Put that way, it did seem rather extraordinary, but to my mind I had done nothing but that which was required to survive. And I pointed out that the captaincy of the Dark Lady was completely fortuitous.
"When we were starting out, you told me there was a saying in your time: 'Fortune favors the bold.' So be bold. I don't know about the rest of Tehana City, but I'm tired of living in a damn cave. Thora's tired of living in a cave. The Nuum have had us down so long they think we're a joke. The conservationists, my people, the breen, we're not laughing. We're mad. All we need is a leader."
"My god," I whispered, my eyes opening wide. "You're right! You are mad."
It was tragic to watch his untempered enthusiasm die its swift and undeserved death. He stood slowly.
"I'll take your orders to the pilot."
Maire had taken to heart my orders to bring her men into line with the more numerous rowers. Timash told me later that she and Skull had put their heads together earlier that morning, each coming away from the meeting with a grudging respect for the other's abilities. I don't know who impressed me more. The crews, however, were working together and that was what counted. Timash himself had taken on the cleaning up each former rower and outfitting him with a new outfit from the former crew’s stores so that at first glance, it was difficult to tell who only yesterday had been the masters and who the slaves.
I don't doubt that there were problems. These men had much to work out, and even the combined personalities of my officers—which were formidable singularly, and positively overwhelming together—could never smooth over all the old animosities. But not a rumor of discord ever reached my ears, and if my eyes spied an occasional facial bruise and a corresponding bandaged knuckle, I could turn away and play ignorant so long as no one disappeared. In that requirement, life had not changed.
Maire consented to turn over to me all of the ship's records, save for her own personal logs, which she assured me had no bearing on my official duties, and I accepted her word with the air of a gentleman. She steadfastly refused to give me access to the Nuum datasphere. I turned instead to the Library without realizing how much my mere request had given away.
What I found in the ship's logs shocked me.
"These men aren't criminals, they're revolutionaries!"
The Librarian pretended to read over my shoulder. I suppose it was to make me more comfortable than knowing that he had scanned all the records beforehand.
"To the Nuum, they are one and the same."
"But these charges—!" I protested. "Their trials were kangaroo courts."
"Without recognizing your reference, I can presume your meaning from context. The Nuum are not interested in justice, but in preserving their way of life. These sky barges are designed specifically to destroy any cohesive spirit by denying the prisoners sufficient resources for all, thus pitting them against one another. It also disperses them across the empire."
I thought back to my own first days on board ship. "The system works."
"The Nuum thought it instructive that the populace understand the risks they took in revolt," the Librarian said. "My files include graphic representations of shipboard life. If they are accurate, Captain Por Foret was a very merciful jailor."
Timash's words haunted me like the ghost of Hamlet's father calling him to his task. I grinned self-consciously at the irony of drawing such a simile while sailing on a ship called the Dark Lady. When my professors had proclaimed the Bard immortal, they had had no idea…
"There is a great deal more to the captain than we thought," I mused.
"As she is beginning to realize about you, as well."
"What do you mean?"
"Come, come, sir," he said in his best imitation of an Oxford don. "You asked her how to access the datasphere."
"Yes?"
He sighed. "The Nuum datasphere." I looked blankly over my shoulder at him and he returned the favor until at last his eyes widened. "Sir, where you come from—they did not have a worldwide data system, did they?"
"Where I come from, they barely had airplanes. We had never heard of computers."
The Librarian walked around to the other side of the table so that I could untwist my neck.
"I begin to see. The Nuum datasphere is a universal system, open to everyone—everyone who is a Nuum, anyway. When you asked Lady Por Foret how to access it, she knew immediately that you were not a Nuum."
I closed my eyes and cursed softly. "Would you know if she had accessed the datasphere herself?"
"No, sir. I am not connected at all. If she carries an implanted datalink, she could download any information or contact any other person in the sphere without anyone else knowing."
"Which means she could call for help at any time."
There was an annunciator in the room; Maire had told me that much, and how to activate it without broadcasting every conversation the length of the ship. It came on now.
"Captain, this is Skull. Another ship has appeared on the northern horizon. It appears to be headed straight for us."
I now understood some of the vast potential of the datasphere. But I feared my comprehension came too late.
42. Sky Raiders
"Is there any way to identify it?" I whispered. Next to me stood Maire, both of us gazing into the cubicle where pilot sat enveloped in a three-dimensional rendering of the sky and earth, down to the wispiest clouds and every migratory bird for leagues. No one but the pilot on duty was allowed in the cube; not even the captain. His view, I was told, must be unencumbered, for without sufficient warning, one of the larger Nuum airships like the one that had shanghaied me to the research station might blow by us and toss us in her wake like a leaf in a storm.
"And if that happened," Maire had assured me somberly, "our pitiful little force fields wouldn't keep half the crew from being thrown overboard—not to mention the disruption to the anti-grav generators, the photon sails, the oars…" Mercifully, she had stopped and let my imagination fill in the rest. Or was it mercy? Was she perhaps pointing out to me in her own needling way that I was the interloper on the ship she was literally born to command?
In answer to my question now, she pushed past me to a small console next to the door. A line of symbols and numbers ran across the scanner. I could read she was the Eyrie, out of Dure.
Maire stared at the screen and bit her lip. Even without reading her mind I could read her mood.
"What's wrong?" I asked with false lightness. "Not the rescue you were hoping for?"
"Hardly," she muttered, then my remark registered with her and she shot me a look of surprise and anger. "What's that—oh, never mind." Once again her attention was on the monitor. She sighed. "They shouldn't be here."
"Who are they?"
"The ship is from Farren House. It's the major house of Dure, the capital of Dure, where my family lives. But we're way out beyond any of the normal trade lanes for any of the southern families. That's why I came here, to get away. Farren House and my family have been friends for years, but there's no reason for them to be here."
"I can think of one," I said.
She turned on me, her brow furrowed with surprise. "What?"
I hesitated; there was more to my interest in Farren than what I was about to tell her, and I still couldn't trust my life and all my men to her uncertain loyalties. But the in viewscreen the other ship was looming larger and I had no time to debate the issue with myself.
Quickly I sketched in the conversation I had overheard in the gravity generator room. Maire stiffened when I told her that the mutineers had mentioned Farren's name. I said nothing of my own interest in the man; for all I knew, we could be talking about two distinct individuals—although I doubted it.
"How do I know you're telling the truth? How do I know this conversation ever happened?"
"Remember Porky—the crewman who disappeared?" She frowned, and nodded uncertainly. He was not the most likely member of the crew ever to have crossed her path. "After the others had left, he fou
nd me." With a little jerk of my head, I intimated the direction of Porky's last voyage.
Maire's gaze slipped back to the viewscreen. My thoughts were racing: Friend or foe? Was the Eyrie just stopping by for a visit with a friend serendipitously found along a remote pathway? Or had it been sent to make sure that Garm and Durrn had done their job? If the former, any face but Maire's could raise an alarm; if the latter, that same face would put the enemy on notice and leave us sitting ducks. How could we know?
Then I considered what I knew of Farren, and the men aboard his ship, and of my own Hana Wen, and I read therein the answers to all my questions.
Without a word to Maire, I whipped out of the pilot's cubicle, gained the deck, and collared Skull and Timash for swift orders.
"Timash, take Maire and her crew belowdecks. Lock them in a cabin. Then report back to me."
"Huh? But what if she won't go?"
I did not have time for this. "Do it! You're a gorilla…" To his credit he stopped arguing and started moving. "Skull—can they see what's going on on our deck?"
"Uh-uh. The force fields give us some privacy."
"Good. Arm the men and have them line the port side, but stay out of sight. And tell the pilot to bring us alongside." I paused long enough for him to send a man down with the orders. "Then have a force field tech standing by to bring down the fields on my order."
Skull stared in frank astonishment. "What are you going to do?"
I clapped him on the shoulder. "We're going to board her, Mister Skull! And we're going to set her rowers free." I left him standing flatfooted while I ran for my cabin.
"Ahoy there!" In all the millennia, my world's ancient sea greeting was sure to have changed, but in this era of telepathic communication, it was the meaning, and not the words, that carried weight. The crew of the Eyrie took my meaning well enough, if the manner of its delivery was unorthodox.
I stood in the Dark Lady's rigging, clinging to the mast with one hand while the other, hidden behind me, held not only Maire's pistol, but the rope I had hastily affixed to a cross-bar. I prayed my knot-tying abilities lived up to my expectations, for my entire plan (as well as my life) would soon hang by this thread. Across a few yards of empty air floated an air barge nearly the twin of our own, a product of the same nostalgia for this world's wild past that had inspired the lines of the Dark Lady. Their buccaneer days had featured flying boats, not floating, but nonetheless history had proven once more endlessly repetitive.
Twenty feet below me my crew crouched out of sight. The order to arm had been sudden and confusing, but welcome at the same time, and they had responded with more alacrity than I had hoped. I knew Timash's dark bulk would stand out among them, but I could not spare a look. Now that we were close enough for unaided eyes to see across the narrowing gulf of nothingness, I could not risk betraying everything with an unguarded glance.
And all eyes on the Eyrie were upon me. Its crew stood in curious clusters on the deck, staring upward. Both their mechanical and telepathic hails had gone unanswered by my order. Whether they expected a shipload of mutineers or a friendly face, they were not expecting a ghost ship, and this was what I was giving them. For now, the element of surprise favored the Dark Lady.
"We've had some trouble!" I called. It did not hurt that I was able to imbue my act with the unmistakable ring of truth. "Our communications are out. We have wounded who need a doctor!" I bit my lip. I had said "wounded" instead of "injured."
"I'm Captain Stoshi!" a man on the other ship's rear deck shouted. "Where is Lady Por Foret?"
"She's been hurt!" I called back, watching the gap between us. It was almost closed, but I needed more time. "Come alongside and lower your fields!" That was the telling point: With Maire's life reported to be in danger, no captain on a legitimate mission would hesitate for a moment to come to her aid.
Captain Stoshi did exactly what I thought he would do, and in all honesty, exactly what I had hoped he would.
"Stand by!" he called back, and headed for the stairs. That was a plain enough sign for me. I waited until he had turned his back.
"Now!" I shouted to Skull, and moments later the air shimmered as our force fields came down. I whipped out the pistol and fired.
The results justified every warning Maire had ever given about the danger of firearms on board ship. Violent red and blue lightnings danced around the periphery of the Eyrie almost too fast for the eye to follow, and more than one Nuum crew member who had been leaning against the shielding was blown back across the deck, blackened and twisted and dead. With a crack! the entire system shorted and the Eyrie stood naked to the elements.
I jumped.
There had been no time to measure the rope I used to swing across to the Eyrie, nor had I any way of knowing just how far I would have to swing. My arms threatened to explode out of their sockets as my full weight jerked the rope tight and I sailed with far more speed than I expected straight onto the deck on the other ship.
At the very last second I let go and slammed into a fortuitous knot of crewmen. All of us crashed to the deck, but at least I knew what was coming. I stumbled to my feet, shot a man, and got my back to a wall. If I could rouse the slaves, they could keep the crew busy at least long enough for my men to follow me.
"Rise, rowers! Fight!"
But they did not. They could not. The Librarian had not lied about their treatment. Filthy, emaciated husks barely looked up as the entire ship's complement charged me.
The pistol hardly gave them pause. I fired once more before it was wrested from me. The very suddenness of my assault had robbed them of the luxury of thinking of their own lives; they had become a mob, a mob intent on the blood of the man who had already tasted their own. I went down under their fists.
And then the Dark Lady's crew surged over the unprotected bulwarks and the battle was joined.
They took the Nuum from behind, and they were angry, but the Nuum were bigger and not sapped by months of deprivation. And they were all armed, where my men had taken what they could from the Lady's armory. Those with weapons lead the way, and those without massed behind. My pistol was gone. I used my sword to good effect, but not every foe had abandoned me and not all the blood that soon stained my costume was from another's wounds.
We'd had no time to plan our battle, and our only previous experience as a fighting unit had come by surprise, in the dark, against the outnumbered mutineers. Here again the Nuum were outmanned, but we could only bring against them as many men as could cross between the ships, and with the lack of any margin of error no man was eager to make that short journey if he could not be certain of his footing.
The ship was shifting underfoot as the pilot tried to break away from us. How our pilot was keeping close I had no idea, unless Skull had managed to rig boarding cables to tie us together. The absence of force shields added to the danger, but it was necessary if we wanted to board at all.
I was close-pressed by two of the Eyrie's crew. They were mean swordsmen, but not seasoned soldiers; had one dropped back while the other engaged me, he could have changed his sword to a staff and between them they would have had me dying on the deck or forced over the side in moments. Still, they had me trapped. Whether Skull or Timash had made the leap to this ship I did not know, but without one of us to lead it our attack would surely fail.
And then that which I most feared happened: With a flickering crackle and the scent of ozone, the Eyrie's force fields came back on.
A shout went up from the defenders. While our mates watched helplessly, the liberated Eyrie dropped like a rock, putting the Lady's own bulk between us and negating any attempt to repeat my short-circuiting of the shields. Its inertial controls kept us all on our feet, but the momentum shifted nonetheless.
With a sudden burst of energy I spitted one of my foes and kicked the other away at the cost of a sliced thigh. Scampering up a ladder at my back, I stood on the upper deck and shouted encouragement to my men.
It worked—so well t
hat Captain Stoshi saw me and began shouting orders of his own. I couldn't hear them and I didn't need to. Half a dozen sailors broke from the combat below me and charged the ladder. I met them at the top.
Two of them went down before more reached me by climbing the ladder on the opposite side of the ship. So many men pressed me that they could not all reach in at the same time. Now the force field that had cut off all aid saved me, for it gave me a place to put my back, at the very aft point of the ship where two planes of force came together. One man fell on my sword; I pulled it out and used his body as a gruesome barricade. My world was a forest of thrusting points quickly turning my shield into a blood-soaked pincushion as none of the frenzied mob could find enough room to push his sword all the way through. My arm ached from my swing and the constant swordplay. The smell of the blood and the sweat in my eyes blinded my senses and I fought on solely because I had forgotten that anything else existed in the world.
I grunted in pain as one of my foes pushed past my guard and pinked my shoulder. My arm went numb and my point faltered. I was past conscious thought and my reflexes were too blunted to parry the next sword to seek my heart.
43. I Renew a Friendship
A scream galvanized my last remaining spark of survival instinct to life. At first I thought the scream my own, that I had blacked out for an instant that would cost me everything, but when the foes about me suddenly scattered like tenpins from a whirling dervish, I realized it was the scream of a predatory bird unleashed on a flock of its prey.
Maire's staff flashed up and down, in and out with a speed and celerity that my weary muscles had lost. She capitalized on the element of surprise; all of her opponents were fighting with shorter weapons than she and none had seen her coming. Each seemingly slight blow flung a man aside or doubled him in pain. And then they were gone and we were for the moment alone.
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