Prolonged silence followed for the three of them. When the boy spoke again, his voice was quiet, as if he were still in thought. "Mr. Krumm, when I came aboard, I was upon my way to Hanover to get help for my family."
The man nodded. "So I had gathered."
358 HENRY MARTYN
"I had time for thought as the ship's lowliest crewbeing. More since. Leupould himself approved the black deeds of Morven. The family Islay have no friends upon the capital planet. It was pointless to make my way there."
"My guessed be you're correct.*'
Arran gazed out the window overlooking the maindeck, not seeing anything in particular. All he had suffered had been to no good purpose, although he was wise enough to ] understand that he had only traded one set of hardships for another he might have suffered as a woodsrunner upon occupied Skye. "For a thousand years, two powerful imperia-conglomerate have been locked in mortal conflict. This is what my tutor and sister-in-law taught me, Mr. Krumm. Comprised of millions of star systems, quintillions of subjects, spanning vast areas of the known galaxy, their resources are enormous—everything they can extort from those they rule—but by no means unlimited."
Krumm gave him an odd look. "Might I ask what you're driving at?" He found he must restrain himself from adding, "sir," whether due to the boy's educated accent or something happening this instant, he could not determine. Arran looked Krumm back in the eye, inhaled, exhaled, and set his mouth.
"Not until I finish reasoning it out, if you please." Now Krumm knew. Arran failed to notice the delighted twinkle in the older man's eyes, and the way the flatsy folded itself upon the carpet, well satisfied.
"In our age, as in some previous, every circumstance exists for brigandry to spring into existence. The frontier is unimaginable in extent, little explored. But the basic fact of the thirty-first century is that §-physics has yet to develop the equivalent of lasercom or radio. Communication between systems is no faster than transportation." Krumm nodded, not wishing to interrupt.
"Given the martial and economic situation in which they find themselves, the imperia-conglomerate extend their prowess at minimal cost by issuing letters of marque, adding to a brigand's already rich opportunity. This suits my purpose, as I assume it suits a man who believes no complement would follow a baker, but might a young hero guided by an older, wiser officer?"
Krumm inhaled, exhaled, and nodded. "That was the idea, lad."
Arran laughed, not a pleasant sound. His body trembled with unreleased tension. "Mr. Krumm, I understand the arrangement and approve. Because I trust you, I who should have had all trust burned out of him, I agree to it. I accept the commission you offer me."
Krumm clapped the boy upon the back. "Good lad—" He held his hand up and examined it as if it were something foreign. "I mean, sir."
Arran was inclined to grin, but sobered as thought reestablished itself "You have swayed me in more than this, for, although we shall live as brigands, it will be to a purpose. I shall not make war, as I believed I might, in the name of persons against property, but against those who live by stealing property—life and liberty—from its rightful owners."
Krumm nodded. "I shall be proud to serve you. Captain Islay."
"I shall take a new name, Mr. Krumm, under which, although I did not know why at the time, I signed onboard the Gyrfalcon. That of my first friend, murdered by Morven as he took my native Skye, one who shared with me his love of ancient lore, and died attempting to preserve my life."
"Sir?"
"In his name shall I wreak vengeance until the whispered words 'Henry Martyn' strike terror into the hearts of thieves and hypocrites who benefit from the imperia-conglomerate! Gyrfalcon being no fighting ship, Henry Martyn shall take the corsair. Placing a few he distrusts least aboard Gyrfalcon, he shall repair the corsair where she lies, rename her Osprey, and appoint you second-in-command." He turned and looked at Krumm. "What others call banditry, he shall call vendetta! Taking suitable ships, he will arm them as he can, expanding his fleet rather than selling them. His crewbeings will be satisfied, for what they lose in prize money, they shall make up in plunder."
"Yes, sir!"
"Henry Martyn will raid planetside, razing every article of Monopolitan property! Every field, mine, and factory owned by the vile murchantilists will be reduced to the sort
360 HENRY MARTYN
of rubble left by Oplytes! He will search the ashes and execute every last Hanoverian vassal and retainer!"
The boy leapt to his feet. "We sail in search of fortune— and revenge!"
Chapter XXXIX:
SiSAO AND SOMON
"'Vast hauling, bemmy! Wanna snap me a spar?"
Krumm shouted from the quarterdeck, fingers entwined at the base of his spine, legs braced against the erratic surge as, with a minimum of starsail, the corsair backed and filled through the perilous, gas-clotted Deep.
It was the third hour of "graveyards," a period of reduced activity when the least numerous and competent of three watches was upon deck. Yet the hour could not be told, as upon the surface of a planet, from the appearance of the sky through the skeletal pyramid of spars^and cabelles overhead. Through the pulsing §-field, the sky itself offered a unique display of color and apparent depth, for, over the past days, he and his captain had insinuated their small fleet lightyears into the heart of a forbidding nebula.
Etumalam. Their destination, only a ship's "day" away now, Sisao and Somon, circled one another in the gas cloud some distance from a giant star of harsh yellow-white in which philosophers of science might have found interest, had pursuit of knowledge been fashionable within the imperia-conglomerate comprising human civilization. Its like was not to be found upon any "main sequence." It would be reasonable to assume it was a young star, destined for a spectacular demise. Yet the planets within its influence were old. To the extent any curiosity was ever manifest among the misfits who inhabited them (starsailing oflScers, doomed to spend their lives avoyaging, often developed esoteric interests; what few naturalists flourished these days were mostly found aboard starships, even those of freebooters
fully as subject to physical law and the tedium of long passages as any legitimate vessel), it could be demonstrated, with support of fossils and the like, that the sun which warmed them was no more given to instability than any other.
Etumalam. No one might have seen it in the first officer's imperturbable appearance, but his mind was a battlefield of conflicting feelings, not alone because this was the system where he had once been sold as a slave.
Etumalam. Like their extraordinary sun, the planets themselves were anomolous. Nothing about the otherwise remarkable star they circled (insofar as could be determined) might have led an erudite observer to expect a pair of near-identical worlds, eleven thousand klommes in diameter, pivoting about an imaginary point upon a mutual orbit round it. Even the nati^ral expectation that they mi^t long ago have compromised gravitic differences, settling into revolutions which, owing to geophysical imperfections, caused them to display the same face to one another (as with better-known examples), proved incorrect. Each spun upon its own tilted axis. The pair, as such, spun upon another. This, in turn, followed Keplerian tracks about the inexplicable primary, rendering determination of time, date, or season—without recourse to complex charts or custom timepieces—quite impossible.
Of the surfaces of these worlds, what might have been rendered succinctly which would be accurate and valuable? The most negligible planet is a complicated phenomenon, in particular if, as these did, it harbors life. Having given birth to its own evolutionary sequence, Sisao and Somon each possessed the usual proportions of land, water, desert, and forest; temperate, arctic, and tropical zones with a trifle more water than the average Hanoverian planet; less desert than forest; a touch more of the tropical than the arctic, offset by mountainous equatorial altitudes attributable to the astrophysics of mutually orbiting planets.
What stood out about Sisao and Somon depended more upon the
ir location outside the explored Deep and the borders of established polities, the nature of their inhabitants (chiefly a certain relaxation concerning fine points of the law), and the manner in which the interests of imperia-
362 HENRY MARTYN
conglomerate had led them to an attitude resembling tolerance toward the system. A cometary "halo*' of unusual density—filled with billions of spinning, sharp-toothed planetary fragments—and the fact the system as a whole was passing through the gaseous remains of an ancient supernova completed its natural defenses. No fleet admiral would risk speeds necessary to spring wamingless upon it against a certainty of dashing his vessels to pieces.
Even in this wild outlaw port, where theorists might predict nothing but chaotic violence (and—in that most abysmal variety of ignorance, that of the educated—call the condition anarchy), spontaneous order and organization were to be discovered. Etumalam possessed its own complexity of rules, powers, and immunities. Such was not for the likes of Henry Martyn. Krumm remembered the first time they had visited here after the boy assumed command.
"Privateer Council be thrust!'* This he had snapped in angry reaction to an invitation to join a guild of freebooters. Its issuers, captains all, had conceived it an honor, for already Henry Martyn had achieved a species of celebrity.
"This arrangement smells of another imperium-con-glomerate in the making! I shall have none of it. And it had better stay out of my way!" Shaking their heads (in most cases gray-thrust or snowy), the captains had departed, mumbling and astonished to have their invitation rejected by this boy-child.
To serve the Osprey's master as his headquarters upon Sisao—many people must be seen in selling off her plunder and attending her resupply—he had leased an inn at the heart of the small city, two streets from the block (although he had not known it until he and his first officer had gone sightseeing) upon which Krumm had once been auctioned for less than he now received in shares from the capture of a lifeboat.
"A clavis for your thoughts, Phoebus."
Krumm came close to jumping. "Ceo take you, Mathilde, you're the only one I know can sneak upon me like that!** Tillie*s laugh was soft. As he turned to face her, he heard the echoing chuckle of his other wife, Tula. "What mischief are you two after committin* *pon me peaceful quarterdeck?"
Tula gave him a mock frown. "Are we forbidden it? We thought we'd take the air of the late watch, Mr. First Officer Krumm, sir. Not so many feet to get under with the captain away, most officers off duty, and our own dear husband pacing the mesh with time heavy upon his hands."
"You aloft!" he shouted as if arguing with his wife. "What're ye rollerballers about up there? Belay that skylarkin' an' see t'those reefs, or by the Ceo's shrunken dingus there'll be no liberty in Etumalam!"
Etumalam. The alien in the mizzenyards waved cheerful compliance to the unnecessary order, carrying on with its duties as before, leaving Krumm to steep in the humiliation attendant upon his own display of temper.
Etumalam. Krumm's wives were accustomed to his moods, as well as the reasons for them, and would not be put off by any such demonstration. "In any case," Tillie insisted, "we wanted to speak with you before we arrived."
Tula nodded agreement. "We wanted to ask you something, Phoebus."
He frowned. In his eyes, love for his wives, concern for their concerns, belied the expression. It was a rare moment, the watch consisting in the main of non-humans, the captain supervising repairs aboard the Jendyne two-decker, and Krumm, accustomed to keeping within himself, for once inclined to talk of things troubling him. "It couldn't wait," he asked, "'til the watch-end?"
Tillie shook her head. "It's been waiting, Phoebus darling, at the end of every watch, while we accumulated courage enough to broach it. Before many more watches have passed, we'll have reached Nosaer, and it will be too late."
Nosaer (pronounced "Noss-air," yet which sailors, typically perverse, insisted upon calling "Nose-hair") was an ice asteroid within the halo of Sisao-Somon. Given its size—it was possible to leap, in a vacuum suit, from the quarterdeck direct onto its frozen surface—it was unnecessary to take orbit or lower the lubberlift, for the direction "down" did not exist.
As the twin planets had provided sanctuary to Gyrfalcon's mutineers, so here the brigantine and the corvette were led by Henry Martyn's Osprey. The corsair would first heave to
364 HENRY MARTYN
— Pelican and Peregrine being sent ahead to join others of his fleet—with the purpose of putting off any from the captured ships who, even after persuasion, would not enlist. Also, she would take on water—at a place it was cheap and, owing to lack of gravity, easiest to get aboard—without which the innovative use of her boats became profligately impossible. By long-standing arrangement, those debarking would be picked up by a vessel whose captain was paid to stray off' course and keep his mouth shut. In Henry Martyn's view they were upon their own thereafter. He did not consider that he was operating a charity. From the murchan starship, they would, by various means, return home to spread the fame, whether he would have it or not, of their erstwhile bcnefac-; tor. I
Krumm frowned down at the small, plump woman. "And?"
"Not 'and,' dear Phoebus," she replied, "but 'so.'"
"So what does he intend," Tula blurted, "with that girl-child he captured aboard the brigantine, the poor thing?"
Krumm nodded. "I wondered when you two would get round t'that."
"I keep asking Tula, what can he do? He's just a little boy, himself."
"That 'little boy,'" Krumm snorted, "ordered a hundred to their deaths just t'begin this run. I won't say they didn't deserve it, but I was that glad I persuaded 'em t'sign his articles an' mean it."
The women made clucking noises appropriate to their personalities and the circumstances. "Will he be angry you didn't carry out his order?"
"He knows all about it. Those were his orders: feed anyone to the field as won't sign up." Krumm pounded a fist into his palm. "That 'little boy' happens t'be the best Old Man I ever sailed under. He doesn't care how things're done as long as they get done."
This, Krumm thought, was only one of his virtues. In the span before they had waylaid the Pelican, with some help from his first officer, the boy had discovered that he was one of those rare, dangerous natural leaders for love of whom men would leap with a glad shout into the maw of death.
True, Henry Martyn—known to a smaller portion of the galaxy as Arran Islay—was a lad of but fifteen, third and lowliest son of an attainted Drector. Krumm had kept close eye upon him as he had risen from stowaway, victim to sadists, gundeck menial, and projecteur's helper, to commodore of a growing fleet. Still he did not altogether understand the boy.
Upon assuming command of the carrack and the corsair he had taken, he transferred to the latter, renamed Osprey. Warfare being laid into her very keels, she suited his purposes better than the ship he had first sailed upon. Taking officers and crewbeings with him whom, by virtue of his own experience and at Krumm's suggestion, he deemed trustworthy, and restoring her to fitness chiefly by restarting her collectors and disposing of the radiation-ravaged corpses of her crew, he had turned his attention back to Gyr-falcon.
Those left aboard were less to be trusted, and in this way his practice of overarming vessels had begun. He had ordered her fifteen projectibles placed aboard the corsair wherever they fit, behind improvised portals upon boat- and liftdecks, upon the commanddeck calipretted at right angles to the bow chasers. Likewise, the holds soon served as hangars for Gyrfalcon's remaining auxiliaries, some of which, more to conserve space than from belligerent design, soon boasted small projectibles—the carrack's chasers—of their own. Later he leavened the ranks of her complement with liberated slaves, victims of pressgangs, and alien life forms.
This developed into a lucky stroke for which he was to feel grateful. Unable to imitate the noises which served them as speech, he had converted them into something he could write and read. In this, he had explained to Krumm, he found the le
tters Old Henry had tau^t him more useful than the sparse jottings of barquode. The young man had discovered that the roUerballers referred to themselves as "seporth." A numerous and varied people just inventing their own steam engines and combustible gas lighting, they inhabited a young planet (which, to everyone's regret, not even Krumm knew how to find) of violent crustquakes
366 HENRY MARTYN
and volcanoes. Human raiders (or Oplytes, the distinction was lost upon the seporth) had dropped onto the surface of their world and made off with an entire town. Nor, if seporth folklore was to be credited, was it the first time.
While humans made perfect riggers and topmen (perhaps owing to their monkey lineage), accounting for their species' preeminence upon the Deep, rollerballers were ideal pro-jecteurs, impervious to heat and smoke, possessed of fine sensibility with regard to the fussy, dangerous projectibles. As long as he had rollerballers serving upon the gundeck, calling thrusts from beneath much-modified darthelms, Krumm never again lost use of a weapon to core failure or conductile bum.
From Henry Martyn's viewpoint, the flatsies—who referred to themselves as "nacyl" —turned out even better. Allowing for an arboreal specialization which had biased the course of human evolution, their flatworm shape was as generalized as that of mankind, lending itself to a broad variety of application. They were faster getting up the cabelles and out upon the spars, spiraling round them like stripes upon a candy stick. Aloft they exhibited limitations. The appendages they used for hands, stubby tentacularities extruding through apertures all over their surface, were no longer than a man's smallest finger. Upon their own world, every artifact, of course, was constructed by means of such manipulators and with such in mind. They professed to admire the longer, stronger limbs of human crewbeings, as well as the adroit tendrils of the seporth.
The nacyl did not say much about their home, not, Krumm believed, because they wished to withhold information. Some inadequacy in the common vocabulary, suitable as it was proving to the working of a starship, kept them from it, or humans from understanding them. If they were to be believed, their culture, although it occupied a solitary world (if that was what they meant), had advanced in technologic arts beyond the imperia-conglomerate; although to the young captain and his first officer it sounded more like sorcery. It appeared, by virtue of Henry Martyn's rescue, that they ' could read thoughts, although their denials were strenuous. I
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