by Foxx Ballard
They all nodded in agreement, including Rusty. It seemed as good a plan as any.
Rusty checked that Buck’s safety was on, and wondered why he was checking when Buck could simply disengage it, anyway. At least he wouldn’t be the one to accidentally pull the trigger during a negotiation. Buck maybe, but not him.
#
The plan left them on a hopeful note, but that night as Rusty headed towards his bedroom, there was a peal of thunder. He poked his head up above deck to see black roiling clouds in the direction they were heading, and they still hadn't reached land. They would have to ride it out. There were more flashes in the clouds, leaving behind an almost constant rumble.
"Able go over clouds, Jack?" Rusty asked, not liking the thought of braving a lightning storm.
"We can try, Cap'n," Jack replied, and he cranked the dial on the infrared fission heater to maximum. Waves of heat and steam emanated from the device, and shortly after Rusty felt heavier in the pit of his stomach, so knew they were rising.
The storm loomed ever closer and, despite Jack's best efforts, it didn't appear that they were going to get above it. Rusty took a walk around the deck to make sure there was nothing loose that could blow away, and when satisfied the deck was clear he went to check on the cargo hold only to find that Mogul, Lais and Angel were already there securing things as best they could. It helped that the crates were magnetic and stuck to each other, so they had tied them down and used them to surround everything that was loose.
The groaning and creaking of the boards of the ship had always been there, but now they were ominous and constant as the wind now buffeted the balloon, dragging them with it. Rusty could feel the humidity rise in his nose, and heard the propeller wind up to maximum as Synth-E-Uh fought to keep them heading west. And then the pattering started as Rusty traversed the hallway, using his arms to stabilize himself as he bounced back and forth toward his bedroom. As he pushed aside the silk panel hanging in the doorway and slid onto the mattress that filled the room, he was thankful that he wasn't on the rough wooden floor. Until a sudden wind gust pushed the ship sideways and he slid across the slippery mattress into the wall. He hadn't thought to make handholds. Lack of foresight. And lack of sight. Even for him, it was pretty dark. They must be fully within the clouds now. As soon as he was able to get to the corner of the room, he pulled Buck off his shoulder and slid him into the corner between the wall and the mattress. "Just a dim light, please," he said to the weapon.
"Target acquired," intoned Buck, and a dim light was emitted from the thick barrel, shining off the ceiling. The smell of cinnamon struck him and a moment later Lais was bracing herself in the doorway.
"Is it okay if I come in?"
"Yes," Rusty nodded.
She gave him a sheepish grin and slid onto the mattress across from him. "I just don't..." She looked across at the other doorway leading to Angel's room and then looked back at him. "I can go up top, if you like."
"No need," Rusty said as he did his best to brace himself in the corner by slipping his hands down the sides of the mattress.
Lais was reaching her hands to do the same when the ship lurched and fell, then jerked suddenly upright, throwing Lais across the room towards him. He tensed reflexively, and she flattened herself, but her foot still thudded into his abdomen with the brunt of her weight, knocking the wind out of him briefly. He hadn't realized she was so heavy!
"Sorry Rusty!" she quickly apologized, facing the floor and digging her hands and feet down the sides of the mattress, splayed out like she was making snow-angels, just on her stomach instead of her back.
Everything okay in there? Angel asked him mentally. I felt your pain.
We okay. You?
I'm good, just trying to keep from getting banged around.
Come here, three of us can push against each other's feet.
Okay.
"Told Angel come in room, brace feet against us. We hold each other against walls."
Lais nodded and gave him an accepting, one-sided grin.
Shortly after, Angel was in the doorway, sliding into the room. Lais slithered up into one corner and they all stuck their feet out against each other. It worked, but it was more awkward than he had originally anticipated because he was shorter than they were.
"Just lay down," suggested Lais. "The three of us pretty much take up the whole room. Rusty, you take the middle, I'll hang onto the doorway so I don't accidentally crush anyone. Again."
They laid down on their backs, Angel on her side because she couldn't get her wings comfortably beneath her. Angel and Lais were facing the same direction, Rusty the opposite, so his feet were facing them, and theirs, him.
"This is kind of fun," Angel stated aloud, grabbing onto one of Rusty's ankles as Lais snagged the other. When he tilted his head up, he caught them grinning at each other. That, he was glad to see. They should be friends. They were both good people. He grabbed onto one of each of their ankles just as a gust of wind had them skidding as a whole to one side, but with Lais hanging tight to the door frame, they didn't thump into the walls, and that was the important thing.
Rusty was starting to get aroused suddenly and strongly, but said a firm "No" in his head and it quickly subsided. He could feel Angel's mild disappointment, but it didn't continue. Lais can not join, don't want to leave her out.
I understand, she replied, though he caught that she didn't really agree with the reasoning. After all, he was the only one she could play with.
An interesting race, the Valkyrie, he thought to himself, aware she was likely still in his mind. Very free of constraints. Would have been nice to have that sort of freedom.
A series of thunderous cracks jolted the whole ship, the blast hurting his ears, and Rusty felt the hairs standing up on his arms, immediately smelling the ozone. They had just been struck by lightning. He tensed for a moment, waiting, sniffing to see if he could pick up any smoke. He couldn't detect a fire, but slowly and steadily, the ship started to tilt backwards.
"Jack!" Rusty barked, concerned, and clambered over top of Lais to pull himself through the doorway. The angle was already making it difficult to maintain his footing, and he had to brace his arms against the walls in the hallway to keep from sliding on his butt. Mogul had sat and braced himself against the walls of the cargo hold with outstretched arms and legs, but when a flash of lightning revealed Rusty to him, the Ramogran picked Rusty up in one hand and held him up to the edge of the main deck. Rusty didn't need the help, but it didn't matter. He was met with howling winds and rain splattering onto his face. He strained to see, and there was Jack, one of his thin metallic arms pulling on a flap string. His monitors on his chest and face were blank, and he had rolled back as far as his tracks would allow. The only thing keeping him from rolling further toward the back of the ship was the flap string he was clamped onto. But Rusty needed to get it out of the robot's hand, or the ship was going to tip vertically. Rusty leapt and grabbed onto Jack's treads and then pulled himself up Jack's body until he could reach the string. With one hand, he yanked it from the robot's grip, and then released it so the flap could close. Jack, suddenly freed, rolled down the ship's deck towards Synth-E-Uh, with Rusty on top of him.
"Grab him!" shouted Rusty, hoping he could be heard over the wind. The lifeless Jack struck the low rail hard, tipping over it and dislodging Rusty. Frantically he flailed his limbs, trying to snag something on Jack's slippery body. Synth-E-Uh reached out and grabbed Jack's arm, the other claw-hand reaching for Rusty. Fingers touched metallic claws, and for a moment he thought they were going to manage to grab each other, and then nothing.
Part III: The Fall ...not the season
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Lais: The Maiden, above the western sea
Damn, Rusty is fast, Lais thought to herself as he climbed over her and scrambled down the hallway of the airship. The tilt towards the rear was making it difficult to stay upright, but she braced herself as she traversed the hallway, just as he had.
When Mogul held her up to climb out of the hold, Jack, with Rusty clinging on top of him, was just speeding by. Lais leapt from the ladder to the back of the ship just as Jack struck the rail, dislodging Rusty, but she had to grab the rail herself and had no chance to reach Rusty. Synth-E-Uh’s arm shot out to him, but they barely touched fingertips and then the Goblin went tumbling out of sight into the darkness below.
When she turned around, Angel shot by, diving over the back of the ship. There wasn’t even a chance to say goodbye. She was just gone.
“Dammit! Is there any way we can stay in this spot so they can find us?” Lais shouted over the propeller and howling winds to Synth-E-Uh. But she already knew the answer. The storm was going to take them with it.
“I can barely keep us facing one direction, let alone in one place,” Synth-E-Uh shouted back. “I’m sorry.”
The lights on Jack’s faceplate and chest monitor flickered on and then scrolled quickly through hundreds of lines of text before the CompsoStar logo appeared for a few seconds, to be replaced by Jack’s usual smiling emoji on his faceplate and a flying duck screensaver on his chest monitor.
“Hi, I’m Jack… Hammer!” he said, holding out a thin metallic hand to Lais. “And you are… Lais… and my job is… GACK!”
Jack, his treads slipping on the tilted deck, managed to reach the flap strings with a healthy shove from Lais. Quickly, he yanked them and started leveling out the ship.
Lais looked down over the rail at the back of the ship, straining to see anything through the rain, listening for a cry for help. Nothing. Just the wind and the rain…. Wait! Buck! Hastily, she dropped into the hold, not bothering to take the ladder, and raced into Rusty’s room. In the corner, there was Buck, still emitting a dim light on the ceiling. She skidded across the mattress and grabbed the laser shotgun, then shoved her legs against the wall, launching herself off the mattress, through the door, and into the small hallway. She landed hard, but immediately bolted down the hallway and jumped out of the hold to the deck with a steadying hand from Mogul, who climbed out after to see what was going on.
“Bright! Wide Beam! Buck, do it!”
“No target, complying…” A bright beam of light stabbed through the darkness and Lais aimed the weapon back and forth, sweeping in wide arcs off the back of the ship. There was nothing to be seen but clouds and falling rain.
“Take us down, Jack!”
Jack obeyed, immediately pulling most of the flap strings and dialed the fission heater to minimum. The ship started dropping, probably too quickly, but Lais didn’t care. She wasn’t going to lose Angel, or Rusty, for that matter. It took several minutes for them to pass below the clouds. As soon as they were below the clouds, Jack cranked the heater to maximum and closed all the flaps, slowing their descent.
Lais swept the light back and forth, and the nearby lightning assisted in providing a flash of the sea far below, but Lais couldn’t see anything.
“Angel! Rusty!” she cried out, as loud as she could. She repeated the cry as she searched. They had to answer, but her cries were just deadened by the storm. “We’ll keep searching until we find them!” Lais yelled to Synth-E-Uh and Jack. Jack saluted.
“ANGEL! RUSTY!” Mogul boomed so loud Lais thought he could have been heard on one of the moons, but there were still no replies.
“I’ll do my best to steer us back to where we were,” blared Synth-E-Uh over the noise. But they both knew the odds. There was no way of pinpointing a location. But if they didn’t find them, their fallen friends would surely die.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Rusty: Freefalling, above the western sea
Rusty could tell which direction he was falling in, because the air was whistling passed from one direction. Instinctively, he spread out his arms and legs and almost immediately the tumbling stopped and he was simply hurtling face down with the rain. He could actually see some of the raindrops now falling with him. There was too much fog from the clouds to see far below him, so he had no idea when he was going to land, but that hardly seemed to matter. They were days out to sea. He laughed to himself. Maybe he should have let Angel play with his mind. At least he would have gone out on a high note.
With his mind accelerated by the adrenaline, it seemed like he was falling for hours. He was frightened for a few seconds, but that quickly subsided into an acceptance of his plight. He was going to die. Not on impact, unless there happened to be a random island beneath him, but the chances of that were extremely slim. No, odds were that he was going to drown when he got too tired to keep himself afloat. His mind wandered to Angel, Lais, then Zondra, and finally to his wife and boy. He still had his arms and legs out, slowing his fall as much as possible, waiting until he caught sight of the water below so when he was close, he could dive to minimize the shock to his body as he struck the water. When he cleared the layer of clouds, he could see the water a long distance below him. It was going to take several seconds to reach it.
There was a rushing noise behind him, and then something clamped onto him, slowing his descent. He could hear Angel’s wings flapping hard and he smelled her clean scent that he identified with her, mixed with the acrid smell of sweat from fear and the leftover bit of cinnamon from being close to Lais. Angel had wrapped her arms and legs around him and he could feel her squeezing him, and the strain on her body as she tried to keep them aloft. She was failing.
“Damn the Deep, Rusty!” she yelled in his ear through the roaring wind. “I needed more time to strengthen my wings.”
He noted that she had almost arrested their fall, but not entirely, and she was sure to weaken. They weren’t going up; they were still going down.
“You have to let me go!” He yelled into the wind and then thought it to her. You have to let me go!
He felt her arms and legs tighten around him even more.
Not on your life. I’m not leaving you to die out here alone. Who else am I going to have sex with? And she sent a brief jolt of pleasure into his mind. Rusty laughed in surprise. It was so unexpected, and then they both laughed at the ridiculousness of it. Still, he was happy she was here, though at the same time he wished she wasn’t.
She then flapped harder and their descent halted. They even started to rise a little, and then she tired as he had expected and they started to fall again. He felt her relax slightly as she accepted she wasn’t going to fly them back up to the airship. Her wings stopped flapping and went rigid instead, causing them to glide.
In lazy circles they descended, much slower than the rate he was falling at. He watched the rain and lightning, listened to the thunder, smelled Angel’s scent, and the sea as they were approaching it. The white-capped waves swelled and rolled beneath them. A few seconds before they reached the dark water, Angel released Rusty, and he dove cleanly into the ocean. It shocked him, the coolness. It wasn’t freezing, but it was cold against his skin. The sudden deadening of sound and the roaring of the bubbles assaulted him for a few seconds, and then he lazily swam to the surface. They were going to die out here.
As he surfaced, he noticed that Angel was still circling overhead for a few seconds before finally landing beside him. She popped up with a splash next to him and got a mouthful of seawater as a reward from the next wave that washed over them. Spluttering, mixed with a few expletives about the Lords of Tallus falling into the Deep, she finally got her head well above the waves, primarily by using her wings to tread water.
Rusty chose to lie on his back, which primarily kept his face out of the water, and let him conserve his energy, but the wind and the waves were making it harder than it needed to be. Most of the time, his quick thinking and reflexes were a benefit, but in this particular case, he would simply run out of energy faster, so he would die sooner. Maybe that was a benefit.
“Stop thinking that way,” Angel shouted after the next wave had passed. A flash of lightning ominously punctuated her statement, to which she smirked and then laughed. “It does seem pretty bad, doesn't i
t?”
Rusty couldn't help chuckling himself. I mean, if you're going to die, might as well go out in a good mood. He looked up at the storm above. It stretched in all directions, out of sight. He wasn't even sure what direction they were facing, although he did remember the storm was generally heading west, so he watched it for a while and noted the direction it was blowing the waves in.
“I think we swim that way,” he pointed out of the water in the direction opposite the path the storm was following.
“I think we should just float,” said Angel.
“Lais... airship... they never reach us, be blown far away.”
“Oh, I know that,” Angel said, throwing her wet hair behind her shoulders so it would stop getting in her face.
“Then...”
“I think we should wait and see if anything swims by.”
Of course! Angel could detect minds, most of them anyway, and encourage them to either help or leave them alone if they were hostile. He didn't know what the odds were of something swimming by that could help, but certainly better than just him floating out here alone. So there was some hope.
#
After a few hours, they were becoming exhausted and nothing notable had swum by yet. At least they had been drawn into a warm current, so weren't suffering from hypothermia. A few schools of fish swam by, but nothing of any size that could help. Angel did entice a couple of fish over for Rusty to eat, so that was kind of her, considering she didn't partake herself.
When the last strands of hope faded, she popped the question.
“Do you want an orgasm? Seems weird, I know, but if I'm going to die out here...”
“Not weird, I understand. Okay,” was all he could think to reply.
