“What happened to him?” she asked casually—a little too casually, September thought. He squinted down at her as another explosion—they were growing more frequent—drowned out all possibility of communication.
When it had died slightly, he shouted, “He… ah… bumped his head coming out of the tunnel.” He shoved the limp form at her. “Why don’t you take care of him?”
Colette backed away a step. “Me? I’m not a damned nurse. Let Williams or Eer-Meesach look after him.”
“Oh, just watch him for a minute, hey?”
She considered, chewing her lower lip. “Oh, all right, give him here.” September bent and passed the dead weight to Colette. She handled it easily and sat down next to the mast with him, studying his face. September grunted appreciatively.
They’d rounded the last spur of black earth and were leaving the volcano astern. The smoke now billowing from the cone was tinged with crimson and seemed to have grown greatly in volume.
There was a tremendous ear-shattering explosion, coupled with a moaning, ripping sound. The Slanderscree was lifted off the ice and slammed down a dozen meters on. A few spars cracked. Somehow, the runners held.
Tran were picking themselves up off the deck, some of them very slowly. One had been thrown from the rigging and was now a grotesque tangle of arms and legs near one hatch.
“Bedamned!” sputtered September, shaking the wrist he’d fallen on as he pulled himself off the planking. Ethan had come around just in time to get thrown into Colette. He bounced off.
“Green clay,” he mumbled, then looked confused. “There was something about green clay… but I’ve forgotten.”
“What happened to me?”
“You hit your head coming out of the tunnel,” supplied Colette. She gently but firmly moved him off her legs. “And I don’t know anything about any green clay.”
Ethan rubbed his jaw… funny place to fall on… and thought hard. He looked up at her and she was staring down at him strangely.
“Oh well… couldn’t have been very important,” he said.
“How would you like to be rich beyond your wildest dreams?”
“Huh?”
“Marry me.”
“I beg your pardon, Miss du Kane?”
“Under the circumstances, you may call me Colette. Well?”
“Wait a minute, Wait a minute.” He must still be dazed. “I didn’t even think you liked me… let alone loved me.”
Those startling green (green?) eyes stared down at him. “Who said anything about love? I’m asking you to marry me! You’re reasonably attractive, reasonably intelligent—and kinder than most. The only people who ask me to marry them are money-hunters. I can read the contempt in their eyes. There’s no contempt in yours. A little pity, but I’m used to that. Well?”
Ethan thought. “This is too fast and I’m still dazed. Let me… let me think it over. What would your father say?”
She gave him a twisted smile. “Father? Father’s been intermittently insane for the past four years.” She stood up and stared down at him from a great height. “Who do you think’s been running du Kane Enterprises for the last four years, Ethan Fortune?”
“Look to the mountain!” yelled a voice. Those who could staggered to the rail.
A kilometer or so up the side of the volcano, a huge fissure dozens of meters wide had cleft the mountainside like an ax-blow. A broad river of fiery red and yellow spilled from the gaping fissure, overflowing the edges of the break.
The amber stream gained the ice. Immediately a jet of superheated steam roared skywards, obscuring much of the peak from view.
“Quite a sight,” said September appreciatively. There was a loud yelp behind him.
Williams was absolutely terrified. He was flailing and gesturing as though he’d lost control of his arms.
“Easy, schoolmaster. What’s the matter? Spirits?”
“We’ve got to put on more sail!” he piped frantically. “Tell the crew to blow into them, if we must! We’ve got to… to get away from here!”
“Why?” September glanced behind them. “We’ve got a little wind with us now. At this rate we’ll be out of sight of the island before dark.”
“Not… not good enough!” panted the out-of-breath Williams.
“Now look, surely we’re in no danger from the lava. I’m no geologist, but…”
“Not the lava. Not the lava!” Williams was pleading. Ta-hoding had walked over and was now an interested listener. So was Hunnar.
“You don’t understand! The lava will melt the ice. And that fissure may have cracked the whole island. If the cold sea water beneath the ice reaches the core… the pressure… incalculable…” He subsided, out of breath.
“What does the small wizard mean?” asked Hunnar uncertainly. September rubbed the full crop of whiskers that now coated that jutting chin under his face shield.
“He says the mountain’s going to blow up, I think.”
“Blow-up?” Ta-hoding’s fat face was comical. His anxiety was not. “Blow-up?” he repeated stupidly. Then he whirled and began rattling off hysterical orders and commands. The deck of the Slanderscree became a madhouse.
The crew strove to mount every square centimeter of sail left in the lockers. They were even stringing it from rigging to hatch covers. Green-brown pika-pina sailcloth went up everywhere, until the Slanderscree resembled a moving island.
Nothing happened all the rest of that day, nor all night. They were still running rapidly to the southwest the next morning when it happened. The volcano was far astern and long out of sight. But they heard the rumble. There was a crackling.
The whole sky northeast of them lit up in a titanic eruption of fire and flaming gases. Lightning smashed every section of unbruised sky. A pillar of red-black smoke and ash sown with lightning billowed into the stratosphere. This time it was September who grabbed the megaphone and roared for everyone to hug the deck. A second later he was imitating a termite.
Nothing happened. The eruptions continued. An ominous lowing breeze swept over the ship, challenging the westwind. Then the full force of displaced air struck them as the giant volcano began to tear itself to pieces.
The maelstrom that came down on the raft made the Rifs seem like a spring zephyr. The Slanderscree exploded forward across the ice. But most of the super-tough sails held. Most of the rigging held. And the lashings on the great wheel held.
The borean monster fell to a simple cyclone. September crawled to the rail and raised his head into that skin-tearing gale. Then he rose to his full height, somehow keeping his balance in the gale.
“Sonuvabitch!” he howled, “what a ride!” Then his feet were blown out from under him and he had to wrap his arms around a shroud to keep from being swept off the deck.
Pity the lad couldn’t see this, he thought. Or mayhap better he doesn’t. The ozmidine? Melted, or pulverized to green dust, perhaps. Immortality was short. He looked across the planking. Colette was using her bulk to shield Ethan from some of the wind. On the other hand, he reflected, smiling, mining is work. A soft touch of a friend, now… that was much more civilized!
The Slanderscree shot southwestward at close to three hundred kilometers an hour.
The prop-jet hummed smoothly on the two-man ice-skimmer as it curved in its daily patrol out from the humanx settlement of Brass Monkey and headed up the frozen fjord.
The two men inside had grown accustomed to the icelocked world and its gruff, somber native populace. But they were completely unprepared for the gigantic raft, dozens of sails billowing, which rounded the entrance to the fjord and shot past them before they could waken to challenge it.
“Mother, did you see that?” exclaimed the pilot.
“How could I miss it, Marcel,” replied his copilot, “seeing as how it practically ran us down.” He was doing things to dashboard controls. “Take over your stick before we pile into a cliffside, will you?”
Abashed, Marcel did so. “Thought I’d seen every
size and shape of ice-craft this backwater had to offer,” he mumbled.
“Moving like the proverbial bat out of hell,” the copilot agreed admiringly. “Somebody did a helluva job on that baby.” They swung the tiny skimmer around. The prop groaned at the strain.
“You’d better get on the comm, tell Docking and Receiving to expect that thing or someone’s liable to have a fit and take a shot at it. I want to meet the natives who built that.”
Marcel goosed the engine to a high whine. “I’ll have to call. For sure we’re not going to overhaul it.” He leaned to hit the comm switch and chuckled.
“You know… it’s funny, this glare and all… but that damn thing went by so fast I thought I saw a set of broad’s underwear flying astern in place of the usual native banner. Biggest pair I ever saw. Ain’t that a kick?” He bit another button and the screen over the angled windshield began to brighten.
“Aw, you’re batty.”
“Sure… all in the mind,” the pilot agreed.
The copilot looked thoughtful. “Then it’s all in mine, too, because I could swear I saw the same damn thing.”
The glance they exchanged was profound.
MISSION TO MOULOKIN
Book Two of The Icerigger Trilogy
For Mike and Helen Green,
beloved Uncle and Aunt always,
and damn the indifferent genetics of it all…
Map
Prologue
IT ALL BEGAN WITH a bungled kidnapping.
The two men who’d attempted to abduct the wealthy Hellespont du Kane and his daughter Colette from the KK-drive liner orbiting the ice world of Tran-ky-ky had been forced to take along two witnesses, a diminutive schoolteacher named Milliken Williams and a salesman, Ethan Fortune.
They hadn’t counted on the additional presence of the white-haired giant who’d been sleeping off a drunk in the back of their intended escape lifeboat. Skua September had not taken politely to being abducted. His resultant action caused the lifeboat to crash thousands of wind-swept kilometers from the only human settlement on the frozen planet below. Those actions also caused the death of one kidnapper and the immobilization of the other.
Crossing the perpetually frozen oceans of Tran-ky-ky, with their subfreezing temperatures and unceasing winds, seemed impossible until a party of curious locals from the native city-state of Wannome reached them. Cautious and wary at first, human and Tran soon became friends, aided by the actions of one remarkable young Tran, the knight Hunnar Redbeard.
The arrival of the humans and their lifeboat of rare metal on metal-poor Tran-ky-ky served Redbeard well. It enabled him to use it as a sign that Wannome and its island of Sofold should resist the coming depredations of Sagyanak the Death and her Horde. Such wandering tribes of nomadic barbarians, whole cities living on their icerafts, periodically visited the permanent towns and city-states of Tran-ky-ky demanding tribute and ravishing all who dared refuse payment.
With the aid of crossbows and one other critical invention concocted by the teacher Williams and the local court wizard, Malmeevyn Eer-Meesach, the Horde was defeated utterly. Then reluctantly, Torsk Kurdagh-Vlata, Landgrave and ruler of Wannome, agreed to keep his promise to help the shipwrecked humans reach the Commonwealth outpost of Brass Monkey.
Using duralloy metal from the ruined lifeboat to provide unbreakable ice runners, and employing designs adapted from the ancient clipper ships of Terra’s seas, a huge raft rigged for ice running was constructed—the Slanderscree.
With Sir Hunnar and a crew of Tran sailors, the survivors set out on the dangerous, lengthy journey. They surmounted the threats posed by the remnants of the Horde, perilous local fauna such as guttorbyn and rampaging stavanzers—some the size of small spacecraft, a monastery of religious fanatics and the explosion of a gigantic volcano.
More troublesome to Ethan were his relationships with Elfa Kurdagh-Vlata, the daughter of the Landgrave who had stowed away aboard the Slanderscree, and with the affectionate but sarcastic and domineering Colette du Kane.
None of which prevented the Slanderscree from reaching the island of Arsudun, its human outpost and shuttleport of Brass Monkey, where they hoped they would find immediate transportation off the hellishly cold, windswept world of Tran-ky-ky…
I
ETHAN FROME FORTUNE LEANED over the wooden railing and screamed. The wind mangled his words.
Below the railing, the tiny two-man ice boat strained to maneuver close to the side of the racing icerigger. One of the men inside leaned out an open window to shout querulously up at Ethan, who then cupped both hands to the diaphragm of his thermal survival suit and tried to make himself understood. “I said, we’re from Sofold. Sofold!”
Spreading both arms, the man in the boat shook his head to show he still couldn’t understand. Then he had to use both hands to clutch at the window edge as the little craft swerved sharply to avoid one of the Slanderscree’s huge duralloy runners.
Five curving metal skates supported the great ice ship: two nearly forward, two nearly aft where the arrowhead-shaped vessel’s beam was widest, and a last at the pointed stern. Each towered nearly four meters, large enough to slice the cautious patrol boat in two if its driver wasn’t careful or quick enough to stay out of the path of the two-hundred-meter ice ship.
Ethan slid back the face mask of his survival suit without shifting the glare-reducing goggles he wore beneath and reflected on what he’d just yelled. From Sofold? He? He was a moderately successful salesman for the House of Malaika. Sofold was the home of Hunnar Redbeard and Balavere Longax and other Tran, natives of this frozen, harsh iceworld of Tran-ky-ky. From Sofold? Had he grown that acclimated to the unforgiving planet in the year and a half he and his companions had been marooned there?
Blowing ice scoured his burnished epidermis like a razor, and he turned to shield the exposed skin. A glance at the thermometer set in the back of his left glove indicated the temperature a balmy –18° C. But then they were not too far from Tran-ky-ky’s equator, where such tropical conditions could be expected.
A furry paw rested on his shoulder. Glancing around, Ethan found himself looking into the lionesque face of Sir Hunnar Redbeard. Hunnar had been leader of the first group of natives to encounter Ethan and his fellow shipwreck victims where they’d crashed, several thousand kilometers distant. Ethan studied the lightly clothed knight, envied his adaptation to a climate that could kill most unprotected humans in an hour.
The Tran bundled up in severe weather, but more temperate conditions allowed Sir Hunnar and his companions to shed their heavy hessavar furs for lighter attire, such as the hide vest and kilt the knight currently wore. Although he stood only a few centimeters taller than Ethan, the Tran was nearly twice as broad, yet his semihollow bone structure reduced his weight to little more than that of an average man.
Slitted black pupils glared from yellow feline eyes; shards of jet set in cabochons of bright topaz. They were split by a broad, blunt muzzle which ended above the wide mouth. Pursed lips and twitched-forward triangular ears combined to indicate curiosity. Hunnar’s right dan, a tough membrane extending from wrist to hip, was partly open, bulging with the force of the wind, but he balanced easily on his chiv, the elongated claws which enabled any Tran to glide across ice more gracefully than the most talented human skater.
While Hunnar’s reddish beard and rust-toned fur caused him to stand out in a crowd of his steel-gray fellows, it was his inquiring personality and natural curiosity that raised him above them in Ethan’s estimation.
“They want to know,” Ethan explained in Tran while gesturing at the small scout boat skittering alongside and below them, “where we’ve come from. I told them, but I don’t think they heard me.”
“Mayhap they heard you well, Sir Ethan, and simply do not know of Sofold.”
“I told you to stop calling me sir, Hunnar.” The titles the Tran of Wannome city had bestowed on the humans after the defeat of Sagyanak’s Horde still made him uncomfortable.
“Remember,” Hunnar continued blithely, “until you and your companions landed near Sofold in your metal flying boat, we had neither seen nor heard of your race. Ignorance is a two-edged sword.” He waved a massive arm at the scout boat. “It would be surprising indeed if your people here in this nearby outpost you call Brass Monkey, the only one of its kind on my world, had heard of so distant a nation as Sofold.”
A cry from above and forward interrupted them. It came from the lookout’s cage set atop the patriarchal tree which served now as the Slanderscree’s mainmast. Many months of living among the Tran had given Ethan the ability to rapidly translate the lookout’s words. After half a day’s careful travel down the frozen inlet from the vast ice ocean beyond, they were finally coming into the harbor of Arsudun, the Tran city-state where humanity maintained its shivering outpost on this world.
Ethan and Hunnar stood on the helm deck. Other than the three masts, it was the highest point on the ship. Behind them, Captain Ta-hoding hurled rapid-fire directions at the two Tran wresting the great wheel connected to the duralloy runner which steered the Slanderscree. In accordance with the captain’s orders, other Tran were manipulating the two huge airfoils at bow and stern to slow the icerigger still more.
Meanwhile the laborious and dangerous process of reefing in sails was proceeding rapidly. Ethan marveled how the Tran crew had mastered the rigging of the enormous ice ship. Only their claws and thick chiv enabled them to hold their footing on the icy spars above.
Though Hunnar slid easily over the icepath bordering the ship’s railings Ethan struggled to remain upright as they moved forward for a better look. The helm deck reached as far as the broad end of the main arrowhead shape of the Slanderscree. Standing just above the muffled screech of the port-aft runner, they could now look straight at the harbor, since from where they stood the icerigger narrowed to a point some hundred and seventy meters ahead.
The Icerigger Trilogy Page 34
