They found Higgsy crouching behind one of the ship’s three landing legs, and all squeezed in to join him.
“Why didn’t you tell me she has a spaceship?” Cal whispered. “We could have taken this one.”
“Steal from Nana Joan?” Higgsy squeaked. “She’d get really angry!”
“Hello!” Cal spat, jabbing a thumb in the direction of the alleyway. Gurt and his gang had appeared, and were slowly fanning out into a search pattern. “Do you think those guys just want to hang out with us for a while?”
Higgsy didn’t reply. Cal felt a pang of guilt and bit his tongue before he went any further. The kid was scared. All three of them were scared. Cal wasn’t exactly having the time of his life, either, but this was still better than another day of doing dishes.
“OK, here’s what we’re going to do,” Cal whispered. “Alan, I want you to do your freak out thing. Make these suckers eat their own feet. Then, I’ll come out…” He caught the look on Alan’s face. “What? What’s the problem?”
“I just… I just don’t know if now’s the right time,” said Alan.
“Now is absolutely the right time,” Cal told him. “There will literally never be a better time than this to get big and angry and Hulk-smash the shizz out of people.”
“I don’t know,” Alan said. “I might cause too much damage. You guys could get hurt. Even if I don’t, strictly speaking, like any of you, I still wouldn’t want to see you get— Ulp!”
“Ulp!” was not the intended end of Alan’s sentence, but he was forced to improvise when a hand reached around the ship’s landing leg, grabbed him by the arm, and dragged him away.
“Hey, get off me!” Alan barked. “I mean it, leave me alone, or you’re going to regret it.”
“Shizz!” Cal muttered. “Stay here,” he told the others, then he took a series of fast, deep breaths, and rolled out of cover.
“OK, easy! Leave him alone,” Cal said, raising his hands as two firearms and four pointy things all turned his way. Alan was being held by a long-haired man with either a few hundred very small tattoos on his face, or a face that had evolved to look like a few hundred tattoos had been etched onto it. Cal couldn’t think of an evolutionary advantage this might offer, so guessed they were probably tattoos.
The reason he bothered to think about it at all was because it gave an interesting insight into the guy currently holding a long, slender blade to Alan’s face. Having that number of tattoos on his face suggested a certain ability to withstand pain. It also showed a level of dedication and commitment, which would likely make him a determined fighter.
And, of course, it suggested he was a full-blown fonking lunatic, which didn’t exactly help Cal’s chances, either.
“It’s all my fault,” Cal said. “I wanted to steal the ship, no-one else. In fact, the guy you’re holding there, Alan. He wanted to stop me. ‘Don’t do it, Cal,’ he said. ‘This ship probably belongs to some really awesome guys. It would be wrong to—’”
“Shut up!” Gurt hissed. Tattoo-face shook Alan roughly, making the little man yelp.
“I wouldn’t make him angry,” Cal warned. “You wouldn’t like him when he’s angry.”
He glanced at Alan to find him frantically shaking his head, but by then the damage had been done.
“Oh yeah?” sneered Tattoo-face. “And why’s that?”
“Uh, he’s a Kholo,” said Cal. “I think that’s what he said, anyway. And you know what Kholos do, right?”
Gurt’s gang glanced at each other. It appeared none of them knew what a Kholo did.
“Make them mad, and they get bigger. And they get meaner. And then you get squished,” Cal said. He mimed squashing something under his thumb.
There was a commotion from behind him as Jork and Higgsy were both pulled out from under the ship by a couple of other gang members. They crowded behind Cal, and he could feel them shaking in fear.
“A Kholo, huh?” said Gurt. He squatted down in front of Alan and studied him, like that weird kid in class might study a fly before tearing its wings off. “Never heard of one. But man, I’d love to see it in action.”
“Y-you wouldn’t,” said Alan, puffing up his chest. “Trust me.”
“Trust him, like he says,” said Cal. “Let him go. Let them all go. I’m the one who wanted to steal your ship. These guys tried to stop me. I mean, they’re practically heroes.”
Gurt ignored him. He rubbed his tongue against the front of those nasty teeth and patted his beard as if it was a family pet. “No. I think I’d like to see this facking nonce turn big.” He looked up at his companions. “We’d all like to see that, wouldn’t we, boys?”
There was some cheering and whooping and a general chorus of agreement. Alan looked imploringly up at Cal, but a slap across his face snapped him back around to meet Gurt’s gaze.
“Look at me, not him,” Gurt growled. He slapped him again, harder this time. A cheer went up from the others. Alan’s tiny fists clenched, but not in a way that suggested he was on the brink of becoming an unstoppable killing machine, and more like he was trying very hard not to cry.
“Look, guys, I was kidding,” said Cal. “Of course he can’t get bigger. I was trying to scare you away. Just let him go.”
Gurt slapped Alan again. “Is that true, runt?” he said. “Are you just a little facking pile of shizz, what can’t do nothin’?”
Thack. Another slap, harder this time. Alan’s eyes blurred with tears.
“Is that what you is?”
Cal took a step forwards. “Hey. Leave him alone.”
Gurt wheeled around and stood up, his shotgun raised and ready. “You don’t facking tell me what do to, alright? You don’t facking try to tell me.”
“A-a-hum.”
There was the sound of someone clearing their throat. A small woman with blue hair stood behind Gurt’s gang. She was dressed in a robe and slippers, and tiny bug-sized pieces of metal climbed through her hair, removing the tangles and returning its light and fluffy puffiness.
“Can I help you gentlemen?” asked Nana Joan.
“This don’t facking concern you,” said Gurt.
“This is my property,” said Nana Joan. “By which I mean the ground you’re standing on, and the people you are threatening. They work for me, and I do not appreciate you manhandling my things.”
Gurt gestured for one of his men to deal with the old lady. He was the tallest of the six, with a bear-like physique and the only beard in the group bigger than Gurt’s.
“Get out of here, lady,” the brute growled, flashing his sickle-like blade.
His beard came off in a series of short, sharp yanks. His wrist bent and broke, and his blade entered his lower intestines at speed, then shot upwards to chest height which, coincidentally, was as high on him as Nana Joan could reach.
She removed the blade with a stomach-turning schlurp, then hurled it at the guy with the blaster, just as he started to take aim. Both his hands came off at the wrists, and he stared blankly at them for a while, as if trying to decide if this turn of events was good or bad.
He settled on ‘bad’ and was about to scream when Nana jammed his own blaster under his chin and pulled the trigger, turning the top of his head into a spectacular eruption of fire and brains.
“Wait, fack, stop, stop!” yelped Gurt. He reached into his pocket and pulled out an ID card. “We’re with the Tribunal. These four were caught in the act of trying to steal a ship. We’re arresting them under Penal Code Alpha 644-dash-9.”
“Wait… You guys are cops?” Cal spluttered. “You weren’t trying to arrest us, you were trying to kill us.”
“You broke the facking law!” Gurt spat.
“We didn’t!” Cal protested. “We didn’t steal the ship. We – I mean I, just me – looked inside a ship. Is that a crime? Looking inside a ship? Is that against the law?”
“Yes,” said Gurt.
“Oh,” said Cal, deflating slightly. “Seriously? Because that feels… That
feels excessive.”
Nana Joan narrowed her eyes and gritted her teeth. “You didn’t identify yourself. I was well within my rights.”
“Of course! Of course you facking were, sweetheart,” said Gurt, oblivious to the way Nana bristled at that last word. “But now I’ve shown you my ID, you’d best back off while we take this lot in.”
“I keep telling you, they had nothing to do with it,” said Cal. “It was me. They tried to stop me.”
“You heard him,” said Nana. “It was just him, not the others. Take him if you must, but not them.”
“No can do,” said Gurt.
Nana’s voice became low and menacing. “Take him if you must. Not the others. You already killed one of my staff. I won’t lose any more. This one is new. He’s not properly trained yet. He can be replaced. The others can’t be. They stay with me.”
One of the other men reached over to take Higgsy’s arm. The gun Nana was holding snapped up and very deliberately took aim between the man’s eyes. “Lay a finger on that boy and see what happens,” she said. “I dare you.”
No-one moved. The man with the gun pointed at him didn’t move with a far greater level of intensity than the others.
“I don’t care if you are the Tribunal,” Nana said. “These three are off-limits. Understood?”
Everyone looked at Gurt, who sucked on his horrible teeth for a few seconds, then shrugged. “Seems to me like they weren’t involved. No need to bring them in and give ourselves any unnecessary facking paperwork, is there?”
There was a murmuring of agreement from the others, particularly from the ones standing closest to the two dead bodies.
Nana Joan nodded and lowered her gun. Cal felt arms grab him roughly from behind.
“We’ll go out the front way,” Gurt said, in a voice that suggested it wasn’t open to debate. Nana, to her credit, considered debating it, but then nodded, just once.
“If that’s what you want,” she said. “But one little thing first.”
She drove a right hook across Cal’s jaw. The punch had such force behind it Cal was wrenched from the arms of the men holding him, and sent spiraling to the ground.
Nana grabbed him by the hair and hoisted him onto his knees. At the same time, she lowered her head so she could whisper in his ear.
“I’m sorry. I tried,” she told him. “And thank you.”
“Any time,” Cal grimaced, then the old woman shoved him away from her and stepped back.
“Get him out of my sight,” she said, indicating the back door of the restaurant. She turned to Higgsy, Jork and Alan. “And as for you three,” she said, slipping the blaster into her robe pocket. “We are going to have some serious words.”
Cal was caught under the arms and dragged backwards towards the door. “Catch you later, guys!” he called back to the others, before a flurry of quick rabbit-punches to the head shut him up.
“Keep your facking mouth closed,” Gurt warned him.
One of the men passed his Tribunal badge before the security scanners, and the back door to Nana Joan’s slid obligingly aside. It opened onto the little storage room at the back of the kitchen area. Cal spotted bits of Cramlin’s skeleton scattered across the kitchen floor as he was pulled through it, and wondered if his final resting place would be somewhere more stately.
Probably not, he reckoned. Cramlin, after all, had merely owned up to being unhappy in the workplace, while Cal had… Actually, Cal was a little hazy on what the nature of his actual crime was, but he had a feeling the deaths of two Tribunal officers was likely to be added to the rap sheet.
The TV was still on. The light from it painted the room in cool shades of white and blue. Cal was almost through the door leading into the restaurant proper when he saw the face on screen.
Loren.
She was soaking wet and in her underwear, either one of which he’d normally consider a good thing. But she was also bruised, her lip bleeding, one eye all but swollen shut.
“Wait, no, stop!” Cal cried, kicking with his heels to try to get purchase on the floor. A fist smashed across his face, but he brushed it aside, trying to see past Gurt to the screen behind him.
The sound was off, but the scrolling news ticker at the bottom announced: ‘Known Symmorium terrorist apprehended by Zertex…’
Before he could be dragged out of the kitchen, Cal grabbed the doorframe with both hands. “Wait, just stop, please! I need to see this. I need to see—”
The butt of Gurt’s shotgun cracked Cal in the face. His head snapped back, but he kept his grip on the door. “One second,” he said, spitting a wad of blood onto the floor.
Gurt motioned to his men. “On second thoughts, it’ll be easier to bring this facking nonce in if he’s unconscious. Gentlemen, would you be so kind?”
A boot connected with Cal’s ribs. A knee slammed into his cheek. Cal fell back under a barrage of kicks and punches. He kept his eyes on the screen for as long as he could, until the welcoming arms of unconsciousness – and, to a lesser extent, Tobey Maguire – pulled him down into the dark.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Cal woke up. This meant he wasn’t dead which, if he were honest, meant things were far better than he’d expected them to be.
Less positive was the fact he was in a cell. At least, he was telling himself it was a cell. It wasn’t really a cell at all, though.
Oh, sure, it had certain cell-like qualities in the form of barred doors and a number of restraints, but the restraints were more imaginative than the simple handcuffs or shackles found in most prisons, and were attached to a variety of contraptions which, even though he was trying very hard to come up with an alternative explanation, Cal knew could only be intended for torture.
And not the clean, hygienic sort of torture he’d experienced at the hands of Lady Vajazzle recently. No, this looked like the wet, messy sort of torture which would see him get gradually smaller and smaller over several hours, as more and more bits of him were removed using a variety of unpleasant methods.
Still, ‘cell’ felt nicer than ‘torture chamber’, or ‘butcher’s shop’, so he decided to stick with that, at least for the time being.
There were two guards in the room, one standing on either side of the door. They wore matching white uniforms with red trim, and something that combined a helmet and metal face mask into one sinister and unflattering piece of headwear.
These were not the torturers, Cal reckoned. It wasn’t that they didn’t look capable – the utter disdain with which they were glaring at him suggested they were positively itching for the opportunity to ram something sharp into one of his fleshier areas – but their body language suggested they were waiting for someone else. Someone important, going by how straight they were holding their backs.
They held slim, elegant blaster rifles in a way that said, ‘Yes, we know they’re small, but that only means you’ll take a lot longer to die,’ which made them all the more worrying than larger weapons would have been. The guns were currently pointed at the floor, but ready to be raised to precisely the height of Cal’s face, should either man deem it necessary.
“Hey, guys,” said Cal, as brightly as he could manage. He felt better than he should do after the kicking he’d received, but he wasn’t yet healed up all the way. He was also strapped to a table with an assortment of corkscrews and blades sitting on a tray beside it, and this was going some way to dampen his mood, too. “Could one of you do me a favor?”
Neither guard moved, yet their hatred for him somehow became even more palpable. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to ask you to let me go, or anything,” Cal assured them. “Although you can if you want to. Seriously, I won’t object.” He waited for some sort of response. “No? OK, it’s fine, that’s not what I was going to ask, anyway – but, again, it’s always an option, just so you know.’
He tried to sit up, but his arms were fastened to the tabletop somewhere above his head, and the best he could do was to flop himself about like a fish, w
hich didn’t really help his situation in the slightest.
“OK, here’s what I need you guys to do,” Cal said. “Find me a TV. Even just a small one. You know? Or… I don’t know, do you have newspapers? Space newspapers? See a friend of mine has—”
A jolt of electricity passed through him from his wrist cuffs, making his whole body go rigid. His eyes bulged as the voltage increased for several seconds, before cutting off as suddenly as it had started.
“No talking,” grunted one of the guards.
Cal gulped down a series of rapid breaths. “OK. OK. Gotcha,” he wheezed. He raised his head to look at the two men. “So, is one of you going to get me a TV or— Hnnnng!”
The electricity ripped through him again, tightening all his muscles and almost making him chew through his tongue. It lasted longer this time, and when it finally snapped off, colors swam and danced before his eyes.
“—am I going to have to come over there and make you?” Cal concluded.
He braced himself for more pain, but it didn’t come. Instead, from somewhere beyond the door there came the sound of blaster fire. It was a short, sudden burst that was followed almost immediately by several voices shouting, and then another volley of shots.
The guards fired each other matching looks of concern, then both trained their guns on Cal. “Whoa, whoa, what?” Cal protested. “Why are you aiming at me? I haven’t done anything.”
The gunfire continued somewhere outside. It still sounded reasonably far away, but closer than it had been a moment ago. A small explosion went off, the force of the detonation rattling the torture implements all over the room.
The guards turned their guns to the door. They muttered something to one another, then one of them took aim at Cal again.
“Seriously, I’m not going anywhere,” Cal said. “I’d concentrate on whatever’s out there. If you release me, I’ll help you fight it. Then, once we’re done, I’ll hop right back on here, I swear.”
“Shut up!” hissed the guy with the gun on Cal.
More gunfire. This time it was returned.
Something went boom, rattling everything again.
Space Team: The Guns of Nana Joan Page 17