The Turncoats, Part II
Previously on… The Turncoats, Part I
If there was anything better than flying, Zozzled didn’t want to hear about it. The Sunfish enthusiastically agreed. She banked and weaved down a narrow, craggy canyon, racing the river that’d carved it. Her gravity drive had grown back and then some. She’d also developed a pair of odd nodules on her dorsal side; no idea yet what they were for, but at least they weren’t harming performance.
Together, she and Zozzled rocketed over a waterfall and dipped toward the delta beyond, whipping the reeds as they passed. Everything out to the horizon was either emerald or aquamarine, and from there… the ocean. As they raced out over the water, The Sunfish opened her fins and sent a glorious plume of white foam skyward.
“Shall we do the same?” he asked the ship as he pulled up on her control levers. The planet pitched away from his bubble cockpit and then they were diving headlong into the sky. Faster and faster, they fell, punching a hole through the clouds. The Sunfish rattled as they broke the sound barrier — just wrecked it — and the sky faded to black.
The stars came out to greet them.
“Flying colors!” Zozzled declared, patting the overhead console affectionately. “If only we had a way past the blockade.” They’d departed just after sunrise, when the wormhole’s orbit passed out of sight from the Cynocephali’s village, taking the Franchise’s damned cathedral with it. The Sunfish’s present course should keep the planet nicely between them and their wardens.
Honestly, Zozzled had been trapped in worse places. The dome of the sky was green and jeweled, with a sliver of purple aura on the sunward side. Even the oceans were more cyan than blue, teeming with life. The Turncoat pulled out a flask and was about to treat himself when excited readouts exploded across his view.
“Whoa, girl! Calm your circuits,” he begged, trying his best to sooth The Sunfish. “What have you found?” An image of a boxy whaleship projected into the air before him. A spiky signal wave appeared beside it, clearly a distress call.
“What’s wrong with it?” The Sunfish’s angry warbling conveyed two things: that it didn’t know and that it shouldn’t matter. “Fine. Let’s take a look.”
The ship flew herself back toward the planet. Zozzled was just along for the ride. A wall of cyclopean cliffs rose from the ocean’s far shore, casting a rain shadow across the interior. It was as far from the Cynocephali’s forested village as one could get. The whaleship’s wailing came from an ancient lakebed high in the mountains, a vast stretch of bone-white salt flats riddled with cracks, like a busted mirror.
“What the nuts?” Zozzled grabbed the levers and pulled up gently, leveling off their flight path. He slowed them down, careful not to cast a shadow over the strange structures that had just come into view. Sunset revealed them, casting in stark relief dozens of slender towers molded from mud. Definitely the work of a lifeform, but what could possibly survive in a place like this?
The whaleship didn’t look damaged to Zozzled’s eyes. It was ugly, though: square and top-heavy, its decks stacked one atop another, sloping steeply down to a stubby tail section. Its loading ramp hung open beneath it, as if screaming.
“If it’s unable to leave, someone must’ve anchored it here.” There was only species Zozzled knew that could operate a whaleship, but eschewed any other technology and lived underground. “The Syzygy,” he stated flatly. The ship let out a long, low whistle. “Yeah, bad news for the Cynocephali… but maybe good news for us. There’s an angle we can play here, but I gotta talk to Tiger about it. I’m sorry, girl, but the whaleship will have to wait. Let’s get out of here before we’re noticed.”
“But I was done waiting,” Blind Tiger continued, pantomiming a grand leap, his arms trailing behind him like wings. The casting coin took his performance and inserted it into a scene of breathtaking heroics. A noticeably younger Tiger threw himself off a trestle bridge and landed atop a passing train.
“Three — no, four! — of the Cardinal’s men came out to face me.” He pretended to draw his rapier and swung it around with gusto. The casting coin did its best to make choreography out of his nonsense. The image of Young Tiger cut a swath through the Cardinal’s men, taking them out with clever feints and brutal ripostes, kicked one clear off the train car.
Spot clapped his clawed hands and barked his amusement. The other young pups had gone back out with the men of the village, presumably hunting larger game. They’d left poor Spot at home with the elders. Tiger gathered he was some kind of medicine man in training, one part healer and two parts tech support. Zozzled started calling him “Spot” after attempts to translate his actual name — something like “bonemeal” or “bones crushed to powder” — ended in failure. Also, the pup had a white spot on his face. Zozzled’s cleverness had its limits.
“Look out! A low bridge!” Tiger yelled, then fell flat on his back. A pedestrian overpass skimmed the top of the illusory train; Young Tiger narrowly avoided having his head taken off. These theatrics didn’t sit well with the elders, who gave Tiger a mighty stink eye from across the square. Tiger got the distinct impression the Turncoats had overstayed their welcome. It wouldn’t be much longer, though. Zozzled had taken The Sunfish for a test flight at dawn and —
Just then, the ethereal whine of a gravity drive burst through the canopy. His apprentice knew the Cynocephali didn’t appreciate it when he flew this close. The Sunfish hovered above the treeline while Zozzled descended from the airlock on a cable, holding his hat. Blind Tiger could feel the elders’ collective disapproval like a bonfire at his back. Consarnit, Zozzled. Tiger’s story would have to end on a cliffhanger.
The younger man forestalled any reprimand by excitedly blurting out, “I have news!” Words tumbled out of him: what he’d found on the other side of the planet, some cockamamie scheme to run the blockade, but Blind Tiger only heard one thing.
“Syzygy,” he whispered, stroking his beard. He didn’t want his concern painted too boldly on his face; though the elders couldn’t speak Codex, they were excellent interpreters of body language.
Zozzled exercised less restraint. “Yeah, but you’re missing the important part. The brilliant part.” When Tiger didn’t respond, “My plan!”
“Don’t be flippant,” his mentor reprimanded him. “The Syzygy are a death sentence. They burrow into a planet like parasites, dig themselves in so deep that no force can expel them. Then, they set about exterminating every other sentient species. They tunnel up under settlements, villages, homes. They collapse buildings and drag away the survivors. They think life is a zero-sum game and they intend to be the only ones left standing at the end of fudging time.”
“Yeah, fine,” Zozzled conceded, obviously bewildered, “but we have some time before the end of time, right? I mean, I was just up there and the stars are burning bright. It’s just one, tiny colony on the complete other side of the planet, so…”
Tiger wasn’t done stroking his chin. “How big was this tiny colony?”
“I dunno. Ask The Sunfish. Somewhere between a town and a fortress, I guess. Like… a couple of castles?”
“And only the one ship?”
Zozzled threw up his hands. “Yeah! Only the one ship… which we should be stealing right now! What’s with the danged third degree, wet blanket?”
“You’re right,” Tiger said, snapping back to the present. “We should rescue that ship, if it’s in distress. As for the rest — “
“My brilliant plan.”
The village elders clucked their tongues and signed amongst themselves.
“We’ll see about the rest.”
The grand sweep of the galaxy stretched both above and below Zozzled as he walked, the firmament perfectly reflected in the glassy surface of the salt flats. They’d flooded, just a little, after an evening rain. It was disorienting, but also beautiful. Every footfall sent a ripple through the heavens.
It’d been a long walk already, with plenty still to go. Zozzled pulled his boot free from the mud for the thousandth time. “We couldn’t have just dropped down on them from above?” he couldn’t help but complain, also for the thousandth’s time. “Or slid down on the tether?”
His mentor stared blankly past the imperceptible horizon. “You don’t know what we’re up against.”
“Then tell me.”
“We should stay quiet,” Tiger insisted. “No telling how far our voices carry.”
“Oh, come on!” Zozzled jogged around in front of him, walking backwards. “Nobody’s gonna hear us. The Syzygy are all underground. You’re supposed to be teaching me, right? Well, teach me.”
Tiger finally looked at him. “You’re relentless, you know that? I pity your foes.”
“Pity yourself, teach,” he teased. “School’s in session.”
“Fine, just… walk like a normal person, will you?”
Zozzled was happy to fall in line.
Tiger took a deep breath. “Many years ago, when I was an apprentice like you, my mentor and I responded to a distress signal from an isolated planet. Sound familiar? Yeah, well, what we found were whalers. They’d been carving up every whaleship that entered the system, using the wormhole as a choke point. It was a massacre. Naturally, we kicked their candied asses out of orbit.”
“Just the two of you?” Zozzled was impressed.
“How many of us should it take?” Tiger laughed. It was nice to hear. “We were flying a manta, at the time, and had a few Scavengers in the hold. The whalers were used to fighting defenseless, uncrewed ships. We set a few of their victims free and, inspired by our example, the larger whaleships fought back. In the chaos, we stormed the whalers’ ship and took control of the bridge. We gave them a count of twenty, then vented all the other decks. Easy peasy.”
“Why don’t we get to do fun stuff like that?” The only fun Zozzled had lately was setting that one guy on fire.
That was the end of Tiger’s good humor. “Careful what you wish for. We followed that distress call down to the planet, but all we found there was a hole in the ground… a hole full of bodies. Parts of bodies, anyway. The Syzygy used the locals to get our attention, then slaughtered them. They just wanted the whalers out of their way; they needed whaleships to reach the surface. When it comes to technology, those monsters can’t do anything for themselves.”
“Is that how your mentor died?!” Zozzled blurted out, jumping ahead of the narrative. “Taking on a whole colony of genocidal monsters?”
“What? No! The Cardinal had him executed. You know that.”
Oh yeah. Zozzled did know that. “But you feel responsible for everyone those Syzygy go on to kill, all the other planets they’ll colonize?”
“No, I mean… yeah, a little.” Tiger stopped in his tracks and, a step or two later, Zozzled turned to face him. “Mostly, I feel used. They manipulated us so easily. They turned our altruism against us… but not only that. We could have landed on the planet first, not rushed into conflict. We would’ve discovered their ruse… but they knew we wouldn’t. They were so confident we wouldn’t, they didn’t even bother covering it up. They’re smarter and more cunning than we will ever be.”
“That’s why you’re always harping about patience,” Zozzled realized.
“It is,” his mentor admitted. “I’m glad you’re listening… if not learning.”
They continued walking. The arm of the galaxy rose ahead of them, a long thread of stars tethering them to the bright center of the universe. “It’s not your fault,” he suddenly told Tiger. “You did the right thing with the information you had at the time. Even if you’d known more, you still would’ve stopped those whalers.”
“That’s exactly my point, Zozzled. The Syzygy don’t stick their hiddeous heads out unless victory is assured. Mark me words: With enough time, those monsters will reduce the entire galaxy to a throne of corpses.”
Dawn was just beginning to creep over the mountains as Blind Tiger and his apprentice crept up behind the stranded whaleship. Beyond it, the white-walled anthills of the Syzygy stood silent watch. There was no hint of the beasts themselves, which was great. Tiger had no need to see their like ever again. Those steam-shovel claws. Those beady, lidless eyes. No, thank you. With a little luck, the Turncoats would be back in orbit with their prize before anyone even raised an alarm.
Because they were always so lucky.
The whaleship’s ramp was still open, like an invitation. Tiger lifted himself up onto it. His ninja-toed shoes made not a sound. The space inside was cavernous, stretching back into the belly of the ship and up into rafters full of cranes and catwalks. A single Scavenger languished in that rigging, its many arms pinned against its body, waiting. At least they’d have a lifeboat, should this whole thing go sideways.
Zozzled duplicated his mentor’s maneuver with the ease of youth. Together, they slipped unnoticed over a floor scarred with pits and scratches. They found a bank of lifts along the whaleship’s side, like ribs, and Zozzled reached for the ramp controls. Tiger stopped him with a glance. “No noise until we know this thing can still fly.” Zozzled’s face said it would be both their funerals, but he did was he was told.
Up they went, past the hangar and passenger decks, until they emerged into the long, sterile corridors of command. Only the dome of the observation deck remained above them. Pale, recessed light glowed from the walls and ceiling, illuminating doors for crew quarters, meeting rooms, navigation. The bridge would be to their left, at the very end of the hall. From there, they could confirm if the ship was spaceworthy and figure out what the Syzygy had done to keep it here against its will. Maybe even reverse it.
The Turncoats neither made nor heard a sound as they padded toward the bow. Zozzled watched his mentor’s back as Tiger waved the bridge doors open.
Terror awaited them inside.
Impossibly, the Syzygy had installed one of their own on the bridge! It scuttled around to face them on six, segmented legs that radiated out from under its broad, armored carapace. It nearly filled the entire room! Mounds of multi-colored fungus caked its shell and exploded up from its head into antler-like, fruiting bodies. Two massive claws snapped and clacked in front of its putrid, puckered face. Tiger heard his apprentice gagging behind him. The stench was overpowering.
When the monster’s eye stalks finally found them, it lifted one of its rear legs and casually pressed a button. Instantly, a low wail issued from the ship, resonating through its walls and — Tiger presumed — also from the outer hull. So much for not raising any alarms.
“Get down to the cargo bay and close the ramp,” Tiger ordered his apprentice as both men drew their swords. “Don’t let any more get inside!” If Zozzled wanted to say, I told you so, he kept it to himself. Instead, he sprinted down the hallway and skidded into the lift.
It was just Blind Tiger and the beast. Predictably, it tried to crush him in one of its mighty claws. Must not be one of the smarty-pants ones. Tiger rolled under the attack, moving to the creature’s flank, and kept running. These quarters were more cramped for the behemoth crab than for the tiny, nimble human. Tiger just needed to keep moving.
It tried to rotate around, following him, but Tiger stepped onto one of the consoles and — careful not to press any buttons! — launched himself onto the Syzygy’s back. All this fungus was the source of its intelligence, like an outboard brain. He hacked at it with his rapier, but barely made a dent. The Syzygy lifted itself up, howling, and tried to crush him against the ceiling.
The Turncoat drew his neutronium dagger and struck it against the crab’s back. It became momentarily unmoveable, stopping the creature cold with just enough room left for Tiger to breath. He slid around, using the dagger as a pivot, and threw himself toward the Syzygy’s head. His boomerang blade broke into two, free-flying sections. Each one chopped an antler off at its base. Tiger gripped his hilt like a knife and struck down through one of the wounds… stabbing the monster in its shrunken, original brain.
It fell to the floor with a thunderous crash.
Zozzled whirled out of the lift and slammed the ramp button without even looking. Powerful pneumatics engaged, lifting the whaleship’s massive jaw off the flats… until it suddenly groaned to a halt. Two pairs of gargantuan, white-and-red claws were clamped onto either side, slowly prying the ramp open!
Another crab charged up the ramp, surprisingly fast on its skittering legs. Reflectively, Zozzled dropped into a defensive stance and raised his chainsword into guard position. Its elegant blade purred as the miniscule teeth along its edge spun to life. Suddenly, it seemed inadequate. The onrushing thing was the size of a train car and could probably crush one in its claws. In moments, it would trample Zozzled with its railroad-spike legs and stuff whatever was left of him into its dripping, quivering mandibles.
He needed to find another way. Sheathing his sword, Zozzled took stock of the empty cargo bay, the control panel before him, the Scavenger held in the rigging… and he had two brilliant ideas. First, he activated a crane between himself and the Syzygy. Sinuous cables descended from the rafters and wrapped themselves around the murder train. It thrashed and struggled, but the cables carried it up into the rigging. Zozzled ran beneath it to where he’d just lowered the Scavenger.
More Syzygy stormed up the ramp, nightmares upon nightmares.
The Scavenger, by contrast, was a vision. It was small, its bubble cockpit just big enough for a solo pilot. Its body was stripped down to essentials: life support, heat sinks, and a gravity drive. Its eight robotic arms were just the weapons he needed. The pilot’s chair dropped down through the bubble and, a heartbeat later, Zozzled was inside.
A roaring Syzygy slammed into the glass, shoving the Scavenger across the floor with its weight. Zozzled engaged the tentacles and they snapped forward, around the cockpit, to grapple their enemy. Then, he pushed the control levers forward and wrestled the Syzygy back toward the ramp. Its legs screeched across the metal floor.
Unfortunately, there were more of the monsters. So many more. How had they responded to that alarm so fast?! Syzygy crawled over each other’s back, heedless of each other’s vulnerable brains, and began pulling the Scavenger’s arms off one by one. Their horrid, pinched faces pressed against the glass and Zozzled realized he’d lost, lost and gotten this poor ship killed in the process. He should’ve escaped back up the lift and helped Tiger with the one on the bridge. From there, maybe they could’ve done something.
So much for brilliant plans.
They were saved only by the arrival of a new horror, one that caused these common Syzygy to stop their rampage and bow reverently, holding the Scavenger down. The object of their obeisance was a hulking forest of otherworldly mushrooms that sat upon the body of an ancient, wobbling crustacean. Its weathered claws and knobby knees were barely visible beneath the thicket. It heaved itself up the ramp and through the throng of its lessers to the sparking wreck of the Scavenger, wherein Zozzled cowered.
“Human,” it concluded after a brief inspection. Its voice rattled from somewhere deep inside its creaking carapace, a tortured imitation of speech. “Turncoat. Always running, fighting, wriggling, fleshy pawns soaked in blood, useful idiots. Your presence is unwelcome, exotic, gamey, stringy, too much gristle. I should throw you to the hungry children. Sport makes the best seasoning.”
It looked around, taking in the Syzygy still hanging from the rafters. “Where is your master? We all have one, natural order, inevitable. Yours must be on the bridge, killing or maiming, else my lesser would already be freed. Attention: human murderer on my bridge! I have your inferior at my mercy, captive and beaten, fought when he could not win, foolish. Say hello, tiny human. Cry for salvation.”
The fiend raised one of its legs and pressed down on the Scavenger’s damaged glass. Cracks began to spiderweb out from the impact. “Take her up!” yelled Zozzled, assuming his mentor could hear him. “Leave the door open and space these palookas!”
“That will do, Turncoat. Fitting name. Back to cowering in silence.” It nearly shattered the cockpit, just to make its point. “Murderous human! Do not test my patience. You’ve already cost us weeks, extracting our pilot, waiting for the ship to heal — again! — all thanks to your short-sighted, violent ways. We are a patient race, but I will not wait much longer! How many limbs will your pet have left when you finally show your cowardly, big-eyed, fangy, furry, face full of protuberances and yet still your brain is so small and inadequate…”
With an abrupt sort of clarity, Zozzled hit the pilot chair release and it dropped slantwise out of the cockpit. Maybe he could save the Scavenger’s life, if he couldn’t save his own. There wasn’t much clearance, with the ship pressed to the floor, but Zozzled extricated himself with as much dignity as possible. He straightened his jaunty hat and brushed the mud from his pin stripes. He barely came up to the master crab’s lowest leg joint.
“My mentor won’t be coming down,” he declared, “you beady-eyed, genocidal, half-witted parasite. He’s not that stupid — “
Which was, of course, the moment Blind Tiger emerged from the lift. Unreal. He looked abysmal, too, covered head-to-toe in sickly, yellow spores. With slumped shoulders, he drew his sword and dagger… then dropped them. “I surrender,” he coughed.
Brilliant. Just brilliant. Ruefully, Zozzled wished he’d brought Spot along as his copilot instead.
“Tell me, murderous human… how does your species taste?”
Blind Tiger marched beside his apprentice at the center of a long column of lumbering, smart-mouthed crabs. Zozzled had pulled his hat down over his eyes; he didn’t want to be associated with his old, cowardly mentor right now. Such is the prerogative of youth.
The master crab was the most lumbering of them all and it set the pace for the rest as they trudged across the salt flats toward their mud-hut colony. “Do you pair well with any particular spices?” it rambled on. “I imagine drenching you in butter, for some reason.”
What else was he supposed to do? Wait around for an angry mob to stomp his apprentice to death? He couldn’t possibly get the whaleship underway in time, not with a dead Syzygy in the way and its spores in his lungs. Can’t a man take a minute to breath?!
“Don’t tell me your species has some prudish, backwards, ignorant taboo about consuming its own kind. Oh, you do! I can see it on what you call a face. Disgusting sweat glands extruding goo. And yet, you murdered one of mine. You species has a convenient sort of conscience.”
No, it’d been smarter to surrender and save Zozzled’s life. No one knows the future, not even the Syzygy. Anything could happen; they’d find their opening. These overconfident crabs had even given him his weapons, demanded he carry them out of their ship, in fact. Called it littering. Not that his rapier would be any good against something as overgrown as Smarty Pants, here. His shell was so thick with fungus, he’d need a chainsaw —
Tiger’s dark mood was cut short by the shadow of The Sunfish passing overhead. What was she doing here?! They’d told her to wait for them well out of sight. The last thing Tiger wanted to do was give these expansionist gatecrashers another ship.
He got his answer when the longfish belly-flopped down on the a lesser Syzygy and crushed it flat into the mud. Spot was crammed into that new nodule on The Sunfish’s stern. Furry little stowaway waved excitedly at the Turncoats as the ship spun around, smacking giant crabs across the flats like a bo staff in the hands of a master.
Tiger must’ve told the pup too many adventure stories.
Syzygy careened around them, skipping on their backs like stones over a pond. So much for the enemies in front of them… which just left the ones behind, between them at the whaleship. Both Turncoats drew their swords, ready to seize this moment but not quite sure how.
Tiger waved The Sunfish over, pointing first to Zozzled and them toward the whaleship. She was a smart, little ship. She’d know what to do. He turned his attention to Zozzled. “Chainsword!” he demanded, holding out his hand. Despite the indignation on his face, he tossed his weapon over. Tiger returned the favor with his boomerang blade.
“Get her airborne,” he ordered before charging into the arms of his enemy.
The Sunfish scooped up Zozzled with the tip of its lower fin and threw him — gently! — over the flailing horde of Syzygy. He hit the whaleship’s ramp and pitched forward into a shoulder roll, one hand on his hat. Always one hand on his hat. He came up in a full sprint and slammed the ramp control. This time, it closed tight and without incident. He had the place to himself.
Up the lift, down the hallway, and into command —
His hand stopped just above the door controls as his eyes discovered the unfolding horror on the bridge. That Syzygy pilot lied in a heap, legs akimbo, blood pooling beneath its slackened mouth parts, but worst of all was the cloud of pallid spores that filled the air. If Zozzled breathed that in, would it colonize his brain? Would fungus antlers burst from his futzing forehead?! Bad news for his hat game, not to mention his life.
And Tiger had breathed that in. That’s why he was coughing, probably why he surrendered. Raspberries!
Well, the bridge wasn’t the only way to release this whaleship’s anchor, so to speak. All he had to do was locate the wires that connected the bridge to the gravity drive and hack them apart with… his mentor’s delicate, unserrated rapier. Can’t ever make it easy, can you Tiger?
He ran down the hall toward a set of large, double doors in the stern. We waved them open and his jaw dropped, along with his eyes, down and down and down into a six-story thicket of pipes and power conduit.
Nope. Can’t ever make it easy.
The chainsword’s rotating teeth whirred in Tiger’s ear as he rushed the behemoth. His split-toed shoes flew over the flats, swift as the salt breeze. The mushroom forest slammed first one, then both of its colossal claws down into the mud, trying to crush its soft-bodied foe. The Turncoat vaulted over the first and used the second as a ramp, running up its gnarled arm and onto its back.
Every swing sawed through a stack of fungus. “How smart are you now?” Tiger shouted, drunk with adrenaline. More importantly, he thought, How dumb do I want you? He picked a spot behind the Syzgy’s head and slashed across the strands, trying to cut the forest off from its host, which shrieked and bucked in response.
Panicked claws snapped at the Turnchoat’s face. “Just an animal, after all!” bellowed the Turncoat. “Just like the rest of us!” He fended off each attack with a high, tight swing of Zozzled’s sword. He aimed for the chinks in its armor… and the tender tendons within. He hit home and the creature withdrew its wounded arm, giving Tiger his opening.
Tiger placed the blade across the sinews of mycelium fiber, laid down as the fungus colonized this creature’s shell. He put his back into it, pressing down on the chainsword with all his weight and letting its tiny, hungry teeth do their work. A spray of symbiotic brain matter was his reward.
The master crab roared like a bull elephant and raised its good claw. The weapon towered over Tiger like a falling tree. Gone were the polite barbs, the bizarre nonsequiturs, the calculated facade of cruel civility.
All that remained was rage.
Zozzled threw himself over the railing and dropped onto a band of pipes one level below. Here, hundreds of wire bundles came out from the command deck and spread through the whaleship’s engineering section like rivers wandering through a delta. The nav controls had to be among them. He traced one toward the gravity drive, a massive and many-lobed sphere that dominated the lower floors.
Planting his feet on parallel beams, Zozzled slid down two more stories before snagging a power conduit and swinging himself over a plume of venting coolant. He nearly missed the ring platform, but managed to catch the lowest rail with his fingertips. The muscles in his arms screamed. He teetered there for a moment, listening to the zzzzzap of electrical discharges from all around the gravity drive.
What a day.
Taking a deep breath, he hauled himself up the railing and flipped over onto his back. His hat fell off and lied beside him, similarly spent. Above them, wires hung like willow branches, terminating in hundreds of little boxes. They hovered around the drive at regular intervals, connected only by arcs of electricity. The wires all seemed to come through a single junction, which just happened to sit along Zozzled’s path down from command. All he had to do was bust up that junction box.
Gamely, he tried cutting it with Tiger’s rapier, but the delicate blade was made for stabbing, not cutting. He tried bashing with the hilt, but made little progress. Desperate, he leapt up to a cross beam and kicked savagely with both feet. No dice.
Zozzled missed his chainsword; it would’ve chewed through this in no time. He imagined his mentor out there, trying to fight a baker’s dozen of giant, bloodthirsty murder crabs. He had to get back out there!
What would Tiger do? Something stupid and nonsensical, no doubt, but it would work all the same… and that gave Zozzled an idea. Maybe not a brilliant idea, but look were brilliance had gotten him. Maybe it was time for stupidity.
He knew the boomerang blade’s control scheme was gestural, so he got back down onto the ring platform and drew his mentor’s weapon. Holding it high over his head, he flicked his wrist toward the junction. The tip of the blade snapped off and embedded itself deep in the junction box.
Gods, this was a bad idea. Either it would work or he was about to die. Fifty-fifty shot. Zozzled flicked his wrist again, but in the opposite direction. The blade’s midsection flew free and struck home, sticking straight out of the gravity drive… and lightning surged through it! A blinding crack of blue-white flashed past eyes on its way to the junction box, skipping the sword hilt and Zozzled’s precious heart. Sparks flew from the bundle of wires.
We have a winner!
Blind Tiger rolled through the mud and came up in a defensive crouch, chainsword held before him like a shield. The elder Syzygy raged on, beating itself literally senseless before realizing its prey had escaped. Its lessers were rapidly regrouping, scuttling around to flank him, but smart enough to keep their distance. Or maybe they were waiting for orders that would never come.
Beyond them, the whaleship shuddered and flew upwards, as if someone had cuts its strings. It tilted gracefully until it seemed to be diving headlong into the sky. Good for you, Zozzled. Fly free.
His adversary lifted itself to its full height and shook loose the wreckage of its outboard brain, which rained down into the tortured mud. Its eye stalks fixed on Tiger and it roared, snapping its one good claw and wielding the other like a flail. Tiger raised his apprentice’s sword and roared right back.
It charged, loud as an avalanche, spraying bone-white mud in its wake. Maybe he could disable the second claw before it pounded him flat into the flats. Or maybe he could roll under the attack and rake the creature’s comparatively tender underside. Most likely, this was it, his last stand against overwhelming odds, covering his apprentice’s escape.
So be it.
Time seemed to stop as the Syzygy loomed over him, blotting out the morning sun. No, that wasn’t right… Time hadn’t stopped, the Syzygy had stopped! Its legs scrambled for purchase, bit something was holding it back. The Sunfish lifted slowly, confidently into view, connected to the monster by a tether of blue energy.
As it rose higher, Tiger’s would-be slayer lost contact with the ground and it started to swing away. From the mystery nodule — must be a gunner’s seat — Spot reeled in the ghost tether, adding momentum to the Syzygy’s swing. When he released his catch, flailing and furious, it vanished into the distance.
The rest of the Syzygy rushed in to kill Blind Tiger, but his girl was faster. She swooped down on him sideways, opening her airlock toward him. Tiger leapt up and held on with white knuckles as The Sunfish flew them to safety. She rotated around and scooped up the Turncoat, who fell into her airlock mud-caked but alive.
No! Zozzled had to get back down there!
When he hadn’t been able to lower the ramp, Zozzled had gone up to the observation deck. Much to his dismay, they were already in space. He couldn’t even see the salt flats anymore.
A circle of light appeared on the deck’s vast, low dome. It was The Sunfish! Zozzled stretched the circle wider and inspected her for damage. She looked none the worse for wear, just a little muddy. Weren’t they all?
He sprinted back to the lift and headed down to the hangar, propelled by equal parts hope and fear. The slender longfish was just settling down when the lift doors opened. “Spot!” he yelled as the dogboy barreled him over. They tumbled together into the lift.
“He stowed away,” a weary voice reported from the hangar. Zozzled extricated himself from Spot and confirmed its source with his own eyes. Blind Tiger looked much the worse for wear, but he was alive.
“Good thing he did,” Zozzled replied, ruffling Spot’s fur. “He saved our butts.”
“Saved mine twice,” his mentor agreed. “Did you know that thing on the back of The Sunfish is a harpoon gun? I love it.”
“We’ll need it,” Zozzled told him, all business. They could be glad they were all alive later. “We have a problem. The whaleship’s headed out of the system.”
“Through the wormhole,” Tiger acknowledged.
Yeah,” Zozzled confirmed, “and right into the Franchise blockade that shot us down, last time!”
Written by Daniel Bayn
Featuring…
- Blind Tiger, the Turncoat mentor
- Zozzled, his Turncoat apprentice
- The Sunfish, their feral longship
- Spot, the precocious dogboy
Based on “Fast Ships & Cool Swords,” a shared storytelling universe by Daniel Bayn. Fast Ships and Cool Swords © 2024 by Daniel Bayn is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0
Daniel Bayn is a prolific author of games and strange fiction. He’s written three tabletop roleplaying games, monthly columns, short stories, and one non-fiction book on the psychology of online social behavior. He holds an interdisciplinary master’s degree from the University of Minnesota and works as a user experience designer, strategist, and researcher. http://DanielBayn.com
His premier novel, Mercyblades, is available on Amazon.
