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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Red stared at him. "Seriously?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"And keep your voice down, they're gonna hear you."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Purple quirked an eyebrow at him.

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

"No damage is better than less damage," Nord said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Alerts are clear they're alerts and not random Foodcourtian junk mail."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Red and Purple exchanged glances.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Personally?" Nord said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They nodded together. "Yes, ma'am."

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

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

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

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

"Well!" She grinned.

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

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

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

"Uh." Red turned to Purple.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tethered to what?

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

Spoots. "Are… are we tethered to each other?"

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

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

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

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

Their gauntlets beeped with a new downloaded message.

"Just one," Poki told them. "Your invoice. Damage repayments."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A wave of groans traveled down the line behind him.

"Hey, shut up!" It wasn't Red's fault the idiot couldn't measure right.

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

"Take it nine times, then! I know that can't be right."

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

"Come on, man," the drone begged. "There's a line back there."

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

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

"Good."

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

The drone backed away from the counter and out of punting range. "I'm not measuring the antennae." Snot.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Technically," said the little guy with the taco wrapper, "it's eleven years, so it's a cycle and four—"

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

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

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

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

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

"Asked when?"

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

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

"Right!" Purple slapped Larb hard on the shoulder. "Farb here knows what it's about."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"It's weird, right?" A little gloved hand tapped Red's knee. He shooed it off.

"Yeah, you'd think they'd put it—"

"In the walls, yeah."

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

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

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

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

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

"I thought you knew," Purple not-whispered back.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Skoodge shrank back from the dirty looks simmering from the rest of the squad. "But Larb's the one who—"

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

Tenn nodded. "Seriously unprofessional."

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

"Pretty sure it's five foot five," Red told him. "Is our curious squadmate five foot five, Purple?"

"No. No, he's not. I heard the clothes drone over there read him as four foot something."

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

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

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

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

The rest of the hub didn't disagree.

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

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

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

At the same time, Red spat, "No."

They looked at each other.

Red glared. " No—"

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

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

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

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

Little buddy. Red's eye twitched.

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

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

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

Elite Sub-Commander Sponch nodded proudly.

Red slowly blinked at him. Squinted. Blinked at Tenn. "Who?"

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

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

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

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

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

Tenn shrugged. "Pretty much. I'd move back if I were you."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"How many were there, sirs?" asked Larb.

Purple shrugged. "About six."

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

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

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

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

"Three fresh ones in cold quarantine," her second confirmed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sponch chuckled. "Oh. In that case, why don't I help you learn to think quieter?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Irk thrives," the Elites called back.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Almost.

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

"Yes."

"You're not eating it, though. What's the matter with it, does it need to get ripe?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"And public."

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

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

A bitter smile twitched at the edge of Red's mouth. "Tch, Commander Poki hates everyone's face."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I get it, Purple, thanks."

"He could've—"

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

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

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

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

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

Purple rolled his eyes. "'Reputationing' isn't a word."

"I— You know what I mean! Shut up, you're dumb."

"YOU'RE dumb!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Cut what out?" Red pulled his legs in and glared at him. "I'm not doing anything."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Did you say 'leader'?"

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

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

"I figured you wanted it more than me." Purple shrugged.

"Yeah, but… don't you want to fight for it?"

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

"I mean. I guess we could, but…" Purple's sentence trailed off, too indifferent to finish.

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

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

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

Purple threw his head back and groaned.

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

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

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

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

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