Galactic Menace

by Timothy J Meyer

  “And I'm thirsty,” Nemo realizes, shoving his chair away from the table with the stuttering squeak of wood against teltriton and rising to his feet. With a flourish of duster and a bounciness of gait, the Captain strolls away, his destination unquestionably the chiller and his aim doubtlessly lemonade that doesn't exist or, failing that, the handiest possible alcohol.

  Once he's successfully rounded the corner into the galley proper, Moira, seated kitty-corner to Nemo's vacated seat, slinks into action. Her left arm snakes between the white cardboard stacks and retrieves, by the very fingerprint grooves on her longest fingers, the remote. As Nemo clatters and clangs about in the caterwauling chiller, Moira's free to scrape the remote back across the Ujad mahogany tabletop and claim supreme authority over the holovision and its billion, billion channels.

  Should any of the Captain's three officers notice or object, they voice no comment nor make any complaint, feasting, swigging or between allegiances, as the case may be.

  “...the hell?” Nemo sloshes a transparent pitcher filled halfway with pulpy orange liquid back and forth. “Who made mimosas?”

  The remote control an utterly foreign object in her hand, Moira's reply doesn't affect her concentration any. “It's orange juice and I did.”

  A scowling Nemo experiments with the equally foreign beverage with a peremptory sniff. “The hell?” he repeats, scrunching up his nose with displeasure. “Who drinks just orange juice?”

  “It's healthy and I do.”

  A peremptory sniff is upgraded to a peremptory sip. “It tastes like asscrack,” he complains around an exaggerated grimace.

  Moira's expression, as ever, doesn't falter or flinch. “You're not wrong and I hate you.”

  “A mimosa's in this shit's future,” predicts Nemo, heeling the whining chiller closed and seeking out suitable glass and suitable Gitterswitch to fulfill the prophecy himself.

  Armed with twenty seconds understanding of the remote's interface, Moira braves the dangers presented by interstellar feedspace and changes the channel.

  To judge from the speed and disdain with which she flits between programs – a hypnotic flurry of flashing lights, bright colors and catchy slogans – Moira, for all her airs of superiority, handles the responsibility of remote-bearer little better than Nemo. She lingers scarcely long enough on any individual frequency to grok whatever it pushes or peddles before thumbing away in search of greener pastimes.

  In her defense, she's confronted with a staggering slew of straight commercials. It's within a ThumbSmash spot, its moronic spokesman hoarsely commanding its pre-teen audience to “smash” their “homework,” that Nemo, mimosa to hand, returns from his kitchen-bound errand.

  “Hey, hey, hey,” the Captain cajoles. “Who died and named you Captain?”

  Moira's thumb delays momentarily over the button, giving the ThumbSmash advert a stay of execution and that much more time to attempt to browbeat the Lover's crew into irreverently “smashing” both objects and people. “You captain the ship. You don't captain the remote.”

  “I'm the Captain. I captain everything,” Nemo reminds with paternal patience. “I captain the spaceship. I captain the toilet. I captain the remote.” With another swill of his mimosa, he settles himself, with as much pomp and circumstance as he can, into his oaken seat. “I am burdened with grim command and, in exchange, I am given sovereignty over the remote and all it surveys.”

  Moira's categorically unconcerned. “Mutiny, then.”

  “Don't joke, missy,” a suddenly spooked Abraham warns, the way one might respond should a specter or the Skelta Installation be mentioned.

  “There's always Two-Bit to sic on you,” Nemo supposes. “You'll recall you held onto those keys for all of ten minutes.”

  “Last time was a kindie,” Two-Bit reminds Nemo between breadstick bites. “I don't crime for peanuts.”

  Moira's totally placid. “Fool me once.”

  Two-Bit adjusts the positioning of his multe bracelet. “Didn't fool you, love.” He smiles with a sliver of genuine wickedness. “I picked your fucking pocket.”

  Moira ripostes with a sub-zero smile of her own, turning the coveted remote tantalizingly over between dextrous fingers. “Do your worst.”

  The pair's posturing is promptly interrupted by snorting, graceless laughter. The Captain reclines as comfortably as his chair will allow, a gooey slice of pizza still steaming to one hand, impromptu mimosa, unequal parts orange juice and Gitterswitch Gin, to the other. His attention, however, is fully captivated by what the holovision broadcasts.

  A cartoon – a slapstick spectacle of improbable weaponry and impermanent injury – is in the early stages of its age-old ritual. An anthropomorphic jborra drools at the prospect of an unsuspecting rat-canary, a conflict that promises to escalate into the involvement of mallets and explosives within the minute. While certainly marketed towards toddlers, Nemo is wholly absorbed, the ownership of the remote a disagreement long forgotten.

  An animalistic belch, a sound so feral-seeming Two-Bit's surprised he's grown so accustomed to it, resounds from Odisseus' yawning maw. The Ortok, with a red-stained paw, pushes aside the empty and ravaged box.

  Abraham shifts his weight to avoid the castoff garbage, as though its devoured contents were highly poisonous. This gives Odisseus pause, his claws already spearing the corner of a third box. His comment, “only anchovies,” he makes with the ghost of a shrug.

  “So they say,” mutters the Grimalti, his ingrained paranoia visually enhanced by the near-perpetual squint of his whitewashed eye.

  Somehow oblivious to the entire Two-Bit versus Moira pissing contest, Nemo's able to pinpoint a practically camouflaged smidgen of spilled sauce against the Ortok's borrowed sweater. He points and pouts. “All the moons, you asshole, there's pizza on my sweater now!”

  Wisely ignoring the pleas of his captain, Odisseus instead screws up his muzzle and poses to Abraham some question. For all the cartoon's clamor and Nemo's nagging, Two-Bit only catches two key phrases – “reason” and “all this,” accompanied by a dismissive wave towards both pizza and Grimalti.

  “You could wash it,” Moira offers helpfully in Nemo's direction.

  Abraham cocks his head sideways, outwardly portraying reluctance but inwardly reveling at the chance to recount some picaroon yarn from his vast repertoire. “Tale goes back, iffen ye don't mind.” Odisseus upgrades his previous half-shrug into a fully-fledged one, creasing the sweater's shoulders substantially.

  Nemo only now notices that Moira addresses him. “Hm?”

  “I were bosun for, well,” considers Abraham, “aye, this woulda been The Good Riddance, some years afore any of ye were born.”

  “You could wash it,” repeats Moira, louder and more insistent.

  Abraham's physicality comes more into his storytelling some, shifting his weight to better illustrate the narrative to the chewing Ortok. “And the captain at that time, he took a real shine to me, he did, always wantin' me opinion on matters of this and that.”

  Nemo's brow furrows. “Wash what?”

  “First mate, though,” Abraham stipulates, “this Hazric fella, he don't like this turn o' events at all. Needless to say, he don't take much shine to me, like our captain do.”

  “The sweater. You could wash the sweater.” Moira indicates with a gesture towards Odisseus, growing agitated at the realization that she's perfectly audible and Nemo's simply dense. “To get rid of the pizza stains.”

  “Puts agwaifapede venom in me chow when I ain't lookin',” Abraham continues, earning the Ortoki equivalent of a sympathetic “ooo.”

  “Wash,” states a somehow still confused Nemo, pinching his own shirt between his fingers as some manner of indication to Moira, “the sweater?”

  Abraham extends three split-nail fingers. “Three days and three nights were I laid up. Blighter bloom near had the honorable distinction o' killin' me, before me prime.”

  Moira points her own supremely frustrated finger, down the be
tweendecks corridor, and waggles the whole hand about when Nemo still doesn't comprehend her point. “In the machine.”

  His chewing ceased in pure amazement, Odisseus mutters another question forward, something with “survive” rooted firmly towards the end.

  “Which machine?”

  “Didn't use enough venom,” Abraham delights in informing, adjusting his posture and cocking an eyebrow. “We Grimalti be harder to poison than Hazrics be, turns out.”

  “The washing machine,” mutters a Moira with her hand pressed firmly over her face in the apogee of frustration.

  The Grimalti shrugs his own shoulders and scans the piles of spoils before him with a suspicious eye. “Since then, well...”

  Nemo scoots more fully out of his chair, as though to telegraph that he doesn't believe what he's hearing. “We have a washing machine?”

  The ignored cartoon vanishes amid a blast of hissing holovision static, grabbing everyone's attention and severing both discussions into bloody stumps. The already unreliable feed strength of Talos' eight moons suffers still further as a new hologram, with the familiar format of an Inner Sector newsplash, wavers in and out of visibility.

  On instinct, Moira, queen of the remote, changes the frequency, only to discover a nearly identical situation – the same news broadcast, mauled and mangled by static, having usurped this channel's previous programming as well. Repetition of the same tactic, Moira thumbing the remote five, six, seven more times, produces no practical difference. Every frequency within range shows the same poorly-transmitted newscaster, reporting some breaking development of inescapable import.

  Hoping that patience will eventually rectify the situation, the crew of The Unconstant Lover each stare, enraptured, at whatever event could cause such a universal agreement across the fractious and uncooperative feedcasters of Bad Space.

  “–to report this breaking news out of Medroteria,” reports a Cadafreyan anchor, with a conservative news blouse, conservative news haircut and claustrophobic cloud of similar headlines, scrolling stock prices and the ever-present logo of GAC – Galactic Airwaves Corporate. “The IMIS has publicly declared a new Galactic Menace, a move some detractors of the Ministry have called long overdue.” She pauses, either to allow the teleprompter time to match her heedless speed or to heighten dramatic tension. A moment later, the anchor collects her breath and continues.

  “As of today, Cadafreyan Galactic News can officially report that the Imperial Ministry of Interstellar Security has named Nehel Morel as the new Galactic Menace.”

  The silence around the pizza-stacked table is ten zottibles this side of stunned, underpinned pleasantly by the continuing newsplash coverage.

  “Following the death of Rithese terrorist leader Kashi Obwala, responsible for the Port Guwhali Hostage Crisis, this makes Morel, alleged High Admiral,” which deserves the unanimous snort it earns from five of the table's six occupants, “of the infamous Freebooter Fleet massing near Talos, the thirty-fourth Menace named. Minister Baxo made the following statement at a press conference mere moments ago.”

  The anchor at her desk is immediately replaced by the sight of an officious looking Gantor, with an enormous IMIS holoseal behind him, a podium to place his skeletal hands upon and a press of reporters, waving recording devices, at his feet.

  “On the grounds,” wheezes the Gantor in thickly-accented Commercial, “that he's a roadblock on the way to potential Imperial prosperity in the Outer Ring. On the grounds that he's directly responsible for incalculable trillions in property damage to the assets of our partner corporation, Valladian Shipping. On the grounds that he's an immediate and pressing danger to the lives of our soldiers and citizens alike, Nehel Morel is hereby declared a Galactic Menace.”

  Shouted questions simmer to the surface among the thronging reporters and Baxo waves a calm claw to entreat more silence from them, raising his raspy voice proportionately. “Like Ott and Obwala before him, the IMIS offers a ten million credit reward to anyone, Imperium citizen or otherwise, who is verifiably responsible for his death.”

  The press conference abdicates to b-roll at precisely the same moment the HV's reception becomes dodgier. Rather than attempting to make out, through the juddering static, the outlines of Qabb's twenty asteroids grinding against each other like horny teenagers, the Lover's crew consider each other and this new development across the table.

  It doesn't take Two-Bit more than a few moments to catch Moira's eye, whereupon he delivers the quip that popped into his mind the very second the Cadafreyan made her announcement.

  “Jabbed you so.”

  Chapter 21

  Odisseus needs to snarl, snap and swipe in order to clear enough of a space for even himself to step into the sunshine. He's actually forced to cuff one individual with a punishing paw, an Aurik swinging her trunk about in exaggerated enthusiasm. Upon receiving the Ortok's warning smack, she quails and curses an annoyed reply but Odisseus, when faced with a hundred plus thronging sentients attempting to batter past him, could honestly care less about hurt feelings or hurt trunks.

  Members of every species imaginable – Akishi, Buja, Corgassi, Dho – create a river of exuberant faces and waving firearms before the Ortok. His poor eyesight, exacerbated by the shrill flash of the occasional holocorder, can only render details on the circle of spectators closest him. All the ranks behind those are relegated, to Odisseus' unreliable vision, into multicolored blurs. Nonetheless, they all surge forward upon Odisseus' exit, in anticipation of what they're convinced will follow shortly after.

  The tide of bodies, summoned by the successive exits of Vobash, Greatgullet and Aju Vog Xah Qaj's posses, chokes the most convenient route from council chamber back to ship. In order to arrive safely again aboard The Unconstant Lover, the Ortok must somehow browbeat and lambaste a path home.

  Secrecy was never a primary virtue of the Council of Captains. Any decision reached by its members would, by necessity, eventually reach Pirateton's corsair constituency, as regards when to fly, where to fly and whom to shoot at. Perhaps privacy was the more strictly enforced virtue. Who precisely could and who precisely could not attend these meetings became a matter of some pride, particularly among the retinues and entourages of the five sovereign Captains.

  Looking out across the current of crowds drawn by simple news of a possible appearance from his own Captain, Odisseus wonders if a dash more secrecy could perhaps benefit the Freebooter Fleet's leadership.

  One moment, the sound is a hubbub of hushed but eager yammering in an encyclopedic array of languages. The next, it balloons exponentially into full-throated screaming, all arms and weapons extended fully. Without looking or smelling, Odisseus knows that, three steps behind him, Nehel Morel, Galactic Menace, has made his entrance.

  On the same breath as their hysterical hollering does the crowd, pressed furry shoulder to feathered shoulder, come pushing-and-shoving all the closer. To a being, they all hope to claim a favorable look, a clasp of the hand or even, should they be lucky enough, an autograph for the newly named Menace.

  To describe Nemo's popularity as "skyrocketing" in the wake of the IMIS's supposedly damning proclamation would be an understatement akin to describing space as "Bad" or Moira as "mean." He'd become the absolute toast of Pirateton, this far from the first time the adoring public trampled each other to gain that many inches closer to him. He could hardly set foot upon sand without spontaneously germinating a crowd. Each crowd, Odisseus observes, seems bigger than the last – more and more enthused pirates to sing his praises and practically mob him, as though hoping to suck some portion of his pure criminality by the force of sheer osmosis.

  Odisseus unleashes a roar of his own, allowing his baser instincts as the territorial beast he is to take over. Spittle flecks onto the faces of the forward ranks of advancing fanboys. This purchases a patch of empty sand for both Two-Bit Switch and, eventually, his saltbrother, to level up on either of the Ortok's flanks. This done, Odisseus commits his primary focus towar
d taking a sniffing stock of the swarms all about him. He attempts to assess, from a few broad whiffs, whether any harmful intentions are smuggled in amongst the hordes of happy freebooters.

  On the other hand, Two-Bit is unable to wholly banish that wide-toothed grin he's worn since the "good news" was announced two days previously. He chooses to usher and shoo aside onlookers with all the efficacy of a jaywalker attempting to verbally dissuade oncoming traffic. Watching this, Odisseus cannot help but wonder why, somewhat frustrated and forlornly, Captain Charybdis required Moira Quicksilver's, Nemo's second de facto bodyguard, presence so immediately.

  For some reason, the Trijan privateer had beckoned aside the Lover's first mate following the adjournment of the Council. Moira'd then neglected to accompany them on their crosstown sojourn in favor of fulfilling Charybdis' cryptic request. In so doing, she denied Nemo's bodyguard detail the use of one widely-respected and universally-feared ex-bounty hunter and all her crowd-parting gifts.

  With Two-Bit a Nemo groupie in all but name, the responsibility fell to Odisseus alone, then, to keep the unwashed masses from stampeding over his unrealistically popular saltbrother and smothering him with misspent affection.

  Even more foregone than the conclusion of his idolization is undoubtedly Nemo's response, lapping greedily at the bowl of his own stardom without any attempts at humility.

  He wholeheartedly waves to the fawning piratical plebs with both hands over his head, like some Inner Sector fascist en route to his awaiting motorcade. Unlike said fascist, however, all the downtrodden and disenfranchised citizens of Pirateton's unabashedly adore him. A ragged, uneven chant of "Menace! Menace!" grinds into general use within fifteen seconds of his arrival. The Captain claps shoulders, shakes hands and signs a baffling number of autographs, thanks to a Two-Bit-provided inkjetter, even within the confined radius of three steps outside the council chamber.

  Apart from wrists, shirts and a surprising number of naked breasts, the object the chanting crowd most overwhelmingly wishes vandalized by Nemo's laughable squiggle of a signature are their guns. Most alarming to Odisseus, each weapon is thrust forward toward the Ortok's saltbrother and brandished back and forth with dubiously discernible intent. Never, in all their years of boarding actions, broadsides and bushwhacks, has Odisseus been made more anxious by this many firearms pointed unarguably toward Nemo, him armed only with a meager inkjetter.