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Chapter Text

[Sump, Cycle 17, Era 24]

Before they learned the art of conquest, before they broke Irk’s atmosphere, before even the first recorded Almighty Tallest, in an era before Eras, the Irken race used to shed their skins. Instead of dragging it around for the rest of their lives, when Irkens grew too large and too great for the smaller creatures they used to be, the obsolete skin fell away.

Discarded. Gone. Welcome to Irken 2.0.

Understand, it was nothing like how other inferior species shed themselves. It didn’t happen piece by piece in little scraps and strips of old flesh. It did not need to be peeled or scraped or scratched off. (Even in their pre-industrial state, let no one call the Irkens messy.) No, Irken skins fell away in one solid piece. More shell than skin, really.

Red saw one once, in the Education Plug. It really had looked exactly like an Irken except transparent, colorless, and hollow on the inside. A physical ghost. While Red had never been one for history—why look backwards when you’re moving forward?—he’d always liked the idea of that. 

Aside from snack baskets and a day off to recover from the soreness, Irkens didn’t really have anything to commemorate height. New encodings came with new ranks, but it wasn’t the same. Evidence of physical growth through PAK data, stats, scores, and trophies were cool and all, but it’d be way cooler to have something solid to hold on to. Something to touch and show off and say, “Check it out, this used to be me”.

That’s what Red would do if he could shed his skin: keep it and marvel at the short little thing he used to be. 

And then he’d stomp it under his boot over and over and he wouldn’t stop until nothing remained but a pile of dust. Yeah. That sounded pretty good.

But the Irken race didn’t do that sort of thing anymore. Now their skins stretched and warped and evolved with them. So Red settled for dumping his outgrown uniforms on the roof, setting them on fire, and chucking the ashes over whoever came walking by. It lacked the visceral satisfaction of stomping old shells to dust, but still gave him that warm furnacey feeling.

Someone in the fleet (Skutch, maybe?) had pointed out that soldiers were supposed to turn their old stuff in. Something about it being protocol to recycle stuff for new recruits or whatever. In twenty years of growth spurts and roof fires, nobody’d ever so much as given Red a warning, though, so Skutch was probably just sniffing around for junk to complain about. He was like that. Most Irkens were like that. They couldn’t handle their own garbage so they rooted through everyone else’s. As if it could make up for their own lousy height or rank or ugly face or low scores or whatever else dragged them down. Pathetic.

That said, Red wished that he hadn’t been so quick to torch that last pair of boots. They’d still be a half-size too small, but better too small than what he had now. 

He frowned at the jagged acid burns that scarred his left boot from calf to toe-tip. In some places, it had eaten all the way through the leather and metal plating. If Red waggled his toes, he could actually see the fabric of his socks through the holes.

Bad look for any soldier reporting for fleet duty. Terrible look for a sub-commander reporting to an official summons. Red glanced at his gauntlet’s screen and the short statement written in official martial green:

IRKEN ELITE RED PAK#e82d10:

Report to PLANET DEVASTIS no later than the date designated below.
Disregard ongoing missions as null and void.
 

A personal summons. They’d used his name and number and everything. As far as Red knew, he’d been the only pilot in the fleet to get one, meaning he’d done something awesome… or something extremely not-awesome. Demotion and re-encoding levels of not-awesome. Someone would’ve said something (or snickered behind his back) if it was the latter, but with this backwater rock’s shoddy communications, who knew.

Either way, arriving with a ruined boot without a phenomenal excuse for it made for a rotten first impression. Unless someone nearby doubled their shoe size in the next five minutes, Red was out of luck. Showing up early wouldn’t make up for it but it’d take the edge off. Maybe. Plus, he might squeeze in time for boot shopping.

A shot squealed in the distance, and a scattered series of shots followed it. Pink and red pulses lit the firing range on the far side of the tarmac. Right on time. 

Red peered out of the corridor. No sign of the Vortians either, save for the trio of mechanics asleep on a trolley cart. Not that they’d care enough to gossip, but those nerds had a bad habit of getting in the way. He triple-checked the perimeter and slipped into the dull black morning, armed with a fresh cherry slooshie and the beginnings of a plan. 

Shadowed beneath the rows of Voot Runners and Shuuvers, Red strode quickly through the hangar until he found her: a state-of-the-art midsize Spittle Runner, fitted with the latest and greatest mods and comfy customizations, including a self-adjusting cupholder.

So far so good. Made it all the way to his ship and nobody’d noticed him. He felt sure of it.

The silhouette of an Irken soldier slipped out from under a nearby Voot and turned towards him.

…Then again, he’d also felt sure that Vortian transmission fluid didn’t explode in Sump’s pressurized atmosphere either. 

Red felt the wind through the holes in his boot and held back a sigh. Oh well. Better one than one hundred.

Elite Tenn wiped her oily gloves near the base of the ship, and as he approached, Red couldn’t help but notice how lovely she appeared under the hangar lights. The Spittle Runner, of course, not Tenn.

A soldier with an unsophisticated eye may not have noticed her in the crowd at all—just a slightly larger Spit in a fleet of thousands. Regulation size, regulation form. They wouldn’t appreciate the sharp deadly curve of her fins. They couldn’t understand the pulsing snarl of her engines, hungry to score a new kill. They’d never know the might of her cannons, nor the eager high-pitched squeal of her lasers before they blasted a ship to shrapnel. (And if they did, they didn’t live to remember it.) Her imperial blue paint job matched The Almighty Tallest’s robes, and even under Sump’s putrid asphalt sky, she gleamed brighter than a blade. The day she leveled Conventia’s capitol city, Red had named her The Lenient. She had no parallel. None but Miyuki’s own Indomitable came within a breadth of her beauty. She was the greatest vehicle to grace this backwater solar system, and if Tenn did not back away from those fins in the next five seconds, Red was gonna make her eat her own antennae.

“What’re you doing all the way out here this early, sir? Shouldn’t you be on the range or the snack bars right now?” Tenn glanced at Red’s expression and took a step away from The Lenient.

Red frowned. “More.”

Six steps back.

“Better.”

The tips of Tenn’s fingers fidgeted with her extendable wrench, a delicate little instrument perfect for fine-tuning motherboards and cracking skulls. She watched Red’s approach without breaking eye contact, though she had to tilt her head back to do it. Judging by that sour little squint of hers, she still hadn’t adjusted to the new view.

Seven years ago, Tenn’s five feet and nine inches had meant something. In fact, it’d made her the tallest in the fleet, barring the commanders. But then for whatever reason—laziness, insubordination, too hesitant, too bold, too soft, or just plain unsuitable for higher places—she’d peaked and hadn’t gained so much as a centimeter since. Kind of a shame to see talent stagnate that way, but if Tenn wanted to stay a shrimp, that wasn’t Red’s problem.

Red watched his shadow skim across her face as he passed. He’d expected the novelty of being able to look down on her to eventually wear off. It hadn’t. “ I’m out here minding my own business. What about you?”

No answer, though Red still felt Tenn’s eyes on him. Thinking. She leaned on the hull of her own hunk-of-junk standard Spit. “You got the Devastis call.”

So much for getting out of here quietly. Red paused at the entrance hatch and glanced back. “What’d you hear?”

“It’s not what I heard, it’s what I know, and I know you’re not the only taller going off-planet. Poki left last night. I saw Sponch hoarding extra bagels the night before that. Everybody’d know if Irk sent something, so either Devastis is summoning Elites or somebody’s hacked the system.” Tenn huffed and flipped the wrench closed with a deft little click. “And I know nobody’s hacked the system. Whatever’s going on…” She jabbed her thumb at the bare patches in the lines of parked ships. More than there ought to be in downtime. “…it’s big. You know, they say it’ll be Invasion Season soon.”

Of course they did. They’d been saying it every year for the last fifty years. It had been exciting the first couple times, back when Red was fresh above ground, short and dumb, and troubleshooting turret sensors, but it got old fast. Always “soon,” never “now”. “Soon” was a guess, a wish, a waste of breath. Come back with hard numbers or shut up.

Still.

Red’s antennae gave a hungry little twitch, as if he’d scented something on the air. He absently rubbed his gauntlets. “Invasion Season, huh?” The thought had occurred to him more than once. Wishful thinking, yes, but it had to happen sometime. Why not now?

Without another word, Red climbed into the cockpit and set course for Devastis. The hangar roof yawned open to reveal a flat sky waiting for him. Sump’s sun twinkled far in the distance.

One last time, he eyed the ships around him, the Vortian mechanics, the soldiers attending their duties. He thought of his own fleet of Irkens who’d followed him into the heart of battle, who’d flown and fought and died beside him for the last two decades. He’d probably never see them again.

Awesome. 

Almost as an afterthought, Red shot off a dry salute. “Later, losers.”

Back on the ground, Elite Tenn bobbed her wrench to him. A gesture of good luck.

Red put his feet on the dash and sipped his slooshie. “Don’t need it.”

[SPACE. Cycle 17, Era 24]

The reception was garbage out here. To be fair, it was garbage everywhere once you got a couple million miles past a planet’s solar system. Out past the regular traffic and satellites and space stations and junk, out of the shallows and deep into the thick of space. The real stuff.

A dark void speckled with suns and stars slid past the windshield. The last few crumbs of Sump’s star system swirled and stretched iridescent in the rearview. Twenty minutes after that, it vanished completely. Thirty minutes after that, nothing but The Lenient and a dark heartless void.

“It’s the hardest part of Elite flying,” Red’s old commander had once said between mouthfuls of sandwich. (Jellybean and mayo on rye, if Red remembered right.) “’Specially sucks when you’re not on fleet or armada duty. It’s the traveling between missions that’ll get you. Boring, boring, BOR-ING. You’re eight-hundred lightyears from nowhere, nothing to look at, nothing to do, nobody to shoot. Get used to it, suckers.”

Other superiors said the same: “it’s dull”, “it’s bleak”, “it’s lonely”, “it’s so quiet you’ll rip out your own PAK and swallow it whole just so you won’t hear that incessant hum of the fan for hours and hours oh no there it is again merciful Irk why won’t it stop”, and so on.

All fancy ways of saying, “You’ll get some peace and quiet for once.”

Finally, some quality legroom. Red rolled his shoulders, leaned back in his contoured gel-padded chair, and stretched all of his limbs. And just because he could, he did it again. “Now these are the goals, people. Am I right?”

The Lenient’s panels glittered in the dark. Silence. What a sound.

“Of course I am.”

No inferiors crowding his legs, whining about drills and rations. No Vortians getting their big stupid horns in his face. No tallers or former tallers giving him the sore loser stink-eye every five seconds. No incompetent fleet ships getting themselves blown up or hogging his space.

They might have had a point about the boredom, though. A little. Red tapped his monitor as if he could brush away the snowy static covering The Announcer’s face. The speakers popped and hissed in their valiant struggle to relay Top Twenty Extinct Idiots Who Thought They Could Face The Irken Empire: Part 2, The Sequel. Shifting starboard, the ship could scrape out a clear sentence or five, but not much more.

*kffsssst* “—ust look at those little guys run! *kffst* “—hat’s what I’d call a real tongue twister—” *ffsst* “—should I say tongue fister? Ahaha!”

“Guess I should’ve splurged on that entertainment package after all, huh?” Red patted The Lenient’s control stick just to show no hard feelings.

She still had that clean clinical new-ship-smell, as she ought. Every part of her, rivets to reactors, came custom-ordered fresh off the factory line and assembled by Red’s own hand. (Good to know those years as a mechanic drone had been good for something.) All regulation, naturally, with some fancy bits suitable for a soldier of his stature. Only the best for the best.

Red flinched at the screech of radio static. Probably could’ve afforded that entertainment package if he hadn’t gone overboard on the drives and thrusters—and also ordered a new pair of boots—but it was worth it. For the price, it better have been.

Admittedly, that 80k debt set his teeth on edge when he thought about it too much. If rumors of Invasion Season were true, however, The Lenient could pay herself off within a month. Even if not, an Elite’s payroll covered it in about a cycle. Seven years wasn’t too bad if he just cut back a little on snacks. Not counting drinks, of course. Red reached into the deluxe cupholder and took a long slurp of slooshie.

 *kffst* “—ou re—ember the Fweezians, old-timers? Think bigger—” *sst* “—less teeth!” *fffkkkssst* “ —thou must make it count. ”

That last bit sounded off. Too formal, too serious. And last Red checked, The Announcer’s voice didn’t sound so feminine. He didn’t have an accent either.

“We’ve but one chance, but if we strike true—” *ksssh* “—wound the Irken Empire so badly ‘t’will take decades to—”

Wait, what? Red sat up, one leg curled under him as he leaned in to adjust the signal.

*krrshhh* “—whole lineup of royals just ripe for the rebellion. Ooops! Make that ripe for the slaughter! Ah, and herrrrre she comes! So long Tallest Fecks, all hail Almighty Tallest Miyuki. See ya, Prince Whatever.”

The Announcer was back and coming in clearer now. That had to mean The Lenient was nearing Devastis’ star system. Not exactly what he’d been looking for, though. He shifted the signal in the other direction. 

“—vulnerable on the western hemisphere, so says Mauv.” There—the stray transmission. A distant signal glinting through the static, and by the sound of it, nothing good.

“Lenient. Track that, if you can.” 

And she could. The star map display shifted, sprinkling dotted lines to trace a winding trail. They weren't far. Understandable, if they could cut through the broadcasts so easily. Anything strong enough to spray their signal all the way out here had to be running some serious power or significant tech.

Red checked his time and his maps. More than enough time for a detour. “Let’s go say hi.” 

The Lenient snagged their signal and leaped hot on their trail. The debris of their transmission dragged behind them like the slime they were. These insurgents, whoever they were, had been messy. Careless. Not only could Red track where they were, but where they’d been.

From its launch point on the battlefronts of Callnowia, the renegade ship had skimmed the proposed conveyor belt planet a few times before meandering through the heart of the production district. Red chewed his straw and scanned his memory for what lived out there. Smoke Folk. Screwheads. A couple of Blob colonies. Larkazoids and Truffloids out on the far edges of the territory, if there were any left. Of course there were also assorted Irkens at their designated posts, but the ship couldn’t be one of their own. Red would’ve recognized an Imperial signal, and besides, no Irken out of the ground could be that sloppy with a data trail. No Irken would put up with this kind of anti-Empire talk, either.

At Foodcourtia, the mystery ship didn’t reroute so much as it tightened focus. Its looping meanders suddenly snapped into a clean line, all straight shots and sharp angles. From there they’d stopped at an asteroid or five—these guys sure liked their convenience stores—but aside from that, it had a set course. Meaning The Lenient could weed out the final destination.

“—of course the intel’s correct! Why wouldn’t it be? Do you think Mauv doesn’t know what he’s doing, or do the last four years mean nothing to you now?” New voice. Male. Kinda overdramatic. “Look, you hurt his feelings.” The speakers still fuzzed and squeaked on the hard consonants, but the signal came in clear. They were close. Maybe a lightyear away.

“Hey Lenient, are we close enough to hack their navigation system?” 

She gave it a shot and… nope. That didn’t surprise him; the ship was still a good distance away, and it wouldn’t surprise him if they hadn’t even locked in a destination. Red just had to work with his best guess.

A proposed flight path sprouted from the rogue ship’s current position and branched out to circle five potential planetary destinations and eight convenience asteroids.

“Hm.” With his free hand, Red pulled up the Era Twenty-Four Price Guide on a side screen and checked the current bounty rates for insurgent forces.

Dragging in a wasted crew (he’d heard at least three aboard), the monies covered a new pair of Elite-issue boots with plenty left over for primo snacks. Brought in alive, the bounty covered new boots, extra snacks, five nap passes, and nullified a quarter of his debt. And that was just the base rate.

“ Lenient, highlight the current path and let’s see the most likely target.” Though he already had a decent guess.

Planet Devastis lit up like The Tallest on Probing Day.

Red grinned. “Yep.” He wouldn’t even have to waste time with a rerouted chase; at this speed, their paths naturally dovetailed in under an hour. But hey, why wait?

The Lenient’s N.Y.O.O.M. drive flared. She kicked up double-time and closed the distance in five minutes. Caught the renegade ship in two more.

“I love you, ship.”

Pity the same couldn’t be said for the scrapheap floating in front of him. Thin lines of tiny windows ran the perimeter of a triangular vessel for small-to-midsize sentients. Her thrusters were a joke, and anybody with an ounce of self-respect wouldn’t have been caught dead with that minimum-wage paint job. A peeling “IRKEN EMPIRE SUXX >8C” sticker flapped pathetically on the side.

If she packed any firepower, Red couldn’t see it and The Lenient couldn’t detect it. Understandable. At a glance, she’d originally been a civilian vessel—repackaged from freight delivery or cartography or astrogation or something. If her current crew couldn’t even afford a decent paint job (Irk’s sake, who flew silver anymore?) they sure couldn’t afford to install cannons.

The signal came crystal-clear now. “Uh, team? Don’t look now, but we’ve got company.”

Unless it was disguised. Unless these guys were serious. Sneaking under the radar as a delivery ship full of morons wouldn’t have been a bad plan… ignoring the fact that a freight wandering into Irken airspace was like a bubblefink landing in an acid marsh.

“What are—aw, no. No, no, no, please tell me that’s not what I think it is.”

He had found someone really smart, or someone really REALLY stupid. Like, Category 7 levels of stupid. And if spraying their data trail all over the stars like some love-struck Rat was any indication (and it was), Red cast his bet on stupid. 

“I dunno, do you think it’s an Irken ship? ‘Cause if not, then it’s not that.”

Someone with an exceptionally annoying voice swore in the background. Loudly.

“Fear not, Mauv. I hold fast to my word; we shan’t let them touch you.”

Red sniffed. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep, lady.”

The guy in the background—Mauv, apparently—cursed even louder. Probably knew he was doomed. Smart guy.

“Get us starboard, Plinka! Boot the warp dr—what do you mean the warp’s dead?! We updated the system last month, it’s brand new!”

No drive at all, then. Not even a flimsy delivery warp. “Huh. Lucky break.” No visible weaponry and no audible orders to retaliate confirmed Red’s suspicions. The ship was toothless. But just in case…

The Lenient's turrets took aim and spat one, two, three vibration pulses; one for each corner of the ship. The renegade vessel stopped dead in its tracks. Her lights flickered for a second, then went dark.

Red turned down the radio signals before the crew’s screaming gave him a headache. His claws twitched against the ingrained reflex to blow the thing to space dust. One shot. That’s all it’d take.

But without solid identification or even confirmation of insurgent activity, he’d get credit for eliminating an unregistered ship at best. Bounties needed bodies (or at least 51% of one).

Fine, he’d do it the old-fashioned way. Manually.

The opaque helmet snapped around Red’s head with a click—a slick little number with reflective black visors and vent spikes on the sides. Spikes were cooler than fins.

The Lenient swooped close. Her cables lashed out to snag the other ship’s airlock, clamping down like a lamprey.

He opened communications. “Hey! You’ve got eight minutes to give me one good reason why you’re in restricted Irken military territory.” 

The call went through audio-only. “Sheesh,” Red mumbled under his breath, “how old IS this heap?” Using a visual call like the rest of civilized society would’ve given a better idea of what he went up against, too. Oh well.

“Wait,” said the overdramatic guy. Someone in the background spilled their drink in a flurry of activity. “Wait, can he hear us?”

“Methinks he can.”

“Well, who opened the feed? Taso, did you sit on something?”

“H-hey, don’ lookit me! Mauv’s in charge of the communication and—”

“Oh goodness, Mauv! I forgot all about him. Tinka, make sure he’s somewhere safe.”

Voices spilled over each other in the growing chaos while someone (the female?) tried and failed to keep everyone calm. You’d think they’d have seen it coming. What, did they really think they could just cruise around space without running into even one Irken ship? Maybe they’d been running on luck this whole time and gotten overconfident.

In the corner of Red’s eye, his gauntlet blipped. He glanced at the incoming communique. Something coming from… Foodcortia? Red rolled his eyes and flipped the panel closed. Of course it’d be now that Foodcourtia tried to sell him coupons or whatever.

The connection cables went taut as the ports clicked, locking on both ships. Connection secure. Prepare to be boarded, douchebags.

The Lenient’s airlock opened with a rolling hiss. Red took a quick inventory check and slipped in. The thump of his boots echoed through the slick metal tubing. At the end of his path, a green circle of light pulsed slow and steady.

Red could already see the shifting shadows and silhouettes of his enemies. He crouched low, pressed against the warm tubing as he crept closer.

Flashes of something white and furry moved in the dim emergency generator’s lights. Red’s antennae perked straight up. The scent overwhelmed the cable tunnels. Fweezian! 

The Collective Memory silently screamed out to him: a split-second clip show harvested from all who’d come before him and learned the hard way what Fweezians meant.

War. Ten-year siege. Famine. Danger. Twenty-year siege. Dust. Fifty-year siege. Blackout. The sky’s all wings and lights and wings and eyes. Too bright! Death. Bad. TOO BRIGHT. Too much. Cold. Hurt. Scared. Rage. Rage. Rage.

Beware.

Be careful.

Red blinked, steadying himself of the walls of the connector cable. Remembered that the Snack Wars ended before he’d even left the Education Plug. The residual panic faded, but it echoed softly under his skin, thrumming through his muscles: Be careful, soldier. Be careful.

He blinked again. Harder. Okay, so at least one moth on board. How about the others?

The tips of Red’s antennae bobbed and twitched at the scents and vibrations of two, five… no, seven individuals ahead: one Truffloid, a few Screwheads, one Fweezian (which he should’ve figured out from the audio transmission), and someone else. The seventh crew member had a weak familiar scent but he couldn’t isolate it through the stink of the Truffloid on board.

Yeah, that’s doable. Red nodded to himself. Alright, new plan:

1. Forcefully board ship (Done).
2. Subdue/neutralize insurgent crew (optional: alive).
3. Collect bounty monies.
4. Obtain snacks.
5. Obtain boot replacement, additional snack.
6. Report for duty on Devastis.
7. Obtain praise, promotions, sweet new encodings, be awesome forever.
8. Wash The Lenient.

The Fweezie sat at the control panel, rubbing her foxlike face with one hand while the other three struggled to bring the ship system back online. Two Screwheads crowded around her, whispering between themselves. The Truffloid huddled in a nearby chair, floppy mushroom cap bent around her head like a fancy sunhat. The others couldn’t be accounted for. Hiding, maybe. Hopefully they wouldn’t be too much of a pain to track down.

The long stalks of the Truffloid’s fingers clasped together, and the damp sour stink of her fear clung to the air. “Has he said anything else? It’s been kinda quiet.” Hopefully, she glanced about the cabin. “You don’t suppose he’s decided to reconsider? O-or just leave us alone?”

“If you seriously believe that,” one of the Screwheads snorted, “I’ve got a bridge in East Twinfast to sell you.”

His fellow Screwhead gave a humorless smile over his shoulder. “You would if wasn’t demolished last month.”

“Yeah, but maybe if we could just reason with him?” This Truffloid really didn’t want to let it go. “I mean, lookit how it turned out with—”

The Fweezian raised a wing. Ragged old wounds split the delicate lacy membrane—seared and scarred from an Irken blaster. Functional, but (hopefully) useless for flight. She hadn’t taken her eyes off the control panel. “Pray, gentle Taso, thou must understand our own Mauv stands as the exception, not the norm. For all things the Irken race is known for, the quality of mercy stands not amongst them.” Her plumed antennae curled inward, twitching against the back of her chair. With a little sigh, she smoothed the frills of her musty uniform and glanced over her shoulder. The pupils in her enormous blue eyes narrowed into slits. “Is that not true, soldier?”

On cue, the others turned to behold the figure stepping out of their airlock.

“Yeah. Sure is.” Pulling himself to full height, Red’s shadow stretched along the walls until it touched the ceiling. Clad in a space-worthy uniform the wounded scarlet of an imploding sun, Red made towards them. He stared behind a black visor bleak and fathomless as a really spooky thing that couldn’t be fathomed. A black hole, maybe.

That mirror practice had really paid off.

The ragtag collection of rebels tensed. Both Screwheads pulled close together. One reached for a weapon.

“I wouldn’t.” A pair of blasters sprang from his PAK, already trained on their targets. Crud, he’d meant to say something smart and intimidating when he came in. “Time’s up, by the way.” Yeah, that worked.

In the thick of the main cabin, the familiar scent grew stronger. Red tried to isolate it, but the Truffloid had gone into panic mode. Under the stench of spores and sweat, he couldn’t even smell himself. These things were disgusting.

Red took a quick headcount while one of the Screwheads went into a series of lame threats or a speech or whatever. Something something, can’t kill ideas, something something, the heart of the rebellion, something something freedom. The usual.

There’d been seven on board; he knew that for sure. Four here, three more in the rear chambers. Right? Red glanced at the hollows dug into the sides of the cabin: a series of cubby holes large enough to squeeze into. Each one had a pillow. Each one stocked with trinkets, posters, blankets, and photos—stray shrapnel from the crew’s personal lives. They’d been sleeping in here.

Yet they flew a mid-size cruiser. These things came standard with at least two compartments—three, counting the engine room—with one acting as a dedicated living/sleeping space. Seven crew members split across two rooms meant only one should’ve been sleeping out in the cabin, if even that. Not unless they had a Blob or something on board, but anything that huge would’ve left evidence of itself.

Did they use the spare rooms for cargo storage? Red frowned. He hadn’t altered his whole schedule for a bunch of pirates, had he?

In the background, the passionate Screwhead had moved into the second paragraph of his speech.

Nah. Pirates weren’t this preachy.

“Sir. Fellow soldier.” It came from one of the Screwheads. The one with the shorter screw who’d been quiet until now.

Red’s head snapped around. Had that thing just…?

“Please, you don’t must to do this.” The words came raw, poorly conjugated and untranslated. Because it didn’t need to be translated. 

The Screwhead was speaking Irken.

Hardly daring to move, the Fweezian and the Truffloid exchanged a look. The other Screwhead had gone the color of bleached burlap.

“Be this way, not-must it need be!” It got worse. Either he’d been working from a practiced script or he’d just realized his mistake and panicked. Or both. “Your enemies be ours enemy. This, know…” The rest of the sentence trailed away pathetically.

“Excuse me?” Red’s voice hissed soft. “Offworlder, I think I must’ve misheard that.” He stalked closer. “Repeat yourself.”

The Fweezie braced hard against her chair. “Oh Tinka,” she whispered, “what did you do?”

The Screwhead (Tinka, apparently) stood firm, surprisingly. Stupidly. “Well, what else can we do? Taso’s right, we should at least try, or else what kind of hypocrites are we?”

“Thou needn’t try like that! Moon save us, of all the profitless endeavors I’ve never—”

“Nobody was talking to you, moth. You.” Red’s PAK blaster tapped the Screwhead’s temple. “Repeat yourself, I said. Now.”

He did. It was even more putrid the second time around.

“Okay, I have got to be hearing things. My translator’s busted or malfunctioning or something because I know…” Red shook his head with a furious little chuckle. “I know I did not just hear MY language just come out of YOUR disgusting offworlder face.”

How had the grody thing even learned it? Or even heard it? Red could understand if it’d been the moth—their languages had similar roots here and there—but still, Irkens kept their stuff on lockdown. The translators naturally hid their native language, even when speaking to each other.

Even if it had been overheard, a novice couldn’t pick up more than a handful of nouns at best. This Screwhead had actually managed a half-coherent sentence. He’d spoken the language before. He’d had practice. Which meant someone had to have taught him.

Red’s squeedlyspooch twisted. I think I’m gonna be sick.

“Listen.” This Screwhead didn’t know when to quit, did he? “I meant no offense.”

To his credit, the one called Tinka truly didn’t seem to understand the gravity of what he’d just done. He was just exceptionally stupid. Didn’t make it any less repugnant, though.

After a moment to calm himself, Red turned to him again. “In that case, tell me what you wanted to tell me. And keep my language out of it this time.”

A frown wrinkled across the Fweezie’s muzzle. She glanced at the Truffloid, who’d perked up hopefully, and tisked.

Tinka looked to his fellows—none of them seemed to specifically be in charge—and when nobody reproached him, he tried again. Same stuff as before, smoother coherent sentences this time. He tried to draw commonalities between himself and Red, as if sharing military backgrounds erased species lines.

He pleaded that Red could be “better” and “more than this”. Weird take from a Screwhead, but true enough. One always had room to improve, to grow higher, to elevate. Constant improvement, constant progress. Of course Red could be more. That’s why he’d been headed to Devastis in the first place.

It almost seemed as if this Screwhead had some sense. “In the end, your enemies are our enemies.” Until that, anyway.

Red tilted his head to the side. The spoot was that supposed to mean?

“The Empire,” the one called Tinka said. “The Empire hurts everyone, even you. They’ve hurt you the same way they’ve…” He blinked at the Fweezian’s ruined wing. “Well, not the exact same way, but…”

“Uh-huh.” With a shift of the shoulder, the helmet retracted into his suit. Red arched an eyebrow and smirked. “You sure about that?”

There’s a look everyone gets when they know they’re boned. Not outmatched, not defeated, not bested. Completely and utterly screwed now and forever. No do-overs, no take-backs. That’s it. It’s over. Say bye to life, say hi to your ghosts and gods if you’ve got ‘em.

Red had to admit, face-to-face work had its perks. It had been a long time since he’d seen that look.

The crew stared at the simple icon burned into the Irken soldier’s forehead. That last 00.5% of hope they’d held onto since The Lenient’s appearance withered and died. “An Elite,” one of them whispered.

They should’ve figured that out from the sweet ride and uniform, but hope made people kind of dumb sometimes. Hope or misplaced confidence. Screwheads and Truffloids might have been stupid, but they weren’t morons. Clearly from their scars and anti-Empire pamphlets (anti-Empire but not anti-Irken, interestingly) they understood the threat they faced.

Yet something had given them the sheer gall to think they could’ve talked Red down. A familiarity.

Red’s antennae twitched, freer outside the helmet. That scent hiding under the stench of offworlders. He knew it now. “You’ve got an Irken aboard.” It explained the language stuff, the lack of total panic, everything. 

There’d been a rush to hide someone when Red’s ship appeared. “That’s this… Mauv guy, right?” He looked amongst the jerry-rigged garbage crew, got no answer, and shrugged. “Thought so. I don’t suppose any of you are gonna tell me where he is?”

Nope. Stubborn defiance all around. It wouldn’t take much to squeeze a confession out of them, but information extraction took too much time that he’d already wasted.

With a great roll of his eyes, Red turned for the remaining chambers of the ship. “Fiiine. Gotta do everything myself.” One of the PAK blasters swiveled backwards as he approached the door. “None of you move; I don’t want to shoot anybody and lose my premium.”

In hindsight, he should’ve brought along a Capture Capsule™ or a pocket web or something. “Whatever, I’m five seconds from the planet. It’s fine.”

As expected, the first hub housed the main engines and hardware. Signs of Screwhead manufacturing covered the room top to bottom, all dust and grit. Nobody’d touched it since completion. Except…

Red squinted at the engine’s entry compartment: a shiny clean rectangle glinting in the grime. He swiped his finger along the side. Cleaner than an autoclave. 

“Huh.” Someone had come digging in here recently, and definitely not a Screwhead. The disinfectant killed their scent and prints, whoever they’d been.

Approaching the second door, Red’s gauntlet blipped. It detected another Irken PAK on the premises. No signal until he’d gotten into close range, either; someone had jammed it.

That meant whoever waited behind that door was one of two things: a prisoner or a defective. Or a prisoner kept so long that they’d lost all senses and become defective if such a thing were possible. Though he hated to think it, all evidence pointed towards the second option. That Screwhead insurgent had been convinced that Red’s betrayal—no, his defection—from the Irken Empire was not only possible but correct. He’d had the confidence of someone who’d seen it before. 

All of them almost jumped out of their skin the second Red mentioned another Irken aboard. Not just fear of being caught, no, that had been concern. Nobody got that worried about enemy prisoners. Not unless they’d stopped being enemies.

The two Irken signals practically sat on top of each other. He’s in there alright.

Showtime. Red took a long drag of his slooshie, holstered it, and shot two pulses into the door. It melted into a smoldering puddle in the hallway to reveal…

Donuts.

Boxes and boxes of donuts. All arranged in haphazard rows and cardboard columns, half of them open, and all of them (regrettably) empty.

Not only donut boxes, either. Looking closer, Red discovered the debris of a banquet fit for a planetary warlord (or at least a high-rank governor). Old napkins, fry cartons, soda cups, sandwich crusts, candy wrappers, and crumpled bags of chips rustled in the air conditioning. Popcorn kernels cracked underfoot. Flecks of nacho cheese sprinkled the walls and rainbow sprinkles freckled the floor. Straws slanted half-mast in hollow ice cream cartons. Cans of whipped cream and Instant Fruit clustered along the shelves in herds. And that was just the first layer.

For a moment, Red could only stare. His insides gave an undisciplined growl, even though he’d just eaten monthly rations a week ago.

A beep pierced the air. Red snapped back to his senses. He pivoted on his heel, blaster raised, and in one clean shot, blew up a microwave.

“HEY!” Someone coughed inside the clouds of smoke and microwave dust. That same irritating voice from the audio feed. The one they called Mauv. “What’s the big idea?!”

Red squinted over the fortress of snack boxes. Within it laid a cozy nest of pillows and blankets arranged upon a large pliable cushion. I looked kind of like a couch, and not the bouncy hard kind used for nap passes, either. This was the sink-down, foam padded, feather-stuffed, luxurious lie-down-and-never-want-to-get-up stuff of Vortian couches. Looking closer, he realized it had no armrests or backboards.

A bed. Not a bunk, not a cot, not a couch. An honest-to-Irk actual bed.

In the center of it all, cocooned in Fweezian silks and furs, another Irken frowned at him. He sprawled taut with an odd kink in his back, either coiled to strike or tuck in for illegal naptime. His eyes—the rich violet of grape smoothies and shiny wet intestines—narrowed, annoyed. As if someone had forgotten to put chocolate shavings on his sundae. He held a fresh plate of steaming pizza rolls.

“If you wanted one you could’ve just asked, sheesh.” Mauv brushed a stray chunk of microwave glass off his robed shoulder. “I wouldn’t have given you one, but I probably would have thought about it.”

“I…” Red blinked at the room, still dazed by the sheer decadence of it all. “What IS all of this?”

“Oh! Neat, huh?” He bounced himself on the cushions. Silk blankets billowed out in waves of supreme coziness. “They call it a bed. A lot of species haven’t evolved out of needing sleep, so they use it for their temporary shut-downs. I’ve been using it as a snacking couch though, so I dunno if technically it still counts as—”

“I know what a bed is!” Red unclenched his fist. The situation called for calm procedural questioning. Cool and calm. He unclenched his other fist. “I mean what are you doing here?”

“Working.” Mauv blew on a pizza roll and popped it into his mouth. “Obviously.” Stretching, he rubbed the hunch in his back. “You’re kinda rude, you know that? Blowing up someone else’s microwave and walking into their mission like this.” He glanced over his shoulder with a sniff. “Didn’t anyone teach you not to interrupt your tallers?”

That tore it.

Red pounced.

The full force of his PAK legs lashed out and slammed down hard. Pierced something soft and wriggly. Cloudbursts of fur and feathers rolled through the air. Razored tips of the PAK leg scraped the solid metal beneath the blankets.

Missed.

The Irken known as Mauv crouched a few feet away with his smug stupid fat stupid face full of pizza roll. He swallowed, frowning. “I liked that blanket...” He swept backwards to duck Red’s second strike. Didn’t even drop the snacks. “For an Elite, you’re not too good at this.”

Red reached into his PAK, searching the weapon compartment for something sharp and deadly. Found only blasters—no good here. Not unless he wanted quadruple-digit fines on top of his debt. Fine; this skreg didn’t deserve a quick death anyway.

He rushed the traitor again. Red’s claws caught Mauv’s robed shoulder and yanked him backward.

The defect’s antennae sprang up in surprise. He dodged, but his bare feet slipped on the rumpled satin. “Whoa!” Scrambling, he reached out to catch the plate of pizza rolls before they hit the ground.

Mauv tucked and sprang before Red’s boot could smash his eye. “When’s the last time you did any hand-to-hand, last cycle?” His tongue coiled around another roll and snapped it up. “Last decade ?”

Red’s PAK leg whistled through empty air. “Stay STILL, you gutless defect! You’re disgusting—out here, nestled up and getting all snoozly with offworlders. What would you know about the Irken Elite?”

Even as he said it, Red couldn’t believe it. He should have found a broken prisoner hacking up blood in a prison cell. A foot-high drone gone half-crazy and full turncoat. A brainwashed engineer begging for death with his eyes. Red had expected damaged PAKs, hacked systems, viruses—weakness and failure.

But no. No, this gangly puke-pail dodged, swiveled, and sprang with the easy grace of an arena fighter. And even if this Mauv guy wasn’t his taller—and he wasn’t—he clearly had some significant height on him. Yet even with height, rank, and the respect of his race, even still he’d thrown in his lot with Irk’s enemies. A level of defection unimaginable.

The other Irken raised an eyebrow. “Uh. Because I am one?”

“You’re gonna pay for this, you two-faced—I’m sorry, what?” Red lowered arms and blinked. Slowly, their earlier conversation came back to him. He’d said something about a mission. “What’s your business here?”

“I told you I was working, you moron.” The Irken formerly known as “Mauv” pulled a wet cloth from his PAK and rubbed it on his forehead. Green concealer and bits of tomato sauce wiped away to reveal an Irken Elite icon. “Elite Purple, division of Infiltration and Information Extraction. And I think the better question is, what’s your business here, butting in on someone’s assignment without any clearance?”

Red put a hand on his hip and sneered, “Since when do you need clearance to engage an enemy vessel?”

“Buh!” Purple’s hands gestured wildly at some invisible answer. “What part of Infiltration Division don’t you get?!”

“Why didn’t YOU say something?”

“I sent a stand-down signal, what more do you want?”

A likely story. Red pointedly ignored the unread Foodcourtia communique still blinking on his gauntlet. “I dunno maybe a simple ‘don’t shoot, we’re on the same team’? Besides, you look pretty cozy from the looks of—”

“Um, Mauv? Are you okay in…” The Truffloid in the doorway put her reedy fingers against her mouth. She looked between Red and the messy Elite insignia on Purple’s forehead. “…oh. Oh goodness.”

She hadn’t come alone. Behind her, the Fweezian stared with bright furious eyes.

Before Red could move, the silent scent signal hit him: HOLD. WAIT. PLEASE.

The Fweezie’s fuzzy antennae perked and twitched; she’d smelled it too. Gotten a stronger whiff, by the look of it. She hesitated in the doorway with an odd little expression.

Red followed her line of sight and did a double-take.

Another Irken stood in Purple’s place. He was a pathetic little thing, sickly and hollow-eyed, stooped so low his antennae drooped past his knees. The once luxurious robe, now bedraggled and damaged from the scuffle, hung sideways off his thin shoulder. Someone could’ve beaten him to death with a feather. This one here, this was the one known as Mauv.

A handy trick, Red had to admit. Demeaning, revolting, and vomit-inducing, but handy. Kind of.

“O-oh, Taso! Lady Greendown! Oh, I’m so happy you’re alright. I went to hide somewhere safe like Tinka told me too, but when I heard all the commotion I got worried. When I came out I found, um…” He glanced at Red.

Red stared back, no help at all.

“I found this guy! We’ve been talking, and gosh, I think there’s been a misunderstanding.” Purple clasped his fingers together with a hopeful little smile sweet enough to rot Fluoriden steel.

The Fweezian’s wings flared at her back. She didn’t return his smile. “Aye, so I see. By the crest impressed upon thine fair head, thou sharest much with this ally, indeed. ‘Mauv’.”

“Uh.” Purple cringed close to his pillow nest. “The thing about that is, see, before the evil empire chased me out I used to…” He sighed. “Aw, screw it.”

In one smooth movement, Purple reached behind his back and pulled out a long metal bracer. His spine popped and cracked as he dragged himself up to his true height.

He rose to meet Red eye to eye.

Same height. They were the exact same height. Right down to the curve of their heads and the tips of their antennae.

How dare he.

Elite Purple looked Red up and down with a surprised little hum. “How about that? I’m really not your taller after all. How are you tall as me and still this—”

A throwing knife hissed over his shoulder. It thunked into the wall, veins of ice spiderwebbing over the varnish.

“I knew it!” The Fweezie rushed them. She smashed through snack debris, waves of pizza crust and donut boxes crashing behind her. Out of her pocket flashed a knife. With a flick, the knife extended to a spear—curved, wicked, and gleaming. “I knew we couldn’t trust you bugs!”

The blade caught the collar of Purple’s robe and sent it fluttering across the room. He tucked and rolled to avoid a Screwhead leaping through the doorway. “Great, now look what you did. I had a great thing going and you just had to ruin it!” He rounded on the Fweezian. “And who’re you calling bug, moth? What kind of language is that for an altruist? So much for peace and love.”

The Screwhead’s massive hammer smashed inches from Red’s torso. PAK legs clawed at the screw as Red kicked him in the ribs. “I found a rogue ship hovering vital Irken territory and leaking raid plans all over the circuit! What was I supposed to do, ride by and ignore it?”

“Yes!” Chased into a corner, Purple’s PAK gripped the walls and climbed for it. “Didn’t any of that seem weird to you? I mean, what moron decides to attack Devastis of all places?!”

The Truffloid drooped sadly in the corner. “Hey…”

Purple shrugged. “Sorry, Taso, but that plan really was the worst.”

The Screwhead’s hammer slammed the wall. Hard enough for Purple’s legs to lose grip. “I wasn’t gonna say anything, but…”

“You’re not sorry at all,” the mushroom sniffed.

“No, but thanks for the free ride to—WHOA!” The hammer vibrations shook Purple off the wall. He crashed into a mountain of fry cartons and booked it before the hammer smashed his head into jelly. “Would you cut that out?!”

Red caught the harsh scent of frost. Dodged too late. 

The Fweezian spear caught his shoulder and bit deep. Sub-zero shocks of venom shot through his system. Red staggered backward, wheezing as his right arm went numb; freezing from the inside out. His PAK hummed in turn as it countered with anti-venom.

The Fweezian’s wings—grounded but functional—hummed and buzzed around his head. Rapid winks of light flashed off her scales. Searing. Blinding. It swerved at the sight of Red’s blaster.

Wheezing, and half-blinded, Red swung towards the light and fired.

Several screamed—Red, included. Had he just shot a Fweezian in the face? One of the fancy kinds? Over two hundred thousand monies down the drain!

When the light dissipated, he found the Fweezie clutching her bottom left arm. A nasty green mass of fur and blood hanging by a thread. She gritted her teeth and watched his blaster warily.

Red coughed against the chill in his chest. “Get cute and I’ll shoot off the other three.”

The PAK blaster threateningly reared over his back to show he meant it. It beeped for a reload.

Purple looked up from where he had the Truffloid pinned in a corner. “Maybe next time, don’t waste your shots on an innocent microwave—HEY!” He ducked the empty blaster chucked at his skull.

It ricocheted off the wall, caught the Truffloid in the mouth, and knocked her out cold.

Purple skittered up the wall before anyone could knock him off this time. “I’m on your side, you know!”

“Hand slipped.” Red rolled his numb shoulder and shifted backwards.

And here came the last Screwhead—the one who’d tried talking Red down before. Judging from the spiked hammer he held, Red guessed that peace talks had finally broken down.

He mentally flipped through his armory: acid spitters, saws, legs… weapons to maim, not subdue. Oh, well. Red tugged the Fweezian knife out of the wall and rushed the Screwhead.

The Screwhead swung back at him, but he got distracted trying not to step on the unconscious Truffloid. The swings came slow and middling. He couldn’t bring the hammer down without accidentally hitting her. Finally, that mushroom was good for something.

Red took his opening and tackled.

Above them, high on the ceiling, Purple gave a crow of triumph. “ There it is!”

An air vent crashed to the floor. The brawl broke apart, and one by one, the fighters looked up.

Purple waved back at them. Slowly, he dragged out a massive metal chest out of an air vent. With a twist and a leap, he landed in a wreckage of pillows and candy wrappers. Out sprang a blaster of his own, not trained on his attackers, but the chest at his feet.

“Lucky for you, Elite, one of us thought ahead. Watch and learn.” Grinning with all his teeth, Purple kicked the lid open. “OKAY, nobody move! I’ve got a hostage!”

“Uh, Elite?” Red tapped his shoulder. “I think you might want to check that.”

Purple glanced down. Slowly, he lifted the blanket covering the lumps inside and blinked at the contents. Poked them a little. Lifted a little moth wing and watched it flop back down. “Oh, right. You’re supposed to feed these things, aren’t you?”

Well, that explained the missing crew members. Red winced and ignored the horrified shrieks and sobs of rage behind him. (That Fweezie had some lungs on her. At least she wasn’t after him this time.) “How did you live in here all this time and not notice? Couldn’t you smell them?”

Purple’s PAK legs clashed against the Fweezie’s spear, tangling around it. He grasped hard and swung both moth and spear over his shoulder. The tip snapped, leaving him with a fancy stick. “It’s always smelly in here.” He jabbed the splintered fancy stick at the Screwhead coming from his left. “I live with a Truffloid.”

Okay, fair.

Movement blurred in the corner of Red’s eye. Red grabbed the remains of the microwave and smashed it on the Screwhead’s skull at the same time the hammerhead came down on his damaged boot. 

Eighty pounds of steel slammed Red’s exposed foot. It cracked.

Red buckled. He grabbed a ledge to prop himself, grinding his teeth against the pain. More than there should have been. Shouldn’t his PAK have administered the painkillers by now? He rolled his right shoulder with a deep shuddering breath. The PAK was still busy dosing antivenom and rebuilding nerve centers. Great.

He eyed the unconscious Screwhead beneath him. The sharp tip of his PAK leg scraped along the thin skin of the Screwhead’s throat. It’d be a quick throat puncture. Barely any effort at all. Red’s broken foot screamed in agony. Bounties just needed a body… but still only half the amount for a live one.

Red withdrew the PAK leg, shifting his weight onto it. That’s what legs were for, after all. He curled the real leg against himself, groaning at the relieved pressure on his injured foot, and looked around.

The room’s chaos had dialed down to a simmer. On the far side of the room, Purple held the second Screwhead at gunpoint under his boot and the Fweezie at a stalemate. That was the nice thing about weak-hearted species and hostages. You could always find replacements.

At a glance, the worst damage had been to the Fweezie’s arm. Maybe a skull fracture on the Screwhead if Red had thrown that microwave hard enough. Nothing that couldn’t be fixed. Excluding the hostages Purple forgot to feed, they could land with the crew intact. 

Good. A couple of hiccups along the way, but still good. “Okay.” Red took a deep breath, realigned himself, and let the agony in his foot fade to background noise. When he exhaled and opened his eyes, he found Purple’s gaze upon him.

The Elite arched an eyebrow and leaned his neck forward, interested. Thinking. His eyes flicked to the unconscious Screwhead. The compromised boot on Red’s mangled foot. Back to the conscious Screwhead and fuming Fweezian at gunpoint.

Purple’s antennae perked high and twitched. “Oh.” He smiled a little, and Red didn’t like a single thing about it.

Nothing in Red’s expression had changed. He stared back flat, expressionless.

It didn’t matter. The snotloaf dug it out anyway. “Now I get it. It’s a monies thing.” The little smile curled and grew teeth. “Isn’t it? What, didja run into a gambling problem? Too many nights in the arena stands, shuttlebug?”

Red loped past him with a sneer, one careful eye still on the bleeding Fweezie. “I don’t think that’s any of your business. Look, it’s like you said, we’re eight minutes from Devastis. Right now let’s just focus on landing and getting these—”

Purple shoved his way into Red’s path. “Hey, you’re the one who boarded my ship.”

“YOUR ship?!” The Fweezian rounded on them with bared teeth and all her fur fluffed out. She kind of looked like an electrified snowcone.

“Hey. Excuse me.” The tip of Purple’s blaster poked the Fweezie in the nose. “We were in the middle of a conversation. Irk, why is everybody so rude today?” Purple put his free hand to his hip and spared her a glance. “The ship belonged to you, you’re Empire property, and I haven’t turned anything in yet. So yeah, my ship.”

The snarling Fweezian’s needle teeth glinted in the low light. Her three working fists clenched hard. For a moment, it seemed as if the moth might ignore the blaster two centimeters from her face and do something stupid. But a Class Eight sapient had better sense than that. Instead, she stared him in the eye and said, low and livid and very clear, “We are nobody’s property.”

Which was a pretty silly thing to say. In the end, everybody belonged to somebody.

Red chuffed under his breath. “Don’t know why you’re looking at us like it’s our fault. If you don’t wanna spin silk in a sweatshop, don’t lose a war.”

“I know, right? It’s that easy. Anyway, like I was saying, you boarded my ship, compromised my mission, totaled at least…” Purple did a quick body count. “…nine of my favorite pillows, killed an innocent microwave, AND ruined my nap. Explain the part where this isn’t my business.”

Please. As if this waste of space was even authorized for naps.

“I already told you, I found a rogue vessel in—you know what? No. I’m not having this conversation again.” 

There shouldn’t have even been a conversation. This was stupid. This whole thing was stupid. That was the trouble with other Irkens, nobody knew how to just shut up and do their stupid job. The sooner they landed, the sooner they could separate and never see each other again.

“It doesn’t matter. You wanna be that nosy, we can trade life stories when we’re back on the ground.” Red rubbed his broken foot while the PAK legs carried him out of range for Purple’s stupidness. He needed room to think. “Can we just worry about right now?”

Purple shrugged with an airy “Fine with me...”

“Fine.”

Red checked the time. Eighteen—no, seventeen minutes until he had to report for duty. Counting the time it’d take to dock ship and pass through decontamination, more like ten minutes. Playing around with this idiot and his stupid idiot mission had devoured all of Red’s excess time.

“Eugh.” Distantly, Red wondered if he’d need to split the haul with the other Elite. Did it even qualify for a bounty if they’d already been accounted for in an infiltration mission? Probably.

Next to the clock, in the corner of his gauntlet’s screen, the Foodcourtia messages from earlier were still blinking. Red skimmed quickly through them: one ad for snack coupons and two Do Not Engage messages. Too late for that now. Eyes forward, Red.

According to the price guide, insurgents under infiltration could still be harvested. Worst case scenario, Red would have to split the bounty, which would bring it to a little over half 100k, assuming the moth’s fancy coloring wasn’t a fluke. Not quite enough for all of The Lenient’s modification debt, but it covered the majority. And it still got him new boots.

Alright, so Capture Plan 2.0:

1. Lock down remaining insurgents (Done).
2. Replace boot. Repair foot (if time).
3. Obtain snacks.
4. Report for duty
5. Bribe new commander with snacks to apologize for near-tardiness.
6. Punch Elite Purple in the throat (stabbing also acceptable).
7. Obtain additional snack.
8. Wash The Lenient.
9. Mop up the blood and dispose of the body that Elite Purple had just shot in the face— wait.

…Wait.

Wait, WHAT?!

Red stared in horror at the dead Screwhead at his feet. Dark blue blood stained his boots and soaked through his exposed sock. “I—you?! WHY DID YOU—?!”

“Whups.” Purple blew the smoke off his blaster muzzle. He looked him dead in the eye. “Finger slipped.”

Merrily, Purple skipped out of strangling range and pulled the plate of pizza rolls out of his PAK. They were still hot and steaming. “So, neat fact about that guy. His name’s Tinka. Nice fella—knew how to make a mean Instant Fruit salad. Sang nice little Screwhead songs to me when I was faking trauma episodes.” He popped a pizza roll in his mouth and gestured to the one Red had conked with the microwave. “He escaped the Belts a few years ago along with his brother over there.”

“What’s that got to do… with…” Red’s thoughts bounced back to him. Everybody belongs to somebody.

But these two Screwheads weren’t just conquered inhabitants. They’d been actively enslaved, escaped, and then quietly recaptured by the Empire. Purple may have been the one who’d fired the shot, but Red created the circumstances which had led to that shot. He had been the one who’d initiated the attack by compromising the infiltration mission. Meaning the blame ultimately came down on him, so…

“Anyway, it’s a good thing you’re not hurting for monies, ‘cause—” Purple gestured to the Screwhead’s body, spitting bits of pizza roll as he spoke. “—looks like you owe the Irken Empire ten thousand.”

Red leveled a flat stare at Purple’s comfy little smirk. Slowly, he closed his fingers around a chunk of loose shrapnel. With the heartless precision of an Irken Elite, he threw it and sent the plate tumbling out of Purple’s hands.

Lights stuttered above them. Not dull orange emergency lights, but the bright whites of the main system. It happened again. How did—

Purple’s fist smashed into Red’s cheek.

Red went reeling backward, his good boot slipping through blood and blankets and pillow feathers. He stumbled into the hall behind him, righted himself, and parried the second fist before it caught him between the eyes. PAK legs clawed the walls for leverage, braced, and ricocheted Red into his target.

They collided—a gnashing, slashing, flailing, hissing knot of fists and claws and legs and arms and metal. Environments whirled as the fight shifted out of the halls and into the bridge.

“You scuzzsack! You absolute SCUZZSACK! Who the spoots do you think you are, barging in here tearing up nests and snackpiles like you own the place?” Purple’s claws clamped around Red’s antenna and bashed his skull into the control panel. Hard. “You know how long I had those rolls in the microwave? Like twenty minutes!”

Claws dug deep into the flesh of Red’s head. Dragged him up and slammed him again. Drew back with a yelp when the heel of Red’s boot hit him in the spooch.

That was a nice sound. Red flipped over and kicked him again. “Aw, poor baby.” He hacked a glob of bright pink and bloodied spit right in Purple’s big ugly face.

“AUGH YOU GOT IT IN MY MOUTH!”

“So sorry doing my duty messed up your squeeby little naptime.” But for a soft squeeb, the fucker still hit like a railgun. And he still had Red’s antenna clenched in his glove. “You’re gonna make me late screwing around here. Some of us have places to be!” Red lashed out and hit something soft.

Purple hissed and wiggled out of the way, but didn’t loosen his grip. “No kidding, genius. Why’d you think I was headed to Devastis in the first place?”

Oh, you’ve got to be kidding.  

He’d gotten the summons too. This festering pukestain had the nerve to get a summons for Invader training—THE most prestigious title in the Irken military— and had the total gall to be the same height as him? 

Red snarled and lashed out—only to find nobody there and his antenna free.

“Quick question.” Purple leaned over the control panel, his puffy eye squinting in the bright lights of the bridge. “Wasn’t this thing broken before?” He tilted his head towards the light. “I thought the power went out.”

It had.

Red met him at the bloodied and dented control panel. The lit and blinking functional control panel. How did… His antennae perked. “Where’s the moth?”

As one, they turned and followed their path of destruction from Purple’s room to the hall to the bridge to the wall. White fuzz mingled with a green blood trail smearing the gaping hole in the airlock.

The airlock with the cable connecting the rebel ship to The Lenient.

HIS Lenient.

A foreign body at this very moment was physically touching—or worse, sitting —in The Lenient. Hacking her beautiful power core. Sapping her energy to jumpstart the scrapheap ship. Shedding disgusting moth dust across her upholstery. Raiding her glorious mini-fridge!

“My baby!” Red bolted for the airlock.

Purple jumped a toppled command chair and followed on his heels. “Aw, spoots!”

To Red's surprise, a sharp scent of panic pulsed and spiked behind him. Antennae straight and flat, Elite Purple’s bare feet slapped the floor in great running leaps. Every breath peppered with little “Spoots, spoots, spoots, oh spoots ” all the way through the connector cable and into The Lenient’s cockpit.

A waste of energy. Sized for solo flights, The Lenient couldn’t fit two tallers and a Fweezian, but that didn’t stop Purple from trying. His lanky body crawled halfway out the airlock, one hand reaching for Red in vain. “Wait.”

Climbing into his cockpit, Red spared the Elite a simmering glare and turned away. One intruder at a time. His skin shivered in the chill; she’d wasted no time making herself at home and lowered the temperature.

A low growl rumbled in his throat. Red stormed toward the Fweezie filth sitting her filthy body in his chair. Bleeding all over his console while the three working arms redirected his energy feeds and fuel lines. How hard did one have to pull to separate a moth’s head from its shoulders?

More slapping and scrambling behind him. In the corner of Red’s eye, Purple had squeezed most of his body through the airlock. “Irk’s sake—wait!”

Oh, so now he wanted to hold back on his captives? Should’ve thought of that before.

The moth’s antennae perked. She tucked and rolled before Red’s claws reached her. He followed.

Forget the bounty. Forget the fines. Red could get the monies some other way. This alien was leaving his ship. Now. In pieces, if necessary.

The saws of his volt-cutters rose squealing out of his PAK, spitting sparks across the cockpit. They’d sliced through hulls and barricades. He’d never seen what they could do to a soft fleshy body, but it felt like a great day to find out.

The Fweezian bared her nasty needle teeth, unsheathing a knife. Maybe the tip of the broken spear, maybe a new one. Didn’t matter; the cutters could handle both, and she knew it.

Purple squeaked in his throat. “WAIT! Lady Greendown—uh, Harpe! H-hey, can’t we talk about this?”

The Fweezian retreated backward. Flinched when the sparks of Red’s saws burned the fur on her cheeks. “Thou art a knave and a scoundrel, deceitful slave of the Empire!” She took shelter under the command console, sandwiched between the wall and the minifridge. “We’ve nothing to discuss.”

What kind of disgusting coward used an innocent fridge for a body shield? Red bent down to go after her and nearly got his eye poked out by her stupid little knife.

“Come on, I didn’t lie about everything.” Did this idiot Elite EVER shut up? “Like… um… I really did like those blankets you made! That counts for something, right?” Purple desperately rooted around his PAK for something. What, Red didn’t care to know.

It served as a decent distraction, though. The second the moth’s gaze shifted, Red lunged under the console, snatched her leg, and yanked.

Yelping, the Fweezie flipped over and fluttered her wings. In The Lenient’s fully functional lights, the flash of scales became an erratic strobe. Blinding, even when Red turned away and shut his eyes.

Didn’t matter. Eyes or no eyes, nobody knew Red’s ship better than Red. The minifridge sat to his right, meaning the secondary glove box was right above him. He punched it open, snatched the loaded blaster inside, and honed in on the quick vibration of Fweezie wings.

She cried out before Red fired a shot. Something thumped hard next to him. The moth’s foot. Coughing, she stumbled and fell.

Red’s vision cleared. Billows of smoke curled through the ship, dark blue and heavy with the scent of citric acid and clove. Purple had set off a smoke bomb.

“Non-lethal methods! Code… whatever!” Through the smoke, Purple’s silhouette tossed a pair of cuffs through the air.

Red’s free hand caught it. The moth struggled to her feet, weakly clawing at him. He grabbed a fistful of delicate wing membrane and kicked her feet out from under her. The second she went down, he caught her wrist and snapped on the cuff.

Instantly, mechanical cables snaked out to become a set of six, one to capture each limb.

Red blinked away the last of blinding effects and stood to consider the bound and subdued Fweezian at his feet. He prodded the intricate filigree patterns in her wing with the toe of his boot. “Greendown, huh? As in the royal Greendowns?” He raised an eyebrow at Purple’s nod. “Huh. Thought we slaughtered all of those cycles ago.”

“We did, sorta,” Purple said, coming up from behind. “But nobility’s got all these little derivatives and stuff. Offspring of the cousin of a bastard duke’s uncle’s mistress’s nurse or whatever, I dunno. Still counts, I guess.”

“Sounds stupid and complicated.”

“It is.”

“No wonder they’re dead.” The Greendown had either gone unconscious or incapacitated from the smoke bomb. Red nudged her cheek with his boot. Unconscious. “Wait… you had those bombs this entire time?”

Purple looked up from his gauntlet. “Sure I did.”

“Why didn’t you use that in the FIRST place?!”

He gave a great big roll of his eyes. “Because I didn’t think of it. Duh.” Cramped inside The Lenient’s cockpit, Purple knelt on the floor, one elbow propped on the minifridge. He gestured to the scuffle’s debris. “What was all that about, anyway? We both had her; she wasn’t going anywhere. Even if she did, we just would’ve gone with her.”

“She was in my ship,” Red told him.

“…so?”

Red reset the thermostat while he took damage assessment for his beloved Lenient. Boot prints and wing scales and bloodstains. Scuffed minifridge. Annoying, but easily fixed. “So my ship is mine. She belongs to me .”

Elite Purple tilted his head, cocked his eyebrow at him, then shrugged. Figure an Infiltrator not to understand the value of a good ship; they spent all their time leeching off everyone else’s.

With the Fweezian lying incapacitated and more room to roam, Purple stalked about Red’s cabin, taking in the surroundings. The holographic star map slowly rotated alongside a flightpath the moth had begun to reroute before being interrupted. Muted in the screen above it, The Announcer silently counted down the Top Twenty Forbidden Snacks Of All Time, in order from least to most delicious.

“Not bad,” he said, “but I’ve seen nicer. Ooh, nice cupholder though! Is this custom made?” Purple ignored Red’s irritated huff. “You know, you never gave me your name, Elite…” He spotted the I.D. plaque engraved above the steering stick. “…Red.”

“You didn’t request it, and it wasn’t important.” Not that Red was required to release his identification to anyone besides superior officers in the first place.

Red wiped the moth dust off his suit and rose to dump the Fweezie into her own ship—and Purple too, while he was at it. Let him find his own way to Devastis. Out of the corner of his eye, he glanced at stars drifting by the window. He slowed to a stop.

Why were the stars drifting?

At the same time, Purple appeared over his shoulder. “Are we moving?”

The Lenient chirped as if in response. A thin scroll of yellow text ran along the bottom of the console: ENERGY TRANSFERAL: 100% COMPLETION.

Together, they stared out at a rogue Fweezian ship, fully powered and operational. Without a pilot.

And slowly drifting down to Devastis.

The Lenient jerked violently. Red’s broken foot collapsed under him, and he fell backwards into Purple.

Drifting? Make that falling. Fast. Very fast.

“Disconnect! Lenient, disconnect from unauthorized ship immediately!”

INSUFFICIENT POWER. PLEASE DISCONNECT MANUALLY. A second message flashed above it in stark black and red. WARNING: INCOMING PLANET AHEAD.

“Thanks, I noticed. You—move.” Shoving the useless Irken lump away from the chair, Red hopped into his rightful place and gripped the steering stick.

Nebulas and satellites and stars and ships smeared in a blur. Temperature control hummed as the falling ship dragged the tethered Lenient into Devastis’ atmosphere.

The Elite behind him dug his claws into the back of Red’s chair. “What are you doing? You can’t rip us off; we’ll just get sucked out of the air—”

“Not ripping us off.”

Devastis streaked by the windshield in a whirling splotch of browns and greens, broken by the occasional landmark. There went the crest of the Arena Spire. Combat hubs. Firing ranges. The Punishment Cube.

Red axed Lenient’s thrusters and eased her into cruising speeds. Just enough to stay ahead of the crashing ship and give the connector hose some slack. “I just need to keep her in the air in the meantime until—”

SMASH!

Oof, that sounded expensive.

CRACK.

That, too.

They wrenched backward as the hose went taut. The rogue ship must have finally collided.

The Lenient eased into a hover and gently landed atop the insurgent ship’s scorched and battered hull.

None of those voices outside sounded very happy.

The ship’s entry hatch eased open. Slowly, Red poked his head out and looked around.

Over two hundred thousand Irken Elite soldiers stared back at them, a line of stunned commanding officers at the forefront. In the thick of the crowd, a smaller Irken stood on tiptoe to stare. Tenn caught Red’s eye and waved at him.

Unsure what else to do, Red waved back.

Light poured through the jagged crater in what had once been a roof. They’d crashed right into the orientation hall.

Purple dusted a cloud of rubble off his shoulder and checked his gauntlet. “Ha! Five minutes early.” He snickered and elbowed Red in the ribs. “See? Toldja we wouldn’t be late.”

Chapter Text

[Devastis. CYCLE 17. Era 24. Training Year 1]

Red hadn’t been worried at all, not really. Not at first. These things happened, right?

Any smeet five minutes out of activation imploded a turbine or five before they’d even gotten a whiff of surface air. It was nature. You couldn’t stop nature, right? Even in a nigh-perfect species, the odd mistake popped up now and then, and as a species engineered and fine-tuned in the art of destruction, those mistakes blossomed spectacularly. Never a cherry bomb, always a nuke.

With that in mind, it didn’t surprise Red that this particular error claimed a casualty or twenty: multiple firing ranges leveled or incapacitated, four shattered statues (five, counting the in-progress monument to Tallest Miyuki’s victory of the Snack Wars), an obliterated orientation hall, the Arena Spire’s 16th, 18th, and 19th floors completely gutted (with multiple breakouts), and at least five snack bars closed for the rest of the week. Oh, and probably some organic casualties too, but nobody’d given a readout for those. 

Still, it could’ve been a lot worse. Without Red’s expert piloting skills, both ships would’ve tumbled through the training facility instead of scalping a couple of spires. The Prime Commanders would understand, right? Right. Besides, none of this was Red’s fault anyway. The Prime Commanders were wise and just and would surely realize that it’d been Purple’s slip-ups that caused this whole mess. 

Therefore, Red wasn’t worried because he had nothing to worry about.

The elevator doors hissed open. FLOOR 22-B. PLEASE EXIT THROUGH THE REAR DOORS. THIS ELEVATOR WILL SELF-DESTRUCT IN 30 SECONDS.

Not until he’d realized the Commanders were meeting them privately.

Red stepped out slowly as his eyes adjusted to the great mouth of darkness before him. If he squinted, he could barely make out the sloped walls and the fat ropes of coil and wire glinting in the elevator lights before the door closed. A lonely runway bottlenecked through the dim chamber, backlit in a sickly yellow-green glow. It could’ve hung two or two hundred feet in the air for all he knew. An illuminated platform hovered at the end of their path, a tiny bright circle of doom framed by the long silhouettes of the Prime Commanders of Devastis.

He searched for eyes watching from the shadows or the telltale recording light of a camera. Some sign of bloodthirsty rubbernecks eager for a show. Nothing like a good old-fashioned public flogging to boost morale, and nobody could resist the simple joys of watching someone fall flat on their face. And how often did someone get to watch tallers get their heads bitten off? This should’ve been the show of the decade. If not a spectacle for the masses, then at least a special presentation for the six-footers who’d aced their finals.

But no. As far as Red could tell, the chamber housed five Irkens and five alone: the Prime Commanders and the accused. Completely private.

The clank of Red’s damaged boot echoed along the metal runway as the humid underground air rustled through his tattered uniform. Ugh, last time he’d been this deep underground he’d still had an egg tooth. Resemblances aside, this was not a smeetery and this was no time to shmoop. Eyes forward, back straight, and head held high, Red marched forward.

Elite Purple strolled alongside him with his hands in his pockets, glancing at the lights lining the walkway now and then. He’d been quiet the whole trip here—stewing in his own guilt and shame, no doubt. They’d probably throw him to The Digestor.

But in that case, why summon both of them if they didn’t plan to punish both at once? Their sentence had to be something so horrible, so unspeakable it couldn’t be seen by Irken eyes. Far worse than your average skin-flaying or pummeling. Maybe even worse than being eaten alive.

Perhaps Purple had already realized it. The terror must have been eating him alive. If he didn’t completely deserve it, Red might have felt an inch of sympathy for him.

Slowly, Purple raised his head to where the ceiling should have been and rubbed the back of his neck. “Hey,” he whispered, “you think they’re still gonna have those little parfaits at the snack bar by the time we’re done with this?” He pointed at the lights moving beneath their boots. “On Foodcourtia the green lights mean it’s custard and pastry day but I dunno if that’s the same everywhere or not. What were the snack codes where you were stationed? Fleet still had ground stations, right?”

Red stared at him. “Seriously?”

“Hm. Yeah, dumb question. You need to dock ships somewhere, of course there’s ground stations. This is a much bigger military hub though, so they might not need to ration snacks into special days. Maybe they have pastries all the time. I bet—” Purple paused to glance back at the muffled elevator explosion behind them, shrugged, and kept moving. “I bet they’re all made on location, too! Have you ever had a parfait right off the line?” Purple’s eyes got round and glossy. “Or flan? Ohhh, it’s been forever since I’ve had a good—”

“They’re probably not serving anything after the snack bars got smashed to bits. How are you even thinking of snacks right now?” Red gestured at the ominous black void of punishment surrounding them and the towering pillars of judgment ahead.

Purple blinked at said pillars of judgment—namely the especially judgey one in the center—and rolled his shoulders in a languid little shrug. Trace scents of marinara still clung to him, mingling with the stink of his little offworlder slumber party. Disgusting.

Red’s lip curled in a sneer. “Didn’t you already stuff your gullet with those pizza rolls?”

“That was almost two hours ago, and I barely got to eat any because SOMEbody popped into my ship and knocked ’em all over the dirty dirty floor.” Purple swept in closer, picking up speed to match Red’s brisk march. He tilted his head, waving his antennae too close for polite society. “What’s eating you, anyway? You’re not the one who got his first solo mission all gunked up by some random gunk pilot who can’t check his messages.”

Red huffed and smacked Purple’s antennae out of his face. This was a disciplinary hearing; they weren’t even supposed to be talking right now.

Not that Purple seemed to care. “Nothing even happened to your ship besides a scratch or ten.”

“ONLY—” Red flinched at the echo of his own voice and dialed it to a whisper. "Only a scratch or ten? Yeah, no. Try sixty-seven and a half scratches, plus the battered hull, the bent fin, all that moth dust in the upholstery…”

He hissed out a long breath. One disaster at a time. Get out of this in one piece, fix the ship later. Thinking of his poor Lenient got Red’s spooch all twisty inside, anyway. Forget the debt he already owed paying her off; the cost of getting her back to optimal shape had to be in the ten-thousands.

What else could he have expected, letting this sloggy Infiltrator within ten yards of The Lenient? The second Red got out of here, his ship was going on the list for security upgrades. One of those new shield barriers with DNA clearance.

…IF he got out of here. The last time Red had caused this kind of collateral damage, he’d led his fleet through a lava asteroid belt. Even then, he’d only lost rations for a few months. Red’s antennae drooped. He should’ve snagged one of those pizza rolls when he had the chance. Might be a while before he legally ate anything else.

Purple’s nosy antenna wiggled back into Red’s line of sight, flicking just out of swatting range. “How come you smell like someone sentenced to drone duty?”

Now that he’d mentioned it, Red couldn’t detect any alarm or fear pheromones in the air besides his own. Not even a gentle pulse of dread. “Why don’t you?”

Ahead, the line of Commanders turned to watch their approach, growing larger and larger by the footstep. One narrowed their eyes at him, glowing with menace in the dark.

“And keep your voice down, they’re gonna hear you.”

“Why would I?” Purple asked with absolutely zero effort to lower his voice at all. He smiled with the balmy interest of someone watching the whole affair from the safety of their skybox and munching nachos. Jerk.

At least he had the sense to straighten up when they approached the semicircle of Prime Commanders. Purple offered a low antennae dip in salute. That stupid smile hadn’t waned an inch. Either he had the best poker face in the Empire or he really was the stupidest Irken Red met in his life (and he’d met a lot of stupid Irkens).

Red could only hope it wouldn’t get them both killed. Practically on tiptoe, he saluted in turn. “Greetings, my Commanders. Please let me be the first to say what a supreme honor it is to be summoned to the mightiest of military training facilities and to even be considered for the Invasion training program.” Red turned to the Irken on the left. “And I look forward to training under your command again, Prime Commander Poki.”

Poki clicked her tongue. The platform lights really highlighted those bags under her eyes. “That’s one of us, at least.” She crossed her arms with a scowl to curdle a silo of milkbars. “Couldn’t even wait until after orientation to kickstart a brand new disaster, could you Elites?”

Purple’s gaze skimmed Poki and the two officers at her side. He offered them a wry little shrug. “Heh, my old commander always said I had initiative.”

Red stiffened. Collective keep me, he’s gonna get me splattered on the wall.

“Initiative. That’s what you choose to call it?” Prime Commander Nord stepped from his place in the center, buggy green eyes narrowed. “Sixteen-hundred million monies in collateral damage including eighty-six Irken casualties, forty-four firing ranges razed to the concrete, The Spire’s midsection out of commission, a Punishment Cube cracked to the base, three years—three years minimum—of repairs, and fifteen snack bars, including the brand new Orientation Hall location, obliterated and unusable for the next month.” His voice rumbled calm and treacherous. “You call that taking initiative, Elites?”

Beside him, Commander Whatevs dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief. “Oh, that poor snack bar…”

“And nobody mourns the loss of that snack bar more than I do, believe me, but…” Red shot a nasty glare at his fellow Elite. It was a garbage argument with a garbage engine and wings made of dookie and also garbage, but too late to ditch it now. “…yes. Yes, I do. The uh… particulars of the situation called for initiative and drastic action. So that’s what I did.”

Commander Poki’s stare simmered but she made no move to contradict him. She’d let him get this far without dropkicking him into the incinerator, so…

“A hostile foreign species tried to commandeer an Irken military Spittle Runner in Devastis airspace. I admit I couldn’t avoid all possible damage but if I hadn’t piloted the Spit with the alien vessel attached, both would have crashed in freefall without leveling out at all.”

Purple quirked an eyebrow at him.

Red ignored it. “The only alternative option, Commanders, meant allowing the enemy vessel to drag both ships through Devastis and resulting in even greater damage. Nobody wants that, right? Less damage is better than more damage.”

“No damage is better than less damage,” Nord said.

Commander Whatevs considered Red’s damaged boot and the tattered silk robes hanging from Purple’s shoulders. She considered it for an uncomfortably long time.

Not for the first time, Red wished they could’ve received their new uniforms first. He grabbed his torn charred sleeve before it slipped onto the floor. At least the boot matched the rest of him now.

Whatevs stroked her chin. “Mm-hmm. And an Irken Fleetclass Spittle Runner was attached to a Fweezian civilian barge because…?”

“Oh! Well, that’s because Elite Red decided he had the clearance to compromise an ongoing Elite Infiltration of rebellious occupant hostiles without any authorization or warning whatsoever.” Purple bounced on his heels with a grin to crush cinderblocks. “I, Commanders, immediately rerouted the barge’s flight pattern as soon as I got my summons. Check the records and you’ll see the ship was already marked Irken property and cleared for landing, by the way. I was en route to crack Devastis territory when—ow!”

Red’s palm jammed into Purple’s eye, shoving him aside. “Pardon the interruption, Commanders.” He kept his eyes on Poki. If Purple stayed in eyesight one second longer Red couldn’t stop himself from knocking the jaw off his stupid smug face. “Isn’t it military protocol to clearly and properly alert allied vessels upon appearance instead of shoveling Instant Fruit into their ugly throats?”

“Isn’t it also protocol to check someone’s stupid messages so they don’t miss that alert in the first place?” Purple shot back.

“Alerts are clear they’re alerts and not random Foodcourtian junk mail.”

Purple’s voice pinched into a tight little squeak. “And fleet pilots don’t fly around boarding random ships in the solar system!”

“No, they don’t,” said Commander Poki. “And sub-commanders also don’t tend to ignore direct orders to beeline a new assignment without diversions.” Her cold gaze swung to Purple. “Commander Whatevs, remind me: shouldn’t an Infiltrator already have a hostile vessel secured well before it comes in range of the Irken military’s most valuable location and potentially compromises the entire planet?”

Whatevs skimmed her data readout. “I’m actually more curious to know why a six-month mission took nearly two years. Elite, you should have completed long before now.”

Red huffed under his breath. Probably because he’d rather sleep in his nest snacking and being waited on by gullible Screwheads.

“Uhh…” Elite Purple’s smile fell a few centimeters. It finally seemed to hit him that he might actually be in trouble.

Normally this would’ve been time for Red to sit back and gloat at the carnage, but in this case, the same laser had them both in its sights. Every argument in Red’s arsenal about Purple’s incompetence traced back to highlight his own. (Not that Red had been incompetent, but in the heat of the moment a grumpy commander might read it that way.) Assigning blame—justified or not—would only turn into back-and-forths and more questions. Questions they’d both rather avoid.

Like the ships that had brought them here, their testimonies and their fates were tethered to each other. If one crashed, they both crashed.

Red and Purple exchanged glances.

But if they could keep the same speed and altitude, if they flew together, maybe they could land this thing without any fires. Or at least without any 4th-degree burns.

Without a word, they both found the answer. Purple hopped on it first. “The Fweezian, Commanders. I locked down the others early on, but the moth suspected me from the start. It took all of those six months just to gain her trust, and even then she kept an eye on me for the rest of the voyage. She was also the only one with real battle training and experience.”

Poki tapped a skeptical claw on her gauntlet. “You’re telling me an Elite-class Infiltrator couldn’t subdue one little pacifist moth?”

Sure didn’t stab like a pacifist. Red rubbed his chest. Whenever he breathed too hard he could still feel a slight chill of venom.

“Without compromising the mission? No. Not without serious bodily damage to the Fweezian. I had orders from the Almighty Tallest herself to deliver Greendown alive and as intact as possible.” Purple flicked an antenna and shot Red a dry look.

Red blinked back innocently. Hey, five out of six arms was still pretty intact. That arm he’d shot off still existed, it just got relocated a little. “I found the insurgents’ ship through leaked battle plans in the broadcast signals, and the audio indicated at least one moth aboard. It sounded suspicious and I had no time to relay a superior, so I figured I’d check in to be safe.”

“Personally?” Nord said.

“I didn’t want to give away my position and we were practically on top of each other anyway. Figured it’d be a quick in-and-out, but when I detected an Irken signal aboard I presumed the worst. Upon boarding, I discovered the Fweezian and my fellow Elite here in a stalemate.” He’d entered dangerous territory; their stories had to synch perfectly from here on out. Red didn’t dare tear his eyes from the Commanders for a moment. “Saving my ally was the best option at the time, especially considering that, again, they sat right outside Devastis territory.” After quick consideration, he added, “Also, I’m pretty sure threats of planetary and species-wide security technically override my original orders anyway, so…”

Poki exchanged glances with her fellow Commanders. “Is this true, Elite Purple?”

Wrinkling his face a bit, Purple clarified, “I didn’t need saving, but yes. I think Greendown figured it out by the time we entered Devastis’ orbit. When Elite Red showed up she knew it couldn’t be a coincidence, not with the ship sabotage on top of it. Namely, the disabled warp. Dunno if she knew about the leaked signals, but it wouldn’t surprise me. An Irken ship showing up out of nowhere and killing the power just confirmed what she knew, and from there…” He gestured to their torn and tattered clothing. “Well, we had a little situation.”

It felt like they’d leveled out. Flying nice and stable. Good. Not great, but good. Now to bring it in.

“The filthy coward sicced her crew on us and made a break for the connected Lenient. No doubt it was her intent to pirate the ship back to her allies and reverse engineer Irken equipment.” And touch all my stuff on the way there. Red would be sweeping dust off the upholstery for months. “That or to turn The Lenient’s weaponry against Devastis itself.”

“Elite, don’t insult us.” Commander Whatevs—overseer of planetary security if Red remembered right—dismissed him with a scoff. “One Spittle Runner’s cannons couldn’t crack our shields if it blitzed all week. Our planetary outposts would’ve caught the biosignature before the moth even broke the atmosphere.”

“The noble-ranked Fweezian showed plenty of cunning, suspicion, and cowardice, but Commanders, nobody called her smart.” Red dared a smile with his little joke.

Poki rolled her eyes, but Nord held back a smile. Whatevs actually snickered.

Purple cleared his throat into his glove. “All due respect, neither of us went against orders. I’d already acted under orders best as I could and redirected the ship to a secure docking station. As for Red…” Their eyes met. Purple grinned. “You said it yourself, Commander Poki: he’s a fleet pilot. He was told to ignore his current mission, and this had nothing to do with that mission. Just doing his duty, right?”

“Right.” Red hadn’t expected that boost but he wasn’t about to question it. “I know the Spire’s seen better days but if we hadn’t acted—”

“—there might not be a Spire left to fix,” Purple finished.

Commander Poki stroked her chin, nodding to herself. “I see. You weighed the risks and overstepped your bounds for the good of the Empire.”

They nodded together. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Sounds like this incident was a team effort.” Poki craned her neck towards Whatevs. “That’s interesting, isn’t it?”

“Oh yes, Poki.” Something about Whatevs’ gently amused tone turned Red’s spooch. “Irkens learning to rely on each other just like in basic training. Why, it’s inspiring in its own way.”

“The others in training could learn a lot from them.” And now Nord was in on it too.

Slowly, Poki approached. At close range, her chin perched inches above the Elites’ heads. The hum of the hovering platform echoed through the underground chamber.

“Well!” She grinned.

In all the years he’d served in the fleet, Red had never seen Poki smile. Not so much as a cruel smirk, not even that time a drone from accounting fell into the trash compactor.

It didn’t work. It didn’t work, she didn’t buy it, and now she’s gonna flay me alive and leave me in the sun for the worms and squeakbeetles.

Her antennae pricked cheerily. “Since you two work so well together, you wouldn’t mind a little more teamwork time, would you?”

“Uh.” Red turned to Purple.

Purple scratched the back of his neck, glancing from Commander to Commander and back to Red. “Um, I… I guess not—”

“Great to hear.” On Poki’s signal, a shackle snapped around Red’s leg. A thin plasma ring glowed on the rim of his boot.

Purple jumped with a yelp as a second shackle clamped over his bare ankle. “That thing’s freezing!” Served him right for slogging around barefoot like some backwater Vortian in the first place.

Upon closer inspection, the shackle resembled the tether rings Red had seen the Wardens use for slaves and prisoners on work leave. Not a one-to-one match (this skintight model was sleek and discreet, unnoticeable aside from the glow) but the basic build seemed about the same. Designed for long-range control, the ring allowed free movement within a designated area, so long as the sap stayed in range of their contact point. Move beyond that point and… ow. The one guy Red had seen try to run for it returned as a twitching knot of charred meat. In three separate sections.

He’d never heard of tether rings being used on Irkens before, but Red never paid much attention to the finer details of prisoner wrangling either. But why bother tethering someone in training in the first place? It wasn’t like they were fleeing the planet anytime soon.

An awful idea slithered in the pit of Red’s guts: nobody had actually guaranteed he’d even be allowed into Invader training at all. Maybe their next stop would be demotion or… He shook his head. No. No, if it were anything that bad, Poki would’ve led with it.

Prime Commander Nord cleared his throat. “Irken Elite Red and Irken Elite Purple, you are hereby sentenced to a tethering.”

Purple’s face crinkled in a squint as he silently mouthed the sentence back to himself. He searched Red for an answer, but Red stared back equally lost.

Tethered to what? 

There should have been a matching contact point somewhere. A mounted pole or a handheld control panel or something. Red looked at his shackle again: a ring of purple light pulsing in time with his heartbeat. He looked at Purple’s. Same thing, except for the color. Purple’s ring glowed bright red.

Spoots. “Are… are we tethered to each other?”

Commander Poki’s little smile returned. “You are to both keep within seven feet of each other at all times. From this moment until the end of the year.”

Red struggled to keep his volume respectable. The last thing he needed was an insubordination charge. “But the year just started!”

The weight of the sentence piled up by the second. A year. Irk save him, a full four hund—wait, the new year started last week—a full three hundred and ninety-two days stuck with this scuzzsack. Not only on missions but everywhere. In lessons and sparring and training sims. In the hallways and snacktimes and off-times and study sessions and if he got a nap pass he’d probably have to share a couch and Red wouldn’t have an ounce of peace and it wasn’t fair because this was Purple’s stupid ugly stupid fault in the first stupid place and… and why wasn’t Purple more upset about this?

In fact, Purple seemed as if he hadn’t heard the sentence at all. He put his hands in his robe pockets and rocked back on his bare heels like someone with better places to be. Head angled down, his violet eyes fixed upon the Commanders in a lazy half-lid stare. When Poki frowned at him, that stare didn’t break. “Sooooo, is there anything else or…?”

Their gauntlets beeped with a new downloaded message.

“Just one,” Poki told them. “Your invoice. Damage repayments.”

Against his better judgment, Red checked the numbers. Bad idea. He closed his messages with a wince. So much for paying off The Lenient any time this cycle. “Are we sharing this part, too?”

Poki nodded. “Always said you were smarter than you looked. Split it among yourselves; don’t care how.” Her eyes narrowed. “Is that alright with you, Elite?”

Below her, Purple skimmed through the rest of his recent messages. One antenna twitched while he tapped through a string of ads. “Fine with me, ma’am.”

Red edged away from him just in case. Maybe if he got lucky Poki’d blast Purple’s head off his shoulders right here and now. Paying all that debt on his own would be worth it if it meant skipping a year tethered to this walking death wish.

Every soldier had contempt for their superior officers now and then (or always) but for Irk’s sake, you didn’t actually show it. It had been no mistake either, judging by the gleam in that nasty purple eye. Commander Poki had kicked soldiers down three flights of escalators for less.

“Thank you, Commanders.” Red stepped forward and saluted, ignoring the muffled snicker behind him. “Is there anything else you need to share with us?”

“Orientation’s in an hour. Get out of my sight until then.” Poki shook her head at Purple’s robe and sighed the sigh of someone who hadn’t slept ten dozen cycles. “And change.”

Red glared at the label inside the collar of his new uniform. He glared at the uniform Purple was currently slipping into. “Check it again.”

A wave of groans traveled down the line behind him.

“Hey, shut up!” It wasn’t Red’s fault the idiot couldn’t measure right.

The garment drone slumped behind his desk and sighed into the mic. “Sir, I’ve already taken it eight times.” He pinched his brow as if Red was the one wasting everyone’s time. Lot of nerve for a drone. “I ran you through the system, I checked the reference sheets, I even used that archaic measuring tape. I assure you those are the correct measurements.”

“Take it nine times, then! I know that can’t be right.”

Behind him, Purple finished snapping himself into the new armor. “Yeah, what if he grew a whole half-centimeter while he was busy complaining like a big old whiny complainey complainer baby who complains all the time?” He tried some stretches and high kicks, admiring himself in the wall-length mirror. “Ooh, it’s roomy. And check out this neat little flappy thing in the back.”

“Come on, man,” the drone begged. “There’s a line back there.”

Red smacked both palms on the desktop, leaning over the edge. “Yeah, and whose fault is that, smart guy? If you knew how to do your job—”

“Listen, even if you did grow in the last…” The garment drone checked the clock. “…fifteen minutes, these things are based on average body height; there’s only like four versions of these things. It’d fit the same either way because the polymer adjusts with the body and grows with… oh, fine.”

“Good.”

“But this is the last time.” The measurement laser scanned Red from head to foot. “Six feet, nine inches, two-point fifty-three centimeters.” Before he got chewed out a ninth time, the drone rescanned Purple too. (Though he had to try a couple of times with the way Purple high-kicked and pirouetted around the dressing hub.) “Six feet, nine inches, two-point fifty-three centimeters.”

The drone backed away from the counter and out of punting range. “I’m not measuring the antennae.” Snot.

Red snatched his uniform and stomped into a corner to suit up as far away from these jerks as possible. Which, in the confines of Advent Hub B, wasn’t very far at all. It had been intended as an area to prep mission takeoffs and assignments for individual squads and cells, not hold a full third of Invader recruits, but that’s what came of smashing through orientation halls. It could have been worse. Apparently, one of the other sections had to prep and meet in the Waste Disposal Hull F. At least this place had benches.

Without looking, Red sensed all the little pairs of eyes upon him and the telltale click of boots shyly trailing behind. Even in the middle of one of Irk’s greatest events of the season, nobody had anything better to do than sniff for gossip. They’d been tailing him for a while now. Both him and Purple. They’d probably taper off once they received their actual assignments or after one came too close and Red threw them into a ceiling fan. Whichever came first.

He focused on the clean iron curves of the wall in his corner of the room, a smooth black arc of metal that stretched up to the domed roof. Squiggles of moonlight cracked through the clouds above them, muted and dull through the blastproof glass. Red only found a few stray scuffs and claw marks in the walls; they must’ve refurbed the place recently. He concentrated on wondering who’d left the bite marks in the bench beside him and not on the murmuring just out of eyesight.

The prickling warmth buzzing around his ankle proved harder to ignore. It felt like a leg full of radio static—annoying, rough, kind of itchy, but tolerable. After Red finished climbing into his bodysuit, that buzz became a throb. By the time he snapped on the last piece of armor—actually not a bad look and that flappy thing was pretty sweet—the throb had built into a sharp sting.

Thousands of invisible barbs pulsed through skin and tissue, deep into the bone. Warning pulses. Red only stood about six feet away from Purple, but apparently, he’d stood there for too long. He rubbed the boot covering the tether ring, sighed, and made his way back.

Something touched his boot. “Uh.” A stubby Elite with a flat head blinked up at him expectantly.

Red glared and nudged the short guy out of the way with the heel of his new boot. He had enough to worry about, thanks.

He found Purple lounging in the center of the room, sprawled out on his side to hog the whole bench, and munching an ice cream taco. The room’s harsh spotlights gave his skin a sallow sheen. Paired with the same basic grey uniform, a passerby could barely tell the difference between them aside from eye color and scent. And soon, not even scent—a few months in each other’s company would take care of that. Either they’d both come out smelling like Devastis or they’d rub off on each other and Red would have to get used to smelling like a juice bar until graduation. “Took you long enough. You sure it fits this time? Don’t need a tenth measurement with that long ropey thing?”

Some squirrely-looking shrimp—a Battalion transfer, from the smell of him—sat on the tiny corner of the bench unoccupied by Purple’s legs. He held a wrapper and a small corner of ice cream taco, watching Red’s approach.

“I like being precise. You, move.” Red plucked the little Irken off so he could set his foot on the bench. “They never get the measurements completely right. If I’m stuck with this thing for a whole cycle, it better fit.”

“Technically,” said the little guy with the taco wrapper, “it’s eleven years, so it’s a cycle and four—”

“Hey, where’d you get an ice cream taco anyway?” Red glanced around the room as if he’d find a secret snack machine stowed behind the boot racks.

“Oh, this?” Flurries of chocolate scattered across the floor when Purple talked. “My little buddy Flarb got it for us to share, right Flarb?”

The supposed “little buddy” didn’t seem too sure about that, but he didn’t argue. “Er, Larb, actually. I think I’m part of your—”

“If you got it to share, where’s my half?” Red squinted at the waffle cone in Larb’s hand. “That better not be it.”

Purple rolled on his stomach, waving both feet in the air behind him. “No, that’s Lart’s half. You don’t get one because you didn’t wanna listen when I asked if you wanted some.”

“Asked when?”

“When you were busy with the drone, being a smeetysmeet about being the same height as me. You snooze you lose, shuttlebug. Isn’t that right, Flart?”

Larb fiddled with his antenna, trying not to look either Elite in the eye. “I don’t really want to get into this; I just wanted to know which one of you I’m supposed to—”

“Right!” Purple slapped Larb hard on the shoulder. “Farb here knows what it’s about.”

Before Red could point out that neither he nor anyone else gave half a worm’s egg about what Larb thought, a burst of movement at the front of the room caught his attention. Sounded like the beginning of a scuffle.

Somebody cried out in an indignant squeak. A stack of uniforms toppled as piercing microphone feedback shrieked through the hub. The garment drone huddled at the corner of his desk, clutching his bent antenna in the shadow of a taller Elite. A much taller Elite.

Immediately, Red recognized him. Everyone did. Towering over waves and clusters of little heads and shoulders, the tallest Irken in the hub was kind of hard to miss. He’d been watching Red and Purple from the back of the line since he arrived. The guy had a casual bulk—not the bulging mass of a hardened ground soldier, but still more than the average Irken. Red wondered where he’d transferred from. Looked too mean for a Guard, too dumb for a Slaver, and honestly, too tall for both. He smelled like a fueling station and walked like someone who’d never had to run.

The desk creaked under his weight as the Elite leaned over it, one arm dangling over the edge. “Beg your pardon, pal, I couldn’t hear you the first time. It’s so loud in here, you understand.” He snatched the drone by the skull and lifted him up to eye level. “What height did you say this one’s for?” The Elite casually glanced at Red and Purple over his shoulder, slowly blinking his bright yellow eyes.

“It’s a sev—” The garment drone squeaked at the claws sinking deeper into his flesh. “SIZE SEVEN POINT FOUR, SIR.”

The huge Elite preened with enough smug to choke a Vortian senator twice over. “Yeah, that sounds about right.”

Purple yawned and licked the last of the ice cream off his fingertips. “Like I said. Dumb to make such a big deal over uniforms.”

“Seriously,” Red scoffed. “We’ve all got the same one.” He eyed the stunted rainbow of shoulder stripes milling around them. “Except, you know, for the little numbers and stripey things.”

“That’s the squad identification,” piped up someone else. Not Larb and not Tenn, who’d come up beside them during that fuss with the garment drone. But they couldn’t see anybody else it could have come from.

What, were the benches talking now? Red supposed it was possible. Weird, but possible. They could’ve installed little speakers in there for important announcements, but wouldn’t walls or ceiling be better places for that kind of thing?

Purple propped himself up on his elbow, one antenna swiveling about. He looked to Red, frowning. “Did that bench just talk? Why’d they make a bench that talks? Nobody can even hear it all the way down there.”

“It’s weird, right?” A little gloved hand tapped Red’s knee. He shooed it off.

“Yeah, you’d think they’d put it—”

“In the walls, yeah.”

“No—what? No.” Purple stared as if that had been the dumbest thing anyone ever said. “They already have stuff in the walls. I was gonna say in the snacks. That way the commanders can bug you no matter where you are, even from your stomach.” He squinted suspiciously at Larb’s taco wrapper.

A stubby arm waved under Purple’s chin. Together, Red and Purple followed the arm down to either the shortest Elite they’d ever seen or some kind of mutated space potato with feet.

The arguable potato kicked his heels in an eager salute. He bounced a little when he did it. “Irken Elite Skoodge reporting for duty, sir!” Skoodge tilted his head, glancing back and forth between them. “Or… sirs?”

Behind him, Tenn and Larb exchanged shrugs. The larger knot of smallers pooling around them didn’t seem to have answers either, and they stared up at Red and Purple as if waiting for one. Technically, half the hub still stared at them anyway (the other half just pretended not to), but everyone also kept a respectful distance. Everyone except these guys.

Red leaned down and beckoned Purple closer with a finger. “Is it me, or have these little guys been following us all day?” He hadn’t looked down enough to know for certain, but Tenn had probably been tailing him since they’d arrived. Not that strange for Tenn—she’d always had her fingers in everything—but that didn’t account for the potato or the taco guy.

“I thought you knew,” Purple not-whispered back.

Elite Tenn pursed her lips and blinked very slowly, the way one does after weeks of back-to-back drills or two hours of corralling smeets. Understandable. More than ten minutes around Purple would tire out anyone. “We’re in your squad. 732.” She tapped the neon pink and green stripes on her uniform, the same color as Red’s, Purple’s, and the Irkens gathered around their bench.

Since when did anybody mention working in squads? Red rolled his eyes. “Well yeah, I knew that. Obviously. So what do you want?” He raised an eyebrow as their squad drew in tighter. “You want something, right?”

Skoodge raised his hand. “We were all wondering since… um. Since we noticed you guys are the same height and both on the same squad, we were wondering why—”

Larb shoved Skoodge out of the way. “How come we have two tallers in our squad?”

The magic question, apparently. Towards the back of the room, a pink-eyed sub-commander perked her antennae and chewed her gum faster. The obnoxious seven-footer briefly looked up from shining his new boots. If anyone in Advent Hub B wasn’t paying attention before, they were now.

Red crossed his arms over his propped knee and glared down at the potato. “And why exactly do you need to know? What’s the matter, two isn’t good enough for you?”

“Yeah!” added Purple. “You know, most people would be happy getting doubles, but oooh not Skoodge. Skoodge needs a special reason for everything ‘cause he thinks he’s better than everybody. I liked you better when you were a bench.”

Skoodge shrank back from the dirty looks simmering from the rest of the squad. “But Larb’s the one who—”

“Now you’re blaming someone else for your mistake?” Larb shook his head. “That’s messed up, man.”

Tenn nodded. “Seriously unprofessional.”

“It’s insubordinate, too.” Purple craned his neck backwards. “Hey Red, what’s the height minimum for a Class 3 information request?”

“Pretty sure it’s five foot five,” Red told him. “Is our curious squadmate five foot five, Purple?”

“No. No, he’s not. I heard the clothes drone over there read him as four foot something.”

Elite Larb chuckled and gave Purple’s elbow a friendly jab. “Ha, more like four foot nothing, amirite?”

“Heh.” A brittle smile slowly cracked across Purple’s face. “Yeahhh, sure. Never touch me again, okay?”

Larb jumped back with a wink and shot double-handed finger guns. “Ha, you got it, sir!”

“Actually.” The seven-foot Elite cut through the crowd of smallers. Waves of green bodies rippled, scattered, and broke apart against his passing bulk. His squad flanked him from a polite distance, heads and antennae tilted curiously. “I think the short guy had a fair question.” He turned to the rest of the hub. “Don’t you?”

The rest of the hub didn’t disagree.

Red’s own squad massed together and shied behind their sub-commanders’ bench as they watched the taller Elite’s approach. A blink-and-you’ll-miss-it frown flashed across Purple’s face. He growled low in his chest, so soft Red barely heard it. Felt it, though.

The Elite loomed overhead, staring with eyes too big for his face and the color of stale nachos. “So what’s with…” He gestured vaguely to the both of them: this pair of tall Elites sharing a bench and practically sitting on top of each other. “Ya know, all of… this? If you’re on the same squad, are you some kinda special partners or what?”

Curling his tethered leg under him, Purple smiled and nodded. “Yes.”

At the same time, Red spat, “No.”

They looked at each other.

Red glared. “ No—”

“Yes!” Purple chirped louder and a half-second faster. He cupped his chin in his palm and let himself sprawl over every spare inch of the bench. A slow, deliberate spill of arms and legs. Muscles leaned against Red’s hip, braced hard and ready. Not that anyone could tell from that lazy smirk. “No? Well, what do you call people you’re stuck working with all cycle?”

“I'm not a weirdo, so I’d call ‘em teammates.” Red clicked his tongue and dryly added, “Or inmates.”

It was barely even a joke, but Purple laughed at it anyway, bright and loud and infectious as a virus. The kind of laugh that flipped a room and shook it until grins fell out. Tenn snickered to herself. The sound spread from Tenn to Larb, from Larb to their squad and all the other squads in the Hub.

The huge Elite’s chest rumbled with laughter. “Inmates… that’s cute. You guys are adorable. Ah, nice to see you again, little buddy.” He gave Red a pat on the head and started back toward his own squad. “Heh, you just try not to break anymore buildings today.”

Little buddy. Red’s eye twitched.

“Again?” Shifting away from the Elite’s clammy gross hand, Red looked him up and down. “Sorry, am I supposed to know you from somewhere?”

The seven-footer stopped and turned. His grin began to fade.

Tenn scuttled in closer. “Sir, you remember Sub-Commander Sponch, right? He ran defense on the Conventia fleet campaign and won last year’s axe toss contest.”

Elite Sub-Commander Sponch nodded proudly.

Red slowly blinked at him. Squinted. Blinked at Tenn. “Who?”

“Sponch, sir.” Tenn took a quick second to read the room. She decided to stand closer to Purple. “He broke the soda machine two weeks ago and pilots The Ostentatious?”

Red’s eyes lit up in recognition. “Ohh! Right, right, the Ripper with all those tacky mods that can’t fly out of a wet paper sack with the lights on.” He spared Sponch a nod. “Good to see you too.”

That smirk was long gone now. Sponch swung back around. “That’d be her. She’s pretty easy to spot; Ostentatious still has all her mods and parts too, because her pilot knows how to fly and didn’t smash her through the Punishment Cube.”

The crowd drew in. A couple of the looky-loos in the back murmured amongst themselves. Taking bets, maybe.

Purple twitched his antenna. His own smirk had soured somewhere between “little buddy” and “wet paper sack”. He turned to Tenn. “Are all the fleet guys like this?”

Tenn shrugged. “Pretty much. I’d move back if I were you.”

He didn’t, though the warning was enough to get Purple to finally sit up. One hand fiddled with the boot covering the tether ring while he glanced between the tallers and the rest of the room.

“Yeah, well…” Finally with room to sit, Red leaned back on the bench. “That’s what happens when a pilot’s got stuff to do and isn’t busy being a cowardly… not-fly-good coward.” That had sounded a lot better in his head. “A fleet commander oughta know battle scars when he sees ‘em.”

Purple—who nobody had asked to step in and possessed the trash talk skills of a moldy nougat bar—buffed his gauntlet on his new uniform. “I just came from Infiltration and even I know nobody gets scars from sitting around at the base.”

“You’d think a seven-footer could see an enemy vessel coming and do something about it. Apparently, I’ve got to do everything myself.” Red shot Purple a flat look.

Purple lobbed it right back. “Lucky for everyone here, some of us give half a damn about planetary security. Otherwise, you guys would be up to your eyeballs in moths and Screwheads right now.” He sniffed at an unimpressed Sponch. “You’re welcome.” He pointed at the pink-eyed sub-commander who’d come closer to watch. “You too, Pleeps.”

Without turning his head, Red hissed out of the side of his mouth, “Step off. I can handle this myself.”

“Don’t tell me what to do. You shoulda thought of that before you got us stuck together.” Purple blinked at his squadmates, who blinked back curiously. “Stuck together on the same team, I mean. Darn, it sure is frustrating to share positions with someone the same height as you.”

Sponch held up a hand. “Back up, half-pints. What enemy vessel? You don’t mean that rusty old tub that dragged you in here, do you? Wow, great job keeping us safe from that super scary delivery ship.”

“It’s not like you’re gonna try and sneak into Irken territory with a star bomber.” Red sighed and bobbed his head toward Sponch with a can-you-believe-this-guy? thumb jab. “You’re in Invader training and don’t even know disguises?”

A smaller from one of the other squads spoke up. “I did see the drones dragging offworlders out of the ship earlier today. One of those mushroomy guys from Foodcourtia.”

Others in the crowd confirmed. Three had seen one of the Screwheads. Someone else claimed they’d seen a Fweezie.

“How many were there, sirs?” asked Larb.

Purple shrugged. “About six.”

“—teen,” Red added. “Sixteen.” He traded glances with Purple, who nodded. If they had to ride this story all year, they might as well trick it out as much as possible.

Almost nobody here had height or rank clearance to dig out the truth. Even if they did, without direct access to Commander Whatevs’ files, it’d take months to confirm anything and by then it wouldn’t matter. Everyone would’ve already moved on and/or decided Red’s version sounded cooler (which it did). Nobody here cared about facts, they wanted a story. Might as well give them one.

“Sixteen insurgents from all sorts of planets. Nasty pieces of work too.” Purple patted Red’s shoulder. “We took care of most of them on the way here. I think only a couple made it alive all the way here.”

The sub-commander with pink eyes—Pleeps, someone had called her—crossed her arms. “Shouldn’t there have been more bodies?” She nodded at the second-tallest in her squad. “Sneakyonfoota just came from the morgue and he saw… how many was it?”

“Three fresh ones in cold quarantine,” her second confirmed.

Purple shrugged it off. “Fell out of the airlock. Lost a couple when we came into the atmosphere too, I think?”

“Burned up, yeah. One of the doors probably popped open and broke the seal. I dunno, I didn’t check; we were kinda busy saving your butts.” Red stretched and checked his gauntlet clock. “Sure, I’d have loved to spare The Cube or the Orientation Hall but it’s kinda hard to fight off Fweezian nobles and steer at the same time.”

Light bloomed in the higher reaches of the hub. Above them, a drone dusted off the walkway that ran along the rim of the wall right under the dome ceiling. Shadows moved deep in the throat of the hallway that fed into the hub. Orientation would be starting soon.

A devilish light glinted in Purple’s eye. He'd seen it too. “Hey,” he whispered.

“Way ahead of you.” As usual. “It would’ve been awesome if Sponch wanted to come help, but I suppose it wasn’t important enough.”

“Aw come on, be fair, Red. I’m sure our pal Sponch had really important things to do.”

The smallers of Sponch’s squad moved aside. He’d gone quiet all of a sudden. That dangerous sort of calm before a bomb falls. He narrowed his eyes and watched them closely.

Almost. Just a little more. “That’s fair. We happened to be in the right place at the right time, that’s all. And besides…” Red waggled his eyebrows and prepped to spring. “It’s not his fault The Ostentatious is slower than a used Voot.”

Sponch’s claws tore through the bench. Red and Purple jumped back in opposite directions. Which would’ve been a lot more helpful if they had somewhere to jump to. The great bulk of him ate up escape routes quicker than they appeared. Purple sprang away before Sponch’s nails slashed his cheek to ribbons—and ran right into his second hand.

Well, nice knowing him. Red turned and ran for it. A little whir of grey and green dashed in front of him—too fast to dodge—and something tugged his legs out from under him. Red hit the floor hard. The smaller who’d tripped him waved with a nasty smirk as Sponch snatched him by the ankle.

Red instinctively clawed at the floor pulling away from him as Sponch dragged him up. His head swung inches above the concrete—the highest the Elite could pull him. Fingers around his ankle squeezed harder the more he wiggled. “Come on, I just fixed that foot!”

“Don’t wiggle and I don’t need to squeeze.” He squeezed harder anyway. “You guys grab yourselves a couple dozen inches and suddenly forget all your manners, don’t you?”

Purple dangled by the neck in Sponch’s grip. The heel of his boot bumped Red’s chin as he kicked. “What? We were just thinking out loud.”

Sponch chuckled. “Well, in that case, why don’t I help you learn to think quieter?”

Spotlights blazed above them. The room froze as High Commander Poki glared over the crowd. “Elites.”

Red and Purple dropped to the floor while Sponch and the rest of the Elites scrambled back to their own squads.

“Glad to see our sub-commanders working so well together, but save the carnage for the arena next time, Sponch. It’s easier to clean.” Commander Poki folded her arms behind her back and clicked her tongue. “But seeing as how nobody here is prepared for orientation, I understand how you’d get the two confused.”

Muddled piles of Irkens rushed to untangle themselves into haphazard formation lines. All three squads arranged themselves into triangles: tallest at the top, shortest at the base. From above, they all should’ve formed the symbol of the Irken Empire. Judging by Poki’s expression, Red suspected they more resembled the Empire symbol if it’d been drawn by a blind smeet with no arms. A quick glance behind him confirmed that at least Red’s squad stood in proper formation.

When they’d shaped themselves into something halfway passible, Poki shook her head. “I see you’ve all managed to at least gather yourselves into the appropriate pods and squadrons. Congratulations. You’ve accomplished the bare minimum we ask of Academy smeets.”

Purple gently rotated the antenna Sponch had crushed, trying to straighten it out without touching it. “Are we really getting it twice in the same day? Yeesh, not even snacktime yet.” Pretty optimistic of him to assume anyone got an official snacktime this week at all after all this.

“I didn’t plan on disclosing this, but Almighty Tallest Miyuki was supposed to appear tonight to officially welcome you to Invasion Season. She was supposed to wish you luck, but even the blessing of the Tallest herself wouldn’t help the pathetic scourge I see right now. I’m only glad she doesn’t have to see what cycles of training and trillions of monies and resources have bought the Empire.” She stretched her arm over the crowd. “These are the best of the best in all our Elite fields. Irk’s pinnacle of genetic engineering.” Poki sneered over the railing. “These are our future Invaders. I’ve seen Planet Jackers with more discipline.”

Several in the crowd visibly flinched at that last part. A small part of Red knew he ought to at least appear ashamed, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He could barely even hold back his grin.

An electric twinge of anticipation raced through his veins and circuitries and all the bones he’d broken climbing up to this moment. After the Snack Wars and academy training, after crawling under turrets, after grinding out years and years in the training sims, after decades in the endless dark of smeeteries lit only by the promise of faraway stars, after over a century of “soons” and “somedays,” the clock finally shifted. The sky opened up and the suns pooled over the horizon. For the first time in his generation, the great expanse of universe split even wider. A glistening place of conquest and treasures, and all of it for them: the young thousands hungry and beautiful and ready.

No rumors this time. Invader Season had officially begun. If Red had to put up with everyone’s garbage for another decade, so be it. It’d be over soon. Everything before now was a shell. A relic. Outdated, obsolete, and already forgotten. All that lay before him now was the future.

Red frowned at his tethered ankle and the spoiled big-mouth attached to it. Now I just need to get there in one piece.

“Take a good look around, Elites.” Poki spread her arm over the sprawl of bright-eyed Irkens clustered below her. “If you’ve got a problem with the faces you see, you’d better sort them out before sunrise because you’ll be seeing them for the next cycle and a half. Assuming you do your jobs right.”

In other words, suck it up and adapt. Understandable, Red supposed. An Invader needed to think on their feet and adapt according to circumstance. All soldiers did, but on the ground in enemy territory, adaptation would be crucial. Still, there had to be better ways than stapling each other into random squads.

“Subordinates, I expect you to follow commands and do your duty. Sub-commanders, I want a ninety-percent minimum of your squadmates present, alive, and whole at graduation. Anything lower is coming out of your score. Do not—I repeat, do NOT—abduct rival smallers to replace your own casualties. I will know the difference, Pleeps. Don’t think Devastis forgot that little incident on Plookesia.”

Sub-commander Pleeps crossed her arms and grumbled to herself. Something about acid rain patterns, dynamite, and nothing being her fault. Some people just couldn’t own up to their mistakes.

Red eyed his own collection of smallers (and bonus Purple). The potato known as Skoodge waved his stubby arm from way in back. “Don’t know why we need squads in the first place. Invasion’s a solo job.” Or so he hoped. “I looked at the syllabus—”

“We have a syllabus?” Purple glanced at his own gauntlet.

“—and a bunch of it’s isolated fieldwork and solitary desensitization and stuff. Wouldn’t it make more sense if we all worked alone?”

In the high shadows of the walkway, Prime Commander Poki’s eyes glistened like the crosshairs of a sniper rifle. “Interesting assessment, Elite Red. With the squads moving in close quarters, it must feel like you’re never more than…” She gave a casual shrug. “…oh, five feet apart, for example.”

Note to self: stop thinking out loud. “A purely rhetorical question, ma’am. It’s a known fact that squad work strengthens species cohesion, reinforces the Collective Memory, and overall optimizes the proficiency of the great Irken Empire, ma’am.”

Poki raised her eyebrows. She almost seemed impressed. “You started the manual readings.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Not like he had much choice. It was either read the Invader trainee manual while waiting in line or listen to Purple talk about himself for a half-hour. Only the introduction had been unlocked, but three read-throughs had been enough to memorize.

“The rest of you, read through the cutoff point before the start of training tomorrow. More instructions will appear as they apply. Go find your residential hubs and get out of my face.” Poki saluted them. “You’re dismissed. Irk lives.”

“Irk thrives,” the Elites called back.

It turned out that snacktime hadn’t been canceled after all, though Poki wasted no time reminding them that they didn’t deserve it. Tradition was tradition, however, and Miyuki’s word topped hers.

The warlord’s ransom of snacks welcoming their squad to the residential hub had been the stuff of infantry rumors and drones’ wildest dreams. The makings of future foodie recordings and the Announcer’s Top 20. (It wouldn’t break the top ten, but it’d crack the mid-teens, no question.) Irk’s future Invaders had been granted every variety of every snack in every flavor, and Red’s rank and height gave him first pick.

It had been the most plentiful snacktime Red could remember since he graduated the Academy and the most variety he’d seen since… ever. They’d cracked open silos that’d been closed for centuries, brought nacho cheese aged to perfection, real vintage stuff. A snacking for the ages, they called it.

The first night of Invader training should have been a top-shelf memory, right up there with first flight, first kill, surface emergence, and that one time he did a backflip off The Lenient’s roof. It should have been a symbol of greater things to come, blah blah literal feast represents the coming feast of conquest, Irk rules forever, and so on. And if he’d come a few days ago, it would have been. But he hadn’t.

As he juggled his eighteen cartons of vintage nachos, thirteen candy bars, thirty slooshies, five sandwiches, and an Emperor Supweme Fwozen Fweeze Sundae™, Red saw only limitations.10 Samples Per Inch. Restrictions. All You Can Carry. Barriers. 2 Gallons Per Foot.

It had been loads more than Red had ever seen on Sump. And also a fraction of the haul he’d seen in Purple’s pampered little hidey-hole, and none of the debris there could’ve been over a month old. The quality of the snacks themselves didn’t compare, but still. That snackage had been limitless. No caps. No quotas.

But back in Irken territory, rules were rules. There was nothing he could do about it, and he did his best not to brood over it. Red gnawed his jellybean sandwich, perched upon one of the rails bordering the pier that overlooked the bay. Every now and then, he glanced down to be sure the spoils of his snacktime were still safely cached below him.

Red absently scratched at the rim of his shackle, barely noticeable under the layered uniform. The training bay’s black horizon lay flat in the distance, save for when the odd submarine breached the surface or someone skipped mines across the water. With the little flat discs of the moons glinting and the acidic tang of smoke and fuel in the air, it almost felt like being on leave. One of those rare moments away from fleets and foreign crowds with room to breathe in the company of himself.

Almost.

A few feet below, curled in the grey sands under the pier, Elite Purple’s jaws smacked wetly while he gorged himself on his twenty-seventh parfait. A curious set of antennae swiveled along the edge of the pier, wiggling in the direction of Red’s snack horde. “Hey, are you gonna eat—”

“Yes.”

“You’re not eating it, though. What’s the matter with it, does it need to get ripe?”

The antennae wandered closer, trying to get a smell. Red grabbed the tip of one and squeezed.

“Owwww-ow-ow, okay, quit it!” A glove grabbed the edge of the pier. “Come on, I just wanna see.”

“You can see fine from down there, and nothing's wrong with any of it. You were there when I got everything, remember?” Memory of a gasquiggasplorch, that one. Red shifted to look over the rail, where Purple stood on tiptoe, his unbent antenna still twitching at the snack stash. “Just because you blew through your rations doesn’t mean you get any of mine.” He nudged Purple’s hand with his foot. “Shoo.”

Purple gave a funky little squint at “rations”, but shrugged it off. Metal squeaked under his gauntlets as he hauled himself up over the edge of the pier, but he stopped halfway. He rested his chin on his hands while the rest of him dangled like a fresh slab in a butcher shop.

Red moved to guard the snacks when he realized Purple’s eyes were somewhere else. He followed his gaze to the swarming crowds in the distance. A rhythmic chanting echoed from one of the balconies—cheering on a fight or someone about to attempt some crazy stunt. Or both. Off duty, it was no real concern to either of them.

“Kinda weird, isn’t it?” Purple said. “Being back with the crowds and squads and everybody. And when did everyone else get so short? It’s like they all shrank the last decade.”

“They didn’t get short. They stayed short.” Red took a hard chomp of his jellybean sandwich. “Didn’t bother putting in the effort. But yeah, I haven’t been around this many guys at the same time since Academy. At least in the fleet you’re in your own ship half the time.”

Weird to think how Sump used to feel crowded, what with its packs of two dozen soldiers—a pittance compared to the three hundred in any given Devastis hub. No wonder they gave ranked Irkens their own quarters here; no way to get a minute of peace otherwise.

Not that Red got any alone time under his tethering anyway. “Can’t even sit alone in my own ship thanks to this thing.”

“Hey, so what actually happens when you get out of range, anyway? I’ve never really seen one of these.” The metal tips of Purple’s boots clanged against the bolsters as he swung his legs under the dock. He frowned at Red’s incredulous stare. “What? I haven’t. I never had to; most of my prisoners didn’t know they were prisoners. That or I boxed ‘em up instead.” His boots knocked out a little tune on the dock’s underside. “We gonna explode or get toxined to death or what?”

“Dunno.” It depended on if they wanted to make an impression on them or make an example to everyone else. “Both, maybe. Toxin and then evisceration—something messy and painful, whatever it is.”

“And public.”

Red nodded. They’d both felt the toxin’s warning stage, no doubting that part. If it had warnings for going out of range, it probably had failsafes for hacking, too. It’d paralyze both arms long before you could finish hacking the tethered leg off. “Wouldn’t surprise me if it was just toxin stuff, though.” 

“Yeah, some paralizey thing that hits at the worst moment so you just lie there and die from whatever’s trying to kill you already. Or die and explode and die again. I don’t get it; we didn’t even do that much. Come on, it’s our first day!” Purple hooked his arms around the rail and slithered up to sit beside Red on one of the lower rungs. With his head and arms poking out of the middle, he looked like he’d been sentenced to the stockades. “Was that Poki character always so nasty or does she hate your face in particular?”

A bitter smile twitched at the edge of Red’s mouth. “Tch, Commander Poki hates everyone’s face.”

Purple clutched both hands against his chest. “But everyone loves my face!” The tips of his antennae drooped a bit. “I moisturize and everything.”

The guy looked so pathetic, Red had to laugh. “Hey, look on the bright side: that face is still in one piece. Be happy I could talk her down to a lighter punishment.”

Slowly, Purple’s head rotated upwards. He stared like someone waiting for the rest of a punchline. Was he screwing around or did he seriously not get it?

“If I know Poki—and I do—she wanted to drag us through an atomizer and back. We’d be looking at the business end of a turbine right now, or stomping around the Digestor’s lower intestines or worse.” What exactly could be worse, Red didn’t know, but Poki’d always been the creative type. “And that insubordinate attitude of yours didn’t help, by the way.”

Purple kept staring like Red had sprouted a field of mushrooms across his face. “Red,” he slowly said, “that was her throwing us into the atomizer. This is one of the worst punishments she could throw at us.”

“I… how? We got a distance restriction.” One with a really vicious penalty, but still just a distance restriction. “It’s inconvenient and annoying and… embarrassing…” Did it count as embarrassing when nobody could see the tether ring in the first place? Red frowned. “If she really wanted to humiliate us she would’ve done it in public.”

“Would’ve.” Purple rubbed the underside of his chin, examining a bruise left from a Screwhead wrench. “Except for the part where Poki’s six foot seven.”

Two inches shorter than them. Higher rank, but not higher stature. Whatevs and Nord weren’t much taller than her, either. They had to be around the same height; tall but not taller than Red and Purple. Not tall enough to be significant, anyway. 

Of course the Prime Commanders hadn’t chewed them out in public. They couldn’t. The smallers couldn’t witness someone punishing Irkens two inches taller than her; it went against the natural order. It just wasn’t done.

“That’s why they met us from that creepy glowing platform. So it’s not obvious.” And come to think of it, Red couldn’t remember being face to face with Poki since he’d come back from the Conventia mission when he’d had that last growth spurt. Everything interaction had been through remote contact or a mass address from a high podium or screamed from across the room. Never where anyone could notice the height difference, not even Red. Not once.

Everyone above you was literally above you. All his life, Red’s superiors had been taller than him, so he’d just presumed… But if he had two inches on Poki, that didn’t really make her his superior. Just his superior officer.

Red sat up and cracked open a fresh soda. “That’s why you were such a snotrag before. You knew she’d already played her best card. She couldn’t do anything else to us.”

“She can’t.” Purple curled his lip in a lazy snarl. “Your seven-foot buddy with the Ripper sure can.”

Red knocked back his soda, eying the residential annex that framed the eastern border. Needlepoints of the commanders’ lofts stabbed at the sky’s underbelly; the lights were already on in one of them. He can try.

“Dunno why you had to bite that Sponch guy’s heels like that. You know what he’s gonna do to us the second he figures out we’re tethered, right?” Purple stuffed his last parfait in his mouth and swallowed it in two bites. The half a dozen crullers he’d been storing in his PAK followed it. “He’ll staple one to the floor and strap the other to a rocket to see which one explodes into chunks first. Or hold onto you while Pleeps grabs me and they slowly walk in separate directions to see how far they get before we start foaming at the mouth. Or get one of those clamps and—”

“I get it, Purple, thanks.”

“He could’ve—”

“He didn’t. And if what you’re saying is true, it’s a good thing I poked him now instead of later. Especially because all the squads probably won’t be together again until midterms.” Spurring on Sponch that much had been a half-accident, but not the point. “He knows we won’t roll over for him now. We didn’t need to win, we just had to live. It looks good.”

“To who? Maybe it impressed some of the smallers, but—”

Red’s empty soda can bounced off Purple’s head and into the water. “Irk to Purple: the smallers are almost everyone. You know who spurs a taller and lives to laugh about it? Nobody.”

Purple licked soda droplets off of his face and didn’t seem overly impressed. “He’s only got a couple of inches on us, though. It’s not gonna make us look that much better.”

“No,” Red told him. “but it does make Sponch look worse.” And now he’d have to work to get that respect back. He’d waste time. Time enough for Red to get a head start on those kill counts and high scores. “If we can’t outgrow him, the next best thing’s out-reputationing him.”

Purple rolled his eyes. “‘Reputationing’ isn’t a word.”

“I— You know what I mean! Shut up, you’re dumb.”

“YOU’RE dumb!”

“No, you’re dumb because I said you were dumb first. You don’t get to turn it around on me like that.”

Got him there; nobody could counter that logic. All Purple could do was sputter at him like a busted engine. “O-oh yeah? Yeah?!” He grabbed the railing, pushing himself higher with the shrill pitch of his voice. “Well if I’m so dumb, how come I had to be the one to explain how your own commander’s shorter than—” He stopped, antennae high and eyes bright.

Red leaned back on the railing as Purple swept in closer.

The Elite crouched with one hand on the rail and the other clutching his chips like he’d found the last bag on Devastis. Quickly, he glanced at Red, his snack stash, then back to Red again. “That’s why you’re hoarding like they’re not gonna feed us anymore, and sulking all over the place, and you know about shorty stuff. You’re a spurt.”

Red’s claws scraped paint off the rail. “It’s like I said: some guys just don’t want to do the work. I earned all of my inches.” He braced his shoulders and sized up Purple in a quick scan. “Don’t know if I can say the same for every taller in this army.”

That should have thrown the gauntlet. This was supposed to be the part where Purple tackled him or tried to kick Red off the pier or flew into a battle of insults. At the very least they should have exchanged bitter glares.

Instead, Purple laughed. Not one of those fakes to break tension or soften a threat. A real and honest laugh. Weirdo. “Yeah! Some of us are born naturally tall and cool and handsome and talented and handsome and tall. Guess I’ll have to live with it.” Eventually, he realized he was still the only one laughing. Purple sighed. “Okay, you really need to cut that out.”

“Cut what out?” Red pulled his legs in and glared at him. “I’m not doing anything.”

“That! That right—this! All of this!” Purple summed up Red’s whole body in a flailing blur of pointy hands. “Red, you’re one of the tallest guys in Invader training—INVADER training—and you’re shluffing around like some janitor drone or whatever. Irk’s sake, you’re almost seven feet tall. If you want to be a sulky chip bag until graduation, fine, but I’m the one stuck to you all year.”

“Well excuse me if I’m not thrilled about being tethered to a lazy, incompetent…” Red blinked. “Did you just call me a chip bag?”

The bag of Xtra Crispies squished in Purple’s grip. He ripped it open and tipped it in Red’s face. “See this? This is you.”

Red waved away the blue clouds of chip dust and peered inside. He raised an eyebrow. “…salty?”

“No—well… yeah. But not what I meant. Look, it’s half air with all the chips at the bottom so they don’t get all crunched up. Big on the outside, little on the inside.” Even littler on the inside with the way Purple was going to town on those chips. He’d already devoured half of his metaphor. “I don’t want to run under a leader still snapping at everyone’s kneecaps. It’s embarrassing.”

Big talk for someone who did a great job embarrassing himself already. But something else in that rant stuck out, so small that Red wondered if it’d fallen in by accident.

“Did you say ‘leader’?”

Purple licked up the crumbs at the bottom of his bag and nodded.

“Neither of us was assigned leadership, though.” As Red recalled, they were technically both sub-commander. Co-commanders, he’d heard Tenn call it. Under normal circumstances, the one with the most inches got the role, but since they were the same height down to the millimeter…

“I figured you wanted it more than me.” Purple shrugged.

“Yeah, but… don’t you want to fight for it?”

Red’s shoulders sagged. He’d kind of been looking forward to the inevitable glorious battle for the right to lead Squadron 732. And also for the opportunity to stomp the heel of his boot through Purple’s eye socket. He’d prepped a one-liner and everything: “Bet you didn’t see that coming!” he’d say and then Red would laugh and the squad would laugh and the arena would laugh and Purple would cry with the eye that still worked.

“I mean. I guess we could, but…” Purple’s sentence trailed off, too indifferent to finish.

“But what?” It was a trick. It had to be a trick. Nobody could give up the opportunity to lead a whole squad without at least complaining about it.

“I already know what happens. We fight, somebody wins. Loser stays mad about it until there’s another fight and in-between there’s sabotage and backtalk and poisoned donuts and I’m barfing all over the floor and… can we just skip it? It wasn’t any fun on Foodcourtia, and it’s not gonna be any fun here. If you want more work telling shorties what to do, you can have it.” Purple pointed his foot toward the battered Arena Spire. “We’ve already got two other squad commanders to worry about.”

“Eight squad commanders.” Red pointed to the nine lofts overlooking Residential. The lights had gone on in two more of them. Must’ve been nice, having the whole place to themselves. “Whatevs and Nord have three sets, too.”

Purple threw his head back and groaned.

Honestly, Red could see the practical side of Purple’s stance. Since they were stuck together no matter what, it made sense to get leadership squared away as soon as possible. Otherwise, they’d be fighting each other, the other sub-commanders, AND wrangling their squad on top of everything else. A split command weakened the entire squad. Weakened squads meant lower scores, and Red didn’t plan on leaving Devastis with anything less than an S++.

But all that crazy talk about “just skipping” their inevitable battle to the death could only be a lie. Or a distraction. Or both. There was no denying the Elite had a talent for deception. The infiltration trick with that Mauv persona proved that. No way Elite Purple actually believed it; nobody Red’s height could be that stupid.

This had been a postponement, not a cancellation. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, maybe not even this year, but eventually they’d come to a head. Purple had moved through the higher circles too long not to know that. Fine, then. If the Infiltrator wanted to play the long game, then game on.

Red sat up and stared Purple in the eye, red eyes alight with the burning resolve of at least three and a half stars. “I’m still going to crack your skull under my boot at the end of this. Just so you know.”

Purple waved his legs over the pier, sipping a milkshake. He smiled. “Neat.”

Chapter Text

[Chillaxis. Cycle 9. Era 24. Smash Day.]

Somewhere between the sixty-seventh and the eighty-fifth step, after the black stuff starts falling but before the white stuff starts falling, Red gets the weirdest feeling that he’s done all of this before. He does his best to ignore it. It’s an error or something. Red’s shoulders shiver under his skintight smeetery uniform. It’s pretty cold out here, and his body’s not used to it. Sometimes when your body gets too tired or too cold or too upset, the brainmeats start making stuff up. It creates patterns that don’t exist and glitches out. That’s gotta be what this is, because how could he have done this before?

Today is a day of firsts.

The first time out of the smeeteries. First time off of Irk. First time on a new planet—an enemy planet, no less. First time in a real spaceship in real life where you can touch the metal and sniff the chairs and the guards tell you not to lick anything but you do it anyway when they’re not looking. But most of all, it’s the very first Smash Day field trip in centuries. No smeet will have another chance like this for generations because Smash Days only happen when the Empire wins a Great Big War. Red doesn’t know when the next great big war will be, but he’s sure it’ll be long after he’s done being a smeet, and Smash Day’s just for smeets. Soldiers and pilots and other big important Irkens don’t get to go on field trips because they’ve all got better stuff to do out in space, being cool and awesome, destroying stuff and maxing out their kill counts.

White vapor trails out in a sigh. Okay. One more heave should do it. With a last great big pull of his arms, he hauls himself up and over the ledge of the stair. Last night, all Red wanted was to get his first hit on his kill count. Right now, he’d settle to just get up these stupid stairs. His antennae tilt toward the palace entrance. It’s quieter inside now, but if he tweaks his antennae just right he can still hear crashing and smashing and shattering deep inside the building. Faint screams echo from the 9th story windows; some of it’s the scared-sad kind from Fweezies dug out of their hiding spots, but most of it’s the happy-fun kind from the smeets who just won Hide and Seek. The smeets who got in already. The smeets who aren’t Red. 

It’s not fair. How come they get first dibs on Smash Day? How come they got here first and climbed up first and did EVERYTHING first? Why did they get long legs before Red got long legs? If Red had legs that long he’d have smashed and broke and destroyed way more stuff than any of those other dumb dummy guys with their dumb big legs.

With a scampering leap, Red tackles the next stair, and it only takes four tries instead of six this time. The next one takes four too, but the one after that only needs three! (Seven if you count the test-jumps, but those are different so they don’t count.) Right. Okay, good. Two more down, only five left.

Too bad they’re all three times his height. (One of the chaperones compared them to a bookcase, whatever that is.)

Red cranes his neck to squint at the top of the next stair, trying to memorize the location before his sight starts to blur. It’s so hard to make out where the edges even are; lit up under the glare of the sun, they all mash together in one big white slant. Why did all those weird fancy moth guys build their weird fancy palace in the cold where the sun’s too bright?

It could be worse, though. The Planetary Conversion Team put a great big dome over the palace right after the cradle ship landed. That way, no sneaky Fweezies can bomb the smeets while they’re trying to have fun, and also so the sun can’t cheat by blinding everybody. But dome or no dome, Red’s never been anywhere this bright, even before all the lights broke. 

Out here, light doesn’t just come from emergency lanterns on the walls, monitor screens, or spots on a PAK. Light comes from the sun, and the sunlight bounces off everything else so that the light just gets everywhere. It’s weird. Fweezians are weird. That’s probably what got them dead. Weirdos with creepy wings and fluffy bodies and long muzzles that made big palaces with too many big stupid stairs. Yeah, let’s spend all our time making giant dumb stairs in our big dumb building to make everyone think we’re cool instead of winning wars, and then we’ll lose the war and die. Great plan, Fweezies. Ugh.

This sucks. He was supposed to be inside by now, not on the stairs. He’s been climbing these things for hours, and he’s been climbing these last few steps for days! Days or… minutes? Quarter-hour? It’s kind of hard to tell time without any timers or Nanny-Bots to tell him. There’s a way to know by looking at the sun or accessing this special part of his PAK, but Red doesn’t know how to do either of those. It never mattered before. Time only mattered in timed sims, and this isn’t a sim. This is the real thing, and the real thing’s a lot colder and annoying… and hard. He doesn’t want to admit it, but the chaperones were right. The real thing’s harder—a lot harder. Especially when you’re eleven and a half inches tall.

Standing on his toes, Red slides his palm along the next stair, feeling for a rough spot. These things are all smooth polished marble, but they all have at least one rough spot for his claws to snatch. If he ever gets his hands on a time machine, he’s going back in time to find the Fweezie who decided stairs should be bigger on the top and smaller on the bottom, and punch them in the face. Seriously, this staircase is the worst. They started out shorter than his heel and now they’re almost taller than he is. An Elite who briefed them called it an “optical illusion”. It makes it harder to storm, and something about looking bigger from a distance to scare away invaders. The whole cradle ship had laughed at that, even the pilots and the drones, since that plan obviously didn’t work. It couldn’t even scare away a squad of little smeets.

The builders probably didn’t care how hard the climb was, since Fweezies can just fly over the stairs anyway. The only ones who’d get tired would be enemies or visitors who could secretly be enemies. It almost makes sense in a backwards mothy way… maybe. The stairs are still dumb, though.

Red shakes the sweat off his forehead before it can freeze again. He’s really starting to miss that rug. It might have been the ugliest thing ever, but it had good traction. At least, it did before Pesto, Smeet #45f623b, and Skutch set it on fire. Now Red’s got to waste all day searching for a good grip. They probably did it on purpose—lit the rug behind them so whoever followed behind couldn’t climb on it anymore. Just to spite him. Just to be mean.

Or maybe… maybe they thought everyone else had gotten into the palace already. Their awful scores meant those three didn’t get off The Inevitable until the very last wave. (Red got way higher scores than all of them. He was in Wave 2, got off-board early, and he’s still the last one inside and it’s so so STUPID.) Since they got off the ship last, they didn’t bother checking behind them for other smeets throwing rocks or starting another stampede.

Maybe they just didn’t see him. Red’s easy to miss since he’s so…

Nah. Nah, they saw him. Of course they’d seen him, he’d been right there! They’d done it to make up for those awful test scores or because of spite or jealousy or… or something.

Red’s claw hits a rough spot. Finally. Digging deep into the marble, he hauls himself up, legs slipping and grappling over the wet stone. His hands hurt. A claw broke off like ten stairs ago, and his palms are all pinkish, raw, and filthy. It’s the autoclave for him when he gets back.

More white stuff flutters through the air, dusting his back like a powdered donut and numbing his sensitive antennae tips. “Snow,” they call it. The hard clear stuff is “ice”, and both of them are supposed to be frozen water. It’s nothing new—Red knows about frozen water from sim-training and the Collective Memory. The thing is, the frozen water he saw there was frozen. Nobody ever mentioned the water didn’t stay solid forever. When the too-bright sun comes out, it all becomes this… this gross squishy not-yet-water that clings to his uniform so the material sticks to his skin so he’s even colder than he already is. The fibers of his antennae froze together a long time ago. It hurts and he can’t smell a thing. This whole planet is the worst place in the whole universe and he hates it, he hates it, he HATES it and just wants to go home.

Except he doesn’t. Not really. Because that’s a stupid thing to want. Only someone small and stupid and weak would want to go back home. Back underground.

Back in the dark.

Red’s shivering antennae draw flat against his head as he takes the next stair. Maybe Chillaxis is too bright, too cold, too wet and slippery, and nobody plays fair, but at least it’s not dark.

Everywhere is dark at home: the halls, the atrium, the hubs, the fight pits and nesting cells, the training auditoriums and cafeterias and test sites and everywhere else. Smeets too young or dumb to know better think it’s always been dark and light only ever comes from the pale emergency bulbs and monitors, but Red’s smarter than that. He’s old enough to know better. He remembers when the smeeteries had light all the time. The whole ceiling lit up end to end, and the training sims never had lines because all of them were always online instead of just a few dozen.

It also meant everybody trained ALL the time. If you weren’t sleeping or eating, and if you were too little for the pits, you were in the education plug. Everyone complained about it on the inside, except one guy. He complained on the outside—loudly.

One of the tall smeets from a neighboring hub, he always complained how long the sims took, how boring training was, complained about everything, really. Until one day, the tall guy decided to do more than complain. He left. Just… Just up and left. Walked out right in the middle of the learning set. It’s a crazy idea now, and it was even crazier then. If smeets were supposed to train outside the sims, they wouldn’t be IN sims.

It went dark not long after that.

Everyone said the lights would come back on in a few hours. Red knew better back then, too. He remembered when the lights went out a long, LONG time, back in basic. The lights didn’t come back for years.

He’d hoped it had been another power surge and the lights really would come back on after a few hours. Then he hoped they’d come back after a few days.

After three months in the dark, the Nannys stopped estimating reboot times and started rearranging everyone’s schedules around the few dozen sims that ran off generators. They say the lights should be back online by the time the smeets return from Smash Day. They say it’s almost fixed. They’ve been saying that so long Red doesn’t believe it anymore.

Sometimes he still thinks about that tall smeet, and the weird coincidence of that smeet running off to see the surface when the lights went dark, and how that coincidence isn’t a coincidence. Tall smeets are good smeets. But good smeets stay still and don’t run off in the middle of training sets. Good smeets follow orders and they don’t make Irk so angry it takes all the lights away. How could that smeet be tall but not be good? It didn’t make sense. It still doesn’t make sense. Red wonders sometimes if he should have tried to stop him, but nobody listens to ten-inch nobodies. It wouldn’t have done anything. But maybe he could have stalled him a couple of minutes, or told someone what was happening. Maybe then the lights wouldn’t have gone away.

For as long as he could remember, Red dreamed what it’d be like to finally breach the surface, of coming out of the dark and into the bright glow of Irk’s cities and billboards. They said the cities were so bright the planet shone in space like a star. So bright you couldn’t even see the moon or stars because Irk shamed them into hiding. But when Red looked out on Irk’s surface, he only saw what he’d always seen: dark, dark, some drones on fire, and more dark. The lights had gone out everywhere, not just underground.

Everywhere except the sky. Above them, points of light cracked through the clouds and concrete, faraway and burning, out in space where all the worthy Irkens go. Boarding The Inevitable, Red had promised himself he wouldn’t waste this chance to go into the stars. He’d prove he could lay waste to Irk’s enemies like anyone else could, shrimpy smeet or not.

It was a good promise. Too bad he couldn’t keep it.

Red’s claws snag the top stair. Last one. Up and over in one try. It’s a hollow victory. He’s the last one here. Too short to climb the stairs on time, too slow to trash the palace, the same way he’s too short and slow for everything else. It stings worse than the broken glass under his feet. He’ll get over it. He always does.

Red wipes the blood and snow and bits of melted rug off his hands, and steps into the entrance hall. It’s a real sight.

According to PAK data, history archives, and at least five back-issues of Overlords & Oligarchs Monthly, the Holy Palace of the Imperial Fweezian Sovereignty had once been the most glorious structure in its galaxy. The moths’ seven-thousand-year-old love letter to themselves arched eight stories into the belly of the clouds, wreathed in glittering towers, and trimmed in colorful banners. It dominated the skyline for miles. Only the highest of highborn Fweezies could even touch the cobblestone. Some fasted and saved monies for generations just to stand outside the gates. Rare visitors gawked at the softness of the silks, couches, and carpets, and went home to write books dedicated to the gilded interiors. Once, this had been the birthplace of emperors and gravesite of priests, the galactic hub of political intrigue, and a holy place of spells, divining, and wicked curses.

Now it’s a playground for smeets to max out their ransack scores. Maybe snag some extra experience points in terror and/or rampage.

Assuming, of course, you managed to get inside the building on time. Red’s heels sink into the smoldering fur carpet as he gazes at the wide expanse of ruin and merrymaking. Candelabras cracked in half droop over upturned bowls and broken pottery. Murals in permanent marker, fingerpaints, and the blood of at least three different species scrawl across the walls and floors and ceiling. Any place to mark has been marked: Irken Empire insignias, drawings of themselves, The Tallest, moths with x-ed out eyes, tally marks, clever jokes, cupcakes, smiley faces, names, numbers, bad puns, battle slogans, and frowny faces claim every inch of wall space until it overlaps into a soup of conquest and delight. There’s no palace left to smash, just one big multicolored territory marker.

Nobody’s here, except for the round smeet asleep in a broken chandelier. Everyone’s moved on to better spoils. It’s not like it’s a surprise—this room got hit first and hardest; after eight waves of smeets, the room’s lucky to still be standing. Even if the rest of the palace hasn’t been totally gutted by now, he’ll still get muscled out of any cool stuff left to smash. There’s no point hunting for things to break, burn, tear, or drown.

That’s just fine with him. Let those dummy dumb-guys have all the shredded couches and melted statues they want. If they want to waste their one and only Smash Day, let ‘em. Red came for something better. Much better.

Kicking through the minefield of shattered shiny stuff, he trails the walls, searching the peeling paper and scarred treeskin underneath for… well, Red’s not sure yet. A crack, a weird seam in the treeskin walls, a statue cleaner than the other statues, something like that. A secret sign to take him where he needs to be. It’s probably a super-secret subtle thing you’d never even notice unless you knew where to look. Maybe it’s not a crack in the wall. Maybe it’s something even smaller, like too many petals on a flower in a picture, or a scent mark only moths can smell or…

Red slows to a stop and cranes his neck up at a signpost.

SERVANT PASSAGE ENTRANCE.
HIRED HELP ONLY BEYOND THIS POINT.
NO SMOKING. NO EATING. NO PETS. NO RUNNING.
NO UNAUTHORIZED SINGING, BLEEDING, CHANTING, OR WEAPONS.
ALL OFFICIAL SACRIFICES LV. 3 AND UP MUST HAVE LEASH.
THANK YOU! n_n

Or maybe they’ll just spell it out for him. That works too.

How come nobody’s gone in yet? The outside’s marked up, and there’s claw scratches all over. Someone tried to break in—the passage door’s open, but not all the way. Why? Too dangerous?

Shaking the snow off, Red twitches his antennae. There’s no Irken blood or alarm scent in the area. If there’s danger here, nobody’s found it yet. There might be another reason, though.

A long shadow passes over him. The ground rumbles as a pair of boots attached to huge legs brush past him, moving fast. Okay, the boots are walking, but when those boots are as tall as you, they might as well be running.

 “Hey.” Red forces his cold and tired feet into a sprint to catch up. “HEY! Hey wait, I have a question!”

 The boots slow but they don’t stop. A tiny head atop a big round body looks around.

 At least, Red assumes it’s looking around. All he can see are two antennae stalks peeking out of the bulk like two flowers on a mountaintop. The Irken soldier is so wide he takes up half of the hallway and all of the rug. Even when Red catches up, all he can see is a summit of fat and muscle and snow and more fat and muscle. He smells different, too. It’s not like the metallic smell of the pilots, and not the icy-smoky scent of the Chillaxis round-up teams either. If anything, this guy smells a little like both. He smells like ships and Chillaxis and Irk and a bunch of brand new scents attached to names Red knows but has never seen. Plookesia. Vort. Bordellux. Dirt. And overlaying all of it, a wash of fungus, plant life, and fry grease from the newly named Foodcourtia.

“Thought I heard something,” the soldier rumbles to himself.

“It’s me! Down here!”

He wipes the snow off his face with a rag and tosses it aside. “I wonder who it could be. I know it couldn’t be a smeet. Smeets know how to show respect to their tallers. Especially Invaders.”

This is an Invader? Red looks again. Yes, the plain uniform, the shiny boots over pale unstriped body armor, the overlapping scents of conquest. It really is an Invader.

There’s no time to be awed, though. “Uh. Excuse me, sir?”

“That’s better.” The boots come to a complete stop, and a pair of small purple eyes peer over the mass of himself. His snacking must be immense to fuel all that. It’s amazing. He must sense Red’s appreciation because his voice turns nicer. “Now what’s so…” He squints and leans down a bit. “Ha! Well, look at that. You’re not even bigger than my boot, and here you are out on field leave. Not even a little exploded either, good for you!”

Red frowns.

“You uh. You are old enough to be here, right?” The Invader raises an eyebrow and glances around the room. “I dunno what I’m supposed to do with stowaways. Detention or thumbscrews or…?”

Can smeet teeth break through boots? Probably not. If the Invader didn’t outrank him by like a billion and wasn’t the second tallest Irken that Red’s ever seen in his life, he might still try it.

“Excuse me, sir, I’m sixty-five.” Technically still sixty-four until next week, but close enough. Not that it matters; some smeets on this trip are only in their mid-forties and they still got to come. “Also, I got an S-plus on all of my tests and…” He’s wasting time. The Inevitable won’t wait around all week, and Smash Day’s just got a few hours left. Every minute he waits is a minute someone else might find the prize before him. “Hey, do you know if anything here’s Out Of Bounds?” He points at the entrance sign. “Like that?”

The Invader looks for himself. “I don’t think so. Nobody said anything. Why do you want to—”

Red’s gone before the second sentence. Last second, he remembers to salute goodbye, even though nobody can see it.

It’s clear. The doorway’s open and clear and he can use it! Nobody’s used that spot yet, and it’s not off-limits or dangerous, so it must be because—

Red bolts through the door and smacks face-first into a forcefield. Yeah, he thought so.

The servant hallways are blocked off by either some sort of fancy shield or freaky moth magickey stuff. Same difference. It didn’t appear until Red walked into it, though, so there must be a trick to it. Claw marks, scorch marks, laser-burns, and very rude phrases mar the fancy treeskin on Red’s left. Beyond the barrier, the hall’s untouched. It’s not even dusty.

Looks like the forcefield’s attached to the wall itself. It doesn’t try to follow Red when he moves closer or draws farther away. That means it’s stuck to this one spot. He doesn’t need to break through the shield, just the wall. And these walls aren’t so strong anymore. Red pokes at the treeskin beside his foot. It’s soft and wet here, and not just from the snow on his boots. It’s really wet.

Nobody can track in that much snow, so it had to come from the snow blown in from outside. Red steps back into the entry hall and shivers under a fresh gust of wind. There’s a huge hole in the ceiling where the wind and snow rushes in, and now that he’s looking for them, there’s puddles and snow all over the floor and banisters and everywhere. Maybe even before the cradle ship even landed. That means it’s been snowing in here for days, which means that wall’s been wet for days.

Watching for spies and tag-alongs, Red double-checks the location of the forcefield again and walks along the outside wall. The barrier popped up seven steps in, right? He walks three, four, six, nine steps along the outer wall and stops. That should be far enough. 

This would be much easier with laser cutters or shock daggers, but nobody gets those until the PAK upgrades, and that won’t happen until Red breaches for real. The best he can do is a dull little knife he swiped off a pit fighter. It’s rusted halfway through and smells like a junkyard puked in a dumpster, but it still works. The blade stabs through the wet weakened treeskin no problem. He can’t cut smooth lines with it, but that’s okay. Red jabs several deep punctures in the wall, going up and over his head and down again until there’s a little arch of stabs—kind of like a cutout picture.

“Okay.” Red squares his shoulders and shoves. Wet treeskin and plaster collapse under his weight, and he goes sprawling across the carpet. The clean, dry, unburned, untouched carpet. He’s in. The clear barrier shimmers over his left shoulder. On his right, the servants’ corridors stretch into infinity, free for the pickings.

It actually still smells like Fweezie in here. For the first time in his life, the only Irken Red can smell is himself. This really is enemy territory, even if nobody’s here anymore. Something deep in his spooch tells him he’s in danger. Reminds him if he gets in trouble nobody can help him. Smeets aren’t meant to be alone. Smeets aren’t even meant to be in groups of less than five. Even on the stairs, other Irkens were still in range and in sight.

Red grips the dull knife tight in his little fist and follows the lights that run along the ceiling. Most of them still work, too—probably powered by weird moon power or batteries or something. At the end of the hall, the path widens and splits into a five-way crossroad. Just by looking, he can tell the whole thing works this way: paths branching into paths like vein-circuits. Doors line the walls of every hall, every path, every possible route. Those doors might lead to rooms, or to more paths, or rooms that feed and loop back into new corridors or…

Red gnaws his bottom lip. Nobody gave them maps to this place, especially not the secret innards inside it. Someone could get lost in here for a whole era. Those stinky jerks probably built it that way to be jerks. The outside rooms are hard to navigate too, maybe harder, because the outside had to confuse enemies. He’d bet his last snack ration that none of them counted on the enemy getting in after they’d already sacked the place. They didn’t count on Red, either.

Nobody counted on Red—or any other smeet, for that matter—finding The Princess Room. None of the big Irkens found it yet. If they had, it would have been announced by now. That means it’s gotta be hidden really really really good, and it has to be somewhere nobody’s been yet.

Pacing the mouth of the crossroads, Red angles his antennae and listens close, just like the sims taught him. Chaos, destruction, and cries of smeetish delight rattle the outer walls of the far left and far right corridors. Someone’s in those rooms, so those routes aren’t the ones he wants. Down the center path, though it’s harder to hear, someone’s running water and throwing jingly stuff. That’s out, too. The middle left and middle right paths are still quiet. Either nobody’s gone down there yet, or everyone’s been there and gone already. The mid-left smells kind of Irken, but the right one… the right’s the stinkiest mothiest path of all. That’s got to be his route.

The knife scrapes along the wall, scrawling long jagged tears of peeling wallpaper as Red follows the corridor. Both so he can find his way back in case he gets lost, and to mark his place. To lay claim on what he did, and what he’s about to do. Yes. He’s going to find The Princess Room, and he’s going to get the prize. Who cares if he didn’t get to bite any butlers or ride a chandelier? Red’s about to do what nobody, not even the grown soldiers could do.

Ahead, the path splits again. Red swivels his antennae to find the smelliest, mothiest route. Takes a few steps, swivels some more. His smile fades. Everything smells like Fweezies now. It’s all the same. Dozens of doors spread down all four halls, and checking all the doors of even one of those halls would take hours. He doesn’t have hours.

“Augh, I HATE this place!” His voice echoes in the empty hall. Like it’s mocking him. “Stupid moths and their stupid rugs and fancy s-stuff and dust all over everything.”

Wait. Red wipes a little cloud of pink moth dust off his leg and sneezes. Was this stuff always here? He doesn’t think so. As it swerves into a new corridor, the dust particles thin and thicken in random patches, as if someone had tried to brush it away at the last second. Dust covers the rug, the walls, the abandoned supply cart tipped on its side. Dried blood freckles the wallpaper. It kind of reminds him of the time a feeder bot spun out of control and splashed soda all over the room.

It’s not the best lead in the world—no telling where this Fweezian was flying from—but it’s better than nothing. Red follows the trail down the northwest corridor as it bends through another turn, down another split path, and up an arching slope where the dust thickens and thickens until it blankets the rug like pink snow. No, more than only dust now. Tufts of fur—mostly pink, with flecks of yellow—poke through the dust and stick to the wallpaper in bloody clumps.

 All the Fweezian fur colors mean something about their rank and jobs and stuff, but that data’s not in his storage. The fanciest most important ones are blue and white, Red knows that much. The green guys—like the one thrown out the third-story window earlier—are something called “priests” and they’re really important, too. Nobodies come in grey or brown. The other colors? Who knows. Pink and yellow are bright colors, though, so this Fweezie had to be someone at least a little important. Maybe important enough to go in The Princess Room?

 The trail stops dead in the middle of the corridor. It doesn’t fade, it doesn’t scatter, it just… isn’t there anymore.

There’s no sign of a teleportation marker anywhere in here. They could have taken one of the doors near the ceiling, but all of the doors higher than Red’s antennae are spotless, even the ones over the dust trail. This Fweezie hadn’t been flying, at least not in this spot, and they hadn’t come down from a higher room.

Red circles the spot where the trail ends. A bunch of fur’s clumped under the rug. Way more than there ought to be. The edge of the rug’s dark green in dried blood, too. Red digs his claws into the fringe and pulls and pulls and pulls. Why is this thing so heavy? He can barely budge it; did they glue this thing to the floor? He shakes off the rug burn and yanks the carpet with all his—

BOOM!

The corridor jolts hard. Red flies backward and knocks his head against the wall. When he opens his eyes and wipes the plaster out of his face, he realizes he’s still holding a chunk of rug in his hand. The whole section tore off.

Where the rug used to be, clusters of dust and fuzz clump around a circle cut into the floor. A secret trapdoor, just like in the simgames. A bloody handprint stains a handle at the top, right above a shiny insignia in the center.

This is it. This is The Princess Room.

Honestly, Red doesn’t even know what a Princess Room is or what it does or why it’s important. But he does know that if he finds it, that means he wins, and winning means you’re good. It means you’re the best. It means he’ll get taller and score more snacks and get everything he ever wanted and nobody’s gonna look down on him anymore. No more “report your progress, e82d10” or “over here, d10”. From now on it’ll be “excellent work, Red ” and “these scores are amazing, Red ” and “I wish I could be as tall and cool as you, Red ”. No more serial numbers. From now on, they’ll know him by his name. Red closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, and opens the door to his future.

“You’ll know it when you find it,” the chaperones had told them. They were right.

Red’s never seen anyplace like this before. True, he’s never seen the rest of this planet before either, not in real life, but he still knew about it. The palaces and snow and layout grids, the poisoned spears and creepy secret chambers with dead people inside, all that’s in his collective memory data or in the sims—snapshots he can reference whenever he wants. Not this place. This is brand new and it’s… it’s weird.  He’d wondered before why they didn’t call The Princess Room a vault since vaults are where you keep valuables. Now that he’s here, it’s clear that whatever this place is, it’s not a vault.

The walls are squishy and soft, like pillows without the bulk. Silver shelves line the walls, holding strange replicas of cities and of Fweezies, kind of like a war room. But war rooms are supposed to be accurate, right? How come all the Fweezie models' faces are so weird-looking? The eyes are way too big, the fluffy antennae are too fluffy and so long they drape off the shelves, with mouths frozen in happy little smiles. And they’re all huge. If he snatched the lacy robes off one of these things, it’d be too big for him to wear. Most of them are bigger than the model buildings. Are these Fweezie models supposed to be giants?

Instead of the drab, serious browns, greens, reds, and golds of the halls, colors in The Princess Room look like a sunrise through fog. They’re washed out and gentle on the eyes, like none of the colors knew how to be colors yet. It’s the only place on Chillaxis where Red doesn’t have to squint.

Red slips through the trapdoor on the ceiling and grabs one of the nearby hanging ropes. It’s a shiny golden thing—not a metal chain like he assumed, but thread sticky to the touch. Handy for keeping a good grip as he shimmies down the thread, even if it feels kind of gross.

His eye trails the thread down to his landing spot: a round nest (or is this what they call a bed?) hanging from the ceiling, full of pillows and Fweezie fuzz. There, in the crook of the nest, swaddled by blankets and pillows, uselessly guarded by a replica-giant, sits the prize.

The pod capsule bends over itself in a crescent, its glow casting the nest in a wash of blue-green light. From far away it looks like the moon in a soap dish. The pod’s at least thrice Red’s height—not full-grown Fweezian size, but close. The soft replica giant smiles stupidly at Red as he lands. These things are even weirder up close.

When he steps closer, shadows wriggle and shift inside the translucent capsule shell. The prize smells really nice. Not like snacks nice, but just… nice? He's not really sure how to describe it. It reminds him of naptime, or that one night a supervisor smiled on the monitor and told him he did a good job. Maybe someone can tell him what the name of this smell is when he turns in his prize. Of course that’ll be after they tell him “Good job Red, you won Smash Day,” and “everybody come see the good job Red did,” and—

“Hey, I think something’s alive in there.”

Did that voice come from inside his head or inside the capsule? Arching on tiptoe, he squints at the shadowy blob. “Hello?” The shell’s too thick to see much. “Uh, I think you’re property of Irk now?”

“We’re already property of Irk, don’t be dumb.” One of the shadows separates from the blob, rising up and up until Red realizes this shadow isn’t on the inside at all.

Another smeet pokes his head out from behind the pod. His onesie uniform is a mess of wall plaster and moth dust, and under the blue glow, his purple eyes are the color of space. Frowning, he tilts his head at Red and turns back to the capsule. “It’s moving inside. That means something inside is alive, right?”

“Sometimes stuff moves when it’s dead, too. I think dead stuff moves different, though, so it’s probably alive. Maybe…” Red’s eyes travel The Princess Room’s fluffy replicas, miniature buildings, and paintings on the wall. “Maybe all this stuff belongs to whatever’s inside. I think it’s sleeping.”

“What a dumb time to sleep! Oh lookit that the house is on fire I better take a nap ‘cause I’m a big dumb moth bluhbluhbluh goodnight everybody.” The smeet giggles and snorts at his own joke. 

Red knows that laugh. It’s the same grating annoying laugh from the education plug and the snack trough. They train in the same sims for group work sometimes, and he sat next to him for a few years before the lights went out. He’s in a different pod group, but the same smeeting year. Red’s PAK identifies him Intermediate Class Irken Smeet PAK#8c33b5. He thinks that maybe he doesn’t like 3b5 very much.

“Hey, know what? I bet it’s full of baby food. That’s why it smells so good.” 3b5 chews the glowing pod a little bit and makes a face. Apparently it doesn’t taste as good as it smells.

“Nobody makes a whole special secret room just to hide baby food.” Probably. Maybe. Actually, the more Red thinks about it, the more he’s not sure. Why would they need baby food, unless...? Red examines the weird glowing pod again. “It kind of looks like a smeeting pod without the… everything else, but that doesn’t make any sense.” Babies go underground if you don’t want them to die. Everyone knows that; even not-Irkens can’t be that stupid. “It can’t be a baby or an egg.”

“It could be one of those in-between things. I think they call it a uh… cocoon. Yeah, because something’s cooking inside.” 3b5 lifts the soft Fweezie replica by its lace wing. “That’s why it’s got all these models and stuff here, so it can figure out what all this stuff is supposed to look like when it comes out of stasis.”

“But it’s so ugly, though.”

“Exactly!”

The smeet’s got a point. Red sizes him up, trying to casually look him in the eye without arching his neck up too much. Staring straight ahead, he can only see the curve of 3b5’s chin. He’s about a head taller than him, give or take an inch. Wild guess, he’s shorter than Tenn ( who earned her name last year and was taller than almost everybody), but taller than Alexovich (who earned his name the day before yesterday). It’s kind of hard to tell, since his giant head makes up most of his size.

“How’d you even get in here?” Red sure didn’t see anybody when he slipped in here.

“Me and Smeet #e74a96c made bombs with some stuff under the sink! He was gonna come with me but he went to play with the fancy green guys Tenn’s group found—” Probably those wingless Fweezies Red saw tumbling out the window earlier. “—so I went to blow up some stuff on my own for a while. Then I blew up a room, and then another room where I found a cool rock, then I blew up that wall over there, aaaaand now I’m here!”

The new guy’s wet footprints trace a wobbly trail from the cocoon to a line of shelves and tiny toppled buildings. There’s a huge hole half-hidden behind one of the biggest shelves. That must have been from the explosion earlier—the one that almost threw Red into the wall when he pulled back the rug.

Red’s fingers twist into the plush fur of the Fweezie replica. It’s good for sinking claws into. Keeps him from sinking his claws into something else. If this smeet bombed The Princess Room the same time Red found the trap door, that only meant one thing.

“We tied.”

“We did?” The taller smeet screws up his face at the idea. “For what?”

“We found The Princess Room at the same time; that means we both win the prize.” It also means they’ll have to share. It’s not… ideal, but murder coverups aren’t in Red’s lesson plan, so it’s what he’s stuck with. He knows he ought to be glad he gets to share with someone taller than him, and grateful he’s only sharing with one smeet and not twenty. It doesn’t make him feel much better, though.

3b5 taps the cocoon with his antenna and slowly, carefully, licks it with the tip of his tongue. “Blech, it’s even worse the second time! This is the worst prize I ever tasted. I hate it, I want a new one.”

Red waves the smeet away before he gets spit all over the prize. “Okay, I’ll take it, then.” 

“I didn’t say I didn’t want it, I just said I hated it! And… and actually, since I blew up the wall AND I’m taller than you that means I should get it anyway. You’re the one that should go away.” 

3b5 glances at Red’s bared teeth with a humph. “...but I guess we could share. I guess. If you’re gonna cry about it.”

Let him try that again and lose a finger or three. Then they’ll see who’s crying about it. 

The smeet glances back to the cocoon, then at the rest of the room, searching for something. “Are you sure this is the prize? I don’t hear any winning chimes. Maybe they don’t know we found it yet.”

"They have to know," Red tells him. "They're watching from somewhere, I bet. I saw one of the smeetery monitors on the balconies when I came in. And I saw a bunch go up the stairs before that.” He remembers because one of them yelled at him when he stepped on Red by accident and almost fell. “They're all over the place." 

More and more adult Irkens have been hovering around lately. Not just for the field trip, either. Whispers around the cafeteria troughs warned of tall figures in the eaves of the smeeteries, lurking in the shadows of the testing simulators, skulking in education plugs, pacing the halls when everyone went to sleep, all of them holding datapads and wearing monitor visors.

Smeet 3b5 considers it. “You mean like the pit scouts.” 

“What's a pit scout?”

“It's when big Irkens come to watch us in the pit fights and they all point and yell a lot. They're supposed to be hidden, but the stubby guy from Vat 56 hit a switch on accident and the wall got invisible, and on the other side, we saw a whole bunch of ‘em watching with snacks and datapads and stuff.”

“Oh.” Red's never been picked to go to the pit before. It sounds fun. “What's it like fighting the real ones?”

The smeet chews his antenna tip and glances away. “Weird. Sometimes they’ll hit you back, but other times they just sit there and make loud crying noises. I don't like it sometimes. It's too loud in there, and none of the offworlders know how to play right. But sometimes it's fun.”

The nanny bots spoke of something called a “draft pick” once. Big Irkens came down from Irk’s surface or from space to choose who they wanted most to come learn stuff with them. Red bet his last snack pellet that they came looking for draft picks in the Chillaxis palace, too. They HAD to know they'd found the Princess Room. Tall Irkens knew just about everything. Why hasn't anyone said anything yet? 

Red pokes the cocoon, watching the blobby shape inside shift away from his hand. “Maybe it only counts as winning if we take the prize down first.”

Easier said than done. The gold threads hanging the nest were tough enough to hold Red’s weight, and they’d felt solid, too. No biting or clawing through those. Maybe they can burn it.

“I guess we carry it to a chaperone,” says 3b5. He frowns at the cocoon twice his height and wider than both of them put together. “Some…how. The important thing is we found it. Hey, you think they’ll let us declare for this?”

“They have to!” If they couldn’t declare their names for this, Red can’t imagine what else would do it.

“What’s yours going to be? I picked mine a long time ago right after the lights went out—the first time, not the other time. You wanna know what it is?”

Red starts to argue that no he does not want to know what it is and that exchanging names before formal declarations is illegal. 

3b5 keeps talking over him. It’s like this guy is always talking. He probably even talks in his sleep. “I’M gonna be Purple! ‘Cause of my eyes, see? Nobody’s got eyes this color.”

“I saw a big Invader today with purple eyes.”

“Well, none of the other smeets have eyes like mine. Grown Irkens don’t count.”

“Okay, but I’m pretty sure 2606jk5 has purple ones, too.”

“That…” The-Smeet-Who-Will-Be-Purple-Apparently curdles his face into a glare. “That doesn’t count either! Her eyes are lilac, duh. You’d know that if your eyes weren’t stupid. Purple’s a cool name and it’s way better than yours. I bet it’s something dumb like… like uh, Smoofindoof or Dookinsmoof! You’re just too smeety-smeet to tell me. I bet you didn’t even think of one yet.”

Shows what he knows. Red thought up and chose his name fifteen and a half minutes after he dropped out the delivery chute. Saying that would just sound like he’s trying to one-up Purple, though, so Red saves himself time and keeps that part secret.

That’s the nice thing about secrets: they belong to you until you decide to give them away. Names are like that, too. They belong to you, even when nobody knows. They belong to you before anyone, even you, says it out loud.

This isn’t how Red imagined saying his for the first time, but this dorkbutt is starting to bother him, and he’s probably going to tell his whole pod about the shorty who doesn’t even have a name yet. “My name’s Red,” says Red.

It feels good to say it out loud. It feels real, it feels right, it’s—

“Fake.”

Red swings around with a hiss. “It is not!”

“Is too.” Purple crosses his arms with a sniff. “You copied me, that means it’s fake. You only chose a color ‘cause I picked a color. Change it.”

“I’m not changing—why can’t we both be a color?”

He rolls his eyes and talks real slow like he’s explaining to some dumb offworlder. “It’s too the same. Obviously. What if people get confused and don’t know which is which?”

Red stares at him. “Because I have red eyes and my name is RED !” He squeaks so loud the cocoon nest rocks around a little.

The smooth porcelain shifts under Purple’s feet. He swings his big dumb head too fast. The quick little skitter of legs can’t match the weight of his skull, can’t keep up with the wobbling nest, and his feet slip out from under him.

Last second, he catches himself on the edge before he drops. Purple flinches at the spinning floor beneath him and glares at Red. “You don’t hafta get all mad just because I’m right.”

Red hisses at him again.

“See, this is exactly why you can’t have a color name, you’re too immature.” Both legs kicking under him, Purple manages to pull himself up by his arms. Even without his legs, he still comes up to Red’s chin. “And short, too! I’m taller than you, so you have to do what I say. Hah! So change it.”

Like that’s even possible. Red is Red. That’s his name, that’s who he is. If even Almighty Tallest Miyuki can’t make him change names, this dummyface smelling like moldy wallpaper sure can’t. He could point out that lots of Irkens have near-identical names without a problem. He could tell him that he picked his name first and by law, had dibs. Or he could just argue the (correct) fact that Purple’s just mad his name isn’t as cool as Red’s is. 

But Red’s tried to argue with taller smeets before. It never works. So he bites Purple’s arm.

Purple reels back squealing. He tries to hold his own arm, forgetting he’s holding on to the edge. The smeet slips off the nest and drops hard into a pile of soft Fweezie replicas. All that’s left of him is two antenna stalks poking out of a mound of fluff and weird clothes, and muffled angry screaming. 

And he calls Red the smeety-smeet.

A thin green arm shoves the smiling dopey face of Emperor What's-His-Name aside and claws out. Purple stares up at Red with a tiny open mouth. It’s like his PAK can’t even process what just happened.

Red waves with a smirk. “You don’t look so tall from up here.” And just because he can, he kicks the fat fuzzy Fweezie replica out of the nest too.

It bops Purple right in the mouth. “Hey! Hey, you—” The smeet spits out a wad of feather fluff. “You can’t do that.” Little crinkles warp and twist his face until his eyes are fat purple crescents with fluid leaking out. It’s gross. “You can’t DO that!”

“Well, I did.” Red sits himself beside the cocoon and gives it a pat. “I’m the one who found the Princess Room anyway, so I’m the one who should get the prize.”

The prize and everything that comes with it: praise, glory, snacks, score-boosts… he might even get a growth spurt! Everyone back home will sure be surprised when Red comes back three feet taller. They probably won’t even recognize him.

“You bit me!” Some squeak on the wind is still complaining down there. “You bit me, and it’s not even spar day!” He might as well be complaining to the walls and stuffed Fweezies. Nobody cares what losers have to say.

Unlike Red, who’s coming back a whole new Irken. Red, who conquered the palace of the Fweezians. Red who expertly tunneled through to the prize like an expert tunneler guy. Red, who finally found—

“Hey, the Princess Room! My fellow little smeets, come—come and BEHOLD!”

…That voice.

Red sits up straight. Gradually, the smile fades from his face.

“Yes, come! Come and see this spectacle of filthy moth… filthness that the greatest and biggest amongst you has uncovered and behold MY greatest—okay, ehhh that’s too close. Yes, yes you may admire from afar.” The voice crows so loud it echoes off the corners of the Princess Room’s ceiling.

Part of him wants to stay up here in the nest guarding his prize on the high ground. A greater part of him, the dumb curious part who just can’t help himself, still has to look. Just to make sure. After all, it’s been years since they met and it’s easy to mistake one voice for another. Red’s PAK tries to identify the smeet’s PAK, but he only gets error codes.

Still, there’s no mistaking the smeet marching with his hands on his hips, grinning like the commander who got the castle. It’s the same smug grin he’d worn while skittering down the Plug hall on his way to breach Irk’s surface. That’s him for sure. Irk’s sake, he’s even taller than Red remembers. The small party of smeets following him through the blast hole are all a head shorter than him, if not more.

The tall smeet turns to frown at Purple lurking at his shoulder. “Uh, I said you can admire me from afar .” He blinks at the pileup of smeets jammed tight in the wall. The squeaking tangle of arms and legs struggle to climb over each other. None of them have realized that maybe they shouldn’t all rush in at the same time. “How’d you get in here so fast, anyway?”

Purple flattens his antennae with a wary little squint, but he doesn’t step back. Second tallest smeet in the room, he barely comes up to the smeet’s eyes. “I was here first before y—”

“WE got here first,” Red calls down.

Purple glares at him. “Oh, it’s ‘we’ now?”

Some smeets sure are stuck in the past. “We found the Princess Room,” Red says again.

A few smeets spare Purple an apologetic shrug. The smaller ones edge themselves out of biting range, just in case a fight breaks out or the second-tallest smeet needs someone to take his anger out on. Others busy themselves exploring the Princess Room’s squishy walls or pushing down the little replica buildings. None of them seem to notice Red at all.

“Hey, hey, hey! Come on, move back before you get stepped on. You! Take that jewelry out of your mouth, that’s not food. NO, don’t swallow… eugh, whatever.” One of the chaperones—a Smeetery Guard on a normal day—shoves the bookcase aside and ducks through the blast hole. He jabs the sides with his shock spear a few times to give himself some headroom.

“I made that!” Purple darts under the chaperone’s legs, tugging the cuff of his robe and getting bits of explosive jelly all over it. “He’s only here because he used the hole I made first. See?” He waves his stinky jelly hand as hard as he can and points at his blast site.

“Hm? Oh, not bad, Smeet uh… #8c33b…3?”

“3b5.”

“That’s what I said. Not bad, #8c33b5. Nice edging on the sides, very clean.” The chaperone gives Purple a donut hole and shakes him off his robe.

Purple opens his mouth to say something else, shrugs, and shoves the donut hole in his face instead.

Maybe he can be bought off that easy, but not Red. He walked down too much hallway and climbed too many stairs. “I found the Princess Room first. Lookit the trap door I found! It’s on the ceiling! Hey. HEY!”

More smeets and three more chaperones crowd the blast hole. One of the rounder smeets starts talking really fast and finally points to Red.

The chaperones follow where the smeet’s pointing and their eyes get real big. “The nest,” says the one in front. The one in back scrambles to get out a communicator while the other two cheer and hi-five each other and start talking too fast for Red to follow, but he can still hear bits of “the nest,” and “we found it,” and lots and lots about getting perks and promotions.

 Red knew they’d be excited, but not this excited.

Wait. Is that guy on the left aiming a blaster? 

A laser pulse shoots between Red’s antennae. Another zips past his head, so close he can feel the warmth on his cheek. One by one, the golden threads snap clean through. The nest drops half a second before a tractor beam catches it.

The world’s shaded in a bright pink tint as the nest gently sails to the floor in a column of light. Red—who had not screamed when the laser almost shot his face off, that was a battle cry—grips the side of the porcelain nest tight and peeks out.

A chaperone stares back. “Hey, check it out!” She reaches over Red to prod at the cocoon behind him. The shadow inside tries to curl away as the Irkens cluster to see for themselves. “Someone tell Infiltration they won the bet. It's here after all.”

“And still alive!” The Guard chaperone who gave Purple the snack kneels down to investigate. It’s hard to tell through the helmet, but it seems like he’s looking—smiling?—at Red. The helmet’s turned right in his direction, anyway. “It’s funny, huh? After all that trouble from Information Extraction and the Sweep teams, one of the smeets finds it after all. Amazing.”

Red rubs the back of his neck and grins. “Yeah, I guess it’s pretty—”

“Excellent work, Smeet 404!”

“Eh?” The tall smeet’s head pops out of an eviscerated Fweezie replica on the other side of the room, blinking at the Irkens crowding around him. “It is?”

Red scrambles out of the nest. “404 didn’t even get here ‘til two seconds ago! I’m the one who—”

“It is excellent work, isn’t it?” The tall smeet shakes off the stuffing and feathers. “I pulled off the leg first and ripped out the squishy bits.” He holds up two handfuls of squishy faux-Fweezie insides to the swarm of camera drones coming through the entry hole.

“Wow,” says Tenn, “I can’t believe you found the Princess Room all by yourself.”

“But—” Someone’s boot comes down, inches from crushing Red’s leg. He ducks and dodges before the next one kicks him in the face. “But he DIDN’T! I found the secret passage and the trap door, he didn’t even do anything.”

Red stares at Purple across the room. He’s losing part of this win, too. He made all that explodey goo or whatever. He had to be mad about this too, and he’s taller, maybe they’ll do something if he says something again.

Sulking beside the wall, Purple looks back at him. His eyes flick from Red to Zim. He frowns at the bite mark in his arm, and goes back to eating his donut hole.

The chaperones lead the room in a formal salute. “Congratulations, 1053r404. Declare your victory and self.”

“I—but wait, he—”

“I AM ZIM!” He thrusts the remains of the un-stuffed Fweezie into a camera drone’s lens. “BEHOLD, ZIM’S VICTORY!”

It’s Red’s victory.

“VICTORY FOR ZIM!”

The freshly christened Zim turns toward the furious smeet shaking his fist beside the cocoon nest. He smiles at Red, generous and condescending. A smile meant for comforting smallers, losers, and drones. “Ha ha, don’t worry, my tiny podmate.” They’re not even in the same pod. “If you do your best and get high scores, perhaps you too may one day be slightly as accomplished as Zim. Zim is me.” He brushes back a crooked antenna, bouncing a little on his heels. “I’m Zim.”

“I still got here first.”

“I dunno why you’re mad,” says Purple. “He didn’t use your explosion to get all the credit…”

For once, Irken Smeet Zim notices the gaping hole in the padded cushioning and treeskin behind him. “Ah yes, you did help me find it, didn’t you? Thanks, fellow smeet.”

Purple’s eye twitches.

“When I—no, when Zim becomes Tallest, I’ll give you a perk. I mean if I remember. I dunno.”

“Hooray for Zim!” cries the round smeet from Zim’s pod. The swarm of smeets take up the cheer with hundreds of little voices still ecstatic with the joy of destruction and riding high on the wave of Irken victory. A victory for one smeet is a victory for all smeets. “Hooray for Zim! Yay, yay Zim! Hooraaaaay!”

“Woo, Zim I guess.” The last of the donut hole vanishes down Purple’s gullet as he licks powdered sugar off the back of his hand. “Look on the bright side, copycat. At least you’re not as bad as that guy.”

Like it’s hard.

“Hooray, Zim!” 

Nobody could be worse than that guy.

Chapter Text

[Devastis. Cycle 17. Era 24. Training Year 1.]

“But at least you’re not as bad as that guy. I heard he—”

*fzzzt!*

THIS CONCLUDES YOUR COMPLIMENTARY NAPTIME ALLOTMENT. GOOD AFTERNOON, PAK#E82D10. REPORT FOR DUTY OR DEPOSIT 750 MONIES TO CONTINUE YOUR NAPTIME EXPERIENCE.

Huh. Almost half the usual nap price. Weird. Come to think of it, the last time Irken Smeet Red… wait. That didn’t seem right.

Red’s eyes creaked open to squint at his too-big-for-smeets hand flex in his too-big-for-smeets glove. No, not Smeet Red anymore, not for a long time. Irken… Mechanic? Fleet Pilot? Elite sub-commander Red? Yes, that sounded about right. No, better: Irken Elite sub-commander Red, Invader-in-training and future conqueror of worlds. Ready to take Devastis training by the horns and sling it into the stratosphere. Right after he managed to sit up. Or lift his head. Whichever came first.

His bones weighed a trillion and ten pounds. A low metallic groan creaked somewhere between his throat and his chest, like an old engine turning over. Naps felt nice and all, but the reboot lag sucked worse than table duty. No wonder he never used his nap passes, just a waste of time and monies. According to his PAK, this one had lasted sixty-one hours, seventy-three minutes, and twenty seconds, plus an Achievement Notice for beating his old naptime record twice over.

All for a nap that Red had absolutely not requested or accepted. He wouldn’t dare. Not with a ten-figure debt looming over him.

Hydraulics hissed as the connection hoses detached from the PAK and slithered back into the couch. Curling his tongue in a great yawn, Red pulled the blanket off his head for a glorious front-row view of an Irken foot. The crimson glow of a tether ring around the ankle blared in his eyes like a stop sign.

Red glared at the violet ring around his own ankle. He wouldn’t dare close his eyes while chained at the heel to the reason Red owed ten figures of debt in the first place. The one who dared to be the same height as him and couldn’t keep his smelly stupid foot on his own side of the big stupid couch they had to share because SOMEBODY crashed Red’s beautiful ship into the Devastis central hub and sucked so much he didn’t even know how much he sucked. Also apparently too dumb to notice that Red had woken up.

Elite Purple, former Infiltrator and constant squelchsucker, curled in the opposite end of the couch, hunched over his gauntlet’s communicator. In the dim of their loft, the display’s backlight illuminated his face as he whispered and mumbled to the muted party on the other end. He spoke too low to hear, but Red caught “Foodcourtia” a few times and his own name more than once. Something about interrogation protocols, quotas, and it not being his fault.

Chips and donuts from feasts Red hadn’t been invited to littered the arms and backboard of their couch. A crusty trail of dried frosting dripped over the ports embedded in the cushions. Purple’s cable latch still had the laminate tape and welcome seal over it. Never opened. According to its readout, he still had sixty-two hours of free naptime. He’d never gone to sleep.

Red’s claws gripped the arm of the couch until he felt the steel skeleton under the padding. Sixty-two hours. Two days. Two full days unconscious and vulnerable in the company of Purple as he did Tallest-knew-what. Scheming. Plotting. Drawing on Red’s face with a marker. Feeding dirty lies to a superior officer. Ordering room service without sharing. And whose idea had it been to take a nap anyway? Not Red’s.

The Irken on Purple’s screen—some skrunkly looking dork in goggles and an Infiltration uniform—pointed in Red’s direction and said something.

Purple’s antennae perked. “Oh yeah, that’s Red! I guess he woke up; he’s the one I told you about. Yeah, with the Spittle. Anyway, do you know when we’re supposed to—”

Red punched him in the mouth.

Purple’s head bopped the back of the couch with a satisfying thunk and a squeal of outrage. Before he could reel for a counterattack, Red snatched the tip of his tongue in one fist and hammered the ribs with his other fist.

Teeth sank into Red’s knuckles as the ugly sneak kicked and lashed at whatever he could reach. “Wugghish urr proffleb?! OWGH! KITT-IT!”

Red smacked the rabid clawing hands away from his face. “You quit it first!” He yanked Purple by the tongue and lurched forward to pin him against the couch. Purple gnawed the leather of Red’s glove, hissing and spitting and squirming, one eye closed in the tearful wince. Red’s knee dug hard into his spooch. “Pretty hard to sneak around and be a… a smug sneaky little secret guy when I got your tongue, isn’t it?”

Too bad the smug snotbag was too smug to think he wouldn’t get found out. That’d show him for tricking Red into taking a nap so he could whisper creepy little plans to his creepy little cohorts. All that slop about giving Red the sub-commander position had been a smokescreen for… for something bad, probably! Well, Purple wouldn’t get away with it.

“You don’t fool me. I know what you did.”

Purple paused in the middle of gnawing Red’s wrist off. He squinted in thought as the drool dripped over the leather. “Ah dig shumphin?”

The Infiltrator on Purple’s gauntlet screen rolled his eyes. Apparently, he’d been unmuted in the scuffle. “Um, you know, just because you changed encodings doesn’t mean you get to go around blowing people off like that. It’s rude.” He adjusted his giant goggles in a humph. “If you wanted to roll around and spar, you could have just said so.” 

“Whah?” Purple spat the hand out and tried to sit up. The tip of his tongue wriggled in Red’s grip. “No! No, Ah don’ wonna—”

“Guess somebody’s just soooooo busy with their fancy new job they can’t even spare a little two-hour remote meeting. Ooh, sorry to bother you Mister Important Invader-In-Training. It’s not like I skipped lunch for this or anything, you go ahead.”

“No! Nooo, he grapbth mah tahng.” Purple’s PAK leg poked Red in the cheek. “Eggof mah FACHE!”

“Well, there’s no need for that kind of language at all! Fine. I get it. A future Invader's too good for boring old Infiltrator Klaxx.”

“Buh—”

Infiltrator Klaxx held up his hands. “Oh no, Elite, don’t trouble yourself. It’s not like I was your department head for eight cycles or anything.”

The PAK leg slashed dangerously close to Red’s eye. He jolted back and lost his grip.

Purple’s tongue snapped back into his mouth. “Wait wait wait! Klaxx, hold on I’m still here, you don’t have to—”

“It’s easier for you this way, anyhow. The High Extractor should be landing on Devastis in a few minutes. That’s much better for your valuable time, Elite.” He puffed up with an oily little smile. “I’m sure that briefing Extractor Foma herself is better suited to your higher standards. Klaxx out.”

The communications window closed. A fresh crop of ads and coupon offers flashed primary colors across Purple’s face as the last few minutes sank in.

“You… you just…” Purple clenched his fists and screeched like busted tires on bad asphalt. With another screech, he snatched the nearest object and launched it at Red’s skull with all the force an outraged soldier could muster.

The chip bag bounced off of Red’s forehead with a soft crinkle.

“Look what you did! Now I gotta have another dumb meeting, only now it’s with Foma and she—she’s gonna…” Purple dragged both hands down his miserable face. “She’s gonna talk to me and it’ll take a billion minutes and she’ll say the accident was my fault just because of the stuff I did!”

That did tend to be how something being one’s fault worked. Which it had been. If Purple couldn’t see that for himself, Red wasn’t about to waste his breath.

The main lights clicked on with a wave of Red’s hand. Not that they needed it with Devastis’s rec district glowing right outside the window. At a glance, you’d hardly know the sun wouldn’t reach their side of the planet for another week. He watched a trio of battle schooners skim above the rooftops and tried not to think of The Lenient.

Red grabbed his boots from the couch’s compartment, looked them over for scuffs, tugged them on, and knocked on the sole for luck. He didn’t need it, but tied to Purple, it couldn’t hurt. “Serves you right for that crooked nap trick you tried to pull. Nice try, but it didn’t work.”

Purple glanced up, smoothing the kinks out of his tongue. Sadly, none of the damage appeared permanent. “What?”

“It wasn’t actually a nice try; I figured it out as soon as I woke up.”

The other Elite stared at him.

“Sarcasm is when—”

“I know what sarcasm is! It’s not my fault you decided to sleep for two days. I don’t even know why you’re mad,” Purple sniffed. “I’m the one who got stuck on a boring old couch all break. I’m the one who had nothing to do but watch old Top 10 s and listen to you mumble in hibernation mode. You’re loud, by the way.”

“I didn’t decide to nap. It just happened.” Red stood, paced the couch’s perimeter, kicked a spare soda can, and sat back down on the arm of the couch. “What did you do?”

Glancing behind him, Purple got on his knees to smooth out the wrinkles in his uniform. A hard crease bent the left tail-flap at a weird angle so that it curled between his legs. “Ugh. This better not need to be ironed or steam-fried or whatever.” He tossed Red a glare. “Why would I chain myself to the couch on my only real break for months when I could be doing literally anything else? You know what’s better than doing nothing? Anything!”

Unless messing with Red while he slept counted as something to do. That said, his PAK didn’t note anything out of the ordinary and his reflection seemed normal. Red resolved to check the surveillance footage later. Just in case.

“Flarping spoots, Red. You’re the only Irken in the Empire who gets stuff for free and complains about it. Weirdo.” Purple bent his tail-flap backward, held it a few seconds, and released. The material still creased but it didn’t tuck under him anymore. “You probably maxed out and auto-hibernated. Far as I remember, it happened as soon as we came back from drills last week. When’s the last time you used a real nap?”

Red opened his mouth, thought a second, then closed it. 

No. This smelled like a trick—something to get him to disclose nap records or monies issues or something else to get under his hull. Purple had no right to demand records from his squad leader, and Sub-commander Red had no reason to relinquish them. Crossing his arms, Red fixed his second in command with a stare that had cowed entire fleets of smallers into shutting up and flying straight. 

A snide grin slid across Purple’s punchable face. “Uh-huh. You burnt out, shuttlebug.”

If he could’ve guessed the answer anyway, why’d Purple bother asking at all? To get under Red’s skin and make him feel all weird and gunky inside, probably. Or he talked to hear himself talk. Or both. That was the trouble with Purple, if not all Infiltrators: you never knew what they hid in their hands until they’d already looped it around your neck.

Red shut his eyes, unclenched his fists, and exhaled. “It doesn’t matter. We’re on duty in twenty.” He checked his clock. “Nineteen.” Without waiting for a response, he shoved off the couch and went for the door.

Purple’s creased tail-flap curled and bounced as he followed Red across their loft suite. Either he’d given up on fixing it or found something new to worry about. His antennae twitched in Red’s direction. “Did you have a bad rerun? Is that why you woke up acting like a snarlbeast?”

Don’t engage. Don’t engage. It’s a trap. Do not engage. It’s unrelated to your duties and has nothing to do with your training. He is not your superior. You don’t owe him a response. Shut up. Do. Not. Engage.

Red’s mouth disregarded the intel. “A what?”

“You know, a rerun. Those funny little movies you get in hibernation mode about stuff that already happened to you? Sometimes it’s about snacks, and sometimes it’s about getting eaten alive by iceworms.” Purple scrolled through the day’s schedule, scrunching up his face. Must have just found out how long today’s seminar ran. “Everybody—ewwww five hours, are you kidding?—everybody gets those.” 

“I’m not everybody,” Red told him.

Purple shrugged. “Okay, but nobody sleeps blank. Stuff you do shows up in the playback no matter what, unless you’re dead or got activated yesterday.” He thought a moment. “Defectives too, maybe? But you’re too tall and alive to be any of those.”

Couldn’t he go back to rambling about snacks or complain about schedules or something else that didn’t involve Red? Engaging encouraged him. Disengaging sparked his interest; if anything, it encouraged Purple even more. Being too boring might shake him off, but sadly, Red was too awesome and cool to be boring.

He glanced over his shoulder. Purple blinked back, expressionless. Not a mask. Not a shield. Blank. A screensaver face. The same face he’d worn in the middle of his decadent bed loaded with blankets and snacks—as if too dumb to know he was in trouble. Too dumb to even consider that he ever could be.

And yet… and yet, when Purple stood beside him he stood eye to eye and inch for inch. Same height to the millimeter. Nobody dumb grew all the way to Red’s height. There had to be something else. Some factor that Red hadn’t accounted for.

“I never said I slept blank. Just didn’t have the name for it. And the rerun was fine, thanks. I never get eaten in mine because that never happen—wait.” Red squinted curiously. “When did you get eaten by ice worms?”

“I didn’t,” said Purple. “Not exactly.”

“What’s ‘not exactly’ mean? If it didn’t happen then how’d you get reruns of it?”

Purple fell quiet. He slouched in the doorway with his hands in his pockets, staring into the hallway. “Dunno. Just do. I don’t think I’m always me in ‘em. The body’s all different and… and maybe it’s like a Collective Memory thing? I dunno.”

The lights shut off as they crossed the threshold and Red set the locks. In the dark, the welcome sticker on Purple’s unused sleep ports glowed blue.

Red couldn’t dismiss the possibility of schemes and plots, but perhaps there’d been other reasons Purple stayed up all break. “You didn’t sleep because you didn’t want to.”

“I don't want to talk about reruns anymore.”

“Tch. Figures.”

Purple never did anything he didn’t want to do. That was what got them tethered in the first place, come to think of it. The admins said he’d taken way too long on a mission he should have finished in half the time. From the state of his comfy quarters, Purple had set himself up nicely with the insurgents. Red couldn’t blame him for not rushing to bomb that bridge, but any Elite worth their rank understood that Empire came before personal wants. Purple knew that. But Purple had also likely known that administrators kept weak tabs in deep space, and nobody could nag him for updates without blowing his cover. He hadn’t wanted to end his mission, so he didn’t. Simple as that.

With no regard for Irken military protocol, every second in contact with Purple risked higher fines, longer sentences, or worse. To survive the year without a ten-digit debt, Red needed a plan. Good plans needed forethought and observation.

OBSERVATION 1: Purple is ugly and weird and annoying and I hate him. (Addendum: Purple smells weird and it is not okay to smell weird.)

OBSERVATION 2: Purple does not do anything he doesn’t want to do.

Red’s eye flicked up to Purple’s. It hovered inches from his face. They walked down the hall at a clip, literally shoulder to shoulder. Donut dust sprinkled on Red’s uniform as the Elite’s elbows wiggled about and fumbled inside his PAK.

OBSERVATION 3: Purple is a sneak and needs to get out of my face.

“Hey. The tether’s six feet, not six inches.” Red stretched his neck, trying to see Purple’s hands as they lifted something shiny out of his port. Something big. “What are you getting out of there? What do you have?”

Purple hid his arms behind his back. “Nothing.”

“I thought you I.E. guys were supposed to be good at lying. I SAW you get something out of there. Are you smuggling snacks?”

“It’s—”

“I knew you were sneaking room service! Without me! You ate it all and didn’t even share!”

“How am I supposed to share if you’re asleep? What, you want me to save you a cold stale bowl of nachos? Shut up.” Behind his back, Purple’s fingers curled around something round, shiny, and metallic. A thermos? Delivery capsule? “It’s none of your business.”

Bundling the sphere in his arms, Purple shuffled faster down the hall.

Red caught his pace and swung in front of him. “I’m making it my business. Give it.”

“No!” Purple wrinkled up his face and cradled the thing against his chest. He looked like a Vortian nursemaid. “You only want it because I have it!”

“Uh, yeah. Obviously.”

“That’s a stupid reason, then. You wouldn’t even like it.” Purple sidestepped backward.

OBSERVATION 4: Purple is stubborn. 

Red stepped forward. “How do you know what I like? Maybe I love that… whatever it is. I’d leave you alone if you just told me what’s in your thermos.” He lunged.

Caught against the wall, Purple bent himself over the sphere and hissed as Red’s claws grappled and slipped over the metal. Too smooth to get a grip with all the flailing and wiggling.

He looped his claws under Purple’s and yanked. “I order you to surrender the thing!”

“You’re not the boss of me!”

A pack of Vortian technicians paused in the hallway to stare at them. So did the janitorial drone skittering up the wall, mop still in hand. When Red glared at them, the drone ran for the air vent. The Vortians whispered to themselves and kept going. One of them laughed. Nosy little gear rats.

A door hissed open further down the hall. Purple’s antennae popped up. He peered over Red’s shoulder, frowning. Red followed his gaze to the Irken coming their way. Had to be a fellow sub-commander; nobody else had access to the top floor. Whoever it was hadn’t noticed them yet. 

Purple’s volume dropped a notch. “My stuff belongs to me!” Not much of a notch. “That means it’s mine. Quit holding us up and looking weird in the middle of the hall. You’re gonna make us late.”

A pathetic attempt to dodge the subject. “Then tell me what’s inside and we’ll go because I AM the boss of you. You’re the one that surrendered squad leadership, remember?” Bet he regretted that choice now. It’s what he deserved for being lazy and not fighting to the death for it like he was supposed to.

“Yeah, so? You still don’t have the rank to make me disclose personal property, squeebface.” He stuck out his bruised tongue. “So there.”

OBSERVATION 5: Purple is insubordinate.

It wouldn’t surprise Red one bit if Purple had refused the sub-commander position to sabotage him. To undermine him in front of rivals like… like whoever this was. Red glanced at the tall Elite approaching them: pink-eyed, green sub-commander stripes on her arm, smelled like mech fuel and gumballs. Pleeps, right? Rivals like Pleeps.

“Yeah? Well, all as your sub-commander, I still get dibs on stuff anybody on the squad has.” Technically that only applied to the spoils scored from battle excursions, but whatever. “I’m calling dibs.” Red held his hand out. “Give.”

“UUUUHHHHGGGGHHHHH!” Purple rolled his eyes and shoulders and spine until he’d cracked himself backward into one solid arc of gripe. “Fiiiiiiiine, sirrrr. If you INSIST.”

The orb slammed into Red’s hands so hard he thought it’d break his fingers. How had Purple carried this in his PAK the whole time? Damn thing had to be like ten pounds.

“There, Sub-commander FussyfussPAK with a PAK full of fuss. Happy now?”

“Always,” Red sniffed. The contents rolled and sloshed inside the canister as he awkwardly hugged it to his chest. Sounded like liquid. Did he have soup in here? His claws ran across the seamless metal shell. No clasps or buttons, no openings anywhere. “How do I…?”

“It’s your problem now. You figure it out, SIR.” With a great sweep of the leg, Purple hauled himself up and into a brisk walk down the hall. His antennae perked and he waved at the other Elite as she passed. “Oh! Hey, Pleeps!” He gave her shoulder a friendly punch. “Your squad ready for trials today?”

Sub-commander Pleeps looked up from her gauntlet. “What? Oh, yeah, sure. We’re gonna annihilate your guys into dust or whatever.”

OBSERVATION 6: Purple fraternizes with the enemy too much.

Though Red could’ve guessed that from how palsy he’d been with those gross offworlder insurgents. Infiltration mission or not, dedication to the bit had a limit. At some point, one had to draw the line between diligence and decadence. It came too easy to Purple, for Red’s taste. He barely knew Pleeps and here he stood chatting like smeets at the feeding trough.

And come to think of it, he’d been that way from the start.

Today’s rerun played in the back of Red’s head, fresh as Chillaxian snow. “Hey, I think something’s alive in there.” Same purple eyes, same empty expression, same annoying whiny voice, same weird conversations out of nowhere. Purple before he’d officially been Purple.

On the core of Irk, Red swore he’d never met or heard of Purple until six weeks ago. Not once. Reruns couldn’t get hacked, could they? Or glitch? No, nobody Red’s height glitched. Still. Something didn’t smell right.

Purple gave Elite Pleeps one last wave as he stepped into the waiting elevator. “See you on the field. Try not to die too bad.” He elbowed Red in the side with a chuckle.

Red frowned. “What?”

“Her squad’s so not ready for field trials. I mean…” Purple tapped the elevator buttons and held up a thin strip of fiberglass between his fingers. “Seriously, going in without an access pass? How do you forget something that basic?” He snapped it in half, cracked the halves into thirds, and let the remains of Pleeps’s access pass crumble to the floor.

Red leaned against the wall, listening to glass and circuitry crunch under Purple’s boot as the elevator numbers rolled across the door. His frown deepened.

“Oh, did you want in on this?” Purple nudged the shiny scraps in Red’s direction. “Not much left, but it still crunches real good.”

“It’s not that.” Red held the canister close and tapped his fingers across the metal. “I’m just thinking.”

“That’s a first.”

“Oh, shut up.”

“You shut up!”

“YOU shut—Irk’s sake.” Whatever hid inside the metal sphere had to wait. It could sit inside Red’s PAK for now. He bounced his shoulders a couple of times until his bones got the message and his PAK evened out the extra weight. “Hey, you said all reruns are stuff that’s already happened, right? So it can’t…” He nudged a spare chunk of circuit board with the toe of his boot. “It can’t put in stuff that never happened. Nothing new, I mean. That’s why we call ‘em reruns.”

Purple side-eyed Red’s PAK and clicked his tongue. “Nah, it can’t do that. Not to us, I mean. It happens to some offworlders, though. They call the made-up ones ‘dreams’ or ‘visions’. One they get asleep and one they get awake. Don’t remember which is which. And I think the vision ones are religious? Sometimes?”

Note to self: upgrade vocabulary files, find out what ‘ree-leg-jous’ means. It sounded tasty. “So reruns can’t insert anybody who wasn’t really there.”

“If that’s not how it happened it wouldn’t be a rerun,” said Purple.

Red blinked at him slowly. “Then what were you doing in mine?”

“What do you—”

ARRIVAL: TENTH FLOOR. PLEASE WATCH YOUR STEP.  

The elevator doors opened to their squad of thirty-odd smallers gathered in the waiting area. They drew themselves up for salute in a sloppy scramble of arms and legs and drooping antennae. “Irk lives,” the squad chirped. “Permission to enter?”

“Permission granted, and make it fast. Irk thrives.” After a quick headcount, Red scanned his access pass and punched in the Drill Yard coordinates. 

Purple humphed. “Dunno how Irk’s supposed to thrive with all of… this.” In a sweep of his hand, he summed up this pathetic cluster of hunched spines and feeble groans. “When’d you guys wake up? Like five minutes ago?”

Elite Skoodge raised his hand. “Actually, we—”

Tenn’s head whipped around. Her glare could’ve ignited a boiler room.

Hands in his pockets, Skoodge slunk back into the crowd.

An airlock hissed outside the door. Gravity went lopsided for a second as the elevator walls flexed and groaned. Several ceiling panels withdrew to make room for an overhead window. With that final detachment of the elevator, Squad 732 officially reported for duty.

Smears of green clouds flickered over the window, darker and darker with every mile. No telling if a storm was headed in their direction or had already passed; with Red’s luck it’d hit the moment they dropped into the field. “Lucky you, it’s an easy one today. We’ve got symposium. Five hours. You’ll all be sitting again in no time.” He clicked his tongue with a smirk. “Assuming you don’t die before you reach the building.”

Meanwhile, Purple opened their assignment map: a massive holographic grid with the drop-off point in the west, a goalpost in the east, and a black glob of CLASSIFIED in the middle. Someone in administration must have felt merciful today. The map had direction markers for once.

“In the meantime,” Red continued, “anybody want to explain that embarrassment in the hallway?”

Elite Tenn stepped up. “Clarification, sir: Squad 732 arrived at our designated elevator stop at approximately 400 hours.” She rolled her shoulders and bit back a wince. “We took advantage of the wait time to study our manuals and practice stealth stillness, as instructed.”

“Stealth stillness?” Official jargon for stand-still-and-shut-up-until-I-can-hear-myself-think. A practice normally reserved for smeet cadets and lesser drones. “For three hours?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Huh. Seems like you needed the practice. When I was your height, I practiced stealth stillness for six hours and I never slouched like that.” Technically, it had been four hours and he’d had a wall to lean against, but still. Red double-checked his own schedule. According to his gauntlet, he and Purple had arrived right on time. The rest of the squad should have arrived at the elevator fifteen minutes early at most. Anything longer than an hour was unheard of. “Who authorized this?”

“The docket update,” said Tenn. “Yesterday.” The rest of the squad nodded in agreement.

Purple grumbled something full of swear words. “You!” He pointed at Larb, whose posture suddenly became immaculate. “Lemme see your schedule.” Without waiting for an answer, he snatched Larb by the arm and yanked it up to eye level. Squinting, Purple flicked his thumb across the gauntlet screen while Larb dangled and squirmed in the air. “Hey. Look.”

Red looked. Indeed, Larb’s schedule marked the first exercise of the day to have started roughly three hours ago. “And all of you have the same schedule?”

“Yes, sir. It’s the s—” Tenn dodged Larb’s boots before they kicked her in the cheek. “Gross, Larb, what’d you step in? Same schedule across the whole squad. We checked.”

Purple and Red exchanged a glance. “Hacked,” they said together.

A fat load of good it did to know that now. The damage had already been done. Half the squad couldn’t stand straight, much less run the miles of today’s drills. Stealth stillness got hoisted on smeets and drones for a reason; either they had excess energy to burn or their encoding involved standing still for hours anyway. The squad might have realized the irregularity if they’d spoken to the smallers under Pleeps or Sponch, but each squad had been assigned to its own floor. Even if they could have checked, the rest of the rival squads were probably in on it too, and would have just lied about it.

Not the first weird thing to happen today, either. Maybe Purple hadn’t been the one plotting sabotages after all. “Somebody’s messing with us. Bet they’re implanting fake PAK memories, too.”

“Are you completely fried all the time or is it just today?” Purple shook Larb’s schedule—complete with floppy flailing Larb—in front of Red’s face. “Look at this! It’s a basic backdoor software hack. Anybody with a welder and a keydrive could do this.”

Or rather, anybody with the proper height clearance to get a keydrive in the first place. Sponch didn’t seem the type to know software tricks, but one of his smallers might. Or Pleeps. Or one of the other six sub-commanders they hadn’t met yet.

Red glanced at the skylight, dark and opaque in the bright glare of the elevator. Their drop-off point lay west; the sun should’ve risen on this side of the planet by now. “Yeah? So?”

The elevator chimed. DESTINATION APPROACHING. PLEASE WATCH YOUR STEP. Squad 732 braced for landing. Tenn, Spleen, and Flobee readied their lasers. Skoodge’s PAKlights brightened.

Sleek metallic legs crept out of Purple’s PAK, coiled and ready to spring. He rolled his eyes and waggled Larb’s gauntlet again. “So a PAK isn’t a gauntlet on a shared network. It’s a closed system, you know that, and anyway I just said reruns don’t change. It’s not a thing!”

Larb’s shoulder made a wet cracking noise. Squad 732 jumped back as Purple dropped him in a heap. “Thank you for letting me be of service, sir.” His good arm raised in a shaky salute.

“You’re welcome. And pop that shoulder back in. Don’t be gross.” Purple bobbed his head toward Red’s PAK. “You just don’t wanna believe me because I’m the one who said so.”

“No.” But actually yes. “It’s because it’s weird! If reruns and memory files don’t change then how’d you just pop into one? Unless…” Red’s fingers tapped against themselves. “Unless I just… forgot you were there?”

But that would’ve meant forgetting Smash Day, one of the biggest highlights of his smeethood. The triumph of finding the secret Princess Room and the outrage of having his credit snatched away should have rooted in his banks forever. It hadn’t. Red, until this morning, recalled the palace, the hidden passages, but everything else between the passage and the ride back home was… Not blank, exactly. More like it’d never come up. A scene skipped in playback.

The elevator jolted hard. YOU HAVE ARRIVED AT YOUR DESTINATION!

Beneath their feet, a seam sliced through the floor—the hinged floor. The elevator did not descend.

Tenn paled. “Aw, bleeps.”

Squad 732 dropped free-fall through the clouds.

The world smashed into a mess of screaming air and screaming Irkens and a swirling mass of green clouds. Red’s PAK legs branched—clawed, scrambled, slashed through mist and fog. Hit something solid. Grasped it. Clung tight.

Whatever he’d grabbed felt solid and thin. Red shifted his weight, stretching his foot through the clouds and rooting around until it tapped another surface. It held his weight, barely wide enough to walk on. It sort of reminded him of the balance beams in the smeetery. As his oculars adjusted to the dark, the place came into focus. Sort of.

Red stood upon some sort of spike. Or a branch. Both, sort of. A thicket of spiked metal towers covered the tarmac, each stabbing at the air in the organic geometry of corals and trees. Not that he could see far through this blasted fog, but judging by the towers around him, it seemed to stretch across the entire field.

No sign of Elite Purple yet, but Red’s ankle didn’t hurt, so he must—

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!” Metal clanged on metal on metal and the spike tower vibrated like a tuning fork.

There he was.

“Stealthy landing.”

“Thanks! Drink acid!” said Purple’s silhouette.

Vague shapes of the rest of his squad rained through the metal forest—a spinning flail of limbs and screaming before the green blankets of fog swallowed them up again.

A smaller (Stink?) fell past them, missing the spikes entirely. Spreading his PAK legs to absorb the shock, he dropped into a perfect four-point landing on the tarmac. Stink shook himself off, whole and unharmed.

Just in time to get shot in the chest. 

Gears shifted in the fog. The barrel of a turret glowed yellow.

Red ducked as a plasma shot whistled between his antennae.

OBJECTIVE: STEALTH MISSION. ADVANCE TO THE INSTRUCTIONAL AUDITORIUM UNSEEN. THIS ASSIGNMENT IS MANDATORY.

Unseen?

Slow as he dared, Red crouched for a better view. Dozens of black spheres swarmed the tarmac and glided between the steel branches. Each one held a glowing yellow turret that rolled and swiveled across the surface—the pupil of a free-roaming eye. Get “seen”, get shot. Simple enough. The turrets seemed to favor the ground. None of them hovered beyond the lower branches.

In the distance, an enormous glass cube glowed bright blue in a sunken valley surrounded by eye-bots. That had to be the auditorium. Getting there meant sticking to the canopy, where the branches clustered close together and above eye-bot territory. Standard Floor-Is-Lava procedure, except the lava was motion detectors with lethal aim.

Still in a crouch, Red skittered to the edge of the branch and leapt for the closet branch, then the one after that. Three towers down, he found Purple waiting for him.

Lucky he didn’t get stepped on. Perched on all fours on the tip of the branch, one could have mistaken Purple for an ugly clump of moss. “Took you long enough.” He frowned at the blue cube in the valley. “We don’t have shield coverage for this, do we?”

Red pointed at the thicket of branches. “You’re looking at it.” As for how they were supposed to get to the goalpost with no coverage whatsoever, well… Future Red would burn that bridge when he came to it. “Let’s move—”

Purple glanced back at him from the next spike tower. “You say something?”

“Nothing.”

They took the thicket at a brisk pace: spike to spike, branch to branch. Quick to move, swift on the dodge. About a mile in, Red got a sense of the place. Up here, the steel trees tangled together in a snarl of branches and spikes—safer to navigate, tougher to move. Below, the tarmac and concrete ran along the spike towers like sidewalks with a street, all clean lines and paths. Easier to move, but harder to navigate without getting shot. The eye-bots, he guessed, moved on a track; they hovered and patrolled in automatic cycles. Unless they found a target.

Due northwest, a spiked tower crashed to the ground. A hail of plasma and lasers lit the fog as a flood of smallers ran screaming and blind through the spike trees. The faster ones made it to the lower branches. The smarter ones kept moving. The dumber ones tried to climb out of range and got shot in the process. Stuck that low, none of them had a visual of the goalpost and had to go with their gut or the map.

Here and there, Red could spot a body jumping through the mid-branches or weaving through the undergrowth, but nobody else had made it this high into the canopy. Nobody had the skill. Nobody had the height to reach. Nobody else deserved to climb to these highest—

Purple’s boots clanged hard behind him. 

Red grit his teeth. It wasn’t fair. Even here, even now when he towered over nearly everyone else on the planet, Red had to share. He had to share this branch, his squad, his training hall, his couch, his snacks, the view, everything. Years of work and growth for the chance to be an Invader, and he couldn’t even enjoy it because he had to split it with this smug sloppy idiot. With the mood completely obliterated, he humphed and stepped around a Vortian test tech who’d gotten himself impaled on a spike. Truly, nobody on all of Devastis suffered as much as Red.

Five branches down, Skoodge yelped as Tenn stepped on his face on her way up the spike tower. Three branches across from them, Flobee dodged a turret shot. A decent chunk of the squad had managed to regroup and follow Red’s lead. Good to know at least some Elites still had their stuff together. No sign of Stink or any others who’d been hit, and he’d seen no change to Squad 732’s casualty counts either. Wherever Stink had gone, he was alive and in stable condition, and therefore, not Red’s problem. The losers likely got benched to a holding area somewhere.

All these Elites in one spot got too much attention for Red's taste. He scowled at the eye-bots massing below them and picked up speed. “We’re scored separately for drills, right? It’s not one of those group pass/fail things?”

“How should I know? It’s your job to remember this stuff, sub-commander.” Purple reached into his PAK and tossed a smoke grenade over his shoulder. It hit some unlucky Elite who fell back coughing and flailing. The eye-bots swiveled west as Red and Purple continued east. “But I guess your memory is just trashgarbage anyway, since you ‘just forgot’ you met me on Chillaxis. How do you forget me? ME! Purple! Everybody remembers Purple! Right, Tenn?”

Elite Tenn tap-danced around a scattershot of lasers below them. “Yeahsureokay, how much farther is the goalpost?”

“Exactly, Tenn!” Purple bunched his shoulders and launched two, three, four branches forward in great long strides with Red at the shoulder. “There, you see? Tenn’s a mezzo at—what, five-foot-something? Almost half your height and SHE remembers me. Even Sneakyonfoota still remembers me, and he’s not even in our squad! In fact, I bet everybody from Infiltration and the old smeet pods remembers me! What’s YOUR problem?”

Praise the rare and fleeting mercy of Irk these turrets were motion detectors and not sound-activated. They’d have flunked in seconds.

“I walk into a room, any room anywhere, and everybody’s all ‘oh hey there Purple, we missed your beautiful eyes, what’s going on, do you want a snack’ and I tell them ‘why yes I would love a snack’ because that’s what you say when you’re not rude like some Irkens on this spike who don’t even ask if you had a good sleep—”

“You didn’t sleep.”

“—and instead start grabbing tongues and just ‘forgets’ the highlight of his whole life.”

The canopy spikes thinned and the jumps grew wider as they approached the eastern border. End of the line, soon. Red hopped on a lower branch with a sharp laugh. “Highlight of my life? Excuse me?”

“You’re excused. You’d think meeting the second-tallest smeet in Pod 24-B would be a core memory file but nooo, you needed the space for cheat codes or how—” Purple ducked a laser shot. “—how to wax jet fuel or something.

“You don’t wax…” Red rolled his eyes. Why even bother?

OBSERVATION 7: Purple can and will make a big deal out of anything and everything.

They crouched at the farthest edge of the thicket, overlooking the sunken stone valley. The cube auditorium sat so close Red could see bloodstains on the glass walls, and their contact point glowed around it. A great moat of a courtyard encircled the auditorium, the lip of its incandescent border blazing through the fog—a thin clear ring of Miyuki-blue in the green murk.

Purple sighed at the barren strip of land between them and their S+. “So I’m guessing we can’t jump that.”

“Not unless you wanna shatter your legs.” Even if they had launch boosts for jumps that wide, it likely wouldn’t count. A contact point on the ground meant a physical finish line. It’d all be on foot from here. Red’s blasters peeped out of his PAK as he started toward the bottom. At a glance, the metal branches between here and the ground probably ranged somewhere between two and… more than two.

To the west, eye-bots swarmed a rush of smallers who’d had the same idea. Five, maybe seven turrets from the sound of it, and outnumbered by the smallers. While the eye-bots busied themselves sniping Elites, a round stubby Irken staggered across the threshold and collapsed.

Only a handful of eye-bots patrolled this area, but a handful with sharper aim.

Red gripped the metal branch and braced. “Wait for a window; we’re gonna have to blitz it.”

Purple’s neck stretched to watch another party of Elites approaching from the northeast. The glow of the eye-bots swiveled for them in the fog. “Ooh, that’s a pretty complex plan. Sure you can remember it?”

“You’re still chewing on that?” Red crawled to the lowest branch, ready to move. “I don’t know what the big deal is. You didn’t remember ME, did you?”

“I…” Purple’s mouth bunched up as his tongue fumbled for a retort. He flicked an antenna and glared. “Y-yes!”

Liar.

Below their perch, the smaller Elites broke and ran. Eye-bots pivoted, turrets ablaze. Their window swung wide open. Red and Purple slid down the metal tree on opposite sides of the trunk, swift and readied with a flawless ancient battle strategy: run really, really fast and don’t get shot.

Red landed light on his PAK legs and launched himself through the swirling plumes of fog. Two strides in, the metal slipped and skidded on the tarmac. In the space of seconds switching from PAK to boot, a turret swung for them. Red spun and shot it. The eye-bot smoked and squealed as its turrets shot blindly into the fog. Purple hissed and yelped somewhere nearby. A second shot (Red’s?) took the bot down. Neither broke stride.

They dropped into the valley in a soggy crunch of glass and metal splinters. Gravel sprayed as Purple’s heel slipped on a wet patch.

Eye-bots pivoted for them.

Purple’s antennae dropped. “…Spoots.”

Red ran faster. Purple ran backward, frantically searching through his PAK. His hand came out holding a canister.

A pulse shot burned past Red’s cheek. “What’s—”

“Dunno.” Purple banked hard left. “Run.” The canister flew over his shoulder. “Also duck.”

The canister cracked with a bang. Blankets of blue-violet smoke plumed and swelled across the field, thick and heavy and wet, and the fog smothered beneath it. The air sagged. Red couldn’t see his hand in front of him, but the contact point still glowed like a nuke in peacetime. That was all he needed. Eyes stinging and chest starting to burn, Red pushed into a sprint. The scent of rust and corroding metal mixed with oil, blood, and stress pheromones. Irkens cried out in alarm as eye-bots beeped out error codes and shot blind into the smog.

Red crossed the contact point in a coughing fit, with Purple and a couple dozen other smallers not far behind. The violet smog evaporated as it rolled across the courtyard—either unable to hold together out of the fog or unable to cross some invisible barrier. Irkens staggered, collapsed, wobbled, and ran shrieking over the contact point in droves all around them. 

Wheezing, Purple squinted through the chemical burn sizzling in his tear ducts. “You think the auditorium has a sandpit to wash this off?” He coughed and shook himself off. “Or an autoclave?”

“It better.” A bulking shadow fell over the pavement. Elite Sub-commander Sponch looked them over as he took a long sip of Gargleblazz soda. Was that a smirk? It sure looked like a smirk. He twitched his antennae and stifled a cough. “Eugh. You guys smell like a spoiled egg sandwich.”

If the PAK could hurry it up mending his ocular lenses, that’d be great. Red paced toward the center of the courtyard, as far from Purple’s gas bomb as possible, blinking back a fresh round of tears.

Sponch followed them and… okay, maybe he wasn’t smirking. Not on his face. But he smirked on the inside— laughed on the inside. Red could feel it. He knew. He couldn’t hear it, but darn it, he knew from the shine of Sponch’s eyes and the easy slack of his towering spine and his… everything else. How long had he been watching them? The whole time? Why couldn’t he keep his eyes on his own stupid squad?

Red growled low in his chest. Who did Sponch think he was, anyway? Sponch flew a trashy Ripper decked out to look even trashier and wouldn’t know his butt from his butt. Someone ought to sock him in the eye. Right now, maybe.

“Hey!” Purple’s head popped over Sponch’s shoulder with a curious squint. “How do you know what an egg sandwich smells like?”

“Prisoner rations. Used to hand ‘em out on brig duty, little fella. We had to keep ‘em out in the hull, so they had to be restrained. Ya know, with collars and tethers and stuff.” Sponch ran his yellow eyes up and down Purple’s dusty uniform. He lingered on the wrists, waist, and ankles. “Hm. You guys are uh, still sticking together, huh?”

“Aw, you remembered! I toldja, Red, everyone remembers Purple. In fact, Sponch loves me so much he can’t bear to tear his eyes away. And yet, he must.” Purple breezed past Sponch in a twirl of fingerguns and a wink. “We gotta go but I’ll give you an autograph next time, okay?”

Next time, huh? Fine with Red. Their schedule didn’t have the space for an impromptu sparring match before symposium started, anyway. That and his eyes still hurt.

Purple shook his head with a sigh. “It’s so hard being popular, sometimes. Oh, and I just need you to know, Red.” An unwelcome arm patted Red’s shoulder. “I’m not mad that you copied my name idea anymore.”

“What?! I did NOT copy—”

“No, no. It’s fine.”Purple snatched his arm back before Red could rip it from the socket. “I’ve moved on from my past. Now is the time for healing. After all, as Elites, we should be bigger than…” His left antenna popped up. “Do you smell popsicles?”

Now that he mentioned it, something did smell tasty. Red looked down.

An attendance drone weaved through the crowd, a tablet in one hand and a popsicle in the other. In the humid Devastian air, melted juice dripped over the drone’s glove and splattered on his boots. Red hoped he wouldn’t need to touch him.

“Hhhokaaaaay…” Without looking up, the drone scrolled through his datapad. “Here we go. Confirmed sign-ins for PAK#e82d10; callsign ‘Red’, and PAK#8c33b5; callsign…” Melted popsicle plopped on the screen. “Plurple.”

“pffffHA!” Red’s knees collapsed in a burst of croaking not-quite-laughter. The sound couldn’t match the level of funny. His chest squeezed a thin strain of airy wheezes between his teeth as he gasped for air. Laughter squeezed out of him like an empty tube of toothpaste.

His fellow Elite glared at him. “It’s Pur—”

Red’s wheezes erupted into screaming laughter.

The glare soured. “It’s Irken Elite Purple, actually.”

“Mmm, no.” The attendance drone tapped the stained datapad. “The list says Plurple.”

“AHAHAHA PLURPLE!” Red screamed in Purple’s face.

The drone tilted his head and shrugged. “Right, your seminar begins in twenty minutes. Your seats are already assigned, and make sure your squad’s inside before the doors close. Anyone outside the building can’t—”

“They’re locked out if they’re late. Fine. Got it. You can go away, now.” Purple glowered at the drone as he tottered away to bother Sponch. In a huff, he crossed his arms and waited for Red to stop laughing.

Purple waited two minutes. He tapped his foot and waited another four minutes. Around minute eight, he gave up. “It’s not that funny.”

It was so funny Red could hardly see through the laughter tears. His exhausted almost-laughed-out body slumped against a railing. “H-hey cheer—” Red bit his lip with a snort. “Cheer up, soldier. You don’t have to be mad about us both having color names now, Elite…”

“Don’t.”

“… Plurple.”

Purple groaned as he shuffled towards the auditorium. “You’re gonna do this all cycle, aren’t you?”

Red’s laughter echoed across the courtyard.

Chapter Text

“Wait, hold on. I don’t get it.” Elite Flobee shifted forward in his seat as he chewed the tip of his stylus. “Why would they surrender if it means they’ll lose? I know offworlders are weird but don’t they still want to win?”

A curious murmur ran through the lecture hall, from the lowly short chairs at the bottom to the row of sub-commander lounges at the top. The seating curved in a fat arch around a podium at the bottom where the lecturer stood. According to Red’s schedule, The High Extractor was supposed to come today. Something must have happened because they’d sent an understudy instead.

A frail unimpressive Irken in gray robes sat cross-legged atop the desk, surrounded by a set of four holograms. Two large Truffloids with wide mushroom caps huddled around a third, smaller Truffloid with a tiny cap. All three stared at the fourth hologram, smallest of all and highlighted in neon as it sat in the palm of the instructor’s hand.

“A fair question, Elite,” she said. “Let’s examine the basics. The offworlders want to win. You also want to win. Lethal force isn’t an option in this scenario. What do we do now? We change what winning means for the enemy. In this case, the enemy’s goal is to expose you and your base.” She lifted a spinning Irken hologram in her opposite hand. “So you make them want something else. We replace one valued item with another.” With a flick of the wrist, the holograms of the little Truffloid and the Irken symbol switched hands. “They value saving the shroomling’s life more than they value ending yours.”

Red huffed. Easy enough to bribe soft dopey mushroom people. His eye slid to Purple beside him. What about species that actually mattered?

Slouched with his legs sprawled over the seat, Purple stared out of the auditorium’s translucent walls. He didn’t watch the battle mechs firing practice shells on the horizon. He didn’t watch the Vortian mechanics tending to damaged bots outside the courtyard. He didn’t even watch sub-commander Pleeps arguing with the attendance drone beside the door. He'd been in screensaver mode for two hours. Every few minutes, he blinked.

Nothing going on up there at all. Maybe. For all Red knew, Purple busied himself with snackcake thoughts or plans to stab Commander Poki in the eye. Enemy plans needed a baseline. How could you draw new goalposts when you didn’t even know what the old goal was? What was a win for Purple?

“Instructor?” Down in the mezzanine, Tenn squinted at her notes as if they’d been written in Slarkesi. “Uh, the shroomling—it’s biologically produced offspring, right? That means they don’t use anything but themselves to create them?”

The lecturer brought her bright pink eyes to Squad 732’s section. “That’s correct, yes.”

“Doesn’t that mean they can just… make a new one?” Tenn twirled her stylus in the air, miming a screwdriver. “How much does it cost? Even if it’s a lot, the bounty for finding Invaders should cover it anyway on most planets. Is this just protocol for planets that don’t know Irkens?”

Sponch stretched in his lounge and rolled his eyes. “As if anywhere worth taking doesn’t know Irkens.”

“It’s theoretical,” Tenn muttered.

“Actually, for many species—Truffloids included—reproduction is free of charge.” The instructor smiled and nodded as the auditorium murmured in confusion. “Most don’t even require a quota or a schedule for it. Isn’t that interesting?”

Larb’s voice piped up from the lower rows. “So they can make these things themselves whenever they want to, however many they want to, for FREE, and they still choose the offspring for the win? Why?!”

“Because they don’t want another one.” The instructor tossed the little shroomling hologram up and down while its holographic guardians flailed their silly little hands. “They want this one. They like this one.”

“But why? Won’t they like a new one just as good? They can probably even make a better one. Look at that thing, it’s crumb size!”

“They might. However, the new offspring couldn’t replace the old offspring. It’s special to them.” Which didn’t make a spark of sense at all. The instructor frowned as the lecture hall murmured in confusion. “Hmm. It is a little hard to grasp, isn’t it?” She motioned towards the top row. “Perhaps one of our sub-commanders with hostage experience can clarify.”

“What?” Purple’s antennae flicked up and the lights came back on. “Oh, it’s uh because of family bonds and—”

Red’s hand popped up. “Better question: who CARES? Offworlders are just weird; it’s not that complicated!”

The holograms vanished with a clap of the instructor’s hands. She hopped off the desk, pointing straight at Red. “Excellent! Very succinct, Elite. I couldn’t have said it better.” 

Of course she couldn’t, that’s why Red had said it instead. 

“Your job is to conquer, not to research. If research helps your mission, by all means, do it. If you know hostages are a high-value item, you use it. If a bottle of water is a high-value item, you use that. Why it's a high-value item doesn’t matter so much as how you use that item. Done correctly, we get what we want and the offworlder gets whatever we allow them to get.”

Speaking of getting stuff… Red reached into his PAK to pull out the orb canister he’d confiscated from Purple hours ago. Still shut tight with no indication of how to crack it open. He tilted the orb side to side, rolling it from one side of his lap to the other. Nothing sloshed or rolled this time, and the canister sagged heavily in his lap, much heavier than he remembered. Weird.

Why get a thermos so hard to open? Red’s fingers grazed the smooth seamless sides. Maybe Purple had coded it to his DNA signature or PAK number. But if he’d known Red couldn’t open it, why had he thrown such a fit when it’d been taken? Any why—wait, the orb was moving. Why was it moving?

A spindly pair of arms sprouted up from between Red’s legs. Little hands wrapped around the orb and snatched it out of his lap.

“What the?”

Before the words left his mouth, the little thief vanished, orb and all. Hidden in the underbrush of heads and shoulders and PAKS, Red couldn’t see where he’d gone. Couldn’t have gone far in a crowd this tight. There—a flicker of movement one row and five seats down.

Red sat up straight in his chair. “HEY!”

The audience shifted and turned in their seats to stare at him, and the thief became one squirming body in a sea of squirming bodies. Great.

The instructor paused in the lecture. “Oh, did you have additional commentary, Sub-commander?”

Purple hauled himself into the sitting straight, one arm flopped over his legs and the other braced against the chair. A sour pheromonal funk hung in the air, and he sputtered in tight nervous giggles.

“No, it’s just that I saw…” Red cast a side glare as Purple sputtered louder.

The thief was long gone. Red could call him out right now, and the rotten smaller might get rooted out. That is, after being questioned about the orb and why Red thought it was worth interrupting the lecture. Worse, he’d have to admit a smaller had gotten the better of him.

Red sighed. “I saw most of this stuff in our guides already. What’s this extra talk do for our training when the databases and profiles are right there?” Not much of a save, but it’d do.

The instructor tapped her chin in thought. “True. But how quickly can you pull a species profile from your PAK’s database? Five seconds? Twenty seconds? A minute?” Her voice rose to address the rest of the room. “Can you cross-reference enemy weak points before it tears out your squeedlyspooch? An Invader can. An Invader must. An enemy planet gives one test, but luckily, Devastis gives many. Isn’t that wonderful ?” She scanned the audience for agreement. A few gave hesitant nods, but not many. It didn’t seem to bother her.

Metal glinted in the top row. Two spots across, Elite Sponch leaned in his lounge to drop a fistful of jellybeans into the waiting hands below him. The orb sat shining in his lap. 

Purple followed Red’s gaze and blinked curiously. “Huh.” When Sponch smiled and waved at them, Purple gave a limp wave back. “All his now, I guess. Snacktime’s soon, right?”

Red scowled at both of them.

“Exams and midterms are all scheduled of course,” the instructor continued, “but in the field, enemies don’t care what the calendar says. That’s why your Prime Commanders and I—” She stretched her arm towards a skybox, where Commander Poki watched the symposium with a grape soda and a side-order of boredom. “—have developed a pop quiz initiative.”

A nervous chuckle rattled under Purple’s breath. “Red? This wasn’t on the syllabus, was it?”

“You’d know if you’d read it, Plurple.” No, the syllabus mentioned nothing about pop quizzes, but he’d read something about extra credit. This sounded more like mandatory credit, though.

Commander Poki rose to full height in her box. “On that note, I presume you’ve seen the scoreboard.”

The shadow of her arm pointed across the room to a computer screen that stretched from floor to ceiling. PAK numbers flipped over and under each other, establishing rank and scores in real-time: exam scores, drill scores, kill counts, and extra credit points. There, in the middle column, sat the marker for pop quizzes, currently an N/A for all PAK IDs.

The scores for today’s drill had come in already. Red kept his eyes on his own A+ and tried to ignore Sponch's S++ two slots above him.

“Those scores and ranks will follow you from now until graduation.” Poki eyed the audience with a huff. “If you live that long. This isn’t the Smeetery; you’re quizzed when your monitor determines you need to be quizzed. Open answer. Three questions. Two out of three to pass. Any questions?”

Red tapped the monitor strapped to his chest, linked snugly to his PAK. A standard issue bio-enhancement for all Elites, he’d been told that monitors secured the PAK to the spine as a security feature against accidental (or intentional) removal. Apparently, it came with a few extra tricks.

“What happens if we fail a pop quiz?” asked Tenn. She angled her neck to watch Skoodge patting the bloodstains out of his uniform down in the bottom row. “Will it bring scores down for the rest of the squad?”

The instructor laughed. “Goodness, no. Pop quizzes are personally assigned and at random. If they affected the squad, why, a talented Elite could trigger seven quizzes in a day and curve the whole squad. That wouldn’t be very fair, would it?” She put her hands in her pockets as she paced across the stage. “No, when you fail a quiz you’ll get a surprise.”

Purple stiffened. “What kind of a surprise?”

A bright smile curved across the instructor’s face. “An educational surprise!”

Stress stink radiated from Purple like month-old milk bars. He sank in his seat, antennae stalks so flat and low they flicked against Red’s arm.

“Ew quit that.” Red waved him off and tried to lean as far as he could from Purple’s stinky gross head. “What’s your problem any—”

THOOM!

The left rows erupted in a massive pillar of fire and smoke and shrieking. In the epicenter sat Elite Sponch. Two yellow eyes blinked in the fumes and ashes of what had once been his chair.

The distinct scent of explosive jelly and burnt metal lingered through the top rows. A bomb. The whole time, Purple’s canister had been a bomb. In Red’s PAK. All day.

Purple shrugged. “I told you you wouldn’t like it. It’s not my fault you don’t listen to me.” He sat up to admire the carnage and pointed. “Wow, that’s a bigger blast range than I thought. The boom jelly got all the way into the cheap seats. Nice.”

Down in the middle rows, Sponch's squadmate thrashed and squealed, blindly reaching for his burst eye as it swung like a pendulum from his skull. Stray globs of explosive jelly fizzed on his uniform and smoldered on his skin.

Larb cried out as smoldering chunks of flesh bounced across his desk. “Cut it out, Spleen! You’re getting biohazards all over my notes!” He waved his hand in the air as hard as he could. “Commander Pokiiiiiiii! Elite Spleen is being a distraction, tell him to stop.”

“MY BRAIN IS ON FIRE! IT’S MELTING!” Spleen sure had a good set of vocals on him. He should have gone for Announcer. “MERCIFUL IRK I CAN TASTE MY BRAINS!”

Larb put his hands on his hips. “And he’s being loud, too.”

“Spleen! If you can’t behave, you’re getting three hours in The Cube.” Poki glowered over the edge of her skybox. “That goes for the rest of you. The High Extractor came a long way for you ungrateful slugs. Show your Higherarchs some respect.”

“Higherarch?” Red glanced from the skybox to the stage. Below, the frail Irken in gray observed the activity in the audience without comment or complaint. “Like… like as in a Higherarch higherarch?”

Purple bobbed his head at the podium. “Oh. Yeah, that’s High Extractor Foma. She runs the Information Extraction department.”

“You’re ripping my wires. She’s gotta be like six feet tall!”

“Six foot six.” Purple crossed his arms and sank into the padding of his lounge chair. “Give or take a millimeter.”

Most of the fires had gone out, but almost nobody cared about the symposium lecture anymore. The instructional holograms vanished with a snap of the Extractor’s fingers. She shook her head with a smile and a sigh. “I suppose Elites will be Elites, won’t they? We’re approaching our time limit anyway, so that’s enough for today, I think. Wonderful meeting Irk’s future Invaders. Spleen, let’s work on our self-control next time, yes?”

Slowly, Purple eased out of his seat. He looked to the left, looked to Red on the right, and nodded towards the door.

They hadn’t been dismissed yet. Red stayed put. If new information about exams or extra credit dropped at the last minute, he didn’t count on the smallers to catch it. Especially when some of them may or may not have been on fire.

“Study well, everyone, your Empire’s counting on you. I’ll see you all again in two years for interrogation training. You’re dismissed.”

There. A few seconds never killed anyone. Red saved today’s notes, stretched his stiff muscles, and got up. 

Purple tapped his foot at the end of the aisle. The minute Red’s butt left the seat, he rushed for the door.

The Extractor turned. “Oh, Purple!”

Purple’s shoulders sank.

“In all the excitement I almost forgot our briefing. I’ll see you in twenty, right?”

“Wouldn’t miss it,” Purple sighed. He bared his teeth with a hiss as Red caught up to him at the door.

Red blinked. “What?”

The wall turret aimed right between Red’s eyes, the center of the barrel already glowing. “Please identify.”

Red rolled his eyes. “PAK#e82d10. Like last time.” The turret folded back into the wall and he speed-walked to close the distance before the tether started to buzz.

Nothing had demanded Purple’s ID, and he didn’t stop for Red to administer his. In fact, since they’d left the seminar building, Purple hadn’t dropped pace or looked up from his gauntlet once. Hadn’t spoken a word either.

Red supposed he ought to be grateful for the silence. “I’m getting pretty sick of giving my number every twenty paces in this dumb place.” Twenty paces was a wild guess. For all Red knew, it could have been every fifty paces or every three feet. Hard to tell when the corridors flipped corners faster than Planet Jackers flipped real estate.

The Devastis Sector of Imperial Defense, Information Extraction, Hostile Containment, and Massage Parlor nestled miles below the planet’s surface. The elevators didn’t even come this far; they’d had to take a teleporter down here. For fun, Red had tried creating a mental map of the area. He’d given up after their twentieth sharp turn. Death mazes had simpler paths than this. Better music, too.

The facility’s elevator music sounded like air chewed up, spat out, chewed up again, and tossed into a bubble. Better than hearing Purple talk, but it got old fast. “What’s with the soundtrack anyway? Doesn’t this place have more than five songs?” Turrets perked up at the end of the corridor. “For the last time, I’m e82d10!”

“Eight.” Purple mumbled so fast, Red thought he’d imagined it.

“Eight what?”

Purple twitched his antennae. “It’s been eight songs, not five. I think this one’s called ‘f o u n t a i n’. It’s probably for the guys working interrogation today. It’s some kinda… brain pokey technique.”

“Like when you yell really loud at prisoners until they get sick and leak fluids?” Red had seen someone from Interrogation do that once.

“Nah. This is supposed to keep prisoners calm.” Purple looked up in thought. “Or drive them crazy. Both? I don’t remember; I didn’t do much in Interrogation before I got moved.” 

Red smirked. “What’d they kick you out for?”

“Unnecessary roughness.” Purple scoffed as he scrolled through his newsfeed for the seventh time. “Why did we even have chainsaws if we weren’t supposed to use ‘em?”

The corridor stopped at a dead end. Light blue glowed along the edges of a flat wall too abrupt to be a wall.

“Hey, it’s me,” Purple told the wall. “I’m here for my 26:15.”

Unseen speakers chimed the last four notes of the Imperial Anthem and the wall split itself open to the shiniest corridor Red had ever seen. He examined their reflections in the mirrored walls as they entered, pleased to see that most of the grime of today’s drills had slipped off his uniform. The place smelled of glass and antiseptic, with a touch of that buttery sweet scent found in snack bars and smeeteries. Even so, it couldn’t overpower that funky stink wafting from Purple’s glands.

Red swore he knew that smell. Under the scent of the corridor and old traces of battlefield grit and smoke bombs, he couldn’t pin it. It didn’t have the sharp tang of fear, but it was in the neighborhood. Stress, maybe? It sure didn’t do Red’s sensitive stomach any favors after that teleporter trip.

 Purple’s boots squeaked on the tile. His pace slowed to a dubious shuffle. “Can’t believe I’m missing snacktime for this.”

Yep. Stress stink for sure. About time Purple took something seriously. Too bad he had to go and drag Red’s snacktime into it too.

“You think she knows that bomb was mine?” He kept his eyes on his gauntlet, fast scrolling through coupons and junk mail. “Of course she does. Always does.” Purple shot Red a glare. “You have to put your big dumb hands into everything, don’t you? I was saving that bomb for later.”

Which he could have just explained hours ago and saved Spleen a trip to the infirmary. “Saving it for what?”

“I dunno, just… for later. Shut up! Don’t change the subject; you’re the one who messed up the timer by shaking it all over the place. Why can’t you mind your own business?”

“Oh, like it’s my fault you can’t keep track of your stuff. You started it.” Red raised an eyebrow. “Dunno what you’re all gunky about. She’s not your boss anymore. It’s not like she can do anything to you.”

As far as he knew, all the Higherarchs stood at the same rank. A High Extractor couldn’t overturn a High Commander. Not unless the High Commander stepped back and let her… and to be fair, Poki might let her. Still, that didn’t change the height difference. “What’s a six-footer doing in charge of this whole operation, anyhow?” Assuming that said operation had more to it than glass halls, a corridor maze, and a bunch of annoying turrets.

“Don’t have to be the tallest one in the Empire to get Higherarch,” Purple said, “just the tallest one in the department. Nobody around was taller than her back then.”

“Nobody in all of Information Extraction got over six foot six?”

A few feet down the hall, one of the walls—or a door within the wall—slid open. The High Extractor poked her head out to smile and wave at them.

“Oh, sure they did. They’re just not alive anymore.” A stiff toothy smile cracked across Purple’s face. He waved back and scampered up to meet her. “Hey, look who’s here!”

Watching him salute his old boss with more compliance and respect than he’d given Poki (or anyone), Red wondered if he’d misjudged her before. The nuances of height and presence could get lost in such a big auditorium. Perhaps he’d been so focused on the lecture he’d failed to judge the instructor properly.

But no. If anything, close proximity made it worse. Like zooming into a corroded hull, little weaknesses and imperfections wormed out of the Extractor by the dozen. Frail, undersized skeletal structure. Pathetic muscle build. Voice of some meek-mouthed drone from customer service. No bio-enhancements to compensate for any of it, save for the scatter of neural nodes rooted in her neck. He’d seen sturdier cadets in the smeetery. This brittle embarrassment should never have been within miles of a Higherarch position. Middle management, at best.

It was gross.

She’d brought snacks along, though, so she couldn’t be all bad. Condensation beaded on the warm box of donuts in her hands. “26:15, right on time! You’re doing much better with schedules now, Purple. I’m glad to see you’ve learned to respect the Empire’s time.” Extractor Foma drummed her fingers on the lid of the donut box. “But…”

Purple winced.

“I have to wonder why you couldn’t show that same respect for your mission. Two years is an exceptionally long time for just one infiltration assignment.” She leaned against the wall and blinked at him curiously. “Now, Commander Poki says you reported a need for an extension to your six-month estimate. Is that correct?”

The stress pheromones thickened. Purple stole a pleading glance at Red. “Uh.”

Red shrugged. Hey, you said it, not me. They’d lined their stories up after that part, and it’s not like Red knew anything about it. Besides, Purple flew himself into this wormhole in the first place. Wasn’t Red’s job to tug him out.

“Uh, yes, that’s right.” Purple’s eyes bobbed between Foma’s face and the box in her hands. “I needed more time for empathetic bonding and persuasive teardown procedure. It’s kind of hard to sabotage anyone when they’re still watching you day and night. I wanted to file an official extension request, but I couldn’t transmit. It would’ve gotten too much attention.”

“That’s perfectly understandable, but I’m afraid your old shipmates here in containment told a slightly different story.” She gestured toward the halls of mirrors around them. The lilt of her voice dipped slow and deliberate. “Somebody on this planet,” she said, “is lying to me.” 

The box opened with a flick of her thumb. Thirteen freshly baked donuts steamed beneath the mirrored lights. Scents of sugar and chocolate steamrolled the antiseptic and weird pheromones. Flecks of powdered sugar sparkled on Foma’s glove as she lifted a donut out and took a slow bite.

“I mean—” Purple’s eyes fought between the Extractor’s face and the rope of viscous filling that dangled from the crust. Goo plopped onto the toe of his boot. “Offworlders and insurgents lie all the time. Can’t get a straight word out of 'em, you know?”

Foma’s pink eyes twinkled. “That’s absolutely right! Why, that’s what Infiltrators like you are for, isn’t it? You create friends from enemies. You need them to like you. Trust you.” She took another bite. “That becomes a little difficult when an Infiltrator kills three Screwheads, doesn’t it? In fact, when that Infiltrator only leaves the last Screwhead—the last of a family unit—alive, it becomes very difficult. He hates Irkens now more than he did at the start of your mission. My Interrogators have to start from scratch.”

Purple glared at Red.

Red ignored him.

Foma took a patient bite of donut.

A long groan dragged out of Purple and he glared at Red again. “You know the whole thing got compromised right? On my way to Devastis, I got boarded and I had to—”

“According to the coroner drones, your hostages expired seven months, two weeks, four days, and eighteen hours before The Lenient contacted the ship.”

Purple’s antennae drooped a few inches. “I can explain.”

“I look forward to it.” The Extractor stepped back with a gentle sweep of her bony arm. “After you, Elite.”

The rest of the donut vanished in two bites and a sweep of the tongue.

About time. They could have done all of this in her quarters instead of hanging around the hallways like a bunch of loitering dorks. Red cracked his joints and stepped up to meet Purple in the doorway.

Purple watched him from the corner of his eye. The stress stink tapered off. What, did he seriously think Red would let him go in by himself? They’d built that report for the Commanders together, they had to fly it together. Flying solo, Purple might let the whole thing fall apart, or worse, throw Red under the gears.

Couldn’t be too hard, right? It’d worked on Poki, and Poki was an inch taller and five times scarier than some weak creep in a lab robe. They’d just fly the same story as before, maybe fancy it up in places, let Purple toss excuses for his spy gig, and done. They could probably catch the end of snacktime.

Foma looked up. “Ooh, no, sorry. Just him.” She nodded at Purple for the go-ahead. Inside waited a desk and a stool made for someone half Purple’s size. “Don’t worry, we won’t be long. You can wait out here if you like.”

Red stepped closer. “If it won’t take long, you won’t mind if I wait inside. I’m his official sub-commander, so I need to monitor for…” What did officers monitor soldiers for, again? “For accurate reporting… things. Things that happened. That I was there for.”

“Irk sees your dedication, Sub-commander Red. However, I’m afraid this particular matter extends beyond your military field.”

Red’s language processors never downloaded the expansion for polite talk, but he knew ‘sit down and shut the fuck up’ when he heard it. “Okay, but—”

“This briefing is classified to Information Extraction. Please appreciate that you are allowed down here at all.”

In the office behind her, Purple circled the stool as he searched for the least-uncomfortable sitting position. The stool was welded to the floor, roughly five feet from the door. Five or… or six.

The ring around Purple’s ankle began to glow bright red under his uniform.

Definitely six feet. Red’s ankle rubbed against his leg. It itched.

She glanced between the rings. “Ohhh, I see.” Extractor Foma’s long antennae perked with a curious chirp. “I’ve never seen a tether like this used on Irkens before! My, Poki must have been upset. What’s the range on this? Eight feet? Ten? Four? It couldn’t be four; something would have happened by now. I imagine that must be terribly uncomfortable for you.”

Red planted both feet on the tile. Feet that absolutely did not itch at all. “I’ve had worse. Look, if it’s a security issue, I can just stand in back with a privacy helmet.”

“I prefer my soundproof walls if it’s all the same to you.”

“It’s not.”

“I understand,” she said. “You didn’t ask to be part of this, and now I’m disrupting your study time when you’re already tethered. I’m sorry for that, I truly am.” Foma offered an apologetic shrug. “It’s a consequence we can’t avoid, but this is how we learn, huh? We can always do better next time!”

Red rolled his eyes. A sliver of free time a day, and he had to waste it waiting for Purple to clean up his mess. “This isn’t going to take all night, is it? I’ve got stuff to do.”

“He’ll be in and out before you know it. Here, I’ll give you something to pass the time.” The nodes in the High Extractor’s neck blinked in sync as she knocked on the wall behind her.

Panel by panel, the corridor’s reflective walls went transparent. Red found himself surrounded by a patchwork of two-way mirrors. In every window, prisoners paced barren cells, huddled in corners, stared into the void, slammed their hands against their earholes, or soundlessly talked to themselves. Boring stuff compared to the broadcasts, but better than staring at his reflection.

On the other side of the High Extractor’s clear office wall, Purple fidgeted on his little stool. He’d figured out a decent seating position, legs awkwardly splayed in a semi-crouch with the tethered ankle sloping towards the door. He frowned through the glass, though he didn’t seem to register Red at all.

Foma pointed to the cell opposite the office, where a Truffloid with a withered cap hung upside down. “Interrogator Enip will be along soon to work File TR34. We think he might talk soon.”

Red squinted at the offworlder. “Don’t those guys usually have fourteen fingers?”

“They do when they cooperate. Sorry again for the inconvenience. You’re missing snacktime for this, right? Here you go.” Extractor Foma plucked out one more donut for herself and handed Red the rest of the box. “I couldn’t finish them by myself anyhow.” She offered a nod and let the door slide shut behind her.

The box had eleven donuts left. Quality, too. This could get a full-page spread in the snack mags, easy. Even elites didn’t get a sniff of this stuff outside of holidays. A token of appreciation.

Leftovers. She—standing at a measly six foot six—had given Red her leftovers, as if he ought to be grateful for it. As if she outranked…

Red crossed his arms and let himself fall hard against the glass. Fine, technically she did outrank him. But still! He ought to dump the whole box out and stomp the donuts into mush. That’d show her what he thought of her handouts.

Red’s tongue swiped frosting off his jaws and swallowed the donut in his mouth. He frowned at the eight remaining donuts, snatched up another, and shoved it into his mouth. Of course, he wouldn't actually throw them out for real. These were top-tier snacks; he wasn’t stupid. He ought to, though.

And what was that “I’m sorry” stuff? Who on Irk apologized to a lower rank? Had she been making fun of him, or had it been her smaller instincts coming out? Red didn’t know and didn’t care to, but the whole thing bunched up his guts inside.

Across the hall, the Truffloid thrashed and swung from the ceiling. It clutched its remaining fingers together and soundlessly babbled to an Irken sitting in a chair below him. The Interrogator nodded and gestured to the canister of liquid nitrogen at his feet. Red hadn’t seen him come in, not that he’d been paying attention.

Under bright corridor lights, the window reflections bounced off of each other. If Red angled his head right, he could see Foma’s office behind him. Purple’s report overlayed the Truffloid interrogation like a glitched transmission.

Purple’s mouth moved fast. His hands moved faster. Fingers tangled around each other. Arms branched big and wide to mime something huge and expanding. He paused for effect, waited a beat, and flip-flopped his torso in five directions. The High Extractor peered down at him from a hoverchair that elevated her above her rightful height. She listened with steepled fingers and a neutral expression.

With a great swing of his legs, Purple hopped off the stool and began to pace around the office. Not quick, not slow, but an even stroll steady enough to dig out of the trench he’d found himself in. By the look of it, he paced about five feet from the wall.

The itchy tingle in Red’s ankles faded.

Running around the Extractor’s office made Purple look like a lunatic. It also covered those precious extra inches of tether distance.

For all of Purple’s faults, the soldier knew how to strategize. Improvise? He knew how to do something. Red didn’t know how deeply Purple had planned that bomb for Sponch (or Pleeps, or whoever it’d been for) but he’d had something in mind. Whatever it was, Red confiscating it probably hadn’t been part of the plan. Probably. Even if it’d sprung too early, the orb had still exploded in Sponch’s lap in the end. It could have burst in Red’s lap, or his PAK, or somewhere else where Purple would’ve got caught in the blast. It hadn’t.

Either Purple had the best luck on Devastis, or he’d recalibrated fast on his feet, or he’d prepped backup plans. Or there’d never been any plan at all, and Purple really had just been saving it for later. Who knew?

Red bopped his head against the wall and sighed.

OBSERVATION 8: After a day of observation, I only know that I barely know anything about him.

Nothing substantial, anyway. Just basic stuff he’d already known.

Bright jelly filling squirted into Red’s hands as he bit into his donut. “Huh. Pizza flavor.” 

Not bad, but a third-tier flavor, if you asked him. He chewed slower. Kind of strange for it to be in a donut. Pizza had never been a popular flavor, but it had niche fans, like… Like Purple. He’d had a whole plate of pizza rolls in the microwave when Red boarded his ship. Red swallowed. The donut went down thick and hard. Slowly, his eyes trailed down to the box in his lap. Who exactly had the Extractor gotten these for?

Purple’s briefing had been scheduled right after the Extractor’s lecture. Snacktime always followed the last exercise of the day, and Elites only got one designated snacktime a day. The timing hadn’t been a coincidence. The Extractor had planned on eating these in front of him. Red wasn’t eating Foma’s leftovers. He was abetting Purple’s punishment.

Suddenly, Red didn’t feel very hungry anymore. “That,” he said to the last three donuts, “is sick.”

OBSERVATION 9: Elite Purple operated under Extractor Foma for at least six cycles.

Six cycles. Over forty years. How on Irk had Purple put up with it for so long? Red never could. Not under someone three full inches his lesser. He would have gone defective and crazy in weeks. Yes, fresh from the smeetery, Purple would’ve started out shorter than her, but still. He would’ve been her height or taller for at least two of those cycles. Probably more.

In a blink, Red recalled a purple-eyed smeet towering over him in a pastel room, smelling of sugar and explosives. Not only did Purple bear impressive height, but he’d done so for a long time. Even if he’d plateaued for a few years, his head start would’ve put Purple well above most of his peers.

OBSERVATION 10: Purple is tall. He has always been tall.

And no Irken in civilized history, ever, got tall by accident. Tallness meant skill. It meant cunning. It meant talent and excellence. Even if one couldn’t tell at first glance. After all, Purple had kept up with Red since Invader training started. He’d done it without breaking a sweat, too. Purple was a big sack of snot, but he was a talented sack of snot.

Red’s ankle itched. He glanced over his shoulder. Behind the glass, Purple sat on the stool while Extractor Foma rubbed her temples.

For Purple’s high caliber, for all his work in the Tallest’s service, poor Purple still had to bend to some spindly Irken who couldn’t look him in the eye without a hoverchair. And why? Only because everyone taller—everyone who’d deserved the rank—died for her to get it, and Higherarch positions were for life. No wonder Extractor Foma never came out in public. If it were Red, he’d never show his face outside a monitor feed.

But Purple, he’d still been out in the field doing the real work, the respectable work. He’d spent two whole years stealthing in the heart of Irk’s enemies, in a ship full of hostile insurgents and no reinforcements for lightyears. For all that, he still had to report and explain himself to someone three inches below him.

It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right.

He remembered the look on Smeet Purple’s face after Red had knocked him out of the Fweezie nest. Not just upset, he’d been outraged. Stupefied by the injustice of it all. And he’d had every right to be.

Certain things just weren’t done. For instance, smeets—even talented ones—weren’t supposed to step out of line or be dumb. Red had never felt dumb back then, or later in his drone days, but dumb people didn’t always know they were dumb. And he must have been, at least a little, right? He had to have done something wrong, or he would have grown a lot sooner.

Maybe that’s why he’d stayed short for so long. He had to learn better. Purple too, maybe. That’s why neither of them got credit for finding the Princess Room.

Red blinked at the simulation pods in the corner far in the back of the Extractor’s office. Probably the same training sims mentioned in the syllabus. They had more lights, conduits, and warning labels than the models they’d used in basic, the ones that had been broken by—

I AM ZIM!!

A shudder rippled through Red’s spine. THAT had been a tall smeet. He’d stood almost a head taller than Purple back then. Weird how there’d been no sign of him in Invader training or even any mention of him in the Irken Elite. Maybe because he’d already outgrown it. Outgrown and outdone everyone in his smeeting year.

“He must be huge by now...”

“Who’s huge by now?” Elite Purple stared down at him from the doorway. His gaze flicked between Red, the floor, the prisoners in the walls, his shoes, and to Red again in the space of a blink. “Nevermind. Don’t care.” His antennae twitched. A bitter acidic scent clung to him.

Red couldn’t blame him. In his position, he’d be grouchy too. “How’d it go?”

“How I expected.” Purple’s flat gaze skimmed over the donut crumbs on Red’s mouth. “Have a nice snacktime?”

“Not really. These aren’t really my thing. I’m more of a slooshie guy, but they were already here, so…” He stood with a shrug and tilted the box in Purple’s direction. “They’re still pretty warm. You can have the rest if you want. Some are pizza flavor.”

“Obviously. I have receptors, you know,” Purple sneered. “And I don’t want your gross leftover snacks after you drooled all over them.”

He hooked the last three donuts, one to each finger, and shoved them all into his face. They went down in big wet scarfing sloppy bites. No jaw enhancements or anything.

Not that Red was impressed or anything. “You know, when most people say that, they give the snacks back.”

“I’m not most people, I’m Purple.” With that, he spun on his heel and stomped down the hall. He moved at a clip—a stroll to a walk to a powerwalk just shy of a jog.

The tether shot warning stings through Red’s foot as he dashed to catch up. “Wait, where are you going?” Another warning sting. Red winced and sped up. “And why are we rushing? The snack bars are closed by now, you know.”

“Not going to snacks.”

Purple swung a sharp right, twitched his antennae, dashed down another hall to take three lefts and another right. His tongue swept over his teeth with a huff. This didn’t feel like the way they’d come.

“Look, if you’re—ow!” Red kicked into a jog and stayed there. The stupid tether usually gave more slack than this, but Purple’s sudden moves had put it on high alert. All that time barely sitting in range probably didn’t help either. “Will you slow down?! If you’re that hungry, there’s still a can of Instant Fruit™ in the loft.”

Another hard lurch right. “Told you, I’m not going to snacks,” Purple said. “And there’s three cans left.” He plowed through a cluster of Interrogators without a glance. The Interrogators hugged the wall and gave him a wide berth. One shot Red a sympathetic frown.

“Then where ARE we going?”

“You’ll see.”

Down the hall and to the left, the corridor opened into a modest set of teleportation pads. The thin seams of Purple’s PAK glowed as he stepped on and the pad connected. Red squeezed in next to him; these things were never meant for two Irkens but they didn’t have much choice. Instantly putting miles of distance between them, even for a second, would mean… Something painful, probably. Best case scenario, they’d miss midterms and need to grow new legs.

"Gimmie the Arena Spire. Floor 28, Section 16-G. Now." With a great heave of his shoulders, Purple flexed his claws and hissed through his teeth. "I need to make something stop being alive."

It took a second to sink in. Red raised his eyebrows. “Wait, we’re going IN the Spire? Do we even have clearance—”

The world flared a bleached searing white. The PAK’s vents spat out excess heat and all his organs got really weird for half a second. When the spots in Red’s eyes faded, he found himself surrounded by blood-pink walls so tall he couldn’t find the ceiling.

“—for that?” Apparently, they did. Red’s voice echoed through the Devastis Arena Spire’s gaping front lobby. Too early (or too late) for the big crowds, the only other ones here were scalpers early to work and gamblers too pathetic to go home. Overlapping scents of thousands of species powered through the antiseptic and carpet cleaner, almost stronger than the stink of Purple’s rotten mood. Almost. “I still say we go back to the loft and eat. It’s two weeks until the First Quarter tests and maybe you don’t care about studying but some of us would rather not flunk out of Invader training.”

“Yeah, well, you say a lot of stuff. You can’t cram two weeks of stuff in a night. Relax.”

For a guy who’d spent his topside life on Foodcourtia or in interrogation modules, Purple navigated the Spire like an old pro. In moments he’d led them past the lobby, up two flights of spiral stairs, and looped around an observation deck. He seemed to know it better than he’d known The Extractor’s area. Had he been here before?

Two hallways past the observation deck and a You Must Be This Tall To Enter sign, they entered a room smaller than the lobby but way too big to be an office. Stats, betting pools, and entry slots streamed across the monitors encircling the room. Couches and accent tables lined the walls, broken up by the occasional advertisement. 

A mighty registration counter dominated the place. It had to be five feet tall, bare minimum. Anybody under the height requirement literally couldn’t see a Gamemaster without standing on a box.

“Registration ended an hour ago. Slots are all taken, guys.” The Gamemaster peered through six unimpressed and unblinking lenses embedded in the metal band around his skull. If he ever had normal eyes, he’d replaced them with the camera mod ages ago. Installation alone had to have cost Red’s entire debt twice over. He picked a spot of lint out of his cape’s moth fur collar. “Come back tomorrow or schedule ahead in the app. It’s just twenty-six monies a week, you can afford that. Probably.”

“There, see? It’s full. Let’s go back.” Red pulled Purple’s arm. Purple didn’t budge. “Come ON. I’m not bombing first exams just because you wanna sulk in the lobby all night.”

“So sit by the wall if you wanna study so bad. The sidelines are like four feet away from the pit. Sit out or don’t, I don’t care. More extra credit for me.”

“What’s extra credit got to do with—”

“Shut up, I’m busy.” 

Purple groped through his PAK with more clinking, clattering, and weird thumps than an Elite’s PAK ought to have. With a smirk, he pulled out a bowl of steaming nachos. The genuine Solo Supreme came with three varieties of cheeses, six styles of exotic chips, and a divot of spicy dip on the side, all contained in an edible bowl the size of a Planet Jacker helmet. No fancier than average snack trough stuff, but nothing to dismiss either. 

Slowly, he slid it across the desk. “Sorry, I couldn’t hear you. When did you say MY slot was?”

The Gamemaster's cameras brightened, all roses and red carpets. “As I said, sir, your slot starts in six… well, five, now. The pit’s ready and waiting to go.” With a gesture, a holographic grid spread beneath his hands. His finger hovered over the tile in the upper-left corner. “But you’ll have to rush, and I’m afraid it’s still early for the night. It’s mostly camera spectators for this one. Are you sure you wouldn’t rather have the fourth or fifth slot? It’s Primetime, big audience there.”

Red flattened his antennae, caught between complaining about the epic nachos Purple apparently had the whole time and the fact that he still had to waste his evening in an arena brawl whether he wanted to or not. As if he could study in the middle of a pit, much less with— wait. Did that GM mention cameras?

“Is this match going to the broadcasts?” Red frowned down at his wrinkled uniform.

A long gooey thread of cheese dripped into the Game Master’s mouth. “Uh. Obviously? It’s a cultural institution, like my glorious voice. If you don’t know that, maybe you DO need to study, whatsyername.”

“It’s Red,” said Red. “And it’s gonna be doubles.” He sighed. “I guess.”

“Doubles?” All seven feet of the G.M. sat up in full. The camera apertures in his head all blinked at once. He smoothed the fur on his cape collar, trying (and failing) to keep nacho cheese out of it. “Hm, that is new. We like a gimmick out here. Doubles… I love it.”

At least somebody here did.

The G.M.’s long fingers tapped a monitor and skimmed through the I.D. numbers. “Well, looks like your liability paperwork’s all taken care of. Yeah, there you are. Callsigns Red and Purple.”

“Are you sure you don’t mean…” Red snickered under his breath. “Red and PLURPLE?”

Purple bared his teeth in a vicious snarl.

The Game Master shrugged. “Purple, Plurple. Clammada, clamato. Seriously, you sure you don’t want slot five? It’s a real squelcher tonight.”

“No. First slot. I’m not waiting.”

“Okay, but this thing doesn’t even talk. It’s not that fun…”

“I don’t need it to talk, I NEED it to stop being alive. It’s FINE. Whatever arena settings are fine. Just…” Purple muttered under his breath and sighed. “Just gimme a plasma ax and—”

“Uh-uh, now that’s a non-starter, Mr. Elite Purple.” The G.M. puffed his nacho-stained cape with a flourish. “What do you think this is, some back alley pit fight? This is Devastis, sir. We have rules. Shock spears only.”

Purple threw his arms into the air. “SERIOUSLY?! Why does everything happen to me? Is this some kind of newbie rule or can we… you know…” He waggled his brow. “Arrange for something cooler? Axes, chainsaws, a steel chair?”

“Everybody gets spears in the Spire, drones to the Admins. Deal with it or don’t.” The Game Master took a wet sloppy bite of nachos. “Oh, looks like it’s that time. Fight starts in ten!”

Hadn’t he said six before? “Ten minutes?” That barely gave Red time to shine his boots, much less stretch to prep for an arena fight. He looked around for a reflective surface. Did his antennae look weird? Sometimes it bent funny after a nap.

“Nah.”

Red smiled.

“Ten seconds.”

Their PAKs lit up as the teleporter connected. 

“Have a good show. Try not to die too fast, mmkay?”

The ground dropped out.

Three teleporter trips in the last two hours. Amazing that he hadn’t puked up the few snacks in his stomach. Red staggered on his feet, squinting into the rows of a stadium.

Five layers of seats rose from the ground to the roof, filtered dusty pink behind the arena glass. A few Irkens hovered ringside, close enough to see their faces peering at him with dull interest. Nobody he recognized, but Red still wished he could have cleaned up first.

The shatterproof glass dome arched high above their heads, orbited on all sides by a rainbow of flashing lights and stats and advertisements. The whole thing kind of reminded him of his old job as a mechanic drone, when he lived inside a slot machine for a year. Beneath his feet, blue sand pulsed in time with the thrashing bass beat. A Game Master’s voice crowded above it, the words muffled behind the glass.

Red huffed under his breath. “Let’s wrap this up quick, Purple. I’ve got stuff to do.”

“Yeah, whatever. Stick to the sidelines and do your homework.” Purple walked along the weapons queue, examining the selection of shock spears. He chose the one with the curved serrated tip, twirled it in his hands, and banged it in time with the beat. “Let the pro talent work. You’d just get in the way.” He shot Red a punchable smirk.

Whatever. Serrated blades were for brutes and weirdos anyway. Red snatched a longtip: simple, sturdy, and stabby with a generous reach to put distance between himself and the enemy. It’d worked well for him in training modules; no reason it couldn’t work here. “What talent? All I see here is you.”

Purple stuck out his tongue. The bruise matched his eyes. “Jealousy just makes you uglier.”

The arena lights went blue, swirling and spinning along the sides of the dome. Outside, the bass thumped faster as the Game Master’s voice boomed through the speakers. “ GET READY TO GET SOME, SOLDIERS!  HERE SHE COMES!”

“About time.” Purple slouched low at the ready, legs bouncing, claws flexing around the spear. Stadium lights gleamed across his eyes as he licked the edge of his grin. The stress stink haunting him all afternoon evaporated completely. He stood like a seasoned fleet cruiser with brand new cannons: no flinch, no falter.

Indeed, the Elite looked downright competent. If it was a bluff, Red had to admit it was a good one.

Smoke filtered into the arena, gray clouds puffing at their boots. The real thing—no dry ice or vapor, just good old fire and ash and noxious gasses. A lesser mammal would suffocate in minutes. Something spat and crackled like fryer grease. A fat rope of flesh snaked through the haze, and the fryer crackle popped so loud Red felt it in his spiracles.

“AND HERE SHE IS! Irkens of Devastis, viewers at home, pirates on satellite—yes, we see you—please give a big HELLO to a special big old girl! All the way from Sector 4513, you know her! You love her! Give it up for CODENAME AN-GE-LAAAAA! ”

The two-dozen Irkens in the audience politely golf-clapped. One guy in the back said “woo”.

Red blinked. The splort kinda name is ‘Angela’? It sounded like a foreign desert. He turned to ask Purple for some sort of game plan.

Purple’s silhouette already dashed through smoke trails several feet away. Of course.

A great ugly hose of a creature rose from the haze, up and up and up until Red had to tilt his neck. Swirls of ash and smoke dripped between seven rows of jagged little teeth centered in a wicked ring of a mouth. Despite the ashy debris, the oilslick skin glistened. Angela had been eating well.

Red stepped back. Angela reared and dove for him.

Instinctively, he lunged out of range. Beneath his PAK, the metal legs flexed, ready to catch the landing and push Red into a second jump.

The hatch didn’t open. He crashed hard onto the concrete. The creature perked and changed directions.

Where were the PAK legs? Red strained. His hatches strained and relaxed with a little “nuh-uh” beep. Disabled. When the G.M. said shock spears only, he’d meant it. Great.

Lightly as possible, Red scattered backward, trying to catch some flash of movement in the smoke. Nothing he could see so far; she hadn’t followed him. Not yet, at least.

Red’s chest monitor glowed. A chipper voice in his brain (in his PAK?) chimed the first three notes of Irk’s anthem. Pop quiz, Elite! Please identify species!

What, now? They weren’t even on duty! Shouldn’t field tests happen on the field, off-planet or something?

She began to turn for him again. Red threw a fistful of gravel behind her. The creature known as Angela screeched and followed it.

Then again, an enemy threat was an enemy threat, no matter the planet.

Please identify species. Unvoiced answers will be considered an errored response. Respond in the next thirty seconds.

“I heard you the first time, relax!”

Too loud. Coils breached over the smoke clouds. Red skittered away from the gleam of Angela teeth as fast as he could while keeping her in sight. Eyes watering in the smoke, he scanned what little of the creature he could see.

Okay. No legs. No eyes. Long, but not tall. Circular mouth and teeth for days. Shiny skin. Spewing smoke and gross stuff could apply to a bunch of species, but if he had to guess (and he did)…

“Some kinda fire leech?” he whispered.

The monitor chimed happily. Correct! Please identify native planet.

Red rolled and dodged a fat sweep of muscle. “Friggin… um…” Sector 4513, The G.M. had said. That sector had those people made of smoke or whatever. “Uhhhh, Quellazaire!”

Well done, Elite e82d10! Twenty extra credits have been applied to your score. 

Not bad, actually.

On the farther side of the arena, Purple cackled at the top of his lungs, coughed, and laughed again. His spear chopped through the smoke as it swung down to stab the leech’s rear. As the ropes of Angela muscle turned left, Red ran right, lashing and stabbing at her shiny hide.

Angela paused, unsure of which Irken to target. In that sliver of time, they struck. Red jabbed the thrashing rear coils while Purple went for the neck and the chest. Gradually, they fell into a sloppy rhythm, loose enough to break predictable patterns, smooth enough to still work in tandem.

If she gnashed at Purple on the left, Red struck right. She twisted right, Purple stabbed left. They circled and swooped her. They dashed and slashed, switching places by the second as they ducked and rolled under the thrashing coils of muscle and fat. Direction matched for direction. Hit for hit.

Too bad none of Red’s hits had actually connected yet. Not enough to matter. The spear blade jabbed through the smoke to hit something thick and gooey. It felt like trying to stab a puddle of jelly. Some sort of membrane, obviously, but there had to be some way through it.

Did Purple know? Had any of his hits connected?

For a moment, the walls of smoke parted and Red saw him. All smiles, Purple ducked and dodged and swiped and back-rolled around Angela’s attacks like an old arena pro. Maybe he was.

He’d been in the pit fights as a smeet and lived to whine about it. That had to count for something. And they had pit fights all over Irken territory, Foodcourtia included, so maybe Purple had never stopped. His melee skills had stayed sharp. He’d breezed through the area rules like he’d heard them a million times, and had already known the fastest way to the registration desk and how to bribe the G.M.

With dozens (hundreds?) of off-worlder fights under his boot, perhaps attack plans came second nature to him now. Perhaps what Red saw now was the manifestation of years—decades!—of experience and talent coming to a head. Indeed, nobody that tall could be dumb. What labyrinths of strategic brilliance did Purple harbor under his PAK?

Because Red really wanted to get in on it.

The leech’s tail slammed the back of Red’s legs.

Like, now.

Catching himself on his hands, he stumbled backward in a clumsy half-run. A fresh jet of smoke shot into his face. He hacked and coughed as his body tried to compensate for the PAK’s clogged filters. Angela roared, and Red caught a whiff of Irken blood. Maybe theirs, maybe the last guy she’d met down here.

Rotten attitude or not, Purple couldn’t drag Red in here and hoard the whole battle plan. The least he could do was fill him in.

“Hey.” Red vaulted over a squiggling mass of mucus and muscles and ducked a rope of flesh coming at his starboard. He caught up to Purple’s silhouette. “Hey! What’s our plan here?”

Purple’s face broke through the smoke, antennae twitching blind and rapid. He tilted his head and laughed. “Uh, kill it until it stops moving? Obviously?”

A coil of leech muscle swung for them. Purple jabbed his spear upwards. One hard solid thrust.

The membrane popped. Leech goo splashed the floor with a violent hiss.

“It’s an arena monster-type guy, what’s there to plan?” Purple blinked at the sizzling end of his spear tip. The blade bubbled and drooled strings of liquid metal as it dissolved. Electric components fizzled and died. In seconds, he held a useless iron stick. “How about that? Acid slime.”

Every single benefit of the doubt dropped into the pit of Red’s spooch. Purple didn’t have a brilliant battle strat. He didn’t even have a mediocre battle strat.

That idiot had walked in blind. And like a bigger idiot, Red had followed him.

Angela flexed in a great shudder of muscle that ran from head to tail. When she growled, the arena floor vibrated beneath Red’s boots. He looked at the leech. He looked at Purple. Screw co-battles. If this moron wanted to die here, he could do it on his own. Red had exams to pass.

This thing didn’t have eyes, and used vibrations to see, right? If he wanted to hide, Red needed the right camouflage. Lucky him, the arena came equipped with plenty to spare. Red pressed against the arena wall. It pulsed and throbbed in time to the battle music outside the dome. Just enough to mask Red’s footsteps as he made himself scarce.

Angela reared high, shifting her coils across the ground, searching for movement. She didn’t have to search long.

In the north of the area, Purple hovered over the little armory. He pawed through the supply of spears, letting all the junk he didn’t want fall to the floor in bangs and clatters.

Red flinched. Irk’s sake, just wear a dinner bell while you’re at it.

The leech swung with a hungry roar and thundered past Red like a wet slimy subway train, little flecks of acid and slime splattering his pants.

Purple held up two scimitar-curved short spears above his head with a silly little grin.

The smoke thickened around him.

Purple’s antennae perked. He looked up.

Too late.

The leech’s jaws unhinged and she dove and there Purple stood in the center: a tall and slender shadow against a bright starburst of orange throat and white teeth. Before Red could call out to him or look away or run or do anything, the leech’s mouth clamped over Purple.

She ate him without leaving so much as a drop of blood. And that was that. One of Irk’s rising stars snuffed out in a heartbeat.

Red slumped against the wall. He’d seen it coming. What else could anyone expect, running in with no plan, no backup, no nothing but some stupid urge to burn off steam? Red had known how this would end, but now that it had, it… it didn’t matter. His insides twisted up all the same, and he didn’t know why. 

A lesser species may have called the feeling “pity”, but no respectable Irken would. It was something greater, deeper than pity. Loss, perhaps. The loss, Red supposed, of military potential. Purple could have done Irk so much good if only he’d thought for two seconds. That had to be it.

Whatever it was, it froze Red on the spot. He stood, staring up and up at Angela roaring in victorious dinnertime. She rose above the smoke, throat twitching as she swallowed. Or tried to.

The lump stopped midway. It wriggled. Then it thrashed.

Angela slumped and tilted her head. If leeches could frown, she likely would have. She wheezed and coughed a smokeless cough.

Slowly, Red’s eye journeyed from the lump to a long shiny thread of liquid dripping from Angela’s neck. It hung viscous and thick, swinging like a pendulum as the creature began to sway.

In all his years revolving through dozens of planets, snack lines, training pods, battlegrounds, fleet formations, and anywhere else Irk’s finest gathered together, Red had learned how to observe. From those observations, he’s learned that the most dangerous Irkens acted one of two ways: barbed wires or laser beams. They struck clean, deadly, and precise, or else lacerated anything that dared come within range.

But not Purple.

The leech split in half. With a flash of metal, she tore in a shower of slime and entrails and smoke. Both halves thudded to the ground, and out he jumped. Six foot nine and glistening like a new smeet in the viscera.

Elite Purple was a landmine. Pure unfiltered violence with a 99.9% kill rate.

Covered from antennae to boot heel in guts and slime, he wiped the sinew from his eyes and spat out a tooth. Purple whipped Angela’s small intestine around his neck like a soggy scarf and laughed.

It was, to Red’s incredible outrage, the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.

Purple scampered to Red’s side, intestine scarf dragging through the sand. He laughed again and punched Red in the bicep. “That was fun! You wanna go again tomorrow?”

Exams were coming up. Red had to study tomorrow. He also had to check his squad’s injuries and scores to make sure they didn’t drag down the average, and The Lenient still needed repairs. Tomorrow’s schedule was maxed out. He didn’t have time to waste fooling around in the arena.

Red’s gauntlet blinked. His stats had updated.

KILL COUNT: 1
EXTRA CREDIT POINTS: 70

He scrolled down.

VICTOR SPOILS: 900 MONIES + 100 MONIES AUDIENCE RECEPTION BONUS.

Red peered over his shoulder. Dozens of Irkens pressed against the dome glass, staring back. He waved to them, and they applauded.

Nobody had ever applauded him before. It felt weird. Kind of like how being tethered to a landmine was weird.

But weird didn’t mean bad. Not always.

“Tomorrow? Uh… yeah.” Red smiled. “Yeah, that sounds good.”