Free America One: War of the Worlds by T. I. Wade Page B

aboard, but the chance was that he had his own bottle aboard somewhere. Maybe Ryan had made it a joke directed at Jonesy.
    “Suzi, I honestly think my husband is going deaf,” continued Maggie once Jonesy had closed down the intercom communications.
    “Going deaf? I thought he had always been deaf, he certainly acts like it,” VIN’s wife replied with him trying to keep a straight face. “My husband would certainly not break any rules. Maggie, lets watch that old Gravity movie from 2014. I quite like that actress, whatever her name was.”
    The cockpit aboard SB-III had changed somewhat for this journey. Having a team of builders who could change the interior of the shuttles at a moment’s notice was certainly a benefit. The two rear jump seats had been taken out and exchanged for two more comfortable chairs that could turn into sleeper beds with straps for sleep.
    Astermine One , the mining ship had an interior the size of a small mini-van inside the cockpit. SB-III was 50 percent bigger. Their luggage was stacked in the small area between the cargo bay door, which was sealed and the rear of the docking port. There were several cubic feet of hanging space and room for bags on top of a 60-day frozen food storage unit. Here was where Maggie was dying to search for Jonesy’s bottle. She would bet her whole pay check to Mars and back that it was stashed inside there somewhere. She was wrong. Both VIN and Jonesy had found new places to keep their luxuries hidden.
    Their water supplies were stocked inside the wall of the ship, between the cockpit and forward cargo bay. It had once been a fuel tank, but had been changed into a water tank decades earlier.
    On the opposite side of the docking port which was in front of this wall, behind the two rear seat/beds was an upright freezer where 100 days of food supplies were stored, as well as the space toilet and bag bath unit, a separate compartment in the rear corner of the starboard side of the cockpit.
    There certainly hadn’t been many places a bottle could have been stored, but Maggie had forgotten that zero degree temperatures didn’t hurt alcohol, just made it less fluid.
    It was a week later into the flight that Jonesy was caught with his hidden bottle, well placed at the rear of the upright freezer, and underneath hundreds of food pouches.
    He was on guard and VIN, his partner had nodded off, or looked like he had nodded off in the right seat. Their wives were sound asleep, and had been for a couple of hours before he carefully undid his seat belt and metal shoes, and floated towards the freezer. He made sure that he was as silent as possible, and moved very slowly towards the rear of the cockpit. He knew the door was quiet when it was unlatched, but this time it made the smallest of squeaks and he looked around to see VIN’s eyes open and staring at him.
    Jonesy put his finger to his lips and dug underneath the pouches. The food pouches had tiny metal exteriors that made them stick to each other in a magnetic environment, and carefully, and once he had his hand sliding in underneath that shelf’s pouches, he silently pulled up his bottle.
    “Why don’t you offer all of us a sip over dinner tomorrow night,” suggested Maggie loudly, turned over and went back to sleep. Suzi also smiled as Maggie said her piece. It had been fun keeping their eyes on General Jones for the last week. She also looked forward to his bottle, as she would open her secret stash towards the end of the flight in a few months when the men needed a shot the most.
     
    “ SB-V to SB-III, also to all shuttles, we have something on the extreme edge of our long distance radar ,” stated Kathy Richmond over the intercom about a month after Jonesy’s bottle had gone dry. They were seven weeks into the flight, had about 100 days left and were really in the middle of nowhere.
    The larger shuttles had slightly more powerful radar systems, and nothing appeared on Jonesy’s monitor.
    “Mine is