Cal had about-turned and now strode purposefully along the hallway, doing his best to look like the man in charge. This was marred slightly by him slipping in the blood puddle and skidding several feet along the corridor, while waving his arms in a panicky flap.
He stumbled the last couple of feet, then steadied himself against the doorframe. “Totally meant that,” he said, then he turned the handle, opened the door a fraction, and poked his head inside.
A moment later, he took it back out again. He turned to Miz, all color draining from his face. “I take it back,” he said. “It’s waaaay worse.”
CHAPTER TWO
If Cal had been asked to describe the scene beyond the door in one word, he would have mumbled something high-pitched and incoherent, before immediately throwing up in his mouth.
Unlike the featureless hallway, this room had been decorated to excess. There were gold drapes over the barred and shuttered windows, a delicately intricate chandelier hanging from the patterned ceiling, and various sideboards cluttered with what Cal would describe as ‘space antiques’ were he not currently wrestling with the vomiting-in-mouth situation.
Because worse than the décor – worse than the hideous wallpaper, the zig-zag patterned carpet and the enormous framed prints of alien dogs playing space pool – was the gore.
There were no body parts in this room, but Cal would almost have preferred it if there had been. You knew where you were with a body part. Admittedly, it was rarely anywhere good, but at least you knew.
Instead, there was a general sort of lumpy red puree covering every surface. It clung to everything like crimson moss, and reeked of things Cal was trying very hard not to think about in too much detail.
“And in case you’re wondering,” said Mech, indicating the mulchy wet redness. “Also dead.”
“Maybe we should get out of here,” said Cal. “This is…” He swallowed. “I don’t know what this is, but I get the feeling it’s not something we want to get caught up in.”
“What did I tell you?” said Mech. “What did I say not twenty fonking seconds ago?”
“Yeah, yeah,” said Cal, spinning on the spot. There was a squelch as the pressure of his heels sprayed blood-slush over the sodden carpet. “Let’s all just run back to the ship as fast as we can and agree never to speak of this again.”
Miz’s hand clamped around his forearm. “There’s someone here,” she whispered.
Cal pointed to the red mush on the ceiling. “What, besides…?”
Miz nodded. She raised her ears and flicked them as her eyes took in the room. “Heartbeat,” she said. “In there.”
Cal followed her gaze. Another door stood just to the right of one of the shuttered windows. It was, given the state of the rest of the room, remarkably clean, with only a few red dots marking the otherwise crisp white paintwork.
“What kind of heartbeat?” Cal whispered, adjusting his grip on his gun.
Miz frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Well, you know. Is it, like a big boom-boom-boom elephant heartbeat, or a brrrrrr hummingbird heartbeat or… what is it? How big a thing is in there, is what I’m asking, and is it going to come jumping out and bite my head off if I open the door?”
Cal shook his head. “In fact, why am I the one opening the door? Mech. Open the door.”
“Fonk you, man. I ain’t opening the door,” said Mech.
“Well, I’m not opening it,” said Cal.
Mech shrugged. “Fine by me. I’m all for just turning around and getting out of here.”
Mizette crossed the room in six big steps, huffing like the Big Bad Wolf. “Here. Look. I’ll open the door.”
Cal screamed and raised his blaster as Miz tore the door off its hinges. Through the now gaping doorway, they saw several coats, a plastic basket, and what looked from where Cal was standing to be an ironing board.
And tucked in amongst it all was a woman. A girl, maybe. It was hard to tell with the cloth bag over her head. Between that, the ropes around her bare ankles and the way her hands were pulled behind her back, Cal got the impression she hadn’t put herself in there on purpose.
“Is she dead?” Cal whispered.
“No,” said Miz.
Cal looked at her. “How can you tell? Kick her and say ‘hello’.”
Miz pointed to one of her ears. “I can hear her heart beating.”
“Oh. Yeah,” said Cal. “Gotcha.”
He squelched across the carpet and squatted down in front of the hostage. She drew in a ragged and panicky breath, like she was about to scream, and Cal moved quickly to intercept.
“Hey. Hey, miss? Are you OK?” he asked, softly.
The scream snagged at the back of the woman’s throat.
“We’re here to help. We’re not going to hurt you,” Cal assured her. “I’m going to take the bag off your head. Now, you might see an enormous wolf-woman, but she’s harmless.”
Miz growled.
“Mostly harmless,” Cal corrected. “But she won’t hurt you. We’re the good guys.”
The woman didn’t resist when Cal’s fingers brushed against her neck. The bag was tied on pretty tightly, and it took several seconds of fumbling before he could get the knot undone.
“OK, bag coming off now,” Cal said. “Please don’t, you know, bite me or spit acid in my face or anything. Good guys. Remember? Keep that in mind.”
The bag was removed, revealing a shock of bright red hair. It had been cut in a way that suggested the girl had done it herself with a pair of blunt scissors and no available reflective surfaces. If the hairstyle was a statement, that statement was almost certainly: ‘I’ve recently lost a bet.’
She looked maybe twelve or thirteen, based on Earth ages. He’d discovered those didn’t mean much out here in space – Miz, for example, was six years old, but part of a species that matured much faster than humans – but something about the girl told him she was young.
Her skin was a pastel green, with hundreds of raised white bumps dotted like freckles across her nose and around her eyes. The eyes themselves were wide ovals with piercing blue irises and curved lashes the same color as her hair.
A purple bruise flowered on one of her sharply-defined cheekbones, and her dark green lips were swollen on one side. Her gaze flitted anxiously from Cal to Miz to Mech, before returning to Cal again.
She closed her mouth tightly and sobbed at the back of her throat, her body vibrating violently as tears rushed to fill her eyes.
“Hey, shh, it’s OK, it’s OK,” Cal said. He gestured to the restraints around her ankles. “Miz.”
Mizette flashed her claws and the ropes fell away. The girl drew her knees up to her chest, her breath whistling in and out through her nose.
“What’s your name, sweetheart?” Cal asked, but the girl didn’t answer. She looked so terrified, Cal wasn’t sure she’d even heard him. He backed away a little and gestured for her to shuffle towards him. “Come on, out you come. Just try not to look at the walls or carpet. Or, you know, anything else in the room.”
Miz’s ears flicked. “Sirens,” she said.
“Zertex?” asked Cal.
Miz listened, then shook her head. “Local cops, but four or five squads.”
Mech was hurriedly tapping the screen in his arm. “They’re coming here,” he announced. “Someone heard screaming and shooting. Called it in a few minutes ago.”
“Well they’re annoyingly efficient,” said Cal, straightening. He motioned for the girl to stay where she was. “It’s OK. The police are coming. They’ll sort out this…” He looked around at the blood-slush. “…whatever this is, and get you back home. We’d stick around but, well, they might think we did this, and that would be problematic.”
He gave her one of his best smiles – a lips together, eyebrows raised little number designed to make his face as comforting as possible – then backed towards the door. “You take care of yourself, OK? Stay in school. If, you know, that’s a thing where you come from. Eat your vege
tables, respect your parents, try not to dwell too much on the whole being kidnapped and locked in a closet thing…”
“Cal,” Miz urged. “We need to go.”
Cal nodded, but hesitated just inside the door. He met the frightened gaze of the girl among the coats. “You’re safe, kid. You’re going to be just fine.”
Mech shoved him through the door and Cal skidded along the hall. He slid out onto the sidewalk, and his boots immediately found their grip on the slabs, snapping him to a jerking stop.
Outside, Cal could hear the wailing of the approaching cops. They didn’t sound like any cop cars back home, but he’d heard enough of them to know a police siren when he heard one. The sound was different, but the intent it suggested was the same.
“Come on, we should get back to the ship,” said Mech.
Cal nodded. “Just one sec. Look over there.”
“Over where?” Mech asked. “What you talking about?”
“Just fonking look somewhere over there!” Cal yelped, then he opened his mouth and an eruption of vomit splattered across the ground. “Too late,” he groaned.
“Aw, man. That’s nasty,” said Mech.
“Like, ew. That totally stinks,” agreed Miz.
“I tried to warn you!” Cal protested. He spat a few times and rubbed his stomach. “That does feel better, though. I guess it’s true what they say, better out than…”
He stopped talking when he saw the girl peeking out from behind one of the broken doors. “Hey. Uh. You should go back inside.”
The girl glanced back over her shoulder, then shook her head and stepped out onto the sidewalk.
Cal put a hand on her upper arm. She flinched, but didn’t quite pull away. “No, listen,” he said. “Hear that? The police are coming. You’ll be safe with them.”
“Shizz. Cal!” Miz barked, just as the street became a red and blue lightshow and several wedge-shaped black vehicles skidded around the corner on cushions of air or magnetism or whatever alien science was keeping them hovering above the ground like that.
The beam of a powerful spotlight hit Cal full in the face and he hissed in shock. “Jesus. That’s bright. What is that, the fonking sun?”
He turned away from the light and realized he was still holding the girl by the arm.
The handcuffed girl.
With the bruises.
“Oh, shizz,” he said, pulling away. “That wasn’t what it looked like,” he shouted towards the oncoming cops. “This is nothing to do with us! Honest. We’re the good guys in this situation.”
“Come on, man, this way,” Mech urged, clanking a few paces in the opposite direction.
A heavy rectangular armored vehicle rumbled around the corner, blocking the road that way, too. A set of double doors opened at the back, then a dozen or more black-clad figures jogged down a ramp and formed a line across the street from one side to the other.
On some hidden signal, they all tapped switches on their left forearm, and a wall of crackling blue energy shields spread out from their wrists. Riot cops, Cal guessed. That wasn’t good. Back on Earth, at least, riot cops weren’t exactly renowned for their willingness to listen to reasoned debate. These guys didn’t look like they’d be any different.
The cars had come to a stop around sixty feet away from Cal and the others. Litter swirled beneath them as the vehicles lowered to the ground, their sirens screaming as if the end of the world was chasing right behind them, and closing fast.
The sides of all four vehicles swung upwards like the doors of an Italian sports car. Mech and Miz both tensed as eight more of the darkly-dressed figures emerged. Where the riot cops had shields, this lot carried blaster rifles. Seven of them took cover behind the cars, while the eighth – the leader, presumably – stood his ground.
“Just leave the talking to me,” Cal said, gesturing in the direction of the cops. “I’ll have this sorted out in—”
A blast of laser-fire scorched the air by his head. Cal yelped and ducked, clamping a hand to his ear. When he took it away, his palm was slicked with blood. “Ah! Jesus! My ear! They shot my ear! Why did you shoot my ear?”
“Maybe because you’re waving a fonking gun at them,” Mech hissed.
Cal looked at the hand he’d pointed to the cops with. Sure enough, his blaster pistol was clutched in it. He quickly lowered the weapon and offered an apologetic smile. “Sorry! Didn’t realize. I can see how that might have looked.”
Miz’s ears twitched. “They’re going to shoot us.”
“What? Why?” asked Cal.
“Guy in front’s got an earpiece. Someone just gave the command.”
“Aw, fonk. Get behind me,” Mech said, but before anyone could move, the girl stepped forwards, putting herself in front of Cal.
“Hey, uh, miss? You might want to get back inside,” said Cal. “This isn’t really the place for…”
The girl opened her mouth. A note rang out. It was piercingly high-pitched, but was over so quickly Cal would almost have believed he’d imagined it, had it not been for the ringing in his ears.
The lone cop in front of the cars flipped violently backwards, his head practically touching his heels as his body looped back on itself.
The cars went next, rolling across the ground in a shower of shattering glass and a tangle of twisting metal. The other cops – the ones who had been taking cover behind the vehicles – became seven explosively colorful stains on the tarmac, before those, too, were swept away as if in the path of a raging tsunami.
The girl turned to Cal, who gawped at her as if she were an unexploded nuclear bomb. “What the fonk was that?” he asked, but she just clamped her lips shut, then angled herself so her bound wrists were pointed towards Mizette.
Miz looked to Cal. He deliberated briefly, then gave a nod.
“Do it. Cut her loose.” He glanced in the other direction along the street, where the assembled members of the riot squad were advancing behind their shields. “Then get ready to run, because we are getting the fonk out of here!”
CHAPTER THREE
Miz bounded ahead, leading the way through the warren of back streets and alleyways. She heard sirens coming from several blocks away, smelled cops before they got too close. Sure, they had to duck behind the odd trash can and sprint across the occasional wide open street, but the going had been pretty easy, considering.
Cal would almost have felt relaxed, were it not for the girl. She jogged along beside Mech, slowing down and speeding up in time with his clanking mechanical steps. She kept her mouth shut the whole way, breathing through her slender nose as they navigated back to the landing pads.
It took Cal a few moments to spot the ship. He was looking for the Shatner, but it had been destroyed after they’d plunged through an anomaly he’d come to think of as ‘a big space hole’. The new ship was better in pretty much every way, but Cal couldn’t help missing the old one.
The Currently Untitled – because Cal hadn’t as yet come up with a name for it – stood dead ahead, sticking out like a sore thumb among the other ships around it. It was completely spotless, that was the problem. The other ships looked like they’d been around the galaxy a few times, and the Untitled looked forecourt-new by comparison.
It was also, Cal was happy to report, the coolest looking of the ships around it. The others looked home-made at worst, boxy at best, but the Untitled was a collection of sleek curves, with a hull that was either black, gray, dark green or a sort of chrome-color, depending on how the light happened to be reflecting off it at the time.
“So what, we’re just leaving?” asked Mech. “What about our money?”
“What money?” asked Cal.
“You know. From the mole-guy. He wanted us to stop them gangsters shaking him down. Well, I reckon they ain’t going to be shaking him down any time soon. We should get paid.”
Cal jabbed a thumb back the way they’d come. “So… you want to take credit for that, do you? You want to take credit for painting the inside
of that house with people puree? With the cops looking for us?”
Mech shifted on his big metal feet. “I just think we should get paid, is all.”
Miz raised an eyebrow. “Seriously? It was, like, fifty credits. If you care that much, I’ll pay you myself.”
“Not the point,” said Mech, crossing his arms. “Ain’t the point. It’s the principle of the thing. We did a job, we should get paid.”
“But we didn’t do the job, did we? We were going there to talk to those guys. Did any of us do that? Do you recall walking in there and saying, ‘Hey, please stop taking money from our friend, oh and by the way, did you know you’re currently dripping from the ceiling?’” said Cal.
“Fine. Whatever,” said Mech, begrudgingly. “But next time, we’re getting paid.”
“Good. Well, I’m glad that’s sorted,” said Cal. He turned to the girl. “Which just leaves you. And we are going to leave now, sweetheart. You should stay here. OK?”
The girl didn’t respond. Cal smiled. “OK. She gets it. Come on.”
He strode towards the Untitled. The girl followed. He stopped.
“No, you can’t come with us,” said Cal. He pointed to the girl, then the ground at her feet. “You, stay. Capiche?”
He strode towards the Untitled again. The girl followed. Again.
Cal sighed. “Look, what part don’t you—?”
A laser blast screamed from the shadows at the far end of the street. It left a shimmering heat trail in its wake as it raced towards Cal’s face, and the goofy expression of surprise currently plastered across it.
Mech thrust up an arm in front of Cal’s head, and grimaced as the blast exploded against his wrist. “Ow. That actually hurt.”
A mechanical voice rolled along the street like thunder. “This is the police. Put down your weapons. This unit is authorized to use lethal force.”
The ground trembled beneath Cal’s feet as something enormous emerged from the shadows. It looked like a cheap Chinese knock-off of one of the Transformers. And not one of the friendly ones. Each leg alone had to be eight feet high, and the body that sat atop it looked to be part robot, part tank, and another part tank for good measure.
Space Team: Song of the Space Siren Page 2