Space Team: Song of the Space Siren

by Barry J. Hutchison

  “I’m afraid I don’t know, ma’am. Without having more detailed knowledge of the creature’s mass, I could only estimate.”

  “Then do that,” said Loren. “Estimate.”

  “Very good, ma’am. I estimate hull integrity would remain intact for somewhere between three hours…”

  “Oh, thank God,” said Cal.

  “And two-point-six seconds.”

  Cal groaned. “I rescind that last statement. Can you estimate any more accurately than that? Because – and no offense here, Kevin – that sounds like you’re covering a lot of bases.”

  “Wait, look!” said Loren. On screen, the spider was rapidly rising. It began to turn, and the Untitled rocked as the leg was withdrawn from its exposed belly. “It’s leaving. It’s letting us go!”

  “Alright!” cheered Cal. “See, Soonsho, I told you everything was going to be…”

  He wiggled his chair around, which wasn’t easy in his upside-down position. The chair where the girl had been sitting was empty. Soonsho was gone.

  “Cal,” said Loren, her eyes flitting to one of the many warning messages currently lighting up the screen. “The landing hatch.” She looked back over her shoulder. “It’s open.”

  * * *

  Miz spun, slashed, dodged, snapped, then hurled herself at a spider-creature, ripping at its eyes with her claws. Her fur was thick with blood and gunge. Her limbs ached, but she fought on. She’d been too late to stop this last spider before it stabbed a hooked leg through the chest of a fleeing Cantatorian. All she could offer its victim now was vengeance, and she was serving it up as best she could.

  The young Spider-Dragon hissed and opened its round mouth. A jet of blue flame escaped it, forcing Miz to skitter back out of its way.

  “OK, I sorta hoped you guys wouldn’t figure that out,” Miz said. Then she shrugged. “Still, guess it just makes the whole thing more exciting.”

  She ducked under the fire, twisted beneath it, then raked both sets of claws down the monster’s now-exposed chin. The flesh split, spilling the spider’s black, tar-like blood onto the ground.

  Dropping to her knees, Miz swung both arms wide. Her claws found two of the thing’s legs, carving out chunks right below the kneecaps. She rolled clear just as the spider dropped, then wrapped her arms around its head and twisted until its neck went crack.

  “You totally deserved that,” she spat, then she looked across to where the broken body of the Cantatorian lay, pushed down a pang of something like guilt, then turned to find her next target.

  A leg slammed into her ribcage, catching her off-balance. Miz stumbled, already preparing to pounce on her attacker, but then a weight pressed on her from behind, knocking her to the ground. She spun onto her back, claws and teeth at the ready, only to find four more of the spiders crowding her, crawling over each other, fighting to get to her.

  Barbed feet sunk into her shoulders and thighs, pinning her like a butterfly. She gritted her teeth, but refused to scream – yeah, like that was going to happen - as mandibles gnashed at her, spraying her with blobs of hot spider spit.

  She struggled against the weight of the monsters, but each movement just dug the legs deeper into her flesh. A head lowered towards her. The puckered mouth expanded and a gust of warm air rolling down over her face.

  “Ew,” Miz told it. “Your breath totally reeks. Also,” she added. “I hope you fonking choke on me.”

  She spat in its eye. Then quickly spat in the others, for good measure. She braced herself, but refused to look away as the head lowered and the mouth opened and a metal hand clamped down on the monster’s skull.

  Miz frowned. Wait. What was that last one?

  The head was yanked back. A blast of laser fire exited through the front of its face, turning it into a gooey black paste.

  The other spiders surrounding the lead one screeched furiously. Mech spun around, blasting them all at point-blank range in the head and throat. Two dropped instantly. The last remaining one stumbled backwards, no doubt giving some serious thought to this whole ‘invasion’ endeavor. Mech finished it with another few short blasts, then turned in time to catch the headless first spider before it collapsed onto Miz.

  “Get it off me,” she told him.

  “But its legs. Ain’t they hooked in?” Mech asked.

  “Just do it!”

  Mech got himself beneath the creature’s lifeless body and pushed upwards, heaving it above his head. The legs tore free with a series of brief but unpleasant ripping sounds, and Miz allowed herself just the tiniest of pained groans.

  With a grunt, Mech tossed the spider away. The area around them was clear now – provided you didn’t count the corpses, limbs and gungy black blood – but that wouldn’t last long. They had to move, and soon.

  Mech dropped to one knee and extended a hand to the fallen Mizette. At first, she batted it away, but when he held it out a second time, she considered it more carefully.

  She looked at the hand.

  She looked past it, to the mash-up of metal and scarred flesh that made up Mech’s face. He looked different from this angle. Bolder. More dynamic.

  Hot, even.

  Miz flicked her tongue across her chops, wiped a blob of spider’s face from her fur, then took Mech’s hand. He hoisted her to her feet with such suddenness, she was forced to throw her arms around his impressively broad shoulders.

  “Hey,” she said, her voice a low purr.

  Mech’s brow knotted. “Uh… hey yourself,” he said. Her hands caressed the back of his neck and his frown deepened. It almost came as a relief when he heard the sound of approaching Spider-Dragons. The relief, however, did not last long.

  There were hundreds of them, approaching along the street like an army. They hurried along, teetering on their ridiculous legs. It took Mech a moment to realize why they were in such a rush. They were chasing someone.

  “Who,” began Miz, peering along the street to where a man with a piano tie and a matching belt was jigging and dancing at the head of the spider conga, “is that guy?”

  * * *

  Cal swung down from his chair, dropped to the ceiling, and launched himself towards the door. “Get the ship the right way up and be ready!” he instructed.

  “Ready for what?” asked Loren.

  “Fonked if I know,” Cal said, jumping up and catching the door lintel. His boots scrambled on the wall as he clambered for the opening above him. “Just be ready in general.”

  He heaved himself into the doorway, teetered on the lintel for a second or two, then toppled forwards and fell into the corridor. “Ow.”

  Too many seconds of climbing and scrambling later, he made it to the hatch by way of the armory, lowered himself from the doorway, and dropped several feet to the ground.

  Cal sprinted clear just as the Untitled’s thrusters propelled it along the ground in a shower of sparks. The scraping of metal on metal was piercingly loud, and he’d have clamped his hands over his ears, were it not for the fact he was holding two quite cumbersome hand grenades. A blaster rifle was slung across his chest, with a pistol tucked into the back of his pants for good measure. None of it was likely to hurt the Spider-Dragon, he knew, but he sure felt better for having it.

  The scraping sound stopped as the ship lurched into the air. Cal raced up the side of a low metal hillock, his head back as he watched the monster above. It had blocked out most of the sky, casting the world around Cal into cold shadow. It was still in the process of turning, and backing itself up a little. From the way it moved, it seemed to be targeting a ridge a hundred feet or so to Cal’s right. He set off towards it at speed, the grenades making a somewhat worrying sloshing sound as he ran.

  “Soonsho!” he bellowed. “Soonsho, where are you?”

  He skidded over the ridge, discovered quite a steep drop on the other side, and bounced twice on the way to the ground. He landed with a heavy thud on his back. The blaster pistol fired, scorching his buttocks and burning a hole in the seat of his pa
nts.

  After he’d recovered from that shock, Cal risked a glance at the hand grenades. Neither one showed any signs of being about to go off, so that was something, at least.

  He struggled upright, considered getting rid of the pistol, then decided instead just not to fall from a height onto it again.

  “Soonsho!” he hollered, then he almost screamed when he turned to find her standing immediately behind him. “Jesus! Never sneak up on a man with explosives in both hands. That’s, like, rule number one.”

  The Spider-Dragon’s head hung over them, the tips of the mandibles just fifty or sixty feet from where they stood. Beyond the mandibles, its cavernous mouth was opening like a camera shutter, revealing a vast, moist blackness beyond.

  Soonsho stepped forwards and put her arms out at her side, inviting the monster to come for her. Cal pulled her back, caught the pin of one of the grenades in his teeth, and pulled it free. Tossing it upwards with all his might, he dragged Soonsho away. They stumbled on, slipping and sliding across the smooth, shiny metal.

  Taking cover behind a jagged outcrop, Cal watched the grenade soar up, up, up towards its target.

  And then fall down, down, down to the ground. It bounced twice.

  Several seconds later, it made a disappointing pop and burst in a flash of fluttering colors. “Well, that was fonking useless,” Cal muttered, tossing the other grenade away. He swung the blaster rifle into one hand, and caught Soonsho’s arm with the other. “Come on, let’s get out in the open and hope Loren can see us.”

  He tried to drag her on, but Soonsho stood her ground. She pointed angrily to the approaching Spider-Dragon, then her face softened a little as she curved her finger back around to point at herself.

  “No,” said Cal. “No, you don’t have to do that. It’s not your job to stop that thing. You don’t have to—”

  Soonsho opened her mouth, just a little, and only for a fraction of a second. Cal didn’t hear the sound she made, but he felt it. It hit him like a hurricane, huffing the breath from his lungs and hurtling him backwards through the air.

  He crashed hard into a boulder-sized lump of metal and slid down it, his body completely ignoring his brain’s instructions to get up again.

  In a minute, it seemed to say. Let’s just lie down for a bit. Doesn’t this rock feel nice?

  Cal watched, helplessly, as Soonsho turned away. He tried to call to her, but he had no breath left in him to make the sound. She opened her arms and tilted her head to the sky. An offering, to the monster.

  Its head lowered. Its mandibles snapped open. Its mouth unpuckered.

  Cal stared at the hideous thing.

  He stared at the girl.

  He remembered the rifle in his hand.

  He pointed it at Soonsho.

  His finger found the trigger.

  And he squeezed.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Miz limped clear of Mech and they both braced themselves for a fight. It was not, judging by the number of spiders approaching, a fight they had any hope of winning, but that had never stopped either of them in the past.

  Halfway between them and the spider-creatures, Dan, Dan the Music Man jigged towards them, his short, flabby body gyrating in perfect time to Come on Eileen by Dexy’s Midnight Runners, which only he could hear. Without the benefit of the music, the guy looked positively insane as he sashayed and slide-stepped the last few feet, then stopped just ahead of Mech and Miz.

  “Who the fonk are you?” Mech asked.

  Dan, Dan the Music Man smiled and winked at them, then he crisply about-turned until he was facing the approaching spiders. They were closing fast now – a few hundred of the things scuttling along on a few thousand legs.

  Splurt shifted, changing his form from that of an ex-children’s entertainer to something very tall and very wide, with a large, heavy hammer-shaped head.

  “Splurt!” Miz gasped.

  “Oh, man,” Mech muttered. Even with his dial turned to the right, he was smart enough to realize what was about to happen. “That thing’s a genius.”

  The spiders stopped scuttling and looked up. Splurt, despite having no face and a head made of ultra-dense neutronium, smiled. Much as he’d enjoyed the dancing, this had been the part he’d been most looking forward to.

  He swung. His hammer-head smashed down on a bug, shattering its skeleton and spraying its guts across the street. By the time the monsters on either side of it had realized what had happened, it had happened to them, too.

  Krik.

  Krak.

  Ksshk.

  Splurt rifled remotely through Cal’s subconscious until he found a suitable track – Phil Collins’ 1981 debut single, In the Air Tonight – and, with the opening drum-beat pounding inside his head, he went to work.

  * * *

  The blast from the rifle clipped Soonsho on the underside of one outstretched arm, searing a perfectly circular hole in the flesh a few inches above her elbow. Whether it was the shock or the pain, it was impossible to tell, but the effect was instantaneous.

  With a mile-long Spider-Dragon preparing to devour her, and her skin still sizzling from where Cal had shot her, Soonsho Sooss opened her mouth and – finally – began to scream.

  The sound rose like a shockwave into the air. Even though he was several dozen feet behind her, Cal was forced to cover his head with his hands and grit his teeth as his eardrums collapsed and his skeleton tried to shake itself free of his body.

  The Spider-Dragon’s head snapped back, as if hit by an invisible uppercut. A web of cracks appeared on the glazing of the monster’s exo-skeleton, fissuring and widening as Soonsho unleashed a lifetime of fear and worry and betrayal and regret in one long, drawn-out wail.

  It rose from within her like an unstoppable force. All those horrors – all those years spent cheerfully preparing for her own agonizing death – were because of this creature. Because of this monster. Because of this thing.

  The Spider-Dragon screamed, but Soonsho screamed louder. And as she screamed, the pitch rose and fell, becoming a song - a song of despair and destruction and death. For the first time in her life, Soonsho sang, and the world trembled at the beauty and the horror of it.

  The monster’s armor split open. Canyons raced along it, revealing the soft, pulpy flesh beneath. Soonsho sang. Fifteen years of silence – fifteen years of holding back – came to an end in a single flowing aria that ignited the clouds above her, scorching the sky in columns of flickering color.

  And then, as suddenly as she had started, she stopped. Her piercing soprano became a croak, then a gasp, then nothing at all as her breath ran out.

  The Spider-Dragon stumbled, its legs not quite its own, its armor falling away in truck-sized slivers. One of its mandibles hung limply and uselessly, while the other moved slowly back and forth, as if searching for its missing mate.

  But the mouth. The mouth was opening. The head was coming down. And the Spider-Dragon, despite the damage, was hungry for one last meal.

  “No!” Cal made it to his feet. He closed the gap between them in a second and a half, then hurled himself at Soonsho.

  They connected just as four fiery red photon missiles slammed into the great beast above them. All four of the blasts pierced the thing’s exposed, quivering flesh, then detonated deep inside its skull.

  With a final shriek, the Spider-Dragon toppled sideways, and fell to the ground with a thunderous boom.

  The Currently Untitled swooped above them, firing its landing thrusters as it came in for a landing.

  “YOU OK?” Cal shouted. His eardrums had been completely obliterated - and he still had a hole in the back of his pants – but, all things considered, it could have gone worse. “SORRY I SHOT YOU!”

  Soonsho nodded shakily and clutched her wounded arm.

  “THAT’LL STITCH RIGHT UP! SERIOUSLY, IT WON’T EVEN LEAVE A…”

  Cal’s ears began to itch like crazy. There was a faint pop, a sharp ache, and suddenly the world became much louder
. He jabbed a pinkie finger inside one ear and wiggled it around.

  “What the…? Testing. Lalalala. Hey? HEY! Hey.”

  Yep, all good.

  “Oh man.” He grinned. “Forget Hannibal and Face – I am totally Wolverine.”

  The Untitled landed beside him in a swirl of dust and spider-armor fragments. “One sec, I have to check something,” said Cal. Soonsho watched him run across the barren metal until he eventually reached one of the spider’s legs.

  He kicked it. He mumbled something too quiet for Soonsho to hear. He waited.

  Then, he turned around and walked back. “Yep,” he said. “It’s definitely dead.”

  Cal gestured towards the back of the ship, just as the ramp lowered.

  “Now,” he said. “Shall we?”

  * * *

  Cal, Soonsho and Loren stepped down from the Untitled into a scene of utter carnage. Even from up in the sky, the scene spread out before them had immediately catapulted itself into Cal’s top ten list of the worst things he’d ever seen, nudging his naked grandmother into eleventh place.

  Now that he was actually standing knee deep in the sludgy black gore, though, it was rapidly closing in on the top five.

  Mech and Miz sat on the back of a partially crushed spider creature. They waved at Cal as he sloshed through the flood of insect guts, both looking relaxed, like this was the most normal thing in the world.

  “What the Hell happened?” he said, trying not to gag at the stench that swirled into the air with every step he took through the murk. “Did you guys do this?”

  “Uh-uh,” said Mech.

  “We did, like five percent,” said Miz.

  “Then how did…?” Cal’s eyes widened. “Splurt?”

  A little green blob rolled out from behind Mech, squidged into a pancake shape, then boinged into Cal’s arms. At least, that was the intention. Caught off guard, however, Cal missed, and Splurt vanished into the spider-slurry with a wet-sounding shlop.

  “Ooh, shizz. Sorry, buddy,” said Cal, then he jumped in fright as a long green tentacle wrapped itself around his neck, and Splurt leapt up onto his shoulder. Cal tickled him where he imagined the little guy’s chin to be. “You did all this?” he asked. Splurt shuddered happily. “Well, way to go, you adorable fonking psycho. Good job!”