The Gem Lords

The False Cleric - Part 3

An hour later, the Jules Verne began accelerating away from the portal, tearing through space at an ever increasing speed towards the nearby sun around which orbited the world that the ship had been built to find and for which it had been searching for over a year now.

Nearby in the cosmic sense, that is, but still a vast distance away by the standards of a race that still did most of its travelling either on foot or on the back of a horse. The acceleration stage of their journey would take four full days, during which they would cover a distance that most of the people of their world would have found literally inconceivable, but the star towards which they were travelling scarcely changed. Not until they'd almost arrived would it begin to grow, becoming a perceptible disc, a sun in its own right, and then the ship would start to slow until it came to a stop another four days later. Then it would begin the search for the planet they wanted. The past and, possibly, the present home of a civilisation so powerful that it was a threat to all the other worlds linked by the portal.

They were just a few hours away from the turnover point, the point where the Jules Verne would turn end over end and begin decelerating, when Callan, the first mate, knocked on the door of the Captain's cabin. Strong closed the valuable first edition of the collected diaries of General Gaarde, hero of the First Shadowwar of over a century earlier, and placed the heavy but fragile book back in its place on the shelf among a collection of other military memoirs. Inspirational reading for the ship's commander and examples he constantly strived to live up to.

"Enter," he sighed. He'd been making sure to enjoy the few days of free time during their flight to the target world. He didn't think there'd be much let up when they arrived. Maybe it's something simple, he thought hopefully. A decision I can make quickly and then get back to General Gaarde.

When he saw it was Callan, though, this fragile hope evaporated. The first mate harboured dreams of commanding his own ship one day and liked to settle as much as he could himself, pretending to himself that he was Captain of the Jules Verne, and that was just fine as far as Strong was concerned. It meant, though, that it would have to be a pretty knotty problem for him to bring it to his superior.

"What is it?" he asked.

"Sir, a felisian ship has just followed us through the portal." the first mate replied. "Major Valeron Hort is aboard, he contacted us using the Masters' communications apparatus. He claims to have received a warning that we have a clay man aboard."

That made Strong sit up and take notice. They'd had problems with a clay man before. The mercenary creature had been hired by the felisians, once their enemies but now their friends, or so they claimed and their recent conduct seemed to support this claim. A possibility flashed through his mind. A rival faction opposed to the alliance between the two worlds and still bent on sabotaging the Rossem Project.

"Had to happen while we're virtually at maximum speed, heading away from them," he said, standing and leading the way out of the room. "Find saturn, and ask him whether there's any way he can bring the Colonel aboard by teleportation."

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By lucky chance, the felisian ship was the Bescot 2, which Saturn had spent some time aboard, so he was able to teleport across and bring the Colonel back with him.

The Jules Verne lacked a conference room, a place where officers and heads of departments could meet to discuss matters, so one of the scout ships served that function. Callan had already shown their visitor to the cramped galley of the tiny reconnaissance ship, the Galtalista. He had also posted guards at the entrance to the hanger deck to keep their visitor's presence a secret, a precaution that Strong approved of. If there was indeed a clay man aboard, they didn't want to tip him off.