“We have to get out of here,” the lab coat shouted with an edge of panic in his voice.

  “I hadn’t noticed!” I responded to him, already having turned tail and started running the way we came. The nerd decided to come with us, running behind while the alarms shrieked and the lights flashed.

  “What is wrong with you?” His shouted question could barely be heard over the continuing alarm, and I didn’t give him an answer. He probably wouldn’t have liked “I’m a few drinks short today, kind of hungry, and that makes me downright ornery,” anyway. When we reached the surface, the sky was glowing orange.

  At first I thought the sun might have been rising, but then I quickly realized that such an explanation was much too prosaic for such a violently terrible day. Instead, the whole base was aggressively burning down, which fit much more nicely. “The motor pool is that way!” I shouted, gesturing to the right. Luckily, the fire hadn’t yet spread in its direction. We ran towards the large garage, eating up the ground as fast as we could.

  When we reached it, the door was locked, so I whipped out my kukri and cleaved downwards, hacking through the handle and lock with a single stroke. I booted the door open with a clang and quickstepped into the motor pool, clearing the place rapidly. It seemed like there was nobody in the room, so I crossed over to the office. Another chop and kick, and I was inside. Of course, the keys were locked in a safe, but my kukri made short work of that as well at the cost of a little force and some time that we didn’t have.

  I grabbed all the keys and ran back out to the pool, rushing up to the first SUV I saw. My preference would’ve been an APC, but I was pretty sure that all of them were fragments of irradiated scrap by now. After testing four of the keys I’d grabbed, the fifth one finally worked, unlatching the door with a click that sounded like salvation to me. Hopping in, I pressed the unlock button for the rest of the doors, and the one for the garage to open. The nerd popped the door and started to get in the passenger seat, but I pointed my rifle vaguely at him.

  “That’s Blart’s seat, sweaty. Find your own ride.” He backed off a step, his face going pale and his eyes pleading. Blart scrambled his way into the passenger side seat, his lil hooves scratching the leather, and I finally relented, seeing the skinny guy’s scared face. “Alright, get in the back,” I sighed at him. Relief crossed his face and he jumped in.

  As soon as he slammed the door, I peeled out, hitting ninety and still accelerating before we reached the gate. There were a few people running around on the base as we left, and I tossed extra keys at them out of the window as we went. Maybe they’d manage to get to the motor pool and get away, maybe not.

  We’d gotten about ten kilometers away into the forested switchbacks before a new star was born on the hill we were fleeing from, shaking the ground and lighting the sky. A moment later, a massive roar rolled over the car, tearing leaves and branches from the trees all around us. I barely kept control over the vehicle as we went, but managed to straighten out and keep going.

  “Where… where are we going?” The nerd’s question was asked as if he didn’t really want the answer.

  “We’re going to my personal rocket ship!”

  “Great. I’ve been kidnapped by a complete schizophrenic. My whole life is in tatters, and I am stuck in a car with a madman and his pet pig.”

  “I’m not his pet!” Blart snapped, angrily. The man’s eyes grew as large as dinner plates, and then he fainted.

  “Now look at what you did,” I said. Somehow, the pig managed to look honestly perplexed. “You made him faint.”

  “What, I did? Your actions destroyed three square kilometers of land and started a massive forest fire! This whole region will be uninhabitable in a week’s time! Don’t you think that might’ve contributed more?!”

  “Well what did you want me to do?”

  “Have the technician shut down and scuttle it safely, you clod!”

  “There’s no way he would have done that,” I said confidently. “Aiding and abetting the enemy is treason. Do you know what the punishment for treason is in the USAS?” The pig didn’t respond, so I went on. “They stake your guts to the ground and toss you off the edge of the grand canyon!”

  “What is wrong with you barbarians? I should have never accepted this contract!”

  “You know what, Blart? You’re right. You should have stayed on whatever smelly squid world you came from, and never showed up here. The entire time I have known you my life has been about as enjoyable as a sandpaper handjob, and it seems like it’s only going to get worse. I was perfectly happy day drinking at my job and whiling the days away at Lefty’s, and now my whole fucking town is uninhabitably irradiated!”

  “Well, it’s not like I’m enjoying it either! Because of your addiction to ape-poison you killed my bonded life-partner! Dead! On a world like this, on such an ignoble contract! He was unique, meant for me, and I’m never going to find another, you know that? I’m going to be alone for the rest of my existence, except for the company of other sub-lifeforms and those of my own kind who will feel nothing but pity and contempt for me!”

  “Oh, boo-fucking-hoo, butt squid misses his butt squid boyfriend! You killed three people and enslaved a fourth for being in your general vicinity when you showed up! Why don’t you suck the tears off my dick you miserable little monster?”

  We went on like that for a little while, trading insults and gripes with the current situation, before the pencilneck in the back seemed to come to. “Guys,” he tried to interrupt, but we were both more interested in our fight than whatever he had to say. “Guys.” he tried again, more insistently. “Guys!”

  “What!?” both me and Blart shouted at him.

  “We’re being followed,” he said. “Are we almost there?”

  “Yes, we’re almost there, maybe another five minutes before we have to get out and walk,” Blart answered.

  “They’ll kill us if we do that,” the nerd whined. “I don’t want to die.”

  “Yeah, and I don’t want to drink my own piss, but I will if I have to,” I said. “Get up here and take the wheel.” I hit the cruise control and began climbing into the back seat. The labcoat monkey made a choked noise of fear and pulled himself into the front while I moved backwards. I set the seat in the back down to make a nice flat area and then waited. There was a stretch of almost six straight kilometers of road before we pulled off to find our path, and that was when the fun would start.

  We hit it and leveled out, and I rose to one knee, leaning against one of the car’s inner walls. I braced my rifle on my arm, and my arm on my knee, and calmed myself. Focusing and blanking out all the aches and pains that my body was reporting, I waited for the car to come around the bend behind us. Steady inhales and exhales steadied my aim, and when we were about six hundred meters up the road, our pursuer came around the bend.

  To my great surprise, I recognized the driver. It was the captain of the base, and he looked pissed. Sitting beside him was one of the base’s guards, holding a satphone. My commanding officer must have recognized me, because the look on his face changed from one of mere anger to a rageful expression an ugly shade of puce, and he began to shout something to his passenger. I wasn’t terribly interested in whatever it was they were planning, and would prefer my generally treasonous behavior to go unreported, so I aimed at the passenger side tire and let off a burst.

  Maybe if we weren’t going so fast, it wouldn’t have been such an issue. Maybe if he were more focused on the road instead of me, he could have kept control of his vehicle. Maybe if he’d simply been luckier, it would have been fine. Heck, if he were driving one of the base’s vehicles instead of his personal one, the solid rubber tires wouldn’t have had a problem. None of these things were in the cards for him, however.

  My rounds slammed into his tire, shredding through it with ease. The wheel twisted with the force of the tire exploding, and my old captain got a look of supreme terror on his face as the steering wheel jerked to the side very suddenly. His vehicle pulled off the right side of the road, off of a dropoff there, and he suddenly plummeted downwards. When the car slammed into an oak tree that had likely been in place for centuries, a brief contest ensued, which the car lost. In an instant, the hydrogen cells burst, their contents ignited, and the vehicle roared into an explosion. I figured that would probably be the last I ever saw of the two men.

  - - -

  Our journey to the starship was relatively peaceful after that point. We reached our parking space among the tall, wide trees, got out and started the hike towards my starship. Every time I referred to it as such I could see Blart get a little bit ticked off, which made me all the more interested in doing so. Nearly the whole time, our new pet nerd complained and whined about nearly everything.

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  “These shoes weren’t meant for hiking,” he said, mournfully. “I’m going to have blisters.”

  “Oh no, blisters,” I responded, turning to look at him. We hadn’t crossed by a stream or anything for me to wash up, so my face was still covered in blood and grime from the previous day, not to mention swelling bumps and bruises. He must’ve gotten my point, because he shut up about it.

  “So what does this starship run on?’ he asked instead. His voice still held no small amount of disbelief about the idea, but that was better than him complaining endlessly.

  “Deuterium fusion,” Blart answered. “Much more efficient than your primitive ape reactors, though.”

  “And what about propulsion?”

  “Magnetic plasma in battle, but gravitic drives elsewise.”

  “You’ve got gravity manipulation technology?”

  “You’ve got gravity manipulation technology?” Blart repeated in a sneering voice, mocking him. “Yes, puny hairless ape scientist, as does everyone else of note or worth who operates in space. It sometimes amazes me that you managed the level of civilization you’ve got at all with your pathetic level of technology.”

  “Is he always like this?” the scientist asked, exasperated.

  “Yeah, if he asks to climb inside you, don’t let him.”

  “What?”

  “He’s an extreme pervert. It’s one of his less endearing traits.”

  “I’m not a pervert! I’m a symbiote, you moronic upjumped chimpanzee!”

  “Wait, you’re not just a talking pig?” the scientist asked, growing only more confused.

  “More like a talking parasite,” I said, cutting off Blart’s irritated reply. “Anyway, there’s the ship.” We’d reached the small clearing with the campsite in the center where Blart’s ship had landed, and suddenly the vessel loomed ahead of us. Four-eye’s four eyes lit up like a kid on christmas, and a wide smile crossed his face.

  “It’s… it’s real,” he said, wonder catching his words in his throat as he spoke.

  “That it is,” I agreed, not wanting to ruin his moment. He was the first person I’d ever shown my starship to, so it was kind of my moment, too.

  “Of course it’s real, puny earthling,” Blart butted in, having no such compunctions. He proceeded to launch into an insulting tirade, but I wasn’t listening. My instincts told me that something incredibly wrong was happening, and I straightened up, looking around. I’d been in combat more times than I could remember, and my gut knew things that my conscious mind would never be able to pick up in time to save my skin. I implicitly trusted it, and right now, it was telling me that somebody was watching me from above the barrel of a gun.

  “Ship! Send out the murderbot! Kill anybody that isn’t us!” It was as if the ship had been anticipating the order with how fast its side popped open, and my egg-shaped robot was waiting right there. At the same time as I shouted this, I tackled our pet nerd to the ground as rounds began to pepper the ground around us. Dirt exploded into the air as I held him down and the eggbots rolled off the ramp.

  I heard the familiar sound of rockets hissing away, and explosions roaring in the forest. My ears began to pound terribly as the shockwaves rolled over us and a huge machine gun began to chatter, pointed in our general direction. I hauled the labcoat wearing brainiac up and rushed forward. I’m sure he said something, probably a complaint of some sort, but it wasn’t terribly important to me. Half-carrying, half-dragging, I rushed up the ramp into the ship.

  “Close ramp! Get ready to go, ship!” My roared commands only barely rose above the sound of the roar and ring in my ears. I felt an awful tug in my left leg, then, and fell to the ground. The nerd grabbed me by my plate carrier, giving me a flashback to a jungle, long ago. “Fuck me, my leg’s off, isn’t it,” I said, slurring the words slightly.

  “Holy shit man, there’s so much blood. Oh god, we’re going to die man! There must’ve been thirty guys out there!”

  “Shut up,” I said, silently thanking nerdboy and his panic for spiking my blood with rage and keeping me semi-cogent. I ripped my belt off my pants and sat up, looking at my leg. There was a nasty chunk missing from my calf, as if a fifty cal had taken off the whole of the meat there. It was a goner. I tried not to think about that, instead tying off my belt as tight as it would go to restrict blood flow.

  “We have to get out of here!” Blart shouted, clearly panicking.

  “Then get us out of here, moron!” I responded. “Get me on my feet, you useless nerd,” I said to the man. His labcoat was more red than white at this point. He complied wordlessly, his face white and focused while he dragged me up. “That ladder,” I said, gesturing.

  “Melvin! Transfer ownership back to me!”

  “I would rather die,” I responded to him, which wasn’t far from the truth. The nerd brought me to the ladder and I began to drag myself up it. It was a serious chore with one non-functional leg, but I managed it thanks to a vast amount of adrenaline still pumping through my system. When I got up to the bridge, the ship was already displaying a view of the outside. A half-dozen men labeled “unknown hostiles”, each in a suit of powered armor, had been identified by the ship which helpfully displayed everything in English for me. A lot of them were taking cover away from the eggbot, which was whipping their four arms around and firing off high-intensity blasts of lasers along with the occasional rocket.

  “We have to get the robot back,” Blart said. “It costs-”

  “Don’t care,” I cut him off. “Ship, get us out of here.”

  “Specify destination,” the ship demanded.

  “Well, we could go to New Washington we could figure this whole thing out with the USAS,” I thought aloud.

  “No! Your government is infiltrated! We need to get out of this system and get additional gear before we come back! No more of your stupid monkey games!”

  “The line is ‘reindeer games’,” I noted. It was probably the blood loss, but I was feeling very calm right about then.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Nothing, don’t worry about it. Anyway, I think the USAS might boil us in piss for having blown up a railgun installation worth a few billion dollars anyway. We’re going to have to go somewhere else. Ship, can you recommend some things to make our situation better?”

  “Orbit! Ship, go to orbit!” As he shouted, the eggbot on the screen managed to catch up to one of the power armored men hiding behind the tree. He fired off a few rounds into its chassis, but it didn’t do much as the robot grabbed the man and lifted him above its head.

  “I’m afraid I can’t do that for you, Blart,” the ship responded while the eggbot tore the man in half in a welter of gore. “It would greatly increase our chances of survival to leave this location and seek somewhere that we can reassert our cover.”

  “Holy crap, did you see that? That robot is awesome!”

  “Yes, it is very expensive, now we need to get out of here you mindless primitive!”

  “Oh, yeah. Let’s go to Hanoi,” I said, scratching my chin.

  “Hanoi!?” The scientist and Blart shouted at the same time.

  “Yeah, it’s the largest city in the Southeast Asia sector, there’s bound to be resistance cells present.”

  “But they’re savages over there,” the egghead breathed. He looked terrified.

  “Oh, totally, but they’re reasonable enough when you’re holding the gun. Some aren’t so bad once you get to know ‘em. Well, sometimes. Ship, take us to Hanoi,” I commanded. Instantly, the ship began to hum louder, and the outside viewpoint began to rise away from the forest.

  “You dolt! You mindless buffoon! You scum!” Blart’s tirade was cut off by an ear-piercing shriek as alarms began to go off on the ship’s bridge.

  “Lockon detected. Beginning evasive maneuvers,” the ship’s calm voice spoke, completely belying the danger that we were in.

  “We’re all gonna die!” the nerd shouted, his voice cracking midway through from his pure terror. “Oh god, and I’ve never kissed a real woman!” Even in the emergency, some part of my brain filed away the fact that he’d qualified his statement with the word ‘real’ and was already plotting to make fun of him for it.

  “Right, I want my leg back,” I said to nobody in particular and heaved myself up from the seat, grabbing onto the nerd for support. “We’re going over to that tube!” I told him, gesturing to it. He started blubbering, but I cuffed him a good one and he started moving. As we reached the tube, the door sprang open, and I pulled my rifle, jacket, and vest off, tossing them onto the ground before falling in. “Ship, give me another rejuvenation,” I ordered. “Do not allow either of the other two people on this ship to interfere with this pod.”

  The door slammed shut and locked me in the dark while fluid began to fill the pod. I’m not gonna lie, I panicked, the feeling of drowning overwhelming me and making me go all lizard-brained before my rational side reasserted itself and reminded me that, in fact, I had been through this before, and I wasn’t going to die. Sweet, light fluid slipped past my nose and mouth, and I slowly inhaled, a little bit tentatively. After a sharp stab of pain, I was fine and able to breathe easily. Something pinched me at the back of my neck, near the base of my skull, and I began to feel sleepy. Far away, it seemed, the ship roared and shook violently, but I didn’t die, so everything was probably okay.

  “Captain Winsor,” the ship said, vibrating my skull to inject the sound directly into my eardrums. “You lack any form of cybernetic or genetic modifications. Your situation could be improved through some simple modifications which we have onboard.” For some reason, I greatly trusted the ship. It seemed like the only thing I’d met in the past few days that hadn’t wanted to kill me, climb inside me, or generally be a jerk. Plus it had a vaguely feminine voice, in a robotic sort of way, and I thought she sounded cute.

  As I was drifting off into unconsciousness, I nodded my head. “Go for it, do whatever would help out,” I muttered and fell deeply into a very comfy sleep.