Galactic Menace

by Timothy J Meyer

  The next confession scrambles free of her mouth before she's a chance to grok what she's saying. “And to impress a certain tattoo artist.”

  Nemo remains strangely disaffected through the whole confession, maintaining both eye contact and radio silence.

  “Ran away,” Moira continues, “shortly thereafter. Keep them covered these days.” At no further comment from Nemo, she traces a thumb haltingly along the rectangular border of one, recounting the familiar shape with a skidding fingertip. “Pretty sure you're the only person in Bad Space I've told about them.”

  This, at long last, causes Nemo to straighten his posture, turn towards her and adopt a surprisingly grave expression. In the face of this sudden, unexpected reaction from her Captain, more liquid courage is immediately required and Moira swigs all that remains of her Bile Backwash.

  With one drunken confession made, Moira's sense of decency or discretion falls asleep at the switch and she barrels forward, confessing more of her closely-guarded thoughts. “On the way back from Hazro, the second time, with The Low-Hanging Fruit, Abraham asked me a question that I couldn't answer, about why I first–”

  A pale-faced Nemo vomits directly on her lap.

  Moira's unbridled shock, her mouth hanging stereotypically open, converts her previous confession into a stilted gasp. The physical act – the convulsion of his torso, the horrific retching sound he makes, the sodden splashing on her hands and upper thighs – is quickly catalogued in Moira's memory as the single most revolting and infuriating action he's ever visited upon her. Were both her hands not casualties to the projectile vomiting, she would have obeyed every ingrained instinct to deliver an Aji Axeblade straight into Nemo's mandible.

  At a stroke, her skirt, her story and the merest scraps of her remaining dignity are destroyed in the most disgusting method possible.

  This done, Nemo cranes back to a more upright position, wipes the forearm of his duster against his dripping lips and suddenly makes a second retching sound, a nauseated burp, seconds later. “I bet Garrock Brondi a million credits that we'd sack Trija,” he comments nonsensically. He clambers, with a great clashing of thermosteel, off the shit-stained garbage can upon which he took his ease.

  With that, he saunters, as soberly as he can, from the scene. He staggers into the enveloping darkness of the tavern with his empty tankard dangling at his side and his first mate, soggy and humiliated, abandoned in the alleyway behind The Bloody Afterburn.

  Chapter 26

  Odisseus cannot put a claw onto what must have inspired this most murderous of Moira's moods. At the rate she devours Yellowtooth Cigarette after Yellowtooth Cigarette, the Ortok's left only to speculate that last night's rowdiness must not have been overly kind to her.

  Attired again in her normal costume – monochrome black boots, breeches, sweater and gloves – she counterpoints Odisseus on Nemo's lefthand side. She pollutes Takioro's toxic atmosphere further with her cigarette and she peels the paint off Hamburger Teriyaki Milkshake's daily specials sign with the force of her glower.

  “The course of action remains both unprovoked and unwarranted.” The Xendo ambassador somehow shows no sign of the station's collective lethargy.

  To a tee, each member of this final meeting of the Council of Captains, from the libertine Greatgullet to the puritanical Vobash, are bent to the table under the weight of their hangovers. As one, everyone engages in temple-massaging and hateful squinting toward Takioro's overhead lighting.

  The Xendo congregation are the exception that proves the rule. Nothing so meager as fermented peach juice was liable to incapacitate a single one of them. Odisseus does wonder precisely how their queen, sequestered aboard her colonyship, feels about loud noises this morning.

  “Yes and no,” is Nemo's languorous answer, attempting to both rally his excitement and stave off his own lethal hangover at once. “Unprovoked is good. Unwarranted is untrue.”

  “And what injustices, pray tell,” moans a similarly suffering Vobash, “have the Trijans committed to warrant such an attack? Has one of their spokespeople mispronounced anything lately?”

  “They have money,” Nemo points out, “and they exist, so.”

  “Hear, hear,” concurs Charybdis almost immediately.

  By rote, Odisseus vehemently opposed this plan of action, this profoundly needless attack against truly invincible Trija. It was practically policy to oppose ninety-percent of Nemo's propositions at this point, though, as they all derived from his saltbrother's same sense of suicidal lunacy.

  Unbeknownst to their peers around the table, this particular plan was somehow even worse advised than usual. Instead of arising sheerly from Nemo's own overconfidence, it was proposed at the perverse and supremely untrustworthy behest of Garrock Brondi – known cad, ne'er-do-well and recipient of now two hot canisters from Nemo's firearm.

  All that said, Odisseus was surprised to discover how complacent he'd become concerning Nemo's newest bad idea. Perhaps the Captain's grim and forlorn mood following that ill-fated interview was to blame. Perhaps because the prospect of this Trijan caper, this final hurrah for the Freebooter Fleet, rekindled Nemo's high spirits, Odisseus is almost swayed begrudgingly to his saltbrother's side.

  It came as an intense relief to discover, then, that the Council of Captains – Socorro Charybdis the notable exception – shared all the Ortok's misgivings and then some.

  The five Captains of the Freebooter Fleet enjoy a late, late breakfast at Hamburger Teriyaki Milkshake. Their respective posses ensconce them, to serve as protection against the more enthusiastic of the passerby. Their venue, this open-air grille, is flattered by the very term “restaurant” and is operated by some of the most ornery waitstaff credits can buy.

  The eatery's name could easily be mistaken for a highlighted sampling of the menu's specialty items. Instead, it refers to a bona fide dish the Hanquo cook whipped up on occasion, for especially masochistic patrons.

  Two-Bit's absence, despite his hard feelings towards the aproned Hanquo, is truly a waste of his guttersnipe's palette. Among all those assembled, only Boogers and Teeth, sucking on separate straws like teenage lovers, share one of the eponymous milkshakes – a chiller cream concoction ordinary brown enough to pass as chocochino.

  Vobash rubs weariness from his eyes. “Anyone interested in commencing the voting of this down? Shall we sack Trija, for nothing but old time's sake? I'm clearly against.”

  “We are Aju Vog Xah Qaj and we are against this motion.”

  “For,” Charybdis swears, before the Xend's even finished its statement.

  Odisseus or anyone present knew little of Charybdis' sordid history with the Supreme Sovereignty. The palpable torch she carried for inflicting damage upon her former masters, however, reminded the Ortok pointedly of another certain psychopath, with his own torch carried against the totalitarian authority of his choice.

  As unpredictable as she was, it seemed Captain Charybdis could always be depended on to approve this notion more passionately even than Nemo would.

  “I mean, for,” Nemo supplies.

  Everyone's eyes cross to meet with the glassy eyes of the single uncast vote – Captain Greatgullet.

  In simpler times, the Obaxi buccaneer's opinion was a carbon copy of Nemo's own. As a rule of thumb, The Rule of Thumb was always in favor of bolder, brasher strategies, of biting off more than she could chew, of any chance to cross swords and pocket booty. Here again, his allegiance would have been obvious and the decision to attack Trija ratified by a narrow majority.

  Indecision, however, is undoubtably present on the Obax's bearded and beaded face.

  “Against,” the marauder admits, after some considerable hemming and hawing. “Me boys're happy, me belly's full. No hard feelings, boss,” he's quick to assuage directly to Nemo, “but quittin' while we're ahead seems the best strategy.”

  “No hard feelings, Gull,” Nemo waves away with a listless hand. Only Odisseus recognizes his demeanor return to that same slack-postur
ed, high-tensile pose he adopted watching the press conference above Qel Qatar last year.

  Vobash slaps his hands together like some patronizing choral instructor. “Shall we call the matter settled? May we proceed to something less asinine?” he concludes, supremely satisfied.

  A murmur of agreement issues from the mouths of three of the four Captains.

  Nemo's expression, inspired by stymied ambition rather than Jotor knows what, hardens enough to match Moira's own.

  Two-Bit Switch trumped Taardia Imperial Penitentiary. He nullified all Nemen Uil's lauded defenses. To coin a phrase, he slipped not only himself, but nine hundred some fellow prisoners, straight through the closing fingers of the HIN Surimiah. Bribing guards, jimmying locks, cutting alarms, greasing bulkheads – all of these came as naturally to Two-Bit Switch as slithering came to a Saurian or fucking came to a Phnuki.

  Nonetheless, try though he might, there was simply no cracking the impenetrable net the Supreme Sovereignty of Trija cast about their homeworld.

  Admittedly, he was an expert on infiltration and escape, substantially less of one on fleet tactics. Even an amateur jailbreaker, though, could glance at the Trijan dilemma and discern with relative ease that naval strength simply wasn't an option available to anyone.

  Their shipcraft, cultivated over centuries, was peerless. Their technology was specifically designed to monopolize their home field advantage to the extreme. To all appearances, the Radiant Armada could not be defeated on any field of battle, much less their own. All the Imperium's august naval majesty couldn't crack their shell and whatever rapscallion rabble the Freebooter Fleet would muster that day certainly wouldn't either.

  The planet wasn't unsackable; Two-Bit firmly believed that much. His criminal creed demanded that with time, trickery and the proper application of brute force, any stronghold could be made thoroughly sackable. The difficulty lay simply in selecting the precise victory condition. Thus far, valor-in-arms clearly wasn't the answer.

  With seventy-two hours, hardly four meals between them and six lines of snoted Spicion in their place, Two-Bit couldn't divine the correct answer.

  At this point, a correct answer meant simply an answer Nemo would accept.

  “Take me through again,” he orders with all the casual authority that only commanding the Freebooter Fleet could have installed in his voice. “I'm not seeing the problem here.”

  “From the top?” Two-Bit assumes.

  Putzing about with two pair of Trijan feeding sticks, Nemo negotiates his noodles entirely unsuccessfully between his four implements. After several attempts, he fails utterly to bring even a single sopping strand to his mouth. “From the top.”

  The other Captain's hands are perfectly sculpted around her own pair of Trijan utensils. Socorro Charybdis pays Nemo's laughable attempts no heed, all her attention focused solely on Two-Bit. “If-you-wouldn't-mind.”

  Seventy-two hours of “research and development” into the Trija caper had devolved the Lover's gundeck into a nest of squalor and iniquity, the handiwork of a hoodlum concerned only with crime and nothing with cleanliness.

  A topography of trash, a census-like sampling of all Two-Bit's favorite fast food, has accumulated across every one of the room's even surfaces. A host of equipment encircles the pair of them, each borrowed screen from the sensor devoted to the task of displaying as many bootlegged schematics as Charybdis could offer him.

  Most embarrassing to a thoroughly Spicious Two-Bit, however, were the sock scraps. Morsels of ratty cloth, the remnants of his final pair of socks, are distributed liberally across the gundeck floor. Even now, their surrendered upper halves remain attached to Two-Bit's ankles from sheer loyalty.

  In the thumb-streaked reflection of his Attaché, Two-Bit Switch resembles his temporary abode as much as Nemo doesn't. He's wild-haired, red-eyed, sweat-stained, more a decade's recluse rather than simply a weekend's. The reflection staring back at him is a shifty, furtive, untrustworthy motherfucker, but that, Two-Bit allows, is likely the Spicion talking.

  By contrast, Nemo looks as presentable as the perennially scruffy outlaw ever could. His hangover half a day past, his monthly shower this morning, all his attention is whetted toward accomplishing this newest and least logical scheme.

  Captain Socorro Charybdis shows solidarity with Two-Bit and his dishevelment. She's left her ornate jacket behind, untucked the tails of her uniform's undershirt and even foregone the wig, revealing her black pate to be as bald as a Buja's.

  Her attending the meeting was mandatory. That much she'd stipulated to Two-Bit when she'd surrendered the sum total of intel she had about Trija's planetary defenses. Rather than offending or scandalizing her, the prospect of hordes of uncouth pirates swarming over her forgotten homeworld seemed instead to fill the ex-privateer with a chipper energy.

  She'd even provided lunch.

  Two-Bit straightens his spine with a series of rewarding cracks. Rubbing his palms together, he reels the strategic imager's slideshow of prepared holograms back to the start. “From the top, then,” he resolves, the catalog of ships, maps and schematics flipping effortlessly past his eyes. He activates the first hologram.

  When he was first presented with the challenge of somehow impregnating impregnable Trija, Two-Bit confesses that perhaps he should've asked a few more questions that began with “why” and not quite as many that began with “how.” He was too enamored with the insurmountability of the task assigned him. Rather, he was too enamored with the corresponding trust Nemo placed in Two-Bit's masterminding skills and, as such, he never necessarily questioned the origin of the challenge – namely, one Garrock Asshat Brondi.

  Two-Bit has palpable difficulty recalling his mental state on Gallow, around Flask and during the bank caper the Captain couldn't rely on him to plan. With Valladia sacked and burnt behind him, his credentials were ten ports thus improved.

  With a positive bleep, the strategic imager tosses a particular solar map into view. After these three “days” of research, Two-Bit could recognize that constellation of planets and orbitals as Trijan Space at six hundred paces. “First crunch,” he begins, “is gonna be warp drift.”

  “Uh huh,” grunts Nemo, wrestling mightily with his lunch.

  “Because coords within Trijan Space're scantier than Brondi's lollies, there's no chance, that I can vizz, of us dropping into anything but a random cluster. Vizzing at the mathematicals I got offa Charybdis,” the two exchange a polite nod, “Abraham's pretty certain he can drop everybody within cobbing distances of each other, but that's all he's promising.”

  Two-Bit leans away from the imager and adjusts the hang of his trousers mechanically, a habit he'd picked up since abandoning his belt two nights previously. “No ambush, no element of surprise, nothing but right into the chompers.”

  “There any reason,” Nemo proposes, Two-Bit assured that he'll need to shoot this proposal down as well, “we couldn't drop out someplace nearby? Powwow a few zottibles away, regroup, fly in together?”

  “These're the only coords you can pony up, right?” Two-Bit dangles towards Charybdis.

  “I'm-afraid-so,” she sings quietly. “After-all, what-reason-would-a-loyal-soldier-of-the-Sovereignty-have-for-warping-anywhere-besides-the-main-harbor?”

  “What, another system, then?” Nemo proposes. “Drop in somewhere nearby, hike over on foot?”

  “Nearest-would-be-Yarba.”

  Two-Bit raps a few more keys on the imager's input pad. The image of the map widens considerably, showing adjacent sector and highlighting one planet in particular. “At standard cruising crackle, it'll take us nine months to fly from Yarba to Trija.”

  “Uh, granted,” Nemo allows.

  “So,” Two-Bit continues with more fingers rapped against more keys. The hologram, in response, zooms much, much closer in. “Accounting for coords and warp drift, squeaks are good we're gonna appear somewhere around here.” On cue, a rendering of Trija's main harbor appears, complete with holographic docking e
mbankments, holographic shipyard gantries and, most saliently of all, a holographic pair of orbital reflectors.

  “The-killbox,” Charybdis recounts.

  As his mouth chews cartoonishly on his latest bundle of spiced noodles, Nemo's eyes sweep the projected orange harbor that dangles several inches from his face. Upon spotting the reflectors, he inclines his noodle-draped chin towards them. “These are those mirrors.”

  “These are them glassies,” Two-Bit confirms.

  Represented now only by fist-sized holograms of acrid orange, the two orbital reflectors that hang pendulously in Trija's airspace were the ever-present thorn in Two-Bit's mastermind side. Sworn up and down by Charybdis, they were the pair of trump cards up Trija's sleeve that would render bootless any attempt to broadside within sight of the system's red dwarf sun.

  “Those-reflectors-are-capable, with-the-correct-angle-to-the-dwarf, of-reducing-an-entire-craft-to-ashes-in-seven-seconds-flat,” Charybdis relates, faintest hint of pride in her cadence.

  Nemo flattens his mouth into a frown. “I assume they're shielded and everything?”

  Off Charybdis' nod, Two-Bit elaborates, hoping to curtail any further stupid questions Nemo should've answered by paying initial attention the first time around. “Tricky thing about Trijans is, they don't share tech, but bloom do they steal it. Ray and bombard, both of 'em, beyond the fucking wazoo.”

  Nemo's mouth being full doesn't impede his speech any. “You're saying there's no way to bust 'em?”

  Two-Bit spins the manacle once around his wrist in gentle twists. “Scanty.”

  “Well,” Charybdis starts to disagree, piercing Trija's hologram with her pointed stick, “that's-not-entirely-true. There're-the-hubs.”

  “Hubs?” Nemo repeats, noncomprehending.

  Two-Bit waves a few dismissive gestures this way and that. “Dohick planetside what controls 'em. I hinked at first that'd be our chink in, but planetfall there's gonna be too fucking gashouse for too few results.”