Starfall
Summary:
Zim is different after the tragedy, suffering a depression that Dib can't seem to break. When he disappears one day out of the blue, Dib is left searching for answers.
Disclaimer:
I do not own the IZ characters, this story however is mine.
Warnings:
Zim angst: Depression. Anorexia. PTSD.
Dib07: Thank you all so much for the follows, favorites and reviews! The support has shocked me, I didn't think this story would attract so much interest! I just hope it continues to entertain you as the story develops!
guest: Whoops - I forgot to update it on A03! My bad, FFN is my go-to which I gotta change soon. I don't know how long FFN will last so... But yeah, how Elysium has even affected Gir is a little worrying. I really hope you enjoy this update, it's longer than I intended, heh. Gaz would agree with your thoughts about Zim's safety...
little side-note:
If you guys are interested there is an opportunity to name Tak's ship in this story, and you'll be credited for it. For the life of me I cannot think of an appropriate name even when I'm some 7 chapters deep into this thing. I've named the ship before in various works, and I don't know if I should stick with the same names (Vandraren from Saving Zim, or the Nebula from Elite Black) or if I should choose a different one. Let me know your thoughts! ^^
The Frontier
The ship he had left in the rut of her own grave, with a robot hanging, puppet-like, in the harness.
His wracked cries were hardly more than squeaks, all the energy and strength was bleeding out of him. Some of what he dribbled was Irken, blood and gibberish besides, and Dib suspected that his translator was damaged.
His eyes went rolling inwards, his trembling shakes weakening to nothing in his arms when Dib got him inside. When he touched his chest, he felt the bones of his ribs shift and move.
"Dib! He's choking!" Gaz was paper white, her purple hair as tussled as the green-soaked sheets. Blood and purple tinged gel came away in her hand.
Something else came to their attention. It was small, not more than the length of a finger when it emerged from the PAK's top port like a worm leaving its burrow. Gaz jolted back, but only to grab what turned out to be a heavy book on car engineering. When it wriggled all the way out, a small, wriggling monstrosity of about three inches with purple coils glowing from it, she smacked it with the book, again and again before Dib could stop her.
Instead of blood and guts, the 'worm' spewed bright purple gel, revealing hair-thin follicles that pulsed, and expelling rubbery protuberances that might be mechanical organs. They had stared, thinking it would move even when it was flatter than a pancake.
Everything else was fragmented, moments surfacing through the gauze as if Dib's brain had taken precedence: numbing memory as much as his senses. Things would stir in the night, like it did for the Elite, things that couldn't stay forgotten.
It hurt to look back, even when it was safe to do so.
Tak's ship doled out preliminary reports, the diagnosis working through operative capabilities and systems. He knew the ship from the inside out, having tirelessly taken her apart to find and repair the damage when the computer could only diagnose it. Experimentation and, in parts failure, had acquainted him with a broader understanding of Irken machinery. It was sensitive, more responsive, and more dangerous. Working on Zim's mechanical arm had been something of a passion project. Starting off small to then realize its credibility had given him a growing hunger for its profound proficiency.
I need how much fuel? Okay, I can rework the turbine. The hull looks pretty good but the starboard side could do with a touch-up.
The ship stood in the open, her sides filled with buttery gold as the clouds broke apart to unveil the sun.
Her engines spluttered out boiling hot breaths of crimson that sent streaks of fire across the lawn. He shut her down too late, the gashes perfect horizontal lines running down the hedgerow to the back of the yard. Blackened and smoky ruts were carved into existence, the air greasy with corrosive fumes of sulphur and peroxide.
Dib ran a hand over his forehead, feeling greasy tendrils of black hair.
Sometimes he wished Zim had been able to just let go. But there was no escaping the pressures of conformity, or from the strains and hardships of one's own design.
And Zim had held on, for duty's sake perhaps, or for his own self-inhibitions and pride.
In hindsight the ship's computer had split open things he didn't know about him, inevitably laying siege to the Irken's paradigmatic facades. Had he come to Earth to shelter himself from his own kind, or was his posting something of an attempt to regain lost graces?
What did you do, Zim? What did it cost?
"Can I come?" Little metal feet tinkered over. Gir was cuddling a rag-doll otter toy that looked more like roadkill, something so ancient that Dib was surprised it wasn't falling apart.
He was about to ask where it had come from only to give up on the question before it had even left his lips. "That's not such a good idea." Was the only explanation he could give. He wasn't so keen on having Gir travel with him when he might accidently hit the wrong button. Disasters came to mind if he allowed the robot even a second in the cockpit.
"Whhhy?" Came his plaintive cry.
"It'll be a long trip. You'll get bored."
"I won't too!" Pouted the robot.
He would steer him back towards the house, feeling like a damned parent running out of patience.
As the evening cast stars through the impenetrable cosmos like a silver flame stretching across the sky, Dib slotted in a metallic panel, hearing it click into place before feeling with his fingers to make sure it was smoothly aligned under the ship's console.
I'm really doing this, aren't I?
If this was delirium spun by fever and heartache, than he was going to keep on riding it. Checking himself into the Institute might snap the madness out of him, blowing Zim's base to smithereens might also produce a healing catharsis, but he could not turn aside the drive that made him. He had inherited his father's stubborn tenacity to keep looking for solutions, to pursue the impossible, to fight when no one else would, and to believe when others gave up.
He had never really been attracted by the idea of flying through space when one dent in the hull could be fatal, and wondered what pressure could really do to the body when it was exposed to a vacuum.
Zim had always given the impression that he never considered the dangers as he travelled, fought, or sought escape in the cold abyss. There was precious little he ever revealed, keeping it tucked and hidden away behind the iron-cladding of his walls.
Dib's only impasse was leaving his sister behind. She had confronted him in the bathroom doorway as he tossed painkillers and antiseptics into a duffel bag.
"There's no stopping you, is there?" Her solemn eyes drew to dark curves. "Have you even remembered to bring a change of clothes?"
He turned to sparingly look at her. "I have to do this."
"You don't know when to stop. You're as bad as he is."
"I know." He said.
"This whole idea of yours is stupid. What if he comes back while you're halfway across the cosmos?"
He cocked his head at her, having known she would poke at his resolve as if he hadn't a clue. Admittedly, he'd done stupid things he wasn't proud of, and it wouldn't be the first time her wisdom had helped steer him from the mess he'd made. "I've created a digital net with the computer at home. That way if his Voot comes within a hundred clicks of our solar system, I'll pick it up."
"Riiight." She slung her shoulders back, slender and elegant in the room's light. When she comfortably leaned against the doorway, arms folded, she showed no sign of just 'letting him go.' "Can't you wait one more day? It's not like he's never 'disappeared' before."
"That was because he took Gir with him that last time, and he wasn't so... different. Look. I found out where he went before he crashed." He carried on hurtling things into his bag without paying that much attention to it. "He went to this planet called Elysium to fight at the warfront. It was in his records. It's all I could find."
She took a step from the doorway, arms unfolding at her chest. "Dib... don't you understand how dangerous..."
"Is a little faith too much to ask for?"
"Running after him isn't the solution! Dad wouldn't want..." She went to grab his arm. He pushed her off with his shoulder and stormed out the room. Her shouts chased after him. "What if you do find him? What then?"
"Then I'll bring him home!" He snapped without turning round.
"I hope it's that simple." She answered too quietly for him to hear.
He headed back out into the garden, threw the old bag down on the gravel and retrieved the bottle of wine from the bench. Simply looking at the ship eased the looming ache in his chest. Solace wasn't going to be found staying, and stagnating here.
I'll be careful. She doesn't understand...
Among other things, the violin lay in its simple but snug case on the bench, ready to be stowed away. He stared at it, perplexed he had even briefly considered bringing it along when the instrument could mean absolutely nothing to the Irken if he ever managed to see him again. His sister had rolled her eyes at him earlier in the morning when he had lifted the instrument, placing its bust on his chin and stroking the bow across the strings to produce the most awful shrieking.
Funny how the sound, erratic and terrible under his rough council, brought Gir over who seemed familiar with the sound, even prompting him to call for his master. He had to quickly put the violin down, apologizing as tears budded in Gir's eyes.
The robot's reaction unquestionably revealed who the instrument belonged to.
But the knowledge also brought sudden, deepening regret when he suspected that the violin might have been a replacement for his absences.
There were only so many sleepless nights one could endure, staying awake just to count the hours, anticipating the next episodic nightmare that would tear Zim from sleep or imprison him in another trance. Sometimes he'd walk slowly to a wall or corner and stand there, rambling listlessly, and sometimes crying.
Dib shook his head at himself, picking up the violin in its case to strap it to the cargo's smooth wall. Hanging onto things had never been in his nature. It fostered too many sentiments when there was the horizon to look forward to. But lately, he found himself clutching old mementos, any snippet of the past really, fearing he might break without them.
-x-
The computer's software did the donkey work for him, recalibrating preliminaries as it cycled through the engines, heat syncs, hull integrity, shield strength and fuel consumption rates. The oxygen he installed himself but transporting tanks of super explosive stuff was daunting. To the merits of Irken hardware, he could feed the oxygen into super tiny condensers that took gluts of O2 while taking up very little room.
There was little else to occupy his mind other than checking the figures the computer was already addressing while he went round overseeing anything that needed a manual touch.
His engineering skills, honed from improvising and experimentation, had opened new channels that ordinarily would have stumped him. Reconstructing Zim's arm had been baffling at first as he sweated over two failed prototypes that were way too heavy, with the connector neurons shorting out. Zim would watch him from a distance, having not the inclination or the desire to help. The tears would blaze into his eyes, with scars holding him fast, his emptiness an expanding void. Any attempts to cajole the Elite into the project seemed to push on the damage, and Zim would hide himself away in the base for hours on end.
Left with the Irken's computer to help him, he discovered the sensitivities of tech bio-reading by plugging it into a test socket, with the computer demonstrating the arm's movement and range, the tests indicating how incredibly sophisticated and accurate the performance was – forget clumsy, clonky machines that missed the mark by a mile. Every neuron twitch was registered, every gentle pressure and touch effortlessly conveyed. Zim could apply pounds of pressure or be as light as a feather whenever he wished.
When the screaming was over after the third prototype was installed, the finer nuances were suddenly redundant when Zim couldn't even lift it, the weight too much on him. Patience had its shortcomings, panic a much more real substance that banished all else. Zim's iron-clad self-control evaporated when he realized there was no getting away from it...
Madness came in instalments. It didn't happen all at once.
The crescent moon glided from misted clouds, bands of white gold streaming over the lawn. He looked at the ship's smooth hull and wondered what he was getting himself into.
This is stupid. Gaz was right.
Gir hurried over dragging a heavy 1970's looking travel case across the lawn. He had asked the robot to pack any essentials and food with him, hoping the robot would then forget. But when he saw him coming across the glistening silver-spun lawn, his heart sank.
"We be ready fer a p-p-p-part-tty!" The glitch came hard, distorting his words heavily. Both eyes flickered, Gir stooping to a standstill with his head bowing forwards. When Dib worriedly hurried over his optic eyes had blinked back on, and he was looking around in that lost, bewildered way.
Trying to act as though nothing had happened to save the robot from tears, he gestured at the travel case. "What did you pack, Gir?"
The robot then looked at the travel case as if he had no memory of it. Only when he tugged the heavy case open did recognition brighten those soft cyan eyes.
Dib exhaled long and hard when the case revealed nothing but toys and more of those looming 'spire' pictures. "Do you know why I'm going?" He slowly knelt down, knees brushing the wet grass.
He was tempted to ask questions just to see how Gir would react. Sometimes the robot would have a glint of the answer. "To f-find Master?"
Dib dully smiled, the pain twisting deeper anyway. "Yeah..." He paused, wondering if he should repeat any of his earlier questions involving the bastard's possible whereabouts, but if Zim had left the robot just as suddenly, then there really was no point in asking. "Are you sure you want to come along?"
Gir nodded, his metal antenna drooping.
He gazed inwards a moment, regrettably remembering the moment when that cybernetic worm had 'popped' out of Zim's damaged PAK. "Did you and Zim... come straight home from Elysium...?"
The perfunctory nod was timid. The human discovered that even mentioning 'Elysium' was enough to corrode Gir's thought processors.
"Alright then, I guess. Now hop in."
The relief was washing out the grey, he could feel himself lift, as if before with the thought of doing nothing but wait, had put blocks of concrete on his heart and feet.
Fear was only impartial when he was still on home soil, but he had a feeling that would change.
Gaz stood at a respectable distance, arms folded, face pinched. Despite her obvious anger, the budding freedom annihilated the resentment and he crossed the distance to speak with her. When he saw her fist clench he miserably regretted his decision only for her to pull him into a stiff, angry embrace. "Don't be long, Dib. When you find the idiot, make sure you pound him for me." The embrace was a quick and dignified affair, pushing him away within moments as if the contact was a little too intimate.
"I have done this before, you know."
"Giving it a spin now and then does not automatically qualify you as a space pilot."
He gave her a bewildered, half ironical look. Chasing Zim through the atmosphere and then into space when he was young qualified for more than simply 'giving it a spin.' "We'll be back before you even realize I'm gone."
She did not look at all convinced, and he felt sorry for leaving her. Her face suddenly paled, and there were the faintest traces of hurt ringing her narrowed eyes. Like Zim's madness, pain came in instalments too. It had been raining on that day, with Gaz standing beside him like a solemn porcelain figurine, her face covered by a black lace veil. Distant family members Dib had never seen before or rarely met stood around the hole they had put his father in without so much as a word. The priest read out the eulogy in the grey foreground as the wind cut into their bodies. When Gaz had clutched his hand tightly, hurting the bones in his fingers, he looked to see a small, gaunt figure standing alone in the distance.
"Don't think you need to go up there because you failed, Dib." She said, her words croaky.
"I know." He reached out, taking her chilled fingers in his.
As the windshield soundlessly slid over his world, he raised his hand in farewell. Sentimentality wasn't his forte either.
She stood there like she had at the funeral, lifting her hand in reciprocation, but her face remained pale, hollow.
His fingers settled over the soft chrome and ploxum of the throttle, and though it was made to fit tiny pronged claws it felt right in his grip somehow. Gir was waving eagerly at her in the little makeshift seat Dib had made with the Irken in mind. It could be positioned to sit at the front or be pushed back to make more room in the cockpit's tin-can confines.
Easing the throttle down, he heard and felt the engines whine to a scream, the cabin thrumming hotly, and there was lift – the same eerie weightlessness that was felt in an elevator but ten times more terrifying, like he was falling in reverse, the movement unable to compute with his brain as he went up and up while sitting perfectly still.
The only way he could ascertain that was he was moving at all was the world dropping away from him. His sister became something no larger than a grain of sand. Houses tumbled away, as fragile and tiny as toy models beside silver veins for roads as they slipped in and out of congested, hunched metropolises. Long, snaking rivers were stripes and spirally strips, trailing off into the distance as the curvature of the Earth began to unfold.
He remained still, eyes infused with the light of the moon as it swathed upwards to meet him, its radiating luminosity a scotch mark in his eyes.
The engines continued to scream, the cabin purring, dashboard busily communicating as he stared gormlessly ahead.
Hugging his ragged, mottled otter-thing, Gir was happily giggling from the seat beside him as if he was in a rollercoaster ride. It was the most laughter he'd heard him make since Zim's crash landing.
The sky was a brilliant and cold azure that filled the heavens. Clouds were spiralling towers and mountains, seeming to reach up and out into the forever, their terrible magnitude and scale intimidating as he drifted beneath their enormous shadow.
Swathes of forest and lake and meadow were patches of greenery that was marginal, fleeting: receding into aching insignificance. Humans and their industry was suddenly a mere blot on the Earth's face.
Mountains stretched below, marching towards fog and cloud. From here they were tiny, and barely held the magnitude and substance of ridges in sand.
The cabin started to rattle, upending his wonder and fascination when fear drove its black claws into his heart and belly. It's okay! Breathe Dib! It's just turbulence! But the ship felt like it was about to come apart, and though he tried to resist the imagery, all he could picture was him falling back down to Earth like a burning, flailing Icarius.
For a second he wanted to ease the throttle, and have the ship drop its nose, but then, above him, the blue paled, abruptly pulling away as cutting cold black arrived to greet him.
Through the cold and black veil were stars.
He had never seen anything more beautiful.
A trillion pearls were fastened upon ink velvet, looking so close, so near. Wreaths and cloisters of distant constellations winked and shimmered invitingly from the reaches of the abyss.
It's beautiful up here, Zim. But when you look, do you see?
The ship groaned, the engines shrieking as great plumes of ruby gashed out behind, cutting lines across the sky. Ice began to rim the windshield, and again the terror of suddenly dropping or being torn apart was there, his eyes darting to the flashing pinks on the ship's control panel for security.
The fire was so painfully white that he threw his hands in front of his eyes with nothing save the ship's autopilot to guide him. He was pushed against the seat, the harness keeping him chained, the weight of the ship groaning around him. He wondered if he'd be a blip on someone's radar, or a stain in the back of the sky's eyelid. Then the ship pushed through, the fire vanished and a terrifying, infinite darkness filled his eyes.
Sequins of stars looked much colder, their shine carrying an underlining harshness that beheld none of the wonder or promise of before. His ship continued speeding upwards, and when he drew out a little monitor he could watch Earth fade behind: a colourful blue ball falling into the dark.
Mankind was suddenly a tiny insignificant blip in a terrifying vastness that made the universe, and when he looked back, he struggled not to think of how inconsequential life and all its struggles were in contrast. It put things into perspective, being hugged on all sides by death in a vacuum made the struggles of an ordinary life on Earth seem weak and contemptible.
Zoth 19 came up in the cartography, the planet represented as an inconsequential dot amongst other inconsequential celestial dots.
"Zoth 19. A planet of high industrial growth." The ship broadcasted the major highlights and statistics while Dib looked for anything more defining. "Distance from the Star Kuan 224 million kilometres. Gravity 1.1. Optimum temperature 22 Fahrenheit."
"Are all Irken planets that... comfortable, temperate wise?"
It was a bonus that Irkens liked to enslave oxygen-rich planets, and if the air was too acidic or alkaline-based for them, they would build giant machines that took in the bad air and belched out breathable good air for their weak carbon bodies to endure. 'Atmospheric processors,' the Irkens called them. But it wouldn't stop him from wearing his spacesuit and oxygen helmet whenever he happened to vacate the cabin even if the planet was a habitual paradise.
He looked at the monitor surveying his rear and the lonely ball of home being absorbed by the dark. Heart sinking, he turned to look ahead. The Irken ship was a shooting star flashing forwards. A typical spacecraft maintained 17,500km but the Irken interstellar craft easily reached 45,000km. What was most disarming was that it felt like he was going nowhere at all. He had to keep checking the numbers on the screens, convinced the ship was suspended in place. With no air to create drag or friction, impossible speeds could be realized without ever feeling it.
And that was when the tedium began. The ship took the helm of most if not all functions, stabilizing the oxygen levels, projecting fuel outputs, keeping the ship on course blah blah blah... and with the control out of his hands, he was left to gaze at the stars with too much time on his hands. He regretted not bringing a CD player with him so he could listen to his CDs. The singular and huge industrial sized battery might have lasted the trip, and he hadn't the foresight to bring a glut of books along for the trip either. Food, oxygen cylinders and fuel had taken up every inch worth of space.
He had become a red dot blinking on a long silver wire as the cartography mapped his progress in the Milky Way. He asked the ship how long it would take until they arrived in the Irken controlled galaxy 'Frontier.'
"One day I guess." Noted the ship in cold formality.
"One day? Huh. That's not so bad."
"One days!" Sung Gir.
Hold up a second there, Dib. You're going into military Irken zones. What do you think will happen when they detect your ship on the approach? Do you think they'll greet you with a warm handshake and offer you a room at the inn?
He suddenly didn't feel quite as enraptured by the journey. He had been so concerned getting through Earth's atmosphere without becoming motes of ash that he hadn't given the long-term consequences as much consideration. It made him realize how very little he knew about Zim and his species as a whole. He knew they were battle-obsessed, with technology falling out of their sleeves, but what was their culture like? Who pulled the strings?
What he knew was only loosely based on what the old bug rambled, and he was a notorious bragger with ludicrous assertions. Zim liked to play around with whatever he revealed, often hiding truths within lies.
He began to sweat, eyes flashing to the monitor screens that highlighted his worry from ten different angles. I can still go back... it's not too late...
But the vacuum Zim had left would be waiting for him at home.
"Looook at dat!" Gir would stretch out of his seat to point at the windshield and the planets beyond.
I'm gonna have to put up with this the whole way, aren't I? "Yup. There goes Neptune."
"Bye bye Neptune!"
At this speed, distant stars were horizontal flashes: lines zipping across the windshield's glass like bullets.
Unclipping the harness, the black straps flashing clear of his shoulders and waist, he eased himself upright, his head brushing the low ceiling of the cabin. Going through the hatch to the rear compartment, he opened one of the adjacent drawers to peer at long-life edibles of food that came in pre-packaged and sealed boxes.
Cereals were the majority of stock, with salami as a close second. Long life milk had been neatly lined up in the little fridge unit, and there were blocks of cheese, packets of chocolate, oat bars and a fuck ton of lemons and tinned goods. He wasn't a fan of cheese, or cold soup, but it would keep, bolstering his limited selection of taste and variety. Lemons were another food he'd rather do without, but scurvy didn't elusively exist in the past.
Like a sailor on a ship bound for a long voyage, fresh fruit and veg was an essential requirement to keep up C vitamins that citrus fruits contained. Ascorbic acids were needed for the body to make collagen, an important component in connective tissue. When the body used up its vitamin C reserves, you became anaemic. The immune system would then promptly nosedive. He had once read about sailors developing gangrene, with their teeth falling out.
He had a good idea of what Zim consumed during long voyages, considering what he'd found in the old bastard's fridge and cupboards. The soldier took vitamins and immunity boosters in pill or capsule form, providing minimum fuel for a carbohydrate-hungry Irken. It kinda killed the excitement and enrichment of eating when your main diet was goddamn rations and standard-issue capsules, and he was certain this diet was really bad for him, especially when Zim had started to rapidly lose weight in the following months.
When he had originally looked into his cupboards at home, he saw military issue pots, packs and boxes meticulously stored in disciplined rows. Half of them weren't even labelled or branded, but towards the very back he had come across more colourful packaging, the text in Irken squiggles and symbols accompanied by happy emoji faces. Being curious and naturally pretty stupid, considering he hadn't put them through a lab to test the ingredients, he had ripped open the plastic-like packaging and dipped his finger into the purples what seemed to be candy when they could be painkillers or medicine for an ulcer for all he knew. After licking the sugary coating off his finger, he was light-headed and dizzy for hours as if he had glugged down a bottle of high-proof rum.
He ripped open a cereal bar, munching on its flavourless texture that tasted like the factory it came from. Gir was quick to join him, picking up a cereal box and slurping it down like one would slurp down a drink. Dib watched, frowning. "Go easy, Gir. This has to last us."
Keeping hydrated wasn't a problem. The ship was basically a recycling machine that effectively salvaged and reprocessed whatever it could: Irkens always capitalized on efficiency, making the most of any one resource or situation even if their mutual greed superseded all those methods.
The carbon dioxide he breathed out was slowly recycled into oxygen again via scrubbers and processors so long as those machines worked; exchanging heat and fuel for the process, but it was the plasma fuel that wasn't infinite. It could carry him for a few months depending on his speed and usage; but sooner or later he would need to refuel, and he hadn't exactly come prepared with alien currency. He hoped some of them traded goods, but he hardly believed interstellar beings with tech falling out of their sleeves would stop to consider trading plasma fuel for a wristwatch, long life milk or a box of cereal.
Maybe I should have bought a goat with me. He chuckled, imagining the panic on an Irken populated street when he brought a horned beast with him.
Dib eased himself back in the command chair, wondering how long he could sit in it for without it becoming painfully uncomfortable.
His passage was a dot on the cartography as a lonely inconsequential grain of sand gradually moving along his course. He would stare at it, elbows on the console just shy of touching the myriad pulsing buttons, knobs and panels. His eyelids would lower, the pulsing red dot reflected as twin flames in his glass lenses. He was suddenly in an arching, metal corridor, solemn black tubing weaving in and around him. Blood slipped between groves of dark fingers, and when he reached closer he jerked awake, scythe of hair swinging into his eyes.
"Hey, wake up! You have an incoming message!"
"W-What?"
"... from the Zulara guard." Repeated the indifferent voice of the ship.
"Zulara... guard? What?"
The cartography flashed brighter for a moment to catch his attention. He blinked, hurriedly trying to rub the sleep from his eyes. His red dot had seemingly curved all the way past fifteen planets and two solar systems while he slept. Accompanying his singular red dot, two purple dots had appeared and were closing in. Each one carried a digitalized tag reading 'hostile' that the computer had implemented. Behind them was a tiny dark planet: Zoth 19.
"Are those... Irken ships?" A device squirmed free from the innards of tubing and material, folding itself out to become a screen.
He was suddenly faced with the long and blank face of an Irken sitting in their cockpit. The Irken's purple eyes were glossy and impossibly smooth, like transparent glass holding the universe. He was broad, with a neck and shoulders corded in muscle beneath dark purple segments of armour, but the creature's smoothness of skin was blighted in spots as if the Irken had stood beneath dripping purple paint.
Dib could hardly believe what he was seeing, having wondered if Irkens could have been severely affected by the war... and if what had happened to Zim had happened to all of them...
"Siz u yerdasiz!" The creature's demand was a squawking, yelling bark that put ice in his bones.
"Hey, are you talking to me, in Irken?" He pointed at himself, and the Irken must have understood because he started to growl, those sleek black lines of antennae snapping down impatiently.
"What's wrong with your ship's translator?" The Irken suddenly snapped back in English. The syllables were slightly exaggerated, the pitch execrably rough and coarse. "What even are you?"
"Are you the town sheriff or something?"
The Irken ignored him. "You are trespassing! I should blow you up right now!"
Another voice joined in, and an additional monitor glided out to reveal a different Irken piloting another ship. Strangely enough he was also covered in blemishes or bruises that dappled his left cheekbone and neck. "Must you really blow up this cretin without further question? You blew up that negotiator from Glop you know!"
The first Irken gestured violently at a bewitched and fascinated Dib. "But this thing looks as ugly as that Glop did!"
The other Irken peered at Dib in a way that a human would look at a diseased rat. "What is that on its head?" Lips parted to reveal those creepy zipper-like teeth, half of which were missing.
Dib couldn't be sure if it was his glasses they were referring to or his hair. He had been so used to Zim seeing him every day that he had forgotten how bizarre and strange his appearance might look to them.
As they stared, observing him with faintly curious but mostly disturbed expressions that wrinkled their stony features, he hurriedly tried to explain himself before they decided upon themselves if he was worth blowing to kingdom come. "I'm after an Irken named Zim. Have you seen him?"
"Zim?" He kept looking to his console as if he needed some kind of registration to read from.
"Hey, yeah!" Responded the second. "I think he's the defective who single-handedly tried to destroy the Armada with a planet!"
"What?" Dib looked between the two monitors.
The two of them were suddenly absorbed in their own hearsay and intrigue. "No Irken has the power to do that much damage!"
"What about that Horrible Painful Overload day when Irk was plunged into darkness for nine years? Don't you watch the reruns of the Evaluation Trials?"
"You think I have time for that when I'm busy blowing up ugly alien interlopers?!"
They continued arguing. Dib decided it was better to just leave. "Urm, I'm gonna go now..."
The first sneered at him with a look so cold that Dib knew he'd blundered into it. "Why are you after this 'Zim?' And is that a S.I.R unit you're with? It looks..."
"Hiyya!" Gir leaned out of his chair to happily wave.
"Well, you see..." He tugged at the collar of his shirt. "Zim left his post and I want to know what happened... He, urm, left his robot behind so..." He smiled pathetically, and the Irkens suddenly and randomly erupted into squawking shrieks of laughter that had his ears ringing. Just when his uneasiness was starting to fade their hilarity went cold even more quickly. Zim had the same eerie emotional transitions: exultant for one micro-moment before his mood shifted at light-speed before you could snap your fingers.
The first Irken pilot went back to looking at his console screen, perhaps to see if this 'Zim' existed. When he next looked up at Dib, he knew things were about to go south.
"You're a spy sent by the vortians!" Then he said to the other pilot. "Kill him!"
Dib slammed down on the throttle with every pound of weight, his other hand whipping forwards to punch the command panel as his ship dropped into freefall. The two Irken scout ships pursued him immediately, corkscrewing after his ruby tails.
"Ship! Defences! What do I do?"
"Chaff and flares to misdirect homing lasers and detonators might help. I'd give 'evasive piloting' a go as well."
He did not stop to look over at Gir who had gone silent.
Even though he could not feel the speed, the weightlessness returned as if gravity was simultaneously an increasing and decreasing force within the cabin. A hard shove on the throttle violently turned the ship, and lasers, beautifully bright and pink, speared past, his ship speeding upwards. When the ship thudded, he rattled in the harness, and the words: 'engine hit – critical' flashed across the screen while electric panic shoot through him.
He was falling; his mind couldn't choose which direction to go in.
During past high-speed chases, he had tried outmanoeuvring Zim into a corner where he could safely fall behind the Voot's stern and offload every missile and laser in his power. Chasing the twin tails of pink as the Voot twirled ahead, Zim was always out of reach, no matter how much power Dib gave the engines. The Irken's piloting was erratic, sometimes he didn't seem to know how to fly the thing at all, and just when Dib thought he had a chance, Zim would perform a near-impossible and dangerous manoeuvre. How he did not pass out when he perfected a steep vertical ascent to then jack-knife around was the greater mystery, and Dib would desperately push down on the throttle to get away in time before they collided.
To be unpredictable...
Exuding excessive amounts of chaff and spiralling flares from the rear compartments, the two ships threw straight into it, their competitiveness to get him first before the other blinding them to proximities and warnings. He dropped a plasma bomb behind him just as he plummeted, and the resulting explosion propelled Dib forwards as billowing colours of silvery purple and pink of every shade spilled out like liquid fire.
Space itself burst into brilliant and eye piercing white novas. His ship rattled and groaned as heat threatened to tear the hull apart. After one thunderous detonation, another followed like rippling water after a stone has broken the surface. Taking a look at the rear-monitors revealed two ships breaking out of plasma-swirling clouds, trailing smoke. One of them lost control, corkscrewing all over the place like a firework gone wrong. When it exploded, its detonation a sad comparative fart to the one before it, Dib realized with cold realization that he had just murdered an Irken.
"Gir...?" He tried to look at him and the monitors at the same time, but Gir had dropped into that lifeless, 'dead zone' again.
The adrenaline didn't let up as he coasted glances at the monitors for signs of pursuit. He tried to tell himself that they cared not for what they destroyed, that their superiority was a blindfold as they senselessly cut down the opposition.
I did what I had to do... I didn't mean to hurt them...
The weight of what he had done had the impact of a sledgehammer. In the moments following the disaster he blanked out, his mind and body running on auto-pilot where the grey came back to swallow him.
He reached out, cold, clammy fingers coming into contact with Gir's warm shoulder pad. "Gir? You okay?" In the second he didn't get a reply he snapped a look to see the robot motionless in his harness, optic lenses for eyes unfavourable shades of black. "Gir?" He leaned against his own straps, lifting the robot's conical head to look for damage.
Shy cyan light flickered intermittently in those darkened lenses but very little else happened.
The otter toy had fallen onto the floor. Dib picked it up, feeling the loose stuffing in its belly before he placed it on the robot's lap like some magical charm that might bring him back. "Gir? Please! Say something!"
The cabin was suddenly shrinking, the claustrophobia tightening all around him. He had the desperate and irresistible urge to yank open the cockpit when there was only the black everlasting night.
Regret was a dark weight around his heart.