Cal’s first thought was that the placement of the white strip must surely make it a magnet for food stains. His second thought was: medals.
The man had twenty or more of them all pinned across the black part on the left of his chest. They were smaller than the medals soldiers wore back home, and reminded Cal of Scout badges or collectible buttons.
On the right side of the man’s chest was an embroidered patch. On it was a blocky, simplified outline of a hand holding some sort of short cylinder. There was a symbol on the front of the cylinder, and while Cal had absolutely no idea what the symbol meant, there was something unmistakably aggressive about it.
If he had to guess, Cal would have said it was an officer’s uniform, although he had no idea which army it belonged to. A space-faring paramilitary wing of the Catholic Church, perhaps.
The man himself was in his mid-to-late forties, with hair and eyebrows so black they couldn’t possibly be natural. That said, his eyes didn’t exactly look normal, either. The irises were a sort of blueish-gray, which were somehow piercing yet insipidly milky at the same time.
His oddly-colored eyes and hair were emphasized by his skin, which was so white it had come out the other side and into a sort of pale blue. It made him look like he’d recently been fished out of a freezing cold canal, and was still suffering the effects.
“Hi,” Cal managed, despite the jaw clamp.
The officer looked him up and down with very obvious distaste, then stepped back.
“Sshk t’un-cha,” he said. Or words to that effect, at least. He marched back two paces – literally marched, with the swinging arms and everything – then stopped. Two burly masked men appeared around the corners of the elevator and stepped inside, almost getting wedged in the doorway. They each took a different side of the frame, and there was a hiss from below as the clamp disengaged.
The frame slowly raised, but Cal could tell he was being lifted this time, rather than floating. The men waddled around until he was facing the wall, then side-stepped out through the narrow elevator door.
Cal was shunted around in the frame as the men shuffled him out. They were both heavily built, but he could hear the groaning and grunting under the strain. The one on his left muttered something below his breath, but it sounded like a load of gibberish.
It was not, by any stretch of the imagination, a dignified entrance.
The room came to an end twenty or thirty feet ahead of him, in a swooping white wall that featured the same logo the officer wore on his jacket. There were several objects between Cal and the wall, which he felt could be broadly categorized as ‘chairs’ and ‘not chairs’.
On the ‘chairs’ front, he counted three. They looked more or less like standard office chairs, with wheels, swivelly bits and what looked from that distance to be reasonably good back support.
The ‘not chairs’ were harder to define. There were more of them – eight or nine, maybe – and they ranged from something that was definitely a coffee table, to something that might have been a lampshade. If it was a lampshade, though, then it was one that had clearly been designed by someone who’d never seen a lampshade before, and who had also just taken a potentially fatal amount of LSD.
As to what most of the other stuff was, he couldn’t begin to guess. It all looked quite cluttered, yet starkly clinical and utterly devoid of character at the same time. It reminded Cal of the time he’d worked in a customer services call center which, despite everything that had happened recently, remained the worst six hours of his adult life.
Cal’s frame was set down on the polished floor. His head jerked around as a strap at the back of his neck was undone. A moment later, the mask fell away. He opened and closed his mouth, waggled his jaw from side to side and rolled his tongue, stretching everything.
Then he considered how all that must look to the officer standing in front of him, and stopped. He cleared his throat.
“Hi there,” he said. “I know you’ve probably heard this before, but I think there’s been a mistake.”
“Turrak skie,” the officer barked, nodding to one of the grunts.
Cal had no idea what he had said, or even what language it was. He fell back on a strategy he’d learned for talking to foreigners during the year he’d spent living in England: ‘When in doubt, shout it out.’
“I said,” he began, raising his voice and dragging out each syllable, “I think there’s been a—OW!”
There was a sharp, sudden bee sting behind his right ear. Now the mask was off, he could turn his head to see one of the helmeted soldiers stepping away, something that looked like a small pistol in his gloved hand. A needle, no longer than the pin of a thumb tack, poked out of the stubby barrel.
“Jesus. What did you do?” asked Cal. “Did you just stick a pin in my head?”
“Norruq tunshun-a kai?” said the officer. His voice was flat and bored-sounding, but raised slightly at the end indicating he was asking a question.
“What? I don’t…”
“Norruq tunshun-a kai?”
Cal glanced from the officer to the soldiers on either side. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what you’re saying.”
“Norruq tunshun-a kai? Norruq tunshun-a kai? Norruq tunshun-a kai? Norruq tunshunderstand me? Do you understand me? Do you understand--”
“Wait! Yes!” Cal yelped. “Yes, I understand you! That’s great! That’s just… it’s awesome! But listen, like I was saying, I think there’s been a mistake.”
The officer gave a dismissive wave of his hand. “Take him through,” he said, and the grunts moved to lift the frame again.
“Take me through? Take me through where?” Cal asked, as the two men shuffled him around in a semi-circle, revealing a room positively brimming with ‘chairs’ and ‘not-chairs’ alike. The men began waddling him forwards, in the direction of a set of wide double-doors at the opposite end of the room.
“And be quick about it!” the officer barked. “He does not like to be kept waiting.”
CHAPTER FOUR
What must surely have been at least 90% of all of outer space stretched out behind a young-looking man with flawless olive skin and a tiny basketball. He wore something that more or less resembled casual business-wear, if your business was doing exceptionally well for itself, and wasn’t too fussed about convention.
His shirt was a pale yellow with a high wingless collar that came halfway up his neck and was piped with gold thread. His sleeves were rolled up to the elbows, revealing the taut, muscular forearms of a man who either kept himself in shape, or really liked squeezing his tiny basketball.
He shot Cal a lop-sided grin as he passed the ball from one hand to the other. It wasn’t, strictly speaking, a basketball – the color and pattern were all wrong – but the way the guy was tossing and twirling it suggested some decent basketball skills.
Cal wanted to focus on the guy, but all that outer space kept catching his eye. It wasn’t just stars this time. There was a planet out there – an actual planet! It had two sets of rings circling it at different angles, like it was trying to one-up Saturn. It took up half of one of the room’s five windows, the rest of which were filled with stars and colors and…
“Spaceships,” said Cal. “There are… there are spaceships. Out there. Spaceships.”
The guy with the basketball turned and looked out of the window, as if only just remembering outer space was there. “Hmm? Oh, yes. Yes. There are.”
He tossed the ball from hand to hand and looked Cal’s frame up and down. “Sorry about the… security. Your reputation precedes you.” His smile widened. It was the smile of TV gameshow host trying to sell his second-hand car. “Still, that’s why you’re here.”
Cal tore his eyes away from the universe. “Yeah, about that. Where is here, exactly?”
“Zertex Command… Six?”
“Seven,” said the officer, who had followed the grunts as they’d carried Cal into the room, then sent them t
o stand by the door.
“Seven!” laughed the younger man, tapping himself on the forehead with the ball. “They all look the same to me.”
There was a scuffle from over on Cal’s left. He craned his neck to try to see what was going on, but the frame blocked most of his view. He caught a fleeting glimpse of a long, hairy arm, then an armor-clad soldier clattered onto the polished floor, and slid several feet across it.
“I told you not to touch me, you creepy weirdo,” snapped what sounded very much like a teenage girl.
“Ah, here come the others now,” said basketball guy. “Gentlemen, can we please treat our guests with a little respect, hmm?”
“Well, about time,” sulked the voice. Cal felt his jaw drop again when the owner of the voice stepped out from behind the frame and plodded over to stand near him.
She – or it – looked like a werewolf’s stunt double. Her long, hairy arms draped down past her squat, hairy knees. Her wide, hairy snout ended in a black, hairless nose, while her glassy brown eyes – one of her very few hairless parts - flicked around the room, very probably trying to decide who she was going to eat first.
Her gaze fell on Cal. “What?” she said.
“Um, hey there,” Cal said, trying not to stare too hard at her enormous, hinge-like jaw. “My, what big teeth you have.”
The wolf-creature sighed petulantly and turned to face the window. “Whatever.”
She was not dressed like a werewolf, Cal thought, although he wasn’t exactly an expert on current werewolf fashion. She wore a small pair of cut-off denim shorts, with a hole in the back for her tail to poke through. On the top half was a cropped vest t-shirt which showed off her furry midriff and clung to a chest that was far more ‘powerful’ than ‘pert’.
The creature slouched her weight onto one hip and studied her elongated fingernails as another door opened somewhere over on Cal’s right.
“OK, OK, listen, don’t push me, man, I swear,” complained another newcomer. “Don’t make me slap you down again,” he warned, as he clanked into the room, accompanied by two armed soldiers. One of the grunts had a crack running from the top of his helmet to the bottom, and seemed to be having some neck and upper back issues.
The figure that had entered was, if anything, even more remarkable than the werewolf woman. He stood eight feet high, approximately seven-point-eight feet of which was metal.
From his top lip to halfway up his forehead, and a couple of patches on one arm were the only visible skin. Cal guessed it was skin, anyway, although being dark red and leathery, it might equally have been the covering from an antique sofa.
In the center of his scorched chrome chest was a dinner plate sized dial, like the setting control on a toaster. Two long strips of what appeared to be masking tape were stretched across it, preventing it being turned.
The hulking cyborg caught Cal staring at him. The flesh part of his face scowled, and his metal jaw snapped up and down. “What you looking at, man?”
Cal opened his mouth to reply, then thought better of it and closed it again.
“Just waiting for one more,” said the man with the basketball. He spun smoothly on one heel and pointed to a door, just as it opened. “And I bet this is them now.”
A uniformed woman strode through, trying very hard to look more confident than she actually was. She was young – mid-twenties, maybe – with the same black hair and faintly blue-tinged skin as the officer who’d met Cal out of the elevator. Unlike his, her hair was pulled so sharply into a bun it was practically giving her a facelift. She didn’t share the male officer’s caterpillar-like eyebrows either, although Cal suspected that was more to do with a well-regimented plucking regime than anything else.
Her uniform was similar to other officer’s, too, but with none of the medals, and – to Cal’s mind, at least - a far more appealing shape filling it out.
She pushed a trolley with a ten gallon glass container resting on it. Inside the container was a semi-transparent green gloop that seemed to throb and pulse against the glass. Deep inside the goo, two detached and worryingly human-looking eyes turned to take in the room.
“Gunso Loren, glad you could join us.”
“Sorry, sorry, I was held up by the…” Gunso Loren caught the look from the man with the medals and cleared her throat. “Thank you, Mr President. It’s a real honor to be here.”
“Wait, President?” said Cal. The basketball guy smiled winningly at him. “You’re the president?”
“I sure am,” the man confirmed. He fired off a relaxed salute. “President Hayel Sinclair, at your service.”
“So… what? You’re like the space president?”
“Well, not all of it, but a chunk, sure,” said Sinclair, spinning the ball on his finger. “I’m president of the Zertex Corporation.”
“Oh,” said Cal. “So, you’re like the president of a space company? Not an actual president president?”
Sinclair’s smile didn’t waver. “The Zertex Corporation runs this sector of the galaxy – over eleven billion planets, trillions upon trillions of sentient lifeforms - and I run the Zertex Corporation.” He tossed the ball over his shoulder. It bounced once, landed on his desk, then rolled neatly into a ball-shaped indent. “Is that president enough for you?”
Cal tried to think of a witty response, but could only muster up a somewhat muted, “Yep.”
Sinclair gave a double thumbs up. “Great!” He opened both arms in a gesture of warmth to the gathered group. “Now then. Ladies. Gentlemen.” His smile faltered just a fraction as he glanced at the tub of gloopy green. “Whatever you are. I expect you’re wondering why I gathered you all here.”
“You can say that again,” barked the cyborg. His jaw whirred very faintly as it moved up and down. Just loud enough, Cal thought, to probably get quite irritating.
“Introductions first, I think,” President Sinclair announced. He gestured to the cyborg, reconsidered, and turned his attention to the other end, instead. “Gunso Loren, one of our promising new officers in the Zertex flight corps. Graduated the Academy with double honors, was it?”
“Triple, actually,” said Loren. “Uh… I mean triple Mr President, sir.”
“Excellent. Excellent. Well done,” said Sinclair. “That puts you on the fast-track to success, which is why you’re here. I’m proud of you, gunso. I’m very proud.”
He applauded. The other officer and handful of soldiers joined in. Cal would’ve quite liked to give her a clap, too, but the whole shackled to a metal frame situation meant he couldn’t. He just smiled encouragingly, instead.
“Thank you, sir.” Loren smiled, blushed, darted her eyes around the room, then stood to attention. President Sinclair noticed none of these things, however, as he had already turned his attention to the fur-covered creature on Cal’s left.
“Mizette of the Greyx,” he announced – quite grandly, Cal thought, given that pretty much none of those words made any sense whatsoever, no matter which order you put them in. “Daughter of Graxan of the Greyx.”
“Oh yeah, sure. That guy,” said Cal, nodding knowingly. “The resemblance is… well, it’s uncanny, frankly. Particularly around the snout.”
The wolf-woman’s mouth curled into what was almost certainly a snarl, but which, with a bit of imagination, might have been a smile.
“Wanted on eight systems for grievous bodily harm, arson, violently resisting arrest, assaulting over forty-two different corporation officers, and multiple counts of attempted murder,” Sinclair said.
Mizette’s nostrils flared. “I keep telling you people, if I’d been attempting to murder anyone, they’d totally have been murdered, already.”
Sinclair smiled and shrugged. “Ah, let’s not get bogged down in detail,” he said. “It’s an impressive rap-sheet, either way. Although not as impressive as…” He skipped straight past Cal and focused on the cyborg. “Gluk Disselpoof.”
Cal snorted. The cyborg’s hea
d snapped round, his pupils glowing a troubling shade of red. “Sorry, that was dust,” Cal said. He wriggled his nose. “Anyone else finding it dusty in here?”
“Known more commonly as Mech,” the president said.
“Good choice,” said Cal. “Very wise.”
“Hacking multiple security systems. Computer fraud estimated to be in the trillions of credits. Stealing a Class 11 Zertex Warship…” Sinclair’s eyebrows frowned, but his forehead remained perfectly smooth and wrinkle-free. “How did you do that, by the way?”
Mech’s shoulders rattled noisily as he shrugged. “Something about taking apart its atoms and, I don’t know, sticking them back together or something, I guess. I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?” asked Sinclair.
Mech tapped the dial on his chest, irritated. “You heard me. I don’t know. Why would I? I was cranked left.”
Cal looked down at the dial, half-hidden by the strips of tape. There were two faded and worn symbols on the robot’s metal chest, one to the left of the dial, another to the right. The dial itself had a little black arrow on it. At the moment, the arrow pointed straight upwards towards the cyborg’s metal bottom jaw.
President Sinclair clicked his fingers and gave Mech a thumbs up. “Makes sense. Makes perfect sense,” he said.
Cal wanted to disagree. It didn’t make sense. None of it made sense. He had absolutely no idea what was going on. He was on a spaceship with a robot-man, a wolf-woman and a pot of slime, but somehow he was the only one they’d felt the need to chain up.
“And that brings us to you,” said Sinclair. All eyes turned towards Cal. “Eugene Adwin of the planet Earth. Better known as the Butcher.”
Cal laughed. It was sharp and sudden and caught even him by surprise. He titled his head back and closed his eyes, taking a moment to just savor the sense of sheer relief.
“That’s not me,” he said, once his initial fit of the giggles had passed.
President Sinclair’s smile remained fixed. “I’m sorry?”
“The Butcher. Eugene Adwin of the planet Earth. That’s not me!”
Space Team Page 3