Hull Damage

by Timothy J Meyer

  Moira scowls. “What about that time I shot you in the head?”

  “Well, like mortally wounded.”

  Moira scowls deeper. “Okay, how about that time Flask ran you over with his drifttaxi and broke like, twelve of your ribs?”

  “Like really mortally wounded. That didn't kill me, did it?”

  “Unfortunately not,” Moira relents.

  “Hardy bloomin' har.”

  “You sound jealous.”

  “Curiosity, I guess,” Nemo surmises, somewhat wistfully. “I don't know what that's like, is all.”

  “Which is really sorta the worst injustice.”

  He pauses. “What do you mean?”

  “Only that you repeatedly put everyone around you in these dire circumstances where, chances are, they'll all die horrible deaths and you have literally no fucking conception of what that'll mean.” Silence answers her unceremonious personality assessment. “That came out harsher than I intended it to,” she assuages at length.

  “No, no,” he mutters distractedly. “You're not wrong.”

  “It's possible that I'm a little drunk,” a fact she corroborates with a harsh swig of her prized liquor.

  “Did you steal my emergency stash?”

  “To be fair, if I had, I wouldn't exactly be inclined to tell you, lest I get myself keelhauled.” She securely fastens the bottle cap, pops open the compartment with the heel of her boot and stows the bottle away. “Besides, that's Garrigan's turret. I never go down there.”

  “Likely story. Aren't you two like, a thing?”

  The question arrives without warning, minus any of the playful augmentation of his tone that always preambles his moronic jesting, minus any possible indication to Moira that he's anything but genuine in his asking and that, rather then merely teasing her, he seems to consider this a definite possibility, even a likelihood, enough to pose such a scenario.

  “Excuse me?” she attempts to clarify.

  “You and Garrigan. A thing. Aren't you?”

  “No. Not even a little,” she instantly disavows, blatantly realizing how one-dimensional it must seem to Nemo, Two-Bit and the rest of the crew. “No.”

  “Okay. Moons.”

  “Maybe a good way to put it is,” she hastily offers, by way of explanation, “he's a comrade. We've, you know, worked together in the past, we have a rapport. I don't know. I actually trust him. It's complicated.”

  “It's fine,” he mitigates, the very picture of mock-innocence. “I was just asking.”

  “What, are you and Odi a thing?” she advances as whatever means necessary to shift the focus and perhaps driven by a certain curiosity of her own.

  “Well, he's my saltbrother,” Nemo retorts bluntly, a reference to a title Moira'd encountered in his daily speech with Odisseus, but whose meaning she continued to be ignorant of. Spiritual bonds between males weren't necessarily uncommon between the galaxy's multifarious sentient species, but nearly all those in Moira's experience contained some sexual component, an element virtually and thankfully absent from Nemo's relationship with Odisseus and thusly painting another layer of conundrum onto this kernel of enigma that was certain areas of her Captain's assuredly-sordid past.

  “And an Ortok. And a dude,” Nemo concludes.

  “So?”

  “So 'no' would be the answer to that.”

  “You're sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “He's just the mechanic, then?” Moira presses.

  “Stop asking.”

  “And the cook, I suppose,” she allows.

  Nemo adjusts both his posture and his tone, true discontent blemishing his voice. “He didn't make you eat any of that gumbo of his, did he? What was it, Artelian like, slapdash something?”

  Moira sighs. “Gumbo. It's slapdash gumbo.”

  “Right. That's what I said.”

  “What about it?”

  “Oh, I forgot,” he discerns panderingly. “You like his cooking.”

  “I forgot you don't. I suppose with all the junk food you and Two-Bit shovel down, it's no blooming wonder.”

  “I don't wanna be ungrateful, it's just always seafood, you know?”

  “I was under the impression you liked seafood.”

  “I did. I do,” Nemo pacifies, certainly with splayed fingers and broad sweeping gestures. “Look, trust me, I like fish as much as the next idiot. More even, but for every moons-damned meal is maybe a little, what's the word, excessive?”

  “Maybe you should learn to cook, then.” Moira, as it happened, cultivated a modest respect for Odisseus and his culinary endeavors, a skill she'd never managed to grasp with any success.

  “Too late now,” Nemo concedes wearily. “Now there's leftovers.”

  “I suppose.”

  “Like, days and days and days of leftovers.”

  Moira musses up her face. “Did he really make that much?”

  “Forgot he only had ten mouths to feed, I expect.”

  “That I hadn't even considered,” she discloses after a long beat. Her memory jogged, Moira allows another sizable pause before, “That was why Brondi–”

  “In retrospect, I'm thinking.”

  “Danbonte. Marco. Anchorage. Brondi. Garrigan.”

  “And the five of us,” Nemo numerates with a certain level of finality. “Are we over our heads?” he suggests suddenly.

  “I'm somewhat sketchy on details, but very definitely yes.”

  This is something he seems to mull for several long moments until his unexpected backpedaling. “Do you know what I think it is?”

  “What?” Moira bites.

  “I don't understand the risk in it.”

  “The risk in what?”

  “Danger. Derring-do. Whatever you wanna call it.” Moira furrows her brow in confusion and he, as if on cue, reprises her earlier point. “Why I'm not afraid of getting shot or blowing up.”

  “How're you not afraid of that?”

  “Because what would I care?” Garrigan's chair groans in exertion as he flops backward with philosophical abandon. “If I get shot in the head, I'm dead. If I blow up the ship, we're all dead. Everything else, everything leading up to that, is just hull damage.” She imagines him shrugging unconcernedly. “It's reparable, you know?”

  “I'm reparable?”

  “Apparently. Otherwise, you'd be dead right now.”

  Moira can't help but smirk. “But that's legitimately your rationale? 'Who cares 'cause I'd be dead?'”

  In the space between her question and his reply, Moira observes several of her dashboard lights adjust. The channel had previously been undedicated, allowing anyone aboard to participate or overhear their conversation, should they pipe into an interior comm access port. Before continuing, Nemo'd taken the precaution to dedicate the channel, leaving Moira to wonder why as the neutral yellow indicator light next to Port 11 (Underturret) blushes a faltering red.

  “I don't know what you mean by rationale,” he proclaims, his tone gone signature steely above the severely diminished feedback of the dedicated connection. “It's not a conscious choice. It's a reaction. You know,” he recalls, in what Moira would later regard as her first tangible clue, “when I went back there this last time, right before I bought the Lover, I didn't even land. I think I just circled a few times and warped out again. I didn't really have the heart to touch down.” He scoffs almost inwardly. “Maybe I should have. Maybe that could have given me a better rationale. Oh, hey,” he brightens without hesitation. “Sixteen minutes.”

  As simple as that, it was gone, whatever it had been. Amid clinking bottles, squeaking chairs and the other sounds of his evident departure, Moira raps her fingers against her armrest and fails to shake the sinking suspicion that she'd borne witness to something consequential but lacked the proper context to appreciate it.

  “Back to Noxix?”

  “The casino break-in, but still. Better than nothing. You sure you don't want in?”

  “Thanks but no thanks,” Moira decid
es. “Have fun.”

  “You too, I guess. Doing, I don't know, whatever it is you're doing up there.”

  “Hey, Nemo?”

  “Yes'm?”

  “What's our next move?” She waves halfheartedly about at the assorted pirate's ships on the pad, made chimerical in the midnight moonlight. “We can't keep squatting here forever, can we?”

  “You wanna know the truth?”

  “Yes.”

  “You're exactly correct. We can't keep squatting here forever,” he confides restlessly. “We got errands to run.”

  “What sort of errands?”

  “Oh, you know. The Takioro sort.”

  Moira massages the middle of her forehead with both forefingers. “You understand that she'll be waiting for you.”

  “Yep.”

  “You understand that, going back there after stringing her along for, what, six months, something like that, your life is blooming forfeit.”

  “Yep.”

  “You understand that she is perfectly within her rights to gun you down on sight – no smiles, no excuses, no weaseling, if you so much as set foot on her station?”

  “Very much yep.”

  “Well,” Moira concludes dumbly, “as long as you're aware. I assume these errands are worth a fight or two?”

  “One would hope. I mean, it's all still a blind gamble, of course, but Takioro is probably the best shot we've got at this point.”

  “And it has to be Takioro?”

  “It has to be Takioro. Two-Bit even says so.”

  “Sublime,” Moira peels her head from her hands and plummets backward into her bouncing turret chair. “You're absolutely out of your mind, you know that?”

  “I suspected as much,” Nemo professes. “But I also suspected,” he adds, “that's the reason you're still here, isn't it?” This last rejoinder he delivers with another time-honored sneer from his repertoire, one Moira can distinguish even across the entire length of the ship. “Shit, I'm missing the episode.”

  The squeal of the gyroscopic chair, some manhandling of the headset and the connection, dedication and all, is promptly terminated. With that, he was doubtlessly clambering up the access ladder, off to his quarters and the nest of distractions he employed to whet his mind toward crafting wild and still wilder schemes, leaving Moira alone with only her peace, the chiller cream vanquished and the alcohol securely cached.

  An hour past midnight and tranquility continues to rule the world outside. Dissimilar ships slumber in silence. No more spacers trek back and forth from the immense lift platform to loading ramps that spill different colors of light upon the slushy thermosteel. Only Nebho, shining its tenebrous indigo, and the Exactly Counterattack, blinking a work light sporadically, offer Moira any further illumination to the twilit scene, the former a comforting constant, the later an unwelcome intruder and the one major obstacle between them and Takioro.

  –––

  Odisseus, as per Nemo's request, uncouples both acceleration regulators, punches up the maximum fuel intake limit on both Port and Starboard, consigns system power from the aftside afterburn shielding directly into the propulsion computer, latches the emergency dynamo cables from the auxiliary generator into each booster's supplementary intake jacks and systemically disables each and every safety precaution he'd laboriously installed to prevent anyone from ramming this much raw firepower into his cherished boosters in the first place. This achieved, he slumps into his technician's seat, straps tight every seatbelt within reach and growls into the comm. “There. You happy now?”

  “Let's find out.”

  To his immediate starboard, the wall-mounted 'engine exertion' light engages bitterly, as though it anticipates the suicidal strain its about to be subjected to. Odisseus clenches his jaw tight but doesn't dare close his eyes as, in the helm, Nemo chokes the throttle. The Ortok mechanic watches in horror as Port and Starboard, each booster presumably gushing freakish gouts of exhaust, rattle and quaver in their restraints from the undiluted effort. His equilibrium, long ago hardened into space legs of steel, barely registers the steering column's blunt bank to port, likely to swerve The Unconstant Lover around some looming obstacle, likely even the Pylon itself. The Briza's barely time to correct after the lurching adjustment before Odisseus' comm burbles to life again.

  “Hey, Odi, could you possibly do me a little favor?” Nemo's voice is pleasant and neighborly, though patched, seemingly about to request a corkscrew and a cup of sugar.

  “You're blooming joking.”

  “We're actually gonna need a little more juice. If that's not too much trouble.”

  “Trust me, Nemo,” Odisseus growls, his scowl firmly planted on his gasping, exhausted boosters. “You really don't want that.”

  “No, I really, really do.”

  Odisseus releases a weary sigh. “...how many fighters are behind us?”

  “Oh, I don't know,” Nemo relents. “Two-Bit, how many fighters do you suppose there are behind us?”

  “Like, a hundred-bloomin'-million!”

  “Two-Bit says a hundred blooming million. Is that enough, you think?” he retorts, the sardonicism evident even through the comm's warble. “How many more would you like?”

  Snarling profanities against Pylons, polar windows and power failures that consisted mainly of wordless vitriol rather than actual language, Odisseus unbuckles his chassis of seat belts, staggers to his feet and sets about the unpleasant task of somehow browbeating more system power into his already-overtaxed jetboosters lest either the Exacting Counterattack's broadside batteries or the apparently “hundred blooming million” Spur-Class interceptors currently hounding their tail blow them into literal smithereens.

  “'You call the shots, Odi'” Odisseus mutters, yanking the fuel compression pad entirely away with his bare paws. “'Long as you keep her afloat, Odi, you call the shots.' All the moons of cocksucking Jotor...”

  Chapter 19

  Two-Bit Switch, honestly a little disgusted, brushes yellow blood off the butt of his B7 Dissident and onto the thigh of his trousers. “You fuckers got cotty blood? Shit vizzes like fooge,” he opines with a grimace, quick to level the pistol's snub back where it belongs once the weapon's been sufficiently cleaned.

  Eidesmoe wheezes on the floor, quills rapidly sheathing and unsheathing, aforementioned yellow blood oozing from his recently-pistol-whipped-puss. He adheres rigidly to cliché, dabbing at the wound with spined fingers and staring shocked daggers up at his incipient armed robber. Two-Bit rifles his left hand through the Glothi fence's open cashbox, the retinal scanner now rendered a blinking vanity. “You fucking scumbag,” Eidesmoe manages through broken teeth.

  “Oh, don't moralize me, you dritchin' little shit,” Two-Bit sneers, deft fingers leafing through sheaves of stored cash. “This is bloomin' Takioro, isn't it? You with your little peep scanner - you practically had a blinker up, invitin' me to biff your beak and avail meself of your rhino every time I came here.” Gathering up his hefty stack of ill-gotten gains, what his professional burglar's extemporaneous appraisal estimates at around seven thousand ICC or so, Two-Bit creases the bundle and stuffs it into his pocket. After shuffling back a step, he vaults the nearest card table, making his way through Eidesmoe's improvised den toward the object he'd crossed three sectors to swipe.

  Wish fulfillment had been the order of the day when Nemo'd first proposed this particular maneuver to him back on Baz, back before the polar window run and their close call with the Pylon and its innumerable allegiant starfighters, back before they'd stole away to Takioro Defederate Station under the cover of the Yarba New Year's four-day hullabaloo. Initially, Two-Bit would have gleefully volunteered to break boorish Eidesmoe's nose any day of the week Nemo cared to pick. Yet, he found himself oddly sullen as he slunk through the engorged crowds of celebrants that choked the Third Ring toward Eidesmoe's bathroom-turned-base of operations, the cowl of his hoodie upturned to shield his face both from unfriendly eyes and from the downpour of confetti that
seemed to perpetually percolate from somewhere above. Perhaps it was paranoia about discovery, perhaps it was residual jitters from their white-knuckler with the Counterattack but, whatever the reason, Two-Bit took strangely little joy in ruining Eidesmoe's day like this.

  He had, as expressed, no intention to kill or even seriously harm his Glothi associate any more than was strictly speaking necessary to execute this stage of Nemo's evolving strategy against the Pylon. Even the robbery itself was something of a pretext for the sake of appearances. An additional seven thousand credits weren't about to make or break this venture; it was a very specific piece of Eidesmoe's hardware Two-Bit'd been tasked to boost and the contents of the cashbox, a relative pittance of the Glothi's total earnings, Two-Bit pocketed as a gratuity.

  It takes him a full minute and more to find the scramble codifier in question, especially with one hand occupied in covering the sputtering wreck of prone Eidesmoe. As Two-Bit runs the proverbial gauntlet of markdown mechanical merchandise in search of an ident flasher that reads “TFS K4 Individual Interceptor Unit, Spur-Class,” the Glothi fence on the floor passes the time spewing up hunks of yellow-stained teeth and muttering spuriously in his mother tongue. Two-Bit isn't concerned about reprisal, particularly with the Dissident trained on his every move – if there's one thing Eidesmoe could be relied upon to do unhesitatingly, it's kowtow.

  After a few uneasy seconds of wondering whether he'd been mistaken, Two-Bit locates the specific scramble codifier, snatches the console from among the stack of dusty claptrap, tucks it under his arm and, keeping his revolver solidly trained on the crumpled form of Eidesmoe, sidesteps his way back around the cluttered card tables. From here, it would be a simple matter to dart for the exit and lose himself amongst the throngs of other looters and ruffians teeming along the Ring before Eidesmoe can call for any sort of aid.

  “Now, it'd be pretty feezy to pop a canister in your stupid little maggie and have done, wouldn't it?” he announces to the cowering Glothi on the floor. “But you know I ain't gonna do that 'cause, were that the case, I woulda done it already. So, instead, ord to fuckin' this.” He gestures emphatically with the pistol. “You were blooming bummin' for this, weren't you, Eidesmoe, mate? You don't seem to follow that this is fucking Takioro and the blokes here got fucking wheelies, don't they? So, get your own fucking wheel outta your fucking wozzer drawer, hire yourself a nice big bruno with a mean fucking kisser and this kinda shit won't happen no more. Nod your silly maggie if you're still followin'.” Eidesmoe complies with an apprehensive nod. “There's a good bloke. No crunchy feelings now, alright?”