There had been a time, long ago, when she had wept. Her sobbing moans and the soft hiss of her falling tears were captured by the thirsty, parasitic winds that swept down the invisible, winding corridors between the Lucid Reality of Now and the trance-like Dreamscapes of When.
Why she cried didn't matter. All that was of any importance was that she did.
They needed that to happen. They valued her tears, each and every one. Better than diamonds, rubies, platinum or gold, the hot salty fall of misery that poured from her eyes were things over which alliances would be broken, over which murder would be committed, over which wars would be fought. It was the currency of Damnation Itself...
The anti-pious demigods who counted themselves as leaders of the Mokaeren Host saw such woeful torment as the most precious of treasures. It was beautiful. They desired it in abundance. Craved it. They needed it.
And to insure her everlasting anguish, to keep her bitter tears flowing, they remade her in their own image.
She was god-like, but nothing even close to being a deity. She was neither an angel nor a devil. There was nothing supernatural about her. She was not a monster. She was not truly an abomination of evolution, though she was, indeed, a mutated organic horror. And she was not a mistake. She was a necessary and important component in an ageless and brutal equation.
Existence was agony. No matter through what perspective she viewed her situation, her fractured multi-chronal presence spread across the continuum interfaces of the Macrocosm was painful to a near unbearable degree. The fact that she did not truly belong to any of the continuums into which she had inserted herself amplified her mental and physical distress. She had been made strong, altered and enhanced, freakishly so, made to be stronger than any living organic being had any right to be, and yet she could only barely contain the traumatizing anguish that flayed her flesh and set fire to her nervous system. And the torturous purgatory of her unrelieved suffering was what fueled her extraordinary power over both Space and Time. That power was intoxicating. That power was addictive. The strength and energy imbued her as the Master Arbiter, her mutant force of might, was gloriously exhilarating and that dark euphoria bonded her to all the many portals to the vast Macrocosm's different Realities with the assured density of an anchor. She was an intrinsic part of everything that suffered under the dread territorial domination of The Decreers of the Mokaeren Host. Her existence, though heinous and torturesome, should have been rousing and vitalizing, a miracle of biogenetic manipulative engineering.
But it wasn't. She had long ago been driven and was incapable of feeling the turbulent emotions that shredded what little remained of her individual consciousness. Every time she used her power a little more of her Self, her identity, was erased. It left scars on her mind, scars that did not heal. Fianaxis could not stop the bleeding... But the only thing she was sure of was that was exactly how the The Decreers wanted it.
It no doubt amused them.
In the presence of Quhr, the First Decreer of the Mokaeren Host, she knelt upon one bent knee in his fortress' courtyard, and stared down onto the surface of the arid plane on which the fortress was built. There was no planetary geography, no actual rocky asteroid surface with physical longitude or latitude relating to the location. The quantum isthmus on which the castle-fortress had been erected was more than merely a slip of solid land set atop a projection of dark matter around which the river-like temporal stream flowed. That isthmus was a concrete materialization, an actualization, of a universal mathematical concept called a "complex topological monodromy group", the "monodromy" being an object running around an algebraic or differential singularity. The fortress and the land on which it sat were a strange manifestation of a set of points in space, along with a set of neighborhoods for each point, satisfying a set of axioms associating those points and neighborhoods.
All around the isthmus, rising and falling at preset, but ill-defined, unanticipated intervals, massive hexagonal prisms enclosing miniscule adolescent Realities emerged from the temporal flow.
An alien Overmind who served the role of the Invoker of Judgment, Quhr was attended to in his castle-fortress of violet-hued crystal by his Assault Host Troopers, hulking, biomechatronic goblins whose geometrically-latticed, metallic flesh was adorned with glowing amber-gold gems at their massive shoulders and inset into their broad, muscular chests. Their triangular insectile faces resembled a cross between the skull and face of planet Earth's preying mantises and those of its hornets, but their eyes were not an emotionless collection of compound lenses. Their upturned almond-eyes were preternaturally alert, betraying the feral emotions of an intelligent breed of hunter-slayer. The Assault Host Troopers were epigenetic microRNA biological robots with limited autonomous intellects. Their genetic matter had been harvested and collected from that of a little known race of beings called "Divisibles" who were creatures living inside the Fold of a geomorphous dimensional 4-space that bordered Euclidean Space and its temporal flow. They were organic beings, but they were not wholly biological in a traditional sense. They made no sound while they waited for Quhr's next set of commands, content to bide their time while he twitchily perambulated and ranted aloud.
"This is not how the plan was supposed to unfold. Calculations were made. Contingencies were deliberated. Omniscience is not the same as prediction and prediction is not the same as certitude," he muttered, the harshness of his inhuman voice grating to the listener's ear, "Events do not so much flow one to another in neat mathematical progression as they rather burst forth half-formed, incomplete, and tumble about directionlessly, but not at all randomly, to collide with one another, sometimes explosively, creating new possibilities. This is how primitive, compulsion-driven, semi-rational animals like humans manage to unwittingly influence the algorithmic certainty of universal formulas. This is how they spread the disruptive disease of their anarchy throughout the physical universe."
His taloned fists, clenched behind his expansive back, were clasped and interlocked. He stopped his pacing long enough to fix her with a baleful stare as he said, "And that is one reason why I exist to judge them."
Fianaxis did not speak. Quhr had not asked an overt question and she knew from experience that unless he did so, he was not predisposed to listening to the ideas of lesser sentient beings.
Quhr's Dominion-Keep, a sprawling multi-tiered, violet-colored structure existing inside a wide-based hyaline, three-dimensional octagonal pyramid, was composed of a series of tall parallel towers, each tower shaped like a shark's dorsal fin, joined at the base by a three-tiered saucer-shaped disk, a set of concentric disks of decreasing circumferences. The surface of the outer glassy pyramid-enclosure was a series of moving plates that continually moved and shifted, constantly dissembling and reconstructing the visual image of the castle-fortress within it. The subtly-placed ramparts and battlement walls of the castle vibrated silently, shifting in and out of visual focus, creating the illusion that the dorsal fin shape of each section was moving forward or back on the horizontal axis, independent of the other fins, with each fin etched and striated with intricate exterior designs resembling electrical circuit boards. The Dominion-Keep was an omniversal, transchronal projection, a kind of quantum physical mobile oasis originating from the furthest edges of the Mokaeren Host's central station hub in the Infradimensional Realm. The octagonal pyramid and the Keep existed simultaneously, but without continuity of timeline, along the rivulets and tributaries of the macrocosmic energy membrane separating twenty-seven different dimensions...
None of those dimensions could be considered "home" for Quhr. He was elemental and ancient and celestial -- a member of an alien race beyond definition, a racial species originating outside normal Einsteinian space. To such as he, "home" was a subjective term that held no true meaning.
But The Woman, Fianaxis, had been born a Zayreffime, a proto-Apotheostekite, which meant she was an antecedent relation, a predecessor, seven times-removed from the blood lineage of the Xherim'efarr, who were commonly called The HyperLords.
"The planet, fourth from their dual suns, that the humans call 'Teshiwahur' was never meant to sustain organic sentient life after the manifestation of the macrocosmic rupture the primitive population named 'The Wound' occurred. The Wound, a ridiculous term, was and is a natural phenomenon, an act of cosmic evolution, a resultant of the shifting of pre-existing interdimensional plates across the fabric of visible space. Its arrival was supposed to happen, almost pre-ordained. Those damnable Xherim'efarr, celebrated as the constructors of galaxies, engineered it. And the wondrous, alter-sentient Laukenmass Lazulux, a mobile nondeterministic polyspatial singularity module, was the key to controlling the growth and expansion of the more deleterius effects of that macrocosmic rupture. The Lazulux was an important component in a complex system of checks and balances protecting Teshiwahur and its inhabitants, but, as usual, the ignorant, egocentric humans, who are nothing more, really than Catarrhinine simians with a common gift for breeding and killing, interfered. A control. The Lazulux was a control I had within my grasp. Now the control is lost, destroyed. And the HyperLords will again dominate this region of SpaceTime."
Quhr sneered down at the silently fuming Fianaxis, his malevolent, raging pus-yellow eyes glowing, and said, "Your sole purpose, the foundation of your very existence, the reason you were gifted with the enhanced transhuman abilities you possess, was to prevent that from happening. I elevated you above all other proto-Apotheostekite gene-trash, gave you the tools to create living weapons from other regressive hominoid throwbacks. Yet you failed. Defeated by the unanticipated intervention of a provincial chaos-witch and a churlish, hybrid-mutant ape calling itself a 'knight'... And now I must justify and explain my actions to the other Decreers."
There was a harsh whine of metal on masonry as one of Quhr's goblinish Assault Troops strode across the amethystine-walled throne room's meteoritic iron floor, the cushioning pads of its wide tridactyl feet molding to the irregular roughness of the surface. The creature stood at an imitation of military attention as it announced, "As expected, Sire, the Dread One has arrived. Should we make ready the tribute?"
"No," was the curt reply. "There will be no tribute."
It flew towards the multi-spired crystalline structure like a comet, streaking down from the oceanic ether, landing in a mucilaginous spatter. A large, shimmering blue-black teardrop elongated liquidly along the series of shifting translucent outer wall panes to Quhr's right side. The wet, sooty smear whorled on the exterior buttress and then seeped its way through the impermeable, non-porous barrier as if the material were corrosively eating its way into the castle-fortress. It collected into a gooey, iridescent black mass and then rained down onto the floor creating a rubbery slick, that then repeatedly bounced in streaming arcs as it silently approached the Mokaeren demigod. It stopped moving a short distance from him and, as the gelatinous semi-liquid pooled, there issued forth a hissing sizzle signifying the release of unimaginable heat.
"Preeminance Kueru'Mael, the Terminant Decreer," the Trooper announced dutifully.
The puddle of onyx ooze rose, spiraling against gravity, from the floor and hastily shaped itself into a vaguely anthropomorphic figure...
As the figure solidified and the details of its morphology were revealed, it became apparent Kueru'Mael was every bit as much an abomination of nature as Quhr. Neither male or female in its anatomical construction, the creature was an odd hybrid of plant and mammalian humanoid, displaying a amalgamated morphology distinctly suited more towards feral predation than calculatory contemplation.
"A castle," it intoned, it's voice echoing, reverberating down unseen ghostly corridors. Clearly, Kueru'Mael was unused to the sonics of human speech, but adopted speaking aloud as a grudging show of respect towards Quhr. "Of course, I should have known. You don't actually need to occupy a physical construct, but I suppose it falls in line with your egomaniacal pretensions of seeing yourself as some kind of a conquering warrior."
"Better an egomaniacal warrior than a deranged zealot slavishly following an obsolete cult of cosmic nihilism."
"You cannot possibly be serious," Kueru'Mael reproved scornfully. "We play with humans. We do not adopt their breed's quirks and mannerisms nor their cultural idiosyncracies. We do not want to become them. That would be counter-evolutionary, to say the least... But, speaking of evolution, I do see that you are still playing biomolecular games with the local livestock. What is it you call these ugly things? Oh yes, 'Arbiters'. This thing kneeling at your feet is one of your precious Arbiters, isn't it?"
"Your remarks border on insolence. What reason have you to come to my domain and show such disrespect? If you find this so distasteful, by all means then, take your leave," Quhr growled.
"Temper, temper, brother...," Kueru'Mael chided, its vaguely anthropomorphic face awkwardly expressing humor. "Try to remember that, as problematic as it may seem, we are united in both species and in purpose."
"Why are you here?" Quhr demanded curtly.
Kueru'Mael sighed. The Terminant Decreer stood with one pair of its long arms clasped behind the wide inverted triangle of its back while its second set of arms gesticulated fancifully as it spoke. The Terminant Decreer stood with one pair of its long arms clasped behind the wide, inverted triangle of its back while its second, shorter and brawnier set of arms gesticulated fancifully as it spoke. Kueru'Mael possessed a dual torso, the topmost rib and chest area being carapace-encased and developed into muscularly herculean proportions, connected by a ribbed, short waist to a smaller, narrower diamond shaped mass that evolved into a long, large-headed pelvis. The Decreer's pigeon-gray flesh was striated with raised welts that looked like connective tissue running between plates of weathered bone. It adorned its forward-facing torso with an ruby-hued, oval amulet on a thick neck-chain. Armored gauntlets and gloves covered its huge, knobby fists. The skull on which its face was set resembled the skull formation of an Earth-based hammerhead shark, but its shining burgundy eyes were front-mounted under a bulging, bony suborbital ridge. The creature's mouth was on a short, wide muzzle, much like that of a canine, the elongated, curved front fangs, top and bottom, were each encased within a thin metal sheath holding a green jewel, while a long beard of coarse, braided hair extended from under its chin. The Decreer was a nasty and disagreeable-looking, alien monstrosity with the courtly mannerisms of an aristocratic dilettante.
"The Council of the Ebon Quincunx have taken notice of your most recent escapades and would like to know what it was you wanted to do with the Laukenmass Lazulux --- before becoming inadvertently complicit in its destruction due to your incompetence."
"The Council of the Ebon Quincunx," Quhr repeated around a derisive snort, "A collection of frightened apologists. They're afraid of upsetting the status quo, afraid of offending our so-called 'betters'. They're cowards. My aim, my plan, was to reawaken our ambition as a nation, as an empire, and create chaos enough to break the chains of our servitude and to elevate us to our rightful position as the predominant celestial species..."
"Why? We have no need of territories to rule. What does it gain our kind to lord over a plague of barely sentient, minimally educated apes scrabbling across the face of a dying planet of sand and ash?"
"You're all afraid of the Xherim'efarr..."
"Well, of course we are," Kueru'Mael said. "When considering a confrontation against the sheer cosmic power of the HyperLords, fear is the most logical of reactions. Do you forget what it is they can do? They are eons old, old beyond reckoning, beyond calculation, a race of cosmic travelers and explorers from outside this region of SpaceTime that existed before the young planet Teshiwahur first emerged from within the turbulent depths of the Makkaryenne Elasticity. They casually travel to and from different dimensional Realities without use of any recognizable physical technology. They know the answers to questions about Time and Space and Relativity that we haven't even imagined to ask as yet. They each are giants standing taller than the highest of castle minarets if set one atop another, have flesh solid enough to withstand fire and explosions, are able to turn away concentrated ion particle beam blasts without the need for armor, and each has physical strength enough to tear a warship asunder with their talons and their bare hands, at least those that possess hands instead of tentacles. And we as a culture have no idea what their motivations and goals are. We do not understand what it is that brought them here, to this solar system in this quadrant of the galaxy. So, yes, we are all afraid of the Xherim'efarr."
"You act as if we should consider ourselves insects as compared with them. We are better than that! We, too, possess knowledge and powers far beyond the grasp of mortal humans. Yet they treat us as if we were their servants...!" Quhr raged.
"You reason as if you were a spoiled child," Kueru'Mael said. "They are the HyperLords. Such as they owe us no deference, no allegiance or comradery. And nothing you do will balance the scales of power between them and us. All you will do is annoy them. All you can do is incur their wrath. The Council of the Ebon Quincunx demand you cease and desist."
Quhr closed his eyes and fought for control over the rising violence inherent to his belligerent nature. It would not do to overtly challenge a fellow Decreer. Though decidedly less aggressive than Quhr, Kueru'Mael was a being capable of commanding and releasing forces of staggering power.
"But regarding the matter of the Lazulux...," Quhr hissed.
"It wasn't yours. It was never meant to be yours. Nothing about it should have been of any concern to you. You did not make any formal petition to engage in either hunting for it or for using it once it was found," Kueru'Mael said, acting as if oblivious to Quhr's discomfort and aggravation, but ultimately more than aware of his fellow Decreer's frustration. "And, rather rudely, you did not make mention of your interest or your intentions to any of your fellow Decreers. We are the Mokaraen Host, after all. The very foundation upon which the loose collective of our cosmic coalition is built rests upon the implicit unity guiding all our actions. We are not an alliance of disconnected individuals with overlapping objectives. We are, instead, a focused army of like-minded beings sharing a single goal."
"Do. Not. Lecture. Me."
"No lecture, my brother, merely a reminder," The Terminant Decreer said, spreading his arms wide disarmingly. "I am only a messenger. The Council of the Ebon Quincunx are simply sharing their wisdom and their concern."
"So what do you all want of me?"
The Terminant Decreer tilted its cephalofoil head to one side as it answered, as if surprised Quhr had needed to even ask the question.
"Stop. Desist. However you need to do it, end these unseemly intrigues and disengage yourself from intruding further into the grubby affairs of these barbarous hairless primates before you cause yourself, and by association we others of the Mokaraen Host, further inconvenience and, dare it say it, potential harm. Do it, brother. We will not ask twice."
Quhr stared down at the floor, his shoulders slumped, and then, slowly, nodded.
Seemingly satisfied, Kueru'Mael turned on the heel of one of his massive cloven hooves and stepped away from Quhr and Fianaxis. "Wise move, brother. You know that we would do this for no other Decreer. You have always been a favorite of the Council of the Ebon Quincunx."
And with those words, the body and image of the Terminant Decreer flattened in space and rippled, devolving into a gravity-defying, teetering tower of blue-black, iridescent liquid that floated up from off the castle floor and then compacted itself, shortening until it looked like a bullet. It rose noiselessly towards the chamber ceiling and then flew off through the violet crystal walls, leaving no trace it had ever breached the exterior walls into the building.
Quhr walked a step closer to Fianaxis, the still kneeling Arbiter not daring to speak in the aftermath of what she had witnessed for fear of incuring the awful wrath of the shamed demigod. She did not look up at him. But to her surprise, she sensed him bend and lower himself until his wide, brutish face was at level with her own. His nearness was both repulsive and yet intoxicating. He was, at this moment, equal parts enticing excitement and calamitous danger. He slowly reached out an oversized, taloned hand and stretched out a single finger to rest under her trembling chin. He gently tilted her head up and back.
"Do you see? Do you see what I suffer for you?" he rumbled softly. "They do not understand. They are incapable of understanding. Do you see the risk I take to raise you above your birthplace among the stones and the dirt? For you. Do you see, child, what indignities your father is willing to suffer while fighting for the future of his children?"
With a lengthy sigh, he slowly rose and then turned to walk away.
And it was not until that macabre moment that she truly knew the horrifying depths of his insanity.
She had to break free of him. She had to. She realized there would be no other way she would survive the pandemonium yet ahead.
* * *
The screeching howl of the wind was still echoing in their ears even though the storm had vanished, dissipating in a barely visible, yet substantial, convulsive shockwave. The dying force of the squall left a ghostly, vibrating wave of unease permeating the cool, wet atmosphere. A billowing, rolling blanket of mist surrounded them even as the multiple serpentine grappling lines from the jetellin to the wreckage of the Aerieakon fell away from their flight path. The separation of the two ships should have presented all in attendance with an overwhelming sense of relief, but it didn't ... because they were dropping like a flaming stone, falling from the sky.
The muscles in Adam Wilder's thick shoulders bunched as he pulled back on the pilot's yoke at the bridge command console aboard the jetellin. His teeth were clenched in a fierce grimace and veins stood out in his forearms and neck. He dug his heels in to brace himself and threw his body backwards to add more leverage to his exertions. Auto-navigational command computing was offline and the huge ship's buoyancy-thrusters were fighting him, allowing planetary gravity to have its way with the vessel's mass. The yoke didn't want to respond. He could hear the jetellin's spinning engines whining as they battled to overcome the loss of aerodynamic lift and the inevitability of a rapid downward descent.
"Stay UP, god's damn it all, UP!" the Traveler in Red snarled defiantly as the jetellin's wide nose continued to point towards the ground below.
The airship skewed to port and the tail of the cylindrical vessel threatened to come around to the fore as the ship tried to spin on its axis, but Wilder was able to counter the drift and keep the craft on point. His mind raced as he tried to remember everything he could about piloting an aircraft, but his own flying experience hadn't prepared him for the complexity of emergency crash correction steerage for a large vehicle like the jetellin. Everything about the ship was counter-intuitive for flight.
And the damn inferno that had leapt across the grappling guy-lines from the Aerieakon to the jetellin wasn't helping his concentration.
Suddenly there was a jarring lurch that shook the vessel's frame as the front end of the ship rose slightly above the negative horizon-line's angle of declination. The nose was coming up, but very, very slowly. Too slowly. The plummeting ship was still going to crash.
Out through the sloping main viewer port, Wilder could see the ravaged hulk of what remained of the Aerieakon as it fell away from its position alongside the jetellin. The huge battle-ready airship began a spiraling tumble as it dropped into a precipitous plunge out of the sky and streaked down towards one of Peravendath's many interpassage canals. Trailing a charcoal-colored streak of black smoke, the vessel hit tail first, striking and demolishing a traffic causeway tower lining a bridge and then splashing into the cool waters with the force of a bomb.
There was a deep and resonant metallic roar as the ship rolled and broke apart, its narrow, rakish profile twisting as hull-integrity failed and the central mass collapsed in on itself. Water geysered into a four story-high wave that splashed down on the bridge's roadway, momentarily flooding the road and spilling other vehicles off into the sea. Spitting up a bubbly froth, the Aerieakon then began to sink under the waves.
Wilder heard a clattering behind him and turned his head, fists still latched onto the pilot's yoke...
Vandessha'Jai lunged onto the bridge through the kilted frame of the deck-to-deck lift tube, his grim face pale, but with an intense stare reflecting desperate focus as he stumbled recklessly over debris to stand at Wilder's side.
"Wondered what had happened to you. Glad to see you didn't die yet," Wilder said out the side of his mouth.
"Likewise," Jai muttered as he grasped the edges of the piloting and navigation console and, once he'd steadied himself, raised a hand to begin stabbing sequentially at buttons on the user interface. He paused only long enough to look up at Wilder and say, "Keep your hands on the yoke, but let up on fighting to climb. My crewmate, an incredibly smart synthetic woman you haven't yet met, gave me a set of instructions to follow. She said this would help to arrest our uncontrolled forward momentum and right the ship. Yes, I know it is counter-intuitive, but it will supposedly help. That's what I was told. Aside from that, I really have no notion of what it is I'm doing."
Wilder shrugged. He could hear the sound of the reaction-control system engaging and a succession of concussive thumps indicated the jetellin's vectoring thrusters were back online and operational. "Couldn't do any worse than what I'm managing now. Do whatever you need to."
The craft shuddered again and the floor tilted slightly starboard. A subsequent series of small tremors rocked the ship from one side to another, appearing to originate from the front underside of the jetellin.
"What in hell --? You wouldn't happen to know what's causing that, would you?"
Vandessha'Jai pursed his lips and he looked uncomfortable as he squinted at the panel's altimeter gauges. It was obvious he was reluctant to answer the question.
"Hmmn, yes, that... That would be my other crewmate. A new crewman. Kind of a non-commissioned contractor as opposed to regular naval staff. He's a synthetic, too, like my friend. He's outside the ship..."
"Outside?"
"Yes. He can fly. And he's really, really strong. He is what is supplying acceleration resistance against the crash."
"He can fly? And he's slowing the ship down?"
Vandessha 'Jai nodded. He wouldn't look at Wilder for fear of locking eyes with the Traveler in Red's expression of disbelief.
"Why did I ask? This planet just gets stranger and stranger," Wilder muttered irritably.
"Says the dead man from another world at the other end of the galaxy...," Jai said pointedly.
"Don't be rude."
The ship's internal intercom sputtered to life, startling both men, and, overriding the harsh static, they heard Ryonne's voice issue from the speaker.
"Whyelle-dur? Are you still there? I've managed to re-engage the fire suppression systems. The passageway decks are slick with foam, but it looks like I've got it contained. Haven't had time to get formal damage status. Can you hear me? Whyelle-dur?"
The Traveler freed one of his hands from off the pilot's yoke and flicked a com-switch on the face of the nearest overhead console cabinet.
"There's a lot of squawk, but I can hear you, Ryonne. Welcome back. I'm alright. I'm up here on the bridge with Vandessha'Jai. Looks like he and a few of the crew from the other aircraft were able to safely take refuge aboard our ship."
"Good to hear. For the record, I want you to know that I retrieved the captain of the other ship. An old friend of yours. She's here with me, a little worse for wear, but being very cooperative, just outside the engineering section..."
Vandessha'Jai watched as a visible change came over the Traveler. The tall black man's face grew cold and expressionless, settling into a solemn mask that camouflaged an abrupt flaring of temper. Ryonne's news cause the hooded warrior in crimson armor to grow even more intimidating than he usually appeared.
A chill seized the Aerieakon First Mate's heart. Jai knew they were referring to Rae'vynn Wyyng. The meeting between his captain and the Traveler was not something to which he looked forward.
"We'll address that later, Ryonne. For the moment, make sure vertical ballast and VTOL components are operating as near to peak efficiency as we can get them. What say we get this ship landed someplace safe and find the rest of our friends so we can get away from this place. That reunion with my old acquaintance will keep until then."
"As you wish." She signed off.
"There's a garrison-command parade field very near the main island's aerodrome tower," Jai suggested, carefully skirting the issue he knew was fueling Wilder's growing ire. "Once we're there, I believe it will provide ample landing area we can put down upon."
Wilder nodded. He turned his dark eyes on Vandessha'Jai and said, "So..., you think you can get your flying friend to help us get there in one piece?"
"I can. Think you could possibly refrain from killing my captain when we land?" he countered cautiously.
Wilder answered slowly. "If I promise not to kill her right away, will that do?"
* * *