“I’m OK. I’m OK,” he said, jumping up from where he landed on the floor. He clapped his hands once, placed them so high on his hips they were practically on his ribcage, then let them flop to his side.
He shot Loren the briefest of looks, checking if she’d seen any of what just happened. Annoyingly, she had. Even more annoyingly, she looked like she was struggling not to laugh.
Fonk.
He casually crossed his arms and leaned his upper back against the wall, playing it cool.
“Uh, are you OK, man?” Mech asked.
“Fine. Totally fine. Why?”
“You’re acting kinda weird,” Mech told him.
“Maybe you’re acting weird, Mech?” Cal retorted. “Did you ever consider that?”
Mech shook his head. “No.”
“Exactly,” said Cal, sniffing triumphantly. “Agreed.”
“Agreed? What the fonk is ‘agreed’? What are you agreeing to?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Cal said. “Let’s move on. We have a problem. That girl out there is the last of the Symmorium. They’re all dead.”
Mech glanced around the kitchen. “Who the fonk are you recapping for?” he wondered. “We were both there. We know.”
“Just wanted to make sure we’re all on the same page,” Cal said. “What else do we know? She’s—and I don’t mean to sound mean here—she’s practically a vegetable.”
Loren sat on the bench across from where Cal stood. “I can’t imagine what she must have seen. What she’s been through.”
“What the fonk was she doing on that station?” Mech wondered. “It’s a long way from Symmorium space. Or what used to be Symmorium space, I guess.”
Loren snapped her fingers. “Wait. Those guards. They were looking for something. They kept asking her where it was, what she’d done with it.”
“Right. Right,” said Cal, who had been so wound up about confessing his feelings for Loren at that point that he hadn’t really been paying attention to anything else going on. “What was it again?”
Loren shrugged. “I don’t know. They didn’t say. They weren’t messing around, though, so I guess it was something important.”
Cal sucked in his cheeks while he thought. “A diamond?”
“Sorry?”
“It could’ve been a diamond. I’m just thinking of things it might have been,” Cal explained.
Loren nodded slowly. “I mean, I guess it could’ve been. Or something else.”
“Or something else,” Cal acknowledged. He realized that this would be the perfect juncture at which to say, ‘Agreed,’ but the novelty had worn off a bit, so he didn’t bother. “A diamond or something else. Let’s assume it’s one of those two.”
Mech muttered quietly, then nodded. “Sure. Let’s go with one of those. But does it matter what they were looking for? We got bigger problems. Like what the fonk we’re going to do with her.”
Cal’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “Are there orphanages in space?” he asked. “You know, like—”
“Space orphanages,” said Loren. “We get it. And yes.”
“Well, alright then,” Cal began.
“But most of them are run by Zertex,” Loren added. “And they’re the better ones.”
“Yeah,” Mech agreed. “The others ain’t so much orphanages as child labor camps.”
“She’s a sturdy girl. Besides, a little hard work never hurt anyone,” said Cal, but the expression on his face contradicted the words coming out of his mouth. He sighed. “OK, so it’s a no to the space orphanages. She has no family that we know of. I doubt she has any friends because, you know, she’s a genuinely unpleasant person…”
“We could keep her,” Mech suggested.
“She’s not a stray puppy, Mech. We can’t just keep her,” Cal said.
“I didn’t mean like a fonking pet. I meant, I don’t know, maybe she could stay with us. We could look after her.”
“We can barely look after ourselves,” Cal reminded him. He pointed out into the corridor. “And did you see her? She’s nuts.”
“She’s suffered a trauma,” Loren said. “I think it’s some kind of shock.”
“Exactly. And now she’s nuts,” Cal said. “Unless either of you has some kind of PhD in Symmorium Psychiatry you’ve never thought to bring up, she needs a lot more help than we can give her.”
Mech grunted begrudgingly. “You may have a point.”
Cal sat on the bench opposite Loren, caught himself reaching for his pie, then pushed it away again. “So, what do we do with her? What do we do with the last Symmorium in the universe?”
Kevin’s voice emerged from the ceiling. “There is, of course, a more pressing matter, sir.”
Cal and the others all looked up. “Fonk, what now?” Cal groaned. “Is the ship on fire? Have we flown into a black hole?”
“Not that I’m aware of, sir.”
That was something, at least. Cal looked up. “Then what?”
“How did it go?”
“How did what go?”
“You know,” said Kevin. “The…” He made a sound like someone whistling quietly through their teeth. Which was impressive, considering his complete lack of teeth. Or, for that matter, mouth.
Cal flicked his eyes to the others. They both looked equally as confused as he felt.
“The what?”
“The…” Kevin made a coughing sound. “The old… you know.”
Cal closed his eyes. “Kevin, what the fonk are you talking about?”
“The date, sir. How was the big date?”
Mech frowned. “The what?”
“They were on a date, sir,” Kevin gushed, with teenage-girl levels of breathless enthusiasm. “Master Cal and Mistress Loren.”
“It wasn’t a date!” Loren protested.
“No, it definitely wasn’t… Well, it was kind of a date,” Cal said, then he caught Loren’s look and hurriedly backpedaled. “But not, like, a date date, obviously. It wasn’t a date date.”
“Are you sure?” asked Kevin. “Because I distinctly recall you saying it was a date when you were running through your speech, sir.”
Loren raised an eyebrow. A beautiful, perfect eyebrow.
“Speech?”
“What? No. Haha! What? It wasn’t a speech,” Cal said, jumping up. He snorted out a laugh, rolled his eyes, then shook his head and made a tutting sound for quite a long time. “Speech!” he chuckled, after a while. “No. Uh-uh. I don’t know what he’s talking about.”
“I could replay it for you, if you’d like, sir,” Kevin said. “I recorded the whole thing.”
“No! Kevin, shut the fonk up,” Cal yelped. “Delete that recording. That’s an order.”
“Very good, sir,” Kevin replied. There was a pause, then he said, “Beep.”
Cal glared up at the ceiling. “Did you actually delete it, or did you just go ‘beep’?”
“Yes.”
“To which one?” Cal demanded.
There was a pause. Kevin’s voice, when it came, was a slightly mysterious whisper.
“Beep.”
Before Cal could probe any further, a metal hand clamped on his shoulder. He turned to find Mech grinning at him. The cyborg’s other hand was on Loren’s shoulder. His neck whirred as he looked back and forth between them.
“So, look at you two lovebirds,” he said. “Man, if I had a heart, it would be warming up like a motherfonker right now.”
“That’s not… It’s not like that,” Loren insisted.
Cal’s head movements tried to agree and disagree at the same time, which resulted in it drawing a vague oblong shape in the air. “Exactly. It’s not like that,” he said.
“They did kiss, though,” said Kevin.
Mech’s eyes blazed with delight. His grin widened. “They did?”
“Yes, sir. I was watching.”
“You were fonking watching?!” Loren spluttered.
“He watches everything,” said Cal.
“But I watched that with particular interest,” Kevin added. “I watched that very closely.”
“OK, now you’re just making it sound creepy,” Cal said, looking up. “I was trying to help you out there, buddy, and you blew it.”
Kevin hesitated. Then:
“Beeeep.”
Mech squeezed Cal’s shoulder. It fonking hurt.
“Well this is exciting,” he said, his grin growing as he watched them both wriggle uncomfortably. “You two. Dating.” He gave a little shudder of delight. “I mean, there ain’t no way this can possibly go wrong.”
“We’re not dating. It was one date,” said Loren. She winced. “And it wasn’t even a date.”
“Not a date date,” Cal agreed. He realized his head was still drawing circles in the air, and forced it to stop. “But, listen, you can’t tell Miz, OK?”
“Fonk, no. Don’t tell Miz,” said Loren.
Mech snorted. “Yeah, like I want to be the one to have that fonking conversation.”
Cal smiled weakly. “I mean, she’ll be fine with it. She’ll be totally fine with it,” he said. “But for the love of God, don’t tell her under any circumstances.”
“I ain’t gonna say a word,” Mech said. “But she’ll find out. You know she’ll find out.”
“She won’t,” said Loren. “There’s nothing to find out.”
There was a sound from over by the kitchen door, making all three of them freeze. Their eyes were the only parts that remained moving. Their eyes all darted between each other, panic growing behind them.
At last, Cal cleared his throat and spoke. “Miz, honey? Is that you?”
The reply, when it came, was flat and measured, and dropped the temperature in the kitchen by a full degree. “The kid’s acting weird,” she said. “You’d better come and see.”
“Uh, sure. We’ll be right there,” Cal said.
They all listened as she thumped off along the corridor, then jumped when she slammed the door to the bridge shut behind her. Considering that the door was of the automatic sliding variety, this did not bode well.
“You think she heard any of that?” Cal whispered.
“I think she heard all of that,” replied Mech, releasing his grip on their shoulders.
Loren looked over at the open door. “Poor Miz.”
“Never mind, ‘poor Miz,’” said Cal. “Poor us. She’ll fonking kill us.”
A splintering sound from the kitchen cupboard interrupted the flow of conversation. Cal, Loren, and Mech watched in silence as a gooey green blob shot through the cupboard door, rolled in a wide circle around them, then returned via the same hole to its original starting point.
They waited to see if Splurt was going to do anything else, then eventually decided that he wasn’t.
Cal exhaled slowly. “I don’t even have the headspace right now to wonder what that was about,” he muttered.
He smoothed down his shirt, ran his fingers through his hair, then kicked off his one remaining boot in case he had to make a run for it. All that taken care of, he took a deep breath, squared his shoulders, and aimed himself at the door.
“Right, then,” he announced. “Let’s go do this.”
Seven
Mizette’s hurt feelings, it turned out, weren’t the most pressing problem on the bridge.
It had taken Mech a couple of solid tugs to get the door open, then he had stood there staring in wonder, completely blocking the view of Loren and Cal behind him.
Once he’d eventually stepped through into the bridge, making room for the others to follow, all three of them had stopped again.
“I thought you said she was acting weird,” Cal whispered.
Miz, who was slouching in her chair and scowling at the rest of the ship in general, gave a little grunt. “Yeah. And she is.”
“She’s floating,” Cal pointed out.
Miz’s eyes flicked to the middle of the room, where Tyrra was levitating three feet off the floor, her head lulling forward, her arms outstretched like some kind of shark-faced-space-Christ.
“And what? You’re saying that isn’t weird?” Miz said.
“Oh, no. I mean, it’s definitely weird,” Cal said, side-stepping cautiously around Tyrra, keeping as much distance from her as possible. “It’s just… It’s more weird than I was expecting, I guess. I thought she was maybe, like… I don’t know. Singing, or something.”
Miz’s scowl deepened. “Why would she be singing?”
“Why would she be fonking floating?” Cal countered.
“I don’t know. That’s why I came to get you,” Miz said. Her eyes went from Cal to Loren and her expression became one of utter contempt, then she tutted and turned her chair to face the viewscreen, and the glittering trails of the onrushing stars.
Cal opened his mouth to say something to her, but Loren caught his eye and shook her head. He wrestled with himself for a moment, then nodded in agreement.
“Mech, what are your scanner doohickeys telling you?”
Mech took a couple of steps forward, consulting the readouts on the sensor panel in his arm. Cal took the opportunity to stand close behind him, using the cyborg as a giant not-quite-human shield.
“I ain’t getting much,” Mech said. “Besides the fact that she’s floating, which we can all see.”
“Is she conscious?” asked Loren. She was also keeping her distance, but squatted down to get a better look at Tyrra’s face. “Her eyes are closed.”
Cal tapped Mech on the arm. “Try waking her up.”
“What? No. You try waking her up,” Mech said.
“You’re closer,” Cal argued.
“I ain’t waking her up,” Mech said. He shifted on his huge feet. “Anyway, ain’t it supposed to be dangerous?”
“That’s sleepwalking,” Cal said. “She’s sleepfloating. It’s a totally different thing. Just wake her up.”
“You fonking wake her up!”
Cal sighed. “Jesus, she’s a little girl. Don’t be such a coward.”
“Man, you are literally cowering behind me right now,” Mech pointed out. “I ain’t the one who’s scared here.”
“I’m not scared,” Cal said, snorting incredulously at the suggestion. “Fine. Know what? That’s just fine,” he said, stepping out from the cyborg’s shadow. “I’m not scared of… whatever Exorcist shizz is happening here.”
He shuffled incrementally closer to Tyrra, and decided that this was quite close enough. Her body was trembling as if the effort of staying aloft was taking its toll.
Cal looked around at Loren. She nodded encouragingly.
“Right, then,” he muttered, then he ducked a little lower so he could look her in the face. “Uh, Tyrra? Honey? You OK?”
He waited for a response.
“Hello?” he said, trying again. “Wake up, sweetheart, you’re hovering.”
A thought struck him and he straightened. “Are we sure the Symmorium don’t all hover when they sleep?”
“We’re sure, sir,” said Kevin. “This is really rather unusual.”
“You can say that again,” whispered Loren.
Cal sucked in his bottom lip, then clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth a few times. “OK, I have a plan,” he announced. “Mech. Nudge her.”
“That’s your fonking plan?” Mech snapped.
“Well, can you think of a better one?” He cupped a hand around his mouth. “Tyrra! Wake up!” he barked. “See? Nothing. You have to nudge her. It’s the only way.”
“You nudge her.”
“Oh, for Kroysh’s sake,” Loren muttered, storming past them. She stopped directly in front of the floating girl, looked her over, then placed a hand on her shoulder. “Hey. Tyrra,” she said, giving the shoulder a little shake.
Tyrra’s eyes snapped open so suddenly that Cal and Mech collided with one another as they both jumped back.
“Jesus!” Cal shrieked. He placed his hands on his thighs and breathed, composing himself. “She almost gave me a
fonking heart attack.”
He realized that Mech had raised one of his arms to blast the girl to pieces, and slapped him on it. “Put that thing away.”
Mech quickly dropped his arm. “Uh, instinctive response,” he explained.
“That’s your instinctive response to a little girl opening her eyes, sir?” asked Kevin. “Shoot her in the face?”
“I didn’t shoot her in her fonking face,” Mech pointed out. “I didn’t shoot her in her anything.”
Cal raised an eyebrow. “And if Loren hadn’t been standing in front of her?”
Mech’s jaw creaked, but he said nothing. Cal rocked on his heels.
“I thought so.” He patted Mech on the back. “It’s OK, big guy, we all panic sometimes. Even me.”
“Oh, you mean like right then when you screamed and said you were having a heart attack?” Mech snapped.
“Almost having a heart attack, Mech. Almost,” Cal clarified.
“And if you didn’t have those healing abilities you have?”
Cal’s jaw creaked.
“Touché,” he said, then they both turned their attention to Loren and Tyrra.
Tyrra continued to float in the air. Loren was still in front of her but had removed the hand from the girl’s shoulder. It was raised slightly in front of her, held between them like a defensive barrier, ready to throw itself into action if the need arose.
“Well?” Cal whispered to her.
Loren half-turned. “Well, what?”
“Is she awake?”
“I don’t know,” Loren admitted.
“Well, her eyes are open,” Cal pointed out. “Do this.”
He raised a hand and made a frantic waving motion. “Do this in front of her face.”
Loren did that in front of her face.
“Anything?” asked Cal.
“You’re looking at her exactly the same as I am,” Loren said. “No, she didn’t react.”
“Damn it, that usually always works,” Cal tutted.
“This is weird, man,” Mech whispered. “This shizz is creepy.”
“It’s not ‘creepy,’” Cal said. “It’s just a floating child. OK? Just a regular, everyday floating child who may or may not be possessed by space Satan.”
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