The longer Moira watches, the less sign the ranger shows of relinquishing the terminal anytime soon. Any moment now, someone else might happen down this side corridor and spot Moira where she lurks in this alcove. Who knows, by now, she may well have been spotted on a surveillance monitor somewhere.
She switches the Attaché into silent mode, summons forth the Franchise's familiar blueprint and strangles a curse against improvisation.
A quick sweep of the surrounding area reveals no additional security terminals anywhere within easy sneaking distance. In theory, all Moira really needs is an open portal, somewhere she can interface the Attaché directly into the Franchise's computer systems. A security terminal would obviously by the ideal choice but, given her dilemma, she may need to lower her standards a touch.
By widening the search, Moira instantly locates half a dozen public access terminals. Designed for use by the rank and file of the Franchise's crew, several are within easy reach of her current location. These would requires a little elbow grease, on Moira's part, to gain unfettered access to the primary ship's computer; not impossible and certainly preferable to kickboxing a spice ranger plates of hardened chitin for skin.
Moira makes her choice – the employee's console in the cargo deck's breakroom. A short walk, made a little longer by her paranoid need to circumvent the spice ranger entirely, is all that separates her from her alternate plan. She stores her Attaché, collects her breath and she's off, padding quietly back the way she came, happy to leave the spice ranger behind.
On her detour, Jesbra Thoi navigates a narrow hallway, lined with holograms of company figureheads. She sidesteps to avoid a forkdrift and its redskin driver, the bulky machine an eyesore against its swanky surroundings. She crosses an exquisite Vhaseen sand garden, following the path of glowing yellow stepstones through the meticulously tended work of art.
Her detour is a short one, however, and soon enough, Moira's standing in the doorway to the cargo deck's breakroom. Why she'd expected somewhere dank and stale-smelling, she'd no idea, considering how upscale the rest of the ship's interior is. The breakroom is more an extravagant lounge, complete with the same plush furniture, polished hardwood and stainless thermosteel – nothing but luxury for even the Franchise's meanest crewmembers.
Constructed elegantly into the wood of the central table are public access consoles before each place setting.
Taking the nearest seat, Moira works quickly to unsheath the Attaché and connect the device. While she waits for the two computers to get acquainted, she taps her fingers idly on the wood and frets a little, praying the interface isn't too challenging to navigate.
True to form, the Franchise's mainframe is streamlined and sleek, especially when compared to the dated and choppy protocols aboard The Unconstant Lover.
Once the connection's established, Moira undertakes the much more onerous task of locating a single file on an Attaché once owned by both Two-Bit Switch and Nehel Morel. When a basic file search fails to unearth the necessary item, it becomes a prolonged and aggravating hunt, scrolling through heaps of documents, files and downloads, all with infuriating names like “Stuff” and “Thing I Wanted To Save” and “Another Thing”.
After much ado, she stumbles across “My Evil Paln 7” and curses that fateful spelling error. Eager to commence with the chaos, Moira doubletaps the icon with a finger and, on instinct, pull her hands away from the device, as though expecting a sudden shock.
A moment later, all she sees is a progress bar.
She reaches for her belted comm, the fancy new one purchased to compliment her costume, with the intent to buzz Nemo a quick few blips, the agreed-upon signal to stand by. Her hand doesn't touch metal, however, before the door breezes open and somebody walks into the break room.
Moira stops dead.
He's an Ondo, of the chalky white skin and the prominent forehead. He's cargo deck crew, of the workaday uniform and the slouched shoulders of defeat. With a weary sigh, he shuffles into the break room, gives the place the once over and, upon spying Moira, nods curtly from the chin. “Hey.”
Moira has no possible other response. “Hey.”
Conversation achieved, the Ondo heads to the chiller, inspired by long habit rather than actual hunger. He throws open the door and stands there several seconds, face aglow from the chiller's light and seeming to expect something delicious to come parading out to meet him.
It would cost Moira very little effort to rise from her chair and crush his esophagus with a Clutching Vyroshek before he could make a peep. Short of cramming the corpse in a nearby cupboard, however, this would leave her zero alibi for when the next crewmember wanders in and discovers Jesbra Thoi, sitting quietly before her Attaché, a dead Ondo at her feet.
Excluding murder, then, all Moira can really do is deactivate the hologram mode on the Attaché, pray he doesn't come close enough to examine the contents of her screen and keep her proverbial cool.
His arm propped on the open chiller door, he turns toward Moira and sloshes a definitely expired carton of lonktonk nog at her. “This yours?”
“No,” answers Moira truthfully.
“Doesn't have a name.” He examine the carton closely. “Bloom it. I won't tell if you won't.”
He throws back a few swallows, wipes his mouth on his sleeve and peers appraisingly at the carton and its waterline of remaining nog. With a pleased shrug, he screws the cap back on and tosses it carelessly back into the chiller.
The progress bar reads 12%.
Meanwhile, the Ondo stoops to retrieve a plastolieum container filled with unappetizing brown sludge. He boots the chiller closed, tosses his meal into the nukebox and spends the intervening seconds while his lunch cooks, gazing dumbly about the room and tapping his long fingers against the counter.
It doesn't take long for his gaze to fall on Moira. His alien brow creases into a scowl.
“You new?”
“Uh,” stammers Moira, her ironshod alias suddenly wispy and translucent. “Transfered. From the Trademark.”
“Oh, sure,” the Ondo recognizes, nodding. “You're from Gunnery. That's cool.”
“Yep.”
Moira could hurdle across the table and collapse his ribcage beneath a flying stomp. Moira could pitch the Attaché across the room and shatter most of the bones of his face. Moira would risk the noise, damn the whole caper and pepper him full of ditrogen craters – until she remembers she, for some reason, agreed to come here fucking unarmed.
The Ondo makes a half-hearted wave. “Frebb.”
“Jesbra,” Moira answers, too quickly. “Hi.”
The nukebox bleats once. Frebb spins around, retrieves his steaming bowl of slimy something and chooses a spot at the table infuriatingly close to Moira's own. He doesn't bother with utensils, simply hunching heavily over his meal and blowing the steam away. Moira, meanwhile, avoids eye contact and any excuse for further small talk, staring fixedly at the Attaché's screen.
Soon as his meal's cooled to his satisfaction, the Ondo extends his worm-like black tongue and proceeds to scoop the slime into his open mouth, gazing around the room with the utter vapidity of the working class moron. A thought gradually occurs to Frebb as he eats and the scowl that comes to his face arrives with all the speed of a glacier.
“How come you're down here, then? If you're Gunnery.”
She wonders how he'd react were she to answer truthfully, that she's really Moira Quicksilver and she's here to steal the galaxy's greatest secret out from under his and everybody else's noses. Part of her almost does fess up, to necessitate killing him and ending this odious and nerve-wracking conversation.
Instead, she points to the progress bar. “Had to use the console,” she explains, trying to sound as mildly contemptuous as she can, to discourage him from pestering her any further. “One upstairs's busted.”
“Yeah?” grunts the Ondo. “Typical.” With a finger, Frebb activates the console installed in the table before his seat and begins surfing thr
ough the ship's internal channels. “Pieces of shit.”
The progress bar reads 16%.
“It's such buhoxshit,” Frebb starts to complain, “the ban on outgoing transmissions. Like, I get it, right,” the Ondo shrugs, making a few mocking gestures, “it's a secret planet, nobody's supposed to know, the truth will out, all that crap.” His tongue lashes out again, slurping up a serving of leftovers. “Pay us better, then, at least,” Frebb suggests around a mouthful. “Homeworld duty blows.”
Moira could shove the table, spill his lunch and, while he's distracted, be on him with a dozen different Tebi-Gali strikes – a Righteous Thazuna or a Crushing Vagobar – a heartbeat later. Moira could probably reach his feet under the table and could, with a properly placed kick, send him spinning from the chair. Moira could swipe the slop he's eating and smash that container over his head repeatedly until he stopped fucking talking to her.
“'cause two weeks is a moons-damned long time to be incommunicado from the rest of the galaxy, man,” Frebb continues to complain. “You know, I gotta girlfriend, back on Psabo, and she's starting to get suspicious of all these mysterious business trips company's making me take.” He shovels more nondescript brown paste into his mouth. “What'm I supposed to say? That the Franchise is on extended assignment, around some secret blooming planet nobody's ever heard of?”
The only response Moira can make that doesn't involve breaking any of his bones is a curt nod. Her eyes are locked downward, boring into that progress bar, willing the sluggish thing to move any faster.
Then, in answer to all her prayers, the lights above flicker once.
Unlike Moira, hyper-aware of her surroundings, Frebb hardly notices. It's only when the lights flicker a third and fourth time that the Ondo looks up from his meal and his monitor, to gaze curiously around.
The moons, in all their wisdom, must truly be watching over Moira. At the exact moment that Frebb glances upward, a distant alarm starts to chime. This is followed by the sound of hurried boots, tromping down the hallway. This is followed by the breakroom's door slamming open and shut erratically.
“Uh...” he stammers, completely baffled at this sudden turn of events.
Moira points a finger towards the door, the hallway and the distant alarm. “Should you go, like, see what that is?”
This brings a deeper scowl to the Ondo face. With a few tapped fingers against the screen, he summons a small hologram of a clock, contemplates the time a moment and dismisses the whole thing with a wave of his hand.
“I'm on break.”
CHAPTER 5
Odisseus takes strenuous objection to that. “It was not an isolated incident.”
Nemo sticks his finger too close to the Ortok's nose. “Name one other time, then.”
“Qabb,” Odisseus replies immediately. “After the sack. You got so drunk you practically forgot your pants back on the ship.”
The finger lingers there another second, its owner considering his saltbrother's argument. “That time doesn't count. That time, Two-Bit put them in a weird place.”
Odisseus spreads his paws wide. “Let me disillusion you of something. The key rack is not a 'weird place' to put the spaceship keys.”
At that moment, another pedestrian – a Ionoi crewman pushing a driftpallet – wanders through the lower atrium. What he sees is a ragged-looking humanoid and a great hairy brute, engaged in a petty argument. The Ionoi scowls his scaled brow, almost opens his mouth to speak, thinks better of it and continues on his way, through another adjoining corridor.
Both saltbrothers stand in awkward silence a moment, as the slithering sound of the Ionoi's tail disappears down the hallway.
“We're made,” frets Odisseus once they’re safely out of earshot. “He's off to find a spice ranger. For sure.”
“We're not made,” dismisses Nemo with a wave of his hand and no more compelling evidence than that.
“'Gee, officer,'” imagines Odisseus in the Ionoi's mock voice, “'I don't know what an Ortok and a homeless gentlemen were doing, loitering around in the lower atrium. But I knew, the second I saw them, that I should buzz it in.'”
“Does sorta beg the question,” Nemo poses, glancing around the abandoned atrium.
“Where's Moira?”
“Yeah,” Nemo agrees. “Or Mayhem.”
They had loitered in the lower atrium of the GCF Franchise an alarming length of time – seven minutes and counting – without the faintest trace of Moira to assuage their irrational fears. She could be caught, she could be sweating out a spice ranger interrogation in the cruiser's brig, she could simply be running a few minutes late. Each of Nemo's ill-advised comms went unanswered, giving them precisely no clue as to the fate of their advance scout.
To make matters worse, the pair of them, shooting the breeze in the cargo deck's elevator lobby, couldn't possibly look more conspicuous. They might as well have tattooed “WE’RE TRYING TO ROB YOU!” in holographic letters across their foreheads. Despite the standard-issue uniform the Captain wore, nothing could be done to make Nemo look less like he’d just spent six weeks in a hooskow of his own making – unwashed hair, slimy skin, frenzied eyes.
Odisseus looks no better. His fur remains unshorn and slick with grease. His claws are untrimmed and his fangs lacquered yellow. Plus, he’s squeezed into a uniform intended for a Quarg several sizes smaller than he was. This left aside the obvious fact that he was no Quarg, with white markings on his neck, webbed digits or a huge blooming tail. All they could hope was that they encountered no xenobiologists nor other Quargs during this brief reconnaissance mission.
With a big blast of breath, Nemo plops down onto the crate, its driftmotor bobbing ever so slightly. “Well,” he starts speculatively, glancing back over his shoulder, “whaddya think?”
“We stay here a minute longer,” predicts Odisseus, crossing his arm, “the jig’s up. A troop of spice rangers is exactly as likely to come tromping down that corridor as Moira is. And then these,” he jangles his uniform’s lapel, making the ident waver and distort, “are no good to us.”
“Yeah,” sighs Nemo, disappointment heavy in his voice. Like a child in a high chair, he dangles his feet disconsolately off the side of the floating driftcrate.
“Whereas, if we head–”
The overhead lights suddenly flicker. For a few spastic moments, the lower atrium is flooded with unfriendly red, resembling a typical battleship corridor for an instant. Both pirates stop and gaze dumbly up at the ceiling, as though they’d just experienced a flash of unseasonable weather.
“Is that–” Odisseus starts to wonder before he’s interrupted by the telltale blare of an emergency alarm. From a set of nearby speakers, the klaxon drones at full volume and Odisseus clamps his paws over his ears. Highly fluent in the language of spaceship alerts and alarms, the Ortoki mechanic would recognize that sound anywhere, no matter what vessel he was aboard.
That sound meant there was an engine fire.
In the flashing red lights, the crooked smile on the Captain’s face gives him a profoundly demonic appearance. “Mayhem,” Nemo mouths, not bothering to cover ears already so damaged by Cosmic Vomit.
“Then we’d better,” Odisseus screams in reply, “not be caught standing around here, then?”
“Agreed.”
With that, the two saltbrothers hustle into the awaiting elevator, Nemo pushing the cherished crate before him. Odisseus punches the necessary button with a claw, the one that will ferry them up to the gunnery deck and their errand.
“In my defense,” Nemo starts to explain, shouting to be heard over all the clamor, “the key rack was kinda an unusual place to put the keys. And Two-Bit should have known that.”
“Not to speak ill of the dead,” mutters Odisseus as the elevator doors slide open. “And where should he have put them instead?” he wonders, in full voice. “Starboard’s fuel intake valve? A bottle of worcestershire sauce?”
Nemo waves a hand dismissively. “Those were isolated incident
s.”
Moira could flip the table, knock the Ondo to the ground, straddle his body and drive her thumbs into his eye sockets.
“And that's the thing,” Frebb continues to grouse. “If I clock in at half-past, that doesn't give me nearly enough time to check all the manifests before I'm needed in supply at quarter to. I mean, like, if I go blooming running down the ship, sure, but the last time I tried that, I got docked for indecorous behavior aboard or whatever Lexubor is blooming calling it now.”
The Ondo rant is peppered with slurping and slathering sounds as he devours his brown mush. The console’s holographic display before him goes utterly ignored as it flicks through thousands of available feeds and frequencies. Moira’s own console, meanwhile, remains decidedly in screen mode, lest Frebb catch a glimpse of its damning progress bar.
With slouched posture, with her noncommittal grunts and nods, with every fiber of her being, Moira is imploring this interferial moron to leave her alone.
The problem is, he won’t stop asking her questions.
Moira refuses to rise to the bait of “When does Gunnery clock in?” and it hangs in the air for several seconds. “Hey. Hey, Jesbra? What time’s Gunnery clock in?”
“Oh,” Moira responds, as though she’d somehow not heard him. “Uh, quarter after, I think.”
“Quarter after? The fuck?” Frebb is flabbergasted. Moira’s immediately terrified that she’s blown her cover, that it’s flagrantly obvious by her answer that she’s an imposter and a galaxy-renowned criminal and here to rob them all. He jabs a finger at Moira. “You’re saying Gunnery gets fifteen extra minutes on the clock than we do?”
All Moira can do is shrug. “I guess so?”
Frebb slaps the table in disgust. “Un-blooming-believable. Those fucks. Those unbelievable fucks.” Moira nods a few times, what she prays is sympathetically, before she returns her gaze back where it belongs, back to her progress bar.
“Gotta get me on Gunnery,” Frebb adds mutteringly.
Somehow, all the cacophony and pandemonium miserably fails to matter to Frebb. Moira can hear three separate alarms, pealing through the ship. Moira can hear an argument between two crewmen about a malfunctioning airlock on the engineering deck. Moira hears a third spice ranger go roaring past the breakroom’s door. That doesn’t include the hazard lights, bathing the little lounge in cautionary red at regular intervals.
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