Into The Void

by Nigel Findley

  “Three wasps are serious trouble,” Horvath said as if in answer to Teldin’s thoughts. “They’ve got the maneuverability, and the Unquenchable isn’t in any shape for a fight, not now.”

  “But it’s sailing right to them!” Teldin yelled.

  “Sure she is.” It was Dana who snapped back the answer. “In a stern chase, at that range, we’d lose. They’d rake us, and we couldn’t return fire until they chose to approach.”

  “Maybe they haven’t the stomach for a foe that wants to close,” Miggins added.

  “What do we do?” asked Teldin.

  “Nothing,” Horvath told him. “They can’t retrieve a boat in a battle. We stay back.” The gnome grinned, but to Teldin it looked forced. “It won’t be long. We’ve got enough air to hold out until this is over. Even now, the Unquenchable can give a good accounting of herself. Right?”

  “Right,” Miggins answered heartily, a little too heartily, Teldin thought.

  “I wish I were aboard,” Dana mumbled.

  Teldin had never seen a space battle from this perspective, and being in one wasn’t the same thing at all. At first it seemed like a stately dance. From his vantage, the four ships seemed to be moving virtually at a crawl, maneuvering to get the advantage on their foe. The approaching wasps initially held to their line-abreast formation while the Unquenchable brought its bow to bear on the center pirate vessel. The dreadnought’s stern was now pointing directly at the longboat. The line of wasps began to lengthen noticeably as the ships loosened up their formation.

  It looked like the illustrations of naval skirmishes that Teldin had seen in his grandfather’s books, but then everything changed and he realized for the first time exactly how complex a space battle could be. Suddenly, the two flanking wasps tipped their noses down and dived sharply. The line became a triangle, and suddenly another dimension had been added to the tactical picture.

  “Classic tactics,” Horvath muttered.

  “What?”

  Horvath shot an exasperated look at Teldin … then relented. “You can’t know,” he said tiredly. “Look you. It’s the classic move for three ships engaging one. Form a triangle. If the enemy commits to attacking one ship, the other two maneuver to parallel the enemy, or ‘cross its T’ and rake it from astern. Whichever ship the Unquenchable goes after, the others have clean shots at her. And if the attackers have superior maneuverability and speed – which they do – all the Unquenchable can do is go after one ship. Unless …”

  “Unless?”

  The gnome grinned wolfishly. “Unless Wysdor remembers those dusty books we read a century or so back.”

  “But what can they do, anyway? They don’t have any weapons left,” Teldin exclaimed.

  “They didn’t” Horvath corrected him. “But we do have some members of the Weapons Guild aboard, and I doubt that even my brother could keep them from making some modifications over the last few hours. Now watch.”

  The dreadnought held its course, as though to drive straight through the center of the expanding triangle of wasp ships. Then the gnomish vessel’s complex rigging shifted, and the bow started to come up until the stubby bowsprit was pointing directly at the wasp forming the triangle’s apex. Teldin could almost feel the strain in the massive ship as it settled on its new course.

  “I thought you said they shouldn’t commit to one ship,” Teldin said accusingly.

  “Just watch,” Horvath told him, “and learn something.”

  The dreadnought kept its bow pointing directly at the apex wasp. For the first time, Teldin started to sense the immense speed of closure as the ships hurtled head-on at each other. He reached back and took the glass from where it lay, forgotten, on Miggins’s lap, and focused it on the pirate vessel.

  The angular ship seemed to jump closer as Teldin focused through the clumsy device. It really did look like a wasp. The body was wide where the two sets of wings were mounted, but then tapered to a sharp point at the tail. The head – maybe the bridge, or maybe a fire platform – was cantilevered forward and down, giving the whole vessel a slightly hunchbacked, and decidedly evil, appearance. Six legs sprouted from the lower hull near the wing roots – probably landing gear of some kind, or maybe part of the ship’s rigging, Teldin presumed. The whole ship, apart from its pale and slightly iridescent wings, was painted night black, making it difficult to focus on against the backdrop of space.

  As he watched, two of the four wings shifted their angle and the vessel began to maneuver. Teldin tracked the glass over to the dreadnought, but the two vessels were too far apart to fit in the device’s narrow field of view. He lowered the tube from his eye, understanding why Miggins had given up on the device: the naked eye was the only way to get a sense of the overall battle.

  “The wasp’s changing course,” Miggins shouted.

  “Aye,” Horvath growled. “Getting edgy, as well it might.” Teldin nodded. It must be more than slightly unnerving to have the huge bulk of a gnomish dreadnought bearing down on you.

  The wasp changed course again – slight corrections only, but obviously to get it out of the Unquenchable’s path. Captain Wysdor was shifting his course, too, keeping his bow pointed directly at his foe. Collision course was maintained. A projectile hurtled from the small ballista in the bow of the wasp, to slam and shatter harmlessly against a metal hull plate.

  With an effort, Teldin tore his gaze away from the apparently imminent collision. The other two wasps were changing course, too, just as Horvath had predicted. Their bows were coming up and turning inward, as they maneuvered to close with the dreadnought. Finally Teldin saw the wisdom of the pirates’ tactics: even if the Unquenchable destroyed its single target, the other two ships would be maneuvering into position below and behind it, masked by the dreadnought’s own hull from any weapons it might be carrying. Presumably the gnomish ship could roll, but by then the wasps could already have landed several damaging shots. And, according to Horvath, the dreadnought was in no condition to sustain prolonged fire from two fully armed wasps.

  “Look!” Miggins yelled.

  The closing ships were almost on top of each other. Again the wasp fired a ballista bolt – a dean miss this time. The gunner must have been distracted, Teldin mused, grinning wryly. Wonder why. The pirate captain tried a last-ditch move – a hard turn to port – but the Unquenchable matched the maneuver perfectly. There was no chance that the wasp could avoid a collision ….

  Then the dreadnought’s bow dropped into a steep dive beneath the still-climbing wasp. The gnomish ship’s heavy mast smashed into the pirate ship’s underside, tearing away two of its legs. At the same instant, a barrage leaped upward from the sterncastle, but a barrage such as Teldin had never seen before. Catapult stones and ballista bolts were one thing, but this fusillade seemed to consist of virtually anything that wasn’t bolted down: a table and several stools, replacement lengths of spar, lanterns and flasks of oil, boxes and crates of supplies, even a barrel of ale. Teldin couldn’t even begin to imagine what contraption the Weapons Guildsmen had fabricated to loft all those projectiles.

  Whatever it was, it was certainly effective. The volley rocketed straight into the underside of the wasp. High-velocity foodstuffs tore through fragile wings; furniture smashed into the wooden hull. Something struck the root of the port wings and burst into flame.

  The gnomes in the longboat roared their approval. “Good shooting!” bellowed Horvath in a voice three times his size. “And they’re away. Look.”

  Sure enough, the dreadnought was accelerating again along its new course – down and away from the scene of battle. The two wasps that had been climbing to engage the gnomes were now well behind their target and heading the wrong way. They immediately began to come about, but even to Teldin’s untrained eye it was obvious they’d be at a grave disadvantage by the time they completed their turn. It would be a stern chase, but this time the range would be much greater. He added his voice to the cheers of the gnomes ….

  Then he stopped
as a thought struck him. “What about us?” he asked.

  “Aye,” Horvath replied in the sudden silence. “That is a question. Oars, I think we —”

  “Wasp ho!” Miggins’s cry cut him off.

  In the excitement of the Unquenchable’s escape, they’d forgotten the third wasp. Seriously damaged – virtually crippled – with sullen red fire licking from a hole in the hull, the vessel was still under power. Its last maneuver to avoid the collision had changed its heading. Maybe a sharp reversal of course was beyond the capabilities of the damaged ship, or maybe its captain and crew had decided they’d had their fill of battle. Whatever the reason, the wasp wasn’t even trying to take up the pursuit of the dreadnought. Instead it moved slowly toward the longboat. Teldin could see movement on the wasp’s foredeck.

  “Oars,” Horvath snapped, “take us about and down.” Dana responded instantly, but Miggins sat transfixed. “Oars!” Horvath roared.

  Miggins jumped guiltily and grabbed his oar, mirroring the angle at which Dana held hers. The longboat turned sharply, and the nose dropped. Teldin clutched at the thwart, expecting some kind of falling sensation. There wasn’t one. To his sense of balance, the longboat seemed as steady as ever. It was everything else – the stars, the distant dreadnought, and the closing wasp – that seemed to wheel around him as though he were the center of the universe. Intuitively, it seemed, he grasped what that meant.

  Or was it intuitively? Teldin had come to suspect that the cloak he wore was somehow supplying him with information. Was this another example of the process?

  No matter what the source of the revelation, it made sense. Apparently, every spelljamming vessel, no matter how small, had its own field of gravity. “Up” and “down” had no significance, except when related to the vessel itself. As he’d seen when the longboat was lowered from the dreadnought, “down” didn’t extend forever, or the boat would have plummeted to the surface of Krynn, hundreds of leagues below. There had to be some kind of “gravity plane” near what would be the waterline on an ocean-going vessel. It seemed logical that “down” might be the direction toward that gravity plane. But didn’t that mean you should be able to walk on the underside of the Unquenchable’s hull?

  “Give us a quarter roll to port,” Horvath ordered, breaking into Teldin’s deliberations. The oarsmen obeyed instantly. Once again the universe moved about Teldin, and the wasp disappeared below the longboat’s hull. “Shielding us from bow shots,” Horvath explained grimly. “We can’t do much about anything heavier but get out of here, fast. Saliman, if you please?” The gnomish priest furrowed his brow in concentration but gave no other sign of having heard.

  With a splintering crash, the boat jolted as if struck by a titan’s fist. Teldin sprawled in the scuppers, striking his head solidly against a thwart as he did so. His stomach was wrenched with nausea and he struggled to keep from vomiting. With a supreme effort he fought back the black veil that seemed to dim his vision.

  The gnomes had fared better than he had, he saw … except for Saliman. The impact had tumbled the priest from his throne, and now he lay huddled in the scuppers, bleeding from a nasty gash on his brow. Horvath crouched beside him, his ear by the older gnome’s mouth to listen for breathing. Teldin looked over the gunwale. The ship was surrounded by flotsam: splinters of wood, and a ballista bolt as large as a giant’s spear shaft.

  After a moment Horvath looked up from Saliman. “He’s alive, but not for long if we hang about here.” He reached beneath the carved throne and pulled out a leather case about two feet long and half that wide. “Teldin, can you see?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then take this.” The gnome threw the case forward to Teldin. “When you see somebody at the ballista, take’em down, all right?”

  Teldin opened the case. Inside was a light crossbow, its walnut stock lovingly polished and its metal limbs buffed, A smaller compartment held a dozen thick quarrels. He looked back at Horvath. “But I can’t …”

  The gnome sighed. “Look you,” he said quietly. “You’ve got to. I need these two at the oars, and I’ve got to take the helm. Do you understand? Anyway —” he grinned again, but the expression looked forced, a grim mockery of the gnome’s usual good-humor “— you’re the neogi-killer, isn’t that right? Why not add a couple of pirates to your bag?” Horvath settled himself in the throne and placed his palms on the wide arms. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. “All right,” he said, deadly calm, now, “here we go. I wish I’d taken my mother’s advice and stayed in the priesthood.”

  The longboat surged once, then settled down to steady movement again. “Oars,” Horvath ordered quietly, “hard a’port … now!”

  Teldin jumped at the intensity in that last word. The gnomes on the oars responded as strongly, but more purposefully. The bow of the longboat came around fast, almost fast enough to unseat Teldin from his thwart. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw something flash silently by to the right of the tiny vessel, and he turned quickly to follow its flight.

  It was another ballista bolt, visible for only an instant before it vanished into the depths of space. Without Horvath’s sudden maneuver, the bolt probably would have hit its target. How did the gnome know, Teldin asked himself, with the wasp masked by the hull … and with his eyes closed?

  Horvath’s quiet words cut through his thoughts. “That’s why you’ve got to do it, why you’ve got to take out their gunner,” the gnome said. “I can’t dodge them forever. Just tell me when you’re ready.”

  Teldin tried to swallow the sharp taste that was in his mouth and picked up the crossbow … tentatively, as though it might do him some damage. He turned it over in his hands. In the war he’d seen crossbows and crossbowmen – albeit at distance – and knew how lethally accurate the weapons could be in the right hands.

  Personally, he knew precious little about using a crossbow. He’d never fired one, never cocked one, never even touched one. He pulled the woven wire bowstring back a couple of finger-breadths – much harder to do than he’d expected – and released it. The metal limbs of the bow sang. Taking a tighter grip on the bowstring, he began to draw it back. The bow’s limbs bent, but not enough. The tendons in his forearm burned with the strain and the bowstring cut cruelly into the flesh of his fingers. With a muttered curse, he braced the weapon’s butt against his belly and pulled on the bowstring with both hands. The bow bent farther, but still the string was almost a hand’s span short of the metal tang that would hold it at full draw. The bowstring slipped from his sweaty fingers, and the bow limbs straightened with a dull thwung. Disgusted with himself – and not a little humiliated – he flexed his aching fingers. Setting the weapon down across his lap, he turned back to face the gnomes.

  As he’d expected, Dana was glowering at him. Her expression communicated sheer contempt. A fire of anger flared within him. “All right,” he growled, holding the weapon out toward her. “How?”

  It was Miggins who answered. “It’s a gnomish design, a very cunning one. The lever is on the bottom, under the stock. Move it forward to cock the bow.”

  Teldin turned the weapon over. A metal lever as long as his forearm ran along the underside of the crossbow. Its pivot point was within the wooden stock, directly under where the bowstring rested when the bow wasn’t cocked. The other end of the lever was underneath the butt of the weapon. A recess in the wood gave enough space – just! – for Teldin’s fingers to wrap around the lever.

  “Put the nose of the weapon on the ground,” the young gnome continued. “Grab the butt with one hand, the lever with the other, and pull.”

  Teldin did as he was instructed. As he moved the lever, he saw a hooked metal finger rise out of a groove in the wood, directly beneath the bowstring. Presumably, the finger was the other end of the lever. The hook caught the bowstring and started to draw it back. It was still an effort, but now Teldin had leverage – and the fact that he could use both his arms and the strong muscles of his back – to help him. With a metal
lic snick, the bowstring caught on the tang and held fast. Teldin returned the lever to its original position and hefted the cocked weapon.

  “Now the quarrel.” It was Miggins again. Apparently Dana didn’t even consider him worth talking to.

  “I know that much,” he said dryly.

  The quarrel was short and brutal, with only the smallest amount of fletching, but with a wickedly sharp head like crossed razors. He seated the missile in the groove ahead of the bowstring. “Now?”

  “Left hand under the stock, right hand down by the trigger,” Miggins directed. “Now put it against your shoulder.”

  “Which shoulder?”

  The young gnome’s control started to slip. “Whichever feels most natural, for the gods’ sake,” he snapped. “Just do it.”

  “Ready?” That was Horvath.

  Teldin shrank the cloak so it was little more than a band of fabric around the back of his neck, then he took a deep breath, held it for half a dozen heartbeats, and let it out in a hissing sigh. “Relaxation ritual,” he heard his grandfather’s voice savin his mind. “Practice so you can do it anywhere, anytime.” He wondered what his grandfather would think if he knew his teachings were being taken out of this world? “Ready,” he answered Horvath flatly.

  Horvath nodded, his eyes still closed. “Oars, quarter roll to starboard.”

  Miggins and Dana shifted their oars, as Teldin twisted on the thwart to face astern. The smooth wood of the crossbow was cool in his hands, its weight somehow reassuring. Once more the universe did its disconcerting pirouette around the longboat, and the wasp ship rose above the gunwale like an evil, angular moon. The pirate ship was close now, no more than a good dagger cast from the longboat, virtually point-blank range for the ballista mounted in the pirate vessel’s bow.

  Somebody was readying that weapon now, cranking fast on a windlass, winching back the thick bowstring. The wasp was close enough for Teldin to make out the pirate’s loose-fitting white shirt, even the red bandanna holding his hair clear of his face. Teldin lifted the crossbow and jammed the curved butt into his left shoulder. He was almost certain this was wrong – he was “crossing his weapon” or something – but that was what seemed most natural.