Death Drop (53 page)

Otto was still chuckling at Booktu’s prank as he looked to starboard, when the fear returned with a mind- and body-numbing vengeance. The fur from the back of his skull to the tip of his thick tail bristled and stood on end. He wasn’t imagining things this time. To the starboard side of the
Lodestar
, revealed by the extraneous flash of the mysterious cloud, was the unmistakable outline of a ship.
“What the hell? What side was Saraunt on when we came in? Could it be The Ghost? Somebody else?”
he thought. Otto didn’t know what to do. Even if Rilek and the others believed him, they couldn’t exactly go looking for the strange vessel.
“Whoever it is, they have to be just as blind as we are in here, right? So, they can’t possibly pose a threat, right? Unless…it’s Draoncul!”
Otto was driving himself crazy again with questions, but given the recent joke about the phantom fleet of the lost king of Rulunsk, he didn’t dare say anything to Rilek. He was certain that if he suggested there was a ship that could be helmed by wraiths floating off to starboard, it would earn him a one way ticket to the infirmary and a nice dose of sedatives. Rilek would never fully trust him if he couldn’t keep his wits about him in battle. Otto was in agony, torn between saying nothing and possibly being attacked and reporting his findings to the crew and being ridiculed and deemed unreliable by a superior officer and revered warrior. The major couldn’t take it anymore and decided that it was better to be wrong and labeled a kook than keep quiet and wind up blasted to pieces.

“Admiral Rilek?” Otto said. “I think I just saw”

POOF! The haze slipped around the sides and top of the conning tower like a celestial magician pulling away his cloak to reveal his illusion to the universe. The navigational instruments whirred to life and showed the
Maelstrom
steady off the port side stern in cover position. Otto gave an audible gasp as he saw the blue glow of one of the
Ghost’s
engines spinning wildly in front of them. Booktu had managed to hit the other engine while they were inside the cloud, and Rilek wasted no time capitalizing on their good fortune.

“FIRE!” he wailed as the
Ghost
leveled out in front of them. Booktu grimaced as he squeezed the triggers on the firing controls, and the big tubes on the deck shrieked death: the forward lengths recoiling and sliding into their larger diameter bases only to extend again in time for the next salvo. BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

The shots sailed wide of the target as The Ghost banked his ship sporadically back and forth. “Bastard!” Booktu spat. The gunner could taste victory—he was close to destroying the mighty Ghost—but Otto was surprised to see that instead of opening fire in a random blanket of shells, Booktu finessed the yoke back and forth, tracking the haphazard movements of his prey and waiting for his moment to strike. And then it came. BOOM! BOOM!

“Good shot!” Rilek hollered as the portside engine on the
Ghost
flickered and died. “Captain Saraunt, covering fire—we’re going in!” The sound of the rattling vibrations caused by the
Maelstrom’s
machine guns through the ship thrummed over the com before Rilek was finished with his orders.

“Aye, Admiral!”

Rilek overtook the wounded Zebulon star freighter with ease. He pulled the battered flank of his ship alongside and stopped so the deck guns were in line with where he thought the fuel tanks would be. It wouldn’t matter if he were a few meters off in any direction, the ordnance fired by the cannons would tear another ship in two at this range, but Booktu was precise and he was taking his time dialing in his shot. After all, there was no threat of retaliation—he could take as much time as he wanted.

AAHOOUGA! AAHOOUGA! AAHOOUGA!

Rilek turned at the helm just in time to see the silver bow of a ship, crackling with bolts of blue electricity, appearing off of their portside bow and turning parallel to their course. “BRACE YOURSEL”

KABOOM-KABOOM-BOOM-BOOM-KABOOM-BOOM-KABOOM!

The ship was shaking so hard, Otto thought his head was going to be snapped off of his shoulders. His arms and his legs flailed beneath the straps of the harness that secured him to his chair, and a guttural moan of fear and surprise howled from his mouth. He didn’t know who had fired on them, but he was sure the worn hull of the ship couldn’t withstand such a brutal onslaught, and he waited to be wrenched into space or incinerated. Much to his surprise, the ship stopped shaking and he wasn’t dead, and even more perplexing, Rilek was still standing at the helm. The admiral was flipping switches, pulling levers and shouting orders as the
Lodestar
and its crew prepared to do battle once more.

“Shutters!” he shouted.

“Shutters, aye!” Nori responded, and the clear view from the conning tower was reduced to a row of small rectangular windows that encircled them as plate armor slid from the seams of the big panes and locked into place.

“Evasive action!” Rilek bellowed as he spun the wheel hard to starboard. The
Lodestar
danced over the top of the
Ghost
in a barrel roll that pinned Otto to his seat and nearly crushed the breath from his lungs. At every turn, Rilek never failed to amaze, and something happened during the roll that fanned Otto’s fascination into a raging inferno.

He was wondering how the admiral had managed to stay upright when they were attacked and as such, his eyes were still trained on Rilek when they began the maneuver. It all happened so fast, but Otto thought—no, he was certain—he saw Rilek stop the spinning helm and grip it, not with feathery hands, but with talons. If that wasn’t odd enough, he was sure that
something
had moved beneath the backside of his coat, like a thick cable, which wrapped around the bottom of the helm and held his lower half securely on the deck. Otto stared at the admiral, scrutinizing his limbs like a confused animal. He knew what he had seen, but now that they were flying level again and the ship wasn’t shuddering wildly from cannon fire, there was nothing there: no talons locked on the wheel like vises, no strange device attached to his waist, just feathery hands at the helm and boots planted firmly on the ground.

Otto turned and looked at Malo, hoping that he, too, had witnessed Rilek’s baffling trick, but the Moxen was unaffected by the action around them. He was still sitting bolt upright in his chair, gripping the handle of his battle hammer and staring, trancelike, straight ahead. Otto knew that Moxen usually sang to alter their mood—their own form of meditation—and he wondered if Malo had figured out a way to sing to himself to get the same effect. Whatever it was, it made the major uneasy. Malo’s huge eyes were blank, like his soul had seen the outcome of the battle and, knowing they were all going to die, had started its journey to the next realm early, leaving the empty shell of the Moxen’s body to face its fate alone. Otto opened his mouth to call to his friend, but the bruising force of his harness pulling against his torso snatched the words away.

The
Lodestar
hovered in mid-flight as Rilek reversed throttle. The admiral stood firm at the helm, his hands pulling at the contoured spindles, letting go, and then deftly gripping them again as he angled for position against the enemy. “Forward shutter one-quarter!” Rilek commanded.

“Forward shutter one-quarter, aye!” came the call from Nori, and the rectangular window directly at the front of the conning tower expanded. Endless pinpoints of light punched through the blackness in front of them and then vanished as the window suddenly filled with the tail end of the most alien ship Otto had ever seen. He mouthed the word as his eyes traced the name that was burned into the vessel’s shiny hull:
Triton
.

“Fire!” Rilek shouted, and before he could finish the word, the
Lodestar
trembled from the might of its cannons and the top starboard engine of the alien ship was torn away in a jet of brilliant orange and red flame. “Well done, Booktu!” Rilek sounded like a man on the verge of victory, the unstoppable tide of the battle on his side, and his confidence filled the room. Otto wanted to let out a jubilant yell to second the praise of Booktu’s fine marksmanship, but before he could gather the breath to holler over the din of the battle, the tide turned.

Two chambered doors opened on the back of the
Triton.
The shell-like portals reminded Otto of creatures he had seen in the oceans of his home world, but he knew what lay inside was neither scrumptious nor benign, and he wanted to scream ‘LOOK OUT!’ at the top of his lungs. Smooth barrels extended from the center of both doors and hurled their forged bolts at the bow of the ship with strobing flashes that lingered in the backs of Otto’s eyelids when he blinked. Rilek rolled the ship to starboard several times to avoid the aft guns of the
Triton
, and as they swayed back and forth, it occurred to Otto that the
Ghost
must still be on their port side. His mouth dropped open and his brow rose. He wasn’t a pilot or sailor, but Major Otto Von Holt was a tactically-minded military man, and he could see the trap they were about to fall into.

Otto’s arm jetted out from his side, his forefinger leading the way like a clawed bullet. It was a foolish gesture. Rilek never would have seen his finger—Otto was sitting behind him—and he didn’t need to. Otto’s arm wasn’t even halfway extended when he lost control of it. Instead of continuing to the viewing pane, it was floating above his head like a flailing limb on an amusement park ride. Rilek had slammed his ship ninety degrees downward as the
Triton
looped back, rolling on its side and opening fire with a vicious broadside cannonade.

The admiral growled as the
Lodestar
shook from several detonations on the stern, but the rusty old girl held together and Rilek saved the engines, and most likely everyone’s life, in the most amazing bit of piloting Otto had seen yet. “Captain, Saraunt, resume your attack on the
Ghost
!” Rilek called over the com as they spiraled down and the
Triton
gave chase.

The
Lodestar
trembled, and it wasn’t difficult for Otto to tell the difference between the smaller vibrations of the aft guns covering their escape and the furious impact of shells on the hull. The alternation took on a haphazard rhythm that Otto’s body reacted to without his permission. The rear deck guns pulsated and the tremors traveled through the deck, into his chair, and up his spine in a mild tingle. Rounds from the enemy on their tail slammed murderously into their stern and shook Otto so hard, he thought his harness might cut through him and his teeth would rattle out of his head. Tremble—Tremble—JOLT—JOLT! Tremble—Tremble—Tremble—JOLT—Tremble—JOLT! And then suddenly, everything went silent.

Rilek had started another loop. His ship was squatter from keel to its highest point than was his opponent’s, and he hoped to use the derelict
Ghost
as an obstacle; swooping from below and cutting close enough beneath it to cause his pursuer to break wide and open himself up for a barrage down the flank. But when they emerged on the other side, the only thing waiting for Rilek was pain and death. Seeing that the
Triton
didn’t follow, the admiral let the ship drift above the
Ghost
and pulled the throttle back. The
Lodestar
leveled out just in time to let Rilek and crew see the
Maelstrom’s
copper skin catch the light from Clara 591 and bounce it back to their eyes as Captain Saraunt pulled out of a half loop and charged, full speed, at the craft that presumably hosted the bastard Mewlatai that had started this whole infernal mess—the
Ghost
.

He lost sight of the
Triton
, but that didn’t matter: the strange ship wouldn’t stray far from the prize. Rilek engaged the throttles again, but as the control pressed against its stop, the admiral gasped in horror. The glimmering alien ship rocketed from the opposite side of the
Ghost
, rising up from some hellish obscurity in the phantom regions of the dark, revealing itself for one purpose—to kill.

“NO!” Otto cringed at the tortured sound of Rilek’s voice. Until now, he would have thought the soft-spoken admiral incapable of menace—a man that led by courageous example and few words—but it was clear that passion raged just beneath his odd exterior. Otto looked to Malo. The Moxen had been strangely quiet through the entire battle, staring intently ahead, as if soaking up every detail. Otto was certain that the haunting, unusual outburst from Rilek would stir Malo from his requiem, but it was no use. Malo stayed in a trance.

Fire erupted in multiple plumes from the side of the
Triton
, and the
Maelstrom
vanished. The green explosion left in place of the once noble ship and its venerable crew flattened and expanded: an emerald disk rushing out to fill the emptiness of space; then it, too, disappeared forever. Captain Saraunt and the Welku were no more.

“Goddam you!” roared Rilek as they pulled alongside the
Ghost
. “Booktu, track the fuel tanks and prepare to fire!”

“Aye, Admiral!”

Otto was amazed. He was certain Rilek’s hatred for the ship that had just murdered his crew in the
Maelstrom
would drive him to revenge, but he was going to finish the mission above all else. Saraunt had put the
Triton
out of position by resuming the attack on the
Ghost
, and the admiral was going to make certain the Welku hadn’t died in vain. Rilek truly was deserving of his legend.