It's been two hours since they shut me up in here, and I love it. The room itself isn't that great, but it has a window and a big table that adjusts like crazy. The guards said it's made for drawing on. And I have this stack of huge sheets of stuff kinda like cloth they call it "paper" and it's a great surface for the stuff they gave me. There are all different colors of pens, wooden sticks with colored stuff inside ("pencils"), black powdery stuff called "charcoal", and chunks of stuff that rub the pencil and charcoal marks away ("erasers" the one term that makes sense). I'm working on a picture of the captain, since he's the one I remember best and the black stuff is the easiest to use. My skills aren't what they should be; I haven't really drawn since I was a smeet. At least the form taking shape on the paper is recognizably Irken.

Someone knocks on my door, then opens it. I turn to see a female standing in my doorway. She's wearing a black shirt striped with red (what is it with this crew and black?), but it's her eyes that really stand out. One of them is black, like those of her crewmates, and the other is a rich golden color.

"Mag sent me to get you for the meeting," she says. "I'm Des, by the way."

"Okay," I say, getting up from the drawing table. I'm about to leave the room when Des catches me by the arm.

"Whoa, you need to clean up a bit first," she says, bending my arm so I can see the large black smudges on my forearms. "There's cleanser in there," she adds, pointing to a cupboard next to a small ledge with a mirror over it.

I get all the charcoal off myself, then Des leads me through the corridors to the meeting hall, a large circular room with tiers descending toward the center. Each tier has a bench on it, though all but the centermost rows are empty. Dire and Mag are sitting on a bench in the central ring, talking about something. About thirty of the crew surround them on the other benches.

Des takes me down to the center and motions for me to stand in the middle of the circle. She sits down next to Mag, although "next to" is a less accurate description than "entwined with" for their spatial relationship. I wonder why they're like that, and I can't help staring a bit. Now that I look at them, they are phyically different from normal Irkens. They're both very muscular, in a sleek way, though Mag's abdomen is not quite flat and taut like a regular male's. And Des has fangs. I didn't really notice them when I talked with her, but when she smiles at Mag, they're obvious.

Dire gets up and motions for quiet. He has to stand and glare at Mag and Des for a few seconds before they settle down enough to listen. I notice that when Mag sees Dire's expression, his eyes turn slightly green, almost as if he's blushing, except . . . in his eyes. It's freaky.

He turns to me. "Do you know why we brought you on board?"

"I'm a defective," I say. "Just like all the others on this ship."

"Do you wish to stay here?" he asks.

"I don't know yet. I don't know enough about you or what you do here."

Dire nods, as if he's pleased with my answer. "We can tell you more," he says, "but be aware that if you decide not to join, we will have to erase all your memories of us."

"I can deal with that," I tell him.

"Good," Dire says. "I suppose I'll start, since I'm kind of responsible for all this." He spreads his hands to indicate the ship and the crew.

"I was once an Irken Elite Master, in line to become one of the highest-ranking members of the Irken military. I knew how to play the system, and I also knew I wasn't quite normal. Unfortunately, someone else found out, and suddenly I found myself facing a rapidly-appraching EET. I did the only thing I could think of. I stole a blank PAK, copied all of my data into it, and shoved it and some random corpse into a small incinerator. They never thought to question what they found; it made sense that an Elite faced with exposure as a defective would rather die that way than face the horror of having his PAK ripped out.

"I didn't find it easy living in the shadows of a place I had so recently called home, especially with all the security the Empire has, so I escaped and spent a few years as a professional fighter on a remote planet the Empire hasn't bothered with yet. It was there I became known as Dire. Eventually, I gained enough money to purchase a ship, which I used to come back and steal a very valuable bit of information from the Empire. In return for that, I was given this vessel, and we have been building our crew ever since. We now have a large enough population to maintain a colony on a planet known as 9278."

"Because the Empire has 9,278 more planets to invade before they'll even consider that one," says Mag half-jokingly. "Dire left out a couple things," he continues, "like the fact that he also picked up me on that first raid, not just my important discovery."

"What was it?" I ask.

"It has to do with genetics," Mag says, pulling away from Des slightly so he can explain more comfortably. "It's basically a method of creating viruses that force a creature to mutate. See, I was an Elite too, but in a more research-oriented role rather than a blowing-stuff-up oriented job like Dire had. Unfortunately, I had a female commander who was rather tall and had these long, delicate antennae and these incredible purple eyes, and I was scared I would lose control of myself eventually and just . . . pounce on her. That would have gotten me shot, so of course when Dire shows up, demands my discovery, and threatens to kidnap me, I take the excuse to get out of there. On the way to meet up with Dire's contact, we started talking and figued out we were pretty much on the same side, so I signed on with him and we decided to start building a place for defectives where the Empire's rules don't apply." As soon as he's finished, his arm slips around Des's waist again, as if it's drawn there by magnets and he can't resist the pull any longer.

"We run this ship as sort of a flying city," Dire explains. "We have, of course, a large military component, and all crew members must be capable of defending themselves and others. Aside from that, we have just about any type of citizen you can think of. Even smeets, though we try to raise most of them on 9278 for safety. Our major decisons are generally made here, in this room, during open meetings. Those charged with running the ship, the Central Crew, handle most of the everyday matters. There are about eight Centrals on duty now, but most of them have come to welcome you."

"If I choose to join the crew," I remind him.

"We welcome you anyway," says a black-eyed male dressed in a tight black bodysuit.