Chaison shrugged and said, "We came out here to find a pirate's treasure, but it looks like we're going to become such a treasure instead."
Travis nearly lost his grip. "Pirate's… treasure? Admiral, sir, what are you talking about?"
Chaison gazed past him. Another of his ships was disappearing behind a pall of smoke. He doubted that it was a deliberate ploy, it wasn't evenly enough distributed. That did not look good.
They were approaching the portholes to the bridge. There was an impenetrable hatch there; they would have to talk their way in. Shouldn't be hard, Chaison thought absently. Venera's not mad at me for anything at the moment.
He risked another glance at the battle. Yes, that was definitely the Clarity on fire out there. Three pirates had it under sustained attack. They were using a wheel formation, he saw—that was far too sophisticated a maneuver to be undertaken by untrained privateers. The three ships had let out ropes and tied them together at a central point. With their engines on full they'd begun to spin around that central pivot point. Spinning up like that was easy; it was a standard way for groups of ships that lacked centrifuges to create gravity while on long voyages. What was hard was spinning and twisting while you spun to present a difficult target to attackers. These ships were doing that.
Two-thirds of the wheeling formation were inside the cloud-bank. The net effect was that a pirate would swing out of the white wall at a fierce clip, fire a volley of rockets, and then dive back into the mist in a much steeper turn than would normally be possible. The Clarity was firing rockets at the center of the formation, hoping to cut the ropes that held the three ships together. That was a long shot, however.
Travis had given up asking about the treasure and was pounding on the armored hatch. Chaison hardly noticed, mesmerized as he was by the drama unfolding in that distant patch of sky. Get out of there, he willed the Clarity, but its engines must be damaged. It was a hanging target, like a driver fallen off his bike and vulnerable in clear air. In seconds it could all be over.
The cloudbank pulsed orange once, twice, then dozens of times in rapid succession. Chaison had seen fireworks reflecting off clouds; that was what this looked like. He'd been mentally timing the appearance of each ship from within the clouds, and the next one was late. No, not late—it wasn't coming out. Seconds passed, and the second of the three should have appeared, but it didn't.
Finally one appeared. The pirate left the cloudbank in an uncontrolled tumble. Flashes of rocket fire showed long streamers of rope trailing behind it.
"They hit something," he said. Travis looked up, puzzled. Chaison pointed, and as he did so another flash lit the clouds, this one miles away.
"Somebody moved the icebergs," he whispered. Then he started to laugh. Two spokes of the wheel had been lost within seconds—two pirate ships flown at full speed into an unexpected obstacle. The fools were too confident in their charts, and now they were blindly running into the mountains of ice they had been using to hide their maneuvering. It served them right.
"I don't see what it is you find so amusing about the situation," said a cold voice behind Chaison.
"Travis, cease your work," he said quietly. Turning, he raised his hands. "We have visitors."
VENERA FANNING CROUCHED on the inside of the bridge's hatch. She could hear voices outside; one had sounded like her husband's. Captain Sembry refused to undog the hatch, however, and she didn't have the strength. The damn thing was designed to resist an invading force. Opening was about the last thing it was capable of doing.
Rhythmic pounding came from the inner doors as well. A minute ago an explosive charge had gone off behind one of those doors, but it hadn't been enough to break the hinges. It was only a matter of time, though.
Well, she thought, this will be an interesting new chapter in my life. Captured by pirates! The prospects of various fates worse than death outraged and angered her, but Venera wasn't afraid. She was already wondering what leverage she could use to make the best of the situation.
"The gas?"
Venera came alert at those words. She looked over at the bridge crew, who were clustered around a set of valves and pipes at the back of the can-shaped chamber. Captain Sembry was shaking his head at whoever had spoken.
"Too late for that," he said. "We'd kill the boarders, but the rest of the pirates would just blow the stuff out and come in again."
"The charges, then."
Sembry nodded, reaching into his jacket for something.
"Captain?"Venera put on her best maiden-in-distress act. "What's happening?"
Sembry turned, looking patriarchal and sad. "I'm sorry, dear," he said, "but we can't allow a Slipstream ship to fall into enemy hands. I'm going to have to scuttle the Rook."
She widened her eyes. "But we'll all be killed, won't we?"
He sighed. "That is the nature of military service, I'm afraid."
"How do you scuttle a big ship like this?" she asked.
Sembry showed her the key in his hand. He nodded to a set of metal boxes on the wall behind him. "These charges can only be set off by electrical current," he explained. "This key—"
He blinked in surprise at the pistol Venera had produced from inside her silk pantaloons. Sembry opened his mouth to speak but Venera never learned what he might have said because at that moment she shot him in the forehead.
The rest of the bridge crew was nicely packed together, and consequently picking them off was just as easy.
Twitching bodies and drops of blood caromed around the bridge. Venera ducked through it all and grabbed Sembry, who still had a surprised look on his face.
First order of business, she thought: dispose of this key.
Second: open the doors and let in the pirates.
HAYDEN'S PLAN HAD worked. He and Martor hovered high above the action, at the only spot he'd found where they could see past cloud, contrail, smoke, and darkness. Four icebergs were nosing out of the mist now, trailing fog as they slowly garnered momentum in their long fall toward the Sun of Suns. The pirates had lost their advantage and were in disarray. The battle might have turned.
Something he hadn't anticipated was happening, though: as the icebergs fell, they brought their weather with them. The battle scene was fast disappearing in a vast billow of cloud. Already foghorns were sounding through the dimness as the ships struggled to avoid one another.
Martor was squirming with impatience. "Now back to the Rook!"
Hayden nodded and spun up the engine; but he was uneasy. with the ships separated by mist and mines it could be a long time before the Rook was relieved. He nudged them cautiously through the layers of mist, listening for the sound of gunfire or rockets. Ominously, he heard nothing.
A black hull loomed up suddenly and he had to spin the bike and hit the gas to stop in time. "It's the pirate!" said Martor as he groped for the sword he'd stowed in the sidecar. "Sounds like we've won!"
Hayden eased them around the hull, as quietly as he could. The pirate and the Rook were still bound together with rope, and lights burned in the portholes of both. He could see the gray shapes of men working on the Rook's engines, so the fight must indeed be over.
Martor was nearly bursting. "Come on, what are you waiting for?"
"Shh!" Cutting the engine entirely, Hayden let them drift toward the aft of the ships. The working figures resolved slowly, like images he'd once seen on a photographic emulsion.
"Hey, those aren't—" Quickly Hayden grabbed Martor's arm, putting a finger to his own lips. The boy pulled away.
"But that can't be! We have to do something."