Unconstant Love

by Timothy J Meyer

  As Flask recounts every minor detail of his conversation with the Ruuvian cashier, Moira plants both elbows against the rail at the top of the companionway stairs and gazes out across the hold. This mysterious omniscient buyer could be their escape, a means to transform the shitslide that was the caper's final phase into a profitable payday, to assuage weeks of heartache, humiliation and hull damage.

  It was exactly as likely, of course, that this was all an elaborate trap.

  It doesn't take her companions long, Odisseus partway down the stairs, Flask only just returned with groceries, to discover this schism and organize on either side.

  “I mean, how blooming convenient, right?” scoffs Odisseus, tossing his paws into the air. “We escape both Consortium and Imperium above Thaksu by the hair on our assholes and then, whaddya know, here comes this mysterious stranger, offering to buy–”

  “If the Consortium,” Flask argues, “could finger us, they'd drop a fookin' squad of spice rangers to collect my arse. They wouldn't bother with this cloak-and-dagger buhoxshit.”

  “Well, here goes nothing,” resolves Nemo with a sigh, tearing open the package with a plastic squeal.

  “Then it's a bounty hunter,” Odisseus decides, changing tactics. “Or the Imperium. Or whomever killed Borsk and all her people. He shrugs violently, a gesture of hopelessness. “Makes no blooming difference, far as I'm concerned.”

  “It don't make no sense, though,” Flask protests. “As a strategy, I'm saying. No bounty hunter's got that kinda network, to send fookin' dudes wherever we go to resupply–”

  “Some do,” counters Moira too quietly enough to be ignored.

  “And the Imperium,” Flask continues, “ain't gonna make a move so blooming shady as that, like. Not without a fanfare of fooking trumpets to announce their presence.”

  “The Imperium,” Odisseus reminds, thoughts of Ikoril Federate Station and the bait-and-switch they pulled there also occuring to Moira, “is capable of some extremely shady shit.”

  “You know,” appraises a chewing Nemo, Niccotine & Onion speckling his lips, “these're not too terrible, actually.”

  “Ultimately,” Flask decides, “you're probably right. This could absolutely be a very cunning and very confusing trap someone's laid for us. Without actually going to Thuwo Minor, there's no way to know. Like, conclusively.”

  “Then, I say,” Odisseus spells out in plain Commercial, “we don't go to Thuwo Minor.”

  “Fine,” relents Flask with a shrug that rattles all the groceries he still carries. “We don't go to Thuwo Minor.”

  “Thuwo Minor,” Nemo wonders, digging his hand deeper into the Carcinocrisps. “Why's that ring a bell?”

  “My question is,” Flask starts to introduce, refusing to completely give up, “where, in all the bloom-fooking moons of Jotor, do you suggest we go, like?”

  Odisseus, sensing a trap, only scowls. “I don't follow.”

  “Next,” provides Moira, seeing Flask's line of thought. “Where do we go next.”

  “That,” Flask thrusts an affirmative finger at Moira, plastic bag dangling from it. “Coffers're dry as a fooking bone. We didn't hardly have the scratch to make this supply run. We've exhausted all your friends and mine. There ain't a wet rock left in the galaxy we could hide under, not long as that weed's still aboard the ship.” Something about this makes Odisseus bristle but he doesn't argue Flask's point. “Trap or no trap, we got maybe ten more jumps before we're outta fuel and sitting lonktonks for rangers or Imperials or bounty hunters or whoever.”

  He stands panting a few seconds, collecting his wits from his little tirade. “So, if you've gotta better heading than Thuwo Minor, I'm sure we'd all love to hear it.”

  Odisseus stews in this very good point for a moment. When Moira starts to shift her weight, he raises a paw to her instead, to ward her off. “Don't tell me he's fucking right.” He sighs an Ortoki sigh, his whiskers bristling. “I know.”

  Nemo thrusts the open maw of the Carcinocrisp bag up towards his saltbrother as a consolation prize. “Want some?”

  Garrock Brondi can't wait to see the look on his stupid moon of a face.

  He's waited an exceptionally long time to see that look. In the short term, he's waited months for his hated rival to stop dragging his ass across the galaxy, exhausting every other possible option before he would come beg on Brondi's doorstep. In the long term, Garrock's waited years for Nehel Morel, Galactic Menace, to arrive at Thuwo Minor, head hung and hat in hand.

  He could hardly contain his excitement when The Unconstant Lover did actually drop warp in system and initiate docking protocols with the Warp Gate Junction. He practically skipped about the place.

  The overwhelming majority of his organization thought this would never happen. At best, his captains and advisors told him, this was an extreme longshot and, according to the franker ones, a waste of resources. His majordomo was their champion, wrinkling his Oodani snout at every expense Garrock “flushed down the shitter” on this “little revenge trip” of his. It was precisely that frankness that Garrock valued in his majordomo but that would only increase the smuggler's swagger when he returned victorious, Gitter sapling at his side.

  Besides, Garrock needed a holiday. Thuwo Minor's dingy Warp Gate Junction wasn't an ideal place to headquarter his smuggling operation the past few weeks but he liked to think he'd made the place his own. There was something refreshing about escaping the hustle-and-bustle of Menoyar, even temporarily.

  A thoroughly unimportant gas giant, an arm's reach from Takioro Defederate Station, Thuwo Minor's planetary deed had been child's play to obtain for his nefarious purposes. Besides the pittance he made on traffic fees, Garrock found it rather convenient to own a little patch of space on Velocity's doorstep, to conduct business deals without the need to pay the Vollocki's exorbitant taxes.

  That wasn't why he'd purchased the planet, though. He knew he'd need it one day – for gloating purposes.

  As the two airlocks make each other's acquaintances, Garrock and his people leap into action. His bodyguards – a menagerie of interspecies muscle, the very finest of Brondi's considerable goon pool – come hustling from their repose all across the station, readying weapons and barking orders. Pushover, a humanoid bigger than some Walkeen on Garrock's payroll, strides past his employer. He carries his Acathi K89 Yellowbelly over one shoulder, Garrock's very special chair over the other.

  His cane clicks against the plastolieum tile as Garrock Brondi follows leisurely behind his underlings. Once the chair's in place, he takes his seat, an envelope of thuggery arrayed all around him.

  The chair was quite a lucky find in the administrator's office, an anomaly among the rest of the Junction's drab furnishings. Very swank, the thing's all red velvet and graceful curves, with golden upholstery and a quartet of clawed feet. It was the very epitome of Garrock Brondi – an item with the outward appearance of class but, underneath, as tawdry and criminal as everyone else – and he was instantly enamored with it.

  Regardless of how this exchange went down, Garrock Brondi is taking this chair home with him.

  The airlocks pressurize with a satisfying hiss. Garrock's bodyguards raise weapons and take aim at the figure they imagine will soon come through that door. Garrock, meanwhile, positions his cane immediately in front of his chair and waits, the very picture of the omniscient mafioso.

  The door control blinks green. The airlock rolls begrudingly away. Through the hissing steam, Garrock Brondi gets his look at that emerging face.

  That face is scowling, attempting to peer through the haze. He's thinner than usual and his hair somehow even shaggier but that high-collared duster is absolutely unmistakable. Even when the smoke's completely cleared and his posse of familiar faces has fanned out to either side of him, he's somehow still scowling. Now, he's leaning all the way forward and staring Garrock Brondi, his archnemesis, in the face, with a look of utter bafflement.

  “The fuck is that?” he asks aside, to whomever
stands to his left.

  “It's Brondi, Nemo,” Moira provides him.

  “Oh, bloom me out,” Nemo reacts instantly, hand flying to his holster and yanking out that antique flintlock of his.

  Garrock purses his lips. He hadn't recognized him.

  On their Captain’s cue, the outnumbered pirates follow suit. Moira Quicksilver summons her 665 Lawmen to her hands like magic, the Ortok pulls free a Haymaker and the new face, the one his associate tapped on Vabob, produces a Halisdro and seems unsure where it should be aimed.

  Simple as that, both parties – twelve to one side, four to the other – find themselves in a good old fashioned Talosian standoff, a staple of the smuggling profession.

  “Howdy,” greets Garrock Brondi, enjoying this too much.

  The Ortok rumbles something, making exaggerated and unwise gestures with the shotgun. The new face, the Gallwegian, turns a disdainful scowl the Ortok's way. “Don't you fooking start, like.”

  “Howdy,” repeats Garrock Brondi, his patience ebbing away.

  Odisseus huffs again, shrugging his hairy shoulders and leveling his weapon back at Pushover. Nemo meets and matches this shrug with an even bigger one. “I mean, I can shoot him right now. That'd kill the whole trap thing right in its–”

  Garrock adjusts his posture, grasping for control. “That won't work ag–”

  “Then what'd happen, you dumb gobshite?” Flask expectorates, lowering his gun to better berate the Captain. “They'd fooking shoot us, wouldn't they?”

  Odisseus makes some monosyllabic reply in support or condemnation of this.

  Nemo scowls again and starts to argue. “Well–”

  “Can someone,” implores Moira, eyes closed, “do me a favor and pay fucking attention?”

  “68 million,” offers Garrock Brondi, cutting immediately to the chase. This draws every piratical eye in the room, their argument interrupted by something vastly more interesting.

  “What about 68 million?” ventures Nemo.

  “Well,” Garrock starts to amend, realizing his error. “67 million. I should say. I will give you 67 million credits,” he starts again in as simple Commercial as he physically can, “if you give me your Gitter sapling. And,” he also amends, “shut your fucking mouths for ten seconds.”

  This further dumbfounds the pirates until, nine seconds later, Nemo speaks up again.

  “How come?”

  “Because,” Garrock relays with a tired paternal sigh, “I'm the one responsible for everything you've suffered sinc–”

  “No, no,” Nemo corrects him, waving away whatever Garrock was saying, “how come 67 million? You said 68 million first and then you said–”

  Interrupted mid-monologue, Garrock Brondi attempts not to sound too crestfallen. “You owe me a million credits? Do you not remember? The last time we were supposed to meet at Thuwo Minor? Last I checked, Trija remains unsacked.”

  “Thuwo Minor.” Nemo snaps his fingers with the force of a gunshot. “I fucking knew it sounded familiar.”

  “Bully for you,” congratulates Flask.

  Odisseus yammers out a string of Ortoki syllables. “That's what I'm wondering,” agrees Moira. “What was that you were saying about 'being responsible' and 'everything you've suffered?'”

  Garrock splays his fingers, cane swaying somewhat to the side to display Garrock Brondi in all his criminal mastery. “I'll give you a minute.”

  “You're the one sent those bounty hunters after us?” wonders Flask.

  Moira scowls. “You tipped off the Consortium.” She scowls deeper. “And the Imperium.”

  “You shot Borsk, didn't you?” Nemo realizes, his face crinkling up.

  “All of the above,” Garrock Brondi is pleased to announce. “Gotta come clean here. I was quite impressed with the scope of your late friend's vision. Never quite got all the specifics, of course, but the results speak for themselves. Biggest oversight, though, if I may give a piece of constructive criticism?” He gives them all his most disappointed look. “Keeping me outta the loop.”

  The face that Nemo's wearing right now, that amalgam of shock, outrage and impotence, that's exactly the face Garrock waited all these weeks and months and years to see.

  “I'm a little offended,” Garrock confesses with the smallest of shrugs. “About how long it took you to come to me. Realistically, I really shoulda been the beginning, the middle and the end of that list. Discreet as fuck,” he starts to count on his ringed fingers, “the epicenter of the galaxy's largest contraband network–”

  “We didn't come to you,” confesses Nemo bluntly, “because you're a dickbag.”

  “66 million,” counters Garrock and this, much to his amusement, seals those unsealable lips.

  “You killed Borsk to drive our business to you,” Moira struggles to comprehend, “but why the bounty hunters? Why the Consortium?”

  “Don't forget,” Garrock feels the need to add, “that Borsk was becoming a bigger and bigger thorn in my side anyway. Nobody wants to pay top shelf for smuggled Gitterswitch when there's an alternative solution.” This explanation out of the way, Garrock Brondi affects a sigh. “I guess it was spite, maybe. Hurt that you didn't come to straight to me, your oldest friend, with the greatest prize the galaxy's ever seen.”

  “Again,” Nemo reminds, “dickbag.”

  “65 million.”

  Flask slaps Nemo hard on the upper arm to silence him, precisely the reaction Garrock hoped for.

  “If one of the bounty hunters or the Consortium or the Imperium somehow managed to actually apprehend you,” Garrock continutes nonchallantly, “that too could have suited my business, after a fashion, since you wouldn't be selling to one of my competitors. Should you swallow your pride and drag your bloomhole out to visit me,” he explains sweetly, “then we could do business.”

  The moment of silence that passes between the four members of the Lover's crew prompts Garrock to continue. “Can we do business?”

  A second silence follows the first, broken by the Ortok after a considerable pause. Odisseus voices some growling dissent, shaking his shaggy head and gesturing emphatically towards Garrock. No one immediately responds to this, forcing Odisseus to once again break the silence and growl another objection. A heavy, shoulder-slumping sigh from Nemo stops Odisseus in his tracks.

  “Go get it,” relents Nemo, turning his shoulder back towards the Ortok.

  Odisseus starts to sputter, to snarl more objections, but Nemo doesn't rise to anger. Instead, the Captain's voice is calm, level and, most deliciously to Garrock Brondi, defeated. “There's no fucking point, man. Let's not make this a bigger thing than it's gotta be.”

  Odisseus makes a tentative noise and shuffles a few steps back towards the airlock.

  Before he's quite left, Nemo turns to look fully around at the Ortok. “Let's do the thing that Two-Bit would've wanted.”

  The Lover’s crew has three separate reactions – Moira stiffens, Flask exhales and Odisseus pricks his whiskers once. Then, with great Ortoki bluster, he spins and tromps back through the airlock.

  The decision officially made, Garrock Brondi makes a small gesture to whichever bodygurd is nearest on his lefthand side.

  “Bring the money.”

  Odisseus finds Thirdseed exactly where he'd left it. The little cactus basks in the simulated heat and the artificial glow of the miniature habitat the Ortok's engineered in his quarters. The moment he slaps the door release, he's blasted with all the trapped pheremones the cactoid's been broadcasting the past hour or so.

  {Thirdseed is comfortable}, it reports, the scents an amalgam of fresh and stale. {Thirdseed is lonely also}. A few feet inside the chamber, the freshest and most eager scent reaches Odisseus. {Foreplanter came back!}

  “Hey, sprout,” Odisseus mutters, coming to stand before the whole production he's constructed smack dab in the middle of his quarters. The little nursery demanded the dominant portion of his room's floor space and electrojacks. To reach anything else inside – hi
s bed, his footlocker, the model spaceships collecting dust in the corners – he'd need to skirt around the sides of the purring torridity unit and each of the three mechanic's lights, angled downward at Thirdseed.

  Now Odisseus stands there, paws on hips, attempting to figure out the best way to dismantle the whole thing.

  One by one, Odisseus unclips the mechanic's lights, deactivates their power cells and sets them aside. He snaps off the torridity unit with a mumbled growl of apology to Thirdseed. With deliberate paws, he scoops up the demonstrably confused Gitter sapling – {Thirdseed is cold. Thirdseed is confused} – and attempts to juggle all his many burdens.

  He would ensure, by whatever means necessary, that Brondi's people took the very best possible care of Thirdseed.

  The truth, Odisseus knows, is that Brondi and his galaxywide operation were infinitely better suited to raising a Gitter sapling than he was. There was nothing to stop Brondi from creating an honest-to-moons habitat, rather than this shoddy improvised stopgap, that would help Thirdseed grow taller and healthier and into a Gitter adult. Indeed, Brondi's whole interest in the sapling demanded he do so.

  The mere fact that Thirdseed hadn't died while in the Ortok's care could be counted a minor miracle. By all accounts, this was a unilaterally positive move for the seedling.

  At the same time, Odisseus can't help clenching his claws protectively around the sides of Thirdseed's pot. Burdened with all the sapling's necessary equipment, he shuffles from his quarters and back into the abovedecks corridor. With an elbow against the door release, there's nothing else to be done, save marching back through the freighter, through the airlock and passing Thirdseed into Garrock Brondi's greedy hands.

  “So, hey,” Odisseus begins as he plods on his way, wheeling the torridity unit behind him. “I'm not sure how much you can understand me but there's some stuff you really oughta understand before this all goes down.”

  {Thirdseed is cold}.

  “I know, pal,” Odisseus sighs, hiking the pot a little higher on his hip. “The situation you're coming into, it's, well, it's unfair. And,” he chokes a little on this concept, unsure whether the seedling can read his emotion or not, “there's no other way to say this. It's me. I'm the one putting you in that situation. To make money. To put more money that I don't really need in my pocket.”