Omega Point (30 page)

  Richards did a double-take. Bear wore a massive fur coat. It must have taken three buffalo to make.

  "What?" said Bear.

  "Bears don't wear clothes," said Richards.

  "Hmph, just because I'm a bear doesn't mean I can't wear clothes. It's bloody freezing up here, if you hadn't noticed. Besides, as you have pointed out, I'm not a real bear."

  Morning came. The mountains reared up icy and unknowable before them. A mile astern came the
Flan O'War
, a tin pie dish domed over with riveted plates. The lower portion spun, the central, upper segment steady as a rock. Three chimneys at the apex in the shape of blackbird pastry ornaments spouted smoke. The dome was broken twice by broad fighting decks, and cannon muzzles pointed outward all round the circumference of the dish. A turreted cannon was mounted at what Richards thought of as the front, if only because that was the direction of travel.

  An amplified voice crackled across the air. "Your bun is done! Your piccolo has piped its last! Stand down now, my favoured enemy. Eat humble pie and give me your ship and foolish hat and I may allow parts of you to live awhile!"

  A pirate handed Piccolo a loud-hailer. "Never!" he screamed. "I will never surrender to you, you ill-begotten baker!"

  "Come, come now," the voice replied, louder as the
Flan O'War
closed. "What's done is done. You have lost. Your sad boat and silly whales cannot best my flying pie, my iron-clad confection, my
Flan O' War!
You know that, Percival Del Piccolo. Pie thief! Stealer of delicious tarts! How I will make you rue the day you chomped on my éclair!"

  "To arms!" shouted Piccolo.

  "To arms!" roared Bear.

  "You really enjoy all this, don't you?" said Richards.

  "Yeah. So?"

  "Otto'd fucking love you," he grumbled.

  "It'll be a cracking fight," said Bear with a wicked grin.

  Richards shook his head in disbelief and took a revolver from a barrel full of weapons. He looped its cord round his wrist. Tarquin growled, and turned to stone.

  There was a ringing of steel as the pirates drew their cutlasses. Flintlocks were powdered, matches sparked. The gun-hatches of the
Kurvy Kylie II
rumbled open and the wide eyes of cannon pushed unblinking into the morning air.

  "Sorry, my friends," said Piccolo. "We will be back about our business as soon as we have dealt with this gibbering pastry maker and his pie-problem. Right!" he shouted. "Men, we cannot let the
Flan O'War
get above us and harm Nikim and Nikogo. We must board that ship. It may be faster, more heavily armed and better armoured than our beautiful
Kylie
, but what are his crew?"

  "Dough balls!" cried one pirate.

  "Baker's lackeys!" called another.

  "Fat little boys who eat too many cakes!" roared Bear.

  "And what are we?" shouted Piccolo.

  "Pirates!"

  "Fighters!"

  "The scurviest airdogs that ever there were!"

  "Giant toy bears!" added Bear.

  "We are going to storm that ship and cut that pie-lubber's gizzard! We'll bake
him
in a pie!" crowed Piccolo.

  Half the pirates ran to the gunwales, ropes and irons in their hands, while the remainder manned the guns. The
Flan O'War
came closer. There was a hissing sound, and a dozen sharpened flan-cases thudded into the deck feet away from Richards.

  "Hard a port, gain altitude! One hundred feet up!" called Piccolo, orders repeated as they worked their way down the chain of command.

  The
Kurvy Kylie
banked directly towards the
Flan O'War
, cannons blazing, shots bouncing from the iron pie's armour. One knocked the foremost blackbird askew; another found its way onto the lower fighting deck, where it bounced about like a pinball, turning cook's whites red.

  "Reload!" ordered the gun captains. Piccolo called to the whale goaders, and the starboard side dipped slightly.

  "Fire!" The cannons belched smoke and flame. The
Flan
was slightly below the
Kylie
and coming edge-on, and most of the cannonballs sped over the pie-plate's low profile. It retorted horribly. Seven flan-flingers spoke. Their cookware sliced through the air. Pirates' limbs flew and bandanna'd heads bounced upon the deck. Several sharpened pie plates buried themselves deep in the starboard whale. It called piteously, and blood gushed quickly, as if the whale's fluids could not wait to be free of it. The whale sagged as gas bladders deflated. The ship lurched starboard as a second volley of flan cases sliced through the whale's harness. A pirate went screaming overboard, holding a spouting stump of a wrist in front of his face, bouncing from the
Flan O'War
as he fell.

  Piccolo kept his nerve. "On the next pass, lads!" he cried. Richards stood on the gunwales and clung to the rigging, letting off shots at any target he could find. The ships jockeyed for position in the sky, cannonballs and flan cases reaping a deadly harvest on both sides.

  "Now lads, now!" bellowed Piccolo. Forty pirates hurled their irons. The armoured walls of the
Flan
's fighting decks provided a firm anchor for grappling hooks. The pirates leapt overboard and shinned up the ropes and onto the
Flan
's decks. The sounds of close-quarter combat joined the tumult of battle, and the flan-flingers fell silent one by one.

  "Rargh!" roared Bear. Fur coat trailing behind him, he jumped and hit the
Flan
with a soft thump. He slipped. Pulling back one paw, he punched his gauntlet blades straight through the
Flan
's hull. In this manner, paw over paw, he pulled himself up the skyship. One hit brought forth a torrent of steam. The blackbirds spat sparks amongst their smoke, and the
Flan
's spinning became an erratic wobble. Bear pulled himself onto the lower fighting deck, and laid himself hard into a gaggle of screaming baker's boys.

  The Punning Pastry Chef had one last trick up his sleeve. The top turret swivelled round, its cannon fixing itself upon the injured air-whale. A loud bubbling sound built in its muzzle. Richards ducked as a jet of strawberry-scented napalm splashed onto the whale above, dripping onto the listing deck, setting all ablaze.

  "Aieee! Greek jam!" shouted a pirate. Jam slopped onto his head, and his voice became a gurgling scream as he clawed at his burning face and stumbled to writhe horribly on the deck.

  The whale twisted, aflame from end to end. It shrieked in agony, sheets of whale skin peeling from it. Its blubber melted as the jam burnt through its flesh. The ship bucked as it struggled. Rigging and deck were on fire, and smoke obscured the
Flan O'War.
All was pandemonium. Screaming, fire, metal on metal, the desperate shouts of men fighting for their lives. The stink of burning fat, the fragrance of hot jam. The ship dropped, sending Richards sprawling as the harness holding the dying whale finally gave way. Streaming smoke, it spiralled off into the rising sun, its death-wail drawing hot tears of shame from all who heard it. The
Kurvy Kylie II
yawed hard, the deck swung out and down to hang perpendicularly as the second whale struggled to carry the full weight of the ship alone. The jam cannon fired again. Its gloopy report panicked the remaining whale. It tried to pull away, jerking both ships as grapples drew tight. Its song was wrathful, a tune of anger at the hates of men. Richards slid down the deck. He snatched at a rope and dropped his gun. It swung from his wrist by its cord and banged his arm hard.

  "Hold on, old boy! Hold on!" shouted Tarquin.

  "I've no intention of letting go," said Richards. "I'm sick of falling."

  The boat lurched again. He slid down the rope and it burned his hands. He swung from side to side, wrapped his arm in the rope and waited.

  The sounds of fighting up above subsided. There was a cheer, and the ships levelled off, leaving Richards dangling thousands of feet above the snowy mountainsides.

  "Oi!" shouted Richards. "Oi! Down here!"

  A pirate leaned out over the gunwales and pointed. More faces appeared, and strong arms hauled Richards back up to safety.

  "Well, well, well," said Tarquin. "I do believe we won."

 

The battle-worn
Flan O'War
and
Kurvy Kylie II
climbed into the morning sky. A night of intense labour on the ground had seen the latter's rigging rearranged to allow the ship to hang beneath the remaining air-whale. The
Kylie
was holed in many places, but airworthy. The
Flan O' War
was dented, the foremost chimney leaning at a crazy angle and spitting more flame than smoke as the boilers were fired.

  Richards stood at a porthole set in the side of the
Flan O'War
and watched the ground recede.

  "It looks beautiful from up here," he said.

  "It looks bloody cold," said Bear.

  "Yeah, well." Richards turned away from the window and sat at an aluminium table bolted to the floor. They were in a small room lined with wire bread-racks, though there were no loaves in them now.

  "You look quite the buccaneer," said Tarquin.

  "Arrr, that be because I'm…"

  "…a piratical kind of bear?" said Richards.

  "Exactly." Bear smirked. "Yohoho," he added, for good measure. He had lost an eye in the fight and wore an eye-patch. He was garbed in a short embroidered waistcoat and canary-yellow pantaloons. Stitched tears in his fur crisscrossed his body. He looked tatty, but happy. Being a pirate suited his temperament.

  Richards tugged the bottle of rum from Bear's fist and took a long swig from it. It was rough and burned his throat, but he didn't care.

  "Mini cupcake?" said Bear. "I'll say one thing about that Pastry Chef, he knew how to bake a bun."

  "Thanks, I'm starving," said Richards, "and I do like my cake." He pulled out a chair and sat down. He munched upon the bun; not as good as Hughie's, but close. His chewing started with vigour, but then he slowed. "This cake, it didn't…"

  "Don't worry, they cooked the chef in the other oven," said Bear. "Arrr."

  "Oh, do stop talking in that ridiculous fashion," said Tarquin.

  "Ahem," said Bear sheepishly, and looked into his bottle with his single eye.

  They ascended for hours before they were high enough to cross the peaks. On the other side an improbable ocean lapped icy shores at the roof of the world. The pylons turned west along this sea, and Piccolo's small armada followed. In places they were treated to glorious vistas, the mountains sweeping down into foothills, the foothills to plains, the plains into fields and so on until the horizon, but all were bounded by the void. At times it was a purple band on the horizon, often it was much closer. In the unfathomable black they spotted sizeable islands, whole countries marooned upon the night, frittering away to nothing.

  As they flew further west it became warmer as the mountains grew lower, and the sea stepped down from the heavens on a series of immense cataracts. The ice disappeared, replaced by glittering archipelagos, but the Great Western Ocean was not untouched by that which devoured the world; they passed a roaring whirlpool in whose centre, half obscured by vapour, lay a perfect circle of black.

  All the while the ground shook below them, fissures opening as the integrity of Reality 37 crumbled. The marks of the Terror were everywhere.

  On the eighth day, the mountains turned in on themselves, forming a giant dam for the sea. The
Kurvy Kylie
and
Flan O'War
swept over their jagged teeth and sailed on as the mountains plunged down to a country of farms and small villages.

  The lands beneath were like Swiss cheese, the holes in them growing larger as they watched. The tortured ground grumbled all the while, scaring sleep away at night. The days revealed long trains of refugees, broad trampled paths snaking behind them, spotted with discarded belongings and corpses. Piccolo's crew became morose. They bet insane sums of loot against one another in games of chance, aware that now, at the end of all things, it was worthless.

  "Hooray!" said Bear, scooping up an armful of trinkets. "I win again."

  "You are blessed by the gods," said Bosun Mbotu.

  "I thinks he might be cheating," said another pirate. "Arrrrr."

  "Hey!" said Bear. "How's that possible?" He tugged at his wrists. "See? No sleeves."

  "What does it matter?" said the bosun dolefully.

  "I don't know how you do it, Bear, but I am cheating and I am still losing." Richards cast his cards onto the table. "I'm going outside for some air." He went to the
Flan O'War
's heavy exterior doors and let himself out onto the fighting deck.

  It was an hour or so after dusk. Richards looked out over the ruination below, fascinated at this physical manifestation of numbers at war. Out over the void, wherever the smallest scrap of land persisted, bits of sky shoaled like strange fish in the blackest of oceans.

  Below the ships was the woolly dark of young night. Richards had seen farms and towns below in the day, but there were no lights to break up the darkness. Whatever had lived in these parts was long gone. Light did shine in the night, but not of a homely kind. Where the land had failed, the shattering edges of reality showed up as showers of sparks.

  They picked up a set of enormous footprints, a double track of multiple feet made by giants walking in two lines. Piccolo assured them that at the end of these they would find Secret, its elusive Queen and a way into Hog's mountain.