“I don’t know,” Griffiths said, looking suddenly away. His sight stopped on Targ.
The Vestis Prime alone seemed unmoved by the spectacle. He stood near the shattered captain’s walk, his feet wide apart and his arms folded across his chest. “We have not come as tourists here, Captain Flynn,” he said with impatience. “We are near the prize. May I suggest that we finish what we have started?”
“What’s he talking about?” Griffiths asked.
“He’s talking about that,” Flynn said, smiling hungrily as he pointed once more.
Griffiths looked again. A new sight drifted into view overhead.
“My God,” Griffiths whispered.
There, hanging above them, was a dazzling blue light. Arrayed all about the light were thousands of drifting ships. Their elegant hulls were ornate and gleaming, untouched by the centuries that had slipped past them. Here they drifted about the light as they had no doubt done for over three thousand years—undisturbed in their rest.
“Lost Empire ships,” Griffiths said in a voice filled with wonder.
“Aye, Griffiths,” Flynn said with boundless satisfaction. “It’s Lokan’s bloody, treasure-laden fleet.”
41
Ghost Fleet
“Enough,” Targ said with finality. “Get this ship under way, Flynn.”
“Excuse me, Vestis Prime,” Flynn said testily as he turned toward the austere shape of the tall, white-haired man, “but just how do you expect me to get under way? We’ve got extensive damage to the drive-tree. The stay lines are a mess, let alone the rigging itself. There may even be damage to the hull, for all I know. We’ll get about the repairs and make way when I say we’re good and …”
Targ was upon the pirate captain in three quick strides, the obvious impatience and anger building in his face with each step. With his right hand, Targ reached out and gripped Flynn by the throat. The Vestis gave every appearance of being in his mid-fifties or early sixties, so far as the stunned Griffiths could tell, yet Targ possessed enough raw strength to press a suddenly choking Flynn to his knees.
“Your rig is not so damaged as you profess, Captain Flynn,” Targ said with chilling disdain, “and I’ll brook no further delay. You’re an insolent, churlish speck who whines too much and does too little.” Targ raised his left hand to strike.
“No, Targ,” Griffiths said simply.
The Director of the Omnet froze at the unexpected words.
“You need him.”
“I need no one!” Targ pressed the words out between his clenched teeth.
“You’re wrong,” Griffiths continued. “You need me because of what I might know that you do not. You need Flynn, his ship, and his crew to get back through the vortex gate.”
Targ smiled suddenly at Griffiths. “You’re only partly right, you know. I do need you.” In a flash, Targ turned his burning eyes back to Flynn, whose face was decidedly taking on a purple tint. “I’ve warned you before and this is certainly the last time. Stand between me and my destiny and I shall tear your lungs out with my bare hands. You will get this ship under way, understand?”
Flynn managed to nod above the constricting hand.
Targ released Flynn with a slight push, sending the pirate captain sprawling onto the deck. “You will steer a course through the wrecks. I will direct you.”
“Direct us toward what?” Flynn said sullenly, rubbing the raw skin of his neck.
“Toward my destiny, as I have said,” Targ said.
“That may work for you,” Flynn replied, picking himself painfully up from the deck, “but we’ll need to see a little more than just your destiny.”
“Your conditions for selling out a friend were quite clear when you contacted me,” Targ replied stiffly. “You will be most welcome to collect on that—but only after you have fulfilled it to me in the utmost measure. Now, will you get this ship back on an even keel, or shall I be forced to promote someone from among your crew to the rank of captain?”
Flynn drew a sharp breath but thought better of giving voice to the reply that had so quickly come to his mind. Instead he turned to his crew. “Master Kheoghi, bring the crew to their stations! I want the weavers into the rigging, and get the second watch rousted to clear this deck. Gather a few of your own choice and see to the helm yourself.”
“Aye-aye, sir,” Kheoghi snorted in reply.
“I want this drifting hulk moving like a ship of the line and I want it to happen yesterday!”
“By your will, Captain!” Kheoghi responded, before he began bellowing at the crew. The visage of the minotaur wearing an enraged expression was more than sufficient to shake the crew from their stupor. “Put your backs into it, mates! We’re within sight of the glory, now!”
Flynn turned back to face Targ. “Is there anything further I can do for you, Prime?” Flynn spoke the words evenly though they were laced with contempt and hatred. “Anything at all?”
Targ didn’t give any recognition to the pirate’s tone although Griffiths was certain that it had not escaped the Prime in the least. Instead, he cocked his face upward and to one side, as though trying somehow to see a great distance overhead. “Bring us to even keel and then enter the derelict fleet there,” he said, pointing to a spot above him and slightly to the left, “between those two massive Settlement Ships. That is where we will begin.”
“Begin what?” Griffiths asked.
“The hunt, of course,” Targ replied.
Grandeur drifted coldly past griffiths. The ships of the Lokan Fleet were gargantuan monuments of metal and glass. They were indeed beautiful, he thought, shining as they were under the blue light from the center of the formation. However, the more he watched them passing, ship after massive ship, the more there came upon him a chilling realization.
The ships were beautiful—but they were dead.
The sheer scale of what he was coming to think of as a graveyard was mind-numbing. They had passed uncounted Settlement Ships as the Venture Revenge wove its course between the stationary vessels. Each of those must have carried several thousand people in the ancient past. Men and women, families and children were their purpose and their cargo. What fate had brought them to such a horrible, silent end? The frigates, the escort tenders and massive command ships—or so he had fancied them as each type came past him—where were their crews?
He glanced about him and knew he was not alone in his reveries. The spacers of the core are a superstitious lot. Their beliefs were not without merit and existed primarily to preserve their lives in the various places that dealt out death quickly and without warning, or so Kheoghi had told him. Sailing among the dead ships of the Lokan Fleet was not apparently cause for joy. The crew had once again fallen silent and communicated with each other in the quiet voices one reserves for visiting a tomb.
Only Targ seemed oblivious to it all, so intent was he on his objective. He stood with his back to the gunwale as he gazed up the mast toward their direction of travel. His voice seemed too loud when he spoke and he occasionally drew sharp looks from the crew who seemed to hold more reverence for the place than did the Prime. “There,” he called out to Flynn. “Bring us between those two large packet ships just to the left.”
“Helmsman, come to port twelve degrees,” Flynn said in a bored voice. “Steady as she goes.”
They were apparently making their way toward the center of the formation where the mysterious blue light illuminated everything. Frankly, Griffiths didn’t give a damn. For that matter, the only person who seemed to care at all was Targ, who grew more and more animated the deeper among the dead ships they sailed.
Griffiths still wondered about the man. He was the leader of the Omnet—unquestionably the most powerful single person in the entire galaxy so far as he could tell—and yet he seemed to have thrown all of that away on this hell-or-high-water obsession with the Nightsword. Power? If Merinda was right, there was no more powerful man in the entire galaxy. Wealth? Griffiths shook his head. Vestis Prime of the Omn
et was practically the ultimate definition of the term. His father had died years ago on this same quest, apparently killed right in front of him. Griffiths supposed that such a thing could be a powerful motivator, but if the stories were true, then it wasn’t really his fault that his dad had died. There was something missing from the picture, Griffiths knew, that would bring all the parts of the man into focus. Something had driven Targ to jeopardize everything he had stood for over the last forty years. Until he knew what that was, the man would remain a mystery.
Mysteries were dangerous, Griffiths thought.
“There!” Targ cried out.
The dual mammoth ships drifted across their vision, unveiling a scene of incredible grandeur. Filling their vision was a massive sphere of blue fire and glass; the glowing center of the formation. The crystalline sphere was impossibly huge, larger than a planet—perhaps larger than a planetary orbit—the scale was impossible to tell. The fires that raged within the sphere created tumbling patterns that seemed at once alive and beautiful. “Bolok!” Kheoghi cried out, his huge bull-like frame falling to the deck in fear. “It is Bolok—palace of the gods! Forgive us! Forgive us this trespass!” The others of the OomRamn also fell to the deck, their bellowing becoming a chorus chant.
It’s the heart of the galaxy, Griffiths thought with a sweet sadness.
The crystal sphere seemed flawed, however, by a dark mark across its face. Griffiths realized at once that the black imperfection was growing as they approached. Soon it outlined the hull of an enormous angular construction.
“The Treasure Ship of Lokan,” Flynn murmured hungrily. “By the Nine, Targ, the wealth of the entire ancient empire is on that ship!”
“Yes,” Targ replied somewhat distractedly, “I suppose it is.”
“You suppose it is?” Flynn was incredulous.
“Closer, Captain Flynn, if you please.” Targ was intent now, concentrating so fiercely that a sweat was breaking out on his brow. He pushed himself up from the gunwale and turned to grip it intently. “Follow along the side of the hull over there. I think it may be just beyond that superstructure jutting out about half a mile ahead of us. Slow as you approach it.”
The bulk of the treasure ship filled their vision, cutting off the blue light from the sphere. The hull plates were tooled with ornate inscriptions and designs of all kinds and sizes. Griffiths was jolted suddenly with the realization that he could read them.
“What is it, Griffiths?” Flynn asked, watching the astronaut curiously.
“Histories,” Griffiths replied. “They’ve carved their histories onto the hull plates of the treasure ship. My God, world after world after world is up there! Histories for civilizations from before the Shattering of Suns—from before the fall of the empire. The history of all these people is there, above us!”
Flynn gazed up for a few moments. “Well, if it is, Griffiths, then it’s for you alone. You’re the only one that can read it.” He turned his attention back to his crew. “Ahoy the rigging! Weave sail for three marks! Slow her down!”
The structure formation that Targ had indicated was coming quickly past the ship. Above Griffiths the spacers were releasing the weave on several of their mystical fields. He could feel the ship slow.
“There!” screamed Targ, pointing excitedly overhead. “As I had foreseen! As it had been prophesied! It is there!”
Griffiths and Flynn both hurried to the gunwale. “What?” Griffiths asked. “What is it?”
“Thank the Nine,” Targ said, his voice choked with emotion. Griffiths was worried for a moment that the man was going to come completely apart.
“Will these wonders ever cease?” Flynn placed his fists on both hips in disbelief.
Griffiths looked up. There, moored to the side of the Lokan Fleet derelict and dwarfed by its incredible size, was a black, waspish ship from which still trailed a long, red banner.
“She’s a Gorgon ship if ever there was one,” Flynn said with a mixture of fear and admiration. “That ensign trailing her is the stuff of legends to every spacer on the Maelstrom Wall. It’s Marren-kan’s old ship!”
As the Venture Revenge continued to slow, it drifted under the hull of the Gorgon ship.
Suddenly, Targ’s cheer collapsed.
Griffiths looked up once again. There, moored on the other side of the Gorgon’s ship was a saucer covered with the ornate markings of the old empire. He had seen its like before.
“It would seem someone has preceded us.” Griffiths smiled as hope began to dawn in his soul.
Both Targ and Flynn spat the name with venom at the same time.
“Merinda!”
42
Excursion
“Damn that woman,” Targ thundered. “Damn her to the Fourteen Hells! The Earther’s saucer brought me into the Narrows and now she’s beaten us here in that same ship!”
The Venture Revenge drifted sideways slightly under the gargantuan hull that now stretched over them until it filled their entire vision. Several large clamshell doors were closed above them. Only the upturned lanterns mounted on the pirate ship’s hull gave any illumination to the scene, casting harsh shadows across the surface of the ancient spacecraft.
Griffiths was still looking upward, hardly daring to believe that Merinda had actually made it this far. Suddenly he thought of the Settlement Ship. Merinda must have convinced Lewis, Tobler, and Ellerby to fly the larger ship as cover for her coming here and beating everyone to the prize. If so, he suddenly realized, then Merinda had convinced them to fly to their deaths. The coldness of the woman was evidenced to him again and a cold chill ran down his spine. Why did he care about such an obviously unfeeling and apparently megalomaniacal female.
“It’s a dead ship,” murmured Elami just to Griffiths’s right, her snakelike tail curling tightly as she visibly shrank from the sight. “Dead ship with a dead crew.”
“The dead don’t pinch!” Flynn snapped savagely at the Uruh snake-woman. “Dead is dead. Their riches didn’t save them, nor their great power, nor their glory.”
“What if this here treasure be cursed?” Kheoghi grumbled. “What then, Captain?”
“There … is … no … curse!” Flynn emphasized each word as though trying to hammer a thought into a child’s mind. “The only curse on this ship is the one we make in our own minds. You start thinking up curses for us, OomRamn, and we’ll doom ourselves before we begin. We’re boarding this ship! We’re going to strip her of her value until our ship’s hold refuses to carry a single bauble more and then we’re going to strip her again!”
“No,” Targ barked.
“What?” Flynn spat in anger and surprise.
“You are going to do nothing of the kind,” Targ said roughly. “You are going to maneuver this ship next to one of those bay doors and then you and your fine crew are going to wait.”
“Wait?” Flynn was red-faced and astonished. “Wait for what?”
“Wait for us,” Targ said as he strained against his own outrage with monumental control. “I’ve not the time nor the inclination to explain this to you, so listen carefully this one final time. You will dock this ship as best you can near these closed bay doors. You will wait patiently until we have returned with the Nightsword. Then we will set sail once more back through the vortex gate and return to normal space, where you and your miserable crew will be rewarded beyond all reason for your lackluster and begrudging assistance in this matter. Your reward there will be far more than your hold here could possibly carry. So, for the last time, demonstrate more intelligence than you have exhibited thus far, and sit here with your crew until we get back.”
“Until we get back?” Flynn countered. “Who else is going?”
“Just a minor expedition,” Targ said at last. “Just two of us.”
“You and who else?” Flynn asked suspiciously.
“Why, our great prophet, of course,” Targ smiled.
“Hey,” Griffiths chirped. He had been following the dialogue with detached amuse
ment but the flow of the conversation had unexpectedly included him. “Count me out!”
“My translation seems to be in error,” Targ said, turning his cold gaze on Griffiths. “What did you say?”
“I said forget it! Deal me out! I’m not going!”
Griffiths felt his feet suddenly leave the deck. Smoothly, and with a single gesture, Targ drew the levitated astronaut across the deck toward him.
“Quite the contrary, Captain.” Targ’s words were arsenic with a patina of honey. “I am in great need of your assistance. I suspect you shall come in handy when I find your good friend Merinda Neskat. She seems to have gone to a great deal of trouble to keep you alive—even to the point of convincing me to be your protector. I believe it would be in our best interests to oblige her a little while longer.”
With a flick of his wrist, Targ sent Griffiths sailing into Kheoghi, nearly knocking the giant OomRamn to the ground. Griffiths himself bounded off the minotaur’s chest and collapsed on the deck.
“Find vacuum suits for myself and my prophet friend here,” Targ said to the crew in general. “You are all about to be very wealthy sentients. Cross me and you’ll never see the stars of home again.”
The vacuum suit stank. Griffiths would have manifested his displeasure in more graphic ways but as an experienced astronaut knew that was out of the question. It is hard to hold your nose while your head is in a bubble.
He and Kheoghi were in what the minotaur had called the “Ready Room.” From what Griffiths could gather, it was where the crew prepared for boarding party assaults. There were a number of vacuum suits that were either hung in wall niches or simply dropped unceremoniously on the floor. Kheoghi had wasted no time in finding one that looked appropriate for Griffiths and stuffing him into it.
The suit selected was an odd patchwork used by the pirates on those occasions where they needed to board a vessel by leaping across cold, raw space. To Griffiths, the suit was far too light and too flexible. The rubberized suits of NASA may have been bulky and inconvenient but there was a certain level of confidence that all those layers gave when one was setting one’s life a few small inches from sudden and rather ugly death. The vacuum suit that Kheoghi had stuffed him into reminded him more of his old flight jumpsuit than a pressure suit. Worse, it had obviously been assembled out of a number of different and mismatched components. The main body of the suit was a mottled brownish color. The boots were a bright neon-orange color that seemed to seal themselves at the top to the legs of this suit. The arms and chest were encased in an overlayer of what appeared to be curved plates of articulated plastic in a dull forest-green color. They might have been very stylish if several of the plates were not obviously missing.
Nightsword Page 35
