Unconstant Love

by Timothy J Meyer

  There's a moment of utter silence that follows the gun's appearance, broken only by the bloodied turbine as it swings on its collider chains overhead.

  “Stick-spray,” Velocity elucidates, feeling the adhesive material she'd coated the weapon's one side with clinging to the meat of her palm. “To the underside of the table. Stupid trick.”

  “Very stupid,” Nemo agrees. “What's your plan here?”

  “Pretty much depends on you,” she's willing to admit. “You can lower the price to something more reasonable, say, 21 million?” She gestures one direction with the pistol. “Or,” she offers, gesturing the other direction, “I can take you in for the bounty.”

  “How original.” Nemo nods slowly before swinging a finger around to indicate the station. “Things're that bad around here, you gotta go all bounty hunter on me?”

  “Wouldn't say that, necessarily,” Velocity disagrees. “Things ain't so good that I got 68 million burning a hole in my pocket. Nor,” she adds with a sad smile, “can I afford to have 20 million go waltzing out the airlock. Not when I know you're unarmed and got no Ortok within shouting distance.”

  “Oh, he wanted to come,” Nemo informs her. “Told him he wouldn't be needed, though, mostly 'cause I figured you were above something like this.”

  “Then, I guess,” Velocity sighs, disappointed with an old friend, “you don't know me too well.”

  “I feel like I do.” Now Nemo's shaking his head with disappointment. “You're too old school for me, Vel.”

  “What's it gonna be, then?” She adjusts the pistol to reinforce the threat a little. “I'm happy to re-negotiate, if you are, but I'm also perfectly happy to do the other thing.”

  “I say that,” Nemo continues, ignoring her ultimatum, “because if you're too old school for me, then I guess I must be a little too new school for you. You gotta trick up your sleeve,” he indicates the gun with a slight nod, “but you also assumed that, long as you borrowed Gozzer's gun detectors for the afternoon, I wouldn't have one too.”

  Some tiny paranoid fragment of Velocity wants to run her hand along the bottom of the table, hunting for a second pistol he's impossibly smuggled there. Instead, she keeps her gun level and calls his bluff. “Prove me wrong.”

  Hands moving slowly, Nemo takes hold of his shirt lapels and, with a tug, exposes his bare chest. Velocity's surprised to discover, however, that, attached to the bare flesh of his sternum with a few layers of vacuum tape is a plastic sack of dull orange goo. Her scowl deepens as he continues to unbutton the shirt, revealing more and more identical such sacks, taped down his torso and around his waist.

  He's standing by this point, flapping out his duster to better illustrate the precise placement and sheer amount of orange goo that's strapped to his body. From deeper inside his sleeve, he produces the small detonator.

  Nemo makes a sweeping gesture, a grand presentation. “The trick up my sleeve.”

  “That's–”

  “Doxychoraphum,” he supplies with that stupid smile of his. “Repellent. Big boom-boom juice. Enough,” he estimates, considering all the explosives he's wearing, “to destroy most of this Ring, I would think?”

  “Isn't that stuff,” Velocity wants to confrim, a certain tremor in her voice at the sheer stakes, “liable to ignite for like, zero fucking reason?”

  “Is the rumor, yeah.” Nemo nods, glancing at his attire admiringly. “Well, not a rumor, I guess. It's definitely true. Seen it happen, actually, a few times–”

  “Get the fuck off my station,” Velocity demands, aiming the Tattletale at his forehead. She debates pulling the trigger anyway, ending this whole ordeal, but the idea of his dead body falling backward and squashing all that volatile repellent stays her hand.

  Captain Nemo's already inching backward, heading towards the gun detectors, when he inches an eyebrow. “That's a hard no, then?”

  “It's a hard no,” Velocity is happy to confirm. She's a cool customer, is Takioro's Depot-Commissioner, but fifteen pounds of the galaxy's most destructive explosive, brought aboard her station and in the hands of a noted maniac, is enough to break anyone's cool.

  Velocity rises to follow him out the door and considers following him further, making sure he arrives safely at the shoots. “You come back to my station again,” she waggles the Tattletale an inch or so in warning, “I put one through your skull on sight.”

  “We coulda had something great, Vel,” Nemo adds wistfully, staggering backwards, step-by-step, through Gozzer's gun detectors. “All I'm asking is that you meet me in the middle.”

  “You call this the middle?” snarls the Depot-Commissioner. “68 million ain't meeting me halfway and neither is coming aboard my station dressed like a supernova. You leave now, I'll give you fifteen minutes before I call every headhunter I know, make 'em suck your coordinates outta my dick.”

  “Ask Abraham, you don't believe me,” are Nemo's final words to Velocity. “Things ain't like they once were.”

  Odisseus really doesn't think taking off the suicide vest is too much to ask.

  “What?” remarks the Captain in the moment right before he shoves an irresponsible amount of caramel corn into his mouth. “You said it was important,” he complains with a mouth full, spewing caramel flecks with each word.

  Odisseus cannot tear his eyes from the concentrated bags of doxychoraphum, literal water balloons that Nemo wears vacuum-taped to his torso. Only the very edges of each sacks are visible beneath both the flapping duster lapels and the partially unbuttoned shirt but, very concerned about exploding, Odisseus can't stop staring.

  The talking timebomb stands snacking in the sensor room's doorway, only minutes back aboard after his unsuccessful powwow with Velocity. As soon as The Unconstant Lover was speeding away from Takioro Defederate Station, her Captain was summoned here on the Ortok's orders to hear some new developments. He'd not bothered with a change of clothes, still carrying enough firepower to obliterate the freighter, and for once, Odisseus doesn't appreciate Nemo's punctuality.

  All the while, Nemo's enjoying the dregs of a Second Street vendor's popcorn, his fingers sticky and his teeth smeared with caramel.

  “Not so important,” Odisseus points out, never taking his eyes from the repellent.

  “This?” Nemo jostles the nearly empty newspaper roll. “It was on the way back and there was nobody manning the thing. It was literally taking candy from a baby.”

  Odisseus scowls at this. “Well, it wasn't literally if there was no–”

  “Literally.”

  “That's not what–”

  “Literally.”

  “Play the fucking message,” demands Moira Quicksilver from further inside the sensor room. At her insistence, Odisseus waddles to the center of the chamber and, with a paw tapped against the floor, activates the holopad.

  “Came in, maybe, an hour ago?” he explains as the pad calibrates, displaying the logo fo whatever posh Inner Sector tech firm they boosted it from all those years ago. “Was gonna buzz you but didn't wanna, you know, interrupt.”

  As the holographic image sputters and comes into focus, Odisseus settles against the nearest console. In short order, a fourth person appears in the center of the cramped sensor room.

  She's a humanoid female, dressed in that outlandish costume that Odisseus eventually recognized as the Trijan style, an outfit he'd not seen for years. He recognizes the massive coat, its many sashes and ribbons and, most of all, he recognizes the periwig, the distinguished white coils cascading down the figure's shoulders.

  For one illogical moment, Odisseus thought he was looking at the specter of Sorocco Charybdis, somehow back from the dead. The hologram's face, is too pale of complexion, however, not a Trijan's chocochino brown.

  That face, what's more, is immediately and frighteningly recognizable.

  “The fuck, man?” Gertie Gundeck exclaims. “Out of the blooming blue, I see your name toppin' the Consortium's charts. Then I see you go running around the Midworlds, your p
ants around your ankles. Then I hear you gotta moons-damned sapling to sell and I,” she presses an affronted hand against her chest, “ain't the first number you buzz?”

  Her expression changes, curling to become somehow more mischevious. “Frankly, boys,” she purrs, her gaze falling perfectly on Nemo in the doorway, “I'm offended.”

  The image shorts suddenly out, replaced by a string of coordinates that flashes for a second before the whole hologram shrivels up into the pad.

  There's a sizable pause here, long enough for Nemo to swallow the last handful of his confectionary corn. Moira idly enters a few numbers into a nearby terminal, her face suddenly cast green by the console's light.

  Nemo's upended the popcorn container and is now pouring its crumbs into his open mouth. “Where're those coordinates?” he asks Moira between licking his lips.

  “Thaksu,” supplies Moira instantly.

  “Thaksu,” agrees Nemo an instant after that. “That's where she's at. Now I remember.”

  FIFTH INTERLUDE

  Two-Bit Switch couldn’t find a molecular strip.

  He’d put this search off for far too long. Of all the things his nascent super-caper required, all the myriad parts and pieces he’d need to assemble, the molecular strip was, in some ways, the hardest to acquire. This was mainly because Two-Bit didn’t really know what he was looking for and couldn’t really ask anyone without giving them far too many specifics about why he needed one.

  Not knowing the specifications of the ship that would eventually pull the super-caper didn’t help much either.

  That’s why he’d procrastinated, Two-Bit assured himself. It had nothing to do with the past year he’d spent as a member of this dysfunctional crew of pirates that had, to this day, never – intentionally – tried to kill him, unlike some past confederates Two-Bit could name.

  Now, however, Gella was breathing down his neck for an update and Two-Bit had nothing to show for the past six months, nothing that the booze baroness would view as legitimate progress. A solid lead on a molecular strip, however, was something Two-Bit could certainly have dressed up to look like progress but, short of pulling one from his bloomhole, it was looking like Two-Bit would come up lonktonk-eggs on this one.

  Idiotic instinct made him actually glance up from his Attaché, to consider his surroundings, and see if he miraculously spotted a spare molecular strip that nobody was using.

  Illuminated only by the blue glow of his Attaché, the deserted holoplex was a ghostly suggestion all around him. Every seat, save his own, were empty, no doubt filled not long ago with the jeering combined crews of the fortress’s pet pirates, that came down here for a little entertainment. The holowell, where that entertainment would be projected, was a blank void, the projector lying inert somewhere far above. There wasn’t a sound to be heard, the walls’ soundproofing sufficient to blot the sounds of the busily running fortress and even the polar winds of Baz.

  That’s precisely why Two-Bit Switch had come here, ostensibly to research molecular strips but also potentially to sulk after the disaster that was the Haess Hustle.

  Yes, they’d made it out with the goods intact and yes, none of the Lover’s crew had actually been killed, but they’d come alarmingly close, rescued only by Moira’s late entrance from the bathroom. Their employer could seemingly care less, as long as he could deliver new weapons to the native insurgents. Two-Bit, meanwhile, couldn’t help feeling like every caper he planned for the Lover and her crew ended in a gunfight or a boarding action or a cellblock.

  In that case, Two-Bit Switch would plan his own caper, the caper-to-end-all-capers, and he would plan that so exhaustively that there was no chance for mishap or disaster or incompetence.

  First, however, he’d need to find a molecular strip.

  What would really make this simpler would be consulting an actual mechanic, someone who could point him in the right direction and steer him should he go astray in his search. The thought of asking Odisseus kept recurring to Two-Bit but there was no way to couch the request in enough innuendo to prevent the Ortok from getting curious and wanting answers.

  The other option, the one staring Two-Bit in the face, would be to ask Ott.

  The Galactic Menace had enough contacts and connections all across the galaxy and could certainly put a finger on a molecular strip that would suit Two-Bit’s needs. The proverbial ink on their unwritten contract, however, was still wet and Two-Bit wasn’t quite sure he wanted to push those boundaries with such a strange request. He was doubly sure he didn’t want to go behind the Captain’s back with the request nor was he certain Ott even knew who he was.

  It was an option to pursue down the line, perhaps, when they were even cozier with Ott than they were now, when Two-Bit felt more comfortable approaching the Galactic Menace in a covert way.

  Until then, he would slink around the fortress’ dark corners, squeezing out an hour of research here or there, while his crewmates were off availing themselves of Ott’s gymnasium or swimming pool or skooshball court.

  Two-Bit nearly jumped out of his skin the next moment, when that dark amphitheater was suddenly flooded with light. The massive screen before him transformed from a well of darkness into an unstable hologram, showing some production company’s logo or another. Poorly recorded audio sizzled and crackled through the speakers, interrupting Two-Bit’s quick reverie with a sudden explosion of music.

  Someone had switched on the holoprojector and starting playing something. Two-Bit Switch gazed up in confusion at the show they’d chosen to watch.

  It was animation, that much Two-Bit could suss, and it was made with tech and aesthetics about three or four decades antiquated by now. In such a modern theater, it didn’t hold up especially well, the hologram frayed and juddering at the edges. Once the slurry of production logos passed, the actual feature presentation began, sparking some faint sense memory, at the very back of Two-Bit’s nostalgia.

  “They found him,” the narrator announced, over a twinkling field of cartoon stars, “in a dingy cantina on a backwater moon on the edge of civilized space. Once, he was the single greatest space pirate captain in the known galaxy.” The character capering around on screen – brandishing a pistol, somersaulting through the air, dodging explosions – was a ludicrous stereotype; eyepatch, atrocious haircut and shirtless under a ragged combat vest. “Until that galaxy spat him out. Now,” the narrator tantalized the audience, “he’s been given another chance.”

  Next came a quick montage of the cartoon’s supporting cast – a busty orangeskinned babe, a goofy alien sidekick, a helpful looking robot – all in incongruous poses of action or comedy. “Along with his ragtag crew of smugglers, thieves and mercenaries, Captain Starstrike flies his trademark vessel, The Starstriker, against the evil Emperor Xarkoth and his Blackskull Empire.” The piece’s villain was exactly as camp as its hero, complete with flowing robes, death’s head visage and maniacal laugh.

  “It’s a tale of peril and adventure,” promised the narrator, over a grand finale of random and disassociated clips, “as Captain Starstrike and his crew strike back against the tyrannical Blackskull Empire, all the while staying one step ahead of Xarkoth’s evil clutches as they explore…”

  Here the show’s title wavered onto screen, precisely as the protagonist’s spaceship zoomed past. “The Endless Night.”

  Two-Bit was watching the opening titles to a cartoon show about a space pirate and he knew exactly who it was that switched on the holoprojector.

  “I’m missing it!” that party announced frantically, as he hustled through the holoplex’s opening doors. Two-Bit worked quickly to deactivate his Attaché, to hide the hovering plans he’d been perusing before he could be discovered. “I’m missing the best part!”

  Nemo appeared on Two-Bit’s periphery, hustling down the aisle at top speed as the show’s opening titles faded away, in favor of the actual episode. In his arms, the Captain carried an irresponsible bundle of junk food – popcorn, boxes of jangling
sweets, a spool of fluffy green candyfloss – and he was rapidly approaching Two-Bit’s row. Nemo's eyes fixated on the holo, Two-Bit was pretty sure he hadn’t been spotted yet and was debating slinking away to sulk someplace else when the Captain scooted into, of every row in the theatre, his row.

  “Cap’n,” Two-Bit greeted with a small sigh. His prediction proved accurate when the Captain emitted a little shriek at spotting Two-Bit, slouched there in the dark holoplex not ten feet away. That shock, however, quickly mutated into pleasant surprise.

  “Well, I’ll be bloomed,” Nemo reacted, with what looked like genuine delight. “The man of the fucking hour. You mind?” Not waiting to see if Two-Bit minded, Nemo plopped down into the seat immediately next to him, his snacks all rattling and spilling everywhere.

  “Thought you and Odi were still casing the Messenger,” Two-Bit probed, still vainly hoping to give Nemo the hint that he’d interrupted his personal brooding time.

  “We did,” Nemo grunted in reply, visibly attempting to decide which confection to devour first. “Took for-blooming-ever.” Settling on the candyfloss, Nemo turned to consider Two-Bit. “You came in here to jerk off or what?”

  All Two-Bit’s lying skills flew right out the airlock. “Uh–”

  “You know,” Nemo made the point, gesturing with his candyfloss at the Attaché lying deactivated in Two-Bit’s lap, “you wanted to watch some porn, you coulda used the big screen.” He nodded his chin towards the cartoon that continued to play overhead. “Moons know he’s got a shit-ton of it. I saw a whole thing back there.”

  Two-Bit was skeptical. “A shit-ton of porn?”

  “A shit-ton of everything,” Nemo countered. “I mean, he’s got this.” He made an indicative gesture towards the screen, where space adventures of the most ludicrous sort were playing out, amid shoddy animation and shoddy dialogue. “You never watched Endless Night?”