by Foxx Ballard
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Rusty: Silk Factory, Central Desert
When he woke up, Rusty was suddenly aware of being in the open. All the silk sheets between the rib bones had been removed, and beyond the sand beetles, they were laid out in a relatively flat part of the desert with rocks to hold them down so the breeze wouldn’t take their edges. It was still light out, so he hadn’t slept the whole day away.
Lais was punching a hard needle and silk thread through the multicolored sheets of silk in order to sew them together. It looked slow going, but she had made some progress. The silk was extremely strong and difficult to work with, but Lais was far stronger than a normal human. Rusty had seen as much in the memories of Angel that he had perused. There were thin silk ropes that formed a net to surround the balloon. Everything must have been laid out and cut in a pattern, and she was just putting it together. The entire balloon looked like it would be three hundred paces long and shaped like a giant patchwork bullet.
Synth-E-Uh laid out the pieces of the drop pod and laser welded them together. It looked like the metal of the drop pod would be used to make the main deck of the airship with a rear open cargo hatch and there would be enough for the frame of a metal railing which would run all the way around the deck. The railing was for the numerous silk ropes that would attach to hold the balloon. The railing was filled in by wooden planks, Rusty assumed, so that nothing could slide or roll off of the main deck. They were tied on with the rock-spider silk threads because they were stronger than steel wire and they had no other fasteners. The same system of planks and silk was used to build the entire below-deck which consisted of a cargo area below the open hatch in the main deck, and a hallway with a couple of bedrooms. A small room at the front would have a potted fovea plant for a bathroom. Stabilizing pontoons were made out of large wooden beams, so the ship would remain upright while on land to prevent them from being tipped sideways if the balloon ever dragged them along the ground.
“Come here for a second, would you please, Jack?” Angel asked, waving him over. When she noticed that Rusty was up, she waved him over, too.
Jack was being used as a portable blueprint, with all the design pieces laid out on his chest monitor. Angel was moving a propeller assembly around and noting how that changed the center mass of the ship and the wind flow diagrams that Jack showed when the animated propellers were on. She settled on putting it at the back end.
“How we make propeller turn?” Rusty asked, curious.
“Synth-E-Uh,” she answered. “We don’t have the technology to make an engine. If we attach a door from the drop pod to the rear with an extended handle for a rudder, we can attach a propeller to that. Then the drive shaft from the propeller directly to one of Synth-E-Uh’s wheels. She says she can disengage her track on one side; her internal drive train is strong enough. With her other track on the other side, she will drive back and forth to steer the propeller. Then we need someone to man the firebox, which will probably be a fission powered infrared heater, so we’re lining the inside of the balloon with black silk, to help with increasing heat, though this silk won’t let much heat through, anyway. That same person will control the flaps that can be opened and closed to release the hot air from the balloon to control altitude. Jack will probably be best at that. The heat wouldn’t bother him and he wouldn’t need to sleep.”
“It would be my pleasure, if Master Rusty approves,” offered Jack.
“No need my permission, do what you think right.”
“As you order, Captain.”
Angel continued. “We also need someone to man the anchors. Lais or Mogul likely as they are both very strong.”
“Anchor?” Rusty found it hard to imagine a design that would stop the ship from floating away without deflating the balloon to the point it would get in the way.
“We’re making two anchors, using droppod pieces, both in the shape of a spade, with a long arm at a sharp angle attached to a thick braided silk rope that can be tied off to the ship. When it hits the ground, the rope will always pull it into the direction that it will dig in, or it will catch on a rock or a tree.”
Rusty shrugged. He wasn’t an engineer, and though he got the basic idea, he would have never thought of it.
Angel had finished attaching the gigantic balloon on the screen to the boat-shaped body and seemed satisfied with how everything was coming together. “It seems we have the labor covered. Rusty, do you mind just keeping an eye out and inform us if any predators or people are approaching?”
“Me can do that,” he answered and shimmied up the nearest large rib to sit atop it.
As the days stretched on, he kept offering to help, but no one really needed him. Occasionally he would pull out a silk sheet for Lais to sew into the balloon, but those times were few and far between. It also appeared to be his job to tap the cacti that surrounded the area for juice, so he, Angel and Mogul could slake their thirst. They were still in a desert, after all.
The first time he passed her a cup, Angel stimulated his pleasure center for a moment in thanks, which was exhilarating and strange, but also caught him off guard.
“Lords of Tallus, forgive me, Rusty!” Angel apologized, putting her cup down and kneeling to put her face directly in front of his. “It’s a habit on my world, and I hadn’t done it in so long, I wasn’t thinking…”
“It okay, I know you.” He did. Her memories still popped up in his mind when he thought of things. Like how open she was sexually. And now he was thinking of her that way. She wasn’t bad looking for a small-head. And then he realized she could hear everything he was thinking and grunted when she stimulated his pleasure center again, his body responding immediately.
“Thanks, for being so understanding. You are definitely unique, Rusty.” She smiled, drank her cactus juice, and then went back to work.
Taking a few deep breaths to calm down, Rusty drank his cactus juice and then climbed back up on the top of a rib, trying to not let his mind wander too much to the Valkyrie. She was definitely a distraction, and not really his to be distracted by. Lais was a lucky woman. Android. Whatever. Person.
One of the giant worms appeared, like the one he had shot the other day, well, the one that Buck had shot, but all the sand beetles that lived around the area scared it off before he had a chance to climb down and get Buck, so he decided to carry Buck on a strap on his back, just so he was handy when the need arose.
When he was bored, Rusty would walk around the site instead, but inevitably he would end up climbing up on top of a rib bone to look about.
Watching the progress of the skyship was interesting though.
Angel added ramps to the design from the pontoons to the deck so it would be easy to board.
They scavenged two mattresses from the silk factory beds and built them into the small rooms. The mattresses took up all the floor space, leaving no room for storage, but everything could be kept in the cargo area anyway, so that wasn’t a big concern.
The giant bullet-shaped balloon looked like it was going to be very large, many times the size of the ship. Small chance they would be able to sneak up on someone, unless they never looked up. The firebox controller had front and rear flaps they could open and close with ropes, so they could control whether the ship tilted one way or the other and how quickly it ascended or descended.
The hold was loaded with their supplies and there was even a miniature fission-powered beer cooler that could be used to condense water from the air to make ice and keep a small amount of perishables refrigerated.
Rusty got down from his perch and assisted when they were ready to pull the whole balloon assembly over top of the ship to tie it down so it could be inflated.
As they pulled it over, he smelled a group of humanoids coming. They were downwind, there wouldn’t be much time before they would arrive. It figured they would arrive during one of the few moments he wasn’t keeping watch.
“Group coming!” he shouted. The only ones that would hear him w
ould be Jack and Lais, though. The others were far away, pulling on different parts of the balloon. If they let go now, they risked the whole thing blowing away. Rusty grabbed a rope and ran to tie it to the ship railing moments before an armed group of raiders rode sand beetles up over the nearest dune. Close to twenty at a glance. At the head of them was a Tigran, a large mane of blond, wiry fur that had been combed straight out to blend with his sideburns and beard, making him look like a humanoid lion. It helped that he was massively muscled and had furry skin. He had on a pair of black leather shorts and boots. Slung over one shoulder was a massive straight blade with an angled tip wielded by a two-handed grip wrapped in leather. The other intruders that lined up on top of the dune were of varying race and weaponry. Rusty weighed whether or not he could dodge a flurry of arrows and crossbow bolts. As long as he kept moving, he figured his odds were pretty good.
The lion-man leveled his enormous blade at Rusty with one arm and held it there without wavering.
“What are you doing with my brother Afir’s things? Do you have a letter of permission from him for being here?” There was laughter from the others on the dune.
Rusty pulled Buck off his back and held the gun pointing up, just in case Buck got the idea to shoot first and ask questions later.
“You brother not here. Leave for over five minutes. My place now. Goblin rules.”
“Cocky, I like it,” the lion man laughed. “But I just need to kill you and your friends, and then this becomes my place. Victonoth rules!” He held his arms in the air, his great sword aloft, and there was cheering up and down the line.
Jack rolled up, cheering like the rest of them, and some of the raiders were pointing and laughing. “Well, they are a rather jovial lot, aren’t they, Master Rusty? Can I sell them something?”
“They want kill us, Jack,” Rusty replied as Lais walked up to them.
Jack’s face showed a sad emoji.
“Get behind me, Rusty,” Lais said as she stepped in front of him.
Rusty was a little taken aback. He didn’t need any more protection than anyone else, and now he had no clear view with Buck. He noticed the balloon fabric was edging its way toward them as it caught the wind, with Mogul, Angel and Synth-E-Uh holding the far ends.
Suddenly Lais rushed the big man at an impossibly fast sprint, so fast her cape made a snapping sound. With wide eyes and a startled cry, the lion-man reflexively swung his uplifted sword down in a two-handed grip. Lais leaned to one side, seeing it coming, but the blade’s path curved and she was still struck full on the neck. With a loud chop, Lais’s head was severed from her body, hanging on by what appeared to be a thin strip of silver mesh and skin. The strength of the blow knocked her body to the side, where she ran one more pace before collapsing like a limp doll. Everyone stood stunned for a moment. Even Rusty. But his moments were faster than others, so he recovered quickly, and as the adrenaline kicked in, everything appeared in slow motion.
Rusty leveled Buck at the big man. “Targ…” Buck started to say, as Rusty pulled the trigger. The lion-man’s chest evaporated with a large hole through it, even as Rusty dove to the side and pulled the trigger twice more. Two more raiders were falling to the ground. On the fourth pull of the trigger, the gun hissed. As soon as he heard the woman’s voice starting to say “Cooling…” he knew that Buck had the settings too high. He sprinted up the dune to where Lais had been knocked to the ground, putting the raiders in a line instead of all being able to fire at him at once.
A hyena-man with a crossbow that had been standing near the lion-man turned to face him… and he could hear the tensing of a bowstring behind him…
And then he was buried beneath a pile of the loose balloon fabric. The balloon was three hundred paces long. If he was under it, then so were the rest of them.
Behind the cover of the fabric, Rusty looked down at Lais’s body and her head, that was rolled to one side. There was a glowing coming from her chest and he could hear a humming that was getting louder. The smell of ozone permeated the air as fat sparks spat between her body and head. Her eyes kept glancing back towards her neck and she was trying to say something, but he couldn’t read lips. She just kept repeating the same phrase and looking at her neck. He picked up her head and put it back in place and within a few seconds, he could see twitching in her limbs. A few seconds more and she reached up to grab her head and held it on by herself.
“Thanks Rusty, I’m sorry, I never… That was foolish of me.”
Rusty shrugged and smiled.
“Me do it, you do it, what difference?”
She smiled in return. “My head can be put back on, if done quickly. Yours can’t. Better me than you.”
There was a spray of sand as the raider nearest him managed to get on his sand beetle and was sliding away beneath the balloon fabric. It seemed that others were following suit and he could hear Synth-E-Uh shouting in the distance and the spattering of laser fire and a few screams and yelps of pain.
“Keep running, ingrates! Oh, looking back was a mistake, mister!” Synth-E-Uh shouted, following up with more laser fire.
Before long, her yelling and firing had stopped and Mogul had thrown the last of the fallen raiders after those that were still able to run or ride away.
The balloon fabric suddenly pulled taut and started to drag back towards the boat. Then it lifted up and there was Jack, holding up the fabric high above his head. He drove up a ramp leading up the side of the ship and stopped at the infrared emitter. He pulled on the fabric until the metal hoop, the mouth of the balloon, was over the emitter, and turned it on full. Rusty could feel the waves of heat emanating from the device until Jack reached down and turned a knob that adjusted most of the heat to be pointing upward.
Rusty started grabbing ropes and tying them off at colored points along the deck railing. When he found a rope with a hand-sized piece dyed red, he tied it to the spot on the railing that had been painted red. He did the same with every colored piece he found, and soon the balloon had risen enough that it was flowing in the wind rising above the ship. Angel, Mogul and Synth-E-Uh were doing the same on their ends, dragging all the ropes back to the ship in the center and tying to the appropriate colors. There were several raider bodies laying out in the sand, most had escaped.
“What’d I miss?” Angel asked. “I saw you get knocked down, but the balloon covered everything…”
“Oh, nothing,” Lais said with a sly smile as the last line around her throat sealed. There wasn’t even a scar.
Angel looked at Rusty, unconvinced.
“Oh fine,” Lais admitted before Angel could read Rusty’s mind. “I was almost decapitated and my TFD nearly overloaded, but thanks to Rusty, and some nanites, I’m good as new.”
Angel creased her brows. “What happens when you fusion drive overloads?”
“Well, I’m not an expert on the subject, but I think it depends on how it’s disrupted. It might just fizzle out. It’s not like a nuclear explosion, though it might be a matter of plasma damaging the nearby area if containment is breached. Misaligned lasers destroying anything they hit nearby? Implosion? I don’t even know how it works, it’s alien technology, I was just grown with it. I would die, that is the one certain thing, because we have no way to restart it.”
“Fair enough,” Angel replied, stepping close to Lais. “But you can’t go dying on me yet, we haven’t even had our… maiden voyage…”
“Oh, how long have you been waiting to say that one?” Lais teased. “And to think we just built a ship…”
“Tonight,” Angel said seriously, briefly touching her upper lip with her tongue. “My wing is better.” Rusty noticed for the first time that Angel was no longer wearing the brace on her wing. He must be losing his touch. He normally noticed the lack of a smell, but then his adrenaline was still dissipating. He tended to miss mundane things when his mind was in combat mode.
They both held each other briefly and then parted with a quick kiss. It made him think of Zondra
. And Angel. She turned briefly to him with a quick smile and he felt a surge of pleasure.
Ooh, you devil slug, you; he thought to her. She just smiled wider and walked away, exaggerating the swing of her hips, which with the stimulated pleasure center kept him mesmerized for a few moments.
“Are you okay, Master Rusty?” Jack asked. “You seem preoccupied.”
Rusty looked up at the concerned emoji on Jack’s face monitor and sighed.
“No, me good, Jack, thanks.” For a robot, he seemed kinder than most other humanoids. They could take a few lessons from Jack.
Angel and Lais set Treasure free, releasing her chains from the sled and opening the rock-spider cage again.
At the first sign of the ship moving, Jack pulled the flaps open to give everyone a chance to board. They all clambered up the ramps, Jack and Synth-E-Uh taking up their control positions on the ship. The only one that hadn’t boarded was Lais, and she had taken a small amphora of cactus juice and smashed it against the front of the hull.
“Old Earth custom!” she called out. “What should we name her?!”
“The Enterpr—” Jack started, but Angel yelled out louder.
“The Maiden! It’s her first voyage.”
“To the Maiden!” Lais echoed her call and then grabbed a rope as the ship started to inch along the ground. She easily climbed up hand over hand and at the top, Mogul gave her a hand up and over the rail, though she likely didn’t need it. She gave him a smile and then held onto the rail while she watched the ground slide beneath them. Mogul braced himself on the rail as well, along with Rusty. It was exciting.
The wind blew a little sideways, and the ship jerked a little across the sand, and then lifted off enough to clear the dunes as Jack adjusted the flaps to try to keep them level. The Maiden responded slowly, but she was meant to. She flew through the air, not the water.