Galactic Menace

by Timothy J Meyer

  "That way," Two-Bit provides, pointing down the corridor's opposite direction.

  "Aw, shucks," Gertie pouts, as though surprised by the stages of this fairly well-rehearsed plan. "Guess I'll see you strangers on the other side.” She leers at Nemo, nods at Two-Bit and turns her attention back toward her massing throngs of devotees. "Here that, boys?" she barks in a sudden commander's voice. "First man to the turret banks gets to fuck me senseless!"

  There's a stampede on the heels of Gertie's decree, thirty blue-balled brigands elbowing each other to reach the apart bulkhead all the faster. Seconds later, there's nothing but empty corridor where once Gertie's entire boarding party stood.

  Nemo scowls incredulously at her. "Really?"

  Gertie scoffs derisively. "No."

  With that, she's gone, sashaying after her slavering crew of boy toys, to the smirking, eye-rolling and huffing reactions of those she departs from.

  The combined crews of Lover, Cannon and Discharge rack up behind him on their walk to Greatgullet at the opposite end of the hall. On the way, the Captain cranes aside to Two-Bit. “Walk me through this again?”

  Recalling the station's schematics on his Attaché, he presents the device before Nemo as visual aid to his plan. "Gertie and her brunos are wending for this turret bank here, yeah? Or, will be, once Thumper clears the way for us both." With a stretch of his fingers, Two-Bit enhances the relevant section of map. "After that, Greatgullet, Vobash and Charybdis hoof it up the spaceway here." He highlights the thick arm connecting this stretch of the defensive ring to the main body of Valladia Prime. "There, I guess they mate up with them Xendo motherbloomers and everybody starts blagging the statee proper."

  "While we're," Nemo supplies uncertainly, "knocking out the other turret bank?"

  "Righto." Two-Bit nods, swapping the hologram's focus from spaceway to gundeck. "Here. Peachy?"

  "Peachy," Nemo returns with a strangely companionable chuck to the shoulder. "What's this, five of ten?" he calculates. "Halfway there."

  "Halfway there," Two-Bit repeats, an unexpected stab of pride striking his center.

  The curtain of five hundred some reavers parts completely before them. Nemo and his ever-expanding entourage meet Captain Greatgullet and his own before the impassable might of the station's sealed bulkhead doors. "Brought my guy," Greatgullet offers, shoving Thumper forward like a traded skooshball card.

  The Rule's Eaymo grenadier is easily spotted by his namesake – the clunky, heavily-modified pseudo-bazooka he clutches in his pressurized gloves. Even at a passing glance, the weapon's tube and chamber clearly are significantly widened to accommodate the firing of his strange projectiles – soup cans.

  Their labels worn away by time, they clatter and slosh about on the belt of his hermetically-sealed suit. From the waist down, Thumper resembles some manner of public park vagabond, as though he might become somewhat peckish at any moment and need to sit down for a slurp.

  Greatgullet scans the faces surrounding Nemo. “Brought yours?”

  "Vizzing at him." Two-Bit waves his Tigress in identification. "We ready here, or what?"

  On cue from their captains, the bulk of the buccaneers, save Thumper, scatter aside. They clear a significant oval around the closed bulkhead doors, as though allowing the Eaymo space to take a penalty skooshball shot. Two-Bit, however, scampers over towards the door's control panel, located a convenient foot or two to the bulkhead's left side. While Thumper proceeds to unclip one of his aforementioned soup cans and insert it, with loving care, into the chamber of his bizarre bazooka, Two-Bit Switch moseys about the relatively humdrum business of hacking the door controls.

  Fifteen seconds later, Two-Bit's firmly grasping the bulkhead's servomotor. When he receives the all-clear from Thumper, he yanks the bulb-shaped mechanism free from its prison of conduits and wiring. The bulkhead yawns begrudgingly open, gusting a fresh batch of artificial oxygen into their quarantined portion of corridor.

  This refreshing breeze, one enjoyed by each pirate present, is quickly interrupted by a throaty command. Undoubtedly "Freeze" or some such, it's shouted from the squad leader of the anti-boarding marines no one's surprised to discover arrayed on the opposite side of the bulkhead. Before any marine can squeeze off a shot, however, Thumper lets fly with his kitbashed bazooka, the weapon coughing black smoke from one end and an airborne soup can from the other.

  From his current vantage, Two-Bit Switch cannot see the faces and therefore the expressions of the hypothetical marines beyond the bulkhead when this dinky soup can comes clattering down at their feet. Neither is he witness to the carnage that ensues when Moira, standing amongst the corsair crowd, plants a bolt from Lefty into the can with a metallic clang and ignites the repellent within. He does see the voracious sunburst of orange and hear the half-second of terrified screaming.

  Seconds later, Two-Bit Switch, amid Nemo, Moira, Greatgullet and their entire column of unscathed marauders, march uncontested down an abandoned and profoundly blackened corridor.

  This next section of Valladia Prime is thoroughly uninteresting, compared to spastic alarms, interruptive airlocks and gradually dropping oxygen levels. Not designed with habitation in mind, the passage between their boarding point and spaceway has all the cosmetic and utilitarian charm of a submersible or a pipeline. The corridor's also unfit for more than five humanoids to walk abreast and Two-Bit Switch, when glancing over his shoulder, loses sight of the pirate parade behind them as its length disappears around the ring's curvature.

  The first peep he's made since setting ancient foot upon the station, Abraham Bonaventure, a rank or two behind Two-Bit, begins to hum.

  Two-Bit hears his bass register, the subsonic rumble of his throaty voice, hardly audible above the shuffling, stomping din created by five hundred pirates on the move. After several bars, the tune he hums is obvious and Two-Bit's lusty smile becomes inevitable.

  The sound is more muttering than music. “Nail 'em to the bowsprit, heave ho.”

  Glancing behind, Two-Bit sees Abraham's own grim, so potent it spells out that singing this little ditty was very obviously his entire motivation to volunteer for this boarding action.

  "Boil 'em all in sharkshit, heave ho," Two-Bit joins in. Combined, their voices are loud enough to pique Nemo's notice. Upon recognition of Abraham's spooky old shanty, the Captain snorts.

  "Drown 'em in the slop pail, heave ho," all three sing together. The Captain's endorsement is cause enough for the circumferential criminals to perk up their ears and attempt to puzzle through the melody.

  "Mu-til-ate! O-bliter-ate!" the entire crew of The Unconstant Lover chants. "Dead men tell no tales!"

  From Abraham's initial seed, the sea shanty takes root and blossoms. The chant is taken up all across the assembled masses, accompanied by an ill-timed percussion of rhythmic stomping and slamming of weapons against palms, chests and bandoliers. Those with enough salt in their blood – namely Lovers and Thumbs – to have actual familiarity with the verses carry the melody. The rest and admittedly majority – mostly Cannons, Fruits and Dishonorables – chime in on the “heave hos” and choruses.

  At these moments, the moments when every throat in the Freebooter Fleet is raised in imperfect, off-key unison, the very bones of Valladia Prime, her teltriton framework, can be heard to quake and rumble.

  Despite the tune's viral spread, despite the massive and maniacal beam on Abraham's beak, the true testament of the shanty's successfulness amongst the pirates comes when Two-Bit catches sight of Moira, under her breath, singing along.

  They're still describing, in halting, three-four time, the various grisly and unpleasant fates that await those who resist them when ninety-five percent of the buccaneer brigade veers off their previous course. Swinging a right turn, they start their march up the spaceway and towards the heart of Valladia Prime.

  The conductor at the head of this murderer's choir is unmistakably Greatgullet. The vim and vigor of the verses so fills him, he's practically swing
ing his sword at pantomimed enemies as he vanguards his platoons up the passage to loot heaven.

  Who's left are the occupants of Two-Bit's first tube; all five members of the Lover's crew, plus a thirty-five member compliment of goonage. Representatives from The Deaf Ears, The Welcome Wagon, The Mommy Dearest and the rest of Nemo's sworn swashbucklers make up the majority, with spare Fruits filling in the gaps. After six or seven seconds are wasted watching the unequalled sight of all the Fleet's manpower tromping off to raise some hell, it's to Nemo that thirty-nine sets of eyes fall expectantly onto.

  "Offer still stands," he mentions sideways to Moira, ten steps toward the distant turret bank. His motion is the catalyst to the entire troop to start pacing down the corridor.

  "The ship," she counteroffers too quickly.

  "The ship," Nemo repeats by rote. "Which ship?"

  "Your ship, numbnuts." She glances aside to him. "What I get if you shoot down more privateers than me." Nemo and all three of his male crewmates scoff as one. This only frustrates Moira further. “What? I thought money was no object?”

  "The Lover," Nemo's quickly to name her, "is substantially more valuable than one of your peashooters," he denigrates, with a nod of depreciation toward both pistols riding in Moira's shoulder holsters.

  "Both of my peashooters, then. I don't have to call your manhood into question, do I?"

  Even Nemo, unchallenged master of the unwise wager, isn't quite stupid enough to leverage something so valuable on stakes so decidedly one-sided. "The keys to the ship, say," he stipulates, proving he's, in fact, almost exactly that stupid.

  "For Righty?"

  "Lefty."

  "Done."

  The second they've shaken hands, Two-Bit, Odisseus and Abraham start the wincing, rubbing their foreheads and shaking their heads despondently. They're even joined latently by the first few ranks of thuggery, Jargon included.

  "What?" Nemo extols from his distressed audience.

  With the next bulkhead approaching fast, Two-Bit increases his pace, subdivides from the main body of pirates and once again approaches the primary door control port. "Don't take this the wrong way, Cap'n," he warns, "but you'd be fuck-all as an Iniquity facer."

  "I'm an incredible Iniquity player!" Nemo continues to protest obstinately.

  While Two-Bit breaks the news, it's Abraham who softens the blow. "I've seen ye play, boyo," he testifies, placing a callused hand upon the Captain's shoulder consolingly, "and ye ain't."

  Odisseus snarks some comment toward Moira containing the verb "to call," the pronoun "you" and the proper noun "Captain."

  She replies with a polite, "I'd be flattered."

  "You can all go stuff your heads up your own vaginas," a pouty Nemo requests, shoving his shoulder free from Abraham's grasp and crossing his arms like a disconsolate teenager.

  The predictable mysteries offered by the bulkhead's door control – namely "find servomotor, then remove servomotor" – are immediately surrendered to Two-Bit. He dawdles a few seconds, waiting for the pirates to properly arrange themselves before what they can safely assume will be another platoon of marines. Nemo's signal given, Two-Bit completes the second half of the equation by yanking free the servomotor.

  The bulkhead ponderously considers its hot-wired orders to open sesame. In the meantime, Two-Bit is granted the time he needs, devoid of Thumper and the awesome power of his repellent gumbo, to scamper to a better vantage. From here, he can, for the first time during this boarding action, actually shoot some motherbloomers.

  Gazing into the sweeping turret past the bulkhead doors, Two-Bit sees plenty of motherbloomers who fit the bill.

  Gunnery crews, number near fifty flush, hustle and bustle about the chamber, priming and preparing the station's legendary turrets. They load arms-length ditrogen shells from limitless racks, they relay shouted targeting information back and forth and, of course, they fire the godlike batteries, with enough sheer force to chatter Two-Bit's teeth.

  The most immediate target, however, for Two-Bit's Tigress is the anticipated platoon of Imperium shock troops. This time, they crouch behind an improvised barricade of cargo crates and level a lineup of SV7 assault rifles directly at whomever appears on the other side of the open bulkhead.

  A cat's cradle of laserfire, one hand kaleidoscopically colorful, the other monochromatically red, stretches between both entrenched parties. The clamor of firearms and a miasma of wafting, rainbow vapors are the inevitable after-effects.

  While the pirates – nearly two to one – serve them well in the firefight, the powered plates of the marines, sculpted perfectly to their chests and allowing their wearers to absorb ditrogen unharmed, serve them better. Their regimented efficiency and precise fire arcs systematically claim freebooter life after freebooter life at such a rate as to foreshadow a bloody defeat.

  Two-Bit himself squanders a full clip's worth of ammunition on misses, pockmarking the crates and fizzling his earnest attempts at murder into some trooper's invulnerable chest. When he stops to flick some fresh canisters into the Tigress' chamber, he spots perhaps a worthier target.

  Tigress in hand, Two-Bit swings his arm around the cover of the bracing he cowers behind. He buries one bolt in a bracing beam past his target, another in the kneecap of a Mezzrian tech scuttling past his target and a third squarely in his intended target.

  Upon contact, the ditrogen shell on the rack merely cracks open, leaking gas in a hissing scarlet geyser. The prone Mezzrian, dragging itself across the floor on its five remaining workable limbs, manages to scream a wordless warning. Too late; Two-Bit's fourth shot ignites the airborne ditrogen and successively each shell on the same rack.

  Squatting a dozen feet from the cartload of ammunition, the more fortunate shock troopers are merely bowled over by the force of the explosion. The unfortunate few caught closer to the blast radius suffer far more grievous injuries. The entire choke point is suddenly mired in a haze of crimson fog. The advancing front of screaming pirates would soon prove to be the more pressing threat to the trooper's survival than Two-Bit's exploding shell game.

  The stylish multe bracelet clamped to Two-Bit's wrist isn't the only souvenir the crew of The Unconstant Lover carried to commemorate their time aboard the Surimiah. Moira Quicksilver bashes and brains marines with her expertly-wielded pair of electrobatons, cracking temples with one while pummeling windpipes with the other. Abraham's blunderbuss, the dodgy old contraption, produces enough punch to shatter cover and armor respectively, whenever the grinning Grimalti bastard can be bothered to reload the thing.

  His minions surging behind him, Nemo dashes forward and bounds brazenly atop the barricade, his pistol afire and his duster flapping behind him, like the pulpy protagonist of some dimestore paperback. The only thing preventing the Captain from being instantly gunned down for his brashness is a frantic Odisseus, his barking Wreckingball and fearsome roars responsible for dissuading a handful of his saltbrother's potential murderers.

  Behind them, of course, comes rushing their re-enforcements.

  Their numbers dwindled from thirty-five to twenty odd, the boarders flood past the bulkhead, swinging electroweapons, lobbing the occasional apple boomer and, above all, loosing laserfire toward razorback and gunnery crew alike. Some small minority among them even attempts to, however halfheartedly, resuscitate Abraham’s creepy corsair chant, a fact that seems to amuse the Grimalti sailing master to no end.

  With more sense than duty, the gunnery crews choose flight over fight and go caterwauling up the turret bank with a score of slavering pirates on their heels. The holder of their proverbial leash, Nemo stands amid the chaos and carnage he's wrought, watching the murderous little tykes tucker themselves out up and down the gundeck.

  "Precious, aren't they?" he remarks to a panting Odisseus who pads up on his saltbrother's side.

  "Not especially, no."

  "We should take holidays more often," Two-Bit opines, plopping a hand upon each of their shoulders.

  M
oira nudges Nemo, sheathing both electrobatons and returning them fluidly to clip onto her belt. "Ready to put your money where your mouth is?"

  As one, they all turn to consider the quadroturrets, abandoned by their operating crews and pointing forlornly towards a space now devoid of any more enemies.

  Two-Bit stakes his claim to his own with a pointed finger and a shouted "Bagsies!" over his shoulder. He darts towards his turret of choice and the remainder of the Lover's crew separates behind him to select their own seats of destruction.

  Clambering up the turret's ten-step access ladder, Two-Bit Switch shoots a glance behind to spot Moira Quicksilver as she withdraws both Righty and Lefty from their respective holsters. With a strange delicacy, she renders them, as though forfeit, atop a shared console.

  In response, Nemo fishes around inside his duster pocket a few moments. He finally withdraws the familiar key ring, complete with "I Heart Takioro" keychain, before plopping it down atop both anted firearms.

  With a sad smirk, Two-Bit Switch hops fully into the awaiting arms of the MI Model Z54 Broadside Heavy Quadroturret Laser Battery. He spends a moment acclimating himself to the weapon's somewhat byzantine controls. He spends another moment acclimating himself to the very thought of manhandling a capital-class weapon capable obliterating a freighter-sized spaceship with a single blast.

  Over the turret bank's internalized comm, his crewmates successfully check in – Moira's cool determination, Nemo's giggly exhilaration, Odisseus' perpetual skepticism and Abraham's doddering gun-shyness. On the targeting screen, a vast array of pleasant green outlines present themselves against an expansive orange backdrop; the privateer armada left aimlessly adrift around the station with nothing to shoot at.

  With a few tapped keys on a nearby control pad, the friendly green is instantaneously replaced with adversarial red. At the same instant, a convenient crosshairs blinks into view around the nearest privateer, a majestic Starlight Inc. revamp. His thumbs brush gently against the trigger buttons and Two-Bit Switch, once again, cannot refrain from smiling at the thought of providing these privateer scum with something to shoot at.