“I can’t,” Loren whispered.
Cal smiled up at her. “Hey. Hey, it’s OK. This is how it has to be. You can do this.”
“I can’t,” she said again. “I can’t.”
She pulled her hand away, but Cal lunged across the table and caught it. “Loren, look at me,” he said. “There are two ways out of this, and while neither of them is what you might call ideal, one of them is way better than the other.”
He turned to Kornack. “If I do this – if we do this – everyone gets to leave, right?”
“I’ll even give you a bandage and a fonking lollipop,” said Kornack. “Now, please, hurry up.” He grinned. “Or should I say… chop chop?”
Placing his arm on the table, Cal pulled up the sleeve of his leather jacket. It dragged the sleeve of his shirt up with it, revealing his bare skin.
“Higher,” said Kornack. His tongue rasped across his teeth. “Below the elbow.”
Cal pulled the sleeves up further. “Jesus. There. Happy?”
“Oh yeah,” Kornack said, his voice a scratchy whisper of anticipation. “I’m real happy. Hoo-ya! Let’s get chopping!”
Cal nodded to Loren. Her hand trembled as her fingers wrapped around the axe. “Cal…”
“It’s OK,” Cal said, although he had to admit the feeling of calm from earlier was rapidly being replaced by a rising sense of panic. Any second now he was going to grab the fork and try to ram it in Kornack’s eye, dooming them all. “Just do it. Hurry.”
Loren’s pale blue skin was almost white. Her eyes shimmered and her breathing came in shallow gulps as she lined the axe up with Cal’s arm. The blunt metal was cold against his skin.
“Ooh, this is happening,” Cal grimaced. “This is actually happening. OK. OK. It’s like taking off a Band-Aid. Nice and quick. That’s the way to do it. Nice and quick.” He puffed his cheeks out, taking several rapid breaths. “Loren, go!”
Loren raised the axe. Cal closed his eyes and gritted his teeth.
Several seconds passed.
Cal opened one eye. Loren still had the axe raised, but couldn’t bring herself to swing it down.
“I swear, you’d better hurry the fonk up, or my guys turn nasty,” Kornack warned.
“Loren. Do it!” Cal barked.
“You got three seconds, sweetheart,” Kornack growled. “Three.”
“Loren!”
“Two! Marvin, get ready to put a hole in that hairy bedge.”
Marvin pressed his rifle against Miz’s back.
“Loren, now!”
Screaming, Loren brought the axe arcing down towards Cal’s exposed arm. Kornack’s face lit up with glee as the weapon whummed through the air. Instinctively, Cal tried to pull his arm away, but the warlord had caught his wrist the moment the axe had begun to swing, and Cal could only watch, transfixed, as the blunt metal blade raced down to meet his second favorite arm.
CHAPTER SEVEN
As the blade swished down, Cal felt a wriggling sensation by his elbow. A split-second before the axe split him into two unevenly-sized pieces, his jacket moved to intercept.
The leather clamped around the blade, stopping it with an inch to spare. Loren and Kornack both stared at the jacket sleeve in confusion. After a few seconds of relieved sobbing, Cal joined them.
“What the fonk?” Kornak muttered, then Loren yelped as the axe was wrenched from her grip. The sleeve parted along the seam and slid over Cal’s arm. It rose from his shoulder like a snake, curved hypnotically in the air for a moment, then snapped suddenly, filling the room with a sound like a cracking whip.
The axe buried up to the hilt in Marvin’s forehead. The hulking henchman’s eyes crossed as he attempted to survey the damage, then he slowly toppled backwards and hit the floor with a crash.
Cal shot Kornack a sideways glance, then laughed, nervously. He swung with his left hand, smashing a fist against the warlord’s head. Pain exploded through his knuckles and up along his arm.
“Ow, ow, bad idea! What was I thinking?” Cal yelped, tucking the hand under the opposite armpit and hopping around on the spot.
Kornack lunged, his face twisting in fury as his granite hands grabbed for Cal’s throat. Across the room, Miz spun on her knees, claws flashing, teeth bared. The unlucky henchman behind her found his insides becoming his outsides, and dropped his weapon while he frantically tried to keep all his purple knobbly bits in the right place.
One of the other guards opened fire on Miz, but a bulky mechanical hand blocked the blast. The hand clamped down on the gun’s barrel, collapsing the metal with one effortless squeeze.
“I told you. Peashooter,” Mech grunted, then a single punch sent the henchman crashing through the wall.
Kornack’s hands wrapped around Cal’s throat and jerked him into the air. Cal kicked and struggled, but the warlord’s grip was literally rock solid.
“Leave him alone,” Loren roared, jumping onto Kornack’s back. She wrapped her arm around his neck in a sleeper hold, but Kornack barely seemed to notice.
“Be with you in a second, sweetheart,” he growled. “First, I gotta murder this no-good piece of shizz, then you can have my attention.”
Cal felt his jacket wriggle and squirm again. The sleeve oozed down along his arm, changing shape and hardening as it coated his clenched fist.
With some difficulty, Cal raised his hand. It was now encased in a spiked metal mace. Despite the crushing pressure on his windpipe, he managed to grin. That would do nicely.
He swung his arm wide, then slammed the spiky ball of metal hard against Kornack’s shoulder. Once. Twice. The warlord hissed as his rocky skin chipped and cracked.
Roaring, he tossed Cal across the room. Cal flipped through the air, rocketing towards a worryingly solid-looking wall.
Around him, the rest of the leather jacket inflated, becoming something not a million miles away from a car airbag. It took the brunt of the blow as he slammed into the wall, then he dropped, upside-down, to the floor.
Over by the door, Miz pirouetted on the spot, her claws eviscerating the three closest guards, and making a fourth seriously reconsider his choice of career.
Mech rose slowly on his injured leg, his gun-arm turning two more guards into abstract wall art. His top half spun like a tank turret, taking aim at another of the henchmen. He stopped when he saw the terror on Soonsho’s face.
She was on her feet, a skinny copper-colored arm across her throat, a gun to the side of her head. “Stop!” warned the guard. “Everyone stop, or I kill this bedge.”
Miz drew back her gums and growled, then lowered on her haunches. Mech grabbed her tail, catching her before she could lunge. She hissed angrily at him, her brown eyes now so dark they were almost black.
“Don’t,” Mech warned her.
“You heard him,” the gunman warned. He had the look of a goldfish about him, with his rusty-looking scales and boggle-eyed expression. “I swear, I’ll shoot her right now.”
Cal heaved himself to his feet. His jacket was… well, it was a jacket again. Nothing more.
Loren was still gamely trying to throttle Kornack into submission, but the warlord simply reached up over his shoulder, caught her by the arm, then tossed her over his head. She hit the ground awkwardly, but managed to recover into a half-decent forward roll that almost made Cal want to applaud.
Kornack surveyed the room. Aside from the one currently holding Soonsho hostage, his guards were all various shades of dead. There were a couple of holes in the wall, several small piles of intestines on the carpet, and the napkin swan was now barely recognizable.
Things had not, it was safe to say, gone according to plan.
Without a word, Kornack pointed to Cal, then over to the others, indicating he should join them. The warlord grimaced in pain as he bent to retrieve a fallen blaster rifle. The weapon looked cartoonishly small in his oversized hands, but with a bit of effort he managed to squeeze his finger through the trigger guard.
“Look. Kornack. T
he girl is nothing to do with any of this,” Cal said. “We literally just met her today.”
“Oh?” said Kornack. “That’s interesting. So I can blow her brains out and you won’t mind?”
He raised the gun to Soonsho’s head. She bit her lip so hard a thin line of blood oozed from where her teeth met her skin.
“Wait! Don’t!” Cal protested, holding up his hands. “She’s just a kid!”
“Like I give a fonk,” Kornack growled. Keeping the gun trained on Soonsho, he turned to Cal. “Take off the shapeshifter.”
Cal hesitated, then sighed. “Splurt.”
The jacket squirmed, becoming a gloopy green goo across Cal’s upper torso. Splurt fell to the floor in a long string of slime, then rolled himself into a ball. His eyes went from Kornack to Cal and back again.
“Thank you for bringing back my property,” Kornack said. “It’s much appreciated. Pick one.”
“One what?”
“Pick one of your friends who’s gonna die,” Kornack explained.
Cal looked along the line at his crew. “Jesus, OK, I’ll eat the arm.”
Kornack nodded. “Oh, I know you will. But before that, I got to teach you all a lesson. About respect. So pick one. And be quick about it.”
“And if I don’t?”
Kornack lunged forwards, grabbing Soonsho by her hair and yanking her towards him. He jammed his gun against her stomach and gnashed his diamond teeth. “Then I take this bedge apart piece by piece until—”
Soonsho’s scream lasted less than a second, but that was all it took. Kornack disintegrated in an explosion of flying rubble. It peppered the screen at the far end of the room, punching holes through President Sinclair’s still-frozen face.
The goldfish-guy stood frozen in shock, his bulbous eyes blinking slowly. Loren drove a side kick into his stomach, doubling him over just as her other knee came up. His nose, which had already been pretty flat, became infinitely more so, and he dropped to the floor in a sniveling mess of snot, tears, blood and regret.
Cal stared at Soonsho.
He stared at the stone fragments scattered across the room, and at the rockery of larger chunks on the floor at Soonsho’s feet.
He whistled quietly through his teeth. “OK. That was…”
“Painful,” said Miz, her ears flat against her head.
“Just be glad you weren’t in front of her,” said Mech.
Cal nudged the rubble with the toe of his boot. “I mean, I don’t think anyone can argue that he didn’t totally deserve that.”
He jumped back as one of the boulders wriggled free of the others. It was the size of a large grapefruit, and rose up on two stick-thin stone legs. Kornack’s face was perfectly reproduced in miniature on the front of the rock.
“Hol-eee shizz,” Cal mumbled.
The mini-Kornack raised a tiny pebble fist and shook it angrily up at Cal. “I’ll fonking get you for this, Eugene,” he said, his deep, gravelly voice now a high-pitched squeak.
Kornack darted across the floor, kicked Cal on the toe of his boot, then scurried through a hole in the wall and out into the corridor.
Cal blinked. “Well,” he said. “There’s something you don’t see every day.”
“Want me to go after him?” asked Miz.
“What? No,” said Cal. “That’s the most adorable thing I’ve ever seen.”
Down at his feet, Splurt rippled. Cal winked at him. “OK, second most adorable thing I’ve ever seen.”
Splurt hopped up onto Cal’s back, transforming into the leather jacket as he wrapped himself around Cal’s back.
“Thanks, buddy. You are awesome at Hide and Seek,” Cal whispered, then he snapped up the collar, took a final look around the room, and gestured to the door. “Now, who wants to get the Hell out of here?”
* * *
It took Mech almost twenty minutes to locate the controls that opened the ship’s jaws, then another ten for him to patch himself into the interface.
Several more minutes of limping later, he was back aboard the Untitled, where everyone else was strapped in and ready to go.
“Well, this was all quite exciting, wasn’t it?” said Cal, flashing his grin from one end of the bridge to the other. “But let’s never do it again.”
“Agreed,” said Loren, her voice clipped and short. “Mech, we good?”
Mech tapped the controls on his arms. The Untitled rocked gently as the docking clamp disengaged. Ahead of them, the ship’s vast doors slowly inched apart.
“Just a reminder,” chimed Kevin’s voice. “A number of vessels loyal to Kornack are currently assembled outside. They will almost certainly seek to engage us.”
“Good point, Kevin, well made. Loren, be ready to get us the fonk out of here as soon as that door’s open.”
“We can’t warp from in here,” Loren said, engaging the forward thrust and lifting the Untitled off the deck. “We have to get outside and clear of the ship first. If we’re lucky, they won’t be on us right away.”
“Yeah. Remind me when we’ve ever been lucky,” said Cal. He turned his chair. “Mech, don’t suppose you’d be able to fix the weapons in the next, oooh, twelve seconds?”
Mech’s only response was a raising of one eyebrow.
“Yeah, thought not,” Cal said, spinning back to the front. “Then I guess we’re back to our default position of crossing our fingers and hoping for the best.”
“Shouldn’t we wait until the mouth thing is all the way open?” asked Miz, gesturing ahead to the eye-lid shaped doorway ahead of them.
“Why?” asked Cal.
“Uh, because she’s flying,” said Miz. “You just know she’s totally going to fly us straight into the wall.”
“Hey, come on! Have a little faith,” said Cal. He leaned forwards and whispered to Loren. “Please don’t fly us into the wall.”
“Totally heard that,” said Miz.
“Here goes. Everyone hold on,” Loren said, guiding the throttle forwards. The Untitled lurched forwards, did a series of kangaroo-hops in the air, then rocketed towards the lower half of the still-opening doors.
“Pull up, pull up!” Cal yelped.
“You’re gonna hit!” cried Mech.
“See? I told you,” Miz snorted.
The ship banked smoothly upwards and passed cleanly through the gap. Loren turned and smirked. “Seriously? I could have fit ten ships through there. Have a little more faith, in future.”
Cal’s eyes widened and he jabbed a finger to the screen. “Uh, Loren…”
Loren turned. Her smirk withered and died. Dozens of fighter ships approached on an attack run, their weapon systems glowing with soon-to-be-unleashed power.
“Oh, shizz!”
“I had a thought, sir,” said Kevin from the speakers.
“Not now, Kevin!”
“Very good, sir.”
The first three ships unleashed searing hot beams of cannon-fire at the Untitled. Cal felt his stomach boing around inside him like a rubber ball as Loren sent the ship into a spin, weaving between two of the blasts. A third struck a glancing blow off the hull, and warning lights illuminated all across the control panels.
“We got no shields,” Mech realized. “Why ain’t we got shields?”
“As I was saying, sir, I had a thought about raising the shields,” intoned Kevin. “But then I remembered Master Carver’s instruction about not using my initiative, so I felt it best if I didn’t—”
“Raise the fonking shields!” Cal cried. He was lifted up until his seat belt went tight, then slammed back down into the chair as Loren threw the Untitled into a dive. Two of the ships turned in time to give chase, but the third overshot the turn, banked too sharply, and exploded against the side of Kornack’s capture-ship.
“One down!” Loren cheered.
“Dozens to go,” added Miz, helpfully.
Two laser blasts streaked past from behind. Loren yanked back on the stick, sending the ship into an agonizingly steep climb.
The Untitled was the most responsive ship she’d ever flown, able to turn at near ninety-degree angles without slowing. From a pilot’s point of view this was great. From the point of view of a human skeleton, not so much.
“Ow. Jesus. A bit of warning, next time,” Cal winced. “I think I just shrunk an inch and a half.”
“What? Where?” asked Miz, suddenly concerned.
“Height, I meant, not… not… Forget it.”
“Six more coming in high,” Mech warned, studying the scanners. “Looks like they’re warming up torpedoes.”
A blast of cannon-fire clipped one of the Untitled’s wings. More warning lights illuminated. “What the…?” Mech yelped. “Why ain’t we got any shields yet?”
“No-one specified, sir,” said Kevin. “And I didn’t want to take any liberties.”
“No-one specified what?” asked Cal.
“Precisely which shields to raise, sir. The ship has several.”
“All of them!” bellowed Cal, Mech and Loren at the same time.
“Very good,” said Kevin, sounding ever so slightly taken aback. “Raising all shields.”
The sky ahead shimmered, just for a moment, as the shielding wrapped around them like a bubble. The knot in Cal’s stomach loosened a fraction. “OK. Good. Soonsho, you OK back there?” he asked, then he remembered what happened the last time she opened her mouth. “Wait! On second thoughts, don’t answer.”
He half-spun his chair to check on her. She had her eyes closed and her head back and was gripping her seatbelt so hard her knuckles were white. “I know exactly how you feel,” he said, then he turned back to the front in time to see a torpedo explode against the shielding.
“I think I’d like to get out of here now,” said Cal, gripping his armrest as the aftershock of the torpedo strike trembled through the ship.
“Give me a second,” said Loren. “I need to calculate our heading.”
“Well hurry up and do it!” said Cal.
“I’m trying!” Loren snapped. She threw the ship into a spinning dive, dodging a hail of cannon-fire. “But it’s not easy with everyone shooting at us!”
“Then just hit the fonking button!” Cal yelped. “Take us anywhere that isn’t here.”
Space Team: Song of the Space Siren Page 6