“As I say, sir, Physics is a funny old thing.”
Cal ducked his head, trying to peer through any gaps in the vines, but the screen was wrapped too tight for him to see anything but foliage. “It’s going to hit us?”
“I’m rather afraid so, sir.”
“When?”
“I can’t be one hundred percent accurate, sir,” said Kevin. “Will an approximate estimate do?”
“Yes! Whatever! When is it going to hit us?”
“Now, sir,” said Kevin, and the Untitled was rocked by a powerful impact that tried very hard to eject Cal’s insides onto the floor.
His head snapped forward. His arms and legs flew out in front of him, fingers and toes briefly meeting somewhere in the middle.
His eyes bulged. His heart momentarily stopped. For a terrifying half-second, he was sure he could see his own tongue extending out of his head like taffy, but then everything spun, the lights flickered, and he could see nothing but darkness.
Despite all that, the noise had been the worst part, he thought. All that other stuff had been thoroughly unpleasant, but there was something about the spaceship you were on making noises it wasn’t supposed to make while trillions of miles out into the endless void of space that really cut to the core, terror-wise.
The ear-splitting bang had been bad enough, but the weird squeaking noise, like two balloons being slowly rubbed together, had been worse. The succession of violent whipcrack sounds that had followed had been enough to turn Cal’s stomach, but it was the silence that came next that had turned nausea into a lingering sense of dread.
Still, panicking was going to get him nowhere.
“Is everyone OK?” he asked. “Loren? Miz? Splurt?” He hesitated. “Tyrra?”
“I’m fine,” Loren said, but there was just a whisper of pain in the words that told Cal this wasn’t entirely true. “Splurt’s OK, too.”
“How do you know?” Cal asked, trying but failing to see her through the darkness.
“He’s sitting on my head.”
“OK, good. Everyone else?”
“She is a bad pilot,” remarked Tyrra from the back.
“Ugh. I know, right? Didn’t I tell you?” Miz replied. “Like, way to go, Loren. I totally knew you were going to crash.”
“I didn’t crash,” Loren objected. “The other ship hit us.”
“But only because you made it,” Miz pointed out. “What, you’re not satisfied just crashing us into stuff, now you have to crash other stuff into us, too? Are you, like, trying to kill us all?”
A voice hollered through from somewhere out back. “Excuse me, might I inquire as to…?” it began, then: “One moment, it is probably best that I readjust for this.”
There was a pause, then a click, then another similar but different voice took over.
“What the fonk are you doing up there?” Mech demanded. “Are you trying to kill us all?”
“That’s what I said,” Miz called back.
“OK, OK, we need to get over it. It’s in the past,” Cal said. “We got hit. Not a lot we can do about that now. What’s the status, Kevin?”
The only reply was a faint buzzing from the ceiling. “Kevin, pal? You there?”
It soon became apparent that no, Kevin was not there.
“That’s worrying,” Cal said.
“Controls aren’t responding,” said Loren, toggling a few switches and jabbing forlornly at a screen. “It’s dead.”
“Mech, you’re our last hope here, pal,” Cal hollered, turning in his chair. The revolving motion was jerky and filled the bridge with the nerve-jangling screech of metal grinding against metal. “Jesus, that was horrible,” Cal muttered, then he went back to shouting in panic. “Mech? Can you fix it?”
“The whole damn ship is broken!” Mech spat.
“We know! The question was can you fix it?” Cal shouted back.
They all heard Mech muttering a string of what were probably obscenities.
“I’m gonna need Loren and Splurt,” he eventually said. “And a whole lot of motherfonking luck.”
The sound of Loren’s seat belt unclipping followed. She jumped to her feet, let out the tiniest whimper of pain, then called back to Mech.
“We’re coming.”
“Think you can manage to not crash into anything on the way?” Miz sneered.
“I’m sure I’ll be fine,” said Loren, navigating her way across the bridge in the dark.
There was a thud from the bulkhead wall beside the door as Loren walked into it.
“Way to go,” said Miz.
“Oh, shut up,” Loren told her, then she stumbled blindly into the corridor with Splurt, presumably, still perched on her head.
Once Loren had left, the bridge fell into an awkward, uneasy sort of silence, broken only by the creaking of the ship and the faint electronic buzz that may or may not have been Kevin.
“So,” said Cal, after the awkwardness of it all got too much for him to bear. “How’s everyone been?”
“We will die here,” said Tyrra. “We will all die here today.”
“Well somebody’s a real Negative Nancy,” said Cal. “And, might I say, has quite a lot to learn. We’re Space Team, kid. We don’t die.”
Cal thought about this.
“Well, I did once,” he said. “Maybe twice, I forget.”
“Like…” Miz began.
“And Miz died also. Yes. We die occasionally,” he said. “But we come back, so it works out fine.”
“Not this time,” said Tyrra. She sniffed the air. “Don’t you smell that?”
Cal held his hands up. “I was hoping you wouldn’t, but fine. I have to take responsibility for that,” he said. “That was some pretty intense stuff back there, and—”
“She’s right,” said Miz. “I smell it, too.”
“Again,” said Cal. “I apologize wholeheartedly for any distress—”
“Not that,” Miz barked. “The air. It’s different. Oxygen levels are, like, dropping or whatever. Life support systems must have failed.”
“Told you,” whispered Tyrra through the darkness. “We all die here today.”
Cal unclipped his belt and stood up. “No, we don’t,” he said. “I’ll go talk to Mech and see if we can hurry up the—”
He floated lazily into the air.
“Hey, who turned off the gravity?” he asked. “How am I supposed to get to the engine room if there’s no—”
He stopped talking and looked down. Something was touching his ankle. At first, he had a horrible suspicion that it was Tyrra about to stab him again, but then it snaked up his leg and tightened around his shin.
“What the fonk is this now?” he muttered, and then his leg was jerked, his body slammed into the floor, and he was dragged screaming across the bridge.
Eight
For more years than anyone could remember, the name Lyra Sherush had brought terror to all those who heard it. Her band of pirates had terrorized the sector, robbing those with things worth robbing, slave-trading those without.
Rumors whispered in back alleys and shady bars said she was a first cousin of King Anderle himself, feared high ruler of all the pirate clans. Whether this was true or not, nobody knew for sure—they certainly had no intentions of asking her—but Lyra’s temperament and her knack for mass-murder were enough to make most folks believe it.
According to legend, it had been Lyra Sherush who had led the attack on the Empress of Ko’theen, taking out a dozen escort ships, three hundred armed guards, and a number of small but aggressively protective pets before claiming the head of the Empress herself. One of the heads, anyway. The important one. The other, non-royal head she left alone, doomed forever to remember the events of that day, but now powerless to do anything about them but mourn.
The Great Siege of Karkaktoom, where four rival pirate clans had united under one flag in order to take down a benevolent god-like entity with golden flesh? That was Lyra, they said. And, while the siege
had ultimately been unsuccessful, the relentless twelve-day onslaught had made Karkaktoom feel pretty damn unwelcome. As a result, she’d quickly fonked off elsewhere in the galaxy, causing an entire system that had grown dependent on her generous offerings to descend into chaos and civil war.
There were many other examples of a life badly lived. The Poktish Massacre. The Endless Fires of Flomus. The Creeping Stench of Hootus VI. Lyra Sherush was behind them all.
Sure, there wasn’t necessarily any evidence of any of it, but the dedicated news channels and daily update bulletins said she was behind it all, and that was proof enough for most.
And there was talk, of course. Hearsay. People passed things on, albeit quietly, and only after checking no one else was listening in. Especially anyone with an eyepatch.
The whispers on the wind said Lyra had killed a thousand men in her time, many while she was unarmed, and three using just the pinkie finger on her left hand.
Some said she was a flesh-eater. Others claimed she ate nothing at all, but instead drank the blood of her victims through a straw she carried at all times in the inside pocket of her pirate coat.
A few people thought she was vegan, and that all her aggression issues could be resolved if she’d only treat herself to a couple of sausages and a steak every once in a while.
They all agreed, though, that Lyra Sherush was bad news. Lyra Sherush was not to be messed with. Lyra Sherush was a monster.
Which was why everyone watched their screens so intently when the Eviscerator rammed both blade-like arms through her stomach and hoisted her into the air.
The cheers rang out across the system, from Logus Prime to Pallton Minor. Glasses were raised, hugs were given, joy abounded. Through all this, nobody took their eyes off the screen.
Their mouths frothing with excitement, they watched as the camera slowly zoomed in on Lyra’s face, savoring the way her eyes lolled emptily in her head.
They cheered again when the image changed to show the blood-spattered Eviscerator, his flawlessly white teeth gritted in a grimace of delight.
Back on Lyra again. She was gagging now, ejecting bile down her chin.
Good enough for her, they cheered. Well deserved!
Two icons blinked up on screen. Thumbs up, thumbs down. Mercy or condemnation. Spare or slay.
All across the system, they made their choices with a look, a button press, a voice command. All across the system, by the will of the people, Lyra Sherush’s fate was sealed.
The icons vanished. An entire star system held its breath as it awaited the result.
“The Hunt will be back,” a smooth voice announced, and an entire star system groaned in frustration. “After these important messages.”
Nine
Cal stopped screaming. He didn’t do this through choice, but rather because he’d been swung quite violently against the corridor wall, and all the air that had been in his lungs had promptly exited his body through his nose. After that, it was hard to scream. After that, it was hard to do too much of anything, really, but be dragged along, bouncing off the floor and into the air through the gravityless ship.
He heard some commotion from up by the bridge—squeaking chairs, an angry shout from Miz—and then his head hit a doorframe and all he heard was a high-pitched eeeeeee inside his ears.
Cal kicked with his free foot but found nothing. He tried to kick with his other foot, but he was still being dragged along by the leg and didn’t have much of a say in how it was able to move right now.
There was some more movement from behind him. A gasp followed by the sudden clang of doors being physically slammed shut. Then, whatever had Cal’s leg suddenly had his other leg, his waist, and his lower abdomen, too. It squeezed, and he felt as if his stomach was being forced up his food pipe and into his mouth. And not in a good way.
If, indeed, there was a good way for all that to happen. He suspected not.
The plant. The fonking plant had somehow found its way inside. That had to be it. And now it was trying to eat him again. It had already had a lick and had clearly enjoyed his flavor. Now, it was back to finish the job. Damn, why did he have to be so tasty?
With a clunk, the ship’s red emergency lighting came on. Gravity kicked in too, and Cal fell a couple of feet backward onto the floor.
He managed to muster another scream when Tyrra appeared above him, her knife raised, her face twisted into a ridiculously toothy snarl.
Cal saw himself reflected in her black, glassy eyes and thrust a hand up to stop her. “Wait, no, not now!”
SHUNK!
Tyrra brought the blade down, embedding it up to the hilt in the thick vine that wrapped around Cal’s body. It writhed in distress, but kept its grip, forcing her to plunge the knife into it again, and again, and again, until it finally uncoiled itself from around him.
Cal kicked clear as the greenery made a desperate dive for Tyrra and the blade, its stumpy severed end smearing green sap across the floor.
They were in the airlock, Cal realized. The part of the plant that had been amputated when the outer doors had slammed shut had untied itself and come looking for revenge. At least, Cal hoped it had been looking for revenge and not, say, companionship, because Tyrra was now stabbing the shizz out of the thing, ejecting sprays of sap all over the room, and cleaving off chunks of its—for want of a better word—flesh.
The plant’s narrow tip grabbed for the blade, but Tyrra was ready for it. She dodged the swipe, plunged the sliver of metal into the vine’s middle, then jerked it sideways, carving a split horizontally across it.
The top part of the plant toppled as if on a hinge, and stopped when it was parallel with the bottom half, but facing the opposite direction. Hooking a foot under it, Tyrra flicked it toward the wall, spun in a full circle, and hurled the knife at it.
The blade passed through the plant and embedded into a sign fixed to the wall beside the spacesuit locker which, ironically, warned of the dangers of sharp objects.
There followed some thrashing and twitching from the plant, but its heart was clearly no longer in it, and Cal couldn’t really blame it for that.
With a final audible groan, it fell still. Cal turned to find Tyrra standing behind him, eyes on the plant, face awash with sap, chest heaving from the effort of the fight.
“Uh, nice work,” Cal told her. “You bested the shizz out of that thing.”
“Are you hurt?” she asked.
“No. Just my pride,” said Cal. “And my… you know how there’s, like, an ass-bone?”
Tyrra said nothing.
“Well, I hurt my ass-bone. But it’ll be fine,” Cal assured her. “I can already hardly feel it. What about you? You OK?”
Tyrra straightened, puffed herself up, and nodded. Suddenly, Cal saw her not as a terrifying shark-creature who delighted in causing him physical distress—although she was that, obviously.
Instead, he saw her as the other thing she was—a kid. That nod, that body language, that expression, he’d seen them all before on his own daughter the day she’d fallen off her bike and insisted that she was fine. Insisted and insisted until her lip had wobbled, the dam had broken, and the tears had come.
Right there inside the airlock, Cal wanted to put his arms around the kid and give her a hug, but suspected she’d produce some hidden weapon and stab, bludgeon, or possibly even shoot him the moment he got within reach.
“Ah, fonk it,” he said, and he hugged her, anyway. To his surprise, she didn’t resist. He felt her arms clamp around him and hug him back.
Fonk, she was stronger than she looked. His ribs grumbled in complaint as she held him, burying her face against Betty White’s and stifling a whimper.
“You’re OK, kid. You did great,” he whispered. He hadn’t intended to whisper, exactly, but the hug meant his lungs couldn’t currently expand, and he had to hold onto as much air as he could.
Through the window on the inner airlock door, Cal saw Loren looking back at him, her face purple in the e
mergency lighting.
Loren mouthed something silently to him, her breath fogging the glass. Unfortunately, because the translation chip didn’t translate silent mouth movements, Cal could only guess at what she’d said. He smiled and gave her a thumbs-up in reply.
She mouthed something else that made literally zero sense to him, then turned and hurried back in the direction of the engine room.
Mizette’s face appeared in the window next. She looked worried at first, surprised at second, and relieved at third. She, too, mouthed something to him, and Cal nodded and smiled, and then offered a thumbs-up in response.
Tyrra turned her head and caught sight of Miz through the glass. She released her grip on Cal and stepped back quickly. It was hard to read her expression, what with her essentially having the head of a shark, but Cal got the impression she was embarrassed at having been caught.
“So that’s what it’s all about,” Cal said, the penny dropping.
She was trying to impress Miz. Everything she was doing was an attempt to impress Mizette.
Tyrra frowned at him, confused.
“Nothing. Relax, kid,” Cal told her. “You might not think it, but under all that hair and attitude, Miz is a big puppy dog. Deep down, she’s a hugger, too. Right, Miz?”
“Ugh. No,” Miz said, her voice muffled by the door. She looked them up and down. “But, like, you both OK, or whatever?”
“Yeah, we’re fine. Thanks to this one,” Cal said, shooting Tyrra a smile. “Don’t know what I’d have done if she hadn’t made it through before that thing closed the doors.”
“Died,” said Tyrra.
“Hmm? Well… I’m sure I’d have found a way out.”
“You wouldn’t,” Tyrra told him.
“I probably would. I’d have come up with something,” Cal insisted.
“You were screaming and crying.”
“I was screaming and crying tactically,” Cal corrected. “That was the first part of my plan.”
Tyrra crossed her arms and put all her weight on one hip. It wasn’t hard to figure out where she’d picked up that move. It was classic Mizette. “What was the next part?”
The Hunt for Reduk Topa Page 7