“Good point, well made,” said the president. He turned to his right-hand man and his smile broadened. “Oh, Tobey Maguire. What would I do without you?”
* * *
Mech, Miz and Carver Two stood in a cavernous dining hall, staring expectantly at a set of double-doors directly ahead of them. Between them and the door was a leather spinny chair and a bright red desk. Between them and the desk was forty feet of empty space and a dozen armed guards.
The Carver Council stood further back, with the stragglers they’d picked up on their journeys across the multi-verse standing further back, still. There had been some excited whispering for a while, but the acoustics of the hall amplified it, so it had eventually descended into an awkward silence.
That had been fifteen minutes ago, and there was still no sign of the president.
One of the Carvers near the back decided to pipe up. “I spy, with my little eye…”
Carver Two turned and glared back. The Carver’s voice became a nervous croak.
“An angry bearded man,” he whispered.
Silence returned.
Mech tapped a foot, impatiently. Miz slouched on one hip, studying her claws.
“Always fonking late,” Mech muttered. “And what’s he doing living in a fonking castle, anyway? He’s the president of the galaxy, not the king of space.”
“Pretty cool castle, though,” said Miz, shrugging. “You know, with the big face, and the door in the mouth, and everything. I like it.”
“It’s insane,” said Mech.
“The castle?”
“The whole thing! I mean, how come he’s president of the galaxy? How the fonk did that happen? The man can’t go four light years without throwing up into a shoe.”
Miz shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess maybe he’s different.”
“Holy fonking shizz, is that guy a robot?” asked the president, as he threw open the double doors. “Awesome! I love robots.”
Mech shot Miz a sideways look. Miz shrugged again. “Or, you know, maybe he isn’t.”
“I ain’t a robot,” Mech said.
President Carver slid into his chair, spun it fully in a circle, then leaned his elbows on the desk. He looked pretty much exactly like the Cal Mech knew and barely tolerated, but maybe a decade older. “You sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“It’s just—”
“I’m sure.”
The president nodded. “Right. Well, I mean, I guess you’d know, right?” His eyes narrowed. “Quick question. Can you define ‘love’?”
Mech frowned. “What?”
Cal banged his hands on the desk and stood up. “Answer the question! Can you define ‘love’?”
“Uh, no.”
“Aha!” said the president. He sat down, smiling proudly. “That’s exactly what a robot would say.”
“Can you?” asked Mech.
“Can I what?”
“Define ‘love’?”
President Carver opened his mouth, frowned, then closed it again.
“Touché.”
Mech shot Miz a look. “Yeah, it’s him, OK.”
The president hammered a drumbeat on the desk, then leaned back in his chair. “So, anyway, welcome to Castle Grayskull, official residence of yadda-yadda-yadda. Tobey Maguire tells me you wanted to talk to me. I’ll be honest, I’m a busy man, and we’ve got a lot on today, right?”
He turned in his chair to look at Tobey Maguire, who shrugged. “Not particularly. Unless you count the bouncy castle.”
“Always count the bouncy castle, Tobey Maguire. That’s, like, rule number one.” He turned his chair back to the front. “So, as you can see, packed schedule, time’s ticking, all that stuff. Who wants to start?”
Carver Two stepped forwards. “President Carver, what I am about to tell you, you may find hard to believe.”
“You’d be surprised,” said the president. “I have seen some pretty crazy shizz. One time, there was this volcano, and… Know what? Doesn’t matter. Continue.”
“I – we – have traveled here from all across the multi-verse to seek your help. Ikumordo, the All Death, approaches. He intends to consume your universe. All universes, in fact. And we believe he is going to begin with Earth.”
“All Earths,” Mech added. “Across all dimensions.”
“Who’s Ikumordo?” asked the president.
“Uh, the fonking enormous orange cloud filling the sky,” said Mech. “Maybe you noticed it?”
The president frowned. “What, the big weird space thing? Is that what that is?”
Carver Two nodded. “Ikumordo. The All Death.”
“And that’s bad?”
Mech snorted. “It’s called the fonking All Death. What do you think?”
President Carver turned his grin up a notch. “I like you. I like him,” he said, turning to Tobey Maguire. “We should get one. Take a note – buy a robot. We’ll have adventures together. I’ll call him Roboto. No, wait! Roboto Two, just to confuse people.”
Tobey Maguire pretended to take a note. “Done,” he lied.
“Excellent!” said the president. He faced his guests again. “So why come to me? What can I do?”
“You have ships,” Carver Two said. “Fighters. You can engage Ikumordo. We have instructions to keep it occupied until another of our group can return. He believes he can acquire a weapon with which we can destroy the All Death. Permanently. We just need to buy him some time.”
Cal turned slowly from side to side in his chair. “So, let me get this straight. You’re telling me that you’ve come from, like, parallel universes or something so you could ask me to help fight a big weird space thing that’s going to destroy… what? Everything everywhere?”
“Pretty much,” said Two. “And yes, that’s more or less the size of it.”
“And you expect me to believe that?” the president asked. He held up his hands. “Because I absolutely do, by the way.”
“You do?” asked Miz, taken aback. “Like, just like that?”
“What can I say? I’m a trusting guy.” He pointed to Carver Two, then the group behind. “Also, that guy and, like, eighty per cent of the rest of you all have my face, so it’s either the alternate universe thing, or I’m about to be hit with the biggest paternity suit in history. For the sake of my sanity, my bank balance and my marriage, I’m going with Option A.”
Carver Two could barely contain his relief. He sighed, and for the first time since Mech had met him, he seemed to shrink a little, as if the stress had inflated him, somehow, and by abdicating some of it to someone else, he’d returned to his normal size.
“Then you’ll help us?” Two said.
President Carver made a weighing motion with his hands. “Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to. But, well, the galaxy has been at peace for...”
He clicked his fingers.
“Eleven years,” said Tobey Maguire.
“For eleven years. We don’t have many fighter ships left. Nothing that could take on a big weird space thing, anyway.”
He leaned back. “Unless… No. No, not that. She’d never go for it.”
“Not what?” asked Mech.
“Nothing. Forget I said anything,” said the president. “There is one ship, but my wife would never allow it. She can be pretty protective. Right, Tobey Maguire?”
“She can,” Tobey Maguire confirmed.
Mech clenched his jaw. “If we don’t stop that thing, there ain’t gonna be nothin’ to be protective of. Everything’s going to be gone. Your ship. Your castle. Your wife. All gone, along with everything else you ever cared about.”
President Carver raised an eyebrow. “Everything?”
“Everything,” confirmed Carver Two.
The president rocked in his chair, nodding in contemplation. He looked to his advisor for guidance. “What do you think, Tobey Maguire? Be honest.”
Tobey Maguire shrugged. “If what they’re saying is true, then I think we have to get involved, don
’t we? You’re the president of the galaxy. You wield great power. And with that great power comes great responsibility.”
President Carver cocked his head to the side and blinked several times. “Holy shizz,” he said, after a pause. “That’s, like, the wisest thing you’ve ever said. Well, maybe second after that thing about putting my tongue in the blender.”
“Thank you.”
“Seriously, it’s like you were fonking born to deliver that line. Good job.”
The president slapped his hands on the desk and stood up. “OK, Tobey Maguire, tell the First Lady we need the ship. Send out a distress signal to anyone who’ll listen. Do a stock-check on whatever other resources we have available to fight this thing – fighters, pilots, really big guns, pointy rocks, whatever.”
Tobey Maguire clicked his heels together smartly. “Will do.”
“And don’t do that again, you look like a Nazi.”
“Right you are. Not sure why I did it in the first place, to be honest,” Tobey Maguire admitted. “I’ll just be off.”
President Carver caught his advisor by the arm before he could turn away. “Oh, and one more thing - make sure my Murder, She Wrote box sets get locked in the vault. You know, just in case. Actually, wait.”
He turned back to Mech and the others. “When you say everything will get destroyed, would that include my vault?”
“Yeah, man. Everything.”
The president looked to his assistant again. “Shizz. OK. Forget Murder, She Wrote.” A pained expression flitted across his face. “Jesus, there’s a sentence I never thought I’d hear myself say. Just go do that other stuff. We’ll head out to the landing pad and meet you there.”
Tobey Maguire glanced deliberately at Mech’s group. “Are you sure you can trust them?”
“Look at those faces,” said President Carver. “If I can’t trust them, who the fonk can I trust? Also,” he added, “I’ve got fifty armed guards, two and a half weeks of karate training, and a blaster tucked into my sock. Pretty sure I’ll be fine.”
Tobey Maguire shot the guests another wary look, but then nodded. “Whatever you say. Just be careful.”
“Hey, aren’t I always?” said the president, grinning from ear to ear. He waited until Tobey Maguire had left, then turned and stage-whispered to everyone else in the room. “I’m totally not,” he said. “Now come on, everyone follow me. Let’s see if we can’t shove this big weird space thing right up its own shizzpipe.”
* * *
Mech felt… something as the president’s ship descended towards the pad, its landing thrusters flaring in bursts of blue. He wasn’t sure what he felt, exactly, but something. Definitely something. Splurt felt it, too, judging by the way he began pulsing excitedly up and down on the cyborg’s shoulder.
The landing pad itself was out back of Castle Grayskull. Quite some distance out back. It had taken a full ten minutes of walking before they’d reached the landing area. The pad itself was, Mech couldn’t help but notice, conspicuously bare, with no control towers, relay antennae, or anything else of note surrounding it.
The ship tilted left a fraction as it descended, and began to swing wide of the pad. President Carver tapped a button on his jacket and spoke calmly, but urgently. “Going a little wide there, honey. Go right. Right. Little more right. Little more right. Tiny bit more right. OK, now a lot more right. No, your right, not… Oh, fonk it, everyone get down!”
Mech, Miz, the Carvers, the Zertex guards, and assorted Dwarves and ninjas all scattered as the ship overshot the landing pad, its fiery blue thrusters scorching the ground around it. It finally crunched down with a crash and a crack and a long, drawn-out screech of metal on metal, then fell ominously silent.
President Carver stepped out from behind a guard. “Phew,” he said, then he ducked again when a hiss of steam billowed from the back of the ship.
The president waited a few seconds to make sure nothing else was going to happen, then stood up for a second time. He dusted himself down, and flashed a grin at the assembled audience. “Roboto, sexy Chewbacca, assorted mes,” he said, nodding to Mech, Miz and the Carvers in turn. “Allow me to introduce you to my ship. Meet the Shatner.”
The landing hatch dropped open, revealing a woman with pale blue skin, serious eyebrows, and a very prominent baby bump.
Miz whistled quietly through her teeth.
“And also, more importantly, my wife,” the president continued. He spun on his heels to face the First Lady. “Loren, honey, you are not going to believe the morning I’ve had.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Aboard the Currently Untitled, Cal was staring blankly at the vast fog on the viewscreen. He was holding his breath. He only noticed because his head was going light, and he forced his lungs back to work just before he passed out and fell off the chair.
Ikumordo spread out before them, bigger than ever before. The nothingness of the Void made it hard to judge size with any degree of accuracy, but Cal was prepared to go out on a limb and say this thing was fonking huge. It didn’t appear to be doing very much of anything at the moment, but it was almost certainly only a matter of time before it violently killed them all – an outcome Cal was keen to avoid, if possible.
“OK, any ideas?” he asked. Cal tick-tocked his head towards both Loren and Lily, but his eyes refused to budge from the big orange cloud on screen. “Anyone? Anything at all? Because I am wide open to suggestions here.”
“La-la-la-laaaa!” sang Kevin, with a suddenness that made all three occupants of the bridge jump and cry out in fright. “There, that all seems to be working now.”
“Jesus Christ, Kevin!” Cal hissed. “I swear to God, you almost killed me.”
“Apologies, sir,” Kevin intoned. “Ooh, I say. Is that what I think it is?”
“It’s Ikumordo,” said Loren. “It’s the thing we’re supposed to be finding a way to destroy.”
“Oh. And did we?” Kevin asked. “Find a way to destroy it, I mean?”
“Not that I noticed,” said Cal. “By the way, that strange signal you were picking up? You know, the mysterious weapon?”
“Yes, sir?”
“It was totally this, wasn’t it?” Cal sighed. “This is what your sensors were picking up this whole time.”
Kevin checked his sensors logs. “No, sir,” he began. “Oh, wait, I tell a lie. Yes, this was it. Ha. How ironic. I mean, what are the chances?”
Lily shot withering looks at the ceiling first, then at Cal. “So, to be clear, the weapon you thought was going to destroy Ikumordo is actually Ikumordo itself?”
Cal shifted awkwardly. “Maybe it’s, like, a metaphor? You know, in the end, we’re all our own worst enemy? Or something.”
“Right,” said Lily, dragging the word out between her teeth. “And how does that help us?”
Cal shrugged. “Fonked if I know.”
A voice exploded inside Cal’s head. It seemed to be screaming and whispering at the same time, and instantly brought on a stabbing headache right between Cal’s eyes. The force of it spun him around in his chair, squeezed a sort of hrowang noise out through his mouth, and inflated a little bubble of snot from his right nostril.
“Cal?” said Loren. “Cal, you OK? What happened?”
Wheezing, Cal raised his head. “Ow. Did everyone else hear that? Or feel that? Or whatever the Hell that was?”
Loren and Lily exchanged glances. “What was? Hear what?”
The voice came again, whispering like thunder. Cal couldn’t understand the words – he didn’t know if there even were words to understand – but the meaning behind them implanted themselves deep inside his mind.
“Oh,” said Cal, as his eyes glazed over orange, and a dribble of saliva trickled down his chin. “Oh, boy.”
* * *
Miz slumped into ‘her’ chair, shook it from side to side a few times, then nodded and hooked both legs over one arm.
“Uh, make yourself at home,” said the first lady, slowly easing
herself down into her chair, one hand supporting her bump.
“I am,” Miz pointed out.
“Um,” said Tobey Maguire. He shuffled anxiously from foot to foot. “That’s my chair.”
Miz lazily flicked her eyes up until they met his. “Not any more, you nerdy weirdo. Besides, it was mine first.”
Mech stood up front, gazing around at the exposed pipes and tangled ceiling vents. Maybe it wasn’t exactly like their Shatner, but it was close enough that he couldn’t be sure.
A flurry of movement at the bottom of the screen caught his attention. “We’re being hailed,” he and the first lady both said at the same time.
President Carver jumped into his own chair, shot his wife a look, then hurriedly put on his seat belt. “Oh, you’ve been on a ship like this before?” he asked.
Mech nodded. “A lot like this, actually.”
“On screen,” said Cal.
“Wait,” said Mech. “May I?”
“May you what?” asked Cal. “Push the button?”
Mech nodded, the few patches of skin on his face suddenly flushed with embarrassment.
“Uh, sure. If you like. You know which one it is?”
Without replying, Mech pushed the button. It made a satisfying clunk sound, which he only realized right then that he missed.
The screen was filled with a battle-scarred, shark-like face, although not one Mech recognized. “Ambassador Thok of the Symmorium,” the shark-guy said. “We have received your signal, and have dispatched several Thresher fleets to assist.”
“Thank Thok for that,” said the president, grinning. He tapped his forehead in salute. “Love to Sandra and the kids.”
The Symmorium ambassador vanished, and was replaced by something purple and wide-eyed. “Grantcha Ny, Xandrie colony outposts,” it said in a vaguely feminine voice. “I hear you’re having some problems, Mr President. Our assets will be with you presently, and are at your command.”
“Much obliged,” said the president. “I’ll try to take good care of them.”
“I’m sure you will.”
The face changed again. This time, when the figure on screen spoke, Miz’s head snapped up.
Space Team: Return of the Dead Guy Page 19
