Omega point

CHAPTER 17

Bear roared and gutted a pirate with a vicious uppercut. His other paw cleaved another into strips. Richards dodged back and forth between a trio of snarling buccaneers, jabbing unconvincingly at them with his sword.

Knives passed into Bear's side and long-barrelled jezzails went off in the aft-castle, their balls bringing forth puffs of stuffing. Bear was unperturbed. He picked up one of the pirates menacing Richards and threw him over the side. Cowed by the toy's apparent invulnerability, the pirates fell back towards the stern of the ship.

"Stop! Stop, I say. Let us parley! Cease fighting! Avaunt, arraunt! Desist!"

Bear kept up his guard but stopped swiping. The pirates backed down. Richards stood at Bear's back, sword at the ready.

There was a motion in the crowd of pirates, and a familiar face came to the fore.

"Percival Del Piccolo, poet swordsman of wit, cavalier, debonair liberator of ladies' virtues, pirate king and all round irritant to tyrants…"

Bear groaned. "You! Can it, clown, we've heard this before!"

Piccolo did not heed him. "…evil Maharajahs and Grand Viziers with ideas above their station, makes common cause with no man! I, sirs, am a free spirit, a sky captain. No man is my friend unless he has proved himself to me." He glowered, and Richards gripped his sword tighter, but then his frown cracked into a wide grin and a wink. "And you have more than done that, a toy like a bear and an idiot fool! My dear friends! Welcome aboard the Kurvy Kylie II." He sprang lightly onto the ship's rails and hung from a rope by one hand. "Men, put up your pistols! Sheathe your swords! These are true friends." He doffed his silly hat at them and bowed his head. "I am at your service. I owe you a boon, for is it not said that once a man saves another man's life, that life belongs to the saviour? Ask of me anything!"

"I," said Richards, "am looking for Lord Hog."

"Ohohohoho!" said Piccolo, jumping down onto the deck. "Maybe apart from that! No one goes looking for Lord Hog; one prays that he does not come looking for you. He is the death of hope! No cutlass or ball can kill such a thing. You speak madness. Come, sail with me to adventure and riches instead, so we may live out the last days of the Earth as princes among men!"

"I mean it," said Richards. "If I can find him, I can stop all of this. The Terror, Penumbra, all of it."

Piccolo frowned for a moment. "No! Really?"

"Yep," said Bear. "Me and sunshine here, we're on a mission."

A wide smile broke across Piccolo's face. He clapped his hands together slowly, threw back his head and laughed outrageously. "Oh, marry!" he bellowed. He clapped Richards on the shoulder. "Very well! Very well! Men!" he called. "Men, prepare for the adventure to end all adventures!" He leapt again onto the railing, and waved his hat around in the air. "We sail to save the world or die in the attempt!"

"Aye, cap'n!" the pirates called and all of a sudden there was a hustle and a bustle. Lines were tightened, decks were swabbed of blood. A burly black man went to the aft-castle and grasped the ship's wheel. Lines from this passed through a series of pulleys to halters about the air-whales' heads. Pirates took long gaffs and prodded them. They whistled. "Where to, Cap'n?" called the helmsman though a cupped hand.

"Indeed, where to, Mr Richards?"

"Just Richards," said Richards. "Is there an end to the pylon line?"

"There is," said Piccolo, "though it is a dangerous voyage."

"There, then."

"Very well! To the northwest," called Piccolo. "We go north first, to the Great Western Ocean, then on to the city of Secret. Or all is lost?" said Piccolo with a smile with a toothpaste twinkle. "I like it. I like it a lot! A perilous part of the world, full of adventure! Northwest, Mr Mbotu! Northwest!"

"Aye, aye, Cap'n." Bosun Mbotu spun the wheel.

The sky-whales sang and paddled at the air. Majestically, the Kurvy Kylie II tracked round.

Richards watched the crew at work. He marvelled at the amount of cliche whoever had constructed this world had managed to cram in. Its creator might have been an ace hacker, but he wouldn't win any creative awards. "All we need now to finish this off is a little song," he said to Bear.

He was not long disappointed.

Piccolo paced his metal skyship, checking lines and pulling levers, laughing with his men, and directing their efforts as they lustily sang cereal commercial jingles with improvised piratical lyrics.

Piccolo joined Bear and Richards and, taking the AI by the elbow, guided him aft. "You left me, as I recall, and the Great Terror struck once more," said Piccolo. "I escaped, and made my way to La Beau Porte Du Chance on the edge of the Specific Ocean. I remember. It was there that I availed myself of this ship and crew, winning it through a game of chance and, I must say, my own great cunning."

"I bet that means he cheated," said Bear from the corner of his mouth.

"And, well," said Richards, rubbing his hands together, "what about the, er, pirates?" He nodded meaningfully at stains on the decking left by their melee.

"Oh, don't worry about that," said Piccolo. "You know pirates. They will merely be happy that they will take a larger share of any spoils."

"I don't think there's going to be much gold where we're going," said Bear. "Only pain and death."

"And so," said Piccolo, "they will share in those as gladly."

The air-whales flew over oasis-studded deserts and lands awash with marigolds, over a rainforest edged abruptly by an endless theme park gone wild, rollercoasters ending in nowhere, surrounded by ragwort and rubble. An entire kingdom made of plastic bricks passed under them. Cities on rivers like serpentine seas slid below, sweeping savannahs crowded with cartoon beasts, swamps of candyfloss trees haunted by dreadful things. They ascended mountains so high that the whales had to be wrapped in blankets. Icicles hung from the rigging and Richards' breath came short. The mountains periodically dipped into green valleys and the Kylie followed the slopes down, offering some respite from the chill until the peaks reared up to once more force frost upon the crew.

They passed the mountains and came to a wide plain studded with cities in the shapes of great pearls. Some of these burned, sending choking columns of smoke and cinders so high in the air that they buffeted the ship.

"Ah," said Piccolo. "There is Temperance, Levity and Just So ablaze. Things go ill with the world if the cities of the Wise can thus be fired."

The green of the plains turned to the black of old fire. Armies trod them, their distant passage marked by columns of dust. They passed over a horde of monsters swarming round iron war machines. It appeared Pylon City had been captured, and had done much to fuel the war effort of the Shadow Lord, as the sun struck a glittering display from a legion of freshly minted haemites. These armies noticed the passage of the Kurvy Kylie II, and sent opportunistic cannonades after them. But the ship flew too high, and the shots rained back down upon the armies below. Richards fancied he could hear their howls of indignation, but he could not know for sure. They were ants below the keel.

Once a band of harpies, voluptuous and foul, came winging their way from cages atop one war-tower. They shrieked and rattled their brass claws before diving down upon the skywhales. Piccolo ordered the cannons loaded with grapeshot, but the whales were far from defenceless; their long beaks snapped harpies from the air, and the assault did not last.

Seven days in, they passed over a battle still in progress. The besieged city was a beautiful place, encased in a dome with a pearlescent sheen whose lower quarter was buried in the land, butted by a series of fantastically carved rocks that formed the city walls. Within the dome was a tiered city of gardens and manses. At the centre of the highest terrace stood a lake, at the centre of the lake a tower of ivory. Every surface was worked with giant figures, the expressions on their huge faces visible from the Kylie.

Thousands of men manned the walls. Trebuchets lofted bales of burning magnesium into the horde besetting the place, but time was short for the defenders. The host of Lord Penumbra crashed upon the walls. Winged horrors plucked soldiers from the ramparts. War-towers sent munitions crashing through the dome of the city, causing sheets of pearly glass to shatter in deadly showers.

"Ah, 'tis a great pity," said Piccolo, "Considered Action, the greatest of the pearls. Now it is soon to fall, and there is nothing we can do." He swore with a sailor's vigour.

To the east of the place the sky was bruised by the gathering clouds of the Great Terror, and the whales picked up speed as they scented it on the wind.

Leagues passed, and they left the war behind. The land became colder; a forest of conifers pricked at the landscape below. Piccolo came to Richards, handed him a telescope and pointed. "The pylons," he said. "The most far flung of the lines. We grow closer. Follow the western line to its very end, so it is said, and you will find Hog."

Richards put the telescope to his eye. The pylons marched dead straight to the northwest. A black box was working its way slowly along their cables. The squeaking of its mechanism cut through the cold air. The pirates fell silent at the sound. Many of their faces became pale; a couple crossed themselves. They did not relax until the box was out of sight.

Richards looked round at the band of hardened cutthroats shivering in fear.

"Great," he said to himself. "Why do I get all the fun jobs?"

The pylons rose with the land, the horizon taking on a jagged appearance. If the mountains they had sailed over before had been giants, these were titans.

"The Unnamed Peaks, beyond which lies the Great Western Ocean," said Piccolo. "From there, we must head onwards, toward the domain of the demon swine. The way is hard and unknown."

"Surely we just follow the pylons?" said Richards.

"Ah, if only it were so simple!" said Piccolo, "but fear not, brave Sir Richards." He grew somewhat misty-eyed. "We call at a city that moves, borne upon the shoulders of giants. Secret, they call it, a dolorous place of terrible myth and close-guarded fact, ruled over by a mournful queen whose duty it is to know all the world's shames. And those shames," he said, coming back to focus on the now, "include the way to Hog's lair. The Queen will know. We seek Secret, thence the way to Hog."

Foothills grew taller, opening suddenly to reveal deep ravines where dirty snow skulked. The moon rose before the sun had set. By the time the moon had the sky to itself the Kurvy Kylie was high over the shoulders of the mountains, and its beams sparkled with frost-rimed snow. Richards kept his mac on tight, and Piccolo gave out furs to all aboard.

Fifteen days into the trip, their journey was interrupted. Richards noticed a rhythmic glitter, something metallic to the east. He squinted until his eyes hurt, and not for the first time cursed his human body.

"Captain!" called Richards. "Captain!"

Piccolo, dressed in an enormous white mink coat, sauntered up beside him. "Aye, dear Mr Richards, what bedevils ye, to make ye crow so loud?"

"There, Piccolo, there. In the east. There's something following us."

The captain leant on the railings. "I see noth… Wait!"

"You see it?"

"Shh! Yes, yes. Damnable bastards! It is ill to say so, but I do. Lookout!" he bawled. "Lookout! Train your glass upon the east! What do you see?"

There was a moment's silence, then an answering call from the crows' nest above the whales' backs. "It is a saucer, sir, or a dish. It skips through the sky like a flat stone on water. It is like naught I have seen before."

"A dish! A dish! He has found me! Damn him, damn his eyes and those of his Dalmatians! Ah! I searched so hard, and now he arrives at the point of least convenience!" the captain snarled. He tore off his coat and handed it to a crewman. "Take that to my cabin," he bellowed. "Man the cannon!" He ran to the steps at the rear of the ship, taking them two at a time as he went onto the poop deck. Richards followed him. Piccolo went to the stern parapet and the great telescope fixed there. "Extinguish the lamps!" he shouted. "Make ready for battle!"

"What is it?" asked Richards.

"Damn him!" shouted the captain. "It is my arch-enemy, the Punning Pastry Chef. His craft the Flan O'War follows in our wake. We are in for a hard fight."

The pursuit lasted through the rest of the day and all through the night. The whales were goaded until they sang songs of annoyance. Piccolo clambered up the rigging in between their car-sized heads and urgently whispered to them. After this they fell silent and redoubled their efforts. Masts extended to either side of the ship, triangular sails unfurling from each to terse heave-hos and the rattle of cranks.

"Deploy keel sail!" shouted Piccolo. Sailors worked a further mechanism at the centre of the ship. The deck jolted and they made fast their lines.

"The sails are an affront to Nikim and Nikogo," said Piccolo. "They are proud, you see, but they understand we are sorely pressed. It is a glad happenstance we have a following wind, or the Flan O'War would be upon us."

"This Pastry Chef must be one tough cookie," said Bear to Richards. "I'd not expect our gabbling captain to run from anything."

Richards did a double-take. Bear wore a massive fur coat. It must have taken three buffalo to make.

"What?" said Bear.

"Bears don't wear clothes," said Richards.

"Hmph, just because I'm a bear doesn't mean I can't wear clothes. It's bloody freezing up here, if you hadn't noticed. Besides, as you have pointed out, I'm not a real bear."

Morning came. The mountains reared up icy and unknowable before them. A mile astern came the Flan O'War, a tin pie dish domed over with riveted plates. The lower portion spun, the central, upper segment steady as a rock. Three chimneys at the apex in the shape of blackbird pastry ornaments spouted smoke. The dome was broken twice by broad fighting decks, and cannon muzzles pointed outward all round the circumference of the dish. A turreted cannon was mounted at what Richards thought of as the front, if only because that was the direction of travel.

An amplified voice crackled across the air. "Your bun is done! Your piccolo has piped its last! Stand down now, my favoured enemy. Eat humble pie and give me your ship and foolish hat and I may allow parts of you to live awhile!"

A pirate handed Piccolo a loud-hailer. "Never!" he screamed. "I will never surrender to you, you ill-begotten baker!"

"Come, come now," the voice replied, louder as the Flan O'War closed. "What's done is done. You have lost. Your sad boat and silly whales cannot best my flying pie, my iron-clad confection, my Flan O' War! You know that, Percival Del Piccolo. Pie thief! Stealer of delicious tarts! How I will make you rue the day you chomped on my eclair!"

"To arms!" shouted Piccolo.

"To arms!" roared Bear.

"You really enjoy all this, don't you?" said Richards.

"Yeah. So?"

"Otto'd fucking love you," he grumbled.

"It'll be a cracking fight," said Bear with a wicked grin.

Richards shook his head in disbelief and took a revolver from a barrel full of weapons. He looped its cord round his wrist. Tarquin growled, and turned to stone.

There was a ringing of steel as the pirates drew their cutlasses. Flintlocks were powdered, matches sparked. The gun-hatches of the Kurvy Kylie II rumbled open and the wide eyes of cannon pushed unblinking into the morning air.

"Sorry, my friends," said Piccolo. "We will be back about our business as soon as we have dealt with this gibbering pastry maker and his pie-problem. Right!" he shouted. "Men, we cannot let the Flan O'War get above us and harm Nikim and Nikogo. We must board that ship. It may be faster, more heavily armed and better armoured than our beautiful Kylie, but what are his crew?"

"Dough balls!" cried one pirate.

"Baker's lackeys!" called another.

"Fat little boys who eat too many cakes!" roared Bear.

"And what are we?" shouted Piccolo.

"Pirates!"

"Fighters!"

"The scurviest airdogs that ever there were!"

"Giant toy bears!" added Bear.

"We are going to storm that ship and cut that pie-lubber's gizzard! We'll bake him in a pie!" crowed Piccolo.

Half the pirates ran to the gunwales, ropes and irons in their hands, while the remainder manned the guns. The Flan O'War came closer. There was a hissing sound, and a dozen sharpened flan-cases thudded into the deck feet away from Richards.

"Hard a port, gain altitude! One hundred feet up!" called Piccolo, orders repeated as they worked their way down the chain of command.

The Kurvy Kylie banked directly towards the Flan O'War, cannons blazing, shots bouncing from the iron pie's armour. One knocked the foremost blackbird askew; another found its way onto the lower fighting deck, where it bounced about like a pinball, turning cook's whites red.

"Reload!" ordered the gun captains. Piccolo called to the whale goaders, and the starboard side dipped slightly.

"Fire!" The cannons belched smoke and flame. The Flan was slightly below the Kylie and coming edge-on, and most of the cannonballs sped over the pie-plate's low profile. It retorted horribly. Seven flan-flingers spoke. Their cookware sliced through the air. Pirates' limbs flew and bandanna'd heads bounced upon the deck. Several sharpened pie plates buried themselves deep in the starboard whale. It called piteously, and blood gushed quickly, as if the whale's fluids could not wait to be free of it. The whale sagged as gas bladders deflated. The ship lurched starboard as a second volley of flan cases sliced through the whale's harness. A pirate went screaming overboard, holding a spouting stump of a wrist in front of his face, bouncing from the Flan O'War as he fell.

Piccolo kept his nerve. "On the next pass, lads!" he cried. Richards stood on the gunwales and clung to the rigging, letting off shots at any target he could find. The ships jockeyed for position in the sky, cannonballs and flan cases reaping a deadly harvest on both sides.

"Now lads, now!" bellowed Piccolo. Forty pirates hurled their irons. The armoured walls of the Flan 's fighting decks provided a firm anchor for grappling hooks. The pirates leapt overboard and shinned up the ropes and onto the Flan 's decks. The sounds of close-quarter combat joined the tumult of battle, and the flan-flingers fell silent one by one.

"Rargh!" roared Bear. Fur coat trailing behind him, he jumped and hit the Flan with a soft thump. He slipped. Pulling back one paw, he punched his gauntlet blades straight through the Flan 's hull. In this manner, paw over paw, he pulled himself up the skyship. One hit brought forth a torrent of steam. The blackbirds spat sparks amongst their smoke, and the Flan 's spinning became an erratic wobble. Bear pulled himself onto the lower fighting deck, and laid himself hard into a gaggle of screaming baker's boys.

The Punning Pastry Chef had one last trick up his sleeve. The top turret swivelled round, its cannon fixing itself upon the injured air-whale. A loud bubbling sound built in its muzzle. Richards ducked as a jet of strawberry-scented napalm splashed onto the whale above, dripping onto the listing deck, setting all ablaze.

"Aieee! Greek jam!" shouted a pirate. Jam slopped onto his head, and his voice became a gurgling scream as he clawed at his burning face and stumbled to writhe horribly on the deck.

The whale twisted, aflame from end to end. It shrieked in agony, sheets of whale skin peeling from it. Its blubber melted as the jam burnt through its flesh. The ship bucked as it struggled. Rigging and deck were on fire, and smoke obscured the Flan O'War. All was pandemonium. Screaming, fire, metal on metal, the desperate shouts of men fighting for their lives. The stink of burning fat, the fragrance of hot jam. The ship dropped, sending Richards sprawling as the harness holding the dying whale finally gave way. Streaming smoke, it spiralled off into the rising sun, its death-wail drawing hot tears of shame from all who heard it. The Kurvy Kylie II yawed hard, the deck swung out and down to hang perpendicularly as the second whale struggled to carry the full weight of the ship alone. The jam cannon fired again. Its gloopy report panicked the remaining whale. It tried to pull away, jerking both ships as grapples drew tight. Its song was wrathful, a tune of anger at the hates of men. Richards slid down the deck. He snatched at a rope and dropped his gun. It swung from his wrist by its cord and banged his arm hard.

"Hold on, old boy! Hold on!" shouted Tarquin.

"I've no intention of letting go," said Richards. "I'm sick of falling."

The boat lurched again. He slid down the rope and it burned his hands. He swung from side to side, wrapped his arm in the rope and waited.

The sounds of fighting up above subsided. There was a cheer, and the ships levelled off, leaving Richards dangling thousands of feet above the snowy mountainsides.

"Oi!" shouted Richards. "Oi! Down here!"

A pirate leaned out over the gunwales and pointed. More faces appeared, and strong arms hauled Richards back up to safety.

"Well, well, well," said Tarquin. "I do believe we won."