Hull Damage

by Timothy J Meyer

  The Captain, the last of Moira's three hangers-on to claw his way to freedom within the crowded lift tube, squeezes himself inside and only manages to turn around when the final parting shot, fired from Traasha's 387 Absconder no doubt, sizzles the cinched teltriton doors less than an inch from his nose.

  Nemo exhales. Moira rolls her eyes.

  As the shoot around them prepares itself for its artillery-like departure, Nemo brushes off his duster, cracks his neck and peers aside. “You got the codifier?” he double-checks to Odisseus over his right shoulder, who nods a confirmation. “You got your, uh...feminine hygiene products?” he double-checks to Moira over his left shoulder, who impugns him beneath her most blistering glare.

  Characteristically, Nemo only shrugs. “Good trip, then.”

  Chapter 21

  Odisseus' tool belt is fucking resplendent. Armed with freshly-polished auto-cincher, neticgrappler and handheld fusioner, as well as a miniaturized cutting beam, six individual rolls of booster tape and a mechanic's instinctual cynicism, Odisseus stands front and center in The Unconstant Lover's disused gundeck – stance wide, arms crossed, the very picture and pinnacle of mechanical vigilance – as he awaits the very latest of Nemo's lunacy. To the Ortok's immediate starboard, Marco the Mange stands similarly equipped, though his suite of belted hand-tools are appropriately smaller, inappropriately grimier and significantly less impressive, Odisseus' unspoken standards falling deaf upon those tufted ears.

  The remainder of the crew, sans the Captain, lounge and loiter about the dusty gundeck with an equal level of ambivalence. Glive Garrigan, ex-petty officer of the fabled Imperium Interstellar Navy, sits one of the plentiful Antagonist ammunition crates stacked in each of the spacious room's available corners, Moira Quicksilver standing sourly to his side. Danbonte lingers nearby, leaning against the underturret's housing mainframe that seems to burst forth from the chamber's portside wall. Abraham Bonaventure, grasping a tankard of ghastly gray moonshine as ever, looms near the bow-ward doorway and hums something certainly shantylike inconsciently. Two-Bit Switch feasts on some manner of jam-filled gas station sausage and dangles both lonktonk legs off the side of the deactivated and unused strategic imaging table, his khaki shorts revealing a few faded purple vestiges of the muck leech's bygone suckers. Only Brondi stands alone, aloof in the opposite corner and nursing an anxiety cigarette, this upcoming meeting to represent the first time he'd shared a room with the Captain since the incident outside Ott's mess hall.

  Apart from Abraham's distracted humming, an occasional word from Danbonte quickly stymied by Moira's obvious umbrage and the squishing sounds of Two-Bit's meal, the crew concurs on silence, both to ponder the insurmountable odds of the task at hand and their Captain's unshocking tardiness. Parked alone at the Warp Gate Junction above Iogo, there were, in fact, a vanishingly small number of places he could conceivably have eluded the Lover's entire crew. Had Nemo a talent beyond daredevilry and brainlessness, however, it definitely involved shirking all manner of responsibilities, particularly those he'd signed himself up for in the first place.

  Without further warning, the doorway adjacent to Abraham wheezes ajar and the hour's man himself saunters inward, the source of his delay painfully evident in his hands. He slurps neon green slush through its bendy straw – the Mondo-size Bubble Blast Green Ice Chill Slushie, undoubtedly purchased from the same over-priced and under-cleaned convenience store responsible for Two-Bit's slimy jellydog. He pauses on the proverbial floor mat, surveys the professional pirates all assembled and opens his green-tinted mouth to make with the skinny.

  “Okay, here's the skinny,” he announces, digging deep in his right trouser pocket to withdraw a slim datadeck and toss it underhanded toward Two-Bit. “Pop that into the imager for me, willya?”

  Swapping the purple-blooded comestible to the opposite hand and giving the datadeck the once-over, Two-Bit complies by inserting it into the imager table's nearest port. “And this is?”

  In lieu of Nemo's reply, the imager, after a moment of calculation, flickers to life and begins feeding a string of involved graphics in acrid orange across its holographic surface screen. Everyone present, excluding Garrigan, Brondi and Moira, shuffles forward as one to better examine what the imager displays. Odisseus recognizes technical read-outs at a glance – a Terro Fleet Systems 545 Pylon-class Capital Warship, Mezzrian in design and, to judge by the familiar contour of its ventral docking ridge, the Exacting Counterattack. It rotates to exhibit all perspectives, a highlighted cross-section sliding substrate across the craft's entire outline to reveal gunnery decks and power cores, pop-up sidebars rattling off industrial information about shield strength, re-routing capability and the like.

  Danbonte, oddly, is the first to speak upon seeing this. “Now, come on,” he denigrates, with a vague gesture over the entire display, “you can't be serious about this. About any of this.”

  Nemo, hanging several steps back from the imager, answers coldly. “Do you think that I'm not?”

  “This is a capital ship, Captain. The humdinger of capital ships. Navies, you hear me, entire rebel navies have tried and failed against Pylons.”

  “I've seen it happen,” Garrigan testifies.

  “I don't care how much faith you've got in her,” Danbonte disavows. “No Briza, yours or anybody else's, stands any chance in Jotor against a Pylon.”

  “Agreed,” Marco confirms.

  Odisseus exchanges looks with Abraham and Two-Bit, though Moira moodily refuses to acknowledge anyone's presence but the floor's. Honest appraisal of the manifold dangers presented, the conscript crew's words eerily reflect Odisseus own opinion. Opinions originally expressed through significant glances and the infrequent muttered aside between the Lover's four officers are now voiced through the mouths of her four marauders as though by some unintended and abstruse ventriloquism.

  “So noted,” Nemo allows, regarding the dinted lid of his slushie with apparent fascination. “Listen,” he commands suddenly, raising that steely, self-determined gray gaze to Danbonte. “I'm sure you mean well but kid, I ain't really talking to you.”

  “Lad's not wrong there, boyo,” Abraham throws in first. “Fool's errand and all that.”

  “Only way back into Ott's good graces is through that Pylon,” Nemo reasons. “And, with us on both Vel's and Xo's shit-list, the Menace's the only game in town that's got the stones to gives us quarter. Not to mention,” he adds with a sideways slosh of his slushie, “the bounty he'd shell out should we succeed could buy Two-Bit every fucking hooker in the Ring.”

  “There's that,” Two-Bit appreciates, licking jelly off the tips of his fingers.

  “That still leaves us the problem of bein' nothing but a banged-up light freighter and them bein' the bloom-near biggest ship-of-the-line, best not forget,” Abraham redirects.

  “They're not invincible,” Nemo reminds, all traces of good humor vanished from his voice unbidden. “They're made of teltriton and shield projectors like anybody else – the Shame or the Horizon or the Indurna or anybody else we ever pirated. I base most of my philosophy on that fact and it ain't failed me yet.” He damns his gaze into the viridian depths of his slushie almost dejectedly. “Took me long enough to figure how, but you all know I'm capable to the task.” He swills what remains of the beverage before repeating “They're not invincible” in a small, resolved voice.

  The room speechlessly stalls each second with either assessment, contemplation or judgment of Nemo's moment of vulnerability, itself a concept that his saltbrother lacks the willpower to endure for any length of time.

  “You're sure?” Odisseus is practically compelled to confirm against common sense.

  The absolute specter of a smile crosses Nemo's still downcast face. “Pretty sure.”

  “Well, now I'm curious, if zilched else,” Two-Bit endorses with a shrug.

  “One way or the other, it'd be one hell of yarn,” Abraham allows.

  “Moira?” Nemo, without raising his head, calls
back to his first mate. “Where you standing?”

  “I have agreed to exactly nothing.”

  “Good enough.” Nemo plunks the gnawed-on straw end back between his teeth and swallows another mouthful of green sludge as he approaches the strategic imager, somber mood entirely forgotten. “The main trouble, as I see it,” he begins, both banishing the extrinsic “engine speed” screen and conjuring the more pertinent “craft overview” screen with a few taps on the control pad, “is that the Counterattack's equipped with a shielding mainframe to rival a planetary defense grid, can, given sufficient time, dispatch nearly ten score starfighters and is packing close to twice that in broadside batteries.”

  “Granted,” Odisseus deadpans.

  “Not to mention,” Garrigan includes, clambering off his distant crate to fully engage in the discussion, “it's what, one hundred some fucking times larger than we are?”

  Nemo curls up a sportive smirk. “That's an advantage. A navy could take fire from most or all of these guns. Thanks to being so small, at most, we're looking at fire from less than half.”

  “I remember,” Odisseus recounts gruffly.

  Marco glances up at the Ortok. “He is right, though.”

  “Warships such as these,” Abraham explains from his post at the doorway, “t'ain't made to swap ammunition with ships such as ours. They're made for fleet actions.”

  “Well, that still leaves something like two hundred other batteries,” Danbonte counters.

  “And two hundred starfighters,” Moira murmurs.

  “I'll get to both of those in a minute,” Nemo compartmentalizes as he dials a pull-up menu on the imager's port side.

  Two-Bit sidles up along his flank. “What're you flashin'?”

  “The big idea is basically,” Nemo replies mutteringly as the computer's subroutine traces a hoop along the simulated Pylon's hull before trisecting and spacing out the digital rendering into three roughly equivalent portions, “to kick its shields out and break it into big pieces.”

  Two-Bit, understandably a little dumbfounded, grunts. “Huh. Is that all.”

  Odisseus, who by now had learnt not to phase himself in face of Nemo's destructive optimism, shifts his weight. “Can we assume you've some idea how to do this?”

  “Usually a safe assumption,” Nemo grants.

  “Wait, what do you mean, break it?” Danbonte advances another step. “Like, apart?”

  Nemo shrugs. “More or less.”

  The redskin scoffs a little nervously and glances around to the rest of the crew as if for commiseration. “There's gotta be a simpler way than that. Could you, uh,” he waves toward the imager, “target the thrusters or something? The bridge?”

  Garrigan frowns. “Bridge is centrally located on a Pylon. It's right there at the heart of the ship. Not really a target.”

  “And thrusters like these,” Marco indicates with a claw, “are meant to withstand considerable drag. Pair of Antagonists, bloom, even torpedoes would take all week to noticeably damage any of those.”

  “Assumin', acourse,” Abraham stipulates, “their shields be down.”

  Nemo congratulates with a point and a smile dyed florescent green. “Very astute, sir. That is phase one. In order for any of this to work, their shield projectors, specifically their bombard shield projectors of which there are four,” he motions the slushie toward the digital Pylon and its purple wreath, “are gonna have to be disabled.”

  “And how do we do that?” Odisseus poses.

  “We don't. They do.” Nemo's following smile surpasses the allowable emission standards of mischief. “Some of you may know, on our most recent trip to Takioro, Two-Bit here was kind enough to relieve an associate of his of a particular scramble codifier for our usage. A scramble codifier,” he elaborates, “of a TFS K4 Individual Interceptor Unit.”

  “Which class?” Marco inquires.

  “Spur,” Nemo finishes innocently, before taking another drag on his bendy straw.

  Two-Bit crinkles his expression. “What's in your maggie, Cap'n?”

  “You mean to put that thing on the Beggarman,” Odisseus abruptly realizes.

  Around the cockled stub of his straw, Nemo awards, “Ten points.”

  Two-Bit's momentarily taken aback. “A five-and-five job. Of course. How did I not vizz this earlier?”

  “I'm not sure I follow,” Danbonte informs.

  “You know what a scramble codifier is, though?” Marco clarifies to Danbonte's confounded shrug. The Mruka exhales, closes his eyes in brief frustration and begins to explicate with pretentiously simplistic gestures. “It overrides the ident tags in your sensor package, makes you look like a different ship to anyone trying to scan you. Good enough scramble codifier can pull wool over anything but the most dedicated sensor sweeps.”

  “And the naked eye,” Moira points out.

  “You install one on the Beggarman, though,” Odisseus slowly formulates, “one that reads it as a Spur, during what I assume will be the starfighter clusterfuck to end all starfighter clusterfucks, you got yourself an invisible ship.”

  “Not hardly,” Moira discredits out of hand. “It's not gonna have a call sign, a relevant ident reading. It's not gonna fly in blooming squadron.”

  “Give me a pilot good enough, that won't matter. Good enough pilot, plus this codifier and Abraham's old heap, those bombard shields could be down in less the five minutes,” Nemo estimates proudly.

  “You're not gonna joy her, are you?” Two-Bit checks.

  “Eat a dick. Of course not,” Nemo brutally disavows. “What, put the Lover on autopilot again? I don't trust that skank any farther than I can throw her.”

  “Then what?” Danbonte, still unaccustomed to Nemo's briefing theatrics, slaps his hands against his thighs impatiently. “Hire someone?”

  “I already have. Garrok?”

  All eyes avert and all necks crane aside to the gundeck's far corner where Garrok Brondi stands like a disobedient teenager, expended cigarette a smoking turd between his fingers and his entire sadsack demeanor nearly as haunted as twenty days previously when the Captain now requesting his services had, after popping him one in the thigh, shoved the still-smoking firearm into his mouth.

  “Yes?” the smuggler listlessly answers at last.

  “You interested in six percent?”

  Brondi pinches the smoke's stub between the edge of his lips. “Ten.”

  “Done.”

  “Nemo, I–” Odisseus interjects, hoping to exploit Brondi's lack of understanding but his saltbrother merely shrugs his shoulders helplessly.

  “We're gonna need everybody, Odi. Besides me, Garrok here's the only pilot we got with stones enough to pull this off. Loathe as I am to admit it, we're gonna need him too.”

  Odisseus glowers chiefly at the cracked smile ghosting across Brondi's face. “Exactly.”

  Brondi shuffles six steps out of the corner to level with Nemo. “What's your plan?”

  “We'll deploy you,” Nemo discloses, shifting his posture to better manipulate the imager's keypad, “as soon as they've scrambled their first few fighter squadrons. You'll take the Beggarman around this elliptical,” he highlights in bolder purple the band encircling the ribbed and ridged outline of the Pylon like a bathtub ring, “and knock out these four shield projector arrays – one beneath the port and starboard attitude fins, one halfways down the prow and one above this line of thrusters,” he finishes, each indicated area pinging brighter as he enters their coordinates.

  “Won't those projectors be shielded themselves?” Danbonte challenges.

  Garrigan points a scummy finger toward the imager. “There's gotta be a gap – deflection energy is emitted outward, but at the source, you gotta tiny window of opportunity.”

  Nemo creates a tiny ring between his thumb and pointer. “On the Lover, we're looking at a hole the size of a coin. On a Pylon–”

  “Motherfucker's gonna be fifteen feet across. At least,” Garrigan supposes.

  “So
,” Brondi begins to summarize, drawing smoke circles with repetitive gestures of his cigarette hand, “assuming I can hit those, assuming they don't shred me during, assuming Abraham's jockey box has even got the firepower to take them all down, then what?”

  “Then you're done – you take out those projector arrays, their bombard shields short, we move onto phase two and you peel off, make for the planet and enjoy your reward.”

  Brondi frowns in consideration. “Dreadful lot to bank on one codifier.”

  “That, and the seven years experience of your smuggling career,” Nemo constitutes with another sly smile.

  “And you, old timer?” Brondi addresses to the apart Abraham. “This plan of action sitting well with you?”

  “Unfortunately for me,” the aged Grimalti concedes, “I trust the Captain's judgment. Ye just bring her back in one piece now.”

  “That I can't promise you.”

  Moira fields the question, “And what're we doing during all of this?”

  “Evasive maneuvers,” Nemo settles, this thumb absently stroking his scar. “Giving those fighters and batteries something else to shoot at. That is,” he conditions, “until phase two.”

  “Which is?” Odisseus presses.

  “Well, with the bombard shields successfully down, we can proceed to the haymaker.”

  Two-Bit makes a splitting gesture. “This is the 'chaveling into three chunks' bit?”

  “You remembered.” Nemo is pleasantly surprised as he places the slushie precariously at imager's edge to cue up more schematics with both hands. “Rymple did me a solid and had his boys compute the Pylon's two points of weakest structural integrity, the two places where, if we pile on enough hurt, it should rupture.” The imager heightens the colorization of two corresponding areas of the Counterattack's eponymous support pylon, the warship's six-deck-deep central backbone that runs the entire length of the craft. “At least according to Ott's techs,” Nemo points toward each of the designated target areas, the proverbial neck and waist of the Pylon's anchoring spine, “these sections here shouldn't be too much thicker than a Karracki Chaperone, which we've had success busting up before, if you'll recall.”