“The shield,” yelped Dorid. “We must lower the shield.”
“What?” asked Loren, finally tearing her eyes away from the green smears on the ground around them. “What shield?”
“Castle defenses,” Dorid explained. “In an emergency such as this, a dome shield seals in the whole castle, preventing anything getting in or out of the grounds. We must lower it. We must get away.”
He gasped as Cal’s hand caught him by the front of his apron and yanked him closer. “Drop that shield, and I’ll kill you,” Cal warned. There was no polished charm in his voice now, no well-rehearsed smile on his face. “That son-of-a-bedge is staying in here with me.”
THIRTEEN
THE DORID CLONES had all fled around to the back of the castle, away from the imminent dangers of being stepped on, crushed by rubble, or screamed into a gelatinous paste. The dial-shifted Mech had finally figured out where his feet were and was now in the process of remembering how they worked.
The Untitled was half-buried, the monster was mostly free, and Splurt… Well, Splurt was still a number of gloopy stains on the landscape.
And Cal was out for blood.
“Soonsho, scream this melty-faced motherfonker down,” he barked, jabbing a finger up at the Dorid-Beast.
Soonsho reached for the device strapped across her face, but Dorid caught her wrist, stopping her. “No! It’s sonically shielded. If Soonsho hits it, the resultant sound explosion will be cataclysmic.”
“Then what do we do?” Cal demanded. “How do I kill it?”
“I don’t… I’m not sure you can,” Dorid said.
“Challenge accepted,” said Cal. He pointed with both hands. “Miz. Mech. Keep it busy. Loren, with me. Everyone else get the fonk out of the way.”
Miz hesitated. The Dorid-monster was huge. Stupidly huge.
“Like, what are we supposed to do?” she asked.
Cal stopped, mid-turn. “That thing killed Splurt,” was all he said. It was all he had to.
“We’ll think of something,” Miz replied. “Go.”
She turned in time to see Mech launch himself through one of the few intact parts of the castle wall, his body punching a hole through it like a wrecking ball. He brought both fists smashing down on one of the creature’s feet, and the air crackled as if in the throes of an electrical storm.
Miz shrugged. “OK, let’s try that,” she said, then she snapped out her claws, bounded towards the castle on all fours, and pounced through a gap in the rubble.
Meanwhile, Cal dragged Loren up the ramp and into the Untitled.
“What are we doing?” Loren asked.
“We’re going to blow that giant piece of shizz to Kingdom Come,” Cal said. He was oddly matter-of-fact about it. It didn’t sound like a threat, merely a statement that this thing was about to happen, and that was that.
Loren stopped at the gun cabinet, but Cal pulled her on. “Not with those,” he said, then he raced ahead onto the bridge and dropped into his seat. “Kevin. Guns.”
“Which guns, sir?”
“All of them.”
“If we’re shooting something, sir, perhaps it would be best if I did the—”
“No. This one’s mine,” Cal said. “Guns. Now.”
He sat back and straightened, then watched from the corner of his eye as his headrest unfolded around him and the two spiked prongs of the weapons interface boinged free.
Loren joined him on the bridge. The Untitled was facing away from Castle Tarkula, so there was no sign of the monster. Instead, all she could see was the rolling black landscape stretching off into the distance, the faint shimmer of the shield dome, and a not-insubstantial amount of rubble.
“We’re using the ship? How can we use the ship?” Loren asked. “We can’t take off with the dome there, and we’re facing the wrong way.”
“No, we’re not,” Cal told her. “You’re going to toast that fonking thing with the thrusters, while I kill it with torpedoes.”
“Missiles, sir,” Kevin corrected.
“Whatever they’re called!” Cal snapped.
“Missiles,” Kevin repeated. “It’s definitely missiles.”
“Kevin, will you just shut the fonk—?”
The needles pierced Cal’s temples and poured silky blackness into his brain. One moment, he was sitting in chair, the next he was hovering in mid-air, gazing out at that rolling landscape of black.
Looking back over his shoulder, he saw the Dorid-thing. It hopped on the spot, hissing and snarling as it slapped at the hairy figure currently clinging to his inner thigh with her razor-sharp claws.
“Tell them to get clear!” Cal instructed.
The sentence was repeated a second later, amplified by the Untitled’s external speaker system. Miz glanced back then dropped out of sight behind a pile of rubble. It exploded outwards and Mech crashed through, with Mizette bounding along behind him.
“They’re out of the way. Loren, light it up!”
The Currently Untitled’s rear thrusters ignited, filling Cal’s view with a haze of brilliant blue. The Dorid-monster stumbled back, its already melted flesh becoming even more so.
Cal raised his hands. They weren’t his real hands, he knew, just some digital representation of his digits through which he could manipulate the ship’s weapons. Assuming, of course, he could remember how. It had been a long time, after all. An entire lifetime, in fact.
“Just like riding a bike,” he said, then he thrust his hands forward and roared in triumph.
Nothing happened.
“Shizz. Wait. Hang on. I got this,” he said. He drew both hands back to his hips, then shoved them forward again. The movement closely mirrored one of the signature attacks from the Street Fighter II video game. Any other time, Cal would have been unable to resist the urge to shout, “Hadoken!” at the top of his voice, but not today. Not now. There were no jokes to be made, no laughs to be had. Splurt was dead, and this fonk was going to pay.
Nothing happened. Even when Cal threw a series of open-palmed jabs at the monster in front of him, nothing happened.
“Should I switch them on now, sir?” Kevin asked.
“What? They’re not on?”
“Not yes, sir, no. It would have been a most peculiar question for me to ask if they were already—”
“Yes! Switch them on!”
Cal felt his hands hum with power. He flexed his fingers and tendrils of purple energy crackled between them.
This was more like it.
Before he could fire, a scream from the monster flipped the Untitled over, slamming it against the shield and making all the rubble slide off it like snow from a thawing rooftop. A beam of cannon-fire erupted from the palms of Cal’s hand, struck the top of the dome, then ricocheted off punched through what was left of the castle roof.
“Shizz. Loren, straighten us out!”
“Trying!” Loren called back. She twisted the controls and the ship’s nose woodpeckered against the ground. “I am not going to miss shizz like this,” she muttered.
“You can say that again,” said Cal, then he frowned. “Wait, what?”
Another scream pounded them. Metal groaned as the ship was squashed between the shield and the sound waves. Cal tried to take aim at the creature, but their current angle made it impossible for him to turn far enough.
He could only watch as the thing kicked free of the now mostly collapsed castle. Could only watch as it squelched through the slick green sheen on the ground that had, until recently, been the best friend he’d ever had. Could only watch as its mouth opened wide and its vocal chords constricted and…
There was a sound.
No, not a sound, an emotion that poured in through Cal’s ears, turning his anger and grief into something purer. Something better.
Cal went from confusion to fear in a heartbeat. Confusion about where the sound was coming from, and fear that it would end – that it would just suddenly stop – and he wouldn’t be able to hear it or feel it or e
xperience it ever again.
Overriding them both, though, was joy. Joy that he was experiencing this sound now. Joy that he was alive enough, even if only for this one moment, to hear what he now heard, feel what he now felt, know what he now knew.
Peace. Utter, absolute peace.
From his partially upside-down viewpoint, Cal saw Soonsho standing before the monster, the metal mouthpiece still fixed to her face. The sound was emerging from within the mask, beautiful despite the electronic edge to it. Or perhaps even more so because of it.
“Miss Sooss appears to be singing, sir,” said Kevin.
“Yuh,” said Cal, the word dribbling half-formed from his lips.
“It’s not bad, I suppose,” Kevin continued. “You know, if you like that sort of thing.”
“Yuh.”
The Dorid monster had stopped thrashing around now. It stood perfectly still, gazing in rapt wonder at the teenage girl standing before it, singing her heart out.
Without the pressure of the beast’s sound waves holding it in place, the Untitled dropped back onto its legs. The impact shuddered through the ship, the clang drowning out Soonsho’s song long enough for Cal to snap out of his trance.
He felt an ache where the song had been, and realized Soonsho had stopped singing. He watched as Miz dragged her clear, then saw Mech give him a thumbs up.
“Kill that motherfonker!”
Cal didn’t need to be told twice. Raising a hand in the monster’s direction he poured all his anger and hurt and hatred into a single powerful blast.
He wasn’t sure what he’d fired, exactly, but it had precisely the effect he’d hope for. A teardrop-shaped bolt of energy punched straight through the Dorid-thing’s chest, slap bang where it’s heart should be.
Its twisted horror-show of a face went slack. The face-hand poked gingerly at the almost perfectly circular hole through its torso.
And then, like a great oak before a woodcutter’s axe, the monster toppled backwards and crashed through what was left of Castle Tarkula.
“Excellent shooting, sir!”
“Thanks, Kevin,” said Cal. He watched with a sense of grim satisfaction as the monster hit the ground.
“I mean, you have just crushed to death all the clones who were hiding back there, obviously.”
“What?” Cal gasped and clamped a hand to his mouth. “Oh, shizz. Did I?”
“I’m afraid so, sir.”
“What is it with you and killing those guys?” Loren asked.
“I don’t do it on purpose!” Cal protested.
“You shot the first two we met in the face,” said Loren, reminding him of their original visit to the castle.
“No, I happened to shoot and their faces got in the way. That’s a very different thing,” Cal explained. He winced. “Seriously, Kevin? All of them?”
“Actually, no, sir. One of them might well pull through,” said Kevin.
There was a moment of silence.
“Ah. No. No, he didn’t.”
“Fonk. OK, my bad!” said Cal, raising his voice in the hope that Dorid and the others heard him.
“It appears death is rather upon this place today, sir,” Kevin intoned. “You know what with Master Sp—”
“Kevin!” Loren snapped. “Stop talking.”
Cal, who was still a digital projection floating in the air outside the ruins of Castle Tarkula, picked a random puddle of green goo to stare at. He wasn’t sure what he hoped to achieve by this, short of full reanimation, but he felt like there was some purpose to it, even if he didn’t understand the details.
“Get me out of here,” he said, then the spikes withdrew themselves from his skull and after a disconcerting moment when he felt like he existed in two different places at the same time, he found himself back in the ship.
Unclipping his belt, Cal hurried off the bridge and along the corridor. He stopped at the hatch, leaned against the wall to support himself, then took a deep, steadying breath.
The blob of goo was still partly on his shoulder, but mostly oozing down his front. He tried scooping it back up again, but it was practically liquid now, and seeped through his fingers like long strings of snot.
“Oh, buddy,” he whispered. His voice cracked.
Curling his fingers until the nails dug into his palms, Cal shook his head, straightened up, and strode down the ramp. Habit made him pull together a smile, but it was a thin and unconvincing thing, and it fell away just as quickly as it had appeared.
Miz and Mech stood with Soonsho and Tim. Of them all, it was only Mech who was able to meet his eye. He nodded at Cal, just once, his eyebrows raised in something like an apology. Cal returned the nod, then continued to where Dorid was standing.
His teeth gritted.
His fist drew back, apparently of its own free will.
Cal managed to wrestle the urge to punch the old man in the face to something of a draw. Rather than right-hook him to the ground, he instead delivered a solid thump to his upper arm that was probably more shocking than painful.
“H-hey!” Dorid protested.
“You did this!” Cal roared. “You killed Splurt.”
“I didn’t mean to,” Dorid replied, gingerly rubbing his arm. “It was an accident, an experiment gone wrong. No-one else was even supposed to be here.”
“And what would you have done if we hadn’t been?” Cal demanded. “Huh? What would you have done then? Let it kill you? Kill Soonsho? Whatever the fonk else lives on this shizzhole planet?”
Soonsho’s electronic tones came from somewhere behind him. “It wasn’t his fault. It was my idea.”
Cal spun. “Yeah? Yeah?” he demanded. His expression and tone forced Soonsho back a step in fright. Cal felt his momentum stutter then collapse. “Well, it was a stupid idea. You know, whatever it was.”
He stood there for a while, waiting for his blood pressure to return to normal, and feeling increasingly guilty for his outburst.
“I may have accidentally killed all your clones,” he admitted.
Dorid winced, but then put a brave face on it. “That’s fine. Apology accepted.”
“I wasn’t apologizing,” Cal told him.
Mech appeared beside them. He cleared his throat. “Uh… You do realize…?” he said, pointing to the ground.
Cal looked down and discovered he was standing in a puddle of green goo. “Aw, shizz!” he groaned, quickly picking his way back to dry land. He stopped by Mech, and they both watched Cal’s footprints slowly smooth over until they were no longer visible.
A hand touched Cal stiffly on the back. He could feel the claws even through his jacket. Mizette said nothing. She didn’t have to.
“I know, Miz,” Cal said, nodding at some unspoken truth that had passed between them. “I know.”
“I feel like it’s partly my fault,” Mech said. “If he hadn’t been coming to catch me…”
Cal shook his head. “You shouldn’t think like that, Mech. It isn’t partly your fault.”
“Thanks, man.”
“It’s mostly your fault,” Cal said.
“What?”
Cal managed a smirk. Just a small one, but it was a start. “You made that too easy.”
“Yurk!”
They all looked back to see Loren skidding in a pile of Splurt, her eyes wide in panic, her arms flapping frantically as she tried to stay upright.
“Like, have some respect,” Miz told her.
“I didn’t mean to— Erk! Fonk, this stuff’s slippy.”
The others all faced front again and waited until she eventually arrived beside Mech.
“I mean… Can he die?” Miz wondered. “Because, like, I totally didn’t think he could.”
“Everything dies,” said the Time Titan. He stood on the other side of the puddle, his hands crossed respectfully in front of his smock.
“Wait. You,” said Cal. He pointed across the puddle. “You can bring him back. You can rewind his time line, or whatever you do. You can fix him!�
�
“I’m afraid I can’t,” said Tim. “I said before there was something unusual about it.”
“Him,” Cal corrected. “About him.”
“Sorry. Yes. About him. It wasn’t until I saw him change size that I realized what it was.”
“He’s, like, a shapeshifter,” said Miz.
Tim shook his head. “No, not that. Shifting shape is one thing, but growing the way he did. Increasing one’s mass to such an extent. Well, that defies reason. And physics.”
“I said that,” Mech announced. “Right? I said that before. How does he grow? It don’t make sense.”
“One of the few advantages of my role is I can see things that others cannot,” said Tim. “And what I saw when it… when he grew… Well, I’ve never seen anything quite like it.”
Cal was in no mood to beat around the bush. “How?”
“He borrows from himself,” Tim explained. Although ‘explained’ what quite a generous description of it.
“He what?” asked Loren.
“Not from his current self, but from past or future versions of himself. He borrows matter through time.”
“Borrowed,” Cal said. The matter-of-fact way in which he said it surprised even him. “He borrowed matter through time.”
“Oh. Yes. Well…” said Tim, but he didn’t really go anywhere with it. “The point is, there’s nothing I can do.”
A hot, oppressive sort of quiet fell. Nobody knew quite what to say, and it fell to Loren to break the silence.
“So, what do we do with him?” she asked. “Do we bury him? Launch him into space?”
“Keep him in a jar…” Miz suggested. It was hard to tell if she was being entirely serious or not, but she certainly appeared to be.
“It’d have to be one fonking big jar,” said Mech, indicating the puddles all around them.
“We wouldn’t have to keep all of him,” Miz explained. “Just, like, a handful, or whatever. We could scoop some of him up and—”
“We’re not keeping him in a jar,” Cal said. “No-one’s scooping him up.”
“Well, like, what then?” Miz asked.
Cal squatted down. “I don’t know,” he admitted.
Space Team: The Time Titan of Tomorrow Page 15
