“Wait, no. There is,” Cal said. “It literally says ‘Deactivate robots.’”
He pressed the button. Immediately, the robots stopped closing in and all lowered their weapons to their sides.
Cal held his breath, waiting to see if anything else was about to happen. When it looked like nothing was, he searched for the button that would open the canopy, before eventually deciding it was safer to manually push the broken glass out of the frame.
That done, he leaned forward and regarded the floor before him. Splurt was gradually pulling himself back together. Loren swept her weapon across the inert robot army, looking for an excuse to start shooting.
Mech waddled, penguin-like, between the metal carcasses Splurt had left strewn across the floor. He and Cal both turned as, with a, “Whoaaaa!” Mizette came sliding out from between two stacks of crates on all-fours. She spun to a stop amid all the carnage, finally coming to rest with her face just a few inches from Mech’s.
She looked him up and down, her confusion palpable.
“Like—”
“Don’t even ask,” Mech told her.
“Look at his little emergency feet!” Cal said. “Aren’t they adorable?”
Satisfied that the robots weren’t about to spring back into life, Loren lowered her repeater cannon. “You didn’t call for help,” she said. She did not sound happy about this. “Why didn’t you call for help?”
“We didn’t really get a chance,” Cal told her. He swung his legs over the edge of the battle suit’s cockpit, moved as it to launch himself off, then bottled it and slid clumsily down the front with a panicky expression on his face.
Straightening up, he flashed Loren one of his most winning smiles. “Things were going great one minute, and then the next minute…” He shrugged. “Robots. So many robots. Also, the only comm-unit we had was in Mech’s arm, and fonk knows where that went.”
Cal gestured over to Mech. “I mean, look at him. They literally tore him limb from limb,” he said. “And, I suspect, molested him. Sexually.”
“They didn’t molest me,” Mech growled.
“Sure they didn’t, short stuff,” Cal said. “You keep telling yourself that.”
He clapped his hands and rubbed them together. “Now. Reckon we can claim this bounty?” he asked, shuffling and sliding around until he found Professor Nushtuk in all the carnage.
This turned out not to be too difficult, as Nushtuk was much larger than he had been. Or rather, he covered a much wider area. The outline of a large three-toed foot could just be made out in the mush of his remains, most of which were now almost two-dimensional.
His head was still the correct size and shape, but it had become detached from the jelly of his neck and rolled a few feet across the floor. His face was pointed in Cal’s direction, the eyes rolled back in their sockets, the end of Tyrra’s knife hilt protruding from a hole in his forehead.
“They wanted him alive,” Loren said.
Cal considered this.
“Maybe if we dressed him up…”
“What the fonk are you talking about, ‘dress him up’?” Mech demanded. “Only thing the man’s gonna fit in now is a bathtub.”
Cal sighed. “You’re right. No way we can Weekend at Bernie’s our way out of this one,” he said. He gestured to Loren’s comm-unit. “I know we get a fortune for bringing him in alive, but ask Kevin what we get for killing him?”
Loren passed on the message. Kevin took a moment to check the job listing before replying.
“The death penalty, ma’am.”
Cal tutted. “Fonk. See? This is the reason I hate jobs. This always happens.”
Loren side-eyed him.
“Not this exact thing. This is a first. But shizz like this,” Cal said. Splurt finally finished pulling himself back together, looked between Cal and Loren a few times, then finally rolled up onto Cal’s back and clung to it.
“We should get back to the ship,” Loren said.
“Agreed,” said Cal. “Miz, go find Tyrra. She and I are going to have words about the importance of not knifing people through the forehead.”
Miz tutted. “Fine,” she said, then all four of her limbs went in opposite directions and she crashed to the ground. “Like, what the fonk is wrong with this floor?”
“Loren, could you help Miz?” Cal asked.
The lines of Loren’s face drew tighter. She chose not to reply to him, and instead just swung her rifle up onto her shoulder.
“Come on, Miz,” she said, holding a hand out. Miz took it and Loren braced herself as the wolf-woman hauled herself upright. “Let’s go,” Loren continued, shooting Cal a glare. “Captain’s orders.”
“Wait, what’s that supposed to mean?” Cal asked, but Loren didn’t respond. Instead, she and Miz teetered off across the slippery floor, holding onto each other for support.
“You’re an idiot, man,” Mech grunted. “I hope you know that.”
“What? What did I do?” Cal asked.
He watched until Loren and Miz had gone sliding off between two crate stacks, then sighed and shook his head.
Bending, he picked up a set of robot legs and supported himself on them like an old man with a walking frame. The metal feet gripped the floor, drastically cutting Cal’s chances of falling over.
“Come on, Frodo,” he said, glancing back at Mech. “Let’s go find the rest of you.”
Sixteen
“Medical study on Pallton Minor,” said Kevin.
“What kind of medical study?” Cal asked. He was holding a little piece of one of the robots in his hands, turning it over and over as he examined it.
While searching the place for salvage, they’d figured out that the little rectangular box Cal was now holding had been what allowed Nushtuk’s battle suit to directly control the robots. Cal was hopeful he could find a way to attach it to Mech without the cyborg noticing. Oh, the fun he would have.
“It doesn’t say, sir,” Kevin replied. “But there is a sizeable list of potential side effects, and an airtight legal disclaimer.”
“Hard pass,” said Cal. “What else?”
“There’s a sewer blockage that requires clearing across on Pallton Major,” Kevin said.
“Sewer blockage? Why’s that on there?” Cal wondered, looking up from the remote control doohickey. “Shouldn’t that be something the authorities handle?”
“It’s become sentient, sir,” Kevin explained. “They’ve already lost over three crews.”
Cal glanced up. “How many over three?”
“One, sir.”
“So… they’ve lost four? Why didn’t you just say they’d lost four crews?”
“Dramatic effect, sir,” Kevin replied.
“Like, I am not going into a sewer,” said Miz, flicking her eyes up to the screen.
“Agreed. It’s a no to the shizzmonster,” said Cal. “Next.”
“How do you feel about psychic parasites?” Kevin asked.
“Negative to indifferent,” Cal replied. “But leaning heavily toward the negative. What about the gameshow thing? Any more of those?”
There was a pause as Kevin checked the job listings. “I’m afraid not, sir.”
Cal tutted. “Damn. Because I think I’d be great on one of those.”
“You’ve said that already,” Mech told him.
“I know, but seriously, I’d be great.”
“There is one available position that’s related to television, sir.”
Cal’s chair creaked as he leaned forward. There was a thud as the remote control pack fell to the floor. “There is?”
“Yes, sir. For the Viaview Network, producers of ‘Obstacle Smash,’ ‘The Hunt,’ and something called ‘Who’s Got the Pants On?’”
“OK, I’m interested. Tell me more,” said Cal.
“Well, sir, competitors all start by taking off their pants—”
“Not about the show, Kevin. About the job,” Cal said. “Tell me about the job.”
�
�Apologies, sir. One moment,” Kevin replied. “Here we are. It’s a delivery job, involving the transportation of two crates from Tolgor, one of the moons of the planet Trogol, to the Viaview network’s station in orbit around Logus Prime.”
“Ah, shizz,” Cal muttered, leaning back in his chair.
“Problems, sir?”
“Where are we going to put two crates?” Cal asked. He brightened, hopefully. “Unless they’re really small crates?”
“They aren’t, sir, no,” said Kevin.
Cal slumped. “Right. Figures. Well, there goes my big break.”
“We could always use the cargo deck, sir.”
Cal frowned, then looked up to the ceiling. “The what?”
“The cargo deck.”
Cal’s lips moved silently as he said the words again, in case by doing so he’d discover some alternative meaning behind them.
He didn’t.
“Wait. We have a cargo deck? Since when did we have a cargo deck?” Cal asked.
“Since always, sir. Haven’t I mentioned it?”
Cal struggled his chair around and looked at Miz. She shrugged back at him.
“No. You haven’t mentioned it.”
“Oh. Are you sure, sir? It sounds like the kind of thing I should have mentioned,” Kevin said.
“You’re right, it does sound like the kind of thing you should have mentioned, doesn’t it?” Cal agreed. “Where is it?”
“It’s downstairs, sir.”
Cal stood up. “Wait, what?”
“The cargo deck, sir,” Kevin intoned. “It’s downstairs.”
“We have a downstairs?!”
Kevin let out an incredulous snort. “Of course we have a downstairs, sir. It’s a large ship. You didn’t really think it was just eight moderately-sized rooms and a corridor, did you?”
Cal looked at the floor and stared blankly at it for a few seconds, before snapping back into life.
“Yes! Yes, I absolutely thought that,” Cal said. “Miz, did you know we had a downstairs?”
Miz shook her head. “No. But, I don’t really care.”
“Mech? Loren? Did you know we had a downstairs?” Cal called.
“A what?” Mech hollered back.
“A downstairs. A cargo deck. Did you know we had one?”
There was a clanking from out in the corridor. Mech entered, both legs now back in place, and one arm almost fully reattached. Loren entered behind him, pushing a protective visor up onto her head to reveal a face covered with oil and, Cal couldn’t help but notice, mild resentment.
“What are you talking about?” Mech demanded. “We ain’t got a downstairs.”
“He’s right,” Loren agreed, her voice short and clipped. “We don’t.”
“Kevin says we do,” Cal told them. “Kevin?”
“I’m positive I mentioned it,” Kevin said.
“You definitely did not,” Cal said. “How do we get down?”
“Entry is made via a sliding hatch on the ship’s underside, sir,” said Kevin.
Cal turned on his heels. “OK. Let’s go check it out.”
From all around the bridge there came a mechanical clanking. The floor around the edge of the room sank into the floor, forming a series of interlocking steps.
“Alternatively, sir, you could take the stairs.”
They elected to take the stairs. Except Mizette, who elected to remain seated, on the basis that she didn’t have any interest whatsoever in looking at an empty room.
Cal crept down the first few steps, then ducked to try to see into what he was already thinking of as the ship’s creepy basement. He’d seen enough horror movies in his time to know the basement was where the action was, and he was about to suggest that Mech went first when the cyborg shoved him in the back, sending him stumbling down into the darkness.
“That was uncalled for,” Cal whispered, when he reached the bottom. “Kevin, do we have lights down here?”
In answer to the question, the whole ceiling began to glow, casting a stark white light across a sizeable amount of nothing whatsoever.
This deck was mostly the same size and shape as the one above, but the complete lack of rooms or equipment made it feel much larger. It wasn’t particularly high—barely over eight feet from ceiling to floor, and curved upward with the lines of the ship at the front, back and sides, reducing the amount of usable space.
But still. It was a cargo deck. They had a fonking cargo deck.
“I can’t believe this has been down here the whole time,” said Loren.
“I know. Crazy, right?” replied Cal, smiling at her. She deflected it with a look so cool it sent a shiver down his spine.
“I can’t believe you didn’t tell us about this, Kevin,” said Mech.
“Nor can I, sir,” Kevin admitted. “Next you’ll be telling me I didn’t inform you about the ship’s spa facilities or holodeck.”
All eyes went up.
“Just my little joke,” Kevin told them.
All eyes went down again.
“OK, then. We have a cargo bay, which means we can take cargo,” Cal said.
“Thank you for that profound observation,” said Mech.
“You’re welcome.” Cal fixed Loren with a smile, and gestured around the room. “What do you think, Teela?”
He ratcheted his smile up a few notches until it became a full-blown grin, and raised his eyebrows. He looked in many ways like a puppy expecting some kind of reward for a new trick he’d just learned.
Boy, was he going to be disappointed.
“I think it’s a cargo deck,” Loren said. “Although, I’m not sure.”
Cal tilted his head to the side and raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”
“I mean I think it’s a cargo deck. I’ll enjoy all the facilities of having a cargo deck, I’m just not sure I’m ready to really commit to the idea yet,” Loren said. She turned for the stairs, started up them, then paused just before she disappeared back up onto the bridge. “How about we discuss it at a later date?”
Cal flinched, but by the time he’d opened his mouth to respond, Loren was gone.
“What now?” he groaned. “I called her by her first name! Isn’t that what she wanted?”
“I ain’t getting involved,” said Mech, turning and clanking up the steps.
“You heard me, though, right? I called her by her first name!”
Mech stopped and looked back. “The woman is sticking parts back onto me using power tools and fire. I ain’t getting involved and risking getting on her bad side,” he said. “Guess you’ll just have to figure it out on your own.”
“How the fonk am I supposed to do that?” Cal asked.
Mech began climbing again. “Like I say. Figure it out.”
“I would be more than happy to offer advice, sir,” Kevin intoned.
“Jesus. No, I’ll be fine, Kevin, thank you.”
“You could write her a poem,” Kevin suggested.
“I’ll bear that in mind.”
“Or bake her a cake shaped like something rude.”
Cal looked up. “Why would—?”
“I hear they’re very popular, sir,” said Kevin. “In women’s circles,” he added, a little mysteriously.
“Again, thanks for the suggestions, I’ll give them some thought,” Cal said. He took another look around the cargo bay, shook his head, then started up the stairs. “Hook us up with that delivery job.”
“Very good, sir.”
Cal sighed. “Maybe today won’t be a total bust, after all.”
Seventeen
Mech, Cal, Mizette, and Tyrra stood in the center of a small town, their mouths hanging open and, in Miz’s case, stomach rumbling.
It was impossible to stress the ‘small’ part of ‘small town’ enough. Each building was barely five feet high, and they were set out in concentric circles around the center. The houses were all shaped like beehives with an arched door in the front, a round window above it, and a lit
tle satellite dish fixed to the top. While identical in structure, each was a different color. Those closest to the center were bright and vibrant, while those in the farthest rings were pale pastel shades.
Beyond the final ring of houses, the landscape undulated into a series of pink-purple hills, where the grass was the color of lavender, and flowers swayed lazily on a warm summer’s breeze.
Notable as they were, neither the scenery nor the architecture were what currently held everyone’s attention, though. That honor went to the Floomfles. Cal knew they were called the Floomfles, because they’d been singing about it and dancing for the past four minutes, and showed no signs of letting up.
The tallest of the Floomfles stood just a little higher than Cal’s knee. The smallest—children, presumably—were barely over his ankle. Their heads were disproportionately large, their eyes disproportionately larger still, with both those factors combining to make them look like Pixar creations made flesh.
A few of them—the females, mostly—had tiny semi-transparent wings on their backs. They looked far too small to support the weight of their heads, let alone the rest of them, and yet they fluttered inelegantly from rooftop to rooftop, joining in with the chorus of those down below.
“We are the Floomfles,” they sang for the third or fourth time, skipping around in a circle and jingling little bells in time with the beat. Cal found himself humming along to the now-familiar tune as he watched them, and had already made peace with the fact that it was going to be stuck in his head for days. “We Floomfle all day long! We hope and trust and laugh and love, our friendship makes us strong!
“We Floomfle on the good days, we Floomfle through the worst! Our kindness, joy, and laughter makes our hearts fit to burst!”
One of the smaller Floomfles dropped to his knees, clutching at his chest. The others fell silent and watched as he groaned and grimaced, his face twisted in pain.
“Jesus, is he…? Oh, God. Someone get that guy an ambulance,” Cal said, but then the kneeling Floomfle pulled open his tunic and, with a pop, a spray of glitter erupted out and swirled around on the breeze.
A cheer went up. The singing resumed, even more enthusiastically than before.
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