Galactic Menace

by Timothy J Meyer

  A forkdrift, he suddenly acknowledges, may be in eventual order.

  Two-Bit jiggles the box to more metallic rustling. "Brought what you hanked. Plus," he adds, in answer to the Ortok's scowling about the obvious surplus he presents him, "some other flaster I bumped."

  Rather than taking the proffered package for himself, Odisseus makes a few perfunctory sniffs towards its contents, preparing to rifle about inside. "And the audioceiver's in here?"

  The proper noun is clearly what gives him the most visible trouble but the context can evidently clue him in enough to make an "Er, should be, yeah," come out of him instead.

  Odisseus dips an oily paw experimentally into the bin of broken and abused absurdities that Two-Bit's collected across the face of Pirateton. He spies hydrosensors, glow gauges, even one booster belt and half its requisite housing. Meanwhile, the jabberhead's eyes settle on the curmudgeonly crowbar and her persistent refusal to be assembled from scrambled parts and castoff trash.

  "Bloom me sideways," he mutters, almost reverentially. "I never actually vizzed one before, in the meat."

  "Me either," grunts Odisseus.

  Misunderstanding isn't the cause of Two-Bit's hesitation. "You've never prod one before?" His attention riveted to the open box, the Ortok shrugs sweatered shoulders. "Is it supposed to vizz like that?" predicates Two-Bit further on these grounds. Shuffling through shock absorbers, Odisseus sequels his previous shrug and discovers, crammed forlornly in the box's far corner, the object of his search and Two-Bit's not-yet-completed errand. "Oh, er, I guess I specced it would be more–"

  "This is a condensed audioceiver," appraises Odisseus after wrestling the device free and suspending it in a displeased pinch between two claws.

  "Er, yes," stammers Two-Bit.

  "I need a dynamic audioceiver," states Odisseus without judgment.

  From his expression, both "condensed" and "dynamic" are words far outside Two-Bit's adolescent Ortoki vocabulary. In response, he considers the box's contents, as though it could offer up the translation at any moment. "'fraid I don't follow you, mate."

  Typically found within an average ship's speaker or subwoofer, a dynamic audioceiver was among several centerpieces to the overall success of Odisseus' constructing of the crowbar.

  An esoteric piece of outlaw tech considered vaguely legendary to most, Odisseus had been commissioned, by the magnanimous management of the Freebooter Fleet, to construct one toward the upcoming sack of Ikoril Federate Station. His first such sack since being named to the position of Galactic Menace, Odisseus' saltbrother was understandably eager to ensure the feat was sufficiently breathtaking and imagined then that a crowbar would be precisely what the doctor ordered to do so.

  A scrappy coalition of ace mechanics were promised him by each of the five reigning Captains. Instead, Odisseus opted to endeavor the task alone, his palette lately fatigued from the “pirate” flavoring each mechanic the Fleet offered stank of.

  The adopted orphan to Takioro's wicked stepsister, Ikoril Federate Station is capped with the same crown of Docking Ports the Defederate Station is. Capital-class airlocks that enclose fully around any docking spacecraft, the once singular system was partially responsible for keeping Takioro so impregnable all these years. Her virtuous cousin, then, could potentially prove equally as effective at repelling all the Freebooter's advances against her, unless these Docking Ports were somehow cracked.

  The linchpin in the pirate's plan, then, hinges solely on the effectiveness of Odisseus' home-cooked crowbar, a device designed specifically to pop airlocks.

  Odisseus wouldn't feign any expertise in resonant harmonics, not to the Council of Captains, not even to himself. Rumors about the crowbar sloshed back and forth across Bad Space like trapped seawater. Apparently, with the proper parts, the proper configuration and the proper amount of elbow grease, a crowbar could, when activated, unlatch, uncouple or even crumple particular species of airlocks.

  A fetishistic fantasy of Greatgullet's, the perennial boarder that he was, the crowbar appeared to be less the golden ticket the Freebooters hoped and more a diving bell of remotely-operated wiring, speaker systems and internalized power generation.

  Odisseus only hoped all his efforts wouldn't ultimately result in a doleful pile of soldered-together buhoxshit.

  "Tell you what," is the slack Odisseus cuts for his accommodating ally, so willing, if somewhat belatedly, to broaden his horizons with some bilingualism. "You hear that?" His conversational pause creates the ideal opening to hear a scratchy busker solo from outside, vocal chords voluminous enough to identify a Sayashan at three hundred paces. "Break her nose, swipe her microphone, do her a favor."

  These instructions more easily understood, Two-Bit Switch, consummate scumbag, betrays his corrupt colors at the prospect of a peaceful evening's mugging. Entrusting the treasure trove of dysfunctional detritus he holds to the Ortok's capable paws, Two-Bit swaggers back from whence he came with newfound purpose and perdition.

  No sooner has Two-Bit decamped down the ramp than Odisseus has screeched the Lover's trash duct open, shoved the cardboard box into the ovular chute and dumped the entire sampling of salvage onto the sand below.

  Moira Quicksilver could smell an ambush with her nose cut off.

  She was a professional bushwhacker, once on bounty-heads, now on merchant vessels, and her predatory intuitions were whetted to such an acute point, they practically were sharp enough to perform the metaphorical rhinectomy themselves. Plummeting through Ikoril Federate Station's central spire, amid the anodyne muzak and impeccable whiteness within one of its roomy lift chambers, Moira's sixth sense, her stalker's sense, goes berserk.

  Its vestigial tinglings first came days ago. Two-Bit's preliminary intelligence seemed to indicate that, with eerily efficient synchronicity, all Valladia-associated ship traffic to, from and within a staggering vicinity of Ikoril Federate Station had abruptly stopped. When one considers how few points along the Shipping Line remain unpillaged, it wasn't an altogether unforeseeable turn of events. The anxious mystery of where next the frivolous Freebooter Fleet would attack was becoming a smaller and smaller inhibiter to Valladia's thus far fruitless attempts to defend its holdings.

  Her suspicions were further confirmed when they dropped warp within spitting distance of Ikoril's faintly familiar frame. The Unconstant Lover and all her pirate host were confronted with an airspace starkly abandoned – no mobile merchants, no privateer protection, no operative spacecraft within zottibles. Without delay, weekend warrior Odisseus' crowbar was deployed, its function flawlessly successful. The first wave of boarders – Eyesore, Rule and Lover – came to berth through Docking Ports with yawning portals where their hermetically-sealed airlocks once belonged.

  Moira's misgivings were all the more amplified upon the discovery of an equally-abandoned First Ring.

  Architecturally Takioro's twin, philosophically Takioro's evil twin, Ikoril could be presumed to possess some measure more decorum and some measure less depravity. Whereas Takioro's First Ring is comparatively the most civilized – a sweaty chopshop where spaceships come to be cannibalized, commandeered and complimented with all manner of illegal weaponry and systems – Ikoril's counterpart thereof shouldn't simply be an empty parking garage.

  Not only do no shock troopers descend to prevent the pirate's initial invasion of Ikoril, no souls of any stripe – pedestrian, technician or administration – are in evidence. Their whole hairy horde hustled down unused arteries and abdicated Docking Ports.

  Now, they were four skeptical sentients, riding the lift down the central spire's main chute, slotted for immediate delivery on Ikoril's Second Ring. All the time, Moira's internalized ambush-o-meter commences its wild wavering.

  A limited number of usable lift chambers meant an unfortunate fracturing of their forces. Curiosity queuing up as her eventual cause of death, Moira had volunteered the primary crew of The Unconstant Lover as one of several spearheads who would complete the initial descent
and clear a comfortable landing space to shepherd all their thuggery through.

  The newly-named Galactic Menace, eager to strut, agreed readily enough.

  Her other two companions also represent the same uneasiness as Moira. Odisseus, subconsciously or not, rumbles, a bellyful of bile percolating somewhere beneath his blubber, the primordial ancestor to a territorial growl. Two-Bit taps an elaborate tarantella on the stock of his unholstered Tigress, his body otherwise replete with faux-relaxation and a reasonable impression of gunfighter's calm.

  Only Nemo, constitutionally incapable of concern, can't tap into the undercurrent of tension that plagues the chamber. Instead, he pops spit bubbles against his cheek with a flicked forefinger.

  Moira simply squints, narrowing her vision as though to also narrow the number of options that await them beyond the airtight lift doors.

  The central spire, everyone but Two-Bit admits, is an astonishing improvement over Takioro's current and tortuous method of inter-level transit. All engineering and elevators, the spire could shuttle commuters between Rings with approximate speed, higher frequency, greater efficiency and zero risk of catapulting a capsule full of them into the wild black yonder.

  The same central spire, of course, had famously been forsaken by Takioro's original corsair conquerors, the same so championed in Bad Space's folklore, in favor of a massive mooring planetoid and massive elevator guns.

  The humble holoscroll shifts both its color and composition, forewarning their imminent arrival. If memory served, the Second Ring's relevant lift platform could quickly become a brutal bottleneck. A suite of skilled marksmen installed there could conceivably stack the corpses of every cutthroat in Bad Space, assuming they were all fluted down this elevator shaft first.

  A shrill whistle and a tip of the temple from Moira flattens the four of them, oblivious Nemo only with some Ortoki strong-arming, against the chamber's walls. They squeeze as much conceivable cover against awaiting assailants as the lift's lipped entrance would allow.

  Soundless air brakes activate. The elevator creeps to an eventual sync with the Second Ring clasps. Moira Quicksilver, appointed to command by Nemo's current mood of cluelessness, gives orders through gritted teeth. "Long as they open with gunfire, hold until reload," she instructs, repurposing a popular naval mnemonic. "Somebody shoots something besides ditrogen our way, that I'll handle." A primed and polished Lefty prepares for its close-up, should the squad of razorbacks they encounter favor grenades. "Otherwise–"

  A gout of depressurized air makes its interruptive opinion known, spraying Moira squarely in the face. Upon reopening her eyes, Moira's further startled by the revelation that her jackboot's once unflappable position, firmly rooted to the floor by the station's artificial gravity, is also under challenge.

  Moira, and her companions, to spare them a glance, all seem to sever their earthly ties and drift languidly into the elevator's open air, wreaking instantaneous chaos with their attempted counter-ambush.

  The doors ping pleasantly apart. The corridor beyond, a whitewashed spaceway that ferries passengers from Ring to spire and vice versa, is thankfully as unoccupied as the entire First Ring and every Docking Port it sprouts.

  "Huh," grunts a newly floating Two-Bit seconds before making the most obvious observation within reach. "Grav's out."

  "Life's support's online." With a few hearty sniffs and his hind claws imbedded into convenient cracks between the lift's floor plates, a still somewhat stationary Odisseus is able to employ his superlative sense of smell to make this secondary deduction. "Odd."

  His hair a black tendrilled anemone growing off his scalp, Nemo mentally checks into the conversation. "Which means...?"

  A throaty shush from Moira, as well as an upraised pistol, garners them all a few seconds of silence. Sure enough, patience and reticence is rewarded with a bleak and distant bleat, a repeating tone piped through a chorus of speakers and originating somewhere down the connecting corridor. "An alarm."

  Listening rather than jabbering grants Two-Bit new insight as well. "Takioro's the same one," he realizes, favoring each of his companions in turn with an expression of glassy-eyed remembrance. "Remember that year when all them Xwollese killer shrooms starting rooting in the Third Ring works? No? Nobody?" he spits futilely towards uncomprehending faces. "Well, it means the grav's out," he summarizes dejectedly.

  "Helpful," Moira deadpans, ambulating through the air and into the corridor.

  Bounding steps are quickly converted into swimming strokes. The four freebooter figureheads crawl and cavort their way towards their next hurdle. An identical white bulkhead down the hallway protects the Second Ring, all its wealth and all its defenders, behind doors latched shut.

  Moira, the first to depart, the nimblest and possibly the least comfortable in weightlessness, makes the doorway first. Lefty and Righty clatter awkwardly against the plastolieum-plated teltriton as she presses herself prone along the entrance and touches her nearest ear to its cool surface.

  "Hear anything?" prompts Odisseus upon his arrival.

  "The alarm," Moira confesses in totality and knees herself into a more advantageous position.

  With no theories to express, no opinions to spread between them, the four crewmen have no choice but to agree to Two-Bit's offer. "On three?" he proposes, clinging by the hand to the door control panel and as overflowing with further suggestions as anyone else.

  The remaining three hoodlums clamber into whatever suitable cover they can scrape together. Moira can only speculate what manner of scrambling, shooting, zero-gee gunfight will erupt should Ikoril and their Valladian masters have legitimately prepared some manner of welcoming.

  Two-Bit taps three buttons, the bulkhead bisects and they're all afforded the first view of what Ikoril welcomes them with.

  Clutter – holozines flapping open like birds in sluggish flight, a ceramic cephalopod figurine beckoning the pirates to enter with its motorized tentacle and an armada of tiny toy spaceships enacting an adorable little fleet action – clogs the Ring's airspace.

  Carnage – multifarious scorch marks marring the bleached plastolieum plating, an abundance of twisted metallic wreckage slicing the still air and, tellingly, physical and aromatic evidence of ditrogen hanging in psychedelic orbs where their original firearms fired them – suggests some great preemptive conflict.

  Corpses – their wounds gruesome and obvious, their blood congealed into floating pinpricks, their species indiscriminately spread – comprise the most salient component of the Second Ring's airborne contents. The nearest such corpse, a male Zourim, is wearing both a holographic Hivu Hiveminds tee and a splattered hole through his throat. He tumbles through the newly opened doorway and up the corridor, his long arms slapping the floor sickeningly.

  To the casual and indeed studied eye, the stores, shops and streets of Ikoril Federate Station have already been plundered by the Freebooter Fleet except, of course, for the indelible fact that they'd only just arrived.

  "Come on my tits and call me your mother," an astonished Nemo suggests.

  "Ditto," Moira agrees.

  Wearing as nauseated an expression as the permanent Ortoki cast to his facial features allows, Odisseus pleads, with a certain degree of helpless confusion. "Have we any idea who could've–"

  "Sure vizzes like," Two-Bit provides, fiddling nervously with his multe bracelet, "we did."

  "It certainly would seem so," mutters Moira.

  "But, what really, then?" a baffled Odisseus begins to balk. "Copycats?"

  "I mean..." proposes Nemo, allowing for a pause wide enough to steer the Preemptive Strike through, "...time travel?"

  Three of the galaxy's most withering expressions are Nemo's immediate reward for the voicing of his hypothesis. To which, Nemo can only shrug the self-evincing shrug of the unheeded conspiracy theorist.

  Wearing her scowl at Nemo's absurdity as a mask, Moira, with hands and hobnails, gains traction on whatever surface her limbs can reach. She front strokes
forward, off in quest of some comparative quiet with which to better prove her emerging theory.

  The level to which Ikoril copies Takioro, especially internally, continues to astound Moira. Transparently constructed from the exact same blueprints, the chief difference between the two Federate Stations, beyond Ikoril's central spire and omnipresent pearly plating, is the actual content of the outlets and storefronts whose facades she finds so familiar.

  To her right, Moira recognizes The Admiralty and The Hole in the Hull, now transformed into the Lucky Stars Community Playhouse and Quality Crandish Ceramics. To her left, the disgusting Niktur's Chiligrubs and the equally disgusting Knockers are metamorphosed, rather harmlessly, into a driftstroller rental and a public boomerang ball court, respectively.

  A trespasser's habits arise in Moira, very meticulous in her movements, lest she somehow contaminate the investigation of all the conspicuous destruction and unmistakeable violence that so improve Ikoril's unintentional impersonation of Takioro. Skirting circumspectly between exhibits of gut-wrenching violence and mind-boggling beauty, Moira feels herself a burglar in a modern museum of zero-gee artwork.

  Golden gaming chips and their dead gamblers, constellated across a corner casino, evacuate the premises with incredible reluctance, the frictionless drift expelling out their glittering or gunshot forms almost experimentally. An episode of Brock Rocket, Star Patriot is broadcast ad infinitum through the plexisheild window of an HV shoppe, ensuring an audience lifeless with laser holes that the Endless Imperium has not forsaken nor forgotten its Outer Ring citizens. A carton of Microwave Drongo Poop, its casing cracked and possessed of the faintest spin, disgorges its contents, a chocolatey stream of fecal concentrate, in a geometrically perfect cyclone.