Cal craned his neck and looked up to the top of the screen, where the underside of the Spider-Dragon rolled by. He’d hoped to find some conveniently exposed soft tissue there, just crying out for a missile or two, but the thing’s belly was just as armored as the rest of it. More so, possibly.
“Well, so much for that plan,” Cal muttered, and then the bug’s body became clear sky as the Untitled dodged through its back legs and sped towards the city.
“Coming up fast on the drop zone,” said Loren. “We’ll have to be quick. The big one’s starting to turn. She’s going to come after us.”
“Guys, get ready!” Cal called. Beneath them, the streets heaved with the spider-creatures. A few of the bolder Cantatorians – women, mostly – were fighting back by screaming at the things. The sound waves forced the spiders to draw back, their mandibles gnashing the air as their soft insides quivered within their exo-skeletons. “And, uh, just so we’re clear, there are a lot of spiders down there. Like, a lot. I feel I can’t stress that enough.”
“Shizz. Big one’s coming!” Loren warned. “We need to drop and go now.”
She jabbed the hatch control and the landing ramp lowered.
“What the fonk? We ain’t even gonna land first?” hollered Mech from the back.
“No time,” said Cal. “You’ll have to jump.”
“Jump?! And then what?” Mech cried.
“I don’t know. You’re an intelligent guy. Figure something out.” He nodded to Loren and she jerked forwards on the thrusters. There was a brief shout from Mech, but it was quickly lost to the howling of the wind.
Cal raised his eyes to the ceiling. “Kevin, they all clear?”
“Indeed, sir. Master Splurt has transformed into some kind of parachute style device. Estimated touchdown in seven-point-one seconds.”
“Does Mech look angry?”
“Exceedingly, sir.”
Cal grinned. “This day is getting better already.” He cricked his neck, locked his gaze on the monster ahead of them, and raised one eyebrow. “Now, let’s go swat us a Spider-Dragon.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Seven-point-one seconds after being unceremoniously ejected from the back of the Untitled, Mech and Miz glided to the ground. The parachute fluttered down over their heads, before twanging back into a basketball-sized blob of goo.
“Thanks, man,” said Mech. Splurt grew an arm and raised a thumb.
“There they go,” Miz said. Above them, the Untitled sped straight for the Spider-Dragon, banked left, and curved around its mile-long torso.
From inside the ship, the monster had seemed enormous. Out here, it didn’t actually look any bigger. It was more that they felt smaller. The bug could have squashed them in the Untitled. Down here, they felt beneath its notice.
What had noticed them, though, was one of the smaller arachna-beasts. Several of them, actually. They bore down on them from all sides, barbed feet tik-tik-tiking across the metal ground, mandibles opening and snapping in time with each step.
“I make six,” said Mech, standing back to back with Miz. “Half each?”
“Ha! Yeah. Try to keep up, grandpa,” Miz snorted. She glanced back at Mech. He met her eye.
“Be careful, kid.”
“Like… you, too,” said Miz, then she curled up her lips, dropped to her haunches and lunged.
Mech adjusted the dial on his chest, diverting some of his brainpower to his hydraulics. He shuddered noisily as his strength levels increased. “That’s what I’m talkin’ about,” he said, then he raised both his arms, took aim, and fired.
Unnoticed by either of them, Splurt inflated, becoming a colorful beach ball. He rolled off along the street, weaving between the legs of several other spider-things. He bounced around happily in front of them, looping in the air and drawing a figure of eight on the road.
Screeching, the spiders gave chase. Splurt rolled away, zigging and zagging down the road, always keeping just out of reach.
Two legs stabbed down at him as another of the bug-creatures pounced. Splurt stopped just in time, spun quickly, then jumped onto the monster’s head. He bounced a couple of times, rolled down its back, then continued on along the road, a procession of twelve-foot tall insects teetering along behind him.
* * *
The Untitled finished its maneuver around the Spider-Dragon and straightened onto an even keel. “We’re clear,” said Loren.
“Good. Kevin, how are the ground troops doing?”
“Still alive, sir. Master Mech and Mistress Mizette are both in the process of battling the infant Spider-Dragons.”
“And Splurt?”
“It appears he’s running away, sir.”
“He is?” said Cal, unable to hide his surprise. “That’s… good, I guess. Safety first.”
“Uh, we’ve got a problem,” said Loren.
“Is it the god-sized Spider-Dragon chasing us?” Cal asked. “If so, yeah, I noticed.”
“That’s the problem. It isn’t chasing us,” said Loren.
Sure enough, the rear camera view showed the beast still looming over the city, its crane-sized mandibles snapping as it lowered its head towards the outer ring of buildings.
“I think it’s going for Mech and Miz.”
“Fonk!” Cal hissed. “Kevin. Blast that thing up the shizzpipe. That should get its attention.”
“Missiles, sir?”
“Sounds good. Fire!”
“As I believe I previously stated, ‘launch’ would be a more appropriate—”
“Just do it!”
Four missiles launched, two from each side of the ship. This time they didn’t swing wide, and instead hammered one at a time into the Spider-Dragon’s bountiful backside. The creature squealed angrily and stumbled around on all six legs. A jet of flame ignited in its throat, scorching the air between it and the Untitled.
“Yeah, that seemed to do the trick,” said Cal. The monster’s legs twitched, launching it towards them.
“Little too well,” Loren spat, lurching the ship to the left and narrowly avoiding being pinned.
“Now, let’s take this ugly old fonk for a walk,” said Cal. He glanced back at Soonsho. She was sitting with her back pressed against the wall, eyes wide, knuckles white on her chair’s armrests. “Don’t worry, we do this kind of thing all the time,” he assured her. “I mean, you know, not exactly this, but broadly similar.”
The Spider-Dragon screeched. Fire crackled past the viewscreen. Cal tried his best to look reassuringly calm. “Nothing to worry about. Just you try to relax.”
He winked at her, smiled again, then turned back to the front. The shiny red landscape rolled past beneath them. In the rear view, the Spider-Dragon picked its way across the uneven ground, leaving the city behind as it followed the Untitled.
“That’s it, baby. Stick with us,” Cal whispered. “Then we’ll see how tough you really are.”
* * *
“Raaaargh!”
Mech’s hand clamped around a leg that had been on a direct collision-course with his head. He yanked sharply, pulling the spider towards him, just as he drove a wrecking-ball uppercut into its jaw. It howled as the skeletal hinge that connected its mandibles together shattered.
Mech twisted, ripping the monster’s leg off. As he spun, he hurled it at another of the things. The barbed end embedded deep into the second creature’s side. It turned towards him, only to be met head-on by a series of armor-shattering laser blasts from Mech’s arm cannons.
Its skull exploded in quite a pleasing way. The spider wobbled unsteadily on its six legs for a few seconds, then fell. By the time it hit the ground, Mech was already blasting a hole in his next target.
Man, this was fun. It actually worried him a little, how much he was enjoying it. Since the war, he’d always considered himself something of a pacifist. Not a very good one, by any means. He got into a lot of fights for one thing, and he suspected that very few other pacifists had military-grade weapons systems
built into their forearms, or a dial on their chest that allowed them to kill more efficiently.
But hypothetically, at least, he considered himself a pacifist. Yes he’d hit, hurt, maimed and murdered multiple times, but he hadn’t enjoyed any of it.
Well, some of it. He’d enjoyed some of it.
But never like this.
A set of mandibles pincered him around the waist from behind. Mech’s top half spun, his elbow, then his fist both hammering against the spider’s exo-skeleton shielded skull. It hissed sharply, then squealed when Mech wrenched the pincers in two.
“Bring it on, motherfonkers!” he cried, then he cranked his dial up another notch, and hurled himself into a seething mass of spider bodies.
A little further along the street, Miz was getting in touch with her animal side. Unlike Mech, she didn’t lie to herself about being a pacifist. She knew exactly what she was, and she reveled in it.
It was rare that she got the opportunity to really cut loose. Her father had never wanted her to fight at all – it wasn’t done for Greyx females to get blood on their claws, and especially not members of the royal family. But she was just so good at it.
For all her bluff and bravado, Miz never really thought of herself as gifted or talented. She wasn’t funny like Cal, or super-intelligent like Mech, or super-strong, also like Mech, depending on which way his dial was turned. She could probably fly a ship as well as Loren, but then that wasn’t exactly saying much. A short length of rope and a brick could probably fly a ship as well as Loren, provided someone pointed it in the right direction.
But this – this, she was good at. This, she could do.
She scythed her claws around, lopping off a leg and sending a spider staggering. Twisting, she pounced, her jaws snapping down on the back of the monster’s neck, where it joined the head. There was a moment of resistance, then the exo-skeleton splintered between her teeth. The spider screamed. Miz howled in triumph.
Yes, this she could do.
Several miles away, Splurt had amassed a small army of spiders. He had stopped being a beach ball a little while back, and now took the form of a man. Specifically, ‘Dan, Dan the Music Man,’ a children’s entertainer who had been the surprise guest at Cal’s sixth birthday party, and who – for reasons Splurt wasn’t clear on - was somehow still near the forefront of Cal’s memory.
Several hundred Cantatorians hid in their houses, peering out the windows at the procession passed. Splurt – or Dan, Dan the Music Man, depending on your perspective – danced and jigged along at the front, skillfully keeping his distance from the spider-creatures, but never getting so far away that they lost interest.
Only he could hear the music – Let’s Hear it for the Boy by Deniece Williams, from the soundtrack to the movie Footloose – as he was currently pulling it directly from Cal’s subconscious. If any of the watching Cantatorians could have heard it, however, they would have no doubt been genuinely impressed by the way he ducked, dodged and darted along in perfect time to the beat.
With an army of baby Spider-Dragons following behind him, and wearing the face of a middle-aged kids party entertainer from the late 1980s, Splurt bopped and jived onwards through the city.
* * *
Cal leaned forward in his chair. The Spider-Dragon stood front and center on the viewscreen, the city of Cantato Minor a dim glow behind it in the distance.
“Fire!”
Nothing happened.
Cal sighed.
“Jesus. OK, fine. Launch.”
“Launching, sir,” said Kevin.
Four… eight… no, twelve photon missiles streaked towards the monster. Its puckered mouth opened, but the missiles all separated, curving wide like planets in a decaying orbit around a parent sun.
The Spider-Dragon spewed its fire in a wide sweep, igniting seven of the missiles before they could connect. The remaining five hammered its ribcage – or roughly where Cal imagined its ribcage to be, at any rate – and this time the monster took notice. It jerked violently and raced forwards, bucking its head like a charging bull.
Loren reacted quickly, firing the lift thrusters and propelling the Untitled upwards out of the creature’s reach.
Cal sprayed it with a few quick blasts from his pew-pew gun, but they thudded harmlessly into the top of the armored skull.
“What was that white laser thing you fired earlier?” Cal asked.
There was silence for a moment. “Me, sir?” Kevin finally said.
“Yes, you. Who the fonk else would…?” Cal took a deep breath. “Yes. The white laser thing.”
“The Phased Disintegration Blast, sir?”
Cal shrugged. “Could be. Let’s see. Give it a taste of that.”
“Very good, sir.”
Two beams of white energy stabbed down at the Spider-Dragon. It hissed and wriggled as the beams carved two trenches in its armor – deep, but not deep enough to do any real damage. It raised its head and spat fire at them, forcing Loren to dodge again.
“Wow, this thing is fast,” she grimaced. “That was close.”
“Have we hurt it at all?” Cal asked. “Beyond its feelings, I mean.”
“Hurt what, sir?” asked Kevin.
“The… what do you mean, ‘hurt what?’ The spider. The fonking Spider-Dragon.”
“Oh, yes. That.”
Cal made an exasperated gesture in the direction of the ceiling, but said nothing.
There was a moment of silent calculation.
“I’m going to be honest with you sir, we haven’t hurt it much,” Kevin announced. “We’ve put a few scratches on its exo-skeleton, and not a whole lot else. We appear to be getting on its nerves, more than anything.”
Cal groaned. “What else have we got?”
“An impending sense of doom, sir?” said Kevin. “Or perhaps that’s just me.”
“Weapon-wise, I mean,” said Cal. “Do we have anything else we can hit this thing with?”
“I’m afraid not, sir, it’s… Oh.”
Cal looked up. “What? What is it?”
“It appears we do have another weapon on board, sir. We have the Omega Cannon.”
“That sounds more like it,” said Cal, sitting up straight and rubbing his hands together. “What does it do?”
“I have absolutely no idea,” Kevin admitted.
Loren shunted the Untitled sideways, avoiding a leaping leg-strike from the Spider-Dragon.
“You’ve forgotten?” said Cal.
“No, sir. It appears that details of the Omega Cannon have been kept from me on purpose. Its schematics are not available for me to access. What I can detect of its circuitry is… rather baffling.”
Cal shrugged. “Ah, what the Hell? Let’s try it.”
“Are you nuts?” Loren yelped. “You don’t know what it does.”
“So? It’s a weapon, and we need a weapon if we’re going to stop that thing. Kevin, fire.”
“Kevin, don’t!” Loren barked. She turned in her seat. “You heard what he said, he has no idea what it’ll do. It might blow that thing to bits, or it might wipe out half the planet. Half the galaxy, for all we know.”
“Loren,” said Cal.
“No! Just listen for once!”
“Loren!”
She turned back to the screen, only to find it filled from edge to edge in all directions by the head and mandibles of the Spider-Dragon as it launched itself towards them.
Its pincers snapped around the ship. Its head jerked sharply. Cal and Loren screamed – and Soonsho tried very hard not to – as the Untitled flipped through the air then slammed against the ground with an ear-splitting bang and a screech of grinding metal.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Cal had been in space for less than two months, and had now officially been involved in his second spaceship crash.
Technically, he’d been in more than two, but the others were mostly just bumps, prangs, and the occasional drawn-out grinding scrape as Loren had failed to clear a docking bay
properly, landed awkwardly on a platform or – on one memorable occasion – flown at warp speed through a grocery store.
What Cal would consider his first ‘proper’ spaceship crash had been a biggie – so big, in fact, that it had destroyed the ship, churned up a mile-long stretch of forest and, most depressingly, broken his guitar.
Man, he missed that guitar.
This latest crash wasn’t so bad. Sure, it had started out pretty grim, what with being grabbed by an enormous spider and everything, but the Untitled’s shields had deflected the worst of the ground impact, and the hull seemed to have remained intact. That was the good news.
The bad news was that they were now upside-down, and the leg of the aforementioned enormous spider was currently pinning them to the ground.
The Spider-Dragon’s sphincter-like mouth hung above them, dribbling a viscous orange-red liquid along the length of its mandibles. The thing might have no eyes, but it seemed to be gazing right at them.
“Kevin, Loren, someone get us out of here!” Cal instructed. The straps of his chair were holding him in place, stopping him plunging towards the ceiling below.
“Can’t,” said Loren. “Not while it’s got us pinned. If we were the right way up…”
“Wait, what’s it doing?” Cal asked, gawping at the screen. The Spider-Dragon’s vast body was inching down towards the ship. It was so close they could make out the tiny hairs on the underside of its armored belly, each one barely the size of an exceptionally tall man. “Is it… is it going to have sex with us?” He looked anxiously to Loren. “Surely this calls for the Omega Cannon?”
“I suspect it’s trying to crack us open, sir,” said Kevin. “Rather like one might crack open the shell of one of your Earth coconuts, in order to get at the flesh inside.”
“O-K…”
“You would be the flesh in that analogy, sir.”
“I got that, thanks.”
“And, to a lesser extent, the milk.”
They could see almost nothing on the viewscreen now but exo-skeleton and a narrowing sliver of the world beyond. Any second now, the thing would be on top of them.
“How long can we hold up under its weight?” Loren wondered.
Space Team: Song of the Space Siren Page 21