Space Team: Planet of the Japes Read online

  SPACE TEAM

  PLANET OF THE JAPES

  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

  FROM THE AUTHOR

  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: The Holiday Special

  Dan Deadman Space Detective Series

  Dial D for Deadman

  Other Stuff

  The Bug

  JAPE (Noun)

  A joke; jest; quip.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Cal Carver closed his eyes and concentrated.

  How long had they been locked in battle now? Two hours? Three? Long enough. Too long, actually.

  Waaaay too fonking long.

  The next words out of his mouth could end it. They could stop all this, release him from this self-inflicted hell he was currently trapped in. He just had to find them. He just had to ask the right question.

  “OK,” he said, blowing out his cheeks. He took a moment to compose himself. “Do I live underwater?”

  Across the table, the cyborg, Mech, sighed and looked at the card on Cal’s forehead. “How the fonk should I know?”

  “Well do I look like I live underwater?” Cal asked, trying without much success to hide his irritation.

  Mech looked at the card again. “I don’t know. Kind of, I guess.”

  “Jesus,” Cal muttered. “OK. So… Am I… an alligator?”

  “No.”

  Cal bit his fist so hard he almost drew blood, then banged it on the table. “God dange it!” He took a deep, steadying breath and let it out slowly. “OK, your turn.”

  “Do I live underwater?” Mech asked.

  Cal clenched his jaw. “You can’t just keep asking the same question I just asked,” he said.

  “Why not?”

  “You just can’t. It’s not fun that way.”

  “It ain’t fun any fonking way. And I read the rules, man,” said Mech, leaning back on the bench and folding his arms. “Ain’t nothing in there about asking the same question as—”

  “Fine! Fine, OK, fine!” said Cal. “Ask what you like. Yes, you live underwater.”

  Mech considered this. “Am I a floopsoid?”

  “What the f…?” Cal threw up his arms and shook his head. “Earth animals, Mech. They’re all Earth animals. We’ve already established this.”

  “I don’t know any Earth animals!”

  “Well whose fault is that?” Cal asked, raising an accusing eyebrow. “Huh? Whose fault is that?”

  They had been confined to the Currently Untitled for almost a week now, while the ship’s artificially intelligent computer system, Kevin, had made some necessary repairs and recalibrations. It turned out that being wrenched into the void between dimensions had caused all kinds of problems, including playing havoc with the navigation systems, scrambling several vital security protocols, and bending at least one light fitting in the bathroom.

  At first, cruising at impulse speed through the endless expanse of outer space had been relaxing. Cal wasn’t a fan of faster than light travel, as his ever-growing collection of vomit-catching receptacles would attest, and the slower pace had been awesome.

  Then it had been pleasant.

  Two hours later, it had become the single most tedious thing to have ever happened to him in his life.

  Cal had picked up a selection of board games on their recent visit to his home planet, which he’d hoped would help the time pass more quickly.

  He was wrong.

  They had been cruising for seven whole days now, and Cal was starting to suspect he was on the brink of going mad. Yesterday, he’d spent more hours than he’d care to admit pretending to be each of the Thundercats in turn. Even the show’s token woman, Cheetara.

  Especially Cheetara, in fact.

  Since then, he had occasionally caught himself wondering if he actually was one of the Thundercats, and only pretending to be some guy on a spaceship. A really boring spaceship. With really boring board games.

  Mostly, though, he wondered why he hadn’t thought to leave the board games behind and pick up an Xbox, instead.

  Pinching the bridge of his nose, Cal tried to remember everything that had been said in the game so far. “OK, so I’m not a sasquatch, I’ve got four legs, no tail, I don’t have spots or stripes, I can’t fly, I’m either a carnivore or vegetarian, you’re not sure, I don’t have a long neck, I don’t have a noticeably shorter than average neck, either, I’m not a flightless bird, I’m small, and I live underwater.”

  “You might live underwater,” Mech corrected.

  “I might live underwater. And I’m not an alligator.”

  “Right,” Mech agreed.

  Cal spent several seconds staring into space. Literally. The window of the kitchen area looked out over a big patch of nothing. Pinpricks of light dotted the darkness, but otherwise there was very little of interest to report.

  “And you’re absolutely sure I’m not an alligator?”

  Mech looked at the card again. “Well, it don’t say ‘alligator’ on it. Was that your question?”

  “What? No! That wasn’t my question.”

  “It sounded like a question.”

  “It was a clarification of an earlier question,” said Cal. “That’s not the same thing.”

  He thought again.

  “OK. Am I like an alligator?”

  Mech closed his eyes, just for a moment, and muttered quietly below his breath. “Again,” he said. “I don’t know what an alligator is.”

  It was Mech’s turn to bang a fist on the table. His metal knuckles left a noticeable dent. “Why are we even playing this fonking game, anyway?”

  “You know why, Mech,” Cal snapped.

  Mech rolled his eyes. “Not this again.”

  “Because you broke Hungry, Hungry Hippos.”

  The door to the kitchen slid open, revealing the wolf-woman, Mizette. She frowned as she looked between Mech and Cal, then regarded the card on Cal’s head.

  “What’s an elephant?” she asked.

  Cal’s eyes widened. “What?” he yanked the card from the plastic headband and flipped it over. “I’m an elephant? Elephants don’t live underwater!”

  “Well what the fonk’s that thing on its face for?” Mech asked. “Anyway, I said you might live underwater.”

  “And they’ve got tails!”

  “Well then they should sho
w that in the picture,” the cyborg spat.

  “And since when was an elephant small?”

  Mech gestured to the card. “Look at it. It’s, like, three inches tall.”

  Cal threw down the card in outrage. “Wait, you thought all these pictures were actual size?”

  “Guys!” Miz barked. “Stop talking about the stupid game, already. We picked up a distress signal. There’s some kids freezing to death on an ice planet, or whatever.”

  Cal jumped to his feet and cheered. “Yes! Thank God!”

  He caught the looks from the others, then sat down again. “I mean, obviously that’s terrible. Just awful news. Can we reach them? Kevin, how long until the warp thingy is fixed?”

  The voice of the ship’s AI emerged from a hidden speaker somewhere up near the ceiling. “Minus sixty-three hours, sir,” Kevin intoned.

  Cal winced. “Sixty-three hours? They could be dead by then.”

  “Minus sixty-three hours,” Kevin corrected.

  Cal blinked. “Huh? Wait, what? What are you saying?”

  Kevin’s voice took on a slightly impatient tone. “I’m saying, sir, that warp capability was restored sixty-three hours ago,” he said. “Along with the rest of the ship’s functionality.”

  Mech, Cal and Miz all looked up.

  “Although, I’m having some difficulty getting the kink out of the bathroom light fitting,” Kevin continued. “But I shall persevere.”

  The words tripped from Cal’s mouth. “The ship has been fixed for sixty-three hours?!”

  “Indeed, sir,” Kevin confirmed.

  “Well why didn’t you tell us?”

  “I did, sir,” said the AI.

  The occupants of the room all exchanged glances.

  “Uh, no,” said Mech. “You didn’t.”

  “Didn’t I?” said Kevin. “Oh.”

  “Oh?” yelped Cal, standing up again. “That’s all you have to say? Just oh? You keep us prisoner here for days, and all you have to say is, ‘Oh’?”

  “Would you prefer, ‘Whoops’?” Kevin asked.

  “Uh, hello?” called Loren, the kind-of pilot, from the front of the ship. “Children freezing to death?”

  “Right. Right. The kids,” said Cal. He made for the door, then hesitated. “Wait. Has anyone seen Splurt?”

  The plastic headpiece Cal wore squirmed as if alive, making him scream, just briefly, in panic. The band became a snot-like string of goo, then squished itself into a ball shape and dropped onto Cal’s shoulder.

  Cal’s mood lightened instantly. “You adorable little weirdo,” he said, and Splurt nuzzled against the side of his head.

  “Kids freezing!” shouted Loren from up front. “To death.”

  “Shizz, yeah. I keep forgetting about that,” said Cal. He pointed dramatically to the kitchen door. “Space Team!” he boomed. “To the rescue!”

  * * *

  “Oh, sweet Jesus, this is cold,” Cal wheezed, tucking his gloved hands in under his armpits and stomping his boots in the snow. “How is this possible? How can it be this cold?”

  “It’s an ice planet,” Mech grunted. “What do you expect?”

  Cal half-gasped, but even with his helmet on, it made his lungs cramp up, so he quickly stopped. He shot Miz a sideways glance. She was trudging beside him, her tail swishing through the powdery whiteness. “Wait. Ice planet? I thought you said nice planet.”

  “You thought I said there were kids freezing to death on a nice planet?” Miz asked.

  “Yes!”

  Mech tutted. “What kind of ‘nice planet’ would have kids freezing to death on it?”

  “Well, I mean…” Cal began to protest, but he quickly ran out of steam. “I mean, I guess that would make it less nice.”

  As soon as Cal had heard that the planet’s atmosphere was breathable, he’d shunned Mech’s offer of a spacesuit and raced purposefully down the landing ramp, desperate to feel the fresh air on his face. To his surprise and disappointment, his eyes had stuck open and his tongue had instantly frozen to the roof of his mouth.

  He was kitted out in a suit now, but the cold still stabbed at him like thousands of tiny icicles, piercing through the fabric, through his skin, and right down into his core.

  Miz hadn’t gone ‘full space suit’ but she was wearing more layers than Cal had ever seen her wear before, including a bobble hat that was stretched almost to ripping point over her head. Her brown fur was a palette of whites and grays, and her nose was already dry and cracked.

  Mech hadn’t gone to any extra effort to protect himself from the cold beyond the obvious one of being almost exclusively made of metal. Little blooms of frost had begun to spread on the few patches of skin he had on his face, but if they were affecting him in any way, he wasn’t letting it show.

  The Currently Untitled slouched on an incline a couple of hundred feet behind them, although the falling snow meant it was already hidden from sight. It was reasonably near to the closest spot they could get to the distress signal, but far enough away that there was minimum risk of Loren landing the ship directly on top of it and instantly killing everyone involved.

  Mech had scouted out a flat patch of ice that was sheltered from the blizzard, and Loren had aimed for there. As they had all come to expect, though, she’d missed it, overshot by quite some distance, and thumped sideways into a snow drift, instead.

  If Cal listened carefully, he could just make out the sound of Splurt digging the ship free, although it was hard to hear it over the howling of the wind, the tinny echo of his breath in the helmet, and the creaking of his blood freezing in his veins.

  “So where are these kids supposed to be?” Cal asked. “And, by the way, did I mention it is fonking freezing?”

  “You did,” said Mech. “And they’re this way.”

  He trudged on into the storm. Cal wiped a deposit of ice crystals from his visor and followed, his thighs burning – but not in a way he welcomed – as he heaved himself through the rising blanket of snow, trying to follow in Mech’s footsteps where possible.

  A few seconds later, a shape appeared in the curtain of white ahead of them. As they drew closer, the shape became a spacecraft, and one that was clearly the wrong way up.

  “It’s a Scout ship,” said Mech.

  “Jesus. Who sends kids out on scouting missions?” asked Cal.

  “No, Celestial Scouts,” said Mech.

  Cal’s eyebrows met in the middle. “Celestial? You mean like angels?” he gasped.

  “What? No. What the fonk are you talking about?” Mech snapped. “Celestial Scouts. You know, uniforms, badges, helping old ladies, or whatever.”

  “Oh, you mean Space Boy Scouts. Gotcha. Just, when you said, ‘celestial’ I thought, you know, Heaven or whatever. You can see why I got confused.”

  From Mech’s expression it was clear he didn’t see why Cal had got confused. Cal waved a hand. “Forget it. Let’s go save those Space Scouts!”

  “Celestial Scouts,” Mech corrected.

  Cal wrinkled his nose. “No. No, I think Space Scouts is better.”

  “But it isn’t their name,” Miz pointed out.

  Cal raised a finger. “You mean it isn’t their name yet,” he said, then he shivered from head to toe. “Did I mention it’s fonking freezing, by the way?”

  “Yeah,” said Mech, trudging on. “You did. A lot.”

  They plodded around the ship, searching for an entrance, but the whole thing had rolled over onto its side, presumably burying the doors in the snow and trapping everyone inside. The ship itself was a long, cigar-shaped thing, with no visible wings or other distinguishing features. If there were windows, Cal couldn’t see any, although if the ship had rolled over – Mech had said so, but Cal couldn’t quite work out how you’d tell – then the windows could be up on top somewhere, and would by now be completely buried under snow.

  Cal, Mech and Miz all stepped in close to the rounded hull, taking cover from the blizzard.

  “Is there anyone
inside?” Miz asked.

  Mech checked his scanner. “Yeah. Getting twenty-six life signs. Mix of species, all of them juveniles. No adults.”

  “That seems irresponsible,” said Cal. “No wonder they crashed.”

  “I’m guessing there were adults on board,” Mech said. “Probably killed when they hit. Or maybe they went looking for help and didn’t come back.”

  “Oh. Right. Yeah, that makes sense. Still, twenty-six,” said Cal. “Can we even fit twenty-six people on the Untitled? I mean, if they’re small enough, I guess we could stack them up.”

  “What are you talking about, ‘stack them up’?” Mech grunted. “We can’t stack them up.”

  “Because they’re too big?” said Cal.

  “Because they’re kids!”

  “Oh. Right. Right,” said Cal. “Gotcha.”

  “Anyway, we ain’t taking them on the ship,” Mech said.

  Miz shrugged and started walking back the way they’d come. “Works for me. It’s freezing out here. It’s their own fault for crashing or whatever, anyway.”

  “Wait, what? We’re just leaving them?” asked Cal. “Is that what’s happening now?”

  “No!” said Mech. He gestured to the scanner on his arm, but the display made no sense to Cal, so he ignored it. “The ship’s still intact. We can tow them home.”

  “Tow them?” said Cal. “Like with a rope?”

  “Well, not exactly, but that’s the general idea.”

  He explained his plan. It was, to Cal’s mind, quite a complicated plan, but this was partly because he stopped listening midway through, and tried to draw shapes in the condensation on the inside of his helmet with his tongue instead. The sight of him licking the moisture off the glass made Mech hesitate, but only for a moment, before he gamely pressed on.

  “Make sense?” Mech asked, once he’d explained it all.

  “Hmm?” said Cal. “Oh. Yeah. Totally.”

  Mech sighed. “You didn’t listen to a word I said, did you?”

  “I listened to some of the words you said. Which, I’ll be honest, is more than I usually do.”

  “Did you listen to the part where you wait here while I go back to the ship?” Mech asked.