"The truth?"
"No, some buhoxshit, please."
"The truth is, you should fucking quit this place. Today. Following this interview. If you were truly, honestly interested in your heart's continued beating, you'd disembark this station, dump your freighter onto a trash heap and find work as an Offchart beet farmer. You think I'm joking. Shave your head, smelt your pistol to slag and sever your ties. Few months of you off the scene, with their supposed Galactic Menace vanished, they'll drum up some phony, shoot him and elect some newer, stupider bastard to your position. You unwilling to do that? Then they're going to shoot you in the head."
"Go fuck yourself."
Chapter 24
Odisseus watches the torpedo's tiny jetbooster flare to life and carry the missile away. A glossy arrowhead of polished metal whenever headlights or sunlight happen to play across its surface, the torpedo rapidly gains momentum and breaks away from the Freebooter's front lines.
None of the other ships-of-the-line, all arrayed expansively to either side of The Unconstant Lover and advancing in a mad mob, voice a single other weapon, cannon or torpedo. For potentially sentimental reasons, the Briza is allowed “bagsies,” as Two-Bit would call it, on the very first shot.
Only very rarely would the opening shot of a fleet action see Odisseus at the helm. Most often, his assuaging skills were required elsewhere aboard, usually to regulate Port and Starboard's engagement speed or to pour system power into their perpetually diminished ray shields or, most frequently, preventing things from sparking, smoking or exploding.
Today was an unusually historic day, however. Today, the last of the Valladian Shipping Line's Outer Ring ports was prophesied, all those months ago, to fall. His decision directly informed by Two-Bit's recent intel, this one time Odisseus opted to claim a seat with the bridge crew and watch the fireworks.
Yime Orbital, the galaxy's one-stop-shop for buhoxmeat of any variety or description, looks as lonesome and spindly as once it did when viewed on Two-Bit's pilfered Attaché. Posted placidly over the pasteurized green farmland of Yime below, the sensors confirm that there's nothing even resembling a civilian spaceship within many zottibles of the station.
The only sign of any occupation onboard Yime Orbital is the ring of blinking distress lights. One after another, they ignite in an eerie, circular fashion, their pleas ignored by the converging crowd of graffiti-spattered pirates.
A week prior to their planned assault on Yime Orbital, Two-Bit Switch made the frustrating report that, as with Ikoril before it, the typical hustle and bustle of ship traffic that surrounds the station succinctly dried up. The majority of the Freebooter Fleet were understandably dismayed about this and, when the news rippled out, a fresh wave of boredom-provoked desertions followed.
Personally, Odisseus found the revelation refreshing. As with Ikoril, the Lover was unlikely to sustain any integral damage and no one was likely to be shooting with hateful intent at himself, his saltbrother or his crewmates. In fact, it was this revelation that permitted him to join his confederates in the helm and even to partake of a celebratory tankard of Gitterswitch Gin, an indulgence the Ortok allowed himself infrequently enough.
His habitually cautious nature still instills him at his traditional seat. Beside the shielding mainframe, he could most easily boost the signal of ray or bombard shields, should some ambush or disaster rear an ugly head. Two-Bit Switch occupied his own traditional seat directly ahead, with orders to angle double forward for the impending "attack," could such a term be used.
Nemo steers The Unconstant Lover with subconscious ease, only a mere sliver of his attention devoted to the task. The majority of his attention remains devoted to maintaining his stony silence, the same one he'd maintained since the interview with Wezz and, in truth, their arrival at Ikoril.
In the sensor room, it was Abraham who confirmed, shortly after dropping out of warp, that the station's life signs were nil, in accordance with Two-Bit's hypothesis. No boarding party was bothered with, subsequently, and Moira, high above them all, only powered up her Antagonist as a precaution. Upon hearing this news, the Captain fired the first torpedo, an opening gambit, a polite consideration.
The torpedo zooms away from its host of haggard pursuers, rocketing across the expanse between Yime Orbital and the Lover's dented nose. Its shape is noticeably imperfect, its craftsmanship a degree shoddier than most anything even a poor black marketeer could dredge up for a potential buyer.
Odisseus, the torpedo's last-minute architect, isn't too harsh on his handiwork, however. Considering the hasty time frame he was given and the rousing success of his previous work – the crowbar that popped Ikoril wide – no one was in a position to criticize.
Almost two years separated Odisseus from his last attempt at replicating a Wolfsbane torpedo. With the collapse of Ott's empire, repellent was that much more scarce on the "streets" of Bad Space. For the frontrunners of the Freebooter Fleet, however, far more than enough raw materials were available to craft a sizable supply of the doxychoraphum-flooded explosives. Each Captain came equipped with a magazine of the things, to fulfill Nemo's singular strategy for Yime Orbital.
"Came equipped," in this sense, meant that Odisseus was commissioned to construct them, this time assisted and abetted with a team of pirate mechanics from across the Fleet.
Nemo's torpedo, selected to perform the first honors, scoots the remaining distance towards the station. It narrowly skirts the broad mercantile disc and instead slams into what could easily be observed, at even a casual glance, as the station's thinnest and least stable point. Good aim Odisseus immediately dismisses; it was Nemo, not Moira, with their finger on the trigger after all. The torpedo that destroyed Yime Orbital was guided, with unerringly precision, only by Nemo's pervasive sense of stupid luck.
A grove of narrow columns that moors the lower, industrial sections to the higher, commercialized sections, the Wolfsbane torpedo demolishes them all. A rapidly blooming flower of orange expands outward in graceful spirals, twisted wreckage beading its fiery pedals like a morning dew.
A creator rather than a destroyer, Odisseus can actually admit, watching that initial blast, that there might be a certain impracticable beauty to the simple visual of an explosion. Thoughts of the blast's inevitable victims universally sullied these frequent spectacles for him. Here, though, in this one quite specific instance, against an unoccupied and derelict space station, the Ortok can simply sip his Gitterswitch and enjoy the show.
What Odisseus nor any other Freebooter in the Fleet anticipated, however, was that Yime Orbital was already rigged to explode.
The explosion that rocked the station's midsection peters out into wispy trails of conflagration. Seconds later, a chain reaction of similar explosions rebound up and down Yime Orbital. Viewports are blown out and airlocks are burst open by the vibrantly high-octane orange of doxychoraphum.
Within the space of a gasped breath, a once fully-functional, if abandoned space station is transformed into an all-encompassing cloud of hungry flame. Fragments and oddments of Yime Orbital's exoskeleton are visible only briefly between gouts of igniting repellent.
A stunned silence, a realization and then a subsequent gratitude passes between the comms of the quickly diverting pirate ships. It's made abundantly clear to the majority of the Freebooter Fleet that Nemo's introductory torpedo spared more than simply their boarding parties from a death by booby trap. They each peel away like a retreating tide, away from the tongues of searching fire, lapping in every direction for something teltriton to chew.
A unanimous cheer, moments later, overthrows their silence. Skeins of exultant expletives burst forth from every open comm channel aboard every ship present.
With one tremendously fortunate shot, the tenth and final port on the Valladian Shipping Line is perhaps not sacked, but certainly destroyed.
Despite the sudden pang his mechanic's heart feels at each and every one of the Lover's comm speakers blowing out simultaneously, Odiss
eus reaches across the helm and plants a paw significantly upon his saltbrother's shoulder.
“Feel better?”
Two-Bit Switch slap palms over both his ears, lest he go instantaneously deaf.
In all his sixteen years of plying Takioro Defederate Station as man and boy, he has never witnessed this many sentients of this many species crammed, tighter than a tin of sporefin, into The Bloody Afterburn.
They are all universally cheering his entrance.
Despite the irreversible damage his eardrums may sustain, Two-Bit Switch could probably get used to this.
Once the applause has abated somewhat, Two-Bit, grinning like a buffoon, pries one hand free to wave endorsingly at the hundreds of revelers, a politician en route to his stump speech. Despite the press of tattooed and tentacled bodies all about him, his presence and prestige does clear something of a space for Two-Bit, enough to, at the very least, clear the way through the Afterburn's actual doorway.
Enough happy hands and proud appendages, originating from the surrounding spacers, clap, clasp and collide with Two-Bit that he feels he's being nudged and prodded towards his inevitable destination – the bar. A dozen requests for the pleasure of his company, indicated by emphatic gestures towards quickly vacated chairs, go unanswered or declined, the current of the crowd sluicing Two-Bit too quickly across the tavern to linger even a moment.
An unimaginative and therefore viral chant of "Two-Bit! Two-Bit! Two-Bit!" is born somewhere deeper within the tavern's crowd. Within seconds, all the faces adjacent to Two-Bit's own are hooting his name with equal, if not greater, enthusiasm.
Yarba New Year, perhaps, is the only occasion during which the Takioro native could recall seeing his home satellite anywhere near as crowded as this. Even from a pedestrian's passing headcount, Two-Bit estimates that, floor to ceiling, the Second Ring contains somewhere near twice, even three times more party-goers than the New Year's busiest night can boast.
By Menacing decree, The Bloody Afterburn was awarded the dubious honor of hosting the bash's main event. Two-Bit's progress down the broad boulevard toward the Afterburn was impeded at practically every step by, beyond simple congested traffic, honest-to-moons admirers. His adoring public are always eager to slap shoulders, sing his praises or, disturbingly, offer gifts and favors, whose natures ran the gamut from alcoholic to monetary to sexual.
From Shellshucker to Afterburn, Two-Bit Switch has received more comm frequencies, scribbled onto scraps of paper or even across his exposed flesh, from potential mates than he's ever received in his entire career as a professional poon hound.
He also could not wipe the idiotic smile off his aching face.
The Bloody Afterburn is scarcely recognizable as Nemo's favorite drinkery tonight, a slattern smearing new makeup across her face to better please the triumphant, returning Freebooters. Beside the sheer anomaly of crowds in an otherwise unpopular joint, the Afterburn's makeover extends in practically all directions.
A surplus of tables, all of them fully occupied, are repositioned to accommodate a wide central mingling area. A fresh coating of dripping wet graffiti decorates the walls, booths and floor of the entire taproom. This was hasty, amateur shiptagger work, of course – nowhere approaching the craft and artistry of Ganymede Mel. Two-Bit does notice, however, obvious representations of each major Jolly Roger, plastered across different corners of the Afterburn, to demarcate the seating into distinct neighborhoods and districts – a miniaturized, replicated Pirateton.
Only through gaps in the crowd of heads, hairdos and horns is the other, more major renovation faintly visible – a performing stage. An unoccupied performing stage, Two-Bit cranes to discover, but the instruments arranged theatrically across it and the completely illegible drumhead scrawl confirm his hopes and deepens his smile simultaneously.
Swept downstream, through the cavorting course the crowd passes him along, Two-Bit's eyes flick now between the corner booths, the seats of honor. There sit, enthroned, the most honored and prestigious guests of this impromptu hullabaloo, each seated beneath their sloppily-painted sigils.
Under the watchful eyes of Boogers and Teeth, Greatgullet and a rowdy group of his goonage engage in a tabletop-slapping, multiple-contestant drinking contest. As each buccaneer bangs the table, the drained tankards, trophies of their previous such contests, rattle against the wood and occasionally clatter to the floor.
Everything about the occupants of Vobash's table telegraph, subtly and unsubtly, how constitutionally opposed the Triomman and his circumspect crew are to attending anything resembling a rave of these proportions. Tension, unease and eye-darting paranoia are commonplace from their quarter.
Beneath Aju Vog Xah Qaj's coat-of-arms, a Xendo squadron ingests, with ten times the efficiency and zero times the jocularity of Greatgullet's crew, an ocean's load of alcohol. Whether or not their efforts would pass along some semblance of intoxication to their absentee queen aboard The Eyesore, Two-Bit couldn't imagine.
It's Charybdis and her blackskin brood that next draw Two-Bit's attention, never quite having observed such a gathering of traditional Trijans. Each one carries an individual conversation and creates, quite by accident, an eerie chorus of unintentionally harmonic melodies that, seemingly without aforementioned agreement, all fall within the same sung key.
One table, not sporting any insignia overhead to indicate its allegiance, still earns a considerable berth from the partying passerby, an isolated island among the shuffling, stomping, bipedal sea. Those fortunate enough to have claimed the table's seats, well-muscled and well-armed thuggery each one, are as protective as a bombard shield. They deflect the drunken rabble from approaching the table, with narrowed glares and a siege mentality, and from accosting its chief occupant, a peer of a different variety to the other Captains.
Velocity, Takioro's Depot-Commissioner, sits unamused at the table's head.
Of course the invitation extended to her was obligatory. Of course not attending would upset some delicate balance within the station's internal politics, particularly considering how popular the Freebooter Fleet'd evidently become in the past eight months. Despite or perhaps because of all these expectations, the Vollocki queenpin couldn't look less thrilled to occupy any one chair in the galaxy than were it spontaneously airlifted into the caldera of an active volcano.
From the overly deliberate way she's averted her gaze, Two-Bit can tell she's even less interest in chatting idle chat with a conquering hero. Far be it from Two-Bit, however, to deny Velocity the chance to bask in his victorious presence.
Against the wishes of the crowding current, Two-Bit lingers before her table an obnoxious length of time, far longer than she can comfortably spend considering the table, her hooves, her thuggery. Her eye contact is a chance outside this galaxy and her verbal acknowledgment, when it comes, is sodden with distaste. "Nice work, Switch."
"Have fun, Vel," he, the prodigal son come home to a begrudging mother, responds immediately, striding easily onward along his bar-pointed trajectory.
This close to the Afterburn's beating heart, Two-Bit doesn't pass a face he doesn't recognize, even if only passingly. A lifetime residence aboard Takioro Defederate Station certainly helps that, not to mention his encyclopedic knowledge of the Freebooters of the Fleet.
The local crowd, far cries from the touring troublemakers Two-Bit's brought with him, buzzes about the main source of the booze like pestilential barflies. Two-Bit tousles the indignant hair of Threesies, slaps suckers with Sifer and even exchanges a knowing nod with Gozzer, stout Ruuvian asswipe and manager of the Astrobounce Gentlemen's Club, of all asswipes.
As homegrown talent returned to roost, everybody from the old neighborhood arrives to pay their respects, begrudging or otherwise, to Two-Bit, the interstellar celebrity they used to flip cards, down shots and knock over liquor stores with.
The Bloody Afterburn's bar is packed past capacity, with an ass on every stool. When Two-Bit approaches, he somehow has little difficulty loca
ting a seat. An uncommonly generous Raqeese abdicates his stool for Two-Bit's use and is even courteous enough to wipe off, with a washcloth pilfered beneath Roger's notice, the slime trail he invariably leaves on the black leather.
Two-Bit plops into his seat, with the Nokko bosun of The Saving Grace to his left and the Mantrian pawnbroker of Tigg's Speedy Deels to his right. No sooner has he done this, than he discovers a garden of proffered tankards blooming before him. Each one comes sliding across the scummy bar top from a dizzying number of directions and each one sloshes its blue contents into a spilled, sticky slurry.
The bartender, the infamously ill-humored Unhappy Roger, creases his weathered Trijan brow and extends to Two-Bit the merest of smirks, a historical event in its own right.
Before Two-Bit can even smirk back, Roger's grumpiness returns, directed at either his tavern's surplus traffic, the incompetence of his undermanned waitstaff or, seemingly, at the very effort of drawing each individual breath.
Gingerly selecting a random Gitterswitch from those assembled around his seat, Two-Bit Switch spends all of approximately thirty seconds shaking a few tentacles, posing for a few holos and sipping down somewhere near a tenth of his first complimentary drink.
His next distraction arrives promptly. A shaggy shadow, a swift-moving orange and brown blur, shoulders and snarls its way through the thicket of bodies thronging the Afterburn's bar and claims a space adjacent to Two-Bit's own.
In stark contrast to the joyous and carefree carousing in every direction, Odisseus appears almost a wreck. His breathing ragged, his eyes half-crazed, his claws carve subconscious furrows into the bar's woodgrain. "Seen Nemo?" he muscles out, both volume and language barrier preventing anything more elaborate to be said.
Galactic Menace Page 50