How is that possible? Ridge’s mind raced even as his eyes darted back and forth, searching the snowy night sky. Some kind of magic? Even with the Iskandian power sources, his people couldn’t put fliers in the sky without pilots.
I don’t sense anything like your energy sources, but there is… something.
That something buzzed out of the sky, not from below but from above, angling straight toward the cockpit. A black flying contraption with three sets of parallel wings stacked atop each other and a cylindrical body dove for him. Though startled, Ridge kept his calm, veering away smoothly. That calm, however, was threatened when the sound of machine gun fire rattled the heavens.
It wasn’t coming from the first contraption but from the second, which also came in from above, diving straight toward him on his new course. There hadn’t been a person, or even a cockpit—he couldn’t have missed that. Who in all the hells was firing at him?
“Hang on,” he yelled for Sardelle’s sake, then swooped upward, much as he had in Crazy Canyon. He looped, turning upside down so he could come back down, this time with the pair of contraptions in his sights.
Sardelle popped into his thoughts, “speaking” rapidly, probably not wanting to break his concentration. I could keep their bullets from hitting us, but you wouldn’t be able to fire through the shield I erected.
No shield. Ridge didn’t say more, because he had the first contraption in view now. It hadn’t changed course. His path brought him toward it from the side, and he thumbed the firing trigger. His own bullets streaked out, every fifth one an incendiary. One of those struck, and a burst of orange lit the sky for a moment. Ridge weaved and dipped, in case the second contraption was targeting him. But he caught sight of it over his left shoulder. It was on the same course as the first. They were flying in tandem, Ridge realized, now that he could see the puzzle from outside of it rather than from within. Interesting. If they stayed together, that would make them easy to take out, but he didn’t assume that they would. He didn’t know what these things were or what to expect.
The first was damaged, but still flying, coming around toward him, the same as its buddy. This time, Ridge dove instead of pulling upward to make a loop. He twisted as he dove, then leveled out, wanting a better look at them as he passed under them.
Their guns fired again, but he thought he was safe, since their front ends were facing where he had been rather than where he was or where he was going. But in the poor lighting, he realized almost too late that they could fire in more directions than straight. More because of instinct than anything he saw, he pulled up again. Just in time. Bullets pounded the air where he had been.
A light flared behind him, but he ignored it, concentrating on these strange new foes. He did another loop, adjusting his fall so he came down behind them this time. He showed no mercy on the trigger, hammering the back end of the closest one. They had propellers in the front, like his flier, but he couldn’t know for sure where the engine was. In the rear? Or buried under some armor farther toward the front? If there had been a pilot, he could have aimed at the person…
Hoping for luck, he continued to pound ammunition into the craft. It banked and swerved, trying to avoid him, but he hung on like a tick on a dog’s tail. Finally, one of his bullets struck something vital. Black smoke poured from the back of the contraption, and it lost all of its momentum. It dipped, spiraling toward the mountainside below. Without taking time to admire his handiwork, Ridge accelerated after the second one. They were as fast as his craft, and more maneuverable thanks to their smaller size—and lack of passengers—but whoever or whatever was controlling them was used to horizontal movement and didn’t think about the three dimensions offered by the sky. The remaining contraption tried to turn for home, but Ridge cut it off, slamming rounds into it again. This time, it exploded spectacularly, lighting up the night sky so much that he had to raise his arm to shield his eyes.
That wasn’t my incendiary bullet, he thought dryly.
Jaxi wanted to help. She got excited, thinking we might deflect some bullets, or burn them out of the air, but you were too adept at swooping around and avoiding getting hit.
Ah, so that explained the glow. Sardelle had her sword out, the way she had the night she had battled that shaman and his Cofah bodyguards, the magical blade melting bullets out of the sky before they could reach her. Sorry, I’ll try to be less efficient next time.
No need for that. But in future battles, please let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.
Ridge smiled, pleased by her calm demeanor. Her first flight, and she hadn’t thought anything of the upside down loops or being shot at. Colonel Thugly probably would have been digging his nails into his shoulder. For a brief moment, Ridge entertained himself with the idea of recruiting Sardelle for his squadron, but a lot of rules and beliefs would have to change before that could be a possibility. In the meantime, they had other worries.
You can help me by figuring out exactly what those things were.
Hard from here. Can we go down and take a look at one?
“Sir? Everything all right?” Ahn asked.
Ridge didn’t know how far the communication crystals worked, and he glanced up at first, expecting to see her flier nearby. But he and Sardelle were alone in the snowy sky.
“Two unmanned mechanical aircraft tried to shoot us out of the night,” Ridge said.
“Unmanned?”
“The Cofah don’t have that kind of technology,” Apex said. “We don’t, either, and we’ve been flying longer than they have.”
“We downed them and are going to take a look,” Ridge said. “Unless Nowon already knows all about them and wants to share that information.”
“I have no knowledge of them,” Nowon called, doubtlessly leaning up to Apex’s shoulder to be heard. “They must be extremely new. I would appreciate it if you would retrieve a sample for me.”
There was something off about a captain asking a colonel to go sample collecting for him, but Ridge merely said, “I’ll see what we can do. Just finding the crash sites in the snow will be a challenge.”
“Understood.”
I can direct you to one.
Oh? Ridge thought of the avalanche she had dug a number of soldiers out of, including himself. Because you saw where they went down and have a mathematical formula?
Not exactly.
Ridge headed in the direction the first one had crashed, figuring there would be more remaining of that one, since it hadn’t been obliterated in a fiery ball.
Jaxi is now feeling sheepish, Sardelle announced.
Oh? From our brief conversations and from what you’ve told me, I didn’t think that was an emotion she could feel.
It’s an extremely infrequent visitor for her. That’s why I thought it might be worth sharing.
Ridge slowed down as they drew closer to the ground. The snow brightened the landscape somewhat, but he still couldn’t see much. The last thing he wanted was to successfully fight off the enemy attack only to bury himself in a snow bank because he wasn’t paying attention.
About two hundred feet lower on the mountainside and ten degrees to port. As Ridge nudged the flier in the indicated direction, Sardelle added, Do pilots use nautical directions?
The hands on the clock usually. He leaned forward in his seat, his harness digging at his shoulders. Was that something black lying in the snow down there? Something besides a log?
A soft orange glow appeared in the direction he was looking. If he hadn’t seen the same effect on the highway north of Pinoth, it would have alarmed him, but he merely said, “Thank you.” It lit up the ground, but it shouldn’t be visible from far away. Which was good, because they weren’t that far from the village. For all he knew, a squad of soldiers was on its way out to investigate the crashed contraptions.
No soldiers yet, but I’ll let you know if that changes.
How far out can you sense? With the light, Ridge could tell the dark blob on the snow was the wr
eck rather than a log, and he took them close, circling and trying to find a landing spot on the sloped and treed hillside.
A few miles usually. But Jaxi is closer to fifty, and she can communicate with me from an even greater distance.
Really? Is she more powerful than you? Up until the morning’s conversation, Ridge had been thinking of the sword as a tool, rather than an entity, and he had certainly never considered that its powers might be so great.
That question resulted in her losing all of her sheepishness and growing very smug.
Oh, sorry.
Ridge found a flat area about a half mile from the wreck, the snow largely swept free of the rock by prevailing winds. He wished he could get closer, but mountains weren’t known for offering many landing spots. Sardelle’s light was still guiding him, so he took them down. Even though the two-seater had been unwieldy during the skirmish, he was glad for the thrusters at the moment. He never could have landed his regular flier anywhere except a road or maybe a field out on the steppes.
Jaxi was born more than three hundred years before I was. She’s that many generations closer to those original humans who were daring enough to mate with dragons and whose offspring received some of their powers. As the dragon blood was diluted over the centuries, sorcerers grew less and less powerful. A weak one from Jaxi’s generation would have been considered a moderately or even very powerful magic user in my generation. I believe the shaman I faced outside of Galmok Mountain was an example of a very powerful magic user in this generation. I defeated him, but I wasn’t considered powerful by my generation’s standards. As for Jaxi, she can’t do all that she could do as a mortal, but she’s still quite capable.
Ridge settled on the stone outcropping, the thrusters and heat of the engine melting the snow in the crevices of the rock. He unfastened his harness, climbed down, and turned, intending to give Sardelle a hand, but she hopped down and landed beside him.
“Let’s go see what you brought down,” she said with a smile.
“Yes, ma’am.” It was almost strange speaking out loud after all of their silent conversations, but with the propeller stopped and the wind a mere breeze, softened by the snowfall, there was no need. Ridge gazed out toward the steppes for a moment, making sure there wasn’t any obvious sign of pursuit, then headed up the slope.
“I think that village is exactly what it looked like,” Sardelle said. “Something simple and rural that just happened to have someone stationed in a watchtower. There are probably only one or two soldiers for the post.”
“One or two soldiers can rouse a village of people with bows and pitchforks.” Ridge grimaced as his boots sank into the snow up to his knees. This was going to be quite the slog, maybe taking longer than he had realized. So much for the night’s sleep—or standing watch professionally—that he had been waiting for.
Sardelle didn’t debate his statement. They clambered up the slope in silence, though they were soon breathing hard from their exertions. Ridge wasn’t out of shape, but this was hard work. He kept looking up the hillside, hoping to spot the thing, but it had to be close to a half hour before the black wreckage came into sight. The three sets of wings had been torn off in the crash, and littered the mountainside. The rest of the battered body was half sunken into the snow.
Wiping sweat from his brow, he pushed his way toward it. “Nowon better appreciate his sample. Even if all I feel like lugging back is a screw.”
Sardelle increased the intensity of the light that had been guiding their way, but stood back to leave the investigating to him. “My engineering knowledge is rudimentary.”
“And here I thought it was a secret passion when you were summarizing Denhoft’s Theories on Aerodynamic and Aerostatic Flight to me.”
Her light was just bright enough that he could make out the redness of her cheeks. That wasn’t all from exertion, he didn’t think.
Ridge stepped toward the wreck, wanting to touch the remains of the hull to see if the black was paint or some strange metal he wasn’t familiar with, but paused, his hand hovering above the fuselage. “It doesn’t have any magical alarms or traps that will go off if I touch it, does it?”
“None that I can sense.”
“You didn’t think it was magic before. Are you still of that opinion?”
“I’m… not sure. I do sense something not entirely mundane, but it’s not like the tools and baubles that sorcerers can make.” She groped in the air with her gloved hands, as if she could find the proper term to explain her feeling there.
Ridge prodded the hull with a finger. Nothing happened. Emboldened, he patted around the cylindrical hull, searching for an access panel. There wasn’t a cockpit, nor would the contraption have been able to support the weight of a man. It was only a third of the size of a one-man flier. Even the guns were scaled down, though he didn’t doubt that they could have damaged his craft if their bullets had struck. The hull did seem to be painted, so his thoughts of strange new metals were unfounded.
“Got something,” he said, his gloves sliding over a crack in the side. He pulled out his utility knife and levered the panel open. He expected some burst of light to shine out, something similar to what his flier’s power crystal emitted, but there was nothing of the sort. There were wheels and levers inside with wires all going to a little box. It had been dented in the crash, but he managed to pull it out, not worrying about the wires snapping. He pried it open, then leaned closer to Sardelle’s light.
A thumbnail-sized glass dome was mounted on something that reminded him of the punch cards used in machines back home. He couldn’t believe the technology he was familiar with could have directed these two aircraft. Not a chance.
He tilted the little dome toward the light and was surprised when a bubble of air moved around inside. “Huh.”
“A liquid?” Sardelle asked.
“A crimson liquid.” Ridge held it toward her. “Is that the source of your not-entirely-mundane feeling?”
Sardelle nodded without taking the board. Her eyes had grown wide.
“Dragon blood?” Ridge asked.
“I… think we should test it before making that assumption. Your king’s report, he didn’t mention anything like this, did he?” She spread her fingers toward the wreck.
“No.” Ridge pocketed the small board. Nowon was going to get a very interesting sample. “Let’s hope Tolemek has something in his bag for examining it. I can tell you one thing, right now.”
“What’s that?”
“I’ve looked this craft over from nose to tail, and there’s nothing else on here that could be a fuel source, not that my brain can fathom anyway.”
“I’m not aware that dragon blood was ever used for fuel. The mind boggles at the notion of a dragon allowing its blood to be used thusly. Or used at all, for that matter. All the legends tell us they were the most formidable creatures in the world. And arrogant and prickly by nature. That said… I don’t know of anyone who was trying to power machines a thousand years ago. Your archaeologist pilot may have more insight, but you were pretty sophisticated if you were using whale oil lamps instead of candles back then.”
If the king’s spies had learned of this, Ridge understood the reasoning—the urgency—behind this mission.
His body had chilled, so he waved for them to head back to the flier. The weather wouldn’t be pleasant tonight wherever the squadron landed, but he hoped it would be a few degrees warmer on the flats beneath the mountains. He gave the wreck several long looks over his shoulder as he and Sardelle picked their way back along the trail they had broken.
“Something else bothering you?” she asked.
“Just thinking that whatever we’re dealing with, it’s far more advanced than anything the Cofah have brought to Iskandia before. If there are more machines like this, we could be in trouble.”
Chapter 7
Sardelle rubbed her arms, shivering in the cold air and watching Ridge try to stifle yawn after yawn. She wanted to drag him off to
bed, or to a bedroll, as the case was. Instead, as the midnight snow fell, he was crouching over a map with Nowon and Kaika, pointing and discussing an extraction plan with them, while the other pilots checked the fliers for damage or maintenance needs. A couple of bullets had clipped the wings of Ridge’s craft during the skirmish with the Cofah constructs.
Since landing, Sardelle had gotten her first good look at the elite troops captains, but they hadn’t done more than give her curious and slightly suspicious looks. The pilots, too, were giving her the squint eye. Duck had been sent off on some mission as soon as they arrived, but Apex kept frowning in Sardelle’s direction. Everyone had to be wondering what Ridge had been thinking in bringing her, especially considering the unorthodox manner in which she had been added to the team. She had been thinking of how she might prove herself to the king, but perhaps she needed to start with them.
Without revealing yourself?
I don’t know, Jaxi.
While Ridge and the others worked, Sardelle loitered near Tolemek, wanting to hear his assessment of the liquid trapped in the bubble. Strange that he was the person here she was most comfortable with now, aside from Ridge. A few weeks ago, she never would have thought she would have any sort of relationship with him, but as the only other non-military person here, she felt a kinship with him. Maybe it was because he was getting even darker glares than she from Apex and from the captains too. Ahn was the only one who saw him as anything other than Deathmaker.
At the moment, Tolemek was kneeling on a bare patch of ground, a lantern burning beside him as he poked into one of his bags. He was assembling something.
“A microscope?” Sardelle guessed as the pieces came together.
“Yes, a very small and weak one. My equipment selection was severely limited due to the weight restrictions someone imposed upon me.” He leveled a stare, not at Ridge but at Ahn.
“It’s not my fault your muscles weigh so much,” Ahn said. “You should be happy we didn’t overheat the engine and fall out of the sky over Hariti.”
The Dragon Blood Collection, Books 1-3 Page 61
