It was a dark and lonely night. There was a thin cover of wisps over the moon. Over the milky moon was the silhouette of the TTG. Dawn Treader. Onboard that ship, Aial was using the cipher telegram to send coordinates to Ziplabs HQ. I was the only person who was still awake besides Dale. The normal driver and engineer were asleep, along with Verne's and the young boy. I still haven't bothered to learn his name.
Dale was probably the person I most talked to. He was from Minnin Kuldar and had served in the holy war for 37 years. Currently he was sitting in the “Engine room” reading aial’s mission orders.
I seem to be the only guy who hasn't read it, I thought to myself.
“What does it say?” I call over to my behind.
“Not much.” He yells over “Mostly sort of weird code”
Dale throws it over to me and I catch it with my other hand. I can't look behind me to catch it, because we're driving through the forest still. This shift we should make it to the central moors, which is exciting. We will be able to load the rest of the supplies onto the runner, and also let out all the speed.
I look down quickly at the booklet. It was written in some script I couldn't read. Some sort of hieroglyphs were scrawled across the book. I set it down on the floor next to the seat, and put my hand back on the control stick.
“How long have you been in Ziplabs?”
“14 years. 163 Special ops missions. 34 broken bones”
“Anything interesting you saw on your missions?” I ask him, ignoring his last type of measurement.
It had been a long 3 days since deployment, even though they were overall pretty dull. People cycled through driving, shoveling, and patrolling the bed of the runner. And if there was time in the schedule they slept. The food was ok, a mixture of dried nuts and dairy products kept cool by the nitrogen canisters. But almonds and cheddar get boring after a while, so I want to try to bag a rabbit in the next couple of days.
It had not been completely boring though. We saw an ironbound deployment craft going the other way. Our airship, fortunately, stayed in the blind spot of the larger craft. We also ran into a couple of homing cluster mines. When you ran them over, a small cylinder came out of the ground and released some spherical homing explosives. My crossbow is surprisingly good at taking them out, as it does not carry the same heat as traditional firearms, and the harpoons can only grab one target at a time.
When we get to the moor the enemy occupation will be a lot more pronounced, but we can also withdraw our remaining supplies from the airship, and have air support. Right now we're going pretty slow, at 15 kilometers per hour. Behind and above me I head a sudden thud, as Aial lands on the back of the runner.
He drops down into the crew compartment, and turns around to put another mark on the map.
“How far from the moor are we?” I call out, wanting to know when we need to stop. I had slept through part of the day, and took a power nap while keeping watch.
“A couple hundred meters out” he yells back.
The trees are thinning out, and I can see the moor with its long grasses and boulders. Thinking that it's safe, I gun the engine forward in its first test of power only stopping acceleration at 90 kilometers. We burst out onto the moor with an empty sky above us. The clouds are wispy, and to the west I can see a thunderhead reaching into the sky. Ahead of me, the seemingly flat moor stretches imperceptibly upward towards the north of the continent, and our destination.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
I slam the throttle control to the back, and start turning to the left to have the airship load the runner. I can feel the back treads loose traction and start to fishtail before we come to a complete stop.
Aial starts waking the other people up to unload the airship, so I stand up and climb the ladder to the small general area, grab two of those cipher powered flight indicators and then jump out of the door in the ceiling.
I turn on the indicators, and start waving the airship in, using the minimal safety training that was taught at the Ziplabs HQ. It lands with a scrape and a thud, and the engineer and medic open the door inside. I grab one of the few other things on my belt, a spyglass and start scanning the horizon for signs of enemy troops, airships, or wrecks.
Apparently the wrecks were really dangerous to be around for a long time, causing cysts and causing people to die. The power source it used was very volatile and unfortunately lasted a long time. 3 different godly avatars showed up to warn us at separate times to avoid it at all costs and don't blow up the ironbound ship.
Fortunately there didn't seem to be anything on the horizon, so I put it down and took a deep breath. I was tired, and it was … when was it? He looked down to his watch, to find that it was 2 Am.
Well that explains that. I've been awake for 20 hours.
I turn around to tell Aial that I'm going to bunk for the night, and ask what time to wake at, when I see the storm cell had grown closer, fueled by the westward crater winds. And bursting out of it was what looked like an airship. Not an ironbound airship, but a wooden mail carrying ship. And it was coming directly towards us.
“Aial?” I call out. “What is that?” ,as the ship starts to come closer
“Oh blast! Get back to the runner” He yelps out to the scouting division. Immediately we can hear the engine on the airship, get turned back to max throttle, and the harpoons are pulled out of the ground. The engineer and the young boy jump out of the airship and sprint over to the runner. Aial has disappeared into the crew cabin, so i start manning the mounted machine gun, and the engineer clambers inside, leaving the boy out to keep watch of the storm cell. I don't understand why this is such a huge emergency.
Suddenly something starts to form out of the storm cell, a long thin black shape with an angled nose. And then a second. Then the ironbound airships burst out of our cloud formation at full speed, angled directly towards us and not at the ship they were pursuing. One was larger than the other, and the bigger one definitely had one of those dangerous power sources.
“Bloody hell” I heard the young boy exclaim, and then spontaneously did something helpful for once. He grabbed a nitrogen canister and carried it down, leaving me alone on the top of the runner. The engine growls to a start, and we pull a U turn away from the incoming ships, planning on outrunning them. All of our weapons are out of effective range so our only option is just to run. The Dawn Treader is struggling to keep up with the speed of the runner as we approach the dangerous speeds. At this point we are moving at least 120 kilometers per hour.
The smaller of the ships slows down and starts descending towards us, while the other ships open fire on the runner with its beam weapon. The light red beam descends from the ship to the ground around 20 meters behind us, leaving scorched earth underneath its 8 inch diameter. The dawn treader suddenly takes off, pitching into a 30 degree roll (The farthest it can turn) and rapidly gaining altitude. I don't understand why until I look back at the ironbound ship descending.
The ironbound ship was launching heat seeking missles towards the other airship and they were rapidly approaching our supply craft.
Finally something I can do
I hold my left hand out and start using my fuel to make a bigger heat signature. Almost immediately one of the missiles veers off path, and then the rest follow. The scorching mark on the ground was approaching the back of the runner, until suddenly I felt a jolt of speed come through the craft. We pull away from the beam, leaving a wet trail of grass from condensation.
Turning around to face where the missiles are coming from, I start firing at them with the runners' machine gun. The first dozen shots miss, and then one of the missiles detonates prematurely causing 2 or 3 more to veer off and hit the ground. At this point they are at eye level, and are approaching at 11 o'clock. I brace for impact with no response. Several seconds later I open my eyes to see the missiles rocket past and try to turn around, before they hit the ground and detonate.
The boy comes out of the crew compartment, with a hull cracker in hand. A 2 cycle rocket launcher, it fires a small rocket before firing a larger rocket. The first rocket weakens the hull on impact, and then the 2nd rocket cracks through and causes structural damage. I jump down, and take the launcher from him and then start aiming through the bomber sites. This is really nice and must be dales, because it has a cipher rangefinder. The information that the smaller ship was 940 meters away was valuable. Tightening my aim, I pull the trigger.
Several seconds later the wing connecting the engine nacelles is hit by a 1 - 2 punch of explosives and snaps. Watching from the runner we saw it hit the ground, and explode. It didn't release any of the deadly forces, and just crashed. I can hear a yell from Aial as he pokes his head through the door and tells us to prepare to board the larger ironbound craft. It was pulling away from the runner and the airship, but still needed to be taken down.
He climbs out of the doorway and then takes off. The runner slows down and the airship pulls next to us, the young boy jumps on. But as I prepare to jump the heat ray refocuses and it starts to melt through the armor above the flyr dust bags on the airship. The airship pulled away, and I started running towards the edge of the bed. Then I jumped.