Unconstant Love

by Timothy J Meyer

  Odisseus, meanwhile, spews bloody pieces of flesh and fabric from his mouth. With an animalistic whine, he climbs into a sitting position and prods his belly wound with a paw. The Ortok sighs heavily as he considers the copious destruction all around him until his eyes eventually fall on Moira.

  “You’re telling me,” Moira suggests significantly, “that you didn’t know Quargs change genders?”

  Odisseus raises his paws defensively. “Let’s not all act like this’s common blooming knowledge. How can I be expected to know every biological peculiarity about every spec–”

  “You just, you know,” Nemo explains, clinging to the doorway, his legs still wobbly beneath him, “look so much alike, I thought you, of all people, might–”

  “See, now that,” Odisseus points a disbelieving claw across the room, “is a genuinely speciesist remark. You call me a speciesist and then say shit like that.”

  Instead of rising to this arguably fair point, Nemo is a little more preoccupied in that moment with not falling on his face.

  “Fucking humanoids,” Odisseus grumbles under his breath.

  “Whoa, buddy.” Now it’s Moira’s turn to throw her hands up, disavowing any connection with the Ortok’s words. “Yikes.”

  As was his wont, his reply consists less of intelligible words and more of Ortoki vagaries.

  Moira plucks more smoky tufts of hair from her scalp and wonders how to proceed from here. Obviously, they’d not counted on a spice ranger, horror of horrors, catching wise to their disguises. Considering this, though, they’d handled the potential disaster reasonably well, barring Moira’s burnt hair, the Ortok's belly wound and the Captain’s probable concussion.

  That said, they’d left considerable and telling destruction in their wake. There’s spattered blood here, scattered machinery there, not to mention the exploded elevator. The last thing they needed now was some slack-jawed crewman wandering onto the scene and spoiling everything.

  It’s Odisseus who first gives voice to this worry, looking about at all the carnage. “How do we hide all this?” He glances back to the Umijo, less formidable-seeming, when she’s sprawled dead at Moira’s feet. “How do we hide her?”

  Moira is, as ever, blunt. “We can’t, is the answer. Mayhem could only conceivably be responsible for so much.”

  “Oh, that part's easy.”

  Nemo’s somehow made his way to the crate, foot propped dramatically against its lid. Triggering the catch with his heel, the kick that sends the lid clattering to the floor is equally dramatic, undercut somewhat by Nemo’s losing his balance and flapping his arms to stay upright. From the depths of the crate, he retrieves something beige and industrial-looking.

  This he tosses to Odisseus, the Ortok catching it between a clap of his paws.

  “You don’t think,” Odisseus hypothesizes, “it’ll be too big? Too destructive?”

  “Too big,” Nemo repeats, as though trying the phrase out for the first time. “Too destructive.”

  The sighing mechanic turns his attention to the mechanism. “I’ll see if I can’t drain the power a little. Try and lessen the blast radius.”

  “In that case,” Moira stipulates, climbing to her feet, “we’ve gotta take her with us.” They both thank her for this brilliant idea by scowling quizzically at her. “We leave her here, even if we blow the place sky high, somebody could still scrape some genetics off a floor and make this whole blooming precaution pointless. Better that she disappears entirely and leave no trace.”

  Nemo only shrugs, dizziness returning with a vengeance. Moira stoops and starts to collect the limbs of the lifeless ranger. She’s alarmed to discover not only how heavy the small-boned Umijo truly is but also how sore every joint in her body has become. She debates maybe asking Odisseus for help but the Ortok’s busy disassembling the shield projector and is himself wounded. She’ll handle the load, then, Moira decides.

  She could lessen the weight somewhat by stripping the corpse of its harness but the portion of unstrangled fangirl in Moira ultimately can’t resist the chance to tinker a little.

  A minute later, Odisseus has finished his own tinkering and sets the device down, with delicate claws, in the center of the floor.

  “We might wanna make tracks,” he advises. “We’re looking at about ninety seconds before this thing goes.”

  Nobody can take exception with that.

  Leaving the bloody battlefield of the lower atrium behind them, they depart as fast as their wounded, burdened and dizzy bodies will take them. As they run back through the Franchise’s cargo deck, Moira starts to see signs of order – squads of bustling crewmen, more sensible holograms, fewer screeching alarms – returning to the hallways and corridors they pass through.

  The pernicious effects of Mayhem are slowly purged from the systems of the Franchise.

  All the same, nobody bothers to stop and question the two humanoids and the Quarg who push their way through the crowd, an injured spice ranger slung over one shoulder. Assuming Mayhem’s done its work properly, they’ll leave no trace, vanishing inexplicably from the security holos.

  On time, they feel the impact that rocks the ship from behind them, the contained explosion meeting its deadline. Most of the nearby crew are startled, stop and look worriedly between one another before they, with the sterling heroism that drives the commercial spacer, hurry off to see what all the trouble is.

  The three imposters, meanwhile, sacrifice some credibility by pressing onward, determined not to fulfill the old adage and return to the scene of the crime. Instead, they move against the crowd, more eager than ever to return to the cargo bay, the dangling spacebergs and The Unconstant Lover.

  SECOND INTERLUDE

  Two-Bit Switch could tell something was not quite right.

  Continuing to chew, he stabbed his fork through the heat shield, its metal prongs passing effortlessly through the shimmering yellow energy. He impaled a choice piece of zugofish omelette and, swallowing his last bite, considered this new one a moment. It was a yellowish blob on the end of his fork, supplemented by the occasional hunk of mushroom or zugofish. He took that bite, chewing thoughtfully, as he attempted to conjure what didn’t quite sit right with him.

  It only then occurs to him that it could be poisoned.

  Looking at his host across the long table, she certainly seemed like the type. Those silver eyes watched him intently for any reaction, as Two-Bit chewed the meal she’d prepared for him, and it wasn’t hard to imagine she was only waiting for him to turn purple and die. When he didn’t, she merely sipped her champagne disinterestedly, every bit the bored socialite.

  “Horseradish,” announced Two-Bit Switch around a mouthful of omelette.

  “Hm?”

  “Horseradish sauce,” he stated clearer, once he’d swallowed. “You got any? That’s what this’s hanking for.” He glanced about the room, hoping he’d snag the eye of some personnel, presumably whomever arranged this whole lavish banquet for the two of them to share. “No?”

  It was quite the affair to have a bottle brought him. A servant was summoned, hushed words were exchanged between his host and her hired help, a sizable pause followed and eventually a bottle of horseradish sauce – its brand some highfalutin thing Two-Bit couldn’t even read – was placed on the table next to him.

  He had the thing uncorked and half its contents slathered across the omelette by the time his hostess, Gella Borsk, spoke again. “Everything’s to your liking, then, I trust?”

  “Mmm,” he responded with a grunt, shoveling a helping of horseradish-drowned omelette into his mouth. “Much better.”

  “The accommodations in general, I mean,” she clarified. “Found the rooms comfortable? Slept well?”

  “Mmm,” he grunted again, taking a moment to wipe his mouth with the actual napkin, taking a clue from the sour face she’d made when he used his sleeve. “Yeah, yeah. Everything’s real jig. You gotta a blooming swank operation here, you don’t mind my jabbing so.” He ran an a
ppraising hand along the silk bathrobe that he too wears. “What’re these, xasana silk?

  “I believe so, yes,” confirmed Borsk. “Sewn and embroidered by cloistered Duuthese wise-women, high in the equatorial mountains of Rith. Virtually priceless.”

  It took all of Two-Bit’s concentration not to glance aside at the yellowish stain he’s left on the right sleeve of his. “Very swank,” he repeated dumbly instead.

  Borsk shrugged with the least convincing pretense of humility. “We try.”

  The grubby little station waif inside Two-Bit Switch was still thoroughly flabbergasted that he’d come this far, this fast. Ten years ago, he was squeezing out a meager living as a barefoot orphan on the sweaty streets of the Defederate Station. Now, here he sat, nineteen years old and the honored guest of Gella Borsk, booze baroness and the only individual, in all the galaxy, that posed any real threat to the Gitter Consortium.

  They had taken breakfast in one of Borsk’s palatial dining rooms and Two-Bit was left with the vague impression this was one of many. The moment he was escorted inside, by some of Borsk’s obviously ex-spice ranger security, his casing instincts instantly went wild.

  Everything in sight could turn a tidy profit on the black market.

  The Casqorin hardwood table was a marvel, the original tree genetically engineered to grow as one seamless piece, a table-shaped tree trunk. That alone is worth enough to purchase the deeds to several not insignificant planets. The holopanes across the windows, currently broadcasting the cyclonic storms of Dythoris Minor, are bleeding edge, the kind of technology holoplexes all over the galaxy would murder for. Had he a few prototypes as perfect as these, Two-Bit Switch could purchase himself a small capital ship.

  Even the silverware was posh was fuck. Not made from steel or silver, they were instead rigidified ice, mined from the glittering comets of the Tinxara Nebula. A spoon or two, smuggled into the pocket, and Two-Bit Switch could retire from this life of crime and live out his days on a beach someplace.

  What, in the name of all the moons of Jotor, is Two-Bit Switch, professional jailbreaker, miscreant and scumbag, doing here?

  She had brought him here. Two-Bit Switch knew he’d made something of a small splash in the Bad Space criminal community, the go-to guy to break one’s bloomhole out of prison. He’d not thought, however, that his piddly reputation would be enough to attract the notice of someone as influential as Gella Borsk.

  For all her hauteur, she wasn’t much to look at. A pinkskin, probably from Gitox or Gizarra or Gisham, in her early fifties, her hair and eyes are identical shades of silver, almost glossy and metallic in the purplish light of the synthetic Dythoris Minor. She wore a bathrobe subtly different from his, the embroidery chased with gold, the belt tighter around her hips in a more suggestive fashion.

  There was the faintest trace of flirt about her, in her voice and posture and behavior, like she was toying with the idea of taking Two-Bit to bed. He was perceptive enough, however, to detect that this was misdirection and that someone hard as teltriton lay beneath this opulent facade.

  He’d been brought here in the cargo hold of a nondescript tramp freighter and, while it was happening, Two-Bit had half assumed he’d been kidnapped. Instead, when he arrived here at this lavish estate, incongruously installed inside a nameless hunk of space rock, Gella Borsk had wined and dined him up and down, preparing to talk about her very big idea.

  From what Two-Bit had understood, that idea involved robbing the Gitter Consortium blind. She wasn’t interested in spice or gin or peaches, either. She was interested in trees.

  How fortunate this was, then. Two-Bit Switch was also particularly interested in trees.

  “To business, then?” she proposed, perfectly on cue. She hoists her sparkling purple champagne, no doubt chosen to match the holopane’s current color scheme.

  “To the quitty,” Two-Bit agreed, gulping down his mouthful of omelette with a big swig of his own champagne.

  “You had questions?”

  “Mmm,” grunted Two-Bit, still swallowing champagne. “I did have some ringers.”

  The next moment, Two-Bit reached into his robe’s voluminous pocket, withdrew his Attaché and slid it smoothly across the Casqorin hardwood. Purchased thanks to a generous donation from Nabdres No-Cock, the device was brand spanking new and contained only a single file – all the plans and schematics Borsk had sent his way.

  “Lemme just jabb,” he sought to get out of the way first,“everything that I’ve vizzed looks peachy. Codes look peachy, timetables look peachy, blooming schematics on every gantine in the Consortium’s fleet, for moon’s sake–”

  Borsk was not known for her patience. “But?”

  “Intel gets spotty,” Two-Bit informed her, clasping his ends together. “Towards the end.”

  Borsk’s reaction was very tightly controlled. “That so?”

  “What’s blanking,” Two-Bit started to explicate, reaching forward to activate the Attaché, “is the skinny on the actual planet and its dirtside.” A hologram leapt into view above the device, a flowchart of spiderwebbing strands that connected bubbles to other bubbles to still more bubbles. “Everything up to that point, everything I hank to put a crew on planet, is here. After that,” he shrugged, a little helplessly, “things kinda sketchy.”

  “I see,” Borsk acknowledges with a stiff nod. “And you want me to fill those gaps for you?”

  “Would be jig, yeah,” Two-Bit agreed. He made a half-hearted gesture her direction. “I mean, you of all people, right?”

  “Me of all people,” Borsk muttered in a distant, dangerous voice. “A fair assumption.”

  A fearsome pause followed, the two parties staring at each other across their omelettes and the only sound the faint hiss of the heat shield, trapping the steam from their meals.

  “So,” Two-Bit ventured, unsure what’s causing this reticence, “what’s down there?”

  Borsk spread her hands and clasped them back together. “Your guess is as good as mine.”

  Two-Bit blinked. “I’m sorry – what?”

  It was with a great sigh that Borsk continued, massaging the space between her eyebrows. “You’ve misunderstood my role in the corporation,” she explained to him, like the child she no doubt thought he was. “It’s a common misconception, believe me.”

  Two-Bit didn’t buy an inch of that. “You were the corp, though,” he reminded her, scowling. “For blooming ever. Two decades, right?”

  “Galactic Commercial Executive,” Borsk corrected flatly. “For seventeen years. There is an alarmingly large gulf, however,” she informed him, her tone going suddenly caustic, “between the Hegemony’s ruling family and what they tell the peons they hire to run their empire.”

  There was a flash of true anger, of genuine emotion, in Gella Borsk for the first time. There was a bitterness there, bubbling to the surface, that wasn’t part of her calm and collected facade. Only mention of the Gitter Consortium and its bizarre ruling family could seemingly provoke that kind of reaction in the booze baroness.

  Everyone knew the tragic narrative of Gella Borsk. Once upon a time, she’d been the unshakeable bedrock that the Gitter Consortium constructed its galaxywide monopoly upon. Then the backstabbing and the infighting and the courtly intrigue of the inbred Gita family, the founding dynasty of the whole Hegemony, got the better of her. At the wrong end of an assassination plot, she was forced into exile, disappearing off the grid with an ample personal supply of Gitterswitch Gin.

  Rebranding the stuff as Borsk Brandy, she’d been peddling what amounts to the galaxy’s most expensive moonshine from her hidden asteroid base ever since.

  This was the story the galaxy swallowed. This was the accepted fairy tale – loyal company woman becomes plucky insurgent, battling an evil empire with her contraband booze.

  Two-Bit Switch knew better than to subscribe to that description, however. There was more to Gella Borsk than met the eye and, when he’d attracted her attention, he knew he’d
best do his homework.

  Details, each one juicier than the last, kept emerging the deeper he dug. He knew she rose to her position of power at the head of the company from a governorship on a minor resource world at the Hegemony’s edge. He knew that she’d married into the infamous Gita clan and that she’d only ever been intended as a stopgap, a steward to run the operation until the next heir came of age. He knew that, while the corporate assassin failed to kill her, her husband was not so lucky and she was a widow when she went into hiding.

  Most importantly of all, he’d heard the rumors about her stores. Her brandy supply was dwindling, they said, and, by decade’s end, she’d be dry. Whether by lack of product or by the teams of spice rangers stalking the galaxy in search of her, Gella Borsk’s days were officially numbered.

  This, then, this one mad scheme to pull the rug out from under the Gitter Consortium, was her last best hope. If she could secure one tree for her own use, her business could continue, perhaps even thrive, and, in time, it could rob the Consortium of all its power, transforming Borsk and her brandy from a nuisance to a true competitor.

  Desperate as she was, she was trusting Two-Bit Switch, nineteen year old scofflaw, to make all of this happen.

  “You know zilch,” Two-Bit struggled to ascertain. “You ran the place for seventeen years and you couldn’t finger that tree in a blooming line-up.”

  During his whole premise, Borsk was nodding. “That’s sadly the case.”

  “How is that possible?” Two-Bit breathed, at an utter loss for words.

  “It’s all a matter of nested percentages,” Borsk responded wearily, clearly in little mood to explain the whole mess again. “Obviously, among the Consortium, it’s no secret that Gita is a fraud. No way to conceal that from everyone. Moons, the galaxy at large all but assumes it at this point.” She took a moment here to sip her champagne, to cool her nerves a little. “Now, the specifics of Gi’s location, its basic details, the climatic field, that’s known to a very small portion of the Consortium’s total work force. Less than 1%.”