Super Spareparts and the Nemerons from the Twelfth Quadrant

By C.J. Parker

"Nah." Sam shook his head. "You're messing with us. Right?"

"Negative. It appears the Nemerons have disguised themselves as four human males who go by the names of Skud, Maggot, Tank and Beetle."

 

A freak accident leaves Sam Steele with no legs, one hand and one eye, but not for long. He gets super spare body parts from the mysterious prosthetics engineer Dr Ecks, who recruits Sam as a superhero and gives him a sidekick dog with a high-tech tail. Sam's first mission is to stop the Nemerons from the twelfth quadrant taking over Earth by blowing up the world's poo ponds, but things get messy …

 

This wacky adventure starts in Blowhard Bay and goes sky high!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ahoy
• Release date: May 11, 2019
• ISBN: 9780995119789

Book preview

ONE

Sam stared around the huge room, wanting to appear cool, as if what he was seeing was normal – even though it wasn’t. People and animals, all of them missing body parts like he was, had been rebuilt using the craziest stuff ever.

A girl danced across the floor on gleaming pink robotic le

gs with glittering silver wheels for feet. A boy with racing-car-red arms and hands played catch with a Labrador dog, who galloped around on legs that expanded and shrank so that the dog could reach wherever the ball was thrown.

A harrier hawk came out of nowhere, passing so close to Sam that he could make out the nuts and bolts dotted across its steel-like wings. It landed on the back of a donkey with mechanical ears as big as an elephant’s, sending it careering around the room at break­neck speed.

Act chill, thought Sam, pretending to check his phone. After all, you figured out Dr Ecks was mega-weird after he told you he’d performed the first ever multiple leg transplant on a centipede that had lost all of its legs in a lawnmower accident.

But there was weird and there was this.

Dr Ecks had been acting strange since Sam had arrived at the consulting room for his usual check up. The doctor had peered beneath the desk, looked behind the curtains and opened and shut all the cupboard doors. But things got really weird when he cleared his throat and got a serious look on his face.

‘Sam, what would you do if a two-headed alien with four tongues brought his friends into town with the intention of taking over the world?’

‘How are they going to do that? Lick us all to death?’

‘Affirmative.’

‘Huh?’

‘Do you trust me?’ Dr Ecks asked.

‘Sure I do. After the accident you hooked me up with all my fake stuff. Without my legs I’d still be shuffling around on my bum. And cheers for the right hand … flicking bogeys with my left hand was getting old.’

‘Two legs, one hand and one eye … you certainly were an extreme case. But you did well, remark­ably so. Which is why I’d like to show you something.’

That’s when Dr Ecks reached into the goldfish bowl on his desk, pulled out the fish, pointed it head-first at the wall and squeezed.

‘Is that a good idea?’ Sam imagined goldfish brains splattered over the floor. Instead, a red beam of light shone from its mouth to an invisible spot on the wall, which slid open to expose a set of steel doors. Dr Ecks placed the fish back in the bowl, where it swam around as if nothing odd had just happened. He touched the doors with the tips of his fingers and they glided apart, revealing a small square chamber.

‘This way,’ said Dr Ecks, stepping inside.

In less time than it took for Sam to hide his glass eye in his sister’s breakfast cereal, the doors opened again and he followed Dr Ecks onto a platform overlooking the people and animals dashing around with their super parts.

‘So, Sam. What do you think?’

Sam put his phone in his pocket. ‘Dr Ecks,’ he said. ‘I think you’ve just gone from mega-weird in a strange way to mega-weird in a cool way.’

Dr Ecks peered at Sam over the top of his thick-as-bricks glasses. ‘Affirmative.’

He pointed to an aquarium extending from one wall into the centre of the room. A dolphin flipped into the air, sending spray across the floor.

‘That’s Bella. When she came in, she had no tail or flippers. I fitted her with a new set for everyday use, but I also developed some turbo flippers for her – that’s what she’s wearing today – and a tail, which she used to propel herself deep into the Indian Ocean where she discovered an illegal mining operation, some­thing the government had suspected for a long time but had been unable to locate.’

‘No way! I mean … oh, sure. Does she live here?’

‘She’s free to leave any time. The aquarium is an extension of the ocean. She gets here through a secret tunnel accessed by initiating a red laser beam like the one you witnessed earlier with the goldfish.’

Sam nodded. ‘I thought so.’ He noticed a woman sitting in a chair knitting. ‘Isn’t that Mrs Evans from the corner store? My mate Leo and I buy lollies there. Her Slippery Snakes are the best. What’s she doing here?’

‘Mrs Evans has been fitted with a standard hearing aid for everyday use, but she also has access to the most advanced hearing device ever developed. If she tunes into the correct frequency, she can hear a pin drop hundreds of metres away. Using that technology, she has infiltrated suspicious government agencies and gained proof of conspiracies before they became cause for international concern.’

‘Impressive. But she’s old. She must be at least thirty …’

‘She’s wearing it now,’ Dr Ecks whispered from the corner of his mouth. ‘Be careful, Sam, she’ll spit in your lolly bag if you’re rude to her.’

Mrs Evans smiled and waved at them.

Dr Ecks waved back and, with the thought of all the Slippery Snakes he and Leo were yet to devour, Sam did the same.

TWO

Marty dozed on a park bench, a back­­pack for his pillow. As a child he’d rarely spoken. People used to ask him if the cat got his tongue and one day, when he was six years old, it did. On that day he poked his tongue out at his mother and the cat took a swipe at it, nicking the end with a claw. Marty had got such a fright he’d forgotten how to talk and hadn’t said a word since. Now he spent a lot of time on the streets, with Pedro his talking parrot (who called him Farty because parrots can’t do ‘M’).

Outside, Marty could watch and listen without having to say anything. Pedro talked enough for them both. He was currently perched on the back of the bench, muttering. Marty yawned and opened one eye.

Jane Oldfield pushed her two-year-old daughter Charlotte along the street in her pram, pausing every now and again to look in a shop window. Charlotte slobbered over an ice cream held in her tight little fist. Powder-puff pink parfait dribbled down her chin. Four big boys ambled towards them, loud boys with wild hair and loose arms.

The boys quietened, stepped to the side and bowed in an exaggerated flourish of good manners as Jane went by pushing the pram. She nodded thank you and hurried on, stopping only when she reached The Shoe Emporium to peer in the window. There was a slithering flash of green as Charlotte’s cone was whipped from her sticky grasp and, with a flurry of jostling, the boys disappeared around the corner. Charlotte burst into tears.

Marty sat up, a look of disbelief on his face.

‘Wasat? Wasat?’ squawked Pedro, flapping onto Marty’s shoulder.

After a moment Marty shook his head, pulled on his backpack and walked away down the street with Pedro sitting on his shoulder screeching, ‘Bad boys! Bad boys!’

Charlotte bawled and her mother growled at her for being so greedy.

THREE

‘Cute dog.’ Sam pointed to a scruffy terrier with a waggling wire protrusion for a tail, playing tag with an Alsatian with two prosthetic back legs. ‘What’s with his tail?’

‘That’s Sparky. He was found in a gutter with his tail flattened. Awful situation. Now he has many hi-tech tail devices. Today he’s wearing his Telecomtuner Tail. It’s capable of detecting communication waves up to two hundred kilometres in any direction – perfect for locating internet infiltrations and the like.’

‘You’ve got some pretty crazy stuff going on here, Dr Ecks. What’s it all about?’

The platform they’d been standing on lowered and the railing lifted.

‘Let’s mingle and I’ll explain.’

They stepped into the crowd and Sparky jumped into Sam’s arms.

‘He’s taken quite a liking to you.’

‘I like him too.’ Sam rubbed behind Sparky’s ears.

‘Sam, you better than most are aware that there are creatures of the