“Fonk. Ow. Shizz,” Cal grunted, as he bounced off Miz’s chair, then the guest chairs, then the door frame. He tried grabbing all three, failed at the first two, but managed to catch hold of the third. He hung there from the door frame, his legs dangling towards the open hatch, his shoulders, arms and fingertips already burning with the effort.
Through the hatch, he caught a glimpse of some big sweeping movements, as if the city was spiraling past him. Then he saw nothing but a sort of shiny darkness, and realized he was staring directly into the eye of Old Man Nostro.
“Kevin! Close the back door!” Cal yelped.
“I’m afraid I can’t, sir,” Kevin replied. “It must’ve been damaged when he picked us up. The mechanism is jammed.”
“Well unjam it!”
“It’s no good, sir. It’s fully stuck,” Kevin said. “But I have an idea. It’s somewhat radical, but I think you might approve.”
“What is it?” asked Cal, gritting his teeth as his grip began to slip on the smooth door frame.
“We should paint flames on the outside of the ship.”
Cal blinked. “What?”
“Not all over it, obviously – that would look rather crass – but just on the wings, perhaps.”
“How the fonk would that help?” Cal yelped.
There was silence for a moment.
“Help, sir?” Kevin asked. “Oh! You mean with the current situation. Oh no, it wouldn’t help with that at all, I’m afraid.”
Cal sighed. “I fonking hate you sometimes, Kevin,” he said, then the monster shook the ship and Cal’s fingers lost their purchase. He tumbled end over end towards the open hatch, and the giant waiting just beyond it.
As he flipped, he caught a glimpse of the metal cabinet that stood just inside the hatchway. He’d either slam into it, or narrowly avoid it. Either way, it was his only chance.
“Kevin, the weapons cabinet. Open the weapons cabinet!”
“Very good, sir,” Kevin replied.
The bathroom door slid open as Cal rolled past it through the air.
“Hang on, that’s not it,” the AI realized. “Let me try again.”
“Kevin!” Cal roared. “Open the fonking—”
The door to the weapons cabinet snapped open. Cal hit it with a breathtaking amount of force, buckling the metal and arguably doing worse to his pelvis, hips and chest bone. The door held, acting like a shelf upon which Cal lay sprawled. It creaked and groaned beneath his weight, the hinges bending slowly outward.
Cal knew he had just a second, maybe less. He thrust his hands into the weapon cabinet and grabbed the first things he could, just as the door folded outwards and he was suddenly falling again, rolling and tumbling as he plunged through the hatch.
Fonk, he was high up! Old Man Nostro had emerged fully from the ground now. He towered above many of the buildings, at least two of which had now started to collapse under the stress of the tremors the giant had caused.
Nostro held the Untitled above him at close to arm’s length, meaning Cal had a fall of thirty or more feet to the monster’s face. He hurriedly examined the weapons he had grabbed, and felt his gut wrench in disappointment.
In his left hand, he held a tiny blaster pistol that would lightly bruise the giant at best, and get right on his tits at worst. In his right hand, he held the ship’s stupidly impractical flamethrower, which could only be activated after a set of very specific, very confusing instructions had been followed. It involved priming pumps and pulling tabs, and although he’d eventually figured it out once before, he hadn’t been tumbling towards a giant, heavily-pregnant vampire monster at the time.
He decided he may as well fire the gun. The shot bounced off Papa Nostro’s eyeball. The eye rippled like a ball of runny pudding, but other than a single blink, the giant didn’t appear to suffer any ill-effects.
Cal hit the eye a half-second later, bounced off it, then rolled out-of-control down the monster’s scarred cheek. He felt the steaming hot vapor of its breath swirling from its nostrils, then saw the jagged stumps of those fast-approaching tusks.
The larger ones, he wasn’t too worried about. Sure, they were three times as big as he was, but that size brought with it a certain bluntness that was unlikely to do him much harm.
Nestled between those larger protrusions, though, was a forest of smaller spikes. They were each the size of a beach ball, but possessed zero of a beach ball’s other qualities. They were hard and sharp, as opposed to soft and bouncy; pointed, not smooth. Lumps of decaying flesh were wedged in the gaps between them – something else Cal had never had cause to associate with balls, beach-based or otherwise.
He tried to read the instructions on the flamethrower’s fuel canister, but had barely made it past, ‘Pull Tab A,’ before he smacked into one of the larger tusks and what breath was left of him shot out of his nose in one big snort.
He made a valiant attempt at swearing – something he found helpful in most situations – but all that emerged from him was a pained squeak and, if he were being completely honest, about a cup and a half of urine.
The giant’s mouth loomed beside him like a gelatinous pit. Cal saw a tongue criss-crossed with old scar tissue. He saw the cavern of a throat that could swallow men twenty times his size.
And then he saw something else. Something that, given the circumstances, very few other people in his situation might have seen.
He saw an opportunity.
A plan formed. It was not his best plan – which in itself said quite a lot about the standard of it – but it was a plan, all the same.
“OK. OK,” he grimaced, maneuvering himself until his feet were wedged against the monster’s rubbery top lip. He sipped some air into his tight, aching lungs, muttered something about this being fonking suicide, then he leaned over the edge and dropped the flamethrower into Papa Nostro’s mouth.
It hit one of the saliva-slicked walls of the monster’s mouth, then slid down to somewhere near the tonsils.
“Fonk it. That’ll have to do,” Cal wheezed. Closing one eye, he took aim with the blaster pistol. “Smile, you son of a bedge,” he spat, then he squeezed the trigger.
The shot rebounded off one of Nostro’s oversized teeth, ricocheted around inside his mouth for moment, then streaked upwards just inches from Cal’s face.
“Fonk! That was close,” Cal said. He took aim again. He repeated the, “Smile, you son of a bedge,” line, although with a little less emphasis and enthusiasm this time. That done, he pulled the trigger.
Nostro’s head exploded, just as Cal had planned. Unfortunately, that was as far as the plan had gone, and everything that happened next came as something of a surprise to him. Although, in retrospect, it probably shouldn’t have.
The eruption of flame and flesh launched Cal spinning and screaming into the air. He saw the sky, then the ground, then the burning neck stump of the giant. Then he saw them all again, several dozen times, in the space of three and a half seconds.
He blacked out, but the respite was annoyingly brief, and he was barely at the monster’s nipple-height when he woke up again, still spinning, only now traveling down instead of up.
He realized, to his dismay, that he was on fire. He was also covered in brain-mush, but that was much further down his list of current priorities.
Cal passed the partially-formed offspring growing from Papa Nostro’s bloated gut. They were upside-down now. Or he was.
Probably that one, actually.
He passed the forest of pubic hair, closed his eyes so he wasn’t subjected to a close-up view of what would almost certainly be the largest, most unpleasant penis he’d ever seen, then decided he may as well take a quick look, since he was here anyway and was unlikely to get the chance again.
He opened his eyes and found himself surrounded by a blanket of green. It wrapped around him, drawing him into its soft, blobby folds. Cal laughed. Despite the falling and the brain mush and the fact that a good thirty per cent of him was currently on fi
re, he laughed.
Splurt flobbed out beneath him, breaking his fall like a giant cushion made of warm jello. Cal rolled around, extinguishing the flames and feeling like a five-year-old on the world’s greatest bouncy castle.
He was almost disappointed when he finally reached solid ground. Splurt oozed out from beneath him, snapping back into his usual ball-shape with an elastic twang, and rolling to a stop next to Cal’s head.
Reaching over, Cal gave the little guy a pat. “Thanks, buddy. I owe you another one.”
Cal’s whole body ached in protest as he propped himself up onto his elbows. Mech, Loren and Miz stood over him, gazing down. He didn’t really have the energy to do much more than give them a thumbs up, then he pointed up and past them in the direction of Old Man Nostro.
They all watched in silence as the now-headless giant vampire monster toppled like a falling tree. Nostro’s arms flailed out at his sides, and he crashed through three different buildings on his way to the ground.
The impact of his landing shook the whole plaza. Cal slowly craned his head and watched as several other buildings fell like dominoes. They collapsed in roars of rubble, and the air was filled with dust and noise and smoke for what felt like several minutes.
At some point during all the commotion, the Currently Untitled came in for a refreshingly smooth landing somewhere close by on the right, its fog lights blazing through the clouds of white dust and grime.
When the cloud had started to settle, and all was finally still, Cal got to his feet. This wasn’t easy, and involved quite a lot of involuntary noises on his part.
Once upright, he brushed some of the dust off him, checked the scorch-marks on his clothing to make sure he hadn’t been too badly burned, then gave a nod of satisfaction.
“Right then,” he said, grinning at the others and rubbing his hands together. “I guess we should go pick up our pay check!”
CAL STARED long and hard at the number on the screen of a tablet in front of him, trying not to let his excitement show. The figure was considerably higher than the one they had initially been promised, although considering their target had turned out to be a hundred feet tall and naked, he felt it was probably only fair.
“That is very generous of you, Mr Clasters,” he said, smiling and nodding his appreciation.
The short, toad-skinned Mayor’s eyeballs bulged, as if someone had squeezed him around the middle. “It’s Clastres. Mayor Smuna Clastres,” he said, the words getting tangled in his long, fat tongue. “And what?”
“I mean, it’s way more than we were expecting. Seriously, you shouldn’t have,” Cal said. He gave the mayor the full double finger guns and winked. “But I’m glad you did.”
“This is not your payment,” Mayor Clastres said, tapping the screen with a moist, squelchy finger. “This is an invoice.”
“An invoice?”
“For the damages!” Clastres cried. “You destroyed half the square. Millions of credits in property damage. Not to mention the giant headless corpse that’s now draped across three blocks!”
“Come on, that’s hardly our fault!” Cal protested. “I mean, it’s partly our fault, obviously, but it’s not exclusively our fault. How were we supposed to know how big he was?”
“We showed you a picture,” the mayor snapped back. Behind him, two anxious assistants hurriedly brought an image of Old Man Nostro up on a wall-mounted screen. Mayor Clastres tilted his head back sharply, gesturing towards it. “See?”
“Did you show us that?” Cal asked. He turned to the rest of the crew, who were gathered behind him. “Did he show us that?”
“Yes,” said Loren.
“Uh-huh,” Mech confirmed.
Cal raised his eyebrows in surprise, then turned back to the mayor. He gestured to the image on the wall. “Well, seems like you did. But there’s nothing there to tell us the scale,” he said. “For all we know, that’s actual size and he’s only three feet tall.”
“He’s standing on top of a fonking building!”
Cal looked closer at the image. “Is that…? Is that what that is?” He tilted his head until it was almost upside-down, as if studying an optical illusion. “Oh! Oh, yeah, now I see it. Those are windows. Gotcha. I thought they were little squares.”
“Little squares?” Mayor Clastres sneered.
“I know, it’s deceiving, right? Not clear at all. You should get a better picture,” Cal said.
“Of what, his headless corpse lying half-buried in my city?”
Cal shrugged. “If that’s what floats your boat, who am I to judge?”
The Mayor still held the tablet up. Cal gently nudged the Gorf’s arm down and hit him with both barrels of his smile. “Now that that unfortunate business is out of the way, how about you give us our check minus, let’s say, three per cent as a gesture of goodwill, and we’ll say no more about it?”
Smuna Clastres was a small man in some ways, but much larger in others. His physical size was nothing to write home about – he was short and stubby, with stumpy limbs that made him look more bloated than he actually was – but he hadn’t got to where he was today without a spirit and moral strength far larger than his body suggested.
Were he a younger man, he liked to think he’d have boxed this bounty hunter’s ears and sent him packing. The wolf thing and the cyborg would have been more problematic, of course, but he’d have taken some satisfaction in wiping the smirk right off the human’s face.
He hadn’t been a young man for quite some time, though, and so he kept his hands to himself, and made a valiant attempt to cross his short arms behind his broad back.
“As you wish,” he said. He proceeded slowly around to the other side of his glass desk and pulled open a drawer. The screeching of glass on glass was indescribably unpleasant, and made Miz fold down her ears in protest.
“You might want to slap some grease on there,” Cal said. “That’s free advice. We won’t charge you extra.”
“How very kind of you,” said Clastres, not looking up. He fished in the drawer, before producing something a lot like a cell phone. The screen illuminated as he tapped it, then let out a series of soft chimes as he swiped his index finger in a complex pattern across it. Finally, with a nod, he gave the screen one final tap.
“Complete,” the device announced, in a not unpleasant – if slightly robotic – female voice.
“It is done,” said Clastres.
“Thank you, Mr Mayor,” said Cal. “You won’t regret it.”
“I know,” said the Mayor. He replaced the device in the drawer and screeched it closed again. “It was the right decision.”
“That it was,” Cal agreed. He tipped an imaginary hat and bowed slightly. “Great to meet you, sorry it had to be under such terrible circumstances, but hopefully we can do it again. Only, you know, without the giant monster next time.”
Mech put a hand on Cal’s back and shoved him towards the door. “Get out of here, man,” he said. “And can you please just shut up for five minutes?”
“See what I’ve got to put up with?” Cal said, directing the comment to the Mayor just as Mech gave him another nudge towards the exit. It slid suddenly into the frame like the slice of a guillotine. Cal jumped in fright. “Jesus. What is with the doors on this planet? They’re all in such a rush.”
A final shove sent him stumbling out into the ornately-decorated hallway. He barely had time to blurt out a farewell before the rest of the crew piled out behind him and the door sliced closed again.
“What’s the hurry?” asked Cal, his voice echoing around the cavernous hallway and mingling with the clacking of their footsteps on the glass floor. “Now you’ve made us all look rude.”
“What’s the hurry?” Mech spat. “I’ll tell you what the fonking hurry is. There is a torch-wielding mob down there in the city all shouting our name.”
“I know! We’re superstars!” Cal said. “Are we going to swing by and say hello?”
“You do know they want to kill
us, right?” Loren asked.
Cal snorted. “What? No they don’t! They were cheering for us.”
“They were demanding our execution,” Loren corrected.
“Come on. Now way. Seriously? I find that very hard to believe,” said Cal.
“They were, like, throwing rocks at us,” Miz reminded him.
“I thought those were gifts,” Cal said.
Loren scowled. “Gifts?”
“They were nice rocks!” Cal said. He reached into his pocket and produced a smooth black stone the size of his palm. “See? Shiny space rocks.”
He handed the stone to Loren. “You can keep that, by the way. I’ve got pockets full of the things. Seriously, if I fall in water right now, I’m a dead man.”
They were approaching two large double doors. A pair of footmen in velvet coat snapped their heads forward in perfectly synchronized bowing gestures, then each pulled open one of the doors.
Cal was deep in thought, and barely noticed the men as he led the others out onto the walkway that led to the Untitled. “Although… now I think about it, all that would explain why those guys were burning that effigy of me.”
“And why they wrote ‘DIE’ on the side of the ship in their own shizz,” Mech added.
“Wait, so that meant die as in die?” Cal gasped.
“What else could it have meant?” Loren asked.
“I don’t know. Some space thing, maybe? Or they could’ve been writing ‘the’ in German, I guess.”
“What’s German?” Mech asked.
“It’s an Earth language.”
“Why the fonk would they be writing the word ‘the’ in some Earth language on the side of our motherfonking space ship?”
“In their own shizz,” Miz added, just in case anyone had forgotten.
“I don’t know! Maybe it’s a cultural thing. I’m not an expert.”
Space Team: The Time Titan of Tomorrow Page 4
