SPACE TEAM

The Collected Adventures

Vol 1

Copyright © 2016 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 Books.

www.barryjhutchison.com

Also by Barry J. Hutchison

The Bug

Space Team: Song of the Space Siren

Space Team: The Guns of Nana Joan

Space Team: Return of the Dead Guy

Space Team: The Holiday Special

Dial D for Deadman

Contents

SPACE TEAM

SPACE TEAM: THE WRATH OF VAJAZZLE

SPACE TEAM: THE SEARCH FOR SPLURT

A WORD FROM THE AUTHOR

SPACE TEAM

Book One

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER ONE

Cal Carver’s last day on Earth started badly, improved momentarily, then rapidly went downhill. It began with him being sentenced to two years in prison, and ended with the annihilation of two thirds of the human race. Somewhere in between, there was a somewhat enjoyable moment when he ate a lemon drop, but otherwise it was a pretty grim twenty-four hours all round.

The sentencing was harsh, but not particularly surprising. It wasn’t Cal’s first offense and, if he were honest, almost certainly wouldn’t be his last.

It was far from his first prison sentence, either, although usually they were dished out in terms of days, rather than years. Still, two years – half, once his impeccable behavior was accounted for – in a cozy open prison would be an opportunity to recharge. A holiday, almost. In some ways, Cal was even looking forward to it. There was just one problem.

“What do you mean, ‘the wrong prison’?”

Cal flashed the warden one of his most winning smiles. He had a number of them at his disposal, and this one was up there with the best, while still holding enough back in reserve to step it up to the next level, if required.

“I literally do not know another way of saying it,” Cal said. “This is the wrong prison. I’m supposed to be in Highvue – you know, upstate? With the gardens? They’ve got this training kitchen. The chefs there, they do these amazing little sort of pastry whirl things that--”

“I know of it,” the warden said, drumming his fingers on one of the few uncluttered patches of desk he had available.

“Good. Right. Of course you do,” said Cal. He waited, cranking his smile up a notch to be on the safe side. It was a smile so dazzling, you could practically hear the ding as the light reflected off his teeth. The warden, however, appeared unmoved.

He shrugged. “And? What’s your point?”

“Well, Warden… Grant, was it?”

The warden didn’t do anything to confirm or deny his name, so Cal continued. “I’m supposed to be at Highvue. That’s what the judge said. Someone even wrote it down on that document this guard here was kind enough to look out for me.”

He gave the female guard an appreciative nod and a flash of that smile. A blush flushed upwards from the neck of the woman’s shirt, but she managed, to her immense relief, not to giggle.

“He’s right, sir. Must’ve been a mix-up during transit.”

“She’s really very good,” said Cal, gesturing to the guard. “I don’t know how it works here, if you take recommendations for promotion or whatever, but if you do I’d be happy – no, I’d be more than happy to--”

“We don’t,” said the warden.

“Oh. Well maybe you should,” Cal suggested. The warden held his gaze for several excruciating seconds. Cal cleared his throat. “I’m going to just let you read that.”

The warden’s stare lingered for a while longer, then he lowered his eyes to the document in front of him. A single crooked finger tapped the desktop as he read, the nicotine-stained nail tic-tic-ticking against the wood.

“As you can see, my crime – while obviously wrong – wasn’t really all that serious.”

The warden didn’t look up. “Identity theft is very serious, Mr Carver.”

“I didn’t steal it, not really. I borrowed it. Just for a while.”

The warden raised his eyes just long enough to make Cal shut up, then went back to reading.

Cal rocked on his heels and studied the office. It must once have been pretty grand, with its wood-paneled walls, high ceiling and lush carpet, but time and a distinct lack of storage space had taken their toll.

The walls were almost completely concealed by mismatched metal shelving. The shelves themselves groaned under the weight of ramshackle ring binders and bulging box files that looked fit to explode and shower the room with their contents at any moment.

Around half of the carpet was as good as new, but a number of paths had been worn into it. The thinnest, most threadbare of them all terminated right on the spot where Cal now stood.

He met the guard’s eye and smiled at her. Despite herself, she smiled back, then fought to straighten her face before the warden looked up again.

“Hmm,” the warden grunted. Cal turned, assuming he’d finished reading, but the old man’s eyes were still fixed on the page, his finger still tapping its steady, solemn beat.

Cal whistled softly beneath his breath and went back to looking around the room.

In the corner of the ceiling, where it met a really quite elaborate bit of cornicing, there was a murky brown stain – three roundish blobs and a swooping curve at the bottom.

“It looks like a face,” Cal announced. The warden lifted his eyes from the page. His gray-flecked eyebrows knotted in the middle. “The damp patch. It looks like a face,” Cal said, gesturing towards the corner of the ceiling. “At least, I hope it’s damp, and not, you know, some kind of dirty protest. I’ve heard what this place can get like.”

He turned and lowered himself until he was half-sitting, half-standing against the edge of the desk. “It must be hard. All that responsibility. You know what? I bet they don’t appreciate you enough, John. Can I call you John?”

The warden’s face remained stoically unchanged.

“Saw it on your stack of mail there,” Cal explained. “You should probably open those, by the way.”

“No,” the warden said.

“No, you’re not going to open the mail, or no they don’t appreciate you enough?”

“No, you may not call me John.”

Cal held his hands up. “I fully understand. I was out of line. That was unprofessional of me.”

He spotted a small round tin on the desk, with a stack of sugar-dusted yellow candy inside. Taking one, he popped it in his mouth. Across the room, the guard stifled a gasp.

“Mm. Lemon. Is that lemon?” Cal asked. “Tastes like lemon. Nice, though. Not too sour.”

A vein pulsed on the warden’s right temple. He closed the folder, very deliberately replaced the lid on his tin of candy, then stared equally deliberately at the point where Cal’s buttocks met his desktop.

It took a few seconds before Cal got the message.

“Right. Yes. Sorry, been on my feet most of the day, just taking the weight off,” he said, standing up. He flashed another beaming smile, and indicated the closed folder. “So, we good?”

The warden crossed his hands over the folder and tapped out another slow drum beat on it. “It appears there has been an administrative error,” he admitted, making no effort to hide the fact that doing so caused him very real pain.

“Hey, these things happen,” said Cal. “You shouldn’t feel bad about it.”

“I don’t,” the warden said.

“That’s the spirit,” Cal said. “So, I guess I’ll just gather up my things…” He patted down his orange jumpsuit. “Yep, looks like I’ve already got everything, so I guess I am ready to go!”

Cal leaned over and shook the guard’s hand. She stared down at it in surprise. “Audrey, thank you for your help, it’s been a pleasure. I hope we can do it again sometime.”

“Uh, no problem.”

Cal winked at her, then turned to the warden and extended a hand across the desk. “John, I really appreciate you sorting everything out,” he said. “If I were you, I’d get that damp patch looked at. It’s structurally unsafe, and from this angle looks like the trapped soul of a dead clown, and neither of those – in my opinion, anyway – are things a man in your position should have to put up with.”

His eyes flicked from John to his outstretched hand and back again. He nodded encouragingly.

The warden’s chair creaked as he leaned back in it. “Unfortunately, Mr Carver, there are currently no prisoner transport options available to me.”

Cal’s smile wavered, just for a moment. “’No prisoner transport options’? What does that mean?”

“I literally do not know another way of saying it,” the warden said, the corners of his mouth tugging into a slight smirk. “I currently have no means at my disposal with which to transport you to Highvue.”

“That’s fine. Know what? That’s totally fine. You could call me a cab,” Cal suggested. “Audrey could come with me, if you’re worried about me running away. You’d be OK with that, right Audrey?”

“Uh, yeah. Yeah, I could…”

“No. Don’t worry. Prison transport will be arranged,” the warden said.

Cal’s shoulders heaved with relief. “Really? That’s awesome! Thanks, John.” He laughed. “You almost had me going there for a minute. I mean, the thought of spending another minute in this hellhole--”

“Tomorrow.”

Cal blinked several times in rapid succession. The warden leaned forwards in his chair again, steepling his hands in front of his face. Somewhere beyond the door behind Cal, a high-pitched alarm began to chime.

“Tomorrow?” said Cal, at last. “I’ll be honest, John, tomorrow isn’t good for me. Tonight – now, tonight would be ideal.”

“Relax, Mr Carver,” said the warden. “Hear that alarm? That’s the lights out indicator. It’ll soon be sleepy-time. Morning will be here before you know it.”

“Yes, but--”

“Has Mr Carver been assigned a cell?” the warden asked. The guard shook her head.

“Not yet, sir.”

“Good. Good. Put him in eighteen.”

The guard shifted awkwardly. “Uh, eighteen is occupied, sir.”

“I’m aware of that,” said the warden. “This is a prison. Cells get shared. That is how it works.”

“Actually, I’m not really a people person,” said Cal. “If you have, like, a single room available…”

“Well, yes, I know, sir,” said the guard, shooting Cal a worried glance. “But… eighteen. That’s the Butcher, sir.”

The warden held the guard’s gaze. His fingers began drumming on his desktop.

“The Butcher?” said Cal, looking between them both. “The Butcher? Who’s the Butcher?”

“Tell me, Mr Carver,” said the warden. “Do you have a family?”

Cal hesitated. “No.”

“Oh, then you’ll get along just fine,” the warden said. “See, the Butcher did have a family. Once upon a time. Then he had bits of one, in carefully marked bags in the freezer. And now he doesn’t have any family at all.”

He leaned back in his chair and interlocked his fingers over his stomach. “Yes, Audrey. Put him with the Butcher. But you’d best take that lemon drop off him. We wouldn’t want him trying to choke himself to death on it during the night now, would we?”

The guard nodded. “Very good, sir.” She cupped a hand in front of Cal’s face. After a final few sucks, he opened his mouth, letting the shiny yellow candy drop into her palm. Audrey studied the sticky ball of yellow for a moment, then slipped it into her pocket.

“Come on,” she told him. “I guess we should go and get you settled in.”

CHAPTER TWO

Cal stood in the corner of the cell, his back wedged into the narrow space where the two walls met. He was uncomfortably close to a very full and what was, to his mind, deeply unsanitary slop bucket. The only alternative was to stand closer to his cellmate, and that wasn’t going to be happening any time soon. At least, not if he had any say in the matter.

The Butcher sat on the edge of the lower bunk, a blank, utterly impassive gaze fixed on Cal. Or in that general direction, at least. Beyond sitting up and swinging his legs out of bed, Cal wasn’t entirely convinced the man had even noticed his arrival.

He was large, both in height and girth. Even sitting, he would be considered a tall adult male, and the last time Cal had seen shoulders quite so big and round he’d been on a day trip to SeaWorld.

Neither his height nor his width were the most worrying aspect of the Butcher, though.

Despite being in his fifties, he was oddly baby-faced, with wispy tufts of white hair, puffy, rosy cheeks, and forehead that was a road-map of old scar tissue. There had been letters carved in there at some point, but most of them were back to front, and too faded for Cal to be able to read. He doubted it was anything of particular literary merit.

None of that was the most worrying thing, either.

The most worrying thing about the Butcher, was what he wore on his bottom half. Or, more specifically, what he didn’t wear. He sat perched on the edge of the bed, his genitals dangling almost all the way down to the floor. If Cal had to describe the Butcher’s genitalia, he’d have to say ‘terrifying’. If he was forced to elaborate further, he’d add, ‘devastatingly impressive’.

They were the single most unpleasant collection of body parts he’d ever borne witness to, and yet there was something about them which drew the eye, despite all Cal’s best effort to resist. They were like a fatal car accident at the side of the road, or two dogs humping in the background of a harrowing news report about childhood cancers. You knew you shouldn’t look, and yet…

“Hey there,” said Cal. He tore his eyes away from the Butcher’s junk and forced them to glance around at the walls, instead. There was a slick of something dark and body-fluidy on one, which he felt warranted precisely zero further examination. “I love what you’ve done with the place.”

The Butcher adjusted his position on the bed, making his penis pendulum back and forth. Cal found himself following it like a hypnotist’s watch, then hurriedly dragged his gaze away again. He forced himself to focus on the Butcher’s face, instead. Not that it offered much of an improved view.

“I know, I know, the last thing you probably wanted was a houseguest,” Cal said. “I promise, you won’t even know I’m here. Just you go about your… whatever it is you do with your spare time, and pretend I’m not around. I’ll be out of your hair first thing tomorrow morning.”

The Butcher continued to stare. His mouth was hanging open, and thin strands of drool trailed from his bottom lip like silken webs. He had very few teeth, but those he did have had been filed into sharp points.

“I don’t know which bunk you prefer – I’m guessing the bottom, you know, with the size and everything – but it doesn’t matter,” Cal continued. “Because I’m just going to stand right here, propped against the wall, eyes open all night long. Just eyes wide open.”

He indicated the single bulb above them, fixed in place behind a perfectly smooth orb of mostly transparent plastic. “As soon as that goes out, it’ll be like you’re on your own. I’ll just melt into the shadows. You won’t be able to see me…” He flinched, suddenly concerned. “I won’t be able to see you. Which, you know, is fine. It’s good.”

The bed frame squeaked as the Butcher stood up. Cal found his eyes drawn downwards again, but managed to fight the instinct. The hulking figure shuffled closer on his troll-like bare feet. Cal tried to back away, but there was nowhere to go, and he only succeeded in pressing himself harder against the rough cell wall.

The floor, wall and Cal all trembled as the Butcher lumbered across the gap between them. The giant’s breath whistled tunelessly in and out through his crooked, misshapen nose. His girth blocked Cal’s view of first the beds, then the door, then everything but the Butcher himself.

Cal raised his left hand, palm open in a gesture of surrender. The fingers of the right one, meanwhile, curled into a tight fist and braced themselves.

The smell of cheap prison soap snagged at the back of Cal’s throat, followed a split-second later by the sweat-stench it had tried – but ultimately failed - to mask.

The Butcher leaned in, placing his left hand on the wall above and to the right of Cal’s head, fingers splayed wide. With his right hand, he idly toyed with his genitals while holding Cal with his dead-eyed gaze.

“I know I said you should pretend I’m not here,” Cal said. He pointed briefly to the man’s crotch, where his meaty, sausage-like fingers were vigorously kneading away. “But, I’m going to be honest, this feels borderline inappropriate.”

“They call me the Butcher.”

The voice that came out was gravel on crushed glass – a throaty growl with a deep, rumbling resonance which wouldn’t have been out of place on a movie trailer, Cal thought. Horror, probably.

“Yes. I had heard that,” Cal said.

The Butcher leaned in. Cal’s fist tightened as those filed-down teeth hovered in front of his face. He tried not to look at those, either.

“But my name’s Eugene.”

Cal’s brow knotted, just briefly. “Eugene?”

The Butcher nodded slowly. “That’s right.” He stopped fondling himself and brought his right hand up for Cal to shake. Cal glanced at it.

“Uh, I’m not sure I want to… ah, you know what? What the Hell? Cal. Cal Carver.”

He grimaced as the Butcher’s hand enveloped his. His arm was jerked violently up and down by Eugene’s over-enthusiastic shaking. “Pleased to meet you Cal-Cal Carver. Sorry they’ve put you in here. I guess you really annoyed the warden. If I’d known you were coming I’d have let them empty the bucket.”

“What? No, it’s fine. Really. I like it,” Cal said. “It adds to the ambiance.”

The Butcher released his grip, smiled a rubbery smile, then turned back towards the bed.

“And it’s just Cal, actually.”

The Butcher stopped.

The Butcher turned.

“What did you say?”

“It’s Cal. My name. Not Cal-Cal.”

The Butcher’s stare bored into Cal, his scarred features twisting into a scowl. “Did you just call my momma a slut?”

Cal’s face went through a number of expressions in a very short space of time, trying to find a suitable one. It came up empty. “Um, no. No, not that I noticed, no.”

“You know what I did to the last person who said mean things about my momma?”

Cal shook his head. “No, but I’m hoping it was something nice.”

“I turned them outside-in,” the Butcher drawled, advancing slowly. “Not inside-out, mind. Inside-out’d have been too good for them. Outside-in.”

“Right, but the thing is—”

“Outside. In.”

“And quite right, too,” said Cal. “But, you see, the thing is, I didn’t say anything about—”

There was a scream from beyond the cell door, followed by a drawn-out gurgling gargle, like sewerage burbling through the pipework in a poorly-designed downstairs bathroom.

The Butcher stopped and turned his head in the direction of the sound. Seizing his chance, Cal sprung off the wall, swinging with his fist. He connected hard, driving a punch across the bigger man’s cheek and snapping his head further to the right.

For a moment, it looked like the Butcher was going to shrug it off, but then he wobbled unsteadily, and toppled like a great oak. There was a thud that managed to sound painfully solid, yet worryingly damp at the same time, as the Butcher’s forehead met the metal frame of the bed.

The big man flopped onto the tiled floor. His semi-naked body twitched and fitted for a moment, then fell still. Cal swallowed, his mouth becoming dry.

“Eugene?” he said.

He nudged a bare leg with his toe.

“Eugene, you OK?”

The Butcher gave a final twitch. A slowly-expanding circle of blood began to spread outwards across the tiles where his forehead rested.

“OK, so that’s not good,” Cal whispered. He raised his voice. “Hey, Eugene, you appear to have tripped and fallen, resulting in you hitting your head on the metal bed frame. I hope you’re not too badly hurt.”

There was another thud – this time from outside the door. Stepping over the Butcher’s motionless body, Cal ducked and peered through the narrow serving hatch.

“Jesus!” he yelped, spotting a pair of eyes staring back at him. “Audrey? Is that you?”

The guard’s unplucked eyebrows were knotted in a lump above her nose. Her nostrils were drawn up, her mouth fixed in an animal-like snarl. There was something on her face. It coated one cheek, plastered her hair to her head and congealed in one ear.

“You’ve got, I don’t know, it looks like blood on the side of your face,” Cal said, motioning to his own cheek. “It’s sort of here, and down here and… Well, it’s everywhere, really. Are you hurt?”

He jumped back as Audrey battering-rammed her head against the metal door, shaking it in its frame. She screamed, not in pain, but in rage - an ancient, primal sound that billowed from her throat like an escaping toxic gas.

“Audrey?” said Cal. “Look, I know we don’t really know each other too well or anything, but I’m going to go out on a limb here and say you’re acting out of character. Is there someone else there I can talk to? The warden, maybe, or—?”

The guard drew back again. Through the gap, Cal could see blood oozing from a tattered line of skin where her forehead had met the door.

“Ooh, that is going to leave a mark,” he commented, then he dropped to the floor as a gunshot rang out and Audrey’s head exploded like an over-inflated balloon.

Cal knew the sensible thing would be to stay down, but he’d never been one for that sort of thing. He got to his knees and tried to look through the door gap while keeping a reasonably safe distance from it. Audrey was nowhere to be seen, other than a few bits of her which dripped from the top part of the hatch. Through the gap came the sounds of screaming, and more gunfire – further off, this time.

Another guard danced into the corridor outside, twisting and clawing at himself. No, not at himself, Cal realized. At the hundreds of oily black insects which crawled all over him.

“Get them off me! Get them off!” he squealed, then he suddenly stopped and snapped to a sort of half-hearted attention. As one, the insects fell to the floor and scuttled away, leaving the man swaying gently from side to side.

“Hey!” Cal whispered. “Hey, you. What the Hell is going on?!”

The guard blinked, like he was waking from a dream. He held his hands up, flexing the fingers in and out, in and out, in and out, as if seeing them for the first time. A figure in an orange jumpsuit hurried past and the guard set off after him, face all bunched up in fury, hands clawing at the air.

They both ran beyond Cal’s narrow field of view. He leaned sideways and peered through the slot, trying to follow them, but all he saw was a gray brick wall being decorated in a spray of crimson, and all he heard was the prisoner screaming and gargling his way to a chillingly final silence.

Being careful not to make any noise, Cal shuffled backwards on his knees away from the door. A hand wrapped around his ankle and yanked his leg, sending him crashing to the tiled floor. He twisted in time to see the Butcher raise his head, a deep gash pouring blood into one of his eyes.

“I don’t like you,” the Butcher growled. “You’re not my friend.”

“That’s hurtful, Eugene,” Cal said. He drew up his free foot and drove it once, twice against the Butcher’s wounded forehead. “I mean, probably not as hurtful as that, but hurtful all the same.”

Hissing in pain, the Butcher released his grip. Cal leaped to his feet. He raised a hand to bang on the door, then the screaming and gurgling and gunfire outside made him think better of it.

He turned to the Butcher, just as the brute used the bed to heave himself upright. “Look, we got off on the wrong foot,” said Cal. He jabbed a thumb in the direction of the door. “There’s something going on out there – a riot, maybe - and I think it’s in both our interest if we work together. Or, you know, at least don’t actively try to kill each other.”

The Butcher growled and began to advance.

“Even just on a temporary basis?”

The Bucher stopped. His gaze drifted past Cal. “Huh?” he said, his scarred brow furrowing in confusion.

“Come on, Eugene, I’m not going to fall for the old ‘hey look, there’s someone behind you’ trick,” Cal told him, putting his hands on his hips. “We’re in a locked cell. How could there possibly be--”

Someone grabbed Cal from behind. Two someones in fact. Cal’s head whipped round and he caught a glimpse of a pair of matching metal masks.

“Hey, what the Hell?” he managed to blurt out, before a needle punctured the skin of his throat, and the world rolled upwards into darkness.

CHAPTER THREE

It was the humming that eventually fluttered Cal’s eyelids open. It was low and monotonous – the humming of an engine or other machinery, rather than of the tuneful variety – and annoyingly insistent.

The room he was in shimmered in blue, and for a moment Cal thought he was underwater. He frantically closed his mouth, realized he was bone dry, and opened it again.

Or, at least, he tried to open it, but there was something across the lower half of his face, holding his jaw shut.

His arms, too, were trapped, shackled down by his sides. The head clamp and mask combo meant he couldn’t look down to see what was across his wrists, but whatever it was, it was cold against his skin, and could really have done with being loosened off a notch or two. He could feel the edges digging into his flesh whenever he tried to move, and quickly came to the conclusion that staying still was a better option for the moment.

He was propped up and fastened to something solid. He could just get the vague impression of a metal frame at the edge of his peripheral vision if he forced his eyes all the way to the right. The whole thing reminded him of something, but it took him a few seconds to figure out what.

“Silence of the Lambs,” he tried to say, but the device across his face resulted in it coming out more like, “Smm um t Lmbs.” Still, he knew what he meant, and as there was no-one else around to hear him, that was all that mattered.

His head ached.

His mouth felt as if he’d been gargling desert.

All things considered, he thought, he could really go a lemon drop.

The room was pretty much the same size as his prison cell. Unlike there, though, there was no bucket of excrement in the corner, no bunk beds along one wall, and – most importantly – no enormous angry psychopath attempting to kill him. Despite the raging headache and whole Hannibal Lecter situation, Cal reluctantly had to chalk this one up in the Win column.

The humming continued. It seemed to radiate from the walls themselves, but if he concentrated he thought he could pinpoint it as originating somewhere below. Or maybe above. One of those, anyway. Wherever it was coming from, it was starting to get right on his tits.

“Hmmo?” he said. Given the mask, it was as close as he was going to get.

No-one answered, but the flickering blue light which had been dancing across the featureless walls swept towards him, gathering together into a tall, thin blinding beam. Cal hissed as the light hit him full in the face, forcing him to screw his eyes closed.

Even through his eyelids, he could see the beam sweeping across him. Right, left. Left, right. Down, up, and back again. The brightness of it made his eyeballs ache way at the back, and no matter how tightly he screwed his eyelids shut, he couldn’t screw them tightly enough.

The glow faded. Cal counted to ten in his head, just in case it came back. He chanced opening one eye. An aura of blue was still burned into his retina. He blinked a few dozen times, trying to clear it away.

The lights had gone their separate ways again, and were back doing their shimmering dance across the walls. Cal opened his other eye and decided to keep quiet for the moment, in case saying anything else brought the beam rushing back.

For some reason, the light had triggered a tickling in his nostrils. He clenched and unclenched them, trying to resist the urge to sneeze. He enjoyed a good sneeze as much as the next man, but sneezing in a head restraint, with a mask covering the lower half of his face, he reckoned, was unlikely to be pleasant.

He sneezed.

As he suspected, it wasn’t a great experience. His head jerked in the brace, hurting his neck. His mouth tried to open, but the mask was having none of it. His nose was – mercifully – largely uncovered, and much of the snot explosion was ejected into the air in front of him, rather than trapped in the mask with him.

The snot wad spun into the air, looping and tumbling at what was, by anyone’s standard, quite a leisurely pace. It soared across the room in two or three slow moving bubbles. Despite their mucusy contents, Cal found them oddly beautiful.

Weird, obviously, the way they were floating like that. But beautiful all the same.

Directly ahead of the flying snotballs, part of the wall slid upwards, revealing a man decked out in a black leather and metal ensemble that looked like an S&M version of police riot gear.

Cal guessed it was a man, at least, but the full-face metal helmet made it difficult to tell for sure. He held his gun in what felt to Cal like an overtly masculine way, which was usually a pretty good indicator. The gun itself was not a make Cal had ever seen before. In fact, it was only thanks to the way the man was holding it – one gloved hand on the handle, the other on the stock, the barrel idly-but-deliberately indicating his leather-clad crotch – that he recognized it as a gun at all.

The mucus bubbles hit the mask in slow motion, splattering gently against the darkened glass visor. The helmet tilted just a fraction, as the head inside turned to see what the hell had just hit it. Cal felt he should probably apologize, but he didn’t want to risk the light again. Or the gun, for that matter.

The man took a step into the room, clanking noisily on the mesh floor. His boots were made of scuffed, dented metal, and comically large, with a series of blinking lights running across the toe of each one.

The lights flashed and flickered with every jerking step as the man lurched across the room like Frankenstein’s monster. Cal gave the wrist restraints another try, but the bands of pain where they cut into him quickly proved too much.

The man clomped and clanged off towards Cal’s left side. As he passed, Cal saw himself reflected in the polished glass of the helmet’s visor. Yep, he definitely had a serious Hannibal Lecter vibe going on.

For a moment, Cal thought he could make out features beneath the other man’s mask, but they were so distorted, so far removed from human, that he decided he must have imagined it.

Or hoped he had, anyway.

The sound of the man’s footsteps continued until they were right behind him, then stopped. Cal tensed, holding his breath, waiting for whatever new terrible thing was about to be added to the list of terrible things that had already happened that day.

The metal frame holding him shuddered. His stomach lurched as the whole thing toppled forwards. He clenched his teeth and braced himself for the jarring impact of the floor, but instead of falling, he and the metal frame glided gently towards the door.

Behind him, the erratic clanking of metal boots on metal floor resumed. Cal’s frame bobbed through the air, and he got the impression it was being pushed along by the armored stranger. That made sense.

The fact it was floating made less sense, but when combined with the other evidence – the floating sneeze, the unearthly blinding light – the explanation was very clear.

He’d had an aneurysm. That had to be it, because the alternative was…

Was…

Cal floated through the door. The universe reflected in the widening pools of his eyes. His frame had bobbed out into a long curved corridor, with windows taking up most of one wall. Through the expanse of glass dead ahead, he could see… everything. At least, that was how it felt.

Night stretched out before him, but a night filled with more stars than he’d ever imagined. There were billions of them. Trillions, maybe. They dotted the darkness everywhere he looked. Even those patches of black which he’d initially thought didn’t have stars in them turned out, upon closer inspection, to be packed with the buggers.

It was like a child had made a picture of outer space, and the last person to use the glitter shaker had forgotten to screw the top on properly.

And the colors! Pinks, purples, blues, all swooshing and swooping in vast patterns that covered most of the sky. Cal had seen the Northern Lights back when he’d been travelling around Europe, but the Aurora Borealis had nothing on this.

The frame turned sharply left, and the view of the universe was replaced with a view of a door. Cal tried to force his eyeballs out of his head so he could get another look at the stars, but they refused to entertain the idea and he reluctantly pointed them ahead of him instead.

Were he at home, he’d have assumed the door belonged to an elevator, but he had a growing suspicion that ‘home’ was a very long way away. He couldn’t begin to guess where the door actually led, or what new astonishing, mind-bending thing lurked behind it.

It opened with a ping. His framed floated through the doorway.

It was an elevator.

There was no clanking behind him. The footsteps hadn’t followed him in.

The door closed. The pressure in the elevator car changed, and Cal suddenly found himself feeling heavier than he had since waking up, and arguably heavier than he’d felt in his whole life.

The metal frame stopped floating. It hit the floor and teetered uncertainly until a clamp whirred and snapped into place somewhere near the frame’s bottom end. At least, Cal assumed that was what had happened, but he still couldn’t move his head far enough to check.

“OK,” he muttered, then he screamed through his gritted teeth as the elevator rocketed upwards.

Cal felt his spine compress. A pressure pushed down on his eyeballs like a pair of giant thumbs, making them swim with hoops of color. His scream faltered and died as a rush of oncoming air snuffed it out in his throat, choking him. His feet tried to sink through the floor, as his stomach and lower intestines attempted to force themselves out through his rectum.

He was just starting to think that maybe the Butcher’s cell wasn’t so bad after all, when the elevator jerked to an abrupt stop that rattled his teeth and made his spine jab upwards into his brain.

“Ow,” he muttered, concentrating on the pain rather than on the sudden and near overwhelming desire he had to vomit. If sneezing in the mask was bad, then blowing chunks would’ve been cataclysmic.

The wall in front of him slid open, revealing an enormous room with zero charm, and a uniformed man who somehow managed to convey even less.

The uniform bore only a passing resemblance to the one the man in the mask had been wearing. There was no mask, for one thing, and a distinct lack of metal. It was still mostly black, but with a long narrow strip of white that stretched down from the neck to the stomach, like a priest who’d got a bit carried away with his dog collar.

Cal’s first thought was that the placement of the white strip must surely make it a magnet for food stains. His second thought was: medals.

The man had twenty or more of them all pinned across the black part on the left of his chest. They were smaller than the medals soldiers wore back home, and reminded Cal of Scout badges or collectible buttons.

On the right side of the man’s chest was an embroidered patch. On it was a blocky, simplified outline of a hand holding some sort of short cylinder. There was a symbol on the front of the cylinder, and while Cal had absolutely no idea what the symbol meant, there was something unmistakably aggressive about it.

If he had to guess, Cal would have said it was an officer’s uniform, although he had no idea which army it belonged to. A space-faring paramilitary wing of the Catholic Church, perhaps.

The man himself was in his mid-to-late forties, with hair and eyebrows so black they couldn’t possibly be natural. That said, his eyes didn’t exactly look normal, either. The irises were a sort of blueish-gray, which were somehow piercing yet insipidly milky at the same time.

His oddly-colored eyes and hair were emphasized by his skin, which was so white it had come out the other side and into a sort of pale blue. It made him look like he’d recently been fished out of a freezing cold canal, and was still suffering the effects.

“Hi,” Cal managed, despite the jaw clamp.

The officer looked him up and down with very obvious distaste, then stepped back.

“Sshk t’un-cha,” he said. Or words to that effect, at least. He marched back two paces – literally marched, with the swinging arms and everything – then stopped. Two burly masked men appeared around the corners of the elevator and stepped inside, almost getting wedged in the doorway. They each took a different side of the frame, and there was a hiss from below as the clamp disengaged.

The frame slowly raised, but Cal could tell he was being lifted this time, rather than floating. The men waddled around until he was facing the wall, then side-stepped out through the narrow elevator door.

Cal was shunted around in the frame as the men shuffled him out. They were both heavily built, but he could hear them groaning and grunting under the strain. The one on his left muttered something below his breath, but it sounded like a load of gibberish.

It was not, by any stretch of the imagination, a dignified entrance.

The room came to an end twenty or thirty feet ahead of him, in a swooping white wall that featured the same logo the officer wore on his jacket. There were several objects between Cal and the wall, which he felt could be broadly categorized as ‘chairs’ and ‘not chairs’.

On the ‘chairs’ front, he counted three. They looked more or less like standard office chairs, with wheels, swivelly bits and what looked from that distance to be reasonably good back support.

The ‘not chairs’ were harder to define. There were more of them – eight or nine, maybe – and they ranged from something that was definitely a coffee table, to something that might have been a lampshade. If it was a lampshade, though, then it was one that had clearly been designed by someone who’d never seen a lampshade before, and who had also just taken a potentially fatal amount of LSD.

As to what most of the other stuff was, he couldn’t begin to guess. It all looked quite cluttered, yet starkly clinical and utterly devoid of character at the same time. It reminded Cal of the time he’d worked in a customer services call center which, despite everything that had happened recently, remained the worst six hours of his adult life.

Cal’s frame was set down on the polished floor. His head jerked around as a strap at the back of his neck was undone. A moment later, the mask fell away. He opened and closed his mouth, waggled his jaw from side to side and rolled his tongue, stretching everything.

Then he considered how all that must look to the officer standing in front of him, and stopped. He cleared his throat.

“Hi there,” he said. “I know you’ve probably heard this before, but I think there’s been a mistake.”

“Turrak skie,” the officer barked, nodding to one of the grunts.

Cal had no idea what he had said, or even what language it was. He fell back on a strategy he’d learned for talking to foreigners during the year he’d spent living in England: ‘When in doubt, shout it out.’

“I said,” he began, raising his voice and dragging out each syllable, “I think there’s been a—OW!”

There was a sharp, sudden bee sting behind his right ear. Now the mask was off, he could turn his head to see one of the helmeted soldiers stepping away, something that looked like a small pistol in his gloved hand. A needle, no longer than the pin of a thumb tack, poked out of the stubby barrel.

“Jesus. What did you do?” asked Cal. “Did you just stick a pin in my head?”

“Norruq tunshun-a kai?” said the officer. His voice was flat and bored-sounding, but raised slightly at the end indicating he was asking a question.

“What? I don’t…”

“Norruq tunshun-a kai?”

Cal glanced from the officer to the soldiers on either side. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what you’re saying.”

“Norruq tunshun-a kai? Norruq tunshun-a kai? Norruq tunshun-a kai? Norruq tunshunderstand me? Do you understand me? Do you understand--”

“Wait! Yes!” Cal yelped. “Yes, I understand you! That’s great! That’s just… it’s awesome! But listen, like I was saying, I think there’s been a mistake.”

The officer gave a dismissive wave of his hand. “Take him through,” he said, and the grunts moved to lift the frame again.

“Take me through? Take me through where?” Cal asked, as the two men shuffled him around in a semi-circle, revealing a room positively brimming with ‘chairs’ and ‘not-chairs’ alike. The men began waddling him forwards, in the direction of a set of wide double-doors at the opposite end of the room.

“And be quick about it!” the officer barked. “He does not like to be kept waiting.”

CHAPTER FOUR

What must surely have been at least 90% of all of outer space stretched out behind a young-looking man with flawless olive skin and a tiny basketball. He wore something that more or less resembled casual business-wear, if your business was doing exceptionally well for itself, and wasn’t too fussed about convention.

His shirt was a pale yellow with a high wingless collar that came halfway up his neck and was piped with gold thread. His sleeves were rolled up to the elbows, revealing the taut, muscular forearms of a man who either kept himself in shape, or really liked squeezing his tiny basketball.

He shot Cal a lop-sided grin as he passed the ball from one hand to the other. It wasn’t, strictly speaking, a basketball – the color and pattern were all wrong – but the way the guy was tossing and twirling it suggested some decent basketball skills.

Cal wanted to focus on the guy, but all that outer space kept catching his eye. It wasn’t just stars this time. There was a planet out there – an actual planet! It had two sets of rings circling it at different angles, like it was trying to one-up Saturn. It took up half of one of the room’s five windows, the rest of which were filled with stars and colors and…

“Spaceships,” said Cal. “There are… there are spaceships. Out there. Spaceships.”

The guy with the basketball turned and looked out of the window, as if only just remembering outer space was there. “Hmm? Oh, yes. Yes. There are.”

He tossed the ball from hand to hand and looked Cal’s frame up and down. “Sorry about the… security. Your reputation precedes you.” His smile widened. It was the smile of a TV gameshow host trying to sell his second-hand car. “Still, that’s why you’re here.”

Cal tore his eyes away from the universe. “Yeah, about that. Where is here, exactly?”

“Zertex Command… Six?”

“Seven,” said the officer, who had followed the grunts as they’d carried Cal into the room, then sent them to stand by the door.

“Seven!” laughed the younger man, tapping himself on the forehead with the ball. “They all look the same to me.”

There was a scuffle from over on Cal’s left. He craned his neck to try to see what was going on, but the frame blocked most of his view. He caught a fleeting glimpse of a long, hairy arm, then an armor-clad soldier clattered onto the polished floor, and slid several feet across it.

“I told you not to touch me, you creepy weirdo,” snapped what sounded very much like a teenage girl.

“Ah, here come the others now,” said basketball guy. “Gentlemen, can we please treat our guests with a little respect, hmm?”

“Well, about time,” sulked the voice. Cal felt his jaw drop again when the owner of the voice stepped out from behind the frame and plodded over to stand near him.

She – or it – looked like a werewolf’s stunt double. Her long, hairy arms draped down past her squat, hairy knees. Her wide, hairy snout ended in a black, hairless nose, while her glassy brown eyes – one of her very few hairless parts - flicked around the room, very probably trying to decide who she was going to eat first.

Her gaze fell on Cal. “What?” she said.

“Um, hey there,” Cal said, trying not to stare too hard at her enormous, hinge-like jaw. “My, what big teeth you have.”

The wolf-creature sighed petulantly and turned to face the window. “Whatever.”

She was not dressed like a werewolf, Cal thought, although he wasn’t exactly an expert on current werewolf fashion. She wore a small pair of cut-off denim shorts, with a hole in the back for her tail to poke through. On the top half was a cropped vest t-shirt which showed off her furry midriff and clung to a chest that was far more ‘powerful’ than ‘pert’.

The creature slouched her weight onto one hip and studied her elongated fingernails as another door opened somewhere over on Cal’s right.

“OK, OK, listen, don’t push me, man, I swear,” complained another newcomer. “Don’t make me slap you down again,” he warned, as he clanked into the room, accompanied by two armed soldiers. One of the grunts had a crack running from the top of his helmet to the bottom, and seemed to be having some neck and upper back issues.

The figure that had entered was, if anything, even more remarkable than the werewolf woman. He stood eight feet high, approximately seven-point-eight feet of which was metal.

From his top lip to halfway up his forehead, and a couple of patches on one arm were the only visible skin. Cal guessed it was skin, anyway, although being dark red and leathery, it might equally have been the covering from an antique sofa.

In the center of his scorched chrome chest was a dinner plate sized dial, like the setting control on a toaster. Two long strips of what appeared to be masking tape were stretched across it, preventing it being turned.

The hulking cyborg caught Cal staring at him. The flesh part of his face scowled, and his metal jaw snapped up and down. “What you looking at, man?”

Cal opened his mouth to reply, then thought better of it and closed it again.

“Just waiting for one more,” said the man with the basketball. He spun smoothly on one heel and pointed to a door, just as it opened. “And I bet this is them now.”

A uniformed woman strode through, trying very hard to look more confident than she actually was. She was young – mid-twenties, maybe – with the same black hair and faintly blue-tinged skin as the officer who’d met Cal out of the elevator. Unlike his, her hair was pulled so sharply into a bun it was practically giving her a facelift. She didn’t share the male officer’s caterpillar-like eyebrows either, although Cal suspected that was more to do with a well-regimented plucking regime than anything else.

Her uniform was similar to other officer’s, too, but with none of the medals, and – to Cal’s mind, at least - a far more appealing shape filling it out.

She pushed a trolley with a ten gallon glass container resting on it. Inside the container was a semi-transparent green gloop that seemed to throb and pulse against the glass. Deep inside the goo, two detached and worryingly human-looking eyes turned to take in the room.

“Gunso Loren, glad you could join us.”

“Sorry, sorry, I was held up by the…” Gunso Loren caught the look from the man with the medals and cleared her throat. “Thank you, Mr President. It’s a real honor to be here.”

“Wait, President?” said Cal. The basketball guy smiled winningly at him. “You’re the president?”

“I sure am,” the man confirmed. He fired off a relaxed salute. “President Hayel Sinclair, at your service.”

“So… what? You’re like the space president?”

“Well, not all of it, but a chunk, sure,” said Sinclair, spinning the ball on his finger. “I’m president of the Zertex Corporation.”

“Oh,” said Cal. “So, you’re like the president of a space company? Not an actual president president?”

Sinclair’s smile didn’t waver. “The Zertex Corporation runs this sector of the galaxy – over eleven billion planets, trillions upon trillions of sentient lifeforms - and I run the Zertex Corporation.” He tossed the ball over his shoulder. It bounced once, landed on his desk, then rolled neatly into a ball-shaped indent. “Is that president enough for you?”

Cal tried to think of a witty response, but could only muster up a somewhat muted, “Yep.”

Sinclair gave a double thumbs up. “Great!” He opened both arms in a gesture of warmth to the gathered group. “Now then. Ladies. Gentlemen.” His smile faltered just a fraction as he glanced at the tub of gloopy green. “Whatever you are. I expect you’re wondering why I gathered you all here.”

“You can say that again,” barked the cyborg. His jaw whirred very faintly as it moved up and down. Just loud enough, Cal thought, to probably get quite irritating.

“Introductions first, I think,” President Sinclair announced. He gestured to the cyborg, reconsidered, and turned his attention to the other end, instead. “Gunso Loren, one of our promising new officers in the Zertex flight corps. Graduated the Academy with double honors, was it?”

“Triple, actually,” said Loren. “Uh… I mean triple Mr President, sir.”

“Excellent. Excellent. Well done,” said Sinclair. “That puts you on the fast-track to success, which is why you’re here. I’m proud of you, gunso. I’m very proud.”

He applauded. The other officer and handful of soldiers joined in. Cal would’ve quite liked to give her a clap, too, but the whole shackled to a metal frame situation meant he couldn’t. He just smiled encouragingly, instead.

“Thank you, sir.” Loren smiled, blushed, darted her eyes around the room, then stood to attention. President Sinclair noticed none of these things, however, as he had already turned his attention to the fur-covered creature on Cal’s left.

“Mizette of the Greyx,” he announced – quite grandly, Cal thought, given that pretty much none of those words made any sense whatsoever, no matter which order you put them in. “Daughter of Graxan of the Greyx.”

“Oh yeah, sure. That guy,” said Cal, nodding knowingly. “The resemblance is… well, it’s uncanny, frankly. Particularly around the snout.”

The wolf-woman’s mouth curled into what was almost certainly a snarl, but which, with a bit of imagination, might have been a smile.

“Wanted on eight systems for grievous bodily harm, arson, violently resisting arrest, assaulting over forty-two different corporation officers, and multiple counts of attempted murder,” Sinclair said.

Mizette’s nostrils flared. “I keep telling you people, if I’d been attempting to murder anyone, they’d totally have been murdered, already.”

Sinclair smiled and shrugged. “Ah, let’s not get bogged down in detail,” he said. “It’s an impressive rap-sheet, either way. Although not as impressive as…” He skipped straight past Cal and focused on the cyborg. “Gluk Disselpoof.”

Cal snorted. The cyborg’s head snapped round, his pupils glowing a troubling shade of red. “Sorry, that was dust,” Cal said. He wriggled his nose. “Anyone else finding it dusty in here?”

“Known more commonly as Mech,” the president said.

“Good choice,” said Cal. “Very wise.”

“Hacking multiple security systems. Computer fraud estimated to be in the trillions of credits. Stealing a Class 11 Zertex Warship…” Sinclair’s eyebrows frowned, but his forehead remained perfectly smooth and wrinkle-free. “How did you do that, by the way?”

Mech’s shoulders rattled noisily as he shrugged. “Something about taking apart its atoms and, I don’t know, sticking them back together or something, I guess. I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?” asked Sinclair.

Mech tapped the dial on his chest, irritated. “You heard me. I don’t know. Why would I? I was cranked left.”

Cal looked down at the dial, half-hidden by the strips of tape. There were two faded and worn symbols on the robot’s metal chest, one to the left of the dial, another to the right. The dial itself had a little black arrow on it. At the moment, the arrow pointed straight upwards towards the cyborg’s metal bottom jaw.

President Sinclair clicked his fingers and gave Mech a thumbs up. “Makes sense. Makes perfect sense,” he said.

Cal wanted to disagree. It didn’t make sense. None of it made sense. He had absolutely no idea what was going on. He was on a spaceship with a robot-man, a wolf-woman and a pot of slime, but somehow he was the only one they’d felt the need to chain up.

“And that brings us to you,” said Sinclair. All eyes turned towards Cal. “Eugene Adwin of the planet Earth. Better known as the Butcher.”

Cal laughed. It was sharp and sudden and caught even him by surprise. He titled his head back and closed his eyes, taking a moment to just savor the sense of sheer relief.

“That’s not me,” he said, once his initial fit of the giggles had passed.

President Sinclair’s smile remained fixed. “I’m sorry?”

“The Butcher. Eugene Adwin of the planet Earth. That’s not me!”

The president blinked several times, then snapped his gaze past Cal’s shoulder. “Legate Jjin?”

The officer with all the medals took six marched paces over to join the president, then crisply about-turned. “It’s him, Mr President. My men collected him from his cell personally.”

“Well, newsflash, they got the wrong guy,” Cal said. “I’m not the Butcher. He was the other guy. You know that big angry guy who was getting ready to butcher me? That was him.”

He shook his wrists in his shackles. “So, if someone could get a key or something, you can drop me off back on Earth and we’ll say no more about… whatever all this is. It’ll be our little secret.”

Sinclair’s eyes went from Cal’s face to the wrist-restraints. His smile broadened again. “Aaah, yes. Very clever. You almost had me for a moment.”

Cal frowned. “Hmm?”

“Your trickery and deception are well documented, Butcher. It’s how you managed to evade capture for so long,” the president said. He wagged a finger, reproachfully. “Lucky for you that I caught on. Had I believed your story – had it turned out that we had, in fact, got the wrong man - I would have had no choice but to have Legate Jjin disintegrate you and scatter your remains in deep space.” He smiled warmly. “We can’t be too careful, after all.”

Cal glanced from the president to the officer beside him and back again, considering his next few words carefully. “Ha-ha. Yeah, you got me,” he said. “Me and my well documented trickery and deception. But… you got me.”

“Aha! See? That’s the Butcher I’ve heard about,” Sinclair laughed.

“Yep. Definitely,” Cal replied. “That’s me. Eugene Adwell.”

“Adwin,” said Jjin, his eyes narrowing.

“Yep. Eugene Adwell Adwin, to give me my full title,” said Cal, quickly. “Although, I wouldn’t bother checking that, because I’ve never told anyone my middle name before. Or written it down anywhere.”

“Eugene ‘the Butcher’ Adwin,” President Sinclair began. “Aged twenty-two, ate both his parents.”

“Wow. That’s pretty hardcore,” said Mizette, almost admiringly. “Did you kill them first?”

Cal shifted his gaze to Sinclair. “Uh, I forget.” The president shook his head. Cal cleared his throat and smiled weakly. “No. No, apparently I did not.”

Mizette looked Cal up and down, her eyes drinking him in. “That is totally awesome.”

“The most prolific serial killer cannibal in the history of the planet Earth. Well, in the history of anywhere, really,” said the president. “With a history of violent homicides stretching back thirty-three Terran years.”

“Thirty-three years?” said Mech. He looked Cal up and down. “How old were you when you started?”

Cal’s lips moved as he did the calculation in his head. “Four,” he concluded.

“Four?!”

“I was an early developer,” Cal said. “What can I say? Even as a kid, I just loved me some killing and eating folks! Though, you know… not necessarily in that order.”

“You’re a dangerous man, Mr Adwin,” said Sinclair. He gestured to the soldiers standing in the corner. “But I don’t think you’re going to try anything, are you?”

“No. Definitely not going to try anything,” Cal said. “Scout’s honor.”

He hissed as the restraints tightened a fraction on his wrists then released their grip. He rubbed the red marks on his skin and stepped free of the frame. “Thanks,” he said.

Sinclair waved a hand. “We are all friends here. Or will be, I hope.”

“What’s with that thing?” asked Mech, gesturing to the tub of green goo. Everyone turned to look at it, and Cal would have sworn the thing’s floating eyeballs almost looked embarrassed by the sudden attention.

“Ah, that. To be honest, we don’t really know,” said the president. “It was found by an asteroid mining crew out by the Qadras rings. Its origin is a mystery, but it possesses some quite remarkable shape-altering properties.”

“So, like, it’s a shapeshifter?” said Mizette.

“Exactly, Mizette! It can alter its shape, size and consistency apparently at will,” said Sinclair.

“A shapeshifter? An alien shapeshifter?” said Cal. “You’ve got to be fonking kidding me.”

His eyes widened in surprise.

“Fonking,” he said. “Fonk. Fonking. Why am I saying fonking?”

“Ah yes,” said Sinclair. “I forget how new this must all be to you. My apologies. Earlier, you were implanted with a piece of technology developed right here at the Zertex Corporation. It’s a… translation chip, let’s call it. It takes alien languages – any alien languages – and deciphers them, before feeding the processed data back to your aural receptors. This is what is currently allowing you to understand what is being said. As the rest of us are all equipped with the chips, we can understand you in return. In reality, we are all talking in vastly different languages.”

“So it’s like a Babel Fish?” said Cal.

The President frowned and glanced at Legate Jjin, who shrugged. “A Babel Fish? I’m sorry, I’m not familiar with that term.”

“Forget it, doesn’t matter,” said Cal. “None of this explains why I’m saying ‘fonk’ instead of fonk.” He pointed to his mouth. “See? I just did it again.”

“The chip’s translation system filters out certain words and substitutes them with something less likely to cause offense,” said Sinclair.

“Which ones?” Cal asked. He held up a hand and began listing on his fingers. “Fonk, shizz, pimsy, bamston, cump, twazz… Shizzing motherfonking jotztrumpet. Arrgh!”

“You get the idea…” Sinclair began, but Cal wasn’t finished yet.

“Amshoop. Amswod. Amsclod? Bedge, donchenod, dirty fonking slodgebiscuits.” Cal threw his arms in the air. “Argh! Damn it!”

He gasped. “Damn it! Damn. Damn, I can say ‘damn!’”

Sinclair smiled, but there was impatience clamped between his teeth. “Is that a curse word?”

“You’re damn right it is!” cheered Cal, triumphantly. “Damn, damn, damn, damn, damn, damn, dandge.”

His face fell. “Dandge. Dandge. Oh… fonk it.”

Cal glanced around at the others occupants of the room, who were all staring at him, their mouths hanging slightly open.

He smoothed down his prison jumpsuit and nodded. “Impressive. Works well,” he said. “Now, you were saying?”

“Legate Jjin, a demonstration, if you would?” said Sinclair, stepping back to let the officer sweep imposingly past.

“Gunso Loren, release the organism,” Jjin barked.

“Yes, sir. Right away,” said the female officer. She bent and fiddled with a catch on the lid of the container. “I think… I’m not sure how it…”

The catch released with a snap that made Loren whip her hand back in fright. She blushed. “Got it, just a bit stiff,” she said, flipping the lid open and tipping the container upside down.

The ball of green goo rolled out and hit the floor with a soggy splurt. Its eyes rotated in opposite directions until they faced front again, then tilted upwards as Jjin’s shadow fell over it.

“It’s literally just a load of slime with eyes in it,” said Cal, pointing out the obvious.

“Please, go, take a closer look, please,” Sinclair encouraged. Cal, Mech and Mizette approached slowly. One of the slime-thing’s eyes swiveled to watch them. The other remained fixed on Jjin. It was a little disconcerting, if Cal were completely honest.

They all gathered around the gloop and peered down. Mizette stepped closer to Cal, so her hairy arm was brushing against his. “Ew. It’s disgusting.”

“And yet somehow completely adorable,” Cal added. He turned to the werewolf-woman. “I’d probably stand back, if I were you. I don’t think you want this guy getting your fur all sticky.”

“Not that guy, maybe,” said Mizette, staring at Cal with a worrying level of intensity. Cal smiled and quickly went back to looking at the goo-thing.

“So, how does it do its changing shizz?” asked Mech.

“Gunso Loren, get me that chair,” barked Jjin. The younger officer nodded one too many times, then bustled over to grab one of the high-backed swivel chairs. Cal’s gaze followed her across the room.

He didn’t consider himself a career criminal, despite his multiple jail terms served in a number of countries across the globe, but he’d been around enough career criminals to know that they were mostly a paranoid, neurotic bunch.

But of all the paranoid, neurotic people Cal had spent time with in the past, he could already tell that the junior officer currently struggling to lift a chair that had wheels on the bottom was among the most paranoid and neurotic of them all. It was there in her every facial expression and movement. She was either terrified to be in that room, or terrified to be alive in general.

Cal couldn’t wait to find out which.

“Uh… wheels,” he said, pointing to the castors on the base of the chair.

Loren glanced down, then her face reddened again. “I know,” she said. “I just… wanted to do it this way.”

“Hurry up, gunso!” Jjin snapped.

Startled, Gunso Loren dropped the chair. She hurriedly lifted it back upright, then avoided Cal’s smirking gaze as she wheeled it across the room and positioned it next to the slimy thing.

“Now… observe,” said Jjin.

They all watched.

Nothing happened.

“That is awesome!” said Cal.

Legate Jjin shot him an angry look, then turned his attention back to the ball of goo. Its eyeballs swiveled as it looked across the faces of the people watching on.

“Wait for it,” said Jjin.

They waited.

Mech tutted. “See? I knew that thing weren’t no shapeshifter. There ain’t no such thing as--”

There was a loud bzzzt as Jjin prodded the slime with a short metal pole. Despite having no mouth, the goo somehow managed to emit a high-pitched scream as it rose up in a whirl of green.

And then, where there had been a chair, there were now two. It happened in the blink of an eye – one moment the goo-thing was erupting in a whirlwind of slime, the next it was a chair.

And not just a chair. It was the same chair, right down to the slight scuffing on the back support, and the indent on the seat.

“Sometimes it just needs the proper motivation,” Jjin said, collapsing the shock-rod and attaching it to a hook at the side of his belt. He rocked on his heels and smirked. “Of course, the same could be said for anyone.”

“Sit on it, if you like,” urged President Sinclair. “It’s quite safe.”

“Yeah… no,” said Cal. “I won’t be doing that. Can he change into other stuff? Or does he only do space chairs?”

“What do you mean, space chairs?” asked Mech. “What’s a space chair?”

“It’s a chair in space,” said Cal. “Clue’s in the name.”

“It’s just a chair, man,” said Mech. “Just a chair.”

“It’s a chair… in space. Therefore, a space chair,” Cal said.

Mech’s neck whirred as he shook his head. “Whatever.”

“I think space chair sounds great,” said Mizette. She ran a finger down Cal’s arm. Even through his prison jumpsuit, he could feel her nail scraping his skin. “Well done. You’re, like, really clever.”

“Uh… thanks!” said Cal. He let her touch linger as long as he comfortably could, then turned to face Sinclair.

“So, Mr Space President,” he said, pausing to savor the tut from Mech. “Does he change into other stuff?”

“Of course,” said Sinclair, his already broad smile broadening even further. “A shapeshifting organism that can only do office chairs isn’t really much use to anyone, is it?”

“I can think of three or four uses,” said Cal. He thought for a moment. “Five, maybe, depending on how much weight he can carry.”

“It can do pretty much anything. Objects, people – even quite complex machinery, it seems,” Sinclair explained. “Our testing has been… thorough.”

Cal glanced at the shock-rod hooked onto Jjin’s belt. “Yeah,” he said. “I’ll bet.”

The chair collapsed, becoming once more just a pulsating ball of green slime. The eyeballs rolled around, trying to get their bearings, then settled warily on Jjin.

“How long can it stay changed for?” Mizette asked.

Sinclair shrugged. “Honestly? We don’t know. Sometimes it lasts for hours, other times barely a few seconds. It’s all a bit of a mystery, really.”

“Look, man, this is all fascinating and all, but can we just cut to the chase here?” snapped Mech. He gestured around at the group. “You’ve brought three of the galaxy’s most-wanted bad-asses and a… a… whatever that slime thing is here for a reason. Why don’t you just get to the point and tell us what’s going on, or let me go back to jail?”

“Silly Putty!”

Everyone turned to look at Cal. He grinned at them. “That’s what he’s like. Silly Putty! Did you guys have that here?” He pointed to what he guessed was a computer terminal over on the president’s desk. “Google it. Go to space Google and put in ‘Silly Putty’. I bet it brings up a picture of this guy.”

“What the fonk is ‘space Google’?” Mech demanded.

“Jesus, he even smells like Silly Putty!” Cal announced, bending to sniff the gelatinous green blob. Its eyes fixed impassively on him as he inhaled deeply. “Get over here and smell this. You know what that’s the smell of?”

“Silly Putty?” Loren guessed.

“Nostalgia. Pure nostalgia. Do you guys have that up here?” he asked, looking very deliberately at Mech. “Space nostalgia?”

“OK, that’s it, I swear,” Mech snapped, raising a metal fist and lunging at Cal.

A serious-looking handgun jammed against Mech’s fleshy cheek, stopping him in his tracks. “Don’t,” warned Loren, her bundle-of-neurosis twitchiness replaced by a steely calm. She glared up at the much taller cyborg and pressed the gun more firmly against his face. “Back off. Now.”

Mech didn’t move.

“You heard me,” Loren said. “Back down. Final warning.”

Slowly, one of the cyborg’s metal hands crept towards the dial on his chest. “Get that gun out of my face, lady,” Mech warned.

“Not happening,” said Loren.

“Do what she says, Disselpoof,” barked Legate Jjin, flicking his wrist to extend his shock-rod. “Back down or I’ll put you down.”

President Sinclair rubbed his hands together. “Wow. This is exciting, isn’t it?”

Cal raised his hands and stepped between Jjin and the cyborg. “Hey, easy, easy, wait. This is my fault. I deliberately wound him up – not like, you know, in a clockwork way, I’m not suggesting you’re a tin man or anything. I was trying to be funny, that’s all. What can I say? I joke when I’m nervous, and my jokes are rarely good. Bad habit.”

He offered a hand to the cyborg. “What do you say? Put it behind us?”

Mech’s eyes went from Loren to Jjin to Cal. His hand hesitated at his chest dial. “Fine. Whatever, man,” he said. He took Cal’s hand, and Cal grimaced as the grip tightened around his fingers like a clamp.

“Ooh, ow, too tight. Bit too tight,” Cal said. Mech released his grip and stepped back from Loren’s gun, which was still aimed squarely at his face. Cal tucked his hand under the opposite armpit. “That is a very firm grip,” he said. “Too firm, if anything.”

President Sinclair placed a hand on the barrel of Loren’s gun and gently pushed it down. As her arm lowered, her neurosis levels raised. She smiled three different smiles at the president in under a second, then holstered her weapon and shuffled backwards to stand beside Legate Jjin.

“Thank you for stepping in,” Cal told her. “Much appreciated. Nice space gun you got there, by the way.”

Mech’s head whipped round, but before he could say anything, President Sinclair clapped his hands together and flashed a smile so intense it could’ve shattered concrete at twenty paces.

“So then,” he said, casting his eye across the group, “what’s say we get down to business?”

CHAPTER FIVE

Four days before Cal Carver went into space, in a far-off sector of the galaxy, in a dirty alleyway behind something a bit like an Indian restaurant – a space Indian restaurant, if you will – something that had just a moment ago been dead, now wasn’t.

The thing that sat up, however, wasn’t the same thing that had fallen down. It looked the same, aside from the gaping hole where its hearts had been, and the flickering green dots that swam behind the pupils of its three bulbous eyes.

It had, until very recently, been Tolores S’an, a long-serving and much-loved member of the restaurant’s waiting staff. Now, though, despite outward appearances, it wasn’t. Anyone who was even passingly familiar with Tolores would have been able to notice the subtle differences.

She held herself differently, her shoulders straight where they had once been stooped by years of servitude, and by the demands of her four children and two hundred and seventeen identical husbands.

The hands of her two short front arms were curled into claws. Her longer back arms, which were usually a whirlwind of activity, dangled and flapped limply behind her.

She was also floating several inches above the ground and glowing faintly in the dark – neither of which, to the best of anyone’s knowledge, she had ever done before.

The only witness to Tolores’s death and return was the person who had pulled the trigger on the weapon that had both killed her and brought her back. He clung to a wall high in the shadows, his saucer-sized eyes making short work of the alley’s oppressive darkness.

He watched, unblinking, as the thing that had been Tolores S’an floated around in three complete rotations, before finally aiming herself towards the restaurant’s rear door. The air around her crackled with millions of tiny green sparks, each one no bigger than the head of a pin, and a particularly small pin, at that.

As per the terms of his contract, the assassin produced an insulated foil bag from a fold in his dark cloak, unrolled it, then slipped his weapon inside. He sealed the bag at the top and pressed a lizard-like thumb against a red dot marked out near the bag’s top.

There was a hiss as the weapon was vaporized inside the bag, then another as the bag itself turned to ash and drifted to the ground below.

The Tolores-shaped thing threw open the door to the restaurant.

She floated inside.

For a long, drawn-out moment, the alley was filled with nothing but the clatter and bustling of a busy working kitchen.

The figure in the darkness waited and listened. His ears weren’t as developed as his eyes, but if all went to plan, he wouldn’t need them to be.

Several more seconds passed before the first scream rang out. It was a scream of surprise that rose quickly into one of utter, abject terror.

The next scream followed almost immediately. This one skipped out the surprised part entirely, and plunged straight into the depths of horror.

The screams came thick and fast after that, howling and screeching and wailing through the open door and flooding out into the alley.

The shadowy figure allowed himself a satisfied nod. He reached into his belt and took out another disposal bag.

He wasn’t generally superstitious or religious – it didn’t pay to be in his line of work – but he offered up a quick prayer of repent to any gods who happened to be listening, because he couldn’t really see the harm in it at this point.

Then, with that out of the way, and the screams of the dying ringing in his ears, he pulled the bag over his head, sealed it as best as he could around his neck, and squeezed the red button.

CHAPTER SIX

The windows, which had been affording Cal a view of what he still considered to be pretty much the whole of outer space, but which was in reality nothing of the sort, had become opaque. Projected onto each one, a lengthy and unpleasant piece of security camera footage was drawing to a close.

Cal knew it was drawing to a close because everyone was dead. Very dead. It was difficult to see how any of them could get much deader, in fact.

When the video had started to play, Cal had thought he was looking at some sort of fancy dress storage facility, or alien-themed costume party. There were thirty or forty figures on screen, with only four or five bearing more than a passing resemblance to any of the others.

There were agonizingly tall ones who looked like their elongated limbs were in danger of breaking if they moved too quickly. There were a number of short, squat ones whose complement of arms ranged from zero to low double figures.

One was hairy, like Mizette. One was small and lizard-like. Another appeared to have testicles where its ears should be, but didn’t seem to be in the slightest bit concerned, although one or two of the others did a double-take as they passed him.

Despite the mind-boggling variety of things he’d never seen before on screen, Cal realized pretty quickly what they were all doing. They were eating.

“It’s a restaurant,” he had said, quite knowingly, as if he were the only person in the room qualified to make that call.

“You don’t say?” Mech had grunted, but all eyes had stayed fixed on the screens as a blobby four-armed creature floated in through a door at the top right of the image, glowing faintly in the dim mood-lighting.

The hush in the room had deepened as the creature opened its gaping mouth and projectile vomited a glittery stream of floating green dots. The dots struck an absurdly-designed waitress on the back of the head, flipping her into a forward somersault so dramatic and spectacular it could’ve clinched her a gold at the Olympics, had she not landed quite so heavily on her face.

The diners all turned to see what the commotion was. There was no sound in the footage, but Cal could imagine the hubbub of chatter fading away as all eyes went to the fallen waitress, who briefly twitched and spasmed on the floor before becoming deathly still.

Most of the waitress’s body was blocked from the camera by a table, but the back of her head could be seen between a gap in the legs. Not that there was much left to see. Around 30% of her skull had been burned away, revealing a brain that shimmered with sparkles of green. Cal was no expert on the physiology of whatever the fonk that thing was, and had no idea if her brain always glowed like that, but he guessed it probably didn’t.

The floating creature rotated sharply to the left. Its mouth opened again and a wide beam of green pinpricks struck someone that appeared to be made almost exclusively of legs. The alien flipped over the table, smashed into its snake-like dining companion, and sent them both tumbling into a table of what appeared to be garden gnomes.

It took the legs-thing less than a second to hit the floor, but most of its innards got there before it. The snake-creature’s mouth moved frantically. It tried to slither away, but another sparkling trail of green from the floating woman tore out its throat, leaving a shimmering coating over its slick exposed flesh.

And so it went. The garden gnomes died next, practically exploding as they were hit, mid-flee, by the attacker’s mouth-beam. At some point during those first few deaths, the restaurant erupted into chaos. Misshapen bodies lumbered, darted, crawled and flew for safety. One by one, they were all cut down by the glittery green glow of the beam.

A few minutes later, there was no-one alive in the restaurant but the thing who had killed everyone else.

Cal glanced around at the others. Mech was transfixed by the closest screen, his leathery brow deeply furrowed, his metal jaw clenched tight.

Mizette was back to slumping her weight onto one thigh and was idly plucking random loose hairs from the end of her tail. Every second or so she’d glance at a different screen, despite the fact they were all showing the same identical footage. She spotted Cal looking at her and winked back at him. He smiled fleetingly, and directed his gaze along the line.

The green gooey thing had formed itself into a perfect ball-shape, and was rocking backwards and forwards, paying the footage no heed whatsoever. Whenever he rocked backwards, his eyes would loop up and over until they were pointing towards the back wall, then he’d roll the other way until he faced front again. He looked quite happy, Cal thought, although the lack of anything resembling an actual face made it difficult to be sure.

Cal’s gaze lingered on Gunso Loren, who stood watching the footage in respectful silence, while doing her best to ignore the blob of slime rolling playfully around near her feet. Of all the people in the room - or the ones who weren’t comprised entirely of goo, at least – she was the most difficult to judge. Just when Cal had thought he had a handle on her, she pulled the gun and seemed to become someone else entirely.

He was looking forward to getting to know her better, mostly so he could figure out what made her tick, but also because there was something quite hypnotically attractive about her. She didn’t have supermodel looks – the blue skin that gave her the appearance of a corpse trapped under a frozen pond would’ve been a strike against her, for a start – but she had caught Cal’s attention the moment she stepped through the door, and when she had jammed a kick-ass handgun into a giant robot-man’s face, she’d won his heart.

Cal turned his attention back to the video footage. Everyone in the restaurant was still dead. The killer floated in lazy circles in the middle of the room, surveying its handiwork.

“So, what…? That thing puked all those people to death?” asked Mech.

“More or less,” said Sinclair, who was sitting on the edge of his desk, angled so he could watch a screen but still see everyone in the room.

“No,” said Cal.

The footage paused, seemingly of its own free will. The president’s fixed smile dipped just a fraction. “No?”

“It’s not vomiting. I mean, it looks like it’s vomiting, because it opens its mouth and all that sparkly stuff comes out. Which, funny story, kind of happened to me once. Back home, we have this stuff called Goldschläger. It’s an alcoholic drink. Swiss, I think. From Switzerland. It’s sort of cinnamony, but with these flecks of gold through it that…”

Cal caught the expressions of Mech and the president and briefly shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. It wasn’t vomiting. On the video, I mean. If you wind it back, there’s a guy who has, like, balls for ears. And by ‘balls’ I mean…”

“We know what you mean,” said Sinclair.

“Anyway, I was watching this guy, wondering how you get through life with testicles fixed to the side of your face, and noticed that when the, uh, the thing came in and opened its mouth, he cups his hands over them,” Cal said. He looked around at the others. “You know, protective-like?”

“I don’t get it,” said Mizette.

“Balls are very sensitive things,” Cal explained.

“Oh, I know,” she replied, then her tongue flicked out and licked across her snout in a highly suggestive way. Quite what it was suggesting, Cal had no idea, but it was definitely suggesting something.

Cal shifted uncomfortably. “So I suppose it kinda makes sense that that guy uses them for ears, but I’d imagine he must constantly be worried about loud noises. Someone shouting would be like getting kicked in the nuts, and no-one wants that.”

He cupped his hands over his ears, just like the creature on screen had done. “He covered his balls. That thing wasn’t puking. It was screaming.”

President Sinclair considered this. “Legate Jjin?”

“It’s… feasible,” the officer admitted, although he clearly wasn’t happy about doing so. “I’ll have our specialists look into it again.”

Cal nodded. “Good idea, Jjin. And if they need my help, don’t be embarrassed to ask, OK? Promise me?”

Jjin’s face contorted into such a sneer he looked as if his face were made of rubber. His right eye twitched, and a vein on his temple pulsed a deep purple through his blue-tinged skin. If looks could kill, Cal, wouldn’t just be dead, he’d never have been born in the first place.

“Screaming, puking, who cares?” Mech grunted. “What’s it got to do with us?”

“This footage was sent to us two days ago. We don’t know where it was taken, but the time stamp tells us it was recent,” said Sinclair. “What we do know is that the killer used an entirely new type of experimental weapon. One that was designed by my predecessor, President Bandini. We don’t know how she got it.”

“She?” said Cal.

Sinclair motioned to the screen. “Yes. The killer.”

“That’s female?” Cal spluttered.

“Of course she is, man. It’s obvious,” said Mech. “She’s a quadroog.”

Cal squinted at the four-armed creature frozen on screen. “Is she?” he said. “What’s a quadroog?”

Mizette pointed to the screen. “That is.”

“Oh, right, well thanks for clearing that up,” Cal said, but the sarcasm was completely lost on the wolf-woman.

“So… wait,” said Mech, whirring softly as he turned to the president. “You people designed this weapon, but don’t know if she was puking or screaming?”

“We didn’t design it,” said Jjin. “It was designed by former President Bandini himself.”

“But it was theoretical,” Sinclair added. “He sketched out a few ideas, did a little of the math, but there was never even a prototype. Besides, notice anything unusual about the quadroog?”

“She’s got four arms,” said Cal. “And three eyes, and... Actually, how long a list do you want?”

“Lady’s got a hole in her chest,” Mech said. “Right there in the middle.”

“I didn’t know if that was deliberate or not,” Cal said.

“Why would she deliberately have a hole right through the center of her body?” asked Mech.

“Oh, like that’s the weirdest part! Why would she have three eyes?” Cal replied. “It makes no sense. Depth-perception wise, I mean.”

“How comes she’s like, even alive?” asked Mizette.

“Oh, that’s an easy one,” said Sinclair. “She isn’t.”

The video images began to play again, and the floating quadroog resumed her leisurely rotation. After a few seconds, she turned and drifted off camera, leaving the bodies of the dead behind.

“Watch,” said Jjin, in a whisper that managed to convey both terror and awe in the same breath.

They watched.

They waited.

“I don’t see anything,” said Cal. “What exactly am I looking…?”

His voice tailed off into silence. On screen, the dead were moving. They sat up one by one, more or less in the order they died in. The waitress with the back of her head missing got to her feet first. As she did, her brain slopped backwards out of her open skull and she immediately fell over again.

By the time the waitress was back on the floor, the thing that was mostly legs and the snake-creature were on the move. Both clearly carried injuries which should have killed pretty much anything, yet there they were, walking and slithering around like they didn’t have a care in the world.

In a matter of moments, the restaurant thronged with the walking wounded. Or, perhaps more accurately, the walking dead.

“So… what? They’re, like, zombies?” asked Mizette.

“Space zombies,” Cal corrected.

Mech sighed. “Look, man,” he began, his voice low. “I’m sorry I lost my temper earlier and all, I’m not a violent person by nature, so don’t take this the wrong way or nothing, but if you add the word ‘space’ to something that it ain’t necessary to add the word ‘space’ to one more time, I’m gonna punch your mouth off.”

Cal glanced at the cyborg’s metal jaw. “Is that what happened to you? Did you say ‘space’ one too many times and someone did that to you? Did someone hurt you, Gluk Disselpoof?” Cal rested a hand on Mech’s armored arm. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“Shut up, man,” Mech scowled, jerking his arm away and facing front again.

“Hey, strong men cry, too,” Cal said. He lowered his voice to a whisper. “Strong men cry, too.”

“I’m going to cut right to the chase,” said President Sinclair.

“Finally,” said Mizette, huffing like a sulky teenager.

“If word gets out that the Zertex Corporation has created a system to weaponize the dead, it’s going to have a catastrophic effect on our stocks,” said the president.

“Boo-hoo. If I had a heart, it’d be bleeding,” said Mech. “Why should we care?”

“News of the weapon will also likely derail our peace talks with the Symmorium, setting back years of progress, and plunging us into a war that will kill billions on both sides,” Sinclair continued. “You’ve seen war first hand, haven’t you, Mech?”

Mech’s metal jaw tensed. “Yeah. Yeah, I seen war.”

“So you’ll appreciate my desire to see it avoided.” President Sinclair picked up his little basketball and tossed it from hand to hand again. “We have been approached with this footage by a Remnants warlord named Kornack. He has generously offered to sell the master copy to us, along with some other information and the location it was taken from, rather than sell it to anyone else.”

“You mean he’s blackmailing you?” said Cal.

Sinclair’s smile hit him with both barrels. “Yes. In a nutshell. But we really must prevent that footage getting out.”

“Then buy it,” said Mech. “Ain’t like you don’t have the money.”

“We do, and we fully intend to,” said Sinclair. “But he refuses to come to us, and a Zertex crew in the Remnants would draw a lot of unwanted attention. Understandably, I think, we don’t want the rest of the data transmitted through open space unencrypted. We need a disguised Zertex ship to get the data and send it back to us on an encrypted channel.”

“You want us to go,” said Cal.

“Well check out the big brain on, Eugene!” said Sinclair. “Or would you prefer me to call you ‘Butcher’?”

“Uh, I prefer Cal, actually.”

“Cal?” said Legate Jjin, his impossibly black eyebrows knotting into a single v-shape above his nose.

“Nickname,” said Cal, quickly. “Back in the day, some of the newspapers used to call me ‘the California Butcher,’ on account of me, you know, probably eating someone in California or something. It was a while ago. I was young. I forget.”

He puffed out his cheeks and glanced between Jjin and Sinclair. “Anyway, it seemed a bit long-winded, so a lot of people just called me ‘Cal’ for short.”

“I have no record of that,” said Jjin.

“It was all very low-key,” said Cal. “Might have been a dream, actually. But I like it.”

President Sinclair blinked slowly. Eventually, he shrugged. “Fine. Cal it is,” he said. “You’re right. I want you four to go and make the handover, then bring the data back here so we can act on it.”

“Why us?” asked Mech.

Sinclair’s smile broadened. “No reason.”

Mech looked along the line. “No reason? You just randomly picked us four reprobates to travel halfway across the galaxy and pay your ransom? That’s don’t make any sense.”

President Sinclair tilted his head left and right, peering at the dial on the cyborg’s chest. “You sure you don’t have that thing turned up?” he asked, grinning. “OK, you got me. There are all kinds of reasons we decided you guys were the best folks for the job. It’s a carefully planned out operation, but all that matters from your point of view is this: make the drop, and you get full pardons. All of you. Released from the jails you’ve been rotting in, given new lives, new identities, if that’s what you choose. A fresh start.”

Mizette stopped fiddling with her tail and let it drop behind her. “Where?” she asked.

“Wherever you choose. We recommend somewhere within Zertex controlled space for your own safety, of course, but it’s up to you,” said Sinclair. His eyes flicked to Mech, answering his question before he could even ask it. “And we’d give you money. More money than you can imagine.”

“I got a very vivid imagination,” the cyborg said.

President Sinclair laughed briefly through his nose. “I’m sure you do. And it won’t be disappointed.”

Cal raised a hand. “Look, I’m not an expert on… well, any of this, but can’t you just call President Bandito or whoever it was you said designed your weapon and ask him about it?”

“President Bandini,” Sinclair corrected. “And we absolutely could do that, were it not for one problem.”

“He’s dead,” said Mizette.

“Well,” said Sinclair, “he was.”

He nodded to Legate Jjin, who stepped in front of the closest screen and made a few subtle gestures with his hands. The footage rewound to the exact moment the four-armed alien was blasting the back of the waitress’s skull to pieces. It froze, then zoomed in on the glittery trail of green sparkles.

One of the dots grew larger and larger until it took up a third of the viewing area. It was a little blurry at that magnification, but there was no mistaking the image. It was a face. The smiling face of an elderly man. His eyes were wide, and his hair was blowing upwards. He looked like he was riding a high-speed rollercoaster and loving every bloody minute of it.

“Who is that?” asked Cal.

“That is former President Bandini,” said Sinclair. “See, he didn’t just design the weapon. He is the weapon.”

“A virus,” said Jjin. “A virus that can be transmitted from technology to organic matter and back again, corrupting and enslaving them both.”

“You can see why we are concerned people might find out about this,” said Sinclair. “President Bandini was a much-loved leader, dearly missed. There were week-long vigils upon news of his death. Strangers – enemies, even – came together to share in their grief. It’s what really helped cement the peace process with the Symmorium.”

Sinclair gestured to the sparkling green face of the elderly man on the screen behind him. “If word gets out that he’s been reborn as a malevolent mass-murdering zombie virus, the damage to his reputation – and, by extension, the Zertex Corporation’s – will be… well, it won’t be good, let’s put it that way.”

Cal raised both hands in front of him, palms outwards in a gesture of miniature surrender. “OK, I’m going to let you know where I am on this. I’m out,” he said. “Don’t get me wrong, I want to thank you for the opportunity, it’s been eye-opening. You know, getting to meet Robocop, Sexy Chewbacca and the Silly Putty and everything. But I think I’d like to go home now.”

“Home?” said Sinclair. “To your prison?”

“Well, maybe not specifically to the prison, as such,” said Cal. “There’s a place called Australia. If you could drop me off there, that would be awesome.”

For the first time since Cal had arrived, the president’s expression turned from one of absolute, unshakeable confidence to one that was ever so slightly less so. He shot Legate Jjin the briefest of sideways glances.

“Yes, you see, the thing is… Earth is not… How can I put this?” Sinclair began. He scratched his head. “The people of Earth are not, broadly speaking, aware that all this is going on. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a wonderful and much-loved part of Zertex controlled space, it’s just a little…”

“Backward,” Jjin volunteered.

“Not quite the word I was reaching for,” Sinclair said. He bolstered his waning smile a little. “You see, it was felt that were we to just abduct you – just snatch you out of your cell – then people might ask questions. We didn’t feel the Earth was ready for the truth yet, so it was agreed that we would cover our tracks.”

“You started the prison riot?” said Cal.

“Possibly,” said Sinclair. “I mean, yes, almost certainly. We sent down a number of parasitic organisms which probably took over some of the guards and inmates, driving them to act… unusually.”

“Those bug-things?” said Cal. “Yeah, I saw those.”

“Right! Yes, those bug-things,” said Sinclair, squeezing his little basketball. “But, you see, the thing is… there was a slight miscalculation, and we may have sent a few too many.”

“How many too many?”

Sinclair studied his basketball. “You know… Three or four trillion.”

“Jesus. And how many were you supposed to send?”

“Six.”

Cal’s jaw dropped. “I’m not sure I’d call that a ‘slight misjudgement.’”

“Our aim was to keep the authorities occupied while we took you away, and leave enough chaos behind that they’d assume you escaped.”

“But…?”

“We may have accidentally killed everyone.”

Cal’s jaw dropped. “The whole prison?”

“Yes,” said Sinclair. He waved the basketball vaguely in the air. “And, you know… the rest.”

“The rest?”

“Yes.”

“The rest of what?”

“Just the rest in general,” said the president. “Of the planet.”

Cal felt a pressure in the center of his chest and a burning somewhere deep inside his brain, like he was suffering a heart attack and a stroke at the same time. His lungs and voice box chose that moment to both stop working. It took him several attempts to squeeze out his next sound, and it wasn’t really worth the effort.

“Hmm?”

“It’s our fault entirely,” said Sinclair. “All I can do is apologize and assure you we’ve taken steps to prevent this sort of thing happening again.”

“You killed everyone?” Cal managed to gasp.

“More or less. It’s impossible to say for sure,” said Sinclair, offering a sympathetic smile. “Two-thirds, minimum, we project. More as the next few days go on.”

Cal realized a hairy, clawed hand was resting on his upper arm. Mech was staring down at the floor. Even the green blob had stopped rocking and had swiveled both eyes to look at him.

A who’s who of everyone he’d ever encountered flooded Cal’s brain, with everyone shouting to make themselves heard.

Jenny Porter, his first girlfriend, who’d promised to marry him, then moved away to Oklahoma when she was eight.

Dead.

Donnie Wood, his best friend all through high school.

Dead.

Tobey Maguire, the Hollywood actor who’d played Spider-Man in the first three movies, although Cal actually preferred him in Pleasantville.

Dead.

His mind went blank after that. He could see lots of faces, all jostling for his attention, but other than his parents – who he hadn’t spoken to in fifteen years – there were very few he could put names to.

There was one face in amongst the chaos he did recognize, though. This one wasn’t shouting or waving or jumping up and down. It was just there, waiting to be noticed.

It was a girl. Six years old. Hair hanging in ringlets. She smiled, proudly showing the gaps where her baby teeth had been, and the whole universe seemed to fill with light.

Dead.

But then, she’d been dead a long time.

Cal’s fists clenched, without him telling them to. He made to lunge, to swing at the smiling face of the president, but Mizette’s hand tightened on his forearm like a clamp.

“Don’t, Cal,” she said.

“Listen to the Greyx,” Jjin warned.

“Ain’t worth it, man,” said Mech. He motioned around them. The other soldiers – including Loren, Cal noticed – had their weapons trained on him, fingers tensed on the triggers.

Cal took a steadying breath. “I’m fine,” he said. He tried to pull himself free of Mizette’s grip, but she was far too strong. “I’m fine,” he said again, looking her in the eye this time. She hesitated, then nodded slowly and let him go.

Rubbing his arm where the wolf-woman had squeezed, Cal stepped back into line. His fists were still clenched. He tried to straighten the fingers, but they refused. Cal’s neck kricked as he twisted it, trying to loosen the knot of tension in his muscles.

He didn’t trust himself to look the president in the face. Not yet. “Hey,” he said, his voice dry like late-Fall leaves. “Accidents happen.”

President Sinclair’s smile brightened. “Exactly! I knew you’d understand!” he said. “Now, back to the mission. I don’t need you to give me your answers right now. Take the evening. Explore the station. Talk it over, if you like. Then, tomorrow morning, you can let me know your decision.”

“Station? This is a space station?” Cal asked.

Sinclair laughed. “Yes! It’s a Zertex Command station, one of the many jewels in the corporation’s crown. You should look around the off-duty decks.”

The president grinned, showing his full complement of perfect teeth. “I think you’ll find it all rather exciting.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

Cal sat in a dimly-lit booth at the back of a dimly-lit bar, nursing a glass of something blue and quite probably poisonous. He turned the glass slowly around on the polished table-top, staring but not really looking at the way the light from the booth’s wall-mounted lamp danced through the liquid.

Sinclair was right – the station was incredible. Wondrous. Packed with sights and sounds and smells unlike anything he or anyone else from Earth had ever seen, heard, or sniffed.

He’d ignored it all, asked for directions to the nearest bar, and found the darkest corner he could.

“Tobey Maguire,” he muttered, twisting the glass between finger and thumb. “Tobey fonking Maguire.”

It was unusual to focus so exclusively on the fate of Tobey Maguire, he knew, but it was the only way he could stop his head imploding. The enormity of it – everyone dead, and at least partly due to him – was too much to comprehend. Any attempt to bend his mind around it was – like Tobey’s final film in the Spider-Man franchise – doomed to failure.

Looking up from the glass, he studied the bar. The place itself didn’t look anything special. There were fifty or sixty tables, not counting the wall booths. An assortment of stuff Cal would’ve described as ‘crap’ had he not been implanted with a heavily censored translator chip cluttered the walls, giving the place a Hard Rock Café or Planet Hollywood vibe.

A horseshoe-shaped bar stood in the center of the room. Coincidentally, something that looked vaguely like an upright stallion was in the process of ordering a drink from a portly, but mostly human-looking, barman. Four jokes about a horse walking into a bar popped into Cal’s head. He chose to ignore them all.

Around most of the tables sat off-duty Zertex soldiers. At least, Cal hoped they were off-duty, otherwise there was a deep-rooted culture of drinking on the job on display.

At one table, not too far away, four heavy-set… men, he supposed. They were human-like, but not quite all the way. They all had little quirks about them – pointy ears on one, two mouths on another – but they were positively normal compared to some of the bar’s other clientele.

A short, painfully thin creature with translucent pink skin and beaver-like teeth was nodding and frantically scribbling their order in a notepad. Cal couldn’t hear what they were saying, but the way they cackled and contorted their faces told him they were giving the little guy a hard time. That didn’t stop him bowing and scraping after everything they said, though.

“Hey.”

A towering hairy figure stepped in front of the booth, blocking his view of the other table. Cal groaned inwardly, but did his best not to show it.

“Hey… Mizette, wasn’t it?”

“Miz is fine. My friends call me Miz,” she said, leaning a muscular arm on the edge of the booth. It was a little lower than she expected, and she was forced to bend awkwardly.

“Miz it is,” said Cal.

There was a long, drawn-out moment of silence. “I sniffed you out,” Miz said, at last. “You know?” She sniffed the air, in case he didn’t understand. “You have a really unique smell.”

“Well… thanks. Nice of you to say so.”

“Really masculine,” Miz said.

“Yeah, I haven’t showered in a couple of days,” Cal admitted. “It’s probably that.”

“Want some company?” Miz asked.

Cal twirled his glass. “Uh, honestly? Not really,” he said. “Sorry. Nothing personal. It’s just… It’s been a big day, is all.”

“Finding out everyone you’ve ever known has died, you mean?” said Miz.

“Yeah, well that certainly didn’t help,” he said. “So, you know, I’m probably not going to be the best company right now.”

“Saw a bug attack once,” Miz said. “Wasn’t pretty. People were clawing themselves apart, ripping people to bits – cubs, even. Little cubs, just torn apart.”

“Right,” said Cal.

“They started eating each other at one point,” Miz said. “Although, you know, I guess you’d like that part.”

Cal frowned. “What?”

“You know, the cannibalism.”

“Oh. Oh, yeah. Definitely. Good old cannibalism.” He rubbed his stomach. “Yum.”

Miz shifted her weight. Clearly, leaning on the booth was rapidly becoming uncomfortable, but she’d committed to it now, and didn’t want to draw attention to her error in judgement by moving at this late stage.

“I can sit down, if you like. For a little while.”

“Thanks, but… honestly, I’m fine.”

Miz nodded. “Is it because of the way I look?”

“What? No. No, of course not,” said Cal. “You look… fine. Great. You remind me of an old friend, actually.”

Miz’s eyes shone hopefully. “Girlfriend?”

“No. God, no. Dog. Lucky.” Cal smiled fondly at the memory. “I loved that dog.”

Mizette frowned. “What’s a dog?”

Cal snapped himself back to the present. He met Miz’s gaze, and was almost crushed by the weight of the hope in her eyes.

“Man’s best friend,” he said. “Back where I come from, everyone loves dogs.”

Miz’s tail flicked from side to side. Her snout curved into something that either meant she was happy, or was about to tear Cal’s throat out.

“Oh. Oh, OK,” she said, brightly. “Well… I guess maybe I’ll catch you later, then?”

Cal nodded. “Maybe I’ll sniff you out.”

Miz’s tail stopped wagging and stuck straight out behind her. Her tongue flopped out of her mouth and hung there, panting gently.

“That came out… I didn’t mean that to sound quite so…” Cal cleared his throat. “I meant I’ll find you. Later. To chat.”

Bending over the table, Miz dragged her claws across it in what was presumably supposed to be a playful way, but which left four deep gouges in the otherwise immaculate surface. She let out a deeply un-dog like purr. “I’ll be waiting.”

Cal watched her back away, giving her a wave as she retreated out of view around the edge of the booth. Only then did he allow himself to let out the breath he’d been holding for the past several seconds.

“You fonking cretin! Look what you’ve done!”

One of the off-duty soldiers at the nearby table gestured down at his uniform. As far as Cal could tell, there was nothing different about it. It was still an oppressive shade of black leather and metal. Clearly something had annoyed him, though, as he snatched a glass off the table and tossed it at the feet of the trembling pink-skinned waiter. The sound of it exploding into fragments brought silence to the rest of the bar.

“So many apologies, endigm,” the waiter stammered, shifting anxiously from foot to foot as all eyes in the place turned to watch him. “You moved quite unexpectedly and nudged my arm.”

The soldier’s face darkened. A set of what looked to be gills flared on either side of his neck. “So what? This is my fault?” he demanded. “You’re saying I just spilled my drink on myself?”

“N-no, endigm,” the waiter said. “That is not what I meant…”

“Sounds an awful lot like it. Right boys?” the gill-necked alien said. His friends all murmured and nodded their agreement.

Cal twisted his glass between finger and thumb. He looked down at the table and tried to keep his gaze there, but it crept back to the soldier and the waiter despite all his efforts.

“No, I am entirely at fault, endigm, not you. You are the blameless victim, as always,” said the waiter, bowing and nodding. “Please, accept my apologies. I will bring you a new drink, yes?”

“A new drink? You think a new drink’s going to pay to have my uniform cleaned?” the soldier said. “We’ll all have free drinks. All four of us. Indefinitely.”

The waiter bowed so deeply his head almost clonked off the floor. “My apologies, but I cannot do that, endigm. I am sorry. I do not have the authority to offer such recompense.”

The soldier’s hand slammed into the skinny waiter’s throat, his fingers meeting at the back of the pink-hued neck. “Well how about you go find me someone who does?” he growled. “Or I’ll see to it that you’re transferred to the Remnants. Let’s see how long you last there.”

The waiter’s eyes bulged as he choked. The soldier studied him with amusement, like that one kid who pulls the wings off flies so he can watch them writhe around and die.

“Get me the manager,” the gill-neck said, releasing his grip just before the waiter passed out. The pink-skinned creature flopped to the floor, wheezing and gasping for air.

“I’m the manager. What seems to be the problem?”

The soldier looked up to find Cal standing over him. Cal reached down and helped the waiter up. “You OK…?” He squinted at the waiter’s name badge, but the collection of symbols printed on the rectangle of plastic made no sense. “Sorry, what’s your name again?”

The waiter opened his mouth and emitted a sound that might have been his name, but equally there might just have been something caught at the back of his throat.

“Gyryrxyx,” said Cal, making a valiant attempt to emulate the sound. He put his arm around the skinny waiter and squeezed, but gently so as not to break him. “I always forget that, don’t I? Now, off you go. Get yourself a drink. Take the rest of the night off. I’ll handle this.”

The alien’s bloodshot eyes swam around the group, then settled on Cal’s face. He nodded unsurely. “Yes. Uh… OK. Thank you,” he wheezed, then he quickly scurried off, leaving Cal with the table of troops.

“He’s a nice guy,” said Cal, once the waiter had gone. “I mean, yeah, he looks a bit like a huge worm with legs, but his heart’s in the right place. Metaphorically. I’ve got no idea about, you know, physical placement.”

He rubbed his hands together. “Anyway, what seems to be the problem?”

“That imbecile spilled a drink on me,” the soldier grunted, gesturing towards four glasses on the table. From Cal’s perspective, they all looked to be full, but when he bent down to study them further, he realized that one was marginally lower than the others. Cal pointed to it.

“This one?”

“Well, obviously that one.”

Cal straightened and picked up the glass. “I can only apologize, sir,” he said. “I always tell my staff, ‘if you’re going to do something, do something right. You gotta give one hundred percent.’ Clearly, though, that advice wasn’t followed in this instance.”

“Exactly,” growled the gill-neck, leaning forward on his elbows. “So what are you going to--?”

The contents of the glass hit him full in the face. The soldier gasped, flaring the gills on either side of his throat. The other three men at the table stared at him, then at Cal, in disbelief.

“There, that’s much better,” said Cal. He set the glass down and motioned towards the door. “Now, gather up your shizz, and get your ams the fonk out of my bar.” He sighed. “Man, I hate this chip.”

The gill-necked soldier stood up. This took quite a long time, because there was a lot of ‘up’ for him to stand. Cal’s neck craned back, his eyes raising as he followed the man all the way into a standing position.

“You are a very large man,” Cal said. “You did not look anywhere near that size sitting down.”

The soldier ran a meaty palm down his face, wiping off the worst of the alcohol. Cal glanced behind him.

“Seriously, is there something wrong with that chair or something, because you looked almost average height.” He motioned up and down the soldier’s hulking frame. “But this… I mean. Wow. Where do you even get clothes that size? It must be… aha!”

He swung with a punch, hoping to catch the soldier off guard. Unfortunately, the man’s jaw was just a fraction of an inch beyond his reach. Cal swung harmlessly beneath him, was thrown off balance, and landed on his back on the table.

All four figures were on their feet now, glaring down at him. “OK, there’s a chance I misjudged this,” Cal said, then he twisted to avoid a punch from the man with two mouths. Two-mouths grimaced as he drove a fist into the solid tabletop. Cal snatched up one of the glasses and smashed it across the side of the man’s head, sending him staggering.

Rolling, Cal leaped up from the table and slammed a shoulder into the stunned two-mouths, doubling him over. Catching him by the waistband of his pants, he shoved him back towards the table, where he was caught by the guy with the pointy ears.

Cal bounced from foot to foot, fists raised. The other occupants of the bar were all on their feet now, watching events with interest. Annoyingly, they were also blocking the only exit Cal was aware of, and he was starting to come to the conclusion that he very possibly shouldn’t have got involved.

Cal’s introduction to fighting had come earlier than most. One of the first things he’d learned had been the advantage afforded by the element of surprise. A lot of people assumed the element of surprise was lost right after the first attack, but an experienced fighter knew the element of surprise was a weapon to be used any time. You just had to do something surprising.

Roaring angrily, Cal charged, his hands raised above his head like bear paws, his eyes wild and staring.

BAM!

A fist hit him in the face like a piston. He spun, clutching his nose, and crashed heavily into a chair.

“Ow,” he grimaced.

Footsteps raced up behind him. He grabbed the chair, swung, realized to his dismay that it was fixed to the floor, then was hit by a hammer-blow to the shoulder that dropped him to his knees.

“OK, OK, you got me. I give up,” Cal said, then he slammed the tip of his elbow into the groin of the soldier behind him. The man doubled over. Cal jumped to his feet, driving an uppercut into two-mouths’ jaw as he rose.

Two-mouths hit the floor in a wheezing heap of snot and regret. Cal turned, rotating his shoulder to try to work through the ache. The other three figures had fanned out to nine, twelve and three o’clock. Gill-neck towered at high noon, lazily cracking his knuckles.

“You’re not the manager,” the soldier said.

Cal raised his hands in surrender. “You’re right. I’m not. And you know what? I think we’ve all learned a lesson here today,” he said. “A lesson about honesty. About respect. About being kind to other people, even if those other people have thrown your own drink in your face in a moment of madness they now deeply regret.”

He smiled at them winningly. “I like to think that we’re all the manager today. And what are we managing? This difficult situation we’ve found ourselves in,” he said. “So, what’s say we manage our feelings about what’s just happened, and all become the best of friends?”

There was a scuffing at his back.

“The two-mouth guy is behind me, isn’t he?” Cal sighed, then a hand shoved him hard, sending him stumbling towards gill-neck.

The soldier’s hand clamped over Cal’s face and most of his head. Cal yelped as he was jerked off the ground. He kicked out, but his feet bicycled freely, finding nothing but empty space.

Cal had never really given too much thought to his use of the phrase ‘vice-like’ before, but in hindsight he reckoned it was probably overused. He’d used it in the past to describe any grip that was firmer than average, but realized now that this had been inappropriate.

The grip that had him now – that was the type of grip he should have been saving ‘vice-like’ for. It felt like five iron bars were digging into his skull, compressing the bone so much he could almost feel it squishing into his brain.

It was the type of grip which, despite the intense, eye-watering pain it was causing, you really didn’t want to fight against, because the only way of pulling free of it would involve a lot of tearing, and the real possibility of leaving the affected body part behind. Had it been a leg or an arm that gill-neck had gotten hold of, Cal might have considered it a sacrifice worth making, but letting the soldier keep his head while the rest of him made a run for it wasn’t really an option.

“Ow! Ow! This hurts,” Cal wheezed. He caught onto the soldier’s wrist and pulled, taking some of the weight off his neck. “But then, you probably knew that already.”

The gills on the man’s throat flared all the way open. His face twisted into a grimace. “You talk a lot. Think you’re funny, don’t you?”

“Usually, although I’m struggling to come up with any new material right this second,” Cal admitted. “I’ve got something about a fish walking into a bar, but I can’t nail the punchline.”

Another hand wrapped around Cal’s feet. He couldn’t see whether it belonged to gill-neck or one of the others. Pain burned down his spine from the base of his skull as the hand on his head and the one at his ankles pulled in opposite directions.

“Endigm. Release that man!”

“Officer on deck,” barked a voice from a nearby table.

Cal felt the grip on his head ease. He began to breathe a sigh of relief, but it was cut short by the sudden feeling of weightlessness as he dropped to the floor. His skeleton rattled with the impact, and he spent several long seconds lying completely still, waiting for the world to stop spinning, and for the ringing in his ears to die away.

Raising his head, he saw Loren standing in front of the four men, who had shambled to a sort of half-hearted attention. Gill-neck was sneering in a way that suggested the officer were emitting an aroma he found deeply offensive.

“…not be tolerated. I will have you on report, is that understood?”

“Yes, botak,” said gill-neck.

“You will address me as Gunso Loren,” Loren told him, but Cal couldn’t help but hear the invisible question mark at the end of the sentence. Nor, it seemed, could gill-neck.

“Yes, botak,” he said. “Whatever you say, botak.”

Cal got to his feet, nursing his aching back. He patted Loren on the shoulder. “Thanks, but you didn’t have to do that. Totally had everything under control.”

“Step back, Mr Adwin,” Loren warned. “This is a military matter.”

Cal slumped over to the table and perched himself on it. “Sure. You go right ahead,” he said. “I’m just going to have a drink.”

He lifted the only glass that hadn’t been knocked over when he’d landed on the table, raised it in a toast, then brought the pale orange liquid to his lips.

“Wait, don’t!” Loren yelped, but too late to stop Cal tipping his head back and draining the contents of the glass.

Cal grimaced.

He blinked in slow motion.

“Hurp,” he said.

Then the bar and everything in it went black.

CHAPTER EIGHT

“Eugene.”

Darkness swam. It wasn’t as dark a darkness as there had been a moment ago, but it was still really quite dark nonetheless. Through the darkness, Cal could see what he could only describe as ‘other darkness’. This new darkness wasn’t as dark as either the first or second darkness, being more a sort of charcoal gray than full-scale black.

Which was interesting.

“Eugene?”

His head hurt. So did the rest of him, for that matter. It wasn’t an all-over general ache, which would have been preferable. Instead, it was as if hundreds of individual pain points had been set up across his whole body, each one operating independently of all the others. They throbbed, stung, burned and ached entirely on their own schedule, making it impossible to adjust to any of them.

The head was the worst, though.

Oh fonk, the head was the worst.

“Eugene, wake up.”

Cal wrestled with his eyelids. He had not previously realized how stubborn they could be, and they put up quite a fight. It was a close-run thing, but eventually he managed to get them to open.

The light hurt them.

They closed again.

Blindly, he gestured in the vague direction he thought the light was coming from, making a series of incomprehensible groaning noises that he hoped would somehow manage to get his point across.

As luck would have it, it worked. The semi-darkness behind his eyelids became a much richer and more pleasing full-darkness. After much persuasion, Cal convinced one eye to open. It swiveled around a room that was only very faintly in focus, then made a valiant attempt to fix on the figure sitting on the edge of the bed he must presumably be lying on.

“Hey, handsome,” said Mizette.

Cal’s other eye flicked open. “Oh god,” he said. “Oh god, we didn’t.”

The vibration of his voice rattled up into his skull and stabbed at his brain with tiny icepicks. He clutched his head and raised it from the pillow, then realized to his horror that he was wearing nothing but his underwear. Actually, it wasn’t even his underwear. He’d never seen the tight white shorts before in his life.

He scrabbled for the sheet to try to cover himself, but it was too tightly tucked in, so he settled for covering his nipples with his hands instead.

“Relax. It’s nothing I haven’t seen before,” Mizette purred. “I mean, I am almost six.”

“Six?!” Cal cried. It brought an avalanche of pain, but he gritted his teeth and ignored it. “You’re six?”

“Almost.”

Cal let his head sink back onto the pillow. The room was spinning, so he clamped a hand over his eyes and hoped it would eventually see fit to stop. “Six. She’s six.”

He parted his fingers and peered up into her hair-covered face. “Did we… did we… The only word coming into my head is ‘bone’ and I feel that’s inappropriate on a number of levels.”

A movement over on his right caught his eyes. Loren approached the bed, carrying the world’s smallest cup on a plastic tray. Steam rose from the top, along with the aroma of something that wasn’t a million miles away from coffee.

Cal looked between the two women. “Wait… did the three of us…?”

“He awake?” barked a gruff voice from beyond the foot of the bed. Mech stood in the doorway, filling it completely in every direction.

“Please tell me we didn’t all…?” he began, then a sudden jarring flash of the bar fight hit him in a wave of nausea. “Wait. That drink. What the fonk was in that?”

“Nothing designed for human consumption,” said Loren. “Knocked you flat out, so I brought you back here. Miz was good enough to keep an eye on you.”

“I sat here just watching you all night,” said the wolf-woman. “Didn’t take my eyes off you once. Not even to blink!”

“Great,” Cal croaked. “Because that’s not creepy at all.” He pointed at Miz, then at himself. “So… we didn’t…?”

“You’ve slept for sixteen hours. And that’s all you’ve done,” said Loren. “To be honest, after picking a fight with four shock troop endigms, you’re lucky you’re still alive.”

“I think death might be preferable,” Cal groaned, clutching his head. “And what the Hell is a shock troop endigm? Hey, I can say ‘Hell’.” He slowly waggled a fist in victory and let out a half-hearted, “Woo!”

Loren handed him the tiny mug. “Here. Drink this.”

With a lot of effort and a frankly ridiculous amount of huffing and puffing, Cal shuffled up the bed into something that faintly resembled a sitting position. He felt like the gravity he’d missed out on during the time he was weightless yesterday had all come back at once and stacked itself up on top of his head.

He took the cup and sniffed it. It smelled quite a lot like coffee, but the liquid itself was a deeply unappealing shade of blueish-gray.

“What is it?”

“Doesn’t matter what it is, just drink it,” Loren told him. “It’ll make you feel better.”

Cal gave it another suspicious sniff. “Is it space coffee?”

“Argh! Just drink it, shizznod!” Mech snapped. “We’ve wasted enough time as it is.”

“OK, OK, fine,” Cal groaned. He sipped the drink. It tasted like a very sweet coffee-flavored candy. He grimaced, then knocked it back in one.

His headache eased. The room stopped spinning. His many throbbing pains vanished one by one, and the crippling feeling of lethargy that had been making his bones feel like lead was replaced by a sudden hankering for a shower, and a deep, almost primal desire for bacon.

Unfortunately, neither of those were on the menu.

“Good. Now get dressed,” said Loren. She tapped a panel on a wall, and part of it slid away to reveal a wardrobe full of clothes. “We’ve arranged a selection that’s appropriate for the mission.”

“I don’t know if I’m going on the mission yet,” Cal said, swinging his feet down to the floor. “What happened to my own clothes?”

“You urinated in them,” said Loren.

Cal winced. “Did I?”

“Multiple times.”

“Explains the change of underwear,” he said. “I’ll be wanting those back, by the way. They hold great sentimental value.”

“I had them incinerated,” said Loren.

Cal stood up, stretched, then plodded over to the wardrobe. “Ah well, probably for the best. Where are we, anyway? Whose room is this?”

“Yours,” said Loren.

“We all got one,” Mech explained. “Room service, free Headnet, the works.”

“Part of me wants to ask what ‘Headnet’ is,” Cal mumbled. “But a bigger part is too tired to really care. I’m glad you’re happy, though.”

“I didn’t go to my room,” said Miz. “I stayed here all night.”

“Watching me, yeah, you mentioned. And I want to thank you for that. I feel very reassured,” Cal said. “But, if you’d all excuse me, I’d like to get dressed now, then maybe try to find some bacon.”

“You have three minutes,” said Loren. “Then we’re meeting President Sinclair.”

“Three minutes? Gotcha,” said Cal.

“And don’t be late, Eugene,” the officer added, ushering the others to the door.

“He’s totally going to be late, you do know that, right?” said Mech.

“OK, first, call me Cal, and secondly - I resent that,” he said, jabbing an accusing finger at Mech. “One thing you will learn, my hulking robotic friend, is that I am nothing if not punctual.”

CHAPTER NINE

Seventeen minutes later, Cal stepped out of the room, four-fifths of the way towards being fully dressed.

The contents of the wardrobe had ranged from ‘baffling’ to ‘fashion crime’ and in the end he’d settled for a pair of light tan cargo pants and a white shirt that was several sizes too big. The way it hung in flaps under his arms made him feel like a backing dancer at a Kate Bush concert. It wasn’t, if he were honest, an entirely unpleasant feeling to have.

“Ta-daa!” he said, twirling on the spot. Miz wolf-whistled, without so much as a hint of irony, but Mech and Loren both looked far from happy.

“What kept you?” asked Loren.

“See? I told you. What did I tell you?” said Mech, his metal jaw chomping open and closed as he spoke. “Gonna be late.”

“What? Three minutes. I wasn’t any more than that, was I?” said Cal. He gestured down to his bare feet. “Couldn’t find any shoes. Am I going to need them, or can I make do without, do we think?”

Loren about-turned and hurried off along a drab, windowless corridor. “You’ll have to do without. Let’s move, and pray the president isn’t angry.”

“He seems an OK guy,” said Cal, following behind. “I’m sure he won’t mind.”

“Oh, he is an OK guy. Nice, even,” said the officer. “You know… mostly.”

“Mostly?” said Miz, falling into step beside Cal and encroaching deep into his personal space.

“Put it this way, ninety-nine percent of the time, he’s great. Charming, funny, handsome…” Loren began.

“Hey, are we still talking about the pres here, or have we moved on to me?” Cal asked. Miz giggled and nudged him with her elbow. It hurt quite a lot, but he tried not to let on.

Loren ignored them both. “But if he gets angry – really angry, I mean… Well, you know that massacre on Keplack a few years back? All those smugglers? That was him.”

Mech whistled through his metal lips. “He ordered that?”

“No, I mean that was him,” said Loren. “He killed them. On his own.”

“Whoa. That’s pretty badams,” said Mech.

Miz shrugged. “Meh. It’s not so great. Did he eat any of them?”

“What? No!” said Loren.

“Oh, well Eugene...”

“Cal,” Cal corrected.

“He’s eaten lots of people.”

“Yes, I have. That’s right. At least some of whom were still very much alive at the time,” Cal said. “Apparently.”

Loren stopped outside an elevator door and waited.

“Uh, thanks for getting involved with those guys last night,” Cal said. “I mean, I had it in hand, obviously, but… thanks.”

“It’s fine,” said Loren.

“What was it they called you?” he asked. “Kojack?”

Loren shifted awkwardly. “Botak,” she said. “It means… one who has been promoted to a higher rank without earning it.”

“Oh,” said Cal. He shrugged. “Well, you know, burn, I guess.”

The elevator opened and Loren led the group inside. It was far roomier than the elevator Cal had been shoved in the day before, with space for a dozen people, or five carefully-stacked Mechs.

“Senior officer dining deck,” Loren said, and the lift hummed as it glided gently upwards.

“Dining deck?” said Cal. His stomach rumbled in anticipation. “Does that mean… breakfast?”

Mech glared at him. “It’s lunchtime, man. Lunchtime.”

“For you, maybe,” said Cal. “But for me, it’s breakfast. Or, should I say, it’s my first ever sp--”

“Don’t,” Mech growled. A mechanical finger unfolded and jabbed towards Cal’s open mouth. “Don’t say it, man. I’m warning you. Don’t you say ‘space breakfast.’ That will not end well for you.”

“‘It’s my first ever special breakfast with my new friends,’ is what I was going to say,” said Cal. The elevator door swished open. “My new space friends,” he quickly added, then he darted out before Mech could make a grab for him.

Four rifle-type weapons trained on Cal immediately. He stopped and raised his hands. “Hey, easy, easy!” He gestured past the guards to the long table in the center of the room, where President Sinclair and Legate Jjin were already seated. “We’re just here for breakfast. No need to get all… gun-pointy.”

Cal placed the back of his hand next to his mouth and stepped in closer to one of the guards. “Sorry we’re late,” he whispered. “Robocop needed an oil change.”

“I heard that, man,” Mech barked. “I did not make us late, you did! And who the fonk is Robocop?”

“He’s part man, part machine, yet all cop,” Cal explained. “You’d like him. Assuming you have emotions. Well, an emotion other than ‘anger’ at least. You should really work on that, by the way.”

“Let them through,” called the president. He half-stood, beckoning the group over. Cal pushed the guns aside and approached the table.

The room was long and narrow, with a number of doors leading through to other rooms. A table made of gray wood took up almost half the floor space, the glow of the starlight through the windows reflecting off its mirror-like polished surface.

Clearly, they liked their windows in this place. The whole length of the back wall behind President Sinclair was transparent, affording a view of space which, while still spectacular, seemed ever so slightly less spectacular than it had yesterday.

Sinclair nodded a greeting at Cal as he approached, and gestured to a seat on his immediate left. Cal took the one next to it, instead, and enjoyed the flicker of annoyance that briefly crossed Sinclair’s face.

“Good afternoon. Sleep well?” the president asked.

“Great, thanks,” Cal replied. “You?”

Sinclair’s brow furrowed lightly, as if it wasn’t a question he’d ever considered before. “I don’t.” He laughed, but it was an affectation rather than anything genuinely mirthful. “Just too much to do. You know how it is.”

“No,” said Cal, yawning. “No, not really.”

The others took their seats at the table – Loren directly across from him, next to her scowling superior officer, Miz on Cal’s right, Mech on a reinforced chair a couple of feet away on his left.

Sinclair nodded and smiled at them all in turn. “I’ve taken the liberty of having the kitchen prepare delicacies from each of your home worlds. They’ll be with us presently.”

“Good, because I don’t know about the rest of you guys, but I am famished. Last thing I had was a lemon candy, and I was forced to spit that out just as it was starting to get good,” said Cal.

He looked around the table. “Where’s the blobby green guy?” he asked.

“The organism is back in its containment,” said Jjin.

“It doesn’t get breakfast?”

“Lunch,” said Mech.

“Whatever,” said Cal. “It doesn’t get any?”

“It doesn’t eat,” Jjin said. “It has no mouth.”

“You said he was part of…” He gestured around the table. “Whatever this is, right? That he was coming with us?”

Sinclair nodded. “Yes. That’s the plan. The organism will be joining you. I believe its abilities may be of use.”

“Then he should be having breakfast with us.”

“It doesn’t eat,” Jjin said, slowly this time, as if talking to an idiot.

Cal shrugged. “Well, then that’s his choice. Either way, I’d like the pleasure of his company.”

“Yes, me too,” agreed Mizette.

“Thank you, Miz,” said Cal.

President Sinclair held Cal’s gaze for what felt like a very long time. Neither of them spoke.

“For the record,” said Mech. “I ain’t got no opinion, either way. The blob’s not here, I ain’t going to lose no sleep over it. All I’m saying.”

“Eugene… sorry, Cal, is right. It should be here,” said Sinclair, at last. He beckoned over one of the guards and whispered in his ear. The soldier nodded and returned to his spot by the elevator. “It will be with us shortly,” Sinclair said. He leaned forwards, placing his elbows on the table and steepling his fingers in front of his mouth. “I must say, Cal, you’re taking this all very well.”

“All what?” asked Cal.

“All everything. Being plucked from your home world, taken up here, introduced to all this. I expected more… disbelief, perhaps. More of a reaction, at least.”

Cal shrugged. “I’ve found myself in a lot of situations that could be considered… unusual over the years. This is only, like, the third weirdest.” He raised his eyes to the ceiling in thought for a moment. “Possibly fourth.”

“Perhaps it just hasn’t sunk in yet,” said Sinclair. “You’ve been taken from Earth and shown a glimpse of the heavens. You’ve travelled farther than any other human being alive.”

“Yeah, but that’s not exactly saying much, is it? Like you said, you’ve killed most of them.”

The President tried to hide his irritation, but couldn’t help but sigh. “Still sore about that, then?”

“Sore about it?” said Cal, leaning forwards sharply. “Yes, Mr Space President, I’m still ‘sore about that.’ Everyone I’ve ever known is probably now dead. My friends. My neighbors. My parents. I mean, yeah, I hadn’t spoken to them in years…”

Cal caught the confused expressions around the table. “…on account of me having eaten them and everything.” He pointed to Legate Jjin. “Have you ever heard of Tobey Maguire?”

Jjin shook his head. “No.”

“Exactly!” said Cal. “None of you people have.”

He deflated a little, like he’d just forgotten the point he was trying to make. He shrugged. “So, sorry I’m not all wide-eyed with wonder, Mr Space President. Kinda dealing with some heavy duty emotional turmoil right now. Let me get back to you on the whole ‘being excited’ thing later, OK?”

Sinclair glanced around at the others, then nodded his understanding. “Of course. I appreciate it must be difficult for you. And please, call me Hayel.”

“Hayel?” said Cal. He raised his hand in a half-hearted version of a Nazi salute. “As in Heil Hitler?”

Sinclair looked bemused. “Uh, yes. Yes, like that.”

One of the room’s many doors swished open. A line of waiters bustled in. Cal recognized the skinny little pink guy in front and gave him an enthusiastic wave.

“Hey, it’s Grxx… Gryyxx… Gyryr… Hey, it’s that guy!” he said.

The waiter’s rubbery-face assembled itself into an expression that suggested it was happy to see Cal, then continued leading the serving line around the table. None of the waiting staff were human, or even within spitting distance of it. If you squinted, one of them looked a bit like a child’s drawing of a human being, but even that was a bit of a stretch.

There were six of them in total, and as the last server filed through the door, Cal’s stomach twisted in shock. Those four arms. The bulbous eyes. The portly frame. He recognized her at once.

“Get down!” he yelped, leaping up from his chair and ramming his shoulder into the alien. Her bulging eyes bulged even wider. Her tray flew into the air then hit the floor, spilling its contents with a sploot.

Cal and the alien landed beside the tray in a tangle of flailing arms and legs. “Help!” she yelped. “H-help!”

“Eugene! What are you doing?” Loren hissed, grabbing his arm before he could deliver a knock-out punch.

“It’s her! From the video,” Cal said. “The one who shot all those people.”

“I didn’t shoot nuffin’!” the alien protested.

“Of course it’s not her,” Loren said, locking Cal’s arm behind his back. “She’s just the same species. They look nothing alike.”

“What do you mean, they look nothing alike?” said Cal, gesturing to the alien woman who was still trapped beneath him. “Same number of arms. Same number of eyes.”

“So do we,” Loren pointed out.

Cal’s mouth dropped open in a way that suggested words were supposed to emerge, but none did. He gently cleared his throat and straightened the waitress’s uniform. “Madame, it appears I’ve made a mistake,” he said, brushing an imaginary speck of dust off her lapel. “I hope you can forgive me. I’m very new to all this, and may have accidentally acted in a racist manner. My apologies.”

He got to his feet and offer the waitress a hand. She took it and struggled to her feet. She glanced at the shocked faces around the table, then down at the tray on the floor. Something spindly and fish-like was mushed into the vinyl beside it.

Cal knelt down. “I’m just going to go ahead and clean that up.”

“Wait,” said Mech. “Is that orvark?”

“Fresh from the Paloosh Sea,” said President Sinclair, drily. “We thought you’d appreciate it.”

“Ain’t never had no orvak before,” Mech said. “Always wanted to try it.”

Cal deposited the plate on the table in front of Mech. The fish-thing was now largely a mush, with flecks of dust and other grime stuck to it. Mech stared down at it impassively.

“Just, you know, eat round the hairs, they’re probably Miz’s,” Cal suggested, patting the cyborg on the back as he returned to his seat. “Sorry. False alarm,” he told the others. “Thought she was someone else. She probably gets it all the time.”

“What, tackled to the ground?” said Loren, sitting down opposite him again.

Mizette’s clawed hand settled on Cal’s leg. “Well, I thought it was brave.”

“Thanks,” he said, his voice wobbling as Miz’s fingernails scraped gently up the inside of his thigh. He spasmed with relief as a covered tray was set down before him, twisting his leg until her hand fell away. “Oh good, food’s here.”

In perfect unison, all the waiters – aside from the woman Cal had knocked over, who just stood around looking awkward – lifted the silver lids off the trays, revealing the food beneath. Mizette gasped in wonder at the carefully stacked tower of shimmering blue balls stacked up in something that looked suspiciously like a large dog bowl. Her nostrils flared as she leaned over and drew in the scent. Her eyes closed and her tongue flopped out, basking in that smell for a few lingering moments.

Cal, meanwhile, was staring at his plate. Sitting on it, wobbling ever so gently, was a pair of human buttocks.

The skin had been removed, making it hard to tell if they were male or female. There was more meat than on a Thanksgiving turkey, so the sheer size of them made him guess they had belonged to a large man. Or possibly some sort of previously undiscovered yeti-type creature.

Cal’s eyes met those of President Sinclair, who smiled and gave him an encouraging nod. “No need to thank me,” he said. “I know how long it’s been.”

“Too long,” Cal croaked, gazing down at the roasted ass cheeks again. They had been carefully placed on a bed of salad, and lightly dusted with some kind of herbs, neither of which made it look any more appealing. “Way too long.”

On Cal’s right, Miz was already getting stuck into her food. On the left, Mech was trying to pick little black flecks off his fish-thing with his enormous metal fingers. It was a frustrating process, judging by the way he kept muttering to himself.

Sinclair, Jjin and Loren all watched Cal expectantly. He smiled at them, while doing his best not to throw up all over the table.

“This looks delicious,” he said, which seemed to come as a great relief to the president.

“Excellent! I hoped you’d like it. It’s your former cellmate.”

“Is it? Is it, really?” said Cal, staring in renewed horror at the carefully prepared buttocks. “I didn’t recognize him from this angle.”

His stomach tightened and he pushed the plate away. “I really appreciate the gesture, but well, the thing is, Hayel, I only eat human flesh in the evenings.”

The president frowned. “What? Why?”

“I… don’t know,” Cal admitted. He shrugged. “It’s just one of my many little endearing quirks. Probably something to do with my upbringing. Your guess is as good as mine. The point is… if you guys maybe had a Danish, or some sort of pastry, or something…?”

Legate Jjin’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. Cal quickly pointed to the plate of wobbling ass cheeks. “But absolutely put that in a bag in the fridge, and I’ll have it later today. Tomorrow at the latest.”

President Sinclair nodded sharply to one of the waiting staff. He bowed in return then scuttled off on too many legs. The rest of the waiters followed behind, filing out through the door they’d entered by, just as another slid open.

A guard entered, wheeling a trolley before him. On the trolley, squashed inside a glass canister, the green blob gazed out.

“Splurt!” Cal said. He turned to the others. “Are we OK with calling him ‘Splurt,’ by the way? I just thought it suited him.”

“It’s a shapeshifting biological entity,” said Jjin. “It doesn’t have a name.”

“Everyone’s got to have a name,” said Cal. “That’s the rules. What do you think, Splurt?”

The newly-christened Splurt offered no response whatsoever.

“I think he likes it,” said Cal.

Two guards lifted the container and placed it on the chair next to Loren. Splurt’s eyes were hidden beneath the tabletop, but slowly floated upwards until they were just visible above it.

“There. The gang’s all here,” said Cal, then he let out a little groan of excitement as a plate laden with pastries was placed before him by the worm-like waiter from the bar. “Grrurkrykkx, I could kiss you,” he said, having a valiant stab at the waiter’s name.

Miz let out a low, barely audible growl.

“But for your own safety, I’m not going to,” Cal said.

The waiter backed away from the table as Cal picked up a pastry and bit into it. An explosion of sweetness filled his mouth, making his eyes roll back in his head. “Oh, man. That is a good Danish. That is a surprisingly good Danish.”

“Good. Now, time is against us,” said the president. “Before we get into the details, I must ask if you’ve all had a chance to consider my proposal? Will you make the handover on our behalf?”

Mech looked up from his fishy mush. “If you’re gonna do that stuff you said, the pardon and whatnot, Hell yeah. I’m in.”

“I’ll do it if Cal’s doing it,” said Miz.

Sinclair shifted his gaze along the table. “Cal?”

Cal pointed to his mouth, chewing frantically. “Hmm-mm.”

Everyone waited.

Cal pointed to his mouth again, rocking his head from side to side in the hope it somehow sped up the chewing process. It didn’t.

Everyone waited.

Cal used his tongue to scrape the pastry debris off his teeth. Finally, he swallowed. He turned to the president.

“Sorry, what?”

Jjin’s chair scraped on the floor as he stood up, his pale blue face flushed with anger. Not taking his eyes off Cal, Sinclair raised a hand to stop the officer moving any further. With a flick of a finger, he motioned for Jjin to sit back down.

“I asked if you were prepared to go to the Remnants and make the deal with the Kornack on our behalf,” Sinclair said. The president’s mouth was smiling, but the rest of his face was refusing to get involved. “Time is against us, I’m afraid I must press you for an answer.”

“What if I say ‘no’?”

“Then we’ll return you home,” said the president.

“With those bug things you sent down? I’d be killed.”

“You’d already be dead,” Jjin said. “We couldn’t send you back alive. You know too much.”

Cal nodded. “Makes sense,” he said. “Well, I guess, in that case… count me in!”

“Me too,” Miz added.

“Excellent! Excellent!” Sinclair beamed. “Gunso Loren will be accompanying you on the mission.”

Across the table, Loren choked on her lunch. “Sorry, sir?” she coughed.

“Undercover, of course,” said Sinclair. “You’ll act as pilot and oversee the operation in the field.”

Loren wiped her chin on a napkin. “But… why me, sir?”

“Legate Jjin and I both felt you were the most qualified for this mission. You’re not known in the Remnants, and I can think of no-one more capable to lead.”

“Oh,” said Loren. “Right. Uh… I mean, thank you, sir.”

“Of course, the warlords won’t deal with a woman, so Cal will officially be captain.”

Cal thrust both arms in the air. “Yes!”

“What?” Mech snapped. “How come he gets to be captain? What about me?”

“I’m afraid the warlords are also unlikely to trust a cyborg,” Sinclair explained. “Besides, they place tremendous value on violence, and Kornack in particular has a real soft spot for cannibals. Hence why we hand-picked Mr Adwin here.”

Cal lowered his arms. “Well yay cannibalism,” he said, glancing briefly at the roasted buttocks of the real Mr Adwin, which still rested in the center of the table, undulating ever so slightly.

“Now, eat up,” said the president, cranking his smile up several notches. “There’s something I want you all to see.”

CHAPTER TEN

Cal stood on an enormously long moving walkway, gazing through the mile-high sheet of glass beside him at what was very clearly a spaceship. It the size of a small ocean liner, and impossibly sleek. It seemed to absorb the light, turning it into a shade of black that somehow managed to be both glossy and matte at the same time.

“Whoa,” Cal whispered. “Is that our spaceship?”

Mech turned on him. “That does it, man, I’ve warned you about putting ‘space’ in front of…” He hesitated. “Well, I mean, I guess it does actually make sense this time,” he admitted, gruffly.

“Actually, no, that’s mine,” said President Sinclair. “I’m heading off to Zertex Command One shortly. This is yours coming up now.”

The walkway carried them past Sinclair’s ship, and another ship behind it edged into view. Cal was no expert on spaceships, having never seen one in person until just a few moments ago, but he could immediately tell that the president’s craft was better in every conceivable way.

The other ship was a gun-metal gray, but pitted with more scorch marks than Mech’s armor. Parts of it were colored very slightly differently to the rest, giving the impression it had been welded together from bits and pieces of other ships.

Its neck was long and comparatively thin next to its bulky back end, which looked a bit like three different ships bolted loosely together. It was hard to judge the scale of it from so far away, but it was far smaller than the president’s ship. Half the size, maybe less.

“What a pile of junk,” said Miz.

“Outside, maybe,” said Sinclair. “We had to disguise it so you’d look like pirates.”

“Space pirates?” asked Cal, side-stepping out of Mech’s reach. “So it’s nicer inside?”

“Not nicer, as such,” said Sinclair. “But she’s got it where it counts. She’ll comfortably pull a one-eighty in a level six warp.”

“Is that good?” asked Cal. “That’s good, isn’t it? I can tell from his face,” he said, pointing at Mech.

“Not bad,” Mech admitted. “That is not bad at all. Weapons?”

“Enough to finish off what’s left of the Remnants for good,” said Jjin.

“Although we’re hoping that won’t be necessary,” added Sinclair. He gestured up to the ship. A few spider-like mechanoids scurried across its pitted surface, making final adjustments. “All that remains is to name it.”

“Shippy McShipface,” Cal suggested.

“A-ha-ha. Yes. Interesting, but no,” said Sinclair. “Pirate ships are always named after a legendary space-faring warrior from the captain’s native planet.”

“Then we got ourselves a problem,” said Mech. “Since Earth ain’t got none.”

“Shut up, yes it does!” Cal protested. He gazed up at the ship. “Legendary space-faring warrior, eh?” he muttered. A smile spread across his face and he rocked back on his heels. “OK,” he said. “I think I’ve got it.”

* * *

The inside of the Shatner was pretty much as unappealing as the outside. Wires and pipes hung from the walls and ran roughshod over the ceiling. Clouds of white vapor churned up through the floor panels at irregular intervals, like steam from the streets of New York. The whole thing had the air of something that was either midway through being built, or two-thirds of the way towards being decommissioned.

“Captain on the bridge,” Cal announced, ducking under a corrugated plastic pipe and stepping onto the flight deck. Four chairs were positioned at different terminals around the room. The one in the middle looked like the most important, with an assortment of joysticks, levers, switches and dials located in front, beside and above it. “Is that where I sit?” Cal asked.

“Can you fly a T6 interceptor class Hammerwing?” asked Loren.

“Is that what this is?” Cal asked.

“Yes.”

“Then I doubt it,” he admitted.

“Well, then I guess that isn’t your seat,” Loren told him. She looked round at Cal and the others. Mech was bending over a terminal, studying the screen. He had Splurt’s container tucked effortlessly under one arm. The little green blob pulsed inside it, looking quite happy, Cal thought.

Miz paced through the flight deck, sniffing the air. She stopped beside one of the chairs. “This is mine,” she said, quite forcefully.

“Fine by me,” said Cal. “You don’t have to, you know, pee on it or anything, do you?”

Mizette’s brown eyes narrowed. “What?”

“To mark it. Your territory, sort of thing?” said Cal. Miz just blinked again. “No? Good. That’s good. I was kidding. Of course you’re not going to pee on the chair, right? I was just joking.”

Loren sighed. “Is there anything you don’t joke about?”

Cal puffed out his cheeks. “Penis cancer, maybe?”

“Sorry I asked,” said Loren, shaking her head. She gestured back towards the door they’d just entered through. “Now come on, I’ll give you all the tour.”

* * *

One tour of the ship later, Cal was none the wiser as to how any of it worked. Mech seemed excited by lots of it, though, and Miz appeared to enjoy the smells she encountered along the way, but to Cal it just looked like room after room filled with pipes, wires and machines that went bleep. It was all a bit disappointing, really.

“I expected it to be more spacey,” he said, when they returned to the flight deck.

“We’re in space,” Mech pointed out. “It don’t get much more spacey than that.”

“No, I know, it’s just… where are the holographic computer screens floating in the air, you know?” Cal asked. “We had to push open all the doors ourselves – even Walmart has those swishy ones like they had in Star Trek.”

“We’re undercover,” Loren reminded him. “We’re supposed to be pirates. They’re not big on luxury.”

“Come on, are you seriously telling me they don’t have sliding doors?” said Cal. “All those hooked hands…? Who wants to wrestle with a door handle when you’ve got a hook for a hand? No-one, that’s who.”

Loren shook her head. “I have literally no idea what you’re talking about,” she said. “But I do know we’re leaving as soon as the ship’s fueled, so we’re going to want to get dressed.”

Cal looked down at his cargo pants and flappy shirt. “I am dressed.”

“You have no shoes,” Loren pointed out. “And no pirate captain would be seen dead dressed like that.”

She folded her hands crisply behind her back, trying very hard to look in charge. “Cal, Mizette, you’ll return to your quarters and get changed. Mech, I’ve booked you in for a respray on deck nine.”

“Respray? No-one said nothing about no respray,” Mech protested.

“It’s part of the deal. Take it or leave it,” Loren said.

“Fine,” said Mech. “Whatever.”

“We’ll reconvene back here in an hour,” Loren said. “Cal, I’ll arrange for you to be escorted so you aren’t late back.”

“Hey! I was late one time,” Cal protested. He looked Loren up and down. “What about you, officer? You losing the leather?”

“Wouldn’t exactly be undercover if I turned up in a Zertex uniform, would it?”

“Shame,” said Cal. He winked at her, but this only seemed to get on her nerves.

“One hour,” she said. “Then we go.”

* * *

Cal stood in his unfamiliar underwear, searching through the assortment of outfits in the wardrobe, hoping to find one that didn’t conspire to make him look like the star of a gay porn version of High Noon. Never before had he seen so many long coats, studded leather pants and frilly, tasseled shirts in one place. Or, not since that Whitesnake concert his dad had taken him to when he was a kid, anyway.

He’d taken off the cargo pants, but had now decided they would be going back on, as he couldn’t bring himself to squeeze into the studded leathers. That just left the top half to worry about.

Tucked behind a shirt so frilly it would have made Liberace think twice, Cal found a much plainer burgundy one. He unhooked it and tossed it onto the bed next to the cargo pants. There was a waistcoat a little further along – leather, of course, but a rich, woody brown rather than the plastic-looking black, and with not a single stud to be found anywhere on it. It joined the rest of the clothes on the bed.

Cal was just looking for a jacket or coat to complete the outfit when his door slid open. “Hey, almost naked here,” he protested, as Legate Jjin strode into the room. The door swished closed behind him again.

Jjin rocked on his heels, making his boots squeak. Feeling exposed, Cal covered his nipples with his fingertips. “Can I help you, Jjin?”

The legate’s face was fixed in its usual expression of contempt, so his next few words came as no great surprise. “I don’t like you, Adwin.”

“I’m not going to lie to you, Jjin, I got that vibe,” Cal said. “You really didn’t need to come all this way to tell me.”

“I don’t like that you’re on this mission. I don’t like that we’ve got one of your kind involved.”

“I broadly agree on both those points,” Cal said. He gestured to the wardrobe. “Now, great talk, but I should probably get on. Loren has me on a pretty tight schedule.”

“You will address her as Gunso Loren,” Jjin instructed.

“I’ll address her however I like,” said Cal. “You know, within reason, and provided she doesn’t find it offensive or anything, because we men need to be feminists, too. Am I right?”

He held up a hand for a high-five. Jjin didn’t acknowledge it.

“Can’t believe you’re just leaving me hanging here, Jjin. I thought you were better than that.”

“The fate of millions of lives hang on your actions on this mission,” Jjin said. “We need to find and stop that virus, and we can’t do that if you don’t make the trade.”

He stepped in closer until Cal could hear the breath whistling in and out through his wide nostrils. “Those people you saw killed in the restaurant? They’re a blip. A hiccup. They’re nothing compared to the death and devastation the virus could bring. It will ravage worlds, consume star systems, murdering or enslaving everything it finds there, man and machine alike.”

“OK. I get it.”

“Oh, but you don’t. You couldn’t possibly,” Jjin spat. “Even if the virus hasn’t spread too far, even if it can still be contained, if the Symmorium find out, we will be thrust back into a never-ending war that will kill whole generations. This is the most important mission in the history of Zertex.”

He regarded Cal with disgust. “And Sinclair sends you.”

“Look, Jjin, I think we got off on the wrong foot,” Cal began, then he doubled over in pain as Jjin brought up a tiny pistol and fired something into his eye. “Ow! Jesus! What the fonk was that?” Cal yelped, covering his eye with the heel of his hand. “Did you just shoot my eye out? Is this part of the pirate thing? So I have to wear a patch?”

He bounced up and down, shaking his arms and keeping his eye tightly shut. “Ow, ow, ow. Man, that really hurt,” he said. “You can’t just go around shooting people in the eye, Jjin. That’s…”

Cal stopped bouncing. Something was happening to the logo on Jjin’s uniform. The squiggly symbol on the side of the cylinder-shape was squirming and thrashing around as if it were alive. Then, with a sudden snap the shapes formed the word: Zertex.

“Visual translation chip,” Jjin said. “Translates text and data into a format you can understand.”

“So… what? I can read alien now?” asked Cal. He opened the still-stinging eye and looked down at his hands, as if something might be written there. Nothing was.

“Do not mess this up, Adwin,” Jjin warned. He backed towards the door and it slid open behind him. “Or I will hunt you down, and I will remove your entrails with my bare hands. That is not a threat, it is a statement of fact. Is that understood?”

“Got it, Jjin, and thanks for the chat,” he said, as the legate backed out of the room and crisply about-turned. “Seriously, drop by any time.”

The door started to close, then opened again. Miz’s hairy head leaned into view, the rest of her tucked out of sight around the door frame. “Ready?” she asked.

Cal looked down at his almost entirely naked body. “I dunno, does this say ‘space pirate’ to you?”

“It makes my loins ache with anticipation,” said Miz. Quite matter-of-factly, Cal thought.

“Um… right. Fair enough,” he said. He looked down at himself again. “You know, I’ll probably pop something else on and meet you back on the ship.”

“OK,” said Miz. She let her gaze linger on Cal for a few moments, then let out a little yap of excitement. The door closed and Cal hurriedly scrambled into the cargo pants in case it should open again. Only when he’d pulled up the zipper did he let himself relax.

“Wow,” he muttered. “They do not make six-year-olds like they used to.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

“Captain on the bridge,” said Cal, ducking through the door and stepping onto the flight deck. He didn’t think he’d ever get tired of saying that, and the fact it already appeared to be annoying Mech made him all the more determined to keep it up.

“Hey, Mech, what happened? Stand too long in the subway?” Cal asked. The cyborg’s metal parts hadn’t been resprayed so much as vandalized. A number of apparently random symbols had been daubed over his scorched and pitted chrome surfaces. None of them swam and turned into words, but they each gave off an air of menace that suggested they didn’t represent anything nice.

“What’s that one?” Cal asked, pointing towards a particularly threatening series of angled lines.

“Don’t touch me,” Mech warned, shuffling back. “Paint’s still wet. And how should I know what it means?”

“You’ve got it painted on your chest, next to your big dial thing,” Cal pointed out.

“Did I paint it on my chest?” Mech snapped. “Hmm? Did I paint it on there?”

“I don’t know, did you?” asked Cal.

“No! Some little dude with a spray can did.”

“Right,” said Cal. “And did you ask him what it meant?”

Mech’s metal jaw opened, but the rant that was about to emerge was derailed. “No,” he admitted. “No, I did not.”

“Well… maybe you should have,” Cal said. “That could mean anything.”

The sound of footsteps behind Cal made him turn. Loren stepped through the doorway, her arms wrapped self-consciously across her flat stomach. Her Zertex uniform was gone, replaced by a dark blue vest top, and a pair of tight-fitting pants with half a dozen buckles and straps on each leg.

Her blaster pistol hung from her waist on a low-slung holster, and she wore fingerless gloves on each hand with a series of short, stubby studs across the knuckles. Her hair, which had been scraped tightly back, now hung in a loose ponytail.

Cal swallowed.

“What?” Loren asked, hurrying past him. “What are you looking at?”

“Nothing,” said Cal. “It’s just… you look good.”

“I look like a criminal,” Loren said. She started bending over to adjust the pilot’s chair, then remembered where she was standing in relation to Cal and crouched instead.

“Then you’ll fit right in,” said Cal. He gestured down to his own outfit. He’d added a long, tatty-looking blue coat to the cargo pants, shirt and waistcoat combo, and found a pair of hefty workman-like boots in another closet. “Is this better?”

Loren shot him a cursory glance. “It’ll do.”

“Ta-daa!” announced Miz, stepping onto the flight deck. “What do you think?”

Cal shot her a glance, half-expecting to find her standing naked before him. To his relief, she wore what looked like a single jumpsuit made of a dark, putty-like material. It was sleeveless, with a little diamond-shaped hole probably designed to show-off the wearer’s belly button, but which currently showed nothing but hair.

Miz twirled like a fashion model. There was a hole for her tail to poke through, but it was messy and clumsy-looking, as if it had been a bit of an afterthought.

“That looks very practical. Good choice,” Cal said. And it did. Far more practical than he’d been bracing himself for. “Hey, wait. Where’s Splurt?”

He turned away, completely missing the expression of disappointment that flitted over Miz’s face. Splurt lurked in his glass cylinder, his bulbous bloodshot eyes bobbing around inside his gloopy green goo.

“Brought you something, little buddy,” Cal said, reaching into an inside pocket. He unfurled a squashed, battered pirate hat and placed it on top of the tank. Splurt’s gaze shifted upwards for a moment, then his surface rippled ever so slightly. “You’re welcome,” Cal grinned, then he turned back to Loren.

The gunso had slid herself into the pilot seat and was flipping a series of switches on the console above her head. A soft hum from deep inside the ship made the floor vibrate beneath Cal’s feet.

Through the big window at the front of the flight deck – although he was sure ‘big window’ probably wasn’t the correct technical term – an enormous circle of metal opened like the shutter of a camera. Through the hole it left, Cal could see stars shining like jewels in the darkness.

“So, we’re really doing this?” he said.

“Looks like it,” said Mech. Behind them, unnoticed, Mizette extended her claws.

“You’re going to want to sit down,” Loren warned. She flicked a switch. The ship shuddered. She quickly unflicked it again. “Wait, no, not that.”

Cal raised a finger. “Uh… you do know how to fly this thing, yeah?”

“Of course I do,” said Loren. “It’s just… the simulator’s layout is a little different.”

“Simulator?” said Mech. “You’ve flown a real one, though, right?”

“The simulator’s just like the real thing,” Loren assured him. “And I clocked up more time on it than anyone else in my graduating class.”

“No, but it’s not the same, is it?” said Cal. “You just said it’s different. Everyone heard her say that, right?”

“I did. She did say that,” agreed Mech.

There was a rrrrip from behind them. Mech and Cal both turned in time to see Mizette carving a strip out of her outfit. It ran all the way around her abdomen, turning her once-practical one-piece into a midriff-baring crop top.

With another few flashes of her claws, the pants were transformed into shorts that ended in tattered rags just above her knees.

“Not so practical now, is it?” she said, spitting out the word as if it had filled her mouth with a bad taste.

Before Cal could answer, the nose of the Shatner lurched sharply downwards. He grabbed Mech’s arm.

“The paint, man! Watch the pain!”

The ship dropped fast. Cal screamed as his stomach shot up to somewhere around his ears.

“Sorry, sorry, my fault!” Loren called. The ship jerked to a stop and Cal’s stomach twanged down to somewhere past his knees.

“Jesus fonking Christ!” Cal exclaimed. “Can you give us a bit of warning before you do that?”

“I told you to sit down,” said Loren, her pale blue skin flushing a shade of deep purple.

“Why, so you could hit the button for the ejector seat?” Cal grimaced. He tugged on his pants, trying to retrieve his testicles, which had been fired up into his lower abdomen with the force of a kicking mule. “Seriously, is there maybe, like, a manual for this thing or something?”

“I don’t need a manual,” Loren said.

“My balls beg to differ,” said Cal.

Loren reached for another button. “Wait!” Cal yelped. “Let me sit down first.”

He hobbled to a chair that was fixed to the floor just a few paces behind Loren’s and lowered himself onto it. Feeling around the edges of the seat’s high back, he found a couple of V-shaped straps that fastened in an X across his chest.

The chair had two wide metal arms. He gripped the ends and gave Loren a nod. “OK, I’m ready. Everyone else buckled up?”

“I’m all strapped in for the ride,” said Miz, managing to make it sound incredibly dirty.

“Don’t need to,” Mech said. He pointed to the floor. “Magnetized my feet.”

“Yay for space magnets,” Cal said. He pointed dramatically towards the doorway far ahead. “First officer Loren, warp speed now!”

Loren eased a lever forwards half-an-inch or so. The Shatner hummed as it glided gently ahead. “Or, you know, crawl very slowly towards the exit,” Cal said. “Whatever you think’s best.”

The circular view of space grew slightly larger. The ship edged towards it. Cal drummed his fingers on the arms of the chair and whistled below his breath.

“It’s taking quite a long time,” he said.

“We’re in dock,” said Loren, making a series of tiny adjustments to the controls. “This is as fast as we can go.”

Cal rocked in his chair and discovered to his delight that it swiveled. He kicked off and raised his knees, twirling himself in a full circle. He waved at Mizette and Mech as he spun past, then smiled when he saw Splurt watching him from inside the tank. That hat really suited the little guy.

After a few more spins, Cal went back to facing front. The doorway loomed a little larger through the glass, but not a lot.

He puffed out his cheeks.

He clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth.

“Eye spy with my little eye,” he began, “something beginning with S.”

“Space,” said Mech.

Cal tutted. “Oh, well thanks for ruining that. Well done.”

A red light blinked furiously on the console to Loren’s right. “What’s that mean?” Cal asked. “Have you hit the self-destruct? You’ve hit the self-destruct, haven’t you?”

“It means we’re clear to warp,” said Loren, tapping the light to acknowledge it. “Ready?”

“Ready,” said Miz.

“Ready,” said Mech.

“Is it too late to go to the bathroom?” Cal asked.

“Yes,” said Loren, then she flicked a switch, pushed a lever, and nothing whatsoever happened.

Loren muttered quietly as she checked the controls again. “Should we have sped up there?” Cal asked. “I feel like that’s what we were all waiting for.”

“Yes. I just… hold on,” Loren said. She reached up and tapped a few buttons above her head, then took hold of the lever again. “Right, got it,” she said.

“Are we taking bets?” Cal began to say, but his words became long and thin, stretching out of his mouth like soft toffee, as the universe flung itself past them in a shimmering shower of shooting stars.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Cal retched with such force he felt as if his whole body was trying to turn itself inside-out from the rectum upwards. A blob of mucusy bile dribbled from his bottom lip, the rest of his stomach contents having already been forcibly ejected over the previous four long, harrowing minutes.

The sound of the retching echoed noisily around inside Splurt’s glass container. Mech had managed to tip the little green blob out just in time for Cal to splatter the inside of the cylinder in a viscous fountain of vomit.

Splurt, for his part, didn’t seem to mind too much. He rolled in tight circles on the floor, his eyes remaining disconcertingly fixed in place while the rest of him rotated around them.

Cal heaved again. His eyes bulged and his face turned an inhuman shade of red. “Oh God. I’m going to die,” he wheezed between retches.

“Aw, man, that stinks,” Mech protested.

“Yeah? Try having my nose,” complained Mizette. She had retrieved one of the torn-off pieces of her outfit and wrapped it around the end of her snout to block out the smell. It wasn’t helping.

Cal leaned back in his chair, breathing heavily. The stars blurred by outside and he doubled over again as another wave of nausea hit him.

This time, though, nothing emerged. He straightened, keeping his arms wrapped around the container and hugging it close to his chest. “That was unpleasant,” he slurred, closing his eyes and pressing his forehead against the cool glass.

“Weren’t no barrel of laughs for us, neither,” said Mech.

“The first few warp jumps can be a little disconcerting,” Loren said.

‘Disconcerting’ wasn’t the word Cal would have used for it. It had felt like his insides had all been transported outside in one sudden lunging leap. For a moment, he’d seen himself in third person, and had spent a panicky few seconds assuming he’d died and was now looking down on himself as a ghost.

Then his innards and his soul had slammed back into place, as if attached to his body by a length of elastic. Colors had swum before his eyes. His eyes, in turn, had somersaulted around inside his head like the barrels of a slot machine, while his head itself had dripped down his neck like melting ice cream and pooled in a puddle in his lap.

At least, that was how it felt at the time. It was round about that point that he’d clamped a hand over his mouth and frantically gestured for Mech to tip Splurt out of his container. The cyborg had figured out the meaning of the frenzied flurry of hand movements with barely a second to spare.

“Are we nearly there yet?” Cal asked, enjoying the coldness of Splurt’s container against his face.

“Not yet. About eight hours at current speed,” said Loren.

“Oh, Jesus,” Cal groaned, swallowing back the urge to blow chunks again. “I think I need to go to sick bay.”

“What you talking about, ‘sick bay’?” asked Mech.

Cal peeled his face away from the glass. “Don’t we have a sick bay?”

“No, we ain’t got no sick bay!”

“We’ve got a room with a bench in it,” said Loren. “If you want to lie down.”

Miz unstrapped herself and jumped up. “I’ll take him.”

“No, it’s… it’s fine. I’ll find it,” said Cal, fiddling with the fastener of his seat belts. After some effort, the straps sprang apart. He stumbled to his feet, tucking the puke-splattered tub under one arm. The content sloshed around unpleasantly as he stumbled towards the door.

“I’m just going to go back there and close my eyes for a while. I’m not going to sleep,” Cal said. “But if I do, wake me in… How long did you say it was until we got where we’re going?”

“Eight hours,” said Loren.

“Wake me in eight hours,” Cal said. He started to duck through the door. “Unless, you know, I seem really tired, then give me another twenty minutes.”

“I can watch you sleeping, if you like?” Miz volunteered.

“Thanks for the offer,” said Cal. “But seriously, I’m fine.” He glanced back at the window, where outer space was hurtling towards them at impossible speed. His stomach flipped. “Catch you in a while,” he managed, then he staggered out into the corridor, and set off in search of the room with the bench.

As luck would have it, Cal found the room after only a few wrong turns. He teetered in on unsteady legs and flopped onto the padded bench, hugging it as if it were a long-lost family member. With his free hand, he lowered Splurt’s vomit-sodden canister to the floor beside him, and deliberately turned his head so he was facing away from the room’s single small window. Through it, the stars whizzed past like streaking comets, shooting right to left in fractions of seconds.

Stars. There were stars passing the window.

He was on a spaceship. An actual spaceship. In space.

He hugged the bench while the enormity of that thought sunk in.

“I really fonking hate space,” he decided.

With some effort, he managed to shrug off his coat. He let it fall to the floor, worried for a moment that it might have fallen in the tub of sick, but quickly came to the conclusion that he didn’t really care.

He sprackled around so he was lying on his back, then draped an arm across his eyes, blocking out the constant flickering of the passing stars.

Stars.

Space.

Outer space.

He found himself wondering just how far he was from home. Not that he’d really considered anywhere ‘home’ for a long time, but the planet Earth had a general sort of homeliness to it, even if there wasn’t one specific place where he truly felt he belonged.

A few more faces from his past flashed up behind his closed eyelids. Old teachers. Old neighbors. Old friends. As they passed, their faces morphed one-by-one into that of a solemn-looking Tobey Maguire.

More and more people he once knew whistled past, until soon there was an army of Tobey Maguires, standing in ranks that stretched as far as the eye could see. There were thousands of him. Millions, maybe. They stood in a hushed silence and watched him, almost expectantly.

“I… I don’t know what you want, Tobey Maguires,” Cal said, and his voice seemed to startle them. Cal gaped in wonder as the millions of Tobey Maguires all lifted off the ground as one. They undulated through the air, dancing and twirling on the breeze like a murmuration of starlings. Cal raised a hand and giggled as his fingers brush against one of the Tobey Maguires’ soft, downy faces. They were, without question, the most beautiful thing he had ever--

“Cal!”

The Tobey Maguires scattered as Cal jumped awake. “Whu-?” he cried, lashing out at the empty space in front of him.

Loren leaned back to avoid his flailing arms. Cal saw her, took several seconds to get a handle on what had happened, then cleared his throat. “Sorry about that,” he said. “We there?”

“No,” said Loren.

“Then shouldn’t you, you know, be flying the ship?” Cal said.

“That’s the thing,” said Loren. “We’ve got a little bit of a problem.”

* * *

“So… you broke it?”

Cal and Loren stood in the engine room, surrounded by towering stacks of equipment. They’d visited the room during the tour earlier. Even then, before they were moving, it had hummed and hissed and bleeped like there was no tomorrow. Now, everything was eerily silent, and only a few lights flickered here and there.

They were both staring down at something that had clearly been on fire at some point in its recent history.

“I didn’t break it, it just broke,” Loren said.

“This is the engine, right?”

“It’s part of it, yes.”

“Of the spaceship that you were flying?” said Cal.

Loren shifted uncomfortably. “Yes.”

“You see where I’m going with this, don’t you?” said Cal. He squatted next to the burned out piece of machinery. It was the length of a small car, and maybe a third of the height. Metal pipes ran in a spider-web pattern from a steering-wheel sized circular bump on the top center. Most of the smoke poured out through a narrow strip of metal mesh that ran around the circle’s edge.

“What does it do?”

“It’s the warp capacitor,” Loren explained.

“And we need that to warp?” Cal guessed. Loren nodded, and Cal’s face lit up. “See, this stuff isn’t so hard! Can’t we just fly at normal speed?”

“Well, yes, theoretically, but it’d take a lot longer.”

“How much longer?”

Loren’s lips moved as she calculated in her head. “Nine thousand years.”

“OK, so that’s too long.” Cal turned his attention back to the warp capacitor. “We’ve got a spare, though, right?”

“No.”

“Well that seems a little short-sighted,” said Cal. “Have you tried switching it off and back on again? That usually works.”

“Yes,” said Loren. “But it didn’t.”

Cal whistled through his teeth. “That’s pretty much where my technical knowledge ends. Can we fix it?”

An unfamiliar voice rang out from behind one of the equipment stacks. “To effect a repair on the warp capacitor would be child’s play.”

Cal’s head whipped around. “Who said that?”

From a passageway between two banks of equipment stepped Mech. While he was physically the same size as he’d always been, he seemed smaller, somehow, and more stooped. His mannerisms were different – a little twitchier and more erratic – and the fleshy bits of his face seemed, for once, to be smiling.

“Have no fear, my boy, ‘tis but I, Gluk Disselpoof, your companion upon this quest.”

“We cranked up his dial,” said Loren, as if that explained everything. When it became clear from Cal’s expression that it didn’t actually explain anything at all, she continued: “Turn his dial left – his left, I mean, our right - and it diverts power to his processors. Turn it right and it diverts to his hydraulics.”

Cal worked this through in his head. “Left makes him smarter, right makes him stronger?”

“Precisely!” chirped Mech. He approached them shakily, leaning on some of the equipment for support. “Warp technology is inordinately complex, hence us taking the decision to turn my intellect up several notches,” he said, indicating the dial on his chest. It was around two-thirds of the way to the left, with only a few degrees left to turn. “Alas, this necessitates diverting power from my body, which has a detrimental effect on its capacity to function efficiently.”

He wobbled unsteadily for a few more steps, then leaned on the smoking machine. “As I was saying, effecting repairs on the warp capacitor itself does not pose any sort of problem.”

“I feel there’s a ‘but’ coming,” said Cal.

“And indeed you are correct. It appears that the warp disk, which gives the capacitor its ability to generate the magnitudes of light speed we require, has been fractured,” Mech explained. “That, as you will almost certainly be aware, Gunso Loren, is far more troubling a situation for us to find ourselves in.”

Loren groaned. “Great. Well, there’s nothing else for it. We’re going to have to call Zertex Command for help.”

“We can do that?” asked Cal. “Great! What’s the problem? We’ll just call your boss and have him bring us another one of those disk things, then boom, we’re good to go. Right?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I guess,” Loren said.

“I’m sensing issues with that plan,” said Cal.

“What? No. No issues,” Loren said.

Cal raised his eyebrows in encouragement. “It’s just…”

“It’s just I wanted to prove I could do this,” Loren said. “In the field, I mean, not just on a simulator or behind a desk.” She gestured towards the smoking machinery. “Instead, I break the ship and have to call for help four hours into the mission.”

“You want to show them you’re not a Kojack,” said Cal.

“Botak,” Loren corrected. She sighed. “It’s fine. I’ll call Zertex.”

Cal turned to Mech. “And there’s definitely no way you can fix it?”

“I’m afraid not,” said Mech. “We cannot possibly affect any repairs without a replacement warp disk.”

“Guys? Hey, guys?” called Miz from further along the ship. “We’ve got a problem.”

“We know,” Cal shouted back.

“No, I mean we’ve got another one. You’re going to want to get up here. Like, right now.”

Loren led the way through the ship, with Cal following close behind and Mech plodding unsteadily along at the back.

Cal heard her let out a sharp gasp as she ducked through the door and hurried onto the flight deck. “What? What is it?” he asked, then he scrambled through behind her and immediately saw the problem.

There, filling most of the window in front of them, was a fiercely angular-looking gray ship with a white-painted underbelly.

“Who’s that?” Cal said, finding himself whispering for reasons he wasn’t quite sure of.

“The Symmorium,” Loren replied, and there was a shake in her voice that Cal couldn’t miss. “That’s a Symmorium ship!”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Cal was the only one on the flight deck who didn’t immediately grasp quite how grave a situation they had found themselves in. This was largely because he had no idea who the Symmorium were. Even Splurt had stopped rolling around, and now sat tucked behind the pilot’s chair, his bloodshot eyes peeking out at the other ship.

“So, are they, like… the bad guys?” Cal guessed. “That looks like a bad guy spaceship.” He squinted. “Have they painted teeth on the front? That is definitely a heel move.”

“The Symmorium have been at war with Zertex since Zertex moved into the political sector,” Loren explained.

“Moved into the political sector?” Cal echoed. “What did it do before that?”

“Manufactured soft drinks,” said Loren.

“Soft drinks? What, so it’s like… the Coca-Cola of space?” Cal said. He slapped himself on the forehead. “Now the logo makes sense. The hand’s holding a drink can!”

“Uh… big spaceship?” Miz reminded him, gesturing to the vessel hanging ominously in space ahead of them.

“Oh yeah. Gotcha,” Cal said. He clicked his tongue against his teeth a few times. “Can we go around it?”

“They won’t let us,” said Loren. “The Symmorium and Zertex have a truce for the moment, but that doesn’t extend to pirates. We’re close to Symmorium space here. I’m surprised they haven’t opened fire already.”

“We should strike now and destroy them first,” Miz suggested. “Use our weapons. Blast them all the way to Sasqkar!”

“Quite impossible, I’m afraid,” said Mech, shuffling unsteadily onto the flight deck. “With the warp capacitor compromised, we simply don’t have enough power to fully charge our weapons systems. We’d get in a few good hits, but their phase shielding would prevent them sustaining even moderate damage.”

Miz looked the cyborg up and down. “What’s happened to him?”

“He turned his brain up,” said Cal. “So, let me get this straight, we can’t run and we can’t fight. Does that sum our current situation up?”

“Also the shields are operating at a little below sixty percent peak efficiency,” said Mech. “As a direct result of--”

“The broken warp capacitor,” Loren snapped. “OK, yes, we get it. Like I told you, it wasn’t my fault.”

“No-one’s saying it was your fault,” said Cal.

Loren shifted awkwardly. “Well… good.”

“I mean, we’re all thinking it, obviously. Just not saying it out loud.”

Loren sighed. “Right.”

“Because it would be impolite.”

“Got it.”

“Even if it’s true.”

“OK. Thank you for that explanation.”

A green light pulsed below the windshield. It was accompanied by a short blast of an urgent-sounding tone.

“We’re being hailed,” said Loren. “They’re hailing us.”

“That’s like phoning us, right?” said Cal. “They want to talk? Well that’s great! Maybe we can reason with them.”

He flopped into his seat. “Let’s hear what they have to say.”

“Are you insane?” Loren hissed. “The Symmorium don’t negotiate with pirates.”

“And yet, they want to talk. So maybe they’re not going to blow us up. That’s got to be a positive, right? Let’s answer the phone.”

Reluctantly, Loren flicked a switch on the panel beside Cal. What Cal had thought was an enormous window revealed itself to be an enormous screen instead. The live feed of outer space was replaced by the snarling head of a heavily scarred shark-like alien.

“Pirate vessel, prepare to be destroyed!” the shark-thing barked.

Cal flipped the switch and the view of space returned. “No, you’re right, they’re totally going to kill us,” he said.

A series of numbers flashed up around the on-screen ship. “Weapons charging,” Loren said.

“Ours or theirs?” asked Cal.

“Theirs.”

“Shizz. How long will that take?”

Mech studied the rapidly changing numbers on the screen. “It appears they have recently dropped out of warp. As a result, it will take approximately nineteen minutes for their torpedoes to reach full launch capacity.”

Loren frowned. “So… they dropped out of warp right in the same place we did? What are the odds of that?”

“Eleven billion, eight-hundred and sixty-seven--”

“It was a rhetorical question,” said Loren.

“Fascinating as this episode of ‘Math Chat with Robocop’ is - just to confirm, we’ve all got roughly nineteen minutes left to live?” said Cal.

“That’s right,” said Miz. “We should totally mate right now!”

“Let’s hold that thought until the last sixty to ninety seconds or so,” said Cal. “There must be something we can do. Can’t we just tell them we work for Zertex?”

“It would set the peace process back years,” said Loren. “And they’d still blow us up.”

“We could suit up and float over there,” said Miz, puffing up her chest. “I’ll tear them apart limb from limb.”

Cal raised his eyebrows. “Could we do that? I thought you said they had a forcefield?”

“Phase shielding,” said Mech. “Designed to deflect energy-based weaponry. Theoretically, a physical object – in this case, Mizette of the Greyx – could, indeed, pass through.”

“Yes, but even if you could get on board, that’s a Thresher ship. It has thirty crew aboard. There’s no way you can take them all out.”

“Want to bet?” Miz snarled.

“Maybe we don’t have to kill anyone,” said Cal. He stood up. “Mech, that disk thing you need?”

“Yes?”

Cal nodded in the direction of the Symmorium ship. “D’you think those guys’d have one?”

Mech’s eyes went from Cal to the ship and back again. His fleshy top lip curved into the beginning of a smile. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, I believe they would.”

* * *

Cal swiveled his chair left to right, drumming his fingers on the metal arm rests. The numbers beside the Symmorium ship were whizzing by now, barely comprehensible as being numbers at all. He didn’t quite know what that meant, but assumed it wasn’t a good sign.

“You might want to hurry up, guys!” he called.

“Almost ready,” Loren shouted from somewhere deep in the back of the ship, her voice sounding muffled and strangely echoey.

Down on the floor, Splurt was still tucked in behind the pilot seat, one eye sticking out of each side as he watched the screen. His body vibrated, making his slimy surface wobble and ripple.

“Hey, don’t worry, little guy,” Cal said. “This is all going to be fine. Trust me.”

One of Splurt’s eyes briefly swiveled back to look at him, then went back to facing front again.

“So fonking adorable,” Cal mumbled. He raised his voice. “Ready yet?”

“Ready!” called Loren.

“And it’s the blue switch, right?”

“Right!” called Loren.

“Good luck!”

“What?”

Cal twisted in his chair. “I said good luck!”

There was a thudding of footsteps from the corridor. A glass dome with Loren’s head inside leaned through the doorway. “What did you say?” she asked.

“Just, you know, good luck,” Cal said.

Loren tutted and backed through the door again, struggling to turn in her bulky space suit. Cal looked down at Splurt. “Do you think she likes me?” He settled back in his chair and placed a finger on the blue switch. “I think she likes me.”

He flicked the switch. The light below the screen illuminated in orange. Above it, a series of symbols swam before Cal’s eyes, eventually forming the word: Dialing.

Cal whistled quietly and tapped a drum beat on his arm rests. The view screen was plunged into darkness, as if the stars themselves had all been snuffed out. A moment later, the image changed to show the same shark-like face that had filled the screen earlier.

“Commander of the Symmorium Thresher,” Cal began, glancing down only once at where he’d scribbled the words on the palm of his hand. “This is Captain Cal Carver of the dread ship Shatner. I wondered if you had, ooh, about fourteen and a half minutes to chat…?”

Loren pulled the airlock door behind her. The gloves of her space suit made turning the handle to seal the door closed difficult, but with a bit of fumbling she managed to lock it into position.

Miz was crouched by the door, like a sprinter on the starting blocks. It had taken all three of them to squeeze her hulking, hairy frame into the suit. Her tail made it bulge awkwardly at the back, and she had to concentrate on keeping her claws retracted so as not to tear through the gloves and boots.

Mech stood between Mizette and the outside door. Unlike the other two, he hadn’t breathed in several decades, and had no need for a space suit of his own. Considering the size of him, that was probably just as well.

“So, explain to me again,” Loren said. “How do we get past their sensors?”

“We don’t,” said Mech. “You and Mizette do. I’ve co-ordinated our launches so you two will appear to be nothing more than echoes of me. Sensor ghosts. Mizette smaller, you more faded, still. They’ll be too busy charging their weapons to boost the signal.”

“And how do we know they’ll bring you aboard and not just obliterate you?”

“That’s impossible to ascertain at this stage,” Mech admitted. “But, based on all available data on the Symmorium, I anticipate a seventy-two percent probability of them taking me on board for further investigation under current conditions.”

“OK. Yes. Got it,” said Loren. She breathed deeply, but the helmet seemed to be sucking away the oxygen faster than it was providing it. She gritted her teeth and unclenched them a few times. “I’m just… I’ve never done this before.”

“I don’t expect anyone has,” said Mech. “Trepidation is to be anticipated. Ready?”

“Just open the door, already!” Miz growled.

“OK. Yes. Let’s do it,” said Loren.

Mech pressed the door release button. The circle of metal snapped open and they all lifted off the floor. “Jump when you hear the bleep,” he instructed, his voice crackling over speakers inside both space suits. “Use your boosters to adjust your trajectory as required.”

With a nod, Mech turned away and clamped his hands onto the outside walls of the ship. He drew back, his legs floating out behind him, then his upper body whirred and he went hurtling out of the airlock, and soaring towards the Symmorium ship.

“You’re next, Mizette,” said Loren.

“I know,” Miz growled, kicking herself off the floor and into position by the door. Her suit bleeped. Her voice hissed in Loren’s ear. “Oh, and keep your hands off Cal. He’s mine.”

With a grunt, Mizette launched herself into space, arms outstretched as she hurtled after the already distant Mech.

“I wasn’t planning putting my hands anywhere near him!” Loren said, but the only reply was a bleep from her suit’s timer. She gulped in another breath. It tasted thin and coppery, and she could almost feel her lungs’ disappointment. “OK, you can do this,” she muttered.

Then, with a heave and a kick, she tossed herself through the hatch and into the unending abyss of outer space.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

“So anyway, when he returns home, it’s gone. Well, not gone, but, you know, different,” said Cal. “Like totally different. His dad’s dead, his mom’s had, like, cosmetic surgery. I don’t know if you guys have that up here or not, but… whatever. The whole world’s changed, is my point.”

On screen, the Symmorium Commander’s sandpaper-rough brow furrowed deeply. “What are you talking about?” he demanded.

“Well, I mean… isn’t it obvious?” Cal said. “Think about it? It was Biff. Biff took the Sports Almanac back to 1955 and gave it to his younger self.”

The alien’s perfectly spherical black eyes blinked. “What’s a Biff?”

“Not what. Who. Biff,” said Cal. “Tannen. The bad guy.”

The commander’s frown deepened. “I thought that was Griff?”

“No! Griff’s his grandson! Jesus, have you even listened to a single word I’ve said?” Cal asked. He threw his hands up in the air and leaned forward in his seat. “Look, OK. Listen. So, Marty and Doc travel to 2015 because there’s a problem with Marty’s kids…” he began.

“Enough of this!” roared the commander, so loudly his on-screen image flickered. Cal sat back in his chair. “You have infiltrated Symmorium space, and for that you shall be destroyed.”

“Ah, but we didn’t, did we? We’re not in Symmorium space,” Cal pointed out.

“You were on a course which would have brought you into our territory.”

“If we hadn’t stopped, you mean?”

The alien’s gums drew back, revealing far too many teeth for Cal’s liking.

“Because we had. Stopped, I mean. Maybe you noticed,” Cal continued, trying not to dwell too much on all those pointy pearly whites. “We’d stopped. Right here. Which, I’m reliably informed, is outside Symmorium space.”

“No matter,” the commander spat. “You will be destroyed.”

“But not until your weapons are charged up,” said Cal. He grinned, showing off his own, far less impressive gnashers. “I make that about four minutes or so. Right?”

Another of the shark-like aliens leaned into shot and whispered somewhere around the spot Cal imagined the commander’s ear would be, if he had any. The commander’s dark, soulless eyes narrowed as he listened.

His lips drew back even further, revealing another few rows of fangs. “So, you thought you could distract us while you launched your attack,” the commander barked. “You failed. We have your mechanoid.”

“You do?” said Cal. He thumped a fist on the arm rest. “Fonk it! Well, you got us. You outsmarted us. Still, no real surprise. It’s like I always say, ‘you can fool some of the Symmorium some of the time, but--’”

“Where are the others?” the commander demanded. He leaned in closer to the camera, as if he could stick his head right through the screen and into the Shatner’s flight deck.

“The other what?” asked Cal.

“Your crew. There were four of you.”

Cal shifted in his seat. He cleared his throat. “When?”

The commander looked off to his left. “Recheck the sensor scans,” he ordered.

“Wait!” Cal yelped. “The others, yes. The others. They’re… using the bathroom. Together. I know, women, right?”

“Deception!” roared the commander, making the screen flicker again.

Cal stood up, raising a hand towards the screen. “No, I swear, they’ll be right back, just… just give them a minute.”

“Recheck the sensors now!” the commander snarled. “The mechanoid did not come alone! The rest of the crew is…”

His voice trailed off as Loren stepped into view behind Cal, tucking her vest into the belt of her pants. She nodded at both Cal and the Symmorium commander, then she crossed the flight deck, continuing until she was beyond the camera’s field of view.

Cal closed his mouth, which he realized was hanging open. He swallowed and tried to arrange his face into something less confused. “See?” he said. “She’s right there. Just like that. As if from nowhere.”

Out of sight of the alien commander, Loren’s body collapsed in on itself like melting jello. Cal’s eyes were drawn to it, despite his best efforts not to look. Loren became a flailing ball of horrifyingly gelatinous flesh, turned briefly green, then reformed into a familiar hairy figure.

For a second, Cal thought he might throw up again, but he swallowed and pulled himself together in the nick of time.

“Oh, hey, Miz. There you are,” he said. “Come out here, a sec, will you? This guy doesn’t believe you’re here.”

The shapeshifted Splurt skipped across the deck in a very un-Miz-like way, planted a kiss on top of Cal’s head, then skillfully Moonwalked off screen. Cal and the commander both watched the wolf-woman in stunned silence.

“There, told you they were both here,” said Cal, trying not to gawp as Miz’s body quivered into a gloopy green blob. “Nothing unusual going on. Everything’s perfectly normal over here.”

There was a bustling of movement on screen and Mech was shoved into shot beside the commander. A pointy-looking blaster weapon jammed against the back of his head.

“No matter,” the Symmorium said. “We have your mechanoid and our weapons are now fully functional. Prepare to be destroyed, pirate.”

“I ain’t no mechanoid, I’m a cyborg, shizznod!” Mech said. “Cy-borg.”

Cal tapped two fingers to his forehead in salute. “Hey Meck. Back to your old self, I see.”

“I’m gonna kill you for this,” Mech warned, eyeballing Cal through the screen. “This whole plan of yours? It’s crazy. How did you get me to agree to this?”

Cal shrugged. “You seemed to think the odds weren’t too bad,” he said. “Or, you know, better than sitting here waiting for them to shoot us, anyway.”

“Enough!” said the commander, snapping his teeth together. “Fire at will.”

Through the speakers, Cal heard the low whine of a weapon preparing to fire. “Come on,” he whispered. “Come on, come on, come on.”

Behind the commander, the lights dimmed. The whining sound coughed and spluttered to a stop.

“Report!” the alien demanded.

“Power outage on deck four, commander,” called a voice from off-screen. “The warp disk is… well, it looks like it’s gone, sir.”

“Gone? How can it be…?” His head snapped back to Cal. “You! What have you done?”

“Sensors detect movement outside, commander!”

“That’ll be my crew, bringing me your warp disk,” Cal said. “I’ll be honest, I didn’t think it was going to work, but it was way easier than I expected. No offense, Sharky, but your security must leave a lot to be desired.”

He leaned forwards. “Now, release the robot, and I won’t open fire.”

“I ain’t no robot!”

The Symmorium commander stiffened. “Our shields operate on a secondary power core. Yours do not,” he said. “There is only one reason you would take our warp disk – your own is damaged. Your weapon systems would not be able to penetrate our defenses before we crippled your ship.”

“You think?” said Cal.

“I know,” said the commander. “You will return the warp disk at once.”

“And why would I do that?” Cal asked.

“Do it, and the lives of your crew will be spared,” the commander said. “You, of course, shall go down with your ship, as is befitting a captain.”

“Tempting,” said Cal. He put his feet up on the console and leaned back. “Or you could give us back our clockwork buddy there before I obliterate you, your ship, and every fonking thing on board. You have five seconds to decide, commander.”

The Symmorium’s shark snout twitched. “You are bluffing.”

“Four. Am I? You think? Three.”

“You don’t have the power,” the commander said, his mouth pulling into something grin-like.

“Guess we’ll find out. Two.”

He hesitated.

“One and a half. Last chance.”

The commander stared impassively back at him across miles of space. “Do your worst.”

“One and a quarter. Last last chance!”

“I knew it. He’s bluffing,” the commander sneered.

Cal held up his hands. “OK, OK. I’ll admit it. I don’t actually know how to fire the weapons, even if they were working. I was sure you were going to just give in there and send him back.”

He leaned forward and winced. “Sorry, Mech, I guess they’re just going to have to keep you.”

“Like fonk they are,” Mech spat. He twisted his dial three-quarters of the way to the right.

A moment later, in a chorus of whirrs and blaster fire and agonized screams, the view screen was plunged into darkness.

“Uh… hello?” Cal said, staring expectantly at the screen. He clicked the blue switch a few times. Nothing but silent blackness stared back at him.

He shrugged and stood up. “Splurt, that was awesome!” he said, pointing to the pulsing green gloop. “You are officially now my hero, you adorable blobby little bamston!”

Splurt throbbed contentedly on the floor, then gave a little jump as something went clang further back in the ship.

Cautiously, Cal crept through the corridor that led away from the flight deck. He could hear the sound of scuffling, and felt the vibrations of the floor beneath his feet.

He reached the airlock window in time to see the space-suited Loren hurtling upwards, her arms flailing in the zero gravity. She slammed against the ceiling, and had to scrabble for a handhold to stop herself floating out through the open door.

Below her, Mizette crouched low then launched herself upwards, her fist drawn back. Before she could connect, Loren pushed off from the ceiling and flipped out of reach. Miz tried to turn, but momentum carried her on and she hit the ceiling helmet-first.

Loren soared towards the exit, hurtling back towards deep space. A moment before she got there, she caught hold of a pipe on the wall, swinging herself towards a control panel. As she slammed her hand against the controls, the open airlock door slammed closed with terrifying urgency, and Loren dropped a couple of feet to the floor.

Up by the ceiling, Mizette also began to fall. It took her almost a full two seconds longer to hit the floor, which she did at quite a high speed.

Wrestling off her helmet, Loren charged at Miz. The heavy space suit and the drag of being back in artificial gravity meant it was quite a slow charge. It was more of a stroll, if anything, Cal thought, although quite an aggressive one.

Loren drove a boot into Miz’s side before the wolf-woman could get to her feet. Miz rolled sideways, snarling so loudly that Cal could hear it even through the helmet and thick airlock door.

“You idiot!” Loren yelled. “What were you thinking?”

Miz thrashed violently on the floor. Her gloves and boots both shredded as her claws emerged. She bounded upright, tearing free of the rest of the space suit, then yanking off the helmet.

“Oh, it is on, bedge!” Mizette snarled. “It is on!”

Cal knocked on the glass. “Uh, ladies?”

“OK, just let me get out of my suit first. Fair?” said Loren, fiddling with her glove.

“Hurry up!” Mizette growled, then she hissed as Loren slammed a kick into her stomach.

Loren’s eyes went wide in panic as Miz grabbed her leg and swung her in a semi-circle, smashing her against the airlock wall. Squirming, she pulled herself free of the space suit, leaving Mizette holding the empty leg.

Cal knocked again, louder this time. “Uh… hello? Ladies?”

“What?” both women snapped, spinning towards the door. The expressions on both their faces told him he should probably just back away slowly, but he pressed on, regardless.

“The disk thing,” Cal said. “Did you get it?”

“Yes! Of course we got it,” said Loren.

“Well… do you think you could do something with it? You know, before we’re all killed?”

With a furious glare at Mizette, Loren unhooked what looked like a silver pizza box from the front of her suit, then opened the airlock door and stepped into the corridor.

“What was all that about?” asked Cal.

“She tried to kill me,” Loren said, jabbing a thumb in Miz’s direction.

“Come on now,” said Cal. “I’m sure she didn’t try to kill you.”

“She’s right. I did try to kill her,” said Mizette.

“Oh,” said Cal. “Right.”

“Aren’t you going to discipline her?” Loren demanded.

Miz purred. “Yes, please!”

“What am I, her mom?” said Cal. He turned to Miz. “Uh, don’t do it again, I guess?”

Loren shook her head. “Oh, well that showed her.”

“She disrespected you,” growled Miz. “And for that, she should die.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” urged Cal. “I disrespect myself on a regular basis. Seriously. All the time. Most people disrespect me on at least some level, and I’m fine with that. Not a reason to kill them.”

He glanced at Loren. “Out of interest, what did you say?”

Loren shrugged. “Just that I don’t find you in any way attractive.”

Cal laughed falsely. “Gotcha.” He frowned. “You said that?”

“Yes,” said Loren, pushing past him and making her way towards the flight deck.

“You actually said those words?” asked Cal, following behind her. “With the ‘in any way’ and everything?”

Loren stopped at the flight deck entrance and met his eye. “Yes. Those actual words.”

“See? I should gut her like an orvark!” barked Miz, lunging for Loren. Cal managed to get between them before Mizette’s claws could do any damage.

“Easy there, tiger. She’s entitled to her opinion. Even if it is horribly misguided and just plain wrong.”

Loren ducked under the doorway. Both the video and audio from the Symmorium ship had been cut, leaving the screen in darkness.

“How long until Mech gets back?” Loren asked.

Cal winced. “Yeah, about that. They sort of decided they were going to keep him.”

It took Loren half a second to grasp what Cal had said. “Keep him? What do you mean?”

“Well, I said they should send him back, and they said no. They want to keep him.” Cal’s face took on a somber expression. “It’s devastating, obviously, but… you know. No point dwelling on it. We’ve got the disk thing, we can get going.”

“We can’t just leave him,” said Loren.

“I mean, I’d love to get him back, obviously,” said Cal. “But I don’t see how we can. Besides, I sort of think this is what he would have wanted. In a way.”

“No, I mean we can’t leave him,” Loren said. “He’s the only one who can swap out the warp disks.”

Cal blinked. “Oh. Well that’s unfortunate.” He clapped his hands and rubbed them together. “Right then – who’s up for a daring rescue mission?”

There was a thud from the front of the ship. The dark screen flickered, revealing Mech pressed against the window. He did not look happy.

Behind him, the Symmorium ship had a gaping hole in it, and appeared to be upside down.

The Shatner’s comms system hissed angrily, as Mech’s voice crackled out.

“Quit staring and open the fonking door!”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Cal’s legs dangled in the air, a full three feet off the floor. His fingers tried to dig in beneath the metal hand that was currently wrapped around his throat, squeezing the life out of him.

An ominous shade of red glowed deep in Mech’s eyes. His metal jaw jutted out, the pointed bottom teeth almost touching his nose.

“Mech, let him go,” Loren said.

“Uh-uh. Dude was going to leave me back there,” Mech grunted.

Cal’s legs flailed around. His eyes bulged. He could hear his own heartbeat in his head, picking up speed as it raced towards the finish line.

“Take your hands off him,” Miz snarled. She lashed out with her claws. There was a spark and a squeal and three shallow claw marks were carved into Mech’s paint. He either didn’t notice, or didn’t care. His eyes narrowed as he hoisted Cal another few inches into the air.

“You set me up, shizznod,” Mech said. “You used me to get the disk, then you were gonna leave me there.”

“Y-you… v-volunt-teered,” Cal wheezed.

“To go get the thing, not to be no hostage!” Mech said.

“I’m warning you, Disselpoof, let him go!” Loren said, training her blaster pistol on the cyborg’s face.

“I’ll let him go in a minute,” Mech said. “Just got to kill him first.”

“Shoot him!” Miz barked. “What are you waiting for?”

She lunged for the gun, knocking Loren’s arm. Mech snatched the weapon before either of them could get a proper grip on it. The gun sparked and fizzled as he crushed it with a squeeze of his hand.

Mech’s eyes flared crimson as he glowered at Cal. “Any last requests?”

“Up.”

“Say what?”

“L-lift me higher,” Cal gasped. “Or is t-this as h-igh as… you can get m-me?”

“What you talking about? Of course I can go higher! Dude, I could throw you through the roof if I wanted to!”

He extended his arm, hefting Cal higher into the air.

“M-much better,” said Cal. Bringing up his feet, he caught hold of Mech’s dial and twisted it all the way to the right.

The red fire died behind Mech’s eyes. His grip slackened. His arm dropped. He toppled backwards, remaining perfectly rigid all the way to the floor. Loren and Miz jumped backwards just in time to avoid having their feet crushed.

Cal coughed and wheezed on his hands and knees, his head spinning as oxygen flooded his lungs. “That guy has serious temper issues.”

Miz peered down at the inanimate cyborg. “What did you do?”

“Intellect power diversion at one-hundred percent,” chimed a voice from somewhere inside Mech. Miz waved a hand in front of his face, but his expression didn’t change. Even Mech’s mouth remained motionless as the voice came again. “A thousand apologies for my attempts to bring about your death via asphyxiation, Cal.”

“Hey. Forget it. Not a problem,” said Cal, getting unsteadily to his feet. “Probably deserved it.” He turned to Loren and pointed to his neck. “Is there a bruise? Can you see?”

Loren lowered her head to look, then scowled. “Man up,” she said. She squatted down next to the fallen Mech. “Are you going to be OK?”

“Oh yeah, show concern for him!” said Cal. “I mean, clearly he’s the victim here.”

“I assure you, I am operating at full efficiency, Gunso Loren,” said Mech’s voice. “All power from my core reactor has simply been redirected to my intellectual processors, rendering my body immobile.”

“Can we fix him?” asked Miz.

Cal leaned in. “Try switching him off and back on again,” he suggested.

“Quite unnecessary,” said Mech. “If one of you would be so kind as to turn my dial a fraction towards central balance – I suggest no more than sixteen degrees – I shall be able to carry out the work required to replace the warp disk.”

“And you won’t try to kill me?” asked Cal.

“As I say, I suggest turning the dial no more than sixteen degrees counter-clockwise,” Mech’s voice chimed. “Any more, and I am afraid I am unable to guarantee your safety.”

“Fair enough,” said Cal. He straightened up. “Anyone happen to have a protractor on them?”

“No,” said Loren. She grasped the dial. “I guess we’re just going to have to eyeball it.”

* * *

The stars streaked by like blurry white stripes. The sensation that accompanied it was still deeply unpleasant, but at least Cal wasn’t throwing up this time.

He slouched in his seat, massaging his throat which he was sure felt swollen. Loren and Miz both sat in their own seats, neither one apparently speaking to the other beyond the occasional muttered death threat from the hairier of the two.

It had looked as if Splurt had disappeared during Cal and Mech’s fight, but Cal eventually spotted him in a duct on the ceiling, and had spent twenty minutes coaxing him down with a space cookie. Once the green blob had flopped to the floor beside him, Cal realized he had no idea what to do with the cookie, so had just rested it on top of his head. It was still there.

“Think he still wants to kill me?” Cal asked.

“Who?” said Loren, glancing back over her shoulder.

“Mech! Who else would want to kill me?”

Loren shrugged. “I’d imagine quite a lot of people.”

“Hey! I’ll have you know that I was very well-liked back home,” Cal protested.

“You ate your parents.”

“Yes, but--”

“And forty-six other people.”

“Forty-six?” said Cal. “Really? That many?” He leaned back in his chair. “That is… Wow, that is a lot. I mean, that’s insane. Forty-six people.”

“Forty-eight, if you count your parents,” Loren pointed out.

“Jesus,” said Cal. “Forty-eight people.” He bit his lip. “Is it wrong that I’m sort of disappointed it wasn’t a round fifty, though?”

“Yes!” Loren scowled, turning in her chair. “Yes, it’s wrong!”

“Well, I think eating forty-eight people is pretty hot,” offered Miz.

“Thank you,” said Cal. “See? Some of us think eating forty-eight people is a good thing. Which, you know, is worrying on a number of levels, but still.”

He gestured ahead of them. “Now watch the screen and try not to break the engine again.”

“I didn’t break it!”

“Good for you. You keep telling yourself that,” said Cal. He pointed to the screen. “That way. Eyes front. Come on.”

He settled back and looked down at Splurt, who pulsed on the floor beside him. “I don’t know, buddy, how do we get ourselves into these situations?” he muttered.

A moment later, he lifted the cookie, took a bite out of it, then set it back down on Splurt’s head.

* * *

A little under four hours after Cal finished the cookie, the stars began to slow. They were still moving ludicrously fast across the screen, but the level of ludicrousness had decreased so it was marginally less mind-boggling than it had been.

“We’re on final approach to the Remnants,” Loren announced. “Arrival within the next few minutes.”

“Good. Great. That’s awesome,” said Cal, sitting up in his seat. He looked around and yawned. “Was I asleep?”

“Yes,” said Loren.

“Don’t worry, I watched you the whole time,” Miz assured him.

“Well, that’s a relief,” said Cal, flashing her a smile. He stretched. “So… where did you say we were?”

“The Remnants. Or we will be soon.”

“The Remnants, right. Gotcha,” said Cal. “What’s that, then?”

“Used to be a great little system. Real nice,” said Mech, stomping through from the back of the ship. He glared at Cal, but made no move to attack him. “Until Zertex and the Symmorium had themselves a battle here.”

“Oh, hey, that’s great,” said Cal, shuffling towards the edge of his chair, ready to spring up and run for it at a moment’s notice. “How you doing, Mech? You’ve turned your dial back, I see.”

“Don’t even talk to me, man,” Mech warned.

“There’s not much left now,” said Loren. “A few shattered planets ruled by violent warlords.”

“So you’re saying it’s a shizzhole? Then why are we here?” asked Cal.

“To deliver the ransom,” said Loren. “To make the deal?”

“For the undead president virusy thing?” said Cal. He glanced around at the others. “We’re actually doing that?”

Loren spun her chair until she was facing Cal. “Of course we’re doing it. Why else would we be out here?”

“I just thought… We’re out here in space. We’re young. We’re single. We’re hairy, in some cases. We’ve presumably got a huge amount of ransom cash just burning a hole in our ship.” Cal shrugged. “I just thought we might want to keep boldly going, that’s all.”

Loren’s blue skin flushed a darker shade. “Steal it, you mean?” she gasped. “I’m not a criminal.”

“No, but we are,” said Cal.

“If we don’t make the trade and get the information, millions could die. Billions,” said Loren.

Cal placed his hands behind his head. “How is that my problem?” he asked. “You already killed billions of people back on Earth. Didn’t seem to bother you then.”

“That wasn’t me!” said Loren. “Besides, it was an accident.”

“Let’s kill her and defile her corpse!” Miz cried, leaping to her feet.

“Whoa, whoa, where did that come from?” said Cal. “I think we all need to cool down. No-one’s defiling anyone’s corpse. Not on my watch.”

“We’re not on your watch,” said Loren. “I’m in charge.”

“Well, I’m the captain, so…”

“No. You aren’t,” Loren said. “We’re pretending you are so Kornack will deal with us, but make no mistake – I’m leading this mission. I decide what we do, and we’re making the exchange as per the plan.”

Cal held her gaze for a moment, then shot a sideways glance at Miz. “I’m seriously not the real captain?” he asked, then he broke into a lop-sided grin. “Fine. Your call, Loren. I’m just saying… I bet there’s a lot of money on board. Split five ways…”

“There is no money on board,” said Loren, turning her chair back to the front. “The ransom isn’t being paid in credits.”

“Oh,” said Cal, deflating slightly. “Well that’s stupid. So what is it being paid in, then?”

Loren hesitated, just for a moment. “Information.” She tapped a sequence of buttons on the control panel to her left and one corner of the view screen changed from showing the streaking stars to showing a still image of… something else. Cal wasn’t quite sure what.

“That’s Kornack,” Loren explained.

“Jesus Christ, he looks like a melted brick,” said Cal. Sure enough, the warlord had the appearance of rough stone that had gone soft in the sun. His head was vaguely rectangular, with long flaps of granite-textured skin drooping over his broad shoulders.

His misshapen body was squashed into what looked like an impeccably-tailored three-piece suit, albeit one that had been impeccably-tailored to fit in precisely the wrong way. It bulged where it should have tucked in, and drew tight in areas where tightness very much wasn’t required. He had the appearance of a volcanic boulder that someone had somehow managed to cram into a sock. An expensive sock, granted, but a sock all the same.

“Ever heard of him?” Loren asked.

“No,” said Miz.

“I heard a thing or two,” said Mech. “None of it good.”

Loren half-turned her chair. “Cal?”

“Me? No. How would I have heard of him? He’s a space guy.”

“Well, he’s heard of you.”

Cal’s brow knotted. “He has? How?”

“Kornack is fascinated by cannibals,” Loren explained. “It’s like, well, it’s like his hobby.”

“His hobby’s cannibalism?” said Cal.

“No, finding out about them is his hobby. I think he’d like to be one, don’t get me wrong, but Igneons aren’t exactly easy to eat. Even by other Igneons,” Loren said. “He has scouts scouring the galaxy, searching out stories of cannibalistic acts. I’m told they give him… a thrill.”

“A thrill? What do you mean ‘they give him a thrill’?” asked Cal. “What kind of thrill?”

“That’s all I know,” said Loren.

“Like… are we talking a sexy-time kind of thrill here? Because if so that really should have been made clear in advance.”

“Man’s got needs,” said Mech. “Who are we to judge how he gets his rocks off? ‘Rocks’ being the key word here.”

“Oh, I might have known you’d say that,” said Cal. “You’d love me to get molested by some big stone… thing.”

“I’m not gonna lie,” said Mech. “Yes, I would.”

“I won’t let him enslave you for his sexual gratification, Cal,” Miz promised.

Cal jabbed a thumb towards her. “See? That’s what I’m talking about. Support. Loyalty. Faithfulness. I think we can all learn a lesson here.” He stared wistfully into space for a moment. “God, I miss that dog.”

The stars slowed to a relative crawl on the view screen. “Arrival in one minute,” said Loren, reading the data that flashed up on her console.

“One minute? God. OK,” said Cal. “So, what’s the plan?”

“Which bit?” Loren asked, easing back on a lever.

“Any of it. All of it,” said Cal. “I have to admit, I wasn’t really paying too much attention earlier.”

Mech tutted. “We should just throw him into space. We should throw him into space right now.”

“We can’t. We need him,” Loren said. “For the moment, at least.”

She flipped a few switches and the ship shuddered unpleasantly. “Wait, no, not that one,” she said, unflipping the last switch. The ship’s movement smoothed again.

“We’re making a trade with Kornack, the warlord. He’ll give us the master copy of the footage he transmitted, along with the co-ordinates of where it was taken,” Loren explained. “We deliver those co-ordinates to Zertex, and they’ll go take care of it.”

“And then we’re free to go?” asked Miz. “New identity, all that stuff?”

“And a whole lot richer,” Mech added.

Loren nodded. “That was the deal,” she said. “Now hold onto something. Coming out of warp in three, two…”

The ship screeched. The stars snapped to a stop. Cal was flung forward in his seat before he could grab for his seat belt, then slammed back into it so hard all the air left his body in a single short puff.

“One,” said Loren, a little belatedly.

“Thanks for the warning,” Cal wheezed. He slammed the heel of his hand against his chest, trying to force the breath back into his lungs.

A planet loomed on the screen ahead of them. Or part of one, anyway. It reminded Cal of a partly-eaten apple. There was a black, rotten-looking wound where most of the eastern hemisphere should have been, as if someone had taken a bite out of it, then tossed it away in disgust.

“Well, this looks homely,” Cal said, finding himself whispering for no real reason. “Considering this is the first new planet I’ve ever been to, couldn’t you at least have found me a whole one?”

“We’re being scanned,” said Mech, indicating a row of warning text flashing at the bottom of the screen in an alarming shade of red. Another three lines of similar text appeared. “We’re being lots of scanned.”

“Pirates,” said Loren. “The Remnants is full of them.”

“You mean space pirates?” said Cal, much to Mech’s annoyance. “But they’re our friends, right? All rogues together? Yo-ho-ho, bottle of rum, pieces of eight, all that stuff?”

Loren shook her head and adjusted the controls. The broken planet grew steadily larger on screen. “Doesn’t work that way. They’re as likely to board us as they are anyone else.”

“Seriously?” said Cal, sounding hurt. “What happened to honor among thieves?”

“In my experience, there’s no such thing,” said Loren. She pushed forward on a lever and the half-planet grew larger until it completely filled the screen. “I’m going to take us in before anyone gets any ideas.”

Cal gripped the arm rests of his chair. “And you’re sure I can’t convince you not to go through with it?”

“Yes,” said Loren. “I’m sure. Suggest it again, and I’ll have you on report.”

“Yeah, good luck with that,” said Cal.

A band of flickering orange appeared at the bottom of the screen, just as the ship began to shudder. Cal looked from the orange glow to the rest of the crew. “Uh… you guys are seeing that, yeah? You guys see that the ship’s on fire?”

“We’re entering the atmosphere,” said Mech. “Happens all the time.”

The ship lurched violently, lifting Cal out of his seat for a full second. He and Miz both reached for their seat belts at the same time.

“And that? Does that happen all the time?”

“That happens less often,” Mech admitted. There was a low whine as his magnetic feet clamped to the floor.

The flickering orange became a flaming red. The Shatner bounced and skipped like a stone across a pond, rattling Cal’s teeth in his skull.

“Is it getting hot in here?” he asked. “Or is it just me?”

Miz’s tongue unrolled. “Not just you,” she panted.

“It’s just a bit of a bumpy atmosphere, that’s all,” said Loren.

“You mean you don’t know what you’re doing,” Miz snapped. “Seriously, you’re, like, the worst pilot I’ve ever met.”

Loren turned in her chair. “Fine,” she said, standing up. “You think you can do better? Please, be my guest.”

“Jesus, Loren, what are you doing?” Cal gasped. He pointed wildly at the screen, which was now awash with hues of orange, red, purple and pink. Through it, he could just make out the scarred surface of the planet waiting for them below. “Sit down and fly the fonking ship.”

Loren crossed her arms, wobbling unsteadily as the Shatner shuddered through more turbulence. “Not until she apologizes.”

“Ha! In your dreams,” Miz barked.

“Miz, apologize!” Cal cried.

“Why should I?” the wolf-woman demanded.

“Well, one, because we’re all about to die if you don’t, and two…” Cal shook his head. “No, just one, actually. Let’s focus on one.”

Miz slumped back in her chair. Her snout curved into a sneer. “Fine,” she said, then the ship shook violently and Loren hurtled upwards at a worryingly high speed. She smacked against the ceiling, hung there for a few moments in a star-shape, then slammed into the floor and stopped moving.

Cal and the others gazed down at her. “Uh… Loren?”

Loren didn’t respond.

“Haha. Good joke,” said Cal, squirming in his seat. He wiped a sheen of sweat from his brow with his sleeve. “Up you get now.”

Loren didn’t respond.

“OK… now,” said Cal. “Nnnnnnnnow.”

Loren let out a groan that suggested she wasn’t getting up any time soon. Cal’s attention turned to the view screen, which now resembled a deeply unhappy rainbow. “OK,” he said. “We may have ourselves a problem.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Cal gaped at the unconscious Loren on the floor, then up at the flickering lights of the atmosphere which seemed intent on tearing the ship apart.

“Miz, Mech, can either of you fly this thing?” he asked.

“No,” Mizette admitted.

“Yes,” said Mech.

Cal punched the air. “Awesome! We’re not going to die!”

“And no,” Mech added.

“What? What do you mean ‘and no’?” Cal asked. “Go back to ‘yes’.”

“I know how to fly it, but the controls ain’t big enough for my hands,” Mech explained. “You’ll have to do it.”

“Me?” Cal spluttered. “I can’t fly a spaceship!”

Mech’s jaw tightened. “Then I guess we’re gonna just smash right into the planet, then.”

Cal unclipped his seat belt. “Oh… fonking Hell,” he muttered. “Miz, help Loren.”

“What? No way! I’m not helping her.”

“Please, just do it. For me,” Cal begged, dashing across to the pilot’s seat. “Put her in my chair. This is probably going to be rough.”

Huffing and sighing, Miz took off her belt and hoisted Loren over her shoulder. “Thank you!” said Cal, sliding in behind a bewildering array of controls. “And has anyone seen Splurt?”

“It’s hiding back there underneath your chair,” said Mech.

“He,” Cal corrected. “Not it. He. Is he OK?”

“How the fonk should I know if he’s OK?” Mech snapped. “Now take hold of that lever, grab that joystick, and put your right foot on the left pedal.”

Cal leaned back so he could see under the console in front of him. “The left pedal? Why am I using my right foot? Shouldn’t I be using my--?”

“Man, just shut up and do it!”

Cal shut up and did it.

“OK, what now?”

“Now, you hold us steady until we’re through the atmosphere,” Mech said.

Cal held them as steady as he could, which wasn’t really very steady at all. His stomach somersaulted over every bit of turbulence they hit. And they hit a lot. The joystick fought against his left hand, while the lever pushed back against his right.

“Almost through,” said Mech. “Almost through.”

“Great!” said Cal. “What then?”

“Then, I’m gonna be honest here, a lot of things are gonna happen at pretty much the exact same time,” Mech said. With some difficulty, he tapped in a sequence of key presses on the control panel to Cal’s right. “She’s got the landing course locked in.”

“Is that good?”

“Best bit of news we’ve had in the last few minutes, anyway,” Mech muttered.

“That’s not exactly saying much,” Cal pointed out. “Miz, you both strapped in back there?”

“Oh, what, so I’ve got to fasten her seatbelt for her now, too?” Miz said, clearly annoyed by the very suggestion.

“Kind of the entire point of putting her in the chair,” Cal said. He grimaced as the joystick rumbled violently in his hand.

“Hold it steady!” said Mech.

“I am! Miz, buckle Loren up. Now!”

Mizette muttered under her breath as she stomped over to where Loren was sprawled and fastened the belt across her chest. “There,” she said. “Happy now?”

“Ecstatic,” said Cal, just as the smear of color faded from the screen, revealing a scorched, desolate land mass below. Lines and lines of red text scrolled up the screen, accompanied by a series of high-pitched klaxons. “That can’t be good. Is that good? What’s all the noise?”

“Alarms,” said Mech.

“Well clearly they’re alarms!” Cal said, yelling to make himself heard over the din. “But why are they on?”

“Fonked if I know. Hit that switch.”

Cal hit a switch. The Shatner’s engines screamed as the ship plunged deeper into a dive. The alarms screamed louder than ever.

“Wrong switch, wrong switch!” Mech barked. Cal stretched for the controls, but the G-Force made reaching it difficult. With a roar of effort, he strained against the onrushing gravity and got a finger to the button.

The ship dipped up and down, sending the horizon rolling from the top of the screen to the bottom and back again. Cal felt his brain sloshing around inside his skull as he tried to correct their course.

“Not so hard! Gentle movements!” said Mech.

“I am making gentle movements!”

“Not gentle enough. More gentle!”

Cal eased back very gently on the stick. The ship continued in a downwards dive.

“Not that gentle, shizznod!” Mech pointed to the screen. “There! That’s where we’re landing.”

Cal squinted. Down on the surface, between what looked like a number of lumps of ugly metal, was a white square roughly the size of a postage stamp.

“On that? I can’t hit that!”

“I don’t want you to ‘hit’ it,” said Mech. “I want you to land on it.”

“I highly doubt that’s going to happen,” said Cal.

“You got this,” Mech said. “You see that cross on screen? Line it up with the landing pad.”

The ship lunged left. “Other way, turn it the other way!” Mech hissed, his hydraulics adjusting to prevent him toppling forwards.

“Yeah, OK, sorry,” said Cal. He lined up the cross. “OK, got it. Now what?”

“Ease back on the thrusters,” Mech said. “That’s the lever. But slow, nice and slow.”

The tone of the Shatner’s engine changed as Cal followed the cyborg’s orders. The ship descended jerkily through a patch of wispy black cloud. The postage stamp was now the size of a drinks coaster, and Cal could see that the ugly lumps of metal were buildings, assuming you applied a very loose definition of the word. They looked like enormous iron ingots, partially melted into the barren landscape, with uneven tracks leading between them.

Cal felt like he should be making some sort of witty remark about the place at this point, but for the life of him, he couldn’t think of one. Instead, he just clung to the controls, kept the target on the steadily growing landing pad, and wondered if it was too late to turn religious.

“OK, get ready on the pedal,” Mech told him.

“It’s the left with the right, right?”

Mech frowned. “What?”

“It’s the left pedal with my right foot?” Cal said.

“Man, you did not make that clear at all,” said Mech. “Yeah, left pedal, right foot. Hard down, now!”

Cal slammed his foot on the pedal. As he did, another pedal came springing down from the console beside it. It slammed into Cal’s shin, making him cry out in pain.

“Argh! What the fonk was that?”

“Sorry, should’ve warned you. Left foot on the other pedal…”

Cal slammed his left foot on the other pedal. His eyeballs were almost fired out of their sockets as the ship screeched to a stop in mid-air.

“Not yet!” Mech cried.

The ship began to fall. It wasn’t even the uncontrolled descent of the last drop this time, but a full-scale plunge towards the ground below.

“You told me to put my left foot on the other pedal!” Cal protested.

“I hadn’t finished the sentence!” Mech cried.

The ground spun in looping circles towards them, the landing pad now filling almost a third of the screen. Cal pumped the pedals as Mech frantically pressed any buttons his fingers weren’t too big for.

“Nothing’s happening,” Cal pointed out. “Why’s nothing happening?”

“Pull up!” Miz cried. “We’re going to crash!”

“Yeah, we noticed!” Mech bellowed. “Ain’t my fault!”

“It’s totally your fault!” insisted Cal.

Behind him, Loren groaned and flickered open her eyes. She gazed at the screen for a few seconds, her eyelids slowly scraping up and down. She jumped suddenly upright. “Second left, third from bottom, top panel!”

Cal reached up for the top panel. “What? Second…?”

“Left! Third from bottom!”

Cal found a small, unassuming white button. “What about it?”

“Press it!”

“Now?”

“Yes, now!” Loren yelped, gripping the armrests as the landing pad spiraled closer and closer. “Press it now!”

Cal pressed the button. There was a roar that rumbled the whole underside of the Shatner, vibrating them all through the floor. The spinning slowed, then stopped. The ship tilted until one of the ingot buildings loomed right ahead of them.

There was an impact which, while jarring, didn’t turn them into a crater on the ground. With a hiss and a billowing of gray smoke, the Shatner touched down on the landing pad.

Loren and Mizette both relaxed into their chairs. Cal swiveled to face them. “What was that?” he asked. “What did I press?”

“Auto-pilot,” Loren croaked, rubbing the top of her head.

Cal shifted his gaze to Mech. “Auto-pilot? There’s an auto-pilot?”

“Hey, how was I to know?” said Mech. “We’re alive, ain’t we? It’s all good.”

Cal stood up. “Well, there’s a very high chance I’ve soiled myself, so I wouldn’t say it’s all good, would you?”

Miz sniffed the air. “I don’t think you have.”

Cal’s nostrils flared. He grimaced, just briefly. “Well, that’s a relief. Thank you for checking.”

“Any time.”

Loren unclipped her belt. “The important thing is that we’re here.”

On screen, an enormous door on the closest building slowly swung inwards. Loren stiffened. “And here comes the welcoming committee.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Cal, Mech, Loren and Miz strode along a raised walkway leading towards the door which had rumbled shut once the welcoming committee had emerged. Splurt rolled alongside the rest of the Shatner’s crew, leaving a thin, glistening trail in his wake.

The group who had come to meet them had turned out to be large in one sense, and surprisingly small in another. There were twenty or more of them, and none of them over three feet tall. They wore long green ropes that covered them down to the knees, and hats made of blackened twigs all tied together into witch-like points. The hats covered them down to below the nose, allowing only glimpses of their wide yellow eyes through gaps in the twigs.

The little creatures surged behind Cal and the others, herding them along the walkway. They chittered in a way that sounded one third excited, two thirds threatening. Try as he might, Cal couldn’t make out a word of it.

“What are they saying?” Cal asked.

“Nothing,” said Loren. “They don’t talk. At least, not in a way anyone’s been able to translate.”

“I’m hungry,” said Miz, licking her chops and glancing over her shoulder at the tiny figures hurrying along behind. “Anyone else hungry?”

“Don’t you dare,” warned Loren. “Kornack would kill us.”

Miz’s snout wrinkled. “I was kidding. Wow. Relax. It was funny. Right, Cal?”

“It was hilarious,” Cal agreed, flashing her a double thumbs up. “Good job.”

A pale, slightly ill-looking sun shone down on them, yet the whole planet seemed to be cast into shadow. The cool air prickled at Cal’s skin. On the other hand, it seemed perfectly breathable, so he wasn’t going to hold the temperature against it.

“So, what’s this place called?” Cal asked.

“Kornack,” said Loren.

“No, not the guy, the place.”

“Kornack,” Loren repeated. “He named it after himself.”

“That’s actually pretty awesome,” Cal said. “I mean, imaginative? No. But awesome? Hell, yes. If I had a planet I’d one hundred percent name it after myself, too. I think me and this Kornack guy are going to get along just fine.”

“Let’s hope so,” said Loren. “That’s the whole reason you’re here.”

“Exactly!” said Cal. “Wait, what?”

“Those stories he’s obsessed by? The cannibal stuff? You’re his favorite. He knows everything about you.”

Cal felt a creeping sensation of dread tingle up his spine. “He does, huh?”

“President Sinclair thought having you make the drop would help sweeten the deal,” Loren explained. “Which, I must say, I think was a genius move.”

“Genius,” Cal agreed. “Definitely. Genius.” He cleared his throat. “When you say he knows everything about me… what do you mean by that, exactly?”

Loren shrugged. “Just what I said. He knows everything about you. Everything you’ve done. Everyone you’ve… you know. Eaten. He’s a big fan.”

Cal swallowed. “Great! This should be fun, then,” he said. They stopped outside the towering metal entrance to the building. Miz’s nostrils widened as she sniffed the air.

“OK, now I think you’ve soiled yourself,” she said.

“Thanks,” Cal told her. “I noticed.”

The door edged inwards. The tiny aliens chittered behind them. Cal took a deep breath. “Well, I guess we should get this over with,” he said, then he stepped over the threshold and into the shadowy darkness beyond.

The inside of Kornack’s headquarters reminded Cal of some of the sleazier clubs he’d visited over the years. It was dimly lit to the point of being almost not lit at all. Shapes lurked in the shadows, getting up to a whole range of things he’d rather not know the details of, but which the squelching and panting made pretty easy to guess.

Music blared out from somewhere up ahead. At first, the crashing volume level made it impossible to recognize the sound as music at all, but as Cal’s ears adjusted his eyes went wide.

“Wait, I know that song,” he said. He hummed along with the intro, trying to place it. “It’s… argh. What is it?”

The intro finished and the first verse blared along the corridor. Cal clicked his fingers. “It’s 9 to 5!” he realized. “That’s Dolly Parton! What the fonk is Dolly Parton doing in outer space?”

He hurried ahead, following the sound, his boots scuffing on the cave-like stone floor. He knew the chances of him finding country legend, Dolly Parton, herself had to be billions to one. Then again, the chances of him hearing her most famous track being played by an alien species trillions of miles from Earth had to be pretty astronomical, too, so he wasn’t completely writing the possibility off quite yet.

The music grew louder as he pressed on through the wide passageway, to the point that when the chorus kicked in, his teeth rattled in time with the beat.

Cal turned a corner and was almost blown off his feet by the volume. He took cover behind the wall, jammed his hands over his ears, then peeked out. An enormous egg-shaped door stood fifty or so feet along the passageway. It towered three or four times Cal’s height, and shone like gold in the flickering glow of the fiery torches fixed to the wall on either side.

“Jesus, who is this guy?” Cal bellowed, as Mech and the others caught up, accompanied by the crowd of hat-wearing little dudes. “The King of Space?”

“What?” shouted Loren, who also had her hands clamped over her ears. Mizette’s teeth were clamped tightly together, like she was trying very hard to ignore the pain, while Mech seemed completely unfazed by the whole thing.

Down on the floor, Splurt’s blobby surface rippled along with the song’s bass line, and his eyes bobbed from side to side in time with the beat.

The backing music was deafening, but it was Dolly’s voice that was the real problem, and the thing most likely to do lasting damage. Cal waited for the all too brief instrumental break before the second verse, then lowered his head and broke into a run.

Halfway to the door, Dolly let rip with verse two. Cal hissed in pain. He staggered, but pressed on, eyes watering, eardrums trembling, and a dull ache radiating upwards from his testicles.

The door swung inwards as he approached, and the song hit him like a targeted shockwave. His skeleton rattled from his toes to the top of his skull. His heart skipped erratically. Colorful darkness spasmed before his eyes. Dolly was already building towards the chorus again. If she hit that “crazy if you let it” line, Cal was done for, he knew.

He stumbled into a round room with bumpy metal walls, hoping to find a large speaker with a visibly obvious power switch. He saw nothing even resembling one, and the only thing that caught his attention was a tall, thin male figure standing in the middle of the room, his hands folded crisply behind his back.

The figure’s mouth moved, but Cal couldn’t catch a word.

“Too loud!” Cal cried. “Turn it down!”

The figure raised a quizzical eyebrow. His mouth moved again. Dolly’s voice raced towards its ear-shattering conclusion.

“TOO LOUD!”

The figure frowned, then produced a small remote control from behind his back. He tapped a button and Dolly Parton echoed away into blessed, merciful silence.

“Pardon, sir?” said the figure, in a voice that made Cal immediately think of both an old English butler and the rustling of Autumn leaves at exactly the same time. “I’m afraid I didn’t quite catch that.”

“I said stop it!” Cal said, the ringing in his ears still making him shout. “Too loud!”

“It has stopped now, sir,” the butler pointed out. He didn’t just sound like a butler, he looked like one, too, albeit one who had an unhealthy fascination with cosmetic surgery.

His head was tall and narrow, with shrub-like gray eyebrows located both above and below each eye. His nose was barely a bump in the center of his face, the nostrils puckered tightly closed, just like his mouth several inches below.

“Well… I know it’s stopped now,” said Cal.

“Would you like me to play it again, sir? I’m informed it’s your favorite.”

“What? No!” said Cal. “That’s not my favorite.” He turned to the rest of the group, who had now entered behind him, followed by the chittering throng of hats. “Seriously. Dolly Parton’s 9 to 5 is not my favorite song.”

“Really, sir? Oh,” said the butler, all four eyebrows raising in surprise. “Perhaps I was misinformed.”

“Perhaps you were, yeah,” said Cal. “Now Karma Chameleon by Culture Club – that’s a song.”

“I’m not familiar with it, sir.”

Cal patted the butler on the chest of his black, largely featureless jacket. “My advice? Get familiar.” He jammed his little finger in his ear and waggled it around, trying to stop the ringing. “So. Are you Karnock?”

“Kornack, sir,” the butler corrected. “And oh my, no. My name is Mtsing Dtsgadston. I am Master Kornack’s most humble servant.”

He bowed his head with such a sudden jerk that Cal let out a little shriek of fright. “My apologies, sir. I did not mean to startle you.”

“You didn’t startle me,” Cal laughed. He glanced back at Loren and the others. “He didn’t startle me.” Cal faced the butler again. “So… Gadston, was it?”

“Dtsgadston, sir.”

“Yeah, there’s no way I’m going to get that,” said Cal. “If it’s OK by you, I’m just going to go ahead and call you Gadston.”

“As you wish, sir.”

“So, Gadston,” began Cal, putting his hands on his hips and scanning the room. “Where’s this Kornack guy?”

“Master Kornack shall be joining us momentarily, sir,” said Gadston.

He swiveled sharply on one foot, revealing a row of four chairs positioned further into the room. They looked like they had once been grand, leather-covered affairs, but time and a full scale galactic war had both taken their toll. Now they were Swiss-cheesed with holes, where springs and stuffing poked through, and at least one of them had had a leg snapped off at some point, and was now propped up on a broken breeze block.

“Well, let’s go make ourselves uncomfortable, shall we?” Cal suggested. He led the crew over to the chairs, Miz pausing to sniff the butler on the way.

“Whoa, you’re old,” she said, prowling past him.

“Indeed I am, madam,” Gadston agreed. “So kind of you to notice.”

Cal lowered himself into one of the chairs, slowly testing his weight on it. Loren and Miz both eased into seats on either side of him, leaving Mech to stare down at the one remaining seat.

“Yeah, I wouldn’t. There is no way that’s taking your weight,” said Cal. “Splurt?”

Splurt oozed up the front of the chair and nestled himself into it. His floating eyeballs looked up at Cal, then across at Mech.

“So… what? I’m just supposed to stand?” Mech grunted.

“You always stand,” Cal pointed out. “You’re like, renowned, for standing.”

“Deepest apologies, sir,” said Gadston. “I shall find you a chair at once.”

He turned to the horde of hat-wearing things and let out a series of incomprehensible chitters. The tiny creatures chattered back, then tumbled over themselves on the way out of the room.

“It’s fine,” said Mech. “I’ll stand.”

“Nonsense, sir,” said Gadston. “I shan’t hear of it.”

He snapped his head forward in a bow once more. “Now, please excuse me for a moment while I notify Mr Kornack of your arrival. He is most looking forward to meeting the famed Butcher of planet Earth. Most looking forward to it.”

“Good. That’s… that’s awesome,” said Cal, waving to the butler as he about-turned and marched towards the door. “Take your time. No rush.”

Once Gadston had left, Cal turned to the others and lowered his voice to a whisper. “Did you hear the way he said ‘most looking forward to it’?” he hissed. “Like, he’s not just looking forward to meeting me, he’s most looking forward to it. What’s that supposed to mean?”

“That he’s looking forward to meeting you a lot?” Loren guessed. “Relax. Just be yourself.”

“But four hundred percent less annoying,” Mech added.

“Thanks for the advice,” said Cal. “Or should I say…”

“Don’t,” Mech warned. “Don’t do it, man.”

“The space advice,” said Cal.

Mech’s jaw ground noisily. “That don’t even make sense!”

“It makes perfect sense,” Cal insisted. “Perfect space sense.”

“That’s it. You’re dead,” Mech growled, his fingers curling into sledgehammer fists. “You’re a dead man.”

“You can’t kill him,” Loren said. “We promised Kornack he could meet the Butcher. If we don’t deliver, this whole thing will fall apart.”

Cal shifted in his seat. “Yeah. Funny you should bring that up,” he said. “The whole ‘meeting the Butcher’ thing. You see – and we’re all going to laugh at this - technically speaking, I’m not actually--”

“The Butcher of planet Earth!” whooped a voice from behind them. They all turned in their seats – or out of their seats, in Mech’s case – in time to see a lump of granite in a pin-striped suit be carried into the room on a golden throne.

Fifty or so of the hat-wearing little creatures strained under the weight of the sparkling chair and its occupant. The way he was bouncing excitedly in it probably wasn’t making their lives any easier.

Gadston picked a path through the throng of struggling hats, then strode smoothly ahead of the throne, his feet moving so smoothly he appeared to be gliding.

“All rise for Master Kornack, slayer of the Sh-int’ee, lord of the Ktubboth, destructor of the following planetary systems…”

The crew all stood, as the butler launched into a list of names Cal wouldn’t even dream of trying to pronounce. They ranged from high-pitched squeaks to low, guttural gurgles, with several dozen tongue-twisters in between. It was a long list, and took quite a lot of time to get through, much to the apparent dismay of the hat-creatures.

When he reached the end of the list, there was a collective sigh from the little aliens, but Gadston wasn’t done yet.

“Brother of Shornack, High Murderess of the Eleven Seals, dominatrix of Qqqtzl, and destructor of the following planetary systems…”

Cal shifted his weight and tried not to meet Kornack’s eye as Gadston launched into a list that was easily as long as the first.

At last, the introduction came to a close and the throne carriers lowered it unsteadily to the floor. “Boom! Touchdown! Haha!” cried Kornack, firing the words out like a latter-day Al Pacino projecting to an audience made up entirely of deaf people. He jumped up, moving surprisingly quickly for something his size. “The Butcher of Earth, right here in my home! Hoo-ha!”

Kornack approached Cal, and his minions scurried over to move the chairs out of his path. Cal smiled and held out his hand. “Mr Kornack, nice to meet you.”

The alien’s face turned stony. Or stonier than it had been, at least, which was really saying something. He peered down at Cal’s outstretched hand in something close to disgust. “You kidding me?” he said, and an excited grin lit up his face. He held his arms out at his sides. “Get in here for one of these, you crazy bamston!”

With a nod of encouragement from Loren, Cal stepped in and tentatively gave Kornack a hug. The rock-like arms wrapped around him and hoisted him off the ground.

“Now that is what I’m talking about!” Kornack said. “That’s the real thing, right there. Am I right?”

“Always, sir,” said Gadston.

After several highly uncomfortable seconds, Cal was set back down on the floor. He smiled weakly as the air filled his lungs again. “Thanks,” he croaked. “That was nice.”

“Kornack, on behalf of Zertex, we would like to extend our gratitude. We appreciate you coming to us with the information you obtained, and would--”

“Yeah, yeah, fine. Whatever. No problem,” said Korvack, dismissing her with a wave of his hand. “Talk to Dtsgadston. Me and the Butcher here have a lot to discuss.” He raised a hand the size of a small Eastern European country. “But first, I want to show you something. I made it myself.”

He ushered the crew towards their seats. The hat-minions carried Kornack’s throne over to Mech and deposited it quite unceremoniously behind him.

“Please,” Gadston said, gesturing to the chair. “Mr Kornack insists.”

Mech looked the solid gold chair up and down. “Well, you know, if he insists,” he said, lowering himself onto the throne. He wriggled, enjoying the moment. “Man, I could get used to this.”

“This took me weeks,” Kornack said. “How long did it take me, Dtsgadston?”

“Weeks, sir,” Gadston confirmed.

“Worth every minute. Seriously. Gonna blow your mind,” Kornack said. He gestured to a patch of empty wall behind him. “Look. See? Nothing there, right?”

“Right,” said Cal.

“I mean, nothing. Literally nothing there.” He waved a hand in front of the nothing. “You’re looking at me now, all like, ‘what’s he doing? Ain’t nothing there.’ Right? That’s what you’re thinking.”

“That’s exactly what I’m thinking,” said Cal. He looked at the others. “I mean, I don’t know about anyone else, but you’ve captured my thoughts perfectly.”

“Yes,” agreed Loren. “It’s just what I was thinking.”

Kornack grinned. “I knew it. Now watch!” he said. “Dtsgadston.”

Gadston produced his remote control again. Cal braced himself for a point-blank range blast of Dolly Parton, but instead a large piece of cloth rolled down from the shadows near the ceiling, accompanied by a handful of confetti, three underfilled balloons, and a sound like a disappointed trumpet.

It was a sign. An enormous, hand-painted sign.

Across the top were the words “Welcome, Butcher” in red.

And below the words, to Cal’s dismay, was a fifteen feet high portrait of the real Eugene ‘the Butcher’ Adwin.

Kornack’s face contorted itself into a terrifyingly wide grin, as he stabbed a finger up in the direction of Eugene’s enormous impassive face and wispy white hair. “Surprise!”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Mech, Loren, and Miz all looked up at the banner.

They looked at Cal.

They looked at the banner again.

“Hey, wait a minute…” Miz began.

“Oh no,” Loren whispered.

“Wait! I can explain,” said Cal. “Just give me, like, twenty to thirty seconds…”

“Explain what?” asked Kornack, his smile waning just a fraction. “You like it or not?”

“What? I mean, yes, I love it, but--”

“He loves it!” said Kornack, visibly delighted. “Hear that, Dtsgadston? He loves it.”

“Indeed he does, sir,” the butler confirmed.

Kornack rocked back on his heels and cast the banner a lingering look of admiration.

After he’d spent a while really taking it in, he turned to Cal. A flicker of something like confusion passed over his face. He looked back at the banner. “Have you… is there something different about you?” Kornack asked.

“Uh, yeah. Yeah. I changed my hair,” said Cal. “And, you know, lost like a hundred and eighty pounds.”

Kornack shrugged, his grin returning. “Ah, wadda I know? You all look the same to me. Am I right, Dtsgadston?”

“Always, sir.”

Mizette frowned. “But--”

“Miz, honey,” said Cal, turning in his seat. “I want you to really carefully consider the next words out of your mouth, OK?” he urged, shooting Kornack a sideways glance. “Mr Kornack took weeks to put together this banner on which is very clearly a picture of me, the Butcher of planet Earth. Understand?”

Miz looked Cal up and down. Her snout wrinkled up, like she’d suddenly got a whiff of something unpleasant. “Yeah,” she said, coldly. “Yeah, I understand just fine.”

“Gunso Loren,” said Gadston, clicking his heels together crisply. “May I suggest we retire to make arrangements?”

Loren stood up. “Yes. Of course.”

“And may I also suggest that your companions may be more comfortable elsewhere in the room, leaving Mr Kornack and the Butcher to their private matters?”

Cal’s eyes widened. “Private? It’s fine, they can stay. There’s no secrets between us, right guys?”

“Man, you’re something else,” Mech muttered, getting to his feet. He gave the throne a loving stroke. “We’ll be elsewhere. Come on, Miz.”

“Right behind you,” Mizette growled, turning her nose in the air as she pushed past Cal’s chair.

“Guys? Come on! Guys?” Cal called, but they crossed the room and stood together in the corner, deliberately keeping their back to him.

Only Splurt remained where he was, but Kornack didn’t seem to have noticed him. With a faint grunt of effort, Kornack lifted his throne, then set it in front of Cal with a clang that echoed around the cavernous space. He sat on it, perched right at the front, leaning in as close as he could get to the deeply uncomfortable Cal.

“This is… cosy,” Cal said.

“Thank you,” said Kornack. “Like the music by the way? That was for you.”

“I appreciate that,” Cal said. “It’s my favorite.”

“I know,” said Kornack. He placed two fingers on Cal’s knee, and slowly walked them up his thigh. “I know all about you.”

Cal swallowed. “Yay!” he said. “But I’m not that interesting, honest.”

Kornack pulled a mock-offended face. At least, that’s how Cal read it. It was difficult to tell with the alien’s folds of rocky flesh hanging down from his jowls. “Are you kidding me? You’re exceptional. You’re exquisite.”

He dragged his fingers back down Cal’s leg, then rubbed his hands together. “Now, tell me what it’s like.”

“What what’s like?”

“Cannibalism.”

Cal nodded. “Oh, yeah, that. Right.” He shrugged. “It’s, you know, nice.”

Kornack’s excited expression didn’t change. “Nice?”

“Really nice,” said Cal. “I highly recommend it.”

“No, but… what’s it like?” Kornack pressed. “That moment you sink your teeth into flesh of your flesh. The sound it makes as you tear them apart. The ripping. The shredding. That feeling of their juices flooding your mouth.”

“It’s… great,” said Cal. “I mean, you’ve pretty much hit the nail on the head with that… vivid picture you’ve just painted there.” He forced a laugh. “Are you sure you’ve never tried cannibalism?”

Kornack’s face turned somber. “Oh, I wish,” he said, and a shudder trembled his body, making tiny pebbles roll off him like a landslide. “I would like that very much.”

“Yeah. Yeah, it’s great alright,” said Cal. He leaned back and made a show of taking in the room around them. “Still, this is nice.”

“Fonk that shizz!” cried Kornack, jumping to his feet with such force his throne skidded backwards across the floor. “I want to hear the good stuff! Tell me what it’s like. Blow by blow, bite by bite. I want to hear it all!”

Cal raised a hand, hoping to calm the warlord down. Kornack was still smiling, but it looked in real danger of slipping away at any second, and Cal didn’t really want to find out what expression he wore underneath.

“OK, OK,” he said. “Have you ever tasted chicken?”

“What the fonk is ‘chicken’?” Kornack demanded.

“No, course you haven’t. It’s a flightless bird, doesn’t matter,” Cal said. “What do you eat?”

“Silicate.”

“What, like… rocks? Well, I guess it’s like that. But, you know, not as crunchy.”

Kornack’s smile dribbled away. His eyes turned glassy and dark.

“And,” said Cal, quickly. “It’s… It’s like an explosion of taste that fills you all the way from your toes to the top of your head. It’s like… you’re not just eating their flesh, you’re eating everything they were. Their thoughts. Their hopes. Their childhood memories. It’s like they’re now yours. Like they belong to you.”

Kornack’s mouth tugged upwards at the corners. “Go on.”

“And… the energy. You feel strong. Like they’ve given you all their strength, all their power. It’s like they’ve given themselves to you in the fullest way possible. More than sex, more than love. They’ve literally given themselves to you on a plate,” Cal continued. “Even if, you know, you’ve had to bash them over the head with a rock to get them there.”

A string of drool dribbled from Kornack’s bottom lip. He wiped it away on the sleeve of his ill-fitting suit.

“More,” he urged. “Tell me more.”

Cal’s mind raced. “Um… what else? It keeps well in the fridge? You know, if you wrap it properly,” he said. “Or the freezer. You can freeze it.”

“Like you did to your parents,” said Kornack, his eyes blazing.

“That’s right. Like I did to my parents. They kept for months. Then you just thaw, reheat. You know, microwave or whatever. That’s you. You’re all set.”

Kornack’s dark purple tongue scraped across his stony lips. “Who was the tastiest?”

Cal puffed out his cheeks. “My mom, probably.”

“Apart from them,” said Kornack. “Apart from your parents, who was the tastiest victim?”

Cal narrowed his eyes and looked upwards, as if searching for a memory. “Fifth one, probably.”

“Alanna Owen. The secretary?”

“Yep. If you say so.”

“Tell me about her,” Kornack urged in a breathless whisper. “In detail. Slowly.”

Cal glanced across to see Gadston bowing at Loren, who then turned away. She gave Cal a nod, and he almost sobbed with relief. “You know, I’d love to, but it looks like we’re done here and, boy, our schedule is packed today.”

He stood up. Kornack’s expression turned to one of confusion. “What?”

“We’re done. Deal’s made, right Loren?”

Loren nodded again as she joined them. “Yeah. All done.”

Cal took Kornack’s hand and shook it. “Mr Kornack, it’s been a pleasure. Good luck with the cannibal stuff, I hope it works out. Mech, Miz! We’re going!” he said, backing away from the warlord. “Splurt, let’s go, buddy.”

“He’s not coming,” said Loren.

Cal shot her a sideways glance, not taking his eyes off the increasingly unhappy-looking Kornack. “What?”

“Splurt… I mean, the organism. It’s not coming. It’s part of the deal. It stays here.”

“What? What are you talking about?”

“That was the trade,” Loren said. “The data for the organism.”

“Stop calling him ‘the organism,’” said Cal. “And there’s no way we’re just leaving Splurt with this guy.”

“Yes,” said Loren. “We are. The deal has been done.”

“Well, not by me, it hasn’t,” Cal protested. “Mech! Miz! She’s given them Splurt.”

The cyborg and the wolf-woman approached. “So?” said Miz.

“So, he’s one of us!” said Cal.

“What you talking about, man?” Mech snorted. “There ain’t no ‘us.’”

“Well, I’m not leaving here without him,” said Cal. He became aware of movement in the shadows at the edges of the room. Shapes lurked there. Dozens of eyes studied him from the darkness.

“The shapeshifter is mine now,” said Kornack, all his earlier joviality now notable by its absence. “The rest of you may leave… after I’ve seen the Butcher eat.”

Cal blinked. “Excuse me?”

“I want to see you consume human flesh,” Kornack said. “I want to admire you in action.”

“I’m not really that hungry,” said Cal. He gestured around them. “Besides, do you even have any other humans here?”

“No, sir,” Gadston admitted.

“Well, that’s that, then,” said Cal. “Shame, obviously, but I can’t very well be a cannibal without a human to munch on, can I?”

“Oh, we have a human, sir,” said Gadston.

Cal frowned. “Who?” he said, turning to face the butler just as he produced an axe-like weapon from behind his back.

“You, sir.”

“Me? But… hold on.”

“You’re gonna cut a piece off,” Kornack explained. “An arm, maybe. You choose. But something meaty. Then you’re gonna eat it, and I’m gonna watch.”

Cal’s jaw dropped. “That is… the maddest fonking thing I’ve ever heard,” he said. He glared at Loren. “You know about this?”

“No. Warlord Kornack, this wasn’t part of the agreement.”

“I know. You’ve got what you wanted. The deal is done. This here? With the eating himself and whatnot? That’s purely for my own enjoyment.”

Loren straightened her shoulders. “I must insist--”

“I must insist you shut your mouth,” Kornack warned. “Dtsgadston, give him the blade.”

“Of course, sir,” the butler said. He turned the weapon and presented it to Cal like a newborn baby to a first time father. “I had it sharpened specially, sir. It should take no more than two to three strikes to cut through.”

“My arm?”

“Or leg. Like I say, your choice,” said Kornack. He settled himself on his throne and flicked his tongue across his dry lips. “Just… don’t take too long to get started. After that, take as long as you like.”

Cal took the axe. It was lighter than he’d been expecting. He hefted it from hand to hand and took a deep breath.

“Oh, man, this is… this is all kinds of messed up,” said Mech.

Cal shot Mizette an imploring look, but she turned away and crossed her arms, her tail curling angrily in the air.

“OK, then. Looks like I’m doing this,” he muttered. “Everyone ready?”

“Cal,” said Loren.

“It’s fine,” said Cal, offering her a shaky smile. “Don’t worry about it. I barely use my left arm, anyway. I won’t even notice it’s gone.”

He lined the blade of the axe up with his arm, just below the elbow. Kornack leaned forwards in his chair, groaning with anticipation. Cal took a deep breath. He swung.

And the blade buried deep in Gadston’s skull, splitting him from the top of the head to the tip of his nose. “Ooh, shizz,” Cal grimaced. “That went in further than I thought.”

Before anyone could react, he made a grab for Splurt and tucked him under his arm. “Now come on,” he urged, just as Gadston toppled sideways to the floor. “Let’s get the fonk out of here!”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Cal powered along the passageway, trying his best to ignore the squealing, howling and roaring of the things that currently chased him. Unfortunately, the fact the din was getting louder and closer with every moment that passed made ignoring it quite difficult.

“You idiot!” hissed Mech, thundering along beside him. “You couldn’t just have cut your arm off like the man asked? And why’d you have to split that dude’s head open?”

“The other guy was made of rock,” Cal said. “There was no way I could have split his head open.”

“Well maybe you could have tried not splitting anyone’s head open,” Mech suggested. “Ever think of that?”

The cyborg’s top half spun one-hundred-and-eighty degrees, while his bottom half continued running forwards. Raising an arm, Mech let rip with a short spray of blaster fire from his wrist.

“Gun arms? When did you get gun arms?” Cal demanded. “You never told me you had gun arms!”

Up ahead, two figures lunged at Loren and Miz from the shadows. From the way the attackers’ expressions changed, mid-leap, they both realized pretty quickly that they’d made a terrible mistake. Loren slammed the heel of her hand into the center of one attacker’s face, while a flash of Miz’s claws gave the other a more detailed knowledge of his innards than he’d possibly have liked.

Splurt squidged around under Cal’s arm, almost slipping out as they rounded the bend that led to the exit. The enormous metal door was shut tight, the floor in front of it swarming with the little hat-things.

“Still hungry?” Loren asked.

“Ravenous,” Miz snarled. She dropped onto all fours and sped ahead, her jaws snapping furiously at the creatures, and sending them scattering in all directions.

“Mech, we need an exit!” Cal urged.

Mech’s top spun like a tank turret. “Coming right up,” he said, taking aim. A volley of blaster fire screamed along the corridor, bounced off the door, and screamed back. Cal ducked just in time to avoid it punching a hole straight through his head.

“It’s reinforced. Blaster won’t cut it!” Mech said.

“Then what do we do?” yelped Cal, painfully aware of the throng of angry alien bamstons closing the gap behind them.

“What we ought to do is toss you back to them and hope they let the rest of us go,” Mech said.

“Not a fan of that plan,” said Cal. “Anything else?”

“Just this,” said Mech. He twisted his dial to the right and his eyes went dull. “Run fast. Follow,” he said in a dull monotone, then he lowered his head and hurtled onwards, passing Loren and Miz in a hiss of hydraulics, and trampling half a dozen of the tiny aliens into a lumpy paste.

With a bang and a screeching of tearing metal, Mech charged through the door like a bull through a Spaniard, leaving a gaping hole roughly in the shape of his outline. The hat-creatures flooded out after him, either giving chase or trying to escape Mizette’s teeth, Cal couldn’t be sure. Loren and Miz were both almost at the hole now, too, leaving just Cal trailing behind.

“Hold on, Splurt,” Cal puffed, risking a glance back over his shoulder. The corridor heaved with misshapen bodies, all waving clubs, knives, and short, stubby swords. “Hey, at least they don’t have guns,” Cal said, just as a burning beam of blue light scorched the air beside him. “Whoops, spoke too soon,” he groaned, covering his head with his free arm and racing on.

A few of the hat-things had managed to dodge past Miz, and now raced towards Cal, their stubby arms waving angrily above their heads. Cal jumped in fright as he felt Splurt move, then stared in wonder as the floppy green blob became a rigidly solid baseball bat.

“Man, I love this little guy!” Cal cheered, giving the bat an experimental swish.

The first few minions reached him, just as he brought the bat around in a wide backswing. There was a deeply satisfying knock, and one of the things smacked against the wall. Cal leaped and kicked and swung his way through the crowd, scattering them this way and that.

He howled in fright as another blast of blue energy crackled past his ear, then ducked through the broken door and out onto the walkway.

“Get these things off me,” Mech droned. He was half-buried by a squirming swarm of the little hat-beasts. He flailed around, trying to shake them off.

Miz tore into a few of them, and snapped at a couple more. For every one that fell off, though, three more clambered onto Mech’s hulking frame. There was a fzzt as one of them tore out a wire, and Mech’s voice became oddly high-pitched.

“Help. Breaking me. Stop.”

Loren yanked a few of the critters away. Cal thwacked another few with the baseball bat, but their numbers didn’t seem to be thinning. “What do we do?” Loren asked.

“Only thing I can think of is this,” said Cal. He lunged forwards and thrust his arm into the heaving mass of alien bodies. Fumbling around until he found Mech’s dial, he turned Mech’s dial all the way to the left.

There was a low hum of power, and Mech’s eyes went completely dark. He spun like a top, sending the creatures hurtling off in all directions. Cal ducked as a dozen of them soared above his head, then straightened up and grinned.

“It worked!” he said, then he stopped when he saw Mech’s expression. The blank stare was gone, replaced by a contorted mask of rage. The walkway shook as the towering cyborg advanced on Cal.

“Hey, pal, what’s up?” Cal asked. “I saved you. Awesome, huh?”

Mech’s jaw dropped open. An animalistic roar rose up from his throat and he swung his arms down, shattering the walkway right where Cal had been standing.

Cal stumbled back, holding up a hand in surrender. “Hey, wait, big guy. We’re on the same side here, remember?”

“You turned him all the way right!” Loren gasped.

“I turned him left,” said Cal.

“No, I mean our left, his right. You diverted all his power to hydraulics.”

“Yes, so?”

“So he’s not Mech anymore,” Loren said. “He’s a mindless weapon.”

Mech swung a fist in an overhead strike. Cal and Loren both dodged in opposite directions, narrowly avoiding being squashed. “And he’s targeting you!”

“Me?” Cal gasped. “Why would he target me? I’m endearingly quirky. Or quirkily endearing. I always forget which.”

“Maybe he doesn’t like liars,” Miz scowled.

“Wait, I’m the liar?” Cal spluttered, jabbing a finger in Loren’s direction. “What about her?”

There was a commotion from the broken doorway as a menagerie of aliens tried to shove its way through all at the same time. “Get back to the ship. Start the engines,” Cal said. “I’ll fix Mech.”

Loren hesitated, then raced after Miz back towards the ship. “We’re leaving in one minute,” she warned.

“Hear that, Mech, old pal?” asked Cal, dodging to avoid another scything strike from Mech’s fists. “We don’t have much time, so excuse me while I do this.”

He pounced, grabbing for Mech’s dial. A metal hand clamped around his arm, stopping him less than half an inch from the control. Cal yelped as Mech hoisted him off the walkway.

“Ooh, ow, ow. This hurts,” Cal said. “And I don’t know about you, but I have a real feeling of déjà vu right now.”

The bat squirmed in Cal’s hand, growing a long, snaking arm. It reached out and flicked Mech’s dial back to center. The light came back on behind the cyborg’s eyes. “What? What’s the fonk is happening?” he asked, blinking.

“We’re escaping. From them. Right now,” said Cal, swinging his leg up and hooking himself onto Mech’s back. “Now run, Robo-Forrest,” he whispered. “Run!”

Mech sighed. “We so should’ve just tossed you back.”

He thundered up the ramp just as the Shatner’s engines ignited, blasting blue fire that drove back the oncoming alien horde. As soon as they were aboard, Mech shrugged violently, launching Cal a few feet into the air, where he flapped frantically for a moment, before plummeting to the floor.

“Ow!” Cal grimaced, rubbing his knees. “Was that strictly necessary?”

“No, but I liked it,” said Mech. Behind him, the ramp clanked into place against the hull, sealing the ship shut and blocking out most of the engine noise.

Cal had dropped the baseball bat during his brief, and ultimately unsuccessful, attempt at flight. It wriggled like a snake, then unrolled into a slimy green sausage with an eye at each end. With an elastic snap, Splurt returned to his normal shapeless shape.

“Better get up here!” Loren shouted from the flight deck. “Taking off in twenty seconds.”

Cal, Mech and Splurt quickly made their way to the front. Liquid burbled through pipes and light flickered on wall panels as the ship came alive around them. Cal got to his seat and fastened his belt just as the Shatner lurched upwards off the landing platform.

“We made it!” Cal laughed. “Good job, team!”

Loren twisted the stick and the desolate horizon rolled towards the floor. “We haven’t made it yet.”

“And we ain’t no team, neither,” Mech added.

“Sure we are. Right, Miz?”

Miz turned just long enough in her chair to glower at Cal with contempt, then returned to picking flecks of hat-thing flesh from beneath her claws.

“Hey, why the cold shoulder all of a sudden? I thought you were, you know, into me?”

“Ew,” Miz grimaced. “You’re bald and unusually hideous. I was into the stuff you’d done, not you. Except you didn’t actually do any of it.”

“Oh. OK. Gotcha,” said Cal, feeling relieved, but oddly disappointed at the same time.

“Leaving the atmosphere in five, four…” Loren announced. Colors swirled around the screen again, but this time there was no violent shudder to accompany it. In just a few short moments, the oil-on-water rainbow patterns had given way to thousands of pinpricks of light.

“See? We made it!” said Cal.

An alarm wailed. Row upon row of flashing red text scrolled up the screen, completely obscuring one side. Something exploded against the ship’s shield, making it flicker.

“Multiple hostiles closing fast!” Loren cried. “I make… eight. Twelve. Too many to count.”

Cal tried to make sense of the text, but it was scrolling by far too quickly for him to grasp more than the odd letter or number here and there. “Is it pirates?”

“Yeah, and Kornack’s fighters,” said Mech. “Not good. This is not good.”

“When in doubt, run away,” said Cal. “That’s my motto. Warp speed, Mr Sulu!”

“We can’t warp!” Loren yelped, as another torpedo exploded against the shields.

Cal groaned. “Don’t tell me you broke it again?”

“I didn’t break it the first time,” Loren hissed. “And no, the proximity sensors won’t let us jump to warp speed when there are other ships so close.”

“Well that’s stupid!” said Cal. “Who thought that was a good idea?”

“It’s a safety feature,” Loren said, pushing down on the stick and plunging them back towards the planet below as she tried to avoid another direct hit.

“Well your ‘safety feature’ is going to get us killed, which sort of seems counterproductive, don’t you think?” Cal said. “Mech, can you disable it so we can get out of here?”

“It’s risky,” Mech replied.

Cal gestured to the screen ahead. A volley of laser fire tore into their shields, making it shimmer worryingly.

Mech nodded. “You got a point. On it,” he said, spinning and marching towards the door. “Mizette, watch the shields.”

Miz let out a long sigh, like she’d just been tasked with the single most annoying job in the universe. “Fine,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I’ll watch the stupid shields.”

Another torpedo slammed into the ship, rocking it violently and turning the shields a quite striking shade of red for a few seconds.

“We got hit,” said Miz.

“I noticed!” said Loren. “Where are the shields at?”

Miz tutted. “How should I know? The front?”

“I mean what level are they at?” Loren spat. She jabbed a finger frantically in the direction of some more text on the far right of the screen. “Over there.”

“Oh, well why didn’t you just say that?” said Miz. “Sixty-two percent.”

“Is that… that’s bad, right?” said Cal. “That doesn’t seem like enough shields. Can we fight back?”

“Against all those ships? No way. There are dozens of them.”

“Which means we have lots of targets,” Cal pointed out. “And the best pilot in Zertex.”

“But only on the simulator,” Miz added.

“I was trying to be motivational,” Cal said.

“You mean you were lying again?” Another explosion rocked the ship. “Shields at fifty-six percent.”

Loren yanked on the stick, sending the ship screaming into an upwards loop. “Fine. You want to fight them? Go ahead,” she said. “I’m not the one in the gunner’s seat.”

Cal looked down as the wide arm rests of his chair flipped open, and a bewildering array of controls tumbled out. They unfolded and locked together, forming two quarter-circle consoles beside each arm.

Something gripped his neck, holding his head steady as a visor slid into position over his eyes. At first, there was nothing but blackness, but then a single white dot appeared in the dark. It rushed towards him, growing larger, then split into billions of smaller dots.

Zooming towards the growing galaxy, Cal felt a wave of motion sickness start to build again. He snapped to a sudden stop and found himself floating in space. Several angular-looking ships screamed past, long red laser blasts stabbing at him. He screamed, instinctively, when he saw a ball of fiery light come hurtling towards him, and could do nothing but close his eyes and hope for the best.

The Shatner trembled. “Forty-seven percent,” Mizette said, her voice no longer just inside the ship, but floating towards him from every corner of space.

Cal jumped as two joysticks pressed themselves into his hands. “Left stick’s cannons, right’s torpedoes,” said Loren’s disembodied voice. “Torpedoes do more damage, but we’ve only got twelve. Watch the cannon for overheating.”

The Shatner swung sideways and Cal screamed as he was sent hurtling helplessly through empty space.

“That’s the basics,” said Loren. “Now take them out!”

Two oblong targeting reticles appeared in empty space ahead of Cal, both swinging around wildly as the Shatner bobbed and weaved through the onslaught of oncoming attack ships. The targets responded when Cal moved the sticks, but just vaguely, as if they were only half paying attention to his input.

One of the ships screeched across their path, dead ahead. Cal yelped in panic and squeezed both triggers. There was a flash as a torpedo launched, then an even brighter one as the cannon fire ignited the missile just a few dozen feet off the starboard bow.

The Shatner flipped and rolled. The alarms screeched louder, but Loren’s voice was even louder still. “Watch what you’re doing! You almost killed us!”

“Sorry, sorry, that was my fault,” Cal said. “Accidentally shot our own torpedo.”

“We know!” Miz shouted. “Shields at twenty-six percent.”

“Cal, you’d better start taking some of those things out right now,” Loren warned. “Or we’re dead within the next minute.”

Cal flexed his fingers, then gripped the sticks again. “Come on, come on, come on,” he whispered. “How hard can it be?”

During Cal’s teenage years, back home on Earth, there had been a video game by the name of Elite 2, which involved – among other things – engaging in space-based ship-to-ship combat with attacking pirates. In many ways, it bore a striking similarity to the situation Cal now found himself in, and was pretty much the perfect training for anyone who ever found themselves locked in a real space battle.

Which was a shame, because at the height of Elite 2’s popularity, Cal had been busy sneaking into bars to try to meet women, and had never even heard of the game, much less played it.

Despite his complete lack of experience, however, Cal quickly began to figure things out. He realized that if you twisted the sticks while moving them, they moved much more slowly, but were far more responsive. Frantically waggling the sticks around moved the sights quickly but erratically, while twisting slowed them to a crawl, but made aiming at anything at least a possibility.

“Coming in hot, eight o’clock,” Loren warned.

Cal turned his head and the galaxy spun. “Eight? Which way’s eight?”

He saw a clumsily put-together ship bearing down on them on his left. “I see it!” he said, fighting both sticks towards the target.

“It’s trying to get a torpedo lock! Take it out!”

“One sec…” Cal said, gritting his teeth. “Almost… got it.”

The left targeting reticle wobbled over the approaching ship. Cal jammed his finger on the button and a scorching beam of red tore into the attacking ship, sending it spinning. “I hit it! Did you see that? I hit it! Eat that, bedge!”

“You destabilized its shields,” Loren said, banking the Shatner to keep the spiraling craft in sight. “Finish it off.”

Cal struggled against the reluctant right stick, guiding the sight in roughly the right direction. As it drew close, he twisted, inching the reticle slowly towards the target. The oblong aiming sight locked onto the ship and flashed green. Cal squeezed the trigger.

A sphere of energy rocketed through space, closing the gap between the ships in seconds. There was a physics-defying fireball as the torpedo ripped apart the attack craft’s shields and exploded through the hull.

“Woo-hoo!” Cal cheered. “One down.”

“Lots more to go,” Loren warned. “Mech, how we doing back there?”

“That depends,” Mech shouted back. “Do you want a twenty percent chance of dying, or a sixty-percent? Right now, we’re at a sixty. Maybe sixty-five.”

Another torpedo slammed into the Shatner. Cal felt it rattle all the way through to his bone marrow.

“Shields at… uh, nothing,” said Mizette.

“Oh, fonk it,” Loren muttered. “Mech, hold onto something!”

The engine whined.

The ship jumped.

And, as a billion billion stars whizzed past around him, Cal quietly threw up in his mouth.

CHAPTER TWENTY

With some difficulty, Cal managed to slip free of the gunner’s visor and blinked in the artificial light of the ship. On screen, everything was streaking by far too quickly for his liking, but at least there was one positive.

“We’re alive!” Cal announced, as if he was the first one to notice. “We did it! Go team!”

“I told you, we ain’t no team,” Mech said, stomping onto the bridge.

Cal unclipped his belt and stood up. “Are you kidding me? We were awesome! Loren avoided those ships, I shot one down, probably saving all our lives in the process, you did the thing with the thing, and Miz read out those numbers.” Cal leaned past Mech and flashed Mizette a smile. “And, if I may say so, you did a great job.”

Mizette blinked slowly, then very deliberately turned away. Cal looked across the scowling faces of the others. “Hey, tell me if I’m crazy here, but I get the feeling I’ve done something to annoy you guys,” he asked.

Loren spluttered and stood up. “You have! You lied to us. You told us you were the Butcher, and that almost got us killed.”

“OK, one, I told the space president he had the wrong guy way back at the start, and only changed my story once it was clear he was going to do some deeply unpleasant things to me if I wasn’t who he thought I was. That’s not my fault.”

Loren crossed her arms, but didn’t say anything.

“And two, Kornack still thinks I’m the Butcher. That’s not why they were chasing us.”

“No, they were chasing us because you grabbed the specimen.”

“Because you were giving him away! Crew members don’t give other crew members away, Loren, that’s like, rule number one.”

“The specimen isn’t part of the crew!” Loren barked.

“His name’s Splurt, and yes, he is,” Cal replied. “He saved the ship from being blown to bits by that Symmorium guy. If it wasn’t for him, we wouldn’t even be here. That makes him part of the crew.”

“What are you even talking about?” said Miz, crossing her arms sulkily. “Crew? What crew? We’re not a crew. We had one job to do, and now we’ve done it – sure, badly, but we did it. Let’s get whatever that Kornack guy gave us sent to wherever it’s supposed to go, and then we are done.”

“Lady makes a good point,” said Mech. “Sooner we get that data gone, sooner we get paid and can go our separate ways.”

“Can’t wait,” said Miz.

“And what happens to me?” asked Cal. “I mean… you guys know all about this space stuff, but what happens to me? Earth, from what they tell me, is dead. Where do I go?”

“Not our problem,” said Miz.

Mech folded his arms and creaked his jaw shut.

“No. I mean, yeah. I mean, right. Not your problem,” said Cal. He turned away, but the streaking star fields flipped his stomach upside-down. He made for the door. “I’m going to go and find that room with the bench again. I’ll, uh, I’ll see you guys later.”

“No rush,” Miz growled.

Cal hesitated at the door. “Look, I’m sorry I lied, OK? Guys?” None of the others turned to look his way. He nodded. “Right,” he said, then he ducked into the corridor and left the flight deck behind.

* * *

Cal sat on the bench, his back to the window, his elbows resting on his knees. He was finding the pattern on the floor between his feet unusually fascinating. His eyes traced the ridges in the metal, like they were part of a maze he could escape from. No matter which way he turned, though, there appeared to be no way out.

“Hey.”

Loren entered, holding a plastic cup. “Thirsty?”

Cal took the cup and studied the contents. “What is it?”

“Water,” said Loren, sitting on the bench beside him.

“Space water?” asked Cal, raising his voice.

“I heard that!” called Mech from the bridge.

“He was supposed to,” said Cal, lowering his voice again.

“Just water,” said Loren. “And why do you do that?”

Cal sipped the drink. It was water.

“Do what?”

“Fool around all the time. Try to get on people’s nerves.”

“I don’t try, it comes naturally. It’s a gift,” Cal said. He swirled the cup around gently, and watched ripples form on the surface. “It’s kind of my go-to response in times of stress. I’m millions of miles from a home that probably doesn’t exist anymore. I’m on a spaceship with a robot, a werewolf, living Silly Putty and whatever you are – no offense – and I’ve just fought a battle with alien space pirates, after escaping a guy made out of rock.”

He sipped the water again. “Yesterday, I was in jail. At least, I think it was yesterday. I don’t even know what time it is. What time is it?”

“Where?”

“Here.”

Loren shrugged. “It isn’t. We’re not in any time zone.”

Cal sighed. “OK, fine. What time is it on Earth?”

“Where?” asked Loren.

“Earth! My home planet. The one your people have completely fonked up with your bugs.”

“No, I mean where on Earth? It’s got different time zones.”

Cal shook his head. “Jesus. Why does it have to be so complicated?” he muttered. He drained the cup in a couple of big gulps, then set it down on the floor between his feet. “You get in touch with your boss?”

“I sent the co-ordinates in an encrypted message. President Sinclair is going to call us himself in a few minutes. Probably to thank us.”

“Something to look forward to, then,” said Cal. “And then we’re done?”

Loren nodded. “And then we’re done.”

They sat in silence for a while. Eventually, Loren drew in a breath and put her hands on her knees in a way that suggested she was about to leave. More than anything, Cal didn’t want her to.

“Hey… what’s your name, anyway?” he asked. “Your first name, I mean. ‘Gunso’ is like a rank, right?”

Loren hesitated. “Right. Teela. It’s… it’s Teela. What’s yours?”

Cal turned to look at her properly for the first time since she’d sat down. “Seriously? My first crush was on a girl named Teela.”

“Oh?” said Loren. “What was she like?”

“She was… animated,” said Cal, after a moment’s thought. “And I don’t mean she was, like, lively or anything. I mean she was literally animated. She was a cartoon character,” Cal explained. “He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. Ever seen it?”

Loren shook her head. “No.”

“By the Power of Grayskull! No?”

Loren shook her head again.

“No, didn’t think so,” Cal said. “And my name’s Cal. Not the Californian Butcher, or whatever I said, just Cal. Carver.”

Loren extended a hand. “Pleased to meet you, Cal Carver.”

Cal studied the hand for a moment, taken aback, then shook. “Pleased to meet you, too, Teela Loren.”

He released his grip, then brushed an imaginary fleck of dust off the knee of his pants. “You got any family?” he asked. “Brothers, sisters… husband, or whatever?”

“Just brothers. Two. Off serving somewhere, haven’t seen them in a while. You?”

“No,” said Cal. “I mean… Yeah. I mean. Once.”

“Oh. You think the bugs may have--?”

“Hmm? Oh, no. This was… this was a long time ago.” He stood up and grinned unconvincingly. “Forget it. Hey, don’t you think it’s weird that Miz likes me less now that she’s found out I didn’t eat forty-six people?”

“Forty-eight.”

“Yeah, sorry. Forty-eight,” said Cal. He sighed. “He so should’ve pushed for the fifty.”

“He really shouldn’t. And yes, it’s weird, but I think it was the eating your parents bit she was attracted to,” Loren said. “Her father is Graxan of the Greyx. I don’t think they’re what you might call ‘close.’”

“Ah, parents,” said Cal. “Can’t live with them, can’t exist in the first place without them. What was it that British poet guy said? ‘They fonk you up, your mum and dad.’”

“I have absolutely no idea,” said Loren. “Also… Greyx don’t like to show weakness. She showed you her feelings, and you betrayed her.”

“Well, ‘betrayed’ is a strong word…”

Loren shrugged. “It’s how she feels.”

“How do I make it right?” Cal asked. “I don’t want her to hate me,” he said, then he blinked, as if the sentence had caught him off guard. “Huh. I don’t want her to hate me.”

“Honestly? I have no idea. Time, maybe? Show her you’re genuinely sorry? It can’t hurt.”

“And how do I do that?”

“That, I’m afraid I don’t know.” She stood up. “Now, I’d better get back. President Sinclair will be calling soon.”

“Good luck with that,” said Cal, then he stopped her before she could reach the exit. “Hey, wait. Do you know what a baseball bat is?”

Loren shook her head. “Is it an Earth thing?”

“Yeah. Yeah, it’s an Earth thing,” said Cal. “Except Splurt changed into one. Back on the planet. He changed into a baseball bat. How would he even know what one was?”

Loren shrugged. “Psychic, probably. Grabbed an impression out of your mind and altered his shape accordingly. In the studies we carried out, there was evidence of telepathic activity.”

“He can change shape and read minds?” Cal said. “And you were going to just give him away?”

“I had my orders,” said Loren, stiffening. “I just hope the fact I failed to follow them doesn’t have too many major consequences.”

Cal waved dismissively. “Just tell them it’s my fault.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” said Loren. “I fully intend to.”

* * *

It was another fifteen minutes before Cal joined the rest of the crew on the flight deck. At least, he guessed it was fifteen minutes, which was his main reason for coming through.

“Listen, I’ve been thinking,” he said, ducking through the door. “We should have a ship time. Like decide what time it is here on the ship, and then that’s what we work from no matter where we are. We could call it Shatner Time and…”

He stopped talking when he realized the faces of President Sinclair and Legate Jjin were watching him from a webcam-style box overlaid in the center of the screen. He waved. “Oh. Hey. It’s you guys.”

“Hello, Mr Carver,” said the president. For once he wasn’t smiling.

“Ah. So, you told him?” Cal asked Loren.

“She didn’t. I did,” said Miz.

“Oh. OK. Yeah, you got the wrong guy,” said Cal. “But hey, it all worked out. We made the trade.”

“The Remnants have declared all-out war on the Zertex Corporation and our allies,” Jjin barked. “By what definition has it ‘all worked out’?”

Cal winced. “By an extremely loose definition?”

“It’s not important, not right now,” said Sinclair. “As I was explaining to Gunso Loren, we’ve decoded the co-ordinates. The footage originates from a moon located on the edge of Symmorium space. It’s a highly disputed territory. There’s no way we can get a team there without sparking a major galactic incident and a confrontation between our government and theirs.”

“Uh, won’t a crazy old man virus thing killing everyone spark an even bigger incident?” Cal pointed out.

“It will,” said Sinclair.

“They want us to go stop the virus,” said Loren.

“Isn’t that… that sounds like it might be dangerous,” said Cal.

“We chose Mech for this mission because we feared this may be a possibility,” said Sinclair. “His systems should allow him to imprison the core virus with little risk of it compromising him.”

“How little a risk we talking?” Mech demanded.

“Tiny,” said Sinclair. “Barely a risk at all. And, of course, you would be handsomely rewarded.”

“How handsomely?”

“Do this – stop the virus – and you can all name your price,” said the president. “Hell, I’ll give you all a planet.”

Mech raised an eyebrow. “Each?”

“Each,” said Sinclair, his smile returning. “Perhaps even two.”

“Wait, wait, but isn’t it out there already?” said Cal. “All those people in the restaurant who came back to life. You said they were infected. How do we stop them?”

“We’ll figure that out,” said Sinclair. “There is no evidence yet that it has left the planet’s surface. Once we have a sample of the virus, we can devise an anti-virus to stop it. It may well be that those infected are not yet beyond saving, but only if we move now.”

“Of course, sir. We’ll plot a course right away,” said Loren.

“Hey, wait a minute,” said Cal. “Shouldn’t we take a vote or something?”

“That is a Zertex vessel,” said Jjin, glaring down at Cal with a contempt he was making absolutely no effort whatsoever to conceal. “So, as the only Zertex officer on board, Gunso Loren has the only vote.”

“Well… that doesn’t seem very fair,” said Cal. “Also, side note, I can see right up your nose from here. You may want to invest in a nasal hair trimmer.”

“I’m afraid Legate Jjin is right,” said Sinclair, interrupting Jjin before he could start shouting. “I don’t like this any more than you do, but Gunso Loren has her orders. If anyone doesn’t like it, they are free to leave at the next stop.”

“But the next stop is virus central,” said Cal. “Clever. I see what you’ve done there.” He glanced around at the crew, then nodded. “If we do it, then Splurt gets his own planet, too.”

“Splurt?”

“The entity,” said Loren. “The shapeshifter. He called him Splurt.”

Legate Jjin peered down his nose at her. “It, I mean,” she corrected. “He called it Splurt.”

“Ah yes, so he did, I remember now,” said Sinclair. “Fine. Agreed. We’re sending you the decryption key for the co-ordinates. You should have them shortly.”

“Got them,” Loren said. She tapped a series of digits onto a screen and the Shatner groaned as it changed direction mid-warp. “We’ll be there within the hour.”

“The peace process is counting on you, gunso,” said Sinclair. “It’s counting on you all.”

“Aw, man, don’t say that,” Mech groaned.

Sinclair’s face split into a beaming grin as he pointed down the camera lens at them. “Don’t let me down now! Zertex Command…”

“One,” said Jjin.

“Zertex Command One out,” said Sinclair, and the video box blinked away, leaving an uninterrupted view of the oncoming stars.

An uneasy silence hung in the air for several seconds after the broadcast finished. It was Cal who eventually broke it.

“So, our own planets, huh? That’s pretty cool.”

“Oh yeah, like that’s ever going to happen,” said Miz.

“If President Sinclair says he’s giving you planets, he’ll give you planets,” said Loren. “He’s a man of his word.”

“Yeah. I have my doubts about that,” said Cal. “I mean, I know you think he’s great and all, but there’s something about that guy…”

“Doesn’t matter,” said Miz. “We all saw the footage. We all know what’s waiting for us when we get there. No way we’re getting out of there alive.”

“Maybe,” Mech admitted. “But I ain’t got nothing else planned for my day, and I could sure use a whole planet of my own.” He looked Cal up and down. “Ever used a blaster pistol before?”

“I’ve used a water pistol,” said Cal. “Does that count? I’d imagine they’re broadly similar.”

Mech muttered something aggressive. “How long you say until we arrive?” he asked Loren.

Loren checked her display. “Forty minutes, maybe.”

“OK,” said Mech. “In that case, I guess we’d better get started.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Cal stood in a room he vaguely remembered from Loren’s initial tour, watching Mech try to open a fiddly locker latch with his huge metal fingers. The cyborg wasn’t having a lot of success, and had now taken to mumbling angrily below his breath.

“Want me to do it?”

“For the fourth time, no. I got it,” Mech snapped.

“You said that three minutes ago,” Cal pointed out. “I could have that thing open in literally five seconds. I have very nimble fingers. It’s one of my best features.”

“I got it.”

“Fine. Suit yourself.” Cal shrugged. “But speaking of ‘minutes’ and ‘seconds’ – while we’re waiting, let’s talk about Shatner Time.”

“Let’s not.”

“But it makes total sense! We could decide that right now is, say, four o’clock, and just work from there. Also, we’d get to say ‘it’s Shatner Time’ whenever we wanted.”

“Argh!” grunted Mech, as the locker catch slipped through his fingers. He tried again. “OK, first up, whatever word you hear when I say ‘minutes’ is not the word I’m saying. It’s doesn’t even necessarily means the same thing. The chip in your head isn’t just translating words, it’s translating concepts.”

“I don’t get it,” admitted Cal.

“Really? You surprise me,” Mech spat. “Look, let’s say you hear ‘eighty minutes’ through your chip. I may have said, I don’t know, four hundred other units of some other time that you ain’t got no word for, but which add up to the same length as eighty minutes. So that’s problem number one.”

“That’s definitely problem number one, because I still don’t understand it,” Cal said. “But go on.”

“Problem number two, is that we’re all from very different planets, with very different orbits, and so work on a whole range of time cycles. Back where I come from, the day is sixty-eight hours long. My world takes four years to orbit the sun. I’m guessing yours is different.”

“Yeah,” said Cal, deflating slightly. “Yeah, it’s different. But what about the space stations? They’ve got to have clocks, right? How do they tell the time?”

“It’s based on whatever sun they’re in orbit around,” Mech said, grimacing as he twisted the cabinet’s catch. “We don’t have that to— Argh! Fonking thing!”

Swinging back his fist, Mech punched a hole in the front of the locker, then tore the door off and tossed it across the room. It whummed briefly through the air, then embedded itself into the wall beside the rack where the space suits were kept.

“Well, that’s one way to do it,” said Cal.

Mech stepped aside to reveal a cabinet filled with what Cal knew could only be guns. He didn’t recognize any of them individually, but the collection had a definitely arsenal-like quality about it. There were twenty or more of them, all shapes and sizes, attached to custom mounts along the locker’s wide back wall.

Beyond a brief flirtation with Duck Hunt in the 1980s, Cal had never been big on guns. Despite that, he wanted the gun that hung in the middle of the rack more than he’d wanted pretty much any object in his life.

It wasn’t too slick, and wasn’t too angry-looking. It looked… confident. That was the only way he could describe it. With its double barrels fixed one atop the other, its twin handles and its matt-silver finish, it was a gun that knew it could kill you at any given moment, but didn’t feel the need to go on about it.

“I want that one,” Cal said, pointing to the weapon.

“Yeah, that ain’t gonna happen,” said Mech. He unhooked a much smaller handgun from near the bottom of the cabinet. “Let’s try this.”

The gun seemed cartoonishly small in Mech’s hand. That, and the fact it resembled a ray gun from a low-budget 1950s sci-fi serial, made it look more like a toy than an actual functioning weapon.

The body was teardrop shaped, with a little saucer attachment fixed by a short, skinny barrel to the fat end. The handle was just big enough for Cal to hold, but the indents in the grip suggested it was designed for someone with fewer fingers than he had.

“What is this?” Cal asked. “Is this even a gun?”

“It’s a blaster pistol,” said Mech. “A DX44.”

Cal studied the weapon. “You mean there are forty-three other guns worse than this one?”

“Don’t let its size fool you, that thing packs a punch,” said Mech. “To fire you just--”

“Pull the trigger?”

Mech nodded. “Well, yeah. But short squeezes, don’t hold or it’ll overheat, and you do not want to be nearby when it does. Fully charged, you got maybe fifty shots.”

“And what then?”

“Then, you’d best hope everything you wanted dead is dead,” said Mech. “Because only way to recharge is by bringing it back here.”

Cal turned the weapon over in his hand. “Does it come in any color that isn’t baby blue?”

“No,” said Mech, shoving a leather holster and belt against Cal’s chest. “It don’t.”

* * *

Once Cal had his gun, and had promised not to accidentally shoot any of the others with it, the rest of the trip was spent in an increasingly uncomfortable silence. To help ease the tension, Loren had brought up some information on the moon they were about to visit, and Cal had quickly struck it from his list of places to visit before he died.

The moon, Pikkish, orbited a planet that was too hostile to sustain organic life, but which nevertheless managed to be a far more desirable location than Pikkish itself.

Pikkish was a third of the size of Earth, with five times the population and a shockingly cavalier attitude towards sewer system design. Tens of billions of people were crammed into continent-sized cities, all stacked up in tower blocks which stretched up towards the artificial atmosphere, only to vanish in the swirling gray smog.

Video footage had shown a mismatched assortment of dirty, grimy aliens swarming along dirty, grimy streets, dodging dirty, grimy vehicles whose drivers either didn’t notice the millions of pedestrians around them, or didn’t really care if they got crushed under the wheels or not.

Now, following a far smoother journey through the much thinner atmosphere and a more controlled landing than last time, Cal and the others stood at the bottom of the Shatner’s ramp. Cal had his nose pressed into the crook of his arm, but it wasn’t enough to stop his eyes watering.

“Wow. The smell really catches you off guard, doesn’t it?” he wheezed.

“Speak for yourself. I could smell it from space,” said Miz, her voice echoing inside the glass domed helmet she’d grabbed just before they’d left the ship.

“Ooh, yeah, the enhanced sense of smell thing,” said Cal. “That’s rough.”

“Whatever,” Miz said, pushing past him. “Let’s go find this thing so I can get back and take a shower.”

They trudged into the street, picking their way over the pockmarked surface which glistened with an inch-thick layer of unidentifiable scum. Splurt hung back at the edge of the ramp, his bloodshot eyes studying the dark gunk. With a ripple of what may well have been revulsion, he rolled backwards into the ship, just as the ramp raised into position against the hull.

“How come a ball of green goo has more sense than the rest of us put together?” Cal asked. He glanced into the mouths of nearby alleyways, and up at the skyscrapers that stretched into the clouds overhead. “Something tells me this is not going to end well.”

“It’ll be fine,” whispered Loren, sweeping a rifle Cal was insanely jealous of around in a slow half-circle. “We just need to get a sample of the virus and get out of here. Zertex will do the rest.”

“Pretty sure you said that about getting the data from Kornack,” Cal pointed out. “And yet, here we are.”

“Just us,” said Mech. “I’m getting no life signs anywhere.”

“No bodies,” Loren pointed out. “Can’t decide if that’s good or bad.”

“If past experience of working with you three is anything to go by,” said Mech. “Then it’s bad.”

“Miz? You hear anything?” asked Cal.

“Yeah. I do,” said Miz. “I hear this, like, annoying quack-quack-quack noise every time you open your mouth.”

“Not helpful, Mizette,” said Loren. “Mech, you picking up any traces of the virus?”

“You mean is it just floating around in the air? No. I’m gonna have to get up close to something infected. Preferably tech-based, but maybe I can get something from an organic, I don’t know.”

“What does this virus thing do, exactly?” asked Cal. “Apart from blow holes in people’s faces, I mean.”

“We don’t know, exactly,” Loren admitted. “Based on President Bandini’s designs, we think it hijacks both organic and technology-based host organisms and turns them into…”

“Zombies?”

“I was going to say drones, but either one works,” said Loren.

“But why? What’s the point?” asked Cal.

“Man, you’re stupid,” said Mech. “It’s a weapon. Drop it on your enemy and their soldiers become your soldiers. Their ships, their tanks, their communications systems – they’re all yours, too.”

“They’d be defenseless,” Cal realized. “The other army could just walk right in.” He turned to Loren. “And why did Zertex want this thing again?”

“To devise an anti-virus,” Loren said.

“Right. Right. Not to use it for themselves, then?”

“No. You saw the footage. It would be inhumane. It would break all the treaty conventions.”

“Yeah,” said Cal. “Yeah, I saw the footage.” He patted her on the shoulder. “You’re a wonderfully trusting individual. Did anyone ever tell you that?”

“Wait, getting something,” said Mech, stopping and peering down at a display built into his forearm. Cal, Loren and Miz stood back to back, eyes searching the shadowy buildings and alleyways for any sign of movement.

“Where?” asked Cal. “I can’t see anything.”

Along the street, the engine of something that looked like a cross between an armored personnel carrier and a school bus roared noisily into life. Four headlights illuminated, casting the crew in an oval of blinding light.

“Oh, wait, there it is,” Cal whispered as, with a screeching of tires, the vehicle skidded on the layer of sludge, then hurtled at high speed towards him. “And look,” said Cal, sighing. “Here it comes now.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Cal and the others leapt out of the vehicle’s path – Mech and Miz one way, Cal and Loren the other. Cal slipped on the scuzzy surface and slid several feet across the road as the armored bus roared by.

Loren’s rifle spat four blue energy blasts which slammed into the back of the vehicle. It spun in a shower of sparks and a trail of smoke, then hurtled back towards the group. Loren stood her ground, pumping round after round into the oncoming vehicle.

Chunks of metal sheared off. Smoke billowed from under the hood, but still the thing kept coming. Frantically, Cal tried to get to his feet, but the ground was too slippy, and his boots couldn’t find a grip.

Loren ducked and rolled to safety. Cal dug his toes in and kicked against the slime as the lights of the armored child carrier became a dazzling glow of white heat.

Something slammed into him from the side, knocking him clear in the nick of time. He hit the ground and slid along it again, but this time with Miz sprawled on top of him.

“Hey,” he said, once his lungs had got over the shock of the impact. “You saved me.”

“Yeah, so?” Miz scowled. “Don’t get used to it.”

She stood, and hoisted Cal to his feet. The bus was already bearing down on them. “Oh come on, not again,” he grimaced.

There was a bang and a rending of metal, as Mech shoulder-barged into the vehicle’s high side. It tipped into a roll, flipping and slamming its way across the road, before eventually coming to rest on its roof.

Loren spun on the spot, gun raised, searching for any sign that the noise had drawn anything else out of hiding. Nothing moved in the shadows. If anything had heard the racket, it was keeping its head down.

“Impressive tackle,” said Cal.

“Thanks,” Mech grunted.

“Think that’s got the virus?”

“Only one way to find out.”

Mech approached the smoking vehicle slowly, ducking left and right as he searched for any movement. “Scanners ain’t showing nothing inside,” he said, but when it came to brainwashing weaponized super-viruses, he felt it was better to be safe than sorry.

“Just get the thing so we can get out of here,” said Miz. “This place is disgusting.”

“Oh, I don’t know. It’s got a certain rustic charm to it,” said Cal. “I mean, clearly you’ve never been to Detroit.”

Mech pressed a hand against the side of the vehicle, as if checking for a pulse. “Yeah. Yeah, I think it’s infected,” he said, more to himself than anyone else.

“Can you interface with it?” asked Loren.

“Ew, and do we have to watch?” asked Cal.

“It’s… I don’t know. It’s complicated. The virus, I mean,” Mech said. He adjusted the dial on his chest a fraction and his voice took on a slightly higher pitch. “Fascinating infrastructure. Injection-based, but highly adaptive.”

“Don’t let it inside you,” Loren warned.

“OK, I am definitely not watching that,” said Cal, turning away.

“I assure you, I’m quite safe,” said Mech, turning his dial up another notch. “I have partitioned a secure memory bank and will apply sufficient encryption to ensure… there.”

He lowered his hand and stepped back from the wreckage. With a twist, he centered his dial again, then tapped himself on the side of the head. “Got it. It’s all locked up.”

“Then let’s get back to the ship and get out of here,” said Miz.

“Uh, Mech,” said Cal. “Your sensors picking anything up?”

Mech glanced at his forearm. “No.”

“Then you might want to get it looked at,” said Cal. “Because I think it should probably be picking up them.”

Along the street, an army of misshapen figures limped, lurched and shuffled towards them.

“Getting no life signs,” Mech said.

“They’re all infected,” said Loren, backing towards the ship. “Come on, we’ve got what we needed.”

She yelped as something lunged at her from a doorway, its frail, spindly arms grabbing for her face. The thing had a ragged hole where part of its throat should have been. A shimmer of sparkling green dots squirmed across the wound like ants.

Snapping up a knee, she slammed it into the alien’s stomach, then spun and fired the heel of her foot into his chest, sending him crashing back into the building. Cal hurriedly grabbed the handle and pulled the door closed, then jumped out of the way as something long and tentacle like smashed through a downstairs window and grabbed at him.

“Aah! Get off, you creepy big bamston!” Cal yelped, convulsing in disgust.

All along the street, from the buildings and alleyways on both sides, hordes of monstrous shapes were emerging. Cal drew his gun. “Fifty shots, you say? That may not be enough.”

“We can’t kill them,” said Loren.

“Yeah, technically they’re already dead,” Cal pointed out.

“No, I mean… We can cure them. Zertex can, I mean. If we get the virus back to President Sinclair, we can help these people.”

“These ain’t people no more,” said Mech, but Loren began to move quickly in the direction of the Shatner.

“I’m in charge, and I just gave an order,” she barked. “Don’t kill them. Just get back to the ship.”

“You’re totally not the boss of me,” said Miz, but she started running anyway, bounding ahead of the others in a series of springing leaps.

Cal chanced a glance back at the zombie hordes as he followed the rest of the crew back to the ship. “Think the whole world’s like this?” he wondered.

“We can fix them,” Loren shouted. “We can fix all of them.”

“Yeah,” Cal mumbled. “Or die trying.”

The ramp lowered, and Miz led the way inside. Splurt pulsed happily when he saw the crew returning, and rolled along behind Cal as he made his way through to the flight deck.

Jumping into his seat, Cal buckled his belt across his chest, just as Loren fired up the thrusters. The ship rose unsteadily, coming dangerously close to bumping into the tall towers on either side.

“Watch out for that building,” Cal said.

“Which building?” asked Loren, tersely. “There are lots of buildings.”

“Any of them. All of them,” said Cal. From outside there came the grinding of metal on stone, and the ship tilted left. “That one in particular.”

“Sorry, sorry. Got it,” Loren said, blushing as she tried to edge the ship away from the tower.

“You are a terrible pilot,” Miz said. “Seriously. You’re the worst.”

“It’s easier in the simulator,” Loren said.

“You’re doing fine,” Cal said. There was another screech as the Shatner tore the roof off a building. “Ignore that. They can stick that back on. It won’t be a problem.”

With a final lurch, the ship lifted clear of the towers. Loren exhaled with relief. “OK, we’re in the air.”

“Great work. All round, I mean. I think we did pretty good down there,” Cal said. “Although I kind of wish I got to fire my tiny gun.”

“Go ahead and do it now,” Miz suggested. “Just make sure you place one end in your mouth first.”

“Jesus, look, I’m sorry I didn’t eat my parents alive, OK?” Cal said. “I’m sorry if you feel I lied to you, or betrayed you, or whatever it is you feel like I did.”

Miz shook her head. “No you aren’t.”

“I am! I’m sorry.”

Miz turned away. “Don’t believe you. You’re just saying what we want to hear. I mean, that’s what you’re good at, right?”

Cal gritted his teeth and grabbed his arm rests as the ship cleared the towers and picked up speed. It rocketed upwards, forcing him down into his chair, then punched through the polluted atmosphere and curved into a tight orbit. Only then did Mizette remove her space helmet.

Loren tapped some controls on the console in front of her. “This is the Shatner hailing Zertex Command One. Private channel, code four-niner-niner-six. Please respond.”

She waited.

She tapped some more controls.

“Zertex Command One, this is Gunso Loren aboard the Shatner, private channel four-niner-niner-six. Request response.”

She waited.

And waited.

“Huh. That’s weird.”

The engines hummed as the ship eased upwards into a higher orbit. “Where we going?” Cal asked.

“I’m not doing that,” said Loren. She nudged the joystick, but the ship continued on its upwards trajectory. “I’m not doing this.”

Cal jerked his hands away as his arm rests flipped open and the gunner controls snapped themselves into position. “Uh… did you do that?”

“No,” said Loren. She jabbed several buttons and switches. “Controls aren’t responding. I don’t know what’s happening?”

“Is it the virus?” asked Miz. “Does the ship have the virus? It has the virus, doesn’t it? It totally has the virus.”

“No,” said Mech. “I’m not picking up any trace of it anywhere outside my head.”

“Well something’s controlling the ship,” Loren said. It had banked down again, until the curve of Pikkish’s surface filled the screen.

Cal looked up just as his targeting visor descended over his head, pinning him in place. “Hey, what the Hell?” he demanded, as a pinprick of white light whooshed to become an entire solar system, then tracked in on the moon below them. “What’s happening?”

“I… I don’t know,” Loren admitted. “Mech, check again for the virus.”

“Nothing,” said Mech. “It’s not the virus.”

“What’s the third target thing do?” Cal asked.

“What third target thing?” asked Loren.

The two targeting reticles Cal had used in the battle with the pilots had been joined by another, much larger set of sights. This one looked like three triangles arranged in a sort of circle pattern, their points meeting in a glowing red dot in the middle.

“There’s another target. Sight, or whatever. Right in the center. I haven’t seen it before.”

Loren hesitated. “I don’t know. I’ve never--”

There was a high-pitched scream and the Shatner shuddered violently. Cal watch as a column of white light streaked away from him through space, hurtling towards the surface of Pikkish below.

He watched it go, the beam splitting into several smaller columns as it neared its target, like a hand slowly extending its fingers. “Oh God,” he whispered, then he watched in horror as the surface of the moon collapsed around the beams’ impact points.

“What the fonk?” Mech said, his voice barely a whisper.

“No, no, no, no,” croaked Loren.

“That’s… that’s not me,” said Cal. “I didn’t do that.”

As the others watched Pikkish collapse on screen, Cal’s gunner visor afforded him the best view in the house. He felt like he was there, floating just above the atmosphere, watching the land masses cave in on themselves, and the oceans race to fill the spaces left behind.

At the corner of his eye, he became aware of shapes drawing closer. He turned to find five gray and white ships moving to surround them.

“Uh, guys,” he said.

“We see them,” said Mech. “Symmorium Threshers. Five of them.”

“Eight more on long-range scanners,” said Loren. “Closing fast. This is bad. This is very bad.”

“We’ll just tell them it wasn’t us,” said Miz. “Just tell them the ship did it.”

“Yeah, I somehow don’t think they’re going to believe that,” said Mech. On screen, the moon was a shapeless lump of floating rock, and still collapsing. “They just saw us turn Pikkish to rubble.”

“And they had no idea about the virus,” Cal reminded everyone. “Meaning, as far as they’re concerned, we just killed thirty billion people.”

The gunner’s visor retracted back into the console above Cal’s chair. With a click, the controls flipped over and tucked themselves back into the arm rests. “Looks like we’re not fighting our way out of this one,” said Cal. “Loren, any ideas?”

Loren stared blankly at the ruined moon. “Thirty-five billion.”

“What?”

“Thirty-five billion,” she said. “Not thirty. We just killed thirty-five billion people.”

“Except we didn’t,” said Mech.

“Then who did, Mech? Hmm?” Loren demanded. “If not us, then who?”

Mech frowned in concentration. He turned his dial to his left. “Perhaps the virus did indeed find a way to breach the ship’s systems,” he said. “Although I can detect no anomalies in the systems beyond normal acceptable performance fluctuations.”

“Keep looking. It’s got to be in there somewhere,” Loren said.

“Why would the virus blow up the moon? All its friends are down there,” Cal pointed out. “Or were down there.”

A red light illuminated beneath the screen. Loren ignored it for several seconds.

“Are we going to answer?” Cal asked.

“And say what?” said Loren. “Sorry we blew up that moon, can you let us go?”

“Well, that’s a little more direct than I was thinking, but we have to say something,” said Cal.

“He’s right. If we don’t answer, they’ll shoot us down,” said Mech. “Mercy ain’t exactly their strong point. Patience, either, so I wouldn’t leave them hanging.”

Loren took a steadying breath. She clicked a switch and the view of the collapsing moon was replaced by what Cal realized was the same shark-like creature he’d spoken to earlier.

“Pirate Captain Carver, what is the meaning of this?” the Symmorium demanded. “You have brought your vile death and destruction to Symmorium space. You have brought about the deaths of billions of innocent civilians.”

“By accident!” Cal protested. “It wasn’t our fault, it was our ship. It did it all by itself!”

“We have no interest in your excuses,” the alien spat. “You are hereby sentenced to death. This is the will of the Symmorium.”

“Weapons locking,” said Mech. “We still got no shields.”

“They’ll tear us apart,” Loren realized.

“Now wait, Sharky, we can explain,” Cal insisted. “Don’t shoot and let’s talk about this, OK? We’re all adults here, am I right?”

The shark-creature’s black eyes narrowed. “Commencing fire in five, four, three…”

“Wait!” said Mizette, standing before the view screen. “Commander, stop. Do you know who I am?”

The Symmorium glared at her for several worryingly silent seconds. “Yes. I know who you are.”

“Then you know who my father is.”

“Yes,” the commander intoned. “I know who your father is.”

“And you know what would happen if you murdered his only daughter.”

“Not murder,” said the shark-thing. “Vengeance.”

“Without a trial, it’s murder, commander. We both know that,” said Miz. “You will take us before the Symmorium Sentience. It will be the one to pass judgement, not you.”

The commander ground his teeth together. He had a lot of them, so it took him quite some time. “As you wish, Your Highness,” he said, tipping his head forward by just the slightest fraction. “But before the day is out, you may wish you had allowed us to end your lives swiftly.”

Miz shrugged. “Yeah. Maybe. You lead the way, we’ll follow.”

The Symmorium made a show of not bowing his head by tilting it slightly backwards instead. “As you wish.”

The shark-alien vanished, and the screen showed a dozen gray and white ships. One by one, they began to turn away. Miz tapped Loren on the shoulder, then pointed vaguely towards one of the Threshers. “Follow, I don’t know, that one,” she said, returning to her seat.

Cal gawped at her in disbelief as she strapped herself in again. She sighed. “What?”

“‘Your majesty?’” he said. “You’re… what? A princess?”

“I told you. Her father is Graxan of the Greyx,” said Loren.

“Yes, but I don’t know what that means, do I?” said Cal. “I don’t know who Graxan of the Greyx is. He could be a plumber or… or… Well, I can’t actually think of any other jobs except plumber right now, but my points is, how was I supposed to know he’s the king of space?”

“He isn’t,” said Loren. “He’s the king of the Greyx.”

“He’s a lame old man with a total superiority complex,” said Miz. “Now, I’d follow the Symmorium, or even I won’t be able to stop them blowing us to bits.”

“You got control again?” Cal asked.

Loren nudged the joystick forward and back, and the ship bobbed in time with it. “Looks like it.”

“Then you heard the princess,” Cal said. “Follow that ship.”

Loren eased forward on the throttle and the Shatner set off after the Thresher ship. Cal leaned over in his chair, bringing him closer to Miz. “Symmorium Sentience? What’s that?”

Mizette flared her nostrils, as if the stench of Pikkish had wafted back into the room. “It’s… too complicated for you to understand.”

“Hey, you’re talking to a guy who made it through all six seasons of Lost,” said Cal. “Well, four and a half, but believe me, that’s still pretty impressive.”

“You got gods where you’re from?” asked Mech.

“Yes. No. Well, I mean, depends who you ask,” said Cal. “Why?”

“The Symmorium Sentience is pretty much their god,” Mech explained. “It’s, I dunno, connected to all of them or something. The way they talk about it, it’s like it’s part of them, or they’re all part of it, or… Shizz, I don’t know. It’s a pretty big deal.”

“Only Symmorium are ever granted an audience,” Loren said. “Well, and members of the royal family of allied regions, apparently.”

“Wait, so none of you have ever seen this thing before?” said Cal. “This is a new thing for all of us? I’m not the only one who’s going to be clueless about what’s going on for once?”

Mech nodded. “Pretty much.”

Cal grinned and leaned back in his chair. “Then bring it on!”

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

While he still didn’t know what the Symmorium Sentience was, Cal had come to the conclusion that it was obviously something pretty important.

It had a dedicated space station all to itself, surrounded by fifty or sixty of the ugliest, meanest-looking space ships Cal had ever seen. Not, of course, that he’d seen many, but he expected that no matter how many he eventually did see, there would be few that could compete with these on the ‘looking aggressive’ front.

The station itself, on the other hand, looked largely harmless. It was the shape of a vast bass drum, with a dome curving upwards from the middle section.

It was towards this area that the Symmorium ship led the Shatner. As they approached, Cal saw a wide slot in the side of the dome. Where the wall should have been was a shimmering energy field. The Thresher passed effortlessly through it, then alighted inside a vast landing bay.

Loren shifted uncomfortably in her seat, and dropped the Shatner down to a crawl. “That is tight,” she said.

“It totally isn’t,” said Miz. “It’s huge. You could fit a terraformer in there.”

“It’s the angle. It’s not easy.”

Miz tutted. “Their ship flew in from the same angle, and it’s way bigger than ours.”

“You can do this, Loren,” Cal urged. “We’re all right behind you.”

“Which means we’ll all totally die in flames when you inevitably crash,” Miz added.

“I’m not going to crash,” Loren snapped. “I mean, you know. Probably.”

“That’s the spirit!” said Cal. He pointed to the roof of the landing bay which now loomed ahead. “I think you might be going to hit that bit, though.”

“I’m nowhere near it!” Loren said, but she quickly adjusted the course to steer them downwards.

“Did they have this in the simulator?” asked Mech.

“How to dock aboard the Symmorium Sentience? Funnily enough, no, that wasn’t in any of the exams.” Loren gritted her teeth. “Here goes.”

She adjusted what seemed to be a lot of controls in a relatively short space of time. The Shatner tilted and twisted as it approached the docking bay’s energy wall, trying to match the station’s rotation.

“Bit more left, bit more left…” Cal said.

“I’m going left!”

“Yeah, but go more left.”

“I’m going enough left!”

“I’m just trying to help,” said Cal.

“Well don’t!”

“You know all those others ships are totally watching us right now, right?” Miz pointed out.

“Shut up!”

The Shatner shuddered as it passed through the energy field. There were a few frantic seconds when the station’s artificial gravity tried to drag it to the floor, but Loren quickly fired the landing thrusters and they bumped down with only a mild case of whiplash.

“Smooth,” said Miz, rubbing her neck and tilting her head forward and back. Loren completely missed the sarcasm.

“I did it,” she whispered, staring down at the controls in something close to awe. “I actually did it.”

A few minutes later, Cal, Loren, Mech and Miz trudged down the ramp to be met by seven heavily-armed figures, who looked far from happy to see them.

There were several other ships in the landing bay, and through a long window at the far end, Cal could see dozens of faces watching their arrival.

Six of the seven Symmorium crew were perhaps only an inch or two taller than Cal, yet he was left with no doubt that they could probably snap him in half using just their eyelids, if they chose to.

They were even more shark-like up close, and the scale-pattern detail on their otherwise almost exclusively black uniforms only added to the effect.

The seventh Symmorium was much shorter than the others, and barely came up to Cal’s waist. She – because something about her told Cal she was female – glared up at him with her round black eyes, sneering in a way that showed several dozen teeth and quite a lot of gum, too.

“Uh, hi everyone,” said Cal. “I’m Cal. This is Loren, Mech and you already know Her Royal Highness Princess Mizette, don’t you…? Sorry, didn’t catch your name.”

“Junta,” said the Symmorium, begrudgingly. “Commander Junta.”

“Nice to meet you. Sorry about before. You know, your ship and everything? Did you get it fixed?”

Junta’s expression remained unchanged.

“I guess you must have, or how would you be here, right?” Cal laughed. No-one laughed with him. “Right.”

“Is this one the captain, father?” the girl demanded. “He has the mannerisms and appearance of an imbecile.”

“Careful, Tyrra,” Junta warned. “You must be on your guard around pirates. They may be dangerous.”

“Father?” said Cal. “She’s your daughter?” He glanced back along at the window, where the others still watched. A few faces were right at the bottom of the glass, stretching up so they could see. “Is it bring your kid to work day, or something?”

Tyrra looked him up and down. “He doesn’t look dangerous. His crew, maybe. Not him.”

Cal put his hands on his thighs and leaned down, smiling. “Well, hey there, you! Listen, I don’t know if your daddy has ever told you, but no-one likes mean girls. And what you said right now? That was pretty mean.”

“I could best him,” the girl said.

Junta stepped aside. “Show me.”

“Huh?” said Cal, straightening up just as the flat top of Tyrra’s head slammed into his groin. He dropped to the deck like a sack of potatoes, puffing and wheezing as he gently cradled his aching testicles and wished, more than anything, that he’d never been born.

Around them, the rest of the Symmorium party erupted in cheers and laughter. Tyrra raised a hand in the air in triumph.

“OK. OK,” Cal groaned. “Well done. You got me.”

Shakily, he got to his knees, only for the girl to wrap her arms around his head.

“What the f--?” he managed, before she flipped him over her shoulder and slammed him backwards onto the deck. The Symmorium cheered again, as Tyrra jabbed her fist above her head.

“Ooh, good one,” said Miz. Cal opened one eye and glared at her. “What? It was a good move. Just being honest.”

With some effort, Cal rolled over and made it onto one knee. He paused there for a moment, waiting for the room to stop spinning. From somewhere just ahead of him he felt Tyrra move in to attack.

BANG! Cal exploded upwards with an uppercut, catching the girl on the end of the nose and lifting her off her feet. There was a chorus of gasps from both crews as she hit the floor, tears already springing to her eyes.

Cal covered his mouth with a hand. “Oh, Jesus. I just punched a little girl in the face!”

He turned to Junta, arms raised in surrender. “I am so sorry,” he said, but before he could reach the end of the sentence, the butt of a blaster rifle cracked against his forehead, and he dropped, once again, to the floor.

* * *

Light swam in looping circles. Colors pulsed. Cal opened his eyes and found himself draped over one of Mech’s shoulders. It was deeply uncomfortable, but the throbbing in his skull suggested now might not be the best time to move.

They were in… an aquarium. That was how it looked, at least. A floor-to-ceiling hoop of glass surrounded them, barely twelve feet away on all sides. The water inside was dark, and Cal got the impression that there was a vast amount of space on the other side of the glass – much more than the cramped circle on this side, anyway.

Behind the glass, something moved. Possibly several somethings, it was difficult to tell through the murk. It was completely shapeless, but unmistakably huge. It moved lazily through the water, circling around the loop, its color altering like the seasons, so you didn’t notice anything had changed until everything had.

It pulsed the color of sunrises and sunsets, of summer skies and fall leaves and from somewhere – not in his ear, nor in his head, but somewhere even deeper – Cal heard the sound of distant whale song.

The skull-splitting ache faded to an annoying throb and Cal slid down from Mech’s shoulder. The cyborg barely seemed to notice. Like Loren and Miz, he was transfixed by the light beyond the glass.

Cal looked around them. Commander Junta stood behind the group, his gun lowered but ready. There was no door anywhere to be seen, so how they got in there was anyone’s guess. Teleporation, maybe? They probably had that in space, he guessed.

He turned his attention back to the swimming blob of color. “Is that…?”

“The Symmorium Sentience,” Loren whispered, not taking her eyes off the thing.

“And that’s the thing that’s going to be deciding our fate?”

Miz nodded, slowly.

“Then I hope we get a lenient sentience,” Cal said. He beamed proudly, and waited for a reaction that didn’t come. “No, I know that probably wasn’t the right time, but I thought of it on the ship and didn’t get a chance to use it. Felt a shame to let it go to waste.”

“Cal,” Loren whispered.

“Yeah?”

“Shut up.”

Miz took a deep breath and stepped forward towards the glass. “Symmorium Sentience, the Greyx thank you for this audience.”

A sing-song voice floated from the depths of the water, the light dimming and brightening in time with each word.

“Assertion: Rejected,” it chimed. “You do not speak on behalf of the Greyx.”

Miz hesitated, suddenly uncertain. “No, but I am a member of the royal family. I am the daughter of Graxan.”

“Assertion: Accepted,” said the voice. “Tell me why you are here.”

“She was with these pirates, Sentience,” said Junta. “She is one of them.”

The colors pulsed behind the glass. “Assertion: Rejected.”

“But she was with them,” Junta said. “Not as their prisoner, but as one of their crew.”

“Assertion: Rejected,” the Sentience insisted. “These are not pirates.”

Cal sighed. “See? I told you we should have had eyepatches.”

Junta’s eyes narrowed. He studied Cal and the others, stopping at last on Loren. “Who are you?”

“We are pirates, honest,” said Loren, but Junta snapped up his weapon.

“Deception! Who are you?”

Cal stepped in front of Loren. “Whoa, whoa, easy there, Sharky. President Sinclair sent us to check something out, that’s all. We don’t want any trouble.”

“Sinclair? You mean you are with Zertex?” Junta demanded.

“No,” Loren spluttered.

“Yes,” said Cal. “That’s right, we are. Zertex sent us.”

“Assertion: Accepted,” said the Sentience.

Commander Junta’s already pretty terrifying face turned several shades more so. His lips drew back over his teeth as he pressed the butt off his rifle against his shoulder and prepared to open fire.

“But wait, wait, we’re not the bad guys here,” said Cal. “I know you think we blew up that planet or moon or whatever it was, but it wasn’t us. Not on purpose, anyway.”

There was silence for several seconds.

“Assertion: Accepted.”

“But we saw them do it,” Junta growled.

“He’s telling the truth,” said Miz. “For once. The weapons fired themselves.”

“There’s a virus. It infects things and makes them act all crazy,” Cal explained.

“That’s not technically accurate at all,” said Loren. “But there is a virus. It took over the controls and opened fire. The ship destroyed Pikkish, but we didn’t pull the trigger.”

“Assertion: Accepted.”

Junta’s dark eyes hovered across the group for several lingering seconds. At last, he lowered his rifle.

“Thanks, Junta. I always thought you looked like a reasonable guy,” Cal said. He smiled at the crew. “Haven’t I always said that?”

“Assertion: Rejected,” said the Sentience.

“OK, so no, I haven’t said it, but I’ve definitely thought it.”

“Assertion: Rejected.”

Cal battled valiantly to keep his smile in place. He pointed up at the pulsing light. “So, am I right in thinking this thing’s a lie detector?”

“It’s their god,” Loren whispered.

“No, I mean, yeah, but it can also tell if someone’s lying? Is that one of its super powers?”

“Looks like it,” said Mech.

“OK. OK, that’s good,” said Cal. “Mizette. Miz. I want you to shut up and listen to me for a second here, OK? I’m not very good at this stuff, and this is a one-time only thing, so you’d better listen. You all had.”

He took a deep breath. “I am truly sorry that I made you hate me. I’m not saying I regret the fact that I didn’t eat my parents alive, but I’m sorry you feel like I’ve hurt you. If I could go back in time and eat my parents… Well, no, I wouldn’t, obviously, that would be insane, but… I sort of forgot where I’m going with this.”

“I think you were trying to apologize,” said Mech.

“Yes! That’s it. I didn’t eat my parents, but we didn’t really get along. Like, at all. Fact is, I haven’t really gotten along with anyone in a long time, not since I… lost someone. I’ve never felt part of anything since then. A family, or whatever. It’s just been me, you know? Doing my thing. Partying. Pulling scams, getting into trouble.” He hesitated. “I’ve lost the thread again.”

“Apologizing,” sighed Loren.

“Yes. Apologizing. I don’t want you to hate me, Mizette – and that’s… that’s amazing. To me, that really means something. See, I don’t care what anyone thinks of me. At least, I thought I didn’t. But turns out I care what you think. What all of you think. Well, maybe not Mech.”

“Fonk you, shizznod!”

Miz ran her tongue across her teeth. “Who did you lose?” she asked, after some thought.

“What?” said Cal.

“You said you lost someone. Who?”

Cal stared at her, but not at her at all. He looked through her, instead, seeing something that was no longer there.

“That doesn’t matter. The point is, I haven’t felt like I’ve belonged anywhere since that day. Not really. And yet… when I stepped on that ship. With you guys. I dunno. It felt like a possibility, you know?”

He clenched and unclenched his jaw, then looked down at the floor for a few moments, composing himself. “So yeah, that’s really all I wanted to say. I’m sorry I lied to you.”

The Symmorium Sentience pulsed all the colors of the rainbow. Unnoticed by anyone, Mech wiped a tiny droplet of coolant from the corner of his eye.

“Assertion: Accepted.”

“And I’ll never lie to any of you again,” Cal said.

“Assertion: Rejected.”

Cal shrugged. “Yeah. OK, OK. It was worth a try, though, right?” he said. He cleared his throat, then produced a smile from nowhere. “And now, let us never speak of any of that stuff I just said again. Deal?”

There was a soft hiss from Mech’s shoulders. He looked down as both arms raised out to his sides, pivoting upwards until they were at right angles to his body.

“What the Hell is this?” Mech muttered.

“What are you doing?” demanded the Symmorium commander, raising his weapon again.

“Fonked if I know,” Mech said. He grimaced as he tried to force his arms back down. “I ain’t moving them.”

“The virus?” said Cal.

As if in answer to his question, a torrent of glowing green dots erupted from the palms of Mech’s hands, blasting the glass walls like the spray from a power hose.

The ever-present chorus of whale song became a brief scream of anguish, then the pulsing color inside the tank flickered into silent darkness.

“Oh man, that ain’t good,” Mech whispered, his arms dropping back to his sides again.

“What have you done? What did you do?” Commander Junta demanded, his gun trained on Mech.

“I don’t… That wasn’t… I don’t know, man! I don’t know what happened!”

The light inside the tank returned. “Oh, thank God,” Cal said. “For a horrible moment there I thought something terrible was going to…”

Floating through the water, the shapeless surface of the Sentience swarmed with a million green dots.

“Yeah. Something terrible has happened,” concluded Cal.

“What is this?” Junta roared. “What have you done to the Sentience?”

“It’s the virus,” said Loren. “It’s… It must be the virus. It’s infected it.”

“You knew this would happen! This is a Zertex attack!”

“No, we didn’t, we didn’t know!” Loren protested. “It isn’t a Zertex attack, it’s the virus.”

Cal blinked, slowly. His stomach felt like it were being drawn into a tangled knot. He looked across the faces of the rest of the crew.

“No. I think… I think he’s right,” he said.

All eyes turned towards him. “What?” said Loren. “What do you mean?”

“Zertex did this,” Cal said. “It all makes sense. Well, not all of it, but most of it. Bits of it, anyway.”

“What you talking about?” Mech demanded.

“Us. This! Sinclair set us up,” said Cal. Loren began to protest, but he cut her off. “Think about it. Think about why we’re all here. He needed me and Splurt to get the data off that Kornack guy. Mech, he needed you to hold the virus inside your head. Miz, the only reason we were brought to the Sentience in the first place was because of you. He used us all. He used us to infect the Sentience with the virus. We’re a Trojan Horse.”

“What’s a Trojan?” asked Mech.

“What’s a horse?” asked Miz.

“I don’t… No, it doesn’t make sense.” Loren said.

“It does! It completely makes sense,” said Cal. “Everyone had a role to play that led us to right here and right now.”

“But what about me? Why would he send me?” Loren asked.

Mech tutted. “Because he needed an uptight motherfonker to make sure we stuck to the plan.”

“No,” said Loren. “No. That’s not…”

“You. Shark guy. When you first saw us, why did you come out of warp?”

“We… we were warned of pirate activity,” Junta replied. He twitched and shook his head, like a horse trying to shake away an annoying fly. “We received a warning.”

“Anonymously, I bet,” said Cal. “See, Loren? They were told to watch out for pirates at the exact same place and time as our warp thingy conveniently broke.”

“I didn’t break it,” she said, automatically.

“I know! That’s what I’m saying. It was sabotaged. It was supposed to break down when it did, so we’d run into the commander here.” Cal spun to face Junta. The Symmorium swayed slightly on his feet, his eyes not quite focusing. “You were tracking us ever since, weren’t you? That’s why you caught up with us at Pikkish – just in time to see us blow up the whole planet.”

“Moon,” Mech corrected.

“Whatever. My point is, this whole thing – getting the virus here – it’s Zertex. President Sinclair set it all up!”

“But… he wouldn’t,” said Loren. “Would he? I mean… the peace process.”

The room flashed red as the wailing of a siren echoed into the narrow space. “Unidentified attack vessels approaching,” warned a gruff-sounding mechanical voice. “All Symmorium, protect the Sentience.”

“I’d say the peace is about to be all processed out,” Cal said.

Suddenly, Junta lunged forwards, taking aim at Cal’s head with his gun. Miz’s claws flashed in the air, and the gun’s barrel clanked on the floor in three pieces.

The Symmorium commander’s dark eyes sparkled with flecks of green. He made a grab for Cal’s throat, but Cal ducked out of reach before the alien’s hands found their target.

Junta spun, teeth bared, his eyes shining with the virus’s glow.

“So… you said they’re all connected to the Sentience, right?” said Cal.

The commander lunged again, only for Mech to throw a metal arm up into his path. The Symmorium’s head hit the elbow hard, and he dropped to the floor in a groaning heap.

“Yeah, they’re all connected,” said Mech.

“So, what does that mean? They’re all infected?” Miz asked.

“And Zertex is sending attack ships to wipe them all out,” Loren said, staggering slightly as she realized the full, terrible truth.

“There are kids on this station,” said Cal. “I don’t necessarily like all of them – OK, one, in particular – but they’re just kids.”

“They train their warriors from childhood. There are children on every Symmorium ship,” Loren said.

“Well, there won’t be for long,” said Cal. “Not if Sinclair starts blowing them all up.”

Loren shook her head. “This is… This is our fault.”

Cal shrugged. “Yeah. No. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t,” he said. “That’s not the big question. The big question is, what are we going to do about it?”

“Us?” said Miz. “What can we do? It’s way too late to do anything.”

Cal pointed to the Sentience, unmoving and glowing eerily in its tank. “Mech, is there some way you can get the virus out of the Sentience?”

“Out of that thing? No!”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s a god. I can’t just hook myself up to a god and try to beat a virus out of it.”

“Why not?”

Mech’s metal jaw opened. He hesitated. “Because… because… Just because, OK?”

Cal gave him a thumbs up. “Still, you’re going to try, and that’s what counts. Miz, you need to stay here and protect him. The Symmorium are going to come in here, and they’re not going to be happy. Also, they might be zombies. Try not to kill them, but keep them away from Mech while he does his thing.”

“I can’t do no ‘thing’ with that thing!” Mech protested.

“That’s the spirit!” said Cal, slapping him playfully on the cheek.

He turned to Loren next. “You and me need to get back to the ship. We can hold Zertex off until Mech has anti-virused the shizz out of the Sentience.”

“What?!” Loren spluttered. “We can’t fight them all!” She stuck her thumbnail in her mouth and chewed. “I can’t fight them all. Miz is right. I’m no pilot.”

Cal caught her by the shoulders. “You know Mech’s wrong, don’t you? You know Sinclair didn’t send you on this mission because you’re an uptight motherfonker? I mean, you are, obviously, and we’re going to have to address that at a later date, but that’s not why he sent you.”

Loren frowned. “Then why did he send me?”

“Because he knows something you don’t,” Cal said. “He knows you’re the best damn pilot in the fleet.”

“Yeah, on the simulator, maybe,” Loren said.

“And off it,” said Cal. “You just need to start believing that. Sinclair sent you because he knew you could outmaneuver the Symmorium and anything else we came across. Because you’re awesome.”

He put a hand on the side of her face. “I believe in you, Teela Loren. Come on, guys, let’s all say it. I believe in you, Loren! I believe in you, Loren!”

“Yeah, there’s no way I’m going to do that,” said Miz.

“Man’s got a point, though,” said Mech. “You ain’t killed us so far.”

“See?” said Cal. “Even Mech agrees with me. When does that ever happen?”

“I mean, sure, it’s been close a few times…”

“OK, Mech, you can shut up now,” Cal told him. He spun to address the whole group. “We can do this. We can fix this thing we’ve done. We can save everyone, and show that son of a bedge, Sinclair, that he can’t trick us into doing his dirty work for him. But the only way we can do that is if we work together.”

“But what about my money?” Mech groaned. “They told me I was getting my own planet, man. I want my own planet.”

“Yeah, that was never gonna happen, Mech,” said Cal. “Far as they’re concerned, the shark-dudes have killed us already.”

He looked across the faces of the others. “So, who’s with me? Miz?”

Mizette sniffed. She ran a clawed hand through the hair on top of her head. “Oh fine,” she said, sighing heavily. “I guess so.”

“I’m in,” said Loren. “For all the good it’ll do.”

“Great! Great! That’s awesome,” said Cal. “Mech? How about you? Can’t do it without you. What do you say? We need you on the team for this one.”

Mech shook his head, slowly. His metal jaw whirred as it opened and closed. “What you talking about? I already told you, we ain’t no team,” he said. He met Cal’s gaze, then held out a hand, fist clenched. “We’re a motherfonking space team.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Cal and Loren sprinted the last few feet to the Shatner’s ramp and scrambled aboard. Behind them, a throng of Symmorium gave chase, their teeth bared, their hands clawing at the air.

“Hey,” Cal shouted through the closing gap. “Do you know that on Earth we make movies about what amshoops you guys are? One was even in 3D. Oh, and in Japan, they use you in soup.”

The ramp locked into position, leaving the Symmorium snapping and snarling outside.

“That little spectacle should buy Mech some time,” Cal said, racing onto the flight deck. Splurt dropped from the ceiling and bounced happily in a circle around Cal’s chair as he strapped himself in. “Hey, buddy, there you are! A lot of crazy shizz has happened while we were away. I’ll fill you in later, OK?”

The engines whined as Loren fired up the thrusters. “I make a dozen or more Zertex ships on the long-range scanners,” she announced. “Coming in hot. I don’t know if we can do this.”

“Sure we can,” said Cal. “After all, we’ve got something they don’t.”

Loren half-smiled. “Yeah, Yeah. ‘The best pilot in the fleet.’ I know, I know.”

“Actually, I was going to say a roguishly-handsome captain with a flair for adventure, but sure, your one works, too.”

Loren eased back on the stick and raised the Shatner off the deck.

“Can you Skype the Zertex ships, or whatever it is you do to call them?” Cal asked.

“Yeah, give me one second,” Loren said. She guided the ship through the energy field and away from the station. The Symmorium ships hung in space all around them, floating lifelessly.

Once they were clear, she flipped a few switches and tapped on a keypad. “OK, signaling Zertex command ship now.”

A window appeared on the screen. Legate Jjin scowled at them across the vastness of space.

“Hey, look. It’s Jjin!” said Cal. “Jjin came along for the party. How you doing there, big guy?”

“Gunso Loren. What is the meaning of this intrusion?” Jjin demanded.

“Sorry, sir,” said Loren. “I can’t answer that.”

“You will answer when I tell you to,” Jjin growled.

“Afraid not, sir. You want answers, you’re going to have to talk to the captain.”

Jjin’s black-as-night eyebrows furrowed. “Captain?”

“I guess that must be me,” said Cal, spinning a full three-sixty in his seat. “I see you didn’t invest in a nasal hair trimmer like we discussed, Jjin. It’s your call – personally, I think it was a mistake, but hey, it’s not my nose, so you do what you feel is right.”

Cal stood up. “And, in other news, we know all about you and Sinclair’s plan to wipe out the Symmorium, and, well, we’re not in favor. In fact, I’d go so far as to say we actively disapprove.”

“Your opinion is irrelevant,” Jjin told him.

“Well, maybe not. You see, we disapprove so strongly, that we all got together and took a vote and we decided we’re going to stop you.”

Jjin sneered. “You? Stop us? Ludicrous.”

“Says the man with the cartoon eyebrows,” said Cal.

Jjin self-consciously reached up and brushed down one of his ‘brows. “Stand in our way and you shall be destroyed.”

“Stand in our way and you shall be destroyed,” said Cal. “Even though, you know, we’re not really trying to get anywhere, so you’re technically not in our way. But you get the point. Don’t mess with us, is what I’m basically saying. Because we’ll win.”

“Really?” said Jjin. “Let’s put that to the test, shall we?”

A series of flashes lit up the sky all around the Shatner as a whole squadron of Zertex fighters dropped out of orbit, and immediately opened fire with their cannons.

Cal stumbled backwards into his seat as Loren banked upwards. He scrabbled with his belt, clipping himself in as she threw the ship into a spinning loop.

“Give me my guns,” he urged, then relaxed into the now familiar grip of the headrest on the back of his neck. The panels locked in place. The visor slid down. Cal’s hands found the targeting sticks just as he was plunged into the full screen, surround sound VR simulation of the battle.

“Wait, do we have shields?” he asked, shouting to make himself heard over the roaring of the Shatner’s thrusters.

“Not fully. They haven’t had a chance to recharge,” Loren replied.

“How not fully? What are they at?”

“Sixteen percent,” Loren said. A beam of red cannon fire tore across the ship’s hull. “No, wait. Make that eight.”

“Eight?” Cal spluttered. “We’ve got eight percent shields? Why did no-one tell me? This is fonking suicide!”

Up front, Loren tucked the Shatner into a roll and smiled grimly. “That’s the spirit!”

A crackling ball of energy spat from one of the attack ships and rocketed towards them. “Torpedo!”

“I see it,” said Loren, swooping into a twisting dive. The torpedo rocketed past overhead, and Cal instinctively tried to duck to avoid it.

“That was close,” he muttered, searching the sky for the ship that had fired on them. He spotted it climbing above them, and steered both targeting reticles towards it. “Now, where do you think you’re going?” he said.

The left-hand sight hovered over the Zertex ship. “Boom!” Cal cried, squeezing the trigger. The cannon flared. The beam struck the ship near the bow, flashing its shields in a rainbow of damage indicators.

Twisting the grip, Cal kept the cannon steady, tearing into the ship for several seconds before the Shatner tucked into a diving roll, narrowly avoiding a blast of cannon-fire from the stern side.

The underside of a Zertex ship loomed dead ahead. Cal squeezed the right trigger three times, firing off a volley of torpedoes. They slammed into the attack craft, flipping it into an uncontrolled spin.

Loren dropped the Shatner into a dive as the spinning ship slammed into another of the Zertex fighters. They erupted in an explosion that sent a ripple of shockwaves racing through space.

The Shatner shuddered, rocked by the explosive wave. “Shields at seven percent,” Loren said. “Not so close next time.”

“Hey, I blew two of them up! A ‘well done’ might be nice.”

“Well done. But next time, not so close.”

“Yes ma’am,” Cal muttered, then he took aim at an oncoming ship that was still at what he hoped was a safe distance, and fired.

* * *

Mech’s body lay motionless on the floor, his hand resting against the glass of the Sentience’s tank, his chest dial cranked all the way to the left.

Miz paced back and forth beside him, her eyes locked on the circular hatchway overhead. It had only been a few minutes since Cal and Loren had gone through it, but she could already hear the sound of running footsteps – close, and getting closer by the second.

She extended her claws to their full, impressive length, then ran on the spot and pulled off a few jumping jacks, readying herself for what was sure to come next.

“How you doing in there, Mech?” she asked.

But Mech didn’t answer.

* * *

Mech swam.

Normally, the weight of his metal frame would make swimming difficult – impossible, even – but unencumbered by a physical form, he skipped through the water like a dolphin. Not that he’d understand that reference, of course, having no knowledge of the existence of dolphins whatsoever, but that didn’t detract from the gracefulness of his moment beneath the waves.

From the darkness ahead of him came a pulse of green light. The glow throbbed, ominously. On, off. On, off. A beacon, warning of looming danger.

Mech’s consciousness swam on through the dark. Around him, tiny brilliant specks appeared in the water, like distant stars in the night sky. Each one was too small – impossibly small – to be able to make out, but freed from the constraints of eyes and visual processors, Mech could see everything.

“President Bandini,” he said, addressing the billions of tiny old men glistening in the water around him. “You have invaded the Symmorium Sentience against its wishes, and against the wishes of the Symmorium people. I would request that you leave now.”

He said none of the words out loud, but transmitted the message through a complex series of streaming ones and zeroes, beamed from his own mind into the core of the hostile virus. Still, the gist of it was much the same.

The former-president-turned-malevolent-zombie-virus didn’t respond, but the tiny dots became slightly less tiny, and the Sentience rumbled out a low, threatening drone.

Mech pressed on through the water, kicking with legs he didn’t have, and crawling with imaginary arms.

“So be it,” he said. “If you are not prepared to leave of your own volition, then you leave me no choice but to force you out. Please note that I will take no pleasure from what follows whatsoever.”

Even without a mouth, Mech somehow managed a smile. “Well, perhaps just a little.”

And with that, the detached consciousness of Gluk Disselpoof pushed its way through the ocean of microscopic senior citizens, and plunged into battle with a zombiefied alien god.

* * *

“Dive, dive, dive!” Cal hollered, as torpedoes criss-crossed towards them from three different directions at once.

“It’s going to be close!” Loren hissed, gritting her teeth and throwing her weight behind the stick.

Both Cal’s targeting reticles found the side of a Zertex fighter. He gave them a blast of cannon fire, then launched two torpedoes. The Shatner changed direction before he could tell if the missiles hit their target.

“Got one behind us,” said Loren. “Closing fast. Its shields are low. Take it out!”

Cal turned, searching the sky for the pursuing ship. The Symmorium vessels continued to float limply and lifelessly in space. The Zertex ships were too busy coming after the Shatner to start their attack runs on the Symmorium or the Sentience’s station, but it was only a matter of time.

There! The ship was so close Cal jumped in fright. His fingers tightened on the triggers, but he stopped them just in time.

“Need to put some distance between us, or the shockwave is going to take us out, too,” he said.

“On it,” said Loren. “Hold tight.”

Space rolled sickeningly around Cal’s head as she banked into a spinning upwards loop, then swung the back end of the ship around. Suddenly, they were bearing down on the other ship from above. Cal just had time to launch a torpedo before Loren twisted the stick, sending them into another frantic spin.

Behind them, the Zertex ship erupted in a chain reaction of explosions, as the torpedo punched through its damaged shields and tore a hole straight through the hull.

“I don’t know what we were worrying about,” Cal laughed. “This is too easy!”

A flare of red punched into the ship from below. “Sharg! Shields at three percent,” Loren announced.

“OK, so ‘easy’ is possibly the wrong word,” Cal said, unleashing a volley of torpedoes towards an attacking ship. “But hey, at least it’s fun!”

Loren tucked the ship into another swooping roll, just barely avoiding a scorching blast of cannon fire. “You have a very strange definition of the word ‘fun,’” she snapped.

Cal grinned behind his visor. “Honey, you have no idea.”

* * *

Mizette stood above the motionless Mech, listening to the clanging and banging on the entrance hatch above them. The Symmorium were out there now, hammering against the metal. It shuddered and shook with every blow. It wouldn’t be long now until it gave way and the Symmorium came pouring through.

If they came through two or three at a time, she could handle it. More than that, though, and it would become a much bigger challenge.

She’d been told not to kill them, but hadn’t committed herself either way. She’d try not to, of course – none of this was their fault, after all – but if clawing them into tiny bits was the only way to stop them, then claw them into tiny bits she would.

The hatch screeched as it gave way.

There was a roar of triumph from above.

And then Miz leaped back, as two dozen shark aliens plunged through the hole, and landed in a heap on the floor.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Mech stood upright in a sea of shimmering data, his electronic synapses firing as he tried to make sense of the onslaught of information.

“Interesting,” he said. He turned to the elderly man who was suddenly standing behind him. “This virus was not created by President Bandini. You may drop the illusion now.”

The face of the former Zertex president fizzled and blurred, then was replaced by the face of the current Zertex President. Sinclair smirked. It wasn’t the real Sinclair, of course, just an artificial representation of him, but whoever had programmed the smile had got it bang-on.

Sinclair’s voice modulated like a bad auto-tuner as he spoke. “Well done. You figured it out. I always knew you were the brains of the outfit, Mech.”

“On the contrary,” said Mech. “Cal was the one who worked it out first. The data I interpreted merely confirms what he already surmised.”

Sinclair shrugged. “Whatever. Of course, the problem for you now is that you’re in here, trapped with me. With all of me.”

Mech turned to find several thousand identical Sinclairs gathered around him. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, I see.”

“Which is a problem – for you, I mean - because as we all know, you can be smart, or you can be strong, Mech. You can’t be both.”

“That is correct,” Mech admitted. “In the physical world.”

Thousands of identical Sinclairs all frowned in unison. “What?”

“In the physical world, I must divert my power according to my requirements. But we are not in the physical world. We are currently located in an entirely electronic plane of existence, and here…”

Mech’s metal frame unfolded like a Transformer, doubling him in size, then doubling him again. “I can do whatever the Hell I want, including disable your damn chip’s censorship!” His eyes flared red as he clenched his house-sized fists. “So the problem for you now, is that all you bitches are trapped in here with me!”

* * *

The Shatner screamed through a gap between two attacking ships, then banked sharply up into a corkscrew loop that forced Cal to shut his eyes and swallow back a wave of nausea.

“Ooh. That was unpleasant,” he grimaced. The ship stabilized and he opened his eyes again, just as another flash of white lit up the sky.

An enormous battle cruiser dropped out of warp dead ahead of them. Cal wasn’t sure how he knew it was a battle cruiser, he just knew. The sheer size of it was the first clue. The shape – like a battering ram with wings – was the second.

The hundred or more weapons mounted on its various parts was really just the icing on the cake, and as they all swiveled towards the Shatner, Cal felt his stomach sink through the floor.

“Uh, there aren’t enough torpedoes in the world to take that thing out,” he muttered.

“Attack fighters pulling back,” Loren said. “They’re leaving us for Jjin to deal with.”

“That’s Jjin’s ship?” said Cal. “Wow, that guy’s penis must be tiny.”

“I’ve lost control,” Loren said. “The ship’s not responding.”

Cal waggled the weapons controls. “Still working here. Should I shoot him? I’d quite like to shoot him.” He shrugged. “I’m going to shoot him,” he decided, but before he could pull the triggers the visor raised up off his head, and the controls flipped back into the arm rests.

“OK, turns out I’m not going to shoot him,” Cal said. “That’s disappointing.”

He blinked, readjusting himself to the change of view. On screen, the battle cruiser loomed large, and looming increasingly larger.

“They’re taking us on board,” said Loren, pointing to where a wide docking bay hatch was unfolding near the back of the cruiser.

“Well, that’s better than shooting us, right?” said Cal.

“Yeah. Maybe,” said Loren. “Although it really depends on what they’re planning to do to us when we get there.”

“Will he torture us? He looks like he’s the kind of guy who’d enjoy torturing us.”

Loren shrugged. “I think he’d enjoy torturing you. You’re not exactly his favorite person.”

“Oh, thanks for that. That’s very reassuring,” said Cal.

“I suggest we go out shooting, just in case,” said Loren. “Not like we’ve got much to lose at this point.”

“Yeah, sounds like a plan,” said Cal. He looked around for Splurt as the ship glided in through the hatch, but the ball of goo was nowhere to be found. “Wherever you are, little buddy, stay out of sight,” he said, then the landing thrusters fired and the Shatner touched smoothly down.

“Nice landing,” said Cal.

“Not bad,” Loren admitted.

“Way better than yours.”

“Yes, yes, I get it. Thanks.” Loren turned in her chair and unclipped her belt. “You ready for this?” she asked, standing and drawing her blaster pistol from it holster. It was much bigger and more impressive than Cal’s.

Cal stood up and self-consciously took out his own gun. It felt even smaller than he’d remembered. “Ready as I’ll ever be,” he said.

Loren straightened and pulled off a textbook salute. “It was… problematic, but interesting serving with you, Cal Carver.”

“You, too, Teela Loren,” he said, then they headed for the landing ramp, hit the button, and raised their weapons.

“Squeeze, then release,” Loren said.

Cal shot her a sideways glance. “Is this really the right time to start coming on to me?”

“The trigger,” Loren sighed. “Hold it to build up charge, release to fire. Squeeze, release.”

“Hey, don’t worry, I’ve got this,” said Cal. “I’m going to Butch Cassidy the shizz out of these guys. You know, but without the part where I die in a hail of bullets at the end.”

The ramp lowered. “Here goes,” Loren whispered.

“Relax,” Cal grinned. “It’s in the bag.”

Then he and Loren both violently convulsed as electric shock sticks jabbed into them from behind, and they fell simultaneously to the floor.

* * *

Miz drove an elbow into the throat of a heavy-set Symmorium, and wasted a half-second watching his eyes bulge out in shock.

A fist smashed into her jaw, snapping her head round. She used the momentum, turning it into a twisting claw-swipe that tore four slits in the Symmorium’s uniform and slashed the skin below.

The hair on her arms tingled and she dropped to her haunches in time to avoid the grabbing hands of another of the shark-aliens. Bounding upwards, she drove a shoulder into his stomach, lifting him off his feet and slamming him against the Sentience’s tank.

She hissed as a hand grabbed the hair at the back of her head and pulled, sending a shockwave of pain burning up her spine.

Miz turned, but too late. A flat Symmorium skull slammed into her snout, staggering her. Down on the floor, Commander Junta’s eyes flicked open. He opened his mouth, revealing far too many teeth, then snapped them shut on the back of Miz’s leg.

Miz howled and went down hard. She dug her claws into Junta’s face, roaring as she forced his jaws apart. A circle of Symmorium knotted around her, their own teeth gnashing hungrily at her.

“Oh… fonk,” Miz muttered, then she braced herself as the shark-aliens dived in for the kill, closing her eyes and waiting for the pain.

She waited.

And waited.

She opened her eyes. The Symmorium stood in the same circle, shaking their heads as if waking from a dream.

Miz jumped as a voice rang out from the floor beside her. “Greeting, Mizette,” said Mech, without moving his lips. “Would you do me the kindness of recentering my dial, please?”

Miz reached over and turned the control knob back to the middle setting. Mech blinked and sat up, rubbing the back of his head.

“Did you do it?”

A soothing orange glow emanated from within the Sentience’s tank, pushing away the sparkles of flickering green.

“Shizz, girl,” Mech said. “Of course I did it.”

He stood up. “Commander Junta. Uh… all you other guys. Zertex ships are on the attack. You all might want to get back to your ships and teach those treacherous motherfonkers a lesson.”

* * *

“Cal?” Loren stammered. “Cal. You conscious?”

“Yes, but kind of wish I wasn’t,” Cal groaned. He rolled onto his front and tried to push himself up, only for a boot to stamp on his back, slamming him to the floor again. “Ow.”

“Well, well. Look who we have here.”

Cal raised his head enough to see Legate Jjin standing over them, his hands tucked behind his back. Turning his head, he also saw four other figures lurking around them, shock sticks clutched in their hands.

“Hey. I know you guys,” Cal wheezed, recognizing the fish-like gills of the tallest figure. “You were the ones from the bar.”

“That’s right,” said gill-neck.

“Have you been on our ship this whole time?” Cal asked. With some effort, he turned to Loren. “Have they been on the ship this whole time?”

“I control your ship,” Jjin said, waving a slim remote control, then clipping it to his belt. “We opened the airlock from outside and they climbed aboard.”

“That’s just sneaky,” Cal said.

Jjin placed a boot on Cal’s hand and pressed down. “Where are the others?”

“What others?” Cal asked.

Jjin pressed down harder. “Where are they?”

“Uh… you know you’re standing on my hand, right?” Cal said. “It kind of hurts.”

“Legate Jjin--” Loren began, but Jjin roared at her.

“Silence, traitor!”

He gestured to one of the others. Loren flopped violently as a shock stick was jammed into her back.

“Stop!” Cal protested. “Leave her alone!”

“Again,” Jjin commanded. Loren’s head cracked off the floor as the electricity coursed through her again.

“Cut it out!” Cal yelped. “You’re going to kill her.”

“Again.”

“D-don’t,” Loren wheezed. “Won’t tell you again.”

Gill-neck snorted. Pushing the other man aside he raised his own shock-stick. “You don’t get to give us orders any more, botak,” he spat.

“Don’t call me ‘botak’. And it wasn’t an order,” Loren said. She scissored her legs around, knocking the soldier’s feet out from under him. He hit the deck just as she flipped upright into a fighting stance. “It was a warning.”

Cal yanked his hand free from under Jjin’s boot and raised up onto his knees. He swung with an uppercut, driving it straight into the alien’s groin.

Pain exploded in Cal’s knuckles and vibrated down his arm. Jjin’s nostrils flared, but otherwise he didn’t show any sign he’d even noticed the strike.

“Jesus,” Cal grimaced. “What do you keep down there?”

He yelped as Jjin caught him by the hair and yanked him into a standing position. Behind him, Loren twirled into a spinning kick, smashing her heel against one of the soldier’s unsuspecting heads.

“Cal, you OK?” she asked, backflipping to avoid a stabbing shock-stick.

“Oh yeah, yeah, I totally got this,” Cal insisted, trying to untangle his hair from Jjin’s grasping fingers. “You handle those guys, I’ve got Jjin.”

Cal cried out as Jjin tossed him through the air. He hit the hull of the Shatner with a thud and dropped like a stone to the floor.

Roaring, Cal leapt up and slammed his shoulder into Jjin’s stomach. Unmoved, Jjin drove a hammer strike into Cal’s back, dropping him to one knee.

Stumbling out of the alien’s reach, Cal straightened, supporting his lower back with both hands.

“Ow. Ow. That is going to bruise in the morning,” he muttered.

Behind him, Loren powered a sideways kick into gill-neck’s stomach, then smashed an elbow strike into the side of his head.

Cal bounced from foot to foot, raising his fists. “OK. OK. You want to do this? Let’s do this. Me and you. Right now. You are going down.”

“Are all humans this tiresome?” said Jjin.

“No. Largely just me,” said Cal. “Now come on, you want some? Come get some!”

He danced forwards, bobbing and weaving. Jjin watched him, impassively.

Cal feigned a left, then swung with a right. Jjin’s hand caught his fist and squeezed. Cal hissed as he felt his bones grind together.

“Quite pathetic,” Jjin said. He slammed an open hand strike into Cal’s chest, sending him crashing to the floor near the Shatner’s loading ramp.

Cal clutched at his chest, gasping for breath. He tried to stand, but his legs overruled him.

Jjin closed in. He unhooked his shock stick from his belt and flicked his wrist, extending the electric prod to its full length. It hummed with the promise of pain.

“Hey, wait, let’s talk about this,” Cal coughed, but Jjin had no intention of stopping. His face twisted into a wicked sneer as he lunged.

From the top of the ramp came the sound of footsteps. Jjin and Cal both looked up the ramp. A young man with dark hair stood just inside the ship.

“Who is that?” Jjin demanded.

Cal was dimly aware of his mouth hanging open, but couldn’t summon the effort required to close it. He looked at the young man at the top of the ramp and blinked several times, in case it was a trick of the light.

“Unless I’m very much mistaken,” he said, at last. “That is Tobey Maguire.”

Jjin looked Tobey Maguire slowly up and down, then shrugged. “I’ll deal with him momentarily. For now…”

He lunged at Cal with the shock-rod. Tobey Maguire melted into a sliver of slime that slithered across Cal’s chest. Splurt shrieked as he took the brunt of the shock, then flobbed around him, encasing him from the neck down in a suit of gloopy green goo.

“Splurt? What are you doing?”

Cal stood up. He didn’t plan to, and he wasn’t entirely convinced his legs were supposed to bend that way, but he was upright in the blink of an eye.

Around him, the green goo shifted and squirmed into a silver suit of living armor. Cal grinned as a helmet bloomed across his head, cocooning it completely.

“Now that,” he said, his voice echoing around inside the mask. “Is more like it!”

Jjin lunged with the shock stick. Cal pivoted on one foot, spun in a full circle, and drove the tip of an elbow into the back of Jjin’s head. The alien stumbled forwards, a hiss of pain bursting on his lips.

“You think that… thing can protect you?” Jjin growled. “From me?”

“I don’t know.” Cal shrugged, and the Splurt-suit shrugged with him. “How about we find out?”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Loren rammed three fingers of her right hand so hard into one of the shock-troopers throats that a wad of snot shot down both his nostrils.

She followed up with a flying knee to his lower chest that she knew would add to the already pretty substantial breathing problems the guy was having.

Sure enough, he dropped to the floor, clutching at his throat and his ribcage, all thoughts of throwing punches replaced by the crippling desire to breathe.

Loren turned to the only soldier left standing. Gill-neck glanced uncertainly at his fallen friends, a shock-stick in one hand, a purple bruise blooming from one eye socket.

“So, you were saying something about… botak?” Loren said.

“Stay back!” gill-neck warned, waving the shock-stick. “I’ll use this. I’m warning you.”

“Ooh. That doesn’t seem fair at all,” she said. Stooping, she picked up one of the fallen sticks and studied the charged end. She nodded briefly, then tossed the stick to the soldier. He caught it and stared at it in confusion for a few moments.

“There,” said Loren. “That might even things up.”

She beckoned him closer. “Now come on, endigm. Why don’t you show me what you’ve got?”

A few feet away, Cal skipped back as Jjin swung with an arcing overhead punch. Thrown off-balance, the officer stumbled forwards. The Splurt-gloves tightened as Cal caught Jjin by the shoulders and swung him, head-first, into the side of the Shatner.

“Oh yeah,” Cal laughed, holding up his hands to admire his living armor. “This is awesome. Everyone should have one of these!”

“You idiot!” Jjin spat from down on his knees. “It doesn’t matter. None of this matters. We control the Symmorium Sentience. We’ve already won.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” said Cal. “I’ve got my best man working on it right now. With any luck, he’s sorted it out already.”

“Impossible!”

“I’ll be honest, Jjin, it’s been a pretty impossible few days, from my point of view. Mech is going to fix the Sentience. Trust me.”

“But he can’t. He mustn’t! The galaxy will be plunged into war. Billions will die!”

“A war you started,” said Cal. “You could have had peace. You were all working towards peace.”

“We don’t want peace,” Jjin spat. “We want victory!”

He lunged, ramming his shock stick into Cal’s stomach. Splurt squealed and seemed to explode into a million tiny droplets of gunge. They hung in the air for a fraction of a second, then landed with a gelatinous splat on the deck.

Cal swung with a punch, but Jjin blocked it easily. He swung Cal in a half-circle, and this time it was Cal’s face’s turn to be introduced to the hull of the ship.

Stars swam behind Cal’s eyes. The floor sucked at him like quicksand. He was on his knees. When had that happened?

He tried to crawl towards the ramp, but the ground undulated uncomfortably and he rolled, puffing and panting, onto his back beneath the ship’s thrusters.

Jjin stood over him, glaring down. “Speaking of billions dying, I wonder how Earth is getting on,” Jjin said. “I wonder if there are any left alive?”

He twisted his shock-stick and the low hum became a high-pitched whine. “It wasn’t really an accident, you know?” he said. “The bugs. All deliberate. I oversaw it myself. Completely unnecessary, of course, but it brightened my day.”

Jjin’s mouth curved into a sickening smirk. “You know, Carver, you may well be the last human being alive?” he said. He raised the shock-stick. “It will be a real pleasure to make your entire species extinct.”

“Wait!” Cal yelped, raising a hand. “Before you do… do you want to know who Shatner is?”

Jjin hesitated. “What?”

“Shatner. The ship. Do you want to know who I named it after?”

“Not really.”

“It’s a funny story,” Cal promised. “You’ll like it.”

Jjin’s face twitched in irritation. “Fine. Who is he?”

“He’s the second most cunning space captain the human race has ever had,” said Cal.

“Second?” Jjin grunted. “Who’s the first?”

Cal smiled. “Funny you should ask.” He held up the remote control he’d taken from Jjin’s belt. “That would be me,” he said, then he pressed a button and the Shatner’s thrusters erupted in a flare of blue fire. “That’s for Tobey Maguire, you weird-eyebrowed mass-murdering fonk.”

As Jjin wafted to the ground in a flurry of smouldering ash, gill-neck crumpled next to him, black fluid oozing from his nose.

“You OK?” Loren asked, limping across to join Cal beside the ship. At the far end of the hangar, a wide set of doors opened, and a whole squadron of shock-troops came racing in.

“Yeah. Great,” Cal wheezed, doubling over as he tried to get his breath back. He nodded in the direction of the approaching soldiers. “Listen, I’ll take the one on the left, you take the other twenty.”

“Or we could get out of here,” Loren suggested.

“Yes. Yes, I like that plan,” Cal agreed. He scooped up the quivering Splurt and tucked him sloppily under one arm.

Loren started up the ramp, but Cal hung back, searching the ground. “What are you looking for?” Loren said. “They’re coming.”

“My tiny gun. I still didn’t get to fire it,” Cal said.

“You can’t shoot them all,” Loren said. “Come on.”

Cal spotted the gun, half-buried by Jjin dust. He picked it up, then hooked it into gill-neck’s belt, keeping the trigger pressed down.

He secured the trigger against the soldier’s belt, then backed away slowly. When he was sure the gun wasn’t going to fire, he turned and bounded up the ramp just before it swung shut. The Shatner bounced clumsily into the air, then raced towards the energy wall that separated the inside of the cruiser from the cold clutches of outer space.

As the Shatner sped away, gill-grunt opened his eyes. He felt something shuddering in his pants, and a warmth against his skin that quickly rose to a searing heat as Cal’s tiny pistol hit its upper charge limit.

“Oh… shizz,” Gill-neck whispered.

BOOM!

The soldier, the deck, and everything within a sixty-feet radius erupted. The shockwave slammed the Shatner against the ceiling of the docking bay, destroying what remained of its shields.

“Hold on!” Loren yelped, fighting with the controls as the ship scraped along the ceiling and plunged out through the force-field.

“Shields gone. If those Zertex fighters come back around, we are done for,” Loren said.

“I don’t think that’s going to be a problem,” said Cal. “Look!”

On screen, the Symmorium ships were tearing through what was left of the Zertex attack fleet.

“He did it. Mech did it,” said Loren.

“Unbelievable! I didn’t think he had a chance,” laughed Cal. “Uh, by which I mean, of course he did it. I never doubted the big lug for a minute.”

* * *

Cal, Loren, Mech and Miz stood in the landing bay of the Symmorium Sentience’s station, surrounded by kneeling Symmorium.

“Well, this is awkward,” Cal whispered, as the shark-like aliens all lowered and kissed the ground before them. “And probably unhygienic.”

“You saved the Sentience, and the Symmorium,” said Commander Junta, getting to his feet. His daughter rose beside him, and Cal kept one eye on her in case she decided to try any funny stuff. “And for that, you have our gratitude.”

“What about Zertex?” asked Loren. “What will you do?”

Junta’s eyes darkened. “Whatever is necessary. It was we who first made the offer of peace. Perhaps we shall offer it again. Perhaps we shall not. It will be for the Sentience to decide.”

“And the whole blowing up the moon thing,” said Cal. “You know that wasn’t us, right?”

“Yes. We know,” said Junta. “The Symmorium bears you no ill will. In fact, we would like to reward you.”

“Reward us?” said Mech, pushing Cal aside and stepping to the front. “You’d like to reward us? Well alright! What were you thinking? Credits? I can take credits. Zertex were offering us a planet, but we don’t have to go that far. I mean, you can if you want, I ain’t gonna say no, but credits would be just fine.”

“Even better,” said Junta. “We would like to present you with the key to Symmorium space. It allows you the freedom to travel within our borders as you see fit, without fear of recourse.”

“A key?” said Mech.

“Hey, that’s… that’s great,” said Cal. “Thanks.”

“A motherfonking key?” Mech held out a hand. “OK, fine. Where is it?”

“Where is what?” asked Junta.

“This key.”

“It’s a metaphorical key,” said Junta. “Not a real one.”

Mech’s shoulders slumped. “So I don’t even get a real key? Fine. Fine, whatever, man.”

He turned and trudged up the ramp leading into the ship, muttering below his breath as he went.

“He appreciates your generosity,” said Loren.

“I don’t think he does,” said Miz. “He looked pretty disappointed.”

“Yes, but he always looks like that,” said Cal.

“No, he doesn’t,” said Miz. “He’s probably crying in there.”

“Then maybe you should go check on him,” said Cal. “Make sure he’s OK?”

Miz huffed in annoyance. “Fine. Whatever,” she sighed, then she headed up after Mech.

“Safe travels, my friends,” said Junta.

“Thanks. You too,” said Cal. He pointed to Junta’s daughter. “And watch out for this one. She’s dangerous.”

“Yes,” said Junta, proudly. “Yes, she is.”

* * *

“Captain on the bridge,” said Cal, ducking through the doorway and stepping onto the flight deck. Splurt pulsed excitedly on the floor, clearly happy to see him. For possibly the first time ever, though, he wasn’t the only one.

“I gotta admit,” said Mech. “All things considered, we did pretty good out there.”

Cal slipped into his seat. “Saved an entire species from extinction, cured a zombified god and beat the bad guys,” said Cal. He nodded. “Yeah, not a bad day’s work.”

“Except the bad guys aren’t beaten, are they?” said Miz, slumping into her chair. She picked a chunk of Symmorium out from beneath a claw and pinged it across the room. “President Sinclair’s the one behind it all.”

“She’s right,” said Loren. “Sinclair will come after us. He won’t stop until he makes us pay.”

Cal waved a dismissive hand. “Nah, he’ll be too busy with the war he just started. Or restarted. Or whatever he did.”

“He’ll have the Symmorium and the Remnants to deal with,” Mech said. “That’s gonna keep him pretty busy, but don’t underestimate the guy. He’ll be after us sooner or later.”

“One thing I don’t get,” Loren began.

Cal snorted. “One thing? I’ve got a list of, like, ten things I don’t get. What’s yours?”

“If Sinclair was behind the virus – if he orchestrated his whole thing, released it on Pikkish, all that stuff…”

“What about it?” asked Cal.

“Why send us to meet Kornack? If he already knew where the virus had been unleashed, why not just send us straight there?”

“Ha,” said Cal. “I’d have thought that was pretty obvious.”

Loren frowned. “No. Why?”

“Tell her, Mech,” Cal said.

Mech shrugged. “Hell if I know. I been wondering the same thing myself.”

“Yeah, OK, I have no idea,” Cal admitted. “Maybe he was just, you know, covering his tracks? Or maybe Kornack released the virus, and Splurt was his reward?”

“Or maybe Zertex weren’t behind it at all,” said Miz. “And we just killed, like, a whole load of innocent people for no reason.”

“Yeah, it’s not that one,” said Cal, shifting uncomfortably in his seat. “It won’t be that one. I’m, like, ninety percent sure it’s not that one.”

He slapped a hand on his thigh. “So, what now, crew?”

“What do you mean?” asked Loren.

Cal offered up a top flight smile. “I mean, what are our plans from here? In which direction will we boldly go?”

“What you talking about, man?” asked Mech. “It’s over. Now, we all go our separate ways.”

“Yeah, I am so going home,” said Miz. “After all this, my dad doesn’t seem quite so bad.”

“I know what you mean,” said Mech. “I think I might turn myself in, serve out my time in a nice cosy cell somewhere. Safer than running around space getting shot at all the time.”

Loren nodded. “I’m going back to Zertex,” she said. “I’ll face their court martial. They’ll probably put me to death, but rules are rules.”

“Oh. What?” said Cal. “Oh. I mean. Yeah. Yeah, that’s all… That’s great.” He cleared his throat. “Or, you know, we could just bum around space for a while, getting into trouble and having adventures.”

A smile crept slowly across Loren’s face. “Yeah,” she said, sliding into the pilot’s seat. “Yeah, I guess we could do that instead.”

“Whatever you say, captain,” said Mech, clamping his feet to the floor.

“Ooh,” groaned Miz, trembling as her tongue flicked up over her teeth. “I always did like a man with power.”

Cal smiled. “Loren, fire up the thrusters,” he said, settling back in his chair and gripping the edges of his arm rests.

It wasn’t home.

It couldn’t be farther from it, in fact.

But, for now, it was close enough.

SPACE TEAM: THE WRATH OF VAJAZZLE

Book Two

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

CHAPTER ONE

Cal Carver was rapidly coming to the conclusion that he didn’t like the ceiling. The first couple of times he’d hit it, it hadn’t been too bad. But now, after the eighth or ninth time of smashing face-first into the thing, the novelty had really started to wear off.

The floor was starting to lose a lot of its charm, too. As Cal’s stolen spaceship, the Shatner banked into an upwards roll, he plunged sharply down and thudded against the metal flooring. All the breath left his body in one big gasp, stealing away his opportunity to curse the Universe in general.

In the pilot’s seat, First Officer Teela Loren twisted and pulled at a variety of creaking levers. On the viewing screen, the stars blurred as the ship dived into a steep plunge. Cal managed a breathless, whispered, “Oh God, not again,” before he shot upwards off the floor and had a painful reunion with the now all-too-familiar roof.

A metal hand whirred and caught him as he began to plummet, then slammed him down into his chair. “Oh, and you couldn’t have done that two minutes ago?” Cal wheezed, hurriedly fastening the buckles of his seat belt across his chest.

“No, I totally could have,” said the cyborg, Mech, his metal jaw curving upwards into a grin. “But I was having way too much fun just watching you flailing around.”

Mech’s metal feet clanked across the floor, his powerful magnets holding him in place. Behind him, idly filing her claws, sat Mizette of the Greyx. Her powerful, head-to-toe-hairy frame was draped lazily across her chair. Her wolf-like ears pricked up, and she winked when she realized Cal was looking her way.

“Hey, handsome.”

Cal smiled weakly. It hurt quite a lot. “Hey yourself,” he said, gingerly prodding at one of the many patches of his face that had been introduced to the ceiling at high speed. “Ooh, that is gonna leave a bruise.”

Loren leaned on the sticks and the Shatner spun into a barrel roll. Cal’s stomach sloshed up to somewhere near his nostrils, before flopping back down again.

“Jesus Christ!” he yelped. “I think I just saw my kidneys.”

“Sorry, almost through!” Loren said.

“Are they following us?” Cal asked.

“Don’t look like it,” said Mech, checking the scanners. “No sign of Zertex ships on the short range scans.”

Cal spun in his seat. “Miz? What about the long range?”

Miz looked up from filing her claws. “What about them?”

“Can you maybe check them? Please?”

“Why do I have to check them?”

Cal gestured to the screen beside her elbow. “Because they’re literally right there.”

Mizette sighed and rolled her eyes, then turned her head the tiniest of fractions to look at the small screen built into her chair’s arm rest.

“Are they, like, lots of little red dots?”

“Yes!” called Loren.

“Just, like, hundreds of little red dots behind us? Is that what I’m looking for?”

“Yes! Do you see them?”

Miz shrugged. “No, I don’t see anything like that. There is a big green dot, though. Is that a problem?”

“No, that’s us,” said Cal. He shot Mech a sideways glance. “Right?”

“Yeah,” said Mech. “Yeah, that’s us.”

Cal could hardly believe their luck. “So… we lost them?”

“Looks like it,” said Mech.

The Shatner bobbed and weaved a few more times, before steadying onto an even keel. “And we’re through the debris field,” Loren announced.

“See? I told you you could do it,” said Cal.

“Yeah,” said Miz. “And we only hit, like, two hundred things. Great job.”

“Thank you,” said Loren, deliberately missing the sarcasm. “OK, going to warp.”

“Oh… good,” Cal grimaced, gritting his teeth and gripping his arm rests. He had been in outer space for less than a week, but seemed to have spent half that time hurtling around at faster than light speeds. Still, at least he didn’t throw up anymore. Or less often, anyway.

The stars became a shimmering lightshow of streaks as the ship lurched into warp. Cal felt his head swim and his stomach tighten. “The screen, change it, change it,” he urged.

Loren flicked a switch on one of her many banks of controls and the image changed to show a video of a kitten trying to climb out of a drawer. If you were being nitpicky about it, it wasn’t technically a kitten. Its eyes were a different shape, for one thing, and its ears were placed a little further back on the head.

It had more legs than a kitten, too, but that somehow just made it all the more adorable. Cal settled back in his chair and managed a smile as his stomach began to settle. “Ah, baby space cat, what would I do without you?”

Miz glanced up at the screen. Her snout wrinkled. “Not this again. Where I come from, that thing would be dinner.”

“Yeah, well where I come from, we have a proud and noble heritage of watching cute cats do funny stuff,” Cal said. He smiled at the screen. “Just look at his little paws,” he said, then he tore his eyes from the kitten-thing long enough to glance at Loren. “Speaking of where I come from, how long until we get there?”

The ship screamed to a stop, hurling Cal, Miz and Loren forward in their seats until their belts snapped them back. Even Mech staggered as the ship dropped from warp speed to no speed at all.

Cal hissed. “Christ!”

“Sorry! My fault! Totally my fault,” said Loren. “Bit heavy on the brake there.”

Mizette shook her head. “Worst. Pilot. Ever.”

Loren flicked another switch and the alien cat vanished. It was replaced by a slowly spinning ball of green and blue. “This is it,” she said. She looked hopefully at Cal. “This is it, right?”

Cal didn’t answer. He didn’t even hear her. He just stared instead at the planet hanging in the star field before them. He’d only been gone a few days, and yet he felt like he hadn’t seen the place in forever. Longer than forever, even. In a way, it was like he was only now seeing it for the first time.

“Cal?” said Loren.

“Hmm?”

“Is this it?”

“Yeah,” he said, his voice coming out as a hushed whisper. “This is it. Welcome to planet Earth.”

It wasn’t that Cal was a particularly big fan of the planet Earth. It had, until recently, been his favorite planet, but that was more a victory by default than anything else, as he’d never been to any others. In fact, it wasn’t until he was abducted from his prison cell in a case of mistaken identity and whisked halfway across the galaxy to do the dirty work of an evil galactic government that he’d even given the idea of visiting other planets any real thought at all.

Since then, he’d visited two other worlds. On the first one, a gangster made of living rock had tried to force him to eat himself, which didn’t really endear the place to him at all.

The second was better. The people – although he used the term loosely – had seemed friendly, and there had been an all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet that he’d partaken of, but then a load of Zertex ships had turned up and ruined everything.

Between those two, he’d also briefly visited a moon, but as literally everything and everyone there had been fully committed to killing him, he hadn’t hung around to really get a feel for the place.

All things considered, Earth was probably still his favorite. Then again, he’d really enjoyed that buffet, so it was a tough call.

“It looks just the same,” said Cal. “I mean, not that I’ve seen it from this angle, but… it looks the same.”

“Well, it is the same,” said Loren. “Apart from, you know…”

“The trillions of evil alien bugs your boss sent to kill everyone?”

“Ex-boss,” said Loren, shifting uncomfortably in her seat. “And yes. Apart from those.”

“Picking up lots of life signs,” said Mech. “Lots of life signs.”

“People?” said Cal.

“Some.” Mech adjusted the controls on the scanner. “Few hundred million,” he said, and Cal felt his heart soar. Mech frowned. “Wait. No.”

“No?” said Cal. “What does that mean, ‘no?’”

“They’re infected,” said Mech. “The bugs. They’re parasites. They bury inside and--”

“Yes, I know, thanks,” said Cal, his skin crawling. “How many not infected?”

Mech fiddled with the controls for a few more seconds. “One or two million. Maybe less.”

Cal blinked. “Right. OK.” He cleared his throat and shrugged. “The rest were probably all douchebags, anyway.” He brightened. “Hey, I can say ‘douchebags!’”

Shortly after he was first abducted, a translation chip had been implanted into Cal’s skull, right behind his ear. The chip listened for alien languages and seamlessly translated them on the fly, before feeding the English language version into Cal’s brain. This allowed him to understand any known language in the galaxy, and because almost everyone else had their own chip, they could understand him, too.

The only slight drawback was that Zertex, the manufacturer of the chip, didn’t approve of bad language, and all of the more interesting and expressive curse words had been censored. On the rare occasion Cal did manage to squeeze out an expletive, it felt like a tiny victory for freedom of speech.

Cal slapped himself on the side of the head, right where the chip was. “Eat that, douchebag-jerk-ballsack!” he said, combining all three of his available curse words into a devastatingly unimpressive insult.

“You still want to do this?” Loren asked.

Cal nodded and turned his attention back to the screen. “Yeah. Yeah, let’s do it.”

Loren adjusted the controls. “OK. What are the co-ordinates?”

“Co-ordinates?”

“Yes. The co-ordinates. So I know where to go.”

“By ‘co-ordinates’ do you actually mean ‘address?’”

Loren shook her head. “No.”

“Ah, well. It’ll be fine, just take us down,” said Cal, waving a hand. “I’ll know it when I see it.”

* * *

After four hours of criss-crossing the surface of the Earth, Cal had eventually spotted the United States. They’d actually passed over it six times, but due to the angle of their approach, he’d had trouble recognizing it.

“Seriously, it’s not my fault,” said Cal, as Loren brought the ship in for a landing. “It was upside down.”

“Man, how can it be upside down?” Mech demanded. “It’s a country. It ain’t got no right way up.”

“Yes it does! Like on the map,” Cal insisted. “Canada at the top, Mexico at the bottom. That’s the right way up.”

“It’s a motherfonkin’ land mass,” Mech hissed. “It don’t got no right way up!”

The Shatner touched down heavily, jolting Cal’s teeth together.

“Smooth,” muttered Miz.

“Thanks,” said Loren.

Miz tutted. “I was being sarcastic.”

“Yeah,” said Loren, smiling as she clambered out of her seat. “I know.”

Cal gazed at the screen. A little wooden bungalow with a wrap-around porch sat at the end of a red brick path. The lawn was as neatly cropped as ever, but the rockery was a new addition. It was a house he knew well, but one he hadn’t seen in a long, long time.

“Cal?” said Loren. “You OK?”

Cal flashed her one of his standard go-to grins. “Couldn’t be better.” He hopped up out of his seat and headed for the door that led into the rest of the ship. “Hey, has anyone seen Splurt?”

Ducking under the low door frame, Cal came face-to-face with himself. The other Cal smiled goofily and flapped an arm around in an overly-enthusiastic wave.

“Hey. Splurt. Buddy,” said Cal, putting a hand on the other Cal’s shoulder. “You’ve got to stop turning into me like this. It’s kinda creepy. OK?” He looked himself up and down, admiringly. He was still dressed in the same crumpled shirt, waistcoat and cargo pants combo he’d been wearing for the better part of a week. “Somehow, I still make that look good,” he said, then he stepped back as the other him folded in like melting marshmallow and became a gelatinous green blob on the floor.

“Hey, there he is!” said Cal, looking down into the bulbous, bloodshot eyes floating in the jello-like goo. “Stay here and look after the ship, little buddy, I’ve just got something I need to do, OK?”

Splurt’s surface quivered.

“Thanks, pal. I owe you one,” said Cal, then he stepped over the shapeshifter and headed for the exit ramp.

* * *

A few minutes later, Cal, Miz and Loren stood at the end of the path, watching Mech trudge along it towards the house. A cool Philly breeze rolled along the deserted street, carrying smells that made Miz’s snout furrow in disgust.

Yards which Cal had once torn across on his BMX stood empty and still. Loren eyed the grass warily, her hand on the holster slung across her hip.

“Hear anything?” she whispered. “Bug-wise, I mean?”

Miz cocked her head and raised one wolf-like ear. “Yeah. But nothing too close.”

Loren nodded, but didn’t relax. She turned to Cal. “How you doing?”

“What? Oh, fine. Yeah. Yeah, fine,” he said. “It’s just… weird, you know? I grew up here. I have a lot of good memories of this place.”

There was a loud crack as Mech’s foot punched through the porch. He grabbed for a hand rail and broke it in two. “Shizz,” he muttered.

“You know, before an eight feet tall robot man smashed it to bits,” Cal added.

Mech pulled his leg free and carefully opened the door. The top hinge tore free of the frame and the door sagged inwards.

“Jesus Christ, Mech, baby steps!” Cal called. “This is my childhood here.”

“Hey, fonk you, man, I’m doing my best,” Mech spat. “You build a house out of paper, what do you think’s gonna happen?”

He trudged on into the house. “Don’t see why I gotta be the one to check it for bugs, anyhow,” he grumbled, disappearing inside.

A moment later, a loud crash was followed by another round of angry muttering. Finally, after several destruction-filled seconds, Mech shouted the all-clear.

“OK,” said Cal, bouncing from foot to foot. “OK. So, I’ll just go in, get the stuff we’re here for, and get back out. You two stay here and watch for evil bug creatures.” He puffed out his cheeks. “Maybe we should come up with some sort of signal in case you see any. Some sort of, you know, like code word?”

“Argh, there’s fonking bugs everywhere, run for your life?” Miz suggested.

Cal clicked his fingers and pointed at her. “Bingo. That’s perfect. Let’s go with that.” He turned back to the house and took a series of deep breaths. “OK. OK, I’m doing this. I am so doing this.”

Loren put a hand on his arm. “You’ll be fine. I’m right here if you need me. I mean, you know, we both are.”

With a smile and a nod, Cal pressed on up the path. Mizette and Loren watched him until he was through the door.

“Wow. Well that didn’t make you look desperate at all,” said Miz, her eyes still fixed on the house.

“Uh-huh.”

“I was being sarcastic again, by the way.”

“Really?” said Loren. “You don’t say.”

Cal stood in the hallway, reeling under the sheer weight of the memories that had come crashing down on him the moment he’d stepped over the threshold.

He’d lost count of how many years it had been since he’d been back to visit his parents, but the house hadn’t changed a bit. The broken doors and damaged walls were different, of course, as was the hulking cyborg currently trying to untangle his head from the light fitting, but otherwise the place looked exactly the same.

His dad’s favorite coat hung from the same hook it always did. There’d be a random assortment of screws, bolts and washers in the right pocket, Cal knew, and a pack of cigarettes in the left, even though he’d quit back while Cal was in fourth grade.

“‘Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer,’” Cal whispered, and he could almost picture his dad patting the coat pocket as he said it.

Cal’s gaze went from the coat to a door a little further along the hallway. He made a move towards it, but Mech blocked his path. “I wouldn’t,” the cyborg said.

Cal stared at the door, as if he could force his eyes to see right through the gloss-painted wood. “What, are they in there?”

“You really want to know?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I really want to know.”

Mech nodded. “They’re in there. But you don’t want to see.”

Cal rocked back on his heels, his chest feeling suddenly tight. “Right. Right. Are they… Is it bad? How did they… How did it happen?”

“My guess? Suicide. Overdose of something, there are empty packets all round the place. Probably saw what was happening with the bugs, and didn’t want to have to deal with it. They went together. Peacefully, it looks like, in each other’s arms.”

Cal reached for the door handle. “Oh. That doesn’t sound so bad.”

“Then something got in and ate both their faces off.”

“Jesus!” Cal yelped, leaping back from the door like he’d been electrocuted. “What the Hell would have done that?”

“Nothing we want to stick around for,” Mech replied. “I say you get what we came for, and we get the fonk outta here.”

“Yeah,” said Cal, brushing his fingertips against his parents’ bedroom door one last time. “Yeah, let’s go with that plan.”

* * *

Cal lovingly set his guitar on top of his bed in the Shatner’s cramped sleeping quarters, and resisted the urge to tuck it in. It wasn’t particularly valuable, and he only knew four chords, but that instrument had brought him more action in high school and his two-and-a-half weeks of college than he could even remember.

Next to the guitar, he placed the one other object he’d taken from the house. It had been standing on his bedside table, in the same spot it had occupied for the past nine years. He looked at it for as long as he could bear, then turned and almost tripped over the suitcases.

He had been midway through packing up the clothes he had left at his parents’ house, when he’d had a better idea. One quick hop in the ship had brought them to the local mall, and after checking some of the abandoned clothing stores for bugs, he’d gone shopping.

Loren had grabbed herself several new outfits, too. Even Miz, who was taller than the average human by a clear foot, had managed to find one or two pieces that fit. They didn’t fit well, of course, but she’d be able to squeeze into them if it came to it. Taking them back off, however, would be much more challenging.

Now, there was just one thing left to do. It was the whole reason for coming back, if he were honest. He just hoped he was strong enough to do it.

The ship gave a jolt.

“Cal, we’re here,” called Loren from up front.

“Great! Just coming!” said Cal, his voice filled with far more enthusiasm than the rest of him.

He picked up the cuddly rabbit toy from beside his guitar.

He kneaded the fabric in his hand, then brought it to his face and inhaled deeply.

And with that, Cal turned towards the door.

CHAPTER TWO

Cal stood alone on a hillside, on a patch of damp grass. He’d always prided himself on his ability to just… talk. No matter the company, no matter the circumstances, he always had something to say. Not always the right thing to say – that was actually pretty rare – but always something.

Until now.

The slab of black granite standing upright in the grass dared him to speak, but the words wouldn’t come – were afraid of coming, for fear of what else they might bring with them.

He looked at the dates, their gold leaf faded by rain and time. Not that he needed to look, of course. They were forever burned into his heart.

“Jesus, nine years.”

The words came out on their own, catching Cal by surprise. He glanced around, like he was worried anyone else might have heard, but the Shatner stood down at the bottom of the hill, beyond even Miz’s earshot.

“Hey, Princess,” he said. “Sorry I haven’t been to visit in… well. You know.”

He tried to look at her name, but his eyes refused. They went to the soft toy in his hand instead. “How you doing, anyway? Good, I hope. Happy.” He smiled, making his eyes blur. “You were always happy.”

Another few minutes passed before he could speak again. He cleared his throat, trying to loosen it off. “Things have been pretty crazy here. I’ve been to space! Actual outer space! Aw, man, you’d love it. The stars and everything.” He laughed. “I mean, I throw up pretty much all the time, but you were always tougher than me, right?”

He nodded and swallowed again.

“Yeah,” he said, his voice a whisper on the wind. “You were always tougher than me.”

He squatted down, picking loose flecks of fluff off the soft toy. “I brought Miss Flopsy. Grandma found her under the bed after you… After the…”

Cal shook his head, refusing to continue any version of that sentence. “Hey, say ‘hi’ to her and Grandpa if you see them, OK? Tell them I’m sorry about their porch.”

It took all his effort to set Miss Flopsy down on the grass, her back propped up against the headstone. Only then did his eyes agree to shift upwards to the name. Lily Elizabeth Carver.

Cal kissed his fingertips, then pressed them against the ornately carved first L. “I miss you so much,” he whispered.

His gaze shifted up a fraction, to the other name chiseled into the granite. Caroline Carver. “Both of you.”

Cal stood up. He inhaled deeply, then wiped his eyes on his sleeve. “You two look after each other, OK?” He cast a glance back at the ship. “I’m going to be going away for a while. I’ve made some new friends. Lily, you’d love them. Caroline, you’d totally hate them.”

He brushed his fingertips across the smooth top of the headstone. “I’ll see you guys later, OK?”

Cal turned. He’d only gone a few paces when he stopped. “Oh, and if either of you happen to bump into Tobey Maguire – you know, the actor? Tell him I said, ‘hello.’”

* * *

Loren turned in her seat as Cal arrived back on the flight deck. “You do what you had to do?”

“Sure did!” said Cal. He was wearing what he knew was an obviously fake grin, but couldn’t find a way to turn it into something more convincing. “All done.”

“What is this place, anyway?” asked Miz, flicking her eyes to the view-screen.

“Nowhere important,” said Cal. “We’re done here.”

“So, we can go now? We can get off this shizzhole?” asked Mech.

“Yes!” said Cal, flopping into his seat. “And no. There’s just one tiny thing I still want to do first.”

Mech grunted. “Oh great. What now?”

“Ladies, gentlemen, mysterious shapeshifting entities, fasten your seatbelts,” said Cal, his smile finally hitting its stride. “Space Team is going to Disneyworld!”

“What’s Disneyworld?” asked Miz. “Is it a planet?”

“It’s a planet of fun!” said Cal. “Except it’s not a planet, no.”

“So what is it?” asked Loren.

Cal pulled on his seatbelt. “As you’ll soon discover, it’s only the most magical fonking place on Earth!”

* * *

Cal stood just inside the main gate of the Magic Kingdom, feeling like he might have oversold things a little. He’d never seen so many dead bodies in one place before, and the few that he had seen hadn’t looked anything like these.

“This is the most magical place on Earth?” asked Mech.

“Well, obviously it’s not normally like this,” said Cal. “There’s usually music and people dressed up and, you know, far fewer dismembered corpses lying around the place.”

He clapped his hands and rubbed them together. “Anyway, who wants to go on Space Mountain?”

Mech scowled. “So, I guess we’re back to adding ‘space’ before everything, are we? I’m warning you, man…”

“That’s its name,” Cal said. “It’s called Space Mountain. It’s a roller-coaster, but in the dark. I’ve never been on it, because I have some issues with motion sickness.”

“We noticed,” said Loren.

“But I’ve heard it’s a lot of fun, and since this is probably my last chance…”

“Shh!” The hair on Miz’s neck stood on end. She turned her head, her ears raising. “Someone’s here.”

The others glanced around. Nothing moved but the occasional corpse-feasting crow.

“Is it, by any chance, a six foot tall talking mouse?” whispered Cal. “Because, believe it or not, that’s totally normal.”

“Mech, what have we got?” asked Loren, drawing her blaster.

“Lot of life signs,” said Mech, checking a readout on the scanning device built into his arm. “Bugs, mostly, but a few infected, too.”

He tapped the display. “Wait. Huh.”

“Huh?” said Cal. “What’s ‘huh?’ I don’t like ‘huh.’”

Mech’s arm whirred as he pointed along Main Street USA. “That’s ‘huh.’”

There, beyond the far end of the street, swarming out of Cinderella’s castle, were people. Lots of people.

Lots and lots of people.

“They look… annoyed,” said Cal.

“They’re all infected. Got bugs inside them,” said Mech. “We should go.”

“Oh, man, but I wanted to take you on It’s a Small World,” said Cal. “Seriously, it tells you everything you need to know about the planet Earth. It’s like Epcot, but all covered in five minutes by dancing robot dolls. You’d love it.”

“Maybe another time,” said Mech. They turned towards the gates, only to see a horde of people thronging past the Shatner, their mouths snapping hungrily at the air.

“That’s not good,” said Loren.

“Aw, man. You can say that again,” Mech groaned.

“I don’t know what you’re worried about, you’re a robot,” said Cal.

“Cyborg,” Mech corrected.

“Same thing.”

“No,” said Mech, turning to face him. “It ain’t. How many times do I have to tell you? I’m only part robot. I can still be infected, just like any of you. I mean, yeah, it’s less likely, because I’ve got less flesh for them to burrow under, but I ain’t safe. None of us are--”

“Uh, hello?” snapped Miz. “Hundreds of zombie bug people about to kill us?”

The people outside the park began hurling themselves over the gates. Mech had torn one of the turnstiles right out of the ground, leaving a wide path that was now letting the crowds rush in.

“In hindsight, I probably should’ve brought a gun,” said Cal.

“You ain’t got a gun?” hissed Mech.

“No! You never let me have a gun,” Cal pointed out.

Miz flicked out her claws and set her jaw. “I’ll deal with them.”

“No!” said Loren. “Don’t get close. They’ll infect you.”

“Closing at our back, too,” said Mech. Sure enough, the other horde was now halfway down Main Street USA, and coming up fast.

“This way,” Cal urged, racing towards a store to the left of the street. “We can go through here and get out behind them.”

Mech, Loren and Miz hurried after him. “Great. Then what?” asked Mech.

Cal puffed out his cheeks and shrugged. “Haunted Mansion, maybe?”

Miz sniffed the air just as Cal reached the store’s front door. The infected horde was coming up fast, hands clawing, teeth gnashing furiously. “Wait!” she yelped, but the warning came too late.

Cal pushed open the door and stepped onto a carpet heaving with fat, black insects. Loren caught him by the back of his waistcoat and yanked him clear, just as Mech stepped in, a jet of fire erupting from his right arm.

The bugs shrieked and squealed and howled as they ignited. Mech swept his arm higher, driving the flame deeper into the store. Novelty hats and over-priced plush toys were engulfed as the fire caught hold, quickly becoming an inferno.

“Look out!” Loren called, raising her blaster and opening fire on the first few rows of… Cal wanted to say ‘people’ but up close he could tell they weren’t people at all. They had been, once, but now they were something else. Something less.

Cal and Miz turned just as the other mob came rushing up to join the fun. “You had to take us here,” Mech snapped. “We couldn’t just have left when I said we should. Oh no.”

Before Cal could reply, the world exploded. At least, that was how it felt. Searing heat and blinding light erupted around them, and for a moment, Cal wondered if Mech had decided that enough was enough, and hit some sort of self-destruct button.

The noise was immense, like an earthquake at a Guns ‘N’ Roses concert. It filled Cal’s head, shaking him through to his bones and completely redefining his understanding of the word ‘loud.’

After the fire and the light came smoke, thick and black and choking. Cal was coughing and spluttering through it when he realized he was lying on the ground. He clambered to his unsteady feet. The world had fallen silent again, but the high-pitched screaming in his ears insisted otherwise.

“Loren? Miz? Mech?” he called, coughing out each name.

“Here.” That was Mech’s voice. He sounded completely unfazed by whatever the Hell had just happened.

“Yeah, over here,” said Miz from somewhere else in the smoke. It was starting to thin a little now, and Cal could just make out the wolf-woman’s outline.

“What about Loren? Has anyone seen Loren?”

“I’m here. Mostly in one piece, I think,” said Loren from over on Cal’s right.

Cal sighed with relief. It came out as a cough. “Great. What about the bug-people?”

“Dead,” said Mech. “All dead. Every last one.”

Cal blinked through the settling soot. “What? How? Was it you? Did you do that?”

Mech shook his head. “Not me,” he said. He extended a metal finger and pointed it straight up. “Them.”

Cal looked up, just as the smoke was pushed aside by the thrusters of a ship coming in to land. He cheered when he spotted the logo painted on the spacecraft’s underside. It was the now all-too-familiar logo of the former soda company turned galactic government.

“Zertex! Great. I love those guys!”

Miz leaned past him to look at Loren. “That was sarcasm, by the way.”

“Yeah. I know,” said Loren. “You don’t have to say it every time. I do understand what sarcasm is.”

“I ain’t no fan of Zertex, but they’re better than being torn apart by bug-people,” said Mech.

“That’s the spirit!” Cal said.

They backed away, making room for the ship to touch down. It was a small, sleek fighter craft, less than half the size of the Shatner. Its landing feet squelched through the partially incinerated remains of the infected, crushing torsos and sending blackened heads rolling in all directions. With a final hiss of landing thrusters, the ship settled on the scorched surface of the street.

“What’s the plan?” asked Miz. “I guess we attack them, right?”

“Well, technically they did just save our lives,” Cal pointed out. “Let’s at least listen to what they have to say before you turn their insides into their outsides this time.”

Miz grunted. “Spoilsport.”

A landing ramp descended below the ship. Three soldiers marched down it in unison – a male officer and two female grunts.

The officer was short and stocky, with a head that attached directly to his shoulders without so much as a hint of a neck. He nodded curtly at Loren while his companions brandished their blaster rifles in a way that was calculated to look as menacing as possible without verging into over-the-top levels of ridiculousness.

“Gunso Loren. So good to see you again.”

“Legate…”

“Filson,” said the officer, curtly. His head was almost completely square, but with a slight bulge on top, like a box containing something just a little bit too large to properly fit inside. His eyes were wide apart – he could’ve squeezed a whole other face between them, Cal reckoned – and his mouth was tucked down near the bottom of his head. Where his nose had got to was anyone’s guess.

Cal stepped forward. Both the troopers’ guns immediately locked onto him. He ignored them. “First up, nice to meet you, Filson. Any friend of Loren’s is a friend of mine.”

“Oh, we’re not friends,” said Filson. “In fact, I fully intend to arrest or kill her, depending on the choices she makes in the next few minutes. I intend to arrest or kill you all.”

“OK, we’ll get to that part shortly,” said Cal. “Secondly, I wanted to say thank you for blasting all those zombie bug people to pieces. I – we – really appreciate the save. I have to admit, it was looking a little hairy for a little while there. It’s lucky you came along when you did.”

“Personally, I’d have loved to watch you all perish, but President Sinclair would be disappointed if I didn’t bring back at least one of you in one piece,” said Filson.

“Oh, and thirdly,” said Cal, his smile shifting from ‘friendly’ to ‘unfriendly’ without apparently changing at all. “I know we just met, and you don’t know any of us particularly well, so I’m going to let you off this one time – but don’t ever threaten me or my friends again.”

Filson snorted. It was quite impressive, considering his lack of nose. “Oh, I wasn’t threatening, Mr Carver,” he spat. “I was making a statement of fact. I plan arresting you or killing you. I’ll let you choose which.”

Cal opened his mouth to reply, but Filson held up a hand. “But I wouldn’t take too long to think about it, or I may just have to decide for you.”

Mizette growled and moved to lunge, but Loren stepped in front of her. “Miz, don’t,” she warned. “There are too many of them.”

“Ha! There are three of them,” said Miz, extending her claws. “That might be too many for you, but I could fight them with my eyes closed.”

Loren shook her head. “There aren’t three of them.”

“She’s right,” said Filson. He gestured at the sky above them. “I have a whole squadron up there, weapons already locked on you. I’m sure your mechanical friend will be able to confirm.”

“I’m seeing eight ships,” said Mech, tapping his scanner. “They all got us on torpedo lock.”

“You see?” said Filson. “You may have led us on something of a merry dance over the past few days, but we were always going to catch you eventually. You can’t just betray Zertex, steal a ship, and expect there to be no repercussions.”

“Zertex betrayed us,” said Loren. “Sinclair left us no choice.”

“Yes, well, you won’t be surprised to learn that he views things quite differently,” said Filson. “Even though he’s currently hard at work trying to broker peace with the Symmorium, he was very insistent that you be caught. Very insistent. Particularly you, Mr Carver. He has a real bone to pick with you. In fact, he made it clear that he wanted you alive. Something about… wiping the smirk off your face?”

“OK, one, it’s not a smirk, it’s a charmingly boyish grin,” said Cal. “And two… Actually, there is no two. Just that first one.”

“I suppose he wants me alive, too,” said Loren.

Legate Filson shrugged, which was quite a feat with no neck. “No. Not really. He was quite open to your death. If anything, I’d say he encouraged it.”

“Ha!” said Miz, finding that highly amusing. “Burn.”

“Oh,” said Loren. “Right. I see. Fair enough, then.”

“This is all very well… Filson, was it?” said Cal. “I mean, you having all those ships locked onto us and everything, I can see why you’re looking so confident. At least, I think you’re looking confident, your face is pretty hard to read.”

“Oh,” said Filson. “I am.”

“Right. Yes. Understandable,” said Cal. He raised a finger. “But you’re forgetting one thing.”

Filson raised an eyebrow. “Oh? And what’s that?”

“The Cross-Phase Electro Nulliblaster!”

Miz frowned. “The what?”

“The Cross-Phase Electro Nulliblaster,” Cal said. He waggled his eyebrows at her to tell her to play along, but the signal was completely lost on her. “That awesome weapon I picked up on that planet Mech made us visit.”

“You picked up lunch on that planet,” said Miz.

“Yes,” said Cal. “And after I did that I picked up the Cross-Phase Electro Nulliblaster.”

“Wait, is this a trick?” Miz asked. “Are we tricking him?”

Cal sighed. “Yes. Well, I was trying to.” He shrugged and hooked a foot under the decapitated head of one of the bug-infected. “Guess we’ll just have to try it this way.”

Flicking up his leg, he sent the head tumbling through the air towards Filson. The soldiers on either side swiveled their guns to take aim at it, and Loren quickly squeezed off two blaster rounds that slammed into their body armor and hurled them back against the hull of their ship.

“Mech, grab that guy!” Cal urged, pointing to where Filson was staring in confusion at his fallen guards.

“On it!” said Mech, snatching the officer up and throwing him over his shoulder.

“Wh-what are you doing? Let me go!” Filson demanded.

“No can do,” said Cal. “If we do that, your ships will shoot at us, and we don’t want them shooting at us, if it’s all the same with you.”

He led the way out through the gate and hurried towards the Shatner. Up on Mech’s shoulder, Legate Filson kicked and complained. “I’ll give the order for them to shoot. I’ll do it. I will!”

“Oh, shut up, Filson,” said Loren. “You’re not going to blow yourself up.”

At the back of the group, Miz stopped. She sniffed the air, picking up a scent on the wind. It was a scent she knew only too well.

“No,” she whispered, looking around. “No, it can’t be.”

“Halt!” commanded a voice that seemed to echo from all directions at once. It was a voice so powerful, so commanding, that Cal’s legs stopped running before his brain had even realized anything had been said. “Halt, or die by the snap of my jaws.”

Miz groaned. “No. Don’t tell me.”

“Tell you what?” asked Cal. “Who is it now?”

From behind the ticket stands and abandoned security stations, several figures emerged. They all stood seven feet tall or more, with broad shoulders and long snouts. They were covered in thick, dark fur, and wore long white skirts that stretched all the way down to their clawed feet.

“Hey, they look like you,” said Cal. “Do you know these guys?”

Miz nodded. “Yeah. I know them.”

“You defile Her Highness with your very existence,” barked one of the wolf-people. “Release her, or face an agonizing death.”

Mizette sighed. “I’m not their prisoner, Kannus. They’re my friends.” She jabbed a thumb towards Loren. “Well, maybe not her, or the guy over her shoulder, but these two.”

“Hey there!” Cal beamed, giving the largest of the wolf-creatures a wave. “Nice skirt. Or is it a kilt?” He leaned closer to Miz. “So, who’s this guy?”

“That’s Kannus,” said Mizette. She shifted around on the balls of her feet. “He’s my… Well, I guess he’s kind of my husband.”

CHAPTER THREE

Cal’s crew stood behind Mizette, Legate Filson still draped limply over Mech’s shoulder. On the ground in front of Miz, Kannus knelt and bowed his head.

“My love. It is I, Kannus, your betrothed.”

Miz tutted. “Well, obviously. I’m not blind.”

“For the glory of the Greyx, I give you my life.”

“Oh great, this again,” Miz sighed.

“For the honor of the Greyx, I give you my soul. For the--”

“Yeah, yeah, triumph, blood, I get it,” said Miz. “Get up, how many times do I have to tell you, you don’t have to kneel?”

“But I must, Your Highness,” said Kannus. “Tradition demands it.”

“Wait, should we be kneeling, too?” said Cal. “I mean, if tradition demands it...”

“Silence, mongrel!” said Kannus, fixing his eyes on Cal and baring a worrying number of teeth. “You do not speak until the princess commands you.”

Cal’s grin widened. “Oh, I can already tell that he and I are going to be the best of friends.”

Kannus leapt to his feet, his claws extending like knife blades from his fingertips. “I said silence,” he hissed, lunging for Cal. Loren snapped her blaster up, taking aim between the Greyx’s eyes.

“Back off,” she said. “I’m warning you.”

All around them, the other wolf-people bristled, their claws and teeth slowly coming on show.

“Kannus. All of you. Cut it out,” said Miz. “Stand down. Cal is my friend, he can speak whenever he likes. Any of them can. Even her.”

“How generous of you,” said Loren. She lowered her gun. “That was sarcasm, by the way.”

“OK, so on second thoughts, she can’t,” said Miz. “But everyone else can.”

“Um… does that include me?” asked Legate Filson. “Can I speak?”

“No,” said Cal. “You don’t get to speak until you’ve had a good long think about your behaviour.”

“But I’m a legate in the Zertex Military!” Filson protested.

“Listen, I don’t want it to get to this stage, Filson, but Mech will spank you. Have you ever been spanked by a cyborg before?”

“What you talking about? I ain’t gonna spank him,” said Mech.

“Oh, believe me, he will,” Cal insisted. “He’ll spank you into next week. You won’t be able to sit down for… well, forever. And why? Because your butt cheeks will be a paste, Filson. They’ll be a paste.”

Filson didn’t reply. Cal nodded. “Wise move.”

He turned back to Kannus and flashed him another smile. “Now, sorry, what were you saying?”

Kannus growled, but resisted the near-overwhelming urge to bite Cal’s face off. Instead, he turned his attention back to Miz and dropped to one knee again. “Your Highness, your presence has been requested by Graxan of the Greyx.”

“Surprise, surprise,” said Miz. “Tell him he can forget it. I’m not coming.”

“It is imperative that you return with us to Kifo at once.”

“Look, I’ve told him before, I’m never coming back to Gre…” Mizette frowned. “Wait, Kifo?”

“Yes, Your Highness,” said Kannus, his voice dropping to a hushed whisper. “Your father is on Kifo.”

“What’s Kifo?” asked Cal. “Is it nearby? We could swing by and say ‘hi,’ couldn’t we?”

“Kifo is the death world,” Miz said, absent-mindedly, as if she were only barely paying attention to the here and now. “It’s where the royal Greyx go when… At the end.”

She gave herself a shake and fixed her gaze firmly on Kannus. “So you’re saying…?”

“I am afraid so, Your Highness,” Kannus said. “Graxan of the Greyx is dying. The time has come to take up the throne.”

Silence fell. Or something close to silence, at least. In the distance, Cal could hear a car alarm wailing. Now that he thought about it, it had been there since they’d arrived, nagging at the very edge of his hearing, but now that everyone had stopped flapping their lips and were just staring at Mizette instead, it finally got its moment to shine.

It was Legate Filson who finally spoke.

“Congratulations!” he said. “About the throne thing, I mean, not about your father…”

“Shut up, Filson,” Loren said.

Miz looked to the sky, then to the ground, before finally settling on Kannus. “No,” she said.

Kannus’s amber eyes widened in surprise. “‘No?’”

Miz nodded, growing more confident. “Yeah. No. I’m not doing it. I told him before, I told all of you before, I don’t want to be the stupid queen.”

“But… you must,” said Kannus. “Tradition demands it.”

“Your traditions sure demand a lot,” said Cal. Kannus growled at him, but Cal bounced it back with a devastatingly friendly grin.

“Cal’s right,” said Miz. “I’m sick of having to do stuff I don’t want to do all the time. Why do you think I left? Go back to Kifo. Tell them they’ll have to find a new queen. I’m not coming.”

With that, she folded her arms, sharply about-turned, and stropped off back towards the Shatner. Kannus moved to lunge after her, but Cal stepped into his path.

“Hey, what’s the time, Mr Wolf? It’s give the lady her personal space time,” said Cal. A brief frown flashed across his forehead. “OK, that sounded way cooler in my head. Out loud it sounded, I dunno, kind of stupid, I guess.”

“Stand aside, runt,” Kannus barked.

“Hey, I’m not a runt,” Cal protested. “Just because I’m surrounded by giant wolf-people and a huge fonking robot--”

“Not a robot,” Mech sighed.

“—doesn’t make me a runt. I’m actually pretty tall for a human. Above average, anyway. And I can do, like, upwards of twelve push-ups in a row, although I’d rather not demonstrate, if it’s all the same to you.”

Kannus moved to push past him, but Cal placed a hand on the hulking wolf-creature’s chest. “No, but seriously,” he said. “She clearly doesn’t want to talk to you. Let me go speak to her.”

Kannus’s eyes narrowed. If his face wasn’t covered entirely by hair, it’d probably have gone red with rage. “You will stand aside. Mizette is returning to Kifo with us, whether she wishes to or not. These are the orders of Graxan of the Greyx.”

“Hear, hear!” chimed Legate Filson from Mech’s shoulder. “Youngsters today really need to be taught discipline.”

“Shut up, man,” Mech growled. He shrugged, violently bouncing the officer around.

“See, that’s not going to work for us,” said Cal. “Miz is with us, and, well, we’re not going to let you just take her.”

“Yeah,” said Loren, stepping up. “Infuriating as she may be – and she really is - she’s one of us. If you want her, you’ll have to fight for her.”

Cal shook his head. “Whoa, whoa. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here and start picking fights with the giant space wolves,” he said. “Let me go talk to her and see what she’s saying first.”

“No,” spat Kannus. “I forbid it.”

“Yeah, well, forbid this,” said Cal, flipping the Greyx the bird.

“What does that mean?” Kannus asked.

“It’s a sign of respect and admiration,” said Cal. He raised his middle finger higher, waggled it in Kannus’s face, then put it away again. “You two OK out here?”

Mech and Loren both nodded. Cal gave Kannus a friendly wink. “Be right back,” he said, then he thrust his hands in his pockets and strolled back towards the ship, whistling happily and savoring the prickling sensation of Kannus’s furious glare on his back.

* * *

“Captain on the bridge!” announced Cal, ducking through the flight deck door. He gestured back at it. “Seriously, I don’t know how you and Mech aren’t bumping your heads on that thing all the time. We should get it raised, it’s an accident waiting to happen.”

Mizette was slumped in her seat, her arms still folded, her gaze fixed on her outstretched legs, watching her right foot kick impatiently.

“I’m not going,” she said, not looking up as Cal sat in his own chair and swiveled to face her. “I don’t want to be the stupid queen.”

Cal shrugged. “Then don’t be. They can’t force you to.” He used his feet to rotate his chair left and right a few degrees, then spun once all the way around. “Man, what a day,” he said. “I knew coming back here would be hard, but… Man, what a day.”

He drummed his fingers on his arm rest, then tapped out a short beat. “Going back to my parents’ house it was… weird. Really weird. I hadn’t been there in years. Hadn’t spoken to them in about as long.”

Cal turned and looked at a wall, as if he could see right through it and all the way back home. “I didn’t miss them. Not once. I mean, I thought about them sometimes, wondered how they were doing, but miss them? No. And they were good people. Both of them. They were good people, we just… we were different, you know? I always felt like I had disappointed them or something.”

Miz flicked her eyes up to him, just for a moment, then went back to staring at her feet.

“But, man, in that house… The memories. And then, knowing they were in there. In their room. Right on the other side of that door. It was like… Do you guys have Christmas?”

Miz sighed, like this was the most boring conversation she’d ever been a part of in her life, but then shook her head.

“OK. Well, it’s like this big day with presents and everything, and standing outside my parents’ bedroom, with them just right there inside… I felt like it was Christmas morning. But early, you know? Still dark outside. And I didn’t know whether it was safe to open my eyes yet or not. Like, there was all this excitement, this, this… joy just trapped inside me, waiting for a release.”

Miz tutted. “What are you even talking about?”

Cal replayed the last part of the conversation over in his head, then shrugged. “I have no idea,” he said. “I was trying to do some sort of clever analogy, but didn’t quite get there. My point is, I wished I’d seen them before they died. I wished I had just five minutes with them, even if it was just to go, ‘Hey, fonk you, I’m great the way I am.’ I guess that’s what I’m trying to say.”

He leaned forward in his chair and lowered his voice, as if imparting some great secret. “You should go see him, Miz. You should go see your dad.”

Mizette’s deep brown eyes lifted again.

“Is there a chance you might wish you hadn’t? Yeah. Sure. Maybe,” Cal said. “But I can guarantee you’ll regret it if you don’t go. Let him see that you’re out here doing you own thing. Let them all see.”

Miz shuffled in her seat and sighed again. She unfolded her arms just enough to let her study her claws on one hand. She’d painted them a glittery shade of purple using nail polish from one of the stores they’d visited. It somehow made them look even deadlier.

“Fine. I’ll go. But not with them, I want to go in this ship.” She looked almost embarrassed. “Our ship.”

“You got it! Wouldn’t have it any other way,” said Cal. He slapped his hands against his thighs, then stood up. “Now, I’ll go let your husband know the good news. You kept him quiet, by the way, you sly dog. Uh… no offence.”

“It’s another stupid royal thing,” Miz said. “As first in line to the throne, you get married young.”

“How young?” asked Cal, who had only recently discovered that the seven-feet tall hulking she-wolf was just six years old.

“In the womb.”

Cal whistled through his teeth. “Wow. That must be one cramped evening reception.”

“Kannus and I were pledged to each other as Lifebounds, which means he’s my husband, and I don’t even get a say in it. When my father dies, I’ll be queen, but Kannus will have all the power as king.”

Cal nodded. “Kinda getting a picture of why you left,” he said. He headed for the door, pausing to give her shoulder a squeeze as he passed. “I’ll go give hubby the good news.”

Striding along the corridor towards the back of the ship, Cal passed the open door of the Bench Room. They called it the Bench Room, because they had no idea what it was for, and the single padded bench was the room’s only distinguishing feature. Cal had discovered it was a useful place to come and vomit when the sensation of travelling at above light speed proved too much. The feeling of the bench’s cool vinyl against his cheek had become as comfortingly familiar as an old pair of shorts.

A few steps past the Bench Room, Cal stopped and backtracked. He was sitting in there, right on the edge of the bench, gazing blankly at the wall dead ahead. “Splurt, buddy! How many times?”

The Cal on the bench became a thick gloopy liquid, then compacted into a ball of green slime. Splurt’s eyes looped in opposite directions, coming together to gaze back at Cal. There was something almost apologetic in the expression, Cal thought, but as Splurt had no features beyond the bulbous bloodshot eyeballs, he was probably just imagining it.

With Splurt now back in non-Cal mode, the real Cal continued down the ramp and out into the Florida sunshine. He slowed down, deliberately closing the gap between him and Kannus in a sedate, casual stroll. He noticed Filson’s two grunts had arrived on the scene. They were taking it in turns to aim their guns at everyone, but no-one was really paying them any notice.

“Ladies. Nice of you to join us,” Cal said, giving them a friendly wave. He dodged past Mech and stopped in front of Kannus. “OK, so there’s good news and bad news. The good news is, Miz has agreed to go see her dad.”

“She has no choice,” Kannus said.

“Well, actually, she does, and she has chosen to go see her dad,” said Cal. “See how it works?”

Kannus twitched in irritation. “And what is the bad news?”

“The bad news, Kannus, old buddy,” said Cal. “Is that we’re coming along for the ride!”

“Unacceptable. No non-Greyx may set foot on Kifo. It is a sacred place,” Kannus said.

“Well, I guess we’ll just have to cross that bridge when we come to it,” said Cal. He turned to Mech and was met by Legate Filson’s ass, which was still hoisted up at the cyborg’s shoulder. “The question is, what do we do with him?”

“Should we kill him?” asked Loren.

Filson let out a little yelp. “What? No! D-don’t do that.”

“Tempting,” said Cal, stroking his chin. “But, I dunno, I kind of like him. There’s just something about his face that makes me want to pick him up and hug him. Is that weird?”

“Yes,” said Mech. “That’s weird.”

“Put him down,” Cal said.

Mech shrugged again, and Legate Filson shot backwards off his shoulder. The officer flapped his arms in frantic panic for half a second, then fell heavily to the ground.

Jumping up, Filson dusted himself down, as if it might help him restore a little dignity. It didn’t. “Yes. And about time, too,” he said. “I was very close to taking action there, and believe me, you’d have been sorry then.”

“Shut up, shizznod,” Mech barked, twitching in the legate’s direction. Filson let out a high-pitched shriek of fright and immediately stopped talking.

“So, Filson. I think one good turn deserves another, don’t you? We spared your life, even though we could have killed you at any time – any time. What’s say you tell your ships up there to let us through, and we’ll all pretend none of this has happened?”

“Never! You all belong to Zertex now!” said Filson, raising his voice so his approaching bodyguards could hear. He quickly lowered it again. “I’m sorry, I had to say that, please don’t kill me! Tell me you’re under protection of the Greyx,” he whispered.

Cal blinked. “Huh?”

“Do it!” Filson hissed.

“Uh, we’re under the protection of the Greyx,” said Cal, just as the two female grunts joined Filson.

“Ah,” said Filson, making a show of looking disappointed. “Curses. Well… that’s that, then. Well played, Carver. Well played. But I’ll get you next time, mark my words.” He wagged a reproachful finger in Cal’s direction. “I’ll get you next time!”

“Oh yeah? We’ll see about that, Filson!” said Cal, getting in on the act. Both men narrowed their eyes, squaring off. After a few seconds of unchecked machismo, Cal buckled. “Ah, what the Hell? I can’t resist,” he said, then he wrapped his arms around the horrified Filson and lifted him off the ground in a hug. “There’s just something about your face.”

CHAPTER FOUR

Hayel Sinclair, current head of the Zertex Corporation, and president of a substantial chunk of the galaxy, sat on the edge of his desk, pointing a polished smile at a screen that took up almost the entire wall in front of him.

On it, a grizzled, shark-like creature glared back at him with its dark eyes. The Symmorium were a warrior race, and Ambassador Druka bore the expression of someone spoiling for a fight.

“You defied the treaty, Sinclair,” he growled. “You attacked the Symmorium and defiled the Sentience. These were acts of war.”

Sinclair rolled up the sleeves of his expensive shirt and raised his hands, half in surrender, half in a calming gesture. “I understand how it may have seemed that way, ambassador, I honestly do. Hey, in your position, with the information you had, I’d be feeling the same way right about now.”

He picked up a ball that was just a little bigger than a baseball and passed it from hand to hand. “I mean, the Sentience gets – what, infected? Wow. Is it OK now? Back fighting fit?”

Ambassador Druka said nothing.

“Well, give it our love,” Sinclair said. “We’re all rooting for it here at Zertex.”

He tossed the ball up and caught it. “The truth is, Druka, Zertex was coming to help. We’d been chasing the pirates who infected the Sentience since they’d left the Remnants. We knew they were planning some kind of attack on the Symmorium, we just didn’t realize what it was. Of course, had we known the Sentience was in danger, we’d have alerted you at once.”

“You sent an invasion force,” Druka snarled, showing a flash of his pointed teeth.

“I sent a police force,” Sinclair said, his smile fixed in place. “To apprehend the pirates and offer help to the Symmorium. An act of friendship, not of war. I give you my word on that.”

Sinclair squeezed the ball, then set it back on his desk. “We’ve worked so hard. All of us. I – we - have put in hundreds, thousands of hours negotiating the treaties. Negotiating peace. How many days have we spent locked in rooms together, Druka? How many months have we - you and I - invested in bringing this pointless war to an end? Together. Why would I jeopardize that now? Why would I even want to?”

Druka’s nostrils flared, but he didn’t reply.

“I’m not going to be around forever,” Sinclair said. “I want to retire, hopefully not too far in the future, settle down, have kids. Do I want them growing up in a galaxy ravaged by a senseless war – a war no-one even remembers the reason for? Or do I want them growing up in a galaxy where Zertex and the Symmorium work together? Build together? I think we both know the answer to that.”

“Your imaginary future children aside,” Druka intoned, “there are many Symmorium who wish to see us retaliate. Swiftly. Without mercy.”

“I’m sure there are,” said Sinclair. He stood up and crossed his hands behind his back. “The question is, what do you wish, ambassador? What sort of galaxy do you want us to work towards?”

Druka ground his teeth together, considering the president’s words. “I shall talk to those above, and try to determine which way the tide is flowing,” he said. “But be warned, Sinclair, if I find out you were responsible for what happened to the Sentience, I shall wait until those future children of yours are born, then I shall eat them while you watch.”

Sinclair nodded, his smile widening. “Fair enough,” he said. “I assure you, we’re not your enemy, Druka. Those pirates you’ve been hailing as heroes? They’re the ones you have to worry about. Rest assured, though, I’m taking steps to deal with them, personally.”

At the corner of the screen, a little alert message flashed up. Sinclair glanced at it, just briefly, then turned his attention back to the ambassador. “Speaking of which, one of the squadrons I sent to apprehend them has just reported back. Hopefully, I’ll have some good news for you soon.”

Sinclair bowed his head. “Farewell for now, old friend.”

“Don’t push it, Sinclair,” Druka warned. The image of the ambassador cut off, and was replaced by a sweeping view of outer space. Sinclair blinked in the sudden glare of the nearest sun. It cast a flickering lens flare effect across the window’s glass. Any other time, he might have taken a few moments to admire it, but there were more pressing matters to attend to.

“Come,” he said, turning to the door. Legate Filson marched in, stomped to a stop, then pulled off a textbook salute.

Sinclair resisted the urge to sigh. Filson was well-meaning enough, and efficient in his own little way, but he was no replacement for Legate Jjin. Now that had been a right-hand man. Fiercely loyal, fiercely dedicated and just fierce in general, Sinclair could always count on Jjin to do what needed to be done.

Could. Past tense. The removal of Legate Jjin from the present tense was just one of the many reasons Sinclair was very keen to get his hands on Cal Carver.

The president crossed his hands behind his back again. This time, he crossed his fingers, too. “Legate Filson. So good to see you back. I trust you bring good news?”

Filson hesitated, just for a moment, then decided to spit it out. It was like pulling off a sticking plaster, he would probably have reckoned, had he even the faintest idea what a sticking plaster was. Best to get it over with quickly.

“No, Mr President, sir,” he said. “They escaped.”

Several seconds passed before Sinclair said anything. It wasn’t really worth the wait. “Escaped?”

“Yes, sir. We had them cornered on Earth, but then the Greyx turned up. Hundreds of them. All armed. They declared the pirates under their protection.”

“Did they? Did they really?”

“Yes, sir. We tried to object, but they were quite insistent. Any attempt to take the pirates would be considered an attack on the Greyx themselves.”

“So?”

Filson frowned. “Uh, well, like I say, there were hundreds of them, sir. They’d have killed me.”

“And I ask again,” said Sinclair, his smile losing some of its polish. “So?”

This wrong-footed Filson a bit. He tried to match Sinclair’s smile, but decided it was inappropriate, then went too far in the opposite direction and scowled instead. “Uh, I didn’t think I’d be much use to you dead, sir.”

“It appears you’re not much use to me alive either,” said Sinclair. He made a weighing motion with his hands. “Dead, I don’t have to pay your salary.”

“I did find out something interesting,” Filson said, scrabbling for the president’s approval. “Graxan of the Greyx is dying. The girl, his daughter, has been summoned to some death world or something.”

“Kifo,” said Sinclair. He nodded slowly. “Oh. That is interesting. That is very interesting. Well done.”

Filson brightened. His chest had been slowly deflating for the last minute or so, but a burst of pride puffed it back up for him. “Thank you, sir.”

“Thank you for the information, legate. You are dismissed,” Sinclair said.

“Very good, sir,” said Filson. He pulled off an extra-enthusiastic salute, then crisply about-turned. He was halfway to the door when Sinclair spoke again.

“On the other hand…”

Filson stopped.

Filson turned.

He was surprised to see that President Sinclair was standing less than an arm’s length away, his salesman-smile showing more teeth this time. “I sent you to carry out one specific task. You did not.”

“Well, no, sir, but I’m sure I can--”

Sinclair lunged, grasping at Filson’s throat. The officer gargled as the president’s finger dug deep into his windpipe. Blood sprayed in a crimson arc, bathing Sinclair’s face in its sticky warmth. He didn’t flinch. Didn’t blink. Just smiled and stared and stared and smiled as he buried his fingers up to the third knuckle in Filson’s flesh.

Then, with a jerk, Sinclair tore the legate’s windpipe out of his body. Spluttering and choking, Filson began to topple backwards, but then the windpipe went taut and he just hung there, leaning back on his heels, Sinclair holding him up by the bloodied remains of his throat.

Filson’s gargling became a strained wheeze. His eyes rolled back. His legs went limp. Sinclair let the fleshy tube slip through his grip, then gave a nod of satisfaction when the officer sunk all the way to the floor.

“I’m sorry, Filson, you were saying?” Sinclair asked, pushing one ear forward as if straining to hear. He allowed himself a chuckle, then returned to his desk, wiping his hands on his clothing.

So, Carver and the others were under the protection of the Greyx. That could be a problem, even if Graxan was on his deathbed.

It was a problem that could be solved, of course, just like any other. A Zertex fleet could obliterate Kifo in a matter of minutes, but that would only agitate the Symmorium situation, and now wasn’t the time for that.

He could tread lightly. Try to make a deal with the Greyx. Take the diplomatic route.

But where was the fun in that?

No, the solution was obvious. Carver and the others – the Greyx, too – needed to be taught a lesson. As circumstances with the Symmorium prevented him doing so himself, that left only one option.

Sinclair flicked the comm switch on his desk.

“Yes, Mr President?” chirped a cheerfully efficient voice from the speaker.

“Hey, Janet. I’m going to need a cleaning crew and a fresh shirt in here,” he said.

“Right away, sir. They’re on their way now.”

“Excellent. Thank you, Janet,” Sinclair said. “Oh, and one other thing.”

“Yes, sir?”

Sinclair smiled. It was his first genuine one of the day. “Get me Lady Vajazzle.”

Hidden in the soft hiss of the speaker, Sinclair could hear his secretary’s surprise. “Are… are you sure, sir?”

“Quite sure, Janet,” Sinclair said. “Tell her I have a job for her, and it’s one I think she’s really going to enjoy.”

CHAPTER FIVE

Cal gripped his arm rest with one hand, and pointed ahead with the other. “Hey, watch it! You’re going to hit them.”

“I’m not going to hit them,” snapped Loren. “They’re over forty miles away.”

“But they’re slowing down,” said Cal. “Are they slowing down? I think they’re slowing down. They should have brake lights on that thing, it’d save a lot of confusion.”

Forty-two miles ahead of the Shatner, the Greyx ship was tilting a little as it skimmed past the tiniest moon Cal had ever seen. He’d only seen four, including this one, but he suspected if he saw a thousand moons, this one would still be the runt of the litter. It was a dusty white with veins of dark blue. If Earth’s moon were made of cheddar, this one was Roquefort to the core.

The Greyx ship was an OCD sufferer’s nightmare. Unlike every other space ship Cal had seen, this one wasn’t symmetrical. It had one long, swooping, eagle-like wing on the right, and a short, stubby one on the left. How it didn’t just fly around in circles all the time, Cal could only guess. Science, probably.

It had taken them several long, boring hours to get to their current position. The Greyx ship’s top warp speed was less than a third of the Shatner’s, and so Cal had tried with an astonishing lack of success to introduce the rest of the crew to Rock, Paper, Scissors. Eventually, he’d given up and gone to fetch his guitar.

Over the next hour, he’d performed – and taken sole credit for writing – every space-based song he could think of, from Bowie’s Starman and Space Oddity to I Lost My Heart to a Starship Trooper by Sarah Brightman and Hot Gossip. Mech had stared impassively during the Bowie, but Cal had caught him toe-tapping during the Brightman, although he quickly stopped when he realized he’d been spotted.

Finally, the guitar was put away, Cal had declared himself the winner of Rock, Paper, Scissors by default, and both ships had dropped out of warp in the shadow of the tiny moon. Beyond it, an almost perfectly white planet shone against the stars. There were no oceans, no land-masses, just the same uniform whiteness wrapping all the way around the globe.

“Hey, is your death world made of marshmallow?” asked Cal, turning to Miz. She could usually be found slumped in her seat, but now she was oddly upright, her back straight, her jaw tense. She had seemed even more sullen than usual during the flight, but now she was alert and staring ahead at the planet creeping over the horizon of the moon.

“It’s cloud,” she said.

Cal swiveled his chair back to the front and looked again. “Yeah. Yeah, that makes far more sense,” he said, although he found it hard to hide his disappointment.

The image on screen changed and Kannus’s face filled the screen. “This is as far as non-Greyx may go,” he said. “Land on the moon. Mizette shall board our ship, and you may be on your way.”

Cal opened his mouth to protest, but Miz beat him to it. “No way, Kannus. Not happening. Just go ahead and land on Kifo, and we’ll follow you down.”

Kannus’s face darkened. “But… our traditions.”

“Blah, blah, blah. I don’t care,” Miz told him. “If my dad wants to see me, we’re doing it my way, or the whole thing’s off. Got it?”

Kannus tightened his jaw, as if fighting to hold back something that was trying to escape. After wrestling with it for a few seconds, he relaxed just enough to spit out an, “As you wish,” before ending his transmission.

“And that, ladies and gentlemen,” said Cal, “is why fetuses should never marry. You might end up with someone like him. You married, Mech?”

“Do I look like I’m married?” the cyborg replied.

“Shame. Wish I’d known,” said Cal. “I have this really high-tech toaster back on Earth I could have totally hooked you up with. Four slot. She’s a beauty.”

“It’s on a landing approach,” Loren announced.

Cal frowned. “My toaster?”

“The Greyx ship. They’re sending the co-ordinates.”

“Can you follow them without crashing?” asked Miz.

“Yes! Of course I can!” Loren snapped, adding the “hopefully” silently in her head. She adjusted the controls and the Shatner subtly shifted direction as it curved past the moon and began its descent towards Kifo.

Mech’s feet clanked on the floor as he turned to Mizette. “You OK?”

Miz blinked, surprised by the question. “What? Why are you asking?”

Mech scowled and began turning back just as the screen was filled with a wispy whiteness. “Forget I asked. Just trying to be friendly.”

“I think she was just kind of taken aback that you cared,” said Cal. “You know, you being a soulless robot, and everything.”

Mech shook his head. “Know what? I don’t. Forget I said anything.”

Cal and Miz exchanged a glance. Cal shrugged.

“I’m OK,” Miz said. “Thanks for asking.”

Mech grunted. “Whatever.”

“Breaking cloud cover in four… three… two… one,” Loren announced. On screen, the image remained steadfastly white. “Er… half… quarter…”

The cloud cleared, revealing a world that was both terrifyingly bleak and terrifying close. An alarm began to squeal as Loren’s hands and feet all flew to different controls, frantically trying to slow the ship’s descent.

“Shizz! Didn’t realize it was so low,” Loren muttered. The Greyx ship was on a landing pad below them, directly in the Shatner’s path.

“Pull up, pull up, pull up!” Cal cried, hooking his fingertips around the edges of his arm rests.

“I’m trying!” Loren yelped. She leaned back and to the left, dragging the stick with her. The Shatner’s nose swung upwards, then a harsh metallic screech vibrated through the ship, like the world’s sharpest fingernails on the world’s squeakiest blackboard.

The ship shuddered until the screeching stopped, then shot forwards, smashed through the top of a rock formation, and slid sideways down the slope on the other side.

With a final crunch, the ship slammed to an abrupt stop. “Everyone OK?” asked Cal.

“Oh, what, have we landed?” Miz said. “It was so smooth I didn’t notice.” She shot Loren a scowl. “That was--”

“Yes! I get it!” said Loren. “How was I supposed to know the cloud levels were so low?”

Mech pointed silently to several lines of data that filled the bottom right of the viewscreen.

“Well, yes, I mean… obviously I could have looked there,” Loren admitted, her blueish-white skin blushing a shade of lavender.

Cal unclipped his seat belt. “Still, no harm done,” he said. “You know, apart from the extensive ship damage and that mountain now being two hundred feet shorter. Oh, and I may have shizzed my pants, but aside from all that? Textbook.”

Loren’s blush darkened further. “It’ll be fine. If there’s any damage, I’ll fix it. Mech, I may need you for some of the more complex stuff. Can I turn you up if I need you?”

Mech glanced down at the dial fixed in the center of his chest. He used it to redirect his power supply to where he needed it most. Turning it to his right diverted the energy to his hydraulics, making him stronger, but with the side-effect of dropping his IQ a few dozen points.

Twist the dial to his left, and his processing power went through the roof, but at the expense of his ability to punch things, lift things, or – if turned up all the way – move around.

“If it means we ain’t stuck here, you got it,” Mech said. He looked at the dark, desolate terrain on the viewscreen and his hydraulics rattled as he gave an involuntary shudder. “This place gives me the creeps.”

“OK, you guys do that,” said Cal, giving them a thumbs up. He stood and extended a hand to Miz. “Shall we?”

Mizette stared at his hand for a long time, like she couldn’t quite figure out what it was for. At last, she took it, and allowed herself to be pulled gently to her feet.

The ship was tilted at an awkward angle, and they had to support themselves on the corridor wall as they made their way to the landing ramp. Splurt pulsed excitedly in front of it, his eyes shining with slime and hope. But mostly slime.

“Hey buddy, how’s it going?” Cal grinned. “You OK? Loren took a somewhat unorthodox approach to landing. Didn’t shake you up too much, did it?”

Splurt bobbed up and down, then turned his eyes very deliberately towards the closed landing ramp. Cal understood right away. “Ah, yeah, see here’s the thing, buddy. I’m not sure now’s the best time for you to come outside. The Greyx aren’t happy that we’re here, and if they see a slimy green blob – fonking adorable as it may be – they might freak out.”

Splurt shuddered and squidged around, quickly taking the form of a small ginger kitten. The tiny cat sat on the floor, its wide green eyes gazing hopefully up at Cal. “Man, that’s cute,” Cal whispered. “But we’re on a planet filled with alien dog people. That’s literally the worst thing you could have turned yourself into. You’ve basically disguised yourself as a between-meals snack.”

Splurt’s whiskers drooped as Cal and Miz stepped over him. “But we’ll hang out later, OK?” Cal called back over his shoulder, as he hit the button that lowered the ramp. “I can teach you guitar. I’ve had an idea for a new song I’m going to call Rocket Man. You’ll love it.”

Flashing one final smile at the sad little kitten, Cal stepped out of the ramp, let out a panicky, “Wah!” and immediately plunged several feet to the ground. The hillside was slippery gravel beneath him. He made a futile attempt to claw at it to slow his fall, but then just surrendered to gravity and let it roll him all the way to the bottom.

Coughing in a cloud of gravel dust, Cal wiped the grime from his face. A towering wolf-like figure loomed above him, its teeth and claws both bared.

“Who dares tread upon Kifo soil without the blessing of the Greyx?” the figure snarled, its hot breath rolling over Cal and filling his nose with the smell of raw meat.

Cal spat out a chunk of grit and tried his best to smile. “OK, firstly, I didn’t technically tread on Kifo soil, I sort of bounced on it on my face and upper body.”

The Greyx growled all the way at the back of its throat. “Whoa, whoa, and secondly, I’m here with Mizette! She asked me to come.”

The wolf-creature’s eyes widened in surprise. “Mizette brought you? Mizette is here?”

“Yeah. I’m here.”

The Greyx’s head snapped up at the sound of Miz’s voice. Mizette had her arms folded across her chest, and her weight slumped on one hip. She glanced at the other wolf-creature, but didn’t hold its eye.

“Oh thank God, you know each other,” Cal sighed, letting his head sink back into the gravel.

“Yeah, you could say that,” said Miz. “This is my friend, Cal,” she explained, gesturing to him. Cal waved.

“Hey.”

“Cal… this is my mom.”

With some effort, Cal stood up. He tried to brush the dust off, but as 95% of him was covered in the stuff, he quickly gave up. “Cal Carver,” he said, offering her a hand. “Pleasure to meet you.”

Mizette’s mom clearly had no clue why Cal was holding his hand out, and made a deliberate effort to ignore it. “Sorshi of the Greyx,” she said, bowing her head just a fraction. “Friend of my daughter or not, you are not welcome here. Non-Greyx are not permitted on Kofi.”

Miz huffed out a sigh. “Oh, give me a break, mom. If Cal goes, I go, too.” She held her mother’s gaze for several seconds, then raised her bushy eyebrows. “So, are you going to take us to see Dad, or what?”

CHAPTER SIX

President Sinclair sat behind his desk, typing on a holographic keyboard projected onto the wood, and savoring the smell of carpet disinfectant. He could’ve moved to another office while the cleaners took care of Legate Filson, of course, but he’d told them he had too much work to be getting on with, and assured them their presence wasn’t causing him any problems.

The truth of it was, seeing Filson’s body being folded into the bag and carried away brought a pleasing finality to the situation. Sinclair was no stranger to taking a life, and while he’d sometimes had cause to kill-and-run, he always felt somehow deflated afterwards, like he hadn’t quite seen the act through to completion.

Now, though, with Filson’s body already on the way to the incinerators, and the dark, clinically-clean smelling stain still drying on the carpet, Sinclair allowed himself to bask in the feeling of a job well done.

There was still the matter of promoting a replacement, of course, and there may well be a wife and children to offer his heartfelt condolences to, but those were minor details that could be attended to later.

For now, there was the matter of the assassin materializing in the center of the room, just to the left of Legate Filson’s stain. Sinclair waved a hand over the keyboard, which became a line of light, then vanished. He clasped his hands on the desktop and smiled as the shimmering lightshow solidified into the shape of a woman in a flowing black robe.

She had a face that had known beauty, but wanted very little to do with it. The ravages of time were drawn like a roadmap across her skin. A puckered scar surrounded her left eye-socket, the eye itself replaced by something red and mechanical.

Her hood was back, revealing a head that was largely bald, but with the occasional wisp of thin gray hair.

When it came to the career choice most likely to result in your prolonged, agonizing death, ‘professional assassin’ was up there near the top of the list. The fact the woman who had appeared in Sinclair’s office had lived long enough to acquire her wrinkles and graying wisps, was perhaps the greatest testament of all to her remarkable skills.

“Lady Vajazzle,” said Sinclair, bowing his head in a rare gesture of deference. “I’m honored you have agreed to see me.”

Vajazzle’s expression remained impassive, her thin frame motionless beneath the folds of her midnight-colored robe.

“I mean, anyone else, I’d ask them to use the door, but it’s always impressive to see your… teleporting thing in action. You really must share the secret some time. We could make a lot of money together. A lot of money.”

“I was informed you had a job for me,” Vajazzle said. Her voice was as smooth as velvet, but with a sandpaper roughness around the edges. It was as if two voices were saying the same words at the same time, and neither one was particularly fond of the other. The way she said the words made them sound like the beginning of a sentence, but she left the end just hanging there, waiting for Sinclair to fill it in.

“I did. I do,” he said. “But first, can I get you anything? A drink, or…?”

“The job. Explain.”

Sinclair’s smile broadened. “Straight down to business. Of course.” He leaned back in his chair. “I believe you’ve had dealings with Graxan of the Greyx.”

Beneath her robe, Vajazzle’s body stiffened. A thin, frail arm emerged from the folds of the garment. She tapped a spindly gloved finger against the metal of her artificial eye. “He gave me this.”

“I had heard that rumor,” Sinclair said, wiping his smile away and replacing it with something that was a bit like concern, but wasn’t. “So I guess it’s safe to say that you’re not his biggest fan?”

“I cannot kill Graxan, if that is why you summoned me,” Vajazzle said in her dual-tone voice. “After our last encounter, we reached… an agreement. I am free to work within Greyx space, but in return the Greyx themselves are off-limits, as long as Graxan lives.”

“Aha! Then you are going to love what I’m about to tell you,” said Sinclair, leaning forward and tapping his fingers on the edge of his desk like a tiny drumroll. “Graxan is on Kifo. He’s dying.”

Vajazzle’s mouth drew tight, the wrinkled skin puckering around her lips, but she didn’t seem to have anything to say on the matter. “And you force me to ask you again. It will be the final time. The job. Explain.”

Sinclair nodded his apology. “Of course. We’ve worked together before, of course, and your reputation speaks for itself, but tell me, Lady Vajazzle,” the president said. “Have you ever hunted an Earthling?”

Vajazzle raised a graying eyebrow. “No,” she admitted. “But there’s a first time for everything.”

* * *

Several billion miles away, the Earthling in question was standing at an unassuming-looking wooden door in a cramped room, flanked on both sides by towering wolf-people. Mizette stood on his left, shuffling from foot to foot like she desperately needed to go to the bathroom, but was trying to not let anyone know.

Her mother, Sorshi, was on his right, angling her body in a way that suggested there was no way he was getting through the door.

“You will wait here while Mizette and I go inside,” said Sorshi.

Cal nodded. “OK. That’s fair.”

“No, Cal comes with me,” Miz said.

“Apparently I spoke too soon,” Cal said. “If Miz wants me to go in, I’m going in.”

Sorshi flinched like she’d been struck across the face. “Miz?” she said, spitting the word out. “You will address her as ‘Mizette’ or, preferably, ‘your highness.’”

“My friends call me ‘Miz,’” said Miz. “And Cal’s my friend.”

“I sure am,” Cal agreed.

“We’re practically lovers,” Miz added.

Cal coughed. “Well, I’m not sure I’d go that far.” He smiled at the suddenly even more furious-looking Sorshi. “But we’re all very fond of her back on the ship.”

“Your father will not approve of this.”

Miz shrugged. “So what’s new?”

Sorshi raised her eyes to the ceiling, just a few inches above her head. Like the door, it was made of simple, rough wood, although there was a yellowish tint to it unlike any Cal had ever seen on Earth.

“Very well,” she said. She nodded, but it was reluctant. Anxious, even. Her eyes went to Cal as she edged open the door. “But on your own head be it.”

* * *

Mech and Loren jumped down from the Shatner’s airlock hatch and hit the ground heavily and lightly, in that order. The landing ramp, as Cal had discovered, was tilted at the same angle as the rest of the ship and overhanging a steep drop, so coming and going via the airlock hatch was the best approach, for now.

The first thing they’d checked on had been the Warp Disk. Without it, the ship could only run on back-up power supplies, and faster than light travel was impossible. Faster than 150MPH travel was pretty tricky to achieve, in fact, and they’d both been relieved to find the disk undamaged.

Outside, the news was less good. “Aw man, that thing looks fonked,” said Mech, gesturing to a big sticky-out part he’d forgotten both the name and purpose of. “Is it meant to be hanging off like that?”

“No,” Loren sighed.

“Great. Can you fix it?”

“I can’t.” Loren pointed her eyes very deliberately at the dial on Mech’s chest.

“OK, OK. I got this,” Mech said, turning the control knob a few notches to the left. His hulking metal frame seemed to sag. There was a high-pitched drone, like the sound of a motor that had previously been running too fast to hear slowing down. The scowl which was a near-constant fixture on Mech’s face became something much lighter and less aggressive.

“Oh, my,” said Mech, his voice raising a full octave and a half. “The aft shield generator is in terrible shape. I fear it is quite beyond even my capabilities to repair.”

Loren threw up her hands. “Great. Awesome. Way to go, Teela.”

“I’m sorry, I am not familiar with a ‘Teela,’” said Mech.

“Uh, it’s me. I’m Teela. Didn’t I ever tell you my first name before?”

Mech shook his head. The movement was slow, like a toy whose batteries were on the verge of running out. “I do not believe so. From this position, I can access all 99% of my memory banks, and I can find no knowledge of your first name in there.”

“Uh, all 99%?” said Loren.

“Yes?”

“Well, it’s just… wouldn’t ‘all’ suggest 100%?”

Mech’s metal jaw opened, as if he were about to speak. He hesitated, a brief look of confusion flashing across his face. “I… do not understand,” he said. “According to my processors, I have full and complete access to my memory banks, and yet statistical analysis of the data shows it represents 99% of all data stored.”

Loren frowned. “What does that mean?”

“It means I have a secret,” said Mech. “One that even I do not know.”

“What kind of secret?” asked Loren.

“You will recall, perhaps, the statement: ‘One that even I do not know,’ which I made but a moment ago,” said Mech. “The nature of the data is unknown to me at this time, and I suggest we have more pressing matters to attend to at the moment. We know the aft shield generator is in disrepair, but we are yet to ascertain the extent of the rest of the damage, I recommend we focus our efforts on that.”

“Makes sense,” agreed Loren, but before Mech could move off, she put a hand on his shoulder. “And I’m sorry. You know, that I never even told you my name.”

“Do not concern yourself,” said Mech. “My metal chassis makes it common for people to assume I am emotionless and detached, and that I therefore have no interest in the lives of those around me. It is something I have come not only to accept, but to expect.”

“Right,” said Loren. Suddenly feeling like the worst person alive. “Well, it’s Teela. My name’s Teela. Use it whenever you want.”

“I shall. Thank you, Loren,” Mech said. “Now, let us continue our investigation, that we may begin repairs in earnest.”

* * *

Since his first meeting with the rest of the crew in President Sinclair’s office, Cal had grown used to the feeling of being dwarfed. Miz towered over him, and Cal couldn’t stand close to Mech without risking some sort of neck injury brought on by too much looking up.

Despite that – despite the size difference between him and his two crewmates, he’d never truly felt small before. Short, yes. But not small. Never small.

Until now.

Graxan of the Greyx stood in the center of the room. Hell, he was the center of the room. He wasn’t as tall or as broad as Mech, yet he somehow seemed bigger in every way. It was as if physics had taken one look at his teeth and claws, announced the normal rules didn’t apply, then backed hastily out of the room while apologizing for any inconvenience caused.

Like the other Greyx, he was covered from head to toe in thick fur. The hairy coat was shades of charcoal and black, with a shock of white around his chin betraying his age. Had he been wearing a jolly red hat, he could’ve passed for a particularly hirsute Santa Claus, but there was nothing jolly about him at all.

He was dressed in a long skirt, like the one Kannus wore, although his was black, not white. His eyes were a dark, murky amber, and his teeth…

Cal swallowed and tore his eyes away from the rows of pointy canines. If this was Graxan when he was dying, Cal would have hated to see him at full health.

“What is this?” Graxan demanded. His voice was a breath of wind, crackling over dry Fall leaves.

“This is Cal,” said Mizette, more subdued than Cal had ever seen her. “He’s… my friend.”

“Friend?” Graxan spat out the word, as if he didn’t want it anywhere near him. “I had hoped you would have outgrown such childish things, daughter. You disappoint me.”

“Pleased to meet you, too, sir!” said Cal. “I’ve heard a lot about you. Nice skirt, by the way. Is that real leather, or artificial?”

Graxan looked Cal up and down. “It speaks?”

“He, Dad. Not it,” said Miz. “And yes, he speaks. A lot.”

“Too much, if anything,” Cal added.

Graxan shook his head, but turned his attention away from Cal. “It is… pleasing to see you, daughter.”

Miz crossed her arms. “Yeah. Whatever,” she said. “So, I hear you’re dying.”

Graxan nodded. Cal caught Sorshi glancing between her daughter and husband, apprehension in her eyes. “In time,” said Graxan. “Not yet.”

Mizette scowled. “What? Kannus told me you were at, like, death’s door. That’s the only reason I came.”

“And that is the only reason we said it,” Graxan replied. “I knew that you would not return without good cause.”

“So, you lied to me? You pretended to be dying so you could trick me into coming back?”

“Oh no. Rest assured, daughter, I am dying. But I have time. Not much, but time,” Graxan said, his voice tailing off into a throaty whisper. “Time to prepare you and Kannus for the roles and duties you are sworn to.”

Miz let out one of her now-trademark sighs. “Seriously, how many times do I have to tell you? I’m not--”

“You will do as you are told!” Graxan roared. It wasn’t loud, not really, but the anger in it creaked the floorboards and shook the wooden walls. “I have tolerated your infantile tantrums long enough. I have allowed you ‘space,’ as you put it, in the hope that you would realize who you are and where you belong, and return to us…” He regarded her with something close to disgust. “…better. But once again, as so many times before, you disappoint.”

“Hey, now wait just a minute, pal,” said Cal, stepping forward. “You’re way out of line.”

The dark fur on the back of Graxan’s neck bristled as he shifted his amber gaze to Cal. “What did you say?”

“Stop being so down on her. Miz is a great kid. Seriously, she’s awesome. She’s kind…” Cal frowned, just a little. “Well, I mean, maybe not ‘kind,’ exactly, but she’s… you know? She’s big. And funny! Remember that time you told us that joke?”

Miz shook her head.

“Actually, that may have been Loren,” Cal admitted. He rallied quickly. “But my point is, you shouldn’t speak to her like that. Is she perfect? No. Hell, no. But who is? And, with all due respect – which, by the way, is none whatsoever – with a father like you, what chance did the kid have? You’ve done nothing but criticize her since we stepped in the room. Seriously, five minutes in your company, and even my self-esteem’s so low I’m thinking about killing myself. How do you think she feels?”

Graxan blinked slowly. “You are right,” he said.

“Damn right, I am! Thank you,” said Cal. “Um… which part, exactly?”

“You talk too much.”

There was a knock at the door, sharp and urgent. Sorshi opened it to reveal Kannus, already kneeling in the threshold. “Great Graxan,” he said, stooping his head. “Trouble approaches.”

“Here? On Kifo?” Graxan croaked. “Who dares?”

“We do not yet know, Your Majesty,” Kannus said. “It is a single ship, but has yet to identify itself. It is, however, broadcasting a message.”

Graxan’s eyes narrowed. “And what is the message?”

Kannus raised his head. “Three words, repeating on loop, Your Majesty,” he said.

“Yes?” barked Graxan, growing impatient. “And what do they say?”

“They say, ‘surrender,’ Great Graxan,” said Kannus. His eyes went to Cal. “‘Surrender the Earthling.’”

CHAPTER SEVEN

Cal stood on an expanse of dark gray slate, a cool wind prickling his skin. The landscape was bleakly black in all directions, with the all-covering cloud layer offering the only real color contrast. In terms of picking the perfect world to go and die on, the Greyx had hit a home run. Kifo was the deadest place Cal had ever been to, and considering he’d once spent a wet Tuesday evening in a Belgian nightclub, that was really saying something.

He was flanked again by Miz and her mom, with Graxan and Kannus standing together a dozen or so feet ahead. Several other Greyx lined the flat patch of slate, their eyes raised to the clouds. The hill that Loren had decapitated loomed a quarter of a mile or so away on the right, the Shatner hidden on the other side of its slope.

“So… what’s happening?” whispered Cal.

“Someone’s coming,” said Miz. “Someone looking for you.”

“Zertex?”

“We have not been able to identify it,” Kannus said, without looking round.

Cal lowered his voice even further. “Wow, that guy has good hearing.”

“Yes. I do.”

“Donchenodssaywhat,” Cal murmured, but – to his disappointment – Kannus didn’t appear to hear that one.

“It approaches,” said Sorshi, taking Cal by surprise. It was the first time he’d heard her speak in Graxan’s presence. Graxan’s ears twitched, and Sorshi ducked her head, as if regretting saying anything.

Just ahead of the group, the clouds swirled into a tornado pattern. A pulsing red light appeared in the center of the twister, then a spinning silver disk the size of a large Merry-Go-Round descended through the fog.

“Hey, it’s a flying saucer!” said Cal. “It’s an actual proper flying saucer. Maybe all those rednecks were right all along.”

At the sight of the ship, Graxan stiffened. He turned, just enough to shoot Mizette an angry glare. “What trouble have you brought to our door this time, daughter?” he hissed, then he turned away before she could offer any reply.

The saucer slowed, coming to a stop twenty or thirty feet in the air. It hung there, spinning lazily, the bulbous red light on its underside throbbing with illuminated menace.

“OK, so what happens now?” asked Cal, then he gawped in wonder as a figure began to materialize beneath the ship in a shimmering aura of sparkles.

“They’re beaming down?” said Cal. “They’re actually beaming down? That’s a thing? How come we never beam down?”

The light show stopped. In its place stood a woman in a flowing black robe. The hood was up, casting her face in shadow, but tucked into the darkness was a single steady spot of red light.

“Graxan,” the woman said, an inflection of surprise in her voice. “I was informed that you were dying.”

“Then I’m very sorry to have to disappoint,” Graxan growled. His voice sounded stronger – a deliberate attempt to disguise his frailty. “What do you want, Vajazzle?”

Behind Graxan, Cal let out a loud snort. “What? No way! Seriously?” he said. “She’s not really called ‘Vajazzle,’ is she?”

“I am. What of it?” demanded the woman in the robe.

Cal looked at the faces around him, trying to figure out if they were winding him up. “Well, I mean… Vajazzle. You know what that means.” He did another sweep of everyone’s faces, and saw only confusion. “You guys do know what that means, right?”

“No. What does it mean?” asked Miz.

Cal shuffled from foot to foot. “Come on, you must know! It’s when someone – a lady – jazzes up their… private area.”

Miz frowned. “Their bedroom?”

“No, their…” Cal made a vague gesture towards his crotch. “…foo-foo. You know? Their special lady’s… region. Their personal frontal…”

The Great Graxan, ruler of the Greyx, raised an eyebrow. “Do you mean their vagina?”

“Yes. Jesus,” said Cal, wishing he hadn’t opened his mouth. “It’s when someone decorates their…”

“Vagina,” said Graxan again.

“Thank you, yes, with, like, fake diamonds and, I don’t know, stickers and stuff. Vajazzle.”

A near-silence fell on the clearing. The only sound was the low droning of Vajazzle’s spinning saucer.

“No,” said Graxan, at last. “It’s a new one on me.”

Cal cleared his throat and crossed his hands behind his back. “Anyway. You were saying? Carry on.”

A painfully thin arm extended from within Vajazzle’s midnight robe. A crooked finger pointed Cal’s way. “Him. I want him. The others, too, but mostly him.”

Graxan nodded ponderously. Beside him, Kannus watched the woman intently, trying to anticipate her next move.

“And my daughter?” Graxan asked.

Vajazzle’s arm retreated into the robe. “Like the rest of the Greyx, she is off-limits, of course. I have not forgotten our agreement. I seek only the Earthling and his non-Greyx companions.”

Graxan nodded again. “Your request is fair,” he said. “But I am afraid I must refuse.”

“What?” said Kannus, his eyes widening. He shook off his surprise, and turned his focus back to Vajazzle. She still had her hood up, but the tone of her voice painted a pretty accurate picture of what her expression must be like.

“Refuse? Me?” Vajazzle hissed. “That is not wise, Graxan.”

“Perhaps not,” Graxan conceded. “My daughter has poor taste in companions, but her companions they are. They are under Greyx protection. An attack on them is an attack on us all.” He bared just enough fang to get his point across. “And attacking us all would not be wise.”

“That was not our agreement, Graxan,” said Vajazzle, and for the first time Cal heard what sounded like a second voice, speaking in time with the first. The first voice didn’t sound happy, but the second one even less so. “The Greyx are to be unharmed, but I have the freedom to pursue anyone else I like. We agreed.”

“You are right, we did,” Graxan conceded. “But while I live, my daughter’s companions are honorary Greyx.”

“Great Graxan, surely you can’t--?” Kannus began, but a low growl from Graxan stopped him going any further.

“They are honorary Greyx, and as such are permitted here on Kifo. The same cannot be said for you, Vajazzle,” Graxan said. “I would ask you to remove yourself from this place, or we shall be forced to remove you ourselves.”

The hood tilted left and right, as Lady Vajazzle surveyed the scene. The red radiance of her electric eye flared, then faded to a feeble glow. “Very well, Graxan. As you wish,” she said. “But know this - you have made a terrible mistake. I have been tasked with retrieving the Earthling, and retrieve him I shall. Whatever it takes.”

“Good luck with that,” said Cal, firing a toothy smile her way. “You don’t be a stranger, OK?” He shook his head and chuckled. “Vajazzle.”

The woman’s black robe became flecked with hundreds of sparkling white dots, like stars appearing in the night sky. As the others watched, she became semi-transparent, then faded completely in a shower of flickering lights.

“Well,” Cal breathed. “She seemed nice.”

Miz took a step forward. “Thanks,” she said, addressing Graxan’s back. He turned and shot her a look that bristled with irritation, then stumbled sideways. Kannus quickly caught him, taking the old Greyx’s weight.

“I have you, Great Graxan,” Kannus said.

“Take him to his chamber,” Sorshi instructed. She beckoned for Kannus to follow her. He strode past Cal and Miz, supporting the limping, wheezing Graxan on his shoulder.

“You want to go check on him?” asked Cal, as he and Miz watched them go.

Mizette shook her head. “No. Kannus’ll look after him.”

“That was pretty cool what he did,” said Cal. “You know, not handing me over to be Vajazzled. I didn’t expect that.”

Miz shrugged, but said nothing. Over on their right, there was the sound of hands and feet scrabbling over loose rocks. Loren and Mech appeared over the crest of the hill just as Vajazzle’s ship rocketed upwards into the bank of cloud.

“So,” said Loren, panting from the effort of the climb. “What did we miss?”

CHAPTER EIGHT

Sinclair leaned back in his chair, twiddling his thumbs and waiting for the comm-screen to light up with an incoming transmission.

Through his ceiling-to-floor office windows, he could see a planet. He wasn’t sure which planet it was. He wasn’t even sure which of the many Zertex Command space stations he was on. Zertex Command Four? Seven? He’d always counted on Legate Jjin to bother with such details, and now that Legate Jjin was nothing but dust, he was proving to be far less reliable.

Jjin had a brother, apparently, also employed by Zertex. When Sinclair had found out he’d been thrilled, thinking Jjin’s brother might make the perfect replacement, but he was currently deployed on an exo-galactic expedition and even if he turned the whole ship around, it would take years for him to get back. Besides, he was a scientist, and likely didn’t have the stomach for violence his brother had had. Then again, very few people did.

Sinclair was aware of seventeen different pressing issues he should have been attending to, but right then none of them mattered. All that mattered was getting his hands on the Earthling. In hindsight, abducting him from his prison cell on Earth was a mistake. Even without the case of mistaken identity – the troops he’d sent to carry out the abduction had grabbed the wrong man – it was a misjudgment on his part.

Earthlings were too unpredictable. He’d only met two – Cal Carver and one equally irritating other – but the pattern was clear. You could try to predict how they’d react in a given situation, but their sheer, unwavering stupidity would mean they’d completely confound your expectations every time. It was easy to assume that an intelligent person would always beat an idiot, but if the idiot had no idea of the rules and just made up his own, then it became a somewhat more difficult game to win.

Speaking of idiots, a thought struck him. He spun in his chair and pressed the intercom. “Janet?”

“Yes, Mr President, sir?”

“Did you send a sympathy note to Legate Filson’s family?”

“Yes, sir. You were very sorry to hear the terrible news, and offered particular sympathies to the children. It was quite touching, sir.”

“Excellent. Excellent. Did I enclose a gift?”

“A book token, sir. To help with the boys’ education.”

“Investing in our youth is so very important,” Sinclair said. “Very good Janet. Exceptional work.”

He flicked the switch and went back to reclining in his chair. Ah, Janet. What would he do without her? She was ruthlessly efficient. If only she were ruthless in other ways, too, she’d have made the perfect replacement for Legate Jjin.

The screen illuminated. Sinclair stood and perched himself on the edge of his desk. He straightened his collar. “On.”

Lady Vajazzle’s eight feet high face filled the screen. Sinclair welcomed her with his salesman smile. “Right on time, m’lady,” he said. “Always so reliable.”

“I do not have them,” Vajazzle said.

Sinclair’s smile faltered, just a fraction. “Oh. Perhaps I spoke too soon.”

“They have been made honorary Greyx, under the protection of Graxan himself.”

“Graxan? I thought he was dying?”

Vajazzle shook her head. “It appears not.”

Sinclair shot the dark stain on his carpet an accusing glare. He ruffled his hand through his hair, composing himself. “I see. I see. But – and please don’t take offense here – how is that my concern?”

Lady Vajazzle didn’t reply.

“I mean… this deal you have with the Greyx? How is that my problem?”

“It is your problem because it prevents me from carrying out your request,” Vajazzle said. There was an edge of menace to both her voices which suggested neither of them liked the way this conversation was headed.

“So… what? That’s it?” said Sinclair. “You’re going to give up? Let me ask you… what if Graxan made everyone honorary Greyx? Hmm? You’d be out of business. How is that fair?”

Once again, Lady Vajazzle said nothing.

“Seems to me that Graxan is twisting your agreement to suit himself. You agreed not to go after any Greyx, and in return he allowed you the freedom to go about your business with anyone else, even if they were hiding in Greyx space.”

“I know the terms of my own arrangement,” Vajazzle said.

“Do you? I’m not sure you do, because it sounds to me like he’s gone back on it. He said you were free to pursue any non-Greyx in any way you saw fit, correct? And yet now he’s saying you can’t do that? He’s saying, ‘oh, actually those non-Greyx I said you could go after? Yeah, they’re now off-limits, too.’”

Sinclair held his arms out at his side and snorted incredulously. “That’s fair how, exactly? And yet, you’re not going to do a thing about it.”

“I never said I wasn’t going to do anything about it,” Vajazzle said. “Graxan may not be on his deathbed, but he will not rule the Greyx forever.”

“So… what? You intend just waiting around for him to die? That’s your plan?”

A thin smile tugged at the corner of Lady Vajazzle’s wrinkled mouth. “Who said anything about waiting?”

Sinclair frowned. “I don’t follow. You’re going to kill Graxan?”

“I cannot harm the Greyx. Besides, his daughter would become queen, which would not improve the situation,” Vajazzle said. “I plan something a little less… direct. But be warned, it could have a number of repercussions.”

“What kind of repercussions?”

“It could tear the Greyx apart and plunge their whole sector into war.”

Sinclair lowered his head, considering this. “A war in which billions of Greyx could die. I’m afraid I don’t call that just a ‘repercussion,’ Vajazzle,” he said. He lifted his head and beamed at her. “I call that a result.”

* * *

Loren led the others onto the flight deck. Mech, who had re-centered his dial, summarized the damage situation. “So, all things considered – you know, what with smashing through a fonking mountain and all – we’re not in too bad shape. The rear deflector shield focusing arm is done for, so until we get that replaced we probably don’t want to get shot up the backside, and the torpedo launch chamber has come out of alignment.”

“What?” said Cal. “Aw, man, but I like shooting the torpedoes!”

“Oh, you can still shoot them,” said Mech.

“Hooray!”

“It’s just you’ll blow the ship to pieces and kill us all, so, you know, up to you, I guess.”

A blob of green gloop stretched down from the ceiling and fell across Cal’s shoulders like a scarf. Cal scratched Splurt where he’d decided his chin might very well be if he had one, then sat in his chair and turned it to face Miz. She slumped down into her own seat, and glanced self-consciously at the others, who were all now looking her way.

“What?” she sighed.

“Nothing,” said Cal. “Nothing. It’s just… what’s the plan?”

“The plan is we take off and get out of here,” said Miz. “He’s not dying. There’s no need for me to be here.”

“You’re right! Absolutely! Couldn’t agree more!” said Cal. He twisted his chair from side to side. “It’s just… since we are here, it might be worth just, you know, talking to him.”

“To Hell with that,” said Mech. “The man manipulated her into coming here. What sort of shizznod does that to his own daughter?”

“A desperate one?” said Loren. “I don’t know, maybe he has a good reason for it.”

“Besides being a total control freak, you mean?” scowled Miz. “Anyway, what do you care?”

“Hey, she cares,” said Cal. “She was ready to fight Kannus to stop him taking you away back on Earth.”

Miz’s scowl became even more pronounced. “Why?”

Loren shrugged. “Girls together, right? I didn’t want to be the only female on the ship.”

“Hey!” Mech protested. “I’m female.”

All eyes turned to look at the towering cyborg. Eleven different responses flashed through Cal’s head. He settled on the one fraught with the least potential danger. “What?”

Mech grinned. “Nah, I’m just messing with you. Thought I should try and lighten the mood.”

Everyone, even Splurt, continued to stare at him. At last, he sighed and threw up his arms. “Fine, know what, I’ll be through the back fixing stuff. Y’all just sit here and be miserable.”

He clanked off into the corridor, muttering below his breath.

“Is he malfunctioning or something?” asked Cal, once Mech was safely out of the room. “Should we be worried?”

“He’s fine,” said Loren. “I think… He just thinks we don’t take his feelings seriously.”

“Wait,” said Cal. “Mech has feelings?”

Loren rolled her eyes at him, then turned back to Mizette. “But seriously, you should at least find out why he was so desperate to get you to come back.” She tapped a few buttons on one of her control panels. “Besides, there’s no sign of her on the scanners right now, but we should probably wait a while until Vajazzle is out of range.”

Cal chuckled. “Heh. Vajazzle.”

Three loud hollow knocks rang out from the back of the ship.

“Is that… did someone just knock at the door?” said Cal.

Miz tilted her head, then sighed. “It’s Kannus.”

“Ah. Want me to get rid?”

Mizette stood up. “No. It’s fine. I’ll talk to him.”

Cal got to his feet and flicked one of Splurt’s drooping ends around his neck. “We’ll walk you to the door,” he said, holding his arm out. Miz regarded it curiously for a moment, then figured out she was supposed to hook her own arm through it. Once she had, Cal led her out into the corridor.

They reached the landing ramp and Cal reached for the button that would lower it. “Thanks,” said Miz.

Cal hesitated. “What for?”

“For that stuff you said. To my dad. I’ve never seen anyone else stand up to him before.”

Cal nodded. “Hey, no problem.”

“It made me hunger to have you inside me.”

Cal’s smile wavered just a little. He swallowed. “Not quite what I was aiming for, but good to know,” he said, then he leaned closer to the hatch and raised his voice. “Uh, you might want to stand back. This thing comes down like a fonking jackhammer.”

He gave Kannus a second to retreat, then hit the button. The ramp dropped and the dull, lifeless light of Kifo seeped in. When Kannus saw Cal and Miz arm in arm, his amber eyes darkened.

With a final squeeze of Cal’s bicep, Miz detached herself and trudged down the steps, giving Kannus a very deliberate cold shoulder at the bottom.

“Now, I want you to bring her back by ten, Kannus. This is a school night, and I won’t have her out any later than that,” Cal said. “I want no smoking, no drinking and no funny business, or you are grounded, young lady. You hear? Grounded.”

Kannus growled. “You dare give orders to the princess?”

Cal grinned. “You know, Kannus, I’m starting to think we have a very different sense of humor, you and me.” He gave Miz a final encouraging nod. “You two go have fun. If you need us, just shout. OK?”

“I will,” said Miz. “I’ll be back soon.”

Cal winked as he stepped back and hit the landing ramp button. With a whirr of mechanical parts, the hatch closed over.

Around Cal’s neck, Splurt gave a shudder. “Yeah, I know, buddy, I don’t like him either,” said Cal. “But I’m sure she’ll be fine.”

He turned away, then stopped and looked back at the closed hatch. He exhaled slowly. “Yeah,” he said. “She’ll be fine.”

CHAPTER NINE

Lontho Oom had many wonderful qualities.

Known locally as ‘Papa Oom,’ due largely to his work with the city’s orphans and homeless children, he was renowned for his exceptional patience and kindness, and his willingness to put the needs of others before his own.

His wisdom was legendary. People would travel from all across the region – from beyond the Koth mountains and across the Sephur seas – in order to seek his guidance and advice. It gave him nothing but pleasure to provide it.

He was aged now, but his stooped back and balding head sat easy on him, as if he’d been an old man his whole life, just waiting to grow into it. But while the rest of his body had withered, his eyes – all four of them – had never lost their youthful, mischievous sparkle.

Perhaps Lontho Oom’s greatest attribute was his trustworthiness. Over the years, he had made many friends, forged countless alliances, and been entrusted with all manner of secrets. He had betrayed not a single one of them. His word was his bond, and that bond was unbreakable.

Yes, Lontho Oom had many wonderful qualities.

Unfortunately, a high pain threshold wasn’t one of them.

“P-please,” he babbled through his burst, swollen lips. “What d-do you want of me?”

The one-eyed woman in the long black robe looked Lontho up and down. Although, as he was currently hanging by a chain from his ankles, it was technically down and up.

“Who says I want anything?” she hissed in two distinct yet similar voices. Vajazzle made a twisting motion in the air with one hand, and Lontho screamed as something slack and squelchy inside him tightened almost to bursting point.

“Ssstop, please,” he slurred, gagging on his own backwards-flowing saliva.

Vajazzle twisted her fingers just far enough to make Lontho’s eyes bulge, then eased off. “Oh, but I’m just getting started,” she promised.

Lontho Oom’s home was modest by anyone’s standards. The wealth he had accumulated over the years had long since been spent on the less fortunate and under-privileged. The apartment was made up of just two rooms, one of which was the bathroom. Everything else Lontho Oom did, he did in the room he now dangled the wrong way up in.

It was part of an overcrowded complex in the poor end of town. On a clear night, with the wind blowing the right direction, you could hear people talking four stories above, and Lontho had never been a fan of the building’s paper-thin walls.

Until now.

“Lontho?” barked a gruff voice beyond the door. “Lontho, are you OK in there? I thought I heard you shout.”

Lontho’s eyes met Vajazzle’s. She shrugged. “Call him if you like,” she said.

He didn’t need telling twice. “H-help! Help me!”

The door shook under a violent impact. “Hold on! I’m coming!” shouted whoever was out there. His voice was deep and booming, and the way the door flew in on the second thud suggested someone large was coming through.

Sure enough, a hulking rock-like figure came stumbling into the room, his fists clenched into boulders. Even without looking, Vajazzle knew it had to be an Igneon. The smell was unmistakable. That was unfortunate. Igneons were tricky to kill. Not impossible, of course. There was nothing that couldn’t be killed. You just had to know where to apply the pressure.

“What the Hell?” the rock-creature growled, his voice like granite rubbing on some other, much rougher granite.

Vajazzle didn’t turn. Her hand went into a very specific part of a certain fold in her robe. It emerged quickly and flicked out in the direction of the Igneon in one fluid motion.

Something round and metallic stuck to the Igneon’s rock-face-like chest. He looked down. A circle of plastic on the front of the device lit up. “What’s this supposed to be?” he asked.

And then, he exploded.

At least, the top sixty percent of his body exploded, spraying chunks of hot red rock all over the place. His legs teetered around on their own for a few seconds, before toppling in opposite directions.

The flying slivers of stone whistled harmlessly past Vajazzle, changing course where necessary in order to avoid her.

Lontho Oom, on the other hand, was not so lucky. In fact, many of the pieces of flying Igneon seemed to home in on him. He screamed and thrashed as they struck his flesh like tiny meteorites, peppering his wrinkled skin with bloody craters.

Lontho’s home had always been modest, but now it was missing part of the wall, a section of ceiling and several square feet of floor, it was decidedly more so. The other inhabitants of the apartment block would have heard the blast. Local security, too. Even now, Vajazzle could hear the wailing of a distant siren, and the much closer thudding of footsteps in the corridor.

“I had hoped to drag this out a little longer,” she said, stepping in close to the hanging Lontho. “I had hoped to make you tell me what you knew in your own words. To hurt you so badly that you gave up everything. All those little secrets you’ve been entrusted with.”

She traced a fingernail down his naked, blood-soaked torso. “Sadly, I’m going to have to take a more direct approach,” she said. She squatted down until her shining red robotic eye cast its glare across Lontho’s tear-stained face. “Still, I can console myself with the fact that it is really going to hurt,” she whispered.

Then she extended a finger, pushed it through Lontho’s forehead, and buried it deep inside his brain.

* * *

Mizette leaned against an angular boulder, her arms crossed, her face very deliberately turned away from Kannus. He had tried to speak to her when she’d first stepped off the ship, but she’d told him to stay quiet until they’d found somewhere out of the way to talk. She hated the fact her old life and her new one had collided, and was determined to force them apart again as quickly as possible.

The rock she leaned on was at the top of the hill Loren had smashed the Shatner through. The Shatner itself stood down the hill on her left, although ‘stood’ was perhaps being generous. It sort of slouched, with one of the landing legs partially buried in a rocky crevice. It was a miracle it hadn’t toppled over.

Down the slope on her right was the flat area of gray slate where Vajazzle had confronted them all. The hut her mom had taken her to lay beyond it, and a short distance past that stood a squat stone building with an understated, yet somehow still grand doorway. Through that door and down the sloped path beyond it lay a maze-like network of rooms containing the bodies of all the Greyx kings, and the ashes of all their queens.

The Tomb of Kifo was a solemn place, a place where Greyx kings would often come to reflect and seek the guidance of their ancestors. It was also, as Miz had discovered on her first visit, brilliant for Hide & Seek. Unfortunately, no-one had ever tried to find her, so she’d eventually stopped playing.

To the right of the tomb stood a number of ships, one large and four much smaller. The royal transport and its guard ships. Kannus’s own craft stood apart from them, its dark hull appearing to absorb the thin light of Kifo’s sun.

“It is good to see you again, Your Highness,” said Kannus. “I have waited a long time for this moment.”

“Yeah,” said Mizette.

“I am just sorry it had to be under such grave circumstances.”

“What grave circumstances?” Miz snapped. “You said he was dying. He’s not.”

“But he is, Your Highness,” said Kannus. “He is not ready to face the Unshuk quite yet, perhaps, but face it he shall, and soon.”

Miz looked at Kannus for the first time since they’d walked away from the ship. “Why?”

“He has… an illness. He asked that it be kept from you.”

Mizette snorted. “No way. If he had an illness, he’d be right on giving me the guilt-trip, trying to get me back here. No way he’d keep it secret.”

“That is something I will leave you to discuss with him directly,” said Kannus. His wolf-like ears twitched. “But it is good to see you again, Mizette. It is good that we may now make plans for our wedding.”

Mizette clicked her fingers. “Of course, how could I be so stupid?” she muttered. “That’s why I’m back. So we can get married before the old man croaks. Can’t interrupt the lineage.”

Kannus nodded slowly. “That is correct. The ceremony will take place in two days, we have everything arranged. Graxan and I thought it best that you be impregnated before… Before he passes.”

“Ew, you two talk about that stuff?” Miz said.

“The thought of it gives him immense pleasure,” said Kannus.

Mizette’s eyes widened and her snout pulled up in an expression of horrified distaste.

“Of his grandchild, I mean,” said Kannus. “Not of you and I—”

“Yes, I get it,” said Miz, cutting him off. She nudged at a stone with her foot, pushing it back and forth across the slate. “Thing is, Kannus… I can’t marry you.”

Kannus blinked and smiled. “I’m sorry, Your Highness?”

“Just call me Miz, OK? Cut the royal stuff.” She sighed. “Look, you’re a great guy and everything, and it’s obvious my mom and dad totally love you, but… I don’t want to get married. I don’t want to be queen. I don’t want to stay here.”

“We would not stay here,” Kannus pointed out. “This is the death world. We would stay on Greyx Prime.”

“No, I know, it’s not… I just…” Mizette shook her head. This was harder than she thought. “It’s not you, OK? It’s me.”

Kannus frowned. “What is you? I don’t understand? We are Lifebound. We are pledged.”

“Yeah, but how is that fair?” Miz asked. “I mean, seriously? We got engaged when I was in the womb. In the womb. That’s not normal, right?”

“It is how it always has been,” said Kannus. “It is our way.”

“Yeah, but wouldn’t you like to be able to just choose who you hook up with?” asked Miz. “Wouldn’t you like to decide for yourself who you want to spend the rest of your life with?”

“I would choose you,” said Kannus.

“Would you?” asked Miz, weakly. “Seriously?”

“Yes,” said Kannus, sensing her uncertainty. “If I had the choice of all the stars in the sky, none would shine so bright as you. Were I not your Lifebound I would watch you from afar, lamenting every day a loss I never had.”

He placed a hand on the side of her face. She flinched, just a little, but didn’t pull back. “But we do not have to choose. Something bigger than us, something greater has chosen for us, and the choice that has been made is the right one, Mizette. I can feel it, deep in my soul.”

“Um, yeah. OK,” said Mizette. She cleared her throat. “See, the thing is, I don’t. Feel it, I mean.”

Kannus searched her eyes. “I don’t understand.”

“Shizz, Kannus, how many ways can I say it?” Miz snapped, pulling away from his hand. She looked away and crossed her arms even more firmly than they had been. “There’s someone else,” she said.

The hair on the back of Kannus’s neck tingled as it stood on end. “Someone else? How can there be ‘someone else’?” he demanded, his voice dropping an octave. “We are Lifebound. We are pledged. You are mine. You have always been mine! It has been decreed.”

“Well I’m un-decreeing it,” said Miz. “I don’t want to marry you.”

Kannus stepped back, shaken. “But… But…”

“I swear, if you say ‘I don’t understand,’ one more time,” said Miz.

“I don’t understand,” said Kannus. “I am to be king!”

“And you can still be king,” said Miz. “Seriously, you’ll be awesome. You’ve been training and, you know, all that other stuff. You can totally be king.”

“How can I be king without a queen?” Kannus demanded.

Miz shrugged. “You’ll figure something out. How about what’s her name? Horri. From school, remember? She was totally into you. You should look her up. I bet she’d love to be—”

“Silence!” Kannus roared, his face twisting up in rage. “I will tolerate no more of this… this nonsense. You are my wife, and you will serve your king as you are duty bound to.”

Mizette spun on her heels and began walking away. “OK, I can see we’re done here.”

“Do not turn your back on me,” Kannus growled. His leg muscles bunched, his fingers splaying into claws. Before he could pounce a piercing bleep sounded from a metal cuff around his wrist.

“Kannus,” intoned the voice of Graxan. Mizette stopped and turned to listen. “Join me on the royal transport at once. There has been a development.”

“Yes, Your Majesty. At once,” said Kannus. His eyes went to Mizette. “Your daughter is with me.”

“Then bring her,” Graxan commanded. “This concerns her, too. The future of the Greyx may be in peril.”

* * *

“So, which do you think?” asked Cal, holding up two shirts on hangers. “The black one, which is probably more space piratey, or the blue one?”

Loren was on the floor of the bench room, rattling through a quite staggering number of push-ups. Cal had no idea how many she’d done before he joined her, but she’d hammered out a solid dozen in the few seconds since he’d arrived.

She looked up, not breaking her stride, and gave both shirts a cursory glance. “Black one,” she said.

“You think?” said Cal. He held it at arm’s length and studied it. “It’s not too David Hasselhoff?”

“I have no idea who that is,” said Loren.

“He had a talking car. Brought down the Berlin Wall,” said Cal. He lowered the shirt. “I wonder if he’s still alive.”

“Probably not,” said Loren, dipping into another push-up.

“I dunno,” said Cal. “If anyone could survive an invasion of alien bug parasites, it’s the Hoff.” He thought about this for a moment. “Actually, no. He’s totally dead.”

He draped the blue shirt over the bench and pulled off his heavily creased, food-stained purple one, taking great care to tighten his stomach muscles and stick out his chest. To his disappointment, Loren’s stride didn’t falter even for a second.

“Aren’t you going to take a shower before you put that on?” she asked.

Cal frowned. “Wait… we have a shower?”

“Of course we have a shower. How could you miss it? It’s in the bathroom right next to the toilet.”

Cal gasped. “We have a toilet?”

Loren stopped at the top of a push-up. “Of course. Why, what have you been doing?”

Cal smiled, but shifted on his feet. “I mean, yeah, I knew we had a toilet. Of course. I’ve been using it for, like, almost a week. It’s just out there on the…”

“Right,” said Loren.

“On the right. Exactly. Totally knew that’s where it was.” He clutched the black shirt to his chest as he backed towards the door. “I’m gonna be back in ten minutes,” he said, then he ducked out into the corridor, turned right and scurried towards a door he’d always just assumed for some reason was a closet.

Just as he reached the door, he heard a muttering from the engine room further along the ship. Cal hesitated, his thumb poised above the ‘open’ button on the wall.

With a sigh of disappointment, he shot the door a longing glance, pulled on the shirt, then followed the muttering.

“Hey, Mech, what’s up?” Cal asked.

Mech stood over by the warp disk containment unit, his eyes looping in tight circles as he watched the shiny white disk spin.

Cal leaned on the doorframe, fastening the shirt’s buttons. Annoyingly, there was a security tag on one of the cuffs which he’d forgotten to remove at the store. He fiddled with it, trying to pry it open.

“Nothing,” said Mech.

Cal shrugged. “OK,” he said, turning away.

“It’s just…”

Cal went back to leaning on the wall. “It’s just…?”

Mech looked up. There was very little of his face that wasn’t made of metal, but what there was of it looked pained. “They controlled me. Like a fonking puppet. Sinclair, Jjin, whoever. Zertex, they controlled me.”

Cal nodded. “Yeah. They implanted, what, some sort of space remote control or whatever? You got rid of it. It’s no big deal.”

He moved to walk away again.

“But what if I didn’t? What if they got another one? I mean, shizz, for all I know they’re controlling me now.”

Cal returned to leaning on the door. He sucked his bottom lip. “I can see why that might worry you. Could we transfer your brain to another body?”

Mech’s brow furrowed. “Say what?”

“You know, just to be on the safe side until we get that body checked out? We could, like, pop you onto a USB memory stick or something, then plug you into the ship’s computer. I’m assuming the ship has a computer, by the way? You could be a face on the screen, chiming in with wisecracks and stuff, and we’d all be drawing mustaches on you, and that sort of thing. I don’t know about you, but I am very excited about this idea.”

“I ain’t a robot! How many times do I gotta tell you?”

“Are you absolutely sure, though?” asked Cal.

“Yes!” He tapped a metal finger against his non-metal forehead. “You can’t move my brain to another body, least not without a hacksaw, a bucket and a whole lot of motherfonkin’ elbow grease.”

“OK, OK, you’re not a robot. Fine, I get it!” Cal said, raising his hands for calm. He couldn’t help but notice the white tag on his cuff. “Hey, do you have, like, some sort of robotic attachment or something that can take this tag off? I don’t want it shooting ink all over the place.”

Mech shook his head, his metal fingers curling into fists. “Fonk you, man.”

Cal grinned. “Hey, I’m kidding!” he said. “No-one’s controlling you, Mech. You cleared them out. If they were controlling you, would they have let you punch a hole in their ship like you did back at that breakfast buffet place?”

Mech’s metal shoulders raised and lowered in the galaxy’s noisiest shrug.

“They wouldn’t. You’re not their puppet, Mech. You’re, like, Robocop, Terminator and the donkey from Shrek all rolled into one.”

Mech opened his mouth. Cal jumped in before he could speak.

“I know, I know, you have no idea what any of those things are,” he said. “But trust me. They’re awesome. I mean, yeah, Donkey’s an annoying fonk at times and there’s a fifty-fifty chance the Terminator will try to go back in time and kill your kids, but…” Cal frowned. “I have no idea where I was going with that.”

He beamed. “Still, good chat!” he said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve recently found out we have a toilet.”

An urgent bleep rang out from the front of the ship. Cal sighed. “Oh, what now?”

He headed for the front. Loren stepped out of the bench room in front of him, her shoulders and the patch of her back he could see glistening with sweat. He resisted the urge to say something wildly inappropriate and followed her in silence through to the flight deck.

A flick of a switch later and Mizette’s face filled the screen. “Hey, Miz, how’s it going?” Cal asked.

Miz glanced back over her shoulder. She was on a ship Cal didn’t recognize. Behind her, he could see Kannus deep in conversation with Graxan.

“Everything OK?” he asked.

Miz shook her head. “No. Can you guys get over to my dad’s ship? There’s something you need to see.”

CHAPTER TEN

Lontho Oom was dead. That much was certain.

His normally rosy cheeks were almost translucently pale. His eyes, known for their sparkling kindness, were glassy and lifeless.

Also, he had a big hole in the middle of his forehead, through which his brains were visible. That was probably the biggest clue.

“Who’s the upside-down dead guy?” asked Cal, bending his neck to try to get a better look at the grainy, black and white picture.

“His name was Lontho Oom,” said Graxan. The king of the Greyx was sitting in a throne-like captain’s chair, raised up in the center of his ship’s bridge. The bridge itself was grand and opulent, but it was a tired and faded sort of opulence, like a palace that had been decorated in the 1970s and never updated.

Purple curtains draped over wood-paneled walls that were set with little gold lamps. The floor was covered in a vast brown carpet which, given the ship’s inhabitants, Cal thought, must surely be a magnet for dog hair.

“He was a… friend of both mine and my father’s,” Graxan said. “A long-time ally of the Greyx.”

“What happened?” asked Loren.

“He was murdered,” Kannus spat. He jabbed a claw towards Cal. “Because of him.”

“Me? What did I do?”

Mizette, who stood beside her mother at the bottom of Graxan’s throne platform, stepped forward. “They think Vajazzle did this.”

Cal snorted. “Vajazzle,” he said, then he realized everyone was staring at him and cleared his throat. “I mean… why? Why would she kill this guy?”

“Lontho was the keeper of secrets,” said Graxan, as if that explained everything.

“Right. OK. What kind of secrets?” Cal asked, when it was clear nothing else was being volunteered. “Like lotto numbers, or…?”

“Tell me, Earth man, what do you know of the history of the Greyx?” Graxan asked.

Cal puffed out his cheeks. “Depends. If I say ‘a lot’ is there going to be a quiz? Because I don’t test well.”

Graxan’s ears twitched, as if flicking away a fly. “There is a… story of a Greyx named Rhaxus. He is the one said to have united the warring Greyx nations under one cause. Before Rhaxus, Greyx was much like your Earth. Nations at war, brother fighting brother over perceived differences that didn’t really exist. Rhaxus stopped that. Rhaxus made us one.”

Graxan’s voice had become a hushed, respectful whisper. “And then, he took us to the stars. Once he had, once he’d set us on our path, he vanished. His final resting place was never discovered.”

Cal glanced around the bridge. Mech and Loren stood on either side of him, but they’d left Splurt back on the ship. The moment Cal had spotted the carpet, he knew he’d made the right decision. If Splurt had been rolling around in that thing, they’d be picking hair off him for weeks.

There were four uniformed Greyx positioned at terminals around the room, and two over by the door. Kannus was with Graxan on his plinth, standing a half-step beside his throne. His amber eyes burned into Cal with an intensity that threatened to make him burst into flames at any moment.

“That’s a nice story,” said Cal. “I mean, it could’ve done with a car chase and a sex scene, but still.”

“It is not just a story,” said Graxan. “Rhaxus was very real. He was a great leader, and like all great leaders, his actions were not always noble.”

“Man, you are dragging this shizz out,” tutted Mech. “What’s it got to do with the dead guy?”

Mizette took up the tale. Clearly she was keen to get to the end, too. “The legend says he had this, like, spear thing.”

“The Bladestaff,” said Graxan.

“Or whatever,” said Miz. “That was, like, magic or something. It let him control the Greyx. That’s how he stopped all the wars, by forcing everyone to do what he said.”

“Nice guy,” said Cal.

“Leaders don’t have to be nice,” said Graxan. “They have to be effective. ‘Nice’ is a luxury they can rarely afford.”

Mech grunted. “I still don’t see what any of this has got to do with the upside-down dead dude.”

Graxan drummed his claws on the arm of his throne, then turned his gaze to Miz. “You’re certain they can be trusted?”

Miz nodded. “Yeah. Totally.”

Graxan inhaled slowly through his nose. “Very well. One of Lontho Oom’s many secrets was the location of a key. Or, more accurately, the location of an individual who knew the location of a key.”

“Now we’re getting somewhere,” said Cal. “I think. What’s the key open?”

“A lock,” said Graxan.

“You don’t fonking say,” Mech snapped.

“Don’t mind him,” said Cal, gesturing to the cyborg. “He’s having emotional issues. You were saying something about a lock?”

Graxan shifted on his throne. He rolled his tongue around in his mouth, as if wrestling the words out. Kannus placed a hand on the back of the throne and leaned closer.

“Great Graxan, I must advise…” he began, but Graxan waved a hand and dismissed the advice before it could be given.

“The lock is to a vault. The vault contains the Bladestaff of Rhaxus. Whoever possesses the Bladestaff…”

“Could rule the Greyx,” said Loren. “You think someone’s trying to find it?”

“I believe it is a possibility,” said Graxan. “The manner of Lontho’s death suggests he was probed by Vajazzle.”

Cal bit his lip.

“Who sent the footage?” Loren asked.

“We don’t know,” said Graxan. “Possibly the assassin herself.”

“That don’t make no sense,” Mech said. “If she’s going after this staff thing of yours, why’s she warning you? Why not just go get it?”

“Did someone turn your brainpower down?” asked Cal, making a show of studying Mech’s power diversion dial. “To lure them out. Or to lure us out, probably. It’s a trap.” He turned to Loren. “Right?”

“We agree,” said Graxan. “It is a trap.”

“So, you want my advice? You swoop in to wherever this Bladestaff is hidden, and you get it before she does.”

“It is not that simple,” said Graxan. “The location of the vault is known only to one person. Another ally of the Greyx. He does not know where the key is, and the keykeeper does not know where the vault is hidden. The Bladestaff is too big a secret for one person to hold. Not even I know where to find it.”

“They think Vajazzle is going to go after the key guy, kill him, get the key, then go find the vault,” said Miz. “So someone needs to go stop her.”

Cal rocked on his heels. “Good luck with that,” he said. “I mean, I don’t know the woman, but she looked pretty fierce, with that creepy eye and the robe and everything.”

“I said we’d go,” said Miz.

“Say what?” Mech said.

Cal frowned. “What… ‘we’ as in us four and Splurt? That ‘we’?”

Miz nodded. “Yeah. Our ship’s faster, we can get to the key guy before she does.”

“I will come with you,” said Kannus.

“OK, one, that’s not going to happen,” said Cal. “We’ve only got three seats. Mech already has to stand, and just look at how miserable that’s made him.”

“Shut up, man.”

“See? No, we’ve got a full crew already,” Cal concluded. “Still, thanks for the offer.”

“And what is ‘two’?” asked Graxan.

“Huh?”

“You said ‘one, that’s not going to happen,’” Graxan intoned. “Implying a ‘two.’”

Cal nodded. “You’re right, that totally implies a ‘two,’ but I can’t remember what it was going to be,” he said. He shrugged. “Ah, what the Hell? Yeah, we’ll do it. We’ll go.”

“We will?” said Loren.

“Just like that?” said Mech. “No discussion, no consultation…”

“I will take the princess’s place,” said Kannus, stepping down from the plinth. “Her place is here, with her father.”

“What? No way,” said Miz. “I’m going with them.”

Kannus bristled. “This is not open for discussion.”

“Know your place, daughter,” warned Graxan. “The time for your tantrums is past. Kannus will go.”

“No!” Miz protested. “They’re my friends, I’m going with them.”

“Kannus! Control your Lifebound,” Graxan barked, slamming a fist on the arm of his throne. Kannus’s orange eyes darkened. His muzzle raised, baring a staggering number of teeth.

Just before he could make his move, Cal stepped in front of him, a palm-sized device clutched between his finger and thumb. “Whoa there tall, dark and hairsome,” he said. “Let’s just calm down, shall we?”

Kannus flashed his claws, but Cal raised the device higher. “I wouldn’t,” he warned. “You ever heard of a Dead Man’s Switch? If I let go of this button, this thing goes off and it’s going to make a real mess of your carpet, drapes and everything within a ten mile radius.”

All eyes went to the device in Cal’s hand. “You’re bluffing,” said Kannus.

“You know something? Maybe I am,” said Cal. “Seriously, I have no idea if I’m going to let go of this thing or not. But I do know there’s only one way to find out. What do you say?”

The silence that followed was broken by Miz’s mother, Sorshi. “I am but a woman and know little of such matters,” she said, bowing respectfully to both Kannus and Graxan. “But might it make sense to send Kannus and his ship to whoever knows the location of the vault, while Mizette and her companions protect the keykeeper?” She bowed again, more deeply this time. “Forgive my impertinence.”

Graxan’s eyes narrowed. He sat that way for a while, before finally speaking.

“Very well. Both ships shall go. Mizette may go, on the understanding she returns in order to undertake her royal duties.”

“Oh, I have your permission?” Miz scowled. “Gee, thanks.”

“That was sarcasm, by the way,” said Loren. She and the others followed Cal as he backed towards the door, the explosive device still held in front of him.

“Send over the address or whatever and we’ll get on it,” said Cal. “We’ll find your key guy before he gets Vajazzled. That’s a Cal Carver guarantee.”

The door swished open at his back. “Which, by the way, isn’t actually legally binding or anything, just so we’re clear.”

With a final nod, he lowered his arm, grinned at the room in general, then strode out into the corridor.

A few minutes later, when they were safely off Graxan’s ship and making their way back up the hill, Loren shot Cal’s explosive disk a wary look. “Where did you get that? It wasn’t in the armory.”

Cal looked down at the circle of plastic, as if only just remembering he had it. “What this?” He flipped it like a coin and caught it. “It’s the security tag from my shirt. I managed to get it off when Graxan was talking.” He held it up and gave the pin a gentle tug. “See?” he said, then the disk went pop splattering his face with yellow ink.

“Huh,” said Loren. “You were right. That would have made a real mess of the carpet.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The shower had been magnificent. The toilet, even more so.

And now that his hair was dry and his bladder was empty, and the thing that was a bit like a kitten was playing on the viewscreen, Cal strummed to the end of one of his many number one hit singles.

“I call that one, ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart,” said Cal, who had run out of proper space-based songs to claim credit for, and was really starting to clutch at straws.

He looked around the flight deck, hoping for some applause, then screamed when he spotted a complete stranger standing near the door. No, not a stranger, he realized. He’d know that lion’s mane of hair and eyeshadow overdose anywhere.

It was Bonnie Tyler.

Cal raised a hand and gave Bonnie Tyler a wave.

Bonnie Tyler waved back.

A moment later, she collapsed in on herself, becoming a gelatinous green ball on the floor. Splurt rolled towards Cal and nuzzled against his legs. Cal had almost forgotten about the little guy’s mind-reading ability. He wondered how accurately he could imagine a naked Jessica Alba, but then quickly pushed the thought away.

“Who the fonk was that?” asked Mech.

“Who? Oh, her. Just… someone that I used to know,” said Cal. He plucked out a chord. “Which reminds me of another song I wrote,” he began, but before he could inflict any more of his singing on the rest of the crew the Shatner dropped out of warp.

“Not again!” Cal groaned, as his belt tightened across his chest, slamming him back against the seat. His guitar flew forwards out of his hands until the strap went tight, then reversed sharply as the ship stopped. It hit his face with a thud and a twrang, both of which sounded better than his entire rendition of ‘The Final Countdown’ had, just a few minutes previously.

“What have you done this time?” snapped Miz, her claws digging into the arms of her chair to stop her sliding out.

“Is it the warp disk? I bet it’s the warp disk,” said Mech. “I bet you broke the motherfonkin’ warp disk again.”

“I didn’t do anything!” protested Loren.

“Yeah, you said that last time,” said Miz.

“And it wasn’t me last time!” Loren said. “Sinclair had sabotaged us.”

“So you say,” Miz snapped.

“Ladies, ladies, let’s take a deep breath and just calm down, OK?” said Cal. He smiled at them both in turn. “There. Isn’t that better? There’s no need to panic. I’m sure it’s just a…”

There was a clang as something metal hit the outside of the ship directly above where Cal sat. His eyes went to the ceiling. “OK, maybe we should panic a little,” he whispered. “What the Hell was that?”

Loren began frantically flipping the controls. “Oh no. No, no, no, no,” she muttered.

“That’s a lot of nos,” said Cal. There was another metallic clang from somewhere towards the back of the ship. “What is it? Loren, speak to me here!”

The image of the not-quite-kitten vanished and was replaced by the now-familiar view of outer space. What was less familiar to Cal was the almost perfectly rectangular spaceship floating just above them and to the right. Something about the ship’s blocky, functional construction, and the scorch marks that painted its sides like rust made him immediately think of a garbage truck.

“Who is that?” asked Cal.

“Scrivers,” groaned Mech. “It had to be Scrivers.”

“Who or what are ‘Scrivers’?” Cal asked, then he jumped as something the color of old copper landed on the viewscreen. “Jesus Christ, what the fonk is that?” he yelped.

If he had to describe the thing in one word, Cal would have said, ‘robot octopus,’ even if only to annoy whoever had asked him. It had more legs than an octopus – twelve, he thought, although they were moving too quickly to say for sure – and unlike your more traditional Earth octopus, this one was made of metal.

Before anyone could get a closer look at the thing, the screen flickered. The image of the octobot was replaced by rolling lines of static, as half a dozen other thuds and clanks vibrated through the hull of the ship.

“They’re scavengers,” Loren said, hurriedly flipping more switches. “They intercept ships in deep space then tear them apart for scrap.”

“Yeah, but… they wouldn’t do that to us, would they?” Cal asked.

“They’re doing it to us right now!” Mech barked. “Sensors show a dozen on the hull. More incoming.”

“What do we do?” asked Miz.

“Wait, I’ve got it!” announced Cal. “Do we have a thing where, like, we shoot an electrical charge out of the ship in all directions at once, frying those things before they can do any real damage?”

“No,” said Loren.

“Shizz,” said Cal. “Then I’m out of ideas. We should really invest in one of those things, though. It’ll pay for itself in no time. Assuming we survive.”

The lights flickered, and the ship plunged briefly into darkness.

“Which, I’ll admit, is looking increasingly unlikely,” Cal said.

“Can’t we go to warp and shake them off?” asked Miz.

“No, they’re jamming most of our systems,” said Loren. “That ship’s loaded with tech stolen from all over the galaxy.”

“So what do we still have?” asked Cal. At his feet, Splurt trembled gently. He reached down and scratched the little guy’s head. “Easy, buddy, we’re not done yet.”

“I make life support, shields and weapons,” said Mech.

“They’re on a protected circuit. Makes sense,” Loren said.

“And what don’t we have?” asked Cal. He watched as his guitar and Splurt both lifted into the air and bobbed towards the ceiling. “I’m no expert, but I’m guessing gravity isn’t working?”

“Gravity, impulse engines, warp, sensors, communications…”

“Is the shower still working?”

Loren flipped another switch. “Doubt it.”

“Son of a bedge!” Cal sighed. Somewhere above his head, metal legs scuttled across the hull. “What if we blow up the ship?”

“Then we’d all die,” said Miz.

“No, not our ship. The other ship. What if we blow up that one? Would that stop the octobots?”

“Yeah, that’d stop them,” said Mech. “But how do you suggest we do that? We can’t see it.”

Cal turned his chair to face him. “Can’t we use the scanners to find it?”

“I told you, sensors are down,” said Loren.

“Yeah, sensors are down, but what about the scanners?” asked Cal. His brow furrowed. “Wait… they’re not the same thing, are they?”

“Yes!” said Loren.

“Sensors and scanners are the same thing?” Cal groaned. “Well, we need to decide on a naming convention so no-one gets…” The lights went out again. This time, they didn’t come back on. “OK, so that’s not good. We need to blow that thing up right now.”

“I told you, we can’t see the ship. How can we shoot what we can’t see?”

Cal thumped the arm of his chair and raised his arms as his control console unfolded. The panels locked into place, forming a quarter circle beneath each arm. The chair gripped his neck, holding him steady as a visor slid over his head and adjusted to size across his eyes. For a moment, he felt like he were seeing a bird’s eye view of the universe, then he gasped as the virtual reality image rushed towards a spot just left of the center.

It stopped in a disappointing blizzard of static. “Fonk it. The gun helmet screen thingy is blocked, too.”

The Shatner creaked and groaned as the octobots scrambled around on the outside. Cal slammed the heel of his hand against the headset, trying to clear the image. “What do we know about these guys? The ones flying the ship, I mean. Anything?”

“They’re scavengers. Scrivers. They track down ships--”

“Yeah, you said that already, anything else?” asked Cal. “So they send their little robot pals to tear the ship a new one, then what?”

“They take the salvage back to their own ship, then they blow whatever’s left to pieces to cover their tracks,” Mech explained.

A screech of metal on metal vibrated through the hull. “They’re going to come through,” warned Loren. “They’re going to tear their way in. We need to suit up.”

“Wait,” said Cal. “They blow the ship up?”

“We’re totally going to be dead by then,” said Miz.

“Yeah, they blow it up,” said Mech.

“Excellent!” said Cal, grinning beneath the visor.

“In what reality is that excellent?” Loren cried.

“We’ve still got shields, right?” said Cal. “And they, the other ship, the Scriver guys, they’ll have sensors or scanners or whatever the fonk we’re calling them today. Yes?”

“Right,” said Loren. “So?”

Cal spun in his chair. “So I know where they are.”

Mech snorted. “What? No way. How can you know where they are? You can’t see nothing.”

“Because if he can scan our shields, he knows we don’t have any at the back,” Cal said. “He’s going to shoot us right up the shizzpipe.”

Cal found the joysticks that let him control the weapons. “Which is torpedoes again?” he asked.

“You can’t fire the torpedoes!” said Mech. “The launch tube ain’t fixed.”

“Fonk it,” Cal muttered. “OK, which one isn’t the torpedoes then?”

“Cannons are on the left,” said Loren.

Cal gripped the left stick. His thumb found the button. “OK, eat this you shower-wrecking shizznod,” he growled, then he opened fire.

“Uh, you know you ain’t facing the back, right?” said Mech.

Cal stopped firing. “No, I did not know that,” he said. “Could someone point me in the right direction?”

He heard the sound of metal footsteps, then his chair was quite forcibly spun to the left. “There,” said Mech. Something up near the ceiling went bang then fzzzt and Cal felt hot sparks rain down around him. “And hurry up!”

Cal’s finger hovered over the trigger. Through the headset, he was lost in a sea of static interference that flashed and flickered erratically all around him. And yet… There was a shape. No, not a shape. A suggestion of a shape that loomed somewhere ahead. He squinted, trying to focus, but the outline – if it even was an outline – was so blurry and indistinct there was nothing to focus on.

It was nothing. A whisper of nothing. But it was the only target he had.

He took aim with the stick. He held his breath. He squeezed the trigger.

Outside the ship, the octobots continued their assault.

“Missed,” said Loren.

“If it’s even out there,” said Mech.

“Hey, wait a minute,” said Miz. “Don’t we have, like, a window at the back?

“The airlock!” yelped Cal. “Of course! Someone go back there and shout directions.”

“I can do better than that,” said Mech. Cal heard the steady clanking of the cyborg’s feet as he rushed out into the corridor and raced towards the airlock.

The Shatner shuddered as several more octobots landed on the hull. “Whatever you’re doing, do it fast!” Cal shouted.

“I see it. Motherfonker, you were right, it is out back!”

“Where? Tell me where,” said Cal, then his eyes widened as a video feed of the view from the airlock window overlapped the snow scene.

“Got you patched in,” Mech said. “You’re seeing what I’m seeing. Shoot that sucker down!”

“Mech, you’re a fonking genius!” Cal cheered. He took aim and squeezed the trigger. The beam of fiery red energy missed the Scriver ship by quite a considerable distance.

“Remember, you’re seeing from Mech’s view,” said Loren. “It won’t line up with the sights.”

“Great! Then how am I supposed to hit it?”

“Use the last shot as reference. Aim based on that,” Loren urged.

“Hurry up, man!” Mech snapped. “They’re onto us. They’re charging their weapons.”

Cal gritted his teeth. He’d been low and to the… left? Right? Which was it? He couldn’t remember. He hazarded a guess and another beam of laser fire punched through space, missing the Scriver ship. Closer, this time, though. Much closer.

“They’re almost in!” said Miz. “I can hear them.”

“He’s gonna fire!” boomed Mech’s voice through the headset.

With a roar, Cal adjusted his aim and jerked back on the trigger. The Shatner’s laser cannon scythed upwards through space, carving a trench into the side of the Scriver ship. Rocked, the enemy craft flipped into a lazy spin. Cal fired again, holding the beam steady and letting the spiraling Scriver vessel spread the damage across all four of its sides.

The clanking and scrabbling on the Shatner’s hull stopped. The virtual reality static vanished. Cal found himself in the unenviable position of seeing the same image from two different directions at the same time, and had to fight to stop his brain shutting itself down through sheer confusion.

“Mech, turn it off!” he shouted, then he sighed with relief as the overlapped image blinked away, leaving just the panoramic original.

The ship let out a rising electronic whine, and even through the headset Cal could tell the lights had returned.

“Systems coming back online,” Loren announced. “Impulse engines ready.”

Cal turned in his seat. He couldn’t see any of the ship itself from his virtual viewpoint, but as he turned he saw the octobots drifting off into space one by one, their snapping, wriggling tentacles now limp and lifeless, like the ‘before’ hair in a shampoo commercial.

“Finish them off,” said Miz. “Tear their ship apart.”

“Meh.” Cal shrugged. He blinked as the visor lifted away. “Let’s just leave them spinning. Maybe they’ll spread the word and tell their buddies not to mess with us again.”

He spun in his chair as his gunner controls folded away. “Can we warp yet?”

Loren clicked a few buttons and checked the readings. “Good to go.”

“Then punch it,” said Cal, gripping his arm rests. He swallowed the nausea he could already feel building. “But do not – I repeat, do not - forget the space kitten,” he added, before a guitar dropped from the ceiling and thumped him on the top of his head.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Kasheeshaktek Shasheeshketak – ‘Kash’ to his friends, of which he had none – stood knee-deep in warm manure, trying to pinpoint the exact moment when it had all gone wrong.

Last season, by this point in the cycle, he’d have been waist deep in the gelatinous slurry. Output was down, and if he didn’t find a way to bring it back up again, he’d never make his quota.

The worm wasn’t eating. That was the problem. Every week, Kash had made the trek across the blazing sands until he’d reached the head end, pushing his trolley laden with high-fiber roughage. Every week, he’d brought most of the previous delivery back again, untouched.

It was simple biology, really. In order for output to increase at the bottom end, input had to increase at the top end. No matter how enticing he tried to make the offerings, though, the worm wasn’t interested.

Was it dying? Was that it? If so, he was in trouble. There were so few of the creatures left now that finding one to harvest could take months. Years, even. He wasn’t even sure there were any others after this one. The other shizzfarmers had all packed up and left this barren ball of sand long ago. Kash had just been too stupid, too broke and – if he were honest - too damn stubborn to follow their lead.

The valve in the floor of the collection tent groaned. Kash stepped out of the way, hope fluttering its gentle wings in his stomach. “Come on, gimme an eruption,” he whispered. “Gimme a volcano!”

The slurry stirred. The slurry rolled. A disappointing burbling sound bubbled on the surface, and the gloopy brown stew crept an inch past Kash’s knees.

“Shizz,” Kash muttered. And it was. Just not enough.

He took longer than usual to strip, shower and redress on the other side of the tent door. His limbs were heavy with disappointment and worry and everything in between. The heat didn’t help matters, either. The sun was well up in the sky, its boggle-eyed glare staring down at him with rapidly increasing intensity.

It would soon be too hot to be outside. Kash rolled up his coveralls and dropped them in a biohazard bag. Technically, he was supposed to incinerate them, but he’d run out of replacements months ago, so had taken to just hosing the outfit down twice a week, and giving it the occasional airing. He hadn’t died yet, although he had developed a worrying rash on his inner thigh that smelled like old soup, and which forced him to walk with bowed legs.

Still, he wasn’t one for grumbling, and even if he was, who was left to listen?

The water tank sounded almost empty as Kash poured himself a cup full. A new delivery was due any day, but as ‘any day’ may not necessarily be any day soon, he’d have to ration it. He sipped just enough to moisten his mouth, dabbed a few drops on his black, bulbous eyes, then turned and headed for a ramshackle cottage that stood on its own a few hundred feet away. Two teetering wooden constructions leaned over it, groaning in the virtually non-existent breeze. They kept the cottage itself in the shade for much of the day, deflecting the worst of the sun’s effects.

A few years back, after a particularly productive season, Kash had spent most of his savings on a single solar panel, which he’d attached to the top of the tallest tower. The advert had promised unlimited power around the clock, and Kash had relished the idea of having lights in the dark evenings, and an electric blanket to see him through the cold desert nights.

The day after Kash had set up the solar panel, it melted. What was left of it was still up there now, after he’d decided not to replace it, and to instead spend a considerably smaller amount of money on some candles and wooly socks.

Yes, it was a tough old life, shizzfarming. Still, this season was bad, but he’d survived worse. The Great Constipation of ’42 had almost brought the whole industry to its knees. If he could get through that, he could get through anything.

As he headed home, Kash almost managed a spring in his step. The situation was bad right now, but you never knew what was right around the corner. Things could always get better.

He was halfway to his house when a ship landed on it.

He stopped. He stared. Two jets of steam hissed out from beneath the ship in a billowing white cloud. There was a screech of feedback from a hidden speaker, followed by a crackled announcement.

“Sorry!” said a woman’s voice. “I think that was partly my fault.”

* * *

“Did you just land on the guy’s house?” asked Cal.

“The landing gear jammed. I overshot,” said Loren.

“A whole planet to land on, and she picks the one building a thousand miles in any direction,” said Miz. “Smooth.”

“It’s not my fault! The Scrivers must have knocked something out of alignment.”

“Like what? Your sense of direction?” said Mech.

They all left the bridge and headed for the landing ramp. Splurt hadn’t come down from the ceiling after the gravity malfunction, and was busy squeezing himself into vents and ducts. He seemed to be having fun, so after warning the little blob not to break anything, Cal left him to his own devices.

The ramp shook as the crew piled down it. “Maybe we didn’t land on all of it,” said Loren. “It might not be that bad.”

She stopped when she saw the remains of the cottage. “No,” said Cal. “It’s totally that bad.”

The house wasn’t a house any more. It would barely even qualify as ‘bits of a house,’ as there was really no way of telling what, if any of it, had been walls or roof. Something that might once have been part of a door could just as easily have been any number of other things, provided all the other things in question were A) made of wood, and B) broken beyond any possibility of repair.

A short, skinny figure with an unusually tall forehead stood in the sand a short distance away, saying nothing. His eyes – two round, shark-black balls – went from the wreckage to the crew and back again, his narrow mouth curved downwards into a frown.

He was about the height of a seven-year-old human, but thinner across the shoulders. His head was completely bald, and his nose had either fallen off, or never been there in the first place. Miz was beginning to wish she could say the same for herself.

“Ugh, what is that?” she wheezed, clamping her hands across her nostrils.

“Nothing pleasant,” said Cal, blinking away tears that nipped at the corners of his eyes. “Yeah, that stinks.”

Loren gave the figure a wave. “Sorry again! We had some problems with the ship.”

“Yeah, the pilot being the main one,” Miz muttered.

Cal stepped down onto the sand and shot the little guy a smile. “Hey. Are you Kashee… Kashees… Mech, help me out here.”

“Kasheeshaktek Shasheeshketak,” said Mech.

“Yeah. Are you that guy?” Cal asked.

The little figure blinked. His eyelids made a faint scraping sound as they licked across his eyeballs. “Me ‘ouse.”

“Uh… sorry? Didn’t quite catch that,” said Cal.

“Me ‘ouse. Me bleedin’ ‘ouse!” said Kash. “You’ve flattened me bleedin’ ‘ouse!”

“Again,” said Loren. “Huge apologies. We can probably fix it.”

She caught Mech’s look. “Well, I mean, no, we obviously can’t fix it, it’s completely ruined, but…”

The sentence tailed off into an apologetic smile. She blushed and looked around, suddenly very interested in the acres of sand in all directions.

“Thirty years I’ve ‘ad that ‘ouse!” Kash protested. “Thirty bleedin’…”

He stopped when he spotted Mizette. “Oh my,” he said. “Oh my, my, my. Oh my.”

Kash dropped to his knees in the sand, realized to his horror how uncomfortably hot it was, and immediately got back up again. “Your ‘ighness,” he said, bowing repeatedly. “Your actual bleedin’ ‘ighness.”

“Uh, yeah,” said Miz. “I guess you’re Kashea…”

“Kasheeshaktek,” said Mech.

“Oh yes, yes, I am that, that I am,” he babbled. “But it’d please me greatly if Your ‘ighness was to call me Kash.”

“Thank fonk for that,” Cal whispered.

“Welcome, ‘ighness, to my ‘umble ‘ome,” said Kash, bowing even more deeply. He shot the wreckage a sideways glance. “I’d invite you in, but, er…”

“You can stop bowing,” said Miz. Her tongue flopped out and she found herself panting heavily. The stench that had been filling her nostrils since they’d landed was rapidly being overpowered by the sour tang of sweat.

“Man, it is hot,” said Cal. He wafted the neck of his shirt and shot Loren an accusing look. “Whose idea was it for me to wear black?”

“You know why I’m here?” asked Miz.

Kash resisted the urge to bow again. “Of course, ‘ighness, of course. I knew this day would come. It’s the key you’ll be after.”

“That’s right,” said Cal. “Do you have it?” He winced. “It wasn’t in your house, was it?”

“Oh, if only it were. If only it were,” Kash fretted. “Had I but known you were coming, ‘ighness, I’d have fetched it, but, well, the thing is, there ain’t exactly a lot of what you might call ‘iding places round ‘ere. An’ Graxan, ‘e said I ‘ad to keep it ‘idden.”

“So… where is it?” asked Cal.

“In the safest place what I could think of,” said Kash. “Somewhere no-one would ever think to look. Somewhere no-one would ever want to look. No-one what was in their right mind, any rate.”

“Right. Good,” said Miz, although she wasn’t entirely sure where the conversation was going. “So… where is it?”

Kash swallowed, his eyes darted towards a steep hill that rose up from the sand a few hundred feet away. “It’s in the worm,” he said.

Cal frowned. “It’s in a worm?”

“No,” said Kash, shaking his head. “It’s in the worm.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Mech stood gazing into the gaping, cavernous maw of an enormous sand worm, wondering if it was too late to turn himself in.

Prison hadn’t been that bad. He’d been given three square meals a day, whether he wanted them or not, and being a seven-feet tall armored cyborg meant he had rarely, if ever, found himself on the receiving end of any unwelcome shower-based advances.

There had been books to read, a gym to use, even games to play. What there hadn’t been was a forty-mile long invertebrate with breath like an abattoir’s garbage can.

“You cannot be serious,” said Mech. “I ain’t going inside that thing.”

“Why not?” asked Cal.

Mech scowled. “Why not? What do you mean ‘why not’? Because – I don’t know if you noticed – but it’s a giant fonking worm. That’s why not.”

“Come on, what’s the worst that could happen?”

Mech’s voice became dangerously high-pitched. “What’s the worst that could happen?” he spluttered. “Well, hmm, let me see… It could eat me, maybe?”

“Yeah,” said Cal. “But that’s, like, absolute worst case scenario.”

“You want me to go in its mouth!” Mech pointed out. “That’s the almost guaranteed to happen scenario.”

“Nah, doubt it,” said Kash. “He ain’t been eatin’ much of late.”

“Oh, so he’s hungry? That’s what you’re saying?” said Mech. “He’s been holding out, waiting for some juicy and delicious snack to come along and hop right in his mouth? That’s what you’re telling me?”

“Well, if that is what he’s saying, you should be fine,” said Cal.

“Hey, fonk you man,” Mech snapped. “I’m both juicy and delicious.”

“Not so loud,” said Loren. “You might give him ideas.”

Mech glowered at her as she tried without much success to hide her grin.

“Know what? Fonk y’all,” he said. “Fonk the whole lot of you. You want to climb inside a worm and get your stupid key? Be my guest.” He pointed to the sand at his feet. “I’m gonna plant myself right here. Y’all go right ahead.”

Cal sighed. He looked into the worm’s mouth. It was wide enough to swallow the ship and almost completely dark from somewhere just beyond the tonsils.

He looked back at the Shatner standing on the sand a short distance away, bits of Kash’s house still wedged in the landing legs.

“OK then,” he said, then he whistled through his teeth. “I guess I’m going to need a space suit.”

* * *

Cal’s breath rolled upwards across the inside of the helmet, fogging the glass. The torch mounted on the helmet’s side pasted a thin circle of light onto the darkness, and reflected quite unpleasantly on the slick, glistening walls.

The floor – which was how he’d chosen to think of it rather than the more accurate ‘throat’ – squelched beneath his boots as he trudged onwards into the smothering gloom. “You guys are there, right?” he whispered, his voice echoing around inside the helmet.

“Yeah, we hear you and we’re seeing what you see,” said Loren. “Which isn’t much.”

“Yeah, I think the torch needs new batteries,” Cal said. He blew upwards onto his face. “Man, it’s hot in here.”

“You know which direction you’re headed right?” Loren asked.

“I’m assuming I don’t have a lot of directions to choose from,” Cal replied. “Isn’t it just ‘up’ or ‘down’?”

“It’s going to branch off in two somewhere up ahead.” That was Kash’s voice, shouting to be heard from the back of the flight deck. “One way’s lungs, the other’s guts. You want the guts.”

“Yeah. Yeah, of course I do,” Cal sighed. “And you can tell me which is which, right?” he said, his feet squidging across the spongy, uneven floor.

“Oh yeah,” said Kash, then, “More or less,” then, “Well, no, not really.”

“What do you mean ‘not really’?” Cal demanded.

“Well, I ‘aven’t been down in years, ‘ave I? ‘ow is I supposed to remember what way to go?” Kash said. “You’ll know it when you see it.”

“How? Will there be a signpost?” asked Cal. “Because I suspect one fleshy worm tunnel looks pretty much like any other fleshy worm tunnel.”

He trudged on, slipping and sliding through a puddle of clear, gooey ooze. “You know, this reminds me of a joke I heard one time,” he said, grimacing as the torch light picked out something purple and fleshy dangling down in front of him. He ducked it and bent forwards into the oncoming headwind of the worm’s breath.

“So, there’s this guy, OK? And he’s at the movie theater, watching… I don’t know. I don’t remember. Let’s say it’s the Godfather. No, wait. Let’s say it’s Big Momma’s House. Both classic movies in their own right.”

Cal stepped over a quivering mound that might have been some sort of pustule, then continued.

“So he gets his snacks, you know, popcorn, a drink, whatever. Hot dog, maybe. And he takes his seat. He’s all excited for the movie to start, but then he notices that in the seat next to him there’s this glow worm. Just sitting there by itself, looking up at him.”

The worm’s throat rumbled as a gust of air rose up from the darkness ahead. It was warm enough that Cal felt it through the insulated suit.

“So the guy’s, like, totally amazed. I mean, he’s quietly sort of freaking out, too, because what’s a glow worm doing at the movies, right?” Cal said. “He’s polite to start with, trying not to look, but then the curiosity just gets too much. So he asks it. He turns to it and just comes right out with it. Just turns to it and says, ‘what’s a glow worm doing at the movies?’”

A string of gloop fell from above and landed with a splat on Cal’s helmet. He tried to wipe it away, but mostly just succeeded in smearing it across the glass.

“Jesus, that’s not pleasant,” he whispered, shuddering involuntarily. “So anyway, the glow worm looks up at him with these big eyes and it says, ‘Because I want to see how it compares to the book.’”

Silence hissed softly over Cal’s earpiece.

“Yeah, I didn’t get it either,” he admitted. “I think maybe it was supposed to be a book worm. That would’ve made more sense. You know, in the context of the joke. Not in reality.”

More silence.

“Because in real life, either way would be crazy. You know, a talking worm and whatnot?”

Yet more silence.

“Hello?” said Cal. “Anyone there?”

He tapped the side of his helmet. “Helloooo?”

The silence was getting pretty repetitive now.

“Well, that’s just great,” he sighed. He looked back the way he’d come. A lopsided circle of light stood at the end of the tunnel, but the world beyond was too bright for him to make out any details. A little voice inside his head told him to go back. A much louder voice agreed with it.

He ignored them both and pushed on through the worm’s glistening innards, watching for the fork in the road.

“I’ll be honest, this is not how I imagined my life panning out,” he said, hoping by talking he could keep the rising feeling of dread from filling him all the way to the top. “I mean, flying around in outer space as a devilishly handsome spaceship captain? That I buy. I’m sure that was always in the cards.

“But trudging through a giant worm, looking for a way into its guts? That I did not see coming,” he said, then he stopped as the one enormous flesh-tunnel became two slightly smaller ones.

Cal leaned left and right, using the torchlight to examine his options. On the left, he had a lumpy purple passageway that oozed with a clear viscous liquid, while on the right he had a lumpy purple passageway that oozed with a clear viscous liquid. It was like the world’s most revolting game of Spot the Difference.

“They’re exactly the same,” he muttered, then he tapped the side of the helmet and tried again, louder this time. “Hey, there’s nothing different about the tunnels. I need a little help here.”

Once again, the only reply was a gently hissing silence. “I swear, if you guys are doing this on purpose to try to freak me out, I am not going to be happy.”

He held a hand out in front of him, gave himself – and his head camera – the middle finger, then picked a passageway at random.

Four paces in, he realized he could still feel the worm’s breath through his suit, so he about-turned and headed down the other tunnel, instead. He was no expert on alien biology, but he was pretty sure breath probably equaled lungs, no matter where you were in the galaxy.

Just a few steps along it, the passageway leading to the stomach became sticky. Thick strands of mucus clung to Cal’s boots. It was like the whole floor was made of Splurts, but without any of the little guy’s more endearing qualities.

Even through the suit, he could smell something acrid and toxic. He was pretty sure that wasn’t good. Space suits, to his knowledge, were supposed to be air tight. That was pretty much the entire point. So, if it was air tight, how was the smell getting in?

He pressed on, trying to will his nostrils closed. The inside of the helmet was fogged up with breath, the outside still smeared with the goo that had dribbled on him from above. Cal raised a hand to try to wipe the rest of the gunk away, and that was when he saw the hole on the tip of one finger.

It was small. Barely the size of a cigarette burn. It shared some other characteristics with a cigarette burn, too – the scorched and blackened outline being the main one.

As Cal watched, the tips of the glove’s other fingers, and a dime-size patch of the palm turned brownish, then blackish, then pink and fleshy as the fabric was eaten away.

Acid.

The gloop that had landed on his helmet was acid.

Cal looked down at his boots, which were inch-deep in the see-through slurry. They were lined with metal, he knew, but would the acid eat its way through that, too? Was it munching its way towards his helpless feet, even now?

He hurried on.

Then slowed down again.

What if he fell? What if he slid on the slippery floor while running and went skidding through the acidic slime on his front?

Or his back?

Or any other part of himself, in fact?

He slowed down even more, remembered his feet might be about to melt, said, “Fonk,” under his breath several times, then marched onwards into the dark.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

As well as not being an expert on alien biology, Cal wasn’t exactly the world’s foremost authority on Earth biology, either. That said, he was pretty confident that food generally went down the throat and directly into the stomach, and so he’d been surprised to stumble upon a second junction in the fleshy passageway a few dozen feet after the first fork. This one branched off to the right, and was a little narrower than the main path.

The torch barely scratched the surface of the darkness as Cal leaned in and peered along this potential new route. The slick, slimy walls curved away almost immediately, making it impossible to see more than a few feet along it.

While he couldn’t see much, he could hear… something. It was a soft squelching sound that seemed to be coming from a long way down the tunnel. It was so faint he couldn’t be convinced he wasn’t imagining it, but something about the sound made him retreat back into the worm’s throat.

Best to stick to the main path, he reckoned. The last thing he wanted to do was get lost, or accidentally stumble upon the bowels or something. Things were already quite bad enough.

The stomach was several miles away, but fortunately he didn’t have to go that far. Kash had told him the key was hidden a few hundred feet past the lung-junction. He hadn’t mentioned anything about a second junction, though, and Cal was starting to get a little concerned.

He tapped the side of his helmet again. “Helloooo? Anyone home?”

As expected, no-one answered. Either the radio had malfunctioned, or the worm’s insides were blocking the signal. That was assuming, of course, that the others weren’t just playing a trick on him. He wouldn’t put it past them. Especially Mech.

The hand in the ruined glove was starting to itch. He hoped he was just being paranoid. He’d take paranoia over flesh-eating acid any day of the week. He pulled what was left of the glove off and tossed it away. It landed in the viscous liquid with a faint splot, then sunk out of sight.

The visor was cloudy where the acid had landed, but it didn’t seem to be eating through the glass. His boots, too, were holding up. If he could avoid getting any of the stuff on the rest of him, he should be fine.

He could taste the acrid stink at the back of his throat. The cuff of his sleeve was tight around his wrist, but it wasn’t a perfect seal. He suspected a lungful of the air down here wouldn’t do him any favors.

“He couldn’t just have hidden it under his bed like a normal person,” Cal muttered. “He had to stuff it inside a giant fonking worm monster.”

The torch flickered across the fleshy walls as Cal waded on through the gunge. The key had to be around here somewhere, assuming it hadn’t been dissolved by digestive juices years ago. He pushed ahead, sweeping the thin light left, right, up, down, hunting for…

WHANG!

Cal’s helmet connected with a shoebox-sized metal canister. It hung in the air, supported by nothing at all. Cal passed his hand above and below it, searching for wires, but finding none.

“OK, that’s pretty impressive,” he admitted. He wrapped his gloved hand around the container and pulled.

It didn’t move.

He took hold of the canister with both hands and pulled again. Again, it didn’t budge.

Cal scratched his head. “Huh. OK. Awkward son-of-a-bedge, are you? How do you like this?”

He battering-rammed the canister with his shoulder. The impact sent a shock of pain rattling through his shoulder and down his spine.

“Ooh, ooh, ow, ow. That was a bad idea.”

He hammered his fist on top of the container.

He pushed it.

He pulled it.

He caught the bottom and tried to shake it around.

Throughout it all, the container remained steadfastly fixed in place.

Cal sighed. He tapped the side of his helmet. “Hello? How do I move this fonker?”

There was a long moment of silence. Then, to Cal’s surprise, Kash’s voice rasped in his ear. “You don’t. You open it,” he said.

“Aha, there you are!” said Cal. “Where have you been? I lost you for a while?”

Kash didn’t reply. Cal tapped his helmet again. “Come on. Hello?”

When he was met by yet more silence, he tutted, shrugged, then brought the light in for a closer look at the canister. There were a few symbols etched into the front of the metal. The chip embedded in Cal’s eye set to work. As he watched, the symbols swam and formed themselves into something less cryptic.

“Press here,” he read. A little arrow indicated a tiny button the same color as the rest of the container. Cal used the pinkie finger of his ungloved hand to push it, then jumped back when a hatch in front of the container flipped down with a loud hydraulic hiss.

A black cloth bag lay nestled inside the metal tube. Cal eyed the canister suspiciously as he moved closer. He held his hand poised, like a snake getting ready to strike. It’d be just his luck if the door slammed shut again while he was reaching inside, so he was determined to be in and out as quickly as he could.

“OK, let’s do this,” he said, taking a series of deep breaths. He waited another few seconds in case the door started any funny business, then snapped his hand forward and yanked the bag free. The door didn’t move.

Cal let out a sigh of relief, then jumped back and let out a little yelp when the hatch slammed itself closed a moment later. “Aah! Son-of-a-bedge!”

He about-turned and tapped his communicator. “I got it, I’m headed back now,” he said, then he stopped as a high-pitched squeal trembled the walls ahead of him. “OK, what the Hell was that?” he whispered.

The sound came again, accompanied this time by a series of gloopy squelches. It was definitely coming from somewhere up ahead. Which was unfortunate, as ‘somewhere up ahead’ also happened to be Cal’s only exit.

Cal shoved the cloth bag into one of the pockets on front of his suit and set his jaw in determination. “Totally should have just stayed on Earth and let the bugs get me,” he muttered, then he strode onwards through the throat, darting his torch from side to side.

As he drew level with the mouth of the mysterious third passageway, he heard the sound again. It screeched from somewhere down that tunnel, echoing damply off the fleshy walls. The squelching was louder here – the squirming wriggle of something moving around in the passage.

And not just moving. Moving in itself wasn’t a problem. It was the fact the sound was moving closer that Cal didn’t like.

“OK, I’m out,” he said, turning his back on the passageway and hurrying on. He didn’t need to know what was down there. In fact, he actively did not want to know what was down there.

Unfortunately, what was down there seemed to have other ideas. The purple walls of the worm’s throat quivered as another screech echoed along it. Without even glancing back, Cal broke into a run, whispering, “Fonk, fonk, fonk, fonk, fonk!” in time with his crashing heartbeat.

“There’s something in here!” he yelped, hoping for some words of comfort to bounce back at him over the radio.

Nothing.

He raced on. Another squeal rang out, and the floor bucked and heaved beneath him. Cal stumbled, tripped, felt his feet slip and the ground come lurching towards him. There was barely enough time for another round of hissed fonks before he splashed into the acidic slurry and slid, face-first, through it, his right arm twisted awkwardly to keep his bare hand out of the liquid.

Kicking and scrambling, Cal fought back to his feet. The thick stench of burning fabric filled his helmet. The glass was so clouded now he could barely see a thing. He stumbled towards the vague oval of light that lay ahead, which he had to assume was the worm’s open mouth.

How close was it? He couldn’t tell. Not fonking close enough for his liking. He stumbled blindly on, the space suit disintegrating around him. As the light grew brighter, he wrestled with the catch that held the helmet in place, and coughed as he pushed the glass dome off.

The blazing sunshine of the world beyond was blinding, but he drove himself towards it, squinting as he threw off his rapidly-melting left glove. Whatever was behind him squelched and squealed again, and Cal was tossed into the air as the worm shifted its immense weight.

He screamed as he was hurled through the air, then almost sobbed with relief as he hit the dry, dusty planet’s surface. The space suit had all but disintegrated, and as he stood up what was left of it fell away, leaving him completely naked aside from an ill-fitting pair of shorts, and an even more ill-fitting pair of space boots.

The scorching mid-day sun prickled his skin. Stooping, he picked up the cloth bag containing the key. Thankfully, the pocket had protected it from the acid. “Ha. Must be my lucky day,” Cal said, straightening again.

It was then that he saw Loren, Mizette and Kash. They knelt on the sand near the Shatner, their hands behind their heads. Mech was nowhere to be seen, but a fourth figure stood right behind Loren, a long, slender blade pressed against her throat.

“Vajazzle,” said Cal, and this time he didn’t find the word funny at all. He tried to smile, regardless. “What brings you way out here?”

“The key,” said Vajazzle, her red eye flicking down to focus on the bag in Cal’s hand. “Bring it to me.”

“Key? What key?” asked Cal. He held up the bag and shook it. “I don’t know anything about any key. This is my lunch.” He shifted his gaze to Loren. “Seriously? You couldn’t handle one old woman?”

“She shut down our weapons,” Loren said. “And she powered down the Shatner’s systems.”

“And your robot friend, too,” said Vajazzle. “That’s the problem with computer brains. So easy to switch off.”

“Again, she’s an old woman,” said Cal. “Even without guns, you couldn’t handle her? I’m very disappointed in you guys.”

“She’s tougher than she looks,” said Mizette. Cal could just make out some sort of handcuff-like set of bands around her wrists.

“Yeah, but that’s not exactly saying much, she looks like she’d blow over in a stiff breeze,” said Cal. He flashed Vajazzle one of his most winning smiles. “Look, I think there’s been a misunderstanding here. We’re just out here, minding our own business, exploring a big worm. We don’t know anything about any--”

Vajazzle yanked sharply back on Loren’s hair and pressed the blade more firmly against her throat. “Whoa! Wait!” Cal protested. “Don’t! OK? Just… just don’t.”

“She wouldn’t dare,” spat Miz.

Cal raised a hand in front of him, trying to calm the situation. “I don’t know, she looks pretty daring to me.”

“You have an agreement with my father,” Miz said. “They are all under his protection.”

“We’re a long way from the Greyx’s reach,” said Vajazzle. “Even so…”

She released her grip on Loren. Kash spluttered in fright as she pressed the knife against his throat, instead. “Perhaps this one.”

“OK, him I’m less concerned about – no offence,” said Cal, honestly.

“None taken.”

“But I’d still rather no-one got hurt here.”

Behind him, a series of wet squelches farted out of the worm’s throat. Cal glanced sideways, partly hoping to see something in his peripheral vision, but mostly hoping he didn’t. He took a few steps away from the mouth, just in case.

He could feel his skin burning in the sun. If he listened closely, he could probably hear it sizzling and crisping up under the full force of the harsh UV rays. Loren, Miz and Kash were kneeling just beyond the line of the Shatner’s shadow, while Vajazzle herself stood just inside the shade’s edge. If she wanted them dead, she wouldn’t have to kill them. She’d just have to wait.

“OK, let’s say this is a key, and let’s say I give it to you, what then?” Cal asked.

“I leave,” said Vajazzle. “Much as it goes against the grain, I leave you all alive, and I go.”

Cal looked down at Loren and Miz. Their faces were giving nothing away. “It’s tempting,” said Cal. “But how do I know I can trust you?”

“You don’t, and you can’t,” said Vajazzle. “But I’d consider your other choices carefully.”

Cal considered his other choices carefully. It didn’t take long as it wasn’t a particularly long list to get through.

“Fine,” he said. “You can have it.”

“Throw it to me,” Vajazzle instructed.

Cal held the bag by one corner, drew back his arm and tossed it over his head. It fluttered through the air, then landed with a soft paff in the sand halfway between him and Lady Vajazzle. They both looked at it for a few seconds.

“Throw it to me, I said. Not in my general direction.”

“The wind must’ve caught it,” said Cal. “I can throw way further than that normally.”

“Pick it up. Toss it over.”

Cal shot the worm’s mouth another worried glance as more squelching squirmed around inside it. He set off towards the bag, the heat pressing down on him with every step. His feet felt like they were melting inside the boots, but he knew the bare skin wouldn’t last long in the scorching sand.

As he bent to pick up the key, he staggered and clutched at his head. “Whoa,” he muttered, toppling over and landing heavily on top of the bag. The sand stung his exposed flesh, and he frantically struggled back to his feet, trying to flick the worst of it away.

“Ow! Ow! Hot!”

He wiped the sweat from his brow and held up the bag. “I don’t know if I can throw it again,” he rasped. “I’ll bring it over.”

“No need,” said Vajazzle. She held a hand up, forming a claw with her fingers. Cal gasped in surprise as the bag was torn from his grip. He watched it zip through the air towards Vajazzle, who caught it in one swift grab.

“Wow, that’s impressive,” Cal said. “Was that the Force? That was totally the Force, wasn’t it?” He breathed heavily and lowered his voice. “Join me. Together we can rule the galaxy as father and son.”

Everyone stared at him, blankly.

“No?” he said. “Empire Strikes Back?” He sighed and shook his head. “Forget it. You’ve got the key, Vajazzle, so go.”

Vajazzle’s eyes narrowed. “Of course, you could save everyone a lot of trouble by coming with me,” she said. “If you let me bring you to Sinclair, he may even let your friends live. Or some of them, at least.”

Cal shifted around on the hot sand, considering this.

“Let me make it simple for you,” said Vajazzle. “I am going to take you to Sinclair. It can be now, and no-one else needs to die, or it can be later, after many, many deaths. The choice is yours.”

Cal looked first at Loren, then at Miz. They both shook their heads, ever so slightly. He looked at Kash, too, but all his attention was on the knife at his throat.

Just as Cal opened his mouth to reply, a movement on the Shatner’s ramp caught his eye. “Just before I answer that, I want to ask you something. You said that you’d shut down our weapons and ship’s systems and… what else was it?”

Beneath Vajazzle’s hood, her non-robot eye twinkled. “Your robot companion.”

“Ah yes, that’s right, that was it,” said Cal. He clicked his fingers and smiled back at her. “But, well, you see, the thing is…”

The ramp creaked behind Vajazzle. She spun to find Mech looming over her. “I ain’t no fonking robot!” he growled, then he drove a fist into the center of her face, sending her sprawling, head-first, onto the sand.

Loren, Miz and Kash got quickly to their feet. Cal joined them, and they all stood around the motionless Vajazzle, looking down.

“Dude, you just punched an old woman right in the face,” said Cal.

“She was asking for it. And at least it wasn’t no little girl,” said Mech.

Cal raised a finger. “Hey, I’ll have you know that that little girl was very aggressive, and much stronger than she looked,” he pointed out.

“What kept you?” Mizette demanded, holding her cuffed hands out to Mech. He took hold of the restraints and snapped them in two, then did the same with Loren’s. Kash hadn’t posed enough of a threat to be wearing any.

“Whatever she used to scramble the electronics messed some of my stuff up, too,” Mech explained. “I got moving again as quick as I could.”

“Is she dead?” asked Loren.

Mech realized all eyes were on him. “How should I know?” He tapped one arm. “Her system scrambling shizz shut down my scanners.”

Cal bent at the waist so he was leaning over the fallen assassin. “You alright, sweetheart?” he asked, raising his voice. “You’ve had an accident.”

He waited for a moment, shrugged, then reached for her hood. “She’s totally dead,” he said, pulling the hood away.

A twisted, grotesque face leered up at him from the back of Vajazzle’s bald head. Cal leaped back as it hissed at him through its rotten teeth.

“Jesus Christ!” he cried. “She’s got another face! Did we know she had another face?”

Vajazzle’s lifeless body suddenly became much less so. Her legs bent, folding her upright into a kneeling position. The bulbous, bloodshot eyes of her second face glared angrily as something thrashed and wriggled beneath her midnight robe.

She shuffled jerkily towards Cal. He shoved her away and danced back. “Argh! Fonk off!” He shot Mech a sideways glance. “What are you waiting for? Punch her again.”

Mech raised his fist, but a long, tentacle-like limb whipped out from inside Vajazzle’s robe, swiping his legs out from under him. For a moment, he went horizontal, then slammed down onto the sand with a ground-shaking thud.

Miz flicked out her claws and lunged, but another swiping tentacle cracked like a whip across her face and she stumbled against the side of the Shatner, blood trickling down her fur.

“OK, that’s not good,” Cal said. Spotting the key bag on the ground, he made a diving grab for it, ducking just as a tentacle-arm scythed above him. “You want this?” he cried, waving in the assassin’s general direction. “Come get it.”

And then, with the sun burning his back, his metal boots pulling him down and a two-faced tentacle-monster grabbing at his heels, he ran.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Back on Earth, Cal had spent quite a lot of time running. He’d run from girlfriends. He’d run from their husbands. He’d run from the police, from criminals who took their careers far more seriously than he did and, on one particularly memorable afternoon in 1996, from the singer, Ozzy Osbourne.

Even then, despite all that practice, and despite the metal boots he currently wore on both feet, he’d never run as fast as he was running now. He tore across the sand, powering towards the gaping mouth of the worm. Behind him, Vajazzle gave chase. She ran backwards, her body twisted awkwardly as her knees tried to bend themselves the wrong way. Things writhed and wriggled beneath her robe, while her two visible tentacles snapped and whip-cracked the air.

Back by the Shatner, Loren and Miz launched into sprints of their own, chasing Vajazzle down. “No, stay back!” Cal cried. “Get Mech into the ship! I’ve got this!”

The worm’s mouth loomed dead ahead. In the darkness of its throat, Cal could just make out something moving. Something large.

“You want your key, Vajazzle? Be my guest!” he yelped. He tossed the bag so it landed just a few feet away from the worm’s mouth, then dived sideways out of the assassin’s path. She sprawled onwards, her limbs impossibly bent, the frail fingers of her human-like hands grabbing for the bag.

From inside the worm, there came something that sounded partly like a scream and partly like a violent rectal prolapse. A shiny blob the size of a school bus erupted from the worm’s throat in a river of stinking green mucus, and immediately began to wail.

Vajazzle tried to stop, but the newly-born worm slid towards her like an out-of-control juggernaut. There was a pained hiss from the assassin and a damp flomp from the worm as the two met, then Vajazzle vanished beneath the creature’s undoubtedly immense weight.

“Whoa,” said Cal, watching the worm slide to a stop in the sand. “That had to hurt.”

“It’s a little ‘un,” cried Kash, hurrying over. “Lawks alive, it’s a little ‘un! So that’s why she weren’t eatin’ nothin’! She were up the duff!”

The shizzfarmer hopped and danced around, laughing and whooping and clapping his hands. “Oh, what a beauty! What a little beauty you is!”

“Wait, so if that’s a baby,” said Cal, eyeing the bigger worm’s mouth suspiciously, “are you sure I went in the right end? That’s definitely the mouth, right?”

“Of course! Where else would it bleedin’ well come out?” asked Kash.

Cal blinked. He shook his head. “Doesn’t matter.”

Loren, Miz and Mech joined them. “Great. So how are we supposed to get the key?” asked Miz.

Cal reached into one of his boots and pulled out a flat piece of metal with a series of square holes and notches cut into it. “What, this key?” he asked, grinning. “Swapped it when I pretended to fall over earlier. Vajazzle just got flattened for a bag with a bit of half-melted space suit inside.”

He tossed Mizette the key. She caught it, turned it over in her hands, then smiled. “Not bad,” she admitted. “Not bad at all.”

* * *

Twenty minutes later, a fully-dressed Cal sat in his chair, waiting for Loren to fire up the engines. All the ship’s systems had needed to be reset after Vajazzle disabled them – a process which seemed to involve nothing more technical than switching them off, counting to five, and then switching them back on again.

They’d offered to give Kash a lift back to the wreckage of his house, but he’d insisted on waiting with the newly-born worm to make sure it survived. They’d left him all the water they could spare, a few blankets for shade and a Twix Cal had picked up on Earth, then waved him goodbye.

“What a day,” said Cal, leaning back in his chair. On the viewscreen, he watched Kash lovingly stroke the side of the baby worm as if it were his own child. He smiled and shook his head. “Yep. What a day.”

Loren fired up the engines. Or, to be more precise, she tried to fire up the engines. The Shatner coughed like it was clearing its throat, shuddered briefly, then fell silent.

“Everything OK?” Cal asked, even though it very clearly wasn’t.

“Yeah,” said Loren. “It’s just…”

She flicked the controls again. The ship wheezed and shook, then… nothing.

“Something’s not working,” said Loren.

“You don’t say?” tutted Miz.

“Mech, can you take a look?” asked Loren, giving the engine another try. Cal gripped his arm rests as the whole ship vibrated. For a moment, it felt like the thrusters were about to kick-in, but then they whined down into silence.

“On it,” said Mech, clanking out into the corridor.

Over on Cal’s right, Mizette slowly sat forward in her chair. “Uh… did you just see that?” she said.

Cal glanced over at her, then followed her gaze. Outside, Kash had stepped away from the smaller worm, and was looking it up and down in something that looked – from this distance, at least – like shock.

“What?” asked Cal. “What am I looking at?”

“There,” said Miz, pointing. There was no need. Cal saw it at the same time she did – a movement from the baby worm. It rose up for a moment, as if it were being pushed by something beneath it.

Or someone.

“Mech!” Cal called over his shoulder. “Whatever you’re doing, you might want to do it quick.”

“Hold on… try now.”

Loren turned the engine over again. It vibrated and stuttered. “Come on,” she grimaced. Outside, the baby worm tilted a few degrees to one side. “Come on.”

“Hold on, hold on,” shouted Mech. “Let me try something.” There was the sound of something being kicked. “OK. Better or worse?”

Loren tried the engine again. The lights flickered and grey smoke poured in from a vent near the ceiling. “Worse! Much worse,” said Cal.

“It’s moving. The worm’s moving!” said Miz.

Sure enough, the smaller of the two fonking enormous worms had rolled almost all the way onto its side now. A thin tentacle whipped around on the sand, reaching out from beneath it.

“Try now!” Mech bellowed.

“This time, this time, come on,” said Loren. She gunned the engine. It let out a high-pitched whine. “Come on, come on, come on!”

Two strands of gloopy green goo descended from the ceiling above one of Loren’s control panels, stretching down until they were almost at floor level. Splurt wriggled around beneath the largest of the panels. There was a spark, a crackle and a fzzt, then the Shatner shot up and backwards, banking sharply away.

The back of the ship hit the ground and scraped across the desert, churning a path through the sand. Loren gritted her teeth and wrestled with the stick. The ship’s hull grumbled in complaint as it lifted free of the sand and raised onto an even keel.

Cal managed to prise his fingers from his arm rest long enough to give Splurt a thumbs up, just as the shape-shifter retreated back up to the ceiling. “Thanks, buddy,” he said. “Loren, get us out of here.”

“What about him?” asked Loren. “What about Kash?”

“What about him?” asked Mech, ducking onto the flight deck again.

“Are we just going to leave him with Vajazzle? What if she kills him?”

Cal shook his head. “Trust me, if I know Vajazzle like I think I know Vajazzle, she won’t be interested in him.”

“But you don’t know her,” Loren pointed out. “You know literally nothing about her.”

“You make a very valid point,” Cal admitted. He shifted uncomfortably and looked at the others. “All those in favor of assuming he’s going to be just fine?”

He, Mech and Miz all raised their hands. Loren shook her head. “You’re all terrible people.”

“Honestly, he’s going to be OK,” Cal said. “Vajazzle’s a reasonable… whatever the fonk she is. I want to say ‘monster’ but that doesn’t do my case any favors at all.”

“He’s hiding, look,” said Mech, pointing to the viewscreen. Sure enough, Kash had darted inside the larger worm and was tucking himself into the shadows of its gaping maw.

“What did I tell you? He’ll be perfectly safe in there,” said Cal. They all watched as the worm’s mouth snapped shut. Its throat quivered as it swallowed. “See? Safe as houses,” Cal added, weakly.

“Guess it got its appetite back,” said Mech.

“Yes,” agreed Cal. “I guess it did.”

The smaller worm rolled suddenly all the way over onto its side. A figure… no, not a figure. Not quite. A shape unfurled itself from the sand where the worm had been. Cal glanced from the crumpled outline of Vajazzle to the dusty terrain around her.

“Where’s her ship?” he asked.

“Don’t know,” said Loren. “She just materialized on the deck behind us while you were inside the…”

Her voice tailed off. Everyone on the bridge gave everyone else on the bridge a worried look.

“Go, go, go!” Cal yelped, gripping his arm rests as Loren’s hands flew to the controls. Cal’s eyes were shoved deeper into their sockets as the Shatner screamed vertically upwards, putting as much distance between them and Vajazzle as possible.

“How far can she do her beam-up thing?” he hissed.

“Fonk knows,” said Mech. “But let’s not find out.”

Loren looked up at the screen as it began to swim with a rainbow of colors. “Leaving the atmosphere in five… four… three…”

A tremor shook the ship from bow to stern. Steam hissed from several vents in the floor that Cal had never noticed before. His stomach dropped down to somewhere near his knees, then twanged back up again until he felt it hitting the back of his throat.

“What’s happening?” he cried.

“The ship’s in bad shape,” Loren said, frantically trying to hold it together as they punched out of the atmosphere. “It’s taken a lot of punishment in the last few hours.”

“Most of it your fault,” Miz pointed out.

“Some of it my fault,” Loren corrected. “Not most, some.”

Another jet of steam erupted from the ceiling. Splurt shot out of a length of pipe like a pea from a peashooter and hit the viewscreen with a noisy splat. He oozed down it slowly, his eyes staring ever so slightly accusingly at Loren.

“That wasn’t my fault, either!” she insisted, but Splurt kept his gaze fixed on her until he’d slid all the way to the floor and out of sight.

With a series of worrying groans, the Shatner tilted sideways and limped out of the planet’s atmosphere. It drifted into a lazy orbit and one by one the billowing clouds of steam grew smaller and less terrifying.

“Are we still in one piece?” asked Cal, glancing around. He had one eye closed and had tucked his chin down against his chest in the hope it somehow made him safer.

“Just,” said Loren, studying her controls. “We must be more beat-up than I thought.”

Mech tapped a few controls and studied several hundred lines of text that scrolled upwards over the right of the viewscreen. “Shields are almost out, weapons barely functioning, life support compromised but holding steady…”

“Is the shower still working?” asked Cal.

Mech frowned. “It was, but I don’t know, it’s not on the list of critical systems.”

“Well, it should be,” said Cal. He jumped up out of his seat. “I’ll go test it. I can still smell worm phlegm on me.”

“Shouldn’t we contact my dad first?” asked Miz.

Cal stopped on route to the door. “What? Uh, yeah. You can do that, can’t you?”

Miz nodded. “Yes. I mean, totally, yeah. No problem.”

Cal noticed her hands. She was twisting her fingers together in her lap, over and over again. He closed his eyes, just for a moment, then raised an arm and gave his pit a deep sniff. “Know what? I actually quite like this smell. It’s… mulchy. Who doesn’t love mulchy?”

He flopped back down into his seat and stretched his legs out in front of him. “Loren, let’s give Graxan a call. I can’t wait to tell him we’ve got his key. Maybe we’ll finally get to see him smile.”

* * *

On screen, Graxan of the Greyx’s brow pushed down into a scowl. “What did you say?”

Mizette and Cal stood side-by-side in front of Cal’s chair. Miz shot Cal a sideways look, and he nodded encouragingly.

“I said we’ve got the key,” she said. “Like you asked.”

Graxan’s fur bristled. “I asked no such thing. I told you to protect the key, not to get it. You were to stop it being removed from its hiding place. You were to stop it falling into the wrong hands!”

“Yeah, well we did stop it falling into the wrong hands,” Miz protested.

“Did you, daughter? Did you really?” Graxan snapped, gesturing at the Shatner’s crew. He gritted his teeth and shook his head. “I should have known not to send you. I should have known you’d mess it up.”

“Hey, now wait a minute,” Cal protested. “Nothing is messed up. Everything is good.”

“Is Kasheeshaktek with you?” Graxan demanded.

Cal hesitated, just for a moment. “Hmm?”

“Kasheeshaktek, the key keeper. Is he with you?”

“Is he with us?” said Cal. “Right now, you mean?” He glanced around the deck, as if looking for him. “No.”

Graxan’s eyes narrowed. He stepped closer until his face was almost completely filling the screen. “I trust he is safe?”

Cal swallowed. “Who?” he said. “Kasheeshka… thing? Oh man, yeah. He’s fine. He’s totally fine. We gave him a Twix. He seemed quite excited. Probably more excited than he should’ve been, actually. I mean, I like a Twix as much as the next man, but--”

“Silence!” barked Graxan, then he exploded into a fit of coughing that lasted several seconds.

“You should drink some water,” Cal suggested. Graxan just glared at him while they waited for the coughing to pass.

“Where is the key now?” asked Graxan, when he was finally able to. Cal smiled and held a hand out.

“Mizette, the key, if you please.”

Miz looked at his hand and frowned. “I haven’t got it.”

Cal’s smile didn’t change. “What do you mean, you haven’t got it?”

“I mean I don’t have it,” said Miz.

“Yes, you do. I tossed it to you before we got on the ship, remember?”

“And then you took it back after we got on board. You said you wanted to use it to get the tag off your other shirt.”

“Oh, yeah, so I did,” said Cal. He held up one arm for Graxan to see. The blue sleeve of his shirt was marked with a yellowish-green stain. “It didn’t work.”

He fished in his back pocket, then produced the key. “Got it. See? It’s perfectly safe.”

“It was safe where it was. All you had to do was stop Vajazzle,” said Graxan. “I trust you at least managed to accomplish that?”

Cal and Miz shot each other another sideways look. “More or less,” said Cal.

Even through millions of miles of empty space, Cal and Mizette felt Graxan’s stare grow colder. His nostrils flared and his eyes became dark, threatening slits. “What do you mean,” he intoned, “more or less?”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Cal stood in the shower cubicle, his mouth shut tight as he held his face in the jet of warm water. He’d had to turn the temperature down soon after getting in, the hot water proving too painful against his sunburnt skin. It was barely above lukewarm now, but he still found himself letting out little yelps when it hit the back of his neck and shoulders.

There was no soap, which was disappointing. There was a wall-mounted dispenser containing something that looked like wet tar, but he hadn’t risked trying it out. It looked like it belonged more in the oil filter of a truck than smeared across his body.

There were no towels, either, and after his first go in the shower he’d been forced to try to shake the water off like a dog, then dry what was left on his dirty shirt and pants. They were both so filthy by that point that rubbing them on himself had probably negated the entire point of the shower in the first place.

“Shizz,” he muttered, remembering that he didn’t have a towel this time, either. He’d just have to drip-dry, and make a point of visiting a planet with a good selection of homeware stores sometime soon.

It took him a full four minutes to figure out how to switch the shower off. Admittedly, most of that was taken up by him accidentally turning the water all the way to cold, so he had to press himself against the shower’s back wall to avoid being hit by the spray, but even when he’d got the water to run warm again, getting it to stop had proven to be quite the challenge.

Once the stream had been reduced to a slow drip, he opened the cubicle door.

Mizette stood just on the other side, watching him. Cal stared at her in surprise for a moment, then hurriedly covered his genitals with both hands. He realized immediately that one hand was more than ample, and moved one of them up to cover his right nipple, instead.

“Miz,” he said. “Uh… hi.”

“Hi,” she replied. Her eyes drank him in from head to toe and back again.

“I’m… I’m in the shower,” he said, gesturing at the cubicle with the thumb of his right hand, while still keeping his nipple concealed. “Maybe you didn’t notice?”

“Oh, I noticed,” she said. “Loren wants to talk to you.”

“Does she? OK, then!” said Cal, more enthusiastically than was natural. “I’ll be right along just as soon as I’ve dried off.”

Mizette looked him up and down again. Her tail flicked from side to side. “OK, but there’s something I want to show you first…” she said, then she stepped closer and reached a hand out towards him.

Cal retreated into the cubicle, grinning awkwardly. “Well, now, hey there… you! What are you—?”

Miz tapped a button on the wall just inside the cubicle. Cal jumped and let out a little shriek of shock as warm air blasted at him from all directions at once.

“I’ll see you soon,” said Miz, her snout curving into a suggestive smirk. She gave his body another admiring look, then backed out of the door. “Handsome.”

“Haha, yes! See you soon. Fully clothed,” laughed Cal. “Accompanied by others!”

The bathroom door closed. Cal sighed and leaned both hands against the wall. “Yep,” he muttered. “What a fonking day.”

* * *

Cal strode through to the flight deck, ruffling his fluffed-up hair. Mech and Loren were both hunched over a control panel. Even though they had their back to him, Cal could tell the news wasn’t good. Draped across her seat, Miz winked at him as he slumped down into his own.

“So? What’s up?” Cal asked.

“We’ve got a problem,” said Loren, not taking her eyes off the controls.

“So what’s new? We’ve always got problems,” said Cal. “That’s what makes it all so exciting.”

“Yeah, well let’s see if this excites you,” said Mech, turning to face him. “The ship’s fonked.”

Cal looked around at the flight deck. “Then we’ll fix it.”

“Simple as that, huh?” said Mech. He tapped a few buttons and reams of text flooded the screen, moving too quickly for Cal’s visual translator chip to be able to do its job. “That there? That’s just the damage to the core systems.”

“OK, so that’s a lot, but we’ll just work through and fix it all up.”

“With what?” asked Mech. “You got a hangar full of spare parts stashed away somewhere that you ain’t told us about?”

“No, but there’s bound to be somewhere round here we can go buy what we need,” Cal said.

Loren swiped a hand across a touchscreen and a map of the sector appeared on the main viewscreen. It showed half a dozen suns, each with varying numbers of planets in orbit around them. A large red arrow with the words ‘You are here’ written on it pointed to a flashing dot somewhere near the middle.

“This is what’s within reach,” Loren said. “Go any further and the ship’s going to tear itself apart.”

“Cool, well there’s loads of planets there. Let’s go to one of them.”

“Not counting the one we just left, there are thirty-six planets within range,” said Mech. “Thirty-five of them are uninhabited.”

“OK,” said Cal, sounding less confident. “So one is habited?”

“Inhabited,” Loren corrected. “And yes, it is. By these.”

Something that was all eyes and teeth and shriveled transparent skin filled the screen. “Jesus!” said Cal, drawing back in horror. “OK. Promise me we’ll never go there.”

“We wouldn’t make it through the atmosphere, anyway,” said Loren. “Or any atmosphere, for that matter. Heat shielding’s cracked.”

“So, you see our problem,” said Mech.

Cal turned his chair slowly left to right. “Can we Skype Graxan again? Ask him to send help.”

“Skype?” asked Loren, raising an eyebrow.

“The video thing. I’m sure we’ve been through this,” Cal said. “Can’t we do that?”

“We tried,” said Mizette, shifting uncomfortably in her seat. “I thought he just wasn’t answering, but it turns out the comms are down.”

“Along with everything else,” added Mech. “So, basically, we’re totally fonked.”

Cal nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, looks awfully like it,” he said. “What are the chances of someone just stumbling upon us?”

“Billions to one,” said Mech.

“And what are the chances of it being someone nice?”

Mech snorted. “I can’t even calculate that.”

Cal stood up and began to pace back and forth in front of his chair. “Right, let’s think about this. There are no planets around where we can get spare parts, except maybe the one filled with terrifying monsters,” he said, pointing to the monster on screen. “And I could be wrong, but they don’t exactly look like experts in spaceship engineering.”

He stopped pacing. “Space stations?”

“There’s a Zertex station just a little beyond range, but even if we could make it there, it’s unlikely to end well,” said Loren.

“And we can’t just, like, bypass the… I don’t know, thermal couplings or whatever is damaged?”

Mech frowned. “What you talking about?”

“I don’t know, it’s what Scotty would do!” said Cal.

“Who--?”

“Doesn’t matter,” said Cal. He went back to pacing. “Right, so spare parts. Spare parts. There must be somewhere we can…”

He stopped.

He clicked his fingers.

He grinned.

“Guys! I’ve got it!” he said, puffing out his chest. “Once again, Captain Cal Carver has only gone and saved the fonking day!”

He jumped into his seat. “Loren, plot a course.”

Loren sat in her own chair and flicked a few switches. “To where? Where are we going?”

“It’s not about where we’re going,” said Cal, interlocking his fingers behind his head and leaning back. “It’s about where we’ve been.”

* * *

Twenty minutes later, the Shatner was rattling towards its destination. The others were pretty dubious that Cal’s plan was going to work, but as it was the only plan they had been able to come up with, they decided it was worth a try.

On screen, the space-kitten frolicked with a piece of string, blocking Cal’s view of the streaking hyperspace star field. Cal had the Greyx’s key in his hands, and was turning it over and over, studying it. “So, it just… what? Slides into the lock? Is this what all space keys are like?”

“No. That one’s old. Very old,” said Miz.

“Only real backwater, ams-end-of-nowhere planets use metal keys these days,” said Mech.

Cal opened his mouth to protest, then changed his mind. “Ha. Yeah. The idiots,” he said. He flicked the key over and caught it. “And it opens the vault where this staff thing is?”

“The Bladestaff, yeah,” said Mizette.

“Do you believe all that stuff your dad says?” asked Cal. “That it’s, you know, magic?”

Miz shrugged. “I dunno. I mean… maybe. It’s one of the first things we get taught. It’s, like, a bedtime story all the Greyx get told.”

Loren turned in her chair. ”Yeah, but… it’s just a story, right? A staff that lets you control an entire species? No offence, but it seems a little… unlikely.”

“Hey, I was just inside a forty-mile long worm,” Cal pointed out. “A gangster made of rock has a bounty on my head because I wouldn’t eat my own arm, and one of my best friends is a green blob who likes to change into me in his spare time. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we’ve been through ‘unlikely’ and out the other side for quite a while now.”

“I don’t know if it’s true or not,” said Miz. “I don’t know if it’s really, like, magic or whatever.” She shrugged and looked at her claws, trying very hard to look disinterested. “But, like, it’s got this inscription on it. There are different translations but it’s basically ‘Whoever wields the Bladestaff rules the Greyx.’ So, I guess it’s kind of important. Like, historically, or whatever.”

“Right,” said Cal. He waved the key, then put it into his back pocket. “And it’s safe, thanks to us. Just as soon as we fix the video thing, and assuming your dad is speaking to us, he can tell us what to do with it, and it’s another mission accomplished for Space Team!”

“Please don’t call us that,” Mech grunted.

“Hey, you came up with it,” said Cal.

“Yeah, but in the heat of the moment,” sighed Mech. “I didn’t expect it to stick.”

“Come on, embrace it,” said Cal. “Embrace the Space Team.” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “Embrace it!”

“Shut up, man,” Mech tutted, then the Shatner creaked ominously as she dropped out of warp.

Loren’s fingers went to the control panel on her right. “We’re here. Putting it on screen.”

“See you soon, space cat!” said Cal, as the image of the kitten-thing flickered and was replaced by a view of outer space.

Cal leaned forward in his chair, studying the blocky rectangular hunk of metal rotating lazily a few miles ahead of them. If he squinted, he could just make out the inert octopus-things drifting along beside it.

“There she is,” said Cal. “What did you call them again?”

“Scrivers,” said Loren.

“And that big tank of theirs is full of stuff they’ve stolen from other ships?”

Loren nodded. “Pretty much.”

“Excellent,” said Cal. He slapped his hands on his thighs, then stood up. “Then let’s go shopping.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Cal, Loren, Mizette and Mech stood in a semi-circle, looking into a wall-mounted metal wardrobe.

“How can we only have one spacesuit left?” asked Cal. “Didn’t we have, like, twenty of them when we started?”

“We had five,” said Mech. “You dissolved one inside the worm.” He pointed at Miz and Loren in turn. “They destroyed two of them fighting a few days back.”

“She started it,” Miz muttered.

“I did not!”

“Ladies, please,” said Cal. “That still leaves two. Where’s the other one?”

“We traded it,” said Mech.

“We did? What for?”

“For that breakfast buffet a couple of days ago,” said Loren.

Cal smiled wistfully at the memory. “Right. Yeah. Totally worth it. That was awesome.” He puffed out his cheeks. “So, who’s going over?”

“I don’t need no suit,” said Mech. “I’ll go.”

“But you’ll need someone to help you,” said Cal. “Loren better stay here in case anything happens and she needs to move the ship. Miz, your dad might call us back, best if you were here for that.”

He grinned and clapped Mech on the arm. “Guess it’s me and you, buddy.”

“I can do it on my own,” said Mech. “I know what we need.”

“You know what you really need, Mech? Companionship,” said Cal.

“I really don’t.”

“Cal Carver and his trusty robot sidekick, saving the day!”

Mech rolled his eyes and shook his head. “Fine. Whatever. Just hurry up.” He ducked so he could peer out through the airlock hatch at the slowly spiraling Scriver ship. “Sooner we get over there, the sooner we get back.”

Cal glanced over at Miz and Loren. “He’s secretly very excited,” he said.

“You’re going to need something to carry everything back,” Loren pointed out. “Unless you want to make two hundred different trips.”

“What, like a box?” said Cal.

“It’d have to be a fonking big box,” said Mech.

Miz’s brow knotted for a moment, then her eyes went to the vents and pipes in the ceiling. “It’s fine,” she said. “I think I know just what you need.”

One quick-change later, Cal and Mech stood in the airlock, listening to the inner door sealing shut behind them. There was a pressure on Cal’s chest that was making it difficult to breathe. He prodded the spot where the pressure was at its worst with one finger, and the tightness squirmed around inside the suit’s front pocket.

“Much better. Thanks, buddy,” Cal said, and he felt Splurt vibrate briefly in reply.

“So, you jump when I say,” Mech instructed. “Not before, not after. You jump when I tell you.”

“Right, of course,” said Cal. “But what if I don’t?”

“If you don’t, then you’ll either smash into that ugly-amsed hunk of scrap, or you’ll go sailing off into outer space forever.”

“And they’re both bad?”

Mech scowled. “Yeah. Of course they’re bad!”

“Just checking,” said Cal. “This is my first space jump.”

“You could always stay here,” Mech suggested. “Seriously, I’ll be just fine.”

“What, and miss our special bonding time? No way! I am going to stick to you like glue, my friend. Like glue.”

“Great,” Mech grunted. “That’s just great.”

He hit the button to open the main airlock door, a little harder than was strictly necessary. Cal felt gravity suddenly abandon him, and lifted a foot or two off the deck. “Whoa!” he said. “I’m flying.”

“Focus,” said Mech’s voice, echoing inside Cal’s helmet. Mech’s metal legs tensed, the hydraulics spinning into position. “Get ready to jump.”

“Jump? How can I jump? My feet aren’t on the floor!” Cal pointed out.

Mech looked him up and down. “Huh. Yeah. Good point,” he admitted. Five metal fingers clamped around Cal’s wrist. “I guess I’ll catch you up.”

“Catch me up? What do you mean--?” Cal began, but then Mech’s whole upper body twisted suddenly and Cal wailed as he sailed backwards through the airlock, and hurtled, out of control, through the empty abyss of space.

He flapped and flailed, trying to twist himself around, but there was nothing to push himself against, and he could only watch as the Shatner grew smaller and smaller in his visor.

“Quit screaming,” said Mech’s voice in his ear.

“I wasn’t screaming!” Cal protested.

“You were totally screaming.” That was Loren this time. “We heard you from here.”

“Well no fonking wonder!” said Cal. “Was tossing me into space really necessary?”

“Necessary? No,” admitted Mech, as two jets of something purple ignited under his feet, propelling him out of the airlock. “Fun? Hell, yes!”

Once Mech had caught Cal and saved him from hurtling into the endless void, they found a way into the Scriver ship. It wasn’t exactly difficult. The Shatner’s cannons had gouged gaping wounds in all four sides of the thing, and they quickly found a hole big enough for even Mech to squeeze himself through.

“Wait, so there’s no gravity in here, either?” asked Cal, bouncing around somewhere near the ceiling. Or the floor. The inside of the ship was completely dark, and he wasn’t really sure which way was up and which was down. He wasn’t even convinced up and down even existed in space, regardless of how much he currently might like them to.

“The ship’s dead, of course there ain’t no gravity,” said Mech. “Hell, there’re barely walls.”

“So, what, I just float around the place like a balloon? That doesn’t exactly seem dignified.”

Mech, who was standing without any apparent difficulty, reached up and pulled Cal down. A metal finger prodded a control on the suit’s sleeve and Cal felt his feet turn to lead. He dropped the final few inches to the floor and his feet hit the metal with a jarring clang he felt all the way up his spine.

“Magnetic boots,” Mech explained.

Cal looked down at his feet, now firmly attached to… he chose to call it the floor. “So, what? Now I’m just stuck here on this one spot?”

“Shizz, you really don’t know nothin’, do you?” Mech tutted. “Walk. Just walk. The boots will keep you from floating off.”

Cal gave the footwear a doubtful look, then took a few paces forwards. “Hey! It works,” he said. “That’s very clever. Someone could make a fortune selling these.”

“I think that ship might have sailed,” Mech said. Two powerful flashlights illuminated on his shoulders, cutting a swathe through the darkness of the ship. Broken fragments of scorched metal bobbed around in the corridor. Something that was possibly a chair – but just as possibly not – bounced lazily from wall to wall as the ship rotated around it.

“Think there’s anyone alive on here?” Cal asked.

“Doubt it,” said Mech. “The loss of atmosphere would’ve been too quick. They’d have suffocated in seconds.”

“Way to make me feel bad,” Cal muttered.

“Don’t,” said Mech. “Scrivers are animals. They’ve killed millions. Families. Kids. They don’t care. Good riddance, I say.”

“Well, then yay for us, I guess,” said Cal. “Now, where do we find the stuff we need?”

Mech tapped a few controls on his arm, muttered under his breath, then slammed a fist onto the buttons. “Still not working properly. Vajazzle’s shut-down voodoo screwed them up.”

“Great. So how do we know which way to go?” asked Cal.

Mech looked along the corridor to his left.

He looked along the corridor to his right.

He shrugged. “This way,” he said, picking a direction and starting to walk.

“What, that’s it?” Cal shouted after him. “No plan? We’re just going to go that way and hope we find something interesting?”

Mech stopped at a door and pressed the switch to open it. As he expected, it didn’t budge. “Pretty much. The inside of most of these boats is taken up with storage. Shouldn’t be difficult to find something,” he said, drawing back a fist. He powered it through the metal, then tore the door free of its hinges. It floated towards Cal like a surfboard on the tide. He stepped aside to let it continue along the corridor, then turned back to Mech.

Mech stood in the doorway, staring into the room beyond. “What is it?” asked Cal. “What’s in there?”

Mech’s voice came as a hushed whisper in Cal’s ear. “Something interesting,” he said. “Something really fonking interesting.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Loren and Miz both sat on the flight deck, watching the viewscreen. “They’re in,” Loren said, as Cal and Mech clambered in through a hole in the Sciver ship’s hull.

“Yeah, I can see that,” said Miz. “I’m not blind.”

“OK, OK, I was just saying,” said Loren. She drummed her fingers on the arm of her chair. “We won’t be able to radio them. Transmitters are too damaged. Signal won’t get through the hull.”

“Well, duh,” said Miz.

Loren sighed. “Seriously, what is your problem?”

“I don’t have a problem,” Miz scowled.

“Well, obviously you do.”

“Well, obviously I don’t.”

Loren shook her head. “Fine. Whatever.”

“Maybe you’re my problem.”

“Oh yeah? Yeah? Well maybe I am!” said Loren.

“Exactly!”

“Fine!”

“OK, then!”

They both turned away and went back to staring at the screen. Nothing much was happening.

It was Miz who eventually spoke.

“Think they’ll be OK?”

“I hope so,” said Loren.

“Yeah,” Miz grunted. “Me, too.”

* * *

Cal and Mech stood together in a room that looked like the inside of a large warehouse. Neither of them spoke. If Cal was asked to estimate the size of the room, he’d have guessed around two football fields long by about one wide. Mech, on the other hand, having never seen a football field before, wouldn’t.

It was only possible to estimate the size of the place thanks to a murky red glow that seemed to seep from the walls all the way to the room’s far end. Emergency lighting, Cal guessed.

An impossible amount of… stuff bobbed listlessly in the space between the floor and the ceiling, rotating slowly in the zero gravity. It varied from tiny nail-sized pieces of metal to complex-looking machinery the size of a small house. Standing looking up at it all, Cal felt like a diver at the bottom of an ocean teaming with marine life of all shapes and sizes. It was pretty awe-inspiring, until something that looked a bit like a microwave oven thudded into the back of his head.

“Ow!” he muttered, rubbing the helmet. He gestured up into the shimmering shoal of ship parts. “You think we can get what we need here?”

Mech squinted, his eyes scanning the room. “Yeah. Yeah, I can see some of it from here. I’ll go collect it. Gimme Splurt.”

Cal undid the pocket on the front of his suit and looked inside. He was surprised – and really quite horrified – to find his own face slumped inside it like a discarded Halloween mask. Splurt quickly dissolved back into blob-form, guilt flitting across his bloodshot eyeballs.

“Come on, dude, cut it out!” Cal said. “It’s bad enough when you turn into me all the way, please don’t start turning into my amputated face.”

He scooped Splurt out of the pocket and passed him to Mech. The green goo wrapped around Mech’s metal hand and twisted up his forearm.

“You sure this is gonna work?” Mech asked.

“Yeah! Of course!” said Cal. “You know… possibly.” He shrugged. “Worth a try, right?”

Mech’s lips moved, but whatever he said he chose not to broadcast to Cal’s radio. “OK, I’m gonna go round up our supplies,” he eventually said.

“Cool! What should I do?” asked Cal.

“Wait here. Touch nothing,” Mech instructed.

“What? That’s it? I can help!” Cal insisted.

“This’ll be much easier if I handle it. You just stay here and out of trouble.”

Cal sighed. “Fine. But what if something comes in?”

“Ain’t nothing gonna come in,” said Mech. “There ain’t nothing or no-one alive in here ‘cept us.”

“OK. Well… just give me a shout if you need me, I guess,” said Cal.

“Thanks,” said Mech. “I won’t.”

The soles of his feet ignited, propelling him off the deck. He lifted up through the floating debris. Pieces of scrap bounced off his hulking metal frame. Cal watched them roll off into the dimly-red darkness, before he lost sight of them.

Mech was up near the ceiling already, the glow of his boosters the brightest thing in the room. “How’s it going?” Cal asked.

“Man, I been gone for twenty seconds. It ain’t started going anywhere yet. It’s gonna take a while.”

“Want me to tell you a joke or something to help pass the time?”

“No!” Mech said.

“OK, so there were these three Mexicans…” Cal began, then there was a soft click in his ear and he knew Mech had switched the radio off. “Well, that’s charming,” Cal said.

He watched Mech for a while, zipping up, down, and around the room. It soon became boring, though, so he tried to find other ways to pass the time. This was quite difficult, as there was nowhere he could go and nothing he could really do.

He stood on one leg for a while, but it didn't do a lot to relieve the boredom.

Standing on the other leg wasn’t much better.

He thought about standing on no legs, but was worried that he’d float away and wouldn’t get back down, so he decided against it.

He stamped his foot on the floor to see if he could hear anything. He couldn’t, but he did feel the impact in his ankle and knee, so decided to knock that on the head, too.

There were a few small bits of metal bobbing around him. He poked and prodded at them, sending them spinning off in different directions. He tried to set up a race between a bulky fuse and a small circuit board, but he misjudged the prods and sent them both off in slightly different directions.

Something that looked like a metal briefcase drifted towards him. At first, he thought about dodging it. He’d spent a quite enjoyable thirty seconds or so dodging other things a few minutes ago, before the novelty had worn off. Then he considered kicking it to see how fast he could send it hurtling up towards the ceiling, but it was coming in just a little too high for him to be able to swing his leg without risking some sort of groin trauma.

Besides, something about the case caught his interest. He caught it, then ran his gloved hands around the outside edge, searching for some sort of clasp or lock. After four complete circuits of the thing, he had to accept that there wasn’t one.

It looked like the type of hard-bodied case that might be used to transport something valuable. Diamonds, maybe. Space diamonds.

Cal flipped the case over in his hands. As well as not having clasps or a zip, it also didn’t have a handle. Cal tapped the top so he could listen to try to figure out if the thing was hollow, but sound’s inability to travel in a vacuum foiled his plan.

He was about to send it floating on its way again when he spotted the buttons. There were three of them, all the same color and texture of the metal. They were each about the size of his thumb-print, and spaced several inches apart.

Cal glanced up into the cavernous warehouse. Mech was darting around somewhere near the middle, paying him no attention whatsoever. Cal looked back at the case.

“OK, let’s see what you’re hiding,” he said, then he pressed one of the buttons. Nothing happened, so he pressed the other two.

“Shizz,” he muttered, when the case remained steadfastly shut. He pressed them again, in a different order this time, with exactly the same effect.

Stretching the fingers on his right hand, he pressed two of the buttons, while jabbing the third with a finger from his left.

The lid snapped open suddenly, flicking the case out of Cal’s hand. He watched it drift upwards beyond his reach as something dark and shiny unfolded itself from within. In the space of less than a second, a series of short metal poles locked together to form a rectangular frame fifteen or more feet high, and seven or eight wide.

A thin beam of white light projected upwards from inside the case, stopping when it hit the inside top of the newly-sprouted frame. The light fanned out, spreading until the whole inside of the rectangle was illuminated in white.

No, not white. Not anymore. As Cal watched, the light became a picture of a blue sky dotted with clouds. He tilted his head, following the image as it drifted further and further away from him.

Was that Earth? He could only see a relatively small patch of sky, so it was difficult to tell, but while there was nothing in the view that told him it was definitely his home planet, there was equally nothing that told him it wasn’t.

“Hey, Mech?” he said, but Mech’s radio was still turned off.

Cal looked at the patch of cloudy-blue again. It was a screen, that was all. It had to be. And yet…

He plucked a cigar-sized bolt from the air as it floated past him, placed it flat on the palm of his hand, then flicked it towards the rectangle of sky. The bolt tumbled, end-over-end, spinning towards the image.

The patch of sky rippled as the chunk of metal passed through the rectangle’s center. It immediately began to spin more quickly, then plunged out of sight as it suddenly found itself under the pull of gravity again. Cal watched for it falling from the other side of the rectangle, but it didn’t reappear.

“It’s a portal,” Cal whispered. “It’s a motherfonking space portal.”

There was a sudden movement on the other side of the portal that snagged his breath in his throat. Something pinkish, and pockmarked with craters, blocked out the sky as it swept down from the top left of the rectangle.

And then, just as suddenly, it stopped. Cal blinked. The enormous eye that was now staring back at him blinked, too.

It looked human – well, apart from the size. It had a white bit, a brown-ish bit, and a shiny black pupil in which Cal could now see himself reflected. He would have said it was definitely a human eye, had it not been several hundred thousand times too large.

“Um… Mech,” Cal said again, hoping he’d reopened the comms channel in the last few seconds. To Cal’s disappointment, he hadn’t.

Cal thought long and hard about what to do next. Unfortunately, no matter how long and hard he thought about it, nothing particularly inspiring came to mind. In the end, he settled for waving. If the owner of the eye waved back, Cal didn’t see it.

The eye moved again, and the view of the sky returned. Cal kept watching, the thumping of his heart and the rasping of his breath the only sounds in the universe.

Seconds passed. The eye didn’t return. “OK, OK, nothing to worry about,” Cal whispered. “Panic over. Whatever that was, it’s…”

The last few words caught in his throat as something else moved on the other side of the rectangle. It wasn’t an eye this time. It was a finger. An enormous human finger with a cracked, dirty nail.

And it was reaching through the gap towards him.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Cal backed away from the probing finger, his magnetic boots snapping him to the floor after each hasty step.

“Mech!” he shouted, as if raising his voice could somehow find a loophole in the laws of physics. Unsurprisingly, it didn’t. Mech, who was currently several hundred feet away in an airless vacuum-filled room, didn’t respond.

The finger wriggled as it tried to squeeze through the rectangular frame of the portal. The tip was easily a dozen feet across the widest point, and Cal could see every loop and whorl of the fingerprint. It reminded him a little of the baby sandworm, only without the mouth or glossy mucus coat.

The underside of the nail was caked with grime, the nail itself chipped and uncared for. It was a fingernail that had never seen a manicure and, more important, one which was currently rapidly approaching Cal’s head.

“Hey, fonk off, you big finger,” he said, jabbing a punch at the end of the fingertip. He didn’t expect to hurt it, but he hoped the impact would send the floating frame tumbling away into the warehouse-like expanse around him. No such luck. Whatever was forcing the enormous finger through – an even more enormous hand, Cal assumed – was holding the portal frame more or less steady. Cal fired off another few jabs as the finger probed closer, then retreated another couple of steps.

He shot a quick glance in Mech’s direction. Mech was way down the far end now, the light from his boot-boosters bobbing around near the ceiling. It reflected, just for a moment, on a bulbous green sack that drifted along behind him.

The finger lurched forward almost a clear foot. Cal screamed as it poked his helmet, leaving a greasy smudged fingerprint on the glass. He stumbled back, hands reaching for anything he could find to fight the determined digit.

He spied a sliver of blueish-green metal with a ragged edge, and snatched it from the air. As the finger reached for him again, he drove the pointed tip of the metal into the rounded tip of the finger. With a jerk that was almost as sharp as the metal fragment, the finger drew back.

A blob of dark crimson squeezed itself through the gap where metal met flesh, and rolled into a pulsing ball. It drifted towards Cal, and he instinctively tried to bat it away. This only resulted in the single large pulsing ball of blood becoming several dozen smaller pulsing balls of blood, and Cal spent the next few seconds dodging them as if they were a swarm of angry wasps.

For a moment, it looked as if the finger was going to withdraw all the way through the portal, but then it stopped and began to squirm forward again, more tentatively this time.

“OK, fonk this,” Cal muttered. He ducked the finger, crouched low, then jumped. Arms outstretched, he flew towards the metal briefcase from which the portal had sprouted. Slamming into it, Cal, the portal, and the massive finger all went spinning upwards towards the distant ceiling.

Cal reached around behind the frame and tried to pull the lid of the case closed, but it wouldn’t budge. He fumbled for the three buttons, spreading his fingers wide again as he pressed all three at the same time.

The slight vibration Cal only now realized he had been feeling stopped. Even through the vacuum of space, Cal could have sworn he heard a distant scream, then the rectangular frame of the portal snapped shut, and the tip of the giant finger went sailing upwards.

Cal was propelled in the opposite direction, and hit the ground after just a few seconds. Clutching the now-closed case to his chest, he frantically tried to plant his feet on the floor before he bounced upwards again.

He felt the reassuring tremor through his foot as one of his boots locked on, then hurriedly planted the other one beside it just as Mech weaved through the debris towards him, dragging a marquee-sized green balloon.

“Everything OK?” Mech asked, looking Cal up and down.

Cal nodded, a little too quickly, and tried not to look up. “Aye, laddie!” he said, in a fierce Scottish accent. He shook his head. “I don’t know why I said it like that. Yes. Everything’s OK,” he said. He smiled too broadly. “Nothing to report.”

Mech looked him up and down again, more slowly this time. “OK, then. Well, I think I got everything we need.” He nodded towards the case. “What you got there?”

“Where?” asked Cal. He looked down, appearing surprised to discover his arms wrapped around a bulky metal briefcase. “Oh, this thing. It’s… I thought I’d take it with us. You know, like a memento of our Boys’ Day Out?”

“What is it?”

Cal’s mouth opened, closed, then opened again. “Trust me,” he eventually said. “You do not want to know.”

* * *

It turned out that Mech did want to know. In fact, he refused to let Cal go anywhere until he’d explained in detail what was in the case. He hadn’t believed any of Cal’s story, until Cal had sent him to find the fingertip. He’d switched the radio back on by that point, and shortly after Mech had gone in search of the decapitated digit, Cal’s earpiece had been filled with some really quite inventive swearing.

Cal had assumed Mech would insist they left the case behind, but to his surprise, Mech agreed he could take it. A hole appeared in the side of the Splurt-sack, just big enough to fit the case through.

“Thanks, buddy,” said Cal, posting the box through the slot. Splurt’s gooey green surface squidged together again, so seamlessly it was impossible to tell there had been a hole there at all. And then, with everything they needed floating around inside the little slime-ball’s innards, they’d all headed back across space to the Shatner.

“Miz, I have to hand it to you,” said Cal, when he and Mech stepped out of the airlock, “using Splurt as a big stretchy sack was genius. Genius. Also,” he added, “it gave me an opportunity to say the words ‘big stretchy sack.’ Those don’t come along very often.”

Mizette shrugged, trying her best to look disinterested, but an involuntary wag of her tail gave her away. “Whatever.”

“Anything interesting happen while we were out?” Cal asked, looking from Miz to Loren and back again.

“Nope,” said Loren.

“No space monsters, big shark people…?”

Loren shook her head. “Not that we noticed.”

Cal exhaled. “Well, that’s a first. Good job!”

Miz tutted. “Why? She didn’t do anything.”

“Oh, I wasn’t talking to her, I was talking to you,” Cal said. He winked, and Mizette’s tail went into full-on windshield wiper mode, swishing happily left and right.

Mech clanked past him and stopped beside Loren. He jabbed a thumb back in the direction of the airlock, which was now cluttered with the parts he’d taken from the Scriver ship. Splurt bobbed around on the floor at Cal’s feet, weaving between his legs like a pet cat might do, were cats actually capable of demonstrating genuine affection.

“We should get started,” said Mech. “The odds of someone finding us drifting along out here should be too high to even matter, but we got a bad habit of attracting trouble.”

“Agreed,” said Loren. “We should get to work.”

“Ship repair montage!” Cal cried, thrusting both hands in the air above his head. Then, he unzipped his space suit, wriggled it off, and shot the rest of the group a grin. “You two get your tools. I’ll go fetch the guitar!”

* * *

What Cal had hoped would be a fun, three-minute ship repair montage turned out to be a laborious sixteen-hour process that grew tedious within the first twenty minutes or so. With his knowledge of spaceship maintenance limited to the point of not existing, Cal was relegated to the job of handing Mech and Loren their tools. As he couldn’t tell a Syphoid Wrench from a Thromm Hammer, he was then relegated further to fetching hot drinks, before eventually being demoted to just keeping out of everyone’s way and not touching anything.

After a while, he headed for the sleeping quarters. Once he was sure no-one had seen him, he slid the metal case he’d taken from the Scriver ship out from under his bed and looked it over. Based on Cal’s description, Mech had agreed it was some sort of portable portal, although where it led was impossible to tell. Cal had vague memories of an old TV show called Land of the Giants, but after giving him a particularly withering look, Mech had quite strongly voiced his opinion that it was unlikely to lead there.

And yet, that eye and the finger had both looked human. Or mostly human, anyway. Just bigger. Much, much bigger.

Cal ran his hands along the case, being careful to avoid the three buttons that had made it spring open last time. The last thing he needed right now was for the giant on the other side to come looking for his missing fingertip.

He turned the briefcase-sized box over, searching for any markings that might reveal where it led to, or who made it, but there was nothing but a few scuffs and scratches on the thin metal plating.

Hearing movement out in the corridor, Cal quickly slid the case under his bed, just as Loren entered. She hesitated when she saw him down on his knees, a frown crumping her brow.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“I’m… kneeling down,” said Cal.

Loren raised an arm to the level of her head and leaned against the door frame. “I can see that. Why?”

“I’m praying,” said Cal, after just a moment’s pause. He clasped his hands in front of him, and raised his eyes to the ceiling. “So, as I was saying, if you could help us get the ship fixed, that’d be great. Love to everyone. Amen.”

He made a series of sweeping motions in front of him which very roughly approximated a cross shape, then stood up. “There. That’s a weight off,” he said. “Both knees and, you know, soul or whatever.” He smiled. “Now, what was it you wanted?”

Loren regarded him quizzically for a moment, then shrugged. “We’re patched up. Or as patched up as we can get out here. We really need to spend a couple of days in dock somewhere to fix everything properly.”

“And can we do that now? I thought landing was going to make us blow-up or something?”

“Not anymore,” said Loren. “Mech’s been out and managed to reseat the heat shielding. The shields are holding stable, warp and impulse engines are good – not great, but good. We even fixed the torpedo tubes.”

Cal let out a little cheer. “I have torpedoes back! We should go blow some shizz up,” he said. “What about the video comm thing? Is that back?”

“Guys!” shouted Miz, before Loren could answer. “You might want to get up here. We’re getting a message.”

“Well, I guess that answers that,” said Cal, following Loren out of the room and onto the flight deck. The screen was filled with rolling static, and a stuttering hiss spluttered from the speakers.

“Oh, great job, guys,” said Cal, giving Loren and Mech a double thumbs-up. “Really stellar work. Is this HD? That picture quality is incredible.”

“It ain’t our side, it’s their side,” snapped Mech. “Whoever the fonk they are.”

“Try to boost the signal,” Cal suggested.

“Already on it,” said Mech, fiddling with some controls to the right of the screen.

Cal smiled, his eyes widening in surprise. “What, that’s actually a thing we can do?” he asked. “That was, like, a total guess! Go me.”

A few snatches of audio crackled over the speaker. “… under attack. Assist…”

Miz sat forward in her chair, her ears twitching. “That’s Kannus.”

Cal looked from her to the speaker and back again. “You sure?”

“Positive.”

The voice came again. Miz was right. It was Kannus’s voice, but he sounded panicked. Scared, even. “… jazzle…”

A burst of static.

“… all dead…”

Another static squeal.

“… help. Someone …”

And then, with a final crackle, silence.

The rolling static blinked into darkness. A moment later, the screen changed to show a view of outer space. The Scriver ship had drifted off, and was now just a grey speck against a black background.

“What do we do?” asked Loren, her voice sounding unnaturally loud in the sudden silence.

Miz was still staring up at the screen, her mouth hanging open a little. Realizing this, she closed it and gave herself a shake. “Cal?” she asked, although she wasn’t really sure why.

Cal spun in his seat. “We go help. We got the guy into this, we’ll get him out. Mech, lock onto the source of that signal!” he announced.

Mech frowned. “What? I can’t do that.”

“Why not?” asked Cal.

“Well, ‘cause it’s impossible, for one thing.”

Cal deflated a little. “Oh. Is it? But I thought… You were able to boost the signal.”

“So? It’s two completely different things,” said Mech.

Cal shrugged. “Radio?” he said, his inflection raising at the end as if to suggest the word was some sort of question.

“What’s that mean?” asked Mech. “Why you just saying ‘radio’ like that? ‘Radio’ what?”

“I have no idea,” Cal admitted. “It’s just… it feels like we should be able to lock onto his signal. It feels like someone should have invented a way to do that by now.”

“Well they ain’t,” said Mech, pinching the bridge of his nose between a metal finger and thumb and trying not to lose his temper.

Cal turned his chair back to face the others. “So, slight problem, we have no idea where Kannus actually is right now.”

“No,” agreed Mizette. She took a deep breath, then let it out as a shaky sigh. “But I know a Greyx who does.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

“I forbid it,” growled Graxan, his scowling face filling the Shatner’s screen. “You are not to interfere.”

“Interfere? It’s not interfering. He called us for help,” said Miz, crossing her arms across her powerful chest. “Tell us where you sent him and we can go help.”

“You would do well to listen more carefully, daughter,” Graxan snapped. “I forbade you getting involved. You have made quite enough of a mess of things as it is. I and a squadron of guards shall attend Kannus.”

“He called us. We should help. I should help. He’s my Lifebound,” Miz protested.

“A fact you were all too quick to forget when it suited you,” said Graxan, his eyes flicking just momentarily in Cal’s direction. “You will journey to Greyx Prime and await further instruction. I will bring Kannus back to you unharmed.”

“No!” said Miz, the ferocity of her voice taking everyone – even Graxan – by surprise. “Kannus called us. He needs help now. Our ship is faster than any of yours. By the time you get to him, it’ll be too late. Tell us where he is, or I swear you’ll never see or hear from me again.”

Cal raised a hand. “Uh, excuse me? Graxan?”

The old Greyx’s gaze lingered on Miz for a few seconds, then slowly shifted across the bridge. “What do you want?”

“It’s just…” Cal began, then he stood up and cleared his throat. “It’s just, I feel like I’m sort of partly responsible for this whole mess.”

“Partly?”

“Or, you know, mostly,” said Cal. “Vajazzle just wants this staff thing of yours so she can get at me. It’s not fair that anyone should get hurt. Even Kannus, who – and no offence to the guy – is a total shizznod.”

“What are you saying?” asked Miz.

Cal sighed. “I’m saying – and I don’t quite believe that I am - that if Vajazzle’s attacking Kannus, I’ll hand myself over to her. She can take me to Sinclair. I mean, what’s the worst he can do?”

Mech and Loren both opened their mouths to speak. Cal quickly dismissed them with a wave. “Rhetorical question. Don’t want to know.”

Miz shook her head. “No. You can’t. I won’t let you.”

“Come on,” said Cal. He tried to smile, but it was a shadow of his usual grin. “It’s the right thing to do, and you know it. How many people has she killed to get at me?”

“Just one that we know of,” said Loren.

“Wait, seriously? That’s all?” said Cal, sounding genuinely surprised. He counted on his fingers. “The guy she hung upside-down… I guess Kash accidentally fed himself to that worm, so we can’t really pin that one on her… Shizz, yeah, you’re right. Just that one guy whose name I don’t even remember.”

He looked up and realized Graxan was glaring down at him. “But, I mean, obviously that’s still one too many,” he quickly added. “So it’s time I ended this. Tell us where Kannus is. I’ll go hand myself over to Vajazzle and put a stop to this whole thing right now. No-one else needs to get hurt.”

Graxan rolled his tongue around inside his mouth. This went on for several seconds, and Cal had just begun to suspect the Greyx leader was secretly eating a toffee when he spoke again.

“Very well,” Graxan intoned. “We have been unable to contact Kannus to verify the situation, so I will have the co-ordinates transmitted to you, on the understanding that you turn yourself over to Lady Vajazzle.”

“No, you can’t!” said Miz. “You’re under Greyx protection!” She spun to face the screen. “You said he was under Greyx protection!”

“He is. That still stands,” agreed Graxan. “But if he willingly chooses to turn himself over into Vajazzle’s custody, no harm has been done.”

“No harm has been done?” Miz spat, but Cal laid a hand on her shoulder before she could continue.

“Hey, hey, easy, OK? I know this isn’t what any of us wanted, but… well, it’s just the way it has to be. I have to do this, Miz. I have to.”

On screen, Graxan’s face darkened, horrified by this demonstration of affection. “The co-ordinates have been sent. Do not mess this up,” he said, then the image changed to a panorama of stars.

“Got the co-ordinates and punched them in,” said Loren. She glanced back over her shoulder. “You’re not really going to turn yourself over to her, are you?”

Cal snorted. “Christ, no. You think I’m an idiot? That’d be suicide.”

“So, what’s the plan?” asked Mech.

“The plan is that we’re going to go find that ugly two-faced space witch and test out the torpedoes,” Cal replied. He jumped into his seat and winked at Miz. “Buckle up, darlin’,” he instructed. “We’ve got us an unwanted husband to save!”

* * *

Cal leaned forward in his seat. On screen, a planet hung against the shimmering background of space. It was a nice planet, he thought. There was lots of green and blue, and it reminded him quite a bit of Earth.

Two thirds of the world were bathed in varying degrees of sunshine, before it all gave way to a slice of darkness. Thousands – millions, probably – of lights pinpricked the gloom as towns and cities began embracing the oncoming night.

“Finally, a nice-looking world to visit,” said Cal, nodding appreciatively. “This is way better than the usual dumps we end up at. Bet no-one’s farming the shizz out of giant worms down there.” He glanced over at Loren. “They’re not, are they?”

“No,” said Loren.

“I knew it!”

“But we’re not going there,” she continued. “We’re going there.”

To call the thing she pointed at ‘spherical’ would be generous. It was a misshapen chunk of dark rock, barely visible against the segment of night-time that was spreading across the planet’s western hemisphere. It was a moon, but it didn’t really look much like one. Instead, it looked more like a growth – a cancerous tumor on the face of the world that was probably infecting everything around it.

Cal exhaled slowly through his nose. “Yeah,” he said. “That figures.” He turned to Mech. “Scanners picking up any sign of trouble?”

Mech shook his head. “No.”

Cal tapped a fingernail against a front tooth. “What about the sensors?” he asked. “Or did we decide they were the same thing?” Mech’s expression told him all he needed to know. He nodded. “We decided those were the same thing.”

“I don’t like it,” said Loren.

“I know, right? We need to settle on one name or another, we can’t keep using both,” said Cal. “I vote for ‘scanners.’” He raised a hand. “All in favor?”

“Not that,” said Loren. She gestured at the malignant-looking moon. “We’re picking up life signs, but nothing that suggests anyone’s under attack.”

“That’s good, isn’t it?” said Miz.

“Unless we’re too late,” said Mech.

“Or in the wrong place,” said Loren.

“Jesus, ever the optimists, eh, guys?” said Cal, dropping his hand. “If we were too late, we wouldn’t be picking up life signs. And why would Graxan send us to the wrong place?”

“Because he didn’t want us coming here and screwing everything up?” said Mech. “His words, not mine.”

“Son-of-a-bedge, he’d totally send us to the wrong place!” said Cal.

“Hold on, I can probably get us an image,” said Mech, busying around the controls. On screen, an illuminated rectangle appeared around the cancerous moon-growth, then the highlighted section zoomed until it filled the entire display.

“I don’t see anything but a nasty-looking rock,” said Cal.

Another rectangle appeared. This one highlighted a chunk of the moon just south of its equator. Again, the image zoomed in until it was just possible to make out a pixelated shape on the rocky surface.

Cal squinted and tilted his head. “I see something, but I have no idea what. What are we looking at?”

“One sec,” said Mech. He tapped a few more buttons and the heavily pixelated image became a marginally less pixelated image. The change was just enough to reveal the outline of an asymmetrical craft with one wing bigger than the other.

“That’s Kannus’s ship,” said Mizette.

“Seriously, how does that thing not just fly around in circles?” Cal wondered. He shook his head. “Any sign of our two-faced elderly friend?”

“Nothing,” said Mech.

“I’m not seeing her, either,” said Loren. “That’s the only ship down there.”

“Can we Skype him now that we’re closer?” asked Cal, quickly adding: “And please don’t say ‘Skype?’ and do that face again, you know what I mean.”

“Been trying since we came out of warp,” said Loren. “Nothing.”

Cal studied the screen for a few moments, then slapped both hands on his thighs. “OK, then. In that case, I guess we go down and ask him what all the panic’s about.” He flashed Miz a smile. “You ready?”

Miz nodded. “Ready.”

“OK, taking us down,” said Loren. She inched forwards just a fraction on the thrusters. Over the next several seconds, the image of Kannus’s ship grew ever so slightly larger.

“You know that thing’s still zoomed in, right?” said Cal.

Although he could only see the back of her head, Cal saw the surprise flit across her face. “What? Yeah. Of course! I absolutely did know that,” she said. The screen flicked back to showing the moon in its actual position, several hundred miles away. “I just thought we might want to… take our time?” Loren continued. The question mark at the end of the sentence was unmistakable.

“Well, given that we were called here as a matter of urgency, that makes absolutely no sense,” Cal pointed out. “It’s literally the opposite of what we should be doing.”

“Alright, alright, fine,” Loren grumbled. “I forgot we were zoomed in.” She eased down her foot, and the Shatner hummed as it picked up speed.

“Holy shizz,” Miz muttered. “Literally, worst. Pilot. Ever.”

As if to prove Miz wrong, Loren steered the ship on a surprisingly graceful descent through the atmosphere in which very little in the way of shaking, shuddering or panicky, wild-eyed screaming from Cal took place.

Just seven or eight minutes after dropping out of warp speed, the Shatner’s landing thrusters fired up and it lowered more or less steadily to a landing beside Kannus’s ship.

Up close, the moon looked even less hospitable than it had from space. If Kifo looked dead, this place looked like it had died, come back as a zombie, then been killed all over again. The ground was a dark rainbow of blacks, grays and pungent greens. Bush-sized clumps of fungi sprouted in patches all around the ships, presumably continuing beyond the ridges of a volcanic-looking crater ring that fenced them in on all sides.

A dozen or so feet beyond Kannus’s ship was… no, not a house. To call it a house would be ludicrously kind. To call it anything would be generous, Cal thought. It was really just a pile of rocks with a hole for a door and something that looked like a piece of tarp weighted down as a roof. It had presumably been put there on purpose, but it was so roughly built that it might just have landed that way by accident.

Cal shuddered and glanced at the blue-green planet up there in the sky. It seemed to be taunting them with its good looks and sunny demeanor. From here, Cal could see a stretch of beach along one coast that had to be five or six thousand miles long. That was a complete guess, of course – for all he knew, it was anywhere between a quarter and fifty times that size – but it was beautiful, either way.

He turned his attention back to the shizzhole of a moon they were parked on. “Can we breathe out there? We’ve still only got one space suit.”

“Atmosphere’s tolerable,” said Mech, checking his readings.

“Tolerable, eh? You’re really selling this place, you know that?” Cal clicked his tongue against the back of his teeth a few times. “We should all gun-up before we go out there,” he said. “Just in case.”

“You promise not to shoot any of us or pretend to be a… what did you call it? Cowboy this time?” said Mech.

“I promise to try,” said Cal. He looked up into the shadowy vents and pipes of the ceiling and whistled. “Here, Splurty, Splurty.”

A goo-covered eyeball extended from inside a pipe on a long strand of slime. It lowered from the ceiling like a legless spider on its thread, turned slowly as it gazed around the flight deck, then it and the rest of Splurt’s quivering body plopped into Cal’s lap.

Cal scooped the shapeshifter up and placed him on his shoulder. Splurt balanced there effortlessly, pulsing happily as Cal stood up. “Just in case we get into trouble, he can do that battle armor thing again,” he explained. Splurt began to shift around, but Cal stopped him. “Not yet. Just if I give the signal. So we’re clear, the signal will be me getting badly beaten or shot at. That’s when you do your thing, OK?”

Splurt twitched.

“OK, then,” said Cal. He rolled up his stained shirt sleeves and cricked his neck a couple of times. “Let’s gun-up, then go save the day.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Cal stepped down from the Shatner’s landing ramp, and immediately found himself at the business end of several mean-looking weapons. They weren’t all guns – he’d have preferred it if they were – but a mixture of rifles, pistols and long-handled spears with angular metal tips that looked like they’d take very little effort to go in, but need a whole lot of yanking and twisting to get back out.

“Whoa, whoa, easy!” he said, somewhat regretting his decision not to wear the Splurt-armor. It was only when he saw the amber eyes and fuzzy snouts at the other end of the weapons that he relaxed a little. He focused on one of the figures just a few feet away on his right. “It’s us, Kannus. Chill out.”

“He’s not Kannus. I am,” growled Kannus, from somewhere over on Cal’s left.

“Oops. Sorry,” said Cal. “You guys kind of look the same to me. But, you know, not in a racist way,” he added, hurriedly. He tried to laugh, but it came out as a hoarse wheeze in the thin atmosphere.

“Lower your weapons,” Kannus barked, as Mizette trudged down the ramp. As one, the eight or nine other Greyx all pointed their guns and blades to the ground, then lowered their heads and dropped to one knee. “Your Highness,” said Kannus. “You grace us with your presence.”

“Yeah, whatever. Just get up,” said Miz, as Mech and Loren exited the ship behind her.

Cal put his hands on his hips and looked around them, nodding slowly. “So,” he said, once the Greyx were all back on their feet. “What’s the big emergency?”

“Forgive me, Your Highness, but why have you come?” asked Kannus, ignoring Cal completely. “I understood we were to protect Savvon, and you were to attend the keykeeper.”

“Yeah, but… you called us,” said Miz.

Kannus’s hairy brow furrowed. He glanced at the other Greyx, then back to Mizette. “No, Your Highness--”

“I told you, quit calling me that,” Mizette sighed.

“Forgive me. No… Mizette,” Kannus said, the word sounding awkward in his mouth. “I did not.”

“Yeah, you did,” Miz insisted. “You called us and told us you needed help. We all heard it. Right, guys?”

Cal swallowed. “Oh… shizz,” he muttered. His eyes crept to the sky.

“What? What’s the problem?” asked Mizette. “He called us. We heard him.”

“We heard someone, sure,” said Cal. “But looks like it wasn’t him.”

The penny dropped. Miz’s eyes widened. “She tricked us.”

“Who? Vajazzle?” asked Kannus.

“She totally tricked us,” Cal agreed. “Man, she’s clever.”

“Who?” Kannus snapped, his fawning subject act fading fast. He caught Miz by the shoulder and forcibly turned her to face him. “Who tricked you? What is going on? Is Savvon in danger?”

Miz tried to pull back, but Kannus’s grip was too strong. Cal stepped into the larger Greyx’s line of sight. Splurt pulsed threateningly on his shoulder. “OK, one, who’s Savvon?” said Cal. “And two, take your hands off my friend. Not necessarily in that order.”

Kannus’s gums curved upwards, showing his sizeable collection of teeth. Behind him, the other Greyx adjusted their grips on their weapons.

A metal hand clamped down on Kannus’s wrist. “You heard the man,” said Mech. “Let go. Now.”

Kannus’s eyes narrowed. He held his grip, but relaxed it just enough for Miz to be able to yank her arm free.

“Amshoop,” she muttered, rubbing her arm, flexing her fingers and shooting Kannus a furious glare all at the same time.

“There, now we all need to play nice here,” said Cal. “In answer to your question, yes, it’s possible that Vajazzle may have tricked us into coming here, so that she could follow us.” He held up his hands before Kannus could react. “But I’m sure it’s pretty unlikely. Mech, what are the chances it was Vajazzle who set us up?”

“About ninety-four percent,” said Mech.

Cal blinked. “Fonk. That high? Seriously?” He sighed and dropped his arms. “I mean, couldn’t you have lied and said, I don’t know, even seventy percent or something? Now everyone’s worried, and – let’s be honest - it’s probably for nothing. If there was another ship up there, our scanners would have picked it up long before--”

A boom rolled across the sky like thunder as a ship punched through the atmosphere high overhead. Cal clapped his hands once and rubbed them together, as if trying to drive out the cold. “OK, good pep talk, everyone. Now, I’m afraid we’re probably all going to die.”

“It’s not Vajazzle,” said Miz. To Cal’s surprise, she almost sounded disappointed.

“What?” he said.

“It’s not Vajazzle,” Miz said again. She pointed up to the ship growing in the sky above them. “It’s my dad.”

Cal squinted up at the ship. It was flanked by two smaller ships, and he recognized them all from Kifo. “Hey, that’s great!” he said. “But how did he get here so soon after us? I thought we were, like, five times faster?”

“He was four-and-a-half times closer,” Loren explained.

They all craned their necks, blinking in the swirling dust as the ships came in to land. “What a sensible but dull explanation,” said Cal. “Still, better Graxan than Vajazzle.”

“Except we’re going to look like idiots,” Mech pointed out. “We told him Kannus was in trouble, and Kannus ain’t in no trouble.”

Cal looked over his shoulder at Miz’s Lifebound. “Could you maybe pretend to be in trouble?” he asked. Kannus’s expression made the answer to that question very clear. “No? No, thought not.” Cal went back to watching Graxan’s ship. “Yeah, we’re going to look like idiots.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Cal spotted an eerie white figure with a head like a half-finished skull. Its eyes were set in deep shadow, while its nose was a single triangular hole. It had no mouth to speak of – or to speak with, for that matter – but the skin where it should have been was scarred and puckered, as if there had been a mouth hole there at one point, but it had long since healed up.

“Wah!” Cal yelped, scrabbling for the blaster pistol slung at his hip. “What the fonk is that?”

The creature shrunk back, tucking himself behind one of the Greyx soldiers. It was almost naked, aside from a dirty curtain of cloth around its waist, and judging by its concave chest and protruding ribs, was badly in need of a good meal.

“What are you doing? Stop!” Kannus commanded. “That is Savvon. The keeper of secrets.”

“I thought the other guy who died was the keeper of secrets?” said Cal.

“Lontho Oom,” Kannus said. “He was. But there are many secrets to be kept.”

Savvon peeped out from behind the Greyx and eyed Cal warily. “So, what?” said Cal. “It’s a franchise?”

“Is that why he doesn’t have a mouth?” asked Loren.

“He cut off his lips and held the wounds together until they sealed shut,” said Kannus.

Cal grimaced. “Jesus. That’s deranged.”

“That’s dedication,” Kannus corrected.

“Yeah, except if someone really wanted to get info from him they could make him write it…” His voice tailed off as his gaze fell on the scarred stumps at the end of Savvon’s arms. “OK, yeah,” he said, shuffling uneasily. “That’s dedication. I guess.”

While they had been talking, Graxan and his guard ships had settled on the moon’s surface. A dozen guards – six from each of the smaller ships – raced to meet Graxan’s landing ramp as it slammed into the shale with a vaguely threatening paff. They all marched alongside the Greyx king as he walked down the ramp and picked his way unsteadily across the moon towards Cal and the others.

Miz looked her father up and down, something like disbelief etched on her face. “He looks so weak,” she said, louder than she intended. Graxan’s ears twitched, but he otherwise showed no indication that he’d heard her.

“I was not lying,” said Kannus, a softer edge to his voice now. “He is dying.”

“But I am not dead yet,” Graxan boomed. He stopped several feet from the rest of the group and looked Kannus up and down. “It seems I am not the only one.” His head shifted a fraction as his eyes locked on his daughter. “Mizette. Explain.”

Miz scratched the back of her head and shifted awkwardly on the balls of her feet. “Um, well, you see, the thing is…”

“Spit it out, child!”

“There’s a chance it all might have been a trick.”

“But just a chance,” said Cal. “Statistically, quite a high chance, granted, but still just a chance. Nothing definite.”

“Silence,” spoke Graxan, not bothering to even so much as glance Cal’s way. He narrowed his eyes at Mizette. “Explain.”

“OK, so we got this message from Kannus,” Miz began. “Asking for help, like we told you.”

“It wasn’t me,” said Kannus. “I am not in need of help, and if I were, it would not be from…” He looked over at Cal, Mech and Loren. “… the likes of them.”

“Charming,” said Loren. “We’ll keep that in mind.”

“Anyway,” said Miz, annoyed by the interruptions. “We spoke to you, then came here expecting to find Vajazzle killing everyone, but…” She gestured around them. “She’s not here.”

“She’s not here yet,” Graxan growled. “Of course this is a trick. She will have tailed your ship all the way here.”

“Or… maybe she tailed your ship,” said Cal.

“Either way, it is your fault we are both here,” Graxan pointed out. “Regardless of whose ship she has followed, the blame lies squarely at your feet.”

“Fair point, well made,” Cal conceded.

“We don’t even know if she followed anyone,” said Loren.

“Of course she did,” Graxan grunted. His gaze shifted to Cal for the first time since he’d arrived. “I assume you haven’t brought the key?”

Cal raised his eyebrows. “Hmm?”

“The key,” said Graxan. “The key we wish to keep out of Vajazzle’s hands. I assume you put it somewhere safe?”

Cal rotated his hips just a fraction until he could feel the sliver of rectangular metal in his back pocket. “Um… funny story,” he began, but a powerful clawed hand was around his throat before he could say any more. He kicked and struggled as Kannus hoisted him cleanly into the air.

“Tell me you didn’t bring it!” Kannus barked. “Tell me even you aren’t that stupid!”

“Kannus, that is enough,” said Graxan. “Put him down.”

“He has jeopardized everything. All of us!” Kannus growled, flecks of foam forming at the corners of his mouth. “He has put our entire species at risk.”

“Cut it out, Kannus!” Miz snapped. Behind her, Mech and Loren raised their weapons. All around them, Kannus’s guards raised theirs, too.

Graxan’s guards, not quite sure what to do or who to aim at, decided to do nothing whatsoever and just hope it all worked itself out in the end.

Cal hacked and coughed, his fingertips trying to force their way between Kannus’s hand and his own constricted windpipe. The tiny gulps of air he could get were weedy and thin. Breathing in the moon’s ‘tolerable’ atmosphere was hard enough without a massive wolf-man choking the life out of him.

“We should send him to Zertex in pieces,” Kannus said, still holding Cal aloft. “It would be simpler. We owe him nothing.”

Graxan took a single step forwards. He shot Kannus’s guards the briefest of glances and they lowered their weapons at once. “He is under my protection,” the Greyx king said, the words rumbling from his mouth like thunder. “I gave you an order. Do you dare to disobey me?”

Kannus’s eyes narrowed until they were little more than slits. He released his grip and Cal fell, gasping and wheezing, onto the hard ground.

“That… that was the signal,” he croaked, giving Splurt a prod. “What happened to the battle armor, buddy?”

“Cal, are you OK?” Miz asked, dropping to her haunches beside him. “Are you hurt?”

“Only my pride,” said Cal. “And my throat. And, to a lesser extent, my buttocks and most of my torso.”

Kannus snorted, but there was no humor in it. “Look at you. Crouching in the dirt with that mongrel. You shame yourself. You shame me.”

“OK,” puffed Cal, using Mizette’s arm and Mech’s leg to pull himself to his feet. “OK, that does it.” He raised his fists in front of his face. “Come at me, you big jerk. Let’s see what you got.”

“Enough,” said Graxan, his snout wrinkling in irritation.

“He challenges me, Great Graxan,” said Kannus, eyeballing Cal and baring his teeth. “He must be put in his place.”

Graxan’s face twisted into a grimace of fury. “I said that is enough!” he roared, then a fit of coughing wracked through his body, rasping in his lungs. Tentatively, Miz reached out to take his arm. At first, he yanked it away, but then he rested his elbow in her grip.

“Your passion does you credit, Kannus,” Graxan said, once he could speak again. “Your disobedience does not. I am still your king, and you will do as I say.”

Kannus seemed to chew on his tongue, then lowered his head in a sharp bow. “Of course, Your Majesty. My apologies.”

“We will speak no more of it,” said Graxan. He began to turn away, but then turned back. “Oh, and Kannus?”

“Your Majesty?”

Graxan leaned closer. “Lifebound or not, if you speak to my daughter in that tone again, I shall tear out your throat with my bare hands.” He watched him for a moment, making sure he wasn’t about to argue, then gave a single nod.

“Now,” Graxan said, sweeping his gaze across the sky. “Have we picked up any traces of Vajazzle?”

“No, Great Graxan,” replied one of his guards.

Mech checked the scanner on his arm. “I’m patched into the ship. I’m getting nothing.”

“Maybe she didn’t follow us,” said Loren.

“Then why set up the fake SOS?” asked Cal.

Loren shrugged. “Maybe she didn’t. There might be a perfectly straightforward explanation for it.”

“For us getting a distress call from Kannus that he didn’t send?” said Cal.

“I said there might be a perfectly straightforward explanation,” Loren pointed out. “I didn’t say I knew what it was.”

“She’s definitely not up there,” said Mech, rechecking the scanners.

“Could she be cloaked?” asked Cal.

Everyone’s brow seemed to furrow at once. “What does it matter what she’s wearing?” asked Loren.

“No, I mean her ship. Could it be cloaked? As in, like, invisible?”

From their expressions, it was clear everyone was still confused. He pressed on. “Like, she presses a button and the ship goes all shimmery then disappears.” He waved his arms in front of himself in a way designed to convey the word ‘shimmery,’ but which was ultimately unsuccessful. “You know? Cloaked.”

“What is he talking about?” said Kannus, asking the question on everyone’s lips. “How can a ship turn invisible?”

“It’d have to be a pretty big cloak to cover her entire ship,” said Loren.

“No, not an actual cloak!” Cal said, then he sighed. “Forget it, doesn’t matter. If she isn’t cloaked, then I guess she’s not…”

He spun towards Savvon. “Wait a minute. Wait a minute. You! Creepy mouth guy.”

Savvon shrunk back, his sunken eyes darting around at the others. “You know where the vault is, don’t you? Don’t you?”

“He can’t speak,” Kannus reminded him.

“No, but he can nod or something, can’t he?”

“He cannot,” said Graxan. “In order to prevent himself revealing his secrets, he has metal rods fusing his neck so he cannot move his head.”

“OK, then blink once for yes, twice for—”

“He has removed his own eyelids,” Graxan said. “That he may not inadvertently reveal that which has been entrusted to him.”

“Holy shizz, that is all kinds of messed up. There’s such a thing as taking a job too seriously, you know?” Cal said. He dodged past Kannus until he was standing in front of Savvon. “OK, you’re on an uninhabited moon, living in a…” He gestured to the rock and plastic tarp construction. “… whatever that is. It’s got to be here, hasn’t it? The vault. That’s why you’re here. It’s not like you’d be able to give detailed directions to its whereabouts if it was somewhere across the galaxy, so it has got to be here, right?”

Kannus tutted. “He can’t speak.”

“Raise your right arm for yes, left arm for no,” Cal instructed. “Is the vault with the bladestick here on--?”

“Bladestaff,” Graxan and Miz corrected at the same time.

“Whatever,” Cal said. “Is the vault with the blade thing nearby?”

Savvon didn’t do much to suggest he understood, and Cal was about to ask the question again when the shriveled figure slowly raised his right arm.

“OK, yes, that’s a yes,” said Cal. “Where is it?”

“He can’t tell you, you imbecile!” barked Kannus. “He can’t speak!”

“No, but he can fonking point!” said Cal. He glanced at the scarred stumps where Savvon’s hands had been. “You know, in vaguely the right direction, at least.”

“He shall not. I forbid it,” said Graxan. “The location of the Bladestaff must remain a secret.”

“But that’s just it, it isn’t a secret,” said Cal. “Vajazzle messed up our communications and faked that message from Kannus because she knew we’d lead her here.”

“But she’s isn’t here,” Mech pointed out.

“No, her ship isn’t here,” said Cal. “It’s out there somewhere, just beyond scanner range. Only, her scanner is better than ours, or maybe she does have a cloaking device, or… I don’t know. Whatever. Her ship’s there somewhere, but she’s not on it.”

“How can you possibly know any of this?” Kannus demanded.

Cal spun to face him. “Because it’s literally the only way any of this makes sense!” He stood back, waiting for everyone to realize he was a genius. When they didn’t, he tutted. “You’re not getting it, are you? Vajazzle isn’t up there. She’s already here!”

The others looked around them. “Where?” asked Graxan.

“The woman can teleport!” yelped Cal. “She’s already inside the fonking vault!”

It took a moment for the significance of Cal’s words to settle in. Graxan’s eyes widened. “Where is it?” he demanded, rounding on the terrified Savvon. “Where is the vault?”

Savvon stared blankly, his mouthless face a picture of confusion. “Where is the vault?” Graxan roared, his teeth and claws flashing furiously.

“Uh, Dad…”

Graxan snapped his head around. “What?”

“I think we found it,” Miz said.

“How? Where? Oh!” said Graxan. “Oh no.”

There, walking towards them across the green-black shale, was Lady Vajazzle.

And also there, clutched in one withered hand, was the Bladestaff.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Cal puffed out his cheeks. “This might not be too bad,” he said. “Maybe she’s just… bringing it to you. As a gesture of peace or something.”

“That was sarcasm, by the way,” Miz muttered, her gaze fixed on the approaching assassin.

“Actually, it wasn’t,” said Cal. “But I can see why you might make that mistake.”

“Take aim!” Kannus ordered. There was a well-organized clattering as his troops raised their rifles, blaster pistols and spears in Vazazzle’s direction.

“Hold,” Graxan commanded. “Lower your weapons.”

Kannus’s head snapped around. “But… Great Graxan…”

“Do not question me, pup,” Graxan warned. He looked past him to where the soldiers were trying to decide whose orders they should be following. “Lower. Your. Weapons,” he said, and the tone of his voice made their minds up for them.

They lowered their weapons.

“Sensible,” said Vajazzle, stopping around fifteen feet away from the group. “Keep your people on their leash, Graxan. I’d hate for our agreement to fall apart on us now.”

Graxan took a step towards the assassin, nudging Kannus aside. “The Bladestaff. Give it to me.”

Vajazzle looked down at the weapon in her hand. If she stood it on one end, it would be taller than Cal by a clear foot. Most of it – the ‘staff’ part was a simple pole made of dark wood. Attached to the top end was a silver-colored blade in the shape of a crescent moon, while a corkscrew-like metal spike had been fixed to the bottom.

It was, as far as Cal could tell, nothing special – a sentiment seemingly echoed by Lady Vajazzle.

“Ah yes, the Bladestaff,” she said, giving it an experimental twirl like a baton. “I thought it would be more impressive. Not magic, of course, that would be ridiculous. Just… better. There’s nothing special about this thing, at all.”

“Then give it to me,” said Graxan, extending a clawed hand. “And go.”

Beneath her hood, Vajazzle smiled. “Now Graxan, you know that isn’t going to happen.”

“Take the Earthling,” Kannus blurted. “That’s what you want. A trade. Him for the Bladestaff.”

“Kannus!” Graxan snapped. “Keep your counsel.”

“I don’t want the Earthling,” said Vajazzle.

There was a moment of silent surprise. “You don’t?” asked Cal. He smiled. “Well that’s the first bit of good news I’ve had all day.”

“Sinclair does.”

Cal’s smile fell away. “Oh. Gotcha.”

“As for what I want,” Vajazzle continued. “I want to make an example.”

There was a sudden flurry of movement beneath her robe. Cal ducked and tucked his head under his arms as the air was filled with the high-pitched whistle of several small objects slicing through the air.

There followed a series of ‘Urks.’

Then a series of thuds.

When Cal looked up, both Graxan’s and Kannus’s guards lay on the ground, their long tongues lolling from their open mouths. Graxan, Kannus and Miz were the only Greyx left standing. Even poor Savvon, who seemed incapable of harming anyone beyond himself, lay crumpled at Kannus’s feet.

Graxan’s snout furled up. The hair on his shoulder stood on end, making him appear even larger than he was, as his fingers balled into fists. “What have you done? Our agreement--”

“Still stands,” said Vajazzle, with a dismissive wave of a hand. “The deal states only that I do not harm the Greyx. They are unharmed. Unconscious, but unharmed. You see, I am a woman of my word. When I make a deal, I stick to it.”

She hefted the Bladestaff in her hand a couple of times, feeling the weight of it. “The same cannot be said for you. Honorary Greyx?” Anger seethed below her hood. “How dare you attempt to alter our arrangement Graxan? How dare you?”

“You would be wise not to question my decisions, Vajazzle,” Graxan warned.

“And you would be wise not to mistake me for one of your groveling minions,” Vajazzle replied, shooting Kannus a very deliberate look.

“We shall see who ends this day groveling, assassin,” Kannus growled. He dropped onto his haunches, preparing to lunge, but Graxan shoved him hard on the shoulder, sending him sprawling onto the shale.

Kannus raised his eyes in shock. Graxan snarled down at him, just briefly, then turned his attention back to Vajazzle.

“I could have insisted, of course,” said Vajazzle. “I could have pointed out that our agreement does not extend to ‘honorary Greyx’ and taken them anyway.”

“You could have tried,” said Miz.

Vajazzle let out a mirthless, “Ha,” sound. “You are your father’s daughter, child. I would have succeeded. You could not have stopped me.” She exhaled slowly. “But that would not have sent a strong enough message to the others I have entered into agreements with. And I am a firm believer in strong messages.”

She nodded to Kannus as he got back to his feet and dusted himself down. “I have watched this one with interest. You have taught him well. Ruthless, ambitious – a little unruly and arrogant, perhaps, but he’ll learn. He would have made a fine king.”

Vajazzle’s robotic red eye flared in its socket. “Of course, that’s not going to happen.” She smiled across at Mizette. “Is it, dear? You have no interest in being his queen. Your heart belongs to another.”

Miz looked at Cal.

Kannus looked at Cal.

Pretty much everyone looked at Cal, in fact.

Cal, for his part, appeared to be deeply fascinated by a small patch of cloud drifting through the sky a few miles. He watched it, his cheeks reddening, until Graxan spoke and everyone turned their attention to him, instead.

“Lies. Kannus will be king. Mizette shall be his queen,” Graxan intoned.

“No. She won’t,” said Kannus. “She told me herself.”

“She is your Lifebound,” barked Graxan. “It has been decided.”

“But… that’s not fair,” said Mizette. “It shouldn’t be decided. Who decided? You? Mom? Some ancient tradition that nobody even knows how it started? It should be up to me to choose. Me. No-one else.”

“You go, girl!” said Mech. He brought his hands together a few times, trying to start a slow hand-clap. When no-one else joined in, he stopped, tutted loudly, then muttered below his breath.

“How must it feel?” Vajazzle purred, her gaze now firmly fixed on Kannus. “Your whole life planned for you from childhood. Every hour of every day spent studying, training, learning to become the king you were born to be. And then…” She blew on her fingertips and mimed them drifting off on the breeze. “Gone. Your destiny taken from you by her. By him.”

“Hey,” Cal protested. “None of this is my… OK, some of it might be my fault, but… I forget where I’m going with this.” He cleared his throat. “Carry on.”

“You know, I almost wish this thing was magic,” Vajazzle said, holding up the Bladestaff. “He who holds the Bladestaff rules the Greyx. That’s the legend, isn’t it? I almost wish it were true.”

“You?” Graxan snorted. “Ridiculous. How could you rule the Greyx?”

“Oh, not me,” said Vajazzle. She tossed the staff towards Kannus. Instinctively, he caught it. “Him.”

Graxan nodded slowly. “Thank you for returning the Bladestaff, Vajazzle. Now, be on your way.”

Vajazzle ignored him. She spoke directly to Kannus, and this time that whispering second voice chimed in to echo her words. “I suppose it is magic, in a way. Because what is magic? Illusion. Trickery. Deception. The suspension of disbelief just long enough to make the unreal appear real.”

Kannus stared down at the staff, its curved blade glinting in the sun’s light.

“Don’t get too used to it, boy,” said Vajazzle. “It isn’t yours. It will never be yours. All you have done, you have done for nothing. All that training, that isolation, that pain. Pack it up. Lock it away. You are not king. You shall never be king.”

“Give me the Bladestaff, Kannus,” said Graxan, extending a hand.

Kannus glanced up, but then felt his eyes be drawn back down again. There were symbols scratched deep into the staff’s wooden handle. It was one of several ancient texts, back from before the Greyx was united. He was only passingly familiar with the runes, but he knew the translation well enough.

“He who wields the Bladestaff rules the Greyx,” he whispered.

“It is not yours to wield!” Vajazzle hissed. “It shall never be yours. The Earthling has seen to that!”

“Give it to me,” Graxan demanded. “Now!”

“Kannus?” said Miz, her brow furrowing in concern. “Give it to him. What are you--?”

She stopped as a spray of blood spattered across her face.

Time seemed to grind into slow motion as the crescent-moon blade of the Bladestaff emerged like a shark’s fin through Graxan’s back. Mizette could only stand. Stare. Her limbs frozen by the weight of this endless unmoving moment.

“NOOO!” she cried, her scream becoming a roar as she hurled herself towards Kannus. An invisible force wrapped around her, jerking her to a stop in mid-air.

“Down, doggy,” said Vajazzle. With a flick of her fingers, she slammed Miz against the ground, just as Graxan toppled backwards onto it.

Blood pumped from the hole in the old man’s chest. His eyes rolled, as if searching for something – anything – to focus on.

“Loren, help him. Mech, with me!” said Cal, drawing his blaster and putting himself between Kannus and the fallen Greyx king. The blade of the staff was awash with crimson. The blood trickled along the wooden handle and fell like rain on the shale. Kannus watched it, his chest heaving as his breath came in short, gulping pants.

“OK, easy,” said Cal, the arrival of Mech at his side providing a much-needed confidence boost. “Put down the staff, Kannus. Don’t make me shoot you.”

Down on the ground, Loren thrust a leg out in front of Mizette. “Claws. I need a bandage. Now.”

Miz blinked a few times, like the words were in the wrong language and she couldn’t figure out the meaning.

“Mizette!” Loren said, shaking her by the shoulder. “Cut me a bandage, or he’s going to die!”

That did it. Miz flashed her claws and tore a long, thick strip from Loren’s pants. Folding it, Loren pressed it against the wound in Graxan’s chest. Blood seeped through it and over her fingers almost immediately.

“Shizz,” Loren spat. “OK, think, think.”

Graxan’s eyes stopped swimming and, after a few false starts, focused on Loren’s face. “Thank you,” he said, the words wheezing from his mouth. “That won’t be necessary.”

With a grunt of pain, he shifted his head until his gaze fell on Mizette. He tried to smile, but coughed instead. A bubble of blood burst across his lips. “Mizette,” he whispered. “My Mizette.”

“I’m here, Dad. It’s me. You’re going to be OK,” she said, taking one of his hands in two of hers. It felt heavy and limp, like the life had already left it. “You’re going to be OK. Loren’s going to help you. Right?”

Loren’s mouth flopped open and closed. She watched the blood pumping through her fingers. “I… I…”

A sound like a burbling brook bubbled from the wound in Graxan’s chest. He shook his head, just a fraction. “It… is the way of things,” he managed.

Miz clutched his hand tighter, pressing it against her face. “No, no. It’s my fault. I’m sorry, dad. I’m sorry. It’s all my fault.”

Graxan coughed again. His eyes rolled back in his head as pain filled all the parts of him that had until very recently been filled with blood. “There is s-something I always wanted to t-tell you,” he said. “A secret of my own. Should have told you… long ago.” Gritting his teeth with the effort, he raised his other hand and beckoned her to him. “C-come closer.”

Miz lowered her head until there was nothing to see but her father’s face, and nothing to hear but the strained whisper from his lips.

“You were never a disappointment.”

He pressed his snout against her cheek and held it there for as long as he could. And then, before Miz could find the words to reply, his head sunk back, his arm dropped, and the last of what had been Graxan of the Greyx ebbed onto the cold dark ground.

“Father? Dad?” said Miz, shaking the hand she still clutched in hers. “Daddy?”

“I’m sorry,” whispered Loren. “There was nothing I could do.”

Miz nodded, just once. She rested Graxan’s hand across his chest. She whispered a private, “goodbye.”

And then, with the blood of her father matting her fur, she got to her feet.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Kannus was still looking down at the Bladestaff when Mizette stepped between Cal and Mech. The sound of her voice finally made him tear his eyes from the weapon’s bloodied steel.

“You killed him,” she said, her tone flat and hollow. “You killed him, Kannus.”

Kannus frowned, as if this was the first he’d heard of it. “He… I… It was not my intention.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t have rammed that thing through his chest, in that case,” said Cal, keeping his gun trained between Kannus’s eyes. “Just a tip for the future.”

“Give me the Bladestaff,” Mizette said. The growl deep in her throat suggested this wasn’t a request.

Kannus looked down at the weapon again. He seemed even more surprised to see it than he had been to hear of Graxan’s death.

“The Bladestaff?” he said.

“Give it to me, or I’ll take it from you,” Mizette said.

“I’d do what she says, man,” said Mech. “Otherwise this ain’t gonna end well for you.”

Kannus’s lips moved silently.

“What was that?” asked Cal. “What did you say?”

Kannus’s grip tightened on the wooden handle. “He who wields the Bladestaff rules the Greyx,” he said, then he twirled the bloodied end of the weapon into a spin. There was a shink as the blade sliced through the end of Cal’s blaster.

Cal groaned as half of the gun’s barrel clattered onto the ground. “Aw man, am I ever going to get to fire one of these things?” he muttered, before Mizette knocked him aside as she hurled herself at Kannus.

She was too close, moving too fast for Kannus to react. He could only throw up an arm and wait for the pain as her teeth and claws tore towards him.

And then, just like before, she stopped. Vajazzle kept a hand raised, holding Miz motionless in mid-air. “Kannus, control your Lifebound,” she told him. “Do not make me intervene again.”

Giving a shove, she sent Mizette bouncing across the ground. Miz yelped and hissed as she rolled clumsily across the rocky ground, then tumbled to a stop.

Growling, she leaped back to her feet, but a shout from Kannus stopped her. “Don’t!” he warned, pressing the point of the Bladestaff against Cal’s throat. “Try that again and you can say goodbye to your… pet.”

Loren and Mech moved to flank Kannus, their weapons trained. “I wouldn’t,” he told them. “All I have to do is twitch.”

“Hey, let’s just relax,” Cal croaked. He tried to swallow, but the tip of the blade stopped his Adam’s apple bobbing all the way down. He glanced sideways, searching for Splurt, but realized the little blob wasn’t perched on him anymore. He was on his own. “Nothing is completely fonked here. Kannus, you can still recover from this.”

“Recover?” Kannus snorted. “Recover from what? From being king? From taking my rightful place?” His lips curled into a snarl and he spat out the next few words. “From getting what I deserve?”

“Oh, you’re going to get what you deserve,” Miz snapped. “That’s a promise.”

“You’re right, you know?” said Vajazzle. “You do deserve to be King. It is your birthright. It is your destiny. No-one need know what happened here. They just need to know that Graxan is dead, and they will accept you as his rightful successor.”

“Except we know what happened,” said Mech.

Cal groaned. “You had to go and point that out to him,” he said, the pressure of the blade making his voice sound unnaturally deep.

“As the new ruler of the Greyx, I trust you will honor the agreement I had with Graxan?” Vajazzle said. “And that you will allow me to take these non-Greyx with me when I depart here? Without their interference, your transition to ruler should be relatively simple.”

Kannus glanced across the faces of Cal and the others. He lingered on Mizette for a few moments. “Whatever happens, she stays with me,” he said. “The Greyx are to remain off-limits.”

“Of course,” said Vajazzle.

“And you have a ship? You can take them now, before the others awaken?”

“Oh yes. I have one right here,” Vajazzle replied.

On some unseen signal, a patch of air that was easily half the size of Manhattan began to shimmer. A moment later, a vast battle cruiser filled the space that had previously appeared empty.

Very aware of the tip of Kannus’s blade, Cal shifted his eyes left and right to look at his friends. “See?” he said. “Cloaked!”

“Man, that is one big ship,” Mech said.

“It’s the Zertex AX11 war cruiser,” said Loren, a little breathlessly. “It’s the biggest frontline battle ship on the fleet. I’ve read about it… a lot, but I’ve never seen it in real life before. The cloaking thing must be some kind of proto-tech.”

“I like the color,” said Cal, gazing up at the completely black hull. “It’s pretty.”

“You will hand Cal Carver and his associates over to me, and I shall deliver them to Zertex,” Vajazzle said, in the voice of someone who knew exactly how the next few minutes were going to play out. “You may keep your Lifebound, but – if you don’t mind some advice – I’d keep her out of the public eye until you’ve… broken her in a little.”

“But… Graxan,” Kannus said. “What shall I tell them on Greyx Prime?”

“Tell them whatever you like,” said Vajazzle, shrugging beneath her cloak. “Tell them the Earthling did it. Tell them I did it. Tell them he and I were working together, and that Graxan died so that others may live. You’re a bright boy, Kannus. You’ll think of something.”

Behind her, dozens of small, saucer-shaped ships detached themselves from beneath the AX11 and swooped in for a landing approach. Even in the shadows of her hood, Cal could see Vajazzle’s grin of triumph. “He who wields the Bladestaff rules the Greyx,” she said. “So go, Your Majesty. And rule.”

One of the saucer-ships stopped in the air directly above Cal. A beam of crackling purple light engulfed him, making his hair stand on end. From other ships, two more beams of the light locked onto Mech and Loren.

“What the fonk is this?” demanded Mech. He tried to step free of the beam, but a jolt of pain tore through his synapses, forcing him to stand still.

“Don’t worry, Miz, it’s going to be OK,” said Cal, shouting to make himself heard over the high-pitched whine that was suddenly screaming in his ears. “We’ll find you. I’ll find you.”

“No, mongrel,” growled Kannus. “You won’t.”

He lunged, smashing the wooden handle of the Bladestaff across the bridge of Cal’s nose. The last thing Cal heard was a roar from Mizette, then the swirling purple light around him gave way to a deep, suffocating black.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

There was a pressure in Cal’s head. That was the first thing he noticed.

The second thing he noticed was that his hands and feet were tied. He could feel something cold and metallic against his wrists, and a deeply uncomfortable tightness around his ankles.

The third thing he noticed was that he’d possibly wet himself. He shifted his legs a little, rubbing his thighs together.

Correction: he’d definitely wet himself.

The fourth thing he noticed in what was now becoming quite a long list, was that his eyes were closed. Just out of interest, he opened them. What he saw confused him immensely.

He was barely two feet from the ceiling in a small, cell-like room. The bit of the ceiling that was directly above him had been covered in plastic sheeting, although he couldn’t quite figure out how it was attached, or why it wasn’t flopping down.

The room had one door, but it extended downwards from the roof, not upwards from the floor, flying in the face of tradition. A thought nagged at Cal, but it was trapped by the pressure throbbing around inside his skull and couldn’t quite manage to make itself heard.

There was a small black leather bag sitting on a table nearby. The table was upside-down and, like pretty much everything else he’d spotted so far, attached to the ceiling. Despite this, the case didn’t fall off.

Craning his neck, Cal saw that the room was lit by a single dome-shaped light fitting. It was fixed to the center of the floor, which seemed to be quite a long way away.

The nagging thought finally managed to battle its way through. “You’re upside down,” it told him. And it was right, he was.

The door slid open with a sudden clank, making him jump. The rope attaching him to the ceiling – the real ceiling – creaked as he swung slowly back and forth.

“Ah. You are awake.”

“Oh, hey, Vajazzle,” Cal said, making a valiant stab at sounding casual. “Fancy seeing you here. Nice boots. Never noticed them before. Of course, I’ve never been hanging upside-down in front of you, so that might explain it.” He smiled warmly. “So… how have you been?”

A rectangle of the wall directly ahead of him illuminated. A face appeared. To Cal, the man on the screen looked to be the right way up, which meant that the image, like Cal, was upside-down.

“Eugene Adwin!” said President Sinclair. He tapped himself on the forehead. “No, wait, I mean Cal Carver.” He wagged a playfully reproachful finger. “I still can’t believe you had us all fooled, you old shyster! Did I ever tell you the story, Lady Vajazzle? About Mr Carver here and Eugene ‘The Butcher’ Adwin?”

“No, and I have no interest in hearing it,” she said.

“Fair enough,” said Sinclair, with a chuckle. “But if you ever change your mind, you just let me know.”

“Hey, Sinclair,” said Cal, cocking his head just a little. “Is it just me or… have you put on weight?”

A flicker of concern flitted across the president’s face, but then was gone. He laughed and wagged his finger again. “This guy!” he said. “You know, Cal, you have caused me – and this is no exaggeration here – you have caused me no end of trouble.”

Sinclair began listing on his fingers. “You ruined my plan to integrate Zertex more closely with the Symmorium.”

“By ‘integrate’ do you mean when you tried to mind-control them all?” asked Cal, but the president ignored him.

“You made Kornack very unhappy when you didn’t deliver the organism—”

“Splurt,” Cal corrected.

“—and now I’ve got him and half the Remnants giving me so much grief about it, you wouldn’t believe. You killed Legate Jjin, one of my most trusted advisors, and – to my mind, at least - a truly great man. You stole a very expensive ship. Oh… did you get it back, by the way?”

“I did,” said Vajazzle. “It’s aboard.”

“Great! That’s great news!” Sinclair said, giving the assassin a double thumbs-up. “And has he told you where the organism is?”

“Splurt,” Cal said again.

“I haven’t asked,” Vajazzle said. “Would you like me to?”

“Oh my, yes!” laughed Sinclair. “I would like that very much. If we can get it back, it’ll help smooth things over with the Remnants. Feel free to do whatever you need to do to get him to talk. In fact… just warm him up a little in general, will you?”

“That’d be awesome,” said Cal. “It’s kinda chilly in here. I think I can see my breath.” He breathed out a few times, putting more effort into it each time. “No, turns out I can’t. Thought I could. Sorry for wasting everyone’s time.” He frowned, just for a moment. “Anyway, what were we talking about again?”

Sinclair twitched with irritation. “Go ahead. Put on your show of bravery, Cal. Please. It’s admirable, it really is. But just know this,” he said, leaning closer to the camera so the top and bottom of his face were cut off by the screen. “Lady Vajazzle is bringing you to me in order that I may hurt you. I have been hurting people for a very long time, and that’s exactly what I intend to do to you, Cal. Hurt you. For a very long time.”

Cal bit his lip. “Are you going to monologue at me?” he asked, his voice cracking. “Please, no, I beg you, anything but that.”

Sinclair’s smile faltered. He leaned back from the camera and very deliberately ticked the final finger off his hand. “And finally, on a more personal level, I just don’t like you very much.”

“Is it my face?” asked Cal. “It’s my face, isn’t it? Because I get that a lot.”

“Haha, yes,” said Sinclair. “I’m quite sure you do.”

He crossed his hands neatly behind his back and rocked on his heels. “You see, the thing you need to keep in mind, Cal, is that you don’t exist. Out here, I mean. The only records of you are on Earth, and even before I killed everyone – apologies again for that, by the way – no-one ever went there. No-one important, at any rate. You are a ghost. A nobody. A nothing. I can keep you for years, and no-one will even know.”

Cal squirmed uncomfortably, making him pendulum gently back and forth. “OK, Sinclair, listen. I know something, OK?” he said. “I’ve got information you need. I can give you it right now.”

Sinclair smirked. “I don’t care. To be honest, I’d rather Lady Vajazzle got it from you the hard way.”

“No, but trust me, this is important,” Cal insisted. “It’s something you’ll want to know.”

Sinclair sighed impatiently, but his curiosity soon got the better of him. “Well? What is it?”

Cal nodded towards the president’s image on the wall. “You’ve got a stain on the front of your shirt. I think it might be mustard.”

Instinctively, Sinclair glanced down.

“Ha!” said Cal. “Made you look.”

The president’s face darkened, but then he forced a smile and wagged his finger again. “Very good. I’ll see you soon, Cal,” he said. “Very much looking forward to it. For now, though, I shall leave you in Lady Vajazzle’s very capable hands. Please, m’lady… take your time.”

The screen blinked off. Vajazzle approached the table. There was the sound of a zip being undone, as she opened the leather bag.

“Secretly, I think he likes me,” said Cal. He watched as she reached inside the bag and pulled out a slim metal case. It looked like a tin that might be used to hold cigars, but Cal had a sinking feeling that Vajazzle wasn’t about to light up. “What you got there?” he asked.

Vajazzle said nothing. She zipped the bag closed and placed it on the floor, then set the metal case in the spot it had occupied. Unfastening a clasp, she opened the case like a book, unfolding it until it lay flat on the tabletop. As Cal’s head was hanging lower than the table, this made it impossible for him to see what was in the case. On balance, he decided he was grateful for that.

“You know, I feel like we haven’t had a chance to really connect. I feel like I hardly even know you,” said Cal. “The real you, I mean, warts and all! Not that I’m suggesting you have warts – I’m sure you don’t, and if you do, then that’s fine, too. Nothing wrong with a few warts or, you know…” He glanced at the bottom of her robe. “…tentacles, or whatever. What I mean is— Ooh, Christ, that looks sharp.”

Vajazzle had taken a long sliver of metal from the case, and was studying it. Her robotic eye whirred quietly as it focused on the blade’s razor-sharp tip. After a moment’s consideration, she set it down on the tabletop with the faintest of clinks, then turned her attention back to the case.

“What’s it like having two faces?” Cal asked. “Does the other one have, you know, like its own personality or is it just a sort of spare that you use sometimes if you get bored of using your main one? Like a back-up face?”

Cal licked his lips, which were suddenly very dry. “Do you two ever argue? ‘Hey, I want us to go this way!’ ‘No, I want us to go this way!’ That sort of thing?”

Vajazzle held up something that looked not unlike a corkscrew, but one that had been specifically designed for dealing with very stubborn bottles. It had three spiral prongs at the end, which all turned slowly when the assassin squeezed the handle.

“Look, what’s Sinclair paying you? Or is that unprofessional of me to ask?” Cal said, starting to babble now. “Ballpark figure. Maybe I can match it. I have, I don’t know, upwards of eight hundred dollars in my account back on Earth with your name on it.”

There was another clink as the tool was set down on the table.

“I mean, it doesn’t literally have your name on it, that would be weird,” said Cal. “Also, I’m pretty sure that scribbling the word ‘Vajazzle’ across a dollar bill is probably a federal crime of some kind, so there’s that, too.”

Vajazzle continued to ignore him. Her hand returned to the case.

“What have you done with the others?” Cal asked. “Are they alive?”

“For now,” said the assassin.

“Are they the right way up?”

Vajazzle said nothing.

“They are, aren’t they? They’re the right way up! Those lucky fonks.” He raised his voice. “Thanks a lot, guys! Way to show solidarity.”

“They can’t hear you,” said Vajazzle. She held up something that looked like a tiny pizza cutter. “No-one can hear you. No matter how loud you may scream.”

“Is that a challenge? Because I don’t know, I can scream pretty loud,” Cal boasted.

Vajazzle nodded. “We’ll find out,” she said. She set the slicing tool down on the table. “They provided me with these tools. I did not ask for them. I am not going to use them on you.”

Cal made a noise that was somewhere between a laugh and a sob. “You aren’t? Well, let me tell you, that’s quite a weight off my mind. I was starting to get worried there, watching you wave all that pointy stuff around.”

“I do not require tools,” the assassin continued, stepping around the table. Cal watched her feet as they brought her closer. When she stopped, her knees were level with Cal’s head. “I have my own methods for making you talk.”

“Talk? Listen, sweetheart, I will talk all day, no torture required. My mom used to say I could talk the hind legs off a donkey which, in retrospect, doesn’t really make any sense, but the point is--”

Something deep in Cal’s insides suddenly tightened, strangling the rest of his sentence before it could get out. Vajazzle twisted two fingers in the air, just a fraction, and pain erupted like fire behind Cal’s ribs.

“Feel that? That is your left lung under compression. Hurts, doesn’t it?” said Vajazzle. “And it will continue to hurt until you answer my questions.”

“You… h-haven’t… asked a-any,” Cal wheezed.

“No, but I will,” said the assassin. “Eventually.”

She knelt down and pushed back her hood, revealing her bald head and its wispy patches of gray. “I want you to know that I take no pleasure from this,” she said. The tip of her tongue flicked across her dry, chapped lips. She leaned in until Cal could feel the warmth of her breath on the side of his face. “Well,” she whispered. “Perhaps a little.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Cal’s scream did a few laps of the room, then faded away into a rasping, wheezing, not-quite-silence.

That had been a rough one. He wasn’t sure exactly where Vajazzle had targeted that time, but it was something just a little below the belly button that he suspected was probably quite important. It had writhed and twisted inside him, then stopped just in time to prevent him blacking out.

He was pretty sure he had blacked out once or twice already, but he hadn’t been taking notes. He thought he could remember brief moments without pain, although that could easily have been his mind playing tricks on him.

The rope creaked as he swung slightly from side to side. The plastic sheet that had been spread out on the floor beneath him was still spotlessly clean, and he almost felt disappointed that he had nothing to show for everything he’d been put through.

Emphasis on ‘almost.’

“Question one,” said Vajazzle, tracing a withered finger downwards across his bare stomach and chest. “Where is the organism?”

The act of speaking proved both difficult and painful. His throat was fine – she hadn’t reached that part yet – but the effort of pushing air from his lungs made his already aching head ache more, and his whole chest constrict from the effort.

“His name,” Cal managed, “is Splurt. And I don’t know.”

Vajazzle grasped at the air. Cal tried to scream as his insides lit up in agony, but all that emerged was a burbling bubble of bloodied spit.

“P-please, I don’t know where he is,” Cal insisted. He convulsed and thrashed as Vajazzle brought her fingers together.

“Do you remember where you last saw it?”

Cal nodded. “Yes. Y-yes.”

“And where was it?” Vajazzle asked.

Cal gulped down a few desperate breaths and swallowed. Groaning with the effort, he nodded towards his left shoulder. “There.”

Vajazzle raised a second hand. Cal’s eyes widened in fright. “No, wait, no don’t, don’t, I didn’t mean it. He wasn’t there, I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you!”

The assassin kept both hands raised, but held them steady. Cal let out a sob of relief, then nodded towards his right shoulder. “I think it was actually that side,” he managed, then he closed his eyes and gritted his teeth as his internal organs thrashed and twisted inside him.

* * *

Mech lay on the floor in his cell, the power-diverting dial on his chest turned all the way to ‘brainpower mode,’ making it impossible for him to move.

His eyes were open, staring blankly at the domed light in the center of the ceiling. There was a speaker system somewhere in the cell. He couldn’t move his head to see it, but he could calculate the exact location by plotting the path of the sound waves. He had chosen to focus on the waveform in an attempt to block out the actual sounds themselves. Unfortunately, it wasn’t working.

“P-please, I don’t know where he is.”

Cal’s scream was so loud it made the speaker crackle and pop. Unable to so much as lift a finger, Mech focused all his brainpower on analyzing the shape of the distortion’s waves until the sound of torture faded into the background.

* * *

Loren’s arms were beginning to ache. Or, to be more accurate, they were continuing to ache, but she was finally beginning to notice.

She was attached by a series of cuffs and chains to the ceiling, her arms raised so her body formed a Y-shape. Had she known of the singer, Michael Jackson, she might have likened her position to the one he adopted on the cover of his posthumous two-disc album, This Is It, but as she was in no way aware of him, she didn’t. And, even if she had heard of him, she probably wasn’t in the right frame of mind to draw any such comparison.

The speaker that had been mounted high on the wall on her right now lay in pieces on the floor. She’d tried listening to the screams at first. She felt she owed it to Cal, somehow, like it was her duty to listen.

She’d listened as Vajazzle had asked him about Splurt, and she’d listened to his replies. It was soon after that she decided she couldn’t listen any longer, and she’d managed to bring her legs up high enough to kick the speaker from the wall.

As the speaker fell, so too did the silence. Loren regretted it almost immediately. Now that she had no idea what was happening, her imagination rushed to fill in the blanks.

She tugged on the cuffs that were locked around both wrists, rattling the chains attaching her to the ceiling. “Stop it!” she bellowed, thrashing the chains around. “Let him go! Let him go!”

Her voice echoed back off the featureless walls and thick metal door as, inside her head, Cal screamed and screamed and screamed.

* * *

Time passed.

Quite how much time, Cal couldn’t really say. He remembered very little except the pain. It had filled him from top to bottom, flooding his lungs and drowning him in its fire.

So yeah, that hadn’t been much fun.

And then… what?

He blinked and looked around him. He was still upside-down – of course, the fact his head felt like a balloon filled with wet sand had already told him that – and still in his cell. The protective sheeting below him was no longer clean. Far from it, in fact. A variety of bodily fluids painted the blue plastic in a rich palette of reds and… well, mostly just reds, actually, with a hint of brown that he vaguely recalled was vomit.

At least, he hoped it was vomit.

He was alone in the cell. That was nice, although it was almost certainly a deliberate attempt by the assassin to let him ponder his fate. By leaving him alone, she no doubt hoped his imagination would fill his head with terrifying notions of what fresh Hell awaited him when she returned, and in doing so make her job that much easier.

Leaving him alone, though, was a mistake. It was a mistake that would be Vajazzle’s undoing. She might have him tied up, but there wasn’t a trap in existence that could hold Cal Carver for long!

Gritting his teeth against the pain in his… well, everywhere, really, Cal squeezed his knees together and twisted his ankles where the bonds that held him to the ceiling were tightly tied. At the same time, he pressed the backs of his hands together and pushed his elbows outwards. The cuffs binding his wrists were tight, but escaping them would be child’s play.

He wriggled his arms.

He twisted his legs.

He let out a sigh.

“Nope,” he said. “I’m completely fonking stuck.”

He dangled for a while, doing nothing, then launched into a frenzied fit of squirming and struggling, as if trying to take the handcuffs by surprise. If they were surprised, they didn’t show it, and when Cal eventually stopped struggling, he was exactly as trapped as he had been moments before.

He was just building up to having another go when the door opened. Lady Vajazzle strode in, her face partly obscured by the hood she had pulled back into place.

“Finally!” said Cal. “I was about to send out a search party.” He tried to smile, but his face had forgotten how to, and he pulled a weird sort of upside-down grimace, instead. “Honestly, I’m not sure you’re taking this whole torture thing seriously at all.”

A long tendril snaked from beneath Vajazzle’s robe and wrapped around Cal’s waist. It tightened sharply and he hissed, more with the anticipation of the pain to come than with actual pain itself. “Well, this is new,” he said, trying to hide the tremble in his voice.

Vajazzle’s withered hands took hold of the chain around Cal’s legs. The fastenings rattled as she unclipped him, then a second tentacle-like appendage tangled around him and hoisted him onto the assassin’s shoulder.

That done, Vajazzle about-turned and marched towards the door. “Yay, field trip!” said Cal, watching the ceiling roll by above him. He was closer to being the right way up now, and his legs prickled as all the blood that hadn’t been evicted from his body rushed to be reunited with his feet.

“So… where are we going?” he asked, but Vajazzle didn’t reply.

Cal twisted his neck, trying to get a better view. They were in what was surely a contender for the world’s most boring corridor. It was long and straight with a number of doors on either side. In that regard, it was much like any other corridor, but it was the almost-gray walls that gave it its tedious edge.

He thought of them as ‘almost-gray’ because while they were gray, they were the wrong gray. They were a shade of gray so boring, so utterly bland and monotonous, that Cal had to assume the decorator had been aiming for a different, more interesting shade, but missed. No-one would pick that exact shade of gray through choice. No-one who wasn’t utterly filled with bitterness and self-loathing, anyway.

The corridor was empty, although it was too soon to say if that was because of the paint color. Vajazzle continued along it past a few other doors, then stopped outside the next one.

“Are we here?” asked Cal, craning around to see where they were. “What’s this room? Is it the spa? Tell me it’s the spa.”

A frail arm extended from within Vajazzle’s robe, and her thumb brushed against a sensor pad on the wall. A small light blinked from red to green, and the door slid open. The assassin stepped through, and Cal had to turn his head to stop his nose being smashed against the top of the door frame.

“Hey careful, you almost hurt me there, and I know how much that would upset you,” he said, then he yelped as Vajazzle’s tendrils hoisted him off her shoulder and stood him in the corner of a room that was not unlike the one he’d just come from.

His legs gave out beneath him and Cal slumped down against the wall. When he hit the floor he discovered he wasn’t the only one to have done so.

“Mech?” His head snapped up to Vajazzle. “What have you done to him?”

“I assure you, I am quite functional,” chimed Mech’s voice. It was higher-pitched than usual, and even though he was speaking, his lips didn’t move. “She merely used my chest-mounted dial to assign all my battery power to my intellectual capacity, rendering me temporarily immobile.”

“Oh,” said Cal. “OK. So… she didn’t torture you until you vomited and-or shizzed yourself? Well aren’t you the fonking teacher’s pet?”

One of Vajazzle’s tendrils snaked out and tangled around the dial on Mech’s chest. It gave a twist, and Mech’s hydraulics let out a series of short hissing sounds as the power returned to them.

Moving surprisingly quickly for someone made almost entirely of metal, Mech tore the tendril off his dial, while simultaneously pointing his other arm at Vajazzle’s face. Cal shrunk back against the wall, keen to avoid being splattered by Vajazzle’s exploding face and torso, but before Mech could fire, the assassin’s head folded in on itself like a collapsing soufflé.

Two large, ominous eyeballs stared impassively down at Mech from a squidgy green mound. Beneath it, Vajazzle’s body broke down, until only the goo-ball remained.

“Splurt!” Cal cried, then he lowered his voice to a whisper. “Buddy! Man, are you a sight for sore eyes. I could kiss you!”

He forced his trembling legs to push him into a standing position against the wall. “In fact, hold that thought – I totally am going to kiss you, but at a more appropriate time.” He jumped around on the spot until he was facing the wall. “Mech?” he said, waving his cuffed hands in the cyborg’s direction. “Would you do the honors?”

Mech got to his feet, being careful not to trample on Splurt. “With pleasure,” he said.

“Hey! What is… What is the meaning of this?” demanded a voice from just inside the doorway. A heavy-set, mostly human-looking man in a Zertex uniform glared at them, his hand moving swiftly to the blaster on his belt.

Mech’s elbow snapped back. It smashed into the guard’s cheek, spinning his head around to the left. The man pirouetted on the spot, then collapsed like a puppet whose strings had all been cut.

Cal looked back over his shoulder at him. “Did… did you just snap that guy’s neck?”

“Uh… maybe,” Mech admitted.

Cal shrugged. “Huh. Oh well,” he said. “Cut me free. You just gave me an idea.”

* * *

When the door to Loren’s cell opened, she was ready. She had spent the last several minutes at full stretch, her feet flat against the room’s back wall. As the door slid aside, she kicked forward with all her might. Her shoulders screamed at her, demanding to know what the Hell she thought she was playing at, as she swung on her chains, flicked her feet up, then wrapped them around the neck of the guard who stepped into the cell.

The guard gagged and choked as she tightened her scissor lock around his throat. “You’ve got five seconds to get me down, or I swear I will pop your skull like a zit.”

Frantically, the guard pointed to his face. The first thing Loren noticed was that it was turning a pleasing shade of purple. The second thing she noticed, was who it belonged to.

“Cal?” she asked. “Is that really you?”

Cal let out a sort of gaak sound and pointed quite emphatically towards his throat.

“Oh, yeah, sorry. Oops,” said Loren. She released her grip and swung back to the floor just as Mech entered and closed the door behind him. Splurt was nestled in one of Mech’s robotic hands, quivering gently, but somehow managing to look quite pleased with himself.

Cal coughed and rubbed his throat. “That’s not how I pictured your legs ending up around my neck,” he said. He stopped rubbing and quickly shook his head. “Not that I have ever pictured such a thing.”

“You’re alive. How are you alive?” Loren asked, as Mech snapped the chains that attached her to the ceiling. “I mean, it’s great, obviously, but… how are you alive?”

“Splurt,” said Cal. He thought about explaining more, but realized that he’d pretty much summed it up. “Yeah. Splurt.”

“Then way to go, Splurt,” said Loren. She nodded, and the little goo-ball rippled in response.

Slipping her wrists from what was left of her shackles, Loren looked Cal up and down. “So, you joined Zertex?”

“Well, you know, I hear they have a great dental plan,” he said.

“The uniform’s a little big.”

Cal held up an arm. Only the tips of his fingers emerged through the end of the sleeve. “Yeah, I took it from a larger gentleman.”

“Still, good idea,” said Loren. “It should help us move around unnoticed.”

“Hmm?” said Cal. “Oh yeah. Actually, I only took it because my own clothes were covered in blood and I’d repeatedly soiled myself, but the sneaking around thing is a nice bonus, too, I guess.”

“Yeah, ‘cept where we supposed to go?” asked Mech. “We’re on their ship. Ain’t nowhere to sneak to.”

“They’ve got the Shatner,” said Cal. “I heard Vajazzle tell Sinclair they’d brought it aboard.”

“Then it’ll be in impound,” said Loren. “The AX11 has a whole level for storing captured enemy ships. One of its original primary purposes was as an anti-piracy vessel, so it was fitted with tractor-beam technology that would allow it to--”

“OK, OK, we don’t need its Wikipedia entry,” said Cal. “Do you know how we get there?”

Loren snorted. “Are you kidding? I spent pretty much every single day during my teenage years studying the schematics of this thing!”

Cal and Mech exchanged a glance. “Damn, girl,” said Mech.

“What?” said Loren. “They were very interesting schematics.”

Cal rested a hand on her shoulder. “We’ll talk about this at a later date,” he promised. “But for now…”

He turned to the door and hoisted up his oversized pants. “…let’s go get our ship back.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Thanks to Loren’s quite tragically detailed knowledge of the ship’s layout, the first nine-tenths of the journey to the impound deck went without a hitch.

They’d navigated the prison deck, ducking out of sight when a couple of guards had emerged from a staff room on their way to the canteen. They’d made their way to one of the ship’s elevators, where Mech had quickly and efficiently overridden the security system by punching a big hole in it and sparking a couple of wires together.

They’d got out of the elevator one deck early and taken the stairs from there. Halfway down, the narrow stairwell opened onto a viewing platform, giving them their first look at the ship’s impound level.

When the Zertex ship had first appeared in the sky, Cal had been struck by the size of it. To call it ‘fonking enormous’ was to do it an injustice. It was city-sized, and nowhere was this more apparent than on the impound deck.

Hangar after hangar stretched off for ten miles or more in each direction. There was room for hundreds of ships. Thousands, maybe. And yet…

“Empty,” Cal whispered. “They’re all empty. Where’s the Shatner?”

“It’s here somewhere,” said Loren, peering in both directions. “It’s got to be.”

“Mech? Any sign?”

Mech first tapped, then jabbed at the controls on his arm. He shrugged. “Either too much interference or this thing’s still on the fritz,” he said. “I got nothing.”

Loren pointed to a computer terminal that stood outside the airlock of one of the hangars. “We can find it with that,” she said.

Cal leaned over the balcony and looked in both directions at the deck below. There were a couple of Zertex types working at other terminals, but the closest was a good quarter of a mile away, and seemed pretty engrossed in whatever he was working on.

“How long will it take?”

“Not long. Couple of minutes to get in, another few seconds to run the search.”

Cal nodded. “OK, then. Let’s do it. Space Team assemble!”

Mech rolled his eyes. “And to think, for a minute there I was actually happy to see you.”

“I love you too, Mech,” said Cal. He blew the cyborg a kiss, then followed Loren over to a second set of stairs that led down onto the deck.

Cal ducked low and began darting across the deck in a zig-zag pattern. Mech and Loren walked beside him. “What are you doing?” Loren asked. “You know that makes you look more suspicious, right?”

“Does it?”

“Of course it fonking does!” said Mech. “You look like you’re dodging sniper fire.”

Cal stopped zigging and zagging. He straightened up. “In a way, aren’t we all dodging sniper fire?”

“What does that mean?” asked Loren.

Call puffed out his cheeks. “No idea. Just thought it sounded good. You know, like wise or whatever.”

They stopped at the terminal and Loren immediately set to work. Her fingers tapped and swiped across the touch screen. “OK, this is good, they haven’t changed from the stock software. One of the really interesting things about the AX11 is that it’s only partly designed by Zertex. Almost a full third of the security protocols were actually devised and supplied by an independent…”

She glanced up and caught the look that passed between Cal and Mech. “I know what you’re thinking, but knowing this stuff isn’t actually that sad.”

“It’s a bit sad,” said Cal.

“And disturbing,” added Mech.

“Sad and disturbing,” agreed Cal.

Loren tutted. “I hate you guys, sometimes,” she said, then she turned her attention back to the screen. “Argh! How can I have been so stupid?”

“In your defense, you were young, you couldn’t get a date - there’s no shame in studying ship schematics every night for--”

“Not that!” said Loren. “I forgot the hangars are double-decker to create more storage space.”

“Right, because if there’s one thing they’re running short of…” said Cal, gesturing at the miles and miles of deck stretching away from them. It was only then that he spotted the Zertex officer striding towards them. “Oh, shizz,” Cal whispered. “We got company.”

“You there!” barked the man. He was tall and skinny, with legs that seemed to bend backwards at the knee. His skin was a queasy shade of green, but he could probably pass for human, assuming the lights were low enough and he was sitting behind a large desk. “What are you doing?”

“Maintenance detail,” Loren whispered, her fingers still flying across the screen.

“Uh, we’re on maintenance detail,” said Cal.

The officer snapped to a full halt just a pace or two away. “Maintenance detail?” he echoed.

“Yes, uh, sir. This computer thing needs… maintained. In a detailed way,” said Cal. “And so that’s what we’re doing.”

The officer’s eyes went from Cal to Loren and Mech. “I see,” he said. He raised a watch-like device on his wrist until it was level with his mouth.

“Communicator,” said Loren.

“Oh, sir, one thing,” said Cal. He pointed to the front of the man’s immaculately neat uniform. “You’ve got something there.”

Instinctively, the officer looked down. “Haha. Made you look,” said Cal. His uppercut caught the officer on the chin, snapping his head back and sending him crumpling to the floor. The officer’s backwards-pointing legs stuck up in the air at two different, yet equally awkward-looking angles.

“Man, I’m glad I don’t have to steal that uniform,” Cal said. He spun to face Loren. “Found it yet?”

“Yes, five hangars that way,” she said, pointing off to the right. “But if I call it up, everyone’s going to know about it. It’s going to get busy in here. We won’t have much time.”

“I just punched a guy unconscious, we already don’t have much time,” said Cal. He grinned. “Did you see that, by the way? It was pretty awesome.”

“Right, calling it now. Here goes,” said Loren.

She swiped the screen. It flashed red for a moment, then the floor beneath Cal’s feet began to rumble.

“Go, go, go!” Loren urged, setting off at a sprint towards the source of the rumbling. Cal dashed after her, with Mech thundering along behind, Splurt quivering in his hand with every step.

“Halt!” barked a voice from somewhere overhead. A squadron of troops arrived at the balcony ahead, blaster rifles training on the three figures running below.

“Take Splurt,” Mech called, lobbing the little gloopy guy underarm towards Cal. Splurt’s eyes rolled as he arced through the air, before Cal caught him and tucked him under his arm like a football.

Mech swung both arms and launched a volley of laser blasts up at the balcony. An explosion ripped through it, sending large chunks of fiery metal and smaller chunks of soggy Zertex soldier flying in all directions.

Loren and Cal dodged sideways, avoiding the rain of flaming debris as a volley of blaster bolts screamed towards them from behind.

“You call this ‘busy’?” Cal yelped, covering his head with one arm as he leaped a broken handrail. Behind him, Mech opened fire again, scattering the second squadron and sending them scrabbling for cover.

“Next hangar. Almost there!” Loren called.

“Thank fonk for that,” Cal wheezed, but his voice was drowned out by another burst of covering fire from Mech.

Skidding on the metal floor, Loren stopped at the next set of doors. They were large and thick, and made almost entirely of metal with just a small window slotted in at head height. Loren pressed the button to open the door, waited a fraction of a second, then frantically started stabbing at it.

“Come on, open up!” she hissed.

Cal arrived behind her and let out a little involuntary gasp as he saw what lay beyond the glass. The Shatner stood in the hangar, its landing ramp lowered. “Oh, there’s a sight for sore eyes,” he said. “Come on, hurry. Get us in there.”

“It won’t open,” said Loren. She pressed the button another ten times in four seconds, just in case one of those would do the trick. “It’s sealed shut.”

“Mech, can you override it?”

Mech spun, blasting the shizz out of a third group of soldiers that had appeared from a door up ahead. “Little busy,” he grunted.

Splurt squirmed beneath Cal’s arm, then plopped down onto the floor. He wriggled past Loren, then stretched himself up, changing into the shape of an amputated gray arm. With one finger, he prodded the button. The door slid open immediately.

“Now do you see why I love this fonking guy?” Cal asked.

“Starting to,” Loren admitted. She darted through. Mech went next, while Cal reached to grab Splurt. The arm drew back, then violently shoved Cal in the chest.

“Hey?” Cal said, stumbling backwards into the hangar. Splurt tapped the button and the doors locked closed between them.

“Splurt?” Cal yelled, pressing himself against the glass. Back out on the deck, he watched as Vajazzle’s arm became a green blob again, then quickly started to turn into something else. “What are you doing? Open the door. Come on, buddy, we need to go.”

Splurt grew until he was roughly Cal’s height. No, not roughly, Cal realized. Exactly.

“No, no, what are you doing?” Cal demanded. He banged a fist on the glass as Splurt sprouted arms and legs, and a face Cal was very familiar with. “No, don’t!” Cal said, his voice cracking. “You can’t!”

On the other side of the glass, an identical duplicate of Cal Carver smiled. Splurt raised an arm and waved as Mech caught Cal by the same arm and began dragging him towards the ship. “Come on, man, we have to go.”

“We can’t just leave him!” Cal protested, struggling against Mech’s grip. “They’ll torture him!”

There was a roar as the Shatner’s thrusters ignited. “They won’t find him. He’ll hide.”

“He won’t!” Cal insisted, turning away from his double for the first time since Mech had started to pull him. “He’s pretending to be me because he knows it’s me they want. He’s trying to help us get away.”

He turned back, but there was no-one on the other side of the glass now, just the sound of shouting and the screams of blaster fire.

“If we’re going to go, we have to go now,” Mech said, hoisting Cal off his feet. “I’m sorry, man.”

“We’ll come back!” Cal shouted, as Mech ran with him up the ramp. “You hear me, Splurt? We’ll come find you!”

The landing ramp raised behind them, locking into place. The floor rolled as the Shatner lurched upwards, then Cal’s stomach flipped as the ship shot through the docking shield and sped out into space.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Cal slumped down into his seat and fastened his belt across his chest.

“You OK?” Loren asked, busily flicking switches on her control panel.

“No. I’m not OK,” said Cal.

“Well, things ain’t about to get any better,” warned Mech. “We got company coming. A whole lot of those saucer ships just detached.”

“Good,” said Cal, slamming his fists down on his arm rests and flipping out the weapon controls. “I really want to shoot something.”

The headset dropped down into position and Cal found himself zooming through virtual reality space. He pushed back in his seat as his view was filled by dozens of swirling saucer-ships. They criss-crossed towards him, weapons unfolding into position beneath them.

“Wow… that is a lot of spaceships,” he muttered. His hands found the weapon control sticks. “Everything’s working, right?”

“Everything’s working,” Mech’s voice said in his ear. “Knock yourself out.”

“Don’t mind if I do,” said Cal. He squeezed the trigger in his left hand and a beam of red energy scorched through space. He arced the beam in a sweeping loop, taking a potshot at any and all of the countless ships whizzing around him. The ships parted as the beam passed, then closed ranks behind it.

“You missed,” said Loren.

“I know!” said Cal. He tried again, spraying cannon-fire into the fast-moving throng. Again, the ships weaved out of the beam’s path, even when Cal banked it sharply in the opposite direction, then erratically waggled the joystick from side to side.

“Man, they’re fast,” he said, then his eyes widened when four ships all opened fire in a perfectly synchronized attack. “Incoming!”

The Shatner shuddered as the saucers’ energy blasts hammered the shields.

“Bit more warning next time!” Loren hissed, fighting the vibration that rattled through the controls.

“Switching to torpedoes,” Cal announced. He swung the right stick, sending a targeting icon swooping across his field of view. He swung it towards an oncoming ship, but it zipped through the reticle before he could get a lock.

He tried again, tracking another of the oncoming saucers. The targeting sight flickered as it tried to get a fix, but the saucer banked into a loop before the lock-on could complete.

“They’re too fast!” Cal said. “How can they be this fast?”

“Scanners not showing anyone on board,” Mech’s voice chimed. “They’re AI controlled.”

“Watch out!” Cal warned, then he gripped the arm rests as Loren sent the ship into a plunging dive. A volley of cannon-fire flared narrowly past them, then the ship rocked violently as a torpedo slammed into its exposed belly.

“That just dropped our shields to forty percent,” Mech warned.

“Just go, get us out of here,” Cal said. “Hit the warp!”

“Can’t, they’re too close. The fail-safes won’t let us,” said Loren.

“Mech disabled them last time,” Cal said, blasting a beam of cannon fire that hit nothing whatsoever. “Do it again.”

“Last time wasn’t like this,” said Mech. “Ain’t no way we can warp with all these things around.”

“Well, I can’t shoot them, they keep moving out of the fonking way!”

“We need to shut down the control ship,” said Mech.

Cal spun in his seat until the enormous Zertex ship they’d just escape from filled the sky. He swallowed. “We’re going to need more torpedoes.”

“Not that one,” said Mech. “One of the saucers is telling the rest of them what to do. The control ship. Take it out and we take them all out.”

“Is it slower than the rest of them?” Cal asked. “Or, ideally, completely stationary?”

“Afraid not,” said Mech.

“Then how do we stop it?”

“OK, I got an idea,” Mech’s voice intoned. Cal blinked as the headset was lifted away, revealing Mech’s face just inches from his own. “But you ain’t gonna like it.”

* * *

Cal stood in the airlock, stiflingly hot inside the ship’s one remaining space suit. His arms hung by his sides, weighed down by the spare pair of boots he had wedged his hands inside.

“I’m totally going to die,” he said.

“That outcome is certainly a possibility,” Mech admitted. His dial was turned all the way into brainpower mode, and he was propped up against the outer airlock door, his face pressed against the window. “However, if my calculations are correct, there is a very real chance that you might survive.”

“Well, that’s encouraging,” said Cal. “And are your calculations correct?”

“We shall find out.”

Cal grinned and shook a boot in Mech’s direction. “I know you’re kidding. You’ve totally got this nailed.”

“On the contrary,” said Mech, his voice echoing inside Cal’s helmet. “To the best of my knowledge, such a feat has never been attempted before. Or, if it has, then it has not ended well. Now, please excuse me while I make the necessary calculations. Take your position.”

“OK, but remind me why I’m in here doing this and not you?” Cal asked.

“I require my full intellectual capacity to calculate the exact launch window,” said mech. “Now, please. Position.”

Cal clanked over to the outer airlock and fumbled into a kneeling position. “How do I let myself get talked into this stuff?” he wondered, as he shuffled right up to the door. “OK, I’m here. So you’re going to… what? Open the doors when it’s time to--?”

The door opened and a blast of pressurized gas erupted from a tank on Cal’s back. He screamed as he was sent hurtling into a fever-pitch frenzy of laser fire and spaceships.

“Jesus Christ!” he howled, instinctively screwing his eyes shut.

“Please remember to hold absolutely still,” Mech’s voice chimed. “Any deviation from your current trajectory will mean your path will not intersect with the anticipated path of the control ship.”

“If I get back, my foot is going to intersect with your fonking… Hey, wait a minute. What do you mean ‘anticipated’ path? I thought you had worked out where it was going to go?”

“I have calculated to within an acceptable margin of error the control craft’s most likely flight path,” Mech said. “However, it remains a possibility that the craft may deviate from its--”

“Acceptable margin of…? So you mean you guessed?” Cal gasped. He opened his eyes, then yelped as a saucer rocketed past above his head, weapons blazing.

“In a sense,” Mech admitted. “But it was an educated one.”

“You know what? Forget it. I don’t want to know,” Cal said. “But we’re sure the shield won’t tear me a new one?”

“The shielding deflects energy-based weapons,” said Mech. “You are not an energy-based weapon.”

“Fine, fine, OK,” Cal grumbled. “But if I don’t hit this fonking ship, then you and I are going to have a long serious--”

Cal hit the fonking ship. Or, more accurately, the fonking ship hit him. The curved edge slammed into his torso so he folded at the middle, his legs flailing around beneath the saucer’s hull, his head and arms flopping about above.

“I thank you,” said Mech, sounding far more pleased with the situation than Cal currently was.

“I think… my balls just exploded,” Cal wheezed.

The ship shifted course and he began to slide. Frantically, he tried to plant the sole of any one of the four boots he currently wore against the saucer’s metal shell, but he couldn’t turn his hands or feet enough to get traction, and as the ship spun into a dive, he felt himself being thrown outwards away from it.

“Oh no you don’t!” Cal grimaced, contorting his left leg in a way he’d never contorted it in before, and hoped he’d never contort it in again. He felt the reassuring clank of the magnet locking onto the hull, then he flailed around like a ragdoll as the ship climbed into a spiraling loop.

“Don’t throw up, don’t throw up, don’t throw up,” he whispered, repeating the words over and over like a mantra.

Flicking his wrist, he eventually managed to shake free one of the boots and fumbled in the pocket on the front of the suit. He pulled out the grey disk Mech had given him, flipped it over a couple of times in case there was a right and a wrong way up, then decided he’d better check.

“So I just… what? Stick it on?”

“You just stick it on,” Mech said. “And then you jump.”

Cal’s eyes widened. “Jump? You never said anything about jumping? Why do I have to jump?”

“Technically, you don’t have to,” said Mech. “But I’d strongly advise you to, otherwise you will be killed by the implosion.”

“Fine, I’ll jump,” Cal sighed. He pressed the disc against the hull of the ship. He drew his hand back slowly, half-expecting the circle of metal to float away, but it remained fixed in place. A moment later, a red light pulsed across its surface. “OK, done. So, when should I jump?” he asked.

Mech’s voice sounded worried. “You mean you’re still there?”

“Yes, I’m still here! You didn’t tell me not to still be here. Are you saying I should--?”

“JUMP!” Mech barked, his voice back to being filled with its normal gruffness.

Cal jumped. He didn’t waste time picking a direction or watching out for oncoming spaceships, he just bent his legs, kicked with his feet and launched himself into space, just as the saucer began to collapse in on itself.

It reminded Cal of Splurt turning back after one of his transformations. The saucer’s shiny exterior crumpled up like a ball of paper, as all the outside parts raced to see which of them could get to the inside first.

Cal spun away, flipping and twirling like a stuntman on the high-wire. Behind him, the control ship was already barely the size of a child’s roundabout.

Then a hula hoop.

Then Cal struggled to decide on any more comparisons, and before he was able to come up with ‘dinner plate’ it had shrunk away to nothing.

It was only then that Cal noticed the other saucer ships had all stopped. Well, technically they hadn’t stopped, as they were still hurtling through space, but they were drifting aimlessly now, with no way of correcting their course.

Much like Cal himself, he realized.

“Mech, tell me you’re coming,” he said.

“Yeah, I’m coming. I see you.”

“Good, then pick me up and get me aboard,” Cal said. “We’ve got to save Splurt.”

Ahead of him, the Zertex war cruiser made the leap to full warp. One moment it was there, the next it was stretching out like old elastic, and then it was gone.

“On second thoughts,” said Cal. “We should probably go and rescue Miz first.”

“He’ll be fine,” said Mech. “The little guy’s probably tucked away somewhere safe already.”

“Yeah,” said Cal, staring at the empty spot in space the ship had just moments ago inhabited. “Yeah, probably.”

* * *

President Sinclair leaned against his desk, kneading the bridge of his nose between finger and thumb. His lips moved in silent frustration for a few moments, then he raised his head to the screen.

“Escaped? How can they have escaped?”

On screen, a Zertex legate puffed up his already overly-puffed chest. “It was the cyborg, Mr President, sir. It breached security and freed the others, then they made it to their ship. I… I mean, we, generally, it wasn’t specifically my decision or anything, have sent drones in pursuit.”

Sinclair stood. “Do not destroy them,” he said. “I want Carver alive.”

Behind the officer, a door slid open. Lady Vajazzle strode through, shoving a shackled figure before her. Sinclair’s smile lit up the whole room. “Speak of the devil!” he said. “I’d heard you had escaped!”

“He was captured by the hangar,” Vajazzle said. “It appears his companions left him behind.”

“Oh, how disappointing for you,” said Sinclair, sticking his bottom lip out in a mocking sad face. His smile quickly returned. “What’s the matter, Cal? No witty comebacks? No devastating quips?”

Cal smiled, raised a hand, and waved. This seemed to tip Sinclair over the edge. “Enough of this,” he snapped. “Forget the others, they’re irrelevant. Bring Carver to me. Now.” He rolled up a sleeve and buttoned it in place above his elbows. “I think it’s time he and I got ourselves reacquainted.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Greyx Prime was not the largest planet in the Greyx sector. Nor was it the nicest. Almost a full third of the land masses were covered by swamp, and it boasted no less than eleven different types of worm that could eat you from the inside out.

In the north, the winter lasted for most of the year, while the area around the equator would often get so hot in the summer the trees would catch fire, the roads would melt, and some of the more liberal Greyx would shave themselves bald.

But while it wasn’t the largest or nicest of the Greyx-run planets, it was the first, and sometimes that’s important.

For the Greyx, Greyx Prime was where it all started. They all knew the history, from the vague stuff about bacteria and swamps, to the more recent stuff about the warring factions and their unification under the leadership of Rhaxus.

The Greyx living on other worlds might have better infrastructure, less lethal weather and fewer opportunities to be devoured from within by a ravenous invertebrate, but they didn’t have history like they did on Greyx Prime.

All the Greyx kings had been crowned on Greyx Prime, from Rhaxus to Graxan. It had been several decades since the last coronation, which was why a few hundred thousand Greyx had flooded the streets of Greyx Prime’s greatest city (which was also, thanks to a quite startling lack of imagination by all concerned, called Greyx) hoping to catch a glimpse of the crowning ceremony.

High above the city, the Shatner drifted along behind a bank of grey cloud, its scanners – or sensors, depending on your naming preference – working overtime.

“So,” said Cal. “What we got?”

“We got a whole lot of people, that’s what,” Mech replied, reading the lines of data that swooshed up the screen like movie credits on fast-forward. “I got no idea how we’re supposed to find Miz in all this.”

“What about Kannus? Have you found him?”

“Yeah, he’s easy,” said Loren. She tapped a few buttons and the image on screen magnified to show a bird’s eye view of a large building with an ornate roof. The image shimmered for a moment, then the heat imprint of several figures appeared inside the building.

“That’s him in the middle,” said Loren. “Those other six around him are guards. We don’t know who the other one is standing off to the side, but whenever Kannus and his guards move, it moves, too.”

“Miz?” Mech guessed.

“Is she trying to tear his throat out?” asked Cal.

Loren shook her head. “No.”

“Then it’s not Miz.”

Cal leaned forward in his chair and studied the screen. “He’d have to hide her, or she’d tell everyone what really happened.” He gnawed on his lip. “But where?”

“Walk it through,” Mech suggested. “He gets her on his ship. Before the guards wake up or after?”

“Before,” said Loren. “Even if his own guys were loyal to him, Graxan’s wouldn’t be.”

“OK, then. So he stows her on the ship somewhere no-one’s going to find her, then he flies here, sends the guards away and takes her… where?”

All three of them studied the screen. “We don’t know enough about this place. About Kannus,” Loren said. “There’s no saying where he might have taken her.”

Cal sat up straight. “Unless…”

“He didn’t take her anywhere,” said Mech.

“On it,” said Loren, her fingers flying across her controls. “Where is it…? Where is it…? Got it!”

The image changed to show an overhead view of Kannus’s lop-sided ship. The screen shimmered again for a moment, then a single heat signature flickered into life inside the back of the craft.

“Alright!” cheered Cal.

“So what’s the plan? We just swoop down there and get her?” said Mech. “Everyone’s gonna be busy with the coronation thing.”

“The coronation,” said Cal, below his breath. He rubbed his tongue against the front of his teeth. “So Kannus hasn’t been crowned yet?”

Loren shook her head. “No, the ceremony doesn’t start for a few minutes. Why?”

“Does anyone else really not want that guy to be king?”

“You can say that again,” said Mech.

Loren turned in her chair. “Do you have a plan?”

“Plan is a strong word for it,” Cal admitted. “It’s more… an idea.” He shook his head. “No, it’s not really an idea, either. A notion, maybe? Ah, let’s just call it an itch.” Cal sat back in his chair. For once, there wasn’t even a hint of a grin on his face. “And I’ve got a real urge to go scratch it.”

“So we go kick his ass, then get Miz,” said Mech. “I like this plan.”

“No, that’s not going to work,” said Cal. “If we just go there and start kicking the shizz out of him in the middle of the street, we’re going to be torn apart by, well, everyone.”

“Well… what, then?” said Loren.

“Mech, you go get Miz. Loren, stay on the Shatner and keep her ready. We might need to get out of here in a hurry,” said Cal. He flexed his fingers, then balled them into fists. “Leave Kannus to me.”

* * *

The streets of Greyx had been torn down and rebuilt countless times over the years. There were a number of reasons for this.

Way back when, the settlement that would later become the planet’s greatest city, had come under attack on an almost weekly basis, and burnt to the ground roughly once every three months.

Since the in-fighting had ended, the city had mostly thrived, despite the occasional earthquake, tornado and – some years back – flesh-eating sentient clouds.

The city’s most recent incarnation was designed to stand up to pretty much anything the weather might throw at it. The buildings were low and stocky, the streets were wide and straight, and everything was heavily reinforced. It wasn’t pretty, but it was quite a lot less likely to collapse, and that was the main thing.

The wide streets brought other benefits, too. Today, for example, they allowed thousands of excited Greyx to gather around the palace, waving flags, wagging tails and – as Kannus emerged through the palace's towering double doors – roaring their approval.

Accompanied by his guards, Kannus approached a raised platform that had been built outside the palace and stopped at the bottom step. All around the clearing, military musicians blasted a fanfare on their trumpet-like instruments, and the roar of the crowd reached fever pitch.

Kannus glanced back at his guards, then at the other figure who followed beside them. Sorshi, Queen of the Greyx, gave him a nod of encouragement, then turned her eyes towards the top of the steps.

A rattling drumbeat echoed around the clearing, keeping time with Kannus as he made his way up the staircase. When he reached the top he cast his gaze across the cheering masses, then thrust the Bladestaff high above his head.

The crowd, which had already been in a frenzy, somehow found the energy to up their noise levels even further. The palace windows rattled in their frames with the force of their adoration.

Kannus lowered the Bladestaff, and raised a hand instead, calling for quiet. It took almost a full minute before the cheering faded enough for him to speak. He didn’t shout, and yet the words he spoke were heard all across the city. This was partly due to the Greyx’s enhanced hearing, but mostly due to the extensive PA system that had been set-up all around the place.

“My brothers and sisters,” Kannus said. The crowd went wild. He let it die down again before continuing. “By now, you will all have heard the news. Graxan – Great Graxan – has gone to face the Unshuk.”

No-one cheered at that. The excited murmuring of the throngs became a respectful silence. Kannus nodded approvingly – gratefully, even – then pressed on.

“Graxan was like a father to me. More than a father, even. His daughter… my Lifebound… was also taken from us by the same pirates who killed her father. Mizette, like Great Graxan before her, died in my arms.”

The crowd made not a sound now.

“Her final words, before she, too, set off on her journey across the Unshuk’s dark realm,” Kannus said, grinding his back teeth together as if keeping his emotions in check. “Were, ‘lead them. Help them. Be their king.’”

Kannus cleared his throat and raised his eyes to the sky. “Even at the end, her thoughts were only for her people,” he said. “For all of you. For all of us.”

A wave of applause rippled through the gathered crowds. A few cheers rose up.

“And so, it is with a heavy heart that I assume the mantle of king,” Kannus said. “I have trained for this moment since childhood. I have dreamed of this moment since before even then. But not like this. Never like this.”

His voice cracked and he hung his head, making a very good show of composing himself. The applause and cheering rose up around him. He let it build for a good minute or more, drinking their love for him in.

“And now, Queen Sorshi, wife of the late, great Graxan, mother of Mizette, shall join me and pass over the reins of power.”

The crowd went wild again as Sorshi took to the steps. In her hands, she carried a small cushion of finest Onkl silk. On it sat a small, unassuming-looking crown. It was fashioned from a dull base metal, with a single strap of black leather around the circumference the only attempt to jazz it up a bit.

Kannus watched her approach. He held the Bladestaff in one hand, the spiral end of the handle resting on the floor. He had thought about returning it to its hiding place, but he liked the symbolism of it. He who wields the Bladestaff rules the Greyx. And wield it he would.

Sorshi was almost at the top of the stairs when the sky went boom. All eyes raised in time to see the Shatner punching through the clouds and dropping into a stationary hover in front of Kannus’s podium.

“No, but… How?” Kannus growled. He gestured to the guards stationed around his platform. “What are you waiting for? It’s the pirates! Open fire!”

As one, the guards raised their blaster rifles and squeezed the triggers. Hot blasts of fiery energy streaked towards the Shatner, bounced harmlessly off its shielding, then ricocheted away. Part of the palace exploded as an energy bolt tore through it. Three more of the blasts streaked into the audience, and the crowds pushed apart in panic as two unlucky Greyx found themselves on the receiving end.

“Stop!” cried Sorshi, hurrying onto the platform. “Stop this, people will get hurt!”

Kannus shot her an angry glare, but bit his tongue. “Cease,” he commanded. The guards stopped firing, but kept their weapons raised.

The panicked crowd quickly calmed down now that the chances of them being blasted by lasers had significantly lowered. They gawped up at the ship that had come swooping down through the clouds. They’d been excited at the thought of seeing a coronation. Seeing a coronation and a shootout with space pirates was twice as thrilling.

A murmur of anticipation rippled through the audience as a ramp folded open at the back of the pirate ship. A human strode down the ramp, waving and smiling. He stopped at the end, looked at the ground quite some distance below, and took a step back.

“Down a bit,” he called.

From inside the ship, those near the front of the crowd could just make out some muttering.

The ship dropped quite sharply. The man on the ramp let out a surprisingly feminine scream, bounced off his feet, then tumbled over the edge.

The crowd gasped as the man threw up an arm and caught the edge of the ramp. He dangled there for a few moments, his legs swinging, his mouth spitting out a string of heavily censored curse-words, the last of which – “Oh, fonking fonk it!” – coming just before he released his grip and landed heavily on the ground.

“I’m OK, I’m OK!” Cal wheezed, rolling onto his side and clambering to his feet. He wore a large Zertex-issue backpack, which almost made him stumble off-balance as he turned to face the crowd. “Uh, hi there!” he said. “Sorry to interrupt.”

There was another boom as the Shatner’s engines ignited it, propelling it away from the palace. Cal gave the ship a wave, then turned back to address the audience. “I know this is probably not the best time, but I wanted to have a chat with Kannus and, well, I think you guys should hear what I have to say.”

He winked at no-one in particular, then spun on his heels and tucked his thumbs into the straps of his pack. “Hey, Kannus,” he said, as a dozen armed guards rushed to surround him. “Miss me?”

“This is the murderer who killed Great Graxan,” Kannus announced.

A growl of resentment swelled through the crowd. Cal’s jaw dropped in mock surprise. “So that’s what you’re telling them? Pin it on the plucky and loveable space adventurer, eh? That’s just… well, it’s just mean, Kannus. It’s very mean. Frankly, I expected better of you.”

Cal shrugged. “Because we both know what really happened, don’t we? You killed Graxan.”

Kannus’s laugh came as a sharp, sudden bark, but it fell away just as quickly. “How dare you?” he spat. “Graxan was like a father to me. You killed him, just like you killed my Mizette!”

“She was never yours. And do us both a favor,” Cal said. “Don’t ever say her name again.”

“Murdering mongrel,” Kannus said. He gestured to the guards. “Kill him.”

“Wait!”

Cal, the crowd and Kannus all turned to look at Sorshi. She bowed her head, but only a little. “I am but a woman, and know little of such matters,” she said, quickly. “But would it not befit the king to deal with this murderer personally?” She raised her eyes and met Kannus’s piercing stare. “An attack on the royal family is an attack on all the Greyx. And you, Kannus, you are now all the Greyx, and all the Greyx are you. Justice must be served, and you must be the one to serve it. It is our way.”

“Kan-nus! Kan-nus! Kan-nus!”

It started as a few lone voices in the crowd.

“Kan-nus! Kan-nus! Kan-nus!”

Quickly, it began to spread like a virus through the throngs, until thousands – tens of thousands – of Greyx all chanted and punched the air in unison.

“Kan-nus! Kan-nus! Kan-nus!”

Cal held his arms out and grinned up at the platform. “Your people have spoken. Cal versus Kannus. Adorable-yet-rugged space captain vs murdering hairy shizznod.” He slipped the bag off his shoulders and tossed it aside.

“Bring it on,” Cal said, raising his fists and firing a succession of jabs at thin air.

Kannus glowered down at him, then looked out across the chanting crowd. His snout curved upwards into a smirk. “Very well,” he said, then his legs twitched and he sailed through the air, the Bladestaff still clutched in one clawed hand.

The ground trembled when he landed, dropping down to his haunches and pressing his free hand against the cobblestone road. When he stood, the crowd went wild.

“Kill him!”

“Tear him apart!”

“Avenge Great Graxan!”

Cal bounced from foot to foot, breathing quickly in and out. He nodded towards the Bladestaff. “You’re not going to use that, are you?” He held his hands out at his sides. “I’m unarmed. You don’t need that to beat me, surely?”

Kannus’s grip tightened on the staff’s wooden handle. He rolled it around in his palm for a moment, then, with a sudden downwards jab, embedded the metal tip in the ground.

“There, isn’t that better?” said Cal, then he lowered his shoulder, roared at the top of his voice, and charged.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Cal’s shoulder slammed into Kannus’s stomach. A jolt of pain travelled the length of Cal’s spine, making his legs go weak. Kannus, for his part, remained unmoved.

“Wow,” Cal grimaced, tilting his head to look up at the towering Greyx. “Those are some serious abs.”

Kannus’s fist hammered Cal on the back, and Cal’s knees folded neatly beneath him. It was only by wrapping his arms around the Greyx’s waist that Cal stopped himself falling over all the way.

Legs burning with the effort, he sprang himself upright, driving the top of his head into Kannus’s chin. Agony exploded through his skull and he stumbled back, hands pressed flat on top of his aching dome.

“Ow, ow, ow! Deeply regretting that one,” said Cal. “Totally going to have a concussion.”

Kannus advanced. “You are pathetic, mongrel,” he said. “It is bad enough that Great Graxan and my Lifebound were cut down, but to be cut down by the likes of you is doubly insulting.”

“Yeah, but they weren’t, were they? I thought we’d established that,” said Cal, backing away. He noticed Sorshi standing up on the platform and gave her a nod. “I’m sorry for your loss, uh… Miz’s mom,” he told her. “Rest assured, I’m going to kick seven shades of shizz out of this guy on your behalf.”

He lunged forwards, swinging wildly with a punch. Kannus leaned backwards, avoiding the blow. Cal spun, off-balance, then tripped over Kannus’s outstretched foot.

The crowd laughed and cheered as Cal rolled on the ground. He stood up and dusted himself down. “Nicely done. Impressive. You saw that one coming,” he said. “But how about this?”

He threw himself into a sloppy flying kick. It was a move he’d seen Captain Kirk pull off with devastating effect many, many times. Unfortunately, Captain Kirk had never fought a fonking huge wolfman before.

Except maybe in the animated series. Cal had never seen that.

Kannus caught Cal’s leg in one hand and swung him around. The crowd let out a collective, “Whoooooa!” sound that started low, went higher as Cal sailed through the air, then ended in a cheer when he hit the cobbles again.

“OK, OK, you saw that one coming, too,” Cal wheezed. He held up a hand, indicating that he needed a second to catch his breath.

Once he had, he stood up, placed his hands on his lower back, and cricked his spine. “Oh, man, I don’t know if that made it better or worse,” he said. He took a few hobbled steps. “Worse. Definitely worse.”

Kannus began to circle him, his claws extending from the ends of his fingers. Cal limped around in the same direction, matching Kannus’s pace.

“Finish him!” roared a voice from the crowd.

“In the name of Great Graxan!”

“Wow, you’ve really managed to get them on-side,” said Cal. “You know, despite all the betrayal and murder stuff. I’m impressed.” He shrugged. “Well, I mean, kinda. There’s the loose end, of course. That’s what’s going to turn them against you.”

Kannus’s eyes narrowed. “They are my people. They will never turn against me.”

“Looking at them right now? I’d totally agree. These guys are behind you one-hundred-percent. It’s quite touching, actually.” He grinned. “But then, that’s right now. That’s not in a few seconds. Then, oh man, then it’s going to be a different story.”

“Explain,” Kannus demanded.

“Come on, where’s the fun in that?” Cal asked. “Let’s just wait and find out. We could count backwards from, I don’t know, twenty.”

Kannus cleared the space between them in a heartbeat. Cal had barely seen the Greyx move when he suddenly found himself flat on his back, Kannus’s snarling snout just inches from his face. “Explain!”

“Ow, ow, you’re kneeling on my leg,” Cal said. “Any chance you could move just a little to the right? I’d really appreciate it.”

Kannus’s teeth snapped hungrily in front of Cal’s face. He jabbed down with a finger, and Cal let out a hiss as the claw stabbed into his shoulder.

“Explain,” Kannus growled.

“O-OK,” Cal stammered. “But first, I got to tell you, this is only, like, the ninth most painful thing that’s happened to me today.”

Kannus twisted his finger and the blood drained from Cal’s face. “Well, m-maybe eighth,” he grunted. “But fine, I’ll tell you. You’re going to want me to whisper it, though. You won’t want your adoring fans to hear.”

Kannus lowered his head the tiniest of fractions. His ears curved until Cal had their full attention. “We know she’s not dead,” Cal whispered. “And we know she’s on your ship.”

It took a moment for the significance of this to filter through to Kannus. “No matter,” he said, his voice a low murmur. “The ship is heavily guarded.”

“Yeah, thing is… did you meet my friend? The one who most definitely is not a robot,” said Cal. He frowned. “I realize that makes it sound like my other friends are robots, of course, which they aren’t, but…” He shook his head, getting himself back on track.

“Anyway, my point is, he has some… temper issues, and doesn’t take too kindly to people kidnapping people he cares about. So, you remember when I said she was on your ship?” Cal tapped his ear, drawing Kannus’s attention to a tiny plastic earpiece he had wedged in there. “I’ve been reliably informed that’s no longer the case.”

The hair on the back of Kannus’s neck stood on end. Cal smiled. “Oh, and three, two…”

Kannus sat back and straightened, then something like a furry rocket slammed into him, sending him sprawling across the cobbles.

Cal let his head drop back onto the ground with a clonk. “Oh,” he whispered. “Thank fonk for that.”

The cheering of the crowd became murmurs of surprise as a tangle of hairy limbs rolled across the road, claws and teeth slashing and gnashing at the air.

All around the plaza, the guards raised their rifles. With a bound, Sorshi leaped from the platform and landed in front of them. “Hold!” she cried, raising an arm. “That… That is my daughter!”

The surprised murmuring became a chorus of full-on gasps. Kannus twisted free of Mizette’s grasp and jumped back out of her reach. A deep gash ran down the side of his neck, darkening his fur with his blood.

“What trickery is this?” he demanded, raising his voice for the benefit of the audience. He pointed angrily at the panting Miz. “The shapeshifter. They have a shapeshifter. How dare you allow it to take the form of my Lifebound? How dare you?”

“Oh, cut the shizz, Kannus,” said Cal, heaving himself to his feet. “That’s Miz. You didn’t kill her, you kept her prisoner.”

“And now I’m totally going to kill you,” Miz snarled.

“No, shapeshifter, you won’t!” said Kannus. “Guards!”

The guards brushed Sorshi aside and formed a circle around Mizette. Her muscles tensed as she calculated her chances of reaching Kannus before the shooting started, but it was no use. She’d be dead before she’d made it halfway.

“The shapeshifter and the pirate mongrel will be executed,” Kannus decreed. “Their companions will be hunted down and they, too, shall be put to death.”

“You killed him, Kannus,” said Miz. “You killed my dad.”

“And I can prove it,” said Cal. He turned and began to sprint across the cobbles, racing towards his abandoned backpack.

Kannus leaped over the heads of his guards with a single bound. He powered along on all fours, eating up the gap between him and Cal in a few scant seconds.

Cal could hear Kannus’s claws clicking across the cobbles as he threw himself at the backpack and frantically fumbled with the zip. “Come on, come on,” he hissed. Kannus was almost on him now. Just one more jump…

Yelping with relief, Cal pulled the silver briefcase-sized box from inside the backpack. He lay it flat on his chest, his hands shaking as he felt around for the buttons.

Kannus pounced.

Cal pressed the box’s three hidden switches.

The lid flipped open and a rectangular frame snapped together. Kannus and everyone standing behind him caught a brief glimpse of blue sky inside the frame, but then an enormous staring eye blocked the view.

“What the fon—?” Kannus managed, before he sailed through the center of the frame, flapped frantically in the air for a moment, then dropped out of sight on the other side.

Cal pressed the buttons and the lid snapped shut. With some effort, he pushed the box aside and sat up. “I’m sorely tempted to make some sort of ‘that’s what you call putting the dog out’ quip right now, but I think it might be quite racist, so I won’t,” he said.

He stood, and quickly found himself surrounded by armed guards. “Hey, easy fellas,” he said, raising his arms. “We’re all good. I’m on your side.” He pointed to the largest of the guards. “Well, maybe not that guy, he looks quite mean, but the rest of you for sure.”

A little way across the clearing, Sorshi cautiously approached her daughter. “Mizette?” she said, softly, like she was scared the word might break. “It’s you.”

Miz nodded. “Yeah, mom. It’s me,” she said, then they collapsed into one another’s arms as the crowd erupted in a fresh chorus of cheers.

Cal wiped one eye on his sleeve and put an arm round a guard’s shoulder. The guard was much bigger than him, so this wasn’t easy, and involved Cal standing on his tiptoes. “Man, I am a sucker for a happy ending,” he said, then he looked up as the Shatner came shuddering to a stop in the sky overhead. “Oh and look, here comes the cavalry. In the nick of fonking time, as usual.”

* * *

Ten minutes of hugging, explanations, hugging, a bit of crying, and some more hugging later, Cal and the rest of the team stood with Sorshi at the foot of the steps leading up to the podium. The crowds had watched on in a thrilled half-quiet, eagerly waiting to find out what was going to happen next. Very few of them had ever been to a coronation before, but even those who had would agree that this one was by far the best.

“So, what happens now?” Cal asked.

Sorshi and Miz exchanged a glance. “A new king will be chosen,” Sorshi explained. “From the guard ranks. It is not ideal, but they shall rule.”

“What? That’s crazy,” said Loren. “Why don’t you do it?”

Sorshi blinked in surprise. “Me?”

“Yeah, you’re still queen, right?” said Mech.

“Well, I mean… yes, but I am but a woman and know little of such--”

“Bullshizz!” said Cal. “I watched you on Kifo, figuring out what needed to be done. And back there when Kannus was trying to get the guards to shoot me, and you were all, like, ‘no, don’t do it!’ and everything. Thanks for that, by the way. If Graxan really was great like everyone says, then I’ll bet he was only great because of you standing beside him, keeping him right.”

“He’s right, mom,” said Miz. “You’d be amazing. Way better than some dumb guard or whoever. You know everything.”

“No-one knows everything,” said Sorshi. “We just know what we know.”

“See!” said Cal. “That’s like some full-blown Yoda wisdom there.” He smiled and bowed his head, just a little. “That, if you ask me, is a queen talking.”

Sorshi hesitated, but then shook her head. “The Greyx are ruled by kings. I am not the king.”

“But you’re the queen, and you’ve got the Bladestaff,” said Loren.

“The Bladestaff is not meant to be wielded by a woman,” Sorshi said. “‘He who wields the Bladestaff rules the Greyx.’ He.”

“Except that might not be what it says, is it? That’s just one translation,” said Cal. He looked at Miz. “That’s what you told me before, right? I’ll be honest, I was only partly listening.”

Miz nodded. “Whoever wields the Bladestaff rules the Greyx,” she said.

“Not he. Whoever,” said Cal. He gave the queen a playful punch on the shoulder, and tried to ignore the dozen or more energy weapons that snapped up and took aim at his head. “So why not you?”

Cal skipped down the steps two at a time, and thrust both hands above his head as the crowd began to cheer. If asked, they probably wouldn’t have been able to explain why they were cheering, exactly, but everyone else was doing it, and no-one wanted to be left out.

“What are you doing?” asked Miz, leaning over the edge of the platform.

Cal picked up the Bladestaff and hefted it in his hand a couple of times. “Tell your mom to catch!” he called, then he drew back his arm and tossed the weapon like a javelin. The crowd, the guards and everyone on the platform held their breath as the staff soared up, up, up. They followed it with their eyes, tracking it as it sliced through the air, almost in slow motion.

Then, it fell back down again and landed with a clank on the ground in front of Cal. He looked down at it, disappointed. “That was supposed to be really cool and dramatic,” he said. He stooped and picked up the fallen staff. He thought about throwing it again, but then shrugged. “I’m just going to carry it up,” he said.

The crowd made a non-committal sort of noise as Cal trudged sheepishly up the steps, then applauded politely when he managed to reach the top without dropping anything.

He stopped in front of Sorshi. “Whoever wields the Bladestaff rules the Greyx,” he said. He held the weapon towards her. After a moment, her fingers wrapped around the wooden shaft. Cal grinned. “Go wield the shizz out of this thing.”

“Thank you,” said Sorshi. “The Greyx owes you a great debt. But, forgive me, I am afraid I must ask you one more favor.”

“Name it,” said Cal.

Sorshi glanced across at Mizette, and smiled. “Take good care of my daughter.”

Miz frowned. “What?” she asked. “You mean… you’re not going to make me stay here?”

“Since when could I make you do anything?” Sorshi asked. “Besides, you are free. You have no Lifebound now.”

“Wrong,” said Cal, putting his arms around Loren and Mech. “She has three.”

Miz scowled. “Ew. Shut up, or I swear I’m gonna throw up in my mouth.”

“Yeah, man, that was pretty fonking cheesy,” said Mech.

“Four, if you count Splurt,” said Cal, then his jaw dropped and his eyes went wide. “Splurt! We forgot Splurt!”

“Where is he?” asked Miz, looking around.

“Long story,” said Cal. “But we have to go.” He grasped Sorshi’s hand and shook it. “Queen, uh, Miz’s mom, lovely to see you, we must do this again some time. Well, not this exactly – let’s never do this again – but you know. Bye!”

He bounded down the stairs and beckoned for the others to follow. “Come on, hurry up! We have to go get Splurt.”

And with that, he raced over to the Shatner and darted inside.

* * *

Cal gripped his arm rests as Loren fired up the thrusters. “OK, is it me, or did we just shatter the glass ceiling and totally cure sexism back there?” he asked.

“Well, I think that’s a bit of an over-simplification,” Loren began, but Cal silenced her with a wave.

“Yeah, yeah, that’s quite enough out of you, little lady. How about you leave the thinking to us menfolk?”

Without turning, Loren raised a hand and gave Cal the finger. It was the wrong finger, but at least she’d tried.

Cal spun his chair until he was facing Miz. She gazed past Loren at the scene outside. There, standing on the platform with the Bladestaff in her hand, was her mom. The Queen of the Greyx.

“You OK?” Cal asked.

She blinked, as if waking from a dream. “Yeah,” she said. She nodded. “Yeah, I’m good. I’m really good, actually. But what the fonk was that thing you used on Kannus?”

“Oh, shizz, I left it out there!” Cal said. He jumped up, then saw Mech waving the box at him. “Ah, you’ve got it.”

“Yeah, I got it. And I’m keeping it,” Mech said. “There’s no saying what you’d get up to with it.”

“That’s fine. That’s totally fine,” said Cal. He held up his hands then turned to face the front. “There are only so many hiding places on this ship, anyway.”

“Says the guy who didn’t know we had a bathroom,” said Loren, smirking as she eased the Shatner into the air.

“Good point, well made,” said Cal. He fastened his belt across his chest.

“So… what now?” asked Mech.

“You know what I always say, Mech?” Cal asked.

“Some bullshizz about songs you didn’t really write?” Mech guessed.

“Something that sounds dramatic but makes little or no actual sense under closer scrutiny?” Loren suggested.

“No! I always say that rescue missions are like busses. You wait ages for one, then two come along at once.”

There was a moment’s silence.

“See?” said Loren. “No sense.”

“He’s saying we go get Splurt back,” said Mech.

Loren looked around from her controls. “You do realize that means flying straight into the heart of Zertex space and probably breaking into one of their space stations, right?”

Cal nodded and grinned. “Pretty exciting, right?”

Loren sighed, but she smiled with it. “Never a dull moment,” she said, then she punched the controls and the Shatner rocketed away from Greyx Prime, and off in search of Splurt.

SPACE TEAM: THE SEARCH FOR SPLURT

Book Three

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER ONE

Cal Carver sat on a tall stool at a low bar, drinking uncomfortably.

He was alone, despite the crowds around him, and estimated he was roughly four-thirds of the way towards being drunk. Which said it all, really.

The sign above the bar’s front door translated as Mishak’s Tavern, which, despite having no idea who or what ‘Mishak’ was, Cal had thought sounded quite quaint. Inside, however, it was anything but.

Hundreds of weirdly misshapen aliens filled the place, flirting and fighting and – in the darker corners – doing other things that may or may not have started with ‘f’.

They laughed, shouted, cheered and roared all around him. He narrowed his eyes and peered over the top of his glass at the mirror behind the bar, trying to take it all in without drawing any unwanted attention to himself.

The bar’s clientele were like the assembled cast of all Cal’s more creative childhood nightmares. There were slug-like things with their eyes out on stalks, rough-skinned green things with nonsensical teeth, and something that looked like a cross between a spider and a fish, but with none of the good bits of either.

There were things made of rock, things that oozed pus from their empty eye sockets, things that took on a ghostly shimmer in the shadows, and faded completely when the light hit them. All it needed, Cal thought, was his second-grade teacher dressed like a clown and he’d have a bad-dream full house.

Voices rose over by one of the dimly-lit booths. There was the scream of blaster-fire, the splat of something wet hitting the wall, then the thud of someone heavy hitting the floor. A sarcastic cheer filled the place, like the kind a group of boorish drinkers might have made back on Earth when a bartender dropped a glass, and then everyone went back to the business of trying to talk more loudly than everyone else in the place.

Cal brought his glass close to his mouth and tried to take a sip, but his arm was swaying and his aim was off and so he sipped at the air, instead. He didn’t seem to notice, and it didn’t stop him smacking his lips together and letting out a satisfied, “aaah.”

With some effort, Cal turned and looked along the bar to his right. A reedy little yellow-skinned guy perched on a stool, nursing his own drink. He had bulbous white eyes that reminded Cal of Kermit the Frog, and a little curled mustache that positively screamed space-hipster.

His clothing, on the other hand, said casual sportswear. It was as close to a tracksuit as Cal had seen this side of Earth’s atmosphere, and made of something that looked like the unholy offspring of velour and nylon. He wore a wide-peaked baseball cap low on his head, although Cal knew it wasn’t really a baseball cap, because they almost certainly didn’t have baseball in space. They probably had something else. Space-ball, or something.

Cal spent a few seconds trying to devise the rules of Space-ball.

That done, he sipped his drink – successfully this time - drew back his lips in utter revulsion at the taste, and turned his attention to far more pressing matters.

“What the fonk is it with these stools?” he asked.

Tracksuit-guy didn’t answer, or even glance Cal’s way.

Cal leaned closer and raised his voice. “I said, what the fonk is it with these stools?” he repeated, shrugging heavily for added emphasis. “I mean… look.”

Cal sat up straight and tried to reach for his drink on the bar. Even at full stretch, he couldn’t get his fingers to the glass. “See? What’s the point in that?”

“I don’t know,” the yellow-skin replied.

“Hmm?” said Cal, pushing his ear forward and closing one eye, in the hope that the reduction in visual input would magically boost his hearing. “What’d you say?”

“Nothing. Forget it,” the guy said. He knocked back his drink in one gulp, shuddered slightly, then moved to get up.

“Wait!” Cal slurred, sliding off his stool in a quite breathtakingly undignified way. He shuffled closer to the stranger, leaning on the bar for support. “I’m Cal.”

He held a hand out for the little guy to shake. The alien looked at it, confused, then shook his head. “Whatever. Have a nice night.”

“Hold on!” said Cal again. “Here, let me… Bartender!” He tried clicking his fingers, but they refused to work for some reason. He glared at them through his one open eye, hoping to force them into making the noise.

A female alien with dark hair and faintly blue skin appeared behind the bar, as if from nowhere. “Yes?” she said, smiling too broadly for it to be natural. “How can I be of service?”

“Aha! You can be of service by getting my new friend here another drink,” Cal replied.

The yellow guy’s Kermit-eyes darted around the bar, looking for something. A way out, probably.

“Look, I ain’t your friend, mister,” he said, his voice coming as a low hiss. He lifted his tracksuit top to reveal the handle of a knife tucked into the waistband of his pants. “So, if I were you, I’d back off. Unless you want this.”

Cal shambled from foot to foot, trying to focus on the long handle. The bar’s dim lighting didn’t help. “Is that your penis?” Cal asked. “Are you… why would I want your penis? Jesus, is it supposed to be that color?” He raised his voice and looked around at the thronging masses in the bar. “Is there a doctor in the house? This man has something wrong with his--”

“It’s a knife,” the skinny guy hissed. “OK? It’s a knife. So, you’d better back away right now, man.”

Cal let out a very deliberate exhale. He looked down at the knife, then slowly raised his eyes. “I’m afraid I can’t do that… Narp, isn’t it?” he said, his voice now dangerously sober. “See, my friends and I would like to talk to you.”

Narp’s ping-pong ball eyes widened. He stared at Cal for a handful of seconds, then turned and hurled himself into the crowd.

“He’s running!” said the bartender.

“Yes, thank you, Loren. I’d noticed,” replied Cal, throwing himself after the fleeing Narp. Behind him, Loren vaulted onto the bar, sending half a dozen glasses crashing to the floor. The same sarcastic cheer as before rose up around Cal as he shouldered his way through a flailing forest of alien arms, legs and a number of other largely unidentifiable appendages.

“Excuse me, sorry, coming through!” Cal said, dodging and weaving through the tightly-packed throngs. Then, when that didn’t work, he tried a different approach. “Move! Out of the way! Space Police, clear the way!”

This technique turned out to be marginally less effective than the first approach, with everyone in the bar squeezing just a little closer together to slow his progress even further.

“OK, not Space Police. I hate those guys!”

Loren, meanwhile, raced along the bar top, scattering glasses and bottles and little bowls of nuts. An eight-fingered hand made a grab for her ankle, but she skipped over it, paused briefly to shatter the wrist with one quick stamp, then pressed on.

Narp was pulling ahead of Cal, but there was a knot of revelers in relaxed business wear gathered tightly near the door, ready to make a quick exit if needed. Narp collided with them, and they all went down in a tangle of limbs and a chorus of breaking glass.

Muttering and cursing, Narp kicked himself back to his feet. Loren launched herself off the bar, aiming for his back, just as Cal stumbled through a gap between a hippo-like thing and a little green creature with pointy ears and a walking stick.

Cal barely made it halfway through the sentence, “Hey, that guy looks like Yoda!” before Loren landed on him, knees first.

It was Cal who hit the floor first, his fall cushioned somewhat by the terrified office-worker he landed on. Loren tucked her head and shoulder into the beginnings of a forward roll, but the rest of the business-dress brigade blocked her as they all fell over one another on their mad scramble to the exit.

Several feet behind Cal, the creature whose wrist Loren had shattered produced a blaster pistol and began firing indiscriminately at the unsuspecting ceiling. Chunks of plaster and masonry rained down, and the bar erupted in a frenzy of anger and fear.

“Come on, move,” Loren hissed, grabbing Cal by the arm and dragging him towards the door. They were carried on a wave of heaving bodies all trying to escape from the gunman.

Cal caught a mercifully fleeting glimpse of the Yoda-a-like being squished beneath one of the hippo-thing’s feet, briefly thought, “Well, there goes my childhood,” then was slammed against the door frame before tumbling out onto the dark, rain swept street.

Despite being on a different world, the city had seemed more ‘foreign’ than ‘alien’ to Cal. There were no flying cars, people on jetpacks, weirdly-lit pods or any of that stuff, just dirty buildings that gave a nod in the direction of looking futuristic, and a lot of noisy traffic.

Cal had never been to Tokyo, but this place was how he thought some of the rougher parts of that city might look. Only, instead of millions of Japanese people, this one was populated entirely by the cast of a nightmarishly drug-fueled episode of The Muppets.

“Up there!” shouted Loren, over the roaring and screaming of the fleeing crowds. Cal followed her finger and saw Narp scrabbling up a ladder leading to the roof of a nearby building. It was four or five floors high, and Narp was already climbing quickly past the second.

“Oh Jesus,” Cal wheezed. The collision with Loren, then the door, had knocked most of the wind out of him, and an impromptu spot of ladder climbing didn’t exactly appeal. “Can’t we just shoot him?”

“We need him alive,” said Loren, hurrying towards the ladder.

“Then set your gun to stun mode,” Cal suggested, hobbling after her.

“What are you talking about?” Loren bent her knees and sprang upwards, catching the bottom rung of the ladder. “It doesn’t have a stun mode.”

Cal jumped, hands grasping for the ladder. He missed and slid down the wall. He squatted down low, then launched himself upwards. He hissed as he caught the ladder and his arms almost jerked out of their sockets. “It doesn’t have a stun mode? What sort of space gun doesn’t have a stun mode?”

“All of them. None of them,” said Loren, gritting her teeth and hauling herself up the ladder. “That’s a confusingly-phrased question!”

Cal’s arms burned as he clambered up the side of the building, leaving the worst of the city noise below. The rain lashed at him, prickling his skin with icy forks, and sticking his hair to his forehead. The wind, which apparently couldn’t decide which direction to blow in, battered him from every angle at once.

Even the one positive about the whole experience – an excellent view of Loren’s leather-clad butt – was ruined by the slicks of rain in his eyes. He shook his head and managed to blink the worst of the water away just as he arrived, panting and heaving, at the top of the ladder.

With a strangled, “Wah!” he toppled over the low wall that surrounded the rooftop, and fell heavily onto the roof itself. It was wide and perfectly flat, and as Cal clambered to his feet he saw Loren taking off after Narp, who was already more than halfway to the opposite side.

Sucking it up, Cal threw himself into a run. The storm protested, whistling and howling as it tried to slap him down. He gritted his teeth, muttered enough swear words to almost make the censorship module of his translation chip go into meltdown, and pushed on.

Wiping his eyes on his sleeve, Cal saw Narp throw himself off the edge. The little yellow guy bounded effortlessly across the gap between this roof and the next, paused briefly to glance over his shoulder, then broke into another run.

Loren threw herself after him, her arms flailing in the wind as she tumbled across the gap. She hit the other roof awkwardly, stumbled to one knee, then was off again in pursuit.

“You have got to be fonking kidding me,” Cal groaned, skidding to a stop at the rooftop’s edge. The gap was only five or six feet, and would have been easily doable with a run up. But the wall around the roof meant he’d have to make the leap from a standing start, and he was far less confident about that.

He leaned over the edge, hoping to see a trailer filled with feathers or mattresses parked right below him, but it wasn’t to be. There wasn’t even a garbage dumpster someone had conveniently left open for just such an emergency.

If he was jumping, he would be doing it without a safety net.

Which meant he shouldn’t jump.

Jumping was madness.

He jumped.

For a moment, there was no sound but the crashing of his heartbeat. Even the storm seemed to abate as Cal hurtled across the gap, arms outstretched, legs trailing behind him. And then…

WHAM!

His fingers found the edge of the roof, and the rest of him found the wall. He felt the last of the breath depart his lungs, and saw a tunnel of darkness closing around his vision. His fingers loosened, and he had to focus to make them hold on.

Cal’s legs kicked limply on the rough stone wall as he fought to pull himself up. “Come on,” he wheezed. “Come on.”

Sluggishly, awkwardly, he heaved himself up until he could hook one leg onto the roof. He clung there in that position for a moment, waiting for the world to stop spinning and the urge to vomit to pass. Then, with a guttural grunt of effort, he pulled himself the rest of the way onto the rooftop.

Cal laughed. He couldn’t help it. The lack of breath meant it came out as a series of short hisses, but it was a laugh, all the same.

“I made it,” he gasped, standing up. “I’m… I’m alive.”

He fired a salute towards the rooftop opposite, turned on his heels, then screamed as the roof collapsed beneath him.

Cal’s scream barely registered over the howling of the wind, but it was enough to make Loren look back. Shielding her eyes against the wind and rain, she scanned the rooftops. “Cal?” she cried, but her voice was stolen away by the storm. She stumbled back in the direction Cal should have been and tried again. “Cal, where are you?”

Further away, and getting further every second, Narp hurled himself across another gap, bounded across another rooftop, then half-climbed, half-slid down another ladder.

He dropped the last few feet into a narrow alleyway, glanced up to make sure no-one was following him, then allowed himself a smile. He had no idea who the people chasing him were, but they’d have to move quicker than that if they wanted to keep up.

Adjusting the collar of his tracksuit, Narp turned towards the alley’s mouth. A figure made almost entirely of metal blocked his path.

“Don’t even think about running, man,” warned the cyborg.

“I’d listen to him,” said another voice from behind Narp. He whipped around in fright and found himself staring into the tooth-filled jaws of a powerfully-built figure who was covered from head to toe in thick, dark hair. “Because no matter how fast you might be, I am totally faster.”

CHAPTER TWO

Narp hesitated, one hand on the handle of his apartment’s front door. He glanced back over his shoulder at Loren, who had her blaster pistol pressed against the small of his back.

“Look,” he whispered. “You’re not… You guys aren’t going to hurt my mom, are you?”

“Of course we ain’t gonna hurt your mom,” said Mech. His face – one of his few remaining organic parts scowled. “What do you think we are?”

“I… I don’t know,” Narp admitted, shooting a nervous glance at the wolf-woman, Mizette. “I don’t know what this is about.”

“Then why did you run?” Loren asked.

“I thought you were the cops,” replied Narp.

Loren frowned. “Why?”

“Well, because he shouted, ‘Stop, Space Police,’” said Narp, nodding in Cal’s direction. Cal was nursing a cut above his left eye, and an ache that radiated upwards from his ass-bone.

“Oh yeah, blame it on me, why don’t you?” said Cal. He winced. “Does your mom have any, like, Aspirin in the house?”

Narp’s eyes flicked anxiously across the group. “Promise me you won’t hurt her.”

“Just open the motherfonkin’ door, shizznod,” Mech barked. “We ain’t got all day.”

Hesitantly, Narp pushed the door open and led them into a narrow hallway. The carpet was thin and threadbare in patches. It was a sickly green, with a pattern of zig-zags that gave the impression the floor was undulating quite unpleasantly beneath their feet.

The walls had been inexpertly painted in just the wrong shade of blue to be complimentary. Framed photographs hung on the wall, most of them showing Narp at different ages, wearing a number of variations on what looked like a school uniform.

“Hey, is that you?” said Cal, studying one of the photographs. “You looked so cute. What happened?”

“Narp? Narp, honey, is that you?”

An elderly woman with the same yellow skin and ping-pong ball eyes shuffled out of a doorway along the wall. She wore a floral-patterned robe and matching slippers, and her short, graying hair was tied up in curlers. She smiled warmly when she saw the four strangers squeezed into the hallway behind her son.

“Ah, yes. There you are.”

“It’s OK, mom, it’s OK,” said Narp. “They’re just, uh, they’re friends of mine.

Cal stepped forwards, all smiles. He took the woman’s hand and shook it. She matched his smile and flashed it right back at him.

“Mrs… uh… Narp’s mom. We’ve heard so much about you. I’m--”

“I know who you are,” she said. “You’re Cal Carver.”

She leaned past Cal and looked at the others in turn. Her smile dipped when she saw Mizette. “Oh, my poor thing, I’m so sorry to hear about your father,” she said, then a frown flitted across her face. “Or… has that happened yet? It’s hard to keep track of it all sometimes.”

“What?” said Miz, blinking in surprise. “Uh, yeah. Thanks.”

“How do you know about that? How do you know who we are?” asked Cal. He looked back at Narp. “How does your mom know who we are? What is this?”

“I used to be a Nun,” said Narp’s mom.

Cal nodded slowly. “Right, well… that explains it?” he said. “Except, you know, not really. Or at all.”

“She was in an order of predictors. She can see the future,” said Narp. “In bursts. Not all of it.”

“You think my Narp can help you with something,” said the woman, still smiling. “You’re looking for your friend.”

“That’s right,” said Cal. “We are.”

Narp’s mom nodded and shuffled towards another door. “Then I’ll leave you to it and go rustle you up some snacks. You’ll enjoy my spit nibbles, Cal.”

“Spit nibbles? Uh, no, I’m pretty sure I won’t,” said Cal.

The woman hesitated at the kitchen door. “Trust me. You do,” she said, then she winked and stepped inside.

“Well that wasn’t weird at all,” Cal muttered, then he clapped his hands once and spun on his heels. “Now then, Narp, m’boy. Let’s get down to business.”

* * *

Ten minutes later, Narp sat on the end of his bed, staring up at Cal and Loren. “You want me to do what?”

“We want you to hack into the encrypted presidential mainframe at Zertex,” Loren said. “We need to know where President Sinclair is.”

“President Sinclair is the friend you’re trying to find?” Narp asked, slightly taken aback.

“No. We think Sinclair has got our friend,” said Cal, munching on a spit nibble. It was a bit like a spicy spring roll, and – if you didn’t overthink the name – absolutely delicious. “He’s keeping him prisoner,” Cal said between bites. “He thinks he’s me. He’s a shapeshifter.”

Narp frowned. “President Sinclair is a shapeshifter?”

“No, our friend is a shapeshifter. Sinclair thinks he’s me.”

Narp’s frown deepened. “Sinclair thinks he’s you?”

“No.”

“Your friend thinks he’s you?”

“What? No! What are you talking about? No-one thinks they’re me.” Cal rolled his eyes. “Jesus, this kid is slow.”

“To be fair, you did explain it pretty badly,” Miz pointed out.

Cal leaned down and spoke very deliberately to Narp. “Listen. OK? It’s not difficult. Our friend, the shapeshifter – the one we’re looking for - has disguised himself as me.” Cal gestured to himself to demonstrate what he looked like. “In order to fool President Sinclair into taking him – our friend - prisoner, instead of me.” He gestured to himself again for emphasis.

“But we don’t know where Sinclair is holding him,” Loren explained. “So we need to track him down.”

“And he don’t exactly announce his movements in advance,” added Mech.

“Hence why we need you to hack the president server, or whatever it’s called,” said Cal.

“Encrypted presidential mainframe,” said Loren. Cal waved the words away.

“Or whatever it’s called, and help us find him.”

Narp slid both arms along the bed covers behind him and leaned back a little. “I don’t know what you’ve heard, but I can’t do that. Wouldn’t even know where to start.”

“Yeah, you would,” said Mech. “You’re Narp Aktinmeed. You’re the only person to have broken Zertex presidential mainframe encryption. Or only one to do so and still be alive, anyway.”

Cal looked around the cramped bedroom. The walls and ceiling were plastered with posters of semi-naked women – or, more accurately, semi-naked females of varying species. The bed was unmade, the curtains were closed, and the very fabric of the place reeked of sweat, farts, and something not a million miles away from cannabis.

The bedside table was an upturned cardboard box. Three plastic pots containing what looked to be ramen noodles – space ramen noodles, Cal thought, but chose not to announce on this occasion – stood congealing on top. One of the half-empty pots had found a new lease of life as an ashtray.

“Are we sure this is our guy?” Cal asked. “He doesn’t look like the galaxy’s greatest hacker.”

“I’m not,” insisted Narp.

“He is,” growled Mech.

Cal clicked his tongue against his teeth and fixed his gaze on Narp. “Well, there’s one way to find out. Miz?”

Miz tutted with annoyance and looked up from picking her claw-like fingernails. “Yes?”

“Chew one of his legs off.”

“What?” yelped Narp, suddenly sitting stiffly upright. “No, wait. What?”

Miz drew her gums back, showing off her teeth. She flicked her tongue across them, hungrily, and lowered her eyes to Narp’s left foot.

“No, wait! Wait! What if I did know a way?” said Narp. “What if I could hack the mainframe? What’s in it for me?”

Cal shrugged. “Your legs?”

“Come on, man,” Narp protested. “Guy’s gotta make a living.”

“I agree,” said Cal, smiling broadly. “And doing so will be far easier if you still have your legs, don’t you think?”

He squatted down until he was at Narp’s eyes level. The smile stayed in place, but the humor had left it. “Look, we wouldn’t normally do this sort of thing. We’re nice, once you get to know us. But we don’t really have any money and, well, our friend is very important to us. So, what’s say you fire up your space laptop, or whatever it is you use, and get us Sinclair’s itinerary?”

Narp rolled his lip between his teeth, his eyes darting all over the place. “I don’t know, man. You’re asking a lot. I just think it would be fair if I was compensated in some way for--”

Cal stood up. “Loren, take off one of his shoes.”

“OK, OK, fine!” Narp groaned. He gestured to a sideboard that was half-buried under piles of dirty plates, empty cups and junk food wrappers. Beside all the mess, a space had been cleared for a single sheet of letter-sized paper. “That’s it. The itinerary,” Narp said.

“What? You’ve already got it?” Cal asked.

Loren picked up the paper and studied it. “Is this genuine?”

Narp nodded slowly. “My mom,” he sighed. “She knew you were coming, and what you were looking for.”

“Then why did you run?” asked Loren.

“I told you, because I didn’t know who you were. I didn’t know that was meant for you.”

“Your mom is a fine woman,” said Cal. “A fine woman. And she makes excellent spit nibbles. You don’t appreciate her enough.”

Narp frowned. “What?”

“Well, I mean, look at this place,” said Cal, gesturing around. “It’s a pig sty.”

“What’s a pig sty?” Narp asked.

“It’s a very messy place, where no-one respects their mother,” Cal said. “You’d better start pulling your weight and tidying up after yourself, Narp,” he added, then he squatted down to Narp’s eye level again. “Or we’re going to come back, and this time, Miz really will eat your legs off. Understood?”

Narp looked up at Miz, just for a moment. She curled up her gums, flashing a tooth. Narp quickly turned back to Cal and nodded.

“Good man,” said Cal, clapping him on the shoulder. “You get tidying, and we’ll see ourselves out. It has been a pleasure. Seriously. Let’s do it again sometime.”

Leaving Narp to it, Cal and the others bundled out into the hallway and headed for the front door. “Thanks for the spit nibbles!” Cal called. “They were surprisingly tasty, although you may want to rebrand them.”

They left the apartment, and Cal was about to close the door behind them when Narp’s mom poked her head out of the kitchen and smiled at him.

“You’re welcome. Drop by any time.”

Cal nodded, and was about to close the door when a thought struck him. “Hey, uh, if you can see the future and everything, then… do you know if we find him? Splurt, I mean. Our friend. Do we find him?”

The woman’s smile faltered, then fell away. “Yes, Mr Carver,” she said, in a voice that was little more than a whisper. “Yes, I’m afraid you do.”

Her smile returned, but there was a sadness to it now. “And while I know you’d love to ask me exactly what I mean by that, you have more pressing problems at the moment.”

“Shizz!” spat Mech from somewhere along the corridor.

There was a screech of laser fire, followed by the unmistakable karuummaf of a wall collapsing. Cal turned in time for Loren, Mech and Miz to hurry past him. “Zertex!” Mech hissed. “Come on, man, let’s go!”

“Thanks again, Narp!” Cal shouted through the open door. He ran, ducking as a bolt of red energy tore along the corridor and blew out a window up ahead.

“There’s our way out!” said Loren, picking up speed.

“The window?” Cal groaned. He lowered his head and covered it with his arms. “Why is it always the shizzing window?”

* * *

One jump, fall, and possible fractured pelvis later, Cal slid into the captain’s chair of his ship, the Shatner, and winced with the pain it brought. “Remind me never to jump out a window again.”

“It was only the second floor,” Mizette pointed out.

“Don’t care.” Cal shrugged. “I don’t care if it’s the first floor. Hell, I don’t care if it’s in the basement, my window jumping days are done. No more.” He held a hand out. “Loren, the printout, if you please.”

Loren tensed. “What? I haven’t got it! I thought you had it.”

Cal shook his head. “What? No! I don’t have it! You have it! You were the last one to…” He broke into a grin. “I can’t do it. Just look at your face.” He fished in the back pocket of his cargo pants and pulled out a folded-square of paper. “Just look at her face.”

“Funny,” said Loren, turning her chair away from him.

“Thanks, I thought so,” agreed Cal. He smoothed out the sheet while Loren started preparing the ship for take-off. “Now. Where are we?” Cal mumbled, looking the page up and down. The writing was messy and uneven. It sloped towards the top of the unlined page like it was making a break for freedom, before being reined back in and finishing just a little higher than where it started.

Cal nodded and clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “Right, then,” he said. He picked the page up and flipped it over, checking the other side. It was blank. “That all seems to be in order.”

“You don’t know what any of it means, do you?” asked Mech.

“Nope,” said Cal, holding the paper out to him. “I mean, I guess those numbers are space dates, but that’s pretty much where I get stuck.”

“Fonking space dates,” Mech muttered, snatching the page away. He glanced at it, just briefly. “Zertex Command Five,” he said, handing it back. “That’s where we’ll find Sinclair.”

Cal nodded sagely and steepled his fingers in front of his face. “Well, well, well. Zertex Command Five, where we were first brought together. How appropriate. Back where it all began. The circle is now comple--”

“That was Zertex Command Seven,” Loren pointed out.

“Oh. Was it?” Cal shrugged. “Forget I just said all that stuff, then.” He gestured to the screen. On it, a set of hangar doors slid jerkily open, revealing the towering spires of the city in the distance. “Chocks away.”

“Hey, Loren, you see all those buildings way over there?” asked Miz.

Loren let out a barely audible sigh. “Yes.”

“Like, waaaaay over there?”

“Yes, Miz. I see them.”

“Do you think you could, like, not hit any of them? You know, just for a change?”

Loren punched a few controls, then took hold of the thruster handle. “I don’t know,” she said. “Let’s find out.”

The Shatner shot forwards, forcing Cal back into his seat. With a grinding of metal and a shower of sparks, the ship scraped against the underside of the hangar’s vast doorway, shuddered like a plane in turbulence, then banked upwards towards the cloud-covered sky.

“Missed them,” said Loren.

“Yeah, but--”

“Miss those buildings,” Loren interrupted. Her blue skin blushed a faint shade of purple. “That’s what you said. Nothing about the hangar roof. Am I right?”

“Technically, yes,” Cal began. Loren stopped him before he could go any further.

“See? Exactly. So I missed them. Mission accomplished.”

She eased down a pedal below her bank of controls. The Shatner groaned as it picked up speed and pulled into a vertical climb. Cal gripped the arm rests of his chair and waited for the now-familiar shudder that rattled through the ship whenever they left a planet’s atmosphere.

The ship punched through the thick layers of gray cloud and the rattling of raindrops stopped. The sky above them was a lighter shade of bluish-gray, but became steadily darker as the Shatner continued its relentless upwards push.

Aaaaand there was the shuddering again. It rose up through the floor, rattling Cal’s bones and doing his sore back no favors whatsoever. His teeth chattered together. His knuckles turned white as he gripped the chair.

On screen, the gray became grayer, then grayer still, before finally becoming a cold, clinical shade of black. The stars winked, as if greeting an old friend, and Cal found himself tapping his forehead in acknowledgement.

“Ladies,” he said.

Mech glowered at him. “Say what?”

“Hmm? Oh, nothing,” said Cal.

“Did you just salute and say, ‘ladies,’ to outer space?”

Cal shifted in his chair. “What? No.”

“He totally did,” said Miz. “He totally saluted and said, ‘ladies.’”

“Man, that is weird,” said Mech. “That is just plain weird.”

“It’s not weird!” Cal protested.

“It is very weird,” said Loren, engaging the auto-pilot and turning to face the rest of the crew. “I mean… it’s borderline creepy.”

“I just, you know, think of the stars as lots of individual women, that’s all!” said Cal. “Is that really so… I mean, yeah, when I say it out loud like that, I guess it does sound a little…”

“Creepy?” Miz guessed.

“Totally fonking insane?” said Mech.

“Quirky,” Cal corrected. “It does sound a little quirky. But there’s no harm in that, is there? The universe would be a very boring place if some of us didn’t think of the stars as lots of individual women, and acknowledge them accordingly.”

He gave the others a look which suggested he’d somehow won the argument, then turned to Loren. “How long until we reach Sinclair?”

“At this speed? A couple of hours.”

Mizette had unclipped her seat belt and was now slouching across her seat, her back against one arm rest, her long hairy legs dangling over the other. “And then what do we do?”

Cal spun his own chair a full three-hundred-and-sixty degrees, buying himself a moment to think. “Huh?” he said, once he’d finished the maneuver. “What was that?”

“She asked what we’re going to do once we get to Zertex Command Five,” said Mech. “I mean, it ain’t like we can just walk in and demand he hands Splurt over.”

“Oh, can’t we?” said Cal, smiling and raising one eyebrow. He twisted his hips, turning his chair from side to side a couple of times. “No, seriously, I’m genuinely asking. Can’t we? Because that was totally my plan this whole time.”

Mech groaned and clamped one robotic hand over his face. Miz snorted, then turned her attention back to her fingernails.

“Of course we can’t,” said Loren. “For starters, the ship’s serial code would flag up the security scanners the moment we asked for docking clearance. We’re wanted by Zertex, remember?”

Cal clicked his fingers. “Oh, so that’s why they were shooting at us earlier.”

“Even if we did somehow manage to get on board, we’d have to get through the station, past Sinclair’s security and get inside his office, then convince him to hand over Splurt, then get back out again without being captured or killed. Not necessarily in that order.

“So, in answer to your question,” Loren continued. “No, we definitely cannot go with that plan.”

“Right,” said Cal, nodding slowly. “Does anyone else have another plan?” He swung in his chair to look around the flight deck. “No? No-one?”

Cal slapped his thighs and pointed to the screen. “Then I guess we’re going with my plan. Loren, plot a course to Zertex Command Seven.”

“Five,” Loren corrected.

“That’s the one. And don’t spare the horses,” said Cal, gripping his armrests. “We’ve got us an adorable green blob to rescue.”

CHAPTER THREE

The Shatner streaked through a shimmering star field, the laws of conventional physics slipstreaming in its wake.

Inside, Cal and Loren stood side by side, studying the viewscreen. On it was a collage of space station blueprints, video footage, photographs and maps. Cal was learning a lot about Zertex Command Five, none of it particularly interesting.

“This is nice. Very detailed. Well done.”

“Thank you,” said Loren, folding her hands behind her back and rocking on her heels ever so slightly.

“But I don’t want to build one,” said Cal. “I just need to know how to find Sinclair’s office.”

Loren sighed. “That’s what I’m trying to explain. You can’t just hop in a lift and hit a button. You need to navigate through over two hundred decks, get past potentially thousands of Zertex soldiers, bypass security systems, avoid cameras…”

“Right, right. Yeah. I mean, of course,” Cal said. He puffed out his cheeks. “That’s a lot to remember.”

“It is.”

“Remembering’s not really my strong point.”

Loren turned her head just a fraction to look at him. He was closer than she expected, his shoulder practically touching hers. She didn’t move away. “And what is your strong point, exactly?”

“I’ll have to get back to you on that one,” Cal replied. Their eyes met. “But possibly xylophone.”

“Xylophone?” asked Loren. Her eyes flitted, ever so briefly, across Cal’s face.

“Yeah,” said Cal, his voice taking on a softer edge. “I’m a wizard. You should hear my Old Macdonald Had a Farm. It’s… beautiful.”

A series of loud clanks from the corridor snapped them out of the moment. Mech ducked awkwardly through the door, leaning on Miz for support. “Well, I’m afraid I have some rather bad news to share,” he announced in a high-pitched nasal whine. The dial on his chest had been turned so that most of his processing power was being diverted to his intellect. “It appears I am unable to alter the ship identification number, after all.”

Cal frowned. “I thought you said you could?”

“I said I thought I could, which is not the same thing at all,” said Mech. “Were we piloting an older vessel, making the changes would have been child’s play, but – alas – the hardware is too modern, the fail safes too advanced for any such tampering to be effective. At best, the warp core would no longer recognize the rest of the systems and would shut down. At worst, it would self-destruct.”

“Right,” said Cal. “Shizz. So, you’re saying… what?”

“We need a new plan,” said Loren.

Miz grunted. “Can you, like, turn your dial back, already? You’re annoyingly heavy.”

Mech looked to Cal and raised an eyebrow. Cal waved a hand. “Yeah, go ahead.”

There was a visible change to Mech’s facial expression and stance as he turned the dial’s knob back towards the center. He straightened, and Miz immediately slouched down into her chair again, muttering, “About time.”

“It’s like I told you,” said Loren. “It’s not a plan. If we go anywhere near the place, we’ll be captured.”

“Or blown up,” said Mech.

“Zertex wouldn’t shoot on sight,” said Loren. “We’d have to be pretty unlucky to be…” She caught Mech’s expression and thought back over the situations they’d found themselves in over the past couple of weeks, and how their luck usually went. “He’s right. We’d get blown up.”

Cal sat in his chair and drummed his fingers on the arm rests. “There has got to be a way to get to Sinclair.”

Mech sighed. “Look, man. I didn’t want to say nothing, because I know you and Splurt are… Well, I don’t know what you are, but you seem to have this weird relationship with him that kinda creeps me out – just saying.”

“What’s your point?” said Cal.

“My point is… Look, I want Splurt back. We all do. But we don’t even know where he is. We don’t even know if he’s on the station.”

Cal rubbed his forehead between his thumb and first two fingers. “We don’t need him to be on the station. We need to get Sinclair and make him tell us.”

“And you think he’s going to do that?” asked Mech. “You think he’s just going to give him up, just like that?”

“Yes. No. Maybe. I don’t know!” said Cal, standing up. “But we have to try. Splurt’s only in this situation because he was trying to save me. He let himself be captured so that I – so that all of us – could get away. If it wasn’t for…”

He stopped, his eyes darting across the floor as an idea flooded his brain. He spun on the spot and grabbed Mech by both arms.

“Mech!”

“What?”

“You’re a genius! Even without your dial thingy. I could kiss you!”

“Just so you know,” Mech replied. “If you did that, I would punch your face off.”

“Thanks for the warning!” said Cal. He spun on his heels. “Loren! Zertex Command Five. What’s the docking bay like?”

Loren straightened her back and launched into a report. “There are nine docking bays located on the station, each one stretching eighteen-point-six miles along decks six through fourteen…”

“The doors. The entrance. How do you get in?” said Cal, cutting her off.

Loren frowned. “You fly in.”

“No, I mean do they have doors?” Cal banged the sides of his hand together, in case Loren wasn’t aware how doors worked. “Or those forcefield wall things?”

“Both,” said Loren. “I mean, they have a mixture of the two, depending on the security protocols for each individual bay. Why?”

Cal lowered himself into his chair, a smile widening across his face. “The only reason Sinclair has Splurt, is because he thinks Splurt is me,” said Cal.

“Yeah? And?” asked Mech.

“He doesn’t want Splurt. Not really. It’s me he’s after.”

Cal crossed his legs and fixed his gaze on the flashing red blip on the viewscreen. “So, let’s give the son-of-a-bedge what he really wants!”

He spun in his chair until he faced Mech. “Remind me. Do we still have a space suit?”

* * *

Cal hurtled through the cold, dark void, his arms stretched out ahead of him in the padded cladding of the space suit. He felt like Christopher Reeve at the end of the Superman movies, and had spent an enjoyable couple of minutes smiling and nodding to an imaginary camera in what he felt was a suitably super-heroic way.

The Shatner was somewhere behind him. Even if he could turn to look at it – and Mech had warned him not to in case the movement knocked him off course – it would be too far away to see. He was alone, soaring through space at a very precisely-calculated angle, and realizing he should probably have gone to the bathroom before he left.

He hummed the theme to Inspector Gadget below his breath. It was his go-to choice of humming tune. There was something about the slow build at the start that he found oddly pleasing. He’d never really understood why, but decided that some things were best left a mystery.

The humming made the glass of his helmet fog up, so he stopped.

He pretended to be Superman again, but the novelty had worn off.

He thought about counting the stars, but there were thousands of them, and they all looked more or less the same.

He clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth.

Several seconds passed.

He clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth again.

“Well, this is boring,” he said.

And then he saw it, looming out of the darkness up ahead. Zertex Command Five was shaped vaguely like a baby’s rattle, assuming the baby’s parents didn’t object to the four big pointy bits sticking out of the handle.

It started thin, curved upwards into a more bulbous, rounded shape, then tapered away again at the very top. The four pointy bits jutting out of the lower part were relatively short and stubby. Viewed from below, they’d form an X-shape, although they were actually set at different heights along the station’s length.

The whole thing was a glassy black, and while the thousands of lights dotted across its surface should have helped make the station stand out against the blackness of space, from this distance they could easily be mistaken for stars.

Cal assumed the whole place was camouflaged, until the station’s lazy rotation curved an enormous illuminated letter Z towards him. The rest of the Zertex logo followed, picked out against the darkness in bright red lettering that had to be several miles high.

“Subtle,” Cal mumbled, if only to break up the repetitive echo of his own breathing.

While Cal would have loved to be able to say the next twenty minutes passed in a blur, that would have been a lie. At one point, Cal contemplated trying to sleep, but decided against it. He always woke up grouchy and sluggish, and he’d have to bring his A-game if his plan was going to work.

Plan. He let out a snort, which didn’t help the helmet-steam situation at all. On the ship, it had seemed like a good plan. Great, even. Arguably in the top ten best plans ever.

Loren had said it was suicide, of course, but then she was always uptight about stuff like this, and so he’d ignored it. On this occasion, both Miz and Mech had agreed with her, which was less encouraging, but he’d still been utterly convinced the whole scheme was foolproof.

Now that he was hurtling through space towards the lion’s den, he was starting to feel those first niggles of doubt. Was this a great plan? Was it even a plan at all? It was the beginning of a plan, certainly. As set-ups for plans went, being launched out of a moving spaceship was rock solid. Definitely.

It was what happened after that part that now seemed a little shaky. Everything from the moment Mech’s hands released Cal into the abyss to the glorious reunion with Splurt he had envisioned – and quite vividly described to the others, with actions – was a bit… vague. He knew the order things had to happen in, he just wasn’t entirely sure how to make those things happen in the first place.

“Ah, fonk it, I’ll figure it out,” Cal muttered, then he closed his eyes and gritted his teeth as he rocketed the final few feet towards the space station and passed through the electric blue docking bay energy shielding with a fzzzzt!

Cal hit the metal floor hard, bounced into the air, then skipped like a stone all the way to the back of the bay.

“Ow! Ooh! Shizz! Fonk!”

He skidded the last twenty feet on his stomach, slammed into a low step, and then rolled to a clumsy stop.

It took him barely a second to work through his mental pain checklist by bypassing the list of his individual body parts and just putting a tick in the ‘All of the Above’ box at the bottom.

He flexed his fingers and wiggled his toes. Both seemed to be responding, so that was good. His skull was still in one piece, although there was a spider-web of cracks on his helmet from one of the many occasions his head had hit the floor.

His skeleton ached. His skin throbbed. He had an itchy nose that was going to drive him insane if he didn’t get the helmet off in the next five seconds.

But he was alive. Somehow, he was alive.

Grunting and groaning, Cal managed to get onto his knees. The floor undulated beneath him like a stormy sea, and he almost threw up inside the suit.

Half a dozen Zertex weapons trained on him. Three different soldiers shouted three different things, but the ringing in his ears meant he couldn’t hear any of it. From their expressions, it wasn’t anything friendly.

“OK, OK, stop shouting,” said Cal. He held both hands up in surrender. “I come in peace.”

With some effort, Cal managed to get to his feet. Ignoring the shouts from the soldiers, he unclipped his helmet and yanked it free. He groaned with pleasure as he scratched his nose. “Aw, man, that’s the stuff,” he said, then he turned his attention back to the troops and flashed them a grin. “My name is Cal Carver. Take me to your leader.”

* * *

A hand shoved Cal on the back, sending him stumbling through the door and into Sinclair’s office. “Hey!” he protested, before he tripped on an expensive-looking rug and lost his balance. As his hands were cuffed behind his back, his fall was broken by his face. “That was just mean,” he objected.

“Leave us,” said a voice Cal recognized as Sinclair’s.

Behind him, the Legate who had personally delivered Cal to the president’s office looked confused. “But, Mr President, sir. He’s dangerous. He’s--”

“Handcuffed and completely unarmed,” Sinclair said. “I can handle it. Get out.”

After the briefest moment of hesitation, Cal heard the officer snap off a salute and crisply about-turn. There was a sshkt from the door as it slid closed, then a bleep from the control panel as Sinclair locked it.

“Well, well, I must say, this is a surprise,” the president said, once Cal had wrestled himself up onto his knees. Sinclair propped himself against the edge of his expansive desk and very deliberately began unbuttoning the cuffs of his pastel blue shirt. “This is most unexpected.”

President Sinclair was irritatingly handsome, like he’d just stepped out of Silver Screen era Hollywood. Other than his skin, which was just a shade too far on the green side of olive, he looked completely human.

“I aim to please,” said Cal. He started getting to his feet, but the floor was still moving in a way that made him queasy, so he decided to stay down for the moment. “How you doing, Hayel? You look tired.”

“Ha,” said the president, in what was possibly the most mirthless utterance of the sound in history. “Between you and me? I am. It’s been a difficult few weeks. Largely thanks to you.”

He neatly rolled one sleeve up to his elbow and refastened it there. Through the ceiling to floor windows behind him, Cal could see the same stars he’d been hurtling past just twenty minutes before.

“I’ve invested a lot of resources trying to catch you, Mr Carver, all to no end,” said Sinclair. “And yet, here you are, dropping in on me completely out of the blue.”

He began rolling up the other sleeve. “I mean, how did you even know where to find me?” he asked, then he shook his head. “In fact, forget it. Doesn’t matter.”

Sinclair reached across the desk and pulled a pencil holder towards him. He took a silver cylinder from the pot and took off the lid to reveal something shaped vaguely like a fountain pen. It was sharp and pointy-looking, and the president grimaced ever so slightly when he pressed his fingertip against the tip.

“The real question isn’t how you found me, it’s why you found me,” Sinclair said, setting the pen down next to him. He reached back into the holder and withdrew a small pile of metal paper clips. Cal watched as Sinclair began straightening them, one by one. “You came here for a reason, and I intend to find out what it is.”

“I’ll just tell you what it is,” said Cal.

“Shh,” Sinclair urged, straightening one of the metal clips with a theatrical flourish. “Don’t spoil it.”

He set the pieces of wire down on the desk beside his pen. “It’s amazing, you know? The damage you can do – the pain you can inflict - with just a few simple office supplies. Seriously. You’ll be amazed. I am going to open your eyes, Mr Carver.”

His face split into a lop-sided grin. “While you still have them, at least.”

“Look, Hayel, I’m picking up a vibe here that maybe I’m not your favorite person. And that’s fine,” said Cal. “I mean, you abducted me from my home planet, and killed… well, pretty much everyone on it in the process, so I doubt I’ll be inviting you to any of my birthday parties any time soon, either. But this little visit of mine, it’s not about you and me. It’s about Splurt.”

Something flashed behind Sinclair’s eyes, but was quickly covered up. “Splurt?”

“The entity, you called him,” said Cal. “Little green shapeshifter. Big eyes. Fonking adorable.”

Sinclair nodded curtly. “What of it?”

“I want him back.”

The president blinked several times. “You do?” he said.

“I do,” said Cal. “That’s why I’m here.”

“I see. How interesting. And Lady Vajazzle?”

“Heh,” Cal sniggered. “Vajazzle.” He wiped the smirk from his face. “What about her?”

“Where is she?”

Cal’s brow furrowed. “How should I know?”

Sinclair leaned on his desk. His eyes darted left to right, as if reading something written in the air. “How very interesting.” He stood up and shrugged. “An issue for a later date,” he said, absent-mindedly. “I’m afraid if you’ve come to trade your life for the entity, there’s one very big problem, Mr Carver.”

He leaned down until his face was close to Cal’s. “I already have you. How you can bargain with something that already belongs to me?”

Cal smiled. “Come on, Hayel. Did you really think I’d come here alone?”

He raised his eyebrows. Sinclair frowned. “Didn’t you?”

Cal had been hoping for something dramatic to happen at the end of his last sentence. It would have been perfect timing. Now, though, it just felt a bit awkward.

“Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t,” he said, stalling.

Sinclair straightened. “I don’t understand.”

“Oh, you will,” said Cal.

Several uncomfortable seconds passed.

“You will. Any minute… now.”

Nothing happened.

“Wait… now.”

Nothing happened. Sinclair glanced around.

Cal tutted. “Well, this is a little fonking embara--” he began, then the rest of the sentence was swallowed by the kraka-boom of the windows exploding, and the high-pitched howling of all the room’s oxygen being sucked into outer space.

CHAPTER FOUR

Cal fought the urge to hold his breath. It was difficult, but the detailed description Mech had given him about how doing so would make his lungs explode helped a lot.

Instead, he and Sinclair both gasped and wheezed in the cloud of floating glass, and watched as Mech came hurtling towards them. Behind Mech, the Shatner’s airlock stood open, Mizette’s face just visible through the window of the inner door.

Cal’s head was already starting to go light. He watched Mech approach through a narrowing tunnel of darkness, saw him silently mouth, “Hold on,” then felt the jarring impact of a metal hand grabbing him by the front of his space suit.

Cal’s arms and legs flopped limply behind him as Mech made a grab for Sinclair. The president had recovered quickly, and was attempting to fly towards the door controls. With a boost from his thrusters, Mech caught Sinclair by the ankle and spun. Like an Olympic hammer-thrower, he tossed the president out through the broken window and hurtling into the waiting airlock.

Mech fired up his thrusters again and rocketed back towards the ship. Cal’s tongue felt frozen. The pressure – or lack of pressure, he wasn’t sure which – seemed to be inflating his face. He felt movement. Jerky. Jarring. Abrupt.

He vibrated, every part of him flooded with a cold more biting and intense than he’d ever known. His heart raced, whooshing his blood around, faster and faster, out of control. He wanted to shout, to scream, but inside and out was a vacuum, and he had no more sound to make.

The airlock outer door closed. Cal and Sinclair both hit the floor in a coughing, spluttering heap. The inner door snapped open, and Cal felt a pair of hairy hands slide beneath him. They were warm. So warm. He liked warm. Warm was good.

“D-did w-we g-get h-h-him?” Cal managed to sob through his chattering teeth.

“Oh yeah, we totally got him,” said Miz, carrying Cal through the door. His head thudded against the thick iron door frame and he whimpered. “Shizz, sorry. Accident,” Miz said as she stepped into the corridor.

Swinging Cal’s legs down, she stood him against the wall, then turned back to the door. Cal immediately collapsed into a position that was somewhere between ‘sitting down’ and ‘vomited up’.

Miz closed the inner airlock door, then raised a hand to the window in a thumbs-up. She turned back to where she expected to find Cal standing, blinked in surprise, then helped him back to his feet.

“Thanks,” he wheezed. “I c-can’t believe that actually w-worked.”

“We’re not in the clear yet,” shouted Loren from the bridge. Cal felt the floor shift beneath him as the Shatner pulled away from the station. “Got fighters coming in fast. Weapons training.”

“Their weapons are training on us, or ours are training on them?” asked Cal.

“Well, since you’re the one who controls our weapons, take a guess!” Loren shouted.

Cal leaned against the wall. His insides felt jumbled up, like they’d been pulled out then stuffed back inside in a hurry. His skin tingled like bad sunburn, and his tongue was sandpapered meat.

“Can we send them the video feed of the airlock? Show them we’ve got Sinclair.”

“Yes. But another pair of hands wouldn’t hurt!” Loren called.

Cal shot Miz a hopeful look. She sighed and slumped off towards the front. “Fine. Whatever. But how come I never get to do any of the fun stuff?”

“Next time, OK?” Cal said to her back.

Feeling his way along the wall, he stopped at the airlock and leaned closer to the window. His arms shook uncontrollably, then gave out on him, resulting in his face smushing up against the glass. He considered moving, but that would take a lot of effort, and it was a pretty comfortable position, all things considered, so he decided just to stay where he was.

Beyond the glass, Mech was holding Sinclair by the front of his shirt, and had hoisted him a couple of feet off the floor. The president wasn’t struggling, but was instead glaring at Cal through the window, his eyes firing concentrated beams of pure hatred from one end of the airlock to the other.

With some difficulty, Cal pulled back from the window enough to smile and wave. “Hey, Hayel,” he said, and from the way Sinclair glanced up at the speakers, Cal knew he could hear him. “I’d normally do some funny small-talk here, but… well, I’m not in the mood. Where’s Splurt?”

Sinclair stared impassively at him through the glass. Cal shrugged.

“OK, let’s do it your way,” he said. “Mech.”

Mech jabbed the airlock control button and the outer door opened. Sinclair’s legs flew out behind him, but Mech’s grip held the rest of him in place. His face went from slight-green to almost-purple in the space of a breath, but he kept his gaze fixed on Cal throughout.

With another prod of Mech’s finger, the airlock door snapped shut. Sinclair gulped down air, and the color – the correct color – slowly returned to his cheeks.

“Where’s Splurt?” Cal asked.

Sinclair fired off a car-salesman smile. “I forget. Perhaps you should jog my memory?”

With a nod from Cal, Mech hit the button again. As before, Sinclair held Cal’s eyes as the moisture froze on his tongue and the oxygen was torn from his lungs.

Mech held the door a little longer this time, before letting it close again. “Where’s Splurt?” Cal asked.

Sinclair’s laugh was a dry crackle at the back of his throat. “You know, Mr Carver, I suspect my tolerance for being tortured is greater than your appetite for being the torturer.” He turned his head and looked very deliberately at the airlock door controls. “Shall we find out?”

“Hit it,” said Cal, and Mech opened the airlock door again. “You’re going to tell us where he is, Sinclair,” Cal shouted, as Sinclair’s face turned a deeper shade of reddish-purple. “You’re going to tell us where Splurt is, and you’re going to tell us how we can save him. You hear me, Sinclair? You’re going to tell us everything!”

The airlock door closed again. Sinclair spent a few seconds wrestling with his breath. “Sorry,” he said, through a series of wheezy rasps, “couldn’t hear a word of what you just said. Vacuum of space, and all that. I hope it was nothing important.” He grinned and gave his shoulders a shake. “You know, this is really quite exhilarating.”

Cal leaned his forehead against the glass for a moment. His numb skin told him it was either very cold, very hot, or somewhere between the two.

It wasn’t working. The main part of the plan – the most critical part – involved Sinclair telling them where Splurt was. That was the entire point of the exercise, and if Sinclair wasn’t going to play along, well… that wasn’t fair!

“Go on, just tell us,” Cal said. “You know you want to.”

Sinclair raised a perfect eyebrow. “Mmm, no. No, I don’t think I do.”

Cal sighed and shook his head. “Fine. You know what? That’s fine, Hayel. I didn’t want to have to do this, but… you leave me no choice.”

“Are you going to come in here and torture me yourself?” Sinclair asked, sounding surprisingly open to the possibility.

“Oh God, no,” said Cal. “I don’t have the stomach for that sort of thing. I’d be hugging you and saying we should be best friends after I broke the first finger. No, terrible idea.”

“That is a shame,” said Sinclair. “I was rather starting to enjoy testing my pain tolerance.”

“Then you, my friend, are in luck,” said Cal. He turned towards the front of the ship and shouted along the corridor. “Miz?”

“What now?” came the reply.

“How’d you like to do some of that fun stuff, after all?”

* * *

Eleven minutes later, Miz returned to the flight deck and slumped into her seat. Cal and Loren watched her, expectantly.

“Well?” asked Cal. “Did you get it?”

“What’s it worth?” asked Miz.

“My undying gratitude,” said Cal. “And a new chew toy next planet we go to.”

“I already got my eyes on a new chew toy,” said Miz, her eyes dropping very deliberately to Cal’s crotch. Cal shifted uncomfortably.

“There is literally nothing sexy about that phrase at all,” he pointed out. “You know that, right?”

Miz smirked, showing off her teeth. “Yeah. I know,” she said, then she held out a hand. There was a small scrap of paper between two of her fingers. Cal took it, and tried not to dwell too much on the blood stains.

The symbols on the paper swam, becoming some sort of mathematical equation Cal had absolutely no hope whatsoever of being able to understand. “Is this it? Is this where Splurt is?”

“So he says,” said Miz, shrugging.

“Is it… I mean, is it an address? What does it mean?”

Loren held a hand out, and Cal gladly handed the paper over. “Co-ordinates,” Loren said, tapping the details into her controls. The viewscreen, which was currently filled with a ring of Zertex fighters, changed to show a map of space.

“It’s there,” said Loren, zooming in on a patch of black.

Cal squinted at the screen. “I don’t see anything.”

“That’s because there’s nothing there,” said Loren. “It’s empty space.”

Cal thumped a fist on his arm rest. “He lied. He hasn’t given you anything.”

“I don’t know,” said Miz. “He was pretty convincing.”

“I’m going to find out,” said Cal. He jumped up from his chair and stormed through to the airlock. There was no damage to his face, but the expression on it told Cal that Miz had been very persuasive indeed.

“Oh man, thank fonk it’s you,” Mech muttered, when Cal entered. He shot the inner airlock door a glance. “That girl has issues.”

Cal stood over Sinclair, his hands on his hips. “The co-ordinates you gave us,” he said. “There’s nothing there.”

“I know,” said Sinclair. He wasn’t smiling now, and even those two words seemed to take the wind out of him.

“Miz!” Cal shouted, but Sinclair quickly raised a hand.

“No, wait, let me explain,” he said.

“Yeah?” called Miz from up front.

Cal waited a few seconds, making it very clear to the president that this situation could go one of two ways, and one of them would be harrowingly unpleasant. “Nothing. It’s fine.”

He raised his eyebrows in Sinclair’s direction. “Well?”

“It never made it back. The entity. The ship – Zertex’s ship – it never reached us.”

“You’re lying,” said Cal. “You have him.”

Sinclair shook his head and coughed. Something wet and black landed on the floor in front of him. “No. We lost contact at the co-ordinates I gave you.”

“So what did you find?” asked Mech. Sinclair looked at him, quizzically. Mech narrowed his eyes. “Don’t tell me you didn’t send someone to check it out. What did you find?”

Sinclair gritted his teeth and glared at them both. Cal jabbed a thumb towards the door behind him. “I can have Miz back here in five seconds,” he said. “And she’s just sat back down again, so she won’t be happy, will she, Mech?”

“No,” said Mech, crossing his arms across his chest. “She will not be happy.”

“We don’t know!” Sinclair bleated. “It’s a hole of some kind. A rip in the fabric of space. It’s something we’ve never seen before.”

“A black hole?” Cal asked.

Sinclair snorted. “Oh please, don’t try to sound like you know what you’re talking about, Cal,” he spat. He managed to rouse his grin a little, and Cal noted the dark blood on his teeth. “No, it’s not a black hole. It’s something else. Something new.”

Cal shifted his gaze to Mech. The cyborg shrugged. “Don’t look at me, man. I don’t know.”

“If you’re lying to us, Sinclair, we’re going to come back,” Cal said, squatting down beside the president. “We got to you once, we can get to you again. And this time, you’ll be begging me to hand you over to Mizette.”

With a smile and a wink, Cal stood and started back towards the inner airlock door. “Can you cobble together a full space suit from what we’ve got?” he asked.

Mech nodded. “Yeah. It won’t be pretty, but it’ll work.”

“Good, get him in it and get him off my ship,” Cal instructed. He stopped at the door. “Overarm throw. Really fonking fire him out of here.”

“What?” Sinclair sputtered. “You can’t do that. I’m the president!”

“My pleasure,” said Mech. “Give me three minutes.”

* * *

Two minutes and forty-five seconds later, Cal sat in his chair, smiling up at the face that filled it. The face wasn’t smiling back. It was quite a round face, and was wobbling a lot as the owner of it ranted and raged about penal code this and targeting systems that.

Cal wasn’t really listening, though. There was something else about the man that was concerning him. Something he couldn’t quite put his finger on.

Wait. He’d got it.

“Dan Ackroyd!”

On screen, the Zertex commander’s words tumbled to a stop. His fuzzy eyebrows met in the middle. “Excuse me?”

“Dan Ackroyd. That’s who you remind me of,” said Cal. “Man, that has been annoying me for a full… ooh, three minutes now.”

“Now you listen,” snarled space Dan Ackroyd, but Cal held up an index finger to stop him.

“One sec. Loren, you all set?”

“All set.”

“Disabled the stupid proximity safety thing?”

“Stupid proximity safety thing disabled,” Loren confirmed.

“Excellent,” said Cal. He lowered his finger, but jumped in before the officer could continue. “Sorry to cut this short and everything, but you may want to take a look at our airlock door. The president is going to be coming out any second…”

A flailing white shape rocketed into view from somewhere behind the ship, and quickly grew smaller as it hurtled off into the depths of space. “Now!” said Cal. “Better go catch him. Loren, punch it!”

Loren gunned the engines. The floor shuddered and the stars became spaghetti as the Shatner shattered the light barrier and left Zertex Command Five far, far behind.

* * *

The co-ordinates Sinclair had given them pointed to a patch of space almost slap-bang between two solar systems. It was a two hour journey at full speed, but Cal had insisted they get there in ninety minutes.

Loren and Mech had both pointed out that this was impossible, unless they wanted the ship to blow up, and he’d agreed that, in hindsight, what did an extra half hour matter, anyway?

It had been a few weeks since Cal had first experienced faster than light travel, but his stomach, inner ear and – occasionally – bladder control still voiced quite strong objections to it. Watching the stars streaking past was out of the question, unless he wanted to spend the entire journey projectile vomiting into the glass container that had once contained Splurt, but which was now exclusively used for puke catching.

Instead of the star-streaks, Cal had been having Loren fill the viewscreen with footage of cute space cats doing adorable stuff. He’d gradually come to realize, though, that you could only watch space cats for so long before they got a little… samey.

“And climb out of drawer,” he muttered, a split-second before an on-screen kitten-thing did just that. “And look around. And fall out of drawer.”

On screen, the space cat gave a little yelp, then waved its legs in the air as it struggled to right itself. Cal sighed. He was going to have to find something else to watch soon. He wondered if Space’s Funniest Home Videos was a thing. Then he wondered if it turned out that it wasn’t a thing, whether he should claim the idea as his own and start a production company.

Finally, he wondered why the fonk he was thinking about starting a TV production company in outer space, and went back to watching the cats.

Loren turned her chair around to face him and the others. “So, tell me about this hole of yours.”

“Oh, yes please,” purred Miz, her tail twitching through the hole she’d torn in the back of her seat. “I would love to hear about your--”

“Mizette. Please,” said Cal. “Let’s not cheapen it.”

She licked her lips, smirked at him, then went back to studying her nails.

“I just know what Sinclair told us,” said Cal. “Hole in space. Nothing they’ve seen before.”

“And… what are we thinking?” asked Mech. “That Splurt’s through there?”

Cal shrugged. “Sinclair said it’s the last place they had contact with Vajazzle’s ship.”

“It wasn’t Vajazzle’s ship, it was a Zertex ship,” Loren reminded him. “The AX11. Largest ship in the whole fleet. Largest ship in any fleet, and what? It just fell through a hole? Must’ve been one big hole.”

“Guess we’ll find out soon enough,” said Mech. On screen, a series of numbers flashed red and began rapidly counting down.

Loren spun her chair back to the front and began flipping switches. “What? Shizz! Arriving in ten… nine… eight…” The digits on screen blinked rapidly. “Uh, fivefourthreetwoon—”

The Shatner dropped out of warp with a jarring jolt that threw Cal, Miz and Loren forward, then slammed them back again.

Any other time, one of the crew would have passed comment on Loren’s piloting skills. Cal would have remarked on how far into his lower intestines his testicles had just been launched, for example, or Miz would have offered an apparently heartfelt compliment, before immediately pointing out that she was being sarcastic. Perhaps Mech might have cursed creatively, or just shaken his head while muttering below his breath.

Any other time, that’s what would have happened.

But not this time.

Cal stared. Loren and Mech stared. Even Mizette looked up from her nails and gazed in wonder at the viewscreen.

“What,” said Cal. “The fonk,” he added. “Is that?”

CHAPTER FIVE

Why Sinclair had called it a ‘hole,’ Cal had no idea. This thing wasn’t a hole. It was an abyss. It stretched all the way across the screen like a claw-mark in the curtain of space. Colors danced and fizzled inside it – reds and oranges around the ragged edges, becoming yellows then whites towards the center.

Just looking at the thing made Cal feel simultaneously like the single most important person in the universe, and the most utterly insignificant. A bubble welled up inside him, like he was about to burst into tears. He wrapped his fingers around the edge of his arm rests, then squeezed until the knuckles turned white.

“It must be thousands of miles across,” Loren whispered. There was a shake in her voice that told Cal she was feeling all the same things he was.

“What is it?” asked Miz. “I mean, like… what even is that?”

Cal didn’t tear his eyes away from the rip. He couldn’t. “Mech?”

Mech didn’t reply. Cal glanced at him, just briefly, and felt a pang of utter, heart-wrenching loss. “Mech?”

“Huh?” said Mech, snapping out of a daze.

“Any ideas what it is?” Cal asked.

“The fonk should I know?” Mech grunted. “Scanners ain’t showing nothing. Nothing that makes any sense, anyway.”

“It’s beautiful,” Loren whispered.

“It’s a beautiful big space thing,” Cal agreed.

They all watched the beautiful big space thing in silence for several pleasant seconds. It was Miz who eventually had to go and spoil it.

“Uh, should our shields be dropping like that?”

Reluctantly, Mech turned his attention to the shield integrity readout. His brow knotted. “We just dropped six percent.”

Cal practically spasmed in his chair. “We’ve only got six percent shields? That’s not nearly enough shield! Does that even cover the ship? Oh God, were going to die, aren’t we? We’re totally about to die.”

“Calm down, shizznod,” replied Mech. “We’re not down to six percent, we’re down by six percent, to ninety-four.”

“Oh,” said Cal. “Oh, that’s fine, then. That’s still more than enough shield.”

“Ninety-one,” corrected Loren. “And falling.”

“So that’s why there ain’t no ships around,” said Mech.

Cal frowned. “What?”

“Big exciting new space thing like this?” said Mech, gesturing at the flickering vortex of color ahead. “Should be science ships. Lots of science ships, with fighters patrolling to keep anyone else from getting too close.”

“Right…” said Cal.

“So where are they?” asked Mech. “Hmm? You see anyone else here but us?”

“You think they blew up?” Cal asked.

“I dunno. Maybe,” shrugged Mech. “Or they got the Hell out when they realized that thing was eating their shields.”

Loren’s hands went to the controls. “I’m going to back off and try to get out of its range.”

“Out of its range?” said Cal. “Have you seen that thing? Nothing is out of its range. And we can’t, we need to find Splurt.”

“We will,” said Loren. “But we need to figure out how first, and to do that we need the ship to be intact.”

“Fair point, well made,” Cal conceded. He sighed. “Fine, back up until the shields stop falling, and we’ll work out what to do next.”

“Uh, guys,” said Mizette, her voice taking on an uncharacteristically serious tone. “You know you sometimes get me to check this little screen thing in my chair, in case, like, loads of little red dots show up?”

Everyone turned to look at her. “Yes…” said Cal.

Miz looked up, her eyes wide with surprise. “Loads of little red dots just showed up.”

“Shizz,” Loren mumbled, tapping some buttons on the panel beside her. Cal felt that jarring sense of loss again when the vortex vanished from the screen, and was replaced by an area of space positively brimming with Zertex fighters. As they watched, another dozen or more came out of warp and stopped abruptly behind the first wave.

Cal leaned forwards in his chair. “Loren, please tell me that all these ships are not currently right behind us.”

The screen changed with a sudden jolt, like it was being forced against its will. President Sinclair’s face appeared. His smile had returned, but it was less convincing than ever, thanks partly to the blood drying across his front teeth.

“Do you know my big mistake, Mr Carver?” the president asked.

“Matching that shirt with those pants?” guessed Cal.

“Making it personal,” said Sinclair. “I wanted you brought to me so that I could torture you. So that I could break you. And why was that? Why the obsession with hurting you directly?”

Cal blinked. “Are you… are you flirting with me, Hayel? Is that what this is? Because – and no offence here, because you’re a very attractive man – but I am not into you at all.”

On screen, Sinclair’s face twisted in rage. He opened his mouth to shout, but snapped it closed before the words could come out. He smoothed down the front of his shirt, and his face fell into line again at the same time.

Sinclair smiled, and this time it was closer to the real thing. “Nice try, Mr Carver, but my interest in killing you slowly and face to face has waned. Now, I just want you dead.”

“Weapons locking,” said Loren.

“Ours or--?”

“Theirs,” Loren snapped. “How many times must we have this conversation?”

“Shields at eighty-five,” warned Mech. “Wait, eighty-two.”

“More of those red dots coming in,” Miz added.

On screen, Sinclair’s smile returned to its full gameshow-host glory. “Goodbye, Mr Carver. You were…” He searched for the correct word, then shrugged. “You were. And in a few more minutes, you won’t be.”

The Shatner rocked as a torpedo slammed against the shields, making them flicker erratically. Five, eight… eleven beams of scorching red blasted from the front line of Zertex fighters. Loren sent the ship into a dive, but the second wave of fighter ships were ready for it, and two more torpedoes found the ship’s exposed belly.

“Oh, man, that hurt us. That hurt us bad,” said Mech. “Shields in the twenties.”

Sinclair watched them from the screen, grinning broadly. Cal pointed to the president’s massive face. “Get that fonk off my TV!” he commanded, banging his arm rests with both fists. His weapons controls unfolded into two quarter circle control panels beneath each hand. Above him, a headset visor lowered down and snapped into place over his eyes.

Cal felt the now-familiar whooshing as his virtual reality viewpoint zoomed in to show the area around the ship. From this view, Cal could see around half of the Zertex ships – far too many to count – and a little over one tenth of the space-hole.

Despite the real and all-too immediate threat posed by the fighters, Cal couldn’t resist a peek at the vortex. Its colors pulsed and fizzled and swirled and danced. Loren was right, it was beautiful. More than that, it was mesmerizing. Hypnotic. He could look at that thing all—

A blast of laser cannon fire rocketed past him. The Shatner trembled with the impact, and Cal saw the shields become thin like plastic wrap around them.

“What are you waiting for?” Loren shouted. “Start shooting!”

Cal spun in his chair to face the Zertex fighters. Another thirty or forty of them had snapped out of warp, and were moving into what he guessed was attack formation.

“Shields at seventeen,” Mech warned.

“Maybe you should, like, warp us out,” Miz suggested.

“Can’t. Not enough power,” Mech grunted. “If I divert from shields, next hit will take us out. We’ll be in pieces before we can fire up the warp drive.”

“Cal!” Loren barked. “Return fire, now!”

Cal’s fingers tensed on the triggers.

Then relaxed again. What was the point? They were one ship – one heavily damaged ship – against an armada. He didn’t even know what half of the buttons on his gunner controls did, let alone have any experience of using them.

A fortnight ago, he’d been a petty criminal from Philadelphia. Now, he was being asked to single-handedly destroy an entire fleet of alien fighter ships. He was out of his depth. He wondered if anyone had ever been quite this far out of their depth before, in fact.

He was so far out of his depth it wasn’t just that he could no longer see the bottom, there was no bottom. He was treading water above an empty, endless abyss that could swallow him up at any...

At any…

Cal spun his chair back towards the vortex. He disengaged his targeting visor and his gun controls folded neatly back into his chair.

“What the Hell are you doing?” Loren screamed. “I can’t dodge them forever.”

“You’re not dodging them now,” Miz pointed out, as a series of cannon-fire blasts thundered across the hull.

“That thing,” said Cal, pointing to the rip in space. “Fly into it.”

Loren flicked a glance back over her shoulder. “Are you nuts? We don’t know what’s in there!”

“No, but we know what’s out here,” said Cal. “And it’s pretty fonking unpleasant.”

Loren shot Mech a look. He sighed, then shrugged. “Man’s got a point.”

“Oh, just do it, already,” said Miz. “Stop making it into such a drama.”

“Fine,” said Loren, gritting her teeth. She pointed the Shatner towards the swirling, sparkling void and hit the thrusters. “But you might want to hold onto something. This could get bumpy.”

“Unlike literally every other time you’ve flown us anywhere, you mean?” Miz said.

Cal clutched his arm rests as the vortex consumed the edges of the screen. The ship lurched and shuddered. Above them, a pipe shook loose of its mount, hissing out its contents in a cloud of hot steam.

“No,” Cal said, shouting to make himself heard over the creaking and grinding of the ship’s extremities. “This time might even be worse than usual.”

“The good news is, Zertex ain’t following us,” Mech said.

“And the bad news?” asked Cal.

“We ain’t got no shields left and we’re all going to die.”

Cal puffed out his cheeks. “Yeah, you’re right, that is bad news,” he said.

The lights flickered. Something high-tech and important-looking fell off the wall and hit the floor with a heavy thonk.

“Controls not responding,” said Loren. She waggled the stick left and right to demonstrate. The Shatner continued in a steady line towards the now all-encompassing swirling mass. “No backing out now.”

Something deep in the ship screamed. Mech studied the information flooding the screen. “Outer airlock door’s gone. Inner door holding for now.”

“It’s OK. It’s fine. We’re going to get through this,” said Cal. “We’ve got through worse.”

The screen flickered like static. The lights dimmed, became stupidly bright, then snapped off completely, all in the space of half a second. Cal’s voice seemed louder in the darkness.

“OK, so maybe not that much worse,” he admitted, then something unpleasant happened. He wasn’t quite sure what the unpleasant thing was, exactly, but it made his insides and his outsides swap places, and turned his eyes to Play-Doh. Or, at least, that was how it felt.

The flight deck was dark, yet simultaneously blindingly bright. It was crammed with light, like there wasn’t enough room to fit it all in, so some parts were overlapping.

At the same time, it was darker than any darkness Cal had ever seen. It wasn’t just an absence of light, it was an absence of anything. An absence of space and time and everything else in between. Cal was just starting to wonder if he was there, or if even he were absent, too, when the roaring and squealing that had been rising to a piercing, ear-splitting din stopped. Just stopped. Like that.

The non-light faded. The darkness lifted, becoming just the regular, run of the mill hey-who-turned-the-lights-off variety.

Cal cleared his throat, and was relieved to find he still had a throat to clear. “Is it my imagination?” he said, offering the words tentatively to the darkness. “Or are we still alive?”

“Yeah, man. I’m still here,” said Mech.

“Me too,” said Miz.

“Yes. Still in one piece,” said Loren.

Cal threw back his head and laughed. “I knew it! What did I say? I knew we’d get through it. I mean, yeah, it was touch and go there for a while, but… Oh, man, that was… That was… Did anyone else feel themselves turning inside-out, by the way? Or was that just me?”

“Not just you,” said Miz. “That was so not cool.”

A thought struck Cal. “Wait… we didn’t actually turn inside-out, did we? We’re not sitting here all, like, innards exposed?”

From somewhere in Mech’s direction, there was a flurry of keyboard tapping. A dim red light illuminated high in the ceiling, casting its crimson glow across the bridge and picking out four shaken, but very much not inside-out crew members.

“Oh, thank God,” breathed Cal. “That could’ve been deeply unpleasant all round.” He turned his chair towards the front. It creaked in protest. “Where are we?”

“Sensors still offline,” said Mech. “Trying to get us visuals on…”

The screen illuminated in a burst of static. It flickered and danced around, revealing... something. Definitely something. Something quite big, Cal thought. Or something very close.

Or possibly both.

Mech banged a metal fist on a control panel. The snow cleared, although the bottom half of the picture jerked off to the left, like an old VHS player in need of a tracking adjustment. It didn’t matter, though. They didn’t need the bottom half of the image to tell them what they were looking at. The top half spoke volumes, all on its own.

“Planet!” Cal cried. “Pull up, pull up!”

Loren heaved on the controls, but the Shatner’s course didn’t change. Cal realized he couldn’t hear the humming of the ship’s engines – a sound he had never actually noticed before, and was only aware of now by its absence.

“Can’t,” Loren hissed through gritted teeth. “Not responding.”

Beads of sweat formed on Cal’s brow. He tried to breathe, but his chest felt tight. “Is it me, or is it hot in here?” he panted.

“Atmosphere,” Mech grunted. “Ship’s burning.”

Cal watched as Mech knelt on the floor and placed his hands against it, fingers splayed. With a magnetic whine, both hands and both knees locked Mech down.

“What are you doing?” Cal asked.

“Brace position,” Mech explained. He nodded towards the screen, which was now completely taken up by a bird’s eye view of a dark green tree canopy, the thin blue pencil-line of a river, and not a whole lot else. “We’re going down. Hard.”

Cal snorted, but it was half-hearted, and barely a whistle through his nose. “What? No. We’re not. Are we? Loren, pull up. Quit messing around.”

Loren turned enough to look at Cal over her shoulder. She nodded, just once. “The ship’s dead. We’re going to crash.”

Miz tutted. “Oh, well way to go, Loren,” she said. “You’ve really outdone yourself this time.”

Cal reached across the gap to Mizette. After a moment, he felt her hand slide into his, and they both squeezed.

He nodded to Mech, and Mech nodded back.

He smiled at Loren. One of his good ones, too.

“Hey,” he said. “Don’t worry about it. You did great, OK? We all did great.” His smile became a devilish grin. “Well, I mean, maybe not Mech…”

And then, with a sound like all the thunder in all the skies, the Shatner hammered through the forest canopy, and hit the ground in a towering eruption of roots and soil.

CHAPTER SIX

Time passed. Ten seconds. A lifetime, maybe. Cal couldn’t say for sure. But time definitely passed, in that way that time does.

More time passed.

And some more after that.

Cal couldn’t tell if his eyes were open. He tried to reach a hand for his face to feel, but his arms wouldn’t move.

Oh, shizz.

He was paralyzed.

Just his fonking luck.

Time passed.

Cal tried wiggling his toes. They wiggled. This was good news, he thought, although he couldn’t quite remember why. He couldn’t quite remember why he’d been wiggling them in the first place, in fact.

He stopped.

Time passed.

There was something important, he thought. He could almost remember it, but not quite. It was something big. Planet-sized. Planet-shaped, too.

It’d come back to him.

Time passed. A second. Ten lifetimes, maybe. Cal couldn’t say for sure.

He wondered if his eyes were open. He tried moving his arms to find out, but they refused.

Paralyzed.

Just his fonking luck.

A memory nagged at him, like déjà vu, or a half-remembered dream.

Could he wiggle his toes, he wondered?

Yep. They were fine.

He was oddly calm about the fact that he couldn’t move his arms, and wasn’t sure why this might be. Maybe he’d never been able to move his arms. Did he even have arms? He had toes, clearly. That was now firmly established. But arms?

He thought so. He definitely felt like he might recall having had arms at some point in his past. One, at least. Possibly two.

Three?

He thought not. Three felt like too many.

Time passed.

A planet! That was it. There was a planet, big and getting rapidly bigger.

He should warn the others!

But no.

Loren probably had it all in hand.

She had hands. And arms. Definitely. He remembered those pretty clearly.

The more he thought about it, the more convinced he was that he’d had arms at some point, too.

He tried moving them again.

Nope.

Maybe not, then.

Cal wrestled an eye open. It looked up, down, left right, swiveling in a full circle as it took in every last detail of where he was.

Except it was dark, so it saw nothing.

He opened the other eye to see if they’d have more luck working in tandem.

Nope.

Still dark.

“Hello?” he said, but all that emerged were a series of sputtering coughs and a wad of something that tasted like it belonged on the inside.

A light hit him full in the face. He hissed in through his teeth and inhaled a mouthful of dust. He coughed again and the light redirected to become an oval on the floor beside him. Cal saw that he was lying on a white, marshmallow-like substance. Embedded in it, in fact. The stuff was wrapped around him like a mallow cocoon.

“Hello?” Cal said, directing the word towards the light, as if it were a living thing come to rescue him. “What’s your name?”

“The fonk you talking about, man?” grunted a voice in the darkness. Mech crawled into the pool of light, and Cal saw it was being projected from a torch on the cyborg’s shoulder. “It’s me.”

“Mech!” Cal wheezed. “Are we… are we alive?”

“Yeah, we’re alive,” said Mech.

Cal let out a high-pitched little, “Oh!” of delighted surprise, but then grew suddenly serious. “Both of us?”

“We’re both alive,” Mech confirmed.

“Oh!” said Cal again, a woozy smile returning. “Can I ask you something?” he whispered.

Mech bent low, studying the white mallow substance that surrounded Cal. “Yeah, man. What?”

“Be honest,” said Cal. “Can you remember if I have arms?”

Mech’s eyes searched Cal’s face, but found only sincerity. “Yeah, man, you got arms. You’re just stuck in this safety putty.”

“I knew I had some! One or two. Not three, though,” Cal slurred, then he squinted as he tried to focus on the rest of Mech’s sentence before it slipped away. “Safety putty? Is that was this stuff is?”

“Yeah. The chair spits it out if the ship crashes.”

Cal gasped. “Did we crash? When?”

Mech swung the torch across a mangled tangle of wreckage. It took Cal a moment to recognize it as the Shatner’s flight deck. “Jesus. What about the others? Are they dead?”

“No, I got them out already,” said Mech. “Just you left.”

Cal let out a sigh of relief, then scowled. “Wait, you got me last?”

“Reckoned it’s what you would’ve wanted,” said Mech.

“Well you reckoned wrong!” said Cal. “In future, definitely get me first, OK?”

Mech shrugged. “Whatever you say, captain,” he muttered.

“Or is that mean?” Cal wondered. “Yeah, that’s mean. Get the others first. Just rescue me whenever.”

Mech nodded. “Like, now, for example?”

“Oh! Yes,” said Cal, brightening again. “That’s a great idea. Rescue me now.”

“Sure thing,” Mech said, then his arm whirred as he clamped a hand down on the mallow cocoon. “Now shut up and hold on. I’ll get you out of here in no time.”

* * *

Time passed. About ten minutes, by Cal’s reckoning.

He sat in his chair, still ninety percent covered by marshmallow and largely unable to move, gazing forlornly at what had once been the dread ship Shatner. Loren and Miz stood either side of him, watching Mech search through the debris for anything useful.

The crash had carved a twelve-lane-highway wide trench in the ground, uprooting trees and shattering rocks as the hull ploughed up the terrain. But if the damage to the ground was bad, the toll it had taken on the ship was even worse.

It wasn’t a ship any more. It barely even qualified as ‘the remains of a ship.’ It was metal. Lots and lots of bent, buckled and broken metal plates, with cables and pipes scattered like dropped noodles all across the ravaged ground.

A section near the rear of the ship – a part Cal tended to think of as ‘that sticky-out bit’ – was partly intact, but mostly on fire, so it was unlikely to stay that way for long.

“So,” said Cal. “Reckon we can fix it?”

“Maybe. If we can swap out a few parts,” said Loren.

“Which parts?”

“All of them.”

“That sticky-out bit is still--”

That sticky-out bit exploded. Shrapnel whistled past Mech and embedded itself deep into Cal’s safety putty.

“No, I tell a lie,” Cal said. “That bit’s gone, too.”

He looked down at the twisted piece of metal that had been stopped just inches from his heart. He looked up at Loren and Miz.

“Hey,” he realized. “How come I’m the only one sitting in a marshmallow?”

More time passed as Mizette used her claws to remove Cal from the safety putty in what he felt was a recklessly cavalier manner. The only area she spent any time lingering over was his crotch. She slowed right down and really took her time over that particular area, which Cal was both relieved and concerned by in almost equal measures.

By the time Cal was free, Mech had deposited just a single box on the ground in front of them. Loren squatted and rummaged in it.

“Is this it?”

“That’s all we got,” said Mech. “A few blasters. Couple of tools…”

“My guitar?” asked Cal, hopefully.

“Thankfully not,” said Mech. “So, at least some good’s come out of this.”

Loren stood up, a blaster pistol in her hand. She checked it over, then tucked it into the back of her belt. “It’s not much.”

“You can say that again,” agreed Mech. “There might be more, but I didn’t want to waste more time looking.”

“My guitar,” Cal sobbed. “My fonking guitar. I am going to kill Sinclair for this.”

“Yeah, well good luck finding him,” said Mech. “Because I have no idea where we are.”

Cal got up out of his chair for the first time since Miz had carved him free of the putty. His skin and clothes still felt tacky, and made a faint thack sound as he pulled himself off the seat.

“Wait, what do you mean?” said Cal. “What about your sensor things? I thought you had, like, GPS or whatever.”

Mech shrugged. “If you mean a location positioning system, then yeah. I do,” said Mech. He tapped his forearm. “This thing can pinpoint wherever I am in the galaxy, down to a few feet.”

“So, what?” said Cal. “It’s broken?”

“Naw, man, it ain’t broken,” said Mech. “We just ain’t in our galaxy anymore.”

Cal stared at him. After a moment, a smile split his face. He clapped his hands together and pointed at Mech. “Aha! You totally almost had me there. I was this close to falling for that.” He laughed and patted Mech on the arm. “No, but seriously.”

“Yeah,” Mech intoned. “But seriously.”

Cal’s face fell. “But seriously seriously?”

Mech nodded. “But seriously seriously. This ain’t our galaxy.”

“Well whose galaxy is it?” asked Cal.

“Fonked if I know.”

“How is that even possible?” asked Mizette.

“We flew through a giant wormhole thing,” Loren snapped, stabbing a finger towards the sky. Cal looked up, half-expecting to see the swirly vortex thing above him, but there was only a coppery-orange sky with flecks of purple cloud. “You think, I don’t know, maybe that had something to do with it?”

“The Hell should I know?” Miz sniffed. “I’m not a scientist.”

“Oh really?” spat Loren. “You do surprise me. With an intellect like yours?”

Miz’s nostrils flared. “Are you being sarcastic?” she said. She turned to Cal. “Is she being sarcastic?”

“No, not even a little bit,” said Cal, shooting Loren a look. “I get it, we’re all a little stressed out here, but that’s no reason for us to start fighting.”

“We always fight,” Miz pointed out.

“She’s right,” agreed Loren, the worst of her anger escaping her in one big breath. “It’s kind of our thing.”

“Then maybe it’s time it stopped being your thing,” said Cal. “Maybe becoming best friends and working together so we don’t all die should be your new thing?”

He looked beyond them to the edges of the forest that hemmed them in. The taller trees were gnarled and bent, each trunk made up of several thinner trunks, all twisted around one another like cables behind a TV.

Beneath those stood fatter, smaller trees. These ones had smooth, bulging trunks with two branches sprouting upwards from the top. They looked like giant slugs wearing leafy wigs, and Cal made a mental note to keep an eye on them, in case they started to move around, or made any attempt to eat him.

“Mech? Picking anything up?”

Mech tapped the controls on his arm. A stream of information flashed up on the display. “Lot of lifeforms in those trees.”

“Any you recognize?”

Another tap on the controls. Another flash of data. “Nope.”

Cal clicked his tongue against the back of his teeth. “Miz? What does your nose tell us?”

Miz tilted her head and sniffed the air. “Right now, it tells us there’s a burning spaceship ten feet away, and that we might be near some trees,” she admitted. “I need to get somewhere less smoky.”

“We should stay here,” said Loren. “Near the ship. Someone’s bound to have heard the crash, or seen us come down.”

Cal nodded. “Yes. But we don’t know if it’ll be someone we want to hang around for. I mean, out of all the people we’ve met since we were brought together, how many of them haven’t tried to kill us? Statistically, the chances of someone friendly turning up are pretty fonking slim.”

“Fair point,” Loren conceded. “We should move on.”

“Anyone got any preference of direction?” asked Cal, gesturing into the wall of woods around them. “Because I’m easy.”

“Oh, really? Well, in that case…” Miz began, but Cal held up a finger again.

“Miz. Please. Now probably isn’t the best time,” he said, then he bent down, grabbed a couple of blasters from one of the boxes, and limped towards a narrow gap in the wall of trees. “I guess this looks as safe a direction as any,” he decided.

But, as was so often the case, he was wrong.

CHAPTER SEVEN

They trudged through the trees, Mech leading the way. Branches whipped and tore at them, which didn’t seem to bother Mech or Mizette, but annoyed the other two immensely.

“You’re doing that on purpose,” Cal said to Mech’s back, as another thin branch slapped him in the face.

“Doing what on purpose?” asked Mech, not turning around.

Another branch stung Cal’s cheek. “That! You’re bending the branches back, then letting them go so they hit me in the face.”

Mech chuckled. “Oh, that. Yeah. Yeah, I’m doing that on purpose.”

“I don’t know what you’re complaining about, Cal. You’re doing it to me!” Loren pointed out from just behind him.

“Yeah, but when I do it it’s funny,” Cal explained. “When he does it it’s workplace harassment.”

They had been walking for an hour or more, headed vaguely east. Mech’s positioning system might not have been working, but his in-built compass helped them stick to more or less a straight line. What was at the end of that line, though, was anyone’s guess.

At first, the forest had been wonderfully terrible, or terribly wonderful, or some other combination of the two words. They’d taken it in turns to point out the pale blue illuminated berries on some of the larger trees, the red and yellow flowers whose tongues flicked like party-blowers at passing insects or, in Miz’s case, some interesting-smelling animal feces.

After a while, though, they’d stopped. It was hot in the forest, and those insects were beginning to tick everyone off. Even Mech, who barely had eight inches of skin to his name, spent half his time waving a hand in front of his face and muttering angrily.

Now, barely sixty minutes after they’d set out, the novelty of the forest had well and truly worn off. Even the chirping of the birds in the trees, which had seemed so joyous and carefree when they’d first heard it, was now the single most infuriating noise any of them had ever heard. Fortunately, Cal knew how to lift their spirits.

“What would you rather, right?” he began. “To be constantly followed by a hyper-critical ghost that only you could see and hear – one who’s giving it, like, ‘you’re rubbish, everyone hates you, you should just kill yourself,’ or whatever in your ear all the time. Or to be a hyper-critical ghost following someone else around?”

“Am I following Loren?” asked Miz from the back. “Is that why I’m hyper-critical?”

“You’d make an excellent hyper-critical ghost,” said Loren.

Cal smiled. “There you go! That was almost a compliment!”

Loren shook her head. “No. It wasn’t.”

“No, but it was almost a compliment. It was along the lines of a compliment, and that’s a start,” said Cal. Another branch whipped him in the face. He ignored it. “Personally, I’d have to be the ghost. I’m not sure I could handle being criticized all the time. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but my self-confidence is pretty thin.”

All three of the others stopped walking for a moment and looked at him. “Yeah, man,” Mech grunted. “Whatever you say.”

They continued on. The forest floor was a tangle of vines and roots, but it was dry and more or less solid, so walking wasn’t too taxing. The further away from the ship they got, the more Miz’s nose was able to pick up.

She could smell trees, although that one was pretty much a given. She picked up bark and sap and berries and foliage. She could detect fruit in some of the higher branches, but not a kind she’d ever smelled before.

There was water ahead somewhere. A mile. Maybe two. She raised her nose and sniffed. Fresh, not salty, and clean enough. It was just as well, since they hadn’t been able to salvage any water from the ship, and Miz’s tongue was approaching sandpaper levels of dryness.

There was something else, too. Something beyond the water, which she could pick up just the faintest traces of when the breeze blew the right way. It was familiar, somehow, but try as she might, she couldn’t quite place it. It hung just out of reach, like the memory of a dream.

Whatever it was, it made the fur on the back of her neck stand on end whenever it wafted by, which made her think it was probably nothing good.

“Think Splurt’s here somewhere?” asked Cal, as they plodded on through the trees. They could hear the burbling of water ahead now, and had started to pick up their pace.

“Doubt it,” said Loren.

Cal tutted. “Thanks for that, Negative Nancy.”

“Well, I mean, statistically, what are the odds? We don’t know the ship came through the wormhole or whatever it is. If it did, why would it land here?”

“Maybe it crashed,” Cal suggested.

“Yeah!” agreed Miz. “Do you have, like, a twin sister who is also a pilot? Because if you do, and if she was flying that ship, it totally crashed.”

“No, I don’t. I have brothers,” said Loren. Her eyes widened and her stomach went tight. “My brothers. I might never see my brothers again.” She considered this for a moment, then waved the thought away. “Ah, I never really liked them, anyway.”

“Wow,” said Cal. “That was the fastest one-eighty emotional turnaround I’ve ever seen. I’m impressed.”

The trees ended in a wall of branches, and Mech pushed his way through to a clearing beyond. A narrow river blocked their path, the water sparkling as it curved over two large oval rocks, before tumbling into a narrower, faster-flowing stretch of river below.

Miz and Cal both dropped to their knees by the bank and Cal scooped up some of the water. It was icy-cold, and zinged against his skin.

“Are you sure it’s safe?” asked Loren.

Cal paused with his hands halfway to his mouth, and gazed longingly at the little pool as it drained between the gaps in his fingers.

“Smells safe,” said Miz, leaning down and lapping hungrily at the liquid. “Tastes safe.”

“Maybe we should boil it first,” Loren suggested, but Cal couldn’t wait. He dug in for another scoop, brought it to his lips, and slurped.

It wasn’t until the liquid flooded his mouth that he realized what a barren desert it had been in there. The soil-dust from the crash had coated his tongue and gums, and the water didn’t just feel like a drink, it felt like a purification, washing away the pain of the past few hours.

It was the taste of hope. The taste of possibility. It was a taste that cradled him close and whispered, ‘You’re safe now. I’ve got this,’ into his ear.

“You know,” he began, sighing contentedly as the icy liquid cleansed his aching throat. “I have a feeling that everything’s going to turn out OK.”

And then, with a splash, something thin and luminous snaked out of the water, wrapped around his throat, and dragged him below the surface.

The water, which had been pleasantly chilly just a moment ago, now stabbed at him in a billion little pinpricks of pain. The vine, or tentacle, or whatever it was tightened around his neck like a garrote. He tried to dig his fingers beneath it, but there was no space to squeeze so much as a nail between the thing and his skin.

He thrashed and kicked, churning up a dark brown sediment from the river’s shallow bottom. It twirled like a tiny tornado, turning the water to murk. Through it, Cal could make out the luminous green thread that had tangled itself around him.

Another glowing tendril snaked towards him, this one moving more cautiously. It sniffed around his feet, then probed around the bottom of his pants. Cal flailed his legs around, trying to kick the thing away.

The murky water swirled up his nostrils. The tightness around his throat made him want to open his mouth to gulp down air, but an aversion to drowning made him think again.

The tendrils, whatever they were, were coming from cracks in the two big rocks. He could just make out where they emerged from tiny crevasses near the rocks’ curved bases.

A shape broke the surface of the river above him. Wrestling with the neck-vine, he turned himself around. He watched with both a growing sense of relief and a desire to shout, “Hurry the fonk up!” as Loren swam towards him with wide, powerful strokes.

The other tendril drew back as she approached. Cal pointed frantically towards the garrote around his throat, and Loren nodded. Her hand went to her belt and she brought out a short knife with a serrated blade.

Cal’s lungs were balloons filled with fire. They pleaded with him, screamed at him to open his mouth. The muscles in his arms and legs were cramping. A lightness was tickling across his scalp. If Loren didn’t get a fonking move on, then—Yes!

The knife hacked through the tendril and the tension eased across his throat. Loren caught Cal under the arm. She kicked off the silty riverbed and launched them towards the surface. It rippled lazily above them, a shimmering lightshow just beyond their reach.

Cal’s arms spasmed. His lungs shriveled away to nothing. Darkness swept in from all sides.

And then Loren’s hands were on his face, her lips pressing against his. Cal’s eyes went wide as he felt air – sweet, beautiful, Loren-filtered air – fill his lungs.

All too soon, she broke away. She kicked, and this time Cal kicked, too. They broke the surface together, Cal coughing and hacking and spluttering, Loren already vaulting up onto the banking.

Miz’s hand snagged Cal by the back of his shirt and heaved him onto dry land. He collapsed onto his back, gulping in lungful after lungful of oxygen, or whatever the local equivalent might be, and clutching the wound that ran around his neck like a thin red seam.

“What the Hell was that?” Mech demanded, as if being strangled by one had turned Cal into some sort of expert.

“Don’t know,” Cal wheezed. “Came out… of the rocks.”

Miz’s ears picked up. She tilted her head, just a fraction, listening for the sound she’d just heard to come again.

“The rocks?” Mech grunted. “How could it come out of the rocks?”

“How should I know?” Cal panted, heaving himself onto his elbows. The sun was pushing through the trees, and he had to squint to look up at Loren. “Thanks.”

“No problem,” said Loren.

Cal winced. “Bit quicker next time, maybe? That’s my only criticism. Literally, just ten seconds earlier would’ve been perfect. That’s all. Otherwise, faultless rescue.”

Miz’s ears twitched. There it was. A faint krick, like cracking porcelain. Close. Very close.

Right behind them, in fact.

Mizette turned to the rocks that she now knew were nothing of the sort. “Uh, guys,” she said, then jumped back as a dozen or more luminous vines stabbed outwards through the shell of one of the eggs in the water, and made a grab for her.

Swishing with her claws, Miz sliced two of the tendrils in half. They continued growing out of the shell, some of them whipping and snapping at the air, while several others snaked through the grass towards her feet.

Cracks splintered across the egg’s surface as more and more of the luminous threads forced their way free.

“To Hell with this,” said Mech, raising a metal foot and pressing it against the egg’s rapidly disintegrating surface. With a shove, he sent the whole thing tumbling over the drop and into the fast-flowing river below. Mech knocked the second egg in after the first, and they both bobbed on the surface a few times, then spun as the current caught them and dragged them downstream.

“Eggs,” Mech muttered, as they watched them float away. “Should’ve seen that coming.”

“Space eggs,” Cal corrected. “And yeah. I mean, based on our past luck, how could they not have been eggs filled with evil spaghetti?”

“You know what I want to know?” said Miz.

“Whether you can convince Cal to get himself out of those wet clothes?” Loren guessed.

“Well, that,” said Miz. “But, like, if those were eggs…”

“Space eggs,” said Cal.

“Shut the fonk up,” growled Mech. “They’re eggs, man. Just eggs.”

“Whatever,” Miz scowled. “If those were eggs, then what laid them?”

They all looked at each other in silence for a while. Eventually, Cal sighed.

“You had to ask,” he said.

And then he threw his hands over his head and ducked, as the surface of the water behind them exploded in a stinking mass of eyes, tentacles and razor-sharp teeth.

“Run!” Loren shouted, incorrectly assuming that everyone else hadn’t already thought of that. They backtracked into the woods, crashing through the undergrowth and dodging between trees, as the monstrous whatever-the-fonk-that-thing-was gnashed and whipped at the air in fury.

A luminous tentacle, no thicker than a piece of string, snapped past Cal’s face, splintering bark from a tree right beside him.

Another of the threads tangled around Miz’s tail and yanked back hard. She yelped, then turned, swiping with her claws. Behind them, the monster’s screech tore through the forest, sending birds scattering from the high branches.

The screech became an eardrum-shaking crash as the thing forced its way between two of the taller trees, forcing the trunks apart and bending them until they could bend no more. They both toppled, tearing up thousands of roots and tons of soil from the forest floor.

“It’s following us!” yelped Loren.

“Mech, light it up,” Cal instructed.

Mech’s top half spun, while his bottom half kept running forwards. He raised both arms and fired a series of bright red shots from his wrist blasters. They slammed into the creature’s front, eliciting another screech and a shambling stumble backwards.

It stopped chasing, but they kept running anyway. The monster wasn’t just hideous, it stank, too – a foul, acrid stench of fish guts and seaweed, and of things long dead. Although he’d only glimpsed it for a minute, Cal wanted to get as far away from the thing as possible. He’d love to know how big the planet they were on was, so he could run exactly half way around it, and stay there. Although, even that would still be a bit too close for his liking.

Despite his near-overwhelming desire to get away, it was Cal who stopped running first. This was partly because he felt they were safely out of the creature’s reach, but mostly because his lungs were cramping, his legs were burning, and he’d just been a little bit sick in his mouth.

Even more than that, though, was the fact that his toe caught on something hard lying in the grass, and he fell, head-first, into a bush.

“Ooh! Ow! Pointy! Pointy!”

The others slowed to a stop. Miz, who had been powering ahead, doubled-back just as Cal extracted himself from the shrubbery.

“Has it stopped chasing us?” whispered Loren, peering back through the trees. Mech tapped his scanners. Miz sniffed the air.

“Yes,” they both said at the same time.

Cal, meanwhile, had bent and pushed aside the grass to find out what he’d tripped on. “What the Hell?” he muttered, once he’d cleared enough of the undergrowth away.

It was a rifle. Cal thought he recognized it as being of a type he’d had pointed at him fairly recently, but this one was rusted in patches, and partially coated in a purple moss.

Loren peered over his shoulder. “That’s a Gloxom N7,” she said.

Cal nodded. “That’s exactly what I was thinking. Except for the ‘Gloxom N7’ part. It’s a gun.”

“A Zertex gun,” confirmed Loren.

“So maybe Vajazzle’s ship did come through here,” said Cal, but Loren shook her head and pointed out the obvious.

“Look at that thing. It’s been here for years.” She frowned and squatted down. “Except, that doesn’t make any sense…”

“Uh, guys,” said Miz. “I found something.”

Mech and Loren headed over to join Mizette, who stood a dozen or more feet away, gazing down at something in the grass. Cal moved to follow, then stopped when he heard a sound from high above them in the trees.

Using a hand to shield his eyes from the sunlight that beamed between the leaves, Cal searched for the source of the noise. A sudden flurry of hops and jumps on one of the branches caught his attention.

There, skipping along a thin branch, was a little orange-furred creature with perfectly round eyes and a ludicrously fluffy tail. It stopped running when it spotted Cal and peered down at him, tilting its head in curiosity.

“Aw, a space squirrel,” said Cal.

Meanwhile, Mech and Loren had joined Miz in looking at the thing in the grass. It was a dead body. Or bits of one, at least. A partially-intact skeleton sat propped against a tree, the meat picked clean from its bones. Grass and roots had grown around the leg bones, while the ribcage was two-thirds covered in the same purple moss they’d seen on the gun.

“I just found this guy,” said Miz. “He’s dead.”

“Is he?” asked Loren. “Are you sure? Did you check for a pulse?”

Behind them, Cal waved to the space squirrel. Rather than wave back, though, the space squirrel instead launched itself from the branch towards him. It fell in slow motion, its light body buffeted by the breeze, but still too fast for Cal to move out of the way.

The space squirrel landed on Cal’s face and immediately clamped itself on, digging its claws into the sides of his head. Cal opened his mouth to scream, but a fluffy tail suddenly filled it all the way to his throat, silencing him.

Frantically, and unable to see anything but squirrel tits, Cal whirled around, yanking furiously at the creature as he tried to pull it free.

A pair of sharp teeth dug into his scalp, just above the hairline. Cal tried to scream again, but all that came out were a series of faint, muffled gagging sounds as the fluffy tail expanded to fill his entire airway, and Cal began to choke.

CHAPTER EIGHT

A few feet from where Cal was being silently murdered by a space squirrel, Mech studied the corpse. “It’s too clean. The flesh didn’t just rot away, it was stripped.”

“You mean he was eaten?” said Loren. “That thing from the river, you think?”

There was a faint whirr of a motor as Mech shook his head. “Look at the bones. You can see bite marks. Whatever ate this guy was small, but with sharp teeth and one nasty bite.”

Behind them, Cal tugged and wrenched at the rodent on his face, desperately trying to wrench it off. He made a grab for its head, his thumbs searching for its cartoonishly-wide eyes, but the nasty little fonker sunk its teeth into the web of skin between his thumb and forefinger, and he quickly yanked his hand away again.

Spotting something shiny in the grass, Miz knelt down. “That’s a Zertex badge,” said Loren, as Miz held up the silver emblem. “This guy was with Zertex.”

“So, what? Zertex were here years ago?” Miz asked.

“That’s what I thought,” said Loren. “But here’s the thing – the Gloxom N7. That gun? It was only manufactured in—”

“What the fonk is he doing now?” grunted Mech. He had looked back over his shoulder to find Cal jumping and jigging on the spot, his back to them. From that angle, they couldn’t see the creature that had attached itself to his head, and he appeared to be dancing.

“Cal?” said Loren. “Uh… I was saying to the others, the Gloxom N7?”

Cal spun in their direction, pointing frantically at the space squirrel. “Ooh, shizz,” hissed Loren. “What is that thing?”

“I don’t care what it is, get it off!” cried Cal, although only inside his head, due to his throat still being jam-packed with tail.

“How does this stuff keep happening to you?” Mech muttered, striding towards Cal and wrapping a hand around the squirrel’s body. He tried to yank it off, but its claws and teeth were holding on too tightly, and Cal remained attached. “Let go, you furry little shizznod,” Mech grunted, tugging on it again.

Cal screamed – internally again, because of the tail thing – and pointed to the thing’s head. Taking the thing, Mech placed a thumb on one side of the creature’s skull, and a finger on the other. He began to squeeze.

The space squirrel spun like a tornado of fur, detaching itself from Cal and whirling itself free of Mech’s grip. Screeching, it made a dive for the nearest victim that wasn’t made almost exclusively of inedible metal.

Unfortunately for the space squirrel, the target it chose to lock onto was Mizette. It launched itself towards her face. Its wide eyes widened even further as it saw her jaws opening, and realized it had almost certainly made a pretty significant miscalculation.

Mizette’s mouth snapped shut. There were a series of damp crunches as she chewed. “Huh,” she said. “That’s actually pretty delicious.”

Cal, meanwhile, had dropped to his knees, coughing and spluttering and hacking up a hairball. “Man, I hate this forest,” he wheezed.

There was a sound not unlike thunder and the ground trembled beneath them. Cal froze, clamping a hand over his mouth to stop himself coughing. Deeper into the woods there were a series of creaks and crashes as a number of trees were toppled by the tremor.

When the rumbling stopped, Cal cautiously moved his hand away from his mouth. “Was that me?” he whispered. “Did I annoy the forest?”

“Well, you manage to annoy everyone else, so it’s possible,” said Mech. He tapped the controls on his forearm and studied the in-built screen. “Looks like it was just an earthquake.”

“Oh, well as long as it was just an earthquake, and nothing serious,” said Cal, getting to his feet. He stuck out his tongue and plucked a few flecks of fluff from it. “Man, I am going to be tasting that thing for weeks.”

“Me too,” said Mizette, although she, unlike Cal, seemed pretty happy about it. “I hope we find some more.”

“I really hope we don’t,” said Cal, his eyes darting across the branches above them. “So, what did we find?” he asked, when he was confident no more space squirrels were preparing to hurl themselves his way.

“A dead guy,” said Miz.

“Zertex,” added Mech. “Been dead a while. Probably killed by one of those things that you found.”

“I didn’t find it,” said Cal. “It found me.” He hacked up another wad of fur and spat it onto the grass. “So, what are we saying? Zertex knew about this place years ago?”

“Looks like it,” said Mech.

“No, that’s what I’ve been trying to say,” said Loren, stepping over to the moss-ridden rifle on the ground. “This is a Gloxom N7.”

Cal nodded and resisted the urge to sigh. “Great. You know your gun types. Well done. How does that help us?”

“The Gloxom N7 was introduced as a replacement for the Wessal Flux, although in my opinion the Flux is the superior weapon, thanks to its twin coolant chambers that…” She caught Cal’s expression and cleared her throat. “Anyway, my point is, it’s new.”

“How new?” asked Cal.

“First manufactured eight months ago. First introduced to Zertex within the last six weeks.”

Everyone looked down at the gun. Rust had claimed most of the barrel, while most of what was left belonged to the moss. “That is not a six week old gun,” said Cal.

“Except it is,” said Loren. “It has to be.”

“Then you got it wrong,” said Mizette. “I mean, it wouldn’t be the first time you messed up. It’s a different gun.”

“No, you can tell by the shape of the stock and the way the trigger-guard curves forward to a point at the bottom,” said Loren, squatting beside the weapon and pointing to the various parts as she spoke. “Trust me, I know my firearms.”

Cal leaned on her back and looked down at the rifle. “Also, it says ‘Gloxom N7’ on that handle bit at the top.”

Loren’s pale blue skin darkened, just a shade. “Yes. That, too.”

Cal straightened and leaned one hand against a tree, taking a moment to gather himself together. The past few hours had been taxing, to say the least, with the last, oooh, eight minutes or so being particularly unpleasant.

He had a fiery red scar around his throat, two deep claw-marks on his temples, and a bite on his scalp that was currently weeping blood along the length of his nose. A chunk of the fleshy web between his forefinger and thumb was gone. He was wet, his face was crisscrossed with whip marks from branches, and his whole body still ached from the catalogue of bone-shuddering impacts that had been inflicted upon it.

Also, he could still taste squirrel.

He tried to ignore the pain and focus on the gun situation. So it was old, obviously – you could tell just by looking at it.

But it couldn’t be old, because it was new.

But it couldn’t be new, because it was old.

Cal decided to stop focusing on the gun situation, because it was making his headache worse.

“So, what are we going to do?” he asked. “Anyone have any suggestions? Anything at all?”

Miz’s ears pricked up. She sniffed the air.

“What is it?” asked Cal, then he grimaced as something tore into his shoulder. He looked down to find the wooden shaft of a short, stubby arrow protruding from his body, just to the right of his left armpit.

He stared at it.

For quite a long time.

Finally, he sighed.

“Man, I fonking hate this forest,” he said, then his legs went up, his head went down and he collapsed in a heap in the undergrowth.

* * *

Cal stirred. He wasn’t sure why.

He didn’t feel like stirring. Stirring was one of the last things on his mind. Being awake had proven to be almost exclusively awful of late, whereas unconsciousness had been pretty much plain sailing.

Nothing had tried to drown him or eat him while he’d been unconscious. Or not that he’d noticed, anyway.

He hadn’t been involved in any spaceship crashes while asleep, or almost asphyxiated in the cold depths of space. Or, again, if he had, he couldn’t recall any of it.

But still, he was stirring. And as he stirred, he felt the pain begin to peck at him. His head. His face. That bit between his finger and thumb.

His shoulder. Oh Jesus, his shoulder.

Cal stopped stirring and jumped awake with a sound that came from some animal part of his brain he rarely tapped into. It was a terrified sort of, “Waururgh!” sound, and was accompanied by some karate style hand slashes and a jerking kick from one leg.

Loren caught his hands and placed them gently by his side. “It’s OK. Everything’s going to be fine,” she said.

Cal’s eyes swiveled around him, taking everything in. He was lying on a single bed in what appeared to be a hospital where a riot had recently taken place. Half the equipment was toppled and broken, and the floor was a minefield of broken glass, empty IV bags and bloodied gauze.

None of the big overhead lights were on, but several gas or oil lamps had been set up around his bed, forming a barricade against the darkness.

“We’re going to get the arrow out,” said Loren.

Cal gawped at her, then turned to find the wooden arrow shaft still sticking out of his shoulder. “You woke me up to tell me that? Why didn’t you do it when I was sleeping?”

Loren blinked. “Huh. Actually, I guess that would’ve made sense.” She shrugged. “Still, done now.”

“Just knock me out again!” Cal suggested. “Find Mech! Get him to punch me unconscious. Trust me, he’ll jump at the chance. Assuming… can he even jump?”

“Course I can fonking jump,” grunted Mech, stepping from the shadows into the pool of light.

“We need you awake so you can push,” Loren explained.

“I’m pregnant, too?!” Cal spluttered, sitting up. “Jesus Christ. When did this happen?”

“The arrow. You have to push against the arrow,” said Loren.

Cal tried to make sense of what she was saying, but failed dismally. “What do you mean? You want me to spit it out of my shoulder? I don’t have that sort of muscle control. Is that even possible?”

“No, you push against the arrow while I push it in,” said Loren.

“In?” said Cal. “Why are you going to push it in? That’s the complete opposite of what you should be doing. We want it out, not in!”

“Here, I’ll push him,” said Mech. He placed his hands on Cal’s upper arms and braced him from behind.

“What are you doing?” Cal demanded. “Careful. And your hands are freezing, by the way.”

“We can’t pull it out,” Loren explained. “It’s barbed at the end, it’d rip a hole in your shoulder.”

“It’s already ripped a hole in my shoulder!”

“A bigger one,” said Loren. “We need to push it through, cut the barb off, and then pull it out.”

“Push it through where?” Cal demanded. “My back?!”

“It’ll just take a few seconds,” Loren promised.

“Yeah, but a few seconds of having a fonking arrow pushed through my back!” Cal pointed out. He took a series of short breaths and gritted his teeth. “OK, Jesus, just do it. Now. Get it over and done with.”

Loren put a hand on the arrow shaft.

“Wait! No! Don’t touch it!” Cal yelped. Loren took her hand away. “No, why are you stopping?”

“You told me to.”

“Of course I told you to, it doesn’t mean you should do it. When does anyone ever listen to me?” Cal said. “Do it. Now!”

Loren gripped the shaft.

“No, stop, don’t you dare! Don’t you even think about it, Loren, or so help me God, I’ll—”

A scream rose like a bubble in Cal’s throat as Loren pushed the arrow and Mech pushed the man. Agony slithered like a snake through his shoulder, then popped its head out through the skin of his back.

There was a high-pitched whine of a little circular saw, then Loren pulled sharply and suddenly on the arrow and an arc of blood spattered across her face.

“Ow! Ow! Son of a bedge,” Cal cried, gritting his teeth and collapsing against the bed. Loren flew at him with dressings and bandages. Mech forcibly heaved him onto his side. The fire in his shoulder rose into an inferno and Cal’s head began to swim.

“Don’t throw up, don’t throw up, don’t throw up,” he hissed.

He threw up.

The last thing he saw was a short, painfully-thin figure dressed in animal skins come gliding out of the darkness, then the lights went out one by one, and the shadows rushed in to devour him.

CHAPTER NINE

Cal dreamed. He dreamed of his old life, back on Earth, before any of this outer space stuff had happened.

Actually, no. Not his old life. His old old life. The one before his switch into self-destruct mode. Before the petty crimes and prison sentences. Before he turned his back on his parents, his home, and everything that reminded him of her. Of them.

He dreamed of a picnic on a hill. He dreamed of a woman and a girl. He dreamed they loved him, and that he loved them, and that nothing would ever take them from him. He dreamed that they would be with him forever. That they hadn’t both died in a tangle of metal and fire at the side of a road, miles from anywhere. Miles from him.

He dreamed of a hooded figure dressed in black, standing watching while they ate and drank and laughed on the hillside. The figure approached, passing through Cal’s family like he was a ghost. Or they were. Possibly both.

Time froze. Cal gazed up at the dark-clad figure, the thudding of his heart the only sound in the world. “Are you… are you Death?” he whispered. “Are you the Reaper?”

The figure shook his head. “Look upon my face, and knoweth my name,” he commanded, scraping his hood back over his head.

Cal blinked in surprise. “Tobey Maguire?”

Hollywood actor, Tobey Maguire, nodded solemnly. “It is I,” he intoned in an uncharacteristically deep timbre.

Some people, upon encountering former Spider-Man star, Tobey Maguire, dressed as Death at a picnic might react with surprise, but this was not the first time Cal had come face to face with the actor recently. In fact, since discovering most of the inhabitants of planet Earth had been killed by parasitic alien bugs, Tobey Maguire had been on Cal’s mind quite a bit. An unreasonable amount, even. He wasn’t really sure why, but quite frankly it was waaaay down his list of worries, and he hadn’t really bothered to dwell on it too much.

Besides, Cal knew this wasn’t Tobey Maguire. Not really. Tobey Maguire was dead, just like everyone else. Still, he was close enough.

“What do you want, Tobey Maguire?” Cal asked.

“I bring forth change. I seek an awakening,” said Tobey Maguire. “And one of those sandwiches, if it’s going. But preferably not the tuna.”

“An awakening?” said Cal, as Tobey Maguire helped himself to a ham sub.

“Yes. An awakening,” confirmed Tobey Maguire. “Does this have mayonnaise on it, do you know?”

“What do you mean?”

“Like, did anyone put mayo on the bread when they were--?”

“Not the sandwich! The awakening bit. What do you mean?”

Tobey Maguire shrugged. “You know what I mean.”

Cal looked at his daughter and wife, both still frozen, mid-laugh. An icy frost spread across his chest. “Oh,” he said, then the dream world rushed away from him like sand through his fingers, and he awoke alone in a stark, empty cell.

Cal sat up, then hissed and braced himself for the pain. It didn’t come. He was naked from the waist up, and cautiously crept a hand across his chest, feeling for the arrow wound. His fingers found a few flecks of dried blood in his chest hair that told him he was headed in the right direction, but nothing else.

Reluctantly, he glanced down at his shoulder, just briefly, as he didn’t really want to see the damage this close.

Nothing.

He looked again, properly this time. His shoulder, where the arrow had been sticking out, was unmarked. No bandage. No hole. Not even a scar. There was a very faint reddish tinge to the skin, perhaps, but even that might have been in his imagination.

Cal checked the other shoulder, in case he’d got them mixed up, but that one was also undamaged. His hand, too, where the space squirrel had taken a bite out of him, had healed without a mark. Cal felt for the wounds on his face and scalp, but found none.

“That’s impossible,” he said. His voice sounded unnaturally loud in the narrow cell.

It didn’t make sense. He couldn’t have completely healed up.

Unless…

Cal swung his legs out of the single bed he was sitting on, and placed his bare feet on the floor.

What if this was the dream? What if the whole being abducted and going on adventures in outer space was the fantasy, and the picnic on the hillside was real?

But then wouldn’t that mean Tobey Maguire was real? Yes, but Tobey Maguire was real, he argued. He’d seen him in movies, and being interviewed on TV.

But why would Tobey Maguire be at his family picnic, dressed as the living embodiment of Death? That one was harder to explain, Cal accepted. For a laugh, maybe?

The cell door was thrown open. Cal jumped up and was surprised to find nothing ached. He felt good, actually. Physically, at least, he felt better than he’d felt in… ever, possibly.

“Hey, who do you think you are, keeping me locked up in here?” Cal started to demand, although he barely got four words into it before he stopped. A short, stocky man with black eyes and a painted face stood in the doorway, holding a spear in a way that suggested he knew any number of ways in which to use it, none of them pleasant.

He was a little shorter than Cal, but with twice as many arms. He was dressed like some sort of ancient tribesman, in that he wasn’t really dressed much at all. A colorful skirt was wrapped around his waist, and a matching neck piece covered the top part of his chest and one shoulder.

His second set of arms – much skinnier than what Cal was already thinking of as ‘the main ones’ – sprouted from a ribcage that had been smeared with thick, oily paints in swirls of reds and greens.

Gleaming white tusks sprouted from his bottom lip. Cal couldn’t be sure at this point if they were real, or just decoration, and he felt it was a little too early in their relationship for him to ask.

“Well hey there… you,” said Cal, eyeing up the spear. It really was very pointy.

“Nukshuk,” said the tribesman.

Cal tapped his head, just behind his ear, roughly where the translation chip had been implanted. “Sorry?”

“Nukshuk. Tamaro!” said the man, his voice becoming more aggressive. He gave the spear a couple of sharp jabs in Cal’s direction.

Cal pointed to his ear. “I think my chip’s broken,” he said. “I can’t understand you.”

“Badona nukshuk!”

“I know! I know! Listen, I would fonking love to nukshuk, believe me, I just don’t know what it…” Cal frowned. “Wait. Fonking. Fonk. Shizz. Bamston. Huh. The chip’s still working. So how come I can’t understand you?”

The tribesman thrust his spear forward with alarming force. It stopped, the metal tip wobbling ever so slightly, just an inch or so from Cal’s nose. “OK, that I understand,” said Cal, raising his hands.

Stepping back into the corridor, the man gestured for Cal to follow. Not wanting to disappoint – or, more importantly, to get a spear jammed through his face – Cal followed. The corridor they emerged into was drab and featureless, and all-too-familiar.

“Is this… is this a Zertex ship?” he asked, but the prod of the spear tip against his back made him stop talking and start walking, instead.

Despite the situation, Cal quickly developed a spring in his step. He seriously couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt this good. In fact, it made him realize just what a mess his body was in the rest of the time. He’d never really noticed his nagging heartburn, lower back pain or dull, ever-present headache until now, when he could no longer feel any of them. Who knew getting shot with an arrow could have such positive health benefits?

Guided by the pokes and prods of the spear, Cal navigated his way through a maze of corridors. It was definitely a Zertex ship. The clinically uninteresting décor was his first clue. The Zertex logo emblazoned across the walls at regular intervals helped, too.

There was power to the overhead lights, but only one in three or so were lit, casting the corridor into erratic shadow. Even some of those that were working buzzed and flickered, suggesting wherever the ship was, it was in pretty poor condition.

As he walked, Cal trailed a finger across one of the Zertex logos on the wall. It looked duller, more muted than he remembered. His finger cut a line through the layer of dust that clung to it, revealing the crisper, more vibrant paintwork below.

“Someone’s cut back on the cleaning staff,” he remarked, but the only reply was a jab in the back, so he decided to shut up and keep walking.

Countless corridors and four sets of stairs later, they came to a set of imposing wooden doors with two worryingly lifelike human skulls partially embedded in the timber. Every other door on the ship was metal or glass, depending on which part you were in. Even without the skull decoration, these doors with their dark wood and old-fashioned hooped handles would have looked out of place.

“You want me to go in there, don’t you?” Cal sighed. “Scary big door. Skulls. Bound to want me to go in there.”

The spear prodded at his spine. “Yep. Knew it,” said Cal. He took hold of both handles, spent a second composing himself, then turned and pushed. The doors creaked ominously inwards, revealing a small theatre lit entirely by hundreds of candle-sized sticks. Each stick gave off a sickly-white glow, but the sheer number of them meant Cal could see all the way from the door, along the aisle, and to the raised stage at the far end of the room.

There, sitting on a golden throne, was a hooded figure. The words ‘Tobey Maguire’ flashed through Cal’s brain, but he pushed them away. This wasn’t Tobey Maguire. He knew exactly who this was.

“Lady Vajazzle,” he said. His voice was a whisper, but the acoustics of the theatre carried it all the way to the stage.

“Mr Carver,” said the elderly assassin, her eyes – one real, one robotically red - glinting in the shadows of her hood. “So good of you to join us.” She extended a withered hand and beckoned him closer. “Please. Come in, so that we may begin.”

Cal got the feeling that he couldn’t resist, even if he’d wanted to. He stepped through the doorway, but the tribesman didn’t follow. He hung outside, instead, half tucked out of sight around the corner.

Vajazzle waved a hand and the doors slammed closed. From inside, Cal could see they were not stock issue, and had been jury-rigged in place over the existing metal doors.

Two rows of the glow-sticks had been placed along the theatre’s central aisle, marking it like an airport runway. Cal paced along it slowly, his eyes falling on the imposing, broad-chested figure lurking just behind Vajazzle, its arms folded across its broad chest.

There was something… Jurassic about the creature. It stood on two legs and was vaguely human-proportioned, but there were spiky plates along the outside of each arm, and a curved horn jutting upwards from the center of its wide, flat face. If you genetically spliced a triceratops with the current heavyweight champion of the WWE this, Cal reckoned, would not only be what you ended up with, but would probably also be the last thing you ever saw.

“Where are my friends, Vajazzle?” Cal demanded, not wanting to look at the dino-beast any longer in case his eyes killed themselves in protest. “And what did you do with Splurt? And where are you taking me?”

Vajazzle pushed back her hood, revealing her bald head, now completely devoid of even the wisps of gray hair she’d had last time Cal had seen her. Her cyborg eye was nested in scar tissue, suggesting it hadn’t been implanted into her face without both of them putting up a fight, and her mouth was a puckered anus of a thing, tight and narrow beneath her long nose.

“Which order would you like me to answer those questions in?” she asked.

“Third, then first, then second,” said Cal, without hesitation. He stopped level with the front row of seats. Up close, he could see that Vajazzle’s throne wasn’t a real throne at all. It was a crudely made wooden prop, painted to look like gold. A white rectangle hung from the ceiling behind her, wider than it was tall. Cal hoped it was a surrender flag, but highly doubted it.

“Very well,” said Vajazzle. “I am taking you nowhere. The ship is not moving. We are still on the planet.”

“You crashed too, huh?” said Cal. “Bummer.”

Vajazzle’s nose scrunched, just for a moment, then she continued. “Your crew is quite safe.” She gave a nod to someone high up behind Cal. A thin, weak light shone down, visible only thanks to the dust motes and tiny bits of fluff picked out by its beam.

The screen behind Vajazzle illuminated. Cal gritted his teeth and dug his fingernails into his palms as a succession of images appeared. Mech, flat on his back, his eyes vacant. Loren, hands cuffed behind her, lying on the floor of a cell.

And then Miz. Oh God, Miz.

She was squashed into a small cage, chains running from her ankles to her wrists, then to a metal harness that had been built across her face like scaffolding. She was sitting, hunched over in the cage, gazing blankly down at the spheres of metal that had been placed over her hands, presumably to stop her using her claws.

“What have you done to them?” Cal demanded.

“Nothing. They are quite unhurt,” said Vajazzle. A smirk tugged at the corners of her puckered mouth. “Well, maybe not the Greyx, but she brought that on herself.”

Cal made a lunge for the stage, but the dino-creature bounded down and landed with a floor-shaking boom beside him. With a swipe of an arm that appeared to require precisely zero effort whatsoever, the thing launched Cal several feet through the air. Cal landed heavily in one of the theatre seats and gripped the arm rests to stop himself attempting anything stupid.

The dino-beast stood its ground in front of the stage, arms folded, yellow-eyed stare boring into Cal. From her throne, Lady Vajazzle let out a laugh that was as dry as the last leaves of winter.

“And as for your other question – ‘where is Splurt?’ You’re looking at him.”

Cal’s grip tightened on the chair. He looked the dino-thing up and down. “What? Bullshizz. That’s not Splurt.”

Lady Vajazzle leaned forwards in her wooden throne and leered down at her one-man audience. “He pretended to be you for six months, you know? Trying to cover for you, even after we crashed here. I knew, of course. I knew from day one, but I tortured him all the same. Every day, Mr Carver. Every. Single. Day.”

Cal swallowed back the urge to hurl himself at her again. “Oh, Splurt. Oh, buddy. I am so sorry,” he said, looking into the cold, impassive eyes of the dino-thing. He frowned. “Wait, six months? How could he have been me for six months? I only got away from you a few days ago.”

It was Lady Vajazzle’s turn to look surprised, but it only crossed her face for a second. “Interesting,” she said. “Very interesting. Because you see, Mr Carver, we’ve been here for almost nine years.”

Cal stood up. The dino-Splurt’s eyes narrowed, but he made no move to attack. “Nine years? What do you mean you’ve been here for nine years? How could you have been here for nine years?”

“Simple. We came through the wormhole. We crashed. Nine years passed,” explained Vajazzle. “Slowly,” she added. “Very slowly. There really isn’t much to do on this planet. Or there wasn’t, at least. Nowadays, we make our own entertainment.”

“You know what?” said Cal, glancing past Vajazzle to where the image of Miz had frozen on screen. “Informative as this is, I don’t really care. Here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to let Splurt go, I’m going to take him with me, and we’re going to go get the rest of our friends. Then – and only then – I’m going to come back and kill you with my bare hands.” He smiled at her, picking one of the more annoying grins from his extensive back-catalogue. “How does that sound?”

Vajazzle made a weighing motion with her hands. “Meh. There’s one slight problem with it,” she said.

“Oh?” said Cal, a little surprised that she’d only found one part to take issue with. “And what’s that?”

“The entity – your Splurt – doesn’t want to go with you. He wants to stay with me.”

Cal spat out a, “Pah!” which he quickly followed up with an, “As if!”

Turning to the dino-thing, he placed a hand on its broad, armor-plated shoulder. “Come on, buddy, it’s time to go home.”

Splurt didn’t move. Slowly – ever so slowly – his eyes crept to Cal’s hand.

“He was with you for what? A week? A fortnight at most?” said Vajazzle. “You barely know him. I, on the other hand, tortured him every day for three years. I know him. Intimately.” She raised her voice. “Hurt him.”

Cal shook his head. “Never. I’m not going to hurt him. He’s my friend.”

On stage, the assassin hissed out another dry laugh. “Oh, Mr Carver, you really are as idiotic as you look. I wasn’t talking to you,” she said, then all the air left Cal’s body in one big puff as a rough, scaly fist slammed into his chest and sent him tumbling into the second row.

CHAPTER TEN

Cal sprackled out of the second row and into the aisle. That upbeat, zesty, lust-for-life feeling had been driven out of him with one battering-ram punch, and now he backed away, palms open in front of him in surrender.

“Splurt. It’s me,” he said to the advancing dino-thing. Steam snorted from its flared nostrils, as its every footstep shook the floor. “Whatever she’s done to you, you can fight it, buddy. You can fight her.”

One of Splurt’s arms arced upwards over his head. Cal dived sideways, narrowly avoiding being pummeled on the top of his skull. He ducked under a scything backhand, planning to jump onto Splurt’s back, but the armored plates sticking out of his spine made it impossible.

For the first time, Cal noticed Splurt had a tail, too. He noticed this right before it swung upwards, the tip slamming into his chin like a hammer-blow.

Cal staggered, stars swooshing before his eyes. He clutched his jaw with one hand, the other held out in front of him, roughly where he guessed Splurt to be.

“Wait!” he said, his voice coming out a slur of vowels and consonants. “You don’t have to do this.”

His back thudded against something solid. Turning, he looked up, blinking away the stars until Lady Vajazzle’s face was revealed, looming over him. He had backed right up to the stage, and now the assassin was standing above him, gazing down. Something squirmed and wriggled beneath her long, midnight robe.

“He’d kill you, you know? If I told him to. He is fiercely loyal. Fiercely loyal. I see now why you liked him,” Vajazzle intoned. Cal heard a damp squelching from under Vajazzle’s robe, and the tip of a tentacle tentatively slithered out. “But like I said, we have to make our own entertainment around here.”

The tentacle crept around Cal’s throat and jerked him into the air. Cal’s feet kicked, searching for the floor. He tried to grab hold of the tentacle and take the weight off his neck, but his hands slipped on the slimy skin, and he could only gasp and choke as his lungs, once again, complained about the lack of air.

Lady Vajazzle tilted her head and watched his struggle. A thin smile parted her puckered lips. “And I believe that you, Mr Carver, are going to be very entertaining indeed.”

* * *

Tobey Maguire looked up from the picnic hamper in surprise, and hurriedly stuffed something white and half-moon shaped into his Death cloak. Cal’s wife and daughter were gone now, and the bright summer sky was swollen with dark, ominous clouds.

“Hey. I wasn’t expecting you back so soon,” said Tobey Maguire.

Cal looked the imaginary Pleasantville actor up and down. “Were you… were you just eating a whole Brie?”

Tobey Maguire laughed. “What? No. Haha. What? Definitely not.”

Cal leaned over and peered into the hamper. “It’s just that there was a whole Brie in there, about this big,” he said, making a circle shape with his thumbs and forefingers that didn’t quite touch. “Were you just eating it?”

Tobey Maguire hung his head. “Dnt fnk cmg bck,” he mumbled.

“Sorry?” said Cal.

Tobey Maguire raised his voice. “I said, I didn’t think you were coming back. I didn’t think you’d mind.”

Cal sat on a chair-sized rock. “I don’t mind. But have it with bread or something, for God’s sake, don’t just take bites out of it. We’re not animals.”

“I threw all the bread to the ducks,” Tobey explained, his head still bowed.

Cal looked around them. The once-grassy hillside was now scorched and blackened. “What ducks?”

Tobey Maguire shrugged, but said nothing. He reached into his robe and took out a half-eaten round of Brie.

“Jesus, did you eat the waxy outside bit, too?” asked Cal. “In fact, you know what, forget it, I don’t want to know.”

He sighed and rubbed his face with his hands. “So, I’m unconscious again, amn’t I?”

Tobey Maguire looked up and nodded. “Yes.”

“Am I going to see you every time I get knocked out from now on?”

Tobey Maguire shrugged again. “Dunno.”

“I hope not, because I seem to get knocked out a lot,” Cal said. “Are you, like, my spirit guide or something?”

“Uh…” Tobey Maguire began, then he fell silent for several seconds. “Maybe,” he eventually continued. “I mean, no-one’s said anything, but… I guess.”

Cal puffed out his cheeks and stared at Tobey Maguire for a while. Finally, he clapped his hands on his thighs and stood up. “Well, good talk,” he said. “Very insightful. Thanks.”

“Want some cheese?” asked Tobey Maguire, offering up the Brie.

“No. No, I do not,” said Cal, then he tucked his hands behind his back, clicked his heels together and – to his immense surprise – woke up.

He found himself lying on rough, rocky ground with a circle of purple-blue sky looking down on him from above. Sitting up, Cal realized he was in a hole. It was quite a big hole, as holes went – thirty feet from end to end, and pretty much circular – with one continuous steep, smooth wall that was polished like glass. A rusted metal hatch, maybe the size of shoebox, was embedded in the wall just above Cal’s head height.

The top of the hole was twice his height at full stretch, maybe a little more. Dozens of faces – some human-looking, others not - leaned over the edge, watching him with morbid curiosity. Cal recognized their faded, dirty outfits as Zertex uniforms, and realized none of them were likely to pull him out.

Still, it wouldn’t hurt to ask.

“Good evening!” he chimed, getting to his feet and dusting himself down. He still had no top on, but the cool night air was made bearable by the dozen or so flaming torches positioned just over halfway up the wall, spread out at regular intervals around the circle. “Don’t suppose any of you happen to have a ladder? I appear to be stuck down a hole.”

Unsurprisingly, no-one answered. Cal glanced over at the metal hatch. If he could get it open, he could feasibly squeeze through it, he reckoned. Provided, of course, he didn’t mind leaving his arms behind. And possibly both feet.

“Or a rope, even?” Cal asked, turning his attention back to the figures crowding around the top of the hole. “Pogo stick? Trampoline? No?”

A voice reverberated through the night air, echoing around inside the pit. “Release the creature!”

A chatter of excitement passed among the faces above.

“What creature?” Cal asked. “Vajazzle, is that you? Release what creature?”

There came a series of metallic thuds and clangs from behind the metal hatch. Cal turned to it, a terrible sinking feeling sucking at his gut. “Oh Jesus, what now?”

There was another sound beyond the hatch, too. A low droning noise, like a circular saw chewing through stone.

“What is that?” asked Cal, bouncing anxiously from foot to foot. He brought his fists up, ready to punch the shizz out of whatever stuck its head through that hatch. “What’s in there?”

At the top of the pit, the crowds shuffled apart so a number of Zertex troops could lower Lady Vajazzle and her wooden throne into position. The people on either side didn’t close the gap again once she’d been set down, leaving a few feet of space on either side.

“What the Hell is in there, Vajazzle?” Cal demanded.

Vajazzle’s eyes flared beneath her lowered hood. “You’ll find out soon enough.”

Something went plink against the other side of the metal door and the droning dipped, just for a moment, before picking up again. The hatch dropped open, becoming a rigid metal shelf sticking out from the wall, and revealing a shadowy passageway. From the darkness emerged… nothing at all.

Cal glanced up at the faces above. Other than Vajazzle, who was still staring at him, they were all chewing their lips, their eyes trained on the open hatchway. They were waiting. Definitely waiting. But waiting for what?

“Hello?” said Cal, squinting into the gap. Nothing moved in the silent dark.

Cal’s feet inched forwards, ignoring a number of quite forceful protests from his brain. He kept his hands raised, ready to strike.

The flickering torchlight sent an orange glow creeping along the tunnel, revealing nothing but empty space. The tunnel walls were metal and reminded Cal of a ventilation duct that a malnourished action hero might find themselves crawling through in a particularly derivative action movie.

Cal lowered his hands. “You bamstons. You totally had me going there. There’s nothing actually in there is--?”

Something small and fast-moving shot out of the hole and streaked past Cal’s head. It was roughly the size of a ping pong ball, only less round and more wasp-shaped. Its body was a lump of oily black fur, with four pointed wings blurring in the air above it.

It did not, as far as Cal could tell as it curved around the circle, have a head. Instead, it had an ass at both ends, each one the proud owner of a long, elegant stinger.

The wasp buzzed up towards the top of the hole, making a bid for freedom, but as it drew closer to the flames of the torches, it abruptly about-turned and swooped close to Cal’s head.

Instinctively, Cal ducked and let out a far from dignified, “Waargh!” sound. The wasp banked past him, droned all the way around the outside of the circle as if searching for the way out, then alighted on the ground.

Cal eyed it with suspicion for a moment, before raising his head and meeting Vajazzle’s gaze. “Is that it?” he asked.

From beneath the assassin’s hood came a light, melodic whistle. Instantly, the wasp took to the air. It buzzed around in tight circles for a few seconds, then launched itself in Cal’s direction. Cal backed away, flapping at the insect with both hands. “Argh. Fonk off,” he hissed. “I mean it, don’t make me squash you.”

His hand slapped down towards the wasp, in what would almost certainly have been an epic finishing move, had the wasp not moved. It rolled in the air like a fighter jet, then plunged a stinger into the back of Cal’s hand.

Pain tore through him like a bullet through butter. He thrashed his arm out to his left, sending the wasp careening through the air.

“Oh Jesus!” Cal hissed, staring in horror at his throbbing hand. The area around the sting was rapidly puffing up, like a balloon was inflating beneath the skin.

There was no time to dwell on it, though. The wasp made a bee-line for him again, and the crowd watching above laughed as Cal broke into a run. He sprinted around the circumference of the hole, the wasp in hot pursuit. He couldn’t see it, but he could hear its rasping drone at his back.

The pain in his hand now burned like ice through his veins, stopping halfway up his arm. He risked a glance at the spot where the bug had stung him, and saw his fingers were now thick and sausage-like. He could still move them, but it took a lot of effort, and the only thanks he got was more pain.

“Stand and fight!” cried a voice from above.

“Stop running!”

“Yeah, yeah. Bite me!” Cal responded, extending a chunky middle-finger in their direction. It was then that he realized he could no longer hear the wasp behind him. Still running, he risked a glance over his shoulder and saw the insect wasn’t there.

He turned back to the front in time for it to hit him in the face. A bomb of agony went off on his forehead. Another exploded against his ear. He staggered, howling, swatting at the bug with his fat hand.

One of the stings plunged into his palm. Again. Again. Cal yowled and pulled away, bringing up a leg and frantically kicking at the bug with his heavy boots.

A stinger stabbed through his sock and sunk into the skin around his ankle. Spitting out a series of heavily-censored curses, Cal hopped across to the other side of the pit, colors swimming before his eyes.

He realized, to his horror, that he could see his own face. Or bits of it, at least. Specifically, the bits that were doubling in size before his eyes. He’d never seen his forehead from this angle before, and hoped he never would again.

His right foot felt heavy and useless. His left hand was a glove full of jelly.

And the wasp was coming again, much to the amusement of all those watching above.

“Shizz, look at his eye. That’s disgusting.”

“That hand’s going to pop.”

“Get him in the throat!”

“No, in the balls!”

A laugh raced around the edge of the pit. Vajazzle herself may have joined in, but her hood made it impossible to tell.

Bending, Cal snatched up a rock. “Fonk off!” he said, the words coming out slurred as he tossed the stone at the approaching insect, missing it by a mile. “Well, that didn’t work,” he mumbled.

A weapon. He needed a weapon. Something he could…

His eyes fell on one of the torches on the other side of the pit. Turning, he found the closest torch and made a jump for it. He fell short by almost a whole foot.

Gritting his teeth against the pain in his foot, Cal squatted low and fired himself upwards. The fingers of his non-fat hand brushed against the bottom of the torch, but then pain drilled into his shoulder as the wasp burrowed its sting in his flesh.

Screaming, Cal spun around, frantically clawing at his back, trying to reach the bug. The wasp withdrew its sting and immediately plunged it in again and again, machine-gunning Cal’s back with its venom.

Roaring, Cal drove his back against the wall, trying to squash the thing. The wasp buzzed to safety just in the nick of time, and Cal felt his lungs contract as the impact with the wall drove the air out of him.

Head swimming, body failing, Cal sank to his knees. An expectant hush fell over the onlookers, as the wasp buzzed all the way to the other side of the pit, then turned the other ass-cheek and lined itself up for its final assault.

“Well, this is all a bit disappointing,” tutted Lady Vajazzle.

Cal looked up at her through his now freakishly swollen eye. He flexed his fat fingers and wiggled his tingling toes. His shoulder had inflated, giving him a hunchback. It would not, by any stretch of the imagination, be a dignified death.

“Yeah? Well Disappointing’s my middle name,” he retorted, which sounded much better in his head. As the wasp closed in, he summoned what was left of his strength and propelled himself into a limping sprint straight towards the oncoming bug.

An ooh of surprise went through the watching crowd. Cal closed in on the wasp then, at the last possible moment, spun like a clumsy ballerina to avoid it. He limped on, his gaze fixed on the open hatchway that stuck out at a right angle to the wall.

The wasp buzzed furiously behind him. It was closing in. There was no time to lose.

Slapping his fat hand against the hatch, Cal jumped and pushed, launching himself higher than before. His good hand wrapped around the handle of the fiery torch, and as his weight jerked on it, the torch tore free of its mounting.

Cal spun in an arc of fire, just as the wasp made another lunge. There was a hiss as its furry body ignited, then a series of panicky yelps from Cal as it dropped into the turned-up bottom of one pant leg, and almost set his foot on fire.

He swung his leg and the burning wasp was launched all the way out of the pit. The crowd around it scattered in panic, which gave Cal a brief moment of pleasure before he collapsed to his knees.

Silence fell, but was quickly broken by someone clapping, slow and steady. Cal tried to look in the direction of the sound, but his back was too bent, and his forehead too large for him to be able to. Still, he could probably guess who it was, he reckoned.

“How very entertaining. Just as I predicted,” said Vajazzle. Her voice took on a more commanding tone. “Go down and retrieve him. Take him to the pens.”

A series of ropes lowered into the pit around him, followed by a burst of activity from above.

“I can’t wait to see how he performs in the main arena.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

After being tied up and dragged from the pit, Cal had found himself surrounded by jeering Zertex soldiers. As one, the crowd had escorted him away from the pit, still shouting and hollering and laughing in his face.

After a few minutes of this, the mob had thinned enough for Cal to see four semi-naked, colorfully painted tribespeople surrounding him, the tips of their spears all pointed at different parts of his anatomy – and some of his favorite parts, at that.

He had been blindfolded, although it wasn’t very effective, as one side of his head was a completely different shape and size to the other. Through the gap at the bottom, he could see his own feet. His right ankle now looked borderline elephant-sized, and his foot throbbed painfully inside his boot.

Through the gap at the top of the blindfold, he could see a sky filled with unfamiliar stars. Once, when he turned, he caught a glimpse of the tear in space the Shatner had flown through. It seemed worryingly close, although his limited grasp of space travel meant he couldn’t even begin to guess how far away it actually was. Ten miles? Ten light years? He had no idea.

He had been bundled onto some sort of metal platform. The tribesmen had climbed on beside him, and the whole thing had glided across the sand, whining gently.

With the men so close, Cal had briefly entertained the notion of launching a surprise attack, knocking them all off the platform, then steering it to freedom, but as he couldn’t see, could barely stand and was increasingly resembling a semi-inflated version of the Elephant Man, he decided to give it a miss.

Several minutes of gliding later, Cal had been bundled off the platform again. He heard hinges creaking. A spear had been pressed against his lower back and then a hand had shoved him. He sprawled onto the dirt, then the gate slammed closed behind him again.

“Nice to meet you,” he called after them.

Cal rolled onto his humped back. It hurt, but then it had already been hurting, and pretty much everything else hurt, too, so there was no point making special allowances for it.

Another gate opened somewhere ahead of him. Words were barked, possibly at him, possibly at someone else. He couldn’t understand them, either way.

Clawing hands grabbed him under the arms. “Hey,” he protested, as he was dragged across the rocky sand.

He was dropped again. He heard footsteps, then the metallic slam of the gate closing. Another voice came, and this one he did understand.

“Cal?”

He blinked as his blindfold was pulled free. Loren gaped down at him, a patina of dried blood across her pale blue skin. “Oh. Wow. What happened to you?”

“Holy shizz, look at his face!” said another familiar voice. Mech clanked into view, his eyes darting all over Cal’s body. “And, oh man, his hand! Check out the size of his hand!”

“Does it hurt?” asked Loren.

Cal swiveled a bulbous, bulging eye towards her. “Guess,” he croaked.

“Aw man, I think I might throw up,” said Mech. “And I don’t even have a stomach.”

“Mech, get Tullok,” Loren said.

Mech retched. “Look at his fonking leg!”

“Mech. Tullok. Now!” Loren barked.

“Who’s Tullok?” Cal whispered, as Mech hurriedly stomped off.

Loren gingerly touched the lump on Cal’s forehead. Pain ricocheted through him, but he was too exhausted to acknowledge it. “He’s a native. But a prisoner, like us. He helped you after we took out the arrow.”

Cal searched his fractured memory. Most of the recent parts were taken up by a wasp and Tobey Maguire, but there was a faint whiff of someone else in there, too. Someone new.

“Little guy? Skinny?”

“Uh, yeah. More or less,” said Loren.

Cal tried to raise his uninjured hand to Loren’s cheek, but the shoulder was too deformed, so he had to settle for lifting the bloated one instead. He wasn’t yet used to the size of it, and rather than gently brushing against her cheek, he thumped her on the ear instead. “Shizz, sorry!” he said. He traced the blood on her face with his hot dog fingers. “What happened?”

Loren smiled grimly. “Nothing I couldn’t handle.”

The effort of keeping his hand up proved too much. Cal let it flop down to his side. “Where’s Miz?” he wheezed.

Loren’s face seemed to grow thinner. “We don’t know. No-one will tell us.”

“She was in a cage. I saw her. Vajazzle showed me,” Cal said, heaving himself up onto his elbows.

“What are you doing?” said Loren, placing a hand on his chest. “You shouldn’t move.”

“We have to find her,” Cal mumbled, gritting his teeth as his brain became a spinning-top inside his head. “She needs us.”

“You can’t do anything for her. Not like this,” said Loren. “Wait for Tullok.”

Cal sunk back onto the ground, the sky swirling and twirling above him. He saw the colorful space-rip swooshing past and tried to focus on it, but everything was moving too quickly and so he screwed his eyes shut and swallowed down his nausea instead.

“They’ve been here for years,” he said.

“We know,” Loren replied. “Mech thinks time moves differently here, wherever this actually is. Either that, or the vortex sent them back in time, somehow.”

Half of Cal’s brow furrowed as he tried to process this. “Then wouldn’t it send us back in time, too?”

“Maybe it did,” Loren said, sounding almost excited by the idea. “Maybe it sent them further back, because they went through earlier, then when we went through we travelled back to a date sometime between their arrival and the present time – by which I mean the time we initially went through…”

Cal held up his fat hand. “Please stop. My head’s already in danger of blowing up. This isn’t helping.”

Loren kept her hand on Cal’s chest, making sure he didn’t move again. “Did you find him? Did you find Splurt?”

Cal hesitated, remembering the cold, dead eyes of the dino-creature. “No,” he said. “No, not yet.”

There was a squeaking from nearby. Cal twisted his neck enough to see a frail figure pushing himself towards him on a rickety-looking wheelchair. It was the same man he remembered coming gliding towards him out of the darkness after the arrow incident.

His arms were like withered sticks, the olive skin hanging off them like rags. His head was a parchment-covered skull, but there was a twinkle in his piercing blue eyes that took a full decade off him.

He wore a sort of sleeveless one-piece jumpsuit made of orange and green dyed animal hide. It stopped just below his knees which, coincidentally, was roughly where his legs stopped, too.

“That Tullok?” Cal asked.

Loren nodded. “He’s on our side. We think. He can make you better.”

“You think he can make me better, or you think he’s on our side?”

“Both,” said Mech, pacing slowly behind the old man’s wheelchair.

Tullok heaved the chair across the rough ground, then stopped when he drew close. With a sudden jerk he shot forwards and flopped, face-first, onto the ground.

“Jesus, Mech, did you just tip that guy out of his wheelchair?” Cal slurred.

“What? No! Of course I didn’t! He tipped himself out.”

With some effort, Cal managed to turn his head enough so he could see Tullok crawling towards him. With his shriveled skull and bone-like limbs, he looked exactly like a zombie, and Cal had to fight the urge to grab for a rock and smash the old man’s head in.

“Tullok!” chirped the man, raising himself up on one arm and tapping his chest with the other hand. “Moinsa Tullok.”

His voice had a light, floaty quality. It sounded like a child’s laughter, and made Cal feel a little better all on its own.

“Cal,” said Cal, flapping his fat hand against his own chest. “Cal Carver.”

“Eh! Toinsa Cal-Cal,” giggled Tullok, his mouth curving into a gummy grin that revealed precisely one-and-a-half teeth.

“No, not Cal-Cal, just… Ah, forget it,” said Cal. He offered back the best smile he could muster, and what was possibly the largest thumbs-up in the whole of human history.

Tullok brought one hand to his mouth and extended his tongue. He began to lick his palm, smearing his saliva into every wrinkled nook and cranny. His tongue worked between his fingers, coating the front and back all the way past his arthritic knuckles and across his cracked, dirty nails.

“Man, you’re really getting stuck in there, aren’t you?” Cal mumbled. He shot a glance at Loren. “What’s he doing?”

“Relax,” Loren urged. “It’s part of the process.”

“What process? What’s he going to do? He’s not going to lick me better, is he?” Cal asked, then he gasped as Tullok slapped the spit-slicked hand onto his bare chest, and warm syrup filled him up from the inside.

Joy. That was what it felt like. It was opening his eyes on Christmas morning. It was first love. A first kiss in the moonlight. His daughter’s first smile, first word, first steps. It was every perfect moment he’d ever had – every perfect moment he ever would have - flooding through him in a tidal wave of bliss.

It ebbed away again almost immediately. Cal felt a flutter of panic – he wanted so desperately to cling onto the feeling – but then that feeling, too, faded, leaving nothing but serenity. He exhaled slowly as the last of the pain drained out through some invisible hole in his back, then opened his eyes.

He could no longer see his forehead. That was encouraging. He raised both hands without any effort and studied them, back and front. They were perfect mirror images of each other, neither one bloated or swollen.

There was no pain. There was the opposite of pain, in fact. Cal felt great again, just like he had when he’d woken up in the cell. Better than that, even.

He sat up just as Loren and Mech helped Tullok back into his chair. The old man was still smiling, but it was strained now, like the act of healing Cal had taken a toll. The bottoms of his legs, where the flesh ended in stumps, was gray and withered. Had they been like that before? Cal couldn’t remember.

“Thank you,” Cal said, jumping to his feet in one big bound, just for the thrill of it. “This is…” He flexed his arms and swiveled his head so his chin brushed against his bare chest. “It’s amazing. What you’ve done. It’s incredible!”

“You know he don’t understand a word you’re saying, right?” grunted Mech.

“Parammie, Cal-Cal,” said Tullok, his cheerful voiced tainted just at the edges by tiredness. “Parammie-mok.”

With a nod, Tullok wheeled himself backwards. Loren moved to help, but a violent flap of his hand waved her away.

“Well, he seemed like a kindly older gentleman,” said Cal, giving Tullok a wave as the old man creaked his chair around and wheeled himself in the direction of a darkened doorway. “We should totally recruit him to the crew.”

For the first time since the blindfold had been removed, Cal looked around at his surroundings. He, Loren and Mech were fenced in on all sides by a welded patchwork of metal walls. Each fence panel stood between twelve and sixteen feet high, Cal estimated, and all appeared to have been salvaged from elsewhere, then assembled around them like a flat-pack prison.

A couple of doorways led off from the area they stood in, neither one boasting a door. The gate Cal had been dragged through was another cobbled-together Frankenstein’s monster of a thing, put together from half a dozen different-sized metal panels. There was no handle on the inside, Cal noted, and no gap at the bottom. It was a gate designed with the sole purpose of keeping people on one side of it.

In the center of it all stood a rickety-looking tower. It wasn’t particularly tall – barely higher than the walls, in fact – but was positioned well away from any of them, making leaping to freedom impossible. A ladder ran up one side of it to a narrow platform at the top.

“So, I’m assuming we have an escape plan?” Cal said, once he’d finished looking around.

“Not yet,” said Loren, dropping her voice to just above a whisper.

Cal tutted. “Well, I’m very disappointed in you both,” he said. “I mean, look at this place. Mech can punch through any one of these walls, we’ll kick shizz out of any guards we come across, then storm Vajazzle’s HQ and grab Splurt.”

“You saw him?” asked Mech.

Cal blinked. “What? Oh, no. I mean, we’d have to find him first, obviously. Then we’d grab him.” He shrugged. “There. Wasn’t so hard, was it? We’ll call that ‘Plan A.’”

Mech and Loren exchanged a glance, then Mech beckoned Cal with a mechanical finger. “Come here. There’s something you need to see.”

* * *

A few minutes later, Cal stood in front of Mech on the narrow platform at the top of the tower, gazing out over the wilderness. The tower was as pieced-together as everything else in the prison, and Cal had been amazed that the ladder had taken his weight, and then had a minor panic attack when Mech had climbed up behind him.

While it was too far from the walls to offer an escape route, it did provide an uninterrupted view of the area, and Cal spent several long minutes just staring out in silence.

Dirt and desert stretched out for miles in every direction, bordered by the beginnings of a forest over in what Cal decided was the east, but was actually nothing of the sort.

Dozens of those miles were taken up by a mind-bogglingly enormous spaceship. It lay partially-buried in the rock and sand, like the ground was trying to claim the technology for itself. “That’s the Zertex ship,” Cal realized. “The big one. The one Vajazzle was on. Is on,” he corrected. “So they did crash.”

“Sure looks that way,” said Mech. “Even Loren’s landings ain’t that bad.”

“I heard that!” called Loren from below.

Midway between the prison and the crashed ship were half a dozen holes in the ground. Some were barely a few feet across, while others looked large enough to park a bus in. One of them – the largest - was surrounded by tiered seating. Cal tried to figure out which one of them he’d been in, but couldn’t.

“So what’s the problem?” he asked. “Through the wall, up to the ship, blast our way in. Simple, like I said.”

Mech pointed past him. “See that?”

Cal cupped a hand above his eyes, shielding them from the sun. A lumpy, misshapen person-sized mound lay on the sand a few feet from something that looked like a silver mailbox. He was barely a five second dash away from the nearest wall. “Yeah. What am I looking at?”

“Last dude who tried to escape,” said Mech. “Watch.”

Cal jumped as a bolt of laser fire screamed from Mech’s wrist blaster. It struck the side of the box, but rather than explode, the box just shuddered with the impact.

A fraction of a second later, the air around it was filled with the same oily black wasps Cal had fought in the pit. There were hundreds of them, thousands maybe, swarming angrily around, hunting for whoever had disturbed them.

“Pressure plates,” said Mech, gesturing in a sweeping motion with his hand. Cal noticed forty or more of the same silver boxes scattered around the outside of the prison. “All over the place. Step on one, those things come out to play.”

“Then we don’t step on the pressure plates,” Cal suggested.

“Yeah. Makes sense,” agreed Mech. “Except we don’t know where they are, and also…”

He fired another blast, at the ground this time, a little further away. The sand shifted, and something a bit like a Venus fly-trap, only several hundred times the size and with unsettlingly human-looking teeth, erupted from beneath the surface and snapped shut with an audible clack.

“OK, so we don’t step on those things either,” said Cal. He whistled softly. “What the Hell are those things, anyway?”

“Hungry,” said Mech. “They’re hungry. Trust me. That guy down there? He ain’t the only one who tried to make a run for it. He’s just the only one there’s anything left of.”

Cal thought for a moment, then clicked his fingers and pointed at Mech. “Rocket boots.”

“Say what?”

“Your rocket boots. You can fly us over all that stuff.”

Mech’s brow furrowed into deep grooves. Cal sighed. “Come on, rocket boots. Remember? You use them all the time.”

“Yeah, in outer space,” said Mech. “Where there ain’t no gravity. Here, they wouldn’t even get me off the ground.”

Cal nodded slowly. “What if I wore them?”

“Wore what?”

“Your rocket boots!”

Mech looked down. “They ain’t boots. They’re my feet. You ain’t wearing my feet.”

“But--”

“You ain’t wearing my feet, man. You ain’t wearing them.”

“I know, but--”

Mech started climbing down the ladder. “I ain’t listening. You ain’t wearing my feet.

Cal leaned over the railing and shouted after him. “Spoilsport.”

Once Mech was clear, Cal slid down the ladder, declared himself, “the boss,” for doing so, then turned and looked at the two doorways leading off from where he, Mech and Loren all stood.

“So, apart from Tullok, anyone else here?” he asked.

Loren and Mech exchanged another glance. “Uh, yes,” said Loren. “One or two.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

Cal stood in another, much larger area, watching twenty or more tribespeople, who were in turn watching two others pummel the shizz out of each other with wooden swords. Around forty blankets lay on the ground along the two longest walls, a few occupied by sleeping bodies, but most of them empty.

In one corner, a stocky native with paint markings daubed across his face and bare chest cooked something on the most home-made looking barbecue Cal had ever seen. He wasn’t sure it actually qualified as a barbecue, even. ‘Some junk over a fire’ was about as generous a description as it deserved.

Still, it seemed to be doing the job, and the smell of whatever the man was cooking reminded Cal that he hadn’t eaten in… well, he wasn’t really sure, but the rumbling from his stomach told him it wasn’t recently.

Normally, with a big fight going on right in front of him, Cal wouldn’t have noticed any of these other details, and would have given all his attention to the battle. But this fight, despite some pretty impressive toy sword handling being on display, was a bit… dull.

It wasn’t even the combatants’ fault, Cal realized. They were going at it Hell for leather, kicking and punching and thwacking each other like their lives depended on it – which, for all Cal knew, they did.

It was the crowd that was the problem. There was no cheering, or shouting, or cries of, “Kick ‘im in the nuts!” to provide a soundtrack to the battle. Instead, the other tribespeople just stood in silence, watching impassively as the fight raged on.

The silence was so oppressively dense, in fact, that Cal didn’t dare speak for fear of shattering it. He alternated between watching the fighting, staring longingly at the food, and looking around at the couple of dozen other tribespeople scattered around the place.

There were men and women. Young and old. No kids anywhere that Cal could see, but he estimated some of the tribespeople to be in their late teens or early twenties, or whatever the local age equivalent might be. At the other end of the spectrum was Tullok, who sat in his chair in a shady spot at the far corner, and smiled gummily at Cal when he spotted him.

It was only as he was looking around for a third time that Cal noticed around half of the tribespeople had an extra set of arms. Those that did were slightly shorter and squatter, with eyes that were completely black. Those with just two arms were taller and skinnier, with eyes that were, well, just eyes, really.

At what seemed to be a completely arbitrary point in the battle, one of the four-armed tribespeople – a woman – stepped forwards and clapped the top two hands together twice, stopping the fight. Cal could tell she was a woman because, just like the men, and just like himself for that matter, she was topless.

The woman barked out a series of commands in her alien tongue, and the onlookers paired up while the first two men stepped aside. Everyone who had been in the crowd had their own wooden swords, too, and after another bit of shouting from the woman, they all began to fight.

“What’s this all about?” Cal asked. “And by the way, is anyone else hungry?”

“They’re training,” said Loren.

“For what?” asked Cal, very deliberately pointing himself in the direction of the barbecue, and hoping someone took the hint.

“For battle,” said Mech. “Vajazzle makes them fight in the pits.”

“Against each other?”

“And against other things,” said Loren. “All for her own amusement.”

“Oh, like gladiators?” said Cal, making a show of sniffing the air and rubbing his stomach. “We had that. On Earth.”

Loren’s face crinkled in disgust. “That’s a bit barbaric.”

“Not recently,” said Cal. “Ages ago. Like, I don’t know, in Jesus times.” He gave up on dropping hints and started walking over to the barbecue, where the four-armed chef was tossing something else onto the grill. “Keep talking, but I need to eat.”

The chef raised his dark eyes and frowned suspiciously at Cal as he approached. When he spotted Mech, though, his face unfolded into a wide grin and he chirped happily in his native language.

“Someone looks pleased to see you,” Cal said, glancing back at Mech.

“Mech built his kitchen,” said Loren.

Cal snorted. “I think ‘kitchen’ is stretching it. It’s some stuff that’s on fire.”

“He likes it,” Mech scowled. “Before that, they were eating everything raw.”

“Maybe they liked eating everything raw,” said Cal, then he was shoved aside as the chef darted out from behind the grill and threw all four arms around Mech in a hug. “Or, you know, maybe they didn’t.”

“Toshop-tee kaipur?” the chef asked, once he’d detached himself again. He scurried back to the grill and indicated a variety of what Cal could best describe as ‘items’ smoldering on top.

Cal peered down at the red hot wire mesh, and the things cooking on it. There were a few lumps of crisped-up fatty gristle, six reddish-brown things that looked a bit like mutated carrots, one of the double-assed wasps with wings and stingers removed, and a whole space squirrel. Or rather, two halves of a whole space squirrel, cleaved neatly down the middle, right between the eyes.

Cal clicked his tongue against the back of his teeth. “Hmm. What to have? What to have?” He met the black-eyed gaze of the chef. “Do you have, like, a burger or a steak or…? No?”

He looked down at the grill again, then turned to his friends. “Any recommendations?”

“Actually,” Loren began, but Mech stepped in front of her.

“It’s all good, man. It’s all good. Knock yourself out.”

Cal puffed out his top lip, then shrugged and pointed. “Fine. I’ll have some of the squirrel and a bit of space carrot.”

“Bodon nanca. Purrup.”

“I don’t… What’s he saying?” asked Cal. “My chip’s on the fritz.”

“No, it isn’t,” said Loren. “This language has never been recorded before. At least, not by Zertex. The chip isn’t translating because it doesn’t understand.”

“I think he’s telling you to stick your hands out,” said Mech. The others shot him a quizzical look and he shrugged his metal shoulders. “What? I been picking up a few words here and there.”

Sure enough, the chef placed both hands together and held them together in a cup shape. He nodded at Cal, indicating he should do the same. Cal shot Mech a sideways look. “So, what? You couldn’t have made the guy some plates?”

He held out his hands, then watched in stomach-churning horror as the chef tore half the squirrel’s head off and plonked it into Cal’s waiting palms. One of the lumpy vegetables was deposited next.

Cal stared down at them both, blinking rapidly. There wasn’t a lot of meat on the squirrel’s head, but there was a fair amount inside it. The half-skull acted like a tiny bowl for some brain, a surprisingly large eyeball, and a decent-sized slice of tongue.

“Uh, I’m more of a leg man,” Cal said, but the chef just nodded enthusiastically at him, and gestured to the food in his hands.

“Oh man, he gave you the head. That is an honor,” said Mech. “It must be because you’re with me.”

“Yeah, but--”

Mech held up a hand. “No, please. Don’t thank me. Just eat your squirrel head. Enjoy.”

Cal sighed. “God, I actually really hate you sometimes,” he muttered, then he shuffled the food into his left hand, and swallowed down a mouthful of saliva.

Pinching the forefinger and thumb of his right hand together, he pincered out the half-tongue. It felt light and rubbery and looked a million miles away from appetizing. The best thing he could say about it – the only redeeming quality it had, in fact – was that at least it wasn’t brain or eyeball.

“Go on, man,” Mech urged. “Pop it in. Savor it.”

Cal set his shoulders and met Mech’s gaze. “Fine. I will.”

“Good.”

“I bet it’s delicious.”

“I’m sure it is.”

“Here I go. I’m eating it now.”

“Enjoy.”

“Oh, I’m going to. I’m going to enjoy it. Right… about… now.”

Cal pressed his whole hand over his mouth, then pulled it away and chewed. “Mmm!” he said, his eyes widening in pleasure. “Tasty. I thought it was going to be terrible, but this is one of the nicest things I’ve ever--”

“It’s still in your hand,” said Mech.

Cal stopped chewing, frowned as if confused, then looked down at his cupped hand. “Oh, so it is!” he said. “How did that happen?”

He took a deep breath, stared down at the sliver of pink meat for a little while longer, visibly flinched, then tossed it in his mouth.

Cal chewed as quickly as he could, hoping to be rid of the thing before he could taste it, but it was like gnawing on a rubber band and it refused to break up between his teeth.

“Yum,” he said, but then the taste hit him like something had taken a dump in his mouth and he hurriedly spat it onto the floor. “Oh Jesus, no. No, no, no.”

He hurriedly took a bite of the space carrot, hoping to mask the taste of the squirrel tongue, but immediately spat that back out, too. “Christ, that’s worse. How can that be worse?”

Cal was frantically scraping at his tongue with his fingernails when he spotted Mech’s shoulders heaving. Tears ran down the cyborg’s cheeks as his metal body clanked and shuddered.

“Oh, man,” Mech wheezed. “Oh, man, your face.”

“You knew it was going to be terrible, didn’t you?” said Cal.

“Of course I did! Look at it. It came out of that thing’s head.”

“The vegetables didn’t,” Cal protested.

Mech wiped his tears with the back of a hand and composed himself. “OK, first up, those ain’t vegetables,” he said. “And second, you don’t want to know where they came from. Trust me.”

He erupted into another fit of laughter as Cal’s expression dropped into all new levels of confusion and horror.

Loren placed a hand on Cal’s arm, and he realized that she, too, had been laughing. “Come on,” she told him. “Let’s show you what’s behind door number two.”

* * *

After returning to the tower area, Cal discovered that what was behind door number two was Zertex. Sixty to seventy men, women and gender-unidentifiable aliens wearing Zertex gear turned, as one, when Cal and the others entered.

Cal’s first instinct was to punch them all in the face and set the place on fire, but it felt like that would be quite a lot of effort, so he settled for just glaring in their general direction and tutting quietly instead.

“Zertex,” he said, on the off-chance the others hadn’t figured it out from the uniforms.

“Relax,” Loren told him. “They’re on our side. Well, kind of. They’re no fans of Vajazzle, anyway, so that at least puts us on the same page.”

“But they’re Zertex!” Cal insisted. “They’re the bad guys.”

“Hey, I used to work for Zertex, too,” Loren reminded him.

“Yes, but you’re different,” said Cal.

Loren raised a dark eyebrow. “In what way?” she asked, and there was a slightly accusing tone to it that made Cal recognize he might be skating on thin ice. “How am I different?”

“Just, you know, in a good way,” said Cal. He gestured to the dozens of Zertex soldiers filling the yard. “You’re not them. You’re you.”

“Can’t argue with logic like that,” Mech said. He shouldered past the others, heading for a man who sat alone on an upturned crate, staring up at the hole in the sky. “Come on, there’s someone you should meet.”

Cal and Loren followed Mech across the yard. The other prisoners continued to watch for a few more seconds, then their attention returned to their conversations, their idle gazing into empty space and, Cal noticed, their eating.

“Hey, they’ve got food here. Real food!” Cal yelped, his stomach gnawing at him as he watched a woman tucking into some chunks of cheese and slices of salami.

“Yeah, they got a replicator. Basic model, but it works,” Mech replied.

They passed a couple of tables which had been made from bits of scrap. A few other people sat around those, too, munching on a variety of things which weren’t space squirrel.

“Why didn’t you tell me?!” Cal asked. “I ate squirrel tongue!”

Mech shot a grin back over his shoulder. “Aw, I guess I forgot. Sorry, man. My bad.”

“Yep, I totally hate you,” Cal announced, and his stomach loudly echoed the sentiment.

The man sitting on the box turned his attention towards them and stood up as they approached. He looked older than Cal, although that may just have been because his face was so thin and gaunt. There were dark circles beneath his eyes, and graying hair around his temples. He looked pretty much human, except for something about his nose Cal couldn’t quite place. Too thick, maybe? Too thin? Something was off about it, anyway. His chin came to a squared-off point at the end, like a flesh-colored Egyptian beard, but aside from those details, he could almost have passed for Cal’s older brother.

“Dronzen, this is Cal,” said Loren.

The man didn’t smile, but gave Cal what seemed like a not-unfriendly nod. “Galto Dronzen,” he said in what, to Cal’s surprise, was not far away from an Australian accent. “I’m glad to see you recovered from your ordeal in the forest. Sounded nasty.”

“What, being half-drowned, bitten on the face by a squirrel then shot with an arrow?” Cal said. “That’s actually one of my better days, of late.”

“Ha. Yeah, mate, I know the feeling.”

“Dronzen was one of the science officers on the ship,” Loren explained.

“Right,” said Cal. He gestured around at the prison yard. “So how come you ended up living the high life here?”

Dronzen sat on his box and placed his hands on his thighs, like he needed to support himself through what came next. “When we crashed – after we came through that thing – we lost hundreds of the crew. Some of them were killed on impact. They were the lucky ones. The less lucky ones died over the next few weeks. Burns. Radiation poisoning from a system breach we didn’t get locked down quickly enough. Nothing pretty.”

He stared accusingly at the vortex for a few moments, then gave himself a shake. “It was only a few hundred, though, out of a crew of thousands. The rest of us – the Legates and other officers, mostly – got together and made plans for getting off the planet and back through the wormhole, or whatever it is. It was good for people. We had a goal. We had something to work towards, you know?”

“So how come you’re still here?” Cal asked.

“Because Vajazzle had other ideas,” Dronzen said, and the way he spat the assassin’s name out told Cal all he needed to know. “She installed herself as, ah, I don’t know. As queen, I suppose. She decided we were staying put. Said she’d always wanted a planet of her own, and that this one would do nicely.”

Cal frowned. “Why? This one’s fonking horrible.”

“You’re not wrong, mate. I didn’t see the charm, either. But anyone who disagreed or tried to challenge her was killed. The important ones, anyway. Anyone in command. Anyone who could fly the ships. She slaughtered them like luntbeast. The rest of us, the nobodies, she stuck here. What you see is all that’s left.”

“Hang on. What?” said Cal, his ears practically pricking up. “What ships?”

“On the AX11,” said Dronzen. “There are decks and decks full of the buggers. Small fighters, mostly, but a few of the bigger science ships, too. They were all locked down during the crash. They’ve barely got a scratch on them.”

Cal’s jaw dropped. “Buggers! We can say buggers!” He jumped up and punched the air. “Eat that censor-chip!”

After a brief celebratory dance at discovering a new mildly-offensive word he could use, Cal composed himself and quietly cleared his throat. “Anyway, you were saying?”

Mech answered for him. “He’s saying that over there on that big ship are lots of smaller ships that can get us the fonk out of here and back to our own galaxy or, I don’t know, universe or wherever.”

Cal chewed his lip, deep in thought. “So, all we have to do is get over there, find Splurt, steal all the ships, ideally kill Vajazzle – or at least make her think long and hard about her actions – then blast off into the sunset like champs.”

“Except even if we get to the ships, we can’t leave,” Dronzen pointed out. “We’ve got no pilots. Vajazzle made a point of killing them all to keep us here.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, my inexplicably Ozzie-sounding friend,” said Cal. He gestured to Loren, presenting her like a gameshow host presenting that week’s star prize. “We’ve got the best pilot in Zertex.”

“Top five, anyway,” said Mech.

“Based solely on simulator performance,” added Cal. “But she knows her stuff.”

“Except landing.”

Cal nodded. “Yes, except for landing, which is a weak spot.”

“And gradual deceleration,” Mech said.

“Oh God, yeah,” said Cal. “She stops on a dime or she doesn’t stop at all. Seriously, she’ll fire your eyes right out through the back of your head, given half a chance.”

Loren tutted. “I think we’re getting off track here.”

“Yes, sorry,” agreed Cal. “My point is - you want a pilot, Dronzen, you’ve got one!”

“Yeah, but we need about forty,” Dronzen pointed out.

Cal deflated, just a little. “Oh. Right.” He shrugged. “Well, in that case, we’re totally screwed.” He about-turned and inhaled through his nose, picking up just a faint whiff of something not too far away from French fries. “Now, where’s this food machine? I am starving!”

Before anyone could answer, a klaxon sounded and everyone in the yard jumped to their feet. “Now what’s happening?” asked Cal, just as four heavy-built alien figures in Zertex uniforms marched in through the door. Each of them carried an impressively large blaster rifle. They swept the weapons across the yard’s occupants with a precisely calculated degree of menace, then fanned out just as a fifth figure strode through the doorway.

“They’re picking people to go fight in the pits,” Loren whispered.

The fifth man was as unlike the other four as it was possible to be, while still being vaguely the same sort of shape. He was Hobbit-sized, with a bushy crop of curly ginger hair, and what was either an attempt at a beard, or a nasty rash.

His uniform was less worn and faded than any of the others Cal had seen, suggesting he avoided getting into trouble and relied on others to do his dirty work. This didn’t surprise Cal in the slightest.

He held a clipboard in one arm, cradling it to his chest like a baby. His eyes darted across the faces of the people watching him and he hummed quietly to himself.

At last, he raised a stubby hand and extended an even stubbier finger. “You,” he said, pointing at a random face in the crowd. “And you.”

“Me?” Cal groaned. “But I just got here!”

“He’s right. That ain’t fair,” said Mech.

The little guy scowled and flapped a hand, like he were brushing away a gnat. He pointed again, first at Cal, then the other man. “Him. And him. With us.”

“No, p-please. I don’t want to go,” sobbed a boy in an oversized Zertex hoodie. Cal doubted he was an actual boy, but he looked stupidly young. Late teens. Twenty at a push. “I don’t want to fight.”

Dronzen stepped forward. “Leave the boy be, Ajan. I’ll go,” he said.

“It’s Lord Ajan to you, Dronzen,” the little man spat. “You’re not my boss now. I’m in charge.”

“Shut your mouth, you little scrote. You won’t have your mates around you forever,” Dronzen warned. “And then we’ll see how tough you talk.”

Ajan glowered up at the bigger man, his lips twitching as he tried to think of a suitable retort. Nothing came to him, though, so he turned to an old classic.

“You and whose army?”

“That doesn’t even make sense, you drongo,” Dronzen spat at Ajan’s back as the little man smugly about-turned and headed for the door.

Two of the hulking guards caught hold of Cal, while the other two made a grab for the squirming younger man. Loren tried to intervene, but a blast of laser-fire exploded the ground in front of her, and she stumbled back.

Cal’s legs bicycled in the air as he was hoisted into it by the scruff of the neck. “Mech, get working on learning some more of those other guys’ language. It could come in useful,” he said. “Loren, now might be the time for you to start thinking about forming a flying school.”

“On it,” said Mech.

Loren nodded. “Be careful,” she urged.

Cal grinned as he was carried towards the exit. “Hey, don’t worry,” he said. “This is going to be a piece of cake!”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Cal slid down the glassy sides of another pit, and landed heavily at the bottom. The Zertex kid, Sessal, hit the ground next, followed a moment later by a capable-looking tribesman whose name seemed to be a complex system of clicks and guttural barks. Cal had decided to call him Gavin, instead.

This pit was bigger than the last one Cal had been in, and the metal hatch built into the steeply curved wall was larger, too. Worryingly large, actually. Whatever was going to come out of this one would almost certainly be bigger than a wasp but, Cal estimated, smaller than a baby hippo. That left quite a lot of scope, though, and didn’t really help him narrow it down at all.

Not that he really could narrow it down, anyway. He had no idea what sort of creatures inhabited this place. Or not beyond squirrels, insects, birds and big luminous spaghetti monsters, at any rate.

“Everyone OK?” Cal asked, getting to his feet. “Sessal?”

“I d-don’t like this,” Sessal stammered.

“Yeah, I think we pretty much established that on the ride over here, when you kept hugging the railing and crying. Like I said, I’m not exactly over the moon about it, either,” Cal replied. “But we’re going to get through it, OK?”

The younger man nodded, but he didn’t look convinced. Cal squeezed his shoulder, then looked across to where the tribesman was bouncing from bare foot to bare foot, his gaze laser-targeted on the metal door. He’d clearly done this before, and was getting himself together for whatever came next.

“Gavin?” Cal asked. “You good?”

“T’torros mossami-ne kisk,” said Gavin, beating his painted chest with a clenched fist.

“That’s the spirit!” Cal cheered. “See, Sessal? We need to take a leaf out of Gavin’s book. He’s loving this. I mean, I think he is. He looks pretty positive, anyway.”

“Just k-keep him away from me,” Sessal pleaded. “He’s one of them.”

“One of who?” asked Cal.

“You know. Them.”

Cal sniffed the air. “Is that…? Is that racism I smell, Sessal? Is that what I’m getting a whiff of right now? Because if it is, I’m very disappointed. You can’t judge people just because they’re different. Did you learn nothing from being part of an evil galactic empire?” He clicked his fingers. “Wait… Yeah, I think I probably identified the problem, actually.”

“D-didn’t one of them shoot you with an arrow?”

Cal’s eyes went wide. “That was those guys?” he gasped, turning to Gavin. Gavin looked back at him, quizzically.

“Roto dom?”

“You’re absolutely right. Wise words, Gavin,” said Cal. “Wise words.”

He redirected his attention back to Sessal. “If Gavin said what I think he might possibly have said – you know, despite having no evidence to support that - he raises a very good point. If you want to arbitrarily hate on a whole group, why not hate on that one?” Cal suggested, pointing up to the top of the pit.

It was lined by somewhere just south of a hundred faces – a mix of Zertex and tribespeople. They leered down through a hubbub of excited laughter and expectant chat, all squashing together to try to get the best view, while always maintaining a safe distance from the top of the pit.

The little guy – Ajan, was it? – was on his hands and knees, leaning over the edge to get the best possible view. Two of his bulky guards held him, one on either side, holding him securely in place.

On the other side of the pit, someone in a Zertex uniform was scribbling symbols on the scorched and oil-stained paper of a flipchart. After a moment, it swam around before Cal’s eyes, his implanted chip translating it.

It quickly became clear that the man doing the writing was a bookmaker, offering odds on the survival of all three of the pit’s current inhabitants. Cal’s chances of survival weren’t particularly great at ten-to-one, but far better than Sessal’s forty-to-one. Gavin, on the other hand, was a comparatively comfortable three-to-one. Cal shuffled a sideways step towards him, and hoped Sessal didn’t notice.

“So, do we get weapons, or…?” Cal shouted up to the crowd, right before the handle of a sword clonked him on the back of the head, and a roar of laughter went around the audience. Two other swords clattered onto the rocky ground beside him. He picked one up and studied the wooden blade.

“Very funny, guys,” he said, waggling the flimsy toy at them. “Seriously. Hilarious. But could we get the real weapons now? Thanks.”

Ajan let out quite a big snort for such a little man. “Those are your real weapons,” he sneered. “Good luck. You’re going to need it.”

Cal smiled and gave him the finger, then turned back to his pit-mates. Sessal was clutching his sword to his chest, his knuckles white. He breathed in short, shallow gulps, his face awash with sweat.

Gavin, meanwhile, was in the process of breaking his sword in half. The wood was flimsy, so breaking it wasn’t difficult, but the tribesman had managed to split it all the way down its length, which was pretty impressive.

“Uh, I don’t think you should be doing that, Gavin. You might need it.” Cal mimed hitting something with his own sword. “You know, like that.”

With a final splintering sound, Gavin ripped the wood apart, leaving him with two long thin stakes, each one far pointier at the end than Cal’s blunt sword.

“Ooh. I want ones like yours. Do mine, do mine,” said Cal, but a sudden sound behind the metal hatch told him there wasn’t time. The crowd cheered and whistled. Gavin adopted a fighting stance. Sessal cried big, silent sobs and backed all the way up to the wall.

“So, what do we think it is? Any ideas?” Cal asked, his gaze fixed on the hatch, which was now rattling and shaking as something slammed against it from the other side. “Something big, I’d say.”

The hatch shuddered again, and this time it bulged outwards a fraction. “And angry. Big and angry,” said Cal. “Always a winning combination.”

“On my mark, release the beast!” bellowed Ajan, although ‘bellowed’ was pretty generous. He was aiming for a bellow, but landed somewhere between a squeak and a hoarse scream. “Three. Two. Drop the hatch!”

The audience erupted in cheers. Cal brought up his sword. The hatch didn’t budge.

Ajan tutted. “I said drop the hatch!”

“Oh. Sorry!” called someone a little further back from the pit edge. “My fault.”

The hatch dropped and an explosion of teeth and claws erupted from the passageway. Cal caught just the briefest glimpse of hungry jaws, then the thing was on him, knocking him onto his back and slamming him against the ground.

He looked up, first at a snarling mouth, then at a pair of narrowed brown eyes, which opened wide when they recognized him.

“Miz!” yelped Cal.

“Hey handsome,” Miz purred, adjusting her position on top of him. “Looks like I finally got you right where I want you.”

“Oh, man, are you a sight for sore eyes,” said Cal, then a sudden flurry of movement from his right demanded his attention. “Gavin, no!”

Cal rolled to his left, throwing Miz to safety just as Gavin drove both his wooden stakes towards her. Cal felt the rush of air as the sticks skimmed his back.

Scrambling to his feet, Cal positioned himself between Miz and the tribesman. Above them, the initial burst of cheering from the audience had quickly become a far less enthusiastic muttering.

“Wait, Gavin, don’t! She’s a friend,” Cal said. “Friend.”

“Bodano-na. Tossk!” Gavin hissed through clenched teeth. He feigned a lunge, but Cal frantically waggled his wooden sword at him until he backed away.

“Stop! Cut it out, Gavin, I’m warning you.”

“What’s going on?” Ajan demanded. “Hurry up and fight the beast, already.”

Cal grinned and shook his head. “Oh, Ajan. You beautiful tiny clown. This ‘beast’ is nothing of the kind. She’s my friend. She’s a princess, actually. You know the Greyx, right?”

Ajan scowled, but said nothing while he tried to think up a devastating retort. Cal interrupted before he could come up with anything.

“But, and just so we’re clear, if you call her a ‘beast’ again, I’ll kill you myself. OK?”

Miz shuddered with pleasure. “I love it when you get all protective.”

Cal was relieved to see that Gavin had lowered his weapons. He was still eyeing Mizette with suspicion, but he seemed to understand she wasn’t an immediate threat.

“See? We’re all friends down here,” said Cal. “So, I’m afraid if you wanted to see someone dying today, you’re going to have to look…”

Cal’s voice trailed away into silence as a dribble of blood coated Gavin’s chin. The tribesman’s eyes bulged and he staggered forwards, gagging and choking.

Gavin’s next step found nothing. He fell forwards, revealing a wooden sword wedged into the soft tissue at the back of his neck. Sessal was revealed, too. He stood directly behind where Gavin had been, his hands shaking, a spray of blood adding to the mask of horror he already wore on his face.

The audience found its voice again and their cheering reverberated around the inside of the pit. The bookmaker began making frantic adjustments to his flipchart as the last of Gavin’s life ebbed out onto the rocks.

“Sessal. What did you do?” Cal groaned.

“H-he was going to kill you. I saw him. You c-can’t trust them,” Sessal shivered. His whole body was vibrating, like he were two thirds of the way through freezing to death.

“No, he wasn’t, Sessal!” Cal snapped. “He wasn’t going to kill anyone. No-one had to kill anyone.”

“Uh… hello? Beg to differ,” said Ajan. “It’s kind of the entire point of you being in there.”

The audience laughed, and Ajan looked quite pleased with himself. “If you won’t kill the beast, then you can all kill each other. Everyone for themselves, last person alive is allowed back out.”

More laughter. More cheering. Cal stooped and picked up one of Gavin’s fallen stakes. “Hey, Ajan, remember what I told you?” he said. “Don’t ever call my friend ‘beast’ again!”

He spun and flicked his wrist, sending the sharp stick spinning up towards Ajan’s head. The crowd barely had time to let out a collective gasp before the stake hit.

Unfortunately, what it hit was a spot roughly two feet below where Cal was aiming. It bounced off the wall, sprung back, then hit the ground with a hollow thonk.

Cal sighed. “Well, that was disappointing.”

“Nice try, you… you… stupid idiot,” Ajan barked. The crowd chorused in with a collective, oooh, which only served to encourage him. “Yeah, you… dumdum. Get fighting. Either two of you die, or three of you do. We don’t mind, either way.”

“We’d prefer three, if anything,” chimed another voice from the audience.

“Exactly! Exactly!” chirped Ajan. “So get killing, or we’ll kill you ourselves.”

Down in the pit, Miz jabbed a thumb in Sessal’s direction. “I could eat this guy, if it’ll help?”

Cal shook his head. “No. I mean, thanks for the offer and everything, but he’s just a kid. He’s scared. Besides, even if he dies, one of us still has to die, too.”

“So what do we do?” asked Miz.

Cal lowered his voice to a faint whisper. “Still hear me?”

Miz’s ears twitched. She nodded, just a fraction.

“Don’t look, but the hatch you came through is still open. Is there a way out?”

Miz gave a non-committal tilt of her head. Cal sucked air through his teeth. “Better than staying here?”

Another nod.

“Hurry up!” called Ajan. “We haven’t got all night.”

“OK,” Cal whispered. “We get the kid, then we run for it. Get ready.”

He spun around and crouched into a fighting stance, fists clenched, eyes locked on Sessal. Miz approached from the other side, forcing Sessal to back away in the direction of the open hatch.

“N-no, please,” Sessal whimpered. “I didn’t mean to kill him. I was only trying to help!”

“I refuse to die in this pit, kid,” Cal growled. “I’m not going to let that happen.”

“Wh-what? No, but… Please, don’t kill me. I’m sorry!”

“Ready, Miz?” Cal asked, not taking his eyes off the boy.

“Ready,” Miz confirmed. Sessal’s head snapped left and right, trying to watch them both at once. He attempted to speak again, but all that came out was a sob, some tears, and a considerable amount of snot.

“Now!” Cal cried, and Miz pounced. The crowd cheered her on, but their delight turned to confusion when she threw an arm around Sessal’s waist and hoisted him over her shoulder.

Ajan realized, too late, what was happening. “The hatch! Close the hatch!” he yelped.

Cal heard a distant. “Oops, sorry, my fault again!” from above, but he was already through the doorway, with Miz and her squirming cargo right at his heels.

The hatch slammed closed behind them, casting the narrow passageway into near-darkness. Cal ran, doubled-over, making for a faint light source at the far end.

“Where does it come out?” he asked, his voice rolling off ahead of him and bouncing off the narrow walls.

“It’s a little, like, shed thing,” Miz said.

“Heavily guarded?”

“Oh yeah,” said Miz. “But now I’m out of that cage they put me in, that won’t be a problem.”

“That’s my girl!” Cal cheered.

They reached the end of the tunnel. Light flooded in from a rectangular hole in the ceiling, above which stood a shed, just like Miz had said. There was no ladder leading up, but the wall was rough and rocky, and Cal scrambled up it without any difficulty.

Sessal screamed as he soared upwards out of the hole, then landed on his back on the shed floor. Miz bounded up behind him, her eyes already fixed on a set of double-doors dead ahead.

A cage stood beside the hole, a tangle of chains and restraints lying on the floor. There were other things in the cage, too, Cal noticed. Fingers. Three of them, at least. Miz hadn’t gone into the pit without a fight.

“Come on, we don’t have much time,” Miz warned, bounding towards the exit on all fours. She exploded outwards through the wood, claws extending as she hurtled through the air. There was a grunt of surprise, then the two tribesmen who had been standing guard at the door lunged at her with their short spears.

Cal turned away until their screaming and thrashing and gargling had died down, then grabbed Sessal by the arm and pulled him towards the door. They stumbled out just as the first of the pit audience arrived, shaking their spears and drawing their blasters.

“Oh, shizz, they got here fast,” Cal muttered. Miz started to bound towards them, but Cal called her back. “No! This way!”

Spinning, he raced around the outside of the shed, pulling Sessal with him. The boy screamed as a blast of laser fire punched a hole in the shed right behind him, showering him in smoldering splinters.

“Stay where you are!” huffed Ajan, scurrying along surprisingly quickly between his four armed guards. Two blaster rifles trained on Mizette, while Cal and Sessal only merited one each.

Cal stopped running and raised his hands. “Aw, come on, guys. Could you just let us escape a little bit?”

“No, you stupid idiot,” Ajan said. He smirked and looked to the crowd for their approval, but it was much more muted this time, the insult having lost all the originality that had made it so entertaining the first time around. “Put them back in the pit!” he barked.

Before anyone could take a step, the ground gave a violent shudder. It rocked them all up and down, vibrating the walls of the shed as it rumbled upwards from somewhere far below.

As the world trembled, Cal noticed the big space vortex thing. Its glowing white outline seemed to shiver in time with each tremor. As the quake passed, the vortex steadied once again.

“What the Hell was that about?” Cal wondered, before a shout from Ajan snapped him back to the situation at hand.

“Well don’t just stand there! Chuck them in the pit!”

“Wait!”

The crowd parted in a sort of polite panic, revealing Lady Vajazzle. Her hood was up, her black robe drawn tight around her. “What is the meaning of this?” she hissed.

All eyes went to Ajan. He drew himself up to his full height, which wasn’t really saying much, and managed to hold Vajazzle’s eye for a full half second before losing his nerve.

“We, uh, we had a pit fight, m’lady,” he said. “You said we could.”

“Yes. Yes, I did say that,” Vajazzle admitted, her voice taking on an almost sing-song quality as she glided through the gap in the crowd. “But did I say you could use them?” she asked, extending a withered hand from within her robe and gesturing towards Cal and Miz. “They were off limits until I say otherwise.”

Ajan shuffled anxiously on the spot. “Oh. Right. I see. I didn’t know. Sorry, m’lady. It won’t happen again.”

Vajazzle stopped before him. The red glow from her robotic eye painted his face as she glared down. “No,” she agreed. “It won’t.”

She loomed there for several seconds, as the audience watched on in silence. This was not the show they had been expecting, but it was entertaining, all the same.

At last, though, Vajazzle took a step back. “Return these two to the pens,” she instructed.

“Yes, m’lady, very good, m’lady,” Ajan babbled, practically sobbing with relief. “What about the other one?”

Vajazzle thrust out a hand in Sessal’s direction. There was an audible krik as his head twisted and his neck splintered.

“No!” cried Cal, but Sessal was already falling, his eyes halfway to the back of his head.

“What other one?” Vajazzle asked, savoring the look of shock on Ajan’s face. “Take them to the pens. Ensure they get some rest.”

She turned until the ruby red eye shone in Cal’s direction. “Tomorrow is going to be a very big day.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Cal and Miz rode back to the prison on something that looked like a flatbed truck, but minus the actual truck part. It was a rectangular platform with a railing around the edges just a little higher than Cal’s waist, and glided noiselessly a couple of feet above the uneven terrain. One of the tribesmen steered it with a rudder at the back, while two others stood at the front, their spears pointed at the prisoners.

Cal leaned on the railings, gazing blankly out over the barren landscape. Night had drawn in now, turning the purple-blue sky black. The glow of the vortex danced and rippled across the sand, giving the impression the whole world was underwater. It was beautiful, in a way, but Cal didn’t notice.

“We should totally just kill these guys and jump off,” Miz suggested. “I’ll take the front two, you take the guy at the back.”

Cal shook his head and gestured at the desert around them. “You don’t want to jump off. Trust me. There are things.”

Miz’s snout wrinkled. “Things?”

“Yeah. Things. Nasty ones. Take my word for it.”

They continued the rest of the way in silence. The prison’s outer gate appeared to open automatically at their approach, but was, in fact, pulled by two tribespeople on the other side.

The platform edged to a stop between the outer gate and a heavier inner gate. Cal and Miz were barked at by one of the spear-holding aliens, and both jumped down as – they guessed – they had been instructed.

It took four of the tribe to open the inner gate. Cal strode through, not bothering to grin or salute or any of his usual shtick.

“Hey, you OK?” Miz asked, as the doors creaked closed behind them.

“No. Not really,” said Cal. He headed for the doorway on the right. “Come on, through here.” He stopped and turned to her before they stepped through. “Oh, and try not to freak out and kill everyone.”

As they emerged into a yard full of people in Zertex uniforms, Mizette’s claws extended all on their own. She dropped to her haunches, a deep, guttural growl rumbling in her throat. “Easy, relax,” said Cal. “This lot are on our side. For now, anyway.”

He spotted Dronzen sitting at a table, dipping bread into a bowl. The Zertex crewman was leaning on one elbow, staring blankly into a murky green soup. He looked up as Cal approached, smiled, then darted his eyes around. His smile faded.

“He didn’t make it,” Cal said.

Dronzen nodded slowly, then dropped his bread into the bowl. His fist banged down on the table, making the bowl – and several of his nearby crewmates – jump. “I shouldn’t have let them take him. I should have made them take me. What happened?”

“Vajazzle. She killed him,” said Cal.

A frown creased Dronzen’s brow. “Vajazzle? You mean he didn’t die in the pit?”

“No. He, uh, he survived the pit. He fought well,” said Cal.

“Oh,” said Dronzen. He looked surprised, but comforted by the information. “So… what? But then Vajazzle killed him anyway?”

Cal nodded. “I’m sorry. He seemed like a nice kid.”

Dronzen closed his eyes and nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, he was a good lad.”

“If it’s any consolation,” said Miz. “I totally love your accent. It’s hot. You know, for being one of the bad guys.”

Dronzen opened his eyes and peered up at her in surprise. Being almost seven feet tall and covered entirely in thick hair, Mizette wasn’t often the last person in a room to be noticed, but Dronzen reacted like he was seeing her for the first time.

“Uh, thanks. Are you… You’re a Greyx, aren’t you?”

“Princess Mizette of the Greyx, no less,” said Cal. “Wait, no. Queen? Princess? What are you these days?”

“I told you before, don’t call me that.”

“Which one?”

“Either!” She turned her attention back to Dronzen, and her tail wagged, just once. “Miz is fine.”

Dronzen stood and gave a brief but heartfelt bow. “I met your father once. Back in my cadet days. I was assigned to a research station on Mooship, on the border between Zertex and Greyx space…”

“OK, fascinating as this is,” Cal interjected. He pointed at the half-finished bowl of soup. “Are you going to eat that? Because I’m about to pass out.”

“What? Oh, sorry. Yeah. Of course, you must be starving. We can get you some food,” Dronzen began, but Cal picked up the bread and took a soggy bite. The soup tasted of vegetables. Not any vegetables he’d ever tasted before, necessarily, but it had a certain vegetableness to it that couldn’t be missed. It wasn’t bad, and a definite step up from what had been on the menu next door.

And speaking of next door…

“Go see Loren,” he told Miz, pointing to the other end of the yard where she was standing addressing a dozen or so of the Zertex people. “I’m sure you two will want to hug and catch-up and, I don’t know, go to the bathroom together like you girls do.”

“Why? What are you going to do?” Miz asked him.

“The tribe guy in the pit with us? Gavin? He came from next door. I’d better go break the news.”

“Be careful,” said Dronzen. “They’re savages over there.”

Cal didn’t mean to, but he let a sigh of irritation escape. It had been a long day. “And yet Vajazzle’s got them working for her. Alongside guys wearing uniforms just like yours, in fact.”

“Maybe, but they attacked us when we first arrived,” said Dronzen. “They killed scores of us.”

“And yet there’s a whole big bunch of them living two rooms away, with no doors standing between you, and I’m betting they’ve never bothered you once,” said Cal.

Dronzen had no response to that. “Word of advice. You might want to adjust your whole ‘them and us’ view,” Cal said, gesturing in the direction of the tribe area, then back to the spot he was standing on. “And start thinking about them,” - he pointed in the direction of the crashed ship – “and us.” He made a little helicopter gesture with his finger, indicating the whole prison. “Your enemies are out there, Dronzen. Not in here.”

He paused, squaring his shoulders and setting his jaw as the shimmering light of the vortex played across his face, then leaned closer to Miz.

“Did I sound, like, dead dramatic and wise there?” he whispered.

“Oh yeah. Totally,” Miz replied.

“Excellent,” Cal grinned. He winked at her, gave Dronzen a look that he reckoned positively screamed, ‘heed my wisdom,’ then turned and headed for the door.

Once out of the Zertex yard, Cal leaned against one of the tower’s legs and took a moment to compose himself. He couldn’t remember when he had last slept. Oh sure, he could remember periods of unconsciousness, but did they qualify as sleep? He was pretty sure they didn’t.

He’d feel better after some food and rest, but there was one thing he still had to do first.

Cal found Mech lying flat on his back, with the tribeswoman who had been training the others earlier standing over him.

Darting to the cyborg’s side, Cal held a hand up to the woman, indicating she should back away. “Mech? Mech, buddy? You OK? Are you hurt? Or, you know, broken or whatever you get?”

“Salutations, Cal,” chimed a lofty voice from somewhere inside Mech’s unmoving frame. “It is pleasing to note your safe return.”

Cal saw the dial on Mech’s chest had been cranked all the way up to ‘intellect’ mode, and slumped into a sigh of relief. “Oh, thank God. I thought you were dead.”

“Your concern for my wellbeing humbles me, and is duly noted,” the voice said. “I felt it best to dedicate as much processing power as possible to understanding the language of the Grimmash. While rudimentary in its basic construction, it contains some surprisingly complex syntax.”

“The Grimmash?” said Cal. He looked up at the woman looming over them, catching a full view of her bare chest. He did his best not to stare. “Is that what she is?”

“She is Sonsha. The species, collectively, is known as the Grimmash.”

“Kankaro,” said the woman. “Hansan cha?”

“She is enquiring as to the whereabouts of her son,” said Mech.

Cal frowned. “Her son?” he said. “How should I know where…?” His stomach tightened as the realization hit him like a sucker-punch. “Wait. Gavin. Was her son taken to fight in the pit?”

From within Mech came a stream of sounds Cal didn’t recognize. Sonsha replied with a short but definite, “Da.” Cal didn’t need Mech to translate, but he did it anyway.

“She says yes.”

Cal sighed. “OK. Can you still translate if I take you out of big brain mode?”

“Affirmative,” Mech said. “I am now fully fluent in the Grimmish, although there may yet be dialects I have not encountered which I would be less familiar--”

“Yeah, yeah,” said Cal, twisting Mech’s dial back towards the center. Mech’s eyes twitched and his hydraulics hissed and whirred as they came back online. He sat up, and Cal and the woman moved aside to let him stand.

Sonsha was watching Cal closely. She had a bodybuilder’s physique and short spiky crop of white hair. Any one of her four arms could have torn Cal’s spine out through his eye-socket, and yet she looked so utterly vulnerable as she anxiously studied his face, searching for news of her son.

“He’s dead, ain’t he?” Mech grunted.

“Yeah,” Cal sighed. “Yeah, he’s dead. Can you translate?”

Mech nodded, then began to garble something in Grimmish. Cal stopped him approximately one-point-four words in.

“Wait, what are you doing?”

“I’m telling her he’s dead,” Mech said.

“How? What are you saying to her?” Cal asked.

Mech frowned. “I’m saying, ‘Your son’s dead,’ is what I’m saying to her.”

“Jesus, you don’t just break that kind of news to someone like that,” said Cal. “Here, translate this.”

He glanced to the sky for a moment, then met Sonsha’s eyes. As he spoke, Mech translated. “I’m sorry to have to tell you, but your son didn’t make it,” Cal said. The woman’s jaw tightened, but she otherwise remained completely still. “He fought hard. He was… brave and died, I don’t know, like a warrior’s death or…”

His voice tailed off and he looked down. Mech stopped translating. Sonsha’s features furrowed, her eyes narrowing. All four fists clenched at once.

Cal shook his head, muttered something only he could hear, then met her gaze again. “He seemed like a nice guy. I mean, I’m basing that on six minutes in his company, and not being able to understand a single word he said, but I got the impression he was a good man.”

“Tonta shar?”

“She wants to know what happened.”

“Jesus, does she? OK,” Cal said. “He was attacked from behind. He died quickly, without pain. The… thing that killed him is now dead, too.”

Sonsha’s face softened. Her fists unclenched, one by one. “I’m sorry for your loss,” Cal said, bowing slightly.

Mech finished translating and the woman returned Cal’s bow. “Roashie!” she called. “Roashie pakar.”

“What’s she saying?” asked Cal.

Mech bit his metal bottom lip. “Oh, man,” he said, fighting back a grin.

“What? Why are you smiling?”

“Roashie pakar! Oonto!” Sonsha shouted, then she fixed Cal with a sincere stare. “Mataska umash nontakko sa.”

“She wants to thank you for fighting alongside her son,” said Mech. “So she’s making you an offering.”

Cal looked down as half a space squirrel’s skull was thrust in front of him. The smell shot up his nostrils like a shotgun blast. He turned to find the barbeque guy grinning at him and nodding his encouragement.

“Oh. No, tell her there’s no need for that,” said Cal. “Tell her I’m good.”

“She insists,” said Mech.

Cal risked a glance at the squirrel brain and immediately felt his gag reflex kick in.

“Seriously. I’m fine. No thanks needed.”

“She still insists,” said Mech.

“Wait, you’re not even translating what I’m saying!” Cal yelped.

Mech grinned. “Nope! But seriously, I’d tuck in. Refusing an offering is deeply offensive in Grimmash culture.”

Cal groaned. “Shizz. Is it?”

“Fonked if I know,” snorted Mech, his shoulders shaking from trying to hold in his laughter. “But do you really want to take the chance?”

“Pakar chau,” Sonsha said, nodding insistently at the offered squirrel head. Cal’s skin crawled as he accepted it and cradled the half-skull in one hand. He turned to Mech.

“I’ve told you I hate you, yeah?”

Mech’s metal smirk broadened. “All the time.”

“Good. Just wanted to make sure,” said Cal, then he scooped out the squirrel brain, tossed it in his mouth, held his nose, and chewed.

* * *

Twenty minutes later, Cal sat at the table back in the Zertex area, wiping the last of the vomit off his pants. A plate of something that looked like biscuits and gravy had been set in front of him, but his nausea was currently beating his hunger, hands down.

Loren sat across from him, with Dronzen on his left. It had turned out Miz was too heavy for the flimsy bench, and so she sat on a rock at the head of the table, with Mech standing nearby.

“Naw, man, trust me. It was funny,” said Mech. “I know funny when I see it.”

Cal shook his head. “No. It wasn’t. Someone falling over, or hitting their head, or landing balls-first on a fence – those are funny. A grown-man vomiting over the ground, himself, and a semi-naked stranger? That isn’t.”

“How did she take it?” asked Loren.

“In the chest and about halfway up her neck, if I remember rightly,” said Cal, scrunching up the puke-stained tissue and setting it on the table. Loren and Dronzen both moved their plates a little further along the table.

Taking a sip of water, Cal swirled it around his mouth a few times, before spitting it onto the ground. Only then did he begin to contemplate the meal in front of him.

“OK, so where are we?” Loren asked.

Cal, Mech and Miz all opened their mouths at the same time, but Loren quickly raised a hand. “Not literally. I mean what’s the plan? I assume we’re breaking out of here.”

“Plenty have tried,” said Dronzen. “They don’t get far.”

“Well, it’s that or wait to be killed in the pit,” said Cal. “And that, if I’m being completely honest, doesn’t really appeal.”

He broke off a piece of one of the biscuits and tentatively nibbled on the edge. It was bland and a bit doughy, but compared to space squirrel innards it was delicious, so he worked through the rest while he talked.

“So, we know there are ships up there on the bigger ship,” Cal began.

“Assuming Vajazzle ain’t destroyed them,” said Mech.

Loren shook her head. “She killed the pilots.”

“So?” asked Miz.

“So if you’re going to destroy the ships, why kill the pilots?” said Loren. “She killed them because they could have flown the ships, so we can assume the ships themselves are still there. It’s just logic.”

“Thank you, Mrs Spock,” said Cal through a mouthful of food. “How are we doing with the flying school?”

Loren leaned casually back in her chair, realized a little too late that she was sitting on a bench, and frantically grabbed for the table. “Uh, it’s going about as well as can be expected,” she said, once she’d composed herself and Mizette had stopped laughing. “You know, considering no-one has any flying experience, I don’t have any means of training them, and I’ve only been talking to them for about forty minutes.”

“How long until they’re ready?” Cal asked.

“Did you hear anything I just said?”

Cal nodded and smiled. “Yes. So how long? Roughly?”

Loren blew out her cheeks. “Forty years.”

“OK. Gotcha,” said Cal. “Could we cut that down a bit and have them ready sooner?”

“How soon?”

“Tomorrow morning,” said Cal.

Loren laughed. She watched Cal, pretty sure he was going to start laughing any time now, too. Any minute now. Aaaany second.

She stopped laughing. “You’re not serious?”

“I’m always serious, Loren, you know that,” said Cal.

Loren, Mech and Miz all opened their mouths at once, but Cal jumped in before they could speak.

“Vajazzle said we’ve got a big day ahead of us tomorrow, but she said it in this really ominous sort of way that makes me doubt she’s throwing us a surprise party,” Cal said. “If we’re going to get out of here, I think we’re going to have to do it soon.”

Loren prodded at her food with her fork, then dropped it onto the plate. “Just so I’m completely clear, you want me to teach a bunch of people to be pilots, without any equipment to train them on or knowledge of what they’ll be expected to fly, in the next eight hours?”

“It’s not like being a pilot’s difficult,” said Miz. “I mean, if you can do it…”

“I’ll help,” said Mech. “We’ll do what we can do. Not saying it’ll be much.”

Loren looked up at him and nodded. “Thanks. I guess we can give it a try.”

With that settled, they spent the next twenty minutes thrashing out their plan. It broadly involved Cal, Miz and whoever else was lined up for Vajazzle’s Big Day taking control of the platform that came to collect them, scooting up to Vajazzle’s ship, grabbing as many weapons as possible, then killing all the bad guys.

It wasn’t a very complex plan, but it was agreed – by Cal, at least, if no-one else – that complicated plans were overrated, and it was much better to come up with something simple, and then just hope for the best.

If all went well, Loren would have all the time she needed to train her class of pilots aboard the actual ships they’d be flying. In the off-chance things went badly, though, Cal wanted them as ready to leave as they could be.

Mech pointed out they still had to find Splurt, but Cal insisted that wouldn’t be a problem, and had quickly moved on.

They were just winding down when another earthquake hit. The prison walls rumbled like thunder. All around the yard, Zertex troops hurled themselves to the ground and lay there, hugging it.

Cal’s plate rattled across the tabletop and plunged over the edge. He was too busy staring at the sky to notice. Just as before, the vortex was trembling in time with the quake.

From out in the entrance yard there came a cacophony of noise that managed, just for a moment, to drown out even the growling of the earth. From where they sat, the walls blocked the view of the tower, but the din could only have been the sound of it collapsing.

The rock Miz was sitting on sunk several inches in one swift jolt. Miz jumped off just as the ground beneath the bolder splintered into jagged cracks. The stone fell a full four feet into the gap, then jerked to a stop.

With a final few shudders, the quake passed. “They’re getting worse,” said Dronzen. “We used to get one every few weeks. Now they’re umpteen times a day.”

“According to the Grimmash, it didn’t happen at all until you arrived,” said Mech.

Dronzen looked surprised by this. “What, seriously?”

“It’s a big ship,” said Miz. “Maybe the crash damaged, like, the planet or whatever.”

“Nah. Surface impact,” said Dronzen. “I mean, yeah, it was a big one, but not enough to trigger quakes years later.”

Cal was still gazing up at the hole in space. It had settled down again, right on cue.

“Anyone else notice that?” he asked.

“Notice what? The earthquake?” said Mech. “Yeah, man, it wasn’t exactly easy to miss.”

“No, that,” said Cal, pointing upwards. “The vortex hole thingy. Whenever the ground shakes, it shakes, too.”

Dronzen frowned and looked up. “Must be recent. It hasn’t always done that.”

“Mech? Any thoughts?” asked Cal.

“About what?”

“The shaky sky earthquake thing,” said Cal, drawing on his scientific vocabulary. Which, admittedly, was quite limited. “Is the earthquake making the vortex shake, or is the vortex making the earthquake shake?”

“How the fonk should I know?”

Cal leaned across and turned Mech’s dial up a few notches. Without changing size, Mech seemed to shrink before their eyes. “Brainy Mech, what do you make of all this earthquake and space hole business?” Cal asked.

Mech tapped his chin with a twitchy metal finger. “Hmm. Please give me a moment. Anaylyzing data.”

Cal drummed his hands on the tabletop as Mech stared blankly towards the wall at the far end of the yard. The other Zertex people had all stopped hugging the ground now, and were starting to bed down for the night atop blankets on the ground.

“Any ideas?” Cal asked.

“Analyzing data. Please hold.”

Cal clicked his tongue against his teeth. If he’d been wearing a watch, he’d have made a point of looking at it, but he wasn’t, so he couldn’t.

“Any--?”

“Analyzing data,” said Mech, sounding just a tiny bit irritated. “Please hold.”

“Jesus, how long does it take?” Cal muttered. “I mean, it’s not like--”

“Analysis complete,” chimed Mech.

“Finally!” said Cal. “So, what have we got?”

“Insufficient data,” said Mech. “No hypothesis available.”

Cal hung his head, mumbled to himself, then raised it again and smiled. “Great! Well, that was worth the wait.” He cranked Mech’s dial back to the center. “Loren, you two go do what you can on the flying lessons front. Dronzen, your people, can they fight?”

“Some of them, yeah,” said Dronzen. “Some better than others.”

“Depending on how tomorrow goes, they might all have to,” said Cal. “Can you get them ready?”

Dronzen nodded. “Yeah. I can give it a go.”

“I’ll help,” said Miz. “I have a lot of experience of violence. Besides, your accent totally turns me on.” She looked at the others. “It’s not just me, right?”

“God, no, it’s not just you,” said Cal, relieved that someone else had found themselves in Mizette’s sights. “It’s, you know, dishy.”

He turned to Mech. “The Grimmash. They should be ready, too.”

“Why?” asked Dronzen. “We’re not taking them, are we?”

“Either we all escape or none of us do,” said Cal. “They’re prisoners here, just like us. They’ve lost people, too. Hell, if it wasn’t for them, I’d be dead by now. Twice.”

Dronzen hesitated for a moment, then gave a reluctant nod. “Fine. If you think that’s for the best.”

“I know it is.”

“What about you?” asked Loren. “What are you going to do?”

Cal yawned. “Me? I’m just going to sit here and think for a while,” he said, resting his head on the table. “I’ll just close my eyes for a few minutes and work out how we can…”

But the end of the sentence never came, as Cal – finally – drifted off into a deep, dreamless sleep.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Cal sat up with a start, snapping his head back from the table as if an electrical current had passed through it. With nothing but fresh air behind him, he toppled off the bench and grimaced as his bare back hit the rocky ground.

“Ow.”

Mech and Loren stepped over him, silhouetted by the morning sun. “They’re coming,” Mech grunted, as Loren reached down and helped Cal to his feet.

“Already?” Cal groaned, stretching his aching back and fighting with one of his eyes which was refusing to open. “What time is it?”

“Early. You’ve been asleep for about six hours.”

“Which is more than can be said for some of us,” said Loren, stifling a yawn.

“And yet you look great,” Cal lied. “Seriously. Fresh as a daisy. How did it go? Do we have pilots?”

“We have people who know what some of the controls of a Zertex short range fighter do,” said Loren. “That’s as good as we’re going to get.”

“Better than nothing,” Cal conceded. “Good job.”

The Zertex yard was deserted. Cal could hear a nervous hubbub of chatter from the main yard, and followed Mech towards the door.

To his surprise, he found both Zertex and Grimmash packed into the walled space, each group warily eyeing up the other. Miz prowled around near Dronzen who, to Cal’s even greater surprise, was standing beside the Grimmash tribeswoman, Sonsha.

“I got them talking,” said Mech. “You know, more or less.”

“So we’re all friends now?” Cal asked.

“I wouldn’t go that far,” said Mech. “But I think they understand they ain’t enemies.”

Striding over, Cal shook Dronzen’s hand, then shot Sonsha an apologetic smile. “Sorry again for yesterday,” he said. “The, uh, the vomit incident.” He caught himself examining her bare chest, and quickly snapped his eyes back to her face. “I see you got cleaned up. That’s good. Glad to… Uh… Anyway.”

He turned on his heels towards the double doors. Beyond it, he could hear the outer gates creaking closed.

“We need to get everyone out of here now, back into their own yards,” Cal said. “If they open the gates and see us all waiting here, they’ll know something’s wrong.”

“On it,” said Dronzen. He gestured to the Zertex crowd and ushered them towards their doorway.

“You should go, too,” said Cal. “This could be dangerous.”

“Come on, you think I’m letting you lot have all the fun?” Dronzen replied. “I’m going nowhere.”

“Fair enough,” Cal nodded. “Mech, tell the Grimmash to get back to their yard and wait there. If anyone comes in who isn’t you, me, Loren or Miz, Sonsha has my full permission to kick the living shizz out of them.”

Mech spun and hurriedly conveyed the instructions to Sonsha and the rest of the tribe. Cal spotted Tullok sitting in his wheelchair near the door, listening intently. He gave the old man a brief wave, then turned back to the gates. The heavy locks were being slid aside. Any second now, the gates would be pushed inwards, revealing… something. Cal had no idea what, and was the first to admit that this part of his plan was being made up on the spot.

“Miz, Mech, left and right,” Cal instructed. “Loren, Dronzen, stay with me and try to look interesting. We want their eyes on us.”

Loren clenched her fists and placed them high up on her sides, several inches above her hips, then spread her feet apart and squared her shoulders.

“What are you doing?” Cal whispered.

“You said to look interesting.”

“Yeah, interesting, not like you’re pretending to be Wonder Woman,” Cal hissed. “They’ll take one look at you and realize we’re up to…”

The gates groaned as they swung inwards. Loren dropped her arms to her side, which made her wide-legged stance look a bit stupid, so she shuffled her feet closer together, too.

Ajan’s four guards strutted through the door, followed by Ajan himself. The little man was practically bouncing with excitement, his face a picture of glee.

“How come you’re so happy, Ajan?” Cal asked. “Santa give you a pay rise?”

Cal glanced at Loren and Dronzen. “I know that joke doesn’t make sense to you guys, but trust me, where I come from, it’s hilarious,” he said. “I mean, it’s arguably quite offensive, but you know, still funny.”

“I’m happy because today’s the day I get to watch you die!” Ajan announced. His guards approached, fanning out ahead of him. Through the open gates, Cal could see three of the moving platforms, all standing side by side. There were tribespeople on all three of them, spears in hand. Whatever Vajazzle was planning, it was big.

“Ah, gotcha. Yeah, that is pretty exciting,” Cal admitted. “That’s why we’re standing here waiting so patiently for you. Also…”

He nodded to Miz. She pounced on Ajan with a single bound, pinning him to the ground. He screamed, but shut up quickly when Miz’s jaws snapped down on his throat, her teeth pressing against his skin, but not breaking it. Not quite.

All four guards turned, guns raising. Mech fired off a series of shots from his arm blasters that hammered into the guards’ armor and sent them hurtling through the air. Loren and Cal both pounced on the downed soldiers, driving almost simultaneous punches across their heavy-set jaws.

It took Dronzen another moment or two to get involved, but he soon jumped in, kicking and punching at one of the guards and wrestling the rifle from his grip.

With a creak, the inner gate began to close, pulled from the other side. “Mech! You can’t let them close those doors!” Cal shouted.

Mech turned and raised both arms, but a high-pitched warbling shriek suddenly echoed all around the yard.

Sonsha and a group of Grimmash raced out of their area and sprinted towards the closing gates. A spear whistled towards them, thrown from one of the platforms. Sonsha snatched it from the air, twirled it expertly above her head, then hurled it like a javelin towards one of the gates.

There was a screech as the spear punched cleanly through the metal, then a strangled, ‘Urk!’ as it buried deep into someone on the other side. The gate stopped moving, then was thrown open as Sonsha and the rest of the Grimmash powered through.

The battle on the platforms was one of the bloodiest, most stomach-churning things Cal had ever witnessed, and he was grateful it lasted just eight or nine seconds.

When it was over, the transport platforms were empty. The ground beneath them, meanwhile, was awash with blood, limbs, and the occasional pile of internal organs.

Blood-slicked and breathing heavily, Sonsha led the rest of her tribe back into the yard, grimaced furiously at Cal, then continued back through the door to their own area.

“Well,” said Cal, letting out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. He slammed the butt of the rifle into the guard’s face, knocking him out. “That was… terrifyingly efficient. And why did she do scary face at me? What did I do to deserve scary face?”

“It’s a sign of respect,” Mech told him, casually blasting the fourth fallen guard in the chest. “Kinda one warrior to another, sort of thing.”

“Oh. Right. Gotcha,” said Cal, sounding relieved. “I thought it was about the puke thing. She’s been surprisingly understanding about that. By the way, did you just kill that guy?”

“No.” Mech held up an arm and tapped it. “Stun mode.”

Cal’s eyes widened. He turned to Loren. “You said there was no such thing as stun mode! His gun has it.”

“No, his arm has it,” said Loren. “That’s not the same thing.”

“It’s absolutely the same thing.”

Loren drove a punch across her opponent’s jaw, knocking him out. “It isn’t,” she said, standing up and smoothing herself down. She performed a series of quick, noisy checks of the guard’s rifle, then slung it over her shoulder.

“Totally is,” Cal muttered, then he, Mech, Loren and Dronzen all gathered around the pinned Ajan. Miz still hadn’t broken the skin of his throat, but from Ajan’s expression it was clear he knew she could at any given moment. He was rigid and frozen, his face a mask of absolute terror, like he’d seen a ghost and died of fright.

“I think you can let him go,” Cal said. “He’s not going to try anything stupid. Are you, Ajan?”

Ajan didn’t dare speak and he definitely didn’t dare shake his head, so he waggled his eyes from side to side instead.

“Didn’t think so,” Cal said. He nodded to Miz and she unclenched her teeth from his neck, but growled in his ear for good measure.

“P-please, don’t hurt me!” Ajan squeaked. “N-none of this was my idea. It was Vajazzle. She made me do it! I didn’t even want to do--”

“Quit whining, you little ratbag, and on yer feet,” snapped Dronzen.

Ajan hurriedly did as he was told. He gazed nervously at all the faces looming over him. “Look, I can explain,” he began, but Dronzen cut him off.

“What’s to explain? That you sold us out? That you betrayed the rest of us in return for a cushy little number up there with your new queen? How you’ve come here all these times and taken so many of us to be killed for her amusement? Is that what you can explain, because if so, I am all ears, Ajan.” Dronzen’s grip tightened on his rifle. “And I’m desperately looking for an excuse not to shoot you where you stand.”

“Wait, no, don’t!” Ajan pleaded. “I can help you! You want to escape? I can help! I know the security codes for the docking bays. You want off here, don’t you? Off this planet? Then you n-need me!”

Dronzen’s jaw clenched. He pressed the butt of his rifle against his shoulder, the sights fixed on the narrow spot between Ajan’s eyes.

“He’s right,” said Cal. “If he’s got the codes, we could use him.”

“He’s a sneaky little mongrel. We can’t trust him,” Dronzen said, squinting along the barrel of the rifle.

“Miz will keep an eye on him. He won’t dare do anything.”

Dronzen grimaced. “Dozens are dead because of him. I want to shoot him.”

“I know you do,” said Cal. “I mean, I’ve only known the guy a few hours and I want to shoot him, too. But hey, how about this? Instead of shooting him, you kick him in the nuts.”

“W-what?” stammered Ajan.

“Just a God-almighty kick in the balls,” said Cal. “A proper toe-punt, square in the danglies.”

Ajan whimpered. “Now hang on…”

Dronzen considered this for a moment, then lowered his gun. “No. I’m not going to do that. I’m not going to shoot him, either. Not yet. He’ll pay for what he’s done, but not like this.”

“Thanks, Dronzen!” Ajan said. “You won’t regret this! We’re going to make a great team again, you mark my—Oof!”

A hairy foot fired up between Ajan’s legs from behind. The force of the kick lifted him into the air, then he folded to the ground, clutching his groin and whimpering.

“What?” said Miz, when everyone else turned to look at her. “If no-one else was going to do it…”

* * *

A few minutes later, Cal, Loren, Mizette and Ajan stood – or, in Ajan’s case, lay – on one of the platforms, with Mech and Dronzen looking up at them.

“So, according to Ajan everyone’s gathering at the big pit, ready to watch us fighting or whatever,” said Cal. “So we’ll sneak up to Vajazzle’s ship, poke around a bit, then signal for you guys over the radio if the coast is clear.”

“You sure we can get everyone else on the other platforms?” Loren asked.

“It’ll be tight,” Dronzen admitted. “But we’ll manage.”

Mech stooped and studied a series of ports on the loading platform’s front end. “I think I can interface with these things. Maybe give them a speed boost.”

“Interface?” said Cal. “Do you mean have sex with them?”

“What? No, shizznod!” Mech barked.

“OK, just checking,” Cal smirked. “I mean, each to their own, but now probably isn’t the right time.”

“Shut up, man. And get going before they start getting suspicious and send more folks out here to investigate.”

“Good point, well made,” said Cal. “Make sure everyone’s ready to fight, and wait for the signal.”

“Good luck,” said Dronzen.

Cal tapped his forehead in salute, then Mech and Dronzen heaved on the ropes that opened the outer door, and Loren steered the platform outside, crashing into the gates just twice.

“Don’t say anything!” she warned.

“What?” said Miz, feigning innocence. “I wasn’t going to say a thing.”

After what should have been a three-point turn, but which instead took well over a dozen movements to complete, Loren aimed the platform towards the enormous hulk of the AX11 and sent it gliding across the sand.

“What’s with all those metal boxes?” Miz asked, as they whizzed by a few feet from one.

“They’ve got wasps in them,” Cal said, gazing ahead at Vajazzle’s ship. “Triggered by pressure pads beneath the sand, Mech thinks.”

“Ew. Is that what happened to that guy?” said Miz, as the platform passed the lumpy, misshapen remains of what had once been a man.

“Apparently so,” said Cal. He looked back over his shoulder at Ajan, who was still lying curled up on the floor, clutching his now comparatively balloon-like testicles. “Hey, Ajan. What’s the best way for us to get inside that thing?”

“Uh, everyone will be at the pit, so I’d g-go wide to the left,” he wheezed. “There’s a lot of damage to the lower decks there. You can get in that way.”

“How are we going to find Splurt?” Loren asked, raising her voice to be heard over the whistling wind and the low hum of the platform.

Cal considered telling them. He really did. He came very close to it, in fact, but whether it was because he didn’t want the others knowing what Splurt had become, or because he wasn’t ready to face the truth yet himself, he didn’t.

“We’ll find him,” he said, and he left it at that.

The closer they got to the ship, the more ridiculously huge it looked. It was practically the size of a city, several miles wide and with upper decks that stretched into the clouds like skyscrapers. There had been thousands of crew aboard – tens of thousands, maybe. And now there were what? Fifty or sixty on each side? Two hundred at most. Even though they were the bad guys, it still felt like a bit of a waste.

As they drew closer to the pits, Miz’s ears pricked up. “There’s a lot of people gathering over that way,” she said, pointing off to her right.

“Well, Ajan, looks like you were telling the truth,” said Cal. “I knew you could be a team player if you wanted to be. Good for you!”

Loren steered the platform to the left. Cal held his breath as she came within a foot of bumping against one of the boxes, but she slowed down until they were safely past, then twisted the throttle grip and sped them up again.

From a distance, the ship had looked in pretty good shape. Half-buried in the sand, obviously, but otherwise not bad. From this angle, though, the damage was obvious. Entire decks had been compacted into the ground, collapsing like a concertina beneath the ship’s immense weight. There was one enormous hole that stretched over several floors, the edges scorched and blackened like the rooms and corridors beyond.

It looked dead, Cal thought. Like a once-noble elephant now reduced to an undignified heap of nothing by a hunter’s rifle. Only, you know, a spaceship.

“Looks like we can get in through there,” said Loren. “Hard to tell from here, but that looks like one of the lower science decks.”

Cal shot Ajan a questioning look. He nodded.

“Which means… wow. It lost a lot of decks when it crashed,” said Loren. Even over the wind and engine drone, Cal heard her gasp. “The prison decks were below science. Splurt would’ve been on one of those.”

“He wasn’t,” said Cal.

He felt Loren’s frown without looking. “How do you know?”

“I just… I just know,” he said. “Splurt’s alive. I can feel it.”

“I hope you’re right,” said Loren, steering the platform towards a burned-out gap in the wall.

Mizette’s ears twitched again as they drew closer. Tilting her head, she sniffed the air.

“What is it?” asked Cal.

“Trouble,” said Miz. “They’re waiting. They’re waiting in there.”

Cal frowned, then he spun on the spot and made a dive for Ajan. The little man was clutching something to his chest, and Cal had to wrestle it from his fingers. He studied the little gadget, flipping it over in his hands. “What the Hell is this?”

“It’s a transmitter,” Loren said, twisting the throttle in the opposite direction and sending the platform into reverse. “A radio. He’s been broadcasting our conversation the whole way over here.”

Cal raised a fist. “You sneaky little--”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” Ajan squealed, holding up his hands in protest. “I didn’t mean to. It was an accident!”

Grabbing him by the front of his faded uniform, Cal hoisted the squirming Ajan into the air. “You want to see an accident? Here’s one. You’re about to accidentally fall off this thing and be stung to death by angry wasps.”

Cal was just about to toss the traitor overboard when a shimmer of purple light lit-up the deck, and a familiar figure in a hooded robe teleported in. “Let him go,” Vajazzle instructed.

“Oh, yes, yes, yes!” Ajan hissed. “Thank you, m’lady. Thank you.” His little face turned from an expression of gratitude to one of rage. “You heard her. Let me go, you worthless piece of--”

Cal let him go. Ajan screamed as he plunged over the side and bounced on the ground. Immediately, shapes slithered beneath the sand.

“N--!” Ajan cried, but that was as far as he got before an enormous plant-like head erupted from beneath the dirt and devoured him in one snapping bite.

As it exploded upwards, the creature slammed into the platform, rocking it. Cal used the momentum to hurl himself at Vajazzle, shoulder lowered, teeth clenched.

“Get her!” he barked, then his muscles tightened and pain buzzed through his skeleton as Vajazzle hit him with the end of a shock-stick. He flopped to the deck, convulsing, and barely registered when Loren did the same.

Miz, meanwhile, was ensnared in a tangle of tentacles that had crawled from beneath Vajazzle’s robe. She struggled against their grip, trying to slash at them with her claws, but her arms were pinned and her mouth was clamped shut and she could do nothing but snarl and hiss.

The assassin’s shadow fell over Cal. He strained to look up, but his body didn’t appear to be paying his brain any attention whatsoever.

“In case it isn’t patently obvious by now, Mr Carver,” Vajazzle told him. Another of her tentacles crept from beneath her robe and stroked his cheek. “I’ve been expecting you.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Of the three pits Cal had been tossed into over the past twenty-four hours, the one he had been tossed into most recently was by far the most impressive. It was deeper than the others – four times his height, maybe – with glassy smooth sides that were practically vertical.

The ground was made of a hard ash-gray rock, while the metal hatch set into the hole’s one continuous wall was much larger and more ominous than the others had been. He didn’t think there were any animals back on Earth that wouldn’t be able to fit through that hatchway, although this was largely because he had always refused to accept the fact that whales weren’t fish.

Unlike the other pits, where spectators stood around and peered over the sides, raked seating had been custom-built all the way around the hole. Eighty or so people in Zertex uniforms watched from their seats, while a couple of dozen Grimmash grimaced down from a standing-room-only area at the front.

Behind the Grimmash was a grand, imposing chair with a high back, thick arm rests, and luxurious padding. It was a chair fit for a king. Or, in this case, a self-made queen.

“I blame you,” announced Vajazzle, standing in front of the chair, her robotic eye burning beneath her shadowy hood.

Cal glanced at Loren and Mizette. They both shrugged. “For what?” Cal asked.

“For this. For all this. For everything,” Vajazzle replied. “If it weren’t for you, we would never have been following the route we were on. We would never have warped into the vortex. We would never have been stranded here.”

“Yeah, but you’re not stuck here, are you?” said Cal. “You’ve got ships. You can leave any time you want.”

Vajazzle nodded slowly, then raised her eyes to the vortex. It sat like a scab on the purple-blue sky. “Do you know what’s through there, Mr Carver?”

“Home,” said Cal. “Well, maybe not home, exactly, but our galaxy, at least.”

“No, that’s what you think,” said Vajazzle. “You assume it leads back to where we came from. That’s a guess. I asked if you knew.”

Cal looked at the vortex and frowned. “Well, I mean, it’s a door, right? Doors go both ways.”

Vajazzle lowered herself into her seat. “Is it? You know that, do you? How do you know it isn’t one way? How do you know we wouldn’t be vaporized by it? Or that we wouldn’t come out somewhere truly terrible?”

“This place is pretty terrible,” Cal pointed out.

“It sustains life,” replied Vajazzle. “Next time, we may not be so lucky.”

A murmur of agreement went around the audience.

“You know what I think?” said Cal. “I think you want to stay here. I think you get a kick out of being emperor or queen or whatever you’re pretending to be. You’ve got no reason to think that hole up there doesn’t just take you right back to where you left. Back to these people’s homes. Their friends. Their families.”

“Perhaps. But I think friends and family are overrated,” said Vajazzle. There was a clanking from the hatch as something heavy approached the door. “Don’t you agree, Mr Carver?”

It was the inflection in her voice that told Cal what was coming next. That smug, superior-sounding edge to her words. Cal’s heart dropped in time with the hatch. He heard Loren gasp in shock at the sight of the hulking dinosaur-like creature that stomped through, each footstep trembling the ground.

“Oh no,” Cal whispered. “No, no, no.”

“Leave this thing to me,” Miz growled, launching herself at the monster Cal knew was Splurt.

“Miz, no!” Cal yelped, then he grimaced as a crunching backhand fist struck her across the jaw, smashing her against the wall. She dropped to the ground, tried to get up, then collapsed as her legs gave way beneath her.

Something swished past Cal’s ear. He and Loren both turned to find a spear sticking out of the ground behind them, the wooden shaft still vibrating from the impact.

“Perhaps that will help balance things up,” Vajazzle said.

Loren wrenched the spear from the ground and spun on the spot, forcing Cal to duck out of the weapon’s path. “Wait, Loren, don’t!” Cal protested, but it was too late. She made a lunge for the dino-Splurt, stabbing with the spear’s sharpened point.

Splurt grabbed for the weapon, but Loren was too fast. She yanked it back then drove it into the monster’s side, jamming the tip beneath one of the armored plates that covered his back.

But the dino-thing either didn’t notice, or didn’t care. He turned and the spear was yanked from Loren’s grasp. She made a lunge to grab it again, but Splurt carried on turning, his tail sweeping across the ground.

Loren jumped just in time to avoid the tail, but a fist clubbed her in the ribs, doubling her over. She landed awkwardly, her lungs rapidly filling with fire. Staggering, she grabbed for Cal, who caught her before she could hit the ground.

Through all this, the crowd above had cheered and clapped and stamped their feet, loving every minute. Only Vajazzle looked less than enthused by it.

“Don’t finish them too quickly. Take your time. Make them suffer,” she instructed. She jabbed a withered finger at Cal. “Him especially.”

Instinctively, Cal reached for a witty response – that perfect arrangement of words that would both mask his growing sense of terror and get right on Vajazzle’s nerves. He couldn’t find it, though. The words weren’t there.

“We have to kill that thing,” Loren wheezed.

“No, we can’t,” said Cal.

“There must be a way!” Loren insisted, unwrapping her arm from around Cal’s shoulder and taking her weight on her own two feet. “You go high, I’ll go low. Maybe if we both attack at the same time we can take him down.”

“No, that’s not what I mean!” Cal said. “We can’t kill him, because that’s--!”

“RAAAAAAAAAR!”

Mizette flew at the dino-thing, claws and teeth both bared. She slashed wildly. Once, twice, again, again, cutting grooves in its leathery-hide. Surprised, the monster stumbled and Loren raced to join the fight. Diving into a roll, she grabbed the shaft of the spear, twisting it deeper beneath the armor plating.

“Stop! Guys, leave him alone!” Cal shouted. “It’s Splurt!”

Miz and Loren both hesitated, just for a moment. It was long enough. Splurt lashed out, driving a granite-like fist into the side of Mizette’s head. As she fell, he turned, cracking Loren across the jaw with an open backhand slap that stung Cal’s skin from several feet away.

Cal stepped into the monster’s path, his hands raised in front of him. “Splurt. Buddy. You have to stop this,” he implored. “I don’t know what she’s done, but this isn’t you. This isn’t my little pal.”

Splurt’s dino-muzzle pulled up into a silent snarl, revealing some ludicrously large teeth. Cal flinched, fighting the urge to burst into tears and run away.

“Come back to me, buddy. You belong with us.”

An expectant hush had fallen over the crowd now. Loren and Miz were both back on their feet, but both were dazed, bloodied, and keeping their distance.

“Well, this is boring,” Vajazzle announced, and a ripple of laughter went through the crowd. “Kill them.”

At once, Splurt reared up to his full terrifying height. His hulking fists clenched and his yellow eyes blazed with fury. Cal thought about standing his ground, but to do so would be suicide. He jumped back just as Splurt brought both fists swinging down, missing Cal by inches.

The ground rumbled beneath them. At first, Cal thought it was another earthquake, but then part of the stadium seating exploded, spilling screaming Zertex troops into the pit.

Vajazzle was on her feet, leaping to safety just as a crackling bolt of energy detonated her throne. Hissing with rage, she vanished in a flash of purple sparkles, as a rain of spears fell across the seats around her.

Chaos spread through the crowd like head lice through a kindergarten. Some of the less panicky Zertex troops drew blasters and returned fire, but most of them ran for cover as another barrage of laser beams punched holes in the arena.

The metal hatch slammed closed. Cal turned away from the top of the pit and saw that Splurt and the Zertex men were gone. Miz and Loren were leaning on each other, each one holding the other up. “What’s happening?” Loren coughed, grimacing as pain poked at her ruined ribs. “Mech?”

“Got to be,” said Cal. He cupped his hands around his mouth. “Mech! Down here!”

Another part of the stadium exploded, showering Cal in fragments of stone and wood. He blinked through the dust cloud until he could make out a broad-chested figure standing at the edge of the pit.

“So much for sending a signal,” Mech grunted.

“We got a little distracted,” Cal said. A group of Grimmash raced behind Mech, chasing down two fleeing Zertex grunts. “Think maybe you could give us a hand up?”

“One minute,” said Mech. He clanked away. Cal heard blaster fire, then screams, then more clanking.

“How could that be Splurt?” Loren demanded. “And why didn’t you tell us?”

“I was going to,” said Cal.

Miz snorted. It hurt, but she didn’t let on.

“No, I was. I wanted to,” Cal insisted. “It’s just… I don’t know. I didn’t want to believe it myself.”

A coil of rope hit him on the head, braining him. “Ow!”

“Look out!” Mech called.

“Thanks for the fonking warning,” Cal hissed, rubbing his head. He looked up to see Mech standing at the edge of the pit, the other end of the rope wrapped around his outstretched arm. Cal gave the rope a couple of sharp tugs, then stepped aside and gestured for Loren and Miz to go first. “Can you make it? Can you climb?”

Loren nodded, just once. She brushed frostily past Cal, took hold of the rope, and began to climb using just her arms. Halfway to the top, the pain became too much and she was forced to use her legs for the rest of the climb.

Miz went next, scrambling up the rope in a matter of seconds, then springing off onto solid ground. If she was hurt – and she had to be – she wasn’t about to show it.

Cal grabbed the rope and began to heave himself up. It was trickier than it looked, and he spent the first few seconds just dangling from both hands and twirling gently. He stretched out a leg, trying to get a foot on the wall.

After a few more seconds of this, he managed to get a foothold. “Bingo!”

His foot slipped off again.

“Could you maybe just pull me up?” Cal asked. “It’s been a rough couple of days.”

Mech retreated from the pit edge, and Cal thudded against the wall. He clung on tightly as his bare back and one shoulder were dragged slowly up the wall, then he rolled onto solid ground again, still holding tightly to the line.

After enjoying a few moments of not being dragged up a wall, Cal got to his feet. Huge chunks of the stadium seating area were now just smoldering ruins. Running battles were taking place between groups of Zertex and Grimmash, but Cal couldn’t really figure out who was on whose side, or who he should be cheering for.

“Thanks for the rescue,” Cal said.

“Any time,” Mech grunted.

“Look out!” Miz warned, just as a series of explosions blasted what was left of the stadium to pieces. She and the others – even Mech – covered their heads and ducked as the debris hurtled past them.

“Jesus, did our guys do that?” asked Cal. “Where did they get the firepower?”

“Uh-uh. Not us,” said Mech. “Them.”

Cal and the others followed Mech’s finger. Cal’s jaw flopped open. “What the fonk are those?”

Three low, squat tank-like vehicles emerged from a hole in the front of Vajazzle’s downed ship. They plodded along on four legs, cannon-fire screaming from a roof-mounted gun.

The ground erupted a few hundred feet away, filling the air with rock, sand and bits of burning Grimmash.

“Thunderfoots,” said Loren. “Those are Thunderfoots.”

Cal frowned. “Thunderfeet, surely?”

“Call everyone back,” Loren told Mech. “Hurry, if they’ve got access to the Thunderfoots—”

“Thunderfeet.”

“Then they’ll also have access to…”

Three flying vehicles, each one about half the size of a family car, buzzed through the gap in the ship’s hull. A circle of blue light on their bases seemed to be keeping them aloft, while a worrying number of guns on each one swiveled in search of something to target.

“Oh shizz,” Loren croaked, her blue-tinged skin turning almost all the way white. “Get everyone back. Now!”

Too late. The drone ships erupted into spinning wheels of death, laser bolts spraying from them like sparks from a Catherine Wheel. All around them, Zertex and Grimmash alike fell, their bodies smoking, smoldering, and far less intact than they had been just a moment before.

“Pull back!” Mech bellowed, amplifying his voice through his in-built PA system. “Everyone back to the platforms. Retreat!”

Across the battlefield, a handful of Zertex troops scrambled back towards the stolen loading platforms. Dronzen urged them on, raining covering fire at one of the Thunderfoots to keep it distracted.

Mech repeated the message in Grimmish, but the tribespeople ignored him. They were too invested in the battle to stop now. They hacked and stabbed and slashed at anyone they didn’t recognize, howling and screeching with banshee-like glee.

The Thunderfoot returned Dronzen’s fire, erupting the ground into a wall of rocks and dirt. He stumbled on, legs pumping like pistons, racing to get clear of the debris.

“Run, Dronzen!” Cal shouted, as if Dronzen couldn’t have figured that one out for himself.

The cloud of dirt rolled up behind him. They all saw the panic flash across Dronzen’s face, and then he was gone, swallowed by the sand fog.

And then he was out again, powering on like a champ, coughing and spluttering as he zig-zagged to safety.

“Come on,” Mech urged, hurrying as fast as his metal body could manage towards the waiting platforms. They both stood side by side, turned and ready for a quick getaway. One of the platforms was empty, while Tullok sat in his wheelchair on the other, watching the battle with wide eyes and tightly-drawn lips.

Cal and the others all leaped, vaulted or clambered awkwardly onto Tullok’s platform, with a handful of the Zertex troops jumping aboard right behind them. “I’ll take this one,” Dronzen shouted, making a run for the other platform.

It ignited in a fireball as a blast from a Thunderfoot struck it. The heat hit Dronzen like a shockwave, launching him backwards off his feet. Cal and Loren both grimaced as the heat blasted them, too. Even Miz gritted her teeth, then hurriedly patted down a patch of fur that began to smoke. Tullok, who had been shielded by Mech, didn’t seem to notice the explosion. He just watched in grim silence as the Grimmash were blasted to pieces by laser fire.

“On second thoughts, get on this one,” said Cal, beckoning for Dronzen to join them.

There were seventeen of them on the platform, with Dronzen making eighteen. “Anyone else coming?” Loren asked, scanning the battlefield. The fighting had died away to an eerie not-quite-silence. Bodies and body parts littered the ground as far as the eye could see.

“Nashko. Naskho parrap,” Tullok whispered.

“What did he say?” asked Cal.

“He says there ain’t no-one else coming,” said Mech.

“Uh, except those things,” said Miz, pointing to where the flying drones were banking towards them.

Loren jumped on the controls and twisted the throttle. The platform rocketed forwards, knocking over Cal, Dronzen and all the Zertex crew like skittles. Cal thudded against the metal floor, then looked up to see that Miz had caught Dronzen before he could fall all the way.

“Hey! Thanks for the save,” Cal said, picking himself up. “And yes, that was sarcasm.”

“What? He was closer,” Miz said. “Besides, I want to hear him thank me in that accent.”

Dronzen blinked a few times in surprise. “Um. Yeah. Thanks, mate.”

“No problem,” Miz purred, her tongue flicking hungrily across her lips. “I’ll be your mate any time you like.”

“Coming up fast!” Loren barked.

Sure enough, all three drones were closing in from behind, their weapons squirming around, trying to lock on. Mech raised an arm and unleashed a volley of laser fire, but the blasts ricocheted harmlessly off the drone’s gun-metal gray hull.

“They’re shielded,” Loren and Dronzen both said at the same time.

“Jinx!” announced Cal, but everyone ignored him.

“Blasters won’t take them down,” Loren continued. “Least, not with the firepower we’ve got.”

One of the lead drone’s guns locked on. It spat concentrated bolts of fire at them, and Loren was forced to jam the rudder hard left, sending the platform skidding sideways above the sand.

Everyone who had fallen over last time fell over again. Miz grabbed Dronzen. Cal hit the deck.

“Back for more, huh?” said Miz, gazing hungrily into Dronzen’s eyes.

“Not now, Miz!” Cal grunted, jumping back to his feet. “And it’d be nice if someone would catch me for once!”

“Go right!” Mech warned, as another screech of laser fire peppered the ground behind them. This time, Cal was ready. He gripped the railing and held on tightly as the platform’s front end weaved right, throwing the back end out behind it.

The edge of the platform skimmed past one of the wasp boxes, and Cal held his breath waiting to see if the insects were about to come swarming after them. Dying from a thousand stings to the head and torso, he figured, would really round the last few hours off nicely.

“I can’t shake them off!” Loren cried.

“I thought you could make this thing go faster?” Cal yelled at Mech.

“I did. It is going faster!”

“Well it’s not going fast enough. Look out!”

Loren weaved again. Something large and important looking was obliterated by the drone’s blaster-fire and the platform shuddered noisily.

“What do we do? What do we do?” whimpered one of the Zertex crew.

“Uh… any ideas? Anyone?” asked Cal.

Unnoticed by anyone, Tullok unclipped a pouch on his belt, and withdrew five small white stones. Each one had been carved and whittled until it was almost perfectly spherical. Tullok weighed all five in his hands, then slipped two back into the pouch.

With a flick of his wrist, he tossed the first pebble so it landed just a few feet in front of the closest drone. The sand churned and writhed, then one of the huge plant-like creatures was vomited up from below the surface, its jaws opening hungrily.

Snap! Its teeth clamped around the drone. Cal and the others watched in a mixture of shock and delight as the plant-thing dragged its prey below the sand.

“Whoa!” Cal whispered. “That was awesome!”

Tullok smiled grimly. Balancing the remaining two marbles on the palm of his hand, he flicked them both, one at a time. They hit the sand. The sand mushroomed upwards. Two monstrous things devoured the drones, then vanished once more beneath the sand.

“Did we get them? Are they gone?” Cal asked, scanning the ground for any sign of the drones re-emerging.

“Seems like it,” said Mech.

Dronzen also peered over the edge, studying the sand. Once he was sure nothing was coming back, he turned to Tullok. “Thanks,” he said. “That was pretty amazing stuff.”

Tullok raised his eyes, just for a moment. “Tosha.”

“He says, ‘you’re welcome.’” Mech translated.

Cal and the rest of the crew looked back in the direction of Vajazzle’s ship. Smoke billowed from the battlefield. The enormous Thunderfoots stomped around, patrolling the area, searching for trouble. A few Zertex troops – on Vajazzle’s side, Cal guessed – prodded at piles of debris, searching for survivors, prisoners, or both.

“Well, in hindsight, that was not a great plan,” said Cal. “I mean, literally nothing went right, really, did it?”

“How long did you know about Splurt?” Loren demanded.

“Splurt? What about him?” asked Mech.

“Tell him,” said Miz.

Cal sighed. “He’s… I don’t know. Vajazzle brainwashed him. She tortured and brainwashed him. And then turned him into a big dinosaur-man. Not necessarily in that order.”

“And now he doesn’t remember us,” said Loren.

“He does remember us!” Cal insisted. “He’s just… confused, that’s all. I can get through to him. I know I can.”

“He tried to kill you,” Loren pointed out. “He tried to kill all of us.”

“I totally had the situation under control,” said Miz.

Loren shot her a sideways look. “Was that sarcasm, or…?”

“Uh, sorry to butt in,” said Dronzen. “It’s just, now that we’ve escaped, what’s our plan? Where are we actually going?”

Cal and the others stopped arguing and peered ahead of them across the dry, barren terrain.

No-one said anything, but Cal broke the silence by making a series of irritating clicking sounds with his tongue. Mech was about to punch him in the head, when Cal finally spoke.

“That,” he said, “is a fonking good question.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

It took almost three hours to get back to the Shatner. Or what was left of it, at least.

They rode the trolley around in a wide semi-circle, keeping as far from Vajazzle’s ship as possible, until they hit the edge of the forest. From there, they walked in single file, with Mech leading the way, and Tullok perched on one of his shoulders.

Everyone else, on Cal’s insistence, watched for squirrels.

Cal had been partly hoping that the ship might be fixed, somehow. That they might realize the damage wasn’t as bad as it had first looked, and that it was nothing a few dozen screws and a bit of elbow-grease couldn’t fix.

But no. The Shatner wasn’t simply beyond repair, it was beyond recognition. It looked less like a spaceship, and more like a terrorist attack on a junk yard.

“Wow,” was all Cal could say at first. He picked across the blackened scrap until he found something he recognized. It was a bench. No, not just a bench. The bench. A bench so important they’d named an entire room on the ship after it. He tried to stand it up, but it only had two legs, and it immediately toppled over again.

He tried again. Four times. The result was always the same.

“OK, so what’s the bright idea?” asked Loren. “Why did you bring us back here?”

Cal watched the bench fall over for the last time, then clambered up a mound of warped metal and buckled flooring. Kicking through a tangle of wiring, he dug around in the wreckage, searching for something.

“Where is it? Where is it?” he whispered.

“Where’s what?” asked Miz, who was the only one to have heard him.

“The case. The one I got from the Scriver ship,” Cal said. “The one that makes the portal thing.”

Mech tapped some controls on his arm. “Over there,” he said, pointing to a dented metal rectangle half-hidden beneath a snake of flexible piping. Cal hurried towards it, then stopped when Mech spoke again. “And over there. And there are a few pieces over there. Must’ve got torn apart on impact.”

“But we can fix it,” said Cal. “Right? We can fix it, jump through, and see where it leads.”

Mech shook his head and carefully set Tullok down on one of the smoother bits of wreckage. “It’s broken, man. It’s no good. Let it go. Besides, didn’t it lead to some freaky shizzhole filled with, I don’t know, giants or whatever?”

Cal sighed and slumped down onto the mound of ship bits. He slid down the side until he landed in a sullen heap at the bottom. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess,” he said. “Although, giants would be pretty awesome. You’ve got to admit. We could make grappling hooks out of paper clips and, like, live in a shoe.”

Mech shook his head. “There’s something wrong with you, man. I don’t know what it is, but there is definitely something wrong with you,” he muttered. “Also, you and me? We got a very different understanding of the word ‘awesome.’”

“So, now what do we do?” asked Miz.

Dronzen scanned the trees that stood on three sides around the crashed ship. Behind the wreckage, the furrow of its impact ran for a few hundred feet, then disappeared over the brow of a hill.

He pointed to a number of the Zertex crew, who had been making themselves busy by standing off to one side, looking awkward.

“You, you and you, search through the debris, see if we can salvage anything useful. Weapons, equipment, any kind of supplies.”

The three crewmen and one woman – who was either of extra-terrestrial origin or had a debilitating skin complaint – all nodded and set to work.

“I already checked,” said Mech.

“Won’t hurt to check again,” said Dronzen. He pointed to the remaining nine Zertex crew members. “The rest of you, fan out, check the perimeter. We need to know none of them buggers have followed us. We need to make sure this place is secure.”

The fur on the back of Mizette’s neck stood on end. “Ooh, I love how you just took charge like that.”

Cal stood up. “Oh yeah? Watch this,” he said. He cupped a hand to his mouth and called after the nine Zertex crew as they set off for the woods. “And keep your eyes open for space squirrels. That’s an order.”

No-one acknowledged him. He did his best to smile, all the same. “They probably just didn’t hear me.”

Loren let out a hiss and clutched her side. She lowered herself onto what had once been part of the Shatner’s bulkhead and screwed her eyes shut.

“You’re hurt,” said Dronzen, kneeling at her side.

“I was just going to say that,” said Cal, squeezing himself in between them and forcing Dronzen to shuffle aside. He looked at the hand that clutched her side. “What is it? Headache?”

Loren opened one eye to glare at him.

“Heh. Just kidding,” he said. “Can I take a look?”

After a moment’s consideration, Loren sighed and moved her hand away. “Fine. But be careful.”

“You won’t even know I’m here,” said Cal. He carefully took hold of the bottom hem of her vest top and lifted it to reveal the lower half of a violently-colored bruise. “Ooh. Jesus! Oh, that’s… that’s horrible. Seriously, that’s disgusting. That’s the worst thing I ever saw. You’ve definitely been hurt.”

“I know I’ve been hurt!” Loren snapped. “I’m painfully aware of that fact!”

“Dromma ska,” said Tullok. “Patooro ama mansko ska.”

“What’s he saying?” asked Dronzen.

“He’s saying to let him take a look at her,” Mech translated.

“Homuro tatoon manoin beh.”

“Now what’s he saying?” asked Cal, jumping in before Dronzen could say it.

“He’s saying… Wait, I have an idea,” said Mech.

Cal frowned. “OK. What’s his idea?”

“No, I have an idea,” Mech replied. He tapped a few controls on his arm.

Pain exploded like speaker-system feedback inside Cal’s head. Loren, Miz, Dronzen and the Zertex crew members all clamped their hands to their ears and hissed, groaned or flat-out screamed.

“Whoops, sorry, my fault,” said Mech, although no-one heard him over the din inside their heads.

He tapped some more controls and the feedback loop stopped. “There. That’s better.”

“What the fonk did you do that for?” Cal panted. “You nearly blew my head off.”

“Let me look at woman. Please. I help.”

Cal blinked, trying to ignore the ringing in his brain enough to concentrate on what he’d just heard. He turned to Tullok.

“I help,” the old man said. “Yes?”

“Hey, I can understand him!” said Cal. “Can everyone else understand him?”

Mech nodded. “I patched everything I got on his language through your translator chips. It ain’t perfect, but it’ll do the job.”

Cal took one of Tullok’s hands and shook it, smiling at him. The old man smiled back. “Tullok, I just want to say a huge ‘thank you’ for helping fix me up earlier. Seriously, I…”

“He don’t understand you, shizznod,” Mech pointed out.

“Oh. Well can’t you patch his chip with our languages?”

“He hasn’t got a chip,” Dronzen pointed out.

“Oh,” said Cal again. “I mean, yeah. Obviously. I knew that.”

He gave Tullok a thumbs up, then backed away. The old man beckoned Loren closer. Gritting her teeth, she slid across the debris until she was within his reach. Tullok smiled gummily at her.

“This will take pain away,” he told her, then he clamped his long crooked fingers around her forearm.

Loren stiffened. A groan – but a good one that made any number of inappropriate thoughts whirl around in Cal’s head – burst from her lips and a shudder passed through her.

She seemed to fill up, as if she’d been partially deflated and was being restored to her former glory. At the same time, Tullok seemed to shrink. His skin became paler, more gray. His breath came in deep rasps, and…

“Look at his legs. What’s happening to his legs?” said Miz.

All eyes went to Tullok’s stumps. Half an inch or so of the flesh and bone of each one was crumbling to ash, burning up like the end of a cigarette.

“Stop. That’s enough,” Loren urged, trying to pull her arm free. The old man’s grip held firm. Another few layers of skin and sinew wafted off on the breeze, then he unclamped his hand from Loren’s arm.

“Better?” Tullok coughed, gesturing to Loren’s side. She lifted her vest top to reveal the bruise had gone.

“Yeah. I feel… I feel great, actually,” said Loren. “But your legs.”

Mech translated, and Tullok flashed a beaming smile in return.

“I am old. You are not. It is fair trade, I think.”

He sagged back against a piece of the hull, his sunken chest heaving in and out.

“Thank you,” said Loren, taking his hand and squeezing it. He nodded at her, but didn’t speak.

A clatter from behind Cal made him spin, fists raised. “Waargh!”

The three Zertex troops Dronzen had sent to pick through the wreckage set a couple of trays fashioned from bits of ship down in front of the others. “This is all we found,” the woman with the skin-complaint announced.

It was meager pickings. Highlights of the salvage included three blasters, a few tools and the neck of Cal’s guitar, which they’d only picked up because none of them knew what it was. Cal snatched it up and hugged it to his cheek.

“Oh, my poor baby. Look at you,” he whispered, stifling a sob.

“Will it still play?” asked Mizette.

Cal looked at the broken slat of wood. All the strings had snapped off, and three of the metal bits at the end he always thought of as ‘the turny things’ had been sheared in half.

“Probably not,” he admitted, then he tutted when Mech, Loren and Miz all collectively sighed with relief.

He gently kissed the fretboard, then tossed the broken neck piece over his shoulder. His eyes fell on something poking up through a spaghetti of wires. “Hey, look!” he chirped, scrabbling across the debris and taking hold of a piece of purple fabric. With a series of heaves and some angry muttering, he pulled the garment free. “It’s one of my shirts.”

Twirling it over his shoulders, he pulled the shirt on. “How do I look?”

“Like you just pulled your shirt out of a crash site,” said Miz, her nose wrinkling in disgust.

Cal looked down at the garment as he buttoned it up. Sure, it was spattered in oil, burned in places, and there was a big hole torn in the back, but it was still a pretty nice shirt. If you ignored the creasing. And the food stains. And the smell.

“What should we do now?” asked the Zertex woman.

Cal puffed out his cheeks. “Well... Good question. What should you do now? I’ve got a few ideas.”

The woman shifted an awkward look in Cal’s direction. “Uh. Sorry. I was asking him.” She pointed at Dronzen.

“Yeah. I mean, yeah. Of course. Makes sense, you being, you know, all Zertex together and everything,” said Cal. “It’s just, FYI, I’m pretty much in charge. Overall, I mean. Sure, Dronzen can be in charge of you, that’s fine. Just that I’m sort of the main one in charge. Overall.”

“Oh. Right. Sorry, I didn’t know,” said the woman. “So… what should we do?”

Cal’s smile remained fixed in place, but his eyes darted ever so slightly left and right, searching for an answer that refused to come.

“Uh… Dronzen? What do you think?” he asked.

Dronzen looked to the sky. “Be dark in a few hours,” he said. “We should probably eat.”

Cal’s smile widened. “Do you know something?” he said. “That is exactly what I was going to say.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

The campfire flickered and sputtered, spitting embers into the darkening evening air. Around it, Cal and most of the others munched on an assortment of things Tullok had insisted were fruit, but Cal wasn’t entirely convinced.

The thing he was eating had a prickly yellow outside, with a dry, husky flesh the color of tar. Fruit, as far he was concerned, should be either pleasingly sweet or refreshingly bitter. The leathery strips he was gnawing on now were neither of these things.

“Steak sauce,” he announced, mid-chew. “That’s what it tastes like. Steak sauce. But, like, waaay past its date.”

Still, it was better than squirrel by a large margin, so he didn’t complain too much.

“You know what I miss?” Cal asked.

“Earth?” guessed Loren.

“Everyone you ever knew who’re now all dead?” suggested Miz.

“Well, those, obviously, yeah,” said Cal. “Spit nibbles. Remember? Narp’s mom? They were amazing.”

They ate in silence a while longer. Miz sat next to Dronzen, alternating between being mesmerized by him and hypnotized by the elaborate dance of the fire. The Zertex people were grouped together, with Tullok sitting between Loren and Cal. Mech paced around the circle, keeping his sensors peeled for trouble.

It was Dronzen who asked the question on everyone’s lips. “So. What do we do?”

Cal had just taken another bite of his steak sauce fruit. He pointed to his mouth to indicate this, and made a show of chewing as fast as he could. Thankfully, this gave him an opportunity to think. His mind raced even faster than his mouth, plotting and strategizing as the fruit slowly turned to mush between his teeth.

With some difficulty, he swallowed what was left of it.

“I have no idea,” he admitted. “I thought it’d just be a case of us all piling up to the ship, having a bit of a fight, then storming inside, but we all saw how that worked out.”

He gestured around them at the forest. “I’d say we should just live here but, you know, fonking space squirrels.”

“This world is dying,” Tullok announced, taking everyone by surprise. The old man was staring into the fire, wringing his wrinkled hands together as he watched the dancing flames. “Since the great destroyer fell from the skies, the ground shakes. At first, not so much. Now, every day.”

“He’s right. The quakes have been getting more regular,” said Dronzen. “But I didn’t know they started when we crashed.”

Cal pointed up to where he knew the vortex would be. “And what about that thing? Is it connected? How long has it been there?”

Tullok followed Cal’s finger. He joined him in pointing to the swirly space hole.

“You wish to know of this? Always there. Always. Before my time. Before my people.”

“Hey, wait a minute,” said Cal. He stood up, scattering chunks of yellow husk onto the churned-up soil. “Always there. He’s right. It is always there.”

Loren followed his finger and saw the vortex. “Yeah. So?”

“So I mean it’s always there. In that exact spot,” said Cal.

“What’s it supposed to do? Go flying around?” asked Miz.

Cal sighed. “No, but I mean - and science isn’t my strong point, so I really hope I’m not the one being an idiot here – it’s evening now. It’ll be night soon. That means the planet’s turning, right? That’s how it works. But the vortex…”

“Stays in a fixed point in the sky,” said Mech. “Shizz. You’re right.”

“So?” said Miz. “What does that mean?”

Dronzen explained. “It means it’s following the planet’s rotation. It is, in fact, flying around, like you said.”

“Oh, so I was right?” said Miz. “Go me.”

“Which means it has to be connected. The vortex and this planet, I mean. They’re somehow linked,” said Loren.

“Exactly!” cried Cal. “And that means…?”

He grinned at everyone, waiting for someone to respond. “That means what?” asked Mech.

Cal deflated. “I thought one of you might know. It has to mean something, right?”

“I know what it means,” said Dronzen, capturing everyone’s undivided attention. “It means that if this planet really is dying, there’s a good chance that thing’s going to die, too.”

One of the Zertex crew piped up. “But if that closes, how can we get home?”

“We can’t,” said Cal. “But on the bright side, we’ll all be dead, so we won’t really mind.”

He sat down again, picked up the other half of his fruit, gazed into its black, dry innards, then tossed it over his shoulder. “So, looks like we’re back to Plan A,” he said. “Getting those ships, grabbing Splurt, and getting out of here before it’s too late.”

“Splurt?” said Loren. “You’re not serious.”

Cal looked up at her. “Of course I’m serious. Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Uh, maybe because he tried to kill us,” said Miz. “Maybe you didn’t notice, but Splurt isn’t on our side anymore.”

“He’s part of the crew,” Cal insisted. “We’re not leaving him behind.”

“What are you talking about?” Loren spat. “He was part of the crew, but that was several years ago, as far as he’s concerned. You saw him. He didn’t even remember us.”

Cal jumped up. “She tortured him, Loren. He pretended to be me, and so she tortured him. Every day. And he kept pretending. He kept trying to cover for me. For six. Whole. Months.”

Silence fell over the clearing, broken only by the crackle of the campfire. Cal looked at the faces around the fire. Hardly any of them met his gaze. “So if we leave, Splurt leaves. That’s just how it is.”

He turned back to Loren to find her smiling sadly at him. “I’m sorry, but that thing’s not Splurt, Cal. Not anymore.”

* * *

Cal stood at the edge of the clearing, leaning against one of the fat, slug-like trees and gazing vaguely into the darkness that lurked beyond. Night was closing in fast, but despite how little he’d slept over the past few days, Cal was wide awake.

Another earthquake had rocked the forest a couple of hours previously, bringing down trees and churning up the ground. Afterwards, the woods had fallen into absolute silence for what felt like forever.

Gradually, the sounds of the forest had returned. Insects now chirruped in the undergrowth. Frogs – or something like them – croaked from the direction of the river. Something honked deeper in the trees. Cal pictured a cross between an owl and a goose, then spent the next few seconds wondering what it would taste like.

God, he was hungry.

Footsteps approached from behind. Cal waited until Loren spoke before turning.

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

“You OK?”

Cal shrugged. “Yeah. You?”

Loren nodded. “Fine. Feel great, actually. Whatever Tullok did… Yeah, I feel great.”

“Good stuff,” said Cal. “Glad to hear it.”

“Right. Yeah,” said Loren. She pointed with a thumb back towards the fire. “I was thinking of turning in. Mech’s going to keep watch. You should probably get some sleep.”

“I’m OK,” said Cal. “I’m not tired.”

“Right. Right,” said Loren. “Well, goodnight, then.”

She started to turn away, but stopped. “Look, I’m sorry. I know what Splurt meant to you, but… It’s just… I mean, you know what I mean, right?”

“Oh yeah. Of course,” said Cal. “You’re right. He’s not Splurt anymore. Not our Splurt, anyway. She broke him.” He turned to her and tried his best to switch on a smile. “He’s gone. I have to accept that.”

Loren nodded slowly. “I wish it were different.”

“Yeah. Me too,” said Cal, then he jumped when a shape lunged at them out of the shadows.

“Hey. What’s up?” asked Miz.

“Christ! My blood pressure, for one thing,” said Cal. “You nearly gave me a heart attack.”

“Oh,” said Miz. She shrugged. “Sorry. What you guys talking about?”

“Splurt,” said Loren.

“Right. Gotcha. So, anyway, I wanted to talk to you,” said Miz, fixing her deep brown eyes on Cal. “It’s about Dronzen.”

“I know what you’re going to say,” said Cal.

“You do?”

“Absolutely. And I agree. He’s getting a little too big for his boots,” Cal said. “He needs to remember who the captain is around here, am I right?”

Mizette shifted awkwardly. “Uh, well, actually I was going to say that – and don’t take this too hard – that I kinda like him,” she said. “You know, like like him. And I think maybe he likes me.”

“Like, like likes you?” Cal asked.

“Yeah. I think he does,” said Miz. She folded one arm across her midriff and chewed on the thumbnail of the opposite hand. “You don’t mind, do you?”

Cal raised his eyebrows. “Hmm?”

“Well, I mean, obviously we had a thing between us – and I totally still dig you in a big way, and everything – it’s just… I like him.”

“You like like him,” said Cal.

“Exactly,” said Miz. “Do you mind?”

Cal didn’t know if he minded or not. On the one hand, he wanted to run in circles and cheer that he was no longer the main focus of Mizette’s affection, but on the other hand… it had been quite nice, in a way.

In the end, he hugged her, almost choking in her fur. “Go get him, Sexy Chewbacca,” he whispered, then he grimaced as she squeezed him tightly in return.

“Thanks. It means a lot,” said Miz, releasing him and stepping away. She gestured to Loren. “Besides, now you two will be able to… whatever.”

“Us two?” Cal spluttered. “Ha! What? As if!”

“I’d rather cut my own hands off!” said Loren.

“Jesus,” said Cal. “That’s a bit harsh. I’m not that bad, am I?”

Loren blushed. “What? Well… duh. Yes,” she said, snorting out a half-laugh, then abruptly stopping.

Mizette looked at them both in turn, then shrugged. “You two are weird,” she said, before turning and loping off towards the camp.

Cal watched her go. “Think it’ll work out?”

“What, us?” Loren snorted again. “Ha! As if!”

“No, them,” said Cal.

Loren cleared her throat. “Yes. Of course. Uh, I don’t know. Maybe.”

Cal patted her on the shoulder. “Useful insight. Thanks.”

“I’m going to go get some sleep,” said Loren, walking away. “Try to get some rest.”

“I will. Oh, and Loren?”

Loren stopped and turned.

“Would you really chop your hands off?”

Loren’s silhouette hid her half-smile. She shrugged. “One of them, maybe.”

“Right or left?”

“Goodnight, Cal,” said Loren. She backed away a couple of paces, then turned and walked away. Cal kept watching her until she vanished behind the glow of the fire.

“Hey.”

Cal jumped again as another voice came at him through the darkness. A blinding flashlight shone in his face and he stumbled back, shielding his eyes.

“Ow! Jesus. Switch it off.”

“Sorry, man,” said Mech. The light faded to a dull glow, picking out Mech’s chest and face against the gloom. “You OK?”

“Yes. I’m fine,” said Cal. “Or I was until you blinded me. Why does everyone keep asking me that?”

“I heard what you said to Loren.”

“About which hand she’d cut off?” Cal asked.

“About Splurt,” said Mech. “About how you ain’t gonna try to get him.”

“Oh. Right. That,” said Cal.

“Ain’t true, though, is it?” Mech said. “Ain’t no way you’re not going to sneak off to try to find him.”

“What? No! That’d be crazy. I mean…” Cal’s voice trailed into silence. “I told him I’d come get him. When he helped us escape Vajazzle’s ship. I told him I’d come back. I promised him.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I know.”

A moment of silence passed between them, before eventually being broken by a cheerful, “Hello!” from Mech’s back.

Cal jumped in fright again. “Jesus! Will people please stop doing that!” he said. Mech increased the strength of his torchlight enough for Cal to see Tullok’s grinning face over Mech’s shoulder. The old man was hanging onto the cyborg’s shoulders like a backpack.

“Tullok wants to talk to you,” said Mech.

“Uh, OK. What about?” Cal asked, then he remembered Tullok could understand him and said, “What do you want to talk about?” to him, instead.

Then he remembered that Tullok couldn’t understand him at all, and directed the question back to Mech.

“Fonked if I know. He won’t tell me,” said Mech. He turned side on to Cal, and Tullok scrambled across onto Cal’s back. For an old man with nothing much to speak of in the way of legs, he was surprisingly agile.

He was also surprisingly heavy. Cal had to lean forwards to stop himself toppling backwards. Tullok extended an arm out ahead of him, pointing into the forest. “This way. Ahead. Yes? Go now.”

“Uh, right. OK,” said Cal. He shot Mech a quizzical look, but got only a shrug in return.

“Metal man wait. We go,” Tullok instructed. He bounced on Cal’s back like a jockey in a horse race. “Quick. Quick. Go. Go.”

“OK, OK, I’m going,” said Cal. He leaned closer to Mech. “But if you hear a scream, you come running.”

Mech nodded. “I won’t be far away.”

“You’d better not be,” said Cal, then he hoisted Tullok higher on his back, took a deep breath, and pushed on into the forest.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

It took almost fifteen minutes of trudging blindly through the woods before Tullok told Cal to stop. The darkness was absolute, and although they’d walked for quarter of an hour, Cal reckoned that his slow shuffle to avoid tripping over anything meant they couldn’t be more than a few hundred feet from what was left of the Shatner.

“Here. Here is good,” Tullok chirped.

“OK. Well, I can’t see shizz,” said Cal. “So I hope you know the way back, or we’re completely…”

There was a sound like a number of babies sighing. A few hundred tiny pinpricks of blue light rose into the air, illuminating the forest floor beneath them. They drifted upwards from buttercup-sized purple flowers which budded into bloom below them.

Cal stepped back to get a better view of the flowers and their lights, and the sighing spread like gossip behind him. Thousands of the tiny flowers unfurled their purple petals, each one spitting a floating ball of light into the air.

“Whoa,” Cal whispered. “That is incredible.”

“Log,” said Tullok, pointing to a fallen tree which was now picked out in shimmering shades of blue. “Sit. We both sit. You. I. We sit.”

Cal lowered the old man onto the fallen tree’s trunk. He slid off Cal’s back, hobbled along the tree on his stumps for a few paces, then flopped into a seated position. Grinning, he tapped the trunk beside him. “Here. You sit with me.”

“What are these things?” Cal whispered, still watching the balls of light as he lowered himself onto the trunk. The glowing spheres had risen four to six feet off the ground, then all stopped. They hung there now, casting their glow, as the flowers beneath them closed their petals and went back to sleep.

“One of this world’s many wonders,” said Tullok. “Wonders that will be no more. Soon, I fear. Very soon.”

“Yeah, that last quake was pretty rough,” was all Cal could think to say. He shook his head and turned away from the lights. “You wanted to talk to me?” He was halfway through the sentence when his eyes widened. “Wait. You understood me! When I asked what they were, you understood me.”

“I understand many things,” said Tullok. “Not your words. Your words are a mystery. But their meaning? Yes. The way you talk. The way you look. The way you move.”

Cal frowned. “So… you do or you don’t understand what I’m saying?”

“I understand your pain,” Tullok said. “You have lost much, I think. Too much.”

Cal said nothing.

“So very much. This is why you will not lose your companion. Why you cannot. Yes?”

“I told him I wouldn’t leave him. I promised him,” said Cal. His voice became uncharacteristically quiet. “And he’s my friend.”

Tullok tapped Cal on the chest. “Good man. Young man.” He placed his hand against his own skinny torso. “Old man. Old enough.”

“Hey, you’re not that old,” said Cal, taking in Tullok’s wrinkled face and turkey-like neck. “I mean, you can’t be more than… what? Ninety? A hundred and ten, tops.”

“I am alone now,” said Tullok. “My tribe – my friends – are no more. Gone.”

“You don’t know that,” said Cal, having a stab at sounding positive. “Some of them might have survived. And there must be others out, you know, in the woods or whatever.”

“I am the last,” said Tullok, tapping his chest again. “I feel it. In here. And I do not wish to be alone.”

Cal slapped his hands on his thighs. “Well, OK, then. You can come with us. You can be, like, the ship’s doctor. Once we get a ship. We’ll have adventures. You’ll love it.”

“I would like to give myself to you,” said Tullok.

Cal hesitated. “Uh… OK. That’s, I mean, I’m flattered. Honestly. It’s just you’re not really my type.”

Tullok lunged for Cal, his long fingers splaying out as his hands clamped around his head.

“What the fonk? Are you trying to kiss--?” was as far as Cal got before his brain was filled with sweet, golden syrup. It swelled his skull and dribbled down his spine, filling him all the way. Cal’s arms and legs became heavy, so he couldn’t fight back, even if he wanted to.

“I am old. I am alone. You are not. You need not be,” Tullok said, his voice whispering like a winter’s breeze. “All that I have, I give to you. All that I am, is now yours.”

Cal was immobile now, his body refusing to respond to his brain’s commands. Not that his brain was commanding all that much. It was too busy savoring the sensation of pure liquid joy that currently flooded its nerve-endings and pathways.

Right at the edge of his eye line, he saw Tullok’s leg stumps darken and crumble. Layers of skin broke up like burnt paper, drifting into the air as flakes of ash.

“S-stop,” Cal managed to slur, the word coming out as a dribble of spit on his chin.

Tullok smiled, even as the blackness spread up over his hips and groin, burning him to cinders. Still the syrupy goodness bubbled inside Cal. He felt like he was being dragged down by the stuff now, frantically treading water as he fought to stay afloat.

“My life force is yours,” the old man wheezed, even as his chest became ash. “Use it. Save your friend.”

His mouth opened to say more, but his throat was now gone. The arms crumbled to dust, freeing Cal from their grip.

“MECH!” Cal bellowed, then his face twisted in an expression of terror as Tullok’s kindly-looking head landed in his lap. Instinctively, he tucked his hands beneath it and launched it across the clearing, then gasped in horror at what he’d done.

“Shizz! Sorry, Tullok. I am so sorry,” he babbled, scrambling through the grass to where the old man’s head had landed. He picked it up, realized it was upside-down, and turned it the right way. Tullok was still smiling, although his eyebrows suggested he was ever-so-slightly annoyed.

Mech shouldered aside a tree and crashed into the clearing, just as Tullok’s head crumbled to dust in Cal’s hands.

“What the fonk did you do?” Mech asked.

“Me? I didn’t do anything!” Cal protested. He stood up and brushed some of Tullok off his shirt. “I mean, I guess from your point of view it might have looked a little…”

“Like you’d cut off his head and then set it on fire?” said Mech. “Yeah, maybe a little. What the Hell happened?”

“I don’t know. One minute I thought he was coming onto me, the next… poof. Gone,” said Cal. “He said he was giving me his life force.”

Mech looked him up and down. “And what does that mean?”

“Fonked if I know.”

“You feel any different?”

Cal put his hands on his hips and flexed them from side to side. He squatted, stood up, arched his back then flexed his arms. “Not really. I mean, I feel good. Healthy. But that’s it.”

Mech about-turned. “OK. Then let’s get back to camp. We should probably tell the others.”

“I’m not going.”

Mech turned back. “Say what?”

“Like I said, I can’t just leave him. I promised.”

Mech let out a long, slow sigh. Which was impressive, considering he didn’t have lungs. “You’re gonna get yourself killed.”

Cal nodded. “Yeah. Maybe.”

“You ain’t gonna listen to me if I tell you not to go, are you?”

Cal shook his head. “Afraid not.”

“I could stop you,” Mech pointed out. “I could pick you up and haul you back to camp.”

Cal nodded. “You could. But you won’t,” he said. “Give me an hour, then tell them where I’ve gone. I’ll try to cause a distraction so you guys can get to the ships.”

“You want us to leave without you?”

“What? No!” Cal spluttered. “Jesus, you think I want to be stuck here? Wait for me, I’ll find you. And I’ll bring Splurt.”

Mech sucked air in through his metal teeth. “I don’t like this, man.”

“I’m not exactly dancing with joy here, either, but I have to do this,” said Cal. He backed into the woods. “One hour, then head to the ship.”

“I got it,” said Mech. He watched Cal turn and run a few paces into the forest. “You know that’s the wrong way, right?”

Cal stopped. He turned to his right.

“Nope.”

Cal turned another hundred and eighty degrees. Mech tutted, then raised an arm and pointed. “That way.”

“Gotcha,” said Cal. He fired off a salute. “Catch you later, Mech.”

“Yeah, man,” said Mech. “You’d better.”

* * *

Cal bounded from the forest, landed on a patch of rock, had a fleeting but all-too-vivid vision of a big monster snapping up at him from below, then frantically scrambled back to the safety of the trees.

After he’d left Mech, he’d spent the next several minutes picking his way through the darkness, occasionally stumbling upon patches of the illuminating flowers that helped light his path.

Gradually, Cal’s confidence had begun to grow. The next ten minutes had been spent jogging through the woods, dodging branches and leaping roots. He’d tripped twice in the first minute, once in the second, then hadn’t fallen again, even when he broke into a sprint, leaping and bounding through the trees, and occasionally swinging from branches he couldn’t even see.

He peered out past the forest’s edge now, panting from the exertion. But only panting – not rasping, wheezing, or wishing he were dead.

Which was nice.

The city-sized ship was a few hundred feet away, the pits a little closer. The whole area was bathed in the shimmering light of the vortex, and the faint glow of a slightly oblong-looking moon Cal hadn’t really paid much attention to before.

He couldn’t see anyone lurking around, but he could hear at least one of the robot tank things stomping around on patrol somewhere.

The terrain between the edge of the forest and the pits was the same featureless rock and sand that had been around the prison. There were none of the metal boxes here, though, much to Cal’s relief. Those were designed to stop anyone escaping the prison, not approaching from the tree line.

Hopefully that meant there were none of the big-mouthed monsters here, either. Cal rooted around in the grass until he found a rock, and tossed it onto the sand half a dozen feet away.

At first, nothing happened, but then Cal saw it – a snaking, heaving beneath the sand just twenty or so paces to the right.

Cal shrunk back as the tooth-filled head burst from below the sand, chomping the rock to pieces. Up close, the smell of the thing was choking. If Cal was forced to describe it, he’d probably settle on ‘burnt vomit,’ but not without running through a few alternatives first.

The monster sunk into the ground again, leaving a hole behind that was quickly filled in by the sand around it. Cal saw nothing to suggest the thing had moved off, and suspected it was lurking around down there, just waiting to pounce again.

“OK, so that’s not good,” he muttered. He crept as close as he dared to the edge of the forest and studied the ground. It was mostly sand, but with occasional outcrops of rock sprouting up from below.

Since the sand-things hadn’t eaten anyone in or around the pits, Cal guessed they couldn’t get through stone. Or not easily, at least.

He spent the next few minutes gathering up some stones and pebbles, and cramming them into his pockets.

Once he’d done that, he took one of the stones and tossed it onto a patch of sand over on his left. The ground in front of him churned as the sand-creature shot off. Seizing his chance, Cal leaped onto the first patch of solid rock, wobbled slightly, then froze.

The sand-monster exploded out of the ground twenty or thirty feet away, then sunk again. Cal stamped his foot on the rock. Once. Twice. The monster didn’t react.

“Well, alright then,” Cal said, grinning from ear to ear. He lined himself up with the next lump of rock, swung his arms, and jumped.

On the third jump, he stumbled and his heel slammed into the sand, just for a moment. Cal heard the ssssslisk of the monster cutting through the sand towards him. Frantically, he pulled a stone from his pocket, spun, and tossed it into the creature’s path.

A spray of sand spewed upwards as the thing exploded from the ground, rolling that wave of stink over Cal again. Moving quickly, he aimed himself at the next safe spot, then made three quick jumps, one after the other, hopping from rock to rock.

The next gap was wide. Too wide. Cal thought back to the rooftop where he and Loren had been chasing Narp, and how he’d barely scraped across it.

The space between this rock and the next safe area was wider than that by a couple of feet, if not more. Cal turned, looking for another route, but short of backtracking right back to the start, there was no obvious alternative. Even if he did turn back, there was no saying he’d find a better route.

He shuffled his toes right up to the edge of the stone platform, then fished in his pocket for another rock to throw. It landed thirty feet away. Cal heard the monster streak off, just as he dropped to his haunches and powered himself off the platform.

The world lurched. Cal’s arms flailed in the air as he soared cleanly over the next rock, somehow overshooting it by three or four feet. He landed awkwardly on the sand, and heard the unmistakable swish of the worm-thing changing direction.

Kicking and scrabbling on the soft ground, he threw himself up onto a jagged boulder, just as the spot where he’d landed exploded like a bomb blast of fury and teeth. Cal lay on his back, holding his breath and trying desperately to maintain bladder control as the monster thrashed hungrily at the air, then slowly retreated back below the surface.

Once he was sure it was safe, and confident he wasn’t about to soil himself, Cal got to his feet. He looked back to the rock he was supposed to have landed on, and the one he’d launched himself from. How could he have even made that jump, much less have overshot it?

Probably best not to question it too much, he decided. Not right now, at least.

He turned back towards the ship. The solid ground around the pits was close now – barely a stone’s throw away. Between Cal and it, though, lay nothing but flat, uninterrupted sand.

He looked back to the previous rock, the one he’d missed. Even if he somehow managed another super-jump, it was too far away to reach. He was stranded on this one narrow sliver of stone, adrift on a sea of monsters.

“Houston, we have a problem,” he announced to the world at large. The sand shifted behind him and he clamped a hand over his mouth.

Cal took stock of his situation. He was stranded on a rock, with a monster waiting to eat him the moment he stepped off it. He had a pocketful of stones which would distract the creature, but not for long. Would it buy him enough time to run all the way to the solid ground ahead? Probably not.

Was he going to try anyway? Hell, yes.

Taking aim, Cal threw one of the larger stones as fast and as far as he could behind him. It clacked off a boulder, skipped on, then landed in the sand with a faint paff. The ground churned as the monster snaked off in search of whatever had made the sound.

This time, Cal waited until the creature’s head had just broken the surface of the sand, then he ran. His feet pounded on the soft ground, which seemed determined to drag him down with each step. The sand slipped and slid beneath his boots. He stumbled, tripped, touched his fingertips to the ground then was off again, sprinting with everything he had for the safety of the ground ahead.

Cal felt the rumbling of the monster giving chase. He hurtled on, his legs a blur, his heart rattling like machine-gun fire in his chest. “Please don’t eat me, please don’t eat me, please don’t eat me,” he sobbed.

He risked a glance back over his shoulder. The thing was still a dozen feet away. He spluttered out a half-laugh. It would be close, but he was going to—

A second monster burst through the sand right at his heels, tossing him into the air. He flapped his arms frantically like a character in a cartoon, then sprawled face-first onto the desert floor.

Spinning onto his back, he saw the worm-thing flick its enormous head towards him. He saw the cavern of its mouth. He saw those absurdly human-looking teeth.

And then, right before the thing could strike, the first monster reared up behind it. The fresh on the scene worm-creature emitted a terrible high-pitched screech as teeth sunk deep into its flesh.

Cal’s arms and legs all tried to do their own thing at the same time, but as their general consensus was, ‘Let’s get the fonk out of here,’ the result wasn’t pretty, but it was effective, as Cal beat a less than graceful backwards retreat across the sand.

He collapsed onto solid ground, patted it to make sure there were no monster-sized gaps around him, then sat up and watched the worm things bite lumps out of each other for a while, until they both sunk beneath the sand.

With that, Cal stood up, rolled up his sleeves and gave a single nod of his head.

“Right then,” he said. Then he put his hands in his pockets, hummed the opening bars to Inspector Gadget, and set off in search of Splurt.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Loren slung a blaster rifle over her shoulder and tucked a pistol into the back of her pants. “How could you just let him go?” she demanded. “He’s going to get himself killed.”

“I told him that,” said Mech. “That’s what I said, but he didn’t listen.”

“Then you should have made him listen!”

Mech shrugged. “Come on. What was I supposed to do? Throw him over my shoulder and carry him back?”

“Yes!” Loren snapped. “If that’s what it took.”

“Maybe you haven’t noticed, but he’s a grown man,” Mech pointed out. “The guy makes his own decisions, and his mind was made up. He was going for Splurt, and that was all there was to it.”

“Did he take the trolley?” asked Dronzen. “Because if he did…”

“He didn’t,” said Mech. “He went the direct route, to the edge of the forest then across the sand.”

“Then won’t he, like, get eaten by those worm things?” said Miz.

“Not if he’s careful,” said Dronzen.

“Maybe we can catch him,” said Loren. “Everyone ready to move?”

A few of the Zertex troops yawned and rubbed their eyes. They shuffled their feet, reluctant to travel through the night.

Loren swung her rifle down into her hands. “Sorry? Didn’t catch that,” she said.

The Zertex crew snapped to attention. Loren nodded. “Better,” she said. “We’re going to be headed through the woods, and apparently the one person who knew his way around this place has turned to dust. Don’t ask. Everyone stick close. If you fall behind you stay behind. Is that clear?”

A hand went up. Loren turned to the Zertex man. “What?”

“I, um, I need to go to the toilet.” He lowered his hand, wilting under Loren’s gaze. “Sorry.”

“Fine. Go,” Loren sighed. The man nodded gratefully, then darted behind a bush. Loren swept her gaze across the rest of the group. “Anyone else need to use the bathroom?”

Four more hands went up. A woman raised her hand midway, then tilted it from side to side, indicating she wasn’t sure. Loren pinched the bridge of her nose between finger and thumb.

“You’ve got two minutes,” she announced. “Then we leave. So pee quick.”

“Actually, it wasn’t a pee I—” the woman began, but Loren held up a hand to stop her, mid-sentence.

“Two minutes,” Loren told her. “Time’s ticking.”

* * *

Cal was passing the pits when he saw her. It was the robotic eye that gave her away, blazing like a red sun when she scraped back her hood. She stood in the wreckage of her stadium seating, the front of her robe trailing over the edge of the hole below.

“I knew you’d come back,” Vajazzle said. Her voice was a whisper, but it carried cleanly through the still night air. “I knew you couldn’t leave him.”

“Where is he?” Cal demanded.

“Where do you think?” asked Vajazzle, a smirk tugging at her puckered mouth.

Cal paused. “I have no idea,” he admitted. “In the ship?”

“In the pit, you imbecile,” Vajazzle hissed. “He’s in the pit.”

“Right, right. Gotcha,” said Cal. “Yeah, that’s good. That’s really dramatic.” He shrugged. “Or, you know, it would have been if I hadn’t messed it up. Sorry about that. We can try again, if you like? You go from ‘Where do you think?’ and then I’ll jump in with my line. It’ll be fine. No-one will know.”

“What are you talking about?” Vajazzle spat. She shook her head, as if annoyed at herself for even asking the question. “Forget it. It doesn’t matter. Just get in the hole.”

Cal approached the pit. “I bet you say that to all the guys,” he said, stopping where the ground fell away. The dino-Splurt stood in the flickering torchlight of the pit, grimacing up at him and showing more teeth than Cal could count.

“Hey, buddy,” Cal called, waving down at him. “I’ve come to rescue you. What’s say we team up and kick shizz out of this crazy space witch? It’ll be just like old—Wargh!”

Vajazzle yanked a hand towards her, and Cal felt an invisible force pull him forwards. He tried the arm-flapping thing again, with exactly as much success as before, then plunged to the bottom of the pit.

His feet hit the ground and he dropped to his haunches, then stood up. It would’ve been an impressively dramatic entrance, had he not immediately started to bounce up and down on the spot, crying, “Whoa, did you see that? I landed like a champ,” and giving himself high-fives.

When he finally stopped celebrating, he turned to Splurt. He made it as far as a hopeful, “Now, buddy,” before a fist the size of a boulder smashed into the side of his head, crumpling his legs beneath him.

“Ow,” Cal groaned, clutching his jaw. He was on his knees. He couldn’t quite remember when that had happened, but he suspected it wasn’t the best place to be. His feet? Now, his feet would be an excellent place to be. Better than his knees, anyway.

If only he could remember where he put them.

Splurt lunged.

“Wait!” Cal wheezed, then another hammer-blow struck him across the cheek and the ground followed up with an uppercut to his chin.

Coughing and spluttering through a mouthful of blood, Cal flopped onto his back. “I’m not going to fight you, Splurt. I know you won’t hurt me. Not really.”

Splurt caught Cal by one leg and spun. “Or maybe you will,” Cal managed to splutter, and then he was hurtling through the air. His back met the pit wall. His body went one way, while all the air in his lungs went the other. He hit the ground hard and tried to push himself up on his arms, but his arms had obviously gone off to find his feet, and he just lay motionless on the ground, instead.

There was a ringing in his ears. Not that this was his most pressing problem, but it was fonking annoying, all the same. Over the high-pitched whine, he could hear Vajazzle cackling and shouting something to him, but his brain was too scrambled to figure out any of the words. Probably nothing complimentary.

He could hear – or possibly just feel – Splurt’s thunderous footsteps getting closer. They weren’t far away. He had two or three seconds, maybe a little more.

There was another sound, too. A voice. Nagging and incessant, right at the edge of his hearing. “Get up, Cal. Get up right now!”

Familiar. Definitely familiar.

Mech? No, too high-pitched.

Miz? Too animated.

Loren? Possibly, but… no. It sounded too concerned.

“Get up! Hurry!”

Wait. He had it.

With a Herculean amount of effort, Cal tilted his head, just a fraction. A man stood there, dressed in a lilac bath robe and slippers. “Tobey Maguire?”

“Yes! And you need to get your shizz together, ASAP,” Tobey Maguire urged. “I mean it, you’re about to be trampled into a paste here.”

Cal looked around him. He was standing up now. Or, more specifically, he was floating in an upright position above his own fallen body. Splurt and Vajazzle were both frozen, as if time itself were standing still.

“Jesus. Am I dead?” Cal asked.

Tobey Maguire shook his head. “No. I mean, not yet, but any second now. This isn’t real. You’re about to pass out.” He gestured around them. “This is all in your mind.”

“Right. Right. Gotcha,” said Cal. He looked Tobey Maguire up and down. “What are you wearing, by the way?”

Tobey looked down, tightened the belt of his robe, then folded his arms. “No time for that,” he said.

Cal shrugged, then pushed his arms out straight in front of his chest, scooped them around like he was doing the breast stroke, and swam over to Splurt. An immense feeling of sadness and regret washed over him as he looked the dinosaur-like figure up and down. “I think I may have made a mistake,” he admitted. “I thought I could talk him round.”

“That thing?” Tobey Maguire snorted. “Are you nuts? Look at it! With the spikes and the teeth and everything. That’d chew you up and spit you out, that thing. And it’s going to, too. In about… ooh… four seconds.”

Tobey Maguire caught the expression on Cal’s face, and sighed. “Look, I know how you love the sound of your own voice, but maybe talking’s not the right approach. You think Vajazzle bent him to her will by having a chat? She broke him.”

Cal frowned. “What are you saying, Tobey Maguire?”

Tobey Maguire shrugged, then raised his fists and shadow-boxed the wall. “I’m saying, maybe you need to beat some sense into him. Give him the old Cal Carver one-two.”

“Are you insane? Look at him! I can’t fight that!”

Tobey Maguire smiled. It was meant to look learned and wise, but actually made him look a little bit simple. Cal chose not to mention it. “You can if you believe,” he said, packing the line with such pathos and drama that Cal felt momentarily outraged the guy had never bagged an Oscar. Or even, as far as he could remember, been nominated.

Sure, he had Teen Choice Award nominations coming out of the wazoo, but…

“Cal!” Tobey Maguire snapped. “Are you listening? I said you can if you believe.”

“Believe?”

“Yes. Believe,” confirmed Tobey Maguire. “Also, you just got about thirty to forty years of Grimmash life force pumped into you. That’s also going to be helpful.”

Cal’s ghost or soul or whatever the Hell it was rushed across the pit, zooming back towards his body. “Oh, looks like you’re up,” said Tobey Maguire. He winked. “Go get him, Tiger.”

Tobey Maguire vanished.

Then reappeared again.

“Oh, and duck,” he blurted.

Time sped up. Cal rolled backwards just as Splurt’s rhino-like foot came smashing down on the spot where Cal’s head had been.

Cal realized, to his surprise, that he was on his feet. The sensation he’d felt when Tullok had grabbed him by the face warmed his bones again. Concentrated joy.

But no, not joy. That was just how it felt. Concentrated life.

Concentrated power.

Splurt’s fist arced through the air in an overheard smash. Cal raised a forearm, blocking the blow before it could strike home. He, Splurt and Vajazzle stood in silence, all three pairs of eyes locked on the spot where Cal’s arm was keeping a towering dino-monster’s at bay.

“Haha!” Cal flexed the fingers of his free hand, feeling the strength pump through them. He clenched them into a fist. “Well this is fonking awesome.”

THWACK!

Splurt’s tail whipped around. Cal saw it, but had no time to react. It caught him just above the knees, spinning him around in the air.

To everyone’s surprise – mostly his own – he flipped a full three-sixty and landed on his feet. “Oh man!” he ejected. “Vajazzle, please tell me your robot eye thing was recording that. Otherwise, no-one is ever going to believe me!”

Splurt swung with a vicious backhand strike. Cal ducked it, and a deep-rooted fighter’s instinct drove a punch into the monster’s exposed side. It was a left-hand blow, and not particularly well executed, but it was enough to make Splurt’s face contort in silent discomfort.

Cal bounced back a few paces, fists raised.

“What is this?” Vajazzle demanded. “How are you doing this? Tear him apart!”

Splurt pounced, both arms outstretched, grabbing for Cal’s throat. Cal saw the attack coming in plenty of time – possibly even before Splurt had even moved, he thought – and side-stepped out of his path.

Placing his hands on Splurt’s armored back, Cal ran forwards, using the dino-thing’s own momentum to slam him hard against the pit wall. The impact cracked the rock, sending a mini rockslide tumbling to the ground.

Splurt bounced back, only to find Cal on all fours directly behind him. As his legs met Cal’s side, Splurt’s heavy tail and armor-plating dragged him backwards. He hit the ground with an earth-shaking thud, and then Cal was on him, kneeling on his chest, driving a devastating right hook into the side of his head.

“Get up!” Vajazzle hissed from the top of the pit. “Get up and finish him. Now!”

“Alternatively, stay down,” Cal urged, smashing another fist across Splurt’s cheek. It was like punching solid rock, and his knuckles would probably have something to say about it in a couple of hours, but for now they weren’t complaining too much.

Splurt twisted, sending Cal sprawling off him. Cal tucked and rolled as best he could, and got to his feet while the dino-thing was still trying to get up off his back. Splurt jerked and struggled, like a six-hundred-pound man trying to do his first sit-up in decades. Cal’s instinct was to help him, but there was only one way to help his buddy now.

“Get up, you… freak!” Vajazzle hissed.

Cal kept his gaze on her as he stooped to pick up a chunk of rock that had been knocked loose when Splurt had hit the wall. He found a fist-sized pieced with a sharp, jagged end, then strolled over to where the dino-thing was still attempting to sit up.

“You know you can get up any time you like, don’t you?” Cal said, tossing the stone into the air and catching it. Splurt’s eyes fixed on him, his mouth curling into a noiseless growl. “You know this isn’t actually you?”

Cal saw something flicker behind the monster’s eyes. He nodded. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. She’s got you thinking you’re a dinosaur Hell beast, but you aren’t. You’re an adorable blobby little bamston. You’re my adorable blobby little bamston, Splurt.”

Cal gritted his teeth and tightened his grip on his rock. “And while it pains me to do this, it looks like it’s going to be up to me to jog your memory.”

* * *

Miz led the way through the trees, her nose low to the ground, her ears pivoting like radar station satellite dishes. “He went this way,” she said, between sniffs. “The scent’s recent. He can’t be far.”

“Getting across the sand is going to be the difficult bit,” said Dronzen. “The worms will be all over us.”

“Can’t we, like, just send some of your people out to distract them, while we make a run for it?” Miz suggested.

There was a worried murmuring from somewhere near the back of the line. “Can we not do that, please?” a Zertex voice suggested.

“Yeah, I think that might be a bit… er, inappropriate, maybe,” said Dronzen.

“Why?” asked Miz. “It’s not like they’re important. They don’t even have names.”

“Of course they’ve got names,” said Dronzen. “Why wouldn’t they have names?”

Behind them, Mech shot Loren a sideways glance. “They got names?” he whispered.

Loren pulled a beats me face and shrugged in response.

“I just been calling them ‘Zertex Guy One,’ or whatever,” Mech continued. “Not one of them even tried to correct me! Man, now I just feel awkward.”

Miz looked back over her shoulder at the sea of faces trudging through the dark. “Seriously?” she frowned. “All of them?”

“Of course, all of them!” Dronzen cried, but there was a hint of amusement in it. “They’re not just a nameless group of victims-in-waiting, they’re people. They’re good people.”

“Huh,” said Miz. She tutted in annoyance. “Well that sucks. That totally makes things more difficult.”

“We’ll deal with it when we get there,” said Loren. “Now hurry. We need to find Cal. Before it’s too late.”

* * *

Cal slammed the rock against the side of Splurt’s face, widening the gash that had already split across the dino-thing’s cheek. With each blow he rained down, Cal stifled the urge to sob.

“Come on! Stop me doing this!” he pleaded, smashing the rock down again. Dark blue blood pooled on the ground behind Splurt’s neck, as his eyes swam in their sockets. “Come on, this isn’t you, Splurt! This isn’t you!”

He hammered the rock down again. Again. The wound widened. Cal fought the rising urge to throw up and dug the pointed end of the stone into the gouge. “You can stop this, Splurt. You can stop me!”

Roaring, Cal leaned his weight on the rock, pushing it deeper into the open flesh. Splurt’s hulking frame convulsed beneath him. “Please,” Cal begged.

As he pushed, the texture of Splurt’s head changed. The rough, scaly hide around the wound became green and slick. It wobbled and quivered like half-set jello.

Cal gasped. His face filled with hope. “Yes. Come on! There’s my boy! There’s my--”

Splurt’s head exploded, spraying green goo across the ground. Suddenly finding himself with nothing to lean against, Cal fell forwards, sprawling onto the cold hard rock.

Without getting up, he turned. Splurt’s dino-like body lay still. Inert. Not moving. His head was… well, his head was gone. A smear of green gloop on the ground, nothing more.

“Splurt?” said Cal. His voice echoed strangely around the pit. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Splurt? Buddy?”

A slow clap rang out from on high.

“Well done, Mr Carver. You won,” said Vajazzle. “Not in the way you intended, I’m sure, but you won all the same.”

She was suddenly right there, standing over him. Her hood was up and things writhed and wriggled beneath her robe. He barely noticed.

Cal let the rock fall from his fingers.

“Splurt?” he croaked.

“You know you couldn’t have beaten him, don’t you?” Vajazzle said. “In a fair fight, I mean. Even with whatever you’ve done to make yourself stronger. You couldn’t beat him. See, I’ve used him to take down whole armies of those savages. Dozens of them, all at once. He’s fought creatures four times his size and he has killed them all, and yet you – Cal Carver, a lone Earthman with a lump of rock – were able to beat him to death single-handed.”

Vajazzle squatted down, blocking Cal’s view of the body. “You know how you were able to do it, don’t you? You know why you were able to?” she whispered. “Because he remembered. Not all the way, of course. Not rationally. But deep inside somewhere. Deep down, where it counted, he remembered you were his friend, and he couldn’t bring himself to fight back.”

She watched Cal’s face fall, then she pouted her bottom lip like a sad toddler. “I know, it’s upsetting, isn’t it? Poor thing. After all he’s been through.”

The ground rumbled, but it wasn’t an earthquake. Not this time. Vajazzle pointed upwards just as the shadow of a Thunderfoot tank passed by the top of the pit. “Your other friends are going to die, too, you know? They’ll be coming after you, following your trail. When they reach the edge of the forest they’ll be so busy worrying about the sand worms they won’t have time to react to my tanks. Then – boom! Gone.” She leaned in good and close. “All of them.”

Cal shook his head. “N-no.”

“Yes. You think you feel alone now, last Earthman in the universe?” Vajazzle sneered. “Give it five minutes and you’ll grasp the true meaning of the word.”

She stood up, then a sharp laugh ricocheted around the pit. “Relax, I’m kidding! You have nothing to worry about,” she said. A tentacle snaked out from beneath her robe and wrapped around Cal’s throat. “Because you won’t even be alive in five minutes.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The tentacle drew tight across Cal’s throat, squeezing so sharply and suddenly he felt his head was going to pop like the cork of a Champagne bottle. He grabbed for the tentacle, but it was oily and slick and impossible to hold onto.

“I’d long given up hope of ever seeing you die,” Vajazzle told him. “Years ago, in fact. The day you turned up… Well, it was like all my Kroyshuks had come at once.”

She tightened her grip further. “The annoying thing is, I don’t even know why I despise you quite as much as I do. What was his name? The president? I forget. He said the same thing. There’s just something about you that brings out the worst in people.”

“I… try,” Cal gargled.

“You thought you could escape, didn’t you? You thought you could come here, rescue your friend, and get away. Were you going to kill me? Was that part of your plan?”

Cal tried to find a reply, but they all floated out of reach somewhere in the oncoming darkness. The tentacle jerked and the assassin’s voice took on a scolding tone. “Look me in the eye, Mr Carver. Don’t turn away. I want to see you go.”

Cal almost didn’t give her the satisfaction, but he was damned if he was going to die with her thinking him a coward. He met her gaze, angry and defiant to the last.

And he was glad he did. Because if he hadn’t looked, he wouldn’t have seen the cartoonishly-huge green hand clamp down over her head and lift her off the ground.

Nor would he have seen the brief but brilliant expression of absolute terror on her face right before a gloopy green fist cocooned her whole upper body.

The tentacle on Cal’s throat slackened. He ripped it free, just as Vajazzle began to shimmer with purple sparkles.

She vanished, revealing the owner of the hand in all his full squidgy glory. Two bloodshot eyes gazed unblinkingly back at Cal from within a foot-high blob of lime-colored jello.

“Splurt?”

The massive hand waved, became a thumbs-up, then twanged back into Splurt’s body like elastic. Cal was on his feet in an instant. He ran towards his little pal and scooped him up in his arms.

To the casual spectator, it would’ve looked pretty strange - a grown-man spinning around at the bottom of a hole, excitedly hugging jelly. Cal didn’t care. Splurt probably didn’t, either, although it was hard to read his expressions at the best of times.

“I knew you were in there, buddy. I knew you’d come back to me,” Cal said. He pressed his nose against Splurt’s head and inhaled deeply. “Silly Putty. Christ, I’ve missed that smell.”

The ground shook, sending pebbles clacking down the side of the pit. “The tanks,” Cal realized. “We need to stop the tanks shooting the others to bits.”

Splurt wrapped himself around Cal, then launched a rubbery appendage that quite closely resembled a string of snot up to the top of the pit. Cal felt a sudden sense of acceleration as Splurt propelled them up and out of the pit.

Two of the tanks stood facing the forest, guns trained on the tree line. Cal looked from them up to Vajazzle’s ship and back again.

“She knows we want out of here. She’ll destroy the ships,” Cal said. “I have to go after her. You think you can handle the tanks, buddy?”

Splurt flopped to the ground and gazed up at Cal, impassively. Cal grinned. “That’s my boy. Go get ‘em, then bring the others and meet me inside. We’re getting off this shizzhole. We’re going home.” He began to turn, then stopped. “You know, ish. Not my actual home, because everyone there’s dead and its full of monsters, but that sort of area, at least. That neck of the… forget it, doesn’t matter. Fonk those tanks up, buddy. Splurt-style!”

Without a sound, Splurt formed himself into a ball, rolled in a circle around Cal, then shot off towards the tanks. Cal wasted a few seconds watching him go.

“God, I love that guy,” he said to the world in general, then he turned towards the city-sized AX11, lowered his head, and ran.

* * *

Miz, Loren, Mech and the others arrived at the edge of the woods to find two tanks on fire. And one of them upside-down.

“What is that thing?” asked Dronzen, taking aim with his rifle as a thin green shape wormed its way into the sand, and vanished below the surface.

“Oh man, he did it,” Mech said. “He actually did it.”

Loren frowned. “Was that…?”

“Oh yeah,” said Miz. “It was.”

Mech gestured for the Zertex crew to join them up front. He’d spent the past five minutes finding out all their names but, despite having access to Zettabytes of onboard memory, had immediately forgotten every single one of them.

“What is it? What are we looking at,” asked one utterly unremarkable woman.

“Something awesome,” said Miz.

The ground rumbled. “Quake!” said Dronzen.

“No,” said Loren. “Look!”

A sand worm flew upwards out of the sand, twisting and wriggling, its mouth open wide as it screamed. It flipped in the air a few times, then landed with very little in the way of grace or dignity on its face.

For a moment, the worm went limp and flaccid, but then it twitched back into life, started to burrow beneath ground, thought better of it, and zig-zagged off towards where the sun was starting to peek over the horizon.

The ground rumbled again, as six or seven enormous shapes churned along below the surface, following the first worm’s lead.

A patch of sand directly in front of Miz began to tremble. Dronzen took aim with his rifle. “What is that? What the Hell just did that? What’s coming?”

“Chill out, handsome,” said Miz, gently nudging Dronzen’s gun away. A ball of green goo popped out of the ground. “The little dude’s with us.”

* * *

“Vajazzle!” Cal’s voice echoed along the empty corridor. “Come out, come out wherever you are.”

Silence.

More silence than he had been expecting.

He’d been anticipating a fight when he’d gone charging into the wreckage of the crashed ship. He’d almost been hoping for one, actually. The scrapes and bruises he’d earned in his battle with Splurt had completely healed. If anything, he felt even better than he had before it, and was very open to the idea of getting into a punch-up with some Zertex bad guys.

But the corridors were empty, and there was no-one for him to fight.

He had no idea where he was going, either. He knew that somewhere on the ship were lots of other smaller ships, but where they were located was anyone’s guess. Even running at full speed, it would take him weeks to search the place.

He thought about searching for a computer terminal that still had power to it, and trying to pull up a map, but he doubted the maps would take into account the fact that a third of the ship had been reduced to scrap, and so probably wouldn’t have been helpful.

Still, ‘when in doubt, have a shout,’ that was his motto. It hadn’t been his motto long, he’d admit – a bit less than fifteen seconds at that point – but he felt it was a solid one, all the same.

“Yoo-hoo! You want me, old lady? Come get me!” Cal listened to his voice fade away into silence. “Come on, don’t make me make fun of your name, because you know I will.”

An earth tremor rumbled through the ship. Cal staggered, bracing himself against a wall as the whole ship vibrated, then plunged several feet.

“Ooh, shizz,” Cal yelped, the floor beneath his feet bucking him around like an unhappy horse. The corridor tilted sharply, and Cal suddenly found himself halfway up a steep slope. His boots slipped. His hands slapped against the smooth vinyl flooring trying, but spectacularly failing, to find a grip.

Another tremor gave him a nudge and he began to slide, hurtling faster and faster towards a particularly solid-looking corridor wall that waited below.

“Ow, ow, ow, gonna hurt, gonna hurt,” he winced, then a cloud of purple sparkles enveloped him and he was no longer sliding but falling instead.

He hit a metal walkway, bounced once, and rolled towards the edge. A gust of raw heat blasted up at him. Hissing with the shock of it, he hooked an arm around the walkway railing, stopping himself tumbling into a churning bit of white liquid below.

Pain seared his skin in a thousand places at once, and he hurriedly flopped his whole body back onto the walkway, shielding it from the blazing heat.

“You’re wondering where everyone is,” said Lady Vajazzle. She stood a few feet along the walkway, her hood pushed back to reveal the full wrinkled horror of her face. There was a second face on the back of her head, Cal knew. This one was bad, but unless he was very much mistaken, the other one was worse.

The assassin had raised herself off the ground on a squirming mass of tentacles. She balanced there, swaying gently back and forth and giving him the evil eye. Two evil eyes, in fact.

Possibly even four, although it was impossible to tell from this angle.

“I’m wondering a lot of things,” said Cal, pulling himself upright. “That’s actually pretty far down the list. But yeah,” he admitted. “Where is everyone?”

“Dead,” said Vajazzle. “After they let you escape, they had to be punished. And, to be honest, they were all a bit boring.” A smile tugged the corners of her mouth. “And, if I’m being completely truthful, it was just plain amusing to watch their little faces as I snuffed the life out of them. Hilarious, actually.”

Cal puffed out his cheeks. “Jesus. And Mech thinks my jokes are bad. What about the tanks?”

“On auto-pilot,” Vajazzle said. “Set to kill anything that wasn’t me or the shapeshifter. Or you. I wanted to kill you personally.”

“Very considerate of you,” said Cal. He jabbed a thumb towards the bubbling morass of liquid below. “What’s that stuff?”

“Warp drive coolant, they tell me,” said Vajazzle. “The warp disk’s somewhere down there, too. The whole thing ruptured when the ship crashed. Terribly radioactive, of course.”

“Haha. Yeah,” Cal said. “Wait, you’re serious? That stuff’s really radioactive?” He shuffled to the center of the walkway and cupped his hands over his testicles.

“It’s been seeping into the ground for years,” Vajazzle said, sounding genuinely delighted about it. “Between the impact and the coolant burbling around down there, they say that’s what’s causing the quakes.”

“Who says?”

“Oh, just they,” said Vajazzle, waving a withered hand. “They’re dead now. Everyone’s dead now.”

“Before you killed them, did they tell you the planet is shaking itself apart?” asked Cal. “It doesn’t have long left.”

“It has long enough,” Vajazzle spat. “Long enough to watch you die.”

She grasped the air and yanked it towards her. Cal flew across the walkway towards her, but he’d been ready for it. He used the momentum to drive a shoulder into her stomach, sending her teetering backwards on her mass of tentacles.

One of the assassin’s thinner tendrils snapped out for his neck, but he threw up an arm, blocked it, then wrapped it around his wrist and tugged. Vajazzle hissed in pain and rage as the appendage snapped off in Cal’s hand.

“Whoops,” he said. “You lost one.”

He tossed the still-twisting tentacle over the railing, then hurled himself at the assassin, fists and feet flying. He moved like he’d never moved before, Tullok’s life force making him faster, stronger, more agile.

Vajazzle’s tentacles were everywhere, swiping and striking and slashing at him from every direction at once. He dodged them all, ducking and weaving through their rubbery mass, hammering her with knees, elbows, and anything else he could think of.

The assassin wrenched a blaster from inside her robe. Cal caught her wrist before she could fire, twisting her grip until her withered fingers were forced open. The gun clattered on the walkway. Cal kicked it out of reach of her tentacles and slammed a shoulder into the old woman’s stomach.

“You’d think I’d feel bad about this,” Cal said, leaping to drive an uppercut into her wart-covered chin. “You know, with you being a thousand years old, or whatever.”

Two tentacles grabbed at him. He stamped them both against the walkway, one after the other. “But guess what? I really don’t. I mean, seriously, not even a tiny bit. If anything, I’m actually enjoying kicking your—”

Vajazzle thrust out both hands and an invisible force battering-rammed into Cal’s chest. He hit the railing hard, then continued over it in a full flip.

The heat howled at him as he rolled over the top railing and plunged towards the churning lake of coolant. A sulfurous stink snagged in his throat, tightening it. Resisting his ‘third time lucky’ instinct to try flying again, Cal threw both arms out in front of him. The fingers of the right hand brushed uselessly past the bottom of the walkway, but the left hand caught, jerking him violently.

Cal’s legs swung down beneath the bridge. The coolant’s heat swirled around him, biting at his skin and slicking him with sweat.

Grimacing, he threw up his right arm until he found the walkway’s edge. His muscles bunched, but before he could pull himself up, Vajazzle stepped up to the edge, blocking him. She scowled down at Cal, her red eye flickering like there was a faulty connection in her head.

“Well, well, well,” said the assassin. “What are we going to do with you?”

Cal grinned hopefully. “Help me up and let me go?” He watched the expression on Vajazzle’s face darken further. “No, I guess it was a bit of a long shot,” he sighed, then he braced himself as the tentacles beneath the assassin’s robe began to roll and heave.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

“Cover me!” whispered Loren, sprinting from cover and racing in a zig-zag pattern towards a docking bay control terminal.

Mech looked around them at the vast, empty deck. Splurt, who was sitting on his shoulder, looked around, too. “From what? There ain’t no-one here,” Mech called after her. “Hellooooo? Bad guys?” He listened for a reply. None came. “See? Nothing.”

“Why is she running like that?” asked Miz, slouching on one hip and crossing her arms over her chest. “She looks like an idiot.”

Across the deck, Loren dived into a forward roll, twisted mid-maneuver, and stopped with her back against the free-standing terminal, blaster pistol raised in front of her.

“Clear!” she shouted.

“Wow. She really likes this sort of thing, doesn’t she?” said Dronzen. He set off after Mech and Miz, beckoning for the Zertex troops to follow him. They all shuffled out of cover behind him, close together, so they looked like one enormous multi-headed entity.

By the time they all reached Loren, her fingers were flying across two different touch screens, tapping and swiping, her head tick-tocking back and forth between each display.

“What’s the situation?” asked Mech.

The left screen flashed red and let out an angry buzz. Splurt quivered uneasily.

“I’m guessing it’s not great,” Mech added.

“There are only a few viable ships,” Loren said, not lifting her eyes from the screen, or slowing her tap-tap-swiping. “Most are damaged, some are stuck, a few just aren’t where they’re meant to be.”

“What about the other decks?” asked Dronzen.

“Worse than this one,” Loren replied. The screen on the right flashed green and let out an altogether more friendly ting. “OK, I got one transporter. It’ll take ten.”

A murmur went around the Zertex group. “Leave him,” one man suggested, pointing to another. “No-one likes him, anyway. Sorry. No offence.”

“Er… quite a lot taken.”

“No-one’s getting left behind,” said Dronzen. He looked to Loren and lowered his voice. “Right?”

Loren’s fingers flew across the screens for a few more seconds. “I have that transporter, and enough one-man fighters for the rest. Unlocking them now.”

She frowned and moved both hands to the right screen. They worked together, blurring as she drilled through screen after screen of data.

“Problems?” asked Mech.

“No, there’s… I think there’s another ship,” said Loren. “But I can’t see what it is. It’s like it’s hidden.”

“A test project, maybe?” asked Dronzen.

The screen blinked green. Loren let out a sharp, “Ha!” of triumph. “Guess we’ll find out,” she said, drawing her blaster again. She nodded to Mech. “Cover me!”

“Sure,” Mech replied, as Loren tore off along the deck. “Whatever you say.”

* * *

Cal’s fingertips ached. His arms burned. His legs burned, too, but that was more to do with the searing pit of liquid beneath him than the effort of holding onto the walkway.

Vajazzle’s tentacles inched towards him, wriggling like vipers across the metal bridge. Cal shuffled his hands sideways, trying to put distance between himself and a particularly unpleasant-looking purple appendage, but stopped when he saw something thin and gray, like an eel’s tail, slithering in from the other side.

There was nowhere to go. Nowhere but down, at least, and he was keen to explore all other possible options before settling on that particular route.

“So… how’s it going?” he asked. “Anything you’d like to get off your chest or anything? Considering, you know, I’m probably going to be the last person you ever talk to. It’s going to get pretty lonely here, all on your own.” He raised his eyebrows and gasped. “Wait, here’s an idea. Don’t kill me.”

Vajazzle’s withered lips pulled into a mirthless grin. “Nice try, Mr Carver. Utter isolation will be an endless joy, compared to another moment in your company.”

“OK, I know you probably didn’t mean it to be, but that was actually quite hurtful,” said Cal. “And, of course, you’re forgetting one thing.”

“And what might that be?”

“Now, Splurt!” cried Cal.

Vajazzle didn’t react.

“Attack her from behind!”

Vajazzle tutted in disappointment. “I literally have eyes in the back of my head, Mr Carver,” she said, turning to reveal the horrifically misshapen face protruding from the back of her skull. It hissed at him, showing what he felt was an unnecessary number of teeth.

As she turned, her robe brushed across his fingers.

“Ah, fonk it,” Cal mumbled, then he grabbed the robe and jerked hard on it, heaving himself up onto the handrail.

Vajazzle hissed in pain or annoyance – or possibly both – and whipped around. She thrust out a hand and that invisible force slammed into Cal again. He wrapped his arms around the metal railing, but the pole itself sheared in two, bending outwards so Cal was now dangling over the toxic coolant from a length of rusty iron that was already buckling beneath his weight.

“Any last words?” the assassin asked.

Cal looked past her in surprise. “President Sinclair?!”

Vajazzle sighed. “Eyes on the back of my head.”

“Shizz, yeah. Forgot,” said Cal.

A violent shudder tore through the ship, shuddering up out of the world below. The railing bar Cal was gripping wobbled violently, the metal screeching as it bent still further.

The bridge itself rocked sideways, sending Vajazzle staggering towards the gap. Her tentacles thrashed towards the handrails on either side, but the welded joint of the floor beneath her came apart with a rending squeal and she stumbled, screaming, towards the gap.

The pole in Cal’s hands folded, swinging him down towards the underside of bridge. He had a second, maybe two, until it gave way. The edge of the walkway was three feet above him. Too far to jump. Way too far.

Cal heard that voice whisper to him again. That emotive, beautiful, Teen Choice Award nominated voice.

“Believe!” it whispered, oozing drama, then it added: “Also, the life force thing.”

“Fonk it,” said Cal. He jumped up and to the left, just as the bridge gave way on his right, spilling Vajazzle towards the bubbling mass of coolant.

Cal’s hands found a grip on the mesh floor of the walkway. The earthquake juddered the ship and the walkway tilted towards him, slipping his fingers back towards the edge.

“No, no, don’t you dare,” he hissed, making a grab for one of the vertical handrail bars. He caught hold, cheered briefly, then hissed in pain as a weight jerked his legs, almost ripping him in two.

One of Vajazzle’s tentacles had snagged around his foot, wrapping in a knot around his ankle. Vajazzle swung from the other end of the tentacle, upside-down, her neck craned so her red-eyed glare was fixed on Cal.

“It’s fitting, I suppose!” she hissed. The heat from the rolling pool of coolant was flaking her skin off. It floated from her flesh, becoming first ash, then nothing at all in the air. “We both die. Together.”

“Uh, Vajazzle,” Cal said. “Look out behind you.”

The assassin sneered. “How many times, Mr Carver? Eyes in the back of my…”

Her face fell as she saw, too late, the spout of liquid erupting upwards towards her.

“Oh no.”

The coolant column didn’t quite reach her. It didn’t have to. The weight on Cal’s leg evaporated. Pushed on by the rising cloud of heat, Cal heaved himself up onto the walkway, wasted half a second catching his breath, then ran for the only available exit, as the ground continued to shake, and the walls began to crack and crumble around him.

* * *

Loren’s fingers hammered angrily on another touch screen, eliciting another red flash and aggressive-sounding bzzzt. She’d deactivated three security protocols, and was now working on the fourth and, hopefully, final one.

“Maybe you should just leave it,” said Mech, shouting to make himself heard over the rumbling of the earth and the grinding of collapsing metal as the AX11 shook itself apart around them. “We ain’t got much time.”

“Get everyone to the other ships,” Loren instructed, not looking up.

“But we don’t know how to fly,” pointed out one of the Zertex crew.

“In those fighters it’s literally just one button to take off. You can’t miss it. It’s says ‘Take Off’ on the front in big white letters,” said Loren. She shot Miz a look. “And no, that wasn’t sarcasm.”

“And what then?” asked the Zertex man.

“You use the fonking stick and you point the ship towards the big hole in the sky!” Loren barked. “The transporter is much the same,” she continued, turning back to the screen. “Except instead of one button to push, there’s seventeen.”

“Seventeen?” spluttered three of the Zertex people at once.

“Eighteen if you also want to breathe,” Loren said. “Mech, show them.”

Mech took her by the arm. “We need to leave whatever’s in there, and get ready to go ourselves.”

Loren’s eyes met his. “There aren’t enough ships,” she told him. “Not for all of us. Whatever’s in there is our only way out.”

Mech held her gaze for a moment, then nodded. “Then what you waiting for? Get going.”

He spun around and addressed the anxious knot of Zertex troops. “Everyone who don’t want to die here, y’all better come with me.”

“Wait!” said Miz, holding up a clawed hand. Her ears pivoted. “Hear that?”

“I hear a lot of things,” said Mech. “None of them good. You might want to be more specific.”

“Shh,” Miz hissed. She closed her eyes and listened, then they flicked wide in surprise. “Cal! I can hear Cal!”

“What? Where? Go!” said Loren. “Find him.”

Mech felt a sudden squirming on his shoulder. Splurt launched himself onto Miz’s back, wrapping himself around her like a backpack.

“Want me to come?” asked Dronzen.

“Oh, you betcha, hot stuff,” Miz purred, eyeing him hungrily. He took a step towards her and she held up both hands. “Oh, wait, you mean to find Cal? No, you’ll totally slow me down. Like, I don’t know, get on a ship, I guess.”

Dronzen looked over at Loren and the increasingly impatient-looking Mech. “Right. Aye. Aye, I should do that,” he said, then he launched himself towards her, caught her by the arms and they kissed.

Mech’s nostrils flared as he watched Miz’s long, pink tongue explore Dronzen’s mouth. “Man, that is just nasty,” he muttered.

Miz and Dronzen’s kissing became more passionate, their hands exploring each other. Miz leaned over, bending the much smaller Dronzen beneath her.

Mech grimaced. “Seriously. That shizz ain’t right.”

Even Splurt, who was still clinging to Miz’s back, looked awkward.

“Miz,” said Loren. The smooching continued. “Mizette! Cal.”

“Oh. Oh, yeah,” said Miz, straightening and releasing Dronzen. His face shone with saliva. He shot Loren and Mech a sheepish look and blushed slightly, as he drew his sleeve across his spit-soaked chin. “See you soon,” Miz told him, then she winked, and spun on her heels.

Splurt’s bulbous eyes flicked across the group from the center of Miz’s back, then she was off and running, bounding on all four across the floor, as the deck rumbled and shook around them.

* * *

Cal raced along a corridor, his knees pumping furiously as the ceiling collapsed in a chain reaction of crashes and thuds behind him. As he drew closer to the door at the far end he launched himself towards it, tumbled through, then hit the wall on the other side.

He was off and running again at once, picking a direction at random and powering himself along as the ship vibrated itself to pieces at his back.

“Loren! Miz! Mech! Dronzen!” he shouted. “Er… or any of those other guys! Can anyone hear me?”

There was a sound like God himself groaning and a crack tore across the corridor dead ahead of him. Cal bounded across as the gap rattled itself apart, widening with each thunderous boom of the planet below.

“Cal!”

The cry came from somewhere up ahead. Cal hurried on, staggering into the walls on either side of him as the ship bucked around.

“Miz? Miz, is that you?”

He found her after two more turns. “Oh, thank fonk!” he cried, throwing his arms around her and hugging her for the scantest of seconds. Splurt flopped onto his arm and rolled up onto his shoulder, then nuzzled gently against his cheek. “Good to see you, too, buddy,” Cal said, then he yelped as Miz grabbed him by the arm and yanked him back the way she’d come.

“Come on, we have to get out of here.”

“Shame,” said Cal. “I hear they have excellent gym facilities.”

A wall collapsed behind them, filling the corridor with dust and smoke and a tumble of electrical wiring all going fzzt.

“But another time, maybe,” Cal bellowed as he picked up the pace. “For now, run!”

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Cal and Miz skidded, neck and neck, onto the landing deck, only to find it filled with choking clouds of black smoke.

“Oh, that’s not good,” Miz muttered.

“You sure this is the right place?” Cal coughed.

Miz nodded. She tried to sniff the air, but there was very little air to sniff. “Come on, this way,” she said, plunging into the smoke.

Covering his nose and mouth with his sleeve, Cal dived in after her. “Loren?” he shouted between hacks and splutters. “You here?”

“Cal? Over here!”

“I see her,” said Miz, grabbing Cal’s arm again and pulling him behind her.

They stumbled on and emerged in an area where the smoke was thinner and less toxic. Loren was still at her terminal, fingers still jabbing furiously at the screen.

“Ta-daa! Look who’s alive!” said Cal, grinning and gesturing to himself.

“Yeah, well not for long,” said Loren, putting a real downer on the moment. “Unless I can get this door open.”

Blinking away the smoke, Cal saw a towering set of metal doors standing fifteen feet beyond the terminal. “Isn’t there, like, a handle or something?”

“No!” Loren snapped. “I’ve disabled the security protocols, but I think the door is jammed.”

“And we need the door open because…?”

“Because there’s a ship in there,” said Loren. “The last ship. Our only way out.”

Cal swallowed. “Then why are you wasting time talking to me? Open the fonking thing!”

“I can’t, I told you, it’s jammed!” said Loren, slamming her fists on the screen in frustration.

She ran to the barrier and dug her fingers into the hairline gap where the two doors met in the middle. Gritting her teeth, she heaved. “Don’t just… stand there,” she grimaced. “Help me.”

Cal and Miz raced to join her. Miz took one side, while Cal positioned himself in the middle, digging his hands in back to back, so he could pull in opposite directions.

“On three,” he began. “One…”

“Just shut up and pull!” Loren barked. “There’s no time for countdowns!”

“OK, but I’d totally have been at three by now,” Cal pointed out, as they all heaved and pulled together.

The door didn’t budge.

“Mech, where the fonk is Mech?” Cal asked through gritted teeth.

“Here,” Mech grunted, emerging from the smoke with both arms raised. “Step aside.”

“No, wait!” said Loren, but it was too late. She, Cal and Miz dived for cover as Mech unleashed a volley of blaster fire on the doors. The laser bolts ricocheted off the metal and screamed past just inches from Cal’s head.

“You think I didn’t try that?” Loren shouted, but her voice was drowned out by an explosion from somewhere deeper in the ship. The floor undulated unpleasantly and the black smoke swirled in around them.

“Where’s everyone else?” Cal wheezed, covering his mouth again.

“Gone,” said Mech. “I got them onto the ships. They should be taking off right about now.”

Cal wheezed and spluttered. “Oh, well at least those nameless guys no-one cares about are all safe,” he said, sliding his back down the door as the smoke swirled into his lungs. “And that’s the main thing.”

“They do have names,” Miz coughed.

“What? Get out of town! All of them?” said Cal. He looked at his shoulder, which was about his full range of vision in the smoke. “Hey, where’s Splurt?”

The doors flew open with a grinding of gears. Cal toppled backwards into a room filled with fresh air. Wheezing, he gulped it down. From flat on his back, Cal saw a long strand of green strung between the doors, forcing them apart. A pair of wide eyes looked down on him.

Cal managed a thumbs-up, then Mech was scooping him up off the floor and half-dragging, half-carrying him further into the hangar. Splurt dropped into a ball behind them, and rolled along at Cal’s feet.

A ship stood before them, its landing legs clamped onto the hangar floor. Cal’s first thought was, “Ooh, that’s quite big,” because his appreciation of spaceship design was largely limited to size, shape and color, and not necessarily in that order.

The ship was twice the size of the Shatner, possibly a little bigger still. It had two wings, three legs and a couple of enginey-looking bits at the back. Despite all those, it somehow managed to look impossibly sleek, like it had been carved out of one solid piece of metal, then polished to within an inch of its life.

Cal had never wanted any object more than he wanted that ship, with the possible exception of a Castle Grayskull playset when he was six. Even then, he reckoned this would’ve come out on top.

The landing ramp was open, and Loren was already tearing up it, Miz hot on her heels. Cal scooped up Splurt, then hurried into the ship. Mech came last, closing the ramp behind him.

“Check this place out!” said Cal, gazing in awe at the smooth lines of the ship’s interior. The AX11 shuddered with the force of another earth tremor, and Cal grabbed onto Mech to stop himself falling over. “But, you know, later. Now’s probably not the time.” He pointed along the corridor ahead of them. “That way?”

“That way,” Mech confirmed.

By the time they reached the bridge, Loren was already sitting behind a long curved bank of controls. As she slid forwards on her chair, the control desk drew in closer, forming a horseshoe shape around her.

Miz had quickly worked out which chair had the fewest controls around it, and made a bee-line for that one. She slouched down into it, bounced up and down to check it would hold her weight, then draped a leg over the arm rest.

“Not bad,” she said. “Not bad at all.”

“Which one’s the gunner’s seat?” asked Cal, taking in the chairs on the bridge. Unlike on the Shatner, there were more than enough chairs for everyone, but Cal wanted to make sure he was the one who got to shoot the guns.

“No idea,” said Loren. “Just pick one. Hurry up!”

She flipped a switch and a holographic display appeared in the air above the controls. Loren’s eyes darted across them, her fingers flexing nervously.

“Tell me you know how to fly this thing,” said Cal, sliding into the chair closest to her.

“It’s… I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Loren. “I mean… I don’t know where to start.”

“Start by getting us the fonk out of here,” Mech suggested, stomping up behind her. “This whole place is about to shake itself apart, and I don’t think we want to be here when it does.”

“I know!” Loren yelped. “I just… These controls aren’t like anything I’ve ever used before.”

“What about that one?” asked Cal, leaning over and jabbing a finger through a holographic symbol. The lights flickered, and the bridge was suddenly plunged into absolute darkness. “OK, so maybe not that one.”

“Self-destruct sequence activated,” intoned a stiff, dusty-sounding voice from somewhere above them.

“What?” Loren cried. “How?”

“Detonation in five… four…”

“That wasn’t my fault!” Cal protested. “OK, obviously it totally was my fault, but let’s not dwell on that right now.”

There was an electrical hum and the lights returned. “Sorry,” said the voice from the ceiling. “Just my little joke.”

Cal looked up, half-expecting to find an elderly English butler dangling from the roof. Unsurprisingly, there wasn’t.

“Uh, hello? Who said that?” Cal asked.

“I am K-Seven-Zero Dash Nine-Three-Three-Zero-Seven Dash Zeta,” said the voice. “An experimental – and, if I may say, groundbreaking - artificial intelligence installed upon--”

“Can you start the engines?” asked Loren, interrupting the voice.

“Would you like me to?” asked K-Seven-Zero Dash Nine-Three-Three-Zero-Seven Dash Zeta.

“Yes!” shouted everyone else at the same time.

“Very well. As you wish.”

The ship hummed. The viewscreen illuminated, revealing a narrow strip of light ahead between the hangar bay ceiling and the shuddering ground below.

“OK, can you fly us out of here?” Loren demanded.

“Indeed I can, ma’am.”

Nothing happened.

“Er… then do it,” said Cal.

“Very good, sir. Calculating launch trajectory,” said K-Seven-Zero Dash Nine-Three-Three-Zero-Seven Dash Zeta.

Nothing continued to happen. The gap between ceiling and ground grew smaller.

“Apologies, my calculations may take some time,” the AI informed them.

“How much time?” asked Cal.

“Seventeen hours,” said K-Seven-Zero Dash Nine-Three-Three-Zero-Seven Dash Zeta. “Ish.”

“What?! Are there manual controls?” Loren cried.

“It will take longer if everyone keeps asking me questions,” the AI pointed out. Quite snippily, Cal thought.

“Manual controls. Now!”

“Very well, ma’am. If you insist.”

The bank of controls in front of Loren reformed like a Transformer, becoming something much more familiar.

“That’s more like it!” said Loren. One of her hands went to a lever, the other to a control stick. She hit the launch thrusters and the ship did nothing at all.

“Way to go,” said Miz. “Seriously. Good job.”

“The docking clamps!” Loren realized. “Disengage the docking clamps!”

“Oh, you want me to do that bit, do you?” said K-Seven-Zero Dash Nine-Three-Three-Zero-Seven Dash Zeta. Cal was sure he heard the AI sniff. “I’m qualified to handle that part, am I?”

“Just do it!”

The docking clamps disengaged and the ship streaked towards the narrowing gap. Loren gritted her teeth. Splurt hopped into Cal’s lap. Even Mech braced himself and closed his eyes as the ceiling raced down to meet the floor.

“This is going to be tight!” Loren grimaced. She instinctively ducked as the ship scraped by beneath the collapsing roof, then yanked back on the stick as they screamed out into the open air. The ship banked upwards at a skeleton-shaking right angle, just as the ground beneath the AX11 opened like a set of hungry jaws, swallowing the entire city-sized wreck and dragging it below the surface.

“Oh man, check out the vortex,” groaned Mech.

On screen, they could make out the transport shuttle and fighter ships outlined against the shimmering colors of the space hole. The hole itself, though, was shaking and rolling like a bad TV signal, its once-smooth edges now jagged and angry-looking.

“Hit the gas!” Cal instructed. “The planet’s about to fall apart, and if that thing really is connected, it’s not going to stay open for long.”

Loren let out a breath she’d been keeping inside. “OK. Hold on,” she urged, pushing forward on the thrusters.

The sky blurred. Everyone screamed. Loren inched back on the lever. Everyone screamed some more.

The vortex filled the viewscreen now, with the transporter and fighter ships all just a few miles ahead.

“Holy shizz, this thing’s fast,” Loren gulped.

“You can say that again,” said Cal, once he’d successfully dislodged his tongue from the back of his throat.

“I feel I should draw your attention to the pursuit ships which are currently approaching,” announced K-Seven-Zero Dash Nine-Three-Three-Zero-Seven Dash Zeta.

“Pursuit ships?” said Cal. “How can there be…?”

A torrent of laser fire tore past them. On screen, one of the fighter craft exploded in a tornado of fire and debris.

“They appear to be automated,” the AI informed them. “They launched from the AX11 just as we did.”

“Looks like Vajazzle had one last trick up her sleeve,” said Cal. “Let’s blow those things out of the sky.”

“An excellent plan, sir, save for one minor detail,” said K-Seven-Zero Dash Nine-Three-Three-Zero-Seven Dash Zeta. “Weapon systems are currently non-operational.”

Another stream of blaster fire howled past, narrowly missing the transport ship.

“Incoming transmission,” K-Seven-Zero Dash Nine-Three-Three-Zero-Seven Dash Zeta announced. “Should I display it, or tell them you’re not in?”

“On screen,” said Cal.

“Very good, sir.”

A rectangular overlay appeared in the top right corner of the viewscreen, showing a frantic-looking Dronzen. “Where the fonk did that pair of bamstons come from?” he yelped. “We just lost… uh… you know. Whatsisname. With the beard.”

More laser fire scorched past the transport ship, jerking it to one side. “We need to stop those fighters, quick flaming smart!” Dronzen said.

“We can’t,” Cal explained. “We’ve got no weapons. Just keep going. Get through the vortex before it closes.”

Dronzen didn’t reply. Not for a long time. When he did, it wasn’t really anything to write home about.

“Right then,” he said, then he leaned heavily on his stick. In the main view, one of the saucer-shaped Zertex fighters banked sharply, wobbled erratically, then rocketed past right above the top of the screen, making everyone but Mizette duck.

“What are you doing?” Miz demanded. “Dronzen? Galto? Do you want to get in the hole or not? Because if you do, you had better get yourself through that vortex first.”

“No can do, gorgeous,” said Dronzen. “If I don’t do this, any one of these ships could get blown to bits. Including yours. And I’m not about to let that happen.” He gritted this teeth. “Tell my wife and kids I’m sorry.”

“No, but… wait, wife and kids?” said Miz.

On screen, Dronzen grinned. “Nah, just kidding,” he said. He fixed the screen with a look of such sincerity, Cal had to bite his lip to stop himself bursting into tears. “Take care, Miz,” Dronzen said. “I love you.”

Miz blinked. “Uh… what?”

“I think he said he loves you,” Cal said.

“Yeah. Like, uh, sure, whatever,” said Miz. She shifted in her seat. “But, I mean, I’ve only known you for a day.”

“What?” said Dronzen. His face reddened. “Eh, yeah. Yeah. What? That’s… I’m not…”

“I mean, I like you, and everything,” said Miz. “But, no offence, that’s a bit stalker-ish. I think maybe we should, you know, like take a break?”

“What?” said Dronzen again. “Oh. I mean, yeah. Right you are.” He puffed out his cheeks. “Well, uh, OK. I guess I’ll see you, then. Take care of yourself.”

Mizette nodded. “Will do.”

“Right,” said Dronzen. He hesitated, then leaned forwards and tapped a button next to his camera. His image remained fixed in place. He smiled awkwardly and tried again. “Sorry, I don’t know how to switch this--”

His picture snapped off. Miz relaxed into her chair. “Wow. What a weirdo,” she said.

“The total weirdo has successfully engaged the pursuit craft,” announced K-Seven-Zero Dash Nine-Three-Three-Zero-Seven Dash Zeta. “Transporter and fighters are passing vortex event horizon now. I suggest we increase thrust before…”

Behind them, the planet exploded.

“…that happens,” concluded the AI.

As the shockwave raced up behind them, the vortex launched into its final thrashing death throes.

“Loren, punch it!” Cal cried, gripping his arm rests and holding his tongue between his teeth.

Space stretched as Loren pushed forward on the throttle. A pair of invisible thumbs pressed against Cal’s eyeballs, swimming them with swirls of color.

And then, in a flash of blinding white, the sky was filled with dozens of Zertex ships. “We made it!” Cal cheered. “Holy shizz, we made it!”

He looked out across the fleet of ships. “Wait, these are the guys who chased us in here,” Cal realized. “Have they just been hanging around here this whole time? Don’t they have homes to go to?”

“Time difference,” said Mech. “Vajazzle was in there for years but to us it was just a few days. Based on that, we probably just went through the vortex a few minutes ago.”

“So Sinclair’s still there?” said Cal. A grin lit up his face. “And he won’t know this is us! We can sneak away without him noticing.”

“Oh,” said K-Seven-Zero Dash Nine-Three-Three-Zero-Seven Dash Zeta.

Cal looked up. “Oh?”

“No, it’s nothing, sir,” said the AI. Cal continued looking up. “It’s just, I may have transmitted a full status update to all Zertex vessels within range, including details of the ship’s current occupants,” he said. “Sorry. Force of habit.”

Another overlay appeared on the screen. This one was filled by President Sinclair’s face. “Carver!” he roared. “How? How are you on that ship? That’s my ship!”

Cal pointed to the floor. “What, this ship? This ship right here?” He turned, and was delighted to find he had a spinny chair. “Any of you guys know this was the space president’s ship?”

“Nope,” said Mech.

“Not me,” said Loren.

Miz shrugged. “Whatever.”

Cal turned back to the viewscreen. “Sorry, we didn’t know.” He frowned. “Wait, hold on,” he said, then he lifted Splurt to his ear and pretended to listen. “Yeah… Uh-huh. You don’t say?”

“The entity!” Sinclair growled. “You have the entity. They have the entity!”

“Turns out Splurt knew it was yours,” Cal said, setting the blob back down on his lap. Splurt wriggled around, like a cat getting comfy. “So, you know, I can only apologize.”

“Surrender,” Sinclair seethed. “Or be destroyed.”

“Yeah. I don’t think so,” said Cal. “You see, the, uh, Currently Untitled is our ship now. Hope you don’t mind.” He leaned back in his chair. “Loren, warp us out of here!”

Loren stared blankly down at the controls. “Um… Warp. Warp, warp, warp, where is the…?”

“Perhaps this one, sir?” suggested K-Seven-Zero Dash Nine-Three-Three-Zero-Seven Dash Zeta. A single green circle appeared in the air in front of Cal.

Cal pushed it.

Nothing happened.

“What does it do?” he asked.

“I’m afraid I don’t recall, sir.”

“What? What do you mean ‘you don’t recall’?”

“Precisely that, sir,” said the AI. “I don’t recall. Presumably I was, once upon-a-time, aware of the button’s purpose, but it appears to have slipped my mind. However, I do have a nagging suspicion you probably shouldn’t have pressed it, sir.”

“You told me to!” Cal spluttered.

“Did I sir?” K-Seven-Zero Dash Nine-Three-Three-Zero-Seven Dash Zeta reflected on this for a moment. “Oh.”

“Is that thing, like, all there?” asked Miz, shooting the ceiling a glance.

“It’s funny you should ask, ma’am,” said the AI. “My experimental nature, coupled with the damage I sustained during the AX11’s crash – as well as several years of forced solitude – means I have possibly gone quite mad.

“And by ‘possibly,’” he continued, “I in fact mean ‘probably.’”

“Great,” said Cal.

“And by ‘probably,’ I mean ‘quite categorically.’”

“Excellent,” said Cal. “Even better.”

“Now, if I may be so bold, I suggest you all hold on.”

“Why?” asked Cal, gripping his arm rests. Through the viewscreen ahead of them, they all watched as space ballooned outwards and inwards at the same time, bulging and contracting all at once. “Oh, that’s why,” Cal said. “What happens now?”

“An excellent question, sir,” said K-Seven-Zero Dash Nine-Three-Three-Zero-Seven Dash Zeta. “In fact, it’s so good, I was about to ask you the same one.”

Cal gritted his teeth and glanced around at the others as the inny-outty space blister engulfed the ship.

Maybe he didn’t know what was going to happen next. Maybe no-one did.

But, man, he thought, it was going to be fun finding out!

You know, assuming they didn’t die, or anything.

Read on for a sneak preview of

Space Team: Song of the Space Siren

CHAPTER ONE

Dogan Murt was not, by any stretch of the imagination, a brave man.

He wasn’t technically a ‘man’ at all, in fact. He was a Talpan – a race of wide-eyed humanoid, yet somewhat mole-like creatures who traditionally lived deep underground, and smelled ever so faintly of kitty litter.

Not content with spending the entirety of his adult life in a dark cave (or overly keen on the kitty litter thing), Dogan had struck out on his own, determined to make his way in the world. That had been several years ago. Of late, things had not been going well.

Dogan looked down at the scrap of paper he clutched in his shaking hands, then up at the flickering neon sign above the door. His reading ability was low at the best of times, and a full third of the letters in the sign were in darkness, but he was pretty sure this was the place.

He pushed open the door. Sweat and smoke and noise and movement all rushed out through the gap.

He closed the door again, alarmed by the brutality of it all.

“Do it, Dogan! Do it, Dogan!” he whispered. It had become a sort of personal mantra of his over the years, and he called on it whenever fear threatened to thwart his attempts to better himself.

‘Do it Dogan,’ had even been his nickname for a while back in the caves, although it was usually said in mocking tones, and followed swiftly by a sharp punch to the testicles. He had no nicknames now, of course. To have a nickname, first you needed a friend. Or an enemy who knew you well enough.

Siphoning some air in through his sharp front teeth, Dogan pushed the door all the way open, clenched his fists down at his sides, then stepped into the bar.

Even before getting the measure of the place, Dogan knew he didn’t approve. The Talpan were fiercely moral, and public venues where people got into fights, drank excessively and did the sort of things the three-legged gentleman on stage was doing were very much frowned upon.

Despite himself, Dogan looked more closely at the man on the stage, and came to the conclusion that the third appendage wasn’t actually a leg at all.

Horrified, Dogan turned away, blinked several times to try to erase the images he’d just witnessed, then headed for one of the bar’s empty booths.

“Sorry. Pardon me. Can I just squeeze… thanks,” he mumbled, weaving his way through the crowds. He reached the dimly-lit booth, only to find a hulking green figure lurking in the corner, nursing a drink.

“Oh. Sorry,” said Dogan. “I just… I didn’t…” He smiled hopefully at the booth’s occupant. “Would you mind?”

The creature stared impassively at Dogan for several seconds, its eyes glassy and black. At last, it waved a clawed hand at the bench across the table, and Dogan slid gratefully onto the ripped and threadbare padding.

“Thank you,” said Dogan, nestling into the shadows. The lizard-creature nodded once, but said nothing.

Now that he was out of the crowds, Dogan took a moment to scan the place. A horseshoe-shaped bar took up around a quarter of the floor space, with the raised stage over by the far wall taking up a much smaller chunk. Clearly people came for the entertainment, but stayed for the booze.

The lights were low, the volume was high, and while there were a few groups hanging out together, most of the clientele seemed to be in pairs or on their own.

Dogan felt the lizard-creature’s eyes on him, and smiled shakily. “I’m looking for someone,” he explained. “I was told I might find him here.”

He glanced around the bar again, anxiously picking at his black fingernails. “I need his help. I am in trouble,” he explained, his voice dropping to a whisper.

Dogan caught himself just in time. He regarded the green-skinned alien cautiously. “You are not with the Xandrie, are you?”

The creature shook its head slowly.

“Zertex?” asked Dogan, eyeing up the exit. “Are you law enforcement? Because I’m not allowed to talk to them, the Xandrie made that very clear.”

The creature shook its head again.

“And you have to tell me if I ask you. It’s the law,” Dogan insisted.

The creature growled deep down in its throat, then shook its head again.

Dogan nodded, relieved. “Good. Good. I apologize. I had to ask, you understand?”

The creature said nothing.

“You understand,” said Dogan, answering on its behalf. He rubbed the tabletop that stood between them, feeling every scratch with the pink, wrinkled skin of his fingertips.

“The problem is, I do not know what he looks like,” said Dogan, gazing out across the bar again. The genetically blessed young man had been joined on stage by two alarmingly supple women, and many of the bar’s occupants had started to gravitate towards that end of the room.

Dogan clicked his tongue against his teeth in disapproval, then angled himself for a better view so that he could really disapprove if things went the way he thought they were probably going to go.

“But I am in trouble, and I believe he can help me,” Dogan said, tearing his eyes from the stage. “The Xandrie, they want money from my business. In return, they have offered to ‘protect’ it. ‘It’s a nasty part of town,’ they tell me. ‘Wouldn’t want anything happening to you,’ they say.”

The mole-man’s eyes moistened, and he lowered his head for a moment, composing himself. “I paid. For a long time, I paid, but now the cost has gone up, and I can no longer afford to do so. Besides,” he said, getting angry. “It is my business. My money. My hard work. Why should I pay these… these… gangsters?”

He banged a fist on the table. It very clearly hurt, but he tried not to let on. He glanced around nervously, and the anger left his voice in a long outward breath. “I just want someone to make the Xandrie understand that I cannot be pushed around. That they cannot continue to do as they please.”

Dogan’s eyes swept the bar again, searching for someone he didn’t know, but on whom he’d pinned all his hopes. “I am told this man and his crew may help me. I was told he might be here.” He sighed. “It appears my information was incorrect.”

Drumming his hands on the tabletop, Dogan met the gaze of the lizard-creature and had another attempt at a smile. “My apologies. None of this is your concern. Forgive me for bothering you.”

As Dogan spoke, one of the alien’s clawed hands fumbled at a spot halfway up its scaly throat. Dogan watched in amazement as the claws dug into the spongy flesh, then blinked in surprise as a square flap was peeled aside, revealing a sweat-soaked human face inside.

“Holy shizz, it is fonking hot in there,” gasped the man. He grabbed for his glass, shut his eyes, then tossed his drink in his face. “Oh, yeah. That’s the stuff,” he sighed. “Wow. That’s better.”

Dogan’s face crumpled in confusion. “I… I do not understand. Who are you? What are you?”

“Oh. Yeah. Forgot that bit. Sorry. Name’s Cal. Cal Carver,” said the man in the suit. He gave a rubbery thumbs up. “And, mister, you just hired the Space Team.”

Cal swept the clawed hand across his face, wiping away his drink. “I mean, technically it’s just ‘Space Team’ not ‘the Space Team’ but, well, there was this TV show where I came from, and every week the leader, Hannibal, would…” He shook his head. The rubbery lizard head shook, too. “Know what? It doesn’t matter. The main thing is, you’ve got a problem, no-one else can help, and you’ve found us.”

“Uh… ‘us’?” said Dogan.

The back of the bench behind Dogan shook as someone moved in the next booth over. There was a whirr and a series of clanks, then a scuffed and dented metal figure stepped into view.

Cal looked the cyborg up and down. “Mech! I thought I told you to find a disguise?”

“I did,” said Mech. He ducked a little and pointed to the top of his head.

“A tiny hat,” said Cal. “That’s your disguise? A tiny hat.”

“I’m a seven foot tall cyborg. What the fonk should I have disguised myself as?”

“I don’t know, maybe a different seven foot tall cyborg?” Cal suggested. “One who isn’t on a list of the galaxy’s most wanted.”

Dogan looked between Cal and Mech, his mouth hanging open. A sudden movement at the edge of the booth caught his attention, and he almost screamed when a wolf-like creature in a tightly-fitting leather outfit slid onto the seat next to Cal.

“Hey,” she said. “Who’s the wrinkly pink guy?”

“Uh, D-Dogan,” the wrinkly pink guy stammered, silently adding the “Please don’t eat me,” part in his head.

“Miz! Why aren’t you disguised, either?” asked Cal, turning to look the wolf-woman up and down. Because of his costume, this wasn’t easy, and it took several attempts before he could twist his body enough to let him see her properly.

Miz shrugged. “I don’t know. Seemed kind of lame. Besides, look at me. Blending in? Totally not my thing.”

Cal tutted and shook his head. “How hard would it have been to pop on a pair of glasses or something? You know? A fake nose. A mustache! You couldn’t even give me a mustache.”

“Why are you disguised?” Dogan asked.

“Because we’re wanted by the government for a crime we didn’t commit,” said Cal. He caught the looks from Mech and Miz. “OK, OK, we’re wanted by the government for a crime we did commit. A number of crimes, actually. Mainly, abducting the president, ejecting him into space, and stealing an experimental ship, but it’s a pretty big list.”

Cal pointed a clawed finger at Dogan. “But we’re not here to talk about us. We’re here to talk about you.”

He leaned across the table, but it made his costume ride up and forced his cheeks up into his eyes, so he leaned back again. “Tell us more about these Xandrie guys. And, more importantly, just where we might be able to find them.”

* * *

Cal, Mech and Miz stood in a darkened doorway, watching the building directly across the street. Cal had ditched the lizard costume in an alleyway behind the bar, and now wore the black shirt, cargo pants and scuffed brown boots he’d picked up on their recent trip back to the Bug-infested wasteland that was now the planet Earth.

“So, if I had to say who was who,” said Cal, rubbing his hands together to drive away the cold, “I’d be Face, because, you know, I’m the smooth-talking one who always charms his way out of trouble. But – and here’s the thing - I’d also be Hannibal, because I’m the leader.”

Mech raised an eyebrow. “Leader? You ain’t the leader. We ain’t got no leader.”

“Well, we do, obviously, and it’s me, but that’s OK, because you’re B.A., and everyone loves B.A.!” Cal said, patting Mech on the chest. “‘I ain’t goin’ on no plane, sucka!’ You know?”

Miz wrinkled her nose. “What is he talking about?”

“I have no fonking idea,” Mech admitted.

“Loren’s Murdoch, because they’re both pilots, not because she’s got undiagnosed PTSD or whatever Murdoch had, and Miz…” His mind raced. “Miz is the sexy werewolf lady they rarely spoke about.”

He shoved his hands in his pockets and turned his attention back to the doorway across the road. “I mean, we’re not exactly the same, but there are broad similarities is the point I’m trying to make.”

It had been over a month since Cal had been abducted from his prison cell and whisked into outer space, and while lots of it was all still new and exciting, there were a few parts which were already losing their novelty.

Streets like this, for example. He knew he couldn’t have seen this street before – they’d only arrived on the planet a few hours ago – and yet there was something tediously familiar about it. The shadowy nooks. The grimy windows. The flurries of litter tumbling along it on the whims of the breeze.

There were streets just like it back on Earth. Streets you didn’t walk down if you valued your wallet, your kneecaps or your life. Cal had seen more than his fair share back on his home planet, and was amassing quite the collection on other worlds, too.

“Think that’s the place?” he asked.

Mech tapped the screen on his forearm and scanned the doorway opposite. “Door’s heavy. Reinforced. Take a tank to knock that thing down.”

“Can you do it?” Cal asked.

Mech snorted and clanked his way across the street. “Just watch me.”

Cal hurried to keep up, with Miz stalking along behind him.

“OK, so let’s just go in there, throw our weight around a little – well, your weight, mostly,” Cal said, looking from Mech to Miz in turn, “and give them a warning. Let’s try not to kill anyone this time, if we can avoid it. Mizette, I’m looking at you here.”

“Fine,” Miz sighed. “But what if they deserve it?”

“If they genuinely deserve it, it’s totally fine,” said Cal. “But you said that last guy deserved it because he was wearing yellow pants.”

“He totally did deserve it,” said Miz.

“Girl’s got a point,” agreed Mech. “Those were some nasty pants.”

A car blared its horn at them as it hovered past. Miz gave it the finger, and Cal felt a swelling of pride that he’d taught her the gesture. They stepped onto the sidewalk and positioned themselves by the reinforced door.

“We should have brought Loren on this,” Cal whispered, drawing a blaster pistol from the holster on his belt.

“Why, so the two of you could hold hands?” asked Miz, the fur on her neck sticking up ever so slightly.

“How many times do I have to tell you?” Cal whispered. “There’s nothing going on between us.”

“Oh, please,” said Miz, then she jabbed a thumb towards the door and glowered at Mech. “Are you going to kick this thing down or not?”

“Get ready,” Mech said. He adjusted the dial on his chest, just a fraction, diverting additional power to his hydraulics. Then he raised a leg and thrust it out in front of him like a battering ram.

The doors flew apart with a screech of tearing metal.

“Oh, man,” Cal whispered. “That was so B.A.”

He took cover behind Mech as the cyborg ducked through the doorway and stomped into the starkly gray hallway beyond. A fluorescent strip light flickered on the ceiling, sending shadows dancing over the gloss-painted walls.

“Attention, uh, the Xandrie,” Cal began, but his voice trailed away when he spotted the blood. It pooled on the vinyl flooring and dribbled down the walls. It dripped from the light fitting and seeped from below the door at the far end of the hall.

And, perhaps most significantly of all, it oozed from the quivering, gelatinous remains of what had presumably once been a living creature, but was now nothing more than gristle and flesh.

Cal’s grip tightened on his blaster. “Uh… hello?” he said, poking the fleshy lump with his shoe. He backed off a little and waited.

“Nope. I think it’s dead,” he announced.

“What do you…? Of course it’s fonking dead!” Mech growled. “Look at it.”

“Well I don’t know, do I?” said Cal, pointing to the bleeding meat. “I saw someone who looked almost exactly like that back on that last planet. The guy giving out the parking tickets. Remember?”

“That was the planet before,” said Mech.

Cal tutted. “Whatever. My point is, how am I supposed to know it’s dead if I don’t gently kick it, say ‘hello,’ and wait to see if it responds?”

Mizette’s nostrils flared. “It’s worse in there,” she said, nodding towards the door.

“Worse?” Cal squeaked. “There’s blood pouring from the ceiling and, I don’t know, a fonking hip lying on the floor. How can it be worse?”

Miz met his gaze and held it. “Trust me,” she said. “It’s worse.”

Cal took a deep breath. It tasted like pennies. “Fine. I’m sure it’s nothing we can’t handle. Let’s go check it out.”

“Why?” asked Mech. “Let’s just turn around and get back to the ship. This shizz right here? This shizz ain’t our problem.”

Cal shook his head in disgust. “And you have the nerve to call yourself B.A. Baracus,” he said.

“I don’t! You called me that,” Mech pointed out. “I don’t even know who that is.” He threw up a hand. “Come on, man. Where are you going?”

Cal had about-turned and now strode purposefully along the hallway, doing his best to look like the man in charge. This was marred slightly by him slipping in the blood puddle and skidding several feet along the corridor, while waving his arms in a panicky flap.

He stumbled the last couple of feet, then steadied himself against the doorframe. “Totally meant that,” he said, then he turned the handle, opened the door a fraction, and poked his head inside.

A moment later, he took it back out again. He turned to Miz, all color draining from his face. “I take it back,” he said. “It’s waaaay worse.”

Space Team returns in

Space Team: Song of the Space Siren

Space Team: The Guns of Nana Joan

Get Space Team: The Holiday Special free

A WORD FROM THE AUTHOR

Hello! First up, thanks for making it this far. Assuming you haven’t skipped to the end, congratulations! You’ve survived the first three adventures of Cal Carver and his crew. You probably deserve a t-shirt. Or maybe just a bit of a lie down.

Before you head off to do that, though, I wanted to quickly tell you why Cal and the guys are so important to me. It won’t take long, I promise.

I came up with the idea for Space Team in 2014, when my mum was dying. She was in hospital after her second battle with cancer, and we knew it was just a matter of time. Sitting in the chair by her bed, watching her getting weaker and weaker, I would often 'escape' by imagining various weird and wonderful character and their adventures.

When she was awake and lucid – which was rare - I'd tell her about them. Sometimes she'd smile. Sometimes she'd roll her eyes, probably wondering to herself if I'd been taking some of her drugs. But it was nice having that time together. Just her, me, and the people in my head.

And then she died. And that was that.

It was last April, on the second anniversary of her death, that I thought about the characters again. I was laying flowers on her grave, and thinking back over those final days when Cal waved to me. That’s the only way I can describe it. He popped up inside my head, and he waved.

I started thinking about him, and about the other characters. It was strange, but the more I thought about them, the more of a connection I felt with my mum again. I decided to write a chapter of two about them, just to sort of make it real, if you know what I mean? If I had words written down, then it sort of helped mark those final days with her in hospital. It would help lock those few positive memories of her final days in place, so I couldn’t forget them again.

And so, I sat down and wrote the first few chapters of the first book. Three weeks later, the book was finished, but Cal wouldn’t stop talking and so, just a few days later, I started work on book two.

So that’s it. That’s the real origin of Space Team. Now you know.

And now, I should probably leave you to get on with your life. If you’re going to miss the Space Team crew, then have no fear – Book Four is on its way, closely followed by Books Five and Six. Beyond that… who knows? It’s a big universe out there, and there’s plenty of adventure to go around.

Best wishes,

Barry J. Hutchison

9th February, 2017

PS - If you have a spare five minutes to leave me a review for this book, or any of the first three individual books, I’d really appreciate it!