Conundrum

Chapter
31

Conundrum rushed across the ship’s bridge and shot up the ladder into the conning tower, climbing through the hatch just as another blow rocked the Indestructible. A splinter of rock stung his cheek, drawing a trickle of blood.

Below him on the afterdeck, Commodore Brigg danced an angry jig around the shattered boom, hurling curses as he tried to shore up the rigging while under fire from shore. Doctor Bothy lay flat out on his back on the deck, a queer smile on his pale chubby face. Conundrum leaped down beside him.

“What’s happening?” Conundrum, asked as he knelt beside the prone doctor.

“What are you doing here? I pushed you below!” Commodore Brigg swore. “I need you in the engine room. We’re under attack!”

“By what?”

“That!” the commodore shouted, pointing to shore where Chief Portlost and Captain Hawser surged back and forth across the sand, engaged in mortal combat with a black-skinned giant. The creature was at least fourteen feet tall, broad-shouldered and powerfully built, with a shock of hair and a patchy beard the color of fire. Its low, backward-sloping forehead and heavy outthrust jaw gave it a primitive, bestial profile, but a cunning light burned in its deep-set black eyes. In one hand, it wielded a broken-off stalactite as a club, using it to fend off the snapping claws of Captain Hawser’s mechanical crab. The two opponents circled one another, the crab darting in to snatch at the giant’s legs, the giant bashing back the crab with mighty blows of its heavy club, neither gaining an advantage.

Suddenly, the giant lunged forward, smashing down with its club. Captain Hawser jerked back on the controls, sending the crab skittering a dozen yards down the narrow beach. In that moment, the giant stooped and, lifting a boulder in one fist, hurled it at the Indestructible. It sailed through the air with uncanny accuracy.

Commodore Brigg pulled Conundrum down behind the prone doctor, using his portly bulk to shield them. The huge, heavy projectile bounced off the aft deck, rattling the ship to its timbers. But before the giant could follow up with another boulder, the crab scuttled back up the beach and renewed its own attack, driving the giant up toward the edge of the ruins whence it had appeared, suddenly and without warning, from the steamy fog a few moments before.

Watching this in horrified amazement, Conundrum asked, “What happened to Doctor Bothy?”

Frowning, the commodore answered, “When the first boulder hit us, it scared him to death, I think. He clutched his chest, smiled, and toppled to the deck, just as you see him. He looked at me and said one word-”Cured!”-before he breathed his last."

The mechanical crab and the giant circled one another warily. Conundrum and the commodore crawled over to the wrecked boom. It lay half in the water, all but one of its bolts ripped from the deck by the giant’s boulder. “It’s hopeless,” the commodore said. “We’ve got to help Hawser and Portlost battle that thing, and to do that, we’ve got to be able to maneuver.”

“But that means…” Conundrum began, his voice trailing off in horror.

“We’ve got to cut him loose,” Commodore Brigg finished for him.

“We can’t!” Conundrum cried. “He’ll die.”

“If we can’t maneuver to help Hawser fight that giant,” the commodore said, “the professor will die anyway. This is something that has to be done. I don’t like it, but there’s no other way.”

Seeing Conundrum hesitating, the commodore patted him on the shoulder. “Send him the message and my heartfelt thanks.” he said. “The professor will understand. While you do that, I’ll find an axe.” He crawled away.

With his heart in his shoes, Conundrum found a hammer and began tapping out the commodore’s message. Under attack. Boom wrecked, and wench broken free. Commodore commends … He was unable to finish. His.new friends were dropping around him like drunken gully dwarves.

A moment later, a response came back, saving him the trouble of breaking the bad news to the professor. Cut me loose. Nearly out of air, anyway. Life Quest complete, as long as someone survives to record results. Will you?

Conundrum brushed away his tears and answered, Yes. Sorry. Commodore commends your bravery and sacrifice.

Cut me loose. Happy. No regrets. Thank you. See you on the other side.

Conundrum nodded to the commodore when he returned, dragging a small hand axe behind him. The commodore’s bearded chin quivered as he hefted the axe above his head. With one quick chop, the blade sliced through the thick rope, and it slithered away through the pulley at the end of the broken boom and into the water. Glancing over the side, they saw the frayed end swirl for a moment in the green depths before slipping silently into the darkness below.

Commodore Brigg stood up and shook his fist defiantly at the shore. “Hap-Troggensbottle, you shall not have died in vain! “he cried.

But the giant and the crab were no longer visible. A thick fog had descended from the city above, enveloping the beach in a warm white cloak through which little could be seen. For a moment longer, they heard the hue and cry of battle, the ring of stone club on metal shell, angry snarl and clatter of bronze claw. And then silence.

The steamy fog continued to roll down from the city’s numerous geysers and mudpits, eventually swirling across the surface of the water and enveloping the Indestructible. In this white dripping blindness, the commodore and Conundrum moved forward until they found the conning tower. They climbed up and found themselves above the mist, but only by a head.

Commodore Brigg picked up the comm tube, blew into it, then said into it, softly, “Switch power from the dyno to the flowpellars. Minimum speed. Secure aft deck hatch.” The four crew members in the engine room obeyed, and the Indestructible slipped silently forward, turning to starboard under the commodore’s hand.

“All stop,” he whispered once they were in position. “Prepare to flood aft ballast tanks.” The ship drifted to a stop, water lapping softly against her sides.

Through the fog, they occasionally heard a grunted oath or the scrape of an iron claw over wet stone. What the fog would reveal when it lifted, neither cared to guess. Conundrum stood beside the commodore and gripped the rail until his knuckles were as white as the fog. Water dripped from the rusting metal and the stone overhead.

Then the fog began to thin as though blown away by a freshening breeze. They felt the hair of their beards stir, and it brought with it a smell of brimstone. Commodore Brigg leaned over the rail to try to peer through the obscuring mist. One hand shot back and pulled Conundrum after him.

Conundrum caught at the rail to steady himself, at the same time feeling the commodore’s hand trembling. He squinted, staring ahead, seeing the fog parting like many layers of snowy veils, opening, shredding, revealing once more the beach and what stood on it, facing one another.

To the left, the crab crouched low with its rear angled up in the air, pinchers extended and open before it. Captain Hawser and Chief Portlost were visible through the gaps in its armor shell. To the right, the giant stood, back bent, stone club held defensively before it, snarling, eyes darting from the crab-

— to the dragon.

Conundrum gasped at the sight of it. Commodore Brigg began whispering urgent orders into the comm tube.

Charynsanth crouched catlike between the crab and the giant, her great reptilian head twitching to glance first at the giant, now at the mechanical crab, her sulfurous breath hissing through bared fangs. Her wings fanned the fog nervously, helping to drive away the last tatters of the mist. She was by far the most powerful of the three opponents now facing each other, but in the blindness of the fog, she had placed herself directly between them, with the water blocking her escape in front, and her natural weaknesses of mobility on the ground preventing a rearward retreat. She knew she could easily dispatch either opponent with her breath weapon or a spell, but in doing so, she opened herself to attack by the other.

The giant, though it looked a brute, was smart enough to know it stood no chance against the dragon alone. Its only hope was that she attacked the crab first. Then it could wade in with its club and crush her skull. Of course, Captain Hawser and Chief Portlost knew the same was true for them. If the dragon attacked the giant first, they might rush in and grapple her with the crab’s mechanical claws, but if she directed her attack toward them first, they stood little chance of surviving a blast of her fiery breath.

And so all three waited. Captain Hawser twitched the controls, adjusting the crab’s stance in minute increments, trying to line his machine up for the best angle of attack should the dragon turn toward the giant. The giant shifted restlessly, black eyes darting, its huge boots grinding the sand underfoot, knuckles cracking as it tightened its grip on the club. Within easy reach lay a boulder large enough to crush the dragon’s neck to bloody pulp. Moving slowly, almost imperceptibly, it inched its way closer to its chosen projectile.

Charynsanth watched them both, still unable to make up her mind which to attack first. Her tail lashed the sand in indecision. Her claws dug in beneath her, and fire bubbled in her chest. Her eyes narrowed, spotting the giant’s movement and divining its intention. A low hate-filled growl boiled up through her throat. She moved one clawed foot ever so slightly through the sand, twitched her tail around in preparation for a lunge at the giant. Captain Hawser inched the crab closer, preparing to strike. The giant froze, its huge fingers twitching mere inches over the boulder it intended to grab and hurl at the dragon.

Water dripped from the stones overhead, plopping noisily in the water. The Indestructible lay just offshore, unnoticed by the dragon for the moment. Conundrum stood glued to the rail, waiting for something to happen, feeling as though there weren’t air enough to breathe, as though he might suffocate before something happened.

And then many things happened at once. From behind the dragon, Sir Grumdish appeared in his battered, dented, no longer shiny, and bloodstained mechanical armor, already at a full run, bent broadsword raised above his helm as he shouted the Solamnic challenge to a foe. Charynsanth spun to meet this new threat, but Sir Grumdish dashed in beneath her upraised wing and sank his blade to the hilt into her exposed neck. She screamed in rage and pain, fire erupting from her gaping jaws to engulf the giant, who had grabbed the boulder and was lifting it to throw. The giant staggered back, a living bonfire, and dropped both its club and the boulder.

At the same moment, the crab rushed in to attack, one claw tearing into the dragon’s sensitive and softer belly scales, the other clamping onto her rear leg. As Charynsanth beat her wings to maintain balance and keep the crab from flipping her onto her back, one wing swept up Sir Grumdish and flung him fifty yards through the air, out across the water and over the Indestructible. He hit the water with a loud, metallic bellyflop and sank quickly out of sight, a final glint of his spurs shining up through the black water.

Commodore Brigg grabbed Conundrum by the shoulder and screamed in his face, “Get below. Stand by to fire UAEPs on my order!”

Shaken from his paralysis, Conundrum slid down the ladder and through the hatch onto the bridge, stumbled through the half light provided by the glowwormglobes, and located the two big red buttons on the weapons console. Snuffling, he wiped one sleeve across his nose and waited.

“Flood aft ballast!” the commodore shouted. With a gurgling purr, the Indestructible began to tilt backward, lifting her streaming bow from the water.

Meanwhile on the shore, Captain Hawser dug the crab’s legs into the sand and continued to push while Chief Portlost, at the controls of the pinchers, lifted with all his might. Charynsanth flapped like a trapped butterfly, her wings buffeting the crab like thunder, while her slavering jaws snapped at the metal braces protecting the two gnomes and tore off the last sections of its bronze shell.

The giant, its hair and beard smoldering, raw flesh showing through its cracked and charred skin, lunged in with a boulder and began to beat both the dragon and the crab. One blow caught Charynsanth across the snout, stunning her. Another broke off the crab claw gripping the dragon’s rear leg. Recovering, Charynsanth lunged into the air, her mighty wings pummeling the wind. Commodore Brigg sank down in the conning tower as her wingtips brushed inches overhead.

With a roar of hatred, the giant launched its boulder. The huge stone cracked Charynsanth squarely across the brow as she banked round for an attack. The force of the blow snapped her head around as if she had come to the end of a string. Her wings fell limp and, tumbling backward in the air, she plummeted like a lead weight. With a tremendous thudding splash, she followed Sir Grumdish to the cavern’s flooded floor, a storm of bubbles hissing and popping on the surface long after the waves of her impact had subsided.

With a victorious roar, the giant then turned on Captain Hawser and Chief Portlost, still inside the mechanical crab. They backed away, waving their one remaining claw before them. The giant limped across the sand and retrieved its club, then turned with a snarl and charged. Captain Hawser threw the crab forward, and the two came together with a deafening crash and roar.

Commodore Brigg had seen enough. Without aiming, he shouted “Fire!”

Conundrum slammed both buttons at the same time. The Indestructible lurched back as twin jets of water shot out from her bow. Two huge arrows streaked across the cavern. One struck with a quivering, meaty thwack in the giant’s back, and the other glanced off the crab with such force that the mechanical contraption went spinning across the beach and slammed into the cavern wall. The giant clutched vainly at the enormous arrow in its back, then toppled face down in the sand. With a last groan, it breathed no more.

Commodore Brigg sighed with relief and turned his attention to the crab. It lay in a tangled heap of metal against the wall, no sign of life within its twisted remains. A thin blue exhalation of smoke curled up from its midst. Brigg’s breath caught in his throat, and he turned and slid down the ladder to the bridge.

He landed with a thump beside Conundrum. “We’ve got to get to shore!” he cried, then turned and shouted down to engineering, “Engage the main flowpellar!”

The ship lurched forward.

“Steer her into shore,” the commodore ordered, pushing Conundrum toward the wheel. “Run her aground. It doesn’t matter.”

“What’s wrong?” Conundrum asked.

“My brother,” the commodore answered, his voice tight with emotion, “and the chief. I’ll get Doctor Bothy’s spare kit. Just steer her in and put her on the beach.” With those words, he ducked through the forward hatch and disappeared.

Conundrum gripped the wheel nervously, staring out through the porthole at the carnage on the beach. The giant lay with their arrow sticking out of its back like a tree. Beyond it, resting against the wall with a tendril of smoke rising from its midst, lay a heap of metal that Conundrum recognized after a few moments as the crab.

The sandy shore slid toward them, and Conundrum held the Indestructible on a steady course. Commodore Brigg banged around in sick bay like a gnomish percussion corps, all the while growling a string of dwarven curses vile enough to strip the rust from the ship’s hull. Below him, the last four members of the crew cranked the ship’s drive springs tight and saw to the oiling of the gears. They were good sailors, and Conundrum admired them. In the midst of this chaos, they kept to their duty, while he held the wheel of the ship as though, were he to let go, he might fly to pieces.

A dozen yards from shore now. A half dozen. Then the shore vanished in an explosion of water as Charynsanth rose up before the ship, like a leviathan, wings spread wide and streaming water in sheets. The Indestructible crashed to a stop against her belly, throwing Conundrum forward against the wheel so hard that it drove the air from his lungs. He hung on, gasping, watching in horror as the dragon’s claws closed round the bow of the ship.

Charynsanth forced the ship’s nose down into the water as he she leaned over the conning tower. The giant’s boulder had only stunned her, but Sir Grumdish’s sword was still embedded in her neck, her life’s blood flowed out around it. She was dying, but she would see to it that everyone and everything died with her.

The conning tower hatch was still open. Charynsanth leaned over it, sucking her last breath in through nostrils frothing with her own blood. The fires boiled in her belly. Staring up through the hatch, Conundrum saw her jaws part, blood streaming out between her long cruel fangs to fall hissing on the deck of the bridge. He smelled the brimstone. He saw the moment of his death arriving.

And then he knew what he had to do. He crossed the bridge in three bounds as dragonfire boiled down through the conning tower. He leaped, grabbed the handle, and released the ram.

It shot out, impaling Charynsanth on its cold steel spike. She reared back in pain, screaming the dragonfire from her lungs in a white-hot plume that fountained upward. In her death throes, she kicked the Indestructible free, sending it skittering across the water, thick black smoke billowing from the top of the conning tower.

Conundrum’s action had bought them only a little time. Enough of Charynsanth’s dragonfire had poured into the bridge to set everything on fire, including Conundrum. His white guild robe went up in flames. He screamed and fell to his knees as the deck cracked and split underneath him. A column of fire shot up from belowdecks, and the floor dropped away beneath him.

Commodore Brigg picked himself up from the deck of the sick bay where he had fallen when the ship lurched to a stop against the dragon’s belly. At first, he thought that Conundrum had run the ship aground, but then he heard the Toaster engaged and the dragon’s roar of pain. He rushed to the door, jerked it open, and got a face full of fire for his trouble. Flames roared down the passage from the bridge and licked around the open doorway. Quickly snatching a blanket from a nearby examination table, he wrapped it around his body and lunged out into the inferno, his only thought to save his ship.

He arrived at the bridge to find half the floor vanished, swallowed up by a column of fire roaring up from below decks. Of Conundrum and his remaining crew, he saw no sign. The conning tower and its escape hatch were well within the flames and out of his reach, but through the forward porthole, he saw that the ship was still moving, that its engines were still engaged. Knowing that he had but one choice, he staggered through the flames to the dive control station. Grasping the scorching bronze levers in his hands, he jerked them down, opening the ship’s fore and aft ballast tanks. Immediately, the burning wreck of the Indestructible dove beneath the waves.

The surface of the water crawled up the glass of the forward porthole. It seemed to take forever for the ship to submerge. Commodore Brigg gagged and choked on the smoke, waiting for what he knew would happen, what he knew was his only chance to save the ship, while flames crowded closer and closer around him.

Finally, the Indestructible slipped beneath the waves, and as it did so, water roared down its open Snorkel. A fountain of chill water blasted across the bridge with the force of a tidal wave, knocking Commodore Brigg from his feet and washing him aft. He grasped the broken half of the Peerupitscope as water continued to pour in, washing over the smoking decks and pouring through the hole in the bridge deck, dousing the fires in the crew quarters below.

Even as the fires were extinguished, the interior of the ship grew dark, dark as the blackest cavern in the deepest bowel of the earth. Commodore Brigg looked up. Outside the Indestructible, there was only inky blackness. The ship had sunk through the hole in the bottom of the cave, down through the hole the professor had explored, into the bottomless abyss that led to the underside of the continent of Krynn.

And she was still sinking.