“Bloom me out,” Two-Bit breathes, feeding all ten fingers through his greasy hair. “Here, I hinked you were scheming something safe and habby, like knocking over the Skelta installation,” both brigands spit instinctively, “or, I don't know, heeling Huong Xo in their literal lollies or something.”
“Oh, no,” Nemo consents. “Much worse.”
Two-Bit converts both hands from scratching his scalp to kneading his brow. “First things first, we don't–” Eyes still closed, he brandishes both hands before his face as he backpedals. “No, wait, first things first, 'are you outta your thinkbox', 'what're you thinking', all that.”
“Granted.”
“Second things second, then,” Two-Bit continues, returning his hands to massage the meat of his face, “if you've any flashes on how, precisely, you expect us to bump, never mind for the present convince or organize, but simply bump any buckos bloomin' antwacky enough to even be jazzed about this, well, then, I'm all ears, mate.”
Nemo tenders his reply as though drawing the most logical conclusion in the galaxy. “That's why I'm bringing you in.”
For once, the Captain diverts his eyes from the irrelevant Iniquity game to consider Two-Bit honestly. “I need to know how and where and when to attack. I need to know who to invite to table and how best to invite them. I need to know how to keep Valladia from catching wise and the Imperium off my back.” He taps three fingers against the edge of the tray as he counts out each his manifold needs. “I need weaknesses, strengths, tactics, schematics, tricks, strategies–”
“I'm a slambreaker,” Two-Bit interrupts, suddenly pleading at this immediate influx of responsibility. “Cap'n, people get clinked, I unclink 'em.”
In hindsight, Two-Bit Switch wouldn't attest the Captain's next words, “You're a criminal mastermind,” as what ultimately convinced him, but rather, the smile that accompanied those words. The unforced smirk is the precise combination of knowing parent and willing accomplice that would cinch Two-Bit's loyalty until the absolute culmination of this very, very bad idea.
In realization of precisely how deep Nemo'd sunk his hooks into him, Two-Bit squeezes his temples between thumb and middle finger and swallows a breath before posing “Any razz in asking why? To any of this, really?”
In answer, Nemo pinches another and third card from his hand, which he deliberately plops onto the center of the tray amid its two brethren. Two-Bit withdraws palm from head to examine the Captain's play arranged with conspicuous neatness across the entire breadth of the tray, each card very delicately spaced to conform to the platform's proportions.
A Picaroon of Stilettos, a Picaroon of Truncheons and a Picaroon of Nooses could only coalesce into one qualifiable combination The salient feature of that combination is not which suit – Fisticuffs, Nooses, Stilettos or Truncheons – they belong to, but rather, what face – in this case, Picaroon – they display.
Three Picaroons, of any suit, amount to a particularly potent third-tier incident in the game of Iniquity known as The Freebooter Fleet.
“'cause piracy ain't pointless,” is Nemo's rejoinder.
Two-Bit scowls and points. “You stacked that deck, right?”
“Oh, yeah.”
Chapter 11
Superior Hjeg can't comprehend what, in all the moons of Jotor, this Briza thinks it's doing. On the future incident report he was going to have to file, the shift manager for the Kiesha Shipyards Space Traffic Controller division would probably say “lurching directionless circles through the station's airspace” or “spewing gouts of temperamental exhaust in its rickety, uncertain wake,” if he was feeling poetic.
In theory, Hjeg was years promoted past the grueling grunt work that his flock of underpaid peons were tasked with. There was still one condition, however, that would require the Kieshan floor boss's actual presence. Every so often, a visiting ship would so flummox the tower crew that Superior Hjeg would need to decamp from his cushy office and set actual talon onto the main bullpen himself.
For a quarter of an hour, they all watched the representative red triangle continue its careening circuit around the station on each and every one of the Space Traffic Control tower's monitors. Too much more of this and Hjeg would be due for another promotion and, more importantly, another raise.
Fifteen minutes ago, when the ship first dropped warp, it was an amusing enough distraction in the middle of another brain-numbingly banal workday. As the minutes rolled on, however, and the queue of impatient starships awaiting docking procedures lengthened and lengthened behind the Briza, the ship's once-amusing antics were fast becoming tiresome.
The ship, a Briza remix bastardized beyond belief, was the epitome of uncooperativeness. Seeming to suffer severe system damage, she ignores all docking protocols, refuses all hails and positively cannot remain still enough for the six seconds needed to establish a graviton lock. Instead, she cavorts uneasy circles around the station's primary tower, complete with erratic fluctuations to roll, pitch and yaw. To complicate matters, a stream of vicious exhaust pours from somewhere starboard.
The furthest port on the Valladian Shipping Line, Kiesha Shipyards still attracts a wide consumer base from all across the Outer Ring. Remote as the station is, the starship prototypes, alternate weapons technology and cutting-edge robotic innovations cooked up by the scientists, researchers and pioneers of Kiesha Laser Corp are commodities not to be undervalued. Law-abiding and law-breaking citizens alike routinely brave the unpleasant commute to the Shipyards to attend the company's frequent auctions, expos and unveilings.
Kiesha's three orbital platforms are quite capable to the task of accommodating the daily influx of ship traffic that arrives to patronize the station's wares and services. From their towering vantage high above Platform A, Superior Hjeg could watch Kieshan service crews scramble about the platforms below. All appareled in their sealed vacuum suits, they attended to each of the dissimilar craft parked on the platforms, performing paid-for modifications to gun emplacements or shielding mainframes or torpedo launchers.
In every cursory glance the shift manager pays to the platform, he espies V&R blockade runners, TFS corvettes, ConcInd schooners, Starlight Inc. dreadnoughts and, every thirty seconds, one gallivanting Briza Astroballistic.
A familiar sound chimes from every speaker available in the traffic tower. Yet another vessel arrived through the system's Warp Gate and was rapidly approaching Platform A.
More vessels, in this case, only meant more hold-up. Until this Briza calmed down and answered for its behavior, the queue of obedient paying customers would only continue to grow.
“Superior?” Idne keeps his microphonic transceiver implant fully retracted, so as to better squawk at Hjeg from his post near the incoming terminal. “Newest craft's a Hesko Planetary 7762 Destroyer Medium, The Loose Cannon and–”
“Superior?” repeats Wute. The tiny retina display that hovers before his left eye currently broadcasts the same bizarre transmission broadcast across each of the four monitors at his communications hub. “Briza finally answered a hail,” Wute explains as Hjeg waddles closer for inspection, “and tagged back this transmission.”
A white symbol fizzles against gray-and-black snow static – a Powosi's distinct three-eyed skull, two brandished pistols, eerie silence broken by spasmodic snatches of distorted sea shanty. A lifetime resident of Bad Space, Hjeg and all his underlings could recognize a Jolly Roger at thirty paces.
“They can't be–”
Hjeg raises a talon to silence his subordinate. He shuffles several steps forward and grips the observation railing to squint out the planetside bay viewport. Quite without warning, the IZ36 Briza Light Freighter suddenly ceases smoking, dramatically re-aligns both boosters and sets a surprising new course to strafe the traffic tower. Before Hjeg or any of his technicians can squawk a command, a warning or even a reaction, the Briza's topturret sparks to life and spews a barrage of brilliant green directly at Platform A.
The traffic tower and all its o
ccupants reel from a pair of impacts. The unexpected cannonade connects with the station's ray shields first. The control tower shudders and shakes as the freighter, a yellowish blur past the starboard viewport, pulls a full-speed flyby.
Superior Hjeg scrambles to the opposite observation railing, shouting more orders to his tech team below. He's preempted by more alarming shouts and shouting alarms.
“Damage to the primary shield projector, Superior,” reports Xusl as she struggles to make her voice heard over the squealing klaxons. “Ray shields dropping from 23%!”
Wholly unprepared for a frontal assault this effective, Superior Hjeg shrieks down at his underlings. “Activate aux–”
His order, however, is interrupted by a second torrent of streaking laserfire from the Briza's topturret. The weakening ray shields are suddenly pounded through and ditrogen connects explosively on the surface of the platform.
Once he's recovered his footing, Hjeg overhears Xusl cry “Auxiliary projector's gone!” and confirms the fact on every available monitor. The Superior tightens his talons on the observation railing as he watches the Briza, doubtlessly some enterprising brigand, motor away from the temporarily defenseless platform.
In seconds, she'd pass directly into range of the row of defensive batteries.
“Activate autoturrets,” Superior Hjeg commands, replete with certain knowledge.
However skilled they might be at mimicking the unpredictable flight of a ship in distress, no pilot could possibly avoid a point blank barrage from a full suite of Kiesha Laser Corp's automated defensive batteries. Moments from now, the Briza would be reduced to a mere cloud of shrapnel. Tech Superior Chevo would no doubt reward Hjeg for his quick thinking and decisiveness. Kiesha Shipyards would survive, nearly unscathed, its first direct act of piracy in nearly two years – practically a record for Bad Space.
All of this accomplished without hide nor hair of those meddling Trijan subcontracts buoying about like hired thugs. Kiesha Laser Corp, let it be known, was perfectly capable of vouchsafing her own interests.
The escaping Briza crosses the threshold. Immediately, Kiesha's quadroturrets unleash their blue crosshatch of return fire. Slick maneuvering on the part of the pirate pilot avoids a third of the bolts. The surprisingly sturdy ray shield shrugs off another third. Tragically, the remaining third of the opening salvo never leaves the barrels of their turrets.
One of the queued starships colluding with the Briza, a pair of planted pirates, was conceivable. Indeed, a single freighter, working alone, presented nothing but a laughable distraction to the Shipyards as a whole. Two marauders, then, working in concert, could perhaps provide more peril to Kiesha and her customers.
Superior Hjeg's words fail him utterly, then, when all three of the vessels waiting in queue mobilize to the Briza's cause, converging on Platform A en masse with weapons alight.
The first ambusher is a Terro Fleet Systems Onslaught-Class heavy-hitter and she immediately broadsides. She swings about to present a full compliment of shielded turrets and snarling countenances against the station's quadroturrets and she demolishes a third of them in the process.
The second ambusher, the Xendo model remix that profoundly redefines the term “ugly,” unexpectedly vomits out a pestilential cloud of irritated starfighters. In squadron-less swarms they swoop, shoot and strafe about the station.
The third ambusher, the newly-arrived Hesko Planetary destroyer, targets every customer's vehicle, arrayed across the parking pad that they can with twin torrents of sparking white disabler fire. Each spacecraft struck goes suddenly limp and lifeless with internal system failure.
The original ambusher, that ballsy Briza Light Freighter who seemingly brought all this bedlam to Kiesha's doorstep, buzzes the traffic tower a second time. Superior Hjeg involuntarily half-ducks as he watches the Briza's booster flare retreat away towards Platform B, its topturret already potshotting towards a certain ray shield projector.
Superior Hjeg finds a moment's worth of quiet serenity to simply watch the unfolding chaos all around him. All the klaxons form some strange, clamant orchestra, sounding all at once. His terrified control crew compliment this music, with their shrill shrieks of “intruders detected” and “communications offline” and “collision imminent.”
Laserfire pummels the platform. Explosions flare up at the edges of his vision. Civilian craft are browbeaten into scraping crash landings under waves of disabler fire. The entire airspace thrums thickly with enemy starfighters.
One of these starfighters in particular, a constant amid the chaos and confusion roiling in every direction, catches the attention of Hjeg and his lackeys, mainly for its unwillingness to swerve and avoid the top of the traffic tower.
Technicians point, caw and bumble from their chairs in their haste to evacuate. The Xendo divebomber is unwavering, gradually becoming clearer and clearer through the massive viewport.
Superior Hjeg stands his ground, clutching the observation railing ever tighter.
In seconds, the starfighter will shred through the viewport and convert every inch of its forward momentum into enough firepower to crumble the entire tower. Hjeg is forced to wonder, in the heartbeat before destruction, who could possibly be responsible for all this.
Which four bloomholes amongst all of Bad Space's braggarts, possess the sheer, unimpeachable balls to provoke the limitless commercial and military might of both Valladian Shipping and the breadth of the Endless Imperium itself?
Odisseus stifles a yawn. One of the chief advantages to employing Abraham Bonaventure, warp navigation exemplar, was that one could consistently rely on reaching one's destination that much faster than anyone else. This seemed like a worthwhile investment but, in logistical matters, it usually meant arriving with three extra hours to kill before every agreed-upon meeting time.
The strike against and subsequent sacking of Kiesha Shipyards was such a whirlwind success, there'd been scarcely little actual repair The Unconstant Lover required. Odisseus, of course, had performed what superficial maintenance there was to perform – some minor re-wiring, popping a few loosed hull plates back into shape and securing the smoking diffusion cable that'd proved so vital during the initial deception above Kiesha.
Following this, the bored mechanic was eventually forced to join his companions inside the wreck to await the arrival of their corsair confederates.
The crash's central cavern, certainly once a large percentage of the cruiser's cargo hold, could easily accommodate three Lovers, parked end to end, within its capacious walls. For now, of course, wreckage is the chamber's primary occupant.
Scads of random teltriton are contorted into unearthly shapes. Coolant-damaged capacitors are strewn across the purple sand like poorly-irrigated seeds. A few practically unscathed derelicts of ancient fighter-craft lie belly up, presumably trapped in the deployment hangar when this colossus of a capital ship arrived at its final, earthbound destination.
Since their initial arrival on Talos II weeks previously, Odisseus had appointed it his inward and personal duty to properly identify the make, model and potential cause of crash for this eroded behemoth. The combination of the craft's indisputable antiquity and the expansive and all-encompassing damage both time and crash had dealt it were conspiring to make this practically impossible. Hours devoted to aimless meanderings through the rubble had only resulted in sore hind paws and a growing appreciation for the supreme sprawl of the crash site.
Sunlight lattices the sandy ground through myriad cracks in the chamber's firmament. A solitary gorjo gecko, master of this domain, skitters about, flaring its frill territorially at these new arrivals – the collection of strongboxes consolidated on the center of the chamber and the quintet of gargantuan intruders responsible for them. The crew of The Unconstant Lover, boredom nearly overtaken them all, awaits the incipient arrival of their first confederate, Captain Greatgullet, from the overheard sound of his RepulsoBrand ZC3 driftjets firing.
Odisseus and Two-Bit lean, in
a mock-casual fashion, on either side of a junk heap. The Ortok fiddles with the connection head to the diffusion cable he'd been fiddling with since landing. The jabberhead leafs through a well-thumbed, secondhand phrasebook Moira had loaned him: 300+ Ortoki Phrases and Idioms For The Confused.
Moira squats precariously atop said junk heap while Abraham, fussing with his temperamental calabash, stands some distance behind, all three of their working eyes pointed unerringly towards the entrance they expect Greatgullet to emerge from. With arms outstretched and seesawing gait, Nemo stomps from strongbox to strongbox, like a child navigating a babbling brook, stepping stone at a time.
An encroaching clamor of footsteps, weapons clinking and conversational chatter crescendos with Greatgullet's approach.
“Boss!” guffaws Greatgullet, immediately chased by a handful more hair-trigger guffaws. The Obax buccaneer, flanked by Boogers and Teeth, followed by a crowd of criminals, absolutely clogs one of the hull breaches broad enough to approximate an entrance. The act of throwing both his arms wide jumbles Greatgullet's collection of bounty hunter's licenses and invites Nemo to walk willingly into his own spine's snapping in one magnificent gesture.
Nemo skips off the lid of the strongbox he currently stands upon. He lands with a splash of sand and returns Greatgullet's gesture as the Obax closes the gap. “Gull,” he addresses with a brotherly air.
When they do collide, Odisseus half-suspects that Nemo will be fully swallowed by Greatgullet's barn door bear hug and vanish completely. Of course, the black mop of hair and the leathern tails of his aviator's duster remain unvanished. When they separate, Greatgullet once agains laughs fully in the Captain's face and gives his shoulders one vigorous shake. “Tell ya what we need here, boss.”
“What's that?”
“More fucking boarders,” Greatgullet confesses, “is what we need here, boss.”
Galactic Menace Page 22
