“Can you give me a boost?”
“Physical, financial, chemical…” it began to prattle before Jaq interrupted.
“Up to the jack on this terminal. I want to get online.” She assumed the network accessed via the terminal required higher security clearance than the general sky platform network available without being wired in, otherwise there wasn’t much point to it. She hoped the Magic Bean would be enough to grant her access.
AU-G00Z hoisted Jaq up to within reach of the port and perched from this precarious position, she jacked in. A security matrix confronted her upon entry but fortunately, the code she possessed was able to decrypt and negate it.
The sky giant network was as large as the invaders were, so big Jaq feared losing herself in it. She had never run anything that size before, usually keeping to Mom’s much smaller illegitimate series of servers. She wasn’t even sure what she was looking for, although it would primarily be the means of support for the sky platform over her city and some way of hacking into it.
Her search eventually led her to the beam-stock system which was tied to the energy sources fuelling the anti-gravity generators. Those generators kept the sky-platform suspended over the city. If she could find a way to disrupt either the energy flow or the general function of the anti-gravity platforms, she could cause the sky platform to topple and its sky-giant residents along with it.
The system had the most complex and intricate coding Jaq had ever encountered and she almost gave up the hack without even really trying. But she reminded herself that she had never turned away from a challenge in her life and she motivated herself further by imagining Queue taunting her for being such a chicken. With a little more enthusiasm, she dove into the code and started to work at unweaving it, searching for ways to sever links and weaken the code’s basic structure. If her hacking attempts did enough damage, there would be no correcting it before the platform destabilized. That was her hope, anyway.
About three-quarters of her way through deciphering the code in order to scramble it, a shrill beeping disrupted her concentration. Her wrist monitor–it warned her that she was approaching the time advisable to remain jacked in. Normally, she would have dumped her hack and made a hasty escape, but this was no ordinary situation. Besides, until she could return to the earth’s surface, jacking out might not help her situation any.
“Damn! I know you’d kill me Mom, for doing this, but I have to risk staying. I have to finish up. This is too important.”
Adrenaline pumping, Jaq chose to ignore the insistent warning and continued her hack, fairly certain it was nearing completion. The buzzy high from staying jacked in as long as she had made her woozy and euphoric, but it also made her work seem easier. Before long, not only had she figured out the code, but she believed she had broken it beyond compare. Now she had scant minutes to evacuate before disaster would surely strike the sky platform.
It took all her willpower to jack-out again, the departure from the network leaving her emptier and unsatisfied, but Jaq managed to do it only because she was aware of the dangers if she didn’t. She still had access to the wireless general network, however so she wasn’t secure just yet. She had to get back down to the city. She knew, however, that she was too disoriented to find her way out on her own.
“Take me to the nearest beam,” she ordered AU-G00Z. “We’re getting out of here.”
“Out of here…this room?”
“Not just this room. We’re going earth-side, as fast as we possibly can.”
Things were already going wonky on the platform by the time they reached the beam, the entire floating structure beginning to shimmy and rock. Jaq clung to AU-G00Z as they both stumbled into the beam. She heard a sky-giant roar behind her as they leapt, the invader having spotted them and recognizing that Jaq did not belong there. It advanced on the beam as they descended and Jaq feared that it would catch up to them before they could reach safety.
Jaq and AU-G00Z had just touched ground when the beam flickered and disappeared, releasing the sky-giant in midair. Not wanting to be beneath the invader as he fell, she sprinted for the nearest basement window and forcing the mobile replicator in through it before her, took cover within.
The sky-giant hit the street with a thunderous crash, its chitin cracking and splitting as a result of the collision with the pavement, spilling out some of its liquid contents. Then the already shadowy sky darkened and Jaq knew other consequences were about to follow thanks to her interference. She crouched and cowered next to AU-G00Z, covering her head, waiting for the worst.
The sky platform above broke free of its malfunctioning stabilizers. It wobbled and veered before it finally struck earth. Jaq covered her ears and closed her eyes, praying her rebellious efforts would not end in her death along with many others. A suffocating cloud of dirt and dust blew into her basement hideout through the broken window and for a moment she believed it would spell her end, unable to breathe despite her desperate attempts to seek air. Had it not been for AU-G00Z, she surely would have died.
Fortunately, the replicator was able to produce a facsimile of clean air. It enveloped Jaq in a breathable layer just in time, countering the effects of the dust cloud. It took her several minutes of coughing and gagging to recover, her voice raspy and her lungs rattling from its residue, but at least she had survived. She dragged herself over to the broken window to look out.
Her eyes were met with a glaring sight, which would have been worse had there not been a blanket of dust and smog hanging in the air. But even filtered by these things, she now knew sunlight when she saw it. The city was no longer contained within shadow. The sky platform was gone.
Jaq had to assume it had crashed a fair distance from where she had hidden because she saw no rubble or debris remaining from the structure, but the body of the fallen sky-giant still lay sprawled in the streets not far from her. She pulled herself out through the window, hoisting AU-G00Z out after her, and then approached the body to investigate.
She prodded a part of its shattered chitin with her toe and then stepped back.
“Is it dead?” she asked.
After some examination, the mobile replicator confirmed that yes, indeed, it was dead.
“Time to take you back to Mom then” she sighed.
Glancing skyward and shielding her eyes, Jaq wondered how the city would function now that the overlords were gone. Did the resistance have a contingency plan in place? Would the sky-giants replace their fallen platform as quickly as possible? Would they try to punish the residents of the city for this act of rebellion?
Jaq didn’t have the answers, but what she did know is that she would be returning to Mom with AU-G00Z to offer her. That would no doubt please the stern woman. Perhaps Jaq would be able to convince her they should share Magic Bean with other cities and elevate their efforts from resistance to revolution. Either way, they would be eating that night.
Directing the mobile replicator to follow her, Jaq started towards home.
FANTASY
ADVENTURES
What could be more exciting…and more dangerous…than chasing dragons on an airborne steamer?
THE WRECK OF THE BLUE PLOVER
David Turnbull
Angus watched as Captain Zachariah lowered his telescope. Deep in thought, the captain tapped his fingers absently against the brass rim that encased the lens. Angus felt a knot of excitement tighten in his belly. He drew in measured inhalation of breath. It didn’t do anything to calm his beating heart.
A flock of black dragons had been spied toward the western horizon and Angus wasn’t the only one nervously waiting for the captain to reach a decision. The airship’s entire compliment was gathered on the gondola deck in hushed silence.
At sixteen Angus was the youngest person onboard the Drunken Molly. He felt a bit like an intruder. Unlike the rest of the crew, who mostly hailed from Tennanbrau City, he had been born in the rolling vista of green hills that encompassed the rural communities of the Low Counties
.
The men of Tennanbrau tended to be broad and brawny, whereas Low county folk were small and often softly spoken. Angus sported a distinctive shock of red hair. It hung down lankly around his ears, augmenting the explosion of freckles that splattered his nose and cheeks. Many of the crew had taken to calling him Ginger and he was becoming increasingly convinced that hardly any of them knew his real name.
Maybe this will be my day, he thought. Maybe today the name of Angus Stonedyke will be on everyone’s lips.
He kept his eyes fixed on Captain Zachariah. The airship captain stroked the narrow ribbon of beard that traced the line of his jaw. The only sound to be heard was the creaking of the timbers as the gondola swayed on the silver wires that hung down from its crimson balloon and rocked against the constant pummeling of the sky winds.
The captain looked up and narrowed his eyes. Angus felt the tensing of his muscles pull tighter. Everyone seemed to recognize the grin that spread on the captain’s face for what it meant. But still they waited for the final confirmation. At last he gave a single nod of his head.
A loud cheer exploded from the assembled crew.
The hunt was on!
As the cheer echoed skyward Angus hurriedly donned his rope loader’s helmet and rushed to his station beside his designated cannon emplacement. Brinsley, one of the rope gunners, climbed into his cockpit and, with practiced precision, checked the cannon’s spring loaded trigger mechanism. Angus felt a twinge of jealously. Brinsley wasn’t that much older that himself. He longed for the day that he’d be given the chance to operate a rope cannon.
The Molly tacked hard left and a blustering gust of icy air washed a vaporous mist across his face. He gasped from the shock of it. Trepidation began to tempter his excitement. Treacleshells, as black dragons were more commonly known, were said to be the most pernicious of all the airborne serpents. Angus had heard that tackling them was fraught with danger. Ill-tempered and notoriously difficult to capture they were a species that most dragon hunters tended to avoid.
But Captain Zachariah is not like most dragon hunters, he reminded himself.
The captain was famed for an unshakable confidence in the infallibility of his airship. The Drunken Molly may have been named after an inebriate Aunt that the captain had a deep affection for-but she soundly defied the unfortunate implications of her name with the velocity of her speed and the ease of her maneuverability. With the Molly to rely upon the captain had become renowned for taking risks that others did not even dare consider. If any airship captain could lead his crew to a successful harvesting of a savage flock of Treacleshells it was Nathaniel Zachariah.
Checking that the beaded lead weights on the loop of the cannon’s lasso were evenly spaced, and making sure the knot of the noose was sound, Angus carefully loaded the rope into the mouth of the cannon. With a tap of his fingers on his helmet he signified to Brinsley that the lasso was in place. The rope cannon gunner pulled his goggles over his eyes and swung the stubby barrel skyward.
Duty performed, Angus studied the captain as he climbed onto the raised iron gantry from where he would direct the hunt. Despite being browned and weather worn from the constant attentions of the harsh conditions endured at high altitude his features remained deceptively youthful. The pencil thin moustache that crested his upper lip was as neatly trimmed as the dark slither of beard on his jaw. Gazing unflinchingly ahead his resolute blue eyes seemed oblivious to the braided ponytail of his long black hair as it danced in the crosswind and whipped against the scaled sheen of his dragon skin jerkin.
“Steady as she goes,” he called to the coxswain. “We want to be right in amongst them before the first lasso is fired.”
Coxswain Grisling tightened his oil stained hand on the navigation wheel. With the other he pulled a lever to lower the rotation of the turbines. High above the gondola the crimson balloon swayed a little to this alteration in the airship’s momentum.
Pushing the rim of his helmet up onto his forehead Angus glanced up at the magnificent balloon above him. It was filled with a compound that consisted mainly of refined Dragon Breath. Lighter than air, Dragon Breath was also the core component of the energy source for all of Tennanbrau City’s vast factories. It was the power upon which the Emperor Julian drove his burgeoning empire ever forward.
The harvesting of Dragon Breath was a lucrative business and since childhood Angus had yearned for the romance and adventure of a life above the billowing cloudbank. Back home in the Low Counties he had practiced roping sheep with a long length of frayed chord that had been disposed of by the vicar when the village church installed a new bell in the belfry.
Imagining that the rugged hill sheep were dragons he had developed, through a considerable amount of trial and error, an excellent and accurate aim with his makeshift lasso. As a consequence he longed to be seated where Brinsley sat, in the cockpit behind a rope cannon, ready let loose a lasso to snare a dragon.
“Lower the bait,” ordered the captain.
Immediately several lengths of rope were cast over the sides of the gondola. The ropes yanked tight. Hunks of salted meat on the hooks attached to the ends of the ropes spun with the relentless forward motion of the Molly.
Through the oncoming swirl of cloud Angus could see that the Treacleshells were viciously attacking a flock of geese that had been passing over the tundra in tight formation. They were hunting in pairs - the midnight hued sows swooping in to snap the necks of the geese between razor sharp teeth, while the larger boars followed swiftly through to clamp their powerful jaws around the plummeting corpses.
Then, with a grotesquely synchronized symmetry, the two would share the prize, tearing and clawing at the limp carcass, as a blizzard of bloody white feathers fluttered a macabre dance in the sky around them.
Angus felt a quickening of his pulse as Grisling steered the Molly straight into the midst of the flock’s savage feeding frenzy. Several of them turned and let out high-pitched screeches, their tongues starkly red against the licorice tones of their scaly muzzles. The surviving geese thrust their wings, long necks outstretched, honking noisily as they made a desperate bid to escape. For a moment it seemed to Angus that the dark assembly of dragons would follow them and that the Molly, in turn, would be forced to give chase.
Then, almost as one, the gleaming slits of their quivering nostrils appeared to scent the salted meat dangling below the gondola. Keening noisily-three, four, five of them dipped their ferocious heads and swooped down, barbed tails slashing the air as they fell from view.
“Steady men,” cautioned Captain Zachariah.
No sooner had he spoken these words than a rancorous looking boar rose immediately in front of Angus, hunk of meat clamped in its slavering black jaw. Brinsley traced its progress with his cannon. Beating down on its wings the boar climbed till it was almost level with the crimson balloon, gnawing at the hunk of meat and raking it with its scimitar claws. One of the gunners released his lasso and spat out a foul curse when it missed its mark.
I wouldn’t have missed so easily, Angus whispered under his breath.
The Treacleshell boar dipped low once more. Following it with his sight Brinsley triggered the coiled spring on his cannon. The rope shot from the barrel and went singing through the air, the lead beads helping it maintain a rounded circumference. With an almost improbably perfect trajectory the loop of the lasso whipped around the hoary ankle of the Treacleshell’s hind leg. When it dived in panic the noose pulled instantly tighter.
“First catch to Mister Brinsley!” cried Captain Zachariah. “Haul the beast in, Angus. Haul the beast in!”
Heart swelling with pride at being given such a direct order Angus made a grab for the rope. But no sooner had he started to heave back against the frantic struggle of boar than several burly crewmen snatched the rope from him and barged him out of the way. “You’re too skinny, Ginger,” goaded one of them. “Watch out you don’t get dragged overboard.”
Whilst they were doing this the gu
nner who had previously missed his mark fired off his re-loaded lasso. The rope dropped over the Treacleshell’s thrashing head and pulled tight around its neck, effectively preventing it from retaliating against its capture with blistering inferno of its fiery breath.
Before Angus had the chance to do anything another crewmember grabbed the second rope and began to help the first group to heave the dragon in. Starved of oxygen, it was easily overwhelmed. The hunk of meat fell hopelessly from its slackening jaw as it slashed out with its claws. Its wings folded back to its ridged spine. It dropped like a stone. A wide net was tossed over the edge of the gondola to catch it and in no time at all it was yanked over the side and tipped onto the deck.
It came awake in an instant.
Two crewmen pinned down its jerking hind legs and stilled the whipping of its tail with their feet. Another wrestled one of its flailing black wings and held it tight. Angus was about to make a grab for the second wing but someone bustled him out of the way and took his place. Relegated to the sidelines all that was left for him was to watch as Crowhurst, one of the ship’s professional dragon-wranglers, straddled the boar’s scaly neck and forced its head into an upright position.
Angus heard the telltale click-click friction of the two flint-like organs that sat half way down the throat of all dragons. Despite the rope around its neck the Treacleshell was desperately trying to produce the spark that would ignite its powerful gaseous breath. Crowhurst reached down and pressed his index finger expertly against the visibly fidgeting bulge on the dragon’s dark, scaly neck.
The clicking ceased.
“Fetch the Breath Extractor!” yelled Captain Zachariah.
A spry crewman dashed along the deck. He was carrying a piece of apparatus with a leather muzzle at one end and a long length of rubber tubing trailing from the other. He barged past Angus and yanked the muzzle over the dragon’s snout. No sooner was the muzzle in place than Crowhurst swiftly buckled the straps behind the Treacleshell’s head. Seconds later the cook came lurching from the galley, his skinny, tattooed arms wrapped around a narrow rimmed clay vessel. He placed the vessel on the deck and stuffed the tubing running from the end of the muzzle into its slender neck.
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