Hull Damage Read online

  “Not a word to Abraham now, savvy?” Nemo emphasizes, returning to his steaming pasta with a few insistent stabs of his fork. Odisseus nods and safely stows his earnings in a belt pouch.

  “Tell you the gritty, I was hinked and a half that we was gonna get dritched by that loopsy Vollocki back there.” Two-Bit tips right, stuffing his cash into his pocket as he confesses.

  Nemo scoffs. “Vel talks tough shit.”

  “She wouldn't dare shortchange us. Excepting Traasha, she’s barely got enough muscle to keep that house in order,” Moira reasons.

  “She and Abraham, you know, they're just old school,” Nemo concludes, thrusting a fork, draped with unctuous noodles, into his mouth.

  Odisseus knots his forearms together. “Still. Maybe she had a point back there, with that revolutionary stuff.”

  “Sure doesn't, if she's saying we're better off smuggling.” Nemo manages through a bite of Jowna, a few rogue specimens dangling slack out of his mouth, “My point being, we’re moving on to bigger and better things.” From the seemingly all-purpose jacket pocket, he withdraws a slim silver card – a holodeck. His right hand shoveling the stray pasta back in, his left slaps the card in the middle of the table, trademark Huong Xo crest leering up at the assembled.

  “You give it a jack yet?” Two-Bit baits, reclining postprandially in his chair, reuben little but a creamy residue on his plate and fingers. Nemo’s smile swells from a smirk.

  “Nope. Thought we should all get a chance to hear it first.” The four newly minted outlaws exchange looks: Nemo impish, Two-Bit villainous, Moira humored and Odisseus circumspect. As a collective, they discern the enormity of this event – by activating the holodeck, listening to the message contained within and undertaking the resulting mission, they were elevating themselves to the next echelon in the intergalactic underworld, from burgeoning brigands to pirates proper. Beyond this point, customs frigates would be the least of their concerns.

  Moira, unsurprisingly, breaks the moment of reverie. “What’re you looking at? Play the fucking message.”

  Nemo stretches an arm over the masticated leavings of their midday meal and presses the launch button at the holodeck’s center. An argent twin of the steely logo stamped to the holodeck’s face flutters into view above it and the monotone chiming of a droidvox greets its jointly skeptical and enthused audience.

  “An extension of greeting to you, Captain Nemo,” the recording opens. “The Most Heedful Huong Xo has observed your capability in clandestine endeavors, the enduring success of your previous engagements and the auspicious outlook of your mounting career with a great interest.”

  Nemo shoots his first mate a glance. “See, Moira? I got me an auspicious outlook.” She cuffs him across the back of his head, eliciting his coltish giggle. Two-Bit shushes the both of them.

  The hologram wavers slightly and continues. “In this fashion do Our Ingratiating Overlords deign to enlist your aid, the aid of your crew and your transport vessel, in a mercantile venture of a most discreet description.”

  Neither Nemo nor Two-Bit can smother the smiles from their faces. Odisseus scrapes up his second helping of jiihu tongue and dispatches it in a curt chomp as the droidvox begins to outline the offer.

  “An independent cargo freighter operating off Alor, The Hourly Wage, undertakes consistent supply runs to a Mercy Clinic on Danboowui. Its shipments typically consist of medical replenishments of a considerable financial appeal to The Most Sagacious Huong Xo.”

  Nemo’s face alights with apish astonishment. “Can it be? Someone who actually hires pirates to commit piracy?” The holodeck reaches its conclusion while Odisseus ingests his fish, gazing distracted out the window at a custodial drone suffusing a disconcerting black blemish on the plastolieum in corrosive chemicals.

  “You will be compensated a sum equal to one hundred and sixty thousand credits of Imperium Commercial Currency in exchange for the timely and inconspicuous re-appropriation of a single shipment of these medicinal supplies,” the hologram chimes, the bastard of bewilderment and triumph exploding on Nemo’s face. Two-Bit literally applauds, drawing eyes from the Boiler’s other diners, and Moira herself brooks a greedy grin.

  “The Most Magnanimous Huong Xo respects and divines your acceptance. When the task is completed to their benevolent satisfaction, interface with intermediates through the use of the following comm frequency for further instructions.” The hologram blips a twenty-digit number for a microsecond and blinks out, as if suctioned back into the holodeck.

  They don’t sit in silence for a second before Two-Bit erupts. “This ain’t bloomin’ bodgers no more, briggies; this is nitty fucking quitty.” Moira blinks.

  Nemo encapsulates it. “Okay, I didn’t understand a word of that.”

  Moira grunts. “Probably for the best.”

  “We can be chuffed about this, is all.”

  Nemo indicates him with a forefinger. “That we can. Like I assume Two-Bit just said, this is officially the big time now. We make this gig and our days of slinking under smuggling cordons are over, savvy?”

  “Let’s not get careless, of course,” Moira redirects. “Or ahead of ourselves.”

  He squints at her, certainly about to misconstrue her point. She reposes forward, elbows rooting on the table. “Holodeck said this freighter, this Hourly Wage, is an independent trafficker. Makes her a teamster.”

  Nemo wrinkles his brow. “Which a good thing. We plunder her and we don’t catch a cap in some company crown.”

  “But you take backing out of the equation, you’ve got a freelance teamster, lacking the protection of a corp, regularly carting cargo big enough for even Huong Xo to notice. And nobody’s tossed her? That doesn’t sound suspicious to you?”

  “What do you think?”

  “This means mercenaries and probably a lot of them.”

  Nemo steeples his fingers against his mouth. “What, rangers?”

  Two-Bit spits. “Motherless fucks.”

  Moira chews her lower lip, pawing the glass's rim with a wayward finger.

  “Rangers are fucking extortive. If this Wage's got the funds to bankroll spice rangers, we’d probably make more jangle fencing their cargo ourselves.”

  Crosshatching his fingers, Nemo adopts his distinctive deliberation. “What would we need?”

  Moira exhales. “Luck. A full mag of torpedoes wouldn't hurt.”

  “I need a new wheel,” Two-Bit suddenly appreciates.

  Odisseus spies it almost before Nemo does. His zeal enkindles behind the slate storm of his eyes as he disembroils his fingers and levels one at the still envisioning Two-Bit.

  “That’s exactly it,” he launches, building speed as he creaks over the table. He’s veered to Moira when the grin first germinates. “We don’t need more torpedoes. We need more guns.” Her scowl still shows her suspect, but Nemo’s undaunted. “If they have a lot of mercenaries, then what do you think we should have?”

  “Mercenaries,” Odisseus flatly affirms.

  “A lot of them.” The grin invades and conquers the left hand side of his face. “We need a bigger crew. A marauder crew.”

  “More crew means less cash per head,” Moira advises.

  Nevertheless, Nemo’s beside himself. “We’ll jump that warp when we come to it, but the point is,” he pontificates and, arrested with alacrity, he slumps back to his chair, frowns satisfied and surmises it thus, “we wanna get serious about piracy, we get us some more motherfucking pirates.”

  Moira cracks into an odd simper. “Fair enough.”

  This triggers Two-Bit's bouncing nods of culmination. “I delly a bruno or two who main drongo when the shit turns to flaster.”

  Finally, Nemo fixes his familiar feverish scrutiny on Odisseus. “Whaddya think, Odi? Time to toss in.”

  Despite his instinctual mistrust of this new employer, his disquiet about siphoning their reward even further apart and his generally disregarded theory that a task was rarely better solved with an increase
in firearms, Odisseus apprehends his final jiihu tongue with a swipe of his paw.

  “You’re my saltbrother. Of course I’m in,” he concludes and casts the fish into his yawning mouth.

  Chapter 3

  Moira Quicksilver skims and counts the envelope’s contents with a thumb – crisp Crander-minted banknotes, amounting four thousand Imperium credits. She tosses Lenduza a venomous glare. “This is supposed to be six-fifty.”

  The bartender returns an embarrassed shrug. “I guess the Mruka’s two-fifty expired. I’m sorry.” He stretches a stubby arm over the counter and stakes both shot glasses with separate fingers. “The Walkeen’s four went through, though. Refill?”

  Moira acquiesces, gesturing him off. Danbonte signals for a double. Lenduza carts off the jiggers and turns his back, occupying himself with the alcohol, while Moira leafs through the cash once more, withdraws it from the envelope, indulges in a thwarted sigh and caches it under her sweater.

  “Who's the Walkeen?” Danbonte extends. The redskin hadn’t discernibly aged in the third of a decade since their last association, barring the week’s accumulated stubble browning his keen chin and the minute notch of a recent scar, in a deeper crimson, barely below his right nostril. Even as he asks the question, his wolfish countenance is habitually lacquered with the boredom possessed of men too clever by half.

  “I don't know. Some thug,” she replies, stroking the bridge of her nose with the edge of her palm.

  “I didn’t know you were still in the game.”

  “Most don’t. I’d appreciate that to remain the case.” She’d endeavored every possible caution to ensure that her approach and entry to The Pistol-Whip, an austere and ill-frequented saloon on the Second Ring, went unnoticed. She’d consummately muddied her route, accessed the tavern’s postern door and purchased the continued silence of the dive’s confirmedly reticent doormen – necessary actions all.

  The Pistol-Whip had a well-warranted reputation as a bounty hunter’s bar and was consequently eschewed by the vast majority of Takioro’s outlaw constituency. Anonymity, in this case, was Moira’s prerogative, lest she share a fate with Cogden Moore.

  “Not a word,” Danbonte consents.

  Lenduza coasts their glasses back to Moira and Danbonte, both brimming with blue booze, before inquiring, “You don’t want the vials back, do ya?” Moira dismisses him and hoists her drink as Danbonte lazily rotates his on the bar top.

  “I was surprised to hear from you,” he smirks. “Honestly figured you’d be dead by now.”

  “I got a job,” Moira cuts to the chase, pitching the Gitterswitch back in a tart rush, exhaling and dabbing the residue from her lips with the meat of her thumb. “Merc work. On a pirate freighter I play first mate for.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Captain wants to lease a dozen or less extra hands for a boarding party on a freelance teamster. Most likely an extension past that.”

  “Payment?”

  “Three percent off the top.” Moira eyes him sidelong. He faux-pouts.

  “Three percent’s pretty low for merc work.” Moira ditches a handful of bills on the bar top and rises, regarding Danbonte.

  “We ship out in fourteen hours. Docking Port #1118.” She chucks him on the shoulder as she stalks toward the rear exit. “Nice to see ya.”

  –––

  Two-Bit Switch brandishes both the B7 Dissident and his most dissenting deadpan against his likeness in the security corder. He pauses in the pose before hefting the weighty handgun back to his left hand appraisingly.

  “How’s the Dissident?” Salo calls from an aisle beyond. Two-Bit rumples his expression and tosses the B7 to his left and back to his right before answering.

  “Something with the klamber,” he estimates. “Feels a mite pecky.”

  “Well, she’s empty.”

  His thumb discharges the cylinder and he gives it the customary spin, to the satisfying sound of the clattering chambers. “What’s her zeen?”

  “What you see there. She’ll hold fourteen before a reload, but the good news is, she uses moonclips, so you can buy as many extra cylinders as you want. Hey, come look at this thing.”

  Two-Bit punches the monitor thrice and the display case’s plexishield whizzes shut. He tenders a cheeky smile at the clerk, an uninterested Ondo flicking through holochannels at a dizzying pace, props the B7 against his shoulder and steps down the adjacent aisle to meet his Corgassi companion.

  Salo Shouldermount was wearing a harness – an antiquated, crinkly nightmare of peeling threads and boiled leather, but the object the harness hoisted was clearly of a different stock. Though splattered with stains and powder burns, the minigun beneath had once been burnished blue, all sympathetically sculpted curves and artfully embossed with rippling wave decals. As Two-Bit rounds the corner, the masterpiece-cum-machine gun swivels to intercept him and locks to his position even as he moves forward, Salo’s diaphanous hands nowhere near the contoured handlebars sprouting from the weapon’s rear.

  “Ain’t she a beaut?” Salo smiles, flashing his row of vestigial teeth. Two-Bit had partnered with Salo on a handful of past jobs and deemed him a reliable gun caddy, enough to consider carving him a place in both this and future capers, but he still hadn’t quite shaken his slight discomfort at watching Salo’s bifurcated brain pulse through the transparent cartilage of his head while they spoke.

  “That’s an otto ratatat, isn’t it?” He takes a few more steps but maintains his distance from the vigilant firearm. Droid gunnery was vehemently banned in nearly every civilized system of the galaxy; naturally, one could pick it cheap at any Takioro pistolpawner. “Who prods that?”

  “Kiesha Laser. Don’t know why somebody’d hock this shit, but she sure would be fun.” He clenches his fists around the handlebars, grits his denticles and feigns firing the exquisite weapon, his dangling headfins jiggling in response.

  “Probably ‘cause it’s fucking antwacky.”

  “You getting the Dissident?”

  Two-Bit tests the bulky revolver in both hands, sweeping it across Nubo’s Discount Pawn one last time. “Yeah, I razz I will,” he concludes, bracketing one side of his face with it. “I shoulda tragged up a while back. You getting that?”

  Salo Shouldermount chortles, a disquieting wet sound, and begins unhooking the harness’ buckled straps. “Nah, I ain’t got the scratch for this broad yet. Besides, a little delicate for this kinda work.” He lifts the cumbersome weapon off his shoulder as he adds. “Maybe after we get paid.” He shelves the automated minigun in the vacant rack where he found it, muzzle still aimed unnervingly at Two-Bit as they head towards the counter.

  –––

  Odisseus releases the accelerator and the driftcart wanders to a standstill in the middle of the First Ring’s Docking Strip, the sealed cisterns slaved astern clinking and sloshing their fuel in response. Two-Bit Switch clambers off the tailpiece and capers to the floor, addressing his apparent acquaintance down the yawning doors of Docking Port #3381.

  “Rooster!” he barks upward at a spindly shape, clinging like a beetle to the scorched and mangled hull of a mournfully pulverized starship – a Terro Fleet Systems L87 Circuit-class Bulk Hauler. Upon hearing the clarion cry, the figure skitters more plainly into view and upon spotting Two-Bit's approach, a pleated yellow crest erects from his scalp, presumably in some form of recognition.

  “Two-Bit?” he replies. “Ord you were in statee – was conjectin' when I’d bump you.” Two-Bit shrugs in response and gestures back at Odisseus in a manner he probably imagines to be placating. Odisseus grumbles and downshifts the driftcart into park. Filling up the Lover wasn’t the only duty the Ortok needed to perform in the next twelve hours and while he appreciated Two-Bit’s uncanny aid in haggling the fuel’s price down, there was a malfunctioning shield mainframe with Odisseus' name on it back belowdecks and he preferred not to dawdle.

  From this distance, Odisseus' poor eyesight can distinguish very little about Two-Bit’s as
sociate, but it only takes him a moment to realize he’s a Dho. Rooster gives Two-Bit a one-handed wave, sustains his grip on the derelict with five more limbs, continues ratcheting a blackened hull plate loose with another two and clutches two handfuls of gadgets in his last pair. Odisseus knew the natively arboreal Dho had rigidly structured skeletal systems but from where he was sitting, Rooster looked like nothing so much as a cluttered conglomeration of random limbs.

  “This derro your gantine?” Two-Bit remarks, stepping forward and spreading his arms. “How in the bloomin’ moons you fangle this?”

  Rooster yanks free the shredded hull plate, enormous yellow letter “C” painted upon its face, flings it to the floor with a crash and shimmies along the cruiser’s lip towards the next rent panel. “Garrok’s, but affi. It’s a knotty but gritty orrie, ball it up for me.”

  “Brondi decking?”

  Rooster's crest narrows arrow-straight as he considers. “Nag, he cast out for a mite. Third then Second, I think, vizzing for a heatsaw,” Odisseus recognizing the jabberterm for cutting beam, “then messes, I guess.” Rooster tweaks out a bolt with his neticgrappler and the next cleft hull plate flops forward. Rooster swings lower, adjusting three of his five grips and sets about the task of unhinging the plate’s bottom. Two-Bit examines the discarded sheeting with a discriminating boot.

  “She even starsy like this?”

  “Scanty. It were pretty rangu fanglin’ Takioro as it is.” The panel tumbles off, both Two-Bit and Rooster scarcely evading its descent, the former by gamboling back, the latter by swinging deftly to the left.

  Odisseus noisily clears his throat. Two-Bit spares a glance over his shoulder and a parting backward step. “Well, I oughta blow. Buzz me and I’ll rhino you a tumble. Savvy?” Rooster hoists three hands in farewell, preoccupied with the unlatching of the next hull plate. The driftcart sputters back to life, cargo clanging together as Two-Bit hustles back and boards the tailpiece.