Galactic Menace

by Timothy J Meyer

  What truly unnerves Two-Bit, though, is that, beyond feeling vaguely exploited, he's honestly unable to muster a proper objection to the bank job. That sort of seamless logic originating from Nemo inspires a wholly original sinking sensation in Two-Bit's stomach, the sensation that perhaps, over time, their bumbling oaf of a Captain had become drastically underestimated.

  Chapter 5

  Odisseus shivers. Benumbing gusts of wind push past him, funneled at a furious speed by Underglow's narrowed alleyways, and so Odisseus, complete with drastically shortened fur, shivers. A decade ago, the much younger and shaggier Ortok barely noticed his city's cold. Lately, ever since this demeaning prison haircut, Odisseus had found most places – Gallow, Qel Qatar, not to mention the vast vacuum of interstellar space – a few degrees colder than he'd personally prefer.

  The elements seem to have no effect on his saltbrother, arriving across the rooftop, other than dramatically whipping his coat out before him. Beyond his habitual tool bet, Odisseus never really bothered with clothing. To someone so hirsute, they were stifling and suffocating and not much else.

  However, the longer his fur remained brutally short and the longer he was forced into these frigid conditions, the more and more appealing the idea of wearing this insulting welder's apron around everywhere seemed to the Ortok.

  Across the rooftop, Odisseus watches Nemo disembark, underpay and bicker several prolonged moments with his drifttaxi driver. The Ortok deactivates his fusioner, edges the bridge of his goggles up over his brow and trundles out to meet his saltbrother halfway.

  Available garage space wasn't terribly difficult to come by in Underglow. This assumes one was generous enough to qualify an empty hundred square feet of canopied-in rooftop as “available garage space.” This unnamed lot's landlady was both a one-eyed purpleskin and amenable to the hefty bribe Odisseus paid her to refrain from asking too many questions about any less-than-legal activities she may observe.

  As the Ortok passes them, he spares a suspicious thought for each of his next-stall neighbors and wonders if they shouldn't perhaps be extended the same offer. To his left, a Ruuvian hammers heavily away on his overcompensation machine. To his right, a Szarzarr screws and unscrews a badly dented hull plate in a fruitless attempt to jam it into place.

  “Flask is a speciesist and a prick,” Odisseus calls towards his saltbrother, now less than ten steps away.

  “Why this time?” Nemo returns without missing a beat.

  “Two-Bit mentioned his little 'No Ortoks On The Caper' initiative.” Odisseus spreads his hind paws and crosses his forearms, preventing Nemo's way forward. “I'm less than thrilled.”

  “Flask says you'll be too conspicuous,” Nemo parrots. “And, unfortunately, I gotta trust his judgment on this one.”

  “I don't care what you trust,” Odisseus rebukes. “If Flask knows what's good for him and his fragile neck, he's gonna change his mind.”

  Suddenly concerned for his own, Nemo rubs the nape of his fragile neck and glances back towards the idling drifttaxi. “I was pretty sure I had a reason to come down here besides my daily haranguing...”

  Sniffing once in mild contempt, Odisseus turns on his heel and begins waddling back towards his reserved space. “Wanna show you something. Needs your stamp of approval.”

  Nemo doesn't move but furrows his brow. “You've never needed my stamp of approval before.”

  “I went a little unorthodox on this. Thought I should buzz it in.”

  With an equally suspicious scowl, Nemo follows Odisseus step for step. They pass between disassembled vehicles parked atop and steaming ventilators jutting from the re-appropriated rooftop. When he arrives, Odisseus lingers several feet outside his designated workspace and waits for Nemo to level up on his left side.

  The Captain plants both arms akimbo and examines Odisseus' partially finished handiwork with a bemused eye. “What is it, even?”

  “You don't recognize her?”

  Nemo squints, cocks his head, points. “Is that...?”

  “You do recognize her,” Odisseus smirks.

  Nemo's astounded. “Bloom everybody out. How in the moons you manage to find her?”

  “I have many mysterious powers,” answers Odisseus, with another cryptic smirk.

  Considering her current state of repairs – disemboweled and slumped so gloomily in the rooftop's hexagonal corner – Odisseus isn't necessarily surprised Nemo couldn't recognize her. The shipwreck, all corroded thermosteel and multicolored stains certainly doesn't resemble a driftchiller, much less the very same driftchiller that once ferried the pair of them around Underglow in their youth.

  Penelope, as she was called then, lead a long and eventful life. Like most driftchillers, she spent many years serving chiller cream cones to the squealing children of Underglow. Like most driftchillers, she was fated to be melted down for her composite alloys when her time came. It was here that the timely intervention of a ten-year-old Ortok rescued Penelope from a fate worse than incineration.

  Many more happy years the two spent together, sharing the sacred symbiosis of craft and craftsman. It was Odisseus who refurbished and restored Penelope into a serviceable driftcraft once more and it was Penelope who was the primary means of transportation for the Ortok and his degenerate saltbrother on errands – plus one doomed heist – around the city.

  When he departed for the Outer Ring, on the trail of that same saltbrother, Odisseus sadly sold Penelope to his former employer, a crotchety junkyard proprietor, and never looked back.

  Imagine the Ortok's surprise, then, when trolling Underglow's junk halos for a capable craft to play into this upcoming caper, he discovered Penelope, parked exactly where he left her seven years previously.

  Until recently, her exact make and model had escaped the budding internal index of young Odisseus. Upon her rediscovery, a short session of matrix-diving would eventually betray her manufacturate – none other than Terro Fleet Systems, the same proud people who produced the warships and starfighters of the Imperium Navy.

  This last feature had been the determining factor in convincing Odisseus of Penelope's particular worth to the caper ahead, despite her less-than-stellar history with the Captain and his capers.

  “She's Civ-Class,” Odisseus provides, “B3 Low-Atmo Driftchiller,” Odisseus identifies, with a few companionable steps towards his workstation. “We needed a TFS definitely, no more than a ton in weight, a two-seater cab and a high performance, low-audible driftmotor.” Nemo's expression does little to convey confidence. “New transmission,” Odisseus denotes, pointing out each future amelioration of the vessel with vague waving gestures. “Serious reduction to the cab's overall size. Disconnect the heat pump. New paint job, coupla necessary decals...” The Ortok sidles up alongside the cabin and seals his pitch. “You're gonna be looking at the spitting image, I swear to the moons.”

  “Sure.” Nemo shifts his weight, thinly-veiled skepticism bubbling to the surface. “You don't think we should be looking for something with a little more, I don't know, backbone? You don't think you're maybe getting a little, uh, sentimental?”

  Rage swells in the Ortok's chest. “My understanding of Flask's master plan,” Odisseus reminds, with tangible disdain, “didn't involve her backbone in the first place.” He scans his saltbrother's uncertain expression. “Have I been,” he pauses to lace the following word with a little bared-teeth bile, “misled?”

  Nemo's categorically oblivious. “No, no. Asking for the sake of asking.”

  Biting his tongue on the topic of Nemo's now-obvious deception had proven simple enough for Odisseus. Years of crossing forearms and standing over his saltbrother's shoulder as silent support had instilled in him an instinctive sense of bodyguard's reticence.

  Swallowing his pride in the face of Nemo's now-obvious deception, however, had proven significantly more difficult.

  “She's built right,” Odisseus presses, “she's gonna handle right and most importantly, she looks right.” He pads forward
a few inches, planting a paw companionably on Penelope's bent fender and turning to face his saltbrother. “Gotta remember – this isn't about tough. It's about cosmetics.”

  Nemo visibly chews the idea, his bottom lip curling into a cartoonish frown as he gives in. “You win.” He displays both palms. “You're the expert.”

  “Damn skippy.”

  Two-Bit imagines that, were Flask on Takioro rather than Gallow, he'd be practically asking for a canister to the brain. Here, however, on Criia's only slightly lawless moon, murder remains a crime and, in this case, a crime considerably worse than hijacking somebody's parked driftcar.

  Flask, therefore, goes about his business unmolested, utterly unconcerned about the prospect of gunfire from the driftcar's currently absent owner. As he jimmies open the vehicle's front door, Two-Bit stands idly by, sipping his chococino and perfecting his well-rehearsed impression of an innocent bystander.

  In Two-Bit's current mood, blacker and fouler than Gallow's deepest depths, he half-wishes the driftcar's commuter would appear, simply to throw a neticgrappler into Flask's most recent seemingly flawless plan: to boost an afternoon's transportation.

  With an electronic beep and an unlatching sound, Flask's attempts to gain unlawful entry bear fruit. He buckles the driver's door open with a creak of rusty hinges. Two-Bit follows suit with the passenger door, sparing the ten-thousand foot drop between catwalk and hovering driftcar a brief and dizzying glance.

  The driftcar, a neon-yellow Concord Industries number a decade or so past its prime, receives their combined weight with a mild dip from the idling driftmotor. Flask plucks his own steaming paper cup off the driftcar's roof and plants it into the single remaining cup holder. While he hunts across his ring of skeleton igniters, Two-Bit gives the interior of the vehicle a cursory inspection.

  “Apologies about the condition of the ride,” Flask mutters, slotting the selected key into the ignition. “Woulda grabbed that shiny TFS bugger up the block a ways back there, but some bastard fookin' slapped her with an impound clamp when I weren't lookin', so.”

  Two-Bit makes a noncommittal grunt, surveying the car's cluttered interior and noting the odd cloying scent with disinterest. He rifles absently with the radio as the driftcar ignites and Flask pumps her into stuttering operation. With a disconcerting shudder and fuzzy astropunk on the radio, the stolen driftcar tips sideways, away from the adjacent catwalk and rattles forward into Underglow, ferrying Flask and Two-Bit about their afternoon errand.

  Two-Bit's spirits were high when they'd landed on Gallow four days previously. He'd been finally fulfilling a lifelong ambition by visiting what his professional peers often considered a miscreant's paradise. He reconnected with an old acquaintance over grimy fast food and he'd received a multimillion credit caper for his trouble. Two-Bit couldn't have been more delighted.

  At the realization that it was Nemo himself who'd been pulling their strings, who had clandestinely arranged for Flask to plan the multimillion credit caper rather than simply approaching Two-Bit, his mood blackened and blackened. By the fourth morning, when he'd agreed to accompany Flask on a preliminary scouting of the route his caper would lead them on, he discovered himself positively sullen. His previous excitement vanished, he instead stares daggers out the window and mentally writes Flask out of the caper-to-end-all-capers that currently ate up space on Two-Bit's Attaché.

  Flask navigates the hairpins and blind alleys of Underglow with the nonchalance of a long-time resident. Even at the busiest of times, though, Two-Bit cannot imagine the traffic below Gallow's surface presents any real hazard. On a lazy afternoon smack dab in the middle of the day season, they're practically alone in the polluted skies.

  Occasional patches of sunlight, crosshatched through the Arrival Tier's thickly-grated demarkation grid, sprinkle down onto them. Tiny slivers of the undercity are revealed, for split seconds, as the purloined driftcar whizzes past.

  In accordance with some obscure Gallwegian property law, all permanent housing was mandated to be constructed below a certain altitude, conveniently just beneath Underglow's proverbial water line. That way, no unsightly tenement buildings need ever blemish a city skyline viewed from bridal suite or gaming floor.

  All the streets within Two-Bit's view display evidence of the Gallwegian slumlords best attempts to circumvent this issue.

  Great honeycombs of individual housing units cluster together, bolted directly onto the side of the mammoth starscrapers. These low-income hives, these chaotic nests of poverty, sickness and malnutrition, certainly re-enforce Gallow's perception of its working class; insects huddling desperately around the afterglow of the real civilization above.

  Before long, however, the driftcar ambles up through the stratified grid and rises into the proper light of that supposed civilization. Flask's adept hand steers them between the scaffolds and construction sites that populate the Arrival Tier during Gallow's day season. Seven more sips of chococino and they've reach their destination.

  This once austere building, conceivably a bastion of commerce and finance in happier times, was now reduced to an abandoned husk. A holographic ticker reads “SOLD TO ICC” in ceaseless, spinning circles.

  Their driftcar the only occupant of the parking pad, Flask idles the vehicle and yanks loose the key from the ignition. “Well, here we are, like,” Flask announces quietly. “First stop.”

  A moment's worth of scrutiny, a once-over across the building and Two-Bit feels qualified to make his own announcement. “This'll never work.”

  Flask scoffs. “Fook makes you say that?”

  Craning forward, Two-Bit presses a finger against the viewport in a point. “Ident scanner. Plain as day.” He works the extended hand back into his jacket pocket. “Ain't gonna take them more than a second to delly we ain't nothing but a rubbish bin.”

  “Scanner like that,” Flask counters calmly, “don't read ident. Driftvault's don't even buzz ident. Armor's too thick, like.” He copies Two-Bit's own point. “Scanner like that's gonna read the barcode they paint on the lefthand side.”

  “Are we gonna have one of those?” Two-Bit poses incredulously.

  “Odi oughta be paintin' her on tonight, like. Far as I heard.”

  “And,” Two-Bit keeps questioning, “they ain't gonna be vizzin' for one specific driftvault? It wouldn't be easier to simply deer a fresh one ourselves?”

  “No, a driftvault goes missing the day before, they'll triple security and we'd never even make the lobby.” As he talks, Flask fishes about in his inside jacket pocket, before withdrawing a trim Attaché not at all dissimilar to the one Two-Bit carried in his own back pocket. “Yes, they will be lookin' for one specific driftvault and that's the barcode I set Odi to re-producin'.”

  He taps a few icons on the device's touchscreen, spacing his speech between taps. “Know a bloke who knows a bloke who knows a bloke who cleans the garage they park these driftvaults in.” He palms the Attaché and it displays its grainy, holographic evidence. That, Two-Bit surmises, must be the red-paint barcode he referred to, sprayed onto the burnished teltriton side of a parked driftvault.

  “Fair enough,” is all Two-Bit can muster and limply at that. He clears his throat and shifts his weight, more to rid himself of his previous argument than out of any actual discomfort. “Security?”

  “Medium to heavy, like,” Flask admits, stashing the Attaché again. “They ain't as fooking stupid as they may sound. They understand the, er, inherent risks in stacking all this jangle in one place and have prepared accordingly.” He cocks his head aside in allowance. “But–”

  “And you don't think that's like to be a crunch for us?”

  “–but,” Flask continues, a note of annoyance coloring his voice, “assuming everything goes according to plan, they ain't gonna be flashing on trouble from the fooking driftvault.” He makes a few accommodating gestures to strengthen his argument. “Assuming the Ortok pulls his angle off and assuming we play our part right, to them, we're gonna look like
the blooming cavalry, won't we?”

  “'Medium to heavy', though,” Two-Bit quotes. “Still.”

  “Worst case,” Flask's quick to correct.

  Two-Bit's reaching for his chococino before Flask's even uttered his caveat. He remembers all the flak he's earned from the Lover's crew whenever he, the designated mastermind, outlays the details of their latest caper. Two-Bit's hell-bent, then, on uncovering at least one hole in this seemingly seamless plan of Flask's – a plan his four confederates had pretty much accepted at face value.

  He was not, it should be noted, above puncturing said hole himself.

  “Delly me the side entrance?” His suggestion is both amplified and muffled inside his paper cup. “The one we'll use?”

  With the skeleton igniter re-inserted, Flask begins cruising the driftcar surreptitiously around the defunct bank branch in discrete loops. He'll occasionally detour around a side street or up an alleyway to avoid any semblance of suspicion.

  “Simple as piss,” Flask relates, on the vehicle's second pass by the bank's service entrance, located in a sheltered alcove around the rear of the building. “Driftvault pulls in,” he represents the driftvault with a blade-shaped hand gesture, “loads the cash through them doors there and backs straight out.” When no immediate acknowledgement or recognition comes from Two-Bit, Flask preempts him with a stifled sigh. “Questions?”

  “Bit of dead end, ain't it?” Two-Bit estimates, attempting to imagine Odisseus' bulky converted driftchiller squeezed into the cramped loading stall. “I mean, if the whole thing goes lollies-up and we're caffled in there, it's gonna turn into a blooming bloodbath in one hot second, won't it?”

  Flask thumbs a button on the dashboard and his window grinds laboriously downward. “Not with a good enough driver, like.”