"Phelps!" I said. "Good to see you, buddy. Look, I don't know what you think you saw, but I'm not working for anybody. For reals. I'm not."

"I'm not blind or stupid, chump," Phelps said. "That guy had government official written all over him and you were sitting at a table with him sipping coffee and spilling your guts out."

"I realize that probably looked sketchy," I said. "But I swear I didn't tell him anything. Honestly, he's a pompous jerk. I just let him buy me a coffee because I didn't want to be rude and then I got away from him as quickly as I could."

"You know all our names and faces and now, thanks to you, the government does, too. You traitorous dirt bag. You deserve to die slowly, but I guess I'm going to have to kill you fast because I've gotta meet up with the Captain in about fifteen minutes. It must be your lucky day."

"Let's hope so," I said as I smacked at his wrist just as he pulled the trigger. I could feel the heat of the laser beam as it went over my head and burned a hole in the wall.

I tried to make a run for it, but he tripped me with his leg and I fell to the ground. I rolled over onto my back in time to see him standing over me with his gun pointed at my chest. "Any last words before I send you straight to hell?"

"Yeah. Could we, like, have a rational conversation about this like two reasonable adults? Or at the very least take this to Captain Marmalade and let him decide?"

"No," Phelps said.

"I was afraid of that," I sighed as I closed my eyes and tried to appear like I was accepting my fate. I rolled to the side at the last minute causing him to miss his shot by inches. At the same time I pulled my own gun out of my pocket and shot him in the chest. A look of confusion came on his face as a burning hole appeared right in the middle of his body and then he fell over dead.

I had just managed to pick myself up and was starting to dust myself off when I felt like I got hit by a freight train. Something big and heavy had slammed me hard into the wall. Pain shot through my body and I thought I heard something snap. My vision went a little blurry for a moment and when it finally came back into focus I saw Bubba staring at me with a wild look in his eyes.

"Oh hey, roomie," I said. "What's up?"

"You killed Phelps!" he shouted.

"No I didn't," I said. I totally just did, but Bubba seemed dumb enough that maybe this might work.

"I saw you!" he shouted again.

"No, you must be mistaken. That was somebody else."

"You're trying to confuse Bubba with your fancy words. That makes Bubba mad and when Bubba gets mad, Bubba smashes!" He clenched both his fists and raised them above his head.

I didn't wait for them to come crashing down on me. Instead I exercised the better part of valor and ran for it. He was blocking my way back to the main corridor so I took off further down the hallway we were in. It didn't seem to be leading anywhere in particular, but finally I came across a door labelled "Engine Room." I ducked inside it and slammed the door shut behind me.

I found myself on a long narrow metal catwalk. About twenty feet below me were several gigantic metal turbines that were whirling away. Other than the loud mechanical noises they made, things seemed quiet in here. I thought I might have managed to give Bubba the slip, so I tried to take a moment to catch my breath, which was proving to be a difficult task. I think Bubba might have cracked a couple of my ribs. I really hoped they hadn't punctured my lungs. I also felt blood dripping from my nose, which was causing me to feel congested.

Just when it seemed like I was getting my breathing under control there was a loud thumping sound followed by the screeching of metal scraping on metal and the door to the room came flying off its hinges. Bubba stood in the entranceway, stamping his feet like a mad bull. He was covered in a sheen of sweat and I could see the veins bulging in his arms as he flexed his muscles.

"Listen to me, Bubba. I know that looked bad, but he was trying to murder me. It was straight up self defense. He didn't leave me any other choice. He didn't want to be reasonable, but I'm sure you and I can sit down and have a calm discussion and come to sort of an understanding, right?"

"Bubba's going to crush your puny little head like a grape!" he shouted as he came charging at me. Once he got near he leaped in the air towards me at full speed.

Acting on pure instinct, I threw myself backwards and thrust my feet out. They caught him squarely in the stomach and I pushed with all my strength. He went flying over the rail of the catwalk and tumbled down into one of the turbines below. I got splattered with a fountain of blood and gore as the blades tore him to ribbons.

Aw, jeez. I can't say I particularly liked the guy, but that was a bad way to go. And a total accident on my part. I was just trying to avoid getting smashed to pieces, I didn't actually mean to kill him.

Nonetheless my head count was rising at a disturbingly rapid rate. I waited a moment to make sure nobody else was going to show up and attack me. The roar of the turbines continued on unabated beneath me. I took stock of my injuries. My nose was still bleeding, I had a sharp pain in my side, and I think I tweaked one of my ankles when I flung Bubba over the rail. But the good news was I was alive. I'm not entirely sure I was thinking straight, but it seemed really important to me that I get off this space station immediately. The best way I could think of to do that was to meet up with Captain Marmalade.

I pulled up the schematics again. I had been forcibly detoured off of my original escape route, but the maintenance airlock wasn't too far away from my current position. If I continued down the catwalk there was another exit on the other end and that would put me just a few short hallways from the meeting spot.

It was slow going trying to walk on my wounded ankle, but I managed to limp my way there without further incident. Captain Marmalade, Bigsby, and Clancy were already there when I arrived.

"Legend!" Captain Marmalade shouted when I stumbled into the small room. "You look like you've been in a tussle with a pack of wild pygmies. Well, anyway, I'm glad you made it. We're just waiting on Phelps and Bubba to show up and then we can be on our way."

"Yeah, about Phelps and Bubba," I said.

Clancy started to sniff at the air. "Yeah, about Phelps and Bubba. I smell their blood. On him!"

"If you would just give me a second to explain myself," I said.

"That blood stain on your shirt's all the explanation I need, human," Clancy said as he bared his sharp teeth and extended his claws.

"To be fair some of that blood is mine," I gulped. I was lucky to have escaped from Phelps and Bubba. I wasn't ready to try to take on Clancy. I'd seen what he was capable of when he destroyed those guards.

"Oy! Back off, mate!" Bigsby as he placed himself in between Clancy and me. "This bloke killed the bloody President, he did. That makes 'im all roight in my book. Let's hear 'im out before we go rushing off to any judgements."

Of all people to stand up for me, I never thought it would be Bigsby. I always got the sense that he didn't like me. Not that any of the crew seemed all that fond of me, but he really seemed to have had it in for me from the beginning.

Clancy let out a low growl, but he sheathed his claws and backed down.

"All right, Legend, what's the deal with Phelps and Bubba?" Captain Marmalade asked.

"Well, Phelps jumped me on the way here.  I honestly didn't have a choice. It was him or me."

"So you got him before he got you," Captain Marmalade nodded. "I can respect that. He's always going on about how broke he is. He was probably just trying to steal your wallet. So what about Bubba?"

"Bubba was just a tragic accident," I said as I wiped a pretend tear from my eye. "He tripped over his own feet in the engine room and fell into a giant turbine. I tried to grab him, but he was too far away."

"I always told that clumsy oaf he was going to break his own neck one of these days," Captain Marmalade said. "Oh well, I guess it all works out in the end. There's only four space suits in here anyway. We were going to have to draw straws to see who was going to get out of here. Now we don't have to. And look, Clancy. One of them is even a triple extra large size. It should fit you perfectly."

"It must be your lucky day, humans," Clancy said. "Otherwise I would have stitched together two of the smaller suits and one of you would have been out of luck."

"I guess it is my lucky day," I said as I put on the space suit. It was a little bulky and the helmet made it so you had to turn your whole body to look from side to side, but all things considered it wasn't too bad. A message popped up on the inside of the helmet saying the suit was doing a self-diagnostics test. A moment later it returned with the news that all systems were fully functional, internal temperature was set at an optimal level, and oxygen levels were at maximum. I was honestly pretty nervous about this whole thing, but that calmed my jitters a little bit.

Once all of us were suited up Captain Marmalade tried the inner airlock door. Despite the station-wide security lockdown, it swung right open revealing a small decompression chamber. I guess there really were loopholes even in the best security systems.

We walked into the chamber and Bigsby sealed the door behind us. There was another door on the other side of the chamber with a small porthole in it through which I could see open space. Captain Marmalade opened a panel on the wall and initiated the pressure regulation sequence which would prepare our bodies for the change from the artificial atmosphere of the space station to the empty vacuum of space. There was a countdown from ten and then the outer door opened automatically and we were cast out into the void.