Only then did she notice the dusts forming about her feet. Hands, legs, bodies, mouths …
Destiny! whispered the voices of the dead.
Merinda looked up.
Targ had heard them!
The Prime released Griffiths, pushing him with such strength that the astronaut was lifted into the air and fell several feet away. Targ turned, his projection weapon in hand, its crystal emitter swinging quickly toward Merinda.
Merinda’s sword discharged, but the brilliant eruption of electric brilliance missed its mark, cutting raggedly across Targ’s chest as he turned rather than through his spine as Merinda had intended.
Targ’s weapon discharged, the force of Merinda’s assault causing the Prime to trigger the device prematurely. Three red bolts of plasma force slammed in quick succession into the massive door behind Merinda, blowing the door backward off its mountings. The howling force of the explosions threw Merinda off her feet, and she sprawled through the dust billowing from the floor about her. She quickly pushed herself up from the chamber floor, crossing her wrists in front of her reflexively.
Her action came not a moment too soon. Targ had abandoned the spent projector weapon, forming his own arm into a dual-pronged javelin in less time than it took for the discarded weapon to fall to the floor. The prongs thrust forward toward Merinda but glanced off a white-flared shielding that sprang from her wrists.
Merinda glanced into Targ’s eyes. They were locked on her but she suddenly knew that they no longer actually saw Merinda Neskat, a former companion and colleague. Now they only saw an enemy to be destroyed utterly. The coldness of his eyes was more frightening than anything she had experienced before.
“Now, Flynn!” she screamed. “Now!”
Flynn burst through the still smoldering doorway, with Kheoghi and Elami behind him. Merinda wondered for a moment how the pirates had even survived the sundering of that doorway by Targ’s errant projector blasts. They are survivors, she thought, but perhaps not for long.
Targ turned toward the movement. The pronged weapon vanished with the distraction.
Merinda saw her chance. She lunged forward, blade still in hand, channeling everything she had left to enchant the weapon.
Targ was too quick. He turned, his cupped hand suddenly ablaze, and thrust the rigid fingers toward her neck. The flaming hand collided with the ice-blue shielding, shattering her protection into a thousand shards of glowing force. The force of the blow completely stopped her forward momentum and reversed it, throwing her bodily against the wall behind her.
Dazed and spent, she slumped against the wall. She was vaguely aware of the blood oozing from the back of her head.
Targ was moving toward her.
Beyond him, Griffiths was standing up.
It was all so much like a dream, she thought. Everything seemed to be happening slowly once more. Griffiths yelling at Targ, starting to run toward him. Targ turning around. She knew she had to stop it but there was nothing left in her to give.
Then, she saw Flynn. His leg swung across Griffiths’s path. Griffiths tripped. His fall, headlong into the bones of the dead, seemed to take forever. He choked on their dust. In his place as the dust cleared stood Flynn, holding a rolled parchment up toward Targ. His words came to Merinda as though from a distant place, just as her consciousness failed.
“I have the map, Targ! We can make a deal!”
33
Deal with the Devil
Griffiths lay choking amid the ash-gray dust of the damned. Their long-dead cells filled his nostrils and his gasping mouth. He coughed violently, pushing himself painfully up from the floor of the chamber, coated with the silt-like remains.
“NO!”
Griffiths craned his head around toward the unspeakable sound. Targ’s cry was subhuman, a gusher of emotions without restraint that echoed from the depths of his being. The Prime looked as though he had been dealt a mortal blow. Indeed, Griffiths was suddenly hopeful that Merinda had succeeded and brought down the great wizard. Yet he could see Merinda where she lay slumped against the wall beyond where Targ stood, his eyes wide in horror and rage.
Griffiths rolled painfully onto his side with as much speed as his ribs would allow him. He had to see what evil could so frighten the most powerful man in the known universe.
Flynn! Griffiths gazed at the pirate in wonder, then sudden rage. You bastard! You tripped me up! I was going to save her, not you! You tripped me and now you stand there looking all powerful and noble. Damn you!
“That’s right, Targ,” Flynn said, his eyes ablaze as he held up the parchment. “I know where your precious Nightsword is and I’ve the means to salvage it!”
The lower half of Targ seemed to become suddenly molten. Griffiths felt the waves of heat radiating out from him through the floor. He quickly pushed himself unsteadily to his feet.
“Give it to me, Flynn,” Targ said, his eyes turning a brilliant, glowing red. “It is mine by right! Give me the map!”
“We had a deal, Targ!”
“I no longer need you or your ship,” the wizard intoned. He stepped closer to Flynn, the heat more intense than ever. “Give me the map or die, here and now.”
Flynn glanced down at the metal floor plates beneath him. Several around Targ had taken on a dull orange tint from the heat, which was increasing by the moment. “Well, I’ll be happy to, but you have to do me a favor first.”
“The only bargain is the one for what’s left of your life, Flynn,” Targ said, stepping closer again.
Flynn ignored the comment. “Here’s the deal, Targ: if you can read the map, you can have it.”
Targ blinked quickly over his flaming red eyes.
Griffiths stepped back once, then twice, as he shielded his eyes from the intense heat.
“What?” Targ said.
“It’s simple,” Flynn replied, his eyes steady even as sweat broke out on his forehead. “Tell me what this map says—truthfully—and I’ll give it to you and surrender my crew unconditionally.”
The heat suddenly withdrew. Targ’s molten half reformed into its natural form. About him, the floor plates faded, retreating the entire area back to its former darkness.
“Here,” Flynn smiled. “If you can read it, it’s yours.”
Targ snatched the parchment with unexpected swiftness from Flynn’s outstretched hand. In a moment he had unrolled the map, found that he couldn’t read in the darkness, and hastily spun his left finger in the air next to his head. Instantly, a globe of soft, white light appeared in the air. Targ grasped both sides of the large parchment, his eyes squinting at the page.
“By the Nine,” Targ muttered through clenched teeth, his anger rising once more.
“By the Nine, indeed,” Flynn said, casually hooking his thumbs on his broad levitation belt. “You can’t read it and I can’t read it. In fact, there’s only one person here that I know of who can read it.”
“This is Lost Empire script,” Targ said, his eyes scanning the map. “I may not be able to read it, but I do know someone who can!”
“Perhaps so,” Flynn continued, seeming in Griffiths’s mind to be walking through the logic of his argument like a man leaping precariously from stone to stone across a stream. “However, you will notice that the final piece of the map, the critical route that passes the Maelstrom Wall, is missing. That piece remains locked in the mind of my good shipmate Griffiths.”
As Flynn gestured with his open hand, Targ turned to look squarely at Griffiths.
“Now wait just a moment,” Griffiths said, holding his hands up.
“One moment indeed,” Flynn interrupted with a casual manner. “You see, Griffiths has signed the Articles of my crew. He is one of us, as every member of my crew knows. He wouldn’t be interested in betraying his old shipmates. Indeed, he wouldn’t tell you what you want to know unless he wanted to do so. Of course, once you learned what you needed from him, you would no doubt be tempted to kill him as I recall you did once before. He could us
e a little protection, and my guess is that his shipmates are just the sort of family he’s looking for right now. He knows he’s safer with us than he is with you, don’t you, Griffiths, old mate?”
Griffiths was catching the drift of Flynn’s speech. It was intended as much for his ears as for Targ’s. He would not put it past the vaunted Prime to kill him in some private corner of the galaxy just to keep him quiet about what he knew. As Flynn had pointed out, the man had already killed him once, or thought he had. Flynn was saying that Griffiths needed protection. Flynn and his mercenary cutthroats may not have been a good offer, but they were the best one he had at the moment.
“Yes,” Griffiths replied to Flynn’s comment, though his eyes remained locked on Targ. “I believe you are right, old mate.”
“There,” Flynn said through his easy smile. “So you see! I think we can make a deal after all! We’ll take you through the Maelstrom Wall personally, Vestis Prime, and give you assistance on your quest. You shall compensate us for our time and effort once we return with wealth commensurate to the prize that we shall recover for you. Of course, my gallant crew shall require that we hold your little secret safe for you until such time as you deliver our fee. It’s a simple enough arrangement. We give you the galaxy—all you have to do is pay us for it. Do we have a bargain?”
Targ turned his now-cold eyes back toward Flynn. “I shall eat your heart while it is still warm.”
Flynn’s smile didn’t diminish at all. “You are assuming that it is warm to begin with. However, know this, Targ! If you harm me, or any of my crew, I’ll see to it that Griffiths is murdered long before you ever find your prize. You may need him alive, but I do not. No offense, Griffiths.”
“None taken,” Griffiths replied through thin lips.
“So, Targ, once more: do we have a deal?”
Targ stood still for a moment, his shocking white hair aglow in the illuminated ball that tenaciously remained near his head. At last, he seemed to relax.
“The crew of the ship that brought me here: they did so on the condition that they are allowed to speak with the ‘Prophet of Avadon’—this barbarian, in fact. Have you any objection?”
Flynn looked momentarily puzzled, then shrugged. “I don’t care.”
“Then, indeed, Flynn. We are agreed.”
Flynn bowed slightly and extended his right hand.
Targ looked at it for a moment, then reached his own right hand out. Each firmly grasped the other’s forearm up by the elbow.
Griffiths felt as though he had just been sold. He shook his head in disgust and turned from the two men, striding through the sighing dust to where Merinda lay. He quickly knelt next to her. She had a pulse and was breathing. The flood of relief that came over him was unexpected and surprising. He suddenly felt very alone.
A hand came to rest on his shoulder. Flynn’s hand. “Well, shipmate, how’s our friend doing?”
Griffiths grabbed the pirate’s hand and pushed it violently away from him. “Stay away from me, Flynn. Just stay the hell away.”
“You’ve got it all wrong,” Flynn said behind him, his voice quiet and low. “I had no choice in this! What would you have had me do—stand around while that psychopath killed Merinda? Or maybe you would rather I let you go through with your attack on the most powerful wizard in charted space? Where would you be right now if I had let you finish that? There wouldn’t be enough atoms of you stuck together to form a complete molecule. As it is right now, Targ knows he cannot kill you or any of the rest of us, for that matter, and we’ve still got the crew following me. So you tell me, Captain Jeremy Griffiths of Earth, just what would you have had me do differently?”
Griffiths turned to answer but there was no answer to give. “I … I don’t know.”
“Well, when you do, feel free to get back to me,” Flynn said, looking around the chamber. “I don’t know why we had to come to this rock in the first place.”
“Perhaps not,” Griffiths said as he stood up, “but I do. Keep an eye on her, will you? We need to get her back to the ship. She seems more weak than damaged. You may have stopped Targ’s attack just in time.
“Excuse me, Targ of Gandri.” Griffiths spoke, and couldn’t keep the bitterness out of his voice. “If I’m going to be of any help, I need to find a bridge or command center or someplace like that in this pile of junk. You were here for quite a while. Would you happen to know …”
Targ was barely listening to him but it was enough. There was heavy sarcasm in his voice as he replied. “Congratulations, prophet, your powers have served you well. This is the command chamber.”
The command platform is just the way the stories described it, thought Griffiths as he sat in one of the ancient relic chairs surrounding the map table. It was all still there. Dark display panels under the single light shining from the optics emitter overhead. The central table, bereft of the coveted map, which Targ had found there so long ago. Even the dead priest was there, his remains scattered in a jumble with his pressure suit where Targ had pushed them decades ago.
Griffiths normally might have been moved to some pity for the fate of this fallen leader and his hundreds of followers—all of whom had died in this hall. Unfortunately, his present troubles seemed to overshadow the tragedy of the past. It was difficult to muster tears for the dead when his own wake seemed imminent.
“Let’s see.” Griffiths spoke out loud, his words echoing through the chamber. Kheoghi had left him here alone at Flynn’s insistence. No doubt there were other guardians posted around the room, but everyone wanted him to think his deep thoughts and find the one true path. So he was left alone to talk to himself with the realization that he had little hope of better conversation than his own. “If I don’t find the heading coordinates of this ancient bucket of scrap, then I can’t lead this collection of murderers and psychos to what is supposed to be the most powerful weapon in all the heavens. If I can’t do that then I’ll probably be killed in my sleep—or awake for that matter—either by this administrator-turned-fruitcake Targ, or by Flynn if he wants to, or by Flynn’s crew if he doesn’t. On the other hand, if I do find the coordinates and I do find the treasure, then any combination of the above will probably kill me anyway and destroy life as we know it. As it stands, either way Merinda probably won’t give a damn.”
Griffiths leaned forward in the chair and gazed down at the parchment map laid out on the table. He had insisted that he needed the map for reference and so Flynn had left it with him. Where, after all, could he go with it? Griffiths gazed at the map and weighed his options.
“I’m screwed,” he said, and put his head down on the table.
“Hey, Captain,” echoed a distant voice. “What does a girl have to do around here to get a drink?”
Griffiths raised his head from the table, astonishment and hope registering on his face for the first time in days. Part of his mind couldn’t accept it. Perhaps it was the ghosts of the room come back to torment him.
“Lewis?” he said, squinting into the darkness. “Lieutenant Elizabeth Lewis?”
“Hey-ho, flyboy!” Lewis said, waving from one of the entrances to the central chamber. Tobler and Ellerby were standing behind her. All of them were grinning stupidly. “Small galaxy, isn’t it.”
“Oh my God,” Griffiths said, his voice filled with growing belief as he stood up. “You … you … you have got to be the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen! No! Wait! Stay on that cleared path across the floor! The minotaur couldn’t stand the whining ghosts and swept a passage.”
Lewis appeared unsure as to what Griffiths was talking about but had at least learned to follow his directions. In moments she was stepping up to the raised platform. “Permission to come aboard?” she said with a smile.
Griffiths reached down, took her hand and pulled her, laughing, up onto the platform and threw his arms around her. In moments both Ellerby and Tobler had scrambled up as well and had joined in the general celebration.
“I still don’t
believe it,” Griffiths said at last, tears in his eyes. “How in the hell did you ever get here? I thought you were looking for Earth.”
“We were,” Tobler said. “We bounced from one star to another in that saucer. We were just getting the hang of piloting it—it’s a really sweet little spacecraft, Griffiths. You wouldn’t believe how well it handles regardless of the quantum zone you’re in …”
“Tobler,” said Ellerby, his eyes rolling up in exasperation. “Get on with it!”
“Oh, right! Well, it suddenly occurred to us that we needed to stop and ask directions.”
Griffiths looked at the faces of his colleagues. “Ask directions?”
“Captain!” Lewis said, nudging him. “We were in such a hurry to find our way home. Remember how we rushed our departure? We couldn’t wait to park that saucer on the White House lawn?”
“Yeah, I remember.”
“Since the big, scary, galactic Omnet didn’t know where Earth was, we simply assumed that no one did.” Lewis’s smile took on a nervous edge. She was coming to the point and it was obviously an important one for her. “What we didn’t think of until after we’d bumped around for a few weeks was that Kendis-dai must have had some knowledge of Earth—otherwise, how would the constellations have been the same on the access device?”
Griffiths nodded. “Sure, that follows.”
“So,” Ellerby prodded, “we thought that the Mantle would also know something of Earth.”
Griffiths was still so giddy from the unexpected reunion that he hadn’t come to the conclusion yet. “Sure, I suppose that follows.”
“So,” Lewis said carefully and more seriously, “we’ve come to ask you, oh, Big-Cheese Prophet of Avadon, if you know where Earth is located.”
They had asked a question of the prophet.
Nightsword Page 28
