Unconstant Love

by Timothy J Meyer

  Under these extreme conditions, the hold of The Unconstant Lover has become a massive undersea cavern, made murky by floating dust and so vast and voluminous that Moira, so accustomed to claustrophobic spaces, actually gasps a little. Her three spearheads of light pierce through the deep darkness as she gazes in half-awe at the comparatively huge chamber.

  The hold, however, is not entirely unlit. The occasional blink from the molecular strip competes with Moira’s lamp, illuminating the massive machine in the far corner.

  The strip’s central hub occupies easily a quarter of the Lover's expansive cargo hold, an ugly blob of corrugated machinery and mismatched piping approximately the size of a small building. It blinks sporadically from several indicator lights, bright enough to seem like beacons in the cargo hold's utter darkness. Even from where she stands, she can see the device's many leech-like tendrils of cable, snaking their way into the Lover's walls and drinking her systems dry.

  There's an entire starship's worth of power, rerouted to this one machine, the one machine responsible for their current predicament.

  Her errand doesn't lie with the molecular strip, however. Instead, she must climb a level higher, up to the abovedecks corridor. Normally, Moira would simply clomp her way up the companionway steps. This time, she favors a somewhat easier tactic.

  As soon as she's stooped and disengaged the graviton boots, she instantly feels much lighter on her feet. In the zero gravity, a simple hop sends Moira floating straight into the air. She uses whatever's to hand to aid her ascent – unstowed cargo crates, the companionway railing, even the hold's massive riveted seams. In mere moments, she's reached the abovedecks landing, is quickly reactivating her graviton boots and muscling open the disabled doors.

  The abovedecks corridor is much the same as the belowdecks one – dusty and deserted. There's no hope of the typically gorgeous view from the corridor's stretch of ceiling, the plexishield still completely obscured. Still, Moira takes the long way around to the sensor room anyway, just to re-experience this section of the ship that she'd practically forgotten about over the past few weeks.

  Inside the sensor room is especially eerie. All the usually vibrant consoles and screens are dead and lifeless and devoid of all Abraham's trappings, the place looks that much more derelict. Somehow, when she cranks open the door, she expects to see the wizened old Grimalti, nursing his moonshine or his calabash pipe.

  Instead, she finds the place simply empty and devoid of personality, its bones picked clean by its bygone navigator. Much as she misunderstood the fat bloke, she's surprised to discover that, on some buried and misguided level, she might miss him a little.

  It takes her a few minutes to properly situate the remote battery, extend its cords into the appropriate plug-ins and run some rudimentary power into the ship's systems. It's not much juice, really; only enough to power some secondary comms and access a few of the basic feeds within reach.

  This far from everything, the reception's pretty terrible and her choice of reroute points is very, very limited. Luckily for Moira, the information she's attempting to access isn't too hidden or exclusive – quite the opposite in fact. Long as one was within a few hundred zottibles of any feed-anchor, they could always tap into the Galaxy's Most Wanted feed.

  Typing on one of the sensor room's lesser keypads with the exosuit's big bulky fingers is far from easy. It takes Moira several frustrating tries to input even the most basic of search terms. Soon as she has, she leans back, as though from great effort, and allows the dismal loading speed to take its sweet time in pulling up the data's she's requested.

  All the ice that spins through the open space of the Kzelos Cloud makes this a laboriously slow process. Moira decides to kill the intervening time by wandering about the abovedecks corridor, exploring the Lover's nooks and crannies for a second time. She visits the warp room, the helm, her own quarters, even the gundeck, though the exosuit's a little too unwieldy for her to cram into her beloved topturret.

  Ask anyone and they'll certainly tell you Moira Quicksilver's the least sentimental person in all of Bad Space. That said, should they all escape this ordeal alive, Moira vows never again to take these musty corridors and unkempt chambers for granted. Compared to the hateful mess hall, this cramped and disgusting spaceship is a veritable palace.

  When she meanders her way back to the sensor room, the read-out she'd wanted is there, ready and waiting for her perusal. The reception's so poor, though, it makes even deciphering the thing an ordeal, even after she reaches up and disables her three-pronged headlight and its unhelpful glare.

  Through the intermittent static, Moira comes eye-to-eye with her own image.

  The mugshot's grievously out of date, taken aboard the HIN Surimiah nearly three years ago. The Moira Quicksilver in that holo – disgruntled, head recently shaved, spinning a full slow circle to exhibit her panoramic view – was about to embark on her first voluntary incarceration. Present day Moira's not really paying attention, however. She's more interested in her bounty posting.

  She sighs to see all the zeroes stretching across the wavering screen. The hypothetical bounty hunter that could track down and apprehend Moira Quicksilver alive would be entitled to a bracing 1.2 million credits in hard currency from the Imperial Ministry of Interstellar Security. Should this prove too much of a nuisance or her too much of a threat to be kept alive, her corpse was still worth easily half as much to a dozen planetary governments, megacorps and even one sovereign kingdom.

  The passage of time, it seems, has done nothing to dampen the galaxy's collective thirst for her blood. The reason behind this is painfully obvious, listed in accusatory red beneath her rap sheet's “Known Associates” column: Nehel “Nemo” Morel.

  This she taps with a gloved finger and then stands waiting, for the sluggish computer to consider granting her feeble human request. Instead of meandering around the ship again, Moira continues to stare at her own bounty posting, caught suddenly in a brood of a very different color than her previous nostalgic one.

  For nearly two years, Moira'd kept a consistent finger on this pulse, always wary for any change in their posted rewards and, by extension, the galaxy's general opinion of the Galactic Menace and his inner circle. Directly on the heels of the Trija Tragedy, The Unconstant Lover and her crew dove deep into hiding, intending to ride out this sudden wave of public animosity until the skies cleared a little. Bad Space's mercurial attention would flitter away, they were assured, and soon enough, they'd be free to resume some more discreet of business as usual.

  It had turned out rather differently. Rather than fade from memory, the 34th Galactic Menace only grew in mystique, having disappeared without even a single stray thread to weave a satisfying ending to his tapestry. The Supreme Sovereignty's continued hunt told the galaxy he hadn't been slain or captured on Trija during the ill-fated kidnapping attempt. What's more, many of the scattered Freebooter Fleet could attest to his absence during the disastrous space battle that broke the piratical power.

  He'd obviously escaped justice, the galaxy agreed, but to where?

  For many months, the starways were choked with amateur bounty hunters and fortune-seekers, all pursuing their own crackpot theories about where the Lover might have gone to ground. The crew weathered this period blissfully unaware, safely hidden from detection around Kuzu Minor and cut off from all communications with the galaxy at large.

  Occasionally, dwindling supplies or cabin fever would oblige them to very temporarily end their exile and rob some farflung Warp Junction. During these layovers, Moira always made a special point to keep tabs on the unfolding saga, eager to see whether their gamble would pay off and interest in the Galactic Menace would eventually wane.

  When Nemo couldn't be even located, much less apprehended, the IMIS found themselves in a bind of their own making. Never, in the whole sordid history of the office, had a Galactic Menace eluded capture or death this long; there was no precedent to fall back on. The bounty, with nothing else
to do, continued to grow and grow, while the public face of the IMIS shrank and shrank correspondingly.

  Knowing their modus operandi as she did, Moira – and indeed much of the galaxy – saw the IMIS's solution for its Nemo dilemma coming a zottible away. Lo and behold, a few days after the bounty reached an astronomical new high – 13 million – a scruffy pirate flying a Briza Light Freighter, matching Nemo's and the Lover's descriptions, was suddenly arrested in a cathouse on Xhor.

  The media hurricane that followed the arrest was not be fooled, however. The imposter was revealed as such in alarmingly short order, amid terrific scandal, and all the IMIS's carefully laid plans exploded spectacularly in their face. Not only was the true Nemo's fate or whereabouts unaccounted for, but by faking his capture with this lookalike, the Imperium had tacitly admitted they'd no hope of actually finding him.

  In this fashion was Nemo's cult status catapulted into honest-to-moons legend. In the space of a year, his popularity swung wildly from public enemy all the way around to folk hero. To Bad Space's outlaw public, Nemo stood as the ultimate symbol of uncatchability. The Imperium, their image in tatters, had no choice but to continue offering the ever-climbing bounty, rather than suffer the shame and defeat of retracting it or appointing a new Menace.

  Meanwhile, above Kuzu Minor, an oblivious Nemo lounged around in his spunky underpants, ate junk food and scratched his asscrack.

  Gleaned through headlines and bounty postings, Moira saw the galactic underworld morph and adapt to the Menace’s departure. She saw the Freebooter Fleet scattered, chased into the woods by bounty-privateers and Imperium task forces. She saw Huong Xo annihilated, their leadership slain in some unspecified gangland beef, their holdings and interests dispersed. She saw the meteoric rise of one Garrock Brondi as smuggler kingpin, his operation expanding ever outward from the Offchart Territories and his reputation as canny businessman growing to match.

  Without Nehel Morel around, even Bad Space quickly fell into something almost resembling peace and quiet.

  In comes that holo, the same one bounty hunters all across known space had long studied, looking for some hidden clue or insight that would point to the Menace's location. Nemo's holographic likeness is a cheerful one, favoring the Surimiah's detention crew with a toothy grin. Not much has changed since Moira last summoned this bounty posting. The damning words [GALACTIC MENACE] are still emblazoned across its top. His last known location is listed as “Trija” and his “Known Associates” column still lists her name first, next to “First Mate”.

  All that's changed is the actual bounty. As of six days ago, it's risen to a clean 18 million ICC, dead or alive.

  There's no ignoring this now. For months and months, Moira'd procrastinated facing this inevitable fact. Here she stands now, staring at the watermark she'd set, the point of no return, with no idea how to proceed.

  As of six days ago, it officially became less profitable for Moira Quicksilver, retired bounty hunter, to remain with the crew of The Unconstant Lover. The logical move, at this point in Moira's career, is to apprehend the Galactic Menace, collect the 18 million and disappear into the woodwork.

  Odisseus watches the little light flash green and then green and then red.

  It actually makes a noise too, an unassuming little beep, when the light flashes red for the first time. He's been staring so long and so insistently, the scanner actually repeats this a few times – red light and beep, red light and beep – before Odisseus even really registers what's happening.

  When he puts two and two together, he starts to make a low, anticipatory sound, the precursor to a growl, in the back of his throat. His heart hammers in his chest and the scanner starts to tremble ever so slightly, along with the paws that hold it. He's unwilling, though, to say anything aloud or even mentally confirm what is happening until he receives the third and final confirmation.

  That's when he first sees the blip, a tiny wedge that creeps onto the edge of the scanner's grid, muted red and definitely not an asteroid.

  That's a ship.

  “That's a ship,” he announces in sotto voce. “That's a ship coming.”

  The room's response is underwhelming. In the three plus hours he's squatted here on his mattress, precious little has changed in the squalor all around him. Moira returned some time ago from her walkabout and now squats on a galley stool, wasting perfectly good gun oil and elbow grease on another unnecessary cleaning of her revolvers. Nemo's long since fallen asleep, his snoring and the repetitive menu music from his pirated Quuilar Noxix holodisc having both long since receded into the background.

  He's almost afraid to speak any louder and warn his comrades, for fear that he might somehow spook this windfall ship and send it packing.

  “Um,” he starts, a little louder, peering around the room, “there's a ship here, now.” For all that they've been huddled in here, praying for just such an occurrence, Odisseus finds the specific words oddly difficult to summon. “There's a ship about,” he cranes his neck back to the scanner to double check, “nine dottibles away and it looks like it's closing?”

  There's no response from the sprawled form of his saltbrother. The sudden cessation of that polish-on-gunmetal squeak from over his left shoulder means he's at least snagged Moira's attention. “You're serious?” she presses, rising from the stool.

  “Unless, I'm like, hallucinating,” Odisseus allows and hoists the scanner for her to see.

  In one smooth motion, Moira's cleared the stool, padded the sizable distance between the galley and the Ortok's mattress and is stooping to squint at the scanner's screen. This she does for nearly as long as Odisseus had, not seeming to believe her own eyes either.

  “That's a ship,” she repeats emotionlessly, as though pointing to one of many in a crowded spaceport.

  “That's what I said,” Odisseus agrees.

  “We're going to be rescued.”

  “Looks like, yeah.”

  “Hey! Pisspants!” Moira suddenly barks, twisting to her left, where Nemo lies, still sleeping and snoring, unaware his entire life is about to be saved from a fate worse than death. “You wanna wake up and get fucking rescued or what?”

  There's nothing but a general murmur of rustling blankets and inaudible mumbling in reply. Moira counters this most eloquent of arguments by planting a bootheel against the lip of the couch and kicking savagely downward, with the intent of folding the entire sofa and all its contents back beneath the floorplates. Nemo's messily tossed out, shrouded in blankets, and Odisseus hears the cringeworthy clattering of HV sprawling across the mess hall floor.

  “You festering fucking mountain of bargain-bin drongo shit,” exclaims the Captain as he tumbles through garbage, his stream of profanity aimed either at Moira directly or at the universe in general.

  “A ship,” Odisseus informs him calmly. “Coming in. Right now.”

  Everything grumpy or groggy about the Captain, sitting up like an erect brushvezzer in a field of tall grass, disappears. “How far?”

  “Not far now,” Moira provides him, where she hunkers over the Ortok's shoulder.

  All Odisseus need do to summon Nemo over is waggle the scanner once, proudly displaying its blinking red light. With a surprising nimbleness, Nemo manages to extract his person from the catastrophic ruin of blanket and partially collapsed sofa, hotfooting his way through the wreckage and to the Ortok's side.

  Together, the three of them huddle around the scanner, where Odisseus has reverently placed it upon the mattress, as though now unworthy to lay paws upon the holy device. It continues to bleep and blink softly, every eye in the room locked on that tiny red triangle.

  “Seven dotts,” calculates Odisseus, based on the sensor screen's primitive grid.

  Nemo's excitement starts to bubble out of him. “What kinda ship do you think?” he speculates. “Do you think she's a real–”

  Moira subsequently shushes him, placing more stock in the sanctity of this moment than seemingly anyone else.

&nbs
p; Their vigil continues to pass by wordlessly, save for Odisseus reporting the closing distance, steadily made every thirty seconds or so. Meanwhile, the specter of the approaching ship plods ever closer to the center of the scanner's grid and their current location amid the asteroid field it represents.

  “Six dotts.” The Ortok's raspy voice is thunderously loud in the pregnant silence of the mess hall. “Five dotts.” Of a sudden, the tiny triangle stops moving forward. “And holding.”

  Three breaths are held as the marooned crew watches the mysterious newcomer stand still. After a second, each of the grayish blocks that surround the red triangle – the many asteroids of the Kzelos Cloud – start to inch closer to the ship's image. Odisseus is keenly aware of his heart, thumping insistently in his chest, as each asteroid that comes adjacent to the ship disappears, one after another.

  The grayish block that represents the derelict Unconstant Lover, however, doesn't move an inch, apparently just outside the other ship's magnetic perimeter.

  “It's not–” Nemo starts to observe, only to receive another, more violent, of Moira's shushes.

  Nemo's assertion, however, ultimately proves the truth. The longer they watch, the clearer it becomes that they're marginally out of range. Several more asteroids disappear the moment they come into contact with the red triangle, eventually leaving a semicircular swath of dead space surrounding their potential rescuer. There's a momentary lull, when all their hopes reach a fever pitch before, without great fanfare, the triangle vanishes from the scanner.

  The beeping stops. The little light flashes red and then green and then green.

  “It's gone,” Odisseus realizes.

  “It left,” Moira attempts to rationalize. “It got what it needed and left.”