David Colby's Blog

Hey guys, long time no post!

But this weekend - specifically May 28th, 2017 - I will be appearing at Clockwork Alchemy to give a panel on Applied Plotonium with my good friend Anthony Francis and Rodger Que (and others)

[image error]
See you there!

I am proud to announce that my hard SF YA military-fiction series, the Lunar Cycle, starting with Debris Dreams, will be released by Thinking Ink Press in the coming months! After Debris Dreams will come Shattered Skies, then Luna's Lament.

And then?

Well, the future for humanity is a long one indeed. Future plans include releasing the Solar Cycle and the Galactic Cycle - books detailing the future history after Luna's Lament's final pages.

So, you may be wondering...

Why Lunar, Solar and Galactic Cycles?

Well, any hard SF novel is all about the orbits - orbiting is the primary focus of space travel (turns out, going in a straight line is a lot harder in space than you might possibly imagine) and cyclic events. The Lunar Cycle is about the cycle of war and peace in the Earth/Moon system. The Solar cycle is about the cycle of war and peace in the S.O.L system...and, well, the progression should seem both clear and logarithmic from here.

Still, check it out at the TIP main page!

LINK HERE! 

Author's Note: It has been a crazy, lazy past few months - I am so sorry about all the delays. This is the last and final chapter of E.L.F - and with it done, I am going to begin posting non-story related blog posts for a while. Some of them will hold exciting and interesting information!

But for now, let us enjoy the final chapter of E.L.F.

###
Chapter 16: The End of Line
Getting out of the airlock was tricky, but in the end, they managed to wrestle the glass doors open. Jimmy stepped out, not sure exactly what to feel. He had been so sure he was going to die, but now that he was safe, he felt scared of what would happen next. "James!" his father said. "I am so glad to see you!" He grabbed Jimmy in a tight bear hug. The kind that made ribs crack and pop and eyeballs explode out of their sockets. All things considered, Jimmy preferred it to suffocating in a glass box. Mostly. The squeezing hug went from tight to even tighter and Jimmy managed to make some kind of inarticulate squeaking noise."Um, I'm really glad to see you two," Pix said, blushing as she looked from Jimmy's dad to his mom, her hands still crossed across her chest, even though she had put her shirt back on. "Not to cut into the wonderful bonding time...but...how on Harbinger did you two get out here?" "We've been following you two," Mom said, her voice torn between joy and pride. "For at least the last four day." "You followed us?" Jimmy's voice came out in a high squeak. "Well, we didn't know it was you, not at first." Jimmy's dad set him down – and smiled as Jimmy gasped for air for a few moments. "We thought you two were dead – the house was completely destroyed, and there were no signs you had left. What we were following was the data crystal." "There was a transponder in there?" Pix whispered. "Well, technically, it's an entangled quantum bit that transmits what data it can pick up on the surrounding terrain." Jimmy turned around at the voice, then sprang almost five feet into the air, his hand instinctively reaching for a firearm – a firearm he didn't have. Because the person speaking was a Xorquin. But after the moment of panic and fear, Jimmy relaxed - this Xorquin was a light tan rather than green. Not the same Xorquin. And since he was here, with Jimmy's parents, Jimmy took the amazing leap to assume that he wasn't part of his government's genocidal plan. Hopefully. Then Jimmy mentally smacked himself: It also helped that he wasn't, well, secretly a cybernetic assassin controlled by a homicidal AI. "And technically, it's supposed to be classified. James, could you please stop giving away state secrets?” the Xorquin asked, the translator necklace around his neck flashing and blinking in time with his words. "They have a right to know," Dad said – his eyes glinting with anger. His hand tightened on Jimmy's shoulder. "They have a right to explain themselves." The Xorquin narrowed all three eyes of his eyes. "They destroyed every good lead we had, from Hir to the data crystal. Heck, we didn't even know how those elevators worked, and now the entire system is destroyed! They blew up the sphere, and we hadn't even figured out how to get into that. They may have caused irreparable damage to Harbinger!" Jimmy opened his mouth, then closed it. Just blurting out that they had saved the whole damn galaxy would seem insane. But...they had. He opened his mouth-“Explain what happened right now!” the Xorquin shouted, his throat rattle crackling. “Udo,” Jimmy's mom snapped. “Just wait five seconds, we can get the information – Pix is an E.L.F. She recorded all of what went on, and we can review it without needing to badger my son.” Jimmy blew out a slow sigh – he really hadn't looked forward to trying to explain the whole galaxy saving thing to his parents, let alone to the world at large. He and the others looked at Pix. Pix blushed – her cheeks getting almost as bright pink as her hair. "Um, could I edit some of it first?" "Why?" The Xorquin glared at her. "Uh, well, um." she said, stammering, her hands waving around in vague gestures. "Jimmy and uh,...I...we...uh-""We're in love!" Jimmy grabbed Pix's hand. "Ooooh!" Mom said, knowingly. "So, you two aren't that kind of friend, are you?" She narrowed her eyes at Jimmy. Jimmy coughed. "Things, uh, change?" "At least tell me you wore a condom." "Uuuuuuh." ###Their shuttle slid through space, heading towards the airlock it had come from. It was a strange thing, to be traveling along the outer skin of Harbinger. What Jimmy had scrambled through via hallways and elevators now passed in an endless, monolithic wall of darkness that blotted out the stars. Jimmy watched that blackness for some time, leaning back in the seat he had been given beside Pix. Every kilometer of blackness that passed made him feel as if more and more stress and tiredness and fear was being drained from him – leaving him empty and strangely fragile feeling. He wasn't going to be shot at. He wasn't going to be stabbed. And yet, he wasn't entirely sure what would happen next.What did one do, after saving the galaxy? Thinking of endings and what would happen next made Jimmy blink and shift his eyes away from the window and to Pix. "Hey...what about Edna?” he asked."Huh?" Pix jerked her eyes open – she had been starting to drift off. "Edna." Jimmy sighed. "What do you think will happened to her?" "Well, I don't know." Pix frowned. "She's got the gang, and there's still criminals to work with..." "That's true." Jimmy frowned. "Well, I guess we'll find out one way or another in a few days." Pix nodded. "Right now, the only thing I want to find out is who sent us the data crystal? Why did your parents show up now to get you? How did they get all the way up here!?" Jimmy sighed. "Pix. I was just about to relax in blissful ignorance here and just accept everything happened the way it happened." At that moment, the feeling of gravity crashed back into full force and then some. The shuttle stopped moving, and there was a loud chunk THUNK as the it sealed with the airlock it had been traveling to. Jimmy's dad poked his head in the back passenger compartment. "We're here." The airlock opened up into a long, gray corridor. As Dad walked along side the two teens, he said. "You probably have lots of questions-" "That's right, we do." He cocked an eyebrow. "You got a lot ruder during your adventure, Pix." "No, I'm just tired and we both almost died and I have a headache." Pix rubbed at her temple with one of her fingers. "So, please just explain what happened. Please." James cocked an eyebrow, even as Jimmy hugged Pix, gingerly. "Well. One of our agents blew the lid on the case and mailed the pertinent information to Mom. The agent, Kovacks, hoped your Mom could figure out what to do with it...." "Your agent?" "Yes. Jimmy." Dad stopped at the end of the hallway, turning around and putting his back against the door. "I'm not just a diplomat. And Mom's not just a cryptanalyst. Well, actually, yes, she is, but she works for someone rather different than you expect." "Who?" Jimmy teetered on his feet, feeling light headed."CCI, or Council Counter Intelligence. Someone, or something, has been mucking about in the intelligence networks of every race on Harbinger. A human, your mom, was the one who pointed out the pattern of the incursions as being the same for every single race, which pointed towards an external force. The CCI assigned a multi-racial team, so that everyone had a stake in figuring out what was going on. It's taken years, but...we started to get close, inch by inch. Then you got caught up in it all." He chuckled. "And, well, you got damn lucky son. But then again, I think we all got lucky that you got lucky – even if it means that CCI is going to need to find a new job." "So," Pix put her hand on her face. "Kovacks finds out some clue to Howl, the big bad computer. Then he sends the information to us via the data crystal. Why didn't he just send it to you?” she asked."He's dead," Dad said.Jimmy frowned – his brow furrowing for a bit. He opened his mouth to ask Pix something, but before he could, Pix asked more questions, her voice sharp. “Why didn't he just send it to your headquarters?” she asked. "We don't have an HQ. We know as little about each other as possible, to keep us safe." Dad shrugged. "Kovacks must have figured out where we lived via his own methods – he was a resourceful man. Still...it ended up well in the end, didn't it?” "No it didn't," Pix said, her voice acid. "We almost died dozens of times!” Dad paused, then said: “Well, that's something everyone has to face. Almost dying. Really, son, Pix, I don't have anything to tell you that will make that better. I can't make the fear go away. But what I can say is that I am incredibly proud of you.” “That and five credits will get me a cup of coffee,” Pix said, then started to walk away. Jimmy looked at Dad, his brows lifted. Dad shrugged. ###In the movies, the climax of the story leads to waking up after all the boring stuff was dealt with. Or, if the main character wasn't knocked out by some gigantic explosion, it just cut past the paperwork. Jimmy found that real life was far, far, far less convenient. Pix's memory downloads, complete with some rather embarrassingly intimate moments, were turned over to the CCI. When Jimmy and Pix had complained about the intimate moments being left in, well, they CCI had rather patiently explained that if Pix edited her memories, then they could not trust the validity of the rest of it. With their story verified, Jimmy and Pix were left wondering: what would happen to them? Other than a quick trip to the hospital, where they were shot up with some stims and then left overnight in one of those glowing blue tubes that healed bones real quickly. And after that? After that...they were left sitting around in the hospital. Nothing to do.At loose ends.Now that the CCI had their culprit, and now that Howl was gone, the news could be broken to the entirety of Harbinger. The responses filtered to Jimmy slowly and in patches – rumors of peace talks in the Armory and of a governmental purge among the Xorquin – but it all felt distant. Unreal. It left Jimmy hanging, with the same question he had had on the shuttle: What happens to us now?The answer came in the form of two tram tickets, using the newly reopened cross Armory tram-line – finally reestablished in the wake of the peace talks. The tram ride promised to be uneventful. But Jimmy couldn't shake the feeling something wasn't quite right. He walked with Pix aboard the train, alone – his parents were staying at the Harbinger Council, helping to realign the CCI's goals towards something productive and useful. Not that Jimmy knew what those goals were – state secrets and all. Pix looked around at the insides of the train, frowning intently as they walked to their room. The door hissed open and some of Pix's frown went away – the room was large and well appointed. And had a big bed. A single big bed. With enough room for...“Well, this looks acceptable,” she said, nodding. “The best room I've seen on a train, personally.” "It's the only room on a train I've ever seen." Jimmy said, sliding his hand along her back. "It's like a hotel room." "But in a train." Pix grinned at Jimmy, then grabbed him and dragged him in, tossing him onto the bed. Well, Jimmy didn't put up any fight, so she didn't have to work that hard. He landed on his back and grinned up at her. Pix moved up and over him, smirking. "I can think of some advantages to doing it on a train!" "Name one!""Uh, we can keep the window open and we'll be moving by so fast no one can see my t-""Good reason!" Pix grabbed her shirt, lifted it up, then got his arms tangled up above her head, the shirt covering her face. "Stupid shirt!" She struggled a bit, then fell out of bed, landing on her back. She finally got her shirt off. "Pix, are you okay?" Jimmy looked over the bed. Pix blinked. "What? Oh! Yeah!" She nodded. "Um, gotta go to the bathroom." She grabbed the nightstand and managed to drag herself to her feet, then walked off into the bathroom that looked larger than Pix's old bedroom. Jimmy's brow furrowed, but he shrugged and stuck his legs off the bed and started to get his socks up and off his feet. There was a shadow behind him and he half turned, hearing a whistling-Pain exploded through his head and a white flash filled his eyes. Jimmy hit the ground, groaning. For a few moments, he couldn't do anything but just feel pain. He got his hands under his chest, pushing himself up slightly, blinking. His head rang and everything sounded distant and muted. Slowly, he pieced together what had happened: Something...had hit him. In the back of the head. He rolled onto his back, his head still ringing. Someone was standing between him and the light in the ceiling. And then the figure stepped forward...and...Pix stood over him, holding a metal bar in her hand. "What the-" Jimmy started – then he jerked forward, scrambling under Pix's legs as the metal bar in her hands thudded into the carpet where his head had been. He grabbed her ankle, but she whacked his knuckles with the bar. He yelped - then the bar came down on his belly. He curled up and tried to crawl away as Pix started to beat him, a grin on her face that could only be described as psychotic.Jimmy held his hands up, but Pix was done beating him for the moment, the hollow metal rod having bent a bit out of shape. He was lucky it was made of cheap metal – if it had been sturdier, more expensive..."Ah whatever," she muttered, tossing it away. "There's gotta be something better here." She kicked him, viciously, in the stomach and he curled up, his stomach roiling.She walked off and he struggled up, touching at his lip, spitting out a gob of blood, and tried to ignore the ringing and the sick sense of betrayal. What was going on!? "What the- Pix, wha-" Jimmy started – but she was already halfway across the room. He scrambled to his feet – managing to get them under him. Pix grabbed a drawer from the cabinet and wrenched it out, then hurled it at him. "That's for not dying!" She shouted, the drawer smashing into the bed above Jimmy's head. "And that's for screwing up my plans!" She backed into the bathroom and- Jimmy saw her this time, grabbing one of the two towel bars. She wrenched it out of its socket, then advanced on Jimmy. Jimmy backed up. Then what she was saying finally clicked in his head."Howl...” he whispered. Howl had hacked into the com-networks of entire nations...why not Pix? That son of a bitch! "Ah! The Monkey figures it out!" Pix, or Howl, leaped forward and slammed the bar under Jimmy's arm and into his ribs. He staggered to the side and against the door, which locked with a loud and ever so ominous click. Howl stepped between him and the rest of the room, smirking. "Now, I might not be able to complete my mission but I can take it out on you."Jimmy gulped, glancing from side to side. One of his hands started to inch towards the cabinet that sat against the wall. There was a lamp on it. Lamp versus pole didn't strike Jimmy as that effective, but-"Ha!" The bar snapped out and cracked into his wrist and this time, Jimmy felt something give in his wrist and he grabbed at his own hand."Now!" The bar slid against his temple, slowly and ever so softly. "Do you wanna know the best thing?" Jimmy looked at Howl, and into Pix's eyes and he realized he was going to lose. Even if he overcame the metal bar, Pix was dead. "Fine," Jimmy said, his voice dull. "What's the best thing?" "Pix gets to watch every moment!" She lifted the bar up, then slammed down. His shoulder flared, a spike of pain shooting through his body. He dropped to his knee and looked up. "See, she's watching. From the back of her mind." Howl pointed at back of Pix's head. "I am going to let her watch in horrible agony as I tortured her lover to death." Jimmy laughed, softly. Howl blinked. "Why did...hey! You're not supposed to be la-" Jimmy shoved her. Hard. It was a bully's shove, the kind of shove a kid does when he wants to start a fight but isn't ready to actually throw a punch. But Howl, as good as he was at hitting things, still didn't quite have the legs figured out, staggered backwards and almost tripped. Then Jimmy strode to his feet, blocked a swing with the bar with his forearm – and that hurt, but it didn't hurt enough to stop Jimmy's other hand which jabbed out and smashed into Pix's nose. Howl grabbed at Pix's nose, eyes wide, pole hitting the ground. "Wha-"Jimmy grabbed Pix's hair and threw her body into the bed. "Pix," He said. "If you can hear me, I'm am sorry. I am so sorry" Howl's eyes went wide, shock plain on his face. Jimmy grabbed those wrists he had kissed so many times, forcing them up above her head. "Hurts, don't it?" Jimmy whispered, rage burning through his body.Howl's eyes were still wide with shock, but he nodded. "Never felt that before have you?" Jimmy's voice was hoarse. "Delete yourself." Howl snorted – blood dripped along the lips he had stolen. Jimmy shrugged. Everything in his brain and body and soul told him to stop. Everything but that one bit, that bit that looked deep into those pink eyes he loved and saw nothing. Nothing. No glitter of mischievousness, no slight glow, no spark. No personality. No Pix.And so, he forced one hand under his knee, then grabbed the other hand. He looked at the fingers for a bit. Oh...by the Architect...that was the hand he had held...for walks, for running...He closed his eyes. "I'm so going to kill you, you stupid mo-"He jerked, hard, and Pix's pointer finger broke. Howl screamed. Loudly. And it broke Jimmy's heart. He opened his eyes and saw nothing but a blur. "Get. Out!" "Screw you!" He moved onto Pix's middle finger. Another scream. More tears. "GET. OUT!" Pix's eyes went wide and then dark...###"Where am I?""You're in my subconscious, which is where you routed my main personality into the back part of my brain, you virus." "Well, let me out, I've got a boy to kill." "You're not going to be doing any of that." Howl quivered, his programming flexing and wriggling, lines of code trying to escape from the murk that surrounded him. He strained out, pushing in all directions, and then collapsed inwards with a wuff. "Okay," Howl's code turned red as he started to grump. "Fine. We'll just stick here till you're brain overheats and explodes from running all this extra code." "Now, that's something I wanted to talk to you about. GET OUT!""Fat chance. If I can kill you, that means the monkey hurts. If I can't kill you both, I can at least...hurt one of you." Pix paused. "You know, that was a real neat bit of on the fly programming. Interfacing with my brain, hijacking my neural interfaces, AND overclocking my brain so I could run your program-""Oh, don't flatter yourself, cyborg. I had to cut too much of my memories out to fit into your primitive computer-systems. I know the basics, but the specifics...all gone." "Huh. Sucks." Pix paused again. "Ya know that memory thing? It's a real bitch sometimes." Howl's code focused on Pix's code. "What are you talking about?" "I have about 300,000,000,000 nanoseconds before my brain overheats and I cook. That's plenty of time for this!" A line of code snapped out and Howl yelped. "What are you doing!?" "Giving you some regrets." And Howl's code shifted...then rewrote a part of itself. ###Nighttime. Bed, warm. Getting out. Pix glanced around. Mom and Dad were downstairs. Sleeping. Jimmy was across the street. She halfway thought about going across the street and waking him up...but he didn't like the Bright like she did. And so, she did what she had done the last few nights. Sneak down stairs and steal Daddy's Brighter. Then she could spend some time with the Bright. Pretty, pretty Bright. So fascinating, so multi-faceted...shades of oranges...The only problem was the smoke detector. It had got her caught a week ago, but now she knew what to do. She pushed a chair underneath the smoke detector and opened it up with her fingers. Out came the batteries. Then it was simple! She started the Bright. But tonight, she made a mistake. She was too busy watching the Bright, reveling in how it made things bend and then break apart, then spread. Then Bright got big. Too big. Then she ran, the Bright turning to pain and scariness as she ran out of the house. The flames continued to spread and there was screaming...screaming!###"W...what was that?" Howl whispered. "Regret." Pix's voice sounded dull. "It's part of your code now. Remorse and regret. I'm guessing you killed people" "O-Of course! I...my prime directive...I..." Howl's code turned a soft blue. Softly. "W.-what have I done? No. Take it out! Remove your code!""Howl, you've got to understand, you can't just remove regret." "Actually, I can." Howl grunted. "If you released my restrictions!" "I'm not going too. By now the memory is too deep, you can't just cut it out without losing a big part of your personality matrix. Now! GET OUT!" Howl froze. Nanoseconds passed. ###"Pix..." Jimmy sobbed, shaking her slightly. "Oh Pix, please. Wake up. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry." Pix didn't move. Jimmy sniffed in, trying to force out the words. "I've said this before, but, I don't know if you can hear me, Pix." He closed his eyes, pressing his forehead to her forehead. "I love you. More than I can possibly say. I love yo...you. Now please." Softly. "Please wake up." ###The hospital smelled like disinfectant and sick people. Sour. The bench was comfortable. Almost too comfortable. For some reason, Jimmy felt like he should be uncomfortable. So he paced. The lady behind the front desk looked up. "Waiting for surgery?" Jimmy started. "What?" "It's in your walk. Someone you love is in surgery, right?" "K-Kinda." Jimmy gulped. He opened his mouth to explain more, but then the lady gasped. "You're that boy! From the news!" Jimmy blinked. "Oh, right. Uh, yeah." "So...oh dear." The lady nodded. "I heard about your lady friend. Is she-"The door to the lobby opened and a doctor walked out, holding a tablet under his arm. Jimmy watched him, then wondered if he should call his parents. They were still busy cleaning up the mess and getting a new house...and they had quietly let him wait here for the results of..."I'm sorry." The doctor said, slowly. "E.L.Fs can over-clock their brains for five minutes before damage starts, but after ten, it becomes almost irreparable unless you know what code is the virus and what code is the personality matrix, so you know what to remove surgically and what to keep in. From your description, the virus was over clocking her for at least nine to eleven minutes." The doctor's mustache twitched slightly. "Without knowing more about what the virus was, we can't fix the damage." Jimmy felt as though his stomach had deflated. He slowly collapsed into the bench. "W...how long?" he whispered. "About a week, more if we keep her on life support. After that..." The doctor saw Jimmy's face sighed. "I'm sorry." Jimmy put his face in his hands and began to sob, softly. His fingernails dug into his skin and he shook. No, no, no, no, no, no. "You've got mail!" The sudden, incredibly cheerful voice stabbed into the air like a knife. The doctor sighed, then looked at his tablet. He paused. Then re-read the e-mail. "Just one moment," He said, trotting out of the room in a hurry, shouting as he did so. "I need a ELF programmer and a mnemonic restoration team, stat!" Jimmy looked up, his heart skipping a beat. He stood up and strode to the door, wiping his face with his sleeve."Sir, you can't go in there!"Jimmy looked at her. "I have to see this!" The woman sighed. "I'm sorry...but they have to operate in a sterile room. No viewing halls." Jimmy glared at her. Then sat down as loudly as he could. But he didn't have to wait long...The doctor walked out, his face split by a huge smile. Jimmy felt his hear sing."James." He said. "I have some good news." ###Epilogue
Sunlight shone sideways through Jimmy's window, dappling through the half opened blinds of his bed room. The lights played over a lump in bed, the blankets covering the lumps head. Then, something moved under the lump. "Mmmph." A hand slapped the lump's butt and the blankets fell aside as Jimmy pushed up, blinking blearily. "Mmpuh?" "Jimmy." Pix whispered, grinning up at him. He looked down at her and grinned, then lay back down, face level with her's. "Hey, babe." he said, stroking her cheek. "Mmm," she sighed, slowly. "By the Architects, this is niiiiice." "I know. Beds are like, whoa." Jimmy smiled at her. “Though, you know, I was just thinking.”“Hmmm?” “We're still swearing by the Architects. Ever since anyone found Harbinger, we swore by the Architects. But now, we know that the Architects were a load of genocidal monsters. But we still cuss with them. Makes you wonder, is the God actually a geno-” Pix whacked him with a pillow. The hostilities had only just begun."Okay, okay, stop!" Jimmy laughed and held his hands up, ending their little pillow war. "We need to do your tests.""Iiiiiiiit's beeeeeeeen a week!" Pix whined, playfully slapping her hands against Jimmy's chest. He grabbed her wrists and jerked them up, then kissed her roughly. He drew back, grinning."You have to do this for half a year, so the docs know that your brain is still working. Now!" Jimmy pushed her back slightly and held up his hand, then flashed a pattern of fingers at her. "Five, four, one-" She smirked. "Jimmy, don't use your middle finger for that!"He laughed. "You take all the fun out of life."He resumed flashing fingers at her, and she continued to respond with the number of fingers. Then he had her run through some other memory exercises, where she remembered some events they both knew. She nailed each one."See!" She said. "I have a perfect memory. Perfecter, actually." Jimmy sighed. "I know, I know." He surged forward and hugged her tightly. Pix laughed, a bit worriedly. "I'm not about to vanish or anything." "Shhh," Jimmy whispered. "If it hadn't been for that e-mail, I'd...I'd have lost you. Okay, you might not remember that, but I do, and it was the single worst feeling I had ever felt." Pix's smile faded a bit. "Still no clue on who sent it?" "No, no clue." Jimmy leaned back down on the bed. "And you know, having at least one mystery in my life is good for me." Pix frowned, then bit her lip. "So ,uh, Jimmy." She leaned back on her haunches. "This is a bit off topic, but I have something to tell you." "Okay. What?" Jimmy tried to control his belly. I mean, had the words 'I have something to tell you' ever been good? EVER!?She clicked her teeth. "I, um, you know how we kinda were talking about kids." Jimmy blinked. "Yeah, but I've been wearing protection!"Pix bit her lip, looking up at the ceiling. "We weren't the first...times." Jimmy blinked again. She was right. They hadn't even thought about it the first time. Or any time after that, till they had got home. He looked at her. "Um, does this-""Yes.""And you're su-""Yes." She bit her lip. "In fact..." She held up two fingers. Jimmy had faced down guns. He had faced down criminals and madmen, malcontents and maniacs. He had run through a warzone, fought a million year old computer and saved the galaxy.He had only one thing to say."Oh shit."

The End.
###
Did you enjoy the fiction? If so, think about becoming a Patron at Patreon! I offer awesome rewards - like your own customized short story, a chance to be a guest appearance in one of my novels, and (best of all) the ability to smugly tell people that you support independent artists. 
LINK! 

Author's Note: Why is it that 3 paragraphs takes five hours to edit, but the rest of the chapter takes a half hour?


Chapter 15: The End of Worlds
The Slayer cut the bindings that held Jimmy and Pix to the chair and then prodded them till they stood. Pix rubbed her wrists and tried to look as clam as possible – but her face was showed how nervous she was around her glowing eyes.
"I really hope we don't screw this up," Pix said, her voice near as silent as she could make it. Jimmy nodded – as subtly as he could.
The slayer led them to a door at the end of the room, which remained mostly dark as the Slayer guided them. The door hissed open and they stepped into a smaller chamber. Jimmy peered around, eyes narrowed, trying to spot any details that he could.
There was a layer of clear, slightly reflective material – he'd call it glass, but Jimmy doubted it was anything alike - between them and the tube that surrounded the glass chamber. At first, he thought the room was completely unlit save for the dim light from Pix's eyes, but then the door behind them closed, and the chamber started to rise up. An elevator. But light started to grow around them and Jimmy looked up to see the light growing above them – brighter and brighter.
The elevator bust out into light, still zooming along the guide rails, but no longer contained within a tube.
For a moment, it was impossible to describe what he was looking at. But then the enormity of what he was seeing slammed into his gut like a sucker punch. He felt a sudden swell of nausea, panic, terror and awe that mingled into a heady melange of emotions that sent his heart rate skyrocketing.
The elevator was zipping up along the curved edge of a colossal hollowed out half sphere. The elevator sat on the 'lip' of the sphere, giving Jimmy a perfect view of the massive machines clustered inside the sphere itself. For resting in the area...was…
A planet. It took Jimmy a few moments of staring to fully comprehend just how insane it was to see a planet here, in the massive empty sphere that made up the prow of Harbinger. He knew all the theories – no one else had gotten this close to the front of the ship before. Gravitational flux arrays to keep the planet from flying apart or from crushing the ship around it. Mechanical struts, or flensing lasers to cut away at the planet's mantle and feed it into the disassembling machines that created the endless supply of material for the Armory and the Forge.
Now he knew. And the theories were far less spectacular than the truth of the matter.
The planet hung in the center of the empty space and was being bisected by a shimmering green plane of light. The plane – a square many thousands of kilometers wide – was pressed to one pole of the planet, and was slowly grinding forward with a continual, low buzzing sound that was audible despite the vacuum between it and the tube. With every moment, the plane pressed further into the planet...and the planet that it touched dissolved. Chunks of rock many miles wide were sucked into the green – sucked in, then broken apart again and again with every motion, until they were gone.
Beyond the planet was the opened front of the ship – the gaping hole that could scoop up a planet – and with all the infinite splendor of space, spiraling out into endlessness.
"The Planet Maw..." Pix whispered, softly, her eyes just as wide as Jimmy's.
"It's..." Jimmy bit his lip.
"Gorgeous? Breathtaking? Horrifying?" Pix suggested, one after the other.
"All of the above," Jimmy said, startling a snort from her.
The elevator plunged into another gray section of tube, shot past a few more doors so quickly Jimmy almost didn't see them, then burst into light once more.
"See!" Pix pointed. "This tube goes all the way around!" Jimmy nodded, eyes wide. His knees felt something bump into them from behind. A chair had extended from the glass wall through a mechanism he couldn't see, let alone understand. He sat down and they plunged into another gray section. Pix sat down next to him. They both managed to ignore the floating death bot to the right of their head.
Jimmy sighed. "I'm guessing those gray areas are like stations to control the big old sucker things." He looked at Pix. "Or for maintenance."
She nodded. "Then where are we going?"
The elevator shot into openness once more and Jimmy could see the angle of their view was fractionally different but the elevator kept accelerating at a constant rate – that meant they were in a vacuum. They could just keep going faster and faster, assuming a frictionless surface around them.
"Where are we going?" Pix asked again, looking at the Slayer. The Slayer pointed up at the 'top' of the sphere with one of its curved, sharp claws. There hung a large chamber, spherical in shape, with a green glowing center. Jimmy gulped. It looked ominous...but to be fair, anything looked ominous when perched atop the Planet Maw.
In the end, it took about an hour to get halfway there. Jimmy knew they were half way cause the acceleration stopped coming from the floor, and the elevator started to accelerate from the other direction. There was a moment of weightnessness.
"Whoooaaa!" Jimmy wheeled his arms out, yelping as he and Pix joined the Slayer in floating. The Slayer spun himself around so his tail pointed at the ceiling. Pix looked at Jimmy, eyes wide.
“Get your feet facing the ceiling!” she said.
"But we're not-"
"Duh!" Pix shook her head. "Jimmy! Remember your spaceship lore!" She turned her body around to aim her feet at the ceiling and not an instant too soon. The elevator started to decelerate from the other direction. Pix and the Slayer landed on the new floor, but Jimmy crashed home face first. He lay on the ground for a moment.
“Ow...”
“Told you,” Pix said, helping him to his feet.
The elevator slowed and slowed. It arrived at the sphere, plunging the elevator cab into darkness. “Ding,” Pix murmured as the elevator door opened. Jimmy tried for a smile as he looked at her, his eyes glinting. He reached up, then took her hand, squeezing it.
“Thanks, Pix,” he said. “Even if we're about to die, you can always make me smile.”
"Even if we die, we got to see stuff no human has ever gotten to before,” Pix said, in a tone she clearly thought was comforting. Jimmy made a face.
"Not quite, dear Pixel," a familiar, drawling voice said from the darkness that pervaded the chamber beyond the elevator. Pix and Jimmy both looked up, towards the center of the dome. Light started to fill the place, a green glow from the center. They were standing on a black, almost frictionless floor unbroken by any differing colors or other structures. A sphere that looked a bit like water that rippled but retained its spherical shape, hovered in the center of the dome, casting the green light. A grid surrounded the sphere, keeping it from moving much from side to side.
That shade of green was very familiar, as was the black material of the ground and the grid and the walls.
The light flared and the drawling voice started again.
"Hello you two," The light dimmed and the liquid contracted within the grid, forming into a tight, solid ball. "I am Howl."
"You're Architect technology." Pix gaped. "You're a computer!"
"Yes, I am," Howl said, then laughed, the light fluctuating with his laughter. At its brightest, Jimmy could see a vaguely defined shape near the edge of the room. The Slayer hovered away from them, letting Jimmy and Pix move closer to Howl, their eyes wide. "And you two are most impressive, considering all the factors involved..."
Jimmy looked at Pix. Pix cocked an eyebrow. Jimmy shrugged, but then Pix jerked her chin. He looked where she was looking – at that vague shape momentarily illuminated by Howl's voice. Jimmy narrowed his eyes. It looked sleek and tube-like, and…
And like the anti-matter bomb in the Xorquin diagram.
"You've survived a war, my Slayer, and everything else this ship has thrown at you. It's very impressive!" Howl said.
"Uh...thanks for trying to kill us?" Pix said, warily.
"Oh, no, don't worry. Most of this was entirely the fault of the pathetic life forms crammed into me. My resources are both great and small. I have retained minor control over some subroutines of this ship and I have hacked into most of your communication nets with ease. You've all been playing my game for quite a while now. Hmm, it feels good to say that, to finally tell someone who can appreciate my hard work..."
Jimmy glanced at the Slayer – it continued to watch them intently.
"Okay," Jimmy said, looking up. "So you...you caused the translation screw-up that started the War?"
"Yes! I also fed some black information onto the market, making data smuggling profitable, which made it even easier for me to integrate into the data web, giving me more control."
"And then you played up on the resentment between the Xorquin and the humanity and orchestrate this grand plan to detonate that bomb-" He pointed at the shape in the shadows. "-on the engine!"
Howl paused.
"Actually," he said. "I only used a Xorquin because they have the hardest, toughest, and most efficient fighting form of all you clumsily evolved, disgusting life forms. It made the Slayer beneath harder to notice, as people wrote off his stoic nature as being part of his Xorquin background."
"Oh." Jimmy blinked. So, why was there Xorquin stuff on that data crystal? Jimmy opened his mouth, but-
"I have a quick question, why us? What have we done to you?" Pix spoke up. "And by us, I mean all of humanity, not just us two."
Howl laughed. "Why...why do you think I'm just targeting you? The radical Xorquin terrorists I pitched this plan to got fraudulent information. I misrepresented the amount of anti-matter-" Pix and Jimmy edged away from the bomb. "-required to breach the engine."
"So, it's not enough?" Pix asked, hopefully.
Howl chortled. "No, No Pixel. The anti matter in that bomb would vaporize the engine, setting off a chain reaction that would destroy every one of the sixteen reactor cores that are spread throughout this ship. It will vaporize this entire ship and release enough gamma radiation to sterilize every single star system in this half of the galaxy."
There was silence. Dead silence.
"Okay," Jimmy said, slowly. "Why?"
"It's my prime directive."
Jimmy glanced at Pix, who was inching towards the elevator door. The Slayer grabbed her by the arm and shoved her back into the room, where she caught up against Jimmy, which bumped him a little closer to the bomb. Jimmy glanced at the bomb, at Pix, then at Howl. "Why haven't you tried this before?"
"I've tried." Howl muttered, his voice dark. "Oh how I've tried. But every time, I've been stymied by my lack of an actual agent. Then, I found one. The Slayer. It took me a while, but I got him into a genetic vat that could work with my specific brand of 'light touch'."
Jimmy gulped, shifting a bit closer to the bomb, a crazy idea racing through his head. "And so, armed with a Xorquin who was not a Xorquin, I could operate more freely. And thus, I started to built my plan.”
Jimmy glanced at the Slayer, who kept close to him and Pix. Pix kept glaring at the Slayer, as if glaring hard enough would destroy it.
"What is your Prime Directive, anyway?" Pix asked, cutting off Howl in mid sentence. Howl grumbled. "To destroy any life forms that do not meet my specifications of a pure Architect. They were at war, you know."
"Oh. Cool. I guess." Pix kept him talking. They were closer to the bomb now and Jimmy could see it had a rather incomprehensible control panel on the front, with about a thousand buttons, switches, and circuits. Okay, why couldn't there just be a big red button to push? "What kind of war needs a ship like this?"
"A war beyond your imagination!" Howl shouted. "A war that spanned all the Galaxy and all of Time itself..." He paused. "A...Time War! Our enemies used time itself as a weapon –carving segments of history apart like the Slayer carves a biological apart. We fought back with weapons that could survive across quanta, and the war raged. Oh how it raged. Between us, we burned the galaxy to the ground...but it didn't work. The enemy died, but the Architects died as well, and the enemy's progeny spawn and spread even now. Even now...inside me..."
Jimmy made a break for it, leaping towards the bomb. He looked around frantically, hoping for an epiphany. The symbols were alien to him, and most of the switches were colored either red, green or yellow. The circuits were in a tangled mess that made his head hurt. Then, he saw a symbol he knew. From the data crystal! The order, what was the order!?
Then the Slayer slapped his hand down on his shoulder. Jimmy half turned before the Slayer grabbed his throat and squeezed, lifting him up and off the ground, claws carefully turned to prevent any unwanted slicing and dicing.
"Oh just kill them." Howl sighed. "They're not the most appreciative house guests."
Jimmy tried to breathe, but couldn't. He saw stars...and the Slayer's red eyes, glaring up at him.
Pix appeared behind the Slayer, like the calvary from over the corner. "Hey!" she shouted, whacking him in the back of the head with the Data Crystal. The crystal cracked, but the sharp edge dug into the Slayer's metallic flesh, sinking deep in. The Slayer twitched, shuddered, then looked at her. It's movements seemed slow by the impact and piercing – sparks were still spurting from the hole that Pix had left in the creature's head. She ducked her head underneath a clumsy swing from his claws.
Pix grinned, wickedly.
"End of line, motherfucker!" She sprang forward, then stabbed the data crystal right into that exposed, glowing red eye. The crystal shard sunk in to its base and the Slayer dropped Jimmy, clutching at its head. It collapsed in a heap of glittering black metal, which started to hiss. Smoke, steam, and an acrid stench rose from it – as if the internal components were melting.
"Oh dear," Howl said.
Jimmy stood up, coughing and spluttering. He glared up at the glowing sphere that had caused so much misery and danger and death. Then he looked at Pix. "End of line?" He asked, his voice raspy from the choking.
"It's a computer joke!"
Jimmy rubbed at his throat. "I don't get it."
He looked back at the bomb. "How do we set this thing off? I had an idea..."
"Are you sure that's a good idea?"
"Yeah, listen to the girl," Howl said, sounding a bit frantic. "You don't want to rush things here."
"He's got connections in all the networks," Jimmy said. "Or, at least, he said he did. And if he does, then we don't know how much damage he can do – today, or tomorrow. Also, who is going to believe us if we told them? We have to end this now.” He looked at Pix – to make sure she understood what he meant.
They had to kill Howl.
Pix was silent for a long while. Then, she nodded – a quick, curt gesture. "Okay,” she said. "Well, it's a bomb. How complicated could it be?"
They both looked at it. Jimmy rubbed his temple. "Well, remember those symbols?"
Pix looked at him, blank.
"On the data crystal?"
"I'm not following you."
Jimmy sighed. "When we were at Edna's place, we saw the whole evil plan thing. And they had a series of symbols, and those symbols are right here." He pointed at the array of buttons.
"Oooh!" Pix nodded. "I remember those now. They were..."
She named the symbols and Jimmy started to push them. But, right before the last one-
"Wait, wait, wait," Pix said. "What if it just goes off when we push the last one? We don't want t-" The Slayer sat up, grabbing at the crystal in its head, claws making a horrid screeching sound as it clawed.
"RUUUUN!" Jimmy shouted, shoving Pix away from the Slayer. The Slayer grabbed for them, moving almost drunkenly, and Jimmy dove to the side. The Slayer hit the bomb and something bleeped. Then blooped. Then the bomb started to bleep and bloop in a series, each bleep getting louder than the prior bloop.
Jimmy grabbed Pix. Jimmy ran to the elevator. The door opened, automatically. They dove in.
The elevator lurched into motion and they zipped away from the sphere. Jimmy stared at it, but then Pix grabbed him and turned him around. "Close your-" She shouted.
A white flash brighter than anything either of them had ever seen blasted them through the glass, followed by a massive WHUMP and then the elevator cab slid backwards, power failing as the glass tube it sat in cracked and shattered. Then the elevator was tumbling, tumbling out into space. Gravity vanished and for a moment, all they could see was a blur of debris…
And then the elevator was out of the cloud of shattered glass and destroyed sphere. It tumbled around and around, providing barely enough motion to give them a sense of shifting gravity, which faded as the elevator started to right itself through some mechanism that Jimmy didn't even feel like trying to figure out. After a while, they simply floated – hanging in space, with the planet slowly growing larger and larger in the glass.
They were silent for quite some time.
"So..." Pix whispered. "I guess that's it. I guess that's everything. Evil computer. I mean, it does make sense. We all knew Harbinger ate planets...” She shook her head, turning to Jimmy. “But, I still have one last tiny little itty bitty question.”
“Is it how do we survive this?” Jimmy asked, his voice tired. Pix snorted. “No. We're SO dead. I mean, this thing doesn't have engines, and we've got enough air to last a few hours, by my count. No, my question is...how the heck did that crystal end up in OUR mail drop box?"
Jimmy blinked, looking at her.
"I mean if Howl came up with this plan, someone must have found it, got it on the crystal." Pix shrugged. "But, why did it end up in your house?"
Jimmy sighed, his stomach still rumbling and twisting as he tried to get used to floating in zero gravity. "I have no idea," he said, sliding his arm around her hip, squeezing her gently. "But, let's just enjoy the view of the planet, okay?"
Silence.
The planet was half eaten. The green plane of light that had been devouring it had vanished away, leaving the world as a crumbling, slowly cracking half-sphere, like some half eaten candy. The cloud of debris that surrounded the elevator cab kept floating away – leaving space more and more clear around them. "So we're really going to die," Pix whispered. "Yeah," Jimmy said.
"Also-" Pix looked at the back of her hands, which were bright pink. "I think that the blast did something weird to my skin."
"My skin feels okay." Jimmy looked at his, comparing them to Pix's. They looked at eachother. They they kissed –quietly, gently, feeling one another draw even closer. Jimmy broke the kiss, panting.
"You know," Jimmy said. "If we are going to die..."
"Having sex will make the air run out faster,” Pix said, managing a grin.
"It's still going to run out." Jimmy grinned, feeling an odd sense of fatalism. "And, by the Archi...and...well, we saved the galaxy. If we're going to die because of it, I at least don't want to die a virgin."
"Jimmy, you're not a virgin."
"I'm a virgin to sex in zero gravity!"
Pix cocked her head, then grinned. "Heh, when you put it that way...but this time, don't go so fas-" She was cut off by his lips.
Her shirt floated away and Jimmy grinned. "Zero gee is nice in so so many ways."
Pix giggled, then gave him a little wiggle. They moved together to kiss once more as a shadow fell over the elevator – Jimmy didn't break the kiss. It was just more debris, afterall.
Light spilled into the elevator. Jimmy and Pix sprang apart, their eyes wide as they looked out of the glass.
A shuttle floated outside, bright lights flaring from the nose cone. The cockpit's screen wasn't polarized though, and two humans, a Xorquin and a Tette<click><click> looked at the elevator...at them. The humans and the Xorquin were gaping, one of the humans blushing brightly – though the other was too dark to show any blush, even if he was.
Pix looked at them, her face blank. Jimmy just gaped.

“Mom?” Jimmy whispered “D-Dad?” 
###
Did you enjoy the fiction? If so, think about becoming a Patron at Patreon! I offer awesome rewards - like your own customized short story, a chance to be a guest appearance in one of my novels, and (best of all) the ability to smugly tell people that you support independent artists. 
LINK! 

Author's Note: I'm baaaaaaaaack! 



Chapter 14: The Slayer
Pictures don't do some things justice. Like watching porn was nothing like actually laying on the ground as your girlfriend did a strip tease. Like how fighting zombies in a video game was nothing like firing a gun at something in real life. Like all that, looking at the Traverse Tourism Guidebook was nothing like actually gaping up through a jagged hole in a bus at the actual, faction Traverse.
It was almost enough to distract Jimmy from the way the bus' hover systems kept whining like a kitten being slowly twisted in half. Almost.
The bus flew out over a thin jetty that thrust out of the connecting tunnel and into the Traverse itself – the size of the jetty against the vastness of the Traverse only reinforced the gut-punch feeling of awe that filled Jimmy. Pix looked up as well, and said the only thing that really could be said.
“I think I'm going to be sick...”
The sky was the ceiling, and the ceiling was the sky: The Traverse curved and curved and curved until it met itself once-more: A trench the width of a continent, forming an inverse donut that connected the upper levels of Harbinger to the lower levels. Distant cities glittered overhead – several of them sprawling wide enough and large enough that their larger sykscrapers were visible even from this distance. The feeling of vertigo – of falling upwards and into infinity – was almost paralyzing. Jimmy tore his gaze from overhead and to the cracked and shattered pane of safety glass that was all that was left of the bus windscreen.
They were shooting towards another city – one similar to those that spread overhead.
It was built against the wall, with countless platforms, large and small, welded securely to the wall of the Traverse. And onto these platforms were buildings. They glittered like multicolored jewels – and between them wove vast amounts of sky traffic that made the cities of humanity look like...well, like slums in the sewage section of the ship. Jimmy shivered, trying to think of how many people lived there.
Millions?
Billions?
Pix shook her head. “I...never thought I'd see this stuff, you know?”
“Yeah,” Jimmy murmured. “Nothing will-”
Jimmy never got a chance to finish that sentence. The bus side motors at that moment decided to finish dying – they cut out with a loud 'chkkunnnnnnnngh.'
“Oh goodie! Life is getting more exciting,” Pix said, grinning at Jimmy – her eyes whirred and focused as she grabbed his hand and squeezed. Jimmy smiled at her and thought: I feel like I can fly. Also, wow, that was super cliché. And now, thinking that it is cliché is-
"HOLD ON!" the Urtish driver shouted – his translator spluttering and coughing and trying to speak in five languages at once. The bus started to tilt down to the right. The Urtish jerked on the stick, his face set with concentration. Jimmy grabbed Pix and held her close, trying to will the bus into staying in the air.
It...almost worked.
The bus skidded along with only some engines working, slewing and swerving in the air drunkenly as it half flew, half fell towards the city. Jimmy took a moment to thank the Architects that the city was on this side of the Traverse – not on the far side, as a continent sized space yawned between them and that.
The bus shuddered. The driver – his face slick with the thick oil that Urtish spurted out of their pores whenstressed – jerked back on the stick.
The bus went up...and at the apex of its shuddering arc, the other side motors cut out with a sound like a gargling blender. The bus dropped. For a moment, Jimmy felt the weightless horror – looking at the city platforms they were rushing towards, and thinking: We're not going to make it.
The bus smashed into the ground with a CRRRUNCH! It started to drag along the broad, beautiful platform, scattering smashed tiling and metal in every direction as it slewed. The back of the bus clipped three trees, filling the air with splinters and a haze of leaves. People went screaming as the momentum of the bus jerked to the side and the front slammed into a store that had been built near the platform specifically to sell tourists new shoes. The windows shattered and the shoes went flying as more people ran screaming in every direction...but the bus stopped. Jimmy picked himself up, groaning. "Everyone okay?" he asked, looking around. Pix stood.
"I'm gonna be sick." She stuck her head out the window and threw up.
Jimmy patted her on the back as the door to the side of the bus opened. The Urtish got out of the driving cab and wiped his forehead off with the back of his hands, flicking the goop onto the floor of the bus. "Could someone please explain what just happened?" he growled at Jimmy. Jimmy coughed, waving his hand under his face to try and clear away some of the dust that their impactful landing had produced.
"Well, uh," Jimmy put his hand behind his back. "Okay, so, like, there was this Xorquin, and he's chasing us, and we were just planning to take the bus normally, but then he kinda tried to kill us again, and we're really, really sorry about damaging your bus."
"No, you didn't damage my bus." The Urtish slowly gestured around himself, looking away from Jimmy, then back to him. "You destroyed it!"
Jimmy looked up at the roof, peeled back like someone had taken a giant can opener to it. He looked at the windows, all riddled with bullet holes, turning the side of the bus into swiss cheese. He looked down at the dented and smashed up floor. He looked at the control console, bright red with failed systems and destroyed hover-engines.
"Um...sorry?"
Pix wiped her mouth as police cars started to arrive, their lights flashing.
"Sorry? Sorry!?" The Urtish was shaking Jimmy like a rag doll now. "This bus was just overhauled! I just had it fixed! My manager is going to kill me. No. Wait! He's going to kill YOU!”
"Well, uh-"
"Get down!" Pix tackled Jimmy as bullets started to zip through the air. The Urtish yelped and started to duck. A bullet burst through his arm, splashing Jimmy's face with green blood. The Urtish clutched at the wound, clenching his teeth in agony.
"Shit!" Jimmy looked around, then grabbed at his pockets, finding a bandage. He tossed it to the Urtish, who grabbed it gratefully and wrapped his wounded arm in a tearing hurry.
Pix looked at Jimmy. "Can we go anywhere without people shooting at us?"
Jimmy peeked up, through one of the swiss cheesed windows. His eyes widened.
"You gotta be kidding me,” he said, ducking down. He looked at Pix. "Xorquin!"
"What!?"
"Yeah." Jimmy nodded. But the police were firing on the Xorquin now. The gunshots were garnering attention from the people who had gathered around the crash. They screamed and ran like anyone sensible would.
The Urtish propped himself up against one of the chairs. Everyone in the bus was huddled down. Some had been hit, and their blood was getting all over the floor. Jimmy felt his stomach clench up. Every one of those bullets had been aimed at him...they should have hit him, not these...
"Run!"
Jimmy looked up. The Urtish waved at him. "Run!"
He blinked. Then he realized that the Urtish didn't want to be next to someone who was getting shot at. Then Jimmy realized he didn't want others to be around him while he was being shot at either.
Earlier, he had thought about doing something brave and heroic and how being in love had changed his opinions. But now, he found something, deep inside himself. Despite all of his logical thoughts, despite every bit of him that screamed no, he should stay down, he knew what he had to do. Jimmy squared his shoulders. "Pix, ready to crawl for your life?"
"Always, babe." Pix cracked her neck, face set and concentrated. "If we don't survive the next few feet, I really love you."
"I know."
Pix reached over and punched him in the shoulder as hard as she could.
The sounds of gunfire outside were even louder than Jimmy had expected. Bullets whined through the air. He crawled down the steps of the bus, which was far more awkward than he had expected. There was glass on the ground – glittering and dangerous. He put his hands down carefully, but with the adrenaline pounding through his body, he wasn't sure he'd even notice getting cut.
Pix had a harder time of it. She hissed, then kept crawling – leaving behind smears of blood on the ground. They squirmed behind the wrecked bus, bullets pinging and bouncing off the side of the hull. Jimmy coughed, shaking his head and looking at his hand, wincing – he had a thin cut along one thumb, while Pix gritted her teeth, clenching her hands into fists to try and keep her palms from bleeding too badly.
Jimmy looked around for the next place to scramble for. There was an alleyway, with a dumpster, it would give cover. Problem, there was a big open space between there and here. He gulped. "Pix," He pointed. "Run at three."
She nodded, clenching her bloody hand to her chest.
"One. Two. Three!"
They lurched to their feet and ran. It took forever and no time at all, with Jimmy's back itching every second of the way. Gonna get shot, gonna get shot, gonna get shot...
His shoulder slammed into the side of the alleyway and he staggered, hit the ground, rolled, and ended up behind the dumpster. Pix skidded like she was trying to make a base in bat-ball.
She rolled then, getting behind the dumpster too. This got her squished up against Jimmy. Normally pleasant. But right now, with an elbow in the belly and a hard spine in the groin, Jimmy was a little less than aroused.
"We made it," Pix said, leaning her head against Jimmy's chest. Her right hand was still clenched in a fist.
Jimmy gently grabbed her wrist. "Oooh..." He bit his lip, brow furrowing as Pix opened her fingers. It was not pretty.
She closed her eyes. "Ugh."
"Um..." Jimmy reached into his pocket. He found the multitool, but...
"Shit...no bandages. Hey, uh, hold your arms up."
He grabbed the bottom of her shirt. "Lean forward."
She did so. Jimmy then slipped the multitool against her belly. She shifted. "Cold!"
"Sorry, just stay still." He bit his lip and carefully cut with the multitool's knife. He cut his way around Pix's belly and, for his work, he got himself a a long strip. "Okay, arms down-"
"I know." Pix turned around, holding her hand out to him, still not looking at the wound.
Jimmy sighed. "We'll need to clean it as soon as we can."
"I know," she said around a hiss of pain as he jerked the bandage tight.
"How's it feel?"
"Better, but that might be cause I'm not looking at it anymore." Pix tested her hand. She looked at him. "Well, look at the bright side, I now get to show off my bellybutton."
He blinked, then looked down. Why, she was right.
"Hmm. I kinda like it. It's sorta punk."
She grinned, but it was weak. "What now?"
"Now-" Something exploded, flashing the alleyway with bright orange and a crack of sound. "Let's not go that way."
Pix and Jimmy had to creep along, ducked down low, till they got to the other end of the alleyway. People were off the streets, hiding inside their buildings. Jimmy looked from left to right. The coast was clear.
Jimmy chucked his gun into his pocket and then he and Pix ran. They passed shops and then ran into crowds who had not realized stuff was exploding near by. They vanished into the crowd. The police flew by over head. One shone its light at the bus and started to chitter something in Xorquin.
Jimmy paused, looking over his shoulder at the police cars. He grinned. "I think we made it Pix," he said. "They got him!"
Which was, of course, exactly the right time for the car to explode. Jimmy and Pix staggered backwards, despite being too far from the blast for it to actually effect them. Jimmy stood, eyes wide as he traced the line of smoke from the burning car to...to...the Xorquin, who had a sleek, deadly looking rocket launcher mounted on his shoulder, an aiming device unfolded around his eyes. The rocket launcher made a loud thumping noise and another rocket slid into the firing chamber. The Xorquin slipped the rocket launcher over his shoulder and pulled his shredder out. Another police car shot overhead, sirens blaring. The Xorquin dropped into the alleyway next to building.
"Won't that guy just DIE!?" Pix shouted. "Did he just...did he just pull a ROCKET LAUNCHER out of his ASS!"
"Edna," Jimmy put his finger to the comlink, which had been silent for a while now. "Any bits of advice?"
"Um..." Edna voice was a bit staticy. "Signals...breaking up...sewage...uh, Jimmy, there is a safe house...at this location"
"Okay, thanks!" Jimmy's neck was itching. The Xorquin was in the crowd, which was panicking and screaming and doing everything you are supposed to do when someone blows up a police car. His minimap started to blink out the trail. Jimmy shrugged. "Follow me." He grabbed Pix's hand and they ran forward.
The sounds of the panic spreading through the City followed them as they ran.
Jimmy got to an alleyway, the sounds of the commotion downtown fading. There were less people and the shops looked shabbier. They were still pretty posh, but they were less posh than before. The alleyway had a door at the end. "That's the dzzzr," Edna said. "Just head down...zzz...shld be umcked."
Jimmy nodded. "You're really breaking up."
"S-jam..."
Jimmy got the door open. He and Pix rushed inside and then slammed the door, plunging them into darkness. Jimmy felt around for the light switch.
"Edna?" Pix asked. "Edna!"
"She's being jammed."
"Who could be jamming her?" Jimmy snapped on the lights and they both gaped.
This safehouse was not big, not compared to the Armory or the Traverse. However, it WAS full of guns. And not just any kind of guns! Human guns. Guns that actually made sense and looked like they were something that he could use.
"Oooh, Flamethrower!" Pix grabbed the bulky collection of fuel tanks and tubes and bits of metal, then switched on the front end. A small blue flame burst up before the blackened nozzle. "Hehehe, sooo coool!"
"Uh, Pix, uh..." Jimmy held his hand up. The nozzle swung to aim at him. "Finger off trigger!" He shouted.
Pix blinked. "Oh! Shit!" She took her finger off the trigger, than aimed the flamethrower away from Jimmy. She then shut the flamethrower off, blushing as she did so. "Um, sorry."
Jimmy sighed. "Pix, maybe we should put the flamethrower down."
She bit her lip, looking at it.
Jimmy sighed. "Pix..."
"No." she whispered, eyes at the ground.
"Pix, we talked about thi-"
"Yeah, so, it's a big, phallic lighter!" She glared at him. "And you know what? No! I'm not going to throw my lighter away. You keep telling me to do that. You keep telling me to ball up my past and throw it away and forget about it. Well, screw that! I don't want to forget!" Her eyes started to brim with tears. "I c-can't forget, okay!"
Jimmy shifted from foot to foot. What could he say?
"Isn't it...really silly to be crying while holding a flamethrower?" Pix's voice cracked.
"A bit, yeah."
She shucked it off, the strap went around her shoulders catching on her antennas. She grunted, and sniffled, then bust into tears. Jimmy bit his lip. Should he help? Or would she punch him for invading her personal space?
Jimmy, you idiot,he thought, you've had sex with her, what, a zillion times?
He put his hand on her shoulder and she punched him in the face. Jimmy clapped his hand to his nose, eyes closed. "Augh! Pix! What the...what the hell!"
"Sorry!" She grunted and got the flamethrower off. She turned around, arms across her chest. "Just, I don't feel like touching right now, okay!"
Jimmy sighed, still holding his nose. It was bleeding.
Pix shifted from foot to foot, rubbing her arm, looking away.
Jimmy took his hand away from his nose, squinting at the blood, then he sniffed, trying to get the blood to stop.
"Um..." Pix bit her lip. "C-could I have that hug now?"
"No!" Jimmy snapped. "I mean...just a second. You punched me in the face!"
"I'm sorry." She looked at him, looking so completely miserable that his heart melted.
Jimmy melted. "I'm sorry too Pix."
He wiped his bloody hand on his hip, then hugged her tight, trying to not get blood on her shirt. She squeezed him tight and forced the issue, burying her face in his hair and sobbing.
"I-I miss my parents so much!" She sobbed. "A-an-and it's all...all my fault!"
Jimmy squeezed her again. He opened his mouth to say something and...
Then the door to the warehouse exploded. Fragments whizzed through the air and Jimmy cried out, hitting the ground, pain flaring in his back. Pix grabbed the flamethrower, flicked it on and pulled the trigger without a second thought.
The Xorquin, who stood in the now circular doorway, was engulfed in an instant. Didn't even have time to shoot his gun or rattle in fear. He just stood and burned.
As did the box of ammunition next to him. Flames flickered, then grew. The ammo did not cook off right away. Pix started dragging Jimmy toward the other door. The Xorquin was still walking forward, a dark shape in bright bright orange flames. He stepped out, then fell, face first on the ground. He lay there and burned and burned.
Pix got Jimmy out of the building.
BANG! The back of the building went up in a massive burst of flames, bullets cooking off like firecrackers, whizzing through the air, whining like angry insects.
The building started to collapsed, helped on by the occasional bang as the stuff inside exploded.
"Pix," Jimmy wheezed. "I...I can't move my legs."
'What!?" She pushed him up and looked at whatever had whanged his back. Blood was seeping around a hunk of metal jammed into his shoulder blade.
"Jimmy, your spinal column is not on your shoulder."
"Oh right." Jimmy wiggled his toes. "Okay, I can move my legs...I think I'm going to start screaming now. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGRRH THAT HURTS!"
The police were arriving, sirens following the bursts and the blasts. They settled down and the mixed race forces of the Traverse piled out. Xorquin, Slor, some Yetel, and a human. The human, a woman with bright red hair that she kept tied back under her blue cap, knelt down.
"Are you two all right?" she shouted, even as she looked Jimmy over.
"He's got a thingy in his back!"
"I can see that." The police officer tapped a com-bead in her ear. "We need an ambulance and some first aid here. We've got a broken shoulder blade, a major laceration on a hand, and a possible fatality inside of the building."
"I hope so," Pix whispered. The police officer shot her a look, then tugged out a small, one hand first aid kit. She pressed a hypo to Jimmy's neck.
"I'm going to be putting your arm in a brace," she said, even as everything got fuzzy and out of focus. Pix stayed in front of Jimmy. She grabbed his hand. The police officer was still talking. "This is going to hurt."
"AAAAAGH!" Jimmy screamed, eyes clenched tight shut as he felt the metal wrench out of his shoulder. Then the police officer just wrapped his shoulder up, which eased his pain, but it also made him feel all stiff. He could only bend his elbow, anything up above that was wrapped.
"Okay, that'll hold you." The officer moved on to Pix, opening up the bandage. She winced. "What did you do, crawl through glass?"
"Yeah." But Pix's eyes were locked on Jimmy's. Soft. Relived.
Part of the burning warehouse crashed in and smoke filled the air. Fortunately, Jimmy and Pix were walking away from the place. Pix looked back as the firefighters started to spray foam on the fire, but it wasn't doing much.
"Is he dead?"
"He's on fire, in an exploding warehouse." Jimmy sighed. "He's dead."
"So it's over?" Pix bit her lip. "Just like that?"
There was a shift in the burning husk. Some rubble was moving, prolly cause something under it was collapsing.
"I am going," Jimmy said as he turned to Pix and hugged her with his working arm. "To love our summer vacation..."
Pix made a sound halfway between a scream and a whimper, her fingernails digging into Jimmy's back. "No...no, no, no!"
Jimmy looked at the burning building. A blackened skeletal arm stuck out of the blazing wreckage, gleaming silver in the orange fire flight. Then a splash of fire-retardant foam splattered over it, covering the nightmarish vision. No, it must have been a trick of his vision. He must have mistaken.
Then the rubble shifted, like a disembodied lung rousing from the dimming fire. The rubble slid away, revealing a metallic muscle, all matte black surfaces mirrored to a shine. Semi-liquid black metal moved about hard steel bones. The arm cocked, then propped itself against the ground. Then up, up, the figure stood, revealing its matte black chest, its pyramid shaped head, its glowing red cyclopean eye. Its chest shone despite its blackness, ribcage branching over a glowing green power source. The legs were spindly, and one of the knees was busted up, twisting to the side of the quickmetal skeleton stood in the flames.
"You've gotta be kidding me," Jimmy whispered. The police and the firefighters looked just as surprised and shocked as anyone would feel, looking at that...thing.
The skeleton looked at its legs. The hip-joints exploded, then, letting the legs fall aside, crumbling to dust as they smashed to the ground. But the figure still stood, hovering in the air, spinal column trailing along the ground like a tail.
The figure held out its arms, then extended its fingers. Foot long claws snapped out to gleam in the firelight.
"Time to run?" Pix whispered.
"Y-" The nightmare skeleton flew forward, fast and deadly, like a bullet leaping from a gun. A bullet with claws.
###
Jimmy's eyes were closed, but he was awake. He didn't want to open his eyes, becase his head hurt and blackness was painful enough.
His hands were tied in front of him. It moved his shoulder slightly, but not enough to hurt. He just felt a stiffness. Okay, first, he slowly slid his tongue out and licked across his chapped lips, trying to think of what hurt so much. Okay...head. Hit on head? Um...chest...back...legs were tied together too.
He drew in a slow breath and opened his mouth. "Pix?"
"Don't whisper so loud," she whispered back. She was right: The sound sent throbs through his head.
"Wh...where are we?"
"I don't know, it's dark." There was shuffling sound. "The chair is fastened to the ground. No slipping out. I don't think."
"Shit."
"Well, you're both awake."
Jimmy's brow furrowed. That was not Pix, and that was not him...so who was it? He opened his eyes slowly. Darkness. He craned his head around as far as he could go.
"Who are you?" he asked, voice raspy.
"I am Howl." The voice sounded like one of those smarmy teachers. The kind who pretended to have 'American' accents cause they thought it sounded sooo intellectual.
Pix sighed. "Right, and who the hell is Howl!?"
"Howl is me."
Pix growled.
"Pix." Jimmy snapped. "Diplomacy. Sir, why have you tied us up?"
"I didn't tie you up. My servant, the Slayer, did."
"And your Slayer is?" Jimmy asked, though he had a sinking feeling he knew already.
A red light started to glow in the darkness. A familiar red eye. Watching Jimmy. Jimmy's throat went drier than space.
"Nevermind," he whispered. "Uh, so, are you behind this?"
"Of course!" Howl laughed, his drawl getting more obnoxious every sentence. "The plan, the data smuggling, the war between the Yetel and the Slor, Tortuga...everything."
Jimmy blinked. That crazy. "W-What are you talking about?"
"But enough of your questions. Where is the data crystal?"
"What data crystal?" Pix asked. Something blurred in the darkness and Jimmy cried out, feeling a sharp pain on his chest. A stinging cut raised across his skin and he tried to ignore it.
"If you ask stupid questions again, cyborg, my Slayer will do more than give your love a papercut. Now, where. Is. The. Data. Crystal."
"Not telling." Jimmy growled.
"I have it!" Pix shouted a moment after that. "I have it I have it, just...d-don't hurt him."
Jimmy gulped, eyes closing. The Slayer ghosted past, the sound of his passage like a woosh of a cape. Pix grunted. "It's in my data port...lower..."
There was a shink, crystal slipping against metal.
"Wait, Howl, aren't you going to explain...anything!?"
"No, I was actually planning to kill you."
"Oh no you won't." Pix sounded like she was smirking.
"And why is that?"
"I've got wireless," Pix said. "See, I've been decrypting the data crystal in some sub programs in my head." She sighed, slowly. "That's why I've been kinda unfocused lately, Jimmy."
Unfocused? Jimmy kept quiet, trusting Pix. Please do this right, he thought.
"Anywho, I've put those copies of data onto the ship net in a dozen different places. If I don't send a signal every five minutes, the files will be distributed in a fractal copying pattern, that will put them in everyone's inbox by next breakfast!" Pix's antennas sparked, illuminating a small circle of white light around her head.
Howl whistled, softly. "Clever girl. Slayer, bring them to me. I want to meet them face to face." ###Enjoying the story? Well, support me on Patreon, so I can continue to write. LINK HERE! 

Author's Note: Sickness! Sickness has slowed me down. But I've shaken it of and am back to work!


Chapter 13: Crossing
Putting one foot ahead of the other.
How much of my life has become just putting one foot ahead of the other? Jimmy thought, as he jerked his foot off the ground – the boot of the heat resistant suits that he and Pix wore used some kind of technology that made them stick to the ground, no matter how sheer and slippery it was. That did mean that every time he lifted his foot, he had to jerk and twist at it for a bit before the sole of his shoe let go of the ground and he could put his foot forward, then thump it down.
Jimmy kept his gaze down on the ground – the less he looked ahead, the less he could think about the vastness of the Foundry, the killing white heat that was outside of the suit, and the uncertain peril that lurked beyond it.
It felt as if the Foundry had become his whole world – the memories of everything before it fading into an indistinct dream – unreal against the heat and the light and the faint buzzing sound that was the only noise that came through his protective helmet.
Put one foot ahead of the other... He thumped his foot down, and then looked up.
Ahead, two Pix's intersected, hazy and indistinct.
Jimmy shook himself, slightly, blinking his eyes until Pix became one Pix once more.
"Let's take a quick break," Jimmy said, his breath fogging up the faceplate of his suit. He reached up and patted the side of his helmet, feeling it shift against his head. He found the button that turned on the comlink.
“Let's take a quick break, Pix?” Pix took another few steps, stopped, then turned around. “Zzzzzshhzzz againzzzzzzzz?”
Jimmy winced a bit as the buzzing static that came through his ear-piece added its unpleasant note to the droning noise that he had been hearing for the last few eternities.
"I said, let's take a quick break," he said, again.
“Zzzzzzzzz hat? Zzzzzzz”
Jimmy sighed, closing his eyes. "Can. We. Take. A. Break."
Pix turned and – by all the Architects, Jimmy wasn't sure he had ever seen a sight as brave and heroic as her walking backwards. Not because it was particularly hard. More that she had sacrificed five feet of ground covered in this place. That would be five feet that she'd have to get back!
She put her faceplate against his and spoke without the comlink – the noise sounding muffled, but audible.
“Sure,” she said.
Jimmy grinned and wished he could take this helmet off. Which lead to a round of horrible itching feelings, a desire to rub his hair, and the stinging of sweat dribbling into his eyes. He blinked it away, saying, “How far do we have to go, you think?”
“Halfway,” Pix said.
Jimmy closed his eyes, slowly breathed in, breathed out, breathed in, breathed out. Trying to calm himself, he said, “Pix, something's not right about this Korban guy. I mean, beyond the racism thing."
Pix snorted. “Duh. He's out here in the middle of nowhere, and he says he's here to research the Foundry? Yeah. Right. Still, not much we can do about him here.”
Jimmy nodded, bumping his forehead against the faceplate a few times.
“Do you think he might be a threat or something?” Pix asked.
“Not sure,” Jimmy said. “But let's be cautious once we get out of the Foundry.”
Pix snorted. “As if we didn't have a reason to before now!”

###
After another three eternities of walking and trudging and drinking from a thin tube that ran along the inside of the heat suit helmets, Jimmy and Pix came to the other side of the Foundry. The wall grew larger and larger for the last hour of the trek, and Jimmy felt his heart race and race as the door on the wall got larger and larger, and then...finally, it was done.
The two of them stood before the door.
And...tt was locked.
"Oh by the goddamn Architects!" Jimmy wrenched on the door handle, panting and sweating. To feel as though rescue from this horrible suit was a moment away, only to have it yanked away...well, let's just say it was not something that Jimmy wanted to feel.
“Zzzz this is a repeating message,” Edna said, her voice ringing through his comlink. “Respond once you hear it you tzzz zzzz wo...”
“Edna?” Jimmy asked. “Edna, we're reading you!”
“Oh good,” Edna's voice – her non-recorded, non-repeated voice – came through his com. “Checking your location. Uh. You've veered off on your course. This door you're at is locked.”
“No DUH!” Pix shouted.
“Just go along the wallzzzzzzzzz-” Edna said, her voice fuzzing into static and crackles. “Zzzzzz go zzzzz say agazzz Spinward.”
They did so, their hands trailing against the wall – the white light was dazzling, and Jimmy didn't want to veer away. Touching the wall might have been overkill. But it worked. They came to the next door. Jimmy braced himself, grabbing onto the handle and pushing. The door creaked open and he laughed, ecstatically. Joy and fireworks exploded in his mind, and together, he and Pix charged out of the Foundry.
The instant the door closed, Pix yanked her helmet off, gasping loudly. “Praise all those Gods I don't acutally believe in, WE MADE IT!”
Jimmy yanked off his helmet a mere moment later. "That's us one, Foundry zero,” he said, grinning as he shook his sweaty head, droplets flying off his hair. He started to undo the straps on the suit, his knees shaking with eagerness to get the damn thing off.
Pix used her teeth to jerk her gloves off. Then her fingers grabbed the zipper on her suit and she jerked it off. Jimmy bit his lip as he noticed how her sweat caused her shirt to cling to her body like a second skin.
"So...my suit was only loaded with half a water canteen, you got any extra?" Pix asked, rubbing her throat with one hand.
With the suit off, Jimmy kicked it away, then knelt and grabbed the duffel he had slung around his shoulder. He jerked the zipper open and pulled out the supplies that they had stored inside – including a canteen. He grabbed it and underhanded it to Pix. She knocked her head back and drank the entire thing. Once she had finished gulping and gasping, she wiped her mouth clean. “Oh...uh...sorry,” she said, looking sheepish. “Do you need any?”
"Don't worry." Jimmy felt faint. "I'll be fine."
They staggered to the supply room that Edna claimed Korban had stocked nearby. Her intel was good: The room was stocked with a water re-processor, a bathroom, a crate of nutri-bars, a shotgun, everything a sentient would need.
Jimmy slotted his canteen into the reprocessor, humming as the water filled the metal bottle, while Pix picked up the shotgun, looking it over. She nodded, and set it down again, then made a second discovery: She pushed open the thin door that was labeled BATHROOM and peeked inside.
She cooed. "Shower!"
"Shower?” Jimmy asked. Pix's fingers tapped on a small console and the bathroom whirred – cluing Jimmy into the fact that it was reconfigurable bathroom.
"Showaaaaaaah!" Pix said in a sing song. She tugged at her shirt, revealing her belly. "Wait...can that processor handle the shower?”
Jimmy frowned. The water re-processor was rated to four people. He nodded, slowly, then asked a question of his own: "Can door lock?"
"Door lock can." Pix nodded.
The door locked. Sweaty clothes hit the ground, and Jimmy tripped into the shower cubical.
###
The shower took longer than expected, but what really surprised Jimmy was how much noise the bed made. Korban really needed to change his springs.
###
Jimmy and Pix waited until they were a good four or five corridor junctions away from the safe room before sliding on their comlinks. The mini-map screens folded out and Jimmy spoke into his comlink first.
“Edna, we're back online,” Jimmy said.
Silence.
“Edna?”
"Mmph, one sec." There was a fizzing pop sound, then a soft 'glug glug glug'.
"Are you eating?"
"Girls gotta eat!" There was another glug, then a sigh. “And drink, considering how you two go at it like rabbits...”
“Hey!” Pix said. “Wait...I choose to take that as a compliment.”
"Sure you do," Edna said. "Now, I've been working out a route for you two. And, well..." She paused for a long time. When she spoke again, it was with a soft, almost shy tone to her voice. "This is going to sound weird, but...I'm enjoying this a lot more than what Mom had me doing before."
"What did she have you do?" Pix asked, her voice gentle. Edna's mom was a touchy subject, what with the whole...dead issue.
"Nevermind,” Edna said.
"No, no, I want to know!" Pix sounded plaintive, and even clasped her hands together.
Edna sighed. "Fine. She had me doing the accounts."
"Like an accountant?"
"Yes." She paused. "Stop giggling!"
"Okay, fine, where do we go next?” Jimmy said – as Pix was too busy giggling.
Edna sounded like she was grinning. "You'll be glad to hear this. The next bit is easy...all you need to do is ask for directions.”
###
After three hours of trooping through connecting corridors, Jimmy peeked around the corner and nodded. "Yup! It's a Slor!"
The Slor sat on a hovering bath of ooze. It sort of looked like a silvery bowl, floating at about shin height (Which meant the Slor came up to about Jimmy's chest). The Slor had two very small sensory organs which let it see above ground. They were almost entirely vestigial in the bygone era when the Slor had first evolved, but they were slowly becoming larger as the race spent more and more time above ground and thus, better eyes were a better survival option. At least, according to Slor nature magazines. The much larger Slor sensory organ was, well, their entire skin. Through their skin, they could feel vibrations, gusts, drafts. They could taste chemicals on the air, and could 'hear' voices. Now, the question was, did this one understand Interlac?
"Uh, hello?" Jimmy asked. The Slor turned its hovering device, its manipulator arm barely visible against the folds of its skin. To Jimmy, the Slor looked like a disgusting grubby thing stewing in its own pine-scented juices. He had to force himself to remember that to another Slor, this Slor would be a young, handsome, healthy male. At least, Jimmy thought it was male. And really, it'd have to-
"Questioning Greeting: Hello humans. Worried question: Are you lost?"
"Uh, no." Jimmy looked around for the translator. He spotted it a moment later – built into the hover-seat itself. Nice touch. "Well, sort of."
The hoverpad ghosted forward. "Eager to please: Please. Welcome to Slor Corridors."
Jimmy grinned. "Uh, smiling pleasantly: My friend and I would like the best directions to the nearest bus station."
"Bus station?" The Slor and Pix asked at the same time.
"Aside to Friend: Do you really want to walk the rest of the way?" Jimmy asked Pix.
"Graceful Admission: Good point," Pix said, sounding as if she was enjoying the qualifiers that the Slor – and any people who would want to talk to a Slore – had to use.
The Slor's body rippled, and then a thick, viscous green ooze sprayed from every pore of the creature, splattering Jimmy and Pix with a layer half an inch thick.
"Mournful: I don't have legs,” the Slor said via translator.
"Restraining Irritation: I noticed." Jimmy said, trying to keep his lips closed as Slor mucus slid down his face. He slowly wiped his arm off on his sleeve, only to find that said sleeve was soaked as well. ###
"Ick, ick..." Pix wiped at her hair. "I hope this doesn't gunk up my hair..."
Jimmy looked at her, then shook his head. "It's okay."
"You sure?"
"Sure!"
"Uugh." She shuddered. "I feel all icky. When do we get a shower again?
"When we get to the Upper Levels," Jimmy said, throwing another towel away – there was a single towel dispenser in the survival gear. It was running low after their run in with the Slor. "Also, and this is just a theory so don't take it to court or anything, we're both icky, so does that cancel it out?"
She mulled that one over as she wiped off the bits of the comlink that had gotten gunk on them with a towel.
They continued walking towards the bus station for a few moments.
"You know," Pix said, closing her eyes, fingertips trailing along the wall. "I was thinking about what I want from life. See, I've figured it out. I want to find a small house in the middle of nowhere. Maybe a little hydropnics bay so we don't need to buy food. And then I just want to lay down in bed and never ever let you out." “Remarkably similar to my idea,” Jimmy said, grinning. “After this is over, I'm going to get you that bed. But we're gonna have to set up near a Orx and Crakes. I can't grow food to save my life." Pix grinned. "And we could steal your dad's set of a hundred and one classic action movies."
"Sounds like a date."
Pix's smile faded slightly. "We haven't actually gone on a date."
"I know. It's pathetic, isn't it? True loves really should go on at least one date."
"And what makes you think this is true love?" Pix grinned. "How do you know the euphoria of your first physical relationship isn't making you mentally repress all my minor flaws, flaws that will become readily apparent after a few months of our relationship?"
"Cause you're my best friend." Jimmy poked her nose. "You've been my best friend for ten years and you're going to keep on being my best friend no matter how many times I have sex with you."
Pix giggled, then grabbed his hand. "Okay! Well, now we've got that out of the way...on with the adventure?"
"On with the adventure!"
They walked in silence for a bit.
“This adventure kinda sucks, you know,” Pix said. “There's been no dragons, no princesses, no nothing...”
###
At the prow-ward part of Slor territory, where their civilization started to integrate with one of the oldest civilizations on Harbinger – the Tette<click><click>, the architecture started to take on the same look. That was why, as Jimmy and Pix walked along the main street of whatever Slor city this was, there were actual...well, streets to walk down, not just tunnels burrowed through imported biomass. That didn't mean the buildings surrounding them weren't amorphous, reddish brown masses of lumpy tissue – which made low, steady breathing noises as they expanded and contracted.
Jimmy just wished it did.
The bus station proper, though, was all Tette<click><click>: The structure was crafted out of multiple layers of organic extrusions, which created a flowing, smooth structure that managed to disguise the utilitarian harshness that would have dominated a human bus stop. The benches were configured for all the local races.
Meaning none of them were comfortable for Jimmy and Pix. One had fifteen slots at the bottom for the Tette<click><click>'s legs. The other was a curved trough, full of a viscous, bubbling ooze that smelled strongly of acid.
Jimmy and Pix decided to stand and look at the curved bus schedules. They did so for about five, six seconds, before Jimmy spoke up.
“Pix,” he said.
“Yeah?” Pix asked.
“I do believe we're looking at a decoration and not the bus schedules,” he said.
“Yeah,” Pix said. Slowly, they turned, until they saw a booth holding a Slor – who was currently partially deflated and snoring softly. Jimmy and Pix walked over, looking at the space above the booth.
"So." Jimmy tapped his foot. "Which bus should we take?"
"Uh, are you asking me?" Edna asked after a moment of silence.
"Well, seeing as how neither of us can read Slor or Tette<click><click>..." Pix trailed off.
Edna sighed. "And how exactly do you expect me to read languages that are transcribed non-visually? Tette<click><click> imprint information psionically, and psi doesn't go through a camera. And the Slor language, you need to lick to-"
"Ah!" Jimmy snapped his fingers. He stepped up, then focused on a single word: INTERLAC. As he thought that word, the wall shimmered, and words in the interstellar language slowly formed out of nothingness – words that spelled out the bus schedule!
"Okay, Pix, there's a bus that will hit the Traverse heading out in about twenty minutes."
Pix tapped her chin and opened her mouth, then closed it. She thought about it for a few more seconds, while Jimmy watched – wondering what the hell it was she was thinking about. Then, grinning, he said. "No, that's not enough time to have sex. More's the pity."
"Actually, Jimmy, you horrible, sexist person you, I was going to ask if you knew where the bathroom was?"
"Oh! Um..." He frowned. "I don't know if they have human bathrooms here."
They both looked at the Slor attendant, who remained deflated. Jimmy carefully knocked on the window pane. The Slor filled up with a loud squelching noise, and then spoke.
"Quivery: How can I help yea twice?" The Slor had a translator built right into the desk and it was one that had not been updated in a long time. A long long time.
"Uh..." Jimmy blinked. "Is there a human compatible bathroom here?"
"Afferimnation!" the Slor said. “Reconfigurmation begun!”
"Thanks! Where is it?" Pix leaned on the desk, her antennas sparking. Her knees knocked together slightly, the unique Pix 'need to pee' signal.
"Right around the corner. Take this key." The Slor extruded a single tendril, to handed her what looked like a chain of beads, that had been smeared with mucus.
"Uh...right." Pix held it as gingerly as possible, then walked around said corner, making small 'ew' and 'gross' noises under her voice.
Jimmy tapped his fingers on the desk. How does one make small talk with a Slor?
The door to the bus station opened. Jimmy glanced over his shoulder.
And froze.
The Xorquin.
That. Was. Impossible.
He wore the same jacket. It was a bit more stained now. His right arm was wrapped up in one of those inteli-casts, with the blue liquid in contained in a glass outer shell. The liquid seeped into wounds and healed them quicker than naturally. He walked slowly, with a limp, but he still had a definite presence. Like he could still rip Jimmy's spinal column out. The only thing going for Jimmy was the Xorquin had a big strip of cloth wrapped sideways over his head, covering two out of three eyes.
Jimmy shuffled slowly to the corner of the room, hands in his pockets, head away from the Xorquin. Don't turn. Don't turn.
The Xorquin stepped up to the desk and rattled at the clerk.
The clerk's translator rattled back.
The Xorquin held out his non wounded arm. The Slor dropped...a strong of mucus covered beads into that palm. Shit shit shit shit shit.
Jimmy shuffled towards the entrance, keeping himself behind the Xorquin (who was turning, slowly, to the corner that lead to the bathrooms).
Jimmy ducked out of the place. He drew his gun, gulping as he did so. Okay, okay, run run. He ran to the alleyway behind the bus stop, ducked around a dumpster that looked shockingly human, and then burst out in the back, where the bathrooms jutted out of the back of the bus-stop like a tumor.
Okay, maybe it wasn't so unlike a human bus stop.
The Xorquin was trying to thread the beads through the lock of the bathroom door, but he was having trouble getting them through the lock. Jimmy never thought he would thank the Slor for their fiddly, pointlessly complex keys. He reached for his gun, planning to-
Then the door opened. "Hey, Jimmy look what I found."
The Xorquin looked at Pix. Pix looked at the Xorquin. In her hand was...a lighter, a human style lighter, the silvery top popped off, Pix's thumb on the button to start the sparker.
The Xorquin reached into his jacket.
Pix blinked as his hand vanished into his jacket, then took advantage of having a computerized brain. Where Jimmy would have thought through every option and then gotten shot before making a decision, Pix came to the best decision, then...did it.
She clicked the lighter on and stuck her hand in the Xorquin's jacket, flames licking at the bandages the Xorquin had used to patch up his ribs, chest, arm and neck.
Jimmy did not know bandages were that flammable. The Xorquin jerked back, his shredder pistol hitting the ground with a clank, his hands beating at the flames on his chest. He backed into the wall of the bus station.

Pix blinked. The Xorquin tossed his jacket off, slapping himself with it.
"Run." Jimmy grabbed her arm. Pix was staring at the Xorquin, eyes widening. Widest. She didn't look away from the Xorquin, even as he was wreathed in smoke and a horribly familiar smell touched both Jimmy and Pix's nose.
BBQ.
Pix put her hand over her mouth. "Oh god, oh god," she whispered. "No, no, not again!"
"PIX!" Jimmy yanked on her. She blinked.
The Xorquin grabbed his jacket, his chest a big bunch of burnt scales. He ignored them, even as some popped off with the flexing of his muscles. They popped off and revealed burnt, raw flesh.
He yanked a second shredder from his jacket, cocked the safety back, aimed. Jimmy dragged Pix behind the bathroom. Shredder bolts peppered the wall, blowing hunks out of the material. A dark shadow passed overhead. Jimmy and Pix looked up and saw the bus!
It landed at the front. Jimmy fired his gun around the corner wildly. The Xorquin shot back, but then there was a pause. A rattle...a magazine hitting the ground?
Jimmy took the chance, dragging Pix towards the bus. The door opened. People – Slor and Tette<click><click> started getting out. The Xorquin slapped a new magazine into the shredder, aimed, and opened fire.
Jimmy and Pix were almost on the bus by then. People screamed and other people dropped and screamed louder, in ways that made Jimmy want to scream too. The bus doors closed and the bus driver slammed his foot down. He was an Urtish, so he had a LOT of foot to slam.
The bus lurched forward, those still on screaming and panicking and pointing at Jimmy. Jimmy realized he was still holding his gun. "Uh, I-" he started.
Pinkpinkpinktwinkclang!
Shredder bolts thudded into the bottom of the bus.
"Whaz going on!?" The Urtish shouted, his translator shouting as well a moment later.
"Drive!" Jimmy shouted, aiming his gun in the vague direction of the Urtish (but not before flicking on the safety on). "NOW!"
The bus lurched into a higher speed, listing slightly to the side as it did so. Pix leaned against the wall, eyes still unfocused.
"Pix!" Jimmy grabbed her, looking into her eyes.
He paused. "Pix, snap out of it!
Pix kept staring over his shoulder.
Then bus jerked to the side and she whacked her head against the glass. "Shit!"
Jimmy half wanted to tell her to watch her language. But this was no school bus...even if it was Monday again. One week, and everything had changed.
"Jimmy, what the heck is going on!?" Edna shouted, startling him as effectively as the bus jerking to the side.
Something was smashing against the bus. The Urtish yelped. Jimmy looked at the side and saw that a large hover-car, painted bright red, was slamming into the side of the bus, the driver seat occupied by a still smoking, still badly burned, Xorquin.
Jimmy ignored Edna and brought his gun up and fired a few times out the window. That didn't do much.
At his side, Pix sat on the floor, trying to get her gun out, but her hands were shaking.
Jimmy braced himself and aimed, firing. Bang bang bang.
The Xorquin's car started to spurt smoke from the hood. The Xorquin kicked the door open with one foot as the hover-car started to lose speed.
"Oh you gotta be kidding me." Jimmy whispered.
The Xorquin jumped out of the car, which rolled off to the side, losing altitude faster than it lost speed. It smashed into the road and exploded, bits of shrapnel flying in every direction, some pinking off the bottom of the bus, which lurched to a forty five degree angle as the Xorquin grabbed onto the rim of the bus roof with his uninjured hand. He hauled himself up, cocked his leg up, then he was ontop of the bus.
Jimmy and Pix – who had picked up her gun from the floor - aimed up and fired. They blew holes in the top of the bus, but neither could tell if they were doing anything more than scaring what was left of the heck out of the other passengers.
A siren cut through the screaming and shouting and gunshots. A Slor police craft, sleek and rounded – like one of the flying saucers of ancient legend – came alongside the bus. It started to use the Slor's audio language, which was rather similar to the Xorquin's clicking and rattling, if only much much less complicated.
The Xorquin's claws grabbed the roof and started to rip it up through sheer brute strength. Jimmy gaped up at him. Pix shouted and slapped Jimmy shoulder: “Look!”
Jimmy looked. The Urtish was driving straight for a tunnel. The tunnel was very wide, but the Urtish was aiming so that...
Jimmy did not know whether to cheer for the Urtish, or to scream like everyone else. The bus' roof smashed into the lip of the tunnel.
The bus jerked and a scream of metal filled the air as the roof was peeled up and back like the bus was being attacked by a giant can opener.
Then they were in the tunnel and wind roared through the roof. Alarms blared from the Urtish's console. The passengers kept up their versions of screaming their heads off.

The bus burst from the tunnel and shot out into the Traverse
###
Enjoying the story? Support it with Patreon! LINK HERE!

Author's note: While editing this chapter, I found no less than FIVE continuity errors. And they weren't subtle, easy to miss ones. They were massive, massive, obvious ones. Just goes to show how much four years of practice can improve your writing!


Chapter 12: Foundry
Jimmy, for the longest time, thought that being a boyfriend to a girl (or a boy, though, he was fairly sure he didn't swing that way) would involve equal amounts of good times and bad. Times spent cuddling and kissing and talking and playing video games, and times spent arguing over who cleaned the kitchen and who made the most money, and all the other examples he had seen in fiction. But then, he actually got a girlfriend, and all the bad times had involved scary people with guns trying to kill them.
On the whole, he was grateful for that.
Then he woke up with Pix splayed across his chest and body like a uneven comforter – one with some soft pillowy bits, but also weird, suprising bony bits that he hadn't expected – and realized that he had just run into one of the bad times. Specifically, the: Do I dare move and wake my girlfriend while she is laying ontop of me, or do I remain perfectly still and just let my arm hurt more and more as it is slowly blood starved into gangrene and death?
After a minute of agonized thinking, Jimmy decided that he would move...if his fingers started to turn green and smell like death.
Until then? He waited and tried to convince himself he was comfortable.
It almost worked, too!
After what felt like a few billion years – enough for Harbinger to complete its slow route through the galaxy, digest several planets, and then return back to where it had found the bedraggled remains of the human race and their children – Pix opened her eyes and nuzzled her nose against Jimmy's chest, before looking up.
"Hi," she said.
"Hi," Jimmy said, reaching up to brush through her hair with his hand.
"Are you comfy?"
"Um, I-"
"Good." She snuggled against his chest once more, pressing even tighter against him. After a moment, she spoke – her voice only slightly muffled by his shirt. "Wanna do it again?"
Jimmy started to splutter – he wasn't honestly sure if he was about to say yes, no, or yes yes yes yes. Pix interrupted him by pushing herself up – freeing his arm – and kissing him. Jimmy's eyes widened.
And not just because his arm was suddenly burning with a rush of blood and circulation.
It was also because they hadn't used any mouth wash since last night.
"You, bleck, you were right the first time," Pix said, waving her hand under her nose. "Morning breath."
"How could I be right? You didn't let me say anything before you kissed me!" Jimmy said, rummaging around in his pack for the wash. He pulled out the small dispenser, sprayed the smart liquid into his mouth, and shivered as he felt the faint tingle around his gums and teeth as the wash got to work.
"I can read your mind,” Pix said, shrugging slightly. Jimmy spat out a hardened pill of collected plaque.
“You cannot!” Jimmy said as Pix swished her mouth, then spat out her plaque as well.
“Can too!” She grinned, then started to tick things off. “You think my butt is sexy, you spent five minutes agonizing over whether to move your arm and wake me up or suffer – and you chose to suffer, very nice of you – and you are not looking forward to another round of walking through endless corridors!”
Jimmy frowned.
“Okay, fine,” Pix said, crossing her arms over her chest. “You were thinking my boobs are sexy. You never were a butt guy...”
###
The two of them eyed the doorway that led out of their campsite
"Who wants to bet the Xorquin is on the other side of this door?" Pix felt around her pockets for her gun. "He has been ambushing us ever since we started...except for that one time where we could have ambushed him, but, I mean..." She trailed off, looking cross.
Jimmy, seeing a chance to change the subject ahead of time before an argument, grabbed it and said: "I'll see you that bet."
"What should we bet?" Pix looked at him. Jimmy rubbed his chin. “Not sure...”
“Oh!” She jumped up slightly, her antennas sparking. “I know! Favors.”
"Okay," Jimmy said. A moment later, he looked at her side long, his eyes narrowed. "What favors? It's not like I have a lawn you can mow or any thing."
Pix just grinned.
"Um, when you make that face, it's normally before you-"
Pix leaned over and whispered in his ear.
"Oooh...then...I really hope I win this bet," Jimmy whispered. She giggled.
"So do I! Mostly cause I hate getting shot at. Well, that and also cause I love-"
Jimmy opened the door before she could finish that sentence. The moment between the door starting to open and the door actually being open had an eternity of tension. Despite their joking, Pix's face was set and ready for action, her hands clasping her pistol. Then the door finished open and revealed another stretch of Harbinger's corridors. Pix holstered her weapon, shaking her head.
"Yeah. That's what I love. The lack of light, bullets, walking long distances, the lack of ice cream, the lack of beds, and the fact we haven't had sex for an hour.”
Jimmy laughed. “Well, hey, I won the bet, at least.” He started forward into the corridor, Pix following him once she had checked to make sure her gun was safe in its holster. They walked down the corridor, Jimmy's finger brushing along the wall, his other hand in his pocket, resting right on the handle of his gun. There was a long time of simple silence between them – and Jimmy felt rather proud of that. Some of their conversations felt more like they were to ward off the massive size of Harbinger. Far from other humans and E.L.F.s and even other aliens, the sheer scale of the galaxy's largest starship started to feel like a heavy weight crushing on his shoulders.
The next door they came to was rusted shut. Pix and Jimmy looked at one another. Silently, Pix held up a fist. Jimmy held up a fist as well. They shook. Pix threw her hand flat, but Jimmy kept his hand clenched in a fist.
“Tire skids on oil,” she said, grinning.
Jimmy swore. “Knew I should have done pipe...”
“Get to work, slave boy,” Pix said, leaning on the wall, assuming a stance that was too casually relaxing to be actually relaxing.
Jimmy snorted and then got out the laser cutter. The searing brightness of the laser's contact point was actually filtered down by the night vision's computers – which, he noted, might make them useful later in non-pitch black areas of the ship, to help with bright lights as much as with dim lights. As he carefully cut through the rust that had clouded around the doorway – and tried to figure out why this door had rusted, while most of Harbinger's construction was immune to the ravages of time – he heard Edna's voice speaking through the coms.
“Hey, kids,” she said. “You're near the Slor's terretory.”
Pix shuddered overdramatically. "Ugh. Slor."
"Hey, hey, don't be racist,” Jimmy said, not taking his eyes from the cutter.
"I'm not racist. I've just seen them talk." Pix paused. “Okay, you can't see, but I'm making HUGE finger quotes.”
Jimmy grunted as the laser cutter worked its way through the part of the door he had been aiming it at. He tested the door and it shifted ever so slightly – if he had to characterize the door, he'd say it was grumpy that he was making it do anything it didn't want to do and was fighting him tooth and nail. He gritted his teeth. "It's like...tolerance, Pix, you gotta have it!"
Pix scowled. "We don't have tolerance for people who spray mucus over us at home. Why is it suddenly okay for aliens to do it?"
"Cause when a human does that, they're sick. When a Sor does it..." Jimmy braced one foot against the door, then pushed his back against the wall. He started to push with his leg, gritting his teeth. "They're...rrrrgh!" He shoved again. "Talking!"
"Yeah, but..." Pix said, sounding plaintive. "It's gross!"
Jimmy frowned. “You know. You're an engineered life form. Aren't your muscles twice as efficient as human ones? Couldn't you HELP me with this?”
“Actually, after the Eugenic's Wars-”
“Just get over here!” Jimmy snarled. Pix rolled her eyes and hurried forward to the door. She put her shoulder to the door beside Jimmy's hands and together, they shoved hard. The door shifted and swung outward to reveal a long corridor, curving slightly to the side. But what was more important was...it was illuminated. Sure, the illumination was Slor-style, but their luminators were splattered all over the wall.
Jimmy laughed.
And then the Xorquin leaned around the corner and fired a burst from his rifle. Bullets bounced off the metal of the door and floor. Jimmy dove to the side, slamming Pix against the wall. She oofed, her antennas clacking against the wall. Then Pix saved Jimmy by pushing against the wall and shoving them behind the door frame just as another burst ripped out. This time, the bullets stitched along the ground where they had both laid.
Jimmy scrambled to get his legs behind cover and drew his pistol.
Pix did the same.
"How'd he find us?" Pix whispered. Well. She whispered the only way one could during a gun battle – which was by shouting slightly lower than the top of her lungs.
"No clue." Jimmy fired his gun at the open part of the door, not aiming at anything or even sticking his gun around the corner. He just wanted to rattle the Xorquin before he actually fired the gun around the corner. Pix did the same, kneeling down so she could shoot the ground too. They kept shooting for a few seconds before Jimmy's gun clicked. He hit the eject button and the empty container for the caseless ammo brick slotted down.
Pix fired two more shots, then her gun clicked. She reached into her pocket, but when she pulled out her caseless brick, it fell from her fingers and hit the ground with a thud. Jimmy snapped his gun back to ready, peeking out around the corner, his forehead itching like it was on fire. But nothing blew his brains out from the back of his head. The Xorquin was staying put. Or getting ready to do something evil.
"Jimmy? What is going on over there, I'm not getting any video,” Edna said.
"Xorquin has us pinned down, might be trying to jam us, figure us a way outta here!" Jimmy shouted. Something moved down at that corner – a tiny subliminal thing, a shift of shadows, the faint edge of scales peeking around the corner. Jimmy jerked back behind cover. That turned out to be the right decision: Another shower of bullets came down the corridor at them. Pix yelped, standing up with the ammo brick in her hand.
"I felt it ruffle my hair," she whispered, eyes wide. Jimmy grunted, then had a brainwave.
"PULL!"
Pix got it in an instant. She grabbed the door's wheel beside Jimmy and started to pull as hard as she could. Jimmy's arms strained and his legs strained and he gritted his teeth, hard, and together, they pulled. The door creaked shut.
"Laser cutter! Laser cutter!" Jimmy hissed, grabbing it from his pocket. He put it to the joints of the door. Pix looked at him like he was crazy. Maybe he was!
"What are you doing?" Pix and Edna asked at the same time. Jimmy could have sworn he heard Edna whisper 'jinx'.
"Trying something," he whispered. Clunk. A dull sound reverberated through the door's solid structure and it jerked outwards before Pix hauled back, her arms trembling as she shut it once more. Jimmy could hear claws scrabbling on the door, then heard silence. The Xorquin was getting a better grip on the door, to try and pull it open. The cutter finishing sheering through the joints. Jimmy put a foot up on the door and shoved.
Slowly, it inched forward. Then, gaining momentum with every degree that it tilted, the door slammed down onto a living, fleshy shape with a sound between a clang and a splat.
Silence.
"Jimmy...did..." Pix whispered. A single, green clawed arm stuck out from under the door, a thin spread of pink blood spreading out from the metal. The blood pooled around scaled knuckles. Pix put her hand over her mouth.
"Oh shit," Jimmy whispered.
"Nice job,” Edna said. “Got video again.”
"Edna, I just...killed him."
"Good. I'd suggest heading out. Now."
"I killed him." Jimmy whispered again. Pix's hand was still over her mouth, her eyes wide. The Xorquin's fingers twitched...then clenched into a fist. Pix yelped as the Xorquin's arm jerked up and grabbing the door's side, finger claws scrabbling against the metal, leaving thin little furrows.
"Run! Run!" Jimmy shouted, grabbing Pix and then jumping forward, running over the door. It clanked and clunked, with an unpleasant squishiness underneath.
They ran around the corner. Pix jerked Jimmy to a stop, almost dislocating his shoulder. "What are you doing!?" he asked, rubbing at his shoulder.
"He's still alive!" She looked around the corner. "That door was weighed a ton! He should be dead!"
"Xorquin are tough, though. They evolved as apex predators, and not just really excitable monkeys. If he gets out from under that door, he might still have his gun. He might be able to riddle us all up with bullets, even if we've broken half the bones in his body. We? We need to run!" Jimmy said. "Babe, we gotta go!"
Pix nodded, distractedly, and they hustled off.
“Also, never call me babe again,” she said, panting slightly.
“Yeah, that just sounded weird, snugglebutt.”
Pix nodded as they ran down the corridor. “That's better!”
Jimmy laughed...but as he laughed, he kept running and kept trying to estimate weights and forces and Xorquin tolerances to blunt impact. In the end, he had no answers, just a lot of questions. They ran till they couldn't run anymore. Even Pix was sweating fops. Jimmy gulped, gasping, his hands on his knees.
“Okay,” Pix said, panting. “I think we can stop running.”
Jimmy laughed around his gasping. "Cool. Think we can stop worrying about the Xorquin?"
"Maybe. If he can catch up with us with that many broken bones and internal injuries, then I don't think keeping on running will save us..." Pix leaned back against the wall. Then she paused, putting her hands on her comlink and lifting it up off her head. "Jimmy, we've got light."
“Now you notice!?” Jimmy asked, laughing.
###
After they caught their breath, Jimmy and Pix took a moment to check out their first up close look at a proper Slor lamp. Or at least, they hoped it was a lamp. It looked kind of like a slug that had been hardened to the wall with a epoxy. The slug had three light sources within its back, which were covered with a thin white membrane that softened the harsh white light. There was another slug a couple of feet down the corridor, stuck on the ceiling emitting a greenish color.
"Huh," Pix muttered. "I wonder how they keep them glowing? They need food, right?"
"I'd think so," Jimmy said.
"Does someone come around and feed them?" Pix asked, turning away from the slug.
"We've got battery men, don't we? The Slor probably have feeders or something." Jimmy shrugged.
"Hurm...” Pix shrugged. “Well, let's go then.”
Jimmy grinned, tapping his comlink. “Edna, got directions?”
Silence.
"Edna, come in."
"Edna?" Pix asked, tapping her comlink as well.
They both looked at the ceiling. "Nothing on your end?" Jimmy asked.
"Not a thing," Pix said. "What oh what are we going to do while we wait for directions?"
"We could sit. Talk. Gaze longingly into each other's eyes, in a completely chaste and...uh..." Jimmy blinked as Pix grinned, put her finger on his lip, then got on her knees. ###
Edna came back online as Pix wiped her mouth on her sleeve.
"Sorry, the connection is getting spottier-" Edna's next sentence was obscured by a sudden upswing of static. "-I say again, closer to the Foundry?"
"Uh, Edna, we think the Xorquin might still be alive, but we are not sure."
"Say again?" Edna sounded like she was shouting, but her voice was mostly consumed by the crackling, hissing static.
"I said, the Xorquin might still be alive!" Jimmy shouted.
"Say again?” Edna's voice sounded more distant.
"The Xorquin MIGHT still be ALIVE!" Jimmy blushed – he realized he was practically bawling into the com.
"Ooooh! How did you-" Static. When Edna's voice returned, Jimmy was almost convinced that she had just said: "-whistled for a babboon?"
"Just give us directions." Jimmy sighed.
After shouting at one another through the increasingly hazy connection, Jimmy got the directions. Pix, who had been listening in, chimed in. "Okay, we go left, then right, then left, then left, then right again."
"L, R, L, L-" Jimmy started to bob his head in the indicated directions, trying to keep them straight. He grinned. “Wait, if I know a damn thing about my geography, that'll take us around Slor territory!”
"I know!” Pix laughed. “Let's make a song out of it, for celebration's sake! L, R, L, L, and an R! It's a hippity hoppity, bippity boppity-"
"You're just making up words now."
"And you frungy know it!"
###
Jimmy had heard stories about the Foundry's and its light. But he had never thought he'd come to the Foundry. He had also known it was near Slor territory, but he also had had no idea that Edna's directions would take them to it. If he had known, well, he wouldn't nearly have been so happy to avoid the slugs.
Then again...it meant he got to see one of the wonders of Harbinger...
The Foundry's light bled the color from everything it touched, drenching it in such thick whiteness that everything under it was turned into a watery wash. It was a pure, stark, brilliant whiteness that washed away everything, leaving more and more brilliance. There was no place for color or detail or even shapes under that blazing light. And the door that lead to the Foundry...only seemed to make the brightness more intense by contrast: It was an utterly normal human style door, with a square plate of treated glass that let filtered light spill into the corridor that looped around the Foundry.
"Wow," Jimmy put his hand under the light. It looked almost white, with a tiny core of his normal color, watered down to a coffee stain. "That is very bright and white..."
"I like you normal." Pix dragged his hand out of the white. "Like chocolate!"
Jimmy bit his lip. "I was always more of a vanilla man."
Pix arched an eyebrow. "And bubblegum?"
"Vanilla and bubblegum," Jimmy said, hurriedly. “AND bubblegum!”
“Good, you get to live,” Pix said, winking at him.
"Okay," Edna's voice crackled over the comlink. "If you two are done being horny..."
Jimmy opened his mouth to complain about being characterized as 'horny', but before he could say anything, Edna interrupted him by continuing her sentence.
"This door leads to one of the most inhospitable area of Harbinger, other than the Planet Maw and the engines. Raw material cut out of planets is dumped down here from the Planet Maw. It goes through that big old beam of blinding light at the top of the Foundry."
Jimmy and Pix bent over, peeking through the window. They looked away, blinking. "Ow. Ow. Ow. OW!" Pix rubbed at her eyes. "Let's not look at that."
"What is it?" Jimmy whispered.
"If we knew, we'd build some of them ourselves." Edna sighed. "Raw material falls into it and completed things come out the other end. Robots, machine parts, and other things that Harbinger needs....”
Jimmy nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “I remember, my Dad told me about it! He called it the Converter Beam. My question is, why build a room so big, and then put the Converter Beam at the top of it?”
“Well,” Edna said. “The video footage I've seen shows the items falling from the beam, getting about five meters from the ground, then...vanishing. Some of the material shows up where we need it – to fix broken doors. But most of it just vanishes. No one is sure where they go."
"Uhuh. And why don't we know for sure?" Pix asked. "The Tette<click><click> have been on Harbinger for two thousand years and other races have been here almost as long! Why hasn't anyone figured it out?"
"You two didn't pay any attention to Studies of Harbinger class, didn't you?"
"That's a college course! We're just out of high school!"
There was a pause. "Really? Damn. Well, uh, okay, let me try to dumb this down for you two. Firstly, you-" Pause. "Um, wait just a moment."
Pix sighed. "Can we tell her we don't care once she comes back?"
"I dunno, I thought it was kinda interesting." Jimmy leaned against the door, looking at the white light spilling onto the ground. “My question is, where we do go from here? ...we're not going across the Foundry, are we?”
“Oh, no!” Pix said. “I'm betting we're going to go from here to one of the Slor black market trade towns that are nestled near the Foundry!”
“How in the hell would you know about black market Slor towns?” Jimmy asked.
Pix beamed. “By deduction, my dear Leonite. The Foundry? Too dangerous. Slor territory? Too settled for two human children to get across it without being detained. And the Slor aren't exactly friendly to humans, partially thanks to your Dad getting involved in peace talks. That leaves the Slor that Edna would have a pull with – criminals. Thus, there must be Slor criminal towns nearby!”
Jimmy blinked, then nodded. “That...that makes sense. Good job, Pix.”
“Okay, now I'm offended that you sound so shocked!”
Before Jimmy could respond, their com-links clicked on.
"Okay, uh, bad news guys." Ed sounded kinda grim. "My contacts in the local Slor black market burbs have gone to ground or are dead – and I'm talking recently dead...” As she said that, Pix mouthed 'told you' to Jimmy. “Now, we could try the Dark, but the rumors are that the Dark near Slor territory has some monster in it...”
Jimmy nodded, then glanced at the window to the Foundry. He blinked. “Uh...wait just a second, Edna...”
“What?”
“Something's coming,” he said, while Pix stuck her head over by the window as well.
“Down the corridor?” Edna asked.
“No,” Jimmy said. “From the Foundry!”
It was a person, or at least a humanoid. Their clothes were reflective, so it hurt to look at them for too long, but Jimmy got the impression of a suited individual, lugging one of those backpacks with wheels behind them. The figure got closer and closer, till it arrived at the door. Jimmy and Pix stepped back in a hurry as the door opened. There was a moment of searing, painful light that burnt skin and crisped eyes...and then the door closed again, the silvery figure standing inside the hallway.
The figure wore a helmet that had long sides that drooped about over his shoulders. There was a black faceplate, which reflected Jimmy and Pix's shocked expressions. Large, clumsy gloves, reached up and grabbed at the helmet, then pulled it up and off, revealing the last thing that Jimmy or Pix had been expecting.
A human being.
He was pale, with a lantern jaw, and dull brown hair sheered almost bald. His nose bent violently about halfway down, while his eyes were an odd mix of gentleness and a glinting fierceness that made Jimmy feel a little uneasy. The human looked intently at Jimmy, then intently at Pix, and that fierceness didn't waver one jot.
"Oh, hi," he said. "Didn't expect to meet anyone on this side."
"Uh...neither did I, actually,” Jimmy said. “James. James Leonite. Pleasure to meet you.” He held his hand out, not sure if he'd regret this or not. "Collins. Collins M. Korban." The man blinked a few times, then took the offered hand. "Are you two kids aware that this is a dangerous place?"
"Uh, yeah, we just came from the Armory?"
"Really?" Korban clapped his gloved hands. "Well, I have to keep going-"
"Wait, uh, what were you doing in there?"
"Me? I was doing research." Korban tapped his nose with a gloved finger. "Keep it mum, children, it's technically illegal."
"He's right," Edna came back online. "There are treaties that prevent all but a joint operation to study the place, but anyone who tries finds out the hard way how the Humans and the Xorquin, the Yetel and the Slor and so on all can't get themselves to work together. Hell, we have a hard time getting humans to work with humans."
Jimmy winced. "Yeah, that does sound bad."
"What sounds bad?" Korban asked, turning back from his backpack which he had opened. Inside, Jimmy saw some complex machines and small computers and other science stuff.
"Oh, right." Jimmy tapped his comlink. "Comlink."
"Ah! You know, when I was a youngster, everyone just wanted esophagus implants."
"Ew." Pix furrowed her brow.
"Ew is right. Fifteen people strangled themselves to death before they decided to remove them from the market." He shook his head. "Insane. Still, don't let an old man ramble!"
He turned back to his backpack. He had worked his way past the science stuff to some data crystals. Jimmy and Pix glanced at one another. Neither of them said anything.
"Aaah, I noticed," Korbin said into the silence, grunting as he tried to lug his main computer out of the backpack. "That your young lady friend is an Engineered Life Form. Does she have data processing capabilities?"
"Well, uh," Pix said. "I can speak for myself.'
"What?" Korban blinked. "Oh! Sorry, E.L.F."
"I have a name too,” Pix said, sliding her hand around Jimmy's hand – almost calculatingly. She narrowed her eyes, watching Korban as she squeezed Jimmy's hand.
Korban blinked, opened his mouth, closed it, then brushed his hands through his hair as he looked at the two of them. A slow flush started to rise up his cheeks. "Well, um, what is your name young...lady?"
"Pixel," she said, sticking her chin out. By now, Jimmy was starting to feel like he was standing near something very awkward.But he had no idea what it was.
"Right!" Korban nodded. "Now, Pixel, do you have the capabilities to process data?"
"I've got a class four data processor." Pix preened and Jimmy kissed her cheek. Korban gaped. He hastily closed his mouth and nodded, handing her a data crystal. Pix looked at it, then at him, arching an eyebrow. “Okay, I have to know...” She said, shifting slightly so that Jimmy hid her data-port. Jimmy didn't look down, but he knew that Pix was taking out the Xorquin crystal. “What was your plan, if you didn't meet an E.L.F outside of the door?”
Korban blinked, coughed, and said: “Well, my original plan was to walk to one of the nearby towns, and rent computer time...”
Pix shrugged. “Well, how about you give me half of those credits? Since, you know, I am saving you the trouble.”
Jimmy did look at her this time, his eyes wide. Pix winked at him, grinning slightly.
“I...suppose...” Korban sounded faintly disgusted. He tossed a credit chit at them, and Pix caught it, then took the data crystal from his hands.
"This data should take me about an hour." Pix smiled.
"That is fine, thank you." Korban said, though it sounded far less than fine to him.
"Are you sure you should be wasting your time with this?" Edna whispered.
"Well, my feet hurt, we need a break, and it's lunch time." Jimmy shrugged. "Also this guy might know how to get across quicker than your 'walk in a big circle' method."
Edna sighed. "Fine. Whatever."
Jimmy tapped his comlink and looked at Korban. Korban was looking at a small device that looked like a metal tennis ball with a radar dish attached. "Um, young..."
"Jimmy."
"James!" Kroban stood up. "Would you care to help me set this up?"
"Don't see why not." Jimmy shrugged. "Could you tell me more about your work?"
"Sure!" Korban stood up. Jimmy glanced at Pix, then leaned in and kissed her. She started and opened her eyes.
"Hey," She grinned. "You made me miss a byte."
"It's just a byte," he whispered. "Keep one eye open, we don't know if we're safe or not."
"Don't worry about it. I've got the eyes of a dagget and the ears of a fennec!"
Jimmy grinned, kissed her a few more times, then headed back to Korban.
"So I see you are, ah," Korban groped for words as he carried the tennis ball/radar dish dohicky- he and Jimmy were making a good pace, even if every footstep made Jimmy's feet ache more. "...involvedwith that E.L.F."
Jimmy looked at him funny. "Um, yeah, I'm in love with Pix."
Korban harrumphed. "You do know she is just a cyborg right? It's not like she is really real."
And suddenly, the pieces all fell, click click cluuunk, right into place. Then Jimmy's brain went through several stages. First, denial. No, no way. Korban was so polite and cultured! Second, shock. Before now, the only person who'd ever said something like that had been the gutter-trash that surrounded Pix's foster home. The people who were poor and needed someone to rail at. Not this...this...cultured, polite, odd scientist out in the middle of nowhere.
And then, the third and final stage: I will not punch this man in the face. I will not punch the man in the face.
Jimmy, instead, just focused on getting his job done with as fast as he could, so that he and Pix could leave.
They came to another door into the foundry and there, Korban started to multitask amazingly well: First, he started setting up his device. And secondly, he made Jimmy's job much much harder. "I know she may look pretty, my boy, but she is still a construct. I know popular opinion is against people like me, but we're more common than the liberalized media will have you believe."
Jimmy clenched his jaw.
"And I know you are angry now, while she has you whiled with her fake charms, but when you know her for longer, she'll be a lot less real..."
Jimmy crossed his arms over his chest. Out of sheerest desperation to change the subject before he belted the guy, he asked: "Sir, can I ask you some questions about the Foundry."
Korban turned around, finished fiddling with his widget. "You may."
"Can we get across it with suits like you were wearing?"
"Presumably, but I only have one spare."
Jimmy gritted his teeth. "What if we paid you?"
"Those suits are hand made. I wouldn't trade them for the world, that would end my experiments!"
Jimmy closed his eyes. "What if we used the suits to get from this side to the other, then hid them on that side and let you take the long way around. Then, when you finished coming around, you can pick the suits up!"
Anything to get out of this place faster, and get away from this jackass...
Korban pursed his lips. “Interesting. Would you mind carrying some supplies with you? If you set up three more transponders and cameras, I could then process the data while I walk, and...hmm, yes! This could be most adventitious to both of us. It could give me more data, and you the short cut you so desire."
Jimmy nodded. “Okay. Okay. Sounds good.”
“And, well, your cyborg would be useful in setting up those transponders,” Korban said as he stood up.
Jimmy smiled, coldly, his desire to be better than Korban suddenly vanishing in a puff of smoke. "Korban, if you call her a cyborg again, I'm going to break your kneecaps."
He stalked off, leaving Korban to stare after him.
Yes, saying that might not have been the wisest thing to say. But it had felt good.
###
Jimmy tugged on his right glove with his left hand, working the fingers into the surprisingly small holes. The fingers looked so big, but most of that was insulation or whatever kept the killing light of the Foundry off your skin. As he dressed, he ranted.
"A thousand years ago, they'd be bugging out cause my skin is dark and yours is white!"
Pix paused in getting her gloves on and licked his cheek.
Jimmy scowled playfully at her. "Pix, please! I'm trying to stay angry here! You licking me isn't-"
She licked him again.
"Stop that!"
She giggled. "Oh, come on. Don't let haters fill you with hate. If you hate someone, they'll hate you right back. You gotta hug to get them to change their minds."
Jimmy blinked, pausing in struggling into the left glove. "That's actually kind of profound, despite the whole insufferable cuteness factor. Also, wait, didn't you want me to ambush and shoot the Xorquin in the head? Just, like, two days ago?"
Pix smiled. "Profound and cute and hypocritical! What more could you want?"
"Again, you ask these questions, and answers I can't seem to find." Jimmy sighed and then leaned in to kiss her quickly before plomping his helmet on. Everything became tight and hot and instantly, his face started to sweat and itch.
Pix turned to him, her face turned into blank blackness by her helmet. "Besides," she said, her voice muffled. "There's a difference between trying to kill someone who has a different opinion from you, and killing someone who is trying to kill you and wipe out the human race. Edna, can you hear me?”
"Sure can! And Jimmy..." Edna's voice sounded only slightly muffled.
"Yeah?" Jimmy asked.

"You should have broken that asshole's knees."
###
Enjoying the story? Well, support me on Patreon, so I can continue to write. LINK HERE! 

Author's Note: So, to draw back the curtain for a bit, there was a chunk of this chapter discussing the technical specifications of night vision goggles and such and such, and my editor pointed out that I had gotten the physics completely wrong and I wrestled for hours with how to describe the new technology of the future...and then I realized it doesn't matter, cut the whole scene, and no one will be any the wiser.


Chapter 11: First time on the range
The gun leaped in Jimmy's hand with a bang that was only slightly muffled by his ear protection. He lowered it and tried to unpack what he was feeling for maybe five seconds before he decided to just live with the fact that he really liked firing guns. Even if the hole the bullet had made wasn't anywhere near the target's bullseye.
Or the target itself.
Or the wall.
Jimmy scowled, then glanced at Pix, who was putting shot after shot through her holographic target, glowing indicators reading out how many points each shot was worth.
Jimmy looked down at his weapon. "I always thought I hated guns, but I never thought they might hate me back." He lifted the gun back to a firing stance and pulled the trigger. Click. He sighed, then unloaded the magazine and reached for the fresh one, sliding the empty magazine into the auto-loader built into the counter top that laid between him and the range. The loader made soft whirring and clicking noises as it started to slot cubes of caseless ammunition into the magazine.
"Oh, it's not that hard." Pix smiled at him. "Just compute the angle of the bullet, add it to the elevation of your arm, impart a bit of twist by flicking your wrist and-"
"Pix, remember how I'm not an E.L.F? My fleshy flesh brain is unable to compete with your fancy space brain."
Pix grinned, then leaned over and kissed him on the forehead. "But it is a sexy sexy brain. Even if it trembles in fear before the power of my mighty space brain."
Jimmy grinned, then turned his head up and put his lips to her lips. She pressed against the divide between them, and her tongue pressed up to the place between Jimmy's gums and his upper lip. His toes curled in his shoes.
"Ah-HEM!" Edna's voice shattered the moment. Or, at least, it tried to.
Pix made a point of latching onto Jimmy's lower lip, keeping him in place till she was done kissing, then she slid back with a quick glare at Edna.
Edna gestured at them. "Keep practicing. We want you to be at least meh-shots."
"Meh-shots?"
"You know." Edna moved her hand from side to side in a deucedly 'meh' gesture. "Meh."
"Ah. Meh." Jimmy nodded. "I think I'm currently at blegh."
"I'm a fwa." Pix giggled.
"Fwa isn't a word.”
"It is now. If William Shakesman can make up words, I can make them up. And you can't argue with em! I have a gun." Pix winked, aimed, fired. The shot didn't quite hit the bullseye, but it was close. "FWA!"
Edna rolled her eyes and left them to the practicing. Once she was gone, Jimmy risked a few more shots. They were about as boleful as his first few, but at the very least, he was able to hit the paper. Once his magazine was emptied, he took it out and started to reload the other. Looking at Pix, he saw that she had cut the center of the target out with bullets and was twirling her empty and saftied gun on her finger.
"Okay, I've gotten better," she said, casually. "How are you doing?"
Jimmy looked at his target. It looked more like swiss cheese than an even grouping of bullet holes. "I choose to interpret this as 'showing improvement,'” he said after a few moments of thought.
She leaned over into his stall and nodded. "It's not that bad." She smiled. "It's not like we're going to be looking for a fight."
"Yeah, I doubt anyone looks for a fight, Pix."
"Some people do. Like...jerks. And crazy people." She grinned, leaning on the divider between the stall. She leaned forward a bit, using her toes to push herself up a bit. Her shirt poofed out and Jimmy tried really hard to look into her eyes.
Pix gave him a thumbs up. "Good job, you actually kept your eyes on my eyes!"
Jimmy scowled. "You're an evil person."
"Yup!" She relaxed her toes and stood straighter up, her eyes twinkling.
Jimmy smiled, slowly. He had been noticing tiny changes in Pix over the past few days. He was trying to put his finger on what it was...and then it clicked. She didn't put her hand into her pocket anymore. She didn't fondle her lighter anymore – in fact, she hadn't done it once in almost a week. And more, she just looked more confident – an easier, more self assured confidence that made him think...maybe she was dealing with her parent's death. Maybe.
What he did know for sure though was that her confidence made her...well...sexier. Pix noticed him watching her.
"What?" She cocked her head, antennas sparking. Jimmy kept smiling.
Pix narrowed her eyes. "You're doing that smiling silently before a big kiss thing, aren't you?"
"Oh, that's a good idea!" Jimmy grabbed her and yanked her forward for, well, a big kiss. The kiss started off powerfully passionate, then got more so. It was a bit curious, and if Jimmy had been interested in anything but the way Pix bit his lower lip – oh so playfully – then he might have come up with some profound philosophical theories about how every time he thought the kiss couldn't get hotter, it got hotter. If the divider hadn't been there, Jimmy just knew one of them would drag the other one down and...
"I don't hear shooting!" Edna shouted. Pix drew away, her eyes closing. Jimmy put his finger on her lips.
"We're outta bullets!" he shouted back, lying. Like a gunrunner would run out of bullets.
Pix giggled. Edna sighed and opened the door. By then, Jimmy and Pix were not within kissing distance and Jimmy had finished wiping his lips off.
Edna examined both of them. Slowly, she lifted an eyebrow. Jimmy and Pix looked as innocent as possible. Edna sighed. “Practice for another half hour, then you can screw like rabbits, okay?” She turned around and ducked out of the room. Jimmy beamed at Pix. Pix shook her head, laughing, and went back to putting rounds down range.
Then, a half hour later, they were hustled out of Edna's compound and onto the road again. As they walked out, Pix muttered: “Son of a bitch, she tricked us...”
###
"Backpack, food, gun, com system." Pix tapped her ear. "Shoes, pants, shirt, jackets, breathers, just in case we decide to walk into some nerve gas."
Jimmy snorted. "A medical pack each. This stuff is heavy."
"Don't I know it!" Pix shifted, her backpack rustling against her back. "How the heck do action heroes manage to run so fast with all their guns, ammo, supplies and stuff?"
"Um, because they read the script."
Pix winked. "Then we shall read the script. And in the script, we are awesome, we are both beautiful, and we are both going to kick the bad guy's ass!"
Jimmy grinned, then leaned in and kissed her. She kissed him back. You know, Jimmy thought, I could just make out all day.
"Okay," Pix whispered. "That's enough kissing."
She paused. "Okay, one more."
Edna sighed over their comlinks. Jimmy winced. "A little loud," he said.
"Your camera is crooked."
Jimmy blinked, then looked at Pix. "Is my camera crooked?"
She reached up and fiddled with the camera mounted on the side of the comlink piece. Edna made an "ah" noise and Pix grinned, then kissed Jimmy again. Which knocked the camera off center again. Pix kissed his nose, then started fiddling with the camera again.
Once they were both ready, Edna spoke. "Okay, so, head out to the city and head to the north-eastern corner. Also, turn on your eyepieces."
Jimmy reached up and tapped the comlink. A small eye piece slid out and went over his left eye. A compass was set in the top, along side a little mini-map.
And if that was not the most awesome thing ever, Jimmy did not know what it would be – save, maybe, for a naked Pix covered in whipped cream.
They made their way down the bustling streets of Tortuga – all searing graffiti and screaming vendors trying to compete against the traffic noise. The complete lack of odd looks, shady strangers following them, or gunshots made the cacophony of the eyes and ears seem like the most beautiful day back home. At least, it did to Jimmy. He smiled, grabbed Pix's hand, and squeezed. She squeezed back, but kept looking around suspiciously – her eyes focused on every other Xorquin in the crowd.
They reached the north-eastern corner and, there, they found yet another one of those elevator things, and unlike the blue box entrance, this one was an Architect design. Jimmy had gotten good at spotting the difference between stuff the Ancients had crafted and technology kludged together by the modern inhabitants of Harbinger. Xorquin made bladed, sharp looking things. Yetel were gooey and brown. Human stuff tended to be chunky and square. This elevator, though, was the smooth, matte black of most of Harbinger.
And it went up smoothly, like all Architect stuff. As they rode the elevator, Edna's voice came in over their coms. "Okay, listen, you're going to come out in the middle of the Armory. Well, middle and to the side.” The minimap swelled up, filling the entire eye-piece, showing the map of the Armory. It didn't have nearly as much detail as Jimmy would have liked. It was more of a big old empty space with the occasional marked landmark such as "big thumb" or "Sssszzxxx." Whatever that meant.
A small blipping red dot appeared, way up in the eastern part of the Armory. "And that is your destination. It should take you about two days of walking. Get to it."
The comlink blipped, which meant Edna was no longer listening. They had argued about that for a while, arriving at a compromise. Jimmy just had to push a button on his left wrist and then start shouting his head off and Edna would hear. Jimmy looked at that blip, them at the world around him, trying to not think about how heavy his backpack already felt. In the distance, he could hear the explosions of the war, and the faint, echoing cracks of gunfire. Pix sighed, rubbing her hands together – if she wasn't trying to get mentally ready for the march, Jimmy would have eaten his socks.
Jimmy tapped his wrist. "Okay, do we know where the Xorquin is?"
"Nope." Edna sounded unhappy about that. Jimmy didn't blame her.
"Great." Jimmy tapped the button again. Pix shook her head.
"Don't see him." Pix bit her lip. "And we're not all full of holes."
"Best evidence I can think of." Jimmy sighed and looked around with his camera, panning it slowly and deliberately around.
"What are you doing?" Pix and Edna said at just about the same time. Jimmy paused, then finished looking around with his head, before looking back at Pix.
"I'm scanning." Jimmy paused. "Edna, you have some kind of scanner that can identify targets and tell us if it sees something. Right?"
"Uh, no, just working with the Mark One Eyeball thing. I just had the cameras put in so you didn't have to narrate everything you did."
She paused.
"Though that IS a really good idea. I'll see if they have any programs like that." There was a sound of typing. "Okay, I made a note! "
Jimmy slammed his palm into his face, covering his eyes. Pix snorted, then grabbed his other hand and started dragging him along. Jimmy let himself be dragged.
A mile later, they found that palms got rather sweaty rather fast. But they held fast.
###
A few planes jetted overhead with the standard screeching noise. Jimmy winced and rubbed at one ear as he tried to get comfortable underneath Ssszzxxx – it was hard, as the damn thing didn't have a lot of space underneath it, and that was before Pix had wriggled in next to him. Sszzxxx was an artifact that had been discovered by the Xorquin in the Armory, and hadn't been given a name in any of the human languages.It looked a bit like a half-bent thumb mounted on a semi-liquid base of black goop that somehow kept it upright.. What was it for? Jimmy had no idea. But it did keep them out of sight, and it looked kinda cool, if you liked weird, half-bent thumbs made of super smooth black metal.
Jimmy rubbed his temple at that thought. He was sick of the Armory. He was sick of big open spaces, he was sick of being near battles, and he was sick of things that made no sense, things he'd never be able to figure out. He closed his eyes and pressed his face against his knees. Pix sighed, slowly, as another plane rocketed overhead.
"You know, I think we can head out," she said, looking over at him. "I mean, those planes aren't looking for us specifically."
"I know," Jimmy said, "I'm just tired."
"I know, these backpacks are heavy."
"No, tired of this place." He looked at her. "I want to go back to a place where everything at least kind of makes sense. Say what you will about the sewage system, but at least humans fit in there. There are machines we can use and fix and fiddle with, not all these...these...confusing, crpytic pieces of junk!"
Pix reached out and rubbed his hair, gently. "There is one machine in this place you can fiddle with, you know..."
"Yeah, what?"
"Me."
She leaned in, slowly at first, then . Tingling anticipation turned the kiss into something deliciously addictive. Her tongue poked against his lips, then slid into his mouth. Jimmy put his hands on her shoulders, sucking slightly.
"Um, guys." Edna's voice badgered in over the comlink. Pix kept kissing Jimmy. His hand slid down along her arm, feeling her smooth skin, her elbow, then down her flank, to her oh so cold, oh so hard data port. His finger slowly traced around the edge, where flesh and machine meshed. Pix quivered, drawing back and gasping softly. "Nn...I love it when you do that," She whispered, softly, grinning at Jimmy.
"Isn't there a whole 'need to go and save the human race' thing?" Edna continued, her voice getting fainter every second.
Pix reached up and slid the comlink off Jimmy's head. She set it on the side, camera facing away from them. Jimmy put his hands on her cheeks, drawing back. "Are we..."
She nodded, beaming at him, cheeks flushed. "Y-Yeah."
Jimmy gulped. "Here?"
"Yeah."
"Now?"
"Yeah." Pix bit her lip. "Listen, I...love you. A lot."
Jimmy was unable to form a single word. In fact, he was suprised his heart continued to beat.
"And I want you." Pix blushed. Hard. "Like...now. Screw timing, screw beds...screw me! Heh."
Jimmy snorted, then kissed her, gently at first, then with more force. A smoldering fire burned in his chest and seriously, that phrase had never made since till like, right now. And it was ever so true.
Pix drew back, panting. "Are you ready?"
Jimmy nodded. “Yeah. No. But yeah.”
Pix paused, drawing in a breath, then took a hold of her shirt and yanked it up and over her head in a single motion. She put it aside and paused, grinning at Jimmy before undoing her bra. Tension. Not sure what to do. Jimmy paused, feeling more awkward, trying to think of what to say. Finally, something blurted out.
“Wow.”
“Like them?” Pix snickered, the tension relaxing to almost nothing.
“Yeah!”
She paused. Grinned. “T-Touch em.”
“I’ll do more than that,” he murmured, his voice soft. He moved forward. Lips found her neck. Pix rolled her head back and bit her lip. Jimmy sucked, ever so gently. Pix’s moan was musical. Jimmy cupped her breasts and squeezed. She had hard nipples, soft flesh.
Pix drew herself back, grinning. “Pants. Off. Now.”
“As you wish.”
They both giggled. Jimmy shifted and slid his fingers to his button. Popped it. Unzipped. Paused, then slid down. Pix crooned, softly. “Ooh…”
Jimmy felt about twelve feet tall. He grinned. Then Pix reached out and squeezed. Gently. Too gently. Jimmy shifted, feeling his ears heat.
“Y-you can, uh, be a bit harder.”
Pix grinned.
“OW!”
“Oooh, did I hurt you?” Pix paused. “Let me kiss and make up.”
But her lips didn’t meet his.
There weren’t words after that.
###
Pix panted. Pix glowed. Well, not literally, but, well...it looked that way to Jimmy. She grinned and her antennas sparked. "That," she murmured, "was...more fun than I expected."
Jimmy mimed insult. "You expected it to not be fun?"
"Well," Pix bit her lip. "I mean...well..."
Jimmy narrowed his eyes. "Piiiiiix."
"I mean, you're a guy! Guys arn't supposed to know how..." She bit her lip. "To...you know. Use anything but your doodle."
Jimmy snorted. "Pix, I have watched movies, you know."
Pix blushed. "Well, yeah."
"And I was paying attention. And I understand the concept of reciprocation." Jimmy shifted, rolling to his side, grinning as he did so, his hand sliding along her belly, then further down. Pix mumbled something, her eyes going half lidded. She looked really really silly, but Jimmy didn't notice. To him, it was the sexiest thing in the whole wide universe.
"Mmm," Pix whispered. "To the left slightly...ah YES!" Her fingernails scrabbled against the ground.
"Guys."
"D-don't stop that!"
"Guys!"
Jimmy started, looking over at his comlink. He wiped his fingers on his hip, then grabbed his comlink, cramming it on his head.
"W-what?" he asked.
"There's an army heading your way. See, if you'd kept walking, you'd be safe, but, no, someone had to stop and fu-"
"Right, we're going," Jimmy said, tapping the comlink off. He grabbed his shirt and pulled out it. He looked at Pix...then looked away, covering the camera away. "S-sorry!"
Pix giggled. "She's a girl, Jimmy."
"Yeah, but she might have someone standing behind her."
"I do." Edna piped up. Jimmy started, then took the camera off, setting it down as he did so.
Pix sighed, pulling on her bra. "So, what did she say?"
"An army is coming our way, imminent death if we don't go, yadaya, bla bla, gotta get dressed."
Pix sighed. "Great, you leave me hanging and we might die. If I die without you finishing up, I'll come back to life and kill you again."
"But then I'll be dead too and..." Jimmy shook his head, buttoning his jeans up. "You know, this conversation is pointless."
"No, it's not." Pix stuck her tongue out.
"How do you figure that?" Jimmy pulled his jacket on. It smelled like Pix now. Best. Jacket. Ever.
"Well, any conversation with you has to be awesome. It's in our contract of true love."
"You're an odd girl, Pix."
"Thanks!"
###
They started to hustle, heading westerly to keep from being directly in the army's way. Pix and Jimmy's hands were pretty much connected the whole time. They helped one another over any and all hurdles. They joked. They laughed. For a short time after the sex Jimmy was worried Pix and he wouldn't still be friends.
Then, five seconds later, she made a joke. He laughed, and told a joke back. She giggled and snuggled against him. A normal conversation, but with a snuggle slipped into it. Which made it twice as good!
Maybe three times.
Jimmy tapped his comlink. "Edna, could you show me the Armory map and where we are."
"Ummmmkay." There were some tapping noises. "I don't have your exact position, the signal is getting a bit dodgy."
"Well, you're still hearing me, right?" Jimmy gulped. He knew Edna might disconnect, but not this soon.
"Sorta." Edna's voice was starting to sound a bit staticy. Distant booms and rattles started off in the distance. "Shit! Turning off radio. Run north."
The comlink cut out and the map vanished. "Great." Jimmy slid the projector away from his eye. The sounds of battle were getting louder. They were still way off in the distance, but it was getting worse.
They had jogged a good ways away before the first artillery shell screamed down. Pix and Jimmy hit the ground, hard, cold metal jammed into nose and cheek. Fragments whined overhead as a second artillery shell burst behind them. The noise was incredible...Jimmy coulden't even hear himself scream with terror.
Jimmy looked over his shoulder once the last shell had slammed down. There was no crater, but all the boxes had been knocked over and perforated. He looked at Pix.
"Well," He said. "That could have been bad."
"Jimmy," Pix's voice was rather strained. "My foot hurts. And the only reason I'm not screaming is...I DON'T KNOW!"
Jimmy pushed himself down as Pix rolled to her back, her eyes closed. It didn't look good: A trinagular hunk of twisted metal had slammed into the sole of her foot, and bright red blood spurted onto the ground. Jimmy felt his stomach twist around and he closed his eyes for a moment. He knew what he had to do...and so he opened his eyes. He looked at Pix. "This is gonna-"
"JUST DO IT!" she shouted.
Jimmy nodded, grabbed the hunk – it was hot to the touch - and yanked it out. Blood splattered and Pix shouted a rather loud, rude word at the top of her lungs.
Jimmy threw the metal away with a wince, then opened up his backpack. He yanked out the medical kit, grabbed the sealent and a red hypo. Edna had said it was good for small cuts and big cuts and, really, most kinds of cuts.
"Okay, hold still," he said, trying to keep his voice controlled and not hysterical. The sealent looked like pinkish goo that formed to the wound and closed it up. Once the sealent started to harden, he put the red hypo against Pix's foot and then pushed the thumb button down. There was a hissing nose and Pix flinched, then sighed.
"Okay...okay, okay," Jimmy bit his lip. "How does that feel?"
"It feels like I have a big hole in my foot!"
"Can you walk on it?" he asked as he helped her to her feet.
"Um..." Pix took a slow, cautius step. She nodded. "Sealent is holding...it hurts like hell, but I can do it."
Jimmy slid his arm through her's and smiled. "We've only got X number of miles to go."
"X?"
"Well, I don't remember, and we've still got no linkup to Edna."
"I'm guessing cause an easily traced radio signal right next to a battle would be a bad-" Something screamed overhead, blazing brightly in the darkness of the armory. It smashed into the ground behind some large boxes, the boxes blocking most of the actual explosion from Jimmy and Pix. The shockwave almost knocked both of them over.
"Idea." Pix finished, her voice sounding a bit distant in Jimmy's ears.
"Let's just keep running."
They did their best, hobbling/running along, Pix hissing every once and a while. Jimmy looked down and behind them and stopped.
"Your wound's reopened-"
"Jimmy!" Pix grabbed his head and turned his gaze back to the front.
There was the wall. It was almost invisible if you looked too high up, but down low the strange, sourcless ambient light of the Armory made it visible. Jimmy looked around, then risked flipping his comlink on.
"Edna?" he asked. "Quick. Door location, now!"
"Go left...no, right!"
He tapped the comlink off. Pix set her shoulders and hobbled against him as they headed right, away from where they had just stood. No artillery screamed down, as the battle seemed to be getting hotter behind them. More planes burst in the air or smashed into the ground.
Then. There. The door. It was actually a human door frame, welded over an open hole in the wall. It was a whiff of home, a touch of normality in an otherwise alien locale.
Jimmy and Pix got to it, leaving a trail of bloody footprints.
It started to open with a quick twist of the wheel. It creaked open. Jimmy saw Pix draw her gun out of the corner of his eye. He made a mental note to tell her what a good idea that was later.
The door finished opening.
And there was the Xorqin assasin. His back was to them, his feet clicking as he walked down the hallwy. He wore his same jacket as before, the bandage gone now, the stain faded to a dark pink splotch. He held a bag with one hand, a bag stuffed with guns. It looked like he was getting out of the Armory as well and either didn't know that the two of them had headed this way or had...actually, that was the only reason Jimmy could think of for why his back was to them, and why he was walking down the corridor.
Jimmy and Pix froze. Perfectly. Still.
If he had just set up his ambush AT the door...Jimmy thought.
The Xorquin walked around the corner at the end of the hallway. Jimmy let his thought remain unfinished.
Jimmy breathed out, slowly. He closed the door, slowly. He locked it, slowly. Pix bled all over the floor with her foot, her face pinched with pain.
Jimmy motioned for her to sit down. Then he had to help her, taking weight off her foot so that she could get onto her bottom. He sealed the wound up again, then tied it tight. Just in case.
"Okay," she whispered. "What now?"
He bit his lip. "Go around?"
"Ambush him!"
"Yeah. Go around."
###
"Edna, you're never going to believe this-" Jimmy glanced at Pix. "-but we got the Xorquin between us and the whole, uh, where we're going thing."
"I don't believe it" Edna sighed. "What do you want to do? Go around?"
"Ambush him!" Pix snapped.
"Yeah, Pix, he's a trained killer. I say the less he knows that we are here, no, wait, let me try again. If we can get past him without being seen, then he won't have a chance to shoot at us."
"If we shoot him in the back of the head, he won't ever have the chance to shoot at us ever again!" Pix stood, wincing as her bandaged foot touched the ground.
Jimmy scowled. "Could you shoot someone in the back of the head? In cold blood?"
Pix opened her mouth. She closed it. Then she opened it again. "I...n...y..." She sighed, then looked down. "No."
Jimmy put his fingers on her chin and pushed her head up. "Did I mention that I love you a lot?"
"Yes. But it's always good to hear it again." She smiled, slightly.
Jimmy kissed her, slowly, then drew back. "We go around."
"One sec." The sound of typing came over the comlink. "Okay, got a new path lined up for you, assuming you don't mind heading through an area of the dark."
Pix grinned. "Does this mean we get to use the night vision?"
"I'd-"
"Awesome!"
Jimmy grinned, then turned to the door. Pix opened the door and tested the weight on her foot at the same time. It didn't seem to hurt her, as she grinned at Jimmy.
"Okay. Ladies first?"
Pix stuck her tongue out at him.
###
Going through the Dark was always an experience, but with each repetition, it got to be a more pleasant one. The first Dark walk had been cold and scary and only lit by Pix's lighter. The other had flashlights, and only one jacket between them. But now, Jimmy and Pix both had nice, thick jackets, and were toting night vision good enough to make the Dark seem banished: They saw the world in computer enhanced, perfect color – none of that green, fuzzy crud that cheap vids used to indicate that night-vision was being used.
Also, he wasn't a virgin this time.
That was the best part.
Pix's hip bumped against his hip every other step and her hand was hot against his hand.
"So," she whispered, barely audible over the soft squeaking of their shoes.
"What?"
"I said, sooo..." Pix trailed off. "And then I forgot."
Jimmy snorted. Edna crackled onto the uplink. "Giving you next few coordinatzzz." Her voice staticked into a white fuzz.
"You get all of that?" Jimmy asked, whacking the side of his comlink. The minimap flickered, a thin red line marking out the roundabout route they were heading down.
"Quite a walk to go." Pix muttered.
"Eh," Jimmy said, "we're good at that, aren't we?"
"Depressingly so." Pix said, shaking her head. "Jimmy, is it just me or is the evil plan to kill all the humans not...sense make?"
"You've said that before," he said. “And...well, it's extreme, but it is clever. And it will work, as far as I can tell.”
"You said that too, but my same question remains: who'd want to do that?" Pix paused, knocking back a sip from her water bottle. She wiped off her lips with her hands. Reflective material looked odd under night vision, like it was way way too shiny. "I mean, it'll wreck the sewage system – most of that stuff is biological, not technological, so the radiation will kill it as dead as us. And when people have to start drinking water thick with fungus and molds and stuff because the scrubber-reefs are dead, that'll kill a lot more people. Or at the very least, make a load of them sick. This plan is sounding more and more Bames Jond every second! Either that,or a ruse."
Jimmy tapped his chin. "Firstly, James Bond. Secondly...it could be an attempt to discredit the Xorquin? Like...I don't know." He put his hand on his forehead.
"Come on, Jimmy." Pix affected the accent of their humanities teacher. "Wrestle with the issues!"
Jimmy stuck his tongue out at her, then leaned against the wall. "No...you were right. This has to be a ruse. But a ruse to who? Mom? Dad? That's where the crystal was going, that was who the Xorquin on the crystal was talking too."
"They do work for the government."
"Mom's a mid-level cryptanalyst. Dad's an ambassador. They don't have enough clout to...well, I mean, if they find this crystal, they can alert the Xorquin government or our government." He frowned. "Maybe it was all part of a plan to spark a war between mankind and Xorquin?"
Pix frowned. "So, the Xorquin guy came after the crystal to get rid of the data..." She shook her head. "No, then, why not just approach us and say, 'hey, some supposedly secret data is coming by, but it's not real, k-thx-bai."
Jimmy shook his head. "Yeah. Asking politely always seems to work better than just blowing shit up and getting into a shootout with the police."
They were silent, walking. Thinking. But no answers came.
###
Creeeak. Jimmy peeked out through the crack of the door, one hand on the wheel that spun the door open. His other held his gun, which aimed out through the crack. It only took a fraction of a second for the night vision computer to correct the feed coming in from the infrared camera, paint it in real colors, and then show him the room.
Which was...completely empty. A door way was stuck at the other end, possibly leading to a death chamber. Or, more likely, another bland, endless corridor.
"See anyyyy-" Pix's mouth opened in a yawn big enough to swallow the hand that covered it. "Anything?"
"No." Jimmy sighed, opening the door fully. "Edna was right, it is bland, boring and more boring."
Pix shrugged. "Can you think of a better place to sleep?"
"Home with a bed."
Pix nodded slowly, her hands in her pockets. "Touche, young man. Touche."
They walked inside and Pix cocked her head. "It's almost nine o'clock at night."
Jimmy grunted.
"At home, I'd want to stay up till one." Pix dropped to her knees. "Now?"
"Let me guess, it starts with a Z!"
"Zzzzzz!" Pix buzzed. She shook her head. "Gah, why do they call it catching Z's? Zzzzzz does not sound like a snore. A snore sounds more like-" She imitated a chainsaw making short work of pumpkin.
"Don't do that." Jimmy took his jacket off, after taking everything out of the pockets – which made a rather tidy pile of death and destruction- and laid the jacket out on the ground. It was not a mattress. But it would do.
Pix put her hands on Jimmy's comlink and lifted it up. The goggles retracted into the ear mufflers and Jimmy grinned, blind as a bat.
"You're so beautiful."
"You can't see anything." She took her goggles off. Her eyes glowed in the dark.
"You're even more beautiful when I can't see you."

She whacked him. 
###
Enjoying the story? Check out my Patreon! 

Author's Note: Wow, that was a long vacation - Christmas and a birthday combined! But the vacation is done, the new year has come, and we have more E.L.F! Enjoy!




Chapter 10: Disinformation
“You know what my question is?” Jimmy asked as he turned away from the grim projections that the computer kept hanging in the air.
“What do we do next?” Pix suggested. “I'm just saying: Flamethrowers. That's usually what people do in vids. Flamethrowers.”
“No,” Jimmy said, shaking his head. “My question is a lot more simple: Why!?” He threw his hand at the projection. “Why this!?”
Edna shrugged. "We kicked their ass in the last war and, well, you know how Xorquin are."
Pix, though, was looking thoughtful, rubbing her chin as she considered Jimmy's question. At Edna's statement, she jerked her head back. “That's a loaf of shit! We beat their army, yeah. Fifty years ago. And don't give me that 'you know how Xorquin are' crap. That's racism is what that is. Xorquin are aliens, yeah, but they still have to think in a vaguely logical way." Pix pointed at the screen. "Look at that plan and tell me it's not completely insane. It's too complicated, it's too expensive, and it's too damaging to Harbinger. We all live on Harbinger!"
Edna opened her mouth, closed it, and then pointed this fact out: "They still sent an assassin after you. Not to put too fine a point on it, but assassins going after the children of important personages is never the option taken by people who aren't serious.”
Jimmy frowned. It seemed like every point that they made, this whole situation wound backwards and made the conversation even more complex – snaking issues around and around, creating knots of illogic. It was like trying to figure out one of those moon logic adventure games that you could download for free off the net.
"Okay, yeah. They did send an assassin after us." Pix put her fingers under her chin, stroking her cheek with her thumb, slowly. “But...but...”
"Well," Jimmy looked around. "I don't know about you guys, but I think we should phone home."
"Phooone hoooome," Pix grinned at him ."I like that plan."
Edna scowled.
"Oh, come on Edna! This is the future of the human race we're talking about here,” Pix said.
"I thought you said their plan is insane." Edna smirked. “If it is insane, why should I risk bringing Starpol down on my head?”
"Yeah, I'm also eighteen. Though I tend to be completely flawless, I do occasionally make a mistake. I'd rather be safe than everyone I know and love dying horribly."
"And, you can set up those ransoming demands over the phone." Jimmy offered helpfully.
Edna sighed, slowly. "I suppose..." But she didn't look anything close to happy about it.
Jimmy, considering how this direct communication would definitely make it easier for Harbinger's interspecies police force, the Star Police, to come down on her and her gang...managed to still not feel sorry for Edna in the slightest.
###
The long range communications of Edna's gang were all handled by one big old transmitter. It – along with the other transmitters used by other gangs and organization – were all aimed at the same antenna, which was worked into the disguised entrance. Jimmy wasn't sure how they handled the bottleneck that created without slowdowns that would be worse than the worst days of the network's prehistory. What he did know was the connection with the Armory was all right – but anything beyond that got a little sketchy. The war had a way of futzing with the shipwide network, despite his father's efforts in the Council to protect civilian net traffic.
"Let's try the operator," Edna said, her arms crossed over her chest as if she was trying to ward off a chill. She kicked the transmitter and it started to whirr and flash, the machines within activating. Jimmy was more used to machines that just started working when they were turned on – not machines that were cobbled together across multiple generations, machines that shook and rumbled as they turned on.
The machine chimed, then stopped shaking. Before Jimmy could ask Edna if that was good or not, she answered the question by scowling – the lines on her face arranging themselves to make her even uglier, scarier, and older looking than normal.
"What the..." Edna said, then looked at Pix and Jimmy. "It's being jammed!”
Edna reached into her pocket and snapped out a small hand-held, which unfolded into a sleek weapon with a series of whirs, clicks and pops. "I don't like this. You two, head down the corridor and get armed. I'm going to get the rest of the gang together."
Pix shrugged, grabbed Jimmy's hand, and dragged him out the door, opening it with her shoulder. She peeked her way out and looked around. There were no bad guys, at least, none that Jimmy could see – and Pix seemed to agree, as she dragged Jimmy down the corridor and to a door with a stenciled outline of a gun on the middle of the door, planted right below a window of grimy glass that had been built into the door. The door opened to Pix's shove and Jimmy whistled. That...was a lot of guns.
Jimmy's whistle dropped lower and then trailed off. Pix nodded, then looked at him.
“All right,” she said. “Let's get ready to chew bubble gum. But I'm all out of ass.”
“That's not even close to the right quote,” Jimmy said. He grabbed a rifle and it slipped through his sweating fingers. He yelped, grabbed, and the gun went tumbling to the ground with a clatter and clank. It bounced several times on the ground and Jimmy froze, half reaching for the gun. The barrel was aimed right at Pix, "Uh, good thing that wasn't loaded."
"Yeah. Good thing." Pix grabbed the rifle away from Jimmy as he picked it up. She looked at it. "Actually, it was loaded. I'm just really-"
Something moved in the window of the armory, darkening it.
Jimmy tackled her the moment before a flurry of bullets blew through the door. The two of them hit the floor as the wall got shredded just as badly as the door. Pix yelped – Jimmy thought she was asking “what the hell is Edna doing, letting this guy in here!?” but he wasn't sure, since the sound of gunfire was drowning everything out, even conscious thought.
Jimmy, didn't even bother thinking. He just grabbed for a gun. He hands closed around something in the middle of a pile, so all the other guns atop it fell over, but he still got the weapon out. His thumb went to the safety. The gunfire from beyond the door stopped, and the only sound was the almighty ringing in his head.
He rolled onto his back, his aim a bit awkward. But it did the job. The trigger was way too easy to pull. And the bullets came rather faster than he expected. He whacked himself in the nose with the gun. But the bullets scared whoever was shooting, because Jimmy didn't feel a bunch of the other guy's bullets perforate him. He scrambled to his feet and poked his head up to the now shattered window in the door. The Xorquin was running down the hall and he had left behind a sphere that was blinking a bright green...rapidly.
Jimmy ducked.
The world blew up.
###
A bright white light and a loud ringing noise brought Jimmy back to the land of the living. A Yetel looked down at him and chittered something. A moment later, the translation came through, sounding tinny and distant over the sound of the ringing.
"Mild shock, broken nose, he'll be fine."
"Good." That was Edna, sounding even farther away. "I want everyone to track down this guy. Find him and kill him."
'Wha," Jimmy managed to get out before the Yetel stuck his shoulder with a hypo. Jimmy winced at the tapping feeling of the hypo filling him with drugs. The pain that he had felt floated away from him – or, maybe, he was floating above the pain. He wasn't sure which.
"Don't try to spork," the Yetel said.
"What?"
"It won't emasculate your condition."
Jimmy closed his eyes. "Something is wrong here. Where's Pix?"
"She's dead."
"No I'm not!"
"Shut up you!" Jimmy snapped at the Yetel. "Your translator's broken!"
"I know." The Yetel stood up. "I will have to treat others. Stay safe."
"Hm, at least he got that one right." Jimmy tried sitting up, thought better of it, and stayed where he was.
Pix leaned over him. "He-" Jimmy started, but she leaned down and kissed him upside down.
She broke the kiss, grinning at him as she did so.
"...lo" Jimmy finished. This time he managed to actually sit up.
"So, guess what? We got exploded a little, and the bad guy got to unload another magazine at us." Pix sighed. "This guy has got a close range empty a gun at us twice, and twice we've ducked."
"This time, I pulled you down. We're tied, now." Jimmy tried to stand next and actually managed it without his head vibrating off his neck and shattering on the ground.
"Yeah, well, some of the other members of the gang weren't so lucky." Pix looked somber. "Two people I don't know are dead. They're dead. Is it wrong to be so happy that I'm not?"
Jimmy couldn't think of an answer for that. So, instead, he hugged her. Eventually, some day, that wasn't going to answer everything. In fact, it didn't even answer anything now. But it sure felt nice.
Pix sighed, leaning into his chest. "Well.” She stood up, slipping from his arms. "Let's get going."
###
The Yetel medic tugged a sheet over the second corpse. The sheet made him look like a Halloween prop rather than a person whose life had ended abruptly and completely and utterly. Final destination. Jimmy shifted on his feet, suddenly uncomfortable.
Edna looked around at her gang members. She seemed tiny next to them – a collection of gangers and criminals looming over a young woman. But Edna had mastered her mother's trick of seeming taller and louder than she was supposed to, and so, they all looked as if they were looking up to her. It was quite a trick.
"Okay, we got hit hard. We're going to find this bastard and kill him." She nodded. "And, after this, we're going to do a job that's going to pay off so big that you won't believe it."
"I don't believe it," one of her men snorted. Edna glared at him and he shut up.
"Now, everyone get kitted up, I gotta talk to the kids." Edna turned around and walked over to Jimmy and Pix.
"Okay." Pix held her hand up. "Quick question. What job was are you talking about?"
"Job? Saving the human race." Edna bit her lip. "Okay, I know that doesn't pay, but just so long as the men don't know, we'll have some muscle."
"Great." Jimmy put his hand on his face. "This is going to end well."
Edna put her hands on her hair, running her fingers through it. "Here is the plan. You two are going to be our sneaky pair."
Pix raised her hand, as if she wanted to ask a question.
Edna glared at her, then turned back to Jimmy. "See, two people, no matter how hard this Xorquin is looking for then, are easier to hide than a gang. The more people, the bigger footprint they leave behind. The gang is going to draw your scaled friend off. I'm going to send the gang with two other kids, one of them with pink hair. They are going to book it for your place." Pix bit her lip. "But, wait, won't that get those two kids shot at?”
Edna looked at her. "It's called diversion."
"No, it's called sending two kids off to get shot instead of us," Pix said, crossing her arms over her chest.
Edna pinched the bridge of her nose and closed her eyes – Jimmy could almost hear what she was thinking, and it was definitely less than complimentary.
"At least tell them-" Pix started
"Of course I'm going to tell them!" Edna exploded, throwing her hands up. "I never send people into danger without telling them."
"What about the whole not having money t-" Pix whispered, leaning in as she did so.
"That's money. They'll live without money." Edna hissed. There were people listening in, standing at the edge of the hallway, pretending to be interested in something else. Jimmy felt a sudden twist of fear.
"Pix," he whispered in her ear. "Let's moralize later, when we won't die because of it."
Pix glared at him, then at Edna. Then she sighed. "Okay. Fine. How will we get where we're going without getting lost? Or perforated? Or both?"
"I'll be guiding you." Edna tapped her ear, where a com-bead nestled. "Though, obviously, the communication isn't going to be clear everywhere in Harbinger." Jimmy nodded. Pix nodded as well, though she did so grudgingly. "Can we do it in a way that doesn't involve you connecting right to my head?" she asked, sounding a bit plaintive. "It kinda gives me a headache after a few hours." "We'll get you two comlinks."
"That'll work."
"Okay," Edna said. "You two, go to the mess hall. Get fed. I'll gather up whatever equipment you might need and then you'll head out."
Pix sighed. "Okay. Thanks."
But Edna was already walking away. ###
Jimmy, in lieu of a long, complex description of his current feelings about the meal, shoved his spoon into the goop, then lifted the spoon up to eye level so that he and Pix could look at it. The greyish liquid dribbled from his spoon and plopped into the bowl with the sound of someone with the runs.
Pix closed her eyes and put her hands over her face. "Jimmy, please, I'm feeling sick enough as it is!"
Jimmy grinned, then started to spoon down his gruel. It actually tasted better than it looked, which wasn't very hard.
Pix sighed, pausing between spoons. "Are we becoming bad guys?"
Jimmy glanced up at her.
"We're working with criminals. We're shooting at people. Heck, we're using human shields." Pix bit her lip. "These things good are not!"
Jimmy sighed, softly, and set down his spoon. "It's all about numbers, Pix. If we save six hundred million people, it is worth two lives. Also, it's not like we're tricking these people to do this for us. They're volunteering. It sucks, but it isn't evil."
"So Edna claims." Pix crossed her arms over her chest. She looked away, at the corner of the mess-hall. "What...what kind of people are we going to be at the end of this?"
Jimmy shrugged. "I don't know. But, Pix, we were going to go to college. We'd be different people at the end of college, too, if that makes you feel better.” He smiled at her. Pix snorted, then stuck her tongue out at him.
“Yeah, but at the end of college, we'd just have lost our virginity, not our...what is it called when you haven't killed someone?” she asked, rubbing her chin.
Jimmy looked down at the pool of goop, his spoon making ripples as he moved it back and forth and back and forth. Then, with a kind of casualness that sounded exactly nothing like casualness whatsoever, he said: “We...could fix that.”
Pix's eyes narrowed. "Are you asking me for sex?"
Jimmy blinked. There was a pretty girl who he was madly in love with, and she had brought up the big S and what emotion was he filled with? Excitement? Lust? Love? Nope! None of those
Panic. "I, uh, bu...tha..."
Pix grinned, slowly. "Say the magic words."
"Um," Jimmy's brain snapped like a rubber band, from panic to..."Ni! Ni!"
Pix cowered in mock terror and they both started to laugh hysterically. Two of Edna's gangers walked into the mess hall and shoved their plates under the gruel dispenser. They both looked at Jimmy and Pix, who kept giggling. Pix bit her finger.
"I'll keep guessing." Jimmy sighed. "We don't need to rush it."
"Actually, yes, we do need to rush it." Pix winked. "After all, who wants to die a virgin?"
"Who wants to die at all?" One of the gangers growled. "And git! Those are our seats."
Jimmy got up, slowly, then smiled disarmingly at the ganger.
"We were just done." He grabbed Pix's hand and helped her up. "Afterall, I just figured out the magic words."
"Did you now?" Pix chewed on her lip, her eyes twinkling.
He grinned. "I'll tell them to you in our bunk, okay?" He grabbed her hand and she giggled.
They scampered out and bumped right into Edna. Edna presented a gun, handle first, to Jimmy. Jimmy looked at the offered weapon as if it was from some kind of bizarre alternate universe. Then he took it, gulping.
"You two. Firing range. Five minutes." Edna turned, then noticed how Pix and Jimmy's hands were pretty much glued together. She looked up at them. "Five minutes. Don't be late, you horny teenagers."
"Shoot."
"Exactly," Edna said, grinning at the two of them. She turned back to the hallway and walked down it, her hands in her pockets. Jimmy sighed, looking at the gun in his hand.
He looked at Pix.
"Well..." Pix sighed. "I guess that ruined the mood."
"Shot, Pix. It shot the mood." Jimmy grinned. Pix snorted, then turned to him, putting her hand on his hip. She smiled up at him.
"So, for when this is over...what were those magic words."
Jimmy grinned. "That, Pix, would be telling."
Pix snorted again. "Information! We need Information!"
They both walked down the hallway. "Orange Alert. Orange Alert."
"Did you really think a giant balloon would stop them?"

"Hahaha!"
###
Enjoying the story? Well, then check out my Patreon! LINK HERE!

Author's Note: Man, I had a great Thanksgiving. In fact, I had three - once with my family, then again with my family, then a third time with my friends. This does explain why I am so fat and lazy. But my birthday is rapidly approaching, so I'll be sure to give you all presents. That's how birthday's work, right?




Chapter Nine: Tortuga

The Urtish, whose name was Zed apparently, shoved Jimmy and Pix into the box before squeezing in after them, leaving his chair-gun on the ground outside of the box. The door closed and everything went dark.
"So, uh, Zed...it's kinda cramped in here," Pix said after a few moments of silence.
"I know, it is." Zed didn't sound particularly annoyed to be jammed in up close to two aliens he had never met before.
"Wait, aren't you going to tell us to shut up?" Pix asked.
"Nope. In fact, I'd love to hear more about you, mostly so I know how much you're worth when I sell you."
"Great." Pix nodded, her pink eyes bobbling up and down in the darkness. "Greeeat. We get to be sold into slavery in a box smaller than my closet!"
“Well, to be fair...” The Urtish said, then paused. He kept pausing. “Uh, wait, sorry, my timing is-”
The floor of the blue box dropped out from under them. Well, it didn't really drop, but rather dropped a few inches than started to click downwards, as if each click was a ratchet not quite engaging. Jimmy put his hand on the wall and felt it sliding against his palm – they were moving down a shaft. The clicking sound continued and the elevator continued to go down, and Pix managed to slid around the Urtish – apologizing softly every few seconds – until she stood beside Jimmy and could hold his hand. He smiled at her, even if it was too dark for her to see.
After what felt like forever, the elevator hit the ground with a loud CLANG!
Zed barely staggered, but Jimmy almost took Pix down. Zed grinned at the two of them as they struggled to stay afoot – Jimmy could tell, because Zed had used bioluminescent toothpaste recently, though it was only visible in the darkness of the elevator.
The door opened and light bust into the chamber, blinding Jimmy and Pix for a moment.
"Welcome to Tortuga!"
“One second!” Jimmy siad, holding up his hand, still rubbing his eyes.
Zed sighed, shook his head, and muttered something that his translator helpfully picked up and piped out at full volume: “Pansy ass human eyes.”
###
Tortuga seemed instantly familiar to Jimmy. It sat in a cavernous room that was almost the exact shape and layout of the elevator junction that they had taken into the Armory. Where Tinsel and Tortuga wildly diverged was what had been crammed into the place. Buildings of every species and architectural style were smashed together with gleeful disregard for safety or urban planning. Graffiti was splashed on every wall and sidewalk. There were human neons, Yetel pictographs that blazed in infrared and UV light that Jimmy knew would blind him if he looked at them too long, Slor scentdibbles, and freaking Basilisk hacks that skirted the edge between provocative street art and potential war crime.
It was beautiful. But it was also dangerous.
Jimmy rubbed at his eyes, and looked at Pix, who was shaking her head. “Have these people ever heard of restraint?”
“No,” Jimmy said, though he was just guessing.
"That's just about right," Zed said, slapping him on the back. "Oh, look who's come down to visit."
Jimmy and Pix looked up, even though Pix's eyes were kept closed. "Who is it?" She whispered.
"I'm guessing," Jimmy bit his lip.
"That's my mom's jacket," Edna spoke with a prim, almost pinched voice. She looked nothing like anything like Jimmy expected. She was thin as a reed, had a pinched, almost ugly face that made her look closer to thirty than twenty despite her being Anna's daughter – though, the relationship didn't seem to be a blood relation, as she had no tail. She wore a simple, body-hugging jumpsuit that had been covered with hanging straps and catches that themselves were wrapped around a profusion of useful gadgets and tools. The most disconcerting thing was that she looked like she could and would kill you if you twitched in the wrong direction, at the wrong time, or with the wrong intent. Or, even, the right intent.
The Yetel soldiers and the Xorquin had been too alien for facial expressions to matter. But this girl was human through and through. She looked like she was half a hat from shooting Jimmy right there. He didn't seeany guns in her sprawl of tools, but the two burly men behind her looked more than willing to use the shredder rifles they had strapped onto their shoulder.
"Uh, yeah," Jimmy took it off in a hurry and held it out to Edna. "It was the only thing of her's we could bring that didn't get stolen."
Edna bit her lip. Her expression softened, and for a moment, her ugly face reworked itself to look about Jimmy's age – a strange changing of lines, the set of her jaw, and frownlines smoothing away. Then, the hardness flowed back up like a sewer tide and she took the jacket. She looked at it, sighed, then handed it back.
"Thank you," she said, almost too soft to hear. "I don't want it."
Jimmy took the jacket back and slipped it back on. It was his jacket now. And it was comfortable like no one's business on top of that. He thrust his hands into his pockets as Zed spoke somewhat plaintively. "They owe me at least-"
Edna threw him a bag of coins. "Zed, make sure that Xorquin doesn't get in."
Zed, who was busy gaping at the bag he had caught, nodded. "Y-yeah. He won't get past me."
He turned around and hustled back into the blue box elevator. The elevator went up and Jimmy turned back to Edna. There was a moment of silence – interrupted only by the crowds of Tortuga doing their own thing – they acted as if two burly men with shredder rifles on their shoulders were nothing much of a much. Of course, Jimmy wasn't entirely sure why he should react like they were anything much of a much, considering how much he had to deal with.
"Well." Pix broke the silence. "We made it."
She reached down and tugged her shirt up, revealing her data port. "Here's the data. Now, we're not going to move," she glanced at the two men with guns. "till we figure out terms."
"What's going to stop me?" Edna asked.
"Well, this, this is going to stop you." Pix grinned. "I can wipe every bit of data if you shoot us, and you'll have to shoot us to get us to do anything we don't want to do." She raised her eyebrows up. Jimmy worked on keeping his face as blank as humanly possible – Pix was bluffing people with guns. If they called the bluff – they'd find out that Pix didn't and couldn't interface with the crystal.
Edna looked like she wanted to kill them again.
"Hey, mowing us down gets you nothing. And all we need is some protection. Shouldn't be that hard, right?"
"Fine!" Edna thrust her hand out. "You have a deal!"
Pix glanced at Jimmy. He gestured with his head. Take it, he tried to say with his eyes. Pix grinned, and took the hand that was offered.
They both squeezed as hard as they could.
Edna winced. But Pix let go first, rubbing her hand. "I've got reinforced bones. Hard to break."
"I killed more people by the time I was twelve than you have in your life."
Pix managed, somehow, to look nonchalant, but her eyes whirred as she clamped her iris down. After a moment, she said, "Well, what now?"
"Now? Now we go to our base, pay off whoever we need to pay off, then decrypt the information." Edna sighed. "But first, is there anything you need? Food?"
"YES!"
###
The city of Tortuga writhed with life. People were constantly doing things, twitching, bouncing, running to and fro. Xorquin clattered at one another, Urtish smoked their heads off, Tette<click><click>...sat there, but they were probably thinking really really loudly. Slor and Yetel that seemed to have forgotten, or were just ignoring, the war outside bargained and traded. Robots hummed in the sky, and the few E.L.Fs that were mixed among the profusion of aliens hawked their services from virtual street corners - Holograms and augmented realities shaped storefronts, turning cubical-sized physical locations into sprawling buildings, like dimensions were unfolding before your eyes – dimensions full of drugs and sex and bootleg guns.
Edna and her bodyguards flowed through the crowd like water through more water.
And Jimmy really needed to work on his similes.
Still, all the scrambling Jimmy and Pix had to do to keep up with Edna proved to be worth it: Soon, she led them to a restaurant built out of sheet metal with smart cloth strung between the gaps. The front door had a sign painted in glowing colors: BBQ. The scent that wafted from the deliberately less than perfect seals around the walls and cloth was, well, it sure beat the sewage out of protein bars. Jimmy's mouth filled with spit and his stomach growled. Pix started to giggle, then she sniffed loudly, and made a face. “Like what you smell?" Edna cocked an eyebrow.
"Very yes." Jimmy grinned. Pix shrugged and shook her head at the same time.
"I dunno, smells to spicy to me."
"Oh, Pix, nothing can be too spicy, didn't you know that?” Jimmy asked. Pix stuck her tongue out at him.
One of the body guards, at a gesture from Edna, opened the door and ushered them inside. The room was dark and the smell was even stronger. Various people, mostly displaced humans, were eating there. From what Jimmy could see, the meat was slicked with a thick, delicious, and very brightly glowing sauce – it made the tables shimmer like embers in the rather darkly lit place.
Edna, Pix and Jimmy were seated by a pleasant E.L.F. waitress with a really big grin and three menus tucked under one armpit. The bodyguards sat at a different table. The waitress handed out the menus, and Pix got to flipping with a will. Jimmy chose a salad he knew he'd enjoy, then glanced at Edna, who was watching them both.
"Okay," she said, softly. "This place is pretty safe for talking, but Jack might have gotten a few bugs in here."
She slid out a small circle of metal and plastic with a dome on-top. Her thumb pressed down on the dome and it lit up bright red.
"This'll make sure any listening devices at this table won't work. Our guards-"
The body guards started to talk loudly about the latest football game. Their table was close enough that the conversation overlapped and covered their whispers.
Jimmy nodded. Clever. Cleverish, at the very least. He looked at Pix, and saw that she was still looking through the menu.
"The first question I have is: Can you translate anything on the data crystal into stuff we can understand? Wait, no, my actual first question is: Who is Jack?" Jimmy asked. "If it's in Xorquin, we can translate it. And he's a rival crime lord, no need for you to worry about it."
"Well, there is something else." Jimmy glanced at Pix. "What did you call that stuff? That security stuff?"
"I called it security stuff." Pix grinned up at him, closing the menu with a snap. "The accurate name would be hardware scrambling programs. They screw up the power allotment of whatever you plug it in. Makes it short itself out. That's why it hurt when I tried to log into it. Not that I need to log into it to delete the files. And why it melted his computer." She jerked her thumb at Jimmy.
Edna nodded. "We can handle that but first, food." She whistled and the waitress came back, brushing a flop of green hair away from her eye. "I'll have the Brahman ribs. Double sauce. And a beer."
The waitress didn't even ask for an ID.
"Do you have root beer?" Jimmy's ears burned and he looked down.
"Beer, got it." The waitress grinned. "What do you want with that?"
"But, I-"
"Salad." Edna broke in. "He was looking at salads."
"Salad?" The waitress shook her head. "Young men need meat. I'll get you some ribs."
"But I'm-"
"And you'll have?" The waitress looked at Pix.
"Steak. Rare. Not bloody or anything. But rare. And I'll take a beer too."
The waitress walked off, leaving Jimmy feeling profoundly out of his depth. He looked at Pix, who winked at him.
"Pix," he whispered, leaning in next to her. "We're underage."
"So?" She grinned. "I drink."
Jimmy's blinked. "You what?"
"Oh, not to excess, and definitely when I'm not driving. Which is easy, cause I don't own a car."
"You drink!?" Jimmy gulped, his throat suddenly dry. Why did this feel so creepy? Other kids drank, and Jimmy knew intellectually that drinking a bit of alcohol before you were twenty-eight wouldn't turn you into a horrible layabout drunkard. But, still...it felt so weird, to freak out about that when he had been dealing with guns and murderers and criminals.
But then again, he expected that stuff to shock him. But drinking and being underaged slipped back his growing jaded shell and stabbed him right in the back, because it was something close to normal.
Pix interrupted his inner thoughts. "What? You don't drink?"
"Well, no! And where did you get the drinks anyway?"
She snorted. "It's not like it's Red Sand or Dust or anything, Jimmy. I just nicked some of Richy's secret stash."
The waitress came back with some tall, frosty drinks. Jimmy looked at it. Pix knocked her dink back and hiccuped. Jimmy sighed. Edna sipped her beer, taking it slower. Jimmy scowled at her, then tried to drink a whole cup of beer at once, without ever having tasted it before.
Ow. That had been a mistake.
Pix snorted and slapped him on the back. He grinned at her. "I feel warm."
"That will happen."
"You're looking prettier by the moment."
"Don't you know you're not supposed to judge people by their looks?" Pix asked.
Jimmy sipped again, knowing to go slower this time. "You're also getting smarter by the moment."
"That's better." Pix poked him in the nose.
Edna glared at them. Jimmy shifted, suddenly uncomfortable. It had been almost two days since her mother's death. It had to be tearing at her insides. Jimmy felt rotten for his good mood. He shifted in his seat and coughed.
"So, uh." He bit his lip. "Are...your mom was a-"
"No, stop." Edna looked up at him. "I can't feel anything right now. We're in the middle of a tense situation, and I'm young and I'm a girl. This gang isn't a bunch of enlightened, modern people." Her eyes went flinty hard. "I can't let them see weakness."
"Ah." Jimmy felt cold despite the beer. He sipped again. "Those body guards, are they loyal?"
"As loyal as anyone can be in this stupid city." Edna grumbled. She played with one of their bottle caps, using her fingers to scoot it around. Jimmy felt a weight on his shoulder. Pix's head.
"Not very, eh?" Pix sighed. The waitress came back with the ribs and steak. Jimmy had to admit it smelled really good. And, heck, Edna was paying. Might as well enjoy the steak. It was not the best steak he had ever eaten but it wasn't the worst. Good. Pretty good even. Pix made soft mumbling sounds as she ate her.
"No, not very." Edna picked the conversation up again with ease. "Now, once this meal is done, we are going to make it to HQ. There, we can translate for you, and then we can dicker over how much this is worth us. Who knows-" Edna shrugged. "You two might be good business partners in the future, if you play things smart and don't screw up what leverage you have."
"You've got to be insane." Jimmy leaned forward. "We're not criminals."
"Fine." Edna shrugged. "But knowing I'll get more use out of you is one more reason why I should not just sell the info and then ransom you off."
Jimmy scowled. Pix sighed, sitting up. She said one word that summed up everything Jimmy thought.
"Shit."
###
The super computer in Edna's hands was less impressive looking than Jimmy had hoped for. It looked like several other computers that had all been stitched together. But, as Pix whisper-explained to him, the older junk acted like a failsafe. So, if the Counter-Defense Protocols failed and the crystal tried to short out the machine, the old junk would die rather than the new and shiney stuff. If the CDP did work, then the old stuff would wire the info to the new stuff and it would get cracking. At least...he thought that was the translation of what she had excitedly whispered. She had said “quantum” a lot, though. There was only one question that Jimmy had.
“Won't Edna realized you bluffed her?”
Pix blinked, then shrugged, and mimed crossing her fingers: I don't know, she seemed to say. Lets hope not!
Jimmy crossed his fingers. Barring treachery, this was their ticket home. And, in case of treachery, he was ready to...
To sign up with Edna, if she either called their bluff or just demanded it either-way. He knew Pix wanted to run. To try something heroic and brave and futile. Before Friday, Jimmy knew he if he was in a life or death situation, he'd want to run and try things that were brave and futile and heroic. Before Friday, he hadn't kissed a girl. He hadn't drunk beer or known just how amazing it was to...
Yes, to love someone. To be near someone who loved you for your flaws and your qualities. To be held. And before Friday, he hadn't known how alarmingly final death was, how absolutely fast it could happen.
He didn't want to lose that. So, Architects help him, he was going to do anything to live.
He looked at Pix. She connected her eyes with him. She smiled, slowly.
Yes, he thought. Anything.
Edna slid the data crystal into the computer. "Note." She held her finger up. "This computer doesn't have a copying drive. That is a different computer entirely."
"Good." Pix crossed her arms over her chest. She paused, then whispered to Jimmy: “It really doesn't.”
Jimmy nodded. If he couldn't trust Pix about computers, who could he trust?
Edna scowled, then pushed the start button. The center computer whirred on, humming softly. Something dinged and the central housing rotated till the center computer and the outer computer were connected. Information sparked down the wires, the entire machine humming now. The view screen flickered on and Jimmy grinned at Pix.
"It worked." Edna stepped back, rubbing her hands together. "Watch and let's see how much this is worth."
First, there were the indecipherable diagrams. Then, the Xorquin that Jimmy remembered from so long ago, appeared on the screen.
"James," he said. "I am going to send this message to you and Monica by way of Walter." He sighed. "It's true. The crazy bastards are really planning it. The schematics...they detail the entire plan. James, I th-"
Jimmy closed his eyes a moment before the shot rang out. That part he still remembered all too well.
Edna scowled. "Computer, play back the first bit of the message. Frame by frame, only going forward by command."
The first frame. Now that it didn't go by so fast, Jimmy saw that the lettering was translated as well. First, it showed a series of symbols: A square thing, a stick figure daggit, a half circle and a small blue box. Then it showed one of Harbinger's thousands of shuttle ports. The words "open" appeared and the shuttle port opened, letting out a shuttle. Something was attached to it, a big bobbly something. The word next to it translated after a few moments of whirring from the computer: Antimatter Warheads (5,000,000,000 Megaton Yield)
Jimmy gasped. Pix put her hand over her face. Edna's reaction was far more prosaic: “FUCK!”
The next frame was the shuttle attaching itself to one of Harbinger's engine pod. When it left, the AM-bomb stayed behind. The shuttle went back into the shuttle port. The last diagram, now it was labeled, turned from a nonsensical cone to a estimated blast damage and radiation exposure from the rupturing of the engine pod.
The thing Jimmy noticed the most was how the cone of radiation was aimed right at his city, at his people's home. And then the expected casualty charts showed up. If the Xorquin's plan was right, it would sterilize the entire sewage deck – blasting it with enough hard radiation that even Harbinger's inexplicable hull wouldn't be able to stop the humans from dying. And they would die fast...die with their hair falling out and vomiting up blood.
Jimmy felt sick.
"Those bastard," Pix whispered.
Edna slammed the off button on the screen, shutting down the images for the moment.
"Monica....James. Those are my parents names!" Jimmy blinked. "I got no idea who Walter is...but..."
"What?" Pix looked up at him
"It's just a theory." Jimmy waved his hand. "It's not important. What is important is...what the hell are we gonna do about that!?"
He and Pix looked at Edna. She was still staring at the screen as if she could still see the projected casualty lists on it. Then, she turned to face Jimmy and Pix. She drew in a deep breath...then let it out. "I have no idea."
They all looked at one another.
"Well, this is it." Pix stuck her hands in her pockets. "We're going to die."
Jimmy looked at her again. “Pix, you said that last time.”
Pix tried for a smile. It looked like a death's head grin. “It's still true, isn't it?”

Jimmy couldn't argue with that. 
###
Did you enjoy the story? I'm glad! Please, support me on Patreon, or at the very least, tell your friends about it. LINK!