Space Team: A Lot of Weird Space Shizz: Collected Short Stories

by Barry J. Hutchison

  “I-It was a kid,” Marvok mumbled. “It was s-some little kid.”

  “What do you mean, ‘it was a kid’?” Jarty demanded. “How could a kid have done…”

  He stood on Splurt. Normally, this wouldn’t be all that big a deal, but as Splurt had taken the form of a six-inch metal spike, it had a number of quite sudden repercussions.

  Screaming, Jarty yanked his knee up to his chest and hopped around in a circle, blood oozing from the hole in the bottom of his boot.

  The other boot, meanwhile, landed on the prongs of a garden rake that the would-be thief would have sworn wasn’t there a moment ago. The handle came up quickly and thwacked him across the eyes, finishing the job on his nose the skateboard had started.

  “Aaaaargh! What the fonk is happening?” Jarty howled.

  Blinded by tears, he lashed out with his hefty metal tool, just as a panic-stricken Marvok tried to heave himself into a standing position. The curved tip of the tool punched a hole in the side of Marvok’s skull.

  Realizing what he’d done, Jarty yanked the makeshift weapon away. As it pulled free, forty per cent of Marvok’s brain spattered onto the floor and skidded out into the corridor, which made Jarty start screaming again.

  Babbling incoherently, Jarty sprint-hobbled into the corridor, desperately trying to remember which direction was the way out. His one good foot landed, heel-first, in a quivering lump of brain matter, and he once more found himself going horizontal in the air.

  The floor was unforgivingly hard as he slammed against it, and his screams and babbling both stopped as all the air was knocked from his body.

  Lying there flat on his back, Jarty could’ve sworn he saw a boy looking down from the tangle of vents and pipes at the ceiling. He had a cherubic face and tousled blond hair, and Jarty’s first instinct was to cry out to him for help.

  But then the boy became a bowling ball, which then fell on Jarty’s head, killing him instantly.

  * * *

  Splurt sat there for a while, enjoying his near perfect roundness and the three little holes in his head.

  The bad men had stopped playing, which was a pity. He was just starting to get into the swing of the game, and he had lots of other things he’d wanted to try out. There were pointy things he could be, and heavy things. He thought he could probably even be a blisteringly hot thing, if he put a bit of effort into it.

  But no. The game was over. The fun was done.

  Splurt watched as something small and metallic came bouncing up the hatch and landed in the corridor some way ahead of him. It hissed as plumes of blue gas seeped from inside it, quickly filling the corridor.

  “Attention occupants of unregistered starship!” barked a voice from somewhere outside. “This is Legate Honfar of Zertex. You are harboring wanted fugitives. Prepare to be boarded.”

  The bowling ball spun in a series of excited little circles, then trundled up the wall. Maybe the fun wasn’t quite done, after all.

  * * *

  Forty minutes later, Cal and the others returned, alive and intact, but dirty.

  “I told you what’d happen,” the metal Not Cal said. “You’d get yourself killed.”

  “We didn’t get ourselves killed,” said Cal. “We almost got ourselves killed, but we knew you’d come and save us, ya big lug.”

  “Speak for yourself,” said the hairy Not Cal. “Like, I was totally fine.”

  “Well, granted, you were totally fine,” said Cal. “And Loren was handling herself, but my point is… My point is… Actually, I don’t know what my point is.”

  He stopped outside his room. “I’m going to get changed. I’ve got, like, pink stuff on me, and I don’t know what it is. Is it marshmallow?”

  “What the fonk is marshmallow?” asked the metal one.

  “I think it’s marshmallow,” said Cal. He stuck a finger in a big blob of the stuff that was stuck to his chest, gave it an experimental sniff, then tasted it. “Jesus. No. No, that definitely isn’t marshmallow.”

  Cal jabbed a thumb towards the door. “I’m going to go get changed.”

  “I wouldn’t, sir,” intoned The Voice. Cal and the others looked up.

  “Uh, why not, Kevin?” Cal asked.

  “There was… Well, I think there was an incident while you were out, sir. Although I’d like to make it clear that I was temporarily disabled, and therefore take no responsibility for any of it.”

  Cal glanced around at the others. “Uh, OK. What happened?”

  “I honestly don’t know, sir,” The Voice admitted.

  Cal shrugged and touched his thumb to the panel beside his door. “Well, if it comes back to you, you let me know. OK, Kev?”

  The door slid open. A pile of mangled Zertex corpses slid out into the corridor at Cal’s feet.

  Cal looked down. Had he looked up, he might have seen the face of a blond-haired boy smiling down at him through the grille in one of the vents. He might have seen him punch the air in triumph, and silently mouth, “Yes!”

  “Uh… Splurt?” said Cal, calling out to the ship in general. “Buddy? We really need to talk.”

  Up in the vent, the baby-faced psychopath had already become a tiny bicycle with bright yellow handlebars. It rippled happily as it weaved and zigzagged through the miles and miles of pipework, then forward rolled until the space cows came home.

  THE END

  SPACE TEAM: THE HOLIDAY SPECIAL

  Originally published as a standalone short story in December 2016

  1.

  Cal Carver was a man of many talents. Or of some talents, at least.

  He could talk his way out of almost any situation. Granted, the situations he talked himself into in the process were often significantly worse than those he’d been in before, but at least it kept life interesting.

  He could be charmingly persuasive, particularly to women of a certain age who felt their husbands weren’t paying them nearly enough attention. To be fair, though, he’d lucked into a face that was handsome in a ‘bit of rough’ kind of way, so he didn’t exactly have to work hard to win them over. A smile would usually do it. A wink, if they were being stubborn.

  From there, even Cal would admit that there was quite a steep drop-off to the rest of his skillset.

  He could do a reasonable number of sit-ups. He knew six guitar chords, four of which he could comfortably play. Following a nine-month period of unemployment in his early twenties, he could reliably describe the plot of any given episode of Cagney & Lacey within six seconds of the opening credits ending.

  After those, he started to struggle. On a good day, his sense of balance was marginally above average. He could run quite fast, but only while being chased. He could take a surprising number of punches to the head before falling over. Nothing to really write home about.

  One thing he didn’t consider to be one of his skills was the ability to identify a space station, like the one that was currently filling most of the viewscreen of his stolen spaceship, the Shatner.

  Another of the skills Cal very much did not possess was precognition - the ability to see into the future. If that had been among his talents, he would almost certainly have turned the ship around there and then, and everything that followed could have been avoided.

  The station was an enormous barrel-like construction, made of a dark metal that would have made it difficult to see against the blackness of space, were it not for the hundreds of lights dotting its surface like well-organized stars.

  It looked… dirty, somehow, like the metal had rusted in patches. Cal vaguely remembered learning that metal couldn’t rust in space, but either no-one had bothered to tell this space station that, or the brown marks were something other than rust.

  For a moment, he had a little flashback to the cell he’d briefly shared with an enormous cannibalistic serial killer back on Earth, and to the lumpy body-fluidy streaks across the walls. He shuddered. Since being taken to outer space a couple of days ago, most of his time had been spent trying to esc
ape death. Even so, he’d take almost being killed by aliens over shizz-stained walls any day.

  “Shizz.” He said the word out loud, testing it.

  After his alien abduction, he’d been forcibly implanted with a translation chip which allowed him to understand any known alien language (good) but censored any swear words he might attempt to say (bad). He’d been fonking furious about it to begin with, but now trying to find curse words which hadn’t been censored had become one of his favorite pastimes. ‘Jerk’ was the best he’d come up with so far, but he’d used it so many times in the three hours following its discovery that the novelty had well and truly worn off.

  “Hey, it ain’t that bad,” grunted a voice from over on Cal’s right. Mech, a seven-feet tall tangle of metal and flesh stood comfortably upright, his magnetic feet locked onto the flight deck floor.

  Actually, calling him a tangle of metal and flesh was being generous. He was almost entirely metal, except for a patch of skin on one arm, and his face, which, from the top lip to halfway up the forehead was… not exactly human, but definitely organic. His skin was a dark reddish-brown, the whites of his eyes actually closer to yellow.

  His hulking metal frame had been spray-painted with a variety of symbols and emblems which announced him as a space pirate. This, however, wasn’t true. The spray-job had been part of a cover story that had recently been forced upon him by President Sinclair, head of the Zertex Corporation. Mech didn’t like his new design. Nor did he like anything else Sinclair had done to him. And that was one of the main reasons why they had plotted a course for this place.

  “North Star station, dead ahead,” announced the pilot, her eyes flicking from the screen to her banks of controls and back again.

  Teela Loren had been a fast-rising officer in the Zertex military, marked as ‘one to watch’ by her superiors. Of course, that was before she’d realized she was working for the bad guys. Now, she was a fearless fugitive on the run from a corrupt government that was desperate to take her down. Or so she liked to tell herself, at least.

  “Yeah, we can totally see it. It’s, like, right there,” sighed the voice of a teenage girl. Cal glanced across at the creature sitting in the chair closest to his. As well as a teenage girl’s voice, she had a matching attitude and dress sense. There, though, the similarities ended. Unlike most teenage girls, Mizette of the Greyx – Miz to her friends – was a powerfully-built werewolf-like alien who was covered with fur from head to toe.

  She had recently adapted her chair to make it more comfortable. Largely, this involved tearing a hole in the base with her claws for her tail to fit through. Cal could see it now, hanging down below the seat. It gave an involuntary flick of excitement when she realized Cal was looking at her.

  “Hey,” she said, adopting a seductively husky tone. She flicked her tongue across her lips. It was presumably meant to be a sexually suggestive gesture, but all it suggested to Cal was that she’d just enjoyed a delicious bowl of Pedigree Chum.

  “Hey yourself,” said Cal, smiling weakly. He turned his attention back to the screen.

  “I’m supposed to announce it,” said Loren. “It’s protocol.”

  “It’s pointless,” said Miz.

  “It’s so everyone on the flight deck is aware of our current status,” said Loren, sounding annoyed. “What if you hadn’t been looking at the screen? You wouldn’t have known we were approaching the station.”

  “I wouldn’t have cared,” Miz said with a sullen shrug. “I’m not flying the ship. I don’t need narration.”

  “But it’s protocol,” Loren insisted.

  “Zertex protocol,” Mech pointed out. “You don’t work for Zertex no more.”

  Loren sighed. “Fine. That’s… fine. I won’t announce anything again. We all happy now? We’ll just fly towards things without me saying a word. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

  “Yes,” said Miz.

  “Oh, I bet you would,” Loren said, her voice taking on a slightly manic shrieking tone. “I bet you would.”

  Miz turned her seat just a fraction towards Cal. “Is she having, like, a breakdown or something?”

  Cal shrugged, just briefly, then flashed an encouraging smile at the back of Loren’s head. It was quite attractive, as far as backs of heads went.

  Her hair, impossibly dark, was scraped back into a viciously tight ponytail. At the edges of her seat he could just make out the outsides of both shoulders. The skin looked starkly white, but on closer inspection was actually a very pale blue. Not that he’d actually had a chance to inspect it all that closely, though not for want of trying.

  “Well, I for one appreciate you announcing things we can all clearly see on screen,” said Cal. He winced a little. “Which, I appreciate sounds sarcastic, but it isn’t. Honest. This whole being in outer space thing is all pretty new to me…”

  “Really?” sighed Mech. “You ain’t mentioned that before.”

  Cal pointed to him and grinned. “Now, that was sarcastic. I had no idea you were programmed to understand sarcasm.”

  Mech’s face darkened. His metal bottom jaw snapped up and down as he spoke. “Programmed? I ain’t programmed!” He tapped the side of his skull. It made a low clanging noise. “Up here, this is all me, man. I ain’t no robot.”

  “Of course you’re not,” said Cal, soothingly. He turned back to the front. “You’re a space robot.”

  Mech’s metal fingers whirred into fists, but before he could make a move, a line of text flashed at the lower right of the viewscreen. “We’re being hailed,” said Loren.

  Cal shuffled himself into a more upright position in his seat and channeled his inner Captain Kirk. “On screen,” he said, then he jumped in fright as something that was 70% teeth, 22% eyes and very little else filled the screen. “Jesus Christ, what the fonk is that?” he yelped.

  “You know he can hear you, right?” said Mech.

  Cal cleared his throat and smoothed the front of his shirt down. “Uh, by which I mean… hello!” He waved at the monstrosity on the monitor. “Hi there. I’m Captain Cal Carver of the… of the…”

  He licked his lips, which had suddenly gone very dry under the boggle-eyed glare of the tooth-thing. “Uh, Loren, you’re better at all this official stuff than me,” he croaked. “I’m going to let you handle this.”

  Loren stiffened with excitement. This was her moment. “This is First Officer Teela Loren of the Shatner, a scavenger-class vessel on route through this system. We request docking authorization so that we might affect some repairs on--”

  “Gluk?” said the tooth-thing, in a voice that Cal thought was probably male, but with a light dusting of female inflections he suspected were put on for effect. “Gluk Disselpoof, is that you?”

  At the mention of his real name, all eyes went to Mech. “Uh, yeah. Yeah, it’s me.”

  “You know this guy?” asked Cal.

  The tooth-monster put a clawed hand to his chest and gasped in mock indignation. “You mean he’s never mentioned me?”

  “I only known them for two days,” Mech said. “I ain’t exactly given them my life story.”

  “Two whole days and you haven’t told them about me?” said the creature, feigning hurt.

  “Oh, please be his wife, please be his wife, please be his wife,” Cal whispered, crossing his fingers.

  “Wife? Ha! Chance would be a fine thing,” the tooth-thing snorted, waving a dismissive claw. His terrifying mouth contorted into something that very vaguely resembled a smile. “Harlosh Ko.”

  Cal frowned. “Uh, yeah. Harlosh Ko to you, too.”

  The creature let out a high-pitched giggle. “No, silly, my name is Harlosh Ko. I’m one of the hosts here on North Star station, and will be pleased to welcome you aboard.” He turned to the side and his face was illuminated by a glow from off-screen as he tapped a few controls. From that angle, and with the light shining up from below, he managed to look even more terrifying. “There is, of course, a docking fee to pay. How do yo
u wish to make payment?”

  Cal looked around the bridge. “Anyone have any cash on them? No?” He turned back to the screen. “Would you take an IOU?”

  “Haha. Unfortunately not,” said Harlosh. He tapped a few buttons again. “But your ship appears to have an open line of credit, funded by… huh.” He blinked his many eyes and looked more closely at his off-screen display. “The Zertex Corporation. Should I charge the fee there?”

  Cal smiled. “Yes. Yes you should. Can we use that for other purchases while on board?”

  “Yes, of course,” said Harlosh. “I’ll just need your thumbprints when you arrive.”

  “Excellent!” said Cal, leaning back in his chair. “Then spread the word – drinks are on us!”

  2.

  It took Loren four attempts to line the Shatner up with their assigned docking platform aboard the North Star. Technically, she had been one of the best pilots in the whole of the Zertex fleet, but that ranking was based almost exclusively on her flight simulator scores – a form of training which, she had discovered, didn’t necessarily translate to the real world.

  On the fourth try, she’d managed a textbook landing, but when they’d tried to leave they’d discovered she’d parked too close to the landing bay wall for them to get the exit ramp open, so she’d had to reverse out and come back in again.

  Finally, and accompanied by a running commentary from Miz which was surprisingly catty for a dog-woman, the ship touched down in the correct position. Unbuckling his seat belt, Cal reached under his chair, then briefly recoiled as something wet and slimy pressed itself against his palm.

  “Sorry, buddy, still getting used to that,” he said, holding his hand steady this time for the blob to hop aboard.

  The part of Splurt that was green and gelatinous quivered. As the little guy was almost entirely green and gelatinous, the effect was really rather impressive.

  The only bit of Splurt that was neither green nor all-that gelatinous were his eyes. They floated inside the goo - two perfectly round and oddly human-looking detached eyeballs. Cal had convinced himself that he could read the emotions in Splurt’s eyes, despite the fact their range of expression stretched from ‘bloodshot’ to ‘marginally less bloodshot’.