The heretic looked up and saw Uriost racing towards him. It was then that something curious took place directly above her: jets of steam spewed from the hydraulic platform that carried Ajax, as massive fuel pumps detached from its hull, whipping the air like mad serpents, raining water pellets down upon the bay without any maintenance crewmembers available to properly wrangle their disengagement.
The heretic cocked his head, confused. “…Just what the hell is going on with my ship? It’s like on autopilot, or something … Is that new?”
The platform screeched to a sudden halt, halfway up towards the ceiling access. The frenzied fuel pumps fell completely away from the ship as the platform then started a twisting descent back down towards the bay – leaving Ajax hovering autonomously in the air. The heretic spotted the edge of the wheeled ladder still hanging buried into Ajax’s starboard. Who cares. There’s my ticket, right there.
Distant shouts brought his attention to a group of about six soldiers ascending the gangway via a ladder hidden in the shadows on the other side of the cab.
The heretic hissed revulsion at the sight of them and rolled out of the cab. He came at Uriost with renewed vigour, barrelling a shoulder right into her as he pushed across the gangway, back towards Ajax. He leapt off the edge, catching the wheeled ladder’s last couple of rungs in both paws.
The rush of adrenaline started to give way to fog-thick weariness. The heretic did his best to shake it off, and started to ascend Ajax’s starboard. Sudden commotion pricked his ears. He looked over one shoulder and found Uriost at the mercy of the other Alliance soldiers in pursuit. She was on her knees with paws shackled behind her back. A lancer among them retrieved Kortho safely off the grated floor, out of her reach.
The heretic sighed. Sara … please forgive me. I hope that one day you’ll understand, and that whatever was stolen from you is reclaimed.
But today, the carnivore’s flight takes its turn for the herbivore’s fight. Tomorrow, who knows. But ‘til then, our world runs red with the blood of innocents, under the burning scrutiny of the father sun and the cold dissonance of the mother moon.
I’ve caused you great pain, but Vida is in even greater agony, now.
You’ll persevere. I know you will.
You always do.
With the an ounce of waning strength left in his body, the heretic pulled himself the rest of the way up towards Ajax’s main deck. He tumbled over the side of the gunwale and raced towards the upper deck. He scooped up the Wind Crystal’s saddlebag, as well as Nimbus, along the way and bounded up the stairs towards the wheelhouse. He wrenched open the door and froze solid.
“You!” he growled.
48. War Rig Ajax
There at the controls, a little farming skunk clad in stolen Alliance gear hammered away at buttons and twisted controls, flanked by an open user’s guide on one side of the dashboard, a horned helmet on the other.
“What are you doing here?!” demanded the heretic.
Regina blinked up at him. A flash of anger seared across her face. “Saving your sorry hide, it seems.”
“How did you—? Oh, never mind.” The heretic dumped the saddlebag and pushed Regina aside so that he could study the console. A seemingly endless ocean of flashing buttons, unlabeled knobs, and grease-stained levers told him nothing useful. His gaze fell upon an upturned plastic casing near the top of the dashboard. A red button within was depressed into the panel. The heretic tilted down the case and snorted when runes that read Crane Release appeared, taped to the top. “Do us a favour, precious, and find the release for the airlock hatch.”
Regina blinked. “A what-hatch?”
“Airlock hatch. The exit, above us.” He swiped up the open user guide off the dashboard and skimmed through a few long and complicated paragraphs of jargon, before tossing the thing over his shoulder. “It’s called a wheelhouse, where’s the wheel?”
Regina screwed her face into total bewilderment at him. “You mean you’ve never actually flown one of these things?”
“Never had to. I, mean, I know the basic controls, but there was always a full crew aboard.”
With a sigh, Regina retrieved Ajax’s user manual off the floor and hastily flipped through its pages to find her place. “By the by, dog-earing isn’t a crime, you know. I was handling this thing just fine on my own.”
“That’s nice, but what does your book say about us getting the hell out of this sand pit?”
“Ah – here we go!” Regina started to read aloud a number of complicated button sequences, inputting each command into the console with hesitant care. With a flick of a switch, steam hissed from a panel in the floor that slipped away to reveal a steel wheel-like device staring up at them. It rose straight up on rickety chains and fell forward into place, fitting mesh with the rest of the console.
“Oh,” said the heretic.
Regina blinked at it. “S-so, now what?”
Something past the windshield caught the heretic’s attention. He growled. “Damn.”
“Huh?” Regina followed his gaze. A trio of bats swooped up over port side; each was clad in Alliance gear that protected their torsos, but left their winged arms totally bare – likely to keep any extra weight off their fragile membranes. Telescopic goggles balanced off their fox-like noses, eyepieces extending and sinking back into place as the bats searched the ship high and low for the heretic. Deadly-looking crossbows bounced against their shoulder blades as they soared and flapped about.
“Skylords.” The heretic peeled back trembling lips, baring a wicked snarl.
They made a swift landing on the lower deck. The commanding officer pointed the two others to search separate parts of the ship. They wasted no time to arm themselves. The captain, on the other hand, broke away and let the strong gusts let off from the roaring propellers above whisk him to the upper deck, where the wheelhouse presided. His mechanical eyepieces extended fully upon the two fugitives.
Without warning, the heretic scooped up Regina’s helmet. In a swift arc, it sank over her head with a dense thunk!
“Hey!!” she protested.
“Get down.” he shoved her beneath the dashboard just as an arrow bolt shot through the windshield. A piercing hum throbbed in Regina’s ears. She upturned her visor and felt an icy chill as feathered iron tickled the air directly above, stuck deep into the midsection of the navigation seat – which was about the same level as her head.
“I’ll be back,” said the heretic. He sprang for the door, Nimbus at the ready.
“Hey! Wait a second!” Regina pointed at the wheel that had risen from the floorboards. “How do I work with this thing?”
“You steer it!”
With that, the heretic was gone.
Regina yanked free the arrow in order to climb up into the seat and started to study the wheel with deep perplexity. The thing looked like it belonged on a pony carriage, except that the outer rim had been removed to let its spokes poke straight out at every curve. Its stainless steel gleamed in the sheen of the cyclical reds and blacks of the hangar’s flashing emergency lights.
“…Steer it?”
She drew the user manual into her lap and stuck a digit into one many grooves made from her claws, indented into the middle section of the ship’s user manual that led a straight line across the marginal valley, to nonsensical diagrams that glared up off the opposite page.
By the Goddess, what am I even doing…?
She shook her head and started to read. The airlock control can found within the wheelhouse console of your navigator’s CLASS-9 WAR RIG. Ascension from your docking bay may only be granted by an AVIATION MASTER on duty with at least two DISPATCH OPERATORS present over the docking hangar’s operations station, to ensure safe and authorized clearance.
Regina threw a look out of the glass wall over her shoulder, where a rectangular-windowed room jutted out over the bay on the far side of the hangar. From the looks of it, the station had been long-since abandoned when the heretic’s presence
made itself known.
“Okay, but where are the actual hatch controls?” She scanned the buttons and levers for anything she may have missed in the user manual. But everything looked all the same, with several different gauges, flashing lights, and switches, knobs, cranks, and levers cluttering the console.
Directly outside the windshield, the heretic was busy dancing amidst raining crossbow bolts, swinging fruitless swipes against foes who took to the air, swooping all about the upper deck in a game of tactical chicken, seemingly to try and further wear him down.
Regina climbed up onto the edge of the console, hooking her ankle into the steering wheel to keep the ship from veering out of control. She banged her palms against the windshield to steal his attention. “Heretic! Hey! Hullo!!”
The heretic slashed at a close-by Skylord, missing the soldier’s torso plate by just mere centimetres. He threw a glare Regina’s way, mouthed something drowned out by the wail of the sirens outside.
“Airlock!” She cried out. “I don’t know how to get it open!”
The heretic spun to deflect an arrow aimed at his backside. He glanced back in Regina’s direction, lips churning out silent words: What? What did you say?
She jabbed at the ceiling of the little wheelhouse. “Up! Look up!”
When her words finally registered, the heretic obeyed – and, unsurprisingly, horrified revelation flared across his face. His eyes widened with alarm, and at once he started to utter silent words at her, pumping one arm up and down like he were pulling at invisible horn strings.
Regina furrowed her brow at him. “What?”
Gearshift!! The windshield reverberated; that time, she did hear him.
Regina scowled. “How am I supposed to do—”
The heretic was then suddenly swarmed by the three flying soldiers. They all piled on top of him with daggers and shackles at the ready. The lot became a tumbling blur of gnashing teeth, tearing claws, and thrashing hind limbs as the heretic refused to go down without a fight.
“Oh, forget it.” Regina sighed and started to slide back down into her seat. As she came off of the dashboard, her heel pushed down on an unseen lever, which caused the steam-powered propellers to slow right down to a crawl. The weight of the air inside of the wheelhouse suddenly went straight to Regina’s head as the propellers cranked back to life, in the opposite direction. One of the larger console gauges’ needles started to tick counter clockwise down a numerical dome. Regina readjusted her spectacles and scanned tiny runes within the gauge that read altitude. The ship was descending back into the bay.
“Oh no! What did I do?! What did I do?! – What do I do?!” Regina searched the controls high and low until the hidden lever appeared out the corner of her lenses, semi-hidden behind the steering wheel.
Like the heretic said, it was a gearshift of some sort – thrown into a downward position. Regina grabbed the control-stick and shifted it all the way up. A needle belonging to a small rectangular gauge just above the steering wheel shot from one end to the other. Steam billowed from the propeller exhausts. Moments later, the rush of blood drained down to Regina’s toes as the ship levitated directly upwards.
The wheelhouse portal flew open. The heretic lurched inside, slamming it shut behind him. “What are you waiting for, air-traffic clearance?! Get us the hell out of here already!”
“Pardon, but if you haven’t noticed, this whole thing is sort of new to me, thank you very much!” The glare Regina threw his way melted at the sight of copious blood pumping freely between claw digits clamped tight against the heretic’s flank. She met his gaze. Eyes that once pierced her soul looked hazy, exhausted.
“…Are – are you okay?” she whispered, shocked.
“I’m fine.” His voice was thin and weak. “Just get us out of here. Now.”
But Regina sat there, stunned at the sight of his injury.
“Alchemist, now!” he roared. “You’re going to get us crashed!”
A bare fist suddenly smashed through the door’s porthole, and with it a whole bat-winged arm snaked around the heretic’s throat before he could react. He swore in strained canine, grabbed at the unseen soldier’s choking vice grip without avail.
Regina cried out. “Let him go, you brute!”
“Don’t take your eyes off what you’re doing, for Goddess’s sake!” The heretic barked at her.
A long dagger blade burst through his chest plate then, spraying the console with Life Energy. Regina shrieked, ducking out of the way so fast, she fell out of her seat. The weight of the ship suddenly rolled a heavy right. A high-pitched squeal resounded from above, and with it a deafening crash as a rain of sparks splashed across the remains of the smashed windshield. A breath-taking force flung Regina against the rear wall of the wheelhouse.
“Alchemist – the wheel! Grab the—”
Stars danced before Regina. She fumbled around blurry-eyed until what seemed like the base of the navigator chair found its way into her searching paws. Her brain felt loose, sloshing against the back of her skull, like reverse vertigo.
“Alchemist—!”
“I’m trying!!” Regina turned her attention on the steering wheel, spinning so fast, the thing barely looked solid. She swallowed hard. If I grab for it … who’s to say it won’t spit me right out through the window?
She searched aimlessly for the seatbelt, eyes locked on the nearly-invisible steering wheel, all the while with the heretic yelling at her through his own struggle to free himself from the Skylord’s attack. Regina ignored him and clicked herself securely in place. Tentative gauntlets extended towards the steering wheel. A strong, invisible force pushed back against her metal-clad digits.
Regina swallowed hard, clenched her eyes shut, and launched forward, removing all thought from her mind. She clamped down on the wheel with both paws. The sheer force nearly ripped her out of the chair, if not for the restraints that secured her in place. She reeled back, crying out in pain as the clockwise pull of the wheel popped her shoulder joints.
A hollow explosion erupted across the main deck. Regina bit back tears and pulled hard on the wheel, veering it counter clockwise as best she could until the sheer fight against the thing started to slack in her grip.
Something appeared off the edge of the bowsprit. It hung in the shifting emergency lights like a sunken, far-away orb, steadily growing in size. It gleamed with shining, hypnotic swirls of the outside world, stationary like a snail’s shell. The look of it confounded Regina, and for a moment she became lost in its design.
“A-alchemist! Switch the propellers! We’re headed for that airlock!”
Airlock. Regina’s gaze solidified on it. She shook her head and found the heretic still struggling with his unseen assailant. “What do you mean, switch the propellers?!”
The heretic took a bite out of the Skylord’s wrist – the soldier tore its arm away with a screech of pain, but instead of retracting completely, used its wing to smother the heretic’s snout in an attempt to cut off his air supply.
Regina noticed Nimbus sliding across the floorboards to the rear of the wheelhouse. The collision must have tipped the ship upwards! She swallowed hard and threw her attention back to the task at hand, only to find the they would surely smash into the maintenance bay.
She hunted around the console until searching paws found a secondary gearshift located on the opposite of the steering wheel, which could be pushed ahead or pulled backward. It’s got to be for latitude. “If I move this stick here – Forward means forward, yes?”
“Yes, yes! Don’t ask, just do it!”
Regina inhaled sharply. With a single flick of the gearshift, hydraulics extended the propellers a safe distance away from Ajax’s sides. Their spinning blades then lowered out of sight beneath the gunwale, facing the ship’s rudder. A jolting force threw Regina against the steering wheel, knocking the wind out of her. When she looked up, the airlock fell almost flush centre off the end of the bowsprit. It grew larger and larger by the second – the
y were flying directly for it.
“A-ask that S-Skylord how to open the airlock, or I’ll die!” she said without looking back.
“W-what?!”
“The airlock!” she repeated.
“I know what you said, but do you?”
“Look, we’re going to crash for certain if it remains sealed! You don’t want to have gone through all this trouble, just for nothing, do you?! Ask him, or I’m going straight through!”
The heretic snarled through muffled gasps for air as he clawed fruitlessly at his attacker’s arm. “Y-you’re crazy, you know that, alchemist?”
Regina glared at him. “Suit yourself, then.”
“No – wait—!!”
Regina set sights on the glowing swirls of sunlight spilling in through slats of the airlock hatch. She took a deep breath, shifted the altitude downward a hair, and rolled the steering wheel until the ship’s bowsprit aligned dead centre with the hatch.
…Ascension from your docking bay may only be granted by an AVIATION MASTER on duty with at least two DISPATCH OPERATORS present over the docking hangar’s operations station, to ensure safe and authorized clearance…
“Check, and check.” Regina murmured.
The swirling gleam of lights engulfed the bowsprit until it was but a thin shadow, spanning long shadows across the main deck. Regina took in another sharp, deep, breath and lowered her helmet visor – as if the added protection would do any good now. “Here we go! Hang on to something!”
“Oh, give me a break.”
“That’s the idea!” Regina yelled. A sharp glare of sunlight struck the windshield. “Brace for impact!” She clenched her eyes shut and prayed her little skunk heart out.
Master Astral … please guide me!!
Rays of light spilled across the lower half of the ship and quickly engulfed the upper deck. Regina unclicked her seatbelt and dove beneath the console.
Thunderous turbulence gripped the wheelhouse at all sides. A deafening explosion sounded outside, and with it came a hunks of steel and wood smashing through what remained of the windshield. And with that, the war rig Ajax escaped Warminister, leaving a trail of smoke and debris across the Galheist skies.
The Book of Wind: (The Quest for the Crystals #1) Page 36