“Our fault,” Loren corrected. “Whatever we did, we did it together. And we’ll deal with it together.”
Cal smiled up at her. It wasn’t one of his well-rehearsed ones, but it was honest. Painfully, brutally honest. “I’m going to hold you to that,” he said.
And then, before he could say anything else, she leaned over, and her lips were on his. Warm. Smooth. Tasting faintly of banoffee pie.
Jesus, had they all been eating it?
She pulled away as quickly as she’d leaned in, brushed a strand of hair back over her ear, then jumped to her feet as if the bed was suddenly made of lava.
“Sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have done that.”
“No. I mean, yes. I mean, no, don’t be sorry!” Cal said.
“I just, I thought I’d lost you—we’d lost you, and… I didn’t…” She glanced up to the ceiling, composed herself, then looked back at Cal. “I’m not great at this sort of thing,” she said. “So, I’m going to go. For now. Just for now.”
“So, you’re coming back?”
Loren tapped the button that opened the door. She stood there in the doorway for a moment, her back to him, then she glanced back over her shoulder and smiled.
“We’ll see.”
And with that, she was gone.
The door closed. Cal sighed in the suddenly empty room.
“Damn my child-sized penis.”
Kevin erupted in gales of laughter.
“Jesus, Kevin. Do you mind?” Cal demanded, suddenly remembering the ever-present AI. “You couldn’t have given us a little privacy?”
“Sorry, sir, it’s just… Kermit suicide!” Kevin guffawed. “I’ll be honest, I didn’t understand it at first, so I cross-referenced all the words of the joke with various Earth databases, and now it makes perfect sense. Kermit suicide. It really is very clever.”
Cal wriggled down in the bed, and his pillow oozed into place beneath him. It was soft, yet firm, comfortable, yet supportive. The perfect pillow.
“Thanks, buddy,” he said, and the pillow undulated briefly beneath his head.
Cal closed his eyes and exhaled slowly. He’d messed up the whole galaxy and handed the reins of power to Lady Vajazzle.
He’d turned a happy-go-lucky kid into a dead genocidal monster, and almost certainly got on the bad side of a living genocidal monster by trying to blow him to pieces.
More importantly, he had a penis the size of a pinkie nail.
And yet, as he lay there on his bed, in his room, with his best friend cradling his neck, and the galaxy swooshing by outside, Cal Carver suspected—no, not suspected, he knew, more than anything—that everything was going to work out just fine.
Unfortunately, on this occasion, he was wrong.
THE END
Space Team: Sentienced to Death
One
The last few months hadn’t been easy for Cal Carver. In fact, it would not be an exaggeration to say they had been bordering on difficult.
This tricky period had started with him being sent to prison, and ended with him being blown to bits and having his guts poured back into him by a robot with a bucket. In between, he’d been tortured, shot, repeatedly stung in the face by mutant wasps, and had almost choked to death on a squirrel’s tits.
Add in all the running, violent travel sickness, the giant spider-dragon, and a liberal sprinkling of semi-naked cannibals, and Cal felt comfortable describing the last dozen or so weeks as ‘trying’.
And that didn’t even include the time travel, dimension-hopping, or that time he spent fifty years trapped in a single second on a cruise ship surrounded by monsters.
Fonking Smashdown Day.
Still, challenging as all that had been, it was nothing compared to the situation he found himself in now. Give him the spider-dragon, any day.
Not so much the squirrel’s tits.
“So…” said Loren, the candlelight flickering across her pale blue skin. She left the word hanging in the air, not quite a question but something close to one.
Cal smiled across the compact table. He had selected one of his most suave and charming smiles, but for some reason, it came across as a little boggle-eyed and manic. He could feel it, too. He knew it wasn’t right, and yet he couldn’t for the life of him work out which parts were wrong.
His hands were sweaty. He started to rub them on his thighs to dry them off, and it wasn’t until Loren’s eyes flicked down that he realized quite how vigorous the rubbing motion was.
He stopped, looked briefly frightened, then clasped both hands on the table in front of him between the slim metal implements he was going to go ahead and assume were a type of space cutlery he’d never encountered before.
“It’s hot in here,” he said, by way of explanation for the thigh thing. He said it quite loudly to compensate for the background noise of the restaurant, but the other diners had elected unanimously to fall into a conversational lull at that very moment, meaning ‘quite loudly’ became ‘too loudly,’ and he essentially shouted the words into Loren’s startled face.
Her brow furrowed a fraction and she bit one side of her bottom lip.
Fonk, she was beautiful. This was not news, exactly—he’d known it since the first time he’d clapped eyes on her—and yet the realization hit him like a sucker-punch from Mech. Considering that Mech was an enormous angry cyborg built almost exclusively for punching things, this was really saying something.
“Are you OK?” she asked. “You seem kind of… weird.”
“How weird!” said Cal, then he visibly flinched. He had meant it as a question, but it had come out as an exclamation. It had also come out sounding a little bit camp, now that he replayed it in his head, and the words were supposed to be in completely the opposite order.
Fonk.
This was all her fault. She’d kissed him. That was what had done it.
Before the kiss, everything had been fine. He’d been able to talk to her without any problem. He’d been able to look at her without thinking about her lips on his, been able to touch her without imagining some fantasy far-off future together where they owned a space ice-cream parlor, and pretended to grudge the freebies they handed out to their space grandchildren, Mikey, Mouth, Data, Chunk, and good old cousin Sloth.
Yes, it was quite a specific fantasy.
And yes, he’d make sure their grandchildren were named after the principal characters in The Goonies, even if it was the last thing he ever did.
She raised her dark eyebrows. Cal’s stomach twisted in anxious knots. Yes, the spluttering, stuttering buffoon he had become was definitely all her fault.
He pulled himself together and tried the response again.
“Weird how?”
That was better. With any luck, she wouldn’t even notice.
He smiled.
At least, he hoped that was what he was doing. It was becoming hard to tell.
He realized he was rubbing his hands on his thighs again, let out a little, “Blurm!” sound in surprise, and returned them to the tabletop with enough of a thump to rattle the empty wine glasses.
Loren reached over, crossing the divide between them. Her hand felt simultaneously warm and cool when she placed it on his. He wasn’t sure how that was even possible, but he went with it.
“Should we not do this?” she asked. “Was this a bad idea?”
“No!” Cal ejected. He yanked his hands away, accidentally elbowed the head of a little green man at the table behind him, then spent several seconds offering his sincere apologies.
When he turned back, Loren continued to lean forward, her hand still on the table but just starting to withdraw. Cal pounced on it like a tiger on a luckless gazelle, pinning it to the tabletop.
“Wait!”
Loren eyed him warily. It was the sort of look you gave someone during the early stages of a nervous breakdown. It was a look that said, ‘I should probably get them help,’ while simultaneously acknowledging that to do so would involve quite
a lot of work and general upheaval, and maybe all they needed was a strong cup of coffee and a nice sit-down.
Cal relaxed his grip so that he was holding Loren’s hand, as opposed to smushing it firmly into the wood of the table. She looked back at him, eyes wide and worried, head cocked just a fraction to one side.
Fonk. She was beautiful.
“Cal, what’s wrong?” she asked him.
Cal took a deep breath. He’d had the whole speech worked out. He’d gone over it twice—once in front of the mirror, and once in front of Splurt. He’d killed it both times, and that was despite the ongoing commentary from Kevin, the ship’s AI, and the fact that Splurt had inexplicably taken it upon himself to turn into a child’s shoe somewhere near the middle part.
He took another deep breath, because the first one hadn’t really helped. She gave his hand a squeeze. He could do this. He could do it.
“Well,” he began.
“Drinks?”
Cal blinked. Something orange and multi-limbed stood by the table, all six hands clasped lightly in front of a spotless white apron. He—Cal was confident it was a he—smiled expectantly at them both in turn, two little gills opening and closing on the sides of his neck.
The question had been simple enough, but it had caught Cal off-guard, and he had no idea what the man was asking.
“Huh?” he said.
“Drinks,” the waiter repeated. “Would-you like-a something to-a drink?”
His voice had an odd sing-song quality to it, with the words all huddling together in little groups, and an accent that immediately made Cal think of the chef from The Muppets.
Drinks. Yes. He very much did want something to drink. Sure, the interruption hadn’t come at the best possible time, but a couple of shots of alcohol would help him relax.
“Uh, yeah,” he said. “Do you have, like, a beer?”
“A bear?” asked the waiter, his smile faltering just a fraction.
“What? No,” said Cal. “Beer.”
“Bear.”
Cal glanced across to Loren. She was studying the weirdly transparent menu that Cal felt was trying a bit too hard to be ‘spacey,’ and so offered him no help.
“No, not bear. Beer. B-E-E.”
“Bees?” said the waiter, his smile falling even further. “You-wish to drink-a bees?”
“No. Not bees. Why the fonk would…?” Cal sighed. “R. B-E-E-R. You know, like…”
He mimed sipping from a large glass.
“Drinks. Yes. Would-you like-a something to-a drink?” asked the waiter. He was back on more comfortable territory now, and his smile returned to its former glory.
“We’ll take a bottle of the Acclusian Noribenger,” said Loren, raising her eyes from the menu.
The waiter nodded his approval. “An-a excellent-choice,” he said. Two of his hands produced a notebook and pencil and scribbled briefly. “Large or-small?”
Loren glanced across the table to Cal. “Better make it the large.”
The pencil scribbled.
“Red or green?”
“Cal?”
Cal stared back at her like a rabbit caught in headlights. “Hmm?”
“Red or green?”
Cal knew what those words meant, of course. He just couldn’t quite fathom out what was being asked of him, or what they meant in this particular context. He decided to play it safe and just pick one, assuming there was no wrong answer.
He opened his mouth. No words came out.
Fonk. He couldn’t pick. Red or green? Red or green what? What did ‘Acclusian Noribenger’ mean? What did anything mean?
Loren and the waiter both watched him, expectantly. Fonk it. He was going bold.
“Can we get a mixture of the two?” he asked.
Loren and the waiter exchanged slightly troubled glances.
“Well, that-would be-a brown, sir,” said the waiter. “Also, it-would get us-a shut down by-the authorities.”
Cal winced, feeling stupid. “Oh.”
“And-the vapors would-a kill everybody in-the room,” the waiter finished.
“Fonk. OK. Let’s not go for the brown,” said Cal.
This was stupid. He could choose. There were only two options. How hard could it be? He made a decision.
Then he changed his mind mid-way through saying it.
“Gred.”
Fonk.
“We’ll take the green,” said Loren, saving him from further embarrassment.
Cal clicked his tongue against the back of his teeth and nodded knowledgeably. “Yes. Excellent choice. Green. Perfect.”
The pencil scribbled on the pad again. The waiter gave a nod. “I will-go and a-get that for-you.”
He glided off. Cal glanced around the restaurant for a moment, not yet able to meet Loren’s eye. The place was decently sized, but completely packed, with tables all crammed closely together. The flickering candlelight lent it a romantic atmosphere, aided enormously by the vista of stars and moons visible through the space station’s huge porthole windows.
At last, Cal looked at Loren. She was smiling quizzically at him. He sucked in his third deep breath of the hour, and launched into it.
“So—”
“Foaming or-a putrid?”
Cal looked up into the smiling face of the waiter.
“What?”
“I forgot-to ask. The Acclusian Noribenger. Foaming or-a putrid?”
Cal pulled a face. “Putrid?”
The waiter looked a little taken aback. Perhaps even slightly impressed. The pencil scribbled briefly. “As-you wish, sir.”
“Wait, no! That wasn’t my choice,” said Cal. “I don’t want putrid.”
“You don’t?”
“No! Of course I don’t.”
“But-you said ‘putrid.’”
“Well yes, I said ‘putrid,’ but I meant it like, ‘Holy shizz, putrid?!’ You know? Not like, ‘I think we’ll have the putrid.’ Obviously, we’re not having the putrid.”
He glanced across the table to Loren. “We’re not having the putrid, are we?”
Loren shook her head. Cal exhaled.
“Thank fonk for that.” He looked back at the waiter. “We’ll have the foamy.”
“Foaming,” the waiter corrected.
“Now you’re just splitting hairs,” Cal replied. He gestured to the notepad. “Just do me a favor and scribble the thing in the thing, then fonk off. Thank you.”
The pencil drew a couple of firm lines in the book, then added a note. “Very-good,” said the waiter through slightly gritted teeth. He nodded as he retreated.
Cal steeled himself. He scraped together a smile that he hoped didn’t look all the way demented and aimed it in Loren’s direction.
“Anyway—”
“By the-way, my name is-a Hubert,” said the waiter. “And I-will be-a serving you this-evening.”
Cal sighed. “Jesus, Hubert, do you mind? We’re trying to have a conversation here.”
Hubert’s face betrayed no emotion, but his gills jammed all the way open for several awkward seconds.
At last, he bowed and backed away, steering himself backward through the maze of narrow tables with the effortlessness of someone who has done it too many times before.
Cal started to draw in another deep breath, decided he was on the brink of coming across as some sort of heavy-breathing sex pest, and stopped. He was just going to say it. He was just going to speak aloud the words that were in his head. He’d probably play down the bit about the space grandkids and cousin Sloth, but the rest of it he would just tell her. He’d say it aloud, they’d fall into one another’s arms, and they’d live happily ever after. Easy.
In fact, he’d been planning on building up to the big finale, but he was going to go ahead and lead with it. That’d make up for the past few minutes of humiliation and bumbling indecision. He was just going to hit her with those three little words.
His chair creaked faintly as he leaned forward.
F
onk! Yes! This was it! He was doing it. This was happening. He took a deep breath, to hell with the consequences.
“Loren, I lov—"
“I’m shouldn’t have kissed you,” Loren told him.
Cal snapped his teeth on the rest of his sentence before it could escape. He swallowed a couple of times before speaking. “Hm?” he said.
Shizz. That came out far too high. And through his nose. He switched to damage limitation mode.
“I mean, yeah. That’s what I was going to say,” he lied, his voice becoming so low it resonated inside the glasses on the table as a droning hum.
“You were?” Loren asked.
“God, yes,” said Cal, settling his voice to a pitch that wasn’t quite his usual one, but would have to do for now. “That’s exactly what I was going to say.”
“It was?” asked Loren. “Why?”
“Why?” Cal snorted. “Why!”
Why? Shizz. He had no idea why. The truth was, he fundamentally disagreed on every level with what Loren was saying. She one-hundred percent should have kissed him. Hell, he should’ve kissed her months ago. It was right. It was perfect.
“It just felt wrong,” Cal said.
No, no, no, no! What was he saying? This wasn’t the plan.
Loren seemed to shrink, just a fraction. “It did?” she said, then she straightened. “I mean, yes. It did. Just wrong.”
“So wrong,” Cal agreed.
He tapped his finger on the tabletop a few times. “So very wrong.”
Loren nodded in that efficient way of hers. It was a military nod, Cal thought—a curt snapping forward of the head that signified that she concurred. It was a nod that wasted nothing.
Fonk. She was beautiful.
“You and me… like that…” she said, waving vaguely with one perfect hand. “It would just be…”
“Weird,” Cal said, his own head bobbing inefficiently in agreement. “I mean, weird can be good, but… No.” He shuddered in revulsion. “Eugh.”
Eugh?! Why the fonk had he said eugh?! He didn’t mean eugh. He meant the opposite of eugh. And as for the shudder of disgust…
“Exactly,” Loren agreed. “Plus, you know, Miz might be upset.”
“Right. Right,” said Cal. He was still nodding, he realized, but he couldn’t quite work out how to stop. “I mean, I’m sure she’d be fine with it, I’m pretty sure she doesn’t like me in that way anymore, but… Yeah. Exactly. Poor Miz.”
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