Galactic Menace

by Timothy J Meyer

“Somebody's plonky,” Two-Bit mutters.

  “And anyway,” Flask continues, “who the fook're you plannin' on runnin' away from? This,” he gestures emphatically, “is the fooking point of the disguises.”

  Two-Bit shifts ground. “And that's all squared away?”

  “Been sitting on 'em for weeks.” Flask hawks a concentrated wad of saliva out the window, to plummet thousands of feet below with the speed of a ballistic missile. “Waiting for the perfect chance to use 'em.” He replaces his finger on the dashboard and the window begins its weary trek closed again. “Got, er, Quicksilver whatserface out there right now, seeing about ident tags from this bloke I know.”

  “Who knows a bloke,” Two-Bit supposes.

  “Who know yet another bloke, yeah,” Flask finishes.

  The driftcar hovers patiently, Flask waiting to see if Two-Bit can muster any more objections. When he doesn't – only grinds his teeth and twists the multe bracelet on his wrist – the driftcar accelerates lightly and Flask diverts up a side street to approach the bank building from a different angle.

  Two-Bit, once again, fascinates himself with the passing scenery – indentured workmen on wobbly scaffolds – until another avenue of conversation presents itself.

  “Which bank is this, then? First or second?”

  “Second. 's closer to my place, is the reason we came here first.” Two-Bit opens his mouth to word the next question, which Flask predicts and answers. “Near abouts fifteen minutes or so, between 'em. Not close, certainly, but ain't too far, like.”

  “Do me a kindie,” Two-Bit pretends to sip from his drained paper cup between statements, “and take me through your timetable, wouldja?”

  The driftcar emerges from the side street in full view of the derelict bank building and Flask, with the slightest of sighs, begins. “Well, the actual driftvault, the one we're impersonating, is due to arrive at the first bank at noon. On the fooking dot.” The driftcar returns to its preordained path, the gradual circuit around their intended target. “And these're the types of blokes what get crucified if they're even a second blooming late to the drop-off, so we can expect perfect fookin' punctuality, like.”

  “Then, how're you–”

  “Bloke who knows a bloke who knows a bloke who knows me in the driftvault's garage, remember him?” Two-Bit gives a slow, noncomprehending nod. “Well, let's just say, snagging that holo ain't the only favor he's doin' me, eh?”

  “Meaning...” Two-Bit dangles.

  “Meaning,” Flask catches, true irritation finally coloring his voice, “I've paid good fooking money, out of pocket, for that driftvault to experience technical fooking difficulties that morning, if you'll pardon me the fooking cliché.” His mouth is a sliver of annoyance for a long moment. “Bloom me fookin' out.”

  Two-Bit waits through an uncertain moment. Flask steers the stolen driftcar back into the shadow of the towering building and descends back onto the parking pad.

  “Well, what if they–” Two-Bit starts.

  “On top of sabotaging the blooming other driftvault,” Flask marches forward, irritation an obvious undercurrent to every word he speaks, “we also make a point to arrive thirty some minutes early, a wide enough window that, were they to get the fookin' thing operational again, we'd be free and clear by the time they even arrive at the first bank, like.” Somewhat breathless, he refuses to make eye contact with Two-Bit. “That make sense?” Two-Bit offers a cautious nod, but is certain Flask doesn't notice.

  “We make whatever excuses we make,” he continues, “start unloading the strongboxes. We're s'pposed to have those, what's the fooking word, the little, er–” Flask proceeds to pantomime some manner of handheld device, indicating a nozzle and wiggling his fingers.

  “Handheld gravitons?” Two-Bit attempts in a small voice.

  “Yeah. Them.” Flask doesn't seem even partially relieved at finding the right word. “We're supposed to have 'em, the driftvault fellas'd have 'em, but I never heard back from me bloke, so, bare hands'll be–”

  Almost in astonishment, Two-Bit seizes his chance. “You can't get your wanks on some handheld gravies?” he clarifies, perhaps too eagerly.

  A moment of bemused silence from Flask. “Well, I ain't exactly made it a priority–”

  “I can get you gravies,” Two-Bit assures him suddenly. “Ball it up for me, if you want gravies, I can get me wanks on a few.” He shoots a few glances out the window, as though he might spot a handy graviton purveyor somewhere in his line of sight. “Even here.” He turns his attention back to Flask, twirling his multe bracelet around his wrist as casually as he can. “How many you hank? Three, four? Ten?”

  The following silence practically deafens Two-Bit. “Look,” Flask admits simply, “I understand what you're doing.” Two-Bit fights the flushing feeling in his face and battles to retain his composure. “I played along, 'cause, you know, no harm, no foul, everybody wants the caper to be as good as it can be, but I think maybe you proved your fooking point, yeah?”

  Two-Bit draws breath to offer either denial or excuse, but no words find him. He doubts there's any logical way to explain this sudden anxiety, this inexplicable need to best, belittle or prove his worth to Flask.

  Perhaps, he reasons, it was simply their similarity. To the naked eye, they occupy the same role in the criminal ensemble that encircles Nemo and the Lover. They were both the well-connected underworld aficionado, the man with the plan, as Two-Bit would certainly describe it, the bloke who knows a bloke, as Flask likely would.

  Perhaps it was simply that – competition, the inherent elbowing for position one feels in the presence of someone so similar.

  This, Two-Bit suspects, however, is only a portion, a comfortable veneer across the true nature of Flask's intrusion into Two-Bit's well-earned position. What sticks most in the jabberhead's craw is the lingering idea that, once, decades in the past, Flask performed these same duties for Nemo, years before he'd struck out for the Outer Ring and eventually made Two-Bit's acquaintance. Try though he might, Two-Bit could not shake the feeling that, when he'd been hired over Bile Backwashes all those months ago, he was simply substituting a role originated by Flask.

  Now, he feared, with the star's return, the understudy would be forced to slink back into the shadows once more.

  Bereft of any believable excuse for his behavior, Two-Bit Switch, seasoned liar and possessor of the galaxy's most honeyed tongue, opts in favor of confessing his embarrassing insecurity to his newest and seemingly bitterest rival. “Gritty be jabbed, mate, I–”

  “Nemo sends you down here to pester me, yeah, see if there's anything to be improved upon?” Flask supposes knowingly. “Bloom me out, he ain't changed one fookin' iota, like.”

  Two-Bit Switch, seasoned shirker and possessor of the galaxy's most opportunistic mind, opts suddenly in favor of shifting the blame and pleading the fifth. “You caffled me,” he confesses, palms in the air. “You seem like a toasty bloke, you know, hated to do this.” He shrugs, overcome with mock helplessness. “Cap'n's orders.”

  Flask regards him with a sage weariness. “Wanna, say, grab me a handful of gravitons and call it even, then?”

  Two-Bit splits into a smile, even partially genuine. “Why, that'd just chuff me to bits.”

  Moira calms her breathing. An objective assessment of the entire apartment and its three rooms, gathered over a short, several-minute-long search, revealed nowhere more comfortable and less odious than the rickety cot she'd called home the past three nights. With her overworked feet screaming inside her unforgiving jackboots, comfort was slowly beginning to win out over cleanliness on the list of priorities for Moira's seating. With several steadying breaths, Moira wrestles down her better angels and lowers herself to a sitting position, on the absolute edge of the least muzzy couch cushion.

  The sofa, a monstrosity only classified as “furniture “in a vague, taxonomical sense, had been Two-Bit's haunt since they'd broken the quarantine on this condemned apartment their first
day on Gallow. Upon spotting the couch, Two-Bit'd veritably leapt across the expanse of the living room to claim the inviolable right of “bagsies.” The subsequent cloud of expelled mildew and dust had nearly blinded Moira.

  Ever since, she had steered entirely clear of the couch, compelled by a superstitious fear to bodily avoid anything that ten years of Underglow's most persistent looters would ignore.

  Instead, she'd favored the lumpy, disagreeable cot, seemingly navy issue, that Odisseus had unearthed from the hall closet for her use. Nemo occupies the master, Odisseus occupies the second bedroom and Abraham seeks shelter elsewhere. Moira, then, had been confined to share the living room with Two-Bit and his “bagsied” couch.

  After three nights upon the wretched thing, however, its unfeeling steel bars carving canyons into her back, she'd finally begun to envy the slovenly little jabberhead his sleeping arrangements, repellent as they might be.

  Moira had frittered away an entire morning on the circuitous task of acquiring the uniforms and keycards they'd need for this week's upcoming deception. Flask's contact, a Fjoran fixer oblivious enough to his own insectoid anatomy to throw several lurid suggestions Moira's way, had pointed her in the direction of a black market tobacconist's a district beneath Underglow. This, turns out, was simply a front for an all-Akishi gunrunning ring, the chief representative of whom, in turn, made a few discreet comm calls on Moira's behalf. The last of these calls finally resulted in a clichéd, goods-under-the-café-table, hand-off with a painfully suspicious Walkeen bagman up on Arrival Tier.

  That morning, Moira met enough lowlifes that she probably could have made up her entire cut of the upcoming job on their bounties alone.

  The uniforms, all four sleet gray and appropriately sized, were neatly folded and awaiting the crew's return in a tidy pile by the apartment's main entrance. Her three-hour Tebi-Gali routine, lately adjusted to include her twin electrobatons, was completed early this morning, once the apartment was agreeably vacated. Righty and Lefty had been cleaned, polished and oiled the evening previous. Her lunch, a watercress sandwich she'd purchased from a small counter three blocks from the drifttram station, was mostly eaten. The leftovers, folded in checkered paper, awaited her dinner on the chiller's third shelf.

  Moira is bored.

  Harmlessly snooping, then, was to be the order of the day. Moira moves between the three-and-a-half rooms of the cramped apartment with the shuffling and listless air of a disinterested renter. With her boots, the cruel jailors of her aching feet, finally removed, the floor's cold thermosteel feels heavenly against her bare soles. Moira does her level best not to consider the sheer amount of grime she was exposing her naked feet to.

  Even empty, the apartment within is depressingly tiny, an assessment not to be undervalued, coming as it did from someone who'd spent the majority of the past two years aboard a spaceship. All in all, their temporary lodgings comprise a total surface area small enough to fit comfortably inside the Lover's mess hall.

  The kitchenette, adjoining the living room by the pretense of a low wall and complete with toilet and uncurtained shower, is Moira's first stop. It looks, she imagines, much as it must have a decade previously. The chiller is the main remnant, the looters unwilling or unable to abscond with something so bulky. Its only contents, beyond Moira's half-a-sandwich, was a jar of heinously expired pickles which Nemo continued to eat, despite their warning label.

  The living room she's exhaustively familiar with, having spent whatever majority of their time not pursuing the bank job there. It was these bedrooms, the ones Nemo and Odisseus guard like territorial tje wolves, that piques Moira's lukewarm curiosity the most.

  Both doors ajar, Moira pads cautiously into Nemo's bedroom first. Her instinct scans the room in search of hidden occupants, as though there was any chance someone'd avoided her notice this long.

  Like the living room and the kitchenette before it, the master bedroom is bereft of anything but the barest, bleakest furniture. A single queen-sized bed stands supported on iron struts, with its vermin-ridden dressings tossed chaotically about, congruent with the Captain's sleeping habits. He hadn't bothered with any luggage and, apart from the decrepit husk of a bed and those few broken hangers swinging in the open closet, the room is nothing but dirty, unremarkable and empty.

  Odisseus' room, across the truncated hallway, is both considerably smaller and an iota more interesting, predicated entirely upon the presence of the bunk bed. Barring Odisseus' luggage and both dethroned mattresses, pushed together on the floor to accommodate the Ortok's bulk, it comprises the room's single notable feature.

  What strikes Moira oddest is the bunk bed’s relative size. Both bed frames and both mattresses are comparatively puny, more properly suited for sleeping children than sleeping adults. This hypothesis is further fortified by the wooden bed frame’s liberal scuffing, scratching and crayon-based graffiti.

  Something strikes Moira suddenly about the scribblings. The wild, anarchic spray of colors faded with both time and abortive attempts to wash them away – clearly the work of an undisciplined or undisciplinable child. Something about them unlodges in her memory, but refuses to be fingered down.

  Something about that graffiti reminds her plaintively of Nemo.

  They'd chosen the apartment at random, Moira is certain. They could've chosen any other apartment among the thousands of derelict housing units that infested Underglow's upper reaches; another honeycomb in an endless hive.

  Such ignominious lodgings were explained away – by Nemo, come to think of it – as a necessary precaution, a safeguard to ensure they weren't recognized or harassed by bounty hunters. Even now, she couldn't necessarily argue his reasoning. Condemned by the Imperial Municipality of Gallow all of six years ago, these apartments would have their bones picked clean by looters within the first few weeks. With a willing Ortok to shoulder down the barricaded doorway, they seemed simple, if perhaps discomforting, accommodations.

  In the recent light of her Captain's quiet conspiracy, however, each of Nemo's perfectly rational decisions and suggestions since Qel Qatar spoil and sour upon a few days reflection. Moira doubted very much that Odisseus had been any more privy to this covert bank caper than the rest of the crew. She still resolves that he very probably could have colluded with his saltbrother to arrange their staying in this very specific apartment.

  With crazed crayon stains as her primary evidence, she might have discovered the reason why.

  Stepping gingerly over both mattresses, Moira places inquisitive fingers against the grain of the bunk's wooden ladder. On every single step, she discovers gouges and pricks, such as those the petite hind claws of a juvenile animal might make, eroded by time immemorial.

  She repositions herself back in the living room, as though a wider vantage might unearth further evidence to support her blossoming theory. Something else, a miniscule, unobserved detail, catches Moira's eye. She lingers in the doorway leading from bedrooms to living room.

  Running her fingers along the doorjamb's corroded thermosteel corner reveals yet more grooves. To judge by the angle and jarred nature of each cut, these are demonstrably the work of blunt blade rather than curved claws.

  Most interesting to Moira, however, are the ratios between the grooves. Beginning a few feet off the ground and ending at approximately her own height, they were interspersed as though to measure the height of a growing child. A hand extended across the doorway and onto the opposite corner confirms another constellation of growth measurements, this one starting far lower and concluding much higher, nearly a foot taller than Moira herself stands.

  Arms braced across the doorway, physical evidence of Nemo's past to both hands, Moira inspects the Captain's childhood home under new eyes. An unconscious glance toward the empty master behind her steers Moira's mind towards the person who might once have occupied said bedroom. This same person, she determines, might once have notched these reminders into the wall and might once have been saddled with the herculean labor
of supervising a certain adolescent boy and his fretting Ortoki shadow.

  Moira feels an unquestionable pang of empathy for said hypothetical person.

  Chapter 6

  Flask's heart and the anxious tapping of his thumbs against the steering yoke stop in concert. There were only two sensations, primal failsafes in the criminal consciousness, that are each sufficient to instantly shrivel the cock of any working felon and they both strike Flask simultaneously.

  The first is the blinding, blue-and-orange splay of police strip lights. The second is the piercing whoop of a warning siren.

  Flask sits frozen in the driver's seat of their disguised driftvault for an entire ten seconds, an instinctive reaction driven home by years and years of cutting purses on Gallow's avenues and alleyways.

  On the eleventh second, when he finally does muster speech, what he says is startlingly unproductive. “Bollocks,” he breathes, staring dumbfounded out the window. “Tie me bollocks in a fooking sheepshank knot, like.”

  The other driver, the driver of the actual driftvault they were currently impersonating, is barely visible through the craft's triple-plated viewport. Upon making eye contact with Flask, he makes some vague and impatient gestures towards his shoulder strapped comm unit. The passenger, a Karracki seated immediately to the driver's righthand side, makes no such gestures. He instead levels the awfully businesslike business end of a combat shotgun directly at Flask, the driftvault's passenger side window converted into a gun-port for this precise purpose.

  Flask's very welcome wits flood back into his brain. He nods in an over-exaggerated fashion, grasps his own shoulder strapped comm unit and presses the call button. “Nemo, we've a very interesting problem out here, like.”

  Nemo's voice, chirping through the comm, is breathless with exertion. “How interesting?”

  Flask frowns, considering. “Life-in-prison interesting.”

  “That is very interesting,” Nemo admits.