Space Team: Return of the Dead Guy Read online

  SPACE TEAM

  RETURN OF THE DEAD GUY

  By

  Barry J. Hutchison

  Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Copyright © 2017 by Barry J. Hutchison

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Published worldwide by Zertex Books.

  www.barryjhutchison.com

  For Angela Lansbury

  Also by Barry J. Hutchison

  The Bug

  Space Team

  Space Team: The Wrath of Vajazzle

  Space Team: The Search for Splurt

  Space Team: Song of the Space Siren

  Space Team: The Guns of Nana Joan

  Space Team: The Holiday Special

  Find Space Team Universe stories in:

  Pew! Pew!

  The Expanding Universe Vol 2

  CHAPTER ONE

  Cal Carver ran. He didn’t particularly enjoy running. He didn’t particularly enjoy being chased by things, either, but he enjoyed being caught by them even less. And so, he ran, racing across the uneven terrain of Ursilon IV, his boots churning up clouds of colorful dust.

  From somewhere behind him, there came a chorus of low, mournful roars.

  “Space bears,” he wheezed, sliding down into a valley of tall, crystalline rocks. The thunder of lumbering footsteps grew louder. "No one said anything about fonking space bears!”

  Splurt was wrapped around his shoulders, bouncing around like a backpack as Cal skidded on the shale and began weaving his way through the columns of sparkling stone.

  As he ran, he muttered to himself. “We’ll swing by this planet, pick up some metal I need to fix my arm. You can take a look around while I dig it up. It’ll be fun.”

  He glanced down at the three long claw-marks through the front of his shirt. “Yeah, so not fun.”

  Cal ducked behind a ridge, taking cover for a few seconds so he could get his breath back. He’d covered around two miles in the past ten minutes, and extra life-force or not, he was one frantic hundred yard dash away from heart attack.

  “What the fonk are you doing?”

  Cal turned to find Mech’s head poking up out of a hole in the ground, his expression frozen midway between ‘What is going on?’ and ‘I’m about to punch you repeatedly in the face and neck’.

  “Mech? How did you get here so fast?”

  “What? I ain’t moved. I been here this whole time,” Mech said. “You were supposed to be leading them things away.”

  Cal bit his lip. “Wait. Have I just gone around in a big circle?” He glanced around. “That would explain why everything looked so familiar these last few minutes. I thought it was like a Scooby Doo planet. You know? Like, where the background just repeats on loop.”

  “What the fonk are you talking about?” Mech demanded.

  “Doesn’t matter. You ready?”

  “No. I need another few minutes,” said Mech. He bent down, and from within the pit came the high-pitched rasp of spinning metal on solid stone.

  Cal groaned and tiptoed towards the edge of the ridge. “I guess I’ll just have to go and lead them away again so you can—”

  A gust of hot air blasted Cal in the face as he peeked around the rocky outcrop. It was accompanied by a roar so loud it made all his teeth jump around in their sockets.

  The mouth generating all that air and noise was a clear two to three times wider than Cal’s head, and filled with three different sets of saw-like teeth, positioned in rows, one behind the other. It didn’t seem to have any eyes. Either that, or they were concealed beneath its matted knots of coarse blue fur. What it lacked in eyeballs, though, it more than made up for on the nostrils front. Two fist-sized holes were positioned side by side on the end of its snout, granting Cal a familiarity with the thing’s respiratory system he had absolutely no desire to have.

  It was down on all sixes, and only marginally taller than Cal, but as it raised itself onto its hind legs Cal was instantly dwarfed, and the idea of fighting the thing, which he’d very briefly toyed with, went right out the window.

  Cal leaned back into cover. “Uh, Mech? Buddy? You nearly done?”

  “Almost. Ninety seconds.”

  “Gotcha,” said Cal. He sipped a breath and held it. Maybe if he stayed very still and very quiet, the space bear would—

  The rock above his head exploded as a paw the size of a bowling ball smashed through it. Cal yelped and launched himself into a perfectly-executed forwards roll, remembered Splurt was on his back, and managed to turn it into a painful face-plant onto the ground just in the nick of time.

  When the rainbow-colored dust cloud cleared, he saw another set of paws padding towards him. There were more to his left, and the sound of something snuffling behind him on the right. Great.

  Yesterday, he’d overthrown the president and brought the galaxy back from the brink of full-scale war. Today, he was going to be eaten by space bears. If that didn’t sum up his life of late, he didn’t know what did.

  A wall of teeth, fur and nostrils was closing in on almost all sides now, but there was a narrowing gap ahead and to the left. He scrambled through it, and almost made it before he felt the fiery sting of a claw-swipe across one of his calves.

  Biting his tongue, he dragged himself on, and by the time he’d staggered to his feet, the leg wound had sealed itself shut. He’d hoped to find himself clear enough to make a run for it, but instead he found himself surrounded by yet more space bears.

  There were nine of the monsters in total, six of them standing upright, the other three staying low. Cal didn’t know if this was a deliberate tactic to completely pen him in, but whether on purpose or not, it made escape more or less impossible. He’d need a miracle to get out of this.

  Fortunately, he had one.

  “Splurt, buddy. Far be it from me to tell you your business, but it’d be good if you could turn into something useful right now,” he said.

  The green blob unhooked itself from Cal’s shoulders and slithered down his back. There was a series of schlopping sounds as Splurt shapeshifted, growing larger until his transformation was complete.

  The space bears snarled.

  Cal sighed.

  “I mean, don’t get me wrong, that remains the best impersonation of Dorothy out of the Golden Girls I have ever seen,” Cal said. “I’m just not clear on how it helps with our current situation.”

  As Cal watched, Dorothy out of the Golden Girls – looking radiant in a nylon purple track suit - began to grow. The air around her seemed to hum as she doubled in size, then doubled again. She was bigger than the space bears now, and still growing. Cal leaned back, craning his neck to try to take her all in, then he dived aside as the first of the space bears lunged, and one of Dorothy’s sneakers toe-punted it into next week.

  Cal scra
mbled back as the rest of the space bears attacked. Dorothy out of the Golden Girls – now thirty, maybe forty feet tall - retaliated swiftly, and without mercy. A backhand strike scattered three of the creatures, sending them tumbling across the shale. Another kick lifted the largest of the space bears off its feet, depositing it atop one of the gemstone columns some distance away.

  “Never a camera around when you need one,” Cal muttered, standing and dusting himself down. With a series of clanks, Mech appeared beside him, a large lump of rock tucked under his good arm. He’d sacrificed the other arm to help save the galaxy, and hadn’t stopped milking that fact since.

  “Got it,” Mech said, indicating the boulder. Ingots of a silver-like metal gleamed on its surface, angled and sharp where Mech had cut it free.

  They both stood in silence for a few moments, watching Giant Dorothy dispatch the rest of the bears.

  “Woo! That’s my Golden Girl!” Cal cheered, as Dorothy swept two more of the creatures aside with her car-sized fists.

  “I don’t get it,” Mech said.

  “Oh, OK,” said Cal. “See, The Golden Girls was a TV comedy about these four women—”

  “No, I don’t give a shizz about that,” Mech said. “I mean, I don’t get how he can grow like that.”

  “Uh, because he’s a shapeshifter?” said Cal. “I thought you were supposed to be the smart one? Or have you turned your dial too far down by mistake?”

  “I get that he’s a fonking shapeshifter,” said Mech. They stepped aside as a space bear sailed past them, upside-down. “But the laws of physics still gotta apply. Where does he get the mass to change size? I mean, he was on your back two seconds ago, now he’s…”

  “A forty-foot tall no-nonsense spinster?” said Cal.

  “Huge,” said Mech. “Now he’s huge.”

  Cal shrugged. “Maybe his, you know, molecules or whatever get bigger, too.” He nodded wisely. “That a sciencey-enough explanation for you?”

  “Not even close,” said Mech.

  “Oh,” said Cal. “Because, I’ll be honest, I pretty much peaked there, science-wise. What if I say the word ‘atoms’ with a rising inflection at the end? Will that help?”

  “No.”

  “Ah.” He shrugged again. “Then I got nothing.”

  Three space bears came racing past, roaring mournfully as they fled the colossal Golden Girl. Cal shook a fist at their backs. “And let that be a lesson to you!”

  He clapped his hands once, then rubbed them together. “See, Mech? Nothing to worry about,” he said.

  “He let them go,” Mech said.

  “Of course he did,” said Cal. “You said it yourself, right before they started chasing me, they were protecting their young. That’s what parents do, right?”

  “I guess so.”

  “I mean, granted, they would probably have eaten us, but people do some crazy shizz to keep their kids safe. Same goes for space bears. Splurt was just scaring them off.”

  “Well, I hope they stay scared, because we’ve got a long walk back to the ship,” Mech pointed out.

  There was a faint pop as the enormous Dorothy became the substantially less enormous Splurt. Cal bent down and picked the little green blob up, then draped him over his shoulder. “Thank you for being a friend,” Cal whispered, then he flashed Mech a grin, fired off a salute to the backs of the now-distant space bears, and stumbled up the shale slope in the direction of the ship.

  * * *

  Cal led the way up the ramp of the Currently Untitled, then waited for Mech to come aboard before closing the hatch.

  “We’re home!” he called.

  “Yay.” That was Miz’s voice. Cal chose to ignore the sarcasm dripping from it.

  “Welcome back, sirs,” said Kevin, the ship’s artificially intelligent computer system. “Did you have a successful trip?”

  “Pretty much,” said Cal.

  “Good. Oh! I almost forgot. Sensors have detected a number of life forms roaming the surface. Large ones, too.”

  “Right,” said Cal. “Sort of bear-sized? No eyes? Lots of teeth?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Kevin. “Just thought I’d warn you, in case you should venture outside again.”

  “Thanks. We’ll bear that in mind, Kevin.” He turned to Mech and grinned. “See what I did there?”

  “I hate you,” said Mech.

  Cal’s smile widened. “I know.”

  Mech tutted. “I’m gonna go try and extract this Durium, see if I can scrape together enough to fix this arm.”

  “Extract the what, sir?” asked Kevin.

  “The Durium. The metal?” said Mech. He waited for Kevin to respond, but the AI remained silent. “The whole point of us coming to this fonking planet?”

  “Oh,” said Kevin, but it was a pregnant, “Oh,” that suggested more than it let on.

  “Kevin?” said Cal. “Something you want to tell us?”

  “No, sir,” said Kevin. “It’s just… Well, it’s just, I wish you’d have told me.”

  Cal and Mech exchanged a glance. “Told you what?” asked Mech.

  “That you were looking for Durium.”

  “We did tell you,” said Cal. “We said, ‘OK, Kevin, we’re going outside now to find some Durium,’ which I thought made it pretty clear.”

  “We been talking about it since yesterday,” said Mech. “We got you to scan all nearby systems to find us some.”

  “Did you, sir?” said Kevin. “I’m afraid I don’t recall.”

  “OK then!” said Cal, brightly. He and Mech moved to go their separate ways, then both stopped.

  “Wait, why d’you wish we’d told you?” Mech asked.

  “Despite the fact we definitely did,” Cal added.

  “Oh, no reason,” said Kevin. He paused for several seconds before continuing. “It’s just we have rather a lot of Durium on board. Several crates, in fact, in case we should need to repair the ship’s outer hull.”

  The rock Mech was holding hit the floor with a clunk. Cal’s jaw dropped at the same time.

  “You mean we did all that when we didn’t have to?” asked Mech.

  “I got chased by space bears for nothing?” said Cal.

  “No, that was my favorite part,” said Mech. “Hell, I’d have gone out there just to see you be chased by those things.”

  “Still, no real harm done,” said Kevin.

  “What, except them destroying my favorite shirt and slicing a hole in my third best pair of jeans, you mean?” said Cal. He considered this for a moment. “Actually, you’re right. Jesus, when you look at it like that, we got off pretty lightly. Plus, we got to see a fonking huge Dorothy, so it wasn’t all bad.”

  Mech muttered something below his breath, then looked upwards. “Just show me where the Durium is,” he said. A door slid open ahead and on the right. “Thank you,” said Mech, although the way he said it suggested it wasn’t exactly heartfelt. He clanked along the corridor, then stepped into the room. It was one of the self-adapting areas of the ship which transformed itself to serve a variety of purposes. Cal caught a glimpse of various crates rising out of the floor before the door slid closed again.

  “OK, I’ll just tidy this up then, shall I?” he called, bending down to pick up the lump of metal and rock. He tucked his fingers under it and pulled. “Fonk. No, that’s not happening,” he said, releasing his grip on the boulder before he herniated his spine. “Guess it can just stay there for now. If anyone asks, we’ll say it’s a feature.”

  Cal lifted Splurt off his shoulders and held the little guy at arm’s length. Splurt’s large, bulbous eyes gazed back at him. “OK, buddy, how do I look?” Cal whispered, glancing ahead in the direction of the bridge to make sure no one was watching.

  Splurt squidged around as he became an eerily accurate reproduction of Cal’s head. Balancing the head in one hand, Cal licked his thumb and wiped a spot of blood off his own face. As he did, the corresponding spot on the severed head vanished, too.

  �
��Teeth,” said Cal.

  Splurt showed Cal’s teeth. Cal turned the head left and right, making sure there was nothing stuck in there, then he nodded. “Thanks, buddy.”

  Cal’s detached head folded in on itself, and Cal was briefly reminded of the Nazis at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Then, where his head had been, there was only an unblinking ball of semi-transparent goo.

  Splurt oozed down, stretching out until he reached the floor. Then he rolled himself up again and trundled along behind Cal as he marched onto the flight deck.

  “Ladies,” said Cal, nodding to Mizette and Loren as he took his seat.

  Miz was draped across her chair, her long, hairy legs dangling over the arm rest, her tail tucked up between them. She glanced up from filing her claws, just long enough to meet Cal’s eye, then went right back to work.

  Loren turned her pilot’s seat a full one-eighty until she was facing him. The bruises she’d received at the hands of her brother and President Sinclair stained her pale blue skin like ink blots, but her eyes were wide and her mouth was smiling, and there was a distinctly upbeat vibe radiating from her.

  “I know, I know, you’re happy to see me,” Cal said.

  “That’s not why I’m smiling,” Loren said.

  “Aha. But you don’t deny you’re happy to see me,” Cal said.

  “We’ve been pardoned.”

  Cal blinked. “Pardon?”

  “Zertex. They just sent out a broadcast, officially pardoning us for all crimes.”

  “We didn’t commit any crimes,” said Cal. “Apart from, you know, all those ones we did commit. But they were against Zertex, so they don’t count.”

  “Well, technically you were all wanted criminals even before Sinclair teamed us all up,” said Loren. “And then we stole two ships from him, and blew up a lot of stuff. You know. Just saying.”

  “I was happily serving jail time for my crimes,” Cal pointed out. “I mean, not ‘happily’ exactly – I was one good punch to the head away from being killed and eaten by my cellmate – but I was doing it. I was paying my dues. Wasn’t my fault you and your Zertex buddies abducted me.”