The Queen's Dirk, Part 2
A Novella by Diane Morrison ~ WorldAnvil Exclusive!
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Part 2
Their first sight of the rings of Wylinta came just before shift change at the helm. The outer ring, from a distance, looked like a wheel. Beyond it, Shaundar could see a shimmering band that might have been a ring or a trick of the light through the etheric membrane that sustained their air, and then something that looked like a band of coloured ribbon, which might have been residual star-stuff or refractive ice crystals. According to the charts, there was a fourth ring beyond that, but Shaundar couldn’t see it. He did, however, make out the rolling balls of two of Wylinta’s four moons. The third and fourth were not currently visible from their approach, so he assumed they must be orbiting the far side. The planet itself was an odd purplish color that could have been any number of odd chemicals, or maybe some kind of algae. “Mr. Sunfall!” called the Captain. “Stand to the helm, if you please.” “Aye, sir.” Sightseeing was over; time to go to work. He made for the helm room with a side trip to the head on the way. “Lieutenant,” he said with a nod, coming in. “I am ready to relieve you.” “Aye,” Lieutenant Sylria returned, closing her book with a snap. She looked weary. “I am ready to be relieved. Maintaining course for Wylinta. Ship’s attitude and pitch as per orders, no immediate deviation in local Airts.” “Course, attitude and pitch as ordered, no immediate deviation, aye,” confirmed Shaundar as he squatted down to the starboard of the helm. “Other than that I have nothing to report. Do you want me to give you a chance to go to the head first?” “Already did.” “Right then. Three, two, one, switch!” Shaundar fell into the helm with the ease of long practice, took hold of the vines to encourage the link, and reached out his consciousness to join with their Starseed man-o-war. He sensed her warm welcome as the vines closed over him and he began to feel his arms as her wings, his head as her bow, his torso as midships, and his legs and groin as her stern. He could sense the crew moving about the decks, which his brain translated as a sort of all-angles vision, and he could sense the rings in front of him. Shimmering bands of colour swirled throughout the space around them and spiraled slowly around Wylinta in a pool. These were the stellar Airts. Only Pilots, and possibly the Starseeds themselves, could see them. They seemed to be related to gravity, but they weren’t dependent on it. Some scholars said that they created gravity. But one thing scholars knew for a fact was that they allowed a ship to travel between stars and planets, in some cases faster than light. They knew this because sometimes, stars would explode and when one arrived at a distant planet, one might still see it glimmering in the night sky. The closer one travelled to multiple large bodies close together – such as between planets in a system, or even asteroids in a belt – the slower the Airts flowed. This wasn’t to say that it was slow; not in the least! But compared to interstellar Airt travel, it certainly took a greater amount of time to cover a shorter distance. Even proximity with another starfaring ship would limit the speed of nearby ships to interplanetary, rather than interstellar, velocities. Which was fortunate for safety; otherwise, what would happen if one crashed into a tiny asteroid at interstellar speeds? It was said that great world-trees with roots as broad as their branches formed the Starseeds, which navigated space naturally by tumbling along the Airts. Shaundar suspected they could not navigate them by choice without the aid of a Pilot, but no one could be sure. “Has the transfer been made?” the Captain asked through the speaking-tube. “Aye, Captain!” Shaundar replied. “I’ve made the link; I have the helm!” “All right, Mr. Sunfall. Begin a cautious approach to Wylinta. Pitch forty-five down, yaw ten o’clock. Bring ‘er in as close to the edge of the ring as you can.” “Pitch forty-five, yaw ten o’clock, aye,” he responded, and began a rapid approach along the edge of the ring. It didn’t take long for Queenie to slow to interplanetary speeds. Shaundar guessed at what the Captain was up to. He was hoping that if there were orc ships hiding in Wylinta’s rings, approaching along the edge of the wheel would disguise them enough that they might not be noticed. They ended up closing in on the outer ring in a tight counter-clockwise spiral that skimmed along the inner edges of Wylinta’s spiraling Airt pool. They made a complete circle, a process which took about an hour, and found nothing. “Very well; if they’re here, they’re deep inside the rings,” the Captain observed. “Let’s start an approach to the second ring in. Yaw ten degrees larboard. Stay as close to a slower Airt as you can, Mr. Sunfall.” “Aye, sir,” was Shaundar’s reply. “Sir, should I go into the second ring or travel over or under it?” “Good question, Mr. Sunfall. How do you feel about it?” Not at all used to being asked his opinion on such things, Shaundar considered it. Travelling along its surface would give them a better overall view of what was going on in the ring, at least from a distance, and they were likely to notice ship movements and the like, even if they were too far away from the ships to make out their configuration. The ring was just over twenty star-leagues across—meaning that light took a full second to get from one side to the other, if one could bend light in such a way. Although, according to the charts, they would certainly not see everything from that vantage point. But the Skipper might expect more than just a flight path analysis in his answer. An officer as junior as Shaundar was light-years away from commanding anything more than a deck crew, but graduates from the elite Aces High flight school were often assigned to one-elf fighters or dispatch craft—like Yathar’s uncle Blackjack, for example—so OCS courses were included in the curriculum. A grin swallowed his face as he realized the Old Man was putting him to the test. Was the Captain considering training him, of all people, for a future command position? Going into the ring would provide more concealment should there be an enemy force, but they might not notice the enemy’s ships until they were right on top of them. Shaundar felt that going directly in would be the better course. He wasn’t sure why; it was just a hunch. “I think we should go in, Cap’n,” he answered. “All right, make it so, Mr. Sunfall. Fly ‘er as you will, but let the sail crew know which way to turn. I understand they train you to do that at Aces High.” “Aye, sir, they do.” It was a difficult exercise. It meant taking command of the sail crew to aid in the maneuvering of the ship so that they would turn when the Pilot needed them to, rather than going through the Captain. It increased response time, but the Pilot really had to know what he was doing. Very specialized training. It was kind of like playing a star-chess match entirely in your head. He hoped he was up to the task. “All right, Mr. Sunfall has the helm and the deck!” Shaundar could hear the call echoing up and down the ship through the brass speaking-tube. “Stand ready!” Shaundar drew near to the second ring. He sensed the unusually direct path of the Airt was disrupted by rolling asteroids. They were tiny, no more than twice the size of the Queen’s Dirk at the most. “Slowing to two leagues!” he called out. The Captain repeated this and it was taken up throughout the ship while he did so. “Entering the ring field!” he bellowed. “Roll fifteen down, yaw ten larboards!” “Haul up the spanker!” cried Sailmaster Lyathali. “Slack off the heads’l sheets!” Queenie began to roll and turn accordingly. They traversed the asteroid field slowly. Shaundar did not find it nearly as challenging as the Brisingamen Cluster, where Aces High was located. He took his time so that the Captain, Exec and barrelman could comb the field with their spyglasses. A couple of hours went by as Shaundar directed Queenie up and down the thickness of the ring, negotiating its circumference at a crawl. Eventually they started edging cautiously closer to one of the moons, since they weren’t finding anything on their side of Wylinta. About three hours into the search, Shaundar sensed something—or, somethings. He wasn’t sure what they were, exactly, but he knew that several small bodies, each maybe a hundred feet in length, were clustered too close together near to one of the larger asteroids. Asteroids would naturally separate if they were that close. They would collide and bounce off each other, forcing themselves apart. “Captain!” he bellowed. “Eight degrees off the port bow, ten up; what do you see, sir?” There was a long moment of silence as the Captain trained his glass in that direction. Then he roared, “Bring 'er about! NOW, Mr. Sunfall!” Shaundar willed Queenie to roll backwards and tack against the Airt. The sails, not set yet, strained against the current. As he did so, he sensed the objects moving. They moved like ships, not rocks. One came around the asteroid on their portside, another on the starboard, a third above and a fourth below. Shaundar kept moving Queenie backwards to keep them at a distance. Still more emerged from behind other nearby asteroids. “Captain!” Shaundar heard Yathar’s voice, sounding almost panicked. “I count ten sail, sir!” Shaundar felt the blood in his veins turn to ice. Ten! All man-o-war class ships, every one of them. It was a whole blasted flotilla! Strangely, they looked to Shaundar like flying insects made of wood and metal, and they had metal, geared grapples that resembled mandibles. Bees, or hornets, maybe. How had they harnessed the power of the Starseeds to power such monstrosities? Or were they powered by gnomish spindizzies? “They’re hailing us, sir,” the yeoman announced. She hesitated. “They want us to strike our colours, Captain.” They continued to tack against the current as the flotilla of “bugs” advanced. The legs of the insectoid ships flexed and contracted in a sinister fashion, creating thrust, like oars in water. One hornet-shaped craft started creeping around behind them, to prevent their escape. On the quarterdeck, Shaundar could “see” the Captain outlined by his own Airt-flow. He stood with his head lowered and his hands in the pockets of his coat, contemplating. Commander Brightstar leaned in close. The balance of their body temperatures had shifted to concentrate heat in their heads and torsos, which told Shaundar just how frightened they were. They conferred quietly for a few moments. Shaundar held his breath. The Captain raised his head and addressed the crew on deck. His growl was as fierce as a hunting tiger’s. “Well, what say you, lads? Do you think I would surrender to a bunch of pig-faces?” The resounding “NO, SIR!” reverberated through the ship. Shaundar’s heart answered in kind. He could swear that he even felt Queenie’s agreement. “All right then! All stop on my mark. . . let’s make them think we’re thinking about it. . .” Shaundar waited, straining to hold the ship steady against the local currents. The crew ran to brace the mizzensails. “Step lively, there!” the Sailmaster called. The gravitational waves kept trying to push them towards larger bodies. Vastly outnumbered, the Captain was making it look as though they were considering surrender to draw the orc fleet in closer, giving them less time to react and making them more vulnerable to weapon strikes. Shaundar could sense the insectoid ship that had moved abaft was very close. “All right, all stop, Mr. Sunfall!” “Aye, sir! All stop!” he called back. Queenie floated obediently. “Yeoman, start pulling down our colours. Do it slowly, and leave them about half-mast. It’s very important that they not be entirely down.” Shaundar smiled at the ruse. “Weapons crews, stand to your arms discretely. Marines, if you’re not already on the fo’c’sle, stand to the hatchway and prepare to draw crossbows on the enemy crew. Wait for my order before shooting anything. Mr. Sunfall!” “Aye, sir!” “On my mark, dive at full accel,” the shrewd Captain commanded, “and then you’ll have command of the sail crew again. Understood?” “Aye, sir!” He took a deep breath to steady his body. He was vibrating with the adrenaline. “Sir, are we fighting or fleeing?” Shaundar could almost hear a predatory snarl in the Captain’s voice. “Word must reach the system fleet,” he said, “but we can’t lead this flotilla back to base, either. We must lose them or sink as many as we can. So, Mr. Oakheart, stand by the Shrike.” Shaundar heard Garan distantly calling back his affirmative. “When the fight begins,” Captain Oleander continued, “stand by ‘er helm. Your orders are to launch if the Dirk takes significant damage, evade the orcs, and make it back to base. Understood?” Garan scurried down into the lower deck, located on the underside of Queenie’s rather un-boatlike keel. The Shrike, their tiny pinnace, was lashed to the keel like some odd kind of baby at Queenie’s belly, accessible via a trap door in the devil. You could go the long way instead if you wanted, leaping over the rail, but the gravity well created by the Starseed’s heart only went in one direction, so access via the trap door minimized the amount of time you had to spend in microgravity conditions. All the while, the strange wood and metal ships drew nearer. The vibration in the Airts from the ship behind them shifted in the bow, forming a kind of “arrow” in its gravity well. Was it extending its “mandibles?” If so, they must be a kind of grapple. Shaundar knew that if they fastened onto the Queen’s Dirk, all was lost. “Steady,” the Captain told his crew. Shaundar was as tense as an overwound watch spring as he awaited the Captain’s order. He strained like a horse at the start line and prepared to fly for their lives. “Yeoman, run up the colours!” the Captain commanded. “All hands; shoot at will!”
Keep Reading!
The Queen's Dirk, Part 3
The Queen's Dirk, Part 4
The Queen's Dirk, Part 5
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