Space Team: The Search for Splurt

by Barry J. Hutchison

  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 w
as 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, a
nyway,” 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.”