Galactic Menace

by Timothy J Meyer

  "To review," Two-Bit Switch announces, calling forth the relevant menu on said Attaché and soliciting silence from his fellow crowded commuters, "there's more or less three stages to this scheme. Well, two-and-a-half, I suppose. Two of them stages happen simultaneously. Sorta.” He waves a hand dismissively. “I mean, you follow me and, if you don't, jog on, yeah?"

  He thrusts the Attaché high above his head, twisting his arm slightly so all can see its hovering hologram. "This is the target. This is Valladia Prime."

  "You mean that?" interjects some certainly well-meaning thunder thief a short distance away. The Borulban points his hoof politely, having claimed the window seat, by right of might. Forty pairs of eyes follow that hoof and stare through the teeny porthole at a gray blob against the green enormity of Valladia Minor.

  Even as it gradually increases in size and detail from the shrinking distance, the second most impregnable space station in all of Bad Space appears minute, tranquil and, most incorrectly, harmless.

  At the moment, therefore, the holographic representation of Valladia Prime that hovers above his Attaché screen would prove substantially more useful to them than would the view out that window.

  "First things first," Two-Bit continues, determined to drill this point into as many thick skulls as necessary, "we are here to deck that statee. Hence us not jocking our own gantines. Hence us not caring what happens to these gantines we're currently decking. You follow?" There's a murmur of too-surprised agreement, especially considering how many times they'd rehearsed this plan.

  "Soon as we touch down, shit's gonna turn to flaster sooner that you can jabb Jotor or any of her moons.” A few more tapping fingers summons forth more images from within the Attaché's seemingly limitless memory banks. “Our chief advant is gonna be that the sods won't know where we're gonna deck from because, to be facting perfectly, we don't exactly either.”

  A goldfish's memory would dwarf those of these escaped Surimiah mooks, to judge from all their shocked reactions. "Once we are decking, it's your job to get me, her and, well, maybe them, if they're rangu," he points to each member of the crew with a decisive thumb, decisive pointer finger and subsequent waffly wave toward the rest, "to Wing 6 of the defense ring with all our lollies or knockers still attached, savvy?"

  More mumbling agrees. There's a perhaps an increase in grumpiness, at the realization they may not, confusingly, be the focal point of this mission. "That done, feel free to run amok. Loot. Sack. Pillage. Have fun." This decree is greeted by substantially more enthusiasm than the previous one, enough even to inspire a ragged cheer among their number.

  "I like how you, somehow," Nemo accuses petulantly towards Moira, "became more important than me."

  Moira's unfazed. "Have you ever fired a broadside quadroturret before?"

  "Have you?"

  "What was it, a hundred credits you pity-tossed to that hack, Jargon?" Moira baits, even earning an unpleasant growl from the Iella herself, seated six shoulders over. "A hundred credits says I smear the very first ship."

  Scratching clawlessly at his orange tweedy stomach, Odisseus rumbles something that, at once, arches Moira's eyebrows and scowls Nemo's.

  "A hundred credits a ship? What am I, made of money?" the Captain objects.

  "By now, ye should be," Abraham opines after a contemplative pause.

  Nemo screws up his lower lip in evident indecisiveness. “I don't know. That's precisely the reason money doesn't interest me. It's coming out my bloomhole.”

  "What would interest you?” probes Moira, clearly eager to prove her superiority in all things sharp and shooting.

  A flick of his eyes in the direction of Moira's armpit betrays his intentions a moment before he, half-jokingly, proposes them. “Lefty.”

  “Piss off,” is Moira's actual response, but that wholly unprecedented sound that chases it, what the wide-eyed Lover's crew eventually deduce to be Moira's laugh, is responsible for skidding the conversation to a halt. “What?” a reddening Moira spits out defensively, seconds later, “that's what it sounds like!”

  "Shit's starting," mentions that window-hogging Borulban, with a vague gesture through the porthole. The forty pairs of eyes all return to the window, as best they can between each other's heads, helmets and garish alien craniums. Everyone aboard watches the shape of Valladia Prime, that gunmetal gray un-moon hanging in orbit above its green gas giant, swell and swell in trouser-wetting size.

  To call the station spherical would be an insult to planets and moons galaxywide. Bristling with ridges, trenches and comm towers, the main body of Valladia Prime is uneven, vaguely oblong and possessed of at least one hard corner.

  Officially, Prime is considered a moon because of the planet it orbits, the massive gas giant who lovingly adopted the company name in their marriage. Unofficially, Prime's status as an artificial moon is earned by its sheer, undiluted size.

  Valladia Prime is large enough to attract rocks, garbage and, in fact, smaller planetoids into its own gravitational pull. Valladia Prime boasts a population exceeding that of most colonized planets in the Midworlds. Valladia Prime is coming right towards them.

  The frontrunner of the Freebooter's facsimile fleet is just visible on the periphery of the porthole. A gutted and galvanized Hesko Planetary gunboat, this particular prize was captured above Moqu and lovingly converted into The Powder Keg.

  Following a respectful distance in the Keg's wake comes a loose collection of more captured and converted ships. The TFS lighter that rumbles softly over their heads flies among them and, indeed, each spaceship in the scrappy squadron also carries a troop-filled package. Twenty Gond-class exoejection airlocks, purchased off Mannimar, are slaved across twenty spaceship undersides.

  At their current distance, the station still remains remote enough to appear innocuous. There is the defense ring, brandishing its banks of quadroturret laser batteries, plus the loose halo of protective privateers, to challenge that appearance some.

  To further complicate matters, the cruiser their airlock was clamped to flies entirely unmanned. All two of the relevant commands – namely “fire torpedo” and “detach airlock” were imperfectly rerouted through a certain Attaché, which Two-Bit clutches like a talisman.

  Two-Bit can merely pray to all the moons that the ship's ray shields, angled double forward to protect their cargo against oncoming fire, can withstand the onslaught about to be hurled.

  First things first, however, The Powder Keg needs to clear the gauntlet.

  The more enterprising or quarrelsome of the privateers open up with their potshots. Laserfire pings against the thickest damn ray shields Odisseus could install on their Hesko bucket. A few inquisitive torpedos are launched and, when each one is thankfully crumpled by an unflinching wall of bombard shields, the cannonade escalates tenfold.

  As the true crossfire begins, The Powder Keg keep on trucking dead ahead, its window of opportunity to pull up and avoid a kamikaze run shrinking and shrinking.

  It's when the station's own weapon installations open up that Two-Bit starts muttering encouragements under his breath.

  "Come on, you dozy twat, you, come on," he whispers, as though profanity can repel laserfire or ricochet torpedos. Dozens of batteries belch four-barreled destruction, again and again, against the Keg's visibly failing defenses. Despite the best efforts of machine and man, however, despite the unholy brunt of laserfire poured onto its defenses, both The Powder Keg's ray and bombard shields hold.

  They hold precisely long enough for the ship to close within exploding distance of a certain shield projector, installed on the station's defensive ring.

  It's, spectacularly, a torpedo that's granted the dubious honor of making first contact with the Keg's brittle hull. In the millisecond following impact, Two-Bit imagines the torpedo nestling comfortably into its new home, among decks and decks stacked, floor-to-ceiling, with crates of black market doxychoraphum.

  The repellent, as is repellent's wont, ignites.

&nb
sp; The airlock's puny porthole is supplanted for several seconds with nothing but searing orange, each member of the boarding party squinting or shielding their eyes from the burning glare. When the blaze fades, The Powder Keg and a sizable portion of privateers have utterly vanished, instantaneously incinerated in the blast. Another sizable portion of Prime's privateer forces career away from the explosion, telltale orange flames chewing their teltriton hulls to tinders.

  More crucially, it seems Valladia Prime's defensive ring is largely untouched, thanks to its own humdinger of a ray shield. Peering back through the porthole, Two-Bit does spy one seemingly insignificant blemish. There's one blackened smear against the ring's white hull, where once, one might find a certain bombard shield projector.

  "Bombard edgies're offline!" Two-Bit shouts. Through his belted comm, a score of dissimilar voices all phrase the same sentiment. A second ragged cheer erupts among the boarders, though Two-Bit doesn't participate.

  He's far too busy dividing his attention as best he can between the distance tracker, dialing down on his Attaché, and the spooky sight of the surviving privateers. Those fortunate or capable enough to shrug off the repellent's effects move quickly to intercept the incoming and, unbeknownst to them, unmanned fleet.

  A veritable rainbow of disparate laserfire spans the gap between the clusters of ships. The first volley is launched sporadically from the swooping privateer swarm, flitting and freewheeling between the unresponsive ranks of the pirate-ferrying freighters. The second, more effective volley, is loosed from the station's roster of broadside batteries.

  Their tugger receives enough of a pummeling, seemingly from every direction, to rock and rollick everyone inside the airlock like dice in a gambler's cup. The sheer shield strain alone makes Two-Bit want to suddenly hang the whole plan and be peacefully exploded a few dottibles from their goal.

  Next, both station and privateer attempt disablers to paralyzing effect. At precisely the same moment, the rangefinder on Two-Bit's Attaché blinks excitedly to announce that Valladia Prime's defense ring is finally within range.

  "In gamut!" Two-Bit cries and jams his thumb through the Attaché's hologram. The weapon welded atop their ferrying cruiser launches its one ballistic torpedo and promptly dies. Disabler fire shortly fizzes out the cruiser's remaining ray shields, allowing regular laserfire to punch holes through her hull.

  All the forty passengers can do is clench their teeth, grip their genitals to ensure they don't rattle off and watch out the viewport. Two-Bit's expelled torpedo streaks towards an empty patch of the defense ring's own hull.

  The following three seconds are a busy three seconds. The above cruiser is torn into shrapnel by crossfire. The torpedo denotes, exposing a ragged hole in the station's thick teltriton shell. Two-Bit swaps his thumb from its previous position on his Attaché's "fire torpedo" function to the "detach airlock" option.

  The magnetic clamps release with a hasty hiss and a metallic clank. Behind and above them storms twisting detritus, the only remnant of their ride here. Three more taps and a middle finger slide on the Attaché fires driftjets and the airlock chases its torpedo's exhaust toward the hole it punched in the side of the defense ring. Ahead loom Prime's batteries and all around buzz her privateers.

  The few seconds spent steering are the most stressful of the entire flight but, when all is said and done, the airlock is slotted to slide snugly into the hole left agape by Two-Bit's torpedo. The sound produced – when teltriton shears against teltriton – conjures only mental images of the tube torn asunder upon arrival.

  Miraculously, though, the airlock survives the scraping, shaving first contact with the station. It also succeeds in unseating each and every one of its passengers with an abrupt forward shucking.

  All the contained criminals untangle themselves from each other and ready what weapons they could conceivably pack with them at such tight quarters. Two-Bit Switch checks the ammunition on his Tigress and keeps both ears peeled for the signature sound that would prove exiting the airlock into the defensive ring would actually be comparatively safe.

  Fortunately, he's not kept waiting long. Airlock after airlock plugs each torpedo-blasted breach with their forward halves. The sound reverberates up and down the entire length of the space station, like a choir of complaining thunder gods. Two-Bit needs to shush the chatter of the eager cutthroats a few moments, counting ten seconds from the final deafening crash.

  "Everybody decking?" he mutters into his comm's transceiver.

  He's greeted by an ensemble of "In!"s – one them each demonstrably belonging to Greatgullet, Vobash and Charybdis. Two-Bit Switch gives the signal to the Borulban nearest the window. With a hoof, he slaps the airlock's release button and everyone is rewarded by the divine hiss of fresh air.

  Countercharged by a wave of recycled oxygen, the column of boarders all stretch their legs in a grateful trample out the tube. Unshackled after four tedious hours, they scream and stomp wildly into the blinking red of Valladia Prime's yowling intruder alert.

  Attaché gripped in one hand, Tigress in the other, Two-Bit clambers out the airlock's open door on the heels of the happy horde. The triple-reprocessed air resisters fresher than an ocean breeze to his station's waifs lungs and he drinks deeply. He then surveys the scenery all around him, standing amid the milling mob of marauders.

  Whereas the main station body of Valladia Prime was doubtlessly more engendered to its visitors, tourists and citizens, the interior design of its defense ring was hard and humorless, as militaristic as anything found aboard an Endless Imperium vessel. The corridor into which they'd clumsily intruded is unpainted, unglamorous teltriton and is composed primarily of bracing beams, bulkheads and blaring alarms.

  What most disagrees with this aesthetic, however, is the string of ancient airlocks, poking their heads impolitely through the ring's hull and, even more impolitely, each spewing forth a stream of buccaneers onto its deck.

  Luckily, leakage is minimal, despite what the whirling "oxygen venting" alarms would have Two-Bit believe. Each tube is ringed with a flower of wreckage, blast-gnashed teltriton where each airlock jammed its protuberant end through. The tube's entry angles are topsy-turvy, occasionally requiring a large leap from the pirates disembarking through them.

  This section of corridor, cordoned off by sturdy bulkheads at either ends, fills with freebooters fast. Considering all the station's ardent warnings about the dwindling oxygen, lingering here overlong would hardly be wise.

  The wheezy retort of Nemo's outdated firearm blisters the ceiling and quiets the majority of the chatter to mumbles. "Greatgullet!" the Captain bellows, blasting his pistol twice more like a flare gun above the press of bodies.

  "Boss!" bellows a husky voice back and the crowd shifts like a tide. A shark slicing through the surf, a Captain Greatgullet dressed entirely for warfare and gripping an honest-to-moons sword in his fishy hand shoves a path to Nemo. The intimidating presence of both Boogers and Teeth, following on either flank, helps part the press of people.

  "Where's your guy?" Nemo presses. "Let's not dawdle."

  No sooner as the Obax juggernaut arrived than he's twisting back around with a vicious snap of all his dangly ornaments. "Thumper! Thumper!" he hollers into the crowd. He's so bellicose and so immediately respected that Nemo's previous attempts to do same with his firearm suddenly seem somewhat precious and childlike by comparison.

  "Here's-a-question," wonders a musical someone. That someone materializes moments later past Two-Bit's shoulder as Captain Charybdis. She's surrounded by a foursquare of Trijan bodyguards and balances one of her bizarre firearms across her shoulder. “Where're-the-Xend?”

  Weapon still held high, Nemo's face is suddenly washed over with confusion. "That is an excellent question," he acknowledges towards Charybdis, before turning his attention to an equally baffled Two-Bit. "Where are the Xend?"

  A quick visual census of every outlaw in sight confirms that, indeed, there's not a single Xend to be seen anyw
here among the surging ocean of boarders that clogs the corridor. With a quick count, Two-Bit realizes that, in point of fact, only thirteen of an even twenty airlocks purchased on Mannimar successfully made contact with Valladia Prime.

  By his reckoning, three hundred some budding buccaneers and practically all of Aju Vog Xah Qaj's mindless drones were most likely destroyed during the initial approach.

  "From what I saw," the smarmy voice of Vobash, accompanied by both Baziron and brushvezzer, informs as he approaches, "they overshot their mark. I suspect they've made contact with the station proper."

  "Those dritching buggers," Two-Bit curses, with all the contempt he reserved for those who willingly subverted his carefully-prepared plans. The coincidence was too high, the targeting on those airlocks too precise. At a guess, the Xendo queen must have sought some retribution for her perceived slight over the Crander business and so devised a method to install her own shock troops that much closest to the station's coffers and possibly the station's delicious residents.

  Perhaps feeling somewhat ridiculous still brandishing his pistol at arm's length above his head, Nemo drops the weapon in his holster and sneers at Vobash. "Suppose you'll find out soon as you get there, won't you?"

  "Found him, boss!" Greatgullet can be heard to scream over the mounting morass of voices.

  Two more shots explode upward from Nemo's gun, joyfully returned to its position over his head. “Lovers!” he shouts. “On me!”

  "That include me?" purrs the proximate voice of Gertie Gundeck, the latest entrant in this converging quintet of captains. Thumbing shell after shell into the chamber of her shotgun, the captain of The Dick Magnet, as ever, continues to exude that aura of her, the one that both attracts a posse of male hopefuls and flummoxes Nemo's powers of speech.

  "Uh, no, actually," he stammers. "Soon as we're finished with Thumper, you're taking him," he searches Two-Bit imploringly, "which way?"