Galactic Menace

by Timothy J Meyer

  A whipsaber reprisal is only moments behind, accompanied by the Captain's continued humming. Moira can only just bring her unignited baton to bear on a parry before the Trijan's ropey and primary weapon encircles and returns the favor to Moira's upraised baton, clattering it across the cleared space with a few dramatic thuds.

  Reduced to a single implement each, gripped in one right hand and one left hand, the two combatants regard each other with a certain steel. Moira's pleased to spot the first indication of a sweat trail, beading on Charybdis' face.

  "Which," she continues, branching out with her whipsaber's far superior reach, "considering-these-were-the-same-immovable-motherbloomers-who–"

  Moira bobs and weaves between outreaches of the whipsaber's unfriendly lash, sparking her second electrobaton alive as she does so.

  "–when-they-discovered-their-white-dwarf-was-dying, constructed-an-elaborate-system-of-mirrors-to-focus-the-sun's-rays–"

  A millisecond slower than she should have been, Moira feels the dreaded twinge of the whipsaber wrapping about her ankle.

  "–rather-than-simply-relocate, I'm-not-sure why I was so–"

  Thus entangled, an eye blink away from being swept off her feet and losing round seven, Moira parodies Charybdis' oft-overheard mantra of three hummed notes. Like a charm, the whipsaber transforms from whip into saber.

  The weapon twangs away, suddenly quite incapable of wrapping around anyone's ankles and Charybdis dropping the thing like a live snake from the sheer surprise. Before she's any time to react, Moira's presented the sparking and hissing end of the electrobaton a few heated inches from the tip of the Trijan's nose.

  "–fucking-surprised," completes a confounded Charybdis.

  The referee, meanwhile, calls a foul.

  Two-Bit Switch kicks off the adjacent wall and dawdles three steps into the center of the street. The smoking cigarette he clutches between pointer and middle finger scorches the scent of imported Psabese tobacco and latent lung cancer into his nostrils. "You know," he preambles, affecting his most convincing casual air, "whenever I'm hanking for a quitty bifter that's right peachy for a tragged-out bruno like meself is, there ain't no brand of bifter I'd rather get me wanks on than–"

  He stops speaking suddenly in favor of squinting obliquely forward, expression of abject disgust crinkling his features. The disembodied voice waits an unusually long time before addressing him.

  “Do we have a problem?”

  “I'll jabb you what the crunch is, shall I?” Two-Bit gestures forward agitatedly, at the scrolling text he's been instructed to read as convincingly as he can. “The fucking vannaphant in the room. I mean, mate, I don't who you scored to scribble that shit for you, but no one, 'specially no jabberhead, would ever jabb anything like that.”

  "And that's cut. Back to one."

  The director is an unreasonably frustrated Powosi who volcanos out of his pretentious driftchair, presumably to pace frustratedly about until somebody improves his mood with chocochino and flattery. The remainder of his crew, given license to move, bustle about the set, adjusting lighting, fiddling with the holocorders and pointing importantly in various directions.

  The handful of Yellowtooth executives, meanwhile – a pack of runty Ruuvians clustered together like feeding lonktonk – chirp and chitter at each other. To judge from their gestures, their topic of conversation seems to range between Two-Bit and the tantrumed director, stomping about the catering table. Standing amid a small crowd of extras, each one plodding back toward their starting places, Two-Bit shrugs massively a second time. “What? Am I wrong here?”

  The amount of corporate strong-arming needed to close down this particularly windy street in Pirateton's Lover district could easily triple Two-Bit's initial fee. The advertising head honchos at Yellowtooth Cigarettes accomplished this feat mainly with both generous bribes and empty promises of interstellar holovision fame to the captains whose spaceships lined either side of the street. These same bribes and promises were offered to the suite of well-paid thuggery standing sentry at each available entrance, preventing the ingress of exuberant or gawking yahoos.

  Couple onto these expenses an uncooperative celebrity shiller, a temperamental director and the undeniable fact that, for non-natives, Pirateton is a notoriously dangerous place to spend a morning, even at the behest and protection of a major corporation.

  This, Two-Bit realizes, may be what's putting Yellowtooth's commercial crew and their flock of supervising bigwigs so on edge.

  Contrasting them against the decrepit, low-tech sprawl of the constituent crappy spaceships of Nemo's district, they certainly appear out of place – even those costumed to resemble passing freebooters.

  A palisade of recording equipment that half-encircles Two-Bit all brandishes the prefix "holo" like some badge of technological honor – holocorders, holoprompters, holoplayback. Floating microphones, given driftmotors by lazy boom operators, hover and bob just beyond the corder's sightline, eager to catch every sniff, scratch and shuffling step Two-Bit makes with incredible diligence.

  Beyond the barricade of lenses, cables and white balance screens, Two-Bit can spot, like a distant promise land, the catering table. Tragically, Two-Bit's separated from the outlaid bounty of wholly unhealthy junk food until this tedious ordeal of ego-massage and product pimping is concluded to everyone's satisfaction.

  The makeup artist, this long-suffering Corgassi strapped with bottles of foundation, blush and an infinite supply of tiny sponges, pads out towards Two-Bit, her accoutrements and headfins jangling.

  As she wordlessly and painstaking reapplies another coat of foundation that ten seconds of blown Talosian sand has evidently ruined, Two-Bit glances to the cigarette, smoldering unsmoked between his fingers. "You wanna puff, love?"

  The Corgassi's brain, visible through the transparent cartilage of her head, pulses once in response. "You've heard their slogan, right?"

  Some years previously, Yellowtooth Cigarettes was slapped with a vicious, high-profile lawsuit. One concerned Inner Sector parent's organization or another supposedly lobbied to force the corporation into adopting a new slogan, particularly if they were to continue advertising to children and continue leading the galaxy in the field of terminal lung cancer. Reasonable as that may sound, the cigarettes in question were so obscenely poisonous to their customers, so loaded with toxins, nicotine and undiluted garbage, that no warning label short of “Don't smoke them. You'll die” could adequately satisfy the plaintiffs.

  Despite a legal department more fearsome than most of the freebooter captains within Two-Bit's line of sight, the packet of Yellowtooth Blacks he holds bears a legally-mandated advertising slogan, emblazoned across the bottom of the package in broad unabashed letters.

  “Don't smoke them. You'll die.”

  “Fair enough,” Two-Bit grunts, returning the carton to his pocket.

  Nowhere near the chain smoker that bad-mood Moira was, Two-Bit Switch had, at best, a tenuous relationship with Yellowtooth and their virulent merchandise. Recently, however, this relationship had been made rather less tenuous.

  Following the declaration of a new Galactic Menace, a veritable flood of sponsorship options materialized for each of five members of The Unconstant Lover's crew. Yellowtooth's tobacconist barons offered Two-Bit a uniquely staggering amount of cash to become the official centerpiece of their latest advertising campaign – Outlaw Slims, a cigarette marketed exclusively to the Bad Space criminal element and the Freebooter Fleet's growing fandom.

  None of this, of course, is meant to imply that Two-Bit Switch turned down the complimentary offers from Bubble, Pickle Planet, CryoChew Extinct Jerky or the Happy Yum-Yum Conglomerate. He gladly accepted their money too, all the more grist for the mill of his eventual caper-to-end-all-capers.

  Yellowtooth were simply the fastest to shuttle out a commercial crew.

  With one notable exception, Two-Bit was quite frankly the only member of the crew to accept any of these offers of sponsorship.
Odisseus balked at the very notion. Abraham's old school anarchic impulses prohibited him from signing any deals with anyone that could be remotely classified as "the man."

  Alone among all offers from various arms merchants, the Accuracy Company signed a small contract, allowing them to market the 665 Lawman as "the official firearm of Moira Quicksilver."

  To a company, all the advertisers seemed to universally comprehend that the Lover's lieutenants, in terms of celebrity endorsement, represent piddly peanuts. The true cash, the true paydirt, would, of course, come from securing a certain Galactic Menace to spout platitudes about their product.

  Shortly after his self-appointment to the positions of the Captain's de facto agent, manager and publicist, Two-Bit Switch quickly saw the mistake in pestering Nemo with these requests. Freshly flushed with fame and victory, asking this Galactic Menace to appear on interstellar holovision, on behalf of some monolithic corporate entity, was literally asking for disaster.

  Besides, was it not Two-Bit Switch, the crew's official frontman, with all the charm, panache and devilish good looks?

  He hadn't predicted mucking about with makeup artists, holoprompters spewing pseudo-Jabber buhoxshit or the sheer number of monotonous takes. If he had, Two-Bit Switch may not, considering the six more commercials he was slotted to shoot for as many companies, have elected to hog all the limelight for his lonesome.

  Even the degree toward which they'd fabricated this particular Pirateton thoroughfare discovers new and exciting ways to irk Two-Bit. This alleyway, formed by the afterburners and fuselages of such parked pirate notables as The Bare Bones, The Kid Gloves and The Shell Shock, was a laughably whitewashed version of its former self. Crowding about the commercial set like stink on a wet Ortok, these Ruuvian execs bleached the street into what they reckoned was a galactically-accepted version of Pirateton its pablum-brained demographics could more easily digest.

  Gone here is the ratty, upended and discarded furniture that once crenellated the sidewalks, a byproduct of all the looting and remodeling that came with the acquisition of newer and nicer things. Gone here is the undergrowth of trash – ragged wrappers, rotten food, rotten corpses – produced by a thousand polluters and no civil services, swept conveniently aside for the holocorders to better catch the color of Talos II's trademark purple sand. Gone here is the sprinkling of drunken derelicts, replaced by imported and underpaid semi-professional actors, cleverly costumed to lie disconsolate in gutters and nurse gunky bottles of artificially-colored soda.

  "Switch," quips the too-familiar director, squirming between elaborate equipment to approach Two-Bit all the faster. “Gimme your ear a second.”

  At ten paces, Two-Bit clocked this Gvish as a spineless egotist, with all the buccaneer's bravado and none of his backbone. A pornographer come corporate lapdog in three-eyed sunglasses, an acid-washed lounge singer's jacket and a sweat-sodden mustache, this Gvish was accustomed to manhandling naked Phnuki prima donnas and six-tentacled starlets with promises they'll never work again in this quadrant.

  This tactic, he doesn't seem to appreciate, is somewhat less effective against the sentient with the firmest grip, however shaky, on the Galactic Menace's leash.

  Two-Bit doesn't dignify the director's command with a reply, only shifts his feet in response to the oncoming Powosi, watching his own stymied reflection grow in each of the approaching sunglasses three lenses.

  "The words aren't mine," is his primary argument. "You understand? They aren't yours, they aren't mine, they're," he points a dirty fingernail across the set to isolate the bevvy of sore thumb Ruuvians, chatting ever so conspiratorially, "theirs."

  He brackets a heart-sized box before his own sternum, as though to encapsulate the entire situation and its simplicity between his two hands. "Nobody's here to tell you how you talk. Nobody except them. So, how's about," he proposes in a compromising air, "we start again and we just muscle through the buhoxshit. You say their words, this asshole," he indicates an individual extra, a tarted-up greenskin, among the collection of cookie-cutthroats they've assembled to populate the background, "bums a smoke offa you, you say the catchphrase. You dig?"

  By way of response, Two-Bit Switch brushes past the Powosi and locks eyes with his hated foe – the holoprompter. "How's about this, eh?" he discovers himself muttering thinly. "How's about this?"

  With a violent jerking motion upon one of the seemingly relevant cables, Two-Bit Switch banishes the accursed holographic text roll into nothing and turns about, daring Gvish to comment further. "We start again, right," he explains when nothing but shifty glances from production assistants follow his rash action, "but without the fucking wordbox, yeah?"

  "Switch," Gvish repeats, as though the usage of his sobriquet's last syllable somehow endears them, "you gotta understand, my hands're tied here–"

  "Gimme one, then, eh? Gimme one where I jabb what I want."

  When the Ruuvians only bristle and bluster at the mere suggestion, the put-upon Powosi sighs and extends a single lonely finger. "One," he repeats and stalks away, issuing orders to camera operators and lightning techs.

  An additional five minutes, including a collective executive conniption and subsequent open-palmed pacification by Gvish, is required before the crew's quite ready to grind out another, this their however manyth consecutive, take. While being assaulted by successive waves of the Corgassi's sponge, Two-Bit's careful not to psyche his words out too much and keep his conscious mind as clear as he can.

  "Oi!" Two-Bit barks towards the running holocorders once the take's begun. As he wings it, anxiety is painfully evident on the score some faces beyond the set's unofficial line of demarkation. "You berks know me. I'm Two-Bit Switch, ain't I? It's me in that holo you wank off to every night before your mum snugs you in.”

  In accordance with his blocking, he shoves off, sauntering forward to land on his mark. "And I'm here to jabb you that Yellowtooth Cigarettes, this fucker here," he raises the obvious prop pinched between his knuckles, "is the best blooming bifter in the Ring."

  He pauses an appropriate number of seconds. "Why? Good ringer.” He points weightily past camera towards the huddle of enraptured Ruuvians. “'cause these shitstains here scored me the big rhino to jabb you so.”

  “Hey there, Switch,” refrains the greenskin dayplayer, sidling seductively up on his left side, entirely unfazed by this off-the-books-take, “any chance of you bumming me one of them Yellowtooths?”

  In a burst of sudden improvisational instinct, Two-Bit's cigarette makes a short journey straight into the emerald dimple of the extra's big phony smile.

  Howling in shock and obvious agony, the dayplayer crumbles into a costumed heap on the ground, cussing up a sandstorm. Panicking crewmen leap from behind the invisible barricade encircling the holocorder to scramble to her assistance.

  Two-Bit Switch considers the thrashing lump on the ground, the stub of his somewhat flattened cigarette still idly issuing smoke. "Bloom no!" he balks towards her, as though she still listens, before placing the cigarette cooly between his lips and making eye contact, once again, with the holocorder. "These're mine."

  No sooner has he taken a drag than he's pulled his face away in disgust. “These're fucking awful,” he announces.

  Once cut is called, once the the remainder of the crew hampered by the more cumbersome instruments come rushing to the greenskin's aid, Two-Bit Switch's able to enjoy his brisk jaunt through the depopulated commercial set. With an unsatisfied grimace, he flicks the crooked cigarette in the general direction of the shellshocked executives.

  The sounds of chaos and outrage behind him, Two-Bit arrives, with hand-rubbing anticipation, before the outspread bounty of the craft services table.

  Chapter 22

  Odisseus doesn't understand what, exactly, is so complicated about all this.

  In layman's terms, he could not be expected to re-route a stabilizing conduit completely around both coolant control and the arrhythmic flucuator without experiencing even a ma
rginal decline in output strength. Neither his current inventory of supplies or his proscribed time frame took into account how much internal space the driftmotor complex somebody'd insisted he install actually occupied. Of course, this said nothing about the outright number of other conduits – projection, energy maintenance, that accursed locator beacon – that needed to be negotiated. This also all assumed the interlocking nozzle on the stabilizing conduit in question remained clasped to its mated port with the necessary amount of vacuum to prevent any leakage.

  Which part of this, Odisseus wonders, is Two-Bit having trouble understanding?

  "I ord ya, mate," he sympathizes halfheartedly, box of junk clanging and jangling with each step. He's only taken three steps off the boarding ramp and onto the hold floor before he's fumbled something. A morsel of metal, whose indicator lights betray its function as a console component, tumbles and thuds to the teltriton, with the telltale crunch of broken glass.

  Two-Bit peers over the brim of his box and cringes over the corpse at his feet. Without sacrificing his hold on the box's four corners, he cannot reach to retrieve it. "Whoops," he offers instead, hardly an apology, before he pads forward all the same.

  Barring the spread of Odisseus' workstation, The Unconstant Lover's cargo hold was comparatively empty. On sound and smell alone, however, one could easily be forgiven for imagining the place packed past capacity by a bazaar's worth of barbecue buhox, disharmonious buskers and impassioned argument between shopper and shopkeeper. All this hustle and bustle was thanks to the Briza's boarding ramp opening onto a sprightly Pirateton evening.

  At the center of the impromptu workstation, atop three substitute struts Odisseus fashioned from the handiest three steerage crates, proudly stands the crowbar. All its innards are arranged in a slaughterous spread about its in-progress husk.

  After hours spent hunkered, rearing to his full Ortoki height allows Odisseus to stretch his sore spine and receive the approaching Two-Bit's gift of mechanical goodies. From this position he also can more fully appreciate the mechanism he's been laboring at. The progressive product of a weekend's worth of work, the crowbar is practically, counting the steerage crate's boost, high enough to meet his eye level and easily four time his weight.