Vorr nodded and looked out of the cargo doorway again. The pyramid ship was only a hundred feet off the ground. Thick smoke drifted past him, causing him to wrinkle his nose in disgust. He would take a long vacation after this, away from everything but clean air and pure water. Anyone who disturbed him would be ground up and eaten.
"How are you doing, General?" Vorr stepped back from the entrance momentarily and gave a brief salute to Admiral Halker, who was walking up behind him. The toothless old scro was looking especially cheerful. "The scars giving you any trouble?" he asked.
Vorr shrugged and gestured at his ruined face, turning to look back out of the cargo bay, the bombard held loosely in his fingers.
"I've heard that Usso has located Teldin Moore, who is conveniently dead." The admiral positively beamed. "We should be able to gain the cloak in one more minute. Do you wish the honors?"
Von stared down into the burning chunks of ceramiclike material that once had been one of the mightiest ships in the known spheres. He nodded, his eyes searching.
He then caught sight of a flash of royal blue among the shattered remains of a vast orange wing, spread out across the green ground. Vorr slapped his hands together to get Halker's attention, then pointed. The old scro came forward instantly to see, standing fearlessly on the edge of the cargo doorway only a few feet from where Vorr stood. Vorr reached out to steady the admiral, but the scro saw the gesture and recoiled, stepping out of reach. "I can manage!" he snapped. "I'm not a cripple yet!"
Vorr withdrew his hand, giving Halker a curious look before he turned his attention again to the ground. The patch of blue was definitely Teldin Moore and his cloak, sprawled on the smoking ground. Beside him lay a giff in a red military uniform. They were both badly wounded, if not already dead, judging from the amount of blood visible even from this height. Both obviously had been caught in the rain of falling debris from the armada.
The pyramid drifted closer and closer, now only man-height off the ground. Vorr stepped up on the edge of the cargo doorway, preparing to jump down. The pyramid came to a stop a moment later. Vorr dropped over the side of the pyramid, landing crouched on his feet with the bombard held outstretched in one arm. He then straightened slowly and walked over to the pair on the ground.
It took only a glance to see that both of them were dead. A falling armada packed a hell of a punch. The cloak on Teldin's back appeared undamaged, however. Not a scrap of dust was on it. Nice magic, Vorr thought, and he reached down for the clasp on Teldin's neck. It popped open at his touch.
With a single motion, General Vorr pulled the blue cloak free and raised it in the gentle wind and smoke. It didn't feel any different than a regular cloak would feel. Magical things were all the same to him. A shame, really, that he couldn't just wear it himself. It would have been interesting to have commanded the Spelljammer, but it would do just as well to have Admiral Halker do it. It made for a guaranteed job for years to come, a far safer position than if the undead neogi Skarke had been in charge-or Usso, for that matter.
Vorr looked up and saw Halker on the periphery of the cargo doorway. The old scro's face was alive with naked desire, and his arras were stretched out to Vorr as if Vorr held the scro's very existence in his hands. Vorr suddenly gave a broad grin, wadded the cloak up with one hand, and tossed it to Halker like a ball. He'd give the old coot Skarkesh's medallion when he got aboard, and cement his future.
Halker snatched the cloak out of the air, clutching it to his chest in ecstacy. As Vorr stepped forward toward the low stone base of the floating pyramid and tossed his bombard into the cargo bay doorway, Halker made a single thumb's-up gesture into the air outside the pyramid.
The pyramid lifted rapidly away from the ground.
Vorr slowed his pace for a moment, stunned-then bolted for the pyramid. He leaped at the last moment, mighty hands spread out to catch any pan of the stonework and pull himself aboard. Halker! he thought. Halker, what in the-
He missed and fell, tumbling into a pile of wreckage. As he struggled to his feet, he heard a peal of feminine laughter.
Vorr saw Halker throw his harpoon-bombard somewhere into the wreckage, then continued to watch as the pyramid rose and became a small black square against the patchwork sky, then a square dot, then a mote that faded away as it dropped toward the horizon. For perhaps five minutes, he did nothing else. Then he uttered a word, one that could not have been understood by any listener, through his tortured lips, fused together by slime and torch flame.
"Usso."
He turned and looked back at the bodies of Teldin Moore and his giff companion.
They weren't there.
*****
Admiral Halker announced to the crew that General Vorr had wished to explore the wreckage for suitably glorious souvenirs; he would be picked up later by another ship. The scro and ogre warriors smiled and nodded, as they knew the general was just like that. No one but the helmsman noticed that there was one additional passenger aboard the pyramid as it took off, a passenger who had climbed on at the moment Vorr had jumped off, but no one was going up to ask the helmsman anything.
Just before the wizard's last meeting with Admiral Halker, before the armada was destroyed, Usso had announced his intention to run the helm himself, freeing the war priests for other duties. Only one warrior, an ogre, happened to hear the feminine laughter coming from the direction of Admiral Halker at the cargo bay doors, but he knew that couldn't have happened. He did think it was curious that Halker appeared to be pantomiming the act of putting on a cloak when he had nothing at all in his hands. But he knew that couldn't have happened, either. He snorted and went on about his duties.
*****
It had been child's play to convince Vorr of Skarkesh's evil intent toward the Tarantula Fleet, requiring only charm spells on Sergeant Dlavish and a few other scro, who had never known what had hit them. Vorr hated undead of any kind, especially liches, and he had been more than willing to believe that Skarkesh would have sold out the scro after Skarkesh's heavy-handed use of Captain Geraz. Usso had no doubt that Skarkesh was not fond of scro, but she suspected that the rotting neogi gladly would have kept the scro around as its servants. Neogi were neogi, dead or alive, and they craved power over anyone that they could find. Scro were as useful as slaves as anyone else.
It had been tricky, she admitted, and she had almost lost control of things once or twice, but she had pulled it off. The victory left her weak in the knees, but she felt an exhilaration that she couldn't believe was possible. She had the cloak to the Spelljammer. General Vorr was far behind on the top of a thousand-mile-high beast's head. Admiral Halker was under her control, charmed by her powers of fascination into crewing the working helm at the pyramid's apex, but eventually he would be dropped over the side or discarded in some other manner, once a nicer ship could be found.
Usso looked out of the broad doorway of the pyramid's cargo bay and watched the landscape rise up to meet her with increasing speed. The pyramid was falling through wildspace toward the ground, where they would rest before leaving this sphere. Usso had ordered the rest of the crewmen to their quarters aboard the pyramid. She still wore her magical disguise as Halker; maintaining it was as effortless as it had been to appear to be an old Oriental man or any other humanlike person she chose. It was one of her innate powers as a hu hsien. A marvelous power it was, too.