Galactic Menace

by Timothy J Meyer

  Moira punctuates each word between twists of the final nozzle. “Any ballpark on that?”

  Intentionally avoiding eye contact with Abraham, Two-Bit fakes a shrug. “Our original estie for Kiesha, not counting whatever gantines Vobash could turn over and the market value of all the mods and augments you lot's helped yourselves to, was 10 mil.”

  A ripple of impression passes through the crew of The Unconstant Lover, enough to cause both Moira and Odisseus to simultaneously cease their work and glance up to read Two-Bit's expression. Mental arithmetic colors both their faces, dividing by four, subtracting a third, dividing into five equal shares and arriving at approximately 350 thousand a piece. A not inconsiderable sum, but one approximately half of what they stood to make from the Gallwegian bank heist.

  A mouth, of course Moira's, is opened to protest, but the crackly voice that interrupts her through the comm couldn't possibly come a moment too soon.

  “Count's off by some, boyo,” Abraham supplies, exactly as Two-Bit anticipated he would. “Me and the boyos been at it all morning – total comes clockin' in near 14 mil, actually.”

  “And that don't count gantines yet to be sold, augments yet to be sold and them seventy gantines we left at the Shipyards,” Two-Bit's quick to capitalize on their collective shock. “Ten more of these, each one bigger and beedier than Kiesha? Mates, we play our faces right here, we stand to become billionaires offa this.” He points a forefinger directly at Moira. “And you was jabbing about retirement from the measly Gallow take.”

  No objection is mustered. In the face of all this endless, cascading cash, neither of the ship's two strongest skeptics can find cause to disparage or discourage. No one present can claim that, should the ports continue to shell out these kind of winnings, the reward wouldn't justify the risk. At the same time, Two-Bit was also saliently aware that, at the first whiff of the scheme failing to result in paydays at least this profitable, they'd immediately vote to tuck tail and run with whatever booty they'd managed to score. He held few illusions these pirates were anything but pragmatic.

  “Mind giving her a trial for me?” Moira requests towards her belted comm as she stands, the third and final amplifier now attached to her Antagonist's corresponding barrel.

  On cue, both Odisseus and Two-Bit shuffle back, the former his curved claws fully extended and the latter with the halting, clamping gait the graviton boots give. Within his plastolieum bubble, Abraham suddenly putters about self-consciously with the controls. In that moment, he's just someone's grandfather, fumbling with the ThumbSmash console he's been handed.

  “Erm,” he stammers, peering all around for hidden controls and eventually reaching below the bucket seat, as though to find some hidden clasp.

  “No, you warty asshole, don't you dare move my fucking–”

  Abraham scoots the topturret's seat back, inch by inch. The ratcheting motion seems to simultaneously satisfy him and sour Moira with inverse proportionality. Eventually, the seat's perfectly positioned to accommodate both his prodigious girth and the turret's handle bars.

  With an electrical whine, the turret pivots and, with a corresponding clicking noise, the Antagonist pivots with it. Abraham's expression is redolent with sudden power.

  “Anything ye'd like to see annihilated?”

  Moira shrugs and Odisseus abstains. Two-Bit frowns and points high, towards the looming shipwreck. “That viewport? Second from the top?”

  This close to the Antagonist, the ditrogen shriek that explodes from the tripartite lips of the minigun nearly deafens Two-Bit before his too-slow hands can reach his ears. For a strabismic old scallywag, Abraham could claim competent marksmanship, scoring a hit scant feet from a target six hundred some yards away.

  It's the Antagonist that overshoots, utterly mowing through the mottled metal. Nothing but a smoking crater that punches unevenly through two layers of the crashed cruiser's hull is left to show.

  Through their comms, Abraham whistles once, softly.

  Moira's complaint catches in her throat. “I'm assuming you–”

  “Whazzat?” Abraham croaks. The navigator's chair screeches around to reveal the sailing master, so demonstrably besotted that the very motion of spinning about to face her sloshes alcohol over the lip of his tankard and causes him to literally hiccup.

  Momentarily speechless, Moira invests several seconds to composing her words. “Of all the people I expect to find drunk in the helm.” Abraham deems the comment unworthy of reply and doesn't but blink at her. She stands in the open doorway with an equally vacant expression. “Where is he?”

  His bumpy brow furrows. “Well, he's here!” he exclaims with gusto, immediately giving way to suspicion. “Am I not he?”

  Moira's totally unaccustomed to managing this level of stupidity this early in the morning. “Nemo,” she cuts to the chase. “The Captain.” No recognition appears on the Grimalti's hoary features. “Long coat, dumb face, stupid head?”

  His deepened scowl completely inverts, seemingly at mention of Nemo's stupid head, into an expression of delight and understanding. “Nemo! The Captain! Why did ye not say! He's–” His enthusiasm abuts against confusion at the realization that, in fact, the helmsman's seat is empty. “Well, he ain't here, at present,” he helpfully informs Moira. “Care to leave a message?”

  She plants a jackboot fully outside the helm, with every intention to decamp off elsewhere to seek Nemo and to abandon Abraham to his booze and his inane babbling. “You and I aren't on speaking terms. Not after that chair incident.”

  “She sure looked eighteen to these old eyes, officer!”

  Moira halts her exit and casts one bemused glance back over her shoulder.

  The awe-inspiring view of The Unconstant Lover plunging at ungodly speed along the Talos–Hazro route – constellations and nebulae whizzing past faster than the mind could comprehend – is belittled somewhat by the sight of the hammered Grimalti buccaneer. He's been made utterly legless with liquor and sways with the shudders of the ship, as though he wasn't himself the proverbial forefather of space travel sea legs.

  Certainly an intoxicated Abraham was an act with plenty of precedent. No master moonshiner of his caliber could concurrently claim teetotalism. Rarely could Moira recall, however, seeing Abraham truly bladdered, plastered, sloshed or whichever of the uncounted euphemisms was most appropriate for this level of supreme drunkenness.

  More disconcerting, of course, than the anomaly of the situation was, in fact, its timing. In a relatively short span of hours, the Grimalti's superlative skills as a dirty warp navigator would be called upon to withdraw the Lover from her faster-than-light shell and deposit her within Hazro airspace. Not to cast aspersions on his unrivaled prowess in the field of warp engineering, but Moira would be mightily surprised if a cask's entire contents wouldn't, perhaps, inhibit his abilities somewhat.

  Hazro became their destination on the heels of a maddening new scheme Two-Bit Switch had cooked up, which would see this “Freebooter Fleet” supplied with a fresh supply of boarders. Let it be known how horrified Moira was to discover herself internalizing Two-Bit's pet name for the pirate armada, but no other option yet presented itself.

  “Dare I ask?” she ventures to Abraham, against her own better judgment. “About any of this?”

  “It's a celebration, missy!” Abraham expectorates merrily. “Do I not look celebratory?” He waves a warty hand across to the shield operating station, where he'd clumsily propped one of his impromptu kegs into the adjoining seat. “Please, please, avail yerself.”

  Moira spies an opportunity, this once, to satisfy her growing curiosity about what, precisely, Abraham's homemade, engine-brewed moonshine would necessarily taste like. She busies herself with selecting one not especially besmirched cup among the diaspora of neglected dishware Nemo scattered across the helm. She wipes out what dust and sediment had accumulated with the cloth of her sleeve, before, as he'd requested, availing herself of his moonshine. “What's the occasion? Your s
even-hundredth birthday?”

  For a joke any sober person would consider fairly corny, Abraham seems particularly tickled by this, an occurrence Moira's inclined to blame on something other than his advanced inebriation. “Seven hundred,” he titters to himself, as though supremely amused. “Nah, nah,” he waves the joke away, struggling to contain his giggles, “it's a, er, a changing of the guard. A funeral. A wake! Out with the new, in with the old!”

  Moira stares into the stygian blackness of her cup. “Those were all words but somehow I didn't understand any of them.”

  Abraham spoils Moira with the sort of expression one might an uncomprehending child. “The lad, missy. The Cap'n.” He spreads his arms wide again, splashing more ale onto the floor panels. “He's done it. He's doing it. Can't ye see?” Abraham straightens his posture, as though swollen with pride. “There ain't any colors in this galaxy I'd rather be servin' under than these, now, at this time.”

  Moira's cup doesn't come near her mouth before she's forced to make her stipulation. “Listen. This is a point that seems somewhat lost on you crowd of self-congratulators.” She gestures forcefully forward with the cup, careful not to contribute more spilled alcohol to the floor's spread of stains. “We sacked one port. We sacked one port because they didn't see us coming. There's nine more to go and that's a trick which ain't gonna work twice.”

  Clarity cracks through suddenly onto Abraham's face. “They'll come. Ye'll see.” Before Moira can question further, his boozy mood returns. “Tides're a-changin' now, missy.” He leans forward conspiratorially, but continues to speak in his full throated voice. “Why ye think I joined up with this crew of yers inna first place?”

  “Wasn't my crew then, to be technical,” Moira echoes into her cup, before the sudden salty snap of Abraham's rotgut touches her tongue, “but enlighten me.”

  “Story time,” Abraham grunts and he scoots still further forward in his chair. Soon, Moira catches a whiff of his brewery breath in each exhale and she keeps expecting the drunk codger to fall on his geriatric ass with every gesture.

  “T'ain't no secret me best buccaneer days be behind me. Seven hundred years, as ye say, and all that.” He shrugs mildly and more moonshine drips between his fingers. “Time for one to retire, find a nice distillery someplace, where I can peddle me poison, and look back on a career well-spent, aye? And see,” he continues without pause, “had me path not crossed with Nemo's, that's where I'd be still today, boiling khepu root for cash and sweatin' out the occasional summer in the Coggi County prison hole.”

  At various points during this tipsy recounting could Moira have interrupted, offered contradiction or simply disparagement. Something truthful, some veneer of honesty beneath the Grimalti's slurred speech and stuttering manner, prevents her, though. For perhaps the very first time, Moira Quicksilver finds herself strangely curious about the inner workings of Abraham Bonaventure's brain.

  “Times were different, I was his age. Aye, the Imperium held their sway in mucha what we call Bad Space today, and we unlawful types were pushed somewhat to the brink, 'strue.” He taps the wrinkled skin beneath his sightless gray eye knowingly. “To the naked eye, Ring today looks rougher, wilder – a pirate's paradise, anyone would say – and yet,” he frowns dramatically, a grandfather indulging his grandchildren with a bedtime story, “what do we have nowadays?”

  He extends the forefinger of his free hand. “Valladia, the Gitter Consortium and the rest – megacorps with twice the influence, thrice the capital and none of the Imperium's moral high ground to exploit.” He extends the following middle finger. “The Scar, Xo, bloom, even Ott – these kingpins who buy up pirates and bounty hunters both, a dime a dozen, and make them fight for their entertainment.” His thumb extends from the side of his fist. “Charybdis and her ilk – pirates happy to prey on other pirates, they're so eager to take coin from the corps or the kingpins or the bloody Imperium itself.”

  He sighs wistfully and Moira catches a lungful of his fetid breath. “Life were simpler in the days of yore is the old saw, missy, but I'll be moons-damned if it weren't true. Ye served yer captain, yer captain served nobody and ye both tried to pillage and plunder as much as ye could afore the Imperium caught ye and threw yer bloomholes in prison. That's all.” His cockeyed gaze sinks into the depths of his clasped ale-jack. “T'were a simple formula, I'll admit, ye know, them cops and us robbers, but, with everything this bad old galaxy's seen these days, moons if I don't hanker for them old ways.”

  He meets Moira's eyes, growing progressively more sober with each word uttered. “There's the reason I ain't in charge of a Vhaseen bootlegging outfit right now. Something 'bout Nemo reminded me of the days of yore and I been waitin' near two years for that hunch to bear me fruit.” The next question comes without warning or preamble. "You?"

  Moira squints. "Me?"

  His tone is so ameliorated from his previous drunken behavior that Moira needs to spend an extra moment in processing. "Is there a reason ye ain't chasin' chump change bounty-heads across Saurian Space still?"

  The charcoal dregs at her cup's bottom become captivating. "Not something I try to question too much, actually."

  "Oh, I doubt that very much," he coos knowingly. He quirks an eyebrow towards the chair occupied by his darkwood cask. "Ye can move that keg. She won't mind."

  "Much as I'd love to." Moira shrugs one shoulder and collects herself to leave. "No idea where he might be?"

  "Suit yerself," Abraham consents without protest, before attempting to quaff deeply from an empty tankard. Raising the ale-jack to his one good eye for proper inspection, he scowls with profound confusion. "Ye might try the galley?"

  "My, uh, compliments?" She sloshes her own remnants, plants the cup back onto the counter and strides toward the doorway, stopping her finger an inch from the door release button. "You sure you're okay to disengage warp like this?"

  Tweaking the keg's tap open, Abraham's reply comes with all the carelessness she would expect from their Captain. "I engaged warp like this, didn't I?"

  Unable or unwilling to present any proper objection, Moira takes her leave, jackboots down the helm's six steps and the abovedecks corridor.

  Abraham's actual question, stripped of the raw shock value of its "from the mouths of drunkards" premise, truthfully hadn't rattled her as much as she might've let on. It was a matter she'd committed some serious hindsight to. When she'd produced no sensible results from all her speculation, though, she'd dismissed the thoughts as idle musing.

  As she clomps from companionway to cargo hold and cargo hold to mess, however, the matter refuses to be banished from her thoughts. She's confronted now with the uncomfortable possibility that a degree of sentimentality may factor somewhat into her reasons for, in light of all the clear and present danger there associated, remaining aboard The Unconstant Lover all these years.

  "Bounty's back up," Moira announces at first sight of Nemo, seated across from Two-Bit, at the crew's personal table. "2.25 million dead from Xo's puppet corp BackDrift whatever on Belena, 250 thou dead or alive from GalaxCom Interstellar Media, plus Valladia's triangulated faster than we thought and is pitching in 500 thou alive as well." The lack of response, verbal or physical, she attributes to poor mathematics. "3 million even, before you ask, but there's no way anyone could oh by all the fucking moons–"

  "What's that" is perhaps what Nemo meant to reply with. The bottle of Gitterswitch Gin planted between his teeth muffles his speech into mere grunts. Moira face-palms so forcefully, she nearly spears her thumb through her eye socket.

  "You thirsty?" Nemo offers slurringly after surfacing long enough to swallow. He extends her the bottle half-empty, with what he imagines to be a winning smile.

  Two-Bit's resolve has never, sitting silent and sullen to Nemo's right, been weaker. This whole idiotic venture was planned almost entirely by elbow nudges, innuendo and behind closed doors. It now faces its most serious threat in the form of its sunshine survivability.

  The warp
to and from Hazro he'd rode on the euphoric high of concrete, confirmable success. His take from the Shipyards sack weighted heavy in his pockets. Nemo's and paradoxically Abraham's spirits were high, congratulatory even. The sheer number of the Surimiah's condemned who, at the promise of murder, money and mayhem, cheerfully shrugged and signed on the dotted, staggered him. All these factors contributed to fill Two-Bit with a feeling of both an outlaw's giddy elation at "getting away" and an eagerness to cement that success with another profitable plundering.

  Here, however, he was surrounded by bickering buccaneers, each asserting their superiority until the proper nouns used lose meaning and their faces turn blue. The harsh reality of attempting to herd five pirate captains onto one path nearly knocks all the misbehaving wind out of Two-Bit.

  "I have a solution," he mutters, unheard, unnoticed and twisting his multe bracelet back and forth on his wrist.

  "Predictability," expounds Captain Vobash in his polite tenor, "is what kills us. Absolutely." The Triomman reclines, arm draped casually over the chair's back, that furred serpent of his gnawing voraciously at some morsel he clutches in his fingers. "The very minute Valladia can predict our actions is the minute they hammer us with the full might of the Imperial Interstellar Navy." He sniffs once, utterly unperturbed by the conflict encircling him. "Ohostoi, as a second target, is right out."

  "Predictability's also gonna breed a pattern, though," Nemo argues. He was no less guilty than any of the other captains, despite his proximity, of ignoring Two-Bit's suggestions. "Once a pattern's established, breaking it's all the fun."

  "Fun is not a chemical we recognize. We would attack the plumpest targets, those targets least defended," monotones the standing Xendo speaker. Captain Aju Vog Xah Qaj's ambassador utterly neglected the chair it was allotted, seemingly out of confusion towards its intended purpose. "To any action that would forearm those targets we cannot give our consent."