“Then what do we do?” yelped Cal, painfully aware of the throng of angry alien bamstons closing the gap behind them.
“What we ought to do is toss you back to them and hope they let the rest of us go,” Mech said.
“Not a fan of that plan,” said Cal. “Anything else?”
“Just this,” said Mech. He twisted his dial to the right and his eyes went dull. “Run fast. Follow,” he said in a dull monotone, then he lowered his head and hurtled onwards, passing Loren and Miz in a hiss of hydraulics, and trampling half a dozen of the tiny aliens into a lumpy paste.
With a bang and a screeching of tearing metal, Mech charged through the door like a bull through a Spaniard, leaving a gaping hole roughly in the shape of his outline. The hat-creatures flooded out after him, either giving chase or trying to escape Mizette’s teeth, Cal couldn’t be sure. Loren and Miz were both almost at the hole now, too, leaving just Cal trailing behind.
“Hold on, Splurt,” Cal puffed, risking a glance back over his shoulder. The corridor heaved with misshapen bodies, all waving clubs, knives, and short, stubby swords. “Hey, at least they don’t have guns,” Cal said, just as a burning beam of blue light scorched the air beside him. “Whoops, spoke too soon,” he groaned, covering his head with his free arm and racing on.
A few of the hat-things had managed to dodge past Miz, and now raced towards Cal, their stubby arms waving angrily above their heads. Cal jumped in fright as he felt Splurt move, then stared in wonder as the floppy green blob became a rigidly solid baseball bat.
“Man, I love this little guy!” Cal cheered, giving the bat an experimental swish.
The first few minions reached him, just as he brought the bat around in a wide backswing. There was a deeply satisfying knock, and one of the things smacked against the wall. Cal leaped and kicked and swung his way through the crowd, scattering them this way and that.
He howled in fright as another blast of blue energy crackled past his ear, then ducked through the broken door and out onto the walkway.
“Get things off me,” Mech droned. He was half-buried by a squirming swarm of the little hat-beasts. He flailed around, trying to shake them off.
Miz tore into a few of them, and snapped at a couple more. For every one that fell off, though, three more clambered onto Mech’s hulking frame. There was a fzzt as one of them tore out a wire, and Mech’s voice became oddly high-pitched.
“Help. Breaking me. Stop.”
Loren yanked a few of the critters away. Cal thwacked another few with the baseball bat, but their numbers didn’t seem to be thinning. “What do we do?” Loren asked.
“Only thing I can think of is this,” said Cal. He lunged forwards and thrust his arm into the heaving mass of alien bodies. Fumbling around until he found Mech’s dial, he turned Mech’s dial all the way to the left.
There was a low hum of power, and Mech’s eyes went completely dark. He spun like a top, sending the creatures hurtling off in all directions. Cal ducked as a dozen of them soared above his head, then straightened up and grinned.
“It worked!” he said, then he stopped when he saw Mech’s expression. The blank stare was gone, replaced by a contorted mask of rage. The walkway shook as the towering cyborg advanced on Cal.
“Hey, pal, what’s up?” Cal asked. “I saved you. Awesome, huh?”
Mech’s jaw dropped open. An animalistic roar rose up from his throat and he swung his arms down, shattering the walkway right where Cal had been standing.
Cal stumbled back, holding up a hand in surrender. “Hey, wait, big guy. We’re on the same side here, remember?”
“You turned him all the way right!” Loren gasped.
“I turned him left,” said Cal.
“No, I mean our left, his right. You diverted all his power to hydraulics.”
“Yes, so?”
“So he’s not Mech anymore,” Loren said. “He’s a mindless weapon.”
Mech swung a fist in an overhead strike. Cal and Loren both dodged in opposite directions, narrowly avoiding being squashed. “And he’s targeting you!”
“Me?” Cal gasped. “Why would he target me? I’m endearingly quirky. Or quirkily endearing. I always forget which.”
“Maybe he doesn’t like liars,” Miz scowled.
“Wait, I’m the liar?” Cal spluttered, jabbing a finger in Loren’s direction. “What about her?”
There was a commotion from the broken doorway as a menagerie of aliens tried to shove its way through all at the same time. “Get back to the ship. Start the engines,” Cal said. “I’ll fix Mech.”
Loren hesitated, then raced after Miz back towards the ship. “We’re leaving in one minute,” she warned.
“Hear that, Mech, old pal?” asked Cal, dodging to avoid another scything strike from Mech’s fists. “We don’t have much time, so excuse me while I do this.”
He pounced, grabbing for Mech’s dial. A metal hand clamped around his arm, stopping him less than half an inch from the control. Cal yelped as Mech hoisted him off the walkway.
“Ooh, ow, ow. This hurts,” Cal said. “And I don’t know about you, but I have a real feeling of déjà vu right now.”
The bat squirmed in Cal’s hand, growing a long, snaking arm. It reached out and flicked Mech’s dial back to center. The light came back on behind the cyborg’s eyes. “What? What’s the fonk is happening?” he asked, blinking.
“We’re escaping. From them. Right now,” said Cal, swinging his leg up and hooking himself onto Mech’s back. “Now run, Robo-Forrest,” he whispered. “Run!”
Mech sighed. “We so should’ve just tossed you back.”
He thundered up the ramp just as the Shatner’s engines ignited, blasting blue fire that drove back the oncoming alien horde. As soon as they were aboard, Mech shrugged violently, launching Cal a few feet into the air, where he flapped frantically for a moment, before plummeting to the floor.
“Ow!” Cal grimaced, rubbing his knees. “Was that strictly necessary?”
“No, but I liked it,” said Mech. Behind him, the ramp clanked into place against the hull, sealing the ship shut and blocking out most of the engine noise.
Cal had dropped the baseball bat during his brief, and ultimately unsuccessful, attempt at flight. It wriggled like a snake, then unrolled into a slimy green sausage with an eye at each end. With an elastic snap, Splurt returned to his normal shapeless shape.
“Better get up here!” Loren shouted from the flight deck. “Taking off in twenty seconds.”
Cal, Mech and Splurt quickly made their way to the front. Liquid burbled through pipes and light flickered on wall panels as the ship came alive around them. Cal got to his seat and fastened his belt just as the Shatner lurched upwards off the landing platform.
“We made it!” Cal laughed. “Good job, team!”
Loren twisted the stick and the desolate horizon rolled towards the floor. “We haven’t made it yet.”
“And we ain’t no team, neither,” Mech added.
“Sure we are. Right, Miz?”
Miz turned just long enough in her chair to glower at Cal with contempt, then returned to picking flecks of hat-thing flesh from beneath her claws.
“Hey, why the cold shoulder all of a sudden? I thought you were, you know, into me?”
“Ew,” Miz grimaced. “You’re bald and unusually hideous. I was into the stuff you’d done, not you. Except you didn’t actually do any of it.”
“Oh. OK. Gotcha,” said Cal, feeling relieved, but oddly disappointed at the same time.
“Leaving the atmosphere in five, four…” Loren announced. Colors swirled around the screen again, but this time there was no violent shudder to accompany it. In just a few short moments, the oil-on-water rainbow patterns had given way to thousands of pinpricks of light.
“See? We made it!” said Cal.
An alarm wailed. Row upon row of flashing red text scrolled up the screen, completely obscuring
one side. Something exploded against the ship’s shield, making it flicker.
“Multiple hostiles closing fast!” Loren cried. “I make… eight. Twelve. Too many to count.”
Cal tried to make sense of the text, but it was scrolling by far too quickly for him to grasp more than the odd letter or number here and there. “Is it pirates?”
“Yeah, and Kornack’s fighters,” said Mech. “Not good. This is not good.”
“When in doubt, run away,” said Cal. “That’s my motto. Warp speed, Mr Sulu!”
“We can’t warp!” Loren yelped, as another torpedo exploded against the shields.
Cal groaned. “Don’t tell me you broke it again?”
“I didn’t break it the first time,” Loren hissed. “And no, the proximity sensors won’t let us jump to warp speed when there are other ships so close.”
“Well that’s stupid!” said Cal. “Who thought that was a good idea?”
“It’s a safety feature,” Loren said, pushing down on the stick and plunging them back towards the planet below as she tried to avoid another direct hit.
“Well your ‘safety feature’ is going to get us killed, which sort of seems counterproductive, don’t you think?” Cal said. “Mech, can you disable it so we can get out of here?”
“It’s risky,” Mech replied.
Cal gestured to the screen ahead. A volley of laser fire tore into their shields, making it shimmer worryingly.
Mech nodded. “You got a point. On it,” he said, spinning and marching towards the door. “Mizette, watch the shields.”
Miz let out a long sigh, like she’d just been tasked with the single most annoying job in the universe. “Fine,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I’ll watch the stupid shields.”
Another torpedo slammed into the ship, rocking it violently and turning the shields a quite striking shade of red for a few seconds.
“We got hit,” said Miz.
“I noticed!” said Loren. “Where are the shields at?”
Miz tutted. “How should I know? The front?”
“I mean what level are they at?” Loren spat. She jabbed a finger frantically in the direction of some more text on the far right of the screen. “Over there.”
“Oh, well why didn’t you just say that?” said Miz. “Sixty-two percent.”
“Is that… that’s bad, right?” said Cal. “That doesn’t seem like enough shields. Can we fight back?”
“Against all those ships? No way. There are dozens of them.”
“Which means we have lots of targets,” Cal pointed out. “And the best pilot in Zertex.”
“But only on the simulator,” Miz added.
“I was trying to be motivational,” Cal said.
“You mean you were lying again?” Another explosion rocked the ship. “Shields at fifty-six percent.”
Loren yanked on the stick, sending the ship screaming into an upwards loop. “Fine. You want to fight them? Go ahead,” she said. “I’m not the one in the gunner’s seat.”
Cal looked down as the wide arm rests of his chair flipped open, and a bewildering array of controls tumbled out. They unfolded and locked together, forming two quarter-circle consoles beside each arm.
Something gripped his neck, holding his head steady as a visor slid into position over his eyes. At first, there was nothing but blackness, but then a single white dot appeared in the dark. It rushed towards him, growing larger, then split into billions of smaller dots.
Zooming towards the growing galaxy, Cal felt a wave of motion sickness start to build again. He snapped to a sudden stop and found himself floating in space. Several angular-looking ships screamed past, long red laser blasts stabbing at him. He screamed, instinctively, when he saw a ball of fiery light come hurtling towards him, and could do nothing but close his eyes and hope for the best.
The Shatner trembled. “Forty-seven percent,” Mizette said, her voice no longer just inside the ship, but floating towards him from every corner of space.
Cal jumped as two joysticks pressed themselves into his hands. “Left stick’s cannons, right’s torpedoes,” said Loren’s disembodied voice. “Torpedoes do more damage, but we’ve only got twelve. Watch the cannon for overheating.”
The Shatner swung sideways and Cal screamed as he was sent hurtling helplessly through empty space.
“That’s the basics,” said Loren. “Now take them out!”
Two oblong targeting reticles appeared in empty space ahead of Cal, both swinging around wildly as the Shatner bobbed and weaved through the onslaught of oncoming attack ships. The targets responded when Cal moved the sticks, but just vaguely, as if they were only half paying attention to his input.
One of the ships screeched across their path, dead ahead. Cal yelped in panic and squeezed both triggers. There was a flash as a torpedo launched, then an even brighter one as the cannon fire ignited the missile just a few dozen feet off the starboard bow.
The Shatner flipped and rolled. The alarms screeched louder, but Loren’s voice was even louder still. “Watch what you’re doing! You almost killed us!”
“Sorry, sorry, that was my fault,” Cal said. “Accidentally shot our own torpedo.”
“We know!” Miz shouted. “Shields at twenty-six percent.”
“Cal, you’d better start taking some of those things out right now,” Loren warned. “Or we’re dead within the next minute.”
Cal flexed his fingers, then gripped the sticks again. “Come on, come on, come on,” he whispered. “How hard can it be?”
During Cal’s teenage years, back home on Earth, there had been a video game by the name of Elite 2, which involved – among other things – engaging in space-based ship-to-ship combat with attacking pirates. In many ways, it bore a striking similarity to the situation Cal now found himself in, and was pretty much the perfect training for anyone who ever found themselves locked in a real space battle.
Which was a shame, because at the height of Elite 2’s popularity, Cal had been busy sneaking into bars to try to meet women, and had never even heard of the game, much less played it.
Despite his complete lack of experience, however, Cal quickly began to figure things out. He realized that if you twisted the sticks while moving them, they moved much more slowly, but were far more responsive. Frantically waggling the sticks around moved the sights quickly but erratically, while twisting slowed them to a crawl, but made aiming at anything at least a possibility.
“Coming in hot, eight o’clock,” Loren warned.
Cal turned his head and the galaxy spun. “Eight? Which way’s eight?”
He saw a clumsily put-together ship bearing down on them on his left. “I see it!” he said, fighting both sticks towards the target.
“It’s trying to get a torpedo lock! Take it out!”
“One sec…” Cal said, gritting his teeth. “Almost… got it.”
The left targeting reticle wobbled over the approaching ship. Cal jammed his finger on the button and a scorching beam of red tore into the attacking ship, sending it spinning. “I hit it! Did you see that? I hit it! Eat that, bedge!”
“You destabilized its shields,” Loren said, banking the Shatner to keep the spiraling craft in sight. “Finish it off.”
Cal struggled against the reluctant right stick, guiding the sight in roughly the right direction. As it drew close, he twisted, inching the reticle slowly towards the target. The oblong aiming sight locked onto the ship and flashed green. Cal squeezed the trigger.
A sphere of energy rocketed through space, closing the gap between the ships in seconds. There was a physics-defying fireball as the torpedo ripped apart the attack craft’s shields and exploded through the hull.
“Woo-hoo!” Cal cheered. “One down.”
“Lots more to go,” Loren warned. “Mech, how we doing back there?”
“That depends,” Mech shouted back. “Do you want a twenty percent chance of dying, or a sixty-percent
? Right now, we’re at a sixty. Maybe sixty-five.”
Another torpedo slammed into the Shatner. Cal felt it rattle all the way through to his bone marrow.
“Shields at… uh, nothing,” said Mizette.
“Oh, fonk it,” Loren muttered. “Mech, hold onto something!”
The engine whined.
The ship jumped.
And, as a billion billion stars whizzed past around him, Cal quietly threw up in his mouth.
CHAPTER TWENTY
With some difficulty, Cal managed to slip free of the gunner’s visor and blinked in the artificial light of the ship. On screen, everything was streaking by far too quickly for his liking, but at least there was one positive.
“We’re alive!” Cal announced, as if he was the first one to notice. “We did it! Go team!”
“I told you, we ain’t no team,” Mech said, stomping onto the bridge.
Cal unclipped his belt and stood up. “Are you kidding me? We were awesome! Loren avoided those ships, I shot one down, probably saving all our lives in the process, you did the thing with the thing, and Miz read out those numbers.” Cal leaned past Mech and flashed Mizette a smile. “And, if I may say so, you did a great job.”
Mizette blinked slowly, then very deliberately turned away. Cal looked across the scowling faces of the others. “Hey, tell me if I’m crazy here, but I get the feeling I’ve done something to annoy you guys,” he asked.
Loren spluttered and stood up. “You have! You lied to us. You told us you were the Butcher, and that almost got us killed.”
“OK, one, I told the space president he had the wrong guy way back at the start, and only changed my story once it was clear he was going to do some deeply unpleasant things to me if I wasn’t who he thought I was. That’s not my fault.”
Loren crossed her arms, but didn’t say anything.
“And two, Kornack still thinks I’m the Butcher. That’s not why they were chasing us.”
“No, they were chasing us because you grabbed the specimen.”
“Because you were giving him away! Crew members don’t give other crew members away, Loren, that’s like, rule number one.”
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