The Sorceress of Karres

by Eric Flint

  At the same time, he noticed that they did appear to avoid the really, really big rocks-anything with enough mass to have a gravity field worth mentioning. He got that gambler's feeling, the prickle on the back of his neck, that he'd come to realize was a klatha sense too. This was valuable information for Karres. The intangible Phantoms didn't take to gravity. That was why they'd avoided worlds. Some kind of gravity tractor would make a weapon against them.

  Goth gave a quiet little snuffly snore from the control chair next to him. "The Leewit," he said quietly into the intercom. "Can you bring Goth a blanket? I think you can stand down from the guns. I've got to keep a look-out for obstacles."

  "Sure thing, Captain. I got a couple more. You got to anticipate them," said the Leewit, gleefully. "I'm glad to have Goth back. It was hard being told I had to be responsible for you on my own."

  Which, Pausert was ready to bet, was exactly what Goth had told her to be. That explained the un-Leewit-like behavior. He smiled to himself. It was a question of perspective, he supposed. He'd had the delusion that he was the one being responsible for them. Oh well, it worked both ways. He concentrated instead on the crowded region of space ahead. A couple of light-hours away was a reasonable sized world with a slew of moons and a series of rings. If the Phantoms didn't like gravity, that would be a good place to hide up and rest. He really didn't want to push the Venture to far on that slightly misaligned tube. The vibration would probably shake loose something else, let alone break his weld.

  ***

  "They're coming up fast, Captain." said the Leewit quietly, leaning over his chair while Goth slept in the one next to him.

  " I know. And I'm going to have to cut the throttle a bit. Look at the tell-tales. Tube seven, the one we repaired the stanchions for, is overheating. Must be the effects of the vibration. I'll have to throttle down soon or she'll blow. And to keep us running in a balanced fashion, I'll need to cut the throttle on tube three by the same amount."

  "Could correct a bit with the laterals," said the Leewit, showing that she'd absorbed a great deal in the time that her sister had been away.

  "Yep." The captains hands moved over the controls, adjusting throttles. "Means we can still keep the other seven at full thrust for a bit, but dodging rocks… well, it's a recipe for disaster."

  The Leewit grinned. "Disasters are what we deal with best on the Venture. We going to Sheewash again?"

  Pausert shook his head. "If we can get into the gravity well of that fourth planet from that greenish star before they get close enough we can rest up a bit. With all three of us doing it, we can try. Dodging debris while doing the Sheewash is even harder. But we're just four light-days from the edge of Uldune's space sphere of influence. I'll be pretty glad to see it."

  "Yeah. Turn this lot of spooks into a Sedmon of the Six Lives problem," said the Leewit. "They just keep right on coming, Captain. I hit the one ship pretty hard. It's almost as if they don't care."

  "They're keeping a greater distance though. So something must have got them a bit wiser."

  "Uh huh. But give me targets that I just have to aim for and hit. Not things where it doesn't matter most of the time. "

  Pausert smiled to himself. The Leewit was very glad to have her older sister back, to hand over responsibility again. But listening to her, Pausert wondered if she realized that it had been a one-way street that she'd walked down. She could never go back to being quite the little hooligan that she'd been before. She still looked the complete blond urchin, of course.

  ***

  They reached the upper edge of the gravitational tug of the mass of the greenish-white world below, and Pausert was happy to discover that his gambler's instinct had been right. The Phantom ships which had been steadily gaining on them began to drop back as they got closer to planet. It must be a gloomy place, Pausert thought. It had a good eighty-five percent cloud-cover. The clouds of course reflected the light of the local sun, giving their white tops a greenish tinge.

  Goth stirred in her chair, possibly the change in note from the Venture 's tubes getting through to her. "Boy, I could murder some breakfast," she said, stretching. "What's up Captain? Where are those

  … Melchin… Illtraming ships? That is weird you know. The guys I was protecting you from back on Nikkeldepain-did you ever guess you nearly got kidnapped? They ended up taking me as bait for you. They'd been to search the old Venture 7333. She's been this way before, you know. "

  Pausert nodded. "I found star-maps. That's how we ended up stopping on the world we picked Mebeckey up at. They indicated that the ship had made a safe landing there. Right now we're hanging just inside the stratosphere of one of the worlds in this cluster. The Phantoms don't like gravity. We can rest and recuperate a little before we need use the Sheewash drive to get out of here again."

  "Had. Yeah. I reckon that place you stopped at… that must be where Threbus picked up the Illtraming map they were so busy looking for. It was inside your home. With the other bric-a-brac Threbus left behind there."

  "Lucky we didn't sell it. We were pretty hard up when you arrived on Nikkeldepain."

  Goth smiled. "And all because Threbus chose to fake his death and disappearance from the same part of space where your father also happened to go missing. A co-incidence, but it made life pretty tough for you. I must say I'm sorry on my father's behalf. I'd like to have told you then. But I couldn't, of course."

  "I bet whoever tried to kidnap you regretted it," said Pausert. "I only wish I'd known. Back then I would have thought it was enormous fun."

  "They were a tough bunch of crooks," said Goth. "And they're still out there if the information I've got is correct."

  An alarm sounded from the detectors.

  Pausert looked at his screens. "We're under attack!" he yelped, hitting the throttles.

  Goth strapped herself in again. "Leewit. Strap in! I thought you said the Phantoms wouldn't come this close to a gravity well, Captain."

  "This is not the Phantoms," said Pausert, putting the ship into a steep dive. "The attack's coming from below!"

  The Leewit had stood down from her guns. The captain flicked control of them to Goth, moving the firing relays to her board. Below, rising rapidly out of the greenish clouds were two atmospheric craft. There was something vaguely insectlike to the design.

  "Fire at will," said the captain, banking sharply. "I'm sorry, Goth. I think we just came for a lovely rest in the Megair Cannibals back yard."

  Red balls of fire leapt toward them.

  Goth and Vezzarn answered fire, and the captain flung the Venture toward the clouds, looking to use the gravity to add to the ship's thrust.

  More atmospheric craft came boiling their way out of the clouds like a seethe of roaches.

  "Going to have to go Sheewa… "

  Something hit the Venture with a terrible bang, and the old pirate-chaser spun out of control, hurtling downwards, no thrust coming out of her stern tubes at all. Pausert fought for control as they plunged down through the cloud. He tried, desperately, for re-ignition in the tubes. Nothing. He hit the laterals, and was rewarded by a burst of power from them. The winds tore and buffeted at the ship, as the captain tried vainly to slow her descent. But he just didn't have enough power.

  Inside the control room there was a storm of debris blowing about, and a white mist of icy air. Hull integrity must be damaged. A good thing they were losing altitude-a bad thing that they were losing it so fast.

  "Vezzarn here, Captain," said the old spacer over the intercom. "I've managed to get to the engine room captain. The main interfacer unit has blown, sir!"

  "Get strapped in, Vezzarn. This is going to be a rough landing." Pausert began hastily re-routing control through to the test firing circuits. Testing wasn't run through the main interface system. It was also not meant to be run in more than ten second bursts. He was going to have to set the Venture down, manually firing her tubes in ten second sequential bursts. If he could slow down their descent enough, he could set th
e Venture down on her laterals.

  That was going to take all his skill as a pilot to do it.

  It didn't help that someone was shooting at them at the same time.

  Chapter 23

  The ground was coming up entirely too fast. Goth saw how, face impassive, intent with concentration, Captain Pausert fired the main tubes in a sequential burst sending the Venture corkscrewing but slowing. Their plunge to the grey-green vegetation slowed. The Venture swung over onto her side, and the captain fired the laterals on full thrust.

  With a rush of cracking, and hissing, the Venture 7333 settled onto the trees, and then lurched and fell. The captain fired the laterals again and the Venture came to a final rest on the surface with little more than a dull thump.

  "We're down," said Pausert with relief. They were certainly neck deep in trouble, but at least they were down. That in itself was a huge weight off his shoulders.

  "Neat flying, Captain," said Goth. Other congratulations came in over the intercom, from the Leewit, Vezzarn, and in a shaky voice from Mebeckey.

  Pausert un-clipped from his webbing. "Touch and go, at times. I better go and see if we've got spare parts for the drive sequencer, or if I can rig some kind of manual over-ride. And we need to find out where the hull integrity is breached. We're not leaving here, Sheewash or no, without fixing that. With luck it is something we can weld a patch onto."

  Goth got up and followed him. "The locals might not be to pleased to see us. After that reception they seem more likely to go after us with a space-gun than offer us the use of their ship-yards."

  He nodded. "We'll just have to deal with them as they arrive. Do you think we can do anything with a light-shift? The little I saw of the local landscape, it didn't seem like the most populated of places."

  "Looked like a cross between a forest and a swamp. With the worst parts of both," said Goth. "I'll check it out. "

  "They can probably find us with an instrument-search," said Pausert. "The hull-metal must be pretty hot. And then there is radiation off our tubes. But let's not make it easy for them."

  "They sure didn't seem too friendly."

  "No," said Pausert. "I think we may have jumped out of the deep-space frying-pan, and into the planetary fire. I think-looking at the design of those ships-this world might be the base of our old enemies, the Megair Cannibals."

  Goth whistled. "Just the perfect place to crash-land, huh? Okay, you see if you can get anywhere with the sequencer. I'll stay here. Check out the screens to see what sort of lightshift I need to do, and I'll test the atmosphere. We're still alive breathing it, but who knows whether we'll be able to go on doing that indefinitely.

  "Good thinking. Keep the Leewit on the nova guns-she's uncannily good-and get Vezzarn and Mebeckey looking for breaches in hull integrity." He squeezed her shoulder. "I can't tell you how good it is to have you back, even if we're straight into a deeper mess."

  Goth found herself smiling, despite the disaster. "We're alive, Captain. And we have three witches of Karres. What's a mere Cannibal's planet to that?"

  ***

  Pausert made his way down to the engine-room, trying not to get too upset by the mess that the conflict had made of the Venture. It could be repaired, if they got out of here. Not if. When, he said determinedly to himself.

  Big dream thing, said the littlest vatch, life around you is fun. More exciting even than the dreamplays.

  "Hello. I didn't know you were still with us," said Pausert with a sort of calm resignation. After all, a bit of little-vatch mischief was fairly harmless compared to the situation they were in. It could make things worse, of course. But it might also help. There was nothing to be gained by getting upset with it.

  Been here and gone. I talk to the Leewit. Learning quite a lot about you, big dream thing.

  Via the Leewit that could be a mixed blessing, thought Pausert. But all he asked was: "There are no big vatches around, are there?" One of those could take them out of here easily enough, once Pausert got klatha hooks into it.

  There came a tinkle of vatchy laughter. Big ones near you? I don't think so! They know your mind's taste by now. Not going to come close. Different for us little ones.

  "Pity. Oh well, I'll have to try and fix the engines and the hull then. Fight our way out, if we have to."

  This seemed to amuse the vatchlet. Never dull around you, big dream thing, it said, and vanished.

  Pausert was left alone to squeeze into the crawlspace behind the electronics banks of the main sequencer. The air stank of burning, back here. The captain sighed. He let klatha-energy guide his hands towards which modules to pull. Three of them were almost totally fried, and hard to get out of their sockets. Even with the little long-necked atomic lamp the captain found he couldn't see well enough to read the module numbers in there. Besides, he'd have to get them from the stores-if they had them at all. You couldn't carry everything, and sequencers-the link between the spacedrive and the tubes-didn't often go wrong. The captain was worried. It was a long way to the nearest human space-port and spare-parts shop.

  With two of the three they were lucky. They were standard T-071 units, processors the ship used in half a dozen places. The third.. .

  Pausert stifled a curse. The third was a multiplier link, and he knew already that they didn't have one. The things were virtually indestructible bits of solid state hardware. This one was probably as old as the ship itself. It would have survived almost anything except a solid-and obviously white hot-fragment of Megair shell. That must have been what caused the hole in the hull-metal. He was standing there, biting his lip, trying to think if he'd ever read how you could do without a multiplier link. It was such a little thing, barely the size of a book-and without it, the ship was helpless.

  Vezzarn coughed. "Found the hole, skipper. Punched straight through the outer hull, into the hold, into the sequencer housing. Dunno what it hit in there or if it kept going."

  "It stopped here." Pausert showed him.

  "That's the multiplier link, eh?"

  "Yes. That's what it is. And no, we don't have a spare. And, no, I don't think it is fixable. The ship is stuck here, unless they find us."

  "The Cannibals or the Wisdoms?"

  "Now there is the question! I don't know."

  But Pausert's mind was already working on the idea of taking the Venture down the Egger route, away from here-no matter how the other two felt about the Egger route.

  The intercom squawked into life. "Captain. We got visitors."

  "Get patching, Vezzarn. If we can patch it quick enough we can get the ship out of here." Pausert made haste back to the Control room. Goth had the external screens on. The view outside was a bubbling swamp, with the mud plainly at half viewscreen level. The Venture lay next to some tall lobate trees of a peculiarly virulent shade of maroon-but that could just be the light. Between the cloud-which here was more like a swirling mist, and the faint light of the green sun, this was not a very attractive piece of real estate. Goth pointed to the upper screens. "Some kind of flier, Captain. I've light-shifted us but they're keeping station."

  It was. With its two clumsy whirling rotors and spikes that could only be some kind of weaponry it was making a slow circle, cutting swathes through the mist. "Want me to bring it down, Captain?" said the Leewit.

  "Um. Just before we do too much… " said Goth. "The mud on the screens is rising. Or, to it another way, the Venture is sinking. Fast."

  As Pausert looked out of the viewscreen, a lanky gray-skinned being stepped into sight, and then slipped behind one of the lobular trees. The creature held what was plainly some sort of weapon. It looked like it fired the cruelly barbed harpoon that protruded from the barrel. Worse still, it had had been talking into a communicator.

  Moments later, a flat sled-like craft slipped into view, with half a dozen of the gray creatures on board. They took cover, except for the one gray man who took careful aim with some sort of heavy weapon on the sled.

  "I guess there's not much poi
nt to light-shifted images of the ship as jungle foliage, then." said Goth, disgustedly. "They must have the tubes radiation pin-pointed."

  "More ship coming," said the Leewit. "Big 'uns."

  That was an understatement. There were nine of them, discharging a truly impressive number of armed gray men. And now a large armored hover-carrier was sliding above the trees, guns pointed at the Venture .

  "We're getting something on external sound, Captain. Nearly loud enough to make the hull-plates vibrate."

  "What are they saying, Leewit?" asked Pausert.

  The littlest witch answered over the intercom, seconds later. "They say we're for coming out. Or they're for boiling the mud and pre-cooking us, before they're for cutting open the hull, and for coming in and eating us. Shall I fry a few of them first?"

  The captain sighed. "No. I don't think we could hold off long enough to take the ship down the Egger route. What if we do a quick Sheewash hop out of here? We can't get too far-not off-world-because we have a hole in the hull and no real use of the main drive. But it could buy us time.

  Goth nodded. "Let's do it," she said, reaching into the drawer for the wires.

  The carrier above loosed off a bolt of red energy, sizzling the mud. The Leewit replied with a nova gun burst, as the Venture leapt clear of the glutinous steaming muck in a burst of speed that left the charges of the Megair exploding far behind them. A brief second of Sheewash and the captain used the laterals again to set her down in what looked like a glade, several hundred miles away.

  "Scary stuff, Captain!" said Goth. "The drive's not really for use so close to solid objects. We hit the ground or even these soft trees while moving at this speed and it's going to turn us into jelly."

  "Still, we must have shaken them off. If we can just get a patch on the hull, we can out of here. We're going to be in sub-radio range of Uldune pretty quick using nothing but the Sheewash. I'd rather not try to take the Venture down the Egger route again."