"Come on, kitty," I said, hooking my arms under Nexxali. "Time to go."

  "Wa? I don't wanna go nowheres," she mumbled, but didn't resist as I hauled her to her feet. She was heavier than expected, plenty of muscle mass packed into a deceptively lean and curvy frame.

  "Hrm," I said, steadying her as she swayed. "Apologize to the nice human boy for breaking his store window."

  "Mmmmsorry," she slurred in the general direction of the employee, golden eyes unfocused. "'Bout the.. the... the every-whatever else I did or didn’t break here."

  "And you'll pay for damages," I prompted.

  "Yeah, yeah. Gold cube. Tomorrow or in a few days. When the ceiling stops wild-dancering." She hiccupped, "Division 881 honors its debts! Even when... when everything's all... wobblyyyy."

  The teenager nodded rapidly, clearly just wanting us gone.

  I half-carried, half-dragged Nexxali to the Cherokee. She kept stopping to sniff things, leaning towards: a fire hydrant, a trash can, my hair.

  "You smell like…. fear, sweat and oil," she announced. "And roses. Why roses?"

  "You crashed through a rose trellis. Super rare roses. Worth at least two gold cubes."

  "Oh. Right. That was me." She giggled as I wrestled her into the passenger seat. “Okkay. Two cubes. Later…”

  I realized that she occupied the same spot where Shady sat earlier while we went shopping. Now, instead of a Wendigo, I had a drunk, high, alien commissar drooling catnip-laced saliva onto my upholstery.

  When I let go of her, she curled up in the seat. I handed the bag with catnips toys to her and she clutched them hard, like a security blanket.

  I exhaled.

  "Nexy,” I began.

  “Yeah?” She asked through a mouthful of toys.

  “Your little cleanup operation back at my house, walk me through it."

  "Mmm?" She didn’t bother opening her eyes, purring deeply. "Oh. Right. Gotta... gotta make it all disappear. Can't have anyone knowing the Admiral's a hypocrite who..." She made a vague gesture. "You know. Does the thing… she yells at others for doing."

  "Fraternizing with primitives?"

  "Fraternizing." She drew out the word like it tasted funny. "Yes. That. Very bad. Very against regulations. Section something something... I used to know all the sections..." Her voice grew mournful. "Used to be such a good… what am I?"

  “I dunno,” I said. “A Propaganda Officer?”

  “Yeah, thasss ‘bout right.” She let out and fell silent.

  "Your plan," I prompted, pulling onto the main road from the pet store. "The Corpse Seeker, the guns?"

  "Oh!" She perked up slightly. "Yes. I… Set the Seeker to maintenance mode before we left. It's net-less. He he he. No recording, no transmitting, no wiggling about." She counted on her claws. "Four more hours? Maybe five? Math is hard when the numbers keep dancing. Nuff time to…”

  “To what?”

  “For the guns to drag the bodies of their dead pawtnerrrs into the Corpse Seeker and to clean up your…” She yawned and chewed some more. “Your smelly, primitive, dirty house.”

  "Then what?"

  "Uhhhhh… Then… I have to report that we found nothing at your house and that the vampires thralls shot my girls, before the Seeker vaporized the vampire thrall scum and started glitching so I had to reset it…”

  She fell silent, purring intensifying.

  “And then?”

  “Once the seeker gets online, the guns ask for a gate to the ship and drag Nadera and Zyra into the Incarnator temple. When they get resurrected, they won't remember the last few minutes before death. Standard… uhhh… me-voice order and ssss… synaptic disruption from terminal trauma to boot! Dassss it!"

  She rolled over in the seat, facing me with dilated golden eyes. "The Admiral gets to keep her reputation, I get another commendation… maybe, and you..." She frowned. "YOU! You were supposed to be dead. Part of the cleanup. But you're not dead. You're driving. And you put a collar on me. How did this even happen?"

  I shrugged.

  Her paw went to the pink collar. "Why did you put this on me?"

  "I felt like you could use some accessorizing," I shrugged.

  "It's pink," she observed. "I'm a ghhh…. ghighly trained Rrrrr…. Riffmancerrrrr Marshal Commandant and you put a pink collar with hearts on me!"

  "That I did.” I said. “Black hearts. Kinda fits, no?”

  She contemplated this for a long moment. "Acceptable," she finally decided, then started purring again.

  I drove up the road back to my house and stopped in the driveway.

  “Just one…. Rrrr… one big problem." She let out.

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  "Which is?"

  "You're alive. And you know things. I rrrr… really have to kill you, but I don’t wanna do nothing… except chew this shhtuufff. Ughhh. How are you Rrrrrr… Resisting my voice?”

  “I dunno,” I said. “Make some educated guesses, Miss Commandant.”

  Nexxali squinted at me, eyes struggling to focus as she chewed on the catnip. "The local Aether here is dense as fuck... is like trying to breathe molasses," she mumbled, one paw going to her lower stomach. "My mana tank… Feels very full but it’s really not… I can't... can't draw from it properly. Maybe that's the prrrrroblem."

  She paused, frowning. "It… worked fine on Nadera and Zyra though. They froze like good little kittens when I..." She made a vague gesture. "When I did my…. Rrrrr… voice thing."

  “Ah, ah!” Her ears perked up suddenly, a moment of clarity breaking through the catnip haze. "I know! Someone trained you! Someone who knows how Charmchain works. Someone really, really good at fucking with minds." Her pupils narrowed slightly. "A Wendigo. One of those antlered bastards taught you to resist!"

  "Maybe the Admiral trained me personally," I suggested.

  Nexxali let out a barking laugh that turned into a hiccup-purr. "The Admiral? THE Admiral Evelithria? Training a human?" She rolled on her seat, chortling. "That's... no. No way. The Admiral HATES humans. Like, pathologically. She thinks you're all... what's that word she uses? Vermin? No, wait... chattel. Animated meat waiting to be harvested."

  “Yes, but…” I said.

  “Having fun with low-race males is something that everyone does now and then,” Nexxali said. “That’s completely different from training a human for months or even years… to rrrrr… resist mental control.”

  "And yet here I am, resistant to your voice," I pointed out.

  "Yeah, that's..." She chewed her lip, then the catnip toy, then her lip again. "That's really fucking weird. You ARE resistant. Which means someone did train you. But the Admiral training a human is like... like..." She struggled for a comparison. "Like me voluntarrr…rrily going to one of Datamancer Kawtrrrha's horrifically borrring spreadsheet presentations. Theorr… …rrretically possible, but would require massive head trauma first."

  We sat in silence for a moment, Nexxali alternating between purring and muttering to herself about how fucked up this situation was.

  "Do you like working for the Frontenachii?" I asked, watching the spider guns zapping my house with red flashes from within.

  Nexxali's purring stopped abruptly.

  "Like it?" She laughed bitterly through the catnip haze. "LIKE IT? Oh, that's rich..." She rubbed her face with both paws. "You really wanna know? You really, really wanna know what it's like being a Marshal Commandant for the glorious Frontenachii Colonial Dominion?"

  "Yep."

  "It's shit," she said flatly. "Complete and utter shit wrapped in a fancy uniform with a nice fancy title. You know what I do? I clean up messes. Highborn messes. 'Oh Nexxali, make this witness disappear.' 'Oh Nexxali, convince these idiot locals to sign away their souls forever.' 'Oh Nexxali, your voice is so useful for making problems go away.'"

  She pulled another catnip toy from the bag, sniffing it. "Decades of being their cleanup crew. Their fixer. Their problem-solver. And you know what I get for it? A pat on the head and another medal I can't even wear because it would 'compromise operational security.'"

  "Why don't you quit?" I asked, already knowing the answer.

  She snorted. "Quit? QUIT? Oh, you sweet, naive little human. You don't quit the Frontenachii. You know what happens to Pradavarians who try to break their blood contracts?"

  I shook my head.

  "The blood in your veins starts to boil. Literally. Like someone poured acid through your circulatory system. And you're alive through all of it. Conscious. Aware. If you keep trying, your soul catches fire too."

  "Eeesh."

  "Yeah. So no, I don't 'like' working for them. But I can’t stop." She fell quiet for a moment, then laughed again, high and slightly hysterical. "You know what the really fucked up part is? I'm good at it. Really, really good. Like the… rrr.. best rrrr… Riffmancer in the fleet. My voice can make anyone do anything. Well... almost anyone." She glared at me accusingly. “Not allowed to mind control the Wendigo cunts.”

  "Must be lonely," I said.

  "Lonely?" Her voice cracked. "You have no idea. Can't have real relationships because everyone's either terrified of me, cannot disobey me, is charmed to the whiskers by my voice, or wants to use me.”

  I nodded.

  “Hey.” She scratched her collar. "Human. What's your name?”

  “Ash.”

  “Why aren't you afraid of me?"

  "Should I be?"

  "I tried to kill you! Multiple times! I executed my own squad!"

  "Yeah, but you're really bad at the killing me part. And the squad thing was to hide the Admiral’s affair with a human. They won’t die right?"

  “Uhhh… yes,” she said, “but it’s like… You knew that they wouldn't die. You’re looking like you know things.”

  “What things?”

  “Secret things,” she whispered with a shudder. “You knew what this tasty grass would do to me.”

  “If I knew everything secret, I wouldn't be asking about your secrets,” I pointed out.

  "You know what?" Nexxali said suddenly. "Fuck it. Fuck all of it. I'm so tired. So, so tired of pretending everything's fine. Of following orders. Of being the perfect officer. My uniform’s shredded to bits, my gun’s at the bottom of some Abyss-forsaken well! You wanna know all my secrets? Fine. Here's a good one: I’ve been grinding at my blood contract."

  "And?”

  “I’ve barely made any progress on it… It’s been inescapably tight… Every moment of my life. Except…”

  “Except?”

  “Except here.”

  “Oh?”

  "I’ve been slacking-ish since planetfall," She blanched. "Been telling the higherups I'm 'investigating leads' but really I've just been... loafing. Drinking. Smoking. Trying to figure out what the point of any of this is. Conquer another world, harvest more people, move on to the next. Over and over and over. For what? So the Highborns can add another trophy to their collection, increasing their hoard size?"

  She slumped in the seat. "I used to believe some of it, you know? When I was younger and stupider. The great Frontenachii Colonial Dominion, bringing order to the mess of the decaying, doomed Omniverse across the finite curve thing… accessible by dimensional gates. But it's not order. It's just... consumption. We're locusts with fancy titles. Being here, on this weird-ass, nearly Astral-less planet crammed with so many humans, it just makes it all the more clear…”

  “That you're the baddies?” I suggested.

  “We're the baddies." She agreed.

  "So why help cover up the Admiral's… indiscretion?"

  "Because that's what I do," she said simply. "It's all I know how to do anymore. Clean up messes, make problems disappear. Even when I hate every second of it. Even when it makes me want to claw my own eyes out. Because what else is there? Where else would I go? I'm bound by blood to serve the Dominion Fleet until I die. And when I die, they just resurrect me and put me back to work. A chain that never ends."

  She laughed again, but it sounded more like a sob. "You know what the really, really fucked up part is? Part of me was hoping you'd manage to kill me. Somehow… Really kill me. Like dead enough that they… couldn't bring me back. Because at least then it would be over. I… I chased you like an idiot… because I wanted you to win."

  The weight of her confession hung between us.

  "But no," she huffed. "You had to go and feed me the tastiest grass in the universe and put a collar on me instead. A pink collar. With hearts. Like I'm some kind of..." She trailed off, then looked at me with dilated golden eyes. “Mrrrrrrrfff… you don’t make sense. Your damned planet doesn’t make sense. The Admiral’s actions don’t make sense. The runaway Princess doesn’t make sense. I don’t make sense…”