CHAPTER THREE
The Shatner streaked through a shimmering star field, the laws of conventional physics slipstreaming in its wake.
Inside, Cal and Loren stood side by side, studying the viewscreen. On it was a collage of space station blueprints, video footage, photographs and maps. Cal was learning a lot about Zertex Command Five, none of it particularly interesting.
“This is nice. Very detailed. Well done.”
“Thank you,” said Loren, folding her hands behind her back and rocking on her heels ever so slightly.
“But I don’t want to build one,” said Cal. “I just need to know how to find Sinclair’s office.”
Loren sighed. “That’s what I’m trying to explain. You can’t just hop in a lift and hit a button. You need to navigate through over two hundred decks, get past potentially thousands of Zertex soldiers, bypass security systems, avoid cameras…”
“Right, right. Yeah. I mean, of course,” Cal said. He puffed out his cheeks. “That’s a lot to remember.”
“It is.”
“Remembering’s not really my strong point.”
Loren turned her head just a fraction to look at him. He was closer than she expected, his shoulder practically touching hers. She didn’t move away. “And what is your strong point, exactly?”
“I’ll have to get back to you on that one,” Cal replied. Their eyes met. “But possibly xylophone.”
“Xylophone?” asked Loren. Her eyes flitted, ever so briefly, across Cal’s face.
“Yeah,” said Cal, his voice taking on a softer edge. “I’m a wizard. You should hear my Old Macdonald Had a Farm. It’s… beautiful.”
A series of loud clanks from the corridor snapped them out of the moment. Mech ducked awkwardly through the door, leaning on Miz for support. “Well, I’m afraid I have some rather bad news to share,” he announced in a high-pitched nasal whine. The dial on his chest had been turned so that most of his processing power was being diverted to his intellect. “It appears I am unable to alter the ship identification number, after all.”
Cal frowned. “I thought you said you could?”
“I said I thought I could, which is not the same thing at all,” said Mech. “Were we piloting an older vessel, making the changes would have been child’s play, but – alas – the hardware is too modern, the fail safes too advanced for any such tampering to be effective. At best, the warp core would no longer recognize the rest of the systems and would shut down. At worst, it would self-destruct.”
“Right,” said Cal. “Shizz. So, you’re saying… what?”
“We need a new plan,” said Loren.
Miz grunted. “Can you, like, turn your dial back, already? You’re annoyingly heavy.”
Mech looked to Cal and raised an eyebrow. Cal waved a hand. “Yeah, go ahead.”
There was a visible change to Mech’s facial expression and stance as he turned the dial’s knob back towards the center. He straightened, and Miz immediately slouched down into her chair again, muttering, “About time.”
“It’s like I told you,” said Loren. “It’s not a plan. If we go anywhere near the place, we’ll be captured.”
“Or blown up,” said Mech.
“Zertex wouldn’t shoot on sight,” said Loren. “We’d have to be pretty unlucky to be…” She caught Mech’s expression and thought back over the situations they’d found themselves in over the past couple of weeks, and how their luck usually went. “He’s right. We’d get blown up.”
Cal sat in his chair and drummed his fingers on the arm rests. “There has got to be a way to get to Sinclair.”
Mech sighed. “Look, man. I didn’t want to say nothing, because I know you and Splurt are… Well, I don’t know what you are, but you seem to have this weird relationship with him that kinda creeps me out – just saying.”
“What’s your point?” said Cal.
“My point is… Look, I want Splurt back. We all do. But we don’t even know where he is. We don’t even know if he’s on the station.”
Cal rubbed his forehead between his thumb and first two fingers. “We don’t need him to be on the station. We need to get Sinclair and make him tell us.”
“And you think he’s going to do that?” asked Mech. “You think he’s just going to give him up, just like that?”
“Yes. No. Maybe. I don’t know!” said Cal, standing up. “But we have to try. Splurt’s only in this situation because he was trying to save me. He let himself be captured so that I – so that all of us – could get away. If it wasn’t for…”
He stopped, his eyes darting across the floor as an idea flooded his brain. He spun on the spot and grabbed Mech by both arms.
“Mech!”
“What?”
“You’re a genius! Even without your dial thingy. I could kiss you!”
“Just so you know,” Mech replied. “If you did that, I would punch your face off.”
“Thanks for the warning!” said Cal. He spun on his heels. “Loren! Zertex Command Five. What’s the docking bay like?”
Loren straightened her back and launched into a report. “There are nine docking bays located on the station, each one stretching eighteen-point-six miles along decks six through fourteen…”
“The doors. The entrance. How do you get in?” said Cal, cutting her off.
Loren frowned. “You fly in.”
“No, I mean do they have doors?” Cal banged the sides of his hand together, in case Loren wasn’t aware how doors worked. “Or those forcefield wall things?”
“Both,” said Loren. “I mean, they have a mixture of the two, depending on the security protocols for each individual bay. Why?”
Cal lowered himself into his chair, a smile widening across his face. “The only reason Sinclair has Splurt, is because he thinks Splurt is me,” said Cal.
“Yeah? And?” asked Mech.
“He doesn’t want Splurt. Not really. It’s me he’s after.”
Cal crossed his legs and fixed his gaze on the flashing red blip on the viewscreen. “So, let’s give the son-of-a-bedge what he really wants!”
He spun in his chair until he faced Mech. “Remind me. Do we still have a space suit?”
* * *
Cal hurtled through the cold, dark void, his arms stretched out ahead of him in the padded cladding of the space suit. He felt like Christopher Reeve at the end of the Superman movies, and had spent an enjoyable couple of minutes smiling and nodding to an imaginary camera in what he felt was a suitably super-heroic way.
The Shatner was somewhere behind him. Even if he could turn to look at it – and Mech had warned him not to in case the movement knocked him off course – it would be too far away to see. He was alone, soaring through space at a very precisely-calculated angle, and realizing he should probably have gone to the bathroom before he left.
He hummed the theme to Inspector Gadget below his breath. It was his go-to choice of humming tune. There was something about the slow build at the start that he found oddly pleasing. He’d never really understood why, but decided that some things were best left a mystery.
The humming made the glass of his helmet fog up, so he stopped.
He pretended to be Superman again, but the novelty had worn off.
He thought about counting the stars, but there were thousands of them, and they all looked more or less the same.
He clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth.
Several seconds passed.
He clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth again.
“Well, this is boring,” he said.
And then he saw it, looming out of the darkness up ahead. Zertex Command Five was shaped vaguely like a baby’s rattle, assuming the baby’s parents didn’t object to the four big pointy bits sticking out of the handle.
It started thin, curved upwards into a more bulbous, rounded shape, then tapered away again at the very top. The four pointy bits jutting out of the lower part were relatively short and stubby. Viewed
from below, they’d form an X-shape, although they were actually set at different heights along the station’s length.
The whole thing was a glassy black, and while the thousands of lights dotted across its surface should have helped make the station stand out against the blackness of space, from this distance they could easily be mistaken for stars.
Cal assumed the whole place was camouflaged, until the station’s lazy rotation curved an enormous illuminated letter Z towards him. The rest of the Zertex logo followed, picked out against the darkness in bright red lettering that had to be several miles high.
“Subtle,” Cal mumbled, if only to break up the repetitive echo of his own breathing.
While Cal would have loved to be able to say the next twenty minutes passed in a blur, that would have been a lie. At one point, Cal contemplated trying to sleep, but decided against it. He always woke up grouchy and sluggish, and he’d have to bring his A-game if his plan was going to work.
Plan. He let out a snort, which didn’t help the helmet-steam situation at all. On the ship, it had seemed like a good plan. Great, even. Arguably in the top ten best plans ever.
Loren had said it was suicide, of course, but then she was always uptight about stuff like this, and so he’d ignored it. On this occasion, both Miz and Mech had agreed with her, which was less encouraging, but he’d still been utterly convinced the whole scheme was foolproof.
Now that he was hurtling through space towards the lion’s den, he was starting to feel those first niggles of doubt. Was this a great plan? Was it even a plan at all? It was the beginning of a plan, certainly. As set-ups for plans went, being launched out of a moving spaceship was rock solid. Definitely.
It was what happened after that part that now seemed a little shaky. Everything from the moment Mech’s hands released Cal into the abyss to the glorious reunion with Splurt he had envisioned – and quite vividly described to the others, with actions – was a bit… vague. He knew the order things had to happen in, he just wasn’t entirely sure how to make those things happen in the first place.
“Ah, fonk it, I’ll figure it out,” Cal muttered, then he closed his eyes and gritted his teeth as he rocketed the final few feet towards the space station and passed through the electric blue docking bay energy shielding with a fzzzzt!
Cal hit the metal floor hard, bounced into the air, then skipped like a stone all the way to the back of the bay.
“Ow! Ooh! Shizz! Fonk!”
He skidded the last twenty feet on his stomach, slammed into a low step, and then rolled to a clumsy stop.
It took him barely a second to work through his mental pain checklist by bypassing the list of his individual body parts and just putting a tick in the ‘All of the Above’ box at the bottom.
He flexed his fingers and wiggled his toes. Both seemed to be responding, so that was good. His skull was still in one piece, although there was a spider-web of cracks on his helmet from one of the many occasions his head had hit the floor.
His skeleton ached. His skin throbbed. He had an itchy nose that was going to drive him insane if he didn’t get the helmet off in the next five seconds.
But he was alive. Somehow, he was alive.
Grunting and groaning, Cal managed to get onto his knees. The floor undulated beneath him like a stormy sea, and he almost threw up inside the suit.
Half a dozen Zertex weapons trained on him. Three different soldiers shouted three different things, but the ringing in his ears meant he couldn’t hear any of it. From their expressions, it wasn’t anything friendly.
“OK, OK, stop shouting,” said Cal. He held both hands up in surrender. “I come in peace.”
With some effort, Cal managed to get to his feet. Ignoring the shouts from the soldiers, he unclipped his helmet and yanked it free. He groaned with pleasure as he scratched his nose. “Aw, man, that’s the stuff,” he said, then he turned his attention back to the troops and flashed them a grin. “My name is Cal Carver. Take me to your leader.”
* * *
A hand shoved Cal on the back, sending him stumbling through the door and into Sinclair’s office. “Hey!” he protested, before he tripped on an expensive-looking rug and lost his balance. As his hands were cuffed behind his back, his fall was broken by his face. “That was just mean,” he objected.
“Leave us,” said a voice Cal recognized as Sinclair’s.
Behind him, the Legate who had personally delivered Cal to the president’s office looked confused. “But, Mr President, sir. He’s dangerous. He’s--”
“Handcuffed and completely unarmed,” Sinclair said. “I can handle it. Get out.”
After the briefest moment of hesitation, Cal heard the officer snap off a salute and crisply about-turn. There was a sshkt from the door as it slid closed, then a bleep from the control panel as Sinclair locked it.
“Well, well, I must say, this is a surprise,” the president said, once Cal had wrestled himself up onto his knees. Sinclair propped himself against the edge of his expansive desk and very deliberately began unbuttoning the cuffs of his pastel blue shirt. “This is most unexpected.”
President Sinclair was irritatingly handsome, like he’d just stepped out of Silver Screen era Hollywood. Other than his skin, which was just a shade too far on the green side of olive, he looked completely human.
“I aim to please,” said Cal. He started getting to his feet, but the floor was still moving in a way that made him queasy, so he decided to stay down for the moment. “How you doing, Hayel? You look tired.”
“Ha,” said the president, in what was possibly the most mirthless utterance of the sound in history. “Between you and me? I am. It’s been a difficult few weeks. Largely thanks to you.”
He neatly rolled one sleeve up to his elbow and refastened it there. Through the ceiling to floor windows behind him, Cal could see the same stars he’d been hurtling past just twenty minutes before.
“I’ve invested a lot of resources trying to catch you, Mr Carver, all to no end,” said Sinclair. “And yet, here you are, dropping in on me completely out of the blue.”
He began rolling up the other sleeve. “I mean, how did you even know where to find me?” he asked, then he shook his head. “In fact, forget it. Doesn’t matter.”
Sinclair reached across the desk and pulled a pencil holder towards him. He took a silver cylinder from the pot and took off the lid to reveal something shaped vaguely like a fountain pen. It was sharp and pointy-looking, and the president grimaced ever so slightly when he pressed his fingertip against the tip.
“The real question isn’t how you found me, it’s why you found me,” Sinclair said, setting the pen down next to him. He reached back into the holder and withdrew a small pile of metal paper clips. Cal watched as Sinclair began straightening them, one by one. “You came here for a reason, and I intend to find out what it is.”
“I’ll just tell you what it is,” said Cal.
“Shh,” Sinclair urged, straightening one of the metal clips with a theatrical flourish. “Don’t spoil it.”
He set the pieces of wire down on the desk beside his pen. “It’s amazing, you know? The damage you can do – the pain you can inflict - with just a few simple office supplies. Seriously. You’ll be amazed. I am going to open your eyes, Mr Carver.”
His face split into a lop-sided grin. “While you still have them, at least.”
“Look, Hayel, I’m picking up a vibe here that maybe I’m not your favorite person. And that’s fine,” said Cal. “I mean, you abducted me from my home planet, and killed… well, pretty much everyone on it in the process, so I doubt I’ll be inviting you to any of my birthday parties any time soon, either. But this little visit of mine, it’s not about you and me. It’s about Splurt.”
Something flashed behind Sinclair’s eyes, but was quickly covered up. “Splurt?”
“The entity, you called him,” said Cal. “Little green shapeshifter. Big eyes. Fonking adorable.”
Sinclair nodded curtly.
“What of it?”
“I want him back.”
The president blinked several times. “You do?” he said.
“I do,” said Cal. “That’s why I’m here.”
“I see. How interesting. And Lady Vajazzle?”
“Heh,” Cal sniggered. “Vajazzle.” He wiped the smirk from his face. “What about her?”
“Where is she?”
Cal’s brow furrowed. “How should I know?”
Sinclair leaned on his desk. His eyes darted left to right, as if reading something written in the air. “How very interesting.” He stood up and shrugged. “An issue for a later date,” he said, absent-mindedly. “I’m afraid if you’ve come to trade your life for the entity, there’s one very big problem, Mr Carver.”
He leaned down until his face was close to Cal’s. “I already have you. How you can bargain with something that already belongs to me?”
Cal smiled. “Come on, Hayel. Did you really think I’d come here alone?”
He raised his eyebrows. Sinclair frowned. “Didn’t you?”
Cal had been hoping for something dramatic to happen at the end of his last sentence. It would have been perfect timing. Now, though, it just felt a bit awkward.
“Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t,” he said, stalling.
Sinclair straightened. “I don’t understand.”
“Oh, you will,” said Cal.
Several uncomfortable seconds passed.
“You will. Any minute… now.”
Nothing happened.
“Wait… now.”
Nothing happened. Sinclair glanced around.
Cal tutted. “Well, this is a little fonking embara--” he began, then the rest of the sentence was swallowed by the kraka-boom of the windows exploding, and the high-pitched howling of all the room’s oxygen being sucked into outer space.
CHAPTER FOUR
Cal fought the urge to hold his breath. It was difficult, but the detailed description Mech had given him about how doing so would make his lungs explode helped a lot.
Space Team: The Search for Splurt Page 3