Except Mech and Splurt, who’d both be fine. Those bamstons.
But those of them who were going to die would die together. That was the point. And no damn door was going to stand in his way.
“Hng,” said Cal, heaving with all his might.
Something in his shoulder gave an audible twang. He yelped in pain and tried to pull his hands away, only to find his fingertips had become frozen to the metal.
Fonk.
He jerked his hands, but his skin remained steadfastly fixed in place.
Shizz.
The lights blinked on again. A cloud of heat cascaded from a vent above the door.
“Belltop!” barked Kevin. “Flungle!”
Cal found himself face to face with Mech, who peered back at him through the glass. His dial was centered again, a thin layer of frost covering all his metal parts.
“You guys OK?” Mech asked.
“F-fine,” Cal said. “Did you f-fix the ship?”
“Not quite, but we got life support. Weapons should be coming online any minute.”
“Barbershop!” announced Kevin.
“And is that normal?” Cal asked, flicking his eyes to the ceiling.
“We’re working on it,” Mech said. He reached for the button that opened the door, but a frantic yelp from Cal stopped him.
“Wait, wait, wait! Don’t open the d-door,” Cal said.
Mech frowned. “Why not?”
“My fingers are stuck,” Cal told him. “They’re frozen to the metal. If you open the door then—”
Mech opened the door. Both halves parted in opposite directions, yanking Cal’s arms out to the sides so he looked like he was being crucified.
“You fonking—” Cal managed to eject, before his arms reached their full stretch and all ten of his fingertips came off in one sudden yank. Tucking both hands under his armpits, he hopped on the spot, muttering and cursing below his breath. “You did that on purpose!”
“Yeah, I did. And you’re welcome,” Mech said, making no attempt whatsoever to hide his grin. He gestured in the direction of the bridge. “Now, go get on guns. Take that ship out before this nasty green fonk kills us all.”
He heard a squelchy ripple from back near the engine room and turned to find Splurt shooting him an accusatory look.
“Not you. The other green fonk,” Mech said.
Splurt kept eyeing him, but slowly disappeared around the doorframe.
Voices rang out from inside the engine room.
“Ugh. Like, how long am I supposed to keep holding this?”
“One more minute.”
“You said that two hours ago.”
“You’ve only been here for six minutes.”
“You’ve only been here for six minutes.”
There was a pause.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“Tch. Whatever.”
Mech whirred as he turned. “I’d better get back before they kill each other.”
The ship creaked. Cal and Mech shot matching looks at the walls and ceiling. “Go shoot the shizz out of this thing before it crushes the ship.”
“On it,” said Cal. The air was already tasting fresher, and the frostbite that had been threatening to devour some of his favorite parts had started to lose its edge. He reached a hand down to Tyrra, his fingertips tingling as they grew back. “Hey, kid. Want to go help me kill a big plant?”
Tyrra regarded his hand for a moment, then nodded.
“Yes,” she said. “I would like that very much.”
Above them, Kevin chuckled. “Timstrel!” he said.
Cal helped Tyrra to her feet and shot the ceiling a look. “Whatever you say, Kevin. Whatever you say.”
Ten
Tyrra, it turned out, was something of a natural when it came to blowing things to pieces. While the gunner controls were unlike anything she had ever used before, she took to them quickly. Annoyingly quickly, in fact.
Cal had been primed to share his wisdom with her, but she’d almost immediately surpassed his own understanding of how the ship’s weapon systems worked. What’s more, unlike Cal she didn’t make ptchow or pew pew noises when she fired, and her legs didn’t do a celebratory dance whenever she hit something.
Instead, she muttered a single, “Got it,” and the vines that had been surrounding the ship immediately went slack. There was another chorus of creaks and groans as the hull expanded back to its natural size, then the only sound was the whine of the weapons system detaching from Tyrra’s head and folding back into the ceiling.
“Excellent shot, ma’am,” said Kevin. “I couldn’t have done it better myself.”
“Hey, Kevin!” said Cal, looking up in the direction of the voice. “Good to have you back with us.”
“Did I go somewhere, sir?” Kevin asked. “I don’t recall.”
“It’s fine. Don’t worry about it,” Cal told him. He jabbed a thumb over his shoulder and whistled to Tyrra through his teeth. “OK, gimme my seat back.”
Tyrra held his gaze for a moment as if going to argue, but then she hopped down.
“Nice shooting, you little scamp,” he told her. He reached for her head in a hair-ruffling sort of motion, before it occurred to him that she didn’t have hair and that this was about to get very weird and awkward.
Luckily for all involved, she caught his hand and bent his wrist until his thumb was touching his forearm. With a jerk, she yanked the arm up his back, doubling him over and slamming his face onto the soft cushion of his chair.
“Ha,” she growled in his ear. “Bested.”
Thirty minutes, two games of I Spy, and one incredibly frustrating conversation with Kevin about what qualified as ‘an object’ later, Cal couldn’t have been more pleased to see Loren and Miz. Loren stepped through onto the bridge first, with Splurt sliding along the floor at her feet, still watching her. Mizette arrived a moment later, doing her best to look disinterested in pretty much everything, but unable to control the wagging of her tail.
“Hey! There you are. Thank God,” said Cal. “We were just about to reformat Kevin with a sledgehammer.” He shot the ceiling a dirty look. “Which, so we’re clear is an object. Unlike ‘regret,’ which is a concept, and therefore invisible.”
He let that sink in for a moment, then lowered his eyes again. He watched, but tried not to show it, as Tyrra sidled up to Mizette and the wolf-woman self-consciously rested a paw on the girl’s shoulder.
Leaving them to it, Cal turned to Loren. “So, we all fixed?”
“Partly,” said Loren, taking her seat.
“What does that mean? What’s ‘partly’?” Cal asked. “Tell me it’s the good parts.”
“The warp disk doesn’t fit,” Loren said, turning to face him. “We can power some systems, but not all. We’ve got life support and gravity, but if we want to move, we’ll have to turn off weapons, and shields aren’t even an option at this point.”
Cal leaned forward in his chair, preparing himself for the worst. “I don’t even want to ask this, but…” He took a deep breath. “What about the replicator?”
Loren gave a sad little shake of her head, like a doctor breaking the news to the loved ones of the recently deceased.
Cal choked down a sob and leaned back in his chair. “Oh, dear God, no.”
“It’s not broken, we just can’t afford to power it,” Loren explained.
“Can’t we cut something else? Like gravity? We’ve got seatbelts! We can cope without gravity, can’t we?” he pleaded. “We could all fly around. It’ll be fun!”
“We ain’t cutting the fonking gravity,” said Mech, stomping onto the bridge.
Cal groaned, then lowered his voice to a whisper. “What about Kevin? Can we turn off Kevin?”
“I heard that, sir,” Kevin remarked.
“You were supposed to!” Cal snapped, looking up. “And FYI, you can’t spy ‘the exuberance of youth,’ Kevin. You just can’t!”
Mech side-eyed Loren. “What’s
his problem?”
“We told him about the replicator,” Loren explained.
Cal choked on another sob.
“Gotcha,” said Mech. “We need to find the nearest habitable system so we can land, get a new disk, and make some proper repairs.”
Loren’s fingers tapped on her console. The viewscreen switched from showing some plant vines drifting inertly through space to showing a starmap.
“We’re actually pretty close to one,” she announced.
“Must be our lucky day,” Cal said. He caught the looks from the others. “You know, I mean aside from all the other stuff that already happened.”
“The Viarox system,” Loren read. “Twelve planets, nine habitable. We could be there in an hour.”
“Man, that is close,” said Mech, looking over her shoulder at the screen. “Technology?”
“Varies, but they’re all space-faring,” Loren replied. “We should be able to get a warp disk on pretty much any one of them.”
She pointed to one planet on screen. “That’s our best bet. Logus Prime. Seems to be the most advanced.”
Mech nodded. “OK. Let’s go there.”
“Hey, hey, hold up,” Cal said, straightening in his chair. “I give the orders around here, buddy.”
He held Mech’s impassive gaze for a moment, then without breaking the stare, said, “Loren? Let’s go there.”
“Yes, Carver,” Loren muttered. “Right away, Carver.”
Cal blinked in surprise, then grabbed for his seatbelt as the Currently Untitled’s engines whined and all the lights dipped a fraction.
Miz waited until Tyrra was safely strapped into one of the guest chairs, then flopped into her own. She turned so her legs were draped across one armrest and her back was resting against the other, then fastened her belt around herself sideways.
“You OK?” Cal asked her.
“Uh, like, yeah,” said Miz. “Why wouldn’t I be OK?”
“No reason,” said Cal, smiling.
Miz rolled her eyes, glanced around to make sure Loren and Mech weren’t paying attention, then lowered her voice to a soft murmur. “Thank you.”
Cal gave a wave of his hand. “I didn’t do anything. She saved me.”
“Correct,” said Tyrra from the back.
“And grateful I am, too,” said Cal, squeaking around in his damaged chair.
“Good. Because you owe me a life debt,” Tyrra said.
Cal frowned. “Huh?”
“Your life now belongs to me,” Tyrra explained.
“What? No, it doesn’t!”
Tyrra nodded. There was something quite menacing about the way she held his gaze as she tilted her head back and forth. “Yes. It does. You are now my property.”
Before Cal could protest further, Kevin’s voice chimed from the ceiling.
“Might I interrupt, everyone?” he asked. “Before we set off, I thought I should tell you that I have successfully unscrambled those subspace transmissions that were causing us problems earlier. It appears there are multiple transmissions broadcasting on a wide range of communications channels.”
Cal screeched his chair back around to face front. “We’re being hailed?”
“Not us specifically, sir. They’re more general call-outs, I believe.”
“Oh. OK. Then… put them on screen, I guess.”
“One at a time, or all at once, sir?” Kevin asked.
Cal puffed out his cheeks. “I don’t know. How many are there?”
“Eight trillion, sir.”
“Jesus. Then not one at a time. That would take hours.”
“All at once then, sir?”
Cal shook his head. “It’s been a long day. Not sure I can handle eight trillion simultaneous conversations. What if we did them in batches? Like, say, ten at a time? Would that get through them quicker?”
“Indeed it would. If you were able to keep each conversation to under a minute, sir, we would get through them in…”
There was a pause as Kevin did some calculations.
“…a shade over fifteen thousand years.”
“Shizz. No. That’s way too long.”
“You think so?” Mech grunted.
“Pick a few,” Cal said, ignoring the cyborg’s remark. “Pick ten and cycle through them, just in case there’s anything important.”
“Very good, sir,” said Kevin.
“Everyone else sit up straight,” Cal urged, adjusting himself in his chair and running a hand through his hair. “We’re in a new sector, let’s try to make a good impression. Miz, Mech, try to look friendly.”
“I always look friendly,” Mech protested.
Cal looked the hulking cyborg up and down for a moment. “OK, we’ll talk about that later,” he said, looking around at the others. “For now, warm, open faces. Big smiles. Not that big, Tyrra, you look terrifying. There. That’s better. Miz, are you just going to lie there picking at your toes like that?”
Miz flicked him a look that made her answer to that question very clear.
“Good. That’s fine. You just do you,” Cal said, grinding the chair back to the front. “OK, Kevin, we’re as ready as we’ll ever be. Let’s see what we’ve got.”
“What you like me to run a language update, sir?” asked Kevin.
Cal’s eyes went to the ceiling. “Huh?”
“Your Zertex translation chips are not currently compatible with many of the languages in this sector, sir,” Kevin explained. “However, they have a similar system of their own, and I can cross-pollinate both databases with the respective stored languages of—”
“Meaning?” asked Cal, who wanted the short version.
“I can copy their translation system’s database to our own, and vice versa, sir.”
Cal kept watching the ceiling.
“Meaning…?”
“Meaning we’ll be able to understand what the fonk they’re saying,” Mech snapped.
“Oh. Oh, OK. Then yes, do that,” said Cal, sitting back. He leaned forward again a fraction. “Wait, will it hurt?”
“I will merely be updating the chip’s database records with some new content, sir,” said Kevin.
“Right. OK,” said Cal, sitting back again.
“So yes. It will hurt immensely.”
“Huh?” said Cal, but before he could voice any further objections the inside of his head became a howling vortex of sound. He thrashed in his chair. He gritted his teeth. A bubble of snot sprouted from one nostril, then popped.
The sound became words. So many words. All the words, in fact, all speaking themselves at the same time directly into his brain. He wanted to cry out, to scream, to make it all stop, but his mouth was clamped shut, his muscles were rigid, and he had a pretty firm suspicion that his skull was in the process of exploding.
And then, as quickly as it had started, it stopped.
Cal wheezed, whimpered, and swore all at the same time. He had slid almost all the way out of his chair, and his legs were buckled on the floor. The seatbelt had snagged on his t-shirt and dragged it up so it was around his throat, exposing everything from his waist to his nipples. He had also been lightly sick in his mouth.
Loren and Mech both regarded him with slightly bewildered expressions on their faces. Loren was rubbing a spot just behind her ear, as if she had the beginnings of a tension headache. Mech seemed none the worse for the update.
“Drama queen, much?” asked Mizette. She was kneading her temples with her fingertips, and smirking in Cal’s direction.
“Again, again!” urged Tyrra from the back of the room. “His convulsions are hilarious.”
It was at this point that Cal noticed the woman on screen. She was blonde, skinny, and—were it not for the extra eye dangling from the end of her nose—flawless.
Cal briefly contemplated his current position and mostly naked torso, decided it wasn’t really the first impression he’d hoped to convey, and squirmed his way back into his seat.
“You couldn’t have w
aited five fonking seconds, Kevin?” he muttered, wriggling his t-shirt down. He took a breath, plastered on one of his best grins, and addressed the screen.
“Well, hey there! This is Captain Cal—”
“Are you troubled by trapped gas, bloating, and constipation?” asked the woman.
Cal hesitated. His eyes flicked down to his stomach. “It’s travel weight,” he said. “It’ll fall right out—”
“I know I was,” the woman said, placing a hand at the side of her mouth as if letting Cal and the crew in on a big secret. “But then I discovered Shiteofast—”
Click. The image changed to show a muscly young man with shiny green skin go gliding through a park on some kind of hovering rollerblades, laughing to himself as he twirled around, his pristine white shirt billowing open to show off an impressive...
Cal counted.
…sixteen pack.
The guy gave a final twirl and stopped, then produced a bottle of orange liquid from a pocket in his pants and drank deeply from it as the sunlight reflected off his sculpted chest.
“Sunjizz,” announced a voiceover, as a music sting played. “Impregnate your thirst.”
“What the fonk does that mean?” Cal asked, but the image changed again.
A broad figure with a face that was mostly nostrils and hair shouted aggressively into the camera. “Parboil! Eight minutes! No more, or you ruin it! DON’T RUIN IT, OR I KILL YOU!”
Click. The screen changed again. Two news anchors sat side by side in a studio, huddled close together. It was only when they started speaking, alternating each word, that Cal realized they weren’t two people, but a single two-headed entity. Everyone on the bridge’s eyes ping-ponged between the heads as they took it in turns to speak.
“Feared.”
“Pirate.”
“Reduk.”
“Topa.”
“Was.”
“Arrested.”
“Today.”
“By.”
“Christ,” said Cal. “This is giving me vertigo.”
Mercifully, the image then cut away to some sort of ball game, where a dozen child-sized competitors in matching strips were being kicked around by a much larger figure opponent who laughed as he held an oblong ball above his head, well out of their reach.
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