“Make sure you have guards on the Air Weavers.” Barrett said to the Marine stationed on the quarterdeck, then turned to Aubrey. “Where did they come from?”
“Out of nowhere it seems, sir. They got in close before we spotted them, the proximity alarms were off,” Aubrey replied.
“Damn! Bring her around.” Barrett was the calm officer now. “Where’s the captain?”
“I don’t know, sir, surely he heard the call.”
“Guns are at the ready!” Third Officer Fuhrman’s voice called over the ship-wide system. “Ready to return fire!”
“Bring us around,” Barrett snapped.
Men scrambled up the masts and Tristan focused on the sails, swinging them with the ship, keeping the willowisps in tight battle formation. Even though he was concentrating on the sails, Tristan caught a glimpse of the four ships. Three were hijacked Naval vessels, but one bore the blackened sails of a former Vermin vessel.
“Target the Vermin ship!” Barrett called.
The Victory’s guns fired, sending projectiles across the void and rocking the ship with the blast. Tristan fought to keep the sails in line as the pirates retuned fire. Another round from the Victory took out one of the smaller vessels but the former Vermin ship was still there, its filthy sails mocking them as it swung slowly around to hit them with a full broadside.
“Target that ship!” Thom shouted. “What’s going on down there?” he demanded.
“We’re having an issue with some of the guns, sir,” Shearer’s voice came up over the intercom. “They aren’t firing.”
“Get them firing!”
“Working on it, sir.”
“Incoming!” someone on deck shouted. “It’s going to breach the shields!”
Tristan heard the call but was focused on keeping the sails in fighting trim. He didn’t register the words until he was knocked to the ground by Barrett an instant before the rattle of shot rolled over their heads, whipping through the air with a whistling sound. The hard projectiles tore up the deck around them and blasted apart like small bombs on impact. The pirates were using a combination load—utilizing both energy rounds and hard shot to do the most damage. What the metal didn’t destroy, the blast of energy often did. The rounds had been outlawed during the last years of the Third World War and the Navy stuck to that prohibition even against the Vermin.
“Are you okay?” Thom demanded, standing up and looking across the deck. “Med teams topside!” he called into the intership system. “Tristan?”
“Yeah, I’m okay, sorry,” Tristan said. He stood and swallowed hard as he saw the damage on deck to both the ship and the men that had been there. Medical teams appeared a moment later and he was back at the Elemental Interface, bringing the willowisps back into line and beginning the spell to fix a massive hole in the mainsail. He had to turn all his concentration to the spell. The willowisps had been injured and needed to be Healed before he could Weave them into place again.
The battle raged on, he could hear the shouts of the men and Barrett’s calm orders. After what seemed a lifetime, a harsh voice took over. Some part of Tristan identified it as the captain. Another broadside shook the ship, the former Vermin vessel was bringing her guns to bear when suddenly some of the crew started cheering. Tristan broke his concentration enough to look up and see Fenfyr and Taminick enter the battle, focusing their attack on the Vermin ship. The smaller pirate ships turned and headed away, putting as much distance as they could between themselves and the Winged Victory.
“Concentrate all guns on that ship!”
The Victory’s guns fired, then Fenfyr and Taminick descended on the former Vermin ship. Tristan uttered a soft spell of release as Fenfyr swept in to release the ship. They killed it as the enslaved dragon was released. Fenfyr and Taminick didn’t give the pirates on the ship the chance to escape. They tore it to shreds, yanking it apart as the Victory continued to fire into it.
“That’s done it!” Barrett said, and a cheer went up.
Tristan was still focused on fixing the damage to the sails. He looked up and noticed blood on the first officer’s face, right before the man collapsed. Aubrey was shouting for a medical team. Tristan turned his attention away, he had to fix the sails before anything else, and Weaving battle-damaged sails was a chore he hadn’t expected to ever do. He knew how, of course, but theory and practice in the calm didn’t really compare to a ship with wounded screaming and the air hissing around him as the Air Weavers struggled to keep the ship’s atmosphere in place until the hull could be repaired.
As Tristan finally finished the Weaving and stepped back, he knew, without a doubt, that Thom had been right. They had been off course—and headed right into a trap.
Sometime later Riggan appeared and grabbed Tristan’s arm. “Sir! The sails are okay, you need care!”
“What?” Tristan asked, blinking.
“Your face is covered with blood, I’m taking you down to sickbay right now, sir.”
“Blood?” Tristan reached up and felt the sticky stuff near his hairline, wondering when it had happened.
“Yes, sir, blood, sir.”
“Riggan! Get over here!” Stemmer shouted.
“Sorry, sir, I have to take care of the Weaver, sir,” Riggan said with a smile. “Now come along, Master Tristan.” He tugged Tristan away from the Elemental Interface towards a lift. Stemmer shouted at Riggan again as the lift doors closed. “He’s still not used to my being your servant.” Riggan laughed under his breath. “Not that I’m saying anything about it, you know.”
“Of course,” Tristan answered, suddenly feeling weary. “I just need to rest, Riggan, Weaving is hard work.”
“You need to get that wound seen to, then you can rest, and if anyone wishes to disturb you, well, they can discuss that with Master Fenfyr. I think he is in a rather bad mood.”
“He’s okay?” Tristan realized that he hadn’t seen the dragon since he and Taminick killed the Vermin ship—but his concentration had been elsewhere.
“Yes, sir, he is patrolling while Mr. Aubrey gets us back on our proper course.”
“And Thom?”
“He’s still in sickbay, so you can visit him while they patch you up, sir.”
Tristan nodded and let himself be pulled out of the lift and along the corridor towards sickbay. There was more activity than there had been the first time he’d been in sickbay. As soon as they walked in, he realized the beds were all filled with injured men and women. The medical staff moved between the beds efficiently, somewhere someone was screaming.
“The Weaver is injured,” Riggan said to the ward at large.
A moment later Rose Webber appeared. “How badly?” she asked, taking Tristan’s arm and gently guiding him to a bed at the back of the ward. “When did this happen?”
“I’m not sure, I was focused on the sails.”
“This won’t take long to fix, I just need to make sure your skull is intact.” She stepped away, returning a moment later with a scanner in her hand. She carefully scanned him, then smiled. “It’s only a flesh wound, sir, I’ll fix that and you can go to your cabin to get some rest. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, Dr. Webber,” Tristan said with a smile. “How is Mr. Barrett?”
“You can check on him on the way out. I’m keeping him here for another couple of hours, and he is to be on light duty for the next three days,” she said as she used a dermo-repair kit to fix the tear in Tristan’s scalp. There was a slight tingling sensation as the skin was mended. “There you go. Now, go rest.”
“Thank you.” He smiled. There was something very solid and comforting in the matter-of-fact way the doctor ran the sickbay. He also knew that for Thom to still be there, he must have been seriously injured, but her calm demeanor helped ease his worry. Getting up, he walked to the curtained bed she pointed at, and opened the curtain. “How do you feel?”
“Like half the deck hit me,” Barrett said with a soft laugh. “Which I guess it did.” He looked terrib
le, deep bruising that not even the medical staff could completely treat marred his face and upper body. “I got to keep my leg, which is a plus.”
“Always a plus,” Tristan replied, trying not to let worry creep into his voice.
“We were off course?” Barrett asked.
“Yes, Aubrey has been working on it for the last…” Tristan had no idea how long it had been since the battle.
“Two hours, sir,” Riggan supplied. “I’m not saying anything, but I heard that he said the nav computer had been fed completely new data. He has no idea how it happened—or why the proximity alarms weren’t working. Mr. Shearer and Mr. Fuhrman are equally disturbed by the non-functioning guns, sirs.”
Thom met Tristan’s eyes. “So now we know.”
“Yeah, but who?”
“And more to the point, Tristan, why?” Thom asked softly.
Tristan shook his head. They couldn’t talk in sickbay, there were too many ears. “Come to my cabin for a game of backgammon as soon as you can.”
“I’ll be there at the usual time,” Thom said. They both knew it was the only place they could talk freely.
“There’s a red tail down the corridor,” Riggan said under his breath. “Watching sickbay.”
“You’re in good hands, then, Thom. We’ll talk later. Rest.”
“You too.”
Tristan smiled and stood. “I’ll see you in the morning.” Thom nodded and Tristan left. As he stepped out of the main sickbay he noticed the tip of a red dragon’s tail lurking around the bend in the corridor. “Good night, Taminick,” he said softly, knowing the dragon would hear him. A soft huff let him know she was on guard.
XV
The rest Tristan had been counting on didn’t last as long as he expected. The Officer of the Watch called him back on deck to Weave one of the topgallants that had been destroyed in the battle about three hours after he had finally managed to get to his cabin. Once the big sails were done, the crew had set to fixing the damage to the ship, relying on the slower engines rather than the sails. However, once they cycled on the main engines, they discovered that two of them were not running at even half power and so they had to get the sails functioning sooner than expected. Running with the sails unfurled in the Winds meant they would reach Terra Octodecimus and the Naval dockyards there—where they were now headed to do repairs—much sooner. Tristan could also use the Guild offices and the secure line back to the Weavers’ Compound.
The door to his cabin opened before he reached for the knob, Riggan tsking worriedly. “You’ve been on deck for hours, sir, without a break.” He gently eased Tristan’s uniform coat from his shoulders. “I was about to send Master Fenfyr up to get you.”
“He was, too,” Thom said from where he was sitting in the chair by the stern gallery doors. They were closed so the Air Weavers could focus on helping the crew work on the battle-damaged hull. “I just got here, Riggan was going to make coffee and then send Fenfyr for you.”
“He did settle on deck more than once,” Tristan said, dropping into a chair with a sigh. “I think he was reminding some of the crew there was a dragon around. He huffed over to a group that was working out on the forecastle, I’m not sure why—but whatever it was they scattered when he showed up.”
“I’m hoping we can replace some of the crew at the station,” Thom said as Riggan brought in the coffee service.
“Not that I’m saying anything, sir, mind you, but I heard that the captain was set on keeping the crew as it is,” Riggan said, pouring them coffee. “Word has it he is keeping everyone that’s still alive. I’m not saying as I heard Colonel Hall saying he wanted to deep space a few before we got there to thin the ranks, mind you, but I think he and General Muher have something up their sleeves.”
“Thank you, Riggan.”
“Yes, sir, if you need me sir, just buzz. I’ll go get some food while you rest.” He fixed Tristan with a look that reminded him so much of his first teacher at the Guild he almost burst out laughing. “I will be right back,” Riggan added, then headed out the door.
“He’s a gossip,” Tristan remarked, looking over at Thom. Some of the dark bruising was beginning to fade.
“A useful one, too.” The officer grinned. “He always has been, even when he was the captain’s servant he would drop a word in my ear now and then.”
“Did he come with Stemmer or the ship?”
“The ship,” Thom said, making a face. “He was to be the captain’s servant.”
“No wonder he reports to you, because he would know.”
“Yes, he knows.” Thom laughed. “Not that he’s saying anything, mind you.” Tristan laughed too, the man’s imitation of Riggan was almost perfect. “Stemmer got him, and, of course, as First Officer, I rate a Gunroom servant, not a personal servant.”
“Stemmer is one of Davis’s gang?”
“Oh, yes, and then some. I was shocked when they chose him as captain, frankly. Even though he was acquitted, there is still the question of his involvement in the Stars Plot and the anti-Weaver movement. He’s never been caught at anything, but he is part of the group at Naval headquarters that want to see the Guild gone once and for all.”
“You can’t have ships without sails, and you can’t have sails without the Guild,” Tristan said.
“I know, and that’s got me worried. I think they are up to something, I’m not sure what.” Thom said. “On my first command the Weaver was anti-social, but made sure I understood that without him there would be no ship to command.” He laughed. “It was an emergency command too—I was promoted because the ship’s captain literally dropped dead at the helm, I was First and command defaulted me. It was an interesting trip.”
“What kind of ship?”
“She was a frigate, we were part of an escort for a while, then went hunting a group of pirates that were plaguing one of the Rim stations.”
“Have you been on the Rim for a long time?” Tristan asked. Thom didn’t show a lot of the usual tell-tale marks of service on the Rim.
“Off and on. I’m not overly popular with Headquarters, so they give me ships, but send me deep-space sailing. We were the ones who first got a whiff of the possible incursion that led to the creation of the Victory. I’d helped design a lot of ships and Admiral O’Brian called me in for the project, trusting my knowledge of battle. Unlike a lot of captains, I’ve seen a fair amount of battle. He figured I could help make the Victory less vulnerable to attack from the Vermin. They tend to use the same style of attack over and over, it gives us an advantage. I was promised command.” He sighed. “Of course, that didn’t work so well.”
“Nothing about this ship is as it was planned, Thom.”
“Thinking about that, whatever happened to Alden?”
“The last we heard he’d left Terra Secundus bound towards the Rim,” Tristan answered. He’d received a message from Rhoads about the former Warrior saying “heading out, keep your eyes open”, but he had no idea what that meant.
“I spoke with Aubrey, he said we should make station-fall in less than five hours. He and Navigator Avila are still trying to figure out what went wrong with the computer.” He stopped as Riggan entered pushing a cart of food.
“Master Fenfyr is resting in the gardens, sir, under the grapefruit trees,” Riggan said, setting plates on the small table. “I went in to get some for him and there he was, sound asleep. The captain is a little distressed.” The man chuckled. “But there was no waking him, sir, so I left him to sleep. He’s been out patrolling since the battle.”
“I hope he’s not disturbing anyone,” Tristan said.
“None of the crew would even know he’s there, he’s curled up and quiet. The only ones who know are the captain and his new servant, on account of where Master Fenfyr chose to bed down. If I might be so bold, sirs, you both should eat and do as he is, I heard them say we’d be at Terra Octodecimus at six bells in the afternoon watch.”
“Thank you, Riggan,” Barrett said with a smile.
“We’ll do that.”
They made station fall shortly after seven bells, having had to wait as a slow cruiser was cleared out of the only dock big enough for the Winged Victory. Tristan was sure he heard a collective sigh of relief from the crew as the masts were lowered into the ship far enough for the massive dome to close around them. Even he had to admit to a feeling of relief, more because it meant he could use the secure line back to the Guild than anything else. He was putting on his uniform when Muher knocked on the door.
“I understand you are heading towards the Guild annex?” the general said, stepping into Tristan’s cabin.
“Yes, I take your appearance to mean I am being escorted?” Tristan asked with a laugh.
“Not so much escorted as accompanied. It’s rougher out here, and I thought it might be wise to have a little firepower at your back, just in case.” Muher smiled. “These outer stations are a bit different than Terra Secundus and the inner system network. It’s just better to have a little extra help at times.”
“That’s fine, I don’t want to run into slavers again.” Tristan grabbed his bag. “Ready?”
As they stepped off the gangplank and onto the station’s plating, Tristan was sure he saw something red disappear further down the docks. He didn’t mention it to Muher, if the general saw Taminick, he saw her, if not, it was better to keep her presence a secret.
Once they left the docks, Tristan could see what Muher had meant. The station was very different from the order of Terra Secundus. Instead of the artificial trees and climate, it was clearly just what it was—a space station, with heavy plating and pipes exposed. There were colored lines on the floor, at every junction the lines were labeled to lead to the shopping area, the residential area or the docks. There were some that had no lettering, Tristan wondered where they went. One of them, a dark gray, headed off in the direction of the docks, but branched off. ”What’s that for?”
The Sail Weaver Page 13
