Galactic Menace

by Timothy J Meyer

  "Blowback? What do you mean?"

  I asked him for this thoughts on the coming reprisals, on how the Imperium would ultimately respond to the Freebooter Fleet. Again, he appeared still further confused.

  "So, wait. They send starfighters, shock troops, moons-damned capital ships after my ass, shoot down a fair percentage of my friends and followers in the process and that don't count as blowback to you?"

  The point I couldn't seem to impress upon the Galactic Menace was the time limit he'd imposed upon himself.

  There's a strange fatalism that's accompanied each of the previous Menaces, from Vepane to Ott to Obwala. As effective as he was, the Eraser could never have killed everyone he named – even if he'd died of old age. Wealthy as he was, Boss Ott would never claim a sustained military superiority over the Imperium. Elegant as he was, Obwala would never convince the Imperium to treat diplomatically with a non-citizen, much less an eight-year-old.

  Despite his inflated egotism, Nemo actually succeeded at his aim and, as such, is now doomed to bleed momentum.

  Without Valladia to pillage, where next with the Freebooter Fleet turn? How will Pirateton maintain its loot-based economy? Who will put plunder in the holds of Nemo's underlings, gin in their tankards, credits in their pocket?

  Will they elect some new foe, turn their hatred and their greed towards the Ring Confederation, the Gitter Hegemony, the hated Imperium themselves? Or, more likely, will they splinter and break apart?

  Whenever a new pirate swears fealty to a member of the Council of Captains, they promise to remain loyal only as long as the "winds remain favorable." With Yime Orbital destroyed, the sails of the Freebooter Fleet have no wind remaining.

  The notion was a wholly new one to Nemo.

  Once this notion occurs to the Freebooter Fleet, however, Nemo's curtain of bodyguards, his shield of invulnerability, will promptly dry up and vanish. Thus exposed, he'll be easy pickings for bounty hunters or Imperium, whomever's faster.

  I gave him a month from our initial interview. Twenty days and counting.

  TEXTBOOK MEGALOMANIAC

  With Nehel Morel, everything points back toward ego.

  "Behold me," he exhorts, after finally opening his resistant package of minibar nuts. "I am stronger than gravity. I am sexier than napalm. I am the devourer of spicy nuts."

  In his mind, he's painted this very particular picture of the sort of pirate captain that he imagines himself as. There's a certain ethos he cultivates, a combination of devil-may-care, gleeful ignorance and wanton brutality, that he works very hard to maintain, in deference to everything and everyone else.

  It burns Nemo to the point of mass murder to see the galaxy's perception of him out of sync with his own internalized image.

  Valladian Shipping claims piracy is pointless; Nemo burns Valladia to the ground.

  The press mercilessly demonizes Nemo for actions he believes himself innocent of; he contacts his own unaffiliated reporter, circulates his own view of the events.

  I accuse him of faking the Quuilar Noxix death footage; he puts a gun to my temple.

  Whenever an opinion, a person or an organization arises that threatens Nemo's personal image, he will kill everyone and everything in between himself and correcting that mistake.

  Psychotic, narcissistic, yes, but most accurately – megalomaniacal.

  The true irony behind Nehel Morel is that events have conspired to play directly into his delusions. Much as we may cringe to admit this, he's likely to become one of the most important figures in this era of galactic history.

  We can only hope he won't end up reading this, though. We wouldn't want him to get a big head or anything.

  – W

  Chapter 27

  Odisseus is thankful that disguises were roundly vetoed.

  No doubt his three companions could, with appropriate attire and affectation, be made to resemble Trijans, even passingly. At the same time, there was precisely no way the bulky, three-hundred pound Ortok could pass as anything but a bulky, three-hundred pound Ortok, even to the most passing observation possible.

  Added to this dilemma was the fact that an Ortok of any build or weight would come immediately as both a horrific and blasphemous shock on the xenophobic streets of Zaraskevi. The executive decision to simply murder anyone perceptive or unfortunate enough to catch sight of them quickly became a foregone conclusion.

  The feasibility of disguise had been discussed at some great length, however, before this conclusion was eventually agreed upon. These discussions came to a growly conclusion following one of Two-Bit's suggestions about a potential disguise for the Ortok that involved a jeweled collar and some species of Trijan wildlife known as a “timberland troxotto.”

  There were certain allowable depths that Odisseus, in his capacity as Nemo's saltbrother, would sink his dignity down to. Slinking around Trijan sewer systems was within those depths. Trotting about on all fours like someone's trained pet was not.

  For someone of Odisseus' physique, finding shadows amble enough to comfortably lurk within also proves that much more difficult. Even were he a perfectly fit specimen of his species, remaining unseen among the nooks and crannies of the Trijan capital would be a tall order. He lags some considerable distance behind his companions, Moira the most of all, and spends much more time plotting his way forward than those both smaller and nimbler than he.

  Soon as he discovers a corner capacious enough to allow both him and his entire paunch to squeeze within, Odisseus splurges several seconds to catch his breath. Panting windedly, he rests comfortably in the knowledge that, come the aqueduct, his confederates will eat his spray.

  The streets of Zaraskevi appear displaced from a fairy tale. Greatly dwarfed by the postmodern urban sprawls of places like Gallow or Bennevikos, Zaraskevi shares one singular similarity with Pirateton – its small size. Small enough to be comfortably nestled within a massif of encroaching mountain peaks, Odisseus marveled at the sight of the capital city from atmosphere descending. To him, Zaraskevi resembled more a model drifttrain set, albeit a distinctly medieval one, than the capital of the Supreme Sovereignty of Trija.

  Preserved for thousands of years, architecture of this type could scarcely be found anywhere else across the entire galaxy, even in the most august halls of the Inner Sectors' nobility. Had the Freebooter Fleet their way, of course, this entire baroque city, in all its undisturbed grandeur, would be picked clean to the bone.

  Zaraskevi's only artificial light after sunset comes from its dimmed solxite panels, ornately framed mirrors that nightly lend the city's spires, minarets and obelisks a ghostly glow. Cobblestones form the streets they walk, each one laid individually by the industrious hand of a honest-to-moons stonemason. The parked vehicles Odisseus is astonished to discover are spoked and wheeled, a technology as antithetical to a drift-dependent culture as canvas sails might be aboard a spaceship. Gargoyles and grotesques peer precipitously over practically every rooftop Odisseus passes beneath, their solxite-tinged eyes afire with eerie light of their own.

  Gazing up at their grim visages, Odisseus idly wonders if any of them depict the hated timberland troxotto.

  Stealth, secrecy and, above all else, speed are their primary objectives here on the planet's surface. For all that, the Ortok cannot help but gawk at whatever sights the city's poor lighting and his poorer eyesight can grant him, wondering what Zaraskevi must look like under the midday sun.

  From his hiding place, Odisseus watches Moira Quicksilver, blacker than sin and practically an entire city block further ahead, stop abruptly. She seeks shelter within the looming shadow of some Trijan dignitary or another, petrified in unrealistically glorious pose and unmoving stone. She beckons forward with a succinct hand gesture.

  Giving his surroundings a perfunctory sniff to ensure he's truly unobserved, Odisseus dares crossing the open cobbles. He shuffles as fast as his hind paws will carry him. At varying intervals, he's joined by Nemo and Two-Bit, both appearing from cover to e
ither side and striding across the stones with the same destination in mind.

  Fifteen seconds reunites a panting Odisseus with all three of his crewmates at the base of the imperious statue. Without incident, they'd somehow managed to traverse the seven block span of Zaraskevi between their point of touchdown and the foundation of the royal palace.

  Everyone here was painstakingly aware how their planetfall was only made possible by the thinnest of aliases. Were it not for Charybdis' fearsome reputation among her own estranged people, this entire plan would very well have exploded on the runway.

  Sinbad was the name of the most self-sacrificing member of Socorro's underlings. Captain of the appropriately named Trijan junk The Olive Branch and the very man they met on Xathik Major all those months ago, he was now faintly visible from their place of hiding, marching directly into the honor guard arrayed before the palace's steps.

  Under the auspices of a surrender, the traitorous Captain Sinbad and his Olive Branch recently appeared in Trijan airspace, hailing anyone who might listen and expressing a willing desire to betray all Charybdis' particulars to any military brass hungry for details. After a harrowing encounter with the Radiant Armada in orbit, the Branch was granted subsequent permission to land and its crew a subsequent order to goosestep straight towards the palace for questioning.

  This accomplished, the four stowaways stashed cunningly aboard the Branch were free, then, to steal through the streets of Zaraskevi under the cover of darkness, contact with the surface achieved.

  The Freebooter Fleet, meanwhile, was due to arrive in the night sky at any moment.

  Sinbad and his squad of scapegoats would provide the much needed distraction while the real landing party, currently crouching in the shade of some illustrious Trijan personage, infiltrated the palace proper.

  “Think they'll question him first?” Nemo muses, peeking over Moira's shoulder and deigning to speak in anything quieter than a stage whisper. “Or jail him first?”

  “I hink either way,” opines Two-Bit, “it'll chomp up a bunch of crushers.” Through some sleight of hand Odisseus can't follow, the jabberhead's Tigress is suddenly in his grip and a mischievous smile's painted across his face. “So much the better.”

  “Here's hoping they don't execute him first,” murmurs Odisseus to no one.

  “So, what're we thinking?” Nemo proposes, oddly calm and drumming fingers against his opposite knuckles. “We still feeling up to the task?”

  “Little late,” Odisseus points out, “to be asking questions like that.”

  Moira cares nothing for joshing or jibing. “Ten seconds and the last straggler'll lose line of sight,” she informs, cold as deep space asphyxiation. “Make for that alcove there, second from the left, on the nearest embankment.”

  The legerdemain that summons her firearms, Righty and Lefty gleaming faintly in the dim light, is an order of magnitude more mysterious than Two-Bit's. Both holsters are empty in the space it takes Odisseus to glance towards Moira's indicated target. “How many we expecting?”

  “No more'n four,” Two-Bit supplies, matter-of-factly.

  This, of all things, earns a withering gaze from the ex-bounty hunter. “Impossible to keep four quiet. Half that, maybe.”

  Two-Bit nods his head towards the gaggle of departing Trijans. “Hence the distraction, then, eh?”

  Somehow, Moira fails to be instantly convinced. “On three.”

  When three comes, it's nothing but a mad dash across the open avenue, all clandestine pretense gone as the four interlopers bolt into plain sight. Abandoning the meandering alleys and switchbacking boulevards of the city proper, the crew of The Unconstant Lover now seeks refuge beneath the commanding eaves of the Palace Immortal.

  Encompassing a square footage fully a fourth of the entire city's space, the Palace Immortal is a redoubtable bastion of Trijan design, engineering and architecture, bristling with gargoyles, twisted turrets and medieval flourish. Solxite panels ring the outer walls of the Palace, reflecting spotlights upward to create silhouettes of its many steeples and spires. Pale blue ivy of some Trijan breed waves and undulates in the wind, like the hands of an immense audience that greets anyone who approaches the six-story curtain wall.

  The alcove they scoot toward, hopefully unseen, is presumably a tight fit, even for four humanoids. Odisseus once again feels the inconvenience of his species and his size in matters of infiltration as each of the would-be burglars elbows each other for the most comfortable position possible. Depending on the size of the guard compliment they were fixing to ambush, they could be looking at nearly an hour spent squeezed so commodiously together, a prospective they were all personally delighted about.

  After a ten second jaunt around the corner, Moira reports back on the strength of the opposition. “All four.” Her expression refuses to betray any emotion or opinion; simply raw fact.

  “Yeah?” Two-Bit grunts. “Bollocks. Playing the game safe, then, ain't they.”

  “What,” Nemo presses, in his worst attempt at keeping his voice down, “maybe I don't understand – is four too many?”

  Odisseus takes the task of explaining basic division to his twenty-five-year old saltbrother in stride. “Four's one a piece. You miss your shot, suddenly he's screaming for help.”

  The calculation gives him momentary pause. “Element of surprise, though.”

  “Is about the only thing in our favor here,” Moira confirms. “Assuming we kill with each shot, four discharges will alert someone on the battlements and the alarm'll be sounded.”

  “Antwacky old alarm, though, don't blank,” Two-Bit reminds. “Might as well be a fucking dinner bell.”

  “An alarm's an alarm and this alarm,” Moira holds fast, shooting a second glance around the corner, “will be sounding.”

  “Leaving the guns holstered,” observes Odisseus, “would eliminate the problem, wouldn't it?”

  Moira's eyes flick to the frayed remains of the Captain's duster. “Against disintegrators?”

  This pleasant conversation is unexpectedly interrupted by a harsh, electronic buzz – an incoming comm transmission. Without a drop of embarrassment, Nemo unloops the device from his belt and raises the mouthpiece to his lips.

  “Nemo here.”

  “Why, we've just arrived, haven't we, lads?” cues the familiar voice of Abraham, for once, not besieged by a background of comm static.

  “Guess we better get moving, then,” Nemo remarks. “Good shooting up there.”

  “Aye aye, Cap'n. Good shootin' down there too, eh?”

  The switch snapped, the transmission killed, it's Moira who hisses her remonstrance first. “For the moons fucking sake, you dickmuncher, can you set that fucking thing on vibrate?”

  “I have never,” Nemo announces, complying with Moira's wishes all the same, “munched a dick.” The comm returned to his belt, he thumbs a gesture straight upward. “Fleet's here.”

  “We heard,” Odisseus snorts, briefly forgetting their need for silence himself.

  Two-Bit cranks his Tigress' slide back. “Now or never.”

  With Moira in her cherished role as spearhead, the four outlaws file rapidly from hiding. As one, they rush around the corner to, unless their brethren in orbit are significantly quicker on the draw, engage the Supreme Sovereignty of Trija in an overt declaration of war.

  A humble culvert is the only point of weakness in the outermost wall of the Palace Immortal. It flutes a shallow channel of fresh water from mountain springs, along a stone aqueduct and beneath the curtain wall. To bolster its weakness, it sports a black-wrought iron gate and, currently, a quartet of Trijan palace guards, with ebony skin, brocaded doublets and bizarre personal weaponry.

  Assigned the most prosaic of all the palace duties, these four guards understandably react with slack-jawed astonishment when an equal number of offworlders come charging around the corner, brandishing offworlder weaponry with deadly intent.

  Moira makes her quota and then some immediately. Two stre
aking bolts of bright citrine stake claims to the skulls of two bewildered guards, slamming them simultaneously to the cobblestones.

  Whereas Nemo's attempts – the loudest, the most frequent and the least accurate – fly four shots wide, Two-Bit manages to scrape together a kill with his Tigress, popping a kneecap and sending his Trijan tumbling fatally into the culvert.

  Ignoring Moira's advise about disintegrators, Odisseus opts to close the distance on the remaining guard rather than risk the echoing retort of his Wreckingball. As a consequence, the Trijan squeezes a shot off from his unslung disintegrator.

  Flashbacks to Nemo's attempted assassination aside, a shimmering cone of displaced pink comes within inches of singing the Ortok's fur before he achieves swiping distance and clobbers the clumsy weapon from the Trijan's fingers. Thus unarmed, the Trijan opens his mouth to sing for re-enforcements. An open Ortoki paw around his larynx dissuades him.

  Another series of flashbacks, throttling a guilty redskin against a bracing beam in the Lover's hold, causes him to pitch the Trijan and his crumpled throat aside.

  Nemo's element of surprise proves a good deal more effective than either of the career pessimists had anticipated. It's a whole ten seconds before shouting or, rather, a musical variation of shouting, resounds from off the battlements. Before they can duck and cover, a fresh volley of disintegrator fire spears downward toward the briefly victorious pirates.

  With no time to congratulate themselves or rifle pockets, the strike team scurries aside to gain as much shelter from the sloping outer wall as they possibly can, crashing down into the waist-high water within the culvert.

  “Oh, bugger all,” bemoans Two-Bit as Odisseus brushes past him. With a paw, he retrieves the only hand tool he'd bothered to bring on this attempted kidnapping – his cutting beam.

  “I thought that went rather well, actually,” Nemo assesses cheerfully. He stands within full view of the parapet's gunners and, like a true blue buffoon, returns fire half-blindly up towards the fortified sentries with brilliant blasts of his pistol.