Unconstant Love

by Timothy J Meyer

  “–doesn’t mean I’m without my questions, of course,” she was quick to stipulate, before Two-Bit could read anything more into her moderately kind words.

  “Of course,” Two-Bit consented, beckoning her with a gesture that she, several paces ahead, certainly couldn’t see.

  “For the overwhelming majority,” Borsk seemed intent on making the point, “I think the essential bones of the caper will work. The infiltration plan, with the molecular strip, seems excruciating but should produce the results you wish. The virus you’re requisitioning sounds indescribably complex but, as that’s not my area of expertise, I’m inclined to trust your judgment.”

  “But?” Two-Bit provided her.

  “But,” Borsk accepted, slowing her stroll a little in acknowledgment, “then there’s the undercover portion.”

  Two-Bit might have guessed. If there was one element to the Gitter heist that Two-Bit was dreading the most, the one he thought stood on the shakiest ground, it was certainly the undercover portion. It spoke well to Borsk’s perceptiveness that she too flagged this area as needing some further review but it behooved Two-Bit to show confidence here, rather than uncertainty, since the entire caper was cruxed on that going smoothly.

  “Vizzes a little antwacky, don’t it?” Two-Bit admitted, attempting to get some distance from the idea, to suss out Borsk’s actual objections.

  “That it does,” she agreed readily. “Tell me – what’s your personal experience with spice rangers?”

  Two-Bit elected, in this case, to be actually honest. “Hoofing away from them, mostly.”

  “As I expected,” commented Borsk. “The Corps are not, I repeat, not to be underestimated. Many of the popular rumors in circulation about them – they’re brainwashed as youths, they worship the Gitter ruling family as demigods, they commit ritualistic suicide when their harnesses become irreparably damaged – are based on more fact than you’d assume.” Here, she turned, to better address her concerns to him. “From the way it’s detailed in your notes, I’m concerned you don’t understand the gravity of what you’re proposing.”

  When he made no immediate reply to this, she clearly felt the need to summarize. “One does not simply steal a harness and sneak into the Spice Ranger Corps.”

  “And that ain’t what I’m propoing,” Two-Bit disparaged back, rising to play Borsk’s game of polite criticism. “You made the case earlier, though, didn’t you, that this part – the sneaking, the skullduggery – ain’t your area of expertise, right? That you mished me, an outsider, precisely for this razz?”

  “I did.”

  “Then I’d ring you,” he continued, not quite allowing her the chance to elaborate, “to ball it up for me on this one.”

  Borsk arched an eyebrow. “That’s it? Trust you?”

  “Trust that I know what’s hanked and what ain’t,” Two-Bit clarified, refusing to give her another chance to denigrate. “You gotta understand, you gotta plant somebody, no matter what you’re scheming. There’s nothing better for squeezing a buncha security protocols, to coop very valuable intel, than by–”

  “There’s no need for that,” Borsk moved quickly to deny him. “All the intelligence about the Gitter Consortium you’ll have any need for comes through me.”

  “Even if that were true,” Two-Bit countered, “which it ain’t, since you’re years outta the quitty, there’s more than intel that a planted spice ranger’s gonna net us.”

  Borsk looked like a petulant teenager, planting her hands on her hips like that. “And that’s?”

  “The field exemptor,” Two-Bit explained with a sigh. “That’s the main stook. Only way to get starside with the goods is through that climatic field and the only way through the climatic field is with a field exemptor and the only way I know to get wanks on a field exemptor is plant somebody in the Stargazers that can swipe us one.”

  “There must be–”

  “You’re welcome to vizz,” Two-Bit offered, shrugging expansively. “I mean, if anybody in the blooming galaxy could finger a backdoor onto that rock – besides the Stargazers – it’d be fucking you, wouldn’t it?” He dug both hands into his pockets and shrugged again, giving Gella Borsk the exact treatment he would an uppity client attempting to shirk expenses. “I’m only criming from what I got.”

  “There’s no way,” Gella started to theorize, rubbing the space between her eyebrows with an exasperate hand, “to short the climatic field some other way?”

  “Not that I’ve snuffed,” Two-Bit attested. “The code phrase, the one that opens the climatic field, is keyed to each particular gantine that the Stargazers use to get dirtside. Can’t really forge a flimmy without a legit one to study and you know better than me,” he made the point, “that the Consortium’s pretty fucking unders about their manufacturing. Particularly when it comes to the fucking door to their secret fucking planet.”

  That stopped Gella in her tracks and, while she appeared to ruminate over the options, Two-Bit laid out the rest of his pitch. “Plus, we gotta plant inside the Stargazers, we can control the intel much more than we might’ve otherwise. Now, we got somebody inside that can vizz the ship at precisely the moment when we want it vizzed. Now, we gotta secret weapon, should things go antwacky when the Stargazers touch, right?”

  Gella remained silent another few moments, even after Two-Bit made his additional points. “It is a tremendous risk.”

  “It is that, yeah,” Two-Bit was ready to agree. “Ball it up for me, I wouldn’t–”

  “Not only to your man,” Gella interrupted him, “but to the whole operation and those behind it, too.”

  Two-Bit scowled at this. “I don’t–”

  “You’re putting one of your accomplices immediately in the Consortium’s clutches,” Gella illustrated for him, somewhat unnecessarily. “You’re asking them to pose as one of the most deadly and dedicated mercenaries in the galaxy – for an unspecified length of time. From what I read, there’s no contingency for that accomplice, should the entire caper disintegrate–”

  Two-Bit spread his hands, a failed attempt to assure her. “It’s on my–”

  “The operatives on the planet,” she proceeded anyway, unconvinced by his breezy attitude, “are far more likely to simply be shot on sight, should the whole thing come apart at the seams. It’s the undercover operative,” he mentioned gravelly, “that’s already in the enemy’s hands, that’s the most likely to be interrogated, tortured even, to reveal who funded this little expedition.”

  Two-Bit blinked. “So, me, then.”

  Gella blinked back. “You?”

  “Me.” Two-Bit jabbed a finger into his own chest. “The undercover operative.”

  “Why would you,” Gella endeavored to learn, looking a little aghast despite her normally composed demeanor, “undertake such a risk? A needless risk, I would say.”

  “Well, tell you the gritty,” Two-Bit responded, flapping his jacket out with his hands in his pockets, “I’m the only one I’d really trust with the delicates. I mean, you get the right team,” Two-Bit went on to add, “the actual caper – sneaking on planet, blagging the tree, running the blockade – kinda crimes itself. It’s the plant, that’s the part that needs a wank at the wheel. Plus, ain’t nobody in the galaxy’s ever gonna know more about the caper than I will, right?”

  Gella’s face was still a carven scowl, unwilling to accept this explanation. “And you wouldn’t be needed elsewhere? You’d be incommunicado for the better part of a year, I would imagine.”

  Two-Bit scoffed. “Six months, tops. These kinds of jobs, you’re always a transfer from another outpost. I pose as a Comettail or Sunspot or Starduster, we flimmy some digitwork that suggests my valor in battle against pirates or spicerunners or the like, I get a shiny and a spot on the super elite squad, the Stargazers. Feez as sin.”

  “Simple as that,” Gella muttered, clearly unsatisfied. “Would you allow me some stipulations?”

  Two-Bit shifted his weight. “That’s really
gonna depend on the proviso.”

  “There’re a few things I can provide you,” Gella began, tapping something seemingly into the open air. Two-Bit was alarmed, in that instant, to see a slight holographic interface appear from nowhere, summoned by Gella’s simple touch. “I can provide documentation or, at the very least, some very convincing letterheads and stationery. A blueprint, if you will, for your paperwork.”

  “I groof that,” Two-Bit acknowledged with a nod.

  “I can provide you a harness,” she continued, rapping out her sequence of keys on thin air, “and the knowledge it won’t be as simple as wearing the thing. You’ll need to have the whole suit keyed to your life signature. You can wear the thing all day long but you’ll never be taken as a genuine ranger without some internal authentication inside the harness.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Two-Bit agreed, nodding. “Whatever you jabb.”

  “I can provide you an expert,” Gella finished, swiping away the summoned interface with a dismissive gesture. “She was certainly never a Stargazer but Zuss, my head of security, spent the better part of her career bouncing around the various spice ranger troops. She’ll no doubt have plenty of anecdotal advise you’d find helpful. Run you through some drills, even, when the time comes.”

  “That sounds squeamy,” Two-Bit admitted, gritting his teeth a little.

  “I am choosing to trust you, Two-Bit,” Gella announced, once her holographic projection disappeared completely from view.

  “You’re making the right choice, love,” Two-Bit assured her with a slow nod. “Well, that is,” he made the stipulation as he waggled his brandy snifter, “unless you gotta clone or, what, a molecular replication of me in some back room someplace.” The charming joke somehow failed to amuse his host and Two-Bit’s forced to reiterate. “If anyone in the galaxy can pull this off, it’ll be me.”

  CHAPTER 17

  Moira Quicksilver is brought nearly to tears by the sensation of Righty and Lefty back in her hands again. Thankfully, the vacuum mask she wears should shield any unbecoming emotions – happiness, sentimentality, relief – from any onlookers. Plus, she's forced to assume, most onlookers are likely too busy attempting to kill her.

  She puts her babies to immediate work, murdering some very deserving motherbloomers. Much as it breaks some small teenage part of her heart to gun down spice rangers, it too brings a shiver of vicarious thrill. What would angsty thirteen-year-old Moira think, were she here now to see this?

  Aiming in this sandstorm is an utter shitshow but Moira, Righty and Lefty, make do. The three of them – plus two other assholes – hunker in the shadow of the capsized Unconstant Lover. Ignored by the majority of the battle, the pirates're free to take potshots at any spice rangers that come close enough to identify them.

  More than once, Moira's had to put down a rampaging Secondseed, driven mad by blood loss and berserker fury, charging anything vaguely humanoid-shaped. At this point, Moira will put the kibosh on anyone – animal, vegetable or mineral – that stands between her and escaping this moons-forsaken planet.

  It mostly just feels good to be gunslinging again.

  “Well, where are you now?” one of those two assholes screams into his comm. This asshole, the Captain, is especially undiscerning in his gunplay today. While he harangues his saltbrother on the comm, he fires completely blind over his shoulder.

  Fully fluent in the snarly language, even Moira can't start to make sense of the Ortoki response, so mangled by static and muffled by wind.

  “Think for a second,” Nemo snaps back. “If I remembered where I'd left them, they wouldn't be blooming lost, now would they?”

  From where they crouch, the bloody battle is nothing but a hazy blur, broken by occasional green flashes and occasional staggering silhouettes. Most often, these staggerers are Gitter, in their flaming death throes. Whenever Moira can snag a spice ranger's unprotected back, she seizes that opportunity with relish.

  Sooner or later, one of the rangers would notice the three of them, squatting guiltily in the shade of their spaceship. It's not the wisest strategy but sheer frustration compels Moira to murder and who is she to deny herself the small pleasures?

  The other asshole, however, seems a little more concerned about their chances. “Shelf life,” Flask grunts into the comm, his Domino unloading another clip, “on this's pretty fooking brief. He don't find them keys soon, somebody's gonna catch wise.”

  It still spooks Moira to glance aside and, expecting to see Nemo's oily Galwegian cousin, see a fully-armored spice ranger instead. His ray shield engaged, his assault rifle blaring, there's precious little recognizable about Flask.

  His near-perfect disguise, however, is betrayed by the potted plant that hovers a hand's length from the transmitter secured in his pocket. While Odisseus made his play for the Lover's keys, the Gitter sapling was entrusted to Flask and his handy ray shield, to ensure no stray bolts happen to destroy everything they've struggled so hard to achieve here.

  “I suppose,” Moira absently agrees. She's a little busy at present, trying to decide if that scrambling shadow she sees in the midst of the storm is a viable target or not.

  “No,” snarls Nemo, in response to something equally snarly that Odisseus warbles through the comm, “you have no such permission. Go near my room at peril to your shaggy bloomhole.”

  “Do not,” countermands Flask urgently, “listen to him. You go in whatever room you gotta, if you think that's where those keys'll be.”

  “Hey!” barks Nemo, twisting his mask about to face Flask. “Who killed me and made you Captain?”

  “You know,” reminds Flask, for the umpteenth time, “it probably ain't too late for me to run back out there, take my lumps with the rangers. Far as they're concerned, I'm still Jag, yeah?”

  “Yeah,” agrees Nemo, teeth bared, “turn your back on me. See how far you get.”

  “This seems,” Moira feels the need to mention, “like a good use of our collective energy right now.”

  That shape she'd been squinting at materializes into a stumbling spice ranger, a host of Secondseeds and their glassrock blades on his heels. The ranger's attention anywhere but behind him, the unsuspecting humanoid receives a pair of complimentary bolts to the back and is dead long before the cactoid weapons rend his body asunder.

  Not wishing to give the Skyscratch any more potential targets, Moira slinks behind the Lover's landing foot. There's no way to know how the overall battle's going, toward which side the tide's turning, but she's determined to make what little contributions she can, here or there.

  Through the comm, Odisseus make some desperate plea to Nemo, sounding like nothing but Ortoki gobbledygook to Moira's ears.

  “What my steps?” Nemo asks, the creases of his mask indicating his deep scowl. “Retrace my what?”

  “You're kidding me,” Flask growls, twisting his wrist and automatically slotting a new banana clip into his Domino with a smooth move of his harness' servomotors; Moira battens down a rising tide of envy and arousal at the sight. “How'd you stomach this, day-to-day?”

  “Nicotine,” is Moira's immediate answer, one that instantly makes her crave a Yellowtooth more than anything – more than escape, more than air conditioning, more than ditrogen holes through Nemo's skull.

  “We somehow claw our way outta this,” Flask suggests, his Domino primed and ready, “first pack's on me.”

  “Deal,” agrees an enthusiastic Moira Quicksilver.

  Odisseus is brought nearly to tears by the sensation of even crawling through the Lover's mechanical veins. It is cramped and uncomfortable and a nightmare at every inch but, even in her organs, she is still his spaceship and he'll never not be happier aboard her.

  Back in Fernhollow, when the idea struck him that the ship might actually be accessible through the anterior ventilation duct, Odisseus bought into the myth that he was a mechanical genius, his mastery and knowledge of the Briza Light Freighter absolute. That belief died, however, as soon as he pried ope
n that grate and laid his eyes upon the path he was expected to navigate; all switchbacks and additional grates to unscrew and scamper over.

  He'd attempted to balk, upon seeing this. Why should he, the indisputably largest member of the crew, be the one forced to wriggle through this unforgiving passage? There was no avoiding the fact, of course, that he was the only member of the crew with any hope of navigating those tunnels, the only one who spent any time in the crawlspaces.

  It actually wasn't quite as arduous as he'd expected, when literal push came to literal shove. Negotiating his bulk through these cramped quarters was actually a sight easier than negotiating with Nemo over the comm about the last known location of his damn ignition keys.

  “Retrace. Your steps,” Odisseus reiterates, against what sound like all the interference in the galaxy – sandstorm, poor reception and laserfire. “From the moment you turned the ship off to the moment you–,”

  “Yeah, yeah,” squawks the comm in Nemo's voice. “We crashed, I shit my pants–”

  Odisseus crawls beneath a low-hanging canopy of wires, wondering where those conduits lead and how they came unfastened. He dawdles a moment, as Nemo continues rambling, and reaches a paw up to re-attach them, in case they lead somewhere vital like ignition or life support. The sound of gunfire, whistling past Nemo's end of the comm, however, inspires him to keep moving.

  “–made a smoothie, washed the shit off my ass–”

  Pinpointing his exact position is proving a little difficult for Odisseus. Considering how far and fast he's crawled from the anterior vent, Odisseus would likely guess he was still somewhere beneath the Lover's cargo hold, nearer the companionway stairs and the betweendecks corridor. Of course, the last time Odisseus assumed he was crawling beneath the cargo hold, he'd surfaced in the water closet, so, really, all bets were off.

  “–went to meet Moira, the Gitter showed up, all that shit went down–”

  Something immediately ahead of Odisseus bursts suddenly to fizzing life, a fusebox of some kind, spraying bright blue sparks in every direction. The Ortok recoils a second, a little unwilling to proceed lest the fusebox come alive again and catch his fur on fire. The little gray rectangle of stained thermosteel – a pitch calibrator, it turns out – sits completely dormant, smoking quietly after its recent outburst.