What does not survive this transition, of course, is Odisseus' jiihu tongue. His lunch falls like dead weight from its packaging and slaps the helm's ceiling with a wet splash. The Ortok sighs mournfully and crumples the empty tin wrapping in his paws.
A curse-muttering Two-Bit fumbles about with his safety straps and Nemo, his partially-disintegrated duster wafting about his chair, calms the driftjets. Meanwhile, Odisseus, all his fur dancing in some imagined wind, wanders drunkenly out the exit and towards the nearest terminal that would grant him access to the overworked compensator. Along the way, he grumbles his fair share of Ortoki curses.
“Dorsal,” Odisseus hears Nemo call into his communicator, “can you get visual on this nearest sneaky bastard?”
“I haven't forgotten” Moira claims back through the comm. Gripping the helm's doorjamb with one paw and opening the adjacent terminal control box with the other, Odisseus catches sight of sterling green retribution, snaking down from a position normally reserved for The Unconstant Lover's underturret. After some seconds, it inspires an explosion that, in addition to its target, cripples or craters each encircling spaceship.
“Good enough,” appraises Nemo and, seconds later, the upside-down Lover is blasting along in search of its next target. From his appointed post before the inertial compensator, Odisseus can see only the merest view of the gunfights, firefights and general unhappiness that're currently all the rage in Pirateton. He does manage to relegate some power from life support to the poor compensator, enough to make onboard movement mostly unhindered but not enough to allow their extremities and airborne objects to return for a landing.
“Unless you're willing to take a hit from the big three,” Odisseus warns, referring to engines, weapons or shields, “this's as good as the compensator's gonna get.”
His black mane more erect than a mad scientist's, Nemo doesn't seem to notice. “Perfect. Everybody keep their eyes peeled for other flagships.”
Odisseus holds his position before the terminal and almost objects, reasoning that there was no way the naked eye was liable to spot a departing spaceship before Abraham and his sophisticated sensor room equipment would. Two-Bit rushes to prove him wrong, however, firing a point across what, on a righted spaceship, would be starboard bow. “Eyesore! There!”
Sure enough, lifting clumsily off the sands, its nimbus of dissimilar starfighters already in buzzing agitation about it, comes Aju Vog Xah Qaj's colonyship. She clears the ungainly spires and jagged shards of Pirateton by meager feet and cuts a diagonal path across The Unconstant Lover's viewport, heading straight skyward.
“Where's she going?” mutters Nemo, perfectly in time with Odisseus' own mental question. “Maybe just re-establish radio contact with her, Abraham. See if she'd like to rendezvous in low orbit.”
“Aye aye, Cap'n.”
“Second target acquired,” chimes in Moira. “Permission to reduce it to cinders?”
Another downpour of ditrogen, another troop transport destroyed and only three such targets should remain. The third, fourth and fifth such ships, craftily concealed amid the mottibles upon mottibles of parked pirates, are successively smitten, one by one, as The Unconstant Lover and her supremely-skilled topturret gunner complete their three-hundred-and-sixty-degree aerial tour of historic Pirateton.
With equal frequency, the three remaining flagships of the Freebooter Fleet are seen to depart the battleground, some with more haste than others. There's one white-knuckling moment of mistaken identity when Moira nearly open fired upon Greatgullet's Rule of Thumb, his ship resembling the enemy's landers so strongly.
The inertial compensator, meanwhile, grapples mightily with Talos II's implacable hold on the Lover and bleeds system power generously. Requiring a constant Ortoki paw to regulate and maintain the status quo, Odisseus is forced to perform this duty yards from the nearest safety harness.
Following the destruction of the fifth and final of the Imperium's 792s, however, Nemo is thankfully wise enough not to dawdle a second longer than is absolutely necessary. With increased power to Port and Starboard, he skyrockets The Unconstant Lover away from the surface and unerringly towards open space.
“Short of potshotting individual assholes,” Nemo supposes regretfully as Odisseus, still lingering in the doorway, hurriedly swaps power back into the ship's life support, “that's the best we can do. We hafta hope numbers and panic prevail over those Imperium blowbags.” His teeth grit harshly together. “I sure don't like running.”
“What's most important now,” Two-Bit is first to voice, “is that all five dapadans is fucking out of stook.”
“What's most important now is findin' a new base o' operations,” Abraham counterpoints. “Even just temporary-like.”
“Maybe,” Odisseus speculates, “what's most important now is to quit while we're ahead.”
“None of those are that important,” mutters Moira musically.
“Thinking anywhere in particular?” Nemo prompts, ignoring Odisseus as rote.
“Ain't sure. Lemme squeeze over into the warp room,” Abraham excuses himself. As he tromps back into the helm to, once again, plant himself in the shield operating station, Odisseus sees the scarlet light next to Port 3 (Sensor Room) wink out.
“Abraham, wait–” Moira urges, milliseconds too late.
“Any other moon of Talos,” Nemo conjectures idly, as whiffs of effervescent cloud scatter and dissolve against the viewport, “would be way too close. Takioro's way too obvious.”
“Vel ain't ready for us yet,” Two-Bit mentions offhandedly.
“How about,” Odisseus puts his two cents forward, “Offchart? Like deep, deep Offchart?”
Nemo sours his expression in distaste. “Blech. Try to imagine forcing all five Captains to agree on one set of Offchart coordinates. Like herding jborra across vast distances of interstellar space.”
Moira's incoming apology is as inauthentic as any the Lover's forged weapon licenses. “Sorry to be a spoilsport,” she interjects as atmospheric flames start tonguing faintly at the edges of the Lover's projected ray shield, “but it occurs to me that we may have more pressing problems.”
“Such as?” Two-Bit dangles.
“Clean jumps outta Talos include Saxon, Umij and Zbagi Major,” Abraham informs helpfully. “Probably best, however, if we avoid the sector entirely. Offchart'd, I reckon, be safest. A blooming nightmare to coordinate, though.” When no reply from helm or topturret is forthcoming, only the sound of rattling freighter and internal comm static answer Abraham. “Cap'n? Ye there? Do ye copy, Cap'n?”
At the moment, Nemo did not copy. He, along with Two-Bit Switch, Odisseus and likely Moira Quicksilver, high in her lofty topturret, currently stare agog, like dumbfounded bystanders before an escalating driftrain wreck, out the viewport. A bizarrely beatific sight awaits them a scarce few dottibles beyond Talos II's stratosphere.
Against the ebon backdrop of deep space, lightly dusted by distant stars, The Rule of Thumb, The Loose Cannon, The Eyesore and The Dishonorable Discharge are all visible, hanging idly in low orbit. Their own captains and crewmen, across all four of their craft, likely stand and sit as agog and dumbfounded by what they've discovered as the Lover's own crew are.
For, lurking barely a broadside battery's range away, are not only four TFS 889 Chaperone-class Capital Clippers, already moving to intercept the stalling pirates. Indeed no, as two TFS 115 Overwhelm-class Mobile Fighter Gantries, already spilling Imperium Spur fighters in preparation for the bloodbath to come, accompany them. Most saliently, however, a TFS 545 Pylon-class Capital Warship, the most overexaggeratedly-sized craft in the entire Imperium Interstellar Navy, twiddles its proverbial thumbs patiently, awaiting the arrival of famed and ferocious Freebooter Fleet.
The central console that contains the main communicator burbles to life shortly following The Unconstant Lover's tardy entrance. Through the accustomed static, a predictably stuffy voice, suffused with naval arrogance, resounds through helm, gundeck and hold
. “Unconstant Lover, this is Admiral Tynd of the Imperium Naval Cruiser Preemptive Strike hereby ordering you, in the name of the Endless Imperium, to peacefully power down your engines and prepare to be boarded, detained and arrested. Do you copy?”
Chapter 19
Two-Bit Switch perfectly recalls their bygone battle with the Exacting Counterattack, down to each and every last painful, excruciating detail.
He recalls a Captain so sloshed he couldn't, at any given moment, completely comprehend all of the events occurring around him. He recalls the Lover flying wholly blindfolded as the only conceivable failsafe against the Pylon's legions of quadroturrets. He recalls the ceaseless swarms of Spurs, hounding and harrying them for every inch of progress they achieved. Fatefully, he recalls the orbit-to-surface crash that, thanks to some timely intervention by Nemo, was responsible only for thoroughly totaling The Unconstant Lover and pulverizing its undergunner into paste.
The thought of replicating it all, the entire dreadful experience, with zero preparation, nearly plummets Two-Bit instantly into the depths of stark, irrevocable madness. All that retains Two-Bit's slipping grip on his sanity is the knowledge that, should he officially go bonkers, that'd leave Odisseus alone with two raging lunatics in the helm with him.
“This is doable,” raves the first lunatic, cranking the yoke as hard to port as physically possible, to circle The Unconstant Lover at the absolute edge of the Pylon's outermost range. “I know what everybody's thinking. This is totally doable, though. This was doable once, it's perfectly doable again.”
“With no preparation?” moans the despairing Two-Bit.
“With less preparation!” Nemo knit-picks with nervous exuberance. “It's just a matter of retracing our steps. Blindfold the ship, punch the shield generators, fire the–” The realization strikes him solidly. “Oh, sure.”
“No Wolfsbane torpedoes?” Moira assumes in her award-winning deadpan.
“Gotta remember to get my hands on a few of those,” Nemo murmurs to himself.
Two-Bit doesn't even blink. “I know a guy.”
“On the upside, I'm mostly sober this time around!” Nemo announces with further fidgety optimism. “Abraham, what'd be the ETA on a totally hypothetical blindfold?”
“Erm,” the stymied Grimalti mutters, “I'm still in the warp room.”
“Stay there,” Odisseus barks sharply. “We're warping out.”
“Smart,” compliments Moira.
“Are we now?” Nemo snorts.
“I don't see any reason why we wouldn't be.” Odisseus' resolve is unflinching. “Seeing as how we're outnumbered, outgunned and outmaneuvered.”
“Oh, hello, Captain,” Nemo salutes the Ortok suddenly, sarcasm thick across his entire demeanor. “Would you like to come claim your Captain's seat?”
“Much as I hate to be the bearer of bad tidin's,” Abraham announces, “but there ain't no way we can warp outta here–”
“See?” Nemo sneers defiantly.
“–seein' as how they've deactivated the warp gate and all,” the Grimalti concludes. This revelation is followed by a healthy pause. Two-Bit's eyes even snap unconsciously towards the titanic shape of the Preemptive Strike, dominating the center of the evolving fleet action.
Full interdiction of a Warp Gate was the holiest of holies, a rubber stamp reserved for only the highest Admirals of the Interstellar Navy and the paper-pushing bureaucrats of IntraGalaxy Transpo to wield. By brandishing executive privilege to reduce Talos' local Warp Gate into nothing but a massive, floating curiosity, this Admiral Tynd and his 4th Fleet cronies were spelling out an unmistakably clear message.
The head honchos of the Endless Imperium were no longer particularly amused by the Outer Ring antics of Nemo's own Freebooter Fleet.
Not to mention, Two-Bit appreciates, the point that the Preemptive Strike couldn't possibly fathom any need for an escape route for themselves.
“And there's no way you can establish enough of a lock someplace else,” Moira supposes, “for a dirty jump?”
“Not for a spell here, no,” confesses the sailing master, his voice heavy with finality. “Warp engineering ain't no exact science, but I wager I'd need fifteen, sixteen minutes, plus for the Lover to be standin' relatively still.”
“So we stay and fight, then?” Nemo evaluates gracelessly. “We're agreed?”
“How?” grouses Odisseus plaintively, gesturing a bewildered paw towards the Pylon on the viewport's periphery. Before anyone can offer their professional, capital-ship-smashing opinion, a blinking alert, a standardized breach of proximity, catches the corner of Two-Bit's eye.
“Jocks!” he declares, scrambling to adjust the shielding package accordingly. “A squadron and some, 41 greez ventrie–”
Two-Bit's warning is superseded by the familiar and unpleasant sound of laserfire. A heartbeat after his re-allocation of the ray shields, a squadron and some's worth of starfighter fire buffets against the Lover's protected aft. Their strafing run met with marginal success, the starfighter squadron – composed entirely of Spurs, the Imperium's trademark interceptor that favored sheer numbers over skill or sophistication – subdivides around the Lover. They reform into the wider squadron some distance past the freighter's famously dented prow.
Two-Bit hastens to wheel the ray shields fully about and cover the regrouping squadron's next logical point of attack. Moira's angered Antagonist bears down on the fleeing fighters with bright green chastisement. Nemo pitches the ship inches to port in preparation to yaw her goofily starboard. “Guess we're doing evasive,” he sighs knowingly and pumps the clutchlever.
The Unconstant Lover rollicks, full-throttle and sideways, into the outermost edges of the Pylon's maximum range. Seconds behind her swings an entire squadron of K4 Spur-class Individual Interceptors. The portrait painted through her viewport – a sprawling spacescape – is a staggering portrayal of the sort of massive, ship-to-ship combat the like of which Two-Bit Switch, having spent the majority of his criminal career attempting to avoid, has never before borne witness to.
With the churning clouds of Talos' great gas giant as an ever-present canvas against which to cast their conflict, the lesser ships of the invading 4th Fleet clash explosively against the four flagships of the defending Freebooter Fleet.
Two Chaperones, their respective batteries afire, sandwich The Rule of Thumb between them. Performed on any other craft, this maneuver would be an eviscerating rake. That scrappy bastard Greatgullet, of course, somehow manages to transform into a foolish mistake. His broadside shields absorb the brunt of each blow and his own batteries give back better than they were given.
The Eyesore instructs the nearest Fjoran Mobile Gantry the meaning of the phrase “swarm tactics.” Flawlessly timed strafing runs by Xendo fighters overwhelm the deployment cruiser's dwindling shields. With the same motion, the thrumming buffer of sacrificial starfighters abuzz about The Eyesore absolutely refuses to allow a single projectile within harming distance of their colonyship.
A Chaperone each engages The Loose Cannon and The Dishonorable Discharge. The former's rapid-fire disabler cannons make laughable mincemeat of its opponent's systems. The latter, its solxite swollen with strength from the nearby sun, punches neat holes through its opponent's hull with its alternatech energy blasts.
The Preemptive Strike, however, deigns to comment on any of the proceedings. It looms an unreachable distance beyond the chief theatre of conflict, with each and every one of the action's participants fully within the scopes of its long-range quadroturrets.
The principal threat to The Unconstant Lover, however, is this swath of starfighters currently eating her exhaust and the Fjoran Mobile Gantry they call home.
Gawky, ponderous spacecraft, each Gantry was capable, when its hollow, skeleton arms were fully stocked, of carrying some hundred Spurs into battle. Her massive maneuvering thrusters engaged, the X-shaped deployment cruiser attempts her damnedest to intercept the incoming Lover. Along the way, she spews enough Spu
rs to make the freighter's current pursuers look like a Gallwegian gang of teenage toughs by way of comparison.
With each approaching enemy ship, Two-Bit's proximity sensor glows all the more red and he exchanges a uncomfortable expression with Odisseus. Having claimed the shield station chair directly behind Two-Bit, the Ortok had inherited the dire responsibility of keeping the regenerative ray shields as close to capacity as the shipborne systems would allow.
Risking to leave their aft somewhat unshielded, Two-Bit Switch focuses his full attention forward, toward the rapidly approaching Mobile Gantry and the throngs upon throngs of Spurs she belches forth with each passing second.
Starfighters supplant the viewport. Ditrogen dimples the ray shields with each successive strike. The Unconstant Lover is the shield-shrouded eye at the center of a storm of Spurs. Each individual raindrop is a spray of searing laserfire that, thanks to the tireless efforts of Odisseus and the exact positioning of Two-Bit Switch, splashes uselessly against the freighter's projected protection.
After a single harrowing second amid the squall of shooting, the Briza breaks blessedly through. Her ray shields hold at a frightening 4%, but an open path to the defenseless Mobile Gantry ahead has been plowed.
There's a minute of reprieve while the hurricane of spent Spurs musters themselves for another devastating pass. During that minute, it quickly becomes Moira Quicksilver's moment to shine. While the first mate and her trusty Antagonist undoubtedly sowed their fair share of destruction among the first wave of attackers, the relish Moira derives from the sudden presentation of a worthwhile target is palpable even from the helm.
In another sterling example of a tactic she's slowly been perfecting, Moira use the minimum amount of ammunition necessary to shard and splinter off one of the cruiser's four gantries. The Fjoran fighter-dispenser lists aside sickeningly in response as one of its component X-arms, its supports shattered by exacting Antagonist fire, twists and shears away from the cruiser's main body.
Galactic Menace Page 39