As if his day hadn’t already been busy enough, between fighting an army of Nazis and chasing down the homeless girl and the men following her, Orion received another call in the middle of the afternoon, when he’d just gotten back from helping with the cleanup process in the Engineering and Biomed Districts. He regretfully answered the buzzing.

“Are you over this all yet?” the Gearmaster asked.

“What is it this time?”

“A large Nazi ship is headed west from the Commerce District. Seems to be on track towards the capitol. And when I mean large, I’m talking about the biggest I’ve ever seen. Lots of news stations talking about this one.”

“We need to work out a system where I’m not the last to know about these things.”

“Yeah, probably. Carmsborough Air Force has already tried to take it on, but they couldn’t get through its shield. Looks like this might be an infiltration job.”

“This must be their last-ditch effort to take control. A barrage of ships didn’t work and a ground army didn’t work, so send in the mother of all airships.”

“Something along those lines. See to it that it never makes it to the capitol.”

“Will do.”

Orion prepared to turn right back around when Rami came into the living room, already bundled up. “Headed out again already?”

“Big ship. Astronomically large, apparently. It’s been a chaotic day.”

“You can tell me on the way.”

“No way. I can’t have you coming with. This is going to be incredibly dangerous.”

“I heard what the Gearmaster said. You could use a little backup in an enemy airship. Besides, what was the point of making me these if I can’t use them?”

Rami flashed his own shield, which was beautiful and functional, something that Orion had done for his second work under the Gearmaster’s wing. He also had his brass scythe, which in terms of functionality compared to the tool it was based on, it had none, but it made for a suitable weapon.

“Alright, but if things get bad, you have to get out of there.”

“Trust me, I’m not looking to earn another gunshot wound. One was more than enough for me.”

Together, they boarded the Clockwork, who, unlike Orion, didn’t feel any exhaustion from the past twenty-four hours. They traveled at normal speed to the ship, reaching it in about ten minutes, after it had already done some minor damage to the buildings below it with some scattered attacks.

“He wasn’t lying,” Rami said, staring out at the enemy airship. “That is certainly a juggernaut.”

The second the trio was spotted, a few attacks were sent their way, which the Clockwork easily dodged. If the Nazis had done any reading on how to counter the Clockwork, which they clearly hadn’t, they would have known that missiles were the way to go. Orion doubted they didn’t have missiles on that big of a ship.

Just to test, the Clockwork tried a shield buster on their hull, which fizzled a little but was overtaken by the purple pulse of the generator. This was a grade of shield unlike any he’d ever seen before, or even heard of. A ship this large must be worth protecting.

Too bad it was going to be going down.

Without slowing down, they approached the ship, still dodging attacks, and landed on its deck in the middle of a group of men all doing various battle prep. The few that were closest had no chance to respond, either getting clubbed by Orion or the Clockwork or slashed by Rami. The rest, however, were more prepared, but not nearly enough.

In a matter of moments, the deck of the ship had been cleared of hostiles, and the three of them rushed for the door inside, which was directly in the cockpit. There was nobody actually piloting the ship, meaning the Nazis had figured out autopilot as well, but there had been people ready to fight. The Clockwork sent one into the ceiling with an uppercut, and Orion shield-bashed another into some control panels. Once they’d been taken care of, Rami looked at the controls of the ship.

“None of this makes sense to me.”

“Is it because it’s in German?”

“Maybe, but I at least expected to know what some of it did.”

Orion looked and also couldn’t figure much out. The wheel was obvious, but there was a whole slew of unlabeled buttons that meant nothing to them.

“No matter. Where they’re going, they won’t need this information.”

“But what if for when we need to get the ship out of Carmsborough?”

“This ship isn’t leaving Carmsborough.”

“What?”

Without elaborating on his cryptic response, Orion charged into the next room of the ship, which was empty, apart from some decorations and a large map in the center, detailing everything the Nazis knew about Carmsborough. The districts weren’t drawn anywhere near correct, and the capitol was much further south than they had put it, but it was apparently doing the job for them.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

Well, not really, seeing as they had been thwarted with every attempt so far.

The other two joined him, and as a group, they continued to the next room. And the next. Every time they met someone inside, they were vastly outmatched and decommissioned within moments. It was almost too easy. Their crew must have been scattered across the ship.

Still, going room by room was a long process, and Orion was worried they were going to be taking too long. He could tell they were still firing randomly into the city, and if given another half an hour, the ship might make it to the capitol.

The Clockwork, feeling his urgency, smashed through the floor into the next sublevel of the ship, and helped lower the two humans into it.

“First item of business is to disable their weapons. Then destroy some engines.”

“This thing probably runs on twenty engines. We’d be hunting for hours.”

“We only need to take out enough to lower the shield. We don’t want to take out all of them, because we’re going to need to steer this thing.”

“Steer it where?”

“Into the mountains.”

The Clockwork went off in one direction, and Orion and Rami went the opposite way, looking for any sign of the barracks. As they came along an enemy, who were now on high alert, they were properly dealt with, sometimes without even getting a word in, until eventually, they found a preposterously long room, curved on the outside wall, lined with weapons and men loading or firing them.

They hadn’t been spotted yet, but that didn’t stop them from charging in and smashing into two of the men. Orion’s rocket boots, a luxury Rami didn’t have, sent him into the air and into another group of people, who he fought with his baton and ultimately defeated. Rami continued with his scythe, and before long, the long room was silent and empty, apart from the two of them. No more weapons were going off into the city below.

“Engines now?” Rami asked.

A large rumble rocked the ship. The Clockwork was one step ahead of them, apparently having already found an engine.

“Maybe we just let him take care of it,” Orion said, running back to where the Clockwork had lowered them onto the floor.

After a few more rumbles, and a growing sense of urgency in the voice of someone on the speaker system, the Clockwork regrouped with them.

“Is the shield down?” Orion asked.

The Clockwork nodded, and then offered to lift them, before soaring up himself.

They ran back to the front of the ship, where the cockpit was, bodies still on the floor, and looked out the window. Off in the distance, Orion could see the mountains to his left and the capitol to his right. There were Carmsborough airships approaching as well.

He pressed a few buttons on his watch, and a few rings later, the Gearmaster responded.

“Do you think you can let the Air Force know we’ve taken control of the ship? I’m at the steering wheel now.”

“What are you doing with it?”

“Crashing it into the mountains. We won’t have to hear from this particular set of Nazis again.”

“Be safe. I’ll let them know.”

He turned the wheel hard, and the ship shuttered as it tried to accommodate for the sudden change in direction. The Carmsborough airships broke off about a minute later, returning to wherever they’d come from before.

Now all there was left to do was stand and wait for the ship to approach the mountains, crash it, and get off before it was too late.

“So anyway, I’m pretty sure it was the same homeless girl I’d met at the scrapyard.”

“How can you be so sure?” Rami asked. “That’s a very weird coincidence. Plus, what would they want to do with a homeless girl?”

“No idea, but she was a little shady. Maybe she cheated the wrong guy, and he sent them to take care of her. I don’t have enough information about any of it, though. Hoping once this Nazi stuff dies down, I can get a good look at it all.”

“That’s a pretty big wish. I doubt if the war is going to end anytime soon.”

“Yeah, me too. But maybe they’ll decide Carmsborough isn’t worth it after I crash this thing. They quite literally have gotten nowhere with us, and they aren’t learning from their previous attempts. It almost feels like busywork.”

“Or a distraction.”

“Maybe. From what, though?”

“Maybe they’re afraid you’d help the rest of the world. If they keep you confined to here, to Carmsborough, you can’t go out and reverse what they’re already doing elsewhere.”

“Do you really think that could be it?”

“Well, I mean, think about it. Other than some fluke with an airship in the United States, there hasn’t been anywhere else that’s done what you’re doing here. If you and the Clockwork take the fight to them, they’re hopeless.”

“Maybe I should, then. But I don’t want to leave Carmsborough exposed. I fought for our country two years ago, and I’m not going to reverse it all for a different oppressive regime just to potentially save another group of people.”

“I wish I had a good answer. Maybe there isn’t one.”

“Maybe the answer is the twins. If I change their goal from defending the shop to just defending Carmsborough as a whole, I could get out there and save some other countries.”

The airship was steadily approaching the mountains, and looking at the track it was on, Dovi Mountain, the tallest of the group, was shaping up to be its ultimate resting point. The three of them looked at each other and knew it was time to get out while they could.

They stepped onto the deck, where two men were waking up, and with ten seconds to impact, darted away to a safe distance to watch the damage, landing on a nearby mountain.

The front of the ship splintered and crushed inward on impact, and as the rest of the ship continued its momentum, it flattened and exploded against the side of Dovi Mountain. The balloon popped and erupted into flames in the blink of an eye, and flaming carnage continued to tumble down the side of the mountain and into the crevices below.

“I’d say a solid eight out of ten,” Rami said. “Could have used more explosions in the hull.”

“I agree, but really loved the front of it crunching like it did. Like stepping on a can.”

Despite the entire ship having fallen to the world below, a large rumbling began below their feet. A portion of Dovi Mountain had an avalanche start on the opposite side of the crash, and from the mountain, a sizable crack in the earth emerged, cutting through the ground and another mountain in a jagged path south. Other avalanches followed, and a chill ran down Orion’s spine.

Just like the incident with Syndra. Both involved Dovi Mountain somehow.

They followed the crack of the earthquake, and it ripped right through a portion of the Lower Agricultural District. As it left the mountainous section, the crack grew wider, reaching a point of one meter wide where a river had once been. There were some toppled barns along the way, but the earthquake and the damage stopped about halfway in, nowhere near the ocean.

The three returned to Dovi Mountain where the earthquake had begun. The crack was small, and he couldn’t tell if he’d made it up or not, but it seemed to have shrunk since they saw it open. Maybe all the rumbling had slid the rock in a way to close it up some more.

The Gearmaster called him on his watch again. “Just got an earthquake on the seismometer. Looks like it hit—”

“South, yeah. We were here. It stemmed from Dovi Mountain again.”

The line went silent for a while, until the Gearmaster said, “Something tells me we should stop messing around with that mountain. Also, I just got word from the police at the Carmsmax Prison. It seems Syndra has, in fact, managed to slip away.”

Orion looked out at the mountain range. He was exhausted.