Galactic Menace

by Timothy J Meyer

  "I..." he stammers, maintaining eye contact with Lefty's barrel rather than Moira herself. "They said, I mean, GalaxCom said..."

  "GalaxCom?" Moira mutters. With a sudden violent jerk, she hoists Dimick harshly onto his feet with a balled fist around his shirt front, showing his frightened face to all the onlookers. "This blowbag familiar to anyone? He serving on anybody's crew?"

  Mass murmuring breaks out amongst the mass murderers, each one looking to each other dumbfoundedly while Moira browses every expression for any sign of recognition. None is volunteered, however, after a significant pause and Moira's forced to hurl her captive back down onto the table.

  "Speak up, you," hisses a familiar voice, some distance into the crowd.

  "I recognize him," quails a second familiar voice from the same direction and approaching with immediate speed. As though disgorging a parasite, the encircling crowd spews forth a pair of figures, one following another.

  The first figure is an unfamiliar Szarzaar – dressed in the nondescript pirate's attire of shiftless overcoat, broad gunbelt and faded bandana – clasped firmly by the short fur by the second figure, a few paces behind. That second figure, a buxom, blonde bombshell who could be only Gertie Gundeck, wheels the Szarzaar unforgivingly about like an abusive pet owner with a four inch leash.

  Moira's barely time to frown at the arrival of her arch nemesis before Gertie's thrust the Szarzaar forward, as though in some ambiguous manner of offering. "You remember Dranab, I trust?" she sasses in the general direction of anyone present who'd spare her some eye contact.

  Moira snorts in recognition. Dranab's voice clicks satisfying into place inside Moira's memory: a certain hack Szarzaar criminologist, former host of a particular holovision reality program and conspicuous absentee from Nemo's terminal encounter with said program's star amid the swirling snows of Baz's northern pole. His professional announcer voice, a sound roughly analogous to chewing gravel, is also conspicuously absent, in favor of this wretched whimpering when he's subjected to Gertie's cruel handling.

  "Hey," realizes Nemo, diehard enough fan of Quuilar Noxix Wants You Dead Or Alive to clean forget the woes of his tragically frayed jacket and approach Gertie's captive.

  "Caught him attemptin' to squeak outta the side entrance, all unnoticed-like," Gertie alleges, nudging her forehead toward the corner where her own crew lately caroused. "Don't fret – my boys're standing 'crost all the other exits, in case these two've got anymore accomplices-in-hiding."

  "How come you weren't with us on Baz?" Nemo interrogates the wincing weaselfolk, genuine hurt and curiosity in his voice. "I looked for you."

  "I, er," Dranab stammers, confusion, fear and pain each interfering with his ability to form complete sentences, "record all my, er, VO, uh, remotely."

  "Oh," Nemo ponders, thoughtfully. "Makes sense."

  Odisseus considerately returns everyone to topic. "Do we have any idea what's actually going on here?"

  "It's not obvious?" questions Moira back towards the Ortok. "I would've thought it was obvious." She addresses the squirming Szarzaar with an extended pistol. "Dranab?"

  He avoids every gaze he can as he answers, in favor of admiring the purplish stains his costume's boots have recently accrued. "We were, er, shooting a new pilot."

  The "we" in question, all were soon to discover, referred not only to the confederates Dranab and Dimick but also to a veritable skooshball team's worth of camera operators and production crew, cunningly smuggled in amongst the debauched rabble.

  With the help of the Magnet's crew, Dranab's film production team were all progressively weeded out and vomited forth. The benumbing total came to not one, not three, but five separate individuals, mostly various humanoid subraces but a token Ouban numbered amongst their cowering ranks as well.

  The unpalatable notion of five undercover camera operators passing this unnoticed amidst a sea of swearing, squabbling brigands rests no easier with Moira than with anyone else among the Freebooter Fleet. That said, she's forced to commend Dranab and his squad of covert underlings on both the undeniable quality of their disguises and the advanced nature of their recording tech. Most of all, she marvels at the sheer idiot stones required to this successfully infiltrate such a bastion of anti-bounty-hunter sentiment with the expressed intention of so publicly collecting a bounty.

  While two of those five uncovered merely stashed audio equipment somewhere on their persons, the remaining two humanoids and one Ouban were outfitted with some manner of high-end bionic eye implant. Named with some extrinsic technical handle even their own operators could barely mumble out under duress, these tiny corders fully capable of capturing top-quality holographic footage with merely a glance and a muttered command.

  Despite all Dranab's assurances they were answerable only to GalaxComm Interstellar Media, Moira thought the entire enterprise stank of Huong Xo a little too sharply for a mere coincidence.

  Before long, the captives have all been corralled, processed out before the Captain's Table and forced to their knees. By then, the cutthroat congregation is absolutely sporting for blood, none more so than Greatgullet. The burly Obax barbarian is virtually chomping the bit in twain at sight of a defenseless bounty hunter.

  "Dimick Decarios Wants You Dead Or Alive?" Nemo idly speculates, perusing the humanoid's ident card.

  While Nemo perfects his drill sergeant's pace with license in hand, Moira is installed far to the Captain's left. Both Lefty and Righty fully extended are deemed more than enough coverage to protect Nemo from further bodily harm. Counterpoint to Moira stands Gertie, leaning as casually as she can against the Captain's Table in a vain pretext to include herself amongst their celebrated ranks and all the closer to catch the Captain's eye with an alluring eye of her own.

  "Dusty Dimick," corrects Dranab shakily, the official spokesperson of the group, "Wants You, er, Dead Or Alive."

  "Ah," Nemo grunts. "Does have more of a ring, I'll admit." With that, he cranks back his wrist and boomerangs the bounty hunting license towards an unawares Greatgullet, smacked in the beards by the sudden projectile. After the Obax sniggers his gratitude, Nemo returns, somewhat theatrically, to the matter at hand. "And I was intended to be vaporized on the first episode of your grand reboot, yeah?"

  A chain reaction of tentative nods is his answer.

  "I'm seriously flattered," Nemo reacts with the genuine honesty of an earnest fan. "Clear something up for me, though. You," he aims a finger toward Dimick, "were gonna do the dirty work, you," the finger flits briefly to the Ouban, "were gonna film it and you," the finger comes to rest on Dranab, "were gonna, what, sweep up my ashes and just toodle-oo the fuck outta here?"

  The absence of any reply transforms Nemo's question into a rhetorical one. "A few plot holes, maybe," he suggests in a nonjudgmental tone, resuming his pacing again. "Far be it from me, though, to spoil your new show." Three steps further along the line, he halts again and half-turns, catching the same terrified Ouban with an inquisitive glance. "Are you rolling?"

  The Ouban, equal parts fear and confusion, shakes his head fervently.

  Frustration plays across Nemo's face. "You don't understand." With a creak of leather, Nemo's freed his bulky pistol from the confines of its holster and aimed it directly at the center of the Ouban's hyperventilating chest. The crowd falls into deathly silence. "Are you rolling?"

  Arriving suddenly upon Nemo's same page, the Ouban blinks the relevant eye significantly, mutters a short phrase and, with a few indicating blips on the surface of his bionic eye, nods his head rapidly. Moira notices that the remaining pair of corder operators wink their own ocular devices into active duty, lest they somehow also earn the Captain's mercurial ire.

  "Good." Nemo shifts the aim of his pistol several inches and clicks the trigger, pumping a canister through the chamber and straight into the unsuspecting heart of Dusty Dimick.

  As any reasonable person would be expected to, all three cameramen, plus Dranab and his audio techs, flinch and stare, w
ide-eyed, at the freshly-minted corpse of their budding holoreality hopeful. This helpfully ensures that his murder receives coverage from three equally dramatic angles.

  A unanimous cheer bursts from a thousand bloodthirsty throats.

  This simple act, the precise sort of solution Moira'd observed her Captain enact dozens and dozens of times previously, seems to immediately electrify the crowd.

  Nemo doesn't foresee this turn of events and is physically taken aback by, as though from a sonic shockwave. He spends a moment recovering and spends several more basking in the adoration these ignorant mongrels seemed so willing to force-feed him. Nemo swaggers up to the edge of the dais with a gait Moira's certain he swiped off Cosmic Vomit's frontman and extends his pistol towards Dranab, to more stamping, clapping approval.

  He stops, of a sudden, when something quite different than simple slaughter seems to strike the Captain, momentarily staying the Szarzaar's execution. There's nearly a collective groan of disappointment as he sheathes the weapon, but face is saved, in fact exalted, when the following suggestion instead issues forth from his cracked smile.

  "Who's up for pirateball?"

  With a weary sigh and an unbroken motion, Moira holsters Righty and Lefty and stalks well-deservedly towards her empty chair at the Captain's Table. She plops down between an equally exhausted Odisseus and a blithely unmoved Two-Bit Switch.

  In the chamber's main well, the teeming throngs already move to scoop up the survivors and transport them to the pit, screaming their approval of Nemo's new idea all the way. The Captain, successfully saved from assassination and still bearing his rockstar comportment, is blindsided by quite a different Captain. Her unexpected approach instills a visible dread in the ungrateful Nemo and a proportional amount of perverse amusement in Moira.

  She's prepared to recline back, enjoy her Gitterswitch and rest comfortably in the knowledge that she, quite demonstrably, has still got it, when a bundle of clinking metal clocks her on the right cheek. Rotating with a venomous slowness to her side, she locks eyes with Two-Bit Switch, twirling a recognizable ring of spaceship keys on his pointer finger.

  Odisseus nearly jumps out of his sweater, blubber and fur. "Moons of Jotor, you scared the bloom outta me."

  "You're still wearing that thing, huh?" Nemo observes dumbly, underscored by the faint and familiar sounds of scraping hand tools against engine components. "You know, one of these days, you're gonna be forced to relinquish that fucking thing. Captain's orders and all."

  "Don't get power hungry on me," Odisseus returns, undertaking the famously uncomfortable wriggle through the two-foot-tall orlop tunnel from access ladder to engine room.

  "Somebody did attempt to assassinate me," the self-important voice of his saltbrother continues to point out.

  "I was in attendance, actually," grunts the Ortok, negotiating his paunch past the passage's least pleasant and most restrictive section.

  With an honest-to-moons popping sound, a panting Odisseus once again emerges from the sadistically short crawlspace that serves as the engine room's exclusive entrance. He's buoyed, however, by the comforting sights of both Port and Starboard, The Unconstant Lover's lovable pet jetboosters, awaiting his return with the indefatigable patience one can only reliably expect from inanimate objects.

  A sight somewhat less buoying for the state of the Ortok's soul, however, is that of a neticgrappler-wielding Nemo, clanging and spattering the tool about within Starboard's propulsion cavity, creating a percussion of hollow thuds and muted sparking.

  "What're you doing?" Odisseus spits, repressed lobes of his bestial brain suddenly enraged by this most unexpected breach of territory.

  "Had a little free time," Nemo replies oddly, contorting his face with effort as he bangs and clatters about the booster's delicate interior. "Thought I'd recalibrate the upshift–"

  With as fluid a mustelid movement as the environs will allow, Odisseus practically gallops on all fours around the engine's side, reaches Nemo's position within a span of six seconds and snatches the neticgrappler from his humanoid hands. “The upshifter does not require recalibrating,” is his only justification.

  “But I wanna go fast,” whines Nemo.

  The Ortoks snaps his fangs dangerously once, scampering his saltbrother a full four feet away from the open booster.

  Sufficiently browbeaten, Nemo merely throws his hands up and waddles aside, to plant his meddling bloomhole casually onto the fold-down technician's seat. He crosses his legs in contentment. "Suit yourself.”

  Halfway through righting whatever internal damage the unsupervised Nemo might've inflicted upon his beloved Starboard, Odisseus gradually withdraws his neck and shoulders from the access hatch and considers his saltbrother down the end of his faintly twitching nose. "What exactly are you doing down here?”

  "Recalibrating the upshifter, I–"

  "What exactly," Odisseus repeats with increased insistence, "are you doing down here?"

  Nemo seems to shrink somewhat in his seat. "Hiding."

  Odisseus twitches his whiskers derisively once, "From your adoring public?"

  His expression holds a degree of unreasonable terror directly at odds with the spoken description of his evident bugbear. "From Gertrude."

  "Down here?" Odisseus presses incredulously. "In the engine room?"

  Nemo's haunted expression doesn't falter. "She could be anywhere. She could be naked."

  Odisseus rolls his eyes, shifts his weight and plunges his torso fully into the hatch's open gap. As he scooches himself left to right until he's satisfactorily jammed inside, he continues to harangue his saltbrother, despite the jointly muffled and reverberated nature of his words from inside the booster. "Forgive me if this is a stupid question," he's careful to stipulate beforehand, "but would that really be so terrible?"

  "Would what," Nemo's voice is cautious, "really be so terrible?"

  Odisseus ceases his puttering to select his words as best he can. "If you two were naked. Together."

  The silence that follows is a profound one.

  "Not to mention," Nemo finally supplies, as though his pervasive silence served as some manner of evidence actually mentioned, "you remember the last asshole who fell for that, don't you?"

  The memory grants Odisseus momentary pause. "Say no more."

  The transition from Good Luck Gertie Guspatch, promising young deadeye and jinx-to-end-all-jinxes, to Gertie Gundeck, Captain of The Dick Magnet and uncatchable scourge of the entire Gitter Hegemony, had blossomed from a juicy piece of pirate pop culture to a cautionary tale all budding buccaneers took to heart.

  Towards the end of her tenure as an unemployable floozy flouncing about Takioro's Second Ring, Gertie somehow managed to convince Rancore, Doreen scuzzbucket and then-captain of a sturdy little IV1 Belladonna-Class, to conscript her services as a lowly tail gunner.

  Gertie being Gertie, however, only six months aboard were required for Captain Rancore, a celebrated hero amongst misogynist pricks, to not just succumb to the girl's brazen charms, but also consent even to marriage. Under Rancore's strictly-observed Dorenese customs, Gertie was immediately skyrocketed to the position of the Magnet's first mate.

  Six hours was the reputed turnover rate from wedding to execution, as Gertie tossed Rancore from the nearest available airlock, repaint the “CH” on Chick Magnet with a doublewide “D” and declare herself Captain as Rancore's rightful successor.

  In one swift and brutally simple move, Gertie Gundeck, Captain of The Dick Magnet and uncatchable scourge of the entire Gitter Hegemony, communicated to the galaxy at large that she was cunning, ruthless and unwilling to play fair by an order of magnitude more than most pirates.

  For, as effective as her coup d'etat may have been, it fell neatly into the category of mutiny, a relic from Abraham's "days of yore" and one of the few taboo transgressions among what remained of a pirate fraternity in Bad Space. As a result, everyone from cantankerous old traditionalists like Abraham and equally treacherous Spith
s-in-the-grass like Vobash regarded Gertie with the same degree of distrust and alienation, as though mutiny was somehow contagious.

  In Nemo's case, however, it was understandably difficult to divorce oneself from images of Captain Rancore, sexist pig or not, floating, bulged-eyed and death-bloated, through the Outer Ring, whenever Gertie's inexplicable lust for him reared its unwelcome head.

  Inside Starboard, the upshifter's only been loosened a marginal amount and it's not a difficult task calibrating the setting back into more reasonable levels. Several more moments of tweaking does the trick and the Ortok's relieved to yank his upper body clean from the jetbooster's cramped interior. Switching the neticgrappler into safety mode, he glances aside and catches sight of his saltbrother, sitting listlessly on the engineer's seat and picking absently at some loose fiber from one of its dangling belts.

  "How're your marbles?" he poses tentatively, waggling his paw at the level of his own temple.

  "Hm?" grunts Nemo distractedly.

  The spaces were few and far between where Nemo and Odisseus could comfortably converse, with his duties as unofficial leader of the Freebooter Fleet occupying nearly every one of the Captain's spare seconds. As illogical a holiday into the engine room as Nemo's might have been, it could still afford a brief discussion between the two saltsiblings, free from the posing, planning and posturing of life amongst the pirates.

  "With all this, I mean," Odisseus nudges his muzzle upward, as though that would indicate the surface world, technically below them. "Hired assassins. Pirate politics. Personal armies." He huffs in realization of their situation with each one. "If we weren't ready for Boss Ott, how could we possibly be ready for this?"

  Nemo emerges from his reverie at the earnest question and, true to form, his rebuttal prominently features a growing, self-satisfied smirk. "Thing is, though, Boss Ott's gone and somehow we're not."

  "So, what, the intention is dash forward into something worse until we are?"