Finally, Kratz’s scanning eyes fell on our diminished line. His gaze passed over the orcs, then stopped. His brow furrowed. He took a step forward, peering down. I tried to make myself smaller, to hide behind the leg of the nearest orc. It was futile.

  “What the Sc…” he began, cutting himself off. “Are you a goblin?” He sounded genuinely perplexed.

  I shook my head, straightening up to my full, unimpressive height. Hiding would only make it worse. “No, Petty Officer. I am a gremlin.” I put a slight emphasis on the word, trying to distinguish myself from the more common, and usually more malicious, goblinoids.

  “A what?” he asked, his curiosity overriding his bluster for a moment. “Are you from Korse?”

  I nodded. “Yes, Petty Officer. We look a bit like goblins while we grow, but obviously true goblins cannot survive on Korse. The gravity would pulp them. We get… bigger, eventually.” It was a simplification of a decades-long biological process, but it would suffice.

  “I haven’t heard of your kind before,” he mused, looking me up and down as if I were a strange insect. “What’s your affinity? Physical?” He said it like he expected me to start lifting heavy things.

  I nodded again. Best to stick to the simplest truth. “There are few of us left. The local orcs know about us, but outside of Pasqual province we are just considered one more odd heavyworld genemod, sir.”

  “Stop calling me sir,” he grunted. “My parents weren’t siblings. You can call me Petty Officer Kratz. What affinities do you have?” He was being unusually patient. I was an anomaly, and anomalies were either interesting or dangerous. I needed to be the former.

  “Tech and physical, Petty Officer Kratz,” I said, keeping my voice flat and factual.

  He blinked. “Tech? So how the hell did WE get you, then? Most of your sort, the smart ones, take the coward’s way out when the press-gangs come.” He wasn't asking about escape. He was asking about suicide.

  I shrugged, a gesture that felt too casual for the moment. “I didn’t get to the portals before they were closed, Petty Officer Kratz. I have no problems fighting the Chaos Lords. That’s what my kind were made for.” That part was true. “But most of us have a big problem with rewarding the fleet that is destroying our world.” That part was also true.

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  He chuckled a little, a dry, rasping sound. “Well, you are here now. Tech? That’s it?” His eyes narrowed slightly, probing.

  I shrugged again and lied through my teeth. I was not going to tell them I had spiritual and forces affinities. That would get me stuck in some lab, my mind wired into some horrific war-golem, or worse, dissected to see how it worked. And forces… well… forces affinities were feared, monitored, and usually ‘retired’ for being too unpredictable. I wasn’t ready to get spaced yet. “That may be why I wasn’t able to escape the fleet slavers.” I answered, layer a touch of bitter resignation into my tone.

  “Bounty hunters or recovery officers, not slavers,” he corrected instantly, his voice hardening. Sure, big difference. “You were being conscripted to fight against the destroyers because your world failed to meet the recruitment tithe, not enslaved.” The party line, delivered without a hint of irony. “Now,” he said, his smile returning, this one decidedly unpleasant. “Drop and give me a hundred push-ups. Let’s see what a tech-affinity gremlin is made of.”

  I sighed internally but kept my face neutral. Oh, for… really? I dropped to the deck, the metal cold against my hands. I started pushing them out, the motion effortless in the station’s lowered gees. In this gravity, I weighed under fifty pounds. Push-ups were not a test of strength; they were a test of endurance and obedience. I could probably do a thousand of them without my heart rate spiking. To be fair, even an unmodded human in decent shape that was my size could have knocked out a hundred without breaking a sweat. But he was making his point, establishing dominance while I was pushing them out, a tiny green creature performing a pointless task under his gaze.

  “First rule,” the petty officer said, his voice loud enough for the entire line to hear as I moved up and down. “You don’t talk scrot about the fleet. We are all fleet. You can bitch about the Navy, you can curse the admirals, but remember that they are your ticket off a hell world. If you piss them off, you might not get a ride home.”

  “Second rule. You are all cowards and convicts. You tried to escape the call. The drivers of those ships that stunned you and dumped you? They are heroes for bringing in criminals, not slavers. I don’t care about what you think, that’s between you and God, but what you say… That I can punish you for, and I will.”

  I reached one hundred and kept going, waiting for him to tell me to stop. He didn’t. He just watched, a predator assessing strange new prey. I was in the Penal Battalion now. The rules were different here. Survival was the only goal. And as I pushed up and down on the cold deck, I began to calculate my first move.

  [author]

  Our gremlin protagonist is already playing his cards close to his chest. What do you think his first move for survival will be? Keep his head down, or look for an opportunity to use his hidden affinities?

  [/author]