Unconstant Love

by Timothy J Meyer

  “Truth is,” Two-Bit admitted with a sigh. “May come to zilch, all this.” He tossed a casual gesture towards the web of holograms hovering before him. “Maybe the different interfaces can’t coordinate, maybe Sifer won’t take the job, maybe it’s too ambitious. Either way,” he shrugged, tapping the Attaché’s power button and plunging the room back into darkness, “it’s a crunch’s gotta be solved, one way or another.”

  There they laid in silence for many long minutes, long enough that Two-Bit assumed Gella had fallen back asleep. She mentioned instead, when even he was on the verge of sleep, in a voice crystal clear and devoid of emotion. “It does raise the question of your team.”

  “My team?”

  “If you have the power to disappear completely,” Gella explained simply, “why split the 68 million at all?”

  That gave Two-Bit pause. The thought had never occurred to him, what would happen to the crew he’d used to pull the caper, once the caper was complete. As a jailbreaker, he was typically a consultant, a specialist brought in to plan, advise and very occasionally ride along. As a gunrunner, he was an equal partner, sometimes required to wrangle underlings and issue orders, but there was always Nabdres, his peer, to consider. Here, he would be the true mastermind, everyone else his subordinates, that he was free to dick over completely.

  There was something about Gella’s suggestion that stuck in his craw, some sentimental twang that made him uneasy at the thought of betraying the team that’d managed to pull the impossible con. It was not insurmountable, of course. He would simply need to hire a crew of bastards, scumbags with more skill than sentimentality, people he wouldn’t feel bad betraying.

  As long as he didn’t become attached to that crew, it shouldn’t matter what happened to them.

  All that was a bridge to cross on another day. There was his magnum opus, his great life’s work, to plan, arrange and execute first. Once he pulled this caper, Two-Bit Switch would have brought low the mighty Gitter Consortium, committed the crime of the century and, assuming Sifer could cook him up some insurance, he’d walk away with no price on his head and with sixty-eight million to his name. After that, there would be no need to plan another caper, to spend another sleepless night in some Third Ring dumpster, to show his face ever again.

  He could disappear into the woodwork forever.

  CHAPTER 30

  Flask hefts the cargo crate with a groan. He totters there a moment, attempting to bring a knee up to relieve some of the weight and, in the process, almost loses his balance completely. Another crewmember, a passing Frigopi with a crate stacked on each bulbous shoulder, gives him a squinty eye as he struggles there. She makes some comment in her hooting language and, even though Flask doesn't speak Frigopese, he doesn't miss her meaning.

  Flask would like the record to reflect that he has not been designed with manual labor in mind. He's certain that, to the common spacers aboard The Ship Shape, shifting a few crates of supplies doesn't actually constitute “manual labor” in the strictest sense. Judging by the brusque attitude his new crewmates are paying him, he anticipates this will be a long and unkind voyage back to civilization.

  Squatting like a fat beetle above them on its six extended landing feet, The Ship Shape really doesn't look like much but, compared to The Unconstant Lover, she looks brand spanking new. Her outer shell's quite recently been painted – the cautionary orange color of a heavy munitions hauler – but her soft underbelly, immediately above their heads, is still all exposed machinery and inner workings.

  A TFS something or other, it's a typical teamster workhorse. This kind of ship is so commonplace that Flask, even in his years as a landlocked criminal fixer, has some familiarity with the model. The crew is a hodgepodge of honest spacers from all over the Ring ConFed, hustling about the ship's underside and ensuring she's trim for departure within the hour.

  Once he's got his crate under control, Flask starts to stagger his way across the landing pad, headed toward the Shape's extended ramp. There, hovering on her membranous wings, is the bosun that initially offered Flask the job. Keeping each of her four eyes on a different member of the crew, she barks orders and chastisements, lamenting the ship's schedule and reminding everyone that this ophilium ore was expected on Balaria yesterday.

  Like any common spacer might, Flask went wandering about Rhav's dockside taverns, seeking employment aboard the dozen merchanter rigs currently on planet. The fact that The Unconstant Lover's crew dissolved here, on the inner edge of the Offchart Territories, actually came as a blessing in disguise – no tramp freighter this far out would require workman's papers of its prospective crew.

  Under the pseudonym of Stubb, Flask booked passage for labor aboard The Ship Shape. According to the boatswain, the freighter was bound for the western worlds of the Ring ConFed and, from there, would meander into Uklio Quadrant, looking for more consignment. Somewhere along that line, “Stubb” knew he'd grow tired of the tramper's life and slink into the shadows, becoming someone else with some other calling.

  What he would do and where he would go, Flask doesn't know. What he does know is that he must keep moving. That rage is not quenched, the shrieking injustice of Nemo's nasty trick still lodged somewhere inside him. All that seems capable of quieting his irrational anger are logistics, plans and schemes for his future. Were he to stop in any one place, Flask fears, anger would drive him to drink and drink would drive him to mistakes and mistakes would drive bounty hunters into his ass.

  Gallow is where he belongs – with its sprawling squalor, its discreet underworld, its rules and practices of the urbane criminal – but that's exactly where he can't go. In all this heat his cousin's heaped on his name, Flask must find a new name and a new den of iniquity and start afresh somewhere else. He'd been a fixer, he'd been a spice ranger – it was time to be something else.

  Talos occurs to him, knowing the great gas giant and its many mischevious moons isn't too far from The Ship Shape's route. Talos V occurs to him, famous for its dash racing and even more famous for the seedy web of corruption that surrounds its dash racing.

  Where the other two were bound, Flask couldn't really say. He knew Quicksilver was determined to track down and apprehend his cousin and, in that, Flask wished her every possible success. A large part of him still wanted to accompany her on that mission but it was actually something about Odisseus and his weary resignation that cooled Flask's fire somewhat.

  He still demanded regular updates from Quicksilver and she'd promised to deliver. A rendezvous would be established, she'd said, as soon as she's laid hands on his cousin and their purloined payday. Somewhere in the back of Flask's mind, he knew none of that would ever happen. Maybe Quicksilver had exaggerated her bounty hunting prowess and Nemo was gone, disappeared into the woodwork. Maybe she would apprehend him and, seeing no reason to share the wealth, she would simply pocket all 65 million.

  Maybe Nemo or Quicksilver or Flask, for that matter, would run smack dab into the jaws of law and order and waste the rest of their miserable lives in some prison cell someplace.

  Whatever the outcome, Flask would keep moving, would keep his options open, wouldn't give himself the time to stop and consider the betrayal or what it might actually mean to him.

  Another passing crewmember, a woman with phosphorescent green hair, gives Flask the same look the Frigopi gave him as he and his crate hustle up the Shape's boarding ramp. For the umpteenth time, Flask is forced to wonder whether the whole crew is plotting to capture him in his sleep and collect his posted reward, soon as they make Belena.

  This is bound to be a long and sleepless journey, Flask predicts. From Offchart to Uklio, he'll be bunking with strangers and keeping one eye open all the while.

  The Ship Shape's cargo hold is a vast voluminous space, three-fourths the hauler's total size. It's overhead lighting dim and distant, all the ship's busy crew are reduced to silhouettes, occasional streams of light catching an arm or shoulder or face. As Flask waddles through them, they s
teer driftcarts and stack crates and argue about everything's organization, tossing about insults and tools.

  None of these people are murderers or wanted criminals, it suddenly strikes Flask. In outward appearance, they're so similar to the galactic scum he's accustomed to dealing with. None of them have any fear of civilized space, he realizes, nor the overhanging noose waiting to snare them around the neck.

  They're everyday stiffs, working for the man; law-abiding citizens. The greatest day-to-day fear someone aboard The Ship Shape might face was about making ends meet, about catching flak from their boss, about getting laid by the cute somebody on the bridge crew. Him the one exception, no member of The Ship Shape's merchant crew looks especially like they'll die in a firefight or a bar brawl or a prison cell.

  Nothing could be further from his former crew. It was ten times more likely that a heatblade or blunt force trauma or firing squad would catch one before he would ever again lay eyes on them. Nemo would be butchered for a blood sample. Quicksilver would displease some gang boss and be made an example of. Odisseus would be apprehended by chance, in some supermarket aisle somewhere, and be imprisoned for the rest of his days.

  Flask, he realizes, would be doublecrossed on some heist gone wrong and his body fed through a waste recycler, so as not to leave a trail.

  With a grunt, Flask slams the burdensome crate onto the teltriton floor, next to all the other identical crates carrying the Shape's essential supplies. He's stretching his back moments later, preparing to go grab another and another and another crate, when someone slaps him companionably on the shoulder.

  He turns to see the hand on his shoulder is at the end of a trunk. That trunk belongs to an Aurik crewmember, a shirtless swaggerer Flask previously gave a wide berth to. Instead of the typical scowl, the Aurik pays him with a broad smile and a joshing shove, all unwarranted. He make some quip, Flask knows, watching him speak and Flask even responds with something rote but the specifics all escape him. The Aurik doesn't linger more than a moment, stomping away before another word can be exchanged but the interaction roots Flask to the spot.

  Here was no hidden menace, no posturing about who was stronger than whom, no undercurrent of deception that threads through all Flask's criminal relationships. A comrade saw that he'd worked hard to carry that crate and came to show his appreciation – no strings attached, no threats underpinned.

  Knowing no other way to respond, Flask brushes imaginary dust from his hands and strides back down the boarding ramp. He wonders how much cargo there's to stow and how many stops there'll be between here and wherever the freighter is eventually going.

  Complete with a chip on his shoulder, an honest crew and the workings of a light sweat, Flask is headed nowhere in particular.

  Moira takes the corpse by the lapels of its flightsuit and heaves upward. The pilot's segmented insectoid legs make the task bloom-near impossible. It's a sweating affair of stances and leverage, the extremely conspicous Moira Quicksilver squatting atop the starfighter's open cockpit, before she makes any substantial headway in pulling the dead pilot from its seat.

  Next time Moira Quicksilver intends to commandeer a ship, she'll wait until the pilot's actually exited the vehicle before blowing their buggy brains out.

  She assumes the vessel's unfortunate pilot to be some stripe or another of bounty hunter, considering the craft they rode in on and the weapons it carries. A Xendo loner like this, separated from its colony, is rare enough, especially this far from Xendar, but even rarer still is the corpse's orphaned spaceship.

  A Vbeck & Rhissol QX5 Peregrine, the subassault fighter – The Target Practice – was lean, angular and ugly. Designed for extreme manueverability in aerial combat, rather than out and out speed, she came equipped with swiveling laser cannons and a plethora of attitude jets that allowed her to spin twice on a dime. The Peregrine is a distant cousin to Moira's Bloodhound of old and thus, she knows the ship comes with pretty much zero amenities, more a crotch-rocket than a dwellable spaceship.

  How in the moons this Xendo nobody came by such a nasty ride, Moira Quicksilver does not know. All Moira Quicksilver knows is that this vehicle is the ideal vehicle for the solo bounty hunter.

  For the better part of the weekend, she'd stalked Rhav's sodden streets, seeking such an ideal vehicle and praying that her patience would pay off. During the interim, she'd been made twice, once by passerby and once by bounty hunter, and had coincidentally committed murder twice. Both bodies impossible to hide in this spaceport hermetically sealed against rainfall, the local constabulary was currently sniffing after her leavings, making “as soon as possible” a great time to get off planet.

  All this while, Moira's comm stayed dialed to local inbound traffic, listening for the arrival of any ship that might serve her purposes. Considering how little reason ships had to visit Rhav, Moira's very fortunate, in one way, that something as perfect as The Target Practice arrived when it did.

  In another way, Moira is very unfortunate, considering The Target Practice is certainly a bounty hunter and certainly only in system to pursue rumors of the Galactic Menace's ship, spotted in Rhav's single spaceport.

  She's been squatting here in hiding, awaiting the Practice's arrival, ever since her comm squawked at her about Pad Upsilon. When the unattractive little fighter made landfall and its pilot activated its cockpit release, Righty made a little mess of Xendo brains against the cockpit's interior plexishield and the ship was officially Moira Quicksilver's.

  Now, she just needs to pry the gunshot Xendo carcass from the pilot's seat, flee the system and start the laborious process of finding Nemo's trail.

  Whatever safeguards Two-Bit Switch has prepared might be sophisticated as fuck, Moira knew, but Nemo was still fundamentally Nemo. There were the more traditional methods of hunting Moira could use, true, but her greatest weapon was still Nemo's abiding stupidity. He would, show-boating numbskull that he is, make some inevitable blunder and Moira need only keep within a short enough distance that, when he did, she could pounce.

  His first mistake was choosing to run here, on Rhav. The northern cusp of the Offchart Territories, there were really only a handful of systems he could realistically jump to. Two-Bit's hocus-pocus or not, he went to Vothoi Minor, Cylmia or Runshaw. Factoring those distances, he would arrive there tomorrow, today or next week, depending.

  He would leave some trace. He'd be caught on security footage or leave an impression in the mind of a service employee or even order fast food, were he dumb enough. With no navigator, all his jumps would need to be clean, dropping a little bread crumb that Moira could collect. Step by step, zottible by zottible, she would close the distance between them.

  The real trick, Moira keeps in mind, is not to tip the hand of the legion of other bounty hunters, certainly on both their trails.

  It's not a speedy art – old school, unplugged bounty hunting – and will require investigation and deliberation. The only real threat to Moira's potential success was another hunter or dozen, nipping at Moira's heels while she worked, hounding her every step with gunfights and explosions and big loud noises to scare her quarry into the woodwork.

  Moira must be careful and she must be quiet, even more than Nemo must.

  The prospect, she's almost ashamed to admit, excites her.

  She's been pretending pirate for nearly a decade, a child dressed in a festive, ill-fitting costume. She's certainly reaped the benefits and she's certainly suffered the losses of collaborating with crewmates and, in the process, became an intergalactically recognized outlaw.

  Moira Quicksilver does not necessarily look back over her time aboard The Unconstant Lover with only contempt.

  At the very core of her being, though, she's always been a bounty hunter.

  The work is arduous and hardly rewarding enough and approximately as life-threatening, in shorter bursts, as piracy. When push comes to shove, though, Moira the bounty hunter makes her own rules whereas Moira the pirate took rules from those with no autho
rity to give them. She might be broke, she might be hungry but, out there, hunting lowlife scum in the untamed black, Moira Quicksilver is Moira Quicksilver and no one else.

  She leaves her old life without a compunction to her name. All her fellow crew, scattered across the galaxy by now, are either dead or adults, capable of making their own way. Flask was a career criminal in the gutters of Underglow long before the Galactic Menace dragged him into the interstellar spotlight. Abraham Bonaventure runs a small bootlegging empire on Pok these days and wouldn't surrender that for all the Gitterswitch he could manufacture. Two-Bit Switch is a smear on a Trijan water fixture.

  It is only for Odisseus that Moira feels a pang of unease, a stab of sympathy. The news that his saltbrother abandoned them, abandoned him, seems to leave the Ortok benumbed. They'd parted company brusquely, both parties uncertain what words they should share and neither party willing to overstep that intangible bond they'd developed as the Galactic Menace's babysitters by offering any genuine emotional sentiment.

  Thus, they'd parted with a nod and a curt word, Moira hot about her task and Odisseus left aimless, to drift through the galaxy without a rudder. Were any of the Lover's crew doomed to capture following Nemo's disappearance, it would certainly be Odisseus, unequipped with the necessary criminal skillset to survive in this unfriendly galaxy.

  Something chitinous cracks down below. One last great effort is enough for Moira to shift the Xendo's carcass completely from the pilot's seat. One undignified shuffle later, she pitches the thing full over the Practice's starboard side and it crunches against the gravel below. She doesn't bother to doctor the scene any, already wanted by Rhav's meager authorities and preferring to leave this soggy ball behind as soon as possible.

  The bucket seat's clearly been modified for an insectoid and is a unique flavor of extremely uncomfortable. Moira nonetheless yanks down the cockpit viewport, scowls a little at the Xendo brain splattered there and ultimately decides that speed here is paramount. She runs her hands across the Peregrine's unfamiliar systems, scanning the consoles and dashboards for that all-important function – autopilot.