Space Team: Planet of the Japes

by Barry J. Hutchison

  He smiled shakily. “Just… Just thought you should know.”

  “See?” said Cal, shooting Mech a scolding look. “Helpful. Offering us advice, even after you got him shot in the balls.”

  “He’s right,” said Miz, cocking her head to one side. “I hear an alarm.”

  “There are access tunnels running below most of the buildings,” Dave said. “We used to deliver here, and that’s how we’d move the cargo around. I can show you.”

  Cal raised his eyebrows in Mech’s direction, just as several sirens began shrieking in the distance. “Well, Mech? Do we trust him, or do we wait here and see what comes through those doors?”

  He squeezed his lips together and in a reedy, high-pitched voice, added: “Please trust him, big robot man, we don’t want to get shot again.”

  Cal’s voice returned to normal as he pointed to his crotch. “And yes,” he said. “That was my testicles talking.”

  Mech’s mechanisms whirred as he looked from Cal to Dave to the broken window. The sirens were getting louder now. Time was running out.

  “Fine,” he said through gritted teeth. “Where do we find these access tunnels?”

  * * *

  The weight of the wooden hatch rested on Cal’s head as he peered through the floor-level gap, watching a squad of more serious, less slapstick-oriented cops storm the restaurant. From this angle, he could only make out their feet and part of their legs, but based on what little information he had, these guys were huge. Their voices were a series of barked, guttural grunts that the translation chip either couldn’t decipher, or didn’t want to.

  The grunting grew more urgent as the new security team discovered the old security team all neatly stacked up. There was some gruff, throaty discussion between the newcomers, then Cal glimpsed the glow of a light beam.

  A moment later, the little sleeping clown-cops exploded into yellow gunge.

  “Jesus,” Cal whispered, then he lowered his head, letting the hatch fall quietly into place before anyone could spot him.

  Clambering down a rusted – and notably low-tech – metal ladder, Cal found himself in a long, hollowed-out passageway that had been carved through solid rock. The walls were rough and uneven, suggesting whoever had built the tunnel network had done so quickly, and without a great deal of care.

  The walls, floor and ceiling all formed a square-ish shape that was ever so slightly wider at the bottom. A rail ran along the length of the ceiling, with a notch in the middle that suggested something should be hanging from it, but nothing was.

  At regular intervals along the tunnel, little side rooms had been carved out. Storage crates were stacked up in each of these alcoves, most of them with variations of the Transol Shipping logo stuck to the side.

  “Some of these must have been here for years,” Dave remarked. His voice, though barely a whisper, scuttled along the passageway in both directions. He ran his fingers across the surface of one of the boxes. “This logo is two generations ago.”

  “Fascinating. Seriously,” said Mech. He gestured along the passageway in both directions. “But which way do we go?”

  “Depends where you’re trying to get to,” said Dave. He winced. “Which wasn’t supposed to make me sound like quite so much of a smart-ams,” he said. “I mean, left takes you back in the direction of the drop pod, right takes you over in the direction of the wall. Either way, we can climb up elsewhere and check the lay of the land.”

  “What is it with the wall, anyway?” asked Cal. “Did they build that after the incident?”

  “What incident?” Loren asked.

  Cal shrugged. “No idea,” he admitted. “It just feels cool to say. ‘The incident’. See?”

  “The wall has always been there,” Dave said. “But after the incident, they made it bigger. Much bigger.”

  “What happened?” asked Miz.

  Dave opened his mouth to speak, then looked up at the hatch above them. “We should probably get moving. I’ll explain while we walk,” he said. “Which way do you want to go?”

  “Let’s head for the wall,” Cal suggested. “Ideally, I’ll never set eyes on that fonking pod thing again.”

  “Fair enough,” said Dave. With another glance up, he led them along the passageway on the right, and as they walked, he filled them in.

  The incident had occurred four years previously, and had made all the local news networks, as well as a few of the bigger, galaxy-wide stations. One of the bio-bots – a large clown character, not unlike the one of the Funworld logo, only blue – had killed a guest.

  It wasn’t the first time a visitor to the park had died – accidents happened – but it was the manner of death which caused the Funworld operators some concern. It had involved a metal fence spike, an unsuspecting orifice, and a vigorous application of upward momentum.

  Still, even this would have barely registered as a minor inconvenience, had the bio-bot – Mr Bongle – not gone on to kill another guest in a similar manner. Then another. And another.

  Soon, a whole sector of the park was awash with blood, and almost exclusively devoid of fence rails. Security had moved in, of course, but like the thousand or more guests that had been enjoying the activities on offer in the area when Mr Bongle broke his programming, they never came back out.

  “Jesus,” said Cal, whistling quietly through his teeth. “So that big wall is to keep one evil clown at bay?”

  Dave shook his head. “No. Whatever had happened to make Bongle flip out, it happened to others, too. Maybe he did it to them, maybe it was just some programming glitch. No-one really knows. But last time anyone did a flyover of that area, the whole place was overrun.”

  “By evil clowns,” said Cal, because he felt it was something that needed to be emphasized.

  “Pretty much,” Dave confirmed. “There must be a couple of thousand of them beyond the wall.”

  “What happened to them?” Loren asked. “How did they malfunction, or break their programming, or whatever?”

  “No-one knows. No-one’s ever gone back in to try to find out.”

  “Wow. I can see why this place isn’t pulling the crowds,” said Cal. “I mean, that whole saying, ‘there’s no such thing as bad publicity’? I’m not sure it stretches to being speared up the anus by a clown-monster.”

  They walked on a while longer, Dave, Cal, Mech, Loren, Splurt and Miz all forming a single line down the center of the tunnel. There were no lights – no electric ones, anyway – but a bioluminescent moss on the ceiling and walls cast a glow as bright as any lamp.

  “Genetically engineered,” said Dave, as if reading Cal’s thoughts. “Like the clowns.”

  Cal shot the moss a wary look, then stopped.

  “Wait a minute. Hold on,” he said. “If there’s an army of pasty-faced butt-stabbers on the other side of the wall, why are we heading towards it? Won’t this tunnel take us right under there?”

  Dave shook his head. “Originally, yes. But when they made the wall higher, they blocked off the tunnel, too. Either way, our exit is just up ahead. The wall’s still a few hundred feet beyond that.”

  “For an Earth guy, you sure know a lot about this place,” said Miz.

  “That’s what I said,” Mech told her.

  “It’s, like, kinda suspicious, if you ask me,” Miz continued.

  Cal sighed. “OK, first up, Dave, it’s nothing personal. They’re always like this,” he said. “Secondly, Dave’s been in space a lot longer than I have. He was abducted. He was probed. A lot. Like… a lot. And now he runs a space business making space deliveries, and this place was one of his clients.”

  He turned and looked back over his shoulder. “Clear? We all up to speed on Dave now? Also, let me remind you again, the guy took a nut-shot, and just saved us from Clown Police version two-point-oh. I think he’s proved at this point that we can trust—”

  “Shut up,” said Miz.

  “Well, that seems harsh,” said Cal. “I was only trying to—”

&nb
sp; Mech’s hand clamped over Cal’s face. “I hear it, too,” he said.

  “Hear what?” asked Loren, her voice dropping to a whisper.

  “Something’s coming,” Mech replied.

  Cal pointed frantically to his face, most of which was currently squashed against Mech’s metal palm. Mech released his grip and Cal exhaled sharply. “Jesus, was that really necessary?” he asked. “You could’ve—”

  Mech’s hand covered Cal’s mouth again. “Awm cmm nnn,” Cal protested.

  Dave and Loren looked in opposite directions along the passageway. Miz and Mech listened. Cal suffocated. Splurt tried to jump up to touch the moss, but fell several feet short. This did not, however, stop him trying again.

  “Security?” Dave guessed. “They know about the underground network, too. Makes sense they’d come looking.”

  “I can’t tell,” Miz admitted. “This stupid tunnel is bouncing the sound all over the place.”

  “Mech? What are your scanners telling you?” Loren asked.

  “Not a whole lot,” said Mech. “The dampening field must be affecting those, too.”

  “Wm shd gt oo th a’er,” Cal mumbled.

  “We should probably get to the ladder,” whispered Dave.

  “Thts wt I sd!”

  Mech let go of Cal’s face. Cal stretched his jaw and rubbed his cheeks. “You have disturbingly smooth hands,” he whispered, then he stumbled after Dave as Loren shoved him in the back.

  “Come on, move,” she hissed. “We don’t want them to find us.”

  Miz tutted. “OK, that is, like, the most obvious thing anyone has ever said.”

  “Shh. Both of you. Quiet,” said Mech.

  “You’ve got metal feet,” Loren pointed out. “You’re making more noise than all the rest of us combined.”

  “It ain’t my fault I got metal feet,” Mech said. “But it’s both your fault that your motherfonking jaws keep flapping.”

  “You tell ‘em, Mech,” said Cal.

  “Shut the fonk up!” Mech hissed. “Everyone just keep quiet.”

  “We’re almost there,” Dave whispered, leading them around a bend in the tunnel. “I can see a ladder up ahead. It’ll take us…”

  His voice died into silence.

  He was right, there was a ladder up ahead. It hung down from a hole in the tunnel roof, near where the glow of the moss light came to a stop. Darkness extended beyond it, a rich, velvety black that seemed to swallow everything beyond the exit ladder, turning it into an empty abyss.

  No.

  Not empty.

  Something moved in the darkness. Cal could hear it now, too, the sound of footsteps scuffing on stone.

  Big footsteps.

  Way too big.

  Something like a giggle was ejected from deep in the blanket of shadow. It made the hair on the back of Cal’s neck stand on end, and his buttocks clench in anxious anticipation.

  “Oh God,” Dave said, his voice a scratchy sob. “They got through.”

  “The clowns? From behind the wall.”

  “Except they’re not behind the wall anymore,” he said, his eyes two saucers filled with terror. “They’re in here. They’re in here with us!”

  “Maybe we should go back,” Loren suggested, the giggling darkness making her uneasy.

  “Can’t,” said Miz, her head tilted. “Those other guys are back that way. I can hear them coming.”

  “Oh well,” said Cal cricking his neck and bouncing from foot to foot. “Looks like we’ve got ourselves a good old-fashioned run for it!”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  They all reached the ladder at approximately the same time, and everyone, with the exception of Splurt and Mech, tried to climb it at once.

  “Hey, out of the way, I’m captain,” Cal protested, trying without much success to shove Miz aside.

  “I don’t care. I’m next,” Miz scowled, reaching up and grabbing one of the higher rungs.

  Dave was already scrabbling up the ladder, and as he shoved open the hatch, another expanse of darkness was revealed.

  While everyone else continued to fight to not be at the back of the queue, Splurt stood gazing into the black void of the tunnel. He craned his neck to look up at Mech, then pointed a stump of an arm into the gloom.

  The thing that was out there – whatever it was – was getting closer.

  “Yeah. I know,” said Mech. “We should go.”

  He crouched and held a hand out, palm upwards. Splurt hopped aboard, sitting on the hand and holding onto the wrist as Mech lifted him towards the ladder. He clambered up it behind Cal, leaving Mech alone with the shuffling, giggling thing in the shadows.

  Over those sounds, he heard something else. Music. A soft tinkling chime, like an old wind-up music box, but one where the springs had gone wonky, making the music play at half speed and in a slightly different key.

  T-tring, tring, triiing-a-tring tring, tring, triiiing.

  Despite not technically owning one, Mech felt a shiver travel the length of his spine. He gazed into the all-consuming valley of darkness, where the world seemed to fall away into nothing.

  “Now that shizz is just creepy,” he muttered, then he reached for an upper rung, grabbed hold, and hauled himself up towards the open hatch above.

  He clambered through without too much difficulty. The hatch was wide, and designed for large objects to be moved through with ease. As soon as he was up, Cal quickly and quietly closed the hatch, then Mech stood on top of it. Whatever was down there, there was no way it was going to be able to heave the hatch open with Mech’s weight pinning it down.

  With the hatch closed, the darkness was absolute.

  “Everyone here?” Cal asked.

  “Yeah, everyone’s here,” Miz confirmed.

  “Dave, you here?” Cal asked.

  Miz tutted. “I told you, everyone’s here.”

  “I’m here,” Dave confirmed.

  “Splurt?”

  “Seriously?” Miz snapped. “Everyone’s here. Like, just trust me, OK?”

  “OK, good,” said Cal.

  A moment of silence passed.

  “Loren?”

  “What?”

  “Are you here?”

  “Well, clearly.”

  Miz tutted. “Why do I even bother?”

  “To be fair,” said Loren, “you very rarely do.”

  “Tch. What-ever.”

  From through the hatch, they heard the faint tinkling of the music, and the soft, throaty giggle of the clown. They heard several sets of footsteps, too, racing along the tunnel, getting steadily louder.

  “Quiet,” Cal warned.

  “We were being quiet,” Loren whispered.

  “Well you’re not now. Shh.”

  “But…” Loren began, then she decided just to bite her lip, instead.

  A burst of shouts and panicked cries went off below. The clown-thing’s giggle rose in volume and pitch, and the corridor was filled with the screams of blaster pistols and, more pressingly, the screams of the dying.

  “N-no, please, no!”

  “G-get away from me, get away!”

  “Yaaieeergk!”

  And then, silence.

  Nothing.

  Not a sound.

  And then the giggle again. And the music - T-tring, tring, triiing-a-tring tring, tring, triiiing – fading gradually as the clown-thing returned to the darkness.

  Cal’s eyes were starting to adjust to the near total absence of light. He put a finger to his lips, gesturing for everyone to stay quiet until they were sure the monster was all the way gone.

  “Hello everyone! Having fun?”

  Kevin’s voice spat from somewhere in Mech’s arm, making everyone jump and Cal blurt out a breathless, “Waah!” of panic.

  Down below, the music stopped fading, and some oversized shoes scuffed to a stop.

  “I do hope so, because I’m having a whale of a time here on my own with no-one for company and nothing to do. It’s a veritable laug
h a minute up here.”

  “Shh! Shut up!” Cal hissed.

  “Oh, well that’s charming,” said Kevin. “I give you a call to check on your well-being, and that’s the thanks I get.”

  “Mech, shut it up!” Loren whispered.

  “I’m trying,” said Mech, jabbing a finger against the controls on his forearm.

  “It?!” Kevin exclaimed. “Who’s ‘it’?”

  T-tring, tring, triiing. The music drew closer, the thing’s breathing a fast, excited rasping.

  Cal leaned closer to Mech’s arm. “Kevin! We’re this close to being murdered down here, so please – for the love of God – stop talking.”

  “Very good, sir,” said Kevin.

  The silence lasted barely a second.

  “How close is ‘this close’ exactly?” Kevin asked. “I can’t help but feel that I’m missing a visual clue.”

  “Who the hell is that?” Dave whispered, glaring at Mech’s arm. “Tell him to shut up.”

  “I did! He won’t,” Cal replied.

  The hatch thudded beneath Mech. To everyone’s surprise – arguably Mech’s, most of all – his weight wasn’t enough to stop the hatch raising an inch or so, before falling back down.

  “OK, so… should it be able to do that?” Cal whispered.

  “Should what be able to do what, sir?” Kevin asked, his voice as loud as ever. “Again, I feel like I must be missing something.”

  “Shh! Jesus! Shut the fonk up!” Cal yelped.

  Mech jammed the arm under his opposite armpit, and whatever Kevin said next came out muffled and indistinct.

  “You think it knows we’re here?” Loren asked.

  The hatch shook again. This time, Mech was forced to take a half-step to keep his balance. A breathless snigger made it through the gap before the hatch fell closed again.

  “Of course it knows we’re here,” Cal said, his voice barely a scratch at the back of his throat. “But hopefully, once it figures out it can’t get in, it’ll go away.”

  The hatch raised again. Mech pulled Miz onto it with him, and their combined weight pushed it down with a bang.