“Appreciate it.”
“Any time! Always happy to help a friend.”
Alan shrugged. “Yeah, well, I ain’t your friend. We’re colleagues. I thought I’d explained the distinction?”
“Sorry, Alan. Sorry, I forgot,” said Higgsy, lowering his head.
“Don’t worry about it.”
“I forgot.”
“It’s done. It’s dusted. Forget about it. I will say this - you’re an exceptional colleague,” Alan told him. “I just don’t like you. You know, on a personal level.”
They stepped inside, with Jork and Cal following.
“So if the replicators take the orders and serve the food,” asked Cal, “then what do we do?”
“We clean,” said Jork, and Cal immediately concluded that this was the understatement of the fonking century.
There were two hundred or more tables in the place, surrounded by benches, chairs and – to a lesser extent – space chairs. This last category, Cal reserved for seating that had been designed with the more eclectically-built alien in mind. They were all different in their own ways. Some had spaces for tails to slot through. Others had twice as many arm rests, or were reinforced with metal girders, or had a place for a second ass to sit.
On top of each table were discarded trays, dirty dishes, crumpled napkins, empty soda cups, greasy food boxes, and a whole variety of food-related debris, from sauce-covered bones to congealing lumps of something that looked like meat, but smelled like cheese. And not good cheese, either.
Sticky soda puddles dotted the trash-strewn floor. Fat, hornet-sized flies buzzed around a little mound of something that might, at best, be vomit. The stench of the place was almost unbearable, and Cal had to cover his nose and mouth with his arm to stop himself giving the flies a second helping.
“Jesus. OK, no,” he said, shaking his head. “Seen enough. I’m out.”
“What? No! You can’t go,” Higgsy said. “It’s not allowed. You’ll get in trouble.”
“I’ll take my chances,” said Cal.
He about-turned towards the exit. A small, cheerful-looking woman with puffy hair that closely resembled pale blue cotton candy stood between him and the door. She was around five feet tall, with a football-shaped face that was far wider than it was high. A liberal application of make-up had been applied to it, possibly with some kind of trowel-like implement. The make-up was presumably designed to hide her wrinkles, but only served to draw attention to them.
She had appeared silently, with nothing to indicate where she’d come from. Cal, however, seemed to be the only one surprised by her presence.
“What the—?” he spluttered, before composing himself. “Um. Sorry. Excuse me, lady. I was just leaving.”
As Cal tried to pass, the old lady’s puckered lips curved into a smile, and she laid a hand against his chest.
“Not so fast, dearie,” she said, in a voice that made Cal think of every grandmother who had ever lived. “You must be Nob.”
“Uh, yeah, something like that,” said Cal. He pointed towards the door. “But, like I say, I was just leaving, so if you don’t mind...”
He tried to push past her, but her hand stopped him going anywhere. It was like pushing against an iron girder. The woman’s smile stayed fixed in place.
“I’m afraid not, dear. You see, you work for me now. You don’t leave until I say you can.” The woman looked past Cal to the other three. “Boys? Aren’t you going to get to work? Wouldn’t want to be late now, would you?”
“Yes, Nana,” said Jork, ducking and bowing as he backed away. “I mean, no, Nana.”
“Thank you, Nana,” added Higgsy.
Alan didn’t bow or scrape like the others, but he did make a hasty retreat alongside them.
“So, yeah, anyway,” Cal began, but the old woman held up a finger and waited until the other three had vanished through a door leading to the back.
“Now, then, dear,” she smiled. “What were you saying?”
“You’re Nana Joan?”
“I am.” She lowered her hand. “I’m sorry I had to stop you leaving like that. I understand, it can be a little overwhelming when you first see it. The morning clean-up is one of the worst aspects of the job, and last night was particularly busy. It does get better, I assure you.”
She ratcheted up her smile and gestured towards the door Jork and the others had gone through. “Now, if you’d be so good as to join your workmates, we can get this place looking ship-shape.”
Cal glanced back at the restaurant. It looked as if the whole place had been trash-bombed from orbit. He shook his head and side-stepped past the proprietor. “Yeah, I’m going to pass,” he said. “Thank you for the opportunity. It was a pleasure to meet you. Good luck with everything.”
He’d barely gone a single step when the heel of Nana Joan’s hand struck his chest. There was a brief but all-consuming moment of pain, then he was suddenly moving at a much higher speed than he had been just a moment ago.
Backwards, too. That was unexpected.
His brain had just begun to warn his body to brace itself when he slammed into one of the tables. To the dismay of Cal’s skeleton, the table was very firmly fixed to the floor. Something that felt important snapped in his lower back region as he flipped awkwardly over the table, kneed himself in the face with both knees, then flopped onto the gooey scattered remains of a deeply unpleasant-smelling meal.
“Ooh, that’s not good,” he grimaced. He tried to stand, but his lower body wasn’t responding. “Shizz. My legs. I can’t feel my legs!”
There was a tingling in Cal’s lower back as his body hastily repaired itself. “No, wait, I tell a lie,” he said. He got to his feet in time for a flying plastic tray to whang him across the bridge of the nose. “Ow! Jesus! What the Hell, lady?”
THUNK. Another tray struck him on the forehead, snapping his head back.
“Fonk! Cut it out! Last warning,” Cal said.
Nana Joan ran at him, moving surprisingly quickly for a woman of her advanced years. Cal dodged around the table, keeping his distance. She still had that smile plastered on her face, but it had become even less convincing than her make-up.
“Back off, you mad old cow!” he cried, shoving a two-assed space chair between them as he continued around the table. “Look, I’m just going to leave, OK?”
He turned and ran for the door, tossing a couple of chairs behind him to slow the old woman’s pursuit. He was halfway to the exit when he saw the shadow growing around him. A quick glance back over his shoulder confirmed his suspicions – Nana Joan had launched herself off a table and was hurtling through the air towards him, her grin almost splitting her face in two.
Operating on instinct, Cal caught her with both hands and used her own momentum against her. “Fonk off!” he cried, sending her sailing towards another of the rigidly-fixed tables. She hit it hard, slid across it, then clattered into a wooden bench on the other side.
A fleeting moment of guilt made Cal hesitate, but then he was hurrying for the door again, determined to get out of there before—
The bench slammed against the side of his head, sending him staggering into an overflowing trash can. Annoyingly, unlike the tables, it wasn’t fixed to the floor, and his attempts to use it to steady himself failed pretty spectacularly. He went down in an avalanche of food waste and cardboard, slid several feet on a tidal wave of soda, then scrambled back to his feet in time for the bench to hit him again.
It slammed into his stomach like a battering ram this time, ejecting ninety per cent of his oxygen, and sixty per cent of his will to live out through his mouth in one sudden gasp. Bent double, he managed to look up just as the bench swung down. It struck a hammer blow on the side of his head, buckling his knees and driving him against the floor.
Nana Joan tossed the bench aside and approached the motionless Cal. His eyes were closed, the whole right side of his face already purple and swelling.
“Now, dear, let that be a lesson to
you,” the old woman said, then her eyes went wide as Cal jumped awake, grabbed her ankles, and pulled. She flailed her arms as she toppled backwards. As she hit the ground, Cal was getting up, his fingers still wrapped around the bottom of her stocking-covered legs.
“Right, you asked for this,” Cal growled. He turned on the spot, heaving Nana Joan off the floor. The old lady was heavier than she looked, but by the time Cal had done one full rotation, she was swinging freely by the ankles, her arms flapping along behind her.
Thwack-thwack-thwack. She ploughed through several chairs, sending them bouncing across the floor. Cal spun faster, each turn raising Nana higher in the air until she was spinning at his chest height, completely horizontal.
With a final grunt of effort, he let her go. She flew a full fifteen or sixteen feet before slamming so hard into a table it partially tore free of the floor fixings. She bounced off it like a limp rag doll, did a full flip in the air, then face-planted onto a heavily reinforced space chair.
Nana stopped with her legs in the air, her wrinkled stockings and sensible shoes pointing to the strip-lighting on the ceiling. Cal watched the legs for a few moments until he was sure they weren’t going to start moving, gave a satisfied nod, then headed for the door.
Just two or three paces from freedom, Nana Joan’s shoulder hit him in the lower back. Cal’s face battered against the glass door, temporarily breaking his nose. “Ow, shizz!” he grimaced. He tried to turn, but Nana’s arm was suddenly around his throat, her other fist pulverizing his kidney area with a flurry of jackhammer punches.
“Stop it!” Cal hissed. “Jesus, what is wrong with you?”
Placing his feet on the door, he pushed backwards, driving the old woman against another table. She held on tightly, but she stopped punching him, at least. Instead, she reached over his head, stuck a finger up each nostril and pulled.
“Aaargh! Oh God, that hurts! Cut it out!” he yelped. When it was clear she wasn’t going to, he held up his hands in surrender. “OK, uncle, uncle! I give up.”
Nana held on for a few long, painful seconds, then shoved him away. He stumbled against another trash can, almost knocking over a stack of filthy trays.
Cal rubbed his throat as he turned. “I mean, seriously, was there any need for all that violence?” he asked, then he swung with three stacked-together trays, thumping them across the old woman’s cheek. Her head snapped to the right, but her smile didn’t falter. Cal lunged at her with a kick, but she caught his foot and twisted. Something popped in his knee and he briefly babbled in tongues.
One of Nana’s brogues rose sharply between Cal’s legs, the solid, sensible leather finding a couple of soft, exposed targets just waiting there.
Cal crumpled. His brain tried to figure out which of his many pains to focus on first, but couldn’t decide, so gave its full attention to Junta all at once, instead. Fortunately, most of the damage was healing, and Cal could already feel his knee pulling itself back into place.
The ball-shot still stung, though. And not just physically – mentally and, if he were honest, emotionally, too. Since he’d first been dragged into space, those little guys had suffered so much. It was getting to the stage where he felt he probably owed them a written apology, or at the very least a couple of beers and shoulder to cry on.
He looked up to find Nana Joan standing above him, a chair raised above her smiling head. “Wait, wait, OK,” Cal wheezed. “You win. I’ll stay. I’ll stay.”
Nana nodded. “Good. You can start by tidying up the mess you made.” She tossed the chair aside and pushed her smile to its limit. “And if you try to leave without my permission again, I’ll kill you. Understood?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I got it,” Cal said. Nana held a hand out to him. He eyed it suspiciously for a moment, then accepted her help. She hoisted him to his feet in one clean jerk.
“Welcome aboard, dear,” Nana said. She licked her thumb and wiped a smear of blood off Cal’s cheek. “I’m just certain you’re going to love it here!”
* * *
Commander Junta of the Symmorium knew his career was over the moment he allowed Loren aboard the battle cruiser. Subsent Takta hadn’t specifically told him not to allow her aboard, but Junta could read between the lines enough that no such direct order had been necessary. It was simply understood that this was the way things should be.
And yet, this woman, along with her friends, had saved his life, as well as that of his daughter and several good men and women from his crew.
More than that, even, she’d saved the Sentience, the closest thing the Symmorium had to a god. Without the calming influence of the Sentience reaching inside their heads, the entire species would have torn itself apart already, with no need for Zertex to lift a finger.
She was, as far as he was concerned, a hero. He owed her everything, and that was precisely what he was giving her. For what he was about to do, he would be stripped of rank. He would probably be expelled from the Symmorium forces. Depending on the judgement of the Subsents, even death wasn’t out of the question.
But he had made his peace with death, and the woman who had saved everyone he loved was asking for his help.
He stopped outside a cell door. Loren looked it up and down. “Is this it?”
“The murderer is in here,” Junta confirmed. “I am afraid you will not have long. The security protocols I have overridden will soon reset. Subsent Takta and the others will know of your presence then. You have approximately eleven minutes before this happens. If you wish to leave here alive, I suggest you conclude your business before then.”
Loren nodded. “I will. And thanks, Junta. I know you’re taking a risk.”
“Not a risk. A certainty. But it is my honor.” He pressed his hand against a sensor panel on the wall. The panel illuminated as it began its scan. “However, if you make any attempt to free him,” the Symmorium added, “then I shall kill you myself. Is that clear?”
Loren nodded. “Clear.”
“Then go,” Junta said, as the door slid open. “And may you find the answers you seek.”
The room beyond the door was dark, the only light spilling in from the corridor outside. As the door slid closed, the darkness became absolute, before the ceiling began to emit a dim white glow that gradually increased in brightness until the room’s contents were revealed.
Loren felt a gasp snag at the back of her throat. Her brother, Dash, sat on a mattress on the floor, his back stooped, his head hung low. His hands were behind his back, and Loren could only just make out the edge of a set of thick metal manacles holding his wrists together.
He was stripped to his underwear, his bare chest a dot-to-dot puzzle of purple bruises. His hair was shorter than she’d ever seen it, and well below the length Zertex regulations demanded. Had he done that himself, Loren wondered, or had the Symmorium done it to him?
“Dash?”
Dash mumbled something incomprehensible.
“Dash, it’s me. It’s Teela.”
More mumbling, but this time with a rising inflection that suggested a question. Slowly, ever so slowly, Dash raised his head. He tried to focus, but his eyes were red and bloodshot, and his pupils didn’t seem to want to play ball.
“Oh, Dashy,” Loren whispered. “What did you do?”
“N-no. They did this to m-me,” Dash managed to stutter. “Help me.”
Loren’s instinct was to run to him, hug him, tell him everything was going to be OK. He was a year older than her, but he’d always been the baby, the one everyone took care of. He’d never wanted to join Zertex, not really, but it had been expected of him, just as it had been expected of her.
She resisted her urges, and kept her distance.
“You attacked refugee ships. You killed their people.”
“Didn’t know,” Dash whispered. “Was j-just following orders. Didn’t know they were civilian targets. I swear.”
Loren nodded slowly. “OK. Well… That’s something,” she said.
“Hel
p me, Teela,” he sobbed. His lips drew back as he cried, showing his blood-stained teeth. “They’re going to kill me, you have to help me get out of here.”
“I’m not going to help you escape. I’ll talk to them, OK? The Symmorium. They’ll listen to me.”
Dash’s expression changed to one of confusion. “Why? Why would they listen to you?” His frown deepened. “How are you even here? Is this a trick? Is that what this is?”
“No,” said Loren. Her brother was afraid. Agitated. That instinct to rush to his side and just hold him flared again, and this time she took a half-step closer. “They’ll listen because I helped them before. They’re not the bad guys, Dash. Zertex is. Sinclair has set this whole thing up.”
Tears cut tracks down Dash’s grimy face. “You helped them?” he hissed. “What are…? What are you talking about, Teela? Why would you help them?”
“Because, like I say, they’re not the bad guys.”
“Look what they did to me!” Dash roared, springing to his feet. “Look what they did to me, and tell me they’re not the bad guys!”
“You killed refugees. Thousands of refugees. Children, Dash. There were children on those ships.”
“Oh come on, Teela. There are children on every Symmorium ship. They take their kids into battle! And yet somehow I’m the monster here?”
“That’s different,” said Loren.
“How? How is it different?”
Loren’s eyes flitted across her brother’s face. “How can you not know?” she said, a crack in her voice almost betraying her. “How can you not see the difference?”
She stepped back, pulling herself up to her full height. “Sinclair engineered this whole thing. This war. The footage he’s broadcasting everywhere? The video that shows the Symmorium blowing up that moon? Didn’t happen. He faked it.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Dash spat.
“I know, because I was there. It was my ship that destroyed Pikkish. The ship President Sinclair gave us. He destroyed Pikkish, he killed all those people, not the Symmorium,” Loren said. “And then he sent an invasion force to attack the Symmorium Sentience. He tried to slaughter them all.”
Space Team: The Guns of Nana Joan Page 12