Hull Damage
Page 60
“Second you get a bead on theirs, you give that sucker everything that gun I stole for you's got.”
Granted exactly the length of leash she preferred, Moira was only to pleased to affirm with another “Aye aye.”
“Did you send me down here for something specific,” Odisseus, joining the comm chat with the scuffing and scraping of his headset, piped in, “or just out of your overall disdain for my physical wellbeing?”
“No, I need you to keep the boosters all simpatico for me. Odds are,” he predicted, anticipating a similar such reaction from the crew, “they probably ain't gonna be big fans of this next little maneuver, so you gotta make sure they don't get the wrong idea and shut down on me, 'cause then, bloom, would we be sunk.”
A pause of advanced pregnancy followed. “What do you mean, 'not big fans'? What's in your head, Nemo?”
“I said something stupid.”
With two last taps of his keypad, Two-Bit hurriedly announces “Edgies're live!”
The effect was instantaneous and jarring. A barricade of undulating energy, so thick as to blur anything visible out the viewport past recognition, suddenly materialized between predator and prey. Upon arrival, it immediately gave furious battle with the Eye's graviton lock.
The empty space some distance off the Lover's bow exploded into a battlefield of invisible forces, the bombard shields polluting the purity of the graviton's hold and taxing the Briza with more frenetic whipping and jouncing. Each crewmember, unprepared for the extreme turbulence, only barely avoided losing their individual lunches as their spaceship lurched to and fro.
Seeing this, The Weather Eye-come-police cruiser sidled itself forward in an attempt to successfully reel the Lover, an unyielding fish who's swallowed the bait and seems determined to drown its angler rather than be taken, toward its airlock.
With this action did Moira, sighting down the length of the turret's trifecta of a barrel in deference to that newly-installed know-it-all of a munitions computer, spotted the graviton projector, mounted obviously atop the Asylum-class freighter's airlock. She reveled in the thunderous sound of the Antagonist dumping its practically untapped ammunition reserve through its flanged barrels but found the result less satisfying, the Eye's ray shields crackling and frying her best efforts into futility.
“No dice on their projector,” Moira was peeved to announce. “We really need an undergunner. Ray shields'll take punishment from me all day.”
Nemo treated himself to a then-novel grin of a certain wicked magnificence. “I was hoping you'd say that.”
He spent a moment hunting beneath the dashboard with one hand until, discovering it an agreeable distance from the yoke, Nemo's fingers brushed against the clutchlever for the very first time. Whomever its previous owner, they'd evidently very little use for such a feature, as Nemo discovered it practically pristine, a true oddity on a ship this haggard. He wrapped an appreciative hand around the stick's contour, feeling the points of traction prick the meat of his palm. A breath of impression, a clarion call to the drastic events to come, escaped his lips before he floored it.
Deep inside The Unconstant Lover, surges of fresh fuel sluiced down connector cables, her very veins, and flooded into the appropriate wells at the head of each booster, lovingly and unimaginatively named Port and Starboard. Within a moment's notice, they converted said fuel into reservoirs of additional thrust, enough to propel the Lover forward at a speed unmatched by any ship her size this galaxy can offer. This thrust, considering the graviton lock, was more or less wasted, if not for the ferocity of the freighter's new bucking and thrashing, exacting an incredible toll on both the graviton lock and the ship's own skeleton.
“Oooh, okay, I like that. Let's do that some more,” Nemo resolved. Ignorant to the incoming objections of his crew, the Captain pumped the clutchlever a second and third time, both jetboosters pouring more heart and more stomach into the effort until Nemo and everyone else aboard actually felt the lock's rigidity suffer a palpable blow. Seeing this, the lurking police cruiser gained speed, suddenly anxious not to surrender its catch to such an idiotic tactic. The Lover herself, boosters included, was none too happy about the turn of events, as Nemo'd predicted, and her chassis, stretching itself too thin inch by inch, creaked and cried in metallic pain.
“Nemo!” Odisseus' bellow echoed around the engine room with remonstrance second only to the freighter's own. “What're you doing? She's not build for this, you're gonna–”
Murmuring some nonsense mockery, Nemo hammered the clutchlever entirely to its possible limit, holding it firm with a prolonged squeal from both the stem and the stern. The graviton struggled against caving and the boosters streamed through more and more fuel to their obvious displeasure. Still, their hold held fast, a nuisance Nemo dealt with by clasping the center of the yoke in a single hand and swerving the whole Briza as far starboard as its maximum confinements would allow, only to snap in the complete opposite direction and send a shiver of whiplash back up the graviton to trouble the encroaching Eye.
As apparently effective as these evasive maneuvers seemed to her Captain, The Unconstant Lover was laboring under astonishing duress, duress she, by all rights, couldn't endure for any realistic stretch of time without the very real possibly of ripping herself in half.
To the four other members of The Unconstant Lover's crew, it appeared as though their Captain, having already exhibited numerous indications he was perhaps several proverbial torpedoes short of a full magazine, had, at best, chosen an extremely inappropriate time to rev the ship's engine and feel like a big man. At worst, he'd gone stark screaming mad; the kind of mad where one feels inclined to tear a nice hole in their starship and take a swim in space. As both options would probably result in their death or, at best, incarceration, each crew member felt a very potent and understandable need to voice these concerns, coincidentally all at once and less coincidentally all on the same comm channel.
“–only gonna destroy–”, “–must be outta your–”, “–she can't handle it–”, “Cap'n, are ye–” and half a dozen other such objections, coupled with a veritable hurricane of static interference, erupts out of every live communications port aboard, a cacophony the Captain is magically deaf to.
For her part, the Lover protests via every means available to her – screeching sirens, flashing alarms both relevant and otherwise, the boosters' own strenuous vociferations, even her beams, girders, plates and frame, the starship's very bones, expressing an increasing level of agony as Nemo continued this ostensibly aimless torture of her.
“I know, baby, I know,” Nemo cooed under his breath, despite the evident fact that no one aboard, including Two-Bit less than five feet away, could possibly hope to hear him, over their own babbling, the patched hiss of static and everything teltriton screaming all around them.
In what could only be his last ditch attempt to realize this harebrained pipe dream of an escape plan, Nemo increased the speed and frequency of his yoke hand and his clutchlever hand respectively. He milked the clutchlever hard enough to actually push The Weather Eye scarce inches back with the displaced force of their own graviton lock shoved slowly back into their face. He zigzagged the yoke fast enough to slap centrifugal force upside both cheeks of the police cruiser's bow until it was practically teetering on the thinnest link of its graviton chain. Both actions, of course, contributed greatly to the chorus of cracking, peeling and bending sounds resounding fatally across the Lover.
In each second before he broke through, Moira Quicksilver, the Ortok known as Odisseus, Two-Bit Switch, Abraham Bonaventure and The Unconstant Lover herself each imagined their respective deaths and simultaneously rued the day and specific circumstances that had facilitated their first meeting with Nehel Morel. For the very first time, the four pirates and their spaceship bore witness to that inexplicably queer and unpredictably reliant attribute of Nemo's they could later ascribe only to the cliché of “good luck”.
By whatever power they cared to name i
t, The Weather Eye's graviton lock died, its projector burst and it spun stupidly aside, paving passage for its prey, the somehow victorious Unconstant Lover, to blast dottibles past with the velocity her Captain had been so thoughtfully choking both boosters with.
They were exonerated from either cold space death or a deeply unpleasant fifteen-year sentence in a Zibbian prison. They were burdened with both an excess of unmovable stolen toothpaste and a burning desire to kick a certain tattletale fence named Mongoose directly in both balls. They were seconds away from activating a miniscule dirty warp to carry them three zottibles to complete safety aboard a starship obviously damaged but by some miracle still flyable. The Lover's crew, as one, were struck wordless by the event they would eventually come to call “The Bozee Bushwhack,” cultivating, if fleetingly and extremely begrudgingly in some cases, an appreciation for the occasional bout of lunacy from their Captain.
In return, he laughed with unprecedented glee until they jumped warp.
On his cue, the machinery deep with the heart of that certain Briza Light Freighter, Model IZ36 once called The Poetic License, once called The Poetic Justice, now named The Unconstant Lover clicks perfectly into place. By a power unknown to all aboard, the starship cuts a swashbuckling swath across the sky as it vanishes, leaving behind only a trace of residual star stuff on its rocketing road to vice, villainy and the nearest possible drink.
Chapter 27
Two-Bit Switch smiles and nods. He had smiled and nodded at the first of Velocity's demands; he had smiled and nodded at the tenth. In fact, here at the twenty-eighth of said demands, each and every one of Two-Bit's current activities fell neatly beneath the two headings of either “smiling” or its complimentary cousin “nodding.”
It had been made profusely clear to Two-Bit that he was, under no circumstances, to speak even a single word at all during these negotiations. It had first been made clear by each member of the Lover's crew on their initial approach into Takioro Defederate Station. The point was repeated by that same evidently well-meaning crew during their twenty-one minute walk and thirteen second shoot ride from Docking Port #3194 to their arranged rendezvous at, of all places, The Bloody Afterburn. The point was lastly belabored by Velocity herself, once expressly spoken and the remainder through her utter yet tacit disdain of his entire presence.
With his twenty-eight smiles, his twenty-eight nods and not a syllable between them, he, in truth, is beginning to wonder why they'd even brought him along in the first place.
“That'd put us at, what, nineteen-fifty?” the Depot-Commissioner tirelessly tabulates, her eyes locked in the ceilingward gaze of joyful contemplation. “For a new window, six tables, eleven chairs, twenty-three glasses and the cost of general repair and maintenance?”
“That, uh,” Nemo comments, glancing down to the battle-scored tabletop beneath him, bearing a litany of wounds and bruises from altercations decades old and deciding once again that discretion is the better part of cowardice, “oughta, you know, cover it.”
“Oh, that's just for this dump,” Velocity disillusions merrily, reaching out to accept an offered tankard from the approaching Unhappy Roger with an appreciative nod and no mind to her phrasing. “I couldn't care less for this putrefied bunghole if you fed it to me – I'm just raking you over whatever coals I can find.” Roger himself actually smirks at his own slander before shambling away, ten thousand happy hours past caring and obviously in cahoots to squeeze them for money he'd rather liquefy and shoot into his eyeballs than spend on repairs.
“Of course,” Nemo swallows. “How silly of me.”
They occupy their usual places in their usual booth, Two-Bit across from Moira, adjacent to Odisseus and crosswise from Nemo. Velocity sits reverse-style, like the cocky teenager she no doubt imagined herself to remain, in a chair she'd dragged to the table's outer end when she'd made her original entrance, emptying the tavern's patronage and launching in with orders and decrees from the get-go. No alcohol sits within reach of anyone but Velocity, as Roger'd only scoffed when they'd attempted to order any, and the unanticipated sobriety, coupled with the persistent need to bite their tongues so hard as to almost dribble blood out of the corners of their mouths, was beginning to undermine their clamant need for acquiescence.
“So, with nineteen-fifty to our depressing-as-dick friend back there,” Velocity indicates with a thumb, in the second's space before planting her cracked lips to the tankard's rim. After only one mouthful, she's frozen, glancing to each assembled pirate for one awkward moment and then oozing the tepid liquid back from whence it came. “What's that shit made of?”
Shuffling back behind his bar, Unhappy Roger only shrugs. Nemo opens his mouth for a quip, makes eye contact with Velocity and, after a beat, closes it again.
“That still leaves reparations for Pickle Planet, SQ, Gozzer and, of course, me.” She numerates each plaintiff on a callused blue finger, complimenting her ring and final finger with a self-satisfied smirk.
Nemo makes a nebulous quantifying gesture over his lap. “Could we maybe get some of like, grand total or ballpark figure, rather than going through each–”
“Nope,” Velocity's pleased to announce. “Pickle Planet's asking twenty-one hundred for a new kiosk and six hundred for the stock you ruined.”
“What, the pickles?” Nemo snorts. “Six hundred for pickles?” If anyone in evidence agrees or commiserates with this assessment, they don't dare show it. “Seems like a good price,” Nemo finishes, after an awkward moment. “I like pickles,” he assuages finally in a small voice.
“SQ,” Velocity blazes forward on the next finger, “only had superficial damage to their storefront, something like two-seventy to refurbish, but I talked them up to five hundred.” She reprises her earlier merriment. “Just to be safe.”
Odisseus grumbles some disparagement to Two-Bit's immediate right.
Velocity counters with a blissful smile and blithe shrug. “My goons are exempt from collateral damage when they're shooting at you.”
“That, uh, makes all the sense,” Nemo appreciates as he creeps a hand across the table to reach for the Depot-Commissioner's discarded tankard of booze. Still distracted by Odisseus, Velocity doesn't notice this encroachment until Moira's caught Nemo's wrist as it trespasses past her and holds it hard to the tabletop.
“Get your grubby dickbeater away from my drink,” Velocity commands with palpable scorn. Nemo, glancing up at her from his protracted position, backpedals into the most accommodating and unselfish smile he can muster and, with Moira's wordless permission, slithers back to his seat. “On the subject of dickbeaters,” Velocity gracelessly transitions, “there's the whole Gozzer matter.”
“Oh, moons,” Two-Bit mutters behind his teeth.
Velocity grips the chair's backrest and leans fully backward before dropping her extortionate bomb. “He wants twenty-four percent which,” she cants her contemplation aside to conjure mathematics somewhere past their booth, “off what Xo threw at you for that piece of Hourly Wage nonsense, would equal out to be near abouts fifty two thou.”
Nemo blinks. “Is he here now?”
Velocity returns his scrutiny with blatancy so potent it crawls Two-Bit's skin. “No.”
“Then fuck him,” Nemo resolves, shrugging and frowning in remarkable symmetry.
“I want twenty four percent,” Velocity corrects pointedly.
“I'd be delighted.”
Moira parts lips perennially sealed since departing Baz to point out. “That's three times what we offered him.”
The Vollocki queenpin adjusts targets like a master duelist. “Think of it as interest then, darling,” she condescends out of hand. “Plus, you personally gunned down three of his employees in cold blood.”
“Self defense,” Moira parries.
“What have you,” Velocity ripostes. She ameliorates her posture somewhat, planting both hooves delicately on the chair's stretcher. “Those three together come out to be about seventy-two thousand.”
“Positively,” Velocity replies with mildly mocked shock. “Never been so pleased to memorize anything in my entire life. All that's left, then, is the little matter of me.” She changes gears smoother than an automatic transmission. “Total damages to my station, you know, the bench, the pay-comms, the shoot control box you iced,” she directs toward Moira, “the Nomad Café, those two dash you stole–”
“That's rich,” Two-Bit blurts, before he's entirely realized the implications of what he's done. “I scored both of them tagalongs plenty of the use of their dash. Ring 'em both, if you like. And all you bastards,” he swings a finger towards the crew, “vizzed me doin' it. On top of that, we didn't even roon 'em or nothing! They're one hundred percent f–” the letter suddenly catches on his lips. Everyone at the table, Velocity included, stares at him wide-eyed, in stark, screaming tension. “I know, I know,” he blusters after a beat, “'Two-Bit, whatever you do' and 'Two-Bit, don't jabb anything' but come on now, she's bending us over the table and she fucking dellys it!”
The Afterburn's silence deafens Two-Bit. His own echo in the distant corners of the empty saloon is the only sound for many long seconds, save his breathing, shifting weight and the chorus of beating hearts as everyone present attempts to anticipate, wince from or steel themselves for Velocity's reaction. At length, she seems to remember the legs beneath her and rises gradually out of her chair, relishing the moment's taut indecisiveness for her own benefit. For not the first time since shipping out aboard The Unconstant Lover, Two-Bit Switch wonders if this might be his last hour aboard Takioro Defederate Station.
“We had an agreement,” she reminds Nemo at last, though never faltering the stream of smoldering blue eye-daggers at Two-Bit. “Dipshit opens his mouth for anything but air, you're all out on your bloomholes.”