Galactic Menace

by Timothy J Meyer

  The other task – how, precisely, does one damage the damn thing – remains elusive.

  Thumbing open her magazine window, Gertie counts a grand total of nine remaining torpedos, an unpromising number to neutralize a target as grand and guarded as this orbital deflector is. When she opens her comm channel, she prays to all the moons that the cavalry she intends to call is either unoccupied or undestroyed.

  “Charybdis, honey,” she charms at full strength into her audioceiver, “I don't suppose you're anywhere nearby slash willing to help a sister out?”

  The radio silence that greets her open hail nearly confirms her fears. Piercing through the static, however, comes about the weakest comm transmission Gertie's ever received. “Copy-that, Magnet,” the privateer-turned-pirate's voice sibilates wildly through the comm, “moving-to-intercept.”

  Gertie's smile is true truculence. “Much appreciated.” The smile quickly quits and hangs open when she catches actual visual confirmation of The Dishonorable Discharge's approach.

  Her solxite is cracked, smeared and spiderwebbed in half a hundred places. Her boosters sputter spasmodically. She paints the planet's orbit with excessive streaks of smoke trailing off the burnt and severed stubs of whole wings.

  Demonstrably amid her death throes, The Dishonorable Discharge limps onward all the same, hiccuping into view at the corner of the viewport. Her alternatech engine runs at such dangerous levels of radiation that the Magnet's warning bells actually start triggering once the junk drops within the ship's proximity sensors.

  “We'll-be-granted-one-chance, here.” Charybdis' voice betrays neither concern nor uncertainty. “Can-I-assume-you’ve-already-expended-too-many-torpedoes-attempting-to-cave-their-bombard-shield?”

  “You'd be right there, yeah,” Gertie mutters. “Discharge, are you trim for this run? I can call in somebody–”

  “We-are-perfect-for-this-run,” she disagrees, her particular brand of calm spelling only one potential course of action for the doomed warship. “Do-you-agree?”

  With Charybdis crossed out, Greatgullet fled, Aju Vog Xah Qaj absent and Abraham incommunicado across the battlefield, Captain Gundeck and her Magnet would be all that remains to champion these fragmented Freebooter remnants into either victory or retreat. Gertie chews her lower lip.

  However unqualified Gertie Gundeck might be to marshal a flotilla of disorganized and panicked pirates, half of whom wouldn't respect her authority for one reason or another, that wouldn't repair The Dishonorable Discharge. Nor, Gertie keenly observes, would it stop its Captain from doing what she was hell-bent on doing.

  “I'll cover you,” Gertie mutters into the comm. One hand readies a fresh batch of torpedos and she holds the other high. Ugly Ubol, in response, puts on the brakes. Once the Discharge has passed, the Magnet falls into extremely ragged formation behind Charybdis' flagging flagship. They're both careful to maintain enough aerial maneuverability to evade the sluggish swings of the orbital reflector's blazing beam.

  On her unswerving trajectory towards the orbital deflector's center mass, The Dishonorable Discharge doesn't bother wasting weapons against either ray or bombard shield. For her own part, Gertie holds no such honorable compunctions.

  She gambles three cluster-torpedos, hoping to preempt as much bombard damage as possible, to ensure that Charybdis' efforts aren't entirely in vain. The chance absolutely exists that this could all end with a destroyed Discharge, an unarmed Magnet and a fully-functional orbital reflector. Beyond lobbing a trio of introductory torpedos, though, there were few other measures Gertie could take to hedge her bets against such a nightmare scenario.

  Each cluster-torpedo New Husband fires continues its streak of disappointments. The reflector's bombard shield wobbles and distorts with each impact, but stubbornly refuses to be punched through so easily.

  The more lasting effect of Gertie's having wasted three cluster torpedos, however, is that they manage to draw the reflector's undivided attention. With a swipe of startling speed, the massive mirror cuts a line of destruction across the path of both vessels. The Magnet is plucked into safety by Ubol's lightning reflexes but the far more ponderous Discharge is not nearly so fortunate.

  When the entire starboard half of her junk is replaced with a charred husk, Charybdis' craft only increases the speed and freneticism of her divebomb. She plunges in drunken circles towards her own reflection in the mirror's face.

  Gertie's trigger fingers are suddenly sweaty as the impact between unstoppable force and the immovable object draws closer and closer. Through the comm channel that connects the two spaceships, she overhears the distant and patched refrain of many voices raised in synchronized song. Much as she can't make out specific lyrics, Gertie understands only too well what's being sung aboard The Dishonorable Discharge during her final moments.

  The reflector's bombard shield absorbs the collision poorly, flickering and, ultimately, under the pressure of the suicidal spaceship, winking cleanly out of existence. Gertie doesn't need any cues from Babs at the shield station to cue her, her fingers having fired the torpedos seconds earlier.

  What remains of The Dishonorable Discharge, like a glass ornament, shatters pitifully against the unmoving vastness of the reflector's main mirror. In turn, the crash inspires only a minor crack that dances across reflector's hyaline surface.

  The six cluster-torpedos that come racing forward in reply promise to pack considerably more punch.

  One after another, they crack, splinter and shatter the defenseless reflector. Seconds before impact, each torpedo spawns their half a dozen smaller projectiles, swarming over every corner of the device and punching clean holes straight through the paper thin solxite.

  The Dick Magnet, advancing heedless of the danger, whizzes straight through one of these holes. She raises her own bombard shield to maximum to fend off the twisting hunks of razor-sharp solxite that part before her nose.

  Both reflectors neutralized, Gertie commands the Magnet to swoop back and return unto the main bosom of the battle where she can asses her options.

  On one hand, she could stay the course, attempt to rally what Freebooters remain behind her banner and inevitably sacrifice her crew, her ship and her own life to this fruitless endeavor. On the opposite hand, she could cop to Greatgullet's assertion and flee, preserving her own skin but sentencing these fledgling Freebooters to an assured death, greenhorn grist for the Radiant Armada's invincible mill.

  None of these options accounted for the Galactic Menace and his landing party, stranded in the event of an utter defeat, on the planet's surface.

  Captain Gertie Gundeck chews her bottom lip and debates her options.

  vo Veaff survives.

  Whether fortune or misfortune shines on her at present, she's no idea. All she knows is that she's been given another opportunity to avenge the murder of her dearly departed koj and she has every intention of seizing this opportunity as well.

  Every step she staggers down The Loose Cannon's main passageway spreads agony across her entire body.

  The usurper's blunderbuss scored only a glancing blow and still destroyed a gruesome portion of the Baziron's left side. The blood, black and thickening, stains her left hand, left leg and every inch of the floor she walks. As a native born Baziron, vo Veaff's precisely aware of how much blood her body stores. In her expert opinion, she's exactly enough life remaining to locate and skewer that Grimalti usurper, no matter where he hides.

  As fast as her injury allows, vo Veaff stalks across the catwalk that suspends over the Destroyer Medium's inner workings. The allegedly abnormal Heskite machinery churns and grinds contentedly away below her feet.

  She's completely ignorant of how the Cannon currently fares in the larger battle or, indeed, which direction the larger battle's overall tide is currently turned. Somewhere, in her conscious mind, she trusts Sarge and the remainder of the bridge crew to acquit themselves well, perhaps even follow Aju Vog Xah Qaj's estimable example. The adrenaline that keeps her standin
g could care less whether, at any coming moment, The Loose Cannon is obliterated in a blaze of glory and fire.

  All that concerns the dying Baziron is the bloodletting of koj Bonaventure before he could engineer some manner of escape.

  Gripping a handy railing for further support, she examines the gristly scene arrayed before her. At a four point crossroads between the two catwalks, the bodies of two separate comrades, both Heskite and both members of the engineering crew, met koj Bonaventure's blunderbuss point blank. They offered more than token resistance, however, to judge from the neticgrappler and the fusioner gripped in their lifeless hands.

  vo Veaff's momentarily glad they both died valiant deaths and is more glad to spot the stumpy, four-toed footprints, stomping through the gore and away from the site of the slaughter.

  It doesn't take long for vo Veaff to understand his course of action. His trail leads away, toward the starboard ejector deck. Whatever hope or quarter he hoped to discover on the hostile planet below would wait long for his coming. By the conflagrant gods of her abandoned homeworld, he would not survive to make such an escape.

  Consciously or not, the hollow wood of vo Veaff's zylkco stick smacks repeatedly against each strut of the railing she passes en route to the ejector deck. At this stage, stealth was a luxury the bleeding-out Baziron could ill afford.

  With the limping, bloodied prints as her guide, it was clear to vo Veaff that koj Bonaventure wasn't fairing especially well either. With any luck, the combined wounds vo Veaff and hopefully her comrades slain upon the catwalk inflicted on his person might be enough to delay his retreat – at least long enough to grant her pursuit the thinnest of chances.

  Her shaking fingers are spared the impossible task of punching in the correct keycode to enter the ejector deck. The door she discovers at the top of the stairs has been left open. The Grimalti's smeared blood across those keys is enough to goad vo Veaff further on, not to mention his silhouette in the next room.

  The row of ejector units, a dozen strong, will stand as silent witnesses to koj Bonaventure's slaying. To his dying action, koj Vobash believed wholeheartedly in discretion as the better part of valor and, subsequently, the ejectors installed aboard The Loose Cannon were absolutely top-notch, should the need ever arise. Even the most sophisticated ejector, however, wasn't warp capable. This left koj Bonaventure three piddly options following his escape – marooned, adrift in orbit or caught in the battle's crossfire.

  Pale and panting, koj Bonaventure is far too busy punching coordinates into his ejector's ignition keypad to notice vo Veaff's entrance or the viciously sharpened zylkco stick clutched in her grip.

  She doesn't bother with another step and instead vo Veaff hurls her weapon overhand, straight toward the Grimalti's blubbery back. Ill luck continues to curse her when the speartip slams sparkingly into the ignition keypad instead.

  Only the merest god, the god of outlanders, must have blessed her throw, as the stick's blade does manages to sever two of the koj's fat fingers at the knuckle.

  She curses calmly within her throatsac as the Grimalti howls an unnatural cry of agony. The unarmed vo Veaff leans piteously against the doorway and accepts her fate, the one inherent in the Grimalti's agonized movements. He staggers around, deep indigo blood oozing down his hand, and appraises her with his one wide eye.

  She stares back, throatsac flaring and abject murder in her eyes as the Grimalti struggles to even level the blunderbuss straight at her. He braces himself with his bloodied hand against the open ejector door and growls out a single sentence.

  “Every step I take,” are the last words vo Veaff ever hears, “I'm surrounded by bloody mutineers.”

  The trigger is squeezed and vo Veaff feels another percentage of her midsection torn free from her body by the weapon's fearsome kickback. She slumps to the teltriton floor, life leaking out of her.

  She watches koj Bonaventure, the once and former captain of The Loose Cannon, collapse into his ejector. He wouldn't survive planetfall, vo Veaff is assured, content in the knowledge that, given enough time, the unjust murder of her true and original koj would be avenged.

  Chapter 29

  Moira Quicksilver can squeeze four shots from Righty and Lefty combined in the time it takes one Trijan palace guard to sing the song that fires his disintegrator. She spends two shots on each of the two Trijans who actually broke her mental perimeter. When struck in the torsos, they both stumble over the fountain's lip, one falling backward onto the parade ground, the other falling forward, to drown face first in the pool.

  Under normal circumstances, she wouldn't allow any enemy to drop within disintegrator distance of her. In this specific instance, however, Moira suppose that watching her friend, fellow crewmate and the mastermind behind this entire scheme be atomized may have distracted her somewhat.

  As shocking, as dumbfounding, as despair-inducing as the current moment may seem, what is required to see the next moment through is not sentimentality – it requires quick thinking, quicker reflexes and buckets and buckets of murder.

  This assessment, however, is not shared by both of her remaining companions.

  Nemo, for example, has been screaming incoherently, ceaselessly, since Two-Bit Switch was reduced to his component molecules. The Captain lunges across the fountain, spraying white water about his ankles and blue ditrogen across the courtyard, in his efforts to plug the Trijan responsible.

  The Trijan responsible is evidently so proud of his previous handiwork, smeared against the fountain's centerpiece, that he figures he'll go after a matching set. With a playful, jaunty tune, he charges his disintegrator and advances towards the inconsolable Nemo.

  An also screaming Odisseus moves to prevent their eventual meeting, contributing to the general mayhem with a roar at full volume, all teeth exposed. He snaps his rudder-like tail back and forth to propel his steps faster across the fountain and, possibly unintentionally, rouse a great cloud of spray in his wake.

  Before she does anything else, Moira plows another advancing Trijan to the lawn with a plug in the shoulder that twirls him into a ballerina's series of pirouettes. This done, she hustles, as best as her jackboots through knee high water can, to throw her own ditrogen-powered dice into the ring.

  For, advancing in all directions around her clueless companions, are practically a full platoon of more Trijan palace guards, each one packing disintegrators capable of the feats that eradicated Two-Bit Switch moments earlier. Mounting the fountain's slippery marble, Moira takes a familiar defensive position – rigid on high ground, Righty and Lefty extended, sniping as accurately as she can towards the onrushing enemies.

  Nemo's adversary, meanwhile, is substantially closer. By means of the good fortune that haunts him at propitious moments, the Menace manages to claim an enviable shot directly on his kneecap. With a stilted scream of agony, Two-Bit's murderer is sent flopping and flailing to the ground.

  Contorted with rage a split second ago, Nemo's face lights up like a child in a toy shop to see the Trijan, sprawled on the grass and clutching his ruined knee. His pace immediately slackens – from the tripping, headlong charge of the completely berserk to the executioner's self-assured swagger – and Moira immediately understands the depth of the problem.

  “You bastardly motherfucking bastard.” He takes an immense amount of pleasure from placing his boot onto and subsequently kicking the Trijan's offending disintegrator away. “You insane sack of shit. You meaningless redneck jizzstain, I'mana–”

  Lashing forward, he snatches the Trijan's collar. Despite the grievous injury to his knee, the palace guard instantly sets about to thrashing when Nemo presses the sweltering hot metal of his gun barrel against the Trijan's temple. Visibly delighting in the action, the overbearing Nemo presses the guard's face into the earth with the heel of his boot.

  “Were I anybody else,” he makes the point, “you'd have ditrogen coming out your pores, I'd shoot you so much and we'd be done here, but I ain't anybody else.” The grin that fo
llows is all ill intent, the dictionary definition of sadism. “I'm me and today's a bad day to be you.”

  This is the very first time Moira debates inserting a canister into the guard's fearful brain. On one level, she'd no doubt enjoy the simple catharsis behind such an action. On another, more practical level, dawdling here would absolutely spell each of their individual deaths.

  On the third, deciding level, however, were she to pull that trigger and rob Nemo of this meager window for vengeance, she had, somewhat frighteningly, no idea how he'd react and even less intention to discover how.

  For now, she resolved to focus Righty and Lefty's attentions on the approaching army of armed Trijans, Trijans who currently required a swift death to the skull much more than Nemo's pet project seemingly did.

  Ever the troubleshooter, Moira is woefully out of practice at providing covering fire. She makes due, trading her clean killing shots for glances, disarmings and superficial wounds. This is a job, Moira appreciates, for machine guns, not revolvers.

  Unsurprisingly, then, some enemies manage to slip into disintegrator range and shimmering pink waves follow shortly. One oscillates inches past an oblivious Nemo, crouching over the whimpering victim.

  Where Moira fails to be Nemo's rescuer, of course Odisseus provides.

  With one mighty paw swipe, the Ortok scoops his saltbrother up by the collar, snarls something straight into his ear intelligible enough for Moira to detect “not the time” and shuffles back towards Moira.

  The dragging resistance he encounters, two steps away from the decumbent body of the Trijan, Odisseus bodily does expect. Nemo's own fist is locked firmly around the guard's collar, as firmly as Odisseus locked his own paw around Nemo's collar.

  A surreal chain of arm-linked, gun-toting monkeys, they seesaw back and forth a few moments. Predictably, it's Odisseus' fragile patience that snaps first and he bellows, inches from Nemo's face, “There are better times for this!”