Galactic Menace

by Timothy J Meyer

  Orientation within an Afterburn this crowded and re-arranged would normally be a nightmare. With the dripping rendition of the Lover's Jolly Roger as a guiding star, however, Two-Bit's easily able to lead his fellows to their preferred table, before the current Cosmic Vomit tune's even concluded.

  The curtain of bodies parts pleasingly before them and passage to quite deliberately the best seats in the house becomes unimpeded. Upon spying their booth, however, Two-Bit's scandalized to discover their table is actually occupied.

  Garrock Brondi waves pleasantly to them.

  Before Two-Bit can recover from his bodily shock or Odisseus surge forward in an outburst of violence, however, Nemo, quite numbly, retrieves Moira's intended drink from Two-Bit's grasp and strides definitively over to accompany him.

  Chapter 25

  Garrock Brondi's had a rough year. Since flying the coop with Abraham's Beggarman, Garrock'd run the gamut on unsuccessful capers of every size, shape and description. Word quickly circulated around the galactic campfire that Nemo and his ilk were thirsty for what they'd describe as retribution and Brondi would more accurately describe as bloodshed. Despite this and Moira Quicksilver on payroll, being professional pirates, they weren't particularly suited to the rigors of an interstellar manhunt.

  Garrock Brondi was grateful. This made the task of slipping between the cracks that much easier. All of this provided, of course, that he clung to the Offchart Territories like stink on a horny Ortok.

  During his tenure as a fugitive on the absolute edge of settled space, Garrock Brondi would come to foster mixed feelings about the Offchart. On paper, the region was rife with opportunity – pristine planets, thorny navigation, lawlessness to make Bad Space look lily white and civilized. It was any smuggler's paradise, with an appalling absence of a single organized smuggling ring.

  This, Garrock Opportunity Brondi, knew was a lacuna he could comfortably occupy.

  The coin's flipside, for Garrock, came with the inevitable lack of competent accomplices to be unearthed this far from Bad Space's well-established criminal channels. Ever since the capture, detainment and disappearance of Rooster at the hands of Insurgent Company, Garrock had yet to replace his right hand position with any continuity. A solo smuggler wasn't unheard of, but it thinned most aliases and made boarding actions a guaranteed game-over scenario.

  He'd sampled a broad sample of the Offchart's offered outlaws with little and pitiable success. To him, the Offchart outlawry were all slack-jawed yokels, backwoods bumpkins hijacking driftsleds, guzzling moonshine and torching the evidence. To them, he was some posh Inner Sector gentlemen criminal, made effete by an improperly healed gunshot wound, waistcoats and a constitutional unwillingness to carry a firearm.

  That final point came after some personal reflection, something a true blue mercenary like Garrock wasn't overly keen on. After the ugliness with Nemo and the Lover's crew, he came to a hardline conclusion about the confluence of violence and crime.

  Their type of criminal, the kind required to make decisions that resulted in a captive Rooster and a wounded leg, was precisely the opposite type of criminal that he wished to be. The type he someday wished to employ, certainly, but conducting business unarmed, while dangerous, sent a clear message to all his associates.

  An equally clear message sent from his associates to Garrock pointed out the necessity of an armed bodyguard or seven.

  Once a serviceable ship was acquired, once one of a handful of interchangeable partners were acquired, Garrock Brondi embarked on a series of hilarious and harrowing misadventures, smuggling the treasures of the untamed Offchart back into the known galaxy.

  His first job consisted of hauling high texture gravel from the unregulated mining world of Mand to the regulated mining world of Quvid for practically pocket change.

  His second job, some honest-to-moons gunrunning, was an unmitigated disaster. Featured highlights include betrayal at the hands of his buyer, search, seizure and two solid months behind the bars of a frontier town lockup on Jai Kai.

  His third job, a laughable affair shuttling free-range lonktonk onto and off of the many moons of Yon, will go down in Garrock's personal history as the single most bizarre sequence of events he's ever born witness to. The whole confounding affair concluded with bills in a few hands, canisters in a few heads and one drowned parakeet.

  In this fashion did Garrock Brondi continue to try the trade of contraband for the better part of a year, with about as consistently bad luck as one person could be cursed with.

  Occasional forays into the Outer Ring were, of course, necessary. On these occasions was Garrock gifted with the faintest and most fragile glimpse of what, precisely, doing business with professional criminals actually entailed.

  It was on one of these aforementioned forays – dodging tariffs on nothing more glamorous than fractal paint – that Garrock Brondi was inexplicably approached by an inexplicable agent. This agent, now of conveniently fuzzy dimensions and description, claimed to, quite inexplicably, work for an organization that called itself Huong Xo.

  It seemed the lofty heads of Huong Xo were interested in hiring Garrock to perform them a very special service. It also seemed the Yheum crime syndicate weren't remotely interested in his superlative skills as a smuggler, nor were they interested in the legendary depths of his discretion. It seemed that what most interested Huong Xo about Garrock Brondi, washed-up Offchart has-been, was his relationship to a certain Galactic Menace.

  Of course Brondi'd heard of Nemo's meteoric rise to power, stardom and Menacehood. Of course the Freebooter Fleet and their antics were galactic news, Nemo tee shirts and Two-Bit advertisements inescapable, even in the Offchart. Of course he understood, primarily through his Bad Space contacts, how damaging to both the short and long-term enterprise of interstellar smuggling Nemo's actions were.

  A surplus of Valladia's goods, some of the priciest and most monopolized commodities in the galaxy, now flooded the free market. This neatly eliminated the need for a skilled individual with a skilled spaceship to provide those amenities, tax free, at bargain prices.

  The sheer quantity of hard cash Huong Xo proposed to pay him was considerable enough for Garrock Brondi to purchase a sizable swath of the Offchart for his own personal use. More appropriately, it was more than enough to bankroll that expansive smuggling ring Garrock believed the Offchart so richly deserved.

  The task itself, why Xo sought his specific services, was both absurdly simple and absurdly dangerous. He'd been paid such an extravagant wage to merely hold a conversation.

  Of course, this conversation was being held with a man who'd previously shot him, was extraordinarily likely to shoot him again and also, somewhat unrelatedly, was now the Galactic Menace.

  The one thing Garrock would admit, as Nemo and his Bile Backwashes approached him blankly from across The Bloody Afterburn, was how lavish the festivities were. Graffiti decorations, Cosmic Vomit, everybody in the known galaxy but him invited – Two-Bit Switch evidently knew how to throw a party.

  “Two-Bit Switch evidently knows how to throw a party,” he extends by way of greeting.

  “You better not let Abraham see you back here,” Nemo warns, with sudden jocularity. “You think I wanna tie your hands and feet to Starboard's flanging fins? Sheesh.”

  “Think I'll take my chances. He couldn't be drunker if he was drowning.” The ridiculous Grimalti is no longer visible, hidden amongst the thronging crowd, but his signature combination of sea shanty and vomiting can be heard even over the astrogrunge.

  “That's sorta my point.” Standing there, Nemo appears somewhat undecided about whether or not to grace Garrock with his presence by actually sitting. “Where'd the Beggarman end up, anyhow?”

  “Scrapped,” Garrock takes a certain pleasure in informing him. “Hell, he wants it back, he'd best head out to Mox. Tell him to pack a magnet and a magnifying glass.”

  “You're a bad, bad man, Garrock Brondi.”

  “Present company exc
luded?”

  “Naturally.”

  “Tell me, Nemo, how you been?” He gazes about at all the spectacle and boozy splendor. “Anything exciting to report?”

  “Funny you should ask.” Seeming to resolve behind the idea of conversation, Nemo seats himself and Garrock scores a point, the first of many he'll need to score to make good on Xo's money. “All I've gotta do is frown at you funny and Odisseus'll be racing everybody else to get the first crack at you.” As he speaks, Nemo laces his idleness with potent threat. “Wanna test that theory?”

  “You like being the Menace, I expect? Target that big suits you.”

  “You know, I do like it. Ott, bless his blue heart, made such a stink about all the burden, that 'heavy crown' buhoxshit, I sorta assumed the same rules would apply. Ott wasn't playing by my rules, however.”

  “He wasn't into the wanton destruction game?”

  “No, he wasn't. Only person, 'sides you, in this whole galaxy considers what we did as wanton would be Valladia. Obviously.” He sidles one steaming Backwash across the mug-ringed tabletop. “Enough about me. How's life treating you, Garrock? Your leg holding up?”

  Garrock brandishes the head of his mostly unnecessary cane. “I get by.”

  Nemo frowns approvingly. “Swank.”

  “The ladies love it.”

  “Do they,” Nemo returns immediately. “Kudos, though, on meeting us here. Two-Bit's security must be pretty lacking, crippled guy like you slips past.”

  “I get by, as I said.”

  “You always was a nimble fella,” Nemo acknowledges mockingly.

  The Bile Backwash stews and sweats between them, Garrock making nothing resembling a move toward the offered drink. Garrock instead cooks Nemo's annoyance like an artisanal tea, averting eye contact at key strategic points to perfectly simulate conversational awkwardness.

  “You come looking for a hand-out here, or...?” Garrock's delighted to hear so early. In order for this task to succeed with Brondi unmurdered, Nemo's early anger is paramount.

  “I'm just here to pay my respects, pal.” Garrock confesses, palm and cane innocently raised. “Nothing sinister.”

  “My resplendent cock-and-balls, you are. You don't claw your way outta whatever boondock bloomhole you'd stuffed yourself down, weasel your way into my shindig and steal my spot to pay any respect to me.”

  Garrock scoots with surprise. “Is this your spot? I had no idea.”

  “I'm thinking you got somewhere near ten fucking seconds to tell me what you came to tell me before Odisseus separates your spine from the rest of you.” Nemo raises his hand languidly and Odisseus, far out of earshot, visibly bares his teeth in an unheard growl.

  “What happened to your coat?” Garrock gambles.

  Nemo's deadpan question comes out a statement. “That's what you came to tell me.”

  “Moons, look like you set the thing on fire.”

  “Disintegrator, actually,” Nemo bites, unable to refrain from boasting. “Bounty hunter with a distengrator. You shoulda seen the prick.” He smirks, hoisting the tattered coat in one hand. “You'da liked him.”

  “Suppose that's a real concern now. Bloom me out. All those bounty hunters from before were moons-damned games for kids. You thought Quuilar Noxix was bad?”

  “You'd be surprised, actually, how little they'd been bothering me. More a nuisance, than anything else.” His next gesture includes the rambunctious rabble all around them. “They sorta helped with that.”

  “Helped, though, huh? The party's gotta end at some point here, doesn't it?”

  Disgust flashes across Nemo's face. “Don't tell me you've gone angler. I really will hafta call Odi over.”

  “No, no, just talking, just talking,” Garrock denies casually. “Point is, now that Valladia's gone bankrupt, Jasso's got holes in his head and all ten ports're sacked, not much reason for them,” his cane mimics Nemo's last gesture, “to stick around.”

  “Them meaning the Freebooter Fleet?”

  “Them meaning all of them. The groupies, the hangers-on, the unintentional bodyguards. Fuck, think of these assholes,” the head of his cane next indicates the rabble on stage. “Soon as Zigzag loses his voice, gets whacked or throws in the towel, rest of the band ain't likely to be far behind. Soon as the band dissolves, nothing left for the faithful to worship.”

  “Yeah, but you hate Cosmic Vomit,” Nemo reasons.

  “I wouldn't hate them if they didn't suck.”

  The evasion is cheap, but Garrock still sees the chord struck in Nemo's face.

  This whole endeavor could sink completely contingent on whether or not Nemo, Two-Bit and the Freebooter Fleet were planning any epilogues or, moons forbid, any second acts to their award-winning performances of this past year.

  Thankfully, the answer's plain as moons all over Nemo's expression. The nerve's so exposed in the Menace that a mere mention of the dilemma he now faced induced from him a half-hid wince.

  “I suppose you were vamoosed by the time Noxix hit us, weren't you?” Nemo recalls, bravado returning at once. “Never got to hear the whole story.”

  “The story I did hear, yeah,” Garrock confirms. “Me and half the galaxy who walked past a holovision set.” He waggles his hand back and forth some. “Meh.”

  “Meh?” Nemo spits, sitting abruptly forward. “The fuck you mean, 'meh'?”

  “I mean meh,” Garrock clarifies, delighted to have unwittingly stumbled into a sensitive area. “Smells a little like buhoxshit to me.”

  “You seen the footage?”

  “I have. Looked a little staged, tell you the truth.”

  Could Garrock have bottled the look of astounded anger Nemo currently wore on his face, he could've sold samples of the expression on any space station street corner at ten credits a pop. “You're the second dumbass baby-rapist to tell me that practically this fucking month.”

  “That so?” Garrock grunts contemplatively. “We two can't be alone in that.”

  “Don't be coy with me, you faffy motherfucker.” Nemo peels the tankard off the tabletop with zero intention of drinking the brew. “You wanna threaten me by proxy, threaten me by proxy.”

  Garrock can't refrain from a smile. “Them's fightin' words.”

  “You're unarmed, ain'tcha?”

  “You noticed.”

  “Moons, you got balls.”

  “You noticed.”

  Nemo scoffs and pushes partially away with the faintest suggestion of standing to leave. He focuses his attention on Cosmic Vomit for a long moment and his words are almost lost to the straining ears of Garrock. “Tell you the truth, I think that canister I put in you's done a galaxy of good. You ain't such a namby-pamby anymore.”

  The anger, his own unexpected anger that threatens to surface unbidden, isn't easily swallowed by the best of men and the one thing his dealings with Nemo showed Garrock, without a doubt, was that he wasn't the best of men.

  “Point I'm making is that, once the party breaks up, the Freebooters go their ways, there ain't nothing anymore between those bounty hunters and that 10 million on your head. Some of whom,” he adds, as an afterthought, “may also be skeptical about that footage.”

  “And this is, what, then?” Nemo shows his own skepticism. “A friendly warning?”

  “Consider me charitable,” Garrock brushes off, the whole success of the venture hinging on him selling this.

  Miraculously, Nemo eats the story up. The whole nonsensical nature of Garrock's bizarre and unheralded appearance working in his favor, there's simply something about how backasswards Xo's assignment is that Nemo can't grok.

  Frankly, were their positions reversed, Garrock's not certain he could follow that twisted Yheum train of logic either. Thankfully, he wouldn't have to.

  “What really burns me about the Noxix thing,” Nemo confesses, “about the footage being faked, I mean, is where the bloom they think Noxix fucking went. You understand?”

  “I understand.”

  “Let's
assume, even for a second, that we faked the footage and I'm not a space-cold badass, which we didn't and I totally am. Wouldn't Noxix come forward? Wouldn't Xo or GalaxCom or whoever the fuck held his leash trot Noxix out and go 'uh, no, assholes, he's still alive. Here's season twenty-one.'” He shakes his head with inconsolable bewilderment. “Nuh uh. Never happened. That show's fucking cancelled.”

  Overconfidence in the success of his scheme makes Brondi risks a sidelong comment he probably shouldn't and he instantly regrets that decision. “Did I hear,” he poses, his intrigued expression too much by half, “that they tried to mount, what, a reboot? With some young turk starring?”

  True to form, though, Nemo's completely clueless. “Shit, yeah, son! Dusty Dimick Wants You Dead or Alive, you believe that? This jagoff, actually, that you asked about,” he realizes, flapping the disintegrated corner of his duster upward again, on cue. “Put him in his place too, the cocky fuck. You should see the footage – that shit ain't faked.”

  “I trust not,” Garrock assures him. “Your Freebooter friends handle that one for you too?”

  He spends a moment in honest deliberation. “No, I think that one was Moira.”

  “Where is the old lady?” Garrock wonders sincerely.

  “Off drunk some fucking place, who knows.”

  “You listen to my advise,” Brondi stipulates, with sudden gravity, “you keep her close. Especially once the Fleet ain't.”

  “Yeah,” Nemo mutters again and is lost further in sudden pensiveness.

  With Nemo in this suggestible state, Garrock's fully prepared to stoke the fires of phenomenally bad decisions all the more. The Galactic Menace, though, bless his stupid heart, always goes the extra mottible to be stupid. “The real trick'd be,” Nemo ponders, more pensive still, “keeping the Fleet together somehow.”

  Amazed at Nemo's willingness to play directly into Xo's hands, Garrock struggles to keep his face straight. “Stay together for the kids?”