The Maelstrom Eye

pistols at once. 'Teldin!' Sylvie called, out of breath. 'Teldin, we've got… we've got to get to the Halibut! The gnomes are taking off! The base…'

Dyffed shoved at Sylvie's legs and forced her into the barracks room, then fired twice out the door again. Teldin tried to get to the door and listen to Sylvie at the same time, but she stopped him with her free hand.

'There are…' she finally said, after swallowing hard. 'There are humanoid ships, apparently orcish, landing all over the place. We have to get out of here. Aelfred's been looking for you, and Gomja. Gomja had brought us back to the hangar just before the orcs came. We're going to get into wildspace, where they can't catch us, before it's too late.' A low, muffled boom echoed across the port.

Teldin nodded back at the silent form on the bunk bed. 'Can you carry her?' he shouted, too excited to think that Sylvie was right in front of him. The half-elf navigator saw Gaye and gasped, hurrying over to the kender's side and sheathing her dagger without wiping it off. In a moment, she had Gaye cradled in her arms.

'I'll never get my seven-weed soup tonight,' Dyffed said sadly, stuffing four pistols into his wide belt and carrying two more. 'First the hamsters, then this. Not my day at all. Shall we be off?'

Teldin nodded, taking a deep breath. Sylvie came up behind him. 'Teldin, she's still bleeding,' she whispered.

Teldin glanced at Gaye's pale face, then looked outside, across the broad, clear pavement, to the far-away hangar where the Perilous Halibut waited. Fires leaped into the sky everywhere, and black clouds rolled and drifted across the whole base. Few figures were visible in the open, most dodging from building to distant building. The sky was clear of spelljammers. They've all crashed or landed, Teldin decided. The ores must be down and waiting for us, too.

'Let's go,' he said, then dashed out of the building, pistols up, running for the distant hangar. 'Come on!' he shouted back, waving Dyffed and Sylvie on as they followed him.

Behind them, oblivious to everything, the two gnomes loaded pistols until there was no place left to put them.

*****

Twenty minutes later, the Perilous Halibut, its helm having been installed by accident two days earlier, burst through the thin wooden roof of the hangar. Cracked lumber and splinters sprayed through the air behind it. Sylvie was at the helm, there being no one else with the spell power to fly the ship as fast as she. The Halibut roared along beneath the cloud cover for many miles, leaving the naval base and a mass of pinned-down and burning humanoid ships far behind it. Borrowing an idea from Dyffed, Sylvie had the cloud-concealed ship simply fly off the edge of Ironpiece, where enemy ships were not likely to look for it. Luck was with them. The sky was overcast right to the edge, and they saw no sign of any humanoid ships when they sped away into the void. The ship's dark, nonreflective color proved to be a marvelous asset in hiding it against the black backdrop of wildspace.

Teldin looked out of the open jettison platform at the Halibut's stern as they left Ironpiece. Seen edge-on, the world was now just a rapidly receding band of light against the distant constellations. Once they were safely away, he knew, Sylvie would take the time to draw out the course through the phlogiston to get to Herdspace. Sylvie, alone out of everyone else, had remembered to ask the gnomes for the navigational charts to Herdspace. This she'd done shortly after she had been taken to the infirmary, and she'd stored the charts with her belongings. We don't deserve to have someone that smart with us, he mused.

Not that Gomja was a slouch, either. He had taken charge of the evacuation, pointing out that the humanoids obviously knew where Teldin and company were, and waiting at the base for the humanoids to go away was a losing game. It was better to get off-planet into wildspace again and try to outdistance the enemy fleet before it caught on. Funny, thought Teldin, how we thought landing on Ironpiece would solve our troubles. Instead, our troubles just followed us right down to the ground.

A heavy hand dropped on Teldin's shoulder, startling him. 'Someone wants to see you, old son,' Aelfred said with a crooked smile. 'We managed to scrape a healing potion together from somewhere for our kender.'

Wordlessly, Teldin followed his friend down the too-narrow corridor to the equally cramped room that was now serving as Gaye's room. He had barely begun to figure out where anything was aboard this flying black coffin. Already he was starting to hate it.

Aelfred opened the door. Teldin had to stoop slightly because of the low ceiling and barely fit through the doorway. Gaye was in bed, looking at him with a pale, anxious face. 'You mad?' she asked in a soft voice. Teldin half smiled. 'No. You okay?' Gaye's face cleared with relief, and she settled back in her small bed. It had been sized for a gnome, and she just barely fit it. 'I'm okay.'

Teldin managed to sit on the edge of her bed without crowding her too much. 'I saw you poke the ogre in the face with that stick. That was a lucky shot, but you should have just run and let me handle it.'

'Oh,' she said. She was about to say more but didn't, simply shrugging instead. 'Thanks.'

Teldin rubbed his face, thinking. 'We're heading for that sphere that Cirathora called Herdspace, though I don't bow how we're going to find the fal once we get there. Dyffed was going to give us a device, a locator of some kind, that we could use when we got to Herdspace. I got it, then lost it when the, uh, hamster swallowed me. We'll have to hope for a lucky break when we get there.'

Gaye looked down at her lap. 'What did the locator look like?' she asked.

'Little red box,' he said. 'He called it a thingfinder. The humanoids might have gotten it, but its more likely that one of the gnomes on the base has it now. We can't go back for it. The scro are all over the place.' He patted Gaye's feet under the blanket, then stood up to leave. 'I've got to find out what's going on aboard our new ship. I'll come back to check on you in a little while.'

Gaye didn't look up as Teldin headed for the door. He heard her call his name once, and he turned before he left.

Gaye was still looking down. Her arm was out, handing something to him. It was a red box with an open back and a dark glass window on it.

'I found this when I was out earlier,' she said. 'Is this it?' She dared to look up.

Ironpiece was a bright spot of light against a stupendous backdrop of stars as the pair of doors at the stern of the Perilous Halibut came open. The figure there looked out but was oblivious to the splendor of wildspace. Instead, the figure stepped around the rear jettison, from which shrapnel could be launched at trailing foes, then carefully scanned the void.

Despite its apparently mechanical trappings, the gnomish covered lantern the figure bore was powered by a simple magical spell that provided continual light. The gnomes had merely added assorted gears and sparking devices that made the lantern weigh three times what it normally would, yet none of the devices worked and all had frozen in place with rust. Still, the light inside was as bright as ever.

After a few moments, the figure spotted a faint, blinking light trailing the ship. It was the signal. Carefully, the figure raised the lantern and, recalling the code that had been so painfully learned, began to open and shut the lantern's cover, sending the first of many messages that its master awaited. Only the stars saw the figure's face and noted its grief.

Chapter Ten

The scro who broke the news did not sweeten its bitter taste, simply gave the facts.

'Sit, five ships out of Captain Sharak's force of twelve have reported back from Ironpiece. The rest were disabled by ground fire. Our casualties are estimated at one hundred and fifteen troops. The gnomes were somehow able to detect Sharak's approach even after our fleet had distracted or disabled their orbital scouts, as the gnomes were quite ready for us on the ground. Neither Teldin Moore nor his companions could be found. He may have escaped us.'

The eight naval and marine commanders crowded into General Vorr's office said nothing in their humiliation. Vorr looked calmly at the tall, black-armored scro, who stared back without apparent qualms. 'Captain Geraz, do you have any idea of where Teldin might be?'

'Sir, I've heard several reports of gnomish ships fleeing during the fighting,' Geraz said, slurring his words a bit. 'One ship crashed through the rooftop of a hangar and fled into the sky, another took off normally, and a third crashed into the lake. Our troops were able to capture enough papers to indicate that one of the ships that got