Blip… blip… blip… blip.

Gaz studied the machine in her lap with interest. She didn't need to be using this smaller beacon right now, and would turn it off soon to conserve the battery, but it was reassuring somehow to know that they were really going in the right direction. The display on the screen was simple, merely an isosceles triangle that twitched and adjusted itself to point in Zim's direction. She stroked gently at the smooth metal, letting the red light flood into her eyes until she teared up from not blinking. Finally, with reluctance, she turned it off and held the small machine close to her heart.

She didn't trust the ship, didn't trust where Tak's personality might be taking her. It would be all too easy for the ship to betray her and take her straight to the Irken leaders. The tracker given by Sizz-Lorr had set her at rest, though; they were indeed proceeding in the right direction to catch up with Zim. It wouldn't be long now…

She looked back up, studied the field of stars disinterestedly. She shifted a bit in her seat. Her calf was cramping, and she contorted her body so she could massage the spasming muscle. This was what made getting out of the Spittle Runner terrible: how it took forever to get used to its confines again… but soon, it would all be over, and she wouldn't have to deal with it anymore. She would take her revenge on Zim for her family- horribly, of course- and would take her brother back. If he was still alive, at least. If not… then both her father and her brother would still be avenged.

God, there was nothing to do on here. How she wished she had managed to salvage her Game Slave or something, anything to break up the relentless tedium of the flight. There was no room to move, and the days of being cooped up made her soft and listless. There was only so much time a person could spend sleeping. You couldn't play stupid traveling games by yourself either; Gaz sneered to think of asking the ship to play I Spy, and where would you find road signs in outer space? Dib had always had some stupid game he wanted to play with her, when they had to go someplace for one of their Dad's things. She had never obliged him, always preferring the company of her game slave, a book, or her CD player. More often than not she had had to smack him before he turned huffily to his own devices.

She swept the star field with her gaze again, watching for anything out of the ordinary no matter how unlikely it was. Like there was going to be an interesting accident with hundreds of miles, on average, between ships?

Space was still an even, unchanging vista of black and white though, which was really no surprise. Gaz settled back in her seat and folded her arms across her chest. "Hey," she said. "How much longer will it be?"

Tak growled irritably through the speakers, and then deigned to give a response. "We're not so far behind now. Maybe three days. But he's very close to the Armada. If he catches up to them I will not be powerful enough to penetrate the AMAZING defenses of the Massive.... The Tallest will probably kill him anyway though."

Gaz dug her fingers into her arms. "Well, we'll just have to catch him before he gets there."

Tak grumbled over the speakers, wordless, mutinous little noises. Gaz ignored them to lay her head back and close her eyes.

The human girl sank into a dull sort of doze, shunting Tak's whining and her own all-encompassing boredom away. Her hands squeezed, then relaxed, and the tracker slid down beside her.

…

"Let's play a game, Gaz."

Dib looked at her brightly, his eyes shining behind his glasses. Gaz, seated across from him, grunted and turned up the volume on her Game Slave, wishing she had ear phones so she could tune him out totally. "Your voice is irritating…" she informed him flatly. Dib blinked at her, unfazed. He was used to those kinds of words from his sister. They were pretty much all he had heard from her since she learned to talk at two.

"Aww, come on, Gaz. You've been playing for six hours already…"

The car's clock blinked ten o'clock. Membrane, concentrating on his driving in the front seat, said absently, "Don't bother your sister, son. Video games develop valuable hand-eye coordination, a valuable skill for a future in the arts or the military!"

Dib pouted, turning to stare sullenly out his window at the lamp lights streaking by. He kicked his legs a little, banging them into the back of the empty front seat. Gaz was sitting behind their father; Membrane had decreed that both children would be put into the back to preclude arguments over who got to sit in the front. This had merely created a whole new set of things to argue over, namely who was encroaching on whose space and whether or not Dib's head was blocking Gaz's view out the windows.

The silence stretched out. Dib snuck a glance at his sister, tentative, wary. He wanted to talk to her but didn't want to make her mad. Gaz opened one eye wide to shoot a glare at him, and Dib quickly looked out the window again, hunching his shoulders protectively, turning totally away from his sister. Gaz turned back to the lit screen of her Game Slave. Dib checked over his shoulder surreptitiously, to make sure she wasn't glaring at him, then turned a wide-eyed stare upon her. Gaz jerked her face up and frowned at him. "Daddy!" she said in a voice of shrill outrage. "Dib won't stop lookin' at me!"

Dib was quick to present his side of the argument. "I'm bored! There's nothin' to do and she won't play with me! Are we there yet, Dad?" He pouted again, craning to present his scrunched face in the rearview mirror. Maybe if Membrane could see him he would be swayed. "I'm bored…"

Membrane chuckled indulgently. "Oh, you kids! Now son, it won't be much longer. Daughter, why don't you play with your brother for a bit?" He shifted his grip on the steering wheel. "I need to focus on the road, kids. Removing my attention from it might result in a terrible accident and all our deaths!"

Gaz looked at her father with wide eyes, attention caught by the prospect of horrible suffering and death. "Wow, really?" she whispered. She thought for a moment, eyes abnormally large. "I can't wait to learn to drive!"

"Gaz, Gaz!" Dib clamored. He was only six, and too inclined to be hyper and energetic to entertain himself quietly on a long car ride on his own. Gaz was even younger, of course, but she had been born with the patience of a snake. Now that he had a playmate Dib was insanely eager to interact with them, even if it was just his temperamental sister. "Let's play I Spy, huh Gaz? I'll go first!"

Gaz snorted and folded her arms grumpily. She was already tired of Dib's dumb game, and she was sleepy, and Dib's stupid breathing and the weird car seat she had to sit in hadn't let her nap. "Fine. This is dumb."

The boy ignored his sister's deprecating words, instead craning out the window for a likely object for Gaz to guess. "I spy… um… oh, there's a… no that's no good… I spy a… ooh! I spy something big and hairy that sucks blood when darkness falls!" He turned back in his seat to stare eagerly at his sister, bouncing up and down with excitement. "Come on, Gaz! Guess!"

She sneered. "I bet it's a chupacabra, huh?"

Dib frowned at her and slouched in his seat. "Yeah. Fine, now you go."

"I spy something big and stupid and white and huge! As big as a planet!"

The pale boy's face reddened uncontrollably. Dib was sensitive, and all-too-cognizant of the mockery of the other kids, and he recognized a jibe towards his head by now. "My head's not that big!" It was just his dumb bowl cut that made it look that way...

Gaz stuck her tongue out at him, and then sang "Big head! Should be dead! Gotta melon for a braaa-aaain! Big head! Should be dead-"

Dib's lower lip wobbled. "Daddyyy…" he mewled. "Gaz is being mean to me!" He knew from long experience not to try and take up the issue with his hell-spawned sister himself.

Up in the front seat Membrane sighed audibly. This happened all too often and without his wife Membrane was the one who had to smooth things over. He wasn't nearly as good at it as she had been, either.

It was probably a mistake to bring the kids to the science convention, too. However, no babysitter would think of taking on Membrane's children for a weekend and there was no close family he could dump them on. Maybe there would be a special daycare for them or something…

"We're here anyhow, kids," he said, straining his eyes to look for a parking space. "Get ready to get out, OK?"

Absolutely delighted at the prospect of getting out of each other's company, Gaz and Dib scrambled to gather their scattered toys and picture books…

…

The corners of Gaz's mouth quirked up at the memory. God, those trips were the only time they got to spend with their father… of course, once Membrane felt that Dib was old enough to hold down the fort for a couple days on his own, he started to leave them at home, reasoning that children couldn't be expected to be interested in highly sophisticated REAL SCIENCE. Dib had been crestfallen, because although he was disinterested in most of the panels his father had attended, he had been by any of them that dealt with space or the possibility of life on other planets. Gaz hadn't cared for the presentations at all, but Membrane had to sit still to watch them, and she got to sit by him… and time spent with her father was rare enough, even before he invented super toast and hit it big.

Not that she could complain about how great life had been after Membrane got really rich… games and a future where she wouldn't have to worry about anything except what to spend that money on. Or so she had thought, before this came up.

Gaz opened her eyes a little, staring blankly through the cockpit's window. Her eyes were blurry from the half-sleep she had fallen into, and the girl blinked several times and then rubbed her eyes ferociously before she really noticed how the view had changed.

Large sections of stars were blocked out by jagged silhouettes of black. As Gaz stared at them, actually startled, the outline of it shifted to reveal that stars had indeed been blocked by the shape. Against all the odds, they had flown into the general area of some debris. Either small debris that was very close or huge debris that was far away.

"Tak," she asked. "What is that?" The shapes seemed too angular to be just… space rocks or something. What had the ship taken them into?

"I'm finding out," the ship snapped snobbishly. "Just wait, girl human!"

Interest piqued, Gaz didn't even snipe back at the weak insult. Instead she sat forward, placing her hands against the cold material of the window to study the shapes closer. As the spittle runner moved the dark shapes loomed larger and larger, almost totally obscuring the stars. Tak guided the tiny ship expertly through the floating pieces, skimming neatly over the surfaces. As they covered the area, inspecting each piece, a larger shape became clear… the picture these pieces had made up, before they were broken into a puzzle.

It was a ship. The shattered and drifting pieces of a ship. A ship that had been fractured into a million different pieces that were still close together…

"This is an Irken ship," Tak announced coldly. "An Irken ship destroyed in Irken territory. And whoever did this… is still around…"

Gaz licked her lips slightly. She felt something inside her begin to boil, churning steadily until her hands were twitching slightly and the hair on the back of her neck stood up. Not fear; never fear, but eagerness. After months of sitting on her hands letting events take their course she might get the chance to pummel someone. She didn't care if they were Irken or not.

"Can you detect anyone?" she whispered, not from any real need to but simply from reflex.

"What? No. Stop distracting me!" Tak sounded harried. Maybe scared...? "I'm sure someone is here. But they're cloaked! They're hiding! I can't punch through it!"

"Just go," Gaz ordered. "Resume… resume your original flight path. But keep an…" She struggled for a moment with the idiom, then continued. "Keep an eye out. We'll see if we can't lure them into the open."

"You don't have to tell me such obvious plans!" Tak flared. "Stupid human, I've been concocting strategies since before your were born!"

Nevertheless, the spittle runner wove its way through the gracefully spinning ruins and turned to follow the regular course. Gaz sat tense as a bow, waiting for trouble.

By the time they ran into some she had almost become bored.

Small, blocky ships came screaming out of the darkness surrounding them, at least five of them converging on the spittle runner. One of them came swooping onto their tail; and faster than even Gaz could react Tak looped the runner tightly up and around, shooting back towards the direction of the Irken ruins. The ship was screaming something in a terrible high-pitched gabbly voice; Gaz was being tumbled so much, fending off boxes of supplies and trying to keep the tracker from falling around that it was hard to concentrate on anything.

She fell heavily forward onto the curve of the screen, snapping her neck back and shielding her head with her arm as boxes came thumping down onto her. Her back arched painfully, straining. The ship went off on another insane right-angle turn and she fell to the side, then bounced neatly back into the seat. "Tak!" she screamed. "Give me the controls! Give them to me, Tak!"

"Never!" the ship roared back. "Irken military secrets will never be stolen by YOU lowly stinkbeasts-!"

Gaz could see they were outdistancing the alien ships, inch by inch. What kind of engineer had Tak been, to build a machine from scrap parts that could STILL after years of mistreatment and neglect on earth outdistance fresh-from-the-factory alien ships? Amazing. Amazing.

There was energy, deep in her core, boiling and popping like hot oil. Gaz gasped and heaved with rage, near-vomiting all over the high-tech insides that Tak had worked so hard to build and design. "You're just a SHIP, I CONTROL you, I CONTROL you!" No matter how ADVANCED no matter how AMAZING I am more amazing STILL stop now and OBEY ME you are MINE…! She felt so hot, like she was burning up inside. All her organs were twisting.

They were back in the ruins now. The runner took cover in a curved piece that had probably been part of the hull once, before these… whatevers… had attacked and destroyed it. Gaz snarled, untangling herself from the other cargo, watching desperately for the other ships. Tak was planning an ambush, she was sure of it, shielding herself with other Irken technology. It would maybe even work…

"Tak!" she insisted, flailing openhanded at the buttons and controls. "Tak, let me pilot!" Because all of a sudden, she had thought better of destroying these things. They had attacked an Irken ship. What if they could become allies…?

The other ships hadn't come in. They weren't taking the bait; not stupid enough to fall for Tak's rather basic plan. Gaz floundered uncomfortably back to a position she could maneuver from. "Tak, damn you- give me the controls!"

"Hailing us!" Tak screeched in return. "They're hailing us! Telling me to surrender! Oooh, you filthy INFERIORS, how DARE they suggest that an ELITE Irken soldier would even THINK of giving in to their demands…!"

Gaz screamed a curse and braced herself as best she could before the spittle runner went careering out between the floating monoliths and back into the fray. The scorching heat in her belly and back throbbed and wavered, burning her up from the inside. She was seeing bright spots in front of her eyes, not just spots but swirls and spirals and insane fractal patterns that made her mind shrink and wail. Tak jerked and twisted her flight plan expertly, dodging the lasers from the other ships with ease. She screamed with laughter and rage over the ship's speaker, while Gaz gasped desperately and fought to gain control of the ship without losing her lunch at the same time.

There were more of the smaller ships now, Gaz noticed. Like cockroaches, they were, had Tak even taken out one? She could hardly think from the strange, dark energy beating behind her eyes. Like a migraine that had gotten big plans, plans for crawling out and taking over the rest of the world. Oh God, hurts so much…

Her palms were hot too, heat was coursing from everywhere, she could feel it coming off her skin in waves. Her brain was boiling in her head. Gaz slammed her palm down on the controls on last time. Her voice was cracked and terrible. "Tak… GIVE ME the controls…! Surrender! Open a line! Just stop!"

Finally, the ship turned it's attention slightly to the passenger. "Oh, what is wrong with you NOW you filthy weakling… The Irken elite does not surrender!"

The energy burst from her hand, given an outlet at last. It jumped and snapped through the metal into the internal workings of the ship, wreaking havoc on Tak's control. Her voice broke up into static and gibberish then faded away. The runner's gravity abruptly cut, leaving the cargo and Gaz free to float. She snatched the tracker from the air.

Gaz took a deep breathe, lungs expanding easily. The pressure and heat inside her was gone. Her head was clear again. She still felt sick.

The spittle runner spun, rudderless, through space. The other ships followed in a swarm, keeping their distance but settling close enough to catch the Irken ship if it decided to make a bid for freedom. Gaz reached out to touch the window of the runner, anchoring herself. The rotation of the ship was making her dizzy.

The mother ship came up slowly. It was a long, boxy ship, without any of the fluid lines Irkens favored. Gaz took that as a good sign.

There was a sudden slight shock that jolted the runner, a wobble that made the human lose her grip and float into a gentle spin. The stars streamed by beyond the huge ship and Gaz watched them dreamily. She glared out at them balefully, daring them to let their guard down… even if she wasn't feeling so great right now… Dully she watched as the doors to a docking bay ground slowly, silently open in the belly of the ship. The spittle runner glided through easily, gracefully, and was locked into grounding clamps. Gravity came in again, quite rudely, and Gaz fell with a grunt.

She was half-stupefied with exhaustion, and so when the entry to the spittle was forced and two bizarre-looking aliens squirmed in to drag her out she didn't immediately take steps to make them regret it. Instead she simply did her best to support her own weight in their tight grip, too burned out to unleash wrath upon them but too stubborn to fall, and blinked that the tiny alien with curled horns and goggles that was glaring at her. "What in the name of Woon Sen with you?!" he demanded twitchily. "You're not an Irken!"

Chapter finished December 19, 2004.

Sorry for the long wait. Was it worth it? Tell me. ;)

I actually decided to upload this early; I was planning to release it on the 29th, my birthday, but since I'm going to have stuff going on that day, YOU GET IT EARLY! WOOO! Celebrate.

And, ehe, one more thing... I have a new deviantart accound, and there's some IZ-related stuff up. Take a look if you like... www skitterklat deviantart com. Take the spaces out and replace them with periods.. hope that works. Yeah, I'm totally high-class.