Two Bards: The Forum!

“Again,” Paul requested politely.

Their teammate and current test subject, a three-foot-tall humanoid named Princess Hedgehog, huffed a little but obliged them. As neither of the pair had been deemed necessary for the current mission by their team leader - the cyborg John Stone - Paul had taken the opportunity to request the Princess allow them to run some tests on her magic. Ever enamored of being the center of someone’s attention, the Princess had agreed.

Paul found their magic fascinating. They were not unfamiliar with other kinds of magic; while the gladiatorial arena was hardly a good place to conduct thorough scientific experiments, they had managed over the years to develop some rudimentary testing protocols that had given them fascinating insights into the other competitors’ various flavors of magic. Then, after being sent to the colony of Hope, they had managed to refine their process further and quantified all kinds of new and interesting magics. They were all fascinating, and while some of them were trickier to study then others, they’d managed to find at least one instrument or process for each.

The study of magic was not one they’d had any interest in before their unfortunate removal from their home plane, but it was one they found endlessly interesting now. Most of the ones they’d studied so far had been beautiful in their own ways, the higher-order energies a challenge to observe and yet infinitely satisfying in the insights they derived from them. It was, therefore, almost vexing that Princess Hedgehog’s magic continued to defy their attempts to study it.

“You know, back on my planet I was one of the best magic users we had. Most of us could cast a spell or two, of course, but only a few of my siblings could cast more spells than I could. They were closer to the throne, of course, so it was more important that they know more spells, but really when it came to average magical power most of us could at least fly - pretty important when you’re only three feet tall you know.”

The smaller being had been monologuing the entire time Paul had been running their tests, but this particular thread of conversation piqued a certain amount of interest. “Are you saying proximity to the throne increased magical potential on your world?” They asked as they reset the instruments in front of them for another run. The results of the last three tests had been largely negligible - while the Princess’ internal nervous systems did spike in activity a little when they cast, it wasn’t any more than was caused by non-magical hand motions - but they wanted a statistically significant sample size before they pursued another avenue of research.

The much smaller Princess blinked up at the much larger Paul as they settled to the ground from where they’d been hovering. “Well, not exactly. It’s more like, the closer you were to the throne the more time you had to study and the more opportunities you had to bring stronger magic into your line.” They paused. “Except, of course, if you actually got the throne or were appointed to do something for the throne because then you were crazy busy and never had time for anything except business.”

Paul nodded. “That makes sense,” they said agreeably as they reset their instruments. Other species, they’d found, liked the redundancy of both a verbal and physical response to whatever had been said. Their own people had tended more towards an economy of communication, but some of their studies in Hope had led them to amend their mannerisms; it was not, after all, that much more effort and it garnered more cooperation from their contemporaries.

Their current lab partner flashed a brilliant smile at them. “Of course it does. Makes me glad I wasn’t too terribly close to the throne. Of course, if I had ended up assuming the throne, I would have been the best ruler our kingdom had ever seen. The most magnanimous, the most beloved, the most attractive - well, you see what I mean.”

Paul nodded again. “You do have a number of striking aesthetic qualities,” they replied truthfully.

While they’d figured out early on that most organics they’d met could not perceive the full range that their eyes could manage or sense the subtle electromagnetic fields that made up their species’ main avenue of communication both verbal and emotive, that didn’t stop them from emitting on that spectrum. The organics they’d met and studied had had limited electromagnetic fields in their own rights. Most of it was contained under the skin, and could be obscured or diffused by varying amount of fur or other coverings, and traced predictable paths with small enough variances in both frequency and intensity.

Not so Princess Hedgehog; to their eyes, the smaller being lit up like a firework. Brilliant shifts of both frequency and intensity made an ever-shifting halo around and through her form, and every single change in mood was reflected in that brilliant display. It was, without doubt or reservation, the most aesthetically pleasing thing Paul had had the privilege of seeing for a very long time, and made their current round of experiments all the more enjoyable. They had yet to determine which patterns went with which emotions or other actions, but the thought of finding out was entirely satisfying.

Princess Hedgehog beamed at them as they tapped the queuing sequence into the instruments, but they forestalled any response by looking up and nodding politely. “Whenever you’re ready,” they said, and the Princess nodded back agreeably.

A quick gesture had the Princess floating off the ground once more, and Paul checked their instruments. All of them showed continuing anomalous spikes in gravitational fields in the lab, and Paul paused in surprise for the briefest moments before making some adjustments. “Hmmm,” they said as they did so, and Princess floated to look over their shoulder.

“What? What is it? Did you find something?” The Princess’ rapid-fire questions were likely more a symbol of her boredom than true interest, but Paul had never been one to dismiss even the idlest of curiousity.

“The gravitational forces in the lab appear to be exhibiting behaviours inconsistent with their previously recorded baselines that I accounted for before we started our current course of experiments. Since we were slated to remain stationary until the rest of the team returned from their mission, I did not enhance the stabilization protocols on my instruments to account for external changes in gravitational constraints.” Princess’ attention visibly waned as Paul spoke, their hands moving methodically across the interface they’d set up as they engaged motion protocols and the instruments ceased registering anything particularly unusual.

The little goblin sighed and flitted back over to the testing area. “You’re lucky you’re cute, I don’t spend this much magic for just anyone,” they told Paul in a tone the much taller humanoid had learned to identify as at least partially joking.

Paul elected to take the comment at face value. “My thanks for your patience. Your magic is an intriguing as it is inscrutable, and from what you’ve told me so far your culture sounds absolutely fascinating.”

None of their tests so far had given them any relevant details on how the magic worked. They’d been working for several hours, and they were no closer to quantifying what her magic was than when they’d started. Oh, they’d managed to eliminate a large number of things her magic wasn’t of course; their entire set of baseline magic tests had proven it wasn’t anything they’d encountered previously, or even anything remotely similar to anything they’d encountered previously. It wasn’t some erroneously named manipulation of natural forces, and it wasn’t the intervention of extradimensional beings. The mystery of it was engaging their entire attention in a way few things had since their liberation from the arenas, and the methodical work of the testing they’d done so far was almost soothing in its own way.

The fact that the Princess’ was highly gregarious and very willing to talk at length about their absolutely fascinating culture was an un-looked-for - but highly welcome - bonus.

The large ears on both sides of the Princess’ head perked up, their electromagnetic fields flaring to an even greater brightness than usual. “Oh, well, did I ever tell you about the time that no less than fifteen princes got ejected from the line of succession?”

Paul shook their head as they reset their scanners again, and proceeded to listen to the long and involved tale that ensued as they ran test after test, and the hours slipped away pleasantly until the team returned.

Reese watched with interest as the second-tallest person on the ship walked around him slowly and carefully with what they had described as a hand-held elecromagnetic imager.

Reese wasn’t quite certain how he’d gone from sitting in his robot form in his comfortable, well-supplied room in the Metaverse Taskforce headquarters to driving down a poorly-maintained road in a whole different metaverse in his stagecoach mode. On the other hand, he still wasn’t certain how he’d come to be in the first place either so perhaps that was more of the same stuff; it probably wasn’t that important. What had been important were the people who’d come running up to him that had felt like more of his people. Well, kind of like his people. They weren’t as much his people as his boy was, but they were much more so than anyone else he’d encountered in that metaverse. So he’d given them a lift, and they’d given him beer.

Moving through that metaverse had certainly been an experience; for once, it had been okay that he was a stagecoach. He’d actually seen other stagecoaches on the road there! Though none of them were quite as large as he was, or quite as fast. He also wasn’t certain why they’d needed real horses but he hadn’t gotten the chance to ask at the time and it seemed silly to now that they’d gone and left that place behind entirely.

He hadn’t quite been introduced to everyone when they’d come to that metaverse to pick him up (for reasons he was still unclear on, he couldn’t just stay). Four of them had been rather busy with the four who had been his people but weren’t any more - he still wasn’t 100% on their names yet. John Stone he’d already been familiar with, though the man hadn’t seemed particularly pleased to see him; Reese couldn’t imagine why, the man was the most his of all the people on board and Reese had carried him across the country and under the sea multiple times. The other person not involved in greeting the four humans who had and then hadn’t been his had introduced themselves as Paul.

Reese wasn’t quite sure what to make of Paul; on the one hand, the person hadn’t given him any shit for being a stagecoach, which put them several ranks above pretty much anyone else he’d met for the first time. On the other hand, they had refused to give him any booze or booze-adjacent beverages and even Patric had managed that courtesy a few times. Paul seemed more interested in what made Reese tick, which was uncomfortable given the amount of time Director Hamilton had spent preventing other people back at home from trying to determine that very same thing.

Still, at least Paul was polite about it and their methods were much less invasive than “pull all his screws out,” which Reese appreciated. Plus their lab was one of the few places onboard the ship with high enough ceilings that Reese could rest comfortably in his stagecoach form and not have to worry about John Stone yelling at him for damaging the ventilation with his luggage rack. It had only happened once, but when John Stone yelled it was a memorable experience and one that Reese was definitely not interested in being on the receiving end of again in the near future.

“Fascinating.”

Reese was pulled abruptly back to the present from his fond memories of the one time John Stone and Patric had gotten into a yelling match within his hearing. Patric was mean, but he was also stubborn and contrary and all of that added up to being one of the few people who wouldn’t automatically do something just because John Stone was yelling at them. Not unless Patric had independently decided that the thing was important to do, anyway. His boy had told him of a few other fights the two had had, but they’d only done it once where Reese could witness.

“What’s fascinating? I mean, I know I am but I think you’re being more specific.”

Reese was curious. He’d never figured out really where he’d come from or why he was alive; his memories started at a lonely gas station in the middle of Nowhere, North Carolina, and before that there was nothing. He had no idea why he could turn into a human-shape or a submarine-shape, or why some people where his to him, or why he could really do with a drink right now. Though, if Paul had something alcoholic, maybe -

“My scans show only those parts present as correspond to the provided diagrams of ‘stagecoaches’ that I found in the Reliance’s database,” Paul began, interrupting Reese’s inevitable train of thought. “And there’s no obvious mechanism for consciousness or indeed self-propulsion. Yet you manifestly do just that.”

Reese rocked on his wheels, the best approximation to a nod he could do in his stagecoach mode. “And turn into a person and a submarine,” he added helpfully, and Paul paused.

“A person and a…submarine?” They responded carefully, large hands still on controls of the imager.

Reese rocked again. “Yep. Makes drinkin’ much easier, and we had to get into an underwater base so I became a submarine, too.” He paused. “Not sure how that happened. I’m pretty sure I couldn’t turn into a submarine before then, but I could when they needed me to.”

Paul nodded thoughtfully, placing the imager on a nearby desk before fiddling with something that had large lenses. “Very interesting. Do you maintain your mass through your changes? Can you turn into anything else? Would you be willing to demonstrate one or both of your other forms here in the laboratory?”

They didn’t stop moving as they spoke, and Reese watched mesmerized as they calmly and unhurriedly adjusted instruments, changed settings, and re-positioned instruments all around him in a wide circle. It wasn’t until they paused and looked in his direction did he remember they’d asked him a question.

“Oh! Yeah, sure. I mean, I definitely change size when I change shape - I’m big enough to carry a crew when I’m a submarine, but only nine people as a stagecoach. Plus I get way taller when I stand up.”

Reese looked up at the ceiling and shifted on his axles a little.

“I’m too big to stand up in here, but maybe if I-”

Paul didn’t pressure him, instead choosing an instrument from one of the array set neatly on a nearby lab table and training it on him. Reese gauged the height of the room one more time - ten feet, maybe? - before taking a metaphorical breath and heaving himself over sideways.

Transforming into his robot form was a kind of relief - he had tension in servos he didn’t know he had and stretching them felt profoundly good - but doing it while basically lying down was supremely awkward. His wheel assembly scraped along the floor with a noise that set his wires on edge as it shifted to make room for his head and arms. He had to yank his leg-servos out the rest of the way as the mechanisms - designed to have the aid of gravity - stopped two-thirds of the way through. The wagon tongue detached with a CLANG as his head hit it at a weird angle, and he hissed out a word he’d heard Patric use the last time his supplier had been late.

The end result had him lying on his side on the floor, and he took a moment to contemplate Paul from the new angle. Seeing things in his stagecoach form wasn’t always clear; the angles got odd sometimes, and if he looked the right way he got a weird fish-eye effect that he was pretty sure none of his people had to deal with. Paul was taller than he’d given him credit for, and built sturdier. The rocky face was set in an expression of polite neutrality, and the hands looked less than a third as dexterous as he knew them to be. It was odd; Paul felt like one of his people, even if it was sort of a weak feeling, but none of his people had even looked like that before.

Still, Reese wasn’t really in a position to throw stones about looking weird, and while he did miss his beer terribly there was something refreshing to being out and about again. Director Hamilton never willingly let him leave the facility anymore, and it could get kinda boring day in and day out.

Paul tapped a few buttons on their chosen instrument and looked down at him.

“Fascinating.”

Reese grinned up at them.

He could work with that.

Paul had made a miscalculation.

Again.

It wasn’t that they were unaware of the body around them; the complex electrochemical processes that the body used to function were fascinating, even from this angle. It was, after all, one thing to know intellectually that human-type organic sentients operated by the transmission of electrical impulses along pathways of specialized cells via electrically-active chemicals, and quite another to experience it. Paul had spent a large portion of the first day in this metaverse content to simply watch as their avatar Gabe conducted his business - from the fear that the bully Chet inspired to the happiness of being with friends, all of it transmitted unique chemicals to the brain where they activated different portions depending on their makeup and quantity.

Then, too, had been the interactions between Gabe and his progenitors. They had asked him about his day, and the accessing of memories had meant even more chemicals. Paul was beginning to really grasp why his organic team members sometimes had trouble recalling things when they were low on chemicals of any kind, and they’d spent a portion of the night that their avatar was sleeping designing and refining formulas for various chemical mixes that their teammates could use in place of meals when they were in a hurry. Though the meal itself was quite pleasant; the foods were all ones that sparked an increase of pleasurable hormones in Gabe’s brain, which in turn lead to an increase in his creativity and energy levels and a good hour spent surreptitiously assembling another invention to be placed in his satchel.

Paul remained unconvinced that mastication was really a necessary first step in the process, however; it was remarkably inefficient energy use when chemicals could be obtained pre-ground and ready for ingestion.

No, Paul was extremely aware that they were not in their own body, it was simply that they’d pushed their analyses of the constant chemical processes to the back of their mind and forgotten that they themselves were not physically present in a laboratory setting. The constant inputs, the chemical inputs and outputs, the presence of their teammates in the other avatars - it had, quite honestly, slipped Paul’s mind that they were in the body of a pre-adolescent humanoid.

One with blood currently dripping down his knuckles.

“Dude! What?!”

“Gabe! Why!”

Their avatar’s friends and fellow pre-adolescent avatars were aghast, and Paul couldn’t blame them even as they inspected their avatar’s knuckles. The impact with the wall had bust a fair number of sub-dermal blood vessels as well as damaged the superficial dermal layer. A flex of the hand was enough to know that none of the bones had slipped out of joint and the tendons were working fine so they’d at least avoided doing permanent damage. It still radiated chemical pain signals, but not nearly so many as the damages from earlier had and were therefore easy to ignore.

That had been their other miscalculation. While statistically it had been unlikely they’d get all of the hostile adults with one set of gas bombs, Paul had thought they’d have more time to react. Chemical impulses were inefficient means of delivering information, after all, and the space between one heartbeat and the next was an eternity if you could perceive things quickly enough. Still, Paul had not accounted for the chemical impulses of Gabe’s body freezing upon being presented with the danger of a loaded gun pointed in their direction, and the shot had torn through Gabe’s chosen shirt and coat - and skin - without being much impeded at all.

The amount of chemical pain signals had been almost overwhelming, and a number of other alarming chemical shifts had also taken place almost immediately. A slowing of the heart rate, a 70% increase in respiration per second, and a constriction of blood vessels beyond a certain distance away from the heart; Paul had observed shock in others, but had never really experienced it firsthand. It was unpleasant, but then so was bleeding to death. They had at least retained enough presence of mind to ensure the older humans would find it difficult to follow the group, at least, and that had been sufficient.

Still, the other avatars were waiting for their response now.

“I got confused. Um.” Paul hesitated to outright state that they had forgotten they were not in their usual body. While they and Gabe maintained a cordial sort of communication as each of them waxed and waned in control of Gabe’s body, it seemed like the other avatars did not really remember their pilots when their pilots were not in partial control. It bore speculation, and possibly future experimentation, to see whether or not the full knowledge of Paul’s existence and mission could be passed along to their avatar and maintained even when Paul was relegated to the back of their shared conscious.

“It’s an id- we gotta figure out how to do it first. Not now. We’re not even there yet!” Judging by the cadence and vocal intonations, Larry Walker was somewhere between upset and annoyed. While he was unlikely to be aware of Paul’s full mistake, it still fell to them to take responsibility for their actions.

They just had to figure out the best way to do that in a fashion that would not upset Larry Walker further.

“I. I, uh, I messed up.” Acknowledgement of the error was step one. Step two was somewhat more difficult, as there were no immediately available remedies to the problem Paul had caused. The hand would heal with time, and was not worth wasting more of Princess Hedgehog’s magic on when they would likely need it more later.

“I have some bandages-” Larry Walker began, but was cut off by Glynn Ordoham - who, upon looking closer, was definitely sharing control with Princess Hedgehog. Interesting. Paul had to wonder how they maintained the balance; the two beings shared a penchant for chaos and going off on tangents, but Paul remained uncertain if that was the source of their balance, or the spite of it.

“Give me that. Monster bandaids,” they explained seriously as they placed on carefully on Gabe’s hand and Paul blinked. That did stop some of the chemical pain signals.

“Thanks.”

Of the many things Paul found interesting about sharing a body with a humanoid organism, pain wasn’t one them. They would have to be more careful in the future.

Vector hummed under his breath as he worked feverishly on connecting the mail coils of the salvaged gun to the internal controlling systems of the Reliance.

“Vector Raynes, fights woe and strife! Vector Raynes, he’ll save your life!” he sang quietly, the old tune echoing in his mind. He hadn’t been certain about the cartoon, when he’d first heard the pitch. All his adventures up until that point had been filmed live-action, and done astronomically well in sales. Animation, though, was a very different kettle of space whales - though they’d promised that they’d be able to use his voice samples to make sure he sounded right. He’d eventually ended up okaying it, and it had taken off like all his other works had. The kids loved The Space Adventures of Vector Raynes, and that had eventually ended up spawning an entire merchandising line that had put his face on every kid’s lunchbox in the Spinwise Drift.

Very lucrative, and the theme song was catchy as hell.

“Vector Raynes with his fine guns! Bring them up, two, one. Boom! Boom!” he continued under his breath as the spanner finally caught and the coil twisted tight. He’d always been good with his hands - all his partners would be more than willing to testify to that, though the majority of them were permanently unavailable for comment - but back home he’d left most of the mechanisms to Johnny Two Layer. He’d picked Johnny up not long after he’d gotten out of the army - well, more accurately he’d picked Johnny’s ship up and Johnny had come along for the ride. Johnny had been a good sport about the whole thing, remarking more than once that working for one man was just the same as working for another, as long as he kept his ship with him.

He hadn’t been so complimentary the first few times they’d to detonate the ship to keep pursuers off their tail, or had it blown out from under them by a lucky shot, but had eventually decided that as long as certain parts - critical components he’d yanked from the first ship before it had blown - were the same, then it was the same ship. Johnny’s ship had ended up with a dozen and more different “looks” over the years, but it was always Johnny’s ship and he’d taken good care of her until the day Vector himself had been taken away somewhere else.

Vector’s hands faltered for a moment as he wondered if Johnny had stayed with his ship until the very end, but then he shook his head. That kind of thinking about things that had already happened and couldn’t be changed helped no-one. He’d be the first to recount tales of his heroic deeds to anyone who’d listen - especially movie producers - but that kind of memory didn’t sell tickets. It wasn’t glorious, or heroic, and it hurt more to think about than it helped, so he simply shoved the memory away. Johnny Two Layer would always be with his ship in Vector’s stories, and that was that.

Plus he had new teammates now. Rhonda was a decent person, whatever reservations Vector himself had about what was actually between her ears. Paul and Princess Hedgehog were useful, and not too grating, and Jonomox would do better once he’d found his footing. Once the team was his, the character dynamics would even out nicely for Vector Raynes and the Reliables.

The only thing that stood in the way of that successful venture was current team leader, John Stone. Vector had to shake his head as he repositioned his tool; John Stone was competent, it was true, but he’d never met a more cheerless, mission-driven bastard - and he’d known his old first mate Sergio back in his lawman days. Stone was a good operative, but he was far from ready for the silver screen and aside from his history with the Council, Vector wasn’t quite sure why they’d chosen Stone for this team’s leader. Still, all he had to do was prove exactly how much better suited he was for the role - and step one was getting the Reliance armed and ready for whatever was coming next.

Vector resumed his humming as he fine-tuned the tension in the coils. The design of the alien gun was, well, alien to him, but in the end a gun was a gun. Whether you used a projectile weapon, a regulated stream of energy, a compressed squirt of some kind of liquid, or emitted some kind of plasma or gas, a gun was a gun was a gun - and Vector knew them all. His preferred guns were on his hips even now, not that he ever let Calamity and Hickock out of his sight if he could help it, but he’d used innumerable guns over the years. The one that had left the biggest impression was the station-mounted magnetic acceleration cannon he’d once used to remove a rogue asteroid from existence - the memory of that kind of power with his thumb on the trigger had kept him warm many a lonely night - but this one he’d salvaged was possibly the strangest.

For one thing, he’d had to jerry-rig a control mechanism. The thing hadn’t had one when he’d gotten his hands on it, almost as if its makers had trusted it to know when to fire itself. Which, given what he’d seen of the weird not-robots, wasn’t that far outside the realm of possibility when he thought about it. Still, he’d scavenged one from a system that he was about 86% certain was a redundant back-up system that controlled the shower pressures in the cabins and made it work. Fine aiming would probably have to be done on manual, but as long as he was at the controls that wouldn’t be a problem.

Another weird thing had been the energy distribution system. The thing had come horribly unbalanced, which he would have suspected as being part and parcel with their salvaging of it except that there hadn’t been a place for the coils to go elsewhere. All the other systems he’d seen had had the coils spread out some to make for more efficient heat dissipation and maintenance cycles, but this one had simply folded back in on itself nearly endlessly. It had taken him hours to comb through each circuit and pace it out, but he had it now and the diagnostics confirmed that it appeared to be working - when the diagnostic computers were on anyway, they seemed to be having trouble with power.

Still it was here, it was controllable and now - Vector grunted as he turned the spanner one last time and the coils sparked for a moment with life - it was integrated with the power grid on the ship. If those robot-energy-whatevers showed up again, Vector would primed and ready to show them what he could really do.

The lights went out.

“Son of a bitch.”

“Vector Raynes! It’s Vector Raynes!”

Vector smiled widely and nodded at the innumerable small children all screaming his name. When he’d first floated the idea to his publicist to make the premiere of his latest feature film - Vector Raynes vs Spider Robots from the Hellverge! - a matinee, and invite a large number of underprivileged youth, the man had been somewhat resistant to the idea. Underprivileged children were not the ones who spent money to see films, after all. Still, with the latest adventure having resulted in heavy damage to a lot of public buildings - Vector Raynes Saves Earthbase Colony II, coming to theaters next March - he’d eventually been swayed by the argument that they needed some good press to offset that debacle.

Not that Vector would have ever accepted another outcome, of course, but the publicist was the sort of man who needed to think things were his idea before he went along with them. It was annoying, but the man was the best at his job and Vector was willing to tolerate a lot for competence - especially when he didn’t have to live the other man in the confines of the ship.

Sergio had declined to come, of course, as had Johnny Two Layer - though the latter had been a lot more reluctant about the decision. The Golden Fleece had suffered almost as much damage as the buildings had during the last mission, and Johnny was always loath to leave the old girl busted up for long when he had the money and parts on hand to fix her. Most of the rest of the crew had sided with Sergio; their last adventure had been exhausting, and none of the others particularly wanted to deal with uncountable numbers of extremely loud and adoring fans.

As it stood, Vector was flanked on one side by the enormous four-armed presence of Sir Edmund “Hotpot” Lagrosse and on the other by the much more subtle one of Mobius, The Blind Man, and the children seemed delighted for the most part. There were a few clutching memorabilia of other members of his crew and looking disappointed, but they were quickly supplanted by more enthusiastic fans.

A path had been laid out for them through the throng with red carpeting, velvet ropes keeping the worst of the crowd at bay. Most of the shorter children were held back by larger, older children who were wise enough to know what the ropes meant, and the few that escaped their handlers were scooped up by someone else with reasonable speed. Many of them sported official Vector Raynes brand merchandise, Vector’s own face flashing and winking at him from hundreds if not thousands of different directions - though there were a smattering of kids wearing merch with his teammates. Sergio was surprisingly the second most popular, but there were gaggles and pockets of fans wearing the others’ merch as well.

Hotpot seemed quite take with a small gaggle of screaming 8-year-olds, all of them wearing shirts with his name blazoned across the shoulders and little fake extra arms hanging down, and veered away from Vector and Mobius as the kids went absolutely wild. Hotpot wasn’t a quiet being, sounding like a cross between a bullfrog and a bullhorn at the best of times, but the cloud of shrieking children that coalesced around him faster than buzzards on drek-meat was more than enough to drown him out. Mobius flashed an 8-bit laughing face on his helm, and Vector had to join him in enjoying the hilarity of the sight of Hotpot trying to keep kids from climbing him like a jungle gym. Hotpot looked like he was trying desperately to get the kids to quiet down, but they all seemed to take it as a cue to scream louder than ever.

“Vector Raynes! Vector Raynes! Over here!”

A particularly piercing shriek had Vector wincing a little as he turned to see what the commotion was. A small boy, probably no more than 9, was hanging off the ropes that hung beside the red carpet and looking adorably determined. Vector could see a woman - probably a relative, given the resigned-yet-fond look on her face - hanging on to the back of the kid’s coat and probably the sole reason he hadn’t actually come running up to Vector like he so clearly wanted. Vector felt a subtle shove on his shoulder in the kid’s direction, but when he looked around Mobius was doing his extremely-innocent-I-wasn’t-even-there posture and entertaining another part of the crowd by flashing fight scenes on his visor.

Vector shrugged internally and headed over to the kid, who stopped trying to drag himself over the rope and instead started jumping up and down in excitement.

“Mom! Mom! It’s Vector Raynes!”

Vector grinned down at the kid, charmed in spite of himself at the enthusiasm.

“Well well well, what do we have here?” he asked, unsurprised when the kid took his somewhat rhetorical question at face value.

“Vector Raynes! Hello Mr. Raynes, my name is Sam, and I’m your biggest fan!”

The kid puffed out his chest as much as any nine-year-old kid could, and Vector’s own face winked charmingly back from under the tagline for the Vector Raynes cartoon. Vector Raynes Fights Woe And Strife! The t-shirt proudly proclaimed, and Vector could feel a warm glow in his chest. He loved adventure, loved finding out secrets and mysteries and fighting bad guys with his crew at his back, but it was nice to be reminded every now and again that there was more to it than the desires of one man and his crew. The things he did had real, tangible benefits for society - most of the time - and it wasn’t just the editors making him look good on film (and other mediums).

“I can certainly see that,” he replied kindly, and the kid nodded so vigorously Vector wasn’t sure his head wouldn’t fall off.

“Yeah! All my t-shirts are Vector Raynes t-shirts, an’ I have all the trading cards, an’ I have all your hologames, an’ I have the sweet hologram lunchbox!” he enthused, and Vector threw his head back to laugh.

“Well! I’m glad your parents approve of me enough to get all that for you.” He spoke mostly to the kid, but spared a quick questioning look at Sam’s mother - who still had her hand clenched in the back of Sam’s light Vector Raynes branded coat. She looked tired, but returned his glance with a nod and a shy smile - and a quick flash of a Vector Raynes charm bracelet - and he felt his own grow. It was nice to see a family sticking together in an enthusiasm.

“Mr. Raynes, would you sign my baseball bat? It’d be real swell if you did, all the other kids back home would be so jealous!” Sam didn’t wait to finish speaking before pawing at the bag at his feet and disinterring a Vector Raynes Junior Slugger from its depths. Vector Raynes hadn’t actually had the chance to look over the new line of sports merchandise yet - samples had been sent to the ship, and Johnny had okayed their quality, but they’d been pulled into a mission involving illegal animal smuggling across planetary bounds and Vector simply hadn’t had the time since to check. They’d gone into production very recently, and the one in the kid’s hands looked to be one of the first thousand in the run.

Silently he held his hands out, and the kid deposited the baseball bat into them with a shriek of delight. Vector weighed the bat in his hands as he looked along its length. The Vector Raynes logo was burned crisply into the wood of the widest end, lines running from it and along the grain to grip. Each line was interrupted in smooth sequence by the name of one of Vector’s teammates, and his own name was embroidered on the smooth, comfortable wrapping on the grip. He took a few experimental swings with it and found Johnny had been right; the thing - while much too short for him - was beautifully balanced for a smaller frame and was a high quality of craftsmanship.

He grinned down at Sam, who had stars in his eyes at the sight of Vector Raynes swinging his bat. Reaching into a pocket, he pulled out the one thing he never went to one of these events without - a bold permanent marker. He’d learned early on that when people requested his signature they liked it best when it was easily visible, and that almost nobody had the best writing utensil for it when they asked him. Making sure to mark between the lines, he signed his name with a bold flourish along the grain and held the bat back out to the kid - who now looked to be on the verge of hyperventilating. The kid’s mother seemed to sense how close Sam was to passing out, because she switched her grip from the back of his coat to around the kid’s shoulders and flashed Vector a brilliant smile before nodding at him.

“Very generous of you, Mr. Raynes. What do we say, Sam?”

Sam looked up from where he’d been staring at the bat with honest-to-goodness tears in his eyes, and Vector felt a little thrill of alarm shoot through him.

“Th-thank you, Mr. Raynes,” the kid managed to stutter out before bursting into tears.

Sam’s mother scooped him up with the ease of long practice before nodding to Vector an melting away in the crowd. Vector shrugged; he hadn’t meant to make the kid cry, but apparently most of his dreams coming true all at once had been overwhelming. More kids stepped up to fill the gap Sam had left, and Vector spent the next several minutes autographing everything from posters to t-shirts to a baby blanket held out to him by a desperately hopeful-looking man in his early twenties, whose kid was sound asleep on his shoulder.

He didn’t know how long it had been before he felt an authoritative tap on his shoulder, and he turned to find Mobius flashing a digital time display at him from his helmet, with a slightly disheveled Hotpot looming up behind him. Less than twenty minutes to the premiere, and they still needed to get inside. Vector nodded to his teammates before turning to the crowd.

“Alright folks! Let’s get moving inside! It’s almost time for the worlds premiere of Vector Raynes vs Spider Robots from the Hellverge!” His voice, trained to shout over explosions and blasterfire, carried easily over the hubbub of the crowd and people began shuffling obediently away. Satisfied, Vector gestured for his team to follow him as he began making his way down the red carpet.

As he walked, the details of the world around him got fuzzier; Hotpot walked companionably along beside him one moment, then it was Sergio trooping quietly down the red carpet. The bright flashes of light from the paparazzi drones faded into one large mass of brightness, and his legs seemed to get heavier with each step. There was something, he just had to- it was the premiere was starting, he was sitting in the theater. Leaned back and reclining in his chair, his teammates around - funny, the crowd was still talking-

Vector’s eyes flew open to a cold, blank ceiling, the hubbub of his many fans replaced in an instant by the hum of machines and the somewhat snarky voice of Jonomox.

“Welcome back to the land of the waking, Vector, glad you could join us. Now let’s get the hell out of here before they come looking and find you gone.”

Doctor Archibald Creed looked on with barely-contained impatience as two brawny soldiers sweated and grunted their way through transferring a very heavy crate from the cart they’d pushed it in on to the examination table Dr. Creed had prepared.

It wasn’t often that Creed got the chance to be the first to examine a newly-found piece of Martian technology, but die Kommandeure had been very impressed with his work on integrating Martian energy-weapon technology into the latest round of gun upgrades. So impressed, in fact, that Creed had been granted his choice of the next three shipments of technology found on Mars with the promise that if his research bore additional useful fruit, he would get his choice indefinitely.

Creed didn’t really care whether or not die Kommandeure were impressed with his findings, but he had chosen his first research subject carefully when word had come that a new cache had been discovered on Mars. The specimen in question was encased in a roughly rectangular chunk of rock; the excavators had identified it by the smooth half-dome of metal protruding from one side and had deemed it unwise to try and remove more stone in the precarious conditions of the Martian mines. What had piqued Creed’s interest in it was the tag that it had come from the same mine that the energy projectors he had worked on previously had come from. The work on the energy projectors had been revelatory, but a single data point did not a theory make and he wanted to test his theories again before bringing them to his fellow scientists.

The files on the xenotech cache had been thorough, if extremely preliminary. Once it was determined that a section of rock did indeed contain the technology the Reich so desperately wanted, mining operations in that spur would cease as scanning teams were sent in to document the find and determine the best way to extract it. Pictures would be taken of any exposed machinery, and small charges would be used and recorded to form an incomplete picture of what lay inside the wall. The survey team would them mark the specific places for the miners to dig out and around, and the workers would be brought back into the spur to do the actual labor of removal.

What had caught Creed’s attention for this particular item was the exposed surface; while it wasn’t an unusual material for Martian technology, other items that had been found with active energy sources had had similar rounded covers over the energetic portions. While the survey team hadn’t reported any of the usual symptoms of finding a Martian energy source, that did not necessarily rule it out. None of the other artifacts in the shipment had been recorded as having even the slightest possibility of energy cores, and so Creed had made the most logical decision possible with the data available to him.

With one final - and, in Creed’s opinion, completely unnecessary - grunt, the two soldiers placed their burden on the brightly-lit metal surface and stepped back, mopping their faces. Dismissing them with a wave to their more usual positions on either side of the door, Creed surged forward to reveal his prize. His quick hands made short work of the crate that hid the large, irregularly shaped object even as his assistant began methodically laying out the tools he would use to excavate the Martian relics concealed inside the stone. And plaster, he noted as the sides of the crate fell away to reveal an expanse of white broken only by the neat lettering of the time, date, and location of the artifact’s discovery. While Creed could appreciate the caution that extended to the additional protective measures, it was just one more thing he would need to remove before his studies could begin in earnest.

Without looking, he held his dominant hand towards the assistant. “Rotary,” he requested almost absently, his whole attention focused on the plaster-covered monolith before him. While the saw would remove the plaster just fine, it would do little to nothing against the rock underneath - and would almost certainly destroy the rotary blade in the process. He would have to cut very precisely to avoid the rock and exposed Martian tech; fortunately, the files had included sufficient pictures to give him a good idea of what lay where beneath the smooth plaster surface. He simply needed the right tool for the job.

As soon as the rotary cutter was in his hand Creed began cutting along the lines he’d identified in his preliminary inspections, eager to get to the more important objects lurking beneath it. White dust filled the air as the hand-held saw chewed busily through the plaster, the high whining that accompanied it grating but within acceptable aural limits given what it heralded. Four cuts yielded a large section of plaster that Creed carefully lifted and discarded, only vaguely aware of his assistant taking the large, irregularly-shaped white chunk and removing it from the lab entirely. Creed’s eyes were glued on the sight before him.

Rising approximately four centimeters out of the dull grey stone was a hemisphere of what appeared to be some form of brass; if it was anything like the rest of the Martian tech recovered, that appearance would be only the most superficial resemblance. Martian technology had, so far, been made exclusively of a proprietary alloy of common Earth metals and mined asteroid metals that gave it the same approximate color of brass and both a durability and a melting point much in the excess of common steel. A fact which Creed was well-prepared to take advantage of.

“Laser stylet,” he ordered, setting aside the rotary and holding out his hand for the next tool.

His assistant wasted no time in handing him the long, tapered wand of the Martian-based laser cutter. Too unwieldy to use in the field, the laser cutter had been reverse-engineered by a Dr. Hans von Kemseke several years ago. The original prototype had proven sufficient to melt through several inches of solid steel, and even cut into relatively thin portions of Martian plating. Creed had made his own adjustments to the model stored in his lab, including an extensible connection to the large canister of xenon gas that the tool required for use, and it boasted several times the accuracy and radial control of even the most cutting-edge model currently in manufacture.

Adjusting the dial at the top of the wand, Creed bent slightly to get a better look at the rock surrounding the xenotech. While he had set the stylet to a precise, if low-power, range - and it was consequently unlikely to damage the technology encased below the rock’s outer layers - it would be better if there was an absolute minimum of interaction between laser and Martian technology. While there had never been a previously recorded case of the lasers provoking any kind of reaction from - or, more importantly, doing any damage to - this kind of xenotech, that was no guarantee of future events.

Narrowing his eyes, Creed flicked the switch at the top of the wand and a thin blue line lanced out from the tip to the surface of the rock some 12.1 centimeters from the exposed portion of technology. While the initial ultrasounds of the object, taken in the mine, had revealed only another 8 centimeters of denser matter in this direction, it was a better idea to leave a margin for error and work closer with a less potentially damaging tool. The laser struck the surface of the rock with a tone only just within the range of hearing; Creed set his jaw and drew the laser down smoothly in the first of several cuts.

While the noises the laser produced were only just on the edge of his tolerance, it was the best tool for the job and within a few minutes Creed had managed to remove most of the rocky detritus that had been surrounding the Martian tech. Shutting the laser off with a sub-vocalised sigh of relief, he carefully set it to one side. It was unlikely but not impossible that he would require it again, and his driving need to get his hands on the xenotech as soon as possible suggested that it was better to have the stylet on hand and ready than to wait for his assistant to set it up.

While much of the laboratory was now covered in a fine layer of rock dust, the irregular shape on the examination table was much reduced in size. As Creed had suspected, over 45% of the material in the container had simply been entrapping rock - though it wasn’t hard to see how the techs on the ground had been mistaken about the object’s size. Cursory examination was enough to reveal a layer of dark, mineral-rich rock in the excised debris near the object; while lacking in the smooth lines of the xenotech, it would have reflected enough of the ultrasonics to confuse the sensors. It had meant that Creed was able to remove a much greater amount of material than he had first anticipated with the stylet, and the resultant lump of rock and technology was approximately 20 centimeters wide and almost 40 long, with a more regular shape beginning to emerge from under the stone.

With a pick, chisel, and brush alternately held and handed to him by his assistant, Creed set about removing the rest of the stone from the technology. While it had taken less than half an hour for the rough shape of the xenotech to become clear, it took more than three to remove the stone encasing it in its entirety. A series of regular protrusions approximately .16 centimeters wide by 5 centimeters tall marched along both sides of the object up until the midway point, where it held almost a hinged shape - the outermost portion of which had formed the raised hemisphere above the rock’s surface. It appeared that perhaps the protrusions were meant to slot together in some fashion, pivoting on the hinge, but Creed refused to start formulating theories based entirely on visual inspection. More often than not, Martian technology proved to defy its first appearances rather than validate them.

Finally the last of the rock was gone, and Creed stepped back from the table for a moment to clean his most important tools; his hands. Long, with a wiry deftness to them that spoke of much practice and familiarity, Creed preferred to make preliminary examinations with the sensitive pads of his fingers whenever possible. More than once, he had discovered some small but crucial detail that was dismissed as sensor error by other scientists, and he was always certain to clean his hands thoroughly before examinations began to ensure a minimum of contamination by his own sweat and oils.

Reaching for the recorder resting near the washing station, Creed flipped it on before beginning to cleanse the rock dust and grit from his hands.

“Day one. Preliminary scans sent in the dossier from the survey team estimated a piece of xenotechnology approximately 75 centimeters in length and 26 centimeters across, however upon detailed excavation of the subject those projections proved to be false. Dark rock of a density in excess of 2900 kilograms per cubic meter and a hardness exceeding 7 was found in close proximity, and may hinder further search efforts in the region by disguising internal material signatures to most basic scanning equipment. Note to forward findings to the geological survey teams. Furthermore - ”

The sound of metal scraping on metal punctuated by a hysterical shriek interrupted him, and Creed spun to find out what the source of the noise was.

The sight that met his eyes was not one he would have predicted. His assistant had begun taking the precise measurements of every portion of the technology as was necessary for proper documentation - measurements Creed himself would have of course double-checked - and had apparently inadvertently activated a mechanical portion of the object. The center point that was the section that Creed had identified earlier as possibly some sort of hinge had apparently been exactly that, and whatever the assistant had pushed or brushed had brought the two halves up in an attempt close together and instead had driven the .16 centimeter protrusions deep into his assistant’s hand and arm.

Creed stepped forward swiftly, ignoring the screaming of the assistant and the shocked oaths from both the guards standing by the door. Grabbing the punctured hand he swiftly twisted it first one way, then the other, ignoring the pained squeals the motion elicited; while the blood made it difficult to judge things precisely, it seemed like whatever mechanism the assistant had inadvertently triggered was not one that would be easily disabled.

“What happened?” he demanded, words cutting crisply and calmly through the pained gibbering of the assistant.

One of the guards, face paler than his platinum-blonde hair, stepped forward and swallowed visibly. “Herr Doktor, I could not see clearly from my station - the assistant was turned away - it-”

Creed waved him away in irritation. Whatever his assistant had done, clearly there would be no getting a coherent explanation while the Martian technology was buried in the offending hand. Additionally, while it did not on cursory glance appear to have taken any damage from being exposed to the chemical cocktail that was human blood, he didn’t like to think of the contamination his experiments would suffer at this lapse. And he was loathe the damage the mechanism simply for some half-trained idiot who clearly should not have been allowed into a laboratory setting without further instruction.

His eyes fell on one of the tools on the table, and instantly, the solution was simple. It was a work of a moment to pull the stylet wand off the table and flick it on. A wordless shout echoed from the closest guard, but Creed had already drawn a precise line across the assistant’s arm approximately 2 centimeters above the embedded Martian technology. There was sizzling sound and the somewhat unpleasant smell of burning flesh and uniform, and the Martian technology fell back onto the examination table with a heavy thunk.

“Gott in Himmel!”

Which of the guards actually shouted and which of them rushed forward to catch the assistant slowly crumpling towards the floor, Creed couldn’t tell; his attention was wholly fixed on the technology now safely back on his examination station. The flow of blood had largely stopped, now that the arm was disconnected from its source, but removing the .16 centimeter protrusions from the soft tissues remained something of a problem.

“Herr Doktor! Was machen wir!?”

Creed didn’t spare glance from the important work before him.

“Take them to the either the prosthesis lab or the anatomists,” he replied disinterestedly. If the assistant lived, he had spaced his cut quite carefully and the prosthesis lab would likely be able to find a suitable replacement that needed field testing. If the shock proved to be too much to survive, then the anatomists could use the corpse for student dissection. Either way was an efficient use of an available resource and, more importantly, somewhere where Creed would not have to deal with the problem.

“Jawohl, Herr Doktor.” He could hear scraping and shuffling behind him, but Creed didn’t bother to look. He had far more work ahead of him, extricating the delicate mechanism from its current fleshy prison. Which would, of course, be easier with another set of hands.

“Please inform Hauptmann Dietrich that I require another assistant,” he said, raising his voice to a precisely calculated degree.

Approximately 3.2 seconds of silence met his request.

“Ja…Jawohl, Herr Doktor.”

Creed nodded to himself, and set to work.

None of the desperados lounging around the fire even batted an eye when Beaumont Morningstar stepped into the firelight. It had been a long, hard day of riding, and all of them were streaked with mud and sweat. At least, most of it was sweat and if any of it wasn’t nobody was complaining about it.

Beaumont stepped around the fire to one particularly louche figure, pausing for the briefest of instants before settling down beside them. Bright eyes slid over to him for a long moment before turning back to the fire, and the figure shifted so their legs knocked into his.

“What took y'so long? If you got digestive problems again, reckon’ the doc’s probably got something that’d clean you out.”

Shane Masters’ voice was quiet but carried the lilt of amusement, and Beaumont snorted as he kicked them none-too-gently in the ankle.

“What Doc’s got’s as like to set me on fire as it is to cure any ails I do not have,” he responded with as much dignity as he could muster, and Masters rolled their eyes.

“Well, then, if you ain’t sick what took you so long? I was gettin’ lonesome.”

Masters winked and it was Beaumont’s turn to roll his eyes.

“A horse looked like it was about to come up lame. Figured we ain’t got time for a lame horse, so I took a couple minutes pickin’ th’ stone out.”

Masters raised an eyebrow.

“Never took you for a horse-lover, Beaumont. And that nag a’ yours was ridin’ fine earlier.”

Beaumont shifted uncomfortably and looked back to the fire.

“Never said it was my horse, did I? Anyways, it’s Morningstar.”

Masters snorted.

“Sure it is, Beaumont - to someone who don’t take as good care a you as I do, maybe.”

Masters winked again and Beaumont had to shift around to make room and get comfortable.

“The desert gets cold at night, sure. Anyways, what do you think about this next job? Always said robbing the coaches was a sucker’s bet, ‘specially them that run through the Mojave.”

Masters gestured vaguely with one hand.

“McCloud’s mad, maybe, but she ain’t exactly wrong about the haul. If one of Hellstrom’s blueprints is really on that coach, it’s worth a railcar of ghost rock to the right fellas.”

They gestured to a tall figure on the other side of the fire who appeared intensely interested in something the firelight didn’t quite illuminate.

“After the doc’s had a go with it, anyway. Though if he gets too riled up over it McCloud might just shoot his dick off. She was mighty mad the last time he ruined somethin’ important doing that.”

Beaumont snorted in agreement and didn’t move away as Masters shifted to sit shoulder to shoulder.

“Might even be enough to take it easy for a while,” they said, looking determinedly into the fire.

Beaumont hummed noncommittally. “Might be.”

Masters smiled softly, lips gleaming in the firelight between the softer reflections of beard and mustache.

“Might be best to split up the gang for a bit, 'til the law cools down.”

“Might be. Wouldn’t be the first time we’d had to.”

Masters sighed and leaned more heavily on Beaumont, who bore the weight without complaining.

“I ever tell you about a little farm I saw out Kansas way? Darn thing had a windmill, if you c'n believe it. Ain’t never seen a farm with a windmill afore.”

Beaumont cocked his head.

“Ain’t farms supposed to have windmills?”

Masters shrugged.

“I ain’t never seen just one farm to a windmill. Usually you find 'em in clusters. But this one was there all by its lonesome, just waving at the clouds going by.”

Silence reigned for a short while as the fire slowly died down to the embers it would remain through the night. As the light faded, Doc Vandall stowed whatever he’d been working on inside of his coat and settled down against his saddle; it didn’t take long before his buzz-saw snores rattled through the camp.

Beaumont sighed wearily, relaxing a bit into Masters as he did so.

“See Doc brought along some laudanum.”

Masters nodded, the motion rubbing their head against Beaumont’s shoulder.

“Seems so. Leastwise he ain’t brought that gravedigger juice, the snorin’s better than the farts. Like to kill small animals when he drinks the stuff, and he always sleeps upwind.”

Beaumont hummed in agreement and shifted to let Masters lay a little easier against him. It wasn’t long before Doc’s snores lulled them both into as deep a sleep as the desert ever brought.

Shane Masters hissed through their teeth as they pulled their shirt up to inspect a long gash along their side. The wound was crusted with blood and caliche dust and surrounded by heavy bruising, and they winced as a poke drew fresh blood to ooze slowly down their side.

“Here now, none a’ that,”

Beaumont Morningstar heaved himself over the lip of rock and down into the narrow arroyo Shane had chosen to lick their wounds in. He dropped heavily down onto the sandy bottom and stomped over to the patch of shade they stood in, a frown firmly embedded in his face. He batted their hand away and framed the gash with his own, his thunderous expression at odds with the gentle motion he used to turn the wound more towards the light.

Shane shifted at the touch, leaning into Beaumont’s hands just a little.

“Aw c'mon Beaumont, ain’t nothin’ but a scratch.”

“I’ll be the judge a’ that,” Beaumont retorted, hands lingering on Shane’s hip for a long moment before diving into a pouch on his hip to pull out a canteen and some bandages.

Shane’s eyebrows crawled towards their hairline.

“Ain’t no thing, Beaumont. Doc’ll have me right as the mail afore you know it.”

“Doc’s busy with Hallyer. ‘Fraid you’ll just have to live with whatever I can do.”

Shane snorted, earning them a poke in one of the less-bruised portions of exposed flesh.

“Can’t imagine Hallyer’s too pleased with that. Doc’s had it in for him since that crack about his knowin’ not bein’ worth a damn.”

Beaumont gave them a dry look as he wetted a handkerchief he’d pulled from somewhere and began to clean the dirt away from the edges of the gash.

“Don’t rightly think he’s in a position to complain. The rattler caught him after I…after it let you go and if Talley wasn’t the luckiest son of a bitch with a rifle Hallyer’d be worm food. If anybody but Doc was workin’ on him, I’d be diggin’ a hole right now.”

Shane was quiet for a long moment before reaching out and thwacking Beaumont on the back of the head.

Beaumont dropped his handkerchief and staggered, grabbing onto Shane to keep from falling.

“Ow! The hell did you do that for!”

“The hell were you thinkin’, gettin’ that close to a rattler?”

Shane’s hiss was quiet, but real anger sparked in their eyes, and Beaumont pulled away as he straightened up.

“The hell was I thinkin’, the hell were you thinkin’! You like to run up into its mouth!”

“I’m Shane Masters and there ain’t a thing I can’t kill. Just had to-”

“Just had to get yourself ate, ’s what it looked like to me.”

The two of them glared at each other silently for a few moments before Shane looked away. Beaumont stayed still for a few moments longer before slowly reaching down to pick up the fallen handkerchief and tuck it back into his pocket.

“Reckon that’s as clean as it gets anyway. Hold still so’s I don’t put this on crooked-like.”

Beaumont stuck a piece of clean linen on the wound before beginning to unroll the wad of bandages.

“How’d this happen, anyways? Thought I shot the thing afore it got you to its teeth.”

Shane held still as he began to wrap the bandages around their middle, but rolled their eyes.

“Mah hero. Anyways, thing was draggin’ me right where I wanted to be 'cept it did it over a big rock.”

“Draggin’ you into its belly more like,” Beaumont muttered.

A measured silence lasted for a long moment, broken only by the wind whistling down the arroyo.

“Thanks.”

Beaumont’s hands stilled.

“For pullin’ my bacon out a the fire. You’re supposed to stay the hell back and let me get up close, not the other way around. Idiot.”

Beaumont didn’t look up as he began wrapping the bandages once more.

“Couldn’t stand by and let a partner die, is all.”

Shane smirked.

“Just a partner?”

Beaumont still didn’t look up.

“Just a partner.”

Shane’s smile disappeared as Beaumont finished wrapping and tied the bandage off.

“You saying you woulda done that for Vandall? Hallyer? Talley? McCloud? You woulda run into the maw of a rattler just for a partner?”

Beaumont’s silence spoke volumes. Shane shoved him away hard enough to dump him on his ass and knock his hat clean off.

“Thanks for the patch job, partner,” they spat, and turned to stalk down the arroyo in the vague direction of camp.

Beaumont stayed frozen for a long few moments before climbing to his feet and grabbing his hat. He looked down at the offending article for a long moment, seemingly uncaring of the fact that it was crumpling in his grip, before slamming it hard against his thigh with a puff of dust.

“Damn it.”

He shoved his hat on his head and began slowly making his way back to camp, shoulders slumped.

Beaumont Morningstar looked up at the gallows in front of him, face set in a blank mask, and didn’t blink.

There was no crowd around the scaffold, though it was in the center of town and plenty of hangings were still treated like impromptu county fairs. People would bring their children, vendors would set up wheelbarrows of apples or carry trays of sweets and drinks. Some more industrious fellows might be selling their services to secure better views for a few pennies; others would be standing by with sharp knives, ready to tear down the scaffold and rope and sell the pieces for whatever people would pay for them. Some people might bet on how long the hanging would last, whether or not the hangman’d get it right or whether the head would come off if he got it wrong.

But not here. Not today. Not for him.

Instead, there was the Marshal, the sheriff, six deputies, and a preacher. The Marshal was sitting on a handsome bay horse, face shadowed by the sun, while the sheriff stood beside the preacher and twitched every time the deputies jerked at Beaumont’s arms. The preacher was thumbing through his bible, mumbling snatches of Revelations and sweating bullets though the sun had only just cleared the horizon. The deputies were silent, grips white-knuckled and every push hard enough to make Beaumont stagger.

Ther sheriff broke the silence, hand resting on the dully gleaming six-gun in his holster.

“Beaumont Morningstar, you are a lyin’, cheatin’, murderous whoreson, and you have been convicted for robbin’ and killin’ across every state and territory west of the Mississippi. Judge Dixon has ordered you to be hanged by the neck until dead, though personally I’d rather shootcha in the head and have done with it.”

The man used his free hand to clap the preacher on the shoulder, who responded by ducking even further down behind his bible as if trying to hide from everyone’s gaze.

“Father Todd here will give you your last rites, if you’d like to unburden your soul afore we hang you.”

Beaumont looked at Father Todd with blank eyes.

“No-”

Abruptly, Beaumont was sitting in a darkened saloon. The only light came from a single flickering lamp hanging over the green felt table, and the details beyond its light were lost in the gloom. A glass of amber liquid sat at his gun hand, the bottle exactly halfway along the table. It was quiet, in a way that saloons never were; no wood creaked in the wind, no voices murmured just beyond hearing, no half-tuned upright plonked out the same old tunes that played in every bar and saloon across the continent. The only sound was that of a deck being shuffled.

A rugged man in a clean and uncreased white shirt sat across the table from Beaumont. His hat was coal black, save for the silver pentagram on the band, and his teeth were as even as a row of military tombstones. Flat, sulfur-yellow eyes looked at him unblinkingly as the man continued to shuffle, a glass of amber liquid sitting at his elbow in a mirror of Beaumont’s.

“Well, Beau my boy, seems like this might be it. Care to play one more hand for old time’s sake?”

The man’s teeth flashed in an unsettling grin, and his eyes never wavered.

Neither did Beaumont’s.

“I think we both know that ain’t enough. Not this time.”

The other man’s grin widened.

“See, that’s why I like you Beaumont. You deal straight and take what you’re dealt. I’ve known some other fellas who think that if they just get a little extra somethin’, they’ll come out on top.”

He chuckled.

“Can’t say as any of ‘em do. Tryin’ to card sharp the devil? The house always wins. But of course, you knew that already Mister Morningstar.”

Beaumont simply looked ahead steadily, and didn’t respond.

The other man nodded anyway, and dealt five cards face-up on the table.

Two of clubs. Three of diamonds. Six of clubs. Seven of clubs. Jack of diamonds.

“Then again, seems like luck simply ain’t on your side. Seems like it hasn’t been since Arizona. The law catchin’ up to Beaumont Morningstar on account a’ he’s too drunk to aim his gun?”

The yellow eyed man shook his head, swept the cards back up into the deck, and began to shuffle them again.

“Bad business, Arizona. Job gone wrong, and a posse after you so quick, it’s like they almost knew what you was plannin’. How many of the gang died that day? Ten? Twelve?”

“Fifteen.”

The yellow-eyed man’s eyebrows rose.

“Fifteen! But you managed to slip away clean.”

He dealt five more cards face-up on the table.

Jack of diamonds. Ten of hearts. Queen of spades. King of clubs.

Ace of hearts.

Beaumont’s gaze snapped from the cards on the table to the grinning man sitting across from him. The ace of hearts lay on the table between them, with the face of a person grinning up at the ceiling instead of the usual center marking.

“They’re out of your reach.”

The other man spread his hands, grin firmly back in place.

“Oh, I don’t know that that’s true. In fact, a little birdie told me that they’re alive.”

Beaumont twitched involuntarily, and the other man’s grinned impossibly widened.

“Oh yes. They managed to make their own, special way out of the debacle in Arizona. But then, what should it matter to you? You were just partners after all.”

The grin had a malicious edge now, and the yellow eyes reflected the lamp light oddly.

“And of course, your road ends here Beaumont. A short drop with a sudden stop, and the end of Beaumont Morningstar. You won’t have to worry about someone with more guns than sense shooting down one of the finest fighters in the West before they can get close. Don’t have to worry about them drinking themselves to death in some nameless town . Don’t have to live with any regrets you might have about what happened between the two of you. Just you, the law, and a rope.”

The man with yellow eyes reached forward and began to sweep the spread back into the deck.

When his hand touched the ace, Beaumont’s hand flashed out faster than the eye could follow and caught his wrist in what would have been a bruising grip.

“Wait.”

The man paused, his hand still on the cards.

Beaumont looked him dead in his yellow, yellow eyes.

“I want to make a deal.”

“Well now, that’s what I like to hear.”

Beaumont let him go and the man straightened, sweeping the other four cards back into the deck but leaving the ace on the table.

“You know the price of course.”

“My soul.”

The man nodded and tapped the ace.

“I can give them to you on a silver platter, they’ll be begging for your presence-”

“They are not part of this deal or any others.”

Beaumont cut across the man’s offer with a voice colder than a midwinter moon. The man raised an eyebrow.

“Then what do you want?”

The outlaw swept his hand across the table, palming the ace and tucking it up his sleeve before holding up an arm that somehow managed to still have the ropes the deputies had bound him with on the wrist.

“I want out. After that I can take care of things my own damn self, but I can’t do it if they hang me.”

The man smirked.

“As if you’ve done such a grand job so far.”

Beaumont said nothing, and simply stared across the green felt table with his hand outstretched.

The Devil looked at Beaumont for a long second before dealing out five more cards.

Ace of spades. Ace of diamonds. Ace of clubs. Ace of hearts.

Joker.

The Devil grinned, and held out his hand.

“We have a deal, Beaumont Morningstar.”

Beaumont clasped the outstretched hand and shook it once, firmly.

The saloon and Devil disappeared, returning to the hot sun and high gallows between one blink and the next.

“-that won’t be necessary,” Beaumont finished to the preacher, the sun glinting ominously off an unfamiliar gun filling his hand where none had been before.

He raised the gun and fired once.

The town dissolved into fire, blood, and a pair of sulfur-yellow eyes.

The wind whistled sharply around Beaumont as he checked that the last of four heavy ropes were tight across the pulleys in front of him.

Far below, far enough that the sparkling blue of their eyes was lost to the distance, Shane stood at the other end of the rope. It had taken nearly the whole previous week to get the tower scaffolds in place and sturdy enough that the wind wouldn’t blow them over. Neither one of them were particularly good about figurin’ out how to put it all together, but they’d promised Doc they’d build him his shack next and he’d agreed to show them how to read and follow the instructions that had come with the thing. He had declined to help actually execute the instructions, and was currently only-just-visible on the top of a nearby rise.

There was nobody else for miles, and the endless yellow grass bowed in waves before the breeze. The scaffold was the tallest thing around, and the wind rattled it as it rushed through. Beaumont gripped the support beam closest to him until the gust had passed, then cupped his hands and leaned over to yell down to Shane.

“All set! Start hauling!”

Any reply Shane might have made was blown away in another swirl of the ever-present breeze, but less than ten seconds later the rope went taught and the pulleys groaned. Slowly, ever so slowly at first but speeding up with every pull, the rope began to make its way through the set of heavy pulleys. Beaumont leaned over and looked down to watch the large head assembly start to slowly inch its way off the ground. It sped up a little before settling into a slow and easy pace, each tug of the rope bringing it about six inches. It wasn’t as heavy as the gearbox they’d hauled up first, but it was more awkward and the wind pushed it around far more.

There was nothing Beaumont could do from the top aid in the lifting; the job he’d been given was to make sure the ropes didn’t jump from the wooden wheels of the pulleys, and he didn’t give it too much of his attention. Instead, much of the time his gaze was focused downward towards the deceptively slight figure at the other end of the rope with a smile stretching the corners of his lips. Even from a distance, Shane was unmistakable. Their reddish-brown hair framed a face marred by sunburn and highlighted by two ice-blue eyes - though the eyes were difficult to make out at a height of nearly eighty feet.

Whatever he could or could not see, Beaumont kept his gaze locked on the form of Shane as the machinery moved closer and closer. It was only when the assembly was level with the platform he was sitting on that he reluctantly switched to looking at the spinner in front of him and set to work with the gaff Doc had put together out of some things Beaumont neither inquired about nor inspected very closely. He swung it out and tried to hook one of the many arms, and missed. He tried again, and missed again; a sharp whistle from below had him looking down to see Shane making a motion that was clear even from a distance.

Setting himself carefully, Beaumont tried again - this time, taking Shane’s advice. Sure enough, the gaff hooked what he was aiming at and he managed to pull the heavy wheel into place. Four bolts more akin to railroad spikes were dropped into four connecting slots, anchoring the head to the structure. One large rod went through the gearbox they’d put up earlier and pushed through til it fit with a clunk into the center of the head assembly, and Beaumont grunted as it went no further. One more bolt went into that at the front, to keep it from slipping out and then he released the ropes that held it in place.

The wood around him creaked and groaned as it took up the strain, but not dangerously so. He reached out and tied a rock with a note on it to the loose end of the rope and let it go, watching as the rope slid through the pulleys freely. Several minutes later, there was another whistle from below and he looked over to see Shane make a very explicit gesture. Beaumont grinned and gave a broad wave back, then settled in to watch as Shane took the rope and began tying it around the large bundle of blades that had been sitting at the base of the tower.

It didn’t take long, and soon the bundle began making its slow way up on the ropes. Even more than the head assembly, the wind grabbed at the bundle of blades and twisted them this way and that. Beaumont did the best he could to keep the ropes in front of him from tangling, but eventually his luck ran out and the blades stopped three-quarters of the way up the tower as the lowest pulley spun in the breeze.

“Goddammit.”

Beaumont began maneuvering his way down from the platform he’d been sitting on; the lowest pulley was six feet beyond his reach. A shrill whistle echoed up from below but he did not turn away from his task. One particular slip nearly turned into a long fall, but he caught himself on a cross-brace and the whistling from below cut off abruptly. Regaining his feet, he held onto the brace and stretched out with the gaff. One swing, two, and the pulley spun back to the correct orientation. Unhooking the gaff was the work of a moment, and Beaumont headed back up to the platform with the gearbox.

Once he made it up, he looked down to see the ropes tied off and a small figure more than fifteen feet off the ground on the scaffolding. He waved, large and slow, at the figure, and they made a gesture back that was unmistakable. They climbed down, and made their way back over to where the rope had been tied off to the base of the tower.

The blades didn’t resume their ascent until more than a minute after he’d made it back up, but resume they did. Faster, this time, the rope ran through the pulleys in great heaving jerks instead of the more reasonable pace it had taken before. Beaumont frowned as dust and scraps flew off the rope where it passed through the pulleys, and reached out. Before he could do anything, however, the bundle of blades was level with the platform he was resting on. The rope creaked as he hauled the bundle towards himself with the gaff, but held; soon enough he had the bundle firmly on the platform.

Beaumont made quick work of the knots and let the rope fall. The first blade had a notch and two holes in one end, and he lined it up with the matching notch on the nearest arm of the spinner. Two screws to hold the blade in place, and he moved on to the next blade. The next five blades went on smoothly, and he turned his attention to the last piece. A short piece of wood with a triangular sail attached to it, it fit neatly into the back of the head assembly. Two pins held the sail in place, and a bolt held the tail solidly against the back of the head assembly.

Beaumont checked each connection point a second time, then reached over and pulled the two pins that had been holding the whole thing still against the wind. At first, nothing happened and he moved towards the blades with a frown. A gust of wind nearly pulled his hat off before he could reach out to check them, however, and with a groan the head slowly began to turn. The gearbox clanked, and the triangular sail whipped as the head turned to face the wind more fully.

Beaumont nodded to himself, pausing to look out over the rolling acres of yellow grass. Whatever he saw, he nodded again and turned to begin making his way down the structure. It took him several minutes, and he ended up dropping the last ten feet to land somewhat heavily on the ground.

He hadn’t even finished dusting himself off before Shane came storming over, covered in sweat and blue eyes blazing out from over red-splashed cheeks.

“Beaumont Morningstar, don’t you dare do that again. The devil might own your soul but like hell he’s gonna get it until I’m good and done with it, d’you hear? Why I oughta-”

“I do.”

Shane blinked at Beaumont’s interruption, but he steamrollered on before they could begin yelling again.

“Shane Masters, I have been an outlaw, a fool, a drunk, a gambler, and most importantly a coward for nearly all my life. I was too afraid a’ what might happen to reach out for the things that could have made my life better. I’m still a drunk and a gambler, but I saw what I was missin’ at the end of a rope and I don’t intend to let fear keep me from what I want any longer.”

He paused to take a breath, but Shane remained quiet, blue eyes wide and mouth half-open.

“So I came, and I found you again, and I made you a promise.”

He reached out and with the barest hesitation, took Shane’s hands in his own, rubbing his gun-callused thumb across the scars and many-times-healed knuckles.

“Shane Masters, I promised you that we’d finally get a damn windmill, and here we are. All I’m askin’ is that you stay. For as long as this windmill is tall, you stay.”

Shane looked at Beaumont, then up at the windmill, then down at their joined hands.

“You damn fool.”

Their voice wobbled with emotion.

“Do you really have to ask?”

Before Beaumont could answer, they pulled him in for a kiss. He closed his eyes and wrapped his arms around the slight figure that was strong enough to support them both. The air around them was still for this one timeless moment.

The windmill slowed in the slack air, before the mechanism groaned again. Slowly, ponderously, the wheel turned and faced the new wind as it settled into a strong, unwavering course. The blades turned, faster and faster until they, too, settled into a new pace.

Around the two small figures, and through the enormous windmill, the wind blew a steady course from yesterday towards tomorrow.

I don’t know why I’m doing this. It’s a terrible idea, really; Management would never allow any of this. In fact, if They find out I’m probably getting fired and that’ll really be the end of me.

But.

Well.

If I don’t do anything, then it all goes pear-shaped anyway. Damned if I do, damned if I don’t sort of situation.

The worst part is, it’s easy. So, so easy to just walk into the Archives. Well, easy for someone who works here; I’m in and out all the time to file my reports. As far as the guards are concerned, I’m just here to put one more piece of history in its proper place. I’m not, of course; I’m here to steal some from its proper place.

Well, not steal. Not really. There are all sorts of edicts and safeguards around the records themselves, you can’t remove the actual reports from the premises. At least, there are a lot of strictures and rules saying not to and I’m pretty sure there are things attached to the actual record to make sure they don’t go anywhere. And I mean, I can sort of see why; my personal theory is is that while history can be changed, the records take longer to update so you can fix mistakes in the time it takes. If you change a record in the Archive, that’s a direct change to the timeline - basically, it would always have been that way, because that’s what the records show. I would shudder to think of what some unscrupulous person could do with access to the Archive, if I could shudder.

Of course, I could be wrong. My job is to write things down, not to speculate about the function of the Metaverse. In fact, critical thinking - especially editorializing - is discouraged by Management. You get a history stream, you write it down, you file the report in the Archive. Still, I have to think that what I’m doing now kinda supersedes that, so - in for a penny, in for a pound. Might as well get my critical thinking out of the way while I’m robbing the Archive.

I wince and make my way through the stacks. Okay, not robbing, exactly. Like I said, you can’t take the actual reports out of the Archive itself. And, to be frank, the people I’m planning on giving this to? I wouldn’t trust them with a real Report anyway. I borrowed - with intent to return! - two handy little devices from a metaverse where hopefully they won’t be missed before I can get them back. One to make a hard copy of what I hope are relevant reports, and one to make a searchable digital copy. I’m hoping that copies won’t set off the same alerts that reports do.

The stacks are - not empty, never empty, no matter what the hour - but less populated than peak times. There’s never not someone going through and filing their latest report in the proper area; the stacks are infinitely tall, of course, but the spot you need is usually right at eye-height for convenience’s sake. It’s not like the public is wandering through and, Management forbid, reading things. The only people here are the other Chroniclers and some people who might be Archivists? Might be guards? Might not be people? I’ve never seen them up close and I am damn sure I never want to.

Fortunately, the stacks with Monday’s reports are empty. Not that I really expected them to be any different; the other Chroniclers try and stay away from this area. Monday was…Monday was her own person - or became so, at least - and nobody’s really sure what happened to her. It’s not like there’s a water cooler to gather up and gossip around, but people will talk to each other no matter what. Personally, I’ve heard that she fell in love, or that she started writing editorials, or that she stepped through whatever it is that separates Chroniclers from the things they’re Chronicling, or a dozen other ludicrous things. There’s only a few things everybody agrees on; she broke the Rules, and nobody’s seen her since.

Not knowing is almost worse than knowing. If it was just dying, well, I wouldn’t be okay with that because I kind of enjoyed living but if I don’t get these files then everyone dies anyway. If I take these files to the people who could use them, and then immediately have to start legging it away from Rhodes? Well, at least I could plan an escape route or something.

But I don’t know what happened to Monday.

Nobody does.

At least the little devices are easy to use. I’m not one of the Chroniclers who prefers a high-tech iteration of their Chronicling tools, but I’m also not one of those who prefers to see their tools as a wooden stick and cuneiform-ready clay tablet. Using things that actually came from Reality is the hardest part of this - physically anyway. The Archives aren’t really on the same plane of existence, and the small devices are not resonating at the right frequency - or something like that - to really work well here. Still, they work long enough that I can get copies of the relevant reports and that’s all that matters.

Of course, using non-approved devices in the Archive draws attention. I have no idea how much time it actually took, but given that I had just exactly enough time to get all the copies I needed, I’m guessing that Something approves of what I’m doing. Fortunately, re-filing a Report is just as simple as putting it back on the shelf or I’d really have been in trouble. As it stands, I don’t think I’ll be going back to those shelves for a long time - if ever.

Getting out of the Archive is just as easy as getting in to the Archive. After all, we have to go to our designated parts of history to write the reports. Employees walk in and out of the Archive all the time. I don’t know if it’s my imagination about the eyes following me as I leave with what I came for, though. It’s not like I know everything about the building or the security systems.

Still, I made it this far and only broke like, half a dozen rules. Now I just have to figure out a way to get the reports to the people working on this problem, and break one of the Rules by giving it to them.

Yeah.

No problem.

…

Just what the hell happened to Monday?

Vector Raynes looked up in mild surprise when Paul walked into the Reliance’s galley.

It was late at night in the Reliance’s time-cycle - a little shorter than what Vector was used to, but nothing he couldn’t handle - and nearly everyone who could sleep was asleep. Princess Hedgehog had retreated to their nook, which they had filled with soft mosses and strange fungi, and Jonomox had disappeared off to whichever room he had claimed for himself. Vector was pretty sure it wasn’t the same room he himself had claimed, but with Jonomox it was hard to be certain. Rhonda’s door and room were always immediately obvious; she kept both immaculate and the reflection off said door was hell on the mornings Vector woke even mildly hung over.

Vector had spent several sleepless hours in his own room before retreating to the safety of the galley. His room aboard the Reliance wasn’t anything like the room he’d had aboard the Golden Fleece, and yet in the depths of the night-cycle his thoughts had turned to his old shipmates. What Jonny would have thought of whatever the hell was going on in the engine room, what Sergio would have made of the crew schedules, the image of Mobius manning the comms station on the bridge, the thought of what Sasrael would have had to say about the jerry-rigged weapons systems.

It had been - much. Too much to let him get to sleep, though he would tear his own arm off before he let himself forget his crew. However many of them had survived the raid that had taken Vector to ARENA had died when that metaverse fell to pieces; now, only he remained to remember them and lift a glass in their honor.

Still, there was remembering - grieving - and there was wallowing, and that Vector refused to do. Every person who’d been a part of his crew had known when they signed on that they might not come back, that every mission could be their last, and they had accepted that risk gladly to stand beside him. To live now to anything less than the fullest extent he had with them would do them a disservice.

But such resolves were not always easy, and tonight hadn’t been good. So Vector had found himself alone in the tiny galley with a mug of hot chocolate cradled between his hands, fragrant steam rising into the slightly chilly air, at an hour when the ship was quiet and most of the people on board were asleep. They weren’t a crew - his crew - yet; they’d seen some action together, true, but the camaraderie was lacking and Vector felt its absence keenly. Whatever qualifications John Stone had, they didn’t include making a bunch of people into a crew. Vector could see it now, how the six of them could be one of the greatest crews the Metaverse had ever seen - how they could come together and form bonds tighter than family, more than blood.

Bonds that Vector missed like he had a hole in his soul.

Vector took a slurp of his chocolate and watched as Paul walked purposefully over to one of the tightly-latched cabinets and began inspecting the contents. The taller humanoid had been a bit of a mystery to him. While they were affable enough and perfectly willing to talk at length about the scientific underpinnings of nearly any subject matter, he still couldn’t quite figure them out. They claimed that a wish for scientific advancement was what drove them to join the team, but beyond that Vector couldn’t cudgel his tired mind into bringing up anything particularly interesting or personal about them.

Vector stood, set his mug down, and took the two steps required to put him right beside the larger humanoid.

“Evening, Paul. What brings you to the galley?”

Paul paused in their slow perusal of the contents of the cabinet - one of the ones reserved for baking, from what Vector could see. Rhonda had a tendency to stress-bake and while what she made was somewhat hit or miss when it came to flavors, whatever she did end up making was usually at least filling if not tasty and nobody had objected when she’d made the cabinet her own.

And Vector wouldn’t speak to what would happen if she found Paul had been raiding it.

“I require additional sodium aluminum phosphate to provide a catalyst for my most recent experiment. Reese has been good enough to provide me with samples of both his wood finish and the leather parts of his interior, and I wish to run some tests.”

Vector blinked, then looked into the cabinet. He pointed to a small glass jar.

“Is that it?”

Paul reached out and turned it so they could see the label.

“No.”

“Hmm.”

Vector looked closer at the interior of the cabinet.

“Is that it?”

This time, he pointed to a small metal canister. Paul reached out and turned the label towards themselves.

“No.”

Vector looked at them with a raised eyebrow.

“And you’re sure it’s in here?”

Paul tilted their head.

“My research indicates it is a common element in human-type cuisine. I had thought my odds of finding it in this cabinet outweighed the possibilities of the other cabinets.”

They paused, then shut the cabinet.

“Clearly I was mistaken.”

Vector clapped them on the mid-back and immediately regretted the gesture. While Paul could move around with perfect - if ponderous - fluidity, they were still made of rock-type materials and Vector was pretty sure he’d broken a knuckle with that back slap.

Turning, he took two steps back to the kitchen table - blinking the automatic tears out of his eyes while he did so. The warmth of the mug was soothing to his abused fingers, and he took a sip before turning his attention back to Paul - who was now rooting around in a different cabinet.

The fact that he knew so little about the taller being bothered him. He didn’t know if Paul had any family, whether or not they were the last of their metaverse or just didn’t have a place to go back to, what exactly Paul wanted out of their little voyage. The lack of information made him edgy, and he knew from experience how easily that edginess could turn into fear and distrust. If he wanted these people to become his new crew, he had to make a start of it himself.

“So, Paul,” Vector said, trying for a casual tone and possibly succeeding. “What are you? Where are you from?”

Paul paused in their perusal of the cabinets and turned to look at Vector with smoky-blue quartz eyes.

“I am a Sodian, from a metaverse which no longer exists. I could still give you the numerical designation it used to occupy, though that data is not very useful at this point in time.”

Paul’s voice was steady and polite, like they hadn’t just told Vector that they were the last of their species.

Vector saluted them with his mug.

“Cheers, I’ll drink to that. Haven’t got a metaverse to go back to either.”

Paul simply watched him steadily as he took a too-big gulp, chocolate filling in the corners of his mustache. They waited politely for him to finish before asking a question of their own.

“Why do you ask?”

Vector gestured at the Reliance around them with his mug.

“Because I’ve seen what we could be - this team could be a real crew, ready to face down the whole world. We just have to establish connections first, and that means reaching out. So,” he waved to himself, encompassing everything from the shine of his head to the softness of his boots “ask away if you have any questions.”

Paul slowly cocked their head, what Vector took to be a pensive look shadowing their face.

“Have you worked with nonhuman species before? How did your metaverse handle spaceflight? Did anyone in your metaverse use magic? Were there any elements that-”

Vector held up a hand in a slightly desperate attempt to staunch the slow and inexorable avalanche of questions.

“Woah woah woah. This works both ways - it helps us get to know one another better so we can work together better. While I know my way around a relentless interview, I think we might have a better time playing tit for tat.”

Paul didn’t really have any eyebrows in the traditional sense, but Vector could hear them raising it in their voice.

“Tit…for…tat?”

Vector nodded.

“I ask a question and you answer, then you ask me a question and I answer. Deal?”

Paul considered for a long moment before nodding.

“Deal.”

Vector nodded again and settled back in his chair.

“To answer one of your questions - yes, yes I did. Sir Edmund Lagrosse; everyone called him "Hotpot” but that was his full name. He had four arms and could make a mean stir-fry while also wielding a pump action shotgun. Came in handy more than you’d think.“

Paul nodded, and paused.

"I believe it is now your turn to ask a question,” they said, and Vector leaned back.

“Ah. Thinking a little slowly this evening.”

He was quiet for a moment.

“Well, let’s ask something basic. Do you have siblings?”

Paul paused again, longer this time. Vector held on to his slowly cooling mug, and waited.

“Technically, all Sodians are siblings. Each Sodian grows from the crust of our planet until such a time as we choose to break off and become our own beings. However, in the most literal sense i.e. the sharing of genetics or other species-specific material that can be passed from generation to generation, no I did not have any siblings.”

Vector choked mid-sip, hot liquid burning his sinuses as he snorted it inelegantly into his nose.

“Wait wait wait,” he sputtered, wiping his face on his sleeve. “Are you telling me that your species just grows out of a planet? That you all are basically planetary pimples?”

Paul cocked their head in the other direction, taking a long moment to think while Vector wiped up the worst of his spill.

“That is not an inaccurate way to describe it, though it is a far more nuanced process. Additionally, young Sodians have a deal of sharp points and rough edges when they first break away from the planet’s crust while pimples - from what information I’ve gathered - tend to be much smoother.”

Vector could only nod dumbly and continue to scrub at the chocolate rapidly setting in to stain his sleeping shirt. Paul seemed to contemplate the scene for a few moments before turning back to their search of the cabinets.

“Now, I believe that it is my turn to inquire about you. What, exactly, can you tell me about the means by which you and your crew traveled across space. Did you use a hydrodynonymous system or…”

“Rhonda, are you sure we should start with sparring?”

“Yeah, totally! It’s how I learned.”

“I dunno, shouldn’t we start with like, forms and stuff? Maybe even some training dummies?”

“No, it’ll be totally fine I promise. Just come at me, and we’ll see where we go from there. I’ll even let you get the first punch!”

“If you’re sure…”

“I am totally sure. C'mon, let’s do this!”

*smack*

*thud*

*CRUNCH*

“Ow!”

“Oh no! Are you alright?”

“I dink you broke my dose.”

“What do your toes - oh! Nose! Oh I’m so, so sorry! I got a little over enthusiastic, it’s just been a while since anyone’s agreed to spar with me.”

“Yeah. Did Pierce hab a medical kid?”

“I know he had some kind of set-up, I think it’s in the same lab Paul works in.”

“Den led’s go.”

“Again, I am soooo sorry - are you going to be okay?”

“Yeah, prob'ly. Necks dime, we dart wid dummies.”

“…yeah, that’s probably for the best. Sorry!”

“Don’ mention id.”

In the space between one second and the next, Paul watched as the caustic fluid they’d been using to analyze spore samples dripped from a newly-eaten hole in the pipette towards the surface of their arm.

It would do damage, certainly, but nothing beyond surface-level. All sodians knew, from a very early point in their lifespans, not to store data in the cruft of their bodies. The outer portions that broke off and wore away, leaving them to smooth as they aged, were extremely poor choices for long-term data storage.

Though it wasn’t always external forces that wore away at their cruft. While Paul had never indulged in the practice, they were aware that a number of other sodians had, in times long past, used tools to reshape themselves in ways they felt were more beneficial to their tasks. Younger ones would smooth away rough edges to appear older, thereby gaining more credence with alien scholars. Others would carve their heads into shapes more useful for the research technologies invented by species whose heads were shaped differently. Still others would hollow storage spaces within themselves, to store items against times of need that they could not otherwise carry.

Paul had never felt the need for any of that, but they had considered - were still considering - the one form of carving that all sodians agreed upon. While sodians encoded data into the very material they were made up of, they also carved commemorations into their cruft. The form it took varied from sodian to sodian; the sizes, the shapes, the locations, all of it extremely personal. And yet no sodian would mistake such a carving for anything other than what it was; a sign of mourning.

Paul had considered it. The loss of every other sodian, all the knowledge that they had poured into the homeworld - the place that would have been theirs, when the time came to rest and return to the planet.

All gone.

They were the only sodian left, and while they could theoretically re-establish sodians in another metaverse, that would be the work of millennia. It would never truly replace what was lost, of course. Whatever form the sodians took would be in the image of times past, but it would not be the same. That wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it was a truth Paul did not often like to think about.

And, in truth, that loss was so all-encompassing that there were no symbols to adequately express it. Not room enough on Paul’s current form to express the loss of untold worlds and pools of knowledge vast enough to encompass entire universes. They could carve that regret into every facet of every silica particle that made up their stony cruft, and it still would not be enough to express it all.

So they did not waste the time to try. Not yet. Not while it wouldn’t do any good. Better to work on the foundations of something new; they were not the only ones to have lost everything, and more would do so if their current team failed in their mission.

The drop of fluid hissed as it made impact with their arm. Paul moved carefully to let it slide off and into the designated disposal container before inspecting the area carefully. A micro-fine layer of the fluid remained, and while the main silicate of their arm did not react to it, there appeared to be a reaction with some trace elements that was causing it to continue to hiss faintly and eat an exothermic trail in their arm.

“Fascinating.”

Paul reached over and use a sampling swab to remove some of the caustic fluid from their arm, another to swab an uncontaminated area, and set the pipette down on a non-reactive surface. The fluid should not have reacted that way to Paul’s cruft; this demanded closer study.

They got to work.

Vector sat quietly in his cabin, the only light coming from his desk lamp. Beside the lamp sat a bottle of clear amber liquid and a small glass, glinting softly in the low light. The glass was empty, for now.

It had started innocently enough. Vector had asked Paul a question about how time worked between different metaverses - not that he’d really expected the answer, he’d just been trying to make conversation and the question had been an idle one - and had received a thorough answer. So thorough, in fact, that Paul had offered to calculate what the date would have been in Vector’s metaverse simply by observing the current velocity and momentum of his component atoms.

Vector hadn’t thought anything of agreeing. Hadn’t thought anything of knowing a number. It was just a “relatively simple” calculation, one that Paul said they’d worked out to determine when the Masters were likely to receive the reports John Stone sent after every mission. All it took was a couple minutes and a sample from Vector’s femur - something which Paul apparently already had, as concerning as that was. It hadn’t even taken Paul ten minutes to do the work.

The answer they gave Vector was the real kick in the teeth.

Vector had thanked Paul and wandered back to his cabin in a daze, stopping by one of the caches of booze he’d found around the ship on the way.

Brown liquor was wrong. Vector had favored a royal purple liquid that sparkled even without light, the suspended nanites winking and flashing as they recongfigured the booze for the species which held the glass. Vector Raynes Rum, patented as a collaboration between Johnny and Addams and marketed through Sunfist Productions, had revolutionized how the galaxy partied and a million imitations had sprung up within a year. Vector always kept a good quantity onboard his ship for impromptu celebrations or memorials, and it was the hallmark of Vector Raynes Day.

He’d started the tradition as a team building exercise. Sure, he’d carefully hand-picked his team but things had been a bit rocky in the beginning as egos collided and personalities tried to find ways to deal with other people. They’d been a group but not a crew, and at a loss for what else to do Vector had posted up the announcement one day that would have been a fine spring one on his home planet. He’d called it something else on that first notice, something like Happy Team Building Day, but when it became a yearly tradition Vector Raynes Day had simply stuck.

The actual exercise itself was pretty simple; play as many pranks as you could, safely. Winner would get a bottle of booze, and anyone who got caught would have to give their target a token of friendship instead of a prank. Winning was pretty subjective; some years, the person who pranked the most people won while other years had the best or most challenging prank take the bottle. That first year, Addams had taken the prize by somehow dyeing Charming’s fur orange and sending him into conniptions. She had never really explained how, and had declined the replicate the feat in later years.

Vector Raynes Day had been the one time of year when the crew could really cut loose. It had been a day of tiny victories, of little challenges and tokens of friendship. It was a day for clearing out dirty laundry and going on to the rest of the year with a clean slate and some merry camaraderie.

It had been today, in point of fact.

Vector reached out and poured a generous splash of the whiskey - probably one of the bottles Jonomox had stolen when they’d landed to get Reese aboard, by the smell - into the glass. Setting the bottle back precisely where it had been on the table, he picked up the glass and looked at it for several long minutes.

Most days, he could put it behind him. He had a new team now, and a new mission - one that was just as important, if not more so, than any he’d undertaken with his previous crew. His days were filled with trying to make the Metaverse a better place, whether that was kicking the Galvanic Collective away from whatever they were targeting this time or trying to stop a madman from the future. It was important work with a good crew, and most days that was enough.

He took a small sip of the whiskey, and didn’t grimace at the taste. His entire metaverse was gone, so completely it was as if it had never been. There were no graves for his crew, no memorials. Nobody else left who would remember the shine of Peluccia “Addams” McFarlan’s hair, or how the way she tied it back during missions would let a thousand flyaway threads gather around her head like a halo. How Sergio would stand like a mountain against all comers, reciting the rules and regulations in his gravelly voice as he put evildoers away according to justice and the law.

Sasrael’s iridescent chitin. “Charming” Kosres ki Capisten’s - six thousand three hundred and thirty-fourth in line for the Seat of Capisten - soft fur. Chtik “Quick” Pik’s predilection for trashy romance novels. Facien “Sneaks” Ytem III lazing on top of the engine housing because it liked the heat and vibration. Sir Edmund “Hotpot” Lagrosse’s delicious meals. The way Johnny’s eyes got misty when Addams held his hand. Mellifluous Ringing Of Bells “Maven’s” poetry. Mobius “The Blind Man’s” lightshows.

Cpl. Charles “Buddy” Buddell’s sacrifice.

Vector felt a catch in his throat that had nothing to do with the whiskey and exhaled a long, slow breath. He missed them, one and all, like a phantom limb. Orders in the field to move and flank, requests for reinforcement - funny jokes about whatever Paul had cooked up this time, commentary on the latest villainous monologue; it all sprang readily to his lips, and died there as the people with whom he’d’ve shared it were no longer a communicator away.

Vector reached out and picked up the bottle one more time, refilling the glass. He held the cup up, saluting the ghosts crowded into every corner of the room and kept there by his memories.

“Absent friends,” he said.

He drained the glass.

I will be the first to admit, I may have made a mistake.

I mean, being knocked out, handcuffed, and tossed in the trunk of a charmingly antiquated motor vehicle is not usually the outcome you hope for when you’re trying to sell a load of perhaps slightly anachronistic knives to a gangster. In my defense, he’d been perfectly cordial up until that point; I mean, sure I got black-bagged and dragged to his secret office or whatever, but you kinda expect that in this line of work. Plus he had some really good whiskey so that kinda made up for it.

Anyway, we made a deal and I showed up with the truck like we’d agreed at two am on the south shore docks where his guys were supposed to give me a case of Roman coins. I didn’t actually care if they were legitimate or not, I just needed them to look about right and have the right signature on them. Anyway, I was there, waiting, when someone knocked me out from behind.

So now I’m in what is clearly someone’s trunk. I woke up handcuffed, sure, but I could probably pick that kind of lock in my sleep - actual sleep, not concussion-style-knockout. I mean, hey free handcuffs but they’re not what I came for, and there’s nothing in this trunk with me that feels like a case of Roman coins, counterfeit or otherwise. Coinage just has this weight to it, y'know? There’s nothing in here except some spare ammunition, a cardboard box that smells like cheese that I really don’t want to know the actual contents of, and a tire iron.

Tire iron’s got some potential uses, but only if I want to hang around long enough to reach the end of this ride and I gotta be honest, not crazy about that idea. Sure, there’s a chance they’ll open the trunk to do some unspeakable things to my presumably-unconscious body, but they could also just light the car on fire. Or drive it into the lake, we were on the docks after all. Not that that would be as much of an impediment to me as they might think, but it would still suck.

Anyway, I digress.

Getting out of the trunk, that’s step number one. And of course this car’s too old to have something handy like an open-from-inside handle; that’s really the way this night is going. Still, I have a few more tricks up my sleeve.

Or, in this case, as my sleeve.

If there’s one good thing about being a Transmettarian, it’s that it never takes me long to change clothes. I may not be the best at this whole shape-changing thing, but I’ve got the clothes bit down pat. I can go from a formal tux to clothes that wouldn’t look out of place in a strip club in ten seconds flat - honestly, they’re closer than you’d think, especially in some of the more entertaining metaverses.

No, my problem is the rest of it - the kind of stuff I need now. You’d think going from a solid to a liquid would be as easy as breathing, wouldn’t you. I mean, it’s kinda like unclenching a tense muscle and letting go, just kinda spreading out.

What that really means is its like trying to shit while someone’s shooting at you. You’re in a tense, stressful situation - say, the trunk of a mobster’s car - and you’ve just gotta relax. Think happy thoughts. Become liquid enough to dribble out of the frankly massive gaps between the flooring and the frame of the car.

Or, and hear me out, I could just kick one of the taillights out and open the trunk from the outside. Much easier.

Becoming street pizza’s never fun, and road rash is killer on you when your clothes are you skin, but hey! It worked! I’m free, and I’m outta here. I don’t need the coins that badly - I have another deal in the works.

Joe’s, here I come.

Vector Raynes cursed nearly silently as a small squad of security guards trooped by - their fourth pass since Vector and Quick had taken up residence behind the sheltering fronds of a large potted fern. The broad, faintly iridescent green-blue leaves and the clear boredom of the guards had been all that had kept them from being discovered thus far, but their luck couldn’t hold out forever.

He glanced down the hall at the backs of the security squad, then put his heavily-encrypted communicator close to his mouth. “Team two, this is team one. Addams, Buddy, where in the depths of space are you? We haven’t got that much time before these Securitas guys wise up and then we’re all in for it.”

Static was all that met his ears for several long moments and his heart clenched - had they been discovered? Had something happened? - before the white noise lessened as the channel opened with a click. “Vector, we need to abort stat. Tell Sergio I need his help at entry point B - now.” Addams’ voice was strained, the tight, tense syllables so at odds with her normal bubbly demeanor that Vector almost flinched away from his comm.

“What happened?” he hissed back, already signalling Quick with his other hand to start extraction.

The smaller Scrik nodded an acknowledgement and darted up the corridor opposite where the security guards had disappeared around a corner. They had two minutes before the next squad swept this hall, and one minute before they swept the next one. While the summer compound of a billionaire pharmaceutical magnate wouldn’t normally have rotating security patrols that ensured every hall was checked at least once every five minutes by a person in addition to the security cameras, they also didn’t normally house illegal off-books medical experimentation either.

Vector had gotten wind of what was going on through Sneaks, of all people. The Sheemol had been kind of shifty about where they’d heard about it, which probably meant it had something to do with their old school. Still, it hadn’t taken long before Vector’s team had found independently verifiable sources about what was going on, and he’d made the decision to go in and break it up. The plan had been to get three teams inside the compound and infiltrate the lab hidden beneath the main house, then have Hotpot, Charming, and Sergio hit the furthest side of the compound with everything they had to open a path for their escape.

Vector and Quick were team one, Addams and Buddy had been team two. Sasrael and Sneaks were team three, with Maven, Mobius, and Johnny staying onboard the ship to work their magic where they did it best. At the last check-in, Sasrael and Sneaks had managed to penetrate the furthest into the compound - a quick glance at his HUD showed their lifesigns still green across the board, and a silent pop-up from Maven let him know that the Ettix had passed the word for them to fall back. Addams and the extraction team also showed green, but - Vector frowned at the display. Buddy was showing yellow in his display, edging towards an angry orange-red.

A crackle from his comm had him hunkering back down closer to the fern for a moment, before it resolved into Addams’ voice. “-s blasted stuff, it’s wrapped too tight. I need Sergio!”

Vector nodded, a gesture wasted on everyone but his trusty camera-drone. “Affirmed. Sending him your way now.”

With a click, Vector flipped his communicator to the extraction team channel. “Sergio, Addams needs help with Buddy at point B - not sure what’s up, but we’re aborting. Do not go loud unless I give the word.”

“Affirmed. On my way.” Sergio’s voice was deep, clear, and concise - one of the few things he had kept with him since his days as a lawman. Perfect diction, a somewhat battered trenchcoat made of armorweave, and an unflinching moral code; they had served him well enough during his time with Galactic Enforcement, but the last had also driven him out of it when he found corruption in his department. Vector liked to think he was happier away from all the red tape and political bullshit, but it was hard to tell with his perpetually dour expression. Still, he was the longest-standing member of Vector’s crew and Vector had every faith that whatever had happened to Buddy, Sergio would do his best to help.

But that didn’t mean Vector couldn’t as well.

Darting from behind the large fern, Vector managed to slip through the door to the next hall just as footsteps began to sound in the one he’d been lurking in. Quick was already there, crouched behind a large Zukaets singing vase that probably cost more than the GDP of a small moon. Vector could almost hear Charming’s diatribe about the market behind them, and he had to spare a moment to smirk at his reflection in the mirror-polished surface. Charming had left most of his prejudices behind when he’d left Zukat, but some residual bitterness would come out when he found high-caste luxuries out in the worlds beyond. He could be remarkably poetic about it, and it was hilarious to see him ranting about something while Maven took studious notes behind him.

Quick gestured at the door they’d come in, further up the corridor. It stood ajar, and Vector dove for cover behind the same vase as Quick even as his camera-drone went for the ceiling - just in time, as a human in a very old-fashioned butler’s uniform walked through it tray-first. From the mirror-polished black shoes to the crisp white of the tie at his throat, the man looked like he’d just stepped out of a historical vid. He closed the door firmly behind him with one white-gloved hand, then proceeded at a brisk pace despite the heavy silver tray with a cut crystal decanter and several glasses he balanced in the other hand.

Vector felt Quick freeze solid, even the normal twitch of his tail-tip stilled, and quickly copied the smaller being. Quick could be a bit distractible at times, but he had a fine nose for when to hold position and when to run for it and Vector trusted his instincts. Sure enough, the shadow of the vase was large enough to keep the man from noticing the both of them, and he was soon out of sight around the corner of the hall.

Vector barely had time to breathe a sigh of relief before Quick was up and off, darting for the recently-closed door. He paused right beside it, dish-shaped ears swiveling for a moment before gesturing at Vector to follow. Vector wasted no time, and the two of them slipped through the door silently. The hallway beyond was far less cluttered with ostentatious decorations, but it was by no means drab; tasteful art screens hung at even intervals on the walls, and the carpet was the kind of deep plush that concealed the cleaning nanobots imbued in every fiber while simultaneously silencing footsteps.

Fortunately, the decrease in decoration meant a decrease in wandering security teams and it didn’t take Vector very long to wind through the twists and turns of the back halls to the door they’d come in through. This late at night, with ostensibly no guests or family in residence, there were very few servants out and about - mostly in the kitchen. Still, it only took a modicum of luck to sneak past them when their backs were turned and Vector soon found himself standing beside Quick in the cool night air as his camera drone whirred quietly overhead. Maven was keeping them from being noticed by the security cameras, so they had a moment to breathe.

Vector tapped his communicator and brought it up to his mouth again. “Sergio, what’s your status?”

There was a long moment before Sergio replied, an unaccustomed note of strain in his voice. “Addams and I are well. Buddy will need immediate medical treatment as soon as I can free him.” Sergio cut the connection, and Vector was left staring at his communicator with a growing sense of dread in his stomach. Looking around at the green, wide-open grounds around them lit by starlight and search beams, he made an executive decision.

“Quick, find the extraction team and fall back to the Fleece. I’ll send team three that way as well. I’m going to see what’s wrong.”

Quick chattered for a moment with his front teeth, indecision sketched with every lash of his tail, but finally nodded before darting off. Vector watched him go for a moment before activating his communicator once more.

“Team three, this is team one.”

The response was immediate, Sasrael’s shivery two-tone voice loud enough to indicate that however far inside team three had gotten, they’d already managed to extricate themselves. “Team three. What in the shining chitinous chunks is going on, V?”

“Team two’s in trouble; I’m on my way to rendezvous with them now. Fall back and meet us at the Ram.” Vector’s tone was grim, and Sasrael didn’t waste any time arguing.

“We’ll meet you there.”

The channel clicked closed, and Vector took off into the dark green of the grounds. He and Quick had chosen to hitch a lift into the compound on the back of some of the service trucks, so he hadn’t actually seen much of the spaces around the main manor. According to the schematics and registered security plans Maven had gotten them for the whole compound, Buddy and Addams should have had to climb a reasonably high wall and abseil down the other side to get in; arduous, but nothing they hadn’t done before. Vector could only imagine what had happened as he sped through the darkness, keeping out of range of the roving searchlights and patrols with his customary aplomb, and he didn’t like the visions his brain conjured up.

The wall rose before him like a monolith as he got closer to the boundary of the compound, and he sped up a little as he frowned. Something was reflecting the starlight at the top of the wall - just a glimmer here, a glimmer there, but as he drew closer it was clear that something stretched along the entire length of the wall. Something that hadn’t been present in the plans they’d used to plot the assault.

As he got closer to entry point B, he could see three figures at the top of the wall. Whatever was shimmering at the top was doing so more frequently around them - like whatever they were doing was moving it, somehow. There were no ropes on this side - apparently they hadn’t even gotten that far in the plan. Still, Vector had spent enough time with people who regularly climbed sheer cliff faces for fun to have picked up a thing or two, and he managed to work his way close enough to resolve the two figures at the top of the wall.

The biggest one was Sergio, dour as ever with several new tears in his coat and suspiciously pale lines on his craggy plating. Krasqueds weren’t living rocks through and through, but their outer skin was made of an exceeding tough polysilicate plating that let them pass safely through the sharp and jagged plants of their homeworld without taking damage. Vector had seen Sergio shrug off carbon-blade knife strikes without a scratch; to see the pale gouges in that plating now…

Vector focused on the still figure beside the Krasqued and scowled. Buddy was pale in the starlight, the grayish tinge to his face a stark contrast to his dark hair. Vector was close enough for the glimmering he’d been seeing to finally resolve itself into long coils of wire that stretched up and down the wall. The shimmering he’d noticed had been starlight reflecting off the jagged half-inch barbs that were spaced evenly every two inches along its length - and especially where it was wrapped around Buddy. Three strands had wrapped themselves around his torso, with two more snaking up his left leg. Vector could see the drips of blood from where the spikes were digging in, but that didn’t explain Buddy’s deathly stillness or Sergio clipping the wire instead of removing it.

Addams stood behind Sergio, in a spot where the wire had clearly been cleared away, with her satchel clenched in both hands and a desperate expression on her face. She slipped over as Vector pulled himself up onto the clear space on the wall and spoke quietly, her eyes never leaving Buddy.

“It’s Kaquestrion Coiling Wire,” she murmured, barely moving her lips.

Understanding flooded Vector’s mind, followed by hot rage. Kaquestrion Coiling Wire was a basic security device derived from the barbed wire of ages past. While still barbed, Coiling Wire incorporated motion-based nanoservos designed to wrap it tighter and tighter around a struggling target. Everyone had heard stories about how, if you struggled too hard, it would tighten to the point of cutting you into chunks of meat. The Galactic Council had unanimously voted to make its use anywhere a war crime, and the possession or manufacture of it were high-class felonies - the kind not even a lot of money could buy you out of the consequences of.

Silence reigned for a long few moments, broken only by the chunk of wire snips and the steady tick-tick-tick of ruby red blood that glistened almost black in the starlight.

“We need to come back,” he said at last - quietly enough to not startle Sergio, but loud enough to be heard by all three of them. “Whatever this slimeball is hiding just took priority; he’s not going to get away with this.”

Addams bit her lip. “If he was wire out here, where people might see, what do you think he’s got in the lab?” she whispered.

Vector’s lips thinned. “Whatever he has, we can handle it. As a team.”

Vector stood just beyond the cold circle of light that beamed down upon the floor. To his left was Sergio, the tall Krasqued a grim spectre in the dark. To his right stood Charming, the Zukaets a picture of feline insouciance save for the twitch of his tail.

Across the pool of light from them stood three sentients in a very similar array. Front and center was a Polymanus Duodecafex who had introduced himself as Corcor; to his left stood a human who had declined to introduce themselves and to his right was a Valarena named Savis. All three of them wore body armor, but none of them had any visible weaponry - if they hadn’t agreed to leave their weapons behind, Vector wouldn’t have agreed to meet with them in the first place.

As it stood, he still wasn’t too happy to be meeting with them now. Corcor had reached out to Vector a little over a week ago with the offer of a joint operation; Corcor had caught wind of a quiet move by Legion Industries to begin the a very hostile takeover of an independent industrial smelting station tucked away in the trailing edge of the Fifth Arm. Vector’s ongoing feud with Legion - and its CEO, Maxwell Tully - was something of an open secret among his professional peers, and Corcor had made the argument that once said move went loud, Vector would have heard about it anyway and taken an interest. A joint operation from the beginning would keep any accidental overlap of their two missions.

Vector hadn’t liked it; Corcor was a mercenary, and even cursory verification of his story brought up the fact that Corcor was getting a hefty fee from the smelting station in question to make sure Legion didn’t shoot everyone inside and then claim the “abandoned derelict” by right of salvage. Still, the facts had checked out; everything Maven and Charming had managed to piece together pointed to the fact that Legion did in fact seem to be gearing up to try and tighten their stranglehold on metal refinement. Vector had had them check again with the same result, then taken everything to the rest of the crew.

Nobody had been overly pleased with the thought of teaming up with Corcor’s squad; where Vector had hand-picked his crew based on a sense of justice and a shared love of adventure, his method was the exception not the norm. While none of them had heard anything about Corcor specifically, mercenary work always attracted a certain type. Still, with no specific objections beyond a certain distaste and a number of good and valid reasons why they should at least hear him out, Vector had set up the meeting.

Corcor took a step forward, into the pool of light, and Vector did the same. He missed the familiar weight of his pistols like a phantom limb; something about Corcor had his hackles up. It didn’t help that the sentient had a good foot of height on him, and five more sets of limbs - most of which rested in casual array, except for the lowest pair which held a datapad.

Corcor held out an empty hand. “I’m so glad to finally meet the great Vector Raynes. Hero of the stage and screen, and champion of the underdogs - according to your press agent, anyway.” He spoke jovially, his tone inviting Vector to play along and set himself above the galaxy at large.

Vector didn’t rise to the bait, instead flashing the patented press smile he normally reserved for paparazzi whose picture lights had given him a headache as he shook Corcor’s offered hand. “I’m just a man, trying to do the best he can with a crew of some of the finest people in the galaxy.”

Corcor’s expression didn’t change, but the human on his left shifted just the tiniest bit; behind him, Vector could hear a soft skktch as Charming flexed his running claws against the floor in a subtle, prearranged signal. Zukaets communicated partially by empathy, and whatever Corcor and his crew were feeling about Vector’s statement boded ill for the success of this meeting. Vector didn’t move, instead focusing internally on the sensation of grim understanding in his chest. The soft scratching ceased as Charming lazily tilted his head to one side, and it was Sergio’s turn to shift just the tiniest bit.

Corcor released Vector’s hand and held out the datapad controls-first. “Here’s the intel my team has gathered on the situation,” he said smoothly, as if the fraught pause for breath had never happened. “Our best guess is that Legion Industries intends to make a move on the station within the next three days, from staging points on nearby asteroids that I’ve highlighted.”

Vector prodded the datapad to life and the simplified rendering of the solar system in question popped into existence a handspan above it. Five asteroids blinked a venomous yellow from where they clustered around the serenely blue station. On the surface of the pad itself a number of reports organized themselves date and relevance, summaries-only at first but popping into the full report as he touched them. Most of them appeared to be exactly what Maven had found, but there were a few that were marked as internal files for the LLC that operated the station.

As he looked more closely at the solar system, though, something niggled at the back of his mind. The five asteroids highlighted in yellow were close to the station - almost too close. If Legion Industries wanted to deny any involvement in the “abandoning” of the station by the former tenants, they’re be better off staging themselves a little further out, in positions less likely to be discovered or on asteroids that could be destroyed once they’d claimed the station.

Corcor shifted his weight as Vector paged through the reports, but didn’t object. “Here’s what I’m thinking: The best way to keep the station from being overrun is by keeping it from being attacked at all. But I don’t have enough people to secure the station and hunt down those Legion bastards at the same time.” He gestured broadly at Sergio, Vector, and Charming with three of his hands. “That’s where you and your crew comes in. If you come sailing in on that ship that everyone’s seen on the holovids and park it real obviously on the station, those idiots on the asteroids will focus all their attention on you and hunker down, leaving my team free to pick them off one-by-one while they think they’re waiting for reinforcements.”

Vector didn’t look up from the reports on the datapad, though he wasn’t really reading them any more. Corcor’s plan sounded good on the surface, except that it relied far too heavily on the Golden Fleece’s reputation and the reaction it might engender in their enemies. Which meant that really, it wasn’t much of a plan at all.

“And what’s keeping them from just shooting us out of the sky as we approach the station?” Vector asked almost absently, pretending to keep his attention on the datapad in front of him.

Corcor huffed in indignation, spreading eight of his twelve arms out into the Polymanus equivalent of indignation. “You think I haven’t done my due diligence? I sent two of my best covert operatives to surveil the equipment that Legion was bringing in, and none of it was anti-ship. They want the station intact, not spread out as solar junk; most of their gear is anti-personnel.”

Vector was silent for a moment, before flipping off the datapad and looking up at Corcor. “And what does my crew get out of this deal?”

He kept his voice polite and even through sheer force of will. This deal was starting to stink worse than a dead kreeg-rat, and he didn’t need Charming’s ability to see emotion to feel the smug falseness oozing off of Corcor and his crew.

The Polymanus gestured expansively. “While the plan does depend on you keeping Legion’s attention while we work, we’re taking most of the risk. Thirty percent of the take to you, and one percent of royalties to us for the use of our images in any films or media you produce in the future.”

Charming hissed quietly; with the franchising deals he’d set up for Vector, one percent of royalties for images would amount to a lot of cash. Thirty percent of the one-off fee for this run wouldn’t even be a drop in the bucket, comparatively. Still, Corcor’s starting numbers were more than enough to tell Vector all he wanted to know and he tossed the datapad at Corcor’s feet.

“No deal. I don’t know what kind of scam you’re pulling, but I’m not risking my crew or my ship for it.” Vector took a step back, not quite enough to take him out of the light but close.

Corcor looked down at the datapad for a long moment, then looked back up with a strangely gleeful smile. “You know what? Talking is overrated.”

Moving faster than Vector would have believed possible, Corcor sprang forward with two fists heading straight for Vector’s jaw.

Vector blinked groggily at the ceiling above him. It was a boring ceiling, really, but the sparkles and spots were an interesting choice in decoration. His head hurt abominably, not helped at all by the meaty sounds of fists meeting flesh.

He blinked and rolled, barely avoiding the whirlwind of fists that was Corcor and Sergio. Vector blinked and shook his head, the pain spiking but details coming more back into focus as he staggered to his feet. His muddled brain still couldn’t tell if Corcor or Sergio had the upper hand in their fight, but he trusted Sergio to let him know if he needed help. Charming and Savis were facing off nearby, the Valarena already bleeding from several deep gouges in his chitinous plates - though Charming favored his right foreleg as well. Even as Vector watched, the Valarena tried to get inside the reach of Charming’s combat-arms without getting skewered, and was driven back by Charming’s almost surgical strikes.

It had just occurred to Vector that one person from the opposing team remained unaccounted for when a silvery glint of light was all the warning he had of the wire setting around his neck. Years of working with his favored pistols gave him hands quick enough to get three fingers under the wire garrotte before he ran out of slack, which still didn’t give him a lot of options as the thing drew tight. He kicked back, but the human on the other end of the wire merely grunted.

Vision blackening, pain in his head spiking, Vector slammed himself backward into the other human. One pace, two - the impact with the wall knocked the breath out of both of them, but there was a crunch Vector more felt than heard somewhere in his opponent’s torso and the tension on the wire abruptly went slack. As the wire loosened Vector wheezed in several life-giving breaths before turning on his assailant, fists at the ready.

His assailant was a little shorter than him, and clutched at a shoulder that didn’t quite look like a shoulder anymore. Vector was low on sympathy, but he certainly didn’t have any energy for cruelty either - not that he’d ever had the taste for it. Bringing his bloody hand away from his throat, he put his whole weight into the uppercut that caught the other human right on the chin.

They folded without a sound, and Vector leaned hard on the wall next to them as he fumbled for his communicator.

“Addams,” he gasped into it, not having the energy to care if anyone else was listening. “Need Addams, send…”

The black spots that had never quite stopped decorating his vision surged, merging with each other into even larger dots. He could distantly feel himself slipping down the wall, and his last thought before he lost consciousness was that he should have listened to his gut and never come at all.

“-an’t believe we actually managed to do it!”

“He’s just some guy, keep your shirt on.”

“No you don’t get it, he’s one of Vector Raynes’ crew and we managed to capture him!”

“Yeah, and we gotta keep him captured so pay attention. Or do you wanna explain to the boss how we lost him before Raynes paid up?”

“Right! Right.”

Cpl. Charles “Buddy” Buddell suppressed a groan as a not-so-quiet conversation nearby heralded his return to consciousness. A steady pain pulsed behind his left ear; it felt like he’d been hit with an engine caliper, though something that large would probably have done some irreparable brain damage and, while woozy, he could still think reasonably straight.

Small favors.

The rest of him ached as well, but not as badly as his head. While he’d taken a few punches in the scuffle that had gotten him captured, the real spiky points of pain were the rough restraints around his wrists, elbows, and ankles. This chair wasn’t really designed with the imprisonment of a human in mind, and the ties were forcing his joints into some odd and unpleasant angles. Add to that the budding charlie horse (hah) behind his right knee, and the overall picture was one of dull agony.

Still, he’d felt worse after a night of drinking with Hotpot and Mobius so on the whole he’d probably be okay. Provided his captors didn’t shoot him first, of course.

“Hey, should he be wakin’ up or something about now? I didn’t hit him that hard.”

“How can you be sure?”

“I did some practicin’ over at Ravero’s last weekend. That place always has a couple humans around, and the fights happen nightly anyway.”

“…are you still allowed back?”

“Yeah, sure I am.”

“…”

“No, I really am! Just, maybe not for the next coupla months.”

The two speakers didn’t sound human, but he couldn’t say for sure what they actually were. Plenty of species in the galaxy rarely encountered humans, though Ravero as a bar name rang some bells. Buddy had never been there himself, but a niggling feeling in the back of his mind suggested that maybe one of the others liked to go there, when they were in the area?

“He is awake.”

That speaker was one Buddy hadn’t heard before, but the fact that he half-heard the words echo between his ears told him all he needed to know. Zukaets didn’t often leave Zukat, but whenever they did they generally had their pick of whatever jobs they wanted. The fact that one had hitched their wagon to this group said volumes for how much money we being funneled through the operation. Either that, or the Zukaets was in over a barrel - but they were, as a general rule, far too canny for that.

Still, it mean that the need to pretend to be unconscious was over. Buddy raised his head to the quiet relief of the muscles in his neck, and looked around. The Zukaets was the most immediately obvious; clearly fresh from Zukat by the pale spring green of its fur, it sat less than ten feet away from him a regarded him with all six of its eyes. Its gaze held none of the friendly warmth of Charming’s and Buddy suppressed a shiver with the ease of long practice.

Outside of the large, felinoid alien, there really wasn’t much to see. They were in some kind of large, warehouse-type room; the ceiling was far enough away that shadows hid most of the details, the pool of light centered on Buddy himself not stretching very far. There were open shelves in neat rows stretching as far as he could see, with a wide variety of items littering the shelves themselves. The open section he was in was formed by pushing some of the shelving out of the way; track marks on the floor said that such a thing happened fairly regularly.

Sitting at a folding table that had a small lantern set on the surface were two more sentients. One was a Polymanus whose number of limbs was concealed enough by the shadows that Buddy couldn’t be sure what his designation prefix was. The other was a Scrik, ears twitching as she studied the hand of cards she held.

“Cozy.” Buddy had never been the best at the witty banter - that was more Charming and Vector’s thing - but he wasn’t about to let the obviously lacking accommodations pass without comment.

The Zukaets’ tail flicked once. “You don’t seem very pleased by it,” it purred.

Buddy shrugged as best he could with his hands cuffed behind him. “What can I say? Kidnappers never have nice digs, but at least yours isn’t an actual sewer.”

That attracted the Scrik’s attention. “You’ve been kidnapped to a sewer before?” She paused. “Wait, you’ve been kidnapped before?”

Buddy attempted his best nonchalant look - the fact that he couldn’t move his hands really spoiled the effect, but he tried anyway. “Running with Vector Raynes is dangerous work. You guys aren’t even in the top five.”

“What do you mean we’re not in the top five?” The Polymanus seemed offended by the suggestion, dropping his cards on the table and standing up.

Buddy gave him an unimpressed stare. “We’re in a warehouse that is clean, dry, and vermin-free. The last guys who tried to grab me had me in some weird half-cave thing with six inches of water on the floor.”

“I mean, if you’re too comfy I’m sure we could fix that.” The Scrik’s mastery over sarcasm was impressive; if Buddy hadn’t caught the twitch of her whiskers, he’d’ve thought she was being serious.

“Might just do it for him anyway,” said the Polymanus, moving forward. “Show him who’s in the top five - ”

“Stop.”

Everyone froze as the Zukaets spoke. Its eyes had never left Buddy, and that unwavering gaze was all the more unnerving for its complete lack of motion - even the tail had stilled.

“You know the orders. Don’t touch him, don’t approach him.”

A pause.

“Unless we need to.”

The Polymanus subsided with a grumble, picking up his hand of cards and staring at it like it might have improved in his absence. The Scrik looked at Buddy for a few moments longer, before turning to look at the Zukaets.

“I want first crack at him,” she said, with a kind of intensity that made Buddy’s stomach lurch.

The Zukaets didn’t even look at her. “Of course. But not until we get the word.”

The Scrik nodded and returned to the card game with the Polymanus. She proceeded to win the next three hands, provoking a quietly bitter argument between the two about cheating, luck, and where counting cards fell on the line between the two. Through it all, the Zukaets sat quietly and observed Buddy.

“You do not seem worried.”

It was a statement not a question, but Buddy answered it anyway. “Should I be?”

The Zukaets’ tail lashed. “People who are kidnapped tend to be, whether or not they are eventually released.”

It got up and prowled into the ring of light that beamed directly down on the chair Buddy was tied to. It was close enough now that he could feel the warmth of its breath as it sniffed delicately at his shoulder and neck, and he shivered at the feeling. The fine hairs felt like spiderwebs on his skin, and he hated spiderwebs.

It was about time, anyway. “Maybe it’s because I know something you don’t know.”

The Zukaets pulled away from him, ears flattening and combat arms loosening in their usual positions.

“Oh?”

Buddy grinned as he felt the almost-subliminal vibration in his shoes of something fast approaching.

“Yeah.”

He leaned forward, almost conspiratorially.

“Vector would never leave his crew behind.”

An enormous truck crashed through the side of the warehouse, and Sasrael launched herself from the roof with guns blazing while the rest of the team wasn’t far behind. A very familiar grin flashed from behind the steering wheel, and Buddy had to laugh.

Vector sure knew how to make one hell of an entrance.

Vector was relaxing in his bunk when the first sign of trouble rocked the ship.

They had just left Tannersend Station after picking up some sorely needed supplies. The head of the place - a Valarena who insisted their name was Tanner - had been more than willing to waive port charges and taxes for docking the Fleece there after a protracted dogfight had disbanded the pirates preying on the place. Vector had no real problems with pirates who stole from the big corporations - his crew routinely robbed large corporations if they heard of unethical practices or other unsavory things about them - but the bullies who preyed upon the people who didn’t have much? Vector had no sympathy for them. If they were too cowardly to go for the targets who were actually worth stealing from, they had no business being pirates at all.

The Fleece had sustained some damage in the skirmish - not a lot, but enough to piss Johnny off - and along with some much-needed food and other niceties, they’d also purchased some spare engine parts Johnny claimed he could make work. There were a few drawbacks to living and working on a high-tech experimental ex-military ship, and getting replacement parts was one of them. Still, Vector had seen Johnny do more with less and so he’d bought the parts without comment and helped Hotpot and Johnny haul them down into the engine room.

Johnny had started work immediately, and Vector had gone up to talk to Mobius in the cockpit briefly before heading for his own room. The Blind Man had been using the bridge computers to test some new laser sequencing, but had set that aside long enough to lay in a new course and set the ship on its way. Vector’s trip back to his own room had been uneventful, and he’d been looking forward to a nap after the sweaty work of getting the new engine parts into the ship.

Loathe as he was to move, a slight shudder in the deckplates and a flickering of the lights in his quarters was enough to bring Vector rolling back up into an upright position. The press of a nearby button was all it took to activate the ship’s internal comms, and he flipped it over to the engine deck.

“Johnny, just felt something weird in my quarters. Everything going okay down there?”

He released the button, and the hiss of dead air was all that answered him for several long moments. Vector was about to press the button again when the static cut off into a very faint voice.

“Help…”

Vector was on his feet in an instant, adrenaline kicking any trace of weariness from his mind.

“Johnny?”

“help…”

“I’m on my way, hang on Johnny.”

Vector was out of his room in an instant, already tapping on his personal comm as he rushed through the narrow corridors of the ship.

“Addams and Hotpot to Engine room, now! Something’s wrong.”

Vector ignored the overlapping acknowledgements and questions from the rest of the team as he poured on the speed. There was only so fast you could go through corridors and down hatches that only just barely fit Sergio if he walked sideways, but Vector managed to get from the fore to the aft of the ship in record time.

Nothing was immediately obvious as he stepped into the engine room. No alarms blared, no mysterious fluids ran towards him in sinister rivulets. In fact, if he hadn’t heard the pain in Johnny’s voice, Vector wouldn’t have know there was anything wrong in the room at all. The lights were on, the spare parts crates were stacked neatly where he and Hotpot had put them - all except the last one, which had apparently been pulled off the stack since Vector had put it there.

“Johnny?” Vector called, taking a few cautious steps into the room. Nothing rose out of the reasonably well-lit room to bite, so he took a few more steps and called again.

“Johnny?”

“Here.”

Johnny’s voice was muffled, and tight with pain as it echoed from between two large metal boxes. Vector turned to try and jam himself in sideways between the two large metal boxes, but the instant he put any weight into the leftmost one, Johnny whimpered. Vector backed off immediately, and craned his head trying to see around the bulky piece of machinery.

“Johnny? What happened?”

Johnny groaned, and one of the units shifted and ground against the floor, the lights in the room flickering.

“Damn thing swung around when I was trying to replace one of the dynamic coils in this neutron condenser. Lift’s dead, this space-cursed thing is stuck half in and out of its moorings, and I’m starting to lose feeling in my arm.”

Metal ground on metal again, and a bitten-off curse came from where Vector was pretty sure Johnny was trapped.

“Any more questions you wanna ask?”

Vector covered his worry with a smirk that was completely wasted on the trapped engineer. “Oh, you know me. Never stop talking when I have a captive audience - and you’re about as captive as they come, until Hotpot and Addams get here anyway.”

There was a moment of silence from behind the box. “…You called Addams?”

Vector’s ears perked up. There was a note of something very interesting in Johnny’s voice when he said Addams’ name. If Vector hadn’t had the faintest suspicion before now, he might suspect that there was something going on there. And, of course, winding the suffering engineer up about it would distract Johnny from being slowly crushed by large machinery.

That was definitely the reason Vector faked a causal lean against a nearby wall that was, once again, totally wasted on Johnny. “Of course I called the medic, Johnny, you sounded like you were in quite a pickle.” He paused artfully for a moment, before continuing.

“Once we get you unpinned, she’ll definitely have to look you over. Maybe even do a full physical. Gotta check and make sure there’s nothing that might accidentally flare up later. Require another doctor’s visit.”

“Vector, kindly go take a long walk off a short pier,” Johnny wheezed, a definitely strangled tone to his voice.

Vector grinned in triumph, but didn’t get the chance to wind up Johnny any more as the door to the engine room whooshed open to reveal the hefty form of Hotpot, and the considerably more lithe form of Addams.

“Johnny!” she cried, a note beyond frantic in her voice, and Vector filed that away too. Seemed like Anything that happened might not be one-sided.

He waved to the other two. “Over here! He’s stuck behind that…thing,” he finished a little lamely, already having forgotten what Johnny’d called the large, square device.

Addams made a beeline straight for where Vector had indicated, managing not to jostle the big cabinet enough that Johnny complained - or, if she did, Johnny didn’t make a peep about it. Vector nodded to Hotpot and indicated he should take the other half of the big metal thing.

“Johnny, we’re getting ready to move this thing. Do you or us two need to do anything to make this work?”

“Huh? Oh. Oh! No, lemme just - ”

There was a soft ptang! and suddenly the box’s weight shifted into mostly Vector and Hotpot’s hands. Vector grunted, the soreness in his arms making a comeback with a vengeance. “Warn us next time, willya?” he gritted out as he and Hotpot carefully took one step away from the floor housing for the unit. Then another. Then-

“I’ve got him! Set down carefully!” Addams’ voice rang through the engine room, and Vector settled his half of the box down with a wheeze and spent a few minutes just breathing while his chest and arm muscles slowly unwound themselves.

“Well, at least now - ” Vector started to say as he turned towards the newly-revealed Johnny and Addams. The words died on his lips as the scene sank in. Addams had largely divested Johnny of his shirt - enough to expose his whole chest and most of his shoulders, but tangling his arms further down. The sweaty surface was marbled with darkening bruises that would have made Vector wince were it not for the fact that Addams was kissing Johnny senseless against the engine housing.

Vector snickered inaudibly and turned to gesture at Hotpot to follow him. As he and the alien quietly snuck out of the engine room, Vector leaned in close and spoke quietly.

“Looks like Sasrael takes the pot for ‘engine accident.’ New pots for how long they’ll stay together and/or when the wedding day will be go to Mobius. I give eight to one odds…”

Johnny sniffed and wiped his nose as he held tension on the torsion wrench. One of Vector’s fancier maneuvers in their most recent skirmish had knocked the main gravitic impellers out of alignment, and while the back-ups were doing a decent job for the moment, Johnny would rather have the main system online sooner rather than later. Of course, he’d’ve been finished re-aligning them twenty minutes ago if his void-begotten nose would stop dripping.

Nose dried - for the moment, he could feel it building back up again - Johnny grunted as he bounced and put his full weight on the wrench. With a ponderous screech that dove straight into the source of his headache and magnified it twenty-fold, the medium-sized but exceedingly dense component shifted back into its proper alignment. Johnny dropped the wrench and slumped to the floor for a moment, just breathing through the pain between his ears. Feeling a catch in his throat, he reached into one of the many pockets on his engineering overalls and pulled out a dented steel flask.

While Johnny wasn’t normally one for drinking while working - having a slowed reaction time while dealing with large and heavy objects was a surefire recipe for finding out how much replacement limbs cost - he’d found that the awful, oily swill Hoptpot preferred was a pretty decent cough suppressant. It was higher in alcohol than he’d like but it did the job he needed it to do and that was really all that mattered.

Johnny could feel his lips twisting at the terrible taste, but the stuff smoothed away the impending urge to cough and he made sure to wipe his mouth thoroughly before sealing the flask again. Huffing out a gusty sigh, he pushed himself to his feet as he stowed away the flask and spent a few moments getting back his equilibrium while his head swam. He was definitely going to use the water shower after he finished getting the Fleece back in perfect working order so he’d be ready for dinner with Addams later.

He sighed, sniffed, and reached for the calibration datapad beside him. While the impeller was back in place, now it had to be re-synced to its brethren in the other four corners of the engineering room. The programs were already up, but the syncing would take at least half an hour and he had other damage to repair - the main weapons system had taken a hit, which meant not only did the housing need to be replaced but the overflow buffers needed to be dumped and/or replaced and the whole system would also need calibration. That wasn’t even touching on the engine itself-

“Hey.”

Johnny nearly dropped the datapad when a hand settled onto his shoulder. Spinning far too fast to face the intruder into his sanctum, he wobbled as his somewhat compromised equilibrium struggled to keep him upright. Addams’ worried face swam into view as she steadied him, hor sleek golden hair glimmering in the harsh lights of engineering.

“Are you okay?”

Johnny winced away from the volume of her question, if not necessarily the content, and waved a careless hand as the furrow between her brows deepened.

“Yeah, yeah, ’m fine. Just finishin’ some repairs after that last fight with those pirates at Pierponte.” He tried fixing on the cheesy grin that never seemed to fail at making Addams smile in return. “Shouldn’t take me more'n a coupla hours, love. I didn’t forget our dinner plans.”

Running at the mouth wasn’t one of his usual flaws, but he couldn’t seem to stop - especially since Addams had only returned a perfunctory sort of smile instead of the usual light-up-her face look to his attempt at a grin. He didn’t stop her either, when she laid a happily cool hand on his forehead. He didn’t think re-aligning the impeller had been that strenuous, but he’d apparently managed to work up quite a sweat to go with his headache.

He sighed and leaned into the touch, suppressing a whine when she pulled her hand away. She switched her grip on his shoulder to a firm press of her hand about halfway down his back, and he’d taken a few steps before he belatedly realized she was steering away from the still-re-calibrating impeller.

Her grip strengthened when he tried to pull away. “Johnny, you should have come to me when you first starting feeling a little under the weather! Now we’re going straight to the medbay and you’re going to lie down while I give you a shot of something that should perk you right up.”

Johnny blinked at her a little stupidly. “How d'you know? I’m not even sick!”

She gave him a Look and he ducked his head. Okay, yes, the nose and the cough and the headache were all definite signs, but still-

“Unlike you, Charming was smart enough to come to me first when he started feeling a little down. I’m willing to bet you caught it from him before I fixed him up.”

Johnny sneezed, an effort that left him reeling while his ears rang. “Stupid cat,” he muttered mutinously.

Addams rolled her eyes before patting him on the arm with her free hand. “Look at it this way,” she said brightly “you’ll have me to yourself all evening! And probably tomorrow as well, depending on how long this takes to clear up.”

Johnny snorted. “At least it’s definitely just a cold,” he mumbled, half to himself.

Addams just patted his cheek, and didn’t answer. Neither did she object when Johnny slung his arm over her shoulders and leaned on her a little more heavily then he ought.

They spent the rest of the walk to the medbay in a warm, companionable silence.

Vector paused for a moment to glance around the corner. Seeing nothing out of place, he gestured for Sergio to move up behind the overflowing trash receptacle just across the alleyway. The big Krasqued moved with surprising grace for a being of his size; not a single discarded DynafoodTM wrapper rustled under his feet, nor did his heavy armor-like plating scrape against the wall when he settled into place.

Still, given how close they were to their target, Vector didn’t want to start getting careless. He counted off six breaths before he began his own move. Unlike Sergio, Vector was small enough to fit behind one of the municipal meters that rested at a somewhat cockeyed angle against the back of the seedy nightclub they were attempting to infiltrate.

Sasrael, Mobius, and Quick were already inside; while none of Vector’s crew were exactly low-profile, thanks to the various movies, associated toy-lines, cartoon spin-offs, and all around media circus that Sunfist Productions carefully curated for them, those three were the easiest to disguise. While Valarena could tell each other apart with ease, most other species relied on their carapace patterns to denote individuals and an hour or two with some bio-safe paint was enough to put Sasrael under the radar. Scrik were reasonably similar; most species identified them by their fur patterns and some dye was good enough get Quick in unnoticed.

Mobius, on the other hand, never needed to bother with disguises. His unique look had spawned copycats of every species and creed under the stars. Vector had even seen pictures of Mobius-style suits that had been modified to hold enthusiastic Sheemol, and he knew there were at least five Ettix who were in constant competition with each other to become the “best” Blind Man. Vector had never been sure if Mobius had done it on purpose, or if it had just been a side effect of what Mobius was, but the veritable swarms of wannabe-Blind Men meant that even when Mobius wasn’t undercover, you’d be likely to see at least one of him in any given nightclub - more if the club’s theme involved lasers in some way.

As it stood, Mobius was one of three Blind Men in their target club tonight - the other two were another human and a Polymanus Bifex - and neither Quick nor Sasrael had garnered a second glance from club security when they entered. Their job was to mingle until Vector and Sergio had moved into position. Once Vector gave the signal, they would start causing as much of a ruckus as they could manage - and Mobius alone could cause a great deal of ruckus - until the club owner came out of his office to deal with things. Vector and Sergio would get in, get the files they needed from the office’s data-terminal, and get out as quickly as possible. Both Hotpot and Charming were standing by to provide support for either team as the need arose.

The door at the rear of the night club opened, and Vector froze, not daring to look around to see if Sergio was doing the same. A Valarena stepped out of the club, holding two large bags of trash as it hummed a tune Vector didn’t recognize. It turned towards Sergio’s hiding spot, the two large bags of trash making the receptacle the obvious target. As it ambled down the alley, Vector spotted a glint of light along its antenna; in the next pool of light it stepped into, he saw the delicate wire filigree of the Valarena equivalent of headphones wrapped around them and breathed again for the first time since it had stepped out of the door.

The Valarena paused by the receptacle, looked it up and down and sighed. “Kure still hasn’t gotten this stupid thing fixed. One of these days, I’m just gonna quit I swear.” It spoke in the too-loud voice of someone who couldn’t hear themselves talk, and simply tossed the bags it had on top of the heap before turning back for the nightclub.

Vector held his breath again until the tall alien had stepped back inside the club and safely closed the door behind it, before turning and signaling to Sergio to move up again. The Krasqued did so silently, somehow managing to wedge himself behind the same municipal meter that Vector was taking cover behind without touching the wall, the meter, or Vector.

Sergio was the first person he’d recruited into his crew - well, “offered a job after being broken out of jail by him and shooting their way out of town” really, but it was much faster just to say “recruited” - and the taller alien approached almost every mission with the same kind of unshakable aplomb. He could be fussy about incredibly petty shit while they were off-duty, but when he was on mission, he was on mission. Most of the time.

Not this time; for all that he hadn’t slipped up yet, Vector could tell when something was bothering him - and something was definitely bothering him. His jaw was clenched, his eyes a particularly disquieting shade of blue-white, and he was leaving finger-indents on the grip of his weapon.

Vector clicked his tongue softly a couple times until Sergio’s eyes snapped to him.

“What’s the matter?” he asked his old friend as quietly as he could manage.

For a long moment, Sergio didn’t answer, looking around at the trash on the ground and the broken lights that only intermittently illuminated the narrow alleyway. When he finally spoke, it was in a voice that matched Vector’s in volume. “I had never thought to return to my old jurisdiction.”

There was something distinctly melancholy to his tone, which Vector couldn’t quite understand. Sergio had left Galactic Enforcement because his department had been rotten to the core. He’d been one of Vector’s crew of pirates for almost half again as long as he’d been law enforcement, and while he could get bitter about busting up corruption in government he hadn’t seemed dissatisfied with being part of the crew.

Still, Vector didn’t need to understand to do whatever he needed to to help. “You want to call the mission? Say the word, and we withdraw now.”

Sergio shook his head, the only noise coming from the flapping of his coat lapels at the violence of the motion. “No. We are clear to proceed,” he proclaimed with as much force as Vector had ever heard him use at a whisper volume.

Vector looked at him for a moment longer before nodding once and bringing his communicator to his mouth. “Here. Begin distraction.”

He didn’t get any verbal acknowledgement, but the meter in front of him juddered against the wall at some kind of impact and that was enough of a signal for Vector. Leaping out from behind the meter he ran the last few steps to the door, Sergio close on his heels. There was an access pad beside the door, but like most of the things in the alley it was grimy and in need of repair; the two suspiciously-clean buttons, pushed in sequence, were enough to get the thing open without any alarms going off.

As soon as the door slid open, a wall of sound hit Vector nearly hard enough to stagger him. The blasting music, heavy with bass, sounded - from the bits Vector could comprehend - like one of Mobius’ newest mixes, and was almost loud enough to drown out the screaming and yelling of some kind of fight going on. Even as Vector watched for a moment, two more individuals ran down the corridor the door opened into and out through to the bar area. Vector gave it another ten seconds, then slipped inside with Sergio hot on his heels.

The noise made it almost impossible to think, let alone speak, but Sergio had memorized the layout of the place and had insisted Vector do the same. They slipped up the corridor away from the pandemonium in the bar proper, bypassed a set of stairs that went up and paused at the top of a set of stairs that went down - a set of stairs that distinctly wasn’t on the official layouts. Vector traded a glance with Sergio and without a word both of them began making their way down the stairs.

The noise from the bar lowered abruptly as they made it to the bottom of the single flight; a quick look around was enough to find the high-grade noise suppression system threaded across the ceiling of the basement and connected to an active panel by the only door. Vector’s mouth thinned to a grim line, and he nodded Sergio into place on the other side of the door. Vector carefully drew one of his pistols, then looked over at Sergio. The Krasqued had pulled a stun blaster out of the depths of his coat, and was checking the charge. Apparently satisfied, he met Vector’s gaze and nodded.

Vector nodded back and counted down from three on his fingers. With his closed fist he hit the door controls and dove into a roll through the door. Coming up to one knee, he had to drop again when a ball of plasma whizzed uncomfortably close over his head.

“That’s far enough!”

Vector didn’t recognize the voice, but he heard the unmistakable clang of metal on Krasqued plating.

“Theo?”

Vector had never heard Sergio sound like that. Soft, somewhere between hope and dread, and younger than his years. Of all the words he might ever have used to describe his second-in-command - and longtime friend - vulnerable wasn’t one of them. Not on mission anyway, not when someone was shooting at them.

“Sergio.”

Vector looked up to see a Polymanus Trifex take a step toward them, a plasma shotgun cradled in two of his fists. It was pointed almost negligently at Vector, but the Polymanus only had eyes for Sergio.

“I thought you were…dead.”

The Polymanus - Theo, apparently - laughed without a trace of actual humor, and Vector took the opportunity to wiggle a little bit to the right - if he could get to the wall…

“You would think that. After all, you were the one who shot me.”

Sergio was silent for a long moment.

“You left me no choice.”

“No choice?” Theo’s voice grew louder with every word, bitterness mixing with anger into an ugly, hateful thing that twisted his words. “No CHOICE? We had the best close rate in the department, and you CHOSE to fuck that up!”

Sergio’s words ground like stone against stone.

“What we were doing was not justice. Was not right.”

Theo made a wild gesture with his free hand, his grip on the shotgun starting to shift more in Sergio’s direction.

“Who the fuck cares? It was in the law, and more importantly it’s what we were paid to do!”

Vector heard Sergio’s plating rasp against itself as he continued to subtly squirm out of the spray of the shotgun. He’d never seen Sergio so tense, not even when the Krasqued had broken him out of jail.

“I upheld the law because it was my duty to do so. I did not - do not - pick and choose the laws as they suit me. Murdering a man in his cell because someone with enough money wanted it to happen has not ever been nor will it ever be the law I enforce!”

Sergio was nearly shouting by the end of his speech, his basso profundo voice vibrating the floor underneath Vector’s stomach.

Theo seemed incensed by Sergio’s words, his shotgun coming up to point at the wall next to the door that Sergio was concealed behind.

“I thought I saw potential in you, partner,” he spat, the venom in his voice enough to curdle Vector’s stomach. “I thought you could handle the job. For years, we handled the job! We had a good thing going, and then you had to go and grow a conscience, and what do I get? One of my arms shot off and invalided out of the force. I coulda had anyone, everyone wanted to be my partner! I coulda been resting on a good nest egg right now, but no. Instead, I get Law and Order who leaves with a prisoner to become a pirate.”

He sneered, face twisting with bitterness. “Some lawman you are. Wish you’d never come to my precinct, but I’ll just have to settle for removing you from this one.”

Theo was fast with a shotgun.

Vector was faster with his blaster.

Dear
Captain
Vector,

By the time you read this, I’ll probably already be dead gone. I know what I’m doing, so don't do anything stupid come after me. I don’t want you guys to see you guys getting arrested on my behalf. I fucked up disobeyed orders, and I’ll accept the consequences.

I joined the military because I wanted to do the right thing. Now I have to wonder if I ever did. All my time in the military just felt like I was just waiting for something better. Sure, we did some things to help people, but it wasn’t until I joined your crew that I really felt like I was part of a family like I was making a difference. I love I’m gonna miss I’m sorry I’m so glad that I got to be part of this team. Playing cards with Hotpot and Sasrael, listening to Mobius’ music, poetry nights with Sergio and Maven - even Combing Days with Quick and Charming okay maybe I wont miss those.

I’m real grateful to you, Vector. You let me be part of something that actually made the galaxy better. But I gotta do this. I don't sorry I hope you understand.

Your Corporal Favorite kid Crewmate Friend,
Buddy

Vector sucked in a deep breath of stale air and brushed off the ice crystals that were forming on the sleeves of his heaviest jacket. They’d been adrift now for almost 84 hours, and the blank coldness of space was creeping in from the skin of the ship without the constant thrum of the engines to keep it at bay.

They’d been in a battle with Lars’ latest stolen-tech-toy had landed a lucky shot straight to the engine of the Golden Ram. Johnny had been lucky enough to get to his emergency exo-suit, but the bulkheads had come down to prevent the rest of the ship from losing air and had been locked into place by the loss of power. The only way Vector knew that Johnny was still alive and working was the clanged-out tap code he’d felt more than heard when he’d knocked desperately on the engine room door.

Vector knew Johnny had enough rations stashed around the engine room to last him at least a week, if not more, because Vector had stashed half of them there himself. Johnny was one of those men who would get so consumed by their work that they would forget to eat if it would take them away from what they were working on. Vector could only be grateful for the habit now, though the enforced inactivity on his own part chafed like sand in his shorts. With the bulkheads in place, no-one but Johnny could try and bring the engines back online.

Fortunately for all of them, it seemed like Lars’ own weapon had also blown out something on his own ship. Quick had reported seeing Lars’ shiny ship limp away venting gases and plasma; he had apparently been watching the whole thing through the armorcrys analog gun-spotter ports. He’d reported it heading spinwards at speeds about like an arthritic snail - which he had only reinforced with a shrug when Vector had pointed out that Terran snails didn’t even have bones.

Wherever Lars had gone to, he hadn’t come back in the last three days to finish the job and that was really all that mattered.

Vector stepped into the corridor and shoved his door closed with a grunt, sweat making clammy trails along the inside of his exo-suit. 32 hours without CO2 scrubbers had made the air inside the ship unbreathable to most of the crew, though it wasn’t until Buddy had nearly collapsed of anoxia that Vector had ordered everyone into their emergency exo-suits.

The suits were a stop-gap solution at best; while they were designed to keep a body alive for as long as possible, they had their limits. Vector had made sure to get the highest-quality kind he could find on the market for each species, but designs and ratings still varied. The human exo-suits he’d acquired were supposed to last seven days - the best of the best, as far as human exo-suit technology was concerned - but given the way his already smelled, he wasn’t very keen on the idea of spending another four days in it, and Johnny had to be worse off already.

Still, there wasn’t much else to be done, and Vector headed back up the corridor towards the heart of the ship.

While the engine was the beat kept the Ram moving, the room closest to the center was the galley. It was an odd shape, the cooking range separated from the main area by a short bar Vector had helped Hotpot install not long after the Polymanus had joined the crew. Made up of the leftover space between the cockpit, the sleeping areas, the medbay, and the engine room, there wasn’t a whole lot of wiggle room. The main seating area consisted of two tables that had received some damage while being put through the doors to get in, and just enough chairs for everyone to sit.

Vector couldn’t think of one time he’d walked into the mess area to find it completely empty; there was always someone, whether it was Hotpot working on the next meal, Mobius working on his next show, or one of the habitual insomniacs sitting at a table and playing solitaire, there was always someone. Now, with heat off in the ship, it was the best place to stay warm.

Vector rapped on the door and heard the shuffling of the mattress Sergio had dragged in to insulate the door. Said door opened a moment later, and Vector hurried through even as a waft of warm air rushed up to meet him. While still not overly warm, by the standards of the rest of the ship the galley was downright cozy. Hotpot sat in his usual seat, a large chair nearest the cooking area, with Sasrael on his lap. The Valarena dealt with the cold poorly as a species, and Sasrael was curled up as small as Vector had ever seen her in the safety of Hotpot’s arms.

Charming had forgone his usual chaise in favor of snaking his long body underneath the same table Hotpot sat at, pushing both three of the other chairs and the other table off to the side. His plush green fur was hidden by a sort of blanketing drape that he normally reserved for worlds with low ambient temperatures - while Zukat was a warm planet, and the Zukaets who stayed rarely wore cloth adornments, there were enough who left to make a decent market of Zukaets-specific clothing for all occasions. There were two extremely conspicuous lumps up where his stomach would be; with a quick glance around the room and a quick process of elimination, the two lumps were probably Quick and Sneaks - though which was which was impossible to tell.

Maven had chosen to go help Johnny as best could be managed. Ettix did not require atmosphere, and while Vector wasn’t sure how Maven had managed it the little alien had been the one responding to his tap code most recently. Things in the engine room were apparently better than they could be, but Maven had still notated between 6 and 12 hours before life support came back on.

Vector sighed and moved towards the chaise that took up one whole edge of the remaining table. Several lumps underneath the drift of blankets on it resolved into Addams, Mobius, and Buddy when he lifted a corner of cloth to slide his own way in. Behind him, Sergio slid the mattress back over the door and returned to the final, oversized chair at the table. Buddy made a plaintive whine when Vector shoved him over, but grudgingly made room as Vector settled himself onto the chaise and pulled the blankets back over them.

“What’s the word, Vector?”

Hotpot’s voice was quiet, though whether that was due to Sasrael in his arms or the question he was asking, Vector didn’t know. He shrugged.

“Maven’s out helping Johnny - don’t ask me how, I don’t think any of us really wants to know - and says that life support should come back online in about 12 hours.” With no engine noises, no pots clanging for food prep, and no other conversations to speak over, Vector found himself matching Hotpot’s quiet tone. “I don’t know about the rest of it. We’ll see, I guess.”

Hotpot nodded and leaned back, and silence once again cocooned the nine of them as they huddled together against the cold emptiness trying to leach the life from their bones.

Buddy cursed loudly and dropped down behind the upturned table Vector was currently using as cover.

Vector shot him a concerned look.

“You alright?” he called over a renewed hail of ion blasts. Buddy pulled the ripped sleeve of his shirt up and winced.

“Yeah fine, they just winged me,” he called back, holstering his gun to grab a handkerchief out of one of his many belt pouches.

Vector popped up and fired once, twice, then ducked down again as a slightly lessened rain of blasts battered the by now somewhat dented table. He looked over as Buddy began tying the square of cloth over the bleeding gouge in his arm, and shook his head.

“You know Addams is going to have to fix that up, right?” he said conversationally, like there weren’t almost a score of goons trying to ventilate them.

Buddy pulled a face and the knot, yanking it as tight as he could. “Does she have to? Her fixes always make me nauseous,” he complained, and Vector raised an eyebrow.

“Uh, think you mean nauseated, Buddy.”

Buddy snorted. “No, I mean nauseous - her meds give me the worst gas, and then everyone else gets sick!”

Vector laughed as Buddy unholstered his gun. A second later and a lull in the ion blasts had them both popping partially out of cover. Vector popped up straight and tall, looking heroic while one camera drone circled him at head height. Buddy, with the footprints of boot camp etched into his muscles, chose instead to roll to the side of the table and provide the smallest target possible to the other people with guns.

Vector’s guns boomed, one shot fully disintegrating one of the idiots with ion rifles while the other took out a decent chunk of wall that two others had been sheltering behind. Buddy’s gun barked six times in quick succession, two shots putting clean holes through exposed, gun-wielding hands while one of them glanced off some armorweave and the last three took down the gangsters Vector’s shot had exposed.

Both Vector and Buddy dropped back into cover in perfect sync as both curses and ammunition began flying their way again, and Buddy glanced over at Vector.

“Join the crew, you said! It’ll be fun, you said! Now we’re stuck behind a rapidly-deteriorating table in a fancy restaurant with a bunch of mobsters shooting at us!”

Vector considered for a moment, then grinned at him. “Bet you’ve never felt so alive!”

Buddy grinned back.

He sure did.