Dusters EIGHTEEN (The End)

Please read this story from the beginning, click on the TAG "Dusters" at the bottom.

Two was met by a company ship the next morning, or when the crew woke up, whatever time it was. All of their logs were copied and removed from the ship. The spooks came and went in a little under an hour. Kelley had announced their presence and then they took over. The design of the remote controlled collector card was also taken. The entire collector system was secured, tagged out.

Fagan was evacuated to the docked company ship, which was designed to go much faster than Two. He was awake and Dinah escorted him out through the docking airlock.

“We did good, eh lady?” He quipped.

“Yeah, we did.” She told him. “When I get back to Earth I want to document this and publish it somewhere.”

“Sure, I can give you a hand.” He said deadpan and winced when he tried to lift the reattached right arm.
She laughed. “Smarty pants, you might want to get them to up your drip if you’re going to be performing.”

“Right, when you get back, look me up.” He told her. “Is Prestmon leaving with me too?” He asked.

“Nope, he’s ok, nothing major.” She answered.

“Oh, no companion on the ride back then. I'll be ok, I need the sleep anyway. See you on Earth, my Lady.”

He was transferred to the company ship with all of the data the company spooks had collected. They didn’t talk much and just went about their business. They headed straight back to Earth.

Once Two returned to Chaffee Dinah hugged Aidyn and almost cried. He told her Geoff had come and gone and has declared the Duster’s program suspended for now. Welhaven was going to pour its resources into perfecting the faster than light speed technology.

They secured everything on Two and Chaffee, shut all systems off except the auto pilot that would hold Chaffee in orbit. They caught a shuttle to Mars, all together.

On the ride, Norrie spoke first. "Um, hey guys. We did something no one has ever been able to do ever." She stood, hunched in the short headroom of the shuttle. "Once by accident and again by our own means. We should be in the fucking history books for that." She held her hands out and everyone slapped them in agreement.

"I will make sure that happens Norrie, and I promise to all of you too." Dinah said. "I already have plans to get that done and I will look everyone of you up for comments and quotes."

"I like it better when you have a plan." Norrie said, and she slapped Dinahs hand and sat down. Everyone was smiling and nodding. They knew this team was over, but were all proud of what they did.

Dinah and Aidyn spent two weeks on Mars before they could catch a company transport back to Earth with Norrie and Prestmon. Everyone else had found new company jobs there, around Mars.

Dinah asked Norrie is she wanted to help document deepest manned space the trip in history and she declined. “Fagan can cover anything I can.” She told Dinah.

She also talked to Prestmon to get some details of the whole drone incident and captured notes. The prybar is not standard issue or a normal tool kept on any ship, he said he just found this one to be pretty useful to have around. He took it on every job.


When they arrived to work on the tale, Dinah and Fagan documented their experience and submitted it to several news agencies. They kept it as secret as possible because Welhaven had already announced their accomplishment as being the first company to break the speed of light and a world record manned deep space mission. Welhaven omitted the fact that it was all a mistake.

Several agencies wanted verification of Dinah's version and took a few days contacting Norrie and Opoku for confirmation. Once they had that, they ran the story and Dinah had her 15 minutes of fame, with Fagan at her side.

Welhaven couldn’t stop their campaign legally, but they did send some “people” by to talk to Fagan and Dinah individually.

For the next year, Dinah and Fagan had a tryst, but it didn’t last. It ended amicably. A few months after it ended, they were awarded a Science Accomplishment Award, which only Dinah could attend. Fagan was off on a mission. She granted him full credit with Norrie at his side to accomplish what they did, by design.

Welhaven did eventually “perfect” the Faster Than Light (FLT) technology, and after a few snags that only killed a few people, it became the standard. They sold the technology to the military and commercial interests, and paid off Dinah, Fagan and Norrie with a onetime bulk check.


Man then entered the age of interstellar travel, and everything changed. That would be a different story though.

The End

(If you read this, drop me a comment, question or suggestion please. I am just wondering if I am wasting my time writing fiction here. It was good to get a version, any version, of this story down on “paper”. It has been bouncing around in my mind since 1978 and now it’s out.)