“Ow. Ow. Ow,” Cal complained. “Mech, put me – Christ! – down.”
With a shrug, Mech launched Cal several feet along the tunnel ahead of him. Miz caught him before he could land and helped turn him around so he was facing the right way.
“Thanks,” he wheezed, but she was already pulling ahead, bounding along on all fours and disappearing around the tunnel’s curve.
Cal glanced back over his shoulder. Mech was thundering along behind him, but the cyborg’s size and the fact he clearly wasn’t built for speed meant he was already starting to fall behind.
“Hurry up!” Cal urged.
“You watch what you’re doing, and I’ll watch what I’m doing,” Mech bit back. “Go on. I’ll catch you up.”
“OK, see you back at the ship,” Cal said.
“What? You’re actually fonking going?” Mech barked. “You’re actually going to run off and leave me behind? After I saved you from fonking the fish-queen?”
“I had that fully under control!” Cal retorted. “There was no save necessary.”
Mech had just started muttering something about gratitude when a clank from the airlock shook the tunnel.
“What was that?” Cal whispered.
There was a sound not unlike a rocket igniting. “Nothing good,” Mech said. “Go! Run! They’re launching the missile.”
“They’re launching the missile?! You said they were bluffing!”
“Well, what do I know?” Mech said. “Go. Move!”
“It’s miles! We’ll never outrun a fonking missile,” Cal said. “Unless…”
He stopped running and pointed to Mech’s forearm. “You can talk to Loren through that, right?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“Call her up. Now!”
Mech tapped his arm. “Channel open.”
“Loren! You there? Pick up!”
“Cal? Everything OK?”
“We’ve had better days,” Cal admitted. “Drop the ship.”
“What?”
“Drop the fonking ship! Go down. Keep the tunnel attached, but drop the fonking ship!”
“OK, but…”
The whooshing of thrusters igniting grew louder behind them. “Just do it!” Cal hollered, then he and Mech stumbled on, clambering awkwardly through the tunnel as it shook and trembled around them.
The floor ahead of them became a shallow incline leading downwards. Cal whooped. “She’s doing it. She’s doing it!”
“You’re crazy,” Mech told him. “You’re fonking crazy.”
“Better crazy and not blown to pieces than sane and… woooooah!”
The shallow incline became a steep drop. Cal’s momentum carried his top half forward, throwing him head-first into a plunge. Up ahead, he heard Miz cry out in confusion. Behind him, he heard Mech’s arms whirring as he, too, began to fall.
And further back still, he heard the roar of the missile as it was launched into the tunnel.
Cal plunged almost straight down now, his arms held in front of him like Superman, the stifling air of the tunnel slicing upwards past him and whistling through the gaps in Mech’s metal parts.
“Why didn’t we think of this last time?” Cal shouted, but his rate of descent meant the words were shoved back down his throat.
They fell for a good couple of minutes, Cal expecting the missile to catch up with them at any moment. Mech would probably take the brunt of it, but that came as little consolation, as even with his limited knowledge of what he thought of as ‘science stuff’, Cal reckoned the explosion would tear the plastic tube in half, immediately sucking him out into space. He was by no means an expert but – again, from his understanding of ‘science stuff’ – he felt sure this would be bad.
With some effort, Cal managed to turn his head and call back to Mech. “Are we nearly there yet?”
From up ahead, there came the crunch of Mizette hitting the Untitled’s inner airlock door.
“Never mind!” Cal said, then he was spat from the mouth of the tube, propelled across the airlock, and slammed into Miz.
“Ow. Fonk. That hurt,” he grimaced.
His body told him to give it a second to check for any serious injuries. His mind, however, became rather insistent that he move, taking pains to point out the huge cyborg currently hurtling towards him like a high-speed projectile.
Miz recovered first. She kicked her legs and launched them clear just as a flailing Mech was ejected from the tunnel mouth. The subsequent impact buckled the inner airlock door, but stopped short of punching a hole straight through it.
Spinning, Mech raised both arms and fired up through the outer airlock, severing the tunnel with a series of small explosions.
“Kevin, shut the airlock door!” Cal commanded.
“It’s already closed, sir,” said Kevin.
“The other one!”
“Oh. You should’ve specified. Apologies, sir,” Kevin intoned.
The door snapped closed just as an explosive warhead emerged from the mouth of the tunnel.
“Kevin, go!” Cal cried.
The Untitled lurched forwards, throwing all three of the occupants of the airlock against the back wall. They braced themselves for the explosion, but the missile had skimmed past the ship’s tail end and was tumbling harmlessly off into space.
“We did it!” Cal said. “I can’t believe we did it! We escaped without being blown to bits!”
A torpedo detonated against the shields, tossing them all around violently.
“Wait, no. I take that back.”
“Those fighters are attacking,” said Loren, her voice coming clipped and urgent over the speaking system. “What the fonk did you guys do up there?”
The outer airlock door shuddered halfway open. Mech shoved it the rest of the way, and they all bundled through.
“Long story!” Cal replied, darting onto the bridge and sliding into his seat just as a volley of cannon fire thumped against the shields.
“Cal almost banged a fish-lady, then we ran away,” said Miz.
“OK. Apparently not that long,” Cal said.
Loren turned in her seat. “He almost what?”
“Spaceships, spaceships!” Cal warned. “Judge later. Fly now.”
“They’re shooting at us!” announced Tim from his chair at the back. “Those ships, they’re shooting at us.”
“Well observed, Timbo,” Cal told him. “Yes, they are. Hold onto something, this might get a little…”
The Untitled banked suddenly upwards into a spinning corkscrew, and whatever word Cal was about to say was lost in a chorus of his panicky squeals.
“What was that?” he demanded, once his stomach had dropped down from around his ears.
“You told me to fly. I’m flying!” Loren snapped.
“That’s not flying, it’s…” He struggled to find a witty analogy, then more or less gave up. “Something that’s like flying, but different and much worse.”
“Incoming!” Mech announced.
“On it!” Loren slammed the sticks sideways, but too late to avoid a torpedo exploding across the front shields. The flare lit up the bridge, temporarily blinding everyone aboard.
“Which part of it were you ‘on’, precisely, ma’am?” Kevin asked. “From where I’m standing you appeared to be very much ‘off it’.”
“Shut up, Kevin!” Loren hissed.
“We should send me back over,” Cal suggested. “You know, like a peace offering? I think me and the queen could broker a deal. Really thrash it out, you know?”
A scything beam of red energy carved across the top of the Untitled, filling the bridge with heat and smoke and panic.
“You know we’re totally on fire, right?” Miz said, barely glancing up from her nails.
“Splurt! See what you can do about that!” Cal called. Up in the vents and pipes at the ceiling, Splurt became something heavy and fire-retardant, and set to work.
“Why are they doing this?” Tim called. “They’re still shoot
ing.”
“We noticed!” Loren replied. She shoved the sticks forward, plunging the ship into a diving maneuver that flattened Cal’s tongue against the roof of his mouth and raised him a couple of inches out of his seat.
The evasive action failed. Another torpedo detonated on the underside shielding, and reams of warning text rolled upwards across the screen.
“Shields at thirty per cent,” said Mech. “Lower deflector array almost gone.”
“Shizz!” Loren spat. “Why is no one shooting?”
“They are shooting,” Cal said.
“I meant why aren’t we shooting back?”
Cal blinked. “Shizz. Kevin!”
“You screamed hysterically for me, sir?”
“Shoot these guys!” Cal ordered. “Take out the fighters. Leave the big ship.”
“Very good, sir,” Kevin intoned. “Might I assume Ms Loren has no moral objections on this occasion?”
“Don’t know, don’t care!” Cal replied, raising his voice to drown out any reply from Loren. “Either they blow up or we do. I know which one I’m choosing.”
“Too late!” Mech roared. He turned away from the view screen, covering his head with his hands, the part of his face that was still human knotted up in panic.
There, dead ahead, were four torpedoes, racing straight towards the Currently Untitled. The first would take out what was left of the shield, clearing the path for the other three to rip the ship apart.
In the time it took Cal to even think that, the first missile found its target. The shield flickered, then seemed to evaporate off into the darkness of space.
An alarm screeched. A crew braced.
And three explosive warheads rocketed through outer space.
SEVENTEEN
IT STOPPED.
If pushed, that’s how Cal would describe it. Stopping.
Not the torpedoes. Or not just the torpedoes. Everything. The Untitled. The fighters. The oncoming warheads.
Not the screaming – at least, not right away – but everything else. Stopped. Dead.
The Untitled hung motionless, the three torpedoes blurred by their proximity to the ship’s view screen.
Cal was pretty sure he could move, but didn’t dare to in case a gesture from him would somehow kick-start the universe into motion again, whereupon they’d be immediately obliterated by fire and loud noises.
Everyone else on the bridge was equally motionless, based on what he could hear. He could only see Loren, but the way her shoulders heaved with each deep, gulped breath told him she wasn’t frozen, just too afraid to move.
Slowly, using just his feet, Cal turned his chair around until it was facing the back of the room. Tim had his eyes closed and the tips of both index and middle fingers pressed together in front of his face.
“I’m going to assume you played some part in this?” Cal whispered.
The Time Titan kept his eyes closed, but nodded. “I don’t like to interfere, but I wasn’t left with a lot of choice.”
“Loren’s fault,” said Miz.
“No one’s fault. Just circumstance,” said Tim. A bead of sweat formed on his brow, and Cal realized it was taking a lot of effort to keep everything frozen.
“What do we do?” Loren asked. She tried adjusting her controls, but they were solid and immobile. “We can’t move. As soon as you restart time, those torpedoes are going to hit us head on, right? And we have no shields.”
Cal leaned forward in his chair and gazed out at the galaxy beyond the incoming warheads. The stars had stopped twinkling. He felt less like he was looking out at space, and more like he was admiring a high-resolution photograph of it.
“How far does it go? The time freeze thing?” Cal wondered.
“Everywhere,” Tim said.
Mech clanked around in a half-circle. “You froze the whole system?”
“Whole universe,” Tim corrected. He spat out a yelp of pain and forced his fingertips more tightly together.
Cal whistled quietly. “And I thought the giant space baby was impressive.”
“Hold onto something,” Tim hissed. His whole body was trembling now, his fingers vibrating as something did its best to force them apart. Gritting his teeth, he moved his pinkie fingers closer together until their tips touched.
The universe skipped a beat. The torpedoes, which had been firmly making their presence felt on the screen, were gone. The fighter ships were still there, but their position had changed – not by much, but enough to be noticeable.
“Like, what just happened?” Miz asked.
“I skipped us f-forward three seconds,” Tim wheezed. “We bypassed the moment of impact, meaning the torpedoes are now b-behind…”
Something inside his head went pop and a spurt of blood colored his moustache directly below one nostril. As he slumped sideways, time roared back into normal speed. The sensors showed three torpedo-sized dots streaking away from the Untitled, their on-board guidance systems scratching their heads in confusion.
“Loren, get us out of here!” Cal instructed.
“Punching it,” Loren replied.
The stars stretched into a tunnel of flickering light, and the Currently Untitled leapt to warp speed, leaving the Gooramy fighters far, far behind.
A MINUTE OR SO LATER, once Cal had adjusted enough to the relentless inner-ear assault of warp speed to be able to stand, he hurried to the back of the bridge and peered down at the Time Titan. Tim was slumped forward in his chair, the seat belt the only thing preventing him falling forward onto the floor.
“Is he dead?” Loren asked.
“I don’t know,” Cal said. “Hold on, I’ll check.”
He kicked the old man on the leg – not hard enough to hurt, but enough to get his attention, assuming he had any attention left to give.
“Hello?”
They waited.
“No, he’s dead,” Cal announced.
“Check properly,” Loren said. “Take his pulse.”
“I’m not touching him. He’s dead!” Cal protested. “I’m not touching a dead guy.”
“He totally isn’t,” Miz said, her ears twitching in the Time Titan’s direction.
“He is. I checked!” said Cal. He bent down, bringing his mouth closer to Tim’s ear. “Hello? Timbo? Are you alive? Blink once for yes, do nothing for no.”
He did nothing.
“See? He’s all the way dead,” said Cal, then he screamed as Tim threw back his head and gasped in a spluttered breath. Cal’s misguided survival instincts kicked in and he drove a panicky right hook across the old man’s face, instantly knocking him out again.
“Man, that was cold,” Mech said.
“Accident! Total accident!” Cal said, holding his hands up as if in surrender. “He took me by surprise. Not my fault.”
Tim jerked upright. Cal cracked him across the face with an open-hand slap, snapping his head around and plunging him back into unconsciousness.
Cal stared at his hand in horror.
“Jesus, what is wrong with me?”
“Get the fonk away from the man,” Mech said. “Before you beat the poor son-of-a-bedge to death.”
“Alright, alright. Backing away,” said Cal, raising his hands again. He stopped several feet away and crouched down. “Timbo? Timbo, you still with us?”
The Time Titan gave a sleepy sort of snort, and Cal breathed a sigh of relief. “He’s still alive.”
Wincing, Tim raised his head. He cricked his jaw around, and rubbed the side of his face. His beard had helped protect him, but part of a hand-shaped red imprint was visible on his cheek.
“What happened?” he groaned.
“A number of terrible accidents,” Cal said, jumping in before anyone else could answer. “But let’s not get bogged down by the details. The important thing is you’re OK. The other important thing is nobody is to blame, and none of us should ever speak of it again.”
Tim dabbed at the bloody stain on his moustache, then regarded the smear
on his finger with a mix of concern and curiosity. “I’m getting too old for all this,” he muttered, before shaking his head and making an admirable attempt at pulling himself together. He gestured with a frail arm toward the view screen. “Where are we?”
“We’re headed for the co-ordinates Dorid gave us,” Loren explained. “Didn’t see much point waiting for permission, since we’re now apparently at war with the Gooramy for reasons nobody has bothered to explain yet…”
“I told you,” said Miz. “They wanted Cal to bang a fish-lady.”
“A fish-queen,” Cal corrected. “Let’s not undersell it here.”
Loren kept her gaze on her controls. “And did you?”
Cal returned to his seat. “Why? Do you care?”
“Of course I do.”
Cal’s eyebrows raised. “You do? Seriously?”
Loren turned, visibly agitated. “It got us shot at. We almost died. If you’re putting us in danger, then of course I care.”
“Oh. Yeah. Right,” said Cal. “I mean… No. I didn’t. That’s why they were trying to kill us.”
“Well… maybe you should have,” said Loren.
“That’s what I told these two,” said Cal.
Loren’s eyes narrowed. “You did?”
“I mean… I didn’t want to, obviously, but for the sake of the mission, or whatever, I thought…”
He found himself talking to the back of Loren’s head.
“But I didn’t. And that’s the main thing,” he concluded.
“Good for you,” Loren said.
Something about the tone of her voice triggered something in Cal’s memory. He’d heard her use that exact tone recently. It was something he’d meant to ask her about. Something he…
Wait.
“You won’t miss this.”
Loren’s fingers stopped midway to one of the switches on her console.
“That’s what you said. You’re not going to ‘miss shizz like this’. Back at Dorid’s place, that’s what you said.”
“Did I?” said Loren. “Heat of the moment. Ignore it. Forget I said anything.”
“No, I mean you must have meant something, right?”
Space Team: The Time Titan of Tomorrow Page 19