CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Back on Earth, Cal had spent quite a lot of time running. He’d run from girlfriends. He’s run from their husbands. He’d run from the police, from criminals who took their careers far more seriously than he did and, on one particularly memorable afternoon in 1996, from the singer, Ozzy Osbourne.
Even then, despite all that practice, and despite the metal boots he currently wore on both feet, he’d never run as fast as he was running now. He tore across the sand, powering towards the gaping mouth of the worm. Behind him, Vajazzle gave chase. She ran backwards, her body twisted awkwardly as her knees tried to bend themselves the wrong way. Things writhed and wriggled beneath her robe, while her two visible tentacles snapped and whip-cracked the air.
Back by the Shatner, Loren and Miz launched into sprints of their own, chasing Vajazzle down. “No, stay back!” Cal cried. “Get Mech into the ship! I’ve got this!”
The worm’s mouth loomed dead ahead. In the darkness of its throat, Cal could just make out something moving. Something large.
“You want your key, Vajazzle? Be my guest!” he yelped. He tossed the bag so it landed just a few feet away from the worm’s mouth, then dived sideways out of the assassin’s path. She sprawled onwards, her limbs impossibly bent, the frail fingers of her human-like hands grabbing for the bag.
From inside the worm, there came something that sounded partly like a scream and partly like a violent rectal prolapse. A shiny blob the size of a school bus erupted from the worm’s throat in a river of stinking green mucus, and immediately began to wail.
Vajazzle tried to stop, but the newly-born worm slid towards her like an out-of-control juggernaut. There was a pained hiss from the assassin and a damp flomp from the worm as the two met, then Vajazzle vanished beneath the creature’s undoubtedly immense weight.
“Whoa,” said Cal, watching the worm slide to a stop in the sand. “That had to hurt.”
“It’s a little ‘un,” cried Kash, hurrying over. “Lawks alive, it’s a little ‘un! So that’s why she weren’t eatin’ nothin’! She were up the duff!”
The shizzfarmer hopped and danced around, laughing and whooping and clapping his hands. “Oh, what a beauty! What a little beauty you is!”
“Wait, so if that’s a baby,” said Cal, eyeing the bigger worm’s mouth suspiciously, “are you sure I went in the right end? That’s definitely the mouth, right?”
“Of course! Where else would it bleedin’ well come out?” asked Kash.
Cal blinked. He shook his head. “Doesn’t matter.”
Loren, Miz and Mech joined them. “Great. So how are we supposed to get the key?” asked Miz.
Cal reached into one of his boots and pulled out a flat piece of metal with a series of square holes and notches cut into it. “What, this key?” he asked, grinning. “Swapped it when I pretended to fall over earlier. Vajazzle just got flattened for a bag with a bit of half-melted space suit inside.”
He tossed Mizette the key. She caught it, turned it over in her hands, then smiled. “Not bad,” she admitted. “Not bad at all.”
* * *
Twenty minutes later, a fully-dressed Cal sat in his chair, waiting for Loren to fire up the engines. All the ship’s systems had needed to be reset after Vajazzle disabled them – a process which seemed to involve nothing more technical than switching them off, counting to five, and then switching them back on again.
They’d offered to give Kash a lift back to the wreckage of his house, but he’d insisted on waiting with the newly-born worm to make sure it survived. They’d left him all the water they could spare, a few blankets for shade and a Twix Cal had picked up on Earth, then waved him goodbye.
“What a day,” said Cal, leaning back in his chair. On the viewscreen, he watched Kash lovingly stroke the side of the baby worm as if it were his own child. He smiled and shook his head. “Yep. What a day.”
Loren fired up the engines. Or, to be more precise, she tried to fire up the engines. The Shatner coughed like it was clearing its throat, shuddered briefly, then fell silent.
“Everything OK?” Cal asked, even though it very clearly wasn’t.
“Yeah,” said Loren. “It’s just…”
She flicked the controls again. The ship wheezed and shook, then… nothing.
“Something’s not working,” said Loren.
“You don’t say?” tutted Miz.
“Mech, can you take a look?” asked Loren, giving the engine another try. Cal gripped his arm rests as the whole ship vibrated. For a moment, it felt like the thrusters were about to kick-in, but then they whined down into silence.
“On it,” said Mech, clanking out into the corridor.
Over on Cal’s right, Mizette slowly sat forward in her chair. “Uh… did you just see that?” she said.
Cal glanced over at her, then followed her gaze. Outside, Kash had stepped away from the smaller worm, and was looking it up and down in something that looked – from this distance, at least – like shock.
“What?” asked Cal. “What am I looking at?”
“There,” said Miz, pointing. There was no need. Cal saw it at the same time she did – a movement from the baby worm. It rose up for a moment, as if it were being pushed by something beneath it.
Or someone.
“Mech!” Cal called over his shoulder. “Whatever you’re doing, you might want to do it quick.”
“Hold on… try now.”
Loren turned the engine over again. It vibrated and stuttered. “Come on,” she grimaced. Outside, the baby worm tilted a few degrees to one side. “Come on.”
“Hold on, hold on,” shouted Mech. “Let me try something.” There was the sound of something being kicked. “OK. Better or worse?”
Loren tried the engine again. The lights flickered and grey smoke poured in from a vent near the ceiling. “Worse! Much worse,” said Cal.
“It’s moving. The worm’s moving!” said Miz.
Sure enough, the smaller of the two fonking enormous worms had rolled almost all the way onto its side now. A thin tentacle whipped around on the sand, reaching out from beneath it.
“Try now!” Mech bellowed.
“This time, this time, come on,” said Loren. She gunned the engine. It let out a high-pitched whine. “Come on, come on, come on!”
Two strands of gloopy green goo descended from the ceiling above one of Loren’s control panels, stretching down until they were almost at floor level. Splurt wriggled around beneath the largest of the panels. There was a spark, a crackle and a fzzt, then the Shatner shot up and backwards, banking sharply away.
The back of the ship hit the ground and scraped across the desert, churning a path through the sand. Loren gritted her teeth and wrestled with the stick. The ship’s hull grumbled in complaint as it lifted free of the sand and raised onto an even keel.
Cal managed to prise his fingers from his arm rest long enough to give Splurt a thumbs up, just as the shape-shifter retreated back up to the ceiling. “Thanks, buddy,” he said. “Loren, get us out of here.”
“What about him?” asked Loren. “What about Kash?”
“What about him?” asked Mech, ducking onto the flight deck again.
“Are we just going to leave him with Vajazzle? What if she kills him?”
Cal shook his head. “Trust me, if I know Vajazzle like I think I know Vajazzle, she won’t be interested in him.”
“But you don’t know her,” Loren pointed out. “You know literally nothing about her.”
“You make a very valid point,” Cal admitted. He shifted uncomfortably and looked at the others. “All those in favor of assuming he’s going to be just fine?”
He, Mech and Miz all raised their hands. Loren shook her head. “You’re all terrible people.”
“Honestly, he’s going to be OK,” Cal said. “Vajazzle’s a reasonable… whatever the fonk she is. I want to say ‘monster’ but that doesn’t do my case any favor
s at all.”
“He’s hiding, look,” said Mech, pointing to the viewscreen. Sure enough, Kash had darted inside the larger worm and was tucking himself into the shadows of its gaping maw.
“What did I tell you? He’ll be perfectly safe in there,” said Cal. They all watched as the worm’s mouth snapped shut. Its throat quivered as it swallowed. “See? Safe as houses,” Cal added, weakly.
“Guess it got its appetite back,” said Mech.
“Yes,” agreed Cal. “I guess it did.”
The smaller worm rolled suddenly all the way over onto its side. A figure… no, not a figure. Not quite. A shape unfurled itself from the sand where the worm had been. Cal glanced from the crumpled outline of Vajazzle to the dusty terrain around her.
“Where’s her ship?” he asked.
“Don’t know,” said Loren. “She just materialized on the deck behind us while you were inside the…”
Her voice tailed off. Everyone on the bridge gave everyone else on the bridge a worried look.
“Go, go, go!” Cal yelped, gripping his arm rests as Loren’s hands flew to the controls. Cal’s eyes were shoved deeper into their sockets as the Shatner screamed vertically upwards, putting as much distance between them and Vajazzle as possible.
“How far can she do her beam-up thing?” he hissed.
“Fonk knows,” said Mech. “But let’s not find out.”
Loren looked up at the screen as it began to swim with a rainbow of colors. “Leaving the atmosphere in five… four… three…”
A tremble shook the ship from bow to stern. Steam hissed from several vents in the floor that Cal had never noticed before. His stomach dropped down to somewhere near his knees, then twanged back up again until he felt it hitting the back of his throat.
“What’s happening?” he cried.
“The ship’s in bad shape,” Loren said, frantically trying to hold it together as they punched out of the atmosphere. “It’s taken a lot of punishment in the last few hours.”
“Most of it your fault,” Miz pointed out.
“Some of it my fault,” Loren corrected. “Not most, some.”
Another jet of steam erupted from the ceiling. Splurt shot out of a length of pipe like a pea from a peashooter and hit the viewscreen with a noisy splat. He oozed down it slowly, his eyes staring ever so slightly accusingly at Loren.
“That wasn’t my fault, either!” she insisted, but Splurt kept his gaze fixed on her until he’d slid all the way to the floor and out of sight.
With a series of worrying groans, the Shatner tilted sideways and limped out of the planet’s atmosphere. It drifted into a lazy orbit and one by one the billowing clouds of steam grew smaller and less terrifying.
“Are we still in one piece?” asked Cal, glancing around. He had one eye closed and had tucked his chin down against his chest in the hope it somehow made him safer.
“Just,” said Loren, studying her controls. “We must be more beat-up than I thought.”
Mech tapped a few controls and studied several hundred lines of text that scrolled upwards over the right of the viewscreen. “Shields are almost out, weapons barely functioning, life support compromised but holding steady…”
“Is the shower still working?” asked Cal.
Mech frowned. “It was, but I don’t know, it’s not on the list of critical systems.”
“Well, it should be,” said Cal. He jumped up out of his seat. “I’ll go test it. I can still smell worm phlegm on me.”
“Shouldn’t we contact my dad first?” asked Miz.
Cal stopped on route to the door. “What? Uh, yeah. You can do that, can’t you?”
Miz nodded. “Yes. I mean, totally, yeah. No problem.”
Cal noticed her hands. She was twisting her fingers together in her lap, over and over again. He closed his eyes, just for a moment, then raised an arm and gave his pit a deep sniff. “Know what? I actually quite like this smell. It’s… mulchy. Who doesn’t love mulchy?”
He flopped back down into his seat and stretched his legs out in front of him. “Loren, let’s give Graxan a call. I can’t wait to tell him we’ve got his key. Maybe we’ll finally get to see him smile.”
* * *
On screen, Graxan of the Greyx’s brow pushed down into a scowl. “What did you say?”
Mizette and Cal stood side-by-side in front of Cal’s chair. Miz shot Cal a sideways look, and he nodded encouragingly.
“I said we’ve got the key,” she said. “Like you asked.”
Graxan’s fur bristled. “I asked no such thing. I told you to protect the key, not to get it. You were to stop it being removed from its hiding place. You were to stop it falling into the wrong hands!”
“Yeah, well we did stop it falling into the wrong hands,” Miz protested.
“Did you, daughter? Did you really?” Graxan snapped, gesturing at the Shatner’s crew. He gritted his teeth and shook his head. “I should have known not to send you. I should have known you’d mess it up.”
“Hey, now wait a minute,” Cal protested. “Nothing is messed up. Everything is good.”
“Is Kasheeshaktek with you?” Graxan demanded.
Cal hesitated, just for a moment. “Hmm?”
“Kasheeshaktek, the key keeper. Is he with you?”
“Is he with us?” said Cal. “Right now, you mean?” He glanced around the deck, as if looking for him. “No.”
Graxan’s eyes narrowed. He stepped closer until his face was almost completely filling the screen. “I trust he is safe?”
Cal swallowed. “Who?” he said. “Kasheeshka… thing? Oh man, yeah. He’s fine. He’s totally fine. We gave him a Twix. He seemed quite excited. Probably more excited than he should’ve been, actually. I mean, I like a Twix as much as the next man, but--”
“Silence!” barked Graxan, then he exploded into a fit of coughing that lasted several seconds.
“You should drink some water,” Cal suggested. Graxan just glared at him while they waited for the coughing to pass.
“Where is the key now?” asked Graxan, when he was finally able to. Cal smiled and held a hand out.
“Mizette, the key, if you please.”
Miz looked at his hand and frowned. “I haven’t got it.”
Cal’s smile didn’t change. “What do you mean, you haven’t got it?”
“I mean I don’t have it,” said Miz.
“Yes, you do. I tossed it to you before we got on the ship, remember?”
“And then you took it back after we got on board. You said you wanted to use it to get the tag off your other shirt.”
“Oh, yeah, so I did,” said Cal. He held up one arm for Graxan to see. The blue sleeve of his shirt was marked with a yellowish-green stain. “It didn’t work.”
He fished in his back pocket, then produced the key. “Got it. See? It’s perfectly safe.”
“It was safe where it was. All you had to do was stop Vajazzle,” said Graxan. “I trust you at least managed to accomplish that?”
Cal and Miz shot each other another sideways look. “More or less,” said Cal.
Even through millions of miles of empty space, Cal and Mizette felt Graxan’s stare grow colder. His nostrils flared and his eyes became dark, threatening slits. “What do you mean,” he intoned, “more or less?”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Cal stood in the shower cubicle, his mouth shut tight as he held his face in the jet of warm water. He’d had to turn the temperature down soon after getting in, the hot water proving too painful against his sunburnt skin. It was barely above lukewarm now, but he still found himself letting out little yelps when it hit the back of his neck and shoulders.
There was no soap, which was disappointing. There was a wall-mounted dispenser containing something that looked like wet tar, but he hadn’t risked trying it out. It looked like it belonged more in the oil filter of a truck than smeared across his body.
There were no
towels, either, and after his first go in the shower he’d been forced to try to shake the water off like a dog, then dry what was left on his dirty shirt and pants. They were both so filthy by that point that rubbing them on himself had probably negated the entire point of the shower in the first place.
“Shizz,” he muttered, remembering that he didn’t have a towel this time, either. He’d just have to drip-dry, and make a point of visiting a planet with a good selection of homeware stores sometime soon.
It took him a full four minutes to figure out how to switch the shower off. Admittedly, most of that was taken up by him accidentally turning the water all the way to cold, so he had to press himself against the shower’s back wall to avoid being hit by the spray, but even when he’d got the water to run warm again, getting it to stop had proven to be quite the challenge.
Once the stream had been reduced to a slow drip, he opened the cubicle door.
Mizette stood just on the other side, watching him. Cal stared at her in surprise for a moment, then hurriedly covered his genitals with both hands. He realized immediately that one hand was more than ample, and moved one of them up to cover his right nipple, instead.
“Miz,” he said. “Uh… hi.”
“Hi,” she replied. Her eyes drank him in from head to toe and back again.
“I’m… I’m in the shower,” he said, gesturing at the cubicle with the thumb of his right hand, while still keeping his nipple concealed. “Maybe you didn’t notice?”
“Oh, I noticed,” she said. “Loren wants to talk to you.”
“Does she? OK, then!” said Cal, more enthusiastically than was natural. “I’ll be right along just as soon as I’ve dried off.”
Mizette looked him up and down again. Her tail flicked from side to side. “OK, but there’s something I want to show you first…” she said, then she stepped closer and reached a hand out towards him.
Cal retreated into the cubicle, grinning awkwardly. “Well, now, hey there… you! What are you—?”
Miz tapped a button on the wall just inside the cubicle. Cal jumped and let out a little shriek of shock as warm air blasted at him from all directions at once.
Space Team: The Wrath of Vajazzle Page 12
