Nigel Findley - The Broken Sphere

*****

They're ramming! Berglund felt a sudden chill. The enemy was taking the fight to him. This engagement wasn't going the way he'd intended it at all.

But then he relaxed a little. What other choice did the enemy captain have, after all? With no way to maneuver, the squid ship's tactical choices were cut almost to nil. A successful ram would damage the Shark, perhaps seriously, but it wouldn't destroy the larger vessel. Then Berglund's crew would swarm aboard the enemy-his highly trained boarding crew easily outnumbering the smaller, and generally untrained, crew of the target-and that would be the end of the fight. Mentally he reviewed the crew roster the mystery man had given him. There were three people aboard the squid ship worthy of respect in combat: the captain himself and the first and second mates. Everyone else, however, may as well already be dead before the swords of his boarding party.

No, he remembered suddenly, there was one unknown quantity: the large, curly-haired warrior who'd signed on soon before the squid ship had left port. He might prove to be a problem, so Berglund would order four of his better swordsmen to handle the burly man. No matter how good he may be, he wouldn't last long against four swords.

There he was! Berglund could see him on the foredeck of the rapidly approaching squid ship. If Berglund could see him, that meant he in turn could see the armed warriors lining the rails of the Shark. Yet, even seeing the force arrayed against him, the big man seemed undismayed.

That was something to consider, wasn't it? That much confidence might be based on some foundation….

All this flashed through Berglund's mind in a heartbeat. Maybe accepting the ram wasn't a wise decision after all….

"Hard to port!" the pirate captain yelled.

But it was too late. With a sudden pang of real fear, Berglund saw the squid ship-impossibly-accelerate even more.

Then he saw the large warrior on the enemy's foredeck start to change….

*****

Teldin growled with fierce exhilaration as he saw Beth-Abz assume its true form. A beam of brilliant green- brighter than the sun-lashed out from one of the beholder's lesser eyes and struck the battle dolphin amidships. The Cloakmaster saw the heavy wood of the hull flash into dust under the magical onslaught.

Then the squid ship's piercing ram struck. The impact hurled Teldin from his chair, into the forward bulkhead. For a moment he was stunned, the ringing in his ears drowning out the sound of shattering timber. Shaking his head to clear it, he forced himself to a sitting position. The glow of the cloak-flickering as he struggled to regain control- flared brightly once more. His expanded perception returned.

The Boundless's slender ram had driven deep into the "head" of the battle dolphin, piercing the reinforced wood as if it had been light balsa. Chunks of torn timber, knocked free by the impact, slammed against the hull of the squid ship. Many of the battle dolphin's crewmen had been knocked to the deck, he saw, but they were quickly readying themselves to board.

They were too late. Teldin's own "boarding party" was already moving.

Beth-Abz floated over the foredeck rail and headed forward along the length of the ram to where it pierced the battle dolphin's hull. Teldin saw Beth-Abz reorient itself slightly as it adjusted for the slightly different gravity plane of the other vessel. A green beam flicked out again, blowing a gaping hole in the planking. Then Beth-Abz disappeared through the gap.

"Stand by to repel boarders!" the Cloakmaster yelled.

*****

A beholder? A gods-cursed beholder! And it's aboard my ship.

From below him, deep in the "head" of the Shark, Berglund could hear his crew members screaming, dying. There was no way they could fight an eye tyrant.

The Shark was lost; he knew it, and the knowledge was a cold, sickening feeling in the pit of his stomach. And if he didn't act soon, his life would be lost, too.

A captain owed loyalty to his crew, as they owed loyalty to him-that philosophy had been drummed into him when he'd served with the military. But that loyalty didn't extend to sacrificing his own life for them.

"Separate the shuttle!" Berglund screamed.

*****

Some few of the pirates had swarmed over their own rail and were trying to board the Boundless, Teldin could see. But their attempt was halfhearted at best, and Teldin's own crew was holding them off with boarding pikes. On the afterdeck, Djan-seemingly little hampered by his arm wound-was pumping crossbow quarrels into the attackers. Dranigor, the secondary helmsman, was doing his part, raking the would-be boarders with magical projectiles that burst from his extended fingertips. The wave of attackers faltered, then broke, fleeing back toward the dubious safety of their own ship.

Even with his enhanced senses, Teldin couldn't see Beth-Abz anymore. He could hear, however, the screams from within the battle dolphin as the beholder rampaged around within it. As he watched, a section of the larger craft's lower hull blew out into space-presumably struck by the eye tyrant's disintegration beam.

Something was happening to the battle dolphin's open main deck, he saw suddenly. The lines of the ship seemed to change, as though it were breaking up…

But then he realized just what he was seeing. A section of the battle dolphin-most of the upper portion of its "tail," in fact-was lifting free under its own power. As the gap between it and the rest of the ship opened, he could see it resembled a two-masted, open-decked sailing ship. Much smaller than the battle dolphin as a whole, this new vessel was no more than forty feet long, and couldn't hold a crew of more than fifteen to twenty, if that. It had to be a kind of lifeboat, a captain's gig, or perhaps some combination of the two. Obviously the enemy captain was making his escape, leaving the remainder of his crew to their fate. If Teldin had anything to do with it, the pirate captain wouldn't make it.

But the Cloakmaster couldn't have anything to do with it. The Boundless ram was driven deep into the battle dolphin, effectively immobilizing the squid ship and preventing it from giving chase. The catapult was broken, and the lifeboat-gig-whatever was taking care to stay out of the firing arcs of the ballistae. Already the escape craft was out of effective bow range. The captain was going to get away with his unprovoked attack, and Teldin would never know who he was or what his motivations were….

Then, without warning, the familiar line of burning green lanced up from the battle dolphin. Angling up out of the space recently occupied by the gig, it struck the stern of the smaller ship, blowing much of it into fragments. The gig instantly began to corkscrew slowly, obviously unpowered and out of control.

*****

Berglund rose slowly back to consciousness like a man swimming to the surface of a night-black lake. The side of his head hurt abominably where something-a fragment of his ship, he thought-had struck him. He felt warm wetness spreading down from above his hairline on the right, blinding his right eye. He wiped the blood from his eye, but didn't bother to tend to the wound, or to any of his other minor injuries.

The dolphin shuttle was virtually wrecked, he saw at once. The aft quarter of the sterncastle deck was just gone, blown into dust by the beholder's magical ray. Amidst the wreckage trailing behind the ship, he could see the tumbling body of his second mate. From this distance he couldn't see whether Rejhan was alive or not. He rather thought not, but there was no way to be sure. Certainly, the helm was down and the ship crippled, leaving him no way of retrieving his lost crewman.

Or relieving the ones I left behind to die, he reminded himself dully.