Hull Damage

by Timothy J Meyer

  Nemo's handpicked buccaneer crew, brandishing a discrepant assortment of weaponry, spew insults and canisters at Nabdres' bloated band of Triomman and Diraaqi bruisers, who tenfold reciprocate the hostilities in orange return fire from their host of identical Halisdro assault rifles. While they certainly couldn't compete with the fervor and creativity of the blasphemies being shouted across the divide at them, The Dead Messenger's crew more than requite the imbalance with actual gunfire, a point Two-Bit likely should have anticipated when preparing to bushwhack a troop of prosperous arms merchants.

  “Any idea which of these blowbags we're actually trying to kill?” Nemo, huddled behind the next table down and barking out blind shots from his obsolete yet somehow fully functional firearm, bellows above the bedlam. Two-Bit attempts a cautious glimpse beyond the rim of the table's protective cover, but a skirting orange ricochet, scant inches from his nose, thoroughly discourages the notion.

  A moonclip and a half into the skirmish and Two-Bit's already lost visual on Nabdres, the centerpiece to this entire maneuver. In his own defense, though, with only furtive glances into the line of sight, distinguishing one cockless Diraaqi among half a dozen similarly dressed, identically armed candidates was no small feat.

  “You know, I ain't rightly sure. Maybe a Diraaqi bloke missing his plonker?”

  Squatting his own considerable form to Nemo's immediate right, Odisseus racks his own Acathi once and grumbles an extended reply in his guttural mother tongue, to which Nemo rejoins, “Be my guest. Blech.”

  “Say, Cap'n,” Two-Bit apprehensively begins, “neither you nor the Ortok would happen to have an extra wheel on wank, would you?”

  Nemo abates his return fire a moment to scowl at Two-Bit. “What's wrong with yours?”

  “She's gone and got herself all lagged up.”

  “Sorry, pal,” Nemo demurs, punctuated by another round from his pistol. “Afraid I didn't think to bring an extra.”

  Odisseus barks something over the sound of the venting Acathi. “Oh, good idea,” Nemo concurs. “Odi says you should try smacking it.”

  “What, did I miss a meeting here? 'course I tried biffin' it!” Thusly discouraged, Two-Bit starts to shift his weight to pursue other solutions before Nemo stops him.

  “Hey, have you seen Moira?”

  “Erm,” Two-Bit stalls as he conducts a perfunctory census of the Lover's entrenched crew. With Ebeneezer to his left and Nemo and Odisseus occupying the next table over, Danbonte and Garrigan fortify the table directly behind Two-Bit, the former squeezing ammunition from his automatic pistol and the latter wielding Barso's totemic shotgun. Having successfully heaved the ungainly thing on its side, Anchorage, Brondi and Rooster seek shelter in the shadow of the joint's now-pockmarked marbles table, giving as good as they got with a steady stream of laserfire toward the hostiles fortuitously installed behind the counter. Finally, Heeko'd managed to wheedle some lukewarm cover out of the shufflefeed by dislodging the hefty console away from the back wall and stooping behind it, peppering the bar top with potshots from his bolt-action carbine.

  Indeed, though, Nemo's observation seemed to be correct; with Nabdres' assorted goons covering the entrance and bar area, Moira is nowhere to be found.

  “Don't tell me she's still in the loo.”

  Realization emerges on Nemo's face. “Oh, bloom me out,” he bedamns as he wrenches the comm off his belt. “Moira? Moira?” he menaces onto the channel before regarding Two-Bit with an appraising look. “What do you think, she spends the whole gunfight in the bathroom, I dock her pay?”

  “Sounds feez to me,” Two-Bit admits, inching himself fully around, with his back to the table, to address another prospect. “Danbonte?”

  The redskin pauses his barrage. “You wanna be shooting that way, Switch,” he indicates forward with the snub of his firearm.

  “You know that, what was it, that little Uppercut wheel you smackered off me last week?” Two-Bit inquires with hands steepled before his mouth. “Have you got it on you?”

  “Sure. Why?”

  Advancing his clasped hands, Two-Bit makes his pitch. “Could you possibly bum it back to me? Just for a spell. Just 'till the flaster is over. Me own's just gone all chaveled on me.”

  Danbonte flinches left as an orange bolt streaks narrowly past his ear. He punishes its contributor with a trio of canisters of his own before consenting. “Okay. She's only got the four shots, remember.”

  “Oh, sublime. That'll be jig,” Two-Bit claps once. “Buzz her over to me, willya?”

  A devilish grin meanders onto his red lips. “Fifty cred.”

  Two-Bit blinks. “You're taking the fooge.”

  “What, you think I'm running a charity back here? Fifty cred to lease a piece's a solid deal.”

  Garrigan unleashes another supercharged round from the late Captain Barso's reappropriated shotgun. “Get bent, Danbonte.”

  “Fifty cred for four canisters?” Two-Bit gainsays.

  “Fair. Forty cred for four canisters.”

  Two-Bit flattens a palm against his forehead. “Thirty-five.”

  “Deal,” Danbonte compromises, sliding the clip out of his custom-modified handgun. “Fork it over.”

  Misplaced gunfire rattles the table he leans against as Two-Bit fingers out a paltry handful of banknotes from the depths of his trouser pocket. Counting out thirty-five square, he passes it forward to Danbonte, who merrily collects his prize before tossing the brass-knuckle-shaped sidearm playfully to Two-Bit. “You're a schiesty little bleeder, you know that, Danbonte?”

  The redskinned mercenary pockets the impromptu fee, thrusts an unspent clip into the butt of his pistol, takes precise aim and shrugs with an “I've heard worse,” before opening fire again.

  Wrapping his fingers through the familiar grips of his recently bygone handgun, Two-Bit Switch, finally armed if only for four shots, regains his bearings and browses the brawl for his emasculated rival. Like shovel-snout frackers popping out of their burrows, a veritable array of Nabdres' ilk belabors the Lover's crew with seemingly endless barrages, situated from a number of secure points along the bar and against the door. By Two-Bit's squinty calculation, of the dozen or so assembled muscle, two Diraaqi cadavers stain the barroom floor green while another two remain in the ranks of the five Triommans and one Prul in Nabdres' collective employ.

  As neither of the downed Diraaqi particularly resemble No-Cock anymore than either of the remaining two, Two-Bit aligns the Uppercut's stubby snout toward the nearby cigarette dispenser and times out his return fire. Sure enough, after several seconds, a prickly Diraaqi countenance surfaces around the vending machine's lip and Two-Bit lets fly, clenching his fists to engage the pistol's odd triggers. His first two shots whiz wide, sizzling sizable scorches into the wall, his third shot smashes the machines' display screen, half-frightening the Diraaqi gunman back into cover, before Two-Bit's fourth shot opens his temple, clobbers his head against the dispenser's buffer and spills his quivering form to the tile.

  Before he can register precisely what's struck him, something clouts him furiously on the shoulder, nearly plowing him straight into the table. For the briefest of moments, he fears he's somehow been shot from behind, but Ebeneezer's throaty laughter mollifies that notion almost immediately. Resting his prodigious purple hand on one of Two-Bit's proportionately diminutive shoulders, Ebeneezer favors him with a toothy beam.

  “Four shots well spent, eh, little man?”

  “Scanty so. Weren't for that last one, the whole thing woulda gone lollies-up,” he concludes, tossing the useless weapon disdainfully to the floor. “And now I'm still one wheel short.”

  Over this point Ebeneezer seems to brood a moment, before peering left and suggesting, as matter-of-factly as Two-Bit Switch had ever seen the rather rational bruiser suggest anything, “Take his.”

  Slouched cartoonishly against the corner of the sparking cigarette machine, the dead Diraaqi had relinquished his hold on his own weapon and the abdicated as
sault rifle, spattered with emerald blood, lies, barely visible beneath his crumbled corpse, a scant fifteen feet past Ebeneezer's left. However, transgressing that modest expanse would parade the transgressor in question across fifteen feet of uninterrupted exposure from two Triommans and a Prul's worth of Nabdres' triggermen. It would also require no short supply of cover fire and even more frenzied dashing, something typically best left for the Captain's doing.

  “That's a bit of a hazard, that is,” Two-Bit summarizes, scrutinizing the fire arcs of the potential assailants to which he'd, however fleetingly, present himself. Ebeneezer, after plugging another set of buckshot shells into the chamber of his Backlash, latches the rifle back into one piece and shrugs another of his titanic shrugs.

  “What, you think I won't cover ya?”

  Several jostling seconds pass before Two-Bit and Ebeneezer have arranged themselves appropriately for the upcoming gambit, during which a mistimed Halisdro projectile pulverizes the shufflefeed into a smoldering hulk and unwittingly grinds it into enervated operation, though, instead of the jouncy Nosebleeds tune it was perhaps slotted to play, it belches out a glitched, bloodless version thereof. Two-Bit has, in response to the klutzy clamor, enough time to comment “Peachy” before Ebeneezer's hollered “Go!” commands him into action.

  Propelling himself forward at the exact moment his cyclopean safeguard jettisons out a fine mist of hypercharged ditrogen as covering fire, Two-Bit Switch skedaddles across the fifteen-foot stretch on all fours, like a peevish child pussyfooting punishment. By the time Ebeneezer's second canister impacts the bar, hacking and chiseling away the shoddy titanium, Two-Bit's slid well into safety, the combined thickness of the defunct cigarette machine and the westernmost corner of the bar itself between his foes and his person, with only a handful of glancing blast marks marring his passage.

  Wasting precisely no time acquainting himself with his new surroundings, Two-Bit promptly dislodges the corpse to retrieve the castoff assault rifle. Just before he pumps the shiny new bolt on his shiny new weapon and scoots the Diraaqi's body into the well of the tavern proper with the heel of his boot, something odd catches Two-Bit's eye: a second assault rifle, slung across the Diraaqi's second shoulder. Currently hefting one of the unwieldy babies in his own two hands, Two-Bit acknowledges the bulkiness of this particular model of Halisdro; dual-wielding such a ponderous weapon would require someone with at an expert level of marksmanship or rather, as it dawns on Two-Bit, someone with a desperate need to overcompensate.

  Yanking the deceased Diraaqi back into concealment by the lapel of a suddenly familiar combat vest, Two-Bit's closer inspection indeed reveals a slack-jawed Nabdres No-Cock, nearly a year older than his previous incarnation and presently varnishing the tiled floor of Loose Lips under a steady stream of his gummy green brains. Mindful not to accidentally confirm No-Cock's namesake as he does so, Two-Bit hurriedly frisks the leaking remains of his former comrade and, after a swift search, he uncovers, in addition to a crumpled public transit stub and some loose change, a humble handful of linked property keys, roughly analogous to those Two-Bit had last observed, dangling idly from The Dead Messenger's ignition port, ten months ago.

  Two-Bit Switch whirligigs the looted starship keys around his pointer finger once before hoisting them over his head. “Cap'n,” he addresses, jangling the pendent prize for added effect, “I got the–”

  A small circle of scalding metal, like a burning brand, delicately introduces itself to the nape of Two-Bit's neck. He doesn't need to glance back to recognize the shape of a firearm's muzzle, in all likelihood a Halisdro-make assault rifle, judging from the configuration of the selfsame weapon lying fruitlessly at his knees, though the reflection granted by the shattered glass of the cigarette machine substantiates the Prul, a female in fact, leaning heavily over the bar top, who currently holds Two-Bit Switch at a significant disadvantage. “On your feet,” she urges in a croaky Prulish accent, emphasizing the order with the tip of her loaded rifle.

  Complete with begrudging sigh, Two-Bit complies, blossoming both hands to reveal empty palms, save for the key ring still quietly clinking at his knuckle. The Prul, who'd somehow managed to shield herself from potential reprisals behind the sputtering jalopy of a cigarette machine, prattles something in glottal Triomman to her confederates before barking “Put up your pistols or I'll empty the whole chamber into his brain” in Commercial.

  Bolt by bolt, the crossfire begins to gradually diminish and finally abates altogether, as the crew of The Unconstant Lover individually lower their weapons and each instead brandish the universal “held-at-gunpoint” gesture of empty, raised hands. All the multi-toned shrieking, chopping and twanging of the firefight is unanticipatedly replaced by the shufflefeed's seesawing pseudo-song and the remotest peal of distant sirens. As unprecedented as its pithy beginning, Two-Bit Switch's most recent caper ends with a cantina full of disarmed pirates and the Captain's flippant disparagement.

  “Sublime, Two-Bit,” he commends, gazing about the room with his vintage pistol drooping flaccidly off his trigger finger. “Sublime.”

  –––

  Moira Quicksilver has literally just begun urinating when she hears the first shot. A bawling blast, unlike the discharge of any modern pistol, a sound Moira has come to recognize as Nemo's signature Carbon Industrial piece, harbingers the downpour and, within moments, the alehouse immediately beyond the bathroom door disorders into the makings of a truly rowdy gunfight. Unchaining enough squalid profanity to curdle milk, Moira does what precious little she can do to expedite things below and, short of discontinuing entirely and taking her chances with wetting herself, she isn't exactly flush with options.

  In Two-Bit Switch's infinite wisdom, they'd apparently preempted Nabdres' arrival by some significant margin and, after two straight hours of sipping substandard gin and watching the windows' incessant buffeting at the hands of boundless leagues of tidal waves and limitless cascades of driving rain, Moira hazarded the briefest of bathroom breaks, reckoning that her chances of missing the action during the ninety seconds she'd spend relieving herself were slim to none.

  Yet here she squatted, helplessly micturating in the safety of the southernmost stall, while stray bolts splinter booze bottles, titanium-topped tables are capsized for temporary cover and all the ribald ruffianism of a barroom brawl roils on without her.

  She's rapidly unraveling reams of toilet tissue when the fizzling murmur of her pocketed comm, signifying an incoming transmission, echoes its droning cry across the empty bathroom. She's plunging both hands in the tepid water of the basin, though she'd fleetingly considered foregoing that particular nicety before better judgment seized her, when some form of tuneless electronic melody lends its voice to the uproarious chaos without. She's just finally banishing the excess moisture from her hands that the basin's inefficient dryer couldn't oust with a few brisk snaps of her wrists when the gunfire sequentially dies out.

  Easing matching pistols from matching holsters, Moira flattens an ear against the bathroom door and attempts to administer an aural survey of the room beyond, despite the atonal fanfare and the relative thickness of the door. Several potential outcomes could result in an abrupt ceasefire and normally, prudence was most advisable when interjecting oneself into any preexisting hostilities. Yet, even through the ambient noise, she's able to discern the prevalence of an unknown voice evidently issuing orders, a general gabble of nondescript Triomman muttering and the unmistakable sound of the Captain's cloying submission, as obvious an indication that a little two-fisted deliverance would perhaps be in order as she required.

  An oddity for any modern colonial establishment, the door to Loose Lips' women's bathroom is an outmoded hinge job and consequently, Moira Quicksilver fancies herself an old-fashioned desperado when she unceremoniously kicks her way into the saloon proper, parallel pistols fully extended and expulsed door freewheeling apart. A female Prul, holding Two-Bit at barrel's end while issuing instructions to an adjacent underling
with a harsh point outward, receives a complimentary perforation clean through her elbow joint, courtesy of Lefty's opening pleasantries, before her Triomman lackey enjoys Righty's corollary statement directly between the eyes.

  Triumphantly pillaging the persons of their kneeling captives and the majority of their weapons discarded or disarmed by treacherous victory, the surviving six of the Messenger's crewmen are plumb oblivious to Moira's grand entrance until she's loosed her first four shots, a window of time she exploits for its undiluted worth. As the proned Prul, howling undoubted expletives in hooting Prulish, flounders on the floor and claws at her soon-to-be-severed forearm, Righty and Lefty zero and eliminate the next nearest Triommans, flopping the first forward to crack his forehead against the barhop with a bolt to his bulbous gut and toppling the second backward into the racked alcohol with an explosive neck shot.

  Finally, with four of their number instantaneously incapacitated, Nabdres' remaining rowdies respond to Moira's unforeseen barrage, two snatching up idle assault rifles and the third scurrying toward the shelter of an inverted barroom table. Moira smears the tile sooty, mere inches ahead of his scrambling gait, with an ill-timed trigger but Righty recovers, burying its bolt in the Triomman's unprotected armpit and flummoxing his breakneck retreat into a literally breakneck stumble.

  A Halisdro snaps twice, corresponding orange streaks caterwauling past to poke pocks in the thermosteel composite. Moira lambastes the offending Diraaqi beneath both pistols' bombardment, utterly overwhelming him with brilliant yellow laserfire. From the opposite vector, something equally brilliant but incandescent orange chars a clear strip up Moira's ebony sweater sleeve, narrowly singeing not just the cloth, but a swath of arm hair as well.