Galactic Menace

by Timothy J Meyer

  "Hold rigidity," she presses to Qalhoon. "I give you the signal, though, you leave both them cunts twistin' in the wind. Peachy?" Before either of the Moraj's mouths can object or request explanation, she tosses a separate order towards the helm. "Igg, full reverse."

  Both members of her bemused crew uncomprehendingly obey their orders. The two-pronged effect on The Dick Magnet is, at once, profound and terrible. At the graviton controls, Qalhoon fights tooth-and-nail to retain their two-fisted hold on both The Dog Days and The Cry Uncle. At the helm, Igg gooses the Magnet's modest engine into a backwards crawl, producing an unfriendly metallic squeal of complaining shipborne girders but inspiring, of course, no budge from either captured pirate ship.

  "This ain't helping rigidity any! We–"

  "Swear to the moons, Tiff, I hear the word 'rigidity' outta either of those mouths one more time, I will boot your ass out the airlock myself," Gertie assures her crewman. "Don't be shy, Igg," she coos with an immediate shift in tone. "Give us some distance."

  With some reluctance, Igg backpedals the engine that much further. The ambush becomes smaller and smaller through the viewport with each successive inch the Magnet manages to negotiate backward. All the while, she maintains her increasingly tenuous hold on both her compatriots. The ship voices her own protest, the poor creature, with a disconcerting rattle and a piercing whine that emanates from beneath the floors and within the walls.

  The gravitational tension separating the three ships from each other continues to coil and coil for several more seconds. Reenforced by his console's flashing lights and persistent bleating, Typhoon Qalhoon pleads for reprieve.

  "Another ten seconds of this and, uh," stammers one mouth, doubtlessly crippled by the absence of the word “rigidity” from his vocabulary, while the second mouth illustrates the point cogently enough, merely by rattling numbers off. "6% and 11%! 3% and 9%!"

  "Hope you boys remember your lunches fondly," Gertie mentions helpfully. "Tiff, drop 'em. Igg, full throttle forward.”

  Despite the pervasive “surrounded by idiots” vibe Gertie enjoyed cultivating among her crew, both Igg and Qalhoon operate with startling synchronicity. The graviton bank ceases its complaining and the proverbial pedal hits the proverbial metal at precisely the same moment.

  The Dick Magnet is a stone launched from some brat's slingshot, both graviton locks the elastic rubber band responsible. She catapults forward with a velocity comets would consider envious.

  Both The Dog Days and The Cry Uncle almost instantaneously kiss the face of the projector pad summoning them, but The Dick Magnet sails gloriously past. Either pad's gravitational influence paws greedily against either side of Gertie's ship as she passes, but both are ultimately too slow to impede Gertie's propulsive progress any.

  With a convulsive shudder as though shaking off the willies, The Dick Magnet clears both pads and presents itself before the privateer flotilla awaiting her on the opposite side.

  All these unfired homing cluster torpedos burn a hole in her magazine. Gertie wheels New Husband to and fro, sweeping her viewfinder across the backside of both projector pads. As the wedge of privateers fire their turbines and close to engagement distance, a grateful Gertie squeezes her turret's trigger.

  Her next torpedo explodes a mere dottible from the bow of Valladia's vanguard. The missile’s remnants veer in every direction away from the foremost privateer, each one zeroing onto the target Gertie designated for them.

  A chorus of explosions thunders off the helpless backsides of both projector pads. The atmosphere of intangible throbbing that lately filled Crander's airspace abruptly stops. The newly-liberated Dog Days and Cry Uncle manage to remove the thumbs from between their butt cheeks and saunter around either side of the smoking projection pads to form up on The Dick Magnet's wings. Gertie Gundeck slots another cluster-torpedo into New Husband's chamber and once again finds herself unable to tear her eyes from the Sunrise.

  Her mind distractedly wanders to the posh Imperium nobility undoubtedly watching the whole spectacle unfold from the opulent safety of the observation deck. She imagines them fretting over both their ruined Outer Ring vacations, their soon-to-be-pilfered plunder and the canisters of supercharged ditrogen that were, inevitably, about to decorate the inside of their skulls.

  Moira should've guessed. She presses the side of her head heavily onto the one hand nearest Nemo, careful to cover the ear beneath, but there was no conceivable means to sit with both ears naturalistically covered. She should've guessed. Luckily for her, the chamber's occupants, to a pirate, were far too distracted by this most audacious newcomer seated directly to Nemo's right to pay much heed to sour old Moira Quicksilver. She still should've guessed, however, that the first day she'd gamble on earrings, the first pair she'd bothered to wear since charm school, Gertie would arrive bedecked in more Inner Sector regalia than Moira's mother even owned, the trollop.

  Gemstones glisten on each ringed finger. A wrist-to-elbow carpet of bracelets click together across both forewarns. A veritable yoke of lockets, lavalieres and pearls dangle distractingly onto her cleavage. Entire constellations of earrings droop from each of her ears. No less than three individual tiaras can be seen, tangled amongst her doxy blonde locks.

  An entire pleasure liner's worth of baubles adorn Captain Gertie Gundeck absurdly, the very visible price of her loyalty. Dressing in such a fashion was doubtlessly a less-than-subtle attempt to feed Nemo crow for the trap he'd willingly sent her to spring but, as far as Moira knew, Nemo possessed no such capacity for shame.

  Despite her mother being a most vocal proponent of costume jewelry, Moira's own earrings were nothing to write home about. A humble pair of lobe studs she'd pulled from a bounty-head corpse she'd made in the halcyon days before Nemo, they'd been in Moira's possession for nearly half a decade and a stable amongst the tin cigarette carton's worth of mementos she bothered to collect.

  The confluence of events which brought her to wear them today of all days was pure chance. She'd no prior knowledge the Council of Captains would convene this afternoon, nor that Nemo would tap her for muscle duty, nor that he'd also tap Gertie for precisely the same honor, ostensibly as some manner of peace offering.

  "Ain't kosher with me, boss," bemoans Greatgullet, displaying his well-documented restlessness by, once again, pacing anxiously back and forth across the chamber. "Ain't at all."

  "Which I'm beginning to appreciate, yes," Nemo grants with enough masked irritation to evade Greatgullet's notice. "Can we all perhaps agree about how I've acted out of turn and about how that's something I won't be doing again and about how I'm a very sorry boy?"

  "We can lend agreement to your having committed a transgression," the Xendo ambassador consents from its own customary position as the spearhead of its brigade of motionless drones. "What we cannot lend agreement to is how this one has chosen to distribute the plunder."

  Nemo thumbs to his right. "This one? Ask her.”

  Gertie lattices her glittering fingers together beneficently. "What seems to the trouble, boys?"

  The unanticipated entrance of Gertie Gundeck and, to a lesser extent, all the other second-string pirates, represented the newest and most startling hurdle placed before the fledging Freebooter Fleet. Nemo's, and doubtlessly Two-Bit's, brilliant notion to pitch Gertie at the problem of the ambush unquestionably lying in wait around the Sunrise Over Criia, was met with aggravation and distrust amongst the remaining four members of the Council of Captains. This distrust and aggravation was heightened when they each awoke to discover The Dick Magnet, The Cry Uncle and The Dog Days dragging their winnings back to Talos II and Gertie Gundeck, prancing about the crash site like the pretty, pretty princess she so painfully thought she was.

  Now, of course, all the other Captains needed to sit Nemo, the Disobedient Wunderkind and his slutty girlfriend down and have a disapproving chat about teamwork, cooperation and not letting bullying skirts keep all the booty for themselves.

  The council chamber,
the lopsided cargo bay of the colossal crashed cruiser, had undergone gradual but substantial renovations since their initial meeting beneath its shattered roof. Four sacks into ten, it now resembled some unlikely combination of banquet hall and war room. The chamber's rows upon rows of mismatched tables could comfortably seat seven hundred, including the five Captains and their entourages upon an impromptu dais of Xendo-mended scrap metal.

  Tactical equipment also accrues with each successful sack. These prizes range in sophistication from a privateer-pilfered strategic imager installed in the center of the Captain's Table to a shoddily-rendered "map" of the Shipping Line displayed on the nearest wall via the cherished medium of spray-paint.

  By the time all ten ports are smoldering ruins, Moira wonders if they'll be seated amid a hub of plundered technology capable of plotting an armed robbery against any target in the known galaxy.

  "The trouble, Captain," Vobash enunciates the offending word with enough disdain he visibly spits, "is that you've undermined the entire economy of this alliance." Whether or not they've some history, Moira isn't certain, but the Triomman certainly appears to be unchaining some vitriol she's never observed in his typically genteel comportment. "The old philosophy of 'I stole it, it's mine' doesn't play here. We've agreed to divide all winnings equally amongst any who participate."

  "Well, you've buried your own chances, then," Gertie snorts with amused derision. "Weren't any of your ships above Crander, were there, so I don't see as how anybody but myself, Captain Wenkya and Captain Lockjaw's any claim to the cash."

  "Can't conjure much argument with that," Greatgullet intones. His bulbous eyes flick unsubtly toward his outspoken rival with the brushvezzer.

  Vobash is notoriously unflappable. "How soon our successes at Moqu and Ohostoi both evaporate." He twists his torso to face the pacing Obax, causing his hidden familiar to scurry to a more comfortable position. "These were all well-accepted protocols when we originally established them around that first pile of cash."

  "You-skinflints," chortles Charybdis in an uncomfortably musical fashion. "Not-so-long-ago, you-were-feeding-me-her-excuse-to-keep-my-hands-from-your-Shipyards-haul." She buries both selfsame hands in the pockets of her commodore's jacket. "I-say, she-stole-it, so-it's-hers," she croons, an ironic musical reprise of Vobash's earlier point.

  "Tell you what." Gertie reclines fully, delicately planting one boot after another onto the tabletop. "You induct me into your little sewing circle or whatever the fuck and I'll surrender the loot to be democratically split." She peers around her shapely boots to consider Vobash. "What say you?"

  To no one's shock, her offer somehow isn't immediately ratified.

  "Well..." Nemo is thoughtful enough to contribute, but evidently lacks any further eloquence.

  "Well?"

  "If we did that," Vobash explains with obvious relish, "afraid the mathematics simply wouldn't compute."

  Gertie cranes forty-five degrees towards Nemo with a coruscation of tinkly jewelry. "What's he implying?"

  "An odd number of Captains must be maintained," the ambassador provides humorlessly, "in order to avoid stalemate."

  Greatgullet shrugs his expansive shoulders, creating a ruckus with his own hanging ornaments to rival even Gertie's own. "Five's a more convenient number than six, I s'pose."

  "Sorry you feel that way, gents." Gertie's countenance betrays no disappointment or frustration. Moira's a skilled enough judge of character, though, to detect plenty behind her level expression. "Guess we'll be keeping all the proceeds, then." She smiles thinly. "Them's the breaks, I'm afraid."

  Vobash's calm somehow reads as dangerous. "Are they?"

  "We are not agreed," rejoins Aju Vog Xah Qaj's ambassador in a chilling monotone.

  The appearance of Gertie's shotgun, balancing its shorn barrel against the table top and leveling said barrel directly toward Vobash, serves, more or less, as Gertie's reply.

  For potentially the first time, an inevitable bristling of firearms explodes amongst the pirates. Mostly, they're drawn by retainers and bodyguards, while the Captains tend to remain tensely above-it-all.

  Moira curses herself inwardly for a vain tart fretting over her jewelry. She sacrifices the shielding hand upon her earlobe to materialize Lefty and align its snub towards Vobash's own first mate, that eerie Baziron bloodsucker. For all Moira's poor reflexes, it's still a full second before vo Veaff can return the favor.

  The ten-member Talosian standoff, its occurrence here so incredibly appropriate the irony almost staggers Moira, last another few seconds. Nemo is visibly undeterred by the sheer amount of firepower aimed directly at him and glances aside to Moira. He scowls with obvious confusion. “Something's on your ear.”

  Divine intervention arrives precisely on time as the nearest entrance's wire mesh curtain separates with a whoosh and, of all people, Two-Bit Switch appears. He's panting bodily and grasping that ever-present Attaché of his.

  "They're here," he declares breathlessly and directly at Nemo. After collecting some small percentage of his wind, he's the good grace to glance around somewhat and notice the hordes of hoodlums pointing very dangerous firearms at each other. Not to be excluded, he tugs loose his Tigress and shops around amongst Vobash's, Charybdis' and Greatgullet's thuggery, attempting to decide who best deserves his pointed weapon.

  "Finally," Nemo grouses, scooting his chair some distance away and rising completely to his feet. Heedless of the weapons trained in his general direction, he grubs about inside his duster pockets and produces an alarmingly fat bundle of currency, which he pitches sideways towards Two-Bit. "Tip Hook generously; he's been such a dear."

  Scraping up the bundle from the edge of the table where it landed, Two-Bit edges toward the door, Tigress still trained. He offers Nemo a perfunctory "Aye aye, Cap'n," and disappears, with a complimentary whoosh to his previous one, through the mesh curtain.

  "Hook?" hums Charybdis.

  "Care to enlighten us, Captain?" Vobash, his brushvezzer poking an inquisitive nose through the shadow of his sleeve, requests with gallons of false charm.

  With the snubs of so many revolvers, semi-automatics and shotguns following his every move, Nemo approaches the hastily painted diagram upon the back wall behind him. His hand clasped firmly behind his back, he's a military commander in some Imperial propagandist holofilm detailing the Expansionist Conflicts. "Anybody given any thought to the next target? No?"

  Greatgullet shrugs his ample shoulders. "Kezz'd surprise somebody."

  "Following Crander," Vobash stipulates poisonously, "Yime would be where I'd place my money."

  It's the refrain that Charybdis sings, from her position far to his immediate left, that catches Nemo's attention. "There's-always-Valladia."

  His thunder thusly stolen, Nemo's repetition of Charybdis' suggestion is missing some of its customary mischief. "There's always Valladia."

  Moira smirks inwardly to watch the Council of Captains, all fixtures of such supposed importance, react with precisely the same shock, confusion and indignation the crew of The Unconstant Lover once might have. They, Moira reflects, disparaged Nemo before it was cool.

  That being said, Valladia Prime next, the artificial moon the shipping tycoons employed as their central nerve center, was perhaps looking the gift horse a little too closely in the mouth, a point Nemo's colleagues on the Council are eager to express to him.

  "Boss," Greatgullet mutters, "you couldn't fucking impregnate that whore with a hundred ships, much less our, what thirty some?"

  "Twenty-seven," Vobash provides precisely.

  "We find this course highly inadvisable," the Xendo ambassador concurs, though devoid of any trace of judgment, censure or really any other recognizable emotion.

  "Valladia Prime," the Triomman politely disillusions, "is equipped with the absolute best defensive weaponry practically infinite money can buy. I think," he continues unabated, "you will perhaps need to content yourself with the uncomfortable fact that only nine of the S
hipping Line's ten ports are going to end up sacked."

  "An understandable assumption," Nemo grants, parroting Vobash's calm demeanor to a tee. "It, of course, follows another understandable assumption: that Valladia Prime's supposedly godlike turret defense system will shoot us to smithereens before we've even dropped warp. But then," the Captain adds, sidestepping his previously peaceable tone to adopt the true assholery he'd become so famous for, "my being a clever bastard, I've thought of something you haven't."

  Nemo stares expectantly at Vobash for an oppressively long moment. The Loose Cannon's captain eventually tires of the suspense and is forced to bite. “What's that?”

  The smile that sidekicks Nemo's statement, smug, smarmy and superior, could and should be the exact image depicted above his casket during his upcoming funeral. "They're going to be far too busy shooting at themselves."

  Chapter 15

  Two-Bit Switch couldn't possibly be claustrophobic. The vast majority of his childhood and adult life combined was spent adrift, from space station to spaceship and back to space station again. Confined steel spaces, therefore, contain no terror for Two-Bit, even those hurtling at uncomfortable speeds through open space.

  That being said, four hours stuffed into a forty-foot exoejection airlock, ass-to-elbows-to-eyestalks with forty sweaty hooligans of as many unhygienic species, was threatening to tarnish his twenty-six-year-tempered record of not vomiting as a direct result of space travel.

  This close to the target, dwindled conversation between the crews of both Unconstant Lover and Low-Hanging Fruit has rekindled. The cruising space-tube is suddenly filled, floor to ceiling, with the excited chatter of sword-swinging, gun-toting murderers, so many eager little tykes, riding the driftbus to their first day of kindergarten.

  The Lover's crew cluster together, brandishing their seniority in order to stake out a square of space of their own seating. As the architect behind this week's insane plan, Two-Bit was able to stake a further claim even amongst his peers. After all, he wields the mighty Attaché, the very tool by which all these aforementioned murderers and cutthroats were to gain access to those they'd murder and cut the throats of.