Chapter 3 - Weathering

The aeroship cut through the thick, wispy mist rolling over the swamp. Its single weak engine puttered along steadily. Alanea rasped her nails lightly across the word wooden wheel that helmed the ship. With her brow furrowed, concentrating, her eyes scanned the horizon. The midday fog had rolled in with a vengeance and swallowed the skyland behind them. This shroud was welcome and cloaked the small craft completely.

Cowel stood beside her with his gaze fixed on the swirling mist. A faint residual drone of the strange auditory hallucination he had experienced still echoed in the back of his mind. He couldn't tell if this was him hearing the noise again or if he was recalling it from memory. The large green gemin was now safely stowed in the cargo hold, covered completely to hide its radiant light. He could feel its presence, thrumming from below with constant, resonant vibration. It seemed to be synchronized with his own heartbeat. Maybe it was his heartbeat. He couldn't discern otherwise.

Ever the pragmatist, Edven was below deck checking on the ship's engine. Their hasty departure hadn't caused any problems, but it was a little rough. His eyes were locked on the gemstone where it lay through the floor below him. He couldn't see it directly, of course.

To him, it was just a rock. A valuable one to be sure, but still a rock. He didn't feel what Cowel felt; no reverberation or heartbeat. Edven inspected the simple pistons being driven by the red gemin within the ship's engine. They were running hot but were otherwise cycling air.

"See anything through the spyglass?" Alanea's sharp voice split across the flight deck, through the low hum of the engines, breaking Cowel's concentration. She didn't take her eyes off the clouds to even look toward him. Her senses were heightened and fearful. They were attuned to the subtle shifts of the air rushing around her face. Her years of navigation experience developed this instinct. She trusted goosebumps to tell her if something wasn't going right.

"Heat distortion, I think, in the atmosphere. Mirages, Captain." Cowel replied, though his voice was still shaky from the jump scare the captain caused him. He was still new to this roping together of multiple roles, scavenger, pirate, navigator, lookout, and explorer. Cowel had grown up on a quiet skyland full of farmers. The promise of a life less ordinary lured him away from that environment. He later considered this to be poor judgment. The once romantic notions he had of "soaring through the skies" were being rapidly replaced by the reality of his situation. They were barely surviving out here.

"Just keep your eye out." Alanea didn't bark this order out. "I don't like this. We're obscured by the mist, but it isn't going to stay that way for long." She swept her view across the horizon, searching for anything out of place. There wasn't but a ripple in the vast white field. The fog served to be both an ally and a trap. It concealed them, but made escape more difficult. They still had to look out for natural debris and tiny bergs of smaller stony skylands.

Cowel nodded. His own eyes scanned the same area. Their ship, at least for now, was registered as "The Murky Prospector". It was a small converted hauler, not a warship. It was fast and maneuverable despite its single engine. However, against a dedicated military vessel or pirate cruiser, which were both well-armed, they stood no real chance. They relied on stealth and speed for defense, and would win every fight they never started. Unfortunately, pirates travel in fleets.

For a long while, the only sound on the deck was the low-frequency sputter of the engine, and the whistle of wind as it slipped past some of the ship's open space. The fog was starting to thin and reveal patches of blue sky above. Sourcelight shone through, bathing the clouds in its golden glow. It was a beautiful sight for the two of them. These rare moments of tranquility almost made stomping through the mud worth it for Cowel. He almost allowed himself to believe, for once, that the danger had passed.

A flicker of movement caught the peripheral of Cowel's vision. He had almost missed it. A dark shape was silhouetted against the blinding white lining of clouds. It was small. Too small to be a cruiser, but it was fast and made an agile turn. This was a scout vessel.

His breath caught in his throat, and his fragile peace was shattered. The gemin in the cargo hold released a deep and desperate vibration. It was intense and surging. His own heart gave equal notice.

"Captain!" Cowel's voice tried to yell, but was instead hoarse and inaudible. He pointed toward the object piercing the clouds abroad. "Clip!... Clip!" The words this time exited his mouth as intended.

Alanea's head snapped in the indicated direction, locking onto the distant dark blob. Her focus narrowed, and a muscle twitched in her jaw. "Damn it all! Why?" She hissed venomously. In a low growl, "I knew it. I knew we shouldn't have lingered. I got greedy." Her knuckles turned white as she tightened her hand around the wheel. She resigned grimly as years of doing this had taught her to trust her gut. After countless brushes and close calls, her experience had told her to leave the swamp days ago. She ignored that feeling implicitly, chasing wealth.

She spun the wheel, and the rudder banked the small aeroship sharply left. Its engine, which had been on its lowest operating speed, flared into emitting a bright red light. The engine whined into a higher pitch as its pistons reciprocated. Somewhere in the cargo hold, a stack of two dry barrels toppled.

The scout vessel made its intentions more obvious. Mirroring their movement precisely, with its two engines radiating their own red light. The gemin in their engines flared and flickered as they gave chase. Designed to appear predatory, its fuselage was sleek and efficient. Many would call it aerodynamic.

"Edven!" Alanea's voice boomed across the deck, straight down to the floor below her, to yell through the floor she stood upon. "I need full power to the engine! Right Now!"

Edven, after throwing the engine shutter open, clambered up the flight and a couple of extra stairs to get to the top deck. "What's going on, Captain?" He bleated upward toward her with his neck craned through the cabin door. The sudden turn caused he ship to lurch. He had already been on his way up.

"We have a fast-moving clipper, uh... two masts," Her eyes darted between the swirl of half-dense fog ahead and the pursuing vessel. "...and they are not friendly."

She pushed the throttle lever forward to try to squeeze out a little more power. The ship creaked as its wood encountered higher wind speeds. The rudder wheel lever had limited control over the amount of engine throttle. Manual opening of the retention door inside the engine gave more heat energy. The Murky Prospector vibrated as the air around them dragged. Wind whipped around the two on the flight deck and nearly slammed the cabin door shut on Edven's hand.

The scout vessel was, unfortunately, much faster. Its smooth aerodynamic shape effortlessly created vortices in the fog around it. It closed the distance between them at disturbing speed. Its silhouette was no longer black. Instead, it was dark-stained wood and inlaid with polished steel. With each passing moment, the shadow cast by it on the clouds behind them grew larger.

"They are not slowing down." Cowel spattered an obvious statement nervously. After doing so, he gasped after a period of breathlessness. He hadn't been in a chase like this before. He felt his heartbeat in his head, and it was hammering against his ribs. Everything he knew told him to run and hide, but there was only one place he could be: somewhere on this ship.

"Yes, Cowel, I can see them!" Alanes snapped as her eyes were still rapidly darting between the ship and the dissipating fog. Her mind was calculating to find some way out. Trajectories to drop them. Maybe they could risk something dangerous. "I need something to distract them or maybe to slow them down." She spoke aloud to nobody in particular. The fate of what remained of her crew was her responsibility.

Cowel, still wielding the spyglass, ran toward the bow of the ship, pointing it ahead. "What can we do?" He muttered under his breath. The ship had no weapons to speak of. A ship like this could lug a cannon around on a floatskid, but to fire, they would have to take it off.

Their only hope was to be braver than them, and lose them in the labyrinth of clouds below. He racked his brain desperately searching for any quick solution. He had to think faster and act bolder. He moved his spyglass eyepiece to look into the torrent. There was an idea. It was desperate and reckless, but for him, it was fairly inspired.

In front of and below the ship, fast approaching, was a tiny skyland whose small core was exposed. No bigger than a fist, it spat harsh arcs of electric energy into the air around it. Harmless, as long as you were far above it.

Alanea's eyes widened. There was a short moment of surprise followed by unspoken understanding between them. The torrent was turbulent and chaotic, and an indisputable death trap. A maelstrom of violent winds and crushing pressure. Entering it would invite disaster, but just above that was a slightly less harmful generator of deadly high-voltage electricity.

Within her mind were flashes, thoughts of burning sails and metal turned to slag. Currently, that didn't seem too terrible. Cowel was right, and this was a good choice.

"You are insane!" Alanea's voice, sharp as glass, was in disbelief. "I can't believe I am doing this." She was already starting to implement the plan before scolding him about considering it. There was no reluctance in performing this maneuver. She locked the rudder in a barring that would buzz by the snapping gemstone.

"You know this is lucky, right? We have a good chance, I think. It looks worse than it is." Cowel's voice gained new strength, and that surprised him. Strange, uncharacteristic, and something he would investigate later. "They won't follow us down there. They can't. They're too... clean. It's a shiny." He gestured vaguely toward the pursuing vessel and was right of course.

Every surface of the outside was polished. It was the ship of someone who valued appearances. They wouldn't risk damage and targeted only unarmed ships. It was a fine specimen of a "reclaimed" military patrol vehicle. It gleamed in even the small amount of sourcelight beaming through the clouds.

The Murky Prospector was paint-chipped, bruised, splitting, and barely held together by brackets and nails. It was not afraid to get it, or its crew, a little muddy... or charred by bolts of electricity that would carbonize the outside of its hull.

Alanea hesitated for a moment. There was immense danger coasting by this. It was purely a luck-based endeavor; a gamble, a long shot. The crew on the flight deck of the scout ship were now visible, preparing their hooks to board. Capture was never an option. Especially now with such an expensive object on board.

"Edven! Take the port nacelle and close it on my signal!" She pointed at him and then at the nacelle. Edven shook his head and double-took toward the nacelle. Then immediately sprinted the four steps toward it, almost tripping over a ropeline.

"Alright, suck it up, we can do this!" She gutturally warned. She took a deep breath and projected, screaming. "Let's go now, now!"

Edven closed the portside nacelle shutter, followed by Alanea with the cloudside, and finally Cowel with the front. As they were closed, the ship entered total freefall.

"Open them slowly so we don't hit our own deck!" Alanea ordered as loudly as she could through the wind rushing around them from all directions. Behind them, a startled pursuit vessel watched as their target plummeted suicidally from the sky.

They coordinated their reopening of the nacelle suppression shutters, easing the forces as smoothly as they could to return to normal. This was mostly successful. Although many of the objects in the cargo hold were no longer stacked, had fallen, or spilled over; including the gemstone.

The pilot of the scout vessel backed off, clearly unwilling to follow them into the torrent. They made a sharp, ninety-degree, left-hand turn. At cruising speed, they continued away. The captain had thought they might make a holding pattern over them, which their ship might have been able to pull off. Perhaps they thought the crew wouldn't be coming back up.

The Murky Prospector was now plunged deep into the dense clouds and was fast approaching a blur of flashing electric light. The wind alone caused a deafening roar, and the ship bucked and groaned in response.

Cowel and Alanea both ran up the stairs toward the rudder, but there wasn't much they could do. The world around them dissolved into a cacophony of snapping and buzzing arcs of electricity. In here was the remains of a single ship, welded to the stone as ladders of electrical energy climbed across its conductive surface. The bones of those aboard vaporized long ago. Though the soles of their boots remained melted to the wood of the deck.

The gemin in the cargo hold was now frantically thrashing around in a corner of the hold, moving of its own accord. It wanted a type of safety that was currently impossible to give. Cowel could feel the stone's fear and was now certain of its ability to communicate with him.

He glanced toward Alanea, who was trying to gain control of the rudder, just as he was. Her eyes were fixated on the chaos ahead of them. She was the captain, and as such, Cowel released the controls. Alanea's hands moved over the controls, swaying with the movement of the ship in the wind. The flashes of purple, blue, and yellow plasma around them were terrifying; crazy, really.

Alanea too let go of the rudder controls as the ship coasted through the energetic field, propelled by its engine. Turning the ship a few degrees wouldn't make the random arcs of electricity any less likely to hit them.

As this artificial storm raged around them, the dense clouds illuminated. Thunder cracked from some of the larger emissions. At this distance, it practically knocked the wind out of them. A bolt of energy climbed the front mast, catching the topmost sail alight. Before any of them could respond, it was sheared off by the wind as soon as it caught fire, preventing further damage.

After another few beads of drift, the electrical arcs were no longer a threat. To their eyes, the scout vessel was gone. Lost to view in the mixing mist above. To get out, they only needed to increase altitude in the opposite way they descended, by opening the nacelle shutters fully. The storm around them slowly passed as they rose from the gentle part of the torrent, long away from where they first dropped into it.

The gemstone below was still afraid and confused, but Cowel felt a sense of trust from it. He could feel its presence all the time, and he would have to address it personally.

Alanea calmly approached Cowel. "We are down a sail and our side's got a fern pattern scorched into it." She held a rag in her hand, covered in soot from wetting the charred wood to prevent smoldering. "Considering what we just went through, it's not even damage."

The captain pointed, looking at the top of the mast, and jokingly gestured. "We probably didn't need our main skysail anyway."