Space Team: Sting of the Mustard Mines

by Barry J. Hutchison

  A thought struck him. A terrible, heart-wrenching thought that made him want to be sick again.

  “So, Lily was never born? My daughter was never even born?”

  Kevin didn’t answer. He thought it more tactful not to. Also, one of the wasps had become jammed in the toilet cistern, and he was having a hell of a job trying to flush it back out.

  “Jesus.”

  Cal sat in silence for a while. “And I’m dead? The other me, I mean?”

  “Indeed, sir. You all are,” Kevin replied.

  Mech looked up. “Wait, what? How are we all dead?”

  Mizette prodded herself, then gave a satisfied nod. “I’m so not dead.”

  “I’m afraid it’s all rather complex,” Kevin said. “Essentially, when Master Carver detonated the time bomb during the first battle with Geronimus Krone, you all essentially splintered off from the altered timeline. You—the you currently here on the bridge—were cast adrift from the timeline, which is how you were able to remember the previous version of the Universe, even after Krone changed everything.”

  Cal glanced around at the others. “Anyone else going to say, ‘Huh?’ now, or should I do it?”

  “When you went back in time and met your younger self, sir, that was in a very real sense your younger self. You were connected. If he learned something, you learned it, too. Cause and effect,” Kevin continued.

  “However, upon returning to the Void, the connection was broken. The timeline you knew was forever altered, and no longer existed. When we returned from the Void, it was to a universe drastically different to the one we had left. You all remember the original timeline because you did not live through the new one. Your counterparts—the younger versions of you—did, however.”

  “Right,” said Loren.

  “And then they all died in various battles with the Edi.”

  Cal felt all eyes turn his way. “I’m sure I wasn’t even involved,” he said, waving their glares away.

  “I’m afraid you were, sir,” said Kevin. “You led the battalion that destroyed the original Zertex Command Four, on which Mistress Loren was stationed. You were instrumental in releasing the spores on Greyx Prime and triggering the genocide that eradicated the entire species.”

  “Ugh. You suck,” said Mizette.

  “And last, but by no means least, you killed Master Mech in hand-to-hand combat.”

  “Bullshiz,” said Mech. “No way.”

  “Ha!” Cal cried. “I fonking knew I could kick your ass.”

  “After bombarding him with missiles from space,” Kevin concluded.

  “That still counts!” Cal insisted. He realized that everyone was still staring at him, and felt it important to clarify something. “Just so we’re all on the same page, I’m glad that other me is dead. He sounds like a total shizznod, and I apologize for him killing you. Or, you know, committing genocide on your home planets. I think we can all agree that was out of line. No, it was way out of line.”

  He began listing on his fingers. “So, to recap, we’re all dead, the Greyx are all dead, Earth is still alive, but is evil, my daughter was never born…” He clicked his tongue against his teeth, then shrugged. “On the plus side, I have a sister. She might be nice.”

  “She isn’t, sir,” Kevin informed him. “You’d hate her.”

  “Oh,” said Cal, deflating. “Well… shizz. So much for that silver lining.”

  He sighed and stood up. “Loren, how long until we get to Moosh?”

  “About twenty-five minutes,” Loren said.

  “OK. Good. Sorry, I just need a little… I’m going to go through the back and process this.”

  Loren gave him a nod and a warm smile. “Uh, sure. Yeah. Of course. Take your time.”

  “Thanks,” said Cal. He headed for the door, then stopped beside Mizette’s chair. “Miz, you OK?”

  Mizette looked up from her claws. “Fine. Why?”

  “Just… you know? The whole genocide thing. That must’ve hit you hard.”

  Miz frowned, as if only now considering the enormity of this. For the most fleeting of moments, her eyes shimmered, then grew hard and indifferent again.

  “Whatever,” she shrugged, before quickly turning her attention back to her claws.

  Cal patted her on the leg, then shuffled out of the bridge. The others listened to his sad footsteps retreating along the corridor, then the sound of his bedroom door sliding open.

  Then the sound of it closing again.

  He shuffled back onto the bridge and took his seat.

  “Full of wasps,” he explained. “I forgot.”

  He stared ahead at the screen, and the message written there.

  Everything is fine.

  No. No, it wasn’t. It was a long way from fine.

  But he knew how to make it better.

  “Loren, foot to the floor, and don’t spare the horses,” Cal urged, sitting straight and upright in his chair. “Let’s go kill these fonks.”

  Twenty-Seven

  They’d all braced themselves to be plunged into battle when they dropped out of warp near Moosh. Cal had activated the weapons. Mech had raised the shields. Miz had plucked at a small knot in her fur, then crossed her arms. It was all systems go.

  To their surprise, there was no waiting armada. No battlecruisers, no squadrons of fighters, not a single ship to be seen.

  “That’s… unexpected,” said Loren.

  “Maybe we got here first,” said Mech.

  “Five credits she’s gone to the wrong planet,” said Miz. “Like, totally the opposite way to where we should have been going.”

  “She has a point,” Cal said. “Loren, are you sure you went the right way?”

  “Yes! This is Moosh,” Loren replied. “I lived here for years. I should know.”

  “She’s right,” Mech confirmed. “Scanners show a lot of sentient life down there, most of it juvenile.”

  He glanced back at Cal. “You should fit right in.”

  “Hilarious,” Cal said. The weapons control systems retracted back into the ceiling, and Cal gave a sigh of disappointment. “I was looking forward to a space battle. We haven’t had a space battle in, like, thirty years. Which, admittedly, was only about two days ago, but still.”

  “The important thing is, Manacle isn’t here,” said Loren. “And also, that Miz owes me five credits.”

  “Uh, no,” Miz scowled. “You didn’t take the bet. And it wasn’t even a bet, it was just, like, me insulting you, or whatever. It’s not like I’ve got any actual money.”

  Cal turned in his chair. “What? You’re, like, Queen of the Greyx!” he pointed out.

  Mizette’s gaze was a withering one.

  “Who the other me murdered en masse. Gotcha,” he said, facing front again. He sighed. “Is it just me, or do we meet too many Cal Carvers on our travels?”

  “You ask me, one was too many,” Mech grunted.

  “Don’t get me wrong, most of them have been great,” Cal said. “It’s just… You can have too much of a good thing, you know?”

  “Or a bad thing,” added Loren.

  Cal tutted. “Well, obviously you can have too much of a bad thing, Loren. A small amount of a bad thing is probably too much.”

  Loren tutted back. “I’m just saying, this latest version of you wasn’t good. He was bad.”

  “Not sure we need to be reminded of that, Loren. The guy committed genocide. That’s pretty fonking definitive.”

  Cal swiveled sadly in his chair and gazed at the screen, barely seeing the slightly misshapen lush green moon hanging in the sky. He briefly noted that it looked like a booger stuck to the camera, before his previous thought process resumed.

  “I can’t believe that lovable scamp we met just a few days ago went on to murder all those people,” he said. “I mean, he had it all. Nice hair. A great bike. OK-ish parents. What went wrong?”

  “We did, sir,” Kevin said. “Our appearance set him on a much darker path than we had anticipated.�
�

  Cal nodded sadly. “You’re right, Kevin. I guess there’s no one to blame.”

  “That’s not really what I was saying, sir.”

  “No one at all. It’s just one of those things. Nothing anyone could’ve done about it.”

  “Well, we—”

  “Nothing at all,” Cal said. He looked around at the others. “I never thought I’d say this, but I’m kind of glad I’m dead.”

  He sat up, gave himself a shake, then smiled. “But anyway. No point moping around. What’s done is done, right? What’s important now is saving the day, and it looks like the day is already pretty fonking saved from this angle, so what’s say we go find a planet where the air is made of alcohol, and get really drunk?”

  He jumped out of his chair. “Wait! I can just get us alcohol from the replicator. Any of you guys ever tried a White Russian?” he asked, striding toward the door. Halfway there, he about-turned and jumped back in his seat.

  “The wasps?” Loren asked.

  “Totally forgot about them again,” Cal admitted. “We have to get rid of those fonking things.”

  “What’s that flashing thing?” asked Miz.

  All eyes went to the screen. “Shizz. We’re being hailed,” said Loren. “They probably want our clearance code.”

  Cal regarded the moon properly for the first time, squinting as if he could somehow see who was hailing them from this height. It was oddly lumpy, with most of the surface covered in rich shades of green.

  There was one large patch of blue that he could see, which had to be some sort of large lake. A silver band ran all the way along the waterfront, forming an outline around the blue. A series of shiny lines crisscrossed the lake—bridges, connecting various parts to various others.

  “The Academy,” Loren explained. “It’s built around Lake Minsh.”

  “You know we still got a call waiting, right?” said Mech. “Someone going to answer it?”

  Cal looked to Loren and raised a questioning eyebrow. “Do we have a clearance code?”

  Loren sucked in her bottom lip. “I have my old student code, but I doubt that’d still work.”

  “If we’re going to answer, we need to do it soon, or it’s just gonna be awkward when we do,” Mech pointed out.

  Cal shrugged. “Fine. OK. Let’s answer. Kevin, medium close-up, not too high, and find a lighting that makes me look good.”

  The bridge was plunged into darkness.

  Cal sighed.

  “Very funny, Kevin.”

  “Thank you, sir. I thought so.”

  The lights returned. Cal pointed to both Mech and Loren, one with each hand. “OK, whoever does the Skype button, do the Skype button. And Mech, try not to get in the shot. You’re covered in shizz, and that’s not the first impression we want to make.”

  The screen flickered. Cal sat up and fixed on the warmest, friendliest, ‘we are not your enemy,’ smile he owned.

  He needn’t have bothered. The woman who appeared on screen didn’t have time to note his smile before she started speaking. Shouting, in fact. Her tone was curt, her words clipped as, behind her, children in Zertex uniforms ran around screaming.

  “This is Legate Rono of the Zertex Academy training facility on the moon of Moosh,” she barked. “All ships, all ships, we are under attack. Request immediate assistance. Repeat, we are under attack. Request immediate assistance.”

  Her eyes became wide. Pleading. “There are children here. There are children—”

  The image went fuzzy, then dark, then returned.

  “Oh, she’s back,” said Cal. “Uh, hi there—”

  “This is Legate Rono of the Zertex Academy training facility on the moon of Moosh…”

  “Yeah, you said that, already,” Cal told her. “Don’t worry, we—”

  “All ships, all ships, we are under attack.”

  “We hear you,” Cal said. “Relax. Help is on the way.”

  “You, uh, you do know that’s a recording, right?” said Mech.

  Cal side-eyed him, then flicked his gaze back to the screen. He repeated this several times.

  “Yes,” he eventually confirmed. “I mean, clearly it’s a recording.”

  Cal sat back in his chair. “OK, looks like we didn’t get here first,” he said. “Loren, take us down.”

  Loren engaged the thrusters and Moosh grew larger on screen at quite an alarming rate.

  “You’re going to want to hold on,” she warned. “This could get bumpier than usual.”

  “Jesus, is that even possible?” Cal asked. “Haven’t we reached peak bumpiness by now?”

  “You, like, literally crashed directly into the planet last time,” Miz reminded her. “How can it get bumpier than that?”

  The moon’s atmosphere sparkled across the screen in rippling waves of heat. “Don’t believe me?” said Loren. “Just watch.”

  As the Untitled dropped into the atmosphere, the air around it exploded like fireworks, forcing Loren into a sudden lurching turn. Zero-point-three-eight seconds before this, Cal remembered he’d removed his seat belt, and had just made a grab for it when the maneuver began.

  Clutching the belt, he was thrown up out of his chair, performed a full sideways flip, and landed on his feet exactly two feet to the right of where he’s started.

  He felt an overwhelming urge to shout, “Ta-daa!” and take a bow, but before he could, several other explosions went off just ahead of them, and Loren banked upward with enough ferocity to slam him face-first into the floor.

  Still holding the belt, he scrambled into his seat and secured himself in place, trying very hard to avoid the gaze of the smirking Mizette.

  Something detonated on the Untitled’s left side. The port side? Starboard? Cal could never remember. It rocked the ship, throwing everyone around in their seats and making Mech stagger, Star Trek style.

  “Who the fonk is shooting at us?” Cal demanded.

  “Automated security,” said Loren, gritting her teeth and plunging the ship into a dive so steep it went full-circle into a climb. There was a harsh, staccato beat from behind them as cannon-fire peppered the rear shields.

  “It’s the Zertex guys who are doing this?” Cal spluttered. “The ones who just asked for our help? This is how they repay us?”

  “The system is automated. If we don’t have clearance codes, we get targeted,” Loren explained.

  “I thought we had a clearance code! You said we had one.”

  “They didn’t ask for it,” Loren pointed out, gritting her teeth as she spiraled away from a series of armor-piercing projectile rounds.

  Cal wailed briefly, clutched at his stomach, then gestured vaguely in Mech’s direction. “Can’t he just hack the doodah, or whatever?”

  Loren and Mech exchanged glances.

  “That might work,” Loren said.

  “On it,” Mech barked, turning to work at his console.

  “Wait, what?” asked Cal, meerkatting bolt upright in surprise. “That’s a thing? I said a thing?”

  Mech’s fingers flew across his terminal, and the right third of the screen was flooded with what seemed to be, in Cal’s expert opinion, a load of gibberish.

  “Man, their systems are complex,” Mech grunted. “This ain’t gonna be fast.”

  “You’re going to have to make it fast, Mech,” Cal said. “Or we can all die. Your choice.”

  Another blast hammered the shields. Cal clutched his armrests and swallowed back the vomit he could feel loading itself into his tubes.

  “We have to pull back,” Loren barked. “I can’t keep dodging.”

  “What do you mean ‘keep dodging’?” asked Miz. “Have you dodged anything so far?”

  “I’m heading out of the atmosphere,” said Loren. “Mech, get through that security.”

  “Getting there,” Mech replied. “Be ready with your code.”

  “Sorry to interrupt, everyone,” said Kevin. “But I’ve conducted some scans of the Academy grounds, and—assuming we
don’t want everyone to have been murdered by wasps by the time we arrive—I suggest we get down there in the next, oooh, let’s say six minutes.”

  “Six minutes?!” Loren spluttered.

  “More like three minutes, ma’am,” said Kevin. “I was sugar-coating it somewhat the first time for fear of upsetting you all.”

  “Shizz,” Cal spat. He groaned loudly and buried his face in his hands. “Oh… fonk! No. No, no, no.” He shook his head. “No. Not happening. I can’t do it. I can’t. But then… What are the choices? Hmm? None. That’s what.”

  “What the fonk are you talking about?” demanded Mech, not looking back.

  “Loren, you have the conn,” said Cal. He held up a hand to stop her arguing. “Let’s not get into that whole thing again. It’s yours. That’s the end of it.”

  “What? Why? Where are you going?”

  Cal smiled weakly. “I’m ninety percent sure I’m going to commit suicide,” he said. “But there’s, like, a nine-point-six percent chance I’ll only be horribly maimed. That zero-point-four that’s left? That’s my sweet spot.”

  Miz frowned at him. “What are you even saying? What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to do what we Cal Carvers always do,” he replied. “Except the genocide guy. But let’s never speak of him again.”

  He unclipped his belt and stood up, imagining a stirring, dramatic soundtrack swelling behind him. And perhaps a breeze lightly ruffling his hair. “I’m going to go be a hero!”

  The Untitled dipped suddenly. Cal flew upward and hit the ceiling with a bang. He remained there, arms and legs spread in an X-shape, embarrassment burning his cheeks.

  “Uh, Splurt?” he called. “Any chance you could come help me down?”

  Twenty-Eight

  Cal tried hard not to think about the word, ‘falling.’ This, given the circumstances, was difficult.

  Above him, the Currently Untitled banked upward towards orbit, its shields flickering from another succession of turret-cannon blasts. Below him, the great blue blotch that was Lake Minsh grew larger at a rate that was currently concerning, but which he fully expected to rise to deeply worrying and then mind-bogglingly terrifying as time went on.