“Do it!”

Alright, alright. “Loud and clear.” He lifted the Vortu helmet and checked to make sure he pressed the correct switch. Izairis had helpfully marked it for him. Idiot Savant.

Ben’s voice played from the helmet’s speaker and across an all-channels frequency, I found the Chime, followed by a loud strike of sound. Patton flipped the switch again to end the transmission.

If the ploy worked, the Scythin would be on their way to kill him forthwith. Now he just had to stash the thing.

The shuttle pulled into the transway station behind the docks in Green Quadrant, which was on the opposite side of the sphere from Blue. He leapt off with his gear and scanned around for a place where the transmitter would be safe – at least until the Scythin found it. No one was strolling about on account of the invasion in progress, so Patton had free reign of the place.

He found himself in a wide-open section of the city – though it was hard to think of it as a city. It was a planet as far as he was concerned, even if there was no dirt. The area beyond the docks seemed half shopping mall and half park, with flowerframed walkways and strangely shaped ponds with strangely shaped fish peeking up to consider him. He wished Ben were here to say something about them. He’d probably make all sorts of smart observations; explain what those extra fins are for and how they could manage to swim with so many facial penises. Ben was great that way.

With the goal being to plant the signal as far away from the Blue Quadrant as possible, Patton picked up the pace. Ahead, a large corridor like an airport terminal split off in three directions. A high-end spaceship showroom with large, scale models on display, drew him down the right-most branch. He’d come to understand the value of guush over the last few days, his experience sharpened by the many foods he’d sampled. The metallic jingling in his space pants felt a whole lot less rich as he gazed upon the models in the showroom window and their manufacturer-suggested retail prices.

He stopped inside the abandoned shop, promising himself to only linger briefly. All sorts of ships were on offer, from little shuttle things labeled “Effelox System Sprinters”, to big, fancy “Galax Cruisers”, to nasty looking “Interceptor/Pursuit Sloops”, that looked a lot like updated versions of the Silent Child.

At the center of the showroom was a full-scale replica of a two-seat cockpit for one of the sprinters and, never passing up the opportunity to be inside an awesome place, Patton sat. And it was very awesome. There were all sorts of different colored buttons and knobs and touchscreens. He was very excited to find that it actually had a steering wheel and rejoiced. Because what was the point of racing if you didn’t have a steering wheel?