Chapter Two Hundred and Thirty-Three - Warning: Rocket Launch Detected

The Beaver Cleaver leapt over the Grey Wall, all sails out to full and engine roaring to help us defy gravity just a bit faster.

I clung onto my captain’s hat and stood with my legs spread out for maximum balance. The entire ship was aimed skyward, so that we’d gain as much altitude as we could. We’d made an escape. And in doing so, had left Blue behind. I felt a little bad about that, but I think the cry would have been happy with us getting their charge out of the clutches of those other cry.

They could fly too, so it wasn’t impossible that they’d be able to catch up, or at least meet up with Moonie on the Lonely island.

“Captain, he’s starting to struggle,” Clive said, cutting through my introspection.

“Struggle how?” I returned.

“Not enough thrust to keep it at this sort of pitch,” was the quick reply.

I nodded. “Level us off!” I said before I jumped to help. With Steve and Gordon both hanging onto the balloon to patch it up, that left our crew two bodies short for doing things like adjusting the sails.

We tilted a bit to one side as the sails on the opposite side were adjusted first, but soon the Beaver was returning to an even flight across the skies. It was pretty cloudy at our altitude, with big puffy balls of white cotton floating past us. That was great; it would make it harder for anyone to track us, though the engine did leave a faint black trail in the sky behind us.

Maybe I could spray some Cleaning magic on the exhaust to mask our trail?

“Captain, permission to slow us down? I don’t want to tax the engine,” Clive asked.

“Granted!”

We slowed down, and the wind didn't tug at us quite so much and it became a lot easier to move about. I saw Steve and Gordon climb down the front of the balloon, then rush across the ship to get to the opposite end, where the exit hole still needed patching.

“Hey, Clive?” I asked as I got closer to the harpy. “Are those two holes going to be a problem?”

I couldn’t entirely see the patch the two harpy crewmates had made, but it looked pretty good to my untrained eye. A green square about two handspans wide that clashed a bit with the bright blue of our balloon.

“Shouldn’t be a problem,” Clive said. “We have some compressed gas in the hold to replace what was lost.”

“The holes are patched!” someone squeaked. I turned and blinked up at Steve who was giving us a wave. “We shouldn’t be losing any more!” he squealed.

I smacked a hand over my mouth. “Do... do we use helium in that balloon?” I asked.

“Yes,” Clive said. “It’s the safest gas to use for airships. Cheap too, if you know a good alchemist.”

“Oh, cool!” I said.

“Broccoli,” Amaryllis said. “Do you hear that?”

I titled my head to the side, bun ears twitching this way and that to better make out any noise. It didn’t take much to hear what Amaryllis was talking about. A sort of hissing roar, like a gas burner that was lit one room over. It came from somewhere behind us, in the direction of the Grey Wall.

I ran to the Beaver’s side and leaned over the rails, one hand holding my captain’s hat in place so that it wouldn’t get whipped away by the wind.

My eyes narrowed, searching the clouds for whatever was making that noise. The wall was already quite a ways behind us, though it still loomed huge, hiding the horizon behind its bulk. The lowest of the clouds hovered just below the top of the wall. That’s where I saw the first glimpse of whatever was following us.

It was a plane.

Not like any plane I’d seen back on Earth, not unless Da Vinci sketches counted.

The machine looked like it was made of wood and cloth, with big, bat-like wings swept back around a light frame that had a pair of rockets strapped to it. I could make out the bright blue of a cry strapped into the middle of it.

A plume of thick black smoke poured out of the back, providing the plane with plenty of thrust.

“Uh oh,” I said. “Clive! Full speed ahead! Everyone, get ready to fight! They have a plane!”

The hissing roar grew clearer, and I turned back to see three dark shapes swooping over the wall and through the clouds to join the first. They were gaining on us, but we still had a minute or two... I hoped.

“Are those rocket planes?” Amaryllis asked, disbelief colouring her voice. “Are they insane?”

“Maybe it’s safer for them?” I asked. “Or they don’t care. They can already fly. Why are they using the planes?”

“Speed,” Bastion said as he came to stand in the middle of the deck. “Their flight speed seems limited. I think any fit sylph could run circles around them. Even a harpy could outpace them by gliding.”

Amaryllis harrumphed. “Yes, well, they are slow, but they have lift, and they seem steadier than some hair-brained sylph zipping around.”

“Steady isn’t fast enough to catch up to a ship like the Beaver,” Bastion said.

“So they get awesome rocket planes,” I finished the thought. “So cool!”

Amaryllis whapped me with a wing. “No, you idiot, now they get terrifying rocket planes and the ability to catch up with us. They’ve already poked a hole in our balloon. That means the bladders inside it will all need to be patched once we’re not running for our lives. A few dozen more and we might be in actual trouble.”

I winced. I could gush over the coolness of the rocket planes later. “Right, you’re right. I think we might have to fight them off. Amaryllis, you’re good with ranged things, but you’re just the one harpy. Awen... wait, where’s Awen?”

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Something clunked, and we all turned to stare as part of the Beaver’s deck rose, then shifted to the side on a set of rails.

A dome, made of dozens of square glass panels, lifted up out of the hold with a constant click-click, like a bicycle’s wheel being spun. The machine rose some more, revealing Awen sitting on a little bench, legs pumping around a pedal while she huffed and puffed.

The front of the machine had four openings with long stalks sticking out of them, each with a set of curved metal plates and what looked like wire under heavy tension.

It was like Awen’s repeating crossbow, but... bigger, and there were four of them all linked together to a complicated set of controls.

The whole thing stopped with a heavy thump, then locked in place as Awen pulled a few levers. She started to spin a wheel, and with each turn the machine spun around a few degrees until it was pointing all four of its bows off the side.

“Whoa,” I said.

It looked like one of those turrets stuck on the back of those World War two bombers, only a bit more anachronistic.

“That’s really cool!” I cheered as I leapt over the divide between the Beaver’s two hulls and landed next to Awen’s contraption. “How does it work?” I asked Awen.

She wiped the back of her hand across her brow. “Poorly.” She blinked. “Ah! I mean, this is just the prototype! I wanted a version that could slide out of the side of the Beaver. This one has awful traversing, and it turns too slowly. I haven’t even zeroed in the bows yet, and it takes a lot of concentration to reload one of them while firing the others. It’s all really inefficient.”

“But it looks so cool!” I cheered. There were brass doodads, and metal knobs, and little gears and all sorts of pulleys, the entire thing covered in layers of glass. A wire at the front was bent into a circle, holding a piece of glass that had an ‘X’ cut into it.

Awen flushed. “It’s just a prototype!” She wiggled her hands around, gesturing to the bows and the levers next to them. “The bows have a draw weight of around a hundred kilos, which is good because they fire these.” She tugged a long bolt from a rack and displayed it for me.

It was entirely made of glass, with a bulb at the end that looked like it was filled with something. It took some squinting to notice the mechanism at the very end of the bolt. “What’s that?”

“It’s a flint striker. The bulb is filled with fuel. It’s the only thing I had on hand that explodes well. But the bolts are heavy, which means I need the entire lever system to reduce the amount of strength I need to reload the bows.”

“Awen, did you make an explosive, repeating AA ballista without anyone knowing?” I asked.

She looked away, cheeks still burning. “No one asked.”

“Awen, you are awesome.”

I felt Amaryllis crowd in next to me to inspect Awen’s machine. “That looks like something I’d see in a report with the word ‘disaster’ in its title,” she said. “Well, as long as the disaster is on the side of the things bothering us.”

“Does it have a non-lethal setting?” I asked.

Awen and Amaryllis stared at me.

“Uh, nevermind.”

“Captain! They’re gaining on us,” Clive called back.

I ran up the steps at the rear of the ship so that I could see out over the back. The three planes were getting much closer. I could even make out the bright blue of the crystals tucked into the middle of the frames.

They were still a little ways away, but that wouldn’t last.

I bit my lower lip and considered things. They were faster than us on the straight-away, but they were planes, they’d need to turn and circle around a bunch.

“Clive, evasive maneuvers! Everyone else, get ready to fight!”

“Awa! I have my crossbow in the hold,” Awen said.

Bastion nodded and dove down, returning a moment later with Awen’s crossbow. That made two crewmates with ranged options, not including Amaryllis and myself with our magic.

“I’m going to try and create a barrier with Cleaning magic,” I said as I jumped back down. “But I don’t expect it to work that well.”

“Don’t worry, we’ll make the fool regret tangling with us,” Amaryllis said.

“Hang on!” Clive called out a moment before throwing the wheel around and tugging a few of the control levers back. I felt it when the gravity engine shifted down and weakened its field.

The Beaver shifted to the side and started to swing around with the slow ponderous motions of a whale turning in the ocean.

The planes came into view over the starboard side, the three in a loose arrowhead formation.

Awen’s turret spun, then locked into place. I saw her grin as she aimed down her sights.

The turret fired. Four shots with a quick tack tack tack tack, beat, and as many shiny blurs zipped out towards the planes.

It was clear right away that Awen had undershot by a bit; maybe she’d underestimated the weight of her bolts since they flew well under the planes.

And then two of them exploded out some three hundred metres away, bright bursts of fire that filled the air with a sprinkling of glass.

“Reloading!” Awen screamed as she started tugging on levers.

I snapped out of it, then started to push as much Cleaning magic as I could out. If I could interfere with the magic creating the lasers, maybe I could save us some repairs later.

This was turning out to be a lot more exciting than I thought it would be. Who knew accepting a passenger could be so much work?

***