Chronicles of Gilderam: Book One: Sunset Read Online Free PDF Page B

bodies.
    “ Jatha …”
    Then he saw the blown-apart turbine.
    “ Gweith … ! ”
    Then he saw the greatest shock of all – Mentrat Ranaloc.
    “ Threithumé! ”
    The white-haired old man was turning dials on a control podium in front of the wreckage. 
    “Galif,” he said without looking up. “You have impeccable timing.”
    The Chief Engineer took a few steps into the engine room. Bodies lay all around. Gore covered the walls and floor. Half of one turbine was blown completely away, leaving a blackened crater of smoking rubble in its place. The usual roar of the engine was little more than a stifled grinding in one corner.
    Galif inspected the engine order telegraph.
    “This is set to All Stop,” he said. “Who ordered that?”
    “Haven’t the foggiest,” said Mentrat as he left the podium to flip switches on the primary boiler controls along one wall.
    The short engineer pulled out a speaking tube beside the engine order telegraph. “Engine room to bridge,” he said. “This is Galif.” He waited for a reply.
    None came.
    He said it again.
    Still nothing.
    He reset the telegraph to “All Ahead Full,” and the lone functioning turbine groaned in protest.
    “I don’t think that will do much good,” Mentrat muttered. Galif turned to give him a look, but his face was buried in the boiler switches. “We’ll need the bridge telegraph set to the equivalent speed to achieve an optimal gear ratio.” Galif turned back to the telegraph, and was so annoyed he didn’t notice a shuffling on the floor behind him.
    “Bridge, this is Galif, Chief Engineer. Is anyone there?!”
    The hijacker with the mustache, burned and bloodied from the explosion, strained to reach for a gun on the floor.
    At last, an unfamiliar and eerily silky voice echoed down the speaking tube.
    “ Yes, Galif. This is the bridge. We read you loud and clear .”
    “Who are you and what are you doing on this ship?!” he roared.
    “ This ship is now property of the Tricorns. So be a good lad and turn the engines back off .”
    Galif’s face contorted with rage, and the edges of his mouth flared as if he were about to start screaming, but then –
    Click!
    Galif wheeled around to face the business end of a pistol that had just been dry-fired. Its operator, fatally wounded from the explosion, nonetheless threw the barrel open and attempted to reload it. Galif picked up a giant wrench from the floor and brought it down, once and mightily, on the hijacker’s skull. The gun tumbled onto the grates.
    “Why, by the gods, did you do that?” asked Mentrat. He had stopped flicking switches, and was looking with honest astonishment from Galif to the dead hijacker.
    “He just very nearly killed me!”
    “It wasn’t loaded.”
    Galif was speechless.
    “Go and fetch that toolbox in the locker, would you?” Mentrat said, dashing for the smoldering turbine. “We still have a ship to fix.”
    Galif continued to glare for only a moment longer before remembering the urgency of their situation. Then he ran to the locker.
     
     
    “Captain!” cried the boatswain. “She’s moving again! Gilderam is moving forward!”
    “What?!” said Perimos, stepping from the forecastle to see. To his disappointment, he watched Gilderam gradually begin to chug further away from him. He could hear the pitiful straining of its one turbine through the propeller shaft.
    “So…” he said to himself. “They must’ve failed to disable her completely. You!” he called to a passing sailor. “Get to the bridge! Tell them to increase speed – get us close enough to board!”
     
     
    Aside from her main deck, Gilderam had two smaller decks, one halfway up, and one halfway down. Owein burst out onto the upper deck with an arm-full of coiled rope. At the fore of the vessel, where Owein tied one end of the rope to the railing, the platform jutted out over the bridge. Its windshield glinted below him with reflections of the moon and Aelmuligo.
    Owein doubled-checked