Galactic Menace

by Timothy J Meyer

  With some coaxing, a thoroughly exhausted Moira manages to stand on her wobbly feet. After some suitably uncomfortable jostling, in which Two-Bit's extremely mindful of the placement of his hands, he manages to strap the drugged-up first mate into a padded combat vest. She remains starkly pantless, however and, lacking any means to remedy this, Two-Bit yanks the lower lip of her vest down as far as he dares.

  “Thank you, Two-Bit,” she responds sleepily. “That was nice of you.”

  “This is jeebing me out.”

  “I like your hat.”

  From where he lurks in the doorway, Odisseus sniffs something impatiently about “moving.”

  Lockdown Control aboard the HIN Surimiah is a small, inoffensive chamber, tucked around the base of the detainment column and conveniently located only a hop, skip and jump south of the infirmary.

  After meeting up in the prisoner receiving area at the very top of the column, Two-Bit Switch and Odisseus had quickly raided the nearby guard's armory. They proceeded to suit themselves up with what body armor they could fit into, Wreckingballs, all the requisite ammunition and, in Two-Bit's case, a riotguard helmet.

  Thusly outfitted, the two accomplices had scampered around the other side of the column to meet up with Moira. That's where they found her unconscious – fresh from surgery, fresh from the medical wing and fresh from lifting the state of emergency lockdown the Ortok's wave emitter had rendered onto the Surimiah.

  Under extreme circumstances, such as complete power failure, the detainment column was programmed to automatically lock down. This prevented the more enterprising of any suddenly-loosed prisoners from escaping the column and running amok in the ship proper. The system of airlocks between column and ship would activate and both halves of the Surimiah were irrevocably sealed off from each other, regardless of the craft's current state of power.

  The lockdown had proven to be a most persistent thorn in the side of Two-Bit's best laid plans against the Surimiah. The only way to circumvent the emergency protocol was from a set of manual controls, located within the appropriately named Lockdown Control and, of course, outside the actual column itself.

  This was the real reason, beyond the pure yuks of it, that Moira'd allowed herself to be shot in the first place. The fastest and most surefire way to place a prisoner beyond the Surimiah's security cordon was to let the establishment cart them off to the infirmary posthaste. As far as this escape was concerned, somebody on the crew was going to have to quite literally take one for the team. The question, of course, only came down to who.

  To Two-Bit's thinking, leave it up to Moira to devise the least lethal means of catching canisters with one's body. When pressed, she even professed some bogus method of contorting herself in the face of gunfire to better cushion the blow. Now that she'd, all hopped up on painkillers, somehow fought her way through all the infirmary's security with nothing but a bloody clipboard and recent gunshot wound, Two-Bit was in somewhat less of a position to doubt her.

  When he'd initially proposed the idea, he wouldn't have described her reaction as “particularly pleased.” As long as Two-Bit pressed how vital it was in their attempts to shirk Huong Xo, however, Moira Quicksilver had agreed right enough and performed the task fairly spectacularly.

  What Two-Bit hadn't necessarily anticipated was the physical and mental state the evening's excitement, not to mention the anesthesia, would leave her in. Understandably, she was extremely sleepy but, disquietingly, she appeared actually amiable and, at the moment, also appeared to be having a surprisingly difficult time standing on two feet.

  Two-Bit honestly wasn't convinced she'd be anything but a hindrance on their mad dash to pacify and commandeer the HIN Surimiah.

  This, coupled with the other, unexpected complication that's recently arose, join forces to overwhelm Two-Bit. He's suddenly filled with a nostalgic desire to be back on Qel Qatar, pouring over blueprints back in Gasbox's scrapbarn, when everything was blissfully hypothetical.

  “Hey. Where's Nemo?” Moira wonders.

  “That,” Two-Bit admits, “is an excellent ringer.” He shares an apprehensive glance with Odisseus. “He was supposed to bump us up at the top here.”

  Odisseus shakes his confused head, completing Two-Bit's sentiment with “never.”

  “Oh,” Moira comments, disappointment painfully visible on her face. “Too bad.” She shrugs a moment later. “He'll turn up.”

  “Sure he will,” Two-Bit agrees halfheartedly. “Coulda used his wheel, though.”

  The other major weak link in Two-Bit's chain of contrived events involved a rather unfortunate deadline they labored under. Odisseus' makeshift wave emitter could only realistically disable the reactor core for a period of approximately twenty-five minutes. With thirteen and a half minutes wasted by Odisseus clambering up the service ladder, that only left eleven and a half minutes to cross the entire length of the Surimiah and neutralize her bridge crew. Needless to say, this left precisely no time to go scampering around the detainment column, searching for their truant Captain.

  On one hand, the plan pressed them to carry on and dig Nemo up later. On the other hand, though, the whole plan was concocted under the auspices of having four capable trigger fingers rather than their paltry two and a half, a distinction all too significant for the anxious Two-Bit.

  “Jabbing of wheels,” he realizes, reaching aside to where he'd set Moira's Wreckingball, “this'll probably do you better than that did,” he offers, indicating the bloody-cornered clipboard at her feet.

  “Thank you,” Moira beams, accepting the shotgun.

  Odisseus repeats his idea about “moving.”

  With that, the Surimiah's three busiest inmates shuffle their way out of Lockdown Control and into the forbidden territory of the main ship itself.

  According to a handy plaque about emergency evacuation procedure Two-Bit found outside the armory, the most direct route from Lockdown Control to the Surimiah's bridge was a relatively straight shot from stern to bow. One simply went past the detainment column, up the catwalk, over the passenger wing, down the catwalk, through the deactivated security atrium and into the helm. Simple enough, perhaps, but Two-Bit noticed that the plaque tellingly made no mention of any armed resistance along the way.

  They pass the time in pragmatic silence, nervous at every step about the prospect of discovery. Their reverie is interrupted only by the repeated chanting of the loudspeaker's warning and the occasional bar of jovial humming from a drug-addled Moira.

  Two-Bit leads and therefore navigates, with his intimate knowledge of the deckplan. Odisseus, as the only other fully conscious of the three, brings up the rear. This leaves Moira in the middle, traipsing innocently along with a shotgun over her shoulder.

  The upper hallway of the Surimiah's main body is subtly different from, but altogether cut from the same cloth as, the circular corridors of the detainment column. The walls, ceilings and floor are the same black teltriton, but smoother and more sculpted, as though only those without felony charges could appreciate finer architecture.

  Apertures into side chambers have graceful oblong doorways. Fluorescent streams of red guide passengers towards the nearest unfired ejection units. Everything is continually limned in the auxiliary purple lighting from above.

  In short order, they mount the short stairs up to catwalk. The narrow passage stretches over the passenger wing, allowing conveniently quick transit from one end of the ship to the other without winding through the dormitories below.

  Two-Bit fully anticipates, by the rules of congested traffic, and is summarily unsurprised by the sound of heavy soled boots, clanging up the opposite set of stairs. Within a heartbeat, the three escaped convicts find themselves staring down a trio of similarly armed, similarly armored prison guards across the uncomfortably slender catwalk.

  “Maggies up!” Two-Bit shouts, dropping to one knee and immediately letting a round fly. The thick red ditrogen bolt travels on its collision course between the shotgun's snub
and the kneecap of the first standing guard, a skin-and-bones Gantorese number. Upon his leg exploding into cerulean spray, he seems to screamingly regret his position several steps ahead of his fellows. He drops instantly to the catwalk, his lower limb practically in pieces and leaving plenty of room for the Fjoran directly behind him to plant a shotgun canister hard on Two-Bit's shoulder.

  He's bowled bodily over, plopping backward on the catwalk himself. Miraculously, his stolen riot armor managed to turn most of the blow, rendering a crippling glance into merely a nasty bruise. As best as he can see from his back, Two-Bit watches Odisseus rack off a pair of poorly-aimed shots, certainly attempting to fire around Moira and already nothing much to write home about in the marksman department anyway.

  With much effort, Two-Bit yanks himself into a sitting position, cracks the Wreckingball's pump into place and makes his best effort for the Fjoran. His posture fumbles his aim somewhat. Two-Bit's not likely to complain, though, when the Gantorese guard leaning over the Fjoran's left receives the bolt with compliments in the stomach.

  Both his compatriots down, the Fjoran primes the shotgun for another round and, rather than retreating, advances, with the clear and obvious intent of finishing off Two-Bit.

  It's Moira's first shot that decapitates him. Her Wreckingball burrows a bolt between his eyes. Her shot hits home with such velocity and at such proximity that its momentum through his headpiece literally rips the whole damn thing off his neck in a spectacle of blood, ditrogen and shards of spinning chitin.

  Moira, expelled smoke wafting from the shotgun's muzzle, cringes delicately. “Eww.”

  The firefight over in the space of seven shots, Two-Bit indulges himself a full minute to loot all three on the catwalk. After putting the dismembered Gantor out of his misery, he tosses clips of barely-tapped shotgun ammo to Odisseus and Moira, one accepting them gruffly and the other graciously. As discreetly as possible, he stuffs the pockets of his armored vest with as much pilfered cash as he realistically can. As he relieves the headless Fjoran of his chump change, Two-Bit half-turns back to his waiting comrades.

  “We're making good time. At this crackle, we'll be biffing on the bridge door in–”

  Two-Bit realizes starkly that neither of them are paying attention to him. Moira flicks blasted brains off the trim of her hospital gown. Odisseus swings his head about, nose twitching, apparently fixated on some scent. “What is it?”

  Odisseus' reply is too convoluted a string of Ortoki for Two-Bit to follow. At his obvious confusion, Moira points a blood-tipped forefinger at him. “He says he smells something.”

  “Well, thank you, Moira,” Two-Bit deadpans. “I was speccing what, exactly–”

  Without another word, Odisseus turns and tromps, almost violently, down the catwalk, back the way they'd come. “Oi! Where in the shittin' fuck do you think you're going? Odi? Odi!” The Ortok snaps something ferocious with a clamp of his mighty jaws. “We're on the bloomin' clock here!”

  Moira, nudging a piece of chitin with her big toe, only shrugs.

  Odisseus finds the first corpse sprawled across the doorway to the mess hall and, by instinct, if not by smell, knows he's close. By the Ortok's reckoning, a point blank shotgun blast had done the dead Gantor the courtesy of removing three-quarters of his chest, but his weapon, its ammunition and his pockets were otherwise undisturbed.

  Bootprints in blue blood lead ominously away from the body and into the darkened recesses of the mess hall. Some Inner Sector shipwright, apparently, didn't imagine this section of the ship important enough to include emergency lighting inside. With his companions and Two-Bit's protestations both gaining behind him, Odisseus racks his own shotgun and steps inside the doorway.

  Without proper lighting, the Surimiah’s mess hall is a backless cavern. The tables and chairs are outlined both in ghostly purple from behind Odisseus and in bitter white from another open door somewhere to his right. At present, the hall is populated only by one cautious Ortok and a handful more corpses, strewn haphazardly in the doorway of the adjoining room.

  At first blush, Odisseus supposes this room to be the ship’s galley and a room his nose supposes to be the epicenter of the beckoning scent. To confirm his suspicions, he hears definitive rooting and rummaging from further within and he watches elongated shadows play against the back wall.

  Sidling to his right along said wall affords Odisseus a better look at the pile of corpses. All three sport gunshot wounds that correlate perfectly with those of the dead Gantor standing sentry at the outer door. Another Gantor, a humanoid and a Karracki they're all prison guard., All sent to their respective makers by shotgun fire at brutally close range, they were splattered against the doorjamb, presumably by whomever or whatever was ransacking the galley not ten feet from Odisseus' position.

  Inches from visual contact, Odisseus catches a fresh whiff of the mystery scent, scoffs, and lowers his weapon.

  “Of course,” he mutters, taking one step into the galley.

  The muzzle flash nearly blinds him. Before he can flinch, a sizable chunk of the wall a whisker’s length from his face is violently replaced with a smoking pockmark.

  Odisseus gives it a moment’s glance. “So, that could’ve ended poorly.”

  Odisseus' saltbrother cuts a guilty, unimpressive figure. He squats before the open chiller, crude light casting his moon of a face into an eerie eclipse, like an impractical burglar who heads straight for the vittles and forgoes one's valuables.

  His waifish black mane is disheveled beyond reason. His crayon-yellow jumpsuit is shabbied by bloodstains, sweatstains and stains that require no further contemplation. His DX2 Wreckingball is propped unassumingly against the top of the open chiller door.

  Captain Nemo shoots his first glance over his shoulder and grunts.

  “Oh, hey. It’s you.” With his unseen hand, he produces a greasy cylinder. “Eggroll?”

  “Blech. No.” Odisseus squints. “Where did you get that?”

  Tossing the eggroll into his mouth, Nemo reads a name off the polystyrene box at hand. “Um, from Liwwo?” He shakes it twice. “There’s a whole thing of them in here.”

  “Would now be an appropriate time to ask how you got here?”

  Biting off one half of the eggroll, he waves the other half around in pinched fingers like a fat, dripping stogy. “I was on the first deck.” He chews a moment. “And hungry.”

  “Apparently.” Odisseus shuffles a subconscious step backwards to appraise the Captain's derelict appearance more completely. All things considered, he was honestly expecting something far worse. “You look like boiled shit.”

  “Thanks.”

  At the smell of Moira rounding the corner into the darkened mess hall and making her approach, Odisseus has only a few more seconds to squeeze the fateful question under the radar. In theory, forty-two hours wasn't nearly enough time for any truly adverse side effects to manifest but, when it came to Nehel Morel and his substantial head start on insanity, one couldn't be too certain. “Missing any marbles?”

  “Probably,” Nemo admits, chewing thoughtfully. “I suppose, sooner or later here, we're gonna find out.”

  “That's not exacting comforting.”

  “Yeah, but that was always a danger,” he dismisses, shifting his weight and his gaze back towards the chiller's open maw. “We talked about this.”

  “I guess.”

  Nemo stops his search of the chiller short. “Wait.” He turns back. “There's something different about you.”

  “Don't start.”

  Moira, her expression utter vacancy, meanders into the galley. A scraping sound accompanies her, as she literally drags the combat shotgun behind her like a child who's forgotten her security blanket. She levels up on Odisseus' right side, him trying his very hardest to simply ignore her.

  Nemo spares Moira, in body armor, hospital gown and bare legs, an understandably confounded glance, before focusing his attention back on Odisseus and his embarrassingly short hair.
>
  “No, no, hold on, I'manna figure it out,” he resolves with disturbing and apparent sincerity. “You didn't get your hair cut, you...” he eliminates before both his lack of other viable options and realization hit him simultaneously. “No, yeah, you did get a haircut!”

  “Fucking hilarious,” the Ortok growls.

  “What? You don't like it or something?”

  Odisseus makes a displaying gesture with his Wreckingball and his empty paw. “It's a prison cut. I'd have thought that would've been obvious.”

  “I think it's fetching,” Nemo opines, vaguely offended.

  “Don't. Start.”

  Moira addresses Nemo suddenly. “What're you eating?”

  “Oh.” He remembers the butt of unctuous leftover in his hand. “An eggroll. Want one?”

  “Yes, please,” she smiles, delighted. Odisseus gives her the wary eye as Nemo digs about in Liwwo's box, retrieves another soggy eggroll and tosses it to his first mate. Despite her evident mental infirmity, she catches it perfectly in her left hand.

  Nemo bites his half an eggroll into quarters and requests Odisseus. “Tell me what you don't like about it.”

  “Well. I'm freezing all the moons-damned time. For one.”

  “You have blubber.”

  “Blubber doesn't work that way.”

  “Yeah, I guess I don't really know how blubber works.”

  Moira, working her way contentedly through the eggroll, offers cheerfully to the room. “These are really gross.”

  Struck by an epiphany, Nemo contemplates his own under new eyes. “They are, yeah!” he agrees, popping the remainder into his mouth all the same.

  Odisseus paws at the floor impatiently. “If we're just about finished here...”

  Without warning, Nemo's free hand withdraws a carton of pink fluid, labeled “joojberry milk,” from the depths of the chiller. Yanking the cap loose with his teeth, spitting it across the room and swallowing the eggroll, he replies into the echoing carton as he hoists it to his lips. “Just about.”

  A stream of heavily-accented expletives, certainly containing “bloom,” “moons” and “fuck” and less certainly containing “blowbag,” “shitmouth” and possibly “doorknob,” resounds from somewhere nearby.