Tiren swore under his breath as another bolt struck just aft of the main thruster. Maybe "you'll never take me alive" had been the wrong thing to say. "Come on, Baby," he pleaded as more of his console turned to red and warning klaxons blared through the compartment. "Come on, Sweetheart, hold together for Daddy." Another hit sent the ship into a wild spin. The strobes on the police cruisers streaked like meteors past his viewports until he managed to stabilize his flight, just in time to dodge another bolt.

Gateway Nineteen hove into view and he made for it with as much speed as he could squeeze out of his damaged power cells. The cops would not dare to shoot in the direction of the Gateway unless they wanted to try outrunning a supernova. All he had to do was stay ahead of them for another few seconds. He urged his ship onward. Just a few more seconds and he would be out of planetary jurisdiction, and free. He did not know what awaited him in the Void but he did not care. Where ever he turned up did not matter as long as there was no more prison food, no more electroharness, nobody waiting to shank him around every corner. "So long, suckers," he sneered as the Gateway powered up ahead of him. "Ti is home free!"

Or so it seemed. Frenetic dancing lights filled his forward viewport as a cruiser darted between Tiren and the Gateway. Startled, Tiren hit his thrusters but even before his ship's course began to deflect his mind filled with images of the leering eyes of the cops as they bound him and rammed him again and again from behind before flinging him down into the Hole yet again. "No way," he growled and recorrected his course for the Gateway. "This time, this one is going to fuck you right back." As the cruiser's strobes centered themselves in his viewport he jammed his claw down so hard that it pierced the thruster control.

The cruiser was twice the size of his ship and growing larger with each passing second. Tiren's beak was clamped so tightly that his whole neck ached but he kept the strobe above the cruiser's cabin dead in the middle of his viewport. "Your turn to take it up the ass now, Boys," he hissed. The cruiser loomed, filling the viewport now, ever larger until that single strobe, throbbing like a pulsar, was all that he could see. The collision alert wailed.

The pulsar dropped abruptly downward and out of sight, followed by the letters L-I-C and then a welcome view of the Gateway's yawning throat, but then there was a jarring impact that sent the Gateway spinning around his viewport. Sirens howled in a raucous symphony around him. The sound was quickly muffled amidst an overwhelming sensation of being stretched into a thin, thin wire. A wave of nausea sent the contents of his crop bursting from his beak. "Gah...I should have cast that up before I left," he croaked.

The disorientation and the nausea passed and Tiren angrily silenced the alarms. Details of the damage scrolled frantically along the computer readout. Both fuel and air were bleeding out. The computer, ever helpful, was recommending a return to his point of origin. "No fucking way," he said aloud. The pellet that he had cast floated past his eyes, almost as if taunting him. It was nothing but paper and bits of fiber -- typical prison fare. "No way am I ever coughing one of those up again." Instead he entered Destination: planet, unspecified. The computer asked for his requirements. No UPD jurisdiction, air, water...

"In that order," he muttered. He would have liked more options but a brand-new horn started to howl. The readout screen turned red. Power levels critical. Oxygen levels critical. Emergency beacon activating. Override? Yes. Are you sure? Yes.

He braced himself against another round of nausea and the feeling that his legs were being forced up into his skull. Stars appeared in his viewports, and dead ahead a gorgeous and shiny planet. UPD jurisdiction? he queried. None, the computer replied, and then the readout went blank.

"Uh-oh," Tiren whispered. Every indicator in the cabin went dark. The air circulators no longer hissed. "Oh, this is so not good," he said. The only light now was that which bounced off of the planet's surface, something he noticed incidentally was approaching very rapidly. There had not been enough power to slow his approach, let alone prepare for re-entry. He jabbed at the thruster switch: nothing. The planet swelled rapidly until the viewport showed nothing but a wall of blue. The ship started to shudder, then to shake violently while brilliant yellow flame burst across the viewport.

Tiren raked the cover off of the hatch release and grasped the handle. It occurred to him suddenly that this might not be the actual plant that the computer had selected for re-entry. What if he was supposed to have maneuvered around this one to the one behind before the ship's computer ran out of juice? He could pop the hatch and end up sucking ammonia. The notion was not pleasant, but all told it seemed better than roasting to a cinder in the rapidly-disintegrating ship. "Here goes nothing," he mumbled, twisted the handle and yanked hard.

The blast knocked him senseless. He was dimly aware of tumbling end over end, of raw wind blasting at his feathers until finally his instincts took over and he snapped both wings open wide. They caught the wind and held, a little singed at the edges but apparently none the worse for wear. The horizon stabilized. Fresh, cool air without even a hint of ammonia flooded into his lungs. Below him was a sea of blue which when he focused the telefield of his eye upon it he realized was a vast expanse of water. It stretched clear to the horizon both left and right, and as far forward as he could see and as far back.

Air. Water. And nothing else, dammit. "Fucking computer!" he growled. The infernal machines were so damned literal. If it had dropped him on some desolate water world he was going to...well, there was not much more he could do. The remains of his ship were coming apart below him, the computer separating itself into a million streams of glowing, liquified metal and polymer behind which a black plume trailed in a forlorn spiral. There was no question that Tiren was going to be stuck for the long haul.

Angrily he smacked down a fleeting spark of panic. There were rising thermal columns all around, enough to keep him aloft for days if need be. He flapped for the nearest one and dove into its base to start a lazy upward spiral. At the apex he drifted off and rode the planet's prevailing winds toward the sun in a long glide that carried him to another thermal. For hours he sailed over endless blue water, until just when that annoying spark was starting to rekindle he caught a glimpse of land at the far reach of his telefield. "Fuck, yeah!" he crowed.

He knew that he was not off the hook yet, however. That quick glance had been enough to show a landscape with lines that were too straight and regular to be natural formations. Just like any planet with any appreciable oxygen levels, this one was probably inhabited, and even if the UPD had no claim on him here there was no telling if the locals had established an extradition treaty, and even if not, he could not assume that they were the sort who looked kindly on strangers. He circled higher, until the air grew thin and frigid and his lungs burned. It was a wise decision; when he reached the shoreline he could see the unmistakable outlines of cities below. His telefield showed him dense clusters of buildings with barely-distinct forms moving amongst them. They made him curious but he was not about to drop down for a closer look. If he could not see them, chances were good that they could not see him, and that suited Tiren just fine.

He let the winds carry him further inland to where the structures were less dense and open spaces began to appear between them. Perfect. Banking, Tiren glided from his thermal and splayed his wings wide, angling them to let the air slip past and drop him into a steady, controlled descent. He was aiming for a hilly region between two of the structures where the vegetation was dense and would offer him cover. It was none too soon, too, since he had not eaten since the breakout and his crop felt like it was going to gnaw itself apart. If the yokels below were friendly maybe he could beg a scrap or two out of them. If not, well, he had plenty of other ways to get what he wanted.

"What the hell??"

A shadow below was approaching fast. Tiren jerked his head around to see what was coming at him but the sky was empty. The horizon was high -- way too high. He looked down again and realized just in time to brace himself that the streaking shadow was his own.

His feet hit hard and his legs buckled, sending him crashing to the ground where the breath was knocked clean out of him. For a moment he simply lay gasping, his mind awhirl, trying to figure out how he could have so badly misjudged his landing. He looked around for cover but found none, only a bed of low and scrubby bushes. Maybe he had blacked out and been blown off course. The planet could have some toxin in the atmosphere that screwed with his senses.

With a grunt Tiren climbed to his feet. He flexed -- wings first, then arms, then legs, then back. A few bruises, a broken feather here and there, but nothing that would ground him and no broken bones. He peered around at the vegetation beneath him and concluded that it was indeed the same terrain that he had seen from the sky. The plants, though, were barely as high as his knees. What he had assumed to be nearby structures must have been something else that had made the foliage appear much larger, which created the illusion that the ground was much further away.

But wait. They were structures.

Tiren squinted. They were much closer than he had thought, only a few steps away, and it was soon clear that they were dwellings because something came scurrying out when he cautiously approached. Some sort of bug, it seemed. Two of them -- wingless, upright, squeaky. Curious, he trapped one beneath his foot and stooped to snag the other between his fingers, bringing it to his face for a closer look. It was not a bug at all, he realized, since it had no shell and he could feel tiny bones breaking inside when he squeezed it. Rolling it into his palm he sliced it open with a claw and pulled out its innards. It squealed and bled red, the sight of which made Tiren's crop flutter eagerly. Those tiny bones and the sparce fabric in which the whole thing was clad would not make for much casting material, but it would be a damned sight better than prison grit and paper and it had been years since Tiren had enjoyed fresh meat. It occurred to him that the little thing might be poisonous but with his hunger gnawing at his insides he did not feel like waiting to find out. As the little creature twitched and fell silent he popped it into his beak and swallowed.

Oh. Oh, yes. His crop demanded more.

The second one squealed even louder as he dragged it from beneath his foot and threw it alive into his mouth. It went down wel in spite of all its wiggling. Tiren closed his eyes and savored the desperate flopping in his crop for as long as it lasted before the clenching muscles finally crushed his meal into submission. While he waited for any signs of cramps or hallucinations he busied himself with studying the dwelling from which his meager dinner had emerged. It was not very sturdy and came apart easily in his hands. From the contents he deduced that the little creatures possessed only rudimentary technology. What little they had seemed almost wasted on something so weak and pathetic. He reasoned that there was probably nothing larger than they were on the whole of the planet; if there was, it would have eaten them all years ago.

And if that were true, then it meant that there was a good chance that Tiren was the biggest living thing in the entire world.

Intrigued by that notion, he turned toward the gray pall on the horizon where he had seen the tightest concentration of dwellings. There was still a chance that he had misjudged their size as well. Then again, if it was the same little creatures that he had discovered here who had built them, then he would have enough food to last a lifetime.

His crop gave a greedy flutter. Tensing his legs he beat his wings down hard and launched himself skyward, then made for the nearest thermal that rose in the direction of the cluster.

It was a city all right, no different from any other on any planet except for its size. The structures were larger than those he had encountered earlier but, as he discovered with cruel delight, just as fragile. He swooped low, marveling at how readily the flimsy constructs shattered beneath the simple draft from his wings. As his shadow raced across the grid below it sent the puny meatbugs scurrying. Their terror was intoxicating. They were helpless before him -- him! Tyren, the biggest badass their world had ever seen. "That's right! Run!" he bellowed. "You'll all be whitewash by morning!"

He landed feet-first on a pair of boxy structures and rode them down as they crumbled satisfyingly beneath him. Stepping from the rubble he raised all of his feathers and shook the dust from them, then turned a callous eye to the paltry beings swarming below. Their stumbling and squeaking made him roar with laughter and he leaned down, scooping up ten or more at once with just a sweep of his hand. The sounds they made as they flailed in his grip was like sweet music; their wiggling made his crop quiver in eager anticipation. "You ought to be proud," he cooed to them. "You get to be my first meal here." With that he threw his head back, gaped wide and dropped them all together into his mouth. He waited with his eyes closed, letting them writhe about in his beak before he began to swallow them a few at a time, moaning in delight as their struggles traveled down his throat and settled in his crop.

The swarm had moved away when he opened his eyes again. "Oh, no you don't," he growled. With two long strides he was upon them. His hand cleared a wide swath through their midst and bore another squeaking dozen to his mouth. He savored them the same way, then gave in to his belly's insistant pangs and began to cram them into his beak as fast as he could snatch them up. He gulped down a dozen, a hundrd, a thousand, until his crop bulged more than it had since his conviction. He gorged himself and still their numbers were limitless. "This is paradise," he cackled, "and it's all mine."

Something impacted against his left arm and he became aware of a popping noise from somewhere below. Swallowing his last mouthful and paying no heed to the two who tumbled from his beak to their deaths, he scanned the street below and noticed an obstacle that was splitting the stream of retreating prey in half. He had never seen anything quite like it although the colorful dancing lights perched atop it were all too familiar. Leaning closer, he spied two of the tiny creatures crouched in the shelter of its leeward side. The popping was coming from them. "So this is what passes for cops here," he laughed. Whatever they were throwing at him was not doing much good. He could see the impacts on the surface of his feathers like raindrops striking them, but that was all. "You're putting me on," he snickered. "Is that all you've got?"

The little cops stumbled backward as Tiren reached down and seized what was no doubt their cruiser in one hand. "I'll tell you, Boys," he taunted, "Your kind make damned fine eating. The only problem, though, is that you don't give a guy much to cast afterward." Bringing the cruiser to his beak he bit down and tore it in half. "Those little bones, that thin skin..." He paused to swallow the front of the wreck. "...it's just not healthy. For me, that is." He threw the rest of the cruiser into his maw and gulped it down as well. "Meat is fine, but a fellow really needs to be able to cough up a good, firm pellet after a big meal."

Pop-pop, pop-pop! More raindrops on his chest. Something the size of a grain of sand left a thin scrape on the side of his beak. Another hit the nictitating membrane of his left eye, doing no damage but irritating the hell out of him. "That's it!" he snarled. Standing tall, he raised all of his feathers and flared his wings to their full span, casting a nightmarishly enormous shadow on the swarm. "I'm going to teach you pathetic insects your proper place!"

The police tried to retreat but were caught up in the swarm. Like a river of living terror it spun them around and carried them along, while overhead a glaring Tiren lifted his foot. "This is how we kill bugs where I come from," he growled, and stamped down hard, deliberately missing the cops but crushing a huge number of their kin just inches away. He made a great show of lifting his foot and holding it aloft so that the cops could get a good look at the dozens of corpses mashed against its underside. With a flex of his toes he made a half ton of raw meat peel off and batter down on them in chunks. He stomped again, then with his other foot, then with the first again, purposefully avoiding the tiny blue-clad figures while trampling the bodies around them into mush, and all the while laughing raucously. Eventually the cops stood alone in a field of flattened citizens with Tiren glaring down at them.

Pop-pop-pop-pop, and his feathers ruffled all over. More of the little bastards were coming out of the woodwork. Tiren snorted. "I was wondering when you were going to get around to sending reinforcements," he said to the two below. With one foot he swiped at them, gutting them both with a single claw before turning to the newcomers. "Well, here I am!" he jeered, spreading his arms and wings out wide. "So what are you waiting for? Arrest me, you little fuckers."

The poppping was nearly constant now and the feathers of Tiren's chest and belly were dancing as though in a strong wind. Bits of metallic sand rained down from his body as he advanced slowly upon the police line, one blood-caked foot after another, holding the cops in his malevolent gaze until he stood right over them. The popping stopped short and the cops bolted but did not get very far. Tiren's hand overtook them, plowing them all together before closing around the entire kicking mass and lifting them skyward. Leering, Tiren slowly sat down, flattening one of their cruisers beneath his rump and catching the ghost of a final scream from the vehicle's occupants.

They squealed like tiny rodents when Tiren held them close to his eyes. The idea of police officers being so tiny that he could grip them in one hand was an incredible thrill. "Are you begging?" he said to them. He clenched his fist just a little, just enough to make their voices grow hoarse. "You should be. I could crush you all right now. All I have to do is squeeze -- oh, yeah, I'd love to do that." His hand relaxed slightly. "But no. You little fucks are going to suffer."

He was interrupted by a sharp pain on his left buttock. "Ow! Shit!" Leaning to his right he raised his cheek and brushing at the feathers. He wondered for a moment if someone had somehow survived in the flattened cruiser and had managed to get off a lucky shot, but from between two of his feathers emerged a tiny creature about the size of a feather-mite. It was a bizarre thing with four tiny legs and a thin tail and two angular points on its furry head, which Tiren figured must be what it used to suck his blood. "You little piece of filth," he growled, snatching up an undamaged cruiser and hurling it at the mite as it crawled away. It skittered from side to side, avoiding the tumbling vehicle before darting out of sight.

Tiren rubbed balefully at his rump and then returned his attention to his captives. His voice was icy with contempt. "You call yourselves police? You're pathetic! A fucking little parasite just got in a better shot on me than any of you." Of course they did not understand what he was saying, the mindless little pricks, and that annoyed him. He decided that a demonstration was in order. Dragging one of them from his grip with his other hand he flipped it up and caught one of its two legs in his beak. A casual twist of his head: Rip! The leg disappeared down his throat as the little thing wailed. The other leg was next: Rip! Then an arm. By then his victim had stopped making noise so he shrugged and tossed the rest into his mouth and gulped.

The display seemed to have had the desired effect on the rest of the captives who were writhing more frantically than ever. Tirens clicked his beak and marveled out loud, "Whoa...I just ate a cop!" He lifted the struggling officers very close to his eyes and narrowed his gaze. "And I'm going to eat a lot more, believe me. But first, it's Payback Time."

He transferred one cop to his left foot, curling the long toes around in a firm grip, and two to his right. The remaining four he clutched together in his fist while rubbing into the feathers of his groin with his other hand. With the rush he was getting from having such ultimate control over the police it did not take long for him to make himself hard. "What do you think of that?" he said mockingly as he held them in the shadow of the mighty organ, which loomed over them like a building. They jibbered, cowering; Tiren was convinced that they were pleading for mercy which only stoked his urge to flaunt his dominance. Opening his hand he cupped it quickly around his erection, squeezing the puny cops against it. A shudder ran through him and he began to pant. Their voices rose to a shrill whine as he began to jerk his hand roughly up and down, dragging them in brutal strokes along the fleshy spire.

It did not take long. Tiren came hard, harder than he had in years, his cream shooting almost as high as his head. He gripped tightly with his fingers, quivering at the feeling of the cops being crushed to death against his spurting shaft, their subjugation complete. Gasping, he lay back against the building behind him and continued to stroke himself until the very last spasm had passed. All that was left of the police by now were red tatters that hung, cum-draped, from his fingers. He flicked them away and sighed blissfully.

By now the street around him was deserted. Tiren gathered the remaining captives back into one hand and addressed them casually. "So where are all your friends?" he asked. "Hiding, I imagine. That's fine. I'll hunt them down as soon as I'm hungry again. As for you..." He held them close again. "...I'm keeping you. I've got some ideas that I'm sure you aren't going to like one bit."

One of them howled. Smirking, Tiren stuffed the tip of a claw into the tiny mouth, silencing the cries. Tiren laughed coldly. "You know, back home, your kind just couldn't resist being up my ass. It seems to me that cops are the same no matter where. I think that tomorrow you three are going to get to experience that for yourselves."

Tiren barked with laughter and stood up. Right away he realized that something was wrong. The buildings around him wobbled and the ground gaze a sudden lurch that dropped him to his knees. The meatbug cops fell forgotten from his hand. He sat down hard. "My head..." he groaned. "What the hell? Are you little bastards poisoned after all?" He blinked away an annoying haze. His arm felt like rock when he reached up to rub at his brow. Every joint throbbed painfully.

Relax.

"What?" Tiren rubbed at his eyes and peered all around.

Relax, I said. It will be quicker if you do not fight it.

He felt the need to empty his crop. "Who the hell is saying that?"

Down here.

Tiren squinted and peered at the ground before him. He saw nothing at first, but then through the gathering fog he made out the diminutive shape of a mite, and a closer look convinced him that it was the very same one that had bitten him earlier. It was not darting away this time, but rather sat serenely preening at the tiny whiskers that sprouted from its snout. For a moment it busied itself with licking at a tiny forelimb and rubbing it over its face before it lifted its head to meet Tiren's gaze. You know, we hunt and kill your kind for sport on this world, although I confess that I have never before seen one your size. It suprises me all the more that my bite would affect you so quickly. Who would have imagined that you would be so weak?

"How the hell...how can you be talking to me?"

How indeed? The mite curled its thin tail around its haunches. Your mind is receptive, at least on a very basic level. It is how we communicate with lesser species.

Tiren felt feverish. It took nearly all of his strength to raise his fist and bring it crashing down upon the annoying pest, but the mite sprang aside at the last instant and peered ruefully at him. I told you to relax. You're only making it harder on yourself.

"What did you do to me?"

The mite sat down and twisted its head around to wash its back. "What a silly question. I have killed you, of course."

Tiren's mouth fell open. The mite finished washing its back, then yawned and settled down to its belly. The bacteria in my saliva usually does its work within days. You must be particularly sensitive to it. Lie still, now. The less you move, the faster you will die.

"You little bastard. What the hell did I ever do to you?"

Do? You were slaughtering our slaves. We could not have that now, could we?

"Slaves?" Tyren's beak sagged down to his chest. "You mean...?"

Naturally. Those creatures that you were so selfishly devouring belong to us. They are a servant species, dull and brutish but not without their uses. You did not honestly think for a moment that something like them could be the dominant species here, did you?

Another mite appeared, then two more, and a dozen, a hundred, a thousand, creeping from the depths of the rubble and surrounding him. Their tiny glowing eyes was the last thing he saw before his own eyes closed and he could not open them any longer. "You could have just told me," he stammered.

Would it have stopped you? No, I don't think so. You have to eat, after all. The mite licked briefly over its nose and added, as, of course, do we.

Tiren could only groan in reply. He felt himself slipping away. A pinprick sent a jolt of pain through his haunch, followed by another, then a dozen, a hundred, a thousand. There's quite a lot of you. I suspect we will only have time for the choicest parts before our servants return to finish the job. Even so, I must say that your meat is far tastier than your smaller local brethren.

You ought to be proud.

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