Hull Damage

by Timothy J Meyer

  Moira retrieves the concave carton between two left fingers and, maintaining her embittered silence, only flares her cigarette's end with an inhale.

  “Tell the koj,” Nemo describes, rooting his hands deep into the pockets of his ceaselessly unbuttoned jacket, “that Ott seeks council, which he's willing to purchase with a gift of, how many, five hundred some high-quality assault rifles, for the Scream-Weed's use against the invading enemy.” vo Qwer complies, quickly converting Nemo's request, but the Captain adds, mutteringly, “See if that don't brighten her day.”

  As vo Qwer, throatsac quivering, sets dutifully about his task, Two-Bit, although standing somewhat apart from the actual negotiations, notices that koj Pasqkla's attention, diverted wholly away from vo Qwer's translation, appears to be focused, more or less, in his general direction. Two-Bit glances behind, fails to spot anything alarming or untoward and faces forward again to see koj Pasqkla conferring concisely with the nearest associate, before exploding into her own diatribe.

  “THE GLUTTED ONE PASQKLA,” vo Qwer begrudgingly downshifts, ceasing Nemo's statement prematurely, “REMINDS THE MALODOROUS OUTLANDER THAT SHE REQUIRES NOT COUNCIL NOR WEAPONRY FROM GLUTTED ONE OTT TO DO BATTLE WITH THE IMPERIUM AND ONLY ACCEPTS HIS GIFTS AS TRIBUTE FOR HIS OWN OCCUPATION OF HER PLANET.”

  Nemo smirks the same stymied smirk he indulges Velocity with, his good humor bleeding away, and considers his boots in the apricot mud. “Which is plucky and endearing of her, but now, we need information on troop movements. So, vo Qwer, how about you tell her to take the weapons, tell us where the forward command station is and then we'll get out of her hair. Or fat, or whatever.”

  Again, vo Qwer rattles into another long-winded translation and again, Two-Bit observes koj Pasqkla's focus waver and, after a moment, realign her gaze seemingly right at him. Two-Bit instinctively runs his tongue between his teeth and slithers a hand through hair two weeks unwashed but again, before vo Qwer can fully recount Nemo's message, the koj spouts more avarice from her voluminous throatsac.

  “THE GLUTTED ONE PASKQLA DOES NOT REQUIRE AID FROM OUTLANDERS TO FIGHT OUTLANDERS. HER SOLDIERS ARE SUFFICIENT, THEIR WEAPONS ARE SUFFICIENT AND SHE STERNLY RECOMMENDS YOU EXTRICATE YOURSELF AND YOUR COMPANIONS FROM HER SCENT.”

  “See, I don't really think I'm being that unreasonable, am I?” Nemo appeals to Brondi and Rooster, who have the distinct pleasure of standing just past his left shoulder. “I am not leaving here,” he directs back at the koj, “until I know the specific location of Insurgent Company's forward campaign base. Now, you can either take these weapons and answer the fucking question–”

  Two-Bit hurriedly sniffs twice and the mercenaries bristle, loosening firearms in holsters for the impending moment of diplomacy's irrelevancy, but koj Pasqkla, as is her nature, preempts everyone with a clicking exclamation of her throatsac and an effortful point of her inflated finger.

  “YOU,” vo Qwer begins to decipher koj Pasqkla's continued accusation and Two-Bit fidgets apprehensively, wondering what in all Jotor's million moons a Baziron chieftain could possibly want with him, “THE STENCH OF YOUR TOBACCO OFFENDS THE OLFACTORY FUNCTIONS OF THE GLUTTED ONE, WHO COMMANDS YOU TO EXTINGUISH YOUR RECEPTICLE.”

  Moira, smoke snaking from the crack of her lips, plucks the Yellowtooth out only to intone, “Tell that sack of shit I'd be happy to extinguish it on her fucking face, if that's her royal fucking wish,” before calmly restoring the cigarette to its former seat.

  Response, initially, is mixed. Several of the pirates, Two-Bit included, scoff, snigger or whistle at the statement's sheer absurdity. Odisseus breathes some word of caution. Nemo, after a beat, guffaws loudly, while vo Qwer, evidently liking their odds against the squadron of Scream-Weed faithfuls, proceeds to translate the remark.

  Upon receiving the gist of Moira's threat from vo Qwer's paraphrasing, the seventeen stoic Baziron scouts and bodyguards burst into alacrity, brandishing their polearms and expanding then deflating their throatsacs in a chorus of honking, a sound Two-Bit can only assume is some manner of war cry. Almost instantaneously, of course, has the crew of The Unconstant Lover dislodged weapons of their own, Two-Bit Switch yanking the Dissident loose and bringing it to bear on their less-than-gracious hosts. The situation, he appreciates, has become significantly snarlier.

  The koj, however, only laughs her hiccupping laugh, sustains her pinpointed deadlock on Moira and emits a warbling response, concluding with another onerous gesture, this time aimed at Nemo. “THE GLUTTED ONE PASQLKA ADMIRES YOUR METTLE, OUTLANDER. YOU, SHE SURMISES, ARE THE TRUE PEER, RATHER THAN THIS WITLESS BOOB?”

  Despite the brunt of gunfight tension, a smattering of the conscripts, Brondi most prevalently, manage a chuckle even at this. Nemo, glancing back at her, shrugs endorsingly, which Moira apparently interprets as her cue.

  “What if I am?” she spits, framed between extended pistols of her own.

  “THE GLUTTED ONE PASQKLA OFFERS, IN PLACE OF THIS LOOMING BLOODSHED, THE RITE OF MORWAQ.”

  “Which is...?” Moira dangles.

  “A DUEL TO THE DEATH,” vo Qwer hastily simplifies, “FOR CONTROL OF THE KOJAJ.”

  Odisseus mutters some disparagement, but Nemo's instantly taken with the idea. “Shit, you serious?” he substantiates to vo Qwer, before turning back to Moira and, in a stage whisper, as though any of the Baziron could understand him, “Say yes, Moira. I got an idea.”

  She percolates a moment, as if debating a refusal until, with one flowing movement, she retracts both Righty and Lefty and the twin pistols plop contentedly into their respective holsters. “I accept. What the fuck.”

  –––

  Odisseus drums the points of his hind claw and wonders whether or not the creature he's standing on, with its fortified outer shell many times more resilient than most starship hulls, even registers the clicking sound of his impatience, much less the nine other pirates and one Baziron standing atop it as it trundles down the incline. The experience of riding an ejvora crab had somehow proven more unpleasant than Odisseus had predicted – their progress is ponderously slow, its gait lurching and the chosen terrain, this blast-strewn, ebonized crater, less than ideal for the creature's six stubby, segmented legs. Upon reaching the deepest point of the bowl and the ejvora crab readjusting itself to mount the toilsome climb up the corresponding slope, Odisseus finds himself ironically missing the bumbling unhandy steering levers of a driftcart.

  “See, this is actually a brilliant idea and I'll tell you why,” Nemo stands apart from the rest of his clustered comrades, like their skooshball coach, atop the teetering crustacean. “All Moira has to do is win the duel–”

  “Versus the koj?” Rooster poses, racketing his crest to an incredulous horizontal.

  Nemo scowls. “Yeah, I don't really know how that's gonna work but,” his face instantly rectifying as he elucidates his asinine plan, “but assuming she wins, she takes Pasqkla's place as the leader of the kojaj–”

  “KOJ PASQKLA.”

  “That's what I said. So, if Moira wins the duel, she becomes the new koj and boom, Ott's got himself an army of like, a hundred million Baziron guys, right?”

  “Pretty sure it'd be my army,” Moira constitutes, tightening the straps on her left duelist's glove.

  “Yeah, but you work for me.”

  “I don't know if the Baziron would even follow a humanoid koj,” Danbonte demurs.

  “What if she loses?” Odisseus finally contends.

  “I won't.”

  “You might.”

  “What's the matter, Odi? Don't you trust me?”

  “Anybody care to make it, er, jazzy?” Two-Bit tenders for approval among the conscripts, eliciting more hoots and snickers.

  “Switch, you cheap bastard,” Anchorage playfully derides, “the lady's life is on the line.”

  “Don't call me that.”

  Ebeneezer, however, remains unconvinced. “Ain't bettin' less I know whose fightin'.”

  Odisseus adjusts his posture to gaze
back over the blackened basin and spies, across the rubble-scattered bury zone, the koj's own platform-crab squirming into its proper position, three quarters of the way up the opposite bank of the hallowed concavity. Reputedly the bygone site of a titanic explosion of the area's residual repellent, the Scream-Weed kojaj favored such locales as makeshift coliseums for the combat trial of “morwaq” because, according to vo Qwer, “ONLY THE GODS, NOT EVEN THE DOXYCHORAPHUM, CAN INTERRUPT THE PROCEEDINGS.”

  By now, Baz's summer sun had wheeled its way to midmorning, slathering not just the jungle below beneath continued waves of this oppressive heat, but also the nearest face of the blue ball of Nebho, scarcely visible above the white-capped horizon of the western treeline. Both Baziron commoners and ktotari birds, the former ringing the crevasse's brink, the latter hovering several yards above it, slowly begin to congregate in greater and greater numbers, as though anticipating the morwaq's eventual bloodletting.

  The opposite ejvora is swollen with mingling Baziron warriors, including the koj Pasqkla herself, greedily draining a globular red fruit of its intrinsic juices, all doubtlessly fifteen hundred pounds of her profuse form preposterously unsuited to any manner of physical activity beyond perhaps further ingurgitation.

  “Something's definitely wrong here,” Odisseus evaluates skeptically. “Short of rolling her down the hill, I don't see how it's possible for the koj to compete in any meaningful way.”

  “Unless she's some sort of obese savant,” Nemo theorizes, with a disturbing sincerity.

  Odisseus slaps his paws fruitlessly against his thighs. “I don't even know what that would be.”

  “Terrifying is what,” Nemo imagines absently.

  Moira buttons closed her right glove and flexes her fingers beneath the leather. “You're thinking a champion?”

  “Sounds feasible to me.”

  “I wouldn't be buggered, were that the case.” Two-Bit nods.

  Nemo shrugs dismissively. “Then Moira kills the champion. No biggie.”

  “Who's the champion?” Odisseus presses.

  As though on cue, the accumulating crowd of Baziron onlookers, amassing in loose clumps along the caldera's lip, intermittently begin to part ways to permit the entrance of an individual who, upon first sight, unequivocally answers Odisseus' question.

  “Oh, fuck,” Two-Bit mutters.

  At first look, especially at this distance, Odisseus isn't certain exactly what species the creature belongs to: a head and shoulders taller than most of his fellow Baziron, sporting a swarthier complexion and, most conspicuously, bedecked in the most outlandish body armor Odisseus had laid eyes on. His forearms, shins, torso and crown safeguarded by dimpled plates of chitinous bronze armor of a fashion akin to the ejvora crab's carapace, only his proboscis and its accompanying throatsac betray him as the statuesque Baziron heavy previously posted at the unenviable position of the koj's rearguard. Alighting to the pit's bouldered floor, he raps the haft of his hollow polearm against his breastplate and trills out some manner of introduction, which vo Qwer promptly translates.

  “VO OBXO PRESENTS HIMSELF AS VINDICATOR TO THE GLUTTED ONE PASQKLA. COME FORTH, ONE WHO WOULD IMPUGN HER SOVREIGNTY THAT HE MIGHT EXSANGUINATE THEM.”

  “Exsanguination?” Brondi echoes over the eerie, fluted ovation of the entirely Baziron audience. “That's what happens if she loses?”

  “Best not lose then, I guess.” Nemo edges a few steps closer to Moira, as if in private conference. “Well, whaddya think?”

  “Weak points are gonna be the elbows, knees, anything on his backside,” Moira appraises mutteringly, more to herself than anyone else present as she strides down off the ejvora and onto the begrimed ground. “vo Qwer, translate for me.”

  She advances three steps, nuzzling her hands onto the butts of her holstered pistols and spouting her own presentation in an uncharacteristically emphatic voice. “Moira Quicksilver of the Unconstant-Lover kojaj hereby denounces koj Pasqkla's sovereignty and declares herself as successor!” A ragtag cheer, of course riddled with obscenities, erupts from the pirate's impromptu balcony, as the Lover's crew catcall, hurrah and rattle their own weapons in the air, matching the Baziron's unanimous applause in fervor, if perhaps not in sheer volume. Odisseus, despite himself, strangles a smile.

  koj Pasqkla, however, does not appear terribly amused. Another blaring of her spacious throatsac and vo Qwer has more ill news to report. “THE GLUTTED ONE PASQKLA FINDS HERSELF UNSURPRISED BY YOUR IGNORANCE,” the droidvox accounts. “A MORWAQ MAY ONLY COMMENCE BETWEEN TWO GLUTTED ONES AND THEY DO NOT DEIGN THEMSELVES TO MELEE COMBAT. HAVE YOU NO SUPPLICANTS THAT MAY VINDICATE YOUR LAUGHABLE CAUSE?”

  Moira falters a moment, peeking quizzically back over her shoulder. “Um,” she stammers, “well, what do I do now?”

  Nemo eyeballs the handful of potential candidates with an expression of remiss recommendation. “Anybody feeling unusually charitable?”

  Only silence volunteers. All of the Lover's gathered crewman, Odisseus among them, glance to each other or to their boots. For a long moment, no one is either able to face the giant vo Obxo in single combat or willing to tender their life on behalf of Moira Quicksilver. For an instant, Odisseus steals a brief glimpse of her and nearly spots something, be it animosity, affront or bald-faced fear he isn't certain, in her dull viridian eyes before a slurring, heavily accented voice shatters the awkward reticence.

  “Clears my debt, Quissilver, and I'll kills him.”

  Heeko, dusty carbine dangling off a shoulder strap, shambles a step forward, wetly blinking three of his six eyes. His volunteering purchases him the aggregate disbeliefs and irresolutions of his nine encompassing companions. Only Moira, the holder of his proverbial chain, speaks up.

  “Are you sure, Heeko?” she ascertains, her own hesitancy painfully evident in her voice.

  “Long as you clears my debt.”

  “Very well. Done,” Moira certifies after a moment's deliberation, extending a hand in agreement. “You drive a hard bargain, Heeko.” If the Myyrigon appreciates Moira's unprecedented display of compromise, he makes no outward display of it, simply shuffling his pear-shaped form off the ejvora crab and trundling down the depression to confer with Moira. Odisseus and Nemo trade significant glances, one traditionally graver than the other, as Moira speedily coaches her new champion.

  “Just shoot him, alright? He's got that armor, but you've got more canisters. Just shoot him until he falls over and dies.”

  “I wills, Quissilver,” he complies vacantly, continuing his maladroit waddle down the declivity.

  Moira's given ample berth as she reclaims her post at Nemo's left hand, sourness unjoyfully returned. “Thanks, boys,” she finally snarls, absolutely daring any among them to comment.

  Instead, vo Qwer launches a fresh suite of introductions, Heeko hobbles to the crater's floor, checking the chamber of his carbine and, without warning, Nemo's comm belches into operation, spewing the harsh discordance of a familiar ringtone.

  “The fuck...?” Nemo murmurs, wrenching the droning device from his belt to examine in the incoming frequency. “Abraham. I'mana take it.”

  “No, you're gonna turn it the fuck off, idiot,” Moira rebuffs coldly. “You wanna bring the Imperium down on us? Right now?”

  “Oh, shit, right.” He snaps the dial entirely off, succinctly silencing the blaring jingle. “There. All the way off.”

  With Heeko summarily introduced, koj Pasqkla conjures no further objections, ritualistic or otherwise. The two combatants square themselves, vo Obxo amending the hang of his breastplate and tapping the flanged tip of his unusual spear against his crab-shell helm, all the while purring, Odisseus assumes some manner of prayer, within his throatsac. Heeko, on the other hand, merely widens his stance, cocks the outdated Carbon Industrial carbine and raises the weapon level to his largest left eye. Odisseus holds his breath as the clarion call, a squawking sound from one of koj Pasqkla's sycophants, springs vo Obxo in a furious charge forward, honking a war
cry and whirling his weapon. The morwaq roars into operation with the alien howl of the Baziron crowd.

  The carbine cracks, burrowing a blazing blue bolt straight through vo Obxo's right shoulder before he's landed his third step, but the bounding Baziron seems undaunted by the virginal wound and persists his charge all the same. Heeko lobs a handful of successive shots, but even those that avoid falling short or flying wide are laughed away by the burnished hunk of carapace bulwarking vo Obxo's chest. Before long, the koj's vindicator has sought refuge from Heeko's barrage between a string of interposing boulders and is closing rapidly.

  Shifting his own ground to correctly correspond with the uneven elliptical of his approaching adversary, Heeko struggles with the carbine's chamber as he scampers aside. Whether via some inherent mechanical failure in the decrepit old rifle or simple ineptitude on the Myyrigon's part, he appears to congest and subsequently jam the firearm's loading cylinder. All nine pirates suck in an anxious breath as vo Obxo clears an uncluttered batch of rubble and surges himself toward Heeko in a staggering leap, cranking his armored arm back for a full-body harpoon jab. The mob urgently silences into an expectant hush before Heeko, visibly surprised himself, swings the defunct carbine like a battleaxe and clobbers the hurdling Baziron plump in the expanded throatsac with a potent uppercut from the weapon's triangular butt.

  The Scream-Weeds approximate jeering, the Lover's crew holler and cackle and vo Obxo's Baziron bell is temporarily rung, staggering away and convulsing his bruised throatsac, Heeko is granted the moment he needs to re-sling the inoperable carbine and clamber, with briskness belied by his dumpy physique, onto the nearest available boulder.

  “Smart move,” Nemo comments passively. “He's never gonna be able to stand to that–” he starts, only to abruptly break off and blink obliquely into the distance.

  Odisseus furrows his brow. “Nemo? What is it?”