The dark skies above Peravendath's skyline were at war with the relative calmness of the planet's seasonal climate. The normally placid, brisk seaside night that fell during this time of the solar year had been replaced with a darkfall that resembled a raging beast. Lashed with wind and lightning, eruptions of eerie yellow-white brilliance peppered the vast billowing cloud bank as the atmosphere resounded with a rolling barrage of pounding thunder.
The dark that enwrapped the turbulent coast and the city-fortress dominating its shoreline and the archipelago stretching out from it, was the kind of a night that teased at the mythology of a cataclysmic battle between primal, angry gods, hinting at the arrival of a great and bloody armageddon.
It was not the type of a sky where any aviator or sky sailor would or could feel safe riding the rushing, dynamic currents of the inky air.
"I've picked up a blurt-broadcast, looks like it is some kind of Aerial Position Indicator Emergency Beacon."
"A distress call? In the middle of this mess? Really? Put it on-screen..."
They had barely missed colliding with the huge, rectilinear skyship by only a little over the breadth of a jousting stadium. The ship had suddenly loomed into view, running counter to the spin of the massive waterspout, from out the foggy curtain of whirling ocean spray surrounding the vortex just as the jetellin's engines had pulled the rigid airship out from the grasp of tractor winds emanating from the storm.
The cigar-shaped, multi-level skyship had emitted a banshee-like shriek as it had flown by the jetellin.
Through a ribboning cascade of black smoke trailing from the ship's nose cone, they could see that its whole port side above the fifth deck had been ripped apart, splayed open, and it appeared that had happened from inside the craft, as if there'd been some manner of explosion that had run the length of the vessel from bow to stern.
From her position at the navigational console, Ryonne peered intently at the image dominating the panoramic master viewscreen and exclaimed, "Whyelle-dur, that ship, do you recognize what kind of vessel that is? It appears to be some kind of a warship, but I've never seen a design configuration matching anything like it...!"
Under his voluminous crimson hood, Adam Wilder's dark face involuntarily wrinkled into a grim mask that was equal parts apprehension and rancor. The sight of the damaged skyship had awakened a stream of bitter memories from his past and, while he fought to keep directional control as he piloted the jetellin through the storm, the gradual realization of what he was looking at further darkened his mood.
"That design is rare. There aren't very many ships of that kind in existence here, so far as I know. It's a relic from Teshiwahur's more technological age, back before the decline of the Emperium. I didn't think that any were left operational. At least that's what the people who took me in told me a long time ago. But if it's the ship I think it is, I know that ship and I know its crew..."
"You do?"
"I think it's the Aerieakon. A large part of me doesn't want to believe that, but I'm pretty sure that is indeed the ship I'm seeing. And if that's so, then that's the ship I was forced to serve on, first as a prisoner in chains, then as a crew-hand, and later as a freebooter, when I was first marooned here in the Withered Land."
Ryonne drew in a slow shuddery breath and looked away from the image to fix Wilder with a hard stare.
"That ship is under the command of the pirate Captain Rae'vynn Wyyng, isn't it? Your former teacher. The one who betrayed you and abandoned you to die as a gladiatorial slave..."
Wilder nodded. "The very one."
Ryonne pursed her lips as she reached up to adjust the red-tinted visor covering her sensitive eyes. "They're in serious trouble. Their ship does not look to be skyworthy any longer. Despite the straining of their powerful engines, they're rapidly losing altitude. I think the force of the cyclonic storm is the main force keeping them airborn. Do we offer to save them -- or do we let them fall to their deaths, as they no doubt deserve?"
Wilder's answer chilled her. "Not going to happen. I've got unfinished business with her and her crew. No damn storm gets to decide her fate. That bitch is mine to kill. Ready the targeting range-sensors and initiate the grappling attenuators. We can snare her. The jetellin has power enough to keep their craft aloft if we hook her and pull her along, out and away from the effects of the vortex eyewall."
"Can we trust they won't open fire on us? Ship-to-ship telemetry sweep shows their weapons system is still online."
"Their weaponry isn't close to being equal to the weapons we have aboard the jetellin. The Aerieakon is a well-armed, armored gunboat, a raider mainly built for speed and altitude. Not to mention their weapons technology is outdated by comparison. This jetellin is a full-scale battleship, a Devastator-class ship built for anti-aircraft warfare. If their own scanning telemetry is still working, they'll see that. They won't dare fire on us."
Ryonne sighed. "I don't like this, Whyelle-dur. This is a very bad business. We should just leave while we still can."
The Traveler in Red uttered a sound that resembled the hoarse cough of a forest predator stalking its prey.
"I'll line us up alongside them. You launch the grappling hooks and reel them in as close as safety deems prudent. We'll get out of the grips of these winds and then I'll find us a place large enough to accommodate our landing..."
It was getting hard to breathe and what air there was in the compartment was sooty and made his eyes burn. The wheelhouse compartment off the central bridge was thick with the smell of melting optical fiber, scorched plastic, and superheated metal. Moreover, the small volume of breathable air inside the bridge command center was humid and hot, sucking the vitality out from the few remaining command crew who'd remained aboard the crippled craft after the life-pods had ejected.
Durkka-jan was regretting his decision to remain on the Aerieakon. Even though the ship had been his home and refuge for many a long and exhausting solar orbital heliar, it was unarguably a very restricted and highly regulated environment both physically and socially and its clockwork reliability had sanded a lot of the hard edges from off his primal survival instincts. The ship had been his world for a long time and now that world was literally coming apart at the seams. He'd gotten used to depending on the intermeshing talents of a coordinated support crew to fill in the gaps and lapses in his own training and performance, become dependent on them, and the catastrophic circumstances he currently experienced fiercely tested his abilities. And in responding to those tests, he was coming up short. He'd already been tired when all this began, he'd never had the opportunity to rest after the events at the Ureeon Skycraft Dockyard, and he felt bruised and pummeled after the combat in the skies over Ometh Nastreq. But after and during The Dragon's personal assault on the ship, keeping control of the helm had thrust Durkka-jan into a life and death battle to keep the huge craft aloft. Making things even worse was the fallout from Emaris Staurqe's aggressive defense against the mighty reptile king's destructive rampage.
He wished he knew what was happening in the rest of the ship, but deck-to-deck communications were offline and propulsion engineering had sequestered themselves behind the bulkhead security seals inside the Systems Dynamics Ops room and weren't answering internal hailing frequencies. Though he had some input from visual prompts, Durkka-jan was dependent on the limited optical data he could glean from the closed circuit camera displays.
Bridge command coordinating network administration was down. Fire suppression control was offline. Wheelhouse connective avionics linkages and directional flight control systems were severely damaged and, as a result, cripplingly limited. Hull integrity was hugely compromised. And now, internal climate control and life support systems were failing. Only the vigorously fearsome Wavehammer engine thrusters maintained optimal power levels.
The ship wasn't going to make it. He wasn't all that sure he was going to survive, either.
He'd stepped into anchoring lock-boots to maintain his footing at the flight console while the ship shuddered and shook with a wildness that imitated the defiant bucking of a trapped and corraled animal. Luckily, he'd been smart enough to activate the lock-boots' telescoping knee-braces to protect his joints as the pitch and yaw of the vessel on its longitudinal axis achieved unsettlingly chaotic intensity. However, the ship's rocking and jerking was threatening to yank him out of those boots and tear him in half.
He was fighting to maintain what little questionable control he maintained over the ship's vertical stability, along a flightpath away from the vacuum pull of the storm vortex's outer sheath, when he saw the massive, bloated shape of a combat jetellin, multiple cannon-muzzles bristling along its sides, looming into view on his forward viewscreen. The plate-armored rigid airship was huge, easily thrice the surface area of the Aerieakon. But the thing Durkka-jan noticed most was how expertly the thing was maneuvering through the howling, buffeting rush of the storm's cyclonic winds. A very determined pilot was at the undercarriage's gondola controls and they were battling to guide the enormous craft towards the Aerieakon.
A loud electronic blurt emitted from the bridge's communications console and, for a moment, an extended stream of buzzing static overrode the external cacophony from the storm's winds. Following that, the familiar bell-tone indicating that ship-to-ship communications had been enabled resounded and a strong male voice issued from the speaker system.
"Aerieakon, Aerieakon, this is Qundin Independent Territories Jetellin Nine-Aleph out of Niyaddour on approach. You should be able to see us on your viewscreen. We are in non-aggressive posture. Do you read?"
Durkka-jan's hand lashed out to grasp the beveled dial on the command console and he responded without delay, allowing himself to indulge in feeling a small glimmer of hope.
"We read you, Jetellin Nine-Aleph! Am I speaking with the cognitive-piloting A.I. or are you a tethered cybernetic bond-operator?"
"Does it matter, Old Trog?"
"Old Trog"? Durrka-jan had not heard that phrase used in many heliars and there had been only one being he knew of who had used it whenever he had directly addressed the golden-skinned, red-bearded muscular troll...
"Wilder? Adam Wilder, is that you?" the beleaguered Battle-captain and First Officer managed to say past a suddenly dry mouth. He could barely believe what he was hearing. It was the Offworlder, the walking dead man who'd been ripped away from his own world and dropped into the middle of a calamity on a planet full of xenophobic war-like aliens. He was listening to the sound of all the collected sins of the crew of the Aerieakon revisited. That voice, Wilder's voice, was one he'd never expected to hear again. Now that he was hearing it, though, he was alarmed at the implications it presented.
"Affirmative. And I have to say I can't believe you actually stayed aboard that vermin-filled, ancient, flying garbage scow considering all the torturous crap its captain put us through."
"By All of Fury's Devils, you're alive! I didn't think you'd survived the Gladiatorial Academy at Pasmett Qanovalle..."
"Have you been promoted to captain? Is the ship now yours? Or do you still serve under the command of Rae'vynn Wyyng?"
Durkka-jan clenched his teeth and allowed a hint of regret to color his tone as he answered. "The Aerieakon is still Rae'vynn Wyyng's command. Listen, lad, you were done a great injustice, I know, and I know that makes this hard, but you have to understand..."
"I don't have to understand a damn thing. Now do you want to be rescued or not? Perhaps we can forgo the stroll down memory lane long enough to get a sitrep on the Here and Now, Old Trog."
Durkka-jan winced. He could hear the feral steel in Wilder's voice even through the modulation of the communication console's electronics. The man was angry. Still angry and probably harboring a lethal grudge. The stocky ship's Battle captain couldn't blame him. If he'd been in Wilder's place, and gone through what it was likely Wilder had experienced, he'd probably be borderline homicidal, as well. As quickly and as succinctly as he could, Durkka-jan explained the seriousness of the situation aboard the Aerieakon.
The Traveler in Red snorted derisively. "A Dragon-King and a flying man did all this damage to your ship? This goddamn planet gets creepier and crazier by the day... Whatever. Try to level her out and keep her speed consistent. Keep ready with the directional docking jets in case we need to make some adjustments. We're engaging grappling lines and towing you away from here. We'll tell you when to throw the Wavehammer engines into half-impulse power as soon as we can verify we're bracketed."
"Be careful, do not let your skepticism blind you to the danger!" Durkka-jan warned. "The Dragon could very well decide to come for your ship, too!"
"Blinded? No, I see all too clearly these days. And as for any threat your 'Dragon' presents, let him try."
* * *
He was hurt, badly, but not mortally. The fact that he still could be harmed was a bittersweet revelation. It had been many, many heliars since he'd seen or felt the wet heat of his own blood running down his flesh. The wound in his left side was as wide and as deep as the circumference of a grapefruit and it instilled in him a unique and alien feeling of raw agony he'd hardly ever experienced. The talon gashes that tore along his rib cage were wide and bled profusely, but the swarm of flowing, semi-organic, programmed nanites inside his flesh were rapidly repairing his injuries. However, the injury still managed to remind him of the fact of his own mortality, despite his extreme longevity, despite the circumstances of his unusual birth, and despite the nature of his superhuman synthetic biology. That sensation was not a welcome one.
But it fueled a fire within him that raged as hot and as bright as the sizzling furnace of a sun.
For the first time since his early days as an outlaw and rebel, Emaris Staurqe felt excited to be alive.
The Beast opposite him was an immense mass of mutated muscle, a genetic masterpiece blending the physical strengths of bipedal mammalian human evolution and the primal ferocity and power of saurian crocodilian development. The Beast was ruthless and cunning, blessed with a wide-ranging and deep intelligence further augmented and expanded by a top-echelon education. Additionally, the creature had been trained as a soldier in the ways of traditional armed and unarmed combat. Fast, smart and confident, it was a supreme predator raised as an aristocrat in a culture that prized aggression and a warrior ethos where murder was an acceptable manner of achieving elevated social status.
And better than all these things was the fact that the Beast did not fear him.
He knew that he, himself, should have been intimidated, frightened even. He wasn't. He was an Alpha Progenitor and by definition that made him something far greater than any anticipated product of natural human evolution. He was an expression of the pinnacle in both human physical perfection and mammalian anthropoid mutation. He was superior. He had been designed to outrival and vanquish all who opposed him. He was a glorious impossibility.
For him, contesting against the beast born with the name Zhe'kae-Chah, a tyrant renowned by the title of The Dragon, he had finally encountered an enemy worth killing. Fueled as he was by righteous anger and vengeance against this creature who had engineered the brutal death of one of his synthetic brethren, he still managed to feel a small measure of sadness that he would be forced to snuff out the Saurotetramorph's life. He had, after all, waited for far too long to at last encounter a foe he could respect.
While he savagely battled, Staurqe's beatific smile was a truly disturbing thing to see.
The Dragon had, for the moment, interlinked his thick arms with Staurqe's and they stood chest to shoulders pressing against one another as their powerful legs drove at the battle-dented flooring of the corridor, and while they wrestled for leverage, they each exerted sheer force enough to crush a half-meter of reinforced theradium-steel plate. The Dragon stared down into Staurqe's face and his scaly muzzle wrinkled into an expression of disgust.
"So this is what the apelings send against me? You? An automaton puppet, an android construct? I can smell the artificial chemical soup they used to weave false flesh covering your cybernetic frame. Were you incubated and grown or did they use a digital molecular printer to create you? Gwaugf! Just touching you is an insult to my imperial personage..."
Staurqe's response was non-verbal. He twisted out from Zhe'Kae-Chah's grip, dropping to one knee facing away from The Dragon as he did so, thus forcing the towering humanoid reptile off-balance, and he next brought both his hands together and spun swiftly, sweeping the massive legs from out under the brute. As The Dragon stumbled, toppling, Staurqe rose and pivoted on one leg to kick upwards and back, driving his booted foot deep into Zhe'Kae-Chah's wide chest. The blow impacted with force enough to throw the reptile-king violently back into the corridor wall, partially crumpling the ship's interior bulkhead. He hit that wall accompanied by a clamor resembling the clang of a mighty gong. Wheezing, The Dragon scrambled awkwardly in an attempt to rise...
Leaping, Staurqe dove onto him with an inelegant, but well-placed, two-footed stomp that piledrived into the creature's exposed abdomen. The floor directly beneath the saurian mutant crumpled under the impact. The coldly calculating Alpha Progenitor then back-flipped away from his enemy and landed facing the reptile-king, fists raised and legs spread in a wide battle stance.
The Dragon coughed and a gout of blood splattered onto the metal floor. He slowly raised a taloned fist and wiped away a trickle of blood from the corner of his lips. He chuckled throatily as he drew himself up on one knee. His baleful eyes regarded the puddle of gore with an air of appreciation.
"Wonderful. Well done. How could I have lived so long without encountering a challenge like you?"
"You won't win," Staurqe said. "For all your strength, you're still only flesh and bone. I am more."
"True. I'll admit that. But you won't win, either. You can't. The odds against you were always far too great."
Staurqe's face underwent a change from an expression of determined triumph to one of surprise and confusion as he realized light was beginning to pass through his physical form as he became transparent and insubstantial. He felt dizzy and queasy. He blinked rapidly as his eyes began losing focus. He felt the effects of gravity slowly recede and it was as if he were beginning to float.
He was fading away.
The Dragon's ugly, hybrid facial features morphed from a dark and cunning sneer into a lopsided smile of triumph.
Staggering, willing himself in a fight to somehow stay tangible, Staurqe noticed that The Dragon was looking past him... The synthetic superhuman whirled around. He was greeted by the sight of a very tall woman of alien physiology, resembling a human female of amazonian proportions yet unsettlingly different, dressed in a multi-sectioned, form-fitting neoprene, leather and carbon-fiber exo-suit. The glowing pearlescent whiteness of her skin was marred by a gray tattoo covering one side of her elvish face.
Fianaxis, the Arbiter who was called The Woman, was standing behind him. Her smouldering eyes regarded him with an implacable gaze that promised unimaginable horrors.
"You are not a part of the plan. You are a distraction. You need to go away," she dryly intoned, the sound of her voice echoing in the enclosed space.
And with that, the synthetic, biological non-human variant designated Kodespawn 77, who had come to adopt the name Emaris Staurqe, disappeared from view.
* * *