“Yes. Of course I was. I’m a Space Commander,” said Cal, trying to sound as incredulous as possible. “I just want to make sure that you understand the plan.”
He tapped a couple of digits, then backspaced. Guessing was doing him no good. He had to think this through. Loren had said he wouldn’t need to write it down. She was only too aware of his limited capacity for remembering things, which suggested it was probably short. But what could it be?
“My orders are to deploy the wasps here on Moosh. I am to kill students, teachers, and parents alike. Stealthily, so as not to raise the alarm. And then I am to leave their corpses for Zertex to discover. It will be a most fitting revenge.”
Cal nodded. “That all sounds correct,” he said. “Bonus question. Revenge for what?”
“For their attempted Bug attack, of course,” said Manacle. “Prezident ZSinclair was going to launch Bugs on Earth. An act of war.”
“Someone stopped him,” Cal pointed out. “He’s dead.”
“He is,” Manacle agreed. He seemed to be in full control of himself now, with only the vaguest hint of a buzz lingering when he spoke. “But Zertex cannot go unpunished. Killing their children is the most efficient way of ensuring they remember who is in charge.”
“Right. Right. Very good,” said Cal, although he was only half-listening. He was still thinking about the code. That fonking code. Something short. Something easy. Something…
Wait.
No.
No, it couldn’t be.
He tapped a button.
He hit Enter.
The message changed.
Code Accepted.
“You have got to be fonking kidding me,” Cal said, snorting.
“I’m sorry, Commander?” Manacle asked.
“Hmm? Oh. Nothing. It’s nothing,” said Cal, now unable to hold back his grin. “You were saying something about… I don’t know. What was it?”
“Why do you have a gun on your finger?” Manacle wondered.
Cal looked down as if only just noticing the weapon for the first time. “Hmm? Oh, this. Funny story. Some Zertex chick tried to shoot me. I jammed my finger in, thinking that would make the gun blow up or something if she pulled the trigger, then I found out that it wouldn’t work.”
“It would,” said Manacle.
“It would?”
“Of course. The combustion would have nowhere to go. The bolt would erupt in the barrel.”
“I knew it!” cried Cal. “That lying bedge.”
“Describe her,” said Manacle.
Cal frowned. “Huh? Like, five-six, gray hair. Kind of sour face. Why?”
Manacle tilted his head again. “The wasps see her. She is inside, surrounded by children. Would you like me to kill her first, or last, Commander?”
“Uh, well now,” said Cal. He tapped a finger against his chin. “First, or last? First… or… last? That is the question. Hmm. Which would you choose?”
“Last,” said Manacle, without hesitation. “Make her watch the children die first. Make her realize how helpless she is. Perhaps give her the means to end her own suffering, and make merry around her while she takes her own life.”
“Make merry?” asked Cal.
Manacle gave a vague wave of a hand. “Dancing. Frivolity. That sort of thing.”
“Well, it sounds like a hell of a party,” Cal said. He glanced up, just briefly, and smiled at the sound of a bumpy, erratic descent. “But I think I’ll pass.”
He moved to step past the figure in black. “I’m going to go and check on the… thing. I parked in a No Parking zone, and I don’t want to get towed. Still, nice catching up.”
A hand pressed against Cal’s chest, stopping him. Faintly, through Manacle’s visor, Cal saw a few lines of backward text scrolling upward.
“Space Commander Cal Carver died on the fields of Skronreth,” he said, his voice taking on a dry monotone. “Who are you?”
From outside, there came the sound of cannon-fire, followed closely by the sound of things exploding. Manacle kept his hand raised, but twisted his head all the way around, owl-style, until he was looking back at the door.
“What is this?” he demanded.
His head snapped back around so the mask was facing front. Cal saw himself reflected, and caught just a hint of the glowing control panel. Cal tried to step in front of it again, but was too late.
“What did you do?” Manacle hissed.
Cal started to say, “Now, don’t get mad, I can explain,” got as far as the “N—” and then was launched backward into a row of computer equipment with enough force to collapse the keyboards and shatter the screens.
By the time he’d pulled himself free of the wreckage and popped his hip back into place, Manacle was standing before the egg-shaped terminal, gazing intently at the text on the screen.
Code Accepted, it read. And, above that, a single digit.
It was like Garunk had said all along. Loren was the Academy’s Number One.
“Cavalry’s here, Manacle,” Cal said. He cupped a hand behind an ear and smiled as a series of cannon-blasts were followed by several pained insect squeals. “Reckon you might want to throw in the towel, give up the ghost, surrender the old… Fonk it. You get the idea.” He grinned. “You’ve lost. We’ve won. It’s all over but the—”
Manacle didn’t appear to move. Not in any conventional sense, at least. And yet, he was suddenly in front of Cal, his hand wrapped around Cal’s throat.
“This is unacceptable,” Manacle hissed. “Unacceptable!”
He twisted, tossing Cal behind him. For a few blissfully happy seconds, Cal experienced no pain. This changed quite drastically, however, when he met the opposite wall feetfirst, shattering bone and buckling metal in what felt like quite an unfair and uneven split.
“They’ve called Zertex,” Cal lied, as he slid to the floor. Or maybe it wasn’t a lie. Maybe they had. He had no clue. “Grown-up Zertex, I mean. Not kids. You should get out of here.”
Cal struggled up onto his knees, but the bottom parts of his legs were still too floppy to take his weight, so there he stayed. His eyes were hazy. His head ached. He was eighty percent sure he was having an aneurysm of some description.
Manacle approached. That was how Cal would later remember it. He didn’t walk. He didn’t stride. He approached. Inescapable, unavoidable, like an oncoming storm.
And, as he approached, something grew from his forearm, piercing his leather gauntlet and extending until it was almost two feet long.
A stinger. The fonker had a stinger.
Manacle paused to study the stinger with an air of amused fascination.
“This will do nicely,” he said, then he resumed his approach.
Cal tried to stand, but his feet bent outward and he flopped onto his knees again. His eyes went to the pointed tip of the stinger, and noted the determination with which Manacle drew it back as he closed the last few paces.
“Wait, wait, wait!” Cal protested, holding his hands up. “I have a joke!”
Manacle, to Cal’s surprise, hesitated. “What?” he hissed.
“A joke. You know? Like a funny story?”
“I know what a joke is,” Manacle said, drawing the stinger back further and readying to strike.
“Hold on, hold on!” Cal yelped. “Please. Just let me tell it. I made it up a few weeks ago, but couldn’t tell anyone because I knew they wouldn’t get it. It’s an Earth thing. You know? For Earth guys. Like us.”
Manacle said nothing.
“It’ll take, like, five seconds,” Cal said. “That’s all. I swear.”
Two jets of steam escaped from Manacle’s back. It sounded, Cal thought, a lot like a sigh.
“Fine. Tell your joke.”
“Seriously?” asked Cal, then he launched into it before Manacle changed his mind. “OK, OK. Here goes. Get ready.” He made a little drumroll noise with his mouth.
“Was that it?” asked Manacle. “I don’t get it.”
&
nbsp; “No. That was just the build-up,” Cal said. “Here comes the joke now. OK. Earth joke. OK. So. What do depressed Muppets do?”
Manacle gazed impassively back at him.
“I don’t know,” he said, after what felt like an age. “What do depressed Muppets do?”
“Kermit suicide!” said Cal.
Silence.
“Like, Kermit the Frog? Kermit suicide.”
The sound took Cal by surprise when it emerged from beneath Manacle’s mask. At first, he thought it was some sort of banshee cry, signaling the coming of the villain’s death-strike. But, no. He was laughing. Manacle, Enslaver of Worlds, was laughing.
“Kermit suicide!” he said, through his guffaws. “Like the puppet frog.”
“Right?” said Cal, chuckling. “I told you you’d like it.”
“I do!” Manacle confirmed. “It’s good. I’ll use that. It’ll be good for breaking the ice with people. They always find me so… intimidating.”
“It’s yours,” said Cal. “Maybe, as a reward, you could let me go.”
Manacle’s laughter died in his throat. “No. No, I’m afraid not.”
He drew back the stinger. Cal winced. Shizz. So this was how it was going to be.
The joke had bought him the time he needed. He sprang up onto his mostly-mended legs and threw himself at Manacle. Colliding with the villain’s chest was like running at a brick wall, but at least it put him too close to skewer with the stinger. Manacle stood his ground. Cal’s breath fogged up his visor as he looked up at him.
“Well, hey there, Piggy,” Cal said, in his best Kermit the Frog voice. He winked at Manacle, then he jammed a thumb against the trigger of the blaster rifle that was wedged between them, and pulled.
Thirty
Cal Carver woke up flat on his back on a comfortable bed, with the smell of banoffee pie hanging in the air.
A figure sat at the end of the bed. Solid and bulky, but female. He could think of only one person.
“Mom?” he croaked through dry, split lips. “Is that you?”
“Whatever,” the shape responded. “Ugh. Finally. Now maybe I can get out of this room.”
Miz craned her neck in the direction of the door. “He’s alive,” she said. “I mean, like, mostly. I think.”
“Miz, is that you?”
Cal blinked and tried to sit up, but the room spun around him and his inner ear politely asked him what the fonk he thought he was doing.
He lay back down again, his head sinking into the comfiest pillow it had ever come across.
“Who else would it be?” Miz asked. “Who else gets all the lame jobs, like sitting here watching you for three days doing, like, nothing at all.”
“Three days?” said Cal. “I’ve been out for three days?”
“Yeah. You were, like, ew. A real mess,” Miz said. “By the way, I brought you one of those pies you like.”
Cal managed a smile. “I thought I smelled one of those.”
“But I ate it,” Miz said. “It sucked. What do you even see in those things?”
“Good to have you back in the land of the living, sir,” said Kevin.
“Thanks, Kevin,” Cal said. He closed his eyes for a moment, then flicked them wide. “Wait! What about Splurt? Where’s Splurt?”
The pillow rippled below him. He relaxed into its embrace, closing his eyes again.
Ah. Of course.
The door slid open, and Miz immediately jumped to her feet. “Finally. Can I go now?”
“Yeah, you can go,” Mech confirmed, ducking through the doorway. “Loren wants you to go watch for trouble.”
“Ugh,” Miz snapped. “Why do I have to do everything around here?”
Cal and Mech listened to her stomping off in the direction of the bridge.
“You made her sit here for three days?” Cal asked, not yet opening his eyes.
Mech snorted. “Since when could we make that girl do anything?” he asked. “She wouldn’t leave your side this whole time. Not even to go to the bathroom.”
“Aw, that’s so sweet,” said Cal.
“Yeah, well, I suggest you don’t look at the floor in the corner of the room,” Mech said. “Ain’t so sweet over there.”
“Oh,” said Cal. He smiled. “Such a loyal dog,” he added, but quietly, in case Miz heard him. He opened one eye, leaving the other one sleeping. “What happened?”
“I guess she just squatted by the bottom of the bed—”
“No, not that. To me. With the wasps. The Moosh thing. What happened there?”
“Oh. Gotcha. I was kind of hoping you could tell me,” said Mech. “We shot up a few of the wasps, then they all just went kinda dormant. Miz eventually found you outside what was left of the control tower.”
Cal frowned with one eyebrow. “Outside?”
Mech made a weighing motion. “And inside. And sort of scattered around the immediate area.”
“Jesus,” said Cal.
“We had to scoop most of your insides up in a bucket,” Mech continued. “We didn’t know what to do with it, so we just sort of poured it back into you and hoped for the best.”
Cal felt this was worth opening both eyes for. “That’s it? That was your solution?” Cal yelped. “Pour it back in and hope for the best?”
“Worked, didn’t it?” Mech shrugged.
Cal waved a hand. “Well, I mean… I guess,” he said, then he saw the hand properly. It was his right hand. The one the gun had been jammed onto it.
“Oh, great. I have a child-sized hand again,” Cal groaned.
“That ain’t the only child-sized thing you got,” said Mech, his metal jaw curving upward at the edges.
Cal frowned. “What? What are you…?”
“Unless it was always that size, of course. I wouldn’t know.”
Cal’s eyes went wide, forming two matching circles of surprise. “No! No.”
He lifted the sheet that covered him from the chest down. His voice came out as a low murmur of horror. “Oh, dear God,” he groaned. He stared for a while longer, his face a picture of grief. “Maybe I could convince Splurt to stand in.”
“Stand in for what?” asked Loren, appearing in the doorway. Cal immediately dropped the sheet and flashed her a grin so broad it almost split both cheeks.
“Loren! Haha! Where did you come from? Look at you! Long time no see! You look great. Doesn’t she look great, Mech? Haha. Yep. Everything’s great. Everything’s fine. Nothing to worry about. Right? Right.” He swallowed. “Right.”
Loren shot Mech a sideways look.
“Don’t ask,” said Mech. He waited until Loren had come in, then ducked back out through the door. “I’d better go relieve Miz. Can’t have her doing everything around here now, can we?”
“You’re, like, way too late,” Miz hollered from the bridge.
“By the way, Zertex is so grateful for us saving all their kids, they want to give us medals,” Mech said. “You believe that? Fonking medals from Vajazzle herself. Crazy.”
“Heh,” said Cal. “Vajazzle.”
Loren gave Mech a nod, then waited until he’d left before closing the door. “Hey,” she said.
“Hey, yourself,” Cal replied.
“Feeling OK?”
“Meh. I’m on the OK Scale,” Cal replied. “Like, a five, maybe.”
Loren smiled. “Better than a four, I guess.”
“Actually, it’s worse than a four,” Cal said. “My OK Scale counts down. I think it might be broken.”
“See, now you’re just making noises again,” said Loren. The bed creaked as she sat on the edge of it. Cal shimmied over a little to make more room. It sent shockwaves of pain through his whole body.
Loren looked down at him in concern. She felt along the bed until she found his hand. It was the tiny, mostly-deformed one, but to her eternal credit, she held onto it anyway.
“I thought we’d lost you.”
“Me? Nah!” said Cal. “It’ll take more than a massive explos
ion to the lower torso to get rid of me, Teela Loren.”
Loren laughed through her nose. “Yeah. I guess so.” She squeezed his hand, just a little. Her fingers felt soft and gentle, although that may have been his infant-hand talking.
“What happened?” she asked.
“Manacle was there,” Cal said. “I convinced him I was me.”
One of Loren’s impressively dark eyebrows rose.
“The other me, I mean. Evil me.”
“Oh. And he bought it?”
Cal nodded. “Yeah. I mean, it’s true, I suppose. I’m him, he’s me. We’re the same person.”
Loren shook her head. “No. You aren’t. From what I’ve heard, you’re nothing like him.”
“Yeah. Maybe,” Cal said, although he sounded unconvinced. He propped himself up in bed a little. His pillow adjusted itself to compensate. “He didn’t buy it for long, though. Figured it out before I could get out of there. Slapped me around a little. Threw me through a selection of solid objects, then tried to impale me on a wasp stinger he grew from his arm.”
“He grew a wasp stinger?”
“Oh, yeah,” said Cal. “He’s got all kinds of tricks.”
“How did you stop him?” Loren asked.
“I told him a joke,” said Cal.
Loren blinked. “You told him a joke?”
“Yeah.”
Loren continued blinking for a little while longer. “A joke?”
“I was stalling for time,” Cal said. “So I could blow us both up.”
Loren nodded vaguely, but it was clear she was still stuck on the joke thing. “What was it?” she asked. “What was the joke?”
Cal shook his head. “You won’t get it.”
“Try me,” Loren said.
Cal told her the joke.
“You’re right,” she said, after some consideration. “I don’t get it.”
“He laughed,” Cal said. “And then, like I said, kablammo.”
Loren looked down at Cal’s tiny hand and kneaded it gently. “Well, I guess you got him,” she said. “He wasn’t there when Miz found you.”
Cal shook his head. “Yeah. Something tells me that’s not the last we’ve seen of that guy.”
He exhaled slowly. “I really fonked things up, didn’t I? This mess is all my fault.”
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