Galactic Menace

Chapter 1

Moira's out of her cell.

In the space of the next three seconds, she's strode into the harsh light of the corridor proper, straddled the corpse of her first felled foe and fully extended the stolen electrobaton with a vicious snap of her wrist. Between Moira's bare feet, the first prison guard and his open head wound stain the floorplates cyan.

The second prison guard apparently favors his own chances against Moira. Rather than raising the cry or sounding any alarms, her still-standing adversary snaps open his own baton and charges her.

Moira allows herself a flinty smile.

She slipped out of her magnetic cuffs. She flattened her body into an upside-down Cotor Clutch against the ceiling of her cell for a quarter of an hour. She incapacitated the first guard stupid enough to investigate her inexplicable disappearance – with her bare hands.

Moira's more than earned this.

Like his fallen friend, this prison guard's a Gantor, a six-foot-six nightmare of snow white skin stretched to its absolute limit over ridged alien bones. He instantly closes the gap on unearthly, elongated shanks.

He strikes first, swinging the bludgeon in a wild, left-handed clobber. Moira parries neatly and scrapes his baton aside, both weapons fizzing as their electrical charges kiss and clash. Her skewering thrust to his stomach is blunted by the Gantor's thick layer of riot armor. Instead, he doubles hard over, weapon spilling from his gauntlet, helmet spilling off his head and his exposed scalp presented before Moira as though he awaited her to oblige him a knighthood. Moira christens him unconscious instead, spinning the electrobaton once and cracking its micne-capped tip hard upon his cranium.

He screams in shock and agony on his two-foot fall to the floor, a scream she muffles by stooping and planting a hand over his mouth to ease him onto the deck.

After ten seconds of chaos, silence once again reigns supreme across the Twenty-Sixth Deck of the TFS 283 Mercy-class Prisoner Transport Vessel Surimiah. Moira Quicksilver crouches motionless, the very picture of vigilance, before the deactivated door of her agape cell. To either side lay the slumped forms of two prone Gantorese prison guards, one dead and the other out cold. The corrugated corridor, its curvature stretching beyond her vision in both directions, is still and silent, save the hum of shipborne systems and the occasional snore of an unseen detainee.

Moira had calculated the immediate hour of her escape attempt very precisely. She'd attempted to coincide with the regulated sleeping patterns of her fellow captives, to minimize the chances of some dimwitted or spiteful prisoner spoiling everything with a squawk.

Her calculations also surmised that she'd need to neutralize at least another two prison guards before she reached the service elevator that could take her off this deck. Neither the corpse to her left nor the drooler to her right had wielded anything but humble electrobatons. From this, Moira could reasonably expect both the remaining guards on this deck to be packing much more serious heat. The standard issue Imperium assault rife, the tried-and-true SV7, seemed likely.

Before all that, however, came the looting.

She's dismayed to discover them relatively rich, as far as prison guards go, after rifling through all four pockets in question. Both boast fat stacks of tender Moira's woefully unable to pocket in her pocketless jailbird's jumpsuit. She does, however, make meaningful prizes of one Gantor's insulated deflection glove, the other Gantor's remote cell-door activator and both their electrobatons.

With her right hand strapped uncomfortably into the oversized gauntlet, an electrobaton in each hand and the remote activator in her teeth, Moira gives each end of the corridor a cursory sweep. With nothing untoward in sight, she slinks off in search of escape.

Forward progress is painfully slow. Between waits of arduous length and total stillness, she dares short sprints from cover to cover. She cowers in any available corner, often with an ear pressed hard to the teltriton of the floor or walls, in rapt attention for any sound or signal of her discovery.

Nothing quite raises Moira's hackles like an ardent need for stealth. When encountering literally anyone could quickly spell her own destruction, Moira wholeheartedly favors discretion as the better part of valor.

One quarter of a rotation around this layer of the detainment column passes uneventfully, save one steely scowl to quiet an awake Diraaqi prisoner in a passing cell. When Moira does stumble upon her quarry, she manages to sidle into the shadow of a bracing beam before they can take notice.

Standing an aimless vigil at the foot of the elevator's embarkation platform and with both backs turned mercifully away from her position are the predicted pair of prison guards. One, a female humanoid sporting Moira's pre-prison shaved-head haircut, passes the time with a ThumbSmash handheld console. The other, a third Gantor, leans heavily over her shoulder and offers the odd word of ignored advise.

Slung carelessly over each of their shoulders dangle the sought-after SV7s.

Moira stalks up behind on callused feet. A workable strategy, a simultaneous smacking of each unaware guard on their respective temples, is summarily dashed to pieces. Her weapons loose in her hands, her sweaty finger slips and quite accidentally extends her left electrobaton with a ratcheting sound and an energizing sizzle. Both guards, expecting to see an unheard peer simply fiddling with their weapon, glance over their shoulders.

Imagine their surprise to spot guilty Moira five feet behind, in a half-squat, with one massive black glove, one live electrobaton and one remote starter, clenched in stunned teeth.

The tinny melody emanating from the ThumbSmash game underscores this supremely tense moment, a reverie Moira interrupts three seconds later by activating her other baton.

All the parties explode into motion at once. Moira launches forward in a leap. The startled guards shuffle backwards in unison. Two assault rifles are hurriedly unslung. The ThumbSmash lives up to its name against the teltriton as it's dropped.

Cursed with significantly shorter legs, the humanoid guard straggles a second behind her partner and subsequently earns Moira's unforgiving headlock. She thrashes, flails and makes every attempt to wrest herself free from Moira's grasp. The hardened fibers of Moira's stolen deflection glove more than adequately squash the guard's windpipe beyond anything but a gurgle.

Confident in the strength of her right arm's stranglehold, Moira employs her other electrobaton to whip the Gantor brutally in the kneecap. He stumbles, losing his grip on his assault rifle and purchasing much needed time for Moira to wheel her impromptu hostage around. By the time the Gantor's regained both his footing and his firearm, Moira's positioned the humanoid woman advantageously between herself and the SV7's snub.

Both women simultaneously pray to all the moons that the employee manual issued to each Imperium prison guard frowned upon shooting one's comrades in cold blood.

The gamble pays off as, when faced with Moira's hasty humanoid shield, the Gantor hesitates. Moira returns the favor by introducing his balls to blunt force and electricity. As he reels in pain, she gambles again, tightening her grip around the humanoid's throat and inching a step backward, a step closer to the opposite wall of the corridor.

Again, he takes the bait, wincing while he limps forward and still struggling to bring the rifle to bear. This impulse Moira rewards with a shocking swat across the chin, followed by another step back. Soon, she's sufficiently goaded him and it's a dance, each participant exchanging as many injuries as steps, until Moira's an arm's length from the intended wall and the Gantor's a bruised, burnt and bloodied mess.

Finally, the haymaker moment arrives. Moira does her level best to counterbalance herself, sucks in an anticipatory breath and, using the unwilling guard as a point of pivot, takes her third and certainly not final gamble of the evening. She performs a flying wall kick off the teltriton behind her and into the Gantor's creepy, emaciated face.

This chain of events the Gantor takes understandably poorly. Slapped senseless more from surprise than impact, he flops listlessly to the deck. Alighting awkwardly on the floor behind the discombobulated humanoid, Moira renders final judgment by seizing the woman's jaw and promptly snapping her neck. In response, the guard performs a lopsided half-pirouette and joins her partner in a heap on the floor.

Moira stands, panting, amid her second prison guard pile-up. The corridor is now clear of any more obvious hostiles; all without a single shot fired from either weapon.

After summoning down the elevator to the Twenty-Sixth deck, Moira hunkers to the floor to collect her winnings. She collects an ammunition belt, an SV7 and spends a moment to further lament this accursed jumpsuit in the face of more useless pocket change.

As if on cue, the service elevator dings obligingly behind her.

The Moira Quicksilver that rises and gives each arm of the corridor a cautionary glance – a suspicious pedestrian about to cross an empty intersection – is that much more stacked than the one who first knelt over both vanquished foes. A soon-to-be-disassembled assault rifle is slung over her shoulder, a belt to clip both batons to is cinched around the waist of her neon yellow onesie and the remote activator is twirled around her right pointer finger. So armed, Moira darts into the service elevator's opening doors.

Once inside, she dials coordinates for the Seventeenth Deck and drops back to her knees to dismantle the SV7. At that moment, the elevator disengages from its present clamps and shoots directly upward.

The HIN Surimiah, like all Mercy-class prison haulers, had a queer design. In order to readily retrieve, transport and deposit all nine hundred of its potential prisoners, the Surimiah made use of a three-hundred foot cylinder, jutting straight out of the ship's underbelly, called a detainment column.

Ostensibly a thirty story building and a free-standing tower in its own right, the detainment column allowed the Endless Imperium the peerless ability to transfer entire wings of their planetary prisons to and fro across the civilized reaches of the galaxy. With relative ease, the Surimiah had charted a checkered course throughout the Midworlds, collecting the very créme de la créme of convicts, Moira Quicksilver included, from holding cells and provincial prisons along the way.

Her coffers full, she cut canvas now for the fifth planet of the Prash system, freezing and lifeless Vorse. There, she'd detach the column, the Seventeenth Deck would become the Seventeenth Floor and the Surimiah, thus unburdened, would depart for Medroteria or Jotor or wherever empty, idle prison ships go.

Moira, on the other hand, harbored other plans for the HIN Surimiah, plans one wouldn't find on any official Imperium manifest or procedural.

She's scarce enough time to wrest loose the SV7's percussion cap before the service elevator clangs into place on the Seventeenth Deck. As the doors grind open before her, Moira's forced to abandon her handiwork to a clatter on the elevator floor.

Both her electrobatons unsheathe and extend before either standing sentry can even register the elevator's sudden appearance behind them. With one concluding motion, she claps both their skulls together with fierce strikes to their corresponding temples. They collapse comically together, their bodies propped against one another in an unconscious canoodle before the yawning elevator doors.

After confirming a clear coast and recovering the assault rifle's component parts from behind her, Moira weaves around the two toppled prison guards on her way. She notes the Surimiah's continued prevalence of Gantorese personnel and wonders vaguely if Gant is the ship's original port of call before busying herself with the elevator's nearby motor control box.

Prying the main panel free certainly wasn't Moira's definition of easy, nor her definition of silent. It offers shrill, teltriton protest, echoing down the hall, when she swats it aside with her electrobaton. Within the next two minutes, she anticipates the arrival of re-enforcements.

Luckily for Moira, the call request transponder is simply located within the control box. A little manual surgery later and she's successfully extracted the transponder and all its attendant cords and wiring. With the remote cell-door activator and the SV7's percussion cap to keep it company, the call request transponder was the final ingredient in the strange cocktail of mismatched mechanisms so integral to Moira's escape.

How exactly any of these random pieces of technical apocrypha intended to spring her from this supremely secure prison hauler mid-warp, Moira deliberately had no idea.

The Seventeenth Deck of the HIN Surimiah is more or less identical to its Twenty-Sixth Deck. The black teltriton corridor is cast in a gentle curve and outlined in wavering pink light from the individual cell doors. Her destination is halfway around the column's circuit and Moira dares it openly, trio of disjointed machine parts in one gloved fist, electrified baton in the other.

She fails to run afoul of any more guards along the way. She does earn the semi-occasional hoot or catcall from an awake prisoner, a form of attention Moira's habitually deaf to.

She lingers before the deflection door of Cell 17P. Each cell was protected by a shimmering membrane of projected pink energy, entirely impermeable to anything but the insulated gloves worn by the Surimiah's guards and now Moira. The door's reflective light only manages to spike the eyes of the cell's sole occupant a dim pink color. Whomever may lurk in the cramped chamber's furthest corner, they don't so much as shift their weight or stir themselves at all in reaction to Moira's arrival.

Dropping calmly to a knee before the scintillating barrier, Moira, after waiting a beat, extends her gloved hand through the membrane. Despite the deflection glove, her skin beneath still crawls and creeps unnervingly.

Moira deposits each nonsensical item in a neat little procession on the prisoner's side of the door; remote activator first, percussion cap second and call request transponder third. This done, Moira withdraws her right hand, locks eyes as best she can with the pink pinpricks within the cell and makes a single stipulation.

Get busy.

A gruff noise, either a grunt or a growl, signals an acceptance and heralds the next and least pleasant of Moira's tasks.

Moira Quicksilver now intended to run down the nearest gaggle of guards, preferably armed, and pick the nastiest, noisiest fight possible. She rises to her feet, banishes any remaining thoughts of stealth and suddenly stomps out of sight of Cell 17P and its wordless occupant.

Moira dashes further down the hallway at full tilt. With both electrobatons extended and armed, she's visibly unafraid but inwardly anxious about the upcoming life-or-death calculations she'd need to pull off. Her most conservative estimate assumed another pair of guards, standing watch over the the opposite service elevator. The possibility of another two remained worryingly distinct, however.

To date, Moira had never engaged more than three individual combatants at once and emerged victorious. Considering that any resistance she's likely to encounter would almost certainly be armed with more than electrified sticks, she doesn't necessarily like her odds.

As always, Moira's afforded precious little time to fully contemplate these odds as she rounds a sloping corner onto, she guessed it, four individual prison guards.

All four loiter about the corridor in various states of repose, their bored conversation immediately interrupted and each only too happy to leap off their laurels to meet the unspoken challenge of an escaped prisoner.

She spends a second counting distances, extrapolating each enemy's entrance and praying to all the moons she knows what she's doing.

Two batons, delivered as one directly to the side of his Gantorese head, is more than sufficient motivation to cave-in the skull of the first prison guard to reach Moira. Her introductions made, the two guards furthest away unsling and cock their respective SV7s.

Her headlong charge doesn't slow when she hurls her lefthand electrobaton at the leftmost of the two marksman, a humanoid male who appears understandably astounded by the sparking projectile whizzing end over end toward him. Whether or not the tossed baton suitably distracts or even comes close to hitting him at all, Moira can't say. She immediately has the second guard, a Sybolo wheezing methane through a breathing apparatus and wielding a baton of his own, as a more pressing concern.

A precision strike to his wrist clatters her enemy's weapon to the floor. Before he reacts, Moira's seized the ecotplasmic prison guard by the scruff of his collar in one gauntleted fist and pressed the sparking end of her baton neatly beneath his chin, as though holding him at sword point. The Sybolo attempts physical protest, but the hissing tip of Moira's baton reminds him exactly how fragile his respiration equipment could be.

At this moment, killing this idiot wasn't her main priority. Closing the gap between herself and either of the two remaining assault rifles was.

The roar of gunfire somewhere behind the Sybolo indicates to Moira the trigger-happiest of her armed opponents. She thrusts forth the unwilling guard as a squishy pink meat shield and advances toward the shooter and his precious assault rifle. The continued sound of his firing, contrasted against the yielding wet sounds of the Sybolo's skin popping, further indicates to Moira that this Gantor shares few of his former comrades scruples against shooting one's co-workers.

By the time she's taken five steps, the Sybolo is little more than a ragged hunk of dead flesh, rent body armor and transparent blood, supported only by Moira's fist around his collar and Moira's baton at his throat. Thankfully, she hears the telltale click of an empty magazine.

Moira commends the Sybolo for his sacrifice by pitching his corpse unceremoniously aside and risking the home stretch fully exposed. At sight of her, the Gantor rifleman, another tall, cadaverous razorback in riot armor, just manages to cram a second clip into the SV7's awaiting chamber.

He levels the firearm point blank at her. Moira, a million mottibles away for all her electrobaton can avail her now, tries her hardest to contort her body in such a way as to minimize the grievous internal damage the oncoming laser bolt is likely to deal.

The Gantor squeezes the trigger. Supercharged ditrogen plows a hole through her midsection. Moira Quicksilver, unsure if her fourth and possibly final gamble of the evening had actually paid off, crumples to the deck.

Odisseus has, over the course of his forty-two hour incarceration, become intimately familiar with every nook, cranny and physical facet of his cramped cell. From the piss-scented corner paradoxically opposite from the chamber's tiny toilet, to the disconcerting mosaic of unidentifiable stains that spans the breadth of the floor, to the patternless claw marks marring each of the three walls, Odisseus knows it all. He had, however, resolved himself early on not to spend any more time pondering the specifics of the room's previous tenants than he absolutely must. Temporary as he intended his stay to be, he imagined there were certain matters it simply didn't help to dwell upon.

Hence his excitement at the unprecedented arrival of three pieces of random claptrap in his otherwise commonplace cell.

They were cheap Imperium trash, each one; the manufactured vomit of drone-operated assembly lines on Dubos or Epar and barely worth the fuel spent to ship them across the galaxy. To the eyes of Odisseus, sequestered from all mechanics for nearly two full days, they looked positively shiny, as though they'd been handcrafted by mythical creatures and left on the Ortok's doorstep overnight. Moira, in her wildest get-up yet, had delivered them and departed not fifteen seconds ago.

Franky, Odisseus would love nothing more than to sink his proverbial teeth into his trio of new toys, were it not for the electromagnet shackling him to the opposite wall.

Micne and multe are two of the galaxy's oddest metals. Both found in prodigious abundance in Hivu's crust, it had taken scientists centuries to discover their queer little symbiosis that made them so invaluable to jailers and turnkeys everywhere.

Should one send an electric current through a substantial amount of micne, they would find that any amount of multe, no matter how trace, would be immediately drawn to its sister metal by an irresistibly potent magnetic force. This learnt, the Endless Imperium happened, in a seeming instant, upon the most oppressive and subjugating possible application of this fascinating technology; electromagnetic manacles.

While his left paw is free, Odisseus' right paw is clapped in a stiff shackle of pure multe. That shackle has spent the entire forty-two hour journey aboard the Surimiah irrevocably magnetized to the thick bar of electrified micne that ribbons his and every other prisoner's cell. Beyond that, the Imperium appeared relatively conservative in the use of micne. The security cordon that encircles every floor and deck of the ship and its detainment column was pure micne. More painfully, the very tips of its guard's electrobatons were made from micne, allowing the hired help to manhandle an unruly captive at stick's end.

For the most part, Odisseus had only found the micne-multe dilemma to be a supreme annoyance rather than a serious detriment to the overall plan. He's at least enough personal mobility within his own cell to use its only two amenities; the bed and the toilet.

Staring at the remote activator, the percussion cap and the call request transponder, arrayed pleasantly just inside the door of his cell and just conveniently out of paw's reach, Odisseus thanks all the moons of Jotor for the length of his tail.

Several protracted moments of awkward jostling and flopping later, Odisseus holds in his only available paw the three ingredients he needs to play his designated role in the escape. Both completely dissimilar in function and messily salvaged from three diametrically opposed systems, they were obviously incompatible. Simply by turning each scrap over in his paw once or twice, Odisseus can discern precisely how he'll cobble together the necessary device.

Assuming its success, this jury-rigged device would not only loose him from his magnetic bonds, but also disable the deflection door of his cell.

All of this would amount to a lengthy but relatively simple procedure with two free paws. With his primary paw glued to the wall, it might not even be possible, a contingency for which the Ortok hadn't accounted.

The work, as predicted, is excruciating. A constant juggling act between hind paw, left paw and encapsulated right paw is the only way Odisseus can achieve the finer points of tinkering. In some instances, his right paw clasped the makeshift device to the wall, while the left monkeyed about as necessary. Other times, a hind paw or his tail would serve this function, if his pinned paw could not.

With this utter forfeiture of precision came the desperate need for caution. Moira, likely responsible for the terrible ruckus the Ortok hears further down the corridor, didn't have the time or the inclination to scrounge him up another batch of parts should he carelessly break one.

Thusly, work that, with two paws, would have taken Odisseus a number of minutes to complete drags on over an hour and more. By the time he's nearing what he believes to be a working prototype, Odisseus can no longer hear the clamant sounds of struggle around the column's bend. He's left to assume that, whatever the outcome, Moira ended up on one winning side or another.

Even for all the trial and tribulation of slaving one-handedly over a hot jury-rig, Odisseus cannot help but derive some simple aesthetic pleasure from repair and reconstruction. He'd suffered five meals of synthetic fish paste, an extremely unflattering haircut and nothing else to occupy his time save running mental maintenance on his faraway spaceship. Uncomfortable as it is, Odisseus revels in the experience of furrowing his brow, biting his tongue and getting grease between his claws.

Much ado and the odd bout of strangled cursing toward his restraints passed before a sweaty and cramping Odisseus has finished. With his own one and a half paws, he's constructed the nearest facsimile to a remote wave emitter that scrap metal, three-quarters of an ace mechanic and an hour and a half can realistically make. It's unwieldy, highly sensitive and tremendously fragile but, for Odisseus' purposes, he predicts it'll have to serve.

If it doesn't, he was looking down the barrel of a life sentence in the famously unfriendly Vorse Imperial Penitentiary, a fate he'd only wish on Garrok Brondi.

With the wave emitter placed gingerly on his meager mattress, Odisseus spares a glance up and down the hallway to confirm the necessary lack of interruptions. This done, he peels back a sizable sheet of floor plating with the unbridled force of his hind paw. He'd made several attempts to loosen this particular plate during off-hours and lulls between guard patrols but it still comes away from the floor with a sickening squeal of unhappy teltriton.

Wasting as little time as possible, Odisseus collects his masterpiece off the mattress. He crouches toward the naked cables and wiring revealed by the displaced plate and sets about inserting the device as something of a stopgap along the main feed conduit.

To the best of Odisseus' knowledge, the main feed conduit on a Mercy-class craft of the Surimiah's build runs the entire length of the detainment column, supplying each deck with both electricity and power. Unless Odisseus grossly missed his guess, the conduit was fed directly, via a series of interconnected relays, into the ship's reactor core. Assuming both the equipment and his handiwork were reliable, Odisseus' wave emitter could theoretically send a counter-signal along the same channel and into the core, theoretically being the operative word in that sentence.

The installation is slapdash, the emitter itself is precariously positioned and Odisseus can only scoot himself so far away from the contraption, thanks to the electromagnet clamping him in place. With the cannibalized remote activator in his paw, the hemmed-in Ortok cringes as much of his bulk away from the emitter as he can.

He extends a blanket prayer to all the moons, the leviathan deity of his homeworld and any latent engineering gods that might be listening and, clenching his fangs, he presses the button.

Less than encouraging is how Odisseus would describe the immediate reaction. The emitter hums, coughs a few sparks out of unsecured wires and overall disappoints its maker a few anxious seconds. Odisseus considers pressing the button again, a solution his saltbrother certainly would have tried, when the overhead lights, the rumble of the distant engines and, fatefully, the deflection door all flicker.

It's brief enough that Odisseus doubts he actually sees it. Before long, though, a second and a third flicker follow, accompanied by the agonizing moan of everything electronic aboard. A rapid series of following flickers, together with the unfortunate side effect of awakening every sleeping inmate, build to a spastic climax in which the wave emitter combusts and the Surimiah, as if in grief, promptly dies.

The overhead lights click off. The engine's rumble beneath his paws gradually peters out. The deflection door before him fizzes once in frustration and finally retreats back into its wall-mounted projectors. Most heartening to Odisseus, however, the tremendous ache in his strained right arm abates suddenly as the electromagnetic cuff fastening him to the far wall relinquishes its forty-two hour hold.

The Ortok wishes he had more than a moment to either appreciate this sensation or congratulate himself on his latest mechanical victory. Need, however, impels him forward.

Odisseus tromps out of the ineffectual cell and onto the Seventeenth Deck's main hallway. Auxiliaries activated, a dulcet droidvox coos repeatedly over the ship's internal loudspeaker. Emergency lighting – no doubt part of the Surimiah's auxiliary package, along with life support, inertial compensation and several other necessities – bathes the corridor faded fuchsia, casting immense and eerie shadows into every corner.

Lingering in the corridor's center a quick moment, Odisseus feels a bitter draft, likely displaced air from the now-inoperable service elevator, rifle through his considerably shorter fur and the Ortok shivers. With no time to contemplate the indignities of his new prison-demanded haircut, Odisseus shuffles his bulk down the hallway, grateful at least for a little exercise.

All around him as he plods down the corridor, Odisseus watches his fellow prisoners come to terms with the drastic shift in their surroundings. Convicts of every shape, stripe and species rouse themselves and peer curiously through the conspicuous gap where their cell doors once stood. All the bipeds are dressed in those trademark yellow jumpsuits while those with less accommodating anatomies, Odisseus included, were generally down to their skins.

Some still snore, most engage in guilty, hushed conversation like truant schoolchildren. Odisseus observes at least one scuffle, threatening to break into a true brawl, even on his short jog to the service elevator.

He passes, as he nears his destination, the obvious scene of some altercation or another, to judge from the presence of two freshly-minted corpses, sprawled dramatically on the floor. One, a Gantor heavy, proudly displays his cause of death, in the form of some heinous head trauma. The other, some pink sentient whose actual species Odisseus might have been able to determine had he been left in one piece, is strewn in several wet pieces around the area, as if someone had attempted to disassemble him with a semiautomatic firearm.

Moira, Odisseus mutters, a suspicion confirmed by the discovery of a third splash of blood, humanoid by the color, Moira's by the smell. The Ortok's bemusedly impressed at her body count, wonders absentmindedly for her safety and waddles into the ajar service elevator.

He has an unbecoming moment negotiating his paunch through the available crack the doorway affords him. After considerable and cumbersome efforts, Odisseus squeezes himself out onto the lip of the elevator shaft.

Seventeen decks tower above him and thirteen more plummet below. The Ortok's claws keep a firm grip on the outcropping behind him as he ponders the heights and depths before him. The draft he'd felt previously is increased tenfold at its source as it whizzes past him. He shivers again, cursing his confoundedly trimmed fur.

Glancing upward, Odisseus is pleased to discover that whomever had last used the elevator had ridden it straight to the top of the detainment column, granting the Ortok a clean climb up the shaft's service ladder. Gritting his fangs against the breeze, Odisseus puts his first paw to the cold teltriton rung and begins the seventeen floor ascent to reunite with his comrades. With each step, he curses Imperium penal procedure.

Moira Quicksilver awakens with the sort of skull-cracking headache that could kill a fully-grown arlaxi troopmother. The thudding pain behind her eyes is her first conscious sensation, dull awareness of her environs the second.

Starchy bedsheets, she apprehends. Industrial lightning in muted purple, she observes. Frantic dialogue, passed back and forth across the spacious chamber she apparently inhabited, she overhears. She's able to crane her neck aside in both directions, catching sight of a plastolieum divider flush against her bed on the right and a deactivated apparatus of blank screens and dead panels on the left.

Moira's regulated her breathing, taken stock of her unimpressive physical status and memorized the patterns on the galvanized ceiling before she registers the freshly-patched hole in her abdomen.

Streams of agony, dulled somewhat by anesthetic, creep up her torso, down her thigh, around her side, across her belly and outward in every direction from the initial wound. She clenches both fists to the bedspread to absorb the brunt of it but it's made thoroughly clear to Moira Quicksilver that she isn't going to be capable to the task at hand without a great many more painkillers.

With a herculean effort, she rears her head off the pillow to confirm her hypothesis. The main infirmary of the HIN Surimiah is located not in the detainment column, but in the main body of the ship proper. A sizable chamber of predictably stark, military accommodations, the ship's medical bay serviced all her injured or sick aboard, prisoner and crewman alike. Automatic restraints serve to keep the former in line.

Now, however, with the Surimiah's current technical difficulties, these restraints dangle limp and ineffectual off the side of her bed. The only thing keeping Moira from misbehaving is the cocktail of pharmaceuticals swimming through her bloodstream.

She wanders her hand off the mattress and investigates to her right, whereupon she discovers not only a small nightstand, but an old-fashioned steel-backed clipboard. Hoping she's unobserved as she does so, Moira discreetly palms the clipboard aside and half-tucks it beneath her body, shielding it and her perusal of it from any unfriendly eyes that might happen to glance in her direction.

14 fl. spz. of narcotic plozine is her prescribed poison, according to her physician's chicken-scratch. Another dosage would certainly make her woozier than a bloodless Baziron, but the imperative pain in her abdomen, she imagines, was only going to be neutralized with still more drugs. The dermal sealant had definitely been applied by now, as evinced by the great swatch of bandage that still cinctured her waist.

Despite this, Moira felt confident that, unless she was too careless and ripped her organicon stitches, another helping of narcotic plozine would be exactly what the doctor, in this case herself rather than the clipboard's Surgeon Ixen, ordered.

Moira bides her time for several long minutes, hoping to snag the attention of the nurses, surgeons and other medical staff that come flittering past. The more extant problem of the ship's electrical failure, however, has captured the infirmary's attention rather decidedly.

Impatient, she opts instead to nudge an idle container of saline solution off the nightstand and onto the floor, landing with a dull thud and spray of spilt fluid. Lying entirely still and faking her best unconsciousness, Moira's rewarded several moments later when a Fjoran nurse in a spotless white frock scuttles over to investigate the disturbance.

No sooner has she arrived, however, than the professedly catatonic Moira's burst back to action. She strikes the nurse fiercely in the temple with the clipboard's steel corner, worried momentarily that the blunted tip of her improvised weapon will be rendered toothless by the Fjoran's ridged exoskeleton. To the clipboard's credit, though, the nurse stumbles backward, slips comically on the saline and smacks the back of her head against the floor's teltriton with a disquieting crack.

Mustering what strength she can from her wobbly limbs, Moira does her very best to vault from her bed, as gracefully as possible. She instead clambers into the defunct medical equipment to her left with a clumsy clatter and only just manages to maintain her balance by clinging to them for support.

Voices from afar, somewhere at the other end of the infirmary, hasten her onward and she tosses the place as quickly as she can, in hectic search for the necessary narcotics. Finally, after several desperate seconds, she's got her hands on a syringe of the stuff, neatly labeled narcotic plozine.

Another several seconds is wasted, debating the best delivery point for her second proverbial spoonful of medicine. Watching the small army of medical technicians bearing down on her, Moira forgoes any semblance of decorum, parts the slit in the back of her hospital gown with one hand and rams the point of the needle into her buttock with the other.

She gnashes her teeth, staggers and props herself bodily on the edge of the nearest infirmary bed not her own. She wrestles to regain composure as her fast-acting medication floods and trickles into every corner of her body.

Moira rises from her slump. Her asscheek remains fleetingly sore as all other sensations of pain, tension or discomfort, gunshot wound included, increasingly drain out of her. Her entire internal system is left cool, shivering and equipped with a deeply, profoundly, nigh unquenchable yearning for a nap on comfy pillows.

She instead turns her body, step by step, toward the wave of oncoming attackers, clipboard in one hand and empty syringe in the other. As best she can, she attempts to foster mental peace with the idea of fighting her way across the entire breadth of the Surimiah in this condition, on her way to the bridge.

Sleepy as Moira might be, the prison break was honestly barely begun.

Chapter 2

Two-Bit Switch, a single point of life among the dunes of dead wreckage all around him, studies the blueprint more as an excuse to ignore her than anything else.

"Two-Bit!"

Bloom me out, Gasbox. He peels his eyes artificially off the spreadsheet in his hands. I ord you the first time, alright? Don't wet your wozzers.

In the dingy, flickering light of her scrapbarn, she's almost pretty. In here, everyone's face sports an eerie, greenish cast from the shoddy lighting. Shadows deepen in the depressions beneath everyone's brow. Like this, Gasbox looks furtive, understated, exotic. The natural emerald complexion of her species helps only to improve Two-Bit's perception of her.

In proper lighting, Two-Bit remembers her features as broader, flatter, less appealing. What's more, the cut of her scruffy mechanic's uniform wasn't doing her any favors either.

For that matter, neither was her perpetual nagging.

Well? She proposes, a hand to each broad hip.

Two-Bit flaps the creased blueprint aside. Did you hank something, or...?

The Moza grease monkey sets her jaw firm, smart enough to suss out that he was running her around but too angry to finger him for it. We ain't friends, is we, Two-Bit?

I wouldn't describe our relationship as such, no.

So, I ain't gotta do you no favors?

Look, what're you jockin' at? I'm a little engaged at the present.

Gasbox extends two stubby fingers. Two weeks of back rent you owe me.

He steps away from her and back onto his previous path, scoffing audibly. Oh, come off it, Gasbox–

I ain't comin' offa nothing! she counters, catching up the ambulatory slack behind him.

They weave a path through the mountainous heaps of junk, salvage and other mechanical miscellany that covers the working floor of Gasbox's unnamed scrapbarn. All that distinguishes this scrapbarn from a traditional, open-air junk heap is the actual roof over their heads, a shaky pretense that threatened to collapse atop them at a moment's notice. In all fairness, calling this place anything but a glorified dump was an insult to chopshops galaxywide.

What the tumble-down scrapbarn lacked in nearly every other amenity or accommodation, it bought back tenfold in anonymity. Crowning the sleaziest cul-de-sac of Qel Qatar's worst ghetto, the scrapbarn had the distinct virtue of invisibility to the outside galaxy. Each member of The Unconstant Lover's outlaw crew could consider this a quite salient advantage, at the present moment.

Besides, Gasbox had always proven to be a decent enough middleman, though she was quickly proving to be a less-than-satisfying landlord, what with her apparent proclivity toward getting on Two-Bit's nerves.

I jabbed you about this, he swears, circling around the deactivated reactor core of a TFS 283 Mercy-Class Transport. I jabbed you we'd square up soon as we come back from, you know, our foolish venture.

See, and that's what I've been thinking about. Suppose nobody don't come back from this 'foolish venture' of yourn. She pauses, certainly for effect. Who's to pay my back rent then, smart guy?

Two-Bit tosses a hand into the air as he steps into the shade of the Moza's still-dingier office. Confidence, woman! I find that you are very much lacking in lollies.

Darn tootin'.

Gasbox's main office, the central junction for each of the scrapbarn's four service stalls, is actually somehow messier than the main warehouse itself.

A smattering of ratty furniture – an expansive workbench, some threadbare chairs, a sagging sofa – is scarcely visible beneath the armada of dusty and deconstructed appliances, household and otherwise, that are crammed between the office's four walls. The aforementioned workbench is where they're thickest, but almost every chair in the joint is stacked with juicers, chocochino grinders and other kitchen sundries. The poor sofa against the far wall plays host to a disemboweled laundry mainframe, its mechanical innards bleeding onto the stained floor.

Got gashouse news for ya, love. I think you might need to– Two-Bit stops short and peers up from his blueprint. The room's only occupant doesn't turn to acknowledge either him or the derailment of his drifttrain of thought. What're you doing?

The hobnailed heels of her fearsome jackboots are planted daintily on the workbench. The glossy cover of the AccCo Bimonthly Product Catalogue masks her face. Moira Quicksilver remains characteristically unalarmed by Two-Bit's entrance, continuing to refuse eye contact behind her magazine. Reading.

Two-Bit's unimpressed. Yeah, well, you're supposed to be unlagging yourself from them bracelets I gave you.

Moira jiggles her boot's wingtip in a lazy point to Two-Bit's right. Following the line of her point, Two-Bit spots, fastened firmly to the side of the micne-smelted toaster oven he'd plugged in ten minutes ago, an empty multe manacle and Moira's wrist inexplicably missing from it.

Two-Bit's impressed. How did you do that?

I have a trick.

You have a trick. Two-Bit's mouth lingers open dumbly. Well, what's that, then?

That would be telling.

Returning his focus to the blueprint, Two-Bit acquiesces and continues his stride through the office toward the rear garages. Have it your way.

Moira finally peels back the corner of her magazine to pose. You were saying? You think I might need to...?

Allowing himself both a wry smile and a moment's pause to dramatically drop it, Two-Bit stalls a second within the opposite doorway to inform her. Get shot.

What?

Without looking up from his schematics, Two-Bit slaps the doorjamb companionably and exits the office. Have fun, darlin'. His smile only widens as he jogs onward through the piles of refuse, listening to Moira's shouted objections behind him.

Two-Bit? What do you mean, 'get shot?'

Get your feet offa there! comes Gasbox's voice from back within the office. Whether Moira's stone cold remonstrance or Gasbox's petulant insistence wins out over the other, Two-Bit hasn't the time, patience or inclination to find out. He, of course, wasn't above exploiting Moira as a temporary distraction from Gasbox so he could potentially put a little ground between himself and his debtor. Besides, he's more important things to look to.

By Two-Bit Switch's count, they required approximately two more months of planning, bribery and rehearsal before they could take this gamble. As a professional jailbreaker, this would be Two-Bit's first attempt at intentional incarceration aboard and resulting escape from an Imperial prison ship midwarp.

Manifold tasks had yet to be accomplished. There were codes to memorize, tests to run, palms to grease, inventories to check and massive amounts of data still to collate about this particular prison ship.

Understandably, Two-Bit had little to no time to waste with Gasbox's over-eager demands. Just as it was the Captain's job to conceive of the stupid notion, it was Two-Bit's unspoken job to plan, prepare and execute his stupid notion.

This time around, the notion was a suitably flashy and suitably feasible method to get caught, get free and more importantly, get Huong Xo off their trail, even if only temporarily.

Tell you what, Two-Bit, Gasbox proposes, a trace of breathlessness on her voice, you're unwilling or, more likely, unable to front all that cash you owe me? All's well – gimme the ship as collateral.

We're still chugging about for a buyer, is Two-Bit's canned answer.

No, the other one. The one you got sittin' in Stall D. The junker. Two-Bit pivots to face her as she talks, to flash Gasbox the warning in his eyes. "The Whatever Lover."

"Unconstant, he reminds gravelly, and I hink, he surmises, facing forward again to consider the blueprint, that the Captain wouldn't much fancy your wording."

Which part?

'Collateral,' for one? Not to mention 'junker.' He cracks the canvas in his hands once. Captain gets awful clingy as regards his gantine.

Your Cap'n don't scare me.

Two-Bit shoots another glance behind at that. You have bumped him, yeah?

Ahead of Two-Bit, the slopes of scrap metal part to reveal a yawning service door, the barn's rear two stalls and a fresh junk heap. Arisen over the past hour and situated smack dab in the middle of the doorway, this newest mess is comprised entirely of machinery both minute, meaningless and handheld.

Squatting hard at work in the middle of all this carnage, like a toddler surrounded by Tyrotect tumbler toys, is one shaggy, disagreeable Ortok. In his clumsy paws, Odisseus agonizes over some cobbled-together contraption or another.

Standing apart and seemingly on guard in the doorway, billowing blue smoke toward the ceiling, is one blubbery, agreeable Grimalti. Abraham Bonaventure doesn't seem to agonize over anything but that gaudy, bulbous calabash pipe he'd fallen in love with four months ago at that bazaar on Bennevikos.

As Two-Bit and his annoying tagalong approach, Odisseus barks an order over his shoulder, demanding an unseen someone to gimme. The reply is confused, protesting and echoes off the thermosteel walls of the scrapbarn's unseen service stall.

What? The 910s?

Odisseus barks another affirmative.

Got plenty of those! the absent speaker confirms. One sec!

Two-Bit attracts everyone's attention with a snap of his blueprint. Good news or bad news first?

Odisseus mutters something about always and Two-Bit takes a guess.

Well, as of right now, it vizzes like Moira's probably gonna hafta get plugged.

Is that all? Abraham comments around his pipe.

Yeah. Two-Bit regards him. What're you doing?

Supervisin'.

Incoming! The disembodied voice warns.

On cue, a spinning hunk of metal whizzes through the open door and lands conveniently in Abraham's upturned palms. The crusty old Grimalti glances sidelong at Two-Bit as he hands the 910 in question toward Odisseus. Without removing his eyes from his own work, the Ortok snatches the offered device.

See? Abraham offers.

Squinting, Odisseus cranes his hairy head up to address Two-Bit with a request about news.

"Good news is, turns out them lifts they use do got those transmitters we want. He flips the relevant swatch of blueprint around. Vizz at that. After squinting for several more seconds, even giving the schematics a perfunctory sniff, the Ortok allows himself a fanged smile. Thought you'd like that."

The Ortok's demeanor immediately changes, however, when consulting his comrade in the other room. He yammers out an angry order for a replacement part and tosses the 910 dispassionately to the pile.

"The 730-whats? You just got the 910s!"

Odisseus snarls something about his mind and changing before the voice capitulates.

Don't snap at me. Hold on. This is followed shortly by more mechanical shuffling, as though someone was digging their way through a junk heap until, after a beat, something audibly dislodges in the other room. A metallic clatter of a spare part avalanche, accompanied by a startled scream, resounds awkwardly from Stall D.

Now, don't freak out, is the voice's first disclaimer on the heels of the accident, but like, a lot of stuff sorta, uh, fell on me? So, nobody should come back here for a second. This is followed by more floundering and flopping in the detritus, during which Two-Bit drops his head to his palm and Odisseus rolls his eyes. Hey, so, he reports after a moment, I can't move, actually. Somebody better come back here.

A huffy Odisseus glares ceilingward and drops the device from his paws. He stomps off into Stall D, to the rectification and rescue of the first point on his impromptu assembly line.

Is that him? Gasbox, arriving expectedly late, questions to no one and everyone. "I'mana have myself a word. Captain!"

Two-Bit stops her short, interposing his body between the Moza and the path following Odisseus into the other room. Gasbox, Gasbox, Gasbox, he stalls. Let's make a jelly. Whaddya jabb to, I don't know, first buyer's rights, eh? That sound jig to you?

Gasbox scowls her benighted features. No foolin'? I heard of your tricks with No Cock, Two-Bit.

Ancient history, love.

You ain't pawnin' no rattletrap off on me.

Take her if you like, derry her if you don't. Your call. Either way, you get your rhino first things first when we coop back here. He makes a gesture into the vagueness behind him. Let's just not tangle up the Cap'n, alright? Two-Bit favors his least trustworthy contact with as amiable a smile as he can fake. Sound savvy to you?

The agreement doesn't come instantly. Fine, she pushes through clenched teeth. Fine. Just, you know, she waves a glove toward Odisseus' caldera of junk, try not to make such a bloomin' mess, willya? Moons.

Both Two-Bit and Abraham watch her take her leave – discontented, suspicious but placated, for the time being. Pretending to study his blueprint, Two-Bit waits a healthy amount of time, until Gasbox is clearly out of earshot and most likely halfway to harassing Moira in the office.

Do us a kindie. Keep your peeps peeled, eh?

Think she'll talk?

Nag. I'm just gettin', you know, a sorta 'steal-your-ship-when-your-drawers-is-down kinda vibe offa her. If you take my meaning. Abraham watches Gasbox depart unmoved. So, like I jabbed, keep 'em peeled.

As ye wish. He extracts the pipe with one hand. Maybe I'm misunderstandin', though. Haven't we the coin just to pay her upfront?

Oh, in spades, me chum. Comin' out our beezers. It's just, you know, Gasbox's a bit of a shoveover, is all. The principle of the thing and whatnot.

Abraham almost smirks. Switch, ye corrupt fuck.

Two-Bit's reply is cut suddenly short by the sudden sound of a second crash. Emanating from somewhere in the stall behind them, this time the commotion comes in tandem with an animalistic yelp that Two-Bit couldn't begin to translate, had he even the knowledge.

"Um, guys? Don't freak out, but somebody else should maybe come back here."

Two-Bit Switch stands, listening to the best and muted efforts of man and Ortok to extricate themselves from a junkslide of fuel cell contractors and energy catalysts in the next room. He eyes the manufacturing blueprint in his hands. The crinkled plans outline the industrial design and overall deckplan of the HIN Surimiah's particular make and model.

Two-Bit wonders absently if his eyes might have been bigger than his stomach.

Two-Bit Switch spots Moira Quicksilver and suddenly has his worst fears about his eyes and his stomach immediately confirmed. Okay, we're in fucking stook now.

She snores softly, slumped against the room's main emergency console, naked save for her flimsy hospital gown.

Odisseus stands guard at the chamber door, armed with both MI Model DX2 Wreckingball Combat Shotgun and his doofy haircut. He sounds unenthused and less surprised when he grunts a question about dead.

Not quite. Two-Bit crouches before the slumbering ex-bounty hunter with a certain degree of timidness, as though about to rouse a resting cobra. You, uh, hanging in there, love? It's me, Two-Bit – your chummy neighborhood slambreaker.

Her eyelids flutter open and Two-Bit practically recoils. She appraises him drowsily before her expression contorts into the most unholy of sights on that flinty face – a smile. Hello, Two-Bit, she greets pleasantly.

Listen. Moira. Two-Bit jiggles the vest of reinforced body armor clasped in his left hand. We gotta get you threaded. We can't have you bustin' up the joint in nothing but, well, he makes a vague gesture, that. He climbs to his feet, opening the vest up invitingly. Here.

With some coaxing, a thoroughly exhausted Moira manages to stand on her wobbly feet. After some suitably uncomfortable jostling, in which Two-Bit's extremely mindful of the placement of his hands, he manages to strap the drugged-up first mate into a padded combat vest. She remains starkly pantless, however and, lacking any means to remedy this, Two-Bit yanks the lower lip of her vest down as far as he dares.

Thank you, Two-Bit, she responds sleepily. That was nice of you.

This is jeebing me out.

I like your hat.

From where he lurks in the doorway, Odisseus sniffs something impatiently about moving.

Lockdown Control aboard the HIN Surimiah is a small, inoffensive chamber, tucked around the base of the detainment column and conveniently located only a hop, skip and jump south of the infirmary.

After meeting up in the prisoner receiving area at the very top of the column, Two-Bit Switch and Odisseus had quickly raided the nearby guard's armory. They proceeded to suit themselves up with what body armor they could fit into, Wreckingballs, all the requisite ammunition and, in Two-Bit's case, a riotguard helmet.

Thusly outfitted, the two accomplices had scampered around the other side of the column to meet up with Moira. That's where they found her unconscious – fresh from surgery, fresh from the medical wing and fresh from lifting the state of emergency lockdown the Ortok's wave emitter had rendered onto the Surimiah.

Under extreme circumstances, such as complete power failure, the detainment column was programmed to automatically lock down. This prevented the more enterprising of any suddenly-loosed prisoners from escaping the column and running amok in the ship proper. The system of airlocks between column and ship would activate and both halves of the Surimiah were irrevocably sealed off from each other, regardless of the craft's current state of power.

The lockdown had proven to be a most persistent thorn in the side of Two-Bit's best laid plans against the Surimiah. The only way to circumvent the emergency protocol was from a set of manual controls, located within the appropriately named Lockdown Control and, of course, outside the actual column itself.

This was the real reason, beyond the pure yuks of it, that Moira'd allowed herself to be shot in the first place. The fastest and most surefire way to place a prisoner beyond the Surimiah's security cordon was to let the establishment cart them off to the infirmary posthaste. As far as this escape was concerned, somebody on the crew was going to have to quite literally take one for the team. The question, of course, only came down to who.

To Two-Bit's thinking, leave it up to Moira to devise the least lethal means of catching canisters with one's body. When pressed, she even professed some bogus method of contorting herself in the face of gunfire to better cushion the blow. Now that she'd, all hopped up on painkillers, somehow fought her way through all the infirmary's security with nothing but a bloody clipboard and recent gunshot wound, Two-Bit was in somewhat less of a position to doubt her.

When he'd initially proposed the idea, he wouldn't have described her reaction as particularly pleased. As long as Two-Bit pressed how vital it was in their attempts to shirk Huong Xo, however, Moira Quicksilver had agreed right enough and performed the task fairly spectacularly.

What Two-Bit hadn't necessarily anticipated was the physical and mental state the evening's excitement, not to mention the anesthesia, would leave her in. Understandably, she was extremely sleepy but, disquietingly, she appeared actually amiable and, at the moment, also appeared to be having a surprisingly difficult time standing on two feet.

Two-Bit honestly wasn't convinced she'd be anything but a hindrance on their mad dash to pacify and commandeer the HIN Surimiah.

This, coupled with the other, unexpected complication that's recently arose, join forces to overwhelm Two-Bit. He's suddenly filled with a nostalgic desire to be back on Qel Qatar, pouring over blueprints back in Gasbox's scrapbarn, when everything was blissfully hypothetical.

Hey. Where's Nemo? Moira wonders.

"That, Two-Bit admits, is an excellent ringer. He shares an apprehensive glance with Odisseus. He was supposed to bump us up at the top here."

Odisseus shakes his confused head, completing Two-Bit's sentiment with never.

Oh, Moira comments, disappointment painfully visible on her face. Too bad. She shrugs a moment later. He'll turn up.

Sure he will, Two-Bit agrees halfheartedly. Coulda used his wheel, though.

The other major weak link in Two-Bit's chain of contrived events involved a rather unfortunate deadline they labored under. Odisseus' makeshift wave emitter could only realistically disable the reactor core for a period of approximately twenty-five minutes. With thirteen and a half minutes wasted by Odisseus clambering up the service ladder, that only left eleven and a half minutes to cross the entire length of the Surimiah and neutralize her bridge crew. Needless to say, this left precisely no time to go scampering around the detainment column, searching for their truant Captain.

On one hand, the plan