Hull Damage Page 22

  The propulsion computer assuredly attempted to compensate Starboard's unscheduled demise by cosigning the bygone booster's fuel intake directly to Port, precisely the sort of logistical error a seventy-five-year-old propulsion computer was inclined to make when pressed. This, in turn, overburdened the drive motor into issuing a series of commands, certainly in haste, one of which was to polarize the heretofore unreliable inertial dampener into wild exaggeration of the Briza's every move, subsequently tossing crewmen about like rag dolls and spilling Odisseus' precariously placed lunch of Bubble Blue Diet and imitation dubix all over the deactivation controls. Another of these commands was to flange Port's turbine cap open, creating an afterburner flare that could only adequately be described as “volcanic.” In summary, having very little voice in the matter, The Unconstant Lover chose to respond to this chain of events by plummeting to her own destruction.

  Only by the sheer idiot chance that bought his breath did Nemo manage to wrench the ship away from direct demolishment with the Defederate Station and now, by the grace of whatever queer fortune had blessed Odisseus' saltbrother, they spiral barely-contained circuits around Takioro, rocketing full throttle in a hairpin tail-spin. Were Nemo not cranking the yoke as far to port as possible, the amputated Briza would certainly crash headlong with the space station's mooring asteroid, though explosive possibilities remained abundant among Takioro's perimeter of embarking and disembarking ship traffic.

  “So, do we have any kind of plan here, or...?” Nemo tentatively probes, level of hysteria gradually mounting. Such was classic Captain behavior – blithely disposed to hurtling an ill-repaired starship into the breach, yet dismember said craft via direct consequence of his venturesomeness and he dissolves into a trepidatious child.

  “I'm cutting the main drive feed,” Odisseus ultimates, regardless of whatever objection Nemo might advance to muddy the situation. In these moments, these unhinged instances of utter nautical catastrophe, a stark, subconscious role reversal always manifested itself, in accordance with an Ortok's biological warding instincts. In that moment, Odisseus was no longer the Captain's underling; he became Nemo's surrogate father.

  “But you just said that–”

  “The pressure helix,” Odisseus begins as calmly as he could muster, spying the object of his search and extending both gauntleted paws toward it, “is the problem, not the solution.” Grasping the smoldering motor control box between safeguarding gloves, the Ortok mentally laments the practical loss of his claws as he attempts to pry back the device's dented lid on rusty hinges, adding, “If you can keep her afloat another fifteen seconds or so, we should be fine.”

  “We'll be–”

  “Dead in the water, yes, but we'll be stopped and we can buzz in for help.”

  Nemo's pause betrays his reluctance before his words can. “So much for a discreet docking.”

  “This is what happens when you clubhaul, Nemo,” Odisseus admonishes. He hoists the unlatched motor control box to his snout and inspects the coils of overheated cables within with a hasty, inquisitive nose, his vision towards wires and other finer objects effectively neutralized by the thickness of his goggles. Selecting the appropriate specimen, the Ortok nuzzles his muzzle into the grody contrivance, pinches the aforementioned wire between fangs and yanks the cord loose.

  “I guess,” Nemo lamentedly concedes as, with a dreadful shudder, the adjacent booster engine finally relinquishes its infuriated shrieking and dwindles into muttering gripes. “Hey–” Nemo observes, woebegone demeanor immediately forgotten in the face of imminent salvation. As Odisseus spits the riven wires of the main drive feed from his mouth and wriggles free from Starboard's access hatch, he can already feel the acceleration slacken and hear the oxygen brakes vent; two telltale signs of the Lover's plodding, ponderous process of mid-flight retardation.

  Odisseus, likewise enervated and panting, declines back to his haunches before catching sight of, out of the corner of his eye, the sparking deactivation control panel, sodden with squandered fish and splattered soda. It remains, a fact the weary Ortok is painfully conscious of, only the first on a suddenly elongated list of repairs that had just landed squarely in his exhausted lap.

  His stomach grumbles in protest.

  –––

  Moira Quicksilver practically has to chase him down the boarding ramp, Two-Bit Switch cantering to keep flush with his opposite flank and Abraham Bonaventure waddling into rearguard twenty steps behind. An airlock breeze whisking his duster open, Captain Nemo disembarks The Unconstant Lover onto Docking Port #7294's grimy grating at a hustle, as if impelled forward by a swell of his own irresponsibility.

  “So, fuel, ammo, Xo's payment, magnets,” he rapidly tabulates on his left hand, “uh, mustard?”

  “Odi's list,” Moira prompts for the third time.

  “Right, right,” Nemo suddenly appreciates. “I have that,” he vouches irresolutely, padding down his pockets, “...somewhere.”

  “Left breast pocket.”

  “Boom.”

  “Socks?” Two-Bit pipes in.

  “Again?” Moira demurs. “You get more socks every damn time we come into port.”

  Two-Bit blinks obtusely. “They get holes in 'em.”

  “Because you wear them until they liquefy.”

  Without warning, an aurulent laser bolt, fired from cover, sizzles the galvanized ground several inches from Nemo's feet, abruptly halting the haste of his advance. By the time Nemo's raised his palms in a pacifying gesture and Two-Bit's dropped a hand to his holster, Righty and Lefty, hammers thumbed back and canisters chambered, already scour the dimness of the Docking Port in search of the hidden assailant.

  “See anything?” Nemo, in sotto voice, offers over his left shoulder.

  “Yellow muzzle flash. From the gas release and the size of the impact, we're looking at an AccCo ditrogen-powered sidearm, probably on the heavier side. Best guess says a sawed-off 387 Absconder carbine. Which would mean either Boy Blaster or, more likely–”

  “Traasha,” Nemo finishes as, training an AccCo 387 Absconder laser carbine, complete with signature sawed-off barrel, on him with her bulky claws, Traasha emerges from behind a support pylon, snarl carefully composed on her cracked lips. “Gee, Vel,” Nemo calls toward the shadowed outline of the harborage doors, “what tipped you off?”

  “You gotta minute, Captain?” comes the husky Vollocki reply, mere moments before she struts into the brassy light. Velocity shudders the folds of her common tramper's poncho as she entwines her arms together.

  Nemo blossoms into his most charmingly apologetic smile. “'fraid not, kiddo. You didn't think I was gonna run, didja?” Velocity parries his ingrained insolence with a disinterested smirk of her own as she plants each hoof into a gunfighter's stance, though whether her belt serves another purpose than holding her trousers up, Moira can't determine through the jaunty cut of her poncho.

  “You won't be runnin' anyplace if Traasha here does what she's keen on doin' and I've half-a-mind to stand aside and let it happen.”

  “Traasha's outgunned,” Moira categorically counters.

  “We've got a whole deckload full of brunos who might delly a peccadillo with that flash of yours,” Two-Bit points out with a sharp nod of his forehead toward the boarding ramp.

  Velocity, engaging Nemo in a fierce bout of ocular fencing, ignores the both of them in all but word. “Captain'd still be dead.”

  A handful of seconds, stretched taut by the unflinching mien of both markswomen, gracelessly passes before Nemo relents. “Fair enough,” he moderates with the compromising shrug of a man held at gunpoint. “What can I do you for, Vel?”

  “Ain't heard a buzz from Baigo. All's quiet on Rith, it seems.”

  “That's odd. What with the terrorists and stuff.”

  Velocity, the very image of unamused, purses her lips with impatience. “It's been over a month, Nemo, with no word and you come rocketin' back here, nearly bang up my station and now you're expecting what,
fuel, quarter? A nice blowjob, maybe?”

  “If it ain't too much trouble,” Nemo grants with a daringly compliant frown.

  “By all the moons,” Velocity breathes, seemingly flustered by the very manner of disregard and obliviousness that Moira swallows on a daily basis. She bats a choleric gesture at Traasha. “You know, I could just have you shot and put an agreeable end to all this.”

  “Listen,” Nemo placates with extended assuaging palms, “we were en route to Rith and a certain misunderstanding arose regarding our previous job with Xo that couldn't be ignored, savvy?” He shrugs helplessly. “Just stowing loose freight.”

  This Velocity appears to consider, dissecting his account somewhere behind the naked indignation of those cobalt eyes. “That's all, huh?”

  “That's all,” Nemo inoffensively repeats.

  “Then you wouldn't know anything about Lzura,” Velocity confirms with nothing but the slightest twinge of grim gratification curling her lips. Moira constricts her trigger fingers.

  “Who?” Nemo blithely retorts, air of mock quizzicality replete across his entire comportment.

  “Heh. Of course.” Velocity glowers her discrimination at Nemo in full, as if attempting to survey his entire person. “Somethin' different about you, squirt.” She snaps several times. “Can't get a finger on it.” Traasha, standing apart, growls something that evidently jogs Vel's memory. “Hat,” the Vollocki realizes tauntingly, with a final extenuated snap. “Where's the eyesore, Nemo?”

  The Captain gnaws his bottom lip and flashes the dangerous grays. Moira herself had noted and deigned to comment on the bowler hat's unforetold vanishment, as had the Lover's other three lieutenants, each with varying degrees of caution or skepticism. Odisseus, the only crew member present when it initially disappeared, had thus far offered precious little comment regarding the obnoxious hat's current whereabouts, the motives surrounding the event and whether or not it was likely to make a resurgence any time soon.

  Nemo nonetheless is cryptically curt. “I ate it.”

  “Cute.”

  “'Speak for yerself, missy. What's with the get-up?”

  Lumbering down the boarding ramp with all the authority uncounted years amidships lends a mariner of his stature, Abraham Bonaventure deflates the room's apprehension under the weight of his mere presence. He lingers atop the ramp, a quarter of the way to the Docking Port floor, and arrests the Depot-Commissioner with the very strabismic regard he attributes to deckhands and dockworkers.

  At the advent of this fresh and formidable opposition, Velocity visibly bristles, adjusting her bearing to receive the grizzled challenger. “Abe,” she salutes stiffly.

  “Vel,” the Grimalti sailing master responds, remotely picking at the puckered hide along his abdominal scar with a split fingernail. “Mind mayhaps pointin' yer piece somewheres else?” he forthrightly addresses to Traasha who, in turn, glances back undecidedly to Velocity. The Vollocki reluctantly acquiesces with a curt nod to her armed escort and, on cue, Traasha lowers the Absconder. Moira reciprocates with a prudent withdrawal of Righty and Lefty to their respective holsters, though she remains confident that should Traasha again find cause to brandish her clunky carbine, both pistols would have ample time to preempt any other attack.

  “Don't rightly think this concerns you, old-timer,” Velocity opines judiciously, attempting to bolster her claim with the full weight of her office.

  Abraham, however, remains unflappable in his disinterest, running a thumb along the rim of his immense brown bandolier. “Yer talkin' 'bout pluggin' me boy here. I think it concerns me well enough.”

  “Your boy's picked himself up some bad habits.”

  “Well, ye know how it is. Takes a whole crew, as they say,” he invalidates casually, before canting his gaze upward in feigned retrospection. “Come to think on it, I seem to recall a certain young brigand who, in her time, got herself into quite a spot with White Dwarf over some disappearing cargo.”

  “When was this?” Nemo questions with thinly veiled mirth, like a teenager learning of his grandparents' youthful mishaps.

  “Oh, long afore yer time. And, unless I'm very much mistaken, that be a problem she solved by simply shootin' him in the skull.” The purport of his implication hangs palpably enough for Nemo to glance sidelong at Moira with a silent whistle of impression. Moira knuckles him castigatedly on the upper arm.

  “Captain?” Vel, duly chastised, shifts her attention from the imposing to the infantile. Erecting three gloved fingers, the Depot-Commissioner fuels her ultimatum with stymied frustration. “Three days, you understand? By week's end, I want you off my station and hauling your goldbrickin' bloomhole to Rith. Savvy?”

  “That'll do, Vel,” Abraham interjects, ambling past Moira and toward the harborage doors. “That'll do.”

  With that, the effectively vanquished Velocity retreats a step back, as if in deference to Abraham's unconcerned approach, the Lover's other present officers falling into step behind him, though none with quite the degree of superciliousness Nemo musters to his swagger.

  As soon as the harborage doors hiss closed behind them, the Captain wastes little time in matching the Grimalti's stride to inquire, with his patented brand of irreverence, “Abe?”

  “That's four ye owe me now, boyo, and don't ye forget it.”

  –––

  Two-Bit Switch prefers to approach his trade with the strictest professionalism, as much as is humanly possible in his admittedly peculiar line of work. That being said, he was very much going to enjoy bamboozling the ever-loving shit out of Nabdres No-Cock. The dickless old Diraaqi had displayed enough clemency not to insert a canister into Two-Bit's face upon the dissolution of their partnership and, given this opportunity, he'd repay Nabdres with a canister of his own, as black-collar business ethics duly demanded of him.

  Nemo, boots bespattered by sleet stains and ballasted against the table's lip, rears his chair back on its hind legs, tottering precariously on the very cusp of ruin, as was his wont. Abraham, meanwhile, decants his capacious form forward to the illustrated tabletop, pondering the deep indigo depths of his ale-jack. Armed with fresh socks, an Attaché equipped with an itemized dossier for the upcoming caper and a scotch glass awash with ochre Tivossian ginger-olives, one of which he wanders against the array of his upper teeth, Two-Bit Switch occupies the chair across from his recently arrived confederates with the frothy energy only a full cup of doused chococino and two lines of snorted Spicion can truly lend a hoodlum.

  “How long ago was this?” the Captain questions distractedly, attempting to wave down a profoundly disinterested Obax waitress who'd, for some reason or another, fascinated herself with tracing her padded pointer finger along the rim of a partially-full pilsner.

  “Maybe a month before we mated up?” Two-Bit estimates with a good-natured scowl. “Ain't been out to that sector since.”

  “Ye don't imagine he's liable to expect this?” Abraham suggests.

  “Don't vizz as how,” Two-Bit concludes, eviscerating the olive to its viridian pit before continuing. “He's just as feez to vizz me comin' now as he is five months from now, ain't he? Way I schemed it out, we scanty gotta blag much anyway,” he plops both palms haphazardly to the tabletop. “No digits, no fuzz, just a coupla wheels and a bit of old-fashioned handbaggin'.”

  Nemo, however, is officially preoccupied with the magnitude of the waitress' truancy. He emits a brief, shrill whistle to shake her from her slack-jawed revelry but whatever incomprehensible mystery the humming pilsner contains, it retains its inexplicable beguilement over her, much to the chagrin of her sole client.

  The Heaven Spot, along with the less esoterically titled Barfly, jointly represent a queer sidestep around the issue of Takioro's meager storefront space. While the latter employs a quartet of slaved driftstages to hover above the squalid churn of the station street, the former, a three table canteen blanketed stem to stern with labyrinthine graffiti, is suspended from four heavy turbine chains from the
Second Ring's ceiling. Despite the volant venue's ingenuity, the Heaven Spot is only accessible via a pair of individually sized lift platforms, hosts an unimpressive square footage as dictated by the Depot-Commissioner and is plagued by occasional bouts of pendant swaying akin to those of a sailing ship. Therefore, the Spot is unsurprisingly frequented by only a limited patronage, mainly those seeking privacy in which to conduct affairs too illicit to openly discuss on Takioro or those wishing to simply admire the artwork.

  The fashion, exhibition and patterning of the fractal paint that illustrates every square inch of the Heaven Spot, bleeding off the ceiling, dripping down the walls and pooling on the floor, even clawing its way up the pub's furniture, belies it as the especially extravagant handiwork of a mythical shiptagger enigmatically known as “Ganymede Mel.”

  Her identity, species, location and motives all remained the subject of galaxy-wide speculation, but inexplicable and maddeningly embellished graffiti artwork, from miniscule stamps on Service Junction bathroom stalls to sprawling murals that encompass entire buildings such as the Heaven Spot's signature coating, have unaccountably appeared across the galaxy, each vandalism actualizing without any eyewitness, each tableau tagged with the unforthcoming handle “Ganymede Mel.” Though copycats abounded, the phantomlike spray artist's workmanship was unmistakably perplexing and, before long, she'd become a folk legend among the Outer Ring's insurgent population, earmarking warp gates, drinkeries and even one Imperium barracks on Prash, a feat that earned the very possibly fictional “Ganymede Mel” a thirty-thousand credit bounty courtesy of the IMIS. Her true apparent passion, however, seemed to be marking starships and those captains lucky enough to earn her inky endorsement on fuselages and torpedo tubes wore them as badges of outlawry honor.