Hull Damage

by Timothy J Meyer

  His first shot rings pointlessly true, impacting the M2's expansive plexishield windscreen with a precarious crack and beneath, the unaffected spotlight operator whirls the high-beam about to fully immerse Nemo, as though he required any further exposing. His second shot, the one he fires just as the pendulous gunner aligns her own contrivance dead bang at the Captain, succeeds slightly more, shattering the plexishield in a drizzle of fractured shards. Moira, as paralyzed as with Ebeneezer, bends all her might to flex her trigger finger and fire the accursed Culminator, Odisseus lunges from cover in some mistimed attempt to tackle Nemo out of harm's way, the Dragoon's gunner racks her prodigious anti-infantry firearm with an apparently satisfying hiss and Nemo takes his third and final shot. In the space between squeezing the trigger and the discharged ditrogen streak actually connecting with its intended target, Moira observes a righteously bizarre phenomenon – the ground, evidently of its own volition, seething and bubbling square beneath the trapezoidal shadow of the unsuspecting M2.

  Moira, punch-drunk from blood loss, drops both the unspent rocket launcher from her hands and her own insipid form from her propping against the tree, as the M2's entire midsection is cleft suddenly in twain by a pillar of baneful wildfire. Murderous orange and belched upward as if from the vengeful planet herself, a fiery hellfist punches a crisp, smoldering hole straight through the Vagrant-Class driftcraft and slathers everything approximate with a precipitous roar of detonation and a hysterical heat.

  Unsurprised that the capricious repellent gods would find common cause with Nemo's mad providence and so spectacularly turn the tables at the very last moment, Moira face-plants in the mud, the shock of her impact stripping free Garrigan's cleaner bandage and bashing away the remnants of her sense.

  Three nebulous sensations flitter about her consciousness, the last three she acknowledges; the unimagined heat and orangeness of the forty-foot column of ignited doxychoraphum against her drooping face, the miniscule black outline of Nemo, coat flapping and madcap laughter roiling almost louder than the explosion itself and the ephemeral notion of whether or not Danbonte would salvage her blood for a bounty, and precisely how much she'd be worth anyway.

  Fourth Interlude

  Moira Quicksilver would have, were it not for the very specific instructions to the contrary, loved nothing more than to shoot this prick's fucking face off. Had the bounty posting not expressed a particularly earnest desire for him to be apprehended otherwise, Righty and Lefty would gladly have rectified the dental arrangement of that shit-eating grin he was doubtlessly wearing. She appraised the drastic dichotomy between his “alive price” and his “dead price” and concluded that, given the current state of her finances, maybe she'd just clock him on the jaw with a nice respectable pistol-whip instead.

  She knew he couldn't take one, either. She'd read his particulars on the seven-hour-warp over from Bennevikos, beamed into the single idle matrix aboard her Bloodhound. Unimpressive build, little recorded history of physical assault or battery, even when incarcerated, he wasn't even branded with an “armed and dangerous” notice – practically unheard of this far into Bad Space. She'd caught half a hundred deep space bozos exactly like this; rinky-dink smugglers with infantile codes of ethics, guileless grifters with nothing but mustaches and hard-ons and, worst of all, wannabe buccaneers with delusions zottibles beyond grandeur.

  If she could only line up a single shot at a non-vital part of his anatomy, she could take her lumps with his Carbon Industrial piece and accompanying poor aim, pistol-whip him across the chin for kicks, drag his senseless body back to Podhi for the piddly bounty and have done, off to some slightly less pitiful rock, in pursuit of slightly less pitiful prey.

  “So,” his infuriatingly unbothered voice began again, hollering over the sound of the pelting mud-rain, “I hope you don't think I'm trying to snow you or anything, but when all this is said and done, whaddya say to maybe, I don't know, grabbing a bite to eat? Buzzing in a Nanosecond Pizza or something?” She disparages this plan with a pair of sequential shots from Righty and Lefty, chipping and chopping chunks of the ravine away and hopefully showering him with dirt. “No, seriously,” he consents after spitting dirt from his mouth, “my treat.”

  They were alone among the No'tiukki night and the mud-rains, Moira seeking shelter beneath his abdicated jalopy of a starship and he beneath the rocky lip of the adjoining drainage ditch that, by some devilish misfortune, he scrambled headfirst into before Moira could succinctly conclude the affair. Only the residual worldshine of immense No'banis Minor and the periodic flashing of the landing gear's warning lights illuminated the midnight confrontation, the former tracing all the nearby terrain in a dull glimmer and the latter rhythmically casting her quarry's hunkered shadow upon the far side of the gully, offering Moira the closest thing to precise targeting she could acquire, with her foe so literally entrenched.

  They squatted only twenty feet apart. Under normal conditions, it would be an exceedingly simple matter for Moira to just dart across the gap to point-blank range and joyfully deliver his much-anticipated pistol-whipping, were it not for No'tiukki's one little climatic oddity: mud-rain.

  She didn't pretend to at all comprehend the explicit geometerology or the explicit meterogeology or the explicit whatever behind this remote moon's torrential phenomenon. In essence, as least as far as Moira understood it, something in No'tiukki's unusually dense atmosphere interfered, on some fundamental level, with the basic underlying principles of the hydrologic cycle. Any water evaporated from the moon's surface carried encapsulated dirt molecules as unwitting passengers on their recurrent trips to the troposphere, perpetually plagued by murky storm clouds. When these clouds burst, however, the ensuing precipitation resulted in downpours the effective marriage of rainwater and landslides. Even such miniscule amounts of earth, when plummeting from such intense heights, proved extremely lethal to anyone standing beneath and while these sorts of turbulent soilstorms tended toward brevity as much as violence, venturing into No'tiukki's mud-rains needlessly was the very definition of a fool's errand.

  “You know,” he wound up again, continuing to strain his voice over the wet din of sand-grains painstakingly chipping away his spaceship's paint job, “I sorta hate to break this to you, but considering my location and considering your location, there's really no way you can line up a decent killshot. You're only gonna–”

  The docking lights flared once, Moira caught half-a-second's glimpse of the idiot's approximate position, leaning heavily to his right to deliver an oncoming wisecrack. She flirted with the idea of killing him anyway, Lefty peeling a dirt clod from the ledge scant inches from the last known location of his head. Technically, she inwardly admitted, his assertion was correct; from her current vantage point, the only real haymaker either of her twin pistols could execute would certainly be unclean and ineffectual. On the other hand, with his back against a solid wall and a pair of freshly-polished 665 Lawman Clicktriggers gleaming in her gloves, who was he to get technical?

  “Well, okay then,” he appreciated, “I stand corrected. Or, squat corrected, I guess.” An exhaustive pause labored past, at the torpid speed of the moron's process of elimination. “So, if you could have shot me in the head and didn't, then you're obviously not really trying to ice me, by which I can probably assume that you're not on any sort of hatchet contract. Which is good, you know, a relief, but still sorta begs the question...” She hears the sound of skin on leather, as if he was drumming his thighs in pleasant conversation before he implored. “Hey, weird question – you're not some sorta ancient-history ex-girlfriend, are you? Because I have dealt with that situation before, actually and I–”

  “Captain Creezok wants you alive.”

  A beat passed before his recognition. “Creezok Skullchewer? Already?” He wheezed out a breath of apparent surprise. “My, you are unusually prompt. I thought I woulda had a week, at least, on any thumbbreaker he could scrape together.” His thoroughly unimpressive powers of deduction
awhirl, he, at long last, surmised. “So, what, you're a bounty hunter, then? A sub-contract?”

  Lefty barked twice, but this he only seemed to interpret as some manner of affirmation or encouragement, the exact opposite outcome from Moira's desired effect, and continued. “Yeah, you're a bounty hunter. I always liked bounty hunters. Well, mostly to kick in the teeth, to be fair, but they're typically more fun than privateers or cops. Do you watch Quuilar Noxix? Who am I kidding, of course you do, everybody does. The thing that gets me about Quuilar Noxix is that you never see him take anybody alive, you know? Actually hogtie the fuckers and bring 'em to justice? Nope, not once.”

  The landing strut's guidance lights flickered again, revealing his exaggerated shadow as he shifted his crouching weight to further explicate his asinine opinions. “I think you bastards get into this business thinking you're all gonna be like, professional blooming war machines, you know, real bad motherfuckers or something. You buy flamethrowers and missile launchers and poison darts, but what you don't realize is that, half the time, it's gonna be about live capture and manacles and paperwork and all the really fucking boring parts of bounty hunting.” She could just envision him down there, gesticulating with some imagined, self-conjured ease, as though conducting this conversation in a public bathroom or a lift tube instead of in their odd little Talosian standoff. Moira squeezed off another two shots and, with no one to observe her, gave her eyes a perfunctory roll, which would be the first of many such eye-rolls.

  This fact she was, of course, thankfully unaware of at the time.

  “They don't put those parts in the show,” he resolved. “Quuilar Noxix doesn't want me alive – he only wants me dead.”

  Moira bit. “As opposed to what? Petty crime?”

  “Um, have you even read my shit? When was the last time you boosted seventy crates of ammunition and two gun emplacements off a Saurian pirate barge while it was still in drydock?” Arrogance of an outrageous new caliber cocked his voice. “Listen, sweetheart–” he demeaned casually, the mere mention earning himself another two unclipped canisters from Lefty, “you're just pissy because we both shoot people for a living and I have more fun, I make more money and my hours are better.”

  She countered his blithe insolence with more gunfire, her efforts only pockmarking the ditch's meddlesome stones. Nearly obscured by the clunky prattle of mud-rain against hull plates, Moira overheard his practically inaudible muttering, as though making notations or whispering into a handheld comm.

  “Bloom me out,” he declared, louder, more present than his private utterance, “I'm so fucking hungry. Maybe I'll buzz Odi. Tell him to grab me something at the Junction.” A moment's deliberation caused him to mention, certainly for her benefit, “You know, I have an associate inbound.”

  “Do you?”

  “I do. Swinging in from Vollok to pick up the recently pilfered contents of my hold. Figured, at the time anyway, that No'tiukki'd be a pretty safe bet for a drop-off.” Moira pinpointed the irony with another exactingly adjacent shot from Lefty. “Apparently not. But, yeah. He oughta be here any old minute now. Probably with his Bellringer combat shotgun in tow.”

  “I'll manage,” Moira denigrated coldly. “The B11's three years outdated anyhow.”

  “Suit yourself. I will warn you – things like this tend to make him, I guess you'd call it 'irritable'.”

  “What sort of thing is this?”

  “Well, shooting at me things. That and Yeltain jetboosters. Apparently, he hates those now. I guess I can't really blame him.” A change in his voice, an abrupt amelioration of tone, banished any residual anxiety or lingering melancholy the gunfight might have imposed upon him. “Did I tell you I have a ship?” Moira instinctively discouraged this sudden brightening by issuing double rebukes from her pistol, but he babbled on, steadfast in his imbecility. “I have a ship.”

  “I noticed.”

  “Oh, moons no, not that thing,” he scoffed, his shadow tossing a disavowing gesture over its head toward the source of Moira's quarterage against the now-dwindling mud-rains. The dull, characterless bulk of a light cargo buss towered over Moira: Starlight Inc. made and therefore obsolete, complete with single rotation turbine, peeling paint and the unbecoming name, The Easy Target. “That's a...transition ship, let's call it. No, I picked one up cheap from the Mannimar scrapyards, what would that be, eight months ago now? Oughta be nearly finished by this point and believe you me, she is a beaut.”

  “Is she?”

  “Well, not necessarily in like, the physical sense so much.”

  “Of course.”

  “See, that's very much my associate's problem too. He's got this constitutional aversion to seeing the big picture. Sure, she's, you know, missing a few teeth. Got some battle scars. Tends to explode. But what that adds up to is character.”

  “Does that matter?”

  “Um, that's everything? Look, you gotta understand – the Lover's an old Briza, Model IZ36, except imagine the standard bar engine removed and a pair of customized, stripped, pivoting Yeltain jetboosters in its place.”

  “This thing is spaceworthy?”

  “As an asteroid. Most maneuverable thing in the air. Or will be. Or, I guess, woulda been. You know, were it not for the whole 'bounty-on-my-head' thing.”

  “I remember. The Lover?”

  “Unconstant.” As the impromptu conversation drew to a lull, this latest bout of mud-rain, seemingly taking the cue, abated its fierce pelting to drizzle spasmodically and eventually fall entirely silent. “I gotta 'gram here, if you wanna see. Uh,” he stammered a moment, over the sound of shuffling clothing, “here. Catch.”

  The landing lights shimmered off an attenuate airborne object and Moira reflexively snapped both pistols high, lobbing a single ill-aimed bolt from each before her target harmlessly slapped the mud several feet from her position. “Relax, willya? It's just a holodeck.” With Lefty unnervingly trained on his location, Moira scooted briskly from cover to confirm this assertion and indeed, the inert object was nothing but the slender shape of a dirt-spattered holodeck. Moira, uncertain herself as to why she was indulging this cretin his inane ramblings, pawed up the offered device and inched back beneath the Target's lip. “Now, as I said, she certainly ain't the belle of any ball, but I tell ya, watch those bounty postings in the near future 'cause that ship'll make history.”

  With a thumb across its activator, the discount holodeck spewed up its wavering contents; a poorly scanned holographic rendering of an improbably designed spaceship, pirouetting a series of non-concentric circles above the deck's display. Even with her admittedly limited knowledge of starship design, Moira could instantly appreciate this Unconstant Lover for exactly what it was.

  “I even got a crew all lined up,” he beamed. “Well, mostly lined up.”

  For some unfathomable reason, Moira fatefully inquired. “Mostly?”

  “Haven't actually locked down a halfway decent first mate yet. Got a mechanic, a navigator and hell, I'll fly the bitch myself, but I'm still in the market for someone to keep the irregulars in line. And to ride topturret in her spanking new Antagonist.”

  Moira peered up from the holodeck, as if startled. “Antagonist?”

  “Sure. The proceeds from the infamous Skullchewer caper. Only thing that 'gram there doesn't show are the pair of GG912 Conc. Ind. An–”

  “–tagonist Heavy Autofire Laser Cannon, yeah,” Moira glanced back to the revolving hologram, attempting to mentally install a pair of three-pronged hypothetical Antagonist laser turrets somewhere on the Briza's misshapen frame. “Jotor's moons, there ain't a weapon system in the galaxy as can match an Antagonist against starfighters.”

  “Now, how'd a nice girl like you learn a thing like that?”

  The next two shots, both from Lefty, she fired inattentively, on impulse, her attention still planted on the clasped holodeck. Rocks tumbled down the ditch in response, but the unheralded sound of an ancient firearm wheezing and expectorating out a canister whipped
her fully around.

  The jackass, Carbon Industrial pistol smoldering in his hand, was struggling to scramble up the ravine at maximum speed, evidently on some indiscernible catalyst. “That's eighteen shots, kid!” he bombastically bellowed, hoisting his antique pistol toward unaware Moira. “And it looks like you're out of–”

  His second shot, an indigo streak indicative of its bankrupt manufacturate, whizzed absurdly wide, striking the opposite leg of landing gear with a spray of scintillant sparks. Moira raised Lefty impassively and promptly plugged off a reprisal, striking him directly in the head. “Counting ammo, huh?”

  She stalked to his writhing form, dallying a moment to clatter his pistol some distance apart with the tip of her boot, and loomed over him, the twin snubs of both her Lawmen afixed on his prone form. “See, that's why I carry two.”

  His gambit run aground, lying in the rain-slick mud at Moira's feet and dabbing the blood away from the smarting gash her glancing bolt traced across his cheek, he shrugged. “Which seems fair.” He swallowed a resolved breath. “Off to Skullchewer, then?”

  “Could be. You said this ship's on Vollok?”

  “Maybe I did.”

  “You got coordinates?”

  “Maybe I do.”

  “Well, I wanna see her then. So, get the fuck up.”