Life, mischievous and cocksure, rebounded his face. “You interested in the position?”
“Depends on the ship,” Moira disillusioned flatly. “If you're lying and there's no ship or she's a junker, I'm taking you in.”
“And if I'm not and she ain't?”
“Then we'll see. Now, get up. 'till then, you're still my bounty.”
“Yes, ma'am,” he acceded mockingly, climbing to his feet. “Nehel Morel.”
“I know. Moira Quicksilver.”
A smug smirk, creasing his crisp new cut, corrupted his expression. “That's the fakest name I've ever heard.”
Moira, before he could react, wheeled Lefty about on her trigger finger, grasped a firm, yet flexible grip on the six-gun's chamber and barrel, yanked him by the upturned collar of his duster and pistol-whipped him hard in the stomach, reasoning that he probably still deserved it.
“Oof,” he agreed.
Chapter 17
Odisseus grimaces knowingly, straggling a loathsome curse against Baz, the Imperium, Nemo's continued stupidity, Boss Ott, Insurgent Company and especially the trio of SV7s responsible for punching three holes clean through his midsection. He aches with each shift of his weight, with each flex of his abdominal muscles and with each left step he takes through Ott's expansive headquarters, shadowing his saltbrother on another of the Galactic Menace's walk-and-talk briefings. This afflictive circumstance granted the Ortok two conflicting opinions; a keenly recurrent reminder of the damage the Imperium was capable of dealing and an utter inability to sympathize with Ott's seemingly esoteric woes.
“I'm asking,” Ott clarifies calmly, “not to chastise nor reprimand your actions, just to fully understand what actually transpired down there.” He, traipsing onward several feet ahead of both Nemo and Odisseus, placates generally with broad, appeasing gestures of his upper arms. “You failed to notify me of a shift in the enemy's tactics, you deliberately baited them into this apparent 'trap' you were grievously undermanned to execute, you insulted koj Pasqkla, engaged her in morwaq and fled the scene–”
“At that point, she was dead,” Nemo delineated meekly.
“You abandoned not only the auxiliary driftcart I lent you, but also the forty crates of stolen weaponry I'd tasked you to deliver, which are now certainly in the Imperium's possession, you, however unwittingly, supplied Insurgent Company with a hostage with concrete knowledge of my whereabouts, enabled the slaughter of a major Scream-Weed encampment and lastly, you managed to somehow lose one of my chief operatives.”
Odisseus exchanges an apprehensive glance with Nemo. The situation with vo Qwer had been unfortunate but untenable. As soon as Insurgent Company had made their presence at the encampment known, the Lover's crew, like any sensible crooks would when the constabulary arrives to crack skulls, scattered before their assured death or their potential incarceration. Whether vo Qwer simply failed to hear or comprehend the shouted orders to regroup within the shade of the driftcarts or whether Ott's emissary had suddenly been overtaken with some latent Baziron patriotism or whether there was some less explicable reason, none of the pirates could attest to, but whatever had actually occurred, vo Qwer was nowhere to be found. The crew had speculated some; he could have fled, he could have been captured or, more likely, he was numbered among the thousands of Baziron casualties at Insurgent Company's hands, a dark smudge against killing fields of paler corpses.
Neither of these options, however, would seemingly mollify Ott.
Nemo nibbles his bottom lip, an unusually appropriate anxiety evident in his comportment. “Yeah, that's, uh, one way of putting it.”
“Losing my temper,” Ott rationalizes faintly, “would accomplish nothing. Until I've a clearer idea of how the Imperium will exploit this information, I'm going to reserve judgment for the time being, except to say this.” He nudges his chin to his left, curtain of headtails drifting aside to reveal a chillingly lax expression. “Your cost continues to outweigh your worth to me, Captain.”
“You know, we lost people too.” Nemo's defiance, if it could be properly described as such, is undercut by another challenge, barely coherent and shouted down the hallway.
“Coward!”
The word, as shrill and inappropriate as a child's tantrum, freezes them in place.
“Speak of the moons,” Odisseus mutters, struggling mightily to ignore the twisting agony in his abdomen as he pivots his posture to glance behind and glimpse their confronter, Nemo and Ott both mirroring his adjustment.
They linger in the ribbed, thermosteel corridor that, via a trio of identical doorways, opened into Ott's spacious mess hall and, poured messily against the farthest such aperture, is Garrok Brondi. His legs waver beneath him, his verticality is only granted by a left shoulder wedged into the doorjamb and, even at this distance, Odisseus smells the signature spice of Gitterswitch, thickly suffusing his entire aspect. “You fucking coward,” he sputters unevenly with a pure, unfermented sample of his inebriation's source, a half-eaten Gitterpeach, clasped in trembling fingers.
The three of them, a drunkard, his saltbrother and the Galactic Menace, had individually cultivated effective immunities against the most drastic of alcohol's consequences on underlings, crewmen and strangers alike and neither Nemo, Odisseus or Ott are even remotely rattled by Brondi's evidently advanced intoxication. Odisseus, nevertheless, is unable to restrain a sour frown.
Having left intensely severe instructions with Two-Bit that none of the conscript crew were permitted to leave the relative safety of the ship until Ott's temperament and receptivity could be ascertained, the Ortoki mechanic is jointly displeased and unsurprised to discover Brondi not only here, in direct violation of his specific orders, but also in such a state, given his circumstances. Circumstances, Odisseus is poignantly reminded, that he personally forbid the trigger-happy Nemo from attempting to rectify in the first place.
Displeased, however, is as profound an understatement as one could feasibly attribute to Nemo's current mood. While Odisseus only scowls and Ott retains his customary unimpressed impassivity, a subtle stiffening of Nemo's jaw harbingers something within his saltbrother's face the Ortok only had the misfortune to witness on three previous occasions; a well of unfathomable blackness, a teetering on a precipice of illimitable depth.
Nemo, his motions fluid but his expression petrified into a rigid blankness, thumbs open the fold of his leather duster, retrieves his timeworn pistol from its hip holster and shoots Garrok Brondi. Odisseus instinctively winces as the gunshot, accompanied with cruel crack and cloud of bright blue ditrogen castoff, echoes both directions down the corridor.
Brondi, alcohol apparently mangling his judgment beyond recognizing this a zottible off, staggers, drops his Gitterpeach and slumps to the thermosteel, marveling at the fist-sized wound growing redder and redder on the meat of his thigh. He stammers something disjointed as Nemo, inching a step forward first as if in mental debate, strides down the corridor. Odisseus considers halting him with a paw to his shoulder but he's a quick instant too late. As Nemo approaches, duster fondled and brushed aside by the idle breeze meandering up the tunnel, Brondi, with bloodied fingers inspecting his injury, looks numbly to his attacker. “You shot me.”
“Yup.”
With an unforeseen fleetness, Nemo shoves the snub of his smoking Carbon Industrial firearm into Brondi's agape mouth. Understandably surprised, he mumbles some unknowable vowels until Nemo levers the pistol's cold steel against his teeth to promptly silence him. Horrified tears welling in his widened eyes, the wounded smuggler finds zero quarter with Nemo's implacable malice.
“Nemo,” Boss Ott's voice interrupts. “Come on.” After a moment of potent silence, the Galactic Menace continues forward up the corridor, away from the would-be execution.
Without hesitation, Nemo yanks the ancient pistol from between Brondi's quivering lips, suffers him beneath another second of his rancorous scrutiny and stalks obstinately back toward tense Odisseus and departing Ott, breeze wrapping the tips of his
duster around his thighs. Behind him, bleeding Brondi stains the thermosteel red, huffing terrified and almost disbelieving the suddenness of his fluctuating fortune. Odisseus watches him a brief moment, trembling and coughing up blue ditrogen smoke beside his forgotten fruit, only turning away as Nemo strides past.
–––
Two-Bit Switch prays to all the moons these purple spots go away.
“This shit's getting antwacky...” he murmurs to no one, prodding with his pinky the nearest example, the smallest and least concerning of the five, where it rests below his kneecap. Fifteen minutes he'd wasted, sequestered in the back corner of the bustling medbay with his feet dangling off the lip of the wall-mounted stretcher, stupidly poking the inscrutable purple marks that encircle his leg and muttering vague premonitions to himself. Having been deemed a non-priority by the beleaguered Grimalti and his amateur Mruka assistant, Two-Bit had little other choice but to sit patiently and await medical attention, but there was just no ignoring these spots.
They'd swollen somewhat in the last hour and now resemble less cartoonish purple polka dots and more warty contusions, bubbling up from the flesh of his right leg, a distinction Two-Bit had noted with a powerless dismay. The five spots follow a predictable path, spiraling up the length of his calf and thigh, each an indication of where the muck leech's suctioned feelers managed to pierce the threadbare denim of Two-Bit's trouser and find purchase on his susceptible skin. What significance these markings held remains a mystery to Two-Bit; be they bruises, bites or something more sinister, all he knows is that they're swelling.
Two-Bit shifts his weight and attempts to banish unwanted thoughts of egg sacs by glancing about the medbay and the drastically worse condition of his crewmates.
He actually doubts he's ever seen the medbay this crowded. To the majority of the crew, save Moira, Abraham and occasionally Odisseus, the medbay theoretically consisted of whatever lurked behind the closed doors just before the mess hall. Only two separate emergencies could compel Nemo, Two-Bit or the conscript crew into the abandoned medbay; a potentially mortal wounding or their monthly dousing in the decontamination shower, the former unsurprisingly more frequent than the latter.
Anchorage floods the central chair with his bleeding bulk, the tissue replicator's hexagonal grid dividing and subdividing the gory hole of his torso beneath swatches of fine green laser. The wall-mounted stretcher to Two-Bit's diagonal left strains and moans under the fitful writhing of a partially conscious Odisseus, whatever dimestore anesthetic Abraham could scrounge together from the Lover's laughable stores dolefully unable to knock a fully grown Ortok senseless. Opposite him, to Two-Bit's diagonal right, Danbonte sits cross-legged on the third stretcher, re-swaddling his burnt and perforated hand in stained cotton gauze.
Meanwhile, Abraham, sporting a blood-spattered surgeon's apron across his expansive girth, lumbers between patient and patient, recalibrating or confirming the replicator's conclusive scans and tending Odisseus' still alarmingly active heart and respiratory rates. A frantic Marco the Mange orbits the hulking Grimalti like an exasperated moon, caterwauling and complaining with every instruction and rebuke from the irascible Abraham.
Only Nemo, miraculously unharmed as usual, Brondi, disappeared since the morning's incident outside Ott's dining hall and his subsequent wounds seemingly patched by the Menace's own physicians, and Garrigan, who'd personally elected to handle the Moira situation, were elsewhere, one unburdened with injuries, one unburdened with proper medical training and one too fearful to set foot aboard the Captain's ship, it seemed.
Those seven who had survived, in various and differing states of physical health, were fortunate, to Two-Bit's finding, to even have wounds that require patching. Danbonte, with an unusual sullenness, had reported that Moira, in an equally unusual display of clemency, had granted the agonized Heeko a compassionate bolt to the brain, before she'd received her own gunshot wound. Rooster's capture and Ebeneezer's unwitnessed death particularly catch in Two-Bit's proverbial throat, with both the Dho and the cyclops having been recruited to the Lover's crew at Two-Bit's behest. With the late Salo Shouldermount three months dead and far from forgotten in the back of his neglected conscience, only Anchorage remains of Two-Bit's individually enlisted thugs and only by the slenderest of threads is even he held aloft.
Little had been expended in the way of mournful words or sad sentiments as regards fallen crewmen, the majority of everyone's energy invested in licking wounds and pacifying Ott, but exactly nothing, save sparse logistics, was afforded to the topic of Moira. Sheer idiot chance had conceded their discovery of her in the first place, crumpled forlorn in the underbrush, Salo's namesake Culminator discarded at her side and swarms of opportunistic ktotari birds, bobbing and weaving about her collapsed body. Upon returning to the Lover, Garrigan had cited some unspoken “former-associate” prerogative and no one objected, leaving their first mate within his seemingly appropriate custody.
Nemo, in particular, had been atypically close-mouthed about the entire affair concerning Moira and was last seen, according to a then-conscious Odisseus, cloistered in the helm, losing at “Asteroid Math” against the ship's computer for the twenty-thousandth time.
“How's yer spots, boyo?” Abraham plods through Two-Bit's daydream and straight into view, brushing organicon film off callused hands and onto the rim of his apron.
“Purple. Swellin'.”
“Still?” Abraham bares his lower left teeth in a leery grimace. “Well, that ain't a good sign.”
“Yeah, I hinked as much. Any flashes?”
“Mayhaps we can lance one, see what happens?”
Two-Bit musses up his face. “That as squidgy as it sounds?”
“More so,” he answers cryptically.
“Oh, peachy.”
“Say, Switch,” Abraham digresses, from craggy and overtaxed to complaisant and complimentary, “might be a need to replenish our supplies pretty quick here. Any chance ye're up fer another little favor?”
Two-Bit blinks wearily and opens his mouth to sigh. “Depends on the kindie, doesn't it? Whaddya need?”
The combination of habitually underfunded equipment and an unexpected surplus of wounded pirates conspired to run the Lover's medical supplies utterly ragged, an eventuality Abraham had actually preempted via employing Two-Bit's professedly expert skills as a housebreaker and sneak thief. Boss Ott's infirmaries, in fact, were outfitted with the widest array of pharmaceutical contraptions and contrivances credits could buy and security to match. Even for Two-Bit, it had been a less-than-simple matter of walking out the front door with several choice pieces of gear tucked under his metaphorical hat.
“Might be the replicator's run low on organicon compound.”
Two-Bit creases his mouth trapezoidal. “Didn't I already pinch like, three tubes of that rubbish yesterday?”
Abraham spares Anchorage a glance over an aproned shoulder. “Awful lotta meat to replace on that one.”
The pride and joy of a handful of Inner Sector cosmetic parlors, a tissue replicator could, if properly utilized, regenerate lost limbs, erase or create burns, scars, disfigurements or disguises and, in a few unsavory cases, actually manufacture organs. The complex artifice of plexishield awnings, confused cables and spastic read-outs that ensconces the lower half of the Aurik's torso is likely the single most expensive piece of hardware Two-Bit had ever “borrowed.” With perhaps only seventy-five such devices in existence, most space stations, Takioro included, and private planets were more affordable.
Despite all Two-Bit's larcenous artistry, the intrinsic value of the replicator insured that Ott would neither overlook nor permit its vanishment for any length of time and it was exceedingly unlikely, in Two-Bit's expert opinion, the Galactic Menace would tolerate another such act of involuntary charity.
“Think the fat man'll let it slide again?” Two-Bit poses, itching an imagined itch under his chin to sell the impression that he was contemplating.
Abraham, with th
e faintest hint of a shrug, nods. “Worth a shot, methinks. Otherways, what would that be,” he calculates grimly, under his breath, “five? With him and, ye know...?”
Two-Bit darts his gaze to his grimy feet, swinging placidly, oddly naked of socks or sneakers and defiantly brandishing the accursed purple spots. He harvests a sizable dollop of saliva with several puckerings of his closed lips, palms himself roughly off the stretcher with a leathern groan and hauks a mustered loogie to the deckplates with finality.
“Alright,” he agrees, gesticulating with a hard finger in the Grimalti's face, “but when I coop back here, you're popping my spots. Savvy?”
–––
Odisseus swipes the Spyglass from Rymple's six-fingered grip with a vengeful paw. Yanking the delicate mechanism out of the pint-sized Treffel's reach, he presses the viewing receptacle to his right eye, dials the minute focusing lens with the rubbery pad of his middle digit and, spying the object of his exasperation, thrusts the opposite paw upward, indicating, somewhat pointlessly, with a claw.
“There,” he snarls. “That's an extended V94 steering fin in plain blooming sight. The 549 doesn't have modular fin emplacements, does it?” Maintaining his forceful point, he peels the Spyglass from his eye and thrusts it back to the unconvinced Treffel. “The 545 does.”
“The 545 is six years off the market and wouldn't use a stabilizing vein,” he disparages, kettling his frustration beneath some pretentious false composure.
“No, look again,” Odisseus grumbles. “That's not a stabilizing vein. That's a ventral docking ridge. Sure, she might extend stabilizers in a low orbit, but that ain't her primary purpose and you know it.”
Rymple shuffles his two forward paws in the sleet as he squints into the Spyglass, removes it a long moment to glower distrustfully skyward with a naked eye, before replacing the device and muttering huffily. “Well, perhaps not a stabilizing vein necessarily...”
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