Hull Damage Read online

  Boss Ott, the Galactic Menace, outlaw king of Baz, thirteen million credit bounty-head and purportedly the owner of the Imperial Ministry of Interstellar Security’s single currently-fielded death mark, is a rotund bull Doreen, spattered in wispy illegible tattoos and clad in the fashion of a common dock worker – muddy boots, neutral breeches and a olive vest over a beige laborer’s shirt, both modified for a four-armed sapient, while the bundle of rubbery headtails sprouting out of his scalp is restrained with a simple hairband.

  In as much as Ott’s pedestrian appearance disagrees with the augustness of his militant environs, the bevy of rapscallions, standing apart with their own holster clips unbuttoned, certainly pertain to the fortress of their crooked patron.

  Eight of the most worlds-weary and munition-strapped desperadoes Odisseus has ever seen, sporting dozens of disfiguring scars, the flinty expressions of the last sentients repeatedly left standing and massive chips on their shoulders, contemn the rambunctious miscreants currently under Nemo’s employ.

  Premiere among them are an underclothed humanoid woman with an inferno of brilliant blue hair broiling down her shoulders and blotchy green starbursts tattooed on her eyelids, an acerbated Gord heavy who’s plucked out the majority of his white feathers to replace them with mismatched, bastardized and repainted battle armor and an aberrant, fleshy biped, reeking of blood, ornamented in tribal fetishes and seemingly lacking a mouth of any sort, substituted by a stubby yet cruelly incisive proboscis.

  Ott, however, seems to pay this leathery lot little heed as he surveys Nemo under intrusively barren scrutiny. “Barso met his end then, I imagine?”

  “I would say so,” Nemo summarizes as casually as he’s able while redoubling his efforts to discern Ott’s ambiguous long game.

  The Doreen hums a noncommittal beat before absently skimming the forefinger of his second left hand along the cistern’s side. “Interesting. And all of this was on Xo’s dollar?”

  “Well,” Nemo begins, as tactfully as he knows how, “see, that’s the thing. Initially, we were under the impression Xo would be footing the bill, but, uh,” he spikes back his shoulders and cranes forward his neck in a gesture of bemused innocence, “if we sell the cargo directly to you, I don’t really see, you know, unless I’m missing something, how Xo benefits at all.”

  “And that makes you nervous?”

  “And that makes me nervous,” Nemo quotes, flapping a hand out of his jacket in accord.

  Ott absorbs this unchanged, inattentively smearing the cistern’s condensation between his fingers in an unintentional display of the galactic gesture for cash. After an agonizing moment or two, Ott ambles two steps back, turns and waves halfheartedly towards his pack of laconic murderers. Odisseus’ paw instinctively drops to the butt of his belted Acathi but only the diminutive centauroid Treffel, a decidedly unmilitarized addendum to Ott’s irregulars, scuttles forward, clasps and activates some handheld artifice to the cistern.

  As the device whirs in apparent contemplation, Odisseus tosses an evaluating glance to Two-Bit, who chews his bottom lip undecidedly and drums three fingers against the grip of his holstered Dissident. Several feet aside, Moira remains implacable, though she surreptitiously managed to position herself a few steps behind Heeko, while Anchorage and Ebeneezer flex fists and attempt to gauge individual specimens among Ott’s entourage.

  The Treffel’s gadget clicks internally and emits a series of mild validating beeps. “The genuine article, Boss,” he barks back towards Ott, mutedly conversing with the surly Gord.

  Nemo shifts his weight to square himself and inclines his chin measurably when Ott’s clarion voice resounds. “Let me disconfirm your fears, Captain,” he states, rotating on his chunky feet and treading forward. “Xo is not defrauding you.” The aide approves another cistern, circling around the driftcart towards the third as Ott heels slightly left and withdraws an obese wad of cash from a back pocket. He licks a second thumb and fingers through the tender as he continues, keeping his first pair of arms tightly crossed. “In point of fact, I suspect they are attempting to defraud me.”

  “Oh yeah?” Nemo remarks quizzically.

  “So it would seem,” Ott substantiates, not nearly as distracted by the monumental amount of money he wafted through like loose change as Nemo clearly is. “Apparently, Xo would prefer to shower me in unwanted gifts and toothless favors rather than pay our agreed-upon price for services past rendered.” The Treffel endorses the final cistern and Ott achieves the apparent total he was searching for, less than a third of the wad’s strength. As the aide scurries back among the cluster of brutes, Ott restores the original sheaf of creased currency to his back pocket, passes the lesser stack to his topmost arms and commences a recount.

  “Ah,” Nemo tentatively concurs, “I can see how that’d be, uh, bad.”

  Ignoring him, Ott progressively elaborates with each tallied banknote. “It is my contention, however, that a few containers of blood, Triomman or otherwise, are shoddy recompense for my endorsement,” he concludes with an vague nod towards the cisterns before accounting for the last bill, doubling over the wad of cash and extending it, unconcerned, to Nemo.

  Nemo guardedly reaches out to palm the payment. “Blood?”

  “Yes,” Ott affirms. “That’s one hundred and sixty Commercial in payment for the shipment and another two hundred for your fuel costs.” His bottom hands find their way into his pockets and his top arms cross complacently. “Any questions?”

  “Uh,” Nemo stammers, thumbing through the money abstractedly, “no, that’ll be good for me.”

  Odisseus scrunches his muzzle. Tangy, invasive, mildly ironlike – Ott smells of blood, though a nearly unrecognizable variation thereof and ergo, very possibly Triomman or another species whose blood the Ortok hadn’t yet had the displeasure to encounter. While a medical facility on Danboowui would have an especially high Triomman transfusion quota, whatever undoubtedly fell purposes Ott designed for it, Odisseus couldn’t guess. There certainly weren’t any Triommans in his patient little roster.

  One of them, a Braaca with a pair of vicious electroknuckles fortifying his fuzzy blue fingers, edges Ott’s shoulder with the flat of his hand and mutters a lengthy something in his ear.

  Two-Bit sniffs loudly once, waits three seconds and sniffs again, louder – an old jailbreaker’s signal for an imminent gunfight the crew’d picked up. Nemo, on cue, ceases counting and presses the payment into his pocket. “Yeah, I–” he attempts, shuffling back a step and thumbing a gesture over his shoulder.

  Still heeding to the whisperings of his flunky, Ott freezes Nemo with an outstretched hand in a gesture for momentary patience.

  Stymied Nemo slaps his hands against his thighs and dawdles at the foot of the boarding ramp a few seconds until Ott finishes his aside while the Treffel produces, from somewhere in the cluster, effectively a steel milk crate, racked with four dingy looking plastocartons, each filled to the brim with an opaque, apricot slush and redolent with the unidentified sulphuric scent. Ott, taking it in his meaty second hands, lumbers forward.

  “Reports indicate a broadside of an unusual size during your blockade run and, coincidentally, we’ve just lost visual on the Indurna, one of the Karracki Chaperone-class corvettes assigned to the Exacting Counterattack, suggesting you destroyed it,” Ott asserts coldly. Two-Bit explodes out a masterful false cough and, as Nemo stares the Galactic Menace down, Moira crosses her arms, Odisseus drops both paws to his belt, Ebeneezer fingers the hilt of his electrochette and Anchorage clenches the end of his trunk into a tight fist. Only Nemo, under scrutiny, and Heeko, totally oblivious, remain relaxed, though the former feigns and the latter simply doesn’t comprehend.

  Cornered, Nemo confesses. “Yup. We blew it up,” he nods bluntly.

  “I know.” Ott extends the crate. “Here.”

  Uncertainly, Nemo complies, grasping the crate with both hands and regarding the sloshing cartons under an unfiltered apprehension. “Well, I always did want s
ome orange shit.”

  Ott mimics Nemo’s former posture, sinking both lower hands into his pockets, though in addition, he drapes his upper wrists over his braced under arms, as if propping his elbows against a bar top. “My technicians have a different name for it, but the smugglers here call it ‘repellent.’ Chemical under the topsoil that spontaneously combusts.”

  Nemo blinks. “Oh yeah?” he repeats, shifting his regard from that of an unhappy gift recipient to the loser of a game of hot grenade.

  Ott shrugs his upper shoulders dispassionately. “I offer a standing bounty to anyone who causes significant damage to the blockade, which would include, you understand, destroying one of their capital ships.” His first right hand points a fleeting finger towards the crate. “Market price for a gallon is, what,” he glances over his shoulder to his cutthroats but doesn’t wait for an answer before turning back, “eleven right now?”

  “Hundred?”

  “Thousand. Takioro is your current port of berth, correct?” Ott inquires unflaggingly. “You’re familiar with a gentleman named Eidesmoe?”

  Nemo opens his mouth to answer before turning sharply around to confer vacantly with his own associates. Odisseus shakes his head. Moira just raises her eyebrows. Two-Bit, though, nods increasingly.

  “I ord of the bloke,” he chimes in.

  “Approach him. He’s as fair a fence as you’re liable to find in-station,” Ott advises. “You’re encouraged to refuel and make any minor repairs before embarking. You’ve until half after to vacate the bay.” He flays open both of his drooping hands beseechingly. “Still no questions?” Nemo shrugs callously and the cartons clink precariously together. At that, Ott concludes with nothing but a stiff nod to his troops and files back toward the lift, four of them falling in roomy rank behind him, the other four remaining to secure the cisterns.

  Nemo hasn’t tarried a single beat before he’s spun, thrust the crate into the spindly hands of listless Heeko and began his indignant stomp up the ramp. As he passes Odisseus, they fall abreast of each other, the Ortok keeping a prudent eye on their departing host.

  “Did you understand any of that Xo, recompense, endorsement stuff?” Odisseus murmurs to Nemo, hopefully out of earshot.

  His gait accelerated, his stare nondivergent and his answer epitomizing, Nemo brushes past Odisseus as he replies.

  “No. Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

  Chapter 8

  Two-Bit Switch practically throws the crate at Eidesmoe. He shuffles it roughly across the impromptu counter and out of his reach, the orange repellent lapping against the lids of their cartons. Eidesmoe fingers the gaps in the crate’s grating and inches it closer under impressed scrutiny. “Bloom me out, Switch. I thought we were talking about, like, a Bubble can. Who’d you have to blow for all this?”

  “Hush,” Two-Bit pleads, bracing his elbows against his knees and dropping his face into his hands. “Do us a kindie and just hush.”

  On the return trip to Takioro, Two-Bit had been appointed by the Captain to serve as the repellent’s temporary guardian. Saddled with the unpleasant task several minutes before departing Baz, Two-Bit, wary of spontaneous combustion, was a little baffled at how, precisely, he was expected to baby-sit a time bomb.

  This anxiety was compounded, of course, by Nemo’s attempt to circumvent another blockade run by exiting Baz’ atmosphere through its polar window – the practice of threading a gap through rotational momentum sufficient to shear the ship with enough deviation. Two-Bit had never met a pilot Nemo’s equal and even he couldn’t manage the feat entirely unscathed; the previously malfunctioning inertial dampener shorted out mid-flight and bestowed unnerving weightlessness not just upon the entire ship, but also on the four cartons of repellent under Two-Bit’s charge. Several frantic seconds were spent scrambling about not only to right himself but to prevent the free-floating cartons from jostling or spilling or anything else that might provoke them into unwarranted detonation, at least until Odisseus could rewire the dampener.

  The repellent passed the remainder of the trip locked firmly in the topmost compartment of the galley’s chiller, predicated on Two-Bit’s blind gamble that a colder temperature might help avert combustion, but the notion of an unjustifiable explosion merely one deck down haunted the quartermaster’s sleep the entire two-week return voyage, a sleep already hounded by unheralded thoughts of Zella. Here, in Eidesmoe’s private bathroom-come-office on Takioro’s Third Ring, Two-Bit had been only too grateful to pass the restless burden of flammable liquid containment on to a professional.

  Eidesmoe whistles idly to himself as he scurries away to the bathroom basin, doubling as his chemical laboratory. As he exhales, the thousands of translucent black quills dotting his hide protrude outward, retreating wetly within as he ceases his whistling to filter repellent into a thermosteel canteen.

  They squatted on toilet seats in the decommissioned bathroom Eidesmoe, a Glothi fence of Two-Bit’s and apparently Boss Ott’s acquaintance, laired his operation out of. Though he’d never formally inquired as to the specific story behind the somewhat unsavory locale, it wasn’t difficult to guess that an independent, bottom-rung middleman like Eidesmoe had some trouble securing respectable office space on the Third Ring, the majority of which was snatched up by the larger corporations. Unoccupied storefront space, public bathroom not withstanding, was a rare find and certainly worth any renovation, though Two-Bit didn’t envy Eidesmoe the original task.

  All the mirrors, save one, had been smashed or stolen. Each basin, save one, had been broken by bludgeons, though severed pipes and tubing still hang flaccidly from the bare sockets, reluctantly dripping stagnant water. The five toilets, save one, were relatively untouched, as their removal would necessitate an entire septvac crew to avoid copious spillage, as evidenced by the wide array of sickening stains around the uncoupled and collapsed one.

  Eidesmoe had complimented an intact toilet, basin and a viciously cracked mirror with several card tables, a miniature computer bank, his prized collection of hot scramble codifiers and a chemistry set in order to erect his little office. Even though he’d also installed a series of encryption locks and replaced the door sign, the joint was still a bathroom. Decades worth of rampant graffiti adorns every wall, promising that “Tejeno the Shank likes it in the butt” and ensuring that “for a good time, dial freq 29:361.7V”. Most of all, however, Eidesmoe’s office continues to reek of urine, semen and feces, despite the best efforts of the canopy of air fresheners he’d festooned all along the ceiling, a suspended jungle of purple, orange and yellow tree icons from a hundred worlds, undulating by an imperceptible draft.

  “Tell you what, I been up to my balls in repellent lately,” Eidesmoe opines as he cracks open the ninth thermosteel canteen to accept the last of the third carton’s contents.

  “You facting?” Two-Bit bites, attempting to sound as uninterested as possible. Increasingly prone to openly discuss business with other clients, small talk with fences, even those as harmless as Eidesmoe, had cost Two-Bit more than a few teeth over the years and he considered it a point of professionalism to avoid it. Besides, Eidesmoe was something of a boor, even by Two-Bit’s abysmal standards.

  “On all the moons,” the Glothi affirms nonetheless. “Every coupla weeks, Ott sends a smuggler up here with tubs and tubs of the stuff – makes hisself a tidy profit, he does.”

  “I hazard he does,” Two-Bit consents. Eidesmoe continues to pour with the smugly amiable satisfaction of a successful businessman while Two-Bit, against his better judgment, inquires after several long moments. “What’s the junk used for, anyhoo? Boomers?”

  “Ya don’t know? Bloody hell, Switch, I’da thought you, in your line a work, woulda at least heard of a Wolfsbane before.”

  “Can you just fess the fucking ringer?” The Glothi throws up the splayed fingers of acquiescing innocence and makes for the fourth and final carton as he complies.

  “’s a torpedo. Homebrew. You see,” he explains, s
etting aside his current task to pantomime a diagram, “you take a regular torpedo, right?” He frames his prickly hands in a roughly ovular shape, approximately the size of a standard starfighter class torpedo. “And you plug it into a bigger casing, say something like this,” he swells the imaginary object in his hands nearly twice the size, like an exaggerating fisherman. “Then, you flood all the negative space with the repellent,” he traces his spined finger about to simulate the liquid. “Direct hit with one of those babies oughta be enough to blow that junker ‘a yours straight to Jotor,” Eidesmoe completes as he turns his attention back to his work.

  “You facting?” Two-Bit listlessly repeats.

  “Only a matter of time afore one of the major corps’ll scoop ‘em up,” the Glothi shrugs. “They’re a hot commodity right now, swear by the quills on my daddy’s cock.”

  Two-Bit muffles a sigh and tilts his head aside, in order to massage the space between his eyes with his middle finger. “You about termed?”

  “I can square ya now, if you got other affairs to see to,” he offers indifferently. On cue from Two-Bit’s weary nod, he scampers back toward the toilet, the provisional throne ensconced by muted monitors, and, after retracting the lid, fetches forth a lockbox of girded steel, buckled by some deluxe retina scanner Eidesmoe undoubtedly conned out of an unsuspecting tourist. After raising the box to his eye, the device chirps pleasantly at him and he peels back the cover to reveal a substantial pot of funds.

  The sort of hood who considered himself canny for employing such a costly piece of security, the notion never seemed to occur to Eidesmoe that right now, should Two-Bit or any other customer pull a pistol, none of that would matter. Two-Bit made a mental note to, at some future point, introduce the fence to this concept – an armed robbery, maybe rounded off with a nice safe pistol-whip to the nose, should do the trick and shouldn’t hurt him or his operation too badly as a result.