Planet 9 (The Dipole series Book 2)

by Chris Lowry

“Your fiancé is still hunting us,” said Tinker.

  “Ex-fiancé,” she corrected.

  “Does that mean he’s on the ship?”

  Bat tried to work the strategy and tactics in his head.

  The tall man made the first move. He lunged toward Bat with a roundhouse punch, the ham sized hand whooshing through the air.

  The guard ducked and lashed out with the tip of his toe. It caught his shin with a crack that sent the big man toppling like a redwood.

  He screamed as he fell.

  The shin bone is little more than skin over skeleton, and the nerve endings number in the thousands. A kick and a scrape turn those nerve endings into tiny little balls of fire that overload the brain with one message.

  PAIN.

  The fact that Bat broke the shin with his kick was a happy accident. That pain message wouldn’t reach the brain until the big man landed.

  The little guy didn’t wait for that to happen.

  He let loose a karate yell and leaped into the air to land a hammer punch with the aid of artificial gravity of the station to give it added power.

  Unfortunate for him, Bat caught him mid-flight, twisted and slammed him into the wall, holding onto his outstretched arm like a hammer throw.

  Before he let go, he twisted again and pounded the little man into the metal deck with a sick crunch on top of the big guy’s wounded leg.

  Both men lay on the floor writhing in agony, their shrieks echoed up the corridor.

  “We should get moving,” said Bat.

  He worked the keypad to enter the dock and stepped through the open doorway.

  After a moment, he noticed the other two weren’t following and he turned.

  “What?”

  “You used that guy like a Billy club,” Tinker stepped over the mewling bodies.

  Mona Lisa followed like she was in a daze.

  “I tried to warn them,” Bat answered.

  “Is that guy’s leg broken?” Tinker paused to examine the foot twisted at an odd angle. “It is. You broke his leg.”

  He hurried past Bat and opened the cargo hatch to the NS-17.

  Bat fell in beside Mona Lisa as they walked into the ship.

  “His orders,” she said. “The bounty on my head. It’s still there. Even though he’s gone, he didn’t send out an order to stop it.”

  She shook her head.

  “They’re going to keep looking,” she sounded worried. “They’re never going to give up.”

  Bat grunted and sat in the jump seat by the door, a spot he had claimed as his own by virtue of occupation.

  “We’ll stop them,” he said. “We’ll stop them all. This favor first and then we’ll take care of it.”

  Mona Lisa nodded, but she didn’t look like she believed him.

  She didn’t think anyone could help her, not even the highly trained mystery in front of her.

  She moved into the cockpit and Junebug got clearance and they took off from the Space Hub.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Tinker settled into the pilot's seat and fished a flask from a cubbyhole under the console. He screwed the top off and took four long loud gulps.

  "Her name is Ming?" he smacked his lips. "That a first name or last name?"

  "Both," Mona Lisa pushed into the seat next to him.

  "How can it be both?" he scowled.

  She shrugged.

  "Ming. It's her name and the name of her family."

  "Ming Ming?"

  "Just one Ming. Mr. Kim referred to her once as Ming the Marauder, but I think he was kidding."

  "Marauder, eh?" Tinker another sip. "Wonder what she looks like."

  "Like a favor," Mona Lisa chided. "Junebug."

  "Mr. Kim has used ICE to send the coordinates of our destination."

  "Good," said Mona Lisa. "I want you to do some research for us."

  She looked over her shoulder. Bat was still in the cargo area but she wasn't sure how long he would stay there. She lowered her voice, just in case.

  "Find me what you can on Bat."

  "Done."

  "Should you be doing that?" Tinker lowered his voice to match hers.

  "Don’t you want to know?"

  "Yeah, but if he finds out-"

  "I am done." Junebug said again.

  "Well?" Mona Lisa stared at the speaker.

  "He is two years old," the AI told them.

  "Do you need to reboot?" Tinker glared. "He's not two. He's at least-"

  It was his turn to look over his shoulder at the cargo hold.

  "How old do you think?"

  "What do you mean he's two?"

  "The records of him are only two years old. From the prison."

  "And before that?"

  "There are no records."

  "But you called him a work of art," said Tinker.

  "I have no memory of that."

  "Yeah, that time you tried to kill us and said you couldn't."

  The lights dimmed for a moment and returned.

  "I am missing a partition," Junebug sounded surprised.

  "Is that possible?"

  "No," the AI answered. "I am a quantum processing based system. Nothing can alter my memory or records."

  "So someone did."

  "Impossible," said the computer. "Tinker, take the helm."

  "Weird," said Mona Lisa.

  "The way I see it, we've got more than one problem."

  "Nope," Tinker argued. "We've got one problem. If we don't do the job, Mr. Kim is going to pop open an airlock while we're in it."

  "You know, you say that a lot. Did something happen to you?"

  "No," Tinker stuttered. "Nothing like that."

  "You can share with us," said Mona Lisa.

  "I don't have anything to say," he shouted and turned back to the console.

  "Sensitive," she said. "What are the other problems?"

  "We have to find a place that's not on any star maps to get a hypothetical engine that might not work, then search for a planet that no one has proven exists to rescue someone we've never met."

  "When you say it like that, it sounds impossible."

  "It is."

  "You’re right," she said. "If we don't do it, Mr. Kim will not be happy. You want we should piss off a man who could squeeze your skull like a grape and pop the insides out through your nose like paste?"

  "Thank you for that descriptive imagery," Tinker moaned. "Man, I am not getting any sleep tonight."

  "I think you'll be alright," Bat said as the pilot fished out the bottle from beneath his seat and took a swallow.

  He'd been on the ship a couple of weeks and as far as he had noticed, Tinker had zero problems nodding off. Even when he wasn't supposed to.

  "I know how we do it," Mona Lisa brought his eyes back to hers.

  "How?"

  "One step at a time."

  "Okay. What's the first step?"

  "I know a guy."

  "Is there any guy you don't know?"

  She shrugged.

  "Millions of them. But I know the important ones."

  "Courtesy of Buster?"

  Her face fell in a grimace of grief and pain. Buster had tried to kill her. Twice. Then he died in a fiery explosion that turned his ship and the bomb on it into space dust.

  Maybe.

  She had planned to kill him, and technically she was responsible for his death, but that didn't mean it didn't hurt.

  "He was connected," she said.

  She was right. His network ran deep. His absence would create a void, and there were a lot of powerplays going on in dark corridors and back rooms on the space stations that dotted the galaxy between earth and Mars.

  She wondered if there was a way for her to fill that void.

  Once the kill order was erased.

  She settled back into the co-pilot’s seat and dreamed dreams of a day when she could stop running as they rocketed through space towards the Red Planet.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The landing was p
icture perfect.

  “Junebug, you’re an excellent pilot,” Mona Lisa said.

  “I’m the pilot,” Tinker grumbled next to her. “She’s just flying the damn thing.”

  Mona Lisa started to debate what he meant, since he was not the one flying the damn thing, but decided to forego it.

  She reached for the communications unit instead.

  A woman answered.

  “I’m trying to reach Jerry?” Mona Lisa stared at the radio in confusion.

  “Jerry’s dead,” the woman snapped. “Who is this?”

  “He’s dead?”

  “Assassinated,” said the woman. “If you can call it that. Someone killed him for no reason. Who is this?”

  Mona Lisa killed the connection and bit her lip.

  “Problem?” Bat asked.

  “Problem,” she said. “Someone killed my connection.”

  “That is a problem,” Bat moved to the entry to the cockpit. He studied the exterior of the ship, and the unpopulated freight dock they had chosen in Mar’s warehouse district.

  Mona Lisa thought he looked like a predator searching for trouble.

  “He was an old man,” said Mona Lisa. “Why would someone kill him?”

  Bat stared at her for a moment, eyes calculating.

  “I know how we’ll get in,” he said in a tired voice.

  “You really don’t want to do this,” she replied. “It’s in your voice.”

  As much as Bat held a poker face most of the time, his voice could give him away if it rose above a growl.

  “We both have memories,” he said.

  “I’ve got memories too,” Tinker added. “Lots of good ones.”

  He leaned toward Mona Lisa and leered.

  “You want to slip into my quarters and make some new ones before we get out there?”

  She shoved him back with a soft punch and moved to follow Bat as he exited the ship.

  Tinker huddled over the keypad next to the hatch as he entered the code to lock up the ship. Mona Lisa rolled her eyes.

  "You know we have radios, right?"

  Tinker took his time looking up at her, making sure he stopped on the twin bulges on the front of her jumpsuit before he locked eyes with her.

  "I don't care what we listen to, as long as I'm dancing close to you."

  She snorted.

  "Radio communication with the ship. Doesn't matter if you hide the combo or tattoo it on the inside of your eyelids, you can't keep us out."

  He straightened up and puffed out his concave chest.

  "I'll have you know I installed a state of the art system that's independent of that computer that took over my computer," he spat. "This works just like the mis-"

  He glanced around and lowered his voice.

  "Missiles I had onboard for the last thing we did. Alleged missiles and allegedly what we did."

  It was Bat's turn to snort.

  He held up a silver cylinder to his lips.

  "Junebug, open the hatch."

  The hatch slid open with an audible hiss as the onboard AI opened the airlock.

  "Damn it!" Tinker groaned.

  "Let's move," Bat said and marched off without waiting to see if they followed.

  Mona Lisa watched him go and glanced at the other ships in the ground based port on the Martian surface. The hold wasn't crowded, just a few techs, pilots and mechanics running around the dozen or so battered crafts.

  She waited for Bat to turn around and counted out the yards as he kept going.

  But he didn't.

  The further away he got, the higher her eyebrows shot up.

  Tinker slid his arm through hers and hooked elbows.

  "Better catch up," he said and tugged her after the prison guard.

  He stopped in front of an elevated mag-train platform and finally turned around. Mona Lisa smirked as Tinker led her up to him.

  "I could have gotten away just then," she said in a sassy voice.

  "I would have caught you."

  "You were two hundred yards away," she explained. "There are a dozen places to hide back there. I could have escaped."

  "Do you want to escape?" he asked.

  She didn't get the chance to answer as an elevated freight car floated next to the platform in a whizzing roar of air and settled down to off load.

  The trio watched automated dolly carts roll off the flat car and trundle toward various parts of the docking station. When they cleared the platform, Bat stepped onto the flat car and waited for Tinker and Mona Lisa to join him.

  "Don't we need tickets?" Tinker asked, nervous.

  "This is going to the base," Bat explained. "Stops next to where we need to be. It's faster and no eyeballs on it."

  "Eyeballs?"

  "Cameras. We don't want to be seen as much as we can help it," the guard explained.

  He stood on spread legs, weight distributed on each foot and waited.

  Mona Lisa adopted a pose to match and kept the smirk plastered to her face.

  "I would have caught you."

  "I'm fast."

  "I'm faster."

  "Not if I've got a head start."

  He shrugged.

  "I would have found you."

  "Not if I don't want you to."

  He locked eyes with her for a minute, dropped the poker face and she almost flinched.

  "I'll always find you."

  Mona Lisa shivered at the way he said it, and tried to hide it from him. He noticed and the poker face went back up again like a mask.

  She was about to ask how, maybe even why when the car took off. Tinker didn't expect it as the cart lurched into motion and sent him teetering toward the edge.

  Bat snatched the sleeve of his jumpsuit and twisted at the hip, sending the pilot in a circle to sit on the metal floor of the magnetic car.

  "Thanks," Tinker gulped.

  "Don't mention it."

  CHAPTER SIX

  The cart slowed down as it approached another platform that stood outside of an eighteen-foot fenced barrier that surrounded the military installation on Mars.

  "Get ready," said Bat.

  "For what?" Tinker asked.

  But Bat hopped off the cart before it reached the platform and landed like a ballerina. Mona Lisa leaped after him and landed with an athletic prowess honed by hours of working out in her prison cell when she had nothing better to do.

  Tinker jumped and was lucky to survive the three-foot fall.

  He rolled, he huffed, he grunted, groaned and threw out seventeen curse words in ten seconds that it took him to flop to a complete stop.

  Then he stood up and dusted off his grime covered flight suit.

  "Ta-de-freaking da," he announced.

  Mona Lisa clapped.

  "Stop fooling around," said Bat and marched them toward a guard house on the far side of the platform.

  "They would have seen us coming," Mona Lisa told him. "And getting off."

  "What are you looking at me like that for?" Tinker examined a scrape on his elbow that made it through the rough canvas patches on his suit.

  "All I'm saying is we weren't being sneaky about it."

  "If we were on the cart at the platform, they would shoot first and forget the questions."

  "No," she said.

  But he nodded.

  "Standing orders. They wouldn't get many visitors riding the rail, so anyone trying to come in that way is the enemy."

  "Aren't we about to steal something from them?"

  "But they don't know that."

  She saw the guards as they approached closer to the guard shack. The two men watched them with bored interest, as if train hopping wasn't that far out of the ordinary, but still a break in routine.

  "Are they going to shoot us now?" Tinker forgot about the scrape and started watching the rifles in the guard's hands instead.

  "They think we're hobos."

  "Hobo's?" Mona Lisa asked.

  "Do they have hobos on Mars? I thought we left them
all behind on earth."

  "There are all kinds on planet," Bat gave them both a look.

  "Are you talking about me?" Tinker put a hand on his chest and acted offended.

  "Are you one of the kinds?"

  "I am one of a kind," he winked at Mona Lisa. "Want to see?"

  "We're here," she announced as they got closer to the guard shack.

  Now the two men could see them better and took a particular interest in her.

  "Let me talk," Bat said out of the corner of his mouth.

  But Mona Lisa had dealt with those looks her whole life, and these men were young, barely more than boys pressed into service. Hormones were raging, and she could see the flush creeping up their cheeks as she stared back at them.

  Her hand drifted up and clasped the seam at the neck of her flight suit and tugged it down to show just a little more creamy white skin.

  Their pink cheeks flared crimson and she flashed a megawatt smile.

  "Hello Boys," she purred as the two men stared at her in hungry rapture.

  "Don't you wish just once you could find someone to look at you like they're looking at her," Tinker whispered to Bat, his eyes glued to the promise of her bosom.

  Bat just grunted.

  He fished a black leather bi-fold out of his pocket and cleared his throat as he opened it.

  One of the guards let an eye drift away from Mona Lisa and settle on the inside of the bi-fold.

  He snapped to attention and shot a hand out to punch his comrade.

  "What the he-"

  His eyes caught the folder in Bat's hand and he stood up like a metal rod shot out of the ground to pound him ramrod straight in the air. He was so fast, his rifle clattered to the ground, but he didn't bother to pick it up.

  "What did you show them?" Mona Lisa pouted, having her fun interrupted.

  Bat folded the bi-fold closed and stuck it back in his pocket.

  "Get someone here to talk," he told the first guard.

  The man didn't know if he should snap off a salute or break speed record to comply so he did a half way job on both. He bounced off the frame of the guard shack, crashed across the desk and fished the phone out of the tattered remnants of what just seconds before had been a small clean office.

  "What's in that damn thing?" Tinker asked.

  The guard dropped the phone and popped out of the doorway to stand at attention.