it. Schizophrenic bulled to the side.

A small-caliber laser emerged from a flip-panel in Mechanism’s arm—fired—hit Schizophrenic in the shoulder—flower of blood blossomed on his sleeve—pain like shark’s teeth tore into his shoulder, down his arm.

Schizophrenic fell. Cracked both heads against the floor. Fireworks sparked behind his eyelids. He must have blanked out, because his life flashed before his eyes, and it was all freeze frames of crap Righty tried to pull. Lefty felt cheated.

A cinderblock crunched onto his stomach. Lefty’s eyes bulged like a corpse’s staring into forever. Schizophrenic’s hands gripped...no, not a cinderblock. That crockasaur Mechanism had lodged a foot on Schizophrenic’s chest and twisted it. A rib cracked. Another threatened to crack. If Mechanism killed him, at least he’d stop flashing through all of Righty’s attempts at shaving the yard.

Mechanism held his laser at Master Asinine Sucks’s head. Paused in a rigid stance, the cowpoke swallowed, a drip of sweat navigating through his whiskers. He didn’t shiver. His eyes didn’t shift. Probably too preoccupied thinking about riding fences.

Mechanism watched Master Asinine Sucks for a moment before he and his laser sights trained themselves on Schizophrenic. That boot still crunched into Schizophrenic’s stomach. If Bigfoot-on-His-Chest’s step wasn’t so lead-footed, maybe he and Schizophrenic could have gotten along.

Mechanism’s laser whirred out like Death’s scythe singing through the air. “I will tell you once: this escape attempt was ill advised.” Mechanism twitched, one sliver of a decision away from firing. “I will not repeat my warning.”

“Nope, nosiree, no how.” Master Asinine Sucks’s face convulsed in a nod. What a straw-chewing dope. He was so spineless he’d serve his manhood on a silver platter if Mechanism asked. Schizophrenic might help him later.

The laser flipped back into Mechanism’s arm, hiding behind a panel. Mechanism lifted his boot off Schizophrenic’s chest—oxygen rushed into his starving system with one eager mouthful—and leaned down. He grabbed Lefty—by the hair, crock, by the freaking hair, and it hurt like a scalpel cutting into him!—and dragged him down the hall.

Schizophrenic thrashed about, barely noticing the stiff fingers in Mechanism’s other hand clenched around Master Asinine Sucks’s throat. His shoulder killed, needing a whole bottle of painkillers.

Lefty blacked out for a half second. His vision returned when his head cracked against the sharp top of the boiler. He smacked the concrete ground, and Master Asinine Sucks landed on top of him. Schizophrenic threw Jim Jam Jangle off him, pounced up, and stampeded at—wait. He returned to the boiler and jerked his shoulder at it to gong Righty against the boiler’s top. Heh.

Righty cheered. “I see stars!”

“They’re not stars if they’re red and leaking from your brow, Soup Head.” Lefty snorted and jerked his shoulder at the boiler again.

Schizophrenic rushed at the door—rammed Appetite aside—“I’ll kill you, you double-plated metalhead”—but Mechanism stood—

“Control, acknowledge. Lock closest door.” Mechanism stepped back to allow the door to seal the Bad Guys in this prison that reeked like a gladiatorial locker room, thanks in no small part to Multipurpose’s miseducation on bathing.

“Mechanism!” Schizophrenic threw himself at the door. “I’ll reach down your throat and use your heart as a grip trainer, you crocking ego sandwich!”

“I love ego salad sandwiches.” Righty smiled, to which Lefty responded with a blinking stare. Righty’s smile widened to include a trickle of drool. “With extra crock.”

* * *

Lieutenant IQ 23 tiptoed down the hall, giving the fallen Mechaknights a wide berth. He glanced over here, over there, over anywhere small enough to hide a toy truck. Those Mechaknights and their tiny flying drone could lurk anywhere.

His broken hand felt as if a brick ground into it. He held his breath. If he didn’t, he’d likely hyperventilate their position away or, even more likely, puke it away. Oh, how he wanted to puke, if only to expel that sick taste of month-old toaster strudel he’d eaten when he was commanded to sit in the dare chair.

Schizophrenic and He Whose Insulting Media Name Shall Not Be Mentioned had bought IQ 23 and Braindead a diversion. Lieutenant IQ 23 had hidden in an unlit alcove behind the destroyed card table, and Braindead had followed. Now, with the diversion and the Mechaknights cleared away, IQ 23 and Braindead were free to move.

“Okay, if we want to liberate our leader, we’ll need to skulk our way back to Station Zilcho silently. Mechanism said he was in the Wreck Room.” Lieutenant IQ 23 checked Braindead, who tiptoed behind hi—No. That wasn’t skulking. The six-foot Virillian merely made a passable attempt at sneaking. Sneaking wouldn’t cut it! “Hey, silence is the key, so...” Right. Look who he was talking to.

Ducking low, his fingers creeping along the wall, Lieutenant IQ 23 skulked off. He couldn’t help realize Braindead didn’t even slink.

Chapter Twelve: The Boss Would Like to Have a Word with You

Amaranthia entered Legion’s office and found Mechanism, like, at the green dude’s desk, feet propped up. He gazed out a window at stars that totally zipped past in some mondo race. “Mecha gitch?” She padded across the floor to the desk.

Mechanism still watched the stars. He took, like, all afternoon to acknowledge her. Then he was , like, “Yes, lower-class gitch? And what, pray tell, is a gitch? Wait. I recall who I am addressing: a member of the proud Dolt Generation. I withdraw the question.”

Amaranthia didn’t sit. She totally wouldn’t give this guy the pride of a regular conversation. She’d rather tower over him. “What you did to that dude? That Franchise whatever? All chained to the toilet and stuff? Probably only wanted to take a leak. And you shot him in the head? His head exploded, and I’m so not eating watermelon anymore. You almost splashed his blood on my way hip Riviera outfit. See?” She displayed her rosewood pants. “This thing costs mucho coin? Anyway, that dude? Totally didn’t deserve that. Totally...totally...not cool of you, man. Totally.”

“Totally?” Mechanism’s feet swiveled off the desk. He sat up, his hands on his knees. “Was that totally uncool? Am I not in the ‘in’ crowd you children so cherish?”

“Like, totally.”

“Well, then, dear Amaranthia.” Mechanism stood. He circled around the desk, each step a stomp as if cement blocks weighted his legs. Oh, man, he stood tall, his armor so huge and stuff. Way...way...huge. “Perhaps we should talk this over. Or I should explain it via a picture book.”

Amaranthia peered up at him, swallowed. “Y-yeah. Sure. Totally. Talk this over.” She swallowed again. Mechanism stood two feet taller than she did. Oh, man. This was way uncool and stuff.

“Here is how things will work.” Mechanism rapped his knuckles on the desk, which gored dents in the desktop and exposed its computer’s wiring. “We will proceed with my plan. We will not question it. We will not deviate from it. And we will not stop for hot pockets.”

“But we’ll get hungry or something?” Amaranthia whispered. “Not cool.”

“If someone attempts to stall or disobey me, I shall deal with that someone...explosively. That includes would-be complainers.” An arm panel flipped open, and two small lasers peeked out with a whir of gears and stuff.

“I dearly hope you still consider me part of the ‘in’ crowd,” Mechanism said.

Amaranthia’s fingers flexed. She discreetly reached behind her back for her sword. Her fingers inched along her crimson shoulder harness—

“Know that your sword cannot penetrate this armor,” Mechanism said. “Neither can sticking out your tongue.”

Amaranthia’s eyes narrowed. She totally held her stance. She chewed her bubblegum, which tasted like awesome cherry. At least for the next four seconds, according to the package—oh, there went the taste.

“Fine. You’re totally the top dog in town anyway?” Amaranthia relaxed her hand. “Also, you totally still owe me a mall shopping spree?” She whirled away and marched to the office door.

“That spree was yours provided you earn an A in home economics!”

Chapter Thirteen: Don’t Eat the Head Cheese—Literal Term

Power Plant switched on his holocostume. Its tiny fan breathed to life, and a holographic projection covered him with his three-dimensional disguise of choice: man-eating Minotaur dude. The face even emoted exactly as he did, so if he wanted to flare his nostrils at a diner patron, there’d be a lot of urine-soaked seats. Because that was what the Minotaur caused.

He entered the diner that smelled of moldy bread. Ace Spandex followed, also covered with a disguise: disinterested cubicle dweller. Just his luck. In addition to that perpetual look of surrender, his mask looked downright boring. Man, Halloween was never so reflective of corporate life.

Ace Spandex sighed with a smile the holocostume rendered as a poker face. He bathed himself in the exhaust of the air conditioner above them. “Feels nice being somewhere that isn’t hot enough to light me on fire.” He glared at Power Plant. “So don’t go looking for kerosene again.”

“Not dis time.”

“Good. I’m not a fan of your pyromania.”

Power Plant jabbed a finger at Ace Spandex’s nose. “You means my pyrotecholics.”

“I swear, if you’re not a carnival fire breather’s failed sibling, you’re his ill-natured cousin.” Ace Spandex swatted the finger away.

The l-door bleated back into existence. Power Plant wished he could slam it shut. He wished he could blow it apart. He checked the scattered early-morning patrons stationed at bar seats along the quick-serve counter. They looked up with drowsy grunts and lazy shrugs. Good. His and Ace Spandex’s disguises worked. Otherwise, the patrons would have formed a mob and thrown Power Plant on the grill with the...Were those ostrich eggs? Ambitious diner.

“Millie’s Diner and Crematorium.” Ace Spandex scratched his arm. “Don’t ask about the secret garnish, and don’t order the specials.”

He examined the room with a wrinkled nose. “Last time I ate at a Millie’s was in college. They used robot waiters at the time, and a computer virus must have hit my waiter, because it spat sparks all over my menu, cursed out the Terran race, and ripped out a few tables.” He shifted his weight. “Then it just started yelling at me for no reason.”

A few patrons mumbled through their food and snorted at Ace Spandex.

“Same cheery clientele, too.” Ace Spandex wiped some drying sweat from under his nose. “Find a table. I’m going to hit the head and locate Seliross.”

Power Plant issued a contemptible snort. “Dis place remind me o’ kindergarten: they got shrunkens heads hanging on walls.” He plopped down at a table whose finish had peeled. He felt a lump in his pocket. What the crock was he sitting on? What crocking poked his last nerve now? He yanked it out, fuming at—

—at the action figure from the toy store. His brother. The face, blood red, looked as stone-chiseled as the real Mark’s. Power Plant traced his thumb along it, his cheeks squeezing. Mark. His eyes dampened.

He tapped the costume cube, and his Minotaur disguise disappeared, the fan shutting up. He wanted to see Mark’s face unobstructed. He didn’t care who spotted him. In fact, he’d consider a lynch mob a favor. He paid no attention to the menu datasheet on the table, didn’t even notice it. Just stared through the dinner specials or the sandwich choices or whatever that happy-looking tuna drawing represented. Whatever. He never bothered reading anything whose name ran longer than four or five letters. He focused his attention on the action figure tucked under his dirty thumb.

Mark...gone forever. Power Plant’s nose tightened. His shoulders slouched in a vaporous feeling of defeat. The scene—the table, the lights, the aroma of charred rodent—dissolved from reality. He felt like the only person left alive, a solitary man in barren isolation, millions of light-years from physical substance. He wiped a sleeve against an eye.

“Hey, darlin’.” Those words called him back to the diner. A petite waitress in a pink uniform and frilly apron stepped to the table. She held a finger above a tiny datasheet, ready to scrawl whatever cockamamie sandwich choice Power Plant ordered.

Power Plant’s eyes crept up the apron...her waist...past her datasheet...then, with only a trickle of life left, to her face.

“Hey, you okay?” The waitress, a redhead no older than Mark was, put a hand to her chest. Her expression softened from a chipper smile to somewhere between sympathy and compassion. “You look like you just lost your best friend.”

Chapter Fourteen: Laughing at Yourself Is the Least Worst Medicine

He huddled against the far wall and rippled with sobs as sharp as broken glass and quivered at the bloody mess across from him in the room that frosty tiles made colder, yeah, these frosty tiles with his own smeared blood repainting them from puke green to an incredible range of red shades and, hey, who chose the colors in this place? A funhouse designer, probably. Yeah, he thought the most ridiculous thoughts at times such as this but it kept him sane. Certainly not anything Kamikaze had ever suggested because nobody should try a trust fall from eighty feet in the air and, oh crock, he was rambling already and he was going insane, wasn’t he, and spiders crawled along his limbs—get ’em off get ’em off!—but he didn’t check, no way, no how, and what was the first sign of insanity? Not staring death in the face as he’d already done twice today and, no, the first sign was probably rambling, hoo hoo, ha ha, did he just burp? That one burned.

Oh crock, oh man, oh crock, another weep blurted through him and echoed in the still air and, like forensic artwork, a fleck of eye, a chunk of brain, a shard of skull decorated the mint-colored wall above a deflated corpse and that disturbed him most—oh crock, oh man—the body sprawled in front of him, but it wasn’t even the smell, that disgusting fog of beans and guacamole that skunked out of the corpse at exactly the wrong moment to fill this room and whoever made this place airtight despised nostrils but could you hate nostrils because right now he wanted to melt his shut.

He pushed away but not because curling into a ball provided warmth but because he couldn’t stomach that his toes slid even an inch closer to that collapsed carcass and, oh man, oh crock, oh geez, oh man, take it away because it stank of whatever corpses stank like. His grandmother or maybe the raccoon stew his grandmother always cooked.

Melt was a funny word. Melt, melt, melt, melt. Raccoon stew. Ha ha. Yuck.

He racked another sob and flinched away and puked a mouthful of water and he might as well expunge his last ounces of fluid before the abdominal workout of dry heaves beleaguered him since he had nothing left to puke anyway—heh ha, nothing left, take that, gag reflex, you got noth—Bbblllarrrrggg. That hurt.

Melt melt melt melt.

Tears washed his vision and he turned from the corpse and couldn’t bear to look at it even for a second but sneaked a peek through fingers clasped over his eyes and the corpse still lay against the toilet, sprawled in naked death, and it slid out another remnant of guacamole. Franchise felt as if he were looking into a mirror but how else should he feel when viewing his own headless clone?

Chapter Fifteen: Ugh, Not These Guys

What Reef wouldn’t give for a chase of whiskey. But he was ten days dry now. So he’d settle for gnawing off his own arm and drinking the blood to avoid being awake when a Mechaknight beat him to death. Crock, oh crock, his nerves were wracked from his sneaking through the halls of the Good Guys’ very own space station, avoiding cameras, Mechaknights, and serving bots distributing honey-garlic chicken wings.

Chicken wings were his gastrointestinal tract’s secret weakness, you see.

A pair of Mechaknights marched across the hallway. Reef ducked into a closet. He crossed his fingers and felt a chill slide along his spine to his shoulders when the door whoomped back into existence as loudly as a comedic slide whistle. Then it performed a drum roll and a trumpet serenade to announce Space Cow’s new Souls of the Tormented burger. Only at participating restaurants and afterlives.

Reef needed to find his friends. At least Franchise. According to what he knew, everyone except Franchise—Pincushion, Sixth Sense, Momentum, Null, and Mabel—was in stasis. If he could find Franchise or the others, he could revolt. With what, though? The charge reading on his gun specified there remained eight shots. Maybe if the Mechaknights removed their helmets and stood in a row. And leaned forward.

The clunky steps passed, so Reef emerged from the closet and the overpowering waft of lumber. He ducked into the hallway and listened for the Mechaknights, who disappeared around a corner. He reconsidered his plan: he had no chance in crock of finding Franchise, but if he remembered the layout of this place, he could find the stasis room and free the others. Maybe Mabel could show him to her cat kennel so they could unleash the fury of furry things that gave looks of cold indifference and licked themselves in inappropriate places.

And his visions about his hyperability. A few years ago, he’d been dismissed with prejudice from the armed forces, but shortly after, he was rehired because prophecy said they’d need his hyperability. Whose prophecy? And for what? No one knew. He couldn’t figure out if Mechanism was who he had to use his hyperability to stop. All those meetings with IP, all those talks about the fate of the universe on his shoulders. Was this what IP had reinstated him for?

He checked over his shoulder again, swore a boot boomed from around the corner—He collided with something and whirled around and scrambled to keep balance and reared back and grabbed his pistol and felt adrenaline explode into overdrive and oh crock, oh crock, oh crock.

Master Asinine’s ungainly lieutenant and that Virillian stood in front of Reef. His hand and cheek bandaged, Lieutenant IQ 23 leaped back and prepared himself in a fighter’s stance that would have made sense if he hung suspended from levers and pulleys. Nothing about this guy made sense.

Braindead reared back in a stance that looked practiced, sharp. Something about this guy said he’d beaten down someone before. By comparison, IQ 23 looked like a ragdoll with a chip on its shoulder.

Reef held up a finger in his pistol hand. “Wait. Hold it a second.”

“I can’t do both.” Lieutenant IQ 23 tried to curl his uninjured hand into a fist, but his thumb stuck out as if he were giving a rigid thumbs-up. His teeth chattered together, and his breathing jacked around like the feed off a neural monitor.

“I think we’re on the same side.” Reef held his pistol up in display. He unhooked his finger from the trigger and ssllloowwwwlllyyy placed the weapon on the floor as if he were rehearsing the move. “You want to stop Mechanism, too.” Reef phrased that as a statement, but it was really a question. When IQ 23 and Braindead traded looks, Reef dropped his stance but kept a gap of three paces from this boy and his dog, enough to remain outside Braindead’s scaly swinging distance. “We can help each other.”

Lieutenant IQ 23 stiffened. “We only want to free our leader.” His thumb still jutted out from his fist like an antenna. Maybe he was receiving signals about how to form a proper fist.

“Listen. Just for a second, listen.” Reef loosened up. He looked at Braindead, whose inflated biceps—one splotched with dried blood and one not—revealed he wouldn’t relax until IQ 23 issued the heel command. “We need to stop Mechanism before he takes control of Renovodomus. When I served as an IP private, we learned how to chart the stars. Our class included mapping the sky above IP’s headquarters.” Reef pointed at the window, at the congregation of lights that speckled the blackened sky. “Despite having drunk my way through class, I recognize that constellation. We’re a half hour outside IP’s main headquarters in Minerva. If my guess is spot on, the next stage in Mechanism’s plan is to hit IP. He’ll murder them before they realize they’ve been duped.

“And, guys, if Mechanism takes IP, Renovodomus and everything in it is his.”

Lieutenant IQ 23’s breathing spiked. His eyes turned into baseballs. His fist thumb drooped.

“That includes your leader’s collection of macramé bracelets,” Reef said.

Braindead still stood with squared shoulders, so Reef said, “Look, I may not like you, and I certainly don’t like smelling you, but this is bigger than the Good Guys versus the Bad Guys. You read me? We need to put aside our differences.” He stretched his hands out unthreateningly, bent down, tweezed his pistol between two fingers, and slid the weapon into his pocket. Each movement was an exhibition. “You want to free your leader? You need to stop Mechanism. Otherwise, what galaxy are you freeing him into?” He pecked his chin at IQ 23. “And why does the bandage on your hand have a picture of a unicorn?”

“Put our differences aside.” Lieutenant IQ 23 nodded, but he still regarded Reef with an untrusting glower. “Fine. But we need to reach Station Zilcho.”

Reef was already stepping down the hall. “Do whatever you need to do. I’ll head off Mechanism. Hopefully that’ll distract him long enough for you to slip off the station.” He threw a finger at IQ 23 and Braindead. “But if I don’t make it, you’re our last chance.” He backed into a full-wall painting of Mechanism seated on a bejeweled throne. Mechanism’s arms lay across his metallic lap, and he wore a royal robe draped over that humongous bodysuit. The armored oppressor stared past the painting, off to the right in a visionary’s pose. Reef nodded in disbelief and moved on. “Still not the creepiest art on this station.”

Chapter Sixteen: Kiss the Cook

The shuffle of feet summoned Power Plant’s attention. Ace Spandex shifted into the table bench across from him, which curiously complained with creaking wood. He should lay off the pizza and bubblegum.

“He’s not here yet.” Still looking like a depressed investor moments from jumping out a window, Ace Spandex lifted a menu datasheet and clicked through its options. The menu’s reflection on his skin revealed a goulash dish. If anything sickened Power Plant more than Millie’s pork-that-might-not-be-pork, it was straight up goulash. “So we wait. He’ll show up.” Ace Spandex finally checked Power Plant and fired him a look as if the younger one had bitten the head off a kitten.

Power Plant dropped his menu. “Whassa problem?”

“We’re the targets of every military and law-enforcement agency in the galaxy right now, and a few angry Elvis impersonators thanks to your antics at this year’s Double-Fried Cheese Baconwich Festival. You should activate your holocostume.” Ace Spandex lifted his menu up to block his face and resumed clicking through its choices.

“Aw, man. Thing smell like a stales lunchbox.” Power Plant slapped his holocostume cube to activate his disguise. Great. So he had to eat whatever cannibalistic lunch he chose through the Minotaur’s mouth.

“It’s a hologram. It doesn’t smell.” Ace Spandex dropped his menu enough to show Power Plant a contemptible look masked behind a businesslike sneer. The face of the holocostume looked leathery. “You could have picked a better disguise than Minotaur.”

Power Plant parried the contemptible look back. “Nuh-uh, ’cause whens I shoots lasers, I shoots ’em outta my face so’s I look extra cool.”

“Touché. And you’d better do that no fewer than three times today. Just stay in character.” Ace Spandex returned to his menu. By the way he shivered in his seat, Power Plant could tell he was reading about the soup of the day.

Power Plant skimmed the menu, and the closest thing he found to something edible was the blueberry tart. Wait. Scratch that. The tart had actual blueberries.

The waitress returned and took their orders. Power Plant ordered a guinea pig’s head with a side order of finger fries. Finger fries. Stay in character? How was that for in character? Ace Spandex ordered the teriyaki chicken sandwich, crossing his fingers that it actually was chicken. When the waitress asked for their drinks, they both ordered water, just water, which felt like a smart move since all the drink names included “intestinal” or “screams of the innocent.” The milkshakes still sounded tasty.

When the waitress left, their orders already transmitted to the kitchen, Ace Spandex deactivated his menu datasheet and deposited it into the slot at the end of the table. He leaned closer. “Psst. Okay, once we meet with this Seliross, we’ll need a starship to get off this planet. If it’s a decent starship, we’ll get to Minerva in ten minutes and show up at IP in another ten. Hopefully we’ll beat Mechanism there.” He stamped the table, causing the salt shaker and marrow squeeze bottle to jitter. “I’ll rip that piss-hole’s head off. For Burnout. For Franchise. For Smith. For all normal-sized egos everywhere.”

Mechanism. Power Plant was holding the soy/gastric-juice bottle. He squeezed, and a stream the color of barbecue sauce spat out. His neck tensed, and fury focused his thoughts into a white wrath. He pounded the bottle against the table. “An’ after dat, I’s gonna busts up whoever turn off Station One’s defense.”

Ace Spandex’s eyes sneaked to one side. “Isn’t th-that a little aggressive?”

“I’s gonnas be aggressive all overs dis crock-head.” His finger probed the bottle, puncturing it. Juice that smelled like acid splattered his hand. “He the reasons Mark’s dead and we’s in this mess.”

Ace Spandex expelled a breath. “Uh, listen, Jeff. I...need to tell—”

“An’ yours plan sounds nice ’cept one things.” Power Plant grabbed the finger-lickin’-good sauce. The name was somewhat accurate. “How’s we gonna gets wit’in fives miles of dat place withouts them shootin’ us up in the gonads an’ sendings our bodies to this place?” He swirled a hand around the diner.

“Well, if you’d grabbed the Cosmonaut Chimp costume instead of Minister Minotaur—”

Power Plant jabbed a finger at Ace Spandex. “Hey, there only ones Cosmonaut Chimp, and I ain’ts it. If I tolds ya once, I tolds ya a thousan’ time.”

Ace Spandex jerked back in the vinyl-padded seat. “You don’t even know what a thousand means. You skip from eight hundred to Mechagodzillion.”

“Nine hunnert’s for suckers.” Power Plant tossed himself back. He inspected the diner for someone who looked like a Seliross. What did a Seliross look like? He could spot a Bob from a mile away, but Seliross detection required an accompanying photo ID.

The waitress arrived and slid their steaming plates of “food” onto the table. Their meals smelled like gas. Ace Spandex’s plate held chicken painted with oily soy sauce. It came garnished with a sprig of parsley or a tangle of human hair. Power Plant couldn’t decide which. Carrots or fingers waved from the side. The waitress had deposited a bowl of dripping coleslaw to complement the meal.

Cold sweat broke on Power Plant’s forehead when he examined his meal. His food consisted of a literal guinea pig’s head. Its fogged eyes gawked open and its mouth hung out in an eternal scream. Its tongue peeked out between toothless gums. Its desiccated skin was the color of mummy wraps. It stank like untreated leather caught in the sun for years. And it was at least two feet wide. Where could guinea pigs grow this enormous? A nuclear dump?

With a sunny smile, the waitress cocked her head and winked. “That extra flavor is our special whipped butter.” She held up a cheese grinder. “Parmesan?”

Ace Spandex’s eyes never left the guinea pig’s head. He edged against the seat cushion, swallowing.

Power Plant nodded stiffly at the waitress. “Yeah. Please.”

“Say when.” The sunny waitress churned the parmesan flakes onto the head’s bald pate. And churned. And churned. And churned.

Ace Spandex averted his stare and began whistling. He grabbed his teriyaki sandwich in both hands and engulfed a large bite. He chewed methodically, angling his nose away from the fermented smell of Power Plant’s choice of cuisine. “Suddenly, I appreciate Momentum’s love of experimentation.”

“Pass th’ vinegar.” Power Plant still examined his meal with his tongue sticking out. “Alls of ’em.”

* * *

Number B stomped toward Millie’s Diner. And Crematorium? Whatever that meant, Number B suddenly felt hungry for one of their thigh burgers barbecued in their special megaovens.

With twenty-one Mechaknights behind them, Numbers J and LC strode up beside Number B. The three stood in a stactical arrangement, Number B in the center. Their breathing made them sound like a concertina of asthma sufferers. Number B checked J, the Mechaknight clad in women’s armor. He then crossed his arms and examined LC, who wore men’s armor. “Darlings, breathe through your noses. We sound like iron lungs.”

He contacted Lord Alpha. “Lord, we’re approaching Millie’s Diner now. No sign of the two rogues, but we’ll slaughter those pigs soon enough. Nothing’s gonna stand in our way. Not tonight.” He would have cackled, but Lord Alpha kept reminding him how “bankrupt of tolerance over such giddiness” the lord was. Huh. Number B would need to install a thesaurus on his armor’s computer.

Number B stopped. The diner stood ahead, fluorescent light escaping through three greased windows. A neon sign over the diner’s eave showed the name of the establishment and a butcher having at it with a grinning pig. The buzzing lights flickered, and the n in “diner” called it quits. An aroma of burned pork escaped through the l-door when a patron left.

Number B and the patron engaged in a harsh staring contest, their attentions growling at each other. Finally, the patron broke the exchange and descended the stairs that led to his civ-tran.

Number B returned to his conversation with Lord Alpha. “Sir, would you like me to pick you up a Burger of the People?”

“Heavens, no,” Lord Alpha said. “Pick up an extra for yourself, however, and allow me to watch you eat it. I love observing people in the throes of sufferance. I will supply the after-dinner mints.”

“Uh...yes, sir.”

“Now, excuse me, for I have a prisoner to mutilate.”

“What fun, sir.” Number B shrugged when the connection ended. The Almighty acted more strangely whenever Number B brought up the prospect of a meal. Now...about that crematorium, was it 2 percent crème or half-and-half? Either way, it sounded simply scrumptious.

Number KJ sidled up next to Number B. “Hold on. There’s a rock in my boot.”

Number B clicked his tongue. “Seriously? It takes twenty-five minutes just to unbolt one of them!”

Chapter Seventeen: Repeat Business

Mechanism approached the bathroom again. When its l-door vaporized, he heard a strangled yelp as if someone had suffered a jolt of electricity. Good. This jellyfish was right to fear him.

Mechanism need not fret about Reef. Number RN—that accursed Harrier—guarded that primate to undercut said primate’s morale. He smiled at his own graceful genius for planning that nugget. Also because he could bake an award-winning tea cake. Not that he trusted Number RN. That was why Mechanism had installed Number PC as a secondary guard, though that rat on legs barely acted as a paperweight let alone a guard. At least he kept Number RN in check. And, if Number RN ever defected...well...Mechanism had not installed a monitoring chip in RN’s skull. Not yet. His cleansing schedule allowed him little free time. Later, he would find the proper motivation to keep Number RN in line. Perhaps bird seed.

Mechanism had ordered the temperature in the bathroom lowered to eleven degrees. That self-multiplying pustule, whose hyperability activated automatically whenever he received a deathblow, probably felt like a snowman now. Ripe for suggestion.

Mechanism came unaccompanied. Last time, Amaranthia—who could turn forty heavily armed assailants into strudel but could not get it through her thick skull to leave Mechanism undisturbed during his wine tasting—had looked sickly and pale. But Mechanism could deal with this hapless prisoner without the aid of his Numbers or their dreadful choice of laundry detergents. Seriously, some of their garments looked starchy enough to deflect moons from their orbits. He almost wished he had hired those flashback-prone carnival vets instead. They chose a proper detergent despite perpetually imagining themselves surrounded by cackling bearded ladies.

The prisoner’s head banged against the bathroom stall’s divider, underneath a limerick about a man, his birthplace of Nantucket, and...Well, the rest was unprofessional. The prisoner stared straight ahead, blank. He did not react to the moth tapping against the light panel above. “I don’t want that block of cheese so you eat the block of cheese and it has souls growing out of it and that’s a mayonnaise crane sticking out of its headlights and, why, yes, I’ll accompany the queen to the ball and I wanna pony for Boxing Day.” The ramblings of a boy whose lucidity had evaporated. He thrust out a tuft of tissue in one hand. “Here, have a roll of secondhand toilet paper.”

“Ah, Jacob.” The first-name pleasantry scraped off Mechanism’s tongue. The name tasted like an emery brick. “Despite my attempts to the contrary, you still live.”

Naked in this frosty room, Franchise shuddered. He looked as pale as old honeydew. His lips were a chilled periwinkle blue. Sunken into their sockets, his eyes shifted up, but he barely mustered the energy to raise his head. A pool of dried urine lay at his feet. “I-I-I...” He hugged himself tighter, and the chain that shackled him to the toilet rattled with a shudder. “I’d l-love a house-and-cement s-sandwich on speed toast-t.”

“Excellent. I shall have one whipped up this instant. Number R is a renowned cement chef.” Mechanism sat on a toilet adjacent to Franchise’s stall, caused it to crack, and decided he would rather not end up on his armored buttocks. He stood and approached. “Now, I have come to reoffer you my deal. It involves no speed toast, though let us see what I can do about getting you iridium on whole wheat.”

“S-sounds-s like a d-deal, Tooth Fairy.” Franchise leaned forward for a handshake but missed and poked Mechanism’s armored knee.

“Dear Jacob, your friends are surrounded. Even as we speak, even as you blunder through your inadequate thinking process—oh, how I wish you comprehended the lofty things I can—my Numbers have them surrounded. I can have your friends killed with but one word. I—”

“Wh-what word?” Franchise finally made eye contact. His face sobered into something resembling cognizance.

“Any word. That is not impor—”

“M-must be a w-word.”

“Fine. We shall say—oooohhhhhh”—Mechanism searched the bathroom—“‘urinal cake.’ Happy?”

“Th-that’s two w-words.” Franchise’s head bobbled on his shoulders, and he managed to raise a hand with three fingers extended. “Like albatross but with another word.”

“Fine.” Mechanism slapped away the hand. “Two words. With but two words, I can have your friends killed. Now, listen. My proposition is thus: summon your friends back. You see, the public would look better upon me were I a merciful man of good tastes and...yes...superior acumen. I wish to capture them without violence. However, mark my words. If they will not come peaceably, I will kill them.” He wished Franchise could see the emphasis his eyebrows placed on that sentence, for this morning he had plucked those eyebrows with precision. “I will.”

He ejected a pistol from a hip holster. A simple pistol. Not heavy, not overstated, but enough to do the job. “If you do not comply, your friends will perish...and you will meet with a most unfortunate accident.” He tapped the pistol against Franchise’s forehead. Whack, whack, whack. Okay, tap was not the correct word.

Franchise stiffened his lower lip against his upper. He was aware now. Snot had dribbled out one nostril, and he looked on the verge of crying though he’d expended all his tears. “N-no deal. I want my lawyer present...or my stunt double.”

Mechanism pulled the pistol away. He crouched on the dead clone, causing its ribs to snap like dry twigs. He placed his palms together under his nose and breathed into them. “The light-bullets in this gun are not regular light-bullets. They do not merely provide stopping power and solidity to prevent a wound from cauterizing, though they do that, as well. These bullets”—he tapped the pistol’s barrel on Franchise’s nose, and Franchise crossed his eyes as if a fly had landed there—“act like hollow points. They will explode inside you. They leave a nasty hole as well as shatter bone, cartilage, and tissue. They will leave shards inside your body, which will hurt excruciatingly. There will also be a lot of Franchise goop exploding out, and I would hate to sully this armor so. I just visited the car wash, after all.”

Franchise was on the threshold of blubbering into snotty tears. But he nodded defiantly. “You c-can’t kill me. I’ll pop out another-r clone.”

Tut, tut. This simian was not easy to deal with. “Dear, Jacob.” Mechanism placed the pistol against Franchise’s knee. “I am not planning to kill you.”

Blam. The bullet smashed through Franchise’s kneecap. The bone exploded, and blood splattered against everything. Walls, the toilet, his face, the cockroach dragging a wafer cookie into a hole. Everything. The cockroach waved good-bye before submerging, after which it erected a Do Not Disturb sign. Wow. When the Good Guys let bugs fester, they went big.

Franchise screamed. He thrust every ounce of his heart and soul into an anguished cry as if a steamroller were crushing him. His leg quivered in spasms, his tibia hung uselessly from shattered cartilage.

Mechanism tromped out of the bathroom, through the bar with the sign that made no sense, and out the door. He did not look at the reject who manned the door, but addressed her nonetheless. “Number FF, I shall return with my proposition once that mediocre puppet has thought over his remaining kneecap. Until then, I want him beaten. Anything short of cutting out his tongue is permissible.”

Meanwhile, he had something to tell the public. And, in little less than one hour, Intergalactic Protection would become a wasteland of the dead.

Chapter Eighteen: Bon Something or Other

Power Plant scraped his fork around the nose of the corpse that had become...well...lunch? He had no better word for it. Maybe vultures would. They probably had ten different squawks for “let’s eat” and only one for “snow.”

His palm supporting his cheek, his elbow resting on the table at an angle steep enough that his chin almost touched its cherry veneer, and his heart melting into his liver, Power Plant stirred his fork in the bile and barbecue sauce splashed around the guinea pig’s head. He especially didn’t eat the chin, even after his horoscope had said he needed to eat more chin. He only dragged his fork around the plate that advertised Fern Whisperer’s new Thursday timeslot in blinking words around the plate’s flower-patterned rim.

“Jeff, we skipped breakfast escaping in a pod. You need to eat. At least try the nose. Apparently it has the most vitamin C.” Ace Spandex forked another piece of chicken or “chicken” into his mouth. “Come on. Your head will get cold.”

Power Plant poked the cheek with his fork. The fork stuck and wouldn’t come out. “It’s be gets a head cold?” He flicked the fork, which boinged in place.

“Not the same thing.” Ace Spandex swallowed another leaf of red lettuce, though maybe it was a tongue made to—Oh, Ace Spandex’s expression said it all. Or perhaps the cook had used too much vinaigrette.

Mark liked vinaigrette. Tears swelled out Power Plant’s eyes, so he sniffled them back and wiped a sleeve over his eyes.

Ace Spandex exhaled a sigh of finality over his meal, as if something ate at his mind. “Jeff...listen. About your brother...and Station One’s defense program...the...” His eyes followed an invisible line down to his plate. His lips twitched through a few unspoken words, as if he weighed each syllable with precise thought. “I need to tell you something about the defense program on—”

Feedback screeched through the air. Everybody looked up, even the guy in the corner who had severed an ear to garnish his deviled eggs. Ace Spandex stood, but his knee thumped the table. He cringed and flopped back down with hands wrapping his leg. Served him right for choosing one of the seventeen tables with nails sticking out of the bottom.

A voice barged in on the subtle diner music. “Ex–Good Guy agents Power Plant and Ace Spandex, we have you surrounded. We do not want to hurt you, but”—giggle—“we will if you leave us no choice.” The voice hushed to a whisper. “Please leave us no choice, please leave us no choice, please—” The rest of his words melted into a series of squeals that sounded like someone turning a loose water tap.

Power Plant’s vision dimmed to a malevolent red. That voice...that reprehensible, happy-go-lucky voice. It belonged to that murderous purple-rimmed guy. Power Plant shut his eyes...pictured Station One’s escape-pod bay...the smell of fresh carpet...the emergency barrier that divided the escape pods from the main compound...the floating half grizzly/half otter that might have been his imagination running wild...the escape pod they burst into...stuttering gunfire...that detestable Mecha-whatever who shot...who shot...his brother was...Mark was—

“Citizens of Millie’s Diner.” The purple one’s voice commandeered the diner again, interrupting the sizzle of grilled home fries or, more likely, toes. “I have a request for you. Send out the rogue Good Guys, and we will not destroy your establishment in a good, ol’-fashioned gunfight. You know, shoot windows, use tables for cover, try your delectable finger foods that may be too accurate a name for comfort.”

Power Plant bounded to his feet and studied the other patrons. The truckers at the service counter, the earless guy in the corner, the potbellied greaser operating the cartilage colander, the waitress who had not questioned Power Plant’s cannibalistic order, everyone searched the bright room for whom the Mechaknights were calling out.

Another giggle squeaked like an unoiled wing flap. “If you are unaware who the Good Guys are, Power Plant was last witnessed sporting a stylish Minotaur holocostume. He’s wearing a bold blue impact suit with yellow stripes along the sides, arms, and legs. An elegant ensemble for this February morning. Ace Spandex is wearing a red impact suit. He might sport a holocostume of a business-casual look: a brown-sweater-and-white-tee combination and a nicely pressed pair of jeans. Perfect for that weekend getaway or just cruisin’ with the boys.”

“This isn’t fashion week, you cheery mental case,” another voice said.

“Yes, it is!”

A scuffle of metal, a rustle, a clang bullied into the diner. Power Plant checked through the window to see the purple one showing another Mechaknight a handheld device.

The other Mechaknight nodded and shrugged. “Fine. So it’s fashion week.”

“That’s them!” a phlegmy voice said. It belonged to a grimy man with a plaid trucker’s hat and the body shape of a globe. “That’s the guy who killed his own brother!”

The crowd advanced on the two, which caused Ace Spandex to creep onto the seat cushion and grab a menu. “Stay back, or I swear I’ll hit you with”—he checked the menu—“the drink list. It’s full of Italian names. No one can pronounce these words because they’re Italian ones.”

“Them’s made from Italia words!” Power Plant grabbed a menu and flung it.

A Trioxidillian in a discreet corner seat leaped up. A huge trench coat kept his body vague and nondescript. He edged toward the back door and, after the door clattered into latent computer bytes, sidestepped out. A hat shadowed his face. Chicken. If he wasn’t going to attack Power Plant, he could at least help.

Behind the counter, the hair-salad cook grabbed a cleaver with two fingers still clinging to it. The fingers fell off in a V shape. Peace? Not today.

Time to act. Power Plant deactivated his Minotaur head, grabbed all the sugar packets his table offered, ripped them open, and sucked them down, grabbed the sugar shaker, downed its contents, jumped to the next table, rinse and repeat, grabbed someone’s meal—no...not going that far—next table, next table, next table, until the end of the row.

The patrons and staff watched him, but they didn’t sit idly. Someone grabbed a steak knife that Power Plant doubted had ever touched steak. Someone else unplugged two blenders and slapped them over his fists as gloves. “Let’s show these punks how we treat murderers.” He snarled, teeth bared and hat tipped over his eyes so much he attacked a sink. The spout attacked back.

“Yeah. Let those Mechaknights take ’em.” That came from the waitress who had served Power Plant road kill large enough to shatter a headlight on impact.

Power Plant’s skin glowed. He upended another sugar container and let it explode into his face in a cloud that he wished hadn’t dusted his eyes. Yi-yi-yi-yi, sugar stung like a punch in the vision.

A cook wielded a spatula that he whacked at Power Plant’s ankles. Entwined around its slits was a rat, which itself looked fiercely angry and wielded a tiny rat spatula of its own.

Power Plant cleared his face of the sugar that had made his cheeks sticky and his tongue tasting a diabetic’s nightmare. Tasty and deadly all at once. “Okay, peoples. Calms down. You wants us outta your diner. We gets dat. We go.” A patron swiped a spoon across his impact suit. “A spoon? I’s think tree barks is food, and evens I know a spoon’s isn’t good for nothin’ but cereals eating.” He blocked another spoon attack. “I ain’t cereals.”

He spotted an oven shoved against a flowery wall, not even working. He could use the power conduits in there. “Okay, I’s all charged up, everybody. I’s leave, but you’s needs to pushin’ me out in that ovenlike, ovenish, ovenly oven thing.”

Ace Spandex hopped onto the tabletop, kicked aside a cockroach sandwich left untouched because it swam in too much vegetable oil, and flung drink menus at customers who hopefully couldn’t conjugate an Italian verb to save their lives. “Jeff, an oven? It wasn’t a good idea when Kamikaze baked himself and twenty blackbirds in a pie, and it’s not a good idea now.” He flung another menu, and a line cook fell, screaming something about the horror of the word robusto.

“Ace, we’s can’ts hold off forever.” Power Plant flung a salt shaker and shattered a window. “But we cans gives ’em one humongous repair bill.”

Ace Spandex danced away from a waitress who poked him with a serving ladle. “Please may this repair bill not involve calling upon the collective might of all wildebeests.” He kicked away an encroaching waiter, or perhaps it was a meal that hadn’t quite died yet. “Last time they ate my shirt.”

“Didn’t bring m’ wildebeests horn.” Aglow, Power Plant’s irises flashed an unhidden anger behind them. “They’s got at least fourteen Booleans Mechyknights outs there.”

“Boolean’s not a—”

“I ain’ts plannin’ to let ya bakes me inta a pie.” Power Plant blocked an attack. “Hey. Enoughs with th’ spatula.”

* * *

Among the singing insects, Number B watched the diner. The l-door faded into a swirl of foam, and a head wearing a cook’s hat stuck out. Number B hardly called the man a cook, though he was almost a butcher what with the necklace of ears dangling over his generous waist. A few ears were Trioxidillian, and a dried and flaky one was Virillian green. “Dey’re comin’ out! First one’s comin’ out in an oven. Dat’s right. An oven. Kids dese days.”

Huh. That was easy. No fuss, no muss. But, poo, Number B wanted to try the chef’s salad since he’d never eaten a chef before. Only sous chefs or, at most, line cooks. Once a soup maker.

A ding from Number B’s onboard computer stole his attention: the heat would start affecting his system in three hours. Plenty of time to nab his targets and make their limbs into household art.

Number B exited the security perimeter, a fluorescent laser line in the grass. He checked over his shoulder. “Our stactics worked, boys. You can handle it from here.” Especially that Number QL. He could handle anything. Too bad he died from testicular cancer last month. Imagine that. Testicular cancer in this day and age. Almost as ludicrous as dying of embarrassment, which was exactly how Number QC had bought it. Those Q-series numbers weren’t known for superior genetics.

Number B commanded his armor to contact Lord Alpha. Their acclaimed leader would want to know that the acquisition of the rogue element proceeded ahead of schedule. Number B would be home sorting his collection of pink matter in no time. Rose pedals, doll outfits, curtains. The pinker, the better.

Number B stopped strolling out at twenty or thirty feet from the glowing light outside the perimeter. Standing in a puddle hot enough to erode the paint on his boots, he waited. Finally, Lord Alpha picked up. “Yes, my gender-vague right-hand man? You know, you embarrass your entire platoon merely by being.”

“Sir, right away, sir.” Exactly the right response.

In the midst of this overbearing heat, Number B worried about how the lethal heat affected the glitter glue that decorated his bodysuit. Some of the purple was already chipping. “I am contacting you because the escaped Good Guys are exiting the diner peaceably. They will soon no longer pose a threat.”

At the diner, under the awning that blushed a blood red from the neon sign above it, an oven slid out. A janitor, a waitress, and a Gharalgian patron in stained overalls hauled it out on whiny wheels. It squeaked down an incline beside the stairs and skidded into a grassy patch close to the parking lot. There it stopped.

“Excellent,” Lord Alpha said through Number B’s connection. “Kill on my word: urinal cake.”

Number B did a double take at nothing. “Urinal...cake?”

“Attempting some new code words. Never mind. Take them to a secluded place and finish them.”

Behind Number B, a voice reached him by the suffocating wind that heated his armor’s backside: “Open the oven up. Let’s look inside, see what we’ve got.” Chuckles broke out from the Mechaknights.

“They’re opening the oven, Lord Alpha. They’ll be extracting an agent from that cavernous food hole any second. And afterward, I’ll try the finger dough here.”

“Oh, will wonders never cease.” Lord Alpha sighed.

“That’s the thing, Lord Alpha. At Millie’s Diner and Crematorium, they don’t!”

Number LH clicked the safety lock off the oven. The oven wasn’t on, probably hadn’t felt power in decades, so he had to open it manually. He wrapped his metal fingers around the handle. Number B wondered if LH should activate his oven mitts. Number B should because his had little ducks imprinted on them, and they quacked whenever he flexed the thumbs.

Ace Spandex appeared at the door, a waiter clasping his left arm and a cook manhandling his right. They shoved him, and he sprawled forward, knocking his chin into the asphalt of the parking lot. Dazed, he moaned, lifted himself off the pebbled ground, and crawled onto the grass. He sat and dabbed the blood off his nose. “I’m not leaving a tip.” The cook waved a fist at Ace. “Fine. Just not a generous one.”

The diner patrons and staff took shelter back inside the building. Number B approached the perimeter line. He wanted to supervise this capture up close and maybe, just maybe, he still had a shot at taking home one of their meat surprises. Was it chicken? Was it pork? Was it something else? Part of the fun was in the discovery.

“Lord Alpha, I have Ace Spandex in sight, and Number LH is opening the oven to acquire Power—”

“Something’s glowing in here.” Number LH swung open the oven and—

A roaring supernova of flame belched from the oven! Everything went yellow and white—hot and tingly—a sound like Goliath expelling diarrhea detonated in Number B’s ears—an enraged fireball clawed out of the oven—enveloped the Mechaknights—mushroomed out ten feet in all directions—fire-bathed Mechaknights clamored away, fell over each other, tripped on boulders, burst in tinier explosions, exploded in pops like cap guns firing, set trees and grass alight—oven debris lanced Number GG through the abdomen.

Number B could hardly budge. He just stared. Blinked. Dropped his arms. Quivered. A hand found his mouth plate. Spread over it.

Power Plant and Ace Spandex had fled. They’d used the wall of fire to hide their escape. And Number B’s small armada—every single Mechaknight—was now fused metal and sizzling plastic encasing limbs that resembled beef jerky...those who remained intact.

Lord Alpha’s teeth ground together. “That was an explosion, was it not, Number B?”

Number B’s voice was a squeak. “Yes.” He watched the gargantuan fireball rise into the diner’s neon sign until the luminous butcher called it quitting time with a burst of glass. Flames that sounded like cackling demons waved from the singed trees and blackened awning. “Yes, sir. It was.”

“Not a good sign.” Lord Alpha groaned. “We will speak of this after work today. For now, you shall journey to Station One and post yourself in the stasis bay. In a short while, those klutzes can reveal my plan to whomever they fancy. As we speak, my Mechaknights have taken position around Gaia in Fireball mil-trans, awaiting my signal to deploy. Those two fools will soon be of no consequence. You, however, will be of great consequence to whichever of my boots I wish to sully. Or perhaps I will make use of the Belt.”

“Looking forward to it.” His head hit the grass as if he hunched in reverent prayer. Why must every one of Lord Alpha’s punishments sound delectably twisted?

Number B pounded the grass and dirt with his fists balled together. He’d worked on this capture for, like, an entire hour and stuff!

* * *

Despite Ace Spandex’s hydraulically pumped legs, Power Plant was fifty feet ahead of him in their race away from the diner. He’d flown, though. Cheater. But they had raced through four blocks in a twisting path away from that macked-off mob, so Ace Spandex felt safe to stop on a sidewalk and let coolant course through his system. His indicators already showed he was overheating. And running sucked.

A ding in his feed. He had received a message from their mysterious contact, Seliross. Good. Ace Spandex was in the mood for an explanation why he had to pass on a perfectly good teriyaki meal because Seliross never showed.

The message unfolded over his brain waves, so he didn’t need to read it. Seliross had come to the diner, but he couldn’t join Ace Spandex and Power Plant before the riot started without raising suspicions. He slipped out the back, but he would meet them in an hour at a warehouse down the road. Ace Spandex said that was fine and that Seliross should bring his strongest firepower.

“Jeff!” Ace Spandex held out a hand with his other propped against a knee. He didn’t need to catch his breath, but his system chugged in the oxygen to cool itself. Little did it know the temperature had risen to a sweltering six degrees above sitting next to the sun. “We’re far enough. You can stop now. And sometime this week you should tie your shoelaces.”

In flight, Power Plant curled around and rejoined Ace Spandex. He touched the yellowing grass beside the sidewalk. His face was awash in sweat, and dark pools had grown under his armpits and over the advertisement with “Crustacean Ventriloquist, New Episodes Starting Monday” on his impact suit’s belly.

“Dat purple guy was there. D’ ya sees him?” Power Plant spat on the grass.

Ace Spandex wiped sweat from his eyes. He noted the sun finally peeking above the horizon of vacant parking lots and office buildings. The sky had brightened from a light-polluted black to ripples of orange and yellow. “We need a hiding place. The locals are wising up, and word will get out that we’re in town. Not a good word, either. A four-letter one.”

“Prod?”

“Depending on their weapon of choice, sure. You’re not right in the head, you know.”

Power Plant’s lower jaw jutted out a half inch. “Those Mechyknights. I’ll shows ’em prod upsides them helmets—”

“Listen, Jeff.” Ace closed the gap between them to put a hand on Power Plant’s shoulder. He threw a thumb in the direction of the diner and their creepy secret ingredients. “Uh, about those Mechaknights. And the ones at the hospital. Jeff...you didn’t just defend yourself. You obliterated them. And you were pleased. That was a moral victory to you.”

“Jus’ a smalls murder compare to Mechynism. A small victory. You shoulds see when I’s dead up dat purples Mechynight.” Light flickered from a fist. “Dead him like he dead up Mark. I’s shoots off his purple head.”

“I looked into your eyes. There was rage there. A bit of happiness that you’re wearing pants right side in...but mostly rage.” He swallowed. “You enjoyed it, Jeff.”

“An’ I’s gon’ keeps ragin’ tills every lasts one of ’em is died for whats they did to Mark. To Jakey.” A tear stood in his eye, and red anger dawned on his face. He thumped his chest. Then again. And again, harder. “Every. Last. Ones. An’ I’s gon’ finds out who turned off the station’s defenses thing...and I’s gonna takes care of him, then steal his socks.”

Ace Spandex swallowed. “Why his socks?”

“’Cause he don’ts deserved socks.” Power Plant thumped his chest like a wrecking ball pulverizing a house.

Ace Spandex let go of Power Plant’s shoulder and pinched his nose. He whipped around and “Jeff, it was me” blurted out before he even thought it.

Near silence froze the moment. Power Plant stopped thumping his chest. Only the cicadas chirping in the excruciating heat proved that time marched on, and for a moment, Ace didn’t know if Power Plant had heard.

Ace Spandex looked at the ground. “I deactivated the defenses.”

In the morning bask of a rising sun that colored the pavement orange and tipped the temperature into something downright blazing, Power Plant blinked. His cheeks twitched, and his breaths sounded ragged. His mind was the blank he usually kept it in, especially during trigonometry class. “You did?”

Ace Spandex bit his lower lip. A nod twitched his head, but it developed into something noticeable.

Power Plant lunged forward and threw a punch into Ace Spandex’s jaw. Dong. Ace didn’t feel it, but his onboard computer supplied a menu of verbal options: “Ow,” “Ouch,” “Hey,” and “I’ll rip out your optics.”

Power Plant shrank back, massaging his hand and suppressing a scream that nevertheless gaped open his mouth so tensely he turned red. “Gadzooks, ya’s chin rape my fist!”

Ace Spandex barely noticed. “Jeff, I—Wow, I can’t believe I’m about to tell you this. I was under Mechanism’s control. He replaced part of my body with cybernetics and part of my brain with a computer, which he used to take control of me. He commanded me to turn off the defenses at a specific time...and now I know why.”

Power Plant recovered. “I shoulds shootinize ya right here, right where ya’s stands, but I’s can’ts aims for crap!” He kicked at Ace Spandex’s leg but missed. “Shoulda never rescues ya from Station Zilcho. You kills my brother!”

Ace Spandex patted the air. “Jeff, keep it down. Someone will hear you and call the grammar police.”

“I don’ts care! You kills my only fam’ly! You kills him! And nows he dead!” Power Plant kicked a fire hydrant and bared his teeth at Ace Spandex. “HE DEAD AND IT YOUR FAULT!”

“I’m sorry.” Ace Spandex sniffled and toed the sidewalk. “I never meant for this.”

Power Plant stayed silent. He straightened up, stopped massaging his hand. His stare could have melted steel. His fingers tightened and loosened, tightened and loosened.

He stomped away.

Chapter Nineteen: Who Programs These Things?

Mechanism propped his heels on Legion’s desk. He held an encrusted goblet of Chateau nous moquons les pauvres, but his helmet covered his head, so he couldn’t drink. Shame he would need to remove it. However, he would simply have to don it again in minutes. At times he felt as ill-equipped as his charges to handle the rudimentary task of consuming wine. Still, he drew the goblet to his face to let his helmet sample the honey swirl of aroma and relate to him its dazzling properties. The feed sprawled over his helmet’s display. Meters climbed a chart. This wine fell into the 97th percentile of both exquisite and robust. Computationally marvelous.

This solar system would soon be his. Then this galaxy. All that stood in his way was this dreadful wait until they arrived at Intergalactic Protection. Soon the backwash intellect of this plane of existence would no longer matter. The ilk of the Floots, his old—and expired—managers at his father’s robotics plant, would fall, leaving the galaxy to those who deserved it: the upper-class privileged. No longer would Mechanism deal with the hogwash of society and its whale-skin belts. Yes. Whale-skin belts. The tragic day he stumbled into Master Asinine’s closet was a dark one indeed.

“Control, acknowledge. How long remains until our arrival at Intergalactic Protection headquarters on Minerva?”

“Hey-hey-hey, just enough time to stop by Mad Scientist’s Inhumane Warehouse of Flowers. Venus bear traps now three for a moolah!”

Mechanism chucked his wine goblet at the haunt control’s speaker. It shattered and rained the carpet with crisp flavor. Now it fell to the 92nd percentile of robust. “I have heard enough about vegetation that sits just this side of the line science must never fathom. The last straw was the corpse flower, and that occurs naturally. Now give me an actual time.”

“We will reach Intergalactic Protection in ten minutes fourteen seconds, or six opportunities to regret missing the mutant plant sale of a lifetime. Long-stemmed sock cactuses, half off the suggested retail price.”

“Control, acknowledge. Cease pushing bastardizations of horticulture, or you will force me to put a light-bullet in something of yours.” If only haunt controls had codpieces...

“Or we could put a light-bullet in you,” someone said. A pistol clicked at Mechanism’s ear. A porterhouse scent assaulted his sharpened sense of smell. Someone thought barbecue baste was a viable alternative to Space Cow’s ketchup.

“Ahh, Reef. Stopped by the food court, did we?” Mechanism chuckled.

“We did.” Reef wiped a splotch of sauce from his fingertip. “And the bathroom.”

Mechanism did not move his head. The side cameras on his helmet fed Reef’s image into his computer’s corner display. Reef was only 75 percent robust. Perhaps Mechanism should deactivate that software. “An escape attempt. How droll.”

“If several ads for Jazz Jackal Jamboree hadn’t already accosted me, I might feel the need to laugh, but those jackals are pitiful comedians. Their entire standup routine is food jokes.” Reef’s odor grew more potent with each word. Had he used the sauce as shampoo? Mechanism was unaware it came in such a tart scent, though if someone had created an ice wine aftershave, Galactic Merchandise should expect an order.

Mechanism stood, keeping his hands in plain sight. Reef’s miserable pistol could not penetrate Mechanism’s finely crafted armor, though a shot could go wide and puncture one of the decorative vases he favored. Oh, how he must protect the brown one holding the geranium plant. And his sarcasm would now end.

“Don’t you move.” Reef leaped back and staggered into Legion’s couch. “Especially no standing. Sit back down. Sit! Bad dog. I hope you’re potty-trained.”

Mechanism strolled to the brown vase and swatted it. It shattered into minuscule pieces that still assaulted his fine vision. Dirt and geranium detritus sullied his glove. Oh, the horror of foul decorations.

“Reef, even you should see the futility in attempting to best me.” Mechanism gathered shards of the ghastly vase. Even holding them made his throat tug a dry retch. “Precious, naïve Reef, Reef, Reef.”

“Precious, naïve what, what, what?” Reef still trained his pistol on Mechanism’s head. “By the way, I placed a no-standing policy in effect.” Reef jabbed a chin at the wall next to Mechanism. “See? The haunt control put up an ad for chocolate-flavored hemorrhoid doughnuts. It agreed and ruined my appetite all in one shot.”

“The haunt control received its programming from those who have suffered too much blunt head trauma.”

The haunt control responded: an advertisement for Caveman Head Trauma Interactive showed up. Two pixilated camps of cavemen emerged from opposite sides of the display wall. One champion on each side met in the middle and waged war with oversized clubs, bashing each other’s heads in. A tyrannosaurus devoured the winner. Mechanism could not remember a time when he cared what a pair of cavemen thought.

Mechanism thundered toward Reef, his feet clunking on the brown carpet. “Reef, you will drop that pistol, or I will use you as a hand puppet.”

“The worst kind of puppet.” Reef fired a light-bullet at Mechanism’s head. The bullet ricocheted into Legion’s desk. Another shot bounced off Mechanism’s chin and struck the tyrannosaurus in the neck. The tyrannosaurus collapsed to the floorboard. Oh, jolly. Those computerized cavemen would feast like virtual kings tonight.

Mechanism wrenched the pistol from Reef’s grip, almost severing Reef’s fingers at the knuckles. One squeeze of Mechanism’s glove turned the pistol into a knot of metal. He tossed it into the couch where it lodged itself between cushions to become lost among pocket lint and forgotten moolah tablets. Perhaps one could find Legion’s sanity in there.

Mechanism cracked a glove across Reef’s cheek. Reef sprawled away and struck his back against a trash ionizer. If Reef enjoyed even a fraction of Mechanism’s gifted intellect, he would understand that pistols were no match for two-inch-thick plastisteel.

Reef finally gave in. He simply peered up with despondent eyes and a hopeless slack to his jaw.

Mechanism nodded. “You are barely worth the effort of keeping alive.”

Reef grabbed the trash ionizer and prepared to hurl it. “So kill me.”

“Alas, I have need of you. In less than ten minutes, this station will dock with Minerva, and we shall descend to Intergalactic Protection’s headquarters. We shall infiltrate their most guarded areas, perhaps enjoy a glass of their fine Eau du toilette...then conquer them.” He pounded the desk.

“Eau du toilette is a perfume, you helmet-squeezed morality.”

“Not at Intergalactic Protection.”

“Fair enough. So why do you need me?” Reef stood and retreated onto the couch, climbed over its back. He bumped into the bookcase behind him and startled himself.

“I am meeting Field Marshal Hullinger, who I must convince to reveal to me these aforementioned most guarded areas and allow me access to the campus, all this to fulfill the magnificent vision of the late and grand Frederick Snogsbottom. You, dear Reef, will act as my diplomat.”

The door to Legion’s office dematerialized with a bleat, a literal bleat since some hard-of-hearing numbskull programmed this office with the Clamor of the Farm sound-bite pack. In filtered three Mechaknights that Mechanism had summoned via his helmet when Reef was occupied deciphering Intergalactic Protection’s puzzling perfume-to-wine choices. First emerged Number EY, a confident swagger in the way she carried herself. Next—

“Harrier.” Reef’s oomph vaporized when he spoke that word. Harrier—Number RN now—shambled in. He and Reef growled at each other, as if baring their canines would resolve the animosity between them. Reef tensed at the third Mechaknight, who wore not a bodysuit but an exoskeleton of hydraulic tubing.

“Luzimoss?” Reef slapped back against the bookcase. It rocked and tossed out a few datasheets and medals that pelted him over the head. “How the piss are you alive?” Yes, Number A—Luzimoss to Reef—was presumed dead to the public. Through Mechanism’s brilliance, his life was saved...and enslaved.

Number A did not gratify Reef with an answer. He did not speak. His only sound was rhythmic breathing. Good. Mechanism wanted not to deal with mediating this conversation, especially if they decided to shoot the breeze about those battling cavemen.

“The man you knew as Luzimoss is now Number A,” Mechanism said. “I rescued him from death so I could use him. He will direct our assault. Through his hyperability, he will determine the odds of success for every move we make. So, if there are no further questions...”

“One.” Number EY raised a hand. “Do we have time for a bathroom stop?”

“You small-bladdered inchworm.” Mechanism swatted another vase, a green-and-red one that burst against the wall. “If there are no further pertinent questions...” Mechanism checked Reef, Number RN, and Number A, whose eyes all poked hostility at one another.

A red light appeared in Mechanism’s helmet viewscreen: this station had arrived at its destination, Intergalactic Protection.

Reef noticed a faint glow from outside the window though Station One had turned off its day cycle lights. He approached the window and bumped his nose into it as obliviously as a wind-up toy would hit an obstacle. “Th-that’s...that’s...th—”

“That is the planet Minerva. We have locked orbit with it. Our journey to make new friends is now complete.” Mechanism knocked through the group and exited Legion’s office. “Now, let us kill our new friends.”

Chapter Twenty: So That’s Why He Sticks His Tongue in Electricity Panels

“There you are.” Ace Spandex padded through the field near the escape pod. The spongy grass shushed under his heavy feet. In the distance, Power Plant sat on a boulder under a glowing sunset light that made him look like an angel. Well, “angel” came nowhere within reaching distance of the truth. Last week, Power Plant had set up a demolition derby involving several of the Good Guys’ Trojan-class starships. And not in the hangar bay. How he’d fit those things into Station One’s banquet hall, Ace never knew. How he’d gotten them out? The colossal hole in the side of the hall was a good sign.

Power Plant didn’t turn around. His chin sat firmly on a palm, fingers over his mouth, and elbow on his leg. His eyes shimmered. He held the action figure of his brother, staring silently at it.

Ace Spandex reached him and checked the field to make sure nobody had followed. He heard only chirping crickets and a distant voice that proclaimed Bullet Sauce as the universe’s most recognized bullet lubricant. What was society coming to?

“Can I sit down?” Ace asked. Lonely wind whistled around him.

“No,” Power Plant said into his fingers. “Go ’way.”

Uh...fine. But Ace still needed to talk to him. He’d have to wait for Power Plant to forget he’d said no. Eight...nine...ten. “Can I sit down?”

“Okay.” Power Plant shifted over. He didn’t look up.

Ace Spandex took his seat on a rocky crag. He placed his palms together between his knees and stared into the encroaching sunset that painted scowls across the clouds. “Figured I’d find you here. Cross-referenced your speed with your biorhythms and referenced any landmark points in our vicinity to determine how far you’d flown. Mostly I figured it out by your sugar intake.” Heat feathered against his scarred right brow. “Brown sugar, in case you’re wondering.” Man, it was sticky out here. “Three bags.”

Power Plant hadn’t reacted to Ace Spandex. Ace pivoted on his buttocks to face him. “Jeff, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt anyone. I wasn’t even in cont—” He checked Power Plant, who still didn’t react. Getting through to him right now was like cramming a civ-tran into a toilet. And not the novelty toilet outside the hardware store.

“Jeff, I’m part robot now. No, I can’t shoot light-bullets out of my eyes.”

Power Plant lifted his head only slightly. The crickets still sang the night’s soundtrack.

“When the Bad Guys captured me in January, they almost killed me. I lost a lot of blood.” Ace Spandex coughed out a mirthless chuckle. “Mechanism saved my life but made me his tool. He cut out some of my brain and most of my organs, and he replaced those bits with computers and hydraulics. He released me to use me as his inside man. I turned off the station’s defenses because I was under his control.”

Power Plant’s jaws wrestled together like a fist squeezing.

“I never meant to hurt anybody. Not Smith, not Jacob.” Ace Spandex tapped the boulder with his heel. “Not Mark.” He scratched sweat from his nose. Even this boulder caused him to swelter.

“You’s a robots now?” Power Plant still stared down at the action figure of his brother. “You’s not in controls o’ yourself?”

“I broke free yesterday.” Ace Spandex rubbed the back of his neck. “Can you forgive me for what I’ve done?”

Power Plant assessed his words as though his brain had come unplugged and he needed to work harder to push out a thought. That would be giving him too much credit, though. He’d only ever pushed out...No, don’t go there.

Finally, he said, “I dunno.”

Chapter Twenty-One: Military Hand-Me-Downs

Mechanism had parked Station One and Station Mechanism close to Minerva but out of sight. Sure, Minerva’s computers sensed Station One, which was the size of a planetoid, and Station Mechanism, which was the size of a tiny moon. But the instrument operators were not looking for the spatial bodies that hid behind a meteor cloud and that metallic banner that orbited the planet: “Come for the Barren Landscape, Stay for Whatever the Crock You Manage to Find Interesting Here.”

The ride from Station One’s hangar bay to Minerva’s orbit took only a few minutes. Reaching the ground in the Good Guys’ four Fireball mil-trans would take only a few more. Knowing Intergalactic Protection, this particular starship’s graceless AI-pilot would crunch on top of someone’s civ-tran in that littered parking lot below. These AI-pilots should require licenses to operate heavy machinery.

Behind Mechanism, one Mechaknight swung off an overhanging pipe but slipped and collided with three others. Two Mechaknights played bloody knuckles in the corner. Sometimes even these troops should require licenses, as well.

During the approach, Mechanism felt vexed that his Mechaknights had battered his refined intellect with stupid questions about Minerva’s weather. It was gloomy. Always gloomy. Minerva was a domed planet with no natural atmosphere, for pity’s sake. Mechanism had replaced his slapping glove twice before the first bathroom break.

The armada of starships slipped through IP’s defense bubble, a secured sphere that allowed entry only via biorhythm recognition or fatness of corporate pockets. In this case, Mechanism did not intend to peddle any sponsorship jujubes or toilet disinfectants, so the system must have recognized his biorhythm.

Mechanism stood beside Reef and awaited this Fireball, B-Comanche, the one at the fleet’s vanguard position, to touch down. He listened to the musical whisper of the starship’s oxygen pumps. “We will soon meet the upper echelon of Intergalactic Protection. Are you excited?” He eased a hand onto Reef’s shoulder.

“I’m so excited I want to kill myself.” Reef squirmed out of Mechanism’s hand.

Number BB leaped forward. “I’m so excited I brought my favorite sweater, and I plan to wet myself!”

Mechanism cracked a hand across Number BB’s helmet. “The question was directed at our guest, you flatulent chimpanzee.” And now he was one slap closer to replacing his glove again.

“Put on your Sunday best, agent Reef, which I hope is not the pinstripe suit you have worn in interviews.” Mechanism stroked his arm panel where hid his needle laser at his command. “And, if you choose to defy me, our day will not end well for your friends in Station One’s stasis bay. So play your role, little puppet.”

“Why are you doing this?” Reef swallowed. He maintained the illusion of stalwart composure, but Mechanism knew that composure tumbled around a network of fearful thoughts.

“Is this when I needlessly expound upon you my plan? Let us merely say this is all the fault of the Floots.”

Reef cocked his head. “You’re doing this because of a musical instrument?”

Mechanism straightened his back and said to his amassed troop, “My legion of clodhoppers, prepare yourselves, and stop scratching your posterior cracks. You cannot sate an itch while wearing armor. We will touch down in”—he checked his helmet’s ticking clock—“fifteen hours?” He smacked Number BB again. “Who backlogged my helmet when I took my sanity break?”

The bloody-knuckles pair halted their childish game, and several other buffoons stopped their activities: wagering in a game of craps, engaging in an arm-wrestling match, and challenging each other to burp loudest.

Mechanism forced out a breath at this literal ship of fools. “Stop playing bloody knuckles in titanium gloves. Yes, I mean you two brain trusts. And why is this starship’s engine flood light on?”

* * *

After Mechanism had regained control of his Mechaknights—which required two timeouts, four stern warnings, and the removal of someone’s public-urination privileges—he stepped off the access ramp of the Fireball mil-tran. Flanking him were Number RN—that dreadful former Good Guy media-named Harrier—a growling Reef, and Appliance with a ruined pincer assembly. Yes, Appliance accompanied him despite still being stuck with that accursed foreign mode.

Under the flag of Intergalactic Protection that flapped in every tender breeze, an Intergalactic Protection welcoming party exited the campus’s main building and met the Mechaknights on the north lawn. Field Marshal Ravioss Hullinger, in his Trioxidillian uniform, headed the receiving group, behind him a staff of two generals, two brigadiers, and a corporate spokesman for Teenie Weenies.

Clad in a black tux and a top hat that looked fashionable only at one of Master Asinine’s tracksuit-and-tie functions, the portly Teenie Weenies man displayed a silver platter with a pyramid of cocktail weenies heaped atop its imprinted surface. He embellished his “cuisine” by bowing and flourishing a gloved hand. Mechanism wanted to pop his monocled head off merely because he entertained the idea that anybody stomached that mush.

Hullinger offered a nod to the Mechaknights. “Good morning, gentlemen.” Offered another. “And ladies.” Offered a nod at a specific one. “And those unidentifiable. Welcome to Intergalactic Protection’s main headquarters here under Minerva’s Grinning Halibut Fish ’n’ Tackle dome.” The computer image of a fish beamed down at the group from a lofty viewscreen hanging under the dome’s peak. He nodded at Mechanism's head. “Love the crown.”

Mechanism bumped Reef from behind: time to begin his act. Reef jolted into awareness. “Yes. Yes, yes, yes. Field Marshal Hullinger, may I introduce to you the Good Guys’ secret agent, Mechanism.” His hands could not stand still. He massaged them together, rubbed the back of his neck, scratched his elbow absentmindedly.

Mechanism had rehearsed his most diplomatic voice before a mirror viewscreen on the journey over. He needed perfection in his ruse to lull Hullinger into a false sense of security. This required poise, acting, and flattery, cha cha cha. “It is my pleasure to be here, Field Marshal Hullinger.” He reached out and, calculating a grip strength that would not crush this menial insect’s bones, shook hands. “I am aware my visit comes on short notice. I am also aware”—he threw a glare over his shoulder—“if my Mechaknight minions do not cease their horseplay, we will not stop for ice-cream sundaes on the journey home.”

Hullinger leaned to peer behind Mechanism. His eyes bulged at the amassed army: seventy-four Mechaknights stood arrayed on the grass, some gawking and waving, some staring into space, and a pair—how dreadfully crude—inflicting noogies on each other. “Looks like you brought the whole family.”

“Indeed, I did, sir.” Mechanism whipped an arm around Number U in mock playfulness. “Even peculiar Uncle Ramon. But he is family only by marriage.” He shoved Number U away. Number U still reeked from a hogtying festival.

Really, he had invited only a small contingent of his forces: forty-five Mechaknights. The rest remained in position.

“And what’s that?” Hullinger signaled the commanding contraption that Numbers AO and CC hauled, each with one hand clasped around a grip. That contraption, a three-foot cube with an interface console and an activation button on its top, weighed no less than one thousand pounds and strained even the Mechaknight suits his Numbers wore. A vent grill on one side whistled air that trickled through the contraption’s insides.

“That, my dear sir, is a gift.” Not a gift, but Intergalactic Protection’s undoing. “An addition to your armament, a mighty machine I confiscated from Master Asinine when I left. As far as we can tell, it was his only weapon that does not squirt hot sauce from fifty yards away. I warn you, however, that it may launch fully constructed parades.”

“You’re joking.”

“Complete with float riders suffering from threadbare sanities.”

“Aweenda shmure tuwinga.” Appliance clacked its intact pincer.

Hullinger regarded him as though Appliance had defecated on the dinner table, so Mechanism flicked the buzzing can aside. “Pay no attention to my small assistant. Since I reprogrammed his speech centers, he has done nothing but scream foreign obscenities at cooking utensils.”

“Börk börk börk.” Did Appliance want to fling an egg beater at a mouthy chicken?

Time to move forward. Mechanism nudged Reef.

“Field Mar—” Reef’s voice shrilled out in a high pitch, so he tried again. “Field Marshal Hullinger, Mechanism has come to us from a highly accredited law-enforcement agency in Rudding. If we’re to put an end to the Bad Guys, we’ll need to see the operation here. And quickly. Mechanism is eager to mobilize against Master Asinine.” He’d spoken verbatim the line Mechanism had fed him, the line Number A said would work most effectively. Excellent. Reef’s act as middleman ensured Mechanism would quickly establish Hullinger’s trust.

Hullinger huffed. “Fine. Let’s begin our visit so we can get to business. This way, please.” Hullinger motioned to the front door. The group entered, but Mechanism first needed to separate two cat-fighting Mechaknights and force them to wait outside until they controlled themselves.

Reef matched pace with Mechanism but kept his stare locked ahead. He refused to make eye contact. “There’s no way you’ll get away with this.” He kept his voice at a murmur, but Mechanism heard him clearly.

“Number A disagrees. With Amaranthia’s sword at his neck, he has outlined our every single move. He feeds changes to me whenever we must deviate.”

Hullinger led the procession of Intergalactic Protection wastes and Mechaknights into Intergalactic Protection’s campus. He indicated some of the soldiers. “Intergalactic Protection boasts an army of over one hundred thousand soldiers and twenty thousand corporate sponsors. Almost ninety percent operates here, though some serve at satellite stations, campuses, and souvenir shops.” They passed a store in which a corporal peddled artillery made from half metal, half plastic, and half suede. Never mind the math calamity, that was just a bizarre combination.

Hullinger led them down a corridor filled with dark doors and clandestinely lit hallways sprouting left and right. During the trip, the Teenie Weenies man had attempted three more times to offload his chum. He never spoke, only flaunting it with an aggrandized wave. Perhaps Mechanism should introduce him to better and more nourishing food, such as rat carcasses. Oh, perhaps a jaunty rubber tire for him to gnaw on between his chins.

The two Mechaknights carrying the contraption found navigating these halls difficult, their uncoordinated steps squeaking on the floor. They were but mules.

Hullinger said, “This station’s subbasement houses the bulk of our munitions and military transports. You said you required access to our resources to finally annihilate the Bad Guys.”

Mechanism elbowed Reef. Reef startled to attention. “Gah. Yes. That’s true. Lowensland is planning a major attack on an undisclosed location. We can’t launch a counterattack with the resources at Station One, so we need your armament.” Ahhh. Lies, sweet lies. Mechanism could have sung that line.

“Great. Another scheme to rid the galaxy of stilt-wearing clowns?” Hullinger tapped his foot. “Well, with Reef’s accreditation and the looming attack, let’s get underway. Allow me to list you in the haunt control’s database. What’s your calltag, Mechanism?”

Yes. Oh. Yes. Mechanism wished to dance, but he reigned in his pleasure. “I still utilize my Bad Guy calltag. It is bad-dash-guy-dash-mechanism. Or you can utilize the speed dial Master Asinine assigned me: superstar awesome.” He sickened even speaking that. “All one word.”

“No.” Reef hid his face under an arm. His voice was but a tiny squeak. “Please don’t.”

Hullinger had not heard his plea. “Control, acknowledge. Upload security codes to calltag bad-dash-guy-dash-mechanism.” He checked Mechanism as if looking for any final signs of duplicity. “And list Mechanism, grant access level five.” The haunt control already knew Mechanism. After all, he was named in several public-enemy lists and a few wine-and-cheese magazines.

Reef’s eyes found the floor and squeezed shut. “No.”

“Excellent.” Mechanism beamed at the transfer meter that blipped onto his helmet’s display. It flashed from 0 percent to 100 percent in the time it would take his infantile underlings to light a match and fart. Excellent indeed.

“And you have sealed your fate, gutter slug.” Mechanism commanded his arm panel to flip open and reveal the needle laser that whirred out at a forty-five degree angle. He targeted...and fired.

Hullinger’s head detonated into splashes of thick carnage. Behind Mechanism, a chorus of Mechaknights cheered and hooted. They took Hullinger’s death as the go word, leaped into action, and dispersed into the campus. Two bumped knuckles. Why bump knuckles? Why?

Appliance lingered at Mechanism’s side. It buzzed in his ear like a mosquito, clacked its undamaged pincer, and yelled Swedish nonsense about lobsters or some other culinary puppet.

“Control, acknowledge. Deactivate alarm system. And contact my Mechaknight army to enact phase get-an-eyeful-of-this-light-bullet-sucka.” Sigh. That would mark the final time Mechanism allowed Number FR to name the plan’s phases. But what else should one expect from he who ate peanut butter through a straw?

“With the equipment here, the final phase of our coup nears completion. And platoons upon platoons of Mechaknights now descend upon Gaia to round up the inferior chaff for cleansing.” Mechanism smirked at the shocked generals and brigadiers. “Let the slaughter begin.”

The tuxedoed spokesman dropped his platter of weenies, which clattered deafeningly. Number RB hurried forward, snatched up a few, and began whacking a brigadier over the head with one.

* * *

Shock flashed through Reef when Hullinger’s brains splattered the wall. Blood gushed over Reef’s face. He stumbled back, careened into a cactus because—just his luck—he always found the worst things to fall on.

The weenie guy swallowed, his gaze scurrying from Hullinger’s crumpled body to Mechanism. Reef could tell Mechanism was smiling under that mask. And Mechanism fired again. The weenie guy—who’d never hurt anybody in his silent life though those glowing weenies had given people tongue cancer—burst apart and gushed against a table.

“My dear liaison, your services are no longer required.” Mechanism faced Reef. “This is the end of the road for you, Reef.” He whirled his arm around—

Reef ducked—dodged aside—rolled—grabbed Hullinger’s gun—fired—chided himself for missing Mechanism and hitting the weenie guy’s corpse—fired again...Seriously? He hit the corpse again? Come on!

He dodged back to avoid the Mechaknight gunfire that rattled around him. Leaped over a blast that would have vaporized his favorite leg, the one he used to kick away Smithereens’s all-guts-no-glory grenades whenever the bomber threw them in the wrong direction. He pressed his back against a wall and checked the pistol’s charge reading. Nothing left. He chucked the pistol away.

A tangle of laser blasts singed the atmosphere. One here, another behind Reef, another on the far side of the room. Faster and faster, louder and louder.

An IP general bowled into the ground by Reef’s feet. A light-bullet had carved a hole through his rib cage, leaving a stomach maw with jaws of bones protruding like the teeth of a dentist’s cash-in patient, or like Multipurpose’s teeth if that breathing buoy kept dunking horse heads into his banana splits.

Another soldier fell, his neck chewed apart by Mechanism’s needle laser. He wasn’t even given the chance to scream. He belched up arcs of blood on the wall, which would have upset Reef if he liked the decor some colorblind idiot had chosen. Starships and cowboys? This wasn’t a nine-year-old boy’s bedroom.

Reef gasped. “Oh. My. Crock.” He heard it, witnessed it, smelled it. The bloodbath unfolding in front of him. The wrenching dirge of screams, the guzzle of fired light-bullets, the domineering cacophony of shattered furniture. He fell to his knees at the horror of the room’s landscape where more and more soldiers realized the slaughter. Watched a private lose his head to a Mechaknight’s rifle blast, a general disintegrate against a wall. Everywhere—the carnage erupted behind him, in the hallway, through windows—everywhere! Mechanism had instigated a thorough hunt. Blood and organic slop now showered everything.

Reef wept.

* * *

Mechanism ignored his pursuit of Reef. Whatever luckless Mechaknight found that fat head deserved the kill. Instead, Mechanism had journeyed to the subbasement of this campus. It smelled of mold down here. Each breath tasted like sand. He tromped past the advertisements for cow’s head yogurt found delectable by Multipurpose and nobody with even a shred of sanity left.

The battle still stormed upstairs, but not for much longer. Not even a hundred well-trained soldiers could survive one single soldier equipped with Mechanism’s genius armor. His helmet registered the chatter of gunfire, the shrill cries of dying squaddies. One squaddie blurted a battle cry—“By the power of my flaming fist!”—and Mechanism wondered if he’d dipped his hand in lighter fluid.

With Appliance still buzzing around his temple—oh, how Mechanism wished he’d had a longer reach with which to swat—and the two Mechaknights carrying the payload a few paces behind him, he stopped at the door where a swirling logo said, THIS DOOR PROGRAMMED BY LETCHTECH, YOUR LEADERS IN GROSSLY INCOMPETENT PRODUCTS YOU BUY ANYWAY. Behind the words eddied a ménage of colors that made Mechanism reconsider the merits of blindness.

Mechanism guided his helmet’s computer through a maze of menus. He again needed to disable the inhibitor chip that prevented Number A, that lout Luzimoss, from using his hyperability. Next, he speed-dialed Number A. Still pinned by Amaranthia’s blade, Number A took only seconds to respond, and when he did, he punched his words out. “What now?” Such unrefined manners made Mechanism consider ignoring him. Instead, he would send Number A an etiquette guide.

The racket of war raged on. A scream or a clatter somewhere disturbed the stony subbasement. The flaming-fist warrior threatened a Mechaknight with what surely felt more painful than a conversation with one of them.

“Ahh, Number A. Not in the lavatory inflicting swirlies on yourself in an effort to atone for your transgressions?” Mechanism smacked his lips. “The time has come. I was unable to squeeze from Hullinger the access code to Intergalactic Protection’s armory, so I have programmed your inhibitor chip to allow you to predict that code. I require it now.”

His subordinates set the payload down behind him.

Number A loosed a grunt. “No. It stops here, you wine-gorging tyrant.”

Mechanism’s mother told him he’d have days like this. She also said gasoline came in four vibrant flavors, but Mechanism still trusted her on the day advice though she often slipped a little tease into her nighttime castor oil. “Number A, might I remind you what I have connected your brain to. That inhibitor chip I can reactivate at a moment’s notice is rigged to explode upon my slightest whim. And, if it explodes, so do four hundred thousand poor men, women, and tiny children who can barely walk let alone discern the palpable wooden bouquet of a fine chardonnay.”

Number A’s face hardened in the viewscreen of Mechanism’s helmet display. His jawbones bulged. “I don’t care. Once you gain access to that armory, you’ll kill those men, women, children, and everyone else.”

“Fine. We will have it your way.” Mechanism smiled. He still tasted fruity Pompignon on his lips. “Control, acknowledge.”

Number A averted his eyes and screwed them shut.

“Access Number A’s inhibitor chip, prepare to detonate on my word—”

“Wait!” Number A whipped up a hand. “You win. Just as long as it keeps you from saying ‘urinal cake.’” Number A opened his eyes. “Eighty-seven percent chance the access code is ‘dangleberry pipeline.’”

Mechanism’s neck craned forward. His gut gurgled with acid. “Really? I must utter those words? They do not even make sense.”

“Hey, you asked. I only reported the code. I didn’t come up with it. In fact, I think IP outsources these things to someone’s grade-two class. The next likely guess is ‘tee-hee, giggle, giggle, poop sauce.’”

Mechanism nodded curtly. “Thank you for putting it in perspective.” Still, he worried he would be unable to speak the code without popping a blood vessel or, if the situation grew direr, his eyeballs. “Control, acknowledge. Unlock closest door. Password: dangleberry”—oh, the humiliation—“pipeline.”

“Access granted. Why not stop for a refreshing dangleberry pipeline at the Bowelmania food court today? Offered in four vibrant gasoline flavors.” How peculiar. His mother was validated.

The doors faded in a lilt that sang like doves to his heart. Oh, yes. Arranged before him...a spectacular view no mountaintop or sunset rivaled...missile launchers, napalm machines, tanks and battleships, planet smashers, jam-packed in the placid room that glowed under a militia of orange light panels. Mechanism drank it all in. The view, the sound his fingers would make kissing the weapons, the smell of lubricant and oil. He sank to his knees, his palms supporting him on the concrete floor. Oh, bless his superior genius for leading him here.

“Now, my Mechaknights, bring forth that which will infuse our new arsenal. Set it in the center of the room and activate it. Mind the coffee cup on the floor.”

Numbers AO and CC hoisted the hefty contraption forth. They steered around Mechanism and entered the armory, their footsteps echoing like hammer falls in this cavern of munitions. They set the machine down and shifted it into place. One of them hit the on button and dialed the machine up to FREAKING ON. Yyyeeesss.

Thick tendrils of electricity snapped out of the machine, grabbing at weapons. Everything...everything woke in activation, brightened to life, whirred and fanned in resurrection. And, inside the machine, the most potent implement of destruction ever devised by man or idiot: the Blast-o-Matic’s power core.

“Whoa.” Number AO slapped his hands over his cheeks. He peered closer into the armory’s distance. “Is that...? I...Hey, Benny, check this out. A speedboat!”

“Are you serious?” Number CC leaped away from the machine. “Dude, we just hit the fun mother lode.” Number CC should have braced himself before he attempted the task of thinking long words. To dream the impossible dream. “No, the awesome mother lode!”

Number CC sidestepped to another row of gadgets. “Oh, man. Take a look at this, Bo.” He flourished a glove. “Stactical missiles. Oh, and over there. Shoulder-mounted cannons!”

“Really? Just yesterday, I told the wife how much we need new shoulder-mounted cannons for entertaining, but she sprang for scented candles instead.”

Through the doorway, Mechanism surveyed the weapons of death, at first soulless shells of machines, now vibrant instruments of annihilation, glowing, juddering in anticipation as if twitching with thoughts of murder. Thanks to the Blast-o-Matic. “Now, Minerva is our command post, Stations One and Mechanism are our satellites, we have incapacitated Intergalactic Protection, and I...am...unstoppable.”

“Indeed, my liege. You are a breath away from attaining complete authority.”

Huh? Was that Appliance? Mechanism regarded his cylindrical kowtower with as a curious a tilt to his head with which he was willing to grace this flying rattletrap. “English?”

“Oh, my apologies, sir. The trial period for the Swedish mod has expired, but you may purchase the full version for only ten moolahs or five plus the inclusion of your immortal soul.”

Number AO burst through the armory in a rocker’s slide that halted at Mechanism’s feet. “Nuclear warheads for everybody!”

Chapter Twenty-Two: There Are Going to Be Some Changes around Here

The viewscreen behind Ace Spandex had appeared only seconds ago. Its display framed Mechanism’s head perfectly, an arrogant chuckle in that megalomaniac’s breath. His second public broadcast today. Behind him, a Mechaknight uncorked a bottle of something. An explosive pop knocked the air, and fizz drenched the bottle’s side and splattered to the floor. It began smoking. Was that carbonated gasoline?

“Hello, my trusting public,” Mechanism said. Every word sounded full of mirth and cheer. Sickening. “I am afraid”—he leaned closer—“the jig is up.”

Ace Spandex looked out the window of this shadowed warehouse and watched a dozen IP Fireball mil-trans roar through the daybreak sky. His heart almost stopped. He could command it to.

His body was awash in a weak quiver. “We’re too late to save IP from that highbrow Hitler. We’re too late to save anybody.”

“This gonna sucks.” Washed in the orange glow of the emerging sun, Power Plant peered out the same window. “Those Mechyknights gonna takes over. We’s gonna needs t’ hides...make up new names...find new favorite pancake houses.”

Ace Spandex’s system fluttered in binary emotion. He broke away from the window, shuffled like a sleepwalker to a row of wooden boxes, and made it just before his knees gave way. His head almost touched the ground. “He won. Mechanism won.”

Power Plant slammed his palm against the window frame. It jangled and almost broke. “So you’s jus’ gonna gives up? Tha’s it? My brother die. Jakey die. Smith die. And you’s jus’ gives up? That...” He whipped a finger at the window. “Dat Hitler kill Mark an’ you’s let him wins.” He thrust a thumb at himself. “I’s gonna makes him pay.”

Ace Spandex stomped to his feet. “How, Jeff? How? We haven’t put so much as a dent in his plan. He’s had us on the run all day, Seliross chickened out, and Mechaknights are overrunning IP. They’re descending on this planet now. In case you haven’t noticed, that Hitler Mechanism is a tough nut to crack!”

“I’s gonna crack Hitler. I’s crack him wide opens.”

“Why does that sound strangely disgusting?”

A rustle scraped from the depths of shadow, behind shelves lined with bags of foam popcorn Power Plant had tried to eat. “Finally found you suckers.”

Ace Spandex sprang back and raised his hands, ready to swing. Power Plant prepared fists and loaded them with sputtering energy. They pulsated as brightly as distant stars or Kamikaze after a day of gamma-ray tanning.

“Who there?” Power Plant searched the shadows. “I swears I wallops you up.”

A clonk resounded against the floor, and a metal boot, white with red contours, emerged from the darkness. A Mechaknight stepped out, pointing a gun at Ace Spandex’s head. Ace Spandex firmed his stance.

“Lord Alpha’s gonna loooove putting you two through the juice press at Station One’s Space Cow.” The Mechaknight’s gun clicked—

A burst of gears-plastic-blood-gore sloshed from the Mechaknight’s midsection. The Mechaknight spilled forward in one piece and landed in two. Ace would help Power Plant with the math later.

Stillness. Ace heard each individual droplet of blood plink from the corpse to the floor. Then more footsteps. Lighter this time.

“I needed to use the name Seliross and a fake picture, or someone would have found me out.” This new speaker, a shadowed Trioxidillian, stepped out of the darkness and into what little light sneaked through the window. He held a smoking rifle in both hands. “And it took a long time to chase you down.”

Legion.

“Jeff, your fly’s open.”

THE END

NEXT BOOK:

Power Plant meets his deadliest foe: multitasking!

About That Guy Whose Book You Read Once

Liam Gibbs knew he was destined to write at age four, when he authored a breathtaking account of a cow who ate grass. The bovine saga failed to catch the public’s eye but earned the budding author parental acclaim. Since those early times, he’s gone on to write the novella Not So Superpowered and humorous articles for various magazines.

A twenty-year veteran of the brutal world of hand-to-hand comic book fandom, Gibbs cut his teenage teeth on titles such as Spider-Man, X-Men, New Warriors, and other Marvel comics.

Gibbs graduated college with a degree in professional writing, which included classes on fiction writing and story structure. He lives on the balmy shores of Ottawa, Canada, where he relaxes by watching staggeringly awful horror and science fiction movies. A health and fitness nut, he shoots lasers from his eyes, uses the word exclusive incorrectly, and once wrestled an exclusive brontosaurus. True story.

That one time I was deep in thought and—Hey, is that ketchup on the ceiling?

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Communicate via homing pigeon at chirp-twiddle-twoo or whatever pigeons say.

Table of Contents

- The Story So Far...

- Available on the Author’s Super-Awesome Site

- Other Stuff the Author Spewed Out

- Your Favorite Table of Contents

- Book 13: A Wolf in Sheep’s Armor

- Appendices

- Chapter One: Such Sweet Sorrow

- Chapter Two: The Clothes Do Make the Man

- Chapter Three: The Welcome Wagon Has a Lot of Beef

- Chapter Four: And the Award Goes To...

- Chapter Five: I Got Your Escape Attempt Right Here

- Chapter Six: Window Shopping

- Chapter Seven: What Happens When Men Visit the Bathroom Together

- Chapter Eight: The Enemy of My Enemy Is My Friend, Subtract One Ally, Carry the Foe

- Chapter Nine: Sleeping on the Job

- Chapter Ten: Military Cusses Are Eight Letters Long

- Chapter Eleven: It Totally Worked on Future Paper

- Chapter Twelve: The Boss Would Like to Have a Word with You

- Chapter Thirteen: Don’t Eat the Head Cheese—Literal Term

- Chapter Fourteen: Laughing at Yourself Is the Least Worst Medicine

- Chapter Fifteen: Ugh, Not These Guys
- Chapter Sixteen: Kiss the Cook
- Chapter Seventeen: Repeat Business
- Chapter Eighteen: Bon Something or Other

- Chapter Nineteen: Who Programs These Things?

- Chapter Twenty: So That’s Why He Sticks His Tongue in Electricity Panels

- Chapter Twenty-One: Military Hand-Me-Downs

- Chapter Twenty-Two: There Are Going to Be Some Changes around Here

- About That Guy Whose Book You Read Once