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Twenty minutes until liftoff. That’s what Bucciarati’s schedule said, but his team hadn’t been given their next mission yet.
The maintenance stations on the Barnard planets were firmly in the hands of Passione, but frankly, Bucciarati didn’t trust the attendants there not to steal parts from the Libeccio while performing “maintenance” on it. So while he waited at the foot of his ship’s ramp, his subordinates inside were inspecting and preparing the ship for the next mission.
Bucciarati kept watching and waiting, until he felt a tug on his pant leg. He looked to his side and downwards, where a small Alphartazian was trying to get his attention. For someone who was raised on Terra, Bucciarati had thought that he looked like a small, grey fairytale dwarf.
But he recognized the Alphartazian’s beard and hair, his walleyed look. He stepped back and bowed.
“Pericolo. I didn’t think you were giving me my assignment,” Bucciarati apologized.
Pericolo shook his head. “Polpo was waiting for my arrival before he called you.”
“He was already here?” Bucciarati’s eyes narrowed. If he had to wait for the capo Pericolo to arrive first, then this was likely some sort of time-sensitive relay mission.
“Come, let’s go.” Pericolo beckoned for the other to follow him.
The pair went into the mechanic station and into a back room, which appeared to be a medical bay. Several beds with curtains around them lined the walls.
Sitting in the corner of the room was Polpo, who happily munched on a banana while he was waiting. His torso appeared to be human for their meeting – Colombans could shapeshift their forms at will, but only their torso. Their cephalopod lower half was the one thing they could not change.
Polpo noticed Bucciarati and quickly threw the peel away. “Oh, good. Seems you both made it on-time,” he remarked.
“Yes, and my crew is doing a maintenance check of the Libeccio as we speak,” Bucciarati reported. “You called me here so suddenly. Is it an urgent situation?”
“Well…yes. It’s a matter of utmost importance. Quite dangerous, in fact.”
Polpo picked up a bottle of wine, opening it with a yellow tentacle. He offered it to Bucciarati, who shook his head, and he shrugged and began sipping it himself.
“I’ve known you for quite a long time, Bucciarati,” he hummed. “You’ve gone above and beyond in your missions. There isn’t a subordinate I trust more than I trust you, my boy.”
Bucciarati narrowed his eyes. He wasn’t blind, this was him trying to butter up his subordinate. Polpo preached trust, but treated his subordinates like pawns. That’s the way the gang worked.
When he’d first joined Passione, he’d been looking for a way to pay his father’s medical bills. Polpo offered to pay them, and to give Bucciarati a translation chip implanted in his head, in return for his employment. But being in that kind of debt meant that Bucciarati had been on the hook to “work the debt off” by following Polpo’s commands.
He’d paid the debt off eventually, but his father had already passed away. By that time, Bucciarati had seen the dark side of the interstellar gang, learned the lows just as well as the highs.
This mission had to be very important, if Polpo was suddenly getting like this. There was no other explanation.
“Is there something wrong?” Bucciarati asked. Polpo cleared his throat.
“Your next mission…well, it concerns the boss.”
Bucciarati’s eyes widened. “The boss?!”
No one had ever seen the boss of Passione. The gang only received his commands through others, or through emails and messages.
One of his own team, the newcomer, had joined the gang in order to usurp him and stop the drug trade. Bucciarati promised to support him, but wouldn’t help him if his life was on the line.
“It’s a direct order from the boss, so I won’t mince words. I suppose I’m not allowed to, anyway,” Polpo chuckled. “Bucciarati, your team is tasked with guarding and escorting the boss’s daughter.”
“Daughter?” Bucciarati repeated. “The boss has a daughter?”
“We only just learned this too,” Polpo shrugged. “Now that Pericolo has arrived, she can be handed over.”
“Bucciarati,” Pericolo called for his attention, and Bucciarati looked down at him. “Her name is Trish Una, and she’s fifteen years old. An Alhenan, but not from her mother’s side. Though, her surname was her mother’s maiden name.”
Bucciarati’s eyes narrowed. He did not plan on learning this much about Passione’s boss today. He’d share it with Giorno later…that is, if there was any information that he hadn’t discerned himself. The newcomer was very observant.
“Trish hasn’t met the boss even once in her life. But you’re well aware that no one knows who the boss is. Even Trish’s mother, Donatella Una, never knew the boss’s real name – a few days before her death, she asked for a person named ‘Solid Naso’ to be found.”
“Solid Naso doesn’t exist,” Bucciarati interrupted. “That’s one of the boss’s aliases he used when he was younger, correct.”
Pericolo nodded. “Word about Donatella spread, you see. It spread even more when Trish’s existence was discovered. The boss caught wind of this, and immediately ordered through proxies for Trish to be put into my custody.”
Bucciarati looked between Pericolo and Polpo. “If you’re here to give her to me, that means she can’t remain in one place. She’s in danger.”
Pericolo nodded. “If the order had come even thirty minutes later, then the ones who ransacked her home after she and I left would have found her first,” he replied. “There are people, traitors to Passione, who would kidnap and torture an innocent girl for information she doesn’t have.”
“Who’s after her?” Bucciarati questioned.
“The Hitman Team’s gone rogue,” Polpo informed. “We aren’t certain as to why – and frankly, we don’t care. But they’ll stop at nothing to get their hands on the boss’s daughter.”
“They want to use Trish to investigate the boss’s past and defeat him, then take over his drug trafficking routes.” Pericolo shook his head. “Their efforts are useless. The drugs only come from the Narcotics Team. But that information is only available to the capos…”
Bucciarati nodded at the implication: if the information gets spread around and it’s traced back to him, he’ll die. He needed to keep it a secret. “I understand.”
“Good, good. Now, you’ll be guarding her for a week, maybe less. The boss will give you further instructions on delivering his daughter to him,” Polpo instructed. He took another swig from his bottle, which looked tiny in his massive hands.
Pericolo looked over at a row of hospital beds. “Trish, come out. Come see the man who’ll be guarding you.”
One of the hospital beds creaked, and Bucciarati whipped around. The curtain was pulled back, and Trish stepped out of the bed. She had been hiding in there the whole time.
She looked at Bucciarati with a quiet intensity he rarely saw in civilians. Her large, catlike eyes were green with narrow slits. Her pink hair matched the patterns on her body. Her magenta horns were curved back against her head, and her tail was of a shape that Bucciarati could call it a devil’s.
Alhenans were white at birth, but slowly turned red as they matured. Bucciarati had learned that when he’d been given lessons about what extraterrestrial species he’d be interacting with in Passione. Trish was a light pink, despite her magenta patterns – true to Pericolo’s description, she was just a regular teenage girl.
She herself likely wouldn’t be of use to his and Giorno’s investigation, but delivering her would bring them closer to the boss.
“Oh, by the way, Bucciarati…”
Bucciarati turned to Polpo, who had dropped the bottle to the ground. The glass was reinforced for heavier gravity on other planets, so it didn’t break.
“You did get your Z-check done, right? It’d be difficult to get it done now, but…” Polpo shrugged. “Well, you’ll have to risk your lives defending her either way. But replacing a trusted subordinate is quite troublesome.”
“Yes, I got it done before my previous mission.”
After news of an incident spread through the Milky Way, it became an informal rule on spaceships to get their Terran crewmates regular medical checkups, especially after exposure to dangers that would kill a normal extraterrestrial. They were called Z-checks after the family that inspired the informal rule.
If Bucciarati had to be honest, he was surprised that this practice hadn’t started sooner. If the incident with Caesar Zeppeli had them clutching their pearls, he’d be curious to know their thoughts about Chernobyl.
“Is that all, then? I’ll begin the mission straight away.” With a bow to the capos, Bucciarati turned away and faced his charge.
Trish looked between the three of them warily, subtly trying to inch closer to Pericolo again. Bucciarati offered her his hand.
“Come, let’s get you onboard. Seems like we have a troublesome journey ahead of us.”
Trish slapped his hand away with a glare. “What am I, a child? This’ll be over quickly enough, so don’t act like we’re friends, Mr. Bodyguard,” she hissed.
Bucciarati straightened up, and went towards the exit of the building. “This way,” he called. It seemed like guarding this girl would not be an easy task, and they hadn’t even gotten attacked yet.
They reached the shipyard, and Bucciarati continued to guide Trish. “This is my ship, the Libeccio. If you have to exit it, bring someone with you. For your own safety,” he instructed.
Trish gave him a curt nod, but said nothing else. It was clear that she wanted this to end as quickly as possible.
Heading towards the ramp, Bucciarati noticed one of his crewmates standing at the spot he once stood. “Abbacchio!” he called.
Abbacchio turned to him, his tail swishing along the ground. His smooth scales reflected the light of the maintenance buildings a little too much, and he was trying to pull his loose clothing over the exposed parts of his body to minimize the glare, albeit hiding it by crossing his arms.
“There you are, Bucciarati.” He noticed the girl beside him and asked, “Who’s this?”
“This is Trish Una. Our next mission is to escort her to the boss…her father.”
Abbacchio’s speaker-like eyes went wide for a moment, then narrowed again. “And they trusted us to carry it out?”
“I don’t think I’d be able to understand Polpo’s logic if I tried,” Bucciarati shrugged. “Inform the crew that we’re lifting off in ten minutes.”
Abbacchio nodded and hurried away. Bucciarati had complete faith in his abilities; he’d learned that the reptilian Sheratanic people were very sensitive to rotational and orbital cycles, and had a great sense of time as a result. Abbacchio was perfect for doing routine inspections of the ship and crew, and keeping everyone to a schedule.
“Who was that?” Trish asked.
“Abbacchio, my quartermaster. He’s reliable where it counts,” Bucciarati replied. “Let’s go inside.”
Leading the way into the Libeccio, Bucciarati heard the sound of faint voices coming from a nearby hallway. He went in that direction, Trish following him, until he found two more crewmates.
The first was a young man with holes on his neck, hands, and sides. Among the people from Gliese 581’s fungal forest planet, his skin, hair, and clothes were coloured white and red to warn of toxicity.
Thankfully, he seemed to be in a good mood. Whenever he got angry, purple spores would leak from the holes in his body. He hoped the next task he assigned wouldn’t involve cleaning them up.
“Fugo,” he addressed, and the young man looked up. “Do you have a moment?”
Fugo looked at where he was showing the other crewmate to mop the floors, then looked back at Bucciarati. “Yes. Do you need anything?”
“Our next mission is an escort mission. I will give you more details later.” He gently placed a hand on Trish’s back, nudging her forwards. “This is Trish Una. I would like you to set up a spare room for his quarters.”
Fugo nodded, putting on a polite smile. “Please follow me,” he told her, and the two of them set off. Bucciarati considered making a bet with someone on how long Fugo’s patience would last with her, but thought better of it.
With the pair gone, he stepped towards the other crewmate and lowered his voice. “That’s the boss’s daughter. You understand what that means, right, Giorno?”
Giorno nodded. “Escorting her will bring us close to the boss. Not just in terms of hierarchy, but physically too.”
“Exactly,” Bucciarati nodded. Giorno did catch on fast after all.
When he first met Giorno, he mistook him for another Terran. But his sharp canine teeth and his yellow blood quickly made him realize otherwise. Underneath the Terran-esque appearance, his insides seemed more like an insect’s, complete with flaps of skin on his back hiding transparent wings.
Giorno seemed like he was a ladybug-like Hamalian…but they were herbivorous, and the sharp teeth were throwing him off. But asking if he had another parent who wasn’t Hamalian was rude by his own Terran standards, so Bucciarati kept quiet.
“We’re being hunted too. Keep your guard up,” Bucciarati warned, and he turned around to leave Giorno to his mopping.
The next place he needed to check was the utility room. Inside, he found another crewmate counting the number of tools put away.
“Mista, is everything in its proper place?” he asked.
Mista turned to him with a smile. “Yep! Nothing’s out of order, boss!”
Bucciarati scoffed and shook his head. He’d only recruited Mista as his weaponsmaster last year, and just recently got over the feeling of uncanny valley he got every time he saw him.
He looked like the golden statues of humans on Terra, but with elongated limbs and head, like something out of an ARG. The least odd thing about him were the holes in a ring around his torso, six in total. He wasn’t even fully sure where Mista was from, having picked him up from a cell on one of Jupiter’s moons.
Well, the point was that Mista should’ve known by now that Bucciarati was as far from the top rung of the gang as one could get. But he appreciated the sentiment anyway.
“Good. We’re taking off very shortly, so go help Fugo, wherever he is, and get yourselves secured in the communal area.”
Mista gave him a small salute, and Bucciarati turned to leave. But he stopped in his tracks when he heard a small sniffling from his suit. He frowned and opened the pocket, only to see a small yellow creature crying inside.
“Number 5?” Bucciarati sighed and carefully removed him, then turned and held him up. “Mista, you lost a Pistol!”
“Ack! Oi, what are you doing over there?!”
Mista rushed forward and quickly took the small creature back. It looked like a miniature version of himself, and Bucciarati learned there were five more creatures that lived in the holes in Mista’s torso. Apparently, there was some kind of hivemind going on with them.
These creatures, nicknamed “Pistols” for some reason, were numbered one to seven, minus the number four. Mista absolutely refused to have anything with the number four, to the point where Abbacchio had to change the number of supplies they had around just to make him stop yelling about it.
Bucciarati quickly left the utility room to leave Mista to managing his Pistols. The last place he needed to check was the cockpit, or as the group called it, the “roost.”
As he expected, his last crewmate was up there managing the screens. Bucciarati walked up, making him turn around. “Bucciarati, hey!” he greeted. He flapped his wings in excitement, making a couple black feathers fall loose.
“Are the calibrations finished, Narancia?”
“Yep, all ready to go! Are we lifting off soon?”
As expected of a Hyadese – an avian who had a body structure similar to a Terran – Narancia only really calmed down whenever their ship was in flight. Bucciarati made sure to assign him a role to let him fly to his heart’s content: he was their scout and navigator.
“In about three minutes. Go give Abbacchio a hand, make sure everyone’s secure in the communal area by then.”
“Alright!”
Narancia dashed, practically flying as a black-orange blur, out of the room to gather the others. He wouldn’t miss an opportunity to bother others into their places, and despite Bucciarati’s exasperation at their antics, he couldn’t deny that they were amusing.
Bucciarati turned back to the control panel, brushed a few feathers off his chair, then sat down and strapped himself in. He pressed a few buttons, raising the ramp and closing the exit while a prerecorded intercom message announced the imminent liftoff to the crew.
A few more buttons pressed, and the engines of the Libeccio began to rumble to life. The roar grew louder and louder, and Bucciarati finally put his hands on the control wheel. As the ship slowly began to lurch forwards, Bucciarati added more power to the engines.
The Libeccio began to move, Bucciarati pulled the control wheel up, and the ship was soon in the air, leaving the atmosphere of the maintenance station’s planets. He watched the clouds and space rocks whoosh past the window, until gravity disappeared and everything slowed down.
Bucciarati flicked a switch to turn on the autopilot, and he got up from his seat. His next stop was the communal area – he had a mission to announce.