“Sure, boss.” Ambrose rolled his eyes—all of them—and turned back to his work.
The banter didn’t reassure me that much. We were cruising at about twelve thousand feet, and we were surrounded on all sides. The Cloud Emperors scudding above us had their tentacles drawn up, coiled like springs. The ones lower down dangled them into the water. I zoomed in to watch as one of them caught something: a giant bony fish, which it reeled out of the waves and stuffed into a nest of digestive tentacles that reminded me uncomfortably of the Rotmother from Lahati’s Tomb.
“Captain, there’s a thunderhead coming up, twelve o’clock.” One of the navigators called out. “Monsoon rains sub twelve thousand feet. Wind is picking up, too.”
“Prepare for climb to sixteen thousand and give me a track toward the island,” Gar ordered. “We need to get into the slipstream along the coast before we get janked around by turbulence. All of you idiots on deck, find a rail and hold on to it.”
“Ugh, what is this guy’s problem?” Karalti muttered to herself like a badly tuned radio.
The engine whine intensified to a whirling roar as the Strelitzia began to climb. My ears popped as I leaned back against the glass, watching the jellies recede as we gained altitude. The bridge darkened as the monsoon clouds enveloped the hull.
“Captain! Something’s headed for us!” Ambrose called to him. “Something fast!”
“How fast?” Gar swiped his screen across to the sonar display.
“Sixty-nine knots and getting faster.” Ambrose cupped his control sphere in both hands, and sent out another pulse of magical sonar. Within seconds, five pings showed up on a holo display, flaring and then vanishing to reappear closer than they were before.
“Spotter! Get a visual!” Gar barked from the helm. “Someone’s intercepting us!”
“Oooh, is it pirates?” Karalti perked, her bad mood forgotten. “I always wanted to fight pirates! I can go outside and change shape?”
“Hold up, Tidbit,” I said, frowning as the crew began to scramble. “Rin, you okay?”
“Umm… yes. I think so.” She was shivering, clutching the railing with both hands. “It’s strange. I never feel nervous on Karalti’s back, but this… phew. I think it’s because we’re inside of a vehicle.”
“Yeah, for sure.” I drew a deep breath. “Not a big fan of cabins myself.”
“What in the name of…” Ambrose was still watching the sonar panel. “Boss, they’re splitting up. I don’t think these are ships.”
“What the hell else could they be?” Gar snapped back.
“Dragons!” Rin said, her voice thin with fear.
“What?” Nearly everyone turned to look back where she was pointing. For a second, I thought she was tripping balls—until I spotted a weird blue and white shape twisting through the air at high speed, like a glider with six paddle-like wings that ended in long glowing fingers. It didn’t look anything like a dragon. “That isn’t a dragon. But what the fuck is it?”
“No, she’s right. Kind of.” Gar shaded his eyes. “Those look like Glacus atlanticus. Blue Dragon Sea Slugs. Nasty little critters—they can give you a real sting.”
I gave him an odd look. “Seen them before?”
“On Archemi? Naw.” He shook his head. “In the real world? Lots of times. Blue Dragons are ocean predators. They eat Portuguese Man o’Wars.”
The flying slugs were eerily beautiful—and alien. They flew with even more agility than Karalti, gliding around the jellies with high-speed hairpin turns. As we watched, one of them darted up to the underside of a Cloud Emperor and bit a chunk out of it, raining glowing ichor into the air. The jellyfish’s gas bag rapidly expanded, then belched out a huge cloud of gas, ice chips, and water vapor as it sunk down through the crowd. The Blue Dragon Slug continued to hound it, nipping at its sail as the jelly rapidly descended toward the ocean.
“Finally. About time something interesting happened, other than me getting evicted from my own goddamned bed.” Gar jammed a cigarette in his mouth, lit it, and made a sound of disgust. “Let’s get ready for some real flying, ladies and gentlemen.”
More and more of the flying slugs appeared, drawn by the huge number of jellyfish and their eggs. Five became fifty—and then fifty became hundreds, serpentine blue bodies darting between the Cloud Emperors and savaging them with rigid scythes of bone. Booming, trumpeting blasts of sound went up from everywhere around us, as the entire mass of jellyfish—including the ones not under assault—began to vent huge quantities of gas into the air. It was some kind of herd defense, because when dragons were caught in the cross-fire, they dropped out of the air like stones.
Rin moaned. “It’s not just argon they’re venting: it’s Aethericly-charged antimagic.”
“Don’t you worry your pretty little head ‘bout antimagic! The Strelitzia can deal with a whole hell of it,” Gar called from the helm. “This just got fun! Hang on tight!”
Chapter 37
We lunged for the nearest rails as the airship dipped sharply to one side. Warning claxons went off: Karalti and I were used to turbulence, but Rin, overwhelmed by the noise, screamed and sunk down with her hands clamped over her ears. The engines roared as Gar gunned the ship to full throttle and swerved to the right, descending toward the crescent of brilliant green growing larger on the horizon: Meewhome. We were close enough to land that I could see a thin, glinting blue dome rising over the island. The translucent shield of energy didn’t prevent the all-out aerial warfare now raging between the ravenous horde of blue dragon slugs and the armada of Cloud Emperors, who were gassing the monsters out of the sky and descending en masse toward the mountain-range sized waves below.
“HECTOR!” Suri’s voice blasted through my HUD. “The hell is going on out there!?”
“Brace for a crash! It’s fucking World War Jellyfish out here. Literally, jellyfish fucking.”
“Hold on to your panties, ladies!” Gar whooped, steering us through the flying-slug-on-flying-jellyfish tentacled dogfight of the century. I heard the engines cut as we entered one of the heavy gas clouds, then stutter back to life as we shot past, trailing a cloud of brilliant blue sparks.
“Karalti! Get ready to teleport out of here in case we go down!” I pulled myself along the railing to Rin and threw an arm around her shoulders, holding her tight. She sobbed with terror as the turbulence thumped us around. “Take Rin if you can!”
“I’ll take both of you, dummy. And Suri, if we have time.” Karalti clung to the rail on Rin’s other side. “Don’t worry, Rin! It’ll be okay!”
“C’mon, baby! Don’t stall, don’t stall!” Gar wheedled to his craft as he expertly swung us one way, then the other, and broke through the jellyfish pack to streak toward the island. As he escaped the gas cloud, the ship’s mana engines roared back to life, and we sailed out of the dive before we lost momentum and entered a fatal tumble to the ground. “YEE HAWW! Feel that lift! Feel that-”
There was an earsplitting boom, followed by the screeching and gnashing of turbines splintering and being crushed inside of the left-side engine.
“Emergency backups! Now!” Gar yelled, suddenly all business. “Get that right engine cooled down! We overclocked the damn thing because of the fucking argon! Someone come help me with the damn throttle!”
“Stay with Rin!” I pushed off from the rail and ran over to clamp my hands over Gar’s. The two of us hauled on the controls, battling the terrible force of gravity outside the ship as the emergency engine flared to life. The Strelitzia wobbled, diving at an angle toward the trees lining the cliffs ahead of us, but the backup engine gave us just enough lift to avoid stalling. We were coming in fast, though, and there wasn’t a lot of clear room to land. Meewhome was heavily forested, a lush jungle of the kind not seen on Earth since the Cretaceous. We shot over a village, a grassland packed with running dinosaurs, a small rise of rocky hills, and headed straight for a bare meadow cut from the jungle like a football field.
“Brace! Brace!”
Gar barked. “We are gonna butter that bread, so help me God!”
The Strelitzia was still going too fast. The engines were reverse-thrusting to slow the descent, but that only did so much for an aerodynamic wedge of metal and wood travelling at nearly a hundred miles an hour. We hit the ground and slid over the damp jungle mud like a sled, leaving the grass and careening straight into the trees. Glass shattered over us, but death never came: the ship smashed through rotten logs and then came a smoking, groaning halt, its nose buried in a small swamp.
“Shit! Woo! Well, what do you know?” Gar got shakily to his feet, looking back at us all. “Everyone alive?”
Navigators stuck their heads out from under their consoles. Ambrose leaned out and gave him a thumbs up. Karalti helped Rin to her feet, hugging her tightly against her chest. Miraculously, no one on the bridge had died.
“Suri! You alright?” I called to her via PM, already moving for the exit.
“Yeah. Banged up, nothing serious. And… Cutthroat… God help us, Hector. Cutthroat really is laying eggs.” Suri’s voice was high and thin with stress. “The crash rolled her off them. I counted three, and now she’s hopped straight back on ‘em and is still going.”
“Check Engineering!” Gar ordered Ambrose. “Make sure Li-Li’s okay! The rest of you, let’s get the hell out of here. If that second engine blows, it’ll Strange the hell out of us.”
“I... I can help with the engines. Once I can see straight.” Rin clung to Karalti’s arm as we grouped together. Hopper and Lovelace skittered through the door I was about to enter, crawling over to her. She sat down on Hopper’s back, putting her face in her hands.
“What did I say in Taltos, Karalti? I swear to god, there’s a law.” I grumbled to myself, jogging back toward the cabin deck.
I found Suri looking pale but composed, her arms looped around Cutthroat’s neck. The hookwing began to hiss as I approached the open door, setting one of her mantis-like claws forward, then the other. She growled, but she didn’t move as Suri rose up, came over, and threw her arms around me.
I hugged her back. “Baby hookwings, huh?”
“Baby hookwings.” Suri sounded strangled. “I don’t know what we’re gonna do, Hector. She won’t leave the nest. The Wiki says she’s gotta sit on the damn things for two weeks. If she stops sitting them, the eggs will die.”
“Then I guess Gar and his ship are coming back to Kalla Sahasi with us.” I kissed her on the cheek. “Don’t worry, okay? We got this. But we’ve got to find her something to eat, right?”
“Right. I’ve still got some food for her, but, uhh, according to this wiki entry, she only needs food once every three days or so because her metabolism gets slower when she’s nesting.” Suri shakily wiped a hand over her face. “Maybe Karalti can catch us something? And we can put it in here with her while we go take care of business?”
“I think she’d be happy to,” I replied. “Just… don’t look at what she brings home too closely, all right? She’s got some weird ideas about baby showers.”
***
The jungle air was like a wet slap to the face. Meewhome was a land of intense, vibrant color, sound, and scent. The humid tropical air was rich with the deep perfume of brilliantly colored exotic flowers. Frogs croaked, bugs buzzed, birds trilled and hooted in the towering trees overhead. We’d carved a trail of destruction from the edge of the meadow to the Strelitzia’s final resting spot. The airship had held together surprisingly well, with only a few major losses. The broken engine had lost its casing, exposing the cracked smoky crystal and carbonized metal. The other engine was steaming, but intact. There was no Mana Poisoning warning, so I figured the Emeraldine-Crystalline-hybrid whoziwhatsits that made it work weren’t busted, either. The bridge was the most damaged part. The glass shell was now an iron scaffold studded with jagged pieces of broken crystal.
We huddled around Rin as Gar moved from person to person, speaking quietly with each member of his crew. I watched him grip Ambrose’s shoulders, leaving only when the Mercurion clapped the back of his hand, then moved onto his shaking engineer. He hugged her until she was okay, and then he slumped over to us, chewing a nail as he hung just beyond the edge of our circle.
“Rin. You okay?” He asked, gruffly. “You were hollering pretty hard in there.”
“I-I…” Rin had her face in her hands. She was crouched down, leaning against Karalti’s side. “Not r-r-really.”
Gar warred with himself for a moment, then went to one knee in front of her. “Hey now, you’ll be alright. Wanna hear a joke?”
Rin peered through her fingers at him.
“How many tickles does it take to make an octopus laugh?” he asked.
The Mercurion shook her head.
Gar’s mouth spread in a roguish grin. “Ten-tickles!”
Rin closed her fingers, but she started to giggle against her palms.
“What do you call a fish with no eyes?”
My eyes narrowed as I thought. “A hagfish?”
“Nah,” Gar replied. “It’s just a fsh.”
Rin’s shoulders shook for a moment before she finally looked up. Her voice was little more than a hoarse whisper. “Th-th-ose are t-terrible.”
“They should be. I got ‘em off one of those flyers with the little paper strips on the bottom.” Still beaming, Gar mimed ripping one off. “They were tearable jokes.”
Suri rolled her head back with a groan. “Hector’s already bad enough. Now there’s two of them.”
Rin laughed, and shakily got to her feet, leaning on Karalti’s shoulder. “Well… I grew up with a single dad, and I like those kinds of jokes. They helped me. Thanks.”
Gar’s expression flickered, eyes darkening. “Don’t suppose you remember if your real name was Regina?”
Rin blinked a couple of times. “No? It was Lily, actually. But everyone always called me Rin.”
“Uhhn.” Gar grunted. He got to his feet and turned away from us, fumbling in his coat for his cigarettes. “Right, well… I’m glad that everyone’s in one piece, but unfortunately for you, we ain’t going anywhere unless you feel like walking to Ru Waat. I reckon that’s a couple hundred miles nor-east of here, give or take.”
“I can take us,” Karalti said. “But your crew might have to camp in the ship while we’re gone.”
Gar jumped as Karalti’s telepathic voice broke through his thoughts. “Hell! What was that?”
Karalti waved. “It’s me. Talking to you.”
Gar scowled at her. “I didn’t say you could get in my damn head!”
“I’m not in your head. I’m broadcasting from MY head, and you’re listening.” Karalti eyes hooded, and she pursed her lips to one side.
The look Gar gave her was skeptical at best. “Right. Sure. And how are you gonna take us to the city? Cuz’ despite what your fella here told me in Taltos, I haven’t seen any horns or dragon wings out of you.”
“I’m polymorphed for twelve hours a day, and I went out and flew behind the ship during the night.” Karalti backed up several dozen feet, then unequipped her clothes and gear. Gar turned beetroot red, then ghostly white as Karalti’s body morphed and stretched back into her native form. I crossed my arms as she paced forward, looming over the smaller trees. She craned her head down beside mine, fixing Gar with a piercing violet glare.
“Oh.” Gar took a step back, not looking away from Karalti. “Oh. Well. If that don’t beat all.”
“You really thought we were taking the piss?” Suri planted her hands on her hips, looking over the wreckage. “Of course she’s a fucking dragon. And you’re about to be the uncle to nearly a dozen hookwings. Cutthroat’s gotta stay where she is.”
“In my bed? You’ve got to be joking.” Gar tore his gaze from Karalti, snapping back at Suri like a dog.
Suri bared her teeth in reply. “You want to fix your ship? Tuck your pussy lips away and help us get this over with. Rin here is an Artificer, and the capital of the Meewfolk’ll have the parts we need
to patch the Strelitzia back together.”
“I’m an Artificer.” Gar turned to me, pointing at my chest. “You didn’t pay me enough to deal with this shit.”
Ambrose reached out and grasped his Captain’s shoulder. “Ease up, Captain. We knew what we were getting into.”
Gar scowled and shrugged the Mercurion’s hand off, but he didn’t say anything further as he stomped off to the edge of the clearing.
“Will you all be okay if we leave you here with Cutthroat?” I asked Ambrose. “We can come back with the materials Gar needs.”
“We will have to remain here as it is. The Forest Keepers will come here to examine the wreck, and we’ll need to buy them off.” The Mercurion crossed his burly arms over his chest. “Every crew member on this ship knows how to take care of themselves. Any Meewfolk who find us will probably be happy to assist, as long as we have a good story to tell and we split our liquor with them. They might be able to help with your hookwing. Her species are held in high regard here.”
“We really didn’t know she was preggers,” Suri insisted. “She chased off the male who tried to… who did knock her up.”
“It happens.” Ambrose shrugged. “We will watch her and her eggs. Despite what the captain says, you paid us a lot to come here. He’ll get over it once he notices his bank account.”
“Right.” I rubbed the sweat off the back of my neck and pulled my helmet on. “Well, ready to go, everyone? This Warsinger isn’t getting any less ancient and fucked up, and neither are we.”
Chapter 38
We picked up an escort about ten miles out of Ru Waat: Eight huge pterosaurs with brightly colored wings and crests, who glided effortlessly into a formation around Karalti. The birds were fast enough to keep up with us, and the Meewfolk braves who rode them kept their bows aimed steadily at our faces.
“Humans! This is the land of our People!” The leader of the wing called out to us in his native tongue, his voice magically augmented to be heard over the wind. “Order your dragon to land, and we will parley! Refuse, and we’ll drive you back to the ocean!”
Spear of Destiny Page 33
