Space Team: Sting of the Mustard Mines

by Barry J. Hutchison

  “Harvesters,” said Konto, his lips drawing tight. “Those were Harvester ships. How big were they?”

  Cal placed his thumb and index finger around six inches apart. “From where I was sitting, they were about that size. Although, obviously, we were quite far away. They’d be bigger up close.”

  Konto regarded him coolly for a moment, then turned to Loren. “Is he always like this?”

  “Pretty much,” Loren confirmed. “I’d say they were Frigate Class. Maybe Destroyer. We didn’t get to look at them for long.”

  “Before she crashed us into the planet,” Miz contributed from the sidelines.

  Mech drew closer, his metal feed clanking on the stone floor. “What’s a Harvester ship?”

  Cal smiled smugly. “It’s a ship that harvests things. Come on, Mech, the clue’s right there in the name. I’m imagining some sort of space tractor. You know, for space farmers?”

  “It’s a ship that harvests people,” Konto corrected.

  “Evil space farmers, I mean,” Cal said. “Not the nice ones.”

  “I heard they’d been working with Edi,” Konto continued. “They’re answering directly to Manacle, if the rumors are to be believed.”

  Cal whistled quietly. “Directly to Manacle? Whoa,” he said, then he turned and looked up at the others. “Do we know who Manacle is?”

  Mech and Loren both shook their heads.

  “You’ve never heard of Manacle?” asked Konto. “Manacle, Enslaver of Worlds?”

  “Oh, that Manacle,” said Cal. He shook his head. “No, still never heard of him. He sounds dreamy, though.” He turned to Loren and Mech again. “Have we heard of this Eddie guy?”

  “Edi,” Konto corrected. “It’s not a guy, it’s a species. Or, I don’t know, maybe an organization.”

  “Oh. Right. Gotcha. Have we heard of them?”

  “Nope,” said Mech.

  “Not a clue,” Loren agreed.

  They were both glaring down at him. Cal winced a little behind his fixed smile. “Look, I’m sure this isn’t all our fault,” he said. “Besides, even if it is, we beat the big bad guy, and that’s the important thing. Sure, there might be some things we’re unfamiliar with, our translators are a little out of date, and people are being harvested in large numbers by horrible aliens with eyes up their nose, but…”

  “I swear, man, if you say, ‘We can say ass now…’” Mech began.

  “Haha. What? No. I wasn’t going to say that,” said Cal.

  “Then what were you going to say?” Loren asked.

  “I was going to say, Loren,” said Cal. He hesitated, his mouth held open as he thought. “I was going to say that at least we’re all together.”

  He gave a nod and looked quite pleased with himself. “Yeah. That’s what I was going to say. No matter what, at least we’re all together.”

  “Except Kevin,” said Miz.

  “Except Kevin, obviously,” Cal conceded. “We’re all together with the exception of Kevin. And let’s be fair, he wasn’t there at the start, was he? I mean, sure, he’s part of the team, but is he part of the team team?”

  “Oh, that’s charming,” intoned Kevin.

  “Yes is the answer to that question. He’s totally part of the team team,” Cal quickly added. Only then did he allow his confusion to show. “Kevin? Is that you?” he asked, standing up. Splurt rolled clumsily onto the floor, shot Cal a slightly accusing look, then sproinged out of cat-shape and became a green blob once more.

  Mech raised his forearm. Lights flickered as Kevin’s voice came again. “Indeed it is, sir,” Kevin replied. “I’ve patched myself into Master Mech’s communication systems.”

  “Awesome!” said Cal. “How did you do that?”

  “I wouldn’t want to befuddle you with science, sir,” said Kevin. “Suffice to say there was a button, which I pressed, and now here I am.”

  “What about the ship?” Loren asked.

  “Still crashed, ma’am,” Kevin said. “By the way, has anyone said, ‘Way to go, Loren’ yet?”

  Cal, Miz, and Mech all confirmed that yes, they had.

  “Drat,” said Kevin. “I was rather looking forward to that. Ah well, not to worry.”

  “Are you still sinking?” Cal asked.

  “I don’t think so, sir,” said Kevin. “I appear to have stopped. Oh! Which rather reminds me of my reason for calling, in fact.”

  “Oh?” said Cal. “And what’s that?”

  “Help me, sir,” Kevin said, his voice taking on a desperate, pleading edge. “They’re everywhere. They have me. Help, please, somebody he—”

  The voice crackled, became a hiss, then faded into silence.

  “Kevin?” said Cal. He leaned over and gave Mech’s arm a prod. “Kev? You there, pal? Speak to me.”

  “He’s gone,” said Mech, swiping at his controls with one mechanical finger. “The signal’s dead.”

  “Shizz,” said Cal. “We have to go help him.”

  Konto stood up. “You can’t go out there. Or have you forgotten what I said about the Slurrits and the Growlers.”

  Cal sniggered, despite the seriousness of the situation. “Growlers,” he said, then he gave himself a shake, scooped Splurt up onto his shoulder, and marched for the passageway that led away from the cave. “We’ve got a teammate in trouble,” Cal said. “And we never leave a teammate behind. Unless it’s Mech. And only then because it’s funny.”

  “Fonk you, man,” Mech said, but he plodded quickly after Cal, with Loren and Miz following close behind.

  “Don’t be crazy, kid,” Konto called after Cal. He came as far as the cave entrance and watched as Cal and the others picked their way along the passageway. “You won’t last out there,” he warned. “Nothing lasts out there.”

  Cal glanced back as he clambered up through the crevasse toward the jagged opening overhead. “Relax, old man,” Cal replied. Jamming a foot onto a rocky outcrop he scrambled up into the world above. “Whatever it is, I’m sure we’ve faced a lot worse.”

  Something hairy, smelly, and monstrous roared in Cal’s face with such force his ears were pinned to the sides of his head and Splurt toppled backward off his shoulder.

  “OK, maybe not a lot worse,” Cal whimpered, then pain dug sharply into both shoulders, leathery wings beat once above his head, and the ground fell away beneath him as he was wrenched up toward the sky.

  “Help!” Cal hollered, as the wings beat the air and the claws dug deeper into his shoulders. The creature above him was the size of a small helicopter, mostly covered in reddish-orange fur, and stank like an open sewer. It had to be a Growler, Cal thought, and this time he failed to find much comedy value in the name.

  “Wings,” he wheezed. “That shizznod didn’t mention they had wings!”

  The Growler turned sharply, flopping Cal around like a ragdoll in its grip. Night had fallen now, and the planet was an expanse of darkness far below him. The only light came from a small town on the distant horizon. Konto’s place, Cal would later guess. Right there and then, however, he was a little too preoccupied to draw any conclusions on it.

  “Cal!”

  Loren’s voice drifted up from somewhere below. Cal kicked frantically, trying to draw her attention. “Here! I’m up here! Help!”

  “I see him.” That was Mech’s voice. Cal hoped his big computer brain could come up with some clever way to get him down from—

  Blaster fire screamed upward past him and scorched the Growler’s wing. It jerked in the air and banked sharply, jiggling Cal around in its pincer-grip.

  “What the fonk?! What are you doing?” Cal howled. “Don’t fonking shoot it!”

  “What did he say?” Mech asked.

  “He said not to shoot it.” That was Miz’s voice, Cal thought, although it was hard to tell over the whooshing of the wind and his own frantic sobbing.

  “Huh. Oh. Yeah. I guess that was kind of reckless,” Mech admitted.

  “Hold on!” Loren shouted up. “We’ll thi
nk of something.”

  “Great. They’ll think of something,” Cal muttered. He inhaled deeply, almost choked on the smell, but then pulled himself together.

  “You don’t need them,” he told himself, launching into a pep talk. “So, you’re suspended from the claws of an amusingly named flying monster thing, hundreds of feet above the ground. You’ve been in tougher spots than this, Cal Carver.”

  He began to count on his fingers. “Spider-Dragons. Space Bears. Ozzy Osbourne that one time...” He tried to come up with a fourth, but his mind was shutting itself down in terror, and his memory failed him.

  “The point is, you can get out of this. An answer will present itself any second.” He squirmed in the Growler’s grip, searching for some sort of sign. “Any second now. The answer’s just going to pop right up any minute… now.”

  He gave the answer a few more seconds to pop up.

  It didn’t.

  “Ah, fonk,” he groaned.

  The Growler dived for a few seconds, then pulled up sharply, flicking Cal upside down before jerking him right-way-up again.

  “That was uncalled for! Seriously, was there any need to…” Cal began to protest, before the memory of something he’d seen while upside-down flashed back into the puree of terror that was his brain. The memory of two somethings, in fact.

  Oh, fonk.

  Oh, fonk. This was madness. Suicide, probably.

  Still, the list of alternative options currently consisted of just one entry—be horribly killed by a big monster—so he decided he may as well give it a shot.

  “Hey, Growly,” Cal called up to the thing. A twisted snout and beady black eyes briefly glowered down at him. “Here’s the deal. You’re going to do exactly as I say. OK?”

  The Growler snorted two jets of steam from its flattened nostrils.

  “No?” said Cal. “Then how about if I do this?”

  Gritting his teeth against the pain burning through his shoulders, Cal twisted and threw out a hand. He gave a yelp of triumph as his hand found one of the two fleshy globes dangling down from within the Growler’s matted fur. The creature immediately let out a shriek of distress.

  “Aha!” said Cal, giving the monster’s testicle a squeeze. “So now you want to talk? OK, then let’s talk. Here’s my proposal. Assuming you don’t want me to squeeze your balls into a lumpy paste, you’re going to gently fly me back to the ground and—”

  Cal’s shoulders made an unpleasant schlopping sort of sound as the Growler withdrew its claws and released its grip. Cal, however, did not release his. He swung backward, tightly clinging to the monster’s right testicle, while grabbing for the other with his now free hand.

  “Oh, so you want to play dirty, do you?” Cal hollered. The Growler roared as all five fingers of his left hand tightened around the beast’s other dangling gonad. “Well, two can play at that game, mister!”

  Cal dug his fingers deeper into the Growler’s furry nutsack and the monster spasmed in pain. It threw back its head, kicked out with both clawed feet, and seemed to lose all control of its wings. It and Cal both screamed as they went plunging toward the ground, the wind whistling past them, the Growler’s globes quivering in Cal’s grip.

  “Pull up, pull up, pull up!” Cal cried. He eased up on the squeezing just enough for the Growler to recover. The leathery wings snapped open just a few dozen feet above the ground, catching the air current like a kite.

  The ground whooshed by beneath Cal’s feet as the Growler leveled off. He could jump from this height and survive, even without his healing factor, but the sand below him was gloopy siltch, so disembarking the ride at this point was out of the question.

  The Growler had other ideas. It lashed backward with its claws, trying to scrape him off. Cal mashed its balls together, giving it second thoughts about the effectiveness of its kicking tactic.

  “Guys? Where are you?” Cal called.

  The reply came from somewhere over on his right. “We’re here. Where are you?” Loren shouted.

  “You really don’t want to know,” Cal said. He eased up on the left testicle and doubled-down on the right. The Growler, who had begun to understand just who was currently in charge here, turned obediently in the direction of Loren’s voice.

  “That’s it. Attaboy. That wasn’t so hard now, was it?” said Cal, adjusting his grip when the Growler was headed in toward the shore. “You know, my arms are fonking killing me, so I can’t imagine how you must be feeling. But I think we’ve both learned a lesson here today. Sure, I don’t really know what it is, but I think we’ve both learned it.”

  The Growler hissed. Cal wasn’t sure if it was pain or anger. Probably a little of both.

  The siltch became rougher and more solid beneath him. “Wait, there they are! Slow down,” he said, rotating both testes inward and bringing the Growler to a complete stop. It beat its wings in the air, throwing a swirl of sand up around Mech, Loren, Splurt, and Mizette. They all stared up at Cal as he dangled from the beast’s fleshy dangling globules, the downcurrent caused by each wing-flap ruffling his hair.

  “Hey, guys,” he said. “Miss me?”

  “Motherf— What the hell is he doing now?” Mech muttered.

  “What?” said Cal, grinning down. “You’ve never seen an adult man hanging precariously from a Growler’s ballsack before? Wow. Sheltered much?”

  “Get down,” Loren urged.

  “Relax. It’s great,” said Cal. “If I could travel everywhere like this, I totally would. I love it. I don’t ever want to let go!”

  He laughed. It bordered on the edges of hysteria. “Also, I’m pretty sure that as soon as I do, it’s going to fonking kill me. So, there’s that, too.”

  Miz crossed her arms and slouched her weight onto one hip. “So, like, what? You’re just going to stay there forever?”

  “No. Not forever, obviously. That would be crazy,” said Cal. “Just until it grows old and dies.”

  “Just hurry the fonk up and jump so we can go save Kevin,” Mech barked.

  “I don’t think you appreciate quite how angry this thing is going to be, Mech,” Cal said. “No offense, but you’re not exactly equipped to empathize with Growly here. It’s like the Bible says, ‘Let he who is without balls cast the first...’ I don’t know. I forget the exact quote, or where I was trying to go with it. The point is—”

  The Growler snapped its back end forward and its front end back until a clawed foot slammed into Cal, dislodging him. Cal wailed briefly, then crunched onto the hard-packed ground just a few feet ahead of the others.

  Screeching, the Growler lunged. Mech brought up both arms to shoot, but a scything blow from the monster’s wing knocked his aim wide, and a metal arm cracked across Mizette’s snout, staggering her.

  Loren drew her blaster, but the Growler slammed its vast hairy butt into her, sending her sprawling onto the sand.

  Splurt fell across Cal like a protective bubble just before the monster’s teeth could reach their target. Trapped beneath Splurt’s body, Cal felt like he was inside an enormous Jello, watching as it was devoured by the world’s hungriest—and ugliest—child.

  “Stop eating Splurt!” he bellowed.

  The Growler obeyed immediately. It stopped its furious gnashing and clawing at the protective green gloop and backed away across the sand, eyes fixed on Cal.

  “That’s more like it,” Cal said. Splurt parted to let him stand up but clung to him like a suit of armor in case the monster should pounce again.

  Loren and Miz dusted themselves down, then Miz shot Mech one of the coldest of her repertoire of withering looks. “Like, watch what you’re doing next time.”

  “It wasn’t my fault,” Mech protested.

  Miz rolled her eyes. “Ugh. Now you sound like Loren. Seriously, could you get any lower?”

  The Growler spun on the spot and lurched into the air in a single desperate bound. Cal waited until it was a safe distance away before shaking his fist in its general direction.

>   “Yeah, you’d better run,” he said, although hopefully not loud enough for it to actually hear him.

  When it had vanished out of sight, Cal clapped his hands together, wiping imaginary dust from them along with some very real Growler ball sweat. “Well, we showed him,” he crowed.

  “Uh, I don’t think it was running from us,” said Mech. He pointed past Cal to the edge of the siltch and the dozens of hulking brown shapes who loomed there. “I think he was running from them.”

  Five

  If asked to describe the figures, Cal’s first port of call would have been ‘lumpy.’ This would’ve been followed in no particular order by ‘dirty,’ ‘slimy,’ ‘hefty,’ ‘smelly,’ ‘scary,’ and ‘totally covered in mud.’ All of which, coincidentally, would also be the names he’d give to Snow White’s Seven Dwarves if he was ever given a shot at a remake.

  A worryingly large number of the figures stood silently around the edge of the siltch. The siltch itself was now dotted with hundreds of spherical mounds. It was only when a few of them rose up out of the gloopy sand and became yet more of the figures that Cal realized the mounds were heads.

  The figures varied in height, ranging from around six feet to eight feet tall. They looked to be made entirely of mud, although the texture and consistency varied from individual to individual. Some were sleek and shiny, even in the darkness. Others were dry and lined with cracks. Those tended to be a little shorter, their backs a little more stooped, the cracks running like deep wrinkles across their—for lack of a better word—faces.

  It was one of these elders who stood at the head of the group, supporting him or herself on a long pole that appeared to have been whittled from a single large piece of rock.

  The elder seemed to be scrutinizing Cal and the others, although as it was impossible to make out its eyes through the cake of dried mud, it was hard to say for sure.

  “What do we do?” Loren whispered. “Do we run?”

  “Well, we sure as shizz can’t fight them all,” Mech muttered.