Distant Worlds Volume 1

by Benjamin Sperduto

  “Name your terms,” Singer said, letting his pistol drop to the floor. His men followed his lead, though Song hesitated. Nothing was said between them; they knew each other well enough to make conversation all but superfluous. After several minutes, she too laid down her sword and pistol.

  There was still no wind between the islands so the British got into their lifeboats and rowed over to the pirate ship. When enough soldiers were on hand, the British commander joined them. While the British disarmed the pirates, he walked over to Singer, who was under heavy guard.

  “Julian Singer,” he said, “I can’t tell you what a pleasure it is to meet you, especially under the circumstances. Allow me to introduce myself; my name is Captain Christopher Hayward. You’ll be pleased to know that I’ve gone to considerable trouble to spring this little trap for you.”

  “I’m touched,” Singer said.

  “I expect we’ll be finding quite a haul of the crown’s property today, eh?” Hayward said.

  “A pity, that,” Singer said. “Afraid we spent it all on women and drink when we last made port.”

  “I see. You disappoint me, Singer. I’d expected more from an Englishman. At least some measure of civilized behavior or restraint with respect to such vices, you understand? Well, I suppose your ship will have to stand in place of your ill-gotten gains for the time being. Come along then.”

  The British soldiers tied up Singer’s crew with lengths of rope. Hayward had Song and Rutger bound securely and brought over to stand alongside their captain.

  “So this would be the fearsome Song Jin, I presume?” Hayward said, eying her slender, muscular frame lustily. “Yet another mark of barbarism, I’m afraid. Where else but among pirates could a woman hope to win a place as first mate? That must be some influence you have with your captain, my dear.” He reached out to caress her cheek but something in her expression made him reconsider and he retracted his hand.

  Hayward turned then to Rutger, who was nearly a full head taller than everyone around him.

  “Ah, Mister Brachoven, isn’t it? Certainly the mountain of a man I’d been led to expect. A pity you never sought work with the Royal Navy; we could have offered a great deal more to a man of your talents than this lot of brigands.”

  Rutger spit in Hayward’s face and snarled something foul in Dutch. Hayward wiped his face clean and smiled.

  “Private,” he said, gesturing to the soldier standing behind Rutger. The soldier slammed the stock of his musket against the Dutchman’s skull and sent him tumbling to his knees.

  “You’ll have plenty of time to learn proper manners before your engagement with the hangman, Mister Brachoven,” Hayward said. “At least do your race the honor of dying like a civilized man and not like some brutish thug.”

  Singer tuned out the captain’s voice and glanced up at the sails of the British ships. They were as still as the Wraith’s. None of their captors seemed to be concerned by it. He guessed that they were no more than ten miles from the coast of Mexico; too close for the lack of wind to be a coincidence.

  “You’ve never sailed these waters, have you, Captain?” Singer said. Hayward walked back over to him and smirked.

  “If I had, I can assure you that you’d have been hanged long ago,” he said.

  “Just in from Europe, then?”

  “I helped to stamp out piracy in the Mediterranean if you must know, Mister Singer. Although I’m afraid the scoundrels there offered more of a challenge than your little band of miscreants. I had expected more from a man of your reputation and blood.”

  Singer nodded, then glanced back up to the Wraith’s sails.

  “The air’s a bit still, don’t you think, Captain?”

  Hayward’s smile lost a bit of its arrogance as he turned his eyes to the sails.

  “An inconvenience,” he said. “I’ve a man who can call upon a wind if one doesn’t present itself.”

  “Oh, of course,” Singer said. “Perhaps you should look in on that?”

  “I’ll be the judge of what needs looking in on, Mister Singer. Or have you forgotten your place so quickly?”

  Singer shrugged.

  “Merely a suggestion. Do whatever you like.”

  British soldiers herded the pirates into the lifeboats and rowed them over to Captain Hayward’s ship. There the captives were lined up on the deck so they could be counted and their arrests recorded in the ship’s logbook. The British left the Wraith unattended.

  Singer, Song, and Rutger kept their eyes on the horizon, watching for signs of movement as they were pushed into line the frigate’s deck. Captain Hayward accompanied them and summoned to his side a thin, Italian man who was not dressed in the uniform of a British soldier or sailor. His clothing was of finely woven silk and winding, serpentine tattoos covered much of his exposed skin. Singer had little doubt of the man’s expertise and trade.

  There weren’t many sorcerers willing to leave the cloistered confines of their libraries for the open seas and Singer made a point of knowing what flags those few sailed under. He knew the major sorcerers of the Caribbean on sight, but this man was unfamiliar. It took a great deal of power and focus to completely conceal five frigates, along with their wake, from the human eye and Singer found it difficult to believe that he’d never encountered this sorcerer before. Perhaps Hayward had brought him over from Europe, he thought, an associate from his days in the Mediterranean.

  Singer was too far away to hear their conversation, but it was quite tense and Hayward was clearly angered by what the sorcerer had to say. He stormed over to them and barked orders to the soldiers standing guard.

  “Get this rabble below deck! Now!”

  “Problem with calling up that wind of yours, Captain?” Singer said.

  Hayward’s eyes fixated on Singer and he grasped the pirate by his shirt.

  “If you have something to say, pirate, then out with it! Otherwise, we have nothing to discuss until your day at the gallows.”

  “Does this ship have oars?”

  “What?”

  “Oars, you know, the sort you row with?”

  Hayward’s face darkened at Singer’s comment; then he drew back his fist and punched him. The pirate fell to the deck, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth. Hayward loomed over him, hand upon his rapier. All traces of civility had vanished from his demeanor and Singer recognized the pitiless eyes of a killer.

  “Try my patience again, Singer, and I’ll have you shot where you stand.”

  Singer spat blood onto the deck as he got to his feet.

  “Do what you want, Hayward. If you don’t have any way of moving this ship without the wind, we’re all going to die anyway.”

  “What are you…?”

  “Captain Hayward!” The cry came from a British sailor positioned in the lookout nest atop the frigate’s mast. “Look there! Off the starboard bow!”

  Everyone on deck turned to look in the indicated direction and a dread silence overtook them all. There, about four hundred yards out, was a small island, and sailing around it was what looked like nothing so much as a floating city. The vessel was massive, dwarfing even the great Chinese treasure ships that plied the waters of the South Pacific. Dozens of parapets and towers reached skyward from its immense base and in the center there rose a tiered pyramid that rose easily twice as high as the masts of the Wraith. Hundreds of oars protruded from its base, rowing rhythmically to the steady beat of drums that emanated from somewhere deep within the stone behemoth.

  “What in God’s name is that?” Hayward said, his voice little more than a whisper.

  “That, my dear Captain Hayward,” Singer said, “is an Aztec dreadnaught.”

  Singer could have explained to Hayward how such an amazing sight was possible, that the great stone ship was kept afloat by foul heathen magic, that after their defeat of Cortes and his Conquistadors almost two centuries earlier they forged an immense land empire that kept the European powers out of Central America, and that their invinc
ible dreadnaughts now threatened to carry their might into the Caribbean. He could have revealed even more, such as how the vessel’s dark magic negated the winds for nearly half a mile around it, but Hayward appeared to be in such a state of shock that there would be little point in wasting his breath.

  The dreadnaught’s forward cannons opened fire and one of the British frigates was torn in half and erupted in flame. Most of the British sailors stared in disbelief of the flaming wreckage but a few ran screaming to take cover below deck or throw themselves overboard. They all but ignored their newly won captives and the pirates worked to free themselves from their bonds.

  Hayward looked to his sorcerous companion, but the warlock ignored him. Instead he began to chant a series of incantations and waved his arms like man caught up in quicksand. Singer knew enough to avert his eyes before a flash of light consumed the sorcerer. When he looked again, the strange man was gone. Hayward stood oblivious to the confusion that consumed his ship, his eyes fixed dumbly at the space previously occupied by his hired warlock.

  Singer took advantage of the Englishman’s distress and threw himself forward to knock Hayward to the deck. By the time he rolled away, Song managed to free herself and retrieve a sword. She first cut his bonds and then Rutger’s as Hayward fled out of sight. The three companions then made their way through the mob of panicked sailors and down to the main deck where most of the pirates had already freed themselves and gathered their weapons.

  “Get back to the Wraith!” Singer said, shouting over the chaos that continued to erupt around them. The Aztecs fired a second volley from their heavy cannons and another frigate burst into flames. As the dreadnaught drew closer, it opened fire with its smaller cannons, raining shot down upon the British ships.

  Most of the pirates jumped overboard and swam the short distance to the Wraith. A few took the time to find a boat, but most of them were capsized by stray cannon shot and flaming debris. Singer, Song, and Rutger swam the distance and climbed up the broken sides of the Wraith’s hull to reach the deck. They hurried to cast ropes over the sides so that the rest of their fleeing crew could get aboard more easily.

  “Run out the sweeps!” Singer said after about a dozen of his men climbed up to the deck. Some of them were still in a state of shock, but Rutger quickly got their attention with his thundering voice.

  “You heard the Captain! Get below deck and man the oars, you dogs!”

  “Song,” Singer said, “we need to ditch weight. See that anything we can do without is lost.”

  “Aye, Captain,” she said and quickly picked out a handful of wet pirates to help her toss overboard most anything that wasn’t nailed down.

  Singer ran to the stern of the ship to man the helm and rudder. Rutger and the men below deck deployed the racks of oars stowed in the bottom of the ship and got the Wraith moving again. Looking back, Singer saw that the Aztecs were less than two hundred yards away. The dreadnaught’s guns were silent, but now a horde of Aztec warriors swarmed down from its stone walls to overwhelm the surviving British sailors with musket fire and steel. Only two of the British frigates remained relatively intact, but both of them had been boarded and would soon join the others at the bottom of the sea.

  The Wraith picked up speed as more crewmen went below deck to man the sweeps and more cargo was dumped overboard. Singer dared to hope that the Aztecs wouldn’t give chase; that they would be satisfied with the destruction of the five British ships that had encroached on their shores. The distance between them continued to grow and Singer soon had to resort to using his looking glass to check for any indication of pursuit. There was none; the Aztecs were too busy rounding up their captives and taking them aboard their massive vessel. Then a slight breeze whipped across the deck of the ship and the Wraith’s sails fluttered to life.

  “The wind is back! We’re out of range!”

  A roar of cheers sounded from the men on deck as they moved quickly to tend to the ship’s rigging.

  “Song,” Singer said, “tell Rutger to stow the sweeps and get those men back…”

  “Captain,” one of the pirates said, “the wind!”

  Singer’s eyes snapped back to the Wraith’s sails in time to see them go limp. He spun around and reached for his looking glass, but he didn’t need it to see that the Aztec dreadnaught was bearing down on them with uncanny speed. Song came up from the main deck to see what held her captain’s attention.

  “It’s not possible,” she said. “I’ve never seen one move so fast before!”

  Singer grunted and brought the stone ship into focus in his looking glass. Its oars were stowed in a fixed, upright position and yet it still barreled towards them with the speed of a sailed ship. He looked more closely, focusing on signs of activity atop the pyramid that rose from the dreadnaught’s center, where an unspeakably horrible ritual was being performed by one of the dreaded Aztec sorcerer priests. The whole peak of the pyramid pulsed with a faint, red light.

  “They’re working some kind of sorcery,” Singer said.

  He lowered the looking glass.

  “How far away do you suppose they are?”

  “Eight, nine hundred yards, maybe,” Song said.

  “Take the helm. And keep an eye on them, we’re probably in range of their forward guns.”

  Song took the rudder controls as Singer bounded down to the main deck and made for his cabin. The British hadn’t had an opportunity to rummage through the ship when they were captured and he found everything as he left it. He reached under his bunk and pulled out a large case, which he opened to reveal an exquisitely crafted musket. The musket’s metal parts were plated with polished gold and the intricate dragon patterns carved into the wood were filled with gold as well. He took the gun and a handful of the bullets from a small compartment in the case.

  Before Singer made it out the cabin door, he heard the familiar booming of the Aztec forward mounted cannons. The Wraith pitched to and fro as the sea heaved violently; the first volley hadn’t missed them by much.

  Singer ran back out to the deck and joined Song at the stern of the ship. The Aztec dreadnaught was much closer now, no more than four hundred yards.

  “Song, give me your powder.”

  “Is that Zhi Si Long?” Song said as she handed over the small bag of gunpowder than hung from her belt.

  Singer’s musket was well named: Deadly Dragon. He had received it as a gift from an old friend during his years of piracy in Asia. Much like the Wraith, he had never seen its equal. Its long barrel was rifled, allowing him to shoot farther and straighter than he could with an ordinary musket.

  “I’ve got to kill that priest,” he said, loading powder and bullet into the musket, “whatever he’s doing up there is making them move faster. Keep us weaving to and fro; they’ve likely got the cannons reloaded by now.”

  As if to confirm his hunch, the dreadnaught’s forward guns thundered to life again. The cannonballs missed their mark, but they were close enough for Singer to hear them whistling by.

  “Alright,” Singer said, “I’m loaded, hold her steady, now!”

  Singer flipped the musket’s sights into place and took aim at the peak of the dreadnaught’s central pyramid. It was a difficult shot: A distance of nearly four hundred yards complicated by the pitching and yawing of two seaborne vessels. He took aim for several seconds and fired.

  The bullet sailed wide of its mark, missing the priest by more that a yard to his left. He didn’t even appear to notice he’d been shot at.

  “Damn!”

  “What happened?” Song said.

  “I bloody missed him, that’s what!”

  Singer reloaded quickly, but not before another volley of cannon fire shot towards them. This time, one of the cannonballs found its mark and ripped through a section of the upper deck. The Wraith shuddered but continued its steady forward progress. Crewmen scrambled to douse the fire left behind by the shot before it had a chance to spread.

  By the time Singer was ready t
o fire again, the dreadnaught was just under three hundred yards away. He knew that if he missed a second time, he might not get another chance.

  “Keep her leveled out, Song,” he said, raising the musket to take aim. The shorter distance made the shot a little less daunting, but there was no way to compensate for the movement of the two ships. Singer aimed, took a deep breath, and pulled the trigger.

  A true marksman is never in doubt. Singer could see in his mind the priest thrown backwards by the force of the bullet punching through his chest before his eyes watched it happen. What he didn’t expect was the explosion of fire and smoke that erupted from the top of the pyramid and made the whole dreadnaught shudder. For a moment, it seemed ready to sink, the waves lashing up its steep walls like some ravenous sea monster, but then the oars lowered and the ship stabilized. Its speed declined noticeably until it seemed to be standing completely still. When the smoke around the pyramid cleared, there was only a charred ruin in place of the peak.

  “What happened?” Song said. “Did you hit him?”

  “Aye, I hit him. Killing him must have set loose whatever magic he was trying to channel. Blasted the whole top of the ship away.”

  “Are they still following us?”

  “No, it looks like they’ve stopped.”

  Singer took up his looking glass and watched them intently for signs of pursuit, but the ship didn’t move. After a few minutes passed, the winds picked up again and the Wraith accelerated quickly across the choppy water. Singer watched the Aztec ship until it finally disappeared over the horizon. He needn’t have bothered, for after the Wraith reached top speed in the open sea, the Aztecs would never catch them even with the aid of their bloody sorcery.

  When the sails were properly positioned, Singer took over at the helm and sent Song below deck to tell Rutger to stow the sweeps. She was gone for some time, leaving him to ponder their next move. He still had to find out how badly the British frigates had damaged the Wraith’s hull as well as take an inventory of everything they’d tossed overboard in their desperate escape. For the time being, however, he was too happy to be alive and free to worry about a few minor, if expensive, inconveniences.