The Decade Worlds

by Patrick McClafferty

  I can’t do that and you know it. Athena sighed. This is, and always has been your task and your task alone. I help a little along the side, and maybe give you a few minutes more warning, but the job is yours.

  Can you tell me if the steamships are still in the harbor?

  I’m sorry. Athena murmured with a strange note in her voice. I can’t tell you that the ships are still docked or that the coal barges are just delivering the final load of fuel for their trip.

  Gareth laughed. Athena, you are a fraud. He gave his wife a nudge. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.” He finished aloud, swinging his feet to the floor.

  Chiu sat up, blinking the sleep from her sapphire eyes. “What is it?”

  “There’s a fleet of ships heading toward Puasheehchester Harbor.”

  “What??” Her eyes were wide open now. “How big a fleet?”

  “Fifteen to twenty small to medium sized ships all filled with armed men.” He replied, pulling on his pants. “And that’s what bothers me. This fleet is too small to be a serious threat. We could wipe it out with one shot from the super gun the marines carry.”

  “What will you do?” Chiu demanded, the covers pulled up to her chin.

  “Use the steamships. They have more than enough firepower to take care of twenty ships.”

  “Is there any sign of Lothar?” There was fear in her voice now.

  “No, but it doesn’t mean that he’s not around waiting for the best opportunity.”

  “You say the most reassuring things. I thought you said that it would take weeks for him to reach Oseothan?”

  Gareth snorted. “Lothar has surprised me before. I won’t take him for granted again.” He bent down and gave her a long passionate kiss. “Follow me with Mairi as soon as you can. Tell your pod to set defense systems for maximum stealth. If Lothar is out there I don’t want him to see you.”

  She reached out, gripping his hand with surprising strength. “Be very careful.”

  “I will.” He pulled away, reluctantly, and turned from the room.

  The ungainly coal barge was just pulling away as the translucent pod set down on the stern of the SS Spray. Gareth was stepping out when Captain Evvos strode across the deck to greet him, his hand already extended. “I didn’t expect te see ye here, Gareth.” He shook Gareth’s hand warmly.

  “Yeah, well I’ve just been informed that there is a fleet of ships on the way here, probably to try and seize The Yeugate. They obviously have no idea of the distances involved. The Spray and the Chesapeake will dissuade them from that idea.”

  Evvos chuckled. “You always did have a direct way about ye, boy. I’ll have a runner carry a message over to the Chesapeake,” he pronounced it Chesypeaky, “and invite Paldeen over fer a little chat.”

  Thirty minutes later, with black greasy smoke billowing out of the single tall funnel, the Spray turned out into the anchorage, following closely in Chesapeake’s frothing wake. Behind them the lights of Puasheehchester Harbor sparkled in the dark night air.

  It wasn’t long before the two steamships were anchored across the front of the harbor, allowing them to bring all three deck guns, one on the SS Spray and two on the Chesapeake, to bear on the approaching ships.

  “Port quarter ahoy!” The lookout standing on the top of the wheelhouse called down. “I kin jest make out the shape o ships comin’ this way.”

  Gareth stared out into the dark, wishing for the millionth time since he’d arrived on Eldenworld, for radar. He could have had radar in the two new ships, he knew, if he only had the time. Time was the one thing he didn’t have. “Prepare to fire.” One of the marines flashed a quick signal light to the other ship to tell them to prepare. On the SS Spray the marines loaded a squat shell into the breech of the small cannon, and adjusted for windage and elevation. One turned and nodded briefly to Gareth, who simply returned the nod. The approaching ships crept silently out of the darkness, only the occasional slap of water on a hull to betray their presence. When they were close enough Gareth picked up a speaking trumpet that sat at his feet and put it to his lips. “That’s far enough!” He bellowed across the water. “Come any closer and we will sink you. There will be no further warnings.” Vaguely he could make out the shape of men scurrying about the decks of the approaching ships.

  “Steady!” He muttered to the young gun crew. “Let them get a bit closer.” He turned to the lookout. “How many do you see?”

  “Ten Sir!” The man called back.

  “Let me know when you see fifteen.”

  “Fifteen. Aye.” To Gareth it felt like he waited forever. “Fifteen Sir!”

  Gareth turned back to the gun crew. “Fire.” He said calmly. “And keep firing until they are all sunk.”

  The gun roared on the deck, belching flame, and the deck shuddered despite the recoil systems built into the chassis of the gun. A heartbeat later the two guns on the Chesapeake spoke, lighting the night with their fire. The cannons continued to crash, and in the water, men screamed and died. At a predetermined moment one of the guns on the Chesapeake raised its elevation to maximum and fired. A round detonated far overhead, and suddenly a bright flare lit the water as bright as day. A vast groan swept the remainder of the attacking fleet, for in the light he could see the half dozen small ships that had slipped in behind them, to board and take the steamships while their attention was elsewhere. He heard shouts on the Chesapeake, and then a crash as the stern cannon began to pick off the late arrivals to the party. Lights blossomed on both steamships, and marines armed with gunpowder carbines charged onto the deck, picking convenient targets on the churning mass of boats, or in the water.

  Gareth started as Captain Evvos touched his shoulder. “It seems to be going well fer us.” He announced in an offhanded manner. “Even if Paldeen only managed to get half is compliment o marines an a skeleton crew to boot.”

  “Oh?” The remaining four boats of the attacking fleet were turning to flee, and the men in the water were making less and less noise. The deck gun crashed, and on one of the fleeing vessels the boat shuddered visibly under the impact of the round, the mast toppling slowly over the side. He sighed. “Signal cease fire.” As he said the words a final gun on the Chesapeake boomed, and a small retreating boat shook, a gaping hole appearing in her starboard side. She began to list immediately, and as the flare from the starshell finally died Gareth could see men jumping into the water. The guns finally fell silent.

  “Signal the Chesapeake to raise anchor and head back to the…” The sounds of panic broke out on the white steamship before them. Screams and weapons fire again tore the night. Gareth grabbed Evvos’s arm. “Cut the anchor lines and move us away from the Chesapeake as fast as you can. Your life depends on it.”

  “What??” Captain Evvos looked dumfounded.

  “Lothar is on that ship. If he gets on this ship you will die.” Evvos bolted for the wheelhouse, shouting orders as he ran. Gareth drew his newly repaired Colt, and watched the other ship very carefully. Men and women, he couldn’t tell if they were crew or marines were jumping over the side of the doomed ship. Five or six cables from shore they had some chance of survival if they swam. If they stayed aboard, they had none. Fifty meters separated the two ships now, and the distance was growing rapidly when Gareth saw a huge figure step up on deck. Even from this distance Gareth could see the glow of his red eyes. Lothar raised his arm toward the fleeing steamship, and Gareth saw the streak of a missile. For a moment he thought that Lothar had missed, and then the heavy gun on the forward deck burst in an incandescent ruin, falling over the side of the speeding ship to land in the water with a steaming hiss. The next missile blew the stern loading crane to flinders. Gareth cupped his hands and shouted to the wheelhouse. “Steer a zigzag course or he will blow us out of the water.” As the ship lurched drunkenly to the side another missile streaked by, a scant meter above the sleek fantail. Gareth suddenly knew with a sickening certainty what Lothar was shooting at, and he bolted for the transportation pod. The ex
plosion as the missile struck the pod threw him to the deck after first bouncing him off the deckhouse. Distantly he could hear the shrapnel, in this case thousands of tiny metal flechettes from the missile, impacting the wood around him. The world spun, and Gareth’s body screamed from the lingchi, or death by a thousand cuts as the ancient torture was called. Staggering, he lurched into the pod. “Are you all right?” He asked the AI.

  “Of course, I’m all right.” The AI replied in a contemptuous voice. “The creature is using class eight weapons, and I don’t have to worry about anything lower than ten.” Seeing Captain Evvos lurching across the deck toward him, Gareth backed out of the pod.

  “Yer hurt!” The Captain rumbled, staring for a moment at Gareth’s dripping blood.

  “I’ve been hurt worse and still traveled.” Gareth growled. Another missile hissed by the stern. “Take the ship out into the ocean. Sail around for a couple of days before you return. Things will be decided by then.”

  Evvos stared at him without speaking, then slapped him on the arm with one meaty hand, making Gareth’s lacerated muscles scream, and turned for the wheelhouse, already shouting orders. Gareth turned back to the pod. “You’re damaged.” He said as he stepped in.

  “I most certainly am NOT!” The AI huffed.

  “I know that, but we need to let our friend back there believe you are damaged. Are you up for a little acting?”

  “Hmmmm.” The AI hummed as it thought. “I could bob and weave, maybe brush the water.”

  “Travel slowly.” Gareth inserted, trying to staunch the blood that was dripping in his eyes from several gashes in his hairline. “Trail smoke if you can.” He found it was getting harder to think clearly.

  “This is going to be fun.” The AI remarked cheerfully as the pod rose from the scarred deck. The pod lurched to the side as another missile struck it. “Idiot.” The AI murmured scornfully. The pod floated over the side of the ship, staggered in the air and fell into the ocean with a tremendous splash. Thanks to the advances in gravity control, Gareth felt nothing, but the show was quite spectacular. The pod bobbed in the water behind the ship for several long moments. A missile fountained the water ten meters behind them, and finally the pod lifted, trailing a plume of white smoke and staggered for the harbor.

  Gareth frowned at the smoke. “What’s burning?”

  “I just picked up some seaweed while we were in the water. It smokes nicely when heated.” Gareth shook his head as the pod proceeded at a walking pace toward the harbor edge. Behind him the Spray had cut her lights and was proceeding with all haste to the open ocean. The hulk of the Chesapeake still glowed like a wrecker’s beacon in the night.

  “Can you put me in touch with Ell?” He grimaced, pulling out a first aid kit from under the seat.

  “You’re on.” The AI chimed.

  “Ell, Lothar has taken the steamship Chesapeake, and damaged the SS Spray. Can you disable the engine on the Chesapeake?”

  “How permanently do wish it disabled? I can break a driveshaft, or I can blow the bottom out of the ship.”

  “Break the engine, enough so that Lothar can’t repair it easily.” The room was beginning to spin, and his stomach was growing queasy. “I’m heading toward The Yeugate, at a slow enough speed to keep Lothar interested. Warn everyone to keep away.” He slurred.

  “Gareth are you all right?”

  The onboard AI cut in. “No, he is not all right. He has multiple lacerations and should probably be in a hospital.”

  “Gareth!” Ell said in an irritatingly insistent voice, while all he wanted to do was sleep. “You have a special friend who helps you on occasion. Call on her. Call on her now!” The voice insisted.

  “Yeah, yeah fine.” He agreed, mainly to stop the nagging. For some reason he couldn’t focus on the first aid kit. “Athena,” he whispered, “I need you.”

  “I counted them.” Athena said, sitting at the edge of his bed. “You needed close to four hundred stitches.” She sighed. “If I had repaired you, you would have looked like Frankenstein’s monster. It had to happen sooner or later, and with you I should have known that it would be sooner. I had to rebuild you. You had a number of fractured bones, torn muscles and ligaments, and you needed an incredible amount of blood. The piece of shrapnel that hit your head penetrated your brain. You should have been dead four times over, thanks to that missile.” She grimaced. “What an incredibly vile piece of hardware.” She ran a weary hand over her violet eyes. “And the worst thing is that you haven’t finished with Lothar yet. I have to send you back to deal with him.”

  Gareth sat up and stretched, smiling. “Piece of cake.”

  “You are totally and certifiably insane.” Athena shook her head.

  “Any number of people have told me that same thing.” He said with a certain amount of weariness in his voice.

  “They were right, you know.”

  Gareth swung his legs out of the bed and began to dress. “To be truthful, I’m getting somewhat tired of all this. The adventure has lost its sparkle.”

  Athena laughed. “Cynic.”

  He stopped lacing his boot and looked up into her incredible violet eyes. “I hope the pay for the job is worth the effort I’m putting in. Death usually isn’t part of a normal job description you know.”

  She returned a look that was just as flat. “You know what the reward is for doing a good job?”

  Gareth groaned as he got to his feet. “I heard that from my Top Sergeant before I received my last promotion in the marines. They increased my workload by four times, my responsibility by ten times, and gave me a whopping one percent increase in pay and one more stripe on my arm. It didn’t take long for me to figure out that I’d been screwed.” He took a deep breath. “I suspect that the reward you’re speaking of is something along those lines.” His smile was crooked. “You should send me back now, before I lose my enthusiasm.”

  She stood with a fluid motion. “As you wish.” She whispered, kissing him lightly on the cheek. “I’ll be looking out for you.”

  “Thank you. I need all the help I can get. This operation could be… tricky, so please don’t wait for me to call you for assistance.”

  He was still slumped in his pod seat when he became aware of his surroundings. Around him the pod hummed gently.

  “Are you feeling better?” The voice of the AI asked solicitously. “Your vitals suddenly jumped from near death, to better than normal.”

  “I called a friend to help me.” Gareth offered dryly.

  “I have no idea what you are talking about, but Ell seems to have complete trust in you and your friend, so it appears that I will have to do the same.”

  “Your faith is underwhelming.” Gareth retorted tartly. “How are we doing?” He asked, looking out of the flickering hull as they crossed the shoreline not so far below. The sky was taking on the first gray tint of sunrise.

  “Lothar is rowing a skiff from the Chesapeake almost as fast as we are traveling. He is no more than an hour behind us at this point.” The AI paused, as if gathering its thoughts. “When he reaches the shore will he be able to go faster or slower?”

  “Probably much faster.” Gareth responded. “Wobble a bit more in your flight and increase the smoke. Slowly accelerate to three times our current speed.”

  “Are you sure that this Lothar can travel at twenty four kilometers per hour?”

  “Absolutely.” Gareth confirmed in a hard voice. “Injured, Lothar ran down a running wolf, and they can travel at fifty five kilometers per hour.”

  There was silence for several long moments before the AI replied. “Perhaps,” it began, “we should increase our speed to forty kilometers per hour.”

  Gareth smiled to himself. “Whatever you wish, but keep us ahead of that thing by at least thirty minutes.” He could now make out the shapes of trees and the occasional house. “Best guess on our ETA at The Yeugate?”

  “Twenty four to twenty six hours.” The AI responded immediately. “Ell is takin
g the necessary steps for your arrival.”

  “My wife and daughter?” Gareth asked, a note of concern creeping into his voice.

  “Have just arrived safe and sound at The Yeugate.”

  He took a deep breath as he broached what could be a painful subject. “Are there any survivors from the Chesapeake?”

  “Drones dispatched by Ell have rescued eleven survivors, mostly crew. At this point in time Captain Athan, eight marines and four crew were killed or are missing. I’m sorry.”

  Gareth recalled the last time he’d seen the tall raw-boned Paldeen Athan. “Yeah, me too.” He looked back into the dimness that still shrouded the harbor, and the creature Lothar. “There’s nothing else to do, so I’m going to shut my eyes.” He announced in a subdued voice. “Wake me if there is any change in status.” Gareth shut his eyes.

  “Sleep well Sir.” The AI replied gently, dimming the interior lights, and tilting Gareth’s seat back a few more degrees. To the outside world the flickering, staggering and obviously damaged transportation pod continued its lonely way northward, trailing a thin stream of smoke that, if you thought about it, smelled suspiciously of burning seaweed.

  “It’s time, Sir.” The voice of the AI woke him from a dream of warm sun-drenched beaches and tropical breezes. “We are rapidly approaching the gateway at The Yeugate. We increased our lead over Lothar as we entered the mountains to the south of here, but as we exited the mountains Lothar regained his earlier loss. He is now thirty eight minutes behind us, and seems to be closing the gap quickly. When we reach the gateway you will have only minutes before Lothar arrives.”

  Gareth scrubbed his gritty eyes with his hand. “Understood.” He answered in a resigned voice.

  “Ell has provided some lightweight body armor that will be waiting when we land. You should have time to don it.”

  “Increase our speed. I’d really like to have time to put the armor on before Lothar arrives.”

  “As you wish. Arrival in nineteen minutes.”

  The departure platform and the surrounding landscape were barren and empty, save the small pile of body armor, when the pod arrived. Gareth had already removed his shirt and pants in the pod to save him time, and jumped out in his skivvies while the pod was still moving. The advanced body armor was snug, protecting his torso, and thanks to an integrated helmet, his head also.