Empire Of Man 3 - March to the Stars (13 page)

“And if you think I'm going to set up shop at K'Vaern's Cove or Q'Nkok, you're crazy,” he went on. “I was thinking of the Ran Tai valley, frankly.”

“Hmmm.” Despreaux's expression was suddenly much more thoughtful. The valley was four thousand meters above the steamy Mardukan lowlands, and actually got chilly at night. It wasn't subject to the continuous rain of the jungles, either. All in all, it was a rather idyllic spot for humans. Which meant it was hell for Mardukans, of course.

“ 'Hmmm,' indeed,” Julian said. “But you're assuming the Empress doesn't have some other task perfectly suited to you. She probably has a half dozen things she would've liked to throw your way if she'd trusted you before we left. Frankly, letting you 'languish in a backwater' is probably going to be at the bottom of her list.”

“I may not give Mother the choice,” Roger said darkly. “Frankly, I don't give a damn about Mother's needs at this point. My days of caring what Mother thinks ended in Marshad.”

“She's your Empress, just as she is mine, Roger,” Despreaux said. “And it's your Empire, just as it is mine. And our children's.”

“One of these days, I will stop having to say this . . .” Cord began with a gesture that was the Mardukan equivalent of a resigned sigh.

“I know, I know,” Roger answered. “ 'I was born to duty.' I got it the first time.”

“And it's a big cruel universe out there, Your Highness,” Julian said with unwonted seriousness. “If you think the Boman and Kranolta were bad, you need to pay a little more attention to the Saints. There's not much worse than a 'civilized' society that considers human beings expendable. 'One death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic.' They live that philosophy. Also, 'The only problem with biospheres is that they occasionally develop sophonts.' I mean, these people aren't just into human extinction; they want to get rid of the Phaenurs and the Mardukans and the Althari, too. All sophonts. Except, of course, the best of the 'enlightened' Saint leadership, who—unlike any other enviro-destructive tool-using species—are capable of 'handling' the management of planets. Amazing how they think our pissant population growth rate is so bad when their Archon has six kids and nearly fifty grandkids.”

“Okay, okay,” Roger said. “I get the point. If Mother has something worthwhile she wants me to do, I'll do it. Okay?”

“Okay,” Despreaux agreed. “Of course, that assumes we live to get off this mudball. But so far nothing's been able to stop our Rog,” she added with a smile.

“Sail ho!” the Mardukan at the fore topmast crosstrees called suddenly. “Sail on the starboard bow, fine!” After a moment he leaned down and shouted again. “Looks like some more behind it!”

“And where there are sails, there are cities and trade,” Julian observed.

“And where there's trade, there are pirates,” Despreaux added. “And multiple sails means either a convoy, or . . .”

* * *

“Pirates,” Roger said. The platform at the foremast crosstrees was crowded with four humans, D'Nal Cord, and Captain T'Sool. Fortunately, the Mardukan lookout had remained at his post at the fore topmast crosstrees, twelve meters above them. His greater height above sea level gave him a marginally better view, but the humans could see the oncoming sails themselves, and everyone who could had climbed the ratlines for a better look.

“Why pirates?” Pahner asked.

“The ship in the lead is carrying too much canvas for conditions,” the prince replied. “They're running with the wind, but the breeze has been steadily increasing all afternoon. Between seeing another ship coming towards them—and I assume they've spotted us—and the increasing breeze, not to mention the way it's clouding up for a storm, she should have reduced sail by now. And she hasn't. So whatever she's sailing away from is more dangerous than risking a cracked mast or even capsizing.”

The Marine glanced speculatively at the prince. Roger was still gazing out at the approaching ships, but he seemed to feel the weight of Pahner's eyes, and turned to meet them.

“So what's our call?” he asked the captain.

Pahner returned his own attention to the unknown ships and dialed the magnification back up on his helmet systems as he pondered that. The safe bet was simply to avoid the entire situation. There was no upside to an engagement . . . except that they had almost no information about the continent towards which they were traveling.

If Roger's analysis was correct, and if they were able to make contact with the ship being pursued, it might be to their benefit. There appeared to be six of the—probable—pirate ships. Each was similar to an ancient cog, but with a pair of masts, not just one. Each mast carried only a single square sail, however, and their deep, rounded, high-sided hulls had clumsy-looking, castlelike foredeck citadels which undoubtedly mounted some of Marduk's massive, unwieldy bombards. They were scarcely the sleekest ships he'd ever seen, and he wondered why pirates, if that was what they were, didn't have ships a tad faster.

“What's an alternative to pirates?” he asked.

“Is this a trick question, Captain?” Kosutic inquired.

“I don't think so,” Roger said. “I think his point is that if they are pirates, all well and good. If we blow the crap out of them, we establish our bona fides with the local powers that be. But if they're not pirates, announcing our intentions with a broadside might be a Very Bad Idea. We have to make peaceful and, hopefully, smooth contact with the local government. So what if they're harmless merchant ships which are supposed to be sailing in company, and the lead ship just has a lousy captain who's gotten too far ahead of the rest? In that case, blowing them away without a warning would not be a good way to make 'smooth' contact.”

“Exactly,” Pahner said. “So what are the other possibilities?”

“The boat in the lead could be a smuggler,” Kosutic suggested. “Or something along those lines. And the ones behind could be revenue cutters. Well, revenue boats. Revenue tubs.”

“And it could be even more complex than that,” Roger pointed out. “They could be operating under letters of marque or some equivalent. So the ones in back could be both pirates and representatives of a government we need to contact. And if that's the case, asking the lead ship won't tell us so.”

“All right,” Pahner said with a nod. “We'll tack to intercept the group. We will not fire until fired upon. Get a helmet system for Ms. O'Casey so she can use the amplifiers for communication. We'll move alongside or send off a boarding party to make contact. If we take fire from either group, we'll respond with a single broadside. That should make the situation clear. If they continue to press it, we sink 'em.”

“And if they are 'official' pirates?” Roger asked.

“We'll deal with that as we have to,” Pahner answered. “We need intel on this continent . . . but we also need to live to use it.”

Tob Kerr, master of the merchant vessel Rain Daughter, closed the glass and cursed. He wasn't sure where the strange ships had come from—there wasn't anything on that bearing but the Surom Shoals, and nobody actually lived in these demon-infested waters—but they were headed right for him. And sailing at least forty degrees closer to the wind than any tack he could take. He not only didn't recognize the origin of the ships, he couldn't even begin to identify their design, or imagine how sails like that could work.

However they did it, though, they obviously did a better job than his own ship could manage, and he wondered where they could possibly have sprung from.

The Lemmar Raiders behind him, on the other hand, were all too well known a quantity. With luck, they would only take his cargo. More likely, though, they would sell him and the crew into slavery, and sell his ship for a prize. Either way, he was ruined. So the best bet was to continue on course and hope for a gift from the Sar, because this was clearly a case of worse the devil you knew than the devil you didn't.

He looked back at the oncoming strangers. The more he studied them, the odder they looked. They were low, rakish, and almost unbelievably fast, and they carried an enormous sail area—one far larger than anything Kerr had ever seen before. It was amazing that they could sail the deep ocean at all; with so little freeboard, he had to wonder why the water didn't wash right over their decks. But it didn't. In fact, they rode the swells like embera, green foam casting up from their bows and their strange, triangular sails hard as boards as they sliced impossibly into the oncoming wind.

He grabbed a line and slid to the deck. The calluses of decades at sea made nothing of the friction, and his mate, Pelu Mupp walked over to him and flipped his false-hands in an expression of worry.

“Should we change course?” he asked.

It was a damnably reasonable question, Kerr thought grimly. The Lemmar Raiders had been in a fairly unfavorable position at the start. Well, as far as Rain Daughter was concerned. Certain other ships had been less fortunate, but Kerr had taken full advantage of the slim opportunity for escape the pirates' preoccupation with the convoy's other members had offered him. By the time they'd been free to turn their full attention to Rain Daughter, Kerr had managed to put enough distance between them to give him and his crew a better than even chance. A stern chase was always a long one, and under those conditions, victory could go to either side. The pirate ships were a bit faster than the merchantman, but the Daughter had a good lead, and any number of circumstances could have resulted in the Kirstian ship's escaping, especially if Kerr could only have kept clear of the Lemmar until darkness fell. But now, with the unknowns closing from almost dead to leeward, the trap seemed to have closed.

“No,” Kerr said. “We'll hold our course. They might be friendly. And how much worse than the Raiders could they be?”

If the crew went into slavery, they would probably end up back in Kirsti, but as “guests” of the Fire Priests. And if that was the alternative, he preferred to throw himself over the side now.

“We'll hold our course, Mupp. And let the Lady of the Waters decide.”

* * *

Roger pulled on a strand of hair and sighed.

“Captain, much as I hate making suggestions—” he began, only to stop dead as Pahner let loose an uncharacteristic bark of laughter that momentarily made him jump. Then the captain snorted.

“Yes, Your Highness?”

“Well, I don't,” Roger retorted.

“I know you don't, Your Highness,” Pahner said with a smile. "You tend to do something by yourself, and then ask me if it was okay later. That's different from making suggestions, I'll admit. So let's have it—what's the suggestion?

“I was thinking about wind position,” Roger continued, after deciding that it wasn't a good time for a discussion of whether one Prince Roger MacClintock had been making too many stupid mistakes lately. Most of the watchers had returned to the deck once the general outline of the approaching ships and their formation had been established. A Marine private was now perched at the fore topmast crosstrees beside the Mardukan lookout, using her helmet systems to refine the data. But at this point it was a matter of waiting nearly two hours as the ships slowly closed the intervening gap.

“They're coming in on our starboard bow, straight out of the wind, but the formation of six ships is spread to our west, and it takes a few minutes for us to wear around. If we stay on this course, when the pursuers come up to us, the most westerly ship will be in a position that would make it hard for us to completely avoid her.”

“I'm . . . not quite getting this,” Pahner admitted.

Roger thought for a moment, then did a quick sketch on his toot, detailing the human/K'Vaernian flotilla, the lead unknown, and the trailers.

“I'm sliding over a graphic,” he said, flipping the sketch from his toot to the Marine's. “From the point of view of avoiding contact, we can break off from the lead ship easily. But if we decided to avoid the trailers, we'd have three choices. One would be to tack to starboard when we come up to them. That would put us in a position to take full advantage of the schooners' weatherliness to run past them into the wind and avoid contact handily. But it takes a bit of time to tack, and there's a small risk of getting caught in irons.”

Pahner nodded at that. A couple of times, especially early in the voyage, when the native Mardukan captains were still getting accustomed to the new rig, one or more of the ships had been caught “in irons” while tacking, and ended up facing directly into the wind, effectively unable to move or maneuver until they could fall off enough to regather way. It was not a situation he wanted to be in with potential hostiles around.

“We don't want that to happen,” he observed. “Go on.”

“Our second choice would be to fall off to the west,” Roger said, “opening out our sails and either sailing across the wind, or coming around to let it fill our sails from behind while we run almost away from it. That's a 'reach' or a 'broad reach.' The problem is, on either tack, the westernmost ship would have at least some opportunity to intercept us. We could probably show them our heels—I'd back any of ours, even Snarleyow, to outrun anything they've got. But there's a risk of interception.”

“In which case, we blow away whatever unfortunate soul intercepts us,” Pahner noted as he brought up the sketch on his implant and studied it.

“Yes, Captain, we can do that,” Roger agreed, licking a salty drop of sweat off his upper lip. “But I submit that it would be better to be in a position where we can avoid contact altogether, if that's what we decide to do. Or control the maneuver menu if we decide to engage.”

“Can we?” the captain asked. “And should we be discussing this with Poertena or the Skipper?”

“Maybe,” Roger said. “Probably. But I was thinking. If we tack to starboard and put them on our port side, we've got all that maneuver room to starboard. It's a better wind position. Also, if we decide to jump in, we can get to windward for maneuvering better from that position. But we need to wait a bit, until we're a little closer.”

“I'll talk it over with T'Sool,” Pahner agreed. “But unless I'm much mistaken, that's a very good idea.”