"Steady now!"

Braced with a motley 12 crewbeings on the narrow platform at the maintier crotch, Yvan Dragomilov awaited the collision.  Scopa's projectibles had already spoken to good effect, delivering themselves of a full, rotating broadside before the corsair swung onto a course opposing that of her pursuers and could, before the coming impact, use only her bow chasers.

The captain had made an everyday habit of carrying a 2nd quickblade.  He chose now for his boarding party only crewbeings adept at fighting with two weapons (while entertaining certain doubts about his own skills on this score).  He had decided on the maintier as their jumpoff, having evacuated all riggers and topmen from the mast and yards further forward, calculating that little of the structure above was likely to survive the catastrophe.  In truth, he would be lucky not to drive the mast through the Scopa's hull, splitting her like a guinea fowl about to be roasted.

For once he was unaccompanied by one of the sleemov who normally took turns as his advisor, liaison with the other flatzniks through the medium of the virus with which they were infected, and something of an extra shadow in Putin's stated opinion.   The creatures were, by virtue of their odd anatomies, unaccustomed to the rigors of combat.  The young captain felt it a shame that his first officer (and wives) were ill-disposed towards the aliens.   This was one reason for keeping that stalwart ignorant regarding his overall strategy.  Nor were any of his comrades of the moment strozad, the rollballs' mass considered too much to survive the initial stages of his plan.

3 of the attacking vessels, whoever they'd been, were well out of the fight, the struggle between Scopa ​​​​​​​and what he presumed was the darkvenger Obrazets having swept beyond them.  By the time they returned, as they surely would, the issue would be settled.  Had it not been for the neutrino storm still raging all around them in undiminished strength, he would have put auxiliaries off to seize those vessels as prizes.  He would still do so if given a chance if only to pay the bill for this fight and make up to his crew for chances they would lose should this endeavor prove successful and they continued to moonringed Genrich.

Yvan Dragomilov peered aloft, shading his eyes against the storm-glare.  Even with all starsail taken in it was tough to see forward.  Before he was quite aware of the distortion it made, the purge-fields of both vessels coalesced and the yards and rigging of each began to tear themselves apart on those of the other.  The racket was not bearable.  Both masts groaned, sending an awful shudder into the hulls of their respective ships, crumpling like foil tubes into their own lengths as foreyards and mainyard ripped loose or were smashed from their crotches like the branches of saplings.  Standing and running cabelles, loaded far beyond their capacities, tightened with a dissonant thrum into rigid bars, stretched with heartrending screams and let go, free ends lashing about the mast like deadly whips, trailing sparks where they struck the purge-margin.

Somehow the young starwolf and his boarding party survived, clinging to the shivering mast, waiting until both vessels ground themselves to a mutually destructive halt.  Fragments of rigging and other objects, including several bodies, plummeted past them, whistling in funereal warning as the darkvenger----being larger and carrying more starsail on her mizzenyards than the Scopa's officers had thought well advised in the teeth of the storm----pushed the double tangle of wreckage along, reversing the influence of acceleration aboard the desperado.  Following his own advice, Putin had ordered the maindeck crew to tie themselves to every cleat and bollard they could find.

Taking a ragged breath, Yvan Dragomilov arose and, without further preparation, flung himself from the platform, spread weapon-heavy arms, and free-fell three hundred measures towards the darkvenger's triangular portside mizzensail, tucking himself into a ball at the last moment to land on his back, hoping the expanse of sailmesh would hold him lest he penetrated and incinerated himself on the afterportion of the purge-field.

The mizzensail held.  Having finished half a dozen diminishing rebounds, and without waiting for his companions, but desiring to get out of their way as they, too, alighted, he scrambled awkwardly toward the crotch of the maintier and down the shrouds to the maindeck.  He and his fellows were confronted there, as expected, by a well-armed repelling party.  At their head was Turr Omarov.

The former capitalissar of the Zilvagabond raised an arm in a salute of death, protecting his torso with the secondary field about the axis of his quickblade.  Even without the eyelid stitched over his grotesque empty socket and the accompanying scar along one dark cheek, Omarov's nasal, rasp-edged voice would have been all too familiar.  "We meet again, Master Sorokin.  Rather sooner than you expected, I would imagine!"

The ring upon his one pierced ear glittered in the stormlight.  Here was an individual who experienced no difficulty making himself heard above the neutrinos' wail.  Disdaining his enemy's salute, Yvan Dragomilov put a hand into his coverall pocket, grinning at the man with long, gray, stiff-braided hair in dozens of polished metal stops.

"Capitalissar Omarov!  More appropriate than I might have dreamed! Day's ago, I paid a visit to this vessel's captain during which, never being one to discard anything useful, I took pains to hide aboard her the explosive you attempted to use against the Ayvengo."

He removed the hand and held up a small squarish object.  "As you recall, this is your remote, now rigged in such a manner that, should I release it, these ships and everyone else aboard will be blown into incadescence.  Give it up. Take off your weapons and advise Yozhov-Zykin to surrender!"

"I have no need of such advice, comrade!" A tall, deep-voiced man with only a pair of metal-studded braids to boast of, hanging past a heavy jeweled choker down his naked chest, had just arrived from the quarterdeck and now stood, with a degree of obvious reluctance, beside Omarov.  "I agreed to help," he told the man, "after we pulled you from the Deep, because this young fellow refused to join our Council, declaring himself desperado among desperados.  I think better of it now.  What is the universe coming to?  He can destroy my starship with that little thing?"

The merchant shook his head.  "What it controls.   But not before I've settled with him personally!"  He cast off his deck-length cloak with its furred collar and edging.  A look of horror and denial crept across the frigate captain's features.  

"Madness!  Better to lose a battle, even a ship, than all our lives!  I shall of course surrender, Captain Dragomilov. What are your terms, sir?"

Yvan Dragomilov grinned again and turned to climb back up to his own vessel.  "The best I can afford to give, sir, I assure you. And that, my former captain," he offered to Omarov, turning to face him a moment, "settles that!"

Omarov sprang forward in pursuit.  "No you don't!"

"No, Captain...." Yozhov Sorokin attempted to interpose himself.  

"Stand aside," cried the merchant, passing at him.   At Yvan Dragomilov he shouted, "Wait!  You will not take leave of this ship while I live!"

The young captain hurled himself back to the darkvenger's maindeck.  "Then I shall take it when you are dead!"

Omarov ripped at the jeweled studs of his billowing, throat-ruffled blouse until he wore only quickblades, loose-fitting trousers, and knee-high, exotic-leathered boots.  His breathing was already furious, from anger rather than exertion.  The two rushed together, ready to kill or be killed, but again Yozhov-Sorokin was between them, pleading.  "There is no shame in surrender, Captain!  The issue has been honorably settled!"

His companion sneered, "Not for me, it hasn't!"

"But what is one child, more or less?  Don't be a fool, Captain!"

Again Omarov pushed him aside.  "It is my affair!"

The Genrichian boy had stood by, watching and listening.  He was, however, ready when Omarov charged, quickblade leveled at his chest.

Flash!  With a casual sweep, Yvan Dragomilov parried the merchant's enraged and desperate thrust, dodging down and to the left, the deadman's switch in his left hand preventing him from using that quickblade.  It was obvious that Omarov had forgotten his own second weapon as he slashed downward, attempting to follow his elusive quarry's motion, but...

Flash!  Omarov's second thrust was short, trailing sparks across the smoking deckmesh, missing its intended target by a measure.  The two combatants disengaged, guards dropped for a moment, both breathing heavily.

"Twice," the boy asserted, "your life was given back to you.  This time you should be hauled to Genrich.  It is what I intended in the end.  But since you prefer it this way, slutspawn, then I won't disappoint you!"

Again they found themselves en garde, engaged in what both knew was a struggle for life or death.  Blade flashed upon kinergic blade, rocking the deck with explosions, as each thrust was hurled and answered by opposing thrust, once, twice, five times, ten times.  Yvan Dragomilov broke off and leaped forward, colliding with Omarov, pressing his glowing axis to the man's sweat-trickled throat.  Omarov somehow insinuated an arm beneath it, also slippery with sweat, levered the boy backward, and parried a blade hurled at him. Before they could disengage, Omarov slashed out, Yvan Dragomilov countering while edging around and sideways.  Neither having intended it, they had exchanged positions.  Omarov's back was to the mast.

His adversary slashed and ducked.  The merchant chopped an answer, Yvan Dragomilov thrusting the same instant. Yvan Dragomilov lunged, attempting (foolishly) to grapple with the bigger man again.  Spine pressed against the mast, Omarov ducked.  He and the boy were, for a moment, locked together, shoulder to shoulder. Both took a breath and the Zilvagabond's former capitalissar ducked from under, reversed, and laughed aloud, crewbeings of both vessels muttering excitedly without regard to whose side was whose.  A ball of fire exploded aloft, the storm, as if jealous, reasserting itself.

With a shout, Yvan Dragomilov leapt forward.  Again the fighters, clumsy with fatigue, chopped at one another, both nearing exhaustion, every thought of marital artistry and warrior's finesse long gone.  With nothing more than sheer ferocity, Yvan Dragomilov drove Omarov backward down the meshing to the break of the quarterdeck.  Omarov suffered a fall, again reversing the field as he rolled to his feet.  Wary, they circled each other, exchanging positions once again.

The older man backed up and paused.  Feeling an obstruction behind him, he put a foot on a hatch cover and in an instant was looking down at his opponent from the height of half a measure.  Breathing hard and streaming perspiration, he continued to retreat across the hatch as the shouting all about him increased in pitch and volume.

Sweat running into his own eyes, Yvan Dragomilov leapt onto the hatch and, almost by reflex, exchanged a short salute with the man, flash following flash like an exercise in the formal salon of death-dealing which neither had ever attended.  They exchanged the salute again, both transformed and somehow beautiful in motion, a long rhythmic series this time, until, having retreated too far, Omarov fell backward off the hatch, landing on a coiled cabelle.

Not pressing his advantage, a breathless, panting Yvan Dragomilov gestured. "Up!"  Half-blind with fatigued faces wet as if they had been swimming, they grinned, almost one comrade to another.  Omarov rose, line by line.

The boy leaped from the hatch, parrying blade after blade, flash after brilliant flash, driving the man backward until the axes of their quickblades jammed on each other, throwing sparks which singed their clothing and, though neither noticed, burned their skin.  They crashed, face to face, eyes locked, the adventurer capitalissar's broken, two-baubled nose no more than a line from Yvan Dragomilov's.  The grin was one of strain now, brute exertion against brute exertion.   With greater strength than any bigger adversary might expect, Yvan Dragomilov pushed Omarov backward by gradual degrees forcing the man to retreat to fighting distance, blade, and blade again.

Another series of blinding multiple flashes filled the air between them.  Omarov now decidedly upon the defensive, Yvan Dragomilov fell this time, struggling to retain his sweaty grasp on the slippery remote in his left hand.  Unlike his opponent, the master-merchant leaned in hard to make the best advantage of it, but Yvan Dragomilov raised his weapon to meet the merchant's.  Their gleaming axes collided once again, showering both with brilliant, painful motes of energy, echoing in miniature the fury of the storm still raging around them, almost forgotten, as they fought.  An infinitesimal pause.  The look that passed between them was one of recognition and of parting, as if each, being at the end of his capacity and resigned to oblivion, realized that only one would walk away from this and live again.  The moment ended.  Again they hacked away at each other.

Omarov's arm shot forward as if he could augment his quickblade's energy with muscle power.  He was answered with an upraised axis.  Their weapons clashed a final time.  Still flat on his back, Yvan Dragomilov forced Omarov to retreat and arose by sheer strength and determination, launching an immediate attack of his own, a single, slashing thrust.  Its object parried, countering with a blur of weary overhand flailing.  Yvan Dragomilov, also long since exhausted, parried and flailed himself, wide of the mark, as Omarov backed away another step.

This time, as Omarov attacked, Yvan Dragomilov ducked inside his guard, crouching to the deck.  He rose and let Omarov's momentum take him past, turned, and jabbed him in the back with his quickblade, delivering the weapon full power into the man's kidney.   The breathless victor backed away three steps.  Omarov fell to the deck, his eyes already glazing, his wide, cruel mouth silenced forevermore.

"And that, my comrade, ends a policy of repeated mercies which should never have begun!" Aware, suddenly, that he still held the remote in his left hand, he overrode the setting and tossed it into the purge-field.  It struck with a flash and crackled and disappeared.  Speaking to Yozhov-Sorokin, he pointed a weapon-heavy hand towards the object that had once been Turr Omarov.  "Get that thing out of my sight!"