But the Cloakmaster couldn't have anything to do with it. The Boundless ram was driven deep into the battle dolphin, effectively immobilizing the squid ship and preventing it from giving chase. The catapult was broken, and the lifeboat-gig-whatever was taking care to stay out of the firing arcs of the ballistae. Already the escape craft was out of effective bow range. The captain was going to get away with his unprovoked attack, and Teldin would never know who he was or what his motivations were….

Then, without warning, the familiar line of burning green lanced up from the battle dolphin. Angling up out of the space recently occupied by the gig, it struck the stern of the smaller ship, blowing much of it into fragments. The gig instantly began to corkscrew slowly, obviously unpowered and out of control.

*****

Berglund rose slowly back to consciousness like a man swimming to the surface of a night-black lake. The side of his head hurt abominably where something-a fragment of his ship, he thought-had struck him. He felt warm wetness spreading down from above his hairline on the right, blinding his right eye. He wiped the blood from his eye, but didn't bother to tend to the wound, or to any of his other minor injuries.

The dolphin shuttle was virtually wrecked, he saw at once. The aft quarter of the sterncastle deck was just gone, blown into dust by the beholder's magical ray. Amidst the wreckage trailing behind the ship, he could see the tumbling body of his second mate. From this distance he couldn't see whether Rejhan was alive or not. He rather thought not, but there was no way to be sure. Certainly, the helm was down and the ship crippled, leaving him no way of retrieving his lost crewman.

Or relieving the ones I left behind to die, he reminded himself dully.

Berglund had never-quite-considered himself a pirate, preferring the term "privateer." Because of that sophistry, he'd never sailed under the neogi skull ensign favored by many other wildspace pirates. Now he found himself regretful. It would be so much more symbolic to officially strike his colors, so much more dignified. And dignity might be all he'd be able to salvage from this. Everything else was lost, maybe even his life.

Oh, well…. He sighed.

"Run up a white flag, if you please," he ordered quietly.

One of his few surviving crewmen hurried to obey.

*****

The din from inside the battle dolphin's main hull had fallen silent. Either the crew members left aboard were all dead, or they'd given up their resistance as useless. The Cloakmaster hoped the latter.

He focused his enhanced senses on the stricken gig, trailing its cloud of space flotsam. As he watched, a crewman ran an improvised white flag-it looked like half a bedsheet-up to the masthead.

"They're surrendering," he called back to Julia. "Get Beth-Abz back aboard. And see what we can do to get the Boundless moving again."

The beholder was back aboard the squid ship in a matter of a minute or two. Using its disintegrator ray to carve pieces of the battle dolphin's hull away, it freed the squid ship to back away from the drifting hulk.

Teldin kept the Boundless moving dead slow, maneuvering gently toward the wrecked gig, where the white flag still flew. As he came in alongside, he turned to Julia. "What in the Abyss do we do now?" he asked. "I don't know the protocol for this kind of thing."

"I do," she said grimly. "Send a prize crew aboard and bring the captain back here so you can accept his surrender personally."

The Cloakmaster nodded slowly. That'd give him the chance he wanted to question his attacker. "Do it," he instructed.

*****

Teldin was waiting on the foredeck when Julia, Djan-his forearm heavily bandaged-and two others escorted the enemy captain aboard the Boundless a couple of minutes later. He wasn't a particularly prepossessing man, the Cloak-master thought, a finger's span or two shorter than Teldin, but with a similar build. His hair and beard were a couple of shades darker than the Cloakmaster's own. Blood from a scalp wound was drying on his right cheek. Teldin found himself staring into the man's eyes, looking for some flash of hostility, some taint of evil, but there wasn't anything like that to be seen. His opponent looked like any other tired, wounded, defeated man, desperately trying to ding to those, shreds of his dignity that remained.

"I'm Teldin Moore," the Cloakmaster said. "And you are…?"

For a moment, Teldin could see the steel of command in the man's manner. "Captain Henric Berglund," the other answered formally. "I offer you my surrender."

"Accepted."

"What will happen to my crew?"

You weren't thinking about that when you escaped in your gig and left so many of them to their fate, were you? Teldin thought. He suppressed his distaste for the man and said simply, "Their lives are spared."

"Are any still alive in the hull?" Berglund asked.

"Some," Teldin responded. "Those who surrendered."

Berglund accepted that without comment. "Prisoners?" he asked.

The Cloakmaster shook his head. "I've got no space for prisoners, and nowhere to take them. You should be able to repair your gig"-he gestured to the small vessel alongside the squid ship-"and you're free to take it anywhere you want." He paused. "If you answer some questions."

"Like what?"

"Why?" Teldin asked earnestly. "Why attack my ship? You were after me, weren't you?"

The shorter man shrugged. "It was a contract," he answered. "Business."

Teldin pointed to the four cloth-wrapped bodies lined up along the port rail-Allyn, Merrienne, and two others slain by the battle dolphin's catapult shots. "Business!" he spat. "You killed my crew!"

"You killed mine," Berglund shot back.

"It's different."

Berglund remained silent.

It took immense effort, but the Cloakmaster forced himself to calm down at least a little. "All right," he allowed, "business. So who contracted you for this business?"

The pirate's lips twisted in a sarcastic smile as he shook his head.

Teldin ground his teeth. "Then what-exactly-were you contracted to do?" he asked. "Blow us out of space? Take us prisoner? What?"

Berglund still didn't answer.

"Interesting," Julia said. Teldin turned in surprise to look at his second mate. She was examining Berglund curiously. "Interesting that you have such loyalty to the people who hired you. After all, they sent you into battle against overwhelming odds, didn't they?" She nonchalantly indicated Beth-Abz, who was easily visible on the afterdeck.

"Your masters, the ones who hired you… they're the ones who killed your crew, aren't they?" she pressed. "I think you owe them nothing, least of all your loyalty."

The pirate was silent for a moment; Teldin could almost feel the intensity of his thoughts. Then he nodded. "I don't know who hired me," he said quietly. "I didn't recognize him, and I didn't ask. All that mattered was that his money was good."

Teldin took a step forward, intent. "What did he want you to do?"

"Take you prisoner," Berglund said flatly.

"And the others?"

"Put them to the sword, then scuttle your ship."

Business, Teldin thought. He struggled to keep disgust out of his voice. "And what was to happen to me?"

"I was to take you to a planet where I'd hand you over to some people who apparently want you quite badly."

"What planet?"

"Falx," Berglund answered.