“To be fair, we were flying for under an hour,” Loren pointed out. “And when Cal asked if you wanted to go you said, ‘Ugh, why do I have to do everything around here?’”
“That didn’t mean I didn’t want to go,” said Miz.
Loren shrugged. “Sure seemed like it,” she said.
“Wait a minute,” said Miz, her chair creaking as she sat forward. “Where’s Tyrra?”
“I thought she was with you?”
“She said she was coming to the bridge,” said Miz.
Loren turned her chair all the way around so she was fully facing in Miz’s direction. Splurt splatted to the floor, rolled under the base of the seat, and peeked up at Loren from somewhere near her feet.
“She’s not here.”
“Like, I can see she’s not here,” Miz scowled. “That’s why I asked. If she was here, why would I have asked where she was? I’m not, like, an idiot.”
“I’m sure she’s fine. She won’t be far,” Loren said.
“She’s quite far, ma’am,” said Kevin.
Loren and Miz both looked up.
“Where is she?” Miz demanded.
“She asked me not to say, I’m afraid.”
Miz stood up, baring her fangs and flashing her claws. “Kevin, I’m going to ask this one more time, and then I’m totally going to disembowel you,” she warned. “Where is Tyrra?”
“Well, I don’t actually have bowels, ma’am…”
Miz growled.
“But I get the general idea. Very well, I shall tell you where Miss Tyrra is,” Kevin said. “But I fear you aren’t going to like it.”
“Help!” Cal wheezed, his legs kicking frantically as he hung suspended by the throat from a robot’s three-pronged grip. His face had turned a vibrant shade of purple that looked like one big bruise, and everything above his neck felt fatter than everything below. “Mech!”
“Kinda having problems of my own!” Mech barked from somewhere behind him.
He clanked onto the floor just at the edge of Cal’s peripheral vision. It was hard to be sure from that angle, and what with the onrushing black cloud of unconsciousness closing in around him, but Cal could’ve sworn the cyborg had now lost the other leg, and at least one arm.
“That is enough,” said a voice, and Cal instantly fell from the robot’s grip. He hit the ground with an unceremonious thud and an undignified bout of hacking and coughing, then lay there gulping in sweet, sweet air until the room stopped spinning and his head felt like it had returned to normal size.
“Alright, you evil shizznod!” he hissed, spinning and jumping to his feet.
A robot fist clanked him on the top of the head, instantly dropping him.
Blackness followed, but only for a moment.
“Ugh. Fonk. That was unnecessary,” Cal protested.
The ground undulated sickeningly beneath his hands as he pushed himself up onto his knees. That was far enough for now, he thought. Standing would hopefully feature in his future, but it was still a distant dream at this point.
A robotic figure, easily fifteen feet tall, stood over him. It was the same color as the other robots, but there all similarity ended. It had two thick legs that angled backward from its fat, spherical body. At the bottom of the legs were a pair of enormous three-toed feet, and something about the set-up made Cal think that, if it put its mind to it, this robot could really jump.
Two stubby arms stuck out from the body, one on each side. The body itself was a smooth, mostly featureless metal until around halfway up, when it became a smooth curve of darkened glass.
“And you must be Daddy Bear,” said Cal.
Kneeling in front of this thing was rapidly giving him an inferiority complex, so he struggled to his feet in the hope that he wouldn’t feel quite as miniscule. It didn’t really help.
There was a whirring from behind him, and Cal braced himself for another strike to the skull. Instead, Mech waddled up and stood beside him. Cal found himself staring down into the cyborg’s upturned face. Both Mech’s arms were missing and, more notably, he was less than five feet tall.
“What the fonk is this?” Cal asked.
“Emergency feet,” said Mech. He leaned back a little, revealing what looked like tiny metal clogs that protruded from his leg sockets.
Cal took a moment to process this.
Nope, wasn’t happening.
“Emergency feet?”
“Yeah. I got emergency feet,” said Mech.
Cal took another moment.
“But… why?”
“The fonk do you mean ‘why?’ In case some motherfonking robots pull both my legs off,” Mech snapped. “That’s why!”
Cal looked Mech up and down. It took much less time than usual. “Do you have emergency hands?”
“Silence!” commanded the towering robot.
“Just… hold up there, ED-209,” Cal told it, still waiting for an answer from Mech. “So? Do you?”
“No, I don’t have emergency hands,” Mech sighed.
“Well, that seems like an oversight,” Cal reasoned. “I mean, if you’re going to go to the trouble to add emergency feet, why not emergency hands? Like, a little set of raptor hands, just…”
Cal brought his hands up to his shoulders and waggled the fingers.
“Just cute little T-Rex arms that—”
“Can we just get down to fonking business?” asked Mech, gesturing toward the big robot with his head.
“No, you’re right. You’re right, it’s not the time,” said Cal. He ran his hand across the top of Mech’s head, as if ruffling his hair. “You eager beaver little scamp.”
Cal turned and looked up at the giant robot. “So. Hi there!” he said, mustering one of his better smiles. “I’m not quite sure what’s going on with all the violence and everything, but I think there’s been some sort of misunderstanding. See, we’re from the… uh, the local neighborhood watch, and we just wanted to offer some advice on how best to secure your property. You know, from space burglars?”
He gestured to the semi-circle of robots forming behind him and Mech. “But I can see you have it all covered by an army of violent robots, which is great. So, we’ll tick you off our list and bid you farewell.”
“Silence!” the giant bot barked again. “Enough of your insolence.”
With a series of clunks and clicks and a high-pitched whine, the glass part of the robot retracted into the metal body. The first thing Cal noticed was the hair. A moment later, he noticed the rest of the professor, too.
“Nutmuck,” Cal said, narrowing his eyes.
“Nushtuk!”
“My old nemesis,” Cal continued. “We meet again.”
“What? What are you talking about?” demanded the professor, veins throbbing along his elongated neck. “I have no idea who you are.”
“Well, we know who you are. You’re the guy who just walked right into our trap!” Cal said. He leaned an elbow on the top of Mech’s skull. “It’s over, Nutmuck.”
“Get your arm off my motherfonking head,” Mech spat, wobbling from foot to foot in order to shake Cal off.
“Sorry. It was automatic. You’re the perfect height,” Cal told him. “I swear, weld a tray to your head, and you’d make an awesome drinks trolley.”
“Shut the fonk up and get on with it,” Mech said.
Cal turned his attention back to the professor. “You want my advice? Give up now. Turn off all these robots. Power down your weapons. And then—and only then—we’ll consider letting you live.”
“What kind of idiot do you take me for?” demanded the professor.
Cal hesitated. “I don’t know. Just, like, a regular idiot?” He glanced at Mech. “I didn’t know there were types. Did you know there were types?”
He pointed up to the professor. “Also… just so I’m clear, is he a robot?”
“No. He’s a guy in a robot suit,” Mech said.
“Oh. So… kind of like you?”
“I ain’t in a
suit,” Mech said.
“You’re kind of in a suit.”
“No. I’m a cyborg. Part organic, part robot.”
Cal looked from Mech to the professor and back again.
“And he’s…?”
“He’s a guy in a robot suit,” said Mech.
“Right. Right,” said Cal, nodding. “And that’s different?”
“Yes! It’s fonking different.”
Cal looked around at the semi-circle of metal figures behind them. “And those are robots?”
“Yes,” Mech sighed. “Those are robots.”
“Hey, don’t look now,” Cal whispered, nudging Mech with his elbow and leaning in close. “But I think the hot one on the end is giving you the eye.”
“Silence!” screeched Nushtuk yet again. “I may not know who you are, but I know why you are here. You have come to collect the bounty on my head. You, like all before you, have failed. You have no trap. You have no clever tricks up your sleeves.”
“This one doesn’t even have sleeves,” Cal said, jabbing a thumb in Mech’s direction.
“Shut the fonk up,” Mech grunted.
“You are hopeless. You are defeated. You are—”
A knife embedded itself in his forehead, cutting off the rest of the sentence.
Cal’s hand flew to his mouth. Mech’s, for a variety of reasons, didn’t.
They both watched as Professor Nushtuk slumped forward, toppled out of the robot suit, and fell to the floor. The butt of the knife struck the ground first, the impact ramming the blade the rest of the way through his head. It protruded through the back of his skull, a lump of brain impaled on the end.
For a moment, there was only silence, then there was only the sound of Cal swallowing. Slowly, he removed his hand from his mouth.
“Hello?” he said.
“The fonk are you doing, man? He’s dead,” Mech said.
Cal watched the chunk of brain slide down the knife blade until it came to rest in a nest of wiry hair that was now more pink than white.
“Jesus Christ,” he groaned “Where did that knife come from?”
“Ha!” hollered a voice. It echoed around the inside of the warehouse from up high on one of the stacks. “Bested!”
And then, the semi-circle of robots around them raised their weapons. The sound of several hundred blaster bolts screamed around the warehouse.
Fifteen
Cal ducked for cover behind Mech as half a dozen of the robots exploded into bits of scrap metal.
Loren strode along the corridor, a repeater cannon tucked under her arm, spraying an apparently endless stream of energy bolts across the warehouse. Splurt perched on her shoulder, the orange glow of the rapid-fire bolts reflecting off his glossy green surface.
“The cavalry’s here!” Cal cheered, peeking over the top of Mech’s head. “We’re saved!”
Loren’s feet slid out from under her. They heard her eject an, “Ooh, fonk!” as she briefly went horizontal in the air, then she hit the floor. The repeater cannon continued to fire throughout, peppering the stacks of crates and ceiling with hundreds of holes.
“No, wait, I spoke to soon,” Cal sighed. “She fell over.”
The robots turned their guns on Loren and opened fire. Splurt expanded around her, becoming a domed shield the deflected the robots’ fire and sent it screaming off in all directions.
The bots all realized at the same time that they were wasting their ammunition, and stopped firing. The moment they did, Miz came bounding from between a stack of crates, running on all fours, the fur on the back of her neck standing on end.
Initially, her expression was exactly what Cal was hoping for. She was angry. She was determined. She was here to fonk some shizz up!
And then her rage turned to confusion as the frictionless surface claimed her, too, and she slid straight from the mouth of one alleyway into the one directly across from it.
“Like, what the fonk is up with this floor?” she demanded, her voice fading as she went sliding off into the wings.
“Jesus, if you want something doing…” Cal muttered. “Mech, keep these guys busy.”
“How the fonk am I supposed to do that?” Mech demanded, waddling around in a semi-circle to look at Cal.
“I don’t know. Do a little dance,” Cal replied. “It’ll be adorable.”
He half ran, half slid over to the robot suit and scrambled up its front. He dived in headfirst just as a volley of blaster fire struck the spot where he’d been. He felt the heat of it, and then he was inside the robot suit’s cockpit, albeit upside-down.
“Fonk, it’s cramped in here,” he complained, performing a series of complex rolls and twists in an attempt to turn himself the right way up.
A foot struck a lever and the suit clanked forward, forcing Mech to waddle out of its path on his emergency feet. Two of the robots weren’t so quick to react, and crunched loudly as they were crushed into scrap beneath the suit’s immense weight.
With a final tuck and tumble, Cal successfully righted himself. Nushtuk’s chair was predictably tiny, and Cal felt like he was operating a child’s toy as he ran his fingers over all the buttons and levers.
“OK, you metal fonks—not you, Mech, the other guys,” Cal said, shouting to make himself heard over the screaming of blaster fire. It hammered against the back of the suit, and the glass canopy closed protectively over the cockpit on some sort of auto-response program.
Cal grabbed a joystick and jiggled it. The top half of the robot shimmied from side to side.
“Aha!”
Jamming the joystick to the right, Cal turned the battle suit around until it faced the growing army of smaller robots. “Let’s see how you shizznods like this!”
He squeezed the joystick’s trigger.
A moment later, the suit’s arms fell off and clanked to the floor.
“Fonk. Wait, no. That was wrong.”
“Oh, you think so?” Mech barked, toddling around in circles, chased by two of Nushtuk’s robot minions.
“Why is that even a button?” Cal yelped, as another volley of blaster fire slammed into the front of the suit. He picked another likely looking button. “Let’s try this one.”
The suit’s legs folded backward, slamming the body onto the floor, and giving Cal an uninterrupted view of the ceiling. “No. No, that’s not it.”
Before he could try anything else, three of the robots clambered up onto the cockpit and began slamming their metal feet against the glass.
“Fonk off! Leave me alone!” Cal told them. He gave the joystick a jerk to try to throw the robots off, but rather than the top half turning, the suit’s legs spun instead.
Krick.
A line appeared in the glass. Cal watched it grow diagonally up the window, each splintering kerack sound filling him with an increasing sense of dread.
He looked up into the electronic gaze of the robot that had caused the damage. Its face was identical to all the others, but Cal could’ve sworn it managed to look just a little smugger.
All three of them raised a foot again. “Hey, guys, let’s talk about this!” Cal cried.
And then a series of blaster bolts hammered into them, sending them sprawling onto the floor.
“Cal! You OK?”
“Loren! Yes! I’m OK!” he replied, laughing with relief.
A green shape passed between Cal and the ceiling, there one moment, gone the next.
The sound of blaster fire intensified, but was quickly joined by another sound, too.
Cal had never heard a robot scream before. He hadn’t even known it was possible. And yet, he had little doubt that the high-pitched electronic whines he was hearing now were exactly that. They were not unlike the feedback screech from a speaker placed too close to a microphone, but with a more ragged, desperate sort of edge that suggested pain, terror, and other things that robots technically shouldn’t be capable of.
Trying the same button he’d pressed last time, Cal unfolded the battle suit�
��s legs, springing it upright again. Through the cracked glass he saw a whirling dervish of green, and a number of robots all flying in different directions.
“That’s my little guy!” Cal cheered, but then a movement from farther back in the warehouse cut his relief short. More of the robots were closing in. Hundreds of the fonkers, surely too many for even Splurt to fight.
“Shizz, shizz, shizz.”
Cal studied the buttons, almost pressed a few of the more promising-looking ones, then thought better of it.
“Glove box, glove box, there must be a glove box,” he muttered, running his hands across the smooth plastic panel in front of his knees.
Nothing.
He reached under the seat and fumbled around. His fingers touched something wet and he yanked his hand clear. A stringy yellow noodle dangled from his fingertips. Shuddering, he flicked it off. It splatted near the top of the canopy glass, drawing Cal’s eye to the sun visor.
He folded it down, revealing a photograph of a scantily clad alien woman with more breasts than anyone would reasonably know what to do with. Beside it, tucked into a little pocket, was a hand-drawn diagram of the battle suit’s controls.
“Bingo!” Cal said, grabbing for the paper. “Splurt, hold on, buddy. Be right with you!”
Splurt had cleared out almost all of the initial wave of robots, but the approaching army opened fire, peppering his blobby surface with a torrent of blaster fire.
Thrashing, Splurt whipped out with several elastic tentacles, but the sheer volume of blaster fire drove him back. They puncture his surface and passed cleanly through, each blast reducing his size a fraction.
Cal’s eyes darted across the instruction sheet, then down at the controls. His stomach flipped when he realized that the information on the paper bore no relationship whatsoever to the layout of the buttons and switches inside the cockpit.
“Damn it!”
“Cal, do something!” Loren yelled.
“I don’t know how!” Cal hollered back. “I don’t know how it works. It’s not like there’s a button that just deactivates all the…”
His eyes fell on a bright red button in the center of the console. A label had been affixed to the plastic beneath it, clearly stating its purpose.
Space Team- The Collected Adventures 4 Page 71