Space Team: A Lot of Weird Space Shizz

Barry J. Hutchison

Zertex Media Ltd

Contents

Foreword

“Dead Men Don’t Get Paid”

One

Two

Three

The Last Bounty

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nun Shall Pass

One

Two

Three

Splurt Home Alone

Untitled

Space Team: The Holiday Special

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Death Comes To Carverville

Introduction

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Afterword

Your Free Starter Library

Also by Barry J. Hutchison

Copyright © 2017 by Barry J. Hutchison

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Published worldwide by Zertex Media Ltd.

www.barryjhutchison.com

Foreword

Hey you! Great to see you. Thanks for downloading this book. Before you dive in, here’s a little bit of info about what’s in store. Feel free to ignore it and just turn to the stories if you prefer. I won’t mind, honest.

Still here? Good. We can talk about all those other slackers who skipped this part and went straight into the book. I mean, that was just rude, right? Some people are just so damned impatient.

But anyway.

At the time of publishing this book (mid-December 2017), the Space Team Universe has existed in print for a little over a year, although it existed in my head for quite a lot longer.

The first Space Team novel was published at the tail end of 2016, introducing Cal Carver and his crew of misfits to a small but encouragingly receptive selection of readers. The response was positive enough that I decided to write a second adventure, and that small group became a slightly larger one. I decided to write a third book, completing what I thought would be a trilogy.

Things just sort of snowballed from there.

There are now seven Space Team novels, with at least three more on the way. There are two books in the spin-off series, Dan Deadman Space Detective, and another spin-off, Konto Garr: Bounty Hunter (and Occasional Babysitter), launching in 2018. You’ll meet both Dan and Konto in this collection, by the way. Say hello from me.

Working with an amazing narrator, Phil Thron, I’ve been able to bring out five Space Team audio books so far, with the rest of the series and the spin-off books set to follow soon. Phil is amazing, and if you haven’t yet listened to the audio versions you should definitely check them out. His comedy timing and voice work adds a whole new dimension to the stories.

2018 should also see the Space Team comic series start to take shape, as well as one or two other potentially exciting developments I can’t talk about at the moment. If you want to keep up to date, you can always join my newsletter and be the first to get all the Space Team Universe news.

As for this collection, the stories contained in here are a mixture of old and new. Two of them – Nun Shall Pass and The Last Bounty – were written for science fiction anthologies which are no longer available, and so can now only be found here. Space Team: The Holiday Special was a Christmas themed short I wrote in December 2016 while unable to sleep on a sleeper train. It was previously available as a standalone short on Amazon, but is now exclusive to this set.

“Dead Men Don’t Get Paid”, Splurt Home Alone and Death Comes to Carverville are all new stories written exclusively for this collection. The first is set between events of “Dial D for Deadman” and “Dead Inside”. The second is a very short bonus story starring Splurt, a fan-favorite character from the Space Team series.

As for the third story… I’m not really sure where that came from. It stars a fictionalized version of Hollywood actor, Tobey Maguire, and it… well, it…

Probably best if you just read it. Maybe you can make more sense of it than I can.

I hope you enjoy this story collection. If you’re an existing reader, I think you’ll enjoy meeting old friends in new places. If this is your first introduction to the Space Team Universe, then welcome aboard. This is just the tip of the iceberg.

OK, space-iceberg.

Thanks for reading. See you on the other side.

Best wishes,

Barry J. Hutchison

“Dead Men Don’t Get Paid”

A Dan Deadman Space Detective Short Story

One

The evening had been going well right up until the point the monsters arrived.

Prior to their arrival, the nightclub, Eyedol, had been a heaving mass of dancing bodies, the music blasting out with such force it wasn’t just permanently damaging people’s hearing, but their skeletons, organs and chances of successful reproduction as well.

Still, they seemed to be enjoying it, and that was the main thing.

They were enjoying it so much, in fact, that they failed to see the middle-aged man with the look of disgust shove his way through the crowds. They failed to notice how obviously out of place he looked, or the contempt with which he glared at the younger, hotter, happier throngs that thrashed and writhed around him.

But then, he was used to not being noticed. Not being noticed was what had driven him here. Now. To this.

They’d notice him soon, though.

Everyone would notice him soon.

Most people had never heard of the Malwhere, much less knew what it was. Those that did know about it usually dismissed it as ‘mumbo-jumbo’ but the science behind it was sound. Alternate universes, parallel dimensions and whatnot. He was no physicist, but it all sounded plausible enough.

The device had cost him six weeks’ wages, three pints of blood and four very specific sexual favors that had haunted his every waking moment since. But it was worth it. Or it was about to be, any second now.

“Attention, everyone. Attention!” he yelled, thrusting the palm-sized contraption into the air above his head like a rock star with a microphone. Two thousand revellers completely ignored him and carried on with their dancing.

“Everyone listen up!” he cried, his voice cracking into an uncomfortable screech. “I’ve got an announcement. I’ve got something to tell you all! It’s important!”

He glared at the people closest to him but, despite being just a handful of inches away, even they seemed oblivious to his presence. All that shouting was hurting his throat, so he lowered his voice to its regular conversational level.

“But… I had a speech,” he complained. “I’d written a speech for this. Why won’t you listen?”

His voice rose again, all on its own this time. “Why does nobody ever listen?!”

He thumbed the button. The device blurred, as if it were no longer fully there. The air above it, which had been thick with dry ice vapor and pheromones, became a lightshow or blues and purples. As the club was already a lightshow of blues, purples and every other color of the rainbow – plus several more that weren’t strictly part of the visible spectrum – no-one noticed.

They did notice, though, when the monsters fell from above them, and the teeth tore into their flesh.

The whole tone of the place – unsurprisingly – changed. Squeals of delight became howls of horror. The strobing of the lights made the shapes of the things hard to identify, but their intentions were clear – the death, dismemberment and, ultimately, digestion of everyone and everything on the dance floor.

The small, insignificant little man who had started it all retreated quickly, keeping his head down as he scurried, still unnoticed, through the fleeing and the dying.

But no, not unnoticed. Not quite.

The hand that caught him by the throat was rough and scarred, the fingernails mostly black with decay. Compared to the man’s face, though, his hand was positively glamorous.

“Not so fast, Rooso,” the guy spat, peering out from beneath the brim of his hat. Even over the stench of sweat and cheap cologne that marked the club like a dog marking its territory, Rooso could smell damp and decay seeping from the throat-grabber’s pores.

The people who’d sold him the device had warned him about this guy. Deadman. Dan Deadman. Some sort of detective who took an interest in schemes like this one.

“Usually, I’d punch you in the face now. Maybe the balls,” Deadman growled, his voice like gravel in an open wound. “Except, well, I currently only have one arm, which would make it kind of difficult. However…”

He jerked his head so suddenly his hat blew backwards off it, revealing the single most horrifying forehead Rooso had ever seen. It was all mould and rot and tracing-paper skin, and it perfectly complimented the rest of his face. Rooso didn’t get a chance to take in any other details because the forehead was also moving towards him very quickly.

The bridge of his nose exploded. Possibly imploded, he wasn’t entirely sure. Whichever direction it went, it fonking hurt, and the sounds of screaming and carnage were replaced by the jarring crunch of breaking bone, and a high-pitched ringing in his ears.

“Wait there,” Deadman ordered, dropping the blubbering Rooso. He bent and retrieved his hat, then pushed it down low on his head. As he straightened, his one hand slipped inside his long dark coat. When it emerged, it was holding a hand cannon that was larger than Rooso’s forearm.

Rooso coughed and choked on his backward-flowing blood. He shuffled himself sideways across the floor, trying to make his escape. The heel of a fleeing woman’s shoe pierced the back of his hand, ejecting a scream of pain from somewhere deep within him.

Deadman had made no move to shoot anyone yet, and was instead focused on the swirling blue and purple hole that hung in the air above the dance floor. “Still got the gizmo?” he asked, turning to Rooso. They both looked down just as another shoe – this one belonging to something big, heavy and ape-like – trod on the handheld device, neatly deconstructing it into its component parts.

Deadman sighed. “Great,” he grunted. He began to turn back to the portal, then thought better of it. “Mindy. Slowdown round,” he said. Glancing around the room, he did a series of quick calculations, figuring out how much power he was going to need. “Ten per cent.”

The chamber of the hand cannon spun, then a series of blue lights illuminated. Dan took aim at the helpless Rooso.

“N-no! P-please don’t, don’t—” he babbled, then Dan pulled the trigger and the gun roared. “—shoooooooooooot mmmmeeeeeeee,” Rooso continued, his voice now substantially lower in pitch and slower in pace than it had been just a moment before.

Dan nodded, then turned and tipped back his hat with the muzzle of the gun. “OK, then,” he sighed. “Guess I’d better kill all these fonks. Mindy. Explosive rounds.”

From Rooso’s point of view, what happened next was hard to describe. Everything – everything apart from himself, that is – was moving incredibly quickly. So quickly, in fact, that he couldn’t really figure out what was going on, other than that a lot of things were being blown to bits in rapid succession.

For a heavily built, badly decaying one-armed man in a cumbersome coat, Deadman’s movements were surprisingly fluid. He dodged and weaved through the crowds of screaming revellers, bolts of light pulsing from the end of his gun, turning the rampaging Malwhere monsters first into fiery balls of innards, and then into a number of light-to-moderate showers.

Despite everything, Rooso was actually impressed. Part of him wanted to stay just to watch the guy work and see how it all ended, but the more sensible part – the part that was really rather keen on staying alive – knew he had to get the fonk out of there. As he sloooowly clambered to his feet, he tried to remember what had been so bad about going unnoticed, anyway? If anything, he’d like to go unnoticed again, he thought, particularly by the scary man with the enormous gun.

Dan sidestepped a Malwhere monster claw-slash, then shoved the barrel of the gun deep into the thing’s mouth as it turned for a follow-up attack. Mindy kicked in his hand, turning the creature’s skull into something with the consistency – if not the smell – of grape jelly.

He spun again, too slow this time to stop another of the ugly fonks sinking its teeth into a screaming Traskalian’s head. The Traskalian had four more, and it could always grow a replacement, but that was beside the point. Dan took the Malwhere thing out with a well-aimed shot between its eyes, covering the already unhappy Traskalian in a wad of sizzling goo.

“Not cool, man,” the victim sobbed, cradling his wounded fifth head in three of his many arms. He shoved past Dan on his way to the door. “Totally not cool!”

He continued dodging and firing until there was only one of the monsters left. The portal continued to hum and swirl in the air, threatening to vomit more of them through at any moment. Even without Rooso’s device, he was confident he could close it.

Well, not ‘confident’ exactly. Hopeful, though.

A little dubious, maybe, but then he was a cynical sort of guy. It was in his nature.

He was too busy thinking about the source of the monsters to notice the last one approaching behind him. The first indication he had of what was about to happen was the clacking of its claws on the dance floor behind him. The second indication was a spiked tail erupting through one of his kidneys and out through his abdomen.

Dan looked down. “Ah, fonk.” He sighed. “There goes another shirt.”

There was a boom as he shot the end of the tail off. Dan was shoved sideways as the monster withdrew the smoking, oozing stump in one sharp, sudden jerk. He staggered, almost losing his balance, sliding and slipping through the mush of blood and guts on the floor. Instinctively, he threw out both arms to steady himself, but as he only had the one it was less effective than it otherwise might have been.

He tried to take aim with Mindy as the wounded Malwhere monster flew at him, purple jello spurting from its injured tail. This one’s head was all mouth, with two fish-like eyes on either side of its thick, stocky neck. Its breath hit Dan like a sucker punch from a hobo, then its fist hit him like a sucker punch from a big angry monster.

What was left of the tail whipped up and Mindy flew from Dan’s hand. He watched her clatter to the floor, before a fleeing foot sent the weapon skidding across the floor.

Turning, Dan caught a backhand strike across the cheek. He stumbled, the floor lurching unsteadily like the deck of a stormbound ship. He dropped to his knees, ears ringing, head spinning from the force of the blow.

He saw those teeth again, the mouth opening wider and wider as—

“Holy shoite, Deadman. Sure, I can’t leave ye alone for two feckin’ minutes.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Dan grunted, his jaw crunching in a way that neither felt nor sounded pleasant. “What the fonk kept you, Artur?”

A tiny figure, just a few inches tall, leaped onto the monster’s tail and forcibly inserted his fist into the open wound at the end of it. It squealed and thrashed, but Artur found something meaty inside the tail stump and dug his fingers in good and tight.

“Watch the door, ye said. Make sure no monsters get out, ye said,” Artur grumbled. “Sure, how was I supposed to spot any monster in that lot that came whizzin’ past? It was like a stampede at a feckin’ zoo. One of them had her head, arms and tits on the wrong way round!”

The tail slammed him against the floor, but he held on. “Although… Now that I think about it, she may have just been facing the other way, I suppose.” He shook his head. “Don’t matter. Could ye maybe find yer gun and shoot this bollocks before he does something to upset me?”

The club was mostly empty now, and it took Dan just a second or two to spot Mindy, then a few more to retrieve her. Taking aim, he squeezed the trigger. A bolt of energy crossed the dance floor, then the number of still-intact Malwhere creatures in the room dropped from one to zero. The explosion ejected Artur from the end of the thing’s tail, just as the tail itself became a sputtering fountain of ooze. He hurtled several feet through the air, then landed with a plop in a quivering pile of purple slime.

“Oh, thanks for that,” Artur called, dragging himself free of the goo. “Thanks a fecking bunch.”

“Any time,” Dan said. Sliding Mindy back into her holster, he turned to where the hopeful part of his brain expected Rooso to still be sitting. The other ninety-five per cent, however, knew what he’d find there before he’d even started to move.

Nothing. Rooso was gone.

“No-one ever stays where I tell them to,” Dan lamented, then he adjusted his hat, wiped a blob of monster goo off his coat, and headed for the front door.

“What about yer big hole?” Artur called after him.

Dan glanced down at the wound in his stomach. He couldn’t feel the corresponding one in his back, but he knew it was there. “It’ll have to wait.”

“No, not that big hole, ye fecking eejit. That big hole!” Artur pointed up to the swirling vortex above him. “Yer big sky hole. Are ye not going to close it?”

“That’s what I need Rooso for,” Dan said. “Stay here. If anything comes through…”

“Climb up its arse and make it wish it’d never been born?”

Dan winced. “I was going to say, ‘keep an eye on it,’ but whatever you think works best.”

* * *

The alley outside the club was dark and mostly deserted, aside from three lads whose bravado and curiosity had got the better of them. They flinched and shuffled backwards when Dan emerged, before realizing he wasn’t one of the monsters.

“What’s going on? What’s happening in there?” asked one of them. He was well-built and athletic-looking, and the way the others cowered behind him clearly marked him as the leader. “We left our coats inside. Is it safe to go get them?”

“Your coats are gone boys,” Dan told them. “Go back in there, you’re dead. That clear?”

All three of them nodded, the two behind more enthusiastically than the one in front. Dan stopped beside them, keeping to the shadows to avoid scaring them off quite yet. “You see anyone come running out of here?”

“Uh, everyone came running out.”

“Oh. Yeah. I mean was anyone running in slow motion?”

The front guy’s eyes widened in surprise. “Yeah! You saw him too? That shizz was crazy.”

“Which way?” Dan asked.

“He went that way, then hung a left at the end,” one of the guys in the back replied, pointing along the alleyway. “Pretty sure you can’t miss him.”

“You sure we can’t get our coats?” the one in front asked.

Dan stepped from the shadows, revealing the full horror of his face. “Trust me, boys. Run,” he growled, baring his teeth. They were in surprisingly good condition compared to the rest of him, although the men were too terrified to notice.

With a few yelps and a lot of scuffling, the lads retreated, clearing the way for Dan to go after Rooso.

Reaching the end of the alley, he emerged onto a street that swam in the blue glow of the enormous city engines hanging in the sky miles overhead. Up There was where the wealthy and well-to-do of the planet Parloo lived. Down Here was home to everyone else - the dregs, the has-beens and the never-weres.

Cars were parked along both sides of the street. Most of them were sleek hover vehicles – second-hand, of course – but there were a few old ground-huggers in there, too, in various states of disrepair.

One in particular, a battered and rust-covered Jonta Exodus, stood out as being in particularly bad shape. Dan’s mouth turned downwards in disgust when he saw it. Which was unfortunate, as it was his car.

Rooso was midway along the sidewalk between Dan and the Exodus. His arms and legs pumped as he powered himself forwards. As he was doing so at just one tenth his normal speed, though, he was fleeing at substantially less than the average walking pace.

“I told you to stay where you were, Rooso,” Dan called, striding after him and immediately starting to close the gap.

Having heard the chipmunk-like chirp of Dan’s voice, Rooso began to turn his head. This took some time, and Dan was almost on him when he finally achieved it.

“Making me come after you is not helping you endear yourself to me. I want you to know that,” Dan said, then Mindy emitted a series of bleeps to announce the slowdown effect wearing off, and Rooso hurtled into full speed.

Dan lunged, grabbing for Rooso with his one arm, but Rooso darted beyond his reach, crying out in triumph. “Ha! Can’t catch me now!” he hollered, then his eyes went wide in horror as he saw Dan slide Mindy from her holster and take aim.

“Mindy. Stun shot,” Dan barked. The cylinder spun, but the lights remained dark, other than the blinking red ‘Out of Charge’ LED above the grip.

“Ah… fonk it,” Dan grunted. He broke into a lumbering run, but he’d be the first to admit he wasn’t built for speed. Rooso was younger, faster, and driven by a terror that writhed in his gut like a sea serpent. He quickly began to pull away.

Several bounding steps along the street, Rooso looked back over his shoulder and laughed when he saw Dan falling behind. He still hadn’t faced front again when the passenger door of the Exodus opened dead ahead of him.

He hit it at speed. So much speed, in fact, that the door bent all the way outwards on its hinges, the metal screeching as the door’s working were buckled out of shape.

“Oh… come on,” Dan groaned. “My fonking car.”

If the damage to the car was bad, though, the damage to Rooso was even worse. He flipped over the buckling door, performed a full forward somersault in the air, then landed on his face, his legs bending backwards behind him until they almost touched the ground.

Dan’s first thought was, Well, that’s him dead, but then Rooso toppled sideways in a chorus of sobs and wails, blood oozing from a number of cuts, grazes and just plain missing parts in his face.

A young woman with purple-pink skin and long dark hair jumped from the Exodus, her fists raised in a way that suggested she’d never raised them before, and didn’t really know what to do with them now that she had. Her name was Ollie, and she was… well, she was complicated.

“I told you to wait in the car,” Dan grunted as he passed her.

Ollie yelped and spun, throwing a punch in his direction. It thudded harmlessly off his chin, and Ollie immediately dropped her hands to her sides again. “Sorry! Sorry, didn’t mean to… Did that…? Accident. Total accident.” She smiled, swallowed, frowned and looked down at her feet, more or less all at the same time. “Uh, I did wait in the car.”

Dan looked from her to the car and back again. He did this very deliberately, hoping it would convey his point, but Ollie didn’t seem to grasp what he was getting at.

“You’re not in the car,” Dan finally said. “You’re on the sidewalk.”

“Oh. Oh. Right,” said Ollie. She hopped into the car, reached for the door handle, and pulled the door closed. As the door no longer lined up with the opening, it sprung outwards again, hitting the sobbing Rooso on the top of the head just as he tried to get up.

“Sorry! My fault!” Ollie said, then she caught Dan’s glare and decided it was probably wise to stop talking. She caught the door on its bounce back and this time just held it closed.

Stooping, Dan grabbed Rooso by the front of his jacket and hoisted him to his feet. Then he hoisted him a little higher, so only his toes were scraping the ground. “Where did you get the device?” he demanded.

“I’ll n-never tell you!” Rooso whimpered.

Dan’s eyebrows lowered, just a fraction.

“OK, OK! Don’t hurt me! I got it from the Yaroh. They’re a gang who—”

“I know who they are,” Dan said. He gave Rooso a shake. “Where?”

“H-House of Fruit.”

Dan had a list of places that the Yaroh and their kind operated from. Dingy back rooms in dingy old bars, usually. ‘House of Fruit’ was a new one on him.

“The health food place on Ninth Avenue?”

Rooso nodded enthusiastically, flicking spots of blood into the air from the many wounds on his face. “Yeah! Yeah, that’s right. On Ninth. They made me take it, I swear. I d-didn’t have a choice!”

Dan nodded. “I thought you might say that.”

“Right! Yes! So y-you believe me?” Rooso whimpered.

“No. That’s just what they all say.”

He dropped Rooso suddenly, and something in one of the sniveling villain’s knees went crack. He fell, clutching it, and landed in a sprawling heap on the sidewalk.

Dan gestured to Ollie. “Go into the glove box,” he told her.

Her eyes widened, then darted left to right. “What?”

“The glove box. The little handle on the dash in front of you. Open it up.”

“Oh, glove box! Sorry. I thought you said ‘love box’. And I was like, ‘what’s a love box, and how do I—?’”

“Just open the fonking glove box,” Dan grunted.

Ollie opened the glove box. Several tools, a small blaster pistol with a broken handle, and a variety of gadgets that looked decidedly home-made spilled out.

“Why do they call it a glove box?” she wondered.

Dan ignored her and pointed in through the window at something that looked like a copper banana. “Give me that.”

Ollie picked the thing up off the floor and turned it over in her hand. “What is it?” she asked, but then it was snatched away by Dan, and he was advancing on the guy currently sobbing on the tarmac.

“You’re welcome,” she said to his back.

“You know what I hate about people like you, Rooso?” Dan asked. He unfolded the banana until it resembled a large horse shoe. Two short metal prongs extended from the end like flick knife blades. “You don’t do your homework.”

Rooso tore his eyes from his rapidly-swelling knee and looked up. “Wh-what?”

“The device you were sold is an Etherian Coalesciser. It connects to a very specific Malwhere dimension. It doesn’t have a name, not officially, but some early Etherian texts refer to it as ‘Rokkan Nanosh’ which roughly translates as ‘hidden death.’ Maybe ‘secret death,’ depending on who you ask.”

Holding up the horse shoe, Dan watched as the ends of each metal prong began to glow. He gave a nod of satisfaction as energy crackled between them, joining the tips together with a fizzing line of blue.

“Wh-what is that thing?” Rooso asked.

Dan ignored the question. “That portal that opened? Wasn’t anything hidden or secret about that, right? I mean, that was fully out there and on display. You know why?” He didn’t give Rooso time to answer. “Because that’s a side effect of that device you used, not the purpose.”

The sound of Rooso’s sobbing took on a note of confusion. “What?”

“If there’s a lesson to be learned here, it’s that you can’t trust the Yaroh,” Dan continued. “I mean, I’m sure there are a hundred lessons to be learned here, but that should be your main takeaway. But, to be honest, I wouldn’t bother committing it to memory. See, you’re going to be dead in the next twenty seconds.”

Rooso let out a strangled shriek of panic. “What? N-no! Please, don’t. Please!”

“Sorry, kid,” Dan said, and the expression on his face suggested he genuinely was. “Technically speaking, you’ve been dead since you pressed that button.”

He lunged forwards, thrusting the horse shoe device at Rooso’s head so the prongs were either side of his temples, and the energy was crackling through his brain.

The effect was instantaneous. His skull exploded, and the end of his neck became a heaving mass of oily shapes, all attempting to exist in the same place at the same time. A face appeared within it all, its hollow eye sockets glaring hatred out at the world, its mouth unfolding and contorting until the whole thing appeared to be swallowing itself.

There was a whispered scream that bypassed the ears and jabbed at the brain like angry toothpicks, and then the shape became vapor, and the headless Rooso slumped backwards onto the sidewalk.

Ollie leaned out through the open window of the Exodus. For a while, she said nothing, just peered down at the body on the ground, blood pooling around the gristly neck stump.

“Is he dead?” she finally asked.

Dan folded the horse shoe back into a banana. “He has no head,” he pointed out.

“Right. Right,” said Ollie, nodding slowly. “So… is that a ‘yes’?”

“Yes. He’s dead,” Dan confirmed, tossing the device through the window and into her lap. “If we’re lucky, the portal has closed, too. Wait there, I’ll go check.”

He moved to step over Rooso’s body, then stopped. Looking down, he sized up the corpse’s left arm, then glanced at his own empty sleeve flapping loosely at his side. “Do me a favor,” he said. “Pop the trunk.”

* * *

When Dan returned to the alleyway, the first thing he saw were the lads he’d tried to scare off earlier. Evidently, it hadn’t worked, as they were still there. Shame, really, because if they’d listened to him, their glistening innards might not now be painting the walls and pooling on the uneven stone slabs underfoot.

“Ah… shizz,” Dan muttered, stepping around a foot-long strip of skin and hair as he hurried towards the club’s front door. He barreled through, raising his voice as he called out: “Artur! Artur, where are you?”

The portal was gone. That was good news, at least. There were no Malwhere monsters roaming around, which was also positive, but the distinct lack of Artur made Dan uneasy. He’d assumed one of the monsters had ripped apart the guys outside, but it wasn’t unknown for Artur to lose his temper in the wee small hours of the night, and multiple violent homicides were not unheard of when someone really got on his bad side.

“Artur?” Dan called, his voice echoing around the pin-drop silent club.

“Sure, what’s all the hollerin’ about?” came a voice from over by the bar. Artur clambered up from behind it, pulling a bottle of gloopy brown liquid behind him. “I’m right here.”

Dan’s relief lasted only a second or two, before anger swooped in to replace it. “I told you to watch the portal.”

“I did! But sure, it was just hanging there minding its own business, so I thought I’d go fetch myself a refreshment or two. I had it all in hand, though, and was aware of what was going on at all times,” he said, then he raised his eyes towards where the portal had been, and his mouth became a little circle of surprise in his beard. “Oh. It’s gone. When did that happen?”

“Five minutes ago, when I closed it,” Dan said. “Something got out, Artur. Something else came through.”

“It must have been very quick,” Artur said. “Or I’m sure I’d have noticed.”

“It’s been closed for five minutes!” Dan snapped. “You didn’t notice that.”

“Well, I only turned me back five minutes and five seconds ago. Ye know, give or take,” Artur protested. “Anyway, after what I went through, I reckon I deserve a drink, don’t you? I mean, look at me.” He gestured down at himself. The long, floral-patterned outfit he wore was thick with purple gunge. “This dress is feckin’ ruined, and I’ll be scrubbing monster out of me beard for months.”

Dan buried his face in his hand. “One job. You had one fonking job.”

“Ah, relax, Deadman. Ye worry too much,” Artur said. He picked up a glass with both hands and clinked it against the bottle. “Now, are ye having one? I’m buying.”

“You mean you’re stealing.”

“Well, if ye’re going to get all technical about it, I formally withdraw the offer.”

“The car,” said Dan, turning on his heels. From somewhere in the distance there came the squeal of approaching sirens. The Tribunal. Great. Just what he needed. “And leave the bottle.”

Two

“Hold still,” Ollie said.

“I am holding still.”

“Well hold stiller.”

She chewed the tip of her tongue as she forced the needle in through Dan’s flesh, then out through what had until recently been Rooso’s. Dan had done most of the actual hacking and sawing part himself, but when it came to stitching Rooso’s amputated arm to Dan’s shoulder, the detective – in every sense – needed Ollie to give him a hand.

“Is this really appropriate for the kitchen table?” Artur asked. He’d found a change of clothes – an off the shoulder cocktail dress that exposed a full half-inch of back hair, and too much thigh for Dan’s liking – and was now sitting on the filing cabinet, clutching a drinking straw and working his way through the bottle of booze. “Ye know, hygiene issues, or what have ye?”

“It isn’t the kitchen table. It’s the office table,” Dan pointed out.

“But since we don’t have a kitchen, it’s also the kitchen table, dining table, shagging table – in fact, it’s every table we might otherwise have had, were it not for the fact that we now live in a single feckin’ room.”

“I know, but… Wait. ‘Shagging table’?”

“Ye don’t want to know, Deadman,” Artur told him. “Trust me, it’s for the best if ye put the old detective instincts on hold as far as that’s concerned.”

“Hold still,” Ollie said again.

Dan muttered something below his breath, but tried not to move.

“So, do ye still reckon something came through yer sky hole?”

“Malwhere portal. And yes,” Dan said. “Unless those guys dismembered themselves.”

Ollie stopped sewing. “Do you think they might have?”

Dan glanced to the ceiling and sighed. “No. No, I do not.”

“Oh.” Ollie shrugged. “Where I come from, they might have.”

“Well thank the Good Lord we don’t come from where you come from, peaches,” Artur said.

“I’ll go out when this is done,” Dan said, nodding towards his shoulder and earning himself another complaint from Ollie. “See if I can pick up a trail.”

Artur took another sip of his drink, then burped. For the size of him, it was impressively loud. “Ah, I wouldn’t bother, Deadman. What’s one more monster roaming around the place? Sure, we’ve our own problems to contend with. Namely, the fecking enormous hole in the wall next door.”

Dan resisted the urge to look over at the inner office door, knowing Ollie would only moan at him again. The wind was whistling through the gap at the bottom, as it had been since the window and part of the wall had been torn inwards by an Igneon debt collector a few nights before, instantly rendering half the office space uninhabitable.

The landlord was demanding twelve grand for repairs, and while Artur had kindly offered to ‘kick the living shoite out of him,’ Dan didn’t particularly want half an office, so was keen to get the place fixed up.

He’d recently completed work on an actual paying case, but the money from that wouldn’t cover the cost, let alone leave him anything for the actual rent. Today’s monster hunt had been a pro-bono, good of the city type deals. No-one would even know what he’d done, let alone reward him handsomely for all his hard work and effort.

“And ye’re sure ye don’t have any money stashed away?” Artur asked. “Like in a secret safe, maybe.”

“You live in my secret safe,” Dan pointed out.

“Fair point, well made,” Artur conceded. “And I won’t insult our friendship by offering you rent money for it.”

“That is very big of you,” Dan said.

“That’s me all over, Deadman. Small of stature, big of heart,” Artur said. He grinned at Ollie and waggled his bushy green eyebrows. “That’s not the only thing that’s big about me, either.”

Ollie stopped sewing. She smiled and frowned at the same time. “Oh? What else?”

“Well sure, I’ve got a great big—”

“Ego,” Dan said, cutting him off. He flexed the fingers of his new arm and looked back over his shoulder at Ollie. “We done?”

Ollie looked worried, then proud, then concerned, then happy as she sized up her work. “Yes! We’re done. You’re all set.”

Dan got up from the chair and rolled his shoulders. The wound in his back and stomach where the Malwhere thing’s tail had skewered him was now sewn shut. It wasn’t neat, but it did the job. Shame the shirt couldn’t be repaired to easily. Even if the ragged edges could be stitched back together, the stains his black blood had left were never going to come out.

Straightening, Dan faced Artur. “How do I look?”

There was a rrrrip as the stitches tore loose, and the arm clunked onto the carpet.

“Mostly armless,” Artur replied, looking quite pleased with himself. He turned to Ollie. “Ye might want to go a little deeper next time, peaches.”

Dan sighed as he lowered himself onto the chair again, and braced his chest against the table. “And use the bigger needle,” he suggested.

“Bigger needle. Right,” said Ollie, picking up the arm. And then, she set to work.

* * *

After an hour or so of Ollie going a little deeper with the bigger needle, Dan stood up again. This time, his arm didn’t immediately fall off, which was a good sign. The angle wasn’t quite right – it turned slightly outwards, which would take some getting used to – but otherwise it was a pretty decent job.

“OK. Good,” Dan said, pulling on a fresh shirt. He fumbled with the buttons. New fingers were always a challenge to begin with, but he shooed Ollie away when she tried to help.

“What do ye say, Deadman?” Artur asked, peering expectantly at Dan over the tip of his drinking straw.

“I said, ‘OK. Good.’”

“I wasn’t asking what did ye say, I was asking what do ye say?”

Dan frowned. “What do I say when?”

“Now, ye big auld ballsack,” Artur said. “What should ye say now? Ye know, to the fine figure of a woman who just stitched ye back together like a ragdoll?”

Ollie blushed a little. “Oh! No, it’s fine. Pffft. No. It’s totally fine. My pleasure.”

Dan ground his jaws together. “No. No, he’s right.” The words rolled around in his mouth for a few seconds, as if struggling to break free. “Thank you.”

“Good. Well done. Manners cost nothing,” said Artur. There was a burbling sound as he drained the very last dregs from the bottle. Despite the volume of alcohol he had consumed in such a relatively short space of time, he seemed largely unaffected. “Now, ask me what my idea is.”

Dan looked up from where he was wrestling with the final button of his shirt. “What idea?”

Artur threw up his hands. “I haven’t feckin’ told ye yet, that’s why I’m saying to ask me what it is.”

Dan muttered something below his breath. It didn’t sound particularly complimentary. “Fine. What’s your idea?”

“Right. Brace yourself. I have a solution to our money worries that is going to blow yer arse off,” Artur announced. “Ye ready?”

“Just tell me what it is.”

“Death Derby,” said Artur. He crossed his arms and leaned back, grinning proudly. “Huh? What did I tell ye? Genius or what?”

“I’m not entering a Death Derby,” Dan said, returning to his button.

“Ye don’t have to. That’s the point. Ye already did.”

Dan managed to push the button through its hole before turning his attention back to Artur. “What?”

“Ye told me all about it. How ye went and splattered that biker guy’s brains all over the ground the other night, then were set about by his brother.”

Dan shrugged. “So?”

“So, I happen to know a thing or two about a thing or two. And one of those two things I know is that if ye killed what’s-his-name during the derby like ye said ye did, then ye should have a great big whack of prize money sitting there with our name on it.”

“Why would our name be on it?” Dan asked.

“Well, ye know what I mean. Sure, I’d only take a small finder’s fee. Let’s say ten per cent.”

“Ten per cent?” Dan snorted. “I don’t think so.”

“Well, that’s very generous of ye, Deadman. Fifteen, then. I appreciate that, I sincerely do,” Artur said, tapping his forehead in a tiny salute.

Dan folded his arms, which was a little awkward with the slight turn in the left one, and leaned back against the table. “I did beat him. The announcer guy did say I was a volunteer. You could be onto something.”

“So… what happened?” Ollie asked. “What are we talking about?”

“Yer man there got involved in a… well, let’s call it a gameshow. And he won, which means he’s entitled to the prize money.”

“Oh. Well done,” said Ollie. “How much is the prize money?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t really pay attention,” Dan admitted.

“Well, there’s only one way to find out,” Artur said. “Let’s get out there, find the organizers, and get what’s rightfully ours.”

“There won’t be another derby for weeks,” Dan pointed out.

“So, ye’re a detective, ain’t ye?” Artur said. “That’s what it says on the door, anyway. Get out there and feckin’ detect.”

Ollie yawned. “Can it wait until morning?”

“No, it cannot,” Artur said. “Anyway, it’s best if ye just stay here, peaches. This could get ugly.”

“You can both stay here,” said Dan, removing Mindy from a charging dock and sliding the weapon back into its holster. “I’ll go ask around.”

“What? Me bollocks!” Artur protested. “I should be out there with ye, noising folks up until they spill the beans or what have ye.”

“You’ve done enough for one night,” Dan said. “Stay here. Keep an eye on her. Shornack’s collectors could still come back. I don’t want her here alone.”

“She’s a feckin’ demon – no offence, peaches.”

“That’s OK. I mean I’m not exactly a… But that’s OK.”

“She can handle herself just fine.”

Dan pulled his coat on over the holster, then reached for his hat. He squashed it between his hands, trying to bend it into some semblance of its original shape. “Stay here. Both of you. I’ll be back before you know it.”

Artur belched so loudly some of the paperwork beside him on the filing cabinet fell off and fluttered to the floor. “And that,” he announced, “is what I think of that.”

* * *

When it came to what you might call ‘detective skills’, Dan hadn’t been particularly blessed. Like Artur had said, the sign on his door said ‘Deadman Investigations’ but the actual investigating part had never really been his strong point.

Sure, he’d heard about DNA profiling, he was aware of the concept of fingerprints and he actually had a bit of a knack for figuring out how long a body had been dead for. He relied on none of those things to get the job done, though. He favored a more… direct approach.

By the time he’d finished in the third bar, his new knuckles had been well and truly worn in. It had taken almost forty minutes to beat the information out of one of the local scumbags, but he’d finally been given an address.

Dan stood outside a run-down hotel in one of Down Here’s less glamorous sectors. Considering how unglamorous the rest of them were, this was really saying something. He hadn’t seen a Tribunal car in ten blocks, and for the first time in as far back as he could remember, he was genuinely concerned that someone might try to steal the Exodus when he wasn’t looking.

Still, good luck to them. He left the doors unlocked, just in case.

The hotel was mostly in darkness, aside from a couple of lights shining in windows up on the top floor. A sign above the door read No Questions Asked but Dan wasn’t sure if that was the name of the place or its motto.

Shapes watched him from the shadows of the doorway across the street. Foreboding prickled at his dead skin in a way that nothing else did these days. There was a reason the Tribunal avoided areas like these. Coming here was an elaborate form of suicide.

But then, death wasn’t high on his list of concerns.

From back a way along the street he heard a scream and a flurry of blaster fire. Both stopped very quickly, cut short by the triumphant squeal of something monstrous. Monstrous and… familiar, maybe?

He shook his head. It was a big city. No way whatever had come out of the Malwhere would be somewhere near here. The odds were… Well, it was highly fonking unlikely, put it that way.

The front door was locked and reinforced. Back one, too. If the hotel was still in business, it sure had a funny way of showing it.

As Dan made his way back around the front, something moved in the dim blue light overhead. A sphere floated down until it hung in the air around ten feet above him. A silver logo on the front revealed it to be a Loudmouth speaker system. Dan pushed back his hat and listened as a man’s voice crackled out.

“You are trespassing on private property,” it announced. “Leave immediately.”

“I ain’t trespassing on shizz. At least, not yet,” Dan replied. “This the Death Derby place? You guys owe me money.”

There was a moment of silence, as if the person on the other end was considering the question.

“This is a one-way communication system,” the voice declared. “Any response from you will not be heard. You are trespassing on private property. Leave immediately or we will take steps to protect ourselves.”

“Good luck with that,” Dan said. He drew his gun. “Mindy. Explosive rounds.”

With a squeeze of the trigger, the door erupted in a ball of fire. The flames flickered for a few seconds, before evaporating into the air. Besides a scorch mark on its surface, the door appeared to be largely unaffected.

“Damn it,” Dan muttered.

“You’re wasting your time,” said the voice on the Loudmouth. “Leave immediately, or we will be forced to—”

The wall beside the door, it turned out, wasn’t as sturdy. It erupted inwards, spraying glowing shards of stone and clouds of dust into the hotel lobby.

Dan swung Mindy up towards the Loudmouth. “Have my money ready,” he said, then he squeezed off another round and the speaker system went the way of the wall.

The hotel lobby was in darkness, but Dan’s night vision had improved dramatically since his death and reanimation. He could make out a mish-mash of old furniture, a scattering of alcohol bottles, and a carpet that hadn’t just seen better days, but better lifetimes. It was polka-dotted with crimson stains, each one suggesting something large had lost a lot of blood on those spots.

There was an elevator and a staircase side by side in the far corner. Dan pressed the ‘call’ button, then tucked himself in against the wall beside the elevator door.

“Mind. Stun shot.”

The elevator clanked down to the first floor. There was a ping as the doors opened, then a spray of blaster fire and some panicky shouting erupted from within. Dan allowed himself a grim smile. Amateurs. Excellent.

Once the gunfire had stopped, he swung around the door frame, fired three shots, and watched as the occupants of the elevator car all slumped to the floor.

Moving quickly, he dragged two of the three men outside and left them in the lobby, then used the third to wedge the elevator doors open.

That done, he ran heavily up the first few steps of the staircase, the old wood creaking under his feet. From somewhere in the darkness above he heard whispering and the clicking of safety catches being removed.

Side-stepping to the edge of the steps, he retreated silently back down to the bottom, stepped into the elevator, and pulled the unconscious gunman in with him. He heaved the man – a stocky, hirsute gentleman with an impressive horn sprouting from the bridge of his nose – into what passed for a standing position, and thumbed the button for the top floor. Then he thumbed the button for the floor below it.

Shuffling in against the side wall, he held Horn-Nose upright beside him, so he was the first thing anyone would see when the door opened. In an ideal world, the door wouldn’t open until he was near the top, but all it would take was someone pressing the call button on one of the other floors to mess things up.

With any luck, at least half of whoever was up there would be watching the stairs. As he had no idea how many people were up there, though, Dan couldn’t afford to get sloppy. He could take body shots all day long, but one blast to the head, and even he wouldn’t be getting back up again.

He tapped Mindy against the side of his leg and hummed quietly as he watched the numbers above the door creep up. Fourth floor. Fifth. Sixth. Going well, so far.

Just after it had passed the seventh floor, the elevator slowed. Dan stopped humming, and pressed himself tighter against the wall. He raised Mindy and took aim at the wall beside the elevator door, roughly at head height.

The elevator jerked to a stop. There was a long pregnant pause before the doors started to open. They’d barely made it twelve inches when a blaster bolt plastered Horn-Nose’s intestines onto the back wall. Several other shots tore through him almost immediately, peppering him with scorched-yet-gloopy holes.

Four shooters, Dan estimated, as the crescendo of gunfire sputtered out. He stepped sideways into view and snapped off four shots before the off-guard gunmen could raise their weapons again. The stun shots tightened their muscles, and Dan saw a brief flash of agony on the face of one of the men as he bit through his own needlessly long tongue, before all four of them sunk to the floor, unconscious.

Shoving the remains of Horn-Nose out into the hall, Dan grabbed himself another stand-in – although not the tongue guy, because he was bleeding everywhere – and resumed the position. The elevator door closed again, and the car swept upwards towards the top floor.

It continued uninterrupted this time until it reached the floor one from the top. Dan propped his replacement patsy against the back wall, the man’s rigid leg muscles making it relatively easy to stand him up.

Once done, he stepped out of the elevator into a short, dimly-lit corridor, and waited for the doors to close.

“Mindy,” he said, bringing the gun close to his mouth and whispering. “Explosive rounds.”

The gun’s cylinder spun as the elevator closed its doors and rose towards the top floor. Dan glanced up and down the stairwell and saw no-one in either direction. There were voices somewhere further down, high and panicky. Amateurs jumping at their own shadow, no doubt.

He heard the elevator reach the top floor, and the ping as the doors opened. Blaster fire erupted above him and a little to the left. Dan took cover behind the edge of the stairwell, then fired twice at ceiling in front of the elevator door.

It came down in a thunder of smoke, dust and screaming gunmen. By the time they’d hit the floor, Mindy was back in stun mode. All five dust-covered figures grunted as the stun bolts hit them, then lay still and silent in the rubble.

That done, Dan took to the stairs and headed upwards. A few stories below, the panicky voices came again, then the scream of blaster fire. There was another sound, too. Something low and guttural that made Dan hesitate near the top of the steps and look back.

“It can’t be,” he muttered, then a flurry of movement from ahead of him made him turn. Something solid went crack across his skull and darkness poured in. The last thing Dan saw was the leering face of someone big and ugly, and then his thoughts became mush and he toppled backwards down the stairs.

Three

Dan woke up. That was something of a surprise.

What was also a surprise was that he hadn’t woken up in a shallow grave somewhere in the waste ground beyond the city limits. Instead, he was tied to a chair in what seemed to be an office of some description. The only source of light was a single lamp in the corner, which cast the three other occupants of the room into silhouette. Or the three other occupants he could see, at least. He could hear someone breathing behind him – big and heavy, so probably the guy who’d cracked him across the head.

Pain throbbed through his skull in a way that made thinking difficult. He wasted a moment wrestling against his restraints, then gave up and turned his attention to the two women and one man standing in front of him.

The guy he could deal with. Short, slight, and with a bouncy, floppy hairstyle that immediately disqualified him as any sort of threat. Thanks to the shadow, Dan couldn’t identify his species, but humanoid enough that his pain and pressure points would all be in easy to reach places.

The women were more problematic. From their outlines he guessed they were Botanians, a race of living plant-people who were functionally immortal. Cut one in half, and two would grow in its place. Fire killed them, along with some harsher chemical compounds, but even then they didn’t go down easily.

As for the ugly big bamston hiding behind him, Dan couldn’t wait to get his hands on that guy.

“Who are you?” demanded the floppy-haired man. Dan recognized his voice immediately. It was the voice on the Loudmouth – the same voice that had commentated on his Death Derby fight with the von Haffs. “What are you even doing here? You’ve killed my guys!”

“Didn’t kill anyone,” Dan countered. “Stun shots, that’s all. Maybe some broken legs. If any of your guys are dead it’s because your other guys killed them.”

Or because something else had.

“Actually, no. That’s not quite true,” Dan admitted. “I did kill someone. And that’s why I’m here.”

He searched the announcer’s face until he found the shadowy outline of his eyes. “Von Haff. At the derby.”

Silence. The announcer shifted uneasily.

“Huh?” he said, which hardly seemed worth the wait.

“I was at the Death Derby. I stuck my arm through the spokes of von Haff’s front wheel, and pancaked his face on the ground.”

There was a wet clicking sound as the announcer swallowed. “That was you?”

“That was me,” Dan confirmed. “So, by my reckoning, you owe me… How much was the prize money?”

“Quarter of a million,” the announcer said, then he let out a little gasp and clamped his mouth shut as it occurred to him that he may have made a mistake.

“Holy shoite!” said a voice from Dan’s coat pocket.

Silence fell again, as all eyes went to the pocket. After a moment, a whispered, “Oh, bollocks,” drifted out.

“What is that? Who’s in there?” the announcer demanded. Beside him, the two Botanians bristled, thorns blooming along their forearms and fists.

“Seriously, why the fonk does no-one ever stay where I tell them?” Dan muttered. “Artur. Come out.”

There was a pause.

“How d’ye know it’s me?” Artur said.

“Just come out of my damn pocket,” Dan snapped. He looked up as Mindy’s barrel took aim between his eyes. The gun shook slightly in the announcer’s grip.

“What the fonk is going on?”

“I wouldn’t,” Dan warned. “The sensors in the grip are linked to my fingerprints. Pull that trigger and it’ll take your arm off.”

The announcer’s eyes darted to the gun. “What? That’s not a thing.” He looked past Dan to the other man lurking behind him. “Is it?”

“Never heard of it,” the unseen man replied.

Dan shrugged. “By all means, be my guest,” he said. “I mean, I’m already dead, so it doesn’t make a whole lot of difference to me.”

He leaned his top half forwards until his forehead was pressing against the gun’s muzzle. “Ladies, I’d step away. The backsplash can be pretty nasty.”

The announcer hesitated, then lowered the gun and tossed it onto the desk behind him. By the time he’d turned back, Artur had clambered out of Dan’s pocket and was standing on the detective’s knee, the heels of his plastic shoes digging into Dan’s rotting flesh.

“Who the fonk are you?” the guy asked, squinting down. Beside him, the two Botanian women also drew in for a closer look.

“I’m his financial advisor,” Artur said. “And you are?”

“I’m none of your fonking business, that’s who I am,” the announcer said.

Artur cricked his neck. “Is that a fact?” he asked, his voice losing its usual lilt. “Well, I reckon we’ll just see about that, won’t we?”

“Cut it out,” Dan told him. “Settle down. We’re not here to fight.”

“You took out half of my men!” the announcer yelped.

“In self-defence,” said Dan. “I came here to talk, that’s all.”

“And to get his money,” Artur added.

“And to get my money,” Dan agreed. He nodded down at the ropes holding him to the chair. “So, if you could untie me, we’ll arrange a transfer, and I won’t even say anything about the crack to the head. We’ll call it a misunderstanding, and that’ll be that.”

The announcer looked to the women beside him, then past Dan to the figure lurking there. Artur followed his gaze, then recoiled in surprise when he spotted the room’s other occupant for the first time. “Ooh, ye creepy big fecker!” he exclaimed. “Ye know there’s a great big potato-faced fella looming behind ye, Deadman?”

Dan nodded. “Yeah. I know.”

“A right ugly bastard.”

“Got it,” said Dan.

“That’s fine, then. Just wanted to make sure we were all on the same page, or in the same boat, or whatever the feck the expression is.”

He turned back to the announcer, putting his hands on his hips. “Now, about that money…”

“You should have claimed it at the time,” the announcer blurted. “You should have claimed it on the night.”

“Bzzt! Wrong. That isn’t in the rules,” said Artur. “Trust me, I looked it up. There is feck all in the rule book that says prize money has to be claimed at the time.”

“Uh, yes. Yes there is,” the announcer insisted.

“Yer bollocks. Fetch me the rule book,” Artur said. “Let’s get this straightened out.”

The voice from behind Dan was low and gruff. “Or we could just kill you both right now.”

“Ye could certainly try, princess,” Artur replied, not giving the guy the courtesy of even turning around. “But I don’t fancy yer chances.”

Making a clicking noise with this tongue, Artur beckoned the announcer over. “Come on, sunshine, time is money, ye know what I’m sayin’? Get the feckin’ rule book and let’s be done with it. Some of us have got places to be.”

The announcer didn’t move at first. No more than his usual anxious weight-shifting, at least. The Botanians beside him kept their gazes fixed on Artur, Dan apparently forgotten.

“I don’t have one here,” he said, at last.

Artur puffed out his cheeks. “That’s how ye want to play it, is it? Not to worry.”

Reaching up under his bristly green beard, Artur plunged a hand down the front of his dress. When it emerged, it was clutching a small, neatly-folded piece of paper.

“I took the liberty of writing down the relevant sections.”

He cleared his throat as he unfolded the paper.

“Now then,” he began, then the echo of gunfire from one of the lower floors cut him off.

“Why the fonk are they still shooting? We’ve got him,” the announcer spat. He nudged one of the women and gestured to the door. “Go out there and shut them up.”

The Botanians both glowered at him with barely concealed contempt, then the one he had nudged made for the door, carried along on thousands of root-like feet that sprouted from the lower half of her legs.

“Well, that was unpleasant to watch,” Artur said, once she’d gone. He nodded at the other one. “No offence, darlin’. I’m sure yer own root-feet are a sight to behold.”

“You might want to hurry it up,” Dan said.

“And ye might want to shut yer hole,” Artur replied. “And let me handle this.”

Dan shrugged. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Artur cleared his throat again. “Right. Here we are. The rules. Make yerself comfortable, because – in my opinion – they’re unnecessarily wordy in parts. Not a criticism, just an observation. Some of them go on and on. Not criticising, like I say. Although reading through them, I did kind of want to kill myself once or twice. Again, just an observation.”

“Get on with it!” Dan warned.

“Let’s just kill these fonks,” the potato-faced guy behind Dan hissed.

“Shut up,” the announcer said. “This is a business. OK? We’re legit now. We trade on our reputation.” He held the other guy’s gaze for as long as he could bear it, then turned his attention back to Artur. “Go ahead.”

“Thanks very much,” Artur said, then he cleared his throat one more time and began to read.

Dan had to agree that the rules did seem unnecessarily wordy. Every sentence had been written using as much complex language as possible, with words placed in an order than Dan was confident didn’t actually make any sense.

After two or three minutes, Artur got to the part about claiming the prize money. It explained how a contestant would be eligible to claim the prize fund, along with what might exclude them from doing so. Just as Artur had said, there was nothing in there about a time limit on claiming.

When Artur had finished, he folded the paper again, and crossed his arms over his chest. “So, there ye have it,” he said. “From a legal standpoint, ye haven’t a leg to stand on. He survived against yer man in the arena, therefore he’s eligible to claim the prize money.”

The announcer slumped into a sitting position on his desk, and the light from the lamp revealed the expression of shock that had settled on his face. “Yeah, but… I mean…”

“But nothing, sunshine,” Artur said, sliding the rule sheet back into his non-existent cleavage. “My client, Mr Deadman, won fair and square. So give us our money, or – and I’m understating this here – I’ll kick up a bit of a stink.” He jabbed a thumb over his shoulder in Dan’s direction. “More of a stink than this walking corpse is already kicking up. If ye can imagine such a thing.”

The announcer blinked. His head raised until he was looking first at Artur, then at Dan. “What? Walking corpse? Seriously?”

Dan shrugged and nodded. “Long story.”

“So… what?” said the announcer, standing. “You’re dead? Like… really dead?”

Artur stiffened. “Wait! Don’t answer that!” he yelped, but Dan already had.

“Technically, yes.”

A smile tugged at the corners of the announcer’s mouth. He hurried around to the other side of his desk, tore open a drawer, then deposited a hefty leather-bound book onto the desktop.

“There’s no need to go over it all again, I think we established I’m in the right,” Artur said, but the announcer flipped through the book’s thin pages, his eyes scanning left to right across the narrow lines of text.

“Aha!” he cried, then he jabbed a finger onto the page and moved it across the paper as he read. “Part sixty-seven, paragraph three, sub-paragraph four: In order to make a valid claim on any and all amounts of the aforementioned prize fund, contestants – whether conscripted or volunteer – must remain alive for any round time duration specified by the derby host, up to and including the point of prize fund transfer and acceptance.”

He slammed the book closed and straightened, grinning triumphantly.

Dan frowned. “Meaning what?”

“Meaning you weren’t alive for the duration of the round,” the announcer said. “Ergo, you can’t claim the prize money. You’re not entitled to it. The rules are very clear.”

He half-sat, half leaned on the desk, his grin widening. “We have a saying at the derby. If you get slayed, you don’t get paid.”

“But he didn’t get slayed,” Artur protested. “He was dead before it started.”

The announcer shrugged. “Same difference. He wasn’t alive at the end of the round, so we owe him nothing.”

Artur’s tiny hands clenched into fists. His beard bristled as if a jolt of static electricity had passed through him. “Oh, ye think so, do ye?”

“Leave it, Artur,” Dan said.

“What? They’re feckin’ robbing ye blind!” Artur protested.

“No. They’re just following the rules,” Dan said. He sighed. “We take that money, we’re robbing them, not the other way around.”

Artur considered this. “I fail to see the problem in that scenario.”

“If you could untie me, we’ll be on our way,” said Dan. “No harm, no foul.”

“You shot up my house,” the announcer said. “You put a hole in my floor.”

“Your potato-head back there cracked my skull. Let’s call it even.”

From outside the office there came a thump of something heavy hitting something solid. The announcer looked past Dan to the door, his smug expression turning puzzled. “What the fonk was that?”

“Uh, you might want to untie me,” Dan said, but the others ignored him.

The announcer had just given the second Botanian a nudge when there came a growl and a hiss from outside.

“Ah, fonk,” Dan grunted, then he leaned forwards, shielding Artur as the office door exploded inwards. The mangled remains of the first Botanian woman spun across the room, forcing the announcer to duck. The body thudded against the back wall, then fell heavily to the floor, sap seeping from a number of open slashes in the woman’s bark-like skin.

The announcer screamed. The guy behind Dan screamed, too, but while the announcer’s scream was one of fear, this one was one of pain. It had a frantic, shrieking quality that quickly took on a burbling, wet-sounding undertone, as if the screamer’s lungs were being filled with a viscous liquid of some description. Which, as it happens, was exactly the case.

He stumbled past Dan, blood oozing down his chin and sputtering from a hole in his chest. Dan kicked himself forwards, bringing the chair with him and forcing Artur to grab hold of his coat to avoid being left behind.

“A bit of feckin’ warning next time!” Artur complained.

“The ropes. Get me out of these damn ropes,” Dan barked.

“Alright, alright, hold yer horses.”

Dan hit the front of the desk and threw himself over it, knocking the announcer over. The other Botanian had recovered from the initial shock of seeing her colleague’s ruined corpse smash against the wall, and now hurled herself towards the monster in their midst. Dan didn’t have to look at it to know it was one of the Malwhere creatures. It must have been tracking him from the club, following his scent. Out for revenge, probably, although it was hard to tell with these fonks.

The woman’s hands squirmed and wriggled until they formed a pair of long thorny spikes. She stabbed at the oily black beast, vine-like tendrils snaking out from her back and hips, grabbing for its arms.

Dan heaved against his bonds. “Hurry up, Artur,” he spat.

“I’m trying. Some eejit put a double knot in it.”

Dan snapped his head towards the announcer. “You. Untie me. Hurry up.”

It was no good. The announcer had all but checked out of the here and now. His gaze was fixed on the Malwhere thing, his eyes so wide they threatened to fall out of his head. He was making a sound – a sort of, “Buh… buh…” that was going nowhere fast as the monster and the Botanian slashed and stabbed and hammered each other.

“Wait, is that making it less tight or more tight?” Artur asked.

Dan struggled. “Worse!”

“Feck. OK, give me a minute to think about this,” Artur said.

Dan began to reply, but a spray of warm sap slapped him across the face, sticking one of his eyes shut and filling his mouth with an unpleasant sickly-sweetness.

“No time,” Dan said. “Hold on.”

He rammed the chair backwards into the wall. Once. Twice. The wood splintered and fell away, giving Dan the slack he needed to pull himself free. He reached his gun just as the Malwhere thing dropped to its haunches, preparing to leap.

“Mindy. Slowdown. Five per cent.”

The cylinder spun and the gun kicked in Dan’s hand. The monster’s upwards pounce suddenly ground into slow motion, and Dan allowed himself a moment to savor this small victory.

“Buh… buh…”

Dan put a hand on the announcer’s shoulder and gave him a shake. “Hey. Hey. It’s OK. Relax. It can’t get you.”

The announcer blinked, as if waking from a dream. “Wh-what? What the fonk is that thing?”

Dan shrugged. “I’m sure it probably has a name. I could find out, but… do you really care?”

“What? I mean… what?”

Dan felt a tugging on his pants leg as Artur climbed up onto his coat. “Thanks for the warning there, Deadman. There’s nothing I enjoy more than being smashed between a wall and yer big arse. Can’t get enough of that, so I can’t.”

Dan gestured over to the Malwhere thing. It was halfway to straightening up now. The light from the lamp reflected off its oily skin and coal-black claws. Like some of the monsters back at the club, this one was mostly mouth. Dan couldn’t see the eyes on the side of its neck, but he guessed they were there somewhere.

“Does it really matter what it is?” Dan asked. “The problem, the way I see it, is that it’s in your office and has just killed… I don’t know. A number of your employees. That’s the real issue here, am I right?”

The announcer’s eyelids flickered as he processed this, then he nodded.

“Thought so,” said Dan. He clapped the guy on the shoulder. “Well, best of luck,” he said, then he held up a pocket flap for Artur to climb inside, and headed for the door.

“Wait! Wait, where are you going?” the announcer yelped. “You can’t just leave me with this thing.”

Dan shrugged, but didn’t stop. “Nothing in the rules about it,” he said. “Just, you know, start running. The slowdown will wear off in a couple of minutes, so you’re going to want to get a head start.”

“But… but… Why is it after me?”

Dan paused at the door. “It isn’t. It’s after me. But it’ll kill you, anyway. Sorry.”

He continued into the corridor and whispered below his breath. “Three. Two. One.”

“Wait! I’ll pay you!” the announcer shrieked. “I mean… n-not the quarter of a million, but I’ll pay you to kill it. Five thousand credits. I can pay it right now.”

Dan kept walking.

“T-ten thousand.”

Dan stopped.

“Fifteen,” he countered.

“Fifteen?!”

Dan started walking again.

“OK, OK! Fifteen!”

Dan looked down at Artur, who was nestled back in his pocket again. “Ye can be a nasty auld shoitebag sometimes, Deadman,” Artur said. He grinned. “That’s why I love ye. Just, ye know, not in a sexy-times kind of a way.”

“I know.”

“Because of yer face. Ye know, with it being so hideous.”

“Gotcha.”

“And also, I’m not of that persuasion, although there’s nothing wrong with it or what have ye, it’s just not for me.”

“I get it,” said Dan.

“But mostly it’s just yer face.”

The announcer’s voice came shrilly from inside the office. “Are you going to kill this fonking thing or not?!”

“Mindy. Explosive rounds,” Dan said, then he leaned around the doorway, and fired. The slow-moving Malwhere thing became an equally slow-moving explosion of fire and guts. Great blobs of it drifted lazily off in all directions, like liquid in zero gravity.

Dan took a moment to admire the effect, before turning his attention to the announcer. “Now, was that a direct transfer?” he asked. “Or will you be paying in cash?”

THE END

Want more from Dan Deadman and friends? Check out “Dial D for Deadman” and “Dead Inside” available on Amazon Kindle now.

The Last Bounty

Originally published in the ‘Pew Pew’ Anthology

One

It was three hours before the kids were taken, and Konto Garr was not having the best of mornings.

“Remind me why you can’t do this again?” he asked, checking his reflection in the mirror for the umpteenth time. It had been years since he’d been off-planet, and he wanted to look … well, not his best, but good enough.

That annoyed him. He’d never seen himself as that guy – the guy who cared what people thought of him. But then, this was the first time he would be representing the family, as his wife had gone to great lengths to point out, and so he was feeling the pressure to put in the effort.

“Because I have to work,” said Maris, playfully shouldering him aside so she could claim her share of mirror space. She had to stand on tiptoes to see herself clearly. Konto, on the other hand, had to duck.

“So did I!” Konto protested.

“Yes, but I’ve got patients to see,” Maris pointed out, as tactfully as possible. “You’ve got …”

“Garbage to haul,” said Konto. He exhaled. “Fine. OK. You win.”

He glanced towards the kitchen door. The blue glow of the buzz-shield radiated into the hallway. The Snorkflies had been bad this season. One of the guys at work had lost the better part of his left arm to a cluster. Fortunately, he never really did anything, anyway, so the workload for the rest of them remained more or less the same.

“But, I mean, she doesn’t even like me.”

Maris glanced at him in the mirror, then decided the statement deserved a full stop-and-turn. “Are you crazy?” Maris said. “She adores you.”

“She told me I have breath like a Shizzfarmer’s breakfast,” Konto said.

Maris smiled. “She was being playful.”

“And that she hopes I die in a fire.”

Maris’s smile vanished. “She said that? Seriously? Deenia!”

“No, don’t,” whispered Konto. “You’ll make it worse.”

Maris shook her head. “She isn’t getting away with that. Deenia!”

The flickering blue of the buzz-shield snapped off. A girl, aged seven, wearing nothing but a scowl and a My Little Parnac onesie shuffled out of the kitchen. “What?”

“Did you tell your father you hoped he died in a fire?”

“No,” said Deenia. She tossed a glare in Konto’s direction. “I told him. He’s not my father.”

Maris’s eyes widened briefly, then narrowed dangerously. “Apologize, young lady. Right now.”

“Seriously, Maris, it’s fine,” said Konto. “People have said worse.”

“Not the point,” Maris snapped, sounding almost as angry with Konto as she was with her daughter. “You work hard—”

“He hauls garbage.”

“You work hard to help provide for this family.” Maris glared at her daughter. “He has taken the day off today so he can go with you on your school trip.”

“He’s coming?!” Deenia yelped. “What? Why?” She didn’t wait for an answer. Instead, she bunched her hands into fists, stamped her foot, and marched back to the kitchen. “Why don’t you just ruin my life, while you’re at it?”

The blue glow of the buzz-shield returned. Konto smiled weakly at his wife. “No, you’re right,” he said. “I think I might be growing on her.”

* * *

It was two hours before the kids were taken, and things had not improved.

“You don’t mind if Larry sits next to you, right Konto?”

Nobosh Tar, property magnate, father of Larry, and all-round rich jerk, smiled insincerely from the seat directly facing Konto, as the shuttlecraft rocked and shuddered its way through the atmosphere.

“It’s just, he’s a puker, and … well, I don’t do well with puke. It’s the smell. And, you know, the sight and the sound, obviously, but mostly it’s the smell. Can’t stand it. Figured you’d be better equipped to deal.” His insincere smile became even more so. “How is the garbage business, by the way?”

“Steady,” said Konto, raising his voice a little to be heard over the excited chatter of the twenty-five children all strapped into the threadbare seats of the shuttle. Deenia had taken the furthest seat away from him as possible. Any further, and she’d have been flying the ship.

Miss Tresno, the class teacher, sat at the back of the shuttle’s passenger bay, where she could keep an eye on everyone at once. Having eight eyes made the job that bit easier, in much the same way her four arms likely helped when it came to rounding the rowdier ones up. She was the first off-worlder to teach at the school and, by all accounts, the kids loved her. At least, they did once they’d stopped screaming.

The other parent helper – a woman Konto had seen at the school gates a few times, but never spoken to – sat at the front, reading a magazine with a level of concentration more suited to bomb disposal. It was the perfect force-field with which to block out all social interaction, and Konto was annoyed at himself for not thinking of it.

Nobosh nodded. “Well, there’ll always be garbage, I guess. Although, I’ll be honest, I always thought we had mechs for that sort of thing.”

Konto felt himself blush, just slightly, but pushed it away through sheer force of will. There was no way he’d let someone like Nobosh Tar embarrass him. “Mechs don’t do organics. We deal with those. Mechs do the recycling.”

Nobosh’s smile became a full-blown grin. “Well, great. Good for you. Then you should cope with Larry just fine.”

Konto looked down at the seat beside him, to find a wide-eyed boy gazing up at him. He had copper-colored hair, rosy red cheeks and – wow – was he fat. That probably wasn’t the ‘correct’ terminology, Konto knew, but the kid could definitely stand to lose a few pounds. Maybe a few dozen.

“Hey,” said Konto. He nodded curtly.

“Hey,” said Larry, then he opened his mouth and a cascade of colorful vomit splattered across Konto’s boots.

“Seriously, Larry, already?” sighed Nobosh. He reached into the locker above him and pulled out a half-used roll of paper towels. “Here, Konto,” he said, tossing the roll across the gap. “You might want to clean that up.”

* * *

It was one hour before the kids were taken, and Konto’s patience was wearing thin.

“In pairs. Two by two. Stay in line.”

Miss Tresno led the line, with the parent helpers spread out along it – Nobosh, magazine woman, then Konto at the back. Larry shuffled along just ahead of him, the only kid walking solo on account of the stench of vomit that hung around him like a toxic cloud. Eight times. He’d blown chunks eight times in forty minutes, each time – somehow – more spectacular than the last.

By the sixth or seventh time, Konto had expected the kid to start heaving up organs, but nope, the barf just kept coming. He did look dangerously close to popping out an eye during his last bout of violent retching, but his stomach seemed to be a bottomless pit of puke-fodder. The gift that kept on giving.

Deenia was near the front, somewhere between Miss Tresno and Nobosh. She was walking with … Juto? Juta? One of her friends, anyway.

He’d glanced at her during one of Larry’s vomit episodes and spotted a fleeting look of something like sympathy on her face, but it twisted into a sneer when she realized he’d spotted her, and she hadn’t looked at him again since.

Still, it was something.

The landing deck was strange, but familiar. He couldn’t remember ever visiting this particular station before, but he’d been on hundreds like it. It was an old converted mining station from back in the day. People like Nobosh – or people like the ones Nobosh desperately aspired to be – had bought them all for a handful of credits and turned them into shopping and entertainment centers. He’d never been a fan, but his job – his old job – had made them a necessary evil.

Still, that was a lifetime ago. Before Maris. Everything had changed then, and his old life was a relic of the past.

And yet, the barely noticeable humming of the deck below his feet brought him dangerously close to smiling.

An old woman stepped into his path, a bag slung across her shoulder. She was small, with wrinkled yellow skin like parchment paper. Unlikely to be dangerous, but that was the problem with old women – you could never tell. There was something troubling about this one, though, that he couldn’t quite place.

“You know what would be handy?” the woman asked, her eyes shimmering.

Konto shifted his weight onto his heels. His fists got ready, all by themselves. “For you to get out of my way?” he asked.

“An animal vac-pack,” said the woman. She waited, just a moment, to make sure he’d heard her, then nodded curtly and was on her way. Konto turned and watched her go.

“What was that about?” he muttered, then he hurried to close the gap behind Larry.

* * *

It was nine minutes before the kids were taken, and Konto was bored.

They had visited four toy shops in the past twenty minutes – four more than he’d ideally have liked – wasted several more minutes throwing credits in a fountain, and spent what felt like quite a long time waiting outside restrooms for Larry to stop throwing up.

Fortunately, they had now reached the actual purpose of the trip – the station’s one and only museum. It was the only museum in the entire sector in fact, this part of the galaxy not exactly renowned for its culture.

The exhibition Konto was keen to see – although he’d never mentioned that fact to Maris, or anyone else - was right at the start of the tour. He’d been disappointed by that. He would have enjoyed the anticipation of the build-up to it and, if he were honest, he felt it deserved to go at the end, like the headline act.

The tour guide – a reedy, disinterested woman with a long gray face and sunshine yellow hair – gestured to the glass display case behind her. Most of the kids, including Deenia, had wandered off to play with the interactive exhibits, leaving just a handful of children listening to the woman drone on. Konto and Nobosh stood at the back of the group, one of them listening in rapt attention, the other contemplating whether he’d do the guide or not and, if so, in which positions.

Maybe after a few drinks, Nobosh decided, or if the lights were low enough.

“This is the original battle armor worn by the bounty hunter-slash-vigilante known throughout the galaxy as the Magister.”

Nobosh snorted. “The Magister? Ooh, scary. You know, if you’re, like, nine years old.”

A flash of irritation flicked across Konto’s face, but he ignored his co-helper and concentrated on the presentation. Although ‘presentation’ was a generous description. The guide delivered the information as if she were reading it from a script no-one had bothered to show her until now. There was a soulless sort of roboticness to it, and a couple of the remaining kids wandered off rather than continue listening to it.

“No, it isn’t,” said Larry.

The woman blinked. “Huh?”

“It’s not the original armor,” Larry said. “The belt’s different, and the boots aren’t right. This is … I’d say … Mark Three. He improved the chest plating after his first fight with the Starbeast of Rognor. You can see where it’s been reinforced.”

Konto squinted and peered through the glass. “Huh,” he said. “He’s right.”

Larry looked back at Konto and smiled goofily. Nobosh rolled his eyes. “Yeah, he loves all that dorky stuff,” he said. Larry’s smile remained fixed in place, but his eyes betrayed him. He quickly faced front. Almost immediately, he spotted a poster on the wall. It showed the Magister in full armor. Below it, in a bold, dramatic typeface were the words: “Justice Strikes Like a Meteorite!”

“That’s his motto!” Larry announced. “I have that poster. That was his motto.”

“No, it wasn’t,” said Konto. “He never said that. That’s a myth.” He glanced around and shrugged. “I mean, that’s what I heard.”

“The Magister was responsible for the capture or death of over eight thousand known felons,” the guide continued, the tone of her voice somehow managing to make that total sound disappointing. “He is believed to have died in … er… the past. His final resting place has never been found.”

“Whoa!” Larry yelped. He pushed past the guide and pressed himself against the next display case. “Is that real?!”

“Please save all questions until the end,” said the guide, sighing audibly. “But yes, that is a genuine Magister arm blaster, retrieved after his battle with the Tholians.”

“Thalians,” said Konto and Larry, at exactly the same time.

“At least, I think it was the Thalians,” said Konto. “I might be wrong.”

Larry bounced up and down, jiggling with excitement. “Can I hold it? Can I hold it? Pleeeease!”

“Please save all questions until the end,” said the guide. “But no, you can’t.”

Larry jiggled some more, then stopped abruptly. He about-turned abruptly and his classmates, now painfully aware of what the expression on his face meant, quickly cleared a path.

“I think I’m gonna be sick,” he said, looking up at Konto.

Konto shot Nobosh a sideways glance, but Nobosh raised his hands and shook his head. “Really not my scene, dude. You mind? I think we passed a restroom right outside.”

Larry raced past them. Konto opened his mouth to protest, then decided against it. “Fine. I’ll go make sure he’s OK.”

Konto plodded out of the museum in time to see Larry disappear through the door of the restroom. Before he could follow, Deenia stepped into his path. “Is Larry OK?” she demanded.

“Fine,” said Konto. “Just travel sick.”

“But we’re not moving.”

“We are,” said Konto. “The station rotates at—”

“How come you’re taking care of him?” asked Deenia, cutting him short.

“Been asking myself the same question,” said Konto. He shrugged. “Someone has to.”

Deenia considered this for a moment. She glanced over to the door of the museum. Miss Tresno was ushering some children out from inside. Nobosh was behind her, laughing and chatting with magazine woman. Konto groaned. So the Magister stuff was the headline exhibit. And, it seemed, the only one.

“His dad’s a jerk,” said Deenia. Konto looked at her in surprise. Her features hardened as soon as he did. “I mean, and so are you,” she added, then she spun on the spot and joined her friend over by the fountain.

Konto shook his head and marched towards the restrooms, swallowing back his anger. It wasn’t Deenia’s fault. She’d been four years old when he’d entered her life. Before then, she’d had her mom all to herself, and Konto hadn’t exactly been a natural when it came to bonding with the girl. He’d never really dealt with kids before, and back then, he’d been preoccupied with the worry that his old job might catch up with him. He probably could have handled it better.

The restroom door slid aside as he approached, and the sound of retching echoed noisily from one of the cubicles.

Hwaaaaargh.

Rrroooouumf.

Bleeeeeurrghmmargh.

“Hey, Larry? You OK?” Konto asked. It was, given the gut-wrenching chorus of horror, probably a silly question. He stepped into the restrooms and the door slid closed behind him.

“Not really, Mr Garr,” Larry admitted.

Yeeeeaaarmmugh.

Hooffaashkaka.

Nnngggungkpumf.

“Well, you know, get it all out, I guess,” said Konto.

“Way ahead of you, Mr Garr.”

Hoosshkagurk.

Mrrraaauurrgubunk.

Pew! Pew!

Konto tensed. That last one had come from outside.

The cubicle hummed noisily as the toilet disintegrated the contents. The echo of the restrooms amplified the sound, drowning out any other noise from beyond the door.

Larry stumbled out of the cubicle, all red-faced and bleary-eyed. “Sorry about that, Mr Garr,” Larry began, but Konto held a hand up to cut him off, then gestured with a finger to his lips for Larry to be quiet.

Screaming.

Children screaming.

“—body does what we say, and no-one gets hurt.”

Konto reached for the button that would open the door, then thought better of it. Instead, he pressed both palms against the door itself and, with a grunt of effort, eased it open half an inch and peered out through the gap.

The kids were surrounded. A dozen or more armed figures formed a knot around them, the same number again forming a second perimeter around the first.

The assailants weren’t from any one race. They were a mish-mash of different species, different outfits, different guns. Pirates, Konto thought. Maybe Xandrie, or one of the local gangs.

Deenia sat huddled among her classmates, not screaming, but not far off. Miss Tresno had draped herself across as many of the children as she could, shielding them with her four arms. Even magazine woman was doing her bit, pulling two of the smaller kids towards her and cuddling them in close.

Nobosh stood alone at the fringes, his hands up. “Please, d-don’t hurt us,” he said, choking back a sob. “You want money? I have money.”

“Shut the fonk up,” hissed one of the … no, not gunmen. This one was weaponless, although his metal arms looked capable of doing as much damage as any blaster. Something about the way he held himself said ‘leader’. “We don’t want money. We’re not going to hurt anyone.”

Nobosh seemed to deflate in relief. “Oh, thank Kroysh,” he wheezed.

The metal-armed man grinned. “But we are going to take you all with us.”

The kids screamed as the assailants caught them by the arms, necks, throats and hair and began ushering them towards the elevator.

“Mr Garr? What’s happening?” Larry whispered.

Konto ignored him. He counted the hostage-takers. Twenty-six - thirteen male, nine female, four unknown. Twenty-five of them had blaster weapons, but less than a handful packed visible melee weapons, which ruled out pirates. A gang, then, and some of the rifles suggested big bucks, which made the Xandrie the most likely suspects.

Konto cursed inside his head, where the censorship functionality of his translator chip couldn’t sanitize it. He hated the Xandrie. Of course, everyone hated the Xandrie – even other members of the Xandrie – so that wasn’t exactly saying much. Konto, though, hated them more than most.

The crowds had scattered now. Konto watched the children being shoved into the elevator, and hoped the station’s security took their time. Worst case scenario was if a squad of those clowns turned up now and tried to intervene. It’d be a bloodbath.

Inside the elevator, Deenia stumbled, then turned around. For a moment, Konto thought that her eyes met his through the gap in the restroom door. To his surprise, he found himself longing to call to her, speak to her, to tell her everything was going to be OK, to tell her she’d be safe.

To tell her he would come for her.

But then the last of the children were shoved inside along with Miss Tresno and the two parent helpers. The Xandrie piled in, and the elevator door slid closed with a clunk.

Two

Konto threw aside the door and raced out into the plaza. Before the attack, it had been annoyingly busy, filled with throngs of people of all shapes and sizes. Most of the kids had gaped and whispered excitedly at each new species they spotted, but now the plaza was silent, aside from the occasional distant sob and the clatter of approaching footsteps.

“You there! Halt! On the ground!”

Konto turned to find three station security men running at him, shock-rods at the ready. They looked more capable than the type you usually found on stations like these, in that they were neither dangerously obese, nor deep into their twilight years.

“Captain, uh, Zarc,” said Konto, reading the name badge of the most senior guard. He had slate gray eyes, a downturned mouth, and a nose which had started life flat, then been pummelled considerably flatter. “We’ve got a problem. The Xandrie have abducted the school group I was—”

“On your knees!” barked Zarc, brandishing his shock-rod in a way that said, ‘I know how to use this’ without showing off about it. “Now!”

Konto frowned. “What? No. Listen, I—”

“I said, on your knees!” Zarc roared. He lunged with the prod. Without appearing to move, Konto dodged. He caught the guard by the wrist, twisted just enough, and the weapon clattered to the floor.

“And I said you’re not listening,” Konto spat back.

There was a snikt from floor level. Konto looked down as a stubby-yet-sharp blade slid from the front of the guard’s boot. “Wait, those aren’t…” Konto began, then it clicked. Not the right sort of boots, not the right sort of guards. Xandrie.

He blocked the kick with his foot, then slammed down, shattering the man’s ankle. One of the other two jabbed with his shock-rod. Konto weaved, spun, and slammed a knife hand strike into the guy’s throat that snapped his head forwards and dropped him to the floor.

Konto kicked the third fake-guard in the kneecap, dropping him before he could attack. The guard went down in a babbling mess of squeals and snot, then a right cross turned him quiet and limp.

The second man was rolling on the floor, wheezing and choking on his own rapidly-swelling throat. That left only Zarc, or whatever his real name was. Konto made his presence felt by pressing his boot down on the man’s shattered ankle. To Konto’s immense disappointment, the Xandrie didn’t scream.

“What do you want with the children?” Konto asked.

“Who are you?” Zarc hissed. Konto pressed harder, and a yelp burst from the Xandrie’s mouth.

“I ask the questions. What do you want with the children?”

“Whoa, Mr Garr! That was awesome!”

Konto glanced back over his shoulder. Larry stood behind him, his mouth wide, his eyes flicking between the fallen men, before settling back on Konto. “Seriously, Mr Garr, that was, like, the third greatest thing I’ve ever seen in my life!” Larry yelped. He pointed at one of the fake guard. “What’s that thing?”

Konto turned in time to see the man whose knee was currently pointing his lower leg the wrong way flip the switch on a grenade. “We are the Xandrie!” the man screeched, then he dropped the explosive on the floor and screwed his eyes shut.

“Larry, move!” Konto boomed, turning and hurling himself at the boy. He swept him up and ran for the only cover within reach.

The water of the fountain was icy cold as they plunged into it. Light reflected off the shiny credits at the bottom of the water, so they looked like they were all winking in turn.

Konto clamped a hand over Larry’s mouth and held his breath. Three seconds since activation. Four. Five.

Larry’s eyes bulged and he struggled against the grip, but Konto held him tightly. Seven seconds. Eight.

Fonk, how long was the timer on this thing?

Larry’s struggling became weaker, and Konto bobbed them back to the surface. Larry gasped in a lungful of air, while Konto peered over the fountain’s edge and saw the three Xandrie helping each other to their feet. The grenade was still on the floor, and Konto quietly cursed himself. A fake-out. Or maybe a dud and the Xandrie had just got—

The explosion tore through the gangsters like fire and fast-moving shrapnel through three fleshy sacks of bone and organs. Konto pulled Larry below the water. It rapidly turned red around them as guts and limbs and forty-percent of a head rained down.

The shockwave followed a split-second later. The fountain’s low walls broke with a series of crunches that managed to be ear-splitting, even underwater. Although, Konto noticed, they weren’t underwater anymore, as it was all rushing out through the cracks and spilling onto the plaza. The few smoldering remains of the Xandrie that hadn’t been catapulted through the air at incredible speeds hissed faintly at the water extinguished them.

Konto jumped to his feet, pulling Larry along with him. “Larry! You OK?” he barked.

Larry wheezed. “Be better once you put me down.”

Realizing he was holding the boy a clear three feet off the floor, Konto lowered him, then let him drop the last few inches.

“Never sneak up on me like that again, Larry!” Konto warned, thrusting a finger in the boy’s face.

“Why?” Larry asked.

Konto hesitated. “What? What do you mean, ‘why’? Look.” Water poured from his sleeves as he gestured at the carnage around them. The floor was designed to withstand carelessly discharged mining explosives, so it was lightly scorched and nothing more. The museum’s windows had all shattered, though, and the front of the restrooms was painted in chunky streaks of red. “You see what happens, Larry? You see what happens when you sneak up on me?”

Konto realized that Larry wasn’t listening. His hair was standing on end and his clothes had inflated as warm air blasted upwards from within the neck.

A moment later, the gust stopped. Larry ran his fingers through his fluffy hair and smiled. “Sorry, couldn’t hear you,” he said. “What did you say?”

“How are you dry?” Konto asked, looking him up and down.

“Self-drying clothes,” said Larry. “Don’t yours do that?”

Konto shifted slightly. He squelched. “Guess,” he said.

Larry puffed out his cheeks. “Yes?” he said, the inflection rising at the end.

Konto sighed. “Guess again, Larry.”

“Oh,” said Larry. “You should really get some dry clothes, Mr Garr. You could catch cold. Or your toes might go wrinkly, or—”

“I’m fine, Larry,” said Konto, turning. He squelched again. It was noisy. Stealth would be out of the question.

“Wrinkly toes, Mr Garr. Wrinkly toes.”

Konto sighed. “This isn’t a retail deck. There’s nowhere to get replacements.”

He had barely made it two paces closer to the elevator when Larry spoke again. “Hey, Mr Garr.”

Konto muttered below his breath, then turned. “What?”

Larry tucked his hands behind his back and rocked on his heels. “I know where you can get some clothes.”

* * *

Konto stood before the display case, his reflection in the glass aligned almost perfectly with the costume inside.

No, not ‘costume’. That’s what the press had insisted on calling it. The armor.

Triple-galvanized neutronium alloy plating over a treated Gronth-hide jumpsuit. Tough, yet flexible. Sturdy enough to resist blaster pistol file, but light enough not to affect speed or agility.

The Mark Five was the pinnacle, of course, but even that was really just a tweaked version of the Mark Three with a few more pockets and a bit more juice in the shock gauntlets.

“This? I don’t know, Larry,” Konto said.

Larry snorted. “Ha! No way, you’re way too fat for that.”

Konto looked at the armor’s waist, then patted his own. Much as he hated to admit it, the kid had a point. Larry gestured to a sales counter in the corner, where a tall, heavily-built guide was cowering in fear. “I thought maybe that guy.”

A brief, one-sided negotiation later, Konto pulled on the guide’s shirt. It was a little on the large side, but he rolled up the sleeves and tucked it into his borrowed pants, and decided it would do the job.

“What are we going to do now? Go after them?” Larry asked.

“We? We’re not doing anything, Larry. It’s too dangerous.”

Larry nodded grimly. “You’re right, Mr Garr. We need to find security. Real security, I mean.

“No,” said Konto. “I’m going to get them back. Me. Not us. Not you. Me.”

Larry frowned. “You? How can you get them back, Mr Garr? I mean, no offence, but don’t you take out the garbage?”

Konto wriggled his feet back into his wet boots. He’d tried wearing the guard’s shoes, but they were ridiculously huge and his feet kept sliding around inside them.

“That’s right, Larry. I take out the garbage. And that’s what I’m going to do.”

“The arm blaster!” Larry yelped. He pressed his hands against the display case, as if he could reach right through the glass. “We should take the arm blaster!”

Konto started to shake his head, but then stopped. If things went wrong – and they would - the blaster could come in handy. Besides, it wasn’t like he was stealing it, exactly.

“Good idea, Larry,” he said, retrieving a fragment of the buckled doorframe from the floor. “Stand back.”

Konto hefted the metal in his hands a few times as Larry hurriedly jumped back, then he swung it with all his might.

CLUNG.

The metal vibrated in his hand, shaking his entire skeleton. The glass remained intact, the blow not leaving so much as a scratch.

Konto gritted his teeth and waited for the vibrations to stop. Larry, meanwhile, turned to the guide, who was now sitting on the floor in Konto’s dripping-wet clothes.

“Hey, can we get the arm blaster please?” he asked.

The guide raised his eyes to Larry. He looked across to Konto. He shrugged. “Sure,” he said. “Why not?”

Larry watched in a hushed, reverend silence as the guide opened the case and withdrew the arm blaster. He held it out to Konto, who hesitated for a moment, then took it. Konto turned the weapon over and over in his hands, taking it in.

“You put it on your arm,” said Larry. “Here, I’ll show you.”

“I know how to use it,” said Konto.

Larry raised his eyebrows. “Really? Well, I’ve got a whole datastack of schematics for the Magister’s equipment, so I think I know best.”

He reached for the arm blaster, but Konto raised his out of his reach. “Oh, you think?” Konto said, slipping the dented metal cuff over his arm. He flexed his fingers and the cuff hummed, just briefly and only faintly, then a series of pinhead-sized green lights illuminated along his inner wrist. It took all his willpower not to blast something, just for the fun of it.

But the Xandrie had Deenia, and ‘fun’ wasn’t on the agenda.

“OK. I mean, I’d have done it better,” said Larry, shrugging. “But yeah, that’s how you switch it on. If you need to know anything else, just ask me.”

“You’re staying here with this guy,” said Konto.

“What?” said Larry.

“What?” said the guide, whose day was already bad enough, thanks very much, without babysitting duty being added on top.

“You’ll be safe here,” Konto told him.

The guide seemed to brighten at that. “Will I be safe, too?” he asked.

Konto nodded. “They got what they came for. They wanted the kids. I don’t know why, but I’m going to find out.” He shrugged. “Or I might not ask. Never really cared about the ‘why’. But my point is, nothing’s going to happen to you here, Larry. You’ll be safe.”

A blaster bolt erupted through the guide’s chest, spattering Larry with his blood. Larry blinked rapidly for a few seconds, then threw up. Konto caught him, mid-puke, and spun him to the floor just as another bolt of energy streaked overhead and ricocheted off the case containing the armor. Konto was quietly pleased that the glass didn’t break even with a direct blaster strike, but then the air above him was filled with scorching beams of energy, and the museum echoed with the high-pitched pewp-pewpews of a rapid-fire blaster rifle.

Three

“I don’t think we’re safe here, Mr Garr!” cried Larry, ducking and covering his head with his hands as the blaster fire streaked by.

Konto caught the boy by the arm and swung him behind the armor case. “Stay down!” he hissed, then he waited for a break in the gunfire and jumped to his feet. A bulky Xandrie with oversized pecs and an undersized waistcoat stood just beyond the shattered museum frontage, hitting the cooling flush on his rifle.

Seizing his chance, Konto raised his hand, took aim with the arm-blaster, and unleashed Hell.

At least, that was his intention. There was no satisfying thunk of the blaster round ejecting from the chamber, no frantic scream of the energy bolt tearing through the air, or explosive ker-splat of innards becoming outtards.

Instead, a small red LED light illuminated somewhere near the front, and an in-built speaker emitted a tinny-sounding poo-poo.

“What the fonk?” Konto muttered, gazing at the device in horror.

“I think it’s fake, Mr Garr,” Larry whispered.

“Oh, really, Larry?” Konto spat. “You don’t—”

The Xandrie’s rifle stuttered into life again. Konto spun on his heel and took cover behind the reinforced glass as round after round ricocheted off it.

“Shizz,” he spat, searching frantically for an exit. There was only one door in and out of the place, though, and it was currently blocked by several hundred pounds of heavily armed bad guy.

“I suggest you boths come out, ya?” called the Xandrie, easing back on the trigger. “Or I blow you boths to bits, I think.”

“What do you want?” Konto shouted out to him.

“I want you boths to come out. I think I am already saying this.”

Konto muttered under his breath. “Why?”

There was another spray of blaster fire. Larry let out a whimper. Konto couldn’t exactly blame the kid.

After a few seconds, the shooting stopped again.

“Fine. If you must know, we just want the boy. That is all. Send him out, and maybe I won’t be shooting you, ya? How does that sound? Maybe you just send him out, and he and I walk away, and then you can go home, and not be dead. Ya? Is good idea, ya?”

Konto looked down at the useless blaster on his arm. He looked at the boy, cowering at his feet. “Stand up, Larry,” he said.

Larry, to his credit, didn’t argue. He stood up. “You’ve got a plan. Right, Mr Garr?” he whispered.

Konto nodded, but didn’t meet the boy’s eye. “I do,” he said, then he placed a hand on Larry’s back and pushed him out of cover and into the sights of the Xandrie. “I’m sorry.”

“Excellent! I knew we could be coming to an agreement,” said the Xandrie, the words coming out almost as a giggle. “Come to me, boy,” he said, beckoning Larry closer. “Come. Ya? Come.”

Larry’s wide eyes gazed up at Konto. “Mr Garr?”

“Go, Larry,” Konto said, sliding the hunk of metal junk of his arm. “You’re not going to hurt him, are you?”

“We don’t want to. All we want is the ransom,” said the gangster. “But if anyone tries to mess with us, we will fonk this kid up, and all his little buddies, too. Because we are the Xandrie, and no-one messes with—”

The arm-blaster cracked him between the eyes. His nose somehow succeeded in both exploding and imploding at the same time, and as he began to topple backwards, his hands grasped for something to hold him up.

All he found was the trigger of his rifle. Konto threw himself at Larry, knocking the boy aside just as a staccato burst of blaster fire drowned out the gangster’s groans. There was a sizzle of flesh, a brief hiss from Konto as one of the bolts scorched his ribcage, and then the Xandrie hit the ground with a thud.

Silence followed. Larry cowered, hunched-over, Konto draped protectively across him. Several seconds passed while they both figured out if they were still alive and, if so, how many pieces they were in.

“Thanks, Mr Garr,” Larry whispered, once they’d both come to the same conclusions – ‘yes’ and ‘one’.

“No problem, kid,” said Konto.

“I mean, it would’ve been nice if you hadn’t sent me out to him in the first place …”

“I needed intel. This is a ransom gig. That’s good news.” Konto stood up and took a half-second to check his wound. The heat from the blast hard torn him open, then sealed him shut. It probably hurt, but not enough for him to pay attention to it.

“Everyone’s been kidnapped, Mr Garr,” said Larry, quite slowly, as if breaking bad news to an in-denial idiot. “That doesn’t seem like very good news.”

“It is,” Konto said. “Ransom means they’ll keep them alive. This could have been terrorism-related, they might have been on a slave-gathering expedition, they might have been on a food hunt for a Drickon Pus Queen …”

Larry looked like he might be about to throw up again. Konto quickly changed the subject. “Point is, a ransom gig is a pretty positive result, all things considered. It means they’re alive, and it means we get them back.”

Larry’s eyes lit up with delight, and Konto quickly realized his mistake. “I. I can get them back.”

“We! You said ‘we’, Mr Garr!”

“I mean I.”

“Uh-uh, you can’t take it back!” Larry said.

Konto grunted and headed for the exit. The Xandrie was flat on his back, arms and legs splayed wide, groaning in his sleep. “Well, I can take it back, actually, and I am,” Konto said. “Slip of the tongue. I’m going to leave you somewhere safe.”

“You mean safe like this place was safe?” Larry asked, very deliberately looking in the direction of the dead guide.

Konto stooped and retrieved the Xandrie’s blaster rifle. The charge icon was flashing red. Barely enough left for a single shot. Still, that was all he needed.

“Larry, shut up and look over there,” Konto said, gesturing to the broken fountain.

Larry did as he was told. “What am I supposed to be seeing, Mr Garr?” he asked.

Behind him, a single shot rang out. The Xandrie stopped groaning.

“Doesn’t matter,” said Konto, appearing behind him and steering him away. “Now come on. Let’s go shopping.”

* * *

The thing with a station this size was that it operated much like a large city. Despite the carnage and chaos on the culture deck, just a few decks below, life continued as normal.

Konto stood at the counter of the store, an array of weapons and gadgets spread out before him. On the other side of the counter, an officious-looking semi-transparent orange blob peered over the top of his half-moon glasses and sucked disapprovingly on his rubbery bottom lip.

“Come on, I’ve got the money, you can see the credit balance, just take it and give me the guns.”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that, sir,” said the blob. A cheerfully-designed name badge lodged into one of the folds of his neck identified him as ‘Gump’. He was, allegedly, ‘happy to help’, although this was not currently in any way apparent from his attitude or behaviour. “The scan reports all large-scale purchases must be authorized by …”

“My wife, I know, you said, but she forgot to change it, is all,” Konto said. “I don’t go off-planet much, she does most of the shopping … what can I say? I really need these guns.”

“Mr Garr?”

“Not now, Larry.”

One of Gump’s eyes flitted down to the weapons, while the other remained fixed on Konto. “All of them, sir? It’s rather a lot.”

“Yes, all of them!” Konto snapped, then he squeezed the bridge of his nose and exhaled slowly. “OK, so with my purchase limit, what exactly can I get?”

Gump’s other eye joined the first in studying the weapons.

Several seconds passed.

Gump clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth a few times, then reached under the counter and produced a small folding knife. “You could have this, sir.”

Konto stared down at the little red handle, the blade tucked neatly inside. “What?! That’s it?” he asked. “Seriously?”

“Mr Garr?”

“Not now, Larry.”

“Well, no, not just that. There is one other option,” said Gump, tapping a pudgy finger against his chin as he thought.

Konto’s eyebrows raised. “Oh?”

Gump nodded, then set a second folding knife on the counter, next to the first. This one had a blue handle.

“You can have either,” the shopkeeper said. He raised an index finger. “But not both.”

Konto gritted his teeth. His fists clenched, but relaxed when Gump very deliberately reached for the ‘panic’ button.

“Fine,” Konto growled, snatching up the red knife. “I’ll take this one.”

“Mr Garr?”

Konto’s temper got the better of him. “What is it, Larry?”

“I could pay for them.”

Konto blinked. “What?”

“I don’t have a credit limit. I can pay for them.”

Konto’s eyes narrowed, darting from side to side while he decided if he could let a seven-year-old pay for his arsenal. It didn’t take him long to make his mind up.

“OK, then let’s do that.”

Gump sucked in his bottom lip.

“Oh, what now?” Konto demanded. “Does he need permission from his wife, too?”

“I’m afraid the young sir is not old enough to purchase weaponry.”

“But he isn’t purchasing weaponry,” Konto pointed out. “I’m purchasing weaponry, he’s just paying for it.”

“I’m afraid that’s not how the law sees it, sir,” said Gump. “My hands are tied.”

“Come on—”

“My hands are tied. Were they not, I would be delighted to be of assistance, but they are, and I can’t. My hands are tied.”

Konto glared at the shopkeeper for several long moments, then he picked up a phone-sized gadget from the counter. “Fine. Is he old enough to buy this?”

Gump nodded. “Would you like me to wrap it for you, sir?”

Konto briefly contemplated wrapping his fingers around the shopkeeper’s bloated neck. “You know what? I’ll pass. Pay the man, Larry,” he said, flicking the switch that turned the device on. He turned to leave, paused, then turned back and gestured to Larry. “Oh, and, uh, I don’t suppose I could leave him here with you for—”

“No, sir,” said Gump. “You categorically cannot.”

* * *

Konto strode out of the store into the throngs of shoppers, tapping at the screen of his new device with such force little round rainbows bloomed under the glass. He mumbled and cursed as he walked, and barely heard Larry as he dodged through the crowds, hurrying to catch up.

“I guess this means you’ll have to take me with you, right Mr Garr? Huh, Mr Garr? Right?”

“What? No, Larry,” said Konto. “You can’t come, and that’s all there is to it.”

“But—”

“It’s too dangerous, Larry. And I work alone.”

“I thought you worked with the other garbage guys?”

Konto shook his head, just briefly. “What? No, I mean, yeah. I do. But I prefer to work alone.”

“You wouldn’t even know I was there, Mr Garr,” Larry whispered. “I can be very quiet. Listen, I won’t say anything for the next five minutes. OK? OK, Mr Garr? OK?”

“OK, Larry! Kroysh!” Konto snapped. “You still can’t come, but I absolutely will not complain if you just stay quiet for a while.”

Larry fell into step behind him and managed to keep his mouth shut for almost three seconds. “I guess your wife doesn’t let you have much money, huh? Why is that? Doesn’t she trust you?”

Konto scowled, his eyes still fixed on the screen. “What? Of course she trusts me!”

“Are you sure? Then why doesn’t she let you spend her money?”

“No, it’s not … I just don’t often … And what do you mean, ‘her money’? I have money. I have lots of money.”

“From collecting garbage?”

“No, from … I mean, yes. What? It doesn’t matter,” said Konto. The device bleeped once in his hand and he let out a little grunt of relief. “She’s alive.”

“Your wife? I should hope so, Mr Garr, otherwise you’re having a really tough day.”

“Deenia,” said Konto. “She’s alive. And I know where she is.”

Larry stood on his tiptoes to see the screen. There was an outline of the station, with a blinking red dot somewhere near the middle. “Pretty much where I thought,” Konto said. “Midway between landing decks, deep near the center of the station so no-one can attack from space, but with an easy route to escape pods in case things go wrong.”

“Is that Deenia?” Larry asked, gesturing to the blinking icon.

Konto nodded. “She has a tracking device.”

“Cool. She never mentioned it,” said Larry.

“Because she doesn’t know it’s there,” Konto said. He shrugged. “Old habits die hard, I guess.”

Larry frowned. “Huh?”

“Hmm? Nothing. Point is, we know where she is, so we … so I can go and get her.”

“Wait. You put a tracking device on her without her knowing?” Larry gasped. He winced. “Ooh, she’s not going to like that.”

Konto shrugged. “Meh, she already hates me, and it might save her life, so …”

“Who hates you?”

“Deenia.”

“Huh?” Larry snorted. “Since when?”

Konto stopped walking so abruptly Larry smacked straight into the back of him. The shoppers around them tutted their annoyance at having to change direction a fraction in order to walk around them.

“Wait a minute,” Konto muttered, then he wheeled around and peered down at the boy. “They already have twenty-four kids. Plenty of scope for ransom. Why’d they need twenty-five?”

Larry’s wide eyes blinked in confusion. “Huh?”

“They came for you, specifically for you. The returned to the scene of the abduction so they could …” The truth clicked. “So they could get the rich kid. You’re the one they were after in the first place.”

“I was?” said Larry, grinning proudly. His face fell again, almost immediately. “Wait. I was?”

“I think so. Or maybe your old man blabbed about how much he’s worth and they decided they wanted you, too. I don’t know.” Konto sighed. “Either way, they’ll be back for you.” He sighed again. He felt the situation warranted at least two, with the possibility of more to come. “Which means you’d better stick with me.”

Larry jumped up and punched a fist in the air. “Woo-hoo!”

“Halt!” crackled a robotic voice.

Larry attempted to freeze in mid-air, but the station’s artificial gravity put a stop to that idea. With his legs locked and rigid, he landed heavily, and Konto had to catch him to stop him toppling over.

Konto winced as something sharp pricked the back of his neck. He spun quickly and saw a shiny silver sphere drifting away from him through the crowds. “Ow. What the fonk was that?”

Larry didn’t move for a second, then he shifted his eyes left and right, blinked a few times, and looked in the direction Konto was glaring. The ball floated off at around Konto’s chest height, weaving through the throngs.

“Oh, I thought it was another bad guy,” Larry said. “That? That’s just a bioscanner.”

Konto touched the back of his neck. A tiny droplet of blood smeared across his fingers. “They’re new,” he muttered, then the significance of what Larry had said filtered through. “Wait. Bioscanner?”

Larry nodded. “Yeah. The guy in the shop probably called them, what with you acting so suspicious and shouting at him and all that stuff. It just takes a DNA sample to check you’re who you say you are.”

Konto’s face paled.

“You’ll be fine, Mr Garr,” said Larry. He placed the back of his hand at the side of his mouth and whispered theatrically. “Unless you’ve got any deep, dark secrets you’re trying to hide.”

Konto stared at Larry in silence for a full two-thirds of a second, then he was off, charging through the crowds, using the full weight of his bulky frame to knock them aside. “Out of the way! Move! Coming through!” he bellowed, shouldering through a pack of chattering high-haired Thoorians and sending them sprawling across the floor.

He vaulted a Snurk, slid between the legs of a Golleeat, and gave two elderly Vaporoids a wide berth. The bioscanner glided around a corner up ahead, and Konto picked up the pace. It was smaller than his head and moved effortlessly through the crowds. The shoppers, in their rush to get out of Konto’s path, seemed to be making life even more difficult for him. They criss-crossed in front of him, tripping over each other in their hurry to not be there.

Konto skidded around the corner into a wide shopping precinct that stretched ahead of him as far as the eye could see. He stopped, his head snapping left and right as he searched for the silver ball. The crowds were thicker here, an ever-moving tangle of heads and arms and tentacles and tails and Kroysh knew what else.

There! He spotted it at just above head height forty or so feet away, moving away from him. It had slowed to a crawl now, encumbered by the tightly-packed throngs around it. Konto set off after it, pushing through forcefully, but not enough to send everyone scattered in panic again.

He closed on it quickly, until there was just one obstacle in his path – a large, wolf-like Greyx who plodded along slowly, examining its clawed fingernails.

“Coming through,” Konto said, shouldering past the Greyx.

“Hey, watch it,” she protested in a petulant voice that reminded Konto a lot of Deenia.

With a lunge, Konto grabbed for the ball. It was only then that he realized his mistake. He was not holding a bioscanner. Instead, he was clutching the metal skull of a hulking, seven-feet-tall robot.

No, not robot. It turned, revealing patches of its face had survived intact, including its eyes. They narrowed angrily as the metal jaw twisted into a sneer. “Can I help you, man?”

“Hey, who’s this guy?” asked a smaller humanoid in a brown leather jacket. A squidgy green blob sat on his shoulder, pulsing gently, its two eyes looking Konto up and down.

“Uh, sorry,” said Konto. He moved to turn away, then stopped as the blob formed the shape of an arrow pointing left. Konto looked that direction, and there was the bioscanner, swooshing through the crowd, heading towards a door marked Security.

Konto glanced back at the shapeshifting green thing. “Thanks,” he said, then he was running again, shouldering, elbowing and pushing his way after the thing, closing the gap, but not closing it fast enough. The sphere had reached a completely pedestrian-free area around the security entrance. It deviated slightly, making for the security panel built into the wall which would allow it to open the door.

Still running, Konto took the knife from his pocket and unfolded it. One chance. He had just one chance.

Catching the knife by the blade, he leapt into the air and hurled the weapon with all his might. It whistled as it flipped end over end above the heads of the oblivious shoppers. There was a satisfying thunk and an even more pleasing series of angry sparks as the blade buried itself deep in the control panel, shorting its circuitry.

The ball drifted to a stop and examined the damaged panel, rotating ever so slightly on its axis as it looked the damage over. By the time it figured out what had happened and turned, Konto was on it. He pulled it to his chest, forced his fingers into the first available join in the bioscanner’s outer casing, and pulled with all his might.

His muscles strained. The thin edges of the metal plating cut into his fingers. He gritted his teeth, hissed through them, and reminded himself how much rested on him pulling this thing apart.

With a screech, the metal casing bent back. Konto thrust a hand inside, bunched it into a fist, then ripped out a tangle of wiring. The sphere became heavier as its anti-grav capabilities shut down. Konto let it clang to the floor, then stomped down on it a few times, for good measure.

Once the bioscanner was in a sufficiently large number of pieces, he fished around in the debris until he found what he was looking for. A tiny glass container sat nestled in a mess of circuitry, an even tinier droplet of red suspended in an anti-grav field inside.

Konto held the vial up to the light, nodded, then crushed it between his thumb and forefinger. He sucked the blood smear from his fingertips, making sure there was no trace of it left behind.

“That was close,” he muttered.

And it was at that point that he noticed three things.

The first was the wailing of an alarm.

The second was the squad of Zertex shock-troopers shoving their way through the crowds in a really rather determined manner.

“Uh-oh, Larry. We better move,” he said.

And that was when he noticed the third thing.

“Oh, shizz,” Konto whispered. “Larry!”

Four

The shock-troops were approaching from the left, so Konto went right, lowering his head as he slipped back into the now panicked crowds. Zertex was the government for vast swathes of the galaxy, including this sector, and their soldiers weren’t known to worry too much about little issues like collateral damage.

Shock-troopers were low level grunts, but a particular brand of low level grunts who didn’t simply not care about the concept of civilian casualties, but actively encouraged it. Their thinking – although that was a generous description of the process – was that everyone had the potential to be a threat to security at some point, and while in an ideal galaxy the crime would come before the punishment, the actual order those two things happened in was, ultimately, merely a technicality.

Konto had dealt with guys like these before, but rarely unarmed. Had they been anything but shock-troops, he could have explained the situation to them, maybe even got them to help. Unless he went in fighting, though, this lot would put him down before he’d opened his mouth.

Going right took him back to where he’d left Larry. He was moving with the crowd this time, as everyone hurried away from the approaching shock-troops. Konto crossed the flow until a group of hat-wearing women were between him and the Zertex squad, then risked a glance back. To his relief, they hadn’t spotted him.

In fact, they didn’t seem to be heading his way at all. Instead, they were pushing off to Konto’s left. He glanced along their projected route and saw the cyborg, Greyx and humanoid-with-blob hurrying away.

For a moment, Konto would have sworn the little blob sprouted an arm and waved at him, but then they were gone, lost in the crowd.

Konto pressed on, back around the corner, back in the direction of the gun shop. The crowds had been thinner here earlier, but now that the shock-troopers had spooked them, everyone was flooding here from the main plaza, and the place was filling rapidly.

“Larry!” Konto called. He ducked, searching for the boy through the sea of bodies and appendages. “Larry, where are you?”

He heard the shout right at the edge of his hearing, mostly smothered by the hubbub of the shoppers around him. “Mr Garr, help!”

Spinning, Konto searched for the source of the sound, but his view was blocked by heads and hair and hats in all direction. “Shizz,” he hissed, then he roared at the top of his voice: “Grenade! Everyone down!”

Screams split the air all around him, but the shoppers, who were all versed in what do in the event of a terrorist attack, and who were already on edge thanks to the shock-troopers – threw themselves to the floor, covering their delicate parts with their less delicate parts, and praying to whichever god or gods they believed in for protection.

Only a few people didn’t drop. Konto spotted Larry at once, kicking and struggling in the grip of a red-skinned, lizard-like Xandrie. Another of the gangsters stood with them, frantically jabbing at the ‘call’ button of an elevator. This one was smaller, with blue skin, a blaster pistol and what looked to be a whip coiled up on his belt.

Clearly deciding the elevator wasn’t going to turn up any time soon, the two Xandrie headed for a door leading to the stairs. Konto hopped onto the armored back of a cowering shopper, then gave chase, using the larger members of the crowd as stepping-stones.

He arrived at the door several seconds behind the gangsters and stumbled through. A hail of blaster fire tore down at him from a gap in the stairwell above. Konto threw himself towards the steps and raced up, two at a time, sticking close to the walls to avoid the blasts.

“I’m coming, Larry!”

A grenade clinked down the steps and came to a stop on the landing right ahead of him. Diving for it, Konto snatched up the explosive and hurled it down the stairwell. It erupted a second later, filling the air with smoke and fire and noise and heat.

Coughing, and half-blinded, Konto staggered up the steps. He couldn’t hear his footsteps. He couldn’t hear anything, in fact, aside from the high-pitched eeeeeee the explosion had left ringing in his ears.

He rounded the corner and began up the next flight. He was almost at the top when something snapped tight around his throat and yanked him forwards off his feet. He hit the metal steps hard, then the whip that had wrapped around his neck tightened further, dragging him up onto the landing above.

Konto tried to grab for the rope, but a boot crunched against the side of his head, spinning him onto his back. The smaller Xandrie stood over him, sneering as he raised his foot up, then brought it sharply down.

With a wheeze of effort, Konto caught the boot and twisted. The Xandrie’s sneer became a wide-eyed look of horror as his knee and ankle both popped, one after the other. Babbling, the gangster reached for his blaster, but Konto caught hold of the whip and jerked it, pulling the off-balance Xandrie towards him.

With practiced timing, Konto angled his head so the man’s nose would meet the top of it on the way down. Blood sprayed. Sobs echoed. With the whip now loose, Konto flicked it free, twisted it around the Xandrie’s neck, and pulled.

The man’s eyes bulged, just inches from Konto’s own. His mouth flapped open and closed, desperately gagging for air as his own whip cut deep into his windpipe. His color changed from a pale blue to a troubling purple as his eyes went from bulging to bloodshot to glassy and still.

With a shove, Konto pushed the body off him, grabbed the blaster and hurried up the stairs. His splayed fingers traced along the wall, helping keep him balanced. Between the explosion, the strangling and the kick, his head was scrambled, but there was no time to stop and recover.

He made it three more flights of stairs before the lizard-thing hit him like a charging bull, smashing him face-first into the wall.

Instinctively, Konto fired an elbow behind him. It found its target. Once. Twice. The lizard-thing grunted, then drove a spiked fist into Konto’s lower back, knocking the wind from him. Konto’s head was pulled backwards, then – bang – the wall came up to meet him again. He raised his right arm so his hand was beside his right ear, trying to aim behind him with the blaster pistol, but the lizard-thing caught his wrist and pulled, and Konto hissed as his arm was wrenched out of its socket.

As he was pulled backwards off his feet, he caught just the briefest glimpse of a scaly red fist coming down, right before it smashed into the center of his chest. Blood burst as a bubble on his lips and he hit the floor, darkness rushing in from the edges of his vision.

Over the ringing in his ears he heard Larry cry out. He forced his eyes open and tried to lift his right arm. There was a grinding sensation in his shoulder which brought enough pain with it to push back the grogginess, but the arm itself was useless. That was disappointing.

Konto took stock. He was partly blind, mostly deaf, barely able to breathe, and only fifty percent of his arms were functional. That was the bad news.

He was also angry. Very angry, in fact. Angrier than he had been in a long, long time. That was also bad news.

But not for him.

The lizard-thing was halfway up the next flight of stairs when he heard the voice spitting at him from below. It was deep and gravelly, like the sound of two rocks grinding together.

“Is that the best you got?”

The Xandrie’s yellow eyes widened in surprise, but it didn’t last long. Dropping Larry, it hurled itself at the now-standing Konto, claws extending, tail whipping as it leaped towards him.

Konto side-stepped and the lizard-thing landed heavily beside him. As it spun, he thrust the three middle fingers of his left hand into its eye with enough force to make it shriek so loudly even Konto could hear it above the ringing sound.

It slashed furiously with its claws. Konto ducked, then struck again at the other eye, even harder this time. The Xandrie stumbled backwards, flailing wildly, blinded. Konto thought about reaching for the blaster, but decided against it. This thing had hurt him, and he couldn’t let that stand.

“I know a hundred different ways to kill you,” he growled, flexing the fingers of his left hand. Something that wasn’t quite a smile, but wasn’t too far off played across his lips. “Pick a number.”

Five

A few minutes later, Konto grimaced as his shoulder clicked back into place and pain spread like fire across his chest. He was sitting on a step several decks above where the lizard-thing’s body now lay. Larry stood on the landing below, gazing up at him.

Larry had spent a solid two minutes vomiting after Konto’s fight with the lizard. Although Konto had warned him to turn away and not look, some of the noises appeared to have been … troubling for the lad, although Larry insisted it was all the jiggling and shaking of being carried that had brought on his latest puke fest.

Now, his eyes watery and his face red, Larry just stared at Konto, like he was seeing him for the first time.

Konto raised his right arm and bunched the hand into a fist a few times. It hurt, but then so did much of the rest of him, so that wasn’t too big a problem. The ringing in his ears had faded to background noise, and there was only a faint explosion-shaped imprint behind his eyes when he blinked. Now that his arm was back where it should be and his lungs had resumed most of their normal duties, he was good to go.

“Justice strikes like a meteorite.”

Larry’s voice was soft and shaken, but it echoed up and down the stairs, all the same.

Konto looked down at him. “What?”

“You’re not a garbage man, are you, Mr Garr?”

The question hung in the air for several seconds.

“You know I am, Larry,” said Konto. “You’ve seen me take away your trash.”

“No, I mean … Maybe you are now,” said Larry. “But you weren’t always, were you?”

Konto considered the question. “Kid, I can honestly say that I have always been in the business of taking out garbage, one way or another.”

“It’s just … that thing you said. About a hundred ways to hurt you, and picking a number. I have that on a poster on my wall.”

“Huh. Really?” said Konto, grimacing slightly as he used his right arm to pull himself upright. “Funny coincidence. Now come on.”

He turned towards the top of the stairs.

“You’re him, aren’t you, Mr Garr?”

Konto stopped.

“You’re the Magister.”

For a long time, Konto said nothing.

“The Magister’s dead, Larry.”

“But—”

“He’s dead, Larry,” Konto said, and the tone of his voice made it very clear the conversation was over. He marched on ahead up the stairs. “Now, are you coming, or not?”

After dealing with the two Xandrie, and the subsequent Larry-based vomit episode that had immediately followed, Konto had taken the time to raid the bodies for anything useful. As well as the blaster rifle, he now had a grenade, the whip, and a comm-device. The whip was coiled around his left shoulder, but everything else was either clipped onto or tucked into his belt and within easy reach. The grenade jingled merrily as he hurried on up the steps.

Two flights later, Larry was flagging. “Mr Garr, I need to stop,” he panted.

Konto tutted in annoyance, then gestured to the tracking device. “They’re only maybe thirty decks above us,” he said. “We’re almost there.”

“Thirty?” Larry wheezed. His legs gave out and he flopped onto the steps. “I’ll be dead by three.”

Konto sighed. Five years ago, he could have carried the kid.

He looked again at Larry’s bulky frame and pudgy limbs.

OK, maybe ten years ago. In his current condition – and he didn’t just mean the recently inflicted damage – he’d be lucky to make it halfway without exhaustion kicking in.

Konto backtracked down until he reached Larry. The boy was looking longingly at the doors that led out onto the deck. A notice on the wall announced it as: “432 – Fine Dining & Nightlife”. It needn’t have bothered. It wasn’t like anyone ever took the stairs except in an emergency. Or, apparently, a kidnapping.

Larry’s face was so red it practically glowed. It was mostly from the effort of climbing, Konto thought, but there was embarrassment mixed in there, too.

“I’m sorry, Mr Garr. I’m too fat.”

Konto blinked, taken aback. “Huh?”

Larry hung his head. “I’m too fat. Everyone says so. I’m a fatty-fatty-fat-fat. I’m sorry I couldn’t keep going. Are you mad?”

Konto shifted uncomfortably. The kid looked on the brink of tears. Killer alien lizards he could handle. Crying children? Not so much.

“Hey. Uh, no. I’m not mad,” said Konto. “It’s fine. Seriously. And who calls you fat?”

Larry shrugged. “Everyone. My dad. The kids at school.” He shrugged again, then raised his head. “Not Deenia, though. She tells the other kids to stop, but, well, they don’t always listen.”

“Oh. OK,” said Konto, which was pretty much the best he could come up with. He felt a pang of … something. Guilt or regret, maybe. He hadn’t said anything to Larry about being fat, but he’d definitely thought it. Deenia, on the other hand …

He awkwardly rested a hand on Larry’s shoulder. “So, um, you should just ignore those people. And don’t worry about the stairs. Everyone has their own, you know, things they find difficult, but also things they’re good at.”

Larry’s face brightened, just a little. “What do you think I’m good at, Mr Garr?”

In hindsight, Konto should probably have been prepared for that. His mouth flapped open and closed a few times, as he looked Larry up and down. “Well!” Konto ejected, more loudly than he had intended. “I mean … where to start? For one thing you have, uh …”

Konto’s sense of relief when the doors flew open and lots of people with guns rushed in was immense. People pointing guns at him was far more familiar territory. He pushed Larry behind him and quickly calculated the odds. They weren’t bad, but weren’t great, either.

Twelve uniformed station security officers had him in their sights. He could feasibly take them all down without a shot being fired, but there was a reasonably high chance of a few blasters being fired wildly, which meant a reasonably high chance of Larry being hit. Short of shoving the boy down the stairs, there wasn’t much Konto could do to protect him, and it was a long fall to the landing below.

“Freeze!” wheezed the lead security officer. She had sallow skin, crow’s feet, and an expression that said, ‘I’ve just run for the first time in a decade, and didn’t enjoy it.’

It took her a second or two to catch her breath before she could speak again. “You’re under arrest!”

* * *

Konto sat in an interview room, his hands cuffed to a metal table, the beady eye of a single camera staring down at him. He’d been formulating a plan that would’ve taken down the security team without putting Larry at risk when the kid had wandered over to them and started babbling about everything that had happened to them since his classmates had been taken.

At first, Konto had considered running and leaving Larry in the care of the station guards, but then he’d remembered the first security team they’d met, who had turned out to be Xandrie in disguise.

This lot had looked much more like Konto would expect station security to look – overweight and underwhelming, and several years past retirement age – but he couldn’t take the chance.

They’d been bundled into a wagon and taken to the nearest station. Another twenty or so officers milled around there, most of them pre-occupied with the eating of various sweet pastries. Yep, these were the real thing, alright.

Konto was studying the cuffs when the door opened. A short but rotund older man, with a mustache that appeared to be winning a turf war with the rest of his face, stepped inside and quietly closed the door behind him.

He carried a cardboard box, which he sat on his side of the table, safely out of Konto’s reach. Before he sat, he walked over to the camera, took hold of the wire dangling beneath it, then pulled, cutting off the feed.

Konto snorted. If this guy was going to try to be ‘bad cop’ he’d be in for a shock.

“Comfortable?”

“Not really.”

“Captain Howlanzer,” the man said. He reached across the table to shake hands, remembered the cuffs, then, in a futile attempt to save face, turned the gesture into a thumbs-up. He held it for quite a long time as he tried to figure out what to do next, then decided to pretend the whole thing hadn’t happened and to just sit down, instead.

The chair creaked as he lowered himself into it. Reaching into the box, he produced a slab-like Datapad. It was an older model. It had been an older model last time Konto had been on a station, in fact.

“So,” said Howlanzer. He tapped the screen and waited for something to happen. The Datapad whirred faintly as it struggled to wake up. “You’ve been a busy man, Mr …?”

“Garr.”

Howlanzer smiled and nodded, just once. “Right. Multiple counts of homicide, wanton destruction of station premises and property, endangering a minor.” He jabbed a thumb in the direction of the now-lifeless camera. “We see all.”

“Then you know why I’m doing it.”

The captain regarded him for a while, sucking on his mustache. “The children. Yes. But we can’t just take the law into our own hands, Mr Garr. Where would we be then?” He slid the Datapad towards Konto and tapped a video icon. “There’s something I want you to see.”

The Datapad’s ancient innards clicked and churned. A spinning icon appeared over the video image and stayed there for several seconds.

“Give it a minute,” Howlanzer said.

The icon spun. The pad strained. And then, a recording from a security camera filled the screen. Konto leaned closer and peered down. Larry’s dad, Nobosh, was trying to negotiate with the metal-armed Xandrie. At least, that was how it looked. When the audio kicked in a second or so later, it told a different story.

“You idiot,” Nobosh whispered. “You didn’t get Larry! I told you to wait for my signal.”

“What did you call me?” the Xandrie asked. There was a flat, even tone to his voice, and Nobosh’s attitude immediately changed.

“No, I mean … Sorry, Ranock,” Nobosh said. “I didn’t … I just meant, you should have waited for my signal, like we planned.”

Ranock shrugged his alloy shoulders. “What does it matter? We have enough children.”

For a moment, Nobosh looked like he was going to start slinging around insults again, but he forced himself to stay calm. “Yes, but I don’t have an insurance policy on these kids, do I?” he hissed. “My insurance will only pay out for Larry. We need Larry.”

On screen, Ranock made a beckoning gesture. The gunman who had shot up the museum stepped into view, then Howlanzer tapped the pad and the image froze.

Konto hadn’t noticed his fists clenching during the video, or the way they had made his wrists swell so the cuffs cut into them.

“That son of a bedge,” he muttered.

“You can say that again,” agreed Howlanzer, sliding the pad back across the table towards him. He interlocked his fingers in front of him and leaned forwards. “I’ve just been talking to Larry. I haven’t shown him this, obviously. Probably couldn’t, even if I’d wanted to. That boy can talk.”

Howlanzer watched Konto closely. “He tells me you’re the Magister.”

Konto rolled his eyes. “That again. Yeah, he told me the same.”

“And what did you say?” asked Howlanzer.

“I said not to be so fonking ridiculous,” Konto replied. “Now, captain, what about those kids? My step-daughter is with them.”

“That’s beyond our remit, Mr Garr,” said Howlanzer, grimly. “I’m afraid there are shock-troops incoming to deal with it.”

Konto’s stomach tightened. “No.”

“There was a squad on board, but they’ve left in pursuit of some other target. That means – and I want you to listen to me very carefully here, Mr Garr – that means we have twelve minutes until the first squad arrives, and approximately twenty minutes until they begin the rescue mission.” He lowered his voice. “Have you ever seen a shock-troop rescue mission before, Mr Garr?”

Konto nodded. He had. It was not something he’d ever forget.

“Then you understand.” He sucked on his mustache for a moment, then folded his arms across his round chest. “It’s unfortunate, you know? That you’re not the Magister. See, I met him once. You know, with the armor on and everything. It was on a station much like this one, but a little further out by the Remnants.”

“Look, we don’t have time for—”

Howlanzer raised a hand, gesturing for silence. “The station was under attack. There was a fire on one of the decks. Smoke everywhere. People screaming. I remember trying to get through it, you know? The flames. But the heat. The heat, Mr Garr. It was … I couldn’t …”

He looked down, just briefly, steadying his voice. “I could hear them, through the fire and the smoke. My children. I could hear them, but I couldn’t reach them.” Howlanzer’s face lit up with the memory. “And then, there they were. There he was. Bounding through the flames, my children – just babies then – in his arms.”

The captain rubbed a hand across his face, trying unsuccessfully to disguise the fact he was wiping tears from his eyes. He cleared his throat. “I never did get a chance to thank him.”

Howlanzer’s chair squeaked across the floor as he stood up. “The Bioscanner you destroyed, it processes samples faster than I can tie my boots. Transmits its finding wirelessly, too. The whole chase thing you did was fun to watch, but ultimately pointless.”

Konto clenched his jaw and silently cursed modern technology.

“I don’t know who you are, but you aren’t Konto Garr,” Howlanzer said. “Unfortunately, there’s going to be a system malfunction in the next few minutes and that information, as well as all security camera footage of you, and Larry’s recorded statement, are going to be irretrievably corrupted.”

He patted the cardboard box meaningfully. “If you had been the Magister, those cuffs wouldn’t pose a problem.” He glanced at his watch. “Eighteen minutes until that room is stormed.”

Konto nodded his understanding. “Is Larry safe here?”

Howlanzer shook his head, just a fraction. Konto nodded again. “Thank you, captain.”

“No, Mr Garr,” said Howlanzer, snapping off the most polished salute he’d managed in years. “Thank you.” He smiled. “Justice strikes like a meteorite.”

“He never said that. It’s a myth,” Konto protested. “Seriously. It sounds so dumb. Why would he ever say something like that?”

Howlanzer shrugged. “I guess we’ll never know.”

Crisply lowering the salute, the captain about-turned and left the room, taking care to not quite close the door behind him. It took Konto a little under three seconds to lose the cuffs, then less than one to get up from his seat and flip open the flaps of the box. There, neatly wrapped in evidence bags, were the blaster, whip, tracker, comm-device and grenade he’d been carrying when the security team had arrested him. The folding knife was there, too, the blade scorched and black.

Tearing open the bags, Konto attached everything to his belt, then hurried to the door. He listened for a moment, before easing it open. The corridor beyond was empty of cops, but a solitary figure sat on a chair across from the interview room door.

“Hey kid,” said Konto, stepping into the corridor. Larry looked up. For a moment, he looked shocked, then a smile spread across his face. “You ready?”

Six

The elevator hummed gently as it glided upwards. Konto checked the charge in the blaster pistol for the third time in as many minutes, then tucked it into the back of his belt.

“I still don’t get it, Mr Garr,” said Larry. “Why did they let us go?”

“Because we hadn’t done anything wrong, Larry.”

“What about all those people you killed?”

“They were bad people, and they attacked us first. That’s allowed. Encouraged, even.” He thought about this for a moment. “No, allowed. Anyway, the captain … owed me one.”

Larry shrugged. “OK. So what’s the plan? We just jump out and start shooting?”

“No, that’s a terrible plan. We’re not taking the elevator all the way. We’ll get off on the floor below and—”

The elevator jerked to a stop with such force, Larry and Konto were both slammed against the ceiling. They hit the floor again just as the comm-device let out a squawk.

“I trust you are bringing the boy to hand him over.”

Konto recognized the voice. It was the metal-armed guy from the video. Ranock, he thought.

“Please wait where you are. I have sent some men to retrieve him,” the voice continued. “If you could possibly refrain from killing these ones, I’d appreciate that.”

Konto looked around, cursing himself. A tiny camera, no bigger than his thumbnail, was mounted in the corner of the elevator car, angled so it gazed down on them. Whipping out the blaster, he used the butt to smash the camera from its mounting, then crushed it underfoot.

Ranock tutted several times over the comm-device, like a parent telling-off a child. “Such needless destruction. We already know where you are. That achieved nothing.”

Konto raised the device to his mouth. “I guess you already know there are shock-troops on the way. You have maybe fifteen minutes until they storm the place. If I were you, I’d spend that time praying.”

Ranock let out a dry chuckle. “Oh, really? And tell me, friend, what should I pray for?”

“That they get to you first,” said Konto, then he snapped off the communicator, shoved it into his pocket, then slammed a fist against the elevator’s ceiling. A square hatch flew open on its hinges.

Larry peered up into the dark void beyond. “Whoa. How did you do that?”

“Maintenance hatch,” Konto explained.

Larry frowned. “Huh? Elevators don’t have maintenance hatches.”

“Well, clearly they do,” said Konto, gesturing upwards.

Larry puffed out his cheeks. “Mr Garr, I have been in hundreds of elevators, and not once have I ever seen one with a hatch in the ceiling.”

“Well, I’ve been in thousands, and they’ve all had hatches in the ceiling,” Konto said. He jumped up and caught the edge of the opening. “How else are you supposed to climb out and shimmy up the cable?”

Larry’s frown deepened. “Uh, cable?”

Hanging from one arm, Konto beckoned Larry closer with the other. Catching the boy’s shirt, he tried very hard not to show how much effort it took to lift him up through the hatch.

“Yeah, the cable. As in the thing that moves the elevator up and down.”

As Konto shoved Larry through the hatch, the boy suddenly became lighter. Much lighter. This was unfortunate, as Konto was still pushing with the same amount of force needed to lift Larry’s previous weight.

Larry flapped frantically as he sailed upwards, his shirt slipping through Konto’s fingers. “There’s no cable, Mr Garr!” Larry yelped. “It works on anti-grav.”

He bounced off one of the elevator shaft’s walls, and began to flip lazily as he soared up through the darkness. “Help!” he cried, his voice echoing around the narrow passageway.

“Oh, shizz,” Konto muttered. He caught the other edge of the hatch and heaved with both hands, launching himself upwards through the gap. The anti-gravity effect pulled him through, and he soared upwards. “Try to grab onto something, kid.”

“Trying, Mr Garr,” said Larry, grabbing uselessly at thin air as he spiralled slowly upwards. “But I don’t feel so good.”

“Larry, don’t you dare!” Konto barked. “I mean it, don’t even think about—”

Brrrwoooaaaaak!

The puke emerged from Larry’s mouth as a series of chunky brown and yellow bubbles. The force of their ejection, and Larry’s angle at the time, propelled the blobs downwards.

“Ugh, fonk.” Konto grimaced, then shut his mouth as he soared through the oncoming assault of barf bubbles. A few of them bounced wobbily off his face and upper body, their gloopy, gelatinous contents quivering from the impact. The others sailed past him, and he was able to catch Larry’s arm and steady him before the boy could throw up again.

“Th-thanks, Mr Garr,” Larry croaked.

“Don’t mention it, kid. Now hold on while I—”

There was a high-pitched whine that seemed to come from the air itself. The anti-gravity effect ramped up sharply, almost wrenching Larry from Konto’s grip before they both shot upwards at eye-watering speed.

With his free hand, Konto grabbed for the walls of the shaft, but every viable handhold was just beyond his reach.

“Do something, Mr Garr!”

“I’m trying!” Konto barked. “Just hold on and don’t throw up!”

Scrabbling at his belt, Konto unhooked the whip. He snapped it towards a door mechanism as they raced past, but the anti-grav threw his aim high.

Another story whistled by. Konto cracked the whip towards the next door. It wrapped briefly around a lever, then uncoiled.

“Shizz!”

They had to be past the floor they had been aiming for now. The roof of the shaft was maybe twenty stories above, and closing fast. Konto snapped the whip out again. This time. Please.

He jerked to a stop. Larry’s hand slipped from his, but then the boy caught Konto’s legs, almost pulling off his pants. The anti-grav was still trying to drag them upwards. Konto’s muscles strained with effort as he tried to pull them closer to the door.

There was movement from below. Konto groaned as dozens of vomit-filled bubbles rocketed towards him, then bounced off his face and arms. Through the bubble storm, he saw another movement, too. Two Xandrie were in the elevator, peering up through the hatch. One of them said something into a comm-device and, a moment later, the elevator began to climb towards them.

Veins bulged in Konto’s neck as he tried to pull against the force of the anti-grav generator above them. It was no use. He was too weak. Too old. His shoulders burned and his hands ached, and no matter how hard he pulled, they were going nowhere.

“The bad guys are coming, Mr Garr!”

“I know, Larry.”

“What do we do?”

“I don’t know, Larry!”

There was a moment of silence. “I know what the Magister would do,” Larry said.

Konto groaned. “No, you really don’t.”

“I do, Mr Garr. He’d do this.”

Konto felt something jerk from his belt. He turned his head just enough to see Larry yank the grenade free, flick the switch, then toss is down towards the approaching elevator.

The grenade soared almost a full two inches downwards, before the anti-grav caught it and pulled it upwards. “Oh,” said Larry. “On second thoughts, maybe he wouldn’t have done that.”

Konto tightened his grip on the whip. “Larry, hold—” he managed, before the grenade hit the top of the shaft and detonated.

Several things happened at roughly the same time. The explosion, with the anti-grav working against it, was a low drama affair. Or at least, it was until the anti-grav equipment itself was damaged, at which point the flames erupted like an angry demon.

Almost simultaneously, gravity welcomed Konto and Larry back into its bosom and they swung down, then slammed against the wall below. Larry’s grip slipped again, but Konto managed to lift his legs and contort himself enough to catch the boy with one hand, while the other kept its grip on the whip.

Below them, even as they started their downwards swing, the elevator plunged downwards. The screams of the Xandrie inside started loud, faded quickly, and then were cut off by the crash of a metal box hitting a metal floor at tremendous speed.

With a lot of heaving, scrabbling, the odd bit of cursing and a worrying moment when it looked like Larry might throw up again, Konto got them both onto the narrow ledge on the shaft-side of the doors.

Digging his fingers into the gap between them, Konto heaved the doors apart. He and Larry both fell through together into a dimly-lit room. A handful of people were watching a two-headed figure standing on a small stage. The heads were taking it in turns to sing into a single microphone, their eyes flitting left to right as they read the words from a screen.

Ugh. A song bar. Konto almost considered throwing himself back into the elevator shaft and taking his chances.

Instead, he grabbed Larry by the arm and pulled him along, searching for the exit. On stage, both heads had a bash at a warbling harmony, failed miserably, then bowed to the muted applause that followed their performance.

“Lovely stuff!” echoed a man’s voice from the speakers. “Now, who will our next act be? How about you, sir?”

A spotlight illuminated around Konto. Without breaking step, he drew the blaster pistol and shot out the bulb.

Song bars. Kroysh, he hated song bars.

They found the exit quickly and hurried out onto the plaza. It was low-market bars and restaurants as far as the eye could see, their frontages plastered with animated neon and the odd flickering hologram.

Konto spotted three elevators within easy reach, but they couldn’t risk that again. The Xandrie obviously had some level of control over the transport system, and Konto wasn’t about to give them the chance to take advantage of it again.

“You,” he barked, pointing to a shifty-looking man with a face like a startled sky-weasel. “What floor is this?”

“Um, um, what?” the man stammered.

“Floor number. Hurry.”

“F-four … four-six-eight.”

Larry’s eyes widened. “Four-four-six-eight? I didn’t even know it went that high! Well, there is no way I’m climbing all those stairs.”

“Four-six-eight,” Konto said, barging past the man and pulling Larry with him. “We’re six above them. Come on.”

They hit the stairs. Larry didn’t complain this time, largely because they were going down, instead of up. He did open his mouth to say something as they began their descent, but Konto gestured for silence. They tiptoed down a few flights, Konto holding his blaster lowered, but ready.

The door leading out to four-six-three had been welded shut. The floor below – where the children were being held – was the same.

“Fonk. They’ve barricaded themselves in,” Konto muttered.

“Can we break it down?” Larry asked.

“Maybe, if we still had the grenade,” Konto said, slightly more accusingly than he meant to. He caught Larry’s expression and almost apologized, but there was no time. He took out the tracking gadget and realized he’d been too scared to look at it until now, when there was no other choice.

The sense of relief when he saw the life-sign data from Deenia’s tracker took him a little by surprise. Of course he was happy, he’d been expecting that. What he hadn’t expected were the tears pooling at the corners of his eyes. He blinked them away, zoomed in on the floors around them, then set off up the stairs again.

“Uh, where are you going, Mr Garr?” Larry whispered. “Shouldn’t we be trying to get through?”

“Can’t, it’s sealed shut. The blaster won’t make a dent in it,” said Konto. “But I have another idea.” He quickened his pace, and Larry hurried after him. “I just hope we’ve still got time.”

Floor four-six-four was mostly designated parkland, with lots of grass, a small lake, and a rainbow of different colored flowers that thrived in the UV glow of the artificial sun. The sights and the sounds and the smell of it stopped both Konto and Larry in their tracks.

The world they’d come from was just on the right side of being a barren, inhospitable dustbowl. The air was dry, the soil was rocky, and the flora was mostly limited to a variety of thorny or poisonous plants, trees and bushes.

Here, the air was heavy with moisture. Fat, furry insects flitted lazily from flower to flower. A soft breeze, pumped in through hidden vents, rustled the bright yellow and green leaves of the towering trees.

Picnickers on blankets dotted the grass. In the distance, a child threw a ball for her pet theeg. There was a faint paff as the animal teleported ahead of the ball, and the girl fell about laughing when the ball bounced off the back of its head, causing it to spin on the spot and start chasing its tails.

It was, by quite some margin, the most beautiful place Larry had ever seen. It didn’t even make Konto’s top fifty – sure, it was nice, and a world away from what home was like, but he’d seen far more of the galaxy than most people – so he recovered from the surprise more quickly than Larry, and quickly marched on across the grass.

As he walked, he studied his scanner. It led him in a zig-zag pattern past picnickers, around the lake, and over to a dense copse of trees standing along the deck’s curved outer wall. Winding through the trees, Konto found what he was looking for.

Having quickly acclimatized to the natural, organic feel of this deck, the metal door and illuminated sign above it seemed almost offensively out of place.

“Emergency exit,” read Larry, panting slightly with the effort of keeping up. “Is this another staircase, Mr Garr?”

“Not quite, Larry,” said Konto. The door worked on a simple mechanical lever. Konto pulled it, releasing the lock mechanism, then pushed through into a room that was completely unlike the deck they’d just left.

It was a cavernous, yet spotlessly clean room, with banks of equipment and shiny chrome lockers lining the walls. Low, calming music lilted from hidden speakers, and soft lighting painted the whole area in a comforting fuzzy glow. It had the feel of a warehouse, but one that probably had an exceptional record for health and safety, and record-breaking levels of employee satisfaction.

Illuminated strips along the floor pointed the way to the room’s far wall, where scores of escape pods sat nestled in their launch tubes. Larry gazed at them for a few moments, trying to figure out what they were. When it clicked, his eyes went wide.

“Wait, we’re not running away, are we, Mr Garr?”

Konto shook his head and made for the closest locker. “Of course we aren’t.”

Unfolding his knife, he jammed it into the gap where the door met the locker body, and gave it a well-rehearsed wiggle. The door gave a soft clunk and sprung open a few inches. Pulling it open the rest of the way, Konto reached inside and pulled out a lightweight EVAC spacesuit, complete with built-in breathing apparatus.

“Here, hold this,” he said, shoving the suit into Larry’s arms, then moving onto one of the smaller lockers.

Larry looked down at the bundle of fabric and glass in his arms. “Uh, Mr Garr? Is this a spacesuit?”

Konto nodded and jammed the knife into the child-sized locker. The door opened, but there was no suit inside, just a stack of spare oxygen cartridges.

“Uh, Mr Garr?” Larry continued. “Why do we have a spacesuit?”

Konto’s blade unlocked the next door. “Shizz,” he muttered. No suit. He looked around for a sign that would tell him where the child-sized EVAC suits were, but saw none. Maybe that health and safety record wasn’t so hot, after all.

“Because we’re going outside,” said Konto. He tried the next locker. No suit. Likewise, the next.

Larry looked from the EVAC suit to Konto, to the suit, to Konto, to the escape pods, to Konto, then back to the suit again.

He wanted to ask more questions, but all those head movements had made him feel quite ill, so he concentrated on not throwing up, instead.

“Aha!” said Konto, prising open the next locker. His excitement was short-lived, though. What he’d thought was a child-sized suit turned out to be some kind of bag with an oxygen-feed built in. Probably for transporting pets.

Konto moved onto the next locker, then stopped. Something niggled at the back of his mind. He sidestepped to the previous locker and unfolded the bag a little. There, emblazoned on the side in red text, were the words: ‘Animal Vac-Pack’.

He thought back to the old woman who’d stopped him earlier. She’d told him one of these things would ‘be useful’ – but how had she known?

She had to be a nun. It was the only explanation. She’d foreseen this whole thing. That would also explain the feeling of unease he’d had when she’d approached him. Nuns were some of the most highly-trained killers in the galaxy, and far more dangerous than they looked.

Still, they were generally trustworthy – assuming you weren’t on their hit-list – and most of them had a soft spot for kids. Konto made a mental note to thank the woman, if he ever saw her again, then took out the bag and tossed it onto the floor.

“What’s that for, Mr Garr?” Larry asked.

Konto took the EVAC suit from the boy’s arms. “That, Larry,” he said. “Is for you.”

Seven

The Vac-Pack with Larry inside had been heavy, and, in hindsight, Konto had wished he’d waited until they were closer to the door before ordering the boy to climb inside. Instead, he’d ended up having to drag the fonking bag several hundred feet across the floor, the effort of it making his visor steam up.

Now they were out of the airlock, though, the bag weighed nothing at all. Konto had the strap hooked onto his belt, pulling it behind him as he picked his way down the outside of the station. Larry was hunched up inside it, floating around with his knees pulled up to his stomach and a look on his face that told anyone who saw it how much he disapproved of this.

There was no sound but the echo of Konto’s own breathing inside the mask, nothing to see but the stars above. Kroysh, he’d missed this. For years, he’d told himself he didn’t need it, that he could settle down, stay planet-side, take a job, but … Kroysh. He’d missed this.

He was gazing out at the abyss of space when he saw two Zertex transport ships come out of warp. They appeared one after another, decelerating rapidly, then banking towards the landing decks on impulse thrusters.

The shock-troopers had arrived.

“Shizz,” Konto spat. He bounded on down the side of the station until he reached the floor he was looking for. He stopped, then was nudged forwards a step when Larry’s bag bumped into his back.

He hoped the kid was OK. There was a little porthole window in the Vac-Pack, but it was on the side, and there was no time to turn the bag around to check. He was still moving around inside there, so Konto took that as a sign that the seal had held, at least.

The handle that opened the airlock hatch was large and bright red, designed to be easy to see and operate by someone in an EVAC suit. Konto took hold of it and wasted a moment collecting himself. How the next twenty seconds played out would depend on how deep into the station’s security systems the Xandrie had got. Hacking the elevators would be relatively easy. Getting access to the escape pod systems – and, by extension, their security cameras – would be much more difficult.

If the Xandrie had seen Konto head outside, they’d know they were coming. As soon as Konto and Larry stepped through the inner airlock, the gangsters would be waiting, and there’d be very little that Konto could do about it.

Still, they couldn’t hang around out here forever.

Konto pulled the lever. The outer airlock door opened, and Konto swam inside, pulling Larry along with him.

Once they were both in, Konto closed the door and pulled himself along the wall to the inner door. He couldn’t spot anyone through the porthole window, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there. Only one way to find that out.

When Konto activated the door controls, oxygen flooded the chamber. Gravity returned quickly but gradually, pulling him and the Vac-Pack gently towards the floor. Konto threw off the EVAC suit quickly, and drew his blaster just as a light above the door turned from red to green and the lock released.

Nudging the door open, Konto risked a peek. The evacuation room stood silent and empty. He listened, but the only sounds were his own heartbeat and the rustling of Larry moving around in the bag.

“OK, hold on, I’m coming,” Konto said, tucking the blaster back into his belt. He peeled aside the Vac-Pack’s seal and unzipped the bag. A little waterfall of vomit trickled through the gap, then Larry exploded upwards and leaped out of the carrier like a scalded yursk.

His shoes had been painted in puke but, miraculously, the rest of him seemed to have escaped mostly untouched. He must’ve batted the barf bubbles away just before gravity had returned, then jumped free before the stuff had a chance to slosh back down to his end.

Larry gulped in a series of big breaths, his eyes wide and staring, his hair slicked to his red face with sweat. “Mr Garr, promise me we’ll never do that again!” he said.

“I promise to try,” said Konto. He led the way out of the airlock, headed for the door leading out onto the main deck. According to the schematics on the tracker, this was a storage level with a large main warehouse space, and some open plan offices near the center. That was where Deenia was, which almost certainly meant that was where the other kids were, too.

And Nobosh, of course. Konto was very much looking forward to catching up with him.

He looked back at Larry and felt a twinge of … something. Guilt, he thought, but that wasn’t fair. He had nothing to feel guilty about. It wasn’t Konto’s fault that Larry’s dad was a no-good shizznod who’d tried to have his own son kidnapped so he could claim the insurance. The boy deserved to know. He deserved to see what his old man really was.

And yet …

Konto grunted, annoyed at himself for wasting time. He stopped, all the same, then spun to face Larry. “Look, kid, this is going to get dangerous,” he said.

“Get dangerous?” said Larry. “You mean it hasn’t been dangerous so far?”

Despite everything, Konto couldn’t stop his mouth twitching into a smile. “Good point, well made,” he admitted. “But I’m going to need you to stay here now. They can’t see you in here. They won’t know where to find you.”

Larry opened his mouth to protest, but then reconsidered. He nodded. “OK, Mr Garr. Whatever you say.”

“Good boy,” said Konto. “Find a corner, stay out of sight. If anyone comes in here, don’t try to fight them, don’t try to do anything clever. Just put your hands up and don’t make any sudden movements. You got that?”

Larry nodded again. “I got it, Mr Garr,” he said. “You’re going to come back for me, though, right? Once you’ve saved everyone?”

“I’ll get the kids safe, then I’ll be back,” Konto said.

“And my dad,” said Larry. “You’ll save him, too, right?”

Konto hesitated. “Uh, yeah. Yeah, of course I will. Now stay here, OK?”

“OK.”

Konto hurried for the door. He was reaching for the handle when Larry called to him. “Mr Garr?”

“What is it, Larry?” Konto asked.

“Can you say it? Just once?”

“What? No!” said Konto. “He never said that.”

“Please, Mr Garr.”

Konto scowled and shook his head, but then sighed. He began to blurt the line out, then stopped. If he was going to do it, he may as well do it properly.

He turned. He cocked his blaster and raised it, pointing dramatically to Larry with his left hand. He cleared his throat.

“Justice strikes!” he boomed, in a voice that rolled around the room like thunder. “Like a meteorite!”

He stopped pointing and lowered the gun. “There,” he said, in a more normal, if somewhat embarrassed voice. “Happy now?”

The grin on Larry’s face said it all. He nodded, dumbly.

“OK, now shut up and stay hidden,” Konto told him. “I’ll be back for you soon.”

Konto turned to the door again. Again, Larry stopped him.

“She doesn’t hate you.”

“What?”

“Deenia. She doesn’t hate you. She talks about you all the time. She used to cry sometimes. You know, about not having a dad.” Larry shrugged. “Now she doesn’t.”

Konto’s throat tightened. He looked down at the flashing red dot on his tracker and brushed a thumb against it, just once.

“Go hide, Larry,” he said, and then he opened the door, stepped through, and was gone.

Eight

T’sa Nass paced between two towering storage containers, his blaster rifle handle gripped in one of his two front hands, the stock resting casually against his shoulder. He’d found a stack of candy bar boxes on his patrol, and had spent the past ten minutes munching his way through half a dozen of the more interesting ones.

He was midway through something called a Pilgrim now. It was firm on the outside, with a soft and gooey inside that tingled faintly on the tongue. He’d probably preferred the last one, which had a pleasingly crunchy biscuit base, but this one was good, too.

His two back arms, which were larger than the stunted front set, began unwrapping the next bar. This one was called Goosh!! T’sa had doubts it would justify both exclamation marks, but its promise of ‘decadent mallow and a smooth frinklenut center’ certainly sounded promising.

He had just finished unwrapping the thing and was about to take a bite when someone grabbed him by the head and twisted his neck until it went snap.

* * *

Lostra of Urt perched on the top of a stack of crates, her narrow yellow eyes scanning the warehouse below. Rows of containers, crates, and boxes stretched out like the walls of a maze in every direction.

She could see a few of her fellow Xandrie down there, patrolling along the aisles. She preferred it up here, far from the ground. Back on Urt, she’d spent the first decade of her life high up in the treetops, never once touching the forest floor.

That had all ended with the gnawmite infestation. Her home had come crashing down around her, and her family had been bundled aboard one of the Zertex rescue ships that had come swooping down from the sky. It was the first time she’d ever seen non-Urtians before, and her introduction to a much wider universe than the one she’d known up until then.

Down there on the floor, she felt boxed in, confined. Up here, she was free. Up here, she could see everything.

Or, mostly everything.

She didn’t see the stranger behind her. She didn’t see the knife his hand. He moved stealthily, struck quickly, and then Lostra of Urt saw nothing at all.

* * *

Harl Kaask thrust his hips forward, his breath coming in short, shallow groans. He’d crossed patrol paths with Tosro Vii, who he considered to be the most attractive of his fellow Xandrie and, as luck would have it, the only one with which he was even remotely physically compatible.

She faced away from him, her hands pressed against the side of the container, her long fingers splayed. She yelped softly with each of his increasingly forceful thrusts, and hissed with something that might have been pleasure and might have been pain as he tightened his hands around her slender waist.

It was not their first such encounter. While neither of them had any interest whatsoever in pursuing a relationship with the other, the occasional frantic fumble was something they both looked forward to it. It was a stress reliever, more than anything else. Being in one of the most feared gangs in all the galaxy brought its fair share of pressure, and their ever more regular bang sessions helped take some of that pressure away.

Tosro could feel Harl building to the big finish when he stopped, suddenly. She felt a wave of disappointment rush through her. She’d been close. So close! Why had he …?

A rope slipped across her throat and tightened, and Tosro Vii knew in that moment that ‘so close’ was the closest she’d ever get again.

* * *

And so it continued. The Xandrie between the emergency exit and the central office died, one by one, before they could utter a sound.

Shunk Nosta, son of Shunk Sen, had a knife buried in the back of his rectangular skull.

The Gart brothers, Do and Tuss, lost their heads. Literally.

Necks were snapped. Throats were cut. Insides became outsides.

Four minutes after saying goodbye to Larry, Konto Garr reached the door of the office. It was, annoyingly, the only door, or the only one that could be opened from outside, at least. There were no windows, either, and while Konto could have improvised another entrance if he’d had more time, he had no choice but to take the obvious one.

It clicked open quietly, revealing a narrow reception area. There was no sign of the receptionist at her desk, but the spray of blood on the wall behind it told Konto all he needed to know. He didn’t bother checking the body he knew would be on the floor. There was no time and, if the blood pattern was anything to go by, no point.

The inner door leading through to the wider, open-plan office area, stood ajar. Sidling up to it, Konto saw a guard posted just inside. He was swiping across the screen of his comm-device, playing some sort of game that seemed to involve throwing flying creatures at haphazardly-stacked towers.

Had anyone been watching the guard from inside the offices, they’d have seen a hand catch him by the hair, then seen him be yanked backwards through the door. Had the onlooker been in possession of particularly acute hearing, they’d have heard his muffled sob of fear, followed a split-second later by the even more muffled crunch of breaking bone.

But no-one saw him taken. And no-one heard him die.

Creeping through the door, Konto stuck to the shadows and sized up the situation. He could see the backs of the children’s heads forty feet or so away on the left. Miss Tresno and Magazine Mom were with them, both doing their best to keep the kids calm. A single Xandrie stood watching them, his gun held menacingly in both hands.

There was another Xandrie standing further ahead on the right. She had a practiced upright sort of air about her. Ex-military, Konto guessed. Maybe Zertex, maybe someone else. She stood guard outside the door of a small private office. Through the darkened windows, Konto could just make out two figures – Nobosh and Ranock, the guy with the metal arms, he guessed.

It was almost too easy. If he’d had more time, he’d have checked the area more thoroughly, but the shock-troops would almost certainly be on their way by now. He had just minutes until this place became even more of a blood bath than it already was.

The woman had a direct line of sight on the guy near the kids. Konto couldn’t take him out without getting rid of her first, and she had set herself up with her back to the wall so sneaking up on her was impossible.

He abandoned stealth entirely and blasted a hole in her chest. The Xandrie watching over the kids turned, but not fast enough. Konto stepped in close and drove his forehead into the man’s nose, spreading it across his face. The gangster’s rifle was wrenched from his grip. Konto jammed the blaster pistol into the man’s mouth, saw the wide-eyed kids watching him in shocked silence, then pistol-whipped him unconscious, instead. He made a mental note to kill him later, when no-one was looking.

“M-Mr Garr?” Miss Tresno stammered. Konto pressed a finger to his lips and looked across the faces of the children until he spotted Deenia. She gawped at him in disbelief, her mouth hanging open.

“Everyone stay here,” he warned, then Deenia’s voice came at him, sharp and sudden and urgent.

“Dad!”

Konto’s shoulder exploded, spraying the screaming children with crimson spots. He hissed, his head going light as he turned to see a third Xandrie guard adjusting his aim. Konto’s arm came up, but the blaster slipped from his blood-slicked fingers.

“I know a hundred different ways to kill you,” squeaked a voice from over by the door. “Pick a number.”

Konto’s world ground into slow motion. He saw the Xandrie shift his aim towards the door. He saw Larry standing there, a Xandrie rifle tucked awkwardly under his arm, his tongue sticking out in concentration as he tried – and failed – to point it at the gangster.

With a roar, Konto pushed past the pain and the fog and launched himself across the floor. He hit the Xandrie just as he opened fire. Knocked off course, the blast streaked above Larry’s head, and Konto allowed himself a split-second of relief before he and the Xandrie hit the floor and agony flared across his ruined shoulder.

“Everyone look away!” he hissed, then he pressed both thumbs against the gangster’s eyes and pushed and pushed and pushed until the man stopped fighting back.

Head swimming, Konto crawled off the fallen Xandrie. The door to the inner office opened, and Ranock strode out, his metal muscles flexing as he stormed across the floor. “You fonking piece of shizz!” the Xandrie roared. He raised both fists above his head …

… and then blinked in surprise when a blaster rifle bolt punched a hole through his upper chest and neck. His mouth flapped open and closed. His arms sagged. He managed to shoot Larry an accusing look before his legs gave out and he toppled forwards onto the floor.

“Whoops,” said Larry. “That totally went off in my hand.”

“Larry?”

Nobosh appeared in the office doorway, his eyes wide and panicked as he tried to figure out what the fonk had happened in the past thirty seconds. There were at least two dead Xandrie on the floor, possibly three. Konto was struggling to his feet, a chunk of his shoulder missing and a really quite remarkable amount of blood smeared across his neck and face, and plenty more of it staining his clothes.

And in the middle of it all was Larry. He turned the gun away when Nobosh appeared. His classmates all screamed and ducked as the rifle swept towards them.

“Larry, be careful!” Konto warned. He made it to his feet, but the floor rolled and undulated beneath him, and he quickly dropped back onto one knee. “Put the gun down, Larry. Slowly.”

“Yes, do as he says, Larry,” Nobosh urged. “We wouldn’t want anyone getting hurt.”

Konto snapped his head around and growled at Larry’s father. “Keep. Your. Mouth. Shut,” he spat. “I know what you did, Nobosh. I know you’re behind this.”

He glared until Nobosh began to squirm, then turned his attention back to Larry. The boy looked confused. “Huh?” he said. “What do you mean, Mr Garr? How is my dad behind it?”

The gun was still half-tucked under Larry’s arm, the barrel still aiming vaguely at the rest of the kids. Miss Tresno and Magazine-Mom, to their credit, had made all the kids drop to the floor. Konto saw Deenia watching him, face-down on the carpet tiles. He gestured for her to stay down, then beckoned for Larry to come closer.

“That’s not important, Larry,” Konto said. “Just come here. Give me the gun.”

Larry looked from Konto to his dad and back again. After a moment, he nodded. “OK, Mr Garr. Whatever you say.”

He shuffled closer. Konto took the gun and ejected the battery pack. Only then did he let out the breath he hadn’t realized he was holding in. “Well done, Larry,” he said. “Good boy.”

Deenia jumped up and ran towards him, then screamed as a hand caught her roughly by the hair. Nobosh pulled her in front of him, a blaster pistol jammed against the side of her head.

“Nobody move!” Nobosh hissed. “OK? OK? Everyone just stay calm and let me think about this.”

“Let her go, Nobosh,” Konto warned.

“Dad?” said Larry, his voice faltering.

“This is your fault,” Nobosh spat, glaring at his son. “You had to go to the bathroom. You couldn’t have just stuck with the group. You had to mess it up!”

Larry’s face went tight. Tears filled his eyes. “What? I didn’t mean … I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I didn’t …”

“You’re always sorry, Larry. You’re always so fonking sorry!” Nobosh yelled, with such ferocity he forced his son back a step. Nobosh’s face twisted as he mimicked his son’s voice. “I’m sorry, it’s not my fault, I couldn’t help it! You’re pathetic!”

“Hey, leave him alone!” Deenia said, then she bit her lip as the blaster was pressed more firmly against her head.

“Nobosh, let my daughter go,” Konto growled. “I am warning you!”

He tried getting to his feet again, but the blood loss was taking its toll now. The floor was made of rubber, and darkness was drawing a circle around his field of vision – a circle which was steadily getting smaller.

“I’ll trade you,” Nobosh said. “Send over Larry and I’ll give you the girl.”

Larry wiped his eyes on his sleeve. “Why do you want me? You already said it, I’m no good for anything.”

“Because, like it or not, you’re my son,” Nobosh said. “We’ll get out of here. We’ll go … somewhere. I don’t know where. Besides, I need a hostage, and you’ll give me less trouble than this one.” He pulled sharply on Deenia’s hair, making her yelp.

“What about Mom?” Larry asked.

Nobosh rolled his eyes. “What about her? We don’t need her. We’ve never needed her. She’s even more useless than you are. Now get over here, now!”

Konto caught Larry by the shoulder and turned the boy around to face him. “You have to do it, Larry,” he said. “You need to make the swap. You have to do it.”

He spun Larry around to face his father, then reconsidered and turned him back. “I’m sorry, OK? There’s nothing I can do.”

Larry nodded his understanding, but said nothing. Konto turned him on the spot, then spun him back the opposite way. “But thank you, Larry. For everything you did. I couldn’t have got this far without you.”

He turned him back to face Nobosh, hesitated, then twirled him around again. “But don’t listen to him. Even if he tells you you’re useless, you aren’t. You’re a great kid, Larry.”

“Hurry up!” Nobosh snapped. “Send him over.”

Konto spun Larry one more time, then gave him a gentle push towards his father. Larry weaved unsteadily across the floor, and stopped when he reached Nobosh’s side.

“Now send over Deenia,” Konto said.

Nobosh sneered. “Idiot. Of course I won’t. Two hostages are better than one. I’d hoped to earn big on Larry’s kidnap insurance, but I’ll have to earn big some other way, instead. I hear some of the Remnants warlords pay big money for fresh-faced young—”

Bleeeeeuurrk!

Larry erupted. A torrent of vomit hit Nobosh side-on, splattering his belly and lower back. Nobosh jumped back in horror as the second wave of puke cascaded over his right leg and onto his expensive shoes.

Konto flicked out with his good arm. His knife whipped through the air. There was a hollow-sounding thonk as the handle hit Nobosh squarely between the eyes. He made a noise that was somewhere between a scream and a hiccup, then he toppled backwards, hitting the floor just in time for Larry to throw up on his chest.

Deenia stumbled forwards and threw herself at Konto. She wrapped her arms around his neck, and he succeeded for several seconds to hide quite how much it hurt. “You came for me,” she sobbed, unwrapping her arms and letting him take her hands, instead. “You came for me.”

“I did,” Konto said. Behind him, the door was thrown wide. His heart leapt into his throat. Shock-troops!

“Wait!” he yelped, turning and shielding Deenia with his body. “Don’t shoot!”

Captain Howlanzer stood in the doorway, his hands raised. “No intentions to,” he said. He smiled. “Seems like someone messed up and sent the shock-troops to the wrong floor. They’re searching one of the under-construction decks right now. Probably blasting the place to bits, if past experience is anything to go by.”

With a grunt of relief, Konto sank to the floor. Miss Tresno appeared beside him and he felt pressure on his wound. Deenia knelt beside him, a worried look on her face. “I’m going to be fine,” he promised.

Deenia looked around the room. “You did all this? You fought everyone to save us?”

“Me? No,” said Konto, gritting his teeth as pain flared on his shoulder. He nodded to Larry, who had now finished throwing up. “We did. I couldn’t have done it without Larry.”

“He totally could have,” said Larry, waddling over to join them. “Do you know who your dad is, Deenia? Who he really is, I mean?”

Konto shook his head, but Miss Tresno chose just that moment to lean over him, blocking Larry’s view.

“Who?” asked Deenia.

“He’s the most awesome, kick-ass guy I’ve ever met,” said Larry. “That’s who.”

Miss Tresno moved, just a little, and Konto caught a glimpse of Deenia’s smile. “I know,” she whispered.

And with those two words rolling around inside his head, Konto Garr closed his heavy eyelids, and drifted off into a deeply satisfying sleep.

THE END

The events of this story take place between Space Team: Song of the Space Siren and Space Team: The Guns of Nana Joan. Find out about the strange old woman with the pet vac pack in Nun Shall Pass which begins on the next page.

Nun Shall Pass

Originally published in The Expanding Universe Volume 2

One

Ronda Sallas had killed a number of men in her time – but then, what nun hadn’t? It had been quite a large number, too. Not three digits, maybe, but close. But she had never - at least, not to the best of her knowledge - used a frying pan to do the job. And certainly not one of her good ones.

She hadn’t actually killed the man yet. But she would. Soon. In four minutes and forty-seven seconds, in fact.

Her son, Narp, was not a bad boy. He was a good boy who occasionally did bad things, and that was an important distinction, as far as Ronda was concerned. Besides, even the bad things he did were never his idea. He was forced to do them against his will. Most of the time, at least.

Ronda stopped outside a building she knew very well, despite never having been there before. She looked up at its featureless gray frontage, taking in its shuttered windows and reinforced front door. Yep, this was the place from her premonition, alright. From the premonition, she knew Narp wasn’t in there, but she knew that someone inside would lead her to him.

She hoisted the bag containing her second-best frying pan higher on her shoulder, approached the metal door, and knocked.

Almost immediately, as she knew it would, a hatch opened. It was a small hatch, through which Ronda could see a tiny bit of a larger-built gentleman. He was, of course, neither gentle nor technically a man. He was a Turlap, a species renowned throughout the galaxy for their size, stupidity and willingness to hurt others for money – although not necessarily in that order.

His name was Gunth. He would die, screaming, impaled on a number of metal spikes. But not today, and not by her.

“What the fonk you want?”

Ronda’s smile flickered, but rallied quickly. She’d resisted having a translation chip implanted for years, preferring to learn languages the old-fashioned way, via months of lingo-tank submersions and agonizing frontal lobe stimulation. Once she’d heard about the chip’s censorship functionality, though, she’d relented. Murder, she could deal with. Bad language, though, that was another matter entirely.

“Hello, dear,” said Ronda. “How’s Aliss?”

The eyes blinked, slow and cow-like. “Huh?”

“Your mother, Aliss. How is she? She should get that swelling under her upper armpit looked at. Tell her that from me.”

“Uh, she’s fine.”

Ronda made a well, actually, face, but said no more about it. “Is Narp there?”

Another blink. “Huh?”

“My son, Narp,” said Ronda, broadening her smile. “Tell you what, Gunth, let’s hurry this along. You’re going to say he’s not there, I’m going to say I know, and that I’d like to come in and speak to Katona.”

Gunth blinked so slowly that a casual onlooker would be forgiven for thinking he’d fallen asleep. “Stay with me, here, Gunth,” Ronda continued. “You’ll say Katona isn’t here, I’ll say he is, you’ll say he isn’t, this will go on for some time, then you’ll eventually ask me for the passcode.”

“What’s the passcode?” demanded Gunth, latching onto the one phrase he felt on more familiar ground with.

“Eight-seven-zeta-nine.”

Behind the door, Gunth’s lips moved silently. Once he was confident the code matched the one he had painstakingly memorized, he shrugged and slid the hatch closed.

Ronda heaved her bag higher on her shoulder as locks unlocked and bolts slid open. A moment later, the door swung inwards, revealing Gunth in all his four-armed enormity. He still looked a little uncertain about what he was doing, but she had the code, and he was supposed to open the door to people with the code.

“Thank you, dear,” said Ronda, stepping inside and patting Gunth on one of his upper arms. “You’ve done very well.”

“I have?” said Gunth, brightening.

“You have.” Ronda’s smiled dipped, just a fraction. “And tell your mother she really should get that swelling checked out.”

“I will,” said Gunth.

Ronda smile returned, but it was a different smile this time. There was a sadness to it. “No,” she said, shuffling along the narrow hallway towards the only visible inner door. “You don’t.”

One of the downsides of Ronda’s gift was all the additional knowledge that came with it. Being able to see along the personal timelines of the people she encountered brought all kinds of advantages – advantages which her time at the convent had taught her to … well, to take advantage of.

However, alongside the usable intel came plenty of other baggage. Feelings, mostly. She’d learned long ago not to get attached to the people in her visions, or even to think about them too much. Sometimes, though, she’d see suffering she felt compelled to try to alleviate, even when she knew it was pointless. At least she could console herself with the fact she’d tried.

“Who the fonk are you?” demanded an expensively-dressed figure in the next room. There were three people in the room, not including Ronda. In a little under three minutes, there would be two. Or, at least, two living ones.

The man who had addressed Ronda was Katona, a Sloortian gang leader who’d made too many enemies back home on Sloorta, and had sold his services to Shornack, a notorious female warlord. Katona ran one of Shornack’s space-based outposts, dealing in drugs, slaves, illegal tech and anything else that would bring Shornack a profit. Shornack, in return, generously resisted nailing his genitalia to a table, or devouring his skull.

Katona slouched in a large, imposing chair that had been positioned in pride of place across from the door. Two henchmen – the closest thing Katona had to friends, although they were quite some distance away from being that – stood up suddenly, hands reaching for blaster pistols strapped to their legs.

With a gesture, Katona told them to wait. He looked Ronda up and down, running his shovel-like hands over the ridges of his bald head. He curled a lip, deliberately showing off a mouth filled with gold teeth. “I’m gonna ask you again, old lady. Who the fonk are you?”

Ronda closed the door. There was a hook on the back of it, just as she knew there would be. She raised an index finger, gesturing for the men to wait, then removed her frying pan from her bag and hung it over the hook. She closed her eyes for a moment, remembering, then adjusted the pan’s angle.

“Now,” she said, turning and rubbing her hands together. “I’ve come for Narp.”

Katona raised a sculpted eyebrow. “Say what?”

“Narp. My son. I’ve come to collect him.”

The gangster raised his arms to gesture around the room, but Ronda jumped in.

“Oh, I know he’s not here. I’ve known that since the day he was born.” She tapped the side of her head. “I was a nun. I foresee a lot of things. Not everything, unfortunately, otherwise I could just have gone straight to find him. But I foresaw you telling me where to find him. I just didn’t catch the actual location.”

At the mention of the word ‘nun’ all three men had stiffened slightly. The henchmen’s hands, which had frozen halfway to their blasters, inched closer.

“Me?” Katona said, snorting the word out in disbelief. “You think I’m gonna tell you where to find him?”

“Actually, not you, dear, no,” Ronda admitted. She pointed to the henchman on the left. “He does. You’ll be dead by then.”

Katona’s brow furrowed. He snarled, baring every one of his golden molars. “Hunch, smoke this bedge.”

Hunch, the henchman on the left, drew his weapon and fired in one smooth motion. In one even smoother motion, Ronda leaned to her right. The blaster bolt scorched past her head, ricocheted off the frying pan, then rebounded off the room’s solitary light fitting.

Katona’s face registered a short-lived look of surprise, before his head exploded, showering his sidekicks with smoldering chunks of skull, brains, and several thousand credits worth of gold.

Hunch and the other henchman both watched silently as Katona’s headless corpse slumped slowly forwards out of his chair, and hit the floor with a soft, but definite thud.

“Now,” said Ronda, unhooking her scorched frying pan and hefting it from hand to hand with precisely the right amount of menace. “Where were we?”

Two

Four minutes and one impeccably respectful conversation later, Ronda exited the elevator and shuffled across the station’s lower docking bay, searching for a very specific ship.

Even after all these years, these converted mining stations took her breath away. The sheer scale of them – six hundred levels, all packed with homes, malls, museums, theaters, and other ‘entertainment’ she tended not to dwell on too much. The Zertex stations were even bigger, she’d heard, although she’d never had call to visit one, and hoped she never did.

She was reasonably confident she never did, of course, but there were a few aspects of even her own future which weren’t entirely clear, so she kept her metaphorical fingers crossed, just in case.

A large group of children filed past, walking hand in hand in pairs. They were accompanied by four adults, spread out along the line. A school trip.

Regret gnawed at her conscience as the children skipped excitedly by her. So much so, in fact, that she felt compelled to step into the path of the trailing adult helper. He stopped instantly, his weight sliding onto his back heel. His already grimly-determined expression became even more so, and the way he held his hands suggested he not only knew how to use them, but also knew that harmless-looking old women were often anything but.

“You know what would be handy?” Ronda asked. The man’s eyes darted across her, sizing her up.

“For you to get out my way?” he grunted.

“An animal vac-pack.”

Ronda nodded curtly, then continued on her way. Without looking, she knew the man briefly watched her go, before hurrying to catch up with the rest of his group.

As she walked, Ronda allowed herself a smile. Some things she couldn’t change, but other things, she could.

She found the ship just where she knew it would be. The code that opened the landing ramp was as she had foreseen, the ‘enter’ button precisely as stiff as she’d expected.

The pilot’s expression of surprise was something she’d hadn’t been anticipating. She took a moment to enjoy it, then took a seat in the gunner’s chair behind him. The pilot was a thin, reedy young man with fish-like features and eyelashes that went on for days.

“How did you get in here?” he asked, his voice shaking with the shock. “Did I …? The ramp, I thought I’d …”

“You did, dear, relax. You’re doing fine,” Ronda assured him. “Now, you’re going to take me to Tussk.”

“Uh, no. No, I’m not.”

Ronda sighed and placed her bag on her knees. As she talked, she rummaged inside. “Look, Marl – can I call you Marl? I’m going to call you Marl. Look, Marl, here’s the situation. You worked for Katona. That was a mistake. You’re a good boy, and I know you thought working for Katona would help with your money problems, but deep down, you knew it wasn’t right. Right?”

Marl swiveled his chair around to face the old woman. “What are …? I don’t … Look, who are you, lady? I still work for Katona.” He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “I mean, I do, right?”

“No, dear,” said Ronda. She withdrew a neatly folded handkerchief from her bag and tossed it to Marl. It chinked as it landed in his lap. The young pilot’s eyes widened as he unfolded the material and saw the contents. Gold teeth. Lots of gold teeth. “You work for me now. And we’re going to Tussk.”

Marl stared down at the teeth. There was still blood and chunks of gummy flesh clinging to a few of the larger pieces. He folded the handkerchief again and slipped it into his pocket, then raised his eyes to Ronda.

“And what if I just toss you off my ship and fly on out of here?”

“No, you don’t do that,” she said. “I’m not entirely sure what I threaten you with to convince you to take me, but take me you do.” She smoothed down her slacks and fastened her seatbelt, then shot the pilot something that resembled a smile, but very much wasn’t one. “I suggest, for both our sakes, you take me at my word on that.”

She waited just long enough for the meaning behind her words to sink in, then held out a small paper bag. “Spit Nibble?”

* * *

Tussk grew in the viewscreen like an aggressive cancer, a malignant brown and gray blot rapidly expanding on a landscape of stars. It was a small, ugly moon circling a large, dead planet right at the edge of the Remnants – a once-thriving star system all but destroyed by Zertex in a yet-to-be-rivalled show of military force. Now, the Remnants was a breeding ground for gangsters, warlords, and other unsavory types. Ronda had spent a few years at a convent a little deeper into the system, back before Narp was born. It had been one of her more relaxing appointments.

“They’re going to hail you in a moment and ask for the docking codes,” Ronda said.

Marl tapped his earpiece. “Yeah. Got them now. What’s the code?”

Ronda clasped her hands in her lap. “Unfortunately, I didn’t foresee that part.”

“What?!” Marl spluttered. “So how are we supposed to get permission to land?”

“Well, dear,” said Ronda, flipping open the arm rests of her chair. A series of weapon controls unfolded, slid and locked into place around her. “That really depends on how you define ‘permission’.”

A stream of red warning text flashed across the viewscreen. “Ships! Incoming ships!” Marl yelped. “Four … no, five. We have to get out of here. We can’t fight them! Do you know who this is? Tussk is Xandrie territory. You do not fonk with the Xandrie. You just don’t!”

“Shh, now, don’t go getting your knickers in a twist,” said Ronda. “Just pop flight control over to my station, there’s a dear.”

“What?! Are you nuts?! You can’t pilot and gun at the same time. I mean, how—?”

“Marl. The flight controls. Hurry now.”

Something about the way she said it made Marl do as he was told. Somehow, the idea of disappointing her was more terrifying that the thought of the approaching Xandrie ships. He tapped the necessary controls and his console went dark.

“All yours,” he said, looking back over his shoulder. “Uh, you might want to put on the targeting visor,” he suggested.

Ronda shook her head, just briefly. She hovered her fingers over the controls, slipped her hands into position, then leaned back and closed her eyes.

“What are you doing?” yelped Marl. He glanced at the screen. Five flashing red icons illuminated between them and Tussk, and quickly began spreading into an attack formation. “Open your fonking eyes! You can’t see!”

“Don’t need to see,” said Ronda. “I need to remember.”

“Remember? What the fonk are you talking about?”

Ronda opened one eye and swiveled it until it fixed on the terrified pilot. “Marl. Please.”

She closed her eyes again. She inhaled slowly through her nose.

And then, she remembered.

She remembered the attack vectors of the Xandrie ships. She remembered the routes of their torpedoes, the projections from their plasma-guns.

She remembered the frequencies of their shields, and the corresponding angles at which controlled bursts of cannon-fire could punch right through.

She remembered the screaming, crackling at her over her headset.

When she’d finished remembering, she opened her eyes and found Marl staring at her, his eyes so wide his long lashes went vertical in both directions. Her fingers tapped across a series of keys, and Marl’s controls hummed into life again.

“Take us down, dear,” said Ronda. “Landing bay six is unoccupied.”

Marl swallowed. “Uh, yeah. OK. Sure,” he said, then he slowly swiveled his chair back to the front.

Ronda popped a Spit Nibble in her mouth and chewed on it. They were homemade, of course, and not bad, even if she said so herself. Tussk grew steadily larger, colors swimming across the screen as the ship descended through the atmosphere.

Much of the moon was shrouded in thick gray cloud. To the north, it was dangerously acidic, and anything above the equator was inhabitable only by a handful of species, and none of them anything you’d care to meet. The south was more hospitable, but still not somewhere you’d want to take a vacation. Or briefly visit. Or, if it could possibly be avoided, look at a photograph of.

The ship swept low over a terrain of angry-looking mountains. They stabbed at the sky like ragged sword-blades, as if the world below were fighting back against the clouds above.

Marl’s scanners showed only one settlement for thousands of miles in any direction. It lurked like a spider in a nest of cliffs and ridges, one central hub attached by long corridors to eight landing bays. Marl swiped across a touchscreen and studied the schematics.

“Which one is—?”

“That one,” said Ronda, pointing at one of the bays. The domed roof stood open, revealing an empty pad inside.

“So, what, they just left it open for us? Just like that?” asked Marl.

“Yes,” said Ronda, picking up her bag and setting it on her knees. “Just like that. Now take us down. And keep the engine running.”

* * *

The air smelled stale and second-hand when Ronda made her way down the ramp. She’d been expecting that, of course. Or had she? She couldn’t quite recall.

A man and a woman waited for her, just as she’d known they would. She smiled at the woman and hoisted her bag higher on her shoulder. “So good of you to come out and meet me…”

Ronda reached for her name, but couldn’t find it. She’d known it earlier, she could have sworn.

“…dear,” she concluded.

The woman – a long-limbed, slender creature with pale yellow skin and a face like a startled giraffe – nodded slowly. “You’ve come for Narp.”

The man beside her, with his low forehead and large tusks, was low-ranking muscle, Ronda knew.

Or thought.

No, knew. Or had known.

Or …

It hit her, then. The realization. The realization that she had no idea what was about to happen next.

And because of that – because she didn’t know – she did know. And her blood ran cold in her veins.

“Oh, no,” she whispered.

“Oh,” said the woman, raising a small remote-control device. “Yes.”

Ronda threw herself into a diving roll just as the platform erupted behind her. The heat propelled her across the bay, launching her towards the Xandrie woman and her sidekick.

She didn’t need premonition to know what was happening to the ship, or to the young man aboard who had, as far as she had been aware, had his whole life ahead of him. Metal screamed as the hull of the ship exploded. A forcefield snapped up just inches from Ronda’s back, shielding her and the Xandrie gangsters from the hail of flaming debris.

Premonition or not, she still had her instincts, still had her training. She hit the ground awkwardly, but recovered quickly, rising into an uppercut that slammed into the man’s groin. He grimaced, but only slightly, and Ronda felt a shock of pain explode across her knuckles.

“Armored,” the man said, his voice hissing and slurring between his tusks. “Barely felt a thing.”

He raised a foot to chest height and thrust it forwards. It was a big foot, and it moved quickly. Under normal circumstances, Ronda would have dodged before he’d even decided to kick, but her ability to predict the future was being blocked, and that could only mean …

She twisted sideways, narrowly avoiding the kick. As she turned, she hooked an arm around the man’s calf, and jerked it sharply towards him. His knee discovered an angle it had wisely elected never to investigate before, and the brute dropped in a mess of tears and high-pitched screams.

“You idiot,” the giraffe-faced woman spat. “I told you to stay on script.”

“Is it you?” Ronda asked. She sized the woman up. “No, it’s not you. Where is she? Do you tell me?”

Giraffe-face nodded slowly, then about-turned and walked with a sort of lumbering grace towards the mouth of the corridor. “This way. She’s expecting you.”

“Yes,” said Ronda, straightening her pants suit and tightening her grip on her handbag. “Of course she is.”

Three

She saw Narp first. He sat at a terminal, his hands cuffed to his chair, a headjack locked into the port behind his right ear. Reams of blurry green text streaked across the screen of a battered old monitor positioned in front of him. He wouldn’t be looking at it, Ronda knew. He didn’t need to. She had her talents, and her son had his.

The handcuffs were tight around his wrists, the metal cutting into his flesh. This made her happy. Not because of the injuries – Narp had a tendency to milk such things, and she’d likely never hear the end of it – but because it suggested he was there against his will. She had probably known that already, but as there was now a gaping void in her head where the future had been, she found the sight of the cuffs reassuring, all the same.

Eight Xandrie sat, stood, slouched or loomed around the station’s central hub. They were all from different species, some of which Ronda didn’t recognize. There was a Greyx, all hair and muscle and snapping, wolf-like jaws. Across the scuffed metal table from him sat an orange-hued blob-like figure with a quivering, semi-transparent skin that showed most of his organs. Ronda had never encountered one of … whatever he was before, and would be quietly pleased if she never did again. He grinned gummily at her, showing thousands of pin-like teeth.

Across the room, a partly-mechanized Symmorium leaned against a wall, his black, shark-like eyes staring at Ronda, cold and unblinking.

She skimmed across the others, then turned and settled on the woman lurking in the shadows behind the door Ronda herself and Giraffe-face had entered through. She hadn’t known the woman would be there, but she had suspected. It was, after all, just what she would have done.

At the convent, they called them ‘Imbukas’. They called them worse things, too, but ‘Imbuka’ was the official classification. Out in the world, though, most people thought of them as ‘anti-nuns’. Fallen nuns who had turned away from one of the Five Paths, choosing instead to abuse their gifts for personal gain.

In many ways, Ronda was an Imbuka, too. She had set off along at least four of the Five Paths over the years, and had wandered off every one. There was a difference between ‘wandering off’ and ‘attempting to eradicate from existence’, however, and Ronda still considered herself much more ‘nun’ than ‘anti’.

“Sister,” she said, nodding in greeting.

The shadows fell away as the woman stepped out from behind the door. Her dirty red hair hung over her pale face like old theater drapes. An eye peered through the straggly strands, the pupil a deep, haunting black, the iris matching the red of her hair. Her ruby lips were stretched into a mockery of a grin, and her dark robe swished as she paced in a semi-circle around Ronda.

“Sister,” the woman replied, nodding back.

“Ronda.”

The woman giggled. It was a high-pitched hiss, like steam escaping from somewhere it probably shouldn’t be. “Voss. And yes, I know.”

Voss. Voss. The name was familiar, but Ronda couldn’t place it. That was the problem with not having her premonition. If she had, she could simply have made a mental note to look the name up when she got home, then looked ahead to a point in time shortly afterwards. Now, all she had to go on was her memory, and her time at the convents had been a lifetime ago.

“I’ve come for my son,” said Ronda. She knew Voss didn’t need the visual clue, but she deliberately glanced towards Narp’s motionless back, all the same.

That giggle came again, hssssss-hssssss-hsssss.

“We’re using him,” said the giraffe-faced woman.

“I know,” said Ronda. “You’re using him to decrypt Zertex security protocols so you can steal …” Her eyes darted left and right, searching for the memory. “Something important. A device.”

“A weapon,” Giraffe-features corrected. “Once he’s done, he’s free to go.”

Ronda almost accepted that, but something nagged at her. A memory of a memory that hadn’t yet happened.

“No. They find out it’s him. They take him away. I never see him again.”

“Never gonna see him again anyways,” whispered Voss, then she giggled again when Ronda threw her a dead-eyed look. “Never gonna get out of here alive, nun.”

Ronda calculated the odds, and came to the rather depressing conclusion that the Imbuka was probably correct. She still had one card left to play, but while it might help earn Narp’s freedom, it was unlikely to save her life.

She reached into her handbag. Around the room, five blasters turned in her direction. “It’s not a weapon,” she assured them.

Something green and dome-like rose out of the bag, followed a moment later by a pair of large, round eyes. The eyes could only be described as ‘large’ when compared to the rest of the head, however. They were a fraction of the size of Ronda’s eyes, for example, and yet they seemed to take up eighty-percent of the tiny cherubic face that appeared from within the bag.

“Alright?” said the creature, in a surprisingly gruff voice. He sat, cross-legged, on Ronda’s hand, tapping out a rhythm on his knees.

The Xandrie all stared in silence at the little green man. Voss stared, too. Clearly, she hadn’t been expecting him, but then that made sense. It would be taking all her concentration to block Ronda’s premonition, meaning that when it came to the future, Voss was equally as blind.

The doll-sized man eyeballed them back, still tapping out his beat. Were they not part of the most feared criminal gang in the sector, the Xandrie would have to admit the guy was pretty fonking adorable. He looked like the cartoon mascot for a ‘Galaxy’s Cutest Baby’ competition, and while at least one of the gang members wanted to eat him alive, most just wanted to take him home and put him on a shelf.

“What the fonk you all staring at, you soppy sacks of shizz?” the little man snarled. “I heard you got a hacking job you need doing.”

“Mr Thundercrotch here is the second best hacker in the system,” said Ronda. “He assures me he’s more than capable of breaking into the systems you require, and – unlike my son – he’s prepared to do so willingly. I hoped you might be prepared to make a straight swap, and let my boy go.”

“Thundercrotch?” snorted the giraffe-faced woman.

The little man shifted his eyes towards her and waggled his eyebrows suggestively. “You’d better believe it, sweetheart. Thundercrotch by name …”

He bounded up so he was standing on Ronda’s hand, did a quite aggressive sort of war-dance, then thrust his hips forward. “Thundercrotch by—”

A set of canine jaws snapped down, devouring Thundercrotch whole. Ronda looked up into the dark brown eyes of the wolf-like Greyx. He swallowed with some difficulty, then flicked his long red tongue across his lips.

“Sorry. Couldn’t resist,” he said, flashing a few teeth in Ronda’s direction, before turning and heading back to his seat.

Ronda stared at her palm, which was now empty, aside from a dribble of Greyx drool. She looked over at her son, still jacked in, still oblivious to her presence. She felt a weight in her chest, a sadness radiating outwards like rot spreading through her insides.

Nine Xandrie. One Imbuka. She’d survived worse, although never without her premonition, and never without injury. She’d been younger then, too. Faster. Stronger.

But age brought benefits also. Wisdom. Experience. And, more importantly, a fonking heavy handbag.

Ronda spun, swinging her bag out and flicking a hidden switch on the handle. Twin blades snapped horizontally outwards from the base. Voss ducked, but cut it too close for it to be premonition. Still, she was fast and well-trained. That could be a problem.

Giraffe-face was neither of those things. Ronda arced the bag upwards and the blade made a satisfying thunk as it embedded in the side of the woman’s skull.

Blaster-fire screamed across the room. Ronda ducked for cover behind the giraffe-woman, who still teetered on her long, slender legs. With a flick of her wrist, Ronda yanked the bag-blade free and the woman folded like a house of cards, her arms and legs all splaying in different directions on the floor.

“Get her!” roared one of the Xandrie, but Voss’s screech brought them to a halt.

“Wait!” the Imbuka screamed. Her eyes danced behind her curtain of hair. “The nun is mine.”

She lunged, without warning, hands outstretched, hair wafting back behind her to reveal a vicious leer. Ronda swung with her bag, but Voss was already too close. The Imbuka’s hands found Ronda’s throat. A knee found her solar plexus. Ronda’s chest constricted, forcing her to gasp for breath that would not come.

Trying to break the grip was pointless, so she went for the eyes. Her thumbs pressed hard against Voss’s eyeballs, and the Imbuka pulled back, hissing and spitting with rage.

Ronda swung with the bag again, but Voss’s leg snapped up, her foot slamming into the older woman’s wrist. Pain flared up Ronda’s arm. Her grip on the bag slipped and it clattered to the ground, spilling coins, handkerchiefs, mints, reading glasses and half a bag of Spit Nibbles across the floor.

Voss struck like a cobra at Ronda’s throat with her three middle fingers. Ronda managed to deflect, twist, and drove an elbow towards Voss’s face. The younger woman half-dodged, turning a devastating nose-splitter into a glancing blow.

Arms moved, twisted, struck, blocked. There was nothing flashy about the fighting, no flying kicks or spinning backhands. The style could best be described as ‘devastatingly functional’ and, had either woman been fighting another opponent, the emphasis would have been heavily on the ‘devastating’ part.

Ronda landed a solid forearm strike across the bridge of Voss’s nose, staggering the younger woman. For a moment, the future poured back into Ronda’s head like sand, but then the Imbuka recovered and it was gone again.

It bought her an extra half-second warning for the next strike, though, and she ducked quickly, then followed up with two firm strikes to Voss’s kidneys, or whatever the local equivalent of kidneys was. Whatever Voss kept down there in her lower back, the strikes hurt. She stumbled forwards, and Ronda moved in to finish her off.

The Imbuka spun sharply. Ronda caught a glimpse of something shiny and metallic, but her momentum carried her on.

She barely felt the blade slipping into her stomach. It wasn’t until Voss twisted the handle, and that hiss of a giggle escaped her lips again, that Ronda fully grasped just what had happened.

The floor came up to meet her. Ronda heard the cheers of the Xandrie as she fell. She saw them, blurred by tears. Aside from the Greyx, who remained seated, they were all on their feet, whooping and cheering and baying for blood.

Ronda breathed. It gargled in her throat. She clutched her stomach where the knife was buried, and felt the blood seeping out from beneath the ornate handle.

Voss stood over here, giggling, her hair falling back into place in front of her face. Her laughter, and the cheering, were drowned out by the whooshing of Ronda’s heartbeat – fast and frantic, but slowing rapidly.

The Greyx was sitting down. That was important. Ronda thought she remembered something about that, but the pain and the fear and the panic pushed the thought away.

hingIt was something she was unused to, panic. There was no need for panic when you knew what was going to happen next. Now, she didn’t even know if she would have a ‘next’. At the rate her blood was seeping from her gut wound, she doubted it.

Her eyes fell on the scattered contents of her bag. Her homemade Spit Nibbles lay strewn around her, partially crushed from the fight. She found herself reaching for one. Her fingers flaked off the pastry, revealing the dark orange filling inside.

There were Spit Nibbles.

And the Greyx was sitting down.

With some effort, Ronda began to laugh. It was weak and frail, yet it soon rose to fill every space in the room as Voss and the Xandrie fell quiet.

“What’s so funny, nun?” Voss demanded, spitting out that last word like it left a bad taste in her mouth.

“Spit Nibbles,” Ronda wheezed.

Voss frowned behind her hair. “What?”

“Do you know when I learned to make Spit Nibbles?”

When no response came, Ronda shrugged. “No, me neither. See, no-one showed me. I just saw the recipe in my future, and started making them.”

She caught her breath. In the silence, she heard the Greyx groan.

“But I must learn the recipe at some point, otherwise how would I know it now?” said Ronda. “And if I know it now, then I survive this.”

Ronda’s face darkened. “And if I have time to learn the art of Spit Nibbles, that means I haven’t dedicated myself to hunting down everyone in this room and killing them all.” She adjusted her position on the floor. “And the only way that would happen, is if you’re all already dead.”

Across the room, the Greyx stood up sharply. He clutched at his stomach, his eyes bulging in panic. “What … what is h-happening to me?” he managed to wheeze, and then everything from his crotch to his chest exploded, spraying his colleagues in blood, guts, and burning chunks of furry flesh.

Thundercrotch erupted from the wolf-man’s torso, a tiny blaster pistol in his hands and an expression of unbridled rage twisting up his face.

“Die, you motherfonkers!” he howled, rolling on the ground and spraying blaster fire at the shock-frozen Xandrie.

Voss gawped in surprise, then looked down at Ronda, but the old woman was gone.

A blood-soaked blade pressed against the Imbuka’s throat. “I could be wrong, dear, but it’s quite possible I did see all this coming, after all.”

Voss jabbed back an elbow, but Ronda had anticipated it and edged aside. “Isn’t it funny how things work out?” Ronda whispered, then she pulled the blade across Voss’s pale skin, and a thin line of red followed behind it.

The future returned. Ronda turned and hurled the knife through the air, burying it into the chest of a tall, angular Xandrie with a hooked nose and feathery hair.

The semi-transparent orange blob raised a rifle and fired on her. Ronda marched forwards, avoiding each shot before it was fired. The gangster’s eyes became larger and more panic-filled as she drew closer.

He lowered the gun, too late, and tried to hit Ronda with the stock, but she was on him then, her arm around his neck. She removed what was left of his life with a surgical crack, caught his blaster as he fell, and killed three of the remaining Xandrie with one perfectly-aimed shot.

She let Thundercrotch take care of the last one – a particularly stocky creature with skin like a dirty potato – then nodded at the little man in acknowledgement.

“Thank you, dear,” she said.

Thundercrotch sniffed and shrugged. “We’re square now, right?”

“Yes, dear. We’re square.”

Tucking his blaster into the back of his doll-sized pants, Thundercrotch nodded at the blood stain blooming across Ronda’s front.

“You should get that looked at.”

“I do,” Ronda assured him. “It’s touch and go for a while, but ultimately, it looks worse than it is.”

She nodded, pleased, and allowed herself a smile. It was good to be back.

Thundercrotch looked over to where Narp was still at his terminal, text flooding the screen before him. There was something else on the screen, too. A diagram. A diagram of something very large. “Want me to go unplug him?”

“Hmm?” said Ronda. “Oh, no. It’s fine. Leave him to it.”

The little man frowned. “Huh? I thought you wanted to get him out of here.”

Ronda tilted her head left and right. “Well, that wasn’t strictly true,” she said. “This weapon, I don’t want Zertex keeping it, but I couldn’t let the Xandrie get their hands on it, either.”

“So … what? You’re taking it for yourself?”

“Me? Goodness, no, dear. I wouldn’t be able to make use of such a device.”

The future unfolded before her, and a grin spread across her face. It was a good future. Not perfect, because nothing ever is. But good enough.

“But I know a man who can …”

THE END

This story is set between Space Team: Song of the Space Siren and Space Team: The Guns of Nana Joan. Ronda appears in the latter story, where you get to find out who ‘the man’ she refers to in the final line is. So, you know, go check that out if you like.

Splurt Home Alone

A Splurt Solo Adventure

Cal was upset. Splurt could tell from the way thousands of red hot needles were jabbing into his psyche.

One of the Not Cals was shouting at him. It was the metal one, who shouted at Cal a lot. Cal was shouting back. Splurt understood the meaning, if not the words themselves. The things Cal was shouting weren’t very nice, but then the things the metal Not Cal was shouting weren’t particularly pleasant, either.

The other Not Cals were getting involved. The red hot needles became a sort of coarse yellow sandpaper across the surface of Splurt’s mind, and he briefly debated whether to retreat into the safety of the ship’s overhead vents, or to kill everyone who wasn’t Cal, thereby effectively ending the argument.

He opted for the overhead vents. Even though the Not Cals shouted at Cal a lot, Splurt knew Cal liked them. He didn’t fully understand why, but then there was a lot Splurt either didn’t understand, or simply chose to ignore.

The laws of Physics fell into that latter category, for example. The card game, Snap, fell into the first.

Splurt could spend hours in the vents. He could explore the whole ship, getting into every nook and cranny, while something about the insulation shielded him from the psychic barrage of whatever Cal’s current emotional state might be.

If he stretched himself out long enough, he could criss-cross through the ducts and pipework until he met himself coming the other way. That was always fun, although the sandpapering his mind had received meant he didn’t really feel like it today.

Instead, he formed himself into a little bicycle and trundled off along the largest vent, weaving and zig-zagging from side to side as he set out to explore the ship yet again.

He was somewhere near the back when he heard the hatch open. Splurt rippled back into blobbiness as Cal thundered past beneath him and hurried down the ramp. The metal Not Cal clanked along at his heels, but stopped just inside the ship.

“Don’t think we’re coming after you, man!” the Not Cal hollered. “I mean it. We ain’t. Storm off all you like.”

Although the words were just unintelligible noises to Splurt, their meanings lit up like animated pictures in his subconscious, and he understood them perfectly.

“Like, where’s he going?” asked the hairy Not Cal with the pointy teeth.

“Don’t know, don’t care,” replied the metal one. “We ain’t going after him.”

“We should go after him,” said the Not Cal who kept crashing the ship. She and the hairy one pushed past the metal guy.

“No! What did I just say? We ain’t going after him!” said the metal one. He tutted, muttered something shaped like an unexploded bomb, then hurried down the ramp. “Wait up. You’re all going to get yourself killed out here.”

Splurt wobbled slightly, waiting to see if anything else would happen.

Nothing did.

He shrugged, then tumbled into a forward roll. He enjoyed forward rolls. Backward rolls made him nervous, but he could forward roll until the space cows came home.

“They’ve left the door open,” said The Voice.

Splurt stopped rolling. His eyes flopped around inside him for a moment, like Bingo balls in a machine filled with barely set jello. He looked around, searching for the source of The Voice, but failing to find it as usual.

“And they’ve gone out without their coats on,” said The Voice. “They’ll catch their deaths out there.”

There was a long pause. Splurt didn’t move.

“No, wait. Desert planet. Forget that.”

The Voice sniffed. Splurt wondered where its nose was. He’d looked for it before, but had never managed to locate it.

“Well, if they think I’m going to close the hatch for them, they’ve got another thing—”

There was a sound like an old-fashioned camera flash bulb popping. Splurt had found out about old-fashioned camera flash bulbs while browsing through Cal’s head. He’d also found out about Skittles (the candy), Skittles (the game), and learned all the lyrics to the song Cool Rider from the movie, Grease 2.

The Voice stopped. Splurt listened – or, more accurately, thought. He expected The Voice to start again, because The Voice seemed to like the sound of itself, but it said nothing.

And then Splurt heard something else. It wasn’t The Voice. It wasn’t any voice, in fact. It was footsteps, softly padding up the landing ramp.

Splurt forward rolled until he found a grille in the vent. Two men – one tall and skinny, the other short and stocky – were creeping into the ship. One of them was studying some sort of gadget he had on his wrist. It wasn’t a watch – Splurt knew about watches, too – but something more complicated.

The smaller man carried a tool designed for breaking things. Splurt had never seen one before, but its shape made its purpose obvious.

“You sure security’s down?” the smaller man asked.

“We got a few minutes,” his companion advised. “But whoa, this ship is weird. I haven’t seen a system like it. So, let’s not waste time.”

“Agreed. Let’s split up. Grab anything that isn’t fixed down, and rip out anything that is.”

Splurt rippled in the vent above them. If he’d had a mouth at that moment, or had been capable of emitting a sound, he’d have gasped. These were bad men. They wanted to steal from Cal and the Not Cals.

That wouldn’t do at all.

* * *

Marvok Uns-Krill snuck into what he assumed was the ship’s engine room, although it was like no other engine room he’d ever seen.

There was a warp disk, which was good. He could shift that for a few thousand credits. The housing would go for less, but it’d still be worth something. The value of the other stuff was a mystery, though. He had no idea what most of it even was, but someone would pay good money for it. Someone always did.

Checking his wrist scanner to make sure the alarm system was still deactivated, Marvok slid a crack-bar out of his sleeve and approached the warp disk.

* * *

There was some things Splurt knew, and some things he just sort of felt.

He didn’t know what the form he had taken actually was, for example, but he felt like it was the right one. Like it was somehow appropriate, given the circumstances.

He was still up near the ceiling, but he was stretched out across part of the floor, too, and running up the wall between them. It was a complicated shape in some ways, and yet so very simple in others.

If he could’ve giggled, Splurt would have done so. Instead, he just watched and waited as the taller intruder drew closer.

* * *

Marvok’s foot snagged on a tripwire made of string. He stumbled a little, then looked up in surprise as a pot of paint swung down from the ceiling towards him.

It cracked him across the temple, fracturing his skull and blinding him in one eye. Marvok emitted a sort of lowing wail as he staggered backwards, green blood oozing from the wound on his eye socket.

CLANK!

A bear trap snapped shut around one of his legs, its serrated metal teeth chomping deep into his flesh. The lowing wail became a burbling scream as he fell backwards and thudded his head against the warp disk housing.

Instinctively, Marvok grabbed for the bear trap, trying to prize its jaws apart. As he touched it, it collapsed into slime, then rolled out of sight.

Clutching at his bleeding leg, Marvok turned, searching for the goo-ball. In its place was a smiling blond-haired boy who punched the air in delight, whispered a silent, “Yes!” then ran out into the corridor.

“Wh-what the fonk?” Marvok whimpered.

* * *

Jarty Boorsk was trying to jimmy a control panel out of the ship’s dash when he heard Marvok’s screams. The fact he was screaming was not particularly unusual. Marvok was easily startled, and probably not really built for a life of crime. The way he was screaming now, though, suggested he wasn’t just scared, he was hurt.

Racing out into the corridor, Jarty had barely made it four big bounding paces when his foot found the skateboard. He careened along the corridor on the thing, balancing clumsily on one foot with his arms wobbling at his sides.

Then, as he neared the door of the engine room, the skateboard slid out from beneath him. Jarty went horizontal in the air, then slammed against the ship’s metal floor. He watched, frozen in confusion, as the skateboard sailed up, up, up, then plunged down, down, down towards him.

The wooden edge of the board bounced off the bridge of his nose, shattering it.

Then it did it again, because it had been so much fun the first time.

“J-Jarty!” cried Marvok from the engine room. “Where are you?”

“I’m here!” Jarty managed while gagging on his own blood. “I’ve been hurt.”

“You’ve been hurt?! Get in here, quick.”

Jarty rolled onto his side and clumsily got to his feet. The skateboard was nowhere to be seen.

“Kroysh. What happened to you?” he asked, as he entered the engine room. Marvok’s leg was hanging off below the knee, his face was awash with blood, and his right eye looked like it had exploded.

“I-It was a kid,” Marvok mumbled. “It was s-some little kid.”

“What do you mean, ‘it was a kid’?” Jarty demanded. “How could a kid have done…”

He stood on Splurt. Normally, this wouldn’t be all that big a deal, but as Splurt had taken the form of a six-inch metal spike, it had a number of quite sudden repercussions.

Screaming, Jarty yanked his knee up to his chest and hopped around in a circle, blood oozing from the hole in the bottom of his boot.

The other boot, meanwhile, landed on the prongs of a garden rake that the would-be thief would have sworn wasn’t there a moment ago. The handle came up quickly and thwacked him across the eyes, finishing the job on his nose the skateboard had started.

“Aaaaargh! What the fonk is happening?” Jarty howled.

Blinded by tears, he lashed out with his hefty metal tool, just as a panic-stricken Marvok tried to heave himself into a standing position. The curved tip of the tool punched a hole in the side of Marvok’s skull.

Realizing what he’d done, Jarty yanked the makeshift weapon away. As it pulled free, forty per cent of Marvok’s brain spattered onto the floor and skidded out into the corridor, which made Jarty start screaming again.

Babbling incoherently, Jarty sprint-hobbled into the corridor, desperately trying to remember which direction was the way out. His one good foot landed, heel-first, in a quivering lump of brain matter, and he once more found himself going horizontal in the air.

The floor was unforgivingly hard as he slammed against it, and his screams and babbling both stopped as all the air was knocked from his body.

Lying there flat on his back, Jarty could’ve sworn he saw a boy looking down from the tangle of vents and pipes at the ceiling. He had a cherubic face and tousled blond hair, and Jarty’s first instinct was to cry out to him for help.

But then the boy became a bowling ball, which then fell on Jarty’s head, killing him instantly.

* * *

Splurt sat there for a while, enjoying his near perfect roundness and the three little holes in his head.

The bad men had stopped playing, which was a pity. He was just starting to get into the swing of the game, and he had lots of other things he’d wanted to try out. There were pointy things he could be, and heavy things. He thought he could probably even be a blisteringly hot thing, if he put a bit of effort into it.

But no. The game was over. The fun was done.

Splurt watched as something small and metallic came bouncing up the hatch and landed in the corridor some way ahead of him. It hissed as plumes of blue gas seeped from inside it, quickly filling the corridor.

“Attention occupants of unregistered starship!” barked a voice from somewhere outside. “This is Legate Honfar of Zertex. You are harboring wanted fugitives. Prepare to be boarded.”

The bowling ball spun in a series of excited little circles, then trundled up the wall. Maybe the fun wasn’t quite done, after all.

* * *

Forty minutes later, Cal and the others returned, alive and intact, but dirty.

“I told you what’d happen,” the metal Not Cal said. “You’d get yourself killed.”

“We didn’t get ourselves killed,” said Cal. “We almost got ourselves killed, but we knew you’d come and save us, ya big lug.”

“Speak for yourself,” said the hairy Not Cal. “Like, I was totally fine.”

“Well, granted, you were totally fine,” said Cal. “And Loren was handling herself, but my point is… My point is… Actually, I don’t know what my point is.”

He stopped outside his room. “I’m going to get changed. I’ve got, like, pink stuff on me, and I don’t know what it is. Is it marshmallow?”

“What the fonk is marshmallow?” asked the metal one.

“I think it’s marshmallow,” said Cal. He stuck a finger in a big blob of the stuff that was stuck to his chest, gave it an experimental sniff, then tasted it. “Jesus. No. No, that definitely isn’t marshmallow.”

Cal jabbed a thumb towards the door. “I’m going to go get changed.”

“I wouldn’t, sir,” intoned The Voice. Cal and the others looked up.

“Uh, why not, Kevin?” Cal asked.

“There was… Well, I think there was an incident while you were out, sir. Although I’d like to make it clear that I was temporarily disabled, and therefore take no responsibility for any of it.”

Cal glanced around at the others. “Uh, OK. What happened?”

“I honestly don’t know, sir,” The Voice admitted.

Cal shrugged and touched his thumb to the panel beside his door. “Well, if it comes back to you, you let me know. OK, Kev?”

The door slid open. A pile of mangled Zertex corpses slid out into the corridor at Cal’s feet.

Cal looked down. Had he looked up, he might have seen the face of a blond-haired boy smiling down at him through the grille in one of the vents. He might have seen him punch the air in triumph, and silently mouth, “Yes!”

“Uh… Splurt?” said Cal, calling out to the ship in general. “Buddy? We really need to talk.”

Up in the vent, the baby-faced psychopath had already become a tiny bicycle with bright yellow handlebars. It rippled happily as it weaved and zigzagged through the miles and miles of pipework, then forward rolled until the space cows came home.

THE END

Space Team: The Holiday Special

Originally published as a standalone short story in December 2016

One

Cal Carver was a man of many talents. Or of some talents, at least.

He could talk his way out of almost any situation. Granted, the situations he talked himself into in the process were often significantly worse than those he’d been in before, but at least it kept life interesting.

He could be charmingly persuasive, particularly to women of a certain age who felt their husbands weren’t paying them nearly enough attention. To be fair, though, he’d lucked into a face that was handsome in a ‘bit of rough’ kind of way, so he didn’t exactly have to work hard to win them over. A smile would usually do it. A wink, if they were being stubborn.

From there, even Cal would admit that there was quite a steep drop-off to the rest of his skillset.

He could do a reasonable number of sit-ups. He knew six guitar chords, four of which he could comfortably play. Following a nine-month period of unemployment in his early twenties, he could reliably describe the plot of any given episode of Cagney & Lacey within six seconds of the opening credits ending.

After those, he started to struggle. On a good day, his sense of balance was marginally above average. He could run quite fast, but only while being chased. He could take a surprising number of punches to the head before falling over. Nothing to really write home about.

One thing he didn’t consider to be one of his skills was the ability to identify a space station, like the one that was currently filling most of the viewscreen of his stolen spaceship, the Shatner.

Another of the skills Cal very much did not possess was precognition - the ability to see into the future. If that had been among his talents, he would almost certainly have turned the ship around there and then, and everything that followed could have been avoided.

The station was an enormous barrel-like construction, made of a dark metal that would have made it difficult to see against the blackness of space, were it not for the hundreds of lights dotting its surface like well-organized stars.

It looked… dirty, somehow, like the metal had rusted in patches. Cal vaguely remembered learning that metal couldn’t rust in space, but either no-one had bothered to tell this space station that, or the brown marks were something other than rust.

For a moment, he had a little flashback to the cell he’d briefly shared with an enormous cannibalistic serial killer back on Earth, and to the lumpy body-fluidy streaks across the walls. He shuddered. Since being taken to outer space a couple of days ago, most of his time had been spent trying to escape death. Even so, he’d take almost being killed by aliens over shizz-stained walls any day.

“Shizz.” He said the word out loud, testing it.

After his alien abduction, he’d been forcibly implanted with a translation chip which allowed him to understand any known alien language (good) but censored any swear words he might attempt to say (bad). He’d been fonking furious about it to begin with, but now trying to find curse words which hadn’t been censored had become one of his favorite pastimes. ‘Jerk’ was the best he’d come up with so far, but he’d used it so many times in the three hours following its discovery that the novelty had well and truly worn off.

“Hey, it ain’t that bad,” grunted a voice from over on Cal’s right. Mech, a seven-feet tall tangle of metal and flesh stood comfortably upright, his magnetic feet locked onto the flight deck floor.

Actually, calling him a tangle of metal and flesh was being generous. He was almost entirely metal, except for a patch of skin on one arm, and his face, which, from the top lip to halfway up the forehead was… not exactly human, but definitely organic. His skin was a dark reddish-brown, the whites of his eyes actually closer to yellow.

His hulking metal frame had been spray-painted with a variety of symbols and emblems which announced him as a space pirate. This, however, wasn’t true. The spray-job had been part of a cover story that had recently been forced upon him by President Sinclair, head of the Zertex Corporation. Mech didn’t like his new design. Nor did he like anything else Sinclair had done to him. And that was one of the main reasons why they had plotted a course for this place.

“North Star station, dead ahead,” announced the pilot, her eyes flicking from the screen to her banks of controls and back again.

Teela Loren had been a fast-rising officer in the Zertex military, marked as ‘one to watch’ by her superiors. Of course, that was before she’d realized she was working for the bad guys. Now, she was a fearless fugitive on the run from a corrupt government that was desperate to take her down. Or so she liked to tell herself, at least.

“Yeah, we can totally see it. It’s, like, right there,” sighed the voice of a teenage girl. Cal glanced across at the creature sitting in the chair closest to his. As well as a teenage girl’s voice, she had a matching attitude and dress sense. There, though, the similarities ended. Unlike most teenage girls, Mizette of the Greyx – Miz to her friends – was a powerfully-built werewolf-like alien who was covered with fur from head to toe.

She had recently adapted her chair to make it more comfortable. Largely, this involved tearing a hole in the base with her claws for her tail to fit through. Cal could see it now, hanging down below the seat. It gave an involuntary flick of excitement when she realized Cal was looking at her.

“Hey,” she said, adopting a seductively husky tone. She flicked her tongue across her lips. It was presumably meant to be a sexually suggestive gesture, but all it suggested to Cal was that she’d just enjoyed a delicious bowl of Pedigree Chum.

“Hey yourself,” said Cal, smiling weakly. He turned his attention back to the screen.

“I’m supposed to announce it,” said Loren. “It’s protocol.”

“It’s pointless,” said Miz.

“It’s so everyone on the flight deck is aware of our current status,” said Loren, sounding annoyed. “What if you hadn’t been looking at the screen? You wouldn’t have known we were approaching the station.”

“I wouldn’t have cared,” Miz said with a sullen shrug. “I’m not flying the ship. I don’t need narration.”

“But it’s protocol,” Loren insisted.

“Zertex protocol,” Mech pointed out. “You don’t work for Zertex no more.”

Loren sighed. “Fine. That’s… fine. I won’t announce anything again. We all happy now? We’ll just fly towards things without me saying a word. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes,” said Miz.

“Oh, I bet you would,” Loren said, her voice taking on a slightly manic shrieking tone. “I bet you would.”

Miz turned her seat just a fraction towards Cal. “Is she having, like, a breakdown or something?”

Cal shrugged, just briefly, then flashed an encouraging smile at the back of Loren’s head. It was quite attractive, as far as backs of heads went.

Her hair, impossibly dark, was scraped back into a viciously tight ponytail. At the edges of her seat he could just make out the outsides of both shoulders. The skin looked starkly white, but on closer inspection was actually a very pale blue. Not that he’d actually had a chance to inspect it all that closely, though not for want of trying.

“Well, I for one appreciate you announcing things we can all clearly see on screen,” said Cal. He winced a little. “Which, I appreciate sounds sarcastic, but it isn’t. Honest. This whole being in outer space thing is all pretty new to me…”

“Really?” sighed Mech. “You ain’t mentioned that before.”

Cal pointed to him and grinned. “Now, that was sarcastic. I had no idea you were programmed to understand sarcasm.”

Mech’s face darkened. His metal bottom jaw snapped up and down as he spoke. “Programmed? I ain’t programmed!” He tapped the side of his skull. It made a low clanging noise. “Up here, this is all me, man. I ain’t no robot.”

“Of course you’re not,” said Cal, soothingly. He turned back to the front. “You’re a space robot.”

Mech’s metal fingers whirred into fists, but before he could make a move, a line of text flashed at the lower right of the viewscreen. “We’re being hailed,” said Loren.

Cal shuffled himself into a more upright position in his seat and channeled his inner Captain Kirk. “On screen,” he said, then he jumped in fright as something that was 70% teeth, 22% eyes and very little else filled the screen. “Jesus Christ, what the fonk is that?” he yelped.

“You know he can hear you, right?” said Mech.

Cal cleared his throat and smoothed the front of his shirt down. “Uh, by which I mean… hello!” He waved at the monstrosity on the monitor. “Hi there. I’m Captain Cal Carver of the… of the…”

He licked his lips, which had suddenly gone very dry under the boggle-eyed glare of the tooth-thing. “Uh, Loren, you’re better at all this official stuff than me,” he croaked. “I’m going to let you handle this.”

Loren stiffened with excitement. This was her moment. “This is First Officer Teela Loren of the Shatner, a scavenger-class vessel on route through this system. We request docking authorization so that we might affect some repairs on--”

“Gluk?” said the tooth-thing, in a voice that Cal thought was probably male, but with a light dusting of female inflections he suspected were put on for effect. “Gluk Disselpoof, is that you?”

At the mention of his real name, all eyes went to Mech. “Uh, yeah. Yeah, it’s me.”

“You know this guy?” asked Cal.

The tooth-monster put a clawed hand to his chest and gasped in mock indignation. “You mean he’s never mentioned me?”

“I only known them for two days,” Mech said. “I ain’t exactly given them my life story.”

“Two whole days and you haven’t told them about me?” said the creature, feigning hurt.

“Oh, please be his wife, please be his wife, please be his wife,” Cal whispered, crossing his fingers.

“Wife? Ha! Chance would be a fine thing,” the tooth-thing snorted, waving a dismissive claw. His terrifying mouth contorted into something that very vaguely resembled a smile. “Harlosh Ko.”

Cal frowned. “Uh, yeah. Harlosh Ko to you, too.”

The creature let out a high-pitched giggle. “No, silly, my name is Harlosh Ko. I’m one of the hosts here on North Star station, and will be pleased to welcome you aboard.” He turned to the side and his face was illuminated by a glow from off-screen as he tapped a few controls. From that angle, and with the light shining up from below, he managed to look even more terrifying. “There is, of course, a docking fee to pay. How do you wish to make payment?”

Cal looked around the bridge. “Anyone have any cash on them? No?” He turned back to the screen. “Would you take an IOU?”

“Haha. Unfortunately not,” said Harlosh. He tapped a few buttons again. “But your ship appears to have an open line of credit, funded by… huh.” He blinked his many eyes and looked more closely at his off-screen display. “The Zertex Corporation. Should I charge the fee there?”

Cal smiled. “Yes. Yes you should. Can we use that for other purchases while on board?”

“Yes, of course,” said Harlosh. “I’ll just need your thumbprints when you arrive.”

“Excellent!” said Cal, leaning back in his chair. “Then spread the word – drinks are on us!”

Two

It took Loren four attempts to line the Shatner up with their assigned docking platform aboard the North Star. Technically, she had been one of the best pilots in the whole of the Zertex fleet, but that ranking was based almost exclusively on her flight simulator scores – a form of training which, she had discovered, didn’t necessarily translate to the real world.

On the fourth try, she’d managed a textbook landing, but when they’d tried to leave they’d discovered she’d parked too close to the landing bay wall for them to get the exit ramp open, so she’d had to reverse out and come back in again.

Finally, and accompanied by a running commentary from Miz which was surprisingly catty for a dog-woman, the ship touched down in the correct position. Unbuckling his seat belt, Cal reached under his chair, then briefly recoiled as something wet and slimy pressed itself against his palm.

“Sorry, buddy, still getting used to that,” he said, holding his hand steady this time for the blob to hop aboard.

The part of Splurt that was green and gelatinous quivered. As the little guy was almost entirely green and gelatinous, the effect was really rather impressive.

The only bit of Splurt that was neither green nor all-that gelatinous were his eyes. They floated inside the goo - two perfectly round and oddly human-looking detached eyeballs. Cal had convinced himself that he could read the emotions in Splurt’s eyes, despite the fact their range of expression stretched from ‘bloodshot’ to ‘marginally less bloodshot’.

He – if, indeed, that was even the correct pronoun – was a shapeshifter that had been discovered in deep space by a Zertex mining operation. President Sinclair had intended to use him as a bargaining chip for a deal with an alien gangster-type, but Cal had intervened, and now Splurt was considered a valuable and much-loved member of the Shatner’s crew by everyone aboard - with the possible exception of Mech, Loren and Miz. Still, Cal thought he was fonking adorable.

“You ain’t taking that thing, are you?” Mech grunted.

“He’s not a thing,” Cal pointed out. “He’s Splurt.”

“You ain’t taking that Splurt, are you?”

Splurt’s eyes tick-tocked between Cal and Mech, watching them both. “Of course I am,” said Cal. “He’s part of the crew. If we go aboard, he comes, too.”

“North Star can be a little… lively,” said Loren. “By which I mean unpleasant and dangerous.”

“Yeah, I got that from the way you pulled that face when you said ‘lively,’” Cal replied.

“Something like that – rare species, or whatever – it’s going to attract unwanted attention,” said Mech.

“It’ll be fine. He’s a fonking shapeshifter. Look.”

He set Splurt down on the floor. “So, let’s say there’s trouble. Some bad guy has spotted Splurt and fallen in love with him – because, let’s be honest, only a monster wouldn’t.” He shot Mech an accusing glare, then continued. “He decides he’s going to Splurtnap him, then – boom – what does Splurt do? He shapeshifts!”

With a dramatic flourish, Cal pointed to Splurt. Splurt stared back at him, impassively.

“He shapeshifts!” said Cal, louder this time.

Nothing happened.

If Splurt had eyelids, he would have blinked.

But he didn’t.

Cal cleared his throat, leaned down, and spoke out of the side of his mouth. “That’s your cue, buddy. Help me out here.”

He straightened as Splurt’s surface began to ripple. The green goo expanded upwards, stretching and twisting as it adopted a new form. Cal turned and grinned triumphantly at the others. “He shapeshifts, blending into the background as he transforms to become…”

He turned back to the now drastically-altered Splurt and stopped. “Dorothy out of the Golden Girls!” he said, the words surprising even him as they slipped from his mouth.

And it was. There, standing in the middle of the flight deck, was a tall, gray-haired and ever-so-slightly masculine older woman.

“Who the fonk is Dorothy?” demanded Mech.

“And, like, what are the Golden Girls?” asked Miz.

Having lived their entire lives on other worlds, none of the rest of the crew were even passingly familiar with 1980s TV sitcom, the Golden Girls, or its spin-off sequel, the Golden Palace. This extended to Splurt, too, who Cal had to assume had never seen even one of the original show’s one-hundred-and-eighty episodes.

Despite his inability to speak, however, Splurt possessed some sort of mind-reading ability, which allowed him to draw images and memories from the minds of those around him, and transform his physical form to match.

But quite why, out of all the billions of memories in Cal’s head, Splurt had selected Dorothy out of the Golden Girls would, Cal supposed, forever remain a mystery.

“She’s a Miami spinster,” said Cal. He saw no benefit in going into it any further. “But my point stands. Splurt’s perfectly safe.” He patted Dorothy on one sturdy shoulder. “So, you coming, buddy?”

Splurt nodded enthusiastically. Cal kept his smile fixed in place. “You changing back, or…?”

Splurt shook his Dorothy-like head. “Well, alright then!” said Cal, sounding just a little too positive about the situation to be convincing. He looked around at the rest of the team. “I guess it’s us four and Dorothy.” He smiled across at the scowling cyborg and gestured towards the corridor leading to the ship’s exit. “Mech, lead the way!”

With a final glance back at Dorothy from the Golden Girls, Mech shook his head, then ducked through the doorway that led through to the rest of the ship. Cal gestured for Miz and Loren to go next, then followed behind as they made their way down the ramp and into the docking bay.

There were three other ships in this part of the bay, with enormous hangar-like doors on two of the walls suggesting further areas in both directions. The ship closest to the Shatner was an angry-looking beast of a thing that made Cal think of a grumpy shark.

“Hey, isn’t that a Symmorium… what’s it called? Thrasher?” he said.

“Thresher,” Loren corrected. “And yes. The North Star is in Symmorium space. There’ll be more where that one came from.”

“Well that’s good, right?” said Cal. “They like us, don’t they?”

“For now,” said Mech. “But I suggest you don’t talk to them too much, in case you make them change their mind.”

Cal thought about protesting, but shrugged. “Good point, well made.”

The other ships were types he didn’t recognize. One was small and sleek, and looked barely large enough for one pilot, while the other was its exact opposite – a bulky, clumsy-looking construction that looked like it could have been knocked together in someone’s back yard over a long weekend.

The hangar itself was a grim affair, like an underground car park in the wrong part of town. The walls were a mish-mash of welded metal plating, each plate a slightly different shade of gray to its neighbors. They were marked with colorful graffiti, and somewhat less-colorful blaster-first scorch marks. The chip implanted in Cal’s eyeball tried translating the stylized graffiti text, but the sheer amount of it was proving overwhelming, and the words swam and slithered disturbingly across the walls.

“So… where now?” asked Cal. The hissing of a door sliding open in the farthest wall answered the question for him. A squat figure with a lot of teeth and only marginally fewer eyes raised a stubby arm and waved enthusiastically.

“Coo-ee!” called Harlosh Ko. “Over here!”

Three

Cal, Miz, Loren, Mech and Dorothy out of the Golden Girls hurried along an erratically-lit corridor, trying to keep pace with Harlosh. For someone with such short legs and a torso that was basically a chubby triangle, he had the quickest ‘non-emergency’ walking pace Cal had ever seen.

“So, Gluk and I go way back, don’t we, Gluk?” Harlosh trilled, his voice sounding tinny inside the narrow passageway. They had been hurrying along it now for a good couple of minutes, but appeared to have made no progress whatsoever. Cal was sure they’d passed the same featureless expanse of metal wall half a dozen times already, and he was starting to feel like they were stuck in a chase scene in a particularly low-budget episode of Scooby Doo.

“Sure. Yeah. Way back,” said Mech, begrudgingly.

“Former work colleagues?” Cal guessed. “Old roommates? Wait, no! Childhood sweethearts!”

“Haha. Oh, I like this one,” laughed Harlosh. He led them around a corner into what was, to all extents and purposes, the same corridor. “No, we served together. Didn’t we, Gluk?”

“Yeah. Yeah, we did,” said Mech, grudging those words even more than he had the last few.

“What, like, in the army?” asked Cal.

“We don’t like to talk about it,” Mech told him.

“Well, he doesn’t,” said Harlosh, stopping outside a door and spinning into a crisp about-turn. “I, on the other hand, will happily spill all once I get off duty.” He looked Cal up and down, then winked. At least, Cal thought he winked. With so many eyes to keep track of, though, there was a good chance it was involuntary. “For a price.”

“Tempting, but we won’t be staying long,” said Cal.

“We’ll be here until tomorrow,” said Mech. “I’m getting my paintwork fixed.”

Harlosh tapped a finger against a few different teeth in quick succession, making a sound like a broken xylophone. “Hmm. We don’t have many rooms. It’s Kroyshuk. Always busy on Kroyshuk.”

“Fonking Kroyshuk,” said Cal, sighing. He looked expectantly at the others, waiting for them to say something. No-one did. “Anyone going to tell me what Kroyshuk is?”

“It’s a holiday,” Loren explained. “A celebration. A lot of planets in this sector consider it a special day, where they get together, exchange gifts, celebrate the love of family and friends--”

“Throw up in their own mouths…” Miz sneered.

“So, it’s like Christmas?” said Cal. His eyes shifted to Mech. A smile crept across his face. “Which, I suppose…”

“Don’t say it, man,” said Mech.

“…makes it…”

“I’m warning you. Don’t go there.”

“…space Christmas!”

Mech’s face darkened. He muttered something below his breath, but resisted the urge to pick Cal up and smash him face-first into the ceiling.

Cal looked left and right along the corridor. Aside from Harlosh, the crew and Dorothy out of the Golden Girls, there was no-one to be seen. “It doesn’t look very busy,” he said.

Without a word, Harlosh pushed open the door beside them. A noise rushed in through the gap, flooding the corridor in both directions. At first, Cal thought it was a single overpowering roar, but after the initial assault he began to pick out individual sounds in the din. Music. Laughter. Raised voices. Chinking glasses, breaking bottles and the occasional high-pitched scream.

Beyond the door was… a room, Cal supposed, although that didn’t really do it justice. It was a vast hall, a couple of football fields from end to end, and stretching a good seven or eight floors high. Moving ramps ferried thousands of... not people, exactly, but individuals between each floor, where they milled around on vast mezzanines, or leaned over the balcony railings, watching the other groups of individuals below.

The reason Cal didn’t describe them as ‘people’ was that very few of them bore even a fleeting resemblance to what he had, until very recently, considered the textbook definition of a ‘person’. Creatures of all shapes, sizes, textures, colors and consistencies mingled, drank, argued, danced, or found other ways to occupy themselves in every available space.

It looked like the Cantina scene in the original Star Wars might have looked, had George Lucas had access to a bottomless budget, several thousand jobbing actors, and an unlimited supply of methamphetamine.

Cal whistled softly between his teeth as he stepped out of the corridor and into the multi-story area. His eardrums protested by vibrating painfully, and only stopped when he stepped back into the corridor and took cover behind the door frame.

“OK, yeah, that’s pretty busy,” he admitted, as the door closed again.

Harlosh looked up from an iPad-like device he had produced from somewhere. While it wasn’t easy to read his face with all those teeth and eyes cluttering it up, Cal thought he looked pleased. Or hungry.

Possibly horny, although Cal hoped it wasn’t that one.

“It’s your lucky day,” Harlosh said. “I’ve been able to secure four rooms for the night.”

“I’ll share with Cal,” Miz suggested.

“Best if Splurt bunks up with me,” said Cal, jabbing a thumb in Dorothy’s direction. Dorothy waved both hands excitedly, then stopped as abruptly as she’d started. He shot Miz a smile he hoped conveyed disappointment, rather than the overwhelming sense of relief he actually felt. “No saying what he’ll get up to if left to his own devices.”

Miz crossed her arms and shrugged. “Whatever.”

“Very good, I’ll just go ahead and…” Harlosh tapped his screen a couple of times. “There. All done. You all have rooms for the night. Good ones, too, on our more… amicable floors.” He shrugged, just a fraction. “Mostly.”

“Mostly?” said Loren. “What do you mean?”

“Well, as I say, we’re very busy,” Harlosh explained. “You know, what with Kroyshuk, and everything. Ideally, I’d have got you all close together, but unfortunately it just wasn’t possible. Three rooms are located on our more desirable premium decks. The fourth, uh… isn’t.”

“Great,” said Loren. She looked around at the others. “So how do we decide who gets that room?”

Cal raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. “It’s fine, it’s fine. Let’s not argue about it,” he said. “Mech can take it.”

“Say what?” Mech snapped. “How come I gotta take it?”

“Because I’m the captain, and the others are girls,” Cal said. “Women,” he corrected, catching Loren’s expression. “The others are women.”

“So?” Mech demanded. “They can handle themselves.”

“You’re not even the real captain,” Loren pointed out. “We’re just pretending you’re in charge until we figure out what we’re going to do.”

Cal gasped. “You take that back!” he told her. “Of course I’m the captain. I’ve got a badge!”

“A badge you made from a fonking bottle top,” Mech pointed out.

“And then lost,” added Loren.

“That don’t count,” concluded Mech.

“Fine. You know what? Fine,” said Cal. “If you don’t want to do the decent thing and sleep in what I’m sure is a perfectly pleasant room…”

“It isn’t,” said Harlosh.

“If you don’t want to do that,” Cal continued, ignoring the host, “then I guess there’s only one way to decide who’s sleeping where.” He turned to Harlosh. “There’s a bar in there, right?”

“Several,” said Harlosh. “Why, you planning on buying me a drink?”

“Hey, you never know your luck,” said Cal. “But actually, I was wondering – does the bar have such a thing as four drinking straws, and maybe a pair of scissors?”

* * *

“Well, buddy, looks like we drew the short straw,” said Cal, as he and Dorothy from the Golden Girls surveyed the graffiti-marked metal door set into the wall of the single most intimidating corridor Cal had ever set foot in. Everything about the corridor, from the flickering overhead lights to the blood smears that dribbled down the walls and pooled on the scuffed vinyl floor. “I mean, you know, we literally did draw the short straw, obviously. Whose dumb idea was it to do that?”

Dorothy shot Cal a slightly accusing look, but then mock-punched him on the chin.

“You know what? You’re right,” said Cal. “I don’t know what I’m complaining about. It could be worse.”

He pressed his thumb against the door’s locking pad. The door itself slid open with a grinding, juddering squeak. A smell – no, not a smell, a full-blown stench - billowed out of the cramped, darkened room beyond.

“Oh Jesus,” Cal groaned. “It’s worse.”

Turning away long enough to gulp down a deep breath, Cal leaned close enough to the door that he could see almost all of the room, without actually putting any of himself inside it. “I reckon we go back and sleep on the Shatner,” he said. “This place does not look sanitary.”

A door opened behind them, making Cal jump in fright. He spun, fists raised, and came dangerously close to punching a pregnant woman in the face. Of course, ‘woman,’ was stretching it, as was more and more often proving to be the case these last few days.

She was not a woman in the traditional sense of the word – most women Cal had known until recently didn’t have such wide eyes, for example, or bean-shaped skulls that curved quite so far back. None of them, as far as he could recall, had skin that was such a vibrant shade of pink, or a neck so agonizingly thin and fragile-looking.

So, not a ‘woman,’ exactly, but something about the way her features and figure were arranged told him she was female, at least.

He wasn’t sure how he knew she was pregnant, but he somehow did. Yes, she had a swollen belly that was one of the traditional hallmarks of pregnancy back on Earth, but she also had six fingers on each hand and little fleshy frills around both wrists, so he wasn’t sure the tummy bump counted for much.

The way she clutched her hands protectively across the bump, though, that was a dead giveaway.

“Sorry,” said Cal, dropping his fist to his side. “You took me by surprise. Hope I didn’t scare you.”

The… ah, what the Hell, he was going to stick with ‘woman’ shot glances along the corridor in both directions before her eyes darted up and down over the strangers standing in front of her.

“Cal Carver,” Cal said, smiling warmly. “This is my friend, Dorothy out of the Golden Girls. Presumably she has a second name, but I don’t know what it is.” He gestured to the open door behind them. “We’re in the room right across the hall,” he said. “Although, to be honest, it’s not really to the standard we were hoping…”

Still looking them both up and down, the woman retreated into her room and closed the door. A moment later, a light above the thumbprint pad switched from green to red.

“Well, she seemed friendly,” said Cal. He turned back to the open door of his own room, considered venturing inside, then tapped his thumb against the sensor pad. The door shuddered closed. “Come on, buddy,” Cal said. “What’s say you and I go find the bar?”

Four

It turned out that Harlosh was right, and there were a number of bars on North Star. In fact, whole sections of the station were nothing but bars. They ranged from cosy little nooks with a clientele that seemed to value the silence as much as the alcohol, to cacophonic nightclubs where heaving, sweating bodies thrashed, squirmed and occasionally floated around in time to a variety of thumping dance beats.

After some exploration, Cal settled on a place that was somewhere between the two extremes. Not so noisy that his eyeballs vibrated in is skull, but not so lacking in atmosphere that he immediately contemplated suicide.

The sign above the door was written in an ornate alien language, with lots of swirls, whorls and twiddly-bits. Cal stared at it for a few seconds until the text resolved itself into English, but the word – Mumfle – meant fonk all, as far as he was aware, so he wished he hadn’t bothered.

The bar was lively, but not in that way that required raised eyebrows or heavy emphasis to accompany the word. Sure, some of the individuals drinking in the place looked like they’d stepped out of a fever victim’s nightmare, but they were keeping themselves to themselves as they enjoyed a quiet drink, tucked into some disturbingly wriggly bar snacks, or huddled around what Cal could only assume was a quiz machine. From the way they groaned after every tap of the screen, it didn’t look like they were doing very well.

There was an air to the place that bordered on being festive. Strings of twinkling lights were slung above the long metal bar. Bursts of good-natured laughter filled the air. In the far corner, Cal spotted something that he at first thought was a Christmas tree, but then it had moved and he’d realized it was a heavily built woman wearing a dress he could only think to describe as ‘ill-advised.’

Ordering drinks had been easier than he had expected. He had no idea what any of the vibrant liquids on display actually were, but after pointing at a bottle of something the color of unripe bananas and pressing his thumb against a pad, he’d returned to the table armed with two tall glasses.

Splurt raised his graying head and gave Cal a goofishly gummy smile as he returned to the table. Once the drinks had been set down, the shapeshifter – still firmly shifted into the shape of Dorothy out of the Golden Girls – stood up and wrapped his arms around Cal, pulling him against his chest.

“Hey, I missed you, too, buddy,” Cal said, as Splurt kissed him lightly on top of the head. “Thanks for that,” he added, once Splurt had released him again.

They both took their seats, and Cal raised his drink in toast. “To you, pal,” Cal said. “Thank you for being a friend.” He waited a moment for a reaction, then shook his head. “Yeah, that totally went over your head, didn’t it? Golden Girls theme. Doesn’t matter. Cheers!”

He sipped his drink. It tasted like soap. He shrugged and took another sip. He’d had worse. Splurt stared blankly down at his own drink.

“It’s good,” said Cal, nodding in encouragement. “I mean, no, it’s not good, it’s pretty fonking far from good, but it’s not bad.”

He took a bigger gulp and winced. “Well, not terrible,” he said, his voice croaking.

There was a sudden twanging sound like an elastic band stretching and snapping into place. Cal watched with a growing sense of horror as Dorothy out of the Golden Girls unfurled an insect-like proboscis from within her mouth, and thrust it deep into the glass of green liquid. With a slurp, the glass emptied, then the appendage rolled up like a party-blower and vanished behind Dorothy’s wrinkled lips once more.

“Well, there’s something I’ll never be able to unsee,” Cal muttered, forcing down another swig of his drink.

Settling back in his chair, he looked across the bar and was struck by how much it reminded him of Earth bars. Even the music – a generic up-tempo song about someone whose heart had been broken ‘in that Grunshun way’ – could have come straight out of MTV. Apart from the bit about the Grunshun way, obviously, which even after four verses and an annoyingly catchy chorus, Cal was still none the wiser about.

It was hard to believe that bars probably didn’t exist on Earth anymore. Not since Zertex had flooded the planet with mind-controlling parasites in an attempt to cover their tracks after they abducted him.

He wondered, not for the first time, if anyone was still alive. And, if so, what sort of world were they living in? He’d been quite partial to the occasional zombie movie, but if the whole world was currently plunged into the middle of one, he was relieved that all he had to worry about was a malevolent galactic government and the occasional gangster made of rock who got a hard-on at the thought of Cal eating himself.

With that, Cal downed the rest of his drunk, convulsed from head to toe, then stood up. “Another round!” he announced, then he flicked finger-guns at Dorothy out of the Golden Girls several times, for reasons he wasn’t quite clear on, and walked awkwardly towards the long, stainless-steel bar.

The music changed. Something that sounded suspiciously like a novelty Christmas hit began to blast from the speakers. On either side, Cal was dimly aware of a few people getting to their feet and dancing, but it felt muffled and indistinct, like he were viewing it through a net curtain.

His legs felt funny. Funny strange, as opposed to funny ha-ha. He tried to talk some sense into them as he stumbled through the crowds, but they didn’t really listen. In fact, he thought he heard them laughing at him for a moment, and made a mental note to give them a serious talking-to once he got them home.

Cal frowned. Something about those last few thoughts didn’t feel quite right, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. Besides, he had more pressing things to worry about, like the fact the whole space station had started rotating. As if that weren’t bad enough, it was rotating both clockwise and anti-clockwise at the same time.

“Well, that’s fonking selfish,” he slurred, then he looked around him, wondering who had said that. “Yeah, you’d better run!” he said, failing to spot whoever had spoken in the merrily-jigging crowds around him.

The bar appeared as if by magic, catching him by surprise. He let out a little, “Wah!” of shock, then glanced left and right to see if anyone had noticed.

By the third glance to the left, he’d forgotten what he was looking for and frowned deeply. The room was still gyrating, so he leaned against the bar to try to hold it down. The metal of the bar top felt pleasingly cool against Cal’s hands. He pressed them flat, splaying his fingers wide, and gave a contended sigh.

He wondered it if would feel as pleasant against his face. He tried. It did. “This is nice,” he said, then he whipped his head up, belted out the one line of In that Grunshun Way he could remember, then snapped to attention and tried to pretend the last few seconds hadn’t happened.

“Barkeep!” he called, ringing what he imagined to be a tiny bell, but was, in fact, just his fingers. “More drinks over here, if you please!”

He gazed down at the bar in front of him, appearing surprised by the lack of drinks. He reached for one anyway, just in case it was there but somehow invisible. It wasn’t.

Frowning, he looked along the bar in both directions. The bartender, a portly chap with a red waistcoat and either one eye or three eyes, depending on how hard Cal tried to focus, stood at the far end of the counter. He was listening to either one man or three men who were talking to him in what, even to Cal’s reduced powers of deductive reasoning, looked to be quite an aggressive way.

Cal raised a hand, trying to get his attention, waited in that pose for approximately three fifths of a second, then tutted loudly and staggered towards the group, mumbling a stream of half-formed gibberish, and leaning on the bar for support.

As he got closer, Cal decided there were definitely three men, but he still couldn’t make up his mind on the barman’s eyes. He could make out some of what the angry men were saying. It was something about a girl. Or a baby. A baby girl, maybe? They were keen to find her, anyway.

“I used to be a baby,” Cal announced, the words sort of dribbling out of his mouth and down his chin. The three men and the bartender turned to look at him. Something about the men reached all the way through Cal’s inebriated haze and gave his brain a slap. His brain, unfortunately, chose to ignore it.

“You look mean, like… big meanies,” he said. He giggled in a way he’d never giggled before, then leaned across to the bartender and whispered in a voice that was several decibels louder than his normal speaking volume. “Can I get two more drinks please? Thank you very much. I like your waistcoat, by the way. Well done.” He turned his attention back to the three men. Two of them were considerably larger than he was, while the other was a good foot or so smaller.

“Or is he sitting down?” Cal asked out loud. He squinted and examined the smaller man. “Nope,” he concluded. “Just a shorty.”

“What did ‘e say?” the smallest man growled. “What’d you say, you fonking nonce? You got a deathwish or somefink?” The way he pronounced ‘deathwish’ made it sound like ‘deafwish.’ This amused Cal no end, and he erupted in an explosive cackle that stopped just as quickly as it started.

“Shhh!” said Cal, putting a finger to his lips. “Let’s just be friends. It’s nicer.” He put an arm around the small-but-surly looking gentleman’s shoulders and pulled him in close. “See?” he said, then he leaned down so his mouth was close to one of the man’s misshapen ears and began to sing the first few lines of the Golden Girls theme in a husky, breathless whisper.

“Dorothy!” Cal gasped, straightening up and turning around on the spot. “Has anyone seen Dorothy?” He spotted the now furious-looking little man and reacted in surprise. “Oh, look at you. You’re titchy! I bet I could fit you in my pocket.” He chewed his lip. “Should we try? Is that allowed?”

Cal was vaguely aware that the other two men were standing behind the smaller one now. They really were an ugly bunch, all scars and rotten teeth and lank, greasy hair.

They reminded him of something, but he couldn’t quite remember what. The one with the eyepatch especially, he thought. “You have a very black beard,” Cal said, reaching out and waggling his fingertips in the eyepatch-guy’s facial bush. “Does that tickle?”

“All right, that fonkin’ does it!” the smallest of the men growled.

“Hey, gentlemen, gentlemen, let’s go easy now. It’s Kroyshuk, after all,” said the bartender in a voice as rich as hot chocolate. There were three clunks as he set shot-sized glasses of red liquid down on the bar. “Clearly this fella can’t hold his liquor, but he’s harmless enough. Nothing a gang of fearsome space pirates like you need worry about.”

On the words space pirates, the barman shot Cal a warning look. It was designed to make him stop talking and walk away, but instead had completely the opposite effect.

“Wait, you guys are space pirates?” Cal yelped. “Me too! I’m a space pirate! Well, we’re pretending to be, but don’t tell anyone else that.” He tried to tap his finger against the side of his nose in a secretive way, but missed and poked himself in the eye instead. “Ow. What was that for?” he muttered, glaring accusingly at his own hand.

The smallest pirate let out an animal-like snarl, then flicked one of his arms back with a sudden jerk. Through the alcohol-murk, Cal spotted something sharp, metallic and pointy, and came to the conclusion that, all things considered, this probably wasn’t a positive turn of events.

“Hey, be careful,” Cal slurred, closing one eye so he could better focus on the tiny pirate. “You’re too little to be playing with stuff like that.”

“Oh, I’m gonna enjoy this,” the pirate hissed. He lunged forwards, thrusting the blade upwards towards Cal’s woefully underprepared intestinal region.

A large shape in an unflattering cardigan bounded past Cal before the blade could connect. There was a thud as Dorothy out of the Golden Girls drove her knee into the little pirate’s lower jaw, then a series of rapid pops and a scream as his blackened teeth exploded in their sockets.

A blur of activity followed. Neither of Cal’s eyes were functioning particularly well by this point, so he was quite sketchy on the details. He was vaguely aware of Dorothy out of the Golden Girls delivering a spinning roundhouse kick, but couldn’t for the life of him work out who was on the receiving end. He was reasonably confident it wasn’t him, but beyond that the recipient was anyone’s guess.

A bone snapped. There was something like a howl. Cal found his attention drawn to the three glasses lined up on the bar in front of him. “Finally!” he said, oblivious to the rrrrip of tearing beard and the wailing of-dehaired pirate that followed. “Our drinks are here. Bottoms up!” he said, then he tipped the fiery red contents of all three glasses down his throat, one after the other.

Something happened. He couldn’t say what, exactly, but definitely something.

He touched his nose, suddenly fearing it wasn’t there. It was, he thought, but not with any degree of certainty. He tried to touch it again to double-check, but missed his face completely.

He pulled his mouth into a circle of surprise, then laughed a sort of staccato laugh that made everyone at the quiz machine and the closest few tables turn to look at him.

“Shhh,” he said, to no-one in particular. “Not so loud!”

Yes, something had happened.

Or was happening, perhaps?

Or, Cal realized just a little too late, was about to happen.

The floor became the ceiling. The walls became the door. Time slowed down and started to run very quickly all in the same moment. Cal looked down at his shoes, and his shoes, for their part, looked back.

“Alright?” he asked them, then he toppled forwards like a falling oak and smashed, face first, through a chair.

Five

Cal opened his eyes. His brain screamed. He closed them again.

He tried to think, but he was still in that not-quite-awake phase where his IQ was so low that thinking wasn’t yet a possibility.

He opened his eyes. His brain screamed. He closed them again, and had a serious case of Déjà vu.

His lips were as dry as parchment. His hair hurt. There was a weight on his chest that he assumed was probably cancer. That was a bummer.

He tried to think again, but his thoughts were scattered and disconnected, like train carriages after a derailment. Accessing memories from more than a few seconds ago was still not possible, so he focused on the more recent past, instead.

The ceiling. From the brief glance he’d got of it, it had been white. Had being the operative word. Now it was a murky swirl of creams and browns, with a bulge of black mold in the corner.

The fact he’d been facing the ceiling told him something else, too. It took him a moment to figure out what it was. He was lying down.

From somewhere not too far away, there came a crash and a scream. He held his breath. It was all he could really contribute to the situation at the present time.

“Splurt?” he said, his voice coming out like crushed glass. “You there?”

There was no reply, but then as Splurt couldn’t speak to the best of anyone’s knowledge, this didn’t reveal much. Cal had no choice but to open his eyes again. His brain protested, but his brain would just have to learn to live with it.

Cal lifted his head. The brain’s protest was joined by every other part of his body, all demanding to know what the fonk he thought he was playing at. He managed to keep his head raised long enough to figure out that neither Splurt nor Dorothy out of the Golden Girls were in the room, then collapsed back onto the pillow again.

There was another crash. Raised male voices. A woman’s sob.

“Hey!” he managed, but it was little more than a whisper. His arms slipped down to his sides, and he realized the weight on his chest hadn’t been cancer, but his hands. That was something, at least.

The part of his brain that processed smells chose that moment to wake up. “Oh, Christ,” he grimaced draping an arm across his face. The room reeked. It was sour and mulchy at the same time, with a tangy note that could have been just a suggestion of horse urine.

It was the same smell he’d been hit with when he and Splurt had gone to check out their room. Ignoring his body’s complaints, he lifted his head again and looked around. Yeah. This was the same place.

His thoughts shuffled into something more closely approximating chronological order. He remembered the bar. He remembered drinking. He remembered something about wanting to put an angry little man in his pocket.

After that…? Not much. Flashes at most. A chair. Some shouting. A blood-soaked Dorothy out of the Golden Girls. Some more shouting. Then… Mech?

He blinked.

Yes, Mech had been there. Loren and Miz, too, he thought, although he couldn’t see them, just sort of vaguely sense their presence.

‘No, please, no, don’t!”

The cry came from somewhere just beyond the door. Cal fixed his gaze on it until it shimmied into some sort of focus. It was then he saw the note pinned to it. We’re up in Mumfle, it read, then was signed in quite an official-looking squiggle at the bottom by Loren.

“Where the fonk is Mumfle?” Cal wondered, then the sharp crack of flesh slapping against flesh and a brief, breathless sob of shock made him shift his gaze towards the door handle.

Cal swung his legs out of bed and stumbled towards the door. The carpet alternated between moist and sticky and hard and flaky in the space of a few steps, and he realized he had no shoes or socks on.

Still, no time to worry about that now. Besides, he’d thrown all his momentum into reaching the door, and now had no means of stopping. He stumbled into a little table with a solid-looking metal lamp sitting on top, apologized profusely, then pulled open the door.

“Hey, what’s all the noise?” he demanded, then his voice trailed off.

Eight large and surly-looking space pirates filled the corridor directly outside his room. They surrounded the same pregnant alien woman he and Splurt had met earlier. Her vibrant pink skin had a blush of deep red across one cheek, and a graze across the other. Two pirates held her arms, one on each side, but her hands still instinctively reached for her swollen belly, trying to shield it from harm.

The woman’s eyes met Cal’s. They were naturally wide, but he suspected they were currently wider than they had ever been. The emotion in them struck him like a hammer-blow, shattering the crust of his hangover and snapping him… not to attention, but into less of a bleary-eyed slump.

There was everything in those eyes – helplessness, despair, fear, doubt and - the one that really kicked Cal in the nuts - hope. She thought Cal was going to save her. Him. On his own. From eight big ugly bimsterds with knives and swords slung at their hips.

“Help me,” she pleaded. “Please. They want to take my baby.”

“Get back in your room and stay there,” barked one of the largest pirates, his hand gripping the hilt of the curved blade he had tucked into his belt. “This ain’t your concern.”

Cal looked across the faces of the pirates. Some of them genuinely wanted him to go back inside. The others looked like they’d prefer him to try something stupid.

He didn’t meet the woman’s gaze again. He couldn’t bring himself to.

“Sorry,” he mumbled, then he quietly closed the door.

He leaned his forehead against it, listening to the woman pleading for her life, and the life of her unborn child. He listened to the footsteps turn and begin to move off along the corridor.

He picked up the lamp.

He opened the door.

WHANG! He brought the lamp’s metal base down on the back of the closest pirate’s head, then drove a bare-footed kick into the leg of another, right behind the knee. Both men went down, falling forwards and stumbling into the other men in front.

Cal swung again with the lamp, catching another pirate across the forehead as he turned. Blood fountained from a split that appeared above the man’s left eye, and the corridor erupted into bellowing chaos.

Swinging the lamp by the power cord, Cal clipped another of the pirates across the jaw, but his straggly brown beard cushioned him from the impact. Swinging upwards with his sword, the pirate sliced through the cord, and the lamp thudded to the floor.

Despite the loss of his only weapon, Cal wasn’t done for yet. The narrow corridor was working to his advantage, as it stopped all the remaining pirates all jumping on him at once. Still, it wouldn’t take all of them to beat him, just one of them would probably do the trick.

He thought about running. Running was definitely an option. Sure, it would mean leaving this nice alien lady and her baby to whatever the pirates had planned for her, but was that really his problem?

Yeah, he thought. Annoyingly, it was.

But why? asked that little devil on his shoulder. They’re not going to hurt the baby, just take it. That’s what she said.

The voice was right. That was what the woman had said. Maybe they had good reason for taking the baby. Maybe they were from some sort of space social services unit and were going to ensure it got the best possible start in life.

He looked across the scarred, misshapen faces of the pirates. None of them exactly screamed ‘child’s best interests.’

All of the above took place in the space of around half a second, fear and adrenaline having kicked Cal’s hangover-ravaged brain into overdrive. By the end of it, he’d had an idea.

He grabbed for the sword of the pirate he’d KO’d with the lamp and whipped it free of its leather scabbard. His experience of swords was limited to being able to make them from modeling balloons, and he wasn’t even very good at that. Fighting a band of experienced pirate-types was out of the question, but then hopefully he wouldn’t have to.

Cal thrust the tip of the sword towards the pregnant woman’s belly. The woman and several of the pirates all gasped at the same time. Cal almost grinned. Just as he’d hoped.

He brought the sword to a stop just inches from the woman’s stomach. “Anyone moves and I run her through,” he warned. “Then it’s bye-bye baby. That’s what you want, isn’t it? The baby?”

There was a moment’s silence, then one of the pirates offered an unconvincing, “No.”

“Nice try, fatty,” Cal said, which caused the man to briefly glance down at himself in a moment of acute self-consciousness.

“Let the girl go, or I kill the baby!” Cal said.

The pirate who had sliced the lamp’s power cord narrowed his dark eyes. They were ringed with lumpy black mascara, like he’d partly based his look on Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean.

“But if you take her, we won’t have the baby,” he intoned.

“And if you don’t let me take her, the baby is a gonner,” Cal said, twisting the sword for emphasis.

“Yeah. But that’s my point, innit?” said the pirate. “Either way, we won’t have the baby.”

“Right,” said Cal, somewhat less certainly. “But at least the baby would still be alive.”

“But what good does that do us, is what I’m saying?” said the pirate. “King Anderle wants the baby, right?”

“Right,” said Cal, despite this being completely new information, and despite the fact he had no idea who King Anderle was.

“So, if you take the girl, we ain’t got the baby, has we? And he ain’t going to like that.”

Behind him, the other pirates mumbled their agreement. “No, he ain’t going to like that one bit, is King Anderle.”

“Will he like it if the baby’s dead?” Cal asked, giving the sword a quick upwards flick which made the woman sob in fright. Cal instinctively opened his mouth to apologize, but stopped himself just in time.

“No, he won’t like that, neither,” said the pirate. “But, well, the thing is, he’ll be just as angry either way. So, way I see it, is we got two choices. Either we let you take the girl, and King Anderle is angry, or you kill the baby, and King Anderle is angry.”

“So you might as well let me take the girl, then?” said Cal, hopefully.

“Well, I mean, yeah, that’s one option, certainly,” said the pirate. “But that way we don’t get to kill you or nuffing. If we let you go ahead and kill the baby, then we get to cut you up into little bits.”

“Or take him upstairs and feed him to the Oznark,” suggested one of the other pirates.

A smile split the lead pirate’s beard, revealing two rows of golden teeth. “Oh, yeah, that is a most excellent suggestion, Brian. If he kills the baby, we can feed him to the Oznark.”

The sword was getting heavier in Cal’s hand. His mind raced, frantically trying to process these latest developments. He wasn’t sure what an Oznark was, but he was reasonably sure he didn’t want to be fed to it. He was also a little taken aback that one of the pirates was named Brian, but that felt a little less pressing than the whole Oznark situation.

“OK, third option,” Cal announced. “How about I take the girl, you guys count to sixty, then come after us.”

The pirates considered this.

“Ten,” said the lead pirate.

“Fifty,” said Cal. “Final offer.”

“Five,” growled the pirate.

“OK, Jesus, ten then!” said Cal. “But I keep the sword and you have to--”

“One,” began the pirate.

“Oh, you’re just mean,” Cal yelped. He grabbed the woman by an arm and pulled her free of the piratey-throng. “Come on, lady, move!”

They stumbled along the corridor, past the open doors to their rooms, the woman trying desperately to pull her arm free of Cal’s grip.

“Two!” The pirate’s shout was accompanied by jeering and laughter from the others.

“Stop fonking pulling your arm, we need to run!” Cal said.

“You were going to kill my baby, let go!” the woman cried.

“Three!” More jeering. More laughter.

“Lady, I just saved you and your kid,” Cal pointed out, pulling her around a corner and onto a long straight corridor that stretched out ahead for a dishearteningly long distance. “If you want me to continue saving you and your kid, you have to trust me.”

“Four!”

Cal powered on, his bare feet slapping against the vinyl floor. The woman struggled for a few more seconds, then seemed to accept that it was getting her nowhere, and picked up the pace.

“Thank you,” said Cal. “Now, we need to find a way to get to my ship. I think there’s an elevator or something around here somewhere. If we can just--”

“Fivesixseveneightnineten,” bellowed the pirate all in one breath. His friends all cheered and there was a sudden thunder of footsteps as they all raced towards the corner.

“Those cheating fonkers,” Cal hissed. There was a door on the left that looked different to the others. It had a frosted-glass pane, a bar handle and an illuminated sign above it bearing a series of cryptic symbols. Cal didn’t wait for the letters to translate, and instead just threw himself at the door, pushed down the bar, and dragged the woman inside.

Six

Beyond the door were two sets of stairs, one going up, the other down. Cal knew his room was deep in the bowels of the North Star station, so he raced for the stairs leading upwards and took them two at a time.

Three paces – six steps – up, he felt his head throb and darkness start to close in, and decided to take them one at a time, instead. His hangover may have gone, but it hadn’t gone very far.

After a dozen or so steps, the stairway reached a narrow landing, before another set of steps led up in the opposite direction. They turned the corner and hurried on, the woman waddling awkwardly up the stairs, holding onto Cal with one hand and the handrail with the other.

They reached the next landing just the pirates came barreling through the door on the floor below. There was another door here, leading out into an equally grim-looking corridor. Cal hesitated, hoping to hear the pirates go charging down the stairs, but their footsteps grew louder, and he realized they’d made the correct choice.

“Shizz,” he whispered. He shoved the woman towards the next set of steps. “Go, go,” he urged. She hesitated, panic flaring behind her wide eyes for a moment, then waddled upwards as fast as she could.

Cal pulled open the door leading out into the corridor, then darted up the steps behind the woman, catching up with her at the next landing. Taking her by the arm again, he pulled her up the next flight, then stopped and listened as the pirates arrived on the previous floor, spotted the door slowly closing, then barreled out into the corridor.

Head swimming from the effort, Cal climbed another few flights of steps, helping the woman along behind him. Three stories up, they heard the pirates pile angrily back into the stairwell again, and Cal decided that was his cue to leave.

Easing open the next door they came to, he guided the woman through, then quietly clicked it closed. They pressed themselves against the wall on either side of the door as the thunder of pirate footsteps clattered past, and held their breath until the din had continued past them and upwards to the floors above.

“Thank fonk for that,” said Cal, sliding the sword into the belt of his cargo pants. He looked over at the woman. She was breathing heavily, her hands slung below her belly like support scaffolding. “Shizz. You OK?”

The woman nodded. “Fine,” she said, between two long, drawn-out breaths. “I’ll be fine.”

“I’m Cal. Cal Carver. What’s your name?”

The woman studied him for a moment, as if unsure whether she should be parting with the information. “Morana,” she said, at last.

“Well, nice to meet you, Morana,” Cal said, offering her the best smile he could muster in the circumstances. “Mind telling me why a gang of pirates want your baby?”

Her arms tightened around the bump. “They don’t,” she said. “King Anderle does. He’s offered a reward for anyone who brings him my son.”

“King fonking Anderle,” said Cal, shaking his head. “What a jerk.” He shrugged. “Who’s King Anderle?”

Morana looked taken aback. “Pardon?”

“Who is he? King Anderle?”

“You don’t know who King Anderle is? How can you not know who King Anderle is? Everyone knows who King Anderle is.”

“I’m pretty new around here,” Cal explained. “So he’s, like… what? The King of Space?”

Morana shook her head. “No, he’s not an actual king. Not really. That’s just what people call him. He runs a few systems in the Remnants.”

“Oh, I know someone from the Remnants!” said Cal. “Korvack. Stone guy? Got a butler. Or did have, anyway. Know him?”

Morana shook her head. “You don’t know who Korvack is? How can you not know who Korvack is?” said Cal, mimicking her. “Everyone knows who Korvack is!”

“Wait, do you mean Kornack?” Morana asked. “The Igneon? The K’Tubboth lord? Shornack’s brother?”

Cal thought about lying, but then sighed. “Yes. That guy.”

“Oh, yeah,” said Morana. “Everyone knows him.”

Cal tutted quietly, then tried to peer through the frosted glass of the door that led back to the stairs. “I think the pirates are gone. You should be safe now.”

“Safe?” said Morana, the word coming out as a snort. “I’m not safe. I’ll never be safe. You think King Anderle just sent those guys to get me? There are hundreds of people on this station looking for me. Pirates, bounty hunters… any idiot with a lack of funds and a lack of conscience. They’re all looking for me.”

“Jesus,” said Cal. “How come he wants the baby so bad?”

Morana’s grip tightened still further on her bump. She shook her head, as if refusing to say the words out loud. Eventually, they found their way out.

“He wants to eat him.”

“The baby?” said Cal. “He wants to eat the baby?”

“Yes.”

“King Anderle? King Anderle wants to eat the baby?”

“Please stop saying it,” Morana pleaded. Her wide eyes shimmered. “You’ll help me, won’t you? You’ll help keep my baby safe?”

Cal held her gaze for a moment, then looked down at his bare feet. “Man, I totally should have grabbed my shoes,” he muttered.

He turned his attention back to the stairs. If Morana was telling the truth - and he had no reason to believe she wasn’t - the floors between here and the Shatner would be swarming with pirates and bounty hunters, all searching for the girl and her unborn child.

Dozens of stories. Hundreds of heavily-armed bad guys. And all Cal had were his wits, a sword, and a hangover sent from the bowels of Hell itself.

“Fonk it,” he decided. “Let’s just take the elevator.”

* * *

Finding the elevator proved to be more difficult than Cal had expected. He’d stood for several long seconds staring at the spot on the wall he’d expected to see it, his brain refusing to accept it wasn’t there.

“But this is where it is downstairs,” he insisted. “On our floor, this is where the elevator is, so it should be here. It goes up and down. That’s just science.”

“What do you mean?” Morana asked, her eyes darting anxiously along the corridor. “Why would it just go up and down? That’s pointless.”

“No it isn’t!” Cal insisted. “It’s a fonking elevator. It elevates. It goes up! And, you know, down. I don’t know what the word is for that. Descendevator, maybe?”

“What are you talking about?” Morana demanded. “We can’t hang around here. Someone might see us.”

Cal tapped the wall, just in case the elevator door actually was there, but hiding from them. It wasn’t.

Somewhere far back along the corridor, a door opened. It was hidden by the corridor’s slight curve, but the footsteps they heard emerging sounded like they belonged to some pretty serious feet.

“In here,” said Cal, throwing open a door and pulling Morana through. They emerged into a vast cargo area, stacked high with rusted containers, oozing barrels and several hundred wooden crates. Cal didn’t actually notice any of those details at first, his attention being grabbed by the much more eye-catching monster that took up a full third of the cage directly in front of him.

“Jesus, what is that?” he gasped, closing the door at his back just as the beast turned its dark, soulless eyes towards him. “It looks like Godzilla humped a lion.”

The creature hurled itself at the bars, a thrashing fury of fur and scales and claws and teeth. It hit the thick metal rods with such force that the whole cage leapt forward a full inch and a half.

“I don’t know,” Morana whispered. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen one before.”

“I’m pretty sure you’d have remembered,” said Cal. He took Morana by the hand and they sidled along the wall, keeping their distance as the creature thrust a powerful front limb through a gap between two bars and slashed furiously at the air. Its face was twisted up in rage, showing teeth that were almost the length of Cal’s entire hand. “Nice Godzilla-lion,” he soothed. “Good Godzilla-lion.”

The thing roared with rage and smashed its head against the cage bars. They rattled in quite a worrying way, and Cal made the executive decision that now would probably be a good time to run. They skirted around a stack of crates and out of the monster’s line of sight. It kept roaring at them, regardless.

Something whirred past Cal’s head and he instinctively ducked. When it was apparent that whatever it was wasn’t trying to kill him, he risked a glance up. The thing that had buzzed him looked like a cross between a drone and a forklift truck. Cal watched it swoop down and slide its prongs beneath a crate, then heard the pitch of its engines change as it raised the box into the air and carried it towards another stack on the other side of the deck.

A few more of the flying forklifts zipped around the place, lifting and depositing cargo for reasons best known to themselves. They didn’t really seem to be achieving all that much, but they were keeping busy, and seemed happy enough.

“Here,” said Morana, tugging on Cal’s arm. Two sets of elevator doors were set into the wall just ahead and to the right. They hurried towards them, then Cal jabbed at the call button several more times than was strictly necessary, and impatiently tapped a bare foot.

“Come on, come on,” he muttered. The Godzilla-lion had stopped making any noise now, but Cal was too scared to turn around in case it was standing right behind him, licking its lips. “We’ll get on this, head to the landing decks, find my ship and…”

His voice trailed off. “Shizz. No, wait! We can’t.”

“Why not?” asked Morana, suddenly panicked.

“Because I need the rest of them.”

“The rest of what?”

“The rest of the crew. My… friends, I guess, although that’s quite a strong word to describe them at this point in time.”

Morana took her turn at frantically pressing the elevator’s call button. “Well, where are they?”

Cal reached through the fog of his memory, stretching back towards the note on the door. “They’re in… a place.”

“That doesn’t help,” Morana said.

“It’s a word. I can see a word,” he said, squinting as if he could somehow bring the writing into focus. “Mumble? No, wait. Mumfle, maybe?”

“The bar?”

Cal slapped himself on the forehead. His hangover didn’t thank him for it. “Of course! The bar. That’s the place me and Splurt went. I even know where that is. Vaguely.”

There was a ping and one of the elevator doors opened. Cal bundled Morana inside and began studying the circular brass buttons that lined all three of the walls. There were hundreds of the fonkers. When he and Splurt had gone on their bar-hunt, he’d pressed a few at random and hopped off at the floor that looked the most promising.

“It’s this one,” he said, settling on a button that looked identical in every way to all the others. “Or possibly that one, that one, this one, or one of these two,” he added, pushing all those, too. A light illuminated beneath each button and the door clunked closed.

The elevator climbed smoothly. This worried Cal a little, because the one he’d been on with Splurt had been a real bone-rattler he’d been convinced was about to drop at any minute. This was a different elevator, and quite possibly didn’t even go to the floor they needed to get to.

Still, he could worry about that in a minute. Right now, there was something else that required his attention.

“Are you OK?” he asked. Morana was leaning against the back wall, her breath coming in short, shallow gulps. A sheen of sweat shone across her pink forehead, and she was flexing the fingers of one hand in and out, while rubbing the underside of her bump with the other. “Tell me you’re not having a baby.”

Morana shot him an irritated look and indicated her bump.

“Now, I meant,” said Cal. “Tell me you’re not having a baby right now.”

After a moment that seemed to Cal to stretch on for all eternity, she shook her head. “Not now, no.”

“But soon?” said Cal.

Morana nodded. “I think so.”

Cal shot a glance up at elevator’s metal mesh ceiling. “Hurry the fonk up!” he urged.

As if on cue, the elevator car glided to a stop. Cal and Morana pressed themselves against the wall on either side and waited for the door to slide open.

Another warehouse-like cargo bay stood beyond the doors. “Nope,” Cal said. “Not this one.”

The door closed and they were on their way again. This pattern repeated four times – the elevator stopped, the doors opened to reveal a cargo deck, or an accommodation corridor, and they continued upwards.

“Are you sure you pushed the right button?” Morana asked.

“No,” Cal admitted. “They should really have, like, a map or something in here, instead of people having to rely on guesswork. It’s a terrible system.”

The elevator stopped. They adopted the position. The door opened.

A flicker of recognition stirred at the back of Cal’s brain. This floor wasn’t loaded with cargo or featureless doors, and was instead filled with people and laughter and the unmistakable chinking of glassware.

“Bingo,” said Cal. He moved to step out of the elevator, but Morana held him back. She pointed past him, to where a group of mostly human-looking men in matching leather armor stood talking to what appeared to be a person dressed as a big rat. Cal had seen enough in the past few days that he knew it probably wasn’t a person dressed up at all, and was, in fact, just a big rat.

Whatever it was, it looked frightened, and anything that could frighten a giant space rat was something to be avoided, that was Cal’s motto. Admittedly, it hadn’t been his motto for long, but he was damn sure it would be from this point on.

The men all wore gun-metal gray helmets which attached to their armor at the back of the neck. From where Cal was standing, he couldn’t see the front of the helmets, but they seemed to be full-faced, designed to protect the wearer’s head, while simultaneously scaring the bejesus out of anyone who met them.

“Bounty hunters,” Morana mouthed.

Cal grimaced. “Great,” he muttered. The crowds were pretty thin around the elevator door, but quickly grew more densely packed together just a few dozen feet away. If they could get past the bounty hunters without them turning, they could feasibly use the crowd as cover all the way to Mumfle.

If they could get past the bounty hunters. That was what it all came down to. And now, with their backs still turned, looked to be as good a time as any.

“Come on,” Cal said, taking Morana by the wrist. They hurried out, Cal striding, Morana waddling a few steps behind him.

“Happy Kroyshuk!” bellowed a grey-skinned creature with walrus-like tusks, lunging towards them. Cal nodded briefly in response and ducked past him, hauling Morana along.

He dodged past a small knot of revelers, sticking close so he and Morana looked to be part of the same group. The main bulk of the crowd was just a few more feet ahead now. Cal spotted a narrow gap in the bodies and headed towards it.

It was then that he made the mistake of checking on the bounty hunter situation. As he looked over, his eyes met those of the big rat. He whipped his head around to face front again, far too quickly for it to look natural, he realized.

“Shizz,” he muttered, wanting to look back, but keen not to look even more suspicious. He waited until they’d reached the gap in the crowd, then chanced a quick peek back over his shoulder.

The rat had one arm raised, a long, thin finger jabbing towards Morana. The bounty hunters had all about-turned, revealing their helmets to be even more intimidating than Cal had imagined them to be.

“Uh-oh, time to go,” Cal said, shoving his way into the throngs of bodies. They were barely a few steps in when the first shot came. It screamed above their heads, a searing streak of blaster fire that slammed into the wall of a restaurant just ahead of them, shattering the window and scattering glass across the floor.

Everyone in the crowd began to scream at once. They surged away from the approaching bounty hunters, carrying Cal and Morana along with them. Cal hissed and shrieked as his bare feet trampled through the shards of glass.

“Ow! Fonk! Shizz! Fonk! Ow!”

Another blast scorched the air. The crowd tightened around them, all screaming and elbows and trampling feet. Cal made it through the glass, holding onto Morana as tightly as he could. He risked a glance back in time to see the bounty hunters gunning down the back few rows of the rushing crowds. This only served to make the next few rows push forwards with even greater enthusiasm, and Morana screamed in panic as she and Cal were forced apart.

There was a gap in the wall ahead, a narrow alleyway between two bars that was presumably some sort of staff access. Cal shoved himself backwards, grabbing for Morana’s sleeve. He hissed as a shard of glass wedged itself more deeply into his right foot, but then felt a surge of relief when he locked his hand onto Morana’s arm.

Cutting right, they worked their way through the fleeing horde, keeping their heads low. Several of the things in the crowd were substantially taller and wider than Cal and Morana put together, so staying out of sight wasn’t too much of a problem.

They stumbled out of the throngs and into the alleyway. “Come on, down here,” Cal urged, hobbling painfully away from the screaming crowds and the screeching blaster-fire.

The alleyway turned into a couple of sharp right angles. They hurried down them, the sounds of chaos getting quieter and more distant with each turn. “Keep going,” Cal said. “I don’t think they saw us.”

“What about that?” Morana asked. She pointed to the trail of bloody footprints that stretched out behind Cal. “They’ll follow those.”

“Shizz!” Cal spat. He lifted the marginally more painful of his feet, looked at the sole, then wished he hadn’t. “Can you give me a piggy-back?”

“No!” Morana said.

“No, right, of course not,” Cal said. He clicked his fingers. “What if I gave you a piggy-back?”

“How would that help?”

Cal winced. “Yeah, you’re right, that doesn’t make any sense, does it?”

“Down here,” crackled a voice from back along the alleyway. “They went this way.”

Morana scampered ahead as fast as a heavily pregnant woman could possibly scamper. Cal shuffled behind her, his feet curved inwards so all his weight was on the outside edges.

“Go, go, don’t wait for me,” he said, gesturing for her to run. She chewed her lip fretfully for a moment, then turned and rushed on, zig-zagging around another set of corners.

Cal was closing on the first corner when he heard her cry out in panic. “No!” she yelped.

“Shizz, what now?” Cal grimaced, hobbling faster. He made it around the z-bend and immediately spotted the problem.

The alleyway opened up into a rectangular storage area that ended in a solid wall dead ahead of them. There were no doors. No way in or out, other than the route they’d just taken.

They were trapped.

And there was nowhere left to run.

Seven

Cal turned, placing himself in front of Morana just as six bounty hunters flooded out of the alleyway and into the wider clearing. He held the sword in a way he hoped suggested he knew how to use it beyond a basic ‘stabby end’ and ‘non-stabby end’ level.

“Hey, guys!” he said, trying to sound breezy and confident. He looked their matching uniforms up and down. “So, are you all dressed the same on purpose, or was it just an awkward coincidence?” he asked. “I bet you were all like, ‘Wait, I said I was wearing the leather armor and sinister helmet.’ Must’ve been pretty embarrassing.”

The bounty hunters fanned out until they stood like a firing squad before him. Cal hobbled on the spot, gritting his teeth against the pain in his feet, and trying not to show how rapidly his fear levels were rising.

“Anyway, I’m really sorry to disappoint,” he said. “I can’t let you take the girl.”

“We don’t want the girl,” crackled one of the masked men, an audio waveform flickering across his helmet’s visor in time with his voice.

Cal glanced back at Morana, then pointed to himself. “Wait… you’re here for me?”

“The baby,” voiceboxed another of the men.

“Right, yes, of course!” said Cal. “Gotcha. Makes sense.”

He raised the sword. “But, you see, the thing is, I can’t let you take the baby, either,” he told them. “Although that thing you do with your mask and your voice is pretty fonking cool. I can see why you all decided to wear it. Hell, if I had a mask like that I don’t think I’d ever take it off.”

While Cal spoke, all six of the bounty hunters simultaneously saw three things flash up beside a little target icon which appeared over his head in their in-visor display. The first was his name. The second was a word which, if viewed with a visual translator chip, would have approximated the word ‘Wanted.’ The third thing was the part they were most interested in. It was a number. A number with a lot of zeroes.

“Cal Carver,” crackled the man in the center. “Looks like we do want you, after all. Or someone does. This is going to be a more productive day that we thought.”

All six weapons snapped up. Morana covered her eyes and pressed herself behind Cal’s back. “Guys, guys, wait!” Cal urged. He smiled weakly. “I mean, come on. It’s Kroyshuk. Season of peace and goodwill. Or, you know, something like that. It’s not a time to be rounding up completely innocent people in alleyways, it’s a time for friendship. For family.”

He looked across at all six visors. “I mean, you’re kidnapping an unborn child. I’m pretty sure that’s, like, in the top ten worst things you can possibly do. Top twenty, anyway. A helpless infant being hunted by a wicked king – that’s not what Kroyshuk is all about.”

None of the men had made any move to shoot him, so he took a breath and prepared to deliver the killer blow. “I mean… what would your moms think?”

Silence fell. There were no screams from out in the main concourse any longer. The only sound was the distant jingle of piped music. It sounded quite festive, which Cal hoped would do his case no harm at all.

“Oh good,” said the middle bounty hunter, as new data flashed up on his screen. “Dead or alive.”

All six of the men’s blaster rifles swung to target Cal. He gritted his teeth, shut his eyes, held the sword up at an angle he hoped would miraculously deflect every one of the men’s shots at the same time, and braced himself.

“Ugh. Like, who is that fat chick?”

Cal opened one eye. A powerfully built figure stood behind the bounty hunters, her hairy head and toothy snout towering above them all.

“Miz!” Cal cried. “Thank fonk for that.”

Three of the bounty hunters spun on the spot, taking aim at Mizette. The others kept their sights trained on Cal.

“Halt!” barked one of the masked men.

“Halt yourself,” scowled Miz, sneering down at him. She eyeballed him for a few moments, then looked him up and down. “That armor is so last year, by the way,” she informed him, then she lifted her eyes to Cal again. “Seriously, who’s that?”

“Uh, Morana, Miz, Miz, Morana,” said Cal, quickly. He gestured to the bounty hunters. “Possibly not the best time.”

Miz glared at Morana, her eyes narrowed. “Whatever,” she said, at last. “Mech says you should move to the left.”

Cal frowned. “Why?”

“What am I, his secretary? He just said you should move to the left.”

“My left or your left?”

“He didn’t say,” said Miz, sounding more and more annoyed. “All he said was, ‘Tell him to move to the--”

The wall on Cal’s right exploded. He moved left, pulling the screaming Morana with him. Two of the bounty hunters trained their weapons on the smoking hole and the pile of rubble on the ground in front of it.

Mech’s metal frame whirred as he clanked through the gap in a cloud of masonry dust. The paint job he’d been given by Zertex was gone. It hadn’t been painted over, but removed somehow, as Mech now looked in the same scorched and battered state he’d been when Cal had first met him.

“Can’t leave you alone for five minutes, can we?” Mech grunted. He stepped in front of Cal and Morana, his back to the gunmen.

“Stand aside!” crackled one of them. Mech held up a finger.

“One second. I’m talking to my boy here,” Mech told them. He nodded towards Morana. “Who’s the girl?”

“Morana, Mech, Mech, Morana,” said Cal. “She’s pregnant.”

“I can see that,” said Mech.

“Wait… it’s not yours, is it?” demanded Miz.

Cal leaned past Mech and shot Miz a reassuring smile. “Hey, come on, I’m fast, but I’m not that fast!”

A bounty hunter swung his weapon to take aim at Cal’s head, and Cal quickly ducked back in behind Mech.

There was a flash of movement by the hole in the wall. Loren rolled expertly through the gap and over the rubble, coming to rest on one knee, her blaster pistol drawn and already taking aim at the closest bounty hunter.

“In position!” she announced.

Miz rolled her eyes. “Hooray, we’re saved,” she said, then she sneered. “We totally had this before you arrived. You’re literally making no difference right now. You just look stupid.”

The bounty hunters now didn’t know who to aim for. When there had been three targets and six guns, it had been simple math. Two guns per target. That was assuming you counted Cal and Morana as one target, which was fine as they were close enough together to be touching.

Now, though, there were four targets and six guns, and from a pure division point of view, that didn’t work. Cal and Morana were both behind Mech, but the gunmen at each end of the line could still see them, which only served to complicate the whole aiming thing further.

On the plus side, the inside of each bounty hunter’s visor was currently a switchboard of names and reward notifications. If they could round up this little lot, they could probably retire on the profits.

“We’re taking you all in,” barked one of the bolder men. “Surrender, or be destroyed.”

Mech clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth, then tapped his forehead at Morana in a little gesture of salute. “Lady, you might want to avert your eyes,” he said.

He turned to face the bounty hunters and regarded them in silence for a few long moments. “In fact… Miz, Loren,” he said, at last. “Why don’t you two take Cal and his lady friend somewhere?”

“Aw!” Miz protested. “How come you get all the fun?”

“Miz. Please,” said Mech.

Miz sighed loudly, folded her arms and shoved her way through the line of gunmen, forcibly shouldering one of them aside. She trudged past Loren, over the rubble, and stopped just inside the hole. “So, are you, like, coming or what?” she demanded.

Cal and Morana shuffled sideways out of Mech’s cover. An alternating number of guns followed them as they joined Miz on the other side of the hole.

Loren straightened up, her blaster still raised, then retreated for the gap in the wall. “You be OK?” she asked.

Mech snorted. “Come on. You serious?”

“Have fun!” Cal called, then he popped his head around the edge of the hole again. “Oh, and once you’re finished, bring me one of their boots, will you?”

He vanished into the hole, then popped back out again. “And by that I mean bring me the boots of one of them, not one boot. Just to be clear. Two boots.”

“Gotcha,” said Mech.

“A left and a right, don’t try to be cute by bringing me two identical boots or anything.”

“Just go, man,” Mech said. “I’ll get you the fonking boots.”

Cal gave him a thumbs-up, then waved briefly at the bounty hunters. “Bye, guys. Merry Kroyshuk.”

He turned away, just as Mech reached for the big round dial fixed to the center of his chest. Turning it one way, Cal knew, cranked up Mech’s brainpower, making him super-intelligent, but at the cost of his physical strength.

Turn it the other way, however, and Mech’s power levels were drastically increased, but his IQ dropped several dozen points.

Cal didn’t see which direction Mech turned the dial, but judging by the animalistic roar that followed, and the high-pitched shrieks of the bounty hunters, he reckoned he could probably hazard a guess.

Miz and Loren led Cal and Morana into a dark, noisy but semi-deserted nightclub. Smoke hung in the air like fog, proving a handy backdrop for a series of colorful laser lights that danced across the almost-empty room.

A handful of panicked revelers were forcing their way out through an emergency exit, sobbing and screaming as they tumbled over each other in their rush to escape.

“Great rescue, guys. Seriously, couldn’t have been better,” Cal said, raising his voice over the music. “A couple of minutes earlier wouldn’t have hurt, of course, and I might not have feet full of glass, but still… textbook stuff. How did you even find us, by the way?”

“Miz got your scent,” Loren explained. “Then Mech’s scanners picked you up.”

“And she did absolutely nothing,” said Miz, flicking her eyes to Loren just for a moment.

“Thanks,” said Loren, shooting her a deeply insincere smile.

They crossed the hall in the direction of the fleeing crowds. “Wow. I guess Mech blowing the wall up really scared them,” Cal said, watching them all try to force themselves through the gap.

“N-not that. I don’t think it was that,” said Morana, tugging on Cal’s sleeve. He turned to see the pirates he’d encountered in the hall outside his room marching across the dance floor towards them. One of them was being pulled along by a chain he gripped with both hands. A chain which was in turn attached to the collar of a heavily muzzled Godzilla-lion.

“Oh, right,” said Cal. “So that’s the Oznark.” He sighed. “Yeah. Yeah, of course it is.”

Loren raised her gun and fired a couple of warning shots at the pirates. With a flick of its chain, the Oznark’s muzzle retracted into its collar, and the beast was unleashed. It bounded towards them, shrugging off Loren’s blaster shots, silvery strands of drool dribbling from its gaping jaws.

“It’s not stopping!” Loren warned.

The hair on the back of Mizette’s neck stood up. She dropped to her haunches, one hand pressing against the floor. “I got it,” she said.

“What? Are you insane?” Cal yelped. “You can’t fight that thing! It’ll tear you apart.”

“Ha! In its dreams,” Miz said, but even over the bluster of her growl, Cal could tell she didn’t quite believe her own words. “Get the fat chick out of here, if that’s what the plan is. I’ll take care of this.”

“Go!” Loren said, unleashing another volley of fire at the pirates, forcing them back. Cal hesitated, but then felt Morana’s grip on his arm tighten. She groaned loudly, almost doubling over. When she straightened, there was a puddle of clear liquid at her feet.

“Uh, Cal?” she said, her face a picture of oddly serene panic.

Cal gaped at the puddle, then up at Morana. “You have got to be kidding me.”

The Oznark was chewing up the ground now, its powerful paws thundering across the dance floor. Mizette extender her claws, her own growls mimicking those of the approaching monster.

“Loren! I need help here!” said Cal.

“I can’t leave Miz on her own!” said Loren, squeezing off another round of blaster fire. It hit a pirate in the chest, propelling him backwards across the room and slamming him into a stack of equipment.

The Oznark launched itself into a final, terrifying leap. Its jaws unhinged, opening to reveal a mouth almost big enough to swallow Mizette whole.

Then, with a sudden jerk, it stopped in mid-air and let out a sharp screech of pain. With a thud, the Oznark fell to the floor, revealing a tall, silver-haired figure standing behind it, the monster’s tail gripped in one wrinkled hand.

It was Dorothy.

Dorothy out of the Golden Girls!

“She’s not alone,” said Cal, almost sobbing with relief. He punched his fist into the open palm of his other hand. “Now come on. Let’s go deliver this fonking baby!”

Eight

As time was something of an issue, Loren kicked open the first door they came to and they all barreled inside, Morana gripping her stomach and groaning like she were battling the early symptoms of demonic possession.

Judging by the number of coats hanging on racks around the room, they’d found themselves in the club’s coat check. Loren immediately set about pulling down the clothing and piling it on the floor, while Cal occupied himself by staring at Morana’s stomach and wringing his hands in panic.

“Lie her down,” Loren barked, as Morana let out a groan that rose to the beginnings of a shriek. Cal hooked an arm under one of Morana’s, taking some of her weight. His glass-ridden feet didn’t think much of that, and made their feelings clear with a fresh wave of agony.

“Shizz, ow, fonking… ow!” he grimaced, helping Morana lower herself down onto the nest-like pile of coats Loren had prepared. He dropped to his knees beside her and took one of her hands in his. With his free hand, he tried to pull a sliver of glass from his heel, discovered it hurt far worse than any pain he’d endured in his entire life to date, and stopped.

Loren knelt near Morana’s feet – the ‘business end’ as Cal was already coming to think of it – and began working Morana’s pants down.

“What are you doing?” Cal asked. Both women looked at him and the penny dropped. “Oh, yeah, of course, that makes sense.” He took a few deep breaths. “So, we’re really doing this, huh?”

“It’s really happening,” said Loren. “Whether we do anything or not.”

Morana cried out in pain and tightened her grip on Cal’s hand. His arm twisted. He shoved his other fist in his mouth and bit down on his knuckle, praying for the pressure to pass.

“Ow, that hurt!” he protested, once Morana’s contraction had eased. She shot him a look that wouldn’t have looked out of place on an Oznark, and he smiled uncomfortably. “But, you know, whatever helps, I guess.”

She threw her head back and screamed. Cal glanced down at his rapidly reddening fingers and decided to join her in a little scream of his own.

“Make it stop!” Morana howled.

Loren ducked down and peered between Morana’s legs. Cal wasn’t sure what she saw there, exactly, but from the expression on her face he was glad it wasn’t in his line of sight.

“You’re doing great!” Loren said. “Seriously, you’re doing amazingly well.”

“You’ve done this before, right?” Cal asked Loren. Loren shook her head. “What? But… don’t they teach you that stuff in the army?”

“I’m a pilot!” Loren pointed out. “Why would they teach me how to deliver babies?”

Cal gestured to Morana with his free hand. “In case this happens!”

He grimaced as Morana grabbed this hand, too. Another contraction arched her back and she squeezed both hands at once. Cal’s mouth opened in a silent scream this time. Outside, in the main club, they could just hear the sounds of battle raging above the thudding of the dance beat. Despite the pirates, bounty hunters and Godzilla-lion, he was starting to think he’d been given the raw end of the deal.

“Ooh, that one nearly broke my fingers,” he muttered, as the peak of Morana’s contraction passed. She panted heavily, her pink face slick with sweat. “Breathe. Just breathe. In. Out.”

“I know how to fonking breathe!” Morana snapped.

A spasm of pain rocked her. Loren let out a gasp. “I see something!”

“Please don’t describe it!” Cal pleaded.

“Push, Morana!”

Morana tightened her grip on Cal’s hand even further. He bit his shirt at the shoulder, grinding the material between his teeth and trying not to pass out through the pain.

Loren let out a panicky yelp.

Morana groaned with relief.

And then… silence.

Nothing.

Nothing but the battle and the music. Distant, and feeling more distant with each second that passed.

In her hands, Loren held a bloody shape. Inert.

Silent.

Not moving.

Morana made a sound that was part gasp, part sob.

“Aw… shizz,” said Cal.

A pudgy pink hand twitched. A toe curled. A cry, sharp and strong and fonking beautiful echoed around the room.

“It’s a boy,” said Loren, smiling despite her ashen-face and trembling hands as she passed the infant to Morana. “You have a little boy.”

Cal flexed his fingers and blew on the knuckles. “Word of warning, kid, your mom has one crazy grip.” He looked down into the baby’s wide eyes and his pain melted away. He smiled. It wasn’t one of his normal smiles, the ones carefully honed to elicit a particular response in whoever he was aiming it at. It was just a smile, meant for no-one’s benefit but his own. “Well, look at you,” he said, tickling the baby’s bare belly.

He tore his eyes away from the squirming infant and met Morana’s gaze. “Thank you,” she said.

“Hey, it was nothing,” he said. “I mean, I’ll never play piano again, but no big deal.”

The door swung inwards. Loren spun on her knees, gun raised. Mech appeared in the doorway, caught a full-on view of between Morana’s legs, recoiled in horror, then abruptly about-turned.

“Uh… everything OK in here?” he asked.

“Yeah,” said Cal. “Yeah, we’re good. You?”

“All taken care of.”

“What about the Hell-beast?” asked Loren.

“Miz dealt with it.”

Loren smirked. “I was talking about Miz,” she said.

“Now, now,” said Cal. “Where are you two going to learn to play nice?”

Something that was all teeth and eyes appeared around the doorframe. At first, Cal thought it was the Oznark, but then it let out a theatrical gasp and flapped its arms about in a way that bordered on hysteria.

“Oh my!” yelped Harlosh. “What is going on here?”

“A child has been born unto us this day,” said Cal, which he reckoned explained everything. It didn’t, obviously, but Harlosh was too polite to push the subject.

“We should get you to a room, my dear. You can have my suite. We can’t have you stuck in here, it’s not sanitary.” He leaned in closer to Mech, who still hadn’t turned around. “Or safe. I think people might be looking for this child. It’s all over the feeds.”

“Really?” said Mech, brushing a lump of bounty hunter off his forearm. “You don’t say?”

* * *

Five minutes, and a blissfully uneventful private elevator ride later, Cal stood at the foot of a grand, four-poster bed, rocking gently from side to side, the swaddled infant in his arms. Morana watched him from the bed, sipping on a cup of something hot and sweet.

Loren, Miz and Mech had gone to stock up on supplies and get the Shatner ready for take-off. Dorothy out of the Golden Girls sat in a wicker chair next to a mirrored dressing table, looking a little green around the gills.

“You don’t need to keep that up now, buddy,” Cal said. “We’re all friends here.”

Dorothy melted, becoming a mound of quivering green goo on the chair. Even in slime-form, Splurt somehow managed to look exhausted. Keeping up the transformation for so long must have taken it out of the little guy.

“You’re really good with him,” said Morana.

“Who, Splurt?”

Morana smiled. “The baby.”

“Oh! Yeah, right,” said Cal. He looked down at the infant’s sleeping face. His tiny lips formed a miniature pout, and he let out a little murmur as he wrapped his pudgy hand around Cal’s finger. “Thankfully, he doesn’t yet have your grip.”

“You have kids?” Morana asked.

Cal opened his mouth, ready for the useful stuff to tumble out. “Blah, blah, blah, too young. Blah, blah, blah, don’t want to get tied down. Blah, blah, blah, something about maybe someday.”

Instead, though, and to his immense surprise, he said. “Yes.”

And then he corrected it to, “No.”

And then he added, “Not anymore.”

“Oh,” said Morana. “I’m sorry. What happened?”

Cal shrugged, keeping his gaze fixed on the baby in his arms. “She was… There was an accident. A few years back.” His jaw tightened, stopping him saying any more, and pushing back the tears he could feel amassing behind his eyelids. “Just one of those things.”

He cleared his throat and the baby jumped awake. “Sorry!” Cal whispered, then he held his breath as the boy’s eyelids slowly closed again.

“How come this King Anderle guy wanted to eat him, anyway?” Cal asked. “I mean, not that I’m saying he doesn’t look pretty fonking appetizing, but… why go to all this effort to eat him? There are bound to be loads of babies out there he could eat.”

“Because of who his father is,” said Morana. She set the cup down on Harlosh’s antique bedside table. “There is a… story. A legend. A boy will be born – a boy of great power – who will destroy King Anderle and his entire domain.”

“This little guy?” said Cal. “He doesn’t look like he’d destroy anyone. I mean, look at that face. And why eat him? That seems a bit… much.”

“Like I say, he thinks my son has power. By eating him, he thinks he can take it.”

“Ah, so he’s a total nutjob? Gotcha,” said Cal. “Who is the dad, anyway? If, you know, you don’t mind me asking?”

“That,” said Morana, puffing out her cheeks, “is a very long story.”

“OK. So… where is he?”

“That’s an even longer one,” Morana said. “He’s… around, I guess.”

“We could take you to him,” Cal suggested. “On the Shatner. We could take you both.”

Morana smiled. “It’s not that simple. You see, he’s not really in any specific sort of…”

The door opened. Harlosh ducked his head around the frame. “Knock knock!” he said, remaining outside. “Everything OK?”

“Hey! Yeah, all good here,” said Cal.

“I want to thank you, Mr Ko,” said Morana. “You’ve been so kind.”

Harlosh waved a dismissive hand. “Oh, now, stop!” he trilled. “Stop it at once! I couldn’t very well leave you lying there on a pile of coats, could I? Plus, it’s Kroyshuk, for goodness sake.”

“Well, thanks anyway, Harlosh,” said Cal. “When I first saw you I thought… well, it wasn’t really a word, more a sort of panicky internal scream, but you’re OK. You’re one of the good guys.”

“Haha. Yes!” said Harlosh. “And on that note… you have a guest.”

He withdrew from the doorway and was replaced by a towering figure in a flowing red robe. The man’s long, dark beard entered first. He ducked to avoid scraping his golden crown on the doorway mantle.

“King Anderle!” Morana gasped.

“Morana,” boomed the King, in a voice that shook the very walls themselves.

Cal glanced at Splurt just as he reared up, taking the form of something large and scaly. Without looking, King Anderle took aim with a small handgun and shot Splurt at point blank range in what was becoming his stomach. A crackle of electricity ripped through Splurt, stopping his transformation midway through and reducing him to a quivering pile of gloop.

“Splurt!” Cal yelped. He spun, thrusting the baby back into Morana’s arms, then launched himself at King Anderle, pain radiating upwards from the recently-bandaged soles of his feet.

Anderle backhanded him across the face, sending him spinning into an expensive-looking table. A vase, which looked even more valuable, shattered beneath Cal as he landed on top of it.

“You’re going to pay for those damages!” Harlosh said, aiming the sentence at Cal rather than at King Anderle.

“You’re going to pay for being a traitorous shizznod,” Cal growled. He stumbled to his feet, only for King Anderle to shoot him in the chest. Cal’s body spasmed fitfully, his muscles tightening until his arms bent back. He fell sideways, almost completely rigid, and slammed against the floor once again.

He tried to move, but nothing worked. There was a total disconnect between his brain and the rest of him. He could see and hear, and there was a definite burning smell filling his nostrils, but his limbs refused to respond to his commands to move. Right. Fonking. Now.

Up on the bed, Morana kicked backwards until she was all the way to the headboard, her son clutched protectively to her chest. “No, no, please, don’t hurt him. Don’t hurt my baby,” she pleaded.

“Come now, Morana,” King Andrele intoned, advancing towards the bed. “You know I have no choice in the matter. To protect my subjects, I must devour the infant. The legend is very clear about that.”

Cal tried to cry out for help, but barely managed a groan. From where he lay, he could see King Anderle approaching the bed, his hands, both adorned by a dozen or so gold rings, reaching towards Morana and her child.

“N-nnn,” Cal said, as King Anderle wrapped those thick, sinewy fingers around the baby and tore it free of its mother’s grasp. Immediately, the child began to wail. Harlosh checked the hallway outside, then pulled the door closed and stood with his back against it.

“Please, no, don’t!” Morana screamed hurling herself at the king. He caught her easily with his right hand, the baby wriggling and squirming in his left. With a single shove, he launched Morana backwards. She hit the headboard hard and folded over, the breath, if not the fight, going out of her.

“P-please,” she pleaded, struggling back to her knees. “Don’t.”

“He doesn’t look like him, does he?” Anderle said, peering down at the struggling child. “Then again, how could he? Around the eyes a little, perhaps, but…” He leaned in closer. “How are they glowing like that?” he wondered.

And then, he exploded.

Later, Cal would recall two bolts of crackling white light blazing from the baby’s eyes. He’d remember a sound not unlike trumpets. Space trumpets, perhaps. He’d recollect the fleeting moment of surprise on King Anderle’s face, right before he disintegrated in an eruption of flaky white ash.

The baby fell, bounced once on the bed, then was snatched up by his mother and swaddled in against her chest. He cooed once, wriggled into a more comfortable position, then promptly fell asleep.

Cal’s fingers twitched. He focused, and with some effort managed to turn his head to look over at Harlosh, who was still pressed against the door, looking… surprised, Cal guessed, although the whole teeth and eyes situation meant that was pretty much just a guess.

All of Harlosh’s eyes went to King Anderle’s weapon. It had fallen, and was now in the process of being covered by the flakes of white ash floating to the floor.

Before he could make a move, the door was thrown open, and Harlosh was sent tumbling across the room, where he smashed, teeth-first, into what Cal hoped had been a priceless antique lamp.

Mech, Miz and Loren stepped into the room. They looked at Cal and Splurt on the floor, then over at Morana kneeling on the bed with her baby in her arms.

Finally, they looked at the white flakes drifting through the air. “Uh… did we miss something?” Loren asked.

“Yy cld say tht,” Cal slurred. His face was tingling and his arms felt like lead, but he managed to prop himself up against the wall. He raised his eyes to the drifting flakes of white and felt a sudden flurry of excitement. “Hey, ’slike snow,” he said. He stuck out his tongue to catch a piece, then remembered what the flakes actually were, and quickly spat it back out again.

With help from Loren and Miz, he slid himself up the wall. His legs gave way immediately, and Loren quickly ducked under his arm to support him. “Thanks,” Cal said. “But in the interests of full disclosure, I’ve wet myself.”

Splurt pulsed on the wicker chair, drawing himself upwards into his traditional blob-like shape. His eyes swam around for a few moments, before coming together and settling on Cal. “Good to have you back, buddy,” Cal said. “Let’s agree never to get shot by one of those things again.”

“So what is this stuff?” asked Miz, sniffing the air. “Smells like dandruff.”

“That’s King Anderle,” said Cal. “The baby blew him to bits.”

“The baby?” said Loren.

“Yep.”

“Blew him to bits?”

“Yep. He’s one tough kid,” Cal said. “Takes after his mom.”

Morana smiled. She looked down at the sleeping infant in her arms. “I guess we can’t keep calling him ‘the baby,’ can we?” she said. “He needs a name. Any suggestions?”

“Hmm, let me think for a moment,” said Cal, tapping a finger against his chin. “A child, born to a mysteriously powerful absent father, hunted by an evil king on Space Christmas Day?” He smiled. It made his face feel weirdly rubbery. “I think I have the perfect name…”

* * *

Cal sat slouched in his seat as Loren fired up the Shatner’s thrusters. “I can’t believe she didn’t like the name!” he complained. “I mean, seriously, what kid wouldn’t want to be called Santa?”

“She didn’t like it, man, get over it,” said Mech. “She called the kid Cal, what more do you want?”

Cal shifted in his chair and gave a begrudging shrug. “Yeah, that was pretty cool, I suppose. But still. Santa.”

“Think she’s going to be OK?” asked Loren, leaning back on the stick and tilting the ship’s nose off the deck. “Staying here, I mean?”

“Well, no-one’s looking for her now, are they?” said Miz. “And, like, she’s got a baby that can blow stuff up.”

“Yeah,” said Cal. “Yeah, I think she’ll be fine.”

The ship edged towards the wide doors that led out into the vastness of outer space. Mech’s metal feet clanked across the deck, and Cal turned in time for a pair of leather boots to be thrust towards him.

“Merry Kroyshuk,” Mech grunted.

“Aw, Mech, you shouldn’t have!” Cal said, taking the boots. “I didn’t get you anything.”

He tilted the boots, studying them. “A matching pair, about the right size, nice leatherwork. These are perfect, Mech, thank you.”

Mech nodded. “Hey, no problem. My pleasure,” he said, returning to his spot.

Cal crossed his legs. He was about to pull one of the boots on, when something inside it caught his attention. He peered inside and his stomach did a little loop-the-loop.

“Uh, you do know there are still feet inside these, right?”

“Yeah,” said Mech, his metal mouth curving into a smirk. “Yeah, I know.”

And then the stars all stretched out, and the Shatner shot off into space, leaving the North Star, Morana, and the newborn boy child far, far behind.

THE END

Death Comes To Carverville

A Tobey Maguire Mystery

Introduction

The story that follows is in no way endorsed by the actor, Tobey Maguire. The Tobey Maguire who appears in this story is not the real Tobey Maguire, but a fictionalized version of Tobey Maguire who just happens to share the same name, face and career history.

Tobey Maguire’s behaviour in this story is not intended to be representative of how the real Tobey Maguire might react in the unlikely event that he was to find himself in the circumstances depicted in the following story. Maybe the real Tobey Maguire would behave in a similar fashion, maybe he wouldn’t. I make no claim either way.

I do not know Tobey Maguire, and have never met him. My insight into the mind of Tobey Maguire is no greater than anyone else’s, but I’m sure he’s a very nice man, even if some people who have worked with him say he isn’t.

I hope you enjoy the story and that if you’re Tobey Maguire, you don’t instigate legal action.

Thank you.

Barry J. Hutchison

One

To his great surprise, Tobey Maguire had finally finished the jigsaw puzzle.

It had taken him… well, he didn’t want to think about how long it had taken him, but it had taken him a while. Probably longer than it reasonably should have taken, but all those blue pieces had been confusing, and an early mistake had made for a frustrating few hours in the middle. But now, at last, it was done. Complete. Finito. All one-hundred-and-fifty pieces slotted into place.

Technically, one-hundred-and-forty-eight, since he’d somehow managed to lose two pieces in the completely featureless white room he currently resided in.

Although ‘room’ wasn’t the right word. You couldn’t walk endlessly in any direction in a room, never reaching a wall or other item of interest. You could in this place.

He’d set off exploring a few days earlier, and had left a trail of jigsaw pieces so he could find his way back to the start. That was probably how he’d lost the missing two parts, now that he thought about it.

Quite why he’d wanted to come back to the start, he wasn’t really sure. The start was identical to every other spot in the white void (apart from the two areas which he was now convinced contained jigsaw puzzle pieces) and he may as well have just bunked down anywhere.

If he were honest, he found the whole place a bit unsettling. Although, what was possibly most disturbing was that he had absolutely no idea where he’d got the jigsaw puzzle.

He also didn’t know, for that matter, where the chair he was sitting on had come from. Likewise, the little folding table where the (mostly) finished jigsaw now sat. The appearance of that stuff was even more of a puzzle than the one he’d just completed, and so he decided it best not to tax his brain too much and just accept it for what it was.

Tobey Maguire had just leaned back in said chair to admire his handiwork when a man in a tan leather jacket fell from above and smashed, face-first, through said table.

“Ow! Fonk!” the guy groaned as he began the process of extracting himself from the tangle of broken wood and jigsaw pieces.

Tobey Maguire gazed sadly at the disassembled ocean scene, but said nothing. Technically, this man was the landlord, and it probably wouldn’t do to get on his bad side. He might start asking for rent.

Cal Carver stumbled into a standing position, dusted himself down, then exhaled slowly through his nose and smiled.

“Tobey Maguire. Long time no see,” he said.

“Hey, Cal,” said Tobey Maguire.

Cal nodded appreciatively as he looked around them. “I like what you’ve done with the place. It’s very… white.”

Tobey Maguire looked around, too, as if seeing the place for the first time. “Yeah. I mean, it wouldn’t be my first choice, but it’s better than the last place, right?”

Cal’s brow furrowed. “Was that the cave? With the monsters pacing around? You were doing some annoying fonking jigsaw.”

“Haha. Yeah,” said Tobey Maguire, subtly sweeping puzzle pieces under the broken table with his foot. He put an arm around Cal’s shoulder and led him off into the endless white. “So, what happened this time?”

“Hmm?” said Cal. “Oh! You mean why am I unconscious? Long story. I got punched by a monster.”

Tobey Maguire waited, but no more was forthcoming. “That’s it?”

“Yeah,” said Cal. “You know, when I say it out loud, it isn’t actually that long a story at all. I thought it was more complicated than it is.”

He stopped walking and slipped free of Tobey Maguire’s arm. “Sorry for the flying visit, but I should probably be waking up. The guys need me. This thing we’re fighting, it’s called a Mindraper. Can you believe that?”

Tobey Maguire blinked. “It’s called a what?”

“I know, right?” said Cal. “It feels wrong. Grammatically, or whatever. That’s what I said to Mech. It should be Mindrapist, right?”

“Right,” said Tobey Maguire, although the grammar issues weren’t his most pressing concern.

“Anyway, it’s probably nothing to worry about, but there’s a possibility we might get mindraped in the next, oooh, eight to ten minutes,” said Cal. “I thought you’d want to know.”

Tobey Maguire very much did not want to know. This was painfully apparent from his facial expression.

“Might be safer if you go find a crowd to hang out in. You know, safety in numbers?”

“A crowd?” said Tobey Maguire, his voice taking on a slightly hysterical high-pitched edge. “What do you mean, ‘a crowd’? I’m in a featureless white void. How am I supposed to find a crowd?”

He sat down heavily on his chair. Which, come to think of it, he was pretty sure wasn’t supposed to be there.

“Oh God. Oh God, I’m going to get mindraped,” he sobbed.

“Look, relax. I’m sure it isn’t as terrible as it sounds,” Cal said.

Tobey Maguire looked up. “How sure?”

“Like… sixty per cent sure,” said Cal. He clicked his tongue against the back of his teeth. “Although, Kevin did suggest we all kill ourselves rather than face the thing, so… Let’s say fifty per cent, just to be on the safe side.”

“Oh God!”

Cal looked up, listening to something only he could hear. “Gotta go,” he said. “Go find a crowd, dude. This… whatever this is with all the empty voidyness, it isn’t healthy.”

“There’s no-one else here! I keep telling you,” said Tobey Maguire. He buried his head in his hands and his shoulders heaved as he sobbed.

“Hey now, you listen to me, Tobey Maguire,” Cal said, soothingly. “My head is packed with stuff. Splurt pulls shizz out of here all the time. You remember The Golden Girls? Hmm? You remember Dorothy? Well, she’s in here somewhere. And if she’s here, I’m pretty sure Blanche and the others won’t be far behind.”

“Great! So not only am I going to get mindraped, but I have to watch helplessly on as the fonking Golden Girls get mindraped, too!” yelped Tobey Maguire. “How is that a better…?”

He stopped talking when he realized Cal was gone. Tobey Maguire was alone. He’d never felt quite so alone, in fact.

Well, maybe after the reviews of Spider-Man 3 had come in, but this was a close second.

“Find a crowd,” he muttered. And just how was he supposed to do that, exactly?

Picking a direction, he walked for a while.

He stopped walking. He wasn’t getting anywhere. Or, if he was, it was nowhere interesting.

“Hello?”

Tobey Maguire’s voice rolled off into the void. He listened for a reply, but none came.

His chair was there behind him again, along with the broken table and the ruined jigsaw puzzle. He sat down and made a concerted effort not to think about being mindraped.

He failed.

He wasn’t sure what being mindraped actually involved, but he felt confident it wouldn’t be anything to write home about.

Placing his elbows on his knees, Tobey Maguire bent forwards, adopting the crash position. He doubted it would help with the whole mindraping situation, but it made him feel a bit better, all the same.

It was while he was bent forwards and gazing down that he spotted the button. It was round and white, and set into the floor. Had he not been sitting in that exact spot, looking in that precise direction, he’d never have noticed it.

“Should I press this?” he asked out loud. Quite who he was asking he wasn’t sure, but he waited for an answer, just in case.

When he didn’t get one, he shrugged and gave the button a poke. It sunk beneath the level of the floor, but nothing appeared to happen. Tobey Maguire held the button there for several seconds, looking around him for any sign that anything had changed.

It hadn’t.

“So much for that,” he sighed, releasing the button.

He slapped his hands on his thighs. He stood up.

“Right, then,” he said.

And then the floor beneath him vanished, and Tobey Maguire plunged screaming through the bottom of the void.

Two

Tobey Maguire had no idea if he could die.

Technically, he was pretty sure he was dead. The real him, at least.

The version of him that was currently tumbling through a cloudless blue sky towards a rapidly approaching ground was merely an imaginary construct living inside the head of one of the last human beings in existence. He wasn’t real. None of this was real.

Still, real or not, this version was the one he was currently most concerned about.

There was a small town below him. Possibly a large village. He didn’t know where the distinction lay. Population size, maybe? Number of municipal buildings? He was sure there had to be some sort of criteria that defined—

Tobey Maguire hit the ground. It sagged beneath him like some rubbery membrane, then snapped back into painful solidity. He lay there for a while, getting his breath back and enjoying the feeling of not being falling from a great height.

When he finally decided to move, it took some effort to raised himself onto his hands and knees. He was barely up on all fours when he spotted the squirrel. It was larger than any squirrel he’d ever seen before, although he’d be the first to admit he hadn’t seen very many. It stood on its two back legs, its tail raised up behind it.

Its reddish-brown fur was dirty and bedraggled, the chest matted with sploshes of the same gloopy black spitting tobacco it now gobbed onto the ground by Tobey Maguire’s right hand.

“Well now. Looks like we got ourselves a nimmigrant,” the squirrel drawled, drawing back its lips to reveal its huge, tobacco-stained front teeth. “That right, boy? You a nimmigrant?”

“Uh… I’m Tobey Maguire,” said Tobey Maguire. He wasn’t sure what else to say, so this seemed as good a place as any to start. “Maybe you’ve heard of me?”

The squirrel slapped Tobey Maguire hard across the face. “You heard of that, nimmigrant? You heard of that back in Ongo-Bongo land, or wherever it is you come from?”

Tobey Maguire frowned. “What are you talking about?”

The squirrel slapped him again, harder this time.

“Fonking cut that out!” Tobey Maguire warned.

“Don’t you backsass me, ting-tong,” the squirrel retorted. He lunged in for another slap, but Tobey Maguire cracked an open palm across the side of the thing’s face, spinning him around.

“I warned you. Now we’re even, OK?” said Tobey Maguire. “Now maybe we can talk like adults.”

He stood up and dusted himself down. He was wearing a black polo neck and charcoal pants, and they had both really picked up the dirt.

He’d only looked away for a moment, but when he looked back, the squirrel was nowhere to be seen.

“That was weird,” Tobey Maguire mumbled, then he turned and took in his surroundings.

The town he’d landed in looked like something out of the Old West. The ground was nothing more than loosely packed dirt and sand, with his imprint still clearly visible in it. The street he was on was wide and lined on both sides by mismatched wooden buildings.

Stencilled black text on the walls identified a saloon, a barber shop, and a general store. Most of the other buildings remained a mystery, although a star above one of the doors suggested either a theater dressing room (unlikely) or a Sheriff’s office (more likely), and a stack of coffins outside another was pretty self-explanatory.

Sombre piano music drifted out through the swing doors of the saloon. He recognized the tune, but couldn’t quite place it. It didn’t matter. Music meant people.

“Find a crowd,” Tobey Maguire whispered, then he took a deep breath, gave himself a little pep talk, and headed for the saloon.

A horse hit him three paces later. It was quite a big horse, and he probably should’ve seen it coming, or at least heard the thunder of its hooves.

Tobey Maguire met the ground hard, rolled clumsily for several feet, then sprang upright again wearing an expression designed to suggest the whole thing had been totally deliberate.

The horse hadn’t stopped. Tobey Maguire turned in the direction it had gone and saw a large squirrel standing on a saddle on the horse’s back. It was giving him the finger.

Once the horse had galloped out of view, Tobey Maguire looked both ways and crossed more carefully to the saloon. The piano music still drifted out from inside (what was that tune?) and now had been joined by the murmur of voices and the chinking of glasses.

Hanging back, Tobey Maguire gave his polo neck one more dusting, took another deep breath, and whispered a second motivational speech.

With that done, he approached the saloon’s swing doors, channelled his inner cowboy, and pushed.

THUNK.

The doors didn’t budge. Through the gap at the top he noticed movement as several people turned in their chairs to look at him. He was only dimly aware of them, though, because he was too embarrassed to meet their eye. Instead, he pushed the doors again, harder this time, and felt his cheeks prickle when they once more refused to open.

“Pull,” said a voice from inside.

It was only then that Tobey Maguire noticed the brass handles on each door, and the shiny metal plates with “Pull to open” etched on them in inch high letters. Shizz. Had they been there the whole time?

He pulled both doors, swinging them outwards. Unfortunately, his arms weren’t long enough to open them both properly, so he was forced to let go of one and sidle through the gap left by the other. He stopped just inside the saloon, then let out a little yelp as the door swung closed and slapped him crisply across the buttocks.

Silence had fallen in the saloon. Or near-silence, at least. The piano player was still playing, but his fingers were gliding softly across the keys now, so the notes floated lightly around the smoke-filled room.

There were twenty or more big round tables in the place, each one seating anywhere from two to eight people. The men wore hats and scowls. The women, for the most part, wore dresses that ranged from ‘formal church wear’ to ‘definitely a prostitute’, although one or two were decked out in the same hat-and-scowl combo as the men.

Despite their differences, everyone had one thing in common. They were all staring at Tobey Maguire with a level of intensity that made him deeply uncomfortable.

“Howdy,” he said, touching the brim of his hat the way he’d seen Clint Eastwood do in some of his movies.

He remembered he wasn’t wearing a hat, wondered briefly how insane the gesture must have looked to those watching, then tried not to dwell on it.

“The, uh, the name’s Maguire. Tobey Maguire.”

No-one responded. If they’d heard of him, they were keeping their cards close to their chests.

“Haha. Please, no autographs!” said Tobey Maguire, which went down pretty much as well as you might expect, and was nothing like the zinger he hoped it would be. He cleared his throat and glanced back out into the street. Maybe an eternity in a featureless white void wouldn’t be that bad, after all.

“Well now, Mr Maguire. You bring yourself over here and let me fix you a drink.”

The voice that had spoken was rich and warm, like hot chocolate on a cold winter’s night. Tobey Maguire looked over in the direction it had come from, and saw a gray-haired black man in a pristine white apron beckoning to him from behind the bar.

Tobey Maguire noticed two things about the man’s face. The first thing he noticed was how open and friendly it was. It had a smiling mouth and twinkling eyes that suggested mischief. But not mean mischief where someone would be inconvenienced in some way, but a positive, all-inclusive kind of mischief where everyone would have a great time, and lifelong friendships would be forged between all those involved.

The second thing he noticed about the face was that it belonged to the actor, Morgan Freeman.

The murmur of conversation returned as Tobey Maguire crossed to the bar and clambered gracelessly onto a tall stool. Morgan Freeman polished a shot glass with the corner of a towel, then clunked it onto the bar top.

“What can I get you, Mr Maguire?”

“Morgan Freeman,” said Tobey Maguire. He winced a little at that. He probably should’ve nested the name in an actual sentence, or even just preceded it with, “You’re,” but he hadn’t. Still, Morgan Freeman didn’t seem put out. If anything, his smile widened, and Tobey Maguire felt his spirits lift.

“You got me,” said Morgan Freeman. “Now what will it be?”

“Uh, what do you recommend?” Tobey Maguire asked.

“Well, most folks, they go for whiskey, but…” He looked Tobey Maguire up and down, and that mischief twinkled in his eyes again. “Are you a man who enjoys taking a risk, Mr Maguire?”

Tobey Maguire almost blurted out a definitive, “God, no!” but something about Morgan Freeman’s smile stopped him. It was a smile that would do him no harm, he knew, and he found himself slowly nodding the affirmative.

Morgan Freeman’s face lit up. “I thought so. You wait right there.”

“OK,” said Tobey Maguire. He motioned in the direction of the piano player. “What’s with the music. Isn’t it kind of… downbeat?”

Morgan Freeman chuckled. “Hear that, Richie?” he said, raising his voice. “Mr Maguire doesn’t approve of your playing.”

The piano clunked tunelessly to a stop. Tobey Maguire shook his head. “What? No, I just meant it was… That I expected…”

“He’s right,” hollered one of the other occupants of the bar. “For Christ’s sake, Richie, play something cheerful. We’re all on the brink of suicide here.”

The piano player, Richie, jumped up as if he’d been electrocuted. He glowered at Tobey Maguire from the shadows beneath his hat, bowed once to the largely unappreciative audience, then walked right on out the front door with his artistic integrity firmly intact.

There was a moment of confused silence, then the chatter returned even louder than before.

“There’s a gentleman who needs to be more open to criticism,” said Morgan Freeman. He turned and reached for a larger glass, then busied himself fixing Tobey Maguire a drink. With his back turned, it was impossible to see what the Shawshank Redemption star was doing, but Tobey Maguire felt confident he was going to enjoy it.

“Watch your wallet,” hissed a voice from beside him.

The squirrel was back, sitting perched on the next stool along.

“Excuse me?” said Tobey Maguire.

Morgan Freeman turned. “Yes, son?”

Tobey Maguire shook his head. “Uh, no. No. Not you, sorry.” He gestured to the squirrel. Morgan Freeman shifted his eyes to it for a moment, then smiled a little less convincingly than before and went back to preparing the drink.

“I said watch your wallet. Him and his kind will prise that slab of leather from your cold dead fingers if’n they has to.”

“What do you mean ‘his kind’?” Tobey Maguire demanded. “Actors?”

“You know what I mean, boy,” the squirrel drawled. “Ni—”

Tobey Maguire punched the squirrel off the stool with a single frantic swipe. He looked up just as Morgan Freeman turned back.

“Sorry about him. I don’t know him. He just turned up,” Tobey Maguire babbled. “I don’t think like that.”

Morgan Freeman frowned a little, although his smile didn’t falter. He raised himself onto his tiptoes and peered at the empty stool. “Who just turned up?” he asked. “And you don’t think like what?”

Tobey Maguire gestured down to where the squirrel had landed, but it was now a squirrel free zone.

“There was… There was a squirrel,” he explained. “There was a big squirrel.”

Morgan Freeman hesitated. “A big squirrel, you say?”

“It could talk. It said… Well, it doesn’t matter what it said. Didn’t you see it?”

A flicker of concern crossed Morgan Freeman’s face. “I can’t say I did, Mr Maguire. Is it gone now?”

Tobey Maguire looked around. “Yeah. Yeah, it’s gone.”

“Well alright, then,” said Morgan Freeman, his smile hitting its stride again. He set a glass on the bar between them. It was more of a mug than a glass, with a large handle and a number of frosted dimples.

A layer of cream, several inches thick, was swirled on top of a faintly yellow liquid, and the whole lot had been finished off with slices of banana and a drizzle of caramel. Just by looking at the thing, Tobey Maguire could have sworn he felt his eyes contract Type 2 Diabetes.

“One Banoffee Pie milkshake,” Morgan Freeman announced. He leaned in closer and winked. “It’s the boss’s favorite. Go on. Try it.”

A red and white striped bendable straw was sticking up through the cream like the periscope of a submarine. Tobey Maguire pinched the end between his lips and sucked. A creamy flavor-bomb exploded in his mouth, filling it with hints of banana and toffee and… some kind of ginger biscuit, maybe? Whatever it was, it was fonking delicious.

“Good, right?” said Morgan Freeman, indicating the milkshake.

Tobey Maguire nodded, still sucking on the straw.

“That’ll be eighty-six dollars.”

Tobey Maguire coughed, mid-sip, and ejected a creamy banana discharge through all of the main orifices in his face. Morgan Freeman leaned back in time to avoid any of the gloopy ejection getting on his skin, but his apron didn’t get off so lightly.

Wheezing as he frantically tried to dislodge milk-sodden biscuit crumbs from the lining of his nose, Tobey Maguire stared up at the barman in horror.

“I’m sorry,” he managed. “That was an accident.”

Morgan Freeman chuckled and waved a dismissive hand. “Oh please, son, I brought that on myself. I was teasing you. The drink’s on the house.”

“Thanks.”

“My pleasure,” said Morgan Freeman, wiping spots of banana-flavored milk from the bar. “I still look back fondly on our time working together.”

Tobey Maguire frowned. “Did we… We didn’t work together.”

“Sure we did, son. On Deep Impact.”

“That was Elijah Wood,” said Tobey Maguire.

A frown troubled Morgan Freeman’s impressive eyebrows. “With the asteroid? You sure?”

“I’m sure. I wasn’t in Deep Impact.”

Recognition flashed behind Morgan Freeman’s eyes. “Of course. I’m sorry. That’s embarrassing. You’re the Hobbit guy.”

“That’s also Elijah Wood,” said Tobey Maguire. He took another sip of his drink. “I was Spider-Man.”

“The superhero? I didn’t see that one,” said Morgan Freeman. “Didn’t you win an Oscar for something?”

Tobey Maguire shook his head.

“Golden Globe?”

“Teen Choice Award,” said Tobey Maguire.

“Oh,” said Morgan Freeman.

“Best kiss,” said Tobey Maguire. “I was upside down.”

“Oh. Oh, I see. Well, that is quite an achievement,” Morgan Freeman replied. He tapped the side of the now empty milkshake glass. “Same again?”

Before Tobey Maguire could reply, a scream rang out from somewhere above. Morgan Freeman’s eyes darted to the ceiling, then he ran to the end of the bar and flipped open a hatch. “Come on, superhero,” he said, beckoning for Tobey Maguire to come through. “We’d better go check that out.”

“What? Why me?” asked Tobey Maguire.

“Don’t trust him,” muttered the squirrel, which Tobey Maguire now realized was hiding under his stool. “He’s luring you back there so he can kill you. They’re all the same.”

“Shut up, you racist fonk,” Tobey Maguire whispered.

Morgan Freeman had heard him. Of course he had.

“You OK, son?”

“Fine!” said Tobey Maguire, springing down from the stool. He glanced back at it, but the squirrel was gone. The other occupants of the bar either hadn’t heard the scream from upstairs, or couldn’t care less. None of them had even acknowledged it, much less moved to help.

Tobey Maguire followed Morgan Freeman through a bead curtain door at the back of the bar. A narrow set of stairs led up into the gloom of a floor above.

“Who’s up there?” Tobey Maguire whispered, his voice sounding unnaturally loud in the near silence.

“I don’t know,” Morgan Freeman admitted. “We should go check it out.”

“Right,” agreed Tobey Maguire. When it was clear Morgan Freeman wasn’t going to go first, he nodded and swallowed. “Right. Go check it out,” he said.

And with that, Tobey Maguire crept up the staircase and into the waiting dark.

Three

Tobey Maguire would have liked more steps. More steps would have given him more time to mentally prepare himself for whatever awaited him at the top. Annoyingly, there were only twelve of the things, and with Morgan Freeman ushering him on, he couldn’t even take his time climbing them.

They emerged into a quaintly decorated corridor with a lot of wood paneling and a few ornate wall-mounted gas lamps. Only one of these was on, the flame inside casting flickering shadows across the carpet and over the woodwork.

There were four doors leading off from the corridor that Tobey Maguire could see. Not that he did see them, of course, as his focus was almost entirely on the rasping, barely-alive figure lying in a pool of blood on the floor.

“Um…” he said, searching for the words that would make it clear this – whatever this was – was beyond the scope of his expertise. But Morgan Freeman’s hands were on his back now, guiding him over to the choking, spluttering victim.

It was a man, mid-thirties probably. His hair was reddish brown, his eyes were wide, and his throat was largely missing. Blood burbled and bubbled in the wound as the guy frantically tried to fill his lungs with something other than his own body fluids.

“Don’t let Freeman near the guy. He’ll take his watch,” said the squirrel, who Tobey Maguire was dismayed to find standing some way along the corridor. He was eating a Twix by nibbling off the chocolate around the edges, then prizing the caramel from the biscuit base. “His name’s Conrad, by the way.”

“Conrad?” said Tobey Maguire.

Morgan Freeman leaned over his shoulder. “You know this man?”

“What? No,” said Tobey Maguire. “It was… Nothing.”

He looked around for somewhere he could kneel without getting blood on his pants, but unless he chose a spot at the other end of the corridor, that wasn’t possible. He bit the bullet and knelt beside the gasping man.

“Is it… is it Conrad?”

Conrad nodded. This made blood spurt more violently from his neck. Tobey Maguire felt it spray across his face. It wasn’t easy, but he fought the urge to jump up and scream.

“Are you OK?” Tobey Maguire asked.

Conrad shook his head.

“H-hello,” he gargled.

“Hi,” said Tobey Maguire. He looked back at Morgan Freeman. “Should we call an ambulance?”

Conrad nodded. More blood spurted.

“No ambulances around here,” Morgan Freeman said. He tossed Tobey Maguire his bar towel and hurried for the stairs. “Try to stop the bleeding. I’ll go get help.”

“He’s not going to get help,” whispered the squirrel, his face now just inches from Tobey Maguire’s ear. “He’s going to steal your job.”

“I don’t have a job,” Tobey Maguire snapped.

“Course you don’t. Filthy nimmigrant.”

“Shut up!”

“Hel-lo,” Conrad wheezed.

“Again, hi.”

“Hello.”

“It’s probably best if you don’t talk,” said Tobey Maguire. He pressed the towel against the open wound on Conrad’s throat.

Suddenly, Conrad’s hand were clawing at Tobey Maguire’s polo neck, his eyes bulging in their sockets.

“Helloooooo,” he said, the word tailing off into a moist, bubbly whisper.

And then Conrad’s hands slipped away, and his head fell back, and what little life was left of him ebbed out onto the carpet.

Tobey Maguire knelt there, the towel still pressed against the dead man’s throat, the corridor spinning around him.

“Conrad? Conrad? You still with me?”

“He’s way dead,” said the squirrel. He was leaning against the wall across from Tobey Maguire, picking bits of Twix out of his teeth. “Be sure to wash your hands. That’s dago blood. He probably had AIDS.”

“Shut the fonk up with that shizz!” Tobey Maguire barked. “Who are you, anyway?”

“Why do you want to know? You fixing to steal my identity, Ali Baba? Just let me see you try.”

“Why would I want to steal your ID? You’re a fonking squirrel,” Tobey Maguire pointed out. “And exactly where do you think I’m from, by the way?”

The squirrel’s fur bristled. “OK, boy. One, you’re from somewhere that ain’t here, and that’s all I need to know. And second, I’m ‘a fonking squirrel’? And you call me racist?”

Morgan Freeman returned before Tobey Maguire could offer a retort. He was out of breath, a sheen of sweat glistening on his wrinkled brow. “I found some band-aids,” he said. “Any good?”

Tobey Maguire looked down at the corpse on the floor. “Not really,” he said.

“Oh. Well, that sucks,” said Morgan Freeman.

“Yeah,” Tobey Maguire agreed. He stood up, the carpet squelching beneath his feet. “Who could have done this?”

“Beats me,” said Morgan Freeman. “I’ve never seen anything like it. Hell, I’ve been in here since the boss first saw Seven, and I ain’t never seen anything like this before. Sure, we all have our disagreements, but I ain’t never seen anyone turn up dead before. Something ain’t right, Mr Maguire. You mark my words.”

The corridor spun faster than ever, forcing Tobey Maguire to lean a hand against the wall for support. It smeared a bloody print onto the wooden panel.

“The Mindraper,” he said.

“The what?” asked Morgan Freeman.

“Now he gets it,” said the squirrel. “About time, camel jockey.”

Tobey Maguire ignored him. “There’s something coming. I think… I think maybe it did this.”

Morgan Freeman stroked his chin. His wizened head nodded in contemplation. “In that case, we’d best go see Sheriff Carver.”

“Cal’s the sheriff?”

“Hmm? Oh, no. It’s his brother, Colt.”

Tobey Maguire’s eyebrows raised. “I didn’t know Cal had a brother.”

“Oh, he doesn’t,” said Morgan Freeman. “It’s kind of a long story.”

He headed down the stairs, but stopped halfway and turned back. “Oh, and Mr Maguire?”

“Yeah?”

“You might want to brace yourself.”

Four

Colt Carver was a compelling speaker with a natural charisma that easily matched his brother’s. That wasn’t all they shared, either. As soon as he’d seen Colt, Tobey Maguire had spotted the similarities between the two men. They had the same lop-sided grin, the same sparkle in their eyes, the same tousled hair.

There, though, the similarities ended. Because while Cal had a fully functioning body, Colt was merely a head with a foot sticking out at the bottom.

This had not escaped Tobey Maguire’s notice.

In hindsight, his first reaction – drawing back in fright and shouting, “Jesus Christ!” at the top of his voice – had been the wrong one. It was insensitive, he knew that now.

To his credit, Colt hadn’t made a big deal about it.

“You’re a head,” said Tobey Maguire, who was still too shocked to attempt being tactful. “You’re a head on a foot.”

Colt’s eyes darted down, then he screamed in horror. “Aaaaargh! What happened? What have you done?” he shrieked. “What have you done to me?!”

Tobey Maguire danced frantically on the spot, flapping his arms in panic. “Wh-what? It wasn’t me! It wasn’t me!”

Colt grinned. “Sorry. Just messing with you. You’re right. I’m a head on a foot.”

“But… But… I mean…”

“Why am I a head on a foot?” said Colt.

Tobey Maguire nodded dumbly.

Colt shuffled around in his chair. He smiled ruefully as he stared off into empty space. “Back when Cal was… ooh. Six? Seven, maybe? He used to tell the other kids he was one half of conjoined twins,” Colt explained. “Course, we called them Siamese Twins back then, but, you know. Times change.”

“Crying shame. Perfectly good description,” said a voice from under Colt’s desk. If anyone else heard it they didn’t let on.

“And was he?” asked Tobey Maguire. “A conjoined twin, I mean?”

“Of course he wasn’t,” said Morgan Freeman, who was standing over by the window, his eyes darting uneasily across the street outside.

“The other kids were totally freaked out. Cal loved it,” Colt continued. “He told them my name, explained how I’d been cut off his back when he was a year old, and said I now lived in a box under his bed.”

“And did you?” asked Tobey Maguire, who was having some difficulty keeping up.

“No,” said Colt. “No, I wasn’t real. He made me up.”

“Right,” said Tobey Maguire. “But…”

“But now I’m here, yes,” said Colt. “Because this – Carverville – it’s inside Cal’s mind. I’m not really Colt Carver, he’s not really Morgan Freeman, and you’re not really Elijah Wood.”

“Tobey Maguire,” corrected Tobey Maguire.

“Hmm?”

“I’m not Elijah Wood,” said Tobey Maguire.

“Exactly. That’s what I just said.”

“No. I mean, I’m not Elijah Wood. I’m Tobey Maguire.”

Colt looked him up and down. “You sure?”

Tobey Maguire nodded. “I’m sure.”

“OK. Well, if you’re sure,” said Colt, then he rolled forward off his chair and thudded onto the floor.

“Oh God,” Tobey Maguire gasped, covering his mouth with one hand. “Did he die?”

A moment later, Colt hopped out from beneath the desk, apparently none the worse for wear. To his shame, Tobey Maguire felt his skin crawl as the smiling head on a foot drew closer. His every instinct screamed at him to kick the fonking thing through the window, to get it as far away from him as possible, but he fought against them all and kept both feet planted firmly on the floor.

“Now, son, I’ve got a question for you,” said Colt. “Namely, how come your arrival here in town coincides so neatly with the only murder in Carverville history? That seems like quite the coincidence.”

“What? I didn’t do it,” Tobey Maguire protested. “I was with him the whole time.”

“He was,” Morgan Freeman confirmed. “He’s got a theory I thought you’d want to hear. Tell him about the Mindraper, son.”

Colt frowned. “The what?”

“Cal told me about it,” said Tobey Maguire. “He said he was fighting it. Out in the real world, I mean. He said there was a chance we might get Mindraped.”

“Meaning what, exactly?” asked Colt, shifting uncomfortably on his foot. “What does that involve?”

“I don’t know. But I can’t imagine it’s anything pleasant,” said Tobey Maguire.

“It’s going to pick you all off, one by one,” said the squirrel. He was sitting in Colt’s chair now, his clawed feet up on the desk. “It’ll chew all you Bohunks up and spit y’all back out again in pieces. You mark my words.”

“What do you know?” demanded Tobey Maguire. Colt hopped around and watched him storm across to the desk and lean over it on his fists. “Do you know what it is? The Mindraper?”

“Who is he talking to?” asked Colt.

Morgan Freeman shook his head. “I have no idea. Seems like he’s addressing your chair.”

“Sure, I know what it is,” the squirrel said. “Same as you do. It’s death. Death for all of us. It’s gonna rip right through this here curry-muncher’s brain that we’re all residing in, and eat up all his memories. You, me and all of us included.”

“Oh God. Seriously?” Tobey Maguire squeaked.

“Mr Maguire,” said Colt. “Conrad was a childhood friend of my siblings and I, and I don’t appreciate you messing around when I’m trying to get to the bottom of his death.”

Tobey Maguire stared at the empty chair for a few moments, squeezed his eyes shut, opened them again, then turned.

“Sorry,” he mumbled. “But I think we’re in trouble.”

“We’ll get to that in due course,” said Colt. “What can you tell me about Conrad’s last few moments? Did he say anything? Did he give you any clue as to what had happened?”

“No. No, just ‘hello’.”

“‘Hello’?”

“Yeah. Yeah, he just kept saying ‘hello’ over and over.”

“Just ‘hello’?”

Tobey Maguire nodded. “Yeah. That’s it.”

“Oh,” said Colt. His face turned several shades paler. As his face made up about eighty per cent of what Tobey Maguire could see of him, this did not go unnoticed.

“Are you OK?” asked Tobey Maguire. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost. You should sit down.” He winced. “I mean… Can you even…? Know what? Doesn’t matter. Forget I said anything.”

“It’s her,” Colt whispered. “After all these years, it has to be her.”

“Her who?” asked Morgan Freeman, turning his back on the window.

Colt took a steadying breath. He looked like he might fall over any minute. Then again, he probably looked like that most of the time.

“The kids eventually got tired of hearing about me,” he said. “Tired of Cal’s stories about his freaky amputated brother under the bed. They stopped being creeped out.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “So that’s when he told them about her.”

Morgan Freeman’s voice seemed to echo in the silence that followed. “Her?”

“Wait,” said Tobey Maguire. “You said you and your siblings knew Conrad. Plural.”

“A sister,” said Colt. “We… we had a sister. Val Carver. She was a flesh-eating mutant who lived in the attic.”

Tobey Maguire threw up his arms. “Of course she was.” He looked up and raised his voice. “Seriously, what is wrong with you?”

“Hello. That was the only word she ever learned. Hello. You’d hear her whispering it late at night. Even from the box under the bed. Hello.”

Tobey Maguire felt the fine hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. He imagined it was caused by his Spider-sense, and not just because he was scared shizzless.

“That was all she ever said?” asked Morgan Freeman.

“Yep. That was it,” Colt confirmed. He shrugged, which was fonking impressive, given the shape of him. “Well, that and ‘I’m going to suck your eyes out through your ass’. Just those two things.”

“Jesus,” Tobey Maguire whispered.

“I guess I knew she had to be in here somewhere,” said Colt. “But why show up now?”

“The Mindraper,” Tobey Maguire whispered.

“Bingo, Bootlips,” said the squirrel. “That thing’s dredging up the meanest and baddest parts of the big guy’s brain and turning it all in on itself. It’s strapping his subconscious into a goddam suicide vest, and we’re all gathering at the marketplace.”

“What does that even mean?” Tobey Maguire asked.

“It means we’re all fonked, boy,” said the squirrel. “It means we’re all fonked.”

“Hello.”

Tobey Maguire, the squirrel and Morgan Freeman all froze. Colt sort of froze, too, but balance issues meant he had to shuffle from foot to the same foot to stay upright.

“Who said that?” Tobey Maguire whispered.

“Wasn’t me,” said Morgan Freeman. “Colt?”

“Nuh-uh,” said Colt.

“Hello.”

A sudden movement by the office door made Tobey Maguire cry out in fright. He spun, folding the forefingers and middle fingers of each hand into his palms while keeping the others extended. As he did, he instinctively made a fsssswwwsss sound, much to the amusement of the squirrel, who was now over by the door.

“Did you just try to web me up, Chi-chi?” he snorted. “You do know you’re not actually Spider-Man, yes?”

Tobey Maguire quickly lowered his hands. “Don’t sneak around like that,” he warned. “You almost gave me a fonking heart attack!”

The squirrel said something in reply, but it was drowned out by the sound of breaking glass and then, a split-second later, by the sound of breaking Morgan Freeman.

A long serrated blade erupted through the five-time Oscar winner’s chest, then jerked upwards through his neck and jaw. It eventually got stuck halfway up his nose but by then, Tobey Maguire reckoned, the damage had probably been done.

“I guess I’d better… get busy living… or get busy dying,” said Morgan Freeman, although the hole in his throat and the knife embedded part-way through his skull meant it came out as a largely intelligible ejection of grunting and saliva.

Still, the thought was there.

“Jesus Christ!” cried Tobey Maguire.

“I don’t think so, kid,” said Colt.

“Hello,” whispered a voice through the now gaping hole in the lower half of Morgan Freeman’s face. For a moment, Tobey Maguire thought he could see an eye glaring at him through the wound, but then the knife was pulled free and the fleshy void flapped closed.

By the time Morgan Freeman hit the ground, the broken window showed nothing but the street beyond.

The killer was gone.

Five

Colt rushed to Morgan Freeman’s side and pressed his tongue against the Driving Miss Daisy star’s ravaged throat.

“What the fonk are you doing?” Tobey Maguire asked, visibly recoiling.

“What does it look like?” Colt asked, pulling his tongue back inside his mouth.

“It looks like you’re licking Morgan Freeman’s neck!”

“I was taking his pulse,” the sheriff explained. “But it’s no good. He’s dead.”

Tobey Maguire nodded. He didn’t need to see a coroner’s certificate to know Morgan Freeman was done for. His throat was hanging in ribbons, and half his face was inside-out. He couldn’t have got any deader if he’d tried.

“This was no accident,” said Colt.

Tobey Maguire blinked. “Well, yes. I mean… obviously.”

“Why obviously?”

“Someone put a big knife through his head.”

Colt nodded. This made him fall over. Tobey Maguire helped him back up in awkward silence.

“That’s my conclusion, too,” Colt agreed. “But who would have done such a thing? And why?”

Tobey Maguire looked back over his shoulder at the squirrel. It shrugged.

“I thought you said it was your sister?” Tobey Maguire said.

Colt frowned. “Did I? When?”

“It’s started,” said the squirrel. “The brain’s eating itself. The memories are being gobbled up.”

“A minute ago,” Tobey Maguire said. “Val Carver. You said you had a sister who only said—”

“Hello.”

The voice came from beneath the floorboards this time, a sharp sudden ejection that hissed up through the gaps.

“Elijah,” Colt whispered.

“Tobey.”

“Sorry?”

“Forget it. What is it?”

“Fetch me my gun.”

“Your gun?” Tobey Maguire spat. “How the fonk can you use—?”

The blade stabbed up through the sole of Colt’s foot and out through his left eye socket. It wasn’t the worst thing Tobey Maguire had seen – those Spider-Man 3 reviews had been unusually harsh – but it was definitely in the top five.

“I can see it,” Colt gargled. “I can ssssssee it.”

No fonking wonder, Tobey Maguire reckoned, what with it sticking out through his retina like that.

“In y-your…”

The final word was lost in a series of damp wheezed and splutters.

While Colt was technically still alive, Tobey Maguire made the executive decision that it was pointless trying to help him, so turned and fonking legged it towards the door as fast as his legs would carry him. As he did, the sheriff’s office collapsed around him like a house of cards, the walls concertinaing into themselves as the roof evaporated into mist.

By the time he made his final frantic dive through the doorway, there was no doorway to dive through, and he just lunged through empty space instead.

Outside, the destruction continued. Carverville was crumbling. The undertaker’s and the general store had both slipped into a widening crack in the ground, so only their upstairs windows and roofs were visible. Dark clouds marched relentlessly across the blue sky, casting the whole place into deepening shadow.

Tobey Maguire watched in mute horror as half a dozen people tumbled out from inside the saloon, then immediately became dust on the swirling winds. He coughed and choked as the ash hit him in the face and snagged at the back of his throat.

“Hello,” came the whisper, the word rising almost tunefully at the end. “Hello!”

“Fonk off and leave me alone!” Tobey Maguire cried, throwing himself into cover behind an old hay wagon. “This isn’t real. None of this is real!”

“Ah, but you ain’t real either, Abbo,” the squirrel said. He was squatting on the ground a few feet away, relentlessly holding eye contact as he pinched off a loaf. “You’re just as make-believe as any of this stuff.”

“Do you mind not looking at me while you’re…” Tobey Maguire’s mind raced. “Wait. Wait, what did you say?”

“What’s the matter, Teapot? Shizz in your ears?”

“I’m just as make-believe as any of this stuff,” said Tobey Maguire.

“Right.”

“Which means it’s just as make-believe as me.”

“Yeah.”

“Which means it is me.”

The squirrel hesitated. “To be honest, I think you’re reaching there…”

“We’re all the same. Everything in here, it’s all just brainwaves or memories or… I don’t know. Mind stuff. Me, you, Morgan Freeman, Colt, the ground, the sky, the saloon, the—”

“Alright, alright, I get it,” said the squirrel. “We’re all the same. Woohoo. What’s your point, Sooty?”

Tobey Maguire inhaled deeply through his nose, then stepped out from behind the wagon. He flexed his arms, and what was left of Carverville seemed to flex with them.

“My point is, this is all in Cal’s imagination, and since we’re part of Cal, then it’s all in our imagination, too.”

The squirrel blinked. “You’ve lost me. What does that mean?”

“It means you were wrong, you racist fluffy-tailed fonk,” said Tobey Maguire. He folded his middle and forefingers in against his palms. Two jets of sticky webbing plastered the squirrel to the side of the wagon.

“I am Spider-Man!” cheered Tobey Maguire. He punched the air. “And I am going to rape the Mindraper.”

“Jesus,” said the squirrel.

Tobey Maguire winced. “Yeah. That came out badly. I’m not actually going to… I meant I’m going to, you know, defeat it.”

“Then why did you say you were going to rape it. I mean… wow.”

A ball of webbing hit the squirrel in the face, silencing it. “Shut the fonk up,” said Tobey Maguire, then he stepped fully out into the street and raised his voice to a shout. “Face me, Mindraper. Face me and die!”

Six

The wind rose into a hurricane that punched Tobey Maguire in the face. He staggered, off-balance, but somehow stayed upright as the gales buffeted and berated him.

“Is that the best you can do?” he hollered.

A flying brick hit him in the face.

“Ow! Jesus!”

“OK, that was better,” he admitted. “But if that’s all you’ve got, then—”

Tobey Maguire choked on the rest of the sentence as eight tiny knives embedded themselves in his thighs. He looked down, screamed briefly, then stumbled back into cover behind the wagon.

The knives were all primary colors, and seemed to be modelled on the swords from the board game Pop Up Pirate. They’d have looked quite fun, he thought, had they not currently been hilt deep in his flesh.

“How’s everything working out for you, Ace of Spades?” asked the squirrel, who had managed to chew through the face webbing.

“They’re not real. They’re not real,” Tobey Maguire whispered.

“The knives or your thighs?” the squirrel asked.

Tobey Maguire had meant the knives, but either one applied.

“Because the knives sure look pretty real. Painful, too. That right, Beanbag? They painful?”

They were painful. Insanely painful, in fact. As his blood oozed down the insides of his thighs, Tobey Maguire felt his earlier rush of confidence ebb out with it. He gripped one of the colorful handles and tried pulling the blade free, but hot sparks of agony lit up the wound, forcing him to let go.

“Having problems, Mr Maguire?”

Tobey Maguire looked up just as Morgan Freeman materialized as a flickering blue ghost a few feet ahead of him.

“Hold onto your wallet!” the squirrel warned, but everyone ignored him.

“It hurts!” Tobey sobbed.

“Does it?” asked Morgan Freeman’s ghost, raising one eyebrow. “Does it really?”

“Yes.”

“But does it really?”

“Yes! It hurts like fonk.”

“Oh. I see,” said Morgan Freeman’s ghost. He shuffled awkwardly for a moment, then made a grabbing motion with one hand. All the knives were wrenched from Tobey Maguire’s legs at once, reducing him to a incomprehensible babbling mess of snot and tears.

“W-what d-did you do that f-for?” he eventually managed to sob.

Morgan Freeman’s ghost made another gesture with his hands, and the knives vanished. “You might say that because I had the great power to do it, I also had the great responsibility,” he said. He smiled when he saw the look of surprise on Tobey Maguire’s face. “I lied earlier, Mr Maguire. I did see your Spider-Man movie.”

“Really? Cool.”

“The third one, at least,” said Morgan Freeman’s ghost. He wrinkled his nose. “Didn’t much care for it.”

“Zing!” said the squirrel.

Tobey Maguire launched into what was now a well-rehearsed rant about studio interference, but before he could get very far the wagon behind him was wrenched away and sent tumbling into a howling vortex of darkness that had opened up at the end of the street. Happily, it had taken that fonking squirrel with it.

Most of the buildings were now gone. Only the saloon remained, looking surprisingly unaffected by the Apocalypse raging around it. Tobey Maguire tried to stick his feet to the ground, Spider-Man style, but as the ground was made of sand this was a complete waste of time on his part.

“What do I do, Morgan Freeman?” he yelled.

“You’re the hero, son,” said Morgan Freeman’s ghost, fading away into nothing. “Figure it out.”

Tobey Maguire gritted his teeth. “I’m the hero. He’s right. I’m the hero!”

Roaring, Tobey Maguire fired two strands of webbing at the vortex. Like the feet thing, this was also a complete waste of time on his part. The webbing flapped like streamers on the wind, then it was wrenched into the spinning hole.

Morgan Freeman’s ghost reappeared, looking disappointed. “No, don’t do the web thing, son. How’s that supposed to work? Your mind. Use your mind. It’s all in your head, like you said earlier. OK?”

Tobey Maguire nodded. “OK. It’s in my head.” He gasped, as the full enormity of those words finally sunk in. “It’s in my head. I’m just as powerful as anything else in here.”

“You got it this time?” asked Morgan Freeman’s ghost. “Because I’m going to go again.”

“Got it.”

“And I don’t really want to come back.”

“Don’t worry. I’ve got it,” said Tobey Maguire. He turned to the vortex and raised a hand. “Stop.”

The wind dropped in an instant.

Morgan Freeman’s ghost’s face lit up in a smile. “You know, I think you probably have,” he whispered as he faded away again.

The spinning black hole was still at the end of the street, but it had stopped dragging the landscape inside. Tobey Maguire marched towards it, rolling up the sleeves of his polo neck, and feeling more confident – more alive - than he’d done since the 2003 MTV Awards.

He was halfway to the hole when Cal Carver hit the ground beside him.

“Fonk. When am I going to learn to stick that landing?” Cal muttered. Standing, he dusted himself down, then waved. “Tobey Maguire!”

Cal placed his hands on his lower back and cricked his spine. As he did, he looked around them. “This is new,” he observed. “What’s going on?”

“It’s the Mindraper,” said Tobey Maguire. “I think it’s taken the form of your sister, or it’s maybe controlling her or something. Anyway, it killed Morgan Freeman. It killed your brother, too, and then sucked most of Carverville into its hole.”

Cal clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “Riiight,” he said, drawing the word out. “That is… I’ll be honest, Tobey Maguire, that is a lot of information right there. A lot of information.”

“It must be hard to hear,” said Tobey Maguire. He placed a hand on Cal’s shoulder. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Thanks,” said Cal. “But, see, I don’t have a brother. Or a sister.”

“You had an imaginary conjoined twin. Colt. He was a head on a foot.”

Nothing about Cal’s expression suggested he knew what Tobey Maguire was talking about.

“And… and your sister. Val. She was a mutant who lived in the attic.”

“Uh… nope,” said Cal. “You’ve lost me.”

Tobey Maguire staggered. “It’s eaten the memories. The Mindraper has eaten your memories of them.”

“The Mindraper?” said Cal, looking confused for a moment. “Oh! Wait, that guy? That was weeks ago. Turned out to be just some dude in a mask.”

“Weeks ago? But you were just here an hour ago.”

“Huh,” said Cal. “Time must pass differently in here. That’s interesting. You know, kind of.”

Tobey Maguire looked Cal up and down. “You’re not still fighting the Mindraper?”

“No. Again, there was no Mindraper. He was just trying to scare us.”

“Then… Then why are you here?”

“Would you believe I bumped my head on the fridge?” Cal said. “I know, right? Cross dimensions, battle space bears, save the universe, and you get KO’d by your own kitchen appliance. What are the chances of–?”

Cal popped like a bubble as he woke up back in the real world, leaving Tobey Maguire alone once more.

No Mindraper? But that didn’t make sense. If there was no Mindraper, then who had killed the others? And why?

He was so focused on the mystery that he didn’t hear the music at first. It tinkled out from inside the saloon, that same slow ballad as earlier.

Tobey Maguire saw the pieces of the puzzle spread out like a jigsaw inside his mind. The clues were there, he just had to piece them together.

Cal had given him advice a while back. What had it been? Find the corner pieces first, then the flat edges, and build inwards towards the middle.

Tobey Maguire gave this some thought, before deciding the whole jigsaw puzzle metaphor didn’t really extend to his current situation, after all.

There was nothing else for it – if he wanted to figure out what was going on, there was only one place he could go.

His legs lurched him towards the saloon. The piano grew louder and more insistent as he reached for the doors.

THUNK.

Fonk. Pull.

He pulled the handles. The music was all around him now, simultaneously drawing him in and pushing him away. That tune. He knew that tune, but what was it? It was the final puzzle piece. The one missing…

Oh.

Oh God.

Richie. That was what Morgan Freeman had called him. Richie.

“Hello,” said the man at the piano, his voice a whispering giggle that made something twist deep in Tobey Maguire’s gut. “Is it me you’re looking for?”

Seven

“Lionel Richie,” said Tobey Maguire. “Of course. I should have guessed.”

Alabama-born singer songwriter, Lionel Richie, slammed his hands on the piano keys, ejecting a chord so malignantly unpleasant it made Tobey Maguire throw up a little in his mouth.

“You really should have,” agreed Lionel Richie. “I’ve been giving you clues All Night Long.” He grinned. “See what I did there?”

“It isn’t night time,” Tobey Maguire pointed out.

“Oh, isn’t it?” said the former singer and saxophonist with the Commodores. He gestured around them. The saloon was gone, replaced by a sky filled with stars. “Then what do you call this?”

Tobey Maguire scrambled for a witty retort. “I don’t know. What do you call it?” was the best he could do, which barely even qualified as a retort, let alone a witty one.

“Touché,” said Grammy Award winning Lionel Richie, whose performance at the closing ceremony at the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles won him international acclaim.

“You killed Morgan Freeman,” said Tobey Maguire.

“Of course I did,” laughed Lionel Richie. “Just like I regularly supported The Jackson Five back in the 1970s.”

“But… But why?”

Lionel Richie shrugged. “We’d just signed to Motown Records. The Jacksons were really starting to hit the big time, so—”

“No, I mean why did you kill Morgan Freeman?”

“Oh. Why do you think?”

Tobey Maguire reached for another punchy comeback, but came up short. “I don’t know,” he said. “Why do you think?”

“Because he told me to stop playing,” hissed Lionel Richie who, in 2008, received the George and Ira Gershwin Lifetime Achievement Award, becoming only the twenty-first person to do so. His eyes darkened. “And so did you.”

“No, I didn’t!” Tobey Maguire protested. “I just said it was an unusual choice for a Wild West saloon!”

Lionel Richie, who has two grandchildren and is wildly popular in the Middle East, frowned. “What?”

“I just said the song – ‘Hello’ – it’s a bit of an odd choice for a saloon. I mean, it’s great. I really like it – who doesn’t? It’s just… It’s not what I expected.”

“Huh,” said Lionel Richie, who once considered becoming an Episcopalian preacher rather than take up a career in music. “I mean… haha. I guess you’re right. It is an unusual choice.”

“That’s all I was saying,” said Tobey Maguire.

Lionel Richie, whose grandmother lived to be 103 years old despite being diagnosed with breast cancer in her 80s, puffed out his cheeks and scratched his head. “Well… this is embarrassing. I kind of regret killing Morgan Freeman now.”

“And the others,” said Tobey Maguire.

“The others?”

“Yeah. Colt and the guy upstairs.”

Twice-married Lionel Richie frowned. “What are you talking about?” he asked, then his throat erupted outwards as the serrated blade of a knife stabbed through it from behind. His eyes bulged. His legs gave way beneath him, and as his weight fell on the knife blade it sliced straight up through the top of Lionel Richie’s skull, cleaving the multi-platinum recording artist’s head in half neatly up the middle.

And there, revealed behind him, was the squirrel.

“Surprised to see me, Bingo-Bongo?” the fluffy-tailed rodent sneered.

“You?” said Tobey Maguire. “But… that doesn’t even make sense. How could…?”

“Shut the fonk up, Cheese Nip!” the squirrel retorted. “You asked me my name earlier. Still want to know?”

Tobey Maguire didn’t really have any opinion on it. “Not that fussed.”

The squirrel bristled a little. “Well… I’m going to tell you, anyway, so listen up.”

He dragged the flat of the knife across his fur, smearing himself in Lionel Richie’s blood (B Negative).

Tobey Maguire frowned. “So… are you going to tell me, or…?”

“I was pausing dramatically, you Chinkerbell fonk!” the squirrel snapped. “You can call me… the Mindraper.”

“N-no,” whispered Tobey Maguire. “No, you’re not real. Cal told me. You’re not real.”

“Ah yes,” said the squirrel, holding up a finger or whatever the squirrel equivalent is. He vanished with a pop, then Cal Carver appeared just a few feet in front of Tobey Maguire.

“There’s no such thing as the Mindraper,” said Cal, but the last word came out in the squirrel’s drawl. As Tobey Maguire watched, Cal sprouted a fluffy tail, then his whole body twisted as it became an unusually large tree-dwelling rodent once more.

“Impressive, huh?” said the Mindraper. “I’ve been playing you this whole time, Tobey Maguire, and you didn’t even know it.”

He gestured up at the stars. They were winking out, one by one. “And now that I’m in here, now that I’ve taken hold, I’ll spread and spread and—”

A God-Almighty kick to the balls lifted the Mindraper off the ground. His breath left him in a single gulping sob and he crumpled to the ground clutching at his groin and groaning. “Urf. Jesus.”

Snatching up the knife, Tobey Maguire stabbed the squirrel repeatedly in the head and neck.

“Christ!”

Tossing away the knife, Tobey Maguire stamped on the Mindraper twice, then picked it up and threw it as far as he could. This was actually quite a short distance, though, so it wasn’t as effective as he’d hoped.

The black hole was still out on the street, although it wasn’t easy to see against the dark night sky. Tobey Maguire lined himself up and kicked the Mindraper into it. Albeit after several attempts.

“How did you enjoy them nuts?” he quipped, much too late for it to be any use.

He clapped his hands together, wiping some imagined dust off them. “I well and truly squirreled him away,” he said, which wasn’t quite as good as the nuts one, and the timing was even more off.

“Tobey Maguire?”

Tobey Maguire sat up sharply. A blinding white light forced his eyes closed, but not before he caught a glimpse of a figure kneeling beside him.

“Hey buddy, you OK?”

It was Cal’s voice. Tobey Maguire forced open his eyes and kicked backwards in panic. He collided with a table, knocking it over and spilling jigsaw puzzle pieces all over the featureless white floor.

“Hey, easy, buddy,” said Cal, smiling warmly. “Sorry, were you sleeping? I thought you’d died or something.”

Tobey Maguire’s eyes darted in all directions. “What? N-no.”

“Hey, don’t worry about it,” said Cal. “Hell, I sleep on the job all the time. There’s this, like, weapons headset thing on the ship. Sometimes I pretend to be practicing just so I can grab forty winks.”

“You were a squirrel!” Tobey Maguire whispered.

Cal blinked. “Uh… I was? When?”

“Now. A minute ago. Just then.”

Cal raised his eyebrows. “OK. Well…” he said, but he didn’t really have anything to add, so it fell away there. He jabbed a thumb vaguely behind him. “Anyway, I’m just in and out. I’m drowning on some ocean planet, but Loren’s pulling me out. With a bit of luck we’ll see some mouth-to-mouth action. Know what I’m saying?”

He held a hand out to Tobey Maguire and helped him back to his feet.

“Th-thanks.”

“Any time, buddy,” said Cal. He looked down at his hands. His fingertips had started to fade. “Looks like I’m about to head back. You take care of yourself, OK?”

Tobey Maguire nodded. “You, too,” he said, forcing a smile. “Don’t get Mindraped.”

Cal hesitated. “Uh. OK. I mean, I had no plans to but… I’ll keep it in mind.”

He stood to attention and closed his eyes, then tutted and opened them again. “Are you OK, Tobey Maguire? You look kind of freaked out.”

“I think I had a dream,” said Tobey Maguire. “You were in it. And Morgan Freeman. And Lionel Richie.”

“Co-writer of the 1985 charity single, ‘We Are the World’ Lionel Richie?” said Cal.

“That one, yes,” said Tobey Maguire. “We were in this town and…”

“I’m going to stop you there, Tobey Maguire,” said Cal. “Much as I’d love to listen, I have to go.”

“Oh. Right.”

“And, if I’m honest, I fonking hate hearing about people’s dreams.”

“OK. Got it,” said Tobey Maguire.

“But write it down,” Cal suggested. “While it’s still fresh.”

“Write it down?” said Tobey Maguire. He smiled. “Yes. Yes, I’ll go write it down right now!”

Cal vanished, but Tobey Maguire barely noticed. He rushed to the table and stood it upright. As he picked up his chair, he found an old manual typewriter sitting on the desk in front of him, a clean sheet of paper loaded up and ready to go.

The keys clacked beneath his trembling fingers as he began to type.

DEATH COMES TO CARVERVILLE

He moved down a couple of lines, thought for a moment, then added:

A TOBEY MAGUIRE MYSTERY

Tobey Maguire nodded his approval.

“I like that,” he said.

Then, all alone in his featureless white void, Tobey Maguire wrote down his dream.

All Night Long.

(Which reached number 3 on the US Billboard charts in 1983.)

(But was kept off the top spot in the UK charts by Billy Joel’s ‘Uptown Girl’.)

Afterword

So there you have it. You’ve reached the end of the short story collection. I hope you’ve been suitably entertained and amused, and that you now know more about Lionel Richie than you previously did. Possibly more than you ever wanted to, I don’t know.

There are no more stories left in this collection, but there are still plenty of Space Team Universe stories waiting out there to be explored. A bit like space itself, in fact, except you don’t have to wear a helmet to read them.

You can if you want, of course. What you do in the comfort of your own home is your business, not mine, and if you want to read the books in full astronaut gear, then far be it from me to stop you.

If you enjoyed the book, I’d really appreciate it if you could leave me a review. When you turn the page it should prompt you to leave one, but if not you can always click over to Amazon and leave one that way. It’ll just take a minute or two, and will make me a very happy man indeed.

If you want to go even further, you can always buy me a coffee. If you really want to spoil me, do both!

And don’t forget, you can always keep up to date with Space Team goings on by joining Team Space Team either via my newsletter or over on Facebook.

Thanks again for reading. Have a great day!

Best wishes,

Barry J. Hutchison

Your Free Starter Library

Looking for more reading material? I’ve got your covered. Just click here or on the the image on the left to download an exclusive starter library featuring 3 short stories including Space Team: The Holiday Special and a Doctor Who story I wrote for a charity anthology.

Also by Barry J. Hutchison

SPACE TEAM SERIES

Space Team

Space Team: The Wrath of Vajazzle

Space Team: The Search for Spurt

Space Team: Song of the Space Siren

Space Team: The Guns of Nana Joan

Space Team: Return of the Dead Guy

Space Team: Planet of the Japes

Space Team: The Time Titan of Tomorrow

Space Team: The King of Space Must Die

Space Team: A Lot of Weird Space Shizz

DAN DEADMAN SERIES

“Dial D for Deadman”

“Dead Inside”

EVERYTHING ELSE

The Bug