“Well, this is nicer,” said one of the Carvers. “You know, apart from the big evil sky thing.”
“That does kind of spoil it,” agreed another. “Although no one’s trying to put spears through our heads, so that’s a bonus.”
The sheep was getting closer now. Another was running after it, wide-eyed with worry. This was not, though, an unusual look for a sheep, so no one took any notice. Besides, Ikumordo was doing a pretty good job of holding everyone’s attention.
“Cal wants us to keep it busy,” Mech said. “My Cal, I mean. No, not… The Cal from my Universe. Not my Cal. He ain’t my Cal.”
Splurt turned into a little hand, gave Mech a vaguely patronizing pat on the head, then went back to sitting on his shoulder.
“Looks like it’s already busy,” said Number Two.
Mech nodded. “I think, ideally, he meant keep it busy doing something else. But to do that, we’re gonna need ships.”
“My uncle runs a boat company,” said one of the Carvers. “Catamarans, mostly.”
Mech and Two both shot him withering looks.
“Oh,” said the Carver. “Not those kind of ships. Gotcha. You know, you should really add ‘space’ in front of things, so everyone’s clear.”
There was a general murmuring of agreement, which Mech immediately put a stop to.
“No! No. Ain’t happening. That is not a road I plan on walking down again any time soon.”
“Oh, OK. Sorry, uh, Mr Robot,” said a Carver.
“I ain’t a fonking robot!”
“Oh. Right. Are you sure? You look like a robot.”
There was more murmured agreement. Mech clenched his fists, but said nothing.
“I might know somewhere we can get ships,” began Number Two, but then the first sheep arrived, and everything kicked off.
“Oi!” it said. “What’s your game?”
Everyone who wasn’t Mech stared at the animal in surprise. Mech, who had no experience with sheep, and so didn’t appreciate how unusual it was to find a talking one, just regarded it blankly.
“Leave it, Duggie,” called the other sheep, who was still some way back.
“I thought I’d told you lot, already,” said Duggie, trotting to a stop in front of the Carvers. He was panting heavily from the effort of running all the way across the field. “Clear off. We don’t want your kind round here. You ain’t welcome.”
“Our kind?” said Number Two, raising an eyebrow.
“Yeah, Two-Legs. Uprighters. You ain’t welcome. This is a closed field,” said Duggie, squinting menacingly. “Understand?”
“Just leave it, Duggie,” wheezed the other sheep. Unlike Duggie, this one sounded female. Her voice seemed to be about one jump-scare away from full-blown hysteria. “They ain’t worth it, babes.”
“Uh, everyone else is seeing this, right?” asked a Carver. “I’m not having a full-on mental breakdown, am I?”
“We see it,” confirmed Number Two.
“And they’re talking? Everyone can hear them talking?”
“Yeah, I herd them,” said a scruffy-haired Cal whose eyes, demeanor and general aroma suggested he was quite seriously stoned. “Get it? Herd, as in a herd of sheep.”
“It’s a flock of sheep. Herd of cows.”
“It can be a herd of sheep, too,” said Stoner Cal.
“You sure?”
“Pretty sure.”
“Oh,” said the other Cal. “Then, you know, good job, I guess.”
They exchanged a high-five.
“So, what? Is that not normal?” asked Mech.
“No, they don’t usually talk,” said Two.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Duggie demanded. “Of course we talk. See my lips moving? Hear the words coming out? Good, then listen carefully. Get the fonk out of our field, and go back to where you came from.”
“Bit racist,” chipped in another of the Carvers.
“Oh-ho. Here we go. No, it’s not. I’m not racist,” Duggie snapped. “I ain’t racist, am I, sweetheart?”
“No, babes. You’ve got that black sheep friend.”
“Exactly! See? I ain’t racist. I’ve got nothing against your sort, nothing at all. But you don’t belong here. This is our field. You do what you like back in Two-Leg Land, or wherever, and good luck to you, but we don’t want you here, that’s all.”
“I dunno,” said Stoner Cal. “Ewe still sound kind of racist.”
“Nice,” said the Carver next to him. They exchanged another high-five.
Duggie’s eyes almost bulged out of their sockets. Had he not been a sheep, this would have been more noticeable.
“Right! Who said that?” he demanded. “Come on. Own up.”
“Just leave it, babes.”
Number Two stepped into Duggie’s path. Something about the man seemed to calm the raging sheep, mid-rant. The fact that Two, with his beard and his staff, had a bit of a ‘shepherdy’ sort of air about him probably didn’t hurt.
“Our apologies for the intrusion,” said Two. “We will be on our way momentarily.”
“Yeah. Well, I mean, I should think so.”
“But first,” said Two. “Am I right in thinking we’re not the first ‘Two-Legs’ to have come this way?”
“No! No, you most certainly ain’t. Some of them looked just like you lot, too.” Duggie nodded to Mech. “Well, not so much him, I suppose.”
“Although, to be fair, you all look a bit alike to us,” said the other sheep. “Though I don’t mean that in a racist way or nothing.”
Two bowed gratefully. “Thank you. I understand. If you’d be so kind as to point us in their direction, we’ll take them with us and leave you in peace.”
Duggie looked Two up and down, glanced at the others, then sighed. “I’ve got a baaaad feeling about you lot,” he said. Stoner Cal and the guy next to him exchanged another high-five. If Duggie noticed, he didn’t let on.
“But if it means getting rid of you all, I’ll take my chances. Come on,” he said, turning around. I’ll show you where they’re hiding.”
* * *
Cal jumped into his chair as an explosion rocked the Untitled, making its shields flicker. “What was that? Torpedo?”
“That was lightning,” said Loren. A second impact detonated against the underside of the ship, briefly lifting everyone out of their seats before the artificial gravity slammed them back down again. “That was a torpedo.”
“Technically, a missile,” Kevin corrected.
“OK, and – another question,” said Cal. “What the fonk is happening right now?”
Loren’s fingers swiped across her controls. Part of the screen changed to show a third-person perspective view of the Untitled.
“That’s us,” said Cal.
Loren shook her head. “No.”
Cal squinted at the screen. “I’m pretty sure that’s us.”
“No, it’s another us,” said Loren. More lightning tore across the darkness ahead of them, briefly painting the bridge in a deep purple hue.
Cal blinked a few times. “Which brings me back to what the fonk is happening?”
“Void echoes,” said Lily, leaning closer to the screen. “It’s… My dad had a theory about it, but there was no way of proving it. His work suggested the Void could create duplicates – echoes – of whatever’s inside it. Even my mom thought it was a bit of a stretch, but he was convinced.”
“Guess your old man knew a thing or two,” said Cal, far too proudly for someone who still had absolutely no idea what Lily was talking about.
A beam of cannon-fire slammed into the Untitled. “Shield integrity dropping,” said Kevin. “Also, we’re out of toilet paper in the bathroom, and all our weapons systems are offline.”
“What?!” Loren spluttered.
“Don’t worry, ma’am, we have more in the store cupboard.”
“More weapons?” asked Cal.
“More toilet paper.”
“Forget the fonking toile
t paper!” Cal yelped, as another cannon-blast lit up the screen.
“Very well, sir,” said Kevin, sounding just a touch confused. “On your own head be it.”
“Why aren’t the guns working?” Loren demanded.
The ship shuddered as more lightning tore at it.
“And can you please start avoiding things that are trying to kill us?” Cal added.
“It’s the Void. Physics,” Lily explained, although her heart didn’t seem to be in it. “And yes, I know the engines are working, we can somehow radio into another dimension, and there’s another identical ship whose weapons are firing just fine, but literally none of that should be happening.” She sat back and folded her arms, said, “Physics,” again, only more emphatically this time, then shut up.
“One thing that might of be of interest,” Kevin began, before another bolt of the purple lightning licked across the darkness towards them and stabbed through the weakened shielding like a knife made of fire through – coincidentally - a sheet of toilet paper.
Kevin said, “Oof,” in a voice that managed to be both high and low-pitched at the same time. The speaker in the ceiling made a series of popping and clicking noises, then emitted a slow yet persistent hiss, like an air bed deflating.
“Kevin?” said Cal.
“Burrrr,” Kevin replied, then he fell silent.
“Kevin?” Cal waited for a response, then forced a laugh. “Just your little joke. Right?”
Silence.
“Right?”
More silence. If it was a joke, Kevin was really starting to push it.
“Kevin!”
Nothing.
Cal swung his seat towards Loren. “OK, I think we’re going to have to assume Kevin is unavailable right now. Loren, how are the controls looking?”
Loren gestured to the right-hand side of her terminal. It had been partially pieced back together, but still resembled the air-conditioning unit at a low-rent Turkish vacation resort. Bare copper wires dangled from the wound in the metal. Something blue dripped onto the floor.
“OK, so they’re looking fonking terrible. How are they working?” asked Cal.
Loren took hold of her joysticks. “Guess we’ll find out,” she said, as the echo ship banked around in front of them and lined itself up for an attack run.
“Can we call them?” asked Lily. “You know, get them on screen, or whatever? It’d be interesting to see what they look like.”
“Like us, presumably?” said Cal.
“Probably not exactly,” said Lily. “I mean, they’re echoes, but echoes aren’t the same as the original.”
“The ship’s different,” said Loren. “The lines of the hull are rougher. Look.”
Cal peered at the echo ship on screen. There was, as far as he could tell, nothing different about it whatsoever. “Oh yeah,” he said. “The lines of the hull.”
The echo ship’s weapons flared as it launched a photon missile. “Dive, dive!” Cal cried, then was thrown backwards in his seat as Loren heaved back on the stick. “Or go up. Whatever you think.”
The Untitled began what was to have been a complicated spiraling move. Everything went well until Loren discovered the flap control lever she needed to complete the spin was lying on the floor at her feet.
The missile hammered against the underside of the Untitled, flooding the screen with lines of angry red text. “Shield integrity at… is that an eight or a zero?” Cal asked.
Lily leaned forwards in her chair and squinted. Because there was so much text to fit in the display at once, each line was stupidly small.
“Eight. No, zero.”
“Fonk. Thought so,” said Cal. “Shield integrity at zero. Nice job, Loren.”
“It’s not my fault!”
“You know, it actually would have been helpful if you’d crashed into it this time.”
“We should hail them,” said Lily.
Loren slammed her stick to the left, sending the Untitled into a balletic sideways dive. “Then hail them!” she barked. “You’ve got the buttons right there.”
Lily looked down at the controls on her arm rest. There were dozens of tiny square buttons, a number of switches and dials, and a seven-inch touch screen set to portrait mode.
“What do I do?” she asked.
“You see a button marked ‘Hail’?” Cal asked.
Lily scanned the controls. “No.”
“Oh,” said Cal. He shrugged. “Then I’m out of ideas. We should probably get a button like that fitted.”
Cannon fire stabbed towards them. Loren jerked the ship right, tilting the wings just enough for the fiery-death beam to scorch past them.
“You know, assuming we survive,” Cal added.
“They’re hailing us,” said Loren, indicating an incoming transmission icon on screen.
Lily looked from the controls to the icon and back again. “What do I do?”
“You see a button marked, ‘Answer’?”
Lily shook her head. “No.”
“Again. We should look into one of those,” said Cal. “Kevin, add those buttons to the To Do list. Oh, shizz, I forgot,” he muttered, remembering Kevin wasn’t currently responsive. “Never mind,” he said, raising his voice again. “Forget I said anything.”
Lily tapped an icon on her touch screen. The top right of the main screen changed to show three leering figures, all bunched together in front of the camera. They were pale and waxy-looking, their skin glistening and wet.
“Wait, is that supposed to be me?” said Cal. “It looks like someone sculpted Ted Danson out of butter.”
“He means, ‘Hi there,’” said Loren. “We come in peace, don’t shoot.”
“I look nothing like Ted Danson.”
The Echoes sniggered and rocked back and forth with excitement, their eyes bulging, drool oozing down over their chins. The Cal Echo raised a middle finger to the screen, and the sniggering became louder.
“OK, so that’s just immature,” Cal said. He frowned. “Wait, what’s he doing?”
The duplicate – to use the term loosely - had stepped back from the screen, and was hastily fiddling with the clasp of his belt. “Is he…? Are you taking your junk out?” Cal asked. “We don’t want to see this. Lily?”
“No, I definitely don’t want to see it.”
“I mean, can you cut the feed? Quickly.”
Lily tapped at the controls. “How do I…? I don’t know how to cut it off.”
“Well figure it out!” Cal said. “I don’t want to see…” He winced. “Oh. No, there it is. There it is. Jesus.”
He turned away from the screen, but found himself going back for another look. “That’s not right. That is not right. Lily, can we…?”
“I’m trying!”
“Is there a button marked, ‘End Transmission’?”
“No!”
“Holy shizz, what is it with these controls?!” Cal griped. He gestured to the Echoes on screen. The waxy-faced Loren and Lily were both giggling and clapping in delight as Echo Cal twisted his hips quickly from side to side, flapping his junk around.
“God, it’s like it’s waving at me,” said Cal. He looked at his hand and realized he was waving back. He quickly snapped his arm down again. “Get rid of it!”
Lily mashed her hands against the controls. The image zoomed in.
“Jesus Christ, it’s going to have my eye out in a minute,” said Cal.
Lily jabbed at a few more buttons.
“I swear, if that puts it into 3D…”
The screen went dark. Cal breathed a sigh of relief.
“Thank you. Finally!” he said. “Oh, and by the way, in case anyone’s wondering, mine’s bigger.”
He met Lily’s eye. A moment of uncomfortable silence passed.
“I mean… I’m assuming you weren’t wondering that?”
Lily shook her head. “No.”
“For the record, I’m not wondering that either,” said Loren.
On screen, the ech
o Untitled began charging weapons. “They’re getting ready to fire. Shields still down. We can’t take another hit.”
“Get us out of here,” Cal urged.
“No time. Missile lock. They’re firing.”
A ball of photon energy spat from the echo ship’s weapons. Cal, Loren and Lily all watched, helplessly, as it streaked across the void towards them.
Stretching out, Cal reached a hand across the gap to Lily. To his surprise, she took it. He looked at their interlocked fingers, then met her eye.
“I’m sorry,” he croaked.
And then the light of the missile filled the screen, and everything in Cal’s world turned red.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Miz plodded ahead through another door. She was, if she were being honest, getting pretty sick and tired of plodding ahead through other doors, and she was having some pretty serious doubts about whether Old Man Carver knew what he was doing.
After fighting – and partly eating - the rednecks on the ash-world, they’d moved on somewhere else, only for some shizznod with a tazer to attack her. Needless to say, it didn’t go very well for the guy, but with armed back-up coming in, Carver Twenty-Seven had quickly opened another doorway for them to escape through.
Since then, Miz had dealt with an angry torch-wielding mob, a handful of ninjas, and some sort of steampunk ‘Robo-Hitler’ that had been determined to pull her tail off.
They’d passed through nine or ten other Earths so far, and had found more of the missing Carvers on around half of them. The group was almost forty Cals strong now, and keeping track of them all was proving increasingly difficult. The fact they had picked up a variety of stragglers from the various Earths wasn’t making things any more manageable either. Between grateful Dwarves, awestruck ninjas and a handful of people fleeing the Third Reich, Miz was amassing quite a following.
There was no one waiting on the next Earth, though. In fact, not just no one, but nothing. The ground was a crudely-fashioned chunk of black rock with nothing growing as far as the eye could see. The air tasted thin and bitter, and left a dryness snagged at the back of Miz’s throat.
She plodded on, making room for the others to come through, and gazed up at Ikumordo. There was something different about the big orange space cloud now, but she couldn’t quite figure out what it was.
Space Team: Return of the Dead Guy Page 17
