The Chase
Cabin boy Alford Curry stood on the deck of the Peregrine, right hand gripping a line. He looked out to starboard, where the running lights from one of the enemy ships could be clearly seen. They were not gaining on the Peregrine, but neither was his ship getting any advantage.
Alford wouldn’t be so worried if that had been their only problem, but right now all the crew knew the Peregrine was under pursuit of no less than three enemy ships. Alford had seen the second ship, off to port, several hours ago. When he had told First Mate Celano, the dark-skinned man had bent down his large frame and told him, “We know, Mr Curry. Captain Merlyn spotted them ten minutes ago.” Seeing Alford’s crestfallen look, Celano had added, “With her visor. You just spotted them without one. Good job, Mr Curry.”
In fact, Alford usually acted as a sort of unofficial look-out, on account of his excellent sight. And so it was that he was worried, because he could not find any other enemy ship.
“Mr Celano, sir?” he asked.
Celano was used to his questions by now. “Yes, Mr Curry?” Both of them continued scanning the Subspace Tapestry, while the First Mate also stole glances at the rigging, the sheets, and the crew.
“Where’s the third ship, sir?”
“That’s a good question, Mr Curry. We cannot be sure…”
Alford thought he knew what was coming.
“But…?” he asked.
“But we imagine she’ll be covering our most probable escape route. Over there, behind the star and to port.”
Alford looked to where Celano was pointing, but there was nothing to be seen. Too close to the starglare. Still, the way the First Mate had spoken, Alford knew there was something else.
“Which is the reason why we won’t use that route.”
“We won’t, sir?”
Now Celano actually looked at Alford, giving him that strange stare he often got from the large man. Alford felt uncomfortable, but stood silent. Celano seemed to make a decision. Reaching into his pocket, he produced his protective goggles.
“Wear this and look at the star, Mr Curry, and tell me what you see.”
Alford did as told and watched the star. The filter in the goggles’ glass protecting his eyes, he saw what Celano was referring to.
“The star… it’s strange. It’s too flattened for a star that size, I’d say. And… does it have a ring of some kind?”
Celano was nodding this time. “Indeed it has. That’s no ordinary star, Mr Curry. It has a very close companion orbiting it… it should be coming around any moment now.”
And there it was. Alford was treated to a spectacular show: a second, much smaller star appeared behind the primary, so distorted that it was no disk but a mass of plasma, huge tendrils of star matter leaking unto her companion’s surface. Alford shivered.
“Starwind powers our sails, Mr Curry. Just like back on Earth’s seas, a ship cannot sail against the starwind, straight up towards a sun. That’s why we’re close hauling. If this was an ordinary system, we’d try to slingshot round the sun and escape by breaking at any point in that manoeuvre. But not here. The interaction between those two stars will create a stargale. And Captain Curry will fly us right through it. The enemy won’t follow us in there.”
Alford felt a chill down his spine. Right then he heard Captain Merlyn’s terse voice speaking to Goldie Ivey, the helmswoman.
“Spiral us sunward, if you please. Always spinwise.”
“We’re going in,” Alford heard Celano say.
~~~~
My entry for the Weekly Writing Exercise: April 27-May 3, 2015 at the Writer’s Discussion Group in Google+. The challenge this week was this: This week’s challenge is an environmental one: the wind must feature prominently in your story. You can use it as a character, as an event, or as a form of conflict. It’s up to you!
I immediately got drawn to a story I wrote last year, with spaceships of the line using the Subspace Tapestry to travel interstellar distances, getting to close to a place called the Unskeining where The Fabric of Reality broke down. Inspiration for that story came from this picture:
The author is mapper extraordinaire Jonathan Roberts, who in turn was inspired to create it by a suggestion made by G+ user Bri Anderson on another of Roberts’ posts. I got inspired and wrote my story, where ships sailed using gravity wells instead of the wind. Here are Parts I and II.
Last week I took all those characters and placed them in a similar, yet different universe, where their ship sailed using what I called the Starwind, so the theme fit the challenge. Basically, I cheated.
I might end up writing something longer using these characters.
