Galactic Menace

by Timothy J Meyer

  Dumb luck guides the searing blue bolt to connect fortuitously with the guard's one undamaged kneecap.

  Once scrambling desperately down the stairs, the agonized Trijan's flailing hands are now helpless to regain his balance or stop his downward spiral to the floor. With one final shriek, he collapses into a twisted heap at the bottom of the staircase and lays motionless.

  Nemo makes some piddling motion after his bygone vengeance but says nothing.

  Both her companions are thoroughly winded and she's little more than a light jog from same. The password encoded Attaché refuses to surrender a floor plan. Enemies abound, those on her right climbing stairs to disintegrate them and, unless her ears deceive her, those on her left soon to be descending stairs to disintegrate them.

  Moira's will breaks.

  She scans hectically about, searching for any possible means of egress, anything to prevent the three of them from becoming surrounded here on this stairwell.

  Fortunately for all three of their hides, the answer lies an arm's reach behind her.

  “Worked once,” Moira murmurs. For the second time that day, she fires a barrage of ammunition at a harmless stained glass window.

  This one once depicted some forgotten monarch of this or that dynasty. It now depicts a gaping hole and, through that, the trunk of a massive, yellow-barked tree, such as those scattered decoratively across the breadth of the palace's courtyard.

  Judging the distance as jumpable, if difficult, Moira crunches a boot onto the spread of broken and colorful glass strewn about the window's marble sill. With one pistol, she murders the eagerest Trijan on the righthand staircase. With the other, she signals Nemo and Odisseus. “Time to call it quits.”

  Nemo's aghast. “The Fleet–”

  “Bloom the Fleet. Raise 'em on the comm, you care so bad.” She hammers the newly-arrived forces, popping from doorways and alcoves along the balcony level, with fresh vigor from Righty. “Wanna join Two-Bit?”

  To observe his face, panic so cleanly visible thereon, Moira's honestly not certain how he'd answer that question. Odisseus, however, doesn't give him a ghost of a chance.

  Hoisting his saltbrother off his decumbent ass with another vicious bite around the collar, Odisseus blasts farewell into one wave of Trijans. With a surprising velocity and momentum, he then pitches Nemo headfirst out the window.

  Based on the scream, snapping foliage and relieved, depraved laughter that follows, Moira judged the distance correctly. With a knowing snort, Odisseus curls his own mustelid body and launches toward the waiting boughs of the yellow-barked tree. Moira is the last of the boarding party to remain within the palace and is reduced, both chambers empty again, to booting the fastest few guards as they come bolting to the windowsill.

  Only escape or broken bones are her two outcomes. Moira bounds from the second story of the Palace Immortal to crash awkwardly among the branches of a fortuitously planted orchid tree. Rustling about among the yellow leaves, she gives her regards to Nemo and Odisseus, each suspended with equal awkwardness from nearby branches. As fast as her unpracticed limbs will carry her, Moira brachiates across the tree and attempts to judge the distance to the curtain wall.

  Two more leaps of faith, two jackboots to two unsuspecting skulls and some disintegrated vegetation later, the three remaining members of The Unconstant Lover's landing party are stealing across the steep and shingled rooftops of Zaraskevi.

  Alarms continue to sound. Patrols of uniformed Trijans are a common sight in the streets below. Extreme caution still needs to be exercised. Their means of escape from the royal compound, however, was reduced to a pile of sawdust and the palace guards have no immediate means to give chase. With some clever urban orienteering and a perceptive eye, as successful an escape from Zaraskevi as could be managed, given the circumstances, was well within Moira's means.

  The destination is unspoken and agreed-upon. Sinbad's parked ship, The Olive Branch, stood unchallenged as literally their only option. There was nowhere else to seek shelter in this openly hostile alien metropolis. There was also no sign or indication as to how Sinbad or the rest of his traitors fared once within the Palace Immortal. Escape and eventually regrouping with the Freebooter Fleet was their only hope.

  The route between here and there Moira could chart with considerably less difficulty than one of blind guesswork within the Palace Immortal. She estimated, assuming they remained as stealthy as they could while continuing to leap across Zaraskevi's rooftops after dark, that they could arrive at the Branch's landing site within minutes, an hour at maximum.

  The mood, between the thwarted pirates, is understandably forlorn. Little is spoken, save taciturn instructions on where best to cross between rooftops and the occasional shushed warning from Moira as a patrol passes in the street below.

  The night sky overhead is worrisome in its stillness. Sparking with distant cannon fire very occasionally, it hangs as a looming reminder of the imminent defeat the headless Freebooter Fleet certainly faces before the superior might of the Radiant Armada.

  What weighs heaviest on the minds and hearts of the Galactic Menace and his two minders, however, is indisputably the loss of Two-Bit.

  Moira's heightened sense of danger staunchly refuses to process anything in this department until she's safe and secure. Odisseus' efforts are largely spent assisting Nemo in the crossing of alleyways and avenues.

  The Captain, meanwhile, has little regard for anyone, his saltbrother included, since being denied his vengeance upon that hapless palace guard. Where he should be beaten, bruised and bewildered, Nehel Morel burns with an icy flame, swollen with the menace of his namesake.

  Many alleys are jumped, many chimneys are negotiated, many drainpipes are scaled. Before long, The Olive Branch is spotted ahead, along with a sight to make Moira's blood run glacially cold – a plume of inky black smoke.

  It costs her one unflattering scamper across a rooftop to locate the source of the cloud. She's relieved to discover its source and more relieved to discover the smoke wasn't emanating from their last ride off this rock.

  A cylindrical tube of teltriton, approximately humanoid height and width, is the source of the smoke, jammed unceremoniously into the landing tower's fourth story window. Crouching at the crux of the adjacent roof, Moira cannot ascertain what in all the moons of Jotor the thing is or, more appropriately, what it's doing here.

  This was the Ortok's job, after all.

  “An ejector,” points out Odisseus kindly, upon arriving on her right flank. “Nice one, too.”

  While Nemo's too fuming to voice any opinion on the matter, his Ortok is curious enough to peer occasionally back toward the site of the ejector's crash. This doesn't stop either of them from advancing onward to make ready the ship neither of them were qualified to fly.

  As the one responsible for saving three of their four asses from the slaughterhouse the Palace Immortal turned out to be, Moira decides to momentarily indulge her own curiosity.

  Failure would result in both an ugly tumble into the alley and an uglier splat on the cobblestones below, but Moira's equal to the task. It requires all her acrobatics and all her nimbleness to lower her boots gingerly to rest atop the slanted ejector without either losing her balance or, conversely, overbalancing the entire tube.

  The ejector's plexishield viewport is largely fogged over, though the words “YOUR EJECTOR HAS LANDED” continue to flash courteously against the inside of the glass. Wiping away the condensation with the cloth of her sleeve, Moira's astonished to see a familiar face beneath the colorless glass.

  Abraham Bonaventure, asleep or dead, overwhelms the tube with his sheer bulk.

  Once her confederates are informed, it's a laborious effort for all three to even extricate the Grimalti from the cramped confines of his ejector, much less shift him onto the landing tower's roof. Moira immediately checks his vitals and discovers his heart rate dismal and, what's worse, the massive clotted wound on his shoulder, which suggests he's been savag
ed by some animal.

  She doesn't notice his shortened fingers until he, alive and miraculously this side of conscious, gestures weakly at her.

  “Had...” he stutters, his beak blue and quivering from extreme blood loss, “yer, yer...coordinates...”

  “The Fleet, Abraham, the Fleet, did–,” ever-impatient Nemo presses him.

  “...where...” the sailing master wonders aloud, conducting a shaky survey of the three faces that peer over him. “...where's...”

  Exhausted from the haul up the landing tower, the Grimalti surrenders his frail grip on consciousness. Moira's hand upon his heartbeat confirms he only passes out.

  Their mastermind is disintegrated and their navigator is hours from death. They're stranded on a strange rooftop in the city of Zaraskevi. Their only means of escape from the Supreme Sovereignty of Trija, currently closing on their position from all directions, is a borrowed starship none of them has any earthly idea how to open, much less ignite, much, much less fly.

  The end of The Unconstant Lover and her crew becomes that much more ignominious by the moment.

  The phase of frenetic pacing about, attempting to crack the riddle of The Olive Branch's user-interface, progressively passes. Each member of the landing party eventually succumbs to the malaise that originates with Nemo. Spreading from Moira to Odisseus, they each sit upon the shingled surface of the landing tower and watch the few flashes of light in the Trijan skyline, the only evidence of the raging space battle doubtlessly going south across the orbit.

  “You know what I realized?” Nemo states, less a question and more a flat, emotionless comment. Neither of his awake and alive lieutenants offer any indication that they've heard or understood. “I owe Garrock Brondi a million credits.”

  “Ship coming in,” Moira blurts with sudden abruptness. Her finger jets upward and she pinpoints a prick of light, growing redder and redder by the instant. They all glance up to see the unmistakeable sight of an object making atmospheric re-entry at the unmistakeable speed of an incoming spaceship.

  “Ship crashing in,” corrects Odisseus glumly, melancholy striking him hardest of all. “Ejector or debris from the battle.”

  Nemo squints. “Nah, I think she's right. Angle's only right for a ship.”

  Raising his hung head to examine the claim for himself, Odisseus joins Nemo and Moira in their squinting and makes the all-important observation. “I think,” he suggests, uncertain, “I think it's headed this...”

  At once, all three pirates are standing, their weapons are drawn and scrambling for cover behind the bent and braced landing fins of The Olive Branch. Seconds later, the thought to scramble back out into the open and drag Abraham's inert and pretty much immobile body into some semblance of cover occurs guiltily to all three of them.

  The muzzles of their upraised pistols and shotgun are aimed uselessly at the descending spaceship. It's Odisseus who keenly notes that this incoming vessel swoops down on a trajectory too perfect for any sort of coincidence, particularly today, particularly towards the fateful end of this most accursed day.

  It's not until the ship dawdles shamelessly, dependent on its driftjets, above the Trijan households, smokestacks and steeples that they recognize the anachronistic eyesore of teltriton, thermosteel and fractal paint. Each member of The Unconstant Lover's crew shuffles into the swath of its headlights to greet the floating craft.

  “Had your coordinates,” quotes the voice of Captain Gertie Gundeck, over The Dick Magnet's primary loudspeaker. “You need a lift, skip?”

  Chapter 30

  Odisseus raps a hairy knuckle against each teltriton plate, searching for that telltale hollow thunk. From Velocity's rough description and his passing knowledge of these harborage doors, the servomotor ought to be installed somewhere around where he was crouching down here. All his fruitless searching was beginning to aggravate his companions. Though they dared utter no complaint Odisseus could still smell the agitation in their sweat.

  Finally, after nearly two minutes of banging around the exterior of Docking Port #0100, Odisseus finds the panel he's looking for. Without further delay, he busies himself, torquing free each of the plate's four rivets.

  Docking Port #0100 was arguably the most remote of Takioro Defederate Station's thousand some Docking Ports, tucked around a blind corner of the First Ring. Because of its off-the-beaten-path locale, it was chosen as the rendezvous of choice for The Unconstant Lover and her crew.

  Anyone who presently attempted to access Docking Port #0100 would be greeted by an unpleasant hologram, informing them the Port was closed for maintenance, due to a pressure leak. Anyone who attempted to force the door open would find its servomotor deactivated. Anyone with more mechanical skill than Odisseus at locating and re-activating servomotors was welcome to whatever they found within, the Ortok supposed.

  The brisk jaunt from Docking Port #7307, where The Dick Magnet was parked, to Docking Port #0100, where The Unconstant Lover was parked, was somehow even more frightening than their doomed attack on the Supreme Sovereignty had been. With the Freebooter Fleet completely unraveled, with no impenetrable wall of loyal buccaneers to shield them from bounty hunter attack, Nemo was simply some asshole with a ten million credit death mark on his head.

  Walking carelessly through Takioro Defederate Station, then, was suddenly a death sentence.

  Moira Quicksilver stood as the solitary precaution against such a sentence. She stood, legs planted firmly apart, at the top of the Docking Port's access stairs. With Righty and Lefty resting, unclipped in their holsters, they were as good as drawn. Should anyone passing peer up and recognize the four fugitives, furtively attempting to break into Docking Point #0100, they'd fall dead to the teltriton before the two thoughts connected in their brain.

  An unnaturally pale Abraham Bonaventure, both wounds swaddled with expansive bandages, leans against the opposite wall, nursing his calabash and another dark humor. Odisseus can't be certain, but he's fairly sure he's overheard the Grimalti mutter the solitary word "mutineer" under his breath more than once since arriving at Takioro.

  As though they needed another method to entice potential bushwhackers, Nemo sits the top of the short staircase and counts cash. He doles out a massive wad, probably tens of thousands of credits worth, into a separate pile and stashes the remainder, in a crumpled mess, back inside his jacket pocket.

  Odisseus is caught by the realization that, were Two-Bit Switch here, he'd most likely be squatting in front of the panel instead of Odisseus, imminently more qualified at B&E than he was.

  "Are we about finished here?" hisses Moira indiscreetly behind her.

  Odisseus readies a snarl over his shoulder. "I've only just–"

  "Him, not you," Moira corrects, nudging her chin towards the Captain where he sits near her.

  "Near enough," Nemo answers curtly, running his thumb along the lesser stack of cash; still a small fortune, but only a percentage of his walking-around total.

  On cue, the harsh metallic buzz of an incoming comm transmission makes all three of them, save Nemo, almost leap out of their skin. The most in danger of practically anyone in the galaxy, Nemo's somehow the calmest, unlooping the blinking communicator off his belt.

  "Vel?" poses Moira anxiously. It was thanks to Velocity that the entire arrangement with Docking Port #0100 was even possible. Of course, it was thanks to a exceptionally generous bribe that the entire arrangement with Velocity was even possible. To Odisseus' knowledge, she'd already been paid her dues, but how could Nemo possibly have had the foresight to line her pockets a second time for a little extra discretion?

  "Nemo here."

  The response that crackles through his comm's tinny speakers is pretty much pure gobbledygook, but Nemo seems to understand well enough. He rises, stretches his back and begins to mosey down the access stairs to the First Ring's main floor.

  Moira's practically aghast. "The fuck're you–"

  She advances a few steps down the staircase, spies something
or someone at the bottom and immediately draws both Righty and Lefty. In an instant, Odisseus has abandoned his work before the Docking Port's harborage door and stands at the top of the stairs, his own Wreckingball drawn.

  At the bottom of the stairs, Nemo squats to reach eye level with a scabby, green-skinned station waif. The boy's face is wholly obscured beneath a mob of unshorn brown and his bare feet, callused beyond belief, seem immune to the scuff and grime of the First Ring floor.

  From the top of the staircase, their conversation is inaudible, brief and seems mainly to consist of Nemo handing the child the massive wad of cash. In response, the child looks vaguely confused, even perhaps a little offended, as Nemo rises again to his feet.

  With the bewildered station waif and his small fortune behind him, Nemo marches back up the staircase. He exhumes both hands from his pockets to hold them up in a defensive posture, at the sight of Moira and Odisseus' three guns.

  "I surrender."

  A grinding metallic sound behind all three of them causes both the Captain's bodyguards to spin. The harborage doors, thanks to the reactivated servomotor, unlatch and wheel apart, revealing the massive hexagonal airlock of Docking Port #0100.

  Striped by the malfunctioning overhead lights within stands The Unconstant Lover, precisely where her crew left her. At a glance, the most wanted spaceship in the galaxy is unmolested. Odisseus thanks all the moons for this blessing, particularly considering the amount of money that would change hands should anyone among the powers that be locate her.

  Too long removed from her engine room, too long spent crawling through Trijan sewers and bunking with the Magnet's horny crew, moves Odisseus unconsciously forward, toward the Lover. He sheathes his shotgun and immediately complies a list of repairs the ship will require, repairs to keep his mind occupied and away from unwelcome thoughts of Two-Bit Switch.

  Moira Quicksilver doubted Kuzu Minor would ever come in handy again.