They left from the other side of Tragacanth this time, as the Arctal Current was flowing the correct way to whisk them from Lumbos to Aspolia in only six days, rather than the typical eight to ten. Not that transit time was any issue for Tol. He suspected the passenger line increased their profits a bit by not having to provide meals and services for those extra days, as the ticket cost the same no matter how long it ended up taking to get there.
As this was a rather expensive cruise, the line management felt it appropriate to provide entertainment beyond the usual musical shows, hammer-string lyre bars, and water sports. The third day out that entertainment centered around a demonstration on the Solare deck by the eccentric gnome inventor of a crazy new flying contraption.
People had taken cracks at practical flying machines for years, but none of them made much progress. There was the kobold over in Hividz who constructed this ten meter-wide framework covered in light fabric that could soar reasonably well when launched from a cliff, but on the third such attempt a microburst slammed him and it into the ground so hard that both were thoroughly dismembered.
There had been many experiments with hot-air envelopes over the centums as well, with varying degrees of success. A small group of dedicated enthusiasts held demonstrations every year and flew their ‘airspheres’ for excited crowds, but the concept never really bled over into either freight or commercial passenger-hauling: too many issues no one was willing to fund working out.
The gnome showing off his invention to the passengers of the Avvolli had hit upon something quite different, however. He lived in the rugged mountainous area of southern Tantatku where he’d spent most of his life as an independent miner, finding and exploiting small veins of various valuable minerals. One day he’d chanced upon a reddish streak that looked like nothing he’d ever seen before. Extracting a sample and heating it repeatedly in his athanor, he eventually worked out that he’d discovered a previously unknown substance that when heated generated a gas with the potentially useful property of linear thermal buoyancy: the hotter it became, the more buoyant.
The gnome, whose name was Dagyo, soon realized he had the basis for an entirely new form of transport in his hands, if he could only work out the niggling details. He spent the next three years doing just that. He used his miner’s knowledge of metallurgy to create an alloy that was both light and extremely strong. From his new metal he crafted a structure that looked like a squashed ice cream cone in cross section: a semicircle sitting atop an acute triangle. It was ten meters long and six wide, covered with a stiff doped fabric. Underneath was slung a streamlined control compartment big enough to house four gnomes.
Along the keel of the craft ran a u-channel with fan-shaped burners situated every meter such that the heating would be relatively uniform across the entire length. The interior of the giant bag was coated with a thin but tough metallic foil sandwiched between two sheets of rubberized fabric. As the solid mineral Dagyo had christened ‘aerite’ sublimed under the influence of the battery- powered burners, it expanded into the sealed envelope. When it cooled to liquid state, the aerite ran down the sides and fed back into the trough to be re-heated. The hotter Dagyo made the fires, the lighter his craft would get.
He added horizontal and vertical planes for navigation and two curious internal fan-driven engines for propulsion, controlling all of that via pulleys and wires from a console at the front of the little passenger car. Dagyo referred to his craft as a Zifjagga, which translates from gnomish as ‘flying jellyfish.’ After two months of almost constant practice and refinement, he took his show on the road to drum up funds for further enhancements.
He landed the Avvolli gig after one of the line’s executives brought his children to an amusement park where Dagyo had been contracted to do demonstrations to distract those in near-infinite queues for the most popular rides. The executive immediately saw the potential for entertainment, if not transport, and booked Dagyo to bring his contraption aboard the Avvolli.
The premise of Dagyo’s Zifjagga show was pretty simple: the ship’s owners had installed a large swiveling mooring point on top of a ten-meter mast on the Solare deck. Not only did the Zifjagga moor there, it was attached by a one hundred meter extra-strong tether to a ring welded below the mooring point so that Dagyo could take the AeroPram (as he named it) out and fly it around in circles without worrying about engine failure or jammed controls causing him to become separated from the Avvolli in the deep ocean.
The spectacle of a bag full of gas with someone suspended underneath it was quite diverting; the shows always had people lining the decks: some to marvel at the engineering, some to gaze in naked envy at the gnome who was no longer bound to the surface, and a few who secretly or not so secretly just hoped to witness a disaster. One of the latter category was a kobold named Lizgug, who happened to be distantly related to the glider creator in Hividz. He hoped the bag would explode, or maybe break apart. Kobolds are not as a race particularly empathic or charitable, but Lizgug exceeded those already low standards by a considerable margin: he was actively—sometimes even aggressively—unpleasant.
Tol saw posters for the exhibition in the dining hall and wandered up to the Solare deck to check it out. So did Lizgug. The two did not know each other, surprisingly. Lizgug was an itinerant thug-for-hire who provided muscle for collections and extortion schemes, jimmied doors for burglars, and generally accepted jobs others were loath or too lazy to undertake. The cruise was a gift to himself after a particularly profitable shakedown; it was also a way to flee to Solemadrina, well away from the long arm of Tragacanthan EE. Or, so he imagined.
After an introduction by the ship’s cruise director, Dagyo waved to the crowd and ascended a portable stairway to the gondola of the gently swaying captive AeroPram. He waved again at the door, and then stepped inside. The crowd waited expectantly as he lit the burners and the aerite began to expand throughout the envelope. At last, first the right, then the left engine vroomed to life. The tail of the Zifjagga lifted, the nose slipped out of the mooring socket, and the craft moved gracefully away to the applause of (most of) the assembled passengers.
One of those who did not applaud was Lizgug. He was analyzing the setup, looking for an easy way to wreak some amusing and potentially profitable havoc. As Tol applauded he swept the assemblage, looking for anything suspicious. His glance passed over Lizgug and stopped cold. He knew that look: it never ended well. This one bore watching.
On a hunch, Tol pulled Petey out of his pocket. “Scan the crowd and look for wanted fugitives, please.”
“Are you not on vacation, then?” asked Petey.
“No. It’s a cover.”
“I see no orders at all in the EE database.”
“You won’t find them there. This mission is Royal Family Eyes Only.”
“Impressive. I do see an open acquisition warrant in your name. They have given you an infinite credit line, for all practical purposes. Must be frightfully important.”
“It’s very important to the king; as one of his knights that makes it very important to me.”
“Not to mention a family affair.”
“There is that.”
“I have three positive matches from the facial database. Two of them are minor traffic and administrative offenses warrants, but the third is for multiple felonies, including engaging in career criminal activities.”
“That’s the fellow I’m after. Let me guess: kobold? Light pink shirt and green pants?”
“Correct. His name is Lizgug Trelk. Hails originally from Ubxafa, a coastal village about twenty kilometers southwest of Evcolla in Hividz. Wanted for conspiracy to commit murder, conspiracy to exploit the elderly, conspiracy to sow civic discord, conspiracy to commit grand larceny, conspiracy to engage in conspiracy, and failure to signal while in a stolen pram.”
“How did a guy like that even get on an international passenger vessel?”
“False credentials. The port authority does not employ facial recognition
scanners on a regular basis due to funding.
Consequently, with a relatively minor effort put forward to manufacture authentic-appearing identification documents, access is easily obtained.”
“The border is porous, in other words.”
“Precisely.”
“He’s probably headed to Solemadrina to dodge Tragacanth EE. I guess I’d better make sure that doesn’t happen.”
“The schematics of this ship do indicate a detainment area on deck two, just above the engineering bay.”
“They’d have to keep him there all the way back. Still, at least he’d be out of circulation.”
Tol watched the rest of the Zifjagga performance, keeping one eye on Lizgug. When the show was over he went into surveillance mode and established a tail on the kobold. Tol was an old hand at this sort of thing: he’d followed hundreds if not thousands of perps in his career. Lizgug headed immediately off down a corridor toward the elevator to the cabin decks. He ducked into a service area just shy of the elevator and came back out two minutes later, headed aft.
The kobold walked all the way to the aft-most staircase and took it as far up as it went. Standing on the uppermost landing for quite some time to make certain he wasn’t being followed (by someone with lesser skills than Tol), Lizgug at last padded off toward the observation lounge directly below the Zifjagga mooring mast. He surreptitiously scouted the possible means of access and settled on a ladder bolted to the other side of a windowless section of wall. Carefully, quietly, he stole out the door and up the ladder. Tol followed after a moment.
The Zifjagga was unoccupied and unguarded. Lizgug grinned and considered his options. He ran his hand along the underside of the rigid envelope, obviously contemplating a few well-placed punctures. Moving on, he rotated one of the spinners back and forth while he thought about sabotaging the engines somehow. Then he spotted the mooring rope.
Tol watched from the shadows as the kobold brought out a wicked knife and placed it against the rope. After the first draw Tol had all the evidence he needed. He walked quickly up behind the kobold and whipped out his badge.
“Edict Enforcement. You are under arrest for attempted criminal mischief, not to mention multiple outstanding warrants.”
Lizgug waved the knife menacingly under Tol’s nose.
“I’ll give you exactly one chance to drop that knife,” Tol said, calmly.
“Oh, I’ll drop it all right. Right into yer ugly gizzard.” He took a step forward and shifted his grip on the knife to blade down, prepared for a downward stab. Tol shook his head and grabbed the kobold’s arm with one hand. He twisted the wrist violently, breaking the arm and forcing Lizgug to drop the knife, which Tol kicked overboard in one sweeping motion that continued with the kobold being thrown down on the deck in a none-too-gentle manner, with Tol’s foot on his back.
“Ow, you smekking lunatic, that hurt!”
“Hey, I have an aversion to large sharp objects being jammed into my gizzard. It’s a character flaw we all have to live with.” He snapped the cuffs onto the kobold’s warty wrists.
“Time to get up, honey.”
Tol yanked the smaller Lizgug to his feet, blood dripping down his fingers from the compound fracture in his forearm.
“You better get me to the infirmary quick. Wait ‘til I file a complaint on your obvious brutality. Ow! Ow! Officer brutality!”
Tol spun him around and looked him dead in the eyes.
“You see that railing right there? If you don’t shut up and cooperate, I could very easily trip while you’re struggling and accidentally send you down to file your complaint with the bureau of fishes. I hear the waiting room is quite damp.”
The kobold turned a little white and went quiet. About that time one of the crewmembers came running up.
“What’s going on here?”
Tol flipped open his badge and credentials. “Tragacanth EE Special Investigator. This person is wanted on multiple warrants. I need to use your detention area.”
The crewmember seemed taken aback. “We...we weren’t briefed about any fugitives aboard.”
Tol gave him that special look. “If you knew he was a fugitive when he boarded, you wouldn’t have let him on the smekking ship. At least, I hope not.”
The crewmember thought about this. “Ah, right. Well, come along, then. I’ll have to get permission from the Officer of the Deck to incarcerate a prisoner, but that shouldn’t be too hard with you being EE and all. Down we go.”
They stepped into an elevator; the crewmember used his key to bypass the other floors and take them straight to the Bathys Deck where the brig was located.
“Sub-sub-basement,” he said as the doors slid open, “Casual wear, sporting goods, and detention.”
Tol smirked; Lizgug rolled his eyes.
“This has got be contrary to some high seas treaty or other,” the kobold complained, struggling.
Tol kicked him. “What, arresting and locking up a convicted felon fugitive? I don’t think so.”
“No, subjecting a prisoner to this jlok’s sense of so-called ‘humor.’”
Tol cocked his head, “You may be right, at that.” The crewmember huffed with pretend insult. “Mention it to the magistrate and maybe he’ll knock a few minutes off your sentence.”
Once the prisoner was formally booked and incarcerated in the ship’s holding cell, Tol shifted his attention back to the Zifjagga. He’d been thinking about potential applications for such an invention beyond the obvious transport of people and freight. Observation of criminal activities from the air would be useful, as would delivery of EE/rescue personnel to an otherwise difficult-to-access site. He set out directly to speak with the gnome about those things.
Dagyo had thought of those uses for the Zifjagga, it turns out— and many more besides. He was torn between a desire to see his invention adopted widely around the world and a deep reluctance to share his buoyancy secret, for fear it would be used for what he considered evil purposes. Gnomes appear to the casual observer to be concerned only with creation and building and engineering, but most have scruples as well, after their own fashion.
Tol understood Dagyo’s viewpoint and suggested that he file for a Writ of Mine. WoMs allowed Tragacanthans who invented something that other people might want to claim for their own the right to control that creation’s use. That way Dagyo could license the floatation technology but maintain control of the actual engineering process used to manufacture it. The kobold was vaguely aware of the existence of the WoM, but had no idea how to seek it. Tol promised to help him when they got back home, in return for Dagyo adapting one of his wondrous craft for EE use.
Chapter the Eighteenth
in which Tol encounters one monster that slays another
The Avvolli docked in Erolossma on the north coast of Solemadrina and stayed in dock for two days before starting the return voyage. That gave Tol time to make some inquiries of local EE concerning the current whereabouts of the elusive Frem. He started at the national EE office there in Erolossma, but after an afternoon of being led around in circles by bureaucracy he chucked the official approach and hit the streets.
A beat cop, especially one who has been on the same beat for many years, has many resources at his disposal when solving crimes: stoolies, friendlies, cages, dodges, and lookouts among them. Tol did not have access to this network here by virtue of long association, yet he could sense their presence and managed to worm information out of them using the same techniques he found successful on the other side of N’plork. People were people no matter where you went, with the same drives, fears, and hopes that could be exploited when needed.
Nevertheless, it took Tol a full day to generate a solid lead on Frem’s whereabouts. She was, thankfully, right here in the city, hiding out in the private rooms of an inn called The Golden Bedpost. He decided to take the direct approach, as he didn’t have much time before the Avvolli sailed with his prisoner.
The Bedpost was in a rundown neighborhood
of Erolossma. The streets were lined with older homes that might have been called middle class a generation or two ago, but now bore the unmistakable hallmarks of age-related degeneration. The residents looked equally worn and tattered; they moved about their daily business in a kind of automatic pilot, showing equal parts no joy, no passion, and no interest in much of anything. They stared dully at Tol as he got out of the rented pram and walked from the parking lot to the front door of the inn. Their listless countenance was nothing new to Tol after many years in the streets of Sebacea. Desperately poor people always seemed to take on that appearance after a while. The constant grind of bare subsistence did that to you.
The crowd in the Bedpost’s common room was a motley assemblage. Just about every race on N’plork other than titans was represented, with a preponderance of goblins and gnomes. In one corner there was a knot of what Tol guessed were elf-gnome hybrids, the result of one of the rarer such encounters. Interracial hybrids, or ‘halfers’ as they were known colloquially, tended to stick together for social cohesion and safety reasons. While most of the clientele were drinking and laughing uproariously as they staggered from table to table, the halfers sipped their razzle and talked quietly amongst themselves, staying apart from the spontaneous festivities. Tol scanned them unobtrusively; they all seemed a bit ill at ease. Given the increasingly boisterous nature of the other pub patrons, most of whom were much larger and prone to violence, their reserved behavior was understandable as a survival mechanism.
More interesting to Tol than the halfers themselves was the almost invisible door directly behind them. Most people wouldn’t notice it even if they were looking straight at it, but Tol was not most people. Someone had turned on a light inside for only a moment— just long enough for Tol to observe a telltale rectangular sliver of yellow. He moved casually toward the halfer table as though he wanted to get a better look at them. He felt the reassuring hard lump of his disruptor and next to it the small cold presence of a special instrument he’d been given when he accepted the assignment. It was the most lethal ranged weapon in the Tragacanthan EE arsenal, selectively destroying the medullary neurons that controlled breathing and heart rhythm by literally shaking them apart with carefully tuned radion pulses. Only a handful of people were authorized to possess this device. Tol was not particularly proud to be one of them. Of course, in the other pocket was the pouch full of lethal toxins. Tol felt like some sort of super assassin from a spy novel.
Gathering of the Titans: The Tol Chronicles Book 2 Page 20