Shadow of the Conqueror

by Shad M Brooks

  “You got it. The safeties are to prevent things like that.”

  “Which you’re about to disengage.”

  “Fun, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, not the word that comes to mind.”

  “Well, I’m only going to loosen those safeties. The main things I need to disable altogether are the altitude regulator and the lock.”

  “Altitude regulator?”

  “Stops the ship from free falling.”

  “How does the ship know the difference between falling and descending in normal flight?”

  “Good question. The ship doesn’t know a thing. The engineers who designed it knew that if all vertical hubs are opened, the ship will freefall. To fix that, each hub has a gauge, which is connected to this gearbox.” Daylen pointed to a wide-riveted steel box under the helm with multiple small rods connected to the main levers and twenty driveshafts that ran down into the ship. “This is the main safety regulator. It prevents the vertical hubs all being opened at once, or opened to the core’s luminous threshold. It also forces the levers to tick through stages when opening, which controls the ship’s rate of acceleration.”

  “So do you just rip it out?”

  “Nope, the control levers pass through this gearbox. Rip it out and you rip out your ability to fly the ship.”

  Daylen drew Imperious and deftly cut through the rivets holding the thick front case of the gearbox, which fell clanking on the deck.

  Within the gearbox was a maze of oiled cogs. It was like looking inside a large and even more complex pocketwatch.

  “Light, that looks confusing,” Sain said.

  “Only if you’ve never worked with them before,” Daylen said, putting Imperious back before reaching in, enhancing his strength. He didn’t have the right tools to unscrew the gear, so instead he ripped it from its thread. “Regulator springs are now disconnected.” He then grabbed a series of gears all lined up next to one another on the same shaft and ripped that entire component free. “And that’s the safety lock.”

  Daylen stood and handed Sain the components. “Here, a present.”

  “Uh, thanks,” Sain said and threw them over his shoulder. “So now you could close all the altitude hubs and we’d plummet.”

  “No, closing the altitude hubs would lock the core from vertical light, which would lock our altitude.”

  “So yeah, to free fall, all the vertical hubs have to be open, and then we’d plummet to our deaths.”

  “Like I said, fun.”

  “I can’t believe the amount of stuff inside these things. They’re so complex.”

  “It’s all based off simple principles, but it’s incredibly sophisticated. Skyships are amazing feats of engineering.” Daylen looked to the piece of paper he had made his notes on. “So, according to my calculations, I need to set the longitude and latitude hubs to this and this.” Daylen pulled the levers a degree at a time until they were in the right place, and then locked them there. “Now the tricky one: altitude.”

  Sain leaned in and was visibly nervous.

  “There’s a lot to calculate,” Daylen said. “Like the ship’s weight, which is very hard to figure out considering cargo. So if I get it wrong… Well, you get the picture.”

  “Just…just don’t be wrong, yeah?”

  Degree by degree, Daylen released the altitude lever until he simply pushed the levers fully up.

  The ship suddenly fell out from under them, and Sain screamed.

  Pulling the levers back down, the ship stopped instantly and Sain landed on the deck with very little grace, falling on his rear.

  Daylen laughed hysterically. “You just soiled yourself!”

  “You…” Sain tried to say, but was quivering in fear and rage. “You bastard!”

  “That,” Daylen replied, “I don’t deny.”

  A voice called out from above them, “Is everything all right?”

  Daylen called back, “Oh, it’s fine, Ahrek! I’m just teaching our new friend here how to cure constipation.”

  “Oh, well, make sure he wipes himself properly. We don’t want him stinking of poo the whole trip.”

  “Get stoned, the both of you!”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The possibility of what was happening, that the girls were being forced into my bed, had always been in the back of my mind, but I was happy in self-imposed ignorance. The truth was that I really didn’t care. I was getting what I wanted.

  * * *

  There’s little danger in falling,” Daylen said. “I was just pulling your leg. Even though what we’re trying to do is very close to the threshold, we’ll feel the ship slowly sink before it freefalls. Finding the altitude threshold is actually the easiest, because you can measure off the movement of the ship.”

  Daylen began to nudge the altitude lever degree by degree until the switchback began sinking very slowly.

  “See? Now that we can feel that we’re just over, we nudge the lever a degree at a time back until the ship stops, and that’s the sweet spot.” One nudge later, and the ship halted. “Done. This switchback is good to be towed.”

  Sain grabbed the scrap piece of paper Daylen had been writing on. “What was with all the math, then?”

  “I still needed to calculate the longitude and latitude hub positions. You don’t need to factor in the weight of the ship, just the size of the core. I still might be a few degrees off, but I’ll be able to tell when we try and tow.”

  Daylen walked forward and grabbed Sain.

  Because Daylen had let the switchback fall a bit from his joke to scare the boy, it was about ten meters lower than the Maraven.

  “What are you doing?” Sain asked, as if expecting another beating, but before he could finish, Daylen had scooped him under his arm. Daylen crouched, his strength already enhanced, and he increased his mass. The timber planks groaned as they now supported a near ton of weight. Daylen then pushed up, ready to release his mass to propel himself.

  His feet pushed through the deck under him. Daylen instantly released his enhanced mass but still fell with a yelp of surprise. Sain hit the side of the hole Daylen had just made, Daylen hanging halfway through, holding himself up by leaning on Sain and bracing himself with his other hand.

  “Get off!” Sain tried to yell, with Daylen’s now normal weight on him.

  “I’m a blackened idiot,” Daylen said as he climbed out of the hole.

  Sain was looking at the hole in the deck. “The ship is falling apart.”

  “No, the ship is fine,” Daylen said, grabbing Sain and channeling light through all of his bonds to his strength.

  “This again?” Sain said, frustrated.

  “Oh, this time it’s going to be a little different,” Daylen said as he took Sain from the back of his belt and neck of his shirt, picking him up like a bag of grain. Spinning around to build momentum, Daylen tossed Sain up to the other ship.

  Sain screamed the whole way. Daylen had measured the throw well, as the boy crested the railing of the Maraven with only half a meter’s clearance. He obviously landed on the deck without a problem, as there were no cries of pain—but there were some curses.

  “You’re a light-cursed bastard, you are!” Sain called out to him.

  Daylen chuckled and looked about.

  Clearly his enhanced jump through mass manipulation was too powerful; indeed, it wouldn’t serve all the time because it easily launched him fifty meters on a single bond. He could experiment with half bonds, but now wasn’t the time.

  He needed another way to jump a more modest superhuman distance.

  Well, he could make himself sixteen times as strong. That should grant him a significant jumping distance. It wouldn’t be anything near what he could achieve with his mass-manipulated jumps, which was exactly what he wanted.

  Daylen walked to a more supported point on the deck, as there was still a small chance he might kick through the floor again.

  Once in place, Daylen enhanced his strength and jumped with all
his might.

  The height of his jump was only a little more than usual, even though it felt like he weighed nothing due to his greater strength.

  “Well that’s odd.” Daylen said, placing his hands on his hips and thinking. “I need momentum to jump, which is a property of mass and speed, not strength. Enhancing my strength increased the rate I could extend my legs marginally, which had a lesser effect on the height of my jump. So instead. . .”

  Daylen crouched, channeling two bonds of light to his speed and then jumped. He shot into the air a good fifteen meters and slowly arced over the Maraven’s railing and landed easily.

  Interesting that my speed jump must have required greater strength to extend my legs so fast, Daylen thought. Or at least more power. It must be another tangential augmentation in the same way my body’s durability increases with greater mass.

  “You’re an Archknight!” Sain said, staring at Daylen in awe.

  “No, I’m not. And five meters, remember?”

  Sain hopped forward to keep close. “No, that’s it. I thought you were just really strong and weird, but seeing you jump like that… Only Archknights can jump that high.”

  Daylen shook his head. “I’m not an Archknight.”

  “You have to be!”

  “Would you tell him, Ahrek?”

  “Daylen is not an Archknight,” Ahrek confirmed.

  “Thank you,” Daylen said, looking at Sain.

  Sain was looking at Ahrek, clearly knowing he was a Lightbringer and thus couldn’t lie. “So how can you do what you do?” Sain asked Daylen.

  Daylen sighed impatiently. “How can the Archknights do what they do? It’s just magic.”

  “There’s more to it than that.”

  “And you really think I’m going to tell you?”

  That finally shut him up, the petulant whelp.

  Daylen left the snot under Ahrek’s supervision while he dug up some strong rigging straps used to strap cargo containers to the undersides of skyships when their standard cargo holds were insufficient.

  Not all carriers were built for such stress, but the Maraven was a hauler; and, well, the name said it all.

  Daylen moved the Maraven to sit directly above the switchback and fixed the straps to their fittings. He then jumped from the Maraven to swing under and around the switchback and then fixed the straps on the other side.

  It was incredibly fun, like flying on a giant swing.

  Daylen repeated this for every strap that had a fitting, eight in all, which held the switchback firmly underneath.

  “We’re good to get underway,” Daylen said, approaching Ahrek. “How are the girls?”

  “They’re doing better than when we found them,” Ahrek replied.

  Daylen looked to them and realized from their stares that they were probably watching him the entire time as he jumped and swung around the ships. Black, there was even more adoration in their eyes than before. Daylen groaned inwardly.

  “They’re still coming to terms with the relief of their rescue,” Ahrek added. “Some look to scarcely believe it.”

  “They’re lucky,” Daylen said. “There’s a whole lot more girls stowed away in other carriers meant for the market.”

  “It sickens me.”

  Daylen nodded slowly. “We might have a chance to dig out the scum who run the larger operation. The former captain of this ship must have some notes in his cabin about the drop off and sale.”

  “I guess we’ll know what we’re doing after we search for the pirate’s hideout.”

  “If there’s no more surprises... Have you told the girls that we’re not taking them home straight away?”

  “Yes, they seemed more than willing to wait if it meant saving other kidnapped girls.”

  “Good,” Daylen said, looking toward the Plummet, “but we need to sleep before winding our way through the Isles. I’ll fly us to the underside of one of the lower islands. There’s bound to be a good bay to shelter us for the rest of the Low. While I’m doing that, you conjure us something to eat.”

  Daylen did indeed find a good bay underneath a near island which covered much of the ship from hostile eyes. Lower cloud cover intermediately masked them from the surface underneath, but being so high up, anyone would need a damn good telescope to see them anyway, after the miracle of actually finding where to look.

  Ahrek made sure the girls were well fed before finding them appropriate sleeping quarters. Daylen dragged Sain below deck and locked him in the brig.

  “Are you kidding me?!” Sain protested.

  “Nope.”

  “Come on, I’m not going to escape.”

  “What a load of drack. You’ll be gone at the first opportunity, and though I wouldn’t exactly be particularly upset to lose your company, I still need you to guide us to your former friends hideout.”

  Sain punched the bars and screamed angrily.

  Daylen laughed. “That’s sure to achieve a lot. Keep going. I’ll see you at the fall.”

  “Get stoned!”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  What I did to those girls was a true and terrible form of psychological and sexual torture. Many broke, so young and unprepared for the horrors of life, their minds snapping like twigs, and so I put them out of their misery. I saw no point in sending a mindless girl back to her family that couldn’t contribute to society. To me, they were already dead. They had killed themselves.

  It’s funny how we can go on thinking that there’s a line we would never cross whilst having long since crossed it. I thought rape a thing so evil that it was far beyond my capability, and I made sure death was the penalty of that crime. I may have never physically forced a girl into my bed, but the truth was that they were all forced, just not by me directly, but rather at my command, and I had in every way become a compulsive rapist of young women.

  * * *

  Daylen ate with Ahrek, finding the Bringer uncharacteristically quiet. When probing to see what was wrong, Ahrek simply replied that there was a lot on his mind and that he would sleep on the deck, as the fall was bright and warm.

  Daylen couldn’t be bothered arguing and made his way to the captain’s quarters.

  No expense had been spared, it seemed, for the quarters were truly lavish. It was the size of a regular master bedroom, and being on a skyship that meant it was comparatively huge. The room was carpeted, with patterned wallpaper on the walls, a coffee table with couches on either side, a sunstone chandelier, a large study desk, a glass cabinet filled with expensive spirits, bookshelves, armoires, a side washing room with toilet, and a large four-poster bed sat in front of massive lead-lined windows that stretched the entire length of the aft.

  “Figures,” Daylen said to himself. “The only thing he bothered to maintain on his ship was his own room.”

  Daylen walked to the drinks cabinet and found a nicely aged scotch. Pouring himself a glass, he sat at the desk and began rummaging through the old captain’s notes. It didn’t take long for him to find what he was looking for: the captain’s journal, ledger, and itinerary.

  Daylen began reading, being utterly meticulous so he wouldn’t miss any important details, even though he knew what he really wanted would be near the ends of these documents. After a few hours and learning some important information, he came to it—the delivery of the current cargo.

  Unfortunately there was no address, just a place somewhere in the city called the “Meat Market.” There was a note describing the need to get the goods there by the end of High Fall on the sixty-third fall of summer, which happened to be right then. Well, it was clear they weren’t going to make that appointment.

  How were they going to get past the inspections? Daylen wondered. All skyships that entered a city had to be inspected at its skyport, even the ships with a permit to anchor at private docks. The Maraven’s captain must have set up a drop-off outside the city. Things were much easier to smuggle in on the ground than the sky, regarding large cities at least.

  Unfortu
nately Daylen could find nothing about the drop off, which meant all he really had was the name of the market. Knowing criminal organizations, they would definitely change the location of this market constantly.

  Still, Daylen was confident that he could track it down. He would spend his life doing good, and this was as good a place to start as any.

  A soft knock came on the door. It clearly wasn’t Ahrek—the knock wasn’t right—so then it had to have been one of the girls.

  What could they want?

  “Come in.”

  Sure enough, a young girl with blue hair streaked with red wearing a dirty tattered white dress entered. She was the one who had first thanked him up on deck. Big blue eyes, dark lashes, a button nose, and flushed lips—no wonder she had been targeted by the traffickers. She nervously shut the door behind her.

  “Is there something wrong?” Daylen asked.

  “My…my name is Sharra.”

  “Oh, of course, Sharra,” Daylen said, getting up and walking toward her. “What can I do for you?”

  “The Bringer—he called you Daylen.”

  “Yes,” Daylen said, growing suspicious.

  “Where are your parents, Daylen?”

  “They died a long time ago.”

  “I see. That’s why you’re alone, why you’re able to be so strong… I was living with my family when I was taken, but I can’t go back.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Sharra began to weep as she continued, “I’m…I’m ruined now. I’m no longer pure…”

  Daylen took Sharra by the shoulders and looked right into her eyes. “That’s a load of drack!”

  Sharra was blubbering by now. “But who’ll marry me now? My…my parents won’t want me anymore.”

  “If your parents love you, that isn’t true.”

  “But they don’t love me,” she whispered forlornly. “They’ve said as much. I’m a bastard. My true mother died, my stepmother hates me, and my father is shamed by my existence. The only reason they accepted me into the family was because I’m pretty. They intended me to marry, but now no one will have me. I have nowhere to go.”