The others stared, openmouthed. The craft that plied the scummy waters ranged from battered junks with painted sails and slave-powered sweeps, to the newest skimmers and needleboats. The people were as motley as their craft, representing every human variant. An occasional alien drew gasps of astonishment from the Pharaohans, who had seen few aliens during their stay in the slave compound.
Ruiz concentrated on remembering the route they took into the heart of SeaStack, and on trying to relate the landmarks to his memories of the pirate city.
Chapter 8
Corean cursed, a low, bitter, monotonous stream. She hung upside down from the acceleration webbing, unable to see out because of the mud and vegetation plastered across the sled’s armorglass bubble.
The craft shifted and subsided slightly. She cut short the curses. Time for that later, after she had somehow prevented the sled from sinking into the bog.
She slapped at the webbing releases, and fell sprawling onto the ceiling. The sled lurched again, and she felt a touch of fear. How deep was the bog?
She examined herself, waggled her limbs. She discovered no broken bones — though she ached everywhere.
She crawled to an upside-down flight panel, and peered at the readouts. She cursed again. The sled was dead; the blast that had grazed it had thoroughly fried the power and control systems.
She heard a clicking rattle and looked around. Marmo was carefully easing himself to an upright position.
“Are you functional?” she asked.
“I believe so,” he replied. “How is the Moc?”
“Don’t know.” She got up and picked her way across the ceiling, back toward the cargo bay. When she pulled herself up through the hatch, she saw the Moc, standing by the burst-open lock. One midarm hung by a thread of chitin.
The insectoid bondwarrior seemed otherwise undamaged, and the midarm would regenerate — though the injury cut its firepower in half, since its midarms carried implanted energy weapons.
It swiveled its head to look at her, and she saw from the nervous rasping movements of its mandibles that it was preparing for combat. It bowed its head, a lightning flicker of movement, and bit off the encumbering remnant of its arm.
“What is it?” Corean moved to the lock and cautiously peered out through a crevice. She saw, beyond the cattails that bordered the bog, a line of peasant guardsmen staring at the sled. They wore plumed hats and carried archaic weapons: pikes, harquebusses, crossbows. Behind them an armored individual sat an elegant mech charger. The armor imitated steel plate, but Corean was certain it was of more advanced design, since it seemed not to weigh heavily on its wearer. The rider wore an ornate broadsword in a sling across the back. The charger, looking something like a steel horse with claws instead of hooves, seemed equipped with more potent armament; two blackened orifices opened in its breastplate.
Corean narrowed her eyes. Bad enough that she was stranded in the middle of a mudhole — all she needed now was an irate local squire.
The armored person rose in the stirrups and called out. “You in the sled! Come out, hands empty and in plain sight.”
“Oh, sure,” she said in a low voice. She settled her helmet on her head, flipped down the visor, and checked the toggles that held the collarpiece securely to the rest of her armor.
“Last chance,” shouted the squire. Moments passed, and then flame coughed from the charger’s breast.
A spinner charge hit the lock and fragmented, sending a hail of glass slivers into the bay. The Moc jerked, then looked at her. The slivers had shredded its doublet, but bounced off its carapace, which was as dense as the armor she wore. One of its great compound eyes had taken a grazing hit, and thick yellow fluid welled from the wound.
Corean bared her teeth. The peasants were moving forward, sinking knee-deep in the mire, raising their harquebusses. “First,” she said, “kill the rider. Then the others.”
The Moc nodded, and blurred into movement, hitting the lock and crashing it open. It was past the peasants before they had time to react. It took a diagonal veer, so as to avoid the charger’s armament. The charger was very quick, however, and whirled to protect its rider before the Moc had quite cleared the bog. It fired again, but the Moc had already gone into an evasive movement pattern, so that the spinner missed. It detonated in midair, killing half of the guardsmen and maiming the rest.
Corean took her usual satisfaction in watching the Moc at its work, though the battle was decided in the first second. The Moc sprang, tearing the rider’s head off with a rip of its remaining midlimb. It continued the motion until its energy tube pointed down into the charger’s barrel. It triggered a short burst of energy, burning out the charger’s interior mechanism, freezing it instantly — and then the Moc was on its way back to finish the surviving peasants.
It was, she thought, a wonderful thing to own such an irresistible juggernaut of destruction. She remembered the time she had ordered the Moc to spare Ruiz Aw. Such foolishness. She would never be so soft again; when next Ruiz Aw fell into her hands, he would die quickly. Or maybe not; maybe he would live for a long time, but wish he could die quickly. Yes… that would be better.
Marmo came to stand next to her, and looked out at the Moc standing immobile among mangled bodies. “What’s this?”
“Local bog owner, who objected to our landing without permission.”
“Ah. What now?”
She shrugged. “Lensh and Fensh will follow when they can. We could try for the manor house, but it’s probably defended heavily — if we hadn’t had the Moc, the squire would have taken us. These retired pirates have a lot of enemies — this one was well armed, despite his playacting with the guardsmen.”
“Best to wait here and hope the squire has no friends to avenge him, then.” He leaned out and examined the surroundings. “The bog seems shallow enough that we won’t disappear into it.”
Corean nodded. “Yes. Let’s sit tight. A dreary wait — but it’ll pass. I’ll spend the time considering how best to make Ruiz Aw suffer for his sins.”
Marmo looked at her curiously. “He’ll be in SeaStack by now. He’ll probably be long gone by the time we get moving again.”
She glared at him. “No! I will have him again — I refuse to believe that he can escape me. Besides, how would he get past the pirates’ screening probes? Would they allow such a dangerous creature aboard one of their shuttles?”
“He fooled you,” Marmo pointed out.
She snarled wordlessly, then spoke in a deadly monotone. “Yes. But the matter has gone beyond business now. And have you forgotten? He knows about the Gencha. What if he somehow finds out that it’s not just a few rogues, what if he finds out what’s really going on, and spreads the word through SeaStack? We’ll be ruined, and one of the pirate lords will take the Gencha. We must be sure he’s dead.”
“I see,” said Marmo. If he had forebodings, he kept them to himself.
With full dark, only a few dim lightstrips illuminated the barges — just enough for safety. Ruiz noted that their captors had chosen dull discretion over the spectacular display of the night before, and he applauded their caution.
In SeaStack, wise beings attracted no unnecessary attention.
The night brought no relief from the heat, and Ruiz tried to ignore the rivulets of sweat that trickled down his body. The air must feel even stranger to the Pharaohans, he thought. They had spent their lives on a hot planet, but one with negligible humidity. Dolmaero seemed particularly affected; he mopped constantly at his broad face and his breathing had an unhealthy rasp. Ruiz hoped he wasn’t getting sick.