-----
 
 

  The city stretched out before them, all violet and magenta and sickly yellow under the street lamps.

  "Turn here-- No!" Teir yelped, as yet another patrol robot emerged from the shadows of an alleyway they had started down. The two Irken boys skidded to a halt in their white boots and turned about-face, back into the street. A whole entourage of patrol bots and police drones, scuttling along on the pavement under the metal orbs, awaited them with guns at the ready.

  Overcoats flapping, the two ran on down the street as laser fire streamed past them. In desperation, Sorun turned around while continuing to run, and fired another shot.

  Catching up with Teir, he heard his twin say, "Did another one just fall?"

  "Either I'm very lucky or this thing's got some sort of auto-lock."

  Teir seemed to slow down a little. "'Auto-lock'?"

  "Look, I read it in a book once, okay?"

  "Right," Teir turned his head. "Let's go this way," he said, indicating a side street off to their right.

  They began to turn towards it, and then began to falter. Another team of robots were emerging from the other end of the street. But having now turned, there was no means of going back with the other group behind them.

  Sorun bit his lip, aimed the blaster gun, and fired. Reaimed, fired again.

  The two patrol robots hit the pavement, blue smoke rising from the blackened wounds in their shells. Teir shook his head in amazement. Grinning, but with the presence of mind to remember the robots still pursuing them, Sorun took Teir by the wrist and drew him into another run.

  "I wish I could do that," Teir muttered, head bowed.

  "You probably can," Sorun replied. "Do you think these utility packs have maps we can use? We're so lost it's not even funny."

  "We don't really have the time to find out."

  They rounded another corner, one that was miraculously absent of any robotic activity. Teir ran ahead of Sorun and stopped, looking around at the buildings.

  He pointed at a large complex at the end of the street. "This is a hangar. There will be ships there. We can get out of the city in one. Come on!"

  "Wait! Are you sure--" Sorun stopped as Teir commenced to run. He sighed irritably, shot down another patrol bot that had come around the the street, and trailed after his twin.
 
 

  After blasting their way through the doors, Teir and Sorun emerged at the base of a multi-levelled hangar, each floor branching off into docks where various ships floated, secured with low-power tractor beams. Teir looked them over, and pointed again, this time to the top floor's dock, where a row of small violet and magenta one-person ships sat, composed almost entirely of stylistic curves.

  "There. Voot runners. They're military class, so any moron could fly one. Let's go."

  "Wait a second." Sorun grabbed Teir's wrist again before he had time to run off. Teir twisted around, glaring. "I'm not just going anywhere you damn well please to. You're planning and we both know you don't plan well."

  Teir grinned happily. "Wrong. You started the plan by shooting that first bot. I'm just covering up for your first blunder now. Shall we go get a ship?"

  Sorun sighed, palming his forehead. He felt a headache coming on. "You go on ahead and get it ready. I'll take care of some more of these guards first and then follow after." He glanced at Teir, and noticed that the boy's eyes were not fixed on him but on the destroyed doorway behind him. Sorun turned around. "Quasars, those things don't quit. Get going, you!" Sorun brought the gun up with both hands, setting Teir free, who began bounding up the stairs.

  The red-eyed Irken backed up a little as the first hovering patrol robot cleared the rubble pile. He fumbled a little with the blaster gun and got it aimed right, and pulled hard on the trigger.

  There it was again, Sorun noticed. That small burst of exhilaration that he got from feeling that deadly beam of light escape from the barrel of the gun. The thrill of seeing something so fatal arc through the air and destroy something that had come at him as a threat.

  He laughed, and shot again, and again.

  This was a lot better than books.

  But Sorun nevertheless noticed that the number of robots now bounding over the rubble were increasing, and the gun's blast was too hard on his arms for him to fire any faster. He backed up and shot in desperation, not pausing to aim.

  "Damn!" he hissed, only managing to get one of the spiderlike security drones mere inches from his feet. He knew with a very sudden burst of clarity that he couldn't keep this up. The back of his overcoat whipping behind him, he turned and ran for the stairs.

  By the sounds above him, Teir was two levels or so beyond him. He didn't know how long it would take the robots to ascend the stairs, but he didn't want to find out. So he ran. By the fifth level he had nearly caught up with his twin who, seeing this, sped up and took the steps up to the sixth and final level two at a time.

  Climbing up the last set of stairs leading to the ships, Sorun panted, "Can you even fly one of these things?"

  "Dunno," said Teir, reaching the first voot runner. "Never tried."

  "That's a great comfort," said the red-eyed Irken, reaching the top. He was aware suddenly of sounds from below, looked back down the stairwell to the previous level, where a mass of security drones were beginning to ascend. "They're still coming. Should I fire again?"

  "Yes-- No, wait, I think I just got it," called Teir, bent over the runner's exterior control panel. The glass dome panel slid back to reveal the waiting cockpit. It was a lot smaller than Teir was hoping... "Come on, get over here."

  Replacing the blaster gun in his utility pack with a far more fluid motion than would be expected by a first-time wielder, Sorun rushed across the metal plating of the docks to the hovering voot runner. "We need to hurry. Those things are kinda fast."

  Teir nodded, and, mentally bracing himself, grabbed the sides of the runner's opening and stepped in. The runner dipped a little under his weight, causing him to squeak a little in fear. But it steadied again, and he pulled himself in fully. He had to duck his head a little to fit, but he had a thin enough form to not be cramped otherwise.

  Seeing that the runner did not spontaneously crash upon Teir's entry, Sorun climbed inside as well, sitting on the right side. After a bit of a pause, Teir reached out to the control panel, tapped a few keys, and the dome closed over them.

  "Are you sure about this?" Sorun asked, looking at his reflection in the glass.

  Teir bit his lip. "No." He pressed another button.

  Both boys found themselves slammed against the curved floor of the ship as the voot runner's engines blasted into life beneath them, propelling the ship upwards. The dock ceiling was getting uncomfortably close with every second.

  "Do something!" Sorun yelled.

  Fighting against the tremendous force pushing them back, Teir reached his thin hands forward grabbed each of the handles of the control throttle, and turned hard to the right.

  The voot runner changed direction a mere few feet from a very messy ceiling doom, and now zoomed toward the distant docking gateway. But they continued at the speed they had when going upwards, which Teir realized, with great presence of mind, he couldn't keep dealing with.

  He shouted, because it seemed like sound would not travel otherwise, "Try some of the command keys on your side! There has to be something to change the speed!"

  Sorun nodded, climbing forward and slamming his two-fingered hands down on the console.

  Two things happened. First, unbeknownest to the two Irkens in the cockpit, the runner's thrusters swivelled around. Second, quite beknown to the two, the voot runner went into a tight spiral.

  "That wasn't right!" Teir screamed, pulling at the controls as the world spinned around them. They shot out of the hangar into the midnight city air.

  Sorun pressed a few more keys and managed to get the runner out of its spin, and just had enough time to access the speed gauge when he looked up.

  "Building! Turn left!"

  "Gah!" Teir pulled hard on the steering throttle. The voot runner swiped along the side of the building, scraping against the glass of a row of windows.

  "Another building! Go up!"

  Teir pushed forward. The ship began to descend.

  "That wasn't up!" Sorun howled, as the ground raced up to meet them.

  "How was I supposed to know?!" The ship was turned to the right and went screaming along mere feet above the desolate streets. "I can't keep this up! Lower the speed!"

  "I'm trying," snapped the red-eyed Irken, fumbling with the controls. "I think I got something here, just a second... Yes!" They felt and heard the thrusters whir down beneath them.

  Then they lit up, at full blast. Sorun and Teir screamed.
 
 

  The schoolhouse was alight. Not one of the nurses was still asleep.

  "Went into the city?" Gori repeated in disbelief, stomping down the hallway with an entourage of nurses behind her. "Why the quasars would they want to do that?"

  "Because it's there, ma'am?" Gesh, Teir's aide, suggested. He was a twitchy little Irken who had become all the more unstable in recent years as his charge grew to be more and more malicious. It was said he slept with a gun on his bedside table, just in case.

  "They know better than to go against our orders!" the head nurse roared. She took a few deep breaths. "Contact the palace. Do not inform His Tallest, but do contact his chief advisors. I want Advisor Dirn here within the hour."

  "Yes ma'am!"
 
 

  "Teir! Are you all right?"

  The blood trickling down around Teir's eyes would suggest not, Sorun figured. The boy's eyes were open and he was breathing, but everything else had a bit of a question mark to it. He was resting limply against the back of the voot runner cockpit, staring at nothing.

  When he had turned the ship hard to avoid the building, his own inertia had thrown him forward even as the runner safely avoided the wall. His forehead had cracked the glass shield, which now had a mess of blood trickling along the same cracked paths made by the collision. It did not affect the pilot's view much, but it looked terrible, and Teir looked worse.

  After the hard turn to the left and Teir's incapacitation, Sorun had taken the controls and pulled them up, rising above the city sky-scrapers until they were safe from any more collision. Up here, while still travelling fast, Sorun seated himself in the captain's chair and worked out the controls while glancing back at Teir. Eventually, he'd found out how to cut their speed.

  The voot runner, cruising lazily through the night sky, was witnessed by scarcely a soul for miles.

  Sorun turned around in the chair and tugged at Teir's unresisting form. He pulled him around so that Teir's back faced him, and began inspecting the boy's own utility pack.

  "There's got to be some sort of first aid kit in these things, doesn't there?" he wondered aloud, going through each of the circles. Although he knew well that this was a desperate measure that a desperate time was calling for, he still felt invasive. He suddenly wished he could shut off his ethical principles at will like Teir seemed able to.

  While looking through the last two compartments, Sorun thought unhappily that he didn't even know what was wrong with Teir. And even if he did, he'd have no idea how to treat it. Was he just looking for some magical solution to present itself in Teir's backpod?

  He felt something inside one of the compartments. Like a switch.

  A voice emitted from the backpod. "Administer electric shock?" It was the same deep computer voice again. Did they use that thing everywhere?

  "Er... No?" Sorun responded nervously. "What's wrong with him?"

  He figured immediately, as soon as the words were spoken, that it was a foolish thing to ask. What would a computer know about it? At least, what would a computer compact enough to fit into a backpod know? It couldn't have an A.I. system--

  "Damage to cranium suffered. Blood loss. Rapidly losing consciousness. Medication must be applied."

  'Compact enough to fit into a backpod' is a bit contradictory, isn't it? Sorun thought dryly.

  "Do we have the medication on hand?" he asked.

  "Affirmative. Administer?"

  "Yes!"

  There was a short, light sound from the packpod, and Teir's back arched convulsively; his eyes went wide and mouth opened in a wordless yell. Then the sound was over, and Teir fell back, collapsing into Sorun's arms. He blinked wearily.

  "Teir!" Sorun exclaimed, face splitting into a wide smile.

  Slowly, Teir pulled himself up and hunched forward. He groaned and clumsily pulled off his gloves, reaching up to gingerly touch his bloodied head with uncovered hands. Teir prodded at the gouches and scrapes and suppressed whimpers of pain, but the trickle of blood was undoubtably slowing.

  Sorun maneuvered in the chair and carefully turned Teir around to rest as comfortably as it was possible against the wall of the ship. He looked back at the control panel. There was something to remove the seat, wasn't there? He remembered from Vehicles 2 that most military ships like this could remove the cockpit seat to allow more room.

  He pressed a likely button and a list of transparent options appeared on the screen. He tapped one, and was able to move out of the way just in time as the seat below him began to retract into the wall, exposing a bare floor beneath it.

  "That's a lot better... Teir?"

  When he was not answered, Sorun looked back at the Irken.

  "You're okay, right?"

  A nod. And then, in a slow whisper, Teir said, "I'll be fine." It was followed by a vicious fit of coughing.

  Sorun's antennae lowered in concern. "Just stay where you are, and keep as still as you can. Just concentrate on... um... the stars."

  "There are no stars."

  "Really? The smog's not as bad out here--" Sorun glanced out the window. A dim red light was appearing on the horizon. "Oh man. We've been out all night..."

  Teir laughed weakly. "The nurses will all kill us." He paused and smiled at the growing light, which was slowly turning orange. "We've never seen the sunrise outside the schoolhouse..."

  Sorun moved backwards across the floor and rested against the wall beside his brethren and watched it with him.

  A ruby-red orb of light emerged from the curved horizon, spreading huge masses of orange and pink across the sky, turning the clouds cherry and the desolate ground a dark tangerine. The solitary trees dotted here and there upon the cracked earth cast long, thin shadows. In the distance to the north and the south, the city lights were going out.

  Eventually Teir broke from the solace and said, in a much improved voice now, "Do you feel better?"

  Sorun appeared puzzled. "What?"

  "It was all for you. Did it help?"
 
 

  Dirn was a quick riser. The moment she woke up she was as alert as she would be in the middle of a very fast-paced day. Nothing was going to slow down an Irken as important as Dirn, not even internal clocks.

  Dirn pointed to a small dot on a backlit grid. "This voot runner was reported as having left its hangar unauthorized about twenty minutes ago. Sensors indicate two life-forms within, but a significantly heavier than usual weight to person ratio. That would be them."

  "How do we get them down?" Gori asked, right to the point. She, unlike Dirn, was missing sleep and looked like it. Her antennae were crumpled, her eyelashes were in disarray, and --most noticably-- she was still in her nightwear.

  "You can't," Dirn said simply. "I do not have the authorization to order military forces, and only they would have the proper tractor technology to force them to land. Possibly we could send another ship out to shoot them down, except it might result in both their deaths."

  Gori seemed to be giving this heavy consideration.

  "Don't look like that," Dirn said flatly, glaring at her. "I know what you're thinking, and I think I should remind you that those are treasonous thoughts. We've been over this, Nurse Gori." The head nurse nodded glumly. "We can radio them if you like, if you think it will help. But I think that at this point there is nothing we could say to them that would convince them to hand themselves over. They're most likely aware of the punishment they will receive when they fall back into your hands, yes?"

  "In vague terms, yes," said Gori, nodding. She bit her lip. This was certainly a difficult situation to be stuck in. Gori wasn't accustomed to scenarios in which her threatening wasn't an ample solution to anything. "...What do you suggest?"

  "Let them have their fun." Dirn nearly spat the word. "I'd worry more about how we're going to deal with the media on this. You haven't considered that, have you? His Tallest is going to hear about this when he wakes up whether we tell him or not."

  Gori growled. "Those two will pay..."
 
 

  Eventually they ran out of fuel. They happened to be near a city when this happened, and with a little bit of difficulty were able to land the voot safely in the city common.

  The reporters were there already.