Nigel Findley - The Broken Sphere

Then he was the squid ship. He could feel its grievous damage, the rents in the hull blasted by the dying beholder, the cracks in the keel, and the ripped and shredded rigging, only partially repaired. He frowned. It was as Djan had told him soon after Beth-Abz's death: the ship could sail- slowly-but it was in no shape for a fight.

That left Teldin with a difficult choice: push the ship to a speed high enough to guarantee escape from the approaching nautiloid, and risk tearing the Boundless apart, or keep to a speed that wouldn't kill the ship, and risk getting blown out of space by the illithid vessel. He sighed. Well, there was no way of telling which was the best course until he'd tested the ship's responses. He extended his will and felt rather than saw the cloak glow with power.

The Boundless surged forward. Teldin gasped with pain as he felt the cracked keel shift, threatening to tear apart. He backed off on the acceleration slightly, as he started to maneuver the ship to bear away from the attacker. Although his wraparound perception still let him see the nautiloid, most of Teldin's attention was focused on the squid ship's internal condition. Thus it was Djan who spotted the next development. "They're firing!" he screamed.

Projectiles-three massive ballista bolts, plus a catapult missile-hurtled through space at the squid ship. Quite a salvo, Teldin thought grimly. With his extended senses, he could easily pick out the incoming shots against the blackness of wildspace and mentally project their courses. In the few seconds before impact, he forced the Boundless into a wide barrel roll-a maneuver he'd heard called "battle evasion." The strain on the keel, and on the entire hull, screamed through his nerves. He gritted his teeth against the pain, desperately willing the ship to hang together.

The maneuver was partially successful. Two of the shots-the catapult missile and one of the ballista bolts- flew wide. The Cloakmaster gasped as the other two bolts ripped through the hull, one tearing another breach into the cargo hold, the other striking farther forward, near the crew compartments. He slowed the Boundless for a moment as he evaluated the damage. Bad enough, he decided, but still not critical.

Now I've got time to react, he told himself. It takes time to reload catapults and ballistae-one or two minutes at least. We've got that much time to get out of here.

He stopped the squid ship's roll and poured on as much speed as he dared. Gingerly, he brought the ship's bow around, curving away from the attacker. The nautiloid appeared to drift aft, hanging like an ersatz moon over the deck rail, until it settled almost directly astern. "Ballistae away!" the Cloakmaster yelled.

He heard the two great bows sing; with his cloak-mediated senses he felt the vibration of their firing communicated through their mounts to the structure of the vessel. He watched the missiles hurtle silently through space. One missed, passing scant feet to the port of the nautiloid's spiral hull. The other struck the ship cleanly in its open battle deck, shattering the catapult and felling the barely glimpsed figures of the weapon crew. Teldin smiled grimly. One heavy weapon down, he told himself. "Reload," he cried. The weapon crews jumped to obey.

The Cloakmaster poured on a little more speed. He felt the damaged keel start to twist sickeningly under the strain, and he backed off again. Paladine's blood, he cursed to himself. Not enough speed. The nautiloid was still closing. The tactical situation had turned into a stern chase, which was always a protracted proposition, and the speed differential wasn't great, but the illithid vessel was slowly overhauling the abused squid ship. This wasn't supposed to be the way it worked; after all, didn't he possess an ultimate helm? It didn't matter much now, he had to admit, with a ship held together by little more than paint and determination. How in the Abyss was he supposed to get out of this one?

The nautiloid was ready to fire again. He could see the three medium ballistae-two on the upper battle station, one on the lower-cranked back and loaded. He started to maneuver the ship again, but felt the strained keel ready to give way.

Damn it to the Nine Hells! What did he do now? Throw the ship into another battle evasion maneuver and tear the keel apart? Or keep a steady course and let the nautiloid blow the squid ship to fragments?

The enemy ship's weapons fired simultaneously, a salvo of three missiles hurtling silently through the void, all heading straight for the mark. Damaged keel or no damaged keel, he knew that to let all three shots hit was to doom the Boundless. Desperately, he threw the bow down. His stomach lurched with the changing acceleration.

It almost worked. One of the iron-headed spears hissed past the ship, vanishing again into the darkness. The second grazed the starboard spanker fin, carrying away only a couple of square feet of wood and canvas. The third slammed squarely into the underside of the stern, tearing through the bilges and driving into the foot of the mizzenmast.

The impact jarred the ship from bow to stern. Teldin's ears were filled with cries of alarm, his body racked with pain as the keel flexed and cracked. He felt control slip away. The Boundless- again!-was no longer a ship under power, but a shattered and drifting hulk.

As the squid ship's speed bled away, the Cloakmaster saw the nautiloid looming up astern, rotating around its long axis so that it appeared to be capsizing. The spiral ship's long, piercing ram was a spear aimed at the Boundless's heart. "They're ramming!" he yelled. "Brace for impact!" Only at the last instant before contact did he take his own advice and grab the deck railing with all his might.

The hull timbers of the Boundless screamed in torment as the nautiloid struck the hull below and between the spanker fins. The long ram drove through the planking at an upward angle, smashing through the helm compartment to emerge out through the afterdeck.

The impact was enormous. With a dry crack, the mizzenmast broke in two, the upper portion falling aft and outward, ripping away the already damaged starboard spanker fin.

Despite his death grip on the rail, Teldin was almost torn free and flung overboard. His head struck a newel post with a sickening crack, and his vision filled momentarily with drifting stars.

No time, he told himself fiercely, no time for weakness. He shook his head to clear it and forced himself to his feet.

The Boundless was dead, he knew that. The impact of the ram must have shattered the keel. Theoretically, with an immense amount of work and colossal good fortune, it might be possible to repair it sufficiently to sail again, but that didn't matter much now, did it? The illithids from the nautiloid would swarm aboard the crippled squid ship at any moment. How many of them would there be? he asked himself. A dozen? Two dozen? Three? How could his crew stand up to that many mind flayers?

Still, he had to try. "Boarding pikes!" he screamed. "Stand by to repel boarders!"

Teldin clutched Julia's short sword as he tried to make sense of the situation. The Boundless was a bigger vessel than the nautiloid, which meant that the squid ship's gravity plane would be dominant. That meant that the boarders from the nautiloid would have to climb steeply down their own ship to the hull of the Boundless. Then, once they'd reached the gravity plane, they'd have to swarm up the sides and over the rails. Possible, definitely, but quite difficult. "Line the rails," he ordered as his armed crew poured up onto the deck. "They'll be coming from below."

They were coming already. He could hear footfalls on the underside of the squid ship's hull.