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

  SPACE TEAM: A LOT OF WEIRD SPACE SHIZZ

  Collected Short Stories from the Space Team Universe

  By

  Barry J. Hutchison

  Contents

  FOREWORD

  “DEAD MEN DON’T GET PAID”

  THE LAST BOUNTY

  NUN SHALL PASS

  SPLURT HOME ALONE

  SPACE TEAM: THE HOLIDAY SPECIAL

  DEATH COMES TO CARVERVILLE

  AFTERWORD

  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

  Also by Barry J. Hutchison

  SPACE TEAM SERIES

  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: Return of the Dead Guy

  Space Team: Planet of the Japes

  DAN DEADMAN SPACE DETECTIVE SERIES

  “Dial D for Deadman”

  “Dead Inside”

  OTHER STUFF

  The Bug

  Foreword

  Hey you! Great to see you. Thanks for downloading this book. Before you dive in, here’s a little bit of info about what’s in store. Feel free to ignore it and just turn to the stories if you prefer. I won’t mind, honest.

  Still here? Good. We can talk about all those other slackers who skipped this part and went straight into the book. I mean, that was just rude, right? Some people are just so damned impatient.

  But anyway.

  At the time of publishing this book (mid-December 2017), the Space Team Universe has existed in print for a little over a year, although it existed in my head for quite a lot longer.

  The first Space Team novel was published at the tail end of 2016, introducing Cal Carver and his crew of misfits to a small but encouragingly receptive selection of readers. The response was positive enough that I decided to write a second adventure, and that small group became a slightly larger one. I decided to write a third book, completing what I thought would be a trilogy.

  Things just sort of snowballed from there.

  There are now seven Space Team novels, with at least three more on the way. There are two books in the spin-off series, Dan Deadman Space Detective, and another spin-off, Konto Garr: Bounty Hunter (and Occasional Babysitter), launching in 2018. You’ll meet both Dan and Konto in this collection, by the way. Say hello from me.

  Working with an amazing narrator, Phil Thron, I’ve been able to bring out five Space Team audio books so far, with the rest of the series and the spin-off books set to follow soon. Phil is amazing, and if you haven’t yet listened to the audio versions you should definitely check them out. His comedy timing and voice work adds a whole new dimension to the stories.

  2018 should also see the Space Team comic series start to take shape, as well as one or two other potentially exciting developments I can’t talk about at the moment. If you want to keep up to date, you can always join my newsletter and be the first to get all the Space Team Universe news.

  As for this collection, the stories contained in here are a mixture of old and new. Two of them – Nun Shall Pass and The Last Bounty – were written for science fiction anthologies which are no longer available, and so can now only be found here. Space Team: The Holiday Special was a Christmas themed short I wrote in December 2016 while unable to sleep on a sleeper train. It was previously available as a standalone short on Amazon, but is now exclusive to this set.

  “Dead Men Don’t Get Paid”, Splurt Home Alone and Death Comes to Carverville are all new stories written exclusively for this collection. The first is set between events of “Dial D for Deadman” and “Dead Inside”. The second is a very short bonus story starring Splurt, a fan-favorite character from the Space Team series.

  As for the third story… I’m not really sure where that came from. It stars a fictionalized version of Hollywood actor, Tobey Maguire, and it… well, it…

  Probably best if you just read it. Maybe you can make more sense of it than I can.

  I hope you enjoy this story collection. If you’re an existing reader, I think you’ll enjoy meeting old friends in new places. If this is your first introduction to the Space Team Universe, then welcome aboard. This is just the tip of the iceberg.

  OK, space-iceberg.

  Thanks for reading. See you on the other side.

  Best wishes,

  Barry J. Hutchison

  “DEAD MEN DON’T GET PAID”

  A Dan Deadman Space Detective Short Story

  1.

  The evening had been going well right up until the point the monsters arrived.

  Prior to their arrival, the nightclub, Eyedol, had been a heaving mass of dancing bodies, the music blasting out with such force it wasn’t just permanently damaging people’s hearing, but their skeletons, organs and chances of successful reproduction as well.

  Still, they seemed to be enjoying it, and that was the main thing.

  They were enjoying it so much, in fact, that they failed to see the middle-aged man with the look of disgust shove his way through the crowds. They failed to notice how obviously out of place he looked, or the contempt with which he glared at the younger, hotter, happier throngs that thrashed and writhed around him.

  But then, he was used to not being noticed. Not being noticed was what had driven him here. Now. To this.

  They’d notice him soon, though.

  Everyone would notice him soon.

  Most people had never heard of the Malwhere, much less knew what it was. Those that did know about it usually dismissed it as ‘mumbo-jumbo’ but the science behind it was sound. Alternate universes, parallel dimensions and whatnot. He was no physicist, but it all sounded plausible enough.

  The device had cost him six weeks’ wages, three pints of blood and four very specific sexual favors that had haunted his every waking moment since. But it was worth it. Or it was about to be, any second now.

  “Attention, everyone. Attention!” he yelled, thrusting the palm-sized contraption into the air above his head like a rock star with a microphone. Two thousand revellers completely ignored him and carried on with their dancing.

  “Everyone listen up!” he cried, his voice cracking into an uncomfortable screech. “I’ve got an announcement. I’ve got something to tell you all! It’s important!”

  He glared at the people closest to him but, despite being just a handful of inches away, even they seemed oblivious to his presence. All that shouting was hurting his throat, so he lowered his voice to its regular conversational level.

  “But… I had a speech,” he complained. “I’d written a speech for this. Why won’t you listen?”

  His voice rose again, all on its own this time. “Why does nobody ever listen?!”

  He thumbed the button. The device blurred, as if it were no longer fully there. The air above it, which had been thick with dry ice vapor and pheromones, became a lightshow or blues and purples. As the club was already a lightshow of blues, purples and every other color of the rainbow – plus several more that weren’t strictly part of the visible spectrum – no-one noticed.

  They did notice, though, when the monsters fell from above them, and the teeth tore into their flesh.

  The whole
tone of the place – unsurprisingly – changed. Squeals of delight became howls of horror. The strobing of the lights made the shapes of the things hard to identify, but their intentions were clear – the death, dismemberment and, ultimately, digestion of everyone and everything on the dance floor.

  The small, insignificant little man who had started it all retreated quickly, keeping his head down as he scurried, still unnoticed, through the fleeing and the dying.

  But no, not unnoticed. Not quite.

  The hand that caught him by the throat was rough and scarred, the fingernails mostly black with decay. Compared to the man’s face, though, his hand was positively glamorous.

  “Not so fast, Rooso,” the guy spat, peering out from beneath the brim of his hat. Even over the stench of sweat and cheap cologne that marked the club like a dog marking its territory, Rooso could smell damp and decay seeping from the throat-grabber’s pores.

  The people who’d sold him the device had warned him about this guy. Deadman. Dan Deadman. Some sort of detective who took an interest in schemes like this one.

  “Usually, I’d punch you in the face now. Maybe the balls,” Deadman growled, his voice like gravel in an open wound. “Except, well, I currently only have one arm, which would make it kind of difficult. However…”

  He jerked his head so suddenly his hat blew backwards off it, revealing the single most horrifying forehead Rooso had ever seen. It was all mould and rot and tracing-paper skin, and it perfectly complimented the rest of his face. Rooso didn’t get a chance to take in any other details because the forehead was also moving towards him very quickly.

  The bridge of his nose exploded. Possibly imploded, he wasn’t entirely sure. Whichever direction it went, it fonking hurt, and the sounds of screaming and carnage were replaced by the jarring crunch of breaking bone, and a high-pitched ringing in his ears.

  “Wait there,” Deadman ordered, dropping the blubbering Rooso. He bent and retrieved his hat, then pushed it down low on his head. As he straightened, his one hand slipped inside his long dark coat. When it emerged, it was holding a hand cannon that was larger than Rooso’s forearm.

  Rooso coughed and choked on his backward-flowing blood. He shuffled himself sideways across the floor, trying to make his escape. The heel of a fleeing woman’s shoe pierced the back of his hand, ejecting a scream of pain from somewhere deep within him.

  Deadman had made no move to shoot anyone yet, and was instead focused on the swirling blue and purple hole that hung in the air above the dance floor. “Still got the gizmo?” he asked, turning to Rooso. They both looked down just as another shoe – this one belonging to something big, heavy and ape-like – trod on the handheld device, neatly deconstructing it into its component parts.

  Deadman sighed. “Great,” he grunted. He began to turn back to the portal, then thought better of it. “Mindy. Slowdown round,” he said. Glancing around the room, he did a series of quick calculations, figuring out how much power he was going to need. “Ten per cent.”

  The chamber of the hand cannon spun, then a series of blue lights illuminated. Dan took aim at the helpless Rooso.

  “N-no! P-please don’t, don’t—” he babbled, then Dan pulled the trigger and the gun roared. “—shoooooooooooot mmmmeeeeeeee,” Rooso continued, his voice now substantially lower in pitch and slower in pace than it had been just a moment before.

  Dan nodded, then turned and tipped back his hat with the muzzle of the gun. “OK, then,” he sighed. “Guess I’d better kill all these fonks. Mindy. Explosive rounds.”

  From Rooso’s point of view, what happened next was hard to describe. Everything – everything apart from himself, that is – was moving incredibly quickly. So quickly, in fact, that he couldn’t really figure out what was going on, other than that a lot of things were being blown to bits in rapid succession.

  For a heavily built, badly decaying one-armed man in a cumbersome coat, Deadman’s movements were surprisingly fluid. He dodged and weaved through the crowds of screaming revellers, bolts of light pulsing from the end of his gun, turning the rampaging Malwhere monsters first into fiery balls of innards, and then into a number of light-to-moderate showers.

  Despite everything, Rooso was actually impressed. Part of him wanted to stay just to watch the guy work and see how it all ended, but the more sensible part – the part that was really rather keen on staying alive – knew he had to get the fonk out of there. As he sloooowly clambered to his feet, he tried to remember what had been so bad about going unnoticed, anyway? If anything, he’d like to go unnoticed again, he thought, particularly by the scary man with the enormous gun.

  Dan sidestepped a Malwhere monster claw-slash, then shoved the barrel of the gun deep into the thing’s mouth as it turned for a follow-up attack. Mindy kicked in his hand, turning the creature’s skull into something with the consistency – if not the smell – of grape jelly.

  He spun again, too slow this time to stop another of the ugly fonks sinking its teeth into a screaming Traskalian’s head. The Traskalian had four more, and it could always grow a replacement, but that was beside the point. Dan took the Malwhere thing out with a well-aimed shot between its eyes, covering the already unhappy Traskalian in a wad of sizzling goo.

  “Not cool, man,” the victim sobbed, cradling his wounded fifth head in three of his many arms. He shoved past Dan on his way to the door. “Totally not cool!”

  He continued dodging and firing until there was only one of the monsters left. The portal continued to hum and swirl in the air, threatening to vomit more of them through at any moment. Even without Rooso’s device, he was confident he could close it.

  Well, not ‘confident’ exactly. Hopeful, though.

  A little dubious, maybe, but then he was a cynical sort of guy. It was in his nature.

  He was too busy thinking about the source of the monsters to notice the last one approaching behind him. The first indication he had of what was about to happen was the clacking of its claws on the dance floor behind him. The second indication was a spiked tail erupting through one of his kidneys and out through his abdomen.

  Dan looked down. “Ah, fonk.” He sighed. “There goes another shirt.”

  There was a boom as he shot the end of the tail off. Dan was shoved sideways as the monster withdrew the smoking, oozing stump in one sharp, sudden jerk. He staggered, almost losing his balance, sliding and slipping through the mush of blood and guts on the floor. Instinctively, he threw out both arms to steady himself, but as he only had the one it was less effective than it otherwise might have been.

  He tried to take aim with Mindy as the wounded Malwhere monster flew at him, purple jello spurting from its injured tail. This one’s head was all mouth, with two fish-like eyes on either side of its thick, stocky neck. Its breath hit Dan like a sucker punch from a hobo, then its fist hit him like a sucker punch from a big angry monster.

  What was left of the tail whipped up and Mindy flew from Dan’s hand. He watched her clatter to the floor, before a fleeing foot sent the weapon skidding across the floor.

  Turning, Dan caught a backhand strike across the cheek. He stumbled, the floor lurching unsteadily like the deck of a stormbound ship. He dropped to his knees, ears ringing, head spinning from the force of the blow.

  He saw those teeth again, the mouth opening wider and wider as—

  “Holy shoite, Deadman. Sure, I can’t leave ye alone for two feckin’ minutes.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Dan grunted, his jaw crunching in a way that neither felt nor sounded pleasant. “What the fonk kept you, Artur?”

  A tiny figure, just a few inches tall, leaped onto the monster’s tail and forcibly inserted his fist into the open wound at the end of it. It squealed and thrashed, but Artur found something meaty inside the tail stump and dug his fingers in good and tight.

  “Watch the door, ye said. Make sure no monsters get out, ye said,” Artur grumbled. “Sure, how was I supposed to spot any monster in that lot that came whizzin’ past? It was lik
e a stampede at a feckin’ zoo. One of them had her head, arms and tits on the wrong way round!”

  The tail slammed him against the floor, but he held on. “Although… Now that I think about it, she may have just been facing the other way, I suppose.” He shook his head. “Don’t matter. Could ye maybe find yer gun and shoot this bollocks before he does something to upset me?”

  The club was mostly empty now, and it took Dan just a second or two to spot Mindy, then a few more to retrieve her. Taking aim, he squeezed the trigger. A bolt of energy crossed the dance floor, then the number of still-intact Malwhere creatures in the room dropped from one to zero. The explosion ejected Artur from the end of the thing’s tail, just as the tail itself became a sputtering fountain of ooze. He hurtled several feet through the air, then landed with a plop in a quivering pile of purple slime.

  “Oh, thanks for that,” Artur called, dragging himself free of the goo. “Thanks a fecking bunch.”

  “Any time,” Dan said. Sliding Mindy back into her holster, he turned to where the hopeful part of his brain expected Rooso to still be sitting. The other ninety-five per cent, however, knew what he’d find there before he’d even started to move.

  Nothing. Rooso was gone.

  “No-one ever stays where I tell them to,” Dan lamented, then he adjusted his hat, wiped a blob of monster goo off his coat, and headed for the front door.

  “What about yer big hole?” Artur called after him.

  Dan glanced down at the wound in his stomach. He couldn’t feel the corresponding one in his back, but he knew it was there. “It’ll have to wait.”

  “No, not that big hole, ye fecking eejit. That big hole!” Artur pointed up to the swirling vortex above him. “Yer big sky hole. Are ye not going to close it?”

  “That’s what I need Rooso for,” Dan said. “Stay here. If anything comes through…”