Unconstant Love

by Timothy J Meyer

  A frantic attack, of course, is by definition a less successful attack. Wounded, wearied and worried, Moira finally discovers she may not actually have the strength to defeat one more well-trained opponent.

  The sound of a door grinding open interrupts the harnessed pair of them, mid-struggle. They both turn to catch the figure that comes hustling down the helm stairs and heads straight for the warp and sensor rooms.

  That figure, dressed too in spice ranger fatigues, stops short and scowls. Flask makes brief bewildered eye contact with both Moira and the bleeding intruder. He opens his mouth to speak and, when no words come, he disappears down the side passage.

  This is precisely the hiccup Moira needs to turn the tide. Recovering her wits a hair faster than the ranger does, Moira makes her move, slicing horizontally across the humanoid's windpipe with the extreme edge of her right heatblade.

  Heatblades don't cut; they burn. A line does appear across the ranger's throat, tracing the path of Moira's blade, but it's black, not red, scorched completely through. His esophagus shriveling up, the ranger coughs once, struggles to breathe and staggers on his feet. Moira scoots fully backward, giving the last boarder the space he needs to experience his death throes and in desperate need of a moment to catch her breath.

  He drops to his knees with a thud, his servos whining. The pain in his leg ignored, he grasps a little at his scorched throat, unable to draw a satisfying breath. Soon, he's slumped into a corner of the corridor, his ragged pants slowing and stopping.

  A moment later, Moira too discovers she's on her knees. The pain in her shoulder returns with new fury, radiating outward to consume the rest of her body. Moira's vaguely aware of the rocketing and buffeting of the ship as she squats there, bleeding slowly out. How the blockade run's going, she's no idea – whether they've actually reached the planet's orbit or whether they're likely to be incinerated this moment or the next.

  One moment, Moira is imagining The Unconstant Lover in flight, battling heroically against the odds stacked ludicrously against them. The next moment, she is flat on her back. She stares upward through the plexishield ceiling, at the stars that wheel past, unsure whether what she's seeing is reality or hallucination.

  Her last sensation, before blood loss takes her, is the churn of the warp drive, somewhere within the ship's bowels, and the unmistakable stomach-flip that accompanies the Lover leaping away at faster-than-light speed.

  Flask never had the chance to meet Gella Borsk, their mysterious benefactor. Now, he never really would, considering the smoking hole straight through her skull.

  To Flask's right, Nemo is particularly saddened by the senseless loss of life. “Fuck,” he is heard to remark. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!” he goes on to say.

  Borsk is spreadeagled on the short stairway that leads from her private bathroom. The pose, legs sprawled, head reclined backward on the topmost stair, looks vaguely peaceful, like she's taking an unorthodox nap here in the middle of everything. Then there are the brains, spilling from her open skull and staining the hardwood floors.

  Flask and Nemo stand at the foot of the short stairway, considering the gruesome scene and a little dumbstruck by all the ramifications that tumble through their heads. Quicksilver is somewhat more productive, stalking about the carnage like a six-legged Aldine stork through swampy water. At the first whiff of bloodshed, Odisseus elected to man the Lover's sensors, keeping a weather eye in case any ship might drop warp in the system and ambush them.

  They all knew this place – Planetoid YRK7860905 – was completely off every known grid in the galaxy and that no one would find them here. Considering the spread of sprawled bodies all about their feet, they'd all become much more skeptical.

  “Rangers?” Flask supposes tentatively. “Think somebody beat us to the punch? Bonaventure's codes're pretty fooking old, after–”

  “Nah,” Quicksilver denies, all business when surrounded by guts and gore. “Weaponry's wrong. I ain't seen a single heatblade death.” She goes picking amongst the liberal spread of dead bodies. “Canister, canister, canister. Huh. Electroblade. Canister.”

  “Fuck,” mutters Nemo, eyes locked on Gella's lifeless corpse. “Fuck.”

  Flask, the resident spice ranger expert here, scowls at Quicksilver's diagnosis. “Wouldn't be without precedence,” he argues, knowing there's something fishy in his theory even as he voices it, “for rangers to stand at a distance, use rifles to end enemies. Particularly ones with ditrogen weapons of their own, like.”

  She's shaking her head before he's even finished. “Ain't rifles. Pistols, for the most part. A shotgun here,” she denotes with a casual point to particular corpses, “and there.”

  Flask pulls a little face to mock her, despite all the horror and death at his feet, and turns to see if Nemo'll notice. Instead, the Captain's simply shaking his head, still staring at the dead booze baroness. “Fuck.”

  Replete with knowing-it-all, Quicksilver eventually comes to stand between them, following their eyes to where Gella's been sprawled. “Recognize this one anywhere,” she points out, with all the grim authority of a homicide detective. Squatting to better examine the gunshot skull and the serene expression on her face, Quicksilver makes her ruling. “AccCo. 341, I'd say, mabe 345 Ambuschade. Pistol, close range. Probably came rushing outta the bathroom to take one through the brainpan.”

  “Friend of yours?” Flask poses archly.

  “The gun?” Quicksilver clarifies, craning a glance back at him. “The most common AccCo on the market. Could be anybody,” she decides as she rises.

  “Fuck,” remarks Nemo.

  In truth, there's some part of Flask that's not too surprised to discover Borsk dead like this. When the whole situation – a famously invisible alcohol magnate appears from hiding to offer these hoodlums the biggest score they'd ever imagine – was first explained to him, he'd been more than a little skeptical. He'd assumed the opposite; that, soon as they arrived, the Lover's crew would be jumped by Borsk and her ex-spice ranger goon squad.

  This – Borsk and all her bullies butchered – was something else entirely.

  Following the skin-of-their-teeth escape from Gi, The Unconstant Lover and her crew took a momentary detour on Bennevikos, to catch their breath, calibrate their heading and patch Moira's wounds. From there, they leaped straight to Borsk's unnamed planetoid, the coordinates provided them by Two-Bit Switch and known to a handful of sentients galaxywide.

  That trip was something of a somber one. Whatever elation or congratulatory spirit they might have shared was overshadowed by how narrowly they had escaped. Quicksilver was wounded, Odisseus was persnickety about all the Lover's thousand malfunctions and there were eight spice ranger corpses to heap in the airlock and space. Flask felt decidedly out of place, a crewmember aboard a surly spaceship that was missing two pivotal members.

  Four days they’d spent in warp, racing across Myxo Quadrant to reach Borsk's hideout. Here, they'd make the exchange and warp away again, 68 million credits the richer.

  The first hint of trouble reared its head when their long-distance comms, confirming they'd escaped Gi with the cargo intact, went unanswered. The second hint, a red flag unfurling, came when they'd dropped warp and their approaching hails also went unanswered. Unnerved by their patron's eerie silence, The Unconstant Lover was nonetheless left with no recourse, save to dock and investigate, less they go unpaid for all their toil and trouble.

  Smelling a trap coming a sector away, they'd entered the palatial asteroid-base with all caution, weapons drawn, ready to retreat at the first whiff of trouble. The further they moved through the manse, though, the more they saw the obvious signs of struggle – last stands made across counters, in doorways, behind marble fountains. It was plain to see they hadn't been the target here.

  This particular chokepoint, at the foot of Borsk's ivory bathroom, appeared to be the center of the thickest fighting. What's more, Quicksilver, in all her investigations, couldn't get eyes on even a single dead at
tacker – someone not a member of Borsk's ex-spice ranger brigade – anywhere in the complex, the most perplexing aspect of this whole unexpected slaughterhouse.

  “My bet would be,” Quicksilver renders her final opinion as she crosses her arms, palms flat against the butts of her pistols, “an unrelated beef. Bad timing for her, worse timing for us.”

  “Who,” Flask starts to object, “in all the galaxy, even knows she–”

  “Fuck!” Nemo screams, shattering the silence of the blood-spattered hallway and snapping their previous conversation off at the branch. A sudden spasm overtakes him and he, with both feet, stomps up and down, like a child throwing a tantrum in a toy store. “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” he hollers with each stomp.

  He stands panting, soon as he's worn himself out, clutching the wall and frothing a little at the corners of his mouth. Flask is taken aback by his cousin's sheer vitriol, normally all stupid smiles and carefree attitude. The expression on Quicksilver's face, however, tells him this isn't the first time he's thrown such a fit.

  “Maybe,” Flask starts to venture, very tentatively, aware that he may be stoking a powder keg. “this isn't the end of the universe. Maybe we're looking at this wrong.”

  “You think?” Quicksilver snarls. “You know anything about manufacturing alcohol? You got any use for a Gitter sapling? You thinking about getting a Gitterpeach orchard off the ground?”

  “Yes and no,” Flask considers, eager to deflect both of their anger somewhere more useful. “68 million, right?”

  “Plus that percentage,” adds Quicksilver. “On the back-end.”

  “Well,” Flask cocks his head to consider. “That percentage's probably lost, 'cause I can't imagine anybody else'n the galaxy's got the means to make all this,” he makes a sweeping gesture to encompass Gella Borsk's entire business, “happen with that little tree.”

  “What's your point?” presses Quicksilver.

  “No reason we gotta lose the 68 million, though.” He turns back to his companions, gives them a knowing look and waits for them to put the pieces together.

  Nemo seems to ponder this a long moment. “Fuck,” he eventually decides.

  “Damn thing's the most valuable plant in the galaxy,” Flask feels the need to remind them both.

  “Find another buyer?” states an incredulous Moira Quicksilver.

  “We find,” Flask awards her, with a beneficient point of his finger, “another buyer, like.”

  Her incredulity only increases. “For 68 million.”

  Flask makes a small shrug. “Or thereabouts.”

  Quicksilver is not convinced. “Thereabouts is not what we signed on for.”

  “Yes, well,” Flask counters, a little bile rising in his own throat. “It's pretty much that or get buggered, so. Besides,” he's quick to change topics and tone, “galaxy's overflowing with people'd pay for this thing. Breaking the booze monopoly? Come on.”

  “And earn the ire of the Gitter Consortium. For, you know, ever.”

  “Don't see,” Flask explains with a shrug, “how's that our problem.”

  “Fuck,” Nemo agrees.

  “I can't imagine,” Flask elaborates, before Quicksilver can make another objection, “it'd be too difficult to drum up some interested parties.”

  Quicksilver shifts her stance. “Who?”

  This proves a stumper. The three of them stand there amid all the carnage of Borsk's hallway for a minute or more, staring at wallpaper or carpet stains or gunshot wounds and attempt to produce some names. They retain this pose for a painfully long time, not generating a single answer, when they're interrupted by the muted grumble of the Captain's stomach.

  “Fuck,” he remarks. “I'm starting.”

  Odisseus presses the button again. The proximity sweep is programmed to refresh automatically every ten seconds. It doesn't really need the Ortok's manual supervision to function at peak efficiency. It would be child's play to rig the ship's sensor package to ping the crew's comms as soon as something of interest happened – another ship dropping warp in the system, for example.

  In the very unlikely event that would happen, The Unconstant Lover could even be remotely started and primed to leave, which really nullifies the need for someone aboard to prep the engines for a hasty exit.

  All in all, Odisseus is pretty superfluous right now. He could easily, with no threat to the safety of the ship or its crew, have joined in picking over Borsk's bones. When given the choice, however, the Ortok would very much prefer to remain on the ship, even under such redundant pretexts.

  {Warm}, cooes the sapling. Placed next to the thrumming torridity unit, the little potted planet actually seems contented, despite how swelteringly hot this makes the sensor room. As uncomfortable as this might make the Ortok, it was a vast improvement on listening to the seedling's pathetic {Cold} again and again.

  Odisseus lounges in the sensor room's single chair, his hind paws on the dashboard, the chair cranked back to its absolute limit. Two of the room's mammoth screens are swamped by static, there being no feedanchors in this supposedly empty patch of space. One screen shows a live feed to the ship's immediate surroundings – the Lover, the planetoid it clings to and a whole lot of nothing nearby. The fourth screen broadcasts some Saurian Space pirate broadcast, the only watchable thing Odisseus could raise on the sensors.

  At the moment, it's all war coverage. As hissingly reported by a grave-faced Saurian newsanchor, the ongoing death toll on Midworlds like Aerio and Jamai climbs higher and higher.

  Odisseus presses the button again; nothing happens.

  {Warm}, the sapling repeats from where it sits at the foot of his chair.

  Odisseus presses the button again; still nothing.

  (Warm}, the sapling is, once again, happy to report.

  Odisseus presses the button again; nothing.

  {What am I?}

  Odisseus opens his mouth to speak, staggered by the sheer weight and surprise of the question. Uncertain whether or not the sapling can even hear or understand him, the Ortok stays in silence a moment before he, somewhat reluctantly, furnishes an answer. “Thirdseed?”

  The word falls from the Ortok's mouth and seems to thud heavily onto the floor. Feeling foolish, Odisseus presses the button pointlessly again, happy there's no one here to hear him conversing with this potted plant.

  Three clicks later, the potted plant responds. {Thirdseed?}

  “Yup,” is all Odisseus can think to reply with.

  {Thirdseed}, it states with a sudden swell of confidence. {Thirdseed is warm}, it concludes after another moment of deliberation.

  “Good for you,” congratulates the Ortok.

  This revelation made, Odisseus is happy to return to his mindless button-pressing. A snatch of overheard dialogue from the screen directly behind him, the one broadcasting the newsplash coverage, catches his ear.

  “...for you Galactic Menace conspiracy nutjobs out there,” a Saurian voice informs him, causing Odisseus to twist his torso around and actually pay attention to the broadcast.

  The anchor is a gray-scaled Saurian with a pattern of blue diamonds running over the crest of her head and down her serpentine neck. Next to her, on the screen, is that very same image of the Ortok's saltbrother, the holo taken aboard the Surimiah and the Imperium's only reliable rendering of the Galactic Menace.

  “This story comes to us out of the Gitter Consortium, of all places,” the anchor reports, her arch tone discernible even through the static and the thick Saurian accent. “It seems the head honchos in the booze business believe there's some truth to those rumors that Morel's still slinking around someplace.”

  Odisseus yanks both paws off the dashboard and spins his chair completely around.

  “An hour ago, the Gitter Consortium has offered a fresh reward on the head of Nehel Morel, 34th Galactic Menace. And it's a hefty price too,” remarks the Saurian with a soft chuckle. “19 million, if you can believe that. Alive.”

  “Moons of Jotor,” breathes Odisseus
.

  “Keen Nemo fans will remember,” continues the anchor, “that's exactly one million more than the Imperium's current offer. Begs the question, of course.” She spreads her reptilian hands, like she's expecting some member of her holovision crew to answer it for her. “Is the Consortium crazy? Is Nemo still out there somewhere? If he is, what's he done to piss the Consortium off so badly, so badly they'd undercut the Imperium like this?”

  Odisseus drops his head into his paws. This was supposed to be the end, when they could finally slink into the shadows and now, even the shadows were proving too bright to hide them anymore.

  “In light of this frankly astounding development, we're gonna take some buzzes here in the studio, to see what the galaxy really thinks. Hello?” The Saurian taps a piece of tech embedded in her scaly head. “Hello? You're on Saurian Side with Qorine Eggswallower. Do you think the Consortium knows something we don't?”

  “Tell you what, Qorine,” comes the sibilant voice of the first caller, someone the holoticker that runs across the screen identifies as Vizrak Venomspitter: Concerned Citizen, “them Consortium types ain't nothing but trouble and Nemo, if you're listening, then–”

  “We are fucked,” remarks Odisseus to no one but the plant.

  {Thirdseed is warm}, reminds the plant pleasantly.

  PART III:

  HER POOR DAMNED CREW

  CHAPTER 21

  Odisseus cranks open the chiller door to a refreshing blast of frigid air. Once there, he doesn't bother debating which precise flavor of frozen ghroshi shrimp – Lemon Garlic, Mango Marinade or Butter Blast – that he most prefers. With a paw, he scoops up every package his arm can reach down and drops them all and into his awaiting basket below.