Galactic Menace Read online

  Nemo furrows his brow. “...was that Two-Bit?”

  “Yeah.” Odisseus nods. “He's having kittens.”

  Jangling his newly-found milk carton in her direction, Nemo abruptly aligns his attention toward Moira. “Okay, I can no longer hold my tongue. Where are your pants?”

  Moira looks to her toes. “You know, I'm not rightly sure.”

  “She's...” Odisseus attempts to phrase tactfully, “under a lot of influences right now.”

  “Right, right,” Nemo ignores, his scrutiny firmly in Moira's direction and the makings of an irresponsible idea abundantly present on his face. “So what you're saying is, that's only a hospital gown under there.” He struggles for both words and adequate gestures. “I mean, in the back, it's all sorta... well, there's no, like, coverage on... um... can I see her butt?”

  Odisseus narrows his eyes. “What're you suggesting?”

  Nemo finally rises from his squat, replacing the shotgun on his shoulder, kicking closed the door behind him with a bang and splaying the milk carton wide in confession. “That I wanna see her butt.”

  Bemused, Odisseus can't bring himself to intervene as Nemo advances two steps towards Moira. “What for?”

  “Don't look at my butt!” Moira squeals, scooting backwards with a startled giggle and tugging the brain-stained fringes of her hospital gown down as far as her armored vest allows.

  Nemo is undeterred in his bizarre endeavor, however, circling around Moira's right flank as he answers oddly. “Blackmail.”

  Moira's, as ever, too quick for him, though. She darts one loping step aside, covering her posterior with one hand, a sight Odisseus averts his confused gaze from. “Blackmail?”

  “What? Don't judge me. When am I realistically gonna get another shot at this?”

  What follows is, hands down, the single strangest game of cat-and-mouse meets ring-around-the-rosie Odisseus ever has, or ever will have, the displeasure of witnessing.

  In one corner is Moira Quicksilver: naked from the waist down, clad only in blood-spattered hospital gown and canister-resistant riot armor, with an eggroll in her mouth, a giggle on her lips and a Wreckingball Combat Shotgun swinging playfully at her side. In the other corner is Nehel Morel: attired like an escaped, bed-wetting schizophrenic, with sloshing carton of pink milk to one hand and his own Wreckingball to the other.

  They both hoot and hop about each other in skipping circles, the latter employing every last trick in his book to steal a gander at the former's bare buttock and the former employing every last trick in her book to evade such a gruesome fate.

  Odisseus, standing apart from the whole fiasco, steps back against the nearest wall and declares to the room. “I wash my paws of all of this.”

  “Wha–” is Two-Bit's initial reaction, having appeared seconds later in the doorway to the mess hall, words plumb failing him and expression of abject astonishment painted on his face. “I don't even know what I'm supposed to be peeved about here!”

  The horseplay continues despite his entrance, however. Only Nemo bothers or even notices Two-Bit's sudden presence with a nod and a momentary wave of the milk carton. “Hey, Two-Bit.”

  The shotgun round buckles the ceiling, clattering an uncoupled plate noisily to the floor directly between the two misbehaving pirates and canceling their tomfoolery immediately. The very picture of stern remonstrance and scarcely-contained rage, Two-Bit Switch, ill-fitting riotguard helmet perched stupidly on his irate head, lowers his smoking Wreckingball to his side, visibly fuming. “We are, unless you've somehow all blanked, smack-dab in the middle of a fucking slambreak! We have exactly six minutes and twenty-one seconds to shoot everybody decking this entire vessel before the power shucks back on and we're fucked thirteen ways from Jotor!”

  Moira scuffs the floor with a downcast toe. “Sorry, Two-Bit.”

  “Now can we all, please, for moon's sake, just blooming deer this ship like good little buckos?”

  Nemo perfectly mirrors Moira's crestfallen pose. “Yes, Two-Bit.”

  Odisseus makes a quick clarification. “I didn't–”

  Two-Bit Switch brooks no rival. He jabs his still-smoking weapon in a fierce, forbidding point toward the exit. “March! Now!”

  A forlorn little procession of would-be commandeerers – Odisseus first, Moira second and Nemo bringing up the rear – muddle their way out of the Surimiah's galley and onto the task more immediately at hand, all under the watchful eye of their friendly neighborhood jailbreaker. As he passes Two-Bit, Odisseus hears his somewhat bewildered question to the Captain.

  “Bloom me out – what happened to you?”

  Chapter 3

  Two-Bit Switch jogs into the HIN Surimiah's deactivated security atrium with minutes to spare. He thanks all the moons that, upon arrival, the overhead lighting remains its dull purple and the “auxiliaries activated” continues to chime calmly across every corner of the ship.

  Now, all that stands between Two-Bit and full accomplishment of his plan – the commandeering of the coveted bridge – were a handful of technicians, probably a stuffed-shirt warden or something and one thick teltriton door, sealed tight against ingress.

  Only panting a little, Two-Bit seemingly weathered the sprint through the forward half of the Surimiah the best of all his companions. Odisseus, the heaviest pound for pound, fared the worst, straggling the farthest behind and worked into the most apparent sweat. The most physically capable of the crew, Moira's still only slightly ahead of the Ortok, the tranquilizing effects of the anesthetic beginning to take a more taxing toll. Nemo is actually the closest behind Two-Bit, his only obvious distraction the quarter of a carton of joojberry milk he still nurses.

  Standing more or less in the middle of the chamber, Two-Bit catcalls back to his lagging companions. “Would you hustle it up already?”

  Odisseus huffs some aggravated response about “coming” and “coming.”

  “And you thought we wouldn't make it,” Nemo chides, spreading his milk and his shotgun in opposite directions in a gesture of demonstration. “You see? Everything's–”

  Fate sufficiently tempted, the entire Surimiah immediately undergoes a drastic paradigm shift. The loudspeaker is silenced mid-warning. The comforting purple lighting vanishes and, in its place, that strident yellow lighting snaps back to life.

  Most drastically, underscored by a subterranean humming somewhere beneath the deckplates, the security atrium activates. In response, a fresh electrical current races through the multe-made metal cordon that rings the room, much to the fascination of the micne electromagnet shackled to Two-Bit's right wrist.

  Lead by the hand into a headlong collision, Two-Bit's pitched unceremoniously to his immediate left. His manacle clicks harmlessly onto the cordon, but the leftover momentum jolts Two-Bit's body into the wall with enough force to drop his Wreckingball and topple his unclipped helmet. Struggling to regain his bearings, Two-Bit glares across the abruptly vacant atrium at the back of his Captain's head.

  “Care to term up that sentence, Cap'n? Everything's what, exactly?”

  Nemo's manacle had hurled him to the starboard side of the chamber instead, slumped awkwardly with his face pressed to the teltriton and his back facing outward. “You said twenty-five minutes,” he mutters, smushed against the wall. “I was expecting twenty-five minutes.”

  “Yeah, I was expecting twenty-five minutes too!” Two-Bit commiserates, reaching for his castoff shotgun. “He jabbed me twenty-five minutes!”

  While his right paw is locked in place like everyone else's, Odisseus is gifted the further difficulty of somehow negotiating his mammoth hairy tail. As the Ortok attempts to wrestle himself into a slightly more comfortable position, Two-Bit catches “closer,” “core,” “signal” and “stronger” among the grumblings. Somehow he detects, assisted by Odisseus' own smoldering glare in his direction, the stink of blame.

  “How am I hooked for this? I had a gashouse enough time greasing that bloke back on Sozzor, didn't I? You're fuck
ing rangu you even fangled a block over the conduit feed in the first place!”

  “Intruders apprehended in the security atrium,” the loudspeaker pipes in.

  “Well,” carps Nemo, “any suggestions, then?”

  Moira, unshackled, unnoticed and standing obliviously in the doorway, yawns and stretches her arms above her head. “I'm sleepy.”

  As one, the three restrained pirates stare, dumbfounded, at their unrestrained comrade. As one, they all begin yammering different commands, pleas and requests in her direction.

  “Moira! Moira! Moira!” Two-Bit contributes, before happening upon the happy idea of clapping to snag her birdbrained attention. “Oi! Moira!” Her eyes are naturally drawn toward the sound and Two-Bit hurries through his pitch. “Listen to me. You gotta do us a kindie now, love. You gotta save our skins before they clink the shit outta us and we bump ourselves choppin' rocks in some Vorseen yard. That ain't something you wanna do the rest of your life, is it?”

  Moira rubs impending sleep from her eyes. “That sounds hard.”

  Two-Bit rewards her with a smile. “There's a good girl. Now,” he indicates the sealed bridge with a point, “in that room, if my bell's still ringin', you oughta vizz a big, black dohick what says...” he dangles, entreating Odisseus with an inviting gesture.

  The Ortok supplies a ten syllable answer featuring the word “override.”

  “That's the one,” Two-Bit agrees, snapping. “Alls you gotta do, Moira, is go in there and toggle that dohick. That's all. Anybody tries to nix you,” Two-Bit snatches up his shotgun and hefts it momentarily, “you nix 'em first. Savvy?”

  “I wanna take a nap,” Moira confesses petulantly.

  “You can snooze your heart out in, say, five minutes. How's that sound?”

  “I guess,” she relents and begins pacing across the atrium towards the door. She sidesteps the spilling carton of milk and dawdles a moment before the release control panel. After ramming it with her thumb to no result, Moira looks back incredulously to Two-Bit. “It's too locked.”

  Two-Bit exchanges looks with Nemo and Odisseus. “Nobody's blanked what this part of the plan was, has they?”

  Racking a shotgun of the Wreckingball's size and weight with only one and a half available hands is no mean feat, to say nothing of aiming one. After thirty seconds of undignified floundering, four shotguns manage to align themselves towards the sealed doorway. Following a countdown from Two-Bit, they fire in near perfect unison.

  The once resilient bridge door is suddenly the recipient of four unleashed ditrogen bolts. Sturdy as military-grade teltriton might be, there's scarcely a sheet of interior metal aboard thick enough to resist that much unified punch. Having gambled as much, Two-Bit is honestly relieved to see the jagged crevice that rifts the center of the door in two.

  The opening is just barely large enough for a humanoid to comfortably slide through.

  “Big black button?” Moira confirms, smoking passageway burst open before her.

  “Can't miss it,” Two-Bit confirms.

  Odisseus presumably wishes her “good” luck and, with that, Moira ducks her head and steps out of sight.

  An anxious moment, filled mostly with the surprised shouts of the bridge crew, elapses before the shooting begins. The unmistakeable clamor of an unseen gunfight – broken up occasionally by the loudspeaker's recurrent reminders about intruders apprehended – is all that passes during Two-Bit, Nemo and Odisseus' uncomfortable time-out in the security atrium. From what little Two-Bit could glean, Moira likely wasn't encountering an awful lot of return fire, as the booming bark of the Wreckingball seems to comprise much of the noise without.

  Before long, the actual resistance, a Gantorese look-alike to every other guard onboard, tumbles backwards through the cleft hole in the door, complaining of a shotgun slug to the belly. For lack of any other way to meaningfully participate, the three magnetized pirates open up on him, further complicating his wounds with four or five more of a similar stripe.

  This done, silence falls over the proceedings. For a sizable pause, the three pirates are each unwilling to voice any clarifying question or comment, like three moons-fearing husbands waiting impatiently outside the women's restroom.

  After an insufferably long moment, Nemo, face still smashed against the wall, breaks the reverie with a characteristically selfish question. “Can anybody reach my milk?”

  They only need to endure a few more seconds before, with a harsh, disappointed buzz, the security cordon releases its magnetic hold on the three wrists in thrall. Two-Bit rises from his cumbersome pseudo-sitting position and instinctively flexes the arm in question. He reaches to retrieves his flopped off helmet and finally exchanges apprehensive looks with Nemo, Odisseus and the smoldering ruin of the bridge door.

  With Wreckingball at the ready, Two-Bit is the first of the three onto the bridge, fully prepared to accept the responsibility for what may be an overall botched plan. What he finds instead is a veritable blood bath.

  Seven dead technicians, of various Inner Sector species, color an otherwise pacified bridge. The entire chamber is utterly devoid of life, save one Moira Quicksilver. She's crumpled on the floor before a large mainframe console and its attendant big, black button, back to snoring softly with mouth open.

  Two steps behind, Nemo swigs the dreggy remnants of his joojberry milk and pats the jailbreaker companionably on the shoulder. “Quick thinking, buddy.”

  “This might work,” Two-Bit mutters, disbelieving.

  Standing in the splintered doorway, Odisseus looses a bolt from his shotgun down the corridor they came from, barking something about “company.”

  “Right,” Nemo grunts, tossing the empty carton to the floor. He then hustles over toward a wall-mounted control panel to Odisseus' left.

  “I think it worked,” Two-Bit opines, nodding slowly and half glancing about at the commandeered bridge as evidence.

  Nemo clicks a few switches on the door control. Behind Two-Bit, he hears the telltale sound of the security atrium's outer bulkhead clamping and fastening tight. The four escaped inmates find themselves quarantined within and completely cut off from the incoming “company” Odisseus spotted. “There,” Nemo reports. “That's done it.”

  “It worked!” Two-Bit realizes, spinning fully about to break the news to his partners in crime.

  For the main command center of an IMIS-sanctioned military starship, Two-Bit finds the bridge of the HIN Surimiah frankly a little underwhelming. It's a claustrophobic, tiny chamber, practically bulging with consoles and mainframes. Two-Bit has difficulty imagining the hellish experience of stuffing seven technicians and one armed guard into a room like this and expecting anything but bumped elbows and stepped-on toes.

  At the moment, however, none of these technicians offer much complaint. Strewn across their work stations, they only bleed profusely from the holes Moira's Wreckingball thoughtfully left in their necks and torsos. Out the visor-shaped viewport, Two-Bit sees only the black oblivion of empty interstellar space. Odisseus' provisional wave emitter must have dropped them abruptly out of warp into blank space and still some distance from their destination.

  “Times when I wish we'd brought Abraham,” Nemo murmurs, half to himself, as he swings into the navigator's chair. Odisseus comes to hover over his shoulder, squinting at the navpanel's bright blue. The Captain pokes and prods the keyboard some, until a read-out, complete with percentages and progress bar, seems to please him. “Okay, according to this, we're only 28.7 zottibles out. If she'd waited,” he indicates the slumbering Moira with an elbow, “five or so more hours to get things going, we'd be on Vorse's doorstep, trying to pull this off.”

  “Which would've crunched things up somewhat,” Two-Bit admits.

  Odisseus poses a question about “nearby” and “jump.”

  Nemo nods, after pressing a few more keys. “That's what I'm scanning for now.”

  “That still leaves the ringer,” Two-Bit points out, allowing the silence th
at follows to provide his proposed topic of discussion; a muffled banging and many hollered commands. Two-Bit jabs a thumb in the direction of the security atrium's thick bulkhead and the Surimiah's former crew behind. “What do we do about them?”

  Odisseus makes an appreciative noise, concluding in “good” and “question.”

  “The plan originally,” Two-Bit recalls, “was to comb through the rest of the gantine, pushing all their buttons individual-like.”

  Absorbed by the navpanel's continued beeping, Nemo doesn't translate Odisseus' next remark. The waggling of the Ortok paw in Moira's general direction, however, indicates his reluctance to proceed in such a plan of action while their most valuable player earned some most valuable rest.

  “Right,” Two-Bit agrees.

  Nemo stands suddenly from his seat. “Oh, that's easy.”

  He wriggles his way starboard, between Two-Bit, corpses and consoles. After a moment or two of searching, he arrives at his destination; next to Moira, at the manual security override. Here Nemo toggles a few switches, blazes past a few precautionary screens and finally activates some internal ship's procedure.

  The warning “DORSAL AIRLOCKS DEPRESSURIZED” flashes clamantly against the screen as Nemo works his way back toward his previous spot before the navpanel. The resultant sounds of terrified screaming from behind the atrium's bulkhead are gradually whittled away as if by a tremendous wind.

  Two-Bit and Odisseus both scoot closer to the relevant panel and stare, with mouths agape.

  “Did he just...?” Two-Bit ponders.

  Odisseus points to the flashing display of the Surimiah's deckplan and yips in confirmation. On the screen, each of the ship's main airlocks, save those holding the detainment column fast read as wide open to empty space.

  “Give 'em a minute,” Nemo stipulates, plopping back in his chair. “Shouldn't take long.”