Hull Damage

by Timothy J Meyer

  “So, you torpedo the fuck outta them and hope for the best?” Danbonte encapsulates.

  Garrigan presses four contemplative fingers against his scruffy cheek. “Theoretically,” he qualifies, “that could work.”

  “Hull's too thick,” Marco denies. “Pylon's dressed in three times the armor a Chaperone wears. Even if the decks are approximately as wide, that plating's some of the purest teltriton available. We don't possibly have the magazine capacity to take out one, let alone two.”

  Nemo deposits both hands into duster pockets. “It's not a matter of capacity. It's a matter of punch.” He yanks free his right hand a moment to wave toward the bowside corner of the room, toward the mountain of boxed ammunition upon whose foothills Garrigan had so recently taken his ease. “Everybody see those crates over there? Moira, do me a favor and pop that one open, would you?” Moira interrupts her gainsaid glare at Nemo only long enough to spoil the aforementioned crates with a split second's disdain. “Two-Bit,” Nemo resolves, “do me a favor and pop that one open, would you?”

  Grumbling some intricate string of jabber-invective, Two-Bit Switch circles the side of the imager, matches Moira's glare as he stoops and presses the nearest crate's hatch release. With an escaping hiss, the insulated strongbox depressurizes and Two-Bit levers open the lid, before rising to his feet and half-stumbling backward, as if in aversion.

  Stacked neatly, five wide and two deep, in one of the pair of identical thermosteel chests, are flanged, overlarge and blemished gray missiles, twice the size of a standard shipborne torpedo and housed in dinted secondhand casings. A whistle of impression escapes Two-Bit's lips in reprise of the uncoupled crate. “Moons, they're–”

  “Wolfsbane torpedoes,” Nemo supplies casually, retrieving his sweat-beaded slushie. “A whole new magazine's worth of repellent-drowned warheads. Think of them as a parting gift from Ott.”

  “Because he expects we'll die,” Odisseus interprets grimly.

  “Now, one of those,” Marco re-evaluates with an accompanying shift in posture, “might do the trick.”

  “How about two? Or five? Or ten?” Nemo hovers the straw's tip inches from his mouth as he rationalizes. “Half a magazine, delivered directly to both of those spinal sections. Ought to more than do the trick,” he claims, popping the straw into his now unoccupied mouth.

  Danbonte, in analysis, leans over the imager. “Why both?”

  Nemo ceases sucking. “Hm?”

  “Both. Why both? Why break it into three sections? You don't think severing the thruster bank from the main body and the bridge would be enough?”

  “Auxiliaries,” Odisseus deduces. “Unless I miss my guess, capital ship of this size is gonna have some failsafes in case of a gate accident or something similar. You sever the back third, I imagine some emergency engines'll kick in, save the front two thirds from crashing. Right?” he theorizes to Nemo who continues to wordlessly drain his beverage while his other hand scrolls and dials through the strategic imager's technical information for several long seconds.

  He stops typing and slurping to report tentatively, “Uh, yes. Correct.”

  “You didn't know that. You were just going to break it into three pieces because–”

  “It's cooler, yeah.”

  “Let me get this gritty,” Two-Bit requests. “We joy in, diddle around until they cast off jocks, set Brondi loose in the Beggarman which we got scrambled up as a Spur, he kuckles out their bombard edgies, hoofs it outta there and then we just gotta use these super-zoomers to chavel the whole mess to Jotor in a jalopy, right?” He compels Nemo for confirmation with corrugated brow and splayed fingers. “A 'five-and-five' with a double reserve 'rubble-to-ritz?'”

  Nemo's answer isn't immediately forthcoming. “Well...”

  “What?” Moira growls instantly.

  Nemo approximates with a sideways slush of his sixty-four-ounce cup. “It's actually slightly more complicated than that.”

  “Care to share?” Moira prompts, ultimatum dangerously present in her voice.

  “Rymple had some other news to report,” Nemo confesses, as though personally embarrassed. “Apparently, after Kivad's attempt and our latest blockade run, the Counterattack's sorta had a change of heart regarding their whole 'blindfolding' strategy.”

  “They've located Ott's fortress, haven't they?” Moira suggests.

  “No, no. Not yet. Ott's got a scrambler feed precisely for this reason and, even if that fails, I guess the whole place has a sophisticated enough defense system to withstand a bombardment or two, but they ain't exactly sanguine about their chances of staying hidden much longer, which, first of all means we're on a little something of a time crunch.”

  “And second of all?” Odisseus urges.

  “Means,” Abraham concludes without displacing the cockeyed scrutiny of his ale-jack's leathern bottom, “any advantage Kivad might've had's been denied to us – all their sensors will be fully operational. No chance whatsoever of catchin' 'em with their breeches down. They'll likely even hear us warp in, for bloom's sake.”

  “That last one,” Nemo jabs the masticated end of his straw toward the Grimalti, “I might have an idea for. Remind me to talk to you later.”

  Two-Bit half raises a grimy hand, like a timid schoolchild. “Um, did you have any flashes for the rest of it, or...?”

  “It's like this,” the Captain, pressed, brackets empty air between his slushie and a vertical palm. “Even if they can only get half their guns pointed at us at any given time, small as we are, we can't afford to take a third or even a tenth of that fire. Shields just won't hold up. And that's,” he thrusts the slushie forward with a wet slapping sound, “without even considering the couple hundred starfighters pecking at our bloomholes.”

  “Yeah, Nemo,” Moira reiterates, “these are kinda our problems with this whole idea.”

  “There is a way around it,” he ponies up. “It's just, you know, you're not gonna like it.”

  “Try us.” Odisseus widens his stance.

  Nemo's solution is uttered as simply as it is utterly suicidal. “We blindfold.”

  Odisseus blinks. “Wait, what?”

  “You heard me. Blindfolding. We.”

  Two-Bit, honestly confused, scratches his scalp. “For the whole doggie?”

  “I mean, yeah,” Nemo shrugs with apparent obviousness, “That's the only way this is gonna work. We present a target out there, we're dead. Simple as that.”

  “Nemo,” Odisseus levels, more out of a desire for full comprehension than in reprimand, “you're suggesting we enter into this broadside action with a Pylon-class capital warship blind. With no sensors.”

  “I did this all the time as a jockey.”

  “Not against a capital ship!”

  “And two hundred starfighters,” Nemo's quick to point out.

  “...I don't even...” the flabbergasted Ortok stammers.

  “Told you you wouldn't like it,” Nemo mutters defensively.

  “How about letting him speak his piece?” comes Moira's odd behest from the corner of the gundeck. She stands there, adjacent to Two-Bit and the unclasped crate of torpedoes, having dropped her folded arms to hook fingers beneath the slender belt of her cross-draw combat rig, in this queerest appeal to hear Nemo's new madness.

  “Thank you. Moira.” Nemo, appreciative of the assist but evidently as suspect of its source as everyone else, rambles his justifications forward all the same. “It's obviously not without its risks. I'm not saying it isn't. What I'm saying is, I can do this. I have, in fact, extensive experience doing this – this is how you fly a starfighter.”

  “I repeat; this isn't a starfighter,” Odisseus feels compelled to remind.

  “And won't their jocks delly how to do this too?”

  “No – that's my point,” Nemo emphasizes with forceful gestures of the slushie. “If there's one thing the Imperium Navy wants to fuck more than natural resources that don't belong to them, it's their targeting computers.” He shrugs vi
olently, tossing icy green ooze against the bottom of the cup's lid. “You take that away, these navy motherfuckers couldn't hit the broad side of Baz.” He shoves his empty hand across the imager in a four-fingered point. “Garrigan can back me up on this.”

  “Wish I could say he was lying,” the ex-naval officer sniggers helplessly.

  Marco calls attention to the nearest flaw seconds before Odisseus can. “With a crew of just under forty thousand, somebody's gonna see it coming and somebody's gonna figure it out.”

  “Not in time,” Nemo defends voraciously. “We can only expect a twenty-five minute window anyway, before re-enforcements from other parts of the blockade show up.”

  “That woulda been nice to delly before now,” Two-Bit comments.

  “On top of that,” Nemo blazes forward, stacking point atop point with each smack of his slushie's bottom to his open palm, “they're gonna be looking for Brondi and the Beggarman. And then their shield generators go out. And then their ship breaks the fuck apart.”

  “I think we're still missing the most salient point here.” Danbonte casts a doubtful expression on his wolfen red face before aligning eye contact with the Captain. “You think you can fly this ship on sight alone? Through the fucking window?”

  A reluctant chorus of “No, yeah, he can”, “Most definitely he can”, “Yeah, I think so”, and a blunted “Yes” from Moira mumble out of The Unconstant Lover's four lieutenants, each mind undoubtedly recalling the events surrounding the Aerio Accident, the Zaboola Blockade and most markedly the Bozee Bushwhack of eleven months past. Only Odisseus bothers to posit, “Can we shoot back without targeting computers?”

  “Eat shit and die, Odi,” Moira tasks brusquely.

  Odisseus extends a padded digit toward Garrigan. “I was talking about him.”

  “Oh. Don't, uh, eat shit or die, then.”

  “Let's assume you're referring to me,” Garrigan conjectures politely, “and whether or not I'd like to fuck a targeting computer.” He shifts his posture a little haughtily and responds with narrowed eyes and an imperceptible nod. “I'll scrape by.”

  Nemo concludes his pitch. “Bottom line here isn't can we do this. We can. We collectively have the ability. It's only–”

  “Should we,” Abraham supersedes soberly. The gundeck and all nine of the Lover's extant crew simultaneously attempt to envision the chaos of the oncoming engagement, the dozes of mitigating variables at play, the hundreds of Munitions Intergalactic laser blasts fired directly at them, the thousands upon thousands of dire mistakes and disasters just waiting to happen, with one missed shot, one lucky technician or one fatefully loose screw.

  Moira, again unusually, breaks the reverie with her decision. “We'll go see to our turrets.”

  Two-Bit edges a foot toward the sternside exit, thumb over his shoulder. “Probably wanna test-joy the Beggarman with the scrambler toggled in before we pin all our squeaks to it.”

  Brondi follows his lead. “And I should probably get familiar, if that's alright?”

  Abraham nods his consent, before shifting his cumbersome bulk off the wall toward Odisseus. “Best see to that sensor package. Will ye be needin' Marco for whatever it is ye'll be up to? Mayhaps I could find use for someone more...appropriately sized,” the Grimalti solicits, with a callused hand walloped against his gut.

  Odisseus sighs with fatalistic resignation. “I'm gonna need to widen that torpedo tube, if we expect to be shooting those fat fuckers outta there.” He waves Marco off to Abraham with a paw, before sliding his gaze to one idle crewmember. “Looks like you just inherited Rooster's old job.”

  Danbonte furrows his red brow. “What?”

  The Captain, crewmen swirling with urgent tasks and modifications to complete all about him, slurps his slushie contentedly and reminds aloud, “We warp out in ten hours, people.” He surrenders a step or two, leveling up close enough to Odisseus to mutter to him out of Danbonte's or anyone else's earshot. “You get that pressure helix fixed?”

  Odisseus doesn't bother to lower his voice. “Yes? Since when do you care about that?”

  “Because, if I'm right, moons are we gonna need it.”

  –––

  Moira finds him in the abnormally abandoned sensor room. For each of the two hours since the dissolution of their improvised war council two doors down, Abraham and his unhappy Mruka ward Marco had exhaustively occupied the abovedecks sensor room with blubber, mange and argument, the mounting attrition of the crew's ten-hour war against the clock evidently taking its toll. Now, however, as Garrigan's chosen rendezvous point, she is surprised to discover it almost entirely empty, save a few idle screensavers, a tankard of unfinished moonshine, a collection of Mruka-sized hand tools and one ex-naval gunner and recovering drug addict.

  “You seen this?” he inquires, sitting before the muted green of a computer terminal, with a particular tone of voice to raise Moira's hackles. Moira had spent her last two hours in comprehensive preparation and amelioration of her cherished topturret, including braving a bracing topside spacewalk complete with automated ascender, discount jetpack and personal graviton boots, to scrub the viewport clean. Therefore, she had almost certainly not seen whatever Garrigan indicated. Upon actually viewing it, however, she immediately wishes he hadn't either.

  What flickers before Garrigan shares a format more familiar to Moira than the faces of her faraway family. A computerized bounty posting, this one a page from the Ring Penal Authority's feed-wide database, displays vital capture information for a certain malefactor Moira only recognizes by the grainy mug shot – Mollizella “Zella” Ungos, seventeen-year old female humanoid, wanted dead or alive in connection to three armed robberies on Cedano for eleven thousand ICC in hard cash. The profile's most arresting feature, however, is the bolded red “[REDACTED]” entered neatly after her current status.

  “Only reason someone redacts a posted reward is the mark either upped and confessed, or they already shelled out the bounty to somebody else,” Garrigan supposes, though Moira's certain he doesn't speak from experience. For her part, she fabricates a frustrated sigh, deposits the flats of her palms against the cold steel of her revolvers and otherwise keeps her thoughts to herself.

  “It gets worse.” Garrigan assures her. With three swift keystrokes, a corresponding trio of matching profiles, a Corgassi, a Myyrigon and an unidentified cyclopean male, materialize upon the sensor room screen, each one bearing the telltale “[REDACTED]” status. “All of 'em's had their bounty collected,” Garrigan resolves somewhat fatalistically. “Came in here to check my own posting, you know, see if anybody's connected the dots, and I found this.” He traces an idle finger along the contour of the console. “Zella and Salo could be coincidences, but the only people who could have collected Heeko and especially Ebeneezer, woulda been the Imperium, some fucking ktotari birds,” he theorizes with a half-smirk, “or one of us.”

  Moira still remains silent until Garrigan wheels the seat about by his heels. “You understand I wouldn't be going back to the slammer,” he predicates. “Imperium gets their hands on me again, shit's gonna get real. Heh. Here,” he preemptively offers, a sudden black humor gripping him enough to spin himself back around to the terminal and minimize the four sheets of damning evidence in pursuit of something tangentially-related.

  Within several minutes he summons a rap sheet of a similar purpose, but vastly different formatting. Moira only had cause to observe such a thing on a handful of instances in the past – an official posting from the Imperial Ministry of Interstellar Security, displaying the full credentials and court-martial of one former petty officer Glive Tyrell Garrigan, as well as a reward for information leading to his arrest totaling 36 thousand ICC.

  “Tyrell?” is the first word from Moira's mouth.

  “Yeah. Great-grandfather's name.”

  “Crazy fucker too?”

  “You don't know the half of it.”

  “What did you even do?” Moira finally bothers to ask.

&nb
sp; “Nothing exciting. Nothing the Imperium can afford to waste 36 thousand on me for.” He aligns the swivel seat's face to the side in order to prop both boots against the adjacent chair's rim. “Had fourteen hours of leave-time on Nos Mantri after the abbers finally caved. Tried Vapid for the first time. Woke up in a bungalow with a starving belly, a native girl's mouth around my cock and my cruiser, along with the rest of the 16th Fleet, six days warped out. Gone AWOL, been declared a deserter and, without my prior knowledge, court-martialed, all official-like. All in my sleep.” He chuckles resignedly. “What was I gonna do, turn myself into the occupation force and apologize nicely? Imperium might be short-handed, but they're still not smart enough to pardon desertion. Besides,” he shrugs off, “I never got into that business to subjugate natives.”

  “You got into it for the blow-jobs?”

  “From my targeting computer, yeah.” His distant gaze doesn't stop him from thrusting a thumb over his shoulder to remind Moira. “You got an answer for any of this?”

  “Danbonte,” she spouts.

  “That weasel? Really?”

  “Yeah. I was worried about this when I first approached him. He's not a pro or anything – he's just exactly spineless enough to supplement his income with a little collection. Especially if somebody else went to the trouble of killing them first.”

  Garrigan eyes her, the real test. “You think he's a danger?”

  “Nah, not to us. I'd hear him think it a mottible off.”

  “You wanna talk to him, maybe?”

  Moira feigns a little concentration. “Can't. Or, not yet, anyway. Don't wanna tip off the Captain. That's the real danger here – we still need him running the tubes for this Pylon business.” She shambles a step backward, in the general direction of the door. “Still, thanks for confirming my suspicions, at least. Keep them eyes peeled,” she instructs, slapping him with rough companionship on the inner shoulder before striding out of the room and into the hallway, proverbial canister, to her thinking, momentarily dodged.