The Icerigger Trilogy: Icerigger, Mission to Moulokin, and The Deluge Drivers (102 page)

Another Tran had been trying to bring a second beamer to bear on the icerigger when one of the bolts slammed into his shoulder and the third grazed his ribs, ripping a hole in his right dan. He dropped the weapon and rumbled back into the craft.

The skimmer bobbed and ducked wildly as its driver momentarily lost control of his ship. It lost altitude, glanced off the ice and threw up a spray of ice particles, nearly crashed into the side of the
Slanderscree,
and finally regained operational altitude as it zoomed toward the southwest before the crossbow operators could reload and fire a second time. Growls of defiance from the rigging and deck of the icerigger spurred its flight.

Premature, Ethan thought. A pity they hadn’t been able to hit the driver. In that event the skimmer would have gone to automatic and they might have been able to board it and take control. As it was, they remained ignorant of who their assailants had been, where they’d come from, and how they’d come into possession of advanced Commonwealth technology.

Humans and Tran conferenced and argued on the quarterdeck.

“Maybe there’s another independent research team out here studying the change in the weather,” Jacalan suggested.

“That’s crazy,” Hwang insisted. “Even if there was, no halfway reputable observer would give advanced weapons to the sentients of a Class IVB world. And why give commands like that? Friendly people who want to talk don’t take potshots at you.”

“I think we should turn about and head for Brass Monkey,” Ethan said firmly. “Yes, I know we’ve come a long way and I’m sorry to see all of you return empty-handed, but this is something we didn’t count on. They showed two beamers. Maybe they have more. Right now I’d say survival’s more important than time. In fact, it’s always more important than time.

“The obvious conclusion to draw from our recent visit is that there are humans or other advanced people operating in this area, doubtless without authorization. They’re engaged in something probably illegal. They’ve provided local allies with weapons and transportation. I’m sure they weren’t expecting us to show up or we wouldn’t have been able to surprise them with crossbows the way we did.”

Second Mate Mousokka joined them. “Your pardon, honored ones, Captain, but the bindings securing our port bow runner have weakened. It is slipping free of its brace. I have been over the side to check it myself. If it is not fixed soon we will loose the runner completely.”

Ta-hoding muttered an old sailor’s curse, looked at the expectant cluster of humans. “We cannot make the necessary repairs while moving. We shall have to stop.”

There was nothing to discuss. Sails were reefed and spars turned into the wind. The
Slanderscree
slowed, came to a complete halt. Ice anchors were set out to hold her steady while workers poured over the side and began work on the crippled runner. Worn lengths of pika-pina cable were cut away and replaced with fresh. Undamaged rope was unwound and retightened.

They were three-quarters finished when the skimmer returned with company. Two of the small, open airships flanked the immobilized icerigger this time. Once more exposed crew scrambled for cover while the crossbowmen loaded their weapons and prepared to defend the ship. Once more a beam was fired from one of the skimmers. It took the form of a thick, intense beam of bright orange light and it ripped right through a mainmast spar. The heavy length of wood fell to the deck like a severed limb, scattered sailors.

“Laser cannon.” September spat to his right. “That takes care of that. We can’t impress ’em with crossbows this time.” He squinted in the direction of the skimmer. “You sure there ain’t any humans on board?”

“There are no skypeople on either sky boat,” Hunnar assured him. “I see only the Tran of strange dress and speech.” As he spoke, the smaller of the two craft edged close to the icerigger while its larger companion hovered well out of range. For the second time that day they were ordered to follow.

“Do we want to go with these people?” Cheela Hwang wondered aloud.

“Do we have any choice?” September said.

Ta-hoding was thinking fast. “Tell them, Sir Hunnar, that we cannot follow because they have disabled us. Tell them of our troubles with our port bow runner. Explain that we are but inoffensive merchants exploring new territory and that we wish only to be allowed to continue on our way.”

A dubious Hunnar conveyed this assertion of innocence to those on board the skimmer. The craft immediately moved around to the stern of the
Slanderscree,
where a Tran with a hand beamer used the small weapon to cut through the thick pika-pina control cables that linked the rudder runner to the wheel on the quarterdeck. The big wooden wheel immediately spun loosely. Until the cables were replaced or repaired Ta-hoding would be unable to steer the ship.

“Laser cannon,” Moware was muttering disconsolately. “Skimmers. Vile people have been at work here.”

The meaning was clear enough to everyone. Whoever had committed these violations of Commonwealth development policy for unsophisticated worlds would be unlikely to have any compunctions about disposing of a few traveling scientists and their companions. They needn’t necessarily be human, either.

While motives and origins were debated, the first skimmer moved from the
Slanderscree’s
stern to her bow. A heavy braided fabric cable was attached just below the bowsprit. By shouts and gestures those on the skimmer indicated that repairs to the bow port runner were to be completed as fast as possible.

“Don’t have much choice,” September told Ta-hoding, Elfa, and the rest. “Not with that sticking down our throats.” He nodded toward the second skimmer and its heavy artillery.

“I have regretfully reached the same conclusion,” Ta-hoding said.

By late afternoon the work was finished and the icerigger was taken in tow. Advanced or not, the load strained the skimmer’s engine. Their progress southwestward was slow. While the first skimmer pulled, the second paralleled the ice ship, the narrow muzzle of its heavy weapon focused amidships.

“What about putting some of our best people over the stern,” First Mate Monslawic suggested, “to repair the steering cables?”

“A thought,” said Ta-hoding. He looked neither fat nor lazy as he glared at the bigger skimmer. “Perhaps we could outrun these sky boats.”

Ethan shook his head. “You’d need twice the wind we have now. They’re more maneuverable than the
Slanderscree
as well as faster. And it would only take one shot from that cannon to disable us permanently. This way if we do get the chance to make a run for it all we have to do is fix the cables.” He frowned. “I wonder why they haven’t taken the precaution of disabling us further.”

“Perhaps they wish the ship for a prize,” Hunnar suggested.

“My beautiful
Slanderscree
,” Ta-hoding moaned. “Everyone wants my ship. Truly it is the greatest prize on all Tran-ky-ky.”

The captain’s pride-filled exaggeration was pardonable, Ethan mused. There was nothing to be gained by pointing out that Tran who had access to laser cannon and hand beamers and skimmers didn’t need ice boats, no matter how great or graceful.

The long, slow tow offered those on the icerigger ample opportunity to study their captors. Despite access to advanced technology the Tran manning the skimmers didn’t look particularly prosperous. Some wore armor and attire that looked battered and worn while their distinctive headgear was more outré than impressive. The dichotomy was as puzzling as it was obvious. It was as if they had encountered a knight of old mounted on the most magnificent charger, only to discover on closer inspection that he was clad in rusty, broken armor and torn underwear.

They were much closer to the southern continent than they thought. They would long since have seen the expected hundred-meter high cliffs of the continental plateau but for one thing: there weren’t any. Not here, where the usual vertical walls of rock had given way to collapsed, eroded slopes. A few isolated granitic spires loomed like lonely sentinels surveying the results of millennia of erosion.

There was also much more vegetation than usual, due to their proximity to the equator. Disintegrated rock had collected in cracks and crevices to form soil. Even so, the land plants which clung to a subfreezing existence were a sorry lot, nowhere near as impressive as the pika-pina and pika-pedan which thrived out on the ice sheet itself.

They sailed parallel to the rubble-strewn slopes all that evening and through the night before morning saw them towed into a deep harbor much like that at Moulokin. Unlike Moulokin’s haven, no sheer walls towered above the ice here. Gentle slopes rose gradually from the edge of the ice.

Ethan knew from their previous journey that such harbors were actually subterranean river canyons which were submerged when the ice sheets melted during Tran-ky-ky’s warm cycle. In twenty thousand years, this inlet would be completely under water.

If not sooner. The new thought was as disturbing as the presence of the laser cannon.

Before long they found themselves in among other, much smaller ice ships. Poorly put together, scarred and battered by heavy use and poor weather, they clustered around the
Slanderscree
like jackals around a lion. Some of those on board conversed animatedly with the crews of the skimmers. No surprises there.

As they neared the harbor’s end the first cliffs hove into view. Thick clouds hid the edge of the continental shelf. Hunnar and the rest of the
Slanderscree
’s crew were panting nonstop now. The water beneath the icerigger’s runners was nearly ten centimeters deep, and to those accustomed to normal temperate zone readings, the climate within the harbor was sweltering. According to Semkin, by high noon the thermometer might reach an astonishing two degrees
above
zero centigrade.

A city had taken root on the southwest rim of the harbor. Ethan hadn’t expected a real town, but the presence of so many small ice ships was sufficient to suggest a thriving community. It was a dull-looking place, the stone structures sprawling haphazardly along the shoreline and back up into the hills. Across, the harbor from this egalitarian community, a fairly steep slope climbed several hundred meters from the edge of the ice sheet, leveled off, and vanished into the clouds. This prompted him to query Jacalan, their resident geologist.

“Sorry. I know there’s a lot of cloud cover here, Ethan, but I’ve been watching my instruments closely and there’s no evidence of plutonic activity anywhere in the vicinity.” He nodded toward the mountain that rose from the north side of the harbor. “If that’s a volcano, it’s dead or dormant.”

“Then what about all this cloud cover? It’s not a rifs storm.
Something
has to be generating all that moisture.”

Jacalan shrugged. “Ask Hwang or Semkin. Weather’s their department.”

He did, but neither meteorologist had a ready explanation for the dense layer of clouds that hung over this area of the continent. It was part and parcel of what they’d come to investigate, and thus far their studies hadn’t produced anything particularly informative. Hal Semkin clung to the hot springs theory despite Jacalan’s counterarguments, while Hwang was trying to put together a theory allowing for warm subcrustal emissions of heat and moisture which would not conflict with the geologist’s findings.

Ethan moved to the quarterdeck. Ta-hoding still stood by his useless helm, “Know anything about this place?” Ethan asked him, fairly sure of the captain’s response.

“Nothing.” Next to the captain the great wooden wheel spun aimlessly.

“What about the sailors from Poyolavomaar?”

“The questions have been asked.” Ta-hoding sounded irritated but Ethan knew it was only frustration that made his replies short and sharp. “This land is as foreign to them as to those of us of Sofold. At this end of the world only Moulokin was spoken of, and as you know it, too, was unknown until we went there and made allies of its people.” He stared at the low-lying city they were approaching. “Would that the soldiers of that fine metropolis were here to aid us now.” He pointed toward the port.

“What a poor place this is. See, with all this broken stone lying loosely about, their homes and storehouses are still ineptly fashioned. There is no profit to be made trading with such a community. The wonder of it to me is that it exists in this place at all. Who do they trade with? We encountered nothing between here and Poyolavomaar.”

Indeed, the closer they drew and the better view they had, the more Ethan found himself wondering what this city was doing in this isolated region in the first place. There was little use of mortar or cement. Gaps between undressed stones were chinked with smaller rocks and pebbles or stuffed with raw pika-pina. Roofs were fashioned of large flat stone slabs instead of the dressed and cut slate common to developed communities like Wannome or Arsudun. Except for a single multistory structure which overlooked the town from off to the left and resembled an oversize hut with battlements, the entire city conveyed the impression of being nothing more than a hasty afterthought.

“No walls, either,” observed Ta-hoding professionally. “No gates. It is evident they do not expect to be attacked. There are no other city-states nearby to threaten them.”

“Who would want to?” Hunnar commented contemptuously. “What is there to plunder? New buildings that are already falling down? Citizens clad in rags and tatters? All the loot this place could offer would not be worth the life of a single warrior.”

None of which, Ethan reflected, squared with the presence of skimmers and energy weapons.

The skimmer with the cannon was moving inboard. Hunnar and September barely had enough time to debate the possibility of jumping her crew when it was already too late. Their captors were prepared to repel boarders not with swords and shields but with hand beamers. It hovered alongside the
Slanderscree
only long enough to let off a couple of its crew. Then it drew away to a safe distance again, the cannon muzzle still trained on the icerigger.