“I wasn’t aiming for style points,” Cal told him. “I just wanted you dead.”
Sinclair’s smile broadened. “Yes, I bet you did.” He unbuttoned one of his shirt cuffs and began to roll it up. “Very well, then. I’ll give you a chance.”
Cal’s eyes narrowed. “What?”
“I’ll fight you. Just you and I. One on one.”
Cal glanced at the robotic guards. “Yeah, right.”
Sinclair finished rolling up his second sleeve. “No, seriously. They won’t intervene. You have my word.”
“You won’t blame me if I don’t think your word is worth shizz,” Cal said.
Sinclair smirked. “Understandable. But it’s either I have them take you away for me to torture and kill at my discretion, or you take your chances.” The president’s smile fell away, replaced by a deranged, boggle-eyed leer. “So, come on, Carver,” he growled. “Take your best shot!”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Miz stepped out into the hallway, one arm around Loren, the other holding the blaster rifle. Loren hobbled along at her side, focusing on moving her legs, which were not taking well to being in use again. She was dressed now, at least, but the hunger still gnawed at her insides, making her head light. The thought of the replicator aboard the Untitled gave her the strength to press on.
Something was different about the room outside the cell. It took Miz a moment to realize what it was. The extractor fans were on, cycling the air out and replacing it with a fresh supply.
“We might have a problem,” she said.
“Another one?” Loren mumbled. “Oh, good.”
“They’re changing the air. They’re trying to mess with my sense of smell.”
“Why would they do that?” Loren asked.
Miz started to turn, then howled in pain, her spine bending backwards as all her muscles contracted. Loren felt a jolt push through her, sending her staggering clear as Miz hit the deck, her fur standing on end and smoking lightly.
“Shock rod,” Miz managed to hiss. Loren limped towards her, then was sent staggering when a punch came out of nowhere and cracked her across the jaw.
From down on the floor, Loren saw the air ripple. For a moment, it just looked like a blur in her vision, but then it solidified, becoming a figure she knew only too well.
“Hey, sis,” said Dash. He gestured towards a device on his wrist. “Personal cloaking tech. State of the art. You see the toys you could be getting to play with if you hadn’t betrayed us?”
Miz snarled, showing all her teeth. She rose onto her haunches, but before she could make her move, Loren stopped her.
“Miz, wait!”
With some effort, Loren struggled back to her feet. She cracked her knuckles, arched her back, then cricked her neck. “He’s mine.”
“You can barely stand,” said Miz.
Dash nodded. “You should listen to your… what is she? Pet?”
“Of course she isn’t.” Loren’s eyes met Miz’s. “She’s my friend.”
“Technically, we just sort of work together,” said Miz, but then she sighed huffily. “Fine. I guess we’re, like, friends or whatever. Just hurry up and kick his butt.”
“Ha. I’d like to see her try,” snorted Dash, then he pirouetted on the spot as Loren’s heel whipped round and slammed into his jaw.
“Trust me, Dashy, this is going to hurt me a lot more than it hurts you,” said Loren, dropping into a fighting stance. She ran the sentence over again in her head. “Wait, no. Flip that around. This is going to hurt you a lot.”
* * *
All Cal’s pain, all Cal’s hatred and, more importantly, all Cal’s power went into the punch. It was a swinging right hook that started fast and rapidly built momentum right up until the point when it twisted Sinclair’s head around by a handful of degrees, and left no obvious mark whatsoever.
Sinclair smirked. “Go on, have another one.”
Cal fired an uppercut into the president’s jaw. Sinclair’s head tipped back, but his feet remained planted on the floor and the smirk on his face didn’t falter.
“Again.”
“Raaaah!” Cal rained blows on the president, hooking and jabbing and crossing Sinclair’s relentlessly smug face, as he tried to wipe the smile right off it.
“That’s it, Carver. Do your worst,” Sinclair said. He still hadn’t moved back a step, but there was some swelling around his chiseled cheekbones now, and a suggestion of blood on his bottom lip.
Cal swung again, putting everything he had into a lunging jab designed to break the president’s perfect nose.
A hand came up and caught Cal’s fist. He tried to pull it free, but the president’s grip was too strong. “Cybernetic enhancements,” Sinclair said, as if that explained everything. “The best that money can buy. I could keep this up all day.”
His other hand came up, the fingers balling into a fist that almost took Cal’s head off. Cal’s cheek split open and the floor turned to marshmallow beneath his feet. Annoyingly, it hardened again right before he fell onto it, clunking his head.
Cal sat up quickly, fought the urge to vomit, and got back to his feet. He enjoyed the look of surprise on the president’s face as the gash on his cheek sealed itself over.
“Yeah. So could I,” Cal said, then he ran at the president, shouldering him in the stomach.
Sinclair took less than half a step backwards, before catching his balance. He caught Cal around the waist and flipped him into the air, before slamming him down again on his back.
“Ow!” Cal wheezed. “Fonking power bombing motherfonker!”
He thrust out a foot, connecting hard with Sinclair’s groin. The president didn’t flinch. Cal groaned.
“Come on, seriously? You bought yourself a robo-winky?” He thought for a moment. “Do you have, like, a number for the store, or…?”
Sinclair caught Cal’s foot and swung him around. The guards shuffled aside as Cal sailed through the air, then smashed against one of the cube racks. He glanced across at Mech, still lying motionless on the floor. The cyborg had come to rest facing the cubes, and Cal could only see his back, and the ruined remains of his right arm.
"Just any time you’re ready, Mech,” Cal wheezed. “Join in whenever you like.”
Sinclair motioned for Cal to get up. Cal thought about staying down, just to be annoying, but decided that possibly wasn’t the wisest course of action.
“Tired, Carver?” the president said, grinning. “Have you realized yet what a mistake you made by coming here? How you played right into my hands?”
“Jesus, why are you such a shizznod?” Cal asked. “With the gloating and everything. What is it with you bad guys and the sound of your own voice?”
“I’m not the ‘bad guy’, Carver,” Sinclair said. “Oh sure, I may have wiped out your planet, destroyed Pikkish and deliberately started a war with the Symmorium, but does that make me the bad guy?”
“It absolutely makes you the bad guy,” said Cal. “Those are all terrible things.”
“Ah! But are terrible things done for the right reasons still terrible things?” Sinclair asked.
“Yes! Absolutely. The answer was in the question. It’s in the name. ‘Terrible things.’ That’s pretty concrete.”
Sinclair shrugged. “Ah well. You may have a point.”
He lunged, driving the flat of his foot into Cal’s chest and hammering him into one of the guards. The robot’s arm wrapped across Cal’s throat, and the president’s eyes blazed. “But being the bad guy is just such fun!”
* * *
Loren ducked, barely avoiding a punch she should have seen coming a mile off. Dash still had the Shock Rod, and getting that off him was priority number one, but only by a nose. Priority number two was not passing out through hunger or exhaustion, but first she had to get rid of that stick.
She waited for him to lunge with it, and sidestepped the attack. Moving in close, she hooked her arm around his, trapping it, then hammered two solid punch
es into his midsection, bam-bam. Twisting, she forced his wrist back on itself, and prized the Shock Rod from his grip just as he caught her by the hair and pulled her back.
“Teela, fonking quit it!” he told her, throwing her to the floor. “You can’t beat me. I’m stronger, faster and—”
Loren’s leg swept out, taking Dash’s feet out from under him. He hit the ground hard, and Loren moved to pin him down. His boot crunched into the side of her head, making her ear ring and her brain slosh around like a crouton in soup.
She fell awkwardly across his legs, holding her hands up to protect her head as he sat up and rained blows on it. “Just stay down,” he commanded. “Stop making me do this.”
He put a foot on her shoulder and shoved her off him. Loren rolled to the wall, and used it to get herself up.
Miz tensed, ready to lunge, but Loren held up a hand to stop her. “No! He’s mine.”
Under any normal circumstances – meaning circumstances in which she hadn’t spent almost a full day chained to a wall, being tortured, beaten and starved – Loren was confident she’d kick Dash’s ass. Yes, he was bigger and stronger than she was, but not by much, and he didn’t know how to use what little advantage he had. He’d done the same basic fight training as anyone else, of course, but Loren hadn’t just come top of that class, but top of the optional advanced-level module, too.
She’d even enrolled in a home study course or two, but had knocked those on the head after accidentally kicking her TV through a wall while attempting to copy some of the techniques.
It was safe to say, though, that she wasn’t at her best. Her legs were heavy, her head was light, and no part of her body was responding as effectively as it should. She should let Miz get involved. That was the sensible thing. The logical thing.
But he was her brother. And if anyone was beating him to a pulp with their bare hands, it was going to be her.
Dash kept his distance, watching Loren’s movements. “Mom cried, you know?” he said. “When she heard you betrayed Zertex. She cried, Teela. And you know how I know? Because I had to tell her. Me. I was the one who had to break her heart.”
“Shut up,” Loren said. She pounced with a kick, but Dash skipped sideways, avoiding it, and pushed her hard in the back. She stumbled, but managed to stay upright.
“And Dad! Wow. You should have seen him. I honestly thought it was going to kill him. Hell, it still might.”
“I didn’t betray anyone,” Loren seethed. “Sinclair used me. He set me up. He killed millions of people. Billions.”
“You’re a liar, Teela,” said Dash, as they both began circling each other again. “You can’t admit what you’ve done, so you try to blame the president. You’re pathetic. Listen to you. Listen to what you’re saying. I know a traitor when I hear one.”
Miz sighed. “Seriously, can’t I just gut this guy and we can go?”
“No,” Loren said. She dived for her brother, but he stepped aside. Unfortunately for him, Loren had anticipated this, and spun on the spot, driving the tip of her elbow into the much less rigid tip of his nose.
Dash’s hands flew to his face as his eyes filled with tears. He stumbled back, and Loren helped him on his way with a snapping side kick to the abdomen.
“You helped him torture me,” Loren said. “I’m your fonking sister, Dash, and you helped him torture me.”
“You think I wanted to?!” Dash roared, blood and snot bubbling from his nose. “I had to, Loren. You left me with no choice. You didn’t just betray Zertex, you betrayed me. You betrayed your family.”
Loren stopped. She looked Dash up and down, then slowly shook her head. “You’re not my family. Not anymore.”
Covering his nose with his hands again, Dash tapped a device on his wrist. The air around him shivered, and he vanished into thin air. Loren lunged for the spot where he’d been standing, but found it empty.
“Fair enough,” Dash’s voice hissed from somewhere over her shoulder. “In that case, I guess I can finally stop playing fair.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Cal squirmed in the grip of the robot guard, then huffed as Sinclair drove a punch into his stomach, right below his ribs. The president pounded him with a series of blows, like a boxer working the heavy bag, then finished with a left cross to the head that split the skin just below Cal’s temple.
“There’s something so… exciting about moments like this. Or is that just me?” Sinclair asked. “Something so primal. So feral. I look at all our progress, all our advances, and it’s amazing, it truly is. But deep down.” He tapped himself in the center of the chest. “Somewhere in here, we’re all just animals.”
Cal winced as his head wound healed itself up. “I think you’ll find you mean ‘space animals’.”
“You know what I mean, though,” said Sinclair. He hit Cal across the face again. “This. Facing off. Man to man.”
“Man and armored robot to man, you mean,” Cal pointed out.
“Oh, come come now, Cal. The battle was won before this one got involved. He’s making sure you remain upright, that’s all. If anything, he’s helping you.”
“I’ll be sure to add him to my Christmas card list,” said Cal, then he grimaced as Sinclair hit him again, temporarily busting open his top lip. “Look, before you hit me in the face again – which we both know you’re itching to do, and I can kind of understand that – I just want to know one thing. Why?”
“Why am I hitting you in the face?”
“No, like I said, I get that part. Hell, if I were literally anyone else, I’d probably want to punch me in the face, too,” Cal said. “I mean, why everything else? Why start a war?”
“A hundred reasons, really,” said Sinclair. “Profit being the main one, of course. Go high enough and most wars are about profit. But also respect.”
“Respect?”
Sinclair nodded. “The Symmorium, they don’t respect me. Not like they should. It’s the same with you, really. You didn’t respect me, either.” He grinned and indicated the robot holding Cal by the throat, and the unresponsive Mech on the floor. “I bet you do now, though, right?”
“Hmm? God, no. Less, if anything,” said Cal. “I will admit, though, you’ve played everyone pretty well. Launching a full-scale attack on a completely innocent species while making yourself look like the good guy. That’s impressive. I mean, I used to con people for a living, but even I will give you props for that.”
Sinclair nodded. “And well you should.”
“And, I mean, you even managed to get other governments on your side, is that right? Mech told me all about it. The D’uzen and… What was the other one again?”
“The Tallash,” Sinclair said. “A fine race. Both fine races, actually. A little… backwards, perhaps, but dependable.”
“And when you don’t need them anymore?” Cal asked.
Sinclair laughed. “What are you talking about? I don’t need them now! But what’s that saying your people have, about keeping your friends close, but your enemies closer?”
Cal nodded. “Make sense. And how would they react, do you think, if they found all this stuff out?”
“And who’s going to tell them?” Sinclair asked. “You?”
“Well, if you tell this guy to let me go, and give me a ten second head start, I’ll see what I can do,” Cal said.
Sinclair laughed, almost fondly. “Oh, you humans. You really are rather amusing.”
He punched Cal across the face again, hard enough to break his jaw. Cal waited for it to heal up before continuing.
“Speaking of finding things out, I’ve found a few things about Mech recently,” Cal said. “Like the fact he wasn’t always made of metal.”
“Fascinating,” said Sinclair. He powered another punch into Cal’s ribcage.
Cal spent a few seconds wheezing, then carried on. “That – for very good reason – he hates war, and would do anything to not have to get involved in one. Including deliberately blowing himself up and preten
ding to be unconscious.”
Sinclair brought back his fist again, then hesitated as Cal’s words filtered through.
“And, most interesting of all,” Cal said. “He also has a ‘record’ function.”
Sinclair’s smooth brow furrowed, his eyes darting left and right as he thought back over everything he’d recently said. “No,” he hissed. “No, no, no.”
He darted to Mech’s side and, with some effort, flopped him onto his back. The dial on the cyborg’s chest was turned all the way to his left, diverting all his power to his intellect. A cable from one of the blue boxes was plugged into a little sliding panel on his intact arm.
“No!” Sinclair cried. “No, no, no, no, no!”
He flew at Cal, swinging with a punch that would have shattered bone, had the robot holding Cal not raised its hand to block him. It wrapped its metal fingers around the president’s fist, holding him in place.
The president stared at the robotic guard. All the cocksure confidence was gone from his expression now, as it was rapidly replaced by rising terror. “What? What are you doing? Step down, unit. Release me and step down.”
“Yeah, that’s not going to happen,” Cal said. “See, this might not actually be the main server room, but apparently if you know what you’re doing, you can get to it from here. And we know what we’re doing. Well, Mech does. That’s something else I learned about him. He’s smarter than he looks. We’re in the system now. All this?” He gestured at the station. “This is us. Right, Mech?”
The robot’s mouth flashed with red LEDs as Mech’s voice crackled from within it. Well, one of Mech’s voices, at least – the faster, higher-pitched one he spoke in when his dial was turned left. “That is quite correct, Cal. I have integrated myself with all the Zertex systems we need.”
“Need?” Sinclair demanded. “Need for what?”
When the robot next spoke, it was the president’s own voice that emerged.
“Oh sure, I may have wiped out your planet, destroyed Pikkish and deliberately started a war with the Symmorium, but does that make me the bad guy?”
Space Team: The Guns of Nana Joan Page 24