Space Team: Planet of the Japes

by Barry J. Hutchison

  “Looks like our friend is coming,” Cal warned. “Everyone be ready. As soon as he steps in here, we take him out. We finish him, hard and fast.”

  Miz smirked. “Then maybe you can finish me hard and—”

  “Miz, not now!”

  From somewhere beyond the walls came the slap-slap-slapping of the clown-thing’s shoes.

  Clenching his fists, Cal ushered Splurt to safety behind him. “OK, he’s going to be here any second. The moment you have a shot at him, take it.”

  Loren adopted a fighting stance. Mech clenched his metal fists. Mizette sighed and shrugged. “Fine. Whatever,” she said, then she winced.

  At the same time, an ache drilled into Cal’s skull that forced his eyes closed. Miz covered her ears and spat out a curse the others could barely hear over the rising ultrasonic tone.

  “Aw… shizz,” Cal said. “Not again.”

  Then, with a paff and a flash, his brain fogged over again and his forehead was introduced, once more, to the floor.

  * * *

  It was the giggling that next woke Cal up. It came from beyond a wall of shadow in a dank, dark room, barely a scratchy whisper of a laugh. As wake-ups went, he couldn’t tell if he preferred this or the previous one.

  On reflection, he decided the space-rat was better. At least it had started well, which was more than could be said for this one.

  He was strapped to some kind of bed or table, supported at a forty-five-degree angle so he was neither lying down nor standing up, but somewhere in between. He could feel at least two clamps on each leg – one across the ankle, one across the thigh – and a similar number holding his arms to the rigid board behind him. Or beneath him. Or whatever.

  His head ached. His eyes stung. His throat felt like he’d been gargling crushed glass, and the inside of his mouth tasted of copper and batteries.

  This room made the featureless cell look like a palace. It was all rough stone and furry moss, with the only illumination coming from three harsh overhead spotlights. Their brilliance was doing nothing for his headache or eye pain, but he suspected no-one would turn the brightness down, even if he asked nicely.

  He asked anyway.

  “Can we dim these a little?” he called into the shadows. “You know, just a fraction below ‘brighter than the sun’ would be awesome.”

  The giggle came again. Another followed. Then another. And another.

  The lights, as expected, didn’t darken.

  “Already tried that.” That was Loren’s voice from somewhere on Cal’s right. He tried to turn his head, but a searing pain stabbed into it just above his ear, forcing him to face front again.

  “Loren?” he said. “Who else is here?”

  “We’re all here,” Mech replied.

  “Jesus, was I the last one to wake up again?” Cal asked.

  “Yep,” Mech confirmed. “We all came around before you.”

  “Even Dave?”

  “Oh yeah, Dave’s wide awake,” said Miz, sounding like her limited patience had been stretched to the limit. “He keeps crying about his toe, or whatever.”

  “My finger!”

  Miz rolled her eyes. “Whatever. It was funny when he started, but now he won’t shut up,” she said. “And I’m like, ‘Yeah, great. Joke’s totally over, already,’ but he just keeps going on.”

  “Because he chopped off my finger!”

  “See?”

  “Wait! Can anyone move their heads? Can anyone see Splurt?”

  There was a general murmuring that suggested no-one could see him. Fortunately, one of them didn’t have to.

  “He’s here. I can smell him,” Miz said.

  More giggling emerged through the shadows. Cal pulled on his bonds, but could tell in the first half-second or less that he wasn’t going to be able to break them.

  “Sounds like we’ve got company.”

  “Oh yeah, totally. I can smell them, too, although I wish I couldn’t,” Miz said.

  “How many?” Cal asked.

  “I don’t know. Like… a lot.”

  More giggles. More sniggers. It came from several different spots beyond the shadow veil, and Cal got the impression that the room was a large one, of which he could see only a small fraction.

  “Mech? You planning on breaking us out any time soon?” Cal asked.

  “Can’t,” Mech said, and there was a note of embarrassment in his voice. “Fonked if I know what these shackles are made of, but I can’t get them to budge a damn inch.”

  “Can you reach your dial?”

  “My hands are tied.”

  “Shizz,” Cal spat. “Can anyone else reach Mech’s dial?”

  “Our hands are tied, too,” Loren pointed out.

  “Oh. Yeah. Damn it. But we have a plan, right?” said Cal, his tone flavored with just a hint of hysteria. “I mean, you all figured out an escape plan while I was still sleeping. Didn’t you?”

  “Sadly not,” said Loren.

  Cal exhaled slowly. “OK. OK, gotcha. So, we’re stuck here, with no hope of escape. That’s fine. That’s not a problem. It’s a problemtunity. That’s what the Japanese would call it. Right Dave?”

  “He cut off my fonking finger!”

  “See? Dave knows what I’m talking about.”

  From the shadows, there came a scuffing sound. Movement. Cal tensed, sweat slicking his back as his fight or flight reflex kicked in, realized it currently served no purpose whatsoever, and so trickled out through his pores instead.

  Cal had no idea what was going to emerge in front of him. The big, green, puffy-nippled guy was a pretty safe bet, although he was crossing his fingers for the Space Police, or a parallel universe version of himself who’d popped over to save the day. The Avengers, maybe. Hell, a random stranger with a set of bolt cutters would be a welcome sight at this point.

  None of those emerged from the darkness, though. Instead, something the size of a three-year-old child came swishing from the shadows teetering atop an oversized unicycle. There were no pedals on the thing – the wheel seemed to turn itself – and the child-sized figure kicked its legs out and waved its arms above its head as is passed.

  Its skin was the color of the summer sky, but with dark, dirty streaks like running mascara covering its face and neck. It wore a white satin one-piece suit, with a line of tiny bells sewn around the middle like a belt. Two weird sucker-come-mandible things stuck out from its neck at right angles, like bolts on Frankenstein’s monster. As the thing passed, they opened and closed, emitting a series of loud parps and honks.

  With a giggle, the bio-bot returned to the shadows, only to emerge again a moment later, this time doing a handstand atop the unicycle’s saddle.

  Its neck things parped again, and the thing took one hand off the saddle so it was supporting itself on just one as it swerved back into darkness.

  “I hate to say it, but that was actually pretty impressive,” said Cal. “You know, with the one hand, and everything.”

  Music began to play. If it had been faster, it would had been the sort of jolly, slightly manic tune that was appropriate for a circus. At less than half-speed, and interrupted as it was by several short, jerky scratches, it would be more at home in a funeral service, horror movie, or bad acid flashback. Not necessarily in that order.

  Two more clown-things broke through the wall of shadow, forward-rolling into the light, their oversized shoes flailing clumsily. They both fumbled themselves into a standing position, then turned abruptly and crashed into each other. As their bulging bellies collided, two ‘amusing’ honks were farted out.

  Behind them, in the darkness, dozens of voices sniggered and whispered.

  Both clown-things jumped back in surprise, then turned away, crossing their arms in indignation. Their butts collided. There was more honking. Laughter followed.

  “Are they… Are they putting on a show?” Loren asked.

  “I think I’d prefer it if they just went ahead and killed us,” said Cal. “I mean, the han
dstand guy had potential, but this is bottom of the barrel stuff.”

  The laughter stopped, replaced by a low, unhappy murmuring.

  The two clowns cut short their theatrics and turned, as one, to Cal, rage blistering behind their eyes.

  “You had to open your fonking mouth,” Mech said. “You couldn’t just have watched the damn show. Which I, for one, was enjoying, by the way.”

  “No, you weren’t,” said Miz, but Mech offered no comment in reply.

  The shadows became alive with noise and movement. One by one, a series of grotesquely grinning visages appeared from the darkness. Some were smaller than the unicycle guy. Others loomed eight or nine feet in the air, their faces visible, but their bodies still hidden by the gloom.

  “Hey! Look, the gang’s all here,” said Cal, his tongue rasping around inside his desert-dry mouth.

  “Shizz. We’re in trouble,” said Loren.

  “Maybe not,” said Cal. “Maybe they’re just going to take a bow, then fonk off and leave us alone.”

  Some of the faces shuffled aside, and another shape emerged. This time, it was a stomach that appeared first – big and round and lime green, with a little hair-filled indent where the belly button either was, or should have been.

  The nipples came next, like two puffy little soufflés. They were darker than the rest of the thing’s skin, and drew Cal’s eye despite his best efforts not to look.

  Next to appear was the face. It was a face Cal had seen a lot of since their arrival on Funworld, grinning out as it did from behind every instance of the planet’s logo he’d seen dotted around the place. In print, it had bordered that line between jolly and creepy, but now there was no such balancing act. From its stretched lips to its bulbous eyes, this thing was all the way terrifying.

  It moved slowly and awkwardly, shuffling its hippo-like legs along, wearing nothing but dirty white underwear and one enormous shoe. Its breathing was uneven and unpleasantly damp-sounding, like the air had to pass through a layer of mucus to escape.

  It was somewhere around then that Cal spotted the knives. The clown-thing held them down at its sides, their points scraping lightly across the floor. They were machete-like, but with some twiddly bits and holes in the blade that may have been designed to make them look more interesting, or may be there to make being stabbed with them hurt even more.

  “On second thoughts, who doesn’t like some well-choreographed slapstick?” said Cal. He forced a laugh. “Right? More of that sort of thing, I say.”

  The clown-thing limped closer. The others drew in behind it, shambling from the shadows like the most colorful zombie horde that ever lived. Or unlived. Or whatever.

  “I’d love to give you guys the round of applause you so richly deserve, but unfortunately, I’m currently restrained,” Cal said, in case this was somehow coming as news to any of the grinning freaks currently closing rank around him. He could smell them now, all sweat and blood and horror. His mouth moved faster, beginning to babble out words all by itself. “So, if one of you could just untie me and my friends here, we would be more than happy to show our appreciation for what I for one have always considered to be the noblest of all the arts.”

  The mascot’s grin somehow stretched even further, showing more of its ample complement of teeth. Behind it, its minions sniggered and giggled.

  “Leave him alone,” Loren cried.

  “Yeah, back off you freakshows,” Miz growled.

  Mech roared as he heaved against his restraints. “Come… on!”

  “Oh God. Oh God, this is it,” Dave whimpered. His voice became a piercing cry. “Help us! Somebody help us! Please! I don’t want to die here.”

  He broke into a mess of sobbing and snot. “It’s my anniversary! I’m supposed to be having fun.”

  “I guess it’s kind of fun,” Cal whispered. “You know, in a sense.”

  Dave scowled. “In what sense?”

  “In a sort of ‘we’re all about to die’ sense,” Cal replied. “Still, look on the bright side.”

  “What bright side?”

  Cal hesitated. “Give me a minute. I’ll come up with something,” he said.

  But he didn’t. There were no more minutes left. No more seconds left. No more time, period. The two slapstick clowns lumbered forwards, their rough hands going to Cal’s face.

  “Hey, careful. Ow, ow, ow!” he complained, as they dug their fingers in around his eyes and forced them wide. Forced them to watch as the mascot-clown juggled both blades (it was quite impressive, Cal was forced to admit), then caught them, flipped them, and jerked them upwards in a violent stabbing motion.

  Cal gasped as he heard metal tear through clothing and flesh. Mech roared. Loren screamed. Miz whined.

  And then the hands pressing on Cal’s face became gelatinous mounds of quivering yellow, and the mascot clown’s smile fell away.

  “Relax,” it said, in a voice like rich chocolate cake. “Everything is under control.”

  Then it spun in an arc, completely decapitating three other clowns, and partially-decapitating a fourth from somewhere just above the nose.

  Cal’s mouth fell open, letting out a breath he’d been holding in for far too long. “Well,” he said, in a low, shaky whisper. “I did not see that coming.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  For its size, shape and general disheveled demeanor, there was something almost balletic about the mascot-bot in action. Its arms moved like two independent living organisms, hacking and slicing and stabbing and thrusting, each strike turning another of the clown-things into custardy mush.

  Most of them were too shocked to react, but one or two were pulling themselves together. A little guy – possibly the unicyclist, although his hair was greener than Cal remembered – bounded onto the head of one of its colleagues and launched himself at the traitor in their midst.

  Without even looking round, the mascot jabbed the handle of one sword backwards, smashing open the incoming clown-thing’s bulbous red nose. It exploded with a honk, and a spray of colorful confetti spewed out down its chin, before drifting gently to the floor.

  A flick of a wrist, a backward thrust beneath his own armpit, and the mascot-clown reduced his attacker to first a column, then a pile, then a puddle of gloop.

  It spun, ducked, swung both swords upwards, briefly cleaving another of the bio-bots into thirds before all three sections disintegrated into yellow sludge.

  “Anyone know what’s going on?” Cal wondered. “Because I have literally no clue at this stage. I mean… is this good? Are we rooting for this guy?”

  The mascot-clown pirouetted neatly, removing two more heads from two more bodies, then finishing with spin, a thrust, and a textbook disemboweling.

  “Long as he’s killing them and not us, I’m on his side,” Loren said.

  “Unless he’s killing them so he can keep us all to himself,” Cal replied. “You know, like all to himself.”

  “Right…” said Loren.

  “Like, in an intimate way.”

  “Yes, I get it.”

  “By which I mean he might try to have sex with us.”

  “Yes! I get what you’re saying,” Loren sighed. “But I don’t think he will.”

  “Look at those nipples,” Cal said. “He’s absolutely going to try to have sex with us.”

  “I’d like to see him try,” Mech said.

  Cal squirmed. “I fonking wouldn’t. But if he does, I want to go first. No, wait. Last. I want to go last.” He bit his lip. “Or would it be better to get it over with? Shizz. What do you guys think?”

  “I think you should stop talking,” Dave told him, clearly stifling a sob. “Please.”

  The mascot stabbed a fat, slug-like clown through the head, then hurled his swords away from him in opposite directions. They tore through the chest of the second-last remaining clown, and punched a hole in the forehead of the last one standing. Both bio-bots toppled, one at a time, both becoming mush at almost exactly the same moment.


  The swords clattered as they fell to the stone floor. The mascot-clown invested a couple of seconds making sure everything that had been solid and clowny was now soft and squidgy, then he retrieved the weapons and cleaned the blades by squeezing them under his armpits and pulling them through.

  “Apologies for the scare. I had to wait until I had them all together before I acted. I couldn’t risk you being hurt.”

  “Oh, thank God,” Dave spluttered. “You mean you don’t want to hurt us?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Great. That’s great,” said Cal. “And, out of interest, what is your position with regards to having sex with us?”

  The mascot-clown blinked a few times. “You’re not really my type,” he said. “No offence.”

  “None taken. It’s fine. Totally fine,” said Cal. He was grinning so hard the mascot was forced to do a double-take to make sure he hadn’t missed a rogue clown-bot. “On behalf of Space Team, I’d like to say a huge ‘thank you’ for…”

  The clown stepped past him and stopped in front of Mech. Tucking both swords under one arm, he snapped off a salute that involved a clenched fist and a series of strikes against his own bare chest.

  Once he’d finished, he bowed his head in a gesture of deference and respect. “Commander Disselpoof,” he said, keeping his gaze averted from Mech’s. “It is an honor to see you again.”

  Cal raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Aaaand suddenly I’m back to having no idea what’s going on.”

  “Say what?” said Mech. “Uh, no. You got the wrong guy, man. I ain’t no commander.”

  The mascot gave a single nod of his oversized bald head. “You warned us you would say something like that, should you ever return.”

  “No, I didn’t,” Mech insisted. “And ‘return’? What do you mean ‘return’? I ain’t never been here before.”

  “Oh, but you have, Commander,” the mascot replied. He gestured vaguely around them. “You built it. You built this whole place.”