“Who was it?” demanded Loren. “Who attacked you?”
Takta’s black-hole eyes shifted just a fraction from Cal to Loren. “You mean who murdered our women and children?” His lips drew back, revealing a brief flash of teeth and gums before he was able to bring his anger under control. “Legate Dash Loren of Zertex.”
Loren closed her eyes. “Oh, no. No,” she whispered.
“And you’re sure?” said Cal.
“We are.”
Cal glanced at Loren, then back to the Symmorium. “What’s going to happen to him?”
“He will be found guilty of the slaughter of four thousand innocent people, and he will be executed,” said Takta.
Loren opened her eyes. “I want to be at the trial. You can make that happen, right?”
Takta snorted. “Trial?” he said. “There will be no trial. This animal does not deserve one.”
Loren stood up. “So, what? You’re just going to kill him?”
“Yes!” Takta snapped. He swallowed, composing himself again. “However, because of our debt to you, we will make his death quick. There are many of us – myself included – who find the very idea of mercy towards him to be… distasteful. But we are the Symmorium, and we always pay our debts.”
“Look, please, just let me see him,” said Loren. “I can figure this out.”
“He killed thousands of us!” roared Takta. Specks of spittle covered the screen. “Our women. Our children. They all died. Screaming. Burning. Helpless. And you think you can somehow change this? You can somehow ‘figure this out’?”
“No, that’s not what… Please, Takta,” said Loren. “Just let me see him.”
Takta breathed heavily for several seconds before he spoke again. When he did, his voice was much flatter and more controlled. “I will arrange a video feed,” the Subsent said.
“Thank you.”
“It will be visuals only,” said Takta. “You may watch him die.”
“What? No, wait!”
The feed snapped off, returning the screen to darkness. Loren stared at it, willing it to come on, willing Takta to come back, to change his mind.
“Wow, they’re going to broadcast his death?” said Miz, breaking the silence. She shrugged. “Guess I’ll get the popcorn.”
Loren spun in her chair. Her arm stretched out, her blaster pointed directly at Mizette’s head.
“Whoa! Whoa! Easy, tiger,” said Cal, raising his hands and stepping into the line of fire. “Loren, put the gun down. Miz, apologize.”
“What? No way!” said Miz.
Cal spun on his heels, his face darkening. The voice that came out of him was not one the crew had ever heard before. “Apologize now, or get off my ship.”
Miz blinked in surprise. She sneered and looked over at Mech for support. He shook his head.
“You were out of line, Miz,” Mech told her.
Mizette huffed and crossed her arms. “Fine. Whatever. I’m sorry, OK? There.”
Cal nodded. “Thank you.”
He turned back to Loren, hands still raised. She had already lowered the blaster, and was hurriedly keying co-ordinates into her console.
“Uh, whatcha doing there?” Cal asked.
“We need to go. I need to see Dash.”
“Uh-uh, no way,” said Mech. “That ain’t happening. I mean, I’m sorry and everything, but I think I made my position clear. I don’t want no part in no war.”
“This isn’t war. It’s family,” said Loren.
“Ain’t my family,” said Mech. “And anyone who can do what he did, sounds like he ain’t someone you really want to have in yours, either.”
“We’re going,” Loren insisted. The Untitled hummed as the engines ignited.
Mech tapped his controls. The engines died. “No,” he said. “We ain’t.”
“You tell her, Mech,” Miz purred.
“Miz, you’re not helping, shut up,” said Cal. He turned to Loren. “Mech’s right. We can’t go. What would be the point?”
Loren didn’t meet his eye. “Because Dash wouldn’t do this. Lokak – my other brother – maybe. But not Dash. Not Dashy. He wouldn’t.”
“But he did,” said Mech. “They got footage.”
“Like Sinclair had footage of the Symmorium destroying Pikkish, you mean?” Loren snapped. “I’m telling you, he didn’t do this. I know he didn’t.” She finally looked at Cal, her eyes blurred with tears. “I have to go. Even if he did do this, he’s family.”
Cal looked down at his feet for a moment, before raising his head again. “Family ends, Loren. Sometimes, you know? It just ends. One minute, everything's great, then ... gone. And you cry, and you drink excessively, and you make disparaging remarks about the god of your choosing, and then you move on.”
He squatted down beside her chair. “And that’s all you can do. You move on. You put it behind you, hard as that may be.” He reached for her arm, but she moved it away. “If we go, we’re in the war. Their war, not ours. We risk everything, and for what?”
“For my family,” Loren said.
“Sorry, not a good enough reason,” said Cal, more curtly than he’d meant to. “He killed children, Loren. Thousands of women and children.”
A tear rolled down Loren’s cheek. Her voice was barely a squeak. “But he’s my brother.”
Cal nodded, just once. “I know. I know. But he did something terrible, and painful as it may be, you have to let him pay the price.”
Loren wiped her eyes, then looked from Cal to Mech to Miz. She didn’t find the smirk she was expecting on Mizette’s face. Instead, the wolf-woman almost looked sorry for her. That was the final straw.
“Fine. You know what? Fine. Don’t help me,” said Loren, jumping to her feet and heading for the door. “I’ll find a way to get there myself.”
“Wait, Loren. Come back!” Cal called, but the only answer was the clang of the landing ramp dropping. He turned to the others. “Come on, help me get her back,” he said.
“Why?” Miz asked, but she stood up, anyway. She followed Cal and Mech into the corridor. “It’s not like we even need her now we’ve got Kevin.”
“Very kind of you to say so, ma’am,” Kevin chimed.
Cal led the procession down the ramp and into the landing bay. Loren was already gone, so he hurried to the exit and out onto the heaving street.
“Shizz. Can’t see her,” he said, standing on his tiptoes to try to get above the sea of heads. “Either of you two spot her?”
Mech peered above the crowds while Miz sniffed the air.
“Can’t see her,” Mech said. Miz tilted her head back and forth, her nostrils flaring.
“I got her scent, I think,” she said. “Failure and desperation. That’s her, right?”
“Where is she?” Cal asked.
Miz sniffed. “That’s weird. It’s like she’s—”
There was a sudden blast of heat and a high-pitched whine as the Untitled’s engines fired.
“No! Shizz, Loren, don’t!” Cal yelped, running for the ramp as it began to raise. Mech caught him just in time as the ship’s thrusters flared blue. The ship rose jerkily into the air, clanged against the landing bay wall, clipped the docking gate, then climbed vertically towards the clouds.
“Oh,” said Cal, as the Currently Untitled was lost to the layer of gray. “Well isn’t that just fonking marvelous?”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Cal stood in the center of the landing bay, looking up. He had been utterly convinced that the ship would reappear shortly after it had disappeared into the cloud cover, but several minutes had passed since then, and he was now considerably less confident than he had been.
“Try calling her again,” he urged. Mech sighed, but tapped one of the buttons on his arm. It let out a slightly irritated bleep.
“No response. She’s turned off the comms,” Mech said.
“Or she’s crashed and blown the ship to pieces,” said Miz. “Which is probably more likely.”
&nb
sp; “Miz, will you cut it out?” Cal snapped. “Jesus. Be serious for one minute, OK?”
“Coming from you, that’s kinda rich, man,” Mech grunted.
“And I totally was being serious,” said Miz. “She nearly crashed, like, what? Three times on the way down? And that was before she was all angsty and boo-hoo, or whatever. I mean it, she’s probably crashed and died. We should move out of the way before the debris lands on us.”
“Just… just stop,” Cal said.
Miz sighed. “Fine. Whatever.”
Cal watched the clouds. “Come on, come on,” he whispered, so quietly even Miz’s ears didn’t pick it up. “Where are you?”
Suddenly, the underside of a ship’s hull appeared through the gray haze. “Yes!” Cal cried, but his excitement was short-lived. The ship coming down wasn’t the Untitled. It was older and clunkier, and could very well have been built in someone’s back garden. Probably a very long time ago.
The old rust bucket spluttered and coughed out plumes of black smoke as it dropped unsteadily onto three of its four landing legs. The fourth leg let out a long corroded-sounding screech as it partially unfolded, then it locked up, midway to the ground.
A moment later, the whole ship toppled sideways and fell over.
A square window in the side of the ship rolled down and a head covered in short black fur that was so shiny it looked soaking wet popped out. “Excuse me, is this Down Here?” it asked.
“Yeah,” said Mech.
“Thank you, kindly,” said the furry thing. It nodded, then began winding up its window.
“Wait!” said Cal. “Did you see a ship on the way down? Kind of four little wings, blackish-greeny-gray. Maybe silver depending on how the light’s hitting it?”
“Why, you know, I believe I did,” said the furry thing. “It was going up as I was coming down. Good and fast, too. Flew right on out there into space, like shizz off a shovel. Friend of yours?”
“Uh, yeah,” said Cal. “Yeah. I think so. Thanks.”
“Happy to oblige!” said the furry guy, then the window rolled up and he vanished further into his ship.
“So, what now?” asked Mech.
“We go after her,” said Cal. “We have to.”
“Well, uh, no. No, we don’t,” said Miz.
“Even if we wanted to, what we supposed to do?” asked Mech. “Flap our arms? She took the motherfonking ship!”
“Then we’ll get another one,” Cal said. “We’ve got the money, right? Two million credits. That’ll buy us something. It doesn’t matter what condition it’s in, we’ll just buy the first one we see and get after her.”
Behind him, the furry thing’s ship belched out a spray of sticky black fluid. “OK, we’ll buy the second one we see.”
Mech shook his head. “Our money? It’s tied to the ship. She’s got it all. We ain’t got shizz.”
“Really? Well, that’s… stupid,” said Cal, taken aback. He shook his head. “But we’ve still got some money. I’ve got maybe two hundred credits on me.”
“That ain’t going to buy a ship,” said Mech. “That won’t even buy you a bumper sticker.”
“OK, well we’ll steal a ship then. Anything at all.”
There was a clank as an exhaust pipe fell to the ground. “Again, obviously not that one,” Cal said. “But we’ll find something. We have to do something.”
“Says who?” asked Miz. “Whatever happens to her, she brought it on herself. Good riddance, I say.”
“You don’t mean that,” said Cal.
Miz shrugged. “Maybe I do.”
“Mech, tell her.”
“Tell her what?”
“Tell her we have to go after Loren.”
“I already told you,” said Mech. “I ain’t getting dragged back into no fonking war.” He tapped his chest. It gave a hollow metallic ding. “I already got me more than enough battle scars. Don’t need any new ones.”
Cal stared at Mech, then at Miz for a long time. He shook his head. “I don’t believe I’m hearing this. This is Loren, guys. She is one of us.”
Mech’s eyes narrowed as he considered Cal’s words. “You know, maybe I was right the first time we met. Maybe it was right, what I said.”
Cal frowned. “What? When? What did you say?”
“There is no ‘us’.”
“What? What are you talking about?” said Cal. “Of course there’s an ‘us’. We’re a team. We’re Space Team.”
Mech grunted. “Since I met you, I have had pretty much the worst few weeks of my life,” he said. “I been shot at, I been blown up, I’ve been thrown into space, had ugly mutant freaks try to do all kinds of crazy shizz to me, been taken over by a virus, attacked by twelve feet tall spiders and almost eaten by a big motherfonking fish,” Mech said. “And half of that? Half of that was just today.”
“You think you’ve had it bad?” Cal spluttered, squaring up to him. “I was abducted by aliens. Everyone I knew before that? They’re all dead. Since then, I’ve been shot, tortured, and I almost choked to death on a squirrel’s tits. Trust me, Mech, my life hasn’t exactly been a walk in the park lately, either.”
“Well,” Mech said. “That just proves my point. This…” He gestured around at the three of them. “Whatever this is. It’s toxic. It ain’t good for anyone.” He looked down, just for a moment. “And it’s over, man.”
Cal shook his head. “No. No, it isn’t. We’re stuck here together.”
“We might be stuck here,” Mech agreed. “But we sure as shizz don’t have to be together.”
“Come on, Mech,” Cal pleaded. When he got no response, he turned to Mizette. “Miz?”
Miz shrugged. “I’m sticking with Mech.”
Mech shook his head. “I think it’s best if we all go our own ways.”
Miz’s eyes widened, giving a fleeting glimpse behind her usually apathetic mask. It lasted for just a split-second, there one moment, gone the next. She slumped all her weight onto one hip and crossed her arms even more deliberately than usual. “Fine. Whatever. See if I care.”
Cal nodded, utterly defeated. “OK. OK, then. Fine. If that’s what you guys want, then, I guess I can’t stop you.”
He lunged at Mech and grabbed his arm. “Aha! Or can I? Now we’ve got no choice but to stick together.”
Mech caught Cal by the back of the neck and hoisted him into the air. “Sorry, man,” said Mech, setting Cal back down on the ground. “It’s over.”
The cyborg’s neck whirred as he peered out onto the street. Sirens continued to wail in the distance. “Now, what was it you said earlier about ‘new identities’?”
* * *
“You sure this is the place?”
Mech looked down at the card Cal had given him, then up at the grimy, gray building before them. It was a tall, almost Gothic-looking construction with once-detailed cornicing that was now crumbling and decayed. Most of the windows were shuttered, and two grotesquely misshapen gargoyles perched up on the edge of the roof, peering out across the city.
Considering the size and shape of some of the things Cal had encountered recently, the fact he instantly applied the term ‘grotesquely misshapen’ to the statues really spoke volumes about them.
“This is it,” said Mech. He approached the heavy wooden doors. Several buttons were fixed to a metal plate on the wall, faded nameplates taped beside each one. The name next to the top button read: ‘Deadman Investigations.’
Mech peered at it, looked down at the card, then over his shoulder at Cal. “It says he’s some kinda detective. You sure about this?”
“He could get us new identities. That’s what he said.” Cal shrugged.
“How do we know we can trust him?” asked Miz.
“Trust him? I could barely even bring myself to look at him,” said Cal. “But I guess there’s only one way to find out.”
He pressed the button. Nothing appeared to happen.
He pressed it again. They waited.
“Maybe
he ain’t home.”
Cal pressed the button again, and held it this time.
After a few seconds, a voice crackled angrily from the panel. “Alright, alright. What?”
“Uh, hi. We’re looking for a, uh, Dan Deadman,” said Cal.
“And?”
Cal’s mouth formed a few different word shapes before settling on one. “Have we found him?”
“Who’s asking?”
“We met in a bar,” said Cal. “While I was sliding along it, head first.”
There was another moment of silence. Cal looked back at the others and shrugged, then a buzzer sounded and the doors clicked open.
“Top floor.”
“Uh, yeah, OK. Thanks,” said Cal, but the intercom remained silent.
Mech leaned back and looked up at the towering Gothic construction. “You know something?” he muttered, as Cal and Miz vanished through the doors. “I have a very bad feeling about this…”
* * *
Six flights of rickety-looking, but surprisingly solid stairs later, Cal, Miz and Mech stood outside a door. It was a fairly old-fashioned door, even to Cal’s mind. It was mostly wood, but with a frosted-glass window taking up a pretty large portion of the top half.
Written large on the glass were a series of symbols. As Cal looked at them, the translation chip in his eyeball shifted the shapes around until they formed the words: ‘Deadman Investigations’. Below that, in smaller letters, was: ‘No case too weird*’ and smaller still at the bottom: ‘*Exclusions apply’.
“Should we go in?” Cal whispered.
“How the Hell should I know?” Mech whispered back.
“Maybe we should knock first.”
“Fine. Then knock.”
“You knock.”
“What? No, I’m not— Just knock on the fonking door,” Mech hissed.
Cal bit his lip. “I mean, he did say we should take a seat, and there aren’t any seats out here, which would suggest he meant for us to just come in and…”
“Guys,” said Miz in her normal volume. “Why are you whispering?”
Cal and Mech exchanged a glance. “I don’t know,” Cal admitted.
Miz rolled her eyes and pushed past him. She opened the door into a small reception area, albeit one distinctly lacking in receptionists. There was a small desk in the corner which looked like it had probably come flat-packed and been put together in a rush, an ancient filing cabinet that would almost certainly require mechanical assistance to open, and a row of worn-looking chairs with the padding poking out through rips in the fabric covers.
Space Team: The Guns of Nana Joan Page 8