Nothing about this unlooked-for assault was to be expected! Bowmore, as was normal and traditional (rather, Mr. Grafenstein, his second mate and projecteury officer), had assigned his least-skilled projecteurs to his least-important projectibles—and, it was ironic, those most difficult to use well—the three low-powered bow chasers situated in the cabins of the commanddeck. The corsair was still no more than an unresolvable dot against the crawling colors of the
§-field and the infinite blackness of the Deep. Yet the air was filled with smoke and the screaming of riggers as, one by one, they were blasted from their shattered spars. By the Ceo's left testicle, someone out there knew how to put bow chasers to good use!
A section of one such spar, trailing loops of cabelle and shreds of starsail, fell with a crash to the quarterdeck, rupturing the mesh, coming within a measure of burying Bowmore beneath it. His first thought was that it must be cleared away. He turned to shout at the sailing master's mate, only to see the man's head struck off as a cabelle, pulled taut by the falling spar, snapped past him like a razor-edged whip. The headless body, a grotesque fountain of carmine, pitched over onto the deck. Almost the same instant, the mesh leapt under him as the crystal core of an overworked projectible flared and the breech exploded beneath his feet, bulging the deck upward and releasing a cloud of hissing cryogenics. Ceo knew how many crewbeings that had cost! It was one of the bow chasers which, along with inferior hands, had also received least maintenance.
Shorn of all but one of her foretier suite, the battered Pelican began to wallow dismally. Bowmore was about to summon Anderson, calculating whether he might get steer-ageway upon her using the mizzentier stunsails and the single fore-and-aft expanse remaining upon the starboard foreyard, when he glanced aft. The corvette was taking as bad a pounding as the Pelican. She, too, was remaking sail, and it was clear from the shape they assumed what she intended. With the tatters the corsair had left her, she was attempting to disengage. Thrust through with white-hot fury, Bowmore forgot Anderson, strode to the rail at the break of the quarterdeck and waved to the runner.
"Fetch me Mr. Glass immediately!"
"Aye, aye, sir!"
The boy, covered with grime and splashes of blood—the latter, to all appearances, someone else's—sauted and ran across the maindeck, avoiding death by the narrowest of margins as a huge coil of cabelle and three entangled bodies crashed to the mesh behind him. He had soiled his trousers, the captain noticed, but still functioned. So much for doubts. In a few seconds he returned with the signal officer,
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the man's heavy lasercom teetering upon his shoulder like an ancient bazooka, peripheral equipment draped everywhere about his person.
"Make signal to the corvette, Mr. Glass."
Some whizzing fragment passed them at eye-blurring velocity, tearing a measure-wide section from the taffrail before volatilizing itself upon the field margin. It could as well have been his legs, thought Bowmore.
"The corsair, sir?*'
"Not the corsair! D'ye think I wish t'surrender? I said the corvette. Say, 'I've placed a fission bomb aboard ye under me remote control.'"
Glass was a short, muscular man of swarthy complexion, close-cropped hair and beard, the nose of a man half again his size, and a peculiar accent unheard in civilized regions. He gave the captain a peculiar look.
"Send the message, Mr. Glass. Do it from here."
"Aye, aye, sir." The signal officer raised the lasercom like the weapon it was at short ranges, peered into the sights, and aimed at the corvette, mumbling into the transducer as instructed. Finished, he looked up.
"Well done, Mr. Glass, now tell the craven I'll blow him up if he veers or won't give better account of himself."
"Aye, aye, sir."
Grudging compliance being returned, Bowmore dismissed both the signal officer and the corvette. Looking across the wreckage-littered maindeck, strewn with mangled corpses, yet still crowded with the upright bodies of struggling men jmd women, he realized, with rare empathy, that it must be even more unbearable belowdecks. Smoke poured from hatch covers and ladderwell as the projectibles upon the gundeck began to heat. Meanwhile, the corsair lumbered ever closer, unstoppable, until it was clear she intended passing between her enemies, thrusting as she came.
Having all but destroyed the Pelican's rigging, she concentrated upon the decks and less-protected areas of the hull. Now the accuracy and timing of the corsair's projecteurs could truly be appreciated. Battling vessels revolved about the axes of their masts, their projectibles requiring intervals for recharging and cooling lest they malfunction with disastrous consequences. Rotating in a conventional enough
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manner (it was the only thing conventional about her), the corsair fenced with the brigantine and her reluctant escort, as if, Bowmore realized, her projectibles were personal thrustibles. Not only did she match thrust for thrust as the brigantine's remaining fourteen came to bear, so that, as with a pair of dueling individuals, opposing beams annihilated one another, she seemed to anticipate the actions of her enemy, their very rhythms, thrusting only after they did, microseconds afterward, employing the resultant explosions as weapons in themselves, Bowmore thought, trying to "walk" them backward toward the brigantine. One such secondhand detonation threw him to the deck again as the Pelican yawed beneath his feet, afterward groaning with him as they both recovered.
The brigantine could not keep up. Her projecteurs, even granting Bowmore's new philosophy, lacked the necessary discipline to counter this new technique. In a portion of his mind keeping track of such things, he was aware he had lost another four projectibles. Despite the lesser number of her weapons, the corsair was getting off three thrusts to the brigantine's one, meanwhile battling the corvette, with her Navy crew, which did not seem to fare much better. Explosions mocked him with their salute. The brigantine rocked, pitched, rolled, and yawed about three axes at the same time, shuddering with destructive stresses she was never fashioned to withstand. Smoke concealed the opposing arc of the quarterdeck. Debris lay everywhere, the deckmesh sundered in a thousand places. By now, the greater part of Pelican's spars and rigging were overside, vaporized upon the §-field margin or lying in a hopeless tangle upon the main- and quarterdecks. Half his crewbeings were dead or useless to him.
By gradual increment, the corsair's thrusting diminished. At the moment of the final blow (delivered by stem chasers as well manned and aimed as her other armament) a stunned and battered Bowmore leaned upon a few remaining vertical fragments of the maindeck railing, thankful she had passed from between her reeling victims, and out of range. Even if she renewed the attack, it would take her a long while to reverse course and catch them up. She surprised him again by putting off auxiliaries. Suppressing a whimper of
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frustration, Bowmore half crawled to what was left him of the taffrail at the Pelican's circumference—even less than the inner rail he had just quit—leaving a faint blood track he did not notice until he glanced backward, seeing for the first time that he had taken a sizable fragment of metalloid and plastic in the heavy meat between his left knee and groin. It glistened where it had fused and he saw a trace of smoke. Had the trajectile struck a femoral artery, perhaps no more than three siemmes away, he would never have seen it at all. He focused his attention aft.
The corsair had hove to, training her stem chasers upon her crippled prey, protecting the flock of lesser predators she released. Large for the auxiliaries of a caravel, and a ftiil dozen in number rather than the usual six (he wondered where her captain stowed the extras), each bore a small projectible which it employed to good effect as, oblivious to the tachyon wind, the miniature fleet steamed toward brigan-tine and corvette.
A shout arose upon the maindeck. "All hands! Stand by to repel boarders! Projecteurs to the boat and lift hatches!" The command was not quite legal, the captain being alive upon deck, and for the most part uninjured. Still, the Pelican's p
rojectibles would be of no ftirther use. Bowmore let it pass. Upon the maindeck. First Oflftcer Borchert, having done with shouting, threaded his way through mountains of entwined wreckage to the break of the quarterdeck. "Captain Bowmore?"
Fingering the control in his pocket, Bowmore was attempting to imagine some way—perhaps some clever lie to draw that accursed corsair closer—in which the bomb secreted aboard the corvette might turn this pitiable situation to his advantage. He looked down at his first ofiicer. Borchert was tall, thin as a stiqueman, possessed of a wiry strength and (it seemed to the more sedentary captain) an unnatural degree of energy. The skin of his cheeks stretched tight over the bones. It was clear he longed to continue fighting to the end. "Yes, Mr. Borchert?"
"They will be here any moment. Permission to distribute small arms, sir?" Bowmore thought it through. One practice he had not seen fit to alter was that the arms locker would open only to his fingerprint. Were something to happen to
him, the crew would be defenseless, but that was their lookout. He would not suffer another mutiny. Only his officers had thrustibles, and he was unhappy about that.
"I think not, Mr. Borchert. Me poor, valiant crewbeings've suflfered cruelly enough. I believe, instead, I'll see whether we can't buy these rascals off." Bowmore could see the man, displeased with the decision, yet perfonn the same mental calculation he himself had earlier completed. The idea might work, at that. Pelican's holds were filled to the hatches with cargo purchased only for appearance, never meant to reach its purported destination, Baffridgestar. "Ask Mr. Glass to signal the corvette. They are to offer no resistance."
"Aye, aye, sir."
Standing with feet spread, hands behind him, as if nothing were more amiss than earlier this morning, Bowmore looked about him. The sailing master, Anderson, was demonstrating all the efficiency which the captain had come, in so brief a time, to rely upon. Sufficient headway was maintained by use of mast, spars, and rigging, along with the few remnants of starsail left to the Pelican, that she still might boast of something resembling gravity upon her riven decks. Bowmore hated to think of the broken, tangled mess floating free. Only minutes before, it had borne his brand-new brigantine through the Deep upon rainbow-colored wings. He received a report from Mr. Preble, officer-of-the-watch. The corsair's auxiliaries had left parties at the lubberlift and taken up station—this much he saw for himself—outboard the mizzentier, projectibles trained upon maindeck and quarterdeck. Not far off, the corvette was being afforded similar treatment. She had drifted close enough that he watched as a pile of debris upon her maindeck erupted, whether in warning or for some real or imagined transgression he could not discern, at a thrust from one of the ^nboats standing watch.
"Upon your lives throw down your weapons, each and every one!" cried an amplified voice from one of the nearby lesser vessels. "Stand where you are!"
Still at parade-rest, Bowmore could hear an increasing racket below as brigands from the corsair climbed forward within the Pelican's hull, driving projecteurs, helpers, and
346 HENRY MARTYN
all Others belowdecks before them. Soon the entire complement was gathered upon the maindeck under the watchful eye of the auxiliaries, and the boarders made their app>earance. Bowmore was shocked, counting scarce more than half a dozen, each attired in a vacuum suit and equipped with a plain, utilitarian pair of thrustibles. Ignoring the captain (except to relieve him, with rough efficiency, of his weapons), three of them climbed to the quarterdeck, spacing themselves about the elevated structure, the better to guard their captives.
One of a remaining three—they had brought a prisoner, as well, not wearing a suit—was a giant who strode forward with a smaller companion and something alien which moved, yet looked like a cemetery headstone swathed in kefflar. Flanked by the others, the giant addressed Bowmore.
"Y'realize, don't y'Captain, if you'd but issued weapons t'your crew, y'might've stood a chance. We're that short-handed, having captured ten prizes—no, this makes a round dozen, doesn't it?—this past month."
His human companion nodded, and of a sudden raised, not one of the pair of thrustibles he affected, but a blue-black metallic object, made a squeezing motion which did not involve his thumb, and squeezed again. With each squeeze, the object unleashed an ear-damaging blast, while pale fire blossomed from its end. Whatever the weapon was, it sufficed, for a hideous dual scream aloft was followed by an even more terrible crash upon the deck at Bowmore's feet. Two of his riggers had worked their way out upon the dorsal mizzenyard, purposing to leap onto the quarterdeck, only to be seen—and thrust in some way—by the smaller of the man-shaped raiders. The larger reached up with a huge hand, seized the crest of his flexible helmet, pulled it off his face, and left it dangling upon his chest.
"You!" Bowmore discovered to his utter amazement that he was looking up into the broad, ironic countenance of his former first officer, Phoebus Krumm. Bowmore did not speak further, for he was staring at another sight beyond the giant. As well as it had been hidden, integrated with the structure of the corvette's mast while she was undergoing minor repairs about Hanover, his bomb had been found. It dangled from the hand of Krumm's helmeted companion.
The prisoner they had with them, a dark, sullen young man in the uniform of a Jendyne naval lieutenant, Bowmore guessed was the captain of the corvette. Several epaulinettes which had held the thrustible along his forearm had been torn away in the act of confiscating his badge of rank and personal weapon. Bowmore was about to offer him commiseration, until—
"You ill-begotten mutant spawn of a gavaged she-cur!" The lieutenant launched himself across the deck in a murderous attack upon Bowmore's person. He raised his hands to fend off the defeated officer, not before he felt the man*s fingers closing about his windpipe, nails sinking into the unprotected flesh of his throat. He was only dimly aware of the shouting and pushing which started up round him. Gasping, he felt cartilage begin to give with a noise that was sickening in itself, and sank to his knees, violet sparks beginning to dance before his eye, his field of vision growing blacker by the second. Desperate, he struggled like an animal, prying at the lieutenant's hold, but the younger man had lapsed into berserk oblivion, and Bowmore's strength was ebbing. Of a sudden, he felt the hands relax, the lieutenant torn away from him. He collapsed, retching, aware that Krumm had pulled his attacker off and flung him halfway across the quarterdeck to the taffrail.
"I warned you." It was a new voice, level and quiet. Bowmore looked up as Krumm*s companion raised a forearm and let go with his thrustible. The lieutenant's anger-ravaged face puckered. His skull burst, spilling blood and brains across the deck. Designator still lit, the thrustible swung round to Bowmore, lingered over his scarred face, and dropped away.
Krumm chuckled. "'Twon't be that easy, Captain. Others ache t'have it elsewise, but the fact is y'lead a charmed life. Instead of comin' to the prolonged, painful end y'well deserve, you're merely t'be set adrift again."
Still kneeling, Bowmore trembled, his metal-ended braids standing away from his head as he contemplated the horrors of his first such voyage and the humiliation which would be the certain consequence of a second. "Kill me!"
Krumm grinned. "I shall not." He turned, winked at his companions, and grinned at Bowmore. "This time, you'll be
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spared t'carry a message from my master to the rulers of the Monopolity, whom he has lately sworn to inconvenience. A formal declaration of defiance, or, if y'prefer, of war."
"But what of me brigantine?"
"His brigantine, now. We shall see to her jury-rigging directly, and send her where she'll be refitted and added to his fleet."
"You would place a prize crew aboard my starship?"
"His starship. Captain. I doubt me whether he*ll place a crew aboard her when one is already here." Krumm turned and shouted to the maindeck. "Mr. Borchert, Mr. Grafenstein, Mr. Owen, Mr. Blackmon! The pleasure of your company's awaited 'pon the quarterdeck. Resume your weapons. Mr
. Glass, if it'll please you, signal the boats so they're not thrust for it."
A grinning third officer was first to reach the quarterdeck, stopping to give the gravestone-shape a good-natured thump upon its keffler-covered top. It responded by attempting to trip him with its undercurving tail, causing him to roar with laughter. Mr. Owen was a curly-bearded individual of girth and substance, a sort of miniature of the fantastic Mr. Krumm. Every opponent who had ever dismissed him lightly had come to a surprised and unpleasant end. He was followed by the first officer, the signals officer, the short, stocky projecteury officer, and, to Bowmore's confusion, the carpen- ■ ter's mate.
The giant addressed them. "Mr. Blackmon commanding, ye five'll select those y'trust among the brigantine crew. Rig her as best y'can and take her you-know-where. Arrange a crew for the corvette. I'd suggest Anderson t'command, with Preble, Luttrell, Graham, and Stafford. Crewbeings from this ship alone, as I mistrust those Navies." He turned to Bowmore. "Let those who brought her to us take her to her real destination."
"Hello the quarterdeck, look what I've found!" This from a gray-haired man of great height emerging from one of the cabins about the maindeck. By one arm he held an angry and struggling young woman attired in a grimy outfit of Deepman's coveralls several sizes too large for her tiny frame.
While the officers rearmed themselves, the attentions of
the giant and his companions remained upon Bowmore. Without looking down at the maindeck, Krumm shouted over his shoulder. "Bring your find here for all of us to appreciate, if ye will, Mr. StaflTord."
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