Galactic Menace

by Timothy J Meyer

  Luckily for Odisseus, however, none of his companions seem especially awestruck by Traffo's candidacy. To fully portray his role as unbiased presenter, Two-Bit makes the token pitch all the same, despite the utter lack of enthusiasm in his voice.

  "He's hooked deep into the Inner Sector scene, is the main razz I'm propoing him." Two-Bit paces a partial path along the pad's starboard side, his contemplative stroll hindered, somewhat, by how little free space the sensor room contains. "He's fluffy as all Jotor, sure he is, but he scribbles somethin' 'bout you, everybody posh's gonna read it."

  In duster and sweatpants of equal rattiness, a severely underdressed Nemo was rousted from both bed and hangover a mere hour previously. As he speaks, he brandishes his most inappropriate breakfast to date – a pink-sprinkled chiller cream cone – delivered by an supremely displeased Moira. "Anything to watch of his?" he requests between licks, his expression the absolute epitome of abject boredom.

  "Should be," mutters Two-Bit, tapping the projection pad with his sneaker to conjure the prepared clip.

  The four of them, Ortok, Grimalti, jabberhead and Menace, crowd the comparatively cramped sensor room with their mere presence. Odisseus, therefore, opts to linger in the doorway and, even there, cannot escape the sense of claustrophobia the chamber instills. With a litany of separate machines running to assist Two-Bit with his presentations, the room's temperature approaches an unbearable level. As preposterous as it may seem, the panting Odisseus eventually comes to envy Nemo his melty breakfast.

  An hour of their morning was wasted by all six reporters, correspondents and newshounds from as many separate press organizations. To a being, each was proposed and subsequently vetoed for a dizzying array of reasons, from under-qualified to overqualified, from "weird" to "funny-looking" to "unsettling nose.”

  By number six, Odisseus officially begins to wonder whether or not his saltbrother is, perhaps, too capricious. That being said, Odisseus hasn't placed the merest smidgen of confidence in a single of Two-Bit's nominees either and, summarily, people who fly glass spaceships and all that.

  This entire notion of a tell-all, a publicity stunt to counteract some of the Imperium's propaganda with propaganda of their own, seems, to the ever-skeptical Ortok, something of a fool's errand.

  Granted, Nemo was actually innocent in the matter of the massacre at Ikoril Federate Station. Granted, the Imperium forces truly responsible advanced the degree of slaughter a caliber or two higher than any plundering pirate would have. The fact remained, though, that had the Freebooter Fleet been granted the opportunity to lay Ikoril to waste, they wouldn't have been there to hand out linked flower leis and good advise. Murder and mayhem were always going to be their modus operandi.

  No matter how skilled a reporter they found to sugarcoat Nemo's public perception, he remained the Galactic Menace for a very justifiable reason. Horrifying as Ikoril was, Nemo's day job remained burning, sacking and despoiling otherwise innocent ports.

  In response to the instructions of Two-Bit's tapped toe, the sensor room's four screens spring simultaneously to life. Their once-darkened faces are instantly replaced by the same sunny and idyllic scene.

  The kitchen they see is appointed so tastefully it strains feasibility. Joojberries glisten in their perfectly arranged bowl. Manufactured sunlight dapples the room through homespun-seeming drapery. Sterling cooking utensils are arranged in an encyclopedic array, an arsenal becoming of any master chef.

  Beginning in media res, the recording snaps into action amid a previous conversation between the kitchen's two occupants – a humanoid and an Oodani. Traffo is quite demonstrably the humanoid, with spotless apron and pleasant attitude. The equally-aproned female Oodani to his left is actually of some passing pop familiarity to Odisseus.

  “With my bare hands?” laughs Traffo woodenly, squiggling anxious fingers over a smooth steel bowl. As the four hoodlums and studio audience listen, the bowl emits a faint squiggling sound all its own.

  “With your bare hands,” repeats the Oodani reassuringly, her meaty orange paws occupied in chopping some purple vegetable with blinding speed. “They don't bite – trust me.”

  Hamming up his apprehension for the benefit of both his studio audience and the folks at home, Ulic Traffo lowers both hands beneath the bowl's rim. His cartoonish apprehension intensifies as he starts to slowly knead the bowl's contents, to further squishing noises.

  “No bites yet,” Traffo appreciates, a viscous and beige substance increasingly visible on his forearms with their every motion.

  “The key,” the Oodani expounds, flapping her prehensile snout as she speaks, “to preparing the perfect batch of zeeki maggots is to ensure that they're each thoroughly massaged and gingered.”

  "If you're just joining us on Good Morning Anglia," a suddenly brightening Traffo likewise addresses to the audience, "we're here with Chef Toruta Theng, author of the new book Gourmet Grubs for Common Kitchens, and she's teaching us how to make down-home style Oodani–"

  A second and succinct tapping of Two-Bit's toe freezes the holographic scene in stilted silence. "So, he's out, then," he immediately determines. With some four finger percussion against the screen of his Attaché, all trace of Ulic Traffo is banished from the sensor room's monitors and projection pads.

  "That's six, then?" Abraham confirms evenly.

  Two-Bit gaze is fixated within the hovering displays of his Attaché. "He was number six, yeah."

  "Well," Nemo begins, creaking suddenly to his feet with the undeserved effort of a job well done, "if we're about finished here–"

  "Who's number seven?" advances Odisseus from the doorway.

  Abraham peaks an eyebrow. Nemo stops short. Two-Bit's eyes flick upward to meet Odisseus' across the room. "Ah, you delly me too fucking well."

  He presses three more fingerprints against the screen. Another life-sized hologram springs into existence from the depths of the projection pad. The bedimmed sensor room is flooded with replacement light.

  The room's newest occupant is about as far a cry from an Anglian puff piece correspondent as one could conceivably imagine. The hairless skin, the feline face and the pointed pair of ears repeated in triplicate identify him, first and foremost, as a Helker. The agonizing array of piercing across practically every available lobe or skein of loose skin identify him, even before Two-Bit does, as a face more familiar to Odisseus than even Toruta Theng's own.

  "Wezz," Two-Bit supplies seconds after activating the hologram. "The boy wonder of Space Times."

  "Boy wonder?" Abraham's expression crinkles. "He were fired from Space Times, were he not?"

  "He may, yes," Two-Bit allows as politely as possible, "have been axed on the heels of the whole Valladian Shipping, 'piracy is pointless' snafu. That don't mean, however," he stipulates, "that he ain't the right choice."

  "So," Nemo poses, his chiller cream dribbling down between his fingers, "who's he write for, then?"

  "Nobody," is Two-Bit's manipulative answer. "He's, er, what's the word, freelance?"

  Chosen very deliberately by Two-Bit, this word seems to enkindle the glint necessary in Nemo's eye, a glint Odisseus hastens to stomp upon.

  "Freelance means no audience," the Ortok points out, hoping instead to capitalize on his saltbrother's budding megalomania.

  "Freelance means no editors," Two-Bit trumps, wielding a startlingly superior knowledge of the Captain's temperaments. "You sit down with another scribbler, a scribbler on somebody else's jangle, he's gotta to nix anything the aggers upstairs don't fancy."

  Nemo aligns his eyes, their light suddenly reasonable and pleading, towards Odisseus. "Censorship's gotta be priority number one."

  "And credentials?" Abraham tosses to Two-Bit before Odisseus can muster a proper counter to Nemo's new argument. "What's he actually scribbled?"

  "To be facting, almost zilch since Space Times axed him. Scanty of this, scanty of that, nothing too meaty." Two-Bit Switch looks into the Helker's holographic face as he elaborates
. "Means he's gonna hank the work, is the takeaway there. There ain't no intergalactic feedzine tragging his play no more. Story like this," he cracks the briefest of smiles, "and he'll be having the bees."

  Odisseus isn't dissuaded. "The question stands. What's he written?"

  "Before that axe came down," Two-Bit continues without a beat missed and another samba beaten against the Attaché's touchscreen, "he was Space Times' boy wonder and, what most people blanked on by now, is that the Captain here wouldn't be the first Menace he finangled a jabber at."

  A process he's repeated for each of the five previous candidates proves once again successful and the still image of Wezz, Space Times' lost sheep, is summarily swapped for one in motion. For the Helker's part, his appearance is measurably altered, mainly separated by a shift in wardrobe and a decrease in piercings across face, ears and appendages.

  "How do you see this ending? Realistically?" he questions openly.

  "Realistically?” repeats Boss Ott. “Heh. Clever. You include realistically and suddenly I'm either an idealist or a pessimist. But I'm unfortunately neither. I'm, as you say, a realist."

  Wezz's expression remains decidedly neutral. “How so?”

  They stand amid a stretch of tundra, familiar coral formations rearing up all round them. From the pace at which they ambulate, they've likely been wandering for some time, conversing for some time. While Wezz is a Helker greatly changed, the then-Galactic Menace is a perfect replica of the Doreen they once worked for. His deckhand's threads are the same, his many headtails are contained within a simple ponytail and he pockets two hands while gesticulating with the other two.

  "I harbor no illusions that our squabble here is going to be the upset that eventually throws the Endless Imperium to its knees. Of course I don't.”

  As he speaks, Ott suddenly stops, drops to his haunches and scoops up a handful of the marshy ground, running the faintly orange muck through his great blue fingers with extreme care, bordering reverence. “The illusion I do harbor, however, is that doxychoraphum is an unessential resource for them. It'll grease the wheels of their war machine, that's certainly true, but it's a luxury, not a necessity.”

  Sensing his cue, Wezz hunkers down next to the Menace as he continues his explanation. “If the cost, in lives, ammunition and military commitment, of each drop of repellent is great enough, they wouldn't and won't continue their occupation. Simple business sense says they'll attempt a different tactic, presumably somewhere else, somewhere less contested. A destroyed Imperium is not the goal. Simply a defeated one."

  Wezz grunts, almost a scoff, almost a snort. "Is there a difference?"

  Ott hefts his hand as the remaining repellent out from between his fingers. "Cheers."

  The hologram clicks harshly into place, freezing the scene and both its participants dead in their sodden tracks. The scene's audience, save Two-Bit and the tip of his sneaker, are nearly as still, nostalgia, instead of a pause button, arresting all their movements.

  To no one's surprise, it's Nemo who shatters the reverie, complimenting his terse command by chomping into his chiller cream cone. Chewing casually, he shrugs the shoulders of his duster. "Make the call, then."

  Wezz flits indecisively between the pod's various seating options, uncertain which one carried the worst connotation. After initially plopping down atop the lushly appointed bed, he reconsidered the message this would perhaps telegraph. Fifteen minutes spent sitting sidesaddle on the red upholstered fainting couch and the reporter's unease was only increasing. After curiosity demanded he, at the very least, inspect the damn thing, he resolved to roundly avoid approaching the inexplicable device ever again, whose straps and stirrups downright dominated the pod's far left corner.

  He eventually ends up propped against the minibar in the chamber's corner. Here, he calibrates his audio equipment, he counts down the seconds and he wonders, like many other occupants of many other such pods, whether his appointed date is actually going to stand him up.

  Wezz is willing to concede that he'd entertained an absurd fantasy about a powwow with this most popular and public Menace kickstarting his desperately stalled career. Wezz would also like the record to show that he hadn't fantasized conducting said interview within a privately-rented lovepod, completing an hour long orbit of Fwelk.

  In fact, he's rather going to avoid incorporating the word "fantasize" anywhere near this lovepod.

  He does have to square his stomach and self-esteem with the fact that he's actually anxious, an emotion he hasn't experienced before an interview in years uncounted. A veteran of the intergalactic news media practically since his whelping, it wasn't the ten million death-mark on Morel's head that gave him pause. Moons knew, he'd shaken hands with much higher bounty-heads than the Captain's introductory ten.

  Nor, he appreciates, is he much intimidated by the seemingly infinite murder charges this Galactic Menace has confirmedly accrued during his short tenure on IMIS' shit-list. Moons know war criminals were nothing new on Wezz's dance card.

  His nerves, simmering at the edges of his fabricated calm, are inspired mainly by his relative rustiness. The last piece of significant reporting he delivered, after all, led directly to this current state of unemployment.

  Normally, an unemployed investigative reporter trailing a career as lengthy and prolific as Wezz's could find safe harborage at practically any feedzine, news outlet or talk radio with feedspace access and anyone halfway competent at its controls. When the corporate boot planted Wezz's tuchus onto the proverbial sidewalk following the now-famous "piracy is pointless" sound bite, slumming at some planetary variety hour as some feature correspondent sounded to the Helker more like a death sentence than a steady income.

  Instead, he'd hang up his shingle as some manner of ultra-gonzo, mercenary freecaster, peddling his printed word wholesale to whomever could tap into his begged, borrowed or stolen frequencies. The very notion was so liberating, so inspiringly brilliant, he couldn't believe the thought hadn't occurred to him a decade and more ago. Unshackled from even Space Times' reasonably permissive editors, censors and assorted butters-in, Wezz also discovered himself unshackled from Space Times' comfortably consistent payroll.

  A year without a substantive story, a year without a substantive paycheck to accompany same, freelance journalism was not quite the total freedom Wezz imagined it would be.

  His stationary equipment all calibrated, Wezz scoops up a smattering of ball-bearing-sized driftcorders. With a thumb pressed against the activation button of each, he wanders the lovepod, sprinkling the air with the occasional floating recording device. Normally an expensive acquisition for any journalist, Wezz's current supply were officially the property of Space Times. Their inexplicable disappearance following his termination went unnoticed or, Wezz supposed, at least uncommented on.

  As he tours the room, careful to maintain a respectful distance from the love machine in the corner, Wezz passes within ogling view of the heavily-curtained viewport. He stops to gawk, given the breathtaking astral vista sweeping out across Fwelk's gentle worldshine and the stars twinkling beyond. Found on a regular hotel wall, this kind of spacescape would be simply a painting, rather than an actual window.

  For all its tawdry decor, the Starcrossed Orbital Hotel & Suites made, to Wezz's hindsight, practically as much sense to host a journalistic interlude as it did a romantic one. Reserved by the Menace's criminal liaison, the advertisement-plastered Two-Bit Switch, this particular suite and lovepod was slotted for the popular "Quickie" package. The pod would take them both on an hour-long lap, three hundred and sixty degrees around Fwelk's equator, devoid of pitstops, comm service or interruptions of any other nature.

  Switch cited security reasons as the primary motivator behind this choice. He claimed, reasonably to Wezz, that the interview could easily prove to be nothing more than a pretense to isolate and bushwhack Morel. Should Wezz indeed be planning such an ambush, an hour would see him returning to the Starcrossed lobby, with Morel's freshly
-minted corpse to answer for and his legendarily murderous crew to answer to.

  On either side of the thong-draped airlock door, indicator lights blink suddenly red, forewarning approved access. Wezz only has time to turn and watch not Nehel Morel, Galactic Menace, part the drapes and stride into the lovepod, but rather a creature of a very different variety.

  Huge, hirsute and harrumphing his bulk inside, the Ortok in the orange fisherman's jumper makes no word of greeting to Wezz. The Helker, uncertain precisely what he expected, grants the surly otterfolk complete run of the joint simply by silence.

  The Ortok proceeds to pacify the suite with all the speed and thoroughness of a long-practiced bodyguard. He tromps an exhaustive path into the pod's every nook and cranny, scratching some place, sniffing others, scowling everywhere.

  Wezz keeps his calm and his peace, inured to all the protocol one needs to cleave through before they're cleared to dish with interstellar celebrity. He opens his mouth only once, when a driftcorder is nearly inhaled into the Ortok's overzealous nostril.

  "Those're harmless," Wezz makes the mistake to clarify, as civilly as possible. He earns nothing but a flash of fangs and a grumbly growl from the Menace's shaggy chaperone.

  Following this, the star-shaped bed is rifled, the drawers are each opened and Wezz himself is subjected to a complete and somewhat demeaning sniff search by the Ortok's insistent muzzle. Nothing untoward discovered, the bodyguard yips once, almost with an air of reluctance, no doubt some "all clear" in his guttural tongue.

  The lacy curtains barricading the entrance snap dramatically apart. Without any further pomp or ado, Nehel Morel, Galactic Menace, makes his appearance.

  He bothers with no disguise, attired almost precisely as his wanted poster depicts him. His beaten leather duster bears a gaping disintegrator hole. His outmoded flintlock laser pistol rides in his hip holster. His oil black hair sits atop his head in an unrestrained mop.