by C. Litka
05
I was standing, leaning against the propeller cowling, glasses in hand, thinking. What was left of the Temtre ship was now just smoke smudge in the featureless sky, her two companion ships, tiny dots viewed without the glasses. We'd put the better part of 10 kilometers between us. I had the propeller idling now while I considered our options. I didn't like any of them.
Py came aft to stand next to me. 'What are you thinking, Wilitang?'
I shrugged. 'I'm thinking that we should have turned on our pursuit and delivered those darts two rounds ago. It was a mistake to run this long.'
'Did you know you could do so much damage with Sister Nyli's weapon?'
'I'd seen what 5mm darts could do, so I was fairly confident we could've crippled the ships. I hadn't realized we could destroy them. I don't like violence any more than you, but with hindsight, we should have used the darts far earlier so as not to have been chased this far. I just never believed that they'd pursue us for so long. I fear we may've run too far.'
'Because we don't have enough black-cake to return to Blade Island?'
I shrugged. 'We might have just enough - if we could sail straight back to it. But I'm not sure we can.' And turning back, I called to Naylea, 'Join us, Naylea. Decisions need be made.'
She stood up rather listlessly and stepped aft, along with the two dragons, whose inputs I figured I could ignore.
She sat down on the low bulwark. 'What needs to be decided?'
'Here's our situation. We probably have enough black-cake to get back to Blade Island at a moderate rate, assuming we can find Blade Island right off?'
'What about your device?' asked Naylea with a nod to the bug-eye on the overhead keel. 'I thought the whole purpose of that was to lead us back.'
'Without air currents, it would. And for a target as large as the Outward Islands, it would. But for a sliver of an island, with maybe six to nine rounds of sailing into unknown air currents, I'm far less certain of finding it straight off since. We wouldn't have to miss by more than 30 to 40 kilometers for the island to be nearly invisible in the vast sky.'
'Why not just follow the Temtre ships back? They probably have pilots with the location sense. We don't have to do more than just keep them in sight.'
'Aye, we could try. However, they also have black-cake to burn and we don't, so I'm afraid that keeping them in sight might require us to burn too much black-cake - assuming they didn't turn on us at some point. Still, I think they'd likely run us out of sight in short order.'
'But we'd have a bearing before they did.'
'True. But we'd still have those six or more rounds of currents to contend with. Finding Blade Island is certainly possible, I'll grant you. Say, even chances. My concern is the downside consequences of not finding it, and finding ourselves without fuel to burn and at the mercy of the winds in the middle of this Endless Sea.'
'Wouldn't they just blow us the way we're now going?' asked Py.
'I suppose, but how long would it take on sails alone?'
'And the alternatives are?' sighed Naylea.
'On the assumption that the islands ahead are a large and numerous group - based on our prior experience when we first arrived - I'm thinking that if we continue on, under power, we'll run across them a whole lot sooner - say half a dozen rounds or less. Once there, we can load up on peat moss and food to set ourselves up to sail directly back for the Outward Islands and the Principalities.'
'And you're sure we'll find these theoretical islands ahead?'
'Well? Yes and no.'
Naylea sighed again. 'Litang?'
'Yes, I know. It's just that while I believe, based on our ride on that serrata that we're within half a dozen rounds of them, I can't be sure they're exactly before us. They could be over our heads, under our feet, to the right or left of us, but not before us. Still, we saw an awful lot of islands during our stay on Tumbleweed Island, so I'm fairly confident of finding them sooner or later. I just can't guarantee it.'
'You can't guarantee anything.'
'No. And I can't give you the odds either. But we have to do something, and I don't want to make that decision alone. The three of us need to decide.'
Siss and Hissi growled their objections.
'Fine. The five of us, then. Can you gals steer us back to Blade Island?'
They were notably quiet, so I took that to be a "no." 'Well, what should we do?'
The discussion went on rather aimlessly for a while, until, in the end, they left it to me, saying I was a sailor and they were not. And I, well, I have a history of avoiding downside risks and I figured that sailing down wind would extend our black-cake supply and allow us to use sails if it ran out, so I decided to continue on to the islands that I hoped lay in the sky, unseen, before us. Not without serious misgivings. But there was no way of avoiding misgivings.
