Chapter 23
True to her word—and thanks to the miracle of videogame crafting—Rin had the parachute ready by the afternoon: a near-replica of the HI-5 ram air parachute used for free fall jumps, except instead of being made out of olive drab ripstop, it was made from bright blue and red silk.
Taethawn had joined us, along with three of his bloodriders, the captains who led his forces on the ground. Istvan, Wing Commander Vasoly, Captain Vilmos, Zlaslo Ul’Tiranozavir and Vash were also in attendance. They watched as Rin moved around Suri’s body, passing under her outstretched arms as she fit the parachute and harness over her armor. As it was a prototype device, the fit wasn’t automatic in the same way that armor or other gear was.
“You blokes alright?” Suri asked, smirking at Vasoly. “Wing Commander, you’re lookin’ a bit green around the gills.”
“That story I told you, about the inventor who jumped off the clocktower?” Vasoly had his arms crossed and his lips pursed. “I was in the city guard back then. My squad were the ones who had to scrape him off the cobblestones.”
“Well, I really don’t think you’ll have to do that this time,” Rin said testily. “Suri is my friend. I wouldn’t be letting her do this if I thought my design wouldn’t work.”
Sitting on Karalti’s back, I sucked on a tooth and glanced over assembled. The officer’s hookwings had been turned loose on the mesa, left to flock up and wander together as a honking, hissing pack. Cutthroat stood head and shoulders over the others. The huge black hookwing had taken pole position, tearing up the moss with her long, sword-like claws and pissing all over it to inform the others that she was, in fact, the biggest, baddest bitch of Karhad Plateau. Most of the other hookwings were sensibly avoiding her—except for one. Taethawn’s mount, a grizzled bull with dark brindled plumage and splendid red tail feathers, seemed determined to keep up. I watched, puzzled, as he bent down to sniff and lick at the moss she’d passed over. When he was done sniffing, he reared up with his jaws parted and his lips pulled back over his teeth, huffing through nose and mouth. It almost looked like he was grinning.
“OooOooh!” Karalti sang. “Someone’s looking for a giiiiirlfriiiiend.”
“Is that what I need to do if I ever want to ask you out?” I bit my lip to keep from laughing before the punchline. “Moon around after you while you piss all over the castle?”
“Hee hee! You flirt!” My dragon’s telepathic voice danced with mirth. “Really, though. Please don’t.”
“Hey, Taethawn!” I called down to him. “Is your guy doing what I think he’s doing?”
“Ey?” The Meewfolk flicked his ear toward me, then looked over his shoulder. Both ears flattened to his skull in dismay when he saw. “Oy! Khun kalang kan, Payu?”
Payu reared his head up at Taethawn’s call, his nostrils flexing, but his fierce golden gaze was irresistibly drawn back to Cutthroat. I knew that look. It was the face of a man on a mission.
“Payu!” Taethawn let out a clicking whistle, but Payu insolently lifted his crests, flicked his tail, and set after Cutthroat at a determined trot.
“Ohoi, my Payu has finally found a lady worthy of his attentions.” Taethawn let out a short laugh, shaking his head. “Don’t worry, Your Grace. Cutthroat will sort him out.”
Vash made a religious sign in front of his forehead. “Should Payu perish in his pursuit of glory, I will be here to give him rites.”
I watched with increasing apprehension as Payu closed the distance to Cutthroat. He let out a huffing bark, and she reared up from her territorial marking, twisting her neck to glare at him.
“HOHH! HOHH!” Payu was large, as hookwings went, but he was no Cutthroat. The bull seemed oblivious to this difference in mass as he inflated his throat, fanned the feathers of his hook arms, and began to bounce his head from side to side. “HOHH!”
I groaned, smearing my hand over my face. “Oh no. Nooo, dude. It’s so not worth it.”
“What?” Suri squinted up at me, then followed my line of sight. “Oh Jesus. Taethawn, grab your bloody bird before Cutthroat rips his dick off and eats it, will ya?”
Taethawn made an airy gesture with one hand. “She is too big for him. He will learn.”
Cutthroat turned her nose up and carried on her rounds, ignoring the male who was now pitter-pattering along behind her, dragging his tail like a randy pigeon. He weaved from one side of her to the other in the hope that she would glimpse his magnificent manly plumage and succumb to his charms.
“Payu! Forget it, mate!” Suri cupped her hand to her mouth, raising her voice to be heard over Sandstorm’s cooing. “That old battleaxe has a cunt drier than the Bashir. You aren’t crackin’ that nut.”
“You mean, he isn’t nutting in that crack,” Vash said drily.
Suri burst out with a short snortled laugh. The noise was so sudden that Rin reflexively shot up to her feet so fast and that the top of her head struck Suri right under the shelf formed by her breastplate. She rebounded with a squeal and tripped, falling onto her butt.
“Ahhhh!” Rin clutched her head. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to!”
Suri was too busy losing her shit to respond, other than to reel away and slap her knees.
“It’s fine,” I cheerfully called down to her. “Suri’s tits are an occupational hazard. I bounce off them all the time.”
“Uaaaaah! HECTOR!!” Rin covered her face with her hands.
The mirth was interrupted by a snarl, a thump, and a saurian shriek of pain. Everyone turned back to the hookwings to see Cutthroat bowl Payu off his feet, yelping as the huge female’s jaws briefly closed on his neck. He backed up with his head low to the ground, hissing, as Cutthroat reared up and clashed her hooked claws together, the universal hookwing sign language for ‘take your stupid mating dance and go fuck yourself with it’.
“Poor Payu,” Taethawn sighed. “But we cannot say he did not try.”
“He was doomed from the start.” I swung my legs, bumping my heels against the thick leather saddle. “Cutthroat’s convinced that Suri, and only Suri, will be the mother of her children.”
Taethawn laughed. “It isss known that some ghora become rider-bonded. It is a lucky thing to have happen for a warrior, and good for battle. But such ghora often cannot be bred for reasons that should be obviousss.”
Rin, still blushing furiously, clambered back to her feet. “Okay, guys, the harness looks good. Everything should just... work. Get ready to have Karalti catch her if the chute doesn’t deploy properly. This IS a prototype.”
Suri swallowed, looking up at the clouds. “It sure is.”
“No sweat. Suri knows what to do once she’s up there.” I dropped the visor of my helmet and locked it into place. “You ready, Karalti?”
“Yeah!” Karalti bent down, resting her ribcage on the ground, and stretched her wing for Suri to climb. “I finally get to achieve my childhood dream of throwing Suri off something really high!”
I rolled my eyes and smacked the side of Karalti’s neck as she mimicked Rin’s giggling laughter.
“I really cannot wait to see thisss.” Taethawn shook his head, extending a single claw to pick at his teeth. “Even I think it is crazy. How will you direct your landing?”
“The parachute has toggles,” Rin said. “You can change your direction with them.”
“I bet you real money I can land it in that square first shot.” Suri cocked her chin at him, reaching up to grasp my hand as she clambered up to the saddle. When she was on, I took the front position and she took the back.
The Meewfolk grinned broadly. “Hmmmm… let us ssssay… fifty olbia?”
“Fuck that. Bet a hundred or go home.” Suri bared her teeth at him.
“Tam tai miu’in. The deal is made.” Taethawn put his hands together, palm to palm, and bowed over them. “One hundred olbia that you can land in the square.”
Suri gave him a thumbs up, then went to hands and knees. She gripped the handles at the back of the saddle, facing
toward Karalti’s tail.
“Okay. Be warned that you’re going to feel like you’re about to fall off constantly,” I said, getting into position between my dragon’s shoulders. “Turbulence feels worse on the hiney of the dragon. It’s not worse, but it feels like it.”
“The hiney of the dragon,” Karalti repeated somberly. “The dragon’s hiney.”
Suri grunted. “Yeah. Okay. I’m more worried about a tail strike.”
It was a real concern. Skydiving off the back of a dragon offered some interesting challenges. Number one was the fact that unlike an airship, dragons undulated as they beat their wings. I knew from experience that it was pretty easy to be flung off. Suri also had to avoid Karalti’s assorted body parts when exiting the platform. That wasn’t a problem for me because of Jump, but Suri didn’t have any special mobility moves. We’d decided the best option was for her to cling on to Karalti’s rump, where the saddle narrowed into a leaf-shaped cantle. Once we reached altitude, she would sprint out to the base of her tail and jump out behind her at an angle.
As soon as Suri was in position, I mentally signaled Karalti. She backed up, scattering the officers, then broke into a lumbering stride for the edge of the cliff. I bowed down and braced my forehead as she kicked off the ledge into the open air. The initial drop lifted our stomachs and then punched them down. Looking back, I saw Suri clinging white knuckled to the grips, watching as the earth receded from us at speed.
“Whee!” Karalti strove her wings rhythmically, gyring upward into thinner, colder air. “Why don’t we fly this high all the time?”
“Mostly because no one else can breathe the air and I don’t like dead friends,” I replied, kneeling back into the saddle. “But once Suri’s parachute is out, I am totally up for a fifteen-thousand-foot dive back to the mesa.”
Karalti brayed with saurian laughter, driving her wings as we broke through a thin, wispy little cloud. “Yeah! You’re on!”
I checked the altitude on the Raven Helm HUD. “Suri, we’re at ten thousand and counting. How are you feeling?”
“I’m ten k in the air with my lungs on fire and a couple of straps holding me on. I’m fuckin’ peachy.” Her eyes were concealed by the polarized goggles Rin had loaned her, and the rest of her expression was stony. “But you know, it’s weird. I feel like I’ve done this a hundred times before, even though it’s the first time.”
“Soldiers jump off high things a lot,” I said. “Maybe you were airborne in your past life.”
“Maybe. I...” She paused for a moment, then grimaced and rested her head down on the saddle.
“You alright?” I glanced at the HUD. We were almost at altitude.
“I just remembered something. I think?” She shook her head. “I remember... I was in a big grey tube with a bunch of other people. We were all dressed the same, all drab greens and grays. I had a pack like this... I remember attaching it to like, a zipline? No. A static line. That’s what they’re called.”
“Hot damn, Suri.” I grinned from ear to ear. “You WERE Airborne.”
“Yeah. The static line pulled the cord from the bag as we jumped.” She chuckled, and rubbed the bridge of her nose. “Shit. That’s weird.”
The mesa was now a great green slab looming over the shadowed valley, the castle a dark triangle to the south. I motioned with a hand. “Okay, babe: we’re at altitude. Let’s do this!”
Karalti, reading my intent through the Bond, slid into circulating current of air and flared her wings into a smooth, condor-like glide. As she steadied out, I stood up and walked with the wind to join Suri. I signed her for three minutes, then got her to stand. She nervously obliged, and I checked her harness from bottom to top, adjusted her rip cord over the back of the parachute, and then gave her a thumb’s up. She signed one minute back to me. Without thinking, we’d both shifted into the universal hand signals of military procedure... signals that were the same no matter which side of the war you were on.
“Hold steady,” I urged Karalti, watching as Suri signed forty seconds, twenty seconds, ten seconds... “In three, two, one.”
Suri kicked up off the saddle like a sprinter and ran down Karalti’s back, launching into the air at a thirty-degree angle from the base of her tail. Whooping encouragement, I hit Spider Climb and held on as Karalti banked into a roll away from Suri, giving her space to fall. “Yeah, girl! Get some!”
Suri rolled over once in the air before getting her limbs under control, spreading them out to maximize drag. Karalti wheeled at a distance, tilting starboard so we could watch her. After about twenty seconds of freefall, I saw Suri pull the ripcord. She tugged once, twice, and my heart began to hammer... but then she yanked it again, harder, and the rectangular silk parachute blossomed up and out, dragging her back up a short distance into the sky. We circled as she drifted down for five minutes or so before landing neatly in the distant pale bullseye below.
“NICE.” I messaged her and Rin.
Rin squeaked with joy. “Yee! And I got a new achievement and bonus EXP! I’m Level 25 now!”
“I got some EXP and a new Skill.” Suri said shakily. “Jeez… already have six ranks in Skydiving from that one jump. And a real bad wedgie from that harness.”
“I can fix that, kind of,” Rin said. “Unfortunately, the, umm, human body being what it is…”
“Hah! Taethawn’s gonna have to pay back the money we gave him!” Karalti flicked her wing and tail, leveling out. “Wanna give them a show?”
“Always.”
Karalti waited for me to assume the dive position, then folded her wings and barreled over with almost lazy speed. My gut lurched with the brief release of gravity, and then we were falling... plummeting toward the ground so fast the wind tore my joyous laughter away before I could even hear it. Diving at top speed, Karalti could reach three hundred miles an hour, nearly twice as fast as a peregrine falcon... conditions that would have sent a normal person flying off her back unconscious, or crushed the air from their lungs as she veered over the mesa and threw her wings open. We cut around the cliff edge, flying almost parallel to it before slingshotting back into the sky. Everyone but Suri ducked as Karalti buzzed over them, then wheeled around to slow herself and backwing down. She touched ground barely twenty feet from where Suri stood.
“You bloody show-offs.” She smirked up at us, her arms crossed, feet planted, her parachute sprawled across the ground behind her in a textbook-perfect landing.
“Yup!” Karalti bobbed her head. “Showing off is a mandatory part of being a dragon.”
“So, Taethawn!” I called down breathlessly. “You owe us a hundred olbia, and I’d say we have a deal.”
The Wing Commander, Istvan, Zlaslo and Captain Vilmos looked at one another, then started to clap. Taethawn’s men joined in, then Vash. Suri took Rin’s hand and bowed, pulling the startled Mercurion down with her.
“Yes, yesss, that we do. I can hardly believe what I just saw, but there it isss.” An excited smirk spread over Taethawn’s mouth. “I will give you two hundred of my finest to train in the ussse of these parachutes. But there is one condition.”
“Oh yeah?” I cocked my head.
He held up a claw. “One single jape about how cats always land on their feet, and neither I or my men will don one of these devices ever again.”
Chapter 24
Now that we had confirmation that our parachutes worked, it was time to start the preparations for our next big mission: prying Bas County out of Zoltan’s greedy hands. Operation Girlpower was far from the first mass combat quest we’d taken on, but The Last of Her House was unique among the quests I’d received since uploading to Archemi. It was completely open-ended, with no framework or parameters other than the timeline.
When Suri, Karalti, Rin and I had come to Myszno to fight Ashur, it was with a Royal Commission, with Ignas’ forces and an active campaign strategy. It wasn’t a GOOD strategy, but we’d been able to hit the ground running after arriving at the Prezyemi Line. The r
ecapture of Bas, while not on the same scale, had no pre-existing strategic groundwork. The success—or failure—of the mission was ours and ours alone. And it wasn’t just Kitti’s safety and the security of the province at risk, either. If we aced this quest, it would push us into the next Renown tier for Myszno, which meant that I would reach new heights of popularity with a province that was still wary of having an outsider as Voivode. With Renown came the most precious resource in the world: Morale. Morale would increase the loyalty of my military and subjects, and make it easier to recruit volunteers and allies within Myszno.
Through the evening and over the next day, Suri mercilessly drilled the soldiers Taethawn picked for the airborne part of the mission. Two hundred Meewfolk, all of them hardened combat vets skilled in close-weapon fighting, had a day and a night to learn how to skydive into a combat zone. In the real world, it wouldn’t have been possible. Here, under Suri’s instruction and with repeated practice, our commandos were able to gain competency ridiculously fast. If we had the time, we planned to roll out airborne training to as many of the Royal 2nd Company personnel as we could. There was no reason an entire crew had to die because their airship went down.
While Suri did that, I found myself neck deep in meetings and the Kingdom Management System, organizing the deployment of our forces. The officers came together with me in my quarters, and we hashed out our operational strategy in record time. The plan was straightforward enough. Inclusive of the Royal Navy, we had one Hussar-class Destroyer and six Bathory-class Skirmishers at our disposal. Between all of them, we could port 1900 troops, more than enough to take on Zoltan’s rabble in Solonovka. We would leave at night, arriving at 4am, when Archemi’s giant moon was on the horizon and cast the least amount of light. The lead ship would be carrying a hundred and twenty-five paratroopers: Taethawn and his men, a single platoon of Nightstalkers rogues, plus me, Suri, and Karalti. Karalti and I would jump outside the castle, using our stealth and darkness abilities to take out key guard positions. Once we were clear, I would alert Suri, who would lead the Nightstalkers and Orphans. Once the Nightstalkers touched down, their job was to breach doors and silently take out sentries deeper within the castle grounds. The Meewfolk were the assault force, charged with battling once our cover was blown and the fight inevitably turned into a melee. When it did, Karalti would assume her dragon form, and threaten to burn Zoltan and his inner circle out of the castle if they wouldn’t budge. There was an important psychological reason why Karalti needed to stay polymorphed until the end—Vlachians worshipped the Nine, the gods of the dragons, and considered dragons to be sacred avatars of said gods. Shock and awe being what they were, the effect of her abrupt appearance would either force a surrender, and-or scare the shit out of Zoltan and his thugs.
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