The Maelstroms Eye (16 page)

Waves were visible on the lake, marching in perfect order. The wind howled in a fury all around the
Probe,
blasting down the ruined corridor from the ceiling and whipping Teldin’s face. He felt nothing but warmth. He was bringing the hammership down to safety. His friends would be fine. The marching waves were coming up now. Closer. Closer. Closer. He was at peace. A hundred feet.

Fifty. Now —

The
Probe
struck the lake’s surface with a thunderclap and skipped upward. Everyone on the decks screamed and clutched at railings and each other, momentarily weightless. Teldin barely heard them over the crash of the landing. The hammership dropped back and the thunderclap sounded again, nearly shattering the hull. The ship skipped up again, traveling at incredible speed. I need to slow it down, Teldin thought. We’re going too fast. The ship slowed at once, fell and struck the water with a terrible sound, and everything slammed forward toward the bow, including Teldin and the door frame on his legs. Teldin could not hear the screams over the explosion of water against the hull, the shaking and battering as the ship sliced through the waves. Then cold water poured down through the ceiling in a torrent. Teldin choked, and the dream ended, and he screamed and screamed as the water rose all around him until it covered his head.

*****

“It’s down!” boomed the security commander, watching from the shore. He swung his huge bulk to his left and pointed. “Squadron Twelve, fire your engines!”

Gnome pilots pulled down their goggles, flipped the starter switches on their machines, and grabbed for the leather-covered steering levers that stuck up in front of their belted seats. One by one, the giant steam-powered fans mounted in the back of each wide, flat boat thundered to life. The security commander quickly found his seat on his own boat, especially built to accommodate his immense size, and leaned toward the pilot. “Take us out!” he yelled.

The gnome pilot tugged on a cord, and an ear-splitting whistle sounded from the rear of the boat. The fan-powered vehicle lurched forward, then picked up speed as it crossed the lake’s surface. The security commander fidgeted, realizing that his seat was less solid than he had hoped. It might not even be bolted down; perhaps his own weight alone kept him in place. He’d have the maintenance teams out in droves on every ship after this run, he promised himself.

His gnome pilot was waving an arm over his head. The security commander looked up and saw that the hammership had slowed but was starting to list to starboard. It had been badly damaged in some space battle. It was a miracle that it was even here at all. The forward helm room appeared to have been holed, and the port hammerhead eye was gone, ripped completely off. Human men and women were leaping into the water now, clutching at boards and debris, waving their arms wildly for rescue.

The fan boat crossed the wake from the ship’s crash, slamming through the waves with several bone-jarring jolts. When the fan boat was close enough, the commander reached forward and poked the pilot hard in the back. The pilot immediately flipped the engine switch and cut the fan’s power. Now, the commander could hear the voices of the hammership’s crew crying out for help. He was close enough to read the ship’s nameplate, too – the
Probe.

Other fan boats behind the lead one were cutting their engines now. Gnomes were hurling every sort of buoyant object on their fan boats’ decks into the midst of the swimming humans. Some humans were badly wounded and were being pulled from the water, screaming in agony. As the lead fan boat rounded the port side of the hammership, the crashed ship settled down into the water. The commander noticed one more survivor clamber out of the huge hole in the upper hull where the hammership’s port “eye” had been, a man in soaking rags who could not use his legs. Exhausted, the man fell forward into the water – and disappeared.

“That way!” shouted the commander to his pilot. “Get that man!” The pilot snatched an oar and maneuvered the boat around until it was next to the man’s floating, face-down body. With one movement, the commander reached down and dragged the human on deck, almost losing his seating and falling overboard himself in the process.

The commander carefully rolled the man over to see if he still breathed. He did, coughing immediately on the water he’d inhaled. “Lucky devil!” said the commander, wreathed in smiles and gently shaking the survivor. “Another few seconds, and you’d … you’d …”

Still coughing, the man squinted up into the commander’s blue, wide-eyed, hippopotamus face, and the latter gasped.

“By the Great Captain’s blunderbuss!” bellowed First Colonel-Commander Herphan Gomja, Commander in Chief of Base Security, Port Walkaway, Ironpiece. “You’re Teldin Moore!”

Chapter Seven

“The helmsman on the
Unicorn’s Wing
has ceased to speak with us, my admiral,” said the battlewizard. Her hands dropped from the crystal globe in her lap. Her face was streaked with tears, but her voice was calm and even. “I fear the smoke and flames have overcome her.”

Admiral Cirathorn said nothing. He stared out the broad, high windows of the
Empress Dorianne’s
bridge at the yellow and red fires in the distance. He could see the
Unicorn’s Wing
ablaze now, about two miles distant and receding swiftly. It was moot whether anyone else had survived the close assault the humanoids had staged against the man-o-war. The gnomes had arrived just as the
Wing
was being boarded; its captain apparently had mistaken the gnomes for more humanoids and had ordered his gunners to fire on them as well. It proved to be a costly error. One of the gnomish vessels caught fire, but three others unleashed their weapons at the man-o-war and humanoid ships, damaging everything in view – including, if reports were to be believed, one of their own ships.

That had been only a small slice of the action. The battle, all told, had taken about four hours. The most severe fighting had come in the first hour, when the elves sighted and recognized the fleet before them as humanoid in nature, then crept in for the first strike. This was followed by cat-and-mouse games played out by vengeful, blood-hungry elven and humanoid captains. Cirathorn had secretly hoped that Teldin would require rescue, placing him and his cloak with the Imperial Fleet, but that had proved unnecessary. If there were any winners, it would be the gnomes, who had driven all others away from their world.

A distant star of yellow and white bloomed among the almost-invisible wrecks. A few moments later, the star grew in ragged brightness, then grew larger again. One of the humanoid ships had blown up. It must have been the ogre mammoth, the one to which the marines from the
Dorimae
had teleported. A good move, that, to decapitate the ship’s command and helm with one strike, just before decloaking and setting the mammoth ablaze. Orcs and ogres had crewed the mammoth’s bridge, fighting surprisingly well for otherwise slow-witted scum.

“What word do we have of the
Probe?”
Cirathorn asked, still peering out the windows.

The battlewizard answered promptly. “It has either landed or crashed on Ironpiece by now, my admiral. It appeared to have been damaged by the initial assault before it pulled away. It was traveling at five times the basic speed a spelljammer can attain when it left.”

Cirathorn hid his surprise. “Did you observe any activity aboard the
Probe
that would account for its speed?"

"No, my admiral. Its flight was completely unexpected.” The admiral stared out the windows in silence. The exploding vessel had come apart in a thousand pieces. The air envelope around the remainder of the hull was visible as an expanding gray smudge against the endless stars.

Teldin had used the cloak to help the
Probe
escape from the humanoids. Cirathorn knew this for a fact. Only the cloak might have the power to serve as its own helm, and so powerful a helm at that. Perhaps it had even overridden an active helm. It would hardly surprise the admiral now to hear it. The Cloak of the First Pilot was said to have been an artifact, after all.

What was there to do now? The humanoid fleet was massing again in a position trailing Ironpiece by about five to six million miles. Did the humanoids have reinforcements following them? Where had they come from originally? Was this the start of the long-rumored and long-feared second Unhuman War? Were the humanoids allied with the undead, given that a pyramid ship – long known to be an abode for mummies, liches, and other perversions-traveled in their fleet with them?

There were other awful possibilities. Did the humanoids have a base in this sphere? The battlewizards said the humanoids were largely made up of powerful-looking orcs who appeared to have been recently armed and supplied. Could theorcs have invaded and conquered a nearby elven world? They reportedly had an elven wizard on the ogre mammoth’s death helm, who had to be slain in his madness by the Dorianne’s marines. The death helm warped the mind and spirit of its doomed helmsman, causing him to fight all attempts at rescue while it drained its victim’s life force. The helm was a perversion that only humanoids would cherish; its possession by any being in civilized space was normally punishable by death.

There were many small colony worlds here, not a few of them elven, and most were widely scattered or socially isolated. Some elven worlds had been settled by renegades, officers cashiered from the Imperial Fleet for disobeying orders or causing trouble, and these worlds did not welcome any contact with the Imperial Fleet as yet. Had pride led a small elven world like Numeliador, Spiral, or Minial’s Arch to turn down a chance to call for help to the fleet’s forces at the Rock of Bral?

If the answer to the last question had been yes, then it had been a foolish, if not suicidal, error. Four elven man-o-wars and an armada had invisibly trailed the Rock of Bral for the last two years, their presence permitted by the Rock’s bribe-hungry Prince Andru. One man-o-war was an odds-on favorite in most ship-to-ship battles; four could strike genuine terror into the commander of a small space fleet. An armada was avoided by all but the most desperate of warriors. The force could have turned the tide of an invasion and spared another world the fate of lost Aerlofalyn. That an elven world would be conquered in Cirathorn’s own assigned sphere without his knowing of it – the thought was devastating.

The elves had taken no prisoners in this fight, there being so little time and coordination of efforts among the elven ship captains, but the orcs and their allies could have taken several prisoners during their boarding and firing of the
Unicorn’s Wing.
Intelligence on the humanoids was thus minimal, though the battlewizards were working on the problem. Further reconnaissance of the sphere would have to be undertaken, meaning the fleet’s presence here would have to be reinforced. Any delay could spell doom for the other colonies. Cirathorn was an elf, and he knew well how the Imperial Fleet worked. If this sphere had any salvation, he alone was that salvation for the foreseeable future.

He had only three man-o-wars left now, two of them – the
Free Wind’s Fury
and the
Leaping Hart
 – with minor damage, and they had the apparent hatred of the gnomes of Ironpiece. As inconsequential as they were in the grand scheme of things, the gnomes certainly had their usefulness. It was a poor start. Nonetheless, the elves had an armada, nearly undamaged. They had cloaking helms. They had magical weapons and superlative wizardry, though the pyramid’s master might prove itself an equal if it were an undead monstrosity. The elves had punished the orcs badly in the first round, killing their capital ship.

The elves also had the report of the helmsman and wizard Vallus Leafbower, made to the Imperial Fleet at Evermeet, on Toril. That report on Teldin Moore and his cloak was worth at least as much as any other advantage.

“Mirandel,” said the admiral, turning and walking from the windows to the battlewizard’s chair. The battlewizard’s eyes were drying, her mourning for her sister’s death at the
Unicorn’s Wing’s
helm set aside for now. The admiral reached for the heavy crystal ball in her hands, and she carefully gave it to him. He raised the globe and studied its depths. He had used one of these once.

“I cannot use the crystal again this day, my admiral,” the battlewizard said. Her green eyes were framed by her long white hair. “Contact with the other ships during the battle has exhausted my talent for now.”

“I did not mean for you to use it,” said the admiral, walking away with the ball. “I mean to use it instead.” He picked up a stool, then returned and placed it a few feet from the battle-wizard, sitting so as to face her. He looked into the crystal ball with a thoughtful gaze.

“I am about to reveal some things to you that have been kept secret by the Imperial Fleet for some weeks now,” the admiral began. He looked up from the globe and at his battle-wizard, who sat in expectant silence. “You are aware that I have developed an interest in a human named Teldin Moore, who arrived on the Rock a few days ago on the hammership we were trailing. You were present when I spoke of the history of his cloak and gave him directions to Ironpiece and places beyond to aid his search for the
Spelljammer.
I believe our battle has proven that there are others who are also interested in the cloak of Teldin Moore, and those forces are as dangerous as any we could hope to meet.”

“My admiral,” interrupted Mirandel. “Is it not possible that the humanoids were already on their way to attack Iron-piece, and we were merely in their way?”

“No. The humanoid fleet has neither transports nor landing craft for armies. There are few worlds known to be inhabited by orcs or other lower humanoids in this sphere, and none of them have achieved spelljamming ability. The humanoid fleet originated from outside this sphere, but it is probably supplied from a base within. Its presence on an intercept course with the hammership
Probe
could not have been coincidence.” Cirathorn smiled, “I cannot believe that more than two dozen humanoid ships would waylay a hammership out of a sense of common piracy. I cannot prove it, but I believe they were after Teldin’s cloak, too.”