Analog SFF, December 2005

by Dell Magazine Authors

  “Uh, the bridge, sir."

  “All right. We're going to have to get there; that's where the scuttling triggers are located. Time to do a little outside climbing, boys."

  He kicked at the broken planking and soon had made an opening big enough to worm through. The staffer who'd confronted him earlier put a hand on his arm as he made to go through it. “Let me go first, sir. We don't know what's out there."

  Fanning stopped in surprise. “What's your name?"

  “Travis, sir."

  “You've got a fine sense of propriety, Travis, but you're a bit impertinent.” Travis looked crestfallen and Fanning laughed. “Get going! We'll talk later."

  Travis made it outside and apparently didn't die; his hand reached back through the gap to help Fanning and the other staffers clamber out. They found themselves at the bottom of a huge dent in the Rook's hull. Nothing that the carpenters couldn't take care of, though. Fanning looked out and saw that both the Rook and the pirate had stopped spinning. They were lashed together now by dozens of ropes. The nearest hatches on the pirate were twenty feet away, and while men were popping out of those every few seconds, none looked forward and spotted Fanning's small group. It was tempting to start picking them off, but that would be a fool's game. They wouldn't last a minute before somebody sniped them from behind a porthole.

  “There's a fine irony,” commented Fanning as he groped for purchase on the streamlined hull. All around was nothing but air, the endless abyss of Virga; a mis-grab here would send you on a slow trip round the world, with the birds, bugs, and fish making a moving feast of you along the way.

  “What's that sir?” Travis appeared next to him. Both of them clung by their fingernails to the gaps between hull planks, moving themselves forward with slow swings so as not to lose that purchase.

  Fanning shrugged and said, “We came out here to find a pirate's treasure, but it looks like we're going to become such a treasure instead."

  Travis nearly lost his grip. “Pirate's ... treasure? Admiral, sir, what are you talking about?"

  Fanning gazed past him. Another of his ships was disappearing behind a pall of smoke. He doubted that it was a deliberate ploy, it wasn't evenly enough distributed. That did not look good.

  They were approaching the portholes to the bridge. There was an impenetrable hatch there; they would have to talk their way in. Shouldn't be hard, Fanning thought absently. Venera's not mad at me for anything at the moment.

  He risked another glance at the battle. Yes, that was definitely the Clarity on fire out there. Three pirates had it under sustained attack. They were using a wheel formation, he saw—that was far too sophisticated a maneuver to be undertaken by untrained privateers. The three ships had let out ropes and tied them together at a central point. With their engines on full they'd begun to spin around that central pivot point. Spinning up like that was easy; it was a standard way for groups of ships that lacked centrifuges to create gravity while on long voyages. What was hard was spinning and twisting while you spun to present a difficult target to attackers. These ships were doing that.

  Two-thirds of the wheeling formation were inside the cloud bank. The net effect was that a pirate would swing out of the white wall at a fierce clip, fire a volley of rockets, and then peel back into the mist in a much steeper turn than would normally be possible. The Clarity was firing rockets at the center of the formation, hoping to cut the ropes that held the three ships together. That was a long shot, however.

  Travis had given up asking about the treasure and was pounding on the armored hatch. Fanning hardly noticed, mesmerized as he was by the drama unfolding in that distant patch of sky. Get out of there, he willed the Clarity, but its engines must be damaged. It was a hanging target, like a driver fallen off his bike and vulnerable in clear air. In seconds it could all be over.

  The cloud bank pulse orange once, twice, then dozens of times in rapid succession. Fanning had seen fireworks reflecting off clouds; that was what this looked like. He'd been mentally timing the appearance of each ship from within the clouds, and the next one was late. No, not late—it wasn't coming out. Seconds passed, and the second of the three should have appeared, but it didn't.

  Finally one appeared. The pirate left the cloud bank in an uncontrolled tumble. Flashes of rocket fire showed long streamers of rope trailing behind it.

  “They hit something,” he said. Travis looked up, puzzled. Fanning pointed, and as he did so another flash lit the clouds, this one miles away.

  “Somebody moved the icebergs,” he whispered. Then he started to laugh. Two spokes of the wheel had been lost within seconds—two pirate ships flown at full speed into an unexpected obstacle. The fools were too confident in their charts, and now they were blindly running into the mountains of ice they had been using to hide their maneuvering. It served them right.

  “I don't see what it is you find so amusing about the situation,” said a cold voice behind Fanning.

  “Travis, cease your work,” he said quietly. Turning, he raised his hands. “We have visitors."

  * * * *

  Venera Fanning crouched on the inside of the bridge's hatch. She could hear voices outside; one had sounded like her husband's. Captain Sembry refused to undog the hatch, however, and she didn't have the strength. The damn thing was designed to resist an invading force. Opening was about the last thing it was capable of doing.

  Rhythmic pounding came from the inner doors as well. A minute ago an explosive charge had gone off behind one of those doors, but it hadn't been enough to break the hinges. It was only a matter of time, though.

  Well, she thought, this will be an interesting new chapter in my life. Captured by pirates! The prospects of various fates worse than death outraged and angered her, but Venera wasn't afraid. She was already wondering what leverage she could use to make the best of the situation.

  “The gas?"

  Venera came alert at those words. She looked over at the bridge crew, who were clustered around a set of valves and pipes at the back of the can-shaped chamber. Captain Sembry was shaking his head at whoever had spoken.

  “Too late for that,” he said. “We'd kill the boarders, but the rest of the pirates would just blow the stuff out and come in again."

  “The charges, then."

  Sembry nodded, reaching into his jacket for something.

  “Captain?” Venera put on her best maiden-in-distress act. “What's happening?"

  Sembry turned, looking patriarchal and sad. “I'm sorry, dear,” he said, “but we can't allow a Slipstream ship to fall into enemy hands. I'm going to have to scuttle the Rook."

  She widened her eyes. “But we'll all be killed, won't we?"

  He sighed. “That is the nature of military service, I'm afraid."

  “How do you scuttle a big ship like this?” she asked.

  Sembry showed her the key in his hand. He nodded to a set of metal boxes on the wall behind him. “These charges can only be set off by electrical current,” he explained. “This key—"

  He blinked in surprise at the pistol Venera had produced from inside her silk pantaloons. Sembry opened his mouth to speak but Venera never learned what he might have said, because at that moment she shot him in the forehead.

  The rest of the bridge crew was nicely packed together, and consequently picking them off was just as easy.

  Twitching bodies and drops of blood caromed around the bridge. Venera ducked through it all and grabbed Sembry, who still had a surprised look on his face.

  First order of business, she thought: dispose of this key.

  Second: open the doors and let in the pirates.

  * * * *

  His plan had worked. Hayden and Martor hovered high above the action, at the only spot he'd found where they could see past cloud, contrail, smoke, and darkness. Four icebergs were nosing out of the mist now, trailing fog as they slowly gathered momentum in their long fall towards the Sun of Suns. The pirates had lost their advantage and were in disarray. The battle
might have turned.

  Something he hadn't anticipated was happening, though: as the icebergs fell, they brought their weather with them. The battle scene was fast disappearing in a vast billow of cloud. Already foghorns were sounding through the dimness as the ships struggled to avoid one another.

  Martor was squirming with impatience. “Now back to the Rook!"

  Hayden nodded and spun up the engine, but he was uneasy. With the ships separated by mist and mines, it could be a long time before the Rook was relieved. He nudged them cautiously through the layers of mist, listening for the sound of gunfire or rockets. Ominously, he heard nothing.

  A black hull loomed up suddenly and he had to spin the bike and hit the gas to stop in time. “It's the pirate!” said Martor as he groped for the sword he'd stowed in the sidecar. “Sounds like we've won!"

  Hayden eased them around the hull, as quietly as he could. The pirate and the Rook were still bound together with rope, and lights burned in the portholes of both. He could see the gray shapes of men working on the Rook's engines, so the fight must indeed be over.

  Martor was nearly bursting. “Come on, what are you waiting for?"

  “Shh!” Cutting the engine entirely, Hayden let them drift towards the aft of the ships. The working figures resolved slowly, like images he'd once seen on a photographic emulsion.

  “Hey, those aren't—” Quickly Hayden grabbed Martor's arm, putting a finger to his own lips. The boy pulled away.

  “But that can't be! We have to do something."

  “Martor, they've taken the Rook,” Hayden whispered. “We can't go back now."

  “What are you talking about? This is the perfect time to go back. They won't be expecting us. We can catch a ride on the hull, like tired crows, and when they least expect it—” Hayden shook his head.

  Martor tried again. “Then let's hang back in the clouds and follow them ... What?"

  “We have another ten minutes’ worth of gas, tops. If they aren't out there already, the pirates are going to send out bikes any minute now to look for any followers. And you know perfectly well they'll check every inch of the hull, inside and out, for stowaways."

  “You want to run back to one of the other ships? No! I'm staying to fight."

  “Martor, that's ridiculous. You wouldn't last ten seconds.” Let the boy think they were returning to the other ships. By the time he realized that their true destination was the tourist city, it would be too late.

  Hayden felt sick at the thought of leaving. Consigning Aubri Mahallan to these monsters was another defeat in a lifetime of defeats. And for some reason, the thought that Admiral Fanning was dead or soon would be, was no consolation. Who cares about him? some unexpected part of him said. Only you, and what do you matter?

  “I hate to do it,” he said sincerely. “But we've got to—"

  He glanced up just in time to see the black cylinder of a rocket, held in Martor's hands, swing towards his face. Then everything burst and went dark.

  9

  When Venera Fanning was a girl, she lived in a room with canary-yellow walls. Little trees and airships were painted on it, and her bed had a canopy of dusty velvet and sat against one wall.

  At night, if she pressed her ear to the uneven plaster, she could hear the screams of men and women being tortured in her father's dungeon.

  She'd been reminded of home many times over the past day. Now, though, the sounds of screaming echoing through the Rook had died out. In the relative silence that followed, she could hear someone big approaching through the lamplit dimness—whoever it was, was banging back and forth off the walls in a freefall tantrum. As the figure passed the doors to the hangar where Venera was tied up, she saw that it was the pirate captain, Dentius was his name. It was apparent that he wasn't pleased with the results of the torture session.

  Venera took the opportunity. “By now,” she said loudly, “you'll have noticed that the crew have absolutely no idea where we were going."

  Dentius whirled. His already small eyes narrowed further and his lips pulled back from his teeth. Swinging into the hangar, he stopped himself by wrapping his legs around Venera's hips. He grabbed her by the throat.

  “What do you know?” he shouted. “Tell me or you're next."

  “Now, Captain,” she croaked, rearing back, “there are easier ways. I'm quite willing to tell you ... for a little consideration."

  He sneered. Dentius wore the faded and patched uniform of an Aerie ship captain. His face, however, bore no traces of ever having been exposed to sunlight. Like most of his crewmen, his skin was as white as the inside of a potato, except where it was criss-crossed with pink scars. To Venera he looked like some giant, writhing grub stuffed into an officer's jacket.

  She knew he was already inclined to treat her differently than the crew, who were mostly crammed into empty rocket racks or water lockers, out of sight and momentarily out of mind. Whether Chaison was with them, or whether he even lived, she had no idea.

  Venera and Aubri Mahallan were tied up and on display in the hangar, “as an inspiration to the lads,” Dentius had said—though both were still clothed because, he'd said, “there's a fine line between inspired and obsessed.” Still, Mahallan was lashed spread-eagled in the center of the space and seemed dazed and despairing. Venera merely had her wrists fastened to a stantion near the door.

  It was clear what the captain had in mind for Mahallan. If he had no clear idea of what to do with Venera, she wanted to provide him with some alternatives before he thought about it too much.

  He peered at her for a moment, then sucker-punched her in the kidneys. The pain was astonishing—but through Venera's mind flashed a memory of herself lying on marble tiles, moaning through a ruined mouth and staring at the blood-shrouded shape of a rifle bullet that lay next to her. While nobody came and her fury grew and grew...

  Dentius grabbed her hair and pulled her head back. “Tell me!” he roared at her. “Or I'll kill you right now!"

  “Th-that's the problem, isn't it?” She managed to smile, though her neck and jaw pulsed with pain and she could feel the hairs in her scalp starting to pull out. “You're going to kill me anyway. So why should I cooperate?"

  Dentius grunted and drew back. He had the mentality of a shark, she'd decided: all straight-ahead brute force, but stupid and immobile when stopped. Her bravado seemed to have stymied him—or at least, it had reminded him of what she'd already done.

  “Why'd you shoot the captain?” he asked suddenly.

  Venera smiled. “Why? Because he was the one other person on board who knew our destination."

  Dentius let go of her hair. At that moment one of his obsequious mates appeared in the doorway. “Inventory's done, Captain,” he said in a familiar accent she couldn't quite place. “Strictly military, except for some paintings. Probably going to trade those at the voyeur's palace."

  Dentius nodded, eyeing Venera speculatively. Then he drew a knife out of his boot. She drew back, but he merely reached up to cut the length of rope holding her to the beam. “We'd best talk further,” he said, as he towed her out of the hangar and into the remains of battle: drifting droplets of blood and hanging balls of smoke, wood splinters and tumbling scarves of bandage.

  As he dragged her with bumps and jerks through the wooden ribs of the ship, Venera tried to keep her wits. She needed a sense of who was still alive, and where they were. The rocket racks were essentially iron cages, so it was easy to see their inhabitants. None of the senior officers were visible, only able airmen who stared at her listlessly or with fear. Was Chaison dead, then?

  Dentius hauled her into the axle of the centrifuge, which had been spun up. Exhausted or wounded pirates lolled in hammocks at the rim of the wheel; she heard both moaning and laughter. “My cabin,” she said to Dentius, pointing with her tied hands.

  “Captain's cabin,” he said. “You his woman?"

  She shook her head. Chaison Fanning had appropriated Sembry's cabin, causing the Rook's captain to have to
bunk elsewhere. “I was the admiral's wife,” she admitted. “But he's dead and lost in the clouds now."

  Venera had no doubt that Dentius would have asked the tortured men about her. There was no point in trying to deny her status.

  Without comment Dentius shoved her into the cabin, which was a shambles of overturned chests and jumbled clothing. Most of the contents had been Sembry's of course; Chaison traveled light.

  Her jewel box lay on the floor, its lid up, the fated bullet that had struck her jaw still on its velvet bed inside. The centrifuge's spin was making her nauseous, so Venera went to sit on the edge of the bed, making a show of straightening her clothes.

  “So...” Dentius gnawed at one calloused knuckle. “Why'd you kill the rest of the bridgers?"

  She shrugged. “They ... objected to my tactics."

  Dentius laughed. “Venera Fanning, that's your name, isn't it?"

  “Aye,” she said, lifting her chin. Her heart was hammering in her chest; raised though she was in the arts of deceit, Venera doubted she could keep her calm demeanor for long.

  Dragging over a chair, Dentius sat down and clasped his hands in his lap. “So,” he said in a horrible parody of politeness, “what brings you to our Winter, Venera Fanning?"

  “Treasure,” she said promptly. “Somewhat ironically ... pirate treasure, to be exact."

  Dentius shook his head. “If there were anything worth having out here, I'd have taken it and built a fleet to reconquer Aerie years ago. Nobody brings treasure into Winter. Anybody here who's got it, takes it somewhere sunny."

  “I know,” she said. “But that wasn't always the case. There've been times when convoys ran through Winter regularly, shipping goods between the principalities of Candesce and the outer nations. And during those periods, there was treasure to be had."

  Dentius thought for a while. His face, which had appeared that of a brutal simpleton just minutes ago, relaxed by degrees into that of an weary, disappointed man. After a while he said, “I've heard the fairy tales. We all have. There was even a time when I believed in such things.” With a faint smile he added, “It's Anetene, isn't it? You're talking about the—how would you put it?—'the fabled treasure of Anetene.’”