Hull Damage

by Timothy J Meyer

  They chew silence for only a minute or less until, apparently judging three feet above the heavy hauler's cargo bed was exactly as acceptable a place to release the graviton clamps as zero feet above the cargo bed, the Swumese foreman driving the driftcrane drops The Unconstant Lover said three feet like a disinterested child with a massive teltriton toy. She clatters to the platform with the skin-crawling shear of metal on metal and undoubtedly a dozen new malfunctions for Odisseus to amend.

  Unmindful to the coupling he's currently clasping, the incensed Ortok attempts to clench both paws into fists and, in the process, completely crumples the held device like a wad of paper.

  He glances toward the cleft machine part in his paws with an embarrassed sigh.

  “Now we have to replace that too,” Marco comments quietly.

  –––

  Two-Bit Switch regrets not starting a tontine between the original ten members of The Unconstant Lover's conscript crew. As macabre an idea as it might be, had he the foresight to instigate such a death-pool, with six crew members dead, one captured and one deserted, he could be currently sitting on a fat stack of cash instead of just his haunches in the betweendecks crew quarters, picking the laughably simple lock on Ebeneezer's footlocker.

  He's collectively a little disappointed in the somewhat infantile security measures he encountered on the three such footlockers he's looted thus far, those belonging to Zella, Salo and Heeko. Thus far, Ebeneezer's proves to be little of an exception.

  Off the rack, these footlockers ironically came minus any locks or other measures preventative against intrusion and therefore it had fallen to the individual crew member to protect their belongings however they best saw fit. Two-Bit, as much a student of habit and humanoid nature as he was, found this an excellent barometer of character: the means one will employ to protect their personal effects.

  Considering the exceedingly brief time she spent aboard, it made perfect sense that Zella, irresponsible to a fault, wouldn't have even bothered to lock up her possessions. The majority of them, save for the customary emergency stash of credits and one fuzzy pink sweater that still clung to a trace of her signature scent, hadn't been awfully useful to Two-Bit anyway.

  For his part, Salo Shouldermount had stayed true to his inherent love of tinkering and trinketry, making use of a small booby-trap inset behind the locker's clasp that would render a mild electrical shock onto whomever attempted to open it. As all Corgassi possessed an inherent immunity to certain extremities of electricity, Salo apparently hadn't thought to include any manner of bypass and Two-Bit was forced to pry the box open from a distance with a bit of leverage. Its contents, unsurprisingly, overflowed with various firearms, handheld explosives and their sundry accessories, as well as a small gratuity of bills and a wobbly hologram of a caged rat-canary singing silently adhered to the lid's bottom.

  Heeko, on the other hand, had only a solitary padlock standing guard over his footlocker, an ancient device that would have been old when Abraham was a street waif cutting purses in the bowels of Gallow's ghettos. A single snip from Two-Bit's bolt-cutter grants him access. “Sparse” would be a gregariously flattering term to describe the inside of Heeko's footlocker. Apart from the smattering of food wrappers and crumpled credits, Two-Bit finds only the tattered blanket of oily green roughspun with which the Myyrigon had insulated his cherished carbine.

  Only three such dispossessed storage bins remain, those resting before Ebeneezer, Anchorage and Garrigan's beds. Two-Bit's still somewhat undecided on that last count, as rummaging through the personal property of Moira's dead whatever wouldn't exactly endear Two-Bit to Moira any and he's still on fence about the risks versus the rewards of peeving her even further off. For the moment, though, he's more concerned with disposing of Ebeneezer's oddly devilish lock.

  It's strikingly silent within The Unconstant Lover herself, especially considering all the workers and repairmen scrambling like Spith around her outer hull. Two-Bit had specifically selected this day, a month and seven days since their now-famous confrontation with the Exacting Counterattack, to slink his way into the crew quarters and perform a little twice-removed grave robbery while most of the attention focused on the ship was centered on her exterior rather than her interior.

  Every now and again, Two-Bit would hear one of Ott's mechanics pass by the betweendecks corridor, or a harsh reprimand in growled Ortoki. As the majority of the crew were deep within the fortress itself, carousing with Nemo over the twenty-first consecutive replay of the Noxix footage, nobody has thus far disturbed his three previous and three, potentially two, planned acts of impiety.

  After what equates to an impressive resistance in the company of such easily hoodwinked locks, Ebeneezer's own finally succumbs to the charms of Two-Bit's electronic lock pick and clinks satisfyingly free. Pressing his palm to the lid, Two-Bit levers the trunk open to rifle through the discarded leavings of his dead compatriot.

  Unlike Heeko or Salo's footlockers, spare clothing constitutes the majority of Ebeneezer's chest which, Two-Bit realizes belatedly, is at least passingly logical for a humanoid of the cyclops' considerable stature. The cash is easily located and Ebeneezer's stash of rainy day funds, a grand sum of nine hundred and seventy-five credits, quickly finds a new home in Two-Bit's own pocket. Brushing aside shirts that would dwarf an extra-extra large and trousers with an estimated length of no less than 47 Tall, Two-Bit Switch nonetheless uncovers a handful of mementos and knickknacks unexpected enough to give him pause.

  The smallish oaken case with an elaborate clasping mechanism of cornered wooden teeth Two-Bit recognizes almost immediately by scent as half a dozen thickly odorous cigars. Upon popping the case free and running one along the length of his nostrils, even Two-Bit, who'd never been accused of being an expert in the field of tobacco, could easily identify them as the respective crème de la crème, a cut significantly above the skunk weed the cyclopean bouncer'd blown into Two-Bit's face upon their first meeting. Without previous knowledge of them, Two-Bit couldn't testify as to what special occasion specifically but Ebeneezer had clearly been hoarding these six cigars for some unexpressed purpose. He finds himself wondering if he'd intended to share them, and with whom.

  Deeper within the baggage bin, carefully wrapped in a towel whose threadbareness is second only to Heeko's bereaved blanket, Two-Bit stumbles upon three shafts of wood and fiberglass, over a foot and a half in length, of tapering thicknesses and clearly intended to screw together into one cohesive pole. Only by its distinctive rings and markings does Two-Bit realize it's a bankshot cue and, to judge from its wear-and-tear, the bankshot cue of a particularly avid bankshot player, a sport Two-Bit, in his seven months of association with Ebeneezer, couldn't recall any mention or indication of his predilection towards. Running his thumb across the butt of the bluntest section, Two-Bit feels the impression of two carved letters, “E” and “N”, obviously Ebeneezer's initials, though Two-Bit had never known his last name and now, in fact, never will.

  Lastly, crumpled in the trunk's corner, seemingly as an afterthought, Two-Bit Switch unearths a frayed, frazzled and bedraggled stuffed animal, revealed to be a cartoonishly bovine buhox after some examination. Its once unmistakably vibrant polka dots of periwinkle and lavender is faded almost to the point of invisibility against the off-white of its main body; its once virginal downy cloth sports stains, stitches and a coarseness indicative of its years and years of handling. Two-Bit Switch squats for minutes longer than he intended to, appreciating the companionable weight of the orphaned toy in his hand, before rolling it over to confirm the sloppily scrawled “-neezer” on the scrappy remnants of the buhox's tag.

  –––

  Ott appreciates Quuilar Noxix Wants You Dead or Alive as much as the next Galactic Menace, but after the seventy-ninth viewing of the same purloined footage that had quite unexpectedly become the series finale, its trademark blend of shocking brutality and tacky sensationalism might perhaps begin to lose its specific charms.


  This argument, however, held no water for the amalgam throngs of raiders, reavers and buccaneers packing Ott's amphitheater almost past capacity. If every cacophonous cheer and every line of dialogue drunkenly quoted by the crowd below is any indication, the seventy-ninth viewing held all the thrill, exhilaration and black humor of its impromptu premiere more than two months ago now. Occupying the second most comfortable chair of his private box suspended from the apex of the amphitheater's volcanic ceiling, Ott is more than willing to indulge the peanut gallery below and particularly their ringleader to his immediate right their well-deserved fun, even if said fun necessitated overzealously repetitive screenings of Quuilar Noxix's final minutes.

  To his somewhat sophomoric credit, Captain Nemo, the man of the hour, the cause celebre and the current favorite folk hero among the Galactic Menace's cutthroat hordes, was no different. He had, if Ott's extemporized calculations were indeed correct, proposed no less than fifty-six of the footage's separate viewings and continued to shout, jeer, cat-call and laugh uproariously throughout the well-trod video, even with a mouth jammed full of imported Bozee calamari.

  “Morel has a well-known reputation for arrogance and charging into a fight without the proper preparation,” he quotes Dranab in perfect unison with the screen above, the hack Szarzarr criminologist whose camera crew follows the perpetually wordless Noxix around and conjectures listlessly on the bounty hunter's motives and tactics, “which Noxix plans to exploit by harpooning one of his bodyguards and drawing him into a snare.” Chuckling to himself, Nemo slurps the suckered end of the precious tentacle between his greasy lips.

  The calamari had been an especially difficult acquisition and an important cornerstone, apart from his considerable pay, in Ott's continued campaign to remain firmly within the mercurial Captain's good graces. Inspired by an idle comment Nemo had made three weeks previously about the apparently subpar quality of the Galactic Menace's in-house calamari, Ott had contracted his chief smuggler into a milkrun the old Chook scoundrel had initially balked at, it was so pedestrian.

  With a little minor detective work, a small gratuity into the long-suffering paws of his Ortok minder and a two and a half week transit into the Inner Sectors, Ott had surprised Nemo this morning with a month's supply of fast food calamari dinners from Tentacles By Graxgor, a greasy spoon on the bad side of Gallow, professedly the single greatest source of deep-fried squid in the galaxy and one of the Captain's childhood haunts. Properly enthusiastic, Nemo currently chomps through his sixth such helping and the white slime-stained fold-up boxes lie sprinkled about his chair, like fruit fallen from the Gitterpeach tree of gluttony.

  What Ott hadn't bothered to mention, in hopes of further surprising Nemo when the soon-to-be-dwindling calamari supply was summarily consumed, was that the Galactic Menace had taken the precaution of sending a ruffian crew along to kidnap all of Graxgor's cooking staff and had seamlessly integrated them into his normal culinary roster, planning only to reveal them at the precise moment with more steaming piles of deep-fried squid for Nemo to enjoy.

  In the wake of the Exacting Counterattack's destruction, Ott had temporarily shifted the primary focus of his efforts off his underfunded war against Insurgent Company, the 10th Campaign Fleet and the covetous wartime whims of the Endless Imperium as a whole and onto the single-minded goal of securing the continued service of The Unconstant Lover, her Captain and her crew. These efforts included a complimentary reconstruction of the miraculous Briza from stem to stern, all the fat-saturated cephalopod one could realistically cram into a single mouth and, most saliently, exorbitant piles of money. For all Nemo's previous faults, errors of judgments and improprieties, Ott wasn't in the market of disregarding or neglecting the most effective weapons in his arsenal.

  “Here,” he offers during a convenient lull in the clamor, reaching to his left to withdraw a small thermosteel strongbox and extend it toward Nemo's lap. “This is for you.”

  With hands slippery from his utensil-less consumption of the previous three boxes, Nemo, one by one, suctions any residual grease from each finger before taking the strongbox's nearest handle in one hand and balancing both the calamari container and the offered case on separate knees. A moment later, he's unlatched the box and gazes down into his contents – ten neatly-arranged stacks of crisp ICC bills from Aerio and Cothmozar and Okberrin and a thousand other planets currently or formerly members of the Endless Imperium.

  “This is what,” he estimates, budging one pile with wet fingers, “250 thou some? This is the bounty for the Pylon? For the flagship?”

  “235 thousand, actually,” Ott corrects, “and there are about nineteen more of those stacked outside.” He thumbs a gesture upward into the theatrical box's atrium. “I just couldn't carry them all myself.”

  “Uh,” Nemo stammers, glancing stupidly toward the spiral staircase, as though expecting to see the mountain of identical strongboxes peeking shyly around its corner.

  “4.7 million, if you're curious. Rymple tells me that, at my current rate, 3.7 million equals the Pylon's approximate worth in doxychoraphum, but I thought I'd do you the favor of simply translating that into hard cash as, from what I hear, you're persona non grata on Takioro these days.” Ott steeples his upper hands together, while allowing his lower pair to dangle freely off the armrests of his chair, watching the enormous holographic representation of Noxix steady himself and his famous harpoon gun into a suitable crouch behind a rocky knoll. “I do trust that's enough, though? You don't feel short-changed?”

  Nemo aligns his gaze back to the Galactic Menace and narrows his eyes to elucidate. “I've never seen half of 4.7 million. I don't think the Emperor and his solid gold balls would feel short-changed.”

  “Heh. Good.”

  “But, uh, why the extra million?”

  “Consider it a retainer,” Ott suggests with an inward smile. “Further incentive to remind you how well the Galactic Menace treats his friends.”

  Nemo nods, impression impossible to mask on his face. “Duly noted.” He redirects his attention back toward the strongbox's contents again, certainly attempting to visualize nineteen such duplicates, likely in an enormous heap or flooding a swimming pool.

  As overwhelmed as the Captain appeared to be by all the trappings outlaid before him, Ott would gladly have shelled out twice, possibly three times what he'd just offered to Nemo, had he the slightest inklings the impulsive pirate was even mentally debating a better offer. Two months had been plenty of time for the ripples of gossip to reach nearly every interested ear in Bad Space; that up-and-comer Captain Nemo had somehow, seemingly with elbow grease and nasty insinuations about their parentage, single-handedly destroyed an Imperium flagship over Baz. Any enterprising kingpin with occasional cause to fight the law, from Smerdyakov “The Scar” Svetlova to even their allegedly hated rival Huong Xo, could realistically find suitable uses for someone of Nemo's unique skill set. Ott certainly wasn't about to surrender his chief advantage, particularly not to an ostensible business rival.

  All the ramifications of the Exacting Counterattack's unprecedented destruction were yet being tabulated in the ongoing competition for Baz and all her natural resources. At present, no other member of the 10th Campaign Fleet had dared resume the Counterattack's duties as a polar window deterrent, not even one of the seven other Pylons that cincture the planet's equator, apparently for fear of Nemo and his mysterious capital-ship crushing powers.

  For the time being, the enemy displayed every appearance of a major regrouping and auditing of their forces. While the Counterattack's defeat didn't spell any major dangers for the ground campaign, it should serve as a severe sucker punch to the Endless Imperium's morale almost galaxywide, Insurgent Company included.

  The Counterattack itself and its subsequent crashing had presented an entirely different challenge. While Nemo's tactic of using a multitude of Wolfsbane torpedoes against dubious points of the Pylon's structural integrity had been quite obviously effective and Ott had no inte
ntion of micro-managing, capital ships of that size have hundreds of failsafes in place for precisely those kinds of scenarios, including sealed bulkheads and years worth of emergency rations. Though typically designed to combat warp gate miscalculations, these precautions had complicated the aftermath of the victory somewhat.

  The three distinct sections of the Pylon not immediately destroyed in the Wolfsbane onslaught had each crashed to the planet in drastically different locations across the north pole and wrangling the survivors, all in all a plucky handful of technicians and marines, had proven a new thorn in Ott's side these past two months.

  One such section, the Pylon's prow, had the misfortune of falling relatively close to Ott's fortress, if one could reasonably consider eighty-five dottibles “close.” Another section, the engine bank, had finally slumped to the earth after considerable ado three or four hundred dottibles to the east, apparently in a hurry to distance themselves from the last known position of the Galactic Menace. The third and largest portion of the obliterated Pylon, its midsection, had actually crashed into the western expanses of Baz's polar sea and hadn't exactly been seen since. While Ott was keenly aware that the sunken midsection would somehow find a way to vex him in the future, he possessed no underwater craft and the more pressing issues of the prow and the engine bank demanded his immediate attention.

  Fundamentally, the problem inherent in the Pylon's splintering and crashing within a stone's throw from Ott's fortress was that two equally armed and armored effective fortresses of the Imperium's own had dropped out of the sky and onto the Galactic Menace's doorstep. Complete with quadroturret batteries, squads upon squads of marines and even the occasional undeployed flight of starfighters, each “fortress” also came equipped with teams upon teams of dedicated technicians working around the clock to jury-rig and restore any systems lost or damaged in the crash.