“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 som
e 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.”
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