guns ricocheted through the cabin and the cargo hold, shattering the glass Khan held in his hand. Unfazed, the businessman calmly brushed the broken glass off of himself.

“Got a bottle of soda pop?” Baloo inquired.

“In the refrigerator under the bar.”

Baloo opened the refrigerator door. It was fully stocked. “Hey, nice setup ya got here, Khan. I been beggin’ Becky ta get me a fridge.” He popped the cap off of an Orange Fizzie, took a swig, and placed his thumb over the opening. He headed for the cockpit while shaking the bottle vigorously. “Oh, Auto, you’ve been working too hard. It’s time you cooled off.” Removing his thumb from the bottle’s lip, he sprayed soda all over the robot.

The Auto Aviator sparked and shorted out. With a loud BANG, its arms blew off. The remainder of the body collapsed in the seat - an useless hunk of metal.

“Barbarian!” Martin Torque growled, seizing Baloo’s nose and ear in his frustrated fury.

“Quiet, Professor, let a real pilot handle this.” Khan forcefully shoved Torque into the cargo hold.

Baloo saluted Khan and hopped into the co-pilot’s seat.

Outside, a swarm of CT-37s surrounded Shere Khan’s plane.

“Hmm...that ugly pilot machine looks like Baloo,” Don Karnage mused over the radio.

Baloo dove the plane sharply and maneuvered sideways between two closely set mountains. Guns blazing, a few foolish air pirates tried to follow, but ended up crashing into the mountains. The ones that crashed had to bail out of their smashed-up planes.

Mad Dog, Karnage’s right wing-man, whined over the radio, “Funny, he also flies like Baloo.”

“Attack!” Karnage commanded the remaining pirates.

Two pirates tried to follow as Baloo rolled the plane and skimmed the side of a mountain. However, they smashed their planes into the mountain.

“No, no, no! Shoot the bear, not your own disgusting selves!” Airplane parts from the pirates’ smashed planes rained down around him. Karnage was bonked in the head by a tailpipe. That was the last straw. It was painfully obvious that they had lost the dogfight. “My wonderfully brilliant mind tells me it may be time for a strategic withdrawal.”

“Say what?” Mad Dog whined. He was the only pirate besides Karnage whose airplane was still intact.

“Run away!” Karnage answered.

While the pirates made their hasty retreat, Baloo leveled the plane out.

“That was more than adequate,” Khan said.

“Thanks, Khanny, ya oughtta see me when I’m really adequate.” Baloo grinned.

Khan raised an eyebrow at the pilot’s inappropriate statement. “Yes, I can imagine. Excuse me a moment.” He stalked back into the cargo hold to where Torque was cowering in a corner with his arms shielding his head. “You have disappointed me, Professor. Worse, you have deceived me. But I have a solution.”

“You...you have?” Torque stuttered, peeking between his fingers.

“You give me all my money back, and I’ll return all of your cretinous contraptions.” He picked the professor up by the lapels of his suit and dangled him out of the cargo hold door, giving Torque a discomfiting view of the landscape far, far below. “Tell me, how does that sound?”

“Sounds fair! Sounds fair!” Martin Torque agreed quickly.

Louie’s Place
The Next Afternoon

The usual group of pilots were crowded around Louie’s bar, listening intently to Baloo’s story about his previous day’s encounter with the air pirates.

“Yeah, I showed them pirates a thing or two or three. There I was...six, noseven pirates zoomin’ in. Machine guns blazin’! Bullets rippin’ through the cockpit. It was up to me to save Khan. So, I take down that robot an’ take over the controls. Visibility is less than zero. Can barely make out the mountains by the lightnin’ flashes. I zig right. I zag left. I do a reverse Immelman/pretzel twist combo around the treacherous terrain. The pirates crash one by one into the mountains. Ha! Ha! Ol’ Karny took off like a dog with his tail between his legs.”

Louie sighed dramatically. “Does this mean that we’ll hafta hear this story forty-seven more times, cuz? Don’t know if I can handle it.”

“Hey!”

The pilots laughed at the big bear’s crestfallen expression. A couple of freelancers clapped Baloo on the back. Even Khan’s pilots gave Baloo friendly smiles.

Over the radio, Dog Rather began discussing the Auto Aviator and the recent turn of events. Finally, the reporter said the words they were longing to hear: “Dateline Cape Suzette. Khan Industries has reported that it has junked all its robots. Pilots are to return back to work.”

A collective cheer went up from the pilots.

Louie handed the big bear a photograph. “Baloo, would you do the honors?”

“Don’t mind if I do.” Baloo ripped the Auto Aviator’s picture from the Wall of Fame and tacked his own picture up.

Beaming with pride, Kit hugged Baloo. His Papa Bear was the best pilot in the world again as it should be. “I just remembered. You never said where Professor Torque ended up.”

Baloo shrugged. “Gone back to the drawin’ board, I guess.”

Thembria

A howling, sub-zero wind whipped a blizzard into Martin Torque’s face as he stood, shivering, on a railway station platform, miles from anywhere. He had lost all feeling in his extremities hours ago. Behind him were the Auto Aviators, now dressed in pink frilly caps and aprons. They had been reprogrammed to perform household chores.

A woolly musk oxen, its grey fur encrusted with snow, pulled a hay wagon. It stopped before the station. Several warthogs slid off of the hay to the ground. With a loud snort, the ox took off for the next station.

With chattering teeth, Martin Torque began his sales pitch. He had to make this one count. The ‘train’ only passed by once every five hours. “Yes, ladies, it’s the amazing new Mechano Maid. They’ll sweep, clean...” an Auto Aviator bonked him on the head with a broom; “thaw your oven.”

One woman stopped for a few seconds, then moved on quickly. It was too cold to stand there for very long, and she didn’t have any money to spend on worthless robots anyway.

“Step right up. Please?” Martin Torque begged as the woman walked away. He was left alone on the cold station platform with his unfeeling robots for company.

The End

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