Galactic Menace Read online

  “Love,” Two-Bit addresses to Moira, ensuring that, no matter what he has to say, she's certain to ignore him, “it were a fluffy flash and all that, but were I this guy you'd never see me again. Guy's got a million credits in his pocket, he could be anywhere in the galaxy; at this point, motherbloomer's got carte blanche.”

  “Lad ain't wrong there,” Abraham admits.

  “He'll show,” Moira threatens. “If I ask, he'll show.”

  “I wouldn't.” Two-Bit jabs a thumb toward Abraham. “He wouldn't.” He converts the outstretched thumb to an outstretched finger towards Moira. “Bloom, if it was us asking, you wouldn't show.”

  “We're not asking. I'm asking.”

  “Yeah and what I'm jabbing is,” Two-Bit explains, frustration finally tinging his voice, “he's a bounty hunter. This whole plan of yours revolves around him not being a bounty hunter, and he's a bounty hunter.”

  In order for the Surimiah Slip to adequately satisfy the forces of law, order and Huong Xo, somebody, some lucky bounty hunter, would actually have to catch them. Enter Tarson: a Jhironese ex-cop, middling bounty hunter, and an old understudy of Moira's. The original arrangement was for Tarson to nominally collect their one-million-credit bounty and, once the Surimiah was slipped, to reconvene and redistribute that million into six equal shares.

  Moira herself had been particularly amused at the thought of collecting their own bounty, more as a means to thumb their noses at Xo than out of any real desire for the actual cash. Whether or not Tarson would honor the original arrangement, however, seemed to be a matter of some debate.

  Before Moira can muster a counterargument, however, Nemo blusters into the room. His hands are preoccupied with wrangling a confusion of charts and his attention is focused solely on making sense of them. He takes no notice of his counting crew, making instinctively for the chiller. When he's closed to within a few feet, Odisseus recognizes his reading materials as Abraham's moth-eaten navigational charts, a fact not lost on the Grimalti.

  “What do ye think ye're doing with those?”

  Lingering in the galley doorway, the Captain doesn't take his eyes from the grasped charts. He acknowledges Abraham's presence with only a nudge of his posture. “Oh, we got clearance, I'm trying to figure out a heading – how in the fuck is this even read?”

  “Boyo, sit down afore ye do yerself a further injury.” He extends a open palm to receive the charts, a gesture Nemo flat doesn't notice. “What heading ye need?”

  Odisseus cranes an inch closer to Moira to inquire in sotto voice. “Where do you think we'd find Tarson?”

  It's nearly in unison that they respond, Nemo answering Abraham's question and Moira answering Odisseus'. “Takioro.”

  The Captain eyes his first mate. “Tarson?”

  The first mate eyes her Captain. “Afterburn?”

  This accord struck, Nemo relinquishes the charts into Abraham's capable hands. He chucks the Grimalti companionably on the shoulder. “Takioro, then, old sport.”

  Odisseus expectorates another package of cash onto the table, much to Two-Bit's obvious displeasure. “This,” he barks towards Nemo, “would normally be the point where I'd argue against both Takioro and Afterburn, but fish hath dulled my temper into magnanimousness and I advance no such argument.”

  Nemo grunts some affirmative. The chiller voices general protest to being opened. Two-Bit peels Odisseus' latest deposit from the center of the table with his triple-thick gloves.

  “Hey,” Nemo comments a moment later, his enunciation mangled by a chewed something, “whatcha doin'?” His pointed finger indicates the table's contents, the crew's efforts for the past odd hour or so. His voice indicates newfound depths of ignorance, as though only now noticing their labors.

  “Janking up the jangle,” Two-Bit supplies, matter-of-factly. “Mathematicals oughta be, with the gantine's fund accounted for–”

  “Oh, no, no,” Nemo objects, a look of sudden embarrassment crossing his face. “We're not deducting a third for the ship's fund.” He waves a generalizing gesture over the entire table. “That's gotta be in five equal shares of a million each.”

  A moment of baffled silence passes amongst all assembled. No amount of fish could make Odisseus magnanimous enough to neglect the ship's fund. He opens his mouth to object, but Two-Bit precedes him. “Well, I mean, that's awful fluffy of you, Cap'n,” he stammers, somewhat bashfully. “I mean, strictly jabbin', the Lover weren't really involved in the caper, so, I guess it makes a certain–”

  “I,” Nemo interjects cautiously, “wouldn't thank me yet.”

  All four of the Lover's lieutenants freeze. Odisseus' call for clarification follows an ominous pause. “What do you mean?”

  “Those five shares aren't for us,” Moira blurts. “Are they?”

  The Captain swallows whatever he was chewing hard. “Not immediately.”

  “Not immediately?” Odisseus growls out of clenched teeth. “Meaning 'no?'”

  “Meaning 'no,'” Nemo confirms a second later.

  The news seems to fully fluster Two-Bit. “Oh. Well. Okay, then. Well. Er...”

  Odisseus hangs his head and plants both paws firmly on the table. “Of course. Of course,” he mutters, his voice tight with both fury and resignation. “There was no way something like this wasn't going to happen.” He swipes another tin of sporefin off the dwindling pile to his right and claws it open in two swift motions. “Fish is all mine, then. You can get fucked.” He levels a sodden claw directly at his embarrassed saltbrother. “I'll fight you, Nehel Morel.”

  “You'd win,” Nemo concurs.

  To punctuate this point, Odisseus empties the tin into his yawning mouth.

  Moira's posture, volume or timbre doesn't change with her accusations. “We know why we came to Gallow. We know you've been in cahoots with Flask since Qel Qatar. We know you've no plans to hide out anywhere.” Chewing, the Ortok once again almost objects on this point, but Moira spreads her arms and continues nonetheless. “Care to cut the buhoxshit?”

  From abashed to arrogant in four seconds flat, Nemo pockets both hands and tips forward on his toes, like an impatient toddler. “Pretty smooth, huh?” he allows himself, with that “guilty-as-charged” smile ghosting across his face.

  “We're having this conversation, so, no,” Moira deadpans.

  He indicates the room with a lazy swing of his finger. “I tricked all you guys.”

  Two-Bit words the only congratulations. “No, yeah, whoo, hurray. You boozled us.”

  “Well?” Moira prompts.

  Nemo takes his sweet time gathering his thoughts. “This isn't gonna make any sense to you now–”

  “Good,” Moira grunts.

  “–and I know what I'm about to ask is historically a bad idea–”

  “Of course.”

  “–but you're gonna need to trust me. This once. I swear.” He goes overboard on the pacifying gestures as he explicates. “I do have a plan, there is a purpose for all this, but if I tell you now, well, that would sorta spoil everything. How about–”

  “How about 'go fuck yourself'?” Moira counteroffers. “How about I shoot you, we take the money that we've earned and then watch Odi mangle your corpse?”

  Nemo appears entirely ill-equipped to parry this suggestion until Abraham, quiet this whole exchange, comes to his rescue. “Ye do that, we'd never know what he's plannin'.”

  The Grimalti's timely intervention earns him a grateful snap-and-point from his Captain. “Smart.”

  “Know what I just flashed on?” Two-Bit comments flatly. “Flask got scored. He got his share, so. You know, there's that.”

  “An interesting point,” Moira piggybacks off Two-Bit's realization. “Five equal shares, you said, a million each?”

  Apparently sensing entrapment, Nemo begins , as casually as he can, edging backward, step by step, toward the door. “Uh, yes.”

  “And no one in this room will receive a share?”

  “Uh, no.”

  �
��Begs the question, then,” Moira concludes. “Which lucky five, among the galaxy's trillions, will be the recipient of our hard-fought cash?”

  Standing in the doorway, seconds away from his ignominious exit, Nemo steeples his fingers to make his final plea. “Can we just get to Takioro? Tell you what, we get to Takioro, everything's gonna make so much more sense.”

  “Takioro?” Moira poses archly.

  “Takioro. You have my blooming guarantee,” Nemo avows.

  With a whirl of snapping duster, the Captain beats his hastiest retreat down the betweendecks corridor. He's off to parts unknown but certainly separated by several layers of reinforced teltriton from his seething crewmates.

  A pause pregnant enough to give birth passes amongst the four pirates. They sit in agree-upon stillness, as though the thickening of the plot around them would make their slightest actions sluggish.

  Odisseus chews unhappily. Two-Bit gazes despondently at his mountains of lost capital. Moira stares daggers down the hallway, as though debating her odds at pegging the fleeing Captain the back with a pistol. Only Abraham seems unaffected, cockling and creasing Nemo's conflagration of charts back into its proper shape. Eventually, he rises to his stubby feet.

  “Any objections?” he tenders to the room, gaining a certain grandiosity in the action. Whatever stake Abraham held in this whole affair, Odisseus couldn't fathom – the cantankerous old Grimalti could prove as indecipherable as the Captain could.

  “Gotta touch base with Tarson anyway,” Moira evaluates, not removing her gaze from the hallway or the departing Nemo. “Certainly gonna need his million now.”

  Abraham sucks in the breath needed to conclude the matter, but is interrupted by Two-Bit flying forcefully to his feet, with enough dynamism to rattle the entire table and everything on it. With two violent efforts, he yanks the sodden vacuum mitts off both of his hands, clatters them onto the center of the table and stomps from the room, seeming in that moment like nothing so much as a petulant child, sentenced to bed without supper.

  Watching him go, Odisseus vomits another package of reneged cash, swallows the mouthful of sporefin and paws up the next awaiting tin.

  Two-Bit Switch wasn't bothered about the money. Of course he could have used the cash. One million in hard currency would be precisely the sort of capital he'd need to convert his daydream caper-to-end-all-capers into a job worthy of presenting to the Lover and her crew. That wasn't what currently stuck in his craw.

  What bothers Two-Bit most, as he storms down the abovedecks corridor, is Nemo's blithe indifference to the crew's morale. Far be it from he to suddenly wax sentimental, but here they were, barely having escaped Gallow with their lives, their freedom and even the payday in tow. Now, mere hours later, they were expected to simply wipe their chins, say “thank you” and surrender all their hard-earned winnings without so much as a “by your leave”?

  Two-Bit wants answers. After a week's worth of holding his tongue and tugging his forelock around Nemo's disconcertingly subtle scheming, he has every intention of banging on the Captain's door and demanding those answers.

  He knocks thrice, awaits a reply, knocks thrice more and is seconds away from blustering off towards the helm in search of the errant Nemo when the muffled reply comes from within. “Yes'm?”

  “A word, Cap'n?” Two-Bit makes little effort to mask his contempt.

  “Uh...” comes the voice's closest approximation to a reply. “Yes,” it resolves a moment later. “Um. Yes.” Another pause follows. “One moment?” it stipulates at last.

  Thirty more seconds find Two-Bit still waiting before the door to Nemo's personal quarters. Two-Bit briefly imagines him crawling out a porthole and scampering away from responsibility across Dockside's steppe of blinking landing lights. With Two-Bit's knuckles hovering inches before the teltriton, threatening another knock, the door clasp finally releases with a weary hiss.

  Two-Bit then finds himself in the presence of Nehel Morel, altered since their meeting two minutes previously by a sudden and unexpected lack of pants.

  “You rang?”

  His shirt is blessedly lengthy enough to cover any unpleasantness that may dangle free below. The Captain stands in his doorway with all the innocence of a church-goer, crunching into a sphere of uncooked Jowna noodles like it was a Gitterpeach.

  Behind him, the darkened interior of his mystery-shrouded quarters is occasionally painted by colors both diffused and vibrant. His holovision set left running and muted, Two-Bit supposes, since no sound, save the Captain's crunching, can be heard from within.

  Two-Bit blatantly refuses to comment on the impossibility of Nemo's missing pants, him having less than a full minute's head start on the pursuing Two-Bit. He motors forward instead, savoring his anger.

  “That? Down there?” He points a trembling finger toward the floor and, beneath that, the Lover's mess. “What you pulled down there? You can't pull that – not on me, not no more. Not after Gallow and Flask and all that blooming wankery of yours.”

  If the Captain comprehends, nothing in his expression – guilelessly chewing his dried ball of instant noodles – betrays as much.

  Two-Bit continues undeterred. “I weren't gonna jabb nothing, you know, when we first sussed out something were up with you and Flask.” He chews his tongue a moment before adding, “It did vex me some, that I'll fess,” in the interest of full disclosure. When Nemo doesn't react further, Two-Bit takes the trouble to explain. “Why you didn't come to me straightaway if you wanted a vault job blagged. But, I figger,” he grants, with two upraised palms for allowance, “you two got history and, for a jig million each, thought it better to batten down me hatch and jack how it was all gonna play out.”

  He bestows a brief pause on his argument, for dramatic and respiratory purposes. “But now, with this,” he points another accusatory finger towards the beneath mess, “it's become beyond clear that you are scheming something, something blooming big, and you're only too happy to keep me and them at arm's length about it.”

  Reaction or no, Two-Bit's advanced too far at this point to turn back. He tosses both arms out wide. “Is there something about the way I scheme a job that so peeves you that you can't even be mithered to jank me in your big, mysterious buhoxshit? Did you not like the Surimiah Slip? If you don't like the way I do my quitty, you know, I'd sure fuckin' groof it if you'd just blooming jabb me so.”

  No answer comes from the munching Captain and frustration shakes Two-Bit's head. “Bloom me out, I thought we had a fluffy little system worked out – you choose the target, I scheme the job – but with this,” his voice reaches its peak of irritation, “I wouldn't know the target from the job if you chaveled 'em both up me bloomhole!”

  His apple-shaped meal reduced to its core, Nemo motions meaningfully at him with the hunk of remaining Jowna. “You wanna know?”

  “You know,” Two-Bit blurts, blindsided by the Captain's bluntness, “I hink that I do.”

  “Okay,” Nemo consents cautiously, “but you gotta wait a second.”

  With that, he was gone, scampering back into the shadowed recesses of his quarters, amid the sounds of shuffling garbage and toppling furniture. Standing both still and surprised, Two-Bit catches occasional glimpses, courtesy of the flashing holovision screen, of his partially-naked Captain, as though in swift search of something.

  Wrappers are swept aside, laundry displaced, chairs upended and cluttered counters are rifled through. He turns to toss his Jowna remnants into his awaiting pot, lying discarded atop an accumulation of dirty clothing. When he turns, he then spots Two-Bit, lingering outside, uncertain whether he should enter or ask permission to.

  Nemo repeats a beckoning gesture. “You can come in.”

  Observing the mayhem via short flashes of the holovision, Two-Bit thinks twice before accepting. Morbid curiosity eventually wins out over prudence and he crosses the threshold.

  Over the past two years, the Captain's unseen quarters had accrued a certain mystique for Two
-Bit. Through the course of his normal duties, the jabberhead had been granted at least glimpses of every other chamber aboard The Unconstant Lover, the two-foot high crawlspace beneath betweendecks and Quicksilver's own quarters both included.

  For whatever reason, the Captain was supremely private about his actual living space. Two-Bit occasionally harbored suspicions about what, precisely, he had hidden within, be it buried treasure or insane wife.

  The threshold duly crossed, however, he discovers neither – simply a messy room, more spacious than his own living quarters by half, perhaps, but a messy room nonetheless.

  Dirty laundry carpets the floor thicker and more efficiently than any true carpet could. Crumpled Jowna packets, moldy fast food containers and dredgy bottles of Gitterswitch break the morass occasionally. Several fixtures of bulky furniture, camouflaged in clutter, ring the room. Of them, Two-Bit's only really able to identify the bed.

  The bed – its blankets, sheets and pillows scattered to the four winds – is fully large enough to accommodate not one, but two additional partners. Nemo quite saliently doesn't appreciate this feature, as more piles of junk are his only sleeping companions.

  Two-Bit's guess about the holovision had been correct, as well as its predictable programming choices; silenced re-runs of Quuilar Noxix Wants You Dead or Alive.

  Reruns were a necessary evil with Noxix. Gone quite suddenly downhill in the middle of its sixteenth season, the show's eponymous hero disappeared under circumstances not especially mysterious to Two-Bit or the rest of the Lover's crew.

  All in all, the Captain's quarters conjure nothing but the helm to Two-Bit's mind, having already seen the effects of Nemo's indolence given four walls between which to expand.

  He does note, however, among the maelstrom, a few bizarre items he hadn't expected to see among the Captain's private possessions. A shattered potted plant spills soil across the mattress. A boomerang ball racquet juts, like a scabbarded sword, from the topmost dresser drawer. The graffitied husk of a Zibbian arcade game stands forlornly in the far corner and bears the improbably translated name of Squishy Squashy Tentacle Wrestling!