by Chris Lowry
Mona Lisa took two steps too, toward Khan and sent a pointed toe up between his shoulder blades by way of his groin.
He squeaked as something popped, threw up and passed out.
"That's not going to help," said Bat, unfazed by the pictures of his prisoner in the buff.
"On the contrary," Tinker drooled. "This is helping quite a bit."
It took ten minutes to wake up Khan. Tinker tried shouting his name once, then giggled.
"What?" asked the guard.
"From the classic movie, you know? Khan!"
"No idea."
"You don't know what that's from?"
Bat shook his head.
"That's insane man. What did you watch growing up? Hell, that show is how we ended up in outer space. Boldly going doing new things."
Bat shrugged again.
"I swear," he turned to Mona Lisa for help.
She stared at the blank view screen she managed to shut off after a brief struggle with Tinker for control of the remote.
"Don't look at me," she barked.
"Love," the pilot said. "I don't think I'm ever going to be able to stop."
"You want to look like him?"
She pointed to Khan as he squirmed back ot consciousness on threadbare rug on the decking. He rolled over and clutched his groin, moaned and made it to his knees.
"What did you do that for?" he managed to get out after several tries.
She pointed toward the screen and waited for him to notice.
"You said I owed you," his voice slowly returned to normal, even if he couldn't stand up straight. "I was showing you that you owed me too."
"Where did you get those?"
"I traded a guy," he told her. "Only known copies."
"Does Buster know?"
"I assumed he took them."
"He did. I meant does he know they're out here? With you?"
Khan blanched and caught his breath.
"Umm."
"That's what I thought. What would he do if he knew you had them."
Khan peeked at the tender spot between his legs.
"I let you keep them," said Mona Lisa. "Now about that favor you owe me."
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Khan was an open book after the threat sank in. He shared everything he knew about the location of the item Mr. Kim had sent them to retrieve.
Granted, it wasn't much more than the location of the ship where it was supposed to be, but on the vast expanse of the Saracen, that was enough.
"How far do we have to walk in these things?" Tinker grumbled as he swung the cloth back and forth walking next to Mona Lisa.
She was tucked between Bat and the pilot as they stuck to the side of the corridor and tried not to hurry.
Khan told them where it was located but refused to leave his berth. Bat insisted until her contact proved that walking would be difficult for him for quite some time.
All he had in his future was bed rest and a bag of ice to slow the swelling.
"All the way," Bat told them.
"It was a rhetorical question," the pilot complained. "Bloody hell."
"Tough being a woman on this thing," Mona Lisa observed.
"We saw your preferred state of dress back in his bunk," Bat said out of the side of his mouth.
She drew back a fist to punch him and stopped short when three of the sword wielding guards rounded a corner and watched them.
"No one talks about it ever again," she warned.
"Talk? I never want to forget it. Just knowing you have the drive in your pocket makes me want to wrestle it off you. Or just wrestle you."
"Quiet," Bat hissed.
They walked past the guard, heads bowed so their eyes were hidden.
The ship berth they were searching for was less than a hundred meters away.
"Should be up there," Tinker said.
A hand grabbed his shoulder and spun him around. One of the guards began yelling at him in rapid fire Arabic.
Tinker shrugged and tried to pull away, but the guard grabbed the hadjib around his chest and yanked him close, spraying the dirty black cloth with spittle.
His partner started screaming louder and pointing at Bat's boots.
The black fabric was too short and no one had paid attention to them until now. But women on the Saracen did not wear space boots, and they knew something was up.
Bat grabbed the one holding Tinker by the collar, twisted, twirled and tossed him into the other two.
Before the three had finished falling, he was on them with three swift punches to the side of the head that left them knocked out in a heap.
"We've got to hurry."
He reached for Mona Lisa's arm but she shrugged him off and took off running down the corridor. Bat sprinted after her and didn't wait to see if Tinker caught up.
They made it to the location where Khan had directed them.
Tinker slid to a stop and keyed in the access code. Nothing happened.
"Khan!" he growled under his breath.
Mona Lisa pushed him to the side and punched in the numbers again. The hatch slid open.
"It can't be that simple."
She didn't wait for an answer. She stepped into the room and lifted up a simple smooth metal cube from a pedestal off to one side.
"What is that guy who said the simplest solution is usually right?"
"Sherlock Holmes," said Bat.
"Occam," Tinker corrected.
She stepped across the threshold and into the hallway. An alarm blared throughout the corridor as red lights strobed in blinding flashes.
"Simple!" screamed Bat. "Get us back to the ship!"
"What?" Tinker yelled back.
"Get us back to the ship!"
"I can't hear you. We need to get back to the ship! Follow me!"
The pilot began sprinting down the metal deck and slid to a stop as a squad of Saracen Guards rounded the corner with swords drawn.
Tinker tried to stop, but his feet went out from under him and his run turned into a base slide that brought him up two steps short of the guard's boots.
They laughed down at him.
Bat plowed into the mass of them, kicking, punching, jabbing and punting before they had time to recover.
He stood up from the tumble of human bodies and looked back at Mona Lisa still by the door.
"Don't," he screamed.
She took one look at the cube in her hand, and the distance between them in the corridor. A nanosecond later she sprinted in the opposite direction.
Bat untangled himself from the press of bodies.
"Come on!"
Tinker scrambled up after him.
They raced after Mona Lisa as she tried to escape.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Mona Lisa ran.
The hajib got in the way. The covering was designed to hide, not for athletic endeavors, and the flowing fabric threatened to wrap around her feet and trip her up.
She almost paused to hike the edge over her knees to at least free up that much, but she could hear Bat's pounding boots on the floor behind her.
Loud.
Like a train bearing down on her.
She tried to run faster, but his thick hands grabbed her by the back of the fabric and yanked.
Her feet kept moving but her body was arrested in mid-flight.
The result was a resounding plop that she felt vibrate up her spine. That was going to leave a mark.
The cube kept going too, bounding and bouncing off the floor until it came up to rest against the wall and began glowing.
"Is it gonna blow up," Tinker reached down to help her up. "You almost made it."
She shook off his pawing hands and straightened the hadjib.
"Not even close," she groused.
"You won't make it, Inmate. Might as well not try. It will just make you tired and frustrated."
She bit back a retort. The alarm bleeping was lower here, but still annoying.
"Can we save the bickering fo
r when we reach the ship?" Tinker asked.
He watched the halls around them. More Saracen Guards could pop out at any moment, and they were the only women in the corridor. Too easy to find.
"Which way?" Bat asked.
Tinker shrugged.
"I got turned around."
Mona Lisa sighed.
"This way."
"Why should we trust you?" Bat asked.
"Because I know the way."
"I don't believe you."
"Believe me or not. If we stay here, we're going to get caught."
He thought about it for a moment and gave in with a long loud breath.
"Fine."
He motioned her to move, and Tinker fell in step beside them, keeping her tiny form in the middle.
She led them away from the room, away from the alarm and they cowered as more guards ran past them.
It wouldn't be long before someone there made a connection about three women walking away from the room with the missing item, but she hoped they would make the ship before then.
They did.
The NS-17 was exactly where they docked her with the addition of two guards standing in front of the air lock.
"Uh-oh," Tinker said as they peeked around the corner.
"Standard procedure," Bat said. "All of the ships will have guards set on them."
"Do we wait?"
Bat straightened up and shook out his neck and shoulder muscles.
"Don't you think when you beat up their guards they're going to put two and two together and come up with us as the crooks?" Mona Lisa regarded him with a raised eyebrow.
"Do you have a suggestion, Inmate?"
"Two of them. Stop calling me Inmate," she snapped. "And use finesse instead of the dead space between your ears you call a brain."
She slipped around the corner of the hallway and marched toward the two guards.
They instantly snapped to attention.
As she approached, Mona Lisa worked the edge of the fabric up and over her head, letting it fall and trail behind her in one hand.
"What's she doing?" Bat muttered.
"Whatever it is, she's doing it right."
"She's going to get us killed."
"But what a way to go."
Bat shook his head and got ready.
Mona Lisa turned up the charm to level ten. She swished, she swooshed. She clenched her shoulders together to bunch up her breasts, and pouted out her lips as she shot serious bedroom eyes at the two guards.
They were transfixed.
She got closer and thought about what to say. What was going to distract them? What was going to draw them away from the airlock door?
They would know she was an outside, of course, but would they consider her a treasure or a threat?
The guard on the left spat something in a guttural voice and the other snickered.
She stopped.
They eyed her up and down and the one on the left lunged forward and grabbed her by the wrist.
He twisted hard and sent her to her knees.
The second guard grabbed her by the hair, and began dropping his pants as he dragged her head forward.
Mona Lisa almost cried out, but she didn't want to give Bat the satisfaction.
He didn't need it.
A ham sized fist plowed into the guard holding her wrist and slammed him into the bulkhead with a sick crunch.
The second guard had time to let go of her hair and make a strange gurgled whimper before another fist pounded his forehead a half inch back.
He sank next to his partner and had time to register a giant boot aimed for his face before it hit and he never had a thought again.
Tinker lifted Mona Lisa up by the arm and didn't say a word as he keyed in the access code to the airlock umbilical.
She shivered in relief and glanced at Bat.
He didn't check on her, his eyes too busy scanning the corridor for any approaching threat.
But she saw the way he put himself between her and the open space, a human wall of rage ready for any threat.
The rational side of her said it was between Tinker and the threat too, or maybe the Cube and the threat, or probably all three. But part of her felt like it was just for her.
A knight, some chivalrous code that required his honor bound commitment to protect her at all costs.
The air lock opened with a swish, and Tinker led her through the chute into the NS-17. Bat was on their heels.
"They're coming," he warned.
They could hear screaming in the hall beyond, the war cries of a hundred Saracen Guards running for the air lock.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Mona Lisa sets the AI on the console and it wirelessly connects and takes over the ship.
Mona Lisa swished across the cockpit and felt eyes on her. She turned, half expecting Tinker to be watching her, staring at her bottom as it did interesting things in the modified jumpsuit.
But it was Bat.
She froze for a second, then smiled and kept walking.
She could feel something radiate off of him, an almost palatable lust.
That's all it took, she thought. Hooch.
"More," she announced returning with the jug of clear white liquor Tinker used to capture the drippings from his still.
She sloshed some into Bat's cup and traded smiles, then refilled her glass and the pilot's.
After all it was a celebration.
Plus, there was nowhere to escape out her in space.
Unless she got them both drunk and dropped them through the air lock. Which she didn't think she would do. Yet.
Bat lifted his glass, sipped it and sat back with watery eyes as it burned all the way down and hit his stomach.
His shoulders dropped a little. His eyes dropped even more.
"Maybe," he said, just a slight slurr to his voice. "The best of us are killed in war."
He looked at Mona Lisa then, eyes drilling into her.
Could she have been wrong? Mistaken his nostalgia for an interest in her?
"The bold," he toasted and took a sip.
"The strong," he sipped again.
"The brave all go die in battle and what's left are the ghosts of heroes."
His eyes watered more and he swiped at the corner of one with the back of his hand before a rebellious tear could make a run down his razor sharp cheek.
"Were you a soldier?" she asked.
In her real voice. Not the coquettish one she used to get her way. Not the snappy sarcastic tone designed to keep everyone at a distance. Her true voice.
She knew he heard her.
No way not to.
The cockpit was too tight.
The thought made her grin, just a small one, because it sounded sexual in her mind. A little dirty.
He thought the grin was a gift to him and gave a half one back. Not much. A curl at the corner of his mouth that lifted his cheek.
"What's left?" she asked. "After the best are gone?"
He made a motion with the half glass of hooch, taking in the ship and Tinker and even space beyond. A generous gesture. All encompassing.
"I was in war once," said the pilot.
He sounded offended in a distracted way. As if he couldn’t be bothered by an insult, implied or otherwise.
"We've all been in a War," Bat drained the glass. "That's all Mars is, all it will be."
"It's the way things work," she said. As if she knew of such things. About such things.
Bat knew different. She had been pampered. Spoiled. Her beauty came early and with it, deference on the part of men who wanted to touch that beauty.
Possess it.
"Sheltered," he slurred under his breath almost like a sigh. She took it as an insult and huffed.
He supposed he must have meant it as such.
"I was-" she started to say the word not.
An automatic argument. An old defense. But she stopped.
Because inside of a space ship hurtling through the stars
with nothing to distract her but fifty million potential deaths, including her own let her pause to reflect.
A decade with Buster.
A year in prison getting ready to turn evidence against him.
She had not grown up a princess, but became one at eighteen. Buster made it so.
He treated her like a treasure. And though she listened and she learned, he also kept her isolated.
Hidden away.
Or so he thought.
Bat leaned forward to set the empty glass down, missed the console and fought to keep his balance on the chair.
He won that victory but only just.
"The best make good babies and leave them to be raised by weak men," he slurred.
Still easy to understand though. Mona Lisa thought this might be a soapbox platform for him. Familiar ground.
"Generations. Each gene pool smaller than the next. Brave men dead. Gone. Less and less."
She watched his head nod and bob, eyes drooping.
"This," his skull bounced off the back cushion and stayed there.
Mona Lisa took a dainty sip from her glass, grimaced as she swallowed fire.
Tinker laughed.
"A bunch of lightweights," he joked. "It doubles as rocket fuel."
"I just thought he was the lightweight."
The pilot quaffed his glass and set it in a regular spot on the console, a homemade triangle welded to the metal as a cup holder.
"He is. Guess some of us are strong in different ways. You want to find out?"
The eyebrows wiggled, the smile was a suggestive leer.
She realized it was an act. The idea came quick. If she ever made a move, he would find an excuse, add if she waited for him to do it, it would take forever.
"I want to learn to fly?" she flirted back.
A game.
"Think you can teach me?"
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
The AI refuses to leave the ship's computer.
They land on the Space Hub and try to figure out how to get the AI to leave the ship’s computer, but it refuses.
Mona Lisa refers to her as a she.
"I've calculated the probabilities of what use a space faring gang lord will have for me," the AI said. "None of them are pleastant activities."