“Ship is coming alongside. Several of her exterior hatches are open. Merinda, we have an access open request at the exterior main airlock. Access denied. Override request denied.”
“Don’t let them in, Lindia,” Merinda growled as she stepped off the lift and opened the hatch to the main equipment bay.
“Subroutine access denied. System access denied. Tracer access denied. Communication access denied,” Lindia chanted a litany of sins attempted against her.
Merinda looked out into the crowded equipment bay. There were few clear fields of fire but she knew that she could use that to her advantage. If Flynn and Griffiths could protect access to the bridge, then she would have a chance to go out and do some hunting. The thought pleased her.
“Flynn?”
“No, Merinda, it’s me,” Griffiths said somewhat sullenly.
“Get down behind that spiritual attractor there.” She pointed at the massive black piece of glass. “You’ll be able to cover the opening from there. If things get too hot, duck back into the hatch and lay down fire from there, got it?”
“Yes.”
“Where’s Flynn?”
“Back here, Merinda,” Flynn called. “I’m just trying to lock down this iris hatch to the lower level. Give me a minute.”
The equipment bay rocked suddenly. The rumble of a distant explosion echoed through the huge bay.
“Aft main access hatch to airlock one has been compromised. Emergency atmospheric envelope in place. Security has been compromised. Intruder alarm. Intruder alarm.”
Merinda could see several of the figures moving across the deck through infrequent gaps in the equipment. She raised her weapon.
Suddenly, a hail of green flaming bolts cut just over her head from behind her. She turned quickly toward the unexpected attack.
A plasma-bolt assault rifle was leveled at her with unquestioning menace.
“Sorry, Merinda,” said the voice behind the rifle, “but it really is for the best. Surrender your ship and your cargo—right now—and do as I say, or it will go very badly for you.”
It was Evon Flynn.
GAMMA:
INHUMAN
CREED
27
Smoke of Battle
Griffiths pressed his face flat against the cold metallic plating of the deck. There was a time for heroics and desperate deeds but this was not one of them, he quickly realized. Flynn had them covered. He might spare Merinda but so far as he was concerned, Griffiths knew that Flynn would just as soon vaporize, atomize, disintegrate, burn, explode, or visit whatever other unspeakable destruction his weapon could do to him without a second thought.
One thought continued to roll through his head—that they had been taken by pirates. Indeed, he realized he could both hear and feel their rapid approach through the vibrating floor plates. He wondered if Flynn had been at least truthful about the intentions of the pirates. Was looting their only real objective? Would he and Merinda be released after the ship had been stripped?
In a moment the pirates were about him. His face remained pressed to the floor. The voices rang out over him, sinister in his own mind.
“Ahoy, Cap’n Flynn!” A deep, guttural voice sounded. “Sure as we thought of never setting eyes on ye agin and here ye be bringin’ in the mark slick as ever before!”
Captain Flynn? Griffiths was quite suddenly glimpsing the depth of what had happened to them.
“Aye, true that be captain!” rang out a reedy voice on Griffiths’s other side. “Ne’r were a son of a bilge rat that were more pleased to set eyes on yer tattered carcass.”
“I am grateful, Master Kratha.” Griffiths all too easily recognized Flynn’s voice. “Pass the word to the men: prepare to abandon the prey.”
“But yer honor,” protested a third voice, “we just boarded her! There be many a pretty piece still laying about her decks that would be profitable!”
“Aye, Cap’n!” the guttural voice chimed in. “Where’s the rush to be kickin’ this old hulk loose so soon?”
“We have bigger concerns, Master Kratha. Besides, there’s no need to bother with the small change when the real prize is at our feet. Master Shindak, would you be so good as to bind and blindfold these two humans and transfer them to the Venture Revenge. Gently, Master Shindak, we wouldn’t want our prize damaged.”
“By your word, Cap’n!”
Black strips of cloth were quickly pulled over Griffiths’s eyes and tied behind his head. Throughout the process he wondered about Merinda. She had not said a single word since Flynn fired the shots. She had made no move to oppose him. Indeed, she had simply complied quietly, as he had done. What was wrong with her? Knowing Merinda as he did, he wondered why the woman had not torn out the man’s heart by now.
The blindfolds effectively kept Griffiths from seeing anything. A moment later, they were both bound with cords and lifted up. Griffiths wasn’t sure just where he was being taken. For a time he felt as though he was being passed around over the heads of various-sized people. Then quite suddenly he was adrift—floating in a free fall he could only guess was outside the Brishan’s gravity. He began to panic, only to realize that he could breathe perfectly normally and was reasonably warm. The perception of motion soon died. He wondered as he floated just how long he would be left here in this sightless, weightless void when, quite abruptly, his motion was arrested painfully by a deck that materialized, complete with gravity, below him. More hands—or what he hoped were hands—took hold of him, lifting him up and passing him along for a time. He had the vague impression that he was moving downward into the depths of the pirate ship’s spaces. With the creaking of a door, he was tossed unceremoniously into a chamber and came at last to rest. Another thump and bump in the room—which he assumed was Merinda following him—and the door slammed closed loudly.
Griffiths felt with his bound hands the rough planks of the deck under him. He held still, waiting for something to happen, for one of the pirate band to say or make some sort of sign as to what they expected of him. Nothing was forthcoming, however, and after a short while he ventured to move. His hands were tied firmly behind his back. His feet were bound also at the ankles. Yet with some effort he managed to push himself to a sitting position. It was a good deal more comfortable than lying against the floor.
“Neskat,” he called out sotto voce. “Neskat, are you in here?”
“Quiet, you fool,” Merinda replied. “Hold still and I’ll get to you in a moment.”
There were a thousand questions burning in his mind at the moment, all of which seemed larger for the darkness that he felt himself engulfed in. Still, he figured that doing as Merinda said was a safe bet. So he sat still on the floor, taking in what he could in the darkness.
The ship had a peculiar smell, something like a cross between sandal leather and old wood. There were other scents that were mingled into it—unidentified spices that seemed inviting and warmly sweet. All together, Griffiths took it for a workmanlike aroma that called up visions of sweat-drenched muscles and oiled deck planks. It was the smell of old ways and long use.
To his ears came the creaking of the wood itself: a low moaning rattle that occasionally groaned under some shifting stress of the hull. A rhythmic banging could be heard in the far distance, muffled by bulkheads and passages. Above it all came the distant, dark voices singing far above them, their voices straining with the tempo as their bodies toiled in unison to some great unseen task.
Hang dried on the gibbet, my lady, my queen,
Drunk on the wine of a blade that is keen,
We’ll swing to the tune of the devil’s black song,
For dead-eyes we have closed on the fools we have wronged,
A pox on our past, to our end rush anon,
A curse on the bones of our Lord Marren-kan.
“Good God,” Griffiths murmured in awe. “We’ve been taken by the Marren-kan!”
“What do you know of the Marren-kan?” Merinda asked, her voice filled wit
h strain as she struggled against her bonds.
“Enough!” Griffiths’s hands began working ineffectively against the ropes. The room in the darkness beyond seemed to be closing in on him. “From what that old yarnspinner told us …”
“Yarnspinner? Do you believe everything old men tell you in bars, Griffiths?”
“Well, you seemed to think enough of what he had to say to drag us out into this forgotten—and, may I point out, deservedly—ignored frontier of the galaxy so that we can all be captured, drawn, quartered, tortured, or worse!”
“One more remark like that,” Merinda said through her huffing breath, “and I may just leave you tied up.”
Griffiths considered that for a moment. Yes, he thought, she probably would. No doubt another tack would be required. “Yes, Vestis. So you don’t think that these are the Gorgon pirates?”
“Pirates? Certainly. Gorgon—not even the remotest possibility … There!”
Griffiths heard the rather satisfying sound of a cord unraveling and falling to the floor. Just stay calm, he reminded himself. You will be free in a few moments if you will just stay calm. Talking seemed to help. “Why not?”
“Because,” Merinda said with a strain registering again in her voice, “there hasn’t been a true Gorgon seen on the frontier since Marren-kan disappeared. Marren-kan, so the spacers locally tell it, got word of where the Lokan Fleet might be found. He disappeared beyond the Maelstrom Wall and was never heard from again. From that time until the present, no Gorgon has been seen anywhere on any world.”
“Well, what happened to them?” Griffiths asked.
“No one knows. That may be something else for us to find out on this little journey of ours.”
Another cord fell quickly to the floor.
“At last.” Merinda’s voice was filled with satisfaction. “All right, Griffiths, hold your head still and I’ll get you loose.”
In an instant, the blindfold was pulled from his head.
Griffiths stiffened suddenly.
“Neskat?” His voice was half awe and half terror. “Where are we?”
Merinda looked around, following Griffiths’s gaze. The compartment had been grown into its shape rather than carved. Its walls were curved, with ribbing supporting the ceiling. A heavy door blocked the only entrance; iron bars had been fitted into a small observation opening. The walls, ceiling, and floor were covered with carvings. Some were small; others were quite large, but they each had a unifying characteristic. Each was of the face of some horrific beast.
“Well,” Merinda commented, “I’m not sure of the exact location but it looks like we are inside an Aendorian totem ship. The Aendorian home world is far from here, but their ships would be quite appropriate to the changes in the quantum zones here. They’re easy to reconfigure and remarkably adaptable. It’s an excellent choice for this area.”
“Well, perhaps.” Griffiths’s eyes were still fixed on the faces all staring back at him. “But why all the faces?”
“Each face represents different types of power associated with different types of quantum zones,” Merinda said as she examined the walls of their prison. “It becomes largely a matter of identifying which totem works in which zone to get the ship to operate there. It is a very efficient system in a place where zones change quickly. These, of course, are guardian totems and thus rather stern in their appearance.”
“Stern?” Griffiths gaped. “They’re horrible!”
“Yes, well,” Merinda said as she reached down and began working to loosen Griffiths’s restraints. “Still, I think you can admire their craftsmanship. They do their job very well.”
“Perhaps, but I’d just as soon not look at them for any length of … wait! Merinda! Someone’s coming!”
In a moment, Merinda backed silently next to the door. Griffiths struggled, the cords around his wrists not yet loose enough for escape. He looked up at the door. He was seated directly in front of it.
Something was moving on the other side of the barred portal.
Griffiths’s mind raced. He had seen any number of things in the galaxy, but for the most part they had been relatively human and often friendly. Here at the core, however, the rules seemed to be different. All sorts of horrors ran through his mind: beasts from his childhood nightmares and terrors from the entertainment videos he used to rent to scare himself. These weren’t imaginings, he reminded himself. These were real.
The lock turned. Slowly, the door began to open with a screaming, rusted hinge.
Merinda quickly reached into the opening, grabbing whatever was on the other side of the door. She pulled hard, throwing the large shape directly at the spot where Griffiths sat. The astronaut had no time to react. The massive blur stumbled over him, knocking Griffiths backward onto the floor as it fell heavily against the wall beyond.
Merinda grabbed the door before it could slam shut again. With one foot against the door, she reached down for the nearest available object. It happened to be Griffiths’s foot. She pulled the man across the floor until Griffiths effectively blocked the door from closing, then stepped over him to pull their captor up from the floor.
Griffiths tried to roll over, to see the terrible monster Merinda had pulled into their cell, but something grabbed him, pinning his arms against his sides. A massive creature covered in coarse hair lifted him bodily off the ground. Griffiths’s eyes went wide with terror. The muscular body was crossed with a thick leather harness ornamented by rows of successive knives. Each knife was sheathed with its handle outward, ready for use at a moment’s whim. Griffiths shuddered involuntarily: the creature’s stench was unbearable. In moments his face was drawn level with the monster’s own hideous muzzle. It was a broad, flat snout, black and wet across its tip. Pairs of curled fangs extended from both sides of its maw. Bloodred eyes gazed back, their massive brows frowning down over them. Horns curled backward from the creature’s forehead over a massive mantle of thick black hair.
“Lay to, lubber!” The monster’s voice was impossibly deep, its resonant sound shaking his very bones. “The Cap’n has asked that you not be disturbing the lady. We’ve got special accommodations just for yourself alone. Now, you wouldn’t be givin’ ol’ Kheoghi any trouble now, would ye?”
Griffiths couldn’t find his tongue. He only managed to nod his head emphatically. He fervently hoped that the creature understood that he had agreed.
28
Perspectives
Kheoghi looked with disgust through the small view-port of the brig door. He found humans abhorrent in general and, for reasons even he could not explain, found this one particularly revolting.
“Master Kheoghi,” came the fluting, high-pitched voice at the end of the corridor. “What vision so enraptures your attentions?”
The huge minotaur straightened up from the locked door as much as the low corridor would allow. It wasn’t much. The flat-faced brute with the brilliant red eyes remained mostly crouched in the confined space. His horns, curled downward on either side of his head, occasionally scraped against the overhead with an annoying sound. “Just givin’ the eye to that thar Griffiths-human, Master Shindak, as per the Cap’n’s orders. Once every eight bells, sir, though it give me no pleasure to do so.”
Kheoghi waited for the elven first mate to approach. Elves love to make an entrance, Kheoghi thought to himself. More human-appearing than the majority of the crew, Shindak seemed to curry the favor of the captain—possibly even along racial types. Most pirate crews were fully integrated, of course, with little regard to race origins and little tolerance for prejudice. Still, Kheoghi thought, it never hurt to be realistic. Humans have always promoted their own kind over all other races. Superficial coincidence—such as having no tail or walking like a biped—could often enhance one’s career in a human universe.
Elves, Kheoghi reminded himself, were not above taking such an advantage—or any other kind of advantage for that matter.
Still, the OomRamn, as Kheoghi’s clan called themselves
, were known for their power and prowess. There was little subtlety among his kind. Their history was summed up in the saying “If it moves, kill it; if it doesn’t move, kick it until it moves.” They were proud warriors, conquerors of the stars, and they had been a terror in their own time, or so their legends said. Their fleets had brought power and glory to OomRamn.
That was long ago, thought Kheoghi sadly, long before the time of Lo-han the Oppressor … Lo-han the Destroyer. Three thousand years had passed and still his name was cursed in the remaining halls of the OomRamn. Lo-han: murderer of all unhuman.
Now the great OomRamn Empire was a shadow of its former greatness; a mere handful of worlds backed up against the Maelstrom Wall. The Old-masters continued to debate and brawl in the Arena, snorting and posturing about the greatness of the OomRamn and their destiny, but little changed. Kheoghi had grown tired of the talk and had come into the stars to try to actually do something about valor and glory. He had more or less by accident had his ship boarded by the Marren-kan and discovered, in the process, that blood honor and glory could also be very profitable. He had signed the Ship’s Articles—by pressing the inked palm of his left clawed hand to the book and taking up the entire page—as soon as they were offered to him.
Kheoghi watched as the elf glided toward him, seeming to never touch the floor. “You have an objection to our prisoner, Master Kheoghi?”
“No more than I objects to any other human, beggin’ yer pardon, sire,” Kheoghi replied with a rumble in his voice, “and that be considerable, indeed!”
“Come now, Kheoghi,” the elf said imperiously as he stopped to stand before the minotaur. “Surely your clan is not the only clan who would harbor resentments toward the rule of men?”
“We’ve grudge enough to go around,” Kheoghi replied with a curl of his black lips. “I’d be eatin’ the raw heart of humanity, given the chance, for what they done to us, and finish the meal with a proper swig of their blood, at that.”
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