"Mastur Sharkfinny, ish yu see what happenin?" asked the Deleter to his master.

The master looked out at the prisoners being carried into the brig of the ship. "Yush..." he said triumphantly. "Dere will be big plox for us nao... we can loot em an steel dere spamm kannon."

They left, snickering under their breaths.

OOO

Sylia tried to wriggle free of her captor, a huge muscle-bound guy with leathery palms and biceps like a couple of space shuttles. The captor held on tight however. Sylia was in a hell of a bad mood, because A) she had been thrown by this exact same guy as a weapon, and B) general bad feelings abounded.

The cell she was thrown into next was an uncomfortable one. The floor was cold and hard and perfectly smooth, apart from the grease stains at infrequent intervals. The rest of the crew were thrown in as well, landing hard on top of her. Scraped and bleeding, Sylia sat up from the pile of people.

"How in hell's name were we supposed to know that this was a ship?" Drago cried.

"I don't think we were," Overseer 2 replied. "However, there's still something I don't get... why did the planet snare us? The gravity on the inside can't be that massive. It's a tiny planet, for Baszucki's sake!"

There were footsteps.

"Quiet, I hear something," they all said in unison, and held their palms over their ears, making a sound funnel. What they heard froze their blood.

"...luk, dere's the cells. We interrogeragerate them first... then weh can steel teir stuffs, teir spamm cannon... den delete them. Like Master Sharkfinny sed."

"Deleters," Bob said.

"What a first day," Sylia moaned.

"What a last day," Drago moaned back.

Two white-armored soldiers inspected the other cells in their prison block. There were loud screams from some of the cells, then the sound of a hammer landing. The screaming stopped abruptly after these blows.

Overseer 2 turned to Drago.

"You know Judo, right?" he asked.

"I studied brickbattling," Drago replied, "but only as a hobby."

"Good enough," Overseer 2 said. "Wait 'till the guards come by. Then we'll knock them out and two of us will wear their armor. The rest will pretend to be prisoners."

"As long as I get to be the one with the weapon," Drago replied, and walked from his seated position to the cell bars. The guards had finished with the cell beside them. Sylia heard a gasp, then a gurgling sound, then the hammer blow, then silence except for their boots on the floors.

A guard appeared. Drago struck it across the head, and it collapsed. The next was smashed against the bars, which snapped. Now that the dirty bit was over, Drago broke the bars the rest of the way and stepped out.

"C'mon," he said. "Are we gonna do this or what?" He put on a helmet, then a breastplate, then the leggings, then the boots, and the metal, arm-length gloves. Overseer 2 did the same. Once the others had filed in between the masqueraders, they started to cautiously walk down the corridor, looking this way and that. Luckily, the Deleter prison bay had no security cameras.

The bay ended at a door, which was open. Beyond was a moderately sized room, with red walls, a ceiling with floodlights stuck in it, and a large hammer with a closed eye on it. The eye twitched a little in its presumed sleep. The hammer itself was mounted on a rotating pedestal.

"Security system," Drago whispered. "Don't make any sudden noises." They snuck past the hammer, and into the next corridor, which was another prison block. The cells were empty.

Then, as they entered the next room, they realized a certain fact: the room was full of Deleters. They screamed and panicked (at least the fake prisoners did; the others merely stood stiffly with their hands raised in salutes, playing their roles well). A deleter in darker armor than the rest swept forward.

"Trups," he ordered, "shuw indentification."

Overseer 2 passed his and Drago's stolen IDs to the Deleter, who scanned them with a little scanning device, then returned them with a grunt of satisfaction. "Why are der prisoners doon her?" he demanded.

"Supposed to bring 'em to the leader for inspection," Overseer 2 barked. "Can you take us to him?"

...

There was silence.

Not even the hum of the engines could disturb this silence, the silence of a dozen Deleters, three prisoners, and two masqueraders, realizing something vital: that this must be the leader in question. They hummed and hahed embarrasedly.

The leader leaned in closer to Overseer 2, then leaned in closer to Drago. He sniffed.

"As I expectorated," he sighed. He prized the helmet off Drago's head, revealing the baseball cap and the nervous face beneath. "Prisoner," the leader snarled.

"Uh, hi," Drago said. He was sweating.

"I am der ledder, Sharkfinny," the leader said. "Lord Sharkfinny der furrst, kang of der Deleaters!" He raised a hand before the Deleters behind him could cry "Hail Sharkfinny!". "You are liars," Sharkfinny hissed. "Durrtay uns... LEMONBUNIONS, tairk dem to der torture chamber fur sum funneh tings." He walked back through the crowd.

A Deleter with lemon-yellow armor grabbed the two fake troops and dragged them away. Sylia, Haiakii, and Bob looked in terror at Sharkfinny as the latter stood up on top of a raised dais and shouted, "DELEATION TO DER PRINSONERS!" The mob surged forward and carried Sylia and the rest up the corridor opposite the one that Lemonbunions and the other two had gone down.

Sharkfinny stayed behind, standing on the dais. He watched the two opposite corridors, and grinned. A fun day, he thought. A verreh fun day.

At the torture chamber, Drago was attempting to stall Lemonbunions by asking how all the different machinery worked; and there was certainly lots of it.

"What's this do?" he asked, motioning at a drill-like thing with a bulb of glistening mucus on the end.

"Pops yurr brans," Lemonbunions said. He strapped Overseer 2 down to a table. Overseer 2 mouthed "Keep going" at Drago.

"And this?" Drago asked again. He patted a large chainsaw on a robotic arm.

"Cuts yurr balls off."

"Ah." Drago thought of a machine to ask about next. He immediately settled on one that looked mildly interesting. "HEY, what's that?!" he asked, positively flailing at an Epic Duck in a cage attached to a pulley system and a rope, which was in turn attached to a robotic arm attached to a laser guided implosion missile about a foot long.

This actually made Lemonbunions pause for thought.

"Urrrrrrmmmmm," he said.

"Keep going," Drago urged. "Think. That one looks like it'll be fun to use on me."

"Urrrrrrmmmmm..."

"Come on."

Lemonbunions was at a complete loss. Drago sat back and gave a thumbs up to Overseer 2. Overseer 2 grinned like a maniac as the torturer's limbs began shaking with unaccustomed spasms of deep thought.

In the other room, down the other corridor, and far away from where Lemonbunions was having siezures in utter puzzlement, Sylia was being tied onto a sort of factory machine, along with Bob and Haiakii. The machine was being held by pulleys over a massive banhammer head, which had been electrically enhanced so it glowed red-hot with pure deletion energy.

The mob was shouting at them and throwing their fists menacingly.

Sharkfinny entered.

"Let der prisoniers drop slowly inteew der deffs!," he screamed.

The factory machine started, slowly, to descend.