by C. Litka
02
A 15-meter-long dragon boat has a beam and height of some 5 meter amid-ship, narrowing fore and aft. An open cargo/living hold runs down the middle of it circled by a meter-wide deck next to its bulwark, widening to a full deck in the stern. Supplies are stored under the deck. It has a platform above the cage amidships for the simple rocket launcher. It is driven by a single propeller aft, with a rudder and two steering wings controlled by tillers. The small boiler, condensers and steam engine, are set under the after deck, with bunkers on either side for the peat moss fuel burned in the boiler's hot box.
Once she was asleep I took the opportunity to use the tillers to get a feel for how the boat steered and kept a close eye on the engine and boiler. With everything so new and different, I'd enough to worry about and to do to keep me awake, though I was pretty much a zombie by the time she emerged from the hold, with a jug of a bitter beer and a jar of preserved cabbage which she shared. 'A funny breakfast, but I know what these are.'
I found the hammock she'd slung under the deck, and the world blinked out almost before I had settled in.
When I awoke, we ate again and then, with the tillers tied, we set out tossing overboard the useless personal effects and questionable food of its late owners, keeping the known food, drink, and fuel while dividing the potential trade goods and the contents of the boat's treasure chest equally. KaRaya insisted on that.
'We'll not be falling out over our fair share of the loot. I've seen knives drawn and blood spilled in arguments over a few dragon disks' worth of spoils. Half and half is fair, isn't it?'
'Aye,' I agreed.
The treasure chest held mainly trade trinkets of little value, dragon disks - actual thin slices of glistening dragon vertebrae, which are used as money in the Outward Islands, and a handful of gold and silver coins, all of which were counted out and evenly divided. It also held an assortment of odds and ends, and much to KaRaya's delight, a deck of almost new playing cards. The Saraime version of cards consisted of six colored sets, each color with three dragon cards and six bird flocks.
Watches were set Pela fashion - in a pattern of three, one common watch and a solo watch for each of us, but no set duration. KaRaya spent her first solo watch crafting a card playing surface where you could place the cards played under a fabric band to prevent them from floating off. And then during our common watch she began to teach me the local games of chance.
'I'm not much of a lad for games of chance,' I said.
'No matter. You'll soon be bored enough to learn. Besides, we'll only play for dragon disks, so you needn't fear I'll win your share of your boat. I've seen knives drawn and blood spilled over stakes in gold and silver.'
'You seem to have seen a lot of knives drawn and blood spilled.'
'I like dangerous men. But I'll make an exception for you, Wilitang, this once.'
We steered well clear of most islands. Though you wouldn't know it by looking at them, many of the larger islands are home to one tribe or another, none of them friendly to strangers. We'd often see their hunting boats in the distance, but everyone seemed willing to let us alone. A Vantra boat will do that, I guess. The sky-sea was filled with the usual birds and flying lizards, plus the occasional larger dragons as well. We saw several that looked to be as large as our boat, but they steered clear of us as well, perhaps familiar with rockets. The exception was one bright red and yellow feathered three-meter-long dragon that swooped past - startling the Neb out of me at the tiller - and settled, bird-like on the boat's forward grating. It gave me a long, challenging look with its black and yellow eyes.
'Hello, mate,' I called out softly so as not to awake KaRaya. 'Take a load off your wings and rest a spell.' I've always made it a point to be congenial to my superiors, and I was treating all the Dragons of the Pela as its masters just to be on the safe side. The young dragon sleeping on my shoulder, who, opened an eye, gave the red dragon a look, a low hiss, and went back to sleep. If even my young, little walnut-brained dragon could run me out of dragon disks at Dragon's Luck, (more of that in a moment) I had to assume that the big dragons were indeed, intelligent.
When KaRaya began to stir in the hammock slung we'd slung between the decks, I called out, 'Watch your head! We've company.'
Opening her eyes to see a red dragon on the grating overhead, got her wide awake fast, with a string of startled curses. She rolled out of the hammock and keeping low (the dragon may've been able to stick his snout through the cage if it cared to but wouldn't have reached her even if she had stood up on the keel deck) scurried forward.
'What in the Blue Islands are you doing letting a Flame Dragon hang about?'
'He's just resting, I think. No harm in that.'
'Just resting, you think?'
'Can't think of anything else he'd be doing just sitting there half the watch, unless he thought you were dead and was waiting patiently to be fed. He was sort of eying you.'
'You and your dragons.'
'Well, what exactly should I have done to shoo him away?
'You got that darter of yours...'
'Aye, and a limited supply of darts and charges that I'm hoping to last a long lifetime by not having to use them to shoo away harmless dragons.'
'He wouldn't be so harmless if he was on this side of the cage.'
I shrugged. 'I believe you, but he's not, so I believe he'd doing us no harm by hitching a ride. I intend to stay on the right side of the Pela's dragons.'
'I doubt that'll prevent them from eating you at the first opportunity.'
'I hope to keep that question open for a long, long time. But this one has no opportunity, so I can afford to be hospitable.'
She shook her head and said again, 'You and your dragons.'
We made several landfalls on several smaller, uninhabited islands before we left them behind. One was to collect a supply of cabbage-greens to supplement the rice and dried fruit which were the Vantras' main non-meat food. We found a grove of coconuts on another. It seems that the humans of the Pela brought a lot of crops from the Nebula, who brought them from a very distant Terra. We had jettisoned all the dried meat we found on board, just to be on the safe side. We did, however, surprise several hunters in a large canoe, and purchased, with some trinkets, two large lizards they had killed. We left them just staring at the trinkets, in wonderment - they'd have been very lucky escape this close of an encounter with a Vantra dragon boat alive. KaRaya butchered the lizards. She cooked the legs for dinner in the ship's cast iron peat moss fired stove. We smoked the meat of one lizard in a tin box that could be set over the boiler's smoke stack, and air dried the other one, fending off the birds who circled the boat, swooping and diving to nab bits and pieces of the thin slices of flesh we had stitched to the grating.
Our second landfall was a small island with a bamboo forest. I had mentioned, during one of our rambling conversations, that I was somewhat adept with a sword. This exited KaRaya. 'I love a good sword fight! We'd must practice," she exclaimed. However, a few exercises with the cutlasses convinced me that both of would not survive the voyage, using real blades, so when we spied the bamboo grove, we stopped to cut a large bundle of young blades to use as practice swords.
Our final landfall in the Outward Islands was on the peak of a large island whose surface was scarred by cuts where its highly compacted peat moss - the partially composted remains of eons of dead moss and vines - had been harvested. This peat moss was commonly burnt for fuel when charcoal wasn't available. We laid in a good supply before setting out to cross the barren sky-sea of the Donta Sea, well supplied with food and fuel.
By the time we'd put the Outward Islands behind us, the three of us had settled into a comfortable routine and an easy friendship. We told yarns of our lives and adventures, and in the telling of them, came to know the other well. I decided to tell her the truth of my origins, with a suitable warning that she could consider me a great liar, if she cared to. Telling the truth and still being considered a great liar seems to
be my fate. She semi-believed me - there were myths in the Saraime of human origin arising from beyond the Pela - so she could believe me, if she cared to. We both agreed, however, that it would be better if my worlds beyond the Pela were replaced with very distant large islands in the Pela when talking about my origins. The inner-outer space of the Pela was known in the Saraime Principalities, and so the possibility of traveling great distances through it in a short amount of time might be believable - and could be used to explain my great ignorance of the Saraime Principalities. And since rockets were common, a ship powered by rockets would be nearly believable as well. (Though Pela rockets were solid fueled, a liquid fueled one, much less a plasma rocket, was again pushing up against believability.) KaRaya's career was not unlike many carefree spaceers. She was literally born on an Outward Island trading ship that her parents owned, and grew up in the trade. She'd gone off on her own, rising in rank and responsibility only to fall with some ill-considered scheme or another.
'Wilitang?' she asked, early in the voyage. In the Principalities, or at least in the Dontas, names are made of the family name coming first - usually one syllable, and then the personal name, so that "Wil" was considered my family name and "Litang" my personal one. She, however like the sound of "Wilitang" and so called me by that name. Having sailed under a made-up name for a decade, I didn't bother to correct her, and if we reached the Dontas, everyone else could as well. I could live as Wilitang, at least it was my real name. When in the Principalities, be a Principalian.
'Raya?'
'I know you have a girl in your heart, Wilitang, and my heart has been broken many times by men who also had girls in the offing - ones they either failed to mention, or found when I was away - so we'll be as brother and sister. No hearts to break.'
'That suits me. I've sailed with mixed crews all my life, so sailing with you is the way I've always known. And I do have only room in my heart for one love, so I'd be delighted to be your older, wiser brother.'
She grinned. 'We'll be twins.'