Author: Barry J Hutchison
Date: 2017-06-26 07:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Science Fiction; Humour; Adventure; Fantasy
Description: They may have recently averted a full-scale galactic war, but Cal Carver and Space Team just can't stay out of trouble. When a 'Weird Space Thing™' threatens to destroy planet Earth, Cal is determined to stop it. But when they get there, they find the place is still swarming with parasitic extra-terrestrial bugs, and that there isn't a whole lot left to save. While battling an unexpected ghost of the past, Cal is abducted by aliens. Again. Brought before their covert High Council, Cal is given a choice: save his Earth and doom countless others to oblivion, or sacrifice it, so that parallel Ear
Publisher: Zertex Books

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 scrambled 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.”

“Anyway, the point is,” said Loren, quickly steering the conversation back to more comfortable territory. “We’re all in the clear. Clean slates. We’re not going to be hunted everywhere we go.”

Cal gripped his arm rests and rocked in his chair like a fidgeting child. “I quite liked being hunted, though. It was exciting. And it’s not like they ever actually caught us.”

Miz shifted in her seat. “Which, considering Loren was always flying, is pretty hard to believe.”

“Luck,” Cal agreed. “Mostly luck.”

“Uh, I’m right here, you know?” said Loren.

Miz smirked. “Yeah. We know.”

“My point is, we’ve got money. We’ve got a lot of money,” said Loren. “And now we’re not being chased down by the government, we can enjoy it. We can go anywhere. Do anything.”

“Alright!” said Cal, getting excited by the idea. “Now you’re talking. What should we do?”

Loren raised her eyebrows. “Hmm?”

“We can do anything,” Cal said. “Any suggestions?”

Loren held his gaze for a few long moments. “Well, I mean… There’s lots, isn’t there?”

“Bound to be,” said Cal. He puffed out his cheeks. “We could… We could always… Miz?”

Miz sighed. “What?”

“Any suggestions for what we should do?”

Miz scowled. “Why are you asking me? How should I know?”

“Right,” said Cal. “Right. Sorry. Don’t know what I was thinking.”

Several seconds passed in awkward silence. Cal opened his mouth to make a suggestion, then decided against it.

Several more seconds passed in an even more awkward silence.

“Sorry to interrupt everyone’s fun, sir,” Kevin announced. “But I’ve picked up a distress signal.”

“Oh, thank God,” said Cal. “Who is it, what is it, and all that stuff?”

“The ‘what’ I’ve already explained. It’s a distress signal. As for the ‘who’… Well, I’m afraid I don’t know, sir. The signal wasn’t specific. It is, however, the ‘where’ which I thought might be of interest.”

“OK,” said Cal. “Color me intrigued. Where is it coming from?”

“Earth, sir,” said Kevin. “The distress signal is coming from the planet Earth.”

CHAPTER TWO

Cal sat back in his chair, impatiently drumming his fingers on the arm rest. On screen, the stars raced towards him, doing that stretchy-tail thing that usually made his stomach flip over before, more often than not, ejecting its contents out through his nose and mouth.

He’d recently discovered, though, that if he pretended the screen was just an enormous old computer monitor, and rather than the vast, unending abyss of space, he was actually looking at one of the built-in screensavers from Windows 95, the effects were much less traumatic.

“How far now?” Cal asked.

Loren leaned over and studied her instruments. “About seventy trillion miles.”

Cal nodded. “Right. Is that far? I mean, obviously it’s far, but in terms of… ‘How long until we get there?’ is basically what I’m asking.”

“Assuming nothing gets in our way, just under two hours,” Loren said. “But it’s a rough neighborhood. Lot of Scrivers around here. Probably Xandrie, too.”

“Can we go any faster?”

“Yes,” said Loren. “But with the possible exception of Mech, we’d all die, so I’d strongly advise against it.”

Cal silently debated it for a moment. “Fine. Two hours it is. Don’t slow down unless you have to,” he said. “And if you do have to, let’s go in shooting.”

“Like, I don’t get what the fuss is,” said Miz. “Isn’t everyone on Earth dead, anyway?”

“Not everyone,” said Cal, shifting in his seat. “Just, you know, almost everyone. Besides, someone’s got to be sending the distress signal, right?”

“I don’t get that bit, either,” Miz said. “Isn’t Earth, like, a total hole? I mean, no offense, or whatever, but isn’t it a total backwater shizzheap?”

“Don’t hold back there on my account, Miz,” said Cal.

“She’s right,” said Loren.

“Jesus, OK, so it’s not perfect. I get it. It was a lot better before someone’s boss sent trillions of parasitic mind-controlling bugs to fonk the place over,” Cal protested. “Naming no names, but we all know I’m talking about Loren.”

“They shouldn’t even be able to get a radio signal this far out into space, let alone a distress frequency,” said Loren, ignoring him.

“And from what I can gather, sir, it was sent specifically to us,” Kevin added. “Earth certainly doesn’t have that sort of capability.”

“Right,” said Cal.

“On account of it being—”

“A total shizzhole. Yes, I got it,” Cal grunted.

“Well, I was going to say ‘less technologically advanced than its neighboring systems.’”

“Oh,” said Cal. “Right. I see.”

“But it is a total shizzhole, obviously,” Kevin concluded. “That goes without saying.”

Cal sighed. “And yet everyone keeps saying it, anyway!” He shot them all a series of accusing looks – just in the voice’s general direction, in Kevin’s case – then went back to looking at the screen. “Any idea yet where on Earth the signal’s coming from?”

“Not yet, sir. We’ll have it within the hour.”

Cal unclipped his seat belt and stood up. “OK. I’m going to get something to eat. Shout me when we know more. Anyone want anything?”

“Yeah, you could get me one of those things you showed me earlier,” said Loren.

Cal stared blankly. “The banoffee pie?”

“No, the other thing. You said it was some sort of rare delicacy. Came in two parts.”

“Oh, the Twix?” said Cal. “No problem, I’ll bring one through in a while. Miz?”

Miz looked up. “What?”

“Twix?”

Miz’s snout furrowed in distaste. “Is that the chewy thing?”

“With the biscuit base, yeah,” said Cal.

“I’ll pass,” Miz said.

“Suit yourself,” Cal said. He stole another glance at the viewscreen, hoping to see Earth looming up ahead, but there was nothing ahead but stars. “OK, see you soon,” he said, then he about-turned and headed for the kitchen, almost tripping over Mech’s abandoned basketball-sized sphere of metal and rock on the way.

Once in the kitchen, Cal made straight for the food replicator and toyed with the idea of ordering something off the somewhat limited menu of items he’d previously ordered. The menu largely consisted of a certain banana and caramel pie-based treat, as well as a Twix, three different flavors of Kit-Kat, and some Chili Cheese Fritos.

None of that stuff was floating his boat, though. He had a hankering for one thing, and one thing only. He faced the machine and braced himself. “Spit Nibbles,” he said. “Like Narp’s mom makes.”

The replicator blinked into life. Cal tried to drift off to his happy place as the machine’s probes set to work, pricking his tongue, zapping his brain, and jamming their metal fingers up his nostrils.

Once it had gathered all the required data, the probes retracted into the machine and, a moment later, twelve Spit Nibbles appeared in the delivery hatch. Cal took the plate, tipped an imaginary hat to the replicator, then slid onto the bench at the kitchen’s single long table.

“Well, they smell pretty awesome,” he said, to no one but himself, then he picked up one of the Spit Nibbles, blew on it to cool it down a little, and popped it in his mouth.

He chewed slowly, letting the flavor flood his mouth. It was… good. Not great, but good. He didn’t quite understand why they weren’t great – on both occasions he’d had them before, they had been amazing – but still, they were perfectly edible, if ultimately a little disappointing.

Splurt climbed onto the bench across from him like a Slinky in reverse. Cal nodded in acknowledgement. “Hey, buddy.”

The little green blob pulsed gently in reply, then eyed the plate. “Want one?” Cal asked.

A thin tendril of goo crept across the table, took one of the wrapped pastry parcels, then retreated with it. From out of sight behind the table’s edge, there came a faint glomp of Splurt absorbing the food.

“They’re called Spit Nibbles,” Cal said.

There was another squidgy sort of sound, then the tendril replaced the parcel on the plate.

“Yeah,” Cal agreed. “Someone really needs to do a rebrand.”

Cal took another Spit Nibble, being sure to avoid the slightly green-tinged one at the far edge of the plate. As he chewed, he thought.

He thought about the last few days, but there was quite a lot in there to consider, from giant spiders and being dead, to zombie detectives and space battles. There was also quite a lot of stuff about washing dishes, and – as ever – just a smattering of Tobey Maguire.

He thought about the last few weeks. Between the being abducted stuff, and all that business with viruses, assassins and wormholes, it had been a pretty hectic month or so. Of course, ‘month or so’ was a bit of a stab in the dark. Without clocks, calendars or even night-time to help him, he’d pretty much lost all track of time. It could have been as little as two weeks, but it might equally have been as many as six.

“Twelve?” he said, reaching for another Spit Nibble. He looked at Splurt. “Could it be twelve?”

He considered this as he chewed.

No. Twelve was too much.

All this thinking about the past was, he knew, just a way of stopping himself thinking about the future.

Earth.

His home planet.

In many ways, it was still his favorite of all the planets. Very few things on Earth had ever tried to kill him. Assuming you ignored disease, pollution, government healthcare policy, and Ozzy Osbourne that one time.

It was where he had been born, where he had grown up, where he had loved, and where he had lost. There were a lifetime of memories on that blue-green ball, and now someone was calling him back. Calling him home.

“Well, this is all rather boring, isn’t it?” announced Kevin from yet another concealed speaker.

“Huh? Oh, sorry, Kevin,” said Cal, even though he wasn’t entirely sure why he should be sorry. “Just thinking.”

“About everyone on Earth being dead, sir?”

“Yeah,” said Cal, chewing on another Spit Nibble. “Something like that.”

“Would you like to play a game, sir?” Kevin asked.

Cal stopped chewing for a moment, then resumed. “I don’t know. Is this where you reveal you’ve gone space crazy and start shutting down the oxygen or whatever? Because if so, I think I’ll give it a miss.”

“Ha!” said Kevin, with artificial mirth. “Quite. But no. It’s a guessing game that Master Splurt and I came up with. Well, it was mostly me, but he joined in as best he could.”

“OK,” said Cal, reaching for another Spit Nibble. To his dismay, there was only the one Splurt had briefly flirted with left. Splurt watched Cal, impassively, as his hand hovered over the ever so slightly slick pastry shell.

“Will anyone judge me if I eat this?” Cal asked.

“Anyone on the ship, or anyone in this room, sir?” Kevin asked.

“In this room.”

“Then no, sir. Knock yourself out.”

Cal shrugged, then ate the Spit Nibble. He was mid-swallow when he heard Loren’s voice on the bridge.

“He ate what?”

Cal coughed and choked the rest of the snack down, then looked accusingly to the ceiling. “Did you tell them?”

“Yes, sir,” said Kevin, sounding just a little surprised by the question. “Why, shouldn’t I have?”

“No! Of course you shouldn’t have!” said Cal.

Loren’s voice came again. “What? No, of course I can’t ‘unhear it,’” she said, then, louder: “You’re disgusting. Just want you to know that.”

“Oh yeah? Well… I’m not bringing you that Twix,” Cal called back. He lowered his voice to a whisper. “Thanks a lot, Kevin,” he said, then he tutted and sighed. “Right. So, what’s this game, then?”

* * *

“Like… What are you doing?”

Cal sprang up from the floor as if it had been electrified. “What? Hi. Hey. Oh,” he said, all in the same breath. He dusted himself down. “How long have you been there?”

Miz looked him up and down, shifted her gaze briefly to Splurt, then went back to sizing up Cal again. “Long enough,” she said. “Why were you on the floor?”

“The floor?” said Cal, in a way that suggested he’d never heard those words before, and had no idea what they meant. “Oh, the floor. Why was I on the floor? No reason.”

“Was it some sort of river, sir?” Kevin asked.

“You were wriggling about on the floor for no reason?” Miz asked.

“You’re right, I was wriggling,” said Cal, shooting Splurt and the general direction of Kevin quite a deliberate look. He turned back to Miz. “I fell.”

“A stick perhaps?” Kevin guessed.

“Since when did sticks wriggle?” Cal snapped, but then he smiled at Miz. “I’m fine, honest. Did you want something?”

Miz frowned and looked around the room. She was aware that something was clearly going on, but hadn’t yet decided if she cared enough to investigate further.

Finally, she shrugged. “I’m just going to the bathroom,” she said, then she turned and slouched off along the corridor.

“Is it a length of rope being flicked by a child?” Kevin asked.

“What the fonk would…? Why would I be pretending to be a length of rope being flicked by a child, Kevin? I’m letting Splurt have his guess. Splurt?”

Splurt immediately shifted shape until a miniature version of a shizz worm squirmed on the tabletop. “Yes! That’s it. Splurt wins again.”

Cal sat down. “Seriously, I don’t know how you do it, buddy, it’s like you can read my… Oh, wait, you can read my mind, can’t you?”

“Can he?” said Kevin. “How is that fair? No wonder I never win.”

“You don’t win because you’re terrible at guessing, Kevin,” Cal said. “I mean, literally your first eight guesses were all ‘brick.’”

“Well, prior to you getting involved, that answer would have been correct in one hundred per cent of all previous games,” Kevin replied, somewhat haughtily, Cal thought.

“Oh, almost forgot,” said Miz, appearing in the doorway again. “Loren wants to see you. Kevin’s figured out where the signal is coming from.”

She wandered away again. Cal raised his eyes to the ceiling. “Oh, yes, didn’t I mention that?” said Kevin. “With all the fun we were having, it must have slipped my mind.”

Cal was already out of the room. He cursed loudly when he tripped over Mech’s boulder then half-ran, half-fell onto the bridge. An image of the Earth was overlaid on the right of the screen, the rest of the screen still filled with nothing but star streaks. A tiny red blip flashed on the image.

“Where is that? Zoom in,” said Cal.

The Earth began to grow, showing first the United States, then the East Coast, and then…

“Philly,” Cal said, lowering himself into his seat.

Home.

“Can we get any closer?”

“Accuracy becomes a problem at this distance, but I can narrow it down a little further, sir,” Kevin chimed.

The image changed again, this time in a series of clicks, rather than a smooth zoom, each step bringing the blip closer.

At first, Cal thought it was centering on the airport, but it was more to the North West. Somewhere around…

Cal stopped breathing.

The image had stopped growing, but even with a margin of error, it was close enough for him to feel… what? Sick? Terrified?

The blip was less than a block away from a cemetery. A cemetery he knew only too well.

“Loren,” he said, but the word came out as a croak, and he had to clear his throat before trying again. “You know you said you could make us go faster?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“Make us go faster.”

“You remember I also said it could kill us all?” Loren said.

“Loren. Go faster,” said Cal. “Please.”

Loren shook her head. “You might be immortal or invincible or whatever you are, but no one else is. I’m going as fast as I can.”

She tapped the controls on her console. “I can maybe bring us out of warp a little later than planned. That would buy us an extra few minutes.”

Cal nodded. “OK. Do that,” he said. “Although, what are the chances of you not stopping in time and smashing into the planet?”

Loren tutted. “Seriously? Please,” she said.

“Sorry,” said Cal.

“I should think so. I mean, it’s like, a one per cent chance,” Loren said. “Three, tops.”

“Uh, OK,” said Cal. “I think.”

Loren looked back over her shoulder at him and smiled. “Relax. I’m kidding,” she said, then a flicker of concern passed across her face. “You OK? Is there something down there?”

“Huh?” said Cal. “Oh, no. I mean, yes. I mean…” He forced a smile, but it was fooling nobody. “Just get us there as quick as you can. I’ll explain later.”

He pointed his eyes at the screen, very deliberately avoiding Loren’s gaze. “OK, then,” she said, when it was clear he wasn’t about to look her way again. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“Thanks,” Cal said. Or maybe he just thought it. He wasn’t sure.

On screen, that blinking light flashed back, taunting him. “I’m coming,” he whispered. “Whoever you are.”

CHAPTER THREE

Too many minutes later, Cal still sat in his chair, watching space streak by. Mizette was back in her seat, apparently content to pass the time by twirling a length of fur around her finger, and occasionally sighing.

“What do you think?” asked Mech, stepping onto the bridge. He held up what had, until very recently, been a scorched arm stump. Now it was... sort of a hand.

“Didn’t you used to have, like, more fingers?” Miz asked.

“Well, obviously it ain’t finished,” said Mech. He flexed his single finger and thumb, then pinched them together. “This ship has got some pretty amazing tech on board,” he said. “Ask me how I’m making my other fingers. Go on.”

Loren looked back over her shoulder. “How are you making your other fingers?”

“I’m printing them!” said Mech. “Seriously! It’s printing solid fonking objects!”

“We have them,” said Cal, not looking away from the screen.

Mech frowned. “Say what?”

“3D printers. We have them. Or had them. Or whatever,” said Cal. “On Earth.”

“Bullshizz.”

“We do. We’ve had them for years,” Cal insisted. “I mean, not many years, but still years.”

Mech looked genuinely annoyed that his thunder had been stolen. “No way. On Earth? On the planet you came from, they have this kinda tech?”

“Yep. Well, I mean, I don’t know if they can make robot hands with it,” Cal admitted.

“Aha! I knew it.”

“Although I’m pretty sure they’ve done artificial limbs. In fact, they were talking about printing internal organs last I heard.”

“OK, now I know you’re lying,” said Mech.

“Guess it’s not such a backwater after all,” said Cal.

“Entering solar system,” Loren announced. She rested her hands on the controls, but didn’t activate them yet. “Approaching Earth. Stopping in three… two… one.”

The Untitled dropped out of warp, coming to a bowel-churningly abrupt stop just outside Earth’s atmosphere. From out in the corridor there came a short, sudden whum, and then a basketball-sized lump of ore rocketed onto the bridge. Loren pulled her arm away just as the projectile slammed into the side of her console, turning a foot or more of control panels into a crackling tangle of wires and metal.

“What the fonk just happened?” Loren yelped, as an alarm screamed and reams of scary-looking data began flooding the viewscreen.

Mech shifted on his metal feet. “Uh, whoops. That may have been my fault.”

“’May have been’?” Cal cried. “It was definitely your fault!”

An orange glow began to flicker across the screen like dancing flames. Loren jabbed buttons and pulled levers, but her console was deader than most of the Earth’s population.

“We’re breaking atmosphere,” Loren said. “I can’t pull up.”

“Nnnzztk uuuuurk,” buzzed Kevin. “Seeeeelf-desssst-t-truct activvvvvaaaated.”

“What?!” said Cal, leaning forward in his chair. He jabbed a finger at Mech. “You see what happens when you don’t pick up after yourself, Mech? You see what happens?”

“Ship-p-p dessstruction in fiiiiive, three, f-f-our, one.”

“Like, thanks a lot, Mech,” Miz snapped, as she, Cal and Loren all gripped their arm rests and screwed their eyes shut.

Nothing happened.

From ceiling height, there came a snigger.

“Ha!” said Kevin. “Just my little joke.”

Cal opened one eye. “What?”

“Oh, I wish you could have seen your faces,” Kevin said. “Oh, wait, you can.”

The image of the Earth changed to show a still photograph of the bridge. Everyone’s faces were frozen in grimaces of terror, like the occupants of a roller-coaster on a theme park memento photo.

“Oh, yes. That’s a keeper,” said Kevin.

“That was, like, so not funny,” said Miz.

“Kevin, you’re a fonking amshoop sometimes,” said Loren. “Show us the screen!”

The photo disappeared, and was replaced by a view of the Earth. The Untitled had tilted a little, so the planet took up two thirds of the screen, while a strip of space was visible at the top.

“Your console may have been damaged, but I still have full control,” Kevin assured them. “I’m assuming you’d like me to take us to the source of the distress signal?”

“Yes,” said Cal. “Quick as you can.”

“Very good, sir,” said Kevin. “Although, there’s something else I think may be of interest.”

The left third of the screen changed to show another view. “I’ve enlarged the image, so it looks closer than it actually is. It’s currently located just beyond the fourth planet in the system, but appears to be coming this way.”

Mech clanked closer to the screen. “What the fonk is that?” he asked.

“I have no idea,” said Loren.

Something orange loomed against the dark background of space. It was completely shapeless, like some sort of cloud, but rippled rhythmically in a repeating pattern.

“So is this a new thing?” Cal asked. “You guys have never seen one of these?”

Usually, he liked it when the others didn’t know things. So much about outer space was new to him, but they acted like they’d seen it all a hundred times before – largely because, for the most part, they had. He enjoyed seeing them as confused by new stuff as he was.

Something about this thing made him uneasy, though, and the fact they had no idea what it was did nothing to reassure him.

“Kevin, any ideas?” Loren asked.

“Initial indications would suggest it’s a big orange thing, ma’am,” Kevin said.

Cal tutted. “Any ideas which don’t involve just stating the obvious?”

“Not really, sir, I’m afraid,” Kevin said. “Scanners are having difficulty ascertaining anything.”

Cal stared at the thing for a while, then shook his head. “OK, so we know it’s big, orange, and still pretty far away, right?”

“Correct, sir.”

“Then we ignore it for now. Take us down.”

“What?” said Mech. “I think we should check it out.”

“Opinion noted,” said Cal. “And ignored. We’ll look at it later. Kevin, take us down. Park us up half a mile or so from the distress signal. I’ll walk the rest of the way.”

“Very good, sir,” said Kevin. “Although I’m picking up a lot of life signs in the area. Bugs, I think, although it’s hard to tell.”

“I guess I’ll go get us some guns,” said Mech. “You know, since we’re clearly walking into some kind of trap.”

“I,” said Cal.

Mech frowned. “What?”

“I’m clearly walking into a trap. You’re not coming.”

Loren turned in her seat. “You heard what Kevin said. There are bugs down there. Not to mention whatever’s sending the signal, which you know can’t be from Earth.”

“All the more reason for you all to stay here,” said Cal. “Fix the console. Stick on Mech’s new fingers. Whatever. I just… I need to do this one on my own, OK?”

Loren and Mech exchanged glances. Even Miz raised her eyebrows in a gesture that was somewhere close to concern. “Well, I guess, if that’s what you want,” Loren said.

Cal shook his head and tried his best to smile. “Trust me, it isn’t. But it’s the way it has to be.”

“You’re taking Splurt, though, right?” said Miz.

“Not this time,” said Cal. “Whatever’s out there, whatever’s sending that signal, I need to face it alone.”

* * *

Cal still hated running, but he did it anyway.

Kevin had touched the Untitled down on a golf course, after a refreshingly graceful descent which had involved sweeping the back end of the ship in a circle a few dozen feet above the ground, and using the thrusters to turn any bugs that happened to be lurking in the grass to dust.

The others had tried to insist Cal seal himself inside a space suit so as to limit the risk of one of the creepy-crawly parasites infecting him, but the suit would have just slowed him down, so he’d refused that, and taken a couple of blaster pistols and a flamethrower, instead.

The fuel sloshed around in the tank on his back as he jogged to the edge of the course and scrambled over the wire link metal fence. His feet thacked loudly onto the tarmac on the other side, and he wasted a second listening for anything that might indicate something had heard him.

There were several large, expensive-looking houses standing along the tree-lined street, all with their windows broken and doors standing wide. It looked like the occupants of one had tried barricading themselves inside with wooden board, but either someone had forced their way in, or they had forced their way out.

Either way, the street was silent, save for the occasional chirping of birds in the trees.

Cal jogged on past a station wagon with a couple of doors open. He paused to feel the hood. Cold. Someone had abandoned it in a hurry, then never come back. Annoyingly, they hadn’t been in enough of a hurry to leave the keys behind.

During the final stages of the descent, Mech had given him the lowdown on what he might come across. The bugs themselves were harmless enough, provided you didn’t let one get on your skin. Mech had advised incinerating them on sight, just to be safe.

The infected were a bigger problem. From what Cal could gather, they were basically very fast, very angry zombie-types – regular people, driven into violent frenzies by their insectoid co-pilots. They couldn’t be talked to, couldn’t be reasoned with. No amount of persuasion would help them break free of their parasite’s thrall. Mech’s recommended strategy? Incinerate on sight.

And then there were the Queens. Mech had started describing the Queens, and had made it as far as ‘horny man-sized insect monsters’ before Cal had stopped him. It was at that point that Mech had given Cal the blaster pistols – not to use on the Queens, but to use on himself if one of them caught him.

Cal was pretty sure Mech had been trying to scare him into taking someone with him as back-up, but he wasn’t falling for it. Kevin had pinpointed the signal to within a few inches, and Cal’s suspicions had been confirmed. Whatever was sending the signal knew there was no possible way he would fail to answer.

He hurried on, keeping low, his eyes scanning the abandoned buildings on either side. The street was eerily quiet. The whole city, in fact. On any normal day, he’d have been able to hear the thunder of traffic from the interstate a quarter of a mile or so ahead, but there wasn’t a whisper. Even the birds had stopped tweeting.

Cal held his breath as he jogged along. Why had the birds stopped tweeting?

He looked up at the trees just as something fat, black and hand-sized dropped from one of the low branches. Its legs flailed as it plunged towards Cal’s face, and he leapt back just in time to avoid the thing.

The bug hit the ground with a solid clack, bounced once, then turned itself around and scurried towards him. Cal took aim with the flamethrower and pulled the trigger. A disappointing squirt of a (presumably flammable) liquid dribbled onto the tarmac between him and the insect.

“Shizz, hold on,” Cal muttered, backing away from the bug and turning the weapon over in his hands. There were instructions printed on the barrel, along with a series of complicated diagrams involving buttons, switches, levers, and some sort of pump.

“Pull Tab A, after priming pump 3c,” he read. “Tab A. Tab A. Where the fonk is Tab A?”

The bug’s legs trip-trapped across the ground, closing in.

“Pull Tab A,” Cal read again. “After priming pump 3c. There isn’t a Tab A. There’s a Tab 1. Is it Tab 1?”

The bug was almost on him now, its glossy black mandibles snapping hungrily at the air.

“Ah, fonk it,” Cal said. He raised his boot and brought it down sharply on the insect’s back. It exploded in a spray of green guts.

He lifted his foot and glanced at what was left of the bug. Yep, definitely dead. Evil alien insect-thing or not, there was no way it was coming back from that.

“Huh. That wasn’t so hard,” Cal said.

And then, from the trees, the bugs fell like rain. Dozens of them – hundreds, maybe – dropped from the branches, wriggling and squirming as they fell. They hit the ground with a machine-gun of clacks, then teetered around on their long, slender legs, until they were all facing the same direction.

Cal’s direction.

“Ooh, that’s not good,” Cal muttered. He stomped on the five closest bugs, while trying to figure out if Tab A and Tab 1 were the same thing. He decided they must be, so pulled Tab 1. Nothing happened.

“Wait, after priming pump 3c,” he muttered, kicking another of the bugs away and sending it sailing several feet through the air. “Pump 3c. Pump 3c. Pump 3c!”

He realized he had no idea what priming a pump involved, so he pumped it a few times and hoped for the best. Each pump was more difficult than the one before, which he took to be a positive sign, although he didn’t really know why.

The bugs scurried closer.

He pulled Tab 1.

“Right, here goes,” he said, then he squeezed the trigger and was almost blinded by the eruption of flame from the nozzle of the weapon. The fire licked across the tarmac, devouring the bugs in its path. They sizzled and popped, screeching as the heat consumed them.

Cal swept around him in a wide circle, clearing the immediate area, then pressed on along the street, scorching a path ahead of him.

“Yeah!” he cheered. “Suck on that, you six-legged fonks.”

He blitzed another wide strip of asphalt, turned back to fire a few warning shots behind him, then carried on along the street, avoiding the trees as best he could.

At the end of the road there was another fence, then a short embankment leading onto the deserted highway. From there, it would just be a short sprint to his destination, assuming nothing tried to infect him, eat him, or furiously mate with him along the way.

The sky was overcast, and a light drizzle began to fall as Cal darted across the highway, giving a wide berth to the burned-out skeleton of a truck. Something made of meat and gristle lay wrapped in rags just a few feet from the vehicle, a trail of blood connecting them like an umbilical cord.

From somewhere in the distance, Cal heard an inhuman screech. Ahead and to the right, he thought, although it was hard to be sure. He was heading left, so hopefully he wouldn’t cross paths with whatever it was.

He also partly hoped he didn’t come across any uninfected survivors, if only because he had a weapon, and his instinct when startled was usually to shut his eyes and start firing. Survivors would already be pretty rare, and he’d hate to thin their numbers even more by accidentally shooting one of them in the face.

A school stood on the most direct route between Cal and his destination. He ducked down a side street and took a slightly longer way round. He didn’t want to see what had happened to the building, or the kids inside.

There was another street, another patch of grass, another fence, and then he was there, standing outside the gates, his heart crashing like a snare drum in his chest.

He took a breath.

He clenched and unclenched his jaw.

“OK, let’s see who you are,” he whispered.

And then, with his flamethrower at the ready, Cal stepped into the cemetery and marched along the path.

Four small masts, each around ten feet tall, had been positioned around a tidy gathering of headstones near the top of a low hill. Between them, near the middle, a man sat on a camping chair, an umbrella held above his head.

A few feet behind the man, but also within the square marked out by the masts, was a bulky shape that had been covered by a large dust sheet. At the top of it, Cal could just make out a red light flashing through the fabric. The distress beacon, he guessed. Covered to keep the rain off, maybe?

The man was hidden in the shadow of the umbrella, but waved cheerfully at Cal when he appeared. It wasn’t until the umbrella was lowered that Cal recognized the man’s tanned face and chiseled jaw.

Of course. Who else?

“Hello, Cal!” said former-president Hayel Sinclair. He fastened the umbrella closed then embedded the metal tip in the grass beside him. “You took your time.”

Cal’s finger tensed on the flamethrower trigger. “I’ll be honest, I thought you’d be locked up by now,” Cal said.

“Ha! No,” said Sinclair. “I mean, not yet. I fear my days of being president are over, though. Shame. I liked that job. Great perks. Still, it’s like they say, the only constant in the Universe is change. Take you, for example.”

“What about me?”

“Not long ago you were a nobody. A nothing. A petty criminal,” said Sinclair. “And before that…” He glanced very deliberately at the headstone beside him, with its two names inscribed in gold. “Before that, you were someone else again. Loving husband. Devoted father.”

“What do you want?” Cal asked.

“That’s why I knew you’d come, see? That’s why I picked here. I should have thought about it from the start, really,” the ex-president said, smiling ruefully. He shook his head. “They make you weak, you know? Kids. They make you predictable. Even, it seems, the dead ones.”

Cal primed pump 3c.

“You want to make someone pay attention – really sit up and take notice, I mean – you go for the children. It’s Tyranny 101,” Sinclair laughed, smacking the heel of his hand against his forehead. “What was I thinking? Right? I send squadrons trailing you across the galaxy, hire assassins to track you down, and all I needed to do was come here, activate one little beacon, and – boom – there you are.”

Cal pulled Tab 1.

“I know what you’re thinking,” said Sinclair, holding up his hands. “You think I did something to the bodies. Dug them up, put them on strings like puppets to torment you with, or whatever, but relax. OK? I wouldn’t dream of it.”

He laughed. “OK, so I’d dream of it, but I wouldn’t actually do it. Come on! What do you take me for? I just paid my respects, that’s all.” He gestured to a bunch of flowers propped against the stone beside a threadbare old toy rabbit. “The flowers are from me. It’s the least I could do.”

“Get away from my family,” Cal said, his finger on the flamethrower’s trigger.

Sinclair winced. “Normally, I would, but… Well, it’s all these bugs. We’re safe in here, but if I step past those masts there, I’m ripe for the picking. Sonics or something. Keeps them at bay. I’ll be honest, I don’t know the ins and outs, I just know it works, and I know I don’t really want to be outside there.”

He jabbed a thumb towards the sheet-covered mound. “Aren’t you going to ask?”

Cal didn’t.

Sinclair pretended he had.

“I think you’re going to like it. I had it made especially for you. Technically, it’s not quite done, but after you broadcast my plans to the entire galaxy, I kind of had to leave in a hurry, so I just grabbed this and got the fonk out of there.”

“I’m not going to tell you again,” said Cal. “Get away from them. Now.”

Sinclair sighed. “You’re not playing along, Cal. You’re not getting into the spirit of it at all. Where are the wisecracks? Where’s that adventurer’s spirit? This is all very disappointing.”

He plodded across the grass, throwing his arms up in a theatrical shrug. “Fine, if you’re not going to pull the sheet off, I’ll do it myself. This was supposed to be a big moment, and you’ve ruined it, I want you to know that. This was going to be epic. I was going to say, ‘Mr Carver, I think it’s time you said hello to an old friend,’ and then you were going to pull off the sheet. You’d gasp, I’d cackle menacingly, I had it all worked out.”

Sinclair stopped by the shape, and took hold of the sheet. The light continued to blink beneath it, pulsing hypnotically through the fabric.

“Old friend?” said Cal. “What do you mean?”

“Aha! Now you’re getting into the spirit of it,” said Sinclair. “Still a little flat, but I’ll take it. After all, I’ve always been a sucker for a touching reunion.”

He yanked the sheet away, revealing a monstrous mish-mash of metal and flesh. The blinking red light was fixed to a wedge-shaped piece of metal skull that was surrounded by scarred scalp.

One eye had been replaced by an oval-shaped lens, the flesh around it burned and blistered. Despite all this, there was something disturbingly baby-faced about the figure, not helped by the strings of drool dangling from his fat bottom lip.

“Cal, say hello to your old cell mate, Eugene Adwin,” Sinclair crowed. “Although you may remember him better as ‘The Butcher.’”

CHAPTER FOUR

Sinclair smirked. “What’s the matter, Cal? No handshakes? No hugs for your old pal? That’s disappointing. I went to a lot of effort to get you two back together.”

“Why?” said Cal. “I mean, yeah, presumably so he can beat the shizz out of me, or whatever, but why him? If this is supposed to be some big ‘Oh my God, not my old pal the Butcher!’ moment then sorry, but I barely knew the guy. I met him once. For five minutes. During which time he tried to kill me.”

Sinclair’s smile didn’t change, but lost a lot of its impact. “What?” he said, then he quickly shook his head, annoyed at himself for asking. “I mean, yes. He might not mean a lot to you, but I’m sure you mean a lot to him. After all, you murdered him.”

“No, I didn’t.”

This time, Sinclair’s smile did take a hit. “Yes, you did.”

“I didn’t. I thought I had, but then he woke up, right before your guys came and whisked me away. Last time I saw him, he was alive.”

“Well he died!” Sinclair snapped. “OK? A few of the infected, they got into the cell and they killed him and… In fact, why am I even explaining myself to you?” He pointed angrily to Eugene. “This was an excellent idea.”

Cal shrugged. “Well, I mean, if that’s what you want to believe, you go right ahead. Now, if you’d transformed my parents into robo-zombies, or, you know, someone I actually knew on a personal basis? That would’ve had impact. Even Tobey Maguire. You know, the actor? I’ve never met him, and you couldn’t really have known this, so I’m not going to hold this one against you, but if you’d got him. Now that – that would’ve had an impact. And, you know, been kind of awesome. But this…?”

Cal shrugged. “This is just some big dead guy I don’t know.”

Sinclair’s smile had vanished now, replaced by a sort of petulant sneer that made him look like a surly teenager. “Why do you always have to ruin everything, Carver?” he spat. He tapped the face of the expensive-looking watch he wore, and the red light on the Butcher’s head stopped blinking.

Eugene’s eyes, which had been glazed and glassy, swam slowly into focus. Cal’s finger tensed on the trigger of the flamethrower, ready to blast the Butcher should he try any funny stuff. As Eugene’s eyes cleared, an expression of recognition passed slowly across his face like a dawn shadow.

“Hey there, Eugene!” said Cal. “Almost didn’t recognize you there with pants on.”

“Wh-what diiiiiiid you s-s-s-s-say?” Eugene asked, his voice skipping and crackling like a scratched CD. “Diiiiid you c-call my m-m-momma a sloop?”

“No,” said Cal, taking a single step back. “No, I did not.”

Eugene took a lumbering step forwards, closing the gap. Cal kept his finger poised on the trigger, ready to light the big guy up. He was so focused on the Butcher, however, that he failed to notice Sinclair behind him, right up until the point the former-president buried a knife in his shoulder, right up to the hilt.

Cal’s cry of pain rolled across the cemetery, and the grass around the barrier formed by the towers became alive with bugs. They skittered towards the three men, but stopped just beyond the square, as if held back by an invisible wall.

Sinclair twisted the knife, wedging the wound open. Cal’s arm went limp, his finger slipping from the flamethrower’s trigger just as a fist connected with his jaw like a wrecking ball, spinning him around. He stumbled, off-balance, towards the carpet of bugs, his ears ringing from the battering-ram force of the punch.

“Oops, careful Cal,” said Sinclair, grabbing the flamethrower’s fuel tank and pulling Cal back from the edge. “Don’t want you going out there quite yet. I didn’t come all this way just to see you infected. When I kill you, I want it still to be you.”

He swung Cal around, yanking the straps of the fuel tank down as he sent him spinning back towards Eugene. Robbed of the flamethrower, Cal’s brain frantically tried to decide which was more important – reaching for the blaster pistols in his belt, or getting the huge fonking knife out of his back. The vote was tied, and he tried to do both at once. This, he quickly discovered, was a mistake, and he managed neither before the Butcher’s fist hammered him across the bridge of the nose, instantly dropping him to his knees.

Fortunately, it was a position Cal knew just how to take advantage of. Half-blinded by blood, snot and tears, he drove an uppercut directly into the Butcher’s soft and dangly bits. Unfortunately, they were now neither soft, nor particularly dangly, and Cal’s fist thudded against a perfectly smooth, perfectly solid groin area.

“Ow. Jesus,” Cal yelped, then a left cross from Eugene sent him to eat grass. He sprawled awkwardly, and there, before him, was the headstone. Their headstone. Caroline and Lily Carver. His wife and daughter. A jolt of something worse than the pain of a huge fonking knife in his shoulder passed through him as he read those names etched into the marble again, but then a hand was around his ankle and Cal was suddenly hurtling upwards, arcing over the Butcher’s head and…

BANG! The impact of the ground exploded through his skeleton, radiating from the shoulder outwards. Dazed and winded, Cal reached for the opposite shoulder, and just managed to get a finger to the knife handle before Eugene swung him up and over again.

Cal twisted hard. Hitting the ground was one thing, but his full weight crashing down on the hilt of the knife was quite another. His knee popped. He made a noise he wasn’t proud of, and then he met the grass face on.

With a growl of pain and of effort, Cal tore the knife free of his shoulder, just as the Butcher flipped him onto his back. The big man’s weight pressed down on him, his knees digging into Cal’s thighs, his hands around Cal’s throat.

“You caaallled-d-d my mom-m-ma a sssssloop.” The Butcher’s voice was a crackling hiss, his face a blank, emotionless mask of nothing. His breath – if it even was breath – smelled of oil and sour milk, and saliva hung in long, gooey strands from his fat bottom lip.

Cal jammed the knife into Eugene’s side, just below his ribcage. The Butcher didn’t flinch, didn’t slow, didn’t so much as acknowledge the steel as it pierced his flesh.

Eugene’s grip tightened around Cal’s airway. The big man’s mouth opened, showing his teeth. So many teeth. Through the thunder of the heartbeat in his head, Cal heard Sinclair laugh.

“Oh, if only Kornack could see this,” he said, then the Butcher – the most prolific cannibal serial killer the galaxy had ever seen - lunged, teeth chomping, towards Cal’s trapped and helpless face.

Aaaaand stopped.

No, not stopped. Froze.

The Butcher’s face hung right above Cal’s, his mouth wide, but unmoving. None of the rest of him was moving, either, for that matter.

“Oh, thank God,” Cal wheezed. Whatever robotic parts Sinclair had installed to get Eugene up and about again must have malfunctioned. With a not inconsiderable amount of effort, Cal managed to push the cannibal away. Eugene fell sideways, still fixed in the same position, and rolled onto his back.

Cal jumped up, ready to throw himself at Sinclair, but the former president wasn’t moving, either. His eyes were still fixed on the spot where Cal had been pinned, his face set in a leer that – Cal was just going to come right out and say it – had a disturbing kind of ‘sexual gratification’ quality about it.

“Hey,” said Cal. He clicked his fingers in front of Sinclair’s face. “Hey, shizznod. Wakey wakey.”

Nothing.

Cal grimaced, just briefly, as his knee popped itself back into place. His other wounds had mostly healed up, although there was still a dull ache around his shoulder where the knife had been. That would pass, though, and he had more pressing concerns at the moment. Namely:

“What the fonk is going on?”

Putting his hands on his hips, Cal looked around. As he did, he realized it wasn’t just Eugene and Sinclair that had frozen. It was everything. The carpet of bugs were completely motionless, and almost looked like toys tucked between the rigid blades of grass.

The clouds weren’t moving. More than that, though, the tiny droplets of drizzle which had been falling now hung in the air like vapor. There was a Cal-sized trail of clear air through it, where he had walked, and as he waved a hand in front of his face, the droplets were swatted aside like flies. He could even prod them around with his fingertips, moving each little drop around in the air.

“OK, so this is weird,” Cal said, discovering a talent for understatement he hadn’t previously been aware of.

In the distance, he could see a couple of birds. They hung in the sky as if suspended by threads from the clouds above. The trees lining the cemetery fence were equally as motionless. It was as if time itself had stopped, but forgotten about Cal.

He wondered how far it went. Were Loren and the others frozen, too? Was the moon? The big weird space thing they’d seen on the way in?

Or was that responsible, somehow? None of the others had known what it was. Maybe it wasn’t a big weird space thing, after all. Maybe it was a big weird time thing that just happened to be in space.

“Yeah,” said Cal, nodding slowly, despite having precisely zero evidence to back his theory up. “Yeah, I think that might be it. It’s a big weird time thing.”

“Ahem.”

Cal whipped around. Two figures stood before him, both wearing black robes with hoods pulled up so he couldn’t see their faces. One of the figures was roughly the same height as Cal himself, while the other barely reached to waist-height.

“Uh… Hi,” said Cal.

“Cal Carver, you will come with us,” said the larger of the two. It was a man’s voice. Quite young, Cal thought, but trying to sound older. Cal was immediately reminded of Jork, one of his co-workers from his recent spell of employment at Nana Joan’s restaurant. The little guy was around the same height as Alan, another of the guys he’d met there.

“Jork? Is that you?”

“Fit’s he oan aboot?” demanded the smaller figure. His voice was gruff and gravelly, and definitely not Alan’s.

“There is no time to explain,” said the taller man. “You have to come with us. You have to stand before the council.”

Cal reached for his blaster. “I don’t have to do anything.”

“Aye,” said the little guy. He reached into the pockets of his robe and produced both of Cal’s guns. Despite the hood presumably making it very difficult to see, he pointed both guns at Cal’s groin. “Ye do.”

Cal cupped his hands in front of the family jewels. “Well,” he said. “When you put it like that, how can I argue. Where are we going? Do you have a ship? We could take mine. I’m sure my friends would love to meet you.”

“No ship,” said the bigger man. He’d given up trying to sound older, and now he was speaking with his real voice he didn’t sound anything like Jork at all. He did sound… familiar, though. “We don’t need one. Twenty-seven.”

Cal blinked. “Twenty-seven? What’s twenty-seven? Twenty-seven what?”

A third hooded figure tapped Cal on the shoulder. This one was a little shorter than Cal, and Cal got the impression he was frail and skinny beneath the folds of his velvet robe. If Cal had to hoof one of them in the balls and make a run for it, it was going to be this guy, he decided.

He didn’t spend a whole lot of time deciding it, though, because most of his attention was focused on the doorway-sized rectangle of blue light that now stood on the grass just a couple of feet away from the motionless Sinclair.

No, not blue light. The outline – the lines of the rectangle – were a shade he’d describe as ‘lightsaber blue’ but within, that the light was a sort of rotating selection of shades of white, each one brighter and more vibrant than the one before.

“Is that what I think it is?” Cal asked.

“Depends. Fit dae ye think it is?” grunted the little guy.

It took Cal a moment to translate the question. “A big blue and white rectangle thing,” he said. To his surprise, both the other two hooded figures also said it at exactly the same time. The third guy sounded older. Old, even. His voice was a dusty croak, suggesting someone in his eighties or nineties.

Yep, he was definitely getting the ball-shot, if it came to it.

The little guy muttered something below his breath, then gestured with Cal’s guns towards the big blue and white rectangle thing. “Twenty-seven’ll ging furst,” he said, rolling the ‘r’ like he enjoyed the taste of it. “Then you.”

“See you on the other side!” said the old man, then he turned, hitched up the bottom of his robe, and ran with a surprising turn of speed into the light. He did not, as far as Cal could tell, emerge from the back of it.

“So, what, is it a doorway?” Cal asked, but before he could get an answer a blaster jabbed him between his butt cheeks, the sudden invasive coldness of the metal propelling him forwards with an agility that surprised even himself.

He tried to stop before he hit the glowing rectangle, but as he got closer to it, Cal suddenly felt as if thousands of tiny hands were gripping him and pulling him towards the light. His feet rasped against the solid, unyielding grass. He flailed his arms around like windmills, trying to find his balance.

And then, the pull of the light became too great to resist, and Cal felt an electric tingle across his skin as he was dragged inside.

For a moment, there was nothing but white, as if he’d been afflicted by snow blindness. Or was looking very close up at a sheet of paper. As his eyes adjusted to the crisp, clean brightness of it all, though, he began to see darker patches. They were like negative versions of the doorway he’d just come through – tall, narrow rectangles positioned around him at varying angles and intervals. They were light gray or beige, and their edges weren’t easily distinguishable from all the whiteness, but they were definitely there.

Cal felt a sudden rush of acceleration. It was the same sensation he felt when the Currently Untitled went to full warp from a standing start, and he instinctively screwed his eyes closed to prevent them being shoved backwards into his skull.

The world lurched as he was buffeted violently back and forth for a few seconds, then there was another electric tingle that made his hair stand on end, before he landed heavily on a patch of hard, dusty ground.

Cal opened his eyes and stood up. The old man was waiting for him, his robe still hitched up to reveal a pair of boots not unlike the ones Cal wore.

“How’s the stomach?” the man asked. “That first trip can be a gut-churner.”

“Uh…” said Cal.

It wasn’t the most eloquent of responses, but then that was hardly Cal’s fault. His attention wasn’t really focused on conversation right now. Instead, it was focused on the amphitheater-like room around him, where hundreds of other figures sat watching on.

There were tall ones, short ones, fat ones, thin ones. Some had beards, a few were green-skinned, and at least one was part cyborg. Despite their differences, though, there was one thing they all had in common.

They all had Cal’s face. Or variations of it, at least.

Cal jumped in fright as the two other robed men stepped from the doorway behind him.

“I know, pretty freaky, right?” said the young guy. “It completely blew my mind when I was first brought in, too.” He slipped his hood down, and Cal saw his teenage self grinning back. “Welcome Cal,” he said. “Welcome to the Carver Council.”

CHAPTER FIVE

Since first being abducted by Zertex, Cal had seen what he would describe, in layman’s terms, as ‘a lot of weird shizz.’

He’d met rock people. He’d fought a two-faced, multi-tentacled assassin named ‘Vajazzle.’ He’d been in space battles, gone one-on-one with a fire-breathing giant spider, escaped clone-freaks by hiding under a sheet, and strolled down the gullet of a five-mile-long worm. And those were just the headlines. Pretty much every minute of every day had inflicted some new kind of space strangeness on him.

This, though - this, right here – this was the weirdest shizz by far.

Well, maybe neck and neck with Dorothy out of the Golden Girls kicking a space bear, but still pretty fonking out there.

“You probably have questions,” said Young Cal.

“You know, I kinda do,” Cal said, nodding slowly. “I’ll be honest, it’s quite a big list and… Oh, you’re me, too. Of course you are.”

While Cal had been speaking, the old man had pulled down his hood to reveal a face that looked like Cal, but also – somewhat depressingly – like Cal’s father, albeit with flaps of skin either side of his neck that closely resembled gills. The man smiled, showing off his three remaining teeth. Even so, Cal knew that smile. It was one of his genuine ones, which he took to be a reassuring sign.

The little guy was next to push his hood back. The first thing to be revealed was a beard. The second thing to be revealed was more beard. In fact, the guy was mostly beard. Sixty per cent of his face was covered by a reddish-brown explosion of facial hair that grew down, obviously, but also sideways and upwards until it almost reached his eyes.

While the beard was the big attention grabber, special mention had to go to the guy’s eyebrows. They had clearly taken their lead from the beard, and were boldly going where no eyebrows had gone before. Color-wise, they matched the beard. Style-wise, they looked like he’d just smeared a lot of glue across his forehead, then been dragged across a barber’s floor. Or, to put it another way, style-wise, they also matched the beard.

He either wore a very tightly-fitting metal cap, or the top of his head was metal. Cal wasn’t sure which, and felt he probably didn’t know the guy well enough yet to ask.

He asked anyway.

“Is that a hat?”

The eyebrows met in the middle. This was more epic than it sounds. “Is what a hat?”

“Doesn’t matter,” said Cal. That answered that, then.

Despite the hair, the size and the metal skull piece, there was still something oddly Cal-like about the little guy. Yes, he reminded Cal of a dwarf from The Lord of the Rings, or a garden gnome who’d got lost for a few months in long grass, but there was something about the eyes that struck Cal as impossibly familiar.

“I’m Carver Nine,” said the young man. He jabbed a thumb towards his companions, starting with the old guy. “That’s Carver Twenty-Seven, and Eighty-Three.”

“So…” Cal began, but he had no idea what the next word was going to be, so he stopped there. He turned slowly on the spot, taking in the watching faces. They looked friendly enough, but then they all had variations of his face, so maybe he was projecting that onto them.

“So,” Cal said again, having settled on his next few words in advance this time. “I’m no expert on, you know, anything, but it appears – and correct me if I’m wrong here – they’re all me. You’re all me.”

Carver Nine nodded and grinned. “Or I could say that you’re all me. Or we’re all Carver Eighty-Three.”

“Ma backside,” said the dwarf. “I’m no’ takin’ the blame fur you shower o’ fannies.”

Cal blinked a few times in Eight-Three’s direction, trying to process what he’d said. He got around two-thirds of it, which he reckoned was probably enough.

“Is this a clone thing? Are you all clones?” Cal asked. His eyes widened. “Am I a clone?” He prodded himself in the face a few times. It wasn’t exactly the most scientific of tests, but it seemed to satisfy him, nonetheless. “I don’t feel like a clone.”

“Don’t worry, you’re not a clone,” said the old man. “Nor are Nine, Eighty-Three, or any of the rest of us.”

“What’s with the numbers?” Cal asked. “Don’t you guys have names?”

Nine’s grin broadened. He thrust out a hand. “Cal Carver, at your service.”

The dwarf placed a fist at the side of his head in some sort of salute. “Aye. Cal Carver.”

“And me,” said Twenty-Seven, his eyes twinkling. “You can probably see why the numbers come in handy.”

He slipped his robe from his shoulders, revealing a white polo shirt, cream-colored slacks and, to Cal’s horror, a pair of brown sandals with gray socks below. The old man tapped a skinny finger against a badge on his chest. It was a rectangular plastic thing, and reminded Cal of the name badges he’d worn at his very first after-school job when he was a kid.

Across the top of the badge, the words: ‘Hi! My name is…’ were printed in a jolly red typeface. Below that was a piece of clear vinyl with a rectangle of white card beneath. On the card, the numbers ‘27’ had been scrawled in shaky handwriting.

“And, in answer to your question, yes, you have a number,” said Carver Nine. “And no, you’re not number one.”

Cal frowned. “How did you know I was going to ask that?”

“Because we all ask that,” said Nine.

“Enough of this!”

The voice that had spoken boomed around the circular room, startling a few of the closest Carvers. A broad-shouldered man wearing a robe and a dented armor chest plate stood up. He had a beard, but nothing like the bush sprouting from Eighty-Three’s face. It was neatly trimmed and dark, but peppered with flecks of white and gray. He held a long wooden staff, which he banged on the floor, calling the room to order.

Cal shot Nine a sideways glance. “Is that Number One?”

Carver Nine shook his head. “He’s our big Number Two,” he whispered, then all four Carvers standing together in the center of the room smirked.

“Yes, yes, shut up,” said Carver Two, sighing as if he’d been through this too many times before to find even the faintest glimmer of amusement in any of it. Which, in fairness to him, he probably had. “Carver Prime will not be amused by your time-wasting. Ikumordo approaches.”

“The whosy-whatnow?” asked Cal.

Carver Two gestured to a fairly standard-issue Cal lookalike standing in a little booth. This new Cal tapped a few controls and a shimmering lightshow was projected into the air above the theater stage where Cal stood.

“Hey, I’ve seen that,” said Cal, gesturing up to the shapeless orange mass throbbing and pulsating rhythmically overhead. “That’s the big weird space thing.”

“It is Ikumordo,” explained Carver Two. “The cosmic traveler, scourge of the multi-verse.”

“Like I said, big weird space thing,” said Cal. “What does it do? I’m guessing by your use of the word ‘scourge’ it’s nothing nice?”

Carver Two nodded, just once. “Ikumordo is the devourer of worlds.”

“You mean like Galactus?” said Cal. When no one took him up on it, he clarified. “You know, big guy, purple hat. In the comics?”

Cal looked around him, but saw mostly only confusion. “Come on, you’re all me, and I’m the only one who’s read a comic? The X-Men beat him, I think.”

“Fantastic Four,” corrected Carver Nine. “But not many of us will get the reference. We’re all from very different places.”

Cal glanced down at Carver Eighty-Three, then around at some of the other less Cal-like members of the audience. “Yeah, I’m getting that.”

“Ikumordo is the ‘All Death,’” said Carver Two. “For countless millennia, it has traversed the cosmos, turning planets once teeming with life into cold, dead husks.”

“Like my first wife!” said a voice from the crowd. Two Cal-a-likes exchanged a high-five somewhere near the back of the audience. Carver Two looked briefly irritated, but chose to ignore it.

“And what?” said Cal. “Now it’s coming to Earth?”

“Not just your Earth. All Earths,” said Twenty-Seven who, despite having his number clearly displayed on his badge, Cal was coming to think of as Old Man Carver. It just seemed to suit him. Probably on account of him being an old man. Named Carver.

“Twenty-Seven speaks the truth,” said Two. “It is not just your world which is in danger, it is all our worlds.”

Cal held up a hand like a school student trying to get their teacher’s attention. “Uh, I have a question.”

“You may proceed,” said Two.

“Thanks,” said Cal, lowering his hand again. “OK, so I guess my question is: ‘Huh?’”

Two rolled his eyes, just a little, then gestured to the Cal in the booth again. The weird space thing vanished, and was replaced by an image of the Earth. Or… was it the Earth? The continents looked ever so slightly different, although Cal couldn’t have said exactly how. Bigger, maybe? Or smaller? Or a different shape? He was confident it was one of those.

“Earth,” said Carver Two. “But not your Earth. This is the home of Carver Prime, who was the first to bring us together.”

“And that’s where, exactly?” asked Cal.

“It’s in the same place as yours, orbiting its yellow sun, part of your solar system,” said Two.

“Then why hasn’t anyone noticed it?” Cal asked. He looked around. “Or is that a stupid question?”

“There’s no such thing as a stupid question,” said Old Man Carver.

“But iffin there wis, then aye, at’d be een,” said Eighty-Three through his beard.

Cal tried translating that, but gave up somewhere around the second word. Above him, the hologram of Earth grew smaller as the image zoomed out, whooshing past other planets, then stars, then galaxies, until the whole thing became just a shiny ball floating in a black void. It was a sort of semi-transparent silver, and looked quite a lot like a bubble.

“Carver Prime’s universe,” said Two. Another bubble appeared beside the first one, touching it. “And this is another universe, similar in many ways, but also subtly different.”

“It’s a bit further to the left, for one thing,” said Cal. “So… what? There are two universes?”

For the first time since he’d stood up, Carver Two smiled. It wasn’t much of a smile – barely a twitching of the corners of the mouth – but it was a smile all the same. He clicked his fingers and bubbles began to appear in the air all around the theater. There were dozens of them at first, then hundreds, then too many to count.

They appeared apparently at random, and yet as more popped up and more gaps were filled in, they formed a uniform structure, each bubble touching six others. Soon, the whole top half of the room was a solid block of interconnected little spheres, each the size of a golf ball.

“So you’re telling me… what?” said Cal. “That all those bubbles are different universes?”

Carver Two nodded. “Yes. Although, in reality, it isn’t as neat and tidy as this. Each one intersects with all the others at the same time.”

Cal stared at the spheres, trying to work out what that would look like. Fortunately, the other Carvers had already thought of that. The regimented block of bubbles became a swirling vortex of shapes that weren’t shapes, colors that shouldn’t exist, and a general nebulous weirdness that made Cal’s eyes ache and his brain begin to fold in on itself in protest.

He was midway through throwing up in his mouth when the formless horror of it all snapped back into neat rows again, and he successfully swallowed everything back down.

“Cool,” he said in a soft, scratchy sort of whisper. He cleared his throat. “And that’s where you guys are all from? Parallel universes? Different dimensions, or whatever? You’re all alternate reality versions of me? Of, you know, each other?”

“That is correct,” said Carver Two. “The Carver Council is primarily made up of Cal Carvers from across the multi-verse. Carver Prime brought us together, that we might attempt to halt the progress of Ikumordo before it reaches the Earths.”

“And there’s an Ikumordo, or whatever, in all the different dimensions?”

“Not quite,” said Carver Nine. “This is where it gets complicated.”

“Where it gets complicated?” Cal snorted. “What are you saying? This has been the straightforward bit up until now? Jesus.”

Before anyone could reply, an alarm sounded. It was a scary alarm, Cal thought. It wasn’t an alarm designed to be ignored, but to instill the maximum amount of panic in those hearing it as quickly as possible.

Sure enough, every member of the Carver Council leaped to their feet at the same time. “Oh Shizz,” groaned Old Man Carver. “Breach.”

“Och, naw! This isnae guid,” gibbered Eighty-Three.

“This way!” yelped Carver Nine, grabbing Cal by the arm and pulling him towards the room’s single door as a tidal wave of other Cals swept past. The crowd pushed them on, shouting and bellowing, and almost driving Cal and Nine apart. The younger man tightened his grip, though, and they both tumbled out through the door together.

The place they emerged into had a distinctly unfinished feel to it. The ground was black with green lines laid out in a neat grid, almost like a computer simulation. The sky above was blue, but completely cloudless. It was also lacking anything resembling a sun, yet the whole place was bathed in light.

No, not the whole place. Half a mile or so off on the right, the blue was tearing apart, revealing a jagged wedge of darkness beyond. Black blobs were seeping through, like drops of ink spreading in water. As Cal watched, they stretched out, becoming tendrils that crept across the sky.

Carver Two was somewhere behind, barking commands with a level of authority Cal knew he himself could never achieve without the aid of a megaphone, a number of henchmen, and a big gun. The commands themselves meant nothing to Cal, though – something about ‘Void rigs’ and ‘matter dispersal’ and protecting Carver Prime.

“What the fonk is going on?” Cal asked, shouting to make himself heard over all the panic. Most of the other Cals had spotted the sky hole, and were running in the opposite direction. A few of the bigger and stronger ones hesitated, as if considering standing their ground, then decided against it and fled with the others.

“Is that Ikumordo?” Cal asked.

Carver Nine shoved him in the same direction as the others were running. “No, it’s a void breach. We’re in a blister universe here, and it’s about to go ‘pop!’”

“And that’s bad?” said Cal. He glanced around at his terrified alternates. “I’m guessing that’s bad.”

“Only if we’re still here when it does,” said Nine. He pointed ahead to a low, wide building with several doors. Carvers were flooding into it in their dozens. “There are dimension gates through there. They’ll take us out of here.”

“Where will we go?” Cal asked, sprinting flat-out now as the darkness spread like a cancer across the sky behind them.

“Somewhere that isn’t here,” said Nine.

“Good enough.”

They slowed at the doors as they joined one of the streams of Carvers all pushing their way inside. They were almost through when Cal heard Nine call out.

“Shizz. Twenty-Seven’s down. Go through, we’ll follow.”

“What? Wait,” said Cal, but Nine was already running back the way they had come. Looking past him, Cal could see Old Man Carver on the ground, struggling to get back to his feet. The dwarf-like Eighty-Three was doing his best to help, but his size made getting leverage on the older Cal difficult.

Cal groaned. “Argh! Why do I always have to be so fonking noble?” he muttered, then he raced after Nine and caught up just in time to help heave Twenty-Seven to his feet.

“Take him through,” Nine instructed. Most of the Carvers had passed now, but a few stragglers remained. Like Twenty-Seven, they looked older than the others, and less steady on their feet.

Cal and Eighty-Three half led, half carried Old Man Carver towards the low building. Only a few stragglers were trickling through its open doors now, and Cal could see a crisp white glow emanating from within. It proved a stark contrast to the murky black chasm that had now swallowed half the sky, and was making a start on the ground.

“Sorry, I’m sorry,” wheezed the old man.

“Dinnae fash yersel’,” said Eighty-Three. The words meant nothing to Cal, but there was a softness in his voice that suggested they were friendly. “Hup, noo, and wull git ye eenside.”

Cal looked back over this shoulder, and blinked in a blast of ice-cold air. Carver Nine was struggling with a green-skinned alien-looking Carver, whose slow, unsteady movements betrayed his great age.

“Uh, Beardy Cal. Sorry, not great with numbers. Get Old Man Carver inside,” Cal instructed. “I’m going to go help—”

What was left of the sky vanished with a thunderous ker-ack, leaving nothing in its place. It was absolute darkness, and yet, at the same time, more colors than Cal had ever seen. It held nothing, but suggested all things – every shape, ever contour, every shadow, every thing that had ever been, or ever would be. It was every consequence of every action ever taken, and in that moment, Cal understood his place in the universe, and how wholly, utterly, completely inconsequential he was.

A sound like the roaring of a vacuum cleaner rolled towards him. He saw the far side of the theatre stretch out and become something that was both like spaghetti and the exact opposite of spaghetti at the same time. He felt the ground rumble as it, too, was devoured by the rainbow of black.

“Look out!” Cal cried – hopelessly, pointlessly – as he saw Nine and the green-skinned geriatric stumble.

Cal’s eyes met those of Carver Nine, and he saw fear at what was to come, and sorrow for a life not-yet-lived. Cal saw himself reflected in those wide, terrified pools. In more ways than one.

And then the void had both Nine and the other Carver, and Cal could only watch as their bodies became putty, then string, then nothing but memories.

A hand clamped down on his shoulder. Cal turned to find Carver Two standing there, his face red, his armor heaving as he gasped for breath. “There’s nothing you can do for them now,” said Two. “You must come with me. The fate of the multi-verse depends on it.”

CHAPTER SIX

After passing through another white doorway, Cal stepped into a place very different from the one he’d left. A wide, uneven field stood before him, stretching out until it met sharply-rising mountains a few miles away in every direction.

The ground beneath his feet was a mix of dry mud and a thick gray grass with jagged edges, and gave off a generally inhospitable sort of vibe. The sky was a uniform shade of cream, like no one had taken the time to color it in yet, and as cloudless as the one they’d left behind.

Ahead of him were a hundred or more tents, mostly dirty, ramshackle things, but with three pod-like constructions in there, too, which helped lift the scene from ‘grim campsite’ to ‘grim campsite with the occasional expensive-looking tent.’

Carvers stood around in bunches, knotted together as they discussed whatever it was that had just happened. Some held court, gesticulating angrily while those gathered around them nodded and punched their fists. Others held each other, each lending the other their strength and support. A surprising number laughed and cracked jokes. Although, given who they all were, probably not that surprising a number.

Cal tried to turn to Carver Two, but the bigger man’s grip made turning impossible. He marched Cal on, steering him through the camp and towards one of the plastic and metal pods standing near the edge.

“What the fonk was that?” Cal asked. “What’s going on?”

“A breach,” said Two. “That universe was temporary. More temporary than we realized. The walls gave way. It is no more.”

“And the black thing?” Cal asked. His head still ached at the thought of the endless gulf he’d seen. “Or, you know, the not-black thing? Or whatever. What was that?”

Two guided Cal past a pair of other Carvers. They both had silvery skin, matching orange jumpsuits, and were holding hands. They nodded respectfully to Two when he and Cal passed by.

“That – what you saw – that was the Void,” Carver Two explained. He still had his staff, and used it to gesture for a blue-haired Carver with glossy white eyes to step aside. “You remember we showed you all those universes as bubbles?”

“It was five minutes ago. An eventful five minutes, I’ll give you, but still. Yes. I remember,” said Cal, finding himself slightly annoyed by the question, although he couldn’t quite put his finger on why. “What about it?”

“If the universes are bubbles, then the Void is the space between them,” said Two. “But by ‘space’ I don’t mean ‘space’. As in, it’s not ‘space’ in the traditional sense.”

“Right. That’s cleared that up, then.”

“I mean it’s ‘space’ as in ‘a gap.’ Not ‘space’ as in stars, planets, and so on,” said Two. He stopped outside the pod, which was quite a bit larger up close than Cal had been expecting. After keying in a lengthy number of digits into a wall-mounted control panel, there was a faint click, and Two pushed open what seemed to Cal to be quite a flimsy door.

“Still not getting it,” Cal admitted. “I feel I’m kind of there, but not quite.”

Carver Two ducked, as if to enter the pod, then stopped. “It’s complicated,” he admitted. “Think of it like this. Space – outer space – is infinite. In terms of conventional physics, at least. Each ‘bubble’ actually goes on forever in every direction, so it’s impossible to reach the walls, or even to know if they exist. From the inside, I mean.”

“Right,” said Cal, despite the fact everything was now making even less sense than it had been prior to that sentence.

“So, you have your universe, which contains – by definition – everything in the universe,” said Two.

Cal thought it was probably too soon to say, “Right,” again, so just nodded in what he hoped was quite a learned way.

“OK, so the Void is like that, only sort of the opposite.”

“Right,” said Cal, although even he wasn’t convinced by the way he said it. “In what way?”

“The Universe – all universes, I mean – each contain everything. The Void itself is empty, yet contains an infinite number of universes. And, in terms of what you saw when you looked at it, it contains infinite possibility. Not only are all universes contained within it, but all potential universes are in there, too. And yet, in a very real sense, it’s completely empty.”

Carver Two raised his gray-flecked eyebrows. “Make sense?”

“Totally,” said Cal. “Yep. Crystal clear now, thanks.”

Two smiled, grimly. “I told you it was complicated. Come.”

He ducked through the short, narrow door, and Cal clambered in after him. The inside of the pod was sparse, but functional. There was a hammock strung between two walls (or, since the pod was circular, between the one wall, Cal decided), a small area that seemed to be for food preparation, and, to Cal’s amazement, three child-sized beanbag chairs, all featuring slight variations of the Ghostbusters logo.

“Hey, I had that beanbag!” he said.

“Many of us did,” said Carver Two.

“Check it out, I used to love doing this,” Cal said.

“Don’t!” said Carver Two, but it was too late. Cal sprung into the air, then slammed down into the beanbag. It exploded immediately, and the floor of the pod was suddenly awash with thousands upon thousands of tiny white pellets.

Cal looked around at the mess, then smiled sheepishly up at Two. “That didn’t used to happen,” he said. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine,” said Two, although his heavy sigh suggested otherwise. “Many of us did that, too. I used to have six. One for each of the Ghostbusters themselves.”

“There were only four Ghostbusters.”

Carver Two shrugged. “In your universe, perhaps.”

“Right. Fair enough,” said Cal. “Still, great movie.”

“Movie?” said Two, frowning. “Your universe made a Ghostbusters movie?” He smiled, wistfully. “Ha! I bet they loved that.”

“Uh, yeah, I’m sure they did,” said Cal, deciding not to pursue the line of enquiry that was currently presenting itself, and to focus on more pressing matters, instead. “So, Nine and that other guy?” he said.

“Gone,” said Two, his voice taking on an almost reverent tone. “Lost to the Void, along with several others. We are fortunate we had Carver Prime’s early-warning alarm system, or we would all have met the same fate.”

“Right. And where is this Carver Prime?” Cal asked. “When do I get to meet the head honcho?”

“Newbies don’t meet Carver Prime,” Two said.

“But—”

“Newbies don’t meet Carver Prime.”

“OK, see here’s the thing, Number Two – you guys abducted me. You swooped in, froze time or whatever. That was you, right? The time thing?”

Two confirmed it with a nod.

“Right. You froze time, took me away, showed me all… you know, me, and then almost got me killed,” Cal said. “I think the least you can do is let me see the boss.”

“Impossible. And even if it were, Carver Prime is currently engaged elsewhere, and therefore unavailable."

Cal shrugged. “OK. Then I’ll be outside until he gets back.”

Two’s staff caught Cal across the back of the legs, dropping him to his knees. Cal tried to stand, but the wooden pole was suddenly pressed across his throat from behind.

“Now listen to me,” Two growled. “You may have thought you were something special back in your own universe. No doubt you thought you were some unique snowflake. The one and only Cal Carver, no one else quite like you.”

Carver Two’s voice became an angry hiss. “But that’s not true. You’re not special, Cal. Not here. Hell, you’re not even Cal here. You’re Ninety-Nine. A number, nothing more.”

He removed the staff from across Cal’s throat and shoved him forwards with his foot. Cal tried to roll back to his feet in what he thought would be a really impressive way, but the wall was too close and he ended up propped against it, mostly upside-down. He flopped sideways and got to his feet the old-fashioned way.

“Good pep talk,” Cal said, rubbing his throat.

“Always with the jokes!” Two spat. “Jesus, we really are insufferable sometimes.”

“Hey, speak for yourself,” said Cal. “I’m roguishly charming. Or charmingly roguish. One of them.”

Carver Two gripped his staff with both hands, then sighed and propped it against the wall. “Forgive me. I’m taking the loss of the other Carvers hard. Every one we lose, I take as a personal failure. I should have reacted more quickly.” He exhaled slowly through his nose, shook his head, then pulled himself together.

“The fact is, Ninety-Nine, hundreds of billions – hundreds of trillions – of people will die if Ikumordo is allowed to consume the Earths. More than that, even. An infinite number more.”

“I’m assuming we’re going to kick all his many butts back to wherever he came from?” said Cal.

“Actually, he only has one butt. Metaphorically speaking. Ikumordo is not like you or I,” said Two.

Cal nodded. “He’s a big weird space thing.”

“He exists across all dimensions at once,” Carver Two explained. “While each universe has its own Cal Carver – its own Ghostbusters, its own everyone – there is only one Ikumordo, existing across all dimensions at once.”

“Right,” said Cal. “Gotcha.”

“You don’t understand.”

“Not in the slightest,” Cal admitted. “But keep going and I’ll catch up.”

“From what we have been able to piece together, Ikumordo is a transdimensional entity existing in all universes simultaneously. If he moves left here, then he moves left in an infinite number of other realities. If he turns purple somewhere, he turns purple everywhere else, too.”

“So they’re all connected?”

“Not connected. One,” said Carver Two. “One single being, virtually unstoppable.”

“Virtually?”

Carver Two placed his hands behind his back and began to pace. The pod wasn’t big, so he only made it a couple of steps before having to turn around again. “There are rumors of a weapon of some kind in the Void. Something that is said to have the power to stop Ikumodo. Unfortunately, no one has ever been able to find it. No one has been reckless enough to even try.”

Cal clicked his fingers. “Aha. And that’s why you wanted me here? You want me to go into the Void and get your gun, or whatever.”

“Hmm? No. No, nothing like that,” said Carver Two. “Ikumordo, from what we can gather, is a sentient being with the capacity for reason. We would like to make a deal with it, and we need you to make our offer.”

Cal’s eyebrows raised in surprise. “Me? Why me?”

“Because Carver Prime thinks it would be unfair to make the offer without consulting you first,” said Two. “You see, in return for leaving the other Earths alone, we wish to offer Ikumordo your universe.”

“My…?”

“Universe.”

“Yes. Yes, I thought that’s what you said.” Cal sucked air in through his teeth. “That’s a bit forward, isn’t it? I mean, we’ve only just met, and you’re asking me to sacrifice the entire universe for you. That’s, like, third date conversation. Second, tops.”

“We do not ask it lightly,” said Carver Two. “And I’m not asking you to do it for me. I’m asking you to do it for everyone.”

“Everyone except the people living in my universe,” said Cal.

“Your Earth, from my understanding, is almost dead.”

“The Earth, maybe, but what about everywhere else?” Cal asked. Two looked taken aback, as if this hadn’t even occurred to him.

“What about them? Their sacrifice may well save alternate versions of their own world at a later date, too. You think Earth is the first planet Ikumordo has consumed? It will feed, but it’ll get hungry again, and then who knows who’s next? If we give it a whole universe, though, maybe that’ll be the end of it.”

Cal tucked his hands into his back pockets and rocked on his heels, thinking this over. “How would I make the deal? Do we just phone him up?”

“Carver Fifty-One can open a door for you that will bring you to the heart of Ikumordo, where you will make your offering in person.”

Cal shrugged. “OK.”

“I understand it is a difficult decision,” began Two, before he realized what Cal had said. “What?”

“I’ll do it. I’ll go speak to the big weird space thing and try to work something out,” said Cal. “But I’m not going alone. I need a team.”

“You shall have one,” said Two. “You may take your pick of the Carvers.”

Cal grinned. “Thanks, but no. I wasn’t talking about that team.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

Loren blinked in surprise. “Where did you come from?”

Cal sat on a Ghostbusters beanbag in front of the viewscreen, flashing what was perhaps his broadest ever grin at the others. A moment ago, they had all been frozen in place – or ‘Time Locked’ as Carver Two had referred to it – but now they were all alert and moving, and wondering where the fonk Cal had just appeared from.

“How did you get back on board?” Mech demanded. He had been flexing all five fingers of his now fully-reconstructed hand, but lowered it when he saw Cal.

“And how did you just appear?” asked Loren.

“And, like, what are you sitting on?” Miz added.

“Guys!” said Cal. “You won’t believe the last few hours I’ve had. Seriously.”

“What the fonk you talking about, ‘few hours’?” said Mech. “You been gone less than fifteen minutes.”

“Yeah, no, you’ve been frozen in time. Long story, which I can’t explain. My point is, what I’ve been doing – I’ll be honest, I think you’re going to love it.” He pointed to Mech and his grin, somehow, became even wider. “Especially you. Without overstating things – Mech, this might just be the single greatest day of your life.”

“What the fonk are you talking about?” said Mech, but Cal was already on his feet, brushing past him and beckoning the others to follow him into the corridor. “Come on, come and see. Splurt!”

Splurt swung down from the pipework, flipped in the air, and landed on Cal’s shoulder. He perched there like a parrot made of jello, wobbling unsteadily as Cal practically skipped over to the hatch control button, then turned.

“Kevin, you there?”

“Always, sir.”

“You remember that recording thing you did earlier, when you took a photo of our faces?”

“Where you all thought you were going to die? Yes, sir. I shall never forget it. It is etched forever in my databanks.”

“Right, OK, can you do another one when I put down the ramp? Get everyone’s faces. Especially Mech.”

“As you wish, sir.”

“Excellent!” Cal said, cackling behind his hand like a cartoon villain. “Mech, Loren, Miz, Kevin, Splurt, there’s somebody I’d like you to meet.”

He bumped the ramp release button with his fist. The ramp hissed as the hydraulics released, revealing a group of a dozen or so variations of the same familiar face standing in a semi-circle outside.

Cal gestured towards them, like a gameshow host showing off today’s star prize. “Me! A whole lot of me!”

From somewhere on high, there came a brief flash. “Oh, good call, sir,” said Kevin. “Their expressions are even better than last time. This one’s a keeper.”

Mech closed his bottom jaw, which had dropped open. “What the fonk am I looking at?” he muttered.

“I know, right?!” Cal laughed. “Isn’t it just the greatest? Come on.”

He hurried down the ramp, about-turned, and hooked his arms over the shoulders of two other Carvers. One of them looked virtually identical to him, but with tribal neck tattoos and enough facial piercings to form the basis of a successful scrap metal business. The other was dangerously obese, riddled with acne, and blushed the moment he saw Loren come swaying down the ramp, one hand resting on the butt of her blaster pistol.

“Guys, this is some of the Carver Council. Some of the Carver Council, meet Space Team. Loren, Miz, Mech and this little guy’s Splurt.”

“Awfy guid tae mit ye,” said Eighty-Three, doing his fist-on-head salute. The others chimed in with greetings, too. They ranged from theatrical bows to nervous waves, with a lot of winking and finger guns going on in between.

Loren looked along the line and back again. “These are… They all… I mean…”

“Spit it oot, lassie,” said Eighty-Three. “Wiv no’ a’ day tae staun here bletherin’.”

“What did he say?” asked Miz.

“I have absolutely no idea,” Cal confessed.

“They all look like you,” said Loren. “I mean, most of them. I mean…” She looked to Mech for help. “What do I mean?”

“Who the fonk are they?” said Mech. “And where’d they come from?”

“They came from Earth,” said Cal. He jabbed a thumb in Eighty-Three’s direction. “Maybe Middle Earth in his case, but, yeah. They all come from the same place as me. More or less.”

“Are they clones?” Loren asked.

Miz sniffed the air. “Don’t smell like clones.”

“We’re from other dimensions,” said the chunky Cal, his face reddening even further when everyone turned to look at him. Like most of the others, he wore a badge. The number “69” was written on it. Cal wasn’t sure if it was his ID number, or just wishful thinking on the poor guy’s part.

“You have got to be fonking shizzing me,” said Mech. “I mean, I get the whole theory of alternate dimensions, different universes, whatever, but this… This shizz ain’t right.”

“By which you mean ‘This is the greatest thing that ever happened,’ right?” said Cal, savoring every moment. “Turns out, I’m not the only Cal Carver. I’m Carver Ninety-Nine.”

“Ninety-Nine?!” Mech spluttered. “So, there are ninety-eight more of you motherfonkers here? I’m getting back on the ship.”

“Yeah, not exactly ninety-eight,” said Cal. “A few died earlier.”

Mech flinched. “Shizz. You couldn’t have told me that two seconds ago, before I opened my mouth? Now I feel bad.”

“There weren’t ninety-eight others, anyway,” said Chunky Cal. “There were ninety-seven.”

Cal counted on his fingers, just briefly. “How does that work if I’m Ninety-Nine?”

“Wait, where are we?” asked Loren, looking around. “This isn’t Earth. Is it?”

“Splinter universe,” said Cal.

“Blister universe,” corrected the one with the piercings.

“Whatever, same thing,” said Cal.

“It really isn’t.”

Cal ignored him. “Turns out – that weird space thing we saw?”

Loren frowned. “What weird space… Oh, the orange thing?”

“Bingo. Turns out it’s a planet-eating transdimensional god-like entity,” said Cal. He shrugged. “I know, who knew, right? And we all thought it was just a big cloud.”

“None of us thought that,” said Mech.

“Oh. Right. Just me, then,” said Cal. “So, turns out it’s going to eat Earth. Earths. Every Earth. Different dimension Earths, I mean. And these guys want us to stop it.”

Sixty-Nine shifted awkwardly. “I’m not sure that’s quite what Number Two said.”

“Atatat!” said Cal, putting a finger to his alternate’s lips. “Let’s not get bogged down in the details. Broad picture, there’s a big weird space thing about to destroy an infinite number of Earths. Fortunately for all involved – with the exception of said big weird space thing – Space Team is going to do what it does best.”

“Crash our ship into stuff?” Miz guessed.

“Almost get ourselves killed?” said Mech.

“Save the day!” said Cal. “I meant we’re going to save the day. But, yes, probably also both of the above.”

He clapped his hands and rubbed them together. “Now, then,” he said. “Who’s going to point us in the right direction?”

“Wait, hold up. We need to know more about what we’re dealing with, before we go rushing off to face it,” said Mech.

“Agreed,” said Loren.

“Guys, come on. This is me you’re talking to,” said Cal, holding his arms wide. “I already have it all worked out. You trust me, right?”

“Kind of,” said Miz.

“No,” said Mech.

Loren gave a non-committal sort of shrug. “Meh.”

“Have I ever steered us wrong before?”

Mech scowled. “Pretty sure we’ve already had this conversation, and the answer was ‘yes’ then, and it’s ‘yes’ now.”

“OK, fair point, but you owe me one for the space bears, so how about you trust me this one time, anyway?”

Mech’s metal feet shuffled on the spot. “Fine,” he said. “Let’s go get ourselves killed.”

“That’s the spirit!” said Cal.

“Are they in agreement?”

Carver Two appeared silently behind Cal, almost making him jump out of his skin in fright.

“Jesus, don’t do that!” Cal protested.

“Who is that?” asked Miz, straightening slightly.

“Uh, he’s me,” said Cal.

Miz’s furry brow furrowed. “What? Like, how can he be you?”

Cal glanced along the line of Carvers. “Like I said, alternate dimensions.”

“Oh, did you?” said Miz. “Wasn’t really listening. Nice beard.”

Cal touched his own chin, before realizing she was talking about Carver Two. “Uh, yeah, so moving on…” Cal said, quickly shifting back to the original subject. “Yes, they’re in. We’ll go and talk to the magic space cloud and smooth this whole thing over.”

“You are prepared to make the offer?” asked Carver Two. He and Cal had spent a solid hour or so in the pod, working out all the details. It had involved diagrams, and everything.

“Offer?” said Loren. “What offer?”

“Details,” said Cal, with a wave of his hand. He smiled at Carver Two. “Like I say, we’ll smooth it over.”

“I recognize that smile,” said Two. “And to say it does not fill me with confidence would be an understatement.”

He stared long and hard at Cal, then sighed. “But we have no choice. Sixty-Nine and Fifty will reconfigure the bumpers, and pre-program them for the return trip. The offer must be made from within your universe. We will provide you with a remote control apparatus so that you may initiate your return once the deal has been struck.”

“Jesus. ‘Remote control apparatus’? Since when did we call it that?” asked Cal. “Call it by its proper name.”

“That is its proper name,” said Two.

Cal raised his eyebrows in encouragement. “Come on, you can do it.”

Two tutted. “Fine. We will provide you with a doohickey, so that you may initiate your return.”

“There you go!” said Cal. “Didn’t that feel better?”

“To my great annoyance, yes,” admitted Carver Two. “Yes, it did.”

Chunky Cal and Tattoo Neck Cal hurried to opposite sides of the Untitled, where two semi-circular clamps had been attached beneath the bottom set of wings.

“We’ll put you back in your universe, on an approach vector with the big weird space thing,” said Chunky Cal, who – unlike Two – hadn’t lost his essential Cal-ness. “You won’t be too close, but you’ll be able to see it.”

“Will it be frozen?” Cal asked. “You know, like everything else?”

“No, that’s only affecting Earth,” said Carver Fifty, flipping open a panel in one of the clamps and adjusting a number of tiny intricate levers.

“Ye couldnae hae thunk wid frozen the hale lot, surely?”

Cal blinked. “Sorry, I have no idea what… Something about Shirley?” He looked at Mech and the others. “Any of you guys know a Shirley? No?” He turned back to Carver Eighty-Three. “No, we don’t know a Shirley. Sorry, dude.”

“Done,” said Chunky Cal, closing his panel.

Tattoo Neck pulled a face, fiddled with a few more switches, then closed his panel, too. He fished in his pocket and produced something that looked like it had come from a gun. There was a handle and trigger, but where the barrel should have been was nothing but a slim metal wire with a flashing red ball on top.

“One doohickey.”

Cal took it, testing the weight of it in his hand.

“Whatever you do, don’t pull the trigger yet,” said Carver Fifty.

Cal pulled the trigger. Nothing happened.

“Kidding,” said Fifty. “Totally knew you’d do that. It’ll only work from your universe. We’ll launch you from here.”

Cal flashed a grin at Fifty. “You guys know me so well.”

He turned to Carver Two. “And stop looking so worried. We have totally got this under control.”

Cal led the others back up the ramp, then turned at the top. “Oh, and you know I’m keeping the Ghostbusters bean bag, right?”

Carver Two nodded. “Yes, I know. Good luck, Ninety-Nine. The fate of the Earths is on your shoulders.”

Splurt rippled, just slightly.

“As well as that green thing, obviously,” added Carver Two, then he tapped his finger to his forehead in salute, and Cal returned it as the ramp raised into position between them.

“I suggest you all buckle up, and quickly,” said Kevin, his voice tainted with panicky tones. “Something very odd is happening that I’m not sure I wholly approve of.”

“We’re going to make a dimension jump,” said Cal, following the others to the bridge. “If it reassures you, we already jumped the ship to get you all here, and no one died. You’ll barely notice it.”

“Well, if you can cope with it, it can’t be too bad,” said Loren, sliding into her chair.

“Exactly!” Cal agreed. “I didn’t even throw up a little bit, and there was, like, zero in the way of accidental bodily functions.”

“I feel like you’re looking for a ‘Well done,’ there,” said Mech. “Just so you know, I ain’t gonna congratulate you for not shizzing your pants.”

“I will, sir,” said Kevin. “And, on behalf of the washing machine, thank you.”

“Thank you, Kevin. I appreciate that,” said Cal. The ship began to hum with vibration, and fingers of white light crept across the viewscreen. Cal quickly pulled on his seat belt, and set Splurt down in his lap. “OK, looks like we’re ready for blast-off.”

“Readings are all over the place,” said Loren, tapping her controls. The side of the panel, which had been broken off, was now back in place, but held on with tape. “I hope they know what they’re doing.”

“Hey, come on. They’re all me,” said Cal.

An awkward silence descended on the bridge.

“Great,” sighed Miz, after what was quite a long time. “We’re totally all going to die.”

The vibration of the ship rose to a loud buzzing sound as the white glow spread like a fast-growing fungus across the screen.

“Hey, now, not so negative,” said Cal, raising his voice over the din.

“Fine. We’re probably all going to die. That better?” said Miz.

“Much,” replied Cal, and then the screen flashed white, their stomachs all lurched, and the laws of conventional physics unfurled like a loose thread before them.

CHAPTER EIGHT

When the whiteness retreated, the big weird space thing loomed in space ahead of them, still doing its weird ripple thing.

Up close, it looked less like one big cloud, and more like billions of smaller clouds, that all just happened to be heading the same way at the same time. A paler orange glow emanated from the center of the vaporous mass, creating a shimmering glitter effect where it reflected off thousands of metallic particles floating within the thing.

“There it is,” Loren whispered.

“Duh,” said Miz.

“What do the scanners pick up?” Cal asked.

Mech tapped some controls. “I got no idea. The data that’s coming back is… I don’t know. I ain’t seen anything like it before.”

“The Carver Council – because I have my own council now. Don’t know if you noticed?”

“We did,” Mech grunted.

“They had a name for it. Not weird space thing, I mean, something different,” said Cal. “Even though, if you ask me, my name was better.”

They sat staring out at the thing for a while. If it knew they were there, it was doing nothing to show it. It was creeping in the direction of Earth, but with a very deliberate slowness that suggested it was in no great rush.

“So, what now?” Loren asked. “Do we hail it? Try to, you know, strike up a conversation, or whatever?”

“I don’t know,” Cal admitted.

Mech’s head snapped around. “What do you mean, you don’t know? You told us to trust you, which, if you ask me, suggests you had at least some idea of what you were doing.”

“No, I asked you to trust me,” Cal corrected. “If you trusted me, you did so of your own free will, so I can’t be blamed for anything that happens to us. Can we all agree on that now? Nothing is my fault.”

“Oh, it’s all your fault!” Mech said.

“Maybe we, like, fly into it?” Miz guessed.

Cal chewed his lip. “Doesn’t that seem a little, I don’t know, forward? Just, like, ‘Oh, hi, Ikumor-whatever. Excuse us while we violate you with our spaceship.”

Miz sat upright in her seat. This was rare, and worthy of note in itself. The alarm in her voice was what really caught everyone’s attention, though. “Wait, what? Ikumordo? Are you saying that’s Ikumordo?”

“Uh, yeah, pretty sure that’s what they called it,” said Cal. “Why?”

“Loren, get us out of here. Now!” Miz barked.

Loren looked back over her shoulder. “What? Why?”

“Just do it,” said Miz. She snarled, but it only lasted a moment before her expression became uncharacteristically soft and vulnerable. “Please. Just get us out of here.”

“You know this thing?” Cal asked. “I mean, I’m assuming not on a personal level, but… You know what it is?”

Miz nodded, her eyes not shifting from the thing on screen. “My dad used to talk about it when I was little,” she whispered. “He saw it, back when he was a kid. Him and my grandfather. He used to say it swallowed a whole solar system. Just, like, devoured it, or whatever – planets, moons, sun, everything. He used to have nightmares about it. I’d hear him wake up screaming pretty much every night.”

“And we’re sure that was this Ikumordo?” said Cal. “I mean, it does sound like its M.O. I guess, but this thing isn’t big enough to eat a whole solar system, is it?”

“How many Ikumordos can there be?” Loren asked. “Maybe it shrunk.”

“Whatever, we need to get away from it,” said Miz. She looked imploringly from Loren to Cal. “Please.”

“I’m rather afraid we can’t, ma’am,” announced Kevin. “It appears we’re caught in some kind of tractor beam.”

Loren tested the controls. “He’s right, I’m getting nothing.”

“Oh, shizz,” Miz whispered. “Oh, shizz, this is it. We really are going to die.”

“Hey, relax. I got this,” said Cal. “The other Cals thought something like this would happen. This is a good thing. This is just what we wanted. OK?”

Cal turned his chair back to face the front. Mech caught his eye, and Cal gave a worried little shrug in reply. On screen, Ikumordo seemed to expand as they were pulled towards it. Wisps of orange hugged the screen like early-morning fog, while further ahead, deeper inside the cloud, something soft and fluffy became solid and rigid.

“We have officially penetrated the big weird space thing,” Cal whispered. “And we didn’t even have to buy it a drink.”

He looked around at the others, half hoping for some sort of reaction, but everyone was transfixed by all the shimmering orangeness.

The Currently Untitled jolted softly as it touched down inside the cloud. “I don’t get it,” said Mech. “Scanners ain’t showing nothing below us. Kevin, did you drop the landing legs?”

“Not me, sir,” said Kevin. “I think Ikumordo may have done it.”

“Shizz,” Mech grunted. “So it can control our ship. That’s not good.”

“Wait, no, hang on,” said Kevin. “I tell a lie. I don’t think I put them away after we left the bubble universe.”

“You sure?” Mech asked.

“Oh yes, sir. Absolutely,” said Kevin. “Well, fifty-fifty.”

Loren looked back over her shoulder. “Now what?”

“Can we take off again?” asked Miz.

“Theoretically, yes,” said Kevin. “The tractor beam is no longer holding us.”

“Then let’s, like, get out of here,” Miz said.

“Hold on, hold on,” said Cal, unclipping his belt. He stood up. “Let’s go out there and talk to it, see if we can make it see sense. It’s either that, or let an infinite number of Earths all die, and I’m not sure my conscience can handle that, can’t speak for anyone else.”

“I’m not going out there,” said Miz. “I’m staying here.”

“Fair enough,” said Cal. “Loren, Mech?”

Mech nodded. Loren unclipped her own belt and stood up. “No way we’re letting you do this yourself,” she said.

“Yeah, man, you’d totally fonk it up,” said Mech. “Hell, I’m thinking we tie you up and leave you here with Miz, just to be on the safe side.”

“Probably best,” Cal agreed, but then he led the way out into the corridor. Just before he reached the back hatch, he set Splurt down on the floor and squatted beside him. “Keep an eye on Miz, OK, buddy? She looked kinda freaked out, and I don’t want to leave her alone.”

“Don’t worry, sir—” Kevin began.

“Or with Kevin,” Cal continued. He rubbed Splurt’s head. The little blob’s eyes gazed up at him with absolute sincerity. “Thanks, pal,” said Cal. “Knew you wouldn’t let me down.”

He stood up, nodded once to Loren and Mech, then dropped the hatch. Loren jumped back, her arms across her face, her eyes wide in panic.

“What the fonk are you doing?” yelped Mech. “We’re in space! You can’t just drop the motherfonking hatch!”

Cal glanced outside, then back at the cyborg. “Why?”

“What do you mean, ‘Why’? Because there’s no fonking atmosphere, that’s why!”

Cal leaned outside, inhaled deeply through his nose a few times, then leaned back in. “I think it’s OK,” he said, then he trudged down the ramp and stopped just before the bottom.

The ground beneath the ship didn’t look like ground at all. It was wispy and white like dry ice, with a vague sort of transparency to it that showed the heaving mass of orange below. The Untitled stood on it, which suggested it was solid, but all the primal parts of Cal’s brain were making it very clear that they believed otherwise. Cal blew towards it, and the top layer of mist drifted away from him, which did nothing to boost his confidence.

“Mech?” Cal asked.

There was a brief pause as Mech tapped the controls on his forearm. “Sensors got nothing. Lot of other readings from further inside this thing – lot of other readings. Far as I can tell, though, there’s nothing beneath us.”

“Great,” said Loren. “So what do we do?”

“We take it slowly,” said Mech. “Maybe link arms or—”

Cal jumped off the ramp. The ground held him. “It’s totally fine,” he said. He jumped up and down a few times for emphasis. “See? Nothing to worry about.”

He held a hand out, but Loren batted it away. She took half a second to compose herself, then stepped onto the fluffy whiteness. “Huh,” she said. “It’s solid.”

Mech moved less confidently. He shuffled closer to the bottom of the ramp, his eyes darting between his scanners and the thing his scanners were insisting wasn’t there.

“Come on, we haven’t got all day,” said Cal. “It’s fine. Look.”

He jumped up and down again. Loren flinched and shot her feet a look of concern, but the ground held firm.

Mech glared at Cal. “I swear, man, if this is some kinda trick, and I fonking plummet through this shizz, you’re a dead man.”

“What do you mean ‘a trick’?” Cal snorted. “What, are were wearing rocket boots? Come on, it’s fine. It’ll hold you.”

“How d’you know? I’m heavier than you two.”

“Not as heavy as the ship,” Loren pointed out.

“Although,” added Cal. “I didn’t like to say, but… have you put on a few pounds lately?”

“Fonk you, man,” said Mech. He stepped off the ramp in a sort of wide-eyed panicky lunge, briefly shouted, “Yaargh!” then jolted noisily when his weight crashed down onto the cloud.

“There, see?” said Cal. “Nothing to worry about.”

They turned and took in their surroundings. Other than, “Ooh, it’s orange,” there wasn’t a lot to say about the place. It was like being in the middle of a thick fog, albeit one the color of a certain popular citrus fruit. Little shiny flecks danced through the cloud like tiny fish, shooting away whenever anyone got within grabbing distance.

Through the mist, Cal could just make out the glowing center of Ikumordo. The white platform they had landed on seemed to stretch out towards it, so Cal set off in that direction, with Loren and Mech flanking him on either side.

“So, you’ve got a plan, right?” said Loren. “You know what you’re doing?”

Cal nodded. “Yeah. The other Cals, they’ve been planning for this. They just needed me to… deliver the message.”

“I don’t get it,” said Mech.

“Which bit?” asked Cal.

“The whole fonking thing. Why is there a Carver Council? I mean, why are you, of all the people alive, in charge of stopping this thing?”

Cal shrugged. It was a good question, but one that it hadn’t actually occurred to him to ask. “We can ask this Carver Prime dude when we get back. He’s the guy who started it all. I’m just a cog in the wheel. Just one Cal Carver among many. Although, I think we’ll all agree, I’m definitely the best-looking one.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Loren. “That guy with the beard and the staff was kind of easy on the eye.”

“What? No!” said Cal. “What? Him? No. I mean, he’s literally called ‘Number Two.’ Imagine if you got married. You’d be Mrs Number Two. No. Trust me, you don’t even want to go there.”

“But, I mean… Why you?” Mech asked again. From the way he said it, it seemed like the very idea of the Carver Council had personally offended him in some way. Which, to be fair, Cal thought, it probably had.

“Honestly? I have no idea,” said Cal. “I mean, much as I enjoy racing around the galaxy having adventures and all that stuff, I think we can agree that it’s a miracle I haven’t been killed yet.”

“You were,” Loren reminded him. “But you came back.”

“My point exactly,” said Cal. “If I was putting together a list of people to save the universe, I don’t think I’d even make the top ten. So Carver Prime must by pretty cocksure to put together an entire team made up exclusively of himself. I mean, even I think that’s a bad idea, and I have, let’s be honest, a disproportionately high opinion of myself.”

“You don’t say?” said Loren.

They plodded on in silence for a while, the soft paf of their footsteps swallowed by the fog.

“So what the fonk are we doing here?” asked Mech. “You just said yourself, this is a bad idea.”

“Yeah, but it’s the only idea we’ve got,” said Cal. “The council has a plan. They made a pretty compelling case. I’ll talk to it, make the offer, then we’ll play it by ear.”

“What’s the offer?” asked Loren.

Cal squirmed. “Uh, probably best if I don’t say it yet.” He gestured around them. “It could be listening. I want to do it, like, face to face, or whatever. Trust me.”

Loren shot him a quizzical look. “You keep saying that. That we should trust you.”

“Well, you should,” said Cal. “Seriously, this is all going to be fine. There’s nothing to worry about.”

He stopped as the wall of orange parted before them, revealing a wide clearing in the cloud.

A head floated in the center of the clearing. It was a large head, stretching maybe twenty feet from pointy chin to bulging forehead. It was made of the same orange cloud, but more densely packed together, giving the impression it was almost solid.

The head’s perfectly round, stupidly large eyes glared at Cal and the others with such intensity they were physically pushed back a full step.

“Who dares approach the great Ikumordo?” the head demanded in a voice like a tropical storm. “Speak. Explain. Or be destroyed!”

“OK, maybe worry a little bit about that guy,” said Cal. “But otherwise, this is all going great!”

CHAPTER NINE

The ominous floating head watched impassively as Cal approached, Mech and Loren striding along on either side.

“Hi there! Ikumordo?” Cal said. “I’ll be honest, no one told me you’d be a big head. That is pretty cool. Don’t you think, guys?”

“Yeah,” said Mech, although he sounded unconvinced. “Fonking awesome.”

“And he’s not easily impressed, so that’s saying something,” said Cal. He gestured around at the empty space in the cloud. “Nice place you’ve got here. Homely.”

Ikumordo’s voice boomed from every direction at once. “What manner of creature are you?”

“Which one?” asked Cal. “Me? I’m a human. I’m from Earth. You know, that planet you’re about to eat? Which is why we’re here, actually.”

He looked down at his feet, flexed his fingers a few times, then took a deep breath before looking up again. “See, I’ve been asked to make you an offer. You know, like a deal.”

“Ikumordo does not make deals.”

“Yeah, well, at least listen to it. I mean, it’s not like you’re in a rush. Earth’s not going anywhere, am I right?”

There was a long, lingering silence. Loren sidled closer to Cal.

“This isn’t working,” she whispered.

“Trust me,” said Cal.

“There you go again,” Loren muttered, and then the thunder of Ikumordo’s voice drowned out whatever she said next.

“Then speak.”

“OK, great. You won’t regret this,” said Cal. He glanced at the others, then drew in a breath. “See, the thing is, while I’m sure you’re a nice… big space thing, and don’t mean to do any harm, when you eat a planet, it’s really not good for the people living there. Like really not good. They die, basically. And probably not in very nice ways. Now, I’m not pointing fingers here, you probably didn’t know that was the case, but—”

“I knew. Ikumordo knows all.”

“Oh,” said Cal, running out of steam a little. “Oh. Right. I see.” He shrugged. “Well, anyway, I’ve recently been approached by a group of individuals gathered from different dimensions – parallel universes, or whatever – and they’re concerned that, by eating Earth, you’ll kill an infinite number of innocent people. Which, and I think you’ll feel the same way, seems like a lot.”

Ikumordo didn’t respond. Its wide eyes continued to stare.

Cal swallowed. “So, see, they asked me to make an offer. A trade. My entire universe, in return for the safety of every other Earth.”

“What?” said Loren, turning sharply. “That’s the deal?”

Cal ignored her. “They want me to suggest that you eat this whole universe – every last corner – and leave all the other Earths in the other dimensions alone.”

“Oh, you have got to be fonking kidding me,” growled Mech, his fingers balling into fists.

“Cal, no, you can’t do this,” said Loren. “I mean… You can’t.”

Ikumordo’s voice was as bone-shaking as ever, but there was a hint of something like intrigue in there, too. “This is your offer? This is the deal you wish to make with Ikumordo?”

Cal raised a finger. “Not exactly,” he said. “See, those guys I told you about, that’s the offer they wanted me to make, and they were pretty persuasive, to their credit. But that’s not the offer I’m actually making. The offer I’m making is this.”

He took a step closer to Ikumordo’s floating head. “Turn around. Fly away. Leave my planet alone, and I’ll let you live.”

Ikumordo’s eyes became even wider, before its features tightened into a frown. “You dare threaten me?”

“Hey!” said Cal, grinning. “Threaten? No. I’m not threatening anyone. I’m just offering a deal. A trade. You leave, and in return, I let you live.” His smile fell away. “But I suggest you take it, because I can guarantee that it’s the best offer you’re going to get, you world-killing piece of shizz.”

He clenched his fists, getting agitated. “You think you can come here to my solar system and mess with my home planet? Not going to happen, cloud boy. So you can turn around, fly on out of here, and never look back,” – he straightened his shoulders and puffed out his chest – “or you’re going to have us to answer to. We’re Space Team, shizznod, and we don’t stand for—”

Twin blasts of purple lightning exploded from Ikumordo’s eyes. Cal yelped and slapped at his legs as the bottom of his pants went up in flames.

“Ooh, that backfired, didn’t it?” he said, shooting Mech and Loren a worried glance.

“What?” Mech spluttered. “That was the plan? Threaten it?”

“Well, it was my plan, not really the plan,” Cal admitted.

More lightning erupted from Ikumordo’s eyes. It licked across Mech’s metal frame, briefly lighting him up like a Kroyshuk tree. “Ow! Fonking fonking shizz fonk!” Mech hissed.

“Eloquent as ever, Mech,” said Cal. He glanced between the cyborg and Loren, then up at Ikumordo. The head was growing larger, the face now twisted into an impossible scowl.

“What do we think? Run away?” Cal said. Ikumordo’s mouth opened, revealing a swirling vortex of fire within. “Yeah, I think running away.”

“I fonking hate you, man,” Mech said through gritted teeth. “Whatever happens, I want you to know that.”

“Thanks, I’ll keep it in mind,” said Cal. He spun on the spot, drawing the two blaster pistols that had been tucked into his belt. He opened fire on Ikumordo, but the energy bolts passed straight through the head as if it wasn’t there. “Yeah, thought that might happen,” Cal admitted, then he turned on his heels and ran.

Shapes emerged from the fog around them as Cal, Mech and Loren raced back towards the Untitled. The shapes were vaguely humanoid, and lurched out of the cloud like clockwork soldiers, their wispy limbs becoming more solid with each step.

“I can’t believe you got us here so you could threaten a god!” Loren cried, ducking as one of the figures made a grab for her.

“I wasn’t threatening. That was, like, mild sass-talk at worst,” said Cal. He swung a punch at another of the soldiers and discovered it was more solid than it looked. Something in his hand went crack, but the cloud figure barely flinched.

He grimaced, then blasted a couple of the cloud men in the chest. They exploded into vapor, then immediately began to reform.

“Besides, would you have preferred me to go with the other plan?” asked Cal, firing wildly ahead to clear a path through the closing throngs of soldiers. “You know, the plan in which the entire universe gets eaten?”

Mech’s fist smashed through the head of another of the clawing figures, disintegrating it. Almost as soon as it had been destroyed, though, it began to grow back. “What the fonk are these things?” he grunted.

“I’m thinking ‘bad guys,’” said Cal. “You know, what with the way they’re all trying to attack us.”

He ducked another grasping pair of arms, blasted the thing’s upper body into water droplets, then pushed on. The Untitled was just ahead, but there was a dozens-deep wall of fog-folk blocking the path.

“Shizz,” said Loren, pulling her own blaster. She picked off a couple, but they were reforming faster than ever now, sprouting new heads and forming new torsos almost instantly.

“Mech!” said Cal. “Arm guns would be nice.”

“They ain’t online yet,” Mech said. “I hadn’t finished hooking everything back together.”

“What?” Cal spluttered. “Why not?”

“Because fonk you, that’s why not! How was I supposed to know you were going to drag us into this shizz?”

“OK, fair point, well made,” said Cal. He and the others were completely encircled by the heaving mass of cloud people now. Their wispy softness had become a crystalline solidity. Their skin – or whatever it was – sparkled like gemstones as they moved in for the kill.

And then the world was filled with fire and noise and bits of flying fog-person as the Currently Untitled opened fire. Half a dozen beams of white light sliced through the crowds, carving a path straight through. Cal, Loren and Mech dashed along it, ducked under the Untitled, and made their way to the ramp.

Once aboard, Mech slammed the button to close the hatch, and clanked through to the bridge, where Cal and Loren were already strapping themselves into their seats.

“I told you!” Miz said, scowling. “I told you this was a totally bad idea, but you didn’t listen.”

“Hmm?” said Cal. “Sorry, wasn’t listening. Nice shooting, Kevin!”

“Thank you, sir,” said Kevin. “I try. Really, it was a simple case of projecting the movements of the individual attackers, then formulating—”

“That’s great, Kev, now shut up,” said Cal. “We need to get out of here, right now.”

“Very good, sir,” said Kevin. The Untitled hummed as the engines fired up, then shuddered as it lurched backwards off the cloud platform.

Lightning flashed in the orange haze all around them, casting sinister shadows across the bridge. Miz looked around anxiously, and Cal felt Splurt roll himself up against the back of his legs, and sit there, shivering.

“I don’t like this,” Miz whispered.

The Untitled rocked as lightning stabbed at its hull. “Not exactly loving every minute of it, either, ma’am,” Kevin intoned. “If that’s any consolation?”

The ship jerked violently, throwing everyone forward in their chairs. Even Mech staggered, before his magnetic feet re-engaged and snapped him to a stop.

“Tractor beam!” Loren announced. “It’s holding us.”

“Kevin, shoot that thing. Blast us free,” Cal ordered.

“Can’t, sir,” said Kevin. “Weapons are non-responsive. Whatever it’s holding us with, it’s blocking access to the ship’s functions.”

“What? No! We have to get away from it,” cried Miz. “We can’t stay here. We can’t die here!”

“The doohickey!” said Cal. “The dimension things. Mech!”

Mech frowned. “What?”

“The doohickey.”

“What about it?”

“Have you got it?”

Mech’s frown became a full-blown scowl. “What? No! Why the fonk would I have it? You had it!”

Cal shook his head. “No, I gave it to you. Or Loren? Loren, did I give it to…?” He held up a hand. “Oh, wait, no, sorry. I have it. I thought it was in the other pocket.”

“Just hurry up and use it!” said Loren, as another fork of lightning stabbed at them from above.

The doohickey had just one trigger. Cal pulled it, and a sheen of rapidly crystalizing white bloomed across the viewscreen like frost.

Everything changed in an instant. The white reached the point of full coverage, then was gone, replaced by a cream-colored sky and, quite a long way down, the ground.

Suddenly free of the tractor beam, the Currently Untitled shot upwards and backwards, weaving erratically as Kevin tried to bring the ship back under control. From somewhere above them came a low, slightly rubbery thoink, like someone slapping a waterbed. The sky around them rippled and wobbled, then the Untitled rebounded and fell into an out-of-control plunge.

As the ship listed sideways, Cal saw several members of the Carver Council scattering for cover. Unfortunately, most of the cover available was in the form of flimsy tents, and was unlikely to offer much in the way of protection from a large spaceship falling out of the sky.

“Kevin, pull us up!” said Cal, gripping his arm rests. “We’re going to kill all the other mes. And probably this me, too.”

“Trying, sir, but we have a power glitch. Attempting to reroute thrusters.”

“Kevin!” Loren cried, as the ground spiraled towards them.

“Now,” chimed Kevin, and the Untitled came to a deeply uncomfortable stop in mid-air. Cal’s spine briefly compacted, taking a couple of inches off his height, before springing back to its normal shape and length again.

The ship’s nose lifted, bringing the Untitled onto an even keel.

“Want me to take us down?” Loren asked.

“Uh, like, no,” said Miz. “Kevin’s got it.”

“Well, he did just almost kill everyone, so…” Loren’s hands went to the controls, but before she could use them, the Untitled touched down on the grass.

“No need, ma’am,” Kevin chimed. “We’re back on solid ground. No need for you to get involved.”

“Great,” said Loren, releasing her grip on the joystick. “Seriously, that’s… That’s great.”

Through the viewscreen, Cal saw Carver Two and a phalanx of other alternates approaching. They stopped thirty or so feet from the ship, and Two stood his staff beside him in a way that suggested he was already growing impatient.

Cal waved, then remembered it was a screen, not a window, and nobody could see him. “Probably best if you leave the talking to me,” he said, unclipping his belt and standing up.

“What are you going to tell them?” asked Loren.

“The truth,” Cal said. “Or, you know, maybe a lie. I haven’t actually decided yet. Let’s just wing it, and see what happens. Kevin, the scanners get anything interesting I can give them?”

“Not really, sir,” Kevin said. “It’s all rather bewildering, if I’m honest. Lots of data, but none of it making any sense.”

“Shizz,” Cal muttered. “I was hoping we’d find something useful.”

“There is one thing, sir,” said Kevin. “Although the data I’ve gathered is all quite nonsensical, it’s nonsensical in a very structured sort of way.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning… I don’t know, sir. Perhaps that Ikumordo is deliberately trying to hide something from us. Perhaps the data I’ve collected isn’t gibberish, but is merely encrypted.”

“Right,” said Cal. “But either way, we know nothing, right?”

“I’m afraid that is the case, sir, yes.”

Cal puffed out his cheeks. “Well, keep trying. Maybe there’ll be something in there.” He turned to the others. “OK, I guess we go do this.”

One descent down the landing ramp and casual stroll across the grass later, Cal stood facing Carver Two. The options he had been considering – ‘Lie,’ and ‘Tell the truth,’ - had now been joined by a third option: ‘None of the above.’

This third possibility was intriguing Cal in ways the others weren’t, largely because he had no idea what it would actually involve, other than neither lying nor being honest about what had happened inside Ikumordo. Maybe he could just pretend he had no idea what Carver Two was talking about. Or feign deafness.

Maybe he could pretend to be an entirely different Cal from a previously undiscovered universe, who’d wound up here by accident.

No. The more he thought about it, the more he realized, ‘None of the above,’ wasn’t really a viable option at all. That narrowed things down to his original two options.

Before he could decide which to go for, the heavy end of Two’s staff cracked him across the jaw, spinning him to the ground. Loren drew her blaster. Miz flashed her claws. Splurt wrapped himself around Cal’s hand, becoming a giant green fist with spikes for knuckles.

Behind Carver Two, the other Cals pulled their own weapons – blasters, swords, something that looked not unlike a fairy wand – and pointed them in the team’s direction.

“Easy, easy,” Cal urged, raising his hands and gesturing for calm. The fact one of his hands now looked capable of punching a hole in the moon didn’t really help, but he persisted anyway. “No need for anyone to get crazy. We’re all friends here.”

“Friends?” spat Carver Two. “You were supposed to make our offer. You were supposed to appease Ikumordo, not challenge it to a fight.”

“You wanted me to sign the death warrant for my whole universe,” said Cal. “Surely you guys know me better than that?”

Two’s face was red with anger. “What I know is that we do what’s right. We do what we must to ensure the survival of the Earths, even if that means making the hard decisions. Every other member of this council would have been prepared to make our offer. Every single one.”

At the edge of the group, a thin, willowy-limbed Cal with black-dyed hair raised a hand.

“Except him,” said Two, flinching just enough for it to be visible. “Every Carver, except him, would have been prepared to make that sacrifice, but instead you betray us. You destroy our only chance of saving our worlds.”

“OK, I’ll admit, I kinda got a bit carried away,” said Cal. “I’ll be honest, I thought Ikumordo was going to back down. I did my serious face, strong voice, back straight, the works. He’s obviously made of pretty stern stuff. Maybe if I can talk to Carver Prime, we can work this out.”

“You are not getting to talk to Carver Prime,” said Two. There was a bleep from his wrist. He glanced down at the device he wore there, read the message, then read it again because he couldn’t possibly have read it correctly the first time.

After reading it for a fourth time, he decided that, yes, it did actually say what he’d thought it had. He rolled his staff around in his hand until his knuckles turned white.

“Carver Prime wants to talk to you,” he announced through gritted teeth. A murmuring of surprise rippled through the other Carvers.

“Jings, ‘at wisnae whit wi wis a’ expectin’,” said Carver Eighty-Three from somewhere in the throng. The murmuring briefly took on an undertone of confusion, before going back to plain old shock again.

“Great!” said Cal. He gestured for Loren to lower her blaster, and for Miz to put her claws away. “I’m sure we’ll have this sorted out in no time.”

They were led to a pod similar to Carver Two’s. This time, though, when the plastic door was pushed open, the pod was revealed to be completely empty.

Carver Two produced another doohickey, different to the one that had transported the ship back to the blister dimension, and tapped a button on the front. A single blue-white doorway rose up from the floor, reached full size, then sat there, quietly fizzing and popping to itself in the otherwise empty space.

“Carver Prime awaits,” said Two, indicating the doorway with his staff.

“You’re not coming?” asked Cal.

“Prime has requested you and your companions. No one else,” said Two.

“Aw, shame,” said Cal. “You must be disappointed.”

“Far from it,” said Two. “Those summoned before Carver Prime are rarely pleased by the outcome.” He gestured to the door again. “Now go. Go and face your fate.”

Cal squeezed past Two and shuffled towards the door. “Jesus, and I thought I was a drama queen,” he said. He waited until the others had fallen into line behind him. Splurt was no longer being a big fist, and had become a rather fetching garland of flowers around Cal’s neck, instead. Cal wasn’t sure it was quite the first impression he had been hoping to make, but he didn’t have the heart to tell that to Splurt.

“Right, off we go, then. Stay in line. Nobody wander off,” said Cal. “Miz, I’m looking at you here.”

He stepped through the doorway before Miz could reply, and squinted in the blinding glow of the blue-white light. It faded quickly into near darkness when he emerged on the other side, forcing him to blink several times to try to clear the rectangular halo currently filling his view.

The others came through behind him, first Loren, then Miz, and Mech clanking along at the rear. “Where are we?” Loren asked.

Miz sniffed the air. “Don’t know, but there’s someone here. Right there.” She nodded ahead. A figure approached, the gloom making it almost impossible to make out any details.

Carver Prime was shorter than Cal had been expecting. Not Eighty-Three short, by any means, but shorter than Cal himself. Skinnier, too.

“Hey there,” said Cal, waving into the darkness. “You must be Carver Prime. I’m Cal. But then, I suppose we’re all Cal. Except these guys, who aren’t.” He pointed to Mech and grinned. “Although some of them would like to be. Am I right?”

Mech sighed, but said nothing. Carver Prime came closer through the gloom, and Cal got the impression of blond hair. This also caught him off guard. He’d been expecting Carver Prime to be big, mean and scary. Possibly bald, but in that shaven-headed military sort of way, rather than a male-pattern sort of way.

What he hadn’t been expecting was someone short, skinny and blond.

Carver Prime stepped into the pool of electric-blue light that was being emitted by the door, and Cal’s surprise levels peaked up to ‘full blown shock’. Carver Prime looked nothing like Cal, but then that, in itself, wasn’t really a surprise, because Carver Prime wasn’t Cal. Not even some weird, alternate version of him.

A Carver, yes, but not that one.

The blond-haired teenage girl in the shadows met his gaze. “Hey, Dad,” she said.

And the bottom dropped out of Cal Carver’s world.

CHAPTER TEN

It had been nine years since the accident. Nine years since he had last seen her face.

She was older now, of course. She should be sixteen, but looked older still. Eighteen or nineteen, maybe.

The last time he’d seen her hair, it had been hanging in ringlets. She’d smiled at him, proudly showing off the gaps where a few baby teeth had recently fallen out.

Now, her hair was tightly scraped back, and all her adult teeth had come in. He could tell, because of the way she was angrily baring them.

Cal fumbled through a couple of attempted sentences. “How can you be…? I mean, I know how you… But how can…?”

He gave up at that point, and went back to staring, slack-jawed, instead.

“Wait, ‘Dad’?” said Loren, looking between Cal and the girl. “What does she mean?”

Cal licked his lips, which were suddenly dusty and dry. “She means… Well, she means I’m her dad. It’s a pretty self-explanatory statement, really.”

“You’re not my dad,” the girl spat.

Mech frowned. “OK, now I’m confused. And I was already confused. You just said he was, now you’re saying he ain’t? What the fonk is going on here?”

Cal clenched and unclenched his jaw a few times. He blinked, hoping it would stop the prickling at the back of his eyes. It didn’t.

“I have a daughter. Had a daughter. Or, I don’t know, maybe have,” said Cal. “Lily. She… Uh, she died.”

There was silence from the others while they processed this. The flower garland around Cal’s neck pressed itself more firmly to his chest, and he gave it a reassuring pat.

“Shizz,” said Mech. “I’m sorry, man.”

Loren placed a hand on his arm and squeezed it, but said nothing.

“Like, why didn’t you tell us?” asked Miz. “I mean, that’s not… I don’t mean…”

“I know,” said Cal, shooting her a half-smile.

The Lily in front of him crossed her arms over her chest with an air of indignation almost worthy of Miz. God, she was beautiful. She’d always looked like her mother, but she’d grown into Caroline’s looks even more as she’d gotten older.

“How did she die?” Lily asked.

Cal wrinkled his nose, pushing the tears back. “Car accident. She and her mom, they…” He looked down, cleared his throat quietly, then looked up again. “Car accident.”

“That’s funny,” said Lily, then a pained expression flitted across her face. “No, I mean, as in ‘ironic’ not ‘ha-ha’. See, where I come from, you died in that accident. You and Mom. Or, no, him and Mom. I survived.”

Cal tried to think of something appropriate to say to that, but for the life of him couldn’t come up with anything. He settled on, “Oh,” because he felt he should probably offer some sort of response.

“Yeah,” said Lily. “Pretty much.”

“Who took care of you?”

Lily shrugged. “Grandparents. Both sets. Yours, mostly. They looked after the money, and the directors ran the company until I was old enough.”

Cal nodded, pleased to hear his parents had stepped up. It took a few seconds for the rest of Lily’s statement to filter through.

“Wait. Company? What company?”

“Your company,” said Lily. “The other you. Pandime Labs.”

“What is that? A dog breeder?” Cal asked.

“Labs as in laboratories,” said Lily. “Not as in Labradors.”

“Ah. Gotcha.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” said Mech, pointing to Cal. “You saying he was a scientist? Because, despite all the crazy shizz I’ve seen lately – and, girl, you have no idea – I’m finding that very hard to believe.”

“Where I come from, there is no religion, no music, no art. There’s science. Just science. I’ve been to thousands of Earths, and mine was the most advanced, by far.”

She gave a proud little tilt of her head that Cal recognized, and his heart almost exploded.

“My mom and dad ran a company, Pandime, investigating the possibility of inter-dimensional travel. They figured out other universes existed, and were working on a way to reach them.”

Lily shifted her weight onto her boot heels and briefly looked down at the toes, as if she’d find something interesting there. “And then the crash happened. And they were gone.”

“Oh, sweetheart, I’m so sorry,” Cal whispered. He reached for her, but she pulled back, all vulnerability leaving her as her face became hard and cold.

“I worked out Ikumordo was coming. I figured out Earth was next on the menu, but no one would believe me. I didn’t know how to stop it. How to fix it,” Lily said. “So I went to the one man I thought could fix everything.”

“Your dad,” said Loren.

Lily nodded, not taking her eyes off Cal. “I found hundreds, but none of them were him. Not really. Some of them looked like him – not as much as you, though. You’re… You look like him. Very much like him. But none of them knew the things he did, or could do the things he could.”

She began walking around the outside of Cal’s group, forcing them to turn to keep her in view. “See, my dad, he’d have stopped Ikumordo, whatever it took. He’d have saved our Earth. Every Earth. My dad could fix anything. But you?”

She looked him up and down, her face twisting into something like disgust. “You’re nothing like him. You didn’t fix things. You broke them. You made it all worse.”

“They were asking me to sacrifice a whole universe,” said Cal. “Do you really think your dad would have done that?”

“Yes!” Lily said, the word coming out halfway between a snarl and a sob. She stopped in front of the glowing doorway. “He would, if he’d had to!”

Cal ran his tongue across the back of his teeth. “Then I guess you’re right,” he said. “I’m not your dad.”

For a split-second, Lily looked wounded by that, and Cal wanted to run to her, hold her, tell her he was sorry, and that everything was going to be OK. But then she pulled herself together again, and the barrier went back up.

“Good,” she said, then she drew herself up to her full height and adopted an officious tone of voice that really didn’t suit her. “For your betrayal of the Carver Council, I have no choice but to inflict the maximum penalty. You will be banished to the Malwhere, the endless shadow realm, where you shall spend all eternity, haunted and hunted by the monsters contained within its walls.”

“Uh, yeah, we’d rather not,” said Cal. “Besides, you need us. We can help stop Ikumordo. We can save everyone, my – our – universe included.”

“It is the will of the council,” Lily said. She hesitated, then stumbled over the next few words. “It is the will of Carver Prime.”

“OK, fine. Fine,” said Cal. He folded his arms and very deliberately planted his feet on the ground. “Try to make us. We’re not going anywhere. This? This is a temper tantrum. We’ll just stand here and wait it out. You can’t make us go.”

Lily smiled, and for the first time ever, Cal saw her looking like him. He recognized that smirk, and realized, too late, his mistake.

“Oh, Cal,” said Lily, stepping backwards towards the door. “You’re already here.”

She retreated into the light. Miz pounced, but the door dropped down into the ground before she could reach it, plunging the area into darkness.

For a long time, no one said a word. It was Cal who eventually broke the silence.

“Tch,” he said. “Kids, eh?”

* * *

Much of the next twenty minutes passed in a string of aborted conversations and awkward, misspoken platitudes.

“Guys, it’s fine,” Cal finally told them, hoping that would draw a line under it all. It didn’t.

“But, I mean, a daughter, man,” said Mech. “And here I am, ragging on you all the time, or whatever, and… Why didn’t you say something?”

“How would that have worked?” asked Cal. It was still dark, but his eyes were becoming more accustomed to it now, and he could at least figure out roughly where everyone else was in relation to himself. “Like, ’Hey, my wife and kid died almost a decade ago, so don’t retaliate when I deliberately try to drive you crazy’?”

“You were married?” said Loren. She heard the accusatory tone in her voice, even if no one else did. “I mean, you were married. Right. I’m so sorry for your loss.”

“Jesus, what is this, the fonking Hallmark channel?” said Cal. “Nothing has changed here. I’m still me. You don’t have to act differently because my kid… Because of what happened.”

He looked over at where he thought the door had been. “Besides, she’s back now. You know, kind of.”

“But, like, she abandoned us in some kind of Hell dimension. Maybe you didn’t notice?” said Miz.

Cal conceded that one with a shrug. “Granted, not quite the family reunion I would have chosen, but it is what it is. Besides, there’s no way she’s going to leave us in here. She’ll be back.”

“You sure, man?” said Mech. “Looked to me like she was leaving us here permanently.”

“That’s because you don’t know her like I do,” said Cal. He sat down on the rocky ground, stretched his feet out in front of him, and leaned back on his arms. The stone was cold beneath him, but that was fine. He wouldn’t be sitting there long.

“She’ll be back. Mark my words. She’ll be back. Any minute now.”

* * *

Cal shivered. He had been shivering for some time now, despite Splurt transforming into a thick winter coat with a luxurious fur-lined hood, and a colorful pair of mittens attached to the sleeves. Loren sat shoulder to shoulder with him, also shivering. Splurt had made himself into a coat for her, too, although of the two, Cal’s was definitely nicer.

“F-for a Hell d-dimension, it’s f-f-fonking cold,” Loren stammered, her breath forming wispy gray clouds in the chilly darkness.

“A-a-any m-minute nnnnow,” Cal said, for about the hundredth time. He looked longingly at the spot where he thought the door had been – in actual fact, he was looking in completely the wrong direction – and crossed his fingers for the fifth or sixth time in as many minutes.

“Face it, man, she ain’t coming back,” said Mech. He and Miz both seemed unaffected by the cold, although Miz’s nose was bothering her, judging by the ways she kept sniffing. “We need to find a way to get you two warm.”

“Who u-us?” said Loren, her teeth chattering. “W-we’re f-f-f-f-f—“

“Fine,” Cal finished for her. “We’re f-f-f-f-f- Oh, f-fonk it.”

Mech held out a hand to Cal. “Gimme your guns.”

Cal blinked. This took quite a long time, due to the cold briefly making his eyelids stick together. “W-why?” he asked. “Are you g-going to sh-shoot us?”

“Yay!” said Loren, waving her clenched fists. “J-just kidding. D-don’t shoot us,” she said. “N-not yet.”

“Just gimme the motherfonking guns,” Mech snapped. Hands shaking, Cal passed the cyborg both his blasters.

“Guys,” said Miz. “We might have a problem.”

“One thing at a fonking time,” Mech muttered. Through the darkness, Cal saw him snap one of the blasters in two. Cal wanted to make a joke about Mech roughly manhandling his weapon, but decided it was too cold to bother, and that he should probably concentrate on not dying, instead.

“Move this boulder for me,” Mech said, indicating a large, flattish rock. Miz, who, like Mech, could see perfectly well in the dark, flashed him an indignant look.

“How come I have to…? Know what, forget it,” she said, sighing. She stood up, dusted herself down, then bent and picked up the boulder without any apparent effort. “But listen—”

“They’re about to freeze to death,” said Mech. “Anything else can wait. Put it down there next to them.”

Miz dropped the rock dangerously close to Loren and Cal’s feet. “Don’t see why they couldn’t just have moved closer to it,” she muttered.

“Why?” Mech snapped. “Because…” He hesitated. “Actually, no, that would’ve made sense. My bad.”

There was a bright blue spark from his hands. He bent quickly, and jammed part of the broken blaster pistol against the curved underside of the rock, then set to work taking the second gun apart.

As Mech worked, the lower edge of the rock began to glow a dull orange. A weak heat radiated from it, drawing Loren and Cal to it like moths to a flame.

There was another blue spark, and Mech jammed part of the second gun under the rock on the opposite side. The glow and the heat both increased exponentially, spreading through the boulder until it resembled a solid chunk of densely-packed fire.

“P-power cells?” said Loren, shuffling closer.

“Should buy us a couple of hours,” said Mech. “Maybe more. If this, I don’t know, night or cold snap or whatever lasts much longer… Then you two are going to be in trouble.”

“Yeah, I wouldn’t worry about that,” said Miz.

Mech looked at her and frowned. “Why?”

“Oh, you want to know now?” said Miz. “Now you’re interested in what I’ve been trying to tell you for the past, like, ten minutes.”

“Minute and a half,” Mech corrected. “Tops. And yes. Now I know those two ain’t about to freeze to death, I’m interested. What’s up?”

Miz rolled her tongue around in her mouth, as if considering whether to give him the satisfaction or not. Eventually, she relented, but tutted loudly to make sure everyone knew she wasn’t happy about it. She sniffed the air.

“We’ve got company.”

Mech looked down at the sensor panel on his forearm. There were lights on it. A number of lights.

Quite a large number, at that.

“Oh,” he said.

“Shizz,” he said.

And then, the night came alive around them.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Cal and Loren’s limited night vision had been hampered by the glow of the boulder, so they saw only shapes closing in around them. Big shapes. Big angry shapes, judging by the animalistic hisses and growls they were making.

Mech swung with a punch, and from the darkness came a sound like splintering bone. Something squealed, but then Mech was suddenly lost beneath a flailing mass of limbs and tails and teeth and torsos.

“Get the fonk off of me!” he snarled, lashing out with a series of crunching backhand strikes. He reached for the dial on his chest, but a thick, prehensile tail wrapped around his arm, holding it in place. Something slashed at him, its fingernails sparking across his metal chest.

Miz launched herself into the shapeless throng, her own claws ripping and tearing and slashing at anything that wasn’t a large aggressive cyborg. This, it turned out, was quite a lot of things, and soon her fur was matted with blood and the occasional chunk of glossy black flesh.

A shadow moved behind Cal and Loren, detaching itself from the darkness and lunging for them, teeth bared. The back of Cal’s coat formed itself into a very long, very sharp spike. The last thing to go through the creature’s head before it died was, “Ooh, shizz.”

Or, more accurately, the last thing to go through its head before it died was a huge metal spike, but, “Ooh, shizz,” was almost certainly a close second.

Cal and Loren both scrambled to their feet. As they were currently conjoined at the shoulder by Splurt, this wasn’t easy, and resulted in Cal making the mistake of briefly leaning on the boulder. His mittens hissed in the sudden heat, before an eye sprouted on the back of each one, and fired him quite an accusing look.

“Sorry,” Cal said, then his head was yanked down as Loren ducked a scything arm or leg or tail.

Drawing her blaster, she turned, dragging Cal with her, and fired a series of shots. The strobe effect of the shots revealed more of the monsters circling the camp. They were all teeth and tails and shiny black exoskeletons that glinted in time with each blaster flash.

“Aliens,” Cal whispered.

“Technically, we’re all aliens,” Loren pointed out. “Depending on who you ask.”

“No, I mean the movie,” said Cal. He staggered in a half-circle as Loren turned and opened fire on another of the creatures. “They look like Alien aliens. Or maybe Aliens aliens. You know?”

“No idea what you’re talking about,” said Loren, blasting at another of the hulking shadow-creatures.

Mech windmilled through half a dozen more, his dial jacked up to give himself extra power. His fists rained like jackhammer blows, smashing skulls, shattering bones, and driving the creatures into a panicked frenzy.

Miz pounced on another of the monsters, knocking it onto its back. Even as it fell, she tore at it with her claws, ripping apart its protective outer shell and gouging deep into the flesh within.

Cal yelped in surprise as Loren spun again, almost pulling him off his feet. “Jesus, a little warning would be nice!”

One of the creatures’ tails knocked the blaster from Loren’s hands, sending it skidding across the rocky ground. A monstrous face suddenly forced itself into Cal’s field of view, its drool-dripping teeth making a valiant attempt to eat his nose off.

Up close, the thing didn’t look all that much like an Alien alien, or an Aliens alien. It might have looked like the Alien 3 alien, but Cal hadn’t seen it, because he’d heard it was terrible, so he couldn’t really comment either way.

Its exoskeleton was like a web-shaped cage over its head, protecting a shriveled raisin of a skull inside. The teeth and jaw were by far the most prominent features of the face, in that order, with the nostril-holes and sunken eyes apparently added in as an afterthought.

Cal’s coat reacted before he did, one arm scything upwards and neatly cleaving the monster in two, from the groin to the head. Cal could only watch, transfixed in mute horror, as the creature fell apart, one half going left, the other dropping to the right.

Cal reached up and gently patted the coat’s fur-lined hood. “Nice job there, you little psycho.”

“They’re running,” Mech announced.

Cal shook a fist into the darkness. “And don’t come back!” he warned.

“Yeah, they went the other way,” said Mech.

“What? Oh, yeah, I know. I was talking to you,” said Cal, shaking his fist in the direction of Mech’s voice again.

Miz sniffed the air again. “They haven’t gone far. And there’s like, other stuff out there, too.”

“A lot of other stuff,” Mech confirmed, looking at his forearm display.

“So, just to recap,” said Loren. “We’ve got a couple of hours of heat, we’re surrounded by monsters, and – oh, yes – we’re trapped in a Hell-dimension. Does that about sum our current situation up?”

“It could be worse,” said Cal.

“How?” Loren asked.

There was silence.

“Give me a minute,” said Cal. “I’m sure I’ll come up with something.”

“I totally should have kept working in that stupid strip joint,” Miz muttered.

“One of us could be an evil doppelganger,” said Cal.

Everyone turned to look at him. “Say what?” said Mech.

“That would be worse. If one of us was some kind of evil impostor, gradually picking the rest of us off, one by one.”

Everyone continued to look at him.

“What? You asked how it could be worse. That’d be way worse,” Cal said. “Or, like, if we were all tied to the back of an angry horse. One each, I mean, not one huge horse between the five of us. Or, no, not an angry horse, a really horny hippo.”

Cal nodded. “Yeah, that’d be far worse. So, you know, silver lining, bright side, glass half full, and all that.”

He’d had no idea where the door that Lily had left through had been, but now even less so. He just picked a random patch of ground and stared longingly at it. “I really thought she’d come back, though. I didn’t think she’d just leave us here.”

“Well, she ain’t, and she did,” Mech snapped, then he caught the glares from Loren and Miz and adjusted his tone accordingly. “I mean, you know, sorry. She ain’t coming back, which means we are stuck here, and our problems are just gonna keep mounting up.”

Cal let out a long sigh of disappointment. “You’re right,” he said. “I have to face facts. She stranded us here, and she isn’t going to come and get us.”

“It does look that way,” said Loren, softly.

“It’s probably a good thing I nabbed this, then,” he said, holding up a rectangular box with a series of buttons on the front. “Took it from Number Two when I brushed past him on the way in.”

“Is he the beard guy?” asked Miz. “He’s pretty hot.”

“See!” said Loren. “I know, right?”

Cal tutted. “Uh, hello? This was supposed to be my big moment here. Can we stop talking about that old shizznod and focus on me for a second?”

Mech took a step closer to Cal. The ground trembled.

“Is that the door control?”

“Yep!”

Mech took another step.

“You mean, you’ve had that this whole time?”

“Yep!” said Cal, grinning. In the half-light, he caught the expression on Mech’s face. It was not unlike the expression on Miz’s face, too. He was too close and too side-on to see Loren properly, but he guessed there’d be a similar look going on there, also.

Cal cleared his throat. “I mean, oh! Look what I found. I completely forgot I had this. What a stroke of luck.”

“You had the door control the whole time?” Loren growled. “We could have frozen to death!”

“I thought she’d come back,” said Cal. “I wanted… I guess I wanted to give her a chance to come back for us. For, you know, for me.”

He smirked. “Yeah, that fonking shut you all up, didn’t it?” he said. “Now, how does this thing work?”

Cal pushed a button. A door opened. Unfortunately, it opened beneath him. And, by extension, beneath Loren and Splurt, too. They hung there in the air for a few moments, with Cal wishing, more than anything, that he had a little wooden sign he could hold up with the word ‘Help!’ written on it.

And then, once the laws of physics realized what they were up to, they fell.

There was a flash of white, a tinge of blue, and then nothing but canvas as Cal and Loren landed on an already ramshackle tent, finishing it off completely. Still conjoined, they got to their feet, Cal examining the doohickey more closely, now that he could see it properly.

“Maybe I was holding it sideways or something,” he said, then he yelped as Loren shoulder-barged him aside. “Ow! Will you please stop doing that? Splurt!”

Splurt transformed back into his normal blobby greenness and took up his perch on Cal’s shoulder.

Mech dropped through the fizzing white rectangle in the air, his immense weight shaking the ground as he landed right on the spot where Loren and Cal had been standing. He stepped aside, making room for Miz to fall through. She landed on all-fours, then immediately growled at the alternate Cal Carvers currently fumbling for their weapons.

“Relax, it’s just me, no need to panic,” said Cal, striding forward with practiced confidence. He pointed and smiled at one of the Carvers, as if recognizing a long-lost friend, waved at a couple of others, then headed for the only one of the three pods in the campsite he hadn’t yet been inside.

He tried the handle. Locked.

“Mech, do the honors,” he muttered, turning and waving again at the other Carvers. They stood frozen by uncertainty, their hands resting on their weapons, but not yet drawing them. “I love that jacket,” Cal called, pointing to one of the Carvers. He deliberately picked one who wasn’t wearing a jacket, knowing the resulting few moments of confusion would buy him more time.

Mech punched a fist through the pod’s plastic door and ripped it off. An energy blast streaked out from within, slammed into Mech’s chest, and staggered him back a few paces.

“Whoa, whoa, easy there, kiddo!” said Cal, stepping into the doorway, his hands raised in surrender. “It’s just us.”

“I know it’s you!” Lily growled. She pumped the weapon like a shotgun, and a spent power cell ejected from somewhere near the back. “That’s why I’m shooting!”

She took aim. Cal ducked out of the doorway, pulling Loren aside as Lily opened fire.

“Jesus, that was close,” he whispered, then another blast punched a hole in the plastic wall beside him.

“OK, watch it! Cut it out!” Cal said. “We surrender.”

The gunshots from inside Carver Prime’s pod had helped the other Carvers make their minds up. All their weapons were now drawn - a real mix of high-tech alien stuff, more familiar-looking Earth guns, and a whole range of stabby things.

Other Carvers were rushing out of tents. Cal spotted a few he recognized. Old Man Carver and Chunky Cal were keeping their distance, while Dwarf Cal was hurrying over, dragging an ornate battle-axe behind him.

Cal raised his hands again and shuffled into Lily’s line of fire. “Look, we’re surrendering. You can’t shoot someone who’s surrendering. That’s the law. You know, somewhere. Probably.” He frowned and turned to Mech. “Is it? Or did I make that up?”

Mech nodded. “Basic rules of war,” he said, aiming the words very squarely at Lily.

Lily didn’t lower her shotgun, but didn’t fire, either, so that was a start. “How did you get here?” she demanded. “How did you get back?”

“Well, I kind of hoped you were going to come back for us, and it was all just, you know, a bit of fun designed to teach me a lesson, or something, but… Well, we both know how that worked out.”

He gestured to his pocket. “May I?”

Lily narrowed her eyes, but nodded, just once. Cal reached into his pocket and pulled out the doohickey. “I may have accidentally taken this from Number Two earlier. It looks complicated, all those little buttons, but it’s pretty straightforward, really.”

Lily’s eyes widened when she saw the gadget. The gun lowered a fraction. “You opened a door? You opened a door from the Malwhere?”

“Yep!” said Cal, proudly. “Pretty impressive, huh?”

“And you closed it,” said Lily, her voice becoming a breathless whisper. “Tell me you closed it.”

Cal’s beaming smile dimmed a little. “Hmm?” he said.

“The door to the Malwhere!” Lily barked. “Did you close the door?”

Cal, Loren, Mech and Miz all turned slowly. Behind them, dozens of black, armored shapes dropped through the sky-hatch, tumbling over one another in a heaving frenzy of tails and limbs.

“You know,” Cal croaked. “It is funny you should ask.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

The assembled members of the Carver Council stood rooted to the ground in shock as the monsters of the Malwhere untangled themselves and stumbled upright.

The Carvers outnumbered the creatures, but not by many. The creatures’ movements suggested they were currently blinded by the sudden glare of the invisible sun, but that wouldn’t last. If the Carvers were going to strike, they had to do it now. Cal opened his mouth to start shouting instructions, but never got the chance.

“Don’t just stand there, attack!” Lily barked, barging past Cal and rushing towards the unravelling knot of monsters. She snapped her head back to Cal. “And shut the fonking portal!”

“Right, yes. Good idea,” said Cal. He pushed a button. The portal doubled in size, dropping a dozen more monsters onto the grass. “Shizz. My fault. Sorry.”

He pressed another button. Two more portals opened alongside the first, raining more of the creatures down onto the grass.

“Again, my fault.”

“Gimme that thing,” said Mech, ripping the doohickey from Cal’s hands. He studied it for a moment, then pressed a button. All three of the floating trapdoors fizzled for a moment, then snapped closed.

Lily blasted a hole in one of the creatures, pumped the shotgun, then blasted another. The second monster spun, but didn’t go down until the butt of Lily’s gun smashed into its armored face with a somewhat stomach-churning ka-rack.

“Jesus, she’s going to get herself surrounded,” Cal muttered. He ran after her. “Loren, covering fire, Miz, Mech, do what you do. Splurt, big fist, buddy.”

Lily spun, fired, spun, fired, driving back two of the creatures. Some of the other Carvers had rushed to join the fray, but most were still frozen to the spot in a mixture of terror and bewilderment. They’d never encountered anything like this before. Some of them had never encountered any sort of danger before, let alone a load of armored alien monsters falling from the sky, and they were taking a while to get into the swing of it.

One of the creatures launched itself at Lily. She turned, too late to get her shotgun between her and it. She saw its withered face and over-developed jaws. She caught a glimpse of its teeth and its claws and its raw, burning hatred.

And then, with a boing, an enormous green fist slammed into the beast, sending it hurtling through the air. The fist’s middle finger extended in the direction of the monster, whose mangled limbs meant it now resembled a swatted fly.

“You see that, you ugly fonks?” Cal crowed. “You mess with us, you get fisted!”

He became aware of a number of people all frowning in his direction at once.

“Punched. I mean you get punched,” he said. He shook his head. “Jesus, why did I say it like that?”

He turned to find Lily’s shotgun pointed at him. “Hey, wait!” he said.

“Move!”

Cal dived sideways and the shotgun roared. A monster screeched, then was promptly put out of its misery when Mech crushed its head between his fists.

“Stitch this, ya bam!” roared Eighty-Three, driving the metal top of his skull into the stomach of another creature. As it doubled over, he swung upwards with his axe. Had he been an inch taller, it would have been a textbook decapitation, but since he wasn’t, the swing fell just short enough to leave the monster’s head flapping around by a strip of gristle and flesh.

Somehow, it remained on its feet. It staggered towards Cal and Lily, head flopping around on its back, blood spurting from its neck stump. One of them let out a high-pitched scream, but Cal wasn’t quite sure which of them it was. He hoped it wasn’t him, but had some pretty deep suspicions that it might have been.

Splurt power-punched the mostly-headless monster, turning it into a fully-headless monster, and one that was suddenly quite some distance away. Cal convulsed violently, briefly dry-heaved, then turned and fisted another monster to death.

Punched. He meant ‘punched’.

The movements of the creatures were becoming more purposeful now, more deliberate. They no longer moved like a load of blind monsters, and instead moved like a load of short-sighted monsters, which removed what little advantage the Carvers had.

Cal uppercutted one of the creatures a full fifteen feet into the air, where it was shot to bits by Loren. She was kicking and shooting her way through the heaving masses, doing as much damage with her feet as she was with the gun.

“Go for the legs,” she shouted. “They’re weak.”

“Soonds lik’ a plan tae me!” bellowed Eighty-Three. He began spinning like a top, twirling his battle-axe out in a wide circle. A number of the creatures went down screaming as Eighty-Three’s axe whizzed through their kneecaps like the blade of a blender.

Lily pumped her gun again, pulled the trigger, and cursed when the weapon let out a click. Tossing it aside, she drew a knife from inside each boot and flew at another of the monsters. Cal caught her by the arm and pulled her back.

“Whoa, easy there, princess. You’re going to get yourself killed.”

He stepped to the side as Miz bounded past, teeth and claws both bared. A moment later, several things all screamed at once, none of them Mizette.

“Get your hand off me!” Lily barked, flashing her blades at him. “Don’t make me ask you again.”

“Ninety-nine is right,” intoned a voice from nearby. Cal and Lily both looked round to see Carver Two approaching through the mass of alien bodies. He twirled his staff with expert precision, smashing through exo-skeletons, shattering knees, and generally causing a whole lot of damage with very little apparent effort, and all without taking his eyes off Lily and Cal. “It is not safe for you here.”

“Bullshizz,” said Lily, tearing her arm free of Cal’s grip.

Splurt swung Cal’s arm out, grabbed the head of an approaching monster, and twisted until something went snap.

“Look at them all!” Lily said, gesturing towards the now thinner, but still pretty hefty mass of alien creatures. “You need me.”

“Exactly. We need you. Alive,” said Two. “Forgive me, Carver Prime.”

A gust of faintly yellow air belched from the end of his staff and hit Lily in the face. She immediately began to topple, but Carver Two was prepared and caught her by the waist before she could hit the ground.

“Help me get clear,” Two barked, hoisting the unconscious girl over his shoulder.

Cal stepped past and pushed ahead, his massive Splurt-fist karate-chopping a couple of the creatures into a lumpy paste. Behind them, unnoticed, another of the monsters raced for them, its teeth gnashing the air.

It dropped to its haunches and jumped, throwing itself towards Carver Two, and the sleeping Lily hanging limply down his back.

A metal hand caught the creature’s tail, mid-leap. “Not so fast, motherfonker,” Mech spat, then he swung the beast up and over his head, before smashing it against the ground with such force it exploded like a paint-filled balloon.

Now that the initial shock had passed – and, more importantly, the numbers had thinned – the other Carvers were starting to join the fray. For all their terrifying appearances, the creatures weren’t all that tough. Their looks had likely evolved as a defense mechanism to scare away predators (although probably not the ones from the movie), but they’d made the mistake of believing their own press, and thinking they were all that.

Even just from the way Eighty-Three was currently puréeing them from the thighs down, it was becoming evident that they very much were not all that. Even calling them partly that was being quite generous, and by the time Old Man Carver got stuck in, the monsters were outnumbered ten to one.

Cal hung back, making sure Carver Two reached Lily’s pod, then returned to the fight. Mech, Miz and Loren had all stepped aside now, leaving the rabble of Carvers to lay into the final few monsters with a level of enthusiasm that had been noticeably absent in most of them just a couple of minutes before.

“Nice work, everyone,” said Cal. “Blue Cal, nice sword work. You… I’m going to call you Emo Cal, good shooting. Beardy Cal, you can probably stop spinning now.”

The whumming of Eighty-Three’s axe died away as he stopped rotating on the spot. “Och, an I wis jist startin’ tae hae a richt braw time tae masel’, tae.”

“That’s… great?” said Cal. He shot Loren a sideways glance. “Any ideas?”

“Not a clue.”

Old Man Carver’s arms wobbled as he raised a rock above his head and then clonked it across the back of the last remaining creature. Cal could see the monster was patently already dead, but decided not to spoil the old guy’s moment.

“Nicely done!” Cal said. “In fact, nicely done all of you.” He began to clap his small left hand against his stupidly oversized right one. “You earned this. You hear that? This is for you.”

He nodded to Mech and the others. “Come on, back me up here,” he whispered.

Reluctantly, Mech and Loren began to clap. Miz rolled her eyes, folded her arms, and uttered a single sarcastic: “Yay.”

“Well deserved,” said Cal. The other Carvers looked mildly embarrassed, but smiled, because everyone likes to be told they’ve done a good job, even if the job entails shooting sentient lifeforms in the face, or shoving pointy implements into their soft, pliable innards over and over again.

Especially then, in fact.

There were a few congratulatory pats on the back, a few more fist-bumps and a couple of hugs. The hand that clamped down on Cal’s shoulder, though, didn’t feel friendly in the slightest. Cal turned to find Carver Two glaring at him.

“A word, Ninety-Nine.”

“Pomegranate,” said Cal. He held a hand for a high-five from Mech, but the cyborg just stared at it, then looked away. “Ouch,” said Cal. “I thought that was pretty decent.”

“Forgive me if I’m not amused,” said Two. “Come with me. I wish to speak to you. Alone.”

“Anything you say to him, you can say to us,” said Loren.

“That is true,” Cal agreed. “Unless it’s about that rash we sometimes get, in which case, let’s keep it between ourselves.”

Cal wriggled his fingers and Splurt detached himself from his wrist. He handed the little green blob to Loren, then flashed the team one of his best grins. “It’ll be fine. I’ll be right back. He’s not going to banish me again.” He looked sidelong at Two. “You aren’t, are you?”

“No. Only Carver Prime has that authority. I wish to talk, that is all.”

“There you go, then,” said Cal. He patted Splurt’s head, making the little guy ripple with joy. “I’ll be right back. If you fancy helping these guys with the clear-up, I’m sure they’d appreciate it.”

“Oh, I’m sure they would,” said Miz, quite accusingly.

“Right. Good,” said Cal. He tapped a finger to his forehead, then gestured for his counterpart to lead the way. “After you, Number Two.”

Carver Two rolled his eyes, but said nothing. He set off towards his pod at pace, his staff thonking every few steps against the ground.

At the pod, Two indicated for Cal to go inside first. Once he had, Two stepped in and pulled the door closed behind them.

“I know, I know!” said Cal, holding up his hands. “But honestly, you don’t have to thank me.”

“Thank you?” said Two.

“OK, well, I said you didn’t have to, but I’ll take it. You’re welcome.”

“I wasn’t thanking you.”

“You sure?” said Cal, frowning. “Because it sounded like you were.”

“You brought creatures from the Malwhere here. You literally made them rain on us out of the sky, and you think I’m thanking you?”

“We also stopped them. You know, mostly. Without us, you’d all be dead,” Cal pointed out.

“Without you, we would never have been in danger in the first place.”

Cal considered this for a moment, weighing up a number of possible counterarguments, none of which were exactly watertight. In the end, he opted for a classic.

“Touché.”

Two propped his staff up against the wall and leaned there next to it. He was older than Cal, but he hadn’t really looked it until now. It was like much of the fire that had been burning inside him had now died, leaving this tired older guy behind.

“For the record, I did not agree with your banishment,” said Two.

“Thank you,” said Cal. “And here I thought you were going to be the bad cop in all this.”

“I wanted you executed,” said Two. “Publicly.”

“Aaaand I was right,” said Cal.

“No, I was right,” said Two. “Had we simply killed you, none of this would have happened. We – Carver Prime – would never have been in danger.”

“I don’t know if she was in danger,” said Cal. “She seemed to be handling herself pretty well.”

“And yet, you stopped her,” said Two. “You put her safety before your own. For that, I suppose I should be grateful.”

Cal said nothing, too afraid of the words that might come out. It rankled him to hear Two talking about Lily as if it was his job to protect her, his responsibility to keep her safe. That was Cal’s responsibility, as far as Cal was concerned. He’d failed in it once. Never again.

“No gratitude required,” said Cal. “Just doing my job.”

“Your job was to make the trade with Ikumordo,” said Two, that fire returning again and straightening him from his slouch. “By not doing so, you have put us in danger. You have put Carver Prime in danger.”

Cal shrugged. “You’re worrying too much. I gave Ikumordo an ultimatum. Sure, he talks big, but I’m betting he’s getting pretty fonking scared right now. If he hasn’t already turned back, he’ll be doing it soon.” He pointed at Two and winked. “That’s a Cal Carver gurantee.”

Without a word, Carver Two reached for his staff. Cal didn’t see him pressing a button or activating any other controls, but a moment later a semi-transparent square opened up in the air in front of him, revealing a lot of gray static and not much else.

“What’s this now?” Cal asked. “TV on the fritz? Mech might be able to help with that.”

As he spoke, the snowy static came alive, like one of those Magic Eye pictures Cal could never get the hang of, no matter how many hours he spent trying to ‘look through’ them. There was no mistaking this one, though. On screen, the static had formed the same head that Cal had addressed inside the orange cloud.

“Ikumordo?” Cal said.

“It was transmitted just a few minutes ago,” Two said. He pointed to the screen with the end of his staff. “Observe.”

Ikumordo began to speak. Cal could tell it was speaking because of the way its lips moved and words appeared inside his head. Looking back, he’d never be able to recall if there had been actual sounds transmitted, or if the words had jumped straight from Ikumordo’s simulated lips into Cal’s brain. Either way, the meaning was abundantly clear.

Ikumordo was not happy about Cal challenging it. Decidedly unhappy, in fact. So unhappy that, rather than just consume the Earth, it was going to gobble up the universe. And not just the universe, but all universes everywhere, and all at the same time. Despite having no reason to, Cal thought that this was probably beyond even Ikumordo’s power set, so made a point of coughing and muttering, “Bullshiz,” during that part of the announcement.

The whole message lasted about twenty seconds, but once it was done, Cal felt like he’d always known it. Like the information had always been there in his head, somehow. A fact, that he’d been unknowingly aware of all his life.

Ikumordo was going to destroy the entire universe. Many entire universes, in fact.

And it was all Cal’s fault.

“Uh, wow,” said Cal. “This is… I mean, this is… awesome.”

“Indeed,” intoned Two, then he frowned. “Wait, what?”

Cal clapped his alternate on the shoulder. “Number Two, Ikumordo has just played right into my hands.”

Two’s frown deepened until his forehead was just one big wrinkle. “You mean this was part of some plan?”

“Yes!” said Cal. “Well, no,” he admitted. “I mean, maybe,” he concluded. “Are you asking if I deliberately planned this exact series of events, knowing what was going to happen? No. If you’re asking did I subconsciously plan this exact series of events, suspecting what was going to happen?”

He shook his head. “Also no. But if you’re asking – and I think you are – if we’ve just landed a lucky break that’s going help us defeat our big weird space thing friend… Again, probably not.”

Cal grinned. “But we might have. And sometimes a might have is all we need to win!”

He conceded a shrug. “I mean, not often. Rarely. And the odds are pretty much overwhelmingly stacked against us.”

Two blinked. “Where are you going with this?”

Cal retraced the steps of his thought process, decided the route didn’t make a whole lot of sense, and shrugged again. “Not a clue. I clearly had some kind of outcome in mind, but Christ knows what it was.”

His smile returned. “Doesn’t matter, the point is, are we going to sit around and wait for a big cloud of space shizz to eat the multi-verse, or are we going to go do something about it?”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

It took twenty minutes of persuasion before Carver Two agreed to bring Cal to Carver Prime, and a further hour or so for Lily to shake off the effects of the gas and wake up.

Cal, Space Team, and the other Carvers then spent several more minutes hanging around outside Lily’s pod, trying to pretend they couldn’t hear her berating Carver Two for knocking her out, while simultaneously listening to every word coming out through the hole Mech had punched in the door.

Carver Two gave as good as he got at times, and eventually the screaming match became a shouting match, then a raised voices match, then just a murmured conversation match from which no obvious victor emerged.

Eventually, Lily marched out from within her pod, drew Cal a look that should have killed him on the spot, then started walking across the grass towards the Currently Untitled.

“Where’s she going?” Cal asked.

“The fonk should I know?” Mech grunted.

“I wasn’t specifically asking you,” Cal pointed out. “It was just a sort of general thinking out loud.”

“Oh,” said Mech. “Well… I ain’t apologizing. You should’ve made that more clear.”

Halfway to the ship, a doorway opened before Lily. Without missing a step, she walked through it. The door remained open, but it wasn’t until Carver Two emerged from the pod and gestured towards the door with his staff that the others started to follow.

“Where are we going?” asked Loren.

“Like, it better not be back to that Hell-dimension,” said Miz. “That place sucked.”

“Please,” said Two. “All will be revealed.”

Cal and the others hesitated, then headed for the doorway, joining onto the snake of alternate Cals – or, as Cal was thinking of calling them, Calternates – as they filtered single-file through the rectangle of white light.

“Just for the record,” said Mech. “Saying ‘All will be revealed,’ like that, it makes you sound like the bad guy. Just so you know. See, now I’m expecting something majorly terrible through here. Like, some evil genius shizz you been waiting to pull, and which you’ve now got waiting for us right through that door.”

“He’s right,” agreed Cal. “Although, to be fair, that probably reflects on us as much as it does on you. I’d say, what, seventy per cent of the people we meet turn out to be bad guys?” He looked to Loren for affirmation. “You think? About seventy?”

“About that, yeah,” Loren agreed.

“What about that guy with all the clones?” said Miz.

“Shizz, yeah. Eighty per cent,” said Cal. He gestured to the doorway. “The point is, if you’re hoping to surprise us, you’re probably going to be disappointed.”

Carver Two’s head had been tick-tocking between them all as they spoke. It stopped now on Cal. “I can assure you, we’re not the bad guys,” he said. He gave a self-satisfied little smirk somewhere deep inside his beard. “But as to whether you’ll be surprised? Well, only time will tell.”

They reached the door and stopped. Carver Two gestured for them to go ahead. Cal looked around at the others, took Splurt from Loren and plopped him onto his shoulder. Then he faced the doorway, raised a foot high in front of him, and stepped on through. He arrived seamlessly on the other side.

Cal was right. He wasn’t surprised.

‘Surprised’ didn’t really do the emotion justice.

He was standing on nothing, gazing out at… everything. He didn’t realize it was everything. Not at first. He thought it was a big black curtain with lots of little holes in it that showed a light beyond. As he looked, though, the pinholes became stars, and the curtain became all of space itself.

Colors began to emerge from the darkness. Galaxies bloomed like spring flowers. Nebulae swirled across the universe like paint droplets in water. Planets of all shades and hues spun on their orbits, and the whole thing got a bit psychedelic for a while, before Cal’s eyes adjusted to it all.

Even though his eyes had started to get the hang of what he was looking at, his brain was taking a little longer to catch up. No matter which direction he looked, he could see forever. Not in that same way he could looking out through the Untitled’s viewscreen at space – then, he could merely see a ridiculously long way. Now, though, he could see for infinite distances, whichever way he looked, and the sheer mind-boggling enormity of out there made a layer of cold, clammy sweat form on his lower back.

Miz, Mech and Loren were standing behind him. He had no idea how long they’d been there for. Hell, he had no idea how long he’d been there for, staring out at the endless abyss. Seconds? Minutes? Days? It could have been any of the above.

Except days, he decided. That would be ridiculous.

The other Carvers were there, too. Judging by the expressions on most of their faces, very few of them had ever seen anything quite like this, either. Even Carver Two, who had come through last of all, seemed equal parts impressed and disturbed by it.

The only one who didn’t seem in the least bit put out was Lily. And possibly Splurt, although he’d turned, quite inexplicably, into a woman’s shoe, so it was difficult to tell.

Lily stood facing the others, hands on her hips, foot tapping the floor with growing impatience. “Yes, yes, it’s all very impressive,” she said. “But we’re not here for the scenery. Eyes on me, Carvers.”

The assembled members of the Carver Council – all sixty or seventy or so – gradually tore their eyes away from everything in the universe, and shifted their attention to their leader. She pointed to Cal and indicated for him to come forward, then motioned for him to stop when he was still a dozen or so feet away. The Caltarnates (which Cal was starting to feel was actually pretty awkward, now that he’d said it in his head a few times) all shuffled aside, leaving plenty of space around him, presumably in case he tried any funny business.

“For those of you who haven’t yet been properly introduced, this is Carver Ninety-Nine, the newest addition to the council,” said Lily.

Cal smiled and waved at the others. “Hi. Hello. Nice to meet you all.”

Lily continued. “And the man who has doomed all of existence to extinction.”

Cal winced a little, but continued waving. “Sorry for the inconvenience. Although, ‘doomed’ is a strong word.”

“Oh? And what word would you use?” Lily asked.

Cal thought for a moment. “I don’t know. ‘Condemned,’ maybe? Or is that worse?”

A murmuring went through the other Cals. Cal smiled at them, but most of them had used that same smile themselves, so were immune to it. “Hey, relax, I was kidding. Nobody’s doomed or condemned.”

“Are we cursed?” asked one of the Carvers. He was a tall, blond-haired Cal, dressed in chainmail armor, and spoke with an English accent.

“What? No. Lightly jinxed at worse. And I mean lightly,” said Cal. He pointed to his chin. “Look at this face. Would this face lie to you?”

“Yes,” said the Carvers, pretty much unanimously.

“See for yourself,” said Lily, raising her voice as she took back control of the room. Without her apparently doing anything, everyone went zooming towards a distant sector of space.

Many of the Carvers screamed. A few hastily pulled bags from their pockets and vomited noisily into them. Cal looked around him with a growing sense of disappointment.

“Jesus, was I ever this bad?”

“You’re still this bad,” Mech pointed out.

Loren nodded. “Often worse.”

She looked away as Cal heaved up in his own mouth, then swallowed it back down again. “It’s not the movement, it’s the puke smell. Honestly,” he managed to say, before gagging again.

They arrived – if, indeed, they’d even moved – somewhere between Earth and Mars. Ikumordo was there, looking as big and orange and cloud-like as ever.

“Ikumordo is no longer approaching Earth,” Lily announced. The other Carvers swapped puzzled glances and shrugs.

“Well, that’s good, right?” asked Old Man Carver. “Isn’t that what we wanted?”

Carver Two joined Lily at the front. “It is no longer approaching Earth because it intends to devour the entire multiverse, instead.”

“OK, that’s less good,” the old man conceded.

“Hoo hus this come aboot?” asked Eighty-Three, his stubby fingers twirling a strand of his bushy ginger beard.

Lily raised her eyebrows. “Hmm?”

“I wis jist sayin’, hoo hus this come aboot?”

“Right,” said Lily. “Yes. Good… question? It was a question, yes?”

“Twis.”

“Right. Yes.” Carver Prime looked a bit lost for a moment, then she gave a little nod. “We’ll come back to that. The point is, we had a plan. A plan we all agreed with.”

A few hands went up in the crowd. “A plan most of us agreed with,” Lily corrected. “But a plan all the same, sacrificing one universe so that the other Earths – so our homes – could live. There was a consensus. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one.”

Cal had heard enough. “OK, OK, listen, Spock. That kind of thinking might get you places back on Science World. But here in the real world…” He gestured around himself, remembered he was currently floating in what he assumed was a simulated version of the entire universe (or an entire universe, at least), and so quickly stopped. “I mean, out there in the real world, or wherever, that’s not how things work.”

“Even the math doesn’t add up,” said Loren, stepping forward.

“What did she say?” asked one of the Carvers.

“Yeah, I didn’t get that,” added another.

There was a murmuring of consensus among the Carvers. It became clear that most, if not all, were unable to understand a word of what Loren had said.

“They don’t have chips,” Mech realized. “They don’t have translation chips. They can’t understand us.”

“Now he’s at it,” said another Carver. “He’s talking gibberish.”

“Then how can they understand me?” Cal asked. He caught Mech’s withering look. “Oh, yeah, we’re all talking the same language. Gotcha.”

It took a moment for Cal to realize the significance of all this. He turned to Lily. “Wait, so none of these guys have ever been to space?”

Lily sucked on her bottom lip for a moment – a move Cal remembered his Lily doing whenever she was preparing to talk her way out of trouble. “Not until I recruited them, no,” she said.

“But they have now?” said Cal.

Lily’s eyes darted away. “No. Not space. Other dimensions, yes. But not actually outer space, as such.”

“Aha! That’s why they all agreed to let that thing eat my universe!”

The same few hands went up.

“Why most of you agreed, I mean.” Cal turned his back to Lily and addressed the crowd. “I was like you guys once. A long time ago. Well, like, a month or two, you lose track in space. Clocks don’t work. Or, you know, something like that. I mean, they have space clocks, but… Know what? It doesn’t matter.”

He shook his head, just briefly, and started again.

“The point is, I used to think Earth was it, you know? That Earth was the place to be. And, don’t get me wrong, Earth is pretty awesome. It’s got ice cream and rocks and, you know, walls.”

He frowned. “I don’t know why I picked those three things. It’s got other stuff, too, obviously. Better stuff than that. Ghostbusters! It’s got Ghostbusters.”

There was a general murmuring of approval. Cal rocked back on his heels, as if his point had been made, then remembered it hadn’t.

“Anyway, then I discovered the rest of the galaxy. No, I glimpsed it. I met people. Yes, many of them tried to kill me in a number of unpleasant ways, but I made friends, too.”

He looked back at the crew. “A family. We’ve saved planets together. Hell, we’ve saved the galaxy. Even a god. And I’ve barely even scratched the surface of what’s out there. Of who’s out there.”

“How nice for you,” said Lily. “But the point still stands. The needs of the many. We were trying to save an infinite number of Earths.”

“And if space is infinitely big, which, you know, I’m pretty sure has been said by someone at some point,” said Cal, floundering a little. He glanced back at Loren, who nodded her confirmation. Bolstered, Cal pressed on. “Well, then, you were going to sacrifice an infinite number of people to save an infinite number of people. There is no ‘many’ and ‘few’ there, just people dying for no reason.”

Lily’s face darkened. “And now everyone is going to die. Everyone, everywhere, all at once.”

“Then why hasn’t it done it?” Cal asked, pointing to the orange cloud floating in the gulf between them. “Hmm? If this thing is so all-powerful that it can gobble up every universe, why hasn’t it started? What, is it waiting for its appetite to build up? Is it hoping for an appetizer first? Why isn’t it doing anything?”

Lily rolled her eyes. “Argh. You’re such an idiot. You don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

“Look, I’ve had just about enough of your attitude, young lady,” said Cal, his temper building. He pointed in an entirely random direction. “Go to your room!”

Lily blinked in surprise. They stared at each other for a few long, awkward moments, and the universe around them seemed to fade into the background. Cal lowered his arm.

“Dad?” Lily croaked, then she cleared her throat. “I mean, you sounded like him. Sound like him. I mean…”

She shook her head and stepped back, gesturing for Carver Two to take over. He stepped in front of her, blocking Cal’s view.

“As Carver Prime has said, we are now facing a graver situation than we had anticipated,” he said. “It seems likely that Ikumordo – the All Death – shall live up to its name. If so, everything we know, everything we have ever known, will be gone. The multi-verse will be no more, leaving only the void.”

Emo Cal raised a black fingernailed hand. “So what do we do? We can stop it, right?”

Anxious muttering rippled through the group. Cal watched the Carvers on both sides as they exchanged worried looks.

“There’s a plan, isn’t there?” asked Old Man Carver. “We do have a plan.”

Carver Two rolled his staff in his hands, took a deep breath, and braced himself for the reaction to the words he was about to speak.

Cal jumped in before Two could give an answer.

“Of course he does. He’s Cal Carver. We’re all Cal Carver,” said Cal. He pulled himself up to his full height and looked as many of the other Cals in the eye as he could. “We take the fight to it. We hit that big orange fonk with everything we’ve got, show it what happens when it messes with the Carver boys.”

No one looked particularly convinced by that. “Listen, I know it’s scary,” said Cal. “But no one else is going to do this. There’s a giant death cloud out there, and do you see anyone else trying to stop it?”

“It’s a suicide mission,” said Emo Cal.

“Probably,” Cal agreed. “But sitting around here doing nothing? That’s a suicide mission, too.” He looked to Carver Two. “If the universes, or multi-verse, or whatever, gets destroyed, what happens to the blister universes? Do they survive?”

“No,” said Lily, stepping out from behind her second-in-command. Her face was drawn tight now, like she’d been secretly sucking on a lemon behind Two’s back. “They’ll be destroyed, too. All that will be left is the Void.”

“There you go,” said Cal, turning back to the Carvers. “Do nothing, and we’re dead. Everyone’s dead.” He pointed to the image of Ikumordo floating around them. “But if we go after that thing, if we try to stop it, then—”

“Wur still a’ deid?” Eighty-Three guessed.

Cal pretended he hadn’t heard him. It was that or ask him to repeat himself several times until it became too embarrassing to continue, and then pretend not to have heard him. This way was just quicker.

“Then we’ve got a chance. Not a big chance, I’ll admit. A tiny chance, but a chance, all the same. Besides, that thing’s no longer just threatening the Earth. If what it’s saying is true, if it really plans obliterating everything in existence, then it’s not just the Earth versus Ikumordo, it’s everyone versus Ikumordo. Every army on every planet in every galaxy in every fonking universe, all focused on one target. That.”

Everyone’s gaze shifted to the big weird space thing. Orange tendrils were starting to sprout from its vaporous bulk.

“I know it sounds impossible,” said Cal. “And, you know, maybe it is. Maybe the sensible thing would be to go home, be with the people we care about, and just wait for the end to come. But we’re Cal fonking Carver, and ‘sensible’ has never been our strong point.”

He rejoined Mech, Miz and Loren, positioning himself so they were assembled behind him. Most of the audience was hanging on his every word now, aside from a couple of members, who were quietly wondering why he had a woman’s shoe on his shoulder.

“So, I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m going to fight that thing. We’re going to fight that thing.” He gestured to the others behind him. “I mean, I haven’t asked them yet, but I’m just going to go ahead and assume they’re nodding their agreement right now, and ignore any evidence to the contrary.”

He gestured angrily to Ikumordo again. “This big orange fonk thinks it can come here and start its shizz on our planet? It thinks it can take a bite out of our multi-verse? Not if I’ve got anything to say about it.” He ramped up his grin and looked out across his now silent audience. “So, who’s with me?”

Not a single voice responded. No one moved, beyond a general lowering of heads and a bit of awkward shuffling.

“Anyone?” said Cal, his smile hitting the down ramp again.

Nothing.

Lily clapped. “Well, nice speech. Seriously. Really powerful stuff.”

Miz leaned over to Cal. “I think that was sarcasm.”

“Yeah, spotted it, but thanks for the heads-up,” said Cal.

Lily addressed the crowd. “Now that we’ve heard Ninety-Nine, let’s get back to the real world for a moment—”

She stopped when she saw Old Man Carver shakily raise a frail arm.

“Yes?”

“I’ll go.” He pointed to Cal. “With him, I mean.”

Cal’s grin hit the rebound and widened again. He tapped his finger to his brow in salute. “Thank you.”

The Carver in knight’s armor thrust a hand skyward. “Aye. I am in agreement.”

“Ach, weel, ah dinnae see the hairm,” said Eighty-Three, raising one of his own stumpy arms. “Wur a’ dun fur, onyways.”

And with that, the floodgates opened. More hands raised. More murmurs of agreement rose from the council, tentative at first, but quickly becoming bolder.

“Let’s give it a go.”

“We can do this.”

“Let’s shove Saturn right up its shizzpipe!”

That last one took everyone by surprise. Cal and the others all looked, as one, at Carver Two, who blushed slightly behind his beard. “I mean, maybe not exactly that,” he said. “But let’s go out there and teach it who it’s messing with.”

Lily started at him in disbelief. “You can’t be serious. You know we don’t have a chance. Ikumordo is transdimensional. We can’t fight it on all dimensions at once.”

“No,” Two admitted. “But we can try.”

“You said there was a weapon or something. In the Void,” said Cal. “Something that could stop it.”

Two nodded, but Lily interrupted before he could reply. “A rumor. A legend. That’s all. We can’t pin our hopes on a fairy tale.”

Cal shrugged. “I bet a lot of folks think the same thing about Ikumordo, too. It’s real, though, so why can’t its weakness be real, too?”

“Even if it was real – which it isn’t - it’s in the Void. How would we find it? Do you know how big the Void is?”

Cal took a guess. “Very big?”

“Infinitely big. No, bigger,” said Lily. “So big it contains an infinite number of infinities. And we don’t even know what we’re looking for.”

“That may well be,” said Cal. “But ever hear the phrase, ‘a needle in a haystack’?”

He nodded smugly and crossed his arms, as if he’d just delivered the knock-out blow.

“Yes. What about it?” Lily asked.

Cal frowned. “What do you mean?”

Mech leaned forward. “Uh, what do you think that phrase means?”

“That you can find even hard to find things, if you look for them,” said Cal.

Mech shook his head. “Right. It don’t mean that.”

“Doesn’t it? Since when?”

“Since always, man,” said Mech.

Cal looked around and was relieved to see many of the other Carvers looking as surprised as he did. “Well… What does it mean?”

“It means there are some things that are next to impossible to find,” said Lily. “Some things you shouldn’t even bother looking for.”

Cal snorted. “Nah. I think my one’s closer.”

“It isn’t,” said Loren. She caught the look from him and shrugged apologetically. “Sorry. It means what she said.”

“OK, fine,” said Cal. “Then full frontal assault it is. Our ship has weapons. We’ve got the Omega Cannon.”

Carver Two’s eyebrows knotted. “What’s the Omega Cannon?”

“We have no idea,” Cal admitted. “I mean, we think it could also potentially destroy the universe, but that suddenly doesn’t seem like quite such a big issue as it did up until now.”

“So, we have one ship,” said Lily. “One ship with which to fight a reality-spanning being of unfathomable power.”

“Yeah,” Cal admitted. “But it really is an excellent ship. And we can round up others,” he continued. “Like I said, everyone in the multi-verse’ll come together to fight that thing.”

“How?” Lily demanded. “How are you going to arrange that? Phone them up? Send out invitations? How are you possibly going to recruit the whole multi-verse before Ikumordo starts to consume everything? Look at it. Those tendrils? It’s already starting.”

“OK, maybe not the whole multi-verse, then, but there must be somewhere we can get ships?” Cal said.

“No. There isn’t,” said Lily.

“Uh…” began Carver Two. He met Lily’s gaze, looked chastised for a moment, but then planted his feet in defiance. “I might know somewhere we can get some. Pilots, too.”

“Alright,” said Cal. “Now we’re talking. So, what are we waiting for?”

Two gestured towards the doorway. “Council, lead the way,” he said.

“Wait, this is idiotic,” said Lily. “This is suicide.”

“So’s staying here,” Old Man Carver pointed out.

“But he’s the one who doomed us all!” Lily protested. “He’s the one who messed everything up!”

Cal spun on his heels to face her. “Or maybe I’m the guy who’s going to save everyone,” he said, meeting her petulant gaze. He jabbed a thumb in the direction of the door, where the other Carvers had all started to file through. Then, much to her annoyance, he placed a hand on her head and ruffled her hair. “So, kiddo, how about we go find out?”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

They heard the screaming the moment they stepped through the doorway. At first, Cal thought it was the wind, which had whipped up from nowhere, and almost knocked him off his feet as soon as he returned to the blister universe.

But then he saw the Carvers flailing wildly, battered by the hurricane, their faces alive with fear as the inky darkness of the Void devoured the sky.

“Uh, like, I’m guessing this is bad?” said Miz.

“Yes. You could say that,” said Cal, then he stumbled as Lily barged past him.

“Shizz, shizz, shizz, shizz, shizz,” she spat. “Void breach.”

“Is this Ikumordo?” Mech asked.

“No. Maybe. I don’t know,” said Lily. She ran ahead and started gesturing to a number of carefully memorized spots across the grass. Every time she pointed, another doorway sprang up from the ground, glowing even more brightly in the growing darkness.

“Carvers, go!” Two boomed. Some of the council members were huddled together in frightened groups, but many more ran around in aimless terror, trying to escape the inescapable.

Two caught the arm of a panic-stricken younger Cal with some kind of robotic eye implant, and shoved him through the closest doorway.

“Calm down!” Two bellowed, making a grab for another Carver, but missing. “The doors! Use the fonking doors!”

“Mech, Miz, help him get everyone out,” Cal barked. He lifted the woman’s shoe from his shoulder and tossed it to Mech. The shoe became a green blob as it flipped through the air. “Splurt, go with them, get everyone safe. Loren, you come with me, we need to get to the ship before—”

A camping stove cracked him across the back of the head. “Ow! Jesus, what was—?”

He turned in time for a flying tent to envelop him. Tangled in the rope and canvas, Cal was dragged several feet across the grass in the direction of the Void, before Miz pounced and slashed him free.

“Thanks.”

“Whatever,” said Miz, but she bared her teeth in something not unlike a smile.

Carver Eighty-Three tumbled past, upside-down, very possibly drowning in his own beard. “Go. Help them,” said Cal. Miz tutted and rolled her eyes, but pounced again, pinning Eighty-Three to the grass. Almost immediately, the little man started to scream.

“Like, shut up,” said Miz. “I’m not going to eat you. I totally just saved your life.”

Eighty-three continued to scream, regardless.

“Loren, let’s go,” Cal ordered.

The Currently Untitled stood between them and the growing Void. Or where Cal guessed the Void breach had first started, at least. Now, the darkness was covering most of the sky, its inky tendrils stretching towards the horizon, and the original breach point was a full-scale howling vortex, dragging the miniature universe inside, inch by agonizing inch.

There was no distance at all – fifteen feet, maybe less – between the Untitled and the point where the grass and the sky fell away into the abyss. This was going to be close.

Cal powered on, the ground a blur beneath his feet. The Untitled tilted towards the Void, before a series of harpoon cables spat from the ship’s underside, anchoring it to the grass. “Yes, Kevin!” Cal cried, forcing his legs to move even faster. “Hold on, buddy!”

Back at the camp, Mech stood by one of the doors, acting as a windbreak as Splurt used the long arms he’d sprouted to shove Carvers through the portal. Many more had already scattered through the other doors, but there were still a dozen or so of the most frightened left, too numb with terror to follow simple instructions. Carver Two was rounding most of them up and shepherding them to safety, but the increasing volume of the wind meant it was becoming harder and harder to shout orders.

Miz was carrying two struggling Carvers over her shoulders, both of whom shared the concern that they were about to be eaten alive, and were currently protesting quite firmly.

“I’m saving you! Quit fonking hitting me!” Miz growled. She tossed them both through one of the doors, then turned and lunged for another of the council members. He jumped back in panic, before Old Man Carver grabbed his arm.

“Calm down, you idiot,” the old man said. “She’s trying to help.”

Nodding his bald head at Miz, he shoved the other Carver through. “Don’t get stuck here,” the old man warned, then he jumped through the doorway, and vanished.

Cal powered on. Since a tribal healer had passed on all his life-force, Cal had been reaping the benefits. As well as healing from any injury – including death, on at least one occasion – he was stronger and more agile than he had been before. And, more importantly, what with everything currently going on, faster.

He was just a few seconds away from the Untitled’s open ramp when a scream cut through the roar of the wind and the crashing of his heartbeat in his head. There had been a lot of screaming, but this one was different. This one he couldn’t ignore – had been genetically programmed never to ignore.

Cal stumbled. “Lily?”

The girl tumbled and rolled across the grass further back on Cal’s right, tangled in a tent just like he had been. She kicked and flailed inside it, flipping and bouncing across the ground, hurtling faster and faster towards the void.

“Loren, get to the ship!” Cal shouted, not looking back to where Loren was racing along behind him. He diverted right, trying to anticipate where to aim himself so he could intercept the canvas cocoon. He picked a spot and ran. Fast. Faster than he’d ever run before, nine years of guilt and pain and sorrow pushing him on.

He wouldn’t fail her. He wouldn’t let her die. Not again.

“I’m coming, baby!” he called, but the words choked him, as his eyes blurred with tears. The wind. He blamed the wind.

Lily screamed again, high and panicked and piercing enough to stab deep into Cal’s already breaking heart. He threw himself to the ground in front of her, bracing himself for the impact.

The tangled tent bounced unexpectedly, then flipped and rolled over him, its ropes cracking in the air like bullwhips as it hurtled the final few feet towards the black.

“No!”

Cal kicked off, throwing himself towards the tent, and the girl wrapped up inside. Their eyes met, just briefly, through a gap in the canvas, then Cal’s fingers found the fabric and he gripped it with every ounce of strength he had.

“I’ve got you. I’ve got you!”

Unfortunately, no one had him. The extra weight slowed the tent’s progress, but not by much. Instead, it dragged Cal with it towards the beckoning Void.

Cal saw a billion formless shapes waiting there in the multi-colored blackness, and then a hand caught him around the ankle and he had to scramble to keep a hold of the canvas as he jerked to a stop.

“Hold on!” Loren hissed. She dug her heels into the grass, gritted her teeth, and began pushing backwards, away from the Void. Over on the left, there was a twang as the abyss reached one of the Untitled’s ropes snapping it in two.

Cal shoved an arm inside the tangled tent. A hand, unfamiliar yet unmistakable, slipped into his. He laughed. He couldn’t say why, exactly, but he laughed.

The tent was pulled free in one sharp tug. Cal saw it go tumbling into the Void, leaving just Lily gripping his hand.

“Don’t let go,” she said. It was a whisper – barely a whisper, even - but he heard it, all the same.

“Never. I’ve got you,” he told her, then he winked. “That’s a Cal Carver guarantee.”

Straining with the effort, he heaved Lily towards him and rolled onto his back. “Give me my leg,” he told Loren, then he scrambled to his feet when she released her grip, both of them pulling Lily up beside them.

“The ship! Get to the ship!” Cal bellowed, the wind snatching away every second syllable. He turned to the Untitled, preparing to run, then stopped. The ground beneath the ship was almost gone, the anchor lines now flapping in the hurricane-force gale.

With a final few twangs and a groaning of metal, the Untitled tipped over the receding edge of the grass, rolled sideways, and went tumbling into the Void.

“Shizz, Kevin!” Cal cried. He started to run, but Lily and Loren both held on, jerking him to a stop.

“What are you doing?” Lily demanded.

“Getting my ship back!”

“You can’t just jump into the Void!”

Cal pulled his arms free. “If we’re going to stop Ikumordo, we need the Untitled.”

Lily looked past him to where the ship was now barely a speck in the darkness. She clenched her jaw, muttered something inaudible, then beckoned for Cal and Loren to follow her. “Come with me.”

They fought against the gales, bending low and edging forwards until they reached what Cal had assumed was another of the misshapen tents. On closer inspection, though, it was a sheet of dark green tarp, flapping violently in the strengthening wind.

Lily drew a knife and sliced through the cord ties. The tarp immediately flew off, revealing two… things. Cal had no idea what they were. If a motorbike and a spaceship had got drunk together one night, and had one thing had led to another, these things would be the result. They were curved and sleek like a particularly sexy fighter ship, but with a vague sort of motorcycle shape to them. They had no wheels, and just hovered above the grass, apparently unperturbed by the gaping abyss growing steadily closer.

“Void rigs,” said Lily, as if that explained everything. She swung her leg over one and pointed to the other. “You two get on that one.”

“No way,” said Cal, swinging into the seat behind Lily. “I’ve seen her fly.”

Loren gave him the finger, then hopped onto the other bike. A blue button illuminated between the handlebars. Lily pressed hers first, and a domed energy canopy snapped closed over her and Cal. She waited until Loren had done the same, then demonstrated the controls.

“Faster, slower, turn, boost,” she said, indicating each pedal, lever and grip as she did. “Got it?”

“Got it,” said Loren. She gunned the throttle, shot backwards at high speed, and somehow managed to hit the only remaining tent, flattening it to the ground.

“You see what I’m talking about?” said Cal, then Loren rocketed past them and he felt the Void rig below him purr into life.

Cal looked across at the blue and white doorways. Mech, Miz and Carver Two were still there, shoving the final few Cals through. The darkness was racing towards them now, devouring the sky and the ground and everything in between.

“Guys, go, go!” Cal called to them, but then the Void rig shot forwards, his stomach shot upwards and, like the first drop on a roller-coaster, the bike plunged into the abyss.

Mech watched the bikes streak off into the darkness as he shoved the last stray Carver through the door. “Thank you,” said Carver Two.

Mech nodded in reply. “No problem.”

Two hurried through the door, leaving just Mech and Miz behind. Mech beckoned for Miz to come over to his door, holding a hand out to her and bracing himself against the spiraling storm. Splurt wrapped around his outstretched hand, became a length of rope, and fed himself towards Miz.

“Come on. This way!” Mech urged, but even Miz’s ears couldn’t hear him over the screeching gales.

She figured it out, though, and was about to make her move when Mech realized there was no time. The Void was almost on her, hungrily devouring everything in its path as it closed in on her and her door.

“Wait, go through, go through!” he boomed, gesturing furiously towards the door beside her. Miz frowned.

Miz turned.

Miz’s eyes opened wide.

And then, both Mizette and her doorway were wrenched into the darkness.

“Miz!” Mech bellowed, but there was nothing he could do. As the Void closed in on him he shot it the meanest, dirtiest look he could muster, then hurled himself and Splurt through the portal as the blister universe collapsed into nothingness.

* * *

Mech fell briefly, hit the ground heavily, then stood up. Angrily. The other Carvers and Number Two were all running for cover, but there was no cover to be had. They were in a long trench, with two tall walls penning them in. The ground beneath their feet was made up of hundreds of large black tiles. Two lines of the tiles were illuminated, each line stretching the length of the trench.

High up at the top of the wall, an audience watched on. They were jeering, but the jeers were quietening into a kind of mumbled confusion as everyone got around to noticing the twenty or more people who had appeared in the trench from the now rapidly-shrinking rectangle of light.

It was thanks to the growing silence that Mech heard the rumble, like distant thunder, and felt the ground trembling beneath his feet. He looked to his left and saw a shape hurtling towards him. Had he ever seen one before, he may well have thought, ‘Oh, that looks a bit like a rhino,’ but he hadn’t, so he didn’t think that. If anything, he thought, ‘Oh, fonk,’ as the enormous horned beast bounded towards him, a figure – apparently dressed entirely in neon yellow lights – sitting astride its back. The figure carried a long pointy jousting stick, which lowered slightly to take aim at Mech’s head.

There was more thunder on Mech’s right. He turned to find another of the things he couldn’t identify as rhinos approaching from that direction, too. Like the first, this one also carried someone, although this time covered in an intricate pattern of little red lights. This figure, too, lowered its jousting stick a fraction.

“Oh, well ain’t this just great?” Mech muttered, then he adjusted his dial, planted his feet, and braced himself.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

“I feel it’s only fair to warn you,” said Cal, raising his voice above the whine of the Void rig. “There’s a fair to moderate chance I might throw up.”

Up ahead, the darkness folded in on itself like a kaleidoscope of darkness. Visually, very little happened, and yet Cal somehow felt the Void’s movement deep in the animal part of his brain.

“Wait, no… moderate to high.”

“Don’t you dare!” Lily hissed. She gunned the throttle, pulling level with Loren’s rig. Loren glanced over, but it made her swerve dangerously towards Cal and Lily, and so she quickly faced front again.

“Jesus. Guess they didn’t have a simulator for one of these.”

“I heard that,” said Loren’s voice from a speaker somewhere up front.

“Totally meant you to,” he lied, then he quickly changed the subject. “Why isn’t Kevin just flying back to us?”

“Ships can’t operate in the Void,” said Lily. “Its systems will be non-operational.”

“So how do we get back out?” Loren wondered. It was a question that hadn’t occurred to Cal, but which now sent him into a brief-but-spiralling panic.

“Shizz. How do we get back out?”

“The jumpers are still attached from when we brought the ship through,” Lily said, gesturing to the clamps attached to the Untitled. “We can use those.”

Something hot and purple sparked across the Void ahead, briefly casting the tumbling Untitled into silhouette. A second flash caught Cal’s eye from over on his left. It left a little imprint of itself on his retina for a few seconds – a single jagged line stabbing down from above.

“Was that lightning? Is there pink lightning in here?” he asked. “Oh, and by the way, we’re totally calling this bike ‘Pink Lightning’ from now on. Loren, you can be ‘Brown Thunder.’”

“Is he always like this?” Lily asked.

Loren shrugged. “Pretty much.”

Lily sighed. “Great,” she said. “The lightning is Void Energy.”

“Is it dangerous?” asked Cal.

Another line of electric fire tore across the darkness ahead of them, like a split in the Void itself. “Guess,” Lily muttered. “We need to get your ship and jump it out of here before we get much deeper.”

“Why?” asked Cal. “What happens if we go deeper?”

“The longer we stay here, the weirder it’s going to get,” Lily explained, her eyes darting at the vast nothingness looming in front of them.

“Like fun weird?” Cal asked.

“Like head-imploding weird.”

“Like fun head-imploding weird?”

Lily drew him a withering look over her shoulder, then twisted the throttle further, pulling ahead of Loren. “Try to stay close,” she said. “If you get lost in here, we’ll never find you.”

Another bolt of Void lightning cracked the sky.

“Oh good,” Loren muttered. “Now you tell me.”

* * *

Mech planted one hand on the first rhino’s horn, and jammed his other hand against the spiked metal collar it wore around its neck. His hydraulics hissed and he gritted his teeth as the impact and the beast’s momentum forced him backwards, his feet carving deep grooves in the illuminated tiles.

From somewhere above, there came a gasp of shock, and Mech felt a little fluttering of pride. “I should fonking think so,” he muttered, grimacing as he shoved back with all his might against the rhino, gradually bringing it to a stop.

The man sitting on the animal’s back was twenty or thirty feet back, and only just getting to his feet. He had attempted to knock Mech over with his jousting stick, but it hadn’t worked out very well. He limped closer now, his bent and buckled weapon tucked under one arm, his formerly illuminated suit now a dark, dull-looking gray. He was gaping in wonder at what he’d just witnessed, and Mech felt that swell of pride again, before he realized the guy wasn’t looking at him.

Mech turned to find an armored rhinoceros being held aloft in one hand by Animal out of The Muppets. He didn’t know it was Animal out of The Muppets, of course – even Splurt didn’t really know who it was, and had just based his appearance on a fleeting image he’d once seen in Cal’s mind – but this made it no less impressive a sight. In Animal’s other hand, a man in a now-lightless jumpsuit remained perfectly still, and quietly wondered what the Hell was going on.

Animal out of The Muppets set both the man and the surprisingly-docile rhino down on the ground, bowed briefly to the dumbstruck crowd, then flobbed back into a gooey green blob.

Number Two and the other Carvers peeled themselves off the walls, into which they had been attempting to press themselves, and came to stand with Mech and Splurt. They all gathered in a vague circle shape, gazing up at the audience above them with a mix of defiance and fear.

From further along the trench, there came a cheer. It spread like wildfire, roaring along the length of the wall on both sides until the whole world seemed to hum with excitement.

“I guess they like us,” said Mech. He raised a hand and waved to the crowd.

Carver Two cleared his throat. “Perhaps,” he said. “Or perhaps they like them.”

He gestured along to one end of the trench. The narrow wall had slid aside, and dozens of uniformed men and women were jogging through. They all carried rifles in a way that suggested they both knew how to use them and were entirely comfortable with doing so. The troops were followed along the trench by a couple more of the armored rhinos, each with a rider and gun-turret on its back.

Mech sighed. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess it could be them. Although, if you ask me, we’re way more lovable.” A realization hit him. “Wait, you can understand me?”

Carver Two nodded and tapped his head behind the ear, where most translation chips were embedded. “The others don’t. But I can translate for you.”

“Uh, no. No need,” said Mech. “I can just sideload your language from my implant.” His eyelids fluttered for a second. “Done. Everyone now understand me?” he asked, in perfect English.

There was a murmuring from the Carvers he took to mean they could.

“What do we do?” asked one of them. He was thin and wiry-looking, like he could do with a good meal. “Do we fight? I mean… We can’t fight all of them, can we?”

“The other you would,” said Mech. “The one I know, I mean. He’d try taking them all on. He’s an idiot.” Mech couldn’t help but smile, just a little. “Course, he’d somehow win. Fonk knows how, but he’d somehow win.”

“Uh, OK. That’s great,” said the skinny Cal. “But that doesn’t really answer the question. What do we do?”

“Commmmpany… halt!” bellowed a voice from the advancing army.

“Looks like they want to talk,” said Mech.

“Taaaaaake aim.”

“Or maybe not,” the cyborg groaned, as the soldiers raised their weapons. “Splurt!”

Splurt curved in front of the Carvers, growing and hardening until he formed a thick metal barricade. From the other side there came a thunder of gunfire, then a series of dull hammer-strikes as the bullets met Splurt’s back.

Meanwhile, Mech spun on the spot, powering a fist into the trench wall. A basketball-sized chunk of masonry turned to dust, revealing a starkly-lit corridor beyond. Mech punched and kicked until the hole was large enough for him to fit through, then moved to lead the way.

“H-hold it right there!” yelped one of the jousters. He held his fists up, but couldn’t hide how badly they were shaking. “I’m arresting you all in the name of the High Imperial Guard. Take one more step, and you’ll answer to—”

Carver Two swung with his staff. The thick end hit the jouster’s head with a solid, definitive clonk, whereupon the man promptly fell over.

“Nice,” said Mech.

“Thanks,” said Carver Two.

They both looked at the other jouster, who had suddenly become fascinated by the ground some distance away, and seemed to have very little interest in attempting to stop them.

Mech nodded. “Wise move,” he said, then he turned to the Carvers. “Everyone stay together and stay close. We’re getting the fonk out of here.”

An explosive shell screamed along the corridor and exploded against the ceiling above Mech’s head, bringing several tons of rock and rubble down on top of him.

“Oh,” said a voice through the dust cloud. “I don’t think you are.”

* * *

Carver Eighty-Three looked up and saw the door he’d very recently jumped through go spinning off into the woods, before fizzling away into darkness somewhere deep in the trees. The wolf-woman who had forcibly tossed him through the portal by the beard hadn’t come through. This caused him concern and relief in roughly equal measures. Relief because she was a terrifying monster with big claws and bigger teeth, but concern because she was a terrifying monster with big claws and bigger teeth who seemed to be on their side.

“What happened?” asked Old Man Carver. He and a dozen or so other council members stood in a clearing, surrounded by towering oaks on all sides. Birds cheeped and twittered high in the branches, and a warm breeze fluttered through the leaves. It seemed like a peaceful place, made even more so by comparison to the chaos they’d left behind. “Where did the door go?”

“Aff intae thae woods,” said Eighty-Three, smoothing down his beard. “Ahind yon lot ower there, then – boof – awa’ it gings.”

Old Man Carver nodded slowly. “That’s… Yes. Right. Interesting,” he said, as diplomatically as he could. “It’ll be interesting to get another perspective, too, though. Anyone else see what happened to the door?”

Chunky Cal pointed in roughly the same direction Eighty-Three had. “Yeah, it sort of flew off that way, then vanished.”

“At’s wit I telt ye,” the Dwarf Cal said.

“Where are we?” asked Chunky. “I mean, I’m guessing it’s Earth?”

Old Man Carver pointed upwards. There, through a gap in the trees, they could see Ikumordo stretching across the sky. Its tendrils were growing steadily now, stretching out in all directions as if grabbing at distant stars.

“It’s Earth, alright.”

“Right. Yeah. But which Earth?” Chunky Cal asked.

“Could be any,” replied the old man. “I mean almost any. Most have forests like this. We’ll have to go further afield if we’re going to figure out more.”

Eighty-Three stood on his tiptoes and sniffed the air, his bushy eyebrows knotting in concentration.

“What’s he doing?” asked a bald-headed Carver. He wore a flowing robe that had presumably once been white, but which was now a sort of dirt-caked swirl of grays and browns, like the world’s dullest tie-dye.

“Sniffing the air,” said Chunky Cal, somewhat stating the obvious.

Eighty-three stopped sniffing and dropped to his knees. His knees weren’t very far from the ground, so this didn’t take him long. Once down there, he picked up something brown, round and lumpy, smeared it between his fingers, then touched a finger to his tongue.

“Oh, Jesus. Don’t do that,” said Chunky Cal. He gagged noisily, forming a little choir with some of the other Cals, who were already doing the same.

“What is it?” asked Old Man.

“It’s clearly shizz! Look at it!”

Old Cal tutted. “Wasn’t asking you.” He nodded to Eighty-Three. “What is it? Have you found something?”

“Mebbes aye, mebbes naw,” said Eighty-Three. He stood up and extended his shizz-smeared fingers towards the older man. “Huv a try.”

“Nah, you’re alright. Taste buds aren’t what they used to be.”

Eighty-Three gave a sort of ‘suit yourself’ shrug, then wiped his fingers on his leather jerkin. “Ah’m nae a hunner per cent or onything, but ah hink it’s ma Earth.”

“Your Earth?” said Old Man Carver, latching onto two of the four words he understood in the little man’s sentence.

“Aye,” said Eighty-Three, then his beard came to life.

At least, that’s how it appeared to those watching. The mass of hair undulated and wriggled for a moment, then curved outwards at both sides and pointed straight upwards, so the beard formed the shape of a big curvy letter ‘W’ on Eighty-Three’s chin.

“Uh, is it supposed to do that?” asked the old man, then he turned at the sound of feet crashing through the forest towards them.

At first, the Carvers saw nothing, but then the undergrowth moved and several small shapes tumbled through, muttering and cursing as they fell over one another.

“Git aff!”

“Haw! Get it right up ye!”

“Awa’ an’ bile yer heid, ya bam!”

Six little men all got to their feet. This involved lots of bickering, and a surprising amount of violence directed at each other.

Once they were all upright, they started to run again, then spotted Eighty-Three and the other Carvers, so stopped.

“Whit the—?”

“Fas you?”

Eighty-Three looked the strangers up and down. This didn’t take long. “Ne’er mind ‘fas me’, fas you?”

One of the other little men, whose beard was far bushier than the others, pressed a fist against the side of his head. “Donnie Wood, Keeper o’ the Shucht.”

Eighty-Three’s eyes narrowed. “Nae wee Donnie o’ the Woods? Fae Ower Yon?”

“Aye, fae Ower Yon,” said Donnie. His eyebrows moved like dancing caterpillars. “Haud on. Cal the Cairver? Fae Yon Why?”

“Aye!” said Eighty-Three.

“Awa’!”

“Aye!”

“It nuvur is.”

“Aye! Tis!”

“Awa’!”

Old Man Carver, like the rest of the council, had been attempting – with zero luck – to follow the conversation. As it now seemed to be stuck in some sort of loop, he felt it a good time to try to interject.

“Uh, what were you running from?” he asked. All eyes turned to him. “If you don’t mind me asking.”

“Fit’s he yabberin’ aboot?” asked Donnie, regarding Carver Twenty-Seven as if only just noticing him for the first time.

“He’s askin’ fit why were ye’s a’ fleein’ sae fast, and fit fae?” said Cal.

Donnie and the rest of his group all gasped, almost in perfect unison. “Aw, help m’boab, ah near clear furgot,” Donnie said. He turned to the trees just as a monstrous yellow-skinned creature bounded from the forest, a club swinging above his head, its terrifying genitalia swinging all the way past its knees.

“Ogre!” cried Donnie and the other dwarves, then they scattered as the club swung down and slammed into the ground, spraying soil and rocks in all directions.

The ogre gnashed its jaws and howled with rage, the dirty, ragged fingernails of its free hand grabbing for the closest dwarf. It caught one of the little fellas by the beard and yanked it closer, the beast’s mouth becoming a cavernous maw filled with rotten teeth as its stomach ejected a rumble of hunger.

A rock bounced off the ogre’s forehead. It didn’t seem to hurt, but it got the thing’s attention. The monster dropped its club so it could prod at the spot where the stone had hit it. Meanwhile, the little man still wriggled and kicked in his other hand.

“Leave him alone!” said Old Man Carver, hefting a second rock from hand to hand. He tossed it, but this time the ogre was ready. It snatched the stone from the air, gave it an experimental sniff, then crushed it to powder between a finger and thumb.

“Or, you know, don’t. Up to you, really,” said the old man. He backed away as the ogre’s expression twisted into one of rage. Tossing the dwarf aside, the monster bounded forwards, snatching up its club and hurling itself at Old Man Carver and the rapidly scattering council.

Carver Twenty-Seven knew his old bones and withered muscles weren’t strong enough for him to fight back, or fast enough for him to flee, so he stood his ground and puffed up his chest as best he could.

He saw himself reflected in the ogre’s melon-sized eyes, saw the monster’s teeth and its club and – briefly, because the pendulum-like motion of it caught his eye – its penis.

“Jesus. That thing’s like a baby’s arm,” he muttered.

And then he saw a blur of movement from the trees. He saw hair and claws and teeth and fury.

And then he saw blood.

Lots of blood.

The ogre made a series of noises which, to the Carvers and dwarves, sounded like nothing more than frenzied howls and grunts. Had any of them been in possession of a Zertex-designed translation chip, however, they might have understood the sounds to mean something along the lines of, “Argh! My throat! Stop biting my throat!”

The subsequent wheezing and gargling, on the other hand, was just regular wheezing and gargling, and no translation would have been available.

When the wheezing and gargling – and, to a lesser extent, the spurting – had stopped, a shocked silence fell across the clearing. It didn’t last long.

“Like, seriously,” snarled Mizette, chewing on something thick and gristly. “I turn my back for two fonking minutes…”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Cal kept his gaze on the Currently Untitled, which was still drifting onwards through the Void. He very much did not keep his gaze on the eye-wateringly acrobatic Void itself, which was currently in the process of simultaneously exploding and imploding in a way that was firmly, yet politely, telling Physics to go fonk itself.

More lightning appeared. Something about it had changed, though – or maybe it was Cal who had changed – because he couldn’t actually identify it as lightning any more, and instead could only think of it as a sound. Only, instead of his ears hearing it, his eyes were smelling it, and his brain, for its part, was wondering what in the name of God was going on.

If pressed, Cal would describe the sound as a sort of bass-heavy blompfk, but with a wobble in the middle and just the faintest touch of high-hat at the end.

He’d also know, deep down, that this was absolutely nothing like the sound his eyes were currently smelling, and that any words which might feasibly describe it didn’t currently exist.

He made a sound like an old-fashioned telephone. He didn’t know why. It just seemed like the right thing to do.

Loren meanwhile, was filled with the unshakeable belief that she was flying upside-down. This wasn’t particularly unusual – in space there was no ‘upside-down’, as such – and yet her every instinct was screaming at her to right herself before she fell off the bike and plunged into the gyrating darkness.

She looked over at Cal and Lily, but the way the Void was twisting and folding beyond them meant she couldn’t figure out if they were the same way up as her, pointing in the same direction, or even what size they were. She alternated between thinking they were huge, but far away, or tiny, but just inches from her head. Interestingly, at no point in the last few minutes had she considered that they might still be the same size as she was.

“It’s getting weirder,” said Cal, but the words came out backwards. Or was he backwards, and the words were the right way around? Both, probably.

Or neither.

He made a sound like a telephone again.

“Almost there,” said Lily. She was either less affected by the Void, or making a better job of hiding what it was doing to her. While Loren occupied herself wondering which way up she was, and Cal tried with limited success to count his hands, Lily closed the gap on the Untitled, swinging the rig down and around beneath the ship to give them a clear run at the ramp.

Once she was in position, Lily tapped a couple of controls on a panel between the handlebars. “Locking you into my path,” she announced, and Loren felt her bike shift direction, apparently now under Lily’s control.

This actually came as something of a relief to Loren, as she’d started to suspect the bike wasn’t her biggest fan, and was secretly thinking some pretty mean things about her. Also, she was convinced she no longer had feet, so operating the pedal controls had been getting progressively more and more difficult.

“Six!” called Cal, gazing at one of his hands. He needed to hold onto the Void rig, so could only lift one hand off at a time to count it, before replacing it on the bike and counting the next hand. “No, seven,” he said, doing just that. “Wait, eight.”

“No, you’re fat,” said Loren, punching her bike. Tears streamed down her face as she listened to her Void rig silently judging her.

Lilly rolled her eyes. “Everyone just hold on,” she said.

There was a blompfk, wobble and high-hat of lightning, then Lily hit the boost and rocketed forwards, rolling the bike sideways in order to fit through the Untitled’s rear hatch. The Void rig screeched along the corridor, the metal scraping grooves in the walls on either side.

“Wait, fourteen!” said Cal, then the bike jerked to a stop just feet from the bridge door, right before Loren crashed into the back of it.

Lily turned in her seat. “Hatch. Hatch. How do I close the hatch?” She spotted the landing ramp controls. “Doesn’t matter. Brace yourself. I’ll try to be quick.”

She took a series of deep breaths, then tapped the button that lowered the shielding, and jumped off the bike.

Cal shrunk and grew at the same time. His fingers stopped being fingers, and instead became long thin slivers of time, each one moving at a different rate, showing him glimpses of his fingers past, present and future. His thumbs looked tiny, and he felt an overwhelming urge to suck on one. Ideally while rocking back and forth, and crying.

He had no legs now, but that was fine. He’d never used his legs when he had them, as far as he could remember, so this was just tidier.

His hair whispered to him, revealing the secrets of the ages. Or most of it revealed the secrets of the ages, but a small patch on his forearm told a slightly racist joke, which he was a bit disappointed by. He shaved it off using fire from his eyes, then giggled as Loren inflated like a balloon inside her bike’s energy shielding, filling the whole space until her massive face was pressed up against it.

“I want to be a bubble, too!” Cal said, through one of the many tiny mouths that had appeared on the back of both hands. He kissed them all individually – though not with tongues – then screamed as a blond-haired monster stabbed him in the throat.

There was… a sensation. A number of sensations, in fact. Mostly, they concerned everything snapping back into some sort of order. He was no longer an infinite number of different sizes at the same time, for example, and his fingers had all stopped aging/de-aging before his eyes - with the exception of the ring finger on his right hand, which seemed to have stuck at seven-year-old size.

The mouths were gone, too, his hair had all stopped whispering, and Loren was no longer a partially-inflated blancmange.

“Cool,” said Cal, then he noisily and spectacularly threw up all over the empty seat in front of him.

Lily gestured for Loren to lower her shielding. Loren spent a few seconds pretending to be a big spider, got surprised by her nose, then slapped her hand against the button.

Loren pointed at the ceiling, which had turned into a number of little fish, shouted, “Whoopsies!” at the top of her voice because she knew, unshakably, that it was the right thing to do, then let out a little yelp as Lily plunged a needle into her throat and injected her with something purple.

Almost immediately, the ceiling-fish became just plain ceiling. Loren blinked rapidly for a while, shook her head, then swung her leg over the bike and dismounted.

“OK, what the fonk just happened?”

“Funny,” said Cal. “I was about to ask the same—”

The rest of the sentence was lost in an explosion of vomit.

“Void sickness,” said Lily. “The trippy mind stuff, I mean, not the throwing up. Although, that’s a common side effect. I didn’t have time to vaccinate you before, or we’d have lost the ship.”

“The ship?” said Cal, frowning. He looked around, then a smile replaced the vomit-caked scowl on his face. “The ship! We’re on the ship! Kevin, you there?”

Silence.

“Kevin? Kev?” said Cal, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. “Hello?”

Nothing.

“Shizz, that’s not good,” said Loren.

She led the way through to the bridge. The controls, which were usually illuminated, were in darkness. The viewscreen was black, too, aside from two words flashing off and on in a stark red font.

CRITICAL ERROR!

“Yup,” said Cal. “That is definitely not good.”

* * *

Miz slouched her weight onto one hip and folded her arms. “Alright, alright, just stop, like, bowing or whatever.”

Donnie and the other Dwarves were down on both knees, bent low, their hands stretched out on the ground towards Miz. Carver Eighty-Three hadn’t quite gone into full worship mode, but he had dropped to one knee and was lowering his head in a gesture of respect. The wolf-creature had, after all, saved them from the ogre, so he felt a show of gratitude was deserved. Also, she could bite all their heads off without breaking a sweat, so getting on her good side probably wasn’t a bad idea, in general.

“Seriously, just get up, already,” said Miz. She looked across to Old Man Carver, began to say something, then remembered he couldn’t understand her. “OK, does anyone here have any fonking idea what I’m saying?”

She was met with blank looks from Dwarves and Carvers alike.

“Well that’s awesome,” she muttered.

“Check it out,” said one of the Carvers, pointing to the gap in the trees overhead.

Ikumordo now filled the entire oval of sky Miz and the others could see. Billions of glinting sparkles flashed in the orange cloud, holding everyone’s attention like a hypnotist’s watch.

“Crivvens! Fit’s ‘at a’ aboot?” chittered one of the Dwarves.

“Ah dinnae ken,” replied another. “Bit it’s nae thing guid.”

“We should try to find the others,” said Old Man Carver. He fiddled with a handheld device for a few moments, then held it at arm’s length, trying to read the writing on it.

“Just in your own time,” said another Carver. “It’s not like we’re in a creepy woods filled with monsters, or anything.”

“Yeah, yeah,” said the old man.

“Oh wait, I tell a lie, it is like that.”

“I was in a forest like this once,” said another Carver. “Almost choked on a squirrel’s tits.”

“Jesus. What? How? Why?” asked yet another. “In fact, no, I don’t even want to know.”

“I absolutely want to know,” said another, and there was a general chorus of agreement from the rest.

“Aha!” cried the old man. He jabbed a button and a doorway opened a few feet ahead of him. “This should take us…” He peered at the gadget again. “Somewhere.”

“Well, it’s got to be better than here, right?” said Carver Sixty-Nine, wringing his pudgy hands together.

Miz looked around at the once-again tranquil woods, with the twitter of birds chorusing from the trees. “I wouldn’t count on it,” she said, but as nobody understood a word of it, she shrugged, beckoned them to follow, and led the way through the portal.

The world beyond was dark, the sky thick with ash and dust. The ground had been sand at one point, Miz reckoned, but now was scorched and blackened into something like glass. It kricked ominously beneath her weight as she padded away from the door, letting the others file through.

“On second thoughts, I think I liked the last place better,” whispered Chunky Cal.

Despite the ash cloud covering the sky, Miz could make out a faint orange glow beyond it. Ikumordo was here, too, although it was impossible to tell how much, if any, it had grown.

“Och, fit’s a’ this stoor a’where?” asked one of the Dwarves. Miz knew it was a question thanks to the rising inflection at the end, but had no clue what the words actually meant. Or, in fact, if they even were words.

“Wait, why are you here? Go back, you’re not supposed to be with us,” said Miz, ushering the Dwarves back towards the door. They shuffled back in fear, but avoided stepping back through into their own universe.

“A’ wir lives belong tae you, quine,” said Donnie, bowing his head in deference. “Wir honor-bound tae stick wi’ ye.”

A chunk of what he’d said actually made some sort of sense. Miz was about to tell him he didn’t owe her anything when the smoggy air was filled with the sound of roaring. At first, Miz thought it was some sort of animal, but as the sounds became louder and the stench of gasoline flooded her nostrils, she realized they were surrounded not by creatures, but by vehicles.

Several sets of headlights and spotlights illuminated, the high-powered beams burning through the dust and ash. The lights were blinding in every direction, so Miz focused on her ears and nose. The fog masked scents and muffled noises, but she reckoned there were twenty or so people out there beyond the circle of lights. A few of them were injured, and all of them were in need of a good wash. Most had blood on them, very little of it theirs.

A short spear, the handle carved from what looked very much like a human thigh bone, appeared from the fog. Its rusted metal tip embedded in the glass between Miz and the Carvers, shattering it into a spider-web pattern.

“Well, now.” The voice that came from the fog was slow and gravelly, and positively oozing with malice. “What in the name of tarnation do we got here?”

* * *

By the time Mech dragged himself free of the rubble, the Carvers were gone. Two squadrons of soldiers filled the corridor, one on either side of him. The weapons they wielded were large and mostly shoulder-mounted, suggesting explosives. Annoyingly, they were well out of his reach, meaning they’d have plenty of opportunity to rain fire on him before he could make it more than a few feet.

The soldiers were all human, their uniforms and weapons pretty much standard, based on Mech’s admittedly-limited understanding of Earth. Or the version of Earth from his universe, at least. There were no energy weapons on display, just rudimentary projectile launchers packed with explosive charges. Crude, but judging by the way one had brought the roof down on him, effective.

Mech’s hydraulics whirred noisily as he got to his feet. “Where are the others?” he demanded.

“Never mind that. Who - what - are you?” asked an older soldier. He was more decorated than the others, and sat astride one of the horned beasts. The turret on the rhino’s back was aiming squarely between Mech’s eyes.

Mech didn’t like the man. There was something about the way he had arranged his features into a calculated sneer – not to mention the tone of his voice - that instantly put Mech right off him.

“I’m the guy who’s looking for his friends,” said Mech. “And who is going to snap every one of you in half until you tell me where they are.” He narrowed his eyes and flexed his robotic fingers. “So, I’m gonna ask again, then I’m gonna count to five. Where are the others?”

A few of the closest soldiers shifted their weight onto the balls of their feet. Mech shot them a very deliberate look. “One.”

“I ask the questions,” snapped the rhino-mounted officer. “What are you, and where did you come from?”

“Two.”

“Are you connected to that thing in the sky? Is that it?”

“We’re trying to stop it before it kills everyone,” said Mech. “Three.”

“Prepare to fire!” barked the officer.

“I wouldn’t,” said Mech. “Four.”

“Company… f—” the officer began, before the floor beneath both platoons suddenly shot upwards, slamming them against the ceiling, rhino and all.

The floor fell away, letting everyone drop for a moment, before smashing them upwards again at blinding speed, taking the remainder of the fight right out of them.

When it dropped away again, the floor began to shrink. It changed color and texture, going from a flat, dull gray to a vibrant blobby green. Splurt rolled over to Mech, stopped at his feet, then twisted around the cyborg’s body until he was sitting on his shoulder.

“Uh, thanks,” said Mech. He gave Splurt a tentative pat on the head (or, more accurately, ‘the top bit’), then looked around at the groaning, broken, semi-conscious bodies littering the corridor. “Any idea where they took the others?”

Splurt grew a hand and pointed along the corridor behind them. “You sure?” Mech asked. Splurt’s hand gave a thumbs-up, then went back to pointing. “OK, then,” said Mech. “I guess we’re going this way.”

Several twists and turns later, Mech heard the cheering of a large crowd. Splurt pointed to a heavily-barricaded set of double doors, but Mech no longer needed directions.

Raising a foot, he kicked open the doors. Wood splintered and metal groaned as the barricades were torn off their hinges and toppled, slowly, into a bowl-shaped arena beyond. Carvers ran from the thundering feet of more armored rhinos. Riders on the animals’ backs cracked whips, waved tridents, twirled nets above their heads and whooped loudly, as an audience seated in high tiers around the perimeter clapped and roared their approval.

“Yaha!”

Mech turned in time to see a spear come flying through the air towards him, tossed by a rhino-rider who had steered his beast into a charge. The spear plinked harmlessly off Mech’s chest. He watched the rhino barreling towards him, waited for just the right moment, then felled it with a single punch to the side of the head.

The rider tried to throw himself clear, but failed. He screamed as the full weight of the animal landed on his leg, rolled upwards over his groin and stomach, then popped him like a spot.

“Yaha yourself, motherfonker,” Mech spat. He cast his gaze across the arena. Nine rhinos and riders were bearing down on the Carvers. None of the Carvers had fallen yet, but only because the riders were toying with them, making a show for the audience to enjoy.

Well, if it was a show they wanted…

Splurt flopped down to the ground and rolled between Mech’s feet. Mech looked down in surprise as he was lifted into the air by a rapidly growing shape. It was not unlike a rhino, but not exactly like one, either. It was bigger for one thing, and had twice as many horns – although this was largely on account of having twice as many heads.

Its feet ended in colossal bear-like paws. Its hide was dark, but fiery, like cooling molten rock, and as it bared its teeth and roared, a jet of blue flame erupted from one of its throats.

The beast’s tail retrieved the spear from the ground and presented it to Mech. The cyborg’s metal jaw curved into a grin. “Oh man, I am liking this,” he said, then Splurt lowered both heads, twitched his kangaroo-like back legs, and charged.

Beneath the all-seeing gaze of Ikumordo on high, Mech drew back the spear, took aim, and so began what witnesses would later refer to as, ‘The Imperial Stadium Massacre.’

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Loren was kneeling on the floor, her head buried inside a terminal, her fingers rifling through a ridiculous number of wires. Cal stood behind her, offering the occasional word of encouragement, and trying not to look at her butt.

“Anything?”

Cal tore his eyes from Loren’s butt long enough to look at the screen. “No, still the same.”

“Fonk it!” Loren spat. She emerged from the tangle of wires and stood up, much to Cal’s disappointment. “Then I don’t know.”

Lily entered the bridge, a handheld scanning device in her hand. She had taken it from her Void rig – or possibly built it using bits of her Void rig, Cal wasn’t quite sure – and then vanished into the bowels of the ship with it.

“System shock,” she announced. “The Void can do that if the shielding isn’t properly configured. The systems depend on conventional physics to work, and here we’re shizz out of conventional physics.”

“But the Untitled’s shields are awesome,” Cal protested.

“The back door was literally open the whole time,” Lily pointed out. “The shields might be awesome, but only if they’re switched on.”

“Shizz, yeah, good point,” said Cal. “So you’re saying… What, exactly?”

“That we’re drifting,” said Lily. “That we’re drifting out of control through the Void.”

“But you can use the jumper things, right?” said Loren. “You can still jump us out of here.”

Lily shook her head. “No. Wait. Yes. Maybe.”

“Well, that covered all bases,” said Cal. “Good job.”

“The clamps need power, which they’d normally draw from the ship,” said Lily, pointedly ignoring him. “If we can somehow hook up the Void rigs, maybe we can use their power source to trigger the jump. No saying how far we’d get, or where we’d end up, but as long as we get out of here.”

“Agreed,” said Loren. “What can I do?”

Cal stepped between them. “Wait, wait, hold your horses,” he said. “What about the thing?”

Both women frowned. “What thing?” asked Lily.

“The thing. You know. The thing that’s supposed to be able to stop Ikumordo. It’s in the Void, right?”

Lily looked annoyed. “Again, it’s a legend. Also again, even if it wasn’t, it’d be impossible to find, and – making this point for the first time – we’re stuck aboard a lifeless ship drifting aimlessly, completely out of control. Even if it A, did exist, and B, we knew where it was, we’ve got no means of reaching it.”

Cal raised a finger and opened his mouth to speak, but Lily pre-empted it. “Void rigs are short distance only. They’ll barely have enough charge to jump us out of here, as it is. If we try going anywhere on those, we’re stuck here forever.”

There was a sniggering sound. Cal and Lily both looked at Loren.

“Something funny there, Loren?” Cal asked.

Loren blinked. “What?”

“No, it’s just Lily said we’d be stuck here forever and you, you know, laughed.”

“No, I didn’t,” said Loren.

The sniggering came again. Cal frowned for a moment, then raised his eyes to the ceiling. “Kevin, have I ever told you you’re a complete fonking shizznod?”

“Not in so many words, sir,” said Kevin, his voice positively giddy with the giggles.

Lily looked around for the voice. The warning text on screen vanished, and the blackness was replaced by a view of the Void. As it was also black, no one really noticed that bit.

“Just his little joke,” explained Cal.

“Just my little joke,” confirmed Kevin. “Oh, you should have seen your faces. Wait, you can!”

The darkness was replaced by a still image of the bridge. In it, Loren was on her knees, rummaging around in the circuitry.

“Hey, were you looking at my butt?”

“What? No!” said Cal. “That’s just the angle.”

He gestured for Kevin to remove the picture. After a moment, the darkness returned.

“OK, so this is good,” said Lily. “This is great. We can draw power from the ship to activate the clamps, and jump us out of here.”

“Or…” said Cal, jumping into his chair. “We could go find the thing.”

“For the third time, it’s a legend. There is no thing,” said Lily. “There never was a thing.”

“Kevin, how are your long range scanners doing?”

“Fine, sir, thanks for asking.”

“Good. Fire them up. Full sweep. Tell me if you see anything unusual.”

There was a moment of silence. Reams of data flooded the right side of the screen. “There’s quite a lot of unusual activity, sir,” said Kevin. “As with Ikumordo, my sensors are having difficulty figuring out what’s what.”

“Oh,” said Cal, deflating slightly. Lily’s expression turned from one of irritation to one of slightly smug irritation.

“Although…” began Kevin.

Cal straightened in his chair. “Yes?”

“I am picking up something specifically unusual, sir. Unusual in the sense that it’s unlike all the other unusualness surrounding it.”

“Aha!” said Cal. “What is it?”

“It’s, well, I’m not sure how best to describe it,” said Kevin. “I suppose you might say it’s a thing, sir. My sensors have detected a thing.”

Cal used his feet to whizz his chair around. He turned a full three-sixty, before stopping in front of Lily. “Oh snap!” he said. “Kevin done found us a thing!”

“Why are you talking like that?” asked Loren.

“I have no idea,” Cal admitted. “Kevin, plot us a course. Find us that thing!”

“Very good, sir,” said Kevin.

Lily shook her head. “There’s no point. Conventional physics, remember? He, or it, or whatever this thing is might be able to power on, but there’s no way it can—”

The Untitled eased forwards as the thrusters engaged, sending Lily staggering backwards. Cal caught her arm and held her while she got her balance back. On screen, the darkness shifted as the Untitled pressed onwards into the Void.

“No, that’s… This isn’t a Void ship,” Lily said. “How is this possible? It shouldn’t be moving. It can’t be moving.”

“It is,” said Loren, studying her console. “Impulse power, but moving.”

Lily shook her head again. “No. No, it isn’t.”

Cal licked a finger and held it up, as if testing the wind. “Pretty sure it is.”

“No, but It can’t be. It’s not possible. It’s not even theoretically possible. Well, no, it’s theoretically possible, but you’d need two entirely different drive systems, and unless they were occupying the same point in space and time, then…”

She ran her fingers through her hair and chewed her tongue. Cal remembered both moves from when she used to struggle with her homework all those years ago.

“I find it’s best not to worry about it,” Cal told her.

“Well I do worry about it,” said Lily. “Lives depend on me worrying about it. Maybe everyone’s life.”

Cal shrugged. “Fair enough,” he said. He unclipped his seatbelt, slapped his hands on his thighs, and stood up. “Then I know just the thing that’s going to help.”

* * *

Lily sat on a bench, peering in disbelief at the object on the table. “Is that what I think it is?”

Cal nodded. “In the flesh,” he said. “Well, not ‘flesh’, obviously, that would be disgusting.” He pushed the plate towards her. “Grandma’s banoffee pie.”

Lily brought her face closer to the pie and sniffed. “Oh, God, it smells just like it.”

“It is it,” said Cal. “Well, based on my taste buds, memories, and whatever can be figured out by sticking a probe up by nose. Here.” He passed her his home made fork. She turned it over in her hands, then looked at him, quizzically.

“Yeah, I had to make it myself. Turns out space isn’t big on forks.”

“Oh?” said Lily. She considered this for a few minutes. “What do they use?”

Cal shrugged. “All kinds of stuff. Sponges. I’ve eaten soup with a sponge. I’m not particularly proud of that fact.” He shrugged again. “Well, I’m a little bit proud.”

Lily rested the fork on top of the pie, hesitated as if scared to proceed, then carved off a chunk. She hesitated a second time with the piece of pie held just in front of her mouth, then she popped it in, closed her eyes, and chewed.

“Oh. Mm. Oh, wow.”

“I know, right?” said Cal. He smiled as he watched her dive right in for a second piece. “You always did love grandma’s baking. I mean… she always loved… I mean, you probably did, too, but I meant my…”

He abandoned the sentence, glanced down at the table to compose himself, then raised his eyes again. “Sorry, it’s just… This is hard. Amazing, don’t get me wrong. But hard.”

Lily swallowed the second piece of pie and nodded. “I know what you mean. It’s… weird. Sitting here. Like this. The accident, it took… everything. Well, I mean, I guess you’d know.”

“Ooh, yeah,” said Cal. He began tracing the contours of the table with a fingernail. “I was supposed to have been driving, but I stayed home. No real reason, I just… I stayed home. I’ve always wondered what might have happened, you know? Maybe they’d still be here.” He gestured around at the Untitled. “Well, probably not here.”

Lily set the fork down on the plate and slid the pie across the table. Cal looked at it for a few seconds, as if he had no idea what it was, then picked up the fork and began to eat.

“I’ve been all across the multi-verse looking for a Cal Carver like my dad,” Lily said. “You’re dead in a lot of universes. Like, a lot. You’ve been shot, blown up, drowned, executed by alien overlords, carried away by a giant moth…”

“Jesus,” said Cal, through a mouthful of pie. “Who’d want to shoot me?”

“Turns out, quite a number of people,” said Lily. “Moderate to high, even.”

Cal shoveled more pie into his face. “Still, giant moth sounds awesome.”

Lily nodded. “Yeah, can’t argue with that. But my point is, in at least one of those universes, you and your whole family – I mean, you know, us and our whole family, I guess – were killed in a car accident.”

She reached across the table and took back the pie before Cal could finish it all. “Maybe you would have made a difference. I mean somewhere, you did, because that’s just how the multi-verse works. But maybe your universe would have been one of those without a Cal Carver in it. And, from what I can gather, you’ve helped a lot of people.”

Cal nodded slowly, watching her finish off the rest of the pie. “Jesus. When did you get so wise?”

Lily shrugged. “I get it from my mom’s side.”

Cal grinned. “You can say that again.”

They sat in silence for a while, the table like a gulf between them, neither one knowing quite what to say. There was a question on Cal’s mind – Hell, there were a lot of questions on Cal’s mind. He wanted to know about school, about friends – boyfriends? – about her favorite things to do, the places she hung out, the life she’d gone on to live.

He wasn’t sure, though, if he was ready to hear the answers to all those little questions, so he asked the big question on his mind, instead.

“Why me?”

Lily frowned. “Huh?”

“I mean, you needed someone to volunteer their universe to Ikumordo. Why me?”

“Oh. Uh, well…” She sighed. “It sounds a bit… clinical. You were the one who had the least to lose. You know, wife dead, daughter dead, parents, other relatives, friends, acquaintances. Basically the whole of Earth dead.”

“I think we’ve established that,” said Cal. “Everyone dead. Got it. But that’s just Earth.”

“I didn’t consider the space thing,” said Lily. “I thought you’d gladly sacrifice a dead Earth to save all those people you knew on other Earths. It didn’t occur to me that you’d see the bigger picture, or whatever. The rest of the universe.”

Cal nodded for several seconds, processing this. “But you knew? You saw the bigger picture? You knew what you were asking me to sacrifice?”

Lily paused, just for a moment, but then continued. “Yes. I knew. But it’s like I said, the needs of the many.”

“You’d have killed the whole universe. I would have killed the whole universe.”

“Not us, Ikumordo. And not the whole universe, a whole universe,” Lily said. She pushed the plate aside, and the gulf between them seemed to widen. “Instead, thanks to your pointless bravado, it’s going to kill every universe. It’s going to end all existence everywhere. In what way is that a victory?”

“It isn’t,” said Cal.

“Exactly. It isn’t a victory, it’s—”

“No, I mean it isn’t going to kill every universe,” said Cal. “It’s not going to kill any universe. Because we’re going to stop it.” He raised his voice. “Kevin, how we doing on that thing?”

“I think we’re getting closer, sir, although it’s difficult to tell.”

“How long until we get there?”

“Ooh, tricky to say, sir.”

“Take a wild guess,” said Cal.

Kevin replied immediately. “Fifteen thousand years.”

A micro-expression of panic flashed across Cal’s face, then was gone. “Take a less wild guess.”

There were a few protracted moments of silence while Kevin calculated. “An hour or two, sir. Perhaps less, but possibly more.”

“OK. That’s more like it. Can you get a message to Mech?”

Lily tutted. “Of course he can’t, we’re in the Void.”

“Master Mech on the line now, sir,” said Kevin. The sentence was followed by a series of screams, the sound of gunfire, and the roar of something that might have been a rhinoceros.

“Good to hear from you, man, but now ain’t exactly a good time,” said Mech.

“Argh! My legs!” howled someone in the background.

Lily gaped up at the ceiling, where the sound was coming from. “No. It’s not. This is a trick. How is this…? No.”

“Where are you?” asked Cal. “Sounds like fun.”

“Yaaark! What the fonk is that thing? It’s got two heads!”

“Long story,” said Mech. He grunted, as if he’d just punched something very heavy, very hard. Which, as it just so happened, he had. “You?”

“We’re in the gap between universes,” said Cal. “Also a long story. We might have a lead on something that can stop Ikumordo, though. Can you keep it busy for us until we get back?”

“How the fonk are we supposed to keep it busy?” Mech demanded.

“It’s breathing fire! Jesus Christ!”

“You’ll think of something,” said Cal.

“Fine. I’ll think of something,” said Mech, although he didn’t sound best pleased about it. “How long you gonna be?”

“Probably a couple of hours,” said Cal. “But no more than fifteen thousand years, tops.”

Mech’s reply was drowned out by a brief staccato of gunfire, which was probably just as well.

“I’m with Loren. Is Miz with you?” Cal asked.

“No,” said Mech. “No, she’s… She’s gone.”

“Gone where?”

“Just gone, man. The darkness. The Void, or whatever, it pulled her in. It got her.”

Cal said nothing for quite a long time. He drummed his fingers on the table, staring up at the speaker, hoping Mech was about to pull one of Kevin’s ‘just my little joke’ tricks.

“Oh,” he said, when he realized Mech wasn’t going to do that. “Shizz. And Splurt?”

“He’s here. Some of the Carvers, too. Number Two, some of the others.”

“OK. OK, good,” said Cal. He closed his eyes and for a moment saw Miz scowling at him from the darkness. “Well, do what you can. We’ll be back soon.”

“Ish,” added Kevin.

“Get it off me! Get it off me! Oh God!”

“Will do,” said Mech. “Oh and, you know, take care of yourself, or whatever.”

Cal nodded. “You, too.”

There was another burst of gunfire, some more screams, and then the connection dropped. Lily looked from Cal to the ceiling and back again a number of times, her mouth trying to form a question, but unable to settle on which one. She decided to go wide.

“How?” she asked.

“How what?”

“We’re in the Void!”

“I know. You keep saying that.”

“But, I mean… How? You can’t just radio out of the Void. It’s impossible.”

Cal snorted. “I thought you were some kind of science whizz genius? Nothing’s impossible. Everyone knows that.”

“No, people who make stupid motivational posters know that,” said Lily. “Lots of things are impossible.” She looked up and raised her voice. “You. Ship. How did you do that?”

There was silence. Quite a deliberate silence, as if someone was making a point of not saying anything.

“Well? How did you do it? It must be a trick.”

“Sorry, is she talking to me?” Kevin asked.

“I think so,” said Cal. He turned to Lily. “His name’s Kevin, not ‘ship’. He’s not the ship. He just works here. He’s one of the crew.”

Lily regarded him as if he’d just claimed all Norwegians could fly. “Right,” she said, dragging the word out. “Well, Kevin, how did you do that?”

“Simple. I routed the transmission through those clamp things attached to the outside of the ship.”

“You jumped the audio feed?” Lily gasped. “That’s… I mean, I don’t know how you… That’s brilliant.”

“Yes, it was rather, isn’t it?” said Kevin. “It was all going so swimmingly for a while, but they seem to be non-responsive now.”

“They’re designed for short-term usage. One quick jump, then they need time to recharge,” Lily said. “Alternatively, you’ve broken them, and we’re going to be stuck here in the Void for the rest of our lives.” She met Cal and Loren’s horrified gazes. “But hopefully the first one,” she said, as reassuringly as she could.

“Being stuck here for the rest of our lives wouldn’t be so bad,” said Kevin.

“In what way wouldn’t that be bad?” Cal asked.

“I simply meant that the rest of your lives is unlikely to be a very long period of time, sir.”

The Untitled rocked as something detonated against the hull. “It appears we’re under attack.”

“What? That’s impossible!” said Lily.

“Nothing’s impossible,” Cal insisted, jumping to his feet.

“Yes, it is!”

“Who from?” asked Cal. “Who’s shooting at us?”

“That’s where it gets really rather intriguing, sir,” said Kevin. “It appears we’re shooting at ourselves.”

He waited for a few moments, before adding: “Bet you didn’t see that one coming, did you?”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

“This’n must be our lucky day, boys,” said the voice in the fog. “Two delicious-looking gift baskets in the same hour, delivered unto us by the good Lord Himself.”

“Amen, Cletus,” sniggered another voice. “We gonna cook them all together, or save these ones for later?”

The first man – Cletus – cleared his nasal passages in a long, protracted series of snorts and grunts, then spat the wad onto the scorched Earth. “Them little ‘uns looks like they’d make mighty fine appetizers. Maybe we’n should roast us a few of those up, first, before we have us the main course.”

Old Man Carver raised his hands and gestured for the others to do the same. A couple of the Dwarves joined in, before the dirty looks this drew from the others made them lower their hands again.

Miz remained slouched on one hip, her arms folded indignantly.

“We don’t want any trouble,” said the old man. “Please, put down your guns.”

“Guns?” Cletus sneered. “Come on now, old timer, we don’t need guns.”

Old Man Carver shot Miz a meaningful look. Miz nodded. “Good to know,” she said, then she bounded into the ring of lights, claws and teeth glinting in the artificial glow.

“Sweet Mother of Christ!” squealed Cletus, barely reaching the exclamation point before his insides became his outsides, and his future became a thing of the past.

The Carvers pulled together in the circle as Miz did the rounds. Screams and wails began to come from all directions. A wild-eyed man with a beard to put the Dwarves’ to shame charged into the circle of light, arms flapping. A clawed hand caught him by the top of the head and wrenched him back into the shadows.

“No, oh no, oh no!” he cried, then he screamed, briefly, before something snapped with a loud, slightly damp-sounding pop, shutting him up. Permanently.

“Fit a fine quine ‘at is,” breathed Carver Eighty-Three, gazing into the darkness with something that hovered right on the border between admiration and lust. “Fit a fine, sturdy figure o’ a quine.”

A minute or so of spectacular violence later, Miz flicked the blood from her claws and tore open the back doors of one of the vehicles. It was a beat-up old truck with a variety of symbols painted amateurishly on the side and, more importantly, a variety of Cal Carvers all tied up in the back. They screamed when Miz appeared out of the ash-fog, gore dripping from her terrible jaws.

“Yeah, yeah,” she scowled, slicing through their bonds with her fingernails. “Maybe, like, a ‘thank you’ wouldn’t go amiss.”

The Carvers hurried out of the truck, ran around in panicky circles, then were shepherded into the circle by Miz. They collided with the other Carvers already there, and there was a happy few moments while they enjoyed their reunion, before Old Man Carver opened another door.

“Right then,” he said. “Let’s see where this one goes.”

* * *

Mech leaned out through an energy door, looked around to make sure nothing was going to shoot him, then stepped all the way through. Number Two and the other Carvers followed, emerging into a lush green field fringed by trees.

Some sheep were grazing at the field’s far end. The animals looked in the direction of the newcomers, then one broke into a canter and began the long run towards them.

There was a clear view of the sky here, and the sight of Ikumordo sent little gasps of shock through the group. The orange space cloud had grown like a particularly malignant tumor, its fingers stretching almost all the way to the horizon in every direction, and plunging the world into a slightly ethereal shimmering shade.

“Well, this is nicer,” said one of the Carvers. “You know, apart from the big evil sky thing.”

“That does kind of spoil it,” agreed another. “Although no one’s trying to put spears through our heads, so that’s a bonus.”

The sheep was getting closer now. Another was running after it, wide-eyed with worry. This was not, though, an unusual look for a sheep, so no one took any notice. Besides, Ikumordo was doing a pretty good job of holding everyone’s attention.

“Cal wants us to keep it busy,” Mech said. “My Cal, I mean. No, not… The Cal from my Universe. Not my Cal. He ain’t my Cal.”

Splurt turned into a little hand, gave Mech a vaguely patronizing pat on the head, then went back to sitting on his shoulder.

“Looks like it’s already busy,” said Number Two.

Mech nodded. “I think, ideally, he meant keep it busy doing something else. But to do that, we’re gonna need ships.”

“My uncle runs a boat company,” said one of the Carvers. “Catamarans, mostly.”

Mech and Two both shot him withering looks.

“Oh,” said the Carver. “Not those kind of ships. Gotcha. You know, you should really add ‘space’ in front of things, so everyone’s clear.”

There was a general murmuring of agreement, which Mech immediately put a stop to.

“No! No. Ain’t happening. That is not a road I plan on walking down again any time soon.”

“Oh, OK. Sorry, uh, Mr Robot,” said a Carver.

“I ain’t a fonking robot!”

“Oh. Right. Are you sure? You look like a robot.”

There was more murmured agreement. Mech clenched his fists, but said nothing.

“I might know somewhere we can get ships,” began Number Two, but then the first sheep arrived, and everything kicked off.

“Oi!” it said. “What’s your game?”

Everyone who wasn’t Mech stared at the animal in surprise. Mech, who had no experience with sheep, and so didn’t appreciate how unusual it was to find a talking one, just regarded it blankly.

“Leave it, Duggie,” called the other sheep, who was still some way back.

“I thought I’d told you lot, already,” said Duggie, trotting to a stop in front of the Carvers. He was panting heavily from the effort of running all the way across the field. “Clear off. We don’t want your kind round here. You ain’t welcome.”

“Our kind?” said Number Two, raising an eyebrow.

“Yeah, Two-Legs. Uprighters. You ain’t welcome. This is a closed field,” said Duggie, squinting menacingly. “Understand?”

“Just leave it, Duggie,” wheezed the other sheep. Unlike Duggie, this one sounded female. Her voice seemed to be about one jump-scare away from full-blown hysteria. “They ain’t worth it, babes.”

“Uh, everyone else is seeing this, right?” asked a Carver. “I’m not having a full-on mental breakdown, am I?”

“We see it,” confirmed Number Two.

“And they’re talking? Everyone can hear them talking?”

“Yeah, I herd them,” said a scruffy-haired Cal whose eyes, demeanor and general aroma suggested he was quite seriously stoned. “Get it? Herd, as in a herd of sheep.”

“It’s a flock of sheep. Herd of cows.”

“It can be a herd of sheep, too,” said Stoner Cal.

“You sure?”

“Pretty sure.”

“Oh,” said the other Cal. “Then, you know, good job, I guess.”

They exchanged a high-five.

“So, what? Is that not normal?” asked Mech.

“No, they don’t usually talk,” said Two.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Duggie demanded. “Of course we talk. See my lips moving? Hear the words coming out? Good, then listen carefully. Get the fonk out of our field, and go back to where you came from.”

“Bit racist,” chipped in another of the Carvers.

“Oh-ho. Here we go. No, it’s not. I’m not racist,” Duggie snapped. “I ain’t racist, am I, sweetheart?”

“No, babes. You’ve got that black sheep friend.”

“Exactly! See? I ain’t racist. I’ve got nothing against your sort, nothing at all. But you don’t belong here. This is our field. You do what you like back in Two-Leg Land, or wherever, and good luck to you, but we don’t want you here, that’s all.”

“I dunno,” said Stoner Cal. “Ewe still sound kind of racist.”

“Nice,” said the Carver next to him. They exchanged another high-five.

Duggie’s eyes almost bulged out of their sockets. Had he not been a sheep, this would have been more noticeable.

“Right! Who said that?” he demanded. “Come on. Own up.”

“Just leave it, babes.”

Number Two stepped into Duggie’s path. Something about the man seemed to calm the raging sheep, mid-rant. The fact that Two, with his beard and his staff, had a bit of a ‘shepherdy’ sort of air about him probably didn’t hurt.

“Our apologies for the intrusion,” said Two. “We will be on our way momentarily.”

“Yeah. Well, I mean, I should think so.”

“But first,” said Two. “Am I right in thinking we’re not the first ‘Two-Legs’ to have come this way?”

“No! No, you most certainly ain’t. Some of them looked just like you lot, too.” Duggie nodded to Mech. “Well, not so much him, I suppose.”

“Although, to be fair, you all look a bit alike to us,” said the other sheep. “Though I don’t mean that in a racist way or nothing.”

Two bowed gratefully. “Thank you. I understand. If you’d be so kind as to point us in their direction, we’ll take them with us and leave you in peace.”

Duggie looked Two up and down, glanced at the others, then sighed. “I’ve got a baaaad feeling about you lot,” he said. Stoner Cal and the guy next to him exchanged another high-five. If Duggie noticed, he didn’t let on.

“But if it means getting rid of you all, I’ll take my chances. Come on,” he said, turning around. I’ll show you where they’re hiding.”

* * *

Cal jumped into his chair as an explosion rocked the Untitled, making its shields flicker. “What was that? Torpedo?”

“That was lightning,” said Loren. A second impact detonated against the underside of the ship, briefly lifting everyone out of their seats before the artificial gravity slammed them back down again. “That was a torpedo.”

“Technically, a missile,” Kevin corrected.

“OK, and – another question,” said Cal. “What the fonk is happening right now?”

Loren’s fingers swiped across her controls. Part of the screen changed to show a third-person perspective view of the Untitled.

“That’s us,” said Cal.

Loren shook her head. “No.”

Cal squinted at the screen. “I’m pretty sure that’s us.”

“No, it’s another us,” said Loren. More lightning tore across the darkness ahead of them, briefly painting the bridge in a deep purple hue.

Cal blinked a few times. “Which brings me back to what the fonk is happening?”

“Void echoes,” said Lily, leaning closer to the screen. “It’s… My dad had a theory about it, but there was no way of proving it. His work suggested the Void could create duplicates – echoes – of whatever’s inside it. Even my mom thought it was a bit of a stretch, but he was convinced.”

“Guess your old man knew a thing or two,” said Cal, far too proudly for someone who still had absolutely no idea what Lily was talking about.

A beam of cannon-fire slammed into the Untitled. “Shield integrity dropping,” said Kevin. “Also, we’re out of toilet paper in the bathroom, and all our weapons systems are offline.”

“What?!” Loren spluttered.

“Don’t worry, ma’am, we have more in the store cupboard.”

“More weapons?” asked Cal.

“More toilet paper.”

“Forget the fonking toilet paper!” Cal yelped, as another cannon-blast lit up the screen.

“Very well, sir,” said Kevin, sounding just a touch confused. “On your own head be it.”

“Why aren’t the guns working?” Loren demanded.

The ship shuddered as more lightning tore at it.

“And can you please start avoiding things that are trying to kill us?” Cal added.

“It’s the Void. Physics,” Lily explained, although her heart didn’t seem to be in it. “And yes, I know the engines are working, we can somehow radio into another dimension, and there’s another identical ship whose weapons are firing just fine, but literally none of that should be happening.” She sat back and folded her arms, said, “Physics,” again, only more emphatically this time, then shut up.

“One thing that might of be of interest,” Kevin began, before another bolt of the purple lightning licked across the darkness towards them and stabbed through the weakened shielding like a knife made of fire through – coincidentally - a sheet of toilet paper.

Kevin said, “Oof,” in a voice that managed to be both high and low-pitched at the same time. The speaker in the ceiling made a series of popping and clicking noises, then emitted a slow yet persistent hiss, like an air bed deflating.

“Kevin?” said Cal.

“Burrrr,” Kevin replied, then he fell silent.

“Kevin?” Cal waited for a response, then forced a laugh. “Just your little joke. Right?”

Silence.

“Right?”

More silence. If it was a joke, Kevin was really starting to push it.

“Kevin!”

Nothing.

Cal swung his seat towards Loren. “OK, I think we’re going to have to assume Kevin is unavailable right now. Loren, how are the controls looking?”

Loren gestured to the right-hand side of her terminal. It had been partially pieced back together, but still resembled the air-conditioning unit at a low-rent Turkish vacation resort. Bare copper wires dangled from the wound in the metal. Something blue dripped onto the floor.

“OK, so they’re looking fonking terrible. How are they working?” asked Cal.

Loren took hold of her joysticks. “Guess we’ll find out,” she said, as the echo ship banked around in front of them and lined itself up for an attack run.

“Can we call them?” asked Lily. “You know, get them on screen, or whatever? It’d be interesting to see what they look like.”

“Like us, presumably?” said Cal.

“Probably not exactly,” said Lily. “I mean, they’re echoes, but echoes aren’t the same as the original.”

“The ship’s different,” said Loren. “The lines of the hull are rougher. Look.”

Cal peered at the echo ship on screen. There was, as far as he could tell, nothing different about it whatsoever. “Oh yeah,” he said. “The lines of the hull.”

The echo ship’s weapons flared as it launched a photon missile. “Dive, dive!” Cal cried, then was thrown backwards in his seat as Loren heaved back on the stick. “Or go up. Whatever you think.”

The Untitled began what was to have been a complicated spiraling move. Everything went well until Loren discovered the flap control lever she needed to complete the spin was lying on the floor at her feet.

The missile hammered against the underside of the Untitled, flooding the screen with lines of angry red text. “Shield integrity at… is that an eight or a zero?” Cal asked.

Lily leaned forwards in her chair and squinted. Because there was so much text to fit in the display at once, each line was stupidly small.

“Eight. No, zero.”

“Fonk. Thought so,” said Cal. “Shield integrity at zero. Nice job, Loren.”

“It’s not my fault!”

“You know, it actually would have been helpful if you’d crashed into it this time.”

“We should hail them,” said Lily.

Loren slammed her stick to the left, sending the Untitled into a balletic sideways dive. “Then hail them!” she barked. “You’ve got the buttons right there.”

Lily looked down at the controls on her arm rest. There were dozens of tiny square buttons, a number of switches and dials, and a seven-inch touch screen set to portrait mode.

“What do I do?” she asked.

“You see a button marked ‘Hail’?” Cal asked.

Lily scanned the controls. “No.”

“Oh,” said Cal. He shrugged. “Then I’m out of ideas. We should probably get a button like that fitted.”

Cannon fire stabbed towards them. Loren jerked the ship right, tilting the wings just enough for the fiery-death beam to scorch past them.

“You know, assuming we survive,” Cal added.

“They’re hailing us,” said Loren, indicating an incoming transmission icon on screen.

Lily looked from the controls to the icon and back again. “What do I do?”

“You see a button marked, ‘Answer’?”

Lily shook her head. “No.”

“Again. We should look into one of those,” said Cal. “Kevin, add those buttons to the To Do list. Oh, shizz, I forgot,” he muttered, remembering Kevin wasn’t currently responsive. “Never mind,” he said, raising his voice again. “Forget I said anything.”

Lily tapped an icon on her touch screen. The top right of the main screen changed to show three leering figures, all bunched together in front of the camera. They were pale and waxy-looking, their skin glistening and wet.

“Wait, is that supposed to be me?” said Cal. “It looks like someone sculpted Ted Danson out of butter.”

“He means, ‘Hi there,’” said Loren. “We come in peace, don’t shoot.”

“I look nothing like Ted Danson.”

The Echoes sniggered and rocked back and forth with excitement, their eyes bulging, drool oozing down over their chins. The Cal Echo raised a middle finger to the screen, and the sniggering became louder.

“OK, so that’s just immature,” Cal said. He frowned. “Wait, what’s he doing?”

The duplicate – to use the term loosely - had stepped back from the screen, and was hastily fiddling with the clasp of his belt. “Is he…? Are you taking your junk out?” Cal asked. “We don’t want to see this. Lily?”

“No, I definitely don’t want to see it.”

“I mean, can you cut the feed? Quickly.”

Lily tapped at the controls. “How do I…? I don’t know how to cut it off.”

“Well figure it out!” Cal said. “I don’t want to see…” He winced. “Oh. No, there it is. There it is. Jesus.”

He turned away from the screen, but found himself going back for another look. “That’s not right. That is not right. Lily, can we…?”

“I’m trying!”

“Is there a button marked, ‘End Transmission’?”

“No!”

“Holy shizz, what is it with these controls?!” Cal griped. He gestured to the Echoes on screen. The waxy-faced Loren and Lily were both giggling and clapping in delight as Echo Cal twisted his hips quickly from side to side, flapping his junk around.

“God, it’s like it’s waving at me,” said Cal. He looked at his hand and realized he was waving back. He quickly snapped his arm down again. “Get rid of it!”

Lily mashed her hands against the controls. The image zoomed in.

“Jesus Christ, it’s going to have my eye out in a minute,” said Cal.

Lily jabbed at a few more buttons.

“I swear, if that puts it into 3D…”

The screen went dark. Cal breathed a sigh of relief.

“Thank you. Finally!” he said. “Oh, and by the way, in case anyone’s wondering, mine’s bigger.”

He met Lily’s eye. A moment of uncomfortable silence passed.

“I mean… I’m assuming you weren’t wondering that?”

Lily shook her head. “No.”

“For the record, I’m not wondering that either,” said Loren.

On screen, the echo Untitled began charging weapons. “They’re getting ready to fire. Shields still down. We can’t take another hit.”

“Get us out of here,” Cal urged.

“No time. Missile lock. They’re firing.”

A ball of photon energy spat from the echo ship’s weapons. Cal, Loren and Lily all watched, helplessly, as it streaked across the void towards them.

Stretching out, Cal reached a hand across the gap to Lily. To his surprise, she took it. He looked at their interlocked fingers, then met her eye.

“I’m sorry,” he croaked.

And then the light of the missile filled the screen, and everything in Cal’s world turned red.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Miz plodded ahead through another door. She was, if she were being honest, getting pretty sick and tired of plodding ahead through other doors, and she was having some pretty serious doubts about whether Old Man Carver knew what he was doing.

After fighting – and partly eating - the rednecks on the ash-world, they’d moved on somewhere else, only for some shizznod with a tazer to attack her. Needless to say, it didn’t go very well for the guy, but with armed back-up coming in, Carver Twenty-Seven had quickly opened another doorway for them to escape through.

Since then, Miz had dealt with an angry torch-wielding mob, a handful of ninjas, and some sort of steampunk ‘Robo-Hitler’ that had been determined to pull her tail off.

They’d passed through nine or ten other Earths so far, and had found more of the missing Carvers on around half of them. The group was almost forty Cals strong now, and keeping track of them all was proving increasingly difficult. The fact they had picked up a variety of stragglers from the various Earths wasn’t making things any more manageable either. Between grateful Dwarves, awestruck ninjas and a handful of people fleeing the Third Reich, Miz was amassing quite a following.

There was no one waiting on the next Earth, though. In fact, not just no one, but nothing. The ground was a crudely-fashioned chunk of black rock with nothing growing as far as the eye could see. The air tasted thin and bitter, and left a dryness snagged at the back of Miz’s throat.

She plodded on, making room for the others to come through, and gazed up at Ikumordo. There was something different about the big orange space cloud now, but she couldn’t quite figure out what it was.

He was a little bigger, but then he was growing by the second, so he was a little bigger every time she looked up.

“Well, this looks charming,” said Old Man Carver, hobbling through the energy door with the rest of the mob close behind.

Miz ignored him and continued to study Ikumordo. It was still huge, still orange, still a cloud. The sparkly bits floating around inside it were still sparkling, just as they always had been.

But there was something…

“Hey. What we lookin’ at?” asked Mech, stepping up beside her.

“Is it just me, or is there something weird about…?” Miz began, before her head snapped round and her face lit up. “Mech?!” she exclaimed. She threw her arms around him and they hugged. Splurt joined in, wrapping a long tendril around both of them, and squeezing.

After a moment, Miz pulled away and quickly dialed down her enthusiasm. “I mean, like, where did you come from?”

Mech grinned and jabbed a thumb back towards a second energy door that had just appeared. Carver Two and a variety of other Cals were shuffling through it, and some of the Carvers from Miz’s group were hurrying over to greet them.

“Long story. But let’s just say, I have seen some crazy shizz in the past hour or so,” said Mech. He looked Miz up and down, his grin widening. “I thought you was dead,” said Mech. “I thought you got sucked into the Void. I mean, I saw you.”

“Yeah, well. That, like, door or whatever, was right beside me when I fell. I managed to jump through it, then ended up in some, like, forest somewhere with some of those guys. We’ve been portal jumping or, I don’t know, whatever you call it, ever since.”

“Oh? You see any fonked up shizz?”

“Totally,” said Miz. “So weird. I swear, I have no idea how any of these guys have managed to survive for so long. Between all the stuff that wants to kill them, and most of them being, you know, like completely useless?”

“I hear you,” Mech said. “We had to save a bunch from some sheep.”

“What are sheep?” asked Miz.

Mech shrugged. “Fonk knows, but if you ask me, they seem kinda racist.”

Miz gestured up to the sky. “Does it seem different to you?”

Craning his neck back, Mech looked up at the shimmering orange formlessness of Ikumordo. “Bigger. Definitely bigger.”

“No,” said Miz, shaking her head. “I mean, yeah, but it’s not that. There’s something…”

She clicked her fingers. “Wait. It’s not that thing that’s different, it’s the sky. It’s black. It’s been daytime everywhere else, but it’s night time now, and—”

“And where are the stars?” said Mech. “There ain’t no stars.”

“Exactly,” said Miz. A terrible thought struck her. “You think, like, it’s already eaten them?”

Carver Two joined them. “From what we can gather, they were never there,” he said. “Not all universes developed. There are those where only a handful of stars and planets were formed. We use this one as a sort of… safe space, where there is nothing to attack us, or cause us harm.”

Mech pointed upwards.

“Hmm? Oh, yes. Except Ikumordo the All Death, obviously,” Two conceded. “But that isn’t usually there.”

Mech and Miz both stared into the darkness for a while, mind-boggled by the emptiness of it all. Pretty soon, though, Miz had had enough.

“OK, so that got boring,” she said, looking away from the empty universe. “You hear anything from Cal?”

“I did,” said Mech. “He’s safe. I think. He wants us to keep that thing busy.”

Miz’s furry brow furrowed. “How are we supposed to do that? It’s up there and we’re down here.”

“I know someone who may be able to help,” said Number Two. “But, well, there’s a possibility that you’re not going to like it.”

A slightly mischievous smirk tugged at his mouth as he turned to Mech. Even with the beard, it was the most Cal-like he had ever looked. “Especially you, I think.”

* * *

Cal opened one eye. Everything was still red, so he closed it again.

Some time passed.

He was alive. At least, he assumed so. He pinched his leg, a little harder than he’d intended. It hurt. If a lifetime of watching Hollywood movies had taught him anything, it had taught him that this meant he was both alive, and not currently dreaming.

He thought this was probably good news, but didn’t want to commit to that conclusion quite yet.

Some more time passed.

“Why do you have your eyes shut?” asked Loren.

So, Loren was alive, too. Good for her.

Cal opened the other eye this time. He thought it probably best to give the first one a break. Loren was looking back over her shoulder at him. Lily was sitting in her chair, gazing ahead at the screen, also alive.

Yay.

The situation was better than he had feared. Everything seemed to be OK. Everything was going fine.

Everything, to quote the soundtrack of Cal’s third favorite movie of all time, was awesome.

Or almost. The screen was a bit of a worry. It was red. No, not red, reds. A crescendo of cherries and crimsons, berries and blush, sangrias and scarlets danced and spiraled across the viewscreen. It was as if someone had taken Beethoven’s Fifth – or possibly the theme to the Lego Movie, it was difficult to tell – and converted each note into a shade of red, before blasting it out through the universe’s most powerful PA system.

The Untitled sailed soundlessly through the noisy colors, as if flying along an impossibly-long tunnel. It was equally possible, however, that the Untitled wasn’t actually moving at all, and that all the ruby redness was somehow washing over it, instead.

“Ooh, that’s pretty,” said Cal. “What is it?”

Loren shrugged. “Don’t know.”

“Well, thanks for that,” said Cal. “Really useful to get your input there, Loren.”

He wished Miz were here to helpfully point out that he was being sarcastic, then realized he hadn’t yet broken the news to Loren. Loren and Mizette’s relationship was both complex and simple at the same time. Simple because they both hated each other, yet complex because they very occasionally, when the circumstances were just right, didn’t.

He turned his chair to his daugh— to Lily. Her face was a flickering series of reds and pinks, her eyes mesmerized by the spiral of color.

As Cal watched her, he remembered Disneyworld. Not the bug-infested zombie town it had been on his last visit, but years before. How old was she then? Four? Five, maybe? The look on her face during those fireworks was exactly the same as the one fixed there now.

“Hey, kiddo,” Cal said. He said it softly, but it snapped her out of her trance as if he’d shaken her by the shoulders. He gestured to the screen. “Any ideas?”

“What? Uh. Oh. No. Not really,” Lily admitted. “It’s… I don’t know. A fold in the Void, maybe.”

“Pity Kevin’s down,” said Loren. “He could have run an analysis.”

“What, and then come up totally blank?” said Cal. “It’s fine, I can do that.”

They watched the swirling patterns for a while.

Cal drummed out a beat on his arm rests with his fingers. He made it through the first couple of verses of Queen’s ‘We Will Rock You,’ before getting bored.

“So, I kind of had my eyes shut for a while back there. Did we get shot?” he asked. “Could we be dead?”

“No,” said Loren.

“You sure? This could be a tunnel to the afterlife,” said Cal. “Although, I’ll be honest, the color is a little worrying, if so.”

“The missile didn’t hit,” said Loren. “This…” - she gestured vaguely at the screen - “appeared right before impact.”

“OK. That’s a relief. I was five seconds away from confessing all my sins and renouncing Satan,” said Cal. He thought about what Loren had said. “So, what are you saying? This thing saved us? We were rescued by the color red?”

“Well, I’m not sure I’d put it exactly like that,” said Loren. “But yes. Basically. We were going to be blown up, then this thing pulled us in. Or wrapped around us. Or… I don’t know what it’s doing. Controls are non-responsive, instruments are all down. I… Oh.”

“Good ‘oh’ or bad ‘oh’?” asked Cal.

“The instruments are back,” said Loren, swiping her fingers across a touch screen as lots of little lights illuminated on her console. “Still no control, but I’m getting readouts.”

“What do they say?” asked Lily, before Cal could ask the same thing.

“Uh, that we’re moving, I think,” said Loren. “Wait, there’s some sort of analysis running. Sensors are gathering data.”

“Did you do that?” asked Cal. Loren shook her head. “Then who did?”

Loren’s touch screen changed. “Scan results coming through,” she said. Then: “Uh… OK.”

“What? What’s ‘OK’?” Cal asked. “What does it say? What does the scan tell us?”

Loren smirked. “See for yourself,” she said, tapping her screen. The left third of the main screen changed to show the scan results. To call the analysis concise would be generous. It was five words. Cal read them aloud.

“It’s a big red thing,” he said.

Cal didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “Oh, for f— Kevin? Have you been pretending to be dead this whole time?”

The text on screen vanished, then was replaced by more.

No, sir. Was offline. Rerooting systems to compensate for damage. With you in a sec, the text said, before it backspaced most of the sentence so it could correct the typo in ‘rerouting’.

Cal wasn’t entirely convinced, but decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. “Good to have you back, buddy,” he said. “Anything you can tell us about this thing – you know, besides size and color, which we’re already up to speed with – would be awesome.”

Will do, came the onscreen reply, then the Untitled decelerated rapidly and the swirling redness became nothing but Voidy black again.

Oh. It’s gone, said the text. Bugger.

“Um, uh, no,” said Loren. “Not gone. Definitely not gone.”

She flipped a switch on her console. The screen changed to show another view of the Void. The redness they had just emerged from was there. It was a tunnel, but wriggling violently like a worm on a hook.

On any other day, it would definitely be the most interesting thing going on, and by quite a large margin. Right now, though, there was something that made even a thrashing dimensional rift-worm fade into the background.

Something big.

Something orange.

Something that filled the Void in several directions, it’s misty, vaporous bulk undulating in a rhythmic pattern as it grew.

For a few brief, panicky moments, Cal’s brain tried to reason that it might not be what Cal thought it was. It could, for example, be…

But that was where it came up short. There was no denying it. No escaping it. There was only one thing this could be.

Ikumordo.

The All Death was here.

The All Death was waiting.

“Oh, well,” said Cal, forcing a smile. “Out of the frying pan…”

CHAPTER TWENTY

Mech stood in a busy city plaza, looking around in disbelief.

This was Earth. He knew that. And yet, it was more familiar than any Earth they’d been to before. It felt like a bustling spaceport, with people from a broad range of planets and sectors all going about their business.

Considering that a huge cyborg, and an only-marginally-less-huge wolf-woman, had stepped from a glowing white rectangle in the middle of the plaza - accompanied by a horde of other folks Mech would generously describe as ‘not exactly normal’ (and less generously as ‘a fonkload of weirdoes’) - nobody seemed even the least bit surprised. The pedestrians strolling by barely batted an eyelid as more and more Carvers filed out of the doorway, and instead simply adjusted their route to avoid bumping into anyone.

Ikumordo filled the sky here, too, and while a few people shot it the occasional glance, most of them paid it very little heed.

It felt… modern. No, not modern. Mech shuddered as he thought the words: Space modern. His knowledge of Earth architecture was admittedly limited, but he didn’t think all the smooth curves and pod-like buildings were normal for this part of the galaxy.

“Where are we?” he asked.

“Earth, naturally,” said Two, shepherding some of the other Carvers and a couple of ninjas away from the door so that others could come through.

“Yeah, I know. I mean… I don’t know what I mean,” Mech admitted. He gazed up at the smooth glass constructions around them. A couple of sleek yellow cars flew between the towers, scrolling LED signs on the underside of their chassis identifying them as taxi cabs.

A ten-story hologram of a scantily-clad woman gyrated across the face of one of the buildings. Mech watched her until she froze in place, smiling benevolently out at the world like some kindly goddess. The words, ‘Celebrity Dance-Off: USA,’ appeared, followed by some details on where and when to watch it.

It was the ‘where’ part that caught Mech’s attention. His blood ran cold, but as he had barely a teaspoon of the stuff in his entire body, he didn’t really notice.

“What the fonk?” he muttered.

“What’s up?” asked Miz. Mech gestured up to the side of the building.

“Tonight, 8pm, CST – whatever the fonk that means,” Mech read. “Only on Zertex Family.”

“Zertex?” Miz spat. The fur on her collar rose all on its own. She glanced around, suddenly on high-alert. “So… what? Like, Zertex runs Earth in this dimension?”

“Something like that,” said Two. His lips moved silently as he finished a head count. “Right, all here. We seem to have picked up a few more, actually. Still, the more the merrier, I suppose.”

Two turned and began to walk across the plaza, but Mech stepped into his path. “Wait, wait, hold up,” he said. “Zertex?”

“Yes?”

“The Zertex Corporation? The fonking Zertex Corporation?”

“What about it?” asked Two.

Miz joined Mech, forming one of the most terrifying blockades in the history of anywhere. “They’re, like, totally the bad guys.”

Two smiled. “Well, now,” he said. “That really depends on your point of view, doesn’t it? We’re all the ‘bad guys’ in someone else’s story.”

“They’re the bad guys in everyone else’s story,” said Mech. “They want to conquer and take control of the whole fonking galaxy.”

He gestured around them, just as two men in Zertex uniforms strolled around a corner, side by side. “Looks like they’ve got their hooks into Earth.”

Number Two nodded. “Yes. Yes, it does look that way, doesn’t it?” he said. “Although, there’s another way to look at it, too.”

He leaned in closer, placed the back of his hand to his mouth and spoke in a stage-whisper. “What if Earth has got its hooks into Zertex?”

Two winked, pushed his mouth all the way through ‘smile’ and into ‘broad grin’ territory, then stepped past Mech and Miz, and made a bee-line for the officers.

“Come on,” he urged. “This way.”

He marched towards the Zertex men, his staff clunking against the ground with every step. Mech and Miz hesitated, but then set off after him, with the flock of Carvers and company following on behind.

The officers first looked puzzled, then looked concerned as the crowd approached. One of them frantically tried to finish chewing the donut he was eating, before forcing it down with, judging by his expression, quite a painful gulp.

“Hello there!” called Two, beaming through his beard at them. “I wonder if you two gentlemen might tell us where to find the president?”

Mech’s fingers balled into fists. “Sinclair,” he growled.

Two and the Zertex officers all shared a look of confusion. “Who?” said Two.

“Sinclair,” Mech repeated. “President Sinclair.”

“Never heard of him,” said one of the officers.

Mech and Miz exchanged a glance. “Then, like, who’s the president?”

Carver Two opened his mouth to reply, then stopped. He gestured with his staff to the building with the holographic billboard. It was advertising another of Zertex Family’s shows – ‘The Pres Report’. The president himself was currently turning to the camera. Everyone watched as he winked and pointed finger guns out at the viewer.

Miz’s jaw dropped. “O. M. G. Like, seriously?”

“You have got to be fonking kidding me,” Mech groaned.

There, standing fifty feet high, with a grin twelve feet wide, was Cal Carver, president of the galaxy.

* * *

President Cal Carver glided across the courtyard on his hoverscooter, weaving and dodging around a number of imaginary obstacles. His personal advisor – the person he trusted more than almost anyone else in the galaxy – trotted along beside him, trying to keep up and, occasionally, leaping sideways to avoid injury.

“So, what, they just demanded to see me?” said the president. “And you said yes? Don’t people demand to see me every day?”

“These were… different. I thought they were worth meeting. You’ll see why,” the advisor replied. “And, no, not every day. Every few weeks, maybe.”

The president wrinkled his nose. “Every few weeks? Jesus. I thought I was more popular than that.”

“Oh, no, you are. Inexplicably,” said the advisor. “People make requests to see you every day. They… well, let’s just say they request you to do a lot of things. Things that the First Lady wouldn’t be very likely to approve of. But the demands – the actual, ‘We demand to see the president!’ stuff, that’s down to about once every few weeks.”

President Carver smiled as he jumped a make-believe river of lava. “God, I love it when you do the voices. You should have been an actor.”

“Ha! In another life, maybe,” the advisor said. “I mean, if I wasn’t here, who’d help get you dressed in the morning?”

“Good point, well made,” said the president. He turned to his right-hand man and his smile broadened. “Oh, Tobey Maguire. What would I do without you?”

* * *

Mech, Miz and Carver Two stood in a cavernous dining hall, staring expectantly at a set of double-doors directly ahead of them. Between them and the door was a leather spinny chair and a bright red desk. Between them and the desk was forty feet of empty space and a dozen armed guards.

The Carver Council stood further back, with the stragglers they’d picked up on their journeys across the multi-verse standing further back, still. There had been some excited whispering for a while, but the acoustics of the hall amplified it, so it had eventually descended into an awkward silence.

That had been fifteen minutes ago, and there was still no sign of the president.

One of the Carvers near the back decided to pipe up. “I spy, with my little eye…”

Carver Two turned and glared back. The Carver’s voice became a nervous croak.

“An angry bearded man,” he whispered.

Silence returned.

Mech tapped a foot, impatiently. Miz slouched on one hip, studying her claws.

“Always fonking late,” Mech muttered. “And what’s he doing living in a fonking castle, anyway? He’s the president of the galaxy, not the king of space.”

“Pretty cool castle, though,” said Miz, shrugging. “You know, with the big face, and the door in the mouth, and everything. I like it.”

“It’s insane,” said Mech.

“The castle?”

“The whole thing! I mean, how come he’s president of the galaxy? How the fonk did that happen? The man can’t go four light years without throwing up into a shoe.”

Miz shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess maybe he’s different.”

“Holy fonking shizz, is that guy a robot?” asked the president, as he threw open the double doors. “Awesome! I love robots.”

Mech shot Miz a sideways look. Miz shrugged again. “Or, you know, maybe he isn’t.”

“I ain’t a robot,” Mech said.

President Carver slid into his chair, spun it fully in a circle, then leaned his elbows on the desk. He looked pretty much exactly like the Cal Mech knew and barely tolerated, but maybe a decade older. “You sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“It’s just—”

“I’m sure.”

The president nodded. “Right. Well, I mean, I guess you’d know, right?” His eyes narrowed. “Quick question. Can you define ‘love’?”

Mech frowned. “What?”

Cal banged his hands on the desk and stood up. “Answer the question! Can you define ‘love’?”

“Uh, no.”

“Aha!” said the president. He sat down, smiling proudly. “That’s exactly what a robot would say.”

“Can you?” asked Mech.

“Can I what?”

“Define ‘love’?”

President Carver opened his mouth, frowned, then closed it again.

“Touché.”

Mech shot Miz a look. “Yeah, it’s him, OK.”

The president hammered a drumbeat on the desk, then leaned back in his chair. “So, anyway, welcome to Castle Grayskull, official residence of yadda-yadda-yadda. Tobey Maguire tells me you wanted to talk to me. I’ll be honest, I’m a busy man, and we’ve got a lot on today, right?”

He turned in his chair to look at Tobey Maguire, who shrugged. “Not particularly. Unless you count the bouncy castle.”

“Always count the bouncy castle, Tobey Maguire. That’s, like, rule number one.” He turned his chair back to the front. “So, as you can see, packed schedule, time’s ticking, all that stuff. Who wants to start?”

Carver Two stepped forwards. “President Carver, what I am about to tell you, you may find hard to believe.”

“You’d be surprised,” said the president. “I have seen some pretty crazy shizz. One time, there was this volcano, and… Know what? Doesn’t matter. Continue.”

“I – we – have traveled here from all across the multi-verse to seek your help. Ikumordo, the All Death, approaches. He intends to consume your universe. All universes, in fact. And we believe he is going to begin with Earth.”

“All Earths,” Mech added. “Across all dimensions.”

“Who’s Ikumordo?” asked the president.

“Uh, the fonking enormous orange cloud filling the sky,” said Mech. “Maybe you noticed it?”

The president frowned. “What, the big weird space thing? Is that what that is?”

Carver Two nodded. “Ikumordo. The All Death.”

“And that’s bad?”

Mech snorted. “It’s called the fonking All Death. What do you think?”

President Carver turned his grin up a notch. “I like you. I like him,” he said, turning to Tobey Maguire. “We should get one. Take a note – buy a robot. We’ll have adventures together. I’ll call him Roboto. No, wait! Roboto Two, just to confuse people.”

Tobey Maguire pretended to take a note. “Done,” he lied.

“Excellent!” said the president. He faced his guests again. “So why come to me? What can I do?”

“You have ships,” Carver Two said. “Fighters. You can engage Ikumordo. We have instructions to keep it occupied until another of our group can return. He believes he can acquire a weapon with which we can destroy the All Death. Permanently. We just need to buy him some time.”

Cal turned slowly from side to side in his chair. “So, let me get this straight. You’re telling me that you’ve come from, like, parallel universes or something so you could ask me to help fight a big weird space thing that’s going to destroy… what? Everything everywhere?”

“Pretty much,” said Two. “And yes, that’s more or less the size of it.”

“And you expect me to believe that?” the president asked. He held up his hands. “Because I absolutely do, by the way.”

“You do?” asked Miz, taken aback. “Like, just like that?”

“What can I say? I’m a trusting guy.” He pointed to Carver Two, then the group behind. “Also, that guy and, like, eighty per cent of the rest of you all have my face, so it’s either the alternate universe thing, or I’m about to be hit with the biggest paternity suit in history. For the sake of my sanity, my bank balance and my marriage, I’m going with Option A.”

Carver Two could barely contain his relief. He sighed, and for the first time since Mech had met him, he seemed to shrink a little, as if the stress had inflated him, somehow, and by abdicating some of it to someone else, he’d returned to his normal size.

“Then you’ll help us?” Two said.

President Carver made a weighing motion with his hands. “Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to. But, well, the galaxy has been at peace for...”

He clicked his fingers.

“Eleven years,” said Tobey Maguire.

“For eleven years. We don’t have many fighter ships left. Nothing that could take on a big weird space thing, anyway.”

He leaned back. “Unless… No. No, not that. She’d never go for it.”

“Not what?” asked Mech.

“Nothing. Forget I said anything,” said the president. “There is one ship, but my wife would never allow it. She can be pretty protective. Right, Tobey Maguire?”

“She can,” Tobey Maguire confirmed.

Mech clenched his jaw. “If we don’t stop that thing, there ain’t gonna be nothin’ to be protective of. Everything’s going to be gone. Your ship. Your castle. Your wife. All gone, along with everything else you ever cared about.”

President Carver raised an eyebrow. “Everything?”

“Everything,” confirmed Carver Two.

The president rocked in his chair, nodding in contemplation. He looked to his advisor for guidance. “What do you think, Tobey Maguire? Be honest.”

Tobey Maguire shrugged. “If what they’re saying is true, then I think we have to get involved, don’t we? You’re the president of the galaxy. You wield great power. And with that great power comes great responsibility.”

President Carver cocked his head to the side and blinked several times. “Holy shizz,” he said, after a pause. “That’s, like, the wisest thing you’ve ever said. Well, maybe second after that thing about putting my tongue in the blender.”

“Thank you.”

“Seriously, it’s like you were fonking born to deliver that line. Good job.”

The president slapped his hands on the desk and stood up. “OK, Tobey Maguire, tell the First Lady we need the ship. Send out a distress signal to anyone who’ll listen. Do a stock-check on whatever other resources we have available to fight this thing – fighters, pilots, really big guns, pointy rocks, whatever.”

Tobey Maguire clicked his heels together smartly. “Will do.”

“And don’t do that again, you look like a Nazi.”

“Right you are. Not sure why I did it in the first place, to be honest,” Tobey Maguire admitted. “I’ll just be off.”

President Carver caught his advisor by the arm before he could turn away. “Oh, and one more thing - make sure my Murder, She Wrote box sets get locked in the vault. You know, just in case. Actually, wait.”

He turned back to Mech and the others. “When you say everything will get destroyed, would that include my vault?”

“Yeah, man. Everything.”

The president looked to his assistant again. “Shizz. OK. Forget Murder, She Wrote.” A pained expression flitted across his face. “Jesus, there’s a sentence I never thought I’d hear myself say. Just go do that other stuff. We’ll head out to the landing pad and meet you there.”

Tobey Maguire glanced deliberately at Mech’s group. “Are you sure you can trust them?”

“Look at those faces,” said President Carver. “If I can’t trust them, who the fonk can I trust? Also,” he added, “I’ve got fifty armed guards, two and a half weeks of karate training, and a blaster tucked into my sock. Pretty sure I’ll be fine.”

Tobey Maguire shot the guests another wary look, but then nodded. “Whatever you say. Just be careful.”

“Hey, aren’t I always?” said the president, grinning from ear to ear. He waited until Tobey Maguire had left, then turned and stage-whispered to everyone else in the room. “I’m totally not,” he said. “Now come on, everyone follow me. Let’s see if we can’t shove this big weird space thing right up its own shizzpipe.”

* * *

Mech felt… something as the president’s ship descended towards the pad, its landing thrusters flaring in bursts of blue. He wasn’t sure what he felt, exactly, but something. Definitely something. Splurt felt it, too, judging by the way he began pulsing excitedly up and down on the cyborg’s shoulder.

The landing pad itself was out back of Castle Grayskull. Quite some distance out back. It had taken a full ten minutes of walking before they’d reached the landing area. The pad itself was, Mech couldn’t help but notice, conspicuously bare, with no control towers, relay antennae, or anything else of note surrounding it.

The ship tilted left a fraction as it descended, and began to swing wide of the pad. President Carver tapped a button on his jacket and spoke calmly, but urgently. “Going a little wide there, honey. Go right. Right. Little more right. Little more right. Tiny bit more right. OK, now a lot more right. No, your right, not… Oh, fonk it, everyone get down!”

Mech, Miz, the Carvers, the Zertex guards, and assorted Dwarves and ninjas all scattered as the ship overshot the landing pad, its fiery blue thrusters scorching the ground around it. It finally crunched down with a crash and a crack and a long, drawn-out screech of metal on metal, then fell ominously silent.

President Carver stepped out from behind a guard. “Phew,” he said, then he ducked again when a hiss of steam billowed from the back of the ship.

The president waited a few seconds to make sure nothing else was going to happen, then stood up for a second time. He dusted himself down, and flashed a grin at the assembled audience. “Roboto, sexy Chewbacca, assorted mes,” he said, nodding to Mech, Miz and the Carvers in turn. “Allow me to introduce you to my ship. Meet the Shatner.”

The landing hatch dropped open, revealing a woman with pale blue skin, serious eyebrows, and a very prominent baby bump.

Miz whistled quietly through her teeth.

“And also, more importantly, my wife,” the president continued. He spun on his heels to face the First Lady. “Loren, honey, you are not going to believe the morning I’ve had.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Aboard the Currently Untitled, Cal was staring blankly at the vast fog on the viewscreen. He was holding his breath. He only noticed because his head was going light, and he forced his lungs back to work just before he passed out and fell off the chair.

Ikumordo spread out before them, bigger than ever before. The nothingness of the Void made it hard to judge size with any degree of accuracy, but Cal was prepared to go out on a limb and say this thing was fonking huge. It didn’t appear to be doing very much of anything at the moment, but it was almost certainly only a matter of time before it violently killed them all – an outcome Cal was keen to avoid, if possible.

“OK, any ideas?” he asked. Cal tick-tocked his head towards both Loren and Lily, but his eyes refused to budge from the big orange cloud on screen. “Anyone? Anything at all? Because I am wide open to suggestions here.”

“La-la-la-laaaa!” sang Kevin, with a suddenness that made all three occupants of the bridge jump and cry out in fright. “There, that all seems to be working now.”

“Jesus Christ, Kevin!” Cal hissed. “I swear to God, you almost killed me.”

“Apologies, sir,” Kevin intoned. “Ooh, I say. Is that what I think it is?”

“It’s Ikumordo,” said Loren. “It’s the thing we’re supposed to be finding a way to destroy.”

“Oh. And did we?” Kevin asked. “Find a way to destroy it, I mean?”

“Not that I noticed,” said Cal. “By the way, that strange signal you were picking up? You know, the mysterious weapon?”

“Yes, sir?”

“It was totally this, wasn’t it?” Cal sighed. “This is what your sensors were picking up this whole time.”

Kevin checked his sensors logs. “No, sir,” he began. “Oh, wait, I tell a lie. Yes, this was it. Ha. How ironic. I mean, what are the chances?”

Lily shot withering looks at the ceiling first, then at Cal. “So, to be clear, the weapon you thought was going to destroy Ikumordo is actually Ikumordo itself?”

Cal shifted awkwardly. “Maybe it’s, like, a metaphor? You know, in the end, we’re all our own worst enemy? Or something.”

“Right,” said Lily, dragging the word out between her teeth. “And how does that help us?”

Cal shrugged. “Fonked if I know.”

A voice exploded inside Cal’s head. It seemed to be screaming and whispering at the same time, and instantly brought on a stabbing headache right between Cal’s eyes. The force of it spun him around in his chair, squeezed a sort of hrowang noise out through his mouth, and inflated a little bubble of snot from his right nostril.

“Cal?” said Loren. “Cal, you OK? What happened?”

Wheezing, Cal raised his head. “Ow. Did everyone else hear that? Or feel that? Or whatever the Hell that was?”

Loren and Lily exchanged glances. “What was? Hear what?”

The voice came again, whispering like thunder. Cal couldn’t understand the words – he didn’t know if there even were words to understand – but the meaning behind them implanted themselves deep inside his mind.

“Oh,” said Cal, as his eyes glazed over orange, and a dribble of saliva trickled down his chin. “Oh, boy.”

* * *

Miz slumped into ‘her’ chair, shook it from side to side a few times, then nodded and hooked both legs over one arm.

“Uh, make yourself at home,” said the first lady, slowly easing herself down into her chair, one hand supporting her bump.

“I am,” Miz pointed out.

“Um,” said Tobey Maguire. He shuffled anxiously from foot to foot. “That’s my chair.”

Miz lazily flicked her eyes up until they met his. “Not any more, you nerdy weirdo. Besides, it was mine first.”

Mech stood up front, gazing around at the exposed pipes and tangled ceiling vents. Maybe it wasn’t exactly like their Shatner, but it was close enough that he couldn’t be sure.

A flurry of movement at the bottom of the screen caught his attention. “We’re being hailed,” he and the first lady both said at the same time.

President Carver jumped into his own chair, shot his wife a look, then hurriedly put on his seat belt. “Oh, you’ve been on a ship like this before?” he asked.

Mech nodded. “A lot like this, actually.”

“On screen,” said Cal.

“Wait,” said Mech. “May I?”

“May you what?” asked Cal. “Push the button?”

Mech nodded, the few patches of skin on his face suddenly flushed with embarrassment.

“Uh, sure. If you like. You know which one it is?”

Without replying, Mech pushed the button. It made a satisfying clunk sound, which he only realized right then that he missed.

The screen was filled with a battle-scarred, shark-like face, although not one Mech recognized. “Ambassador Thok of the Symmorium,” the shark-guy said. “We have received your signal, and have dispatched several Thresher fleets to assist.”

“Thank Thok for that,” said the president, grinning. He tapped his forehead in salute. “Love to Sandra and the kids.”

The Symmorium ambassador vanished, and was replaced by something purple and wide-eyed. “Grantcha Ny, Xandrie colony outposts,” it said in a vaguely feminine voice. “I hear you’re having some problems, Mr President. Our assets will be with you presently, and are at your command.”

“Much obliged,” said the president. “I’ll try to take good care of them.”

“I’m sure you will.”

The face changed again. This time, when the figure on screen spoke, Miz’s head snapped up.

“President Carver.”

The president nodded and smiled. “Graxan of the Greyx. Long time no see.”

Miz stood up. “Dad?”

Graxan’s eyes were pale and milky, his hair mostly gray. He cocked his head at the sound of Miz’s voice, a look of confusion crinkling his fur-covered features. “Mizette? Mizette, is that you?”

The president and first lady both turned in their chair to look at Miz. Thanks to the bump, this was much easier for Cal than it was for Loren.

Miz suddenly became aware of all eyes on her. Behind her, Tobey Maguire quietly slid into her recently-vacated chair and strapped himself in.

“Uh, no. I mean, yeah, I mean…”

“Yeah,” said Mech. “Yeah, it’s her.”

Graxan’s look of confusion became one of delight. “Mizette! My Mizette,” he said, his voice becoming a wheeze. “Where have you been, child? Your mother has missed you, dearly. I have missed you.”

Miz tried to speak, failed, then cleared her throat and tried again. “I, like, you know, missed you, too,” she managed, before her throat tightened again. “I’ve been, uh, like, kind of…”

“Saving the galaxy,” said Mech. “Righting wrongs, helping people, doing good.”

Miz glanced at him in surprise, then shuffled awkwardly. “Uh, well, I mean… I guess. You know, not, like, all the time.”

“But regularly,” said Mech. “Pretty fonking regularly.”

Miz met his eye again and a smile passed between them.

“You should be proud of this girl,” Mech continued. Up on his shoulder, Splurt nodded. Sort of.

“Proud?” said Graxan, his brow furrowing into a deep frown. “Of course. Always.” A tear rolled from one of his milky eyes, and was immediately absorbed by his dry, brittle fur. “Since the day she was born, I could not have been prouder.”

Miz’s nose twitched and her eyes moistened. She rocked back on her heels, and nodded once, but couldn’t find the words to reply.

President Carver leaned forwards and pointed upwards. “Uh, hate to interrupt. But big weird space thing? About to kill everyone? Thought it was worth mentioning.”

On screen, Graxan bowed, just a fraction. “The Greyx are with you, old friend. Keep my daughter safe. Keep us all safe.”

“Ten-four, Graxy. And thanks.”

“Farewell, Mizette,” Graxan said.

Miz managed a hoarse-sounding, “Bye, Dad,” before the feed cut off. Still reeling, she stepped back and sat down, right on top of Tobey Maguire.

“Fonk! Where did you come from?” she snapped, jumping up again.

“I told you, it’s my chair,” said Tobey Maguire. “This is where I always sit.”

Miz was about to tear him out of the seat when her ears pricked up. Mech spotted it immediately.

“What’s wrong?”

“Screaming,” said Miz. “Outside.”

The first lady thumbed a switch and the sounds of panic and terror spat at them from the Shatner’s speakers.

“Fonk,” said the president, jumping to his feet. “Honey, stay here.”

“What? No!” First Lady Loren protested. “I’m coming.”

President Carver shook his head. “No. Stay with the ship. Be ready to go. We still need to go fight the big weird space thing, and no one can fly this baby like you.”

“You mean, like, sideways into a wall?” said Miz.

The president leaned in closer to his advisor. “Keep an eye on her. Keep her safe.”

Tobey Maguire nodded. “Of course.”

“You two,” said the president, pointing to Mech and Miz. “With me. Let’s go find out what the fonk is going on.”

They hurried into the corridor towards the hatch. On the way, Mech stopped to pull open the weapons cabinet. He tossed Miz a blaster rifle, then grabbed the only one big enough for his fingers to operate.

“Hey, how’d you know about that?” asked the president. He gestured for Mech to toss him a gun.

“Lucky guess,” said Mech. Instinctively, he picked up the smallest blaster pistol he could find and passed it to President Cal.

“What’s this? A potato gun?” said the president.

“If you’re gonna accidentally shoot me, I’d rather you shot me with that,” said Mech.

“Fair point, well made,” the president conceded, then he slammed the button that dropped the hatch, and all three of them ran outside.

The sky was falling. At least, that was how it looked. Long fingers of crackling orange energy stretched down from Ikumordo. From where they stood, Mech and the others could see twenty or more columns of light, evenly spread a few miles apart in all directions. One of the beams had struck the city where they’d first arrived in this dimension. Most of the screaming was coming from that direction.

“Oh shizz, that’s not good,” said the president. He pointed at a man in a Zertex uniform who stood, open-mouthed, as he watched on in horror. “You. What’s happening?”

The guard tore his eyes away from the closest column, realized the president had addressed him, and snapped to a sort of clumsy salute. He was slightly-built, with dark orange skin. Mech thought there was something vaguely familiar about him, like he’d met him in another universe somewhere, but couldn’t place where.

“Um, um, um,” said the guard, not very helpfully.

“There’s no burning,” said Miz, sniffing the air. “No explosion. That thing – those beam things – I don’t think they’re doing any damage.”

“Then what the fonk are they?” asked Mech.

The president strode forwards. “Let’s go find out.”

“No,” said Mech, catching him by the arm. “We’ll go. You get up there and engage that thing. That’s the only way we’re gonna stop it.”

President Carver snorted, as if about to immediately dismiss the idea. But then he glanced back at the Shatner, spent a few seconds contemplating everything inside, and nodded.

“Fine. But keep everyone safe. Please.”

Mech nodded. “You have my word.”

Cal patted him on the upper arm. “You’re a good man,” he said. He hurried up the ramp, then looked back when he reached the top. “A good robot man.”

“Fonk you, shizznod,” Mech spat. The president winked, grinned, then vanished behind the rising ramp.

“So, what’s the plan?” asked Miz.

“The Carvers are still in the castle. Go get them. If it’s safe, head for the column thing,” said Mech. He jabbed a metal finger at the terrified guard. “You?”

The guard looked back over his shoulder, hoping to see someone else there. Sadly, he didn’t. “Who, me?”

“Yeah you. You see anyone else here?”

The guard looked around again, just in case. “N-no.”

“Exactly. Come with me.”

Despite looking like he’d quite like to object, the guard nodded. “OK.”

While Miz bounded back towards the castle, Mech and the guard raced around the outside, as quickly as Mech’s massive frame would allow. The screams grew louder, and were joined by a low frequency humming sound which throbbed through the ground and made all Mech’s loose bits rattle.

“What is it?” asked the guard, his eyes darting anxiously between the light column and the cyborg. “Is it…? It’s dangerous, isn’t it?”

“Chances are pretty fonking high,” said Mech, as they rounded the front of Castle Grayskull, and saw a handful of other guards all ducking for cover behind the high gates. “Open these up,” Mech barked. “We’re going out there.”

“Fonk off!” yelped one of the men. “Out there? With that? You’re having a laugh, ain’t ya?”

The first guard’s anxiety seemed to evaporate at that. It was only then that Mech noticed the pips on his shoulder that signified his officer rank. “You heard the man!” he barked. “Get these gates open. There are people out there. Come on, move, move, move.”

A well-drilled guard unit would have responded instantly. This lot responded quite slowly, and with a lot of dubious looks back over their shoulders. They did, however, open the gates.

“Now get out there and start helping people,” the officer instructed. He looked sideways and up at Mech. “Right?”

“Right,” said Mech, ushering the guards out. “Go. Do what you can.”

With a fair amount of muttering and the occasional disparaging look, the guards crept out through the gates, keeping their heads as low as they possibly could while still being able to see where they were going.

“Thanks,” said Mech.

The officer shrugged, and all his anxiety returned. “They’re just scared. We’ve never… This isn’t what we do. We’ve never seen action. Most of us just joined for the benefits. I only got promoted because I had the shiniest shoes.”

Mech glanced down. Despite the whole end of the world thing going on, he couldn’t help but let out a whistle of appreciation. “Holy shizz. Those are some shiny motherfonking shoes.”

The guard’s face became a knot of worry. “I… I have a family. Kids. I don’t want to die.”

“And you won’t,” said Mech. “Stick with me, and you’ll be OK.”

The man nodded. The worry remained, but was joined by a grateful smile. “I will. Thank you.”

Mech began to march on, and beckoned for him to follow. “What’s your name, son?”

The guard shifted on the balls of his feet, a little uncomfortably. “You’ll laugh.”

Mech sighed. “What? Seriously? Just tell me your name, man.”

The guard smiled, a little embarrassed. “My name’s Gluk,” he said. “Gluk Disselpoof.”

Mech stopped.

Mech turned.

And then, with very little in the way of warning, Mech exploded.

* * *

Miz found the Carvers still in the hall, surrounded by worried-looking guards. Carver Two hurried over to her as she crashed through the double doors, panting heavily.

“What’s going on?” he asked. “Is it happening? Is Ikumordo attacking?”

“Looks like it,” said Miz. “Round everyone up. We need to get out there.”

Two spun on his heels and banged the bottom of his staff against the wooden floor. “Carver Council! Uh… and friends. The moment has come. Ikumordo attacks. This is the moment we’ve been preparing for.”

The stoned-looking Cal raised a hand. “Uh, when were we preparing?”

“Yeah, I don’t remember any, you know, actual preparing, exactly,” said another Carver.

“OK, so ‘preparing’ was a strong word,” admitted Carver Two. “This is the moment we’ve been…”

“Shizzing ourselves about?” suggested Old Man Carver.

“Spik fur yersel’,” said Eighty-Three. The little man was wielding a double-headed battle axe twice as tall as himself. Where he’d got it from was anyone’s guess. “We cannae wait tae git stuck intae it. Richt, lads?”

“Yer nae wrang,” said another of the Dwarves.

“Intae ‘im, intae ‘im, intae ‘im!” chanted a few of the others.

One of the guards cleared his throat. “Um, we’re supposed to keep you in here,” he said.

Miz rounded on him, her lips drawing up to reveal her teeth. “Try it,” she suggested. She had no idea if the guard had understood her or not, but he backed down immediately, and offered a panicky smile.

“B-but we won’t, obviously,” he said, stepping aside.

“You’re coming, too,” she told the troops, hurrying for the door again.

“Council and company, let’s go! This ends here and now!” Carver Two boomed. He set his jaw in grim determination and added, more quietly: “One way or another.”

* * *

Mech sat up. He didn’t intend to, but Splurt had squeezed himself under the cyborg’s back, and shoved.

He could smell burning. Scorched metal. Melting wires.

That sort of thing.

The pain arrived as reams of data. Damage reports flooded his field of view, too numerous to process all at once. He was hurt. That was about the size of it. And badly.

“Hey. Hey, mister. You OK?” whispered the guard, and Mech remembered the final words he’d heard him say. He forced himself to sit up further.

“Do I look like I’m fonking OK?” he grunted.

There was a hole where Mech’s dial had been. It sparked and fizzed, the jagged metal edges of the wound still glowing red hot. The remains of some sort of missile lay scattered on the ground around him, along with part of the castle gate, which Mech had crashed backwards through at high speed.

“What the fonk happened?”

“Uh, that guy shot you,” said Gluk, pointing to where a hulking figure was approaching. He was silhouetted against the tower of light, but even through a veil of scrolling damage reports, Mech recognized him.

“Hey,” he grunted, forcing himself up onto his knees. “That’s me.”

The other Mech raised a missile launcher and fired again. Mech shoved Gluk Disselpoof aside, but there was no time for him to get clear himself. He crossed his arms across his damaged chest and braced himself.

Splurt caught the missile in a huge, gloopy fist, flipped it over, and tossed it back. The other Mech ducked, but the explosive detonated against the ground behind him, with enough force to lift him off his feet.

As the light of the explosion illuminated him, Mech realized the other him wasn’t another him, at all. It was like him, definitely, but everything about it was a slick, oozing white, as if he was made from some kind of living wax.

“What is it?” asked Gluk.

“I don’t know. Some kind of clone, maybe?”

“It’s an echo.”

Mech turned to see Carver Two running down the castle steps beside Miz. The rest of the council and their recently-acquired companions were filing out through the main doors in groups of three and four (or, in the case of the Dwarves, seven).

“Say what?” said Mech.

“Void echoes. I mean, I think. Carver Prime talked about them,” Two said. “Although, why they’d be here, I don’t know.”

“Shizz. What happened to you?” asked Miz. “Are you, like, OK?”

“Been better,” Mech admitted. “But I’ll be fine.”

The Echo Mech was getting back to its feet. Even over the sound of the screams and the humming sensation throbbing through the ground, Mech could hear the duplicate’s hydraulics hissing.

More figures were marching out of the light column in the distance. Dozens of them, becoming hundreds. Some of them walked, some of them ran. One of them bounded on all fours, its tail flapping along behind it.

“Seriously?” snarled Miz. “Bring it on.”

“It’s an invasion force,” said Two. “A ground invasion, designed to wipe us all out.”

“Oh no,” cheeped Gluk.

“I got your back, man,” Mech assured him.

“No, don’t you see? This is good. This is great!” said Number Two.

“Fit whysit great?” asked Eighty-Three.

“Why would it attack us? Like this, I mean?” asked Two. “Why would it feel the need to stop us? Because it knows we can stop it. By wiping us out, it’s playing it safe, and if it’s playing it safe, it means it isn’t invulnerable.”

“So what do we do?” asked Mech. “And, just so you know, if the next words out of your mouth ain’t, ‘go beat the shizz out of those things,’ I’m gonna be very disappointed.”

Carver Two grinned. He nodded, just once. Behind him, the Shatner rose into the air, clipped the castle roof, then streaked off into space.

“Mech. Mizette. Carvers?” said Number Two. “Let’s go beat the shizz out of these things.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Cal had never been in two places at once before. He hadn’t been in three places at once before, either.

And as for four?

No.

So, being everywhere at once, as he now currently was, was proving to be somewhat disorientating. He could only liken it to that time he had…

No.

He had nothing.

The part of him that could still think rationally was pretty sure his brain was still in one piece, but the rest of his mind had fragmented into a seemingly infinite number of parts, all of which were granting him a different view of the universe. Or universes.

Universii, maybe?

No.

No, that was silly.

He saw not just through space, but through time, as well. He saw the Void, empty and still. He saw a bubble appear in the blackness, then another, then another. He saw worlds rise and fall, galaxies bloom and fade, universes be born, only to die as billions of years passed in the blink of an eye.

Not that he had eyes.

Or eyelids.

Not anymore.

He saw beauty in it. Wonder. Horror. Joy. He saw the beginning of everything and the end of all things, both at the same time. He saw eternity and infinity collide, and felt the shockwave ripple through every atom in the multi-verse.

He said, “Crikey,” quite loudly – a word he had never said before, would never say again, and would later deny all knowledge of ever having said in the first place.

“Cal? Are you OK?”

Loren’s voice was far away, but right in his ear. He tried to reply, but couldn’t figure out where his mouth was, or, for that matter, when he’d last seen it. He checked his pockets.

No.

Not there.

“What’s happening to him?” Loren asked.

“I don’t know,” said Lily, and Cal felt sparks and fireworks flare in his head at the sound of her voice. Lily. His daughter. His little girl, all grown up.

Alive.

Lightning flashed everywhere, everywhen, and the Void returned. The darkness felt different, somehow. Younger. Fresher. Like it had only just begun.

It spiraled around him, twirling every different version of his consciousness in a thousand different directions at once. He hoped he could remember where his mouth was soon, because he was definitely going to throw up if this didn’t stop in the next few seconds.

It stopped in the next few seconds.

And there, smeared across the face of the Void like orange-flavored birthday cake, was Ikumordo.

And there, next to Ikumordo, was another Ikumordo.

Two Ikumordos.

Two.

One big, one small.

Something passed between them. Not words, not even emotions, but something. A sensation.

No.

A bond.

Cal felt the sparks and fireworks flare in his head again. A parental bond. Mother and child, although that wasn’t quite right, either. Two of the same thing. Two pieces of the same whole.

And then, without moving in any way, the smaller of the two was gone. Just… gone. Cal’s fractured mind ached with longing and loss. He wanted to cry, to wail, to scream into the darkness.

“No! Please! Come back!”

“What?” said Loren.

“Who?” Lily asked.

Oh. He’d evidently found his mouth again. That was a bonus.

The one remaining Ikumordo expanded rapidly, rushing towards him like smoke towards an open window. Cal felt the clammy hand of panic slap against his chest as the cloud forced its way up his nostrils, down his throat, and – to his dismay – into every other available orifice.

Cal opened his eyes. Or maybe his eyes had always been open, but were only just working again. He opened his mouth, and a voice that was partly his, but partly something else emerged.

“I understand now,” he said.

Loren and Lily exchanged a glance. Kevin exchanged the same glance, but as he was only a voice, nobody noticed.

“Understand what?” Lily asked.

Infinity and eternity collided inside Cal’s head. He spoke again, and his voice boomed like thunder.

“Everything.”

* * *

The Shatner screamed towards the big weird space thing, its cannons stuttering out a hail of energy blasts. On the bridge, President Carver bounced excitedly in his seat, his face covered by the gunner’s visor.

“Oh, man, I have missed this!” he cried.

“You know you’re shooting at a cloud, yes?” asked the first lady. “You’re literally doing zero damage.”

The president shrugged. “Maybe. Still fun, though,” he said. “Tobey Maguire, report!”

Tobey Maguire looked round in surprise. “About what?”

“I don’t know, I just like saying stuff like that,” said the president. “And you know I find your voice soothing.”

First Lady Loren glanced back over her shoulder, “Seriously starting to think I should be worried about you two,” she said, then she banked the Shatner towards the most densely-concentrated area of the space cloud. If there was anything to shoot on this thing, it would most likely be there.

Tobey Maguire sat more upright in his chair. “OK, so… we’re flying towards the orange thing. You’re shooting stuff. There are three of us.”

“Jesus Christ, Tobey Maguire, that’s the worst report I’ve ever heard,” said President Cal. “And that includes a report I gave on my nine favorite colors in third grade.”

“Oh, sorry.”

Silence fell.

“I didn’t say stop.”

“Right, yes,” said Tobey Maguire, but before he could start again, several dozen shapes emerged from the cloud ahead of them. “Um…”

“I see them,” said the president. “Loren? Honey? Is it just me, or do those ships look like us?”

“It’s not just you.”

“I mean… a lot like us?”

“Yep.”

“I mean… They’re us.”

Thirty or more virtually identical Shatners streaked towards them in a tightly-packed formation. Tobey Maguire tapped the short range scanner controls on his arm rest. “They’re definitely very similar.”

“Could they be us from other universes?” the first lady asked. “I mean, that’s a thing that seems to be happening today, right? Alternate versions of… well, you?”

“Yes!” said the president. “Of course. Makes sense. These guys are on our side. They’ve come to help us fight the… Oh, fonk, no, they’re shooting at us.”

First Lady Loren spun the Shatner into a twisting spiral as the Echo Shatners fired a volley of torpedoes. Most of the energy blasts streaked past, but a few landed glancing blows on the shields, dropping their integrity by a couple of per cent.

“Nice flying,” said the president. “I mean, I think I might cough up one of my own balls, but still, good job.”

“Long as it’s one of your own,” the first lady said, tilting the ship to avoid the last of the torpedo barrage.

“So we have evil doubles,” said the president. “That is both awesome and problematic. Tobey Maguire, how many are out there?”

Tobey Maguire began to count the dots on his display. “One, two, three, four, five. Wait. One, two, three, four… Stop fonking moving!” he shouted at the arm rest. “One, two, three, four, five, six, s— Oh, I don’t know. Loads.”

“Concise, yet detailed. That’s why I pay you the big bucks, Maguire,” the president said. The other Shatners were all still fixed in their formation. Cal adjusted his grip on the cannon control stick. “I wonder…” he said, then he squeezed the trigger and jerked the stick, sending the beam swinging left to right across the approaching enemy ships.

It cut through them with ease, neatly cleaving each ship into two or more parts.

“OK, relax, everyone,” said the president. “Looks like they’ve made that age-old mistake of building their ships out of cotton candy.”

“How about those ones?” asked Tobey Maguire.

“Which ones?” asked the president. “If you’re pointing, I draw your attention to the visor currently covering my…”

His voice tailed off as he turned his chair and saw what Tobey Maguire was talking about. Another fleet of ships was emerging from the cloud. No, not a fleet, an armada. There were hundreds of them, all flying in a tightly-packed formation.

“OK, so that’s a lot,” said the president.

“Keeping formation, though,” the first lady replied. “Looks like they didn’t learn from last time.”

As if they’d been listening in, the other Shatners broke ranks and swooped into a whole range of different attack vectors.

“You had to say it,” said the president, as hundreds of weapons systems flared around them. “OK, baby, show us what you’ve got.”

“I’ll try,” said First Lady Loren, reaching around her bump for the controls, before plunging them into a dive.

“Well, I mean, I was talking to the ship,” said the president. “But much appreciated, all the same.”

Loren shook her head. “Man, I hate you, sometimes.”

Behind his visor, President Cal Carver grinned. “I know.”

The Shatner flipped, curved upwards (or downwards, depending on where you were standing), then twisted into a spiraling loop. It was a perfectly executed move, designed to put them directly behind one of the attacking ships. And it did. Unfortunately, it put them directly in front of three other attacking ships, too.

“Shizz,” the first lady spat. “Full power to rear shields.”

Tobey Maguire was filled with the sinking feeling that she had been talking to him. “Is that my bit?” he asked, looking down at his controls just as a volley of cannon-fire hammered against the shielding.

“Yes, that’s your bit!” Loren said.

“Jesus Christ, Tobey Maguire, you had one job,” said the president.

“I had a number of jobs!” protested Tobey Maguire. “And it’s not my fault! I’ve never done the buttons before, have I?”

“Done the buttons?” said the first lady, twisting a number of controls at once and throwing the ship into a complex series of maneuvers that was, I’m afraid, completely indescribable. Impressive, but indescribable. You really had to be there.

“Well, you know what I mean!” said Tobey Maguire. He did a button. “Is it this one?”

There was an odd humming sound, not unlike the sound of a number of shield generators shutting down, all at the same time.

“What did you do?” the first lady cried. “We’ve lost all shields.”

“I just pushed a button!”

“Well fonking unpush it!” said the president.

An alarm squealed. Loren’s eyes went wide as a number of weapons systems got full lock on the unprotected Shatner. Her first instinct was to bank the ship to the right, deploy any and all defensive countermeasures, and hope to Kroysh they worked. Another, more powerful instinct took over, though.

Taking her hands from the controls, Loren covered her bump.

“Incoming,” she whispered.

And then the screen flared as the three closest Echo Shatners erupted in a hail of energy blasts. A voice crackled over the comm-system’s emergency broadcast channel. It was gruff and angry. It was also, without question, the most beautiful voice anyone on board had ever heard.

“President Carver, Symmorium Threshers at your disposal. We await your command.”

“Ooh, fonk, are we glad to see you guys,” said Cal, as dozens of Symmorium ships dropped out of warp all across the sky. “As for my command?”

He wriggled in his seat, adjusted his grip on his gun controls, then smiled grimly. “Let’s go beat the shizz out of these things.”

* * *

A metal fist clanged against Mech’s jaw, staggering him. Around him, Zertex troops, alternate Cal Carvers and a few plucky citizens were fighting back against the tide of pasty-faced Echoes. Ninjas and Dwarves chopped through a whole regiment – the Dwarves using axes, the ninjas, their hands.

The Echo Mech’s fist swung again. Mech ducked it, but couldn’t avoid the follow-up right hook that exploded against what would have been his ribcage, had his ribs not long since been replaced by a flexible Durium alloy.

Further damage reports and error alerts scrolled across Mech’s eyeline, making it difficult to predict where the next strike was coming from. He’d tried to suppress the information, but it turned out that his ‘suppress visual damage reports’ functionality had, ironically, been one of the first things to go.

Somewhere, far enough away for them to be unaware of Mech’s current predicament, Mizette and Splurt tore and hammered their way across the battlefield. Miz was on a collision course with her duplicate, who was currently at the back of a long line of cannon fodder.

Splurt wasn’t heading in any one particular direction, and was instead just twirling around, squishing Echoes into lumpy piles of paste with ten very long, very heavy tentacles. It was, judging by the way he was pulsating, the most fun he’d had all day.

Another battering-ram blow caught the side of Mech’s head. His vision flickered, like a TV screen with a bad connection. He reached for the dial on his chest, remembered it was gone, then swung wildly with a punch that his Echo easily avoided.

KABAM!

The duplicate’s shoulder hit Mech like a freight train, launching him backwards. Too startled to even flail his arms, Mech sailed several feet through the air until he collided with a wall behind him.

The Echo was already stomping towards him. Mech tried to stand, but his legs were twitchy and unresponsive. His vision flickered, and the duplicate was suddenly closer, a leer twisting its waxy white face.

“H-hey, back off!”

Gluk Disselpoof stepped between Mech and the Echo, a blaster pistol trembling in his hands.

“No! No, don’t,” Mech said, but his voice came out like a series of synthesizer notes from the 1980s.

The Echo didn’t stop. Gluk opened fire, squeezing the trigger over and over again. The first shot punched cleanly through the Echo’s shoulder. The second left a deep dent in its chest.

The third shot ricocheted harmlessly off, and the Echo kept coming.

It was learning, Mech realized. Adapting.

“Go. Run!” Mech warned.

But Gluk Disselpoof did not run, would not run. He stood his ground, eyes wide, hands shaking, firing round after round at the oncoming Echo.

Frantically, Mech reached into the hole in his chest. He knew the schematics. He’d repaired himself a hundred times before, although never with this much damage, and never under this much pressure.

But he knew the schematics. And he knew what had to be done.

There was no dial. Not anymore. But then, that didn’t matter. The dial was only there for his protection – a failsafe, to safely divert power from brain to body without the risk of him burning himself out by using both to their full capacity at once.

But that was possible. Easier, even, than rigging up another failsafe. And quicker. Much quicker.

He wouldn’t have long, but the time he did have would be spectacular.

Sparks flew as Mech twisted a knot of wires together in his chest cavity.

Blaster bolts crackled as Gluk Disselpoof fired again and again and again.

The Echo drew back its fist.

The blaster, its charge depleted, went click.

And the ground rumbled as Mech got to his feet.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

The vast orange face of Ikumordo was crisscrossed by ships, all engaging in battle. The Symmorium had quickly eliminated the second wave of Echo crafts, but the third wave was proving more difficult, having adapted to the Thresher ships’ attacks.

The Echoes were no longer just of the Shatner, either, and picking the enemy ships from the friendly ones was proving increasingly difficult.

A few battalions of Xandrie fighters had now warped into orbit, and their more unorthodox fighting style – ‘fly around wildly, shoot even more so,’ – seemed to be more effective at taking out the Echoes.

The peace deal between the Xandrie and the Symmorium was pretty flimsy, though, the president knew, and all it would take was some accidental friendly fire to set relations back a decade.

Of course, if that happened, it would mean the universe had survived, so it was a price worth paying, he reckoned.

President Carver spun in his chair, taking down a Thresher Echo that had found their tail. Previous ships had required a single pulse of cannon-fire, but now they needed a direct torpedo hit to take them out, and the Shatner only had a handful left.

“Argh! Look out,” warned Tobey Maguire. The first lady punched the thrusters, banking the ship up and over an approaching enemy fighter, then tilting to bring it directly into the president’s sights. He used up another torpedo and the ship exploded into debris.

“Two missiles left,” warned Tobey Maguire.

“They’re not missiles, they’re torpedoes,” said the president.

“Is there a difference?”

“Yes. ‘Torpedoes,’ sounds cooler.”

“Greyx ships incoming,” said the first lady. She swung the Shatner around, bringing the heart of Ikumordo into view again just as it spat out another armada of Shatners, Threshers and now Xandrie fighters. “But it’s not going to be enough.”

She tightened her grip on the controls, looked down at her bump, then back at her husband. “Cal? What do we do?”

Even through the visor, the president could feel her eyes on him. “We fight,” he said. “In fact, no. We don’t just fight. We space fight. And we keep on space fighting.”

“That makes literally no sense,” his wife replied.

“What good is it doing?” asked Tobey Maguire. “For every one we destroy, that thing spits out five more. And besides, if what those… yous said is true, then this isn’t just happening here, it’s happening to millions of other Earths, too. Billions.”

“Then we’ll make sure this one is the last to fall,” the president said.

“How?! Forgive me if I’m out of line here, but there’s nothing we can do against that thing. We’re not even delaying the inevitable, we’re just spectating the inevitable, very close up.”

The president tapped a button on the visor, retracting it upwards towards the ceiling. “So what am I supposed to do, Tobey Maguire?” he demanded. “Hmm? Any suggestions? Because I’d love to hear one. It’s not like the solution is going to just miraculously appear out of thin air, is it?”

A few hundred miles ahead of the Shatner, something appeared out of thin air. Well, technically not ‘air,’ what with being in space, and everything, but out of nowhere.

It was a ship. A green ship. Or black. Or possibly silver, depending on which way you looked at it.

“Who the fonk is this now?” asked the president. He looked across at Tobey Maguire.

“What? How should I know?” the advisor replied. “It’s another ship.”

“Seriously?” said the president. “That’s the best you’ve got?”

“Uh, honey…?” said the first lady. The president looked round and saw that a face had appeared on screen, as if someone had taken over the comm-channel and forced their way onto it.

At least, that’s what everyone aboard the Shatner thought, at first, before they realized the face wasn’t on screen, at all. It was being projected into space itself, several thousand feet high from chin to forehead.

The president leaned forward in his chair. “Holy shizz, is that… Is that me?”

Tobey Maguire looked long and hard at the floating head, then at the president, then back to the head.

He repeated this a number of times.

“I think it might be.”

“Of course it is,” said the first lady, with just a note of exasperation in her voice. “It’s identical.”

“But bigger,” Tobey Maguire pointed out.

“Well, yes, obviously it’s bigger.”

The president grinned. “I’m a giant face,” he said, then he gasped. “No! I’m a giant space face! Way to go, me!”

* * *

Miz carved through a couple of white-faced waxy things, snapped the neck of another, then hissed as a club cracked across the back of her skull.

“Witch oot, quine!” hollered Carver Eighty-Three, tossing his axe. It buried in the chest of Miz’s attacker with a satisfying thunk.

Miz nodded briefly to the little man, bounded through the oncoming crowd, then stopped in front of a distorted reflection of herself. “Like, who are you supposed to be?” she snarled.

“Like, who are you supposed to be?”

“I asked you first,” said Miz.

“I asked you first.”

Miz growled deep in her throat. “Wait, are you, like, copying me?”

“Wait, are you, like, copying me?”

“Cut it out!”

“Cut it out!”

Miz extended her claws. Her Echo did the same. “OK, fonk this,” they both said, just seconds apart, then they leaped at each other, teeth and claws and fur flying.

* * *

Mech caught his Echo’s fist, just before it could make a smooth pâté of Gluk Disselpoof’s head. His fingers twitched, crushing the duplicate’s hand.

A powerful blow from the Echo’s other fist caught Mech on the side of the head. He ignored it, punched a hole deep into the duplicate’s stomach, then hoisted its entire frame above his head.

With a faint hissing of his super-charged hydraulics, Mech tore the double in half. He spun on the spot, tossing first one half, then the other, into the oncoming hordes of Ikumordo’s army. Both pieces cut down ten or more of the Echoes, before embedding themselves several inches into the surface of the street.

Gluk Disselpoof gawped up at Mech. Sparks danced like briefly-brilliant fairies in the cyborg’s chest cavity. His voice, when it came out, was higher-pitched than before, and sounded more machine than man. The words were comforting, all the same.

“I am most grateful for your assistance,” Mech said. “However, in the interests of your personal safety, I advise you to leave the remainder of this conflict to me.”

* * *

Cal Carver’s body sat aboard the Currently Untitled. His consciousness, on the other hand, wasn’t home. Instead, it had been dragged out into space, and now floated in the midst of a fonking huge battle between lots of vaguely similar-looking ships, and what appeared to be several identical versions of Cal’s old ship, the Shatner.

It was cold out here, but as he had no physical presence whatsoever, he reckoned that was probably psychological.

He flicked his eyes downwards, then upwards, then left to right. He was, it seemed, a giant head in space. While he had never been a giant head in space before, for some reason it didn’t feel all that unexpected.

He tried to imagine himself a very big hat to help keep out the cold, and was slightly disappointed when one failed to appear.

The battle eased off around him as more and more of the ships spotted his enormous face. Even Ikumordo’s fighters slowed in their attacks. Especially Ikumordo’s fighters, in fact. They began to drift, floating aimlessly off into the emptiness of space, like forgotten toys.

Cal could feel hundreds of pairs of eyes watching him, waiting for him to say something. He tried to think of something suitably profound, but the weight of all that expectation made his mind go blank. He was also still coming to terms with being a giant space head, which wasn’t helping, either.

“Howdy,” he said.

The sound somehow traveled through the vacuum of space. As it did, the Echo ships dissipated into mist, before being absorbed back into the flickering orange cloud of the All Death.

Ikumordo’s rhythmic rippling became faster, and more erratic. Cal fixed the cloud with a cold, hard glare. Or maybe his eyes did it by themselves. Either way, the effect was much the same. Ikumordo, devourer of worlds, swallower of galaxies, drew back, as if in fear.

“You,” said Cal, in a voice born of the Void itself, “have been a very naughty boy.”

He said a name. Not Ikumordo, nor All-Death, but something older, from back before there were words, or people to speak them. It resonated through space, making the stars themselves tremble.

And then, despite an evident lack of chest, lungs, or basically anything from the chin down, Cal began to inhale. He drew the airless vacuum inside himself in a long, slow gulp. Ikumordo thrashed around as its wispy edges were drawn into a point, which was in turn sucked down towards the giant Cal head’s waiting mouth.

A few hundred miles away, President Carver’s mouth was also open, although his was open in surprise, and not so he could inhale a galaxy-devouring space monster.

“Somebody tell me they brought a camera,” he muttered.

There was a flash and a click from his right. “Got it.”

“Thanks, Tobey Maguire,” said the president.

The first lady whistled softly through her teeth. “I always knew you had a big head,” she remarked. “But this is fonking ridiculous.”

* * *

Miz stood over her fallen Echo, threw back her head, and let out a howl of triumph that rolled across the city in all directions.

Once that was out of the way, she launched herself towards an oncoming Echo…

…only for it to become a puff of wispy white smoke.

The columns of light stuttered, then cut off, as all across the plaza, the duplicates deteriorated into vapor.

Splurt stopped spinning. He looked around, sagged slightly as he lowered his tentacles, then plopped back into his usual ball shape, making no attempt whatsoever to hide his disappointment.

Mech swung with a punch that didn’t connect. “Oh, I say,” he said, as his processors set about processing several thousand potential scenarios that could have led to the disappearance of the Echoes. Most of them, happily, were positive.

“Well, that was fun, wasn’t it?” he said to Gluk.

And then black smoke began to billow from his chest, his hulking metal frame shuddered violently, and he toppled backwards with a thud.

* * *

Back aboard the Untitled, Cal was turning blue in the face. He wasn’t aware of that fact yet, what with his mind currently being out in space, but as his lungs were on the brink of exploding, he was almost certainly going to find out, soon enough.

Loren tapped her controls, but a flickering orange energy had cocooned them, and nothing she did elicited any kind of response. She sat back and puffed out her cheeks. “This is… This is…” She turned to Lily. “What? What is this?”

Lily tore her eyes away from Cal’s giant space head. “Huh?” she said, which wasn’t very helpful. “Oh. Sorry. What is this? Was that what you asked?”

Loren nodded. “Yes.”

“As in…” Lily gestured from the almost inert, gently inhaling Cal, to his floating head. “This? All this?”

“Yes!”

It was Lily’s turn to puff out her cheeks. “Your guess is as good as mine. Has he done anything like this before?”

Loren watched as the colossal Cal-head sucked down more of Ikumordo. She raised her eyebrows. “Not that I’ve ever noticed, no.”

“No,” said Lily, a little absent-mindedly. “No, thought not.”

Loren chewed her lip. “Will Cal be OK?”

“Well, considering he somehow transported us out of the Void and across dimensions using, from what I can gather, just his mind, and is now, you know, that.” She gestured to the viewscreen. “I’m not even sure that is Cal, anymore.”

Outside, Cal – if, indeed, he was Cal anymore - felt like a hole was being filled. Although not in that way. The aching he had felt since he had witnessed the second orange mass vanishing from the Void was easing, healing, his broken heart knitting itself together as the space cloud found its way deep inside him.

Again, not in that way.

And yet… Ikumordo wasn’t giving up without a fight. It thrashed and clawed at his insides, wrenching and heaving around in his throat and in his guts, despite the fact he currently had neither of those things.

A sharp, scything pain cut through his head from top to bottom, and he felt both of the giant space clouds lock each other in battle inside his mind.

No, not battle. Not quite. But conflict, certainly. The sensations became feelings, the feelings unraveling themselves into words.

“Ugh. Why do you always do this? You never let me do what I want to do!”

“Well, maybe when you start acting like a grown-up, I’ll start treating you like a grown-up!”

“Argh! It’s not fair! I hate you! I wish I’d never been conceptualized!”

The raging continued, and Cal felt an infinity of regret, reproach and revenge begin to play out inside him. The two entities fought bitterly, each thunderous collision deforming his floating face.

The space head exploded. Cal sat forwards in his chair, rediscovered the effects of gravity, and almost headbutted his own knees.

“Wha—?” he uttered. “Nng. Fmk.”

Loren jumped up from her seat and hurried to him. She had almost reached his chair when a wave of heat radiated from Cal’s skin, pushing her backwards and forcing Lily to spin her own chair around for cover.

Cal looked down at his hands. He had some again, so that was good. They appeared to be on fire, though, so that was less promising. Still, at least it didn’t hurt.

Well, maybe a little.

Sweat poured from him, slicking his forehead and trickling into his eyes. Somewhere behind his eyeballs, he could feel both big weird space things thrashing around, throwing things at each other, and generally behaving like a couple of shizznods.

“D-did I get it?” Cal grimaced.

Loren glanced at the screen and nodded. “It’s gone.”

“That one is,” said Lily. “But the other dimensions…”

Cal shook his head. “N-nope. Got it all.” He patted his stomach and pointed to his head. Up close, he realized the orange light flickering across his hands wasn’t fire. Energy and heat, yes, but not fire, exactly.

Still, getting pretty painful now.

Lily frowned. “Got it all? What do you mean, you’ve got it all?”

“Both,” said Cal. He hoped that answered any and all questions, because speaking was proving quite difficult. Judging by Lily’s face, though, it didn’t. “Big weird s-space things. Two of,” he said. He tapped the side of his head. “In h-here.”

Pain tore through him as a battle even older than the multi-verse raged inside him. He hissed as the skin on the back of his hands blistered and split, cracks shooting up his arms, pulling the skin apart. Orange energy seeped from each fresh wound, and Cal felt himself being pulled apart, not just metaphorically, this time, but literally, too.

More than that, though, he felt rage. Fury. Jealousy. Scorn. He felt hatred and anger and fear and wrath. The two entities were wrestling inside him, resuming a battle that had raged from before time itself.

And it fonking hurt.

“He’s burning up,” said Loren. “Cal? Cal?”

It wasn’t that Cal couldn’t hear her, exactly, but a good ninety-nine per cent of his brain was focused on him not exploding into tiny bits.

“Ooh,” said Kevin. “He doesn’t look well, does he? You should probably stand back, ma’am. And possibly fetch a mop.”

A storm raged inside Cal’s head. His eyes rolled back as his chest constricted and his left arm went tight.

Heart attack, he thought. Great.

He opened his mouth to scream, but all that emerged was the heat and the light, as his body burned up from the inside, and his organs began to evaporate one by one.

This was it, then. He was dying, in a literal blaze of glory.

Still, if you’ve got to go… he thought, trying his hardest to force a smile.

But no.

No.

That was bravado talking.

As usual.

The truth was… Well, the truth was…

Cal coughed out a sob and a whisper.

“I don’t want to die.”

He felt a hand slip into his, small, but bigger than he remembered. Her skin was cool against his palm, soothing his burns and easing the pain.

“Ninety-nine?” she said.

Then: “Cal? Cal, can you hear me?”

Then, more quietly: “Dad?”

Time stopped.

Cal was on a beach. At a school concert. Pushing a bike. Changing a diaper.

He was putting a sock on his nose and pretending to be an elephant.

He was sitting on the sofa, a book in his hands, a head snuggled up against his chest.

He was laughing, singing, dancing, clapping, celebrating this gift that had been given to him. This child.

He was, just for that moment, home.

And the ancient cosmic entities raging against one another inside his head?

Well, they could pretty much go fonk themselves.

Cal gripped Lily’s hand and opened his eyes. From the way she pulled back in fear, he knew it wasn’t his eyes she was seeing, but the things behind there.

“Hey, relax,” he said, smiling despite the effort it took. “It’s me. I h-have a plan.”

“Does it involve blowing up, sir?” asked Kevin.

“Ideally not,” said Cal. He met Lily’s gaze. “Need to get back to the V-Void.”

Lily nodded slowly, but then shook her head. “No, but, we can’t just jump into the Void. It doesn’t work that way.”

“Can’t you do it?” asked Loren. “You brought us here.”

Cal shook his head. “N-no. This thing’s kind of busy.” He grimaced. “OK. What about an empty u-universe? I saw s-some of those.”

“Yes, that I can do!” said Lily. She turned away, pulling her hand with her, and Cal roared as a fresh wave of pain arched his back. Lily quickly grasped for his hand again. “Sorry, sorry, sorry!”

“S-should fonking think s-so,” stuttered Cal, but the pain eased and he calmed quickly.

Lily operated her doohickey with one hand, punching in a complex series of equations using a tiny touch screen. “What are you going to do?” she asked.

“J-just get us there,” Cal whispered. “Please.”

He squeezed Lily’s hand, much harder than he intended. She held on, despite the pain, and jabbed the button that activated the jump.

“You know what you’re doing, right?” she asked him.

With great difficulty, Cal winked. “Of course. It’s a Cal Carver g-guarantee.”

Outside, the other ships watched as the clamps attached to the Currently Untitled crackled with white and blue lights. The ship shimmered faintly, wobbled gently, then disappeared like a bubble going pop.

Aboard the Shatner, President Carver looked over at first his wife, then his advisor. “So, is this a good thing? Did we… Did we just win?”

Tobey Maguire wrinkled his nose and shrugged. He had no idea if they’d won. He basically had no idea what was going on, in general, and was finding it increasingly difficult to keep up even the vaguest pretense that he did.

“Hard to say,” he said, at last.

The president tutted. “Shizz or get off the pot, Tobey Maguire,” he said. “Did we just win, or didn’t we?”

An incoming transmission icon blinked on screen. Loren tapped the button, and the view of space was replaced by images of Earth. Hundreds of people had gathered outside the president’s castle. They whooped and cheered, hugging each other and dancing together in joy.

“OK, I’m going to go out on a limb,” said Tobey Maguire. “Yes, Mr President. We won.”

“Way to go us!” the president said. He leaned back in his chair and rocked it from side to side, enjoying the squeak it made.

Gradually, his smile faded. He looked around the flight deck. “Well, I guess we should head back home.”

First Lady Loren nodded. “I guess so,” she said, but she made no move towards the controls.

The president nodded, also. “Boy, I am glad these days are behind us. Space battles, surviving by the skin of our teeth, that sort of thing.”

“Yup,” agreed the First Lady. “So glad.”

“So totally glad,” the president confirmed.

There was silence.

President Carver drummed his fingers on his arm rests.

It was Tobey Maguire who broke the silence. “We’re not going back yet, are we?”

Cal and Loren made eye contact. They smiled, and both seemed to come alive. “Maybe once around the galaxy, for old time’s sake,” said the president.

The first lady’s hands went to her controls, over her bump. “Aye aye, Captain,” she said, then the Shatner streaked into warp, and Cal Carver, president of the galaxy, quietly threw up in his mouth.

* * *

A barren, lifeless Earth orbited slowly around its dim parent star, its polar ice caps forever in darkness. Had there been anyone on the planet, they might have looked up and been the only witness to the sudden appearance of the Currently Untitled in the sky.

However, they’d almost certainly have died of asphyxiation and frostbite within milliseconds of their arrival – and then imploded - so it was probably just as well that there wasn’t.

In many ways, it was a shame the event passed unnoticed, though. Had anyone been watching, not only would they have seen the ship appear, but they’d have seen everything that happened next, too.

If they’d had very good ears (and had sound suddenly decided to start traveling in a vacuum), they might have heard the noise of a man retching violently – so violently, in fact, it was almost as if he was exorcising himself of everything that had been inside him. They might then have heard the booming of cosmic thunder.

They’d have seen the dark, starless sky filled with a sudden ejection of orange, and witnessed two similar but separate clouds attempt to kick the living shizz out of each other.

And that still wouldn’t have been as exciting as what happened next.

Inside the Untitled, Cal coughed and wheezed, his eyes wide and bloodshot as he slapped repeatedly at his chest with his free hand. He hadn’t been sure if the old ‘fingers down the throat’ technique would be an effective way to cleanse himself of cosmic-entity-possession, but it worked even better than he’d hoped.

He’d half expected to end up with a few gallons of wispy orange gloop on his legs, and sloshing around on the floor, but the entities had exploded out of him like novelty snakes from a can, briefly filling every square inch of the Untitled, before seeping out into space.

“Ooh, shizz. That was unpleasant,” Cal said, swallowing back a mouthful of something he worried might be leftover Ikumordo, but which was, on reflection, probably just regular sick.

The fiery orange energy that had been crackling over his body was gone now. His head was completely devoid of cosmic entities, his skin was knitting back together, and either his internal organs had come back, or he’d learned to live without them.

Lily’s hand was still in his. He had no intention of letting it go.

“Controls are back,” Loren announced. “What do we do? Jump back out of here and leave them to it?”

Lily shook her head. “That won’t work. There’s no saying they’ll stay here. They could spread everywhere, only now there’d be two of them.”

Cal pointed to the screen. “That one wants that one to go back to the Void. Once it’s got it there, it can keep it locked up. We just need to help it.”

“And how are we supposed to do that?” Lily asked.

Cal squeezed Lily’s hand for a moment. Then, reluctantly, he released his grip. “You’d better strap yourself in,” he said. “I don’t know what’s going to happen, exactly.”

On screen, the cosmic clouds wrestled and fought. Lily was right. They wouldn’t stay here for long. There was no time to lose.

“Kevin,” Cal said.

“Yes, sir?”

“Fire the Omega Cannon.”

Loren spun in her chair. “What? I thought we’d agreed it was too dangerous? It could blow up the entire… Oh. Oh, right.”

“Yep,” said Cal. “That’s what I’m counting on.” He gave her a nod that he hoped was in some way reassuring, then raised his eyes to the ceiling. “Full beam. Or, you know, whatever it is. Is it a beam?”

“No idea, sir,” said Kevin.

“Well, give it all you’ve got, anyway.”

There was a few seconds of silence, then the faint background humming of the Untitled changed, becoming a little higher in pitch.

The lights dimmed.

“Are you quite sure about this, sir?” asked Kevin.

“No. No, I am not,” said Cal. He clenched a fist. “Now, fire!”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Mech’s eyelids snapped open. Someone was elbow deep in his chest which was, cyborg or otherwise, never a nice thing to wake up to.

He couldn’t move his head to see, but from the leisureliness of their movements and the sound they were making – a relaxed humming below their breath – whoever was in there was in no great rush.

A face leaned into view, concern written on every furry line of it. “Hey. Is he… Are you awake?” Miz asked.

Another face leaned in, too. It was Dorothy out of the Golden Girls.

Mech tried to answer Miz’s question, but as two wires sparked together he, quite inexplicably, shouted, “Puffle flumps,” in a loud voice, before spasming violently.

“Sorry, that was my fault,” said the owner of the arms that were currently messing around inside him. It was a young voice. A child, he thought.

A child was twisting his wires back together.

Oh, fonk.

There were some more sparks, followed by another puff or two of smoke. The list of error messages and damage reports in Mech’s field of vision halved, then halved again.

Then doubled.

Then dropped right down to three, none of them critical.

“There. All done,” said the kid, jumping up. “It’s not perfect, but it’ll do.”

Mech tried sitting up, knowing that there was no way it was going to work.

It worked.

The movement brought him eye to eye with a skinny bald kid with dark orange skin and some kind of screwdriver tucked behind his ear.

“How…? How did you do that?” Mech asked. And it was Mech, too. Not a super-intelligent or super-strong version, but regular vanilla Mech.

The boy shrugged. “Wasn’t hard,” he said. “Besides, you saved my dad, so I wasn’t going to just let you die.”

“He’s kind of a genius,” said Gluk Disselpoof, placing a hand on the boy’s shoulder. He smiled, proudly. “Only without the ‘kind of’ part.”

Mech stared up at Gluk for a few long seconds, then shifted his gaze to the boy. “Your son? He’s your son.”

“He is. Thirk Disselpoof. My eldest.”

Mech blinked slowly, taking in every detail of the boy’s face. “Thirk Disselpoof,” he said.

Hydraulics whirring, Mech got to his feet. He held a hand out to the boy. “It is a real pleasure to meet you, son.”

Thirk took the hand, turned it over in his, then made a tiny adjustment to one of the fingers. “Sorry, that was bothering me,” he said, then he threw his arms around Mech’s waist, and hugged him.

Two other children appeared from the crowd. Thirk’s brother and sister, by the looks of them. They piled on around their brother, each holding onto one of Mech’s legs. He patted them on the back, uncertainly at first, but his confidence growing.

“You saved our daddy,” the girl said, her cherubic face angled up towards Mech’s. “Thank you, Mr Robot.”

“I ain’t a…” Mech began, but then he sighed, shook his head and smiled. “Any time, kid. Any time.”

* * *

The Omega Cannon began its charge, flickering the lights aboard the Untitled as it drew power from the warp disk. It scrambled systems, recalibrated controls, and completely erased banoffee pie from the replicator memory banks. Fortunately, Cal wasn’t aware of that last one, or it’d have put a real fonking downer on what had already been a less than enjoyable experience.

As the ship shuddered, Cal, Loren and Lily all gripped their arm rests, and gritted their teeth. “Here goes,” said Cal.

“Firing Omega Cannon,” said Kevin. “Now!”

Nothing happened.

“Oh, no wait, that’s the bathroom lights,” said Kevin. “Nnnnn… Hang on. No, that’s not it, either.”

Cal rolled his eyes. “Jesus Christ, Kevin, just shoot the fonking thing!”

“Now!” said Kevin, and the lights flickered as the Omega Cannon activated.

Cal stretched up in his seat, trying to get a better view. “Where is it?” he asked. “Nothing’s happening.”

“Wait, look,” said Loren, pointing ahead. A small white dot, no bigger than a beach ball, glided away from the Untitled at what, at most, could be described as ‘a leisurely pace’. All three occupants of the bridge watched it in silence as it drifted aimlessly, sort of in the direction of the battling cosmic beings, but also a bit to the left.

“That’s it?” said Cal. “Seriously? That’s the Omega Cannon?”

“Well, I mean, I never said it would definitely destroy the universe,” Kevin pointed out. “I just said it might.”

Cal gestured to the now barely egg-sized speck in the middle distance. “The universe? That thing could barely knock down a bowling pin. Why do we even have that gun? It is literally the worst gun I’ve ever—”

The rest of the sentence was muffled by the sound of the universe collapsing. It happened quite quickly, in the end. The little white ball became a smaller ball, then smaller still.

Then it became nothing.

Then a black ball.

Then a howling vortex of absolute destruction.

Reality shattered. Time snapped. Cal blew a little bubble of snot from his nose, but thankfully nobody noticed.

“OK, I take that back,” Cal said. “Loren, get us away from the space hole. Lily, can we jump?”

“One sec,” Lily said, fumbling with her doohickey as Loren hit the thrusters. The Untitled stuttered forwards, alternating between existing, not existing, and existing in several places at the same time.

Miraculously, Cal didn’t throw up. Although, he did come close.

The universe continued to collapse, revealing more and more of the vast, empty Void. Cal saw one of the big weird space things try to pull away, but the other wrapped around it, pinning it in place as it waited for the Void to consume them.

“Any time you’re ready would be good,” said Cal, shooting Lily a nervous glance.

“One second!”

A jagged tear ripped across space, tearing the sun in two. Over on the right, the planet that had never got around to becoming Earth became dust, then atoms, then nothing at all.

“Cutting it kind of fine, here!” Cal warned.

“Got it!” said Lily.

She tapped a button. The clamps on the Untitled’s wings burst into life.

And then everything took a sudden jump sideways.

* * *

Two hours later, Cal and Lily walked up a long hill, their boots scraping on the unmoving grass. In one hand, Lily held flowers. In the other, she held Cal’s. Or let Cal hold hers, at least.

They moved between the gravestones, beneath a motionless sky. They both had things to say, but neither knew quite how to say them, and so they walked on in silence, until they reached the spot they were looking for.

A cybernetically-enhanced cannibal lay on his side on the ground. Beside him, the former president of the galaxy was staring down and leering unpleasantly.

Lily pointed at them both in turn. “Should I ask?” she said.

Cal did a double-take, as if just seeing the men for the first time. “What? Oh, no. No, I’ll take care of that later,” he said, then he stopped at the foot of his wife and daughter’s grave, and nodded at the slab of black granite.

Lily hesitated, but then stepped on past him, holding the flowers out like some kind of peace offering. She set them down, propped up against the stone, then gave a little yelp of surprise.

“Hey, Miss Flopsy,” she said, picking up the threadbare rabbit toy. “God, I remember this.”

Cal’s jaw tightened. “You should take it,” he said. “It’s yours.”

Lily brushed the rabbit’s fur with her fingertips, straightened its ears, then set it back on the ground. “No,” she said. “It’s hers. Your Lily, I mean.”

Cal nodded and smiled, but without the smiling part. “She loved that stupid bunny.”

“I know. So did I.”

They stood in silence for a while, each lost in their thoughts. Down the hill, keeping their distance, Mech, Loren and Miz waited with the Carver Council. None of them spoke. There weren’t a whole lot of words that fit the situation.

“You’re not her, are you?” Cal said, at last. “Not mine, I mean.”

It seemed to take a long time for Lily to shake her head. “No. I’m not her. And you’re not him.”

Cal felt an overwhelming urge to apologize to her for that. More than anything, he wanted to be him. He wanted to be her father.

But he wasn’t. Not really.

And that was that.

“He would’ve been so proud of you,” Cal said. “I mean, obviously I never met the guy, but still. I think I speak from experience.” He met her eye and smiled. “So proud of you.”

Lily shrugged, but smiled. Her eyes glistened, and she quickly swallowed, composing herself. “You know, I think he might?” she said. She turned to him and took both his hands in her own. “And your daughter would have been proud of you, too. I’m proud of you, Cal Carver.”

“Don’t you mean ‘Ninety-Nine’?”

Lily’s grin broadened. Cal recognized his own smile in there. “I think we can let that go, just this once,” she said.

With a wave of her hand, she gestured for the council. After a final lingering look at the headstone, she made her way down the hill, with Cal following. They met the other group halfway down.

“Everything OK?” asked Loren.

Cal nodded. “Fine. It’s, yeah. It’s fine.”

“At musto bin an awfy time fur ye,” said Eighty-Three, nodding up the hill. “Fit’s ae twa loons daein? Fys that ‘een oanna flair?”

Cal’s eyes darted around the rest of the group. Everyone, with the exception of Eighty-Three himself, shrugged.

“Right!” said Cal. “Good point, well made.”

Number Two bowed his head. “You know a position will always be available for you on the council,” he said.

Cal frowned. “Wait, you’re keeping the band together? I thought, with Ikumordo gone…”

“There will be other threats to the multi-verse,” Two said. “Many of us will return home to our own universes now, but when reality is in danger, the Carver Council will reassemble.”

“Holy shizz, that’s awesome,” said Cal. “I’m totally getting that made up as a t-shirt.”

He shook the man’s hand, then fired off a salute to Old Man Carver and some of the others. Two tapped a doohickey and a couple of portal doors opened behind the group.

“Wait!” said Cal. “What about the time thing?” He gestured around. “I mean, when does the world restart?”

“We’ll set it to start running again a few minutes after we leave,” said Lily.

A smirk spread across Cal’s face. “Can you set it for, like, three hours?”

“Why?” asked Mech. His dial was still missing, along with most of his chest, but he’d already started printing a new and improved replacement from the Untitled’s stock of Durium. “What’s the point?”

“You’ll see,” said Cal.

The other Carvers all nodded, saluted and waved their farewells, then vanished through the doorway. Lily hung back until there was no one else left.

“Well, uh, take care,” she said.

“You, too,” said Cal.

They nodded at each other. Miz sighed and rolled her eyes. “Oh, for fonk’s sake, just hug, already,” she muttered.

And they did.

And it was awesome.

Mech ground his teeth together. On his shoulder, Splurt shot him a sideways look. “What?” Mech croaked. “I got something in my eye, that’s all.”

Splurt rippled.

“Yeah, well fonk you,” Mech said, but then he reached up, rubbed the little goo-ball on the head, and sniffed back an oily tear.

Cal stopped Lily again before she could duck through the door. “Will I, you know, will I see you again?” he asked.

Lily looked back at the doorway, then up at the sky, considering this. At last, she winked. “It’s a Lily Carver guarantee,” she said, then she stepped through the doorway, and vanished.

Silence hung over the group for a while, no one quite knowing what to say. In the end, Loren went for the obvious.

“You OK?”

Cal made a weighing motion with his hands. “Ups and downs, I’ll be honest,” he said. He looked across the faces of the crew. “Sorry I never told you. About… you know.”

“Yeah, we know,” said Loren. “And you didn’t have to.”

“I did,” said Cal. “I should have. You guys are family.”

There was a loud honking sort of noise, as Mech burst into tears. The patches of skin that made up his face reddened as everyone turned to look at him. “It’s the new wiring,” he said, pointing to his chest. “That kid must’ve done it wrong.”

Cal patted the cyborg on the shoulder. “Yeah, buddy. I guess that must be it.”

He looked up the hill. Sinclair still stood there, frozen to the spot. “Come on,” Cal said. “Let’s go.”

“Go where?” asked Miz. “You’re not, like, just leaving Sinclair there, are you? You’re not letting him get away?”

“No!” said Cal. “Of course not. I just want to visit a t-shirt printing store first.”

Mech grunted. “You ain’t seriously getting that ‘Carver Council Assemble’ shizz printed, are you?”

“Tempting,” said Cal. “But no. That just gave me the idea.”

There was a spring in his step as he shot one final glance back up the hill. “A fonking excellent idea.”

They continued on towards the Untitled, which stood in the street just beyond the cemetery gates. “So,” Loren asked, glancing back at Miz, Mech and Splurt. “What happened to you guys when we were gone? Meet anyone interesting?”

Miz and Mech swapped looks.

“One or two,” said Mech.

They looked down at Loren’s stomach. “Maybe three,” said Miz

And they all headed into the Untitled.

Together.

* * *

The former president, Hayel Sinclair, frowned.

“What? Where…? Where did he go?” he asked. He spun on the spot, head twisting left and right. Carver had been right there a moment ago, pinned beneath the weight of the Butcher. Now, though, he was nowhere to be seen. “Where did he go?”

That wasn’t all that had changed, Sinclair realized. He was wearing a hat. Where had that come from?

He tore it off his head and examined it. It was a cheap and flimsy-looking baseball cap. White, but with writing on the front, printed slightly off center. Without thinking, he read it aloud.

“Eugene’s momma is a sloop.”

Slowly, ever so slowly, the part-mechanical Eugene ‘The Butcher’ Adwin got to his feet. The part of his face that was still human bunched up in anger.

“What did you say?” he drawled, then his eyes went to the slogan on Sinclair’s t-shirt. This, also, expressed the view that Eugene’s mother was a woman of some sexual promiscuity, only not in so many words. “You just called my momma a sloop.”

Sinclair looked down at himself, then at the hat, then up at the now-advancing Butcher. “What? No. I didn’t,” he said, retreating. “This is a trick. This was him, don’t you see?” he babbled, as the monstrous tangle of flesh and metal drew closer. “Stay back, Butcher. I’m warning you!”

The former president retreated a step too far. The grass heaved beneath him, and several fat oily bug skittered up the leg of his pants.

“N-no!” he yelped, thrashing at his shin. “No, don’t, get out!”

And then a hand was over his head, the fingers like sausage-sized vices on his skull. Sinclair gargled as he was hoisted into the air. The Butcher’s breath was like sour milk in his face. “Nobody calls my momma a sloop.”

Then an ex-president became an ex-person, and somewhere, far out in space, Cal Carver and his Space Team streaked off into the wide black yonder.

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Space Team will return in

SPACE TEAM: PLANET OF THE JAPES