Galactic Menace

by Timothy J Meyer

  “You-think?” Charybdis seems disappointed, almost crestfallen. “I've-kept-a-tactic-in-my-back-pocket, case-I-ever-needed-to-touch-down-on-the-surface-ever-again.”

  “That,” Two-Bit points back, “we may still hank.” He smirks an aside to Nemo. “As you could probably specc, hinky fuckers like these don't take toasty to offworlders touching down.”

  “Thoughts, then?”

  “Only thing I'm flashing, and this's hooked pretty much offa hunch I had about something you jabbed me,” he aims towards Charybdis, “is zappers.” This provokes a visible reaction from Nemo, who ceases chewing to make actual eye contact with Two-Bit.

  “They-don't-have-any,” she provides. “They've-no-research, no-interest, not-a-word-about-them-back-home.”

  “Could mean whatever jumbo they got's immune,” Two-Bit allows. “Could be, though, it's an oversight.” He shrugs. “Maybe they'll do bloom all. Maybe they'll blow the shit wide open.”

  “Guess-we'll-find-out.”

  “Disablers, though,” Nemo, now visibly agitated, presses. “Means you need Vobash.”

  Charybdis grates her teeth together. “Right.”

  Two-Bit scowls at both of these reactions, his paranoia resurfacing. “Is Vobash a crunch now?”

  Nemo's next smile is all the answer Two-Bit requires. “This I was gonna talk to you about.”

  “Peachy.”

  Nemo shuffles his noodles aside for a second and engages full weaseling mode. “How feasible is, say,” he pitches, “pulling this off sans Vobash entirely?”

  “Well–”

  “And sans all his ships.”

  “Well–”

  Nemo's grimace bears grim tidings. “That bad?”

  Two-Bit sugar-coats nothing. “That gashouse. Zoomers'll maybe do in a pinch, but–”

  “Plus,” Charybdis confesses, “I'm-not-even-certain-my-weaponry-and-the-weaponry-of-my-ships-will-even-harm-solxite. There's-a-decent-chance-it-won't.”

  “You ask me,” Two-Bit continues, “zappers is where our best squeak lies and Vobash's boys is got all the good zappers.” He stands now, arms akimbo. “Care to jabb me what this rumpus is with Vobash?”

  “He-refuses-to–”

  Nemo shakes his head thrice and rapidly. “That isn't what I want you worrying about. I want you worrying about Trija,” he gestures a pair of sticks towards the holographic airspace dangling before him, “and killing all its dudes. What's the next big hurdle?”

  Two-Bit doesn't stop scowling, sensing the ever-present phantom of Nemo's withholding, intentional or otherwise, of imperative information. Charybdis, unwilling to intervene, is suddenly shuffling her noodles with sublime grace and coordination.

  “The next big hurdle,” Two-Bit proceeds warily, “apart from the honking glassies of death,” he beats a fresh percussion on the keypad to summon forth their latest challenge, “is, of course, the Radiant Armada.”

  A host of one hundred holograms, each one minute and nonthreatening at this resolution, appear suddenly in orbit around Trija. Without examining them, Two-Bit can identify specific ships, their call signs and their capabilities, their traditional positions memorized after extensive hours of study and some specific tutoring from Charybdis.

  In his peripheral, he spies massive dreadnoughts, the cornerstones of the Armada's aerial defense. He's certain, corroborated by the testimony of both schematic and Charybdis, each of these capital ships boast enough individual starfighters to rival even The Eyesore's own prodigious reserves. He spots well-armed junks, the capabilities of which he's that much more comfortable with, The Dishonorable Discharge once counted among their number.

  “Ah. Yes. Right,” Nemo appraises, his face suddenly cast that much more green by the unexpected entrance of the Radiant Armada.

  “At any given moment, Her Royal Bloomhole vizzes fit to cast approximately a hundred fifty gantines in the skies over Trija.”

  “A-third-of-the-Armada's-full-strength.”

  “Should–” Two-Bit's fingers reach for the keypad but Nemo's follow-up catches him first.

  “And we have?”

  “At this given moment?” Two-Bit dangles, mostly for dramatic effect. His fingers hit the pad typing. A smattering of purple, a mere fraction of the green forces arrayed against them, is added to the hologram. Each individual pixel modeled after a particular craft within the Freebooter Fleet, The Unconstant Lover serves as the spearhead's absolute point. “Thirty-six.”

  “Thirty-six?” repeats Charybdis numbly.

  “The fuck?” Nemo spits, as though stabbed. “How'd we get so–”

  “It's been three days, mate,” Two-Bit reminds pointedly. “No more jangle to toss 'em, mercs tend to get fidgety. Now, I'm sure,” he placates immediately, “we snuff around some, make the noises needed, sprinkle the word you're massing marauders again, we can easily double that. Long as too many don't care or catch wise where we're headed.” Two-Bit pauses at sight of Nemo's conflicted expression. “I've gotta scrogger on wank, ready to raise some jazz, soon as you gimme the blinker.”

  Charybdis' face is impassive as she complicates things. “Vobash, of-course, will-notice.”

  “Sure. Vobash.”

  Nemo chews the dilemma fiercer than his noodles. “He puts two and two together, hears through the grapevine we're gearing back up again, he'll take his toys, disablers and all, and go the fuck home.”

  “More-than-disablers, though,” Charybdis is quick to add, “we-need-the-ships.”

  “She's right.” Two-Bit nods. “Even assuming we can dreg up another forty to fifty, and that's if we're rangu, but assuming we can, we're still vizzing at two-to-blooming-one tosses here.”

  “Hold off on Threesies, then,” Nemo insists, correctly guessing Two-Bit's station waif without batting an eye, “until this Vobash mess sorts out. Soon as that's straightened, we'll hit the recruiting drive all the harder.”

  “Every-day-we-delay,” Charybdis warns, “means-fewer-and-fewer-Freebooters-delay-with-us.”

  “I know. I know.”

  Never before has Two-Bit observed reality's harsh weight, the strain of innumerable odds stacked against him, tax a physical toll on the indefatigable Nehel Morel. Here, with every human and fallible factor laid before him, Nemo's entire bearing seems to shrink, to buckle somewhat beneath the burden he's shouldered.

  Two-Bit almost reaches a hand instinctively out, to warn Charybdis off continuing to stack the odds higher against his crestfallen Captain. “Even-assuming-we-get-Vobash-and-his-ships, they-hardly-improve-the-odds-any.”

  Two-Bit gives the Freebooter Fleet and their chances a condoning shrug. “We've bumped worse, sure – we've just usually bumped much better.”

  Charybdis doesn't waver, only points a finger towards the Armada where it's projected. “These-are-no-pushover-privateers-either. These're-military-ships, captained-by-military-officers, with-technology-you’ve-never-faced, en-masse.”

  “Yeah,” Nemo responds by rote. By now, he's clearly in the stage where he only hears more objections, more common sense to fly in the face of his understandably stupid plan. His attention, then, stays firmly planted amid the unctuous mess of his noodles. “You want any of this?” he offers to Two-Bit. “I'm done, I think.”

  “Oh, fuck me, sure.” Two-Bit reaches instantly for the proffered bowl.

  When Charybdis arrived, the starving Two-Bit devoured the lunch she'd prepared for him in three wolfish bites. Now, offered a second helping, the Spicion-addled jabberhead is suddenly overcome with a fresh wave of hunger. With his unwashed hands, he scoops up mouthfuls of the spicy Trijan meal and crams it directly into his hungry craw. Charybdis, a trueborn natural with the food's proper utensils, deigns to comment on his act of barbarism.

  “All that being jabbed,” Two-Bit attempts to assuage after his first swallow, “I do have a scheme up me sleeve.”

  “Does it rely,” Nemo poses, now watching his noodles disappear with regretful and covetous eyes, “principally on disablers?”r />
  “It does not.” He chews several seconds, on noodles and how best to phrase his proposal. “That's the rub there, ain't it? Zappers or no, best case we match these blowbags ship-to-ship.”

  “Worst-case,” Charybdis assumes, “they-incinerate-us-seconds-after-with-those-accursed-reflectors.”

  Nemo's eyeline doesn't move, but his expression crinkles about it. “So far, this sounds less like a scheme and more like depressing shit I already knew.”

  “We gotta dritch to win, I'm jabbing,” Two-Bit bottom-lines with a quick glare to Charybdis, unaccustomed to the fine art of Nemo-handling. “We play fair, they chavel us apart. Instead, we do what we do best.”

  Nemo's vague gesture is meant to signify his ears, seemingly. “I'm all fucking ears or whatever.”

  Swallowing his current mouthful, Two-Bit narrows his focus back toward the task at hand. He rattles off a sequence of commands into the imager's handy keypad. The previous hologram, depicting Trija and all its orbital defenses, makes itself suddenly scarce. In its place, Two-Bit installs a new graphic.

  A representational tree of genealogies descends down a staggering number of generations. Hardly an expert in the field, even Two-Bit's untrained eye noticed how remarkably straight forward Trija's history of royal succession was. Where he imagined a zig-zagging enterprise of intermarriages and inbreeding, here instead was an unbroken line from monarch to monarch to monarch.

  Charybdis' face is cast in a scowl, one she doesn't break for a lengthy chunk of the coming conversation.

  “What's the other fucking thing they do so bloody seriously, Trijans?”

  “Sing,” Nemo deadpans.

  “The other other thing,” Two-Bit allows patiently. He points to the relevant hologram. “This thing.”

  “I don't know, beget each other?”

  “Spot on,” awards Two-Bit. “They been begetting each other for fucking hundreds of fucking years. For whatever razz,” Two-Bit attempts to rationalize, “they've gone and convinced themselves, over these hundreds of years, that their, what you jabb it, their 'royal lineage' – you know, king to queen to queen to king – is bloom near sacred or something. Way more,” he clarifies, “that that tripe what passes with the Emperor. These blokes ain't fuckin' around.” He shoots a glance at Charybdis. “Correct me if I'm wrong here.”

  Another percussion of fingertips on keys narrows the hologram's focus past generations and generations of Trijan royals. When it stops, it highlights the very furthest tip of the furthest branch, from which no other branches yet germinate.

  “This one,” he points out, “this Queen Anorra–”

  “Anyorra,” Charybdis corrects, still scowling at his hologram.

  “Sure. Anyorra the However Many the Fuckth is the most recent in a direct lineage of Trijan queens longer than yours and mine plonkers put together.” The metaphor causes Nemo to involuntarily wince and miss the point. Charybdis just keeps scowling.

  “We're jabbing maybe sixty, seventy generations here, unbroken through the centuries, leading directly to this little scrogger.” He mimics honest confusion. “Did I jabb you that she was only nine years old?”

  Nemo doesn't bite. “Um, no.”

  “How's-that-relevant?”

  “Shit's relevant because, far as I know, a nine year old scrogger ain't begetting anybody anytime soon, is she?”

  He scrawls the hologram several units wider, to reveal parents, grandparents and great grandparents to the Queen in question. “Progens died too young, I don't know, something happened. Whatever the case, this Anyorra,” he indicates with a point, “is the only good-juiced member of their precious royal family's what's gotta pulse left.”

  Seconds after making the following suggestion, he semi-successfully tosses a pinch of noodles into his agape mouth. “So, we kill her.”

  Charybdis opens her mouth once but says nothing.

  Nemo repeats the words without any inflection. “We kill her.”

  “Sure. Or, well, we try. Trying is the important part.”

  Nemo allows a scowl to cross his features. “Somehow, miraculously, I don't follow. How's this sack Trija?”

  “Not to belabor the point,” Two-Bit caveats with a wearied sigh, “but we ain't–”

  “He's-right,” Charybdis suddenly blurts.

  Two-Bit stops dead in his tracks. Nemo now points his scowl toward Charybdis. “He's right about what?”

  “He's-correct. This-plan-will-see-Trija-sacked. That-is, assuming-I'm–” she stops herself suddenly, almost self-conscious and steps half a step away from the imager. “Excuse-me. Please, finish.”

  Two-Bit's unable to completely hide the smile that Charybdis' endorsement, the endorsement of a bona fide former member of the Trijan war machine, inspires. “I was jabbing,” he begins again, slower this time, “we ain't winning the space battle, is we? I mean, it's equally important we don't lose the space battle, but shove comes to push, they've every advant and we've practically none. The trick then,” he proceeds, egged on by Nemo's persistent lack of understanding, “becomes changing the win condition. We're only there to pocket their jangle, right, not bloom their gantines or ice their crushers.”

  “Or kill their queen.”

  “Right. Specc on this, though.” Two-Bit's hands spread wide, as though attempting to paint Nemo a mental picture he hadn't prepared any holograms for. “You take a small team, jabb, four or five berks stupid enough to agree, and you touch 'em down on the surface of the planet–”

  “How do you accomplish that?”

  Two-Bit points. “She's got her way, don't blank.”

  Across the strategic imager, Captain Socorro Charybdis is all smiles.

  From sweeping gesture to swiftly typing fingers, Two-Bit swaps holograms to an aerial view of an expansive, earthbound city, constructed amid the rocky heart of a mountain surrounded massif. “Capital city's,” Two-Bit informs, “called Zaraskevi and the capital city, sure enough, is where one bumps the royal palace.” Another rapping of keys illuminates a centralized building, easily a tenth of the city in size, in isolating and identifying purple.

  “From there,” he conjectures, stepping a few feet away from the imager to better address his incredulous Captain, “whole shebang's a simple slambreak.” Two-Bit summarizes his theory thusly. “Sure as fuck I can't scheme you a victory in space, but I'll be thrice bloomed before there's four walls and a roof I can't specc you a way into.”

  “I'm certainly dense,” stipulates Nemo, “but I'm failing to see a connection between pillaging all the Supreme Sovereignty's cash and assassinating their queen.”

  “Assassinatin' is maybe too strong,” supposes Two-Bit. “It ain't, as I jabbed, really about icing her.”

  Two-Bit doesn't miss the look of disappointment that briefly colors Charybdis' face.

  “All we really hank is to instill the fear of Jotor in the bastards; bump her, take her hostage, force the Armada to lay down wheels and empty their wallets, else we put a canister in her maggie and conclude the whole centuries long business quick as can be.”

  “So, a hostage situation?”

  “Sorta, sure. And the sweets'd be all the jangle on Trija and all its colony planets.”

  His uncharacteristic attempts to drum up an objection fail him. Nemo then flaps a finger from his pocket and points at the palace, spinning slowly below him. “Place looks pretty fucking huge. You gotta–”

  A specially-prepared sequence of keys drastically zooms the hologram inward. Almost instantaneously, the entire interior of the royal palace – floor plan and all – is transparently visible. The several areas Two-Bit'd specifically outlined as either vulnerabilities or snags are flagged green and a purple arrow whizzes back and forth across the complex in a repeating loop, highlighting the quickest, safest and most feasible route through.

  “Oh,” is Nemo's response.

  “Turns out, we know somebody what used to work there,” Two-Bit reminds with a nod across the imager. Charybdis takes a short, mocking
bow.

  “Nobody,” he goes on to clarify, “is jabbing this's gonna be habby. Bloom, nobody's jabbing it's even gonna be feez but, end of the day, it's our best hazard, bar none.”

  “May-I-ask,” Charybdis poses, “what-the-Fleet-and-I'll-be-up-to-during-all-this?”

  “Fleet's gotta be doing as much damage as possible in low orbit, to enforce the threat and provide us cover to make planetfall. That ain't a job I'm envious of, so much so that I'm fucking volunteering for landward duty, but shit's gotta be done, unfortunately.” He sighs and returns his hands to his hips. “This would be why,” he adds, “them zappers is so damn essential.”

  “Much as I'd like to promise those,” Nemo confesses, “I really haven't grokked any method to manhandle that Triomman bleeder as of yet.”

  “Take your time, I suppose,” Two-Bit advises, politely as possible.

  “Can't, really,” is the Captain's honest answer. “Tick tock and everything.”

  Two-Bit Switch finds himself unusually unarmed to combat another of the Captain's melancholies. Instead, he occupies himself with devouring another droopy morsel of noodles.

  “And we're certain,” Nemo endeavors again after a substantial pause spent staring into the juddering hologram as though into the waving flames of an introspective campfire, “this is possible? We're certain I shouldn't just pay Brondi his million and have done?”

  “All-I-know-is,” Charybdis stipulates, “you-put-that-planet-in-my-sights-and-an-armada-at-my-back-and-I'll-be-happy.”

  “Sound like two entirely different ringers, you ring me.” Two-Bit slurps a pendant noodle into his mouth. “Is this possible? Yes, I'd be inclined to jabb so. Me at the helm, it's possible and not much more.” He pauses long enough for the point to penetrate Nemo's famously thick skull before continuing to his counterpoint.

  “Should you just score Brondi his mil? Yes, I'd be equally inclined to jabb so. Safe jangle says Brondi's right, you're a fucking dunce who oughta just score the bleeder his mil and have done.” The Menace swallows this point with an equal amount of silence, but Two-Bit imagines he detects Nemo's shoulder tense at the mere suggestion. “Consequence of that, though, would be admitting Brondi's right.”