“No, sir.”
“No?!” Cal spluttered. “What do you mean, ‘no’?!”
Kevin hesitated. “Well, you know the word, ‘Yes,’ sir…?”
“I mean why don’t we have shields? Give us shields.”
“Forget the engines, sir?”
“Do both!” Cal yelped.
“Both engines?”
“Jesus Christ, Kevin,” Cal cried, clamping his hands on either side of his head. “I mean fix both the engines and the shields!”
“How many hands do you think I have, sir?” Kevin asked him. “It’s none, by the way, in case you were wondering. Which, if you ask me, makes the fact that I’m repairing anything even more impressive.”
“More ships incoming,” Loren warned, as three more flashes illuminated the frosted screen. “All locking on.”
Mech hurried for the exit in a chorus of rattling clanks. “Kevin, keep working on the engines,” he instructed. “I’ll go see what I can do about the shields.”
He jabbed a finger at Cal on the way past. “Buy us some time.”
“Buy you some time.” Cal nodded. “That, I can do.”
As Mech left the room, Cal pointed to Loren. “Hail them,” he said. “Put in a call to the lead ship.”
Loren glanced back at the glowing green orb hanging in the air. “What about the Sentience? We should hide it before they see.”
“Good point,” said Cal. “Uh, Sentience. Can you hide somewhere? Preferably somewhere that isn’t inside anyone’s digestive tract?”
The Sentience didn’t move. Its voice failed to make itself heard inside their heads.
“Hello?” Cal said. He waved a hand in front of the ball, just as he’d instructed Loren to do with Tyrra. The Sentience didn’t respond.
“Shizz, its batteries must be running low,” Cal groaned. Tentatively, he placed a hand on the orb, then hissed and drew back as a jolt of energy buzzed up his arm. “Fonk. No, that’s not going to work,” he said.
“They’re hailing us,” Loren said. “They’re saying we have ten seconds to respond, or they’ll blow us up.”
“Fonk, fonk, fonk. OK, think,” said Cal, looking around. “Hide it. How do I hide it?”
A thought struck him with such force he let out an involuntary yelp of surprise. Wrenching off his shirt, he draped it over the Symmorium Sentience, covering it completely. Its glow was still faintly visible through the dark material of the shirt, but it would have to do.
Cal casually leaned an elbow on the inexplicably hovering garment, smiled warmly at the viewscreen, then gave a nod.
“OK. Patch them through.”
“That’s it?” Loren hissed. “That’s how you’re hiding it?”
“Well, do you have any better ideas?” Cal demanded. “Because I’m all fonking ears!”
Loren’s eyes darted briefly around the bridge, then she sighed and faced front. “OK, here goes.”
At the flick of a switch, the screen changed. Quite what it changed to, exactly, was hard to tell, thanks to the layer of moisture vapor that still covered it.
Cal could make out the shape of what he could tell was a person, probably male, wearing something red. Beyond that, it was anyone’s guess. It might’ve been a Zertex officer, but then it just as easily might have been Santa Claus. There was no way to tell for sure.
“Unidentified vessel,” the voice boomed.
Cal cut it off before it could go any further.
“Wait. Wait. Hold up, we’ve got a bit of a tech situation going on here,” he explained. “Give us a second.”
“What’s wrong with your screen?” the voice demanded. It had a sneering, officious sort of tone that at once made Cal dislike the owner of it, and stirred some distant memory tucked away at the back of his brain.
“What makes you assume it’s our screen that’s the problem?” asked Cal. “Maybe it’s yours.”
“You just said you had a tech situation,” the voice pointed out.
Cal hesitated. “Oh. Yeah. OK, then that’s fair, I guess.” He looked up. “Kevin, can we turn on the defroster?”
“The what, sir?”
“The defroster. For the windshield,” Cal said. He looked to Loren for support. “We have a defroster, right? You know, the blowy thing?” He made a sound like a car defroster to help convey what he meant.
“It’s not a windshield,” Loren explained. “And no.”
“Shizz, seriously?” said Cal. “OK, so, then I don’t know what to do.”
“What’s happening there?” the shape on screen demanded. “Who am I speaking to?”
“Just hold your space horses. We’ll be right there,” Cal said. He gestured to Loren. “You’ll just have to give it a wipe.”
Loren turned and opened her mouth to object, but decided it wasn’t worth the bother. With a huff of indignation, she got to her feet, walked over to the screen, and began to wipe off the moisture.
“Not with your hand. Jesus, you’re just smearing it around,” Cal said. “Use your sleeve.”
Loren muttered something too quietly for him to hear, then pulled her sleeve up over her wrist and continued wiping. As she did, the blurry red garment came into focus, revealing a Zertex officer’s dress uniform.
Cal counted the officer’s medals. This helped stop him from focusing exclusively on Loren’s ass as she stretched to reach the screen. They were nice medals, he thought. Shiny. Beautifully curved, and so damn pert. Man, he’d love to…
Shizz.
He flicked his eyes back to the medals. Loren had cleared a six foot by six foot area of the screen, which was all she could reach without the aid of a stepladder. She turned, shrugged at Cal in what he felt was quite a confrontational sort of way, then returned to her chair.
“Great. Thanks. Now I can see the center of his chest. Perfect,” Cal told her. “That’s the only part I wanted.”
Loren glared at him, then tapped a series of controls. The image on screen reduced in scale until it fit the area she had cleared, albeit slightly squashed so the person on the feed looked weirdly stunted and fat.
Even out of proportion, though, Cal knew that face. The blue skin. The thick eyebrows. The way the nostrils curved up as if something had taken a shizz on the man’s top lip, and his nose was trying to keep its distance.
It was the face of a man Cal had killed. Twice.
At least, he’d killed him once and had tried to kill him again quite recently. He’d thought he’d succeeded, but the fact that the guy was glaring back at them from the viewscreen now suggested the mission hadn’t been quite the success he’d thought it had.
Loren let out a gasp of shock. “Oh fonk,” she whispered. “You have got to be kidding.”
Nine
Loren stared in horror at the face on the screen. “Legate Jjin,” she whispered, which was a relief to Cal, because while he remembered the bamston’s face all too well, his name had completely escaped him.
Jjin looked down at Loren, but no recognition registered on his face, and he soon drew his eyes back in Cal’s direction.
“Legate Jjin,” Cal echoed, with an air of confidence that suggested he’d known his name all along. “As I live and breathe. I heard you were dead.”
Most of Jjin’s face remained fixed in his usual mask of indignation, but his nostrils flared to their very limits as he looked Cal up and down.
“What is this?” he demanded.
“What’s what?” Cal asked. He looked down at himself, following Jjin’s gaze, and suddenly remembered he was topless and leaning on a faintly glowing shirt that was hanging in mid-air.
“Oh, this,” Cal said, trying his best to look nonchalant about the whole thing. “It’s, uh, it’s not what it looks like.”
Jjin’s eyebrows met in the middle, like two fat caterpillars about to have a fight. “What does it look like?”
Cal thought for a moment. “I don’t know. But whatever it looks like, it’s not that.”
Jjin gave him another w
ithering up-down once-over, then looked him fully in the eye for the first time. Recognition crept across his face like sunset shadows across a desert floor.
“You. It’s you.”
“It’s me, alright,” Cal confirmed.
“The assassin,” Jjin spat. “You murdered the president.”
Cal winced. “Don’t you think ‘murdered’ is a little harsh? I mean, technically it’s correct, yes, but it just sounds a little…” He shuddered. “You know? Like kind of…” He shuddered again, sticking his tongue out this time and flapping it in distaste. “Right? Can’t we stick with ‘assassinated’? Or even just ‘killed’? I’m happy with ‘killed.’”
“You shot me,” Jjin continued. “EDI scum, you shot me!”
“Again, technically correct, but how about we say I projected an energy blast in your direction? ‘Shot’ just sounds a little…” He began to shudder again, but a roar from Jjin cut it short.
“SILENCE!” the Legate demanded, flecks of foam forming at the corners of his mouth. “You murdered the president of Zertex. You maimed a high-ranking commanding officer.”
“Hold up! No, I didn’t do that one,” Cal objected.
“I meant me,” Jjin hissed.
Cal held up his hands. “Gotcha. OK, yeah, I did that one,” he admitted.
“And I assume you were behind the attack on the Academy,” Jjin concluded. “You filthy EDI scum.”
Cal shook his head. “Now, hold on. We saved the Academy. Lady Vajazzle wanted to give us a medal. Or, you know, so we heard,” he said. “And we’re not with the EDI.”
“Lies!” Jjin hissed. “I’ve seen the pictures and vid-feeds of you. We all have. You’re their glorious poster boy. You’re Cal Carver, their great conquering war hero.” He gave Cal another up-and-down glare, making no attempt to hide his distaste. “You’re supposed to be dead.”
“Yeah, well so are you, pal, so…” He reached for a clever conclusion he could draw, or some snappy quip to finish on, but failed to find one “…there. Also, I know you can’t see it, but on this screen, you look about four-feet-tall and morbidly obese. So, I guess the joke’s on you.”
He rocked back on his heels. That had shown him.
“You are in possession of the Symmorium girl,” Jjin said. “You will hand her over, then we will destroy you.”
Cal’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t you mean or you’ll destroy us?” he asked. “Hand her over or you’ll destroy us.”
“No, not or,” said Jjin, speaking slowly, as if to a child. “Then. Hand her over, then we will destroy you.”
Cal smirked. “Not sure you’ve got the hang of the whole negotiation thing there, Jjin. See, if you’re going to destroy us anyway, then why would we hand the girl over?”
“So that she might live,” Jjin said. “Even though you will not.”
“Oh,” said Cal. “Right.”
“I presume you do not wish her death on your conscience?” Jjin continued.
“Well, no, but—”
“You would rather she not die in vain?”
“Well, yes, but—” Cal sucked air in through his teeth. “I mean, I have to hand it to you, Jjin, as negotiation strategies go, I guess it does kind of make sense.”
“Don’t flatter yourself,” said Jjin. “This is not a negotiation. You will do as I say, and then you will die. That is the entirety of it.”
“Can we have twenty minutes to think about it?” Cal asked.
“No.”
Damn it. Worth a try.
“Can we have five minutes to think about it?”
“You can have three minutes to arrange the handover,” Jjin countered. “Then we open fire.”
“Hey, come on, now, Jjin. Be reasonable,” Cal said. “If you shoot us, you don’t get the kid.”
“Honestly? We don’t want ‘the kid,’” said Jjin.
Cal blinked. “You don’t? OK, now I’m confused.”
“We want what is inside her. She can live, or she can die. It makes no difference to us. The thing inside her will survive, either way.” Jjin stared at Cal’s chest for a moment. “What are you doing?”
Looking down, Cal realized he was idly toying with one of his exposed nipples.
“Huh? Oh.”
He stopped and dropped his hand to his side.
“Sorry. That was inappropriate,” he acknowledged.
“You have three minutes. Starting—”
Jjin’s head snapped sharply to the right as if something had caught his attention.
“More ships dropping out of warp,” said Loren.
“Zertex?” Cal whispered.
Loren shook her head. “No, don’t think so.”
She tapped her controls and squinted at the screen. “Shizz,” she groaned. “They’re Earth ships. It’s the EDI.”
Cal’s whole body tensed. “OK,” he breathed. “This is fine.”
He adjusted his position, trying to look more relaxed and at ease. After the whole time travel, altering the timeline, accidentally creating a hyper-advanced imperial Earth with genocidal tendencies thing, he’d been dreading coming face to face with someone from his homeworld.
Sure he’d met that Manacle guy, but he just seemed like some crazy robot-dude with a Darth Vader fetish. Cal came across people like that a lot in space. Mad helmet-wearing despots, he could deal with. It was the regular, everyday Earthlings he was worried about.
He knew it had to happen at some point, obviously. He just didn’t expect it to be so soon. Similarly, he didn’t expect to be semi-naked, leaning on a god, or to have one erect nipple.
Maybe he should give the other one a flick so they were both erect. Would that be better, he wondered? Or worse?
Decisions, decisions.
Before he could come to one, the image of Jjin blinked out and was replaced by that of a burly dark-haired woman with the complexion of an overripe orange. At first glance, her eyebrows were thin and elongated, with slightly bulbous heads. They immediately made Cal think of sperm, and he had to resist the urge to say as much out loud.
With some cursory closer inspection, though, it was easy to see her real eyebrows directly below the painted-on version. They were thick and solid, and would’ve given Jjin’s a run for their money had the woman not attempted to cover them with foundation, or fake tan, or whatever the fonk had turned her that color.
Her face was fixed in a grotesque sneer, showing yellow-brown teeth that suggested chain-smoking, coffee addiction, and years of neglect. Her uniform was an unflattering shade of gray. It was also an unfortunate size, and bulged unevenly on the woman’s rounded shoulders.
Cal had only half a second or so to take all this in before she started shouting.
“What’s your fackin’ game?” she spat. Literally spat. The flecks of frothy foam speckled the screen in front of her face. “Eh?” she demanded, giving no one a chance to respond. “Well? What’s the big fackin’ idea?”
Loren glanced back at Cal. “Do you know her?”
“No. Why would I know her?” asked Cal.
“She’s from Earth.”
“It’s a big place,” Cal pointed out.
Loren made a sort of scoffing face. “Well…”
“It’s big enough that we don’t all know each other,” said Cal.
“Oi! Shut your maaath, you little green fack!”
Cal’s lips moved as he replayed the sentence. “Shut my mouth?” he guessed. “And wait, who’s green? Is she talking to me?”
The woman leaned in closer to the camera, affording a clearer view of her awful teeth. Cal’s eyes didn’t want to study the teeth in too much detail, so diverted down to the badge on the woman’s lapel. It read: Sgt Heseltine.
“Don’t you fackin’ talk back to me, you disgusting anal-probing little shizzbag,” Heseltine warned. “Because I will suck you in. Alright? I will fackin’ suck you in and spit you out the other side, sunshine. Is that what you’d like? Is it?”
“I don’t… I mean, I don�
�t think so, no,” said Cal.
“No. I bet you fackin’ don’t,” Heseltine hissed.
She placed a finger against the side of her nose, flattening one nostril. There then followed several seconds filled with some of the worst sounds Cal had ever heard, as the Earth woman rearranged the contents of her sinuses and nasal passage, then spat them unceremoniously onto the floor.
Under cover of the snorting, rasping, and general horrifying unpleasantness, Cal whispered to Loren.
“Any updates?”
“Still no shields,” Loren whispered back. “Sub-warp engines online, but not light speed.”
Fonk. What the hell was taking them so long?
“Half the Zertex ships are locking weapons on the EDI,” Loren continued. “EDI’s doing the same to them.”
“Well, I guess that’s something,” Cal replied.
“Yeah, but with the EDI ships, we’ve actually got more weapons pointed at us now than we had before.”
Cal sighed. “You can’t just let me have one silver lining, can you?” he whispered.
“You know why we’re here,” barked Heseltine, once she’d sorted everything out, phlegm-wise. Her face was all puckered up with rage, like she was one wrong word away from smashing the shizz out of everything within arm’s reach. “So, give us the Sentience and maybe we won’t kill ya.”
It was, Cal had to admit, a better deal than the one Zertex had offered. Possibly being killed was a step up from definitely being killed in anyone’s book. Still, something about the woman—everything, in fact—told him she wasn’t to be trusted.
“The what?” Cal asked.
“Oh. Finks you’s a funny fack, does ye?” Heseltine sneered.
Her accent was incredible. Technically, she was speaking the same language as Cal did, and yet he was barely catching one word in two. Maybe he’d been relying on the translator chip for too long.
“You know what we want. You got it aboard your silly little fackin’ ship. An’ if you don’t hand it over, we’ll sack the fackin’ lot of ya.”
Cal raised his hands in surrender. “OK, OK. Sorry, I thought I could outsmart you, but obviously I’m dealing with a greater mind than my own here,” he said. “I apologize.”
Space Team- The Collected Adventures 4 Page 39