Hull Damage

by Timothy J Meyer

  “’fraid not,” Nemo readily disillusions.

  “Dented is more what we is.”

  A resigned sigh accompanies her response. “Can she still fly?”

  “We’re coming, we’re coming,” Nemo abates, as he takes hold of the yoke and begins to navigate the coasting Lover through the curtain of masticated debris.

  “You chavel ‘em all to hell down there?” Two-Bit questions.

  “You could say that,” Moira contentedly returns. “Ten fighters destroyed. Now we’re just twiddling our fucking thumbs down here while they shoot at us.”

  “We’ll be down in a few; just stand by,” Nemo confirms, easing the ship out of the drifting wreckage.

  An abrupt tonal shift claims Moira's voice. “Actually,” she dallies, “could you possibly give us a minute?”

  “Well, it'll take us a few minutes to wend back there, won't it? Say, five minutes tops?” Two-Bit supposes.

  “That's perfect. See you then.” The comm channel clicks dead.

  The Captain and co-pilot exchange a second pair of glances. “What's she about down there?”

  Nemo shrugs, making a grunting approximation of “I don't know.”

  Through the viewport, the converging starfighter, apparently unwilling to tussle with a freighter capable of merely shaking off a head-on collision at headlong engagement speed, tucks tail, pulls off and flees into Lzura’s primary ring, bustling back toward The Damn Shame with all haste.

  Observing this, Nemo responds in kind – throttling the Lover's clutchlever long before she’s game for pursuing velocity. The much-abused freighter convulses ahead in apparent shock and, after a few seconds of reconfiguration, gallops ungainingly after the final fleeing starfighter.

  –––

  Moira probably doesn't have time for a shower. With ditrogen bolts poking and pocking the walls and crates all about her encircled boarding party, Moira devotes the majority of her mental energy towards nullifying the airborne efforts of a Kezzerak crackshot and his pet grenade launcher. Lefty snipes each grenade seconds after they're fired, exploding them harmlessly high overhead while Righty joins the efforts of her strike team's machine guns, to beat back the vengeful pirates hordes pressing hard against their entrenched position before the nearest bathroom.

  Moira bangs Lefty's butt roughly against the bathroom door during a spare second while the Kezzerak reloads his artillery. “Your sixty seconds are up!” she decries back to Brondi, hopefully only washing his hands and not wasting his time sprucing himself in the mirror. “Anchorage, you're next!” she directs with a scream and pistol-wave toward the Aurik, who nods sagely.

  Heeko, to her right, plows a Trijan to the teltriton under his covering fire. “Captain says he was coming, right, Quissilver?”

  She nods. “Well, that's what he said.” Whipping about to spy the Kezzerak's next projectile already whizzing through the air, she brings Lefty to bear as quickly as she can, snagging the spinning grenade at the last possible second. Ducking slightly to avoid the fringes of the resulting explosion, she mutters, mostly to herself, “Let's only hope he doesn't get here before my turn.”

  Chapter 10

  Odisseus isn’t interested in Happy Yum-Yum Bars or CryoChew Extinct Jerky or Frisky Phnuki Fuckbuddies. He’s only interested in preserving Nemo’s mercurial attention for at least thirty seconds.

  “Main electrical conduit got crumpled,” the Ortok elaborates, now counting on his fourth claw. “That’ll require effectively a full re-haul of the anterior wiring before I can get anything but auxiliary systems up, but we don’t gotta ground her. Eight thousand and five days, a week on its own,” he pointedly adds.

  “Uh huh,” Nemo ignores between bites of his candy. He pinches the masticated stub of the peeled Yum-Yum Bar against his ring and pinky fingers as he leafs confoundedly through the sordid publication with nougat-stained fingers. The languid unfurling of a centerfold elicits a visible recoil, accompanied by an expression somewhere amidst revulsion and intrigue. “Okay, what is that?”

  Nemo and Odisseus wait in queue at a Warp Gate Junction, identical to the thousands that dot the galaxy at nearly every certified jump point. They're one place behind a laboriously chatty Ondo freight tramper who inundates the incurious Chook clerk with tedious palaver and one place before a trio of bickering Xend delinquents with antennae piercings and the telltale aromas of recently consumed Yellowtooth cigarettes.

  Awaiting contact from Velocity’s brother in orbit above Rith, the stopover had allowed for some badly needed recuperation, both for the browbeaten starship and the surviving members of Moira’s boarding party. Beyond nursing their minor injuries and allowing bolt-addled Anchorage’s regenerative flesh to amend itself, Salo’s demise had cast something of a pallor over the allegedly victorious pirates. Zella’s death may have been untimely, but few among the crew, save Two-Bit, actually knew her, while Salo had been considered a comrade for long enough to turn even professional cutthroats a little introspective, reminding everyone aboard, Odisseus included, that, in this business, a stray bolt or a crack shot was all it required.

  If such speculations penetrate Nemo’s breezy aplomb, however, he’s unwilling to show it. Three paces ahead of Odisseus in line, he leans flippantly against the rack of outdated, non-holographic periodicals. As he browses the bawdy material, he devours, amidst his horde of selected confections, an unpurchased Yum-Yum Bar; a pet peeve of Odisseus’ about which he elected to keep quiet, figuring it somewhat petty to chide a wanted criminal for consuming goods before he paid for them.

  “I mean, seriously, where would that even go?” Nemo ponders astoundedly.

  “And then, of course, there’s the shielding mainframe,” Odisseus ignores right back, dialing his tally down to his broad thumb claw. “That I’m gonna need parts for and no small number of them. A week on its own, easily, and probably longer. I’ll be lucky to get her under ten thousand.”

  This catches Nemo’s eye as he slaps Fuckbuddies to the counter and draws up another, a slimmer volume entitled Dirty Bipeds, from the top shelf and absently pages into it. “So, what’s your total?”

  “Forty-nine,” Odisseus reports firmly. “A minimum of ten days at dock.”

  “Forty-nine,” Nemo repeats, starkly unable to mask his intimidation. He flips a few dispirited pages, Odisseus counting the seconds before he, rigidly in character, glances back to his saltbrother and reaffirms, “You’re sure?”

  “Yes, Nemo. Do you see what happens when you crash your spaceship?”

  “Yes, yes, okay, I get it. Forty-nine thousand. Fine.” Seemingly hectored by responsibility, Nemo relents, throwing up a palm in submission. As Odisseus turns aside to retrieve his intended purchases from atop the cigarette stand where he’d placed them to more effectively budget to Nemo, the Captain halts him hard with a breathless exclamation. “Holy shit.”

  Whizzing suddenly about, Odisseus expects Quuilar Noxix or worse, but only discovers Nemo, new centerfold flapping open from the inverted copy of Dirty Bipeds, with eyes agog at the drooping insert’s undoubtedly illicit contents. “By all the moons of Jotor,” the Ortok bemoans, “what?”

  Face flush with ebullient astonishment, he brandishes the nudie magazine towards Odisseus with flabbergasted pride and the Ortok reluctantly considers the objectifying spectacle Nemo suspends before him.

  A humanoid woman of ludicrously voluptuous proportions, complete with tattered bandana, cartoonishly enormous bare breasts and a gauzy gee-string emblazoned with a tiny skull-and-crossbones, tarnishes the entire poster with both her slovenly posture and her very existence. Its caption, “The Dread Pirate Blackbush,” wholly deserves Odisseus’ disgusted grimace.

  “It’s horrifying.”

  “It’s also perfect. Look,” Nemo denotes from behind the dangling obscenity, “they even have the same boots. Or, well, boot.”

  Even more reluctantly, having already witnessed the thing, Odisseus turns his unwilling gaze back toward the area of Nemo’s indicatio
n to discover that, indeed, one of her mismatched combat boots was passingly familiar.

  Nemo hastily folds the demeaning pin-up back into its sheaf. “Moira’s gonna love this.”

  “Oh, Nemo, I don’t think that’s–”

  The fizzing warble of a communicator interrupts his cautioning. Nemo, unthwarted, plops the crude periodical onto his mounting pile of junk food and unclips the buzzing device from his belt. “Nemo here.”

  “Erm, Cap’n? Ye be aboard?” Abraham addresses with an odd air of apprehension.

  “Odi and I made a run to the Junction.”

  The old Grimalti buccaneer seems to deliberate a beat before inquiring, “Ye ain’t got Xo’s old holodeck on ye by chance, would ye?” Consideration crosses Nemo’s expression as he fishes a hand into the pockets of his duster.

  “Uh, yeah, I think so. Why, what's the rumpus?”

  “I’mana buzz ye over the transmission I just received and ye’d best give it a look-see as soon as ye can,” he returns cryptically. “Seems we might be in a spot ‘o trouble.”

  Nemo and Odisseus exchange wary glances, wave the impatient Xend past and huddle a little closer to watch this supposedly troubling message. Nemo jams the sheer metallic holodeck into the insertion drive of the scuffed copper communicator and, after a moment of stammering static, a projected head-and-shoulders wavers into view.

  “Captain,” Boss Ott’s holographic likeness begins, “I sincerely deplore having to contact you like this, but I’m afraid you’ve scarcely left me another option. It seems we have an urgent matter that requires immediate discussion. I await your arrival on Baz and I would advise strongly against refusal or tardiness.” As curtly as the message began, it concludes, the oscillating image of the Galactic Menace guttering back into the holodeck.

  “Shove all the moons of Jotor up my ass,” Nemo breathes frightfully.

  “What was that?”

  “Ye boys didn’t, say, shoot his puppy or somethin’ last time we was there, didje?” Abraham theorizes through the freshly opened comm channel.

  “Not that I remember.”

  “What does he want?” Odisseus reiterates.

  “‘Discussion’, he said?” Nemo recalls, “about an ‘urgent matter?’ Whatever the fuck that means, I guess.”

  “’course, it’s possible this be nothing but a bushwhack. Xo coulda set us up. Ye think the blood was bad, maybe?”

  “I mean, the Treffel’s blood detector thingy seemed to like it fine,” Nemo extrapolates as he extracts the bowler from his brow to wander a consternated hand through his hair. “Fuck, I don’t know.”

  “So, what do we do about this?” Odisseus doggedly assesses.

  “Bloom him. Creepy-ass motherfucker can suck exhaust.” Nemo dismisses with an encompassing shrug, but Abraham quickly disillusions him.

  “I ain’t sure runnin’ be the wisest course ‘o action, Cap’n.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Last thing ye wanna do is pour salt in whatever wound he’s got on you, ‘cause trust me boyo, there ain’t a round planet spinnin’ where we’d be safe – not Medroteria, not Spithax, not no place.”

  “Oh, come on,” Nemo derides, “we go deep Offchart. Bril or Gren or–”

  “Nemo, only person what draws more water in this galaxy, ‘sides Boss Ott, is the Emperor. Maybe. Ott’s bigger than Vel, he’s bigger than the Scar, he’s bigger than Xo. Ye think we’ve got bounty hunter troubles now?” Abraham challenges, before giving a brief snort, “Blow, ye’d be better off buying a hole out at Skelta and chuckin’ yerself in fer all eternity.”

  Nemo spits. “You’re serious?”

  “If we run, Ott’ll most likely buzz every angler and headhunter owes him a favor and believe ye me, that’ll be too much heat, too fast,” Abraham estimates.

  “I mean, he is the Galactic Menace, Nemo,” Odisseus supposes calmly.

  “Okay,” Nemo, flustered, submits, “so, what then?”

  “I guess we show,” Abraham warily proposes.

  “What, and get fucked in the ear for our trouble?”

  “I mean, we go, right,” Odisseus postulates, “we go, we have an escape plan, we hope for the best.”

  “We go armed to the dick, you mean,” Nemo asserts.

  “Well, sure.”

  “I think the Ortok’s right there – we show up, make it clear we’ll fight iffen we have to and hope he’s got something reasonable to ask ye.”

  Nemo pleats his temple with a grimy palm. “There’s that word ‘hope’ again.” He roots the bowler back atop his head, plants a hand to his hip and shudders out a sigh. “For once, I think this is a phenomenally bad idea.”

  “Says the man with the starfighter-shaped dent in the front of his spaceship,” Odisseus mutters, to which he receives Nemo’s elbow in his side.

  “Whaddya wanna do, Cap’n?”

  With a helpless shrug, Nemo relents. “Make contact, explain that we’ve got a few repairs to make before we’re ready to warp and we’ll make our way as soon as we’re trim. Savvy?”

  “Aye aye, Cap’n.” Nemo snaps the channel closed and clips the comm back to his belt, offering a stymied glance to Odisseus.

  “All the moons. You ever think we’d end up like this?”

  “Decidedly no.”

  Their business concluded, the two saltbrothers, as one, collect their discarded merchandise and, turning to approach the check-out counter, discover all three Xend customers and the Chook clerk, apparently having overheard their entire comm conversation with Abraham, staring at Nemo and Odisseus, wide-eyed and slack-jawed.

  –––

  Ott doesn’t need to wait in order to glean a reaction. His guest, gauging the saffron-spotted composition before him with a callous disinterest, is about as scrutable a person as the Galactic Menace ever had cause to encounter and his opinion, as uneducated as his own, starkly plasters his face.

  “I don’t know,” Nemo tangles his arms together and deposits a violent shrug. “It sorta looks like puke,” he bluntly spits.

  Somewhere behind, Bald Tizor fails to muffle a scoff, but Ott inclines his head to the left in accord with Nemo’s observation, knot of barely-contained headtails sloping in unison. “Well, it is puke, actually.”

  In response, Nemo squints and cants his own torso left, as if to examine the canvas from a fresh vantage. “Oh, huh.” At his new askance angle, he jabs a finger towards the painting. “That, uh, would explain it.”

  Ott allows himself a smirk. Nemo’s entire demeanor capably betrayed his bafflement at being led into an apparent portrait gallery rather than being immediately murdered upon his landing. Both the Captain and his obstinate Ortoki orderly kept their weapons looser in their respective holsters than they had during their first meeting with Ott. The Doreen could easily ascertain the characteristic combat tension that clenched both their chests, the pair of them simultaneously anxious for the second proverbial footfall and for this to become an ambush after all.

  The four of them occupy, to varying degrees, the third floor map room in the South Spire, with Ott and Nemo contemplating the Luq 3211 in the far corner as their respective minders, Bald Tizor and this undiscourageable Ortok, glower mistrustfully at each other on opposite sides of the exit.

  Nemo’s candid conjecture had indeed been correct – apparently this Ubiq Luq, a Moshi solvachromist a millennia classical by now, was reputed for ingesting various hues of fractal paint, swilling them amalgamated for several hours in his fluidsac and regurgitating the motley mess onto the canvas. Whatever dried an hour later he proceeded to term as “art.” Few people, it seemed, contested the ancient painter on this point and this particular piece, a spattered festival of noxious yellows, oranges and greens retrieved by Tizor on his latest run, was ostensibly worth three quarters of a million credits – arguably the most expensive piece of dried vomit in the galaxy.

  “Tell you the truth,” Nemo, two steps to Ott’s left, prefaces, “I never woulda pegged the Galactic Menace as an ar
t buff.” He sweeps an absent gesture at the menagerie of other odd paintings that adorn the unfeeling thermosteel walls, Ott following his motion and burying his lower hands into his pockets.

  “Actually never thought of it like that,” he appreciates. “What would you have pegged me as?”

  Nemo considers the admittedly leading question less than he probably ought to have. “A war criminal. A vengeful gangster.” He blinks. “The Galactic Menace.”

  “I see. And this is how the greater galaxy views me?”

  “Pretty much, yeah,” he answers, liberating a cloistered exhale and peering down the curvature of the chamber towards an ancient Mantrian marble of some local war deity or another, virtually identical to the pantheon of similar statues dotting various rooms throughout the fortress.

  “You understand what all this is,” Ott states flatly.

  “Esoteric?”

  “Plunder,” Ott corrects with a term that ensnares Nemo’s truant attention. “At a certain point,” he elucidates with a conversational shrug, “it no longer makes sense to spend all your capital on drink and whores. Canisters I still buy, but after a few years of working this game, before everything here really came to a head, I bought, I don’t know, art.”

  The Captain contemplates this with a hint of that grave esteem which characteristically claims the faces of all aspiring hoodlums when they consider the foregone conclusion of their future riches. By this tell, does Ott recognize Nemo as a kindred class of criminal.

  For, in truth, the only thing Ott possessed fewer of than dependable soldiers or reliable intelligence was artistic sensibility. Priceless paintings such as this Luq, avant-garde sculptures like the enormous dingus that dominated the lobby and idiosyncratic architecture from dozens of worlds and cultures like the Vollocki symphonic ceiling, all became Ott’s chief imported commodity only shortly after he’d purchased lifetime supplies of several differing brands of alcohol, only after he'd sampled the majority of the galaxy’s sentient bipedal prostitution and only after he’d, quite literally, drunk and fucked himself into boredom.