Galactic Menace

by Timothy J Meyer

  What would possibly drive such an unknowable intelligence into a life of piracy, Odisseus couldn't possibly fathom. What was certain were the fates of those who fell prey to Aju Vog Xah Qaj's nameless remix colonyship – equal parts cargo tanker, pleasure barge and calcified Xendo saliva. Her greatest strength, however, were all her loyal swarms of remix starfighters, each one piloted by a kamikaze Xend willing to die for their queen's glory.

  Once the final strongbox is successfully stacked, the total accumulated wealth amounts to a seemingly impregnable citadel of consolidated cash. The rank and file of Xend then proceed to shuck forward something else to the head of the column, with a certain reverence.

  An ordinary-looking Xendo worker stands before its ranked people.

  Each and every non-Xend in attendance is simultaneously disgusted when this individual peels away its pronged mandibles to reveal a disquietingly normal pair of humanoid lips beneath the chitinous exterior.

  “We are Aju Vog Xah Qaj,” the speaker informs in alarmingly clear Commercial. “We speak with one voice.”

  During the initial parley, when the strike against the Shipyards was first orchestrated, the Xendo queen had dispatched a similar envoy, possibly the same one, to treat with the gathering pirates. This, then, confirmed their standard operating procedure moving forward.

  Nearly forty feet long, lacking any reasonable mouth parts for the act of speaking Commercial and perpetually in a state of birthing more egg sacs to man her swarms, Aju Vog Xah Qaj wisely preferred to confer with her allies from afar.

  “I are Nemo,” Nemo, master of subject-verb agreement, returns. “I speak with one voice too.”

  Unbothered by Nemo's potentially offensive comment, the speaker offers a tri-digited gesture towards the mountain of money. “We have brought forward the currency to be divided, as requested. We do, on behalf of our hungry people, take exception with the amount of meat denied us at the Shipyards above the planet Kiesha.”

  Nemo whistles out a sigh. “Ah, yes. The meat.”

  The prodigious number of civilian survivors was a circumstance the pirates found themselves unprepared for and, by and large, was a issue mostly skirted. Good piratical wisdom, as championed by Abraham, demanded no survivors be left alive in the first place, under the Grimalti's lauded “dead men tell no tales” clause.

  However, when the Shipyards finally did surrender, the captains were quite unexpectedly faced with over two hundred helpless, unarmed Kiesha technicians, scientists and shipwrights, rather than the typical handful of standoffish devouts found aboard every commandeered ship in Bad Space.

  Commendably or otherwise, Nemo had surprisingly little stomach for such sanguinary work and asserted that any cooperating survivor remain restrained but unscathed. He argued that any survivors should of course be allowed to tell whatever tales they like, directly in conflict with Abraham's credo.

  This, of course, quickly developed into a point of contention between the buccaneers.

  “I'd like to take this opportunity,” Vobash voices with utmost politeness, “to remind everyone exactly how damaging a roomful of survivors can prove.” His gaze inevitably falls on Nemo. “The Xend's way is cleaner, distasteful though it may be to we omnivores.”

  “Like it or not,” Nemo bottom-lines, “word'll reach Valladia sooner rather than later. I mean, there's no way we pull even another of these jobs directly under their noses.” He shrugs with a certain feigned helplessness. “Jborra's outta the bag either way.”

  “Afraid I've gotta toss in with Vobash there, boss,” weighs in Greatgullet. “No reason to ratchet up the heat before it's necessary.”

  “Now,” Two-Bit preambles, shifting his posture to better address the Xendo ambassador, “how's about all them Kieshans what didn't surrender and got iced during the boarding action?” He shrugs suggestively. “Them don't qualify as meat to you?”

  There's a sizable pause, enough time for chemical signals to be secreted, travel to the colonyship, be received and counter-signals to be secreted and interpreted. The ambassador's fleshy lips part again to answer Two-Bit's question. “Carrion degrades we. We demand meat cultivated by our own mandibles.”

  “Sensitive palettes, these buggers,” Two-Bit mutters, ostensibly to Nemo, before positing another theory for the ambassador's approval. “How would you feel,” he prefaces, adopting all the mannerisms Odisseus once expected Hook to have, “about mating up with the boarding party?” He spreads his arms, in a gesture meant to seek approval from all his comrades. “Take some of the pressure off you, provide the Xend someone else to munch on. Two birds, one stone.”

  Greatgullet and Vobash shrug in unison. Nemo stops long enough on his inexplicable expedition to climb to the top of the mountains of haphazardly piled strongboxes to extend Two-Bit a corny thumbs-up. Everyone waits for another substantial pause as chemicals are exchanged and the ambassador can ratify Two-Bit's proposal. “We find this solution potentially acceptable.”

  The collected pirates, perhaps fifty faces in all, watch Nemo, some stupefied, some speechless, some unemotional, as he completes his peril-fraught ascent up the unstable slope and onto the thermosteel summit of the strongbox mountain. Panting with the pitiful amount of effort required to clamber the short distance he uselessly has, Nemo surveys those assembled all around him, a crazed prophet imparting idiocy down unto his captive flock. “How's about this shit, huh?” He sweeps his hands across all the amassed loot, undoubtedly a staggering amount of raw cash, not counting the capital likely to be made on the resale of the captured spacecraft. “We're all still in agreement to divvy the winnings into four equal shares?”

  Before anyone can respond, a new speaker Odisseus briefly mistakes for Moira replies from somewhere behind, offering an addendum. “Best-make-that-five.”

  Glancing over his shoulder in time with every other occupant of the crashed hold, the first indication to Odisseus that Moira couldn't have been the speaker was that the comment was, in fact, sung rather than spoken. The second indication, of course, was that Moira herself appears to be as surprised as anyone else, standing alert now, with Righty and Lefty trained immediately on the singer's point of origin.

  Who emerges from the ripped opening behind Moira's junk heap shouldn't truly have shocked anyone, considering the musical nature of the interruption. Nonetheless, Odisseus cannot help but be taken aback when three Trijans, each appareled in full epauletted dress uniform, step, one by one, into the main chamber, like three stage magicians materializing from a hidden compartment.

  The first surprise Trijan is unrecognizable. The second is revealed to be none other than Nemo's bald mystery contact from Xathik Major. The third is unmistakable to everyone present by both appearance, reputation and process of elimination.

  Her uniform may have once have ben considerably more resplendent than those of her two fellows, with filigreed cuffs, a bejeweled cummerbund and an impressive tangle of golden lanyards. The ravages of time and rampant misuse, however, have tattered, discolored and made threadbare her once regal attire. A bizarre-seeming firearm, stashed in an equally bizarre-seeming holster rides her hip. Her callused black hand rests upon an even less obvious weapon – a rolled-up whip with a sword's hilt and pommel – on her opposite hip.

  The item that most adequately establishes her rank and position above those two accompanying her, however, is the elaborate, feathered wig, doubtlessly once pampered and powered and now stringy, scrappy and sallow, yet still sitting defiantly upon her head.

  “I'm afraid you've already been paid your share,” Nemo calls down, without missing a beat. His hand floats to his own firearm, where it rests in his own hip holster. “That was a one-time deal.”

  “You-misunderstand-me, Captain,” sings Socorro Charybdis, Captain of The Dishonorable Discharge, disgraced deserter of the Trijan Radiant Armada and Valladian Shipping's pet privateer. “It's-not-a-hand-out-I-come-seeking. I-want-in.”

  Chapter 12

  Two-Bit Switch is immensely reliev
ed that the need for reticence, secrecy and innuendo has passed. Now, he can finally speak openly, honestly and forthrightly with his fellow crewmen about what the months and weeks to come will bring them. That being said, there was a fair amount of carping, complaining and straight-forward explanation the Lover's three nay-sayers were entitled to, a task assigned to Two-Bit by a Nemo perpetually shirking his duties.

  “Recap this for me,” requests Moira, swiping her forearm across her brow to replace its sweat with gun oil. “One million went to Greatgullet. One million went to Vobash and one million went to Aju Vog Xah Qaj.”

  His muzzle six inches beneath the surface of the hull, Odisseus rumbles some addendum containing the words “million” and “Charybdis.”

  “And one million went to Charybdis,” Moira quickly adds.

  “That's all facting, yeah,” Two-Bit answers, squatting his short distance away. When the answer doesn't seem to appease the scowling Moira, he takes it upon himself to elaborate. “Chartered piracy's perhaps the best way to vizz at it.” She opens her mouth to voice the obvious objection, but Two-Bit doesn't grant her the opening. “Except, of course, in Charybdis' case. That was hush jangle, no mistake.”

  Moira's mouth resets into a displeased line. She continues her handiwork for several more seconds in silence. “And why, exactly,” she mutters after a moment, “are we footing the bill for all this chartered piracy?”

  This time, it's Two-Bit who's preempted by, of all people, Abraham. “An investment, lass. Best think of it as an investment.” His voice warbles in eerie stereo through their three belted comms. “Ain't that right, Switch?”

  A surprised Two-Bit makes grateful eye contact with Abraham through the glass canopy of the topturret. “That's, er, right.”

  Considering the somewhat imperious location they'd chosen to set this most recent crew meeting – the roof of The Unconstant Lover – the centuries-old Grimalti elected, perhaps wisely, to attend this powwow remotely. Abraham had installed himself in the comparative comfort of the Lover's topturret and converses via a frequency dedicated to their three individual comms. Even Two-Bit had been hesitant about this particular meeting's locale as well, until Moira had consented to his borrowing her pair of graviton boots.

  He squats, magnetically anchored to the hull. With Moira and Abraham to his left and Odisseus to his right, the thirty-foot fall off the Lover's roof and onto the sandy ground slopes away behind him.

  Besides its relative isolation, the chief advantage to staging their first assault against Kiesha Shipyards were the shiny new toys. A significant portion of the non-cash plunder had materialized as functioning, Laser Corp-produced prototypes, augments and new technologies just waiting to be installed aboard the victorious pirate ships.

  Each crew had gleefully staked out a handful of trinkets their ships could be modified to include. Therefore, much of the time spent since arriving back on Talos II was devoted to beefing, buffing and bolstering the ships of the Freebooter Fleet with everything Kiesha Laser Corp had to offer.

  The Unconstant Lover was little different. Both Moira and Odisseus had veritably squeed like schoolgirls at the prospect of attaching amplification nozzles onto her beloved Antagonist and replacing the Briza's outmoded shield mainframe with a state-of-the-art interlocking projector array, respectively. Two-Bit, on the other hand, had contented himself with a state-of-the-art chocochino maker looted from one of the Shipyards multifarious break rooms.

  To this end, they convene on this precarious perch to allow Moira to screw her nozzles into place and Odisseus to yank free the decrepit old mainframe while they chat. Two-Bit had, now erroneously, hoped that these circumstances would somehow improve the pair of their huffy, still somehow offended moods.

  To the Lover's port and starboard, her sister professionals in piracy commence their own improvements, repairs and modifications. Their augments, however, were applied using methods completely alien to the humdrum elbow grease the Lover employed.

  On the starboard side, a small navy of Trijans, armed with rags and spray bottles, laboriously wipe down every expansive inch of their craft's reflective solxite panels. Each solitary speck of dust, grit and grime can reduce their bizarre spaceship's potential power that much more.

  On the port side, a swarm of Xend amuse themselves by plucking irregular sheets of teltriton from the crash, munching them into new shapes between their mandibles and vomiting up the ingested metal to create their signature slurry of shipbuilding material. This allows them to craft whole new hulls for starfighters to replace those scuttled or sacrificed in the previous fleet action. It's a handy tactic, if unpleasant to watch, to no one's shock.

  There'd been little intermingling between the various pirate crews as of yet, a situation Nemo hoped personally to change. Following the initial meeting, the Captain had immediately departed on a roundabout well-wishing campaign, visiting with crewmembers from each ship. Two-Bit imagined him making acquaintances, shaking hands, kissing babies, whatever else the dubious admiral of a pirate navy does to gain the trust and cooperation of his underlings.

  While Odisseus and Moira went to pick through the Kiesha-brand loot and Abraham oversaw the cash-counting committee, Two-Bit sought to formulate his various plans for the Fleet's next steps. The task fell to him to ensure that, when the Captain came to him for advise on how to proceed, Two-Bit could come out swinging with idea after idea.

  Odisseus resurfaces his fuzzy head from the dusty interior of the shielding mainframe and barks an ample series of syllables Two-Bit's way, not one of which he recognizes.

  “How do you mean?” he ventures hopelessly.

  With a short huff, the Ortok rephrases, only dropping one remotely comprehensible proper noun, “Valladia,” across the entire scope of his diatribe. After seven or eight seconds of this, Two-Bit raises a hand to stem the mechanic's nonsensical flow.

  “No, I seriously don't understand what he's jabbing on about,” Two-Bit pleads to his Commercial-speaking crewmates, now regretting leaving his Ortoki phrasebook on his footlocker.

  “What happens,” Moira cheerlessly translates, “when Valladia catches wise and sends somebody to squash us?”

  Two-Bit draws in a substantial breath to make his prepared argument. “First, you've gotta assume they can even bump us out here. If we warp dirty, in and out, and nobody squawks, there's a decent chance we'll make another two or three attacks without them learnin' our port of call.” He shifts his weight as much as he can, his feet clamped unerringly onto the hull. “And then, when it comes down to it, who the fuck are they gonna cast after us, anyway? With Charybdis gone,” he waves a hand in the direction of the parked Discharge, “their privies have lost their dapadan and their best blooming gantines both.”

  Odisseus poses some further question, centered around the word “Imperium.”

  “That caffles things somewhat, true.” In truth, Two-Bit had a potential solution for the eventual issue of the Imperium's inevitable involvement but it was an outside shot so outside, that he held a superstitious fear about voicing it. Instead, he retrieved the canned answer he'd given Nemo when the Captain had brought such concerns to Two-Bit's attention early on. “In that case, I jabb we just relocate, find some other boondock moon, let the blighters come snuff us out again.”

  This answer seems to pacify the Ortok as much anything might. He submerges his muzzle and forepaws into the mainframe again without another word.

  Moira squats down herself to meet Two-Bit's eye level, more to rest after fitting the second of three barrels with an amplification nozzle than to commune with her fellow crewman any. “And you're still hopeful we can even sack all ten ports? I mean, on the scale of suicide, Kiesha Shipyards is pretty near the bottom. What about Adrog? Ikoril? Valladia?”

  Two-Bit nods appreciatively, each name a challenge he'd already met and mentally bested. “Way we schemed it, any of them ten ports becomes habby, if you know what you're doing. With Kiesha, we went full frontal 'cause they couldn't possi
bly have been speccing on it. Tactics do change going forward, though.”

  “What're ye boys thinkin', then?” Abraham, ever the patient parental figure, presses gently, from within the safety of the topturret.

  Two-Bit frowns involuntarily. “That ain't been decided yet. All the Captains wanna meet on the subject. Specc on that becoming a fixture.” He converts his frown into a powerless shrug. “Freebooter Fleet's more or less outta me wanks these days, what with all these buckos tossing in now.”

  Moira can't contain her scoff. “Don't call it fucking that.”

  Odisseus gives voice to the next question, forgetting that he's still shoulders deep in the Lover's hull. After three words, he realizes his mistake, emerges and yammers something containing the phrase “stupid question” back towards Two-Bit.

  “Shoot,” Two-Bit beckons.

  Odisseus' complaint isn't especially long or difficult to comprehend, but Two-Bit silently seeks Moira's aid, as he wishes to understand the Ortok's precise wording. “Is there a reason for any of this,” she recites, flatlining Odisseus' question into a statement. “Besides Nemo throwing a tantrum.”

  Two-Bit steadies himself and his argument before answering the question. As a matter of principle, he'd specifically avoiding wasting any mental energy on the “why” portion of this Valladia debacle, as questions so existential tended to bog down the engine of nefarious cunning. As such, he'd still holstered a defense, should the fairly legitimate question be posed him.

  “Let's nobody front that we've any flash on what goes on in that fucking thinkbox of his,” Two-Bit disillusions. “When I came to him and demanded the skinny, he jabbed he wanted this schemed and not much else.” As the answer visibly fails to satisfy, he proceeds without a pausing breath. “For the time being, what I will jabb, is that I'm chuffed as fuck with the rhino we're like to rake in and once we get confirm on the precise mathematicals, I hink you will be too.”