Hull Damage

by Timothy J Meyer

  Two-Bit's a foot from the door release when Eidesmoe spits, “You're in for a surprise, Switch.”

  “What's that? You'd rather the canister?”

  He attempts to chuckle, which only causes more blood to seep from his smashed face. “They're waiting for you and yours, Switch.”

  Two-Bit advances an inch. “You been jabbing to Velocity?”

  Gripping the nearby toilet to hoist himself onto his elbows, Eidesmoe grins through cracked lips. “Maybe you should check your postings.”

  Opting not to waste any further time with this lowlife, Two-Bit nudges the door release, merges into the teeming press beyond and abandons Eidesmoe to his broken teeth and dangling colony of multicolored air fresheners.

  –––

  Gertie Guspatch is attempting to foster herself a better nickname. She'd recently deemed her current sobriquet a little too ironic and far too detrimental to her career, considering the unfortunate string of bad breaks and worse ends that had befallen each of the four captains she'd served under these past nine months. Captain Akari's Strange Bedfellow had been promptly boarded by a Ring ConFed customs cruiser and himself promptly incarcerated therewith. Captain Chiriq had contracted the Dressdaalian retchings a week out of port, followed shortly by half The Far Cry's non-humanoid crew. Captain Bors Fingerbreaker had been shanked in the eye over a thirty-credit bar bet during a game of bankshot ball. By the time that Captain Mantares had been fed to The Scar's mated pair of pet jborra panthers, Gertie was zero for four and the prefix “Good Luck” had emerged in and among the cups and whispers of Takioro's superstitious citizenry at an alarming frequency, along with a sharp decline in the rate of her employment.

  So Good Luck Gertie was in the proverbial market for a relabeling and potentially a nine-to-five behind a laser turret, could such a thing be managed. She'd heard Fingerbreaker's boatswain, an enormous Walkeen eyesore known simply as Bosun, offhandedly refer to her as Gertie Gundeck, a handle that had enchanted her and then never been repeated. She'd also heard that Captain Herne Halfsmile had lost a few hands during a recent boost-and-juice off Vanholt and was perhaps shopping in station to scrape a few unsavories off Takioro's tile to replace them. Hiking up her skirt, unfastening her third button and strapping on her gun belt, she's swaggered down to the Bloody Afterburn to offer up her credentials, as she'd done with every corsair of sufficient clout who'd swept into port of late.

  Herne Halfsmile, an ugly Phnuki scuzzball with a decent rap sheet in the Midworlds and twelve teeth missing from the left side of his grin, brushes some imaginary dust off his lapel and signals Unhappy Roger for another two of whatever Gitterswitch concoction sat drained before him. “You're big trouble, what I hear, ain't you, Guspatch?”

  “Maybe I'm the good kinda trouble,” she purrs, shrugging deeply over the bar.

  “Yeah? And how do I tell?”

  “Look closer.”

  Sexy banter, in Gertie's experience, rarely made much sense, as the conversation's verbal content was typically of less importance than the actual manner of its delivery. As long as it was snappy and breathless and she pursed her lips just so, most of the drooly apes she danced this dance with could care less whether they discussed crew openings or the consistency of quorki manure.

  Unhappy Roger deposits both tumblers before Herne with a morose sigh. Eyeing the nearest of the frothy blue drinks, Gertie scoots her wobbly stool an inch and an inch closer to Herne, all the better with which to murmur her desirous aspirations under the conglomerate commotion of the celebratory Afterburn.

  On Day Three of the Yarba New Year, The Bloody Afterburn seethes and churns like an overflowing tide pool. Sentients of every shade and stripe rub raucous elbows about the begrimed barroom. A bewildering confusion of chat, be it Commercial, Jabber or the dozens of more outlandish tongues bounced about the joint by its myriad patrons, wrestles the piped-in tavern music for the supremacy of sound. Tankards are hoisted, clinked and drained of the Consortium's cheapest swill in exaltation of the obscure holiday whose planet practically none of the celebrants had ever even heard of. Subsequently, Unhappy Roger's dolor was black as ever and the saloon was suffocated with unwashed buccaneers and unsavory intentions.

  Gertie toys with her tumbler on the bar top. “Well, you know what they say about Phnukies, don'tcha?”

  As he shoots back his Gitter, Herne cocks his head askance, to prevent the booze from dribbling out the side of his toothless gap. “What do they say?”

  “They say,” she intones, her conniving eyes catching movement somewhere past the Halfsmile's shoulder, “that their cocks are as big as their...Nemo,” she breathes.

  “My cock is as big as my Nemo?”

  By now, Gertie Guspatch was paying precisely no attention. Minus that winsome bowler hat of his, minus the meretricious grandstanding he flattered the Afterburn and exasperated Roger with upon every visit, minus that deadpan harpy, Quicksilver something, that usually dogged his every step, but nevertheless, there, all the way across the Afterburn, is unquestionably him – edging his way past the even more persistent Ortok and two-hundred-and-eighty pounds of dreadlocked Aurik muscle to slip unsteadily out the side entrance.

  Gertie slams her Gittershot, jettisons herself off the teetering stool and saunters through the cavorting crowd toward the exit to the alley, Herne Halfsmile a faint memory behind her. She indulges both the Ortok and the Aurik with the most virginal smile in her arsenal as she breezes past the pair of them and sidles herself through the agape doorway.

  The alley adjoining The Bloody Afterburn and its next door neighbor, a humble five table bistro called The Peach Fuzz, is an anticipatedly squalid affair, decorated largely in wet sacks of cast-off trash from both establishments, dissolute shells of sentients slumped against the scuzzy teltriton walls and a dappled mosaic of stains, splattered, spilt and dried across Gertie's path in a dozen not-so-mysterious colors. To her left, Nemo just circles the far corner and disappears, with a half-stumble and an unintentional twirl of his coat, around the Afterburn's backside. To her right, the alleyway deltas into the Second Ring's main thoroughfare and all the hooting, honking, riotous ribaldry of the Yarba New Year invades the sidestreet's relative hush.

  An alpacafolk from an ill-visited world in the Offchart Territories, the beginning of the Yarba's calendar year coincided with the ninth month of the Standard Imperial Calendar, an otherwise banal enough occurrence that Takioro's criminal culture deemed as worthy as any to ceremonialize with a four-day, no-holds-barred, station-wide debauch. Outlaws from all walks of crime, from petty pickpocket to kingpin pirate, flock to the Defederate Station each year, all the restaurateurs and flipskirts and pistolpawners clean up on holiday discounts and clearances, the Depot-Commissioner enjoys a juicy percentage of each transaction and Gertie is reasonably certain that, even with Takioro's vagrant population swollen fivefold, she's never, in two decades, seen a single Yarba in station during their alleged New Year celebration.

  She discovers him pissing shamelessly into the emergency exhaust vent jutting from the floor behind the Afterburn, the rippling wake of hazardous miasma shimmering the air before him into a effervescent pillar and splaying the tails of his coat wide open. She sashays across broken bottles and discarded syringes to slink up along his oblivious side.

  "'round back here ain't exactly my ideal choice of venue, but skip, you know I'm always willing to improvise if you are," she admits with an accommodating shrug and a glancing appraisal of their scuzzy surroundings. "Moons know I've done worse."

  He scowls left, opens his mouth to speak in alarm, bites his lip and remarks rather, "You continually astound me," he slurs, "with your unsung talent for creeping around."

  "I got lotsa unsung talents. You game for a tussle?"

  "'fraid not. You know, I got that…" he punishes his lip with further gnawing, "dick mold."

  She regards his sputtering yet evidently unmarred manhood with a hoisted eyebrow. "Oh yeah?"

  "Yeah," he nods, with exaggerat
ed graveness. "It's in the sorta 'spore' phase right now."

  “This is different from those, what, gonad barnacles you had last time?”

  “Yes. Very different. This is mold,” he points. “On my dick.”

  "Guess I don't want no dick mold."

  "You really don't. Anything else I can help you with, Gertrude?"

  Ever since the dissolution of her first marriage, Gertie'd considered the practice of twirling doltish men around her little finger a point of professional pride and thus far, barring this most recent dry spell, she'd proved more than successful in such endeavors, with one notable exception. On paper, this Captain Nemo appeared the supreme candidate for Gertie's admittedly diffuse affections – hard reputation, rising star, marvelous ship and tirelessly defiant to boot. To make matters worse, he was ostensibly immune not only to her renewed charms, but seemingly to all charms of a female persuasion, and if there was anything in this galaxy to whet Gertie's appetite more than his particular brand of disinterest could, she'd never encountered it in nineteen years spent tramping the worst parts of Bad Space.

  Thusly, they beat around this very particular bush over and over again, at every chance meeting, every in-station stumble-upon, every happenstance encounter that Gertie meticulously arranged; her proposing to knock boots at a variety of locales and instances, him concocting a truly prodigious string of irrational excuses, ranging from dental appointments and urgent comm transmissions to this more recent patch of genital maladies. Gertie wasn't struck with the impression he was askew necessarily, but the amorous advances of even her own voluptuous nature appeared entirely lost on him, much to her pocketbook's chagrin.

  “'s Gertie and lemme tell you how you can help me. Get me a job on that Lover.”

  “Pretty sure we had an understanding about that.”

  “Bloom that. You got space these days, with Shouldermount and the others offed. Plus,” she delivers the following in an unnecessarily hushed tone, to add some habitual melodrama, “talk is, you're headlining for Boss Ott now, ain't that right?”

  “Might be, might be,” he consents with a ghost of a smile.

  “Then, your ship got mold too or what?”

  “Well, yes, probably,” Nemo allows, with a perfunctory consideration, “but that ain't the point. The point, and I've definitely told you this,” he elucidates unevenly, while stuffing his dripping member into his unfastened trousers and tapping closed the exhaust vent with his heel, “is that Moira simply will not have it. She, uh, she brooks no rival. I've told you this.”

  “And why is that again?”

  “You'd have to ask her. If you'll excuse me–” Nemo excuses himself with extended palms, but Gertie deftly sidesteps to immediately intercept him.

  “And that purple-haired skank what unmoored with you six months back? Switch's current doxy?”

  “I actually got a theory Moira shot her in the back of the head.”

  Gertie sneers. “I can handle Quicksilver.”

  “Don't doubt that you can. All of this, however, is somewhat beside the point,” he asserts with another escape attempt and this time, Gertie grants his passage, lingering only three of his footfalls, each slightly wobbled by intoxication, before posing a question harmless enough to halt him in his tracks.

  “What're you even doin' here, skip?”

  He doesn't make eye contact as he replies. “Errands. Ott's business in station.”

  “That ain't what I mean. Coulda sent one of your mooks with a shopping list to run any errands you got. No,” she prances a step forward and flattens her hands against the grips of her gunbelt, “you came here special. All those guns pointed at your head makes it just 'bout the most expensive slab of dead meat this side of Inapi and it leaves me wonderin' why you'd even bother flashin' that pretty face of yours down here at the Afterburn. Weren't to run no errands. Weren't to see me, what with the dick mold,” she deduces with a sidelong gesture at his crotch, “and weren't for no business either, as you and your posse ain't looked twice at a single stiff in that joint.” She shrugs almost playfully. “So, what's the answer, skip? Good ol' fashioned stupidity or somethin' more specific?”

  Nemo dawdles another moment before coming about to face her properly again, Gertie perceiving a subtle yet profound shift in his aspect. “I needed a drink,” he comments simply, uninterestingly even, and Gertie feels the puncture of his remote gaze. “My, uh, stash was all used up,” he explains with a listlessness she can only identify as abject detachment. He does nothing more than blink before it's dissolved away and a boozy grin reclaims his face. “Besides, it's Yarba New Year, isn't it? That's certainly worth a carouse – even a quiet one.”

  “Suit yourself,” she settles. “Only...”

  The bait is cheap, Gertie confesses inwardly, and the fact that Nemo's this easily inspirited by such a crude hook remains her most consistent proof of his interest. “You're terrible.”

  “Sad to say.”

  “Only?”

  “Only unless you're keen on catching laser bolts with your head, you'd best hoof it back to that moldy ship of yours and make tracks outta here. By my count, there's at least three hard cases with your number printed up all nice and clean on bounty posters,” she thumbs to her immediate right, “waitin' just inside there.”

  Nemo ruffles, the truculent eagerness he immediately displays tellingly blatant and therefore strangely exciting. “Anybody I know?”

  “Some chick all done up in tattoos and totems. A Saurian fella biggern' the fourth moon of Bohor, calls himself Thood. Froz,” she adds as an afterthought. “Plus Traasha and her toadies are about someplace – Vel's got 'em out in force. Somebody musta tipped her.”

  “Bloom me out,” Nemo breathes. “That's some heat for what, two-fifty?”

  “More than that, skip. You been upgraded.”

  “That so?” he inquires with a certain degenerate pride. “How much?”

  “Wouldn't wanna spoil any surprise, but let's just say, between Vel, these anglers and anybody else jumpin' outta Second Ring windows to cash in the shiny new price on your brainpan, you'd best take my advise and skedaddle.”

  Nemo slaps his thighs. “Maybe you're right.”

  “Get me on the payroll and you got yourself another gun,” Gertie advertises with a sly smile and an accentuation of the pertinent hip. “Fuck, best gun on the Defederate Station.”

  “Willing to bet Moira'd contest that part.”

  “Which part?”

  “Both, I imagine.” That said, the stifled echo of shattering glass, followed by a volley of shrieking laserfire, silences the muffled bustle of the merry-making Afterburn for less than a full second, before the removed saloon blossoms into an unharmonious chorus of loosed bolts, broken furniture and four dozen jam-packed souls abruptly dragooned into drunken violence. “That'd be them now, I expect,” he edges away from her several more steps, making gradual progress toward the corner. “Should probably see to that.”

  “Probably. Last chance to change your mind and take me.”

  “Tempting but, you know, dick mold.”

  “Of course. Shoot me somebody, wouldja?”

  He beams with inebriated finality. “I'll shoot you a whole buncha people.”

  He spins on a dime, nearly forfeits his balance and vanishes cleanly out of sight, loping back toward the Afterburn's side entrance, with the unexpressed desire to bruise knuckles and waste ammunition with a trio of bounty hunters undoubtedly out of his league and, in all eventuality, find himself punctually murdered.

  Good Luck Gertie Guspatch chews her bottom lip and debates her options.

  –––

  Odisseus is going to throttle him as soon as he comes back from peeing. Through the effective bottleneck of the corner booth's only point of ingress, the impatient Ortok spots Froz Four-Eyes slap a handful of bills to the bar's counter and plop into the unoccupied seat to Herne Halfsmile's immediate left, all four of his eponymous peepers trained unflaggingly on the side entrance. The ve
ry same side entrance, Odisseus notes, that his saltbrother staggered out of seven minutes previously, ostensibly to “let the little guy breathe for a minute” but with Good Luck Gertie just moments behind. Odisseus wasn't sure whether he'd simply been too tipsy to reject her earnest advances or whether she'd finally won him over with the rough talk and the vixen smiles, but he was certain that, as soon as Nemo graced the Afterburn's back door with his meddlesome presence again, they'd likely have themselves a piece of action.

  Froz has aged considerably since Odisseus had seen him last, at that speakeasy on the bad side of Gallow's Worldshine district eight and more years ago. While he'd certainly grown into his lanky frame and spindly appendages, it was exceedingly unlikely that the Ortok would ever have the slightest difficulty singling the queer Gallweigian bounty hunter out among a crowd. Of an unknown breed, race or species whom no one could ever recall encountering another specimen of, Froz Four-Eyes earned his moniker not from spectacles, but rather from the pair of big hazels on his second head. Each capping an arm's length of serpentine neck, each possessed of perhaps a quarter of a brain, the unnervingly two heads of Froz Four-Eyes had accrued a dubious esteem across several sectors, both for his talents as an idiot savant of a trick marksman and for his inexplicable penchant for arriving at the least opportune moment to ruin one's day. Enemies of old on Gallow, Froz, typically a few degrees above their notice, had probably leapt at the chance to collect the mounting bounty on Captain's Nemo's hated head.