Galactic Menace

by Timothy J Meyer

  To Nemo, then, came the tired, the hungry, the unwashed masses yearning to be pirates. A true blue megalomaniac, he conscripted every single one of them.

  To find proof that Nemo's loyalists weren't quite up to snuff, all one needed to do was tour a short section of his territory. Moira stoops to pass beneath rotten overhangs and she insinuates her body between support struts stacked within mere feet of each other. She navigates the tangled mess of mangy, unimpressive spacecraft with both the growing ease of familiarity and the heightened caution of unfamiliar ground. The changeable nature of Pirateton's alleyways were a treacherous enterprise at the best of times.

  The spaceships that line the streets she walks would only be thought of as capable to pillage and plunder by their individual captains and certainly no one else. They were public transit vessels, they were shipyard backloaders, they were an abundance of interplanetary tugs, not to mention the scads upon scads of bloomhole-ugly remixes. They all came with ill-fitting weapons clumsily soldered onto their sides. They were all crewed by inexperienced yahoos of every species and anatomy imaginable, each driven to delusion by the promise of booty, babes and booze. They were all crammed ever closer after each successful sack, attempting to claw their way to a cherished position within sight of their piratical patron.

  For every competent corsair, Gertie and her Dick Magnet regrettably among them, she encounters, Moira circuits beneath, around or between the ships of five incompetent roadies.

  Moira bickers briefly with a this-time Phnuki fishmonger over an overpriced morsel of broiled jiihu tongue to surprise Odisseus with. Moira howls promised derision and a smattering of warning fire from Lefty onto the aforementioned Cannonball Dogs imitators, discovered not far from her walk home. Moira smirks knowingly at the sudden increase of novelty shops specializing in eyepatches, tricorn hats and squawking, shouldermounted pets, as she takes each step closer to The Unconstant Lover and its mercurial, affectations captain.

  Besides the buskers, brokers, beggars and buccaneers, Moira also spies more members of a strange subcaste emerging amongst Pirateton's populace. Much like the memorabilia merchants, they grow much concentrated with proximity to the Lover: the press.

  Moira'd only confirmed their actual existence when she'd collared one, disguised with a surprising cunning as an ordinary brigand. This Gibblan, more fidgety than a fingered Flask, originally arose Moira's suspicions toward another camp; assuming the little slime was a spy for Xo, Valladia or someone worse.

  According to her testimony, though, Pirateton was lousy with newshounds. Representatives from all the major publications of the Outer Ring were apparently hoping to snap a holo or bag a quote from that most elusive of quarry; Nehel Morel, widely suspected Admiral of the Freebooter Fleet.

  Moira'd predictably sent the Gibblan packing. Out of some undeserved sense of preservation for the Captain's wellbeing, she'd neglected on informing His Majesty, for fear of inflating his planet-wide ego any more.

  It's this same vigilance that clues Moira into the next legitimate threat to the continued existence of the Freebooter Fleet, zottibles before any of her comrades or crewmates are.

  In the business of acquiring a preferable pirate ship, a decommissioned or commandeered Imperium military craft is really the ideal choice. Generally designed for broadsider tactics, they came equipped with everything a pirate could possibly want in one package. They had thicker hulls, naval-quality shields, more system space allotted for weaponry and onboard life support accommodating of larger, more boarding capable crews. Overall tougher and more dependable than your average cargo freighter, they were a common and sought-after staple of the piracy-and-privateering market.

  Thusly, it's no great shock to spot a workhorse of the Endless Imperium's planetary invasion forces offloading its entire crew down a spacious boarding ramp and onto the purple sands of Talos II. The TFS 792 Onslaught-Class Heavy Troop Transport is painted, appareled and dilapidated in all the ways one expects a pirate ship to be. Fresh ditrogen scars and holoposters of scantily-clad sentients are visible on her hull and she bears the tongue-in-cheek handle The Spitting Image.

  At first glance, Moira almost mistakes the craft for Greatgullet's Rule of Thumb. At second glance, Moira correctly identifies the craft as belonging to a significantly newer model, the 792 only recently having rolled off the factory floor. At third glance, Moira acknowledges that the scores upon scores of individuals that hustle down the ramp, belong to a comparatively limited number of species. Beyond the overwhelming majority of humanoids, every pirate that emerges from the Image's cargo bay belongs to an Inner Sector race – Gantor, Fjoran, Karracki, even a Moza or two are visible among their ranks.

  At fourth glance, Moira realizes they're all wielding identical SV7s.

  Within five seconds, instinct sidles Moira aside and into the comforting shadow of an adjacent aviary. None of the comical peki macaws squawk or even ruffle a green feather at her unnoticed entrance. Within fifteen seconds, she's dialing Nemo's comm frequency.

  Waiting through the white noise, Moira watches the “pirate crew” of The Spitting Image hoof their way, in a loose practice march, through the fragmented forest of hull pieces and pieced-together hulls.

  Their destination is child's play to deduce; the looming cruiser-shapes specter of the Council chamber.

  “Wake up, you lazy cocksuckers,” Moira whisperingly cajoles to nothing but static.

  “Garrok Brondi's Complimentary Cocksucking Service,” comes the sing-song reply. “How may I direct your buzz?”

  “Are you on the ship?” hisses Moira immediately.

  Today, Nemo's jovial. “Hey, it's you.”

  “Are you on the ship?”

  “Hey, it's Moira,” Nemo repeats distantly to someone, who responds in a startling combination of Jabber and Ortoki, leading Moira to conclude he rather addresses someones.

  “Are you on the ship?”

  “Do you have the dice?”

  “Yes are you on the ship,” Moira screams in stage-whisper. The macaws swinging all around her finally squawk and ruffle their feathers, noticing her now for the first time.

  “We are,” Nemo grants.

  “Take off.”

  “What? Where?” Moira pictures Nemo's exact expression. “Moira says take off?” he once again questions somewhere behind.

  “Take off now,” Moira insists. “Buzz the other four Captains, tell them to do likewise. The most important thing is that, in the shortest amount of time possible, nobody's grounded. You understand?”

  “Not even remotely.”

  “The fuzz,” Moira savors the shock of informing, “is here. For you.”

  This inspires a substantial pause. “The fuzz fuzz? Not Valladia?”

  “Not Xo, not Valladia,” Moira confirms grimly. “The other guy.”

  The pause inspired by this confirmation dwarfs the first and a severe change in the Captain's tone is included, free of charge. “Well, was happening sooner or later.”

  Moira matches his tone dour for dark. “All good things.”

  “You know how many?”

  She squints. “I've been counting best I can. Hundred, maybe two, but there's no way to know if this's the only place they've landed.” She risks a slight smirk. “You want I should lessen that number?”

  Nemo's own smirk is audible over the comm. “Why not?” Moira rises from her crouch, her thumb placed to sever her comm's connection, when Nemo's stipulation catches her off guard. “And Moira?”

  “Yes, Nemo?”

  “Bring the dice?”

  The Captain is only spared Moira's glower by distance and line of sight. In one motion, she switches the comm dead and loops it back onto her belt. Her parcels secured on her forearms, Moira prowls from cover into open light, Righty and Lefty drawn within the space of two steps.

  The shuffling column of disguised infantry goes primarily ignored by the majority of the witless boobs and gormless blowbags that trouble all the space surrounding The Unconsta
nt Lover. In order to best slow their progress, Moira can only devise a single strategy: to expose them.

  Righty and Lefty sing their deadly duet. Three covert commandos, two humanoids and a Fivvite, billow the purple dust with their falling bodies. Everyone within a certain radius of earshot freezes, uncertain why Moira Quicksilver, The Unconstant Lover's black-clad phantom, has initiated a street fight with this suspiciously well-ordered boarding party.

  As the populace's own firearms make their first appearance and The Spitting Image's crew finds themselves completely surrounded by unfriendly and heavily-armed hoodlums, Moira can only pray that Pirateton survives the homegrown carnage sure to follow.

  Odisseus has never, in three years spent serving alongside her, been so relieved to see Moira Quicksilver alive and well. With pistols afire and shopping bags draped over her shoulders, she comes bounding, out of breath, back up the Lover's boarding ramp.

  The Ortok may have always carried a certain torch of suspicion concerning the ship's resident bounty hunter. Listening to the ditrogen-laced commotion outside the Briza's triple-thick walls, though, he half-expected Quicksilver to be among those fatally caught in the crossfire and is strangely relieved to realize his mistake.

  She's onboard less than five seconds before Odisseus punches flush the ramp's control button and barks “she's in” into his paw-gripped communicator. The helm's reaction is similarly instantaneous, as Odisseus braces his space legs against the firing of the Lover's driftjets.

  “A welcoming committee?” a panting and sweat-drenched Moira Quicksilver appraises as she approaches the Ortok. “Should I be flattered?”

  “I wouldn't be.” Odisseus extends a paw. “He wants the dice.”

  With an oft-rehearsed and unanimous roll of their eyes, Moira drops the connecting string onto the Ortok's waiting pad. With a complimentary gesture, she hefts one of the parcels. “You hungry?”

  “Jiihu tongue? You shouldn't have.”

  Moira scowls, disappointment coloring her features. “You can smell that?”

  “There ain't a fish tongue on this moon I can't smell.”

  She passes the purchased meal into his opposite paw. “Bon appetit, then.” An explosion without, the sound of something ancient, decrepit and teltriton collapsing, suddenly draws them both back into the situation at hand. “Really coming down out there,” Moira observes, with breathless nonchalance.

  “I heard,” Odisseus returns, shifting his weight in preparation of his own departure. “You might wanna find yourself an Antagonist.”

  Together, they cross the cargo hold and climb up the companionway in uneasy silence. In one fell swoop, both their individual predictions regarding galactic backlash to the Freebooter Fleet came concertedly true. It was Odisseus who predicted that someone would successfully intervene before they'd sacked all ten targets and it was Moira who predicted it would be some unrevealed enemy, neither Xo nor Valladia.

  If the Endless Imperium, with all of its warships and all of its men, had indeed come to pay Pirateton a visit, The Unconstant Lover and her crew would be exceedingly lucky to even escape their city of make-believe alive.

  “It's a short-range vessel, remember,” Moira reminds at the entrance to the gundeck, giving Odisseus pause.

  “What's a short-range vessel?”

  “The 792,” she supplies, her breath still labored from exertion. “That's the chief difference between the 773, the one Greatgullet flies, and the 792, the one they've got. The new one, the 792, is short-range.”

  “Which means?”

  “Which means,” she explains with an unmistakable degree of annoyance, “they came from somewhere, didn't they?” She nods to his package. “Enjoy the fish.”

  As though this constitutes an actual explanation, she's gone, the door to the gundeck sliding closed behind her. A confused Odisseus, fuzzy black dice bumping against his tool belt and mind suddenly flooded with the idiosyncrasies of Heavy Troop Transports, hurries the remainder of the distance between the abovedecks corridor and the helm door, left ajar for his return.

  “Comm chatter be comparatively thick for one boatload,” greets Abraham's voice, piped in from his perpetual perch in the sensor room, as Odisseus enters. “This is quite an operation, sounds like.”

  “Well, widen the sweep,” commands the Captain, flicking the switches and adjusting the dials necessary for take-off. “See if you can't raise me a definite number.”

  “Aye aye, Cap'n.”

  “Two-Bit,” Nemo's issuing orders to co-pilot's seat already, “shields spread evenly. Start with ray, but have bombard prepped. Somebody gets smart with a rocket launcher, I don't wanna be chewing repellent, savvy?”

  “Aye aye, Cap'n,” Two-Bit answers dutifully, punching keys and calibrating the shield station's gyroscopic rig.

  “Special delivery,” Odisseus announces, with a distinct sardonic lilt and a hoisting of the proffered dice.

  The sound Nemo makes, upon noticing his saltbrother's presence for the first time, is the sort a nine-year-old makes when he opens his birthday present. “She chose well,” he adds. “She's alive then?”

  “She's alive,” the comm asserts in Moira's voice, the indication light next to Port 10 (Topturret) coming alive in proclamitory red.

  “You chose well,” Nemo shouts towards the comm console, before turning towards Odisseus. “Would you care to do the honors?”

  Approaching the rearview imager and subsequently the viewport grants Odisseus a decent view of the pandemonium that's suddenly usurped the once “peaceful” streets of Pirateton. Insulated by the Lover's sturdy teltriton hull, everything Odisseus observes in the ten seconds spent draping the pair of novelty fuzzy dice over Nemo's rearview imager is conducted in eerie silence.

  A multicolored fog bank of excess ditrogen floods the city below, generated by the sporadic sparking of red, green, orange and yellow laserfire. Every few seconds, Odisseus will spot a number of figures move through breaks in the miasma, only the color loosed from their ammunition capable of distinguishing friend from foe. One side fires the guilty red of the Imperium shock troops, the other the indecisive green, orange and yellow of the besieged pirate population.

  While mass confusion reigns over the spontaneous slaughter that rages all around, it's the architecture and facades that receive the worst of the damage. Wreckage, rubble and ruins all contribute their own inky black smoke to the accumulating cloud that plagues Pirateton.

  Shuffling away from the viewport, Odisseus is hauntingly reminded of a certain clearing in the jungles of Baz's northern continent and the similar shock-and-awe tactics employed there to exterminate the indigenous peoples.

  “Now, that's a handsome sight, don't you think?” opines Nemo.

  “What?” snarls an appalled Odisseus, spinning on his saltbrother.

  “Oh, no.” Nemo waves his hands once and cranes in his seat to glance down the viewport. “That's a shitstorm out there. I'm talking about the dice.”

  Odisseus is forced to follow the Captain's finger and consider the pair of skull-and-crossbone-emblazoned fuzzy dice that swing stupidly beneath the rearview imager, undercut, somewhat, by the murder and mayhem unfolding behind them.

  In lieu of a reply, the Ortok stomps backward to the shielding station, to comfort-devour his portion of jiihu tongue.

  “Cap'n,” interjects Abraham, “I'm reading as many as five of the buggers, parked at various points 'round town.” The sensor display nearest Nemo wavers once and five pinpricks of red materialize into view. “With a few hundred razorbacks each, me best guess'll put near a thousand of the blighters on the ground already.”

  “One in each district makes a certain degree of sense,” evaluates Nemo soberly. As Odisseus tears his greasy fish from its tin prison, the Captain clasps the yoke and yanks unexpectedly upward, the buoying driftjets bouncing The Unconstant Lover from a standing position to a story or so's height above the ground. “Means their escape route can be cut off.”

  Two-Bit's ret
racting the landing gear with a few furious taps of an adjacent console seconds before he bothers to reply. “Is there anybody even riding underturret?”

  Her driftjets still her primary form of propulsion, the Briza banks gently starboard, the embattled district that bears her namesake spreading out before him. “Ventral?” Nemo yammers into his headset. “Ventral? Jargon, you reading?”

  “Underturret's empty,” Moira's too satisfied to report. “I checked.”

  Nemo shrugs theatrically. “Guess we'll be doing this bassackwards, then. Odi–” he begins to bark, before the addressed Ortok interrupts him.

  “You can't mean–” Odisseus sputters. “Nemo, in atmo, the sheer strain to–”

  Even as he voices his objections, the expression on his saltbrother's face informs Odisseus it's all for naught anyway. “You might wanna have a sit down with the inertial compensator.”

  The vaguest possible warning given, Nemo, with one hand, fires both jetboosters sequentially. With the other hand, he twists the steering yoke sharply enough to starboard to half-barrel roll the Briza, until up is down and down is up. The Captain, the cutpurse and the mechanic are individually staggered by this sudden reversal of perspective, with the top of the viewport now displaying the open sky and the bottom of the viewport the cluttered city.

  The inertial compensator, the dodgy old specimen Nemo wouldn't spring to replace, handles the mammoth task of offsetting the moon's unrelenting gravitational pull marginally well. Everyone remains, more or less, tethered to the helm floor, but hair, clothing, ignition keys, even several items among the helm's perpetual state of slovenly mess, stand on end, drift into space or wave strangely as though underwater.