Into The Void

by Nigel Findley

  Vallus rejoined the others on the forecastle. “I thought that would work,” he said mildly.

  “Good job,” Aelfred told him. The first mate called down to the rope crew, “Bring her alongside. Slowly.”

  Now that the mosquito wasn’t moving, and because speed wasn’t an issue, only a dozen men were needed on the rope.

  The others picked up weapons and stood along the rail. Those with bows had arrows nocked and ready, but didn’t draw.

  Silently the mosquito inched nearer. Still nothing moved on board the small ship. Eventually the hammership rocked slightly as the two hulls met.

  “Boarding party,” Aelfred roared. “Two people. Julia and Garay.”

  The red-haired officer and the muscular crewman drew their swords and clambered over the rail. Cautiously they moved about the mosquito’s tiny deck.

  “Nobody on deck,” Julia called back. “Maybe below, but the air’s fouled. I don’t hold out much hope.”

  “Check it out,” Aelfred ordered, “but no heroics. I want you both back.”

  Julia flipped the first mate a quick salute. She and Garay moved from sight.

  Almost immediately they reappeared. Julia was in the lead, Garay following, with a large bundle in his arms. With a twinge, Teldin recognized the shape of that bundle: another body. Julia swung quickly back over the rail aboard the Probe. Garay handed his burden up to another crewman and followed.

  Aelfred and the other officers hurried down to the main deck. Teldin followed, a little hesitantly. As he drew closer, he knew he’d been right in his identification of the bundle. Lying on the deck, it was unmistakably a human body, wrapped in a heavy green traveling cloak. Aelfred knelt beside it, and slowly reached out a hand to pull the cloak back from the face.

  The body sat up. With a slender hand, it pulled the cloak back from its face and shook out its long blonde hair. “Well,” the body said in a rich contralto voice, smiling into Aelfred’s astonished face, “if this is death, it’s not as bad as I expected.”

  *****

  The officers’ saloon was as full as Teldin had ever seen it. Aelfred, Sylvie, and Julia – as Aelfred’s second-in-command after the death of Sweor Tobregdan – sat around the central table. Estriss was notably absent, but presumably the illithid had decided his presence might disrupt the proceedings.

  Teldin was present, too, though he’d pulled a chair away from the table and sat in a back comer. Nobody had actually invited him, but neither had he been excluded from the meeting, and – as his grandfather had always told him – it’s easier to get forgiveness than permission, so he’d tagged along with the others. At first he’d considered keeping the hood of his cloak in place, then had decided Sylvie and Julia would have more important things on their minds than his changed appearance. He’d been right; neither woman had given him so much as a second glance. Their attention was focused totally on the sole inhabitant of the mosquito ship.

  His own attention was focused pretty much in the same place, Teldin had to admit. He also had to admit that it was warranted.

  The newcomer sat at the table, her back to the large port that looked out to the star – studded blackness of wildspace. She’d removed the heavy cloak she’d been wrapped in, and Teldin thought that was a great improvement. She was tall – almost as tall as Teldin himself – and slender, but her movements seemed to imply there was considerable strength in her supple body. She wore a jerkin and tights of forest green, not too different from the clothes worn by most aboard the Probe, but her garb was well-tailored to show off the curves of her figure. On her feet were boots of soft mahogany-brown leather that came halfway up shapely calves. Her face was slender, but her features were more rounded than sharply chiseled, and her small nose was slightly upturned. When she smiled – which was often – the tanned skin around her green eyes crinkled in what Teldin thought of as “laugh-lines,” and she became even more beautiful than when her face was at rest. When she spoke, her warm voice seemed to have an undercurrent of laughter.

  She was speaking now, brushing shoulder-length curls of honey-blond hair back from her face. “My name is Rianna Wyvernsbane,” she said, “and, first thing, I want to thank you all for saving me. I thought I was dead.”

  Aelfred gave a half-smile and shook his head as though to dismiss the thanks. “What happened to your ship?” he asked.

  “I was inward bound from Garden,” Rianna answered.

  “For Toril?” Sylvie put in.

  “For Dragon Rock, in the Tears of Selune. I live on Tori], but I keep my ship – the Ghost – on the Rock.”

  “Toril to Garden’s a long flight in a mosquito,” Sylvie remarked.

  “Not really,” Rianna replied with a throaty chuckle, “not if you don’t mind your own company. I make my living as a message-runner. If you need a message delivered to any planet in Realmspace – fast, with no complications – I’m your girl.”

  “You were telling us what happened,” Aelfred reminded her.

  Rianna favored him with a smile. “That’s right, I was.” She sat back in her chair. She seemed completely relaxed, Teldin thought, totally unconcerned that she was aboard a strange ship surrounded by potential enemies. Was she so brave that the thought didn’t bother her, or so stupid that the danger hadn’t even occurred to her? Or was her apparent relaxation just a facade?

  “I’d delivered my message to the party in question,” Rianna went on, “and I was climbing away from Garden when I saw another vessel coming up ahead. A deathspider.”

  Aelfred cursed. “Neogi again.”

  Rianna shot him a curious look, but he waved her on with her story. “The Ghost isn’t much to look at,” she continued, “and she’s not much in combat, but I’ve stripped her for maneuverability, and she’s fast ….” She grinned wryly. “The long and the short of it is, I ran, down toward Garden again. If you know Garden at all, you know it’s a cluster of large rocks in one atmosphere envelope. I ducked in among the rocks to lose the deathspider. It worked. Just.” She grimaced. “Those neogi are nothing if not persistent. They got a few shots away, and the poor old Ghost took a bad hit ….”

  “I didn’t notice any damage,” Sylvie pointed out.

  “Take a look at the starboard wing root,” Rianna suggested, “you’ll see it’s held on by rope, a little wire, and a whole lot of good intentions. The keel is cracked, too, ready to give way, I think.”

  “Go on,” Aelfred prompted.

  “They followed me down,” the woman continued, “right on my tail, until they had to break off or slam full into one of the rocks. I went on through. They had to reverse course, then take the long way around, so I had a good head start, enough to get away.”

  “What were the neogi doing there?” The question slipped out before Teldin could stop it.

  Rianna’s green-eyed gaze settled on Teldin for the first time. I wish I’d made myself more handsome, he caught himself thinking. Now where did that thought come from?

  “I don’t know,” she replied with a smile, “I didn’t stop to ask them.”

  “And then?” Aelfred prompted.

  “Then I headed for Toril. I pushed the Ghost as hard as I could, for as long as I could keep my mind clear. I was well away from Garden, and I couldn’t see the neogi anymore. That’s when my helm died. No warning. One moment I’m tearing along at full spelljamming speed, the next, I’m moving at a crawl with no control over the ship at all.”

  Teldin felt a current of sympathy around the table. He could understand why. Vallus Leafbower’s comments about distance in wildspace were still with him. The idea of being stranded in that vastness was terrifying.

  “Bad,” Sylvie commiserated, echoing the feelings of everyone else in the saloon. “What was wrong with the helm?”

  Rianna shook her head, and her blond tresses swung. “I’m not an arcane,” she chuckled. “I can run a helm. I can’t troubleshoot one. It was just dead.”

  “And then?” Aelfred prompted again.

  �
��Then I drifted. What else could I do? I was too far from Garden for its gravity to affect me, but I did still have some speed – though not much – and I was heading toward the sun. I figured the best thing – the only thing – was to conserve the air I had. No work, no movement that I could avoid. Just hope that some ship would find me before I suffocated.” She bathed everyone at the table with a warm smile. “I slept a lot, but I didn’t enjoy the dreams.”

  “The air was foul aboard your ship,” Julia noted. “How long were you adrift?”

  “Twenty-three days.”

  The female officer looked at her uncertainly. “You had food and water for twenty-three days? On a mosquito?”

  “Water, yes,” Rianna replied. “I don’t do cargo runs, so I load the Ghost’s cargo space with as much water as I can. You never know, do you? But food, no. I’ve been on very thin rations, and for the last couple of days nothing at all. So maybe when we’re finished here …?” She patted her stomach.

  “We’re almost finished,” Aelfred said briskly, “then you can get something to eat. Your destination is Toril?”

  “Dragon Rock,” Rianna corrected him, “if you’re going near there …”

  “Our destination is Toril,” the first mate told her.

  She shrugged. “Close enough.”

  “About your ship,” Aelfred pressed on. “We can’t take her aboard.”

  “Tow her?” Rianna suggested.

  The first mate shook his head. “Not practical. If the keel is cracked, she’ll break up. Plus, we can’t land with a ship in tow.”

  Rianna digested this in silence, eyes lowered. “Ah, well,” she sighed eventually, “I suppose I knew the Ghost and I had taken our last voyage together. Cut her loose if you have to.”

  Sylvie reacted to the woman’s sadness. “We’ll post a salvage claim on the hull,” she said reassuringly. “That way maybe you’ll recover something from her.”

  The newcomer nodded her thanks, then she turned back co Aelfred. “What port on Toril?” she asked.

  “Rauthaven. Naturally, we’ll give you passage to there.”

  “Nimbral?” She looked somber for a moment, then brightened. “Well, it could be worse. I should be able to get passage to Dragon Rock from Rauthaven, then maybe another ship, and I’m back in business.” She smiled at Aelfred. “If we’re through here, maybe we could do something about that meal …?”

  *****

  As the Probe drew closer to Toril, Teldin came to realize that Rianna Wyvernsbane’s status aboard ship was almost as ambiguous as his, though for quite different reasons. Almost immediately after she’d eaten, Rianna had sought out Aelfred and insisted that he assign her duties in return for passage to Toril. She’d offered to take shifts on the hammership’s helm – after all, she was mage enough to run the Ghost – but the Probe already had enough helmsmen. Instead he assigned her to assist Sylvie with plotting the approach to Rauthaven.

  The crew knew that Rianna was at least nominally an officer – by virtue of her assignment alone, though she couldn’t officially give orders – but they couldn’t help but respond to her on a nonprofessional level as well. She was, after all, strikingly beautiful, and it was apparent that she had no close friendship – or any other relationship – with anyone on board. That was just another factor that set her apart from most of the other women on board. There were no rules aboard the Probe that prohibited relationships or even casual liaisons between crew members – as long as they didn’t interfere with the smooth running of the ship – and the hammer-ship’s female crew members were generally as glad to enjoy the benefits of this freedom as the males.

  It was easy to learn just where Rianna was aboard the Probe, Teldin noted with amusement, just look for the largest group of off-duty male crew members. The size of her entourage seemed pretty constant, though its membership varied according to time of day.

  Even when Rianna wasn’t present, she was often the topic of conversation among the “temporarily unattached” men aboard. Discussions over who did or didn’t “have a chance” with her were common, and some of these exchanges sometimes grew a little heated. One, in fact, almost came to blows, forcing Aelfred Silverhorn to exercise his considerable disciplinary powers. The two men involved found themselves standing back-to-back watches for three days.

  Rianna did nothing to foster these controversies, but her naturally friendly nature did nothing to discourage them either. She was always ready to talk to anyone nearby, and male members of the crew frequently competed to see who could best elicit her warm and throaty laugh.

  Teldin’s own situation was different, too. Once it was established that Rianna would stay aboard until the Probe made landfall, he suggested to Aelfred that it might be best if he dropped the charade that he was becoming less and less comfortable maintaining. To his surprise, Aelfred disagreed vehemently. “It’s not that I have any reason to distrust her,” the first mate explained, “quite the opposite, in fact, but why take the risk? It’s safer if you don’t show your own face. I’m not ordering you, Teldin,” he added, “just asking, as a friend, all right?” Teldin had accepted the big warrior’s argument, but wasn’t happy with it.

  As the days passed, there was no way he could keep his new face hidden. At first, crew members had shown surprise over the “new man” aboard the Probe, but his own voice – which he was still incapable of disguising – quickly gave away his true identity. The crew’s reaction to this had surprised him deeply. He’d expected that people would question him, but that simply never happened. Instead, the crew just shrugged and seemed to write it off as another magical eccentricity of the “fighter-mage” in their midst. He learned that Estriss, as captain, had quietly passed the word that no crew member was to tell Rianna about Teldin’s true identity, on pain of losing one half of the culprit’s pay for the voyage. Considering, cynically, that any crewman would give up that one-half share and more for a better chance at Rianna’s favors, Teldin doubted that this edict would have any effect at all.

  Teldin made no effort to speak to Rianna and, in fact, went out of his way to avoid meeting her. Even though he found her as attractive as did every other male member of the crew, he knew that talking to her would force him into a position of lying about his identity, and that was something he simply didn’t want to be compelled to do.

  So, for the first five days after her arrival on board, Teldin saw Rianna Wyvernsbane only at a distance.

  There was no way that could continue, of course. On the sixth day after the Probe had encountered the Mosquito, Teldin found himself unable to sleep. As he usually did on occasions such as this, he went to the officers’ saloon.

  When he opened the door, he saw that Rianna was already there. Unaccountably, she was alone, somehow having managed to shake off her retinue of admirers. She was sprawled, boneless and relaxed, in one chair, with her long legs propped up on another, gazing out the port into the depths of space. He started to withdraw.

  Rianna must have sensed his presence somehow, for she turned her green-eyed gaze on him and greeted him with a slow smile. “Well met,” she said lazily. “Join me?” She patted another chair.

  Teldin hesitated. There was no way he could leave now without being unforgivably rude …. Plus he had to admit that he found the tall blonde very attractive, and the chance to talk to her alone wasn’t something to pass up lightly.

  His hesitation was long enough for Rianna to notice. Her warm smile faded a little. “If you’d rather not …” she said quietly, a hint of disappointment in her voice.

  Quickly he stepped into the room, closing the door behind him. “No,” he answered, “I’d like to.” He took the chair she had indicated. It was close to her, close enough for him to notice a subtle aroma. Some kind of musky perfume? None of the other women aboard wore scent. Or was it just her natural fragrance? He sat in the chair a little stiffly, then forced himself to relax. For the first time, he had the opportunity to study the woman from close up. At this range, it was p
ossible to be a little more critical. Taken individually, her features weren’t as perfect as they appeared from a distance. Her mouth, for example, was a little large for her face, filled with white teeth. When she smiled, her upper lip pulled back to display a line of pink gum. Her jawline was hard, giving her a “stubborn” chin.

  But that was nit-picking. When he looked into Rianna’s face, it was the totality that mattered, the way the individual features combined into a harmonious whole. He had to admit that Rianna Wyvernsbane was one of the most beautiful women he’d ever seen, let alone spoken to.

  He’d never been good at judging women’s ages – and that fact had gotten him into minor trouble on occasion. Rianna simply reinforced the fact. Initially he’d guessed that she was around twenty summers. Now he had to revise that estimate upward. The laugh-lines around her eyes were deeper and remained visible – if only as a network of spiderweb-thin traces – even when her face was in repose. The eyes themselves were clear and steady and seemed to contain wisdom out of keeping with someone as young as his original guess. If he were forced to estimate now, he’d have to say she was about his own age, maybe even a couple of years older.

  If Rianna noticed his close appraisal, she gave no sign. “I remember you were here when I first arrived,” she said, “so you know who I am ….” She let the statement trail off.

  “My name is Aldyn Brewer,” Teldin told her, a name that Estriss had suggested he use. Its rhythm was much die same as his real name, as were the sounds of its individual syllables. The illithid had reasoned that Teldin would be better able to remember – and respond to – a name with a cadence similar to his own.

  “Aldyn Brewer,” Rianna repeated. The name sounded so much better rolling off her tongue, Teldin thought. “Did you come here looking for me, Aldyn Brewer?”

  “No,” Teldin answered honestly. “I often come here to relax.”

  “To be alone with the stars,” Rianna amplified. “Yes. That’s why I came here. I miss it, being on a big ship. That’s what I liked about the Ghost. Alone with the stars for days, weeks at a time. Do you like your own company, Aldyn Brewer?” Her voice was slow, lazy, as though she were merely vocalizing her wandering thoughts.