They all turned as one to see what he was pointing at. A squadron of black ships was arcing around the hull.
“Stand by the guns!” Flynn shouted. “Prepare for battle.”
“No,” Shindak said quietly.
“What?” Flynn said incredulously.
“We cannot possibly win this battle. We shall not fight it for your pleasure, Captain Flynn,” Shindak said evenly, then turned to the crew. “I stand for captaincy of this vessel. I say we stand down and give these Tsultak what they want. The Maelstrom Passage is not going anywhere! Flynn has promised us everything and delivered us nothing! He lies … and thus proves himself a human! I say we save our lives for battles we can win and live through! I say we divest ourselves of this human trash and win the prize for ourselves!”
Griffiths’s eyes were on Shindak as he spoke, the crew not moving at their posts, weighing … waiting. He heard the sound of sliding steel to his left. Realization dawned on him.
Griffiths turned toward the sound.
Flynn lunged forward, his sword directed toward Shindak. Deadly accurate and backed by Flynn’s full weight, the blade slid into the elf’s flesh. Flynn’s aim was perfect. The blade missed the spine by inches, slicing upward and emerging through the elf’s rib cage.
Shindak turned suddenly with such force that Flynn’s cutlass broke off just above the hilt. Enraged, the elf leaped toward the pirate captain, the blade protruding from his chest. Flynn quickly dove under his own oncoming blade, knocking the legs out from under the elf.
The elf dropped to the deck, the blade still buried in him pressing sideways as he fell against the planks.
The pirate scrambled to his feet, the remains of his shattered blade protruding from the hilt still in his hand. “You damned traitorous filth!” Flynn screamed, his quick stride across the deck bringing him to stand over the struggling elf. “I’m the captain here!”
He kicked savagely at the blade in the elf’s chest.
“I am the captain, damn you!” he shrieked. “It’s my ship! It’s my life!”
Red-faced with rage, tears streaming down his face, Flynn reached down with his left hand and pulled up Shindak’s head by the hair. His right arm was raised up, the hilt of the broken sword poised to strike.
Griffiths was transfixed. The brutality of Flynn’s attack was horrific.
A massive arm arrested Flynn’s blow.
“Kheoghi! Let me go!” Flynn bellowed.
“I’m thinking not for the moment, captain sire,” the minotaur rumbled menacingly. Kheoghi’s eyes narrowed to bright red slits. “I’m thinking that humanity’s manners may need a little adjustment. This fine crew followed yer orders here to the brink of the seven hells and now …”
The minotaur suddenly looked up, his brutish snout drooping in wonder.
“By all the gods!” he growled.
Griffiths turned back toward the railing, to see just what it was that had caught Kheoghi’s attention. A chill suddenly fell over him.
The massive form of the Lost Empire Settlement Ship emerged from the clouds like a resurrected leviathan. The towers of the ancient craft suddenly erupted in multiple bolts of deadly force. The brilliant javelins lanced several of the dragon ships at once, each collapsing in a flash of dazzling finality.
“Merinda,” Targ murmured behind Griffiths, his voice filled with satisfaction.
Griffiths heart sank. His one consolation had been that they, at least, may have gotten away. Merinda had said she would come back and now he wished so fervently that she hadn’t.
“The Tsultak are turning to attack the Settlement Ship,” Targ said, pointing to the various dragon ship elements wheeling away from the Venture Revenge. “Merinda’s clearing our way for us.”
“She’s not alone,” Griffiths said hopelessly. “My crew is with her.”
“Aye … and mine will be with me,” Flynn sneered as he turned back toward the xenoforms of his awestruck crew.
The dragon ships formed into coordinated formations, wheeling as though commanded by a single mind to attack the gigantic relic ship as one.
“There’s your chance, mates!” Flynn shouted to the crew on deck and in the rigging. “You might have followed this spineless elven traitor to an uncertain future, or you can have it all right now! Opportunity’s in the sky! This is the moment! Do you want the prize?”
“Aye,” answered a few voices in ragged chorus.
The Venture Revenge continued to dash upward toward the Maelstrom Wall, the helmsman having been given no alternate course.
“Do you want your reward now?” Flynn bellowed.
“Aye!” the answer came more firmly.
The Settlement Ship’s weapons flared again, knocking a handful of dragon ships from the sky. Not enough, however, Griffiths determined ruefully. The dragon ships opened fire, their weapons exploding against the defensive armament of the huge craft. Griffiths noted grimly that the dragon fleet weapons effectively breached the defenses in many places. The surface of the ancient ship burst apart at a dozen points as the dragon fleet concentrated its fire.
“Will you follow me there, mates?” Flynn screamed.
“Aye!” came the shouted chorus.
The dragon fleet ships, almost indefinable swarms of black dust at their present range, passed across the surface of the enormous disk. The bolts from the weapons towers were far fewer now than before.
“Turn … evade … run away … DO SOMETHING!” Griffiths urged the Settlement Ship. Still the ship held its course, never deviating from its protective following position behind the Venture Revenge.
“Look lively, lads!” Flynn shouted up the mast. “We’re sailing to hell!”
“Damn you, Merinda!” Griffiths raged. “Get the hell out of here!”
The swarming black dust of the dragon fleet wheeled again toward the Settlement Ship, now falling far behind them.
Griffiths caught his breath.
The ancient ship exploded suddenly, a force wave of compressed energy released catastrophically from the ship’s collapsing engines radiating in a sphere, slamming into the dragon fleet.
In that instant of despair, the Venture Revenge hurtled at full speed against the Maelstrom Wall.
OMEGA:
EYE
OF THE
MAELSTROM
40
The Gate
Griffiths pitched to the deck under the impact. Darkness engulfed him. The ship was reeling through the Maelstrom Wall, buffeted by forces that howled through the rigging. He had passed through numerous quantum fronts these last few weeks—especially during the mad dash he had piloted across the disk toward the galactic core—but none of them compared to the fury of the storm they had collided with under full sail.
Griffiths began pushing himself up against the acceleration of the deck. He heard a sharp crack overhead and had the dim impression of something whipping past him at high speed. The ship lurched suddenly to one side. Griffiths felt himself sliding across the decking, images of tumbling over the gunwale passing through his mind. Panicked, he flailed in the darkness for some hold. Pain shot through his arm as it hit against a ventilator cover, but he held tight just as the deck pitched once more in the opposite direction.
The sound was overpowering. The atmosphere of the deck seemed alive with it: a constant bombardment of a moaning, shrill rage. Through it, Griffiths thought he could hear the distant cries of the crew all about him. They seemed to call to him from the rigging, from the deck, from everywhere. Their words were drowning in the cascade of sound, swallowed until their meaning was lost and only their desperate tone remained.
He managed to pull himself onto his side. The contrast between the opal brightness of the Bonefield Narrows and the pitch-darkness of the passage was startling but not complete. Beyond the clear mystical dome that encompassed the deck and most of the drive-tree, Griffiths glimpsed a million suns rushing past them, their light frozen with the quantum flux and dust clouds spiraling down around the
ir wake. Though densely packed this close to the galactic core, their light was only a dim shadow of their glory, diffused and dampened by the chaos variance that surrounded the ship. Griffiths’s sight was slowly returning to him as his eyes became accustomed to the new gloom through which the ship now hurtled.
He was still on the captain’s walk, he realized gratefully. The ventilation grating had stopped him just short of the railing which, he noticed with a start, was now completely missing, shattered by a yardarm that had broken loose. The cables that had once held it in place writhed snakelike through the air. Beyond that he could dimly perceive movement on the deck below and something beyond the gunwale along the outside edge of the hull.
His eyes widened and he suddenly looked up. “Oh, my God!” was all he could say.
The Maelstrom Passage was a tortured funnel of gray stars and shifting dust, twisting forever toward the center of the galaxy. In a sudden reversal of perspective, Griffiths suddenly knew that he was not flying up into the center of the tornado so much as he was falling down it.
He realized it would be a fall that would last for all eternity.
He quickly glanced around the captain’s walk. Cable and debris littered the deck but the drive-tree remained intact. Shindak was trying to pull himself back onto his feet next to the mast. Targ clung to one of the backstays, his face turned upward defiantly toward the storm that fell savagely around them.
Suddenly, the Venture Revenge hurtled past a massive nearby star, its passage flashing the star’s illumination across the deck. In that flash Griffiths caught sight of Flynn. The pirate captain stood with his feet set wide apart. Both hands gripped the helm wheel. He was shouting into the gale, his voice barely carrying over the horrendous sound.
“Damn you,” he shouted. “Hold your course in the center of the vortex! We’re going to stay in the channel until we come out the other side!”
“No!” screamed Griffiths. With supreme effort, he pulled himself up from the deck, trying desperately to get his feet under him. The deck failed to cooperate. The ship pitched suddenly away from him. Griffiths once more reached out and wrapped his hands in a death grip around a backstay cable.
Griffiths could see more clearly now. The walls of the twisting vortex were closing in on them the farther they sailed. Now he could see that the tempest’s wall was studded with debris that was taking on regular shapes.
The signs, he realized. The signs are here.
Griffiths gritted his teeth, swung about on the line, and planted his feet back on the deck with renewed determination. Taking aim, he lunged toward the helm. The deck pitched yet again as he moved, but his momentum carried him through to the wheel housing. At the last moment, he managed to grip the lateral wheel and keep his feet under him.
“Griffiths!” Flynn shouted angrily. “Don’t touch that! We’ve got to hold our course until we break through!”
“No, Flynn,” Griffiths yelled back. “We’ve got to turn the ship!”
The pirate captain glanced at him with unquestionable horror. “Are you mad? Turning in the midst of a wave front passage is suicide! We’ve got to get to the other side!”
“We’ll never get to the other side,” Griffiths screamed into the thunderous roar about them. “There is no other side!”
“What?”
“There’s no other side,” he repeated. “The map calls this a temporal vortex. It leads to the gate, but the gate is in the wall of the vortex, not the end—there is no end!”
“This is madness,” Flynn replied. “You’ll kill us all.”
“Will I?” Griffiths spat back. “Look at the walls of the vortex, Flynn. Tell me what you see there!”
Flynn glanced past Griffiths. Suddenly, the pirate’s eyes went wide. “By the Nine!”
“Those are ships, Flynn!” Griffiths went on, still gripping the helm wheel as he pressed his face closer to the pirate. “Ships who tried this passage once before without the map. Ships who just wanted to get to the other side. The vortex got narrower and narrower and the time distortion became greater and greater until now they’re all stuck in a temporal event horizon. They still think they’re sailing, Flynn! They still dream of glory and riches on the other side—only they don’t know that they will never get there, Flynn … never!”
“You led us here, you bastard!” Flynn cried, reaching out across the helm and grabbing Griffiths by the collar.
“That’s right,” Griffiths replied. “And I’m the one who is going to lead you out of it so get your hands off my shirt!”
Flynn clenched his teeth but released the astronaut.
“There’s a gate in the vortex wall,” Griffiths went on. “We’ve got to turn this thing into it right now!”
Flynn looked at Griffiths suspiciously. “Why are you so anxious to help me now?”
“Let’s just say I’ve got a reason to live,” Griffiths replied.
“What reason is that?”
“I need to be around long enough to see if they still hang people like you.”
Flynn smiled. “Fair enough! Give me a course, Captain Griffiths!”
Griffiths looked up into the constricting vortex overhead. Even with his untrained eye he could see that there was extensive damage already done to the drive-tree and its yardarms. “There!” he pointed. “That dark spot in the wall. Make for that!”
“Aye-aye, Captain,” Flynn said with a sneer, spinning the wheel under his experienced hands.
The ship groaned loudly under the load. At first, the gallant pinnacle of the drive-tree did not shift against the spiral toward which they were plunging. Slowly, however, the ship’s course altered. The buffeting of the hull became far more pronounced as she turned. The vortex seemed to sense its prey moving to escape and its furies increased. Griffiths saw the main mast bending back and forth under the new loads. Several of the backstays snapped with the crack of a whip, lashing up dangerously from the deck behind him.
“We are losing the main yard,” Shindak shouted, on his feet at last behind them.
“Have it braced!” Flynn yelled back.
The dark spot was quickly resolving itself into a great ring set impossibly into the wall of the tempest.
“Too late,” Shindak called out.
Griffiths looked up. The massive wooden beam was rushing downward from above. He leaped out of the way. Too late. The yardarm smashed the decking next to him, dragging him down into the shattered bowels of the ship. He felt himself falling, tumbling into the blackness, into death. He almost welcomed it, he thought at last. Then his head struck something terribly hard.
“Griffiths-mate?”
Go away, he thought. I’m dead.
“Griffiths-mate?” the rough voice intruded. “Come about, thar be sights to be seen and thar be no doubt about that.”
Everyone I know is dead, Griffiths pondered. Why can’t I be dead, too? He considered Zanfib’s words for a moment and wondered if perhaps he, too, were not some sort of wizard-prophet after all. A fleeting image of himself in robes of midnight-blue velvet flashed through his mind as he commanded scores of bucket-wielding brooms. He shook his head to clear that image from his mind and then, reluctantly, opened his eyes.
He started visibly. Kheoghi’s bull-like face was pressed near his own. He should have recognized the voice and matched the face to it but the sight still came as something of a shock.
“Sights to be seen is right,” Griffiths mumbled to himself. For a moment he was not sure where he was lying. Suddenly he remembered the falling yardarm, the splintering wood. Indeed, there were smashed timbers all about where he had finally come to rest with this monster standing over him. He suddenly realized that Kheoghi seemed to be surrounded by a bright nimbus of light streaming down from beyond him.
Perhaps I am dead, Griffiths thought.
“Come, Griffiths-mate. Cap’n Flynn ask that I see to you and bring you up on deck. A stout one, you are, for a human that is. Still, I’m thinking you might have been dead altogethe
r if it weren’t for that Targ of Gandri. Saw you fallin’ he did. Worked his magic but it weren’t enough to keep you out of the hold.”
“Great,” Griffiths shook his head. “You mean that I now owe my life to that bastard?”
“Well, Griffiths, he may not be one of the Brethren of the Wall but he didn’t give you the soft farewell either. He also wants you topside. Thought you might be a bit interested in seeing where you’ve led us, so to speak.” Kheoghi extended his massive left arm.
Griffiths accepted the offered help to his feet and looked around them. The remains of the yardarm jutted with jagged edges from the various shattered bulkheads and debris of the broken hold. A soft white light streaming down from the broken hatch overhead seemed to beckon him upward. The ladder mounted to the wall of the compartment remained intact. Kheoghi had already hauled himself up its rungs by the time Griffiths began climbing his way back to the main deck.
There was a surreal quality to the surroundings as he emerged. He couldn’t place his finger on it for a moment. Then he realized what had made him uncomfortable. Though the xenomorphic crew of the Venture Revenge was still present, they all were standing motionless and silent in their awe. More than that was disquieting, however: there were no shadows anywhere to be seen.
“By the Nine, Griffiths.” Flynn spoke softly as the astronaut approached him. “Look where you’ve brought us!”
Griffiths looked.
The expanse of space itself was glowing with a soft whiteness as though someone had taken a photograph of the night sky and somehow, impossibly, printed a negative instead. He had to remind himself, however, that this was no mere picture. The great glowing whiteness was studded with black stars that drifted over the deck in a slow procession. All this was veiled in a procession of nebulae glowing in hues of salmon and deep turquoise. It was an image of heaven, Griffiths thought to himself as the ship drifted slowly through the milky expanse. Its beauty had robbed the pirate crew of their speech. Its wonder brought tears unbidden to Griffiths’s eyes.
“What are those?” Flynn asked quietly, his outstretched hand pointing to yet another of the huge rings drifting past them in the procession of the sky. There were hundreds that studded the sky from place to place.
Nightsword Page 34
