“We could end up somewhere worse.”
Another torpedo slammed into the Untitled’s belly. “I doubt it!” said Cal. “Go!”
“Fine!” Loren hollered. “But don’t say I didn’t warn you!”
CHAPTER EIGHT
“You know your problem, Loren?” Cal asked, spinning in his chair as the stars streaked past on the viewscreen.
Miz enthusiastically raised a hand, but Cal gestured for her to put it down.
“I’m sure you’re about to tell me,” Loren said.
“You worry too much.”
Loren sighed and shook her head. “For the fifth time, we could have warped straight into a ship, a space station – maybe even a planet. You can’t just pick a random direction and hope for the best.”
“And yet – and correct me if I’m wrong here – that’s exactly what we just did.” He looked around the bridge. “And we’re all still here to tell the tale.”
He drummed his fingers on his arm rest and puffed out his cheeks. “Now, what were we doing before we were so rudely interrupted? Oh!” Cal spun his chair to face Soonsho. Her terror levels had dropped a little, but she still looked a few stressful moments away from a complete nervous breakdown. “We were taking you home.”
Miz, who was lying sideways across her chair, her legs hooked over the armrest, reached one arm down to the floor and turned the seat so she could see Soonsho. “That was pretty awesome, by the way. You know, the way you took care of Kornack? That totally rocked.”
“Ha!” said Cal. “’Rocked’. Good one.”
Miz shot him a withering glance that suggested she had no idea what he was talking about, then turned her attention back to Soonsho. “She looks like she’s freaking out. Want me to, like, go help her get cleaned up, or whatever? She’s got bits of dead guy all over her.”
“Great idea, Miz, thanks,” said Cal. “Because if being scrubbed clean by a seven foot tall talking wolf-woman doesn’t calm her down, I honestly don’t know what will.”
Miz tutted. “Whatever,” she said, then she got up and slouched towards the door, motioning for Soonsho to follow. The girl shot Cal a look that suggested she had very deep reservations about this, but then unclipped her belt and followed Miz off the bridge.
“And you say Miz is never nice,” said Cal, turning to the front.
“No, I said she’s never nice to me,” Loren clarified. “Not the same thing.”
Cal sat back in his chair, watching her for a while. Once they’d gotten clear of Kornack’s fighters, she’d done all her stuff with headings and co-ordinates, and pointed them towards Cantato Minor, Soonsho’s home planet.
As far as Cal knew, there was very little to do now but wait, and yet Loren’s fingers passed over the same three sets of controls again and again, like she was stuck in some endless loop. As her fingers brushed against the levers and dials, Cal could see them trembling.
He looked over to Mech, who stood with his arms behind his back, gazing blankly into space. He looked a million miles away, and the fact he’d stop complaining about his leg suggested something was weighing on his mind.
Cal nudged Loren’s chair with his foot. This required him to slide down in his own chair until his shoulders were barely touching the seat part, and stretch his leg out as far as it could go.
The moment his foot touched Loren’s chair, he lost his balance and fell to the floor. He quickly rolled onto one side and raised himself onto one elbow, like a young Burt Reynolds on a bear skin rug.
Loren turned, looked briefly confused by Cal’s empty chair, then spotted him on the floor. “What are you doing?”
“Just chilling,” said Cal. “Just, you know, chilling here on the floor.”
Loren blinked. “O-K,” she said, stringing the letters out.
“Care to join me?”
“Not really.”
“No, don’t blame you,” said Cal. “It’s surprisingly uncomfortable.”
He clambered back into his chair. “That’s better.”
“Uh, good,” said Loren, then she started to turn back to the front again.
“Hey, Loren, wait,” Cal said.
Loren stopped, but didn’t turn back.
“You OK?”
“Fine,” said Loren.
“Good,” said Cal. “Good to know. It’s just… that stuff with Kornack. And the axe.”
“What about it?”
“You were just doing what you had to do.” He raised his hand and waggled the fingers. “See? No harm done.”
Loren didn’t say anything for a while, then she turned her chair all the way front. “Yes,” she said, her fingers instantly looping between the controls again. “I know.”
“Loren…”
“I told you, I’m fine,” said Loren, and the tone of her voice suggested the conversation was over.
Cal clicked his tongue against the back of his teeth, then turned to Mech. “And how about you, sparky? You’re quiet.”
Mech didn’t move. “I’m just thinking, is all.”
“What about?” asked Cal. He grinned. “Be honest – is it about me?”
Mech sighed. “No. It’s about what Sinclair said.” He turned away from the view of space, his leg fizzing and popping. “We’re at war.”
“No, they’re at war,” Cal corrected. “We’re just bumming around, doing our own thing. Our own space thing,” he added, hoping for a reaction. None came. “Seriously, don’t worry about it. Nothing to do with us.”
“For how long?” Mech asked. “Because I remember when Zertex and the Symmorium were at war last time. Really at war, I mean, not these past ten years of bickering and name-calling. Man, that thing spread through half the galaxy. Whole planets – Hell, whole systems – were wiped out. A lot of good people died. Lot of good people.”
Mech turned back to the screen. “And the rest of us… well, we were changed.” He clanged a metal finger against his chest. It made a hollow, empty sort of sound. “Some of us more than others.”
He sighed loudly and shook his head. “We might not be on the front lines yet, but I know how this plays out. We’ll get drawn in. Sooner or later, we’ll get drawn in.” He looked back over his shoulder at Cal. “And then everything’s gonna change.”
“Hey, come on, guys!” said Cal. “Enough with the long faces. We’re going to reunite a kidnapped girl with her parents, then we’re millionaires! We can go where we want, do what we want. This war stuff, it doesn’t need to affect us.”
Mech nodded slowly. His reflection nodded back at him from the screen. “Funny. That’s what I said last time.” He regarded his mirror image. “Now look at me.”
“You, sir, are gorgeous,” said Cal. “Unconventional? Sure. Mildly terrifying? Certainly. Partially magnetic? You betcha. But gorgeous, all the same.”
Mech grunted. “Point is, sooner or later, we’re gonna have to pick a side.”
Cal made a weighing motion with his hands. “The Symmorium consider us, like, folk heroes and have given us the freedom of Symmorium space,” he said, raising and lowering one hand. He turned his attention to the other. “Zertex are hunting us like dogs, and want us dead. Hmm. Decisions, decisions…”
Loren gently cleared her throat, but didn’t take her eyes off her controls. “I have brothers in Zertex,” she said.
A silence hung there for a while, until Cal couldn’t stand it any longer.
“Jesus, this is the most depressing conversation I’ve ever had,” he said, slapping his hands against his thighs. “And believe me, I’ve had some fonking depressing conversations in my time. We need to lighten up here, come on, guys.”
Loren and Mech said nothing.
“Kevin, how about you? You’re a positive kind of guy. Tell us some funny shizz.”
“The thirds have harvested the Tuesday, sir,” Kevin announced.
“See? There you go!” said Cal. He laughed, before realizing the words made absolutely no sense whatsoever. “Uh, by which I mean, ‘what the fo
nk are you talking about?’”
“Elbows are in the history. Oh, my.”
Cal, Loren and Mech all looked up. “Say what now?” asked Mech.
“My apple-pies, sir,” said Kevin, his voice slowing and speeding up like a wonky tape recording. “It appears crab shells have infiltrated m’lady’s central pums-pimser.”
Cal blinked. “What the Hell’s a pums-pimser?”
The stars stopped stretching and snapped to a stop. Cal was jerked from his seat, flipped twice in the air, then slammed against the viewscreen, face first. As he slid to the floor, the bridge’s lighting flickered and went out.
“Please tell me it’s dark for everyone,” Cal wheezed. “Otherwise I’ve gone blind.”
A series of panels in the floor illuminated in an ominous shade of emergency red. “Oh, thank God,” Cal whispered, clambering back to his feet. He shot his leather jacket a disappointed look. “Well, thanks for the save, buddy.”
The jacket inflated like a giant marshmallow around him.
“Maybe just a smidgen earlier, next time,” Cal said. The marshmallow turned green and gloopy, then Splurt dropped to the floor and rolled under Cal’s chair.
“What happened?” Cal asked. “Did we hit something?”
“Controls are dead,” said Loren.
Mech gestured to the now black and lifeless wall in front of him. “Screen’s down. We got no visuals.”
“Like, please tell me you didn’t break the ship again,” groaned Miz, striding onto the bridge. Soonsho slunk along behind her, holding onto the wall to steady herself. “I almost took the new girl’s eye out.”
“It wasn’t me!” Loren protested. “I didn’t do anything.”
“Oh, like we haven’t heard that before,” Miz snorted.
“It’s berries uncle that you attain m’lady’s central pums-pimser,” said Kevin. His voice was a full octave higher now, and rising sharply. “Befronk all my dates are corrugated.”
Cal pointed to the ceiling. “Has he had a stroke?”
“Could be a virus, maybe?” said Loren. She tapped some keys and waggled a lever. “Nothing’s responding.”
Cal groaned. “Not another virus. We barely survived the last one.”
“Negativity, ma’am,” Kevin said. His voice was uncomfortably high-pitched now, like Alvin and the Chipmunks covering The Bee-Gees. “No voices infraction de-ta-ta-ta-ta in m’lady’s frong.”
“Well, at least that’s something,” said Cal. “You know, I guess.” A thought struck him. He jumped to his feet. “Hey, wait a minute!” he said. “What happened to all those little hat guys?”
* * *
The door to one of the many rooms aboard the Untitled Cal was explicitly forbidden from setting foot inside slid open, revealing a scene of absolute carnage within.
“Holy shizz, it’s Gremlins 2,” Cal groaned. “Specifically, there’s this scene in a cinema when they’re all going ‘rrraaaa’ and smashing the place up, or whatever,” he explained, for the benefit of those who hadn’t seen it. Which was everyone.
If anything, the scene inside the room was even worse than the one Cal had described. For one thing, the cinema in Gremlins 2 didn’t contain life support systems vital for keeping the cinema’s occupants alive. This room, on the other hand, contained exactly that.
A hat-creature dangled from a recently exposed knot of brightly-colored wiring which hung from the back of the life-support terminal like an upside-down rainbow. It tugged furiously on the wires, trying to wrench them free, for reasons best known to itself.
The reason Cal wasn’t allowed to enter this room under ordinary circumstances was because everything inside it – literally every panel, console, and cylindrical metal thing that went whrum – was important to the running of the ship. Vital, even.
And now most of it was in pieces.
Hat-things pulled on cables, jumped on pipes, hammered buttons and clawed at circuit boards. They chittered excitedly whenever they damaged something, cooing in wonder whenever a spark or a bang was produced.
“Hump me,” Kevin implored, his voice now slow and drawn out. “Hump me, pleebs.”
Mech charged into the room and brought his foot down on the hat-thing that was currently up to no good with the life support. It glanced up just in time to see the foot racing towards it, chattered briefly in panic, then exploded like a paint-filled balloon across the floor.
“Jesus,” said Cal. “Was that strictly necessary?”
Part of a control panel whanged against his forehead. Across the room, one of the critters giggled.
“Ow! You little shizznod,” Cal grimaced. “Mech, forget I said anything. Stomp them all!”
Miz shoved Cal aside and bounded into the room, her claws extending from her finger-tips. One of the creatures charged at her, waving its tiny fists in the air. Miz’s foot pinned it to the floor, and her tongue flicked hungrily across her exposed teeth.
She looked back over her shoulder. “You might not want to watch this part,” she said.
Cal swallowed. “Uh, yeah,” he said, backing out of the room. “Loren, why don’t you and I leave them to it and check the rest of the ship?”
Mech picked one of the hat-critters up in both hands, then pulled it in two with a sharp, sudden tug. The blue tinge drained from Loren’s face. “OK. Yes. Let’s do that.”
They hurried along the corridor and stopped outside another room. Loren glanced back in the direction of the bridge as Cal listened at the door.
“Think Soonsho’s OK?” she asked.
“Splurt’s with her. She’ll be fine,” Cal said. “I mean, you know, the conversation’s unlikely to be sparkling, but she’ll be safe.”
He closed his eyes and concentrated, trying to pick up any sounds beyond the door. “Can’t hear anything,” he decided, then he tapped the button and the door slid open.
This room was another of those that had been declared off-limits for Cal. It wasn’t that he would ever deliberately mess with any of the equipment, it was more that – given his history – there was a good chance the equipment might just spontaneously explode with him around.
During the lengthy discussions about which parts of the ship Cal could and couldn’t set foot in, Loren had described him as “a magnet for trouble.” Mech had gone a step further, declared him “a fonking jinx” and made it quite clear that he’d personally shoot Cal himself if he ever found him near the Untitled’s core systems.
That had seemed a bit harsh to Cal, but he had to admit that misfortune seemed to follow him around pretty closely, and that perhaps not venturing into areas that might make the ship implode probably wasn’t such a bad idea.
As a result, he had no idea what the room they entered was for. It had flashy lights, gurgling pipes and more of those cylinders that went whrum. It was also, Cal was happy to note, completely intact.
Although…
Cal nudged Loren and gestured to the floor near the corner of the room. A hat-critter stood at the base of a console, trying to prise open a metal access hatch on the front. It grunted and squeaked as is struggled with the metal, and hadn’t, as of yet, noticed it had company.
Placing his fingers to his lips, Cal crept into the room, his hands out in front of him like he was ready to receive a chest pass. The critter heaved and tugged on the panel, its little hat wobbling around on its head.
Cal closed in. Five feet. Four feet. Three feet.
The critter stopped pulling on the panel, raised its head and let out an inquisitive chirp. Cal dived for it, arms outstretched. It darted sideways and Cal slammed into the console, clonking his knees on the floor.
“Budatie!” squealed another of the hat-critters, as it hurled itself from behind a ceiling-mounted duct and dropped onto Cal’s back. More of the creatures rained down from above, shrieking and squeaking as they threw themselves in Cal’s direction.
“What the fonk?” Cal yelped, then he hissed as two of the creatures tugged his ears in opposite directions. �
�Ow! Cut that out!”
He grabbed for the ear-pullers, but two more critters caught his sleeves and wrestled with his arms. A flood of warmth trickled down over the back of his neck, and several of the creatures erupted into high-pitched laughter.
“Are you… are you peeing on me?!” Cal cried. The stench of hat-thing urine answered the question for him. “No! Bad little space midgets!” Cal wailed. “Cut that out!”
It took all his strength to roll over onto his back. Most of the creatures scrambled clear, but one gave a satisfying crunch beneath his shoulder as he slammed his weight on top of it. Jeering, the creatures raced to pin him down again. Cal raised a foot to kick out, but before he could, one of the smaller hat-things dived into the bottom of his cargo pants, and began scrambling up Cal’s leg.
Cal howled in panic as the creature headed north. Backhanding one of the larger critters away, he grabbed for the moving lump which was already at his knee and moving fast. It scampered around the underside of his leg, its tiny hands tickling at the back of his thigh.
“Don’t you dare! Don’t you fonking dare!” Cal yelped, wrestling desperately with his belt.
Loren, who had been watching the scene unfold with - she had to admit - some amusement, raised her blaster and fired ten shots in rapid succession. The chittering of the other creatures stopped, leaving only the frantic squeals of Cal as he undid his button and kicked his pants down around his ankles.
He caught the little creature just as it dived for his junk, and tossed it towards the ceiling. Loren whipped up her blaster and shot it in mid-air. Cal sighed as a drizzle of smoldering guts fell on his upturned face.
“Thanks, I guess,” he wheezed.
“No problem,” said Loren, sliding her blaster back in its holster. A smirk tugged at the corner of her mouth. “Oh, and by the way… nice shorts.”
CHAPTER NINE
It was taking almost all of Cal’s concentration not to throw up, but he did his best to pretend he was listening.
Mech had been listing the damage to the ship’s systems for several minutes now, apparently oblivious to the inch-deep puddle of guts and gore that currently sloshed around on the floor. Miz sat on what must once have been a console, but which now more closely resembled a modern art installation, picking chunks of meat from her teeth with a piece of wicker.
Space Team: Song of the Space Siren Page 7