CHAPTER II

Zanboloch stumbled around, trying to find somewhere to help.

Jump in a Starfighter? No, he would just get himself killed.
Try to turn the lights back on? Too easy!

Zanboloch donned his helmet and contacted Slick over the radio.
“Slick! What do I do, uh, sir?”
“I dunno…go fix the lights or something. Visibility is important.” He grunted.

Zanboloch groaned. Yeah, sure, i’ll just hide away and do something somewhere where I won’t trip over my own feet.

He trudged (well, ran, but he certainly felt like trudging) over to the electrical room when a section of the wall vanished in a cloud of smoke and a loud BANG.

Zanboloch gasped, and then choked. The humans were here. Inside the space shuttle. He stood there, petrified. He had probably forgotten he had a laser gun on his belt.
The shape of one of the most feared creatures in the galaxy emerged from the suffocating smoke.
The humans were dressed in skintight black all-body suits, but with formidable silver chest plate (however dinged and very bashed-up) and a helmet (made out of the same material as the chest plate) that looked quite similar to that of an english knight.

In fact, the whole uniform looked very reminiscent of a futuristic “knight in shining armour”.

Except for the laser gun.

“Oi, look! A gurgle-gut! Blast ‘im!” Yelled a human.
Zanboloch didn’t have time to be insulted by this very offensive racial slur, because he had to face his imminent death first.
Luckily, he didn’t have to, because Poioy stepped in and deflected the laser with her sword.
“Get out your GUN!!!” Screamed Poioy over the noise as she began slaughtering the humans.
Zanboloch was too horrified by all the killing. Both sides, not negotiating, never hesitating, just death, death, death.
Time seemed to stand still for Zanboloch.
He saw Poioy sink her sword into the back of many a soldier, and many a soldier manage to knick her flesh with their own weapon.

Suddenly, as Poioy struck down the last human soldier, there was a massive, echoing BOOM!! And Zanboloch was yanked back into reality like a yo-yo on a string.

A starfighter had been shot down and slammed into the rear end of the space shuttle, vaporising a chunk of the ship.

There was a lurch, and then a gradual feeling of weightlessness.
“W-woah…” Mumbled Zanboloch as he began floating.
“Urgh! The artificial gravity generator must have gotten smashed!” Growled Poioy.
Zanboloch’s face went a dirty, muted, pastel blue.

“I don’t think it’s the gravity generator that got smashed.” Croaked Zanboloch as he stared out the window.

“Then what is it? WHAT HAPPENED!?” Poioy screeched as she stomped over to Zanboloch.
The yell died in her throat.

“Oh…” She said, her voice barely above a whisper.

CHAPTER III

Out of the window, there was a great view of the human planet Earth. Zanboloch had seen pictures and holograms of it, but the real thing seemed…so much more beautiful.

Except for the fact that a starfighter had been shot down, smashed into the main engine, and sent the entire ship into a dramatic downward spiral.
Suddenly, a horrible siren ran through the ship, like a robot going down a metal slide.
“WE HAVE TO GET TO THE COCKPIT!!” Poioy roared over the noise.
“WE’LL BE ABLE TO IGNITE THE REVERSE THRUSTERS FROM THERE!!”
And so, the two siblings charged, or rather, bounced through the corridors, racing against time.
The ship entered Earth’s atmosphere, and turned into a raging inferno.

It looked like a flaming metal nugget of dragon poop.

“Finally, the cockpit!” Sighed Poioy.
The pilots seemed to have fainted in their chairs.
“Useless idiots.” Muttered Poioy as she shoved them out of their seats.
Her smug smile immediately vanished at the sight of…
“Oh my fins. Buttons. Buttons, levers. Everywhere.” She groaned.
Poioy may be extremely strong and prodigious in the physical sense, but her mind was not quite as sharp as her various weapons.

“Sister, we’re running out of tiiiime.” Zanboloch said through gritted teeth.

Her staring, twitching and jiggling intensified until she completely lost it and yelled, “BUTTON MASH!!”
She began repeatedly smacking the buttons with open hands, yanked on levers, and twisted everything in sight.
“NO! What are you DOING?!” Screamed Zanboloch.

The red lights changed from red to blue to green and the siren suddenly started playing “The Duck Song”.
Bom bom bom…baddom baddom…a duck walked up to the lemonade stand…

“What the heck is a duck?”
“Beats me.”

Meanwhile outside, in his starfighter, Captain Slick was looking on at his downed spaceship in despair. He could almost hear Poioy screaming for help…

Could he?

“CAPTAIN, SIR, SLICK, HELP! WE’RE STUCK IN THE SHIP!!” Screamed Poioy into her helmet microphone.

It took a moment for Slick’s brain to process what he was hearing.
“Oh, um, yes, I hear you. Lieutenant.”
“Sir! My sister is an idiot, sir!” Said the voice of Zanboloch.
“Sir! My sister is mashing the buttons and making everything worse, sir! And what’s a duck, sir!”
“SHUT UP, ZANBOLOCH!!” Yelled Poioy.
“Or is private not a low enough rank for you?!” Finished Slick.

That shut him up.

“Do you see the button labeled “reverse thrusters”?” Sighed Slick.
“Um, yes. What do you think I am, blind?”
“No, I think you’re stupid.” Zanboloch butted in.
“Shut up!”
“Forget your brother! Just push the button!”

Poioy pushed the button.
Nothing happened.
“IT’S NOT WORKIIING!” She screeched.
“Ohhhh no,”, groaned Zanboloch, who was looking out the window, “BRACE YOURSELF!!”

CHAPTER IV

The spaceship slammed into the sandy beach, causing an uproar of sand, water and dust to spray up into the air, which mixed with the smoke from the crashed space shuttle to create a thick, choking smog.

All was quiet except for the crackling of a few fires.
Poioy yanked the helmet off her head and groaned.
The beach they crash-landed on didn’t look very pretty and there didn’t seem to be any signs of humans around. They were safe. For now, at least.

Poioy turned her attention to her brother. He had a plate of metal over his head and he wasn’t moving.

“Zanboloch, are you alive?” Poioy said gruffly, trying to hide her fear.
“Mmmf. Hmph. Five more minutes.”
“WAKE UP! THE HUMANS ARE HERE!!!” She screamed in his ear.

Zanboloch banged his head on the metal.

“We’ll need to call for immediate backup. We’re far too exposed here, we’ll have to move.” Grunted Poioy as she gathered what useful things she could find.
“W-we surrender. P-please d-don’t e-e-e-e-e-EAT us.” Stammered Zanboloch.
Poioy groaned.
“I just said that to wake you up. Now, find everything we might need.”

Nothing happened except the whimpering of Zanboloch.

“Helloooo? Why aren’t you moving?!”

Zanboloch wasn’t moving because there was a gun shoved in his face.

CHAPTER V

“Well, well well.” Said a voice.
“Look what I found.”
The human was quite short, young-looking, but he was suited up in the most magnificent armour, with sword with a jewel-encrusted handle and a top-of-the-notch laser gun.
He wore a mask that mostly featured a blacked-out tinted glass around where his face would be, and there were digital blue eyes that mimicked his facial expression.

Zanboloch and Poioy looked at each other.

The much-too-confident-sounding human radioed for backup.

As the human blathered on, Poioy nudged Zanboloch and gestured to something in the sky.
Through the hole in the roof of the crashed ship, Poioy had spotted a large number of attack shuttles descending silently (well, almost silently, but the human was talking too loud to notice).

Zanboloch somehow interpreted Poioy to be gesturing in the complete opposite direction which, just so happened, was the direction of where a multitude of human attack shuttles were approaching.

“We’re saved!” Poioy whispered.
“We’re doomed!” Zanboloch whispered simultaneously.

In less than three seconds, Poioy leapt over and grabbed her sword, then flung herself at the young human whose chattering only petered out when Poioy punched him.
The glass on his helmet cracked and shattered revealing his face.
The roaring of starfighters and the zapping of lasers began thundering across the sky. “Brother!” Cried Poioy. “A great battle is beginning! Follow me, I shall lead our army to victory!”
She charged out of the ship and nearly got blown to smithereens by a laser blast. She hardly even noticed.
Zanboloch watched as the battle raged outside. He winced at every person that was killed, whether it was his own species or a human.
“Come on, brother! Help out!” Shouted Poioy from across the battlefield. A few other soldiers called out in agreement.
Zanboloch groaned and flinched as if struck. He hated moments like this, when everyone expected him to do something that he felt terrible doing.

He looked over at the now unconscious human. He looked so young, possibly as young as 16. Zanboloch picked up the human’s gun and examined it. It was an X-017, which were very rare and costly to make.
“Who are you?” Whispered Zanboloch. What was he doing on the battlefield? Zanboloch thought for a moment. What was he doing on the battlefield?! He didn’t want this to be his life!
“PRIVATE ZANBOLOCH! GET UP AND KILL SOMETHING!!!” Yelled Poioy.
Zanboloch jumped, and pulled the trigger on the gun he was holding.

The blast from the gleaming gun shot through the air, out of the downed spaceship, across the beach, up into the sky, and through the window of a human commander’s warship.
The commander, named Ward, was rather fat by human standards. He was notorious for being both ruthless in battles, and was feared by many. His vision and brain was enhanced by cybernetic implants, so he saw the laser bolt coming about 2 seconds before it would reach him. However, he was so used to sitting in a cushy chair, far above the carnage of the battle, that he couldn’t get out of the way fast enough.

The laser blast hit him hard in his flabby belly, killing him instantly. He felt forward, and his head bashed the controls for his warship.
It went up, down, fired a few lasers, did a 360 and then began hurtling down to where Zanboloch now stood in total shock.

“Oops.” He said, not sure what else to say.

“ZANBOLOCH!” Bellowed Poioy.
Zanboloch winced. He was in trouble.
“YOU DID IT!! YOU KILLED THE OPPOSITION’S COMMANDER!!!”
“I did?”
Poioy looked up at the falling warship.
“Oh no. ZANBOLOCH, RUN. RUN!!”

Zanboloch did what he normally did in a situation like this: panicked.
He was about to be blown to smithereens.
Suddenly, the human came back to the land of the living.
“Augh! Fist punch! Ow!” It squeaked.
It followed Zanboloch’s gaze.

“Get out of there!” Zanboloch’s sister’s voice seemed so distant.

The human grabbed its gun, and then bolted.

At least one of them follows my orders, Poioy thought, rolling her eyes.

Zanboloch had seconds to act.

He began running after the human, thinking that he would probably know where to run to, seeing as all the equipment he had, but he immediately tripped over his feet and fell into a hole.
He pulled a sheet of scrap metal from the ship over the entrance and braced for impact…

CHAPTER VI

The explosion was louder than anything Zanboloch had ever experienced before. Even with his ears blocked, all he heard was noise. The only thing louder than the explosion was probably his ringing ears.

When he came to about half an hour later, everything was dark. He had to poke himself in the eyes to make sure they weren’t still shut.
He rubbed his temples and groaned. He had a blinder of a headache.

Something scrabbled in the darkness, and Zanboloch yelped, jumped up and smashed his head open on something metal.

A light flickered on, and it was shined in Zanboloch’s eyes.
It took a while for his pupils to adjust to the sudden brightness.
When they did, he was certainly surprised.

“You!” Started Zanboloch in surprise.
“Yes, me. Who else would it be?” Said the human, confused.
“How did you end up in here? Are you gonna kill me? Are you gonna EAT me?!” Zanboloch said, genuinely worried.
“What?!” Spluttered the human.

There was an awkward silence.
“How did you get in here?” Zanboloch said at last.
“I woke up just in time to see that giant spaceship falling out of the sky. I jumped into this hole.”
“I jumped into the hole too. The ship must have exploded and some debris fell over the hole - -“
“And now we’re trapped.” Completed the human.
Zanboloch sighed and tried to lean back, but the top half of his body fell down a hole instead.
“AAUGH!” He screamed as he struggled back up.
The human was not there anymore.

Zanboloch began panicking again. He felt his heart hammering in his ears.
He turned around.
“Did your head just phase through the floor?” Said a rather startled sounding human.
Zanboloch willed his heart to calm down.
If my heart keeps beating this loud, the human will hear it. And then he’ll strike.
Then he paused and thought about what he had just thought.
Really? That doesn’t really make much sense. How could this, practically a child, be so vicious?

He shook himself.
Remember the wise words of the Emperor. Show no emotion or fear.
“My head did not phase through the floor.” Zanboloch croaked in a robotic voice.
“My head is very stronger than yours.”

The human crawled over to Zanboloch wearily, like he was a cat poised to smack his hand.
“I think there’s a hole there!”

And there was a hole, indeed. A hole in the hole they were in. It seemed to go downwards at an angle, and Zanboloch thought he saw something reflect the human’s flashlight, but it disappeared. It was probably just his imagination.

The human looked up at Zanboloch.

“Oh, no. I am NOT going down there. That is…that is a no.” Zanboloch declared.
And with that, he jumped up and tried to push the ceiling of smouldering scrap metal.
All he got in return for trying was a sore back.
“Always lift with your knees, not your spine.” Said the human.

Zanboloch grumbled in reply.

“The only option we have is to go down the hole. It’s not like we have a-“
“WOAH,whoah, woah.” Said Zanboloch.
“There is no ‘we’.”
The human sighed.
“If both of us are down here together, we may as well call a truce, at the very least.”
And he held out his hand.
Zanboloch slowly extended his hand…

CHAPTER VII

“Too slow, suckaa!” Said the human, who proceeded to make one of the oddest-sounding snickers Zanboloch had ever heard, and then slid down the hole.
Zanboloch scowled. He quickly questioned his sanity and jumped after the human.
The tunnel righted itself and became horizontal, and there was a sticky, greenish-brownish slime, coating the ground and dripping off the walls, giving off a disgusting, dank smell of a liquidated trash can full of rotten flesh.
Needless to say, it smelt awful.

“Ergh, this place smells awful.” Muttered Zanboloch, holding his nose.

They walked along, the ground clinging to their boots as if trying to suck them down.
The further they went along the tunnel, the deeper the slime became.
“Okay, that’s the furthest i’m going.” Said Zanboloch through gritted teeth when the slime began seeping through his boots. As if his feet didn’t stink enough.

The human, though, seemed quite content with the disgusting goop.
“There’s something about this stuff that feels…familiar.” He said uncertainly.

Suddenly, he gasped.
“Look! LIGHT!”
Zanboloch looked. He couldn’t see any light.
“Come on. Follow me. It’s fine. Trust me.”
Zanboloch took one look at the seemingly endless slime and said “No.”
The human shrugged and said, “Suit yourself.” and began wading through the slop.
Zanboloch looked behind himself. It was pitch black without the flashlight.

There was a pause.

“Urrgh!” Groaned Zanboloch, questioning his mental health once again.

“So?” Huffed Zanboloch, about 5 minutes of wading through rancid porridge later.
“Where’s this light of yours?”

The human said nothing. It just stared at the ceiling of the hole.
Suddenly, he whipped out his gun and fired a single shot into the air.
The ceiling crumbled down, a rain of dirt and grit, and the stinking tunnel was bathed in light.

“There it is.” The human said flatly.
“I told you i’d find it…?”
“Zanboloch.”
“Caleb.”
“Nice to meet you, Caleb.”

CHAPTER VIII

Caleb helped Zanboloch out of the hole and back onto the surface of Planet Earth.
Zanboloch breathed in deeply.
“Ahhh. I can’t believe how much it stank down there.”
“I actually thought it kind of smelt…not too bad.”
Zanboloch gave Caleb a funny look.
Humans are so weird. He thought. He would never have assumed any living thing would be able to wade through that and not be scarred for life.
Then he noticed something.
“Hey, there’s a path of the sludge. It seems to be going that w-“

Suddenly, something gurgled.

The two stopped dead in their tracks.
“Did you hear that?”
They followed the trail of ooze up a hill, and then instantly ducked back behind it.
“What the HECK WAS THAT?!” Caleb whisper-shouted in Zanboloch’s ear.
They peeked around once again.
It was a disgusting looking insectoid creature. It seemed to be leaving the trail of slop, its body just melting into the ground, as if it was made of the disgusting fluid.
It was like a giant praying mantis that was the size of a car, but only its head and one of its arms remained of it. It dragged itself forward, inch by inch, as if it were desperately trying to get somewhere.
As it reared up and screeched loudly, Zanboloch could hardly stifle a gasp.
The creature’s head snapped in their direction.
It screeched again, turned around and began dragging itself towards the two, as if they were its last and only hope of staying alive.

“GAH! Caleb, you have a gun! Shoot it!” Yelled Zanboloch.
“I’m trying, i’m trying! Something’s wrong with it!”
“The gun or your HEAD?! Give it! I’ll do it!”
“No! This is a X-017! You won’t know how to operate it!”
Their bickering went on and on until the mantis was almost upon them, its goopy body bubbling like boiling water…

CHAPTER IX

With a flash of greenish-blue, Poioy came roaring in, all guns blazing.
“EAT LASER, SLIME BUG!!” She bellowed as she spammed her trigger.
“Oh no. Hide!” Hissed Zanboloch to Caleb.
The lasers lashed into the liquid bug like rocks being thrown at a snowman, until the monster was just a puddle of reeking liquid and both Zanboloch and Poioy suddenly had stinking greenish-brown freckles all over their faces.

“Zanboloch! You’re alive!” Gushed Poioy, then checked herself.
“Private Zanboloch. You’re alive. Good work. Now, what the HECK WAS THAT THING?!”
Zanboloch shrugged.
“I don’t know. We just got trapped in a hole and found a tunnel full of that slime. We followed it until we found an exi-“
“Hold on, hold on.” Said Poioy, waving her hands.
“‘We’?”
Zanboloch froze. He knew that if Poioy found out he allied with a human then she would go ballistic and he would probably get banished from the empire.

“Uh, we? Did I say…I didn’t say…who?” Zanboloch said weakly.
Poioy looked at him with narrowed eyes.

Zanboloch looked away.

“ZANBOLOCH! POIOY!!” Bellowed a gruff voice, shattering the silence like a golf ball flying at a window.

The squat form of Captain Slick rounded a hill.
He was huffing and puffing by the time he got to them.
“Private Zanboloch! Good, you’re alive. Now, what, the heck, is that?” He said in a deceptively calm voice.

Zanboloch shrugged. “I dunno.” He said.
Slick exploded, his face going a bright, vivid green.
“I dunno?! I DUNNO?! You disappear for ages, your sister practically threatens to quit if I don’t send a rescue team to find her,” He at Poioy, whose face was a mix of anger, disgust and embarrassment, and then at the small group of men behind him,
“And then you say, I DUNNO?!”

Zanboloch quivered.
“Well, if you put it like that…”
He filled everyone in on his story, about falling in the hole and getting trapped, following the stinky tunnel, and the weird monster made out of slime.
He carefully made no mention of the human.

Captain Slick sighed and rubbed his temples.
“Well, whatever the case, you can write a full report when we get back to our new space shuttle.”

Zanboloch groaned. He hated filing reports. There was nothing like enduring a horrific experience and then being forced to recall it all and put it down in words without any trace of emotion.

“Zanboloch? Hel-LO?!” Yelled Poioy, waving her hand in front of his face.
“It’s TIME to GO!!”

As the team moved out, Zanboloch stole a look at the human, peeking out from the hole they climbed out of.
“Uh, Poioy? I…I think I dropped something over there. I’ll stay back for a second and look for it.”
Poioy grunted in reply.

Zanboloch ran over to Caleb.
“What’s happening?” Caleb whispered.
“I’m going back to the shuttle.” Replied Zanboloch.
“Ok. See you then, Zanboloch.”
And with that, the human climbed out and started to run off.
“No, wait, wait! They will drop an Magma Stirrer on the beach once we’ve all gone.”

“A what?”

Zanboloch sighed.

“A Magma Stirrer. It’s a special type of signal that drags magma up from the Earth’s mantle onto its crust, causing magma to seep over the designated area, killing everything touching the ground. The frequency even keeps the magma from solidifying. Once the job is done and everything is dead, they drop a fire-resistant robot emitting the same signal down the hole where the magma came out of, which drags it all back down again, including any water that might be in the immediate vicinity, solidifying the magma (once the robot melts and stops emitting the signal) effectively patching the hole in the Earth’s crust.”

Caleb stared at Zanboloch blankly.

“It’s this noise that pulls lava up from under the surface of the Earth, washes it over the land, and then shoves it back down its hole.” Zanboloch said irritably.

Zanboloch did not like Magma Stirrers. They wiped out literally everything, even plants and animals that had nothing to do with the battle.

“Then where will I go?”

Zanboloch thought for a moment.

CHAPTER X

Zanboloch tried to act as natural as possible as he walked up the ramp into Slick’s new space shuttle.
Which, naturally, he was terrible at.
“Hey-hey, sissy sis! That was…a…big battle we just went through!”
In short, it earned him a very sore abdomen.

Everybody followed eachother to Slick’s conference room (AKA the cinema) but Zanboloch hung around until the airlock was almost shut…
“Now!” He hissed.

The human dived through the rapidly closing gap like an albatross into the ocean, and then promptly face-planted into the hard floor like an albatross who had just realised the ocean was, in fact, cold, hard metal.

Caleb opened his mouth to scream blue murder, but Zanboloch jammed a hand in there to shut him up.
Yes, in Caleb’s mouth. Oops.

In his sudden shock, Caleb instinctively bit down on the squishy thing inside his mouth.

Zanboloch opened his mouth and swore louder than he ever had before. The foul word echoed through the corridors.

All was quiet until the stomping of boots began getting closer, and closer.
“HIDE!” Hissed Zanboloch.
“Where?” Spluttered Caleb.

Zanboloch picked him up and shoved him into a trash vent.

“W-w-w-w-what was that?” Said the squeaky voice of Fred, the 1st most novice person in the squad.

Zanboloch tried to say “Nothing!” and “I don’t know” at the same time, but all that came out was “No don’t thing.”

Fred stared right past Zanboloch.
Zanboloch followed his gaze.
Caleb’s foot was sticking out of the trash vent.

Zanboloch frantically kicked the foot. It made a muffled noise of pain and slid downward.

Fred puffed himself up to his full height.
“I heard something there. I know it. That is why I am placing you, UNDER A-ARREST!!”
He yelled.

Suddenly, Captain Slick rounded a corner.
Zanboloch put his head in his hands. It was over. He was going to be shoved in prison for harbouring a human.

“What’s going on here?” He growled dangerously.
“Him!” Fred squeaked, pointing a quivering finger at Zanboloch.
“He is to be arrested and put in jail for a…a long time, for committing the worst crime of all…”

Captain Slick’s face went from anger, to shock and then straight down to furious.

“SAYING A NO-NO WORD!!” Fred’s words echoed through the room dramatically.

Zanboloch breathed a huge sigh of relief. Nothing bad was going to happen to him.

Slick went from furious to absolutely livid.

“IS THAT IT?!” He roared.
“Well, not really. There is the thing about the trash vent.” Fred said matter-of-factly.

Zanboloch froze.

“He didn’t put a bit of trash in there properly. It got stuck. But then he pushed it all the way down. So everything’s fine.”
Zanboloch couldn’t agree more.
However, Slick begged to differ.

He began bellowing and screaming so loud that he didn’t even notice the fact that Zanboloch wisely used this time to haul Caleb out of the trash, and the two silently scampered off while Slick verbally unloaded on his little brother.

Her name was Poioy.

CHAPTER XI

“Are you a minimalist or something?” Asked Caleb, up in Zanboloch’s new room.
“What do you mean?”
Caleb gestured around at the desk, chair, sleeping pod, laptop, and literally nothing else.
“Your room is almost empty! Wow, Xingfengese are so different. Where’s all the furniture? And the decorations?”
“Why would I need furniture or decorations? It would be a waste of material and time.”
“Wow. You’re REALLY different.”

Nothing but the sound of Zanboloch typing up his report filled the room. Normally he would just simply use a special device that translates your memories into words, but he didn’t need the full story of what had happened on that beach in the Emperor’s Archives.
So he was typing it up on a physical, old-fashioned keyboard today. Besides, using the device mostly made his head hurt and put an outrageous price on his accomodation bill.

“What are we going to do now?” Asked Caleb suddenly.
Zanboloch mumbled something about filing a report.
“No, about me. What’s going to happen to me?”
Zanboloch hesitated.
“What? Are you going to let me go, with a tracking device implanted into me? Once i’m home, are you going to come back and…and massacre everyone?”

“No! I would never do that!”

“But wouldn’t that make you a traitor?” Caleb said coldly.

His words stung. Zanboloch would have looked at his feet, but they were under the table.

“Whatever. It’s alright. I just wish life didn’t involve deception at every turn.”

Zanboloch sighed sadly and went back to his report. He decided to edit the story so that Caleb - sorry, the human - ended up getting blown up when the warship fell out of the sky. Zanboloch rubbed his eyes. Today had been exhausting. Even more exhausting than… that time…when…

Zanboloch was awoken with a jolt by the arm that was supporting his head. It gave way, and his head bashed into the keyboard. He groaned audibly.

“You alright?”
“Yeah, I just banged my head.”

Zanboloch clicked “Submit” and slumped back in his chair. He thought he might take a bit of a nap for a while…

Caleb spotted the sleeping Zanboloch. He crept over and waved his hands over Zanboloch’s eyes. Out cold. He wasn’t going to wake up anytime soon.

Not taking his eyes off Zanboloch, he pulled a screen, much like an iPhone of many years ago - maybe the 2020s? Caleb banished the thought and dialled a number on his phone.

“We have a situation.” Said Caleb to the shadowy figure on his screen.

CHAPTER XII

About thirty minutes later, Caleb had hung up on the shadowy figure and was now playing some games. The game he was playing was called Minecraft.
“Dang, this game is so old.” He muttered.

Suddenly, the computer dinged and Caleb screamed and dropped his phone.

“Wassat?” Mumbled Zanboloch sleepily.

Caleb fumbled with the phone. Zanboloch couldn’t find out he had any means of communication.

“The Emperor demands your presence in the throne room immediately.” Said a clipped, pompous-sounding voice.

Zanboloch awoke, for the second time, with a jolt.
Caleb scooted over the source of the voice, the computer.
“Who is that?” Asked Caleb, pointing at the shrewd face on the screen.
“She looks like a chihuahua.”
Zanboloch made a noise that was halfway between a chuckle and a snort.
“That’s Lola. The Emperor’s assistant. I have no idea was a chihuahua is, but I bet it’s something offensive.”

Lola scowled.
“I can HEAR YOU, YOU KNOW. THIS IS A LIVE MEETING.”
Zanboloch shoved Caleb out of the frame and tried to look alive and innocent. But after allying himself with a human, and dragging himself through a subterranean tunnel of horrendous-smelling slop, he was neither of those things.
“Hello, Lola, your majesty. I am here. And I am Zanboloch.” He spluttered.

Lola’s scowl grew even more pronounced. She even bared her teeth a little.

“That is no way to treat Emperor Gairake’s assistant. Report to the docking bay of your ship immediately. And just wait until Emperor Gairake hears about your insolence.”

Lola tapped some button that was off-screen. Nothing happened. Retaining eye contact, she began randomly mashing the keyboard until she disappeared, her face replaced by a timer.

“The shuttle is coming in 7 minutes. She’s serious. We have to go.”

Caleb looked at Zanboloch as if he was insane.

“She might be serious, but you can’t be. You have no idea why he’s bringing you to his ship, or what he might do to you.”

“And where did you get this distrust from?”

Caleb slumped. “My uncle. The Emperor. The human Emperor.”

Zanboloch’s eyes widened. “You’re the nephew of the feared Emperor Carne?!”

“Yeah. He told me that the Xingfengese are vicious creatures who adore bloodshed, and would do anything to spread their plague across the galaxy.”
“OUR Emperor said exactly the same thing.”

There was a pause.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were Emperor Carne’s nephew?”

“Because I was scared you were going to kill me if you found out.”

There was yet another pause.

“My Uncle always told me to never trust anyone but my closest allies. He taught me to hate humans, especially your Emperor.”

“Emperor Gairake has his flaws, but in the end, he really just wants to save our civilisation.” Zanboloch reasoned.

The two sat in silence.

“Come on, Caleb.” Sighed Zanboloch eventually.
“I’ll prove to you that Emperor Gairake isn’t the guy your Emperor claims him to be.”

CHAPTER XIII

Zanboloch shifted uneasily in the shuttle. It wasn’t because the seats were uncomfortable, far from it. They were soft and luxurious. It wasn’t that Lola had fixed him with a death stare that felt like it was boring a hole in his face. No, it was because Caleb was screaming into his helmet communication device.
All he could hear was rumblings, whooshing, and a whole bunch of garbled screams and yells.
This was because Zanboloch had the bright idea to strap him to the outside of the shuttle …in a mech, stole from Captain Slick’s ship.
The sterile environment prevented Caleb from suffocating in space, and the magnetic hands and feet allowed him to cling to Lola’s space shuttle.

At one stage, they went through an asteroid field, and Zanboloch could hear the space rocks clanging into the hull of Lola’s ship, and Caleb’s shouts got increasingly louder and more offensive.

Finally, they reached the Emperor’s flagship, and boy, was it a sight to behold. It was positively massive, could have been over 2 kilometres long.

It was shaped like the head of a rather wicked-looking trident, with two arms bending in and one in the middle shooting straight forward.
It looked as if construction work was being done on the three points, but the shuttle went down under and into the docking bay before Zanboloch (or Caleb) could get a good look at it.

Eventually, the shuttle landed and Caleb ducked out of view.
“Follow me.” Said Zanboloch over the comms, “but stay out of sight.”
Caleb wondered how in the world he was going to do that in a giant spaceship crawling with aliens.

The trek through the smooth hallways of Emperor Gairake’s spaceship was intolerably long. After about 30 minutes of walking Zanboloch almost sat down right where he was and refused to get up again, but Lola’s piercing glare forced him onwards, constantly checking behind his back for Caleb.

Finally, they reached the grand gates of the Emperor’s Throne Room.
It was a humongous place, with a majestic arched ceiling and columns that stretched up and around, all focusing, leading or pointing to an grand, elaborate throne, on which a figure was seated.

“Presenting his excellency, Emperor Gairake.” Lola declared, rather unnecessarily.

Zanboloch bowed deeply. This was the first time he had seen the Emperor in real life. He’d only ever seen him on broadcasts, and even that was once in a blue moon.

He wore golden armour seemingly made out of scales underneath his theatrical dark red cape, and looked about 2 metres tall.
But by far the most imposing about him was his helmet.
It was sort of reminiscent of a human gas mask, but it looked like it was made of titanium, there were two horns that resembled razor-sharp metal antlers, and the eyeholes were black pools of darkness that seemed to stare into Zanboloch’s soul.
He was hunched over, gripping the arms of his throne like he was in the middle of a hurricane.

Somebody in a labcoat and a different mask hurried over with a glass sphere on a cushion. The sphere was filled with a green mist.

The Emperor hissed as he snatched the sphere, crushed it in his hand and breathed deeply.
The green gas from the sphere was pulled into the eye sockets of the mask like an extractor fan, and the Emperor’s demeanour relaxed.

“Welcome, Private Zanboloch of Squad 9,410.” Boomed the Emperor in a smooth male voice that was shadowy to begin with, but was made three times more sinister by the mask.
Okay, Zanboloch willed himself as he bowed deeply and kneeled on the floor. This is the most important person you have ever met. Be cool. Be confident, but not insubordinately so.

Zanboloch made a noise that was somewhere between the chuckle of a hyena and the squeak of a hamster. (Not that Zanboloch knew what a hyena or a hamster was)

Emperor Gairake chuckled. A warm chuckle of a voice that seemed so smooth and clipped. Even so, it made Zanboloch shudder.

“I read your report on what happened on the battlefield yesterday. About how you crash-landed the shuttle, and that human. Your description of the human was most…intriguing.” There was a brief pause and Zanboloch gulped.

“Your description was, and I quote…” Emperor Gairake said, looking at a screen he had seemingly pulled out of nowhere, “‘The human wore a cape, golden armour, a helmet with eyes, which is freaky, and kind of stupid…” Zanboloch winced. Even though this sort of writing was common among soldiers, he wished he hadn’t said anything of the sort now that it was being read aloud by the Emperor.

“‘He had a X-017 model laser gun, and a jewel encrusted sword.’”
The Emperor stopped reading.
“Do you know who you just encountered?”
Zanboloch knew full well who the human was, but he shook his head.
“You just came across the opposition’s prince, General Caleb.”

Zanboloch tried to pretend to be shocked, but he was a terrible actor. Luckily, the Emperor didn’t seem to notice.

“Are you absolutely sure you saw him dead?” Asked the Emperor.
That simple sentence terrified Zanboloch more than almost anything he had experienced in his life so far.

“Y-y-y-yes, your majesty. He was crushed by the falling warship. But, I guess, there is a chance he survived…” Stammered Zanboloch.

“Are you sure you didn’t aide in the human’s escape?” Said the Emperor, sitting forward in his chair, his tone hardening.

Zanboloch’s brain nearly shut down then and there. He began shivering.

“I-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i d-d-didn’t help the h-human…” He squeaked.

“Okay.” Said the Emperor, his tone returning to normal.
“Another thing that interested me was the creature you encountered. I believe you called it a…” He consulted the screen again, “A stinky slime… ‘boPWOIroge’?”

Zanboloch’s face went so green he thought it would explode. He forgot to fix the part where his face began typing instead of his hands.

“Y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-yes, your m-majesty. I believe that was a spelling error. I meant to say, uh, a stinky slime bug. I also believe the slime from the bug was the slime we, I mean I, saw in the tunnel.”

“Interesting. Very interesting.”

The Emperor stood up and walked over to a grand window, overseeing a panoramic view of a blackness speckled with the bright lights of distant stars.

“Thank you, Private Zanboloch. Your information is appreciated. You may go.”

Zanboloch breathed a huge sigh of relief and scampered away, out of the double doors, happy to escape from any more total and utter humiliation.
The Emperor hadn’t suspected a thing.

Suddenly, someone grabbed him and yanked him into a closet.