The Hunt for Reduk Topa

by Barry J. Hutchison

  “Of course I knew that,” Cal lied. “Although, they might have done it to annoy—”

  “Shh. Quiet,” Mech hissed.

  Cal’s eyes darted along the corridor ahead of them. “Why? What is it?”

  “Nothing,” said Mech. “I just want you to stop talking.”

  “OK, that was mean,” Cal said.

  Mech smirked. “Yeah. That was mean.”

  They continued along the corridor. It was pretty uninteresting, as corridors went. It had walls, a floor, a ceiling—the usual set-up. There were some symbols stenciled here and there on the bulkheads, but Cal’s visual translation chip didn’t seem to have much interest in deciphering them, and he was too busy trying to keep up with Mech to waste too much time on them.

  “I like the bloops,” Cal said.

  Mech frowned back at him. “What?”

  “The bloops,” Cal replied. He raised a finger and waited, then said, “Bloop,” in time with a steady chime being emitted by the ship. “It’s like on Star Trek. They had bloops. And, like, a woo-woo-woo noise. Sometimes, if you were lucky, a bting.”

  He counted in his head, then said, “Bloop,” in time with the chime again. “We should get bloops for our ship.”

  Mech stopped walking and just stared down at him for quite a long time.

  “Bloop,” said Cal, after a while.

  “I hate you,” Mech told him, then he turned and continued along the corridor, tapping at the sensor panel on his arm.

  “Is there air in here?” Cal asked. “Can I breathe?”

  Mech checked the sensor display. “Well, the atmosphere won’t kill you.”

  Cal reached for the clips on the base of his helmet.

  “But it will knock you unconscious.”

  Cal hesitated. “Oh.”

  “And give you extensive brain damage.”

  Cal decided to leave the headpiece where it was for now, even though it had started to steam up, turning the corridor blurry and indistinct.

  “Look at this,” said Mech, stopping by a screen that was fixed to the wall.

  Cal peered through the visor-fog at the screen. It was a nice screen, from what he could see of it. Smooth. Curved. Bezel-less. Probably Ultra HD, with killer surround sound. The perfect TV, aside from one tiny detail.

  “Someone smashed it to pieces,” said Mech. “There’s a big hole in the middle of the screen.”

  “Damn, that’s a shame. We could’ve set that up in my room,” Cal said. “I could’ve watched my Murder, She Wrote box-set that someone—naming no names, but it’s you, Mech—won’t let me watch on the main screen.”

  “I watched forty-seven motherfonking episodes,” Mech protested.

  “Exactly. We’ve barely scratched the surface.”

  “Check this out,” said Mech, ignoring him. On the floor below the screen was a spattering of dark green spots. “Looks like dried blood.”

  “Space blood,” Cal corrected. “Normal blood’s red.”

  “There’s another one,” Mech said, continuing along the corridor in the direction of a second screen. At first, it seemed to be intact, but as they drew closer, Cal saw that this one had been destroyed just like the first.

  “What a waste,” Cal said, looking from one TV to the other. “They’ve got to be fifty inches. Maybe fifty-five. Imagine Lansbury on one of those.”

  “Why are they broken?” Mech wondered. He gestured to the wall below the second TV, and to the streaks of green that had dried onto the metal. “What the hell happened?”

  Cal thought for a moment, then tried to click his fingers. The space suit gloves paffed disappointingly. “I got it. Maybe they fell off.”

  Mech looked from Cal to the screen and back again. “What?”

  “Maybe they fell off the wall,” Cal explained. He mimed the TV falling off the wall, and added a crash sound effect for good measure. “Kpshhk! You know?”

  “So… you’re saying they fell off the wall, smashed, then someone put them back on the wall all broken and in pieces?” said Mech. “That’s what you think happened?”

  Cal had to admit it did sound a little unlikely, but he doubled down, regardless.

  “Rule out the impossible and whatever’s left, however improbable, must be what happened,” Cal announced grandly. “You know who said that, Mech?”

  “No.”

  “Well, neither do I,” Cal admitted. He patted Mech on the chest. “That’s something fun for you to find out.”

  They continued along the corridor, Mech scanning for information, Cal occasionally saying, “Bloop,” in a gratingly high voice.

  “It’s cold,” said Mech, consulting his scanner. “Real cold.”

  “I’d say I’d give you my jacket, but I don’t think it’d fit,” Cal said. “Also, the whole unconsciousness and brain damage thing is pretty unappealing.”

  “I ain’t saying I’m cold, I’m just saying the ship’s cold. I think life support might be failing. That don’t bode well for the condition of the warp disk.”

  “That’s just what I was thinking,” said Cal. He glanced at another broken screen as they passed it, and noted another spray of space blood on the wall and floor beneath it. “Still, this is nice, isn’t it?”

  “What is?” asked Mech.

  “This. Us. Getting out, doing guy stuff. It’s nice. We should do it more often.”

  “We definitely should not,” Mech countered, visibly shuddering at the very thought.

  They plodded on toward where the corridor became a T-junction ahead.

  “So, what do we think happened?” Cal wondered. “Did everyone abandon ship?”

  Mech shrugged noisily. “Fonked if I know. Maybe. Or maybe we’ll turn this corner and find their bodies all piled up,” he said.

  “Why would they be dead?” Cal asked. He lowered his voice to a whisper. “Wait, do you think they were all murdered?”

  He gasped.

  “What if whatever killed them is still here?”

  “Unless it was the fonking houseplant, then it ain’t here,” Mech said.

  “Right. Right,” Cal said, relaxing a little. He stretched himself up so he could see above the fog that now completely covered the bottom half of the visor. “Where are we going, by the way? Do we even know?”

  “Engine room,” said Mech.

  “Right, but do we know where that is?”

  “Yeah. Kevin ran a full diagnostic scan of the ship and found it in the hour it took you to put the suit on. I know where it is.”

  “Good. Perfect,” said Cal. “We’ll salvage what we can of the warp disk, pick up the plant, then get out of here so I can get out of this suit. I forgot to go to the bathroom before we set off.”

  Mech’s top half partially rotated so he could look back at Cal. “What do you mean you forgot? I specifically asked you if you needed to go to the bathroom.”

  Cal blinked. “You did?”

  “Yes! And you said no, and I asked if you were sure, and you said, ‘Jesus, Mech, I’m not a child. I know when I need to use the bathroom.’ You said those words.”

  “Those actual words?” said Cal, staring blankly. He shook his head. “No. No, I don’t recall any of that.”

  Mech muttered something uncomplimentary, but chose not to pursue that particular conversation any further.

  “You ain’t seriously going to pick up the plant?” he asked instead.

  Cal nodded. “Sure. I mean, I thought it’d be nice.”

  “For who?”

  “For Kevin. He seemed to really want us to get it,” Cal said.

  “So? He’s an artificial intelligence. The fonk’s he going to do with a plant?”

  “I don’t know. I guess I kind of feel sorry for the guy, you know? He’s got no one,” Cal said. “Miz has got Tyrra, I’ve got Splurt and Loren, you’ve got me. Who has Kevin got?”

  “I got you?” Mech spat.

  Cal rubbed a gloved hand across the cyborg’s back. “You bet you do, big guy,” he soothed. �
��Always.”

  “Shut up.”

  “Ah, come on now, Mech,” said Cal, grinning. “Don’t fight it. I know you feel it just like—”

  Mech whirred insistently as he placed a metal finger to his lips. “Stop talking,” he whispered. “Listen.”

  Cal listened.

  “You hear that?” Mech asked.

  Cal listened again, then nodded slowly. “Yeah. You mean that breathing sound? Like… huuup. Huup?” He narrowed his eyes. “Wait.”

  Mech watched with growing impatience as Cal exhaled and inhaled several times in turn.

  “No, that’s me. I’m hearing myself. It’s the helmet,” he explained, pointing to his head in case Mech had forgotten what a helmet was. “It echoes.”

  His voice took on a low, ominous tone. “I am your father,” he said, then his eyes widened and he smiled from ear to ear. “Ha! That’s actually awesome.”

  Cal held a hand out to the cyborg. “Join me, Mech. Together, we can rule the galaxy as—”

  “Will you shut the fonk up for one damn minute?” Mech hissed. “Listen.”

  This time, Cal held his breath. He was convinced he could still hear the inner workings of his own head reverberating back to him from the glass of the helmet, but there was something else, too. Voices. High-pitched and screechy, although he couldn’t make out the words.

  “There’s someone here,” Cal whispered.

  “Sure sounds like it,” Mech agreed.

  “I’m going to fonking kill Kevin when we get back,” Cal said. “He said there was no one on the ship.”

  Mech gestured to his forearm scanner. “Ain’t Kevin’s fault for once. Look.”

  Cal looked.

  “It’s your arm. What am I supposed to be looking at?” he asked, after a few seconds of staring blankly.

  “I ain’t getting any life signs, either,” Mech said. “Just you and me.”

  Cal gave a little gasp. “So… what are you saying?” he asked, searching Mech’s face. “The plant died?”

  “No! I didn’t count the fonking plant!” Mech snapped. “I’m saying that whoever’s here, they ain’t registering as life signs.”

  “Oh, shizz,” Cal whispered. “What if it’s space ghosts?”

  Mech regarded him with barely concealed contempt, then rotated his top half to face front and set off toward the T-junction.

  “Or space vampires,” Cal suggested, hurrying to keep up. “Space zombies? They’re real, right? We actually saw those before! We know they’re a thing!”

  Mech slowed as he approached the corner, his footsteps becoming a series of solid thuds rather than the usual rattling clanks. Cal stuck close behind him, using the cyborg’s towering metal frame as cover.

  “I should’ve brought a gun,” he muttered. “Why didn’t you let me bring a gun?”

  “Because I didn’t want you accidentally shooting anything.”

  “That never happens,” Cal protested.

  Mech fired him a look.

  “OK, hardly ever.”

  They both listened to the voices. There were at least four of them. Two were high and screechy, the others a little less so.

  “Can you understand what they’re saying?” Cal whispered, looking up at Mech. The condensation inside the helmet gave the cyborg a hazy look, like he was the love interest in a movie from the 1950s.

  “No, I ain’t getting a word of it,” Mech replied. “But we’re a long way out of Zertex space. Could be that it’s a language the chip ain’t encountered before.”

  “Or maybe they’re talking in code so we just think that’s the case,” Cal suggested. “Try swapping every letter they say for the next letter of the alphabet and see if that works.”

  “How the fonk am I supposed to—?”

  Mech pinched the bridge of his nose, summoning the self-restraint required to ignore Cal’s suggestions. He pointed along one branch of the T-junction. “Look, the voices are that way. Right?”

  “Left,” Cal corrected.

  “What?”

  “That’s left,” Cal said. He pointed in the opposite direction. “That’s right. Unless, wait, you’re facing me, so I guess that would mean that—”

  “Shut the fonk up, you know what I meant! I swear, you do this deliberately,” Mech seethed.

  “Do what deliberately?” asked Cal, looking genuinely bemused.

  “The voices are that way,” Mech said, pointing. “The engine room is the other way. So, we go for the engine room, and leave whoever’s up there to do whatever they’re doing.”

  “What if they need help?” Cal asked.

  From the corridor on the left came the sound of uproarious high-pitched laughter.

  “They sound like they need help?”

  “I guess not,” Cal admitted. “So, voices that way, engine room that way. Got it.”

  Mech set off in the direction of the engine room.

  “Will I meet you back here?”

  Mech stopped. “What? Why would I meet you here? We’re going together.”

  “I thought you could go do the engine room stuff, and I could go get the plant,” Cal said. He gestured the other way along the T-junction. “I’m guessing it’s this way?”

  Mech glowered at him. “Will you forget the motherfonking plant?”

  “I’ll only get it if it’s easy,” Cal said. “I won’t take any stupid risks.”

  “You’re already taking a stupid risk,” Mech pointed out. “You’re risking getting caught for a plant.”

  “What can I say? It was a good-looking plant,” Cal said. “And besides, I’m not risking getting caught for a plant, I’m risking getting caught for Kevin. The guy literally lives on that ship all the time and has nothing of his own. It’ll be a nice gesture. And, with any luck, it’ll mean he has something to keep him occupied that doesn’t involve watching us all the time like a weird pervert.”

  Mech said nothing. Cal made a clumsy thumb-jab back over his shoulder.

  “So, are you going to tell me where it is, or should I go ask those guys?”

  Mech stood motionless for a while as he considered the options. He could pick Cal up and bring him along, but then he’d have to listen to him the whole time. A few minutes of peace and quiet without him was actually pretty tempting.

  He tapped something on his arm. The top half of Cal’s visor became a heads up display, filled with text, flashing icons, and a small map showing the T-junction and two blinking dots.

  “Hey! Since when could it do this?” Cal asked, studying the display. It appeared to be coating the inside of the glass and yet simultaneously hovering a few feet ahead of him, projected into thin air. He quickly found that it moved depending on where he was focusing, so that it was always in sight. Under normal circumstances, this would be incredibly useful. As it was, with the lower half of the visor now completely steamed up, it was a fonking nightmare.

  “Since always,” said Mech. “The green dots are us. The arrow will take you to the plant.” He visibly flinched at that, like he still couldn’t believe it was actually happening. “Anything red is another life-sign that ain’t you or me.”

  “Got it,” said Cal. “Green, red, follow the arrow. Easy.”

  “Yeah. I hope so,” Mech grunted. He turned away, then turned back. “And stay out of trouble.”

  Cal held his arms out at his sides. “Come on, Mech,” he said, grinning in what he thought was probably the cyborg’s direction. “What could possibly go wrong?”

  Five

  Cal fumbled his way along the wall using the HUD map to navigate his way through the corridors of the ship. He’d been walking—shuffling, really—for a few minutes now, and the voices were still ahead of him somewhere, growing slowly but steadily louder as he followed the arrow.

  Occasionally, the ship would give off one of its regular bloops from somewhere right beside him, making him jump inside the suit, and forcing him to reconsider the idea of having them installed aboard the Currently Untitled.

&nbs
p; Sure, they were fun, but how long would that last? He was pretty sure the novelty would wear off the first time they kept him awake all night. Maybe they could set them up for special occasions, like when they were in space battles, or for the moments building up to Loren’s next crash-landing. That could work.

  Bloop.

  Another of the fonkers went off near his head at the exact moment Cal’s hand touched the wall, making him eject a little shriek of fright.

  No. They were a bad idea, he decided. In fact, if he never heard one again, it’d be too fonking soon.

  He continued his clumsy sightless shuffle along the corridor, the arrow blinking in the visor. Visibility was down to maybe five percent now, he thought. He was aware that the lights were still on and got a sense of the open passageway ahead of him, but beyond that, he was pretty much blind.

  Maybe he should take the helmet off. If he held his breath, he could probably whip the headpiece off, give the inside a wipe, then get it back on before his brain got too badly scrambled.

  Unless he couldn’t. Unless he passed out the moment the thing was unclipped, and the insides of his head immediately turned to meringue. What then?

  “Nothing good,” he reasoned, and he decided to persevere through the condensation fog for now.

  The HUD map indicated a right-turn down a corridor ahead. Annoyingly, this was the same direction the voices were coming from, and the realization crept over Cal that the plant would almost inevitably turn out to be in the same room as whoever else was on the ship. This would be a problem. It was one thing to sneak around a spaceship to steal a houseplant from an empty room. It was quite another to steal one from a room filled with aliens.

  He thought about turning back then. They could find Kevin another plant. They could find him any number of plants. There was no reason it had to be this specific one.

  The arrow nagged at him.

  Maybe he’d go just a little further, he thought. Maybe the plant and the people wouldn’t be in the same room, after all. Maybe he’d get lucky.

  Yeah, right, he thought. Sure.

  He crept on, taking his time, treading carefully. Whatever language the voices were speaking, the translation chip was having none of it. The words were a garbled string of syllables, grunts, and whistles, and not remotely like anything he’d heard before.