The Dipole Shield - The Dipole Series sci fi comedy adventure

CHAPTER ONE

The concrete walls were an exercise in monotony. Mona Lisa O'Neil sat on the thin mattress with her legs crossed and stared at them.

Zen, she thought. I'm being Zen.

She'd had that thought for hours on end day after day.

The wall in front of her was eight feet long. Eight feet high. Solid construction with no visible grooves except where it met the ceiling and floor.

Her back leaned against its twin five feet away.

A five by eight space to call her own for the next five years.

At first, she tried to be optimistic about it.

Five years was better than twenty the prosecutor had threatened her with.

Five months into her first year she wasn't so sure.

The cell was unadorned on purpose. Plain.

Not as a form of punishment, but because almost every government facility on Mars was Spartan. On purpose.

Money was better spent elsewhere.

She would know. Millions of those credits had flowed through her hands.

Buster's hands, she corrected.

Although she had a part in it. He was why she was here though.

She made no mistake about that.

Mona Lisa stared at the tiny three-inch port that shot regulated air into the room.

She liked to imagine it was a globe, though she had never seen Earth except in pictures.  She could draw lines in her head for the continents and blue waters, though she had never seen a real ocean.

Never seen a blue sky.

Even with all the money, she had never taken a trip back to earth.

Which preyed on her.

Time alone gave her time to think.

About regrets.

About getting involved with a notorious gangster who ran entire sections of the hubs and space stations that dotted the galaxy between home and Earth.

Regret made her angry.

Angry at him, angry at herself.

So, she practiced Zen. Breathing.

Which she was doing when the door opened and one of the guards peeked in.

"What are you looking at?" she snapped.

Mona Lisa knew she had that look. She had been called beautiful her whole life, a gift from her Irish father and Italian mother and some genetic lottery that made her features perfect by a dozen standards.

The kind of face men went to war over.

"Get up Inmate."

She didn't recognize him, but he did not seem impressed with her looks.

He waited by the door while she slipped her legs over the edge of the bed and stood to stretch, taking her time.

In prison, there's nothing but time and this little distraction, whatever it was, could keep her mind occupied for the next few months.

"Move."

She sauntered to the door, swishing and swaying in a way that drove most male's crazy. Buster had told her once she oozed sexy and she knew exactly what that meant.

And how to work it so she got her way.

The guard stared at her with flat eyes. She wouldn't want to play poker with him either because his face was an emotionless mask.

Unconventionally handsome, she thought as she tried to brush up against him and bring him around.

But he was fast, slipping past her so she was in the hall and he was still in the doorway.

"Right."

He didn't need to point. His was a voice used to giving orders and having them followed.

He stood straight, arms at his sides and towered over her five feet two-inch frame by almost a foot.

Most of the guards kept their hands on the pleather prison issue belts with standard taser guns close by.

Not this one though.

He looked relaxed.

Unconcerned.

It kind of hurt her feelings that he didn't consider her a threat.

"Where are we going?"

She added a suggestive lilt to her voice, a promise of pleasures and innuendo.

"Warden, inmate," he nodded.

That shut her up.

She had seen the Warden once upon being delivered to the penal institution and remembered him as a sweaty scarecrow of a man who got nervous at the sight of her.

But she'd had no reason to be called to his office before.

"Why?" she asked.

But the mask didn't move, didn't tell her anything. The guard just kept staring, waiting for her to follow his orders.

After a moment, she did.

CHAPTER TWO

“Mona Lisa O'Neil," the Warden couldn't look at her. He fumbled with a digital tablet in his sweaty palms.

"Reduced sentence in exchange for testimony against one Buster Ross, aka Buster the Butcher, aka Buster the Balustrade-" he stopped and glanced up at her, licking his lips.

"What's a balustrade?"

Mona Lisa shifted the weight on her five feet two-inch frame from one hip to the other and gave him a practiced go screw yourself look.

It came easy to her beautiful face.

"Never mind," his finger swiped on the screen of the tablet and he stuck his tongue between his lips as he typed in the word.

"How do you spell that?" he asked distracted. "Bali-"

"U," said the guard behind Mona Lisa.

She turned and gazed over her shoulder at him, a look she had given many men with the expectation that they turn to jelly and fall at her feet to offer the sun, the moon and stars at night.

He just gave her a smirk.

"-s-t-r-a-d-e," the Warden finished spelling. "An ornamental- oh."

He glanced up at her, still nervous.

"Why did they call him that?"

"Because he ripped one off one time and used it to beat one of his enemies to death," she said it rough, to see what effect it had on the authority figure in front of her.

He wiped his damp brow again.

"Oh."

"Allegedly," she amended.

"Of course," said the Warden. "And then he tried to kill you."

"He's threatened to destroy the Dipole Shield."

"So," she rolled her eyes. "He's made a lot of threats. It's what he does."

"The Martian government is taking this very seriously," the Warden answered.

"Good for them."

"They are treating it as a terrorist act."

"It sounds like one. But Buster is a big boy."

Folds studied the tablet on his desk, unable to look at her.

"Do you even know what the dipole shield is?"

She shrugged her still toned shoulders, courtesy of constant working out in her cell. That and meditation were her only hobbies, the only thing she was allowed to do.

Prison on Mars wasn't designed like it had been on earth. Since everything was shipped in, and there was a high cost associated with the shipping, prison on Mars was a bare bones operation.

Literally.

The walls were poured concrete. The floors and ceiling the same. All hired out to a minimum bidder who could build the construction and keep it from the Martian atmosphere at a low cost.

No frills meant no television. No books. No movies. No education.

Prison on Mars meant time spent in a single cell. Alone.

Nothing to distract a person from thinking about their crime and counting down the time.

There were a lot of suicides in Martian prison.

But not Mona Lisa.

She worked out.

And practiced her breathing.

If she wanted to die, she would have let Buster succeed in killing her.

Nope, she planned to do her time, and use it to better her inner self, and sculpt her outer self with body weight exercises.

Plus, it gave plenty of time to plan revenge.

"It's what keeps us all safe," the Warden told her.

"Like Space Soldiers?"

"Don't they teach this in school?"

"I didn't pay attention."

He couldn't look at her.

Not out of disgust at her education or lack thereof, but at her sheer beauty. It literally took his breath away and left him a slack jawed catatonic, brain vapor locked as he tried to think of things to say.

Better to not look at all and study the fine contours of the slick tablet on his desk.

"You know, that's the problem with younger generations of Martians," he ran his finger along the edge of the device. "No sense of history." Just pop rock music and wrist communicator selfies."

"Yeah I had plenty of time for both what with the water shortages and weekly food riots."

Fold shifted in his creaky wooden chair.

"That's still no reason to turn to crime," he lectured still not looking. "The government says poor people can still act civilized despite the obstacles they face in fact.

"Warden."

The guard said his name in a tone and manner that made the Warden practically snap to attention.

"Right," Folds sputtered. "Time table."

He swiped the screen of the tablet on his desk and paused.

"The threat is real. Buster is planning to blow up the Dipole Shield. If that happens, all life on Mars is dead."

"So. Go arrest him."

"We can't find him."

"Not my problem."

"You're on Mars."

"In a cell," she said. "What do I care."

"There are fifty million people on this planet."

"So?" she said again.

Folds grunted and glanced over her shoulder to the giant guard towering over her.

"That should make our choice easier."

"What choice?" she asked.

Folds wouldn't make eye contact with her. He studied the tablet again.

"He said we could trade you for the ship the bomb is located on."

Mona Lisa sat up straighter in her chair and gauged the distance to the door. Her heart pounded in her chest as she tried to plot an escape, somewhere to hide.

"What do you mean trade?"

"You versus fifty million," Folds finally looked at her. His forehead was still a dripping mess, but something about the fifty million deaths, including his own allowed him to meet her eyes.

"The math is simple."

"You can't do that," she sputtered.

"I would," he snapped his fingers. "Like that."

The guard cleared his throat. Folds flinched back in his chair.

"But, you get one shot. Forty-eight hours to find that ship and stop him."

"What do you want me to do?"

If she had gum, she'd be smacking it as she glared up at him from under arched eyebrows gone wild during her sentence.

The warden wiped flop sweat from his balding pate as he tried not to stare at errant hairs or her amble bosom pushed up on display over crossed arms.

"Could you zip up?"

She realized his discomfort and shifted forward in practiced ease, putting her closer to him.

"It wasn't a request, Inmate."

The guard behind her was not impressed.

Or was he dead below the waist?

"What are you? Dickless?"

He put a gentle hand on her elbow and eased her inches back from the warden.

"My dick works fine. Now zip."

"Oh yeah?"

She grinned and pressed against him.

"Working now?"

Bat reached down and pulled the zipper up with a loud sound that bounced off the bare concrete walls.

"Zipper works."

"Dickless," she sniffed and put her hands on her hips.

Another practiced move. Too easy.

"Nice act princess," Bat twirled her around to face the warden.

Folds cleared his throat and wiped his forehead with a grungy bandana.

"You're going to stop him."

"Me?" she snorted. "How?"

"You're his fiancé."

"Ex-"

"You still have a connection."

"He tried to have me killed."

The Warden held up a gig stick.

"But he writes you every day."

Her dark eyes flashed.

"You've been holding my email!" she snarled.

Mona Lisa drew her hand back and threw a roundhouse punch at Folds. Bat caught her wrist and twisted her into a spin that brought her into his arms, but forward, her wrist folded up between her shoulder blades.

"That hurts," she whined.

"It's supposed to."

Folds dripped sweat onto the empty desktop. He dropped the tiny portable stick drive into his coat pocket.

"You'll get this when you get back."

She blew a raspberry with her lips.

"You want me to do something for you and in exchange I get what? Mail?"

Folds sat behind his desk putting distance between him and the beautiful woman.

"What else do you want?"

"I want out."

He shook his head.

"I can't let you out."

"Look, from what you're telling me, Buster is going to blow up the planet and kill everybody, right? I think that deserves some freedom."

"I can't do that."

"Then who can?" she glanced over her shoulder. "This guy?"

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