Beam Back Barney (working title)

By Daniel J. Pool & Quentin Ponagratatazengamolattepolosoloawesomegoodtimeyeah

Chapter One

“Boom Boom BLAM Boom!” crashed the unlucky starship against the hull.

“Wam! SLAM! Bar! Dink!” spattered a bulkhead as a missile blew up a section of the
undercarriage.

Barney lay awake in his bunk, unable to sleep. The battle outside was now into its fifth
hour and he had had enough. With vigor he stood up, banged his head on the bunk above his, and
pulled back the makeshift curtains over his porthole.

“Shut up! SHUT UP!” Barney threw his fists into the air as he shouted and made obsec
hand gestures at passing starships. “Don’t you know there are engineers who have to go to work
in three hours! Grrarr!”

“Barney I am trying to sleep. They can’t hear you anyway.” sounded an exhausted voice
from the top bunk.

Barney looked back to Linus and continued to unbutton his pajama bottoms.

“It makes me feel better at least.” Said Barney as he rose a full moon into the porthole.

“You’re ridiculous.” replied Linus.

Boom Boom ba-BOOM!

“HAHAHAHA!!! Did you see that? I mooned one and the guy steered straight into a
missile! That was classic.”

“Barn I am trying to sleep, we had an extra long shift and I am exhausted, please can we
try and get some sleep?” Linus pleaded.

“You know I have trouble sleeping through battles. There are so loud.” replied Barney
still staring out at the flashes of explosions.

“Really? They are in space. No sound in space remember?”

“I can hear it when they hit our ship.” said Barney as he pulled his bottoms back on.

“Ok ok, can you at least stop shouting? You’re waking the whole deck up.”

Looking down the corridor Barney could see angry eyes flashing from behind bunk
privacy curtains.
 “ Like you said, we have to go back in three hours.” Remarked Barney as he started to
creep back into his bunk to avoid the crews stares.

BLAM! KAPOW! BOOM!

“Oh God… Was that the main reactor?” Linus groaned.

“BOOM! Hsssssssssssssssssss-ke!” retorted the pipe above Linus’ head as a red light
began to blink indicating that all of engineering was to report to posts.

“It was… Thank you Halmari Republic. What would I do without you?”

“Be homeless.” Barney replied.

“I didn’t ask you.” snorted Linus as he hopped out of bed and into his blue Tharkka
Incorporated jump suit. “You know back on Eden Prime I could have been somebody. Had a
normal life, had a normal family, but Noooooo. I am stuck on a Titan class dreadnought, in the
middle of the butt-crack galaxy, with you.”

“What’s wrong with me? I like me. Why just yesterday I looked in the mirror and you
know what I told me?” said Barney through smug teeth.

“What?” asked Linus.

“You’re cute. Just like that.” beamed back Barney.

“Would you two shut it already?” grumbled a scratchy voice from a nearby bunk.

A brick shit-house named Roff slide out of his bunk, coming eye to eye with Linus. The
Tarsian’s orange leather skin glistened in the low lamp light. Lasting the air he zipped up his
jump suit and headed for the door.

Sharing a glance Barney and Linus decided it was best to be useful instead of dead today.
They finished dressing and started to head to the door when Barney turned back.

“Barn? Where are you going?”

“I can’t leave Mittens with no food.” He said nearing next to his bunk. Grabbing a box of
kibble from under his mattress, Barney pulled back some of his sheets and poured the contents of
the box into a dish.

“I really wish you wouldn’t keep that thing here. It hasn’t been through quarantine, you
don’t know how many diseases it could be carrying.” Linus scoffed.

“Relax; something this cute can’t possibly be dangerous.” Barney said as a hairless
opossum with black talons and a beak snatched the box from Barney’s hand and began eating the
cardboard and plastic. “Dang it Mittens, you’ve grown! Be good for daddy, ok?”
 “Grrazzz.” snapped back Mittens, backing into a corner holding the box against its chest.

“We are so dead if Command hears about him.” Linus said as the couple trotted down the
hall.

“Come on man, live a little.” Barney joked as he nudged Linus.

“Really? You’re the one who lives a “little” too much wouldn’t you say? I mean how
rotund are you now?”

“Just a 2X now, for comfort you know.” jabbered Barney’s jowls.

“Many more donuts ‘n beer and you will be wearing a Tarsian’s jump suit.”

“Shut it Linus.” huffed back Barns.

The squabbling pair continued to chat until passing the flight deck. A crowd of cheering
aeronautic mechanics and flight controllers were hovering over a smoking GR-34. The oversized
star-fighter looked like a cat that had gotten stuck in a meat grinder. A smoldering decal of a red
hawk gripping a sword was painted on the side of the cockpit.

“Damn aeronuts, they couldn’t fix a microwave and they get all the glory.” Linus said
looking down on the rough lot below.

“That’s her Linus!” screamed Barney pointing; his eyes glazing over like much of his
colon.

From the top of the cockpit a dashing blonde, whose flight suit was a bit too small for a
lady, stood cheering with the crowd. Holding her helmet up she drove them into a frenzy.

“Would you stop staring, we are already late. Besides, she is already spoken for.” Said
Linus as a green flight suited man with a long flowing mane climbed over the crowd to kiss the
warrior woman.

“That two-bit chump? He doesn’t have anything on me.” scoffed Barney.

“No nothing; just a license to fly, a squadron of lighten eating gorillas, and a pile of
metals. No sir he has nothing on you at all.”

“Just merit badges, I am a real man. Stupid Phillip McCool. What kind of name is that
anyw…“ Barney was stopped mid-sentence as a wall of Christmas tree metals and badges
suddenly smacked him in the face.

“Watch where you walk maggot!” yelled a red faced general, “And GET BACK TO
WORK!”

Running the pair reached the reactor room, “Please don’t get us fired into space today. I
am too beautiful to die Barns.” pleaded Linus.
 The sliding grey doors of the reactor peeled back to reveal a hailstorm of sparks and fire.
A portly dwarf stood on the entrance catwalk distributing jobs. Barney and Linus began to creep
off to one side to start working discreetly.

“HOWARD! SULLIVAN! Down in front. Now!” spat the little man.

Rejected the two crossed over to face the bearded man. His eyes were hiding under fluffy
eye brows and a cigar hung out of his beard, unlit.

“Yes sir, reporting for duty sir.” snapped the two, coming to attention.

“You’re late, just like the last 800 days in this tub.” barked the diminutive man.

“Why sir, we didn’t know you cared so much for us that you counted the days.” Barney
remarked.

“That’s quite enough out of you private.” Turning his gaze to Linus, and back to Barney
he continued, “I count the days I have to spend with you two by etching hash marks into the
bulkhead I sleep under. I count the days here by pulling out one of my hairs for every stupid
thing you break…”

“That’s why he is going bla…” Linus started before receiving a smack across his knee
cap. “Oww.”

“One more smart-assed remark and you too will be on external painting duty without
helmets!” this miniature boiler was officiously ready to blow when a hollow voice crackled
through a com-link on Sergeant Benton’s wrist.

“Sir, we found the leak, but it is internal.” sounded the electric-shaky voice.

“Well now, I think I have just the men for the job.” said Benton through a hard smile.
“Boys! Suit up!”

Standing in front of the maw of fire, Barney and Linus shared a look of terror through
their yellow hazard suits. The ill-fitting radiation suits slunk off at different angles, the pair
desperately tightened their PNA’s (personal nuclear armor).

“Godspeed boys!” cheered Benton over the com-link.

“He is too happy about this.” muttered Linus, making his first steps into the reactor core.

The orange cylinder of glass and steel hung suspended in a anti-gravity chamber,
spinning on its axis in concordance with the needs of the ship. Lightening shot out both ends, to
be collected directly into photonic-ion-collectors (PICs). Though the design was instrumental in
the advances in modern science, it also was instrumental in the advances of Barney and Linus’s
bowel movements. The stink of fear filled them and their PNA’s as they edged closer to the
repulsor lift door into the core.
 “Linus, I want you to know something if we should be vaporized.”

Looking at the shielded helmet of Barney, “What’s that buddy?”

“I was the one that stole your underwear, and ate the last of your care-package cookies.”

A solemn glance passed between the two and then they returned their eyes to the cylinder
of fire before them.

“If we live through this, I am going to kill you.” Linus replied.

“That’s what I like to hear! Now get in there before we all fry!” offered Benton.