The Sorceress of Karres (23 page)

As for Pausert . . .  He really hadn't ever been able to forget that kiss.

He wasn't ready to deal with this. It was almost with relief that he forced his mind aside to deal with the perilous situation of the moment.

"Not too safe here anyway," he said, untwining his fingers from hers and taking control of the ship. The Sheewash drive was plainly not a "drive" so much as some kind of sequence of tiny jumps through space-time, because it left the
Venture
far ahead of the pack of Phantom ships, but also with no extra velocity. The captain pushed his throttles forward, causing the
Venture
to increasingly shake and sway because of the roughly aligned repaired tube.

"She doesn't feel so good, Captain," said Goth. "You think we got hit back there?"

"No, we had a run-in with a space rock earlier. Broke a tube-bracket. We did a repair job on the cinder-block world we found Mebeckey on. The alignment's not perfect, I'm afraid. I just hope it's a good enough weld."

Goth cracked an enormous yawn. "Sorry. It's been a very long, full day for me. Back on Nikkeldepain and here."

"Sleep a bit. I'll call if I need you," said the captain, keeping a wary eye on a cloud of shattered rocks that was showing on one of the screens. The dust in the system made guiding the ship even more difficult, hanging in drifting curtains obscuring both the view and the instrument detection. On the positive side, the same factors should make it a good place to hide and evade pursuit—which was probably why the Megair Cannibals used this system themselves.

Then Pausert looked at the rear-screens and realized how wrong he was. He had to dodge space debris—but Phantom ships appeared to go straight through them. And whereas the
Venture
had been dealing with twelve in the englobement, there were more of them now. Far more.

At the same time, he noticed that they did appear to avoid the really, really big rocks—anything with enough mass to have a gravity field worth mentioning. He got that gambler's feeling, the prickle on the back of his neck, that he'd come to realize was a klatha sense too. This was valuable information for Karres. The intangible Phantoms didn't take to gravity. That was why they'd avoided worlds. Some kind of gravity tractor would make a weapon against them.

Goth gave a quiet little snuffly snore from the control chair next to him. "The Leewit," he said quietly into the intercom. "Can you bring Goth a blanket? I think you can stand down from the guns. I've got to keep a look-out for obstacles."

"Sure thing, Captain. I got a couple more. You got to anticipate them," said the Leewit gleefully. "I'm glad to have Goth back. It was hard being told I had to be responsible for you on my own."

Which, Pausert was ready to bet, was exactly what Goth had told her to be. That explained the un-Leewit-like behavior. He smiled to himself. It was a question of perspective, he supposed. He'd had the delusion that he was the one being responsible for them. Oh well, it worked both ways. He concentrated instead on the crowded region of space ahead. A couple of light-hours away was a reasonable sized world with a slew of moons and a series of rings. If the Phantoms didn't like gravity, that would be a good place to hide up and rest. He really didn't want to push the
Venture
too far on that slightly misaligned tube. The vibration would probably shake loose something else, let alone break his weld.

"They're coming up fast, Captain." said the Leewit quietly, leaning over his chair while Goth slept in the one next to him.

"I know. And I'm going to have to cut the throttle a bit. Look at the telltales. Tube seven, the one we repaired the stanchions for, is overheating. Must be the effects of the vibration. I'll have to throttle down soon or she'll blow. And to keep us running in a balanced fashion, I'll need to cut the throttle on tube three by the same amount."

"Could correct a bit with the laterals," said the Leewit, showing that she'd absorbed a great deal in the time that her sister had been away.

"Yep." The captain's hands moved over the controls, adjusting throttles. "Means we can still keep the other seven at full thrust for a bit, but dodging rocks . . . well, it's a recipe for disaster."

The Leewit grinned. "Disasters are what we deal with best on the
Venture.
We going to Sheewash again?"

Pausert shook his head. "If we can get into the gravity well of that fourth planet from that greenish star before they get close enough, we can rest up a bit. With all three of us doing it, we can try. Dodging debris while doing the Sheewash is even harder. But we're just four light-days from the edge of Uldune's space sphere of influence. I'll be pretty glad to see it."

"Yeah. Turn this lot of spooks into a Sedmon of the Six Lives problem," said the Leewit. "They just keep right on coming, Captain. I hit the one ship pretty hard. It's almost as if they don't care."

"They're keeping a greater distance, though. So something must have got them a bit wiser."

"Uh huh. But give me targets that I just have to aim for and hit. Not things where it doesn't matter most of the time."

Pausert smiled to himself. The Leewit was very glad to have her older sister back, to hand over responsibility again. But listening to her, Pausert wondered if she realized that it had been a one-way street that she'd walked down. She could never go back to being quite the little hooligan that she'd been before, no matter how much she still
looked
the complete blonde urchin.

They reached the upper edge of the gravitational tug of the mass of the greenish-white world below, and Pausert was happy to discover that his gambler's instinct had been right. The Phantom ships that had been steadily gaining on them began to drop back as they got closer to the planet.

It must be a gloomy place, Pausert thought. It had a good eighty-five percent cloud-cover. The clouds, of course, reflected the light of the local sun, giving their white tops a greenish tinge.

Goth stirred in her chair, possibly the change in note from the
Venture
's tubes getting through to her. "Boy, I could murder some breakfast," she said, stretching. "What's up, Captain? Where are those . . . Melchin . . . Illtraming ships? That is weird, you know. The guys I was protecting you from back on Nikkeldepain—did you ever guess you nearly got kidnapped? They ended up taking me as bait for you. They'd been to search the old
Venture 7333
. She's been this way before."

Pausert nodded. "I found star maps. That's how we ended up stopping on the world we picked Mebeckey up at. They indicated that the ship had made a safe landing there. Right now we're hanging just inside the stratosphere of one of the worlds in this cluster. The Phantoms don't like gravity. We can rest and recuperate a little before we need to use the Sheewash drive to get out of here again."

"Had. Yeah. I reckon that place you stopped at . . . that must be where Threbus picked up the Illtraming map they were so busy looking for. It was inside your home. With the other bric-a-brac Threbus left behind there."

"Lucky we didn't sell it. We were pretty hard up when you arrived on Nikkeldepain."

Goth smiled. "And all because Threbus chose to fake his death and disappearance from the same part of space where your father also happened to go missing. A coincidence, but it made life pretty tough for you. I must say I'm sorry on my father's behalf. I'd like to have told you then. But I couldn't, of course."

"I bet whoever tried to kidnap you regretted it," said Pausert. "I only wish I'd known. Back then I would have thought it was enormous fun."

"They were a tough bunch of crooks," said Goth. "And they're still out there if the information I've got is correct."

An alarm sounded from the detectors.

Pausert looked at his screens. "We're under attack!" he yelped, hitting the throttles.

Goth strapped herself in again. "The Leewit, strap in! I thought you said the Phantoms wouldn't come this close to a gravity well, Captain."

"This is not the Phantoms," said Pausert, putting the ship into a steep dive. "The attack's coming from below!"

The Leewit had stood down from her guns. The captain flicked control of them to Goth, moving the firing relays to her board. Below, rising rapidly out of the greenish clouds, were two atmospheric craft. There was something vaguely insectlike to the design.

"Fire at will," said the captain, banking sharply. "I'm sorry, Goth. I think we just came for a lovely rest in the Megair Cannibals' back yard."

Red balls of fire leapt toward them.

Goth and Vezzarn answered fire, and the captain flung the
Venture
toward the clouds, looking to use the gravity to add to the ship's thrust.

More atmospheric craft came boiling their way out of the clouds like a seethe of roaches.

"Going to have to go Sheewa—"

Something hit the
Venture
with a terrible bang, and the old pirate-chaser spun out of control, hurtling downwards, no thrust coming out of her stern tubes at all. Pausert fought for control as they plunged down through the cloud. He tried, desperately, for reignition in the tubes. Nothing. He hit the laterals, and was rewarded by a burst of power from them. The winds tore and buffeted at the ship as the captain tried vainly to slow her descent. But he just didn't have enough power.

Inside the control room there was a storm of debris blowing about, and a white mist of icy air. Hull integrity must have been lost. A good thing they were losing altitude—a bad thing that they were losing it so fast.

"Vezzarn here, Captain," said the old spacer over the intercom. "I've managed to get to the engine room, Captain. The main interfacer unit has blown, sir!"

"Get strapped in, Vezzarn. This is going to be a rough landing." Pausert began hastily rerouting control through to the test firing circuits. Testing wasn't run through the main interface system. It was also not meant to be run in more than ten-second bursts. He was going to have to set the
Venture
down, manually firing her tubes in ten-second sequential bursts. If he could slow down their descent enough, he could set the
Venture
down on her laterals.

That was going to take all his skill as a pilot to do it.

It didn't help that someone was shooting at them at the same time.

The ground was coming up entirely too fast. Goth saw how, face impassive, intent with concentration, Captain Pausert fired the main tubes in a sequential burst sending the
Venture
corkscrewing but slowing. Their plunge to the gray-green vegetation slowed. The
Venture
swung over onto her side, and the captain fired the laterals on full thrust.

With a rush of cracking and hissing, the
Venture 7333
settled onto the trees, and then lurched and fell. The captain fired the laterals again and the
Venture
came to a final rest on the surface with little more than a dull thump.

"We're down," said Pausert with relief. They were certainly neck deep in trouble, but at least they were down. That in itself was a huge weight off his shoulders.

"Neat flying, Captain," said Goth. Other congratulations came in over the intercom, from the Leewit, Vezzarn, and in a shaky voice from Mebeckey.

Pausert unclipped from his webbing. "Touch and go, at times. I better go and see if we've got spare parts for the drive sequencer, or if I can rig some kind of manual override. And we need to find out where the hull integrity is breached. We're not leaving here, Sheewash or no, without fixing that. With luck, it is something we can weld a patch onto."

Goth got up and followed him. "The locals might not be too pleased to see us. After that reception, they seem more likely to go after us with a space-gun than offer us the use of their shipyards."

He nodded. "We'll just have to deal with them as they arrive. Do you think we can do anything with a light-shift? The little I saw of the local landscape, it didn't seem like the most populated of places."

"Looked like a cross between a forest and a swamp. With the worst parts of both," said Goth. "I'll check it out."

"They can probably find us with an instrument search," said Pausert. "The hull-metal must be pretty hot. And then there is radiation off our tubes. But let's not make it easy for them."

"They sure didn't seem too friendly."

"No," said Pausert. "I think we may have jumped out of the deep-space frying-pan and into the planetary fire. I think—looking at the design of those ships—this world might be not just the back yard, but the base of our old enemies, the Megair Cannibals."

Goth whistled. "Just the perfect place to crash-land, huh? Okay, you see if you can get anywhere with the sequencer. I'll stay here. Check out the screens to see what sort of light-shift I need to do, and I'll test the atmosphere. We're still alive breathing it, but who knows whether we'll be able to go on doing that indefinitely."

"Good thinking. Keep the Leewit on the nova guns—she's uncannily good—and get Vezzarn and Mebeckey looking for breaches in hull integrity." He squeezed her shoulder. "I can't tell you how good it is to have you back, even if we're straight into a deeper mess."

Goth found herself smiling, despite the disaster. "We're alive, Captain. And we have three witches of Karres. What's a mere Cannibal's planet to that?"

Pausert made his way down to the engine-room, trying not to get too upset by the mess that the conflict had made of the
Venture.
It could be repaired if they got out of here.
Not if. When
, he said determinedly to himself.

Big dream thing
, said the littlest vatch,
life around you is fun. More exciting even than the dreamplays.

"Hello. I didn't know you were still with us," said Pausert with a sort of calm resignation. After all, a bit of little-vatch mischief was fairly harmless compared to the situation they were in. It could make things worse, of course. But it might also help. There was nothing to be gained by getting upset with it.

Been here and gone. I talk to the Leewit. Learning quite a lot about you, big dream thing.