Heseltine caught the orb in her right hand. This time, she didn’t pass it back to the left. Her eyes flicked down to it, then back to Cal.
“I mean it. It’s a bomb,” Cal said. “It’ll blow this whole place up. I just have to say the word.”
The guard with the gun looked to his commanding officer for her instructions. She slowly brought the ball up to head height and peered at it down the crooked length of her nose.
“If you let me go, I won’t have it blown up. You all get to stay alive.”
“You think we’s fackin’ idiots?” Heseltine asked. “We took your comm-link. Even if you was telling the truth, there’s no way for you to contact anyone.”
Cal hesitated. “I have another one,” he said. “It’s… hidden.”
“Bullshizz.”
“I mean it,” said Cal. “You’d better let me go. I just have to give the word. All I have to say is, ‘Push the button,’ and—”
The orb exploded in Heseltine’s hands, turning everything down to her ankles into a hot, fast-moving puree that splattered across Cal, the chair, and the rest of the room.
The explosion took out half the guards. Specifically, the left half of the guard on Heseltine’s right, and the right half of the one on her left.
“Jesus Christ, Mech!” Cal hollered, spitting out something lumpy and sour-tasting. “That wasn’t me giving the word!”
A tinny voice echoed out from inside Cal’s mustache, too quiet for him to hear even without the blaring alarm that now sounded.
“Never trust a fonking robot,” Cal muttered. He kicked and wriggled his way down the chair and jumped down into a steaming puddle of goo. Twisting his shoulders, he brought his cuffed hands out from behind him. “Splurt, a little help with this?”
The mustache flopped off his face and crawled laboriously on its two hairy legs down Cal’s chest and around to his back. From somewhere outside, Cal heard the sound of raised voices.
“Hurry up, buddy!” Cal urged. “We don’t have a lot of time here.”
Something tickled against his wrists, then the cuffs clanked to the floor. Catching the mustache, Cal deposited it on his shoulder, where it immediately collapsed into a gooey green smear.
Inside the smear was a miniature earpiece, and a little black square the size of a piece of Starburst candy. Splurt shoved them both to his surface, where Cal could retrieve them. Cal took the smaller of the two and screwed it into his ear, but left the other square where it was for the moment.
“I’m here,” he said. “And still in one piece, no thanks to you.”
“You said, ‘Push the button,’” Mech’s grunted. “You gave the fonking instruction.”
“I was speaking hypothetically at the time,” Cal said. “I was explaining to her what would happen if…” He sighed. “Forget it.”
Stooping, Cal scooped both of the guards’ blasters from the soup of their remains. “Can I activate the thingy yet?”
“Not yet,” said Mech. “You’re too far. You need to get out of the room you’re in and go right.”
Cal groaned. “Right. Got it. How far?” he asked, heading for the door.
“Not far. Maybe twenty feet,” Mech replied.
Cal punched the door open button. “OK. That’s not bad. I can do twenty feet.”
“Uh, yeah. I should warn you, though,” said Mech, as Cal stepped out into the corridor. “You’re gonna have company.”
A blaster bolt screamed along the corridor from his left, scorching a chunk out of his ribcage.
“Fonk, fonk, fonk!” Cal yelped, dancing in panic and firing blindly back along the corridor. The shots ricocheted wildly, but a couple of throaty Urks told him he’d hit something, at least.
Ducking, he threw himself forward, still firing behind him. Splurt grabbed Cal’s ear and twisted with such force that Cal instinctively stumbled sideways away from the pain, just before a volley of blaster-fire tore through the space he’d just been occupying.
“Thanks. I think,” Cal wheezed.
“Ten feet,” Mech instructed. “Then deposit, and extract through the door on the left.”
“What?” Cal hollered, struggling to hear over the sound of shouting, gunfire, and the clattering of his own boots.
“Five feet.”
“What?”
“Now!” Mech barked.
Cal stumbled. “Now? Now! Splurt, now! Eject, eject!”
The Starburst-sized device shot upward from inside Splurt, flipped once in the air, then landed on the floor somewhere behind Cal. Unnoticed by everyone in the corridor, it sprouted eight little legs, scuttled toward a ventilation grate in the wall, then crawled inside.
A moment later, a small red light began to blink in the air vent, and the little robot set off to explore.
“Door on the left. Now!” Mech bellowed.
Cal threw his shoulder at the door and stumbled through, but not before a blaster bolt grazed his thigh as it whistled past.
The room beyond was a large, open-plan office. Dozens of heads rose like Meerkats from behind cubicle partitions, all watching Cal with wide-eyed horror.
“What the fonk is this place?” Cal asked.
“Emergency call handling,” said Mech. “Try not to kill any of them.”
“Of course I’m not going to kill any of them. Why would I kill any of them?”
“Because you got guns in your hands,” said Mech. “And you have a history of accidentally shooting people.”
“Good point,” Cal said. He waved the blasters above his head. “Everyone out! That way!” he ordered, gesturing to the door behind him. “Go, go, go!”
The terrified call center staff hurried to comply. He sprinted past them as they surged for the door he’d just entered, blocking the way for the pursuing guards.
“Mech, get me an exit!” Cal hollered, limping for a few seconds before his healing factor kicked in and sealed the wound in his leg. “Which way?”
“Door on your right,” Mech said. “They’ve locked down the elevator network, so we’re resorting to Plan B.”
Cal skidded toward the door, shot it several times just in case it was locked, then kicked it open.
“Plan B? Since when did we ever have a Plan B?” he cried. “What’s our Plan B?”
Part of the wall erupted as a blaster bolt slammed into it. With Splurt clinging to his shoulder, Cal ducked through the door, then stumbled to a stop in what looked like a manager’s office. There, behind a shoddy desk overburdened by paperwork and dirty coffee mugs, was a large window the size of a cinema screen. It showed a view of space and the curved edge of the sun around which Kappa-Seven was orbiting.
And it showed something else, too. It showed the Currently Untitled.
What was it doing here? It wasn’t supposed to be here. It was supposed to be waiting on the docking platform.
“Not that I’m not pleased to see you guys,” Cal said. “But what are you—?”
“You’re gonna want to duck,” Mech warned him.
“Duck? What do you mean, I’m going to want to—?”
Cal screamed and threw himself headlong to the floor just as a beam of cannon-fire spat from the Untitled’s weapons systems. The window shattered into a billion flakes of safety glass, all moving in slow motion thanks to the sudden lack of gravity.
The abrupt loss of pressure sucked Cal up off the floor. He instinctively cried out as he tumbled, end over end, through the shattered window, but no sound escaped in the vacuum of space.
His head went light and heavy at the same time. His limbs cramped up. His lungs inflated.
And Jesus, it was cold.
Peeling his eyelids open, he saw a humanoid metal frame come drifting towards him, gleaming against the dark curtain of space, rockets flaring at his feet.
“Relax, man,” said Mech’s voice in Cal’s ear. “I got you.”
Twenty-Two
“I got him,” announced Mech, once the outer airlock door had closed behind them. The Untit
led’s engines droned faintly as the ship accelerated and climbed.
“F-f-fonk, it’s cold,” Cal wheezed. He blew on his hands to warm them up, then wrapped his arms around himself. “Oh, and for the record? I preferred Plan A.”
From outside came the thack-thack of cannon-fire hitting the shields.
“Wait. They’re attacking us?” Cal asked.
Mech jabbed the button to open the inner airlock door. “Course they’re fonking attacking us,” he said. “Don’t know if you noticed, but we just did a whole series of illegal things.”
Cal followed Mech out into the corridor. “No, I know, but… I just thought we’d have more time before they—”
Loren sent the ship into a dive. Cal stumbled forward and crashed into Mech’s back.
“Ow. Sorry. Not my fault.”
The Untitled bottomed out, then began to rise suddenly. Cal held his arms out and moved them in tight forward circles, trying to compensate for the sudden shift of balance. It was no use. As the ship rocketed upward, he found himself unable to stay upright on the suddenly sloping floor.
“No, I’m going,” he announced.
Mech caught him by the front of his shirt, stopping him tumbling all the way to the end of the corridor.
“Thanks, big guy,” Cal said. He looked past him to the door of the bridge, then raised his eyebrows and grinned.
Ten seconds later, Mech clanked onto the bridge, with Cal nestled in his arms.
“Hey, guys! I’m back,” Cal announced, then the action on screen caught his attention. “Ooh, spaceships.”
“A lot of spaceships,” Loren confirmed, spiraling the Untitled into a corkscrew as two probing streams of red spat at them from different directions. “We need to start shooting back, or we’re toast.”
“Kevin, can you do weapons?” Cal asked. He rubbed a hand across Mech’s metal chest. “I think I’m going to stay here.”
“No, you ain’t,” Mech grunted.
“What? But I feel so safe,” Cal protested, then he was dumped unceremoniously into his seat. He strapped himself in while Mech strode across to his console. “Can we make that a regular thing?” Cal asked.
“No.”
“Like, just a few minutes a day?”
“Shut the fonk up,” Mech said. He tapped and swiped at the console.
“Did we get it?” Loren asked through gritted teeth, as she rolled to avoid a torpedo. “Are we good?”
“I don’t know. I gotta interface with the ship first.”
“Can you take care of your love life on your own time, Mech? We’re kind of up against it here.”
Mech muttered darkly, but continued working on his terminal.
“Where’s Miz?” asked Cal, looking around the bridge.
“With Tyrra,” came Loren’s curt reply.
“Oh,” said Cal. He watched her from behind as she jammed the ship into a sideways climbing maneuver he didn’t know the name for. Her movements were wild, yet somehow precise. It was like she was dancing, he thought, and he couldn’t take his eyes off her.
It was like she was born to do this. Like the controls were an extension of herself.
Sure, she might crash them into the sun at any moment, but if she was the last thing he saw as they plunged helplessly into a lake of fire, he thought, that wouldn’t be so bad.
Still bad, obviously—really awful, in fact—but if he absolutely had to be burned up in the heart of a dying star, then this would be the time to do it.
The very real possibility of them all dying at any moment made him want to talk to her. To tell her how he felt. To say the things he’d been trying to say since she kissed him.
He cleared his throat.
“So, uh, how have you been?”
“Shut up and get on the weapons!” Loren barked without looking back at him. “Or we’re going to get torn to pieces.”
Cal frowned. “I thought Kevin was doing those?”
“Kevin’s helping Mech,” Loren said. She grimaced as a staccato hail of cannon-fire thundered into the shields, making them flicker. “Now hurry up!”
“OK, Kevin, plug me in,” said Cal, wriggling upright in his chair. “Mech, how long do you need?”
“Yes!” Mech cheered.
“That doesn’t help me, big guy. ‘Yes,’ is not a unit of time,” Cal replied. He braced himself as the weapons interface unfolded around his head. Splurt dropped off his shoulder and landed in his lap like the contents of a particularly violent sneeze.
“The hackbot is online and broadcasting,” Mech said.
“Seriously, that’s what we’re calling it? ‘The hackbot?’”
“What the fonk else do you suggest we call it?”
Cal thought. “Spiderlegs,” he said. “Wait, no, that’s too on the nose. Arachnaspy.”
“Fine. Call it what you like,” Mech said. “I’m in. Give me a minute.”
“One minute,” said Cal. “No more, no less.”
He grimaced at the sudden pricking at either temple, and then came the sudden whooshing sensation as his consciousness was projected outside the ship.
From up there, he could survey the whole battle scene. The station was on either his right, his left, above him, or below him, depending on which way Loren was jamming the stick at any given moment.
Twelve fighter ships, each roughly the size of the Untitled, approached in loose formations from two sides—one squadron closing from in front and on high, the other below and behind. More ships approached from the opposite side of the station, but they were still just dark pinpricks against the sun, and something he could worry about later.
Cal flexed his fingers, then cracked his knuckles. One minute, that was all he had to hold them off for. Hell, less than that now. Forty seconds, probably. Maybe even—
A torpedo exploded against the shields, rocking the ship.
“Will you hurry up and shoot them?!” Loren yelped.
Cal raised his right hand and fired the cannons. A solid red beam of crackling energy tore upward through one of the squadrons, forcing the six ships to break ranks and bank off in different directions.
As soon as the beam had passed, they dropped back into perfect formation.
“Whoa, that was some fancy flying,” Cal said.
“They’re drones,” said Loren, just a touch defensively. “It’s an automated process.”
“Drones?” Cal asked. “So, there’s no one aboard?”
“No, they’re AI controlled,” said Loren. The shields flared as cannon-fire hammered them from below. “Now shoot them!”
Cal felt better knowing that there weren’t real people on the attacking ships. He might not be the biggest fan of the EDI, but those guys were still from Earth. They probably had families back there, waiting for them to come home.
Sure, the same could be said for all the Zertex pilots they’d blown to pieces, but that was different. That was Zertex. It didn’t count.
Another torpedo detonated off the stern, rocking the ship.
“What are you waiting for? Fonking shoot them!” Loren yelped.
“Hmm? Oh. Shizz. Sorry, miles away,” Cal said. He raised both arms and pumped out a couple of missiles. They streaked across space, rapidly closing the gap on the front two ships.
The ships all split up, performed a series of acro-space-batics, then returned to their original formation.
“You missed, sir,” Kevin informed him.
“I can see that, Kevin,” Cal said.
“Everything. You missed everything.”
“Noted. Thanks.”
Twisting, Cal rained cannon fire on the other squadron. It, too, split up to avoid the blasts, then retaliated with three fast-moving torpedoes.
“Loren, behind!”
Loren’s eyes darted to a small rectangular screen just above her main screen, then jammed the yoke forward and right. Two of the torpedoes tumbled past them, but the third smashed into the shield, making it flicker erratically.
“Shields
at twenty-seven percent,” Mech announced.
“We’ll worry about the shields, you worry about getting that page,” Cal barked. “What’s taking so long?”
“They got some serious security around it. Trying to crack the master password,” Mech explained. “Running a brute force attack, but it could take a while.
“Have you tried ‘password’?” Cal asked.
Mech snorted. “They ain’t gonna secure an encrypted private server with ‘password’ as the fonking password.”
“They’re from Earth, right?” said Cal. “Try it.”
“It’s a waste of time, man.”
“Try it!” Cal urged, slicing through one of the squadrons with another beam of cannon fire. Just as before, he hit nothing.
“There. Tried it. Didn’t work,” said Mech.
“Try ‘password123.’”
Mech sighed. “Look, man. I know you’re trying to help, but you ain’t. OK? I don’t want to sound ungrateful, but I don’t need or want your fonking help.”
“Just try it!” Cal yelped, his stomach leaping up to his ears as Loren dived to avoid another explosive blast.
Mech tapped his console.
A moment of silence followed.
“You Earth guys are fonking idiots,” Mech announced. “I’m in. Gimme a minute.”
“Another minute? Jesus. Hurry it up,” Cal urged.
The squadron of ships that had been approaching from behind suddenly ejected a series of small shiny objects from their undersides. Cal watched, helplessly, as they passed through the shields and thundered into the hull, denting it until it looked like the surface of a golf ball.
“Ooh, that’s going to take some buffing out,” he said. “What the fonk are they firing?”
“Railguns,” Loren hissed, jamming on the space brakes and forcing the ships to overshoot. “Our shields won’t stop them.”
Cal swished both arms in the direction of the passing ships. Even at this distance, they easily avoided the blasts.
“And they won’t stay still so I can to shoot them,” he protested. “How is that fair?”
“Mech, how long?” Loren demanded.
“Just a minute.”
Space Team- The Collected Adventures 4 Page 51