03. Quest for the Well of Souls (10 page)

They trimmed the sails until they were balanced against the strong southerly current and stood almost still in the water. Mavra and Joshi ran to the side and jumped up to the low ship's rail. Their forelegs were near the top and they were almost vertical, supported by their hind legs. It wasn't entirely comfortable, but it gave them vision.

Tbisi came up to them silently on his padded pipe-cleaner legs and looked out with them.

"A little ship," he muttered. "A small black cutter. Fast, but no threat to us, I shouldn't think."

"Ambreza?" she asked nervously.

Tbisi extended his long, impossibly thin neck and peered into the mists. "No, I think not. Not the kind of ship they use. Aluminum hull and armored, it looks like. The ship is Oglabanian—don't ever see 'em over on the west side—but it's been heavily modified. I'm afraid I don't know exactly
what
it is."

The small black ship suddenly seemed to explode in a series of bright, blue-white flashes.

"Signal to
Trader
!" yelled the lookout. "Stand to for board and search! They're using standard customs codes, but it's not a government ship for sure!"

The voice of the
Trader
's strange captain came through its translator sounding like a cross between a foghorn and a steam whistle. "Board and search be damned!" it yelled. "Not
my
ship! Signal:
We are in mutually neutral waters
.
Go about your own business!
"

A huge lantern was mounted forward, filled with something that glowed brightly but didn't melt the interior of the lamp. A weasellike creature perched to one side moved a lever back and forth several times, unmasking the forward section of the lamp and projecting a blazing glow into the haze. "Done, Captain!" it yelled.

The
Trader
waited tensely, wondering what the small cutter would do next.

Mavra, as tense as any, turned to Joshi. "You know, they could be the same ones who attacked us the other night. They must have come by ship—I bet that's them."

Joshi nodded without taking his eyes off the unknown ship. His throat was dry, and he could hear his heart pounding. An idle part of his brain hoped that his fear wasn't all that apparent to Mavra; it never occurred to him for a second that she was feeling the same things.

"Cannoneers to station, pump ballast to port side," the captain ordered. The crew was experienced; in short order the cannons were manned, loaded, the hatches through which they fired were lowered, and the cannons themselves were pushed up on small rails.

Joshi suddenly became disconcerted. "I think we're sinking!" he exclaimed.

Tbisi laughed. "No, we carry large tanks of liquid as ballast and pump water into them selectively to balance the ship when we have an uneven cargo load. Now they're hand-pumping all of it to this side of the ship, so that we'll present the least hull for them to hit."

"But that tilts the deck into them!" he noted. "Isn't that worse?"

Tibby laughed. "No, we can stand a lot of direct hits on the superstructure. Messy, but it won't sink us or drive us out of control. A shot below the waterline that got between two watertight hatches might send us to the bottom, though." He turned to face them. "Better take cover, you two. It could get nasty around here. I have to get to my command station in the auxiliary bridge."

Mavra nodded and then said, "Come on, Joshi. We'll be no good later on if we're in bloody pieces."

He was reluctant to leave; he wanted to watch the battle. However, he never questioned her judgment or common sense. He went.

"They're angling bow into us, Captain!" shouted the lookout. "Looks like we got a fight!"

"Trim sail completely!" ordered the captain. "I'm going to let the current carry us back into the fog. Hard port! Man stern bridge!"

The sails came immediately down; at the same time, the
Trader
turned slowly to present the least profile to the challenger. It also started to move slowly backward, at the mercy of the southern current now.

"All aloft, below!" the captain yelled, and everybody, lookouts included, got down fast and went to their stations. Large barrels of water were made handy to wash down the cannon deck. Torches were lit.

The cutter, seeing their maneuver, had matched it. The same current that carried the
Trader
would carry it, and as long as both were current-propelled, the big ship could not make any speed on the little one.

There was a bright yellow flash and a boom from the foredeck of the cutter, and a smoky plume rose from its bow, then angled toward them.

"Steady as you go . . . steady . . . steady . . ." the captain murmured. They had now turned completely around, bow away from the cutter, the captain on the stern bridge. The smoke plume looped, started to come down.

"Hard port, now!" yelled the captain.

The ship's massive rudder turned under heavy, trained muscles, the chains that controlled it groaning and the masts swaying as it suddenly turned to present its profile.

There was an explosion about thirty meters out, a tremendous blast as the rocket hit the sea in front of them and struck the surface at a velocity sufficient for spring-loaded detonators to ignite.

Fragments of metal ate into the ship even from that distance, but it was a clear miss, and nothing flew but a few splinters.

The cutter turned sharply now, so that it was apparent that they had only two launch tubes, bow and stern. In the time it would take them to get the stern tube in position, they would have to present a brief but inviting broadside to the
Trader
.

The second mate, who was in charge of the gun crews, waited his moment. Then, suddenly, for a brief period of time, both ship's sides were parallel.

"Fire all guns!" he shouted, and immediately bright-burning torches were touched to fuse holes in the rear of the cannons. There was a repetitive series of explosions that shuddered through the ship as sixteen cannon shots went off in series.

They were short. Though great plumes of water rose all around the cutter, and it looked as if the smaller craft had been completely destroyed, as the water calmed, it became clear that none of the missiles had come within fifty meters of the attacking craft.

The
Trader
continued to turn, bow now facing the pursuer's stern. The exceptionally strong current allowed the smaller craft to close, but, with the cannon-washes from the salvo, it wasn't any easier to turn than the much larger vessel.

Ordinarily the
Trader
would accept such a challenge and engage at a fixed distance circularly, ship-to-ship, but the cutter's rockets gave it added range, and the captain dared not let it come in too close. That was frustrating; the rocket mines obviously had a greater range than the
Trader
's cannon, and, although the big ship could stand some hits, it could not do so without casualties, and if they didn't immediately disable the opposing craft they'd soon be at the attacker's mercy. The captain wasn't one to take such risks if he could avoid them.

Looking out at the attacker, whose second missile was already in the air, the eerie face and glowing eyes of the captain never wavered, but he shouted to the navigator, "Did you get me a fix?"

Before the navigator could reply, the grenade struck, closer this time, metal fragments flying from it and causing a series of nasty gashes in the
Trader
's side and forward superstructure.

The captain shouted corrective orders; the fog was becoming thick again, and the cutter was becoming harder to see—as was the
Trader
. In a matter of minutes they would be invisible to each other. This, oddly, favored the cutter, which would continue to close because of its smaller, lighter nature as they both followed the current.

Joshi peered out from under a tarpaulin. "God! I wish I could see what's going on!" he complained. "Fog's getting thick again!"

"You're better off alive!" snapped Mavra Chang. "Get back under here and stay here! This captain knows what he's doing!"

I hope,
she added silently to herself. There was no way that she or Joshi could swim.

The navigator on the bridge had waited for a short interlude in the exchange. Now it gave the information. "34 south, 62 west!" it called.

"Exactly!" snapped the captain. "How close are we to the Ecundan hex point and Usurk?"

The navigator brightened with the light of understanding. "At this speed," it replied, "maybe ten, twelve minutes' time at the most!"

That satisfied the captain. "All aloft!" he yelled. "Full sail!" Their bow was angled away from their pursuer at this point, the proper angle, and there was an eight- to ten-kilometer wind blowing.

The cutter, which, even though it was closing, was having increasing difficulty locating the bigger craft in the fog, got enough of a glimpse to see the sails unfurling.

The Parmiter, on a watch platform midships, cried out, "They're putting on sail! We have to catch them fast or we might lose them! Com'on, you bastards! They can't see us but we can still see them! If you can't hit something that size from this distance, we're all lost!"

The Parmiter was right. The early morning light of the sun occasionally revealed a small part of the
Toorine Trader
. Coming out of the still-darker northwest, their craft, of black aluminum, was indistinguishable from the water.

The bow tube fired again, and this time it was a close call. They were not only closing, they were getting the range; had they been able to use two bow tubes, they might have hit the
Trader
dead on. The constant turning, however, made aiming more chancy, for each time a tube came up the angle had changed slightly.

On the bridge of the
Toorine Trader
the captain was becoming worried. The last shot had blown a gash in the stern and blew open a hatch cover. Obviously the cutter was getting the range while managing to keep just out of cannon's reach. The captain resolved that if he got out of this, the company was going to pay for some of those rocket mines for
his
ship.

"We must be getting close to the border!" The captain shouted to the navigator. "Man boiler room! Preheat coke! Man Type A defenses!"

Two Twosh bowling-pins scampered across the deck on bright white-gloved hands, then hopped atop a tarpaulin-covered shape at the bow. The tarp came off, revealing a device resembling a small telescope with a dome-shaped housing. The Twosh poised before a control board with form-fitting indentations to the rear of the device, huge oval eyes staring at the dead controls.

Another rocket mine soared, then struck amidships, blowing a huge hole in the side of the
Trader
.

"Shift ballast to compensate!" screamed the captain.
Come on, you bastards, where's that border?
 

Then suddenly, as if someone had lifted a dirty curtain, the
Toorine Trader
came out of the fog and stood clear to the pursuers, a sitting duck.

"We got 'em!" screamed the Parmiter in triumph. "Now let's finish 'em off!"

The rocket crews sniggered and loaded for the kill. They were aiming at the midsection, hoping to strike the central mast. That would leave the big craft at their mercy.

The Parmiter's crew took its time on this one, no longer worried about the problems of fog and elevation. They were so busy making sure of their shot that they failed to notice faint wisps of white begin to rise from the
Trader
's twin stacks.

On the bow, the two Twosh at the strange console suddenly yipped in glee as sophisticated control panels came to life before them. A radar mast flipped up and started its slow back and forth sweep, and a large grid in front of one Twosh showed the cutter clearly.

The captain had won his gamble. Now, in the fight and run, with the current carrying most of the load, they'd drifted back over the high-tech hex border, into Usurk. That had activated all their technical devices.

They could see the flare in the hand of a ghostly shape on the cutter deck prepare to touch off the rocket mine that would administer the
coup
de grâce
to the
Toorine Trader
.

But the Twosh suddenly elevated their platform to proper height, locked on, and fired with computer-aided accuracy.

The odd-looking telescope was better known as a laser cannon.

At the same time the
Trader
turned; sails came down in record time and when the master gauge on the bridge read ready a slim tendril shot out from the captain and pulled a lever, activating the great engines and twin screws.

Huge clouds of smoke billowed from the
Trader
's stacks before the sails were even down, and it turned with astonishing speed and bore in on the small cutter.

"Fire!" screamed the Parmiter, but at that moment a blinding beam of greenish-white light struck them full force. The grenade rose a half-meter, then exploded. The laser beam swept down, slicing off a part of the cutter's bow.

The small ship exploded.

There was a blinding flash and roar as the balance of the rocket grenades ignited, and a great plume of water shot up, then fell, leaving only fragments where the ship had been.

A collective sigh of relief traveled the length of the
Toorine Trader
.

The captain surveyed the scene, its odd, transparent head cocked a little to one side. "Maybe they're right," it murmured to itself. "Maybe those grenades
are
too damned explosive to carry."

Damage-control personnel started cleaning up, patching, and repairing, taking advantage of the high-tech hex to use their best equipment.

The
Trader
approached the now-visible coast of Ecundo, which looked wild and forbidding this far south. Shortly she'd head north, back up that coast, almost all the way under sail.

As the ship headed toward the land, it moved away from a single, tiny figure drifting south in the current. It was too small, and soon much too far away, to be heard or noticed except by a few curious seabirds.