Space Team: Sting of the Mustard Mines

by Barry J. Hutchison

  “Fonk you, man!”

  Cal shot the wasps a pleading look. “Guys, come on, it wasn’t my fault! I fell in by accident!” he protested. “Leave me alone!”

  Mech’s voice came bellowing up from below again, fighting to be heard over the angry drone of the wasps. “Stop the ship. We’ll find you!”

  “Bring antihistamines!” Cal hollered back. “Bring all the antihistamines.”

  His stomach lurched as Splurt bounded up out of the passageway, and a warm wind was suddenly swirling around them, blowing neon blue fragments and a distinctive mustardy aroma up from the desolate surface of Moktar.

  The roaring of the Harvester ship’s engines rattled through Cal’s bones and made all four legs go wobbly. Shizz. They didn’t have much time.

  “Yah, Splurt, yah!” Cal cried.

  Splurt yahed.

  “No, yah that way. Toward the ship!” Cal told him. “Toward.”

  Splurt spun, giving Cal the perfect view of the chimney hole just as thousands of wasps of varying sizes erupted out of it, forming a column in the air.

  “Shizz, shizz, Splurt, run!”

  Splurt ran. Unfortunately, he ran backward, and at such speed that Cal was immediately bent double. Cal flopped helplessly, his arms trailing, his gag reflex voicing a number of concerns about how twitchy his stomach was becoming.

  The Splurt-feet rattled over the metal roof of something that might have been drilling equipment, but might just as easily have been a crashed fighter. Whatever it was, its buckled frame and the rusted cables that trailed from it like tentacles suggested its working days were over.

  Splurt tripped on one of the cables, and Cal felt a moment of terrified weightlessness as they went tumbling down the side of the damaged craft, before the legs found their footing again, and the chase resumed.

  Still facing the wrong way, Cal watched as the wasps crested the peak of the damaged machinery, their wings thrashing against the air. The one big wasp he’d seen emerging through the foam had been joined by six or seven others. They didn’t move quite as fast as the smaller varieties, but there was a certain inevitably to their movements which suggested that their catching up was only a matter of time, and would not be an enjoyable experience when it happened.

  A secondary engine fired on the Harvester ship, and the air went from pleasantly warm to uncomfortably hot. The pursuing wasps were blown back several feet, and Cal felt a tiny moment of relieved elation before Splurt skidded to a stop.

  “What are you doing?” Cal gasped. “Why are you stopping? Splurt, hurry, we need to…”

  He looked back and up over his shoulder, and saw that they were too late. The Harvester ship was in the air now, already out of reach and climbing steadily.

  “No, no, no,” Cal groaned, then the ship became the least of his concerns when the wasp cloud arrived on the scene.

  “Splurt, run!”

  But Splurt didn’t run. He unwrapped himself from around Cal’s waist, letting Cal fall to the ground just as the first squadron of stripy space bugs lined itself up in attack formation.

  “Ooh, shizz, this is going to hurt,” Cal groaned, curling into a ball with his hands over his head. He remained in that position for a couple of seconds, before reaching back and placing one hand over his butt, which he realized was pointing invitingly into the air.

  The angry droning of the wasps rose in pitch. Cal gritted his teeth, clenched his butt-cheeks until they formed a single solid buttock, and waited.

  Then, to his surprise and relief, the wasps alighted one by one on the ground beside him. Cal peeked out at them through a gap in his fingers and watched as the insects lined themselves up in neat ranks, smallest at the front, biggest at the back.

  “Is this a trick?” he asked them. “Are you going to wait until I take my hand off my ass then just fonking let rip? That’s your plan, isn’t it? Well, if you think I’m falling for that, you guys have got another thing—”

  A leg rested on his shoulder. It was a long black leg, with thousands of tiny hairs growing from it. Cal turned slowly and looked along the leg. It had no foot, but made up for that by what felt like an over-abundance of knees.

  It looked, he thought, not unlike the legs of the wasps in front of him. Only bigger.

  So much bigger.

  Cal swallowed. “Oh, fonk. Splurt!”

  The leg on his shoulder shook.

  No. Not shook.

  Rippled.

  Cal risked a half-turn until he was looking up into the eyes of a horse-sized space wasp. The eyes were different, of course—everything was different—but he knew his buddy when he saw him.

  “Oh, thank God,” Cal whispered, standing up.

  Stretching, he put an arm around Splurt’s wide, furry shoulders. The wasps buzzed angrily, then fell silent when their queen put one of her front legs over Cal’s shoulder in return.

  “Splurt, you’re a fonking genius,” Cal said. “Thanks, buddy.”

  Turning, he watched the Harvester ship continue its climb through the sky. It wasn’t moving particularly fast. If he’d had a ship—and, ideally, a pilot—he could have easily caught it. The best he could think of to do now, though, was to throw stones at it, and that would be a waste of time.

  He threw stones at it. They all missed.

  “Fonk.”

  Cal put his hands on his hips and sighed. “Mech is going to be furious,” he said. “I am never going to hear the end of…”

  He frowned. Something stirred in his brain. Not a plan. Not even a scheme. More of a notion, really, and a half-baked one at that.

  Fonk it, it would do.

  “Splurt,” he said, a grin curving the corners of his mouth. “I know what we’re going to do.”

  Mech drove a fist through the metal hatch covering the mine’s entrance tunnel, then pushed the wreckage aside and clambered out. He groaned when he saw the Harvester ship gaining altitude above them. The sentiment was echoed by Loren, who climbed out next, and rounded off nicely with a disparaging tut from Mizette.

  “I told him to stop the fonking ship,” Mech said. “You heard me, right? ‘Stop the ship,’ I said. And now look. It ain’t stopped. It’s the diametrical fonking opposite of stopped.”

  He shook his head. “I swear, that guy is the most useless motherfonker I ever—”

  Something shot out from behind a rocky outcrop beside them, creaking and groaning as it took to the sky.

  Mech, Loren, and Miz stood in mute silence, watching the broken remains of something that looked like drilling equipment be dragged into the air by eight large wasps, all connected to the wreckage by lengths of metal cable.

  Cal sat atop the wreck, laughing in a way that suggested he was having serious second thoughts about this, but had now come too far to put a stop to it.

  Beside him, an even larger wasp sat with its bottom set of legs crossed. It waved a foreleg down at the crew as they soared past. Mech, Loren, and Miz all slowly raised a hand and waved back.

  “Now Stripy, now Stingy, now Angry, now Mean!” Cal called, giving a couple of the cables a shake. “On Bamston, on Fonker, on Evil, on…”

  The queen wasp shuddered.

  “I can’t call him ‘Green.’ That doesn’t make sense,” Cal remarked.

  Splurt rippled.

  “Well, I know it’s your favorite color, but… Oh, hey guys!” Cal called. He laughed hysterically again as the wasp-powered sleigh climbed higher into the air, his voice fading as they raced upward. “I’m going to fonking die!”

  Mech and the others watched him be dragged through the air in the direction of the Harvester ship. To the wasps’ credit, they were gaining fast on the much slower Harvester ship. Not that it’d do them much good.

  “You think he’s right?” asked Miz.

  “Fonk, yeah,” said Mech. “He’s one hundred percent going to die. But, you know, full marks for trying, I guess.”

  There was a clattering from behind them. They all looked in the direction of the sound
and saw Garunk heave himself up out of the hole in the ground. Loren resisted the urge to groan.

  “Phew! That was a lot of ladder,” he wheezed, rolling onto his back. “I’m not saying it was too much ladder, but it was too much ladder. Am I right? Loren? Loren. Am I right?”

  “Yes! It was a lot of ladder. What are you doing here? I thought you were staying?”

  “Oh, I am. I just thought I’d come to see you off and let you know that I’m fine. I thought you’d want to know.”

  Loren couldn’t really admit that she had almost no interest in knowing, and had pretty much forgotten him already, so just nodded instead.

  With some effort, Garunk rolled onto his front then got to his feet. He dusted himself down, apparently concerned that his head-to-toe coating of mud had gotten dirty.

  “Anyway,” he breathed. “What did I miss?”

  “Cal’s…” Loren began, then she faltered to a stop. “Actually, I don’t really know what Cal’s doing,” she admitted. She pointed to the sky. “See for yourself.”

  Garunk peered past her.

  “What am I looking at?” Garunk asked. “The ship? It’s a big one, isn’t it? Good and long.” He slapped himself on the wrist, and said, “Cheeky,” but he was too out of breath from the climb for his heart to be fully in it.

  “No, not that, the… Wait,” said Loren. “Where did he go?”

  They all studied the sky. There was no sign of Cal or his wasp-sleigh anywhere.

  “I guess he burned up,” said Mech. “Thrusters probably got him.”

  Loren slapped him on the arm with the back of her hand. It hurt. “Don’t say that,” she said, nursing her knuckles.

  “Why not? It’s true,” said Mech. “What the fonk was he hoping to achieve?”

  “Couldn’t he be, like, on board already?”

  “Sure,” said Mech.

  “Really?”

  “If he has magical powers he ain’t ever demonstrated before,” said Mech. “Otherwise? There ain’t no fonking way he’s managed to—”

  There was an explosion from somewhere in the belly of the Harvester ship. It shuddered in the air for a moment, before listing to the right. One of the vast exhaust ports at the back flickered, then went dark. Metal groaned as gravity took hold.

  Mech, Loren, Miz, and Garunk all watched in silence as the ship plunged downward, before disappearing behind a rocky ridge.

  “That wasn’t him,” Mech insisted. “No fonking way that was him.”

  Loren and Miz had just reached the top of the ridge when the crash started. It was a large ship, so the whole crashing process took quite some time. They were watching the rising fireball when the shockwave struck them, lifting them both off their feet and depositing them a not inconsiderable distance away from where they’d started.

  “Well, if he wasn’t dead before, he’s dead now,” Mech said, tetchily. “Even if he somehow made it aboard the ship—which he didn’t—and somehow managed to blow a hole in it—which he didn’t—then he’s dead now.”

  A shadow appeared around him as something hovered above. He didn’t look up. He refused to look up.

  “Hey,” said Garunk. “Isn’t that your ship?”

  “Hello down there!” crackled a voice from the speaker.

  Mech closed his eyes, just for a moment. “That son of a bedge,” he grunted, his metal jaw curving into a smirk.

  “Does anyone know how to land this thing?” asked Cal. “Preferably not Loren.”

  “I have a fairly good idea, sir,” said Kevin. “Also, you do know you aren’t actually flying the ship, yes?”

  “I’m not?” asked Cal. There was almost silence, but for the faint hissing sound of the speaker. “Then what’s this thing for?”

  “Switching the bathroom lights on, sir.”

  “Loren has a button for switching the bathroom lights on? That seems unnecessary.” There was another pause. “What does this one do?”

  A circular hatch, roughly the size of a large dinner plate, opened above Mech’s head. A slurry of lumpy liquid splattered down on him like dirty slush.

  “Ew,” said Miz, wrinkling her snout.

  Mech said nothing.

  “It empties the waste tank, sir,” Kevin announced. “Probably best not to press it in the air.”

  “Message received and understood, Kevin,” Cal said. There was the sound of a hand dramatically slapping a thigh. “Now, take us down, and let’s round up the troops. Looks like Space Team is saving the day. Again.”

  Twenty-Five

  Mech waddled up the ramp, his face twisted into a sneer of distaste. Miz’s face wasn’t much better as she plodded along at a distance behind him, with Loren acting as a buffer between Miz’s nose and Mech’s aroma.

  “Jesus, what happened to you?” asked Cal, looking the cyborg up and down. His nostrils flared. “You stink.”

  “I know I stink,” Mech snapped. “You think I ain’t aware of that fact?”

  “What are you covered in?” Cal asked. He brought his nose closer, then gagged and took a step back. “It’s nasty, whatever it is.”

  “It’s the contents of the motherfonking waste tank,” Mech growled.

  “Ha! What are the chances?” asked Cal. “Kevin was just telling me about a button that…”

  Cal’s voice trailed off. He cleared his throat. “Oh.”

  “Yeah. ‘Oh,’” Mech grimaced. “Now, get the fonk outta my way. I gotta get this shizz off.”

  He tapped the button that opened the shower door. Cal leaped forward, but was too late to block him. “Wait, don’t!”

  The door slid open. Mech froze, his finger hovering just above the button.

  “OK, so here’s a question,” he began. “Why is the bathroom full of wasps?”

  “Space wasps,” Cal corrected. He tapped the button and the door slid closed. “And it’s not full of them. It’s, like half-full. Three-fourths full, at most.”

  He jabbed a thumb toward another door. “The rest are in the kitchen.”

  “The kitchen?” said Loren. “You filled the kitchen with wasps?”

  “They kind of filled it on their own, but yeah,” Cal said.

  “Are they anywhere else?” Loren asked, eyeing the doors along the corridor.

  Cal scratched his head and smiled awkwardly. “Well, funny you should ask…”

  “They’re in every room, ain’t they?” said Mech. “They’re in every fonking room.”

  “Not every room, no!” Cal protested. “One of the bedrooms is clear, for example.”

  Mech’s eyes narrowed.

  “Whose bedroom?”

  Cal gave a half-laugh. “Does it matter? The important thing is—”

  “It’s your bedroom, ain’t it?” Mech said.

  “Only technically,” Cal insisted. “But let’s not get bogged down in all that. The important thing is we’re all together and we’ve got the ship back. Sure, you’re covered in human waste, and almost every cubic foot of living space is filled with wasps, but that’s still a step up from where we were an hour ago, right?”

  Mech didn’t respond, other than to grind his jaws together and glare raw hatred in Cal’s direction.

  “That’s the spirit,” Cal said, flashing him one of his most winning smiles. “Now, are we going to stand around here yakking all day, or are we going to go stop the villain of the week? Kevin’s already got a bead on the guy.”

  “No, I don’t” said Kevin.

  Cal looked up. “You don’t? I thought you said you did?”

  “No, sir. You said, ‘Kevin, get a bead on the guy,’ but didn’t actually explain which ‘guy’ you were referring to, or what getting ‘a bead’ on him actually entails.”

  “Oh. Then why didn’t you say that?” Cal asked.

  “I did, sir,” Kevin insisted.

  “You did?” Cal frowned. “What did I say?”

  “I believe it was something along the lines of, ‘Oh fonk, oh fonk, I’m covered in wasps!’ sir.”

>   “Shizz. Right,” said Cal. He glanced at Mech and the others. “I was covered in wasps,” he explained.

  “We guessed,” said Loren.

  She went to move past him, then stopped and turned back to the ramp. Garunk stood at the bottom, anxiously wringing his hands.

  Loren sighed quietly. “One second, guys,” she said, heading back down the ramp until she was standing before Garunk. “You should come with us,” she said. “We could use you.”

  “You could? How?” asked Garunk.

  Loren opened her mouth and inhaled, as if preparing to reply. She froze there for a moment. “I could use you,” she said. “Look, even back in the Academy, I was always kind of…”

  “A loser?” guessed Miz from the top of the ramp.

  “Self-absorbed,” Loren said. “I wanted to be the best. It was all I cared about. Not you. Not Clorice, Hoof, Feltch, or the one with the eyes.”

  “Those eyes were insane,” said Garunk.

  “Terrifying,” Loren agreed. “But the point is, I was wrong. Being the best isn’t what matters.”

  “Good thing for you,” Miz chipped in from up the ramp. Loren ignored her.

  “Friends are what matters. Having people you can count on. Who’ve always got your back. That’s what’s important.”

  She put a hand on Garunk’s shoulder. “And I know you have my back, Garunk. So,” She inhaled deeply. “You should come with us. You should join the team.”

  Garunk’s muddy skin blushed. “Wow. That’s… I mean… wow. I am honored. I really am,” he said. “But, uh, I think I’m just going to stay here and have sex with a bunch of Nogems.”

  Loren blinked.

  “Oh,” she said. She felt like this was such an appropriate response, she repeated it. “Oh.”

  “Otherwise, you know, I’d have been all over the space stuff,” Garunk said. “Seriously. We’d have had a great time. But, those Nogems are pretty hot? Am I right? I’m right.”

  “Oh,” said Loren. Then, a moment later. “Oh.”

  Garunk wrapped his arms around her, squidging her into a sloppy hug. “Now, go save Moosh, Loren. And when you’re out there in the future, exploring the galaxy, think of me,” he whispered. “Think of your old pal, Garunk, out there somewhere on the wild frontier. Having sex with Nogems.”