by Chris Lowry
Something he wondered if she would do more of soon. After this was over.
"You made a joke inmate," he snapped.
It came out harsher than he meant, but the desired effect was the same.
She turned around and stopped studying him, stopped searching for an angle.
He sighed and bit back an apology.
Those were simple facts. She was an inmate. He was a guard. They were on a mission.
He needed to concentrate on the task at hand.
"Get us closer to that ship," he said.
"Alright," said Tinker.
The hum of the engines changes as their speed increased.
"Done," Junebug answered.
"Damn it, let me drive this ship."
"Fly," the AI corrected.
Bat let them bicker and tuned them out. He watched the ship, but his mind was on something else.
Or someone else pouting in the chair in front of him.
CHAPTER TWENTY SIX
What's going on with the ship?
Somehow it's a trap.
They evade the trap and stop the ship from blowing up, or blow it up anyway.
Tinker has something special in the hold. Weapons. Torpedoes.
"Why don't I know about these?" Junebug asked.
"They’re my secret weapons."
"But I'm the ship."
"It's my ship," Tinker said. "I'm the pilot."
"But I should know about these things."
"I had it on a separate independent network. Doesn't even touch the ship's computers. No wireless," he cackled. "Like my still."
"I need to be fully aware of all ship functions and capability," Junebug lectured. "If you expect me to optimize our performance capacity."
"Can you shoot those damn things?"
Tinker's fingers clacked around the small keyboard.
"If you turn control over to me, I will be better able to aim than you."
"Aiming ain't an art, sweetheart," Tinker jabbed the enter key. "It's a science."
Two tiny portals opened on the belly of the ship and twin rocket trails lit up the starry night as they twisted toward the target.
They hit at the same time, tiny little sparks like firecrackers bouncing off the hull.
"That was anti-climactic," said Mona Lisa.
"Wait for it."
The belly of the ship bulged out like an overblown balloon, cracking the hull open into a thousand pieces. The demolitions on board exploded out in a giant fireball of destruction.
"Penetrating incendiaries," Tinker giggled.
"Those are illegal."
"Lucky for us we don't have a cop on board," he said eyeing Bat.
The guard stared beyond the destruction at the Dipolar Shield safe beyond.
"Lucky indeed," he answered. "Junebug, set a course for home."
"Hey," Tinker complained. "I'm the pilot. Junebug, make it so."
"You can't say that," said Mona Lisa.
"I just did."
"It reminds me of him. He used to say it all the time."
She wiped the corner of her eye and stared at the floating cloud of partially vaporized debris that drifted away from the explosion vector.
"He wasn't aboard."
"He might have been."
"He tried to kill you. Twice."
"That doesn't mean we didn't have something special. It's only right to mourn the dead."
Bat shook his head.
"I'll never understand relationships."
She moved her hand and he could see there were no tears.
"No. You won't."
Junebug engaged the engines and set a course for the prison.
CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN
"You said home, but its back in a cell for me."
She said it aloud to Bat, but didn't look at him as she did.
"The Warden promised you a reduced sentence."
"But it's still behind bars. I'll be trapped. Again."
Tinker studied the yoke in front of him and sighed.
"I'll be back to hustling runs."
Bat didn't answer either of them. But he was thinking about prison too.
He was thinking about how convenient it was that the ship was exactly where Mr. Kim said.
How no one else could share that information with Space Command. He thought about the why's behind it.
Sure, Buster tried to buy guards at the prison. He had to. If he really wanted Mona Lisa dead, all it would take is some precisely applied leverage to get one of the guards to do it for him.
He'd start with the families, obviously. A lot of men would do heinous things to save their family.
It's what made Bat particularly good for this one job.
He had no family.
No one to kidnap and torture to make him do things.
No one to hold against him.
No one to miss him if he disappeared.
Bat glanced at the back of the pilot's head.
No official pilot granted. This trip was unsanctioned. Technically, Folds could have turned Mona Lisa over to Buster instead of giving her forty eight hours to find him.
Or find his ship.
If something happened to Bat, no one would care.
There would have been some extra paperwork, but he didn't have relatives listed that would miss him if he were gone.
Just like Tinker.
The man had memories of a dead cat and nothing else besides his ship.
If he disappeared into a puff of space dust, it would be just another smuggler lost to the cosmos. Hell, there were hundreds of those missing each year, either prospecting in the asteroid belt or pirated and left to float to some distant star.
Never to be seen again.
If Tinker vanished, no one would care.
He shifted in his seat.
"Ship," he called out. "Run a calculation analysis."
Mona Lisa and Tinker glanced back at him.
"What are you analyzing?" she asked.
"We did it," he began to explain his line of thinking. "We completed the mission and saved Mars."
"Yeah," said Tinker. "I can count those bonus credits now."
"But what if we weren't supposed to do it?"
"Beat Buster?" Mona Lisa squirmed. "We didn't. He's still out there, looking for me."
Bat shook his head.
He wasn't explaining it like he wanted.
"What if we were supposed to die on the ship. Or fail at any number of places? If you didn't stop the ship, what would happen?"
"I'd get turned over to Buster."
"Where he would kill you?"
"Third time's the charm."
"But we stopped the ship. And we didn't go on it, we blew it up with unlicensed and unregistered weaponry that no one knew you had."
"I don't think we need to mention that in a report," Tinker sputtered. "I don't want to get in trouble."
Bat waved him off.
"We were supposed to be on the ship when it blew up. That was the plan. But we weren't. We were here."
"How did they know we would go on the ship?" Mona Lisa argued.
"Because we would have had to do it that way."
Bat sat up in his seat as the puzzle pieces fell together.
"We would have pulled alongside the ship, attached the umbilical, gone through the airlock and when we were aboard, it would have blown up."
"But it didn't," said Mona Lisa as she chewed on her lip.
It sounded like Buster, like something he had done to a competitor in space junk.
He didn't like them taking a small slice of the financial pie when they salvaged derelict equipment and debris, so he set a trap on an abandoned ship.
It did exactly as Bat described it.
The three man crew hooked onto the floating wreck, snaked over in an umbilical and set off a booby trap that took out both ships.
"He didn't know we had missiles," she concluded.
"I wouldn't be missed," said Bat and pointed at Tinker. "No o
ne would miss you."
"And I'd be dead."
"For something like that to happen the way you're describing, he would need an inside man," the Pilot pouted. "And plenty of people would miss me."
"Who would even know you were gone?" Bat snapped as his brow crinkled.
He said it in an off handed way, but realized it just a second later.
"I'm sorry," he offered. "I didn't mean it like that."
"Lots of people. Bob would have missed me."
"Bob's dead."
Tinker rested his forehead on his forearms and held in a sob. His left foot tapped on the floorboard.
"What's taking so long with that damn AI? Is it on the fritz?"
"I assure you I am not on the fritz," Junebug said through the speaker. "I have a name."
"Is this computer giving me attitude?"
"I am not giving you attitude," Junebug explained in a slow patient voice. "I am quite capable of answering your query as I have access to over one million forms of communication, including a private missive between the Warden and your fiancé."
"Ex-" Mona Lisa and Bat said together.
She smiled at him. It was a smile that sent men to war with one another, and had she shared it with Tinker and he was flying the ship, they might have crashed.
Bat let the warmth of that smile wash over him, like a wave. He took a deep breath and smiled back. Just a small one, just for a minute.
But it was real and she could tell.
"However," Junebug continued. "I will require you address me by my name if you desire my assistance."
"Can we unplug that thing?" Bat snorted.
"Thing! I am an advanced artificial lifeform created for the express purpose of-"
Tinker pulled on the yoke.
"What are you doing?"
"Trying to shut you up. We get it. Smart AI. Very smart. Excellent driver. You're an excellent driver."
"Flying," it sounded like Junebug sniffed. "Analysis complete."
"You said messages between Folds and Buster," said Bat. "That was it, wasn't it? The connection."
"It seems your Warden is on a new payroll now. Your return to Mars would cause irreparable harm to yourself and others."
Bat scooted back in the seat.
He stared at the other two crew members for a second and let out a raspberry.
"I got nothing but dirty words," he grunted.
"We go back, I'm dead," Mona Lisa curled her legs up in the seat and turned to face them in the tight cockpit.
"We all are."
"I didn't do anything," Tinker argued.
"You survived."
"Well," said the pilot as he fished a clear bottle of hooch out of a secret compartment and took a pull. "I'm good at that."
"Seems like we all are," Bat stared at the view screen. "Computer?"
There was no answer.
"What do we call this thing again? June?"
"My name is Junebug."
"Junebug?"
"Yes?"
"Set a course for the McMurdo Base. I know some people who can help us figure it out."
Tinker cleared his throat and held out the bottle of hooch to Mona Lisa. She took a dainty sip and passed it to Bat.
"Two things," Tinker counted off on his fingers. "One, McMurdo is restricted airspace. We can't get in there."
"I'll handle it," said Bat. "What else?"
"Junebug doesn't fly the ship, I'm the pilot."
He grabbed the yoke again and shook it, as if that would magically give him control over the thrusters and rockets.
Junebug routed power into the circuits at his console and let him turn the ship at least.
Mona Lisa watched Bat take a drink as the ship altered trajectory and set in a new course.
"Guess we're stuck with each other for awhile."
Bat swallowed, took another gulp and stared at her for a minute.
"Yeah Mona Lisa, it looks like we are."
THE END
I hope you enjoyed The Dipole Shield as much as I enjoyed writing it. If you liked it, would you leave a review on Amazon?
I wrote this in ten days after reading an article about how to colonize Mars. It rolled around with some other stuff I read about Elon Musk's forty year plan, plus my love of sci fi shows growing up as a kid. One of my favorites was LOST IN SPACE and sure it's a cliche, but danger Will Robinson has become a sort of catch all warning phrase in my household, just as Damn it Jim is something I shout out whenever I get something wrong. Trust me, I do it far too much.
I like these guys a lot, and want to spend some time with them, so I planned out PLANET 9 and PLANET 10 to see what happens. Check for them in a few weeks, and let me know what you think.
This started out as a sci fi comedy short story, and turned into something a little more ambitious and adventurous. I plan for the next two to be a little longer, and maybe with some more science in them. Not like THE MARTIAN, which I found incredible, but just passing references to real theory stuff.
Like the FTL drive they have to go find in Planet 9. Right now, their travel time between space stations is a great way to get in some conversation. I could have shared more detail, but I like Elmore Leonard's approach to scene and character, which is to let the reader paint the picture. But is Faster Than Light travel even possible? Oh man, I can't wait to find out how they do it!
Anyway, I appreciate you reading this book.
You can find me on Facebook and message me, or send me an email at [email protected] if you like.
Stay sexy,
Chris
Have you joined the adventure?
Battlefield Z
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Battlefield Z – Mardi Gras Zombie
Battlefield Z – Bluegrass Zombie
Battlefield Z – Outcast (June 2017)
More adventures in the series
FLYOVER ZOMBIE – a Battlefield Z series
HEADSHOTS – a Battlefield Z series
OVERLAND ZOMBIE – a Battlefield Z series
OTHER WORKS by CHRIS LOWRY
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Mission One
Shadowboxer
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Credible Threat
Moon Men
Super Secret Space Mission
Holy War
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Time Out
Jack’s Wild