Chapter 12 - Frigin' Frigate

The Prospector's silky sails shimmered in the sourcelight. For the crew, days had been bleeding into each other since their frantic attack and escape from the kobald territories. Constant vigilance of the captain was necessary until they passed into Lillyvon's area of influence. She remained at the helm's wheel, with her hand calloused over from the blisters her grip had formed. Even though it was well polished and waxed, the pressure was too much for her skin. Her owl familiar remained swiveling its head occasionally. Sometimes it would rotate a full one hundred and eighty degrees, reminding her that it was still creepy.

Cowel settled near the bow. In his hand was a freshly cut and rounded Prism, pulsing in his palm. The allgeminel was shrouded in its protective cloth. It was no longer there to protect the stone from sight, but rather to protect its freshly finished surface from scratches. Within the last day since Kuthe had finished the cutting operation, he had grown accustomed to carrying it around. It shared his awareness and provided thoughts beneath his own. He likened it to having an imaginary friend.

As they drew closer to the expansive region controlled by the Great Circus, Prism emanated its reluctance onto Cowel. This sense of foreboding from the gemstone caused his abdomen to tense up. The feeling for him was not fear exactly. Prism, over the last week, had begun to release itself from fear. The stone conveyed to him premonitory planning of the trials it expected to face, as if finding something to say.

"See anything in the spyglass, Edven?" Alanea's voice was sharp and clear, mostly due to irritation from the pain in her hands.

Edven hunched over the railing of the cabin deck toward the cloudside, grunting as it pushed against his stomach. "Nothing solid. Getting some magma falling from the argo strip in like... ten redknots." He remained taut across the rail.

Alanea figured that there would be nothing solid around this place. The only ships travelling the outways fork from Radeph were traders on their way to Bellflower. Those merchants would often be escorted by the military to reduce the threat of piracy. So they would be in visible groups. If they ran into anyone, they would be from the Great Circus, which would temporarily benefit them.

Kuthe sat cross-legged on a pillow amidst scattered scrolls and instruments. His golden scales glinted from the gemin lights in the galley. His obsidian eyes were fixated on the direction of the queen beyond the ship's shell. He had been more modest than usual since their discussion, partly due to the gemcutting, but also because he was contemplating something. The other members of the crew didn't know if he was uneasy about the upcoming meeting, or if his thoughts were on playing the game ahead to win.

"We're nearing some markers of Carnival-controlled airspace. I wouldn't call this controlled by them, though. So keep looking alive. Lilly's lieutenants don't take kindly to surprise visitors." The captain used her convincing voice of command. Lillian's allegiance was a fragile thing. It could easily be swayed by profit or the allure of power. Anyone could have promised anything to her or to her husband, Adrian Von. Thankfully, he was often predisposed.

A glimmer of metal shone down Edven's magnified eyepiece. "Bearing two-eight-zero! Something is closing in fast!" Edven was screaming in alarm, with the captain only a few feet away.

Alanea ran toward him, leaning over the rail herself, blocking the sourcelight above with her hands. "Identification?" she barked at equal volume, right next to him.

"Unknow--- wait. It's Radephian. A frigate by the looks of it. It's not the same one, their ship name starts with a 'C'." Edven spoke with his normal outside voice.

A lone Radephian frigate this far from their patrol routes was bizarre. In addition to threatening conflict with Lillyvon, their actions also threatened a much larger international incident with Argentis. Alanea concluded this to be a probing action to test the area's defenses, whatever they were. This war was encroaching its tendrils in from the frontier lands outwards of the Argentian's center. This included the sanctuary of Lillyvon's Carnival, and was a dumb thing for Radeph to be doing.

"A frigate?" Cowel was asking loudly as he jogged the length of the ship. He approached the rail with the others, resting his hand on the hilt of his newly acquired knife. The Murky Prospector, even with its recent upgrades, was a mismatch in firepower. Three decks, each with fifteen guns on both sides, versus: a wildcard, three dreamers, three keygemin, and a whatever the kobald could pull out of his ass.

"They're testing to see how far they can push toward us." Alanea ground her teeth.

"Do they know what they are doing is a bad idea?" Cowel's face showed concern. Not for themselves, but for the Radephian soldiers onboard. "Can they see us?"

"I'm not about to find out." Alanea took as deep a breath as she could before bellowing. "Prepare for an evasive maneuver!" She stepped backward the five paces it took to get back to the helm wheel. The Prospector, though not built for combat, was nimble. Even before the retrofit, it was a scavenger's vessel designed to squeeze into tight areas and make a quick escape. Alanea always pushed the ship close to its limits. With the fresh power provided by two pairs of propellers, those limits had recently become much higher.

"Let's see what she can do!" Alanea turned the helm wheel with the palm of one hand as if she were about to parallel park the ship into a crowded aeroina, and pulled open the restriction lever on the red gemin engines. The inertia of this turn slid Kuthe to the wall side of the stairs, where he was walking up to the top of the cabin deck.

The skylands on the edge of Lilly's Land were fractured, creating a lot of debris. Many of these debris fields had been cleaned up and managed by centuries of people passing through the skyway. However, magma flows falling from the skylands into the torrent created clouds of ash. Combined with rocky skylets and floaters, the approach to Lilly's Land and the Great Circus was best done from above.

Alanea plunged the ship into this area, threading through the skylets. The remnants of these ancient shattered skylands drifted past them. The crew tied loose cloths around their mouths. Cowel's serval companion did her best to keep the air around them free of debris, and Alanea's owl smote occasional embers with pinpoint-accurate needle-thin jets of water.

Edven's face grimaced as he scrambled down the ladder toward the engine well. He managed the valves and heat exchange-driven shafts to coax every bit of power from the kobald-designed engines. The wind howled around them, and the reinforced hull compressed under the force of the wind. What used to be the sound of creaking was now replaced by stiffening squeaks and the lubricated sliding of metal.

Cowel put Prism into his coat pocket and buttoned it closed. He felt Prism's unease return. It tried to shrink away within its confines into the corner of the pocket cloth. Its vibrant colors radiated, shining through its silk cover and his coat pocket as if someone was holding a candle within.

The automaton projected the outline of the now pursing Radephian Frigate on the wall of the engine compartment. "They're gaining on us! How?" Edven yelled up through the decks of the ship toward the captain.

The Radephian frigate was faster and more powerful. Its aerofoil wings and aerodynamic profile provided an edge over them. The small guns on either side of its bowsprit were being loaded. Alanea continued to grit her teeth as she scoped her eyes through the cloud of stone ahead.

"Hold on! Watch the sails! Make sure they don't catch anything!" She shouted and took the ship into a sudden lurch. Cowel pulled the relief ropes to turn and lift the main sail booms and reduce drag. Alanea limited the nacelle shutters to plunge the ship into a narrow gap between two massive rock formations. This chasm was barely wide enough for their ship, and their high rate of speed threatened damage to the protruding nacelles.

The frigate, being large and unwieldy, hesitated. It too would risk collision in the confined space. Damage to their nacelles would threaten the lives of hundreds of soldiers. This, however, bought them only a few moments. As they emerged from the narrow passage, the frigate was adjusting its course above and around the split ahead of them. In a measure of frustration, the frigate fired its bow-facing guns ahead of them. The whistling warble of the small cannonballs streaked past the hull. One impacted a floater on their right-hand side, too close for comfort.

"Any damage!" Alanea demanded, unable to check for herself.

"They missed us, but their aim is dialed in! They'll hit us when they reload for sure!" Edven shouted again upward. Though he was very much distracted by his steel and stone golem, who accurately tracked the flight path of the cannonballs and projected them also against the walls of the engine room. The mechanoid started to calculate potential trajectories of the next rounds of fire.

Cowel's heart was pounding. He felt a surge of defiance from Prism. It was almost imperceptible at first, but he recognized what it was. Although the gemin was apprehensive about the situation, it was not afraid. This quickly developed into a dangerous emotion. It was gaining resolve, ready to face the challenge set before it. Not unlike standing up to a bully or running into a battlefield. He tightened his grip on the cloth in his pocket. Prism understood it should not interfere, but it wanted to.

The captain's eyes tunneled in on a cluster of smaller, more fragmented skylets ahead. It was a dense jumble of rock and natural detritus. "Edven! We're going to make a tight turn, reverse, and then drive the dockside propellers on my marks! Everyone else brace!" The captain yelled through a thick wool scarf and was barely audible to Edven in the engine room.

Her plan was clear. She would use this confusing terrain to, within, make a sharp ninety-degree left-hand turn. They would make a double bluff against the frigate, turning a broadside toward them while flying into a cloud of debris. Its four decks wouldn't pass through that cloud with their sails down.

"Mark!" The Murky Prospector banked sharply, and its loose sails snapped in the wind. It gained a few scratches as its hull scraped against jagged rocks and fallen tree trunks. "Mark!"

The Radephian frigate, entirely off guard, was now facing the broadside of a pirate ship. This was surely something it wanted to avoid. It fired its bowside guns, wildly missing the small ship in front of them as it cantilevered itself by its nacelles to also turn broadside. One of their nacelles nearly snapped from the shearing load.

The frigate proceeded to fire a full volley of forty-five cannonballs into the wall of stone in front of them, where the ship formerly was. As they committed to their blast mining operation, Alanea was traveling at nearly sixty knots perpendicular to them with a wide smile. Weaving through the tight debris field like a nimble flyfish.

"They have a knot of stone to get around, they're disengaging!" Edven yelled up through the deck with triumph. The frigate was frustrated in its pursuit, with fifty cannon shots wasted. Its captain was unwilling to risk further damage to their ship through their hubris. It was indeed pulling away.

They drew further into the haze of ash, and the Radephian frigate faded from view. The crew remained on edge with their senses heightened for the remainder of the day. Their eyes continued to scan the sky for any signs of further pursuit. Edven was quickly learning this was unnecessary as it seemed his machine friend was capable of identifying threats, even through this dense ash.

Cowel still felt Prism's lingering unease. The closer they sailed toward Lillian's domain, the more the allgeminel grew apprehensive and prepared for conflict. Lillyvon's Great Circus, which was meant to be a place of sanctuary for pirates, was just another trap. They had been ensnared by a few cages lately.

This was the price of their discovery, it seemed. A tax paid through vigilance and threat of death. Alanea, at this point, wished they had never picked the stone up, had just left it behind, or decided to throw it overboard. During their flight in the ash, the Source shut into darkness and cast its dim light shadows across the deck. Cowel wondered if they would ever truly be free again.

Alanea kept her knuckles white and wrapped around the wheel. The strain on the engine was evidenced by the scent of overheated lubricant from the pipes in the engine room. Her owl-doll descended to steam the room to cool it down through evaporation. Edven, who was then working in a sauna, muffled curses as he burned himself touching one of the waxed hot copper pipes.

The captain's gaze drifted to Cowel, who was still holding the wrapped Prism from within the pocket of his coat. He was becoming more sensitive to the emotions it released, and recently, she was noticing a change in his behavior. The thoughts of the stone, or whatever they were, she hoped wouldn't affect their upcoming negotiation.

Kuthe, other than being up on deck during the ordeal, had returned below deck to again become otherwise oblivious. Alanea was learning to trust his knowledge, experience, and kobald instinct even though his methods were incomprehensible. He saw and understood things that were far beyond her comprehension. The captain knew almost nothing about the elemental forces that governed nature, at least not outside her limited education.

Cowel's fingers traced across the edges created by the stone's many new facets, underneath the cloth. Touching the stone provided some comfort and soothed its anxiety, as far as he could tell. The Radephian frigate's sudden appearance was a jarring intrusion into the connection they were forming. As sensitive as the stone was, it was absorbing the emotions expressed around it. It mirrored the fear and tension of the crew, and the mostly stoic nature of the keygemin onboard.

Something unexpected was its reflection of the emotions of the crew within the pursuing ship and their gemin. This became a valuable realization. He wondered if it would be able to sense Lillian's true intentions and gain insight about her during their negotiation. Perhaps it could already feel her emotions. He didn't know.

The ash died down, and the sky once again became open and breathable. Edven emerged from below deck, with his face again spattered with grease and a wrench in hand. Behind his head, floating with padded wings around his hair, was the owl-doll.

"The ship's in good shape." He looked over the rail at the side of the cabin deck and the nacelle that was scraped by debris. "That'll buff out... Captain, they knew we had the stone. Why'd they pull back?"

Alanea shrugged a shoulder with her hand on the wheel. Her eyes didn't leave the horizon line. "Just a look-see, a test. They know we're here. If we left outways, they would have followed, but they know they can't go where we're going." She paused, and her stance became rigid. "It was just a reminder to us. They want us to know we're being watched. If they hit our ship with that volley, the stone would have gone down with us. So they must know something I don't."

The captain hesitated for a moment. "Lillian won't be pleased. She prides herself on controlling her territory. I'm sure she'd hear about a Radephian frigate poking around her border. It's an insult. If she doesn't find out, I'll tell her myself."

Kuthe walked back up the stairs to the cabin deck and broke his silence. "The Argentians seek to harness all power, to bring all of Una under their dominion. Radeph will not rest until they have it, or it is destroyed. They would rather see Prism plummet than be under the control of the Erudis. They will not hesitate to blow us out of the sky."