She decided to report to Patris that she was feeling better and able to resume shipboard duties. Busying herself with mundane matters seemed the best way to drive away disturbing thoughts. Before long, her head was filled with the feel of the wind, the smell of salt, and the steady rhythm of the waves.
~
Late in the afternoon on the fourth day, she was seated in the crow’s nest. Of all the places on the ship, this was her favourite. Here, far above the deck, she felt as free as the birds that wheeled overhead. She was Queen of the Sea, casting her eye over a watery domain that stretched as far as the eye could see. All of a sudden, she spied a hazy line on the horizon. She squinted, rubbed her eyes, and peered at it again. Finally, when she was certain it was not a mirage, she pointed and hollered. “Land. Land on the port quarter.”
Her cry was met by answering shouts from below. People scurried over the deck like insects, congregating at the ship’s side. Shann felt a wave of relief wash over her, followed by another of anticipation. After so many days—so many hardships—their goal was in sight at last. Time to make an end of it.
She forsook her throne and descended the rigging.
Lyall and Alondo stood ready at the lines. Each wore a grey sailor outfit, although Alondo’s head was topped off, as usual, by his festive red cap.
Patris was waiting for her, a squally wind blowing his long lank hair about his face. “Well spotted, First Mate. Wind has veered around to the northwest. We can sail on a beam reach, then close haul and tack inshore. She’s gusting though, so you’ll need to pay constant attention to the sail trim.”
Shann nodded. “When you’re ready to turn into the wind, let me know.”
She watched his retreat as he hurried aft to man the rudder. Then she joined the others, working to let out as much sail as possible. As the swell increased and the waves grew steeper, they allowed the sail to luff, spilling excess wind, and hauled the Reach in a little closer to the breeze. Shann’s actions were instinctive, as if she were one with the ship. She felt a twinge of regret at the thought that all too soon she would be leaving behind the freedom of the open sea once again.
Patris hollered, and the ship heeled over to port so that she was now close hauled. The vessel rose and fell. Wind-whipped spray ran down their faces as the three crewmembers drew in the sheet tightly and began to tack upwind. Gradually, the distant shoreline rose up and became a forbidding cliff of dark grey slate and obsidian. Waves crashed against the jumble of huge rocks at its base, and birds cawed overhead, adding their cries to the cacophony. They reefed the sail and the Reach came about so that she was running parallel to the shore.
Patris tied off the rudder, descended the ladder, and joined them. Lyall’s brow furrowed as his gaze ran up the towering cliff face. “Where do you suggest we weigh anchor?”
Patris wiped the hair away from his face. “I don’t suppose anyone has a chart or a map of this island?”
Lyall shook his head. “I’m afraid not. Rael says that no records survived from ancient times, other than the name ‘Helice’. None of his people have ever ventured here.”
“Then I suggest we circumnavigate the island until we find a place where we can put ashore—assuming of course there is one.” Typical Patris, she thought. Always has to add a note of pessimism.
“The hu-mans managed to land here,” Lyall maintained. “So will we.”
The line of cliffs slipped slowly past as the Reach hugged the coastline, threading bare islets of grey granite. Four-winged birds in sombre black and white plumage perched on skerries cawed at them as they passed, as if resenting their intrusion. At length, the wall of indomitable rock parted, to reveal an inlet guarded by reefs.
Lyall went over and stood beside Patris as he surveyed the gap between the reefs. “What do you think?”
“If the swell doesn’t get any worse, then it should be navigable,” Patris replied, “provided there’s sufficient clearance for the keel. We go in slow—take regular soundings to be on the safe side.”
“All right. Make the necessary preparations and let me know when you’re ready.” Lyall turned. The three drach were heading towards them, with Keris, Boxx, and Rael just behind them. Keris was like a vara-cat—watching their every move.
“What’s happening?” Frang demanded.
“We’re going to anchor in the bay over there,” Lyall informed him. “My party will then take the launch and make landfall. You and your men will stay here and guard the ship until our return, as agreed.”
Frang’s face was a stone mask. “Very well.” He turned and strode away, the other two blue-coated figures trailing in his wake. No arguments. No offhand comments. No veiled threats. He’s up to something.
Alondo’s cheery voice cut short Shann’s brooding. “So... who’s going ashore?”
“You are, old friend,” Lyall said, “together with the other three component carriers—Keris, Rael, and Shann, here. I will go to watch your backs. Patris stays here with the ship.”
“What about Boxx?” Shann asked.
Lyall looked thoughtful. “Its abilities could be useful, but I think we should ask it. Boxx, are you willing to come with us?”
The Chandara replied in its child-like voice. “I Go With Keris.”
“Then it’s decided,” Lyall said.
“What is your plan?” Keris inquired.
“To locate the hu-man weapon and neutralize it,” Lyall replied.
“But we have no idea of its location,” she pointed out. “Nor do we know the position and relative strengths of the enemy. We cannot formulate a strategy without that information. There are too many things that could go wrong. Let me go ashore first—scout and then report back.”
“And if we lose you, what then?” Lyall countered. “Three component bearers are no use; we need all four if Annata’s instrument is going to work. No—we go in together.”
The others murmured their assent. Keris fell silent; clearly, this was one battle she was not going to win. Shann felt a certain sympathy with the woman’s point of view. Lyall was a good man and an inspired leader, but there were times when he got carried away with his own optimism. Keris was invariably the voice of reason, and she tended to get knocked back for it. But her training and experience meant that she was right more often than she was wrong. Yet in the final analysis, she would always follow his lead. All of them followed his lead.
Let’s hope he doesn’t lead us all off a cliff.
~
“Five fathoms.” Patris’s voice rang out over the deck as Annata’s Reach creaked and wallowed her way between the reefs that lay on either side of the inlet.
“Six fathoms.” Everyone was on deck, even those who had no need to be. It felt as if the entire ship were holding its breath.
“No contact.” Patris let down the lead line once more. Lyall, Alondo, and Shann stood by—ready to spring into action at a word of command.
“Four fathoms and a half... three fathoms.” Shann realised she was grinding her teeth and made a forcible effort to stop. “The ship’s draught is one and a half fathoms,” Patris declared. “If we get to two and a half, I’m calling a halt. I’m not going to risk gouging another hole in her side; not out here, in the middle of nowhere.”
No one dissented. When it came to the operation of the ship, Patris’s word was unassailable and his decision final.
Shann peered towards shore. She could make out a beach now— stony and covered with patches of pure white snow. It reminded her of the beach she had woken up on those many days previously, when she first sighted this world. It looked just as empty and desolate. Beyond the beach, a barren, rocky landscape terminated in a line of ancient-looking hills.
She started to turn away. A flash—two flashes caught the corner of her eye. Hurtling towards them from the direction of the island’s interior were a pair of sleek silver avionics. “Look out,” she cried.
Heads barely had enough time to turn before a searing bolt of energy lanced forth from th
e front of the nearest craft, narrowly missing the ship’s starboard side. A plume of water shot into the air at the point of impact. Patris swore. Keris drew her weapon, but it was unclear how she intended to use it against the attacking aircraft. The pitch of their engines fell as they passed directly overhead and started to bank in preparation for another pass.
Shann glanced around and spotted Rael, climbing the ladder to the foredeck. Above him sat the avionic—securely held by its deck mountings. A wild idea came to her, and she raced after him. When she reached the raised foredeck, she saw that the clamps had been released, and he was already standing on the fan housing and preparing to climb into the cockpit. “Wait for me,” she shouted.
Rael turned and looked over his shoulder. “Shann. What are you doing?”
“I’m going to fly this thing.”
“What? Are you crazy? Not a chance. The avionic is my responsibility. Besides, you don’t have the flight experience. Heck, you haven’t even had any formal training.”
“But I do have the combat experience. I proved that in the Cathgorns. Remember?”
“But this avionic is different,” he insisted. “It has certain... enhancements. No one is allowed to touch it except me—those are my orders.”
A bright flash cut a diagonal swathe across the afterdeck, searing it with a black scar and sending bits of timber raining down like shrapnel.
“You want to argue about this now?” Without waiting for a reply, she hauled herself up, shoved him aside, and climbed into the rear seat. Rael muttered something inaudible under his breath and took the front seat, pulling the transparent cover down savagely.
Shann fired up the twin fans, located the lever that corresponded to the avionic’s lodestone layer, and rammed it open. Her stomach stayed firmly on the deck as the avionic shot vertically into the air, propelled by the lodestone set into the Reach’s foredeck. The boy in the front seat let out a gasp. You’d better not throw up on me.
Her intention was to do something similar to last time—get above the other craft and use the repulsive force of the avionic’s lodestone to knock them out of the sky. However, the plan was not without its flaws. Even if these pilots had not heard of her earlier stunt, there were still two of them. She might manage to down one of the craft by that method, but seriously doubted whether the other pilot would allow her to do the same to him. Still, it might give Lyall and the others a chance, and right now, it was all she could think of. Yet there was something else—something Rael had mentioned.
Shann swivelled both of the avionic’s fans to a forty-five-degree angle, and the aircraft shot forward. “All right. What did you mean by ‘enhancements’?”
“I can’t tell you,” Rael yelled over the fan’s high-pitched whine. “Access to information on the technology is restricted by order of the Directorate.”
Shann felt like reaching forward and cuffing him around the back of the head. “Don’t be an idiot. We’re under attack. All I have is the lodestone and my piloting skills. If you have something—”
“Electrostatic charge,” he chimed in.
“Electro-what?”
“Electrostatic charge. It’s based on a modified version of the weapon the drach use.”
“You mean their stun weapon? What use—”
“Hannath theorised that the avionics that the hu-mans use must employ sophisticated electrical systems. A sufficiently high charge could disrupt them—possibly fry them completely.”
“And that would knock them down?”
“If it works, yes.”
“Can you operate it from there?”
“Yes.”
“Then it’s time to test it out. Be ready to fire the thing when we get within range.”
Shann cut the starboard fan and opened up the port fan until it screamed. The avionic whipped around and began heading back towards the Reach’s position. From across the bay, the two opposing craft were coming in once more for a low pass. On the deck of the ship, most of the tiny figures were clustered around the launch. It looked as if they were about to abandon ship.
“Ready the weapon,” she yelled. The ship passed beneath them, and Shann extended the avionic’s lodestone layer once more, in order to get a boost off the refined lodestone in the foredeck. Both of the incoming vessels directed their energy discharges against the ship rather than her. It seemed that they did not see her as a serious threat.
“Now.”
A jagged yellow finger of fire erupted from someplace beneath the cockpit. It enveloped the nearest attacking craft in lightning that crackled and sputtered over every inch of its surface. She banked the avionic and watched as the lightning died and the other machine slowed and began dropping towards the water.
Shann cut off Rael’s victorious whoop. “It’s not over yet.” Panic seized her as she searched frantically above and behind for the second attacker, but he had eluded her. To make matters worse, she had now made them his prime target.
Bang. Shann was thrown back, then forward, as a sudden impact struck them from behind. An acrid, burning smell started to fill the cockpit as she fought to regain control. Smoke poured from both fans, and the controls were sluggish and unresponsive. They were starting to lose altitude. Suddenly, the grind and judder of their engines was joined by the smooth and steady whine of the other machine as it passed over their heads.
“Fire,” she screamed.
Another charge sizzled across the gap and wrapped its tendrils around the second craft. It flipped upside down and began a downward spiral. Shann had no further time to track its progress, as she turned her full attention back to their stricken avionic.
They were heading inland, towards a line of saw-toothed peaks ringed by low-lying clouds, which constituted the island’s spine. She pushed and pulled levers in a frantic attempt to keep the flying machine on an even keel as clouds of black smoke billowed out behind them, marking their erratic flight path.
“We’re going down,” she yelled.
<><><><><>
Chapter 6
Alexander Edward McCann drifted towards consciousness and was greeted by a vision of white all around. But in place of the intense cold, there was a cocoon of warmth, and instead of the crisp white snow—crisp white sheets. A prolonged argument followed between the part of himself that wanted to revel in his newfound comforts and the part that insisted that he should explore his new surroundings and find some answers.
At length, the explorer won out, and he hauled himself out of bed. At once, his muscles began to protest, and the part of him that had demanded rest cried I told you so.
He was in an upstairs room furnished in rustic fashion—poor, yet functional. A basin of water stood on a thick wooden table by the bed. A sash window afforded a view of a snowy landscape that gave no clue as to his location. He had been stripped to his undershirt, and his gamma—his hand-held gamma ray laser—was gone.
He vaguely recalled his descent from the tower in the mountains, but the sequence of events appeared disjointed, so that it was impossible to determine whether they were real or part of some fevered dream. He had been attacked by the large, shaggy beasts that infested the upper ranges—of that he was fairly certain. He remembered his weapon blossoming, as bright as the suns; the sound of enraged growls and the stench of singed fur; one of the dark-green-skinned creatures staring down at him, shouting something. The next thing he knew, he was waking up here. Wherever ‘here’ was.
The door had been left open, and he could hear the sound of voices drifting up from below. He swung his bare feet to the bare wooden floor and began casting about for his boots and trousers. They were nowhere to be seen. Maybe they had been knocked under the bed? He got down on all fours, put his face to the floor, and began peering into the gap beneath the bed. There was a strip of cloth and something that looked like a bobbin, but nothing that resembled a pair of size nine boots.
McCann muttered a curse to himself. As he did so, he felt a tingle in the back of his neck—a presence beh
ind him. He jerked his head around to see a round olive face and wide, brown eyes peeking at him from behind the door jamb. The face was staring at the sight of two large white buttocks jutting out from the bottom of the bed. McCann screwed his face up. “Shoo.” The little face disappeared.
McCann pulled a sheet off the bed and tied it around his waist like a sarong. A further search of the room did not uncover the rest of his clothes. He went to the door, but the juvenile Kelanni was gone. He padded out onto the landing and went to the head of the stairs. The voices from below were louder now—more audible.
The first voice was female “... were ya thinkin’ of—bringin’ ’im ’ere?”
A male voice answered—gruff and somehow familiar. “We ’ad no choice. ’E was out of it. We couldn’ just leave ’im there t’ be taken by th’ cold or th’ murghal. B’sides, I ’ad t’ know... ”
“You ’ad t’ know what?” the female voice demanded.
“What a ’u-man was doin’ off their island an’ all th’ way up in th’ Cathgorns. ’Ow did ’e get there? What’s ’e up to? ’Ow many more o’ them are there?”
“That’s none o’ our concern,” the female returned. “The Directorate is responsible fer them kinds o’ doins. They could take yer licence away.”
A new male voice entered the discussion—younger, and filled with trepidation. “They wouldn’ do that, would they, Yonach?”
“The high-ups favour them new hunters wi’ their fancy new equipment,” the female continued. “There’s a number of ’em sees Yonach as fuddy-duddy an out o’ date. They’d just as soon flush ’im away, wipe their backsides, and think no more o’ it.”
“Y’don’t understand what’s at stake ’ere, woman,” Yonach replied. If the ’u-mans ’ave left their island an’ come ’ere, it could lead to another war.”
The Lodestone Trilogy (Limited Edition) (The Lodestone Series) Page 76
