Space Team: The Wrath of Vajazzle

by Barry J. Hutchison

  “So… what? You intend just waiting around for him to die? That’s your plan?”

  A thin smile tugged at the corner of Lady Vajazzle’s wrinkled mouth. “Who said anything about waiting?”

  Sinclair frowned. “I don’t follow. You’re going to kill Graxan?”

  “I cannot harm the Greyx. Besides, his daughter would become queen, which would not improve the situation,” Vajazzle said. “I plan something a little less… direct. But be warned, it could have a number of repercussions.”

  “What kind of repercussions?”

  “It could tear the Greyx apart and plunge their whole sector into war.”

  Sinclair lowered his head, considering this. “A war in which billions of Greyx could die. I’m afraid I don’t call that just a ‘repercussion,’ Vajazzle,” he said. He lifted his head and beamed at her. “I call that a result.”

  * * *

  Loren led the others onto the flight deck. Mech, who had re-centered his dial, summarized the damage situation. “So, all things considered – you know, what with smashing through a fonking mountain and all – we’re not in too bad shape. The rear deflector shield focusing arm is done for, so until we get that replaced we probably don’t want to get shot up the backside, and the torpedo launch chamber has come out of alignment.”

  “What?” said Cal. “Aw, man, but I like shooting the torpedoes!”

  “Oh, you can still shoot them,” said Mech.

  “Hooray!”

  “It’s just you’ll blow the ship to pieces and kill us all, so, you know, up to you, I guess.”

  A blob of green gloop stretched down from the ceiling and fell across Cal’s shoulders like a scarf. Cal scratched Splurt where he’d decided his chin might very well be if he had one, then sat in his chair and turned it to face Miz. She slumped down into her own seat, and glanced self-consciously at the others, who were all now looking her way.

  “What?” she sighed.

  “Nothing,” said Cal. “Nothing. It’s just… what’s the plan?”

  “The plan is we take off and get out of here,” said Miz. “He’s not dying. There’s no need for me to be here.”

  “You’re right! Absolutely! Couldn’t agree more!” said Cal. He twisted his chair from side to side. “It’s just… since we are here, it might be worth just, you know, talking to him.”

  “To Hell with that,” said Mech. “The man manipulated her into coming here. What sort of shizznod does that to his own daughter?”

  “A desperate one?” said Loren. “I don’t know, maybe he has a good reason for it.”

  “Besides being a total control freak, you mean?” scowled Miz. “Anyway, what do you care?”

  “Hey, she cares,” said Cal. “She was ready to fight Kannus to stop him taking you away back on Earth.”

  Miz’s scowl became even more pronounced. “Why?”

  Loren shrugged. “Girls together, right? I didn’t want to be the only female on the ship.”

  “Hey!” Mech protested. “I’m female.”

  All eyes turned to look at the towering cyborg. Eleven different responses flashed through Cal’s head. He settled on the one fraught with the least potential danger. “What?”

  Mech grinned. “Nah, I’m just messing with you. Thought I should try and lighten the mood.”

  Everyone, even Splurt, continued to stare at him. At last, he sighed and threw up his arms. “Fine, know what, I’ll be through the back fixing stuff. Y’all just sit here and be miserable.”

  He clanked off into the corridor, muttering below his breath.

  “Is he malfunctioning or something?” asked Cal, once Mech was safely out of the room. “Should we be worried?”

  “He’s fine,” said Loren. “I think… He just thinks we don’t take his feeling seriously.”

  “Wait,” said Cal. “Mech has feelings?”

  Loren rolled her eyes at him, then turned back to Mizette. “But seriously, you should at least find out why he was so desperate to get you to come back.” She tapped a few buttons on one of her control panels. “Besides, there’s no sign of her on the scanners right now, but we should probably wait a while until Vajazzle is out of range.”

  Cal chuckled. “Heh. Vajazzle.”

  Three loud hollow knocks rang out from the back of the ship.

  “Is that… did someone just knock at the door?” said Cal.

  Miz tilted her head, then sighed. “It’s Kannus.”

  “Ah. Want me to get rid?”

  Mizette stood up. “No. It’s fine. I’ll talk to him.”

  Cal got to his feet and flicked one of Splurt’s drooping ends around his neck. “We’ll walk you to the door,” he said, holding his arm out. Miz regarded it curiously for a moment, then figured out she was supposed to hook her own arm through it. Once she had, Cal led her out into the corridor.

  They reached the landing ramp and Cal reached for the button that would lower it. “Thanks,” said Miz.

  Cal hesitated. “What for?”

  “For that stuff you said. To my dad. I’ve never seen anyone else stand up to him before.”

  Cal nodded. “Hey, no problem.”

  “It made me hunger to have you inside me.”

  Cal’s smile wavered just a little. He swallowed. “Not quite what I was aiming for, but good to know,” he said, then he leaned closer to the hatch and raised his voice. “Uh, you might want to stand back. This thing comes down like a fonking jackhammer.”

  He gave Kannus a second to retreat, then hit the button. The ramp dropped and the dull, lifeless light of Kifo seeped in. When Kannus saw Cal and Miz arm in arm, his amber eyes darkened.

  With a final squeeze of Cal’s bicep, Miz detached herself and trudged down the steps, giving Kannus a very deliberate cold shoulder at the bottom.

  “Now, I want you to bring her back by ten, Kannus. This is a school night, and I won’t have her out any later than that,” Cal said. “I want no smoking, no drinking and no funny business, or you are grounded, young lady? You hear? Grounded.”

  Kannus growled. “You dare give orders to the princess?”

  Cal grinned. “You know, Kannus, I’m starting to think we have a very different sense of humor, you and me.” He gave Miz a final encouraging nod. “You two go have fun. If you need us, just shout. OK?”

  “I will,” said Miz. “I’ll be back soon.”

  Cal winked as he stepped back and hit the landing ramp button. With a whirr of mechanical parts, the hatch closed over.

  Around Cal’s neck, Splurt gave a shudder. “Yeah, I know, buddy, I don’t like him either,” said Cal. “But I’m sure she’ll be fine.”

  He turned away, then stopped and looked back at the closed hatch. He exhaled slowly. “Yeah,” he said. “She’ll be fine.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Lontho Oom had many wonderful qualities.

  Known locally as ‘Papa Oom,’ due largely to his work with the city’s orphans and homeless children, he was renowned for his exceptional patience and kindness, and his willingness to put the needs of others before his own.

  His wisdom was legendary. People would travel from all across the region – from beyond the Koth mountains and across the Sephur seas – in order to seek his guidance and advice. It gave him nothing but pleasure to provide it.

  He was aged now, but his stooped back and balding head sat easy on him, as if he’d been an old man his whole life, just waiting to grow into it. But while the rest of his body had withered, his eyes – all four of them – had never lost their youthful, mischievous sparkle.

  Perhaps Lontho Oom’s greatest attribute was his trustworthiness. Over the years, he had made many friends, forged countless alliances, and been entrusted with all manner of secrets. He had betrayed not a single one of them. His word was his bond, and that bond was unbreakable.

  Yes, Lontho Oom had many wonderful qualities.

  Unfortunately, a high pain threshold wasn’t one of
them.

  “P-please,” he babbled through his burst, swollen lips. “What d-do you want of me?”

  The one-eyed woman in the long black robe looked Lontho up and down. Although, as he was currently hanging by a chain from his ankles, it was technically down and up.

  “Who says I want anything?” she hissed in two distinct yet similar voices. Vajazzle made a twisting motion in the air with one hand, and Lontho screamed as something slack and squelchy inside him tightened almost to bursting point.

  “Ssstop, please,” he slurred, gagging on his own backwards-flowing saliva.

  Vajazzle twisted her fingers just far enough to make Lontho’s eyes bulge, then eased off. “Oh, but I’m just getting started,” she promised.

  Lontho Oom’s home was modest by anyone’s standards. The wealth he had accumulated over the years had long since been spent on the less fortunate and under-privileged. The apartment was made up of just two rooms, one of which was the bathroom. Everything else Lontho Oom did, he did in the room he now dangled the wrong way up in.

  It was part of an overcrowded complex in the poor end of town. On a clear night, with the wind blowing the right direction, you could hear people talking four stories above, and Lontho had never been a fan of the building’s paper-thin walls.

  Until now.

  “Lontho?” barked a gruff voice beyond the door. “Lontho, are you OK in there? I thought I heard you shout.”

  Lontho’s eyes met Vajazzle’s. She shrugged. “Call him if you like,” she said.

  He didn’t need telling twice. “H-help! Help me!”

  The door shook under a violent impact. “Hold on! I’m coming!” shouted whoever was out there. His voice was deep and booming, and the way the door flew in on the second thud suggested someone large was coming through.

  Sure enough, a hulking rock-like figure came stumbling into the room, his fists clenched into boulders. Even without looking, Vajazzle, knew it had to be an Igneon. The smell was unmistakable. That was unfortunate. Igneons were tricky to kill. Not impossible, of course. There was nothing that couldn’t be killed. You just had to know where to apply the pressure.

  “What the Hell?” the rock-creature growled, his voice like granite rubbing on some other, much rougher granite.

  Vajazzle didn’t turn. Her hand went into a very specific part of a certain fold in her robe. It emerged quickly and flicked out in the direction of the Igneon in one fluid motion.

  Something round and metallic stuck to the Igneon’s rock-face-like chest. He looked down. A circle of plastic on the front of the device lit up. “What’s this supposed to be?” he asked.

  And then, he exploded.

  At least, the top sixty percent of his body exploded, spraying chunks of hot red rock all over the place. His legs teetered around on their own for a few seconds, before toppling in opposite directions.

  The flying slithers of stone whistled harmlessly past Vajazzle, changing course where necessary in order to avoid her.

  Lontho Oom, on the other hand, was not so lucky. In fact, many of the pieces of flying Igneon seemed to home in on him. He screamed and thrashed as they struck his flesh like tiny meteorites, peppering his wrinkled skin with bloody craters.

  Lontho’s home had always been modest, but now it was missing part of the wall, a section of ceiling and several square feet of floor, it was decidedly more so. The other inhabitants of the apartment block would have heard the blast. Local security, too. Even now, Vajazzle could hear the wailing of a distant siren, and the much closer thudding of footsteps in the corridor.

  “I had hoped to drag this out a little longer,” she said, stepping in close to the hanging Lontho. “I had hoped to make you tell me what you knew in your own words. To hurt you so badly that you gave up everything. All those little secrets you’ve been entrusted with.”

  She traced a fingernail down his naked, blood-soaked torso. “Sadly, I’m going to have to take a more direct approach,” she said. She squatted down until her shining red robotic eye cast its glare across Lontho’s tear-stained face. “Still, I can console myself with the fact that it is really going to hurt,” she whispered.

  Then she extended a finger, pushed it through Lontho’s forehead, and buried it deep inside his brain.

  * * *

  Mizette leaned against an angular boulder, her arms crossed, her face very deliberately turned away from Kannus. He had tried to speak to her when she’d first stepped off the ship, but she’d told him to stay quiet until they’d found somewhere out of the way to talk. She hated the fact her old life and her new one had collided, and was determined to force them apart again as quickly as possible.

  The rock she leaned on was at the top of the hill Loren had smashed the Shatner through. The Shatner itself stood down the hill on her left, although ‘stood’ was perhaps being generous. It sort of slouched, with one of the landing legs partially buried in a rocky crevice. It was a miracle it hadn’t toppled over.

  Down the slope on her right was the flat area of gray slate where Vajazzle had confronted them all. The hut her mom had taken her to lay beyond it, and a short distance past that stood a squat stone building with an understated, yet somehow still grand doorway. Through that door and down the sloped path beyond it lay a maze-like network of rooms containing the bodies of all the Greyx kings, and the ashes of all their queens.

  The Tomb of Kifo was a solemn place, a place where Greyx kings would often come to reflect and seek the guidance of their ancestors. It was also, as Miz had discovered on her first visit, brilliant for Hide & Seek. Unfortunately, no-one had ever tried to find her, so she’d eventually stopped playing.

  To the right of the tomb stood a number of ships, one large and four much smaller. The royal transport and its guard ships. Kannus’s own craft stood apart from them, its dark hull appearing to absorb the thin light of Kifo’s sun.

  “It is good to see you again, Your Highness,” said Kannus. “I have waited a long time for this moment.”

  “Yeah,” said Mizette.

  “I am just sorry it had to be under such grave circumstances.”

  “What grave circumstances?” Miz snapped. “You said he was dying. He’s not.”

  “But he is, Your Highness,” said Kannus. “He is not ready to face the Unshuk quite yet, perhaps, but face it he shall, and soon.”

  Miz looked at Kannus for the first time since they’d walked away from the ship. “Why?”

  “He has… an illness. He asked that it be kept from you.”

  Mizette snorted. “No way. If he had an illness, he’d be right on giving me the guilt-trip, trying to get me back here. No way he’d keep it secret.”

  “That is something I will leave you to discuss with him directly,” said Kannus. His wolf-like ears twitched. “But it is good to see you again, Mizette. It is good that we may now make plans for our wedding.”

  Mizette clicked her fingers. “Of course, how could I be so stupid?” she muttered. “That’s why I’m back. So we can get married before the old man croaks. Can’t interrupt the lineage.”

  Kannus nodded slowly. “That is correct. The ceremony will take place in two days, we have everything arranged. Graxan and I thought it best that you be impregnated before… Before he passes.”

  “Ew, you two talk about that stuff?” Miz said.

  “The thought of it gives him immense pleasure,” said Kannus.

  Mizette’s eyes widened and her snout pulled up in an expression of horrified distaste.

  “Of his grandchild, I mean,” said Kannus. “Not of you and I—”

  “Yes, I get it,” said Miz, cutting him off. She nudged at a stone with her foot, pushing it back and forth across the slate. “Thing is, Kannus… I can’t marry you.”

  Kannus blinked and smiled. “I’m sorry, Your Highness?”

  “Just call me Miz, OK? Cut the royal stuff.” She sighed. “Look, you’re a great guy and everything, and it’s obvious my mom and dad tot
ally love you, but… I don’t want to get married. I don’t want to be queen. I don’t want to stay here.”

  “We would not stay here,” Kannus pointed out. “This is the death world. We would stay on Greyx Prime.”

  “No, I know, it’s not… I just…” Mizette shook her head. This was harder than she thought. “It’s not you, OK? It’s me.”

  Kannus frowned. “What is you? I don’t understand? We are Lifebound. We are pledged.”

  “Yeah, but how is that fair?” Miz asked. “I mean, seriously? We got engaged when I was in the womb. In the womb. That’s not normal, right?”

  “It is how it always has been,” said Kannus. “It is our way.”

  “Yeah, but wouldn’t you like to be able to just choose who you hook up with?” asked Miz. “Wouldn’t you like to decide for yourself who you want to spend the rest of your life with?”

  “I would choose you,” said Kannus.

  “Would you?” asked Miz, weakly. “Seriously?”

  “Yes,” said Kannus, sensing her uncertainty. “If I had the choice of all the stars in the sky, none would shine so bright as you. Were I not your Lifebound I would watch you from afar, lamenting every day a loss I never had.”

  He placed a hand on the side of her face. She flinched, just a little, but didn’t pull back. “But we do not have to choose. Something bigger than us, something greater has chosen for us, and the choice that has been made is the right one, Mizette. I can feel it, deep in my soul.”

  “Um, yeah. OK,” said Mizette. She cleared her throat. “See, the thing is, I don’t. Feel it, I mean.”

  Kannus searched her eyes. “I don’t understand.”

  “Shizz, Kannus, how many ways can I say it?” Miz snapped, pulling away from his hand. She looked away and crossed her arms even more firmly than they had been. “There’s someone else,” she said.

  The hair on the back of Kannus’s neck tingled as it stood on end. “Someone else? How can there be ‘someone else’?” he demanded, his voice dropping an octave. “We are Lifebound. We are pledged. You are mine. You have always been mine! It has been decreed.”