"The Broken Sphere" - читать интересную книгу автора (Findley Nigel)

Chapter Five

The privateer Shark hung against the psychedelic backdrop of the Flow, its helm warmed up for station-keeping and prepared for pursuit or flight. In front of the battle dolphin, the outer surface of Heartspace's crystal sphere looked like an infinite wall of mother-of-pearl. From the command deck, the permanent portal into the sphere's interior looked like a black disk limned around the edges with Saint Elmo's fire. At this distance, the portal-actually large enough to accommodate even the biggest ship-appeared about the size of a doubloon held at arm's length.

Captain Berglund leaned back against the aft railing, looking forward down the length of the command deck toward the shimmering portal. He pulled from his belt pouch the folded sheets of parchment he'd been given when he was ashore on Starfall. For the dozenth time since entering the Flow, he reread his orders-he still thought of them as "orders," even though it had been seven years since he'd deserted from military service.

The orders were very specific. Hold station at a specific point outside the Heartspace sphere and wait for a particular vessel to exit through the portal. Intercept said vessel and cripple it. Board and put the crew to the sword… with one exception: the captain was to be spared, no matter what it took to guarantee that. Scuttle the target and head off with all haste into the Flow for a distant crystal sphere, bringing the captain as prisoner.

Berglund stroked his beard as he thought. With the exception of sparing the captain, the orders matched his standard operating procedure. He didn't have a problem with that part of the mission at all… particularly since the nondescript human who'd hired him agreed that Berglund could keep whatever booty he could take from the vessel.

What did bother him was the amount of detail he'd been given about the target. He turned to the second page of the orders. Here was a complete rundown on his victim-a squid ship, he noted again. There was also a manifest detailing all the weapons the vessel carried, its projected time of arrival at the portal, plus an entire crew roster. Berglund simply wasn't used to having this level of intelligence on a target.

Still and all, he thought, it does make my job easier, and guarantees no surprises. You don't refuse a gift ship just because you smell dry rot, do you?

But where did that mystery man get all this information? Berglund wondered again. There was something about this that hinted to the pirate captain that he was getting into something much too big for him.

Yet the payment was big, too, wasn't it? Even if the squid ship turned out to be empty of valuables, Berglund and his crew would make more from this single operation than they'd normally make in a four-month of piracy.

He shook his head. His battle dolphin against a squid ship was normally a much closer fight than he liked. Smaller, less maneuverable, and worse-armed vessels were much more tempting targets. Even though Berglund was a good tactician, there was always the chance of losing such a well-matched battle. Yet the mystery man had said that had been taken care of, too….

A final time he read the section describing how the enemy captain was to be treated. Bound hand and foot, blind-folded, and gagged-that he could understand. But kept unconscious throughout the entire return voyage, even if that meant risking his captive's life through repeated blows to the head? There definitely was more to this mission than he knew.

Still, he supposed, he who pays the piper calls the tune. And this piper was very well paid indeed.

*****

The crew's even better than I expected, Teldin Moore thought. Although the revelation that Beth-Abz was a beholder shocked the crew members down to their very cores, their outward reactions had been calmer than the Cloakmaster would have thought possible. There'd been no hysteria, no outrage, and-Teldin's greatest unspoken fear-no hint that anyone was considering mutiny.

Certainly, the crew had treated the beholder with fear at first, shying away from it whenever it appeared, as though it would vaporize them at any moment. But within only a few days, their reactions had started to change. Fear had faded and quickly become respect. Crewmen still stepped well back when Beth-Abz floated across the main deck or entered the galley, but the wide eyes and grimaces of terror were gone. It hasn't killed me so far, each crew member seemed to think, so why should it now… as long as I don't give it a reason?

For the first week after the revelation, nobody had talked with the beholder, probably because they just didn't know what to say. Teldin, Julia, and Djan-who took the whole matter in stride, as if sailing with an eye tyrant were an everyday thing-had gone out of their way to be seen treating Beth-Abz no differently than the rest of the crew. They'd greeted the creature in the same way they would anyone else, and chatted idly with him whenever they happened to have similar duties.

The example hadn't been missed by the crew. At first cautiously, and then more freely, other members of the Boundless complement had taken to striking up conversations- albeit very brief ones-with the spherical creature. Teldin had known the campaign to integrate Beth-Abz with the rest of the crew was won when he'd wandered into the saloon one graveyard watch and found the beholder trading travelers' tales with a handful of off-duty sailors. When he'd heard them break into laughter together-the harsh, coughing sounds of the beholder's mirth mixing with human chuckles-he'd been amazed.

"I can't believe it," he'd told Djan the next morning, after describing what he'd experienced. "The credit's all yours for picking good spacers."

The half-elf had shaken his head. "No," he'd corrected Teldin, placing a hand on the captain's shoulder, "I think the credit's yours. They trust you, Teldin. They trust your judgment, and they want to sail with you. If a beholder in the crew's mess is acceptable to you, then it's acceptable to them."

In his familiar position on the afterdeck, Teldin shook his head. Everybody's always so keen to trust me, he thought. Sometimes I think I'm the last person they should trust… if they want to stay alive, at least. He took a deep breath and forced the thoughts from his mind. He knew all too well that they'd be back, however.

"Portal ahead, Captain." Djan's voice rang out, echoing hollowly through the speaking tube the half-elf had installed running up the mizzenmast from the helm compartment to the afterdeck. "Slowing to tactical speed."

Teldin stamped on the deck once-the agreed-upon signal for "message received and acknowledged." Then he waved to Julia, who stood on the forecastle by the mainmast.

"Crew aloft," the copper-haired second mate called. "Rig for portal passage. Flow stations. Extinguish all flames." On her order, four crewmen scurried up the ratlines, while twice as many more on the main deck hauled on lines to trim the rigging. Still others scoured the ship, putting out torches and braziers, so as not to ignite the volatile phlogiston once the ship passed through the portal.

The Cloakmaster felt the motion of the ship change as it decelerated-from about three hundred leagues each heartbeat, to less than a spear cast-and the strange winds of wildspace filled the sails. A lot of trouble just to pass through a portal, Teldin groused to himself. The other times he'd passed through a sphere portal-except for obvious special cases such as Herdspace-the ship had done so at full spelljamming speed, without any ill effects.

But Djan had been adamant. "The permanent portals of Heartspace aren't like any others anywhere in the universe," the half-elf had told him firmly. "The very fact that they're permanent tells you that. You might be able to blow on through at full speed, and live to tell about it, but then you might find yourself thrown totally out of control, with no steering and no helm command, and no way to bring the ship back to an even keel. Hundreds of ships have died in or near Heartspace because their masters were overconfident."

Teldin had considered telling Djan about his own entry into the crystal sphere-in the Fool he'd come in at full speed, not knowing any of the risks-and he'd been fine. But then he'd remembered that the tiny Fool was under the control of the ultimate helm at the time, and that could well have made a difference. Rather than making an issue of it, he'd gone along with his first mate's recommendations.

He could see the portal ahead now. As always, he found his sense of perspective thrown off by the view. Even though he knew the inner surface of the Heartspace sphere was only a score of leagues away, the black backdrop of space looked very little different. Granted, there were no stars-his field of view encompassed only a gap between stars-but he still experienced the sense of gazing into infinity that he always felt when he looked into space. The crystal sphere showed no detail and no texture-nothing to give him any due as to its proximity or distance.

The portal itself, now that was a different matter. It seemed to hang in space in front of the Boundless-a totally fallacious image, he knew, but one he couldn't shake. It appeared to be a huge disk, with a diameter several times he length of the squid ship, showing the myriad curdled colors of the Flow. Outlining the disk was a shimmering margin that reminded Teldin of the heat lightning he'd sometimes seen during the summer storms in Ansalon. The portal appeared to expand slowly as the Boundless crept forward.

"Crew down," Julia called. "Lookout aloft."

Teldin watched as all but one of the ratline crew slid down ropes to the deck. The one remaining sailor-Merrienne, a young woman not yet out of her teens, with long blond hair gathered up in a bun-crawled into the crow's nest atop the mainmast. "Portal ahead," she sang out in a clear, ringing voice-more to confirm that she was in position, Teldin thought, than to tell anyone something they didn't already know.

Djan joined the Cloakmaster atop the sterncastle, swinging up the steep ladder as if he'd been born on ship. Flashing a quick smile at his captain, he positioned himself near the speaking tube. "Ready to pass the portal," he told Teldin. "Be ready. Sometimes it can be a little rough." As though to confirm his words, he spread his feet into a broad, stable stance and steadied himself with a hand on the mizzenmast.

Teldin still remembered his uneventful entry into Heart-space. But, better safe than sorry, he told himself. He took a firm grip on the port rail.

"Crew ready," Julia ordered.

The Boundless nosed into the portal.

As the pointed ram of the squid ship penetrated the plane of the portal, the large vessel's motion changed noticeably, and Teldin realized his first mate might not have been exaggerating the dangers after all. If he'd been aboard one of the small river craft he'd know as a youth, he'd have guessed the ship had been caught by an eddy of some kind. Here, without anything for there to be an eddy in, it had to be some kind of attribute of the portal itself. The hull proper entered the portal, and the sideways, twisting motion became more pronounced. Spars creaked and lines groaned as the rigging took the strain. Then the mainmast itself was through, and the canvas of the mainsail cracked like a bombard as a blast of wind struck it from an unexpected direction.

"Look out above! It's…" The rest of Julia's screamed warning was drowned out by the scream of tortured wood. Instantly, Teldin snapped his head up.

The gaff boom, mounted on the aft side of the mainmast, was angled far out-way too far out-over the starboard rail of the squid ship. The sail, still bellied out, was applying force to pivot it even farther out of line. The only things keeping the boom from being torn away altogether were its mount-a metal bolt-and-eye bracket on the mainmast-and two half-inch ropes that ran down from its tip to belaying-pin racks on the port and starboard rails.

"Strike the mainsail, now," the Cloakmaster bellowed, "or we'll lose the boom, maybe the mast!" Crewmen sprinted to where the main sheets were cleated off and struggled to release them against the abnormal pressures of the sail.

A shrill scream echoed the length of the Boundless. Teldin raised his gaze higher, above the twisted bracket that supported the boom. "Paladine's blood!" he screamed. "The lookout! Get her down!" The force generated by the flapping mainsail was being transmitted through the boom into the mainmast itself, twisting and torquing it in ways it had never been designed to resist. The mast top lashed back and forth like the end of a riding crop. To Teldin, on the deck below, it looked as though the mast were a live thing, purposefully trying to shake the shrieking Merrienne out of the crow's nest.

Julia saw the girl's peril, too. "Crew aloft!" she yelled. A handful of crewmen ran to the ratlines, then stopped in bafflement. On the starboard side, the boom was already tangled in the ratlines, twisting what were usually broad rope ladders into warped renderings of spiderwebs. On the port side, the mast's contortions were transferred directly to the ratlines, making them jerk and vibrate like the strings of a plucked lute. There was no way anyone could climb them.

"Strike that sail!" Djan cried, echoing Teldin's order.

But it was too late. Even as the crew members freed the main sheet to let the mainsail flap free, the line connecting the boom to the port rail parted with a crack like a giant's whip, With nothing to stop it, the gaff boom swung farther around, out over the starboard rail, and pivoted completely until it pointed almost dead forward.

The mounting bracket, already hideously strained, failed. With a screech of tearing metal, the boom came loose from the mainmast and crashed to the foredeck, striking the glacis of the catapult turret.

As the boom came free and the torque it had produced vanished, the mainmast twanged audibly, its tip flailing wildly. With a piercing scream, Merrienne was snapped out of the crow's nest to land with a sickening thud on the main deck.

"Strike the sails!" the Cloakmaster roared. "All of them! And bring the helm down!" As the crew leaped to obey his orders, Teldin couldn't drag his gaze from the small, huddled figure lying on the planking, her head surrounded by a halo of fine blond hair that had been shaken free from its bun. The ship's two healers knelt beside the woman, blocking the Cloakmaster's view. He turned away.

Then, suddenly, a sickening thought struck him. Julia was on the foredeck, where the boom had landed!

Teldin almost jumped down the ladder and sprinted across the foredeck. He staved off a massive jolt of guilt as he passed Merrienne's huddled body. The healers can do more for her than I can, he told himself. He sprinted up the portside ladder to the forecastle.

Julia was unscathed, he saw immediately, but another crewman hadn't been so lucky. The falling boom had bounced off the metal facing of the turret, shattering the port foredeck rail as if it were kindling. Somewhere along its path it had struck someone with the ill fortune to be standing just aft of the catapult shot hopper. Julia was kneeling beside the fallen man, her ear pressed to his chest, listening for a heartbeat.

Teldin didn't have to come any closer to know it was futile. The man's left shoulder and neck had taken the brunt of the impact, pulping the bones. The side of the man's skull, too, looked soft, like an overripe fruit. Even though the victim's face was distorted, Teldin recognized him easily as Allyn, the gunner's mate. The wind-tanned old man who'd survived a career in space that was longer than Teldin's entire life.

For what? the captain found himself wondering. To come here, to die in the service of Teldin Moore, Cloakmaster?

He looked up into the chaotic "sky" of the phlogiston that now surrounded the ship, tears blurring his view. Why? he silently demanded. Just what in the Abyss is it all for? One more dead-maybe two, if the healers' expressions were any indication. And the voyage had barely begun. How many more would fall before it was all over?

"Ship ahoy!"

The hoarse shout cut through Teldin's dark thoughts. He snapped his head around toward the source of the voice.

It was Dargeth, the half-orc, a member of the catapult crew. He was leaning against the forward rail of the turret, pointing out into the Flow. "Ship ahoy!" he repeated. "High on the port bow."

Teldin's gaze quartered the area of space Dargeth had specified. Nothing…

Yes, there it was, a black shape against the riotous colors of the phlogiston. It was close, too-closer than a ship had any right to be without being spotted… "What's the ship?" Teldin yelled. "And what course?"

The answer came from the afterdeck. Djan stood braced against the mizzenmast, Teldin's brass spyglass to his eye. "Battle dolphin," he called back. "And it's on an intercept course."

"A battle dolphin, confirmed," Djan sang out again a moment later. "It's maneuvering, probably trying to come in below us."

Even without a spyglass, Teldin could see that the half-elf was right. The black shape of the enemy ship was sinking toward the starboard rail. Soon it would be masked from view-and from weapon shot-by the squid ship's own hull.

"Load all weapons!" the Cloakmaster ordered. "Helm up now!"

"It'll take a couple of minutes to warm it up," Julia reminded him.

Teldin cursed under his breath, remembering his own order to bring the helm down. They didn't have a couple of minutes. But, at least, they did have other options.

"Get Beth-Abz up on deck," he told Julia. Then he planted his back against the mainmast and braced his feet. With an effort, he forced his breathing to slow and his muscles to relax.

*****

Berglund lowered his spyglass and snorted in amazement. The mystery man had proven himself right on two counts. Here was the target squid ship, right on time-and, lo and behold, dead in space. Would wonders never cease?

He flashed the other members of his bridge crew a predatory smile. "Bring us in," he ordered quietly. "Below their hull, if you please."

"Yesss, ssir," his first mate, an olive-scaled lizardman, hissed. Surprisingly fast for his heavy build, he hurried down the ladder to the helm compartment directly below, to convey his captain's orders.

"They're not maneuvering," Rejhan, Berglund's second mate, told him. "Their helm must be down."

The pirate captain nodded his agreement. "Continue to bring us in," he ordered. Then his smile broadened. "And… catapults away," he added almost negligently.

The hull of the Shark jarred beneath his feet as the vessel's twin catapults fired.

****

"They're firing! Take cover!" Djan screamed from the sterncastle.

Around him, Teldin heard the scurrying of feet as the crew took Djan's suggestion and found shelter. He wanted to do the same thing himself, wanted to crouch behind the metal glacis of the turret.

But saving his own life wasn't the only thing he had to worry about at the moment. The ship and its entire crew were his responsibility. The helm was down, and the Boundless truly helpless…

Unless he did something about it.

The squid ship jolted hard as a catapult shot struck the low port quarter of the bow. In his peripheral vision the Cloakmaster saw the second shot hurtle by, a couple of yards away.

"They're reloading!" Djan called.

Teldin took a deep breath-so deep that his chest felt as though it would burst-then let all the air spill out of his lungs. A sense of calm came down upon him, stilling the knotting fear in his belly. The sounds around him-the creak of the windlass as the weapon crew wound back the main catapult, the thunder of feet on the deck-seemed suddenly muffled, not as sharp, somehow. And yet he could hear everything, even those noises normally much too quiet for his ears to detect. He felt the presence of the cloak on his back.

The cloak felt warm around his shoulders-not the simple, passive warmth of a garment, more like the vibrant warmth of a living thing. Even though he couldn't see it, he knew it was starting to glow with a pink light. He felt his awareness start to blossom, to expand. I am the ship….

Julia grabbed his arm, and the glow-and the expanded perception associated with it-faded slightly. "Get below," she told him. "You're exposed out here."

He shook his head. "No time. I have to take over the ship now."

She gripped tighter. "You can do that from anywhere!" she shouted at him. "If you get yourself killed up here, what good will that do the rest of us?"

He wanted to argue but had to accept the sense of her words. He let the awareness, the sense of the cloak's power, slip away. Then he turned and followed her down into the forecastle.

*****

The squid ship still hadn't moved, Berglund saw. It still just hung there against the backdrop of the Flow, like a strangely shaped fruit ripe for the picking. He turned to his second mate.

"Rejhan, bring us in along their axis, full on the bow," he ordered.

The dark-haired man looked aghast. "On the bow… ?" he echoed. "But… but captain, all they have to do is roll and we're in their main catapult's field of fire, at point-blank range."

"Follow my orders," Berglund said, his voice deceptively calm.

Rejhan blanched even more and jumped to obey.

Berglund smiled. But behind that smile, he was doubting. Am I depending too much on the mystery man's promises? he asked himself. The next two minutes would tell.

*****

Teldin hurried into his cabin, flung himself into a chair, and tried to recapture the sense of calm. To his surprise, it returned almost at once. Again he felt his perception, his awareness, expand beyond the physical limits of his body, until it encompassed the whole ship. Again, he was the ship: he could feel its every plank, its every dowel. Its keel was his spine, its thwarts his ribs, its hull his skin, and its sheets and lines his muscles. He could sense the minor damage inflicted on the hull by the enemy's catapult shot, and the torn and twisted rigging, as a strange tingling, a kind of pain-yet-not-pain. The cabin brightened as the cloak began to glow with a rosy pink light.

With his expanded perception, he could see the approaching enemy clearly, even though he was inside the ship, and the other vessel was screened by the squid ship's own bow. The adversary was close enough now for him to make out details without the benefit of a spyglass.

A dolphin, Djan had called it, and the name was appropriate. It was a smooth-lined ship reminiscent of a huge fish-maybe a jumping trout, Teldin thought-with its horizontal fluked tail raised higher than the main body. A turret atop the tail contained one catapult-heavy or medium, he couldn't be sure-while another catapult was mounted on the main deck just forward of the mast. The whole vessel, painted a misty blue-gray, was as long as the squid ship and slightly broader, hinting at a greater tonnage. The battle dolphin was coming in slowly, though Teldin had the unmistakable feeling it could move fast enough when necessary.

There was something about the ship's approach that bothered Teldin. It took him a moment to realize what it was.

"They're coming in wrong," the Cloakmaster said to Julia, who was standing in the cabin doorway. In his own ears, his voice sounded emotionless, detached. "It's as if they're daring us to roll and use our catapult. What do they know that we don't?"

Julia opened her mouth to reply, but before she could speak Teldin's answer came from the deck above him. A crash and screams of fright came from the forward turret. The Cloakmaster's perception instantly focused on the foredeck.

The catapult had torn itself apart, he saw at once. As the crew had been winding back the shaft, one of the thick skeins of hemp fiber that provided the weapon's power had torn. The unbalanced force had wrenched the shaft to one side, tearing it loose from one of the bearings. A man in the weapon crew had been struck by the shaft and seemed to have a broken arm. The others were unharmed, he was glad to see.

But the catapult-the squid ship's only forward-firing weapon-had been rendered useless.

How did the enemy captain know… ?

*****

The Sharks second mate lowered his spyglass and shot a sidelong glance at Berglund. "Their catapult's down, Captain," he said.

Berglund just nodded. "Clear their decks, Rejhan," he ordered simply.

The second mate jumped to relay the order, but the unasked question still echoed in his head: How had the captain known… ?

*****

"Firing again!"

Teldin could hear Djan's voice twice-once, muffled, through his own ears; and once, clear as crystal, via his expanded perception. Even against the distracting background of the flow, he could track the enemy's catapult shots coming in. This time they weren't single stones, but clusters of pebbles. This "grape shot" couldn't harm a ship's hull or rigging, but was absolute murder on an exposed crew. He tried to call out a warning, but was a moment too late.

The tiny stones rattled off the foredeck over Teldin's head, sounding like a sudden lashing of hail. His ears were filled with screams. All over the ship he saw crewmen stagger and fall as the tiny stones tore into their flesh. Djan's forearm was laid open to the bone, but he kept his position by the speaking tube.

I've got to get us out of this, Teldin told himself, or they'll slaughter us. He extended the power of the cloak, the ultimate helm, and tested the squid ship's response.

With the first touch of power it surged forward responsively, but it resisted turning and rolling as if it were a live thing. It must be the rigging damage, Teldin realized, with a chill feeling in his stomach. Even with the ultimate helm, a ship needs rigging if it's to maneuver. He cut back on the power and examined the situation.

It wasn't good. As he'd discovered from experimenting with the Fool, he could drive a ship with any degree of speed or control only forward. That meant the Boundless's possible range of motion could be pictured as a flaring cone centered around the line of its keel. In this case, it was a narrow funnel, because he couldn't turn the ship's bow rapidly. No matter how fast he drove the ship, he'd still be within the battle dolphin's fire pattern for several minutes, the last portion of which he'd be at point-blank range.

Paladine's blood! he raged to himself. If the battle dolphin had made a normal approach-from the side, or the stem- he'd be able to use the speed of the ultimate helm to escape. But because the enemy was directly on his bow, his choices were cut to few or none. Again, it's as if the enemy captain knows my situation….

At least there's one thing he doesn't know about. With his extended vision, Teldin could see Beth-Abz-in human form, he was glad to note-clamber up onto the foredeck. We have one forward-firing weapon left, the Cloakmaster told himself with a grim smile. He watched the black-haired man stride to the front of the foredeck and grab the rail with both hands to steady himself.

Suddenly Teldin knew the tactics he had to use if he wanted to get out of this alive. He felt his lips draw back from his teeth, his smile becoming an almost feral grimace.

"Tell Beth-Abz to hold on," he told Julia. "Don't do anything until I say so."

She nodded, backed out of the cabin-leaving the door open behind her-and took up a position by the saloon's door that led out onto the deck. Teldin heard her voice as she relayed his instructions to the beholder above him.

Behind him, around him, he felt the ultimate helm's energy as he drove the squid ship forward.

*****

"They're moving!" the Sharks second mate called out.

His cry was unnecessary. Berglund had already seen the target ship lurch forward, directly toward the battle dolphin. Damn, he thought, they've got the helm up again sooner than expected. But he was close enough now to see the damaged rigging, the missing gaff boom, the mainsail still flapping uselessly over the squid ship's starboard rail. He remembered the time, several years ago, when he'd captained a military squid ship, and reviewed in his mind what he knew of that vessel's maneuverability. With that much damage, the enemy would be about as maneuverable as a heavily laden tradesman-in other words, not much at all. In contrast to his topped-out battle dolphin, it may as well have remained dead in space for all the good an operating helm would do for it. He smiled again.

"Hold course," he ordered.

Then, to his shock, he saw the squid ship leap forward, faster than any ship had any right to move….

*****

Teldin gasped with the exertion-neither physical nor mental, but something totally different-as he poured on the power. In only a few seconds, the Boundless was up to its normal top speed, and still it accelerated.

Suddenly the heavy vessel lurched, tried to maneuver in a way that Teldin hadn't intended. He knew that the ship's major helm was on line again, and knew that the helmsman was trying to take command of the vessel.

"Get Blossom off the damn helm!" he yelled to Julia, and again heard her echo the order aft. After a moment, he felt the extraneous movement cease as he regained control of the ship. "And tell Beth-Abz to get ready."

The enemy battle dolphin loomed ever larger before the Boundless. He altered the ship's heading by a few degrees-even that minor change taking great effort-and brought the squid ship's slender piercing ram to bear on the larger vessel. Still the Boundless accelerated.

He saw the attacking vessel's two catapults fire again, and watched both shots go wide as the enemy gunners tried to track their high-speed target. That would be their last chance, he knew. There was no way they'd have the time to load and fire again before this was over… one way or another.

The battle dolphin swelled in his forward view. "Brace for ramming!" he bellowed. "And tell Beth-Abz to hit them with everything he's got!"

*****

They're ramming! Berglund felt a sudden chill. The enemy was taking the fight to him. This engagement wasn't going the way he'd intended it at all.

But then he relaxed a little. What other choice did the enemy captain have, after all? With no way to maneuver, the squid ship's tactical choices were cut almost to nil. A successful ram would damage the Shark, perhaps seriously, but it wouldn't destroy the larger vessel. Then Berglund's crew would swarm aboard the enemy-his highly trained boarding crew easily outnumbering the smaller, and generally untrained, crew of the target-and that would be the end of the fight. Mentally he reviewed the crew roster the mystery man had given him. There were three people aboard the squid ship worthy of respect in combat: the captain himself and the first and second mates. Everyone else, however, may as well already be dead before the swords of his boarding party.

No, he remembered suddenly, there was one unknown quantity: the large, curly-haired warrior who'd signed on soon before the squid ship had left port. He might prove to be a problem, so Berglund would order four of his better swordsmen to handle the burly man. No matter how good he may be, he wouldn't last long against four swords.

There he was! Berglund could see him on the foredeck of the rapidly approaching squid ship. If Berglund could see him, that meant he in turn could see the armed warriors lining the rails of the Shark. Yet, even seeing the force arrayed against him, the big man seemed undismayed.

That was something to consider, wasn't it? That much confidence might be based on some foundation….

All this flashed through Berglund's mind in a heartbeat. Maybe accepting the ram wasn't a wise decision after all….

"Hard to port!" the pirate captain yelled.

But it was too late. With a sudden pang of real fear, Berglund saw the squid ship-impossibly-accelerate even more.

Then he saw the large warrior on the enemy's foredeck start to change….

*****

Teldin growled with fierce exhilaration as he saw Beth-Abz assume its true form. A beam of brilliant green- brighter than the sun-lashed out from one of the beholder's lesser eyes and struck the battle dolphin amidships. The Cloakmaster saw the heavy wood of the hull flash into dust under the magical onslaught.

Then the squid ship's piercing ram struck. The impact hurled Teldin from his chair, into the forward bulkhead. For a moment he was stunned, the ringing in his ears drowning out the sound of shattering timber. Shaking his head to clear it, he forced himself to a sitting position. The glow of the cloak-flickering as he struggled to regain control- flared brightly once more. His expanded perception returned.

The Boundless's slender ram had driven deep into the "head" of the battle dolphin, piercing the reinforced wood as if it had been light balsa. Chunks of torn timber, knocked free by the impact, slammed against the hull of the squid ship. Many of the battle dolphin's crewmen had been knocked to the deck, he saw, but they were quickly readying themselves to board.

They were too late. Teldin's own "boarding party" was already moving.

Beth-Abz floated over the foredeck rail and headed forward along the length of the ram to where it pierced the battle dolphin's hull. Teldin saw Beth-Abz reorient itself slightly as it adjusted for the slightly different gravity plane of the other vessel. A green beam flicked out again, blowing a gaping hole in the planking. Then Beth-Abz disappeared through the gap.

"Stand by to repel boarders!" the Cloakmaster yelled.

*****

A beholder? A gods-cursed beholder! And it's aboard my ship.

From below him, deep in the "head" of the Shark, Berglund could hear his crew members screaming, dying. There was no way they could fight an eye tyrant.

The Shark was lost; he knew it, and the knowledge was a cold, sickening feeling in the pit of his stomach. And if he didn't act soon, his life would be lost, too.

A captain owed loyalty to his crew, as they owed loyalty to him-that philosophy had been drummed into him when he'd served with the military. But that loyalty didn't extend to sacrificing his own life for them.

"Separate the shuttle!" Berglund screamed.

*****

Some few of the pirates had swarmed over their own rail and were trying to board the Boundless, Teldin could see. But their attempt was halfhearted at best, and Teldin's own crew was holding them off with boarding pikes. On the afterdeck, Djan-seemingly little hampered by his arm wound-was pumping crossbow quarrels into the attackers. Dranigor, the secondary helmsman, was doing his part, raking the would-be boarders with magical projectiles that burst from his extended fingertips. The wave of attackers faltered, then broke, fleeing back toward the dubious safety of their own ship.

Even with his enhanced senses, Teldin couldn't see Beth-Abz anymore. He could hear, however, the screams from within the battle dolphin as the beholder rampaged around within it. As he watched, a section of the larger craft's lower hull blew out into space-presumably struck by the eye tyrant's disintegration beam.

Something was happening to the battle dolphin's open main deck, he saw suddenly. The lines of the ship seemed to change, as though it were breaking up…

But then he realized just what he was seeing. A section of the battle dolphin-most of the upper portion of its "tail," in fact-was lifting free under its own power. As the gap between it and the rest of the ship opened, he could see it resembled a two-masted, open-decked sailing ship. Much smaller than the battle dolphin as a whole, this new vessel was no more than forty feet long, and couldn't hold a crew of more than fifteen to twenty, if that. It had to be a kind of lifeboat, a captain's gig, or perhaps some combination of the two. Obviously the enemy captain was making his escape, leaving the remainder of his crew to their fate. If Teldin had anything to do with it, the pirate captain wouldn't make it.

But the Cloakmaster couldn't have anything to do with it. The Boundless ram was driven deep into the battle dolphin, effectively immobilizing the squid ship and preventing it from giving chase. The catapult was broken, and the lifeboat-gig-whatever was taking care to stay out of the firing arcs of the ballistae. Already the escape craft was out of effective bow range. The captain was going to get away with his unprovoked attack, and Teldin would never know who he was or what his motivations were….

Then, without warning, the familiar line of burning green lanced up from the battle dolphin. Angling up out of the space recently occupied by the gig, it struck the stern of the smaller ship, blowing much of it into fragments. The gig instantly began to corkscrew slowly, obviously unpowered and out of control.

*****

Berglund rose slowly back to consciousness like a man swimming to the surface of a night-black lake. The side of his head hurt abominably where something-a fragment of his ship, he thought-had struck him. He felt warm wetness spreading down from above his hairline on the right, blinding his right eye. He wiped the blood from his eye, but didn't bother to tend to the wound, or to any of his other minor injuries.

The dolphin shuttle was virtually wrecked, he saw at once. The aft quarter of the sterncastle deck was just gone, blown into dust by the beholder's magical ray. Amidst the wreckage trailing behind the ship, he could see the tumbling body of his second mate. From this distance he couldn't see whether Rejhan was alive or not. He rather thought not, but there was no way to be sure. Certainly, the helm was down and the ship crippled, leaving him no way of retrieving his lost crewman.

Or relieving the ones I left behind to die, he reminded himself dully.

Berglund had never-quite-considered himself a pirate, preferring the term "privateer." Because of that sophistry, he'd never sailed under the neogi skull ensign favored by many other wildspace pirates. Now he found himself regretful. It would be so much more symbolic to officially strike his colors, so much more dignified. And dignity might be all he'd be able to salvage from this. Everything else was lost, maybe even his life.

Oh, well…. He sighed.

"Run up a white flag, if you please," he ordered quietly.

One of his few surviving crewmen hurried to obey.

*****

The din from inside the battle dolphin's main hull had fallen silent. Either the crew members left aboard were all dead, or they'd given up their resistance as useless. The Cloakmaster hoped the latter.

He focused his enhanced senses on the stricken gig, trailing its cloud of space flotsam. As he watched, a crewman ran an improvised white flag-it looked like half a bedsheet-up to the masthead.

"They're surrendering," he called back to Julia. "Get Beth-Abz back aboard. And see what we can do to get the Boundless moving again."

The beholder was back aboard the squid ship in a matter of a minute or two. Using its disintegrator ray to carve pieces of the battle dolphin's hull away, it freed the squid ship to back away from the drifting hulk.

Teldin kept the Boundless moving dead slow, maneuvering gently toward the wrecked gig, where the white flag still flew. As he came in alongside, he turned to Julia. "What in the Abyss do we do now?" he asked. "I don't know the protocol for this kind of thing."

"I do," she said grimly. "Send a prize crew aboard and bring the captain back here so you can accept his surrender personally."

The Cloakmaster nodded slowly. That'd give him the chance he wanted to question his attacker. "Do it," he instructed.

*****

Teldin was waiting on the foredeck when Julia, Djan-his forearm heavily bandaged-and two others escorted the enemy captain aboard the Boundless a couple of minutes later. He wasn't a particularly prepossessing man, the Cloak-master thought, a finger's span or two shorter than Teldin, but with a similar build. His hair and beard were a couple of shades darker than the Cloakmaster's own. Blood from a scalp wound was drying on his right cheek. Teldin found himself staring into the man's eyes, looking for some flash of hostility, some taint of evil, but there wasn't anything like that to be seen. His opponent looked like any other tired, wounded, defeated man, desperately trying to ding to those, shreds of his dignity that remained.

"I'm Teldin Moore," the Cloakmaster said. "And you are…?"

For a moment, Teldin could see the steel of command in the man's manner. "Captain Henric Berglund," the other answered formally. "I offer you my surrender."

"Accepted."

"What will happen to my crew?"

You weren't thinking about that when you escaped in your gig and left so many of them to their fate, were you? Teldin thought. He suppressed his distaste for the man and said simply, "Their lives are spared."

"Are any still alive in the hull?" Berglund asked.

"Some," Teldin responded. "Those who surrendered."

Berglund accepted that without comment. "Prisoners?" he asked.

The Cloakmaster shook his head. "I've got no space for prisoners, and nowhere to take them. You should be able to repair your gig"-he gestured to the small vessel alongside the squid ship-"and you're free to take it anywhere you want." He paused. "If you answer some questions."

"Like what?"

"Why?" Teldin asked earnestly. "Why attack my ship? You were after me, weren't you?"

The shorter man shrugged. "It was a contract," he answered. "Business."

Teldin pointed to the four cloth-wrapped bodies lined up along the port rail-Allyn, Merrienne, and two others slain by the battle dolphin's catapult shots. "Business!" he spat. "You killed my crew!"

"You killed mine," Berglund shot back.

"It's different."

Berglund remained silent.

It took immense effort, but the Cloakmaster forced himself to calm down at least a little. "All right," he allowed, "business. So who contracted you for this business?"

The pirate's lips twisted in a sarcastic smile as he shook his head.

Teldin ground his teeth. "Then what-exactly-were you contracted to do?" he asked. "Blow us out of space? Take us prisoner? What?"

Berglund still didn't answer.

"Interesting," Julia said. Teldin turned in surprise to look at his second mate. She was examining Berglund curiously. "Interesting that you have such loyalty to the people who hired you. After all, they sent you into battle against overwhelming odds, didn't they?" She nonchalantly indicated Beth-Abz, who was easily visible on the afterdeck.

"Your masters, the ones who hired you… they're the ones who killed your crew, aren't they?" she pressed. "I think you owe them nothing, least of all your loyalty."

The pirate was silent for a moment; Teldin could almost feel the intensity of his thoughts. Then he nodded. "I don't know who hired me," he said quietly. "I didn't recognize him, and I didn't ask. All that mattered was that his money was good."

Teldin took a step forward, intent. "What did he want you to do?"

"Take you prisoner," Berglund said flatly.

"And the others?"

"Put them to the sword, then scuttle your ship."

Business, Teldin thought. He struggled to keep disgust out of his voice. "And what was to happen to me?"

"I was to take you to a planet where I'd hand you over to some people who apparently want you quite badly."

"What planet?"

"Falx," Berglund answered.