The Rainbow Ocean
Elnamerrna, lost in the Flow
Greenmonth 4th, 2461
"Two weeks!" Kiran gasped. "And more!"
Tyfelian read the date for himself. The cleanly painted Embimuran numbers did not lie.
"That long..." Tyfelian trailed off in disbelief.
Kiran opened his mouth to speak, but he closed it again quietly, having no idea what to say.
"Small wonder I'm starving," Tash commented softly.
"Small wonder we need to change our diapers..." Kiran mumbled.
Tyfelian looked so badly confused that Kiran would have thought it comical had he not known why.
Then, alarm replaced the confusion on the half-drow's face.
"Call Shipwide Emergency, Kiran," Tyfelian ordered. His head lowered slightly with an exhaled breath as he gave the command; he was not looking at his friend. He stared straight ahead, at the outeye, which still showed naught but the infinite colors of the Rainbow Ocean.
Tyfelian barely heard Kiran urgently issuing orders into the voice horn, for his thoughts were held by their predicament. The moment the human finished calling the ship to emergency status, he voiced his alarm.
"Lost in the Flow," he spat. "A ship lost in the Flow might be a ship with a crew that'll die, sooner or later."
"Supplies," Kiran replied, understanding. "The air regenerator will keep the air fresh for a very long time, but not forever."
"Water's no problem, not with my decanter of endless water," Tyfelian added, "but food is another matter. The clerics can't keep creating food for long."
"The gods are out of anyone's reach in the phlogiston," Kiran said, meeting Tyfelian's eyes grimly. "By strict rationing, we can feed the crew for five or six months, certainly no longer than that."
"I knew we should've resupplied in Greyspace, but it was a bit out of the way," Tyfelian muttered. He would have continued further, probably to blame himself for pushing the ship on, but Kiran raised a hand to stop his line of self-recrimination.
"We've been in space for over a year, behind the lines of the scro navies," he said gently. "No one can blame you for wanting to press on with alacrity. We've been moving generally toward the Hearthspace Cluster, so stockpiling supplies didn't seem a high priority."
Tyfelian accepted the paladin's words and calmed down a little. He seriously wondered what he would do without the human; Kiran was the only person Tyfelian had ever met who could keep him focused, keep his emotions from flying away from him at flowspeed. Alzja often frustrated him under stress conditions, and while Fing was fantastic for the morale of anyone she liked, her infatuation with him always felt distracting. Jaclyn and Trula did not have the correct manner to do what Kiran did, and even Melanerra did not have the right supportive approach to keep Tyfelian's wild emotions in line. For some reason that Tyfelian did not quite understand, only Kiran could keep him from running off half-strung.
He flashed an appreciative smile at his first officer, then faced forward to address the helm.
"Where are we, Tash?"
Anticipating just that question, Jaclyn had handed a stack of papyrus sheets to Tash. The drow lady shook her head, leafing through her navigation records frantically.
"All of this is outdated back to the fourteenth of last month. I have no idea where we are."
Tyfelian swallowed his fear and asked, "Are the sails free yet?" In a distracted way, he had heard Kiran give the order to untie the sails.
"Yes," Tash answered. "We have steering, but no navigation."
Tyfelian glared at the outeye, then made his decision.
"Hard about. Reverse our direction."
"Go back?" Tash turned in the helm to stare at Tyfelian, astonished.
"Without a point of reference, we're dead in six months at most. Do it."
"Back to the crystal shell you and Trula saw?" Kiran asked.
"Absolutely," Tyfelian stated. He picked up the voice horn and started to click it, to address Trula in the crow's nest, but then he saw Alzja return to the bridge through the starboard door. This reminded him that he did not need to click it. It was still open to the nest.
"Crow's nest, bridge."
"Crow's nest, Trula," the human's voice returned.
"We're returning to the crystal shell you and I spotted, Trula, if we can find it again. Let me know the instant you spot it. It shouldn't take long. We couldn't have drifted very far under sail."
"Gotcha," Trula replied.
"I really don't want to go through that again," Kiran said to Tyfelian as the half-drow shut off the horn.
"Would you rather wander through the Flow blindly 'til we all die?" Tyfelian asked him softly, raising an eyebrow.
Kiran pondered the choice for a moment, then nodded, acquiescing to Tyfelian's judgment.
"It's worth trying once," the paladin admitted.
"Flowspeed, Tash," Tyfelian called to the helm.
A crewman opened the portside door and hurried into the bridge. He went to Kiran straight away and talked to him briefly.
Kiran pursed his lips as the crewman finished. The paladin dismissed him and turned to Tyfelian.
"Everyone has checked in...only minor injuries, except for Jalaysa. She has some badly infected scratches on her, neck to belly button. Her clothes are ripped to shreds."
The paladin paused, troubled, then went on.
"The wounds look something like what a tiger might do to a person."
Tyfelian grimaced, and his eyebrows rose with the mystery. No answers seemed forthcoming.
"There it is," Trula's voice came from the horn. "Crystal shell off the port bow, barely visible."
"Full stop, helm," Tyfelian said to Tash.
"Rogue shell," Tash repeated as she willed the Silver Triop to a stop. "It's sitting right beside the flowriver and drifting with it, not fixed between three or more rivers like most of them are."
"Disregard," Tyfelian said. "It's a point of reference, sort of. That's all that matters right now."
Tash bent to the task, writing frantically on a papyrus with Alzja's help, but shook her head. It had taken longer than they'd expected to find the rogue shell—over six hours—probably due to slight changes in the Elnamerrna's course when her sails were lashed. Over time, no ship could fly a straight line without a steering crew.
Worse, she now knew that the crystal shell in question had also moved during the missing two weeks. It was a rogue shell, not attached to any flowriver, so its value as a point of reference was shaky. Naught but educated guesses would guide much of Tash's navigation.
Tyfelian knew this as well, and realized uneasily that they had been most fortunate to find it even as quickly as they had.
"Navigation?" he prompted.
Alzja worked her figures rapidly, trying to get her bearings. Making the assumption that she knew where the Elnamerrna was in Known Space by the location of this rogue shell—or, more accurately, the ship's location on Rainmonth Fourteenth—she determined their location on the elven maps of the Rainbow Ocean tucked into the drawers of the desk upon which the planetary locator rested.
Alzja and Tash murmured quietly to each other for a moment, pointing at various spots on the flow map, then Alzja turned to Tyfelian and Kiran.
"If that's the same crystal shell, we're at about ten days travel out from Drakspace, along the flowriver leading from there to Elbraspace—but the margin of error is bad, really bad."
Tash glanced to her left to share a triumphant, if tentative, smile with Alzja. Elbraspace was a crystal shell that the Empire of the Elves had charted but not explored... in the outermost reaches of the Hearthspace Cluster.
"Right where we oughtta be—if that's the same damn rogue shell," Alzja noted.
"No choice but to assume it is," Tyfelian stated. He glared at the offending rogue crystal shell. He would very much have liked to go to it and find out what it had done to him and his crew, but, against that attitude, he agreed with Kiran's earlier sentiment - he did not wish to experience it again.
With a final withering glance at the enigmatic crystal shell, he said, "Tash, take us into the flowriver at a comfortable distance from that rogue."
Tash did. The outeye's view showed the port turn, then they felt the very slight lurch as the Elnamerrna's helm made flowspeed.
"If we have our bearings, we're now charting course to the Hearthworld Cluster, by way of Elbraspace," Alzja reported reassuringly.
Tyfelian leaned back in his chair and pondered what had just happened. His heart cried out warnings loudly, urgently, that something dreadful had occurred during those two weeks, but he saw and heard nothing wrong.
Still...
"Kiran, post guards outside the bridge. Set up teams to look for stowaways. Tash, tomorrow, you will magically examine everyone on this ship to make certain that they're who they say they are."
Tash nodded, but Tyfelian managed to catch Alzja's eye. His fingers signaled in drow sign language, "You will do the same, too, on everyone, including Tash herself. Make sure I'm there when you do."
A very slight tic of Alzja's eye gave her acquiescence.
The Rainbow Ocean
Elnamerrna, en route to the Hearthspace region
Greenmonth 12th, 2461
Tyfelian reclined on his bed, but he was not sleeping. He held a book in his hands, but he wanted to pause and think before he lost himself in the journal of Ibinon, one of the creators of the seven Elendran artifacts.
He had set his mind at ease regarding the crew. Tash (and unknown to Tash, Alzja also) had verified that the crew had not been compromised with any spies, and a thorough search (twice) had discovered no stowaways on board. Likewise, Barolcot had reported no new damage to the ship.
Reviewing this in his thoughts, Tyfelian smiled and pushed all of his worries aside for a while. His overtaxed mind needed diversion.
He opened the book to the spot he had book marked and gently tugged on the tassel. He set the bookmark aside and found his place.
Ibinon and his party had been a band of non-evil drow. Over decades, they had formed a secret society of drow who did not worship the Spider Queen. Spread throughout Elendraspace, these breakaway drow had desired to leave Elendraspace and find a new home, where they could live in peace and isolation.
Ibinon and his friends devised a plan to steal a large number of gypsy moth ships, and thereby escape Elendraspace and make a new life elsewhere.
The daring plan had gone off without a hitch, but the Elendran drow would not let so many of their kind (and over a hundred gypsy moth ships) up and leave so easily. The Elendrans gave chase. The fleeing renegades left Ibinon and party behind to follow later.
Ibinon didn't find out what had become of those ships until years later, when rumors of
the subsequent events had filtered down to the point that a renegade drow, out of the loop of mainstream Elendran society, could hear of them.
The renegade ships had gone on to find an uninhabited crystal shell to call their own, that much Ibinon had discerned from hearsay, though he hadn't known how his people had escaped. To Tyfelian's disappointment, Ibinon's journal contained no charts of the Rainbow Ocean to point out where they had gone, either.
Some years later, after several failed attempts to leave Elendraspace themselves and join their people, Ibinon and party got surrounded, cut off, and put under siege in their stronghold, that small asteroid in rogue orbit 'round the dim Elendran sun. Ibinon described the complement of besieging Elendran ships and their attempts to get into the renegade stronghold, but there his journal ended.
Tyfelian could only wonder about the details of how, when, and why, but he knew Ibinon's fate. He had seen the bones of that long-ago renegade drow psion in that hidden base in Elendraspace. He could envision it readily—the Elendrans had bypassed the heavily trapped door and teleported into the stronghold. Ibinon had not had time to write any further.
Tyfelian closed the journal and smiled, glad that he had picked up the work on a whim and brought it with him from Elendraspace. He loved history, whether to study the works of others or to uncover it himself.
He put the journal on his nightstand and stood. He poured himself a goblet of an herbal tea called "chamomile," a drink that he enjoyed greatly. It was cold, and in the Rainbow Ocean, he dared not even try to heat it, but Tyfelian didn't feel like having a hot drink anyway.
A knock on his door broke into his steady stream of pleasant thoughts.
"Come in," he called.
One of the crew opened his door and looked into his room. It was Abt, a minotaur from the planet Krynn, and a straggler from the old mercenary crew who had chosen to stay with the Elnamerrna as a gunner.
"Tyfelian?" Abt asked, his leader's name coming to his lips clumsily. The short but big-shouldered minotaur ducked under the doorway and poked his horned head in. Abt looked a bit uncomfortable addressing Tyfelian by name. He was used to calling his leaders "captain" or "sir," but Tyfelian had begun the process of banning that practice. His crew were his fellow adventurers and his authority over them was, to the half-drow, mostly a formality.
Tyfelian gave Abt a smile and a look of intense interest to put him at ease.
"Trula would like to see you in the crow's nest," Abt informed him.
Tyfelian knocked back his tea and left with the minotaur.
Abt reached up to the ceiling and opened the hatch leading up, and out, to the rope ladder to the crow's nest. He could do this without climbing the wall-mounted ladder due to his great height. Short for a minotaur he may have been, but he was still over seven feet tall.
"Thanks," Tyfelian said to him. He swiftly climbed the wall ladder, leaving behind the guards set under the hatch. Then he scaled the rope ladder. He made it to the crow's nest in just moments and swung over into it.
Trula waited for him there, spyglass in hand.
"At first, I thought it was false sighting," Trula said, passing the spyglass to Tyfelian, "but it's there, all right. It's been there for a good half hour."
Tyfelian eyed the contact through the spyglass, looking astern from the crow's nest. It was a ship, for sure, though what kind, he couldn't guess. It was just a tiny blot of dark color against the whirling rainbow fog of the phlogiston.
Following their course.
"It could be coincidence," Trula murmured. "We're flyin' deep in a flowriver, catchin' the best winds to Elbraspace... or to the Hearthworld region, at least. They could just be another traveler goin' the same way..." the human trailed off uncertainly.
"... except that ships seldom fly toward Hearthspace," Tyfelian picked up on her rambling. "Space folks consider us a backwater."
"Hmm? Why?" Trula looked puzzled.
"We're some distance outside the Inner Prime, and a lot of them don't like our flowrivers."
Trula snickered. "You mean thousands of crisscrossin' flowrivers and our flowshells, eh?"
"Flowshells? Are those the 'second shells' of thick phlogiston that surround most of the crystal shells in our space?"
Trula nodded.
"Never heard 'em called that, but it's a fine name for it," Tyfelian muttered, still eyeing the contact astern. "I've heard a lot of people don't like the way our phlogiston looks, either."
Trula snickered again. "There's plenty of shells near Hearthspace, too."
A slight smile touched Tyfelian's lips. "No one even knows exactly how many, either. We might be a backwater, but our space is enormous. Even the elves gave up on trying to map it."
Trula thought. "It'd take the whole fleet a hunnerd years to chart it?"
"Or more," Tyfelian agreed. "But that's all the more reason I don't believe it's just a fellow traveler back there."
The half-drow's expression went grim. His gut warned him that his ship had been spotted and was now being followed.
"We're pulling ahead of it fast," the human lookout advised him, "but they're trying, I'll give them that."
"Keep a close watch on it," he said to Trula, handing the spyglass back to her. "But keep watch in all directions as normal, too."
Trula nodded. She looked at the distant vessel again to spot its location, and then went back to her usual watching.
Tyfelian hadn't even made it to the ladder before she blurted, "Crystal shell ahead and to starboard!" She almost immediately added, "Entering Hearthspace region!"
Tyfelian watched with satisfaction as the Rainbow Ocean seemed to change before his eyes. The Flow in the area of Hearthspace looked more agitated than in other areas. It was patchy, and visibility through it sometimes improved a bit beyond the usual limit. The sight looked like broken cloud cover over the surface of a world, except for the colors.
As it was at the moment; Trula and Tyfelian could see the crystal shell off to the right, despite the considerable distance, though patches of dense phlogiston obscured parts of its orb. The flowriver—or flowstream, perhaps?—that led to it was also visible in the broken-up, swirling phlogiston near Hearthspace.
As an added attraction, that flowstream wasn't straight. It veered out of the main flowriver somewhere up ahead and curved "downward" (from the perspective of the Elnamerrna's crow's nest) then "up" again toward the remote crystal shell.
Tyfelian marveled at the sight, then did a double take.
His eyes fastened upon that curved flowstream and the half-obscured crystal shell beyond it. He stared at the spectacle, a very strange feeling creeping over him.
It had some of the oddest associations for him. He knew, as well as he knew he drew breath, that he had never seen it before, yet it seemed familiar. He knew then, that it was the Dridercomp, and excitement took him as he wondered whether the creator of the Elendran artifact had seen this sight at some point in his life, those three hundred some-odd years ago.
His heart swelled with someone else's pride, happiness, and contentment...
"Crow's nest, bridge," Kiran's voice called from the nest's horn. The sound startled Tyfelian—not an easy thing to do.
Tyfelian picked it up and answered.
"Crow's nest, Tyfelian."
"Tash says we're in the wrong flowriver—there aren't any crystal shells along the one leading from Drakspace to Elbraspace."
"Well... at least we're in the Hearthspace area. You can see that for yourself," Tyfelian replied.
"Crow's nest, helm," Melanerra's melodic voice broke into their conversation.
"Tyfelian," the half-drow acknowledged.
"We're coming up on a flow-fork," the human cleric advised him, though Tyfelian already knew it—he could see the fork now that the Elnamerrna had moved closer. "Steady on, or should we visit that crystal sphere over there?"
"Stand by," the half-drow said. He covered the end of the voice horn with his hand. "Trula, check that contact."
Trula turned around, spyglass still against her eye, found the ship astern, and peered.
"No change," she murmured. "No closer, not much farther. They can't keep up, but it'll take time to lose 'em."
Tyfelian removed his hand.
"Take the flowstream to starboard, Melanerra," he ordered. "Perhaps we can find some help."
Outermost reaches of the Hearthspace region
Elnamerrna, approaching an uncharted crystal shell
Greenmonth 12th, 2461
Less than an hour after the Elnamerrna turned into the flowstream, Tyfelian took Trula's report that the unidentified ship astern had likewise turned and tailed them still.
"Perhaps this is their home crystal shell," Tyfelian speculated.
Kiran nodded. "I suggest we enter the shell, and, if it's all right in there, we lie in wait for them. We might get the jump on them, but not to attack, necessarily. Perhaps to talk."
Tyfelian smiled. "That's not a bad idea at all."
The journey continued uneventfully until they reached the outer wall of the crystal shell—not a large one, according to Tash, but the shell wall still appeared nearly infinite, as was always the case with the crystal shells.
"Battle stations," Tyfelian commanded. Kiran relayed the order.
Melanerra murmured the command word for the passage device, and it sent out its inaudible call to the shell wall. A portal opened in the endless blue-black expanse, lined with sparking green bolts of lightning.
The Silver Triop's command crew watched the outeye. Cautious, they never made the ship dart through a portal into an unexplored shell before the green lightning cleared and they could see inside a little, and they always entered such a shell ready to fight.
Tyfelian looked through the portal with interest. Once again, he almost felt that he had seen this before, but he had half-expected that and put the thought aside for the moment.
This crystal shell apparently had a central sun; the portal looked directly at it. A fine yellow sun it was, like Erilonia's sun. Not as brightly shining, but the same hue. Tyfelian liked the color and smiled slightly at the sight of it, as did Kiran and Jaclyn—and Tyfelian felt eager to know what the planets might be like.
"Forward, helm," he said to Melanerra.
The Elnamerrna eased through the portal. Melanerra swiftly looked around within it with the all-around vision provided by the helm.
The stars of this shell appeared to be tiny dots of light against the inner wall—nothing spectacular. The immediate area, though, got everyone's attention; one did not need all-around vision to note the oddity.
"Debris," Tyfelian muttered, looking at the outeye. It showed only small asteroids and floating boulders, all spinning.
"And a lot of it," Melanerra noted.
"The locator's blank," Alzja said. "No planets in here."
"What?" Kiran blinked.
"Not a one," Alzja repeated.
"What happened to the planets?" Tash murmured. Then something on the outeye caught her gaze and held it for a moment.
"Ohhhh," she groaned. "That boulder there," she pointed. "Look at those bite marks!"
"Gammaroids! Gods curse 'em to the Abyss," Jaclyn snarled.
Tyfelian stared at the boulder in question, floating about thirty yards away. It had clearly been bitten off, he could tell. He figured that, indeed, it had been one of the giant space tortoises that had done it. He had seen another crystal shell once—Moragspace—which had been similarly ruined by gammaroids.
He grimaced, thinking of the thousands of innocent lives that had been lost when the space tortoises ate this shell's planets, but then he got back to business.
"Melanerra, ease us into a spot to try to blend us in with the rocks, so when our shadow gets here, we can take it by surprise."
Melanerra made the Elnamerrna turn, and soon, the vessel settled in between five boulders of similar size. She hoped that this would give them a slight delay in being spotted, but she couldn't be sure. A silver-colored starship could not hide easily.
Tyfelian clicked the voice horn and called to the crow's nest.
"Trula, keep watch for our shadow -"
"It just used its passage device," Trula cut him off in mid-sentence. "It's coming through."
"Identify if possible."
"Looks elven... but it's dark-colored... by the gods! It's a gypsy moth armada!"
"Drow," Kiran muttered.
Tyfelian aimed the outeye at the drow vessel. He could not see it quite as well as Trula could with her spyglass, but he knew a gypsy moth class starship to see one. He easily recognized that bloated, hunchbacked design and deep purple color, a twisted remake of the beautiful elven armada-class ship. It was impossible to mistake, even if one had only heard a description...
... and Tyfelian had seen gypsy moths before. The mainstay of the Elendraspace navy was the gypsy moth. While in Elendraspace, Tyfelian had seen plenty of gypsy moths.
The Elnamerrna then drifted behind one of the spinning boulders—or it moved past them; it was hard to say which—and they lost sight of the moth.
"Melanerra, take us over that boulder and straight toward the moth on my command. Trula," he went on, picking up the horn, "be ready to flash a friendship message to it as soon as you can."
"Ready," Trula replied. Melanerra nodded by way of response.
"And... now!" Tyfelian commanded.
Melanerra sent the Silver Triop into an "upward" arc, "over" the floating, whirling boulder...
Up in the crow's nest, Trula kept watch alertly. The ugly, pitted, bitten-off boulder spun "downward" from her perspective, and then the Elnamerrna crested it and shot forward...
... straight toward the gypsy moth—less than fifty yards away!
"Bridge! It's right in fr-"
"Helm! Steering! Hard to starboard, now!" Tyfelian shouted.
As fast as they were, the Elnamerrna crew had reacted too late, even with a ship with the agility of a triop. The ships seemed about to collide...
... but the crewmen of the gypsy moth somehow reacted even faster and turned away just in time.
Trula watched, horrified, as one of the Elnamerrna's lateral sails came within twenty feet of the gypsy moth's wings. Within it, she didn't need her spyglass to see drow manning the weapons and more of the black-skinned elves sitting in flitters atop the dark ship's "shoulders."
Recovering her wits, she worked the lantern, sending out a flash-code message of parley.
"You don't want to know how close that was!" Melanerra cried.
Tyfelian twisted the nut on the voice horn frantically.
"Gunners! Hold your fire!"
"They've got a spelljammer detector!" Alzja snarled. "They knew!"
"That's right," Jaclyn muttered. "And they'll be burning us down in a minute unless we attack," she continued, looking at Tyfelian with alarm.
Tyfelian knew, somehow, somewhere deep in his heart, that Jaclyn was wrong. The Dridercomp reached out to him, easing his mind, soothing him, and urging him to stay his attack.
"You never know," Kiran countered Jaclyn. As if on cue, Trula's voice rose from the horn.
"Tyfelian! They're answering my parley!"
Tyfelian eagerly picked up the horn.
"What do they say?"
"They... demand that we identify ourselves," Trula said slowly. "Their signal officer called us an unknown vessel—I think. The code they're using is mighty strange... some weird variation of the Elven Imperial code."
"That's not a usual drow reaction," Melanerra murmured.
Tyfelian shook his head; Kiran quietly bit his lip.
"What do you know?" Jaclyn asked the half-drow.
"We just might have found the renegades who made our artifacts... or the ones who left Elendraspace, anyway," Tyfelian explained. He spoke into the horn again.
"Tell them."
"Do what?" Trula replied incredulously.
"Tell them who we are. Quickly, Trula!"
Not quite believing that she was doing so, Trula put down the spyglass and worked the signal lantern. She flashed out the Elnamerrna's name and homeport to the dark elves.
Then she quickly grabbed her spyglass again and watched anxiously for a response.
"Who are you?" Tyfelian said very softly, looking at the image of the gypsy moth on the outeye. His right hand touched his belly, where the Dridercomp was concealed under his tunic.
"Are you the ones?" he murmured hopefully.
"If they are, it's no coincidence we're here," Alzja said to him. Her keen drow ears had caught the gist of his mumbling. "The artifacts saw to it that we came here."
"No question about that," Tyfelian agreed.
"Tyfelian?" Trula's voice resumed. "They want to know why we're here."
The half-drow bit his lip, then said, "Tell them we're lost, because of a mysterious event, and we're hoping to find help."
"The simple truth," he said to the bridge crew—all of them watched him with concern now.
"But not very believable—not to drow," Jaclyn noted. "You of all people know how paranoid they are."
Tyfelian gave her a curt nod, but raised a hand to stay further objections. He waited tensely for Trula's relay.
"Their commander requests that we follow them to their home base," Trula finally called.
"Ask them why, please," Tyfelian ordered.
A shorter wait, then Trula's voice came yet again.
"To talk, they say," the lookout reported. "But their commander offers to allay our fears by visiting us on route."
"Answer yes, Trula," Tyfelian told her, to the astonished gasps of his bridge crew.
"It's all right," the half-drow assured them, and deep within himself, he knew that it was.
"The moth is moving closer," Trula called, "but their weapon crews are standing down. I think they're friendly—ah..." the human woman interrupted herself.
The bridge crew tensed, even Tyfelian, but then Trula set them at ease.
"Their signal officer just sent another message," Trula noted. "It was, 'Elnamerrna, this is the patrol ship Reztyngra. Welcome to Listraeespace.'"
Listraeespace
Elnamerrna and Reztyngra, near the crystal shell wall
Greenmonth 12th, 2461
The single boarding plank thumped against the floor of the Elnamerrna's portside catapult bay and settled down there. The moment it made contact, the catapult crew on Tyfelian's end tied it down fast. The drow gunners on the other vessel did the same.
Tyfelian gave a wave to the gypsy moth's weapon crew and beckoned them. He swallowed his nervousness with difficulty, grateful that Kiran stood beside him. The paladin's aura felt soothing.
He just hoped that his visitors would feel the same way.
A female drow, dressed in a splendid, dark blue military uniform trimmed with orange and embroidered with gold thread in specific designs—most prominently, a flow maelstrom, which gave Tyfelian pause—stepped onto the plank and walked over with confident agility.
Tyfelian knew with only a glance that she was the captain. Her uniform decorations made it obvious, but Tyfelian didn't need to see them to know it. One born to command could recognize another such person right away.
Tyfelian gazed at her for a moment. By drow standards, she was very attractive despite the fact that she was probably, by human measurements of age, in her early forties—over four hundred years old in real time.
Another Reztyngra officer, considerably younger but still clearly the first officer, strode across the plank half a step beside the captain. Also female, her uniform appeared much the same as her leader's, but it had slightly less decoration. All of the uniforms, though, had the symbol in common of a whirlpool, or something very like a whirlpool.
"Flow maelstrom," Tyfelian thought again.
Behind them, five males accompanied the captain and first officer. Tyfelian nodded respectfully at all seven. Although it appeared that these drow—even if renegades—still had a female-dominated society, Tyfelian knew full well that it might not be so.
"They might practice equality of the sexes," he realized—something Tyfelian approved of, for sure—and if they did, he didn't want to offend anyone.
He noted that the drow leader's eyes widened with alarm as she came close enough to notice that he was a drow or half-drow. Tyfelian quickly offered a friendly smile—which was not entirely an act—and raised a hand to greet them to ease their obvious tension.
He felt doubly glad of Kiran's presence. All seven approaching drow reached for their weapons at the sight of him—until their captain stayed them, noticing Kiran, and the gunners in the weapon bay—all humans. Tyfelian had been careful to arrange that.
"Welcome to the starship Elnamerrna," Tyfelian hurriedly said to the drow captain. "Tyfelian of Embimura, commanding." He waved a hand at Kiran. "This is Kiran Talersus of Embimura, my first officer."
"Captain Sildara Kerrilsta of the Reztyngra," the drow captain replied. Her accent sounded extremely heavy, and not quite the same accent of a drow, including Elendran drow. She spoke the common trade language of the Inner Prime stiffly, formally—not her first language, most certainly.
"My first officer, Menlina Stortil," she finished. Tyfelian and Kiran exchanged pleasant nods with Menlina; Tyfelian took care to look interested in the conversation. Sildara introduced the five males, warrior-wizards by the looks of them, and then faced the half-drow directly.
"Please state your business in Listraeespace," Sildara told Tyfelian, "- the truth. Not what your lookout signaled to mine."
"But that was the truth," Tyfelian replied evenly.
"Are you from Elendraspace?" Sildara asked him bluntly.
Inwardly, Tyfelian groaned—not at her mention of the place, though it surprised him—but at the fact that his recognition of the name had shown on his face. His surprise had made him blink. No one could achieve a command and not be perceptive enough to see it, and Tyfelian felt that it could mean trouble.
"No, but I know where it is," Tyfelian shrugged, trying to downplay the topic. "We visited there about a year ago. Not a good place to go, though we found a handful of valuable things there."
Tyfelian hoped that Sildara's people still had the innate abilities common to many drow across the Prime Material Plane, and that she'd been using a detect lie spell on him. He had spoken the truth.
Sildara seemed appeased—perhaps by the fact that she knew, by way of a detect lie power, that he hadn't lied, or because she believed him by intuition—it didn't matter. Tyfelian relaxed, relieved.
"A pleasure to meet you," Tyfelian said sincerely. "Might I ask... is there a civilization in this crystal shell? Are there more of your ships and people here?"
"Yes," Sildara answered carefully, but volunteered nothing more.
"In Elendraspace, we learned of a renegade band who left there three hundred and fifty years ago or thereabout," Tyfelian explained. "Might your people be those, and their descendants, by any chance?"
Sildara's eyes widened so much that they seemed to swallow her pretty face.
"How in the name of the gods do you know about that?!!" she exclaimed.
Tyfelian raised a finger, indicating "one moment," then, to everyone's astonishment, he unfastened the clothing of his upper body, and pulled it open to reveal his armor.
Sildara examined it. The armor—the Dridercomp—was fashioned with craftsmanship fantastic even by drow or duergar standards, and emblazoned with all manner of magical runes, but for a moment, it seemed that it meant nothing specific to her.
"A suit of chain armor, duergar make, but -" she suddenly cut herself off with a gasp.
"By all the gods!" she cried softly. "The armor of Trizfastell!"
Tyfelian nodded.
"He was one of the founders of our civilization," Sildara breathed.
Tyfelian smiled. "I know. I met him... in a way. Before he died, he cast an illusion spell of himself to speak to people who got to his tomb."
Sildara looked at Tyfelian with astonishment.
"Did you take that armor, or did he let you have it of his own free will?"
"He allowed me to take it, and we also found five other artifacts once worn by his comrades."
"Are any of them still alive?!" Sildara asked him frantically.
"I'm afraid not," Tyfelian replied with regret, fastening his clothing once more. "The illusion of Trizfastell didn't say anything about how, but we found the bodies of all five..." He paused at the hard look on Sildara's face, unsure about telling her the full truth.
"They're in our cargo bay," he gambled. "We were going to take them back to our home for proper burial, but I think we should give them over to your care."
"By all means!" Sildara exclaimed. She extended her hand to Tyfelian and took his wrist in a warrior's clasp.
"I don't know what to say, truly," she told him, "but we will learn of each other."
Tyfelian nodded, squeezing her wrist. "We certainly need to compare notes."
Listraeespace
Elnamerrna
Greenmonth 12th, 2461—end of Evening Shift, beginning of Night Shift
"Hi, Autumn," Jaclyn smiled at the other human woman as they passed each other in the long hallway leading astern from the bridge area to the Elnamerrna's upper aft weapon bay.
Autumn smiled back, but didn't linger to chat with her friend. The catapult gunner slicked past Jaclyn in a hurry and proceeded to the aft weapon bay.
Autumn stepped up to the arched opening at the rear of the triop's hull. The rows of small catapults forming a jettison weapon dominated the area beyond. Though she could not see them, Autumn knew that four crewmen stood out there on guard duty, too.
Autumn shot a glance behind her to make sure no one could see, then quietly mouthed the words of a magic spell. She shifted slightly on her feet, and then levitated up to the ceiling.
Now, any member of the Elnamerrna crew—and some others acquainted with Autumn—would have wondered, had they seen her, just how she had done this. She wore chain mail armor and she was definitely human. No human could easily cast spells while wearing armor.
One who had known Autumn for very long would have also wondered when she had become a spellcaster. Autumn was a warrior.
The human woman reached the ceiling and started pulling herself along it at a slow pace. She entered the upper aft weapon bay less than fifteen feet from three of the guards, who sat or lay on the floor, playing some card game.
The fourth one stood near the jettison. He was the one actually attending the business of guarding. Autumn stood security post often enough herself, so she knew that they took turns, to alleviate the boredom.
This fourth guard stared out the opening of the weapon bay at the aft view. Spinning boulders and bitten-off asteroids tumbled into, then out of, the line of sight; the bay was open to space.
Autumn kept to the shadows of the ceiling, circling to the left, around the perimeter of the weapon bay. She dragged herself to the lip of the opening, chose her moment with care—the guard glanced away, spotting a colorful boulder that the Elnamerrna passed—and swiftly crawled out onto the triop's outer hull.
The human looked all about. She could not see the Reztyngra, as she'd hoped. The gypsy moth flew on the portside, and Autumn crouched on the Elnamerrna's "tail," far astern and on the starboard side.
Autumn had to try hard to avoid distraction, caused by the view afforded by standing on the ship's hull while it was in space and moving at starspeed. Awe-inspiring at any time, it was worse now, because of the endless boulders that seemed to stream by all around her. Those rocks spun by the sails on either side, overhead, and seemed to pass below the Elnamerrna as well. Adding insult to injury on Autumn's senses, the Silver Triop weaved in between them, ducking, rolling, changing course constantly while still headed in the same direction, following the Reztyngra's lead.
"So different from seeing it from inside the ship," she whispered to herself.
Swallowing her wonder, Autumn concentrated on the other difficulty she had with being spotted. She was not concerned about the helmsman seeing her—she had prepared for that. There was another problem.
Trula in the crow's nest.
The lookout had her own troubles, though. She kept watch ahead, not astern, calling down cues to the helm on upcoming boulders that the helmsman would have to avoid. Immersed in this, Trula did not see the very out-of-place movements and actions of the lady crewman behind and below her.
Autumn stood up on the hull and suppressed her levitation spell. Keeping her eyes off the rather spectacular view—she thought again how seeing it while standing outside seemed so unlike from looking out at it from within—she stepped around a large runic inscription on the hull, in the direction of the mainmast. Then she walked around a boarded-up but sizable crack in the hull—old battle damage not possible to repair in space—and hid behind the mainmast. She literally stood right in the gap between the mainmast and the sail itself, her legs straddling the rope tying it fast, hiding from Trula by way of being straight below the lookout.
Standing there, from beneath her cloak she pulled out a bizarre insect.
The little thing was ugly, but its legs and wings whirred softly, making a rather pleasant sound. It was a hummerfly, a creature used by those who could get them for long-range communication. The little bug could carry a short spoken message even to another crystal shell.
Autumn lifted it close to her face and whispered to it.
"Elendraspace, at the Glory of Lolth Shipyards."
She lifted the hummerfly high above her head and released it.
The little insect flew off at extreme speed and vanished into the debris-strewn darkness of Listraeespace.
Her task complete, Autumn crept back toward the lip of the weapon bay to retreat from the scene of her treachery. She glanced up at Trula to check the lookout. Seeing the human still deep in calling cues—though Autumn tensed once when she thought she saw Trula start to glance around backward—she skulked back to the lip of the upper stern weapon bay as the Silver Triop circled around a larger piece of debris, a flat asteroid a hundred miles long or more.
"Wish to the Abyss I could be invisible," she cursed, but she knew full well that such magic wouldn't work in the Elnamerrna's weapon bays. Tash had seen to that, long before, for security reasons. While Autumn had magic about her that had prevented the spelljamming helmsman from spotting her, invisibility and other stealth magic would fail the instant a person using it entered the bay.
Even her levitation spell felt like it might be weakening, so Autumn tried to hurry in getting back into the bay.
She peeked over the edge and checked the guard. He still stood there quietly, though his three buddies talked and swore at each other readily enough.
Autumn watched him until he looked the other way once more, then slipped past him slowly and silently as death. Below her, stacks of ammunition for the jettison—hard trash, useless paraphernalia, anything the right size and not too soft—witnessed her slink back to the arch leading into the ship. To Autumn's advantage, the inanimate objects could not cry out the warnings that the guards would have if they had noticed the sneaky woman above them.
Her levitation spell now definitely growing weaker, she pulled herself along the ceiling back the way she'd come as quickly as stealth would allow, then checked the hallway.
Finding it clear, she canceled her levitation spell and went on her way.
"Helm, big one dead ahead. Port five degrees, fifteen seconds."
Riding the crow's nest, calling cues down through the voice horn, Trula experienced an odd feeling.
The two ships had been flying above the ecliptic of Listraeespace, "above" the whirling rocks, for most of the journey. Now, however, they had to enter the debris fields once more, because their destination lay within them.
The shadow in the back of Trula's mind took time to press through—she was quite occupied by her task of keeping the ship from colliding with the countless rocks. Still, she felt something amiss, somewhere—likely right behind her, she thought.
She wanted to look behind herself, even started to do so—and in the process nearly missed a cue, nearly let the Elnamerrna plow forward straight into a flying sheet of rock the size of Lallakel Island back home.
"Helm, starboard twenty," she advised calmly, and the Elnamerrna cut right around the gigantic, flat crumb from the mouth of a gammaroid.
Her expression hardened as she tried to dismiss the strange uneasiness in her gut, but no matter what she did, the feeling remained. Finally, unable to bear it, she waited until the Elnamerrna and the Reztyngra emerged into a clear area—she thought that they likely neared their destination—and then she turned her head to scrutinize the view astern.
Her eyes seemed drawn to the upper hull for some reason—the area just astern of the mainmast, near a large hull breach, in particular—but there was no one there.
Puzzled, Trula stared hard at the area for a moment, then turned away from it, from her intuition of a bit of strangeness, and resumed her post.
