Galactic Menace

by Timothy J Meyer

  Threesies ceases nodding suddenly as an idea obviously strikes him. “Half first, half later, when is job termed.”

  Two-Bit chews the thought a tasteful moment or two before retrieving his swollen money clip. Doling out another five Cadafrey-minted bills, he indulges Threesies his shrewd business practice. “Thinkbox gotee you,” Two-Bit compliments a moment later.

  Threesies' shrug is pure precociousness. “Hinkee I always so.”

  Rising to his full height again, Two-Bit casts both wrists out in a dramatic ushering gesture, as though he expected live doves to come flapping out of his sleeves. “Hoofee you, then, you schiesty little bleeder, fore squeezee you all me rhino.”

  With tiny green middle finger extended behind him, Threesies darts away. In three seconds flat, the waif has entirely melted into the thinning crowd of pedestrians with the ghostlike smoothness of one whose entire survival depends solely on unobtrusiveness. Watching him vanish with a wry smile, Two-Bit shuffles a few steps back to reconvene with his Captain.

  Perfectly on cue, Nemo spins his attention from the Kybrellian vendor and the tourist trap he was inexplicably patronizing. His pointer finger laxly twirls a cheap plastic keychain emblazoned with the slogan “I Heart Takioro,” the gushy red heart symbol even encircled by three Rings of its own. “Ready?”

  Two-Bit nods pleasantly at both Nemo and his impulse purchase. “Aye aye, Cap'n.”

  Falling into mutual step, they continue their circuit through the Third Ring's sparseness. They both sidestep the occasional driftvehicle or fistfight, Two-Bit ruminates the next few rungs on their stepladder and his Captain concentrates on hooking his newfound keychain to the Lover's keyring.

  “What's the haps?” Nemo questions finally, with an inattentive nudge of his head behind, at a Threesies five minutes disappeared.

  “To ord him jabb it,” Two-Bit relays, “Greatgullet's strapping on the Belt.”

  Nemo grunts. “Heh. He would.”

  “I ball it up fast enough,” Two-Bit admits, “but what's the flash? That motherbloomer's been gouging gantines near a decade longer than we have.”

  “Like as not,” Nemo rationalizes, chipping away at the keyring with a dirty thumbnail, “he ain't preying on the pigeons passing through.” His finger slips and he snarls a silent curse, before meeting Two-Bit's gaze. “He's preying on the rookie pirates.”

  Two-Bit snorts involuntarily. As tempting a target as Veraspo presented, it invariably tended to draw the piratical crap of the crop. These were bush-league buccaneers who'd somehow managed to beg, borrow or steal an operative spaceship, load it full of boozy bozos and cut canvas for Veraspo – ostensibly the perfect practice yard for the inexperienced pirate. The majority of them ultimately fail. Most meet untimely ends when their piloting skills aren't up to snuff to navigate the asteroids. Some are bested or butchered during ill-conceived boarding actions. Even fewer actually manage to jumpstart a decent career in piracy off the prizes won whilst “strapping on the Belt.”

  “Veraspo's something of a jump,” Nemo confesses. “We're certain he's there?”

  “We're certain,” affirms Two-Bit.

  Truth be told, Two-Bit Switch'd known about the whereabouts of Captain Greatgullet and The Rule of Thumb an hour after touching down on Takioro. His exploits were lauded in the Haliquant Quadrant and it was almost difficult to find a street corner in station where his name wasn't being uttered with typical hallowed reverence.

  Employing Threesies' superlative talents as a rumormonger served dual purposes for Two-Bit; firstly, to solidify the swirling rumors into one concrete location and, more importantly, as a pretense to float the brat some capital.

  Certainly, Two-Bit could've simply awarded Threesies the sixteen simply on principle but, in his experience, those in station who become beggars learnt nothing except begging. He couldn't rightly send the cocky little twerp out into this bad galaxy without all the necessary tools he needed to survive.

  Try though he may, it was impossible for him not to see simply a younger Two-Bit – shoeless, smeared with stains and struggling against starvation – whenever he saw the boy.

  So he'd deploy Threesies on these superfluous reconnaissance missions whenever he could, dispatching the kid about the manifold tiny errands that earned Two-Bit his keep and surrogated an education during his own wasted youth. Threesies was already zottibles more competent as a scrounger, a scrapper and a sneak thief that he would've been at his age, a fact that occasionally caused Two-Bit a glimmer of disquieting pride.

  “Can somebody please, by all the moons,” Nemo pleads, wrestling fruitlessly with the supremely uncooperative keychain, “just piss battery acid in my fucking mouth already?”

  In three motions, Two-Bit's pinched the keys in question from Nemo's grip, slipped “I Heart Takioro” effortlessly onto the loop and passed it back, without comment.

  Nemo's dumbstruck. “Oh, hey, thanks.”

  An Ortoki comment, something about “vomit” and “gutter,” draws their collective attention forward, where they discover their awaiting companions.

  “What the blooming fuck are you wearing?” Nemo blurts and hustles forward to confront his saltbrother.

  The same sentimental lobe of Two-Bit's brain that pestered him with irritating waves of sympathy for the plight of Threesies and his ilk was, by his thinking, the same party responsible for the wave of pity he felt whenever he looked upon Takioro's forlorn playground.

  Years ago, before the coming of criminality to the Federate Station, some civic-minded astrotect had apparently thought to include a partially-enclosed child's play area in Takioro's initial blueprints. Complete with graffitied slide, rusted jungle gym and lonesome swing set, the ill-frequented corner of the Third Ring must have originally been intended as a deposit point for the offspring of whatever legitimate merchants the station intended to draw.

  Today, however, the place was looked upon with distaste by the superstitious crowd of malcontents and child-killers, most often simply afforded the same deferential berth one might grant a house reputed to be haunted. To those unconcerned about such matters, it served as a handy locale for an off-the-record meeting and little else.

  The first thing Two-Bit notices is that Odisseus is garbed somewhat comically in an ill-fitting and ratty orange sweater. The Ortok reclines languidly at the mouth of the slide, both forepaws straddling his belly and exhaling laboriously. The massive mechanic grumbles something unpleasant about “vomit” and “face” to the ceiling of the slide he lies decumbent within.

  “I'd prefer,” confesses Nemo indignantly, “you to answer my fucking question.” He points a determined finger towards the Ortok's starchy orange midsection. “Where'd you get that?”

  A sizable pause passes before an Ortoki conjugation of the verb “to find” answers from the darkened interior of the slide.

  “You found it in my moons-damned quarters, is what you mean.” Nemo turns his astonished expression on Two-Bit, his point still aimed unerringly at the Ortok. “That's my sweater he's wearing.”

  “Scandalous.” Two-Bit plants a palm on his own stomach, screwing his face into a sympathetic grimace. “Still squeamy from all them fishes?”

  A meek whimper is all the conformation Two-Bit gets, but Nemo's evidently unsympathetic to the Ortok's digestional woes.

  “Is there any point in asking, say, why you might be wearing my new favorite sweater outta the blooming blue?” Odisseus' muttered no more than three words, one of them “cold” before Nemo's tirade tramples over him again. “Can you not buy your own sweater? Must you stretch mine all the way to Jotor instead?”

  “With what money?” a voice barks from further into the playground. A short distance away sits Moira and her Jhironese boytoy, each propping themselves awkwardly atop a paintless child's bouncy rocket ship.

  “You see what he's wearing?” Nemo demands, not missing a beat.

  “Can we maybe,” Moira requests wearily, with a nudge of her head towards her wingman on t
he rocket ship, “not do this in front of the kids?”

  “Oh, hey, you found what's-his-balls,” Nemo realizes.

  “Tarson,” Tarson corrects. “Is my balls.”

  At seventy paces and through a thick fog, Two-Bit Switch could still have recognized Tarson for what he was; an ex-cop, a fact that almost immediately unnerves him upon realization. As with a large percentage of the amateur bounty hunter population, this thick-necked Jhironese bears all the hallmarks of a corrupt cog spewed forth from the well-oiled machine of law and order. His shoulders slouch, he wears his street clothes like some kind of costume and a service revolver is still strapped to his left thigh. Whatever else this Tarson might be, he'd been an unworthy policeman first, a bush league bounty hunter second.

  “Fess you the gritty,” Two-Bit addresses to Tarson. “Didn't think you'd face, mate, what with a square million and every place to lavender.”

  “Thought crossed my mind, I won't lie.” He considers Moira after a moment. “But, you know, I gotta vested interest in keeping both my balls attached, so.”

  “You know me so well,” Moira croons, no dollop of sweetness in her voice.

  “That the rhino?” Two-Bit inquires, nodding towards the satchel lying between the springs of Moira and Tarson's mounts.

  “Yep. Minus my share, oughta clock in around 834 thou.” Two-Bit glances to Moira for confirmation before Tarson supplies. “Ask Quicksilver. She counted.”

  Moira make a generalizing gesture to encompass both herself and Tarson. “So, if we're finished and–”

  “You're a bounty hunter, right?” Nemo directs to Tarson, not waiting for a reply. “I will pay you cash money if you can retrieve that sweater,” he aligns a condemning finger at the torso and lower abdomen of the Ortok jutting disproportionately from the child's slide, “from him.”

  “Uh–” is Tarson's stuttering response.

  Odisseus whines something about “bounty” from within the depths of his plastolieum tube.

  “Hey–” Moira attempts to interject, but Nemo thoroughly ignores her.

  “Are you not a thief?” he poses to Odisseus. “Are you not wearing my property?”

  The Ortoki answer is shouted, further distorted by the shape of the slide and contains the plural forms of the word “pirate” and the word “thief.”

  “Hey, shitpants!” Moira barks at Nemo which, surprisingly, he seems to respond to. “If we're finished with Tarson and you two secret assholes have finished with your secret thing, that means we're finished with Takioro.” She slaps both thighs exasperatedly. “Are you gonna fucking tell us now?”

  “Well–” Nemo prevaricates, grasping for some method of deflection.

  Two-Bit swoops into the rescue. “We're ain't termed on Takioro, matter of fact. There's Sifer to bump still.”

  Moira's expression anneals homicide hard. “Yeah?”

  “That'd be my cue.” Tarson rises properly to his feet, sending the rocket ship into bouncy hysterics. “Been a pleasure, folks,” he farewells, shuffling back toward the street, “and if y'all're ever lookin' to turn yourselves in again, gimme a buzz. Easiest takedown of my career,” he adds, rounding the corner in the direction of nowhere in particular.

  Moira makes no motion to acknowledge her decamping colleague and only spits “Who the fuck is Sifer?” at Nemo.

  “Someone very integral to our cause, believe me,” Nemo attempts to assuage with grand, placating gestures. “Two-Bit assures me he's the best there is.”

  “Does he? Sublime,” Moira snarls, climbing to her full height and sentencing her own bouncy rocket ship to the same wobbly fate as Tarson's. “Let the fucking record show that I do, in fact, outrank Two-Bit–” she's briefly interrupted by Odisseus' yawlping agreement, “but, you know, why should that matter?”

  “Me wanks,” Two-Bit confesses with a satisfied grimace, “is caffled, I'm afraid.”

  “In the fullness of time,” Nemo explicates grandiosely, “everything shall be–”

  “My fucking tits it shall be,” Moira denounces, brushing violently past the Captain and nearly bowling him over with a shoulder shove.

  After she's stormed three defiant steps onto the deserted Third Ring street, Two-Bit points meekly in the opposite direction. “Sifer's that way.”

  Odisseus always made a conscious effort to be nice towards Zibbians. He did this as unironically, as unpatronizingly as he possibly could; he honestly held no personal grudge against the species. It was simply difficult for someone of Odisseus' disposition to look upon a member of the Zibbian race – with all those delicious-looking tentacles – and see something other than lunch.

  The moral dilemma surrounding his people and the various fish-like sentient species of the galaxy represented an issue to quagmiry to parse. For decades and decades, his own species were casually considered a voracious predator to the galaxy's Corgassi, Obax and Zibbian populations. Odisseus occasionally found himself wishing there was a race of sapient, bipedal cheeseburgers running amok and that everyone else might have some food-versus-friends ethical issues to sort out.

  All that being said, looking at Sifer, Odisseus was overcome with, rather than disquieting hunger pangs, another fresh wave of nausea. The combination of the post-warp queasies and a stomach full of freeze-dried sporefin had sentenced Odisseus to indigestion for the remainder of the afternoon.

  For the foreseeable future, then, Sifer had nothing to fear. For the foreseeable future, the Ortok would honestly rather meet, rather than eat, any fish he happened to encounter.

  “And with Valladia-them, now, whole situation-thing's going down the shitter-drain,” Sifer prattles on, all six tentacles busily engaged hunting and pecking across three separate keyboards. “You heard about Valladia-that, right? Those fuck-beaks bought every feed-anchor on the Line.” He unfurls a forked tentacle before Two-Bit. “Do you have the footage-film?”

  In response, Two-Bit simply inclines his head towards Nemo, already burrowing a hand into his inside jacket pocket to retrieve something. Several seconds and some leathern jostling reveals a slender datadeck clasped in his fingers. With an irreverent flick, he tosses the datadeck forward and Sifer snags it with one of his tentacular hands.

  Selecting an open port at random, the appendage inserts the datadeck without comment while Sifer continues his grim prognostications, “This is how the fun-times end, Sifer-I'm telling all-you.”

  “Shall we,” Moira sulks, her attention focused on the blinking stub of the datadeck, “be afforded the pleasure of knowing what's on there?”

  Two-Bit indicates one of several scummy-looking holovision display screens, this one currently afire with silent fistball coverage played in reverse. “Sifer, do us a kindie, when you get a mite?”

  “From Kezz-here to Kiesha-there, their feed-anchors are already churning out their lukewarm, Inner Sector blowhole-shit, what Sifer-I hear.” With an offhand swat, he splatters a twelve-legged Akuddi roach, transgressing onto his kiosk counter, into a gooey mess. “Way ahead of Switch-you.” The screen in question surrenders its previous picture in favor of silent static. “Those used to be freecaster signal-waves. They-waves all used to be freecaster signal-waves.”

  They each occupy one of the cardinal four seats drawn up to Sifer's ramshackle kiosk. Around them shambles and squirms all the sordid squalor of the Third Ring understreet. Paying as little attention as he possibly can, Odisseus is only aware that drugs are dealt, marbles are rolled and sewage drips.

  There are two conceivable reasons one would visit the Third Ring understreet, a cesspool in all but name. The first was dealings too unsavory for the upperstreet. The second was to seek the skills of Sifer, the station's preeminent freecaster.

  The main method of sending information across the vast reaches of interstellar space involved a tangled cobweb of satellite-broadcasted transmission feeds. A feedcaster could employ this network to relay infinite volumes of media to every corner of the galaxy. They send breaking newsplash and political commentary a
nd educational programming and sports coverage and, most importantly, pornography.

  While the Inner Sector feedspace is a strictly regulated government commodity, the derelict satellites adrift in the Outer Ring have since been hijacked by anarchistic radio radicals who self-apply the pretentious title of “freecasters.”

  With his antiestablishment tirades and his workspace overflowing with geeky paraphernalia, Sifer could expound ad infinitum on the virtues and valors of freecasterism. He could also reach a wider audience than anyone else on this side of the Ring. For whatever reason, a freecaster's skill set had been deemed an instrumental facet of Nemo's ever-evolving mystery plan, and in a revelation that surprised no one, Two-Bit knew a guy.

  Nemo fiddles distractedly with one amongst the manifold children's toys that line the edge of Sifer's nest– a green plastic arlaxi with a miniature top hat. “What kinda range're we talking?”

  “That'll depend on sight-views,” the Zibbian returns robotically. “Off the start-bat, Sifer-I cast out of two quadrant-spaces, but, you get enough sight-views, caster-others're gonna pass the info-leak along.” He attempts a tentacled approximation of a shrug. “Footage-film's what Switch-he says it is, should go viral in hours-day, maybe days-week?”

  Nemo pauses his fiddling, “Veraspo's in which quadrant?”

  “Haliquant,” informs Two-Bit.

  “To start, then,” Nemo prefaces, “let's say Haliquant and, I don't know, Uklio? Give them something to think about.”

  “Veraspo.” Moira blandly states, before muttering almost to herself, “What's in Veraspo?”

  “Imperium-they,” Sifer rambles forward, “keeps making push-inroads into Bad Space, sooner rather than later we're all gonna be watching Brock Rocket, Star Patriot!” The rhythmic cadence of constantly clicking keys suddenly stops. “Have any-you seen that fucking balls-thing?” The expression of suspicion and fear is somehow still distinguishable on his squid-like features. “Hey, feed-loop's live,” he chirps, inclining a tentacle at the previously static screen.

  On the tiny, smeared screen, Odisseus watches a grainy rendition of a tired tableau. Moira struggles in the snow. Quuilar Noxix brandishes his harpoon. A bolt of blue ditrogen bores a hole in Noxix's skull and Nemo jubilantly guns down camera operator after camera operator. He'd viewed the whole spectacle an innumerable number of times at Nemo's behest and what plays out on Sifer's screen holds few surprises for him.