Nigel Findley - The Broken Sphere

Another glow sprung to life, now to the left of the ship's path. Another bolt arced skyward, burning past the hull.

Another glow, another bolt, then another. Instantly he knew this one wasn't going to miss like the preceding three.

He felt the impact like a punch over the heart delivered by an ogre. He felt the ship's hull rupture, felt his body torn asunder. Redness, then blackness, enveloped him.

"We're going down!" Julia screamed.

And her voice followed Teldin down into unconsciousness.

Teldin could only have been unconscious for a couple of heartbeats if that, not even long enough to fall. As awareness returned, he could feel the deck jolting beneath his feet as the Boundless plummeted toward the world below. He grabbed at the mizzenmast to retain his balance.

His connection with the ship-his cloak-mediated control-had vanished as consciousness had fled. Now he struggled to regain it. Rosy pink light flared around him.

He gasped, almost doubling over with the pain, as his awareness once more encompassed the whole of the stricken squid ship. A huge hole had been smashed in the hull just starboard of the keel-directly amidships, in the middle of the cargo hold. Flames licked around the jagged edges of the hull breach and across the overhead. The large hatch cover had been blown loose and lay smoldering on the main deck.

"Fire in the hold!" he gasped, and heard Djan echo the cry. He felt and saw crewmen with buckets of sand jump to deal with the threat.

Again, the squid ship was plunging toward the ground. But this time the Cloakmaster knew he had more time to react. They were falling free, not being driven downward in a screaming dive by the power of the ultimate helm. That alone made the threat less immediate, but that benefit was negated by the serious damage to the ship.

Cautiously, he extended his awareness throughout the squid ship's structure. The impact of the bolt-whatever in the hells it was-had been tremendous. Joists and thwarts throughout the hull had been cracked or ripped apart. As his consciousness touched each area of damage, he flinched anew. The "wounds" he felt were grievous, maybe even mortal. His chances of bringing the ship out of its plunge rested totally on the condition of the keel. He hesitated, afraid to discover the worst. But then he forged on.

The keel was cracked amidships. He could feel the fibers of the timber grinding back and forth against each other, like the two bones in a badly broken arm. But the crack didn't extend right through. There should be enough support for him to bring the ship down in one piece… if he was careful. If he applied too much force, or turned the ship too sharply, the damaged keel would part, and then there'd be nothing even the ultimate helm could do to save it. Carefully, he started to pull the Boundless out of its stern-first plunge.

The ship jolted sideways-none of his doing!-threatening to rip the keel in two. Blossom!

"Get her off the helm!" the Cloakmaster screamed, loud enough to tear his throat and bring the bright copper taste of blood into his mouth. In an instant the spurious motions were gone, and he recognized that the ship was again entirely his.

Carefully-oh, so carefully-he started to apply forward power. With the stem of the vessel pointing downward, that began to slow its fall. He felt timber strain, felt the keel shift a fraction of an inch, another dozen wood fibers shearing under the stress. Then he started to bring the bow down-a couple of degrees a second, no faster. He tried to gauge how far they still were above the mountains below, but realized instantly that even that slight shift of his attention decreased his control over the ship's motions.

"Get Blossom to call out the altitude," he croaked to Djan, and heard the half-elf relay the instructions down the speaking tube.

He could feel Blossom sitting on the helm. She was no longer trying to exert any influence on the ship, but he could sense her extended perception overlapping his. He didn't need Djan as a relay when she announced, "Ten leagues."

Slowly he continued to push the squid ship's bow over. He tried adding a touch more forward force, instantly felt the damaged keel complain, and backed off again.

The ship's attitude was still forty-five degrees stern-down. But now the hull was exposing more surface area to the strong wind that whipped through the atmosphere envelope. He felt their downward speed start to diminish further… as the strain on the keel increased again.

"Four leagues." Even through the-artificial calm that connection with a helm brought, he could hear the fear in the woman's voice.

He didn't have much time left. The ship had a huge amount of speed; there was nothing he could do to bleed it all off, he knew. It's make or break, he told himself. He forced the bow over even harder.

He felt his stomach lurch and his feet almost leave the deck as the ship pivoted around an axis running horizontally through its beam. He felt and heard the screaming of tortured timber. But now the ship was horizontal, falling keel-first through the sky.

"Two leagues."

Still he pushed the bow over, until the Boundless had fifteen degrees of downward pitch. He felt the air catch the spanker sails bracketing the stern, felt the wooden supports take the strain. He fought the ship's desire to flip into a vertical bow-down attitude. Wood and canvas screamed a banshee wail.

It was working. With the spanker sails catching the wind, some of the ship's downward speed was being converted into forward velocity. If the spanker sails didn't tear loose, and if the keel didn't part… Again he added a touch more forward power.

The wind was a howl around him. He knew that, with the main helm effectively inactive, the ship's atmosphere envelope would collapse if he released control. Then the speed of their flight would tear the masts away, fling everyone on deck over the stern, even peel the decks themselves away from the hull.

"One league."

We really might make it! He knew it with sudden clarity. The ship was still in a screaming dive, but it was traveling bow first now. He had control of both its attitude and its heading. He started to bleed off speed with feather-touches of reverse power. Wood ground against wood as the keel flexed. If the keel were ever going to let go, now was the time, as his attempts to decelerate effectively tried to compress the Boundless along its longitudinal axis.

But the magnificently strained keel held. The death scream of the wind faded to a faint whistle. Then it fell silent as the ship's air envelope reasserted itself over the slipstream. The ship still was at a fifteen-degree angle and he didn't think he could pull it up again without tearing the vessel in two, but at least the speed was down to manageable levels.

"Altitude," he croaked.

"Two thousand feet," he heard Blossom gasp. Then she shouted, "Mountains!"

But he'd already seen them, some of the peaks reaching several thousand feet above the deck of the squid ship. By sheer luck, he'd brought the Boundless in along the line of a steep-sided pass between the highest of the peaks. Less than a league to one side or the other of their present course, and the ship would have been smashed to splinters against the rocky slopes.

What in Paladine's name am I going to do? Teldin asked himself. The squid ship was designed solely for a water landing, but there wasn't any water for dozens of leagues, and he knew he wouldn't be able to keep the stricken ship in the air for much longer before something critical failed.

So be it, then, a ground landing it had to be. He knew all too well what it would do to the ship, but his sole concern now was the lives of his friends and his crew.