“Well, obviously it ain’t finished,” said Mech. He flexed his single finger and thumb, then pinched them together. “This ship has got some pretty amazing tech on board,” he said. “Ask me how I’m making my other fingers. Go on.”
Loren looked back over her shoulder. “How are you making your other fingers?”
“I’m printing them!” said Mech. “Seriously! It’s printing solid fonking objects!”
“We have them,” said Cal, not looking away from the screen.
Mech frowned. “Say what?”
“3D printers. We have them. Or had them. Or whatever,” said Cal. “On Earth.”
“Bullshizz.”
“We do. We’ve had them for years,” Cal insisted. “I mean, not many years, but still years.”
Mech looked genuinely annoyed that his thunder had been stolen. “No way. On Earth? On the planet you came from, they have this kinda tech?”
“Yep. Well, I mean, I don’t know if they can make robot hands with it,” Cal admitted.
“Aha! I knew it.”
“Although I’m pretty sure they’ve done artificial limbs. In fact, they were talking about printing internal organs last I heard.”
“OK, now I know you’re lying,” said Mech.
“Guess it’s not such a backwater after all,” said Cal.
“Entering solar system,” Loren announced. She rested her hands on the controls, but didn’t activate them yet. “Approaching Earth. Stopping in three… two… one.”
The Untitled dropped out of warp, coming to a bowel-churningly abrupt stop just outside Earth’s atmosphere. From out in the corridor there came a short, sudden whum, and then a basketball-sized lump of ore rocketed onto the bridge. Loren pulled her arm away just as the projectile slammed into the side of her console, turning a foot or more of control panels into a crackling tangle of wires and metal.
“What the fonk just happened?” Loren yelped, as an alarm screamed and reams of scary-looking data began flooding the viewscreen.
Mech shifted on his metal feet. “Uh, whoops. That may have been my fault.”
“’May have been’?” Cal cried. “It was definitely your fault!”
An orange glow began to flicker across the screen like dancing flames. Loren jabbed buttons and pulled levers, but her console was deader than most of the Earth’s population.
“We’re breaking atmosphere,” Loren said. “I can’t pull up.”
“Nnnzztk uuuuurk,” buzzed Kevin. “Seeeeelf-desssst-t-truct activvvvvaaaated.”
“What?!” said Cal, leaning forward in his chair. He jabbed a finger at Mech. “You see what happens when you don’t pick up after yourself, Mech? You see what happens?”
“Ship-p-p dessstruction in fiiiiive, three, f-f-our, one.”
“Like, thanks a lot, Mech,” Miz snapped, as she, Cal and Loren all gripped their arm rests and screwed their eyes shut.
Nothing happened.
From ceiling height, there came a snigger.
“Ha!” said Kevin. “Just my little joke.”
Cal opened one eye. “What?”
“Oh, I wish you could have seen your faces,” Kevin said. “Oh, wait, you can.”
The image of the Earth changed to show a still photograph of the bridge. Everyone’s faces were frozen in grimaces of terror, like the occupants of a roller-coaster on a theme park memento photo.
“Oh, yes. That’s a keeper,” said Kevin.
“That was, like, so not funny,” said Miz.
“Kevin, you’re a fonking amshoop sometimes,” said Loren. “Show us the screen!”
The photo disappeared, and was replaced by a view of the Earth. The Untitled had tilted a little, so the planet took up two thirds of the screen, while a strip of space was visible at the top.
“Your console may have been damaged, but I still have full control,” Kevin assured them. “I’m assuming you’d like me to take us to the source of the distress signal?”
“Yes,” said Cal. “Quick as you can.”
“Very good, sir,” said Kevin. “Although, there’s something else I think may be of interest.”
The left third of the screen changed to show another view. “I’ve enlarged the image, so it looks closer than it actually is. It’s currently located just beyond the fourth planet in the system, but appears to be coming this way.”
Mech clanked closer to the screen. “What the fonk is that?” he asked.
“I have no idea,” said Loren.
Something orange loomed against the dark background of space. It was completely shapeless, like some sort of cloud, but rippled rhythmically in a repeating pattern.
“So is this a new thing?” Cal asked. “You guys have never seen one of these?”
Usually, he liked it when the others didn’t know things. So much about outer space was new to him, but they acted like they’d seen it all a hundred times before – largely because, for the most part, they had. He enjoyed seeing them as confused by new stuff as he was.
Something about this thing made him uneasy, though, and the fact they had no idea what it was did nothing to reassure him.
“Kevin, any ideas?” Loren asked.
“Initial indications would suggest it’s a big orange thing, ma’am,” Kevin said.
Cal tutted. “Any ideas which don’t involve just stating the obvious?”
“Not really, sir, I’m afraid,” Kevin said. “Scanners are having difficulty ascertaining anything.”
Cal stared at the thing for a while, then shook his head. “OK, so we know it’s big, orange, and still pretty far away, right?”
“Correct, sir.”
“Then we ignore it for now. Take us down.”
“What?” said Mech. “I think we should check it out.”
“Opinion noted,” said Cal. “And ignored. We’ll look at it later. Kevin, take us down. Park us up half a mile or so from the distress signal. I’ll walk the rest of the way.”
“Very good, sir,” said Kevin. “Although I’m picking up a lot of life signs in the area. Bugs, I think, although it’s hard to tell.”
“I guess I’ll go get us some guns,” said Mech. “You know, since we’re clearly walking into some kind of trap.”
“I,” said Cal.
Mech frowned. “What?”
“I’m clearly walking into a trap. You’re not coming.”
Loren turned in her seat. “You heard what Kevin said. There are bugs down there. Not to mention whatever’s sending the signal, which you know can’t be from Earth.”
“All the more reason for you all to stay here,” said Cal. “Fix the console. Stick on Mech’s new fingers. Whatever. I just… I need to do this one on my own, OK?”
Loren and Mech exchanged glances. Even Miz raised her eyebrows in a gesture that was somewhere close to concern. “Well, I guess, if that’s what you want,” Loren said.
Cal shook his head and tried his best to smile. “Trust me, it isn’t. But it’s the way it has to be.”
“You’re taking Splurt, though, right?” said Miz.
“Not this time,” said Cal. “Whatever’s out there, whatever’s sending that signal, I need to face it alone.”
* * *
Cal still hated running, but he did it anyway.
Kevin had touched the Untitled down on a golf course, after a refreshingly graceful descent which had involved sweeping the back end of the ship in a circle a few dozen feet above the ground, and using the thrusters to turn any bugs that happened to be lurking in the grass to dust.
The others had tried to insist Cal seal himself inside a space suit so as to limit the risk of one of the creepy-crawly parasites infecting him, but the suit would have just slowed him down, so he’d refused that, and taken a couple of blaster pistols and a flamethrower, instead.
The fuel sloshed around in the tank on his back as he jogged to the edge of the course and scrambled over the wire link metal fence. His feet thacked loudly onto the tarmac on the other side, and he wasted a seco
nd listening for anything that might indicate something had heard him.
There were several large, expensive-looking houses standing along the tree-lined street, all with their windows broken and doors standing wide. It looked like the occupants of one had tried barricading themselves inside with wooden board, but either someone had forced their way in, or they had forced their way out.
Either way, the street was silent, save for the occasional chirping of birds in the trees.
Cal jogged on past a station wagon with a couple of doors open. He paused to feel the hood. Cold. Someone had abandoned it in a hurry, then never come back. Annoyingly, they hadn’t been in enough of a hurry to leave the keys behind.
During the final stages of the descent, Mech had given him the lowdown on what he might come across. The bugs themselves were harmless enough, provided you didn’t let one get on your skin. Mech had advised incinerating them on sight, just to be safe.
The infected were a bigger problem. From what Cal could gather, they were basically very fast, very angry zombie-types – regular people, driven into violent frenzies by their insectoid co-pilots. They couldn’t be talked to, couldn’t be reasoned with. No amount of persuasion would help them break free of their parasite’s thrall. Mech’s recommended strategy? Incinerate on sight.
And then there were the Queens. Mech had started describing the Queens, and had made it as far as ‘horny man-sized insect monsters’ before Cal had stopped him. It was at that point that Mech had given Cal the blaster pistols – not to use on the Queens, but to use on himself if one of them caught him.
Cal was pretty sure Mech had been trying to scare him into taking someone with him as back-up, but he wasn’t falling for it. Kevin had pinpointed the signal to within a few inches, and Cal’s suspicions had been confirmed. Whatever was sending the signal knew there was no possible way he would fail to answer.
He hurried on, keeping low, his eyes scanning the abandoned buildings on either side. The street was eerily quiet. The whole city, in fact. On any normal day, he’d have been able to hear the thunder of traffic from the interstate a quarter of a mile or so ahead, but there wasn’t a whisper. Even the birds had stopped tweeting.
Cal held his breath as he jogged along. Why had the birds stopped tweeting?
He looked up at the trees just as something fat, black and hand-sized dropped from one of the low branches. Its legs flailed as it plunged towards Cal’s face, and he leapt back just in time to avoid the thing.
The bug hit the ground with a solid clack, bounced once, then turned itself around and scurried towards him. Cal took aim with the flamethrower and pulled the trigger. A disappointing squirt of a (presumably flammable) liquid dribbled onto the tarmac between him and the insect.
“Shizz, hold on,” Cal muttered, backing away from the bug and turning the weapon over in his hands. There were instructions printed on the barrel, along with a series of complicated diagrams involving buttons, switches, levers, and some sort of pump.
“Pull Tab A, after priming pump 3c,” he read. “Tab A. Tab A. Where the fonk is Tab A?”
The bug’s legs trip-trapped across the ground, closing in.
“Pull Tab A,” Cal read again. “After priming pump 3c. There isn’t a Tab A. There’s a Tab 1. Is it Tab 1?”
The bug was almost on him now, its glossy black mandibles snapping hungrily at the air.
“Ah, fonk it,” Cal said. He raised his boot and brought it down sharply on the insect’s back. It exploded in a spray of green guts.
He lifted his foot and glanced at what was left of the bug. Yep, definitely dead. Evil alien insect-thing or not, there was no way it was coming back from that.
“Huh. That wasn’t so hard,” Cal said.
And then, from the trees, the bugs fell like rain. Dozens of them – hundreds, maybe – dropped from the branches, wriggling and squirming as they fell. They hit the ground with a machine-gun of clacks, then teetered around on their long, slender legs, until they were all facing the same direction.
Cal’s direction.
“Ooh, that’s not good,” Cal muttered. He stomped on the five closest bugs, while trying to figure out if Tab A and Tab 1 were the same thing. He decided they must be, so pulled Tab 1. Nothing happened.
“Wait, after priming pump 3c,” he muttered, kicking another of the bugs away and sending it sailing several feet through the air. “Pump 3c. Pump 3c. Pump 3c!”
He realized he had no idea what priming a pump involved, so he pumped it a few times and hoped for the best. Each pump was more difficult than the one before, which he took to be a positive sign, although he didn’t really know why.
The bugs scurried closer.
He pulled Tab 1.
“Right, here goes,” he said, then he squeezed the trigger and was almost blinded by the eruption of flame from the nozzle of the weapon. The fire licked across the tarmac, devouring the bugs in its path. They sizzled and popped, screeching as the heat consumed them.
Cal swept around him in a wide circle, clearing the immediate area, then pressed on along the street, scorching a path ahead of him.
“Yeah!” he cheered. “Suck on that, you six-legged fonks.”
He blitzed another wide strip of asphalt, turned back to fire a few warning shots behind him, then carried on along the street, avoiding the trees as best he could.
At the end of the road there was another fence, then a short embankment leading onto the deserted highway. From there, it would just be a short sprint to his destination, assuming nothing tried to infect him, eat him, or furiously mate with him along the way.
The sky was overcast, and a light drizzle began to fall as Cal darted across the highway, giving a wide berth to the burned-out skeleton of a truck. Something made of meat and gristle lay wrapped in rags just a few feet from the vehicle, a trail of blood connecting them like an umbilical cord.
From somewhere in the distance, Cal heard an inhuman screech. Ahead and to the right, he thought, although it was hard to be sure. He was heading left, so hopefully he wouldn’t cross paths with whatever it was.
He also partly hoped he didn’t come across any uninfected survivors, if only because he had a weapon, and his instinct when startled was usually to shut his eyes and start firing. Survivors would already be pretty rare, and he’d hate to thin their numbers even more by accidentally shooting one of them in the face.
A school stood on the most direct route between Cal and his destination. He ducked down a side street and took a slightly longer way round. He didn’t want to see what had happened to the building, or the kids inside.
There was another street, another patch of grass, another fence, and then he was there, standing outside the gates, his heart crashing like a snare drum in his chest.
He took a breath.
He clenched and unclenched his jaw.
“OK, let’s see who you are,” he whispered.
And then, with his flamethrower at the ready, Cal stepped into the cemetery and marched along the path.
Four small masts, each around ten feet tall, had been positioned around a tidy gathering of headstones near the top of a low hill. Between them, near the middle, a man sat on a camping chair, an umbrella held above his head.
A few feet behind the man, but also within the square marked out by the masts, was a bulky shape that had been covered by a large dust sheet. At the top of it, Cal could just make out a red light flashing through the fabric. The distress beacon, he guessed. Covered to keep the rain off, maybe?
The man was hidden in the shadow of the umbrella, but waved cheerfully at Cal when he appeared. It wasn’t until the umbrella was lowered that Cal recognized the man’s tanned face and chiseled jaw.
Of course. Who else?
“Hello, Cal!” said former-president Hayel Sinclair. He fastened the umbrella closed then embedded the metal tip in the grass beside him. “You took your time.”
Cal’s finger tensed on the flamethrower trigger. “I’ll be honest, I thought you’d
be locked up by now,” Cal said.
“Ha! No,” said Sinclair. “I mean, not yet. I fear my days of being president are over, though. Shame. I liked that job. Great perks. Still, it’s like they say, the only constant in the Universe is change. Take you, for example.”
“What about me?”
“Not long ago you were a nobody. A nothing. A petty criminal,” said Sinclair. “And before that…” He glanced very deliberately at the headstone beside him, with its two names inscribed in gold. “Before that, you were someone else again. Loving husband. Devoted father.”
“What do you want?” Cal asked.
“That’s why I knew you’d come, see? That’s why I picked here. I should have thought about it from the start, really,” the ex-president said, smiling ruefully. He shook his head. “They make you weak, you know? Kids. They make you predictable. Even, it seems, the dead ones.”
Cal primed pump 3c.
“You want to make someone pay attention – really sit up and take notice, I mean – you go for the children. It’s Tyranny 101,” Sinclair laughed, smacking the heel of his hand against his forehead. “What was I thinking? Right? I send squadrons trailing you across the galaxy, hire assassins to track you down, and all I needed to do was come here, activate one little beacon, and – boom – there you are.”
Cal pulled Tab 1.
“I know what you’re thinking,” said Sinclair, holding up his hands. “You think I did something to the bodies. Dug them up, put them on strings like puppets to torment you with, or whatever, but relax. OK? I wouldn’t dream of it.”
He laughed. “OK, so I’d dream of it, but I wouldn’t actually do it. Come on! What do you take me for? I just paid my respects, that’s all.” He gestured to a bunch of flowers propped against the stone beside a threadbare old toy rabbit. “The flowers are from me. It’s the least I could do.”
“Get away from my family,” Cal said, his finger on the flamethrower’s trigger.
Sinclair winced. “Normally, I would, but… Well, it’s all these bugs. We’re safe in here, but if I step past those masts there, I’m ripe for the picking. Sonics or something. Keeps them at bay. I’ll be honest, I don’t know the ins and outs, I just know it works, and I know I don’t really want to be outside there.”
Space Team: Return of the Dead Guy Page 3
