Beneath their feet and everywhere around them, crewbeings felt the fabric of the vessel shudder with another  Dzendayn volley.  Upon the gundeck, the burnt, sundered bodies emitted an intolerable stench.  Like his youngest projector's helper, his first officer, and everyone else aboard, Omarov worried about his starship and the starwolf pursuing her.  That his worries differed in their particulars from those of the common crew was something he kept hidden, although he suspected Putin was aware of his thoughts.

As Zilvagabond's stern-chasers howled their futility below, the tips of Omarov's ring-laden fingers strayed for an instant over an odd weight and thickness hidden in the double lining of his cloak.  It wasn't often, he thought, peering about through blood-tanged smoke, that a man carried all his hopes and fears in one pocket.  Violating every advertised convention---a cynical usage in currency upon the capital planets nowadays---he had in recent weeks and at considerable expense, become the holder of letters of marque from the Premiers of both the Dzendayn Empery-Cirot and the Cosomopolity of Romanova, granting him the right to despoil vessels of that imperium-conglomerate over which (respectively) they did not have authority.

A trickle of sweat ran down his neck and into the elaborate collar of his blouse. Understandably, neither Premier (nor, more to the point, certain among their deputies with whom he'd done business) was informed in every detail of this double-ended arrangement.  To his regret, he had not yet found time or chance to exercise the privilege.  The Zilvagabond was too fragile a reed in which to go a'plundering, and he had, to his annoyance, become diverted to serve the purpose of one who had discovered his secret and found means of exploiting it before a better ship and crewbeings could be acquired.

Above the racket of thrust and counterthrust, he could hear the burble of someone, likely one among the wounded, sobbing.  It reflected his own mood.  If he were captured and the documents found on his person (having sacrificed so much to keep them, he could not, despite the edicts of prudence, bring himself to dispose of them), he would be punishable by each side as a brigand and traitor.  Unschooled as he may have been in any relevant precedent, he knew the characteristic of both polities.  Every diplomatic nicety would be exercised in his behalf to assure that he got a measure of retribution from each and that his death would be the last, least, and, in the end (to him), most welcome item come the time of reckoning.

In desperation, he had come below, into the savage, cloying death-stink of the gundeck (as he had never before ventured to do) and commanded Putin to gather all hands about him.  He had chosen them, in part, because the maindeck crew and those aloft were needed to buy the extra hours his plan required and must neither be distracted nor diminished in number.  Yet it was the presence, and the presumed understanding, of the giant 1st officer which, in the end, had decided him upon this course. Purposing to preserve their lives, that of the adventurer that bore them, and of course, his own ass, Captain Omarov announced something of a tactical innovation.  Their contribution, he informed the gundeck crew, would be a volunteer to carry it out.

"You want a volunteer, sir?" Omarov bent to hear better and came close to being knocked over by a sudden leap of the vessel.  The rhetorical question had been asked by the first officer, who reached out a hand to steady his superior.

"He's asking for a bloody pigeon!" Putin scowled through the thickening gloom.  Who had yelled that before the captain could reply?  He could not find the culprit. Zakh nursing a tactical innovation of his own, drifted as far towards the officers as the bounds of his station would allow, the better to see and hear.  He was far from alone in this. With the gundeck projectibles out of service, a circle was growing around Putin and the captain.  As a newly-fledged ship's boy, now a blooded projector's helper, it was unquestionable that he had, with the first officer's help, made of himself much more than the lowest crewbeing he'd started as.  But....

"You wish a pigeon to save a falcon?" Someone at the front was encouraged by the previous insubordination committed punishment-free.  Omarov, however, raised an arm.  A crack sounded as the purge-wavefront met unprotected flesh.  The speaker fell to the mesh.  A long silence followed.  Someone behind Zakh nudged him in the ribs. "No pigeon, then.  More likely a chick..."

The voice broke off as its owner, too, slumped to the deck, alive (to his regret, likely) and vomiting as he held out both hands over his genitals.  Zakh rubbed the back of his fist and went on thinking.  He had nothing to say about his own fate. Some among the crew (and elsewhere, in likely a majority of so-called sapient life) welcomed relief from responsibility for themselves or anything else. To a boy educated otherwise, it was the least tolerable feature of life aboard the Zilvagagond. He discovered now, without surprise, that he was willing to do anything to alter his circumstances.

Among the crew about the smoky, stench-filled gundeck, undiscouraged by the lesson in deportment just now given, considerable muttering arose over the captain's announcement, regarding----in brief sentences and briefer words---the inadvisability of volunteering for anything.  Possessing, as an oppressed class will, a nice judgment in such things, they deduced that the captain, in his hour of need, was (within limits just established) obliged to tolerate it.  Proving them right, he spoke again, more for their benefit than that of the man he ostensibly addressed.  "Da, Mr. Putin, a volunteer, and a handsomely rewarded one."  Omarov turned, looking as many crewbeings in the eye as he could. "He will, if a pressed man, provided he succeeds in this here undertaking, find his liberty restored to him, along with a document, issued under my authority as reserve officer of the imperium-conglomerate, granting him perpetual immunity from future conscription."

"Until next time!" Pressing the limits, someone had shouted from across the gundeck.  Putin scowled in that direction as the captain plowed on, to all appearances unperturbed.  "He may remain on board as a free crewbeing, perhaps training as an officer, or be delivered dirtside at our next destination."

Muttering about the two continued unabated. "Prong everything as moves, swab everything as don't, and never volunteer!"

Omaravo cleared his throat.  "In either event, there'll be other rewards.  My personal profit from this voyage, upon the order of two hundred thousand kredities.  A not inconsiderable sum, I'm sure you'll agree.  Also...."

A delicate buzz replaced the muttering, rising so rapidly that it became tough to think, let alone to hear or to be heard. "I still say never volunteer!"

"Shut up, you barrel-scrapings!"  The first officer, although he most likely agreed with the suggestion, sounded outraged.  "By the Galactic Core, I'll stripe the next man who speaks out of turn!"  Silence fell like a meteorite.  It was odd for Putin to threaten in so grim and serious a manner. When punishment was warranted, he struck without preamble.  Now, he cleared his own throat.  "You were saying, sir?"

"Thank you, Mr. Putin.  I was about to say, should our volunteer be male---female, for that matter; in the end what difference does it make?----and of appreciative inclination, I offer additional inducement, a rather old-fashioned one, the person of my beloved daughter."  Reaching to his collar, Omarov extracted from within the many overlapping frills a finely-wrought chain he wore around his neck, upon which depended a small, deep-graven, and bejeweled cylinder of less than a line's diameter and eight or nine lines long.  Turning the free end upward, he made manipulations with his fingers and an image sprang into the air above it, the miniature moving figure of a beautiful girl.  Zakh stumbled forward.

It was an unpretentious resemblance.  She stood upon a polished inlaid floor, a shaft of yellow sunlight falling on her hair and shoulders from a pair of tall windows behind her.  It was possible, he thought, that she had not known her image was being taken. Into one small hand she held a fold of her voluminous velvet skirt.  Her other---her eyes were half-closed, lips half parted---made gentle motions to the beat of unheard music.  A floor-to-ceiling mirror set between the windows conveyed another view of her as she turned, with an unhurried, flowing motion, upon her little feet, rising to her toes and down again, coming round at last to face the unseen eye before her image began fading, only to repeat itself.

The device in the captain's hand, Zakh realized, was a rare, expensive autofile, something he had heard of and never seen, a self-playing recorder requiring no reader to release stored information.  The image dancing before his face gave him pause.  At first glance he had believed it---although he did not know how it could be so---that of his tutor.  The girl shared something of Mistress Maria's coloring.  Her hair, arranged after what he knew to be the current Romanovan fashion, was the same brown-auburn.  To the extent he could tell, from the miniscule full-length portrait, she was even freckled in a similar manner.

Upon closer examination, there were differences.  She was younger, somewhat more delicate of face and form.  Even this vignette conveyed a repose that touched the boy in places, buried within him, which, for the sake of survival, he had forgotten existed.  A portion of his mind which, from habit longer than his servitude aboard the Zilvagabond, stood apart, offering wry commentary, wondered how such a creature could be daughter to the vile Captain Omarov.  A portion of his heart which, despite everything, had never grown cynical, told him he had found the woman he might love for all his life.  Something else, something he had seldom heard from before, stirred below his navel, sizzled through his blood, and gave his body an odd, strained feeling.

"Here, son," grinned the captain, "keep it if you wish."  He removed the autofile and its chain from his own neck and placed it about Zakh's.

"And what a small task, sir..." It was one of the projectors who asked, a tall, clean, personable and man with an educated accent, darthelm tucked beneath his arm.  "...might someone do to acquire all of this largesse?"

"Ah," replied the captain, "Mister...."

"Borodin," Putin replied, "first projectible operator."

"Mr. Borodin, the answer lies within this chest."  For the first time, Omarov acknowledged the coffer he had caused two strong men to bring from his cabin.  It sat upon the mesh, not exactly producing a depression, its bearers standing guard beside it.  Whatever tragedies and losses had befallen a child innocent and cheerful by inheritance, Zakh's intellectual capacity was undiminished.  Without being told, he knew what was inside the chest, for he had learned the lesson of the tokarev well and had been determined to apply it again if given a chance.  Such a weapon as the captain now offered him, or anyone who volunteered, would be useless against a starship's protective purge-corona.  But when the fields merged---if (for example) the Zilvagabond hove to, pretending to surrender---such a device, unleashing its fury inside the Dzhendayn's purge-field would, at the very least, kill every member of her crew and leave the vessel derelict.  Never expecting half of what had been promised, and against the urging of his comrades, Zakh stepped forth.

The fact was that Omarov's tactic had, until this moment, depended more upon what he could induce a volunteer to do than feasibility.  The Supreme Merchant was delighted to discover this ship's boy (in increasing optimism, he failed to catch the lad's surname, but he looked familiar) had conceived the all-vital final details.  He would, as Omarov suggested, don one of the adventurer's six worksuits, a seldom-employed alternative to boats which attended to repairs that could be carried out traversing the Deep.  He had refused, in the beginning, to strap onto his arm a quickblade Putin offered, insisting he was not familiar enough with its operation to make good use of it, nor, he avowed, justify the loss to its owner.  Putin pressed until the boy conceded that one or more among the Dzehndayn's crew might be fast-witted enough to ruin the plan, or spoil his escape.

Whatever the case, the boy would venture overboard in a manner contrived between him and the first officer and---this was the boy's part of the plan---drift at the end of a cable past the pursuing vessel.  The captain's contribution was that half-legendary weapon of last resort, which caused a purge-field to shrink about a core of heavy metal, becoming a small (and in ship-to-ship combat, he hoped unexpected) atomic explosive.  Zilvagabond would be prepared to make her escape, separating fields from the Dzehndayn prior to the explosion.  The adventurer's quickblades would, if need be, finish the rest of the gruesome job.  Afterward, the boy would be picked up by lubberlift.

An hour's preparation passed like seconds.  Alone save for the metal-bound chest, set with excessive caution a measure away, Zakh rode the mastlift, where he had first seen Putin holding forth, aloft in the yardtiers.  the worst (he recognized the thought as irrelevant if not irrational) was not knowing what to do with his hands.  The ride into the foreyards was long enough; circumstances made it seem longer.  For the endless while it lasted, he attempted, without success, to affect casual demeanor, leaning, despite its inconvenient height, against the encircling rail.  His arms----folded across his chest, hanging with fingers interlaced before him, bracing him from either side with hands spread upon the railtop---would not assume a natural position.  He felt the autofile upon its chain where the suit pressed and wished he had kept it out to look at, or never accepted it to start with.  The awkward armor was filled without someone else's sweaty odor.  Donning and adjusting it had offered something useful-appearing to do, but there were limits to how long that lasted. Now the lift carried him past each of the yards and stays, the curious eye of every topman inspecting him, wondering at his courage or his sanity.  It was not a feeling he cared for.

He reached the limit of the lift's travel and must debark onto the yard.  Little as he had enjoyed the ride, he looked forward to a climb aloft less, encumbered by a suit he was unused to, carrying the chest's contents.  Fortunately, owing to the plan he, Putin, and Omarov had devised, he did not have far to climb.  The rest of his journey was not, as it might have been, horizontal, half a verst outboard along the dorsal foreyard to stunsail booms extended in a desperate, futile attempt to provide Zilvagabond with more legs than her pursuer.  Swaying as they were in the currents of the Deep, swinging with her evasive maneuvers, jumping with each thrust, he would not have relished venturing onto them, despite what he was about to do instead.

He required use of bits and cables at the inboard end of the foreyard, and leverage obtained from the distance between the point he now occupied and the outboard end of the dorsal mainyards far below.  A staysail cable, stretching down and outward, was stripped of its expanse of sailmesh.  The topmen who had helped him rig it and carry the chest this far retreated, possessing exaggerated notions of his weapon's deadliness at rest.

Zakh detached four spring-loaded hasps---through his helmet he heard alarms ping at the intrusion---and opened the chest.  A louder alarm within his helmet told him he was bathed in low-level radiation.  Inside, as he had been told he would, he found, nested in rich quilting, another coffer, cubical in shape, 30 lines upon a side.  No provision existed for opening this one; when time arrived, it would open itself.  Judging from the condition of the liner, it had rested without attention some years longer, maybe decades, than he had lived.  He wondered whether it still worked.  Stuffed beside it, a set of coveralls had been cut and sewn across the waist.  He lifted the device, sealed it within this makeshift bag, and tied the arms about his neck so that it hung before his chest.  Cords stitched in by whichever Mrs. Putin had done the work allowed him to attach it about his waist.

Seizing a turnbuckle, he unfastened the cable and held it in his hands, feeling the impatient tug of its weight.  He awaited a luff of starsail about him which would signal Putin's part in the undertaking.  Zilvagabond would stop accelerating, allowing the corsair to overtake her.  Before her master could help it (likely he would welcome it), the purge-fields of both ships would merge.  Before boarding parties might launch themselves across the bridge they had been provided, Zakh would act.

He felt a mighty shudder through the mast which all but cost him footing and knew it for what it was, the vessel's protest at being taken aback.  Not waiting to observe the starsails, he reached into his makeshift pack, flipped a cover, tipped a toggle beneath it, firmed his hold upon the turnbuckle, and leapt.  For a timeless moment nothing happened, as if he were suspended above the foreyard and would stay there forever.  Then, stomach complaining of being left behind, he descended in a swoop.  The weight of cable and his burden carried him aft at a sickening rate.  Starsails and spars streaked by in an undistinguished blur, punctuated by a staring eye or gaping mouth.  Maintier, mizzentier, and deck rocketed towards him.  The cable carried him outward----he was reminded of the path Rodya had followed, which had given him this idea---until, at a point he failed to notice, he crossed the line, no longer lethal, which marked the margin of the Zilvagabond​​​​​​​'s field.  Inertially, she was one with the enemy starwolf, among whose mainyards he now found himself.

Likewise, among her defenders.  Unlike those of the Zilvagabond​​​​​​​, these crewbeings---literal usage being necessary, given the inhuman horrors swarming her decks and yards---were trusted with personal weapons.  Having achieved (as they thought) the purge-field coalescence they wished, they were occupied with preparations for boarding.  Had more of them observed Zakh alighting halfway along the corsair's mainyard, he would have died instantly, battered to jelly within his suit by a hundred quickblades.

Something desperate in the boy's temperament worked now to his advantage.  His footing, as he ran along the yard towards the mast, was confident.  Nor did he miss a step when a being which seemed to consist of little more than sinuous arms rose before him wielding an oddly shaped quickblade.  Zakh lay his own designator upon its center of mass and thumbed its life away. It splayed its limbs and died without falling, draped over the yard like laundry, so that he was obliged to step over its steaming bulk and continue inboard.  His second killing was even easier.  A glint upon a nearby staycable, caught by the corner of his eye, led him to aim and thrust without thought.  The starsailor, human, screamed through the whole long fall to the deck.  

By then it was too late for anyone who noticed to stop the intruder.  He had armed the device lest he should die before planting it.  Removing it from its sack, he held it against the mast, leaning with his full weight, and pushed a button.  A tingling jolt like that produced in the hand by striking an anvil with a hammer told him it could no more be torn away now than it might be taken and tossed overboard by mutineers.  As he turned to escape, a limbless entity slithered down a cable before him, attempting to bring a quickblade to bear.  Both of their first blades missed, as well as their second, the range being closer than that at which blading is habitually practiced.  "Nose to nose" would have described it, had the crewthing possessed such an organ.  Zakh aimed with his third thrust at the cable supporting it.  This parted, carrying the climber to its death upon the mesh.

It had no sooner hit than he was forced to duck as a bolt dashed against the mast.  Many thrusts were being aimed at him, although he was hidden by folds of starsail which, like those of the Zilvagabond, were deprived or rigidity.  He seized a turnbuckle identical to that he had begun with, wrenched it free, and swung outboard.  The carrack had squared herself away, refilled her starsails, and departed from under the Dzendayn's lee.  As agreed, he aimed himself at that portion of the double purge-field which, as the vessels parted, grew more attenuated, trusting a suit constructed for such activity to protect him as he crossed the diluted margin.  It had been Putin's opinion that nothing could preserve his life if he crossed a full-strength boundary.

As he drifted further from his victim, the bomb exploded, contained, ironically, by her purge-field, bathing all aboard in lethal radiation, and, as certain mechanisms were destroyed, exposing survivors to the Deep where they would die by suffocation, freezing, or decompression.  The corsair herself remained in one piece, thanks to field which, even as they failed, permeated her substance.  He had succeeded.  All that was left, before he claimed his reward, was to await the lubberlift, swinging at the end of its long tether.162Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7VDf1KHx6y
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Someone shouted, "She blows!" Omarov required no darthelmed lookout to tell him his enemy was dead.  He was wearing such a helmet, himself.162Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ62Sc7leN0x
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"Mr. Putin, my compliments to all for a valiant fight.  The gundeck may stand down."  He had by this time recognized the child who had saved his ship, his cargo, and his life, from a file once shown him, as the fugitive son of a disgraced Oligarch-Hereditary against whom, at Aidos Zaytseva's blackmailing insistence, he had offered perjurious testimony upon a moonringed world.8964 copyright protection158ＰＥＮＡＮＡZa9cexWm28 維尼

"Thankee, sir. Projectors, square away your weapons!  Helpers, form squads for repairs!  Idlers to another deck!  Deploy the lubberlift---time to look for our brave lad out there!"8964 copyright protection158ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0V3YGNbJzf 維尼

Omarov chuckled.  Always the conscientious Putin.  What would he do, what would everyone else aboard do, without him?  He removed the darthelm and looked around.  Putin, the captain realized, would have to be handled with care.  He was at heart a peasant, more like the crewbeings than the elite commanding them, while he---the captain---had never intended keeping any promise, whoever volunteered.   It would not do to let any among them think to elevate themselves by a foolhardy act.  Better they believe, as most already did, that no officer's word was to be trust.  He needed that two hundred thousand himself.  And, to his knowledge, he had never had a daughter.8964 copyright protection158ＰＥＮＡＮＡjp6iz5bApg 維尼

"Mr. Putin, belay that last.  Do not deploy the lubberlift." To settle past accounts and impose new debt upon Zaytseva which might someday prove profitable, he would leave the boy to the same death as whoever among the starwolf's crew had survived the blast.  "Get us under way," he ordered, "with all deliberate speed."8964 copyright protection158ＰＥＮＡＮＡLm8GzFgreG 維尼