“Me?” Cal groaned. “But I just got here!”
“He’s right. That ain’t fair,” said Mech.
The little guy scowled and flapped a hand, like he were brushing away a gnat. He pointed again, first at Cal, then the other man. “Him. And him. With us.”
“No, p-please. I don’t want to go,” sobbed a boy in an oversized Zertex hoodie. Cal doubted he was an actual boy, but he looked stupidly young. Late teens. Twenty at a push. “I don’t want to fight.”
Dronzen stepped forward. “Leave the boy be, Ajan. I’ll go,” he said.
“It’s Lord Ajan to you, Dronzen,” the little man spat. “You’re not my boss now. I’m in charge.”
“Shut your mouth, you little scrote. You won’t have your mates around you forever,” Dronzen warned. “And then we’ll see how tough you talk.”
Ajan glowered up at the bigger man, his lips twitching as he tried to think of a suitable retort. Nothing came to him, though, so he turned to an old classic.
“You and whose army?”
“That doesn’t even make sense, you drongo,” Dronzen spat at Ajan’s back as the little man smugly about-turned and headed for the door.
Two of the hulking guards caught hold of Cal, while the other two made a grab for the squirming younger man. Loren tried to intervene, but a blast of laser-fire exploded the ground in front of her, and she stumbled back.
Cal’s legs bicycled in the air as he was hoisted into it by the scruff of the neck. “Mech, get working on learning some more of those other guys’ language. It could come in useful,” he said. “Loren, now might be the time for you to start thinking about forming a flying school.”
“On it,” said Mech.
Loren nodded. “Be careful,” she urged.
Cal grinned as he was carried towards the exit. “Hey, don’t worry,” he said. “This is going to be a piece of cake!”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Cal slid down the glassy sides of another pit, and landed heavily at the bottom. The Zertex kid, Sessal, hit the ground next, followed a moment later by a capable-looking tribesman whose name seemed to be a complex system of clicks and guttural barks. Cal had decided to call him Gavin, instead.
This pit was bigger than the last one Cal had been in, and the metal hatch built into the steeply curved wall was larger, too. Worryingly large, actually. Whatever was going to come out of this one would almost certainly be bigger than a wasp but, Cal estimated, smaller than a baby hippo. That left quite a lot of scope, though, and didn’t really help him narrow it down at all.
Not that he really could narrow it down, anyway. He had no idea what sort of creatures inhabited this place. Or not beyond squirrels, insects, birds and big luminous spaghetti monsters, at any rate.
“Everyone OK?” Cal asked, getting to his feet. “Sessal?”
“I d-don’t like this,” Sessal stammered.
“Yeah, I think we pretty much established that on the ride over here, when you kept hugging the railing and crying. Like I said, I’m not exactly over the moon about it, either,” Cal replied. “But we’re going to get through it, OK?”
The younger man nodded, but he didn’t look convinced. Cal squeezed his shoulder, then looked across to where the tribesman was bouncing from bare foot to bare foot, his gaze laser-targeted on the metal door. He’d clearly done this before, and was getting himself together for whatever came next.
“Gavin?” Cal asked. “You good?”
“T’torros mossami-ne kisk,” said Gavin, beating his painted chest with a clenched fist.
“That’s the spirit!” Cal cheered. “See, Sessal? We need to take a leaf out of Gavin’s book. He’s loving this. I mean, I think he is. He looks pretty positive, anyway.”
“Just k-keep him away from me,” Sessal pleaded. “He’s one of them.”
“One of who?” asked Cal.
“You know. Them.”
Cal sniffed the air. “Is that…? Is that racism I smell, Sessal? Is that what I’m getting a whiff of right now? Because if it is, I’m very disappointed. You can’t judge people just because they’re different. Did you learn nothing from being part of an evil galactic empire?” He clicked his fingers. “Wait… Yeah, I think I probably identified the problem, actually.”
“D-didn’t one of them shoot you with an arrow?”
Cal’s eyes went wide. “That was those guys?” he gasped, turning to Gavin. Gavin looked back at him, quizzically.
“Roto dom?”
“You’re absolutely right. Wise words, Gavin,” said Cal. “Wise words.”
He redirected his attention back to Sessal. “If Gavin said what I think he might possibly have said – you know, despite having no evidence to support that - he raises a very good point. If you want to arbitrarily hate on a whole group, why not hate on that one?” Cal suggested, pointing up to the top of the pit.
It was lined by somewhere just south of a hundred faces – a mix of Zertex and tribespeople. They leered down through a hubbub of excited laughter and expectant chat, all squashing together to try to get the best view, while always maintaining a safe distance from the top of the pit.
The little guy – Ajan, was it? – was on his hands and knees, leaning over the edge to get the best possible view. Two of his bulky guards held him, one on either side, holding him securely in place.
On the other side of the pit, someone in a Zertex uniform was scribbling symbols on the scorched and oil-stained paper of a flipchart. After a moment, it swam around before Cal’s eyes, his implanted chip translating it.
It quickly became clear that the man doing the writing was a bookmaker, offering odds on the survival of all three of the pit’s current inhabitants. Cal’s chances of survival weren’t particularly great at ten-to-one, but far better than Sessal’s forty-to-one. Gavin, on the other hand, was a comparatively comfortable three-to-one. Cal shuffled a sideways step towards him, and hoped Sessal didn’t notice.
“So, do we get weapons, or…?” Cal shouted up to the crowd, right before the handle of a sword clonked him on the back of the head, and a roar of laughter went around the audience. Two other swords clattered onto the rocky ground beside him. He picked one up and studied the wooden blade.
“Very funny, guys,” he said, waggling the flimsy toy at them. “Seriously. Hilarious. But could we get the real weapons now? Thanks.”
Ajan let out quite a big snort for such a little man. “Those are your real weapons,” he sneered. “Good luck. You’re going to need it.”
Cal smiled and gave him the finger, then turned back to his pit-mates. Sessal was clutching his sword to his chest, his knuckles white. He breathed in short, shallow gulps, his face awash with sweat.
Gavin, meanwhile, was in the process of breaking his sword in half. The wood was flimsy, so breaking it wasn’t difficult, but the tribesman had managed to split it all the way down its length, which was pretty impressive.
“Uh, I don’t think you should be doing that, Gavin. You might need it.” Cal mimed hitting something with his own sword. “You know, like that.”
With a final splintering sound, Gavin ripped the wood apart, leaving him with two long thin stakes, each one far pointier at the end than Cal’s blunt sword.
“Ooh. I want ones like yours. Do mine, do mine,” said Cal, but a sudden sound behind the metal hatch told him there wasn’t time. The crowd cheered and whistled. Gavin adopted a fighting stance. Sessal cried big, silent sobs and backed all the way up to the wall.
“So, what do we think it is? Any ideas?” Cal asked, his gaze fixed on the hatch, which was now rattling and shaking as something slammed against it from the other side. “Something big, I’d say.”
The hatch shuddered again, and this time it bulged outwards a fraction. “And angry. Big and angry,” said Cal. “Always a winning combination.”
“On my mark, release the beast!” bellowed Ajan, although ‘bellowed’ was pretty generous. He was aiming for a bellow, but landed somewhere between a squeak and a hoar
se scream. “Three. Two. Drop the hatch!”
The audience erupted in cheers. Cal brought up his sword. The hatch didn’t budge.
Ajan tutted. “I said drop the hatch!”
“Oh. Sorry!” called someone a little further back from the pit edge. “My fault.”
The hatch dropped and an explosion of teeth and claws erupted from the passageway. Cal caught just the briefest glimpse of hungry jaws, then the thing was on him, knocking him onto his back and slamming him against the ground.
He looked up, first at a snarling mouth, then at a pair of narrowed brown eyes, which opened wide when they recognized him.
“Miz!” yelped Cal.
“Hey handsome,” Miz purred, adjusting her position on top of him. “Looks like I finally got you right where I want you.”
“Oh, man, are you a sight for sore eyes,” said Cal, then a sudden flurry of movement from his right demanded his attention. “Gavin, no!”
Cal rolled to his left, throwing Miz to safety just as Gavin drove both his wooden stakes towards her. Cal felt the rush of air as the sticks skimmed his back.
Scrambling to his feet, Cal positioned himself between Miz and the tribesman. Above them, the initial burst of cheering from the audience had quickly become a far less enthusiastic muttering.
“Wait, Gavin, don’t! She’s a friend,” Cal said. “Friend.”
“Bodano-na. Tossk!” Gavin hissed through clenched teeth. He feigned a lunge, but Cal frantically waggled his wooden sword at him until he backed away.
“Stop! Cut it out, Gavin, I’m warning you.”
“What’s going on?” Ajan demanded. “Hurry up and fight the beast, already.”
Cal grinned and shook his head. “Oh, Ajan. You beautiful tiny clown. This ‘beast’ is nothing of the kind. She’s my friend. She’s a princess, actually. You know the Greyx, right?”
Ajan scowled, but said nothing while he tried to think up a devastating retort. Cal interrupted before he could come up with anything.
“But, and just so we’re clear, if you call her a ‘beast’ again, I’ll kill you myself. OK?”
Miz shuddered with pleasure. “I love it when you get all protective.”
Cal was relieved to see that Gavin had lowered his weapons. He was still eyeing Mizette with suspicion, but he seemed to understand she wasn’t an immediate threat.
“See? We’re all friends down here,” said Cal. “So, I’m afraid if you wanted to see someone dying today, you’re going to have to look…”
Cal’s voice trailed away into silence as a dribble of blood coated Gavin’s chin. The tribesman’s eyes bulged and he staggered forwards, gagging and choking.
Gavin’s next step found nothing. He fell forwards, revealing a wooden sword wedged into the soft tissue at the back of his neck. Sessal was revealed, too. He stood directly behind where Gavin had been, his hands shaking, a spray of blood adding to the mask of horror he already wore on his face.
The audience found its voice again and their cheering reverberated around the inside of the pit. The bookmaker began making frantic adjustments to his flipchart as the last of Gavin’s life ebbed out onto the rocks.
“Sessal. What did you do?” Cal groaned.
“H-he was going to kill you. I saw him. You c-can’t trust them,” Sessal shivered. His whole body was vibrating, like he were two thirds of the way through freezing to death.
“No, he wasn’t, Sessal!” Cal snapped. “He wasn’t going to kill anyone. No-one had to kill anyone.”
“Uh… hello? Beg to differ,” said Ajan. “It’s kind of the entire point of you being in there.”
The audience laughed, and Ajan looked quite pleased with himself. “If you won’t kill the beast, then you can all kill each other. Everyone for themselves, last person alive is allowed back out.”
More laughter. More cheering. Cal stooped and picked up one of Gavin’s fallen stakes. “Hey, Ajan, remember what I told you?” he said. “Don’t ever call my friend ‘beast’ again!”
He spun and flicked his wrist, sending the sharp stick spinning up towards Ajan’s head. The crowd barely had time to let out a collective gasp before the stake hit.
Unfortunately, what it hit was a spot roughly two feet below where Cal was aiming. It bounced off the wall, sprung back, then hit the ground with a hollow thonk.
Cal sighed. “Well, that was disappointing.”
“Nice try, you… you… stupid idiot,” Ajan barked. The crowd chorused in with a collective, oooh, which only served to encourage him. “Yeah, you… dumdum. Get fighting. Either two of you die, or three of you do. We don’t mind, either way.”
“We’d prefer three, if anything,” chimed another voice from the audience.
“Exactly! Exactly!” chirped Ajan. “So get killing, or we’ll kill you ourselves.”
Down in the pit, Miz jabbed a thumb in Sessal’s direction. “I could eat this guy, if it’ll help?”
Cal shook his head. “No. I mean, thanks for the offer and everything, but he’s just a kid. He’s scared. Besides, even if he dies, one of us still has to die, too.”
“So what do we do?” asked Miz.
Cal lowered his voice to a faint whisper. “Still hear me?”
Miz’s ears twitched. She nodded, just a fraction.
“Don’t look, but the hatch you came through is still open. Is there a way out?”
Miz gave a non-committal tilt of her head. Cal sucked air through his teeth. “Better than staying here?”
Another nod.
“Hurry up!” called Ajan. “We haven’t got all night.”
“OK,” Cal whispered. “We get the kid, then we run for it. Get ready.”
He spun around and crouched into a fighting stance, fists clenched, eyes locked on Sessal. Miz approached from the other side, forcing Sessal to back away in the direction of the open hatch.
“N-no, please,” Sessal whimpered. “I didn’t mean to kill him. I was only trying to help!”
“I refuse to die in this pit, kid,” Cal growled. “I’m not going to let that happen.”
“Wh-what? No, but… Please, don’t kill me. I’m sorry!”
“Ready, Miz?” Cal asked, not taking his eyes off the boy.
“Ready,” Miz confirmed. Sessal’s head snapped left and right, trying to watch them both at once. He attempted to speak again, but all that came out was a sob, some tears, and a considerable amount of snot.
“Now!” Cal cried, and Miz pounced. The crowd cheered her on, but their delight turned to confusion when she threw an arm around Sessal’s waist and hoisted him over her shoulder.
Ajan realized, too late, what was happening. “The hatch! Close the hatch!” he yelped.
Cal heard a distant. “Oops, sorry, my fault again!” from above, but he was already through the doorway, with Miz and her squirming cargo right at his heels.
The hatch slammed closed behind them, casting the narrow passageway into near-darkness. Cal ran, doubled-over, making for a faint light source at the far end.
“Where does it come out?” he asked, his voice rolling off ahead of him and bouncing off the narrow walls.
“It’s a little, like, shed thing,” Miz said.
“Heavily guarded?”
“Oh yeah,” said Miz. “But now I’m out of that cage they put me in, that won’t be a problem.”
“That’s my girl!” Cal cheered.
They reached the end of the tunnel. Light flooded in from a rectangular hole in the ceiling, above which stood a shed, just like Miz had said. There was no ladder leading up, but the wall was rough and rocky, and Cal scrambled up it without any difficulty.
Sessal screamed as he soared upwards out of the hole, then landed on his back on the shed floor. Miz bounded up behind him, her eyes already fixed on a set of double-doors dead ahead.
A cage stood beside the hole, a tangle of chains and restraints lying on the floor. There were other things in the cage, too, Cal noticed. Fingers. Three of them, at least. Miz hadn’t g
one into the pit without a fight.
“Come on, we don’t have much time,” Miz warned, bounding towards the exit on all fours. She exploded outwards through the wood, claws extending as she hurtled through the air. There was a grunt of surprise, then the two tribesmen who had been standing guard at the door lunged at her with their short spears.
Cal turned away until their screaming and thrashing and gargling had died down, then grabbed Sessal by the arm and pulled him towards the door. They stumbled out just as the first of the pit audience arrived, shaking their spears and drawing their blasters.
“Oh, shizz, they got here fast,” Cal muttered. Miz started to bound towards them, but Cal called her back. “No! This way!”
Spinning, he raced around the outside of the shed, pulling Sessal with him. The boy screamed as a blast of laser fire punched a hole in the shed right behind him, showering him in smoldering splinters.
“Stay where you are!” huffed Ajan, scurrying along surprisingly quickly between his four armed guards. Two blaster rifles trained on Mizette, while Cal and Sessal only merited one each.
Cal stopped running and raised his hands. “Aw, come on, guys. Could you just let us escape a little bit?”
“No, you stupid idiot,” Ajan said. He smirked and looked to the crowd for their approval, but it was much more muted this time, the insult having lost all the originality that had made it so entertaining the first time around. “Put them back in the pit!” he barked.
Before anyone could take a step, the ground gave a violent shudder. It rocked them all up and down, vibrating the walls of the shed as it rumbled upwards from somewhere far below.
As the world trembled, Cal noticed the big space vortex thing. Its glowing white outline seemed to shiver in time with each tremor. As the quake passed, the vortex steadied once again.
“What the Hell was that about?” Cal wondered, before a shout from Ajan snapped him back to the situation at hand.
“Well don’t just stand there! Chuck them in the pit!”
“Wait!”
The crowd parted in a sort of polite panic, revealing Lady Vajazzle. Her hood was up, her black robe drawn tight around her. “What is the meaning of this?” she hissed.
Space Team: The Search for Splurt Page 12