Hull Damage

by Timothy J Meyer

  Thusly, as soon as Ott's most exterior sensors detected the Counterattack's inevitable sundering from low orbit, he dispatched what reavers he could to hamper and harry each section's descent into the atmosphere.

  The engine bank had faired the best of the three, considering its improvised method of cushioning the plunge with its tremendous thrusters, but its slowed fall allowed Mutha Be Mean and her pirates more time to utterly destroy any communications equipment left to them before touching down. The prow hadn't been so lucky, however. With no convenient engines to buffer its plunge and with a host of hungry buccaneers snipping at its heels, the frontal section of the Exacting Counterattack took drastic damage in the crash and thus far, while they've held a decent defense, haven't had the gumption to launch any strikes themselves. The engine bank, on the other hand, had been considerably more active.

  Two months had seen three attempted incursions, two by land with infantry and ground vehicle, and one by sky, in the form of two squadrons of starfighters. The Galactic Menace had rebuffed both these advances out of hand. Nemo had actually begged and stomped his feet in demanding to helm a starfighter himself during the following reprisals, but this was one request Ott was forced to deny him, not willing to risk Nemo on such an ignominious chance.

  Nevertheless, the engine bank had proven likewise resilient against Ott's own incursions and the Doreen outlaw king only recently shifted his tactics, favoring classic hit-and-run maneuvers which required a laxer supply of troops, while he focused his attentions elsewhere, such as repairing relations with the Baziron of the north continent and placating the latest of Nemo's capricious inclinations.

  “Let me ask you a deliberately leading question,” Ott requests of Nemo as, during what the Galactic Menace imagines to have been a tedious three-hour wait on Noxix's part, the show flashes a comprehensive compilation of Nemo's previous career, complete with shaky footage of bar fights and space battles and accompanied by Dranab's over-saturated narration. “Where do you imagine you'll be in say, a year's time?”

  “Buddy,” Nemo addresses, propping bare feet against the balcony's railing, “I can't imagine where I'll be in an hour.” With an askance glance to the battlefield of spent calamari boxes all about him, he amends his statement. “Probably pooping.”

  “I'd like to imagine,” Ott volunteers, shattering the steeple of his upper fingers to gesture forward, as though conjuring his vision from mid-air, “that in a year's time, the Imperium's tucked their tails and is majorly reconsidering their long-term goals here. Also, maybe a headquarters with a little less snow. That's all a little, shall we say, sanguine, perhaps, but if it's definitely not going to be possible without talented individuals like you and your crew. So, the reason I ask is,” he explains, finally turning to make eye contact between loosed headtails, “whether or not you had anything on the horizon we'd need to work around.” He awaits Nemo's own turn of the head to catch his gaze before continuing. “That is, of course, assuming you're even interested.”

  “There's Xo to deal with,” he mentions at length.

  “Well, believe me, there're more ways to deal with them than you'd think. With Noxix so decidedly,” he flaps a flabby blue hand toward the holoscreen, “out of the picture, they're deprived not only of their best bagman, but it'll also be difficult for them to save face with the jborra actually out of the bag. What I will do,” he stipulates, replacing his fingers to their previously interwoven position, “for the time being, is extend feelers and spread the word around that Captain Nemo's officially under Boss Ott's protection. I'd personally be very much surprised if Xo won't simply cut their losses and go back to denying your existence.”

  “Just like old times,” Nemo simpers, with apparently fond remembrance, before he begins a string of nearly imperceptible nods. “You make it difficult for a fella to say 'no.'”

  “Quite intentional, I guarantee you,” Ott relates, smiling gregariously.

  A hush falls suddenly over the masses beneath as the holographic projection of Quuilar Noxix, evidently having spotted that tall drink of bitch serving as Nemo's first mate, lets a tethered harpoon fly. In doing so, the point-of-view immediately shifts to the signature camera mounted atop the soaring spearhead.

  Every hoodlum in the amphitheater, despite the three-quarters of a hundred viewings, holds their breath as they ride a flying harpoon bareback across the tundra snows before finding purchase, and deafening cheers, in the unsuspecting Anglian's left calf. The blackness cuts immediately to the last of several carefully-crafted commercial breaks Ott's team of technicians had sporadically inserted throughout the edited footage, based on exhausting hours of research watching re-run after re-run – all for toward the entertainment of Nemo and the adoring rabble.

  A truncated version of the show's theme song, a twangy, blood-and-thunder nightmare, shakes the room's foundations, aided by its rhapsodic recitation by every pair of vocal chords in the room. Ott, who'd sat only smiling through all seventy-eight previous, finally, almost subconsciously, joins in.

  –––

  Moira Quicksilver hides out of habit, but from no one. The room, kind enough to oblige her insecurities with its darkened state, provides ample corners and triangles of shadow within which to crouch out of sight. Truthfully though, as she and her misgivings remained the chamber's sole occupants, her whole stealth act wasn't likely to buy her much soap. Yet there she squats, behind an enormous Ujad mahogany trunk, situated parallel to the door's wall, pistol loose in her hand and needlessly counting seconds to a million.

  All her meticulous preparation and arrangement had now coalesced into Moira kneeling here almost absurdly in darkness. Indeed, the deeper into this business she delved, the more absurd it seemed to become.

  The weapon she'd acquired after a surprisingly elaborate exercise in larceny. Garrigan's emergency stash of Vapid, discovered in the depths of his footlocker, would help nullify the chances of a potential alibi. Hours and hours of surreptitious study of the chamber in question had facilitated as ironshod an escape route as one could realistically hope for under these circumstances. Lastly, the actual date she'd chosen should hopefully discourage much further investigation. Despite all her precautionary measures and provisions, the various mitigating factors gnaw at the fringes of her composure, not least of which are an unpredictably homicidal Captain and all sixteen claws, thirty-six fangs and three hundred pounds worth of unquestioningly loyal Ortok.

  She's spared any further apprehension when the main entrance to Boss Ott's spartan penthouse cracks open, spreading a yellow rectangle across the center of the floor and the Galactic Menace himself shambles inside, visibly weary. He dawdles with a held Attaché a moment in the entryway, simultaneously slides the door sealed behind him with a fist lightly into the door control and engages the overhead lights with a thumb hard against the appropriate button. Moira Quicksilver is suddenly revealed, standing behind his oaken trunk with FZ091 Concord Industries Paramour Semi-Automatic Laser Pistol at arm's length.

  The Doreen's expression upon seeing her is blank as oblivion. “Any particular reason?”

  Moira chokes the trigger and the first canister loses itself somewhere in the tangle of blue headtails. Its effect, however, is immediately visible on Ott's face as he stumbles, eyes agog, mouth slackened open, three of four hands grasping for support on the nearby walls and finding none. He finally loses his balance altogether after several moments of gawky wavering, shattering the Attaché against the thermosteel floor and slumping comically against the left-hand corner of the entryway.

  The mortifying silliness of his inauspicious death shocking her back into action, Moira Quicksilver, immediate danger steeling her nerves anew, withdraws the vial from her pocket, stoops before the warm, quivering corpse of the former Galactic Menace and mentally reviews the second stage of her plan.

  Chapter 26

  Two-Bit Switch can't imagine what he would have done if Mutha Be Mean had shot his fingers off. Screaming would probably have been hi
s initial reaction, followed shortly by cursing and concluded with a nice healthy dose of running the fuck away. His career as expert cutpurse, safecracker and cardsharp would definitively have been history, his effectiveness as hired gun, jailbreaker and all around ne'er-do-well would seriously be called into question and “Two-Bit Switch” would likely cease to be his official moniker, in favor of something along the even less flattering lines of “Half-Wanker” or “Fingerfuck”.

  He certainly wouldn't have been able to calibrate The Unconstant Lover's bombard shields for her forthcoming departure through Baz's polar window, as he does now. He cherishes each and every finger on his left hand as he dials an adequate power frequency to encompass the skyrocketing Briza as she hurtles herself toward open space. He also, without the expressed permission of the laconic Captain, prepares and stores a separate ray shielding sequence to properly protect the Lover's hind quarters, ready to be engaged at a moment's notice, should the late Boss Ott's incensed vassals scramble any of their ships in time to give chase.

  The Unconstant Lover rattles familiarly from the successive layers of gravitational force exerted by the beginnings of its atmospheric exit through Baz's polar window, her first jaunt into actual orbit since the crash three months previously. Two-Bit numbly realizes it's likely to be her last such voyage from the forsaken planet below. Strange indeed would be the circumstances that would drag The Unconstant Lover, her Captain and her crew back to a Baz devoid of Boss Ott, the former Galactic Menace.

  Said Captain is erect and sullen in the helmsman's chair, demonstrating a caliber of his frightening reticence zottibles beyond anything Two-Bit had ever beheld. Only his hands, almost synonymous with the yoke they grip, display any signs of movement, twitching every other second to adjust the ship's alignment into the atmosphere. His face is a stolid mask, lacking any crease or line to indicate mood, attitude or opinion.

  “Cap'n, you mind if I cadge a little into aux power?” Two-Bit ventures, less to actually seek approval and more to attempt to provoke some manner of response. “Case of a pressure flux, don't wanna get caffled with our plonkers in our wanks.” Nothing, not a nod, not a sniff, not even a blink, escapes the unflinching stillness that had swallowed Nemo. “I'll just help myself then, shall I?” he mutters after a moment, leaning the co-pilot's gyroscopic rig to the edge of its starboard reach to toggle open the auxiliary conduits, inadvertently smearing pink Mrukese blood on the necessary switches.

  The Unconstant Lover shreds the uttermost edges of Baz's atmosphere in the haste of her fleeing and not twenty minutes before, Two-Bit Switch had been blissfully ignorant to the unheralded upheaval that would necessitate their flight. At the time, the four fingers of his left hand hadn't yet been imperiled and Marco the Mange, penultimate member of the conscript crew, had been alive and well, loitering by Two-Bit's side.

  Having just completed the last superficial repairs during the Lover's three-month post-crash overhaul, Marco, being the precocious windbag he was, had wandered Ott's labyrinthine fortress in search of someone to complain to and had been fortunate enough to discover Two-Bit himself, agonizing over Bubble flavors outside the boosted vending machines beneath the East Spire.

  A few pleasantries and an extensive one-sided rant against Odisseus and his general cantankerousness later, a brute squad, commanded by none other than that most incorrigible Powosi Mutha Be Mean, boiled out of a nearby lavatory, looking for blood and not looking for answers.

  From what admittedly few specific details Two-Bit had been able to glean before things became rather messy, Ott had quite suddenly been found dead in his penthouse, courtesy of an unasked-for ventilation in his skull. Upon learning this, Mutha had somehow gotten the wild notion that some bounty hunter on Nemo's payroll had done the dirty deed in pursuit of the thirteen million credit reward. Without bothering to properly interrogate the two nearest suspects, Mutha had let slip her bevy of goons. Before Two-Bit could yank the unarmed Marco out of the way, the hapless Mruka had been sloppily brained by the business end of the resident Gung'nooj's warclub, splashing a disquieting volume of the mechanic's pink blood all over Two-Bit and subsequently toppling him to the floor in surprise and horror.

  At this point, Mutha Be Mean, her infinite wisdom certainly enhanced by a considerable quantity of good-morning alcohol, resolved to open fire on the prone, hopelessly outnumbered and blood-spattered Two-Bit with her underslung machine gun. Fortunately for Two-Bit, that third eye apparently didn't improve this Powosi's aim any measurable amount and the first half of her clip strafed the thermosteel inches from his hurriedly retracted fingers.

  By the time Mutha's stopped to check her aim, Two-Bit'd freed his own piece, the HH19 Tigress borrowed on Takioro, from its holster and paid Ott's last remaining pirate captain back with a trio of canisters smack dab in her chest. Mutha's mooks subsequently distracted, Two-Bit took the initiative to gather his feet under him and bail before the muscle could close the distance.

  As labyrinthine as Ott's headquarters might be, word of his death reached its every corner and cranny with surprising speed. By all reports, the scattered members of the Lover's crew encountered similar misunderstandings all across the fortress, though the headcount indicated only Marco, among the crew, had gone to meet his maker. They'd reconvened aboard the ship and, with vengeful pirates on their heels, there'd been too much pandemonium surrounding their escape to either confirm or disconfirm the potpourri of conflicting rumors each crew member had been assaulted with.

  To this moment, co-piloting The Unconstant Lover through the uppermost pinhole in Baz's rotational momentum, Two-Bit Switch had no concrete notion of how Ott had died, who had killed him or whether, truth be told, he was actually dead. From what he'd ascertained, the only of the Lover's crewmen to see allegedly have seen a corpse had been Nemo and Two-Bit wasn't of a mind to further press the obviously unwilling Captain.

  With a last convulsion of opposing pressure that buffets the ship ever so slightly to port, the Lover breaks finally free of Baz's gravitational grip and tastes open space for the first time in the new year, never to return to the world of doxychoraphum, Baziron and Quuilar Noxix's resting place for as long as she flew. Abraham, from the warp room, patches through the convoluted string of dirty warp coordinates that even Two-Bit, a rank amateur of a navigator, recognizes at a glance as a blank point, an unoccupied patch of open space in the vast void between established and unestablished warp routes. Whether this is a judgment call on the old Grimalti's part or Nemo's expressed wishes, Two-Bit can't rightly say.

  Upon receiving this routing information, Nemo doesn't even spare it a cursory examination, instead dialing an involved sequence of commands into the dashboard to his port. On cue, the co-pilot's rig aligns its exact center of gravity, locks into place and the monitors before Two-Bit burble out information on speed, attitude and navigation.

  “Take the helm until further notice,” Nemo orders at once, in a voice to perfectly match his passionless expression. Rising to his feet, he peels the duster off the chair's back in one swift motion, sliding it over his shoulders and disappearing down the stairway into the abovedecks corridor, entrusting Two-Bit the helm in an unprecedented act of either trust or neglect.

  –––

  Moira Quicksilver wholeheartedly believes that assiduous firearm maintenance is the most distinguishing characteristic between the psychotic gun-toting morons that dominate the marauder trade and the actual professionals like herself. Aside from Moira, practically none among the Lover's crew, not even the otherwise conscientious Odisseus or the late Corgassi gun-nut Salo, cultivated an appropriate level of care or concern for their weaponry. This distinction Moira wore as a point of both private contention and personal pride.

  Her austere worktable, one component of her uniformly austere living quarters, is precisely large enough to service cleaning and minute repairs for only two relatively attenuate firearms, the only two weapons Moira's ever owned. For all the infatuated special treatment she spoils her Ant
agonist with, at the end of the day, Moira only has eyes for Righty and Lefty.

  Crisp and clasped and fully loaded, Lefty glimmers even in the soft light of Moira's dim lamp, a perfect poster child from one of those pristine, pseudo-sexual AccCo advertisements Moira used to worship as a child. Righty occupies all her attention at present, however, popped open and receiving its first coat of polish into all the pistol's dimples, depressions and curves via the very cleanest cloth in Moira's kit.

  Sequestered within her quarters, Moira savors the silence and isolation sweetly, only the contented hum of the distant jetboosters disturbing her reverie.

  The door behind her she leaves agape, however, in anticipation of an eventual visitor. All things considered, she waits practically twice as long from the warp's initial jump as she'd expected for his arrival. When he finally does darken her doorway, she recognizes him immediately by the shape of his silhouette against the wall before her.

  “I get Odi to toss this place,” he theorizes, dangerous detachment evident in his voice, “I'm not gonna find a little vial of Doreen blood, am I?”

  Moira peels her gaze off the unlatched firearm in her hand to feign consideration. “What an odd question.”

  His shadow shifts its comportment, burying spectral hands in spectral pockets and standing loose with the stationary swagger of a brawler daring to be punched. “Word 'round the campfire is, whomever killed Ott collected a blood sample shortly thereafter.”

  Moira crests both eyebrows and cants her head aside. “You know what that means.”

  “Somebody's after the thirteen million.” His silhouette doesn't shift, budge or stir. Her hackles mounting, Moira drops her left wrist to the worktable as casually as possible, within finger's distance of the fully loaded, fully primed Lefty. “Well?” he prompts in a small voice.