Hull Damage

by Timothy J Meyer

  A spray of red gunfire perforates the roiling smoke and Barso bemusedly recognizes the trademark clatter of an SV7 – the standardized Imperium assault rifle, the premier weapon of Inner Sector customs officers. For a brief baffling moment, the Captain almost expects to see razorback shock troopers come stomping into his hold, but the man who wades through the smog, pumping ammo into Barso’s mercenaries is decidedly not Imperium.

  Apart from bearing a gristly black beard and heralding the squalid new stench that wafts in through the airlock, the first marauder is unremarkable, as far as pirates go. A wild-eyed humanoid, wielding his clunky SV7 and screaming like the deranged, he powers one Szarzarr and another, the two forefronters, to the deck under the weight of his covering fire.

  “Boil ‘em all in shark shit!” he bellows, another gruesome lyric in the perverse limerick. He’s painted in return fire from the entrenched mercenaries – one shot, two shots, three shots to the chest yet he stands, roaring and spewing ammunition across the hold. Four, five, six solid hits in the torso and he advances, chanting his macabre chant with a hideous grin on his face. The seventh shot finally brings him down, Barso claiming a spot on his thigh with a shotgun round and crumpling the knee beneath it. Even as he plunges to the deck, he whips the SV7 around, pocketing the walls and ceiling with holes.

  Their vanguard finally down, the bulk of the pirates charge.

  Two of Barso's mercenaries break cover and immediately flee the rush of the incensed barbarian horde who bay like hounds and discharge their mismatched weaponry with both reckless abandon and deadly effect. Ravenous and slavering, tattooed and begrimed, they were the very picture of modern murderous marauders. A menagerie of different species, yet all baleful, cutthroat perversions thereof, they fall upon Kukane’s irregulars like those selfsame hounds on hapless livestock.

  The mercenaries mount a paltry defense before fleeing amidships or meeting gory ends. One Aurik boarder tosses aside a perfectly serviceable shotgun in order to throttle a Szarzarr with his own weighty trunk. Another, a flabby Myyrigon, continues to fire his carbine into his opponent’s ribcage while plunging elongated fangs into his exposed neck. Kukane himself, Barso’s quartermaster for seven years, falls beneath the repeated hacking chops of an electrochette, at the hands of the behemothic purple reaver.

  Through it all, through the utter routing of his wretched resistance, the attacker’s anthem is conducted by the sound of pitched laughter which echoes down the impossibly still-smoking airlock – the unmistakable mirth of an archfiend, a butcherlord who sneers down with degenerate glee over the carnage outlaid before him.

  It’s this, this merciless guffawing, that spills the weapon from Captain Barso’s hand and sends him skittering backward across the hold floor, spirit desperate to flee but limbs unwilling to push more than a crawl. It’s Whipul, hoisting him roughly by the collar and literally dragging him along the floor in retreat, that saves his life, hauling him hastily from the ransacked hold and out of earshot of that dreadful, maddening laughter.

  –––

  Moira Quicksilver just wishes he’d stop laughing. At least he’d eventually wound down that maniacal windbag cackling he lovingly referred to as his “game face laugh,” the one he seems to think strikes mortal terror into the hearts of their victims when shouted down the airlock during a boarding action. He'd only really downshifted into chuckling amiably to himself when they’d strode into the ruination of The Hourly Wage’s cargo hold, him passing out chummy shoulder pats and congratulatory high-fives among the sweating and partially wounded marauder crew.

  There were few true injuries – most managed scrapes and near misses. Anchorage, owing mostly to his proclivity for forgoing his firearm entirely in favor of two hands and trunk, had received a sizable degree of punishment from a Szarzarr's semi-automatic, but it was nothing the Aurik's regenerative flesh couldn't amend. The towering bouncer with the electrified cleaver, Two-Bit’s Ebeneezer, earned a fresh powder scar across his left cheek to match his Captain's, but he seemed to wear it proudly. Even fly-by-night armed robber Zella escaped the fray unscathed.

  Only Garrigan, who’d drawn the short straw and was chosen to spearhead, had been seriously wounded, though his standard issue Imperium-model powered plate absorbed every shot but the leg wound. With proper care, he’d be fully functional in a week or two. After a cursory inspection, Moira'd sentenced Garrigan back to the Lover's medbay for the remainder of the pillaging, under she could safely tend to him.

  All the while the crew scraped themselves from the battleground and finished off the remainder of the apparently entirely Szarzarr mercenary squad, however, Nemo continued that obnoxiously smug tittering.

  When Xo’s prized cargo failed to materialize, however, his mirth whittled down to the odd sarcastic snort and finally died altogether when a floor panel was withdrawn and the vault, complete with encrypted keycode lock, was discovered.

  “Well, fuck,” he had added.

  As befits a bulk freighter, The Hourly Wage consists mainly of her cargo hold; at present, her hold consists mainly of billowing smoke, dead Szarzarr and scavenging pirates. Her walls yawn outward, lending her the appearance of a bloated belly, crosshatched entirely by corrugated teltriton grating. Swirling black smoke churns about their feet as they, Nemo and Moira, stand staring down at the cylindrical vault door, like disappointed homeowners at a mysterious stain discovered beneath the kitchen tile.

  “Whaddya think, get Rooster?” Nemo proposes.

  Moira points. “That’s Niasi steel. Diamond-smelted. We couldn’t blow this blighter open with a torpedo.”

  “So, what then?”

  His genuine bewilderment only serves to expand her scowl. “Since when is the combination no longer a viable option?”

  Nemo tilts apprehensively left. “I don’t know. I’m not so terribly in the mood.”

  “You’re not in the mood.”

  He tousles his expression in response. “Don’t give me that look. Your way involves fewer explosions.”

  “The petrodrone and their airlock weren’t enough for you?” She inquires, knowing the answer.

  He does honestly seem to consider this a moment before he shrugs. “No.”

  Moira pours every last ounce of withering disdain into her glower, but his apparent immunity serves him well, blinking stupidly in retort. “Anybody still got a live one?” she calls over her shoulder to the assemblage of brigands. After a few seconds of shuffling, the voice of Garrok Brondi hails from across the hold.

  “Here’s one!” he informs. Moira flattens Brondi with her time-honored glare as she approaches, Nemo pacing doggedly behind.

  Upon arrival, Brondi gestures towards the culprit. A proned Szarzarr, half-splattered across the floor grating from a gaping belly wound, hisses up at them between stained incisors.

  As if by sudden magic, Lefty gleams in Moira’s extended hand. “What’s the combo?” The dying mercenary hacks a wad of ruby spittle.

  “Don’t know.”

  “Who does?” Moira presses.

  “Probably the Captain.”

  A few paces behind her, Nemo characteristically shafts his hands into his pockets. “Yeah? Where’s he?”

  The Szarzarr's muzzle spoils into an earnest growl. “Chew cock, pirate.”

  “Lovely,” Nemo comments. “Moira?”

  With a flick of her forefinger, Lefty sings and ruptures open his throat, spewing its contents in a brief bubble on the hold floor. Moira instinctively sheathes the pistol, scowling at the sputtering Szarzarr. “Saltless mustelid fucks.”

  “Hey!” Odisseus barks from across the hold.

  A little disquieted and apparently unable to turn his gaze from the dying mercenary, Brondi attempts to idly brush the blood from his boots. “What next?”

  Nemo, hands still pocketed, shrugs forcibly. “Find the Captain.”

  Moira pinches the skin beneath her nose between thumb and trigger finger, dropping the other hand to her hip. “Sooner rather than late
r, preferably – Port Authority oughta be dropping by pretty quick here.”

  Nemo launches both eyebrows skyward. “We have a volunteer.”

  Moira sighs and absently adjusts the position of her shoulder holsters with a thumb. “Fine,” she acquiesces, turning to Brondi. “Bridge’s that way?” she indicates, thrusting a finger towards the hold’s main exit. Brondi nods.

  She begins her jaunt a few steps, motioning Heeko with a sharp head tilt, when Nemo clears his throat from behind. “Um, Zella, you go with her.” Moira halts hard in her tracks. She shifts her stance a few cautious steps, in time to spot Zella disentangle her tongue from Two-Bit’s mouth, cock the bankrobber’s uzi dangling off her shoulder strap and begin cantering cluelessly towards Moira.

  On the opposite side of the hold, Nemo only smiles at her.

  Moira blinks. “Fine,” she repeats and continues her stride, both Heeko and Zella falling into place at her flanks.

  The Hourly Wage is an efficient design, especially compact for a cargo freighter and it’s a short silent sojourn towards the bridge, through the craft’s largely vertical architecture. As the troublesome trio transverses hexagonal corridors and switchbacking companionways, Moira sweeps the deserted chambers for any evidence of outstanding crewmen, Barso in particular, as she concurrently memorizes a vague impression of the deckplan. Such information she cataloged instinctively, for use when Nemo assigned her as the Wage's temporary spoil captain, as he had with the previous two vessels they'd commandeered.

  In Moira's experience, such was the greatest benefit of chartered piracy. While Nemo apparently objected to Velocity's incessant rumrunning on more ideological grounds, Moira chafed beneath its belittling yoke on account of sheer economics. Perhaps arrant piracy was more dangerous, but with a truly savage crew, a cunning enough corsair on contract, could, when pooling the compiled revenue of a hustled spaceship, any sundry valuables found aboard unmentioned in the client's instructions and a flat fee, easily double or triple the income a square smuggler could hope to muster on a single run.

  What's more, this Hourly Wage seems a marketably choice catch. With allowances made toward her recently-inflicted wounds and the dubious dependability of Two-Bit's dealership contacts, a lightly-used and freshly-serviced F9 Heavy Cargo Hauler of this caliber could court a considerable asking price atop Talos VI's auction block or in the half-a-hundred other interchangeable showrooms spread across the Outer Ring. Seldom indeed could brigands of their arguably amateurish stature hope for a salable specimen this pristine and Moira anticipates satisfyingly swollen dividends as a result.

  First things first, however, she had to locate Barso.

  As Moira and her twofold lackwits circuit through vacant hallways en route to the bridge, they discover few signs of calamity or even struggle beyond the hold, barring a smattering of spilled dishware in the galley and the discouraging fact that every last of the freighter's ejection units has seemingly been fired, both lessening the Wage’s overall market value and greatly increasing the chance Barso had jumped ship. Moira favors some inexorable silence in deference to sharing these opinions with either Heeko or Zella, however, the former literally digesting the two thirds of a Szarzarr he’d just consumed and the latter whistling Abraham's bygone shanty hopelessly off-key in a manner a little too akin to her Captain’s.

  The old Grimalti had bribed all nine of the participating conscript crew at two hundred perfectly good credits a head, frittering away a compounded total of eighteen hundred square, all to preserve some archaic buccaneer ethos. The verses meant little to nothing to those reciting them, Moira didn't doubt – any ordinary outlaw would view such chanted vulgarities as little more than something spooky said to help rile the blood and quickly cow the opposition, but Abraham observed them almost ritualistically, as if holy orders, a superstition Nemo sponsored because he “liked the ambience.”

  Moira’s recollection of The Hourly Wage's layout places them at the threshold of the bridge in a matter of minutes. However, durable bulkhead doors, sealed emergency tight against ingress, obstruct their entry. Inwardly hexing Two-Bit’s name and posting his girlfriend on sentry duty, Moira stoops before the control panel, attempting to recall anything specific she’d gleaned off him about the frangible science of breaking and entering.

  The key, as far as she could remember, to disabling the locking mechanism on a standardized security door had something or everything to do with the servomotor and its discharging, disconnection or destruction. To this end does Moira labor, uninformed and frustrated, with Heeko hovering blankly over her shoulder and Zella three paces away, tracing the abandoned hallway with the muzzle of her automatic, as if to anticipate an ambush.

  Several anxious seconds of manual jostling manages to wrest loose a bulb-shaped mechanism that Moira prays is the servo motor and, as she forcefully wrenches it free, the bulwark doors disjoin diagonally and whine wide open. The noise spins Zella skittishly about and, before Moira can issue an order, she empties her weapon’s full chamber into the bridge.

  Green laserfire streams from the lips of the blaring machine gun, spent ditrogen gas oozing from the chamber and choking the doorway. As curtly as it begins, it ceases suddenly, the trembling weapon clicking empty and shuddering from the exhaustion of its ammunition, accompanied by the distinct sound of horrified coughing from within.

  Moira doesn’t need to peer around the corner to recognize and confirm precisely the extent of Zella’s panicky blunder. Utterly incapable of withstanding a ratatat barrage, the consoles, bridge controls and likely main computer were almost certainly pulverized, denigrating the entire Hourly Wage from a potentially profitable prize into a virtually profitless derelict, fit only for petty scavenging. Beyond that, unless the single apparent survivor knew the vault’s combination, Zella'd potentially cost them both Huong Xo’s entire payoff and the blessing of the galaxy’s preeminent criminal syndicate.

  “Whoops,” is all she admits behind her embarrassed grimace before stepping a handful of reluctant paces into the sparking havoc of the bridge, Moira padding a moment behind.

  Royal purple blood, centered around the crumpled corpse of a female Iella, inundates the entire room, overtaking and homogenizing the significantly lesser spill of a wheezing humanoid male, himself perforated by a dozen punctures and scooting limply away from Zella. As she approaches him, Lefty explodes Zella's kneecap from behind with a wet pop. She topples to the ground, emits a stifled shriek and barely has time to cry wolf when Lefty’s second shot ventilates her skull. Her expression snapped vacant, Zella droops placidly and sprawls clumsily on the floor.

  “You didn’t see anything,” Moira asserts as she stalks forward, scooping up Zella’s discarded machine gun and apprehending the humanoid, presumably Barso, roughly by the collar.

  “Understands,” Heeko confirms, receiving the scruff of the squirming captive's shirt in a clawed hand.

  Moira devotes a brief moment to doctoring the scene, rotating Zella's body fully around by the ankle, in order to reposition her backside toward both demolished consoles and the pockmarked carcass of the Iella copilot. She kneels before the messy remains, punctures the skin directly behind the tufted ear with an attenuate needle, floods the attached vial with royal purple and rises from her crouch.

  The return trip is even less eventful. For his part, Heeko, dragging the feebly resistant humanoid behind him, maintains Moira's single edict in glorious silence while Quicksilver herself mentally rehearses her alibi and savors the beginnings of a brood she anticipates to last the remainder of the day. Minutes later, Heeko tosses the blubbering Captain at Nemo’s feet, who pins him to the hold floor with a boot to the shoulder.

  In the interim, the cargo hold, whose scorch marks, blood stains and littered corpses had previously lent it the distinct appearance of a war zone, now more sharply resembles the wreckage left behind by some manner of natural disaster. The expansive chamber is lousy with uncoupled deck plates, sacked cargo crates and every other possible evidenc
e of pillage ten eager and hurried pillagers could possibly muster in the time allowed. All this chaos, however, is centered on a single supervising figure, currently standing tall and pressing a wingtip over the fallen form of the ship's former Captain like an obvious metaphor.

  “Barso, I presume?” Nemo guesses, to which Moira, standing apart with arms crossed and palms flat on the butts of her weapons, nods. Nemo jovially unsheathes the russet antique pistol from his hip holster and relocates it to Barso’s temple. “What’s the combo?”

  The Captain quails something unintelligible, but Nemo’s indelicate cocking of his firearm allows him to reconsider. “Uh, 44-12-98,” he stammers.

  As Brondi punches the combination in, Moira watches Nemo’s thought process extrapolate from the ordnance hanging off her shoulder. “Hey,” the notion dawns on him. “Where’s Zella?”

  “You’re looking at her triggerman right there.” Moira declines her forehead in gesture at the prone Barso. “Beat me to it.”

  “But–” Barso begins, blubbering.

  The pleasing sounds of electronic access bleat confirmingly behind Nemo. “We have entry!” Brondi reports proudly.

  “Excellent,” Nemo responds and punches a round through his pistol, splattering the contents of Barso’s weeping head against the grated deckplates.

  “Moons,” Brondi breathes, making no effort to conceal his disgust. Nemo retaliates with a smile that redefines heartless glee.

  “You weren't hired for the rough stuff, smuggler. Think you're up to piloting the prize outta here before Port Authority rumbles this whole party?”

  “No doing, I'm afraid,” Moira demurs calmly. “The last earthly act of Two-Bit's ex-girlfriend involved shooting the shit not only out of this poor bastard,” she indicates Barso's corpse with a shoulder, “but also all the Wage's consoles and controls. This boat's deader than Danboowui itself.”

  Nemo furrows his brow in discontent. “That's disappointing.”