Hull Damage

by Timothy J Meyer

  At least, to Two-Bit's thinking, on Takioro, the very ground and everyone on it wasn't necessarily working actively towards his death, which is more than this forty-five minute overland trek toward the temporary base camp of the Scream-Weed kojaj could claim.

  Dawn escapes only momentarily between rare breaches in the three interlacing layers of canopy, freckling the forest floor in shreds of orange and red. Excepting these semioccasional slivers of sunlight, however, the Scream-Weed's ancestral province is little but noxious, musty and oddly sepulchral, an apparently endless jungle of hemotaphagus fauna and whitewashed flora. All of the vegetation here, from the unusually patterned leaves, to the desaturated wood of a thousand entwining trunks, to the frondy undergrowth of ferns and scrubs, is a sinister shade of pale, as if a forgetful painter-by-numbers had neglected to color the entire forest in.

  Beyond the chronic sinkholes, which returned deeper, darker and more abundant, and the mounting suspicion of unprecedented and fiery fulmination from below, no less than twice did vo Qwer and the seven members of their “welcoming party” from the nearby kojaj need to stave off, by waggling both their throatsacs and their peculiar hollow polearms in its general direction, the predatory advances of some prickled monstrosity that appeared uncomfortably predisposed to draining the pirates of their various bodily fluids. Like any progressive hoodlum would when confronted by a charging, ravenous sanguivores, the ten non-Baziron present drew down and prepared to pepper the thing with supercharged ditrogen and only the stern admonitions of vo Qwer who stated that energy weapons would only “FURTHER ENFLAME THE NHYBARK,” and “ALERT THE IMPERIUM TO OUR POSITION,” could dissuade them.

  Most salient among vo Qwer's various stern admonitions, however, were his unceremonious cautions against the multiform wildlife of Baz's unnavigable tropics that professedly thirsted for Two-Bit's blood. As he trudges through the cadaverous white undergrowth, Two-Bit occasionally passes the odd fern or shrub, blushing delicately pink as though embarrassed, and he's immediately more mindful of his footing lest he, through clumsiness or simple misfortune, run afoul of some lurking danger and provide the parasitic vegetation with a second meal this morning.

  He's more mindful to fully circumvent the patches of hanging growth that droop down across his path, in case any of the pendulous vines happen to belong to an arboreal creeper and its nettles imperceptibly puncture his skin and summon worse fiends down upon them. He's more mindful to avoid stepping upon, over or too near any deadfall, sunken logs or rotted timber, lying overgrown among the leafy chaparral, on the off chance that they currently house the ambushing, adhesive tongue of a giant crerpo toad. A creature so exceedingly grotesque that the Baziron regard it with all the deferential deification that befits an ancestor, the crerpo toad allegedly reels any ensnared prey in at an unavoidable speed and, according to a reverential vo Qwer, pulpifies them against the serrated walls of its own throatsac.

  While perhaps not as directly hazardous to his health, several other unpleasant features of these southern jungles, in Two-Bit's admittedly biased opinion, could have warranted mention in vo Qwer's too-eponymous briefing; the stifling humidity, for one, that eerily persistent wailing of the scream weed for another, but the most intolerable of vo Qwer's oversights, were the droves of damned ktotari birds.

  Millions of infinitesimal birds that Two-Bit, judging by their size and numbers, would have mistaken for midges had vo Qwer not passingly corrected his zoology, cloud the muggy air in pestilential swarms, buzzing about with their microscopic wings flapping once every millisecond, like the insects Two-Bit'd confused them for. Ostensibly lacking the necessary mouthparts to draw blood from their own victims, ktotari birds simply hounded likely-looking prey long enough until another, larger predator could be bothered to spill the hapless creature's blood for them to scavenge the leavings. Two-Bit considered this, predicated on the innumerable multitudes hovering about the twin driftcarts and their squadron of accompanists, a heartening sign.

  After quite nearly submerging his entire left leg into another invisible sinkhole, Two-Bit Switch sours enthroned Odisseus with his nastiest glower. The Ortok, struggling obstinately to steer the enslaved driftcarts through the entangling brush without toppling either of their insecurely stacked loads, pays no heed. The grumbly Odisseus had flat-out refused to bear any additional passengers as burden beyond the forty crates of DU5 assault rifles to be delivered to koj Pasqkla's proverbial doorstep, arguing that the driftcart's undercarriage was entirely liable to bend and buckle under the weapons' tremendous combined weight and, unless the pirates felt inclined to march through the undergrowth hefting four gun crates a head, they'd best not tax the driftcarts anymore than they absolutely needed to. Though Two-Bit couldn't exactly take exception with this hypothesis, it didn't make the aforementioned march through said treacherous undergrowth, especially for those without a cushy driftcart to ride, any smoother sailing.

  Moira, nursing a Yellowtooth and a deeply scurrilous attitude ten feet to Two-Bit's left, certainly didn't think so either.

  The newest in an extended history of her foul temperaments, Moira's current umbrage, of course directed at Nemo, first germinated late the previous evening, following the hovercraft incident at the Dancing-Horizon's main settlement. When her earnest entreatments to reconsider his strategy fell on habitually deaf ears, the seething contempt endured through the night, to manifest this morning with disregardful cigarettes and barely an audible word to spare anyone.

  The Captain, however, is as customarily clueless to Moira's moods as he is to nutritional facts, local weather patterns or common sense and is, by some strange means Two-Bit couldn't comprehend, able to contently, even cheerfully, tromp through the underbrush. Which, Two-Bit suddenly grasps, meant he was almost certainly thinking about killing someone, a sentiment Moira undoubtedly shared.

  As for the rest of the thuggery, Two-Bit observes that, to a sentient, from Danbonte to Ebeneezer, Brondi to Rooster, Anchorage to Heeko, they all flinch from snapped twigs in the brush, restlessly scan both the shadowed fathoms of the jungle and the unreadable expressions of their Baziron hosts for signs of hostility and, as casually as they can, rest uneasy hands on the stocks of so many holstered weapons. With only Abraham, Marco and Garrigan left behind to guard the Lover in whatever unspoken and vainglorious subterfuge Nemo assuredly attempted to bait Insurgent Company with, the remaining six hired guns evidently share Two-Bit's constitutional fear of this place, in all likelihood many reared in circumstances resembling his own on Takioro. This uneasiness, coupled with last night's sleep deprivation and shaking loose the residual malaise instilled in a spacer after practically a month of shore leave, jointly works wonders on the crew's morale.

  From what little Two-Bit could piece together about Baziron disposition, even vo Qwer seems wary, though apparently more by the immediate presence of over half a dozen Scream-Weeds than by any authentic fear of the jungle or its dangers. For their part, the seven fetchers from the approaching kojaj commit their level best to ignoring their charges, vo Qwer and pirate alike.

  Such is how the expedition progresses for three quarters of an hour: forty crates of stolen firearms, seven inconversable Baziron guides, six gravely disquieted mercenaries, two cumbersome driftcarts, the consternated Ortok piloting them, one skeptical emissary, one resentful first mate, one good-natured Captain and Two-Bit himself, stomping begrudgingly through the most vigorously hazardous wilderness environment in the galaxy until, at length, they arrive.

  A pair of whitewood totemic posts, ritualistically carven with glyphs and wardings of a fashion passingly similar to those adorning the equipment and vestments of the Dancing-Horizon, are Two-Bit's first clue toward the nearness of their destination. As gratefully painless an action as it is to officially gain entrance to the base camp of the Scream-Weed kojaj, he can't shake the grim conceit that, had they not been escorted, the crew of The Unconstant Lover, even with vo Qwer's aid, would never have broached this far.

  Two-B
it's second indication of their infringement comes significantly later, at his first spotting of a Baziron citizen, crouching among the bracken to feed a handful of swatted ktotari birds to a yipping slodzen. These southern specimen, when contrasted against vo Qwer, differ slightly on an anatomical level: svelter, more wiry and of substantially paler complexion with nostril slits that taper upward, practically to the cranium's crown and an elongated proboscis, capped with a thistled tip. As the driftcarts and their entourage lumber ungainfully through their settlement, the Baziron inhabitants, of assorted ages, genders and social standings, gradually begin to materialize, momentarily disregarding their morning routines to rubberneck this queer caravan. Only as several of what Two-Bit recognizes as Baziron children come scurrying out of their abode to view the parade of interlopers does Two-Bit realize that he's unknowingly passed over a score of their dwellings.

  Marked every few yards by the latitudinous and half-buried mossy stone slabs their ashen roots entwine and sprout from, the hollowed-out bowls of a chalky softwood tree serve as masterfully-disguised domiciles, expertly woven thongs and camouflaged nets mingling with the tree's own ghostly foliage to perfectly blur the buildings into mere underbrush. Two-Bit even imagines that, were the Baziron to remove their engraved whitewood posts and retreat into the confines of their virtually undetectable lodgings, a complete Insurgent Company battalion could transverse the entire breadth of their village and not suspect a thing. On the other hand, the labor-intensive act of excavating a new tree and carefully re-applying the facade every time they moved camp sounded perhaps over-elaborate for the purportedly nomadic Scream-Weeds to continually undertake.

  This question resolves itself further down the trail. One of the dwellings' stone foundations, apparently uncomfortable in its current position, shifts, briefly disinters its westernmost face to reveal two segmented legs which, free of their earthen tomb, inch the entire production, tree, dwelling and Baziron included, several degrees to the south, before retracting both surprise appendages and nuzzling back into the sodden soil. The Baziron female above, complacently boiling clothing in a clay basin in the doorway, barely notices this adjustment, only idly hoisting the washbowl off the “stone's” surface in order to prevent its spilling and, her home's facing summarily changed, returns, unbothered, to her laundry.

  Two-Bit hastily yanks on vo Qwer's slender arm, a gesture the jumpy Baziron seems to almost interpret as some manner of attack and nearly gores Two-Bit with his proboscis but, following the sightline of his pointed finger and the bewilderment in his voice, the emissary at last comprehends his intent. “vo Qwer, what, in all the moons of Jotor, is that?”

  “AN EJVORA CRAB, QUARTERMASTER BITSWITCH,” vo Qwer's droidvox categorically replies. “THE SAVAGES CONSIDER THEMSELVES AT WAR AND, THUSLY, HAVE ABANDONED THEIR SACRED FOOTHILLS TO FOLLOW THE HERD.”

  “The herd?” Two-Bit restates, shooting a panoramic glance at the encompassing number of Baziron homesteads, each planted firmly atop a monumental hunk of brown bedrock. “You're tryin' to delly me...”

  “THE EJVORA CRAB FEEDS ON DEPOSITS OF DOXYCHORAPHUM IT FINDS IN THE SOIL. WHEN IT LOCATES A SUFFICIENT AMOUNT, IT BURROWS INTO THE EARTH, SPENDS SEVERAL DAYS DRAINING THE SUBSTANCE FROM THE IMMEDIATE AREA AND RELOCATES ITSELF TO ANOTHER CHEMICALLY RICH AREA.” vo Qwer motions vaguely about the campsite, apparently in reference to its milling denizens. “COME THE ADVENT OF WAR, THE SAVAGES OF THE SCREAM-WEED INITIATE A PARASITIC RELATIONSHIP TO THE EJVORA, PROVIDING THEIR COMMUNITY WITH MOBILITY, HAVEN FROM THE DOXYCHORAPHUM'S FURY AND A STEADY SUPPLY OF BODY ARMOR, HARVESTED FROM THE CRAB'S DURABLE OUTER SHELL.”

  “Tragg enough to edge off a bit of repellent, sure,” Two-Bit muses appreciatively, before issuing a half-cough and the slightest shake of his head. “This place is bloomin' antwacky, isn't it?”

  “CONFIRMED.”

  The final leg of the overland journey to koj Pasqkla Two-Bit occupies by skimming the Baziron camp for any sign of the next batch of weirdness to drop from the sky or spring from the earth but, luckily for him, it happens to be the koj herself.

  She is female, Two-Bit assess as about the only feature he can declare decidedly, although how, precisely, he's able to declare this detail remains a mystery. She sports neither breasts nor any visible genitalia and overall, biologically resembles koj Hhenel as much as two members of the same race ought to, but something about either her attire or her comportment seems to suggest the utmost maternity. Like koj Hhenel, she's prodigiously plump, conceivably even plumper, if such a thing was indeed possible but, unlike koj Hhenel with the copper coloring representative of his tribe, koj Pasqkla contradicts this complexion, as she's swollen with pink pigment. Watching her bulbous form shudder and shake atop the unearthed ejvora crab she rides towards them, Two-Bit, briefly reminded of the plots of rosy vegetation they'd crossed in the jungle, shivers.

  Chaperoning her atop her mammoth chitinous mount, in addition to the capacious cushion she reclines upon, are a full retinue of ten burly attendants, lending the slowly scuttling arthropod beneath them the combined weight of fifteen regularly sized Baziron. The ejvora crab, unperturbed by the excessive burden continues forward all the same. Presumably all guards, the koj's half-a-score of minders are draped and festooned in a flurry of downy regalia, similar to those of the Dancing-Horizon warriors but far more extravagant and puzzling, a wild conglomeration of kaleidoscopic feathers. Chief among these protectors is a swarthy oddball of a brute, a full foot and a half taller than the rest of the already beanstalk Baziron, this attribute the only reason he's even remotely visible to the party of pirates, standing, as he is, directly behind koj Pasqkla.

  The two bizarre hosts, the former a pair of mated, mud-splattered driftcarts surrounded by spooked pirates and stacked with illegal hardware, the latter an overtaxed crustacean of burden conveying Baz's fattest bloodsucker and her entire honor guard, finally converge upon a conveniently sparse patch among the undergrowth. Odisseus meanders the driftcaravan to an intermittent stop and their seven Baziron conveyors continue roughly ten yards forward, halting immediately before the lumbering crab and, as one, they about-face, forming a defensive half-perimeter around the koj's settling platform and leveling their seven polearms straight the way they'd come. Freshly reminded of their unfriendly odds should this koj Pasqkla be less receptive to Nemo's unique charms than koj Hhenel had been, Two-Bit fleetingly wonders if they'll need to crack into those DU5s to ensure an uncontested retreat.

  Several strained seconds elapse, neither faction willing nor necessarily certain how to extend the proper opening pleasantries, before vo Qwer discharges some mucous greeting and ventures forward, throatsac pulsating and fingers flourishing. Several of the Scream-Weeds, the koj Pasqkla among them, reciprocate the popped salutation and, as vo Qwer strides past, Two-Bit suddenly catches an unexpected whiff of nicotine and tobacco, a putrescence oddly domestic to his Takioro-bred sensibilities. Glancing over his shoulder, he spots discontented Moira, christening a crisp cigarette and about to stash the diminished remains of the pack.

  “You got another bifter in there?” Two-Bit inquires with a halfhearted point toward the crumpled Yellowtooth carton. Moira, unlit smoke drooping from her mouth, blinks. “Mind bumming me one?” After a long scrutiny, she tosses him the almost exhausted package.

  Withdrawing the penultimate cigarette from its tissuey casing, Two-Bit loiters three steps backward as Moira fishes out her book of matches and vo Qwer presumably devises as grand an introduction as Nemo could possibly deserve.

  koj Pasqkla, her throatsac engorged like an overripe melon, chortles some strangling interruption to vo Qwer's protracted preamble. After a moment, the cowed emissary relates, possibly masking frustration beneath his implant's unfeeling voice. “THE GLUTTED ONE PASKQLA DEMANDS TO KNOW WHICH OUTLANDER DOG GLUTTED ONE OTT SENDS TO TREAT WITH HER NOW.”

  “The dog in question would be me,” the Captain volunteers, traipsing himself and his sunny inclination forward a few steps. vo Qwer init
ially attempts a translation, but koj Pasqkla supersedes him again, undulating her distended throatsac and eliciting streams of hiccup-laughter from her encirclers.

  As though embarrassed to report her jeer, vo Qwer stutteringly imparts, “THE GLUTTED ONE PASKQLA DOES NOT RECOGNIZE YOUR SCENT AND PROCEEDS TO MOCK THE DUBUIOUS SUCCULENCE OF YOUR BLOOD.”

  “Mock?” Nemo, half-alarmed, struggles to comprehend. “Wait, like, that's a joke? That I'm not, what, 'succulent?'”

  Two-Bit closes his eyes to imbibe a first great swallow of the newly ignited Yellowtooth, hoping to so sweepingly swamp his senses that he might, if only for an instant, totally expunge any evidence of Baz's abhorrent jungle and replace it with the faintest trace of Takioro's signature smog.

  He nearly vomits from the shock, doubling over to hawk and wheeze into the mud whatever residual wreckage of his pulverized lungs remained after that virulent pseudo-tobacco wearied of roughing up the place. He commits several moments, hunched and hacking, to re-establishing as regular a respiratory rate as he dares and insuring that his ambushed esophagus had not, in fact, shriveled into a blackened, mummified husk.

  Two-Bit peers up, after the brief respite to discover not just Moira's withering two, but all sixty of the transaction's eyes, the pirates, the Baziron, the Captain, the koj, all fixated on him and his unheralded spasm of dry heaving. “Sorry, mates,” he croaks apologetically before barking out a final wad of ebonized phlegm and silencing the offending cigarette in a gloved fist.

  “Seriously, I'm supposed to be offended that she doesn't wanna drink my blood?”

  Two-Bit blearily rights himself, glimpsing the abused package's “Yellowtooth Blacks: Unfiltered Cancer Sticks” label, unholy little icon sniggering malignantly back at him. “All the moons, Quicksilver,” he exhales to Moira under his beleaguered breath, “these blowbags are naffy enough to unclink outta their boxes and gank you in your sleep!”