Space Team: The Search for Splurt

by Barry J. Hutchison

  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 wis
e 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, b
ut 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?”