Unconstant Love

by Timothy J Meyer

  Odisseus hears Nemo suck in his breath in anticipation of the ground-trembling explosion that comes a moment later.

  The Ortok's momentarily worried his fur will catch fire, the heat is so intense in that horrendous moment of destruction. Through his paw, Odisseus can still see and can especially smell the fire, the shorn metal, the scorched petroleum. He peeks just in time to see unrecognizable hunks of wreckage come hurtling at them from the blast. At the precise last moment, the bombard shield appears to bounce the debris away, where it crashes back to the arena and even onto some competitors.

  The explosion's impact on the overall derby is universal, more than one innocent bystander caught and rolled away by the shockwave.

  Somehow, Flask's furious shouts are louder than all of this. “Well, fook me for breathin', then!” he exclaims from where he sits behind Odisseus, slapping his thighs in impotent rage.

  Gertie cranes over a shoulder at him. “One of those was yours?”

  “Fooking sixty on Daddy's Favorite,” Flask growls.

  The mistress-of-ceremonies can only unsteeple her fingers and shrug, reaching a free hand towards her milkshake. “Thanks for playing, friend.”

  “I wanna do it,” breathes Nemo for the umpteenth time.

  This time, it's Moira turn to relieve Odisseus of his sacred duty. “You're not doing it.”

  “I wanna do it,” he repeats, convinced that his will alone is enough to alter reality.

  Flask, meanwhile, continues to gripe. “If fookin' Buhox minded its own business for ten fookin'–”

  Odisseus spins around in his supremely uncomfortable chair, no doubt salved from some mining juggernaut or another. “Favorite's anterior motivator was shot. Rear ventral compartment was sparking. From the get-go.” Flask does not visibly react to this news. “That's how Psychopomp,” Odisseus continues, “was even able to get its hooks in. Another thirty seconds, it would've been a lemon.”

  Flask, slumped so far down in his own chair, his knees're at eye level, blinks. “Well, you coulda blooming said something to me, couldn't ya?”

  “I just did.”

  “At any point before I made the fooking bet and it were fooking exploded!”

  “I'm gonna do it,” Nemo resolves and starts to rises with purpose from his chair.

  Spinning back around, Odisseus plants a heavy paw on Nemo's shoulder and instantly reverses his momentum, plopping him back in the chair. “You're not gonna do it.”

  There's a sudden eruption from the crowd at this, reacting to more demolishing in the arena rather than Nemo's ambitions thwarted.

  The audience's sheer size staggers Odisseus. Somewhere near ten thousand spectators scream and jeer and throw their concessions into the massive arena, far rowdier than any sporting event the Ortok's ever seen. From where they sit, high on the arena's northern side, Odisseus could see three separate brawls in the stands, each one about to be quelled by incoming house security. Every few seconds, the bright spark of laserfire, shot in anger or exuberance, would catch the Ortok's eye from some new corner of the stands.

  There's something about the sight of all these slavering, trigger-happy yahoos that reminds Odisseus of Pirateon more than a little.

  Where, in all the moons of Jotor, Gertie had found these people and brought them to Thaksu of all planets, Odisseus couldn't fathom. It wasn't difficult to see what attracted them in the first place. Blood-sport is undoubtedly the official pastime of Bad Space.

  The makeshift stadium is absolutely filled with jeering spectators, more than its wobbly design can realistically hold. Scads of seats sprout like rogue patches of coral across the surrounding barrier of crashed spaceships, mining equipment and one honest-to-moons junk heap that demarcates the arena's edges. Every square inch of space overlooking the carnage contains a hooligan, cussing out the competition, spilling their bright blue beer and, most importantly, throwing around enormous wads of cash.

  All this sound and fury, Odisseus marvels, over a little spattered mud, a little spilled blood and the occasional explosion.

  Back in the arena, the last few pieces of the most recent crash come smoldering back to the ground. The remaining competitors, however, have long since been revving their engines and crashing into one another. A few of the drivers are nimble enough to avoid the smoking wreckage, spinning frantic circles in the mud. The rest are either too slow or too foolhardy to care, smashing right through the charred pieces of their comrades to cheers or disaster.

  The clear frontrunner, an utter remix that must've been an X811 driftdumper in a previous life, freewheels around the arena's center. It spews a double dose of exhaust from its amplified nozzles and dares any to rise to its challenge. Unlike the competition with its host of mechanical terrors, the only weapon the Rubadubdub boasts is the small platoon of weapon-wielding psychopaths, riding on its hoverbed and shrieking defiance at any who come too close.

  One such challenger, a Heavy 472 with a preposterous pair of lever-action jaws, takes the bait. With a squeal of its engine, Lockjaw makes a strafing run, attempting to dig its sharpened metal fangs into the driftdumper's exposed rear bumper. It's a squealing miss, jagged themosteel teeth scraping uselessly against Rubadubdub's side.

  This is exactly the window that a member of the boarding party needs. That boarder, a Ponduur in dasher's leather with a hatchet to one hand, a blowtorch to the other, goes scampering across his moving vehicle with all the abandon of a suicide bomber. With a flailing leap, the boarder slams onto the Lockjaw's windshield and it gives way beneath him, rolling the screaming Ponduur into the cockpit of the swerving craft.

  There's still more swerving as Lockjaw careers away, wildly out of control. The bloodied and burnt bodies of its original crew start spilling from its opening doors while its big stupid jaws flap open and closed like a pair of novelty dentures. With a sad crunch, the Heavy 472 crumples against one of the arena's uneven sides and lies still, immediately the target of the crowd's derision and various shades of sprayed piss.

  All the while, Nemo is clapping and giggling like a child at the circus.

  Flask sounds a little more bemused. He points a finger between the heads of Odisseus and Nemo, indicating the Rubadubdub and its next victory lap, hissing and honking at its lesser competitors. “Can they do that?”

  Gertie shrugs, in the middle of a long draught on her milkshake. Soon as she finishes slurping her straw, she makes with the explanation. “Why not?” She extends two fingers as she replaces the drink in her cupholder, more a laser-blasted hole than a design feature. “Derby's only got the two rules.”

  Nemo is all too interested. “Only two?”

  “Nothing ditrogen,” counts Gertie on her fingers, “and nothing offworld. Means they gotta make their monsters on planet and they gotta pay me for the parts. Also means,” she adds with a devious grin, “they gotta get creative.”

  Nothing evinces this more than the three vehicles left sputtering down below, each one more madcap and lunatic than the next.

  The five of them, plus a pair of Gertie's boner-toting bodyguards, lounge in her exclusive box, with a commanding view of the entire arena and every moment of the bloodshed and battery. Their seats, the cushiest in the house, are torn leather and musty fabric, pilfered from the mouldering wrecks that comprise Thaksu's countryside. Their window is clearly the result of some dreadful accident, the opening they watch through all ripped and rent thermosteel.

  To reach their seat, they climbed enough dubious catwalks and wobbly gangplanks to convince Odisseus how poorly made the whole enterprise is, arena and all. One ill-aimed harpoon, he theorizes, or one jackknifing competitor and this whole operation could quite literally come crashing to the ground.

  “You build all this?” is the kindest way Odisseus could think to propose the idea, translated a moment later by Moira, where she lingers near the minibar.

  “Oh, moons, no. I'm pretty much fresh off the boat.” Nonetheless, she gazes down at all the destruction and debris with a certain
motherly pride. “Maybe made a few changes here and there, you know how it is. Mudwrecking on Thaksu's older than fucking. Betting on who dies first?” she adds, gesturing with her milkshake. “Older than that, even.”

  “How'd you get here, then?” Flask wonders, always eager to find a new angle. “Hill didn't have a fooking king already?”

  “Oh, my usual way.” The very tone of her voice is enough to make Nemo shudder with discomfort. “Much less a headache than running dash, I tell you what, or even that piracy game you were runnin' way back when.” She makes this reference idly, mentioning the disastrous Freebooter Fleet so casually, as though it had been nothing more than a momentary scheme Nemo pulled to make a little scratch on the side.

  “And how's that?” Flask, an armchair dash enthusiast since he was seven, rises to the challenge.

  “In that there ain't no egos to deal with,” she explains, matter-of-factly. “Nobody becomes a mudwrecking star because, nine times outta ten–”

  She's interrupted by a tremendous cheer from the crowd, loud enough to actually activate the bombard shield in places. Odisseus consciously decides to avert his eyes and Gertie only smiles into the roar, pleased as plunder at her fortuitous timing.

  “–there are no survivors.”

  “And you never miss it?” Nemo poses, a strange note of thoughtfulness in his voice. “The captaincy? The booty? The life?”

  This does give Gertie a moment of pause, the smallest flicker in her otherwise smug demeanor. “The life's still out there someplace, you know, but the climate ain't right. Now ain't the right time, it don't feel like, to make a go at swashbuckling again. That'll change, I'm sure, but–”

  Odisseus is suddenly very aware of the Captain's stillness, containing a dangerous calm, to the Ortok's immediate right.

  “–for the moment, I'm actually pretty content. 'sides,” she sighs, a sudden wistfulness in her tone, “duty calls.”

  Nemo's instinctive snort at the word “duty” and the automatic hiss of the chamber's bulkhead door are simultaneous. Without warning, there's an immediate third party in the Governor's spacious viewing box.

  “Apologies, apologies, apologies,” comes the accented voice. Odisseus twists to see this newcomer as he hustles down towards the front row of seats. A thick purplish mist hangs about him and Odisseus recognizes the scent of Votagi tobacco a moment later.

  His protective instincts bristling, Odisseus knows that Moira's all but drawn Righty and Lefty, ready to fill the stranger with ditrogen at the first unfriendly move.

  Gertie, however, is cool as a cucumber. “What happened?” she offers over her shoulder.

  “Is remembering Hezou, yes?”

  Gertie spends a moment thinking, time enough for the newcomer to reach the box's lower level and peer down at the proceedings in the arena. The smoke dissipating from his face, he's revealed to be an orange-skinned Votagi himself. “This is Hairless Hezou?” Gertie wonders. “With the unibrow?”

  “Is him,” confirms the Votagi. He leans forward, gazing into the arena below to check the progress of the bout. As he does, one of the foot-long prehensile feelers extending from his upper lip dashes away a little purple soot from the cigar's end. “Is always cornering me, him and his boytoys, whatever chance he gets. Is demanding this and that from me.”

  “Lemme guess,” posits Gertie, looking at the ceiling a moment to jog her memory. “he's unhappy with Bottom Feeder's spread?”

  “Is fecking surprise to me,” the Votagi discovers, in mock epiphany, throwing his hands up exactly as something smashes into something else in the arena. As he makes the gesture, the pair of great folded triangular wings on his back seem agitated and flutter and rearrange. “Is saying 'moons of Jotor' to him. Is saying how grieved I is to hear this, how can I ever, blah blah blah, suck my dick, who cares?'”

  To this, Gertie laughs, inspiring a scowling exchange of confusion between Odisseus, Moira and Nemo. While all three of them wear the same expression, Flask is clueless and attempts to mouth something Odisseus can't discern, while pointing a discreet finger at the newcomer.

  “Anyway,” the Votagi resolves, turning back around to address the seated Gertie and gesticulating with one cigar-gripping feeler. “Is sending Geen and her girls to push him around a little, make pee his pants? Is meeting with your approval?”

  “Yeah,” appraises Gertie, rising from her seat to fuss suddenly with the Votagi's vest in a shockingly domestic way. “You're a very important fellow, after all, and we can't have unibrowed blowbags like Hairless Hezou stopping you on the fucking streets.”

  “Is maybe sending you after him instead?” suggests the Votagi, bringing the unoccupied feeler around to stroke the side of Gertie's face and play with a few loose strands of her hair. “Is you thinking you've lost your, how you say, edge?”

  She extends a finger too close to his face. “You watch it, buster, or I will reacquaint you with my edge.”

  Then, to a crowd of mouths hanging open in shock and confusion, they kiss for a period of time thoroughly irresponsible considering the number of other people in the room. About the time when all four hands and both feelers are involved, Nemo's shock has given way to disgust. “I think I'mana ralph.”

  At this, they disengage and turn to acknowledge their audience, wearing completely opposite expressions of embarrassment and indifference on their faces. The Votagi, the embarrassed half, steps around the side of Gertie and extends both hands and feelers up in a gesture of forgiveness. “Apologies again.”

  Gertie, the indifferent half, simply wipes a smear of purplish saliva from her mouth and curls one corner of her lips into the faintest hint of a mischievous smile at the Captain.

  “Is not imagining,” the Votagi comments to Nemo, extending a four-fingered hand to him in greeting, “you, of all people, is accustomed to be overlooked?”

  Nemo accepts the offered hand. “Is very confused.”

  “Is Galactic Menace agreeing,” the Votagi makes the concession, sweeping a feeler behind to indicate Gertie, “that a woman such as this cannot be ignored for even a moment?”

  “Uh, sure,” Nemo agrees, with no clue what he's agreeing to. “Didn't catch your name.”

  “Is Triggan,” the Votagi introduces with a slight bow, complemented by a spread of wings.

  “And it's you that's,” Flask makes the leap, rising from his seat and pointing towards the open window, “responsible for all this?”

  “Is thinking,” Triggan allows with a chuckle, “once upon a time, this is maybe true. Is different these days. Is, how you say,” he twists partially around, extends one mustache-feeler back towards Gertie and wraps the thing around her finger, “partnership.”

  “How cute,” is Moira's single contribution to the conversation.

  “Is the greatest of all honors,” Triggan bows again, his wings fluttering a little with the depth of his humility, “to play host for such illustrious guests. Is most welcome, the Galactic Menace and all with him, to our lowly establ–”

  “I wanna do it,” Nemo declares suddenly, seizing his opportunity. He thrusts a finger towards the arena, so far and so fast the bombard shield nearly activates to stop him.

  In place of the bombard shield, it's Odisseus who activates to stop him. “He's not gonna do it.”

  Triggan shrugs both feelers, hands and wings a little, making the classic mistake of giving the Captain an inch. “Is what Galactic Menace wants–”

  “See?” Nemo practically shrieks, swinging his pointed finger from the arena to point, a little too closely, at Triggan's face. “He says I can do it.”

  Odisseus doesn't relent. “That's very kind and stupid of him.”

  “Darling?” interrupts Gertie, inclining her head towards the arena. Every set of eyes in the viewing box follow, to see what the Governor's indicating.

  All the chaos and clamor appears to have actually died down some. Destroyed and deactivated vehicles lay in utter smoking ruin all over the arena. One's been rolled fully o
nto the bombard shield, hanging in suspension a few feet above a scad of fans complaining about their obstructed view. In the center of the ring, the once triumphant Rubadubdub lies upended, its boarding crew spread in circles of roadkill all around. The nominal winner, Green Machine, spins a braindead circle, its green flamethrower sputtering and its engine still active enough to draw the same circle over and over again in the mud with the dead pilot's dragging corpse.

  “Is having a winner!” declares Triggan, throwing hands and feelers into the air. “Is supposing I should haul ass down there now, yes?”

  “You adoring public awaits,” Gertie reminds him, slugging the Votagi on the shoulder hard enough to practically launch him through the window.

  “Is most lovely to meet you,” Triggan extends to the whole room as he hustles back towards the doorway. “Is having a drink later, yes?”

  A chorus of muttered agreement is his only answer before he disappears, with another flutter of wings, through the bulkhead and back into the arena's superstructure.

  There's a healthy pause before anyone else speaks, the silence filled by the hooting, cheering and chanting of the crowd.

  Nemo points a finger through the entryway after the departing Triggan. “That's...”

  “My husband,” Gertie confirms with a nod, obviously savoring everyone's confusion and shock. “My third, actually.”

  “Your third,” Odisseus states evenly, remembering well the fate of Captain Rancore, once her first husband and now a piece of bloated space trash floating somewhere in orbit above Abmar.

  “Was there a second one in there somewhere?” Nemo wonders, looking around like he might find Gertie's second husband like his missing keys.

  Gertie offers a single shoulder shrug. “A real prick and a long story.”

  Nemo points a thumb back through the doorway, towards the long gone Votagi. “Well, I like him.”