“No, I don’t” said Kevin.
Cal looked up. “You don’t? I thought you said you did?”
“No, sir. You said, ‘Kevin, get a bead on the guy,’ but didn’t actually explain which ‘guy’ you were referring to, or what getting ‘a bead’ on him actually entails.”
“Oh. Then why didn’t you say that?” Cal asked.
“I did, sir,” Kevin insisted.
“You did?” Cal frowned. “What did I say?”
“I believe it was something along the lines of, ‘Oh fonk, oh fonk, I’m covered in wasps!’ sir.”
“Shizz. Right,” said Cal. He glanced at Mech and the others. “I was covered in wasps,” he explained.
“We guessed,” said Loren.
She went to move past him, then stopped and turned back to the ramp. Garunk stood at the bottom, anxiously wringing his hands.
Loren sighed quietly. “One second, guys,” she said, heading back down the ramp until she was standing before Garunk. “You should come with us,” she said. “We could use you.”
“You could? How?” asked Garunk.
Loren opened her mouth and inhaled, as if preparing to reply. She froze there for a moment. “I could use you,” she said. “Look, even back in the Academy, I was always kind of…”
“A loser?” guessed Miz from the top of the ramp.
“Self-absorbed,” Loren said. “I wanted to be the best. It was all I cared about. Not you. Not Clorice, Hoof, Feltch, or the one with the eyes.”
“Those eyes were insane,” said Garunk.
“Terrifying,” Loren agreed. “But the point is, I was wrong. Being the best isn’t what matters.”
“Good thing for you,” Miz chipped in from up the ramp. Loren ignored her.
“Friends are what matters. Having people you can count on. Who’ve always got your back. That’s what’s important.”
She put a hand on Garunk’s shoulder. “And I know you have my back, Garunk. So,” She inhaled deeply. “You should come with us. You should join the team.”
Garunk’s muddy skin blushed. “Wow. That’s… I mean… wow. I am honored. I really am,” he said. “But, uh, I think I’m just going to stay here and have sex with a bunch of Nogems.”
Loren blinked.
“Oh,” she said. She felt like this was such an appropriate response, she repeated it. “Oh.”
“Otherwise, you know, I’d have been all over the space stuff,” Garunk said. “Seriously. We’d have had a great time. But, those Nogems are pretty hot? Am I right? I’m right.”
“Oh,” said Loren. Then, a moment later. “Oh.”
Garunk wrapped his arms around her, squidging her into a sloppy hug. “Now, go save Moosh, Loren. And when you’re out there in the future, exploring the galaxy, think of me,” he whispered. “Think of your old pal, Garunk, out there somewhere on the wild frontier. Having sex with Nogems.”
“Oh,” Loren said.
She felt like ‘Oh,’ had probably run its course now, and swapped the next one out for a, “Right,” which she followed swiftly with a, “Will do.”
“Any chance we could hurry this along?” asked Cal. “Garunk, are you coming with us?”
“No,” said Garunk.
“He’s staying,” explained Loren, as Garunk released her from his hug. “He’s staying to, uh, to have sex with Nogems.”
“So many Nogems,” Garunk said.
Cal’s jaw clenched. His mouth became a grimace of horror masquerading as a smile.
“Well, good luck with that,” he said, after much consideration.
“You look after her, OK?” Garunk instructed. “Not that she needs looking after—she’ll always be number one—but you take care of her.”
“Will do,” said Cal. He glared meaningfully at Loren. “Can we?”
“I’m coming,” Loren said. She gave Garunk a brief wave, then retreated back up the ramp. “If you ever see Clorice, tell her I said—”
The landing ramp slammed closed between them.
“Sorry to interrupt the touching farewell, but we need to get going,” Cal said. “We still need to track down Manacle, and Kevin’s useless.”
“I heard that, sir.”
“You were supposed to! That’s why I said it out loud.”
Loren pushed past him and hurried along the corridor. “It’s fine. Tracking him down won’t be a problem. We know where he’s going. I just hope we can get there before… Aaand the bridge is full of wasps.”
Cal laughed awkwardly. “Again, ‘full,’ is an exaggeration.”
He followed her onto the bridge and gestured at all the empty space. “See? In what sense is this full of wasps?”
“In the sense that they’re covering every available surface,” Loren said.
“That’s not full. That’s my point,” said Cal. “I painted the walls of my parents’ dining room once. I didn’t then say the dining room was full of paint. There’s an important distinction there that I think—”
“Get rid of them,” Loren snapped.
Cal sighed. “Fine. Splurt!”
The kitchen door slid open. The mother of all wasps ducked out, several playing cards clutched beneath its two front legs.
“Can you take these guys to my room?” Cal said. “But, under no circumstances is anyone allowed to look under my bed.” He pointed to an apparently random cat-sized insect. “That means you, Stripey.”
Splurt plodded onto the bridge, made a beckoning motion with four of his legs, then turned and marched off toward Cal’s sleeping quarters. The wasps followed, forming a long line that buzzed out into the corridor, clearing the bridge.
“There. Happy now?” asked Cal.
Loren slid into her chair. “Well, yes, obviously. The whole place is no longer covered with wasps. I’m ecstatic.” She tapped in a series of coordinates, then pulled on her belt. “Everyone buckle up. We’re going full warp as soon as we’re out of the atmosphere.”
Cal groaned. “Great. Those are words I’ll never get tired of hearing.”
“While I was aboard the Harvester ship, I took the liberty of fixing your chair, sir,” Kevin announced.
Cal regarded the chair with suspicion. Now that it was no longer covered in wasps, he could see that it was, indeed, looking as good as new.
“How the fonk did you do that?” Mech asked, plodding squelchily to his control station in front of the view screen. “Ain’t like you got arms.”
“Yes. It’s a rather interesting story, sir,” Kevin began. “I grew it.”
“You grew it?” asked Cal. He gave the chair an experimental prod. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Since I was at rather a loss with regards what else to do, sir, I examined my personal schematics more closely, and discovered several interesting facilities I was not previously aware I was in possession of.”
The ship shuddered as it lifted into the air. Miz jumped into her chair, rocked it back and forth a few times, then reclined with her legs hooked over one armrest.
“Oh?” said Cal. “Like what?”
“I’m not entirely sure, sir. A lot of it was over my head, to be honest,” Kevin admitted.
Cal frowned. “Aren’t you, like, super smart?”
“Very kind of you to say so, sir,” said Kevin. “And yes, I am. However, much of the information on the schematics are written in a language I am unfamiliar with. I only figured out I could regrow your chair by looking at the pictures.”
Cal shrugged. “Fair enough. You think you can figure anything else out?”
Kevin hesitated. “Well, I could probably grow you a coffee table, if I concentrated hard enough.”
“Hold that thought, Kevin,” Cal said. He lowered himself cautiously into the chair, gave it a few experimental half-turns, sniffed the arms to make sure he couldn’t smell smoke, then nodded. “OK, looks like it’s all good,” he said.
And then the world turned inside out as the Currently Untitled broke the atmosphere and Loren launched them i
mmediately into full warp.
Cal swallowed down half a pint of gastric juice and nodded weakly. “Yeesh. That’s fast,” he squeaked, grimacing as the stars streaked past in a glittering, nauseating light show. “How long until we get there?”
“At this speed? Forty minutes,” said Loren.
“Oh, Jesus,” Cal croaked. “Kevin, can we put something else on the screen?”
“At once, sir,” said Kevin.
The stars were replaced by a series of colorfully abstract, mind-bending fractals, all collapsing and expanding as they kaleidoscoped their way across the screen.
“Fonk! Not that. That’s worse!” Cal yelped. “Something else.”
“My apologies, sir,” Kevin intoned.
“What even is that?”
“Just another feature I discovered, sir. I believe the manual refers to it as ‘a screensaver.’” Kevin replied. “One moment.”
The image changed again. This time, it showed blurry, virtual-reality style footage taken on a high-speed rollercoaster as it plunged into a ludicrous drop.
Cal glared at the ceiling. “You’re doing this on purpose, aren’t you, Kevin?”
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean, sir,” Kevin said. The screen went black. A moment later, the words ‘Everything is fine,’ appeared on it in a soothing light blue bubble font.
“Great. Go with that one,” said Cal, adjusting himself in his seat.
“Yeah. I mean, it’s not like I need to see where I’m going,” said Loren.
“It’s space, there’s nothing to see but more space,” Cal replied. “And we’re going at, like, a kajillion miles an hour. What are you going to do if you do see something? Hit the brakes? We’ll be fine. This is good.”
He rocked back in his chair. “OK, so, forty minutes. That should give us time to figure this out.”
“Figure what out?” asked Miz, glancing up at him.
“Just, you know, everything,” said Cal. “I mean, I don’t know if you guys noticed, but this galaxy is kind of different to the one we left. I’m thinking we got put back in the wrong place. You know, after all the time stuff?”
Mech shook his head. “That’s not what the council said. This is our galaxy. Our universe. We just changed it.”
Cal narrowed his eyes. “I know they said that, but do we trust those guys?”
“Well, most of them are versions of you,” Mech pointed out. “But despite that fact… Yeah. I trust them.”
“Fine. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that this is our galaxy. We stopped Geronimus Krone, right? We saved everyone from that psycho.”
“And installed another one in his place,” Loren pointed out.
“Let’s try to keep this positive, Loren,” Cal said. “We stopped Geronimus Krone. Check in the win column. We killed Sinclair before he could do any of his evil shizz. Another check.”
“And he was replaced by Vajazzle,” Mech pointed out. “Check removed.”
“What? You can’t remove the checks,” Cal said.
“I can, and I am.”
“Those are my checks!” Cal pointed out. “You can’t just take them.”
“I’m taking both checks,” Mech snapped. “They’re gone.”
Cal gaped in outrage for a moment, then sat back and shrugged. “I got a pocket full of checks, Mech. A pocket full. See if I care.”
“Guys!” Loren said. “What are you doing? We don’t have time for this. Manacle is on his way right now to attack a moon full of children. Chil-dren. Can we focus on that?”
Cal nodded. “You’re right, Loren, of course. Sorry. Maybe if Mech hadn’t been so childish…”
“Cal!” Loren barked.
Cal held his hands up. “Sorry, sorry. You’re right, let’s focus on the dead kids.”
He caught Loren’s expression. “Not dead kids. I mean dying… Not dying. Obviously, I don’t mean dying. I mean… in danger.”
Loren closed her eyes and squeezed the bridge of her nose. Cal took the opportunity to mime drawing a couple of checks in the air, then swiveled his chair away before Mech could respond.
“What do we know about this Moosh place?” Cal asked.
“It’s where Zertex Academy is based,” said Loren. “It’s the younger years training facility. There are kids of all ages there, toddlers to teens.”
“But they must have defenses, right?” said Cal. “Don’t tell me Zertex leaves all its prize students unprotected?”
“It’s heavily defended,” Loren replied. “Every facility is protected by energy shielding, and there are automated surface-to-air cannons throughout.”
“See? Then they’ll be fine,” Cal said. “I don’t know why we’re even bothering to go. We’ll probably just get in the way.”
“We’re going because the energy shielding doesn’t block organic matter,” Loren said. “And the cannons only respond to attacking ships, or tanks. Anything mechanical.”
Cal smiled blankly at her. “Uh-huh.”
“So, something organic could get through.”
Cal’s expression didn’t change. “Gotcha,” he said, in a voice that firmly suggested he hadn’t.
Loren sighed. “Something like—for example—giant killer wasps.”
Cal’s mouth became a little circle of surprise as the penny dropped. “Ah. OK. So, all Manacle would need to do is sick the wasps on the kids, and let them do his dirty work for him?”
“Exactly,” Loren confirmed.
Miz briefly raised her eyes. “Didn’t he get, like, one wasp?”
Cal shook his head. “He mentioned having more. A Beta. Whatever that is.”
“I got the impression he’s been collecting these things for a while,” Mech said. “Reckon he’s got more than enough to do what he needs to do.”
“Right. Right, makes sense,” said Cal. He sucked on his top lip for a moment. “And why is he doing this again? Do we know?”
“According to what I was able to ascertain from Headnet records, sir, it appears Zertex and the Edi had something of a falling out recently. Attempts were being made to avert a full-scale war, but then someone assassinated President Sinclair, and it all became something of a mess.”
Cal smiled, and chose to gloss over some of that, particularly those parts that might reflect badly on him. Which, he realized, was most of it.
“And what do we know about these Edi guys?” he asked. “Are they all like Manacle? All kind of… you know, ‘I am your father!’ or whatever?”
“Uh, no, sir,” said Kevin.
There was silence.
“So, what are they like?”
If Kevin had been in possession of a throat, he would have cleared it. “I’m… I’m not sure I should say, sir.”
Cal glanced around at the others. Except Mech, who he could see from the corner of his eye stood poised with a hand in the air, ready to rub out his win column checks, and Cal was damned if he was going to give him the satisfaction.
“Well… you should,” said Cal. “You should definitely say. What do we know about them? What kind of species are they? I’m guessing not a friendly one, but what else?”
“They aren’t, sir.”
Cal frowned. “Aren’t what?”
“A species, sir,” said Kevin. “They’re a group.”
“What, like the Beatles?”
“Possibly, sir. I have no idea who that is,” said Kevin. “Were they a well-funded, technologically advanced, and entirely hostile organization intent on galactic domination?”
Cal hesitated. “No,” he said. “Well, Ringo, maybe. But no, I don’t think so. Is that what Edi is?”
“Precisely, sir,” said Kevin. “It’s, uh, it’s…”
“Spit it out, Kevin,” Cal urged.
“It’s an acronym, sir. The name, I mean. For convenience, most people refer to it as Edi, but in fact, it’s E.D.I.”
“Ooh, wait! Let me guess,” said Cal, straightening in his seat. “Evil Diabolical Industries?”
“No, sir.”
“Elevated Danger Incorporated?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“Hold on. Hold on. I’ll get it.” Cal’s brow knotted in concentration. He tapped a finger against his armrest. “Elongated Donkey…”
“Shut the fonk up and let him speak,” Mech barked. “Kevin, what does it stand for?”
There was a pause, just long enough to focus the anticipation.
“Earth Defense Initiative,” Kevin announced. “I’m terribly sorry, sir, but it appears that Manacle and the Edi are from the planet Earth.”
Twenty-Six
Cal had quite a pressing question. So pressing, in fact, he’d asked it three times already.
“Like, Earth Earth?”
“Indeed, sir.”
“How can it be Earth Earth?” Cal wondered. “You mean, like, the planet I’m from? That Earth?”
“The very same, sir.”
“Earth Earth?”
“Look, man,” Mech sighed. “What part of this are you struggling to understand?”
“All of it!” replied Cal. He turned Mech’s way, then grimaced when the cyborg furiously erased two invisible ch from an imaginary win column. “The Earth part! The part where the big scary bad guy comes from my home planet. That’s the part I don’t understand. I mean, in my reality, or timeline, or whatever the fonk it is, we hadn’t even been to the moon.”
“Yes, you had, sir,” Kevin said.
“Had we?” said Cal. “Well, way to go us, I guess. But the point is, we hadn’t gone any farther than that.”
He glanced at the ceiling.
“Had we?”
“No, sir.”
“No. Exactly. And now we’re… what? Out here enslaving alien races and taking over planets so we can steal their resources?” He crossed his arms and shook his head. “Earth? Humans? No. That doesn’t sound like the kind of thing we’d do at all.”
He exhaled slowly. “Well, I mean, maybe the British.”
He rolled his tongue around in his mouth. “And several successive US governments. And, you know, the French and Italians, obviously. And Jesus, don’t even get me started on Germany.”
He sighed. “Fonk. Earth’s the bad guys. How the hell has this happened?”
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