Space Team: Sting of the Mustard Mines by Barry J. Hutchison

Author:Barry J. Hutchison [Hutchison, Barry J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Zertex Media Ltd
Published: 2018-09-22T05:00:00+00:00

Sixteen

Cal woke with a cold, damp compress on his head, and a body that ached so badly he suspected it would never forgive him.

“You awake?”

That was Loren’s voice, drifting into his half-awake fog from somewhere in the space beyond his eyelids.

“Not sure,” he murmured. “Let me get back to you on that one.”

Cal lay there for a while, enjoying the cooling pressure on his forehead, and observing the various parts of himself coming back online.

He felt his toes and gave them a twitch. His hands, too. He pointed his feet and stretched his legs, simultaneously worsening and easing the ache in his muscles.

His senses of taste and smell switched on with a bang, popping his eyes open.

Mustard.

He tensed, preparing to set off running again, but the taste had bedded in now, and was more like an insistent background noise than the crescendo of agony that it had been. It was still deeply unpleasant, of course, but not so bad that he couldn’t cope with it.

He’d complain about it, yes—God, how he’d complain about it—but it was manageable for the moment.

As his eyes swam into focus, he expected to see Loren kneeling over him. Instead, he saw the sludgy mud-pack that was Garunk’s face. The Slurrit’s sloppy wet hand was resting on Cal’s forehead, oozing rivulets of runny mud into his hair and pooling it in his ears.

“Hey, beefcake,” said Garunk. “Good to have you back.”

He withdrew his hand and Cal sat up. Loren stood behind Garunk, one arm wrapped around herself, the other held up to her mouth so she could chew on her thumbnail.

“You OK?” she asked.

Cal nodded gingerly. “Head kind of aches,” he said. “And, you know, every other part of me, too. But, on the plus side, my sinuses have never been clearer.”

He inhaled deeply through his nose to demonstrate his point, but the smell of mustard and burning flesh made his stomach flip, so he quickly stopped.

Propping himself on his elbows, Cal took in the cell around them. “We’re back here? Why are we back here?”

“They figured you couldn’t work when you were unconscious,” Loren said.

“Ha! Shows that they know,” Cal snorted. He shook his head. “Actually, they’re right. I can’t work when I’m unconscious. I don’t know why I said that.”

With some difficulty, Cal got back to his feet. The room spun around him, forcing him to lean against the wall for support.

“Still, nice of them to give me time off,” Cal said. “For evil, people-trafficking slave masters, they’re actually not too bad. Wait, what am I saying? They’re truly terrible people.”

“Can’t argue there. Although, they did let us check in on you every so often to make sure you were still alive. Took some persuasion, though” said Loren. “Your friend said he’d work a double shift to cover your quota until you got back.”

Cal frowned. “My friend?”

“With the red hat.”

“Oh, Red Hat!” said Cal. “Seriously? He’s covering for me? What a guy.”

He yawned and stretched, then smacked his lips together several times in the vain hope of tasting anything that wasn’t mustard.

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