Star Trek: Bendross
Space Cowboy

By
Jay P. Hailey
And
The Bendross Players

 

"I'm a sssspppaaaaaccceee Cowboy, I bet you weren't ready for that. I'm a spaaccceee cowboy and Sure, I know where it's at, hey hey hey!" Hamilton sung

"Would you please knock that off?" Rudy asked exasperated.

Hamilton grinned at him. "Hey Rude-man. Relax. We're going to be doing this for a while."

"That's what I'm afraid of." Rudy sighed.

Hamilton looked at the screens carefully. The Tug had a serial number. It was called Tug Three. It was from the Bendross 1, and so the official were calling it Tug 1-3.

Hamilton called it Cecil, which had the advantage of being easier to remember.

Hamilton looked at the patched in LIDAR reading. Cecil didn't come with LIDAR, Hamilton had to fake it. It also didn't originally have a laser canon, but Hamilton and Tristan were able to rig that up as well.

Now Hamilton and his co-pilot Rudy were blazing a trail back out into the Bendross system. The colony needed to find a decent asteroid to eat and soon.

The Tug was a fat cylinder with three legs. At the end of each leg there was a fusion rocket modified with a CDP Drive. That was a factory mod.

Cecil's three legs were tied together with circular metal hoops. This is where he'd hold cargo pods.

The Cargo pod Hamilton and Rudy carried was filled with air, water food and other supplies. It was also their makeshift bunk room.

Hamilton looked at the bulkhead of the tug. "Maybe I can convince some of the cuties on the Bendross 1 to pose for me."

Rudy looked sideways at Hamilton. "That's going to happen."

Hamilton sighed. "Now I know why truck drivers have all the pin ups. This is boring."

Rudy nodded. "Agreed."

Hamilton waiting for a while, scanning his LIDAR screen.

Then he spoke again. "So. Tell me about your life."

Rudy looked at him. "What?"

"Like there's anything else to talk about?" Hamilton explained.

"What part of my life?" Rudy asked.

"Whatever's interesting." Hamilton said.

"You definitely need to learn some interrogation techniques. Ham." Rudy said shaking his head.

"I'm not interrogating you." Hamilton replied "If I were, I'd be asking you about the location of the Death Star Plans."

Rudy looked out the window and growled "Help me, Obi Wan. You're my only hope."

Hamilton shrugged "Okay. Which one was your favorite?"

"The original, of course." Ruddy sniffed. "You can't beat the hair."

"I liked the Jedi-Matrix, myself." Hamilton said.

Rudy rolled his eyes "That was total, cheesy, geeks-ploitation, and you know it."

"Sure." Hamilton nodded "I'll concede that it was as dumb as a box of hammers, but it was funny."

Rudy looked at Hamilton dubiously.

"I don't think I have ever laughed as hard as when Keneau Reeves said 'Dude, I'm a Jedi!'." Hamilton explained.

"That was bad, but immediately after that it breaks into a bollywood dance number. I have never been able to sit through that." Rudy griped.

"What, no. Even stoned?" Hamilton asked.

"I watched that thing on designer drugs that cost tens of thousands per hit. Nothing ever improved it." Rudy said.

"You're problem is that you're humor impaired," Hamilton said. "Dude," he added with a decent Keaneu Reeves impression.

Rudy nodded "I've been told that. But I find I have lower limits past which stupid is just stupid."

Hamilton grinned again. "No wonder you left Earth."

Rudy grinned back and was about say something about Irony when the contact Buzzer went off.

Straightening out immediately the two men took stock of their prey.

"I have one stealth nuke at 16,000 kilometers." Hamilton said.

"Confirmed, that's one Stealth nuke. I am marking it's location and scanning for any of his buddies." Rudy said.

"Starting burn to close with the Stealth nuke now." Hamilton said.

At Hamilton's touch, the Cecil moved towards the stealthy nuclear device.

"I'm not seeing any buddies getting ready to bounce us." Rudy said.

"Good, we'll go ahead and engage." Hamilton said. "Arm the Laser cannon."

"Okay. Laser Cannon armed." Rudy replied.

"Count me down to weapons range."

"14,000 kilometers." Rudy read off.

A few seconds later. "13,000 Kilometers."

"Stay on Target." Hamilton said, deadpan.

"The Force is weak with this one." Rudy smirked. "12,000 kilometers."

"Alright, Getting LIDAR lock." Hamilton dialed in the sensors.

"11,000 Kilometers" Rudy read off.

"Alright, turning flight control over to you, Rudy. Don't hit anything." Hamilton said calmly.

"Acknowledged. No ramming speed." Rudy Replied.

Hamilton and Rudy both activated the controls that witched flight control with smooth ease. Almost as if they'd practiced.

"Range is 10,000 kilometers." Hamilton read. "Correcting for speed of light delay and kentucky windage."

"You're go." Rudy nodded.

"Firing." Hamilton finessed the Laser cannon's aim and pressed the firing control. The Laser beam pumped energy out.

On the screen the LIDAR signature of the mine changed. "Activity." Hamilton said.

"The Laser should destroy it." Rudy said.

"Might take a bit." Hamilton said. "Why don't you slow us down relative to the mine."

"How much?" Rudy asked.

"All the way. Hurry." Hamilton said.

Rudy activated the proper controls and pushed the throttle all the way open. The Tug seemed to stand upside down.

"Mine is closing." Hamilton said. "Range 8,000 kilometers. Accelerating."

"Keep firing." Rudy said tensly.

"Ooooh, yeah." Hamilton said. He struggled to keep the beam focused on the moving target.

"Is it Evading?" Rudy asked.

"With the changes in relative motion it might as well be." Hamilton said grimly. "There we go."

"What's the range?" Rudy asked. He sounded constrained because he was hanging by the seatbeat in a chair that felt upside down.

"5,000." Hamilton sounded absolutely normal. This was nothing to the maneuvers a fighter plane pulled.

"Should I evade?" Rudy asked.

"Hold us Steady. I think I can get it." Hamilton could see the Mine's stealth coating starting to flake off. "Can you give me a little more power to the laser?"

Rudy shut off the interior lights. The were bathed in an almost Christmas like glow from the controls.

"Thanks for the thought." Hamilton said. "4,000 kilometers."

"Is that thing gaining on us?" Rudy asked, his voice was calm but his skin felt cold and clammy

"Yup." Hamilton said. Now he could see the shape of the mine start to deform.

As the mine approached 3,000 kilometers in range suddenly the LIDAR was whited out. Hamilton and Rudy could see a painfully bright spark out the windows of the Tug.

Hamilton took a deep breath. "I think that got that one."

Rudy eased the throttles closed and the space tug seemed to right itself. "I'll, uh? I'll put us back on course." Rudy said.

Hamilton nodded. "Good. You did alright, Rudy."

Rudy nodded "Thanks. How about we come to a stop relative to the next mine before we engage it?"

Hamilton briefly calculated the energies required. They were stupendous. But with it's fusion reactor the space tug had plenty. "Yeah. Sounds like a plan."

-*-

Two days later Rudy and Hamilton had already discovered every possible way they could annoy each other and were coming through the other side.

"Okay, we're approaching asteroid one on our list." Hamilton said. A recorder was running and the comm-system was relaying their worlds back to Bendross III. It would take about 45 minutes for the comm-laser to carry their words to the Bendross III so whatever happened, they were on their own.

"Scanning the asteroid with LIDAR now." Rudy said. He keyed up the controls and set the laser scanner on Cecil playing across the asteroid.

The sensors gathered data as Cecil coasted towards it's rendezvous with the Asteroid.

"Getting a good read now." Hamilton reported. "The Asteroid is approximately 3 kilometers long by 2 kilometers wide. It's rotating. It looks like a giant potato."

"That's good scientific observation there." Rudy said.

"Mmmm. French Fries." Hamilton sighed.

Then he looked more closely. "Okay, it appears as if out target has a small companion."

Rudy looked at him

Hamilton thought. "I need to make sure that it's not a weapon or a danger of some kind. So we'll apply the LIDAR to the companion object and try to identify it. Then we'll complete the mission objective to scan the asteroid."

Hamilton carefully moved the focus of the sensor to the new object. "It seems to be about 300 meters long by about 100 meters wide."

As they closed He used the ship's computer to make some calculations. "Something's wrong. The mass isn't reading right."

"Range is 5,000 Kilometers" Rudy announced.

"Oh my dipsy doodle." Hamilton breathed. "Bendross III, I hope you're seeing this."

He turned his screen so that Rudy could see it. "I am reading a regular outline. We have an artifact, here."

"I'll bring us to a halt relative to the asteroid." Rudy said.

"Good idea." Hamilton said. "Bendross III I do not recognize the outline. We have an unknown object."

 

-end-

Jay P Hailey

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