Mech and Loren both shook their heads. Cal hadn’t even bothered to look at Miz, knowing full well that she wouldn’t have been listening in the first place.
“OK, new rule, from now on everyone has to carry a pen,” Cal said.
“Don’t worry, sir,” said Kevin. “I’m able to recall the gate number.”
“You are?” asked Cal, sounding a little dubious.
“Indeed, sir. My databanks are almost limitless. I have the capacity to remember anything. A fifteen-digit number is unlikely to cause me any problems.”
Cal nodded, impressed. “OK. Well, great.
“Or was it sixteen?” Kevin wondered.
Cal’s cheeks deflated, as did his spirits.
“Not to worry, sir,” Kevin said. “I’m sure we’ll figure it out.”
Three hours later, Cal sat with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands, trying very hard not to cry. Miz and Tyrra had left just forty-five minutes into the ordeal—allegedly to go and kill themselves—and Mech had eventually headed for the engine room some time after that. Cal wasn’t sure just how much time, because he’d been banging his head against the floor at that moment, and loudly declaring that he wished he’d never been born.
“And you’re sure we can’t call them back?!” Cal asked.
“For the tenth time, no, we can’t call them back,” Loren snapped. “Or, yes, we can, but they’re not answering. I just get a recorded message that says ‘Please follow previous instructions.’”
“We forgot the previous instructions!” Cal cried, clawing at the air in frustration.
“I know!”
“I wasn’t talking to you! I was talking to them!” Cal said, gesturing angrily at the Viaview station.
Splurt turned an eye toward him and rippled.
“You’re damn right I’m getting uptight!” Cal told him. “Because this is torture, Splurt. And I say that as someone who gets tortured at least once a month. This is worse than all those.”
Splurt gave a wobble. Cal checked himself and exhaled some of his anger out in a long, controlled breath through his nostrils.
“No, I know. I know. That’s not getting us anywhere,” he said, sitting upright.
“Found it, sir,” said Kevin.
Cal knew better than to get too excited. He’d been burned too many times before.
“Have you, though?”
“Indeed, sir. Plotting a trajectory now.”
“But… You’ve said that before. Like, ten times now.”
Splurt shimmied on the back of Loren’s chair.
“Twelve times,” Cal corrected. “Jesus, twelve times.”
“This is the one, sir,” Kevin assured him.
Cal shrugged. “Fine. Great. Let’s see.”
Loren took her hands off the controls as Kevin took over again. The Untitled curved around the side of the station and began to climb.
“Think this is really it?” Cal asked.
Up front, Loren didn’t turn. “Don’t know.”
Cal watched the back of her head, hoping she’d turn to face him. She didn’t.
“You OK?”
“Fine.”
“We OK?”
“I don’t know, are we?”
Cal groaned inwardly. “Is this about the name thing? Is it seriously problem?”
“Not a serious serious problem,” Loren said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Cal asked.
“I heard what you said. To Miz. About it—me—being just fun.”
Cal groaned outwardly. “What? How? I mean, that wasn’t… I mean, I didn’t…”
“It’s fine. It’s good that we know where we both stand,” Loren said. “I don’t want serious, either.”
Before Cal could reply, the Untitled came to a halt directly across from a landing bay door.
“Here we are, sir,” said Kevin.
Cal looked at the screen. His eyes, now all-too accustomed to the set-up of the doors, went instinctively to the number stenciled onto the lower right corner.
“This is number six,” Cal said, his voice cracking at the edges.
“Indeed, sir. Found it at last.”
“But we’re not looking for number six. We’re looking for a fifteen or sixteen-digit number.
Silence.
“Not a one-digit number,” Cal said.
“Are you sure, sir?”
“Yes! Jesus Christ! I’m sure,” Cal said, jumping to his feet. “Have I died? Is that what happened? Have I died and gone to Hell?”
And then, right at the edge of the screen, he spotted his salvation. It stuck out from the side of the station like a stick-on soap dish from the side of a bathtub. “Wait. Look. What’s that?” he whispered, as if worried he might startle it and scare it away.
“It’s a landing platform,” Loren said.
“Yes! Right! Great! And it has one of those wibbly forcefield screens around it that we could fly the ship through!”
“Yes, but it looks like a private pad,” Loren pointed out.
“At this point, I don’t care if it’s a private fonking bathroom, we’re landing on it.” His head tick-tocked between the pad and Loren. “Uh, can you land on it?”
“Of course I can land on it!”
“It’s just, now that I look at it, it seems pretty small.”
For the first time in three hours, Loren turned toward him. The expression on her face made him almost wish that she hadn’t. “Look, do you want to land, or do you want to keep circling around until we die of old age?”
Cal swallowed. “Um, I’d like to land, please.”
“Fine!” Loren turned back to face front. “Then we’ll land.”
She jammed the controls around. The ship’s landing gear made a long, high-pitched grinding sound. Loren glanced back over her shoulder, just briefly.
“But you might want to put on your seatbelt.”
In the end, the landing was mostly uneventful. Sure, a full third of the ship was hanging over the edge of the platform, but Loren assured him it wasn’t going to fall off, and he didn’t think it was wise to argue.
After a quick scan by Kevin to confirm there was a breathable atmosphere around the ship, and a double-check by Mech because Cal felt much safer getting a second opinion, they’d ventured down the ramp and onto the platform itself.
The entire crew stood together, Cal at the front, Loren at the back, and everyone else positioned between them, trying to pretend they hadn’t picked up on any of the all-too-obvious tension.
“So, now what?” asked Mech.
Cal looked across the landing platform to where it met a second glowing forcefield wall. Beyond that lay a room that had gone big on space, but small on furniture. From where he stood, Cal could see one circular desk, several banks of monitors, and what appeared to be three or four museum-style display cases.
A figure sat in a chair at the center of the desk, turning occasionally to check a screen or tap on a console. Thanks to the wobble of the forcefield, it was hard to tell exactly who or what the figure was, but Cal got the impression they were tall, slender, and—unless he was very much mistaken—silver.
“Now, we go talk to this person,” Cal said. He straightened himself up, smoothed down his t-shirt, and flicked away a few of the crumbs left over from the half a Twix he’d found down the side of Loren’s chair when she’d gone to the bathroom. “Happy faces on, everyone. Best manners. Let’s try to make a good impression. Tyrra, try not to kill anyone. In fact, that goes for everyone. No killing. OK?”
He looked across their faces. Miz, Tyrra, and Mech looked non-committal. Splurt, who was perched on Loren’s shoulder, looked positively crestfallen.
“OK, good,” said Cal. He wasn’t entirely convinced by their reactions, but didn’t think it’d do much good to press the point. That’d only make them kill someone solely to annoy him. “Then let’s go do our thing.”
He thrust a hand out in front of him, palm down. “Space Team!”
<
br /> The others all regarded his hand, then Mech snorted. “Yeah, that ain’t happening,” he said, walking off. Loren , Miz, and Tyrra started after him.
“You’re seriously leaving me hanging here?” Cal called after them.
“We’re delivering boxes,” Loren said, briefly glancing back over her shoulder. “We don’t really need a rallying cry.”
“They’re not boxes, they’re crates!” Cal countered, his arm still raised.
He was about to lower it again when a little green hand stretched over on a snaking, elongated arm and rested briefly on the back of his.
“Thanks, buddy,” Cal said, then he hurried to catch up with the others, weaved past them, and took up his rightful place at the head of the procession.
Beyond the forcefield, the figure still twirled around inside the hoop of a desk. Now they were closer, Cal could see that it was definitely silver, and that it had more arms than he could count.
OK, technically it probably only had six or seven arms, maybe eight at a push, but they moved constantly, and too quickly for Cal to be able to keep track.
“We should probably let me do the talking,” Cal said.
“Why?” asked Mech. “When has that ever been a good idea?”
“Uh, since always,” Cal countered.
“Bullshizz. No way. I’m doing the talking,” said Mech.
“You can’t do the talking!”
“Why can’t Mech do the talking?” Loren interjected.
“Because that’s my thing! I do the talking!” Cal protested. “Mech does the engines and the, you know… I don’t want to say ‘robot stuff,’ but robot stuff. You do the flying, Miz does the violence and practiced indifference—”
“Whatever.”
“Splurt’s adorably psychotic, and I do the talking. That’s how it works!” Cal said.
“What do I do?” asked Tyrra.
“You stay quiet and don’t cause any trouble,” Cal told her. “I mean it, one strike and you’re out.”
Tyrra flashed her teeth at him and snarled. Cal rose above it and led them up to the interior forcefield.
Mech clenched his jaw and shook his head. “Fine. You do the talking,” he said, in the tone of someone who fully expected this to be a mistake. “But I ain’t bailing you out if you get in trouble.”
“Ha! As if,” said Cal. “Trust me. I’ve got this.”
He turned and mimed rapping his knuckles on the shimmering wall. “Knock knock!” he said, then he stepped through, smiled broadly, and was immediately shot in the chest.
Twenty
Fonk. That stung.
Cal moved to sat up, but something wet and knobbly almost fell out of the ragged hole in his sternum, so he lay back down again.
After some thought, he placed a hand over the knobbly thing and held it in.
A metal hand caught him by the scruff of the neck and hurriedly dragged him back through the forcefield. Loren dropped to her knees beside him, both her and Splurt’s eyes wide with worry.
“Cal! Cal! Can you hear me?”
“L-Loren? Is that you?” he asked, his voice a hoarse whisper, his expression vague and glassy. He gave himself a shake. “Wait, no, I mean… T-Teela? Is that you?”
His hand fumbled blindly for her face, but found a boob instead. She gave him the benefit of the doubt for the first five seconds, then slapped his hand away when he showed no intentions of moving it.
“He’s fine,” she said, rocking back on her heels.
“Huh? Where am I?” Cal blinked a few times, as if waking from a trance. “Oh, man. That hurt,” he groaned. “The getting shot thing, I mean, not you slapping me on the hand. Although, I’ll be honest, I can’t pretend that didn’t also sting.”
He coughed quite violently, his whole body flopping around like a dying maggot as he spluttered and wrenched. After a bit of a struggle, he hacked up something brown and meaty and spat it onto the floor beside him. It wobbled in a way that would almost certainly have made his stomach turn, if he still had one.
“Jesus. I doubt that thing’s ever supposed to be on the outside,” he mused, eyeing up the lumpy wad. “What the fonk shot me? Did anyone see?”
“I’m pretty sure it was some kind of, like, gun thing,” said Miz.
“Oh, really? You think so?” asked Cal, the pitch of his voice rising. He gestured to himself. “You think the thing that shot me could’ve been some kind of gun thing? Great deduction. Let’s go ahead and mark that case closed.”
Miz shot Loren a sideways look. “Is he being a total shizznod right now?”
“Pretty much,” said Loren.
“Well, I am sorry,” said Cal. “But I’m kind of in a tremendous amount of pain here, and currently mourning the loss of…”
He gestured to himself.
“…this entire section of my body. So, you’ll forgive me if I come across as a tiny bit tetchy.”
Miz rolled her eyes. “Whatever.”
Cal groaned. “I fonking knew we should’ve done the hands in a circle thing.”
“It looks like an automated defense turret,” said Mech, with a glance through the shielding. “The thing that shot you, I mean. Targeted your ass the second you stepped through the shield.”
Cal explored his chest wound with the tip of one finger. “Well, if it was aiming for my ass it needs some serious target practice.”
He poked something squidgy that stuck up between two partially destroyed ribs. A gush of blood erupted like a miniature geyser from the same spot on the opposite side of his chest.
Cal stopped prodding then and let his head fall back onto the floor with a clunk. “My God, this hurts.”
“What does it feel like?” wondered Tyrra. She was standing on her tiptoes to see over Loren, staring at the wound in rapt fascination.
“Like I’ve been shot in the chest by a big cannon,” said Cal.
“No, but what is it like?” Tyrra pressed.
Cal sighed. “Have you ever had really bad indigestion? Wait, no. Acid reflux? Have you ever had acid reflux?”
Tyrra shook her head.
“What am I saying? Of course you haven’t, you lucky bamstom. What are you, six? Trust me, it’ll strike one day, maybe years from now and ooh boy, then you’ll be…”
He shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. Probably not the time. Just try to imagine that your insides are overflowing with stomach acid. Only instead of stomach acid, it’s liquid fire. And instead of a stomach, it’s a giant hole where your stomach used to be.” Cal wrinkled his nose. “It pretty much feels like that. Only, you know, several magnitudes worse.”
He glanced down at himself, then up at Mech and Loren. “How does it look? Does it look bad?”
“Well… you’ve looked better,” Loren confessed.
“You’re basically a paste from your waist to your neck,” said Mech.
“Shizz, that does sound bad. Is it at least a nice paste?” Cal asked.
Mech had the decency to at least pretend to give this some thought.
“No,” he said, after a show of consideration. “No, it ain’t.”
Cal groaned. “Yeah. I thought not. It doesn’t look great from this angle, either. Still, on the bright side, you guys did want me to lose weight…”
“That don’t count,” said Mech.
“Totally counts,” Cal argued. “I am ripped. Ripped open, granted, but still ripped.”
He raised a shaky hand and pointed to the cyborg. “OK, new plan. Mech, you do the talking. I’ll lie here for a few minutes and regret my life choices.”
“Great, so now I’m going to get shot at?” Mech said.
“Quit whining, you big baby. You’re indestructible.”
“What? No, I ain’t!”
“You aren’t?” Cal asked. “Are you sure?”
“I’m fonking certain.”
Cal pulled a ‘Well, I never,’ sort of face. “Huh. I did not know that,” he said, then he made a dismissive gesture with a blood-soaked hand.
“Anyway, you’ll be fine. Just make sure you shoot first.”
Loren raised an eyebrow. “What about making a good impression?”
“Yeah, I think we can safely say that ship has sailed,” Cal said. “Anyway, we’re not going in and wrecking the joint, it’s self-defense. The turret shot me, we shoot the turret, we’re square, and we can get back to business.”
Mech grunted. “Fine. Let’s get this over with.”
“You can do it, big guy!” Cal called after him, as Mech padded toward the shielding. “I believe in you. You’re Han Solo, that thing’s Greedo, and this is the original edit before—In fact, know what? That’s too long and complex a metaphor, just go in there with your… aaaand, he’s gone.”
From beyond the shield there came the sound of blaster fire, then of metal exploding.
“Did he get it?” asked Cal. “I can’t sit up or everything will fall out. Did he get it?”
The familiar clank of Mech’s footsteps came in reply. “Yeah. I got it. Y’all coming in, or what?”
Cal beckoned to Splurt, who was still perched on Loren’s shoulder. “Hey, buddy. Can you come be my chest until I heal up? I wouldn’t normally ask, but…”
He made a ta-daa gesture to his wound, like a gameshow host presenting the star prize. Splurt flopped down from Loren’s shoulder, landed on Cal’s face with a splat, then oozed down over his torso, becoming an exact match for Cal’s flesh tones.
“Thanks, buddy,” Cal said. He gritted his teeth and hissed as Loren and Miz helped him up, but everything that was supposed to be inside him stayed there, so he marked it as a win.
“OK,” he said, squaring his shoulders. “Let’s go show this fonk who he’s dealing with.”
He led the way through the shield, glanced warily around to make sure nothing else was going to shoot at him, then marched toward the desk and the elegant silver figure twirling behind it. The blood-soaked remains of his t-shirt hung down from the bottom of his jacket, which was open and showed off his bare chest.
Cal stopped a few feet from the desk and put his hands on his hips.
“Hey, there,” he said. He’d chosen the perfect smile from his arsenal. It was six parts threatening to four parts friendly. It was designed to suggest that the next few minutes could go very well, or go very badly, with very little room for anything in between. “It seems we may have gotten off on the wrong foot.”
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