Hull Damage

by Timothy J Meyer

  Nemo snorts. “With my dick.”

  Two-Bit creases his greasy brow. “Moira, you ain't seriously propoin–”

  “Well, I'm certainly not gonna fly one.”

  “Thank fuck,” Nemo concurs.

  “And what do we do?” Odisseus, unconvinced, challenges.

  Nemo shrugs. “Hold on, I expect,” but Moira's already moving. With the expelled contents of Righty's chamber continuing to stymie Traasha's attempts at evening the score, ten strides have Moira skirted wholly past SQ, have her competently concealed from gunfire by the strip club's architectural curvature and have her planting the steaming hot snub of her AccCo 665 Lawman against the temple of the little urchin girl.

  “Your bike or your brains.” The girl, understandably flabbergasted, stammers some stationside Jabber too mutated to follow and her Prulish counterpart seizes the opportunity to mount and fire up his dash. The sight of Righty aligned at his own head dissuades him of the notion. “You too.” Self-preservation, of course, prevails and the station waifs raise empty hands and shuffle some distance backward down the adjoining alleyway, leaving Moira with her matching commandeered dashes. On her signal and safeguarded by her streaking bolts of super-charged ditrogen, Odisseus, Nemo and Two-Bit clear the crossing and the latter two busy themselves preparing their newfound escape routes for immediate departure.

  “Bloom me out,” Nemo reminisces as he straddles the girl's unignited dash and, after grinding the thing to life, fiddles its carriage and comportment to better suit a grown man than a child. “Been close on nine years since I rode anything that resembles dash. Takes me back.”

  Wrapping his blood-soaked paws around the passenger pole and shoving a hunk of unclasped machinery Moira assumes to be Two-Bit's scramble codifier into the luggage pouch, Odisseus climbs onto the tailpiece of Nemo's dash, the scaled-down driftbike greedily absorbing his weight. “Encouraging.”

  Sliding into her corresponding place around the passenger pole of the Prul's already-ignited rig and similarly stowing her own satchel, Moira throws a last call shout over her shoulder to dawdling Two-Bit. “Dash up or you're getting left!” Some distance away and muttering some jabber-platitude that Moira can't distinguish over the roaring gunfire, Two-Bit surrenders the station waifs a fistful of change and a rushed apology before jogging back to rejoin the others and swinging into the only vacant saddle.

  “You couldn't joy one of these if your maggie was hanked on it,” he scoffs.

  “And we'll take it you can?”

  He redoubles his scoff. “Since I was a wee scrogger.”

  “I'm gonna go ahead and assume that means 'yes.'”

  Two-Bit guns the handlebars, Nemo nanoseconds behind, and the two dash scream out of the alley's mouth with gloriously unmatchable speed. Only hours and years of rigorous Tebi-Gali conditioning are responsible for Moira' ability to shift her equilibrium and retain her balance on the tailpiece with both hands preoccupied by shooting parting shots into the Freezee-Squeez's exterior dining area. A corner rounded, two driftboosters spiked and they're zooming posthaste from the ditrogen-scored stairwell plaza and instead into sardined streets of the ceremonializing Second Ring.

  The chief encumbrance one faces when rocketing at a preposterous speed around really any of Takioro Defederate Station's famous three Rings is not geographical; were one to judge by the sheer architecture of the Second Ring, as a pertinent example, they'd be hard-pressed to find a simpler circuit. A basic quadrilateral shape, with rounded corners for easier banking, identical to its two counterparts, would theoretically make for an ideal vehicle course. The true difficulty with Takioro, particularly the Second Ring, especially during the Yarba New Year, specifically on Day Three, was the pedestrian element.

  Blurred advertisements in flashing colors, the persistent potpourri of brassy, ill-congruous music, torrential confetti and the constantly fluctuating width of the avenue before them thanks to vendors, displays and pushcarts are all considered relatively inconsequential obstacles in light of the capricious whims of Takioro's ten thousand streetwalking transients. Should she lean slightly too far in either direction, Moira would suffer an instantaneous collision with a piece of passing detritus, humanoid or otherwise, at a velocity capable of decapitating her, a fact that Nemo and Two-Bit, evidently older hands than Moira'd imagined, seem both blithely unconcerned about. At opportune gaps and openings, they josh and elbow each other like racing schoolboys, much to the nauseated chagrin of Odisseus and overall something Moira'd attempt to reprimand them for had she not found the entire spectacle so damnably impressive, an opinion she succinctly strangled in favor of her matter-of-course grimness.

  “Moira,” Two-Bit starts to regale, “you'll never hink what happened to–”

  “Squandered your cover, specifically against my advise, at, let me guess, the Afterburn, where you got unsurprisingly bushwhacked by the three-and-a-half semi-sentient outfit of Froz Four-Eyes and the Threadbare Bounty Hunters, ran like hellfire, probably lost Anchorage somewhere along the way, bumped into Traasha outside the Squeez and figured wetting yourselves behind a pickle cart was as dignified an end as you probably deserved anyway.” She fingers Righty's cylinder open to lever the spend casings out. “I miss anything?”

  Nemo frowns in approving consideration. “Nah, that pretty much covers it.”

  “Anchorage is dead,” Odisseus clarifies.

  “Boo hoo fucking hoo. You'd all be dead had I not stubbed my toe on you.”

  “What the bloom were you doing at the Pistol-Whip anyway?” A peeved Two-Bit somehow chances a glance away from the path ahead to inquire.

  “Checking our postings. Watch the road.”

  “Oh yeah?” Nemo, with a self-flattering interest, perks up. “Don't keep us in suspense.”

  “998 thou,” she enjoys flatlining, the same manner of degenerate satisfaction derived from fantasies about her eventual eyeball jewelry. “Near enough to a million as makes no difference.”

  “A mil?” Two-Bit repeats.

  “That's...” Odisseus' words fail him.

  “A big fucking number,” Nemo deduces. “Wow. I'm speechless. I have so many people to thank.”

  “It gets bigger,” she continues, shaking the blackened casings loose to a ground made indistinct by such an incredible speed that, had they been fresh ammunition, they would have popped and discharged upon impact.

  “I mean, my mom. Odi, Moira. Our friends as Briza Astroballistic,” Nemo rattles on.

  “Froz mentioned something about individual bounties,” Odisseus provides.

  “Yep,” Moira confirms. “246 thousand a head for Ortoki male alias Odisseus, humanoid male alias Two-Bit Switch, humanoid female alias Moira Quicksilver.”

  “Ott, Abraham. Hook. Should probably mention Anchorage in there somewhere...”

  Moira thumbs a six-canister moonclip into Righty's awaiting cylinder. “Not counting the additional 493 thousand upon delivery or confirmed destruction of a particular Briza Light Freighter we'd all recognize.”

  “Hell, Velocity even–”

  “Oi! What about me?” Two-Bit interrogates indignantly.

  “I guess.”

  “You guess?”

  “Puts the complete bounty on the four of us and the ship at somewhere in the court of 2 million, 250 thousand. Or thereabouts,” Moira estimates, replacing Righty in its holster and repeating the process with Lefty.

  Odisseus appears baffled. “All that was posted by the Imperium? In war-time?”

  “Some. A good third came through some podunky driftcart manufacturate out of Belena in the Ring ConFed. BackDrift something. Never heard of them.”

  Odisseus tosses a glance to Two-Bit. “You bet that's a front for–”

  “Oh, no, no,” Nemo laments almost under his breath.

  “Xo,” Two-Bit takes his own enjoyment in finishing.

  Moira instantly stops reloading Lefty. “You're kidding.”

  “Nope,” Two-Bit, replete with aggravated glee, rep
orts. “Seems Xo's got more'n a few dabbers in the Haess wheel-bootin' scheme.” Nemo, with eyes solidly forward, smiles weakly.

  “I wonder if your testicles would make a half-decent necklace,” Moira ponders aloud.

  Nemo's smile falters. “Well, that freezes the blood.”

  “Did you know?”

  “That,” Nemo weasles, “is something of a complicated question.”

  “Might wanna hold off on the bollocks-chopping, then,” Two-Bit warns. “Seems we got more handbaggin' yet to do.”

  Moira folds Lefty closed and dares enough of a lean outward to better gauge the situation. The unforeseen speed boost of the tagalongs had not only left their enemies in the proverbial dust, but also fantastically expedited the not-inconsiderable distance from the Pistol-Whip to the nearest Second-to-First Ring shoot. The third hurdle of their extraction maneuver, the embarkation platform, already swells ahead of the two dash bikes and their four passengers. Nemo and Two-Bit ease their respective throttles and subsequently their advances down at the sight of seven Triomman heavies packing severe heat and loitering aimlessly around the benches and pay-communicator stands of the platform. Normally, this would be a banal occurrence for Takioro on even a slow news day, much less Yarba New Year, had it not been for the inclusion of a comically squat sentient in a stained windbreaker and matching bald spot, leaning sentry across the street from the shoot and against the main floor entrance to the station-renowned establishment he owned and operated – the Astrobounce Gentleman's Club.

  “Gozzer,” Odisseus breathes. “Of blooming course.”

  “Bloody hell,” Two-Bit mutters as he powers his tagalong to a stop. “Is there one bloke in statee what don't got a beef with us?”

  “This is gonna be, uh, delicate,” Nemo, doing likewise, appreciates apprehensively.

  With both dash parked and deactivated at a respectful distance to the platform and its troupe of Triomman thugs, the four pirates, with scramble codifier and shopping satchel retrieved, dismount and fan themselves out, Gozzer shoving himself off the advert-plastered walls of his nightclub to intercept them. The slimy Ruuvian scuzzbucket, radiating that particularly rancid brand of pheromone his sorely-mistaken species considered both intimidating and sexually arousing, plugs his hairy three-fingered knuckles into his trouser pants and splits a yellowed lounge-singer's grin, his Triomman insurance bristling an array of laser weapons in holsters. “Well, ain't we in an awkward situation, Captain?”

  “Funny story, Gozzer, we–” Nemo winds up his legendary weaseling a beat before Moira loses her legendary patience, conjures Righty and Lefty in both fists and excavates a pair of tunnels through the brains of Gozzer's nearest two Triommans, slumping them both to the ground and killing them long before that.

  The remaining five shellshocked Triommans jostle their weapons into their hands. The three equally surprised pirates utter three separate curses before diving for cover to the right. Gozzer gapes at his slain muscle before scampering aside himself toward the open door of the Astrobounce. Moira manages to injure a third and kill a fourth before the jiggle joint bouncers can open fire.

  With the two station benches quickly garrisoned by the surviving Triommans, the Lover's Captain and three lieutenants surrogate shaky shelter behind the plexishield half-partitions of four pay-communicator posts, neatly processed along the platform's outer wall. Nemo, his exasperation echoed strangely by the torso-and-higher smudged screen, bellyaches between gouts of gunfire. “What the bleeding fuck, Moira?”

  “My way's faster. Your excuses would have kept us here until morning. Besides,” she adds sourly, “normally, you're more likely to start a gunfight than change your underpants.”

  “Three in one hour is my limit. Of gunfights,” he stipulates.

  “I was only after my eight percent, you bastards! Nemo, you promised!” Gozzer's protestations, shouted across the platform, go completely disregarded.

  “Oh, bloom it.” Two-Bit, after a deep breath, risks a three-step jaunt into the crossfire, timed precisely to intersect with the flight path of a Jhironese gunwoman, fleeing the skirmish by the most direct route. As she passes, he tears the hefty ten-chamber revolver from her hip holster and when she objects most strenuously in Jhironese, he clocks her fully in the jaw with the butt of the pilfered weapon, before hotfooting back to his pay-comm's not-so-impregnable embrace.

  “Two-Bit!” Nemo admonishes with mock affront. “You apologize to that poor lady!”

  “No lady I ever bumped packs an HH19 Tigress,” he evaluates brusquely, after putting the reappropriated firearm to better use against Gozzer's Triommans.

  “You never answered my question,” Moira reminds Nemo, who recoils in the face of rattling gunfire against his cracking plexishield divider.

  “Yeah, got sorta distracted.”

  “Well, we got more distraction inbound,” Odisseus, in the furthest occupied pay-comm, announces gravely. After Righty and Lefty's next salvo cleans up the unfinished matter of the wounded Triomman and successfully chases the remaining roughnecks back down their holes, Moira braves a glimpse behind her, curses blackly and realigns her aim in the opposite direction.

  Parting the mingling crowd with spouts of warning laserfire shot toward the ceiling comes a repainted driftcart, in point of fact the Nomad Café, Moira realizes rankly – that low-rent coffee bar that wanders the Second Ring as a trio of chococino-brewers bolted to a stolen driftcart. With the elderly Nokko barista-pilot nowhere to be seen, the Café's new owners, Traasha and what remains of her incompetent entourage, amble their commandeered vehicle forward, harrying the beleaguered pirates from makeshift cover behind chunky espresso machines.

  “That was cracklin',” Two-Bit appraises, likewise swinging his fresh firearm about.

  Moira ricochets Righty's shot off Traasha's coffeepot cover. “You're really kidding,” she implores blankly.

  “Yeah,” Nemo concurs, scoring a lucky stomach shot on the Café's Ondo pilot, which both plummets him screaming from the seat and shivers the driftcart to a standstill with a belching of spilt coffee. “If you're all pulling my leg and this is some kinda Yarba New Year prank, now would really be the time to tell me.”

  Odisseus sniggers despite the shelling his rickety plexishield receives. “That'd be pretty great, wouldn't it?”

  Hissing red return fire shrieks entirely too close to Moira's unprotected backside, signifying the Triomman's contribution to their overall besiegement. As both arms of the vise-grip begin to constrict, Two-Bit voices their growing concerns with a tentative “Yeah, I'm getting zilched on cover here...”

  “Any more brilliant ideas, Quicksilver?” Odisseus requests wryly.

  “Thought that was more the Captain's department,” she redirects, a point she illustrates by thrusting her pistols diametrically out, Lefty peppering Gozzer's goons hard, Righty tipping then plowing over the cast-iron percolator Traasha's Powosi kneels behind and deluging him in scalding black chococino.

  “Hey,” Nemo forfeits, “the whole grand theft tagalong thing was your idea.”

  “Here's another. Answer my question.”

  “The thing about that–” he stalls as Moira, sidestepping back to the pay-comm's dubious protection to avoid the retribution of Traasha's two remaining guns and Gozzer's four, donates one of Lefty's canisters toward the noble endeavor of splintering the plexishield barrier inches from Nemo's face. “Fine, fine!” the satisfactorily startled Nemo relents, “it was Ott's play, alright, not mine! He needed weapons, he wanted to burn Xo, I knew Two-Bit'd done some gunrunning on Haess, he knew Xo'd recently expressed interest in the weapons market there. What was I gonna do, say no and get burnt alive, or worse, go back to puppy-smuggling?” His countenance is the deepest shade of grim. “I'm not a puppy smuggler, okay? I'm not. Dread pirates do not smuggle puppies.”

  “Dread pirates?” Moira quotes.

  An unprompted Triomman scream interrupts this particular line of thought to usher in both a third wave of assailants and mo
re ditrogen-powered mayhem to the general clusterfuckery exploding outside the Astrobounce Gentleman's Club. A wooden blowgun dart feathers one of Gozzer's conscripted toughs from behind and spills him to floor amid an outbreak of frothing convulsions. Moira resolves never to set one jackboot on this revolting station ever again as Froz Four-Eyes does his best Moira Quicksilver impression with two sidearms ablaze against the Triomman's rear flank and his belligerent opposite number, after having stashed the fetishized blowgun and drawn a tacky imitation of a vallaphant's animal goad, bounds high onto the platform and begins sprinting unerringly towards the Captain.

  “Okay, that's just impossible,” Nemo reacts.

  “Maybe they deered a tagalong too?” Two-Bit proposes dryly.

  “More likely they came back around on Third,” Odisseus theorizes, an activity Moira, at this point, is flatly uninterested in continuing, having finally heard the telltale bell of an available lift tube.

  “Bloom this, boys. I'm gone,” she bids farewell. After replacing her shopping satchel over her shoulder and steeling herself with a brief bout of Tebi-Gali breathing, Moira opens by planting two unanimous bolts into the drivefeed distributor behind the Nomad Café's noseplate which promptly deactivates the driftmotor, crashes the entire driftcart sparkingly to the floor and dislodges both of its outstanding passengers into a tumble-down heap. She continues by breaking cover to rush the embarkation platform, all the while hammering Gozzer's three clustered Triommans so hard as to replace all their latent, vestigial “daddy issues” with newly-minted “Moira issues” and even finding the time to cancel the pseudo-Whuudi wash-up's murderous charge with an even more murderous canister to the heart. She concludes by simultaneously pressing the shoot pad's “call tube,” “open tube” and “fire tube” buttons with Lefty's last cartridge, waiting patiently while the shoot properly allocates her getaway vessel. Upon hearing those sweet doors grinding open, Moira launches herself fully inside the awaiting lift tube, only to discover that, in fact, Two-Bit, Odisseus and Nemo are crowding in after her, apparently having followed her one-woman vanishing act in a mass exodus of their own.