Chương 599: Chapter Five Hundred and Eighty-Three - Cloudwrack

I walked onto the main deck while cradling a mug of pipping-hot tea in both hands. It was quite chilly out, and I still had a blanket shrugged over my shoulders for warmth. I felt really nice. Sure, I hadn't slept all that much, but my Snoozing skill made taking the middle watch not that bad. Otherwise I think I would have been feeling just a smidge cranky. After sleeping only three hours, then waking up, then going back to bed a few hours later for another three hours...

well, it didn't add up to a full night's sleep.

"Good morning," I said. There were only three people out on the rear-most deck at the moment. Bastion, Caprica, and Calamity. All three of them were chatting quietly, with the occasional glance over the side.

"Mornin' Broc," Calamity said.

"Sleep well?"

"Yeah," I said before yawning.

"Not bad, at least. You?"

"Can't complain," he said.

"We've been keeping an eye on our friends out there." He flicked a thumb to the side, into the early morning mist that filled the space around us. At some point we had drifted out of the stormier skies. That was my doing. Last night the wind had started to pick up and move the Beaver about in a way that I didn't like. Not when it was so dark and most of the crew was asleep.

So I had veered the ship off to one side, fighting the wind until we were just skimming along the outer edge of the stormier clouds that hopefully hid that flying castle we were looking for. That meant that we were now a ways off from where we started. Amaryllis was going to be a bit annoyed at having to trace our path, but I was confident that she could do it. I squinted out into the dark where Calamity had pointed, but all I could see was gloom and shadows.

The sun wasn't up yet, though the horizon was turning much lighter and brighter, so that was bound to happen soon.

"Did you see the ship that was following us?" I asked.

"Nope," Calamity said.

"But Bastion here did." Bastion nodded severely.

"I did, Captain," he replied.

"It was approximately an hour ago. The ship was due east, on a northwesterly heading."

"Was it close?" I asked, ears perking up.

"For you to see it in the clouds and when it's still dark..."

"No, the vessel was some distance away. However, they didn't have the light discipline that we did. I was able to make out their deck lights in the distance, and Princess Caprica made use of your spyglass to confirm that it was the ship, not some minor illusion."

"Darn," I said. The ship was approaching our current destination "We gave them the slip, though! Do we know where they are now?" There was a lot of headshaking at that.

"We lost sight of it about an hour ago," Caprica said.

"It moved closer to the storm and was swallowed up by the clouds there. For all we know, it could be within a short flight of us now. Though we can't hear its engine, so there is that." I frowned, then reached up and held my ears straight before moving my head slowly from right to left, as if I was a bun-eared radar installation. I couldn't make out any rumbling beyond the Beaver's own engine.

"I can't hear it either," I admitted.

"So it's not that close," Calamity said.

"Or it's running quiet--but we're flying into the wind, so in that case, they'd have no chance of catching us. Could be that the clouds are muffling any noise, though." The clouds, which had just been fluffy grey masses when I came out, were taking on a much sinister feeling now that I knew that they were hiding a possible enemy.

"Okay... let's start getting breakfast together. If anyone's still asleep, let them sleep a bit more, but then I want everyone on deck and on high alert," I said with a decisive nod as I let go of my ears.

"We'll have everyone on break rotations as well, at least until the sun's fully up and we're ready to tackle that storm." The storm was close by. I could still taste it, though it was rather faint. Looking up, I could see where the storm cell towered up out of the surrounding cloud cover. The clouds there were darker, a deep grey fading into black, with huge flat 'shelves' sticking out of the central pillar that were occasionally lit up by a flash of actinic blue.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. Things proceeded pretty calmly on the Beaver for the next little bit. We continued to sail along the edge of the storm while the crew had breakfast and woke up, but soon everyone was out and on deck. Awen went about handing out goggles she'd made and ponchos made of some sort of water-proof material pulled from storage, and then the Scallywags spread sand on the main deck with some sort of glue mixed in.

It would ordinarily be a pain in the butt to clean off, but I could take care of that later. In the meantime, it would give us all a lot more traction. Ropes were brought out to secure anything that was supposed to stay in place, even if things were safe already. The last thing we needed was for something to get loose and knock other things around. We even considered lashing the helm, but decided against it.

We weren't just flying into a storm, we were looking for something within it, so it was likely that we'd have to maneuver around at some point. With everything as ready as we could make it, I gave the order.

"Clive! Take us in! We're running with the wind! Lookouts, eyes peeled!" The Beaver wheeled to starboard, and I reached out to hold onto a railing as we slowly dipped deeper into the storm. With the wind at our backs and a few small bits of sail deployed, we really started to gain some serious momentum, though since the Beaver was a little... aerodynamically challenged, that meant a lot of time was spent swaying hard from side to side.

I think that if i hadn't gotten used to life on an airship I might have gotten skysick. I was getting increasingly wet as the air filled with a light misting of rain that grew stronger the closer we came to the storm. We rose up some, not quite pushing the Beaver to its limits, but still angling us upwards to a higher level, where we might be able to skim over some of the rougher parts of the storm which seemed to more or less stay at the same level.

"Captain!" Gordon called off to one side.

"Ship sighted!" I squinted at the poncho-clad harpy, then moved over to the edge of the rearmost deck and looked over the edge. Below, maybe a kilometre and a half back and a hundred metres down, was the skiff. I pulled out my spyglass and squinted through it. From this close up, it was possible to make out the crew onboard the skiff, though the rain and foggy clouds did distort things a little. I saw three figures, all dressed in dark clothes. At least two were definitely humanoid, the third...

might have been a harpy? It was hard to tell. The skiff itself was long and rather narrow, with sails at the front and sticking out of the bottom. The balloon atop it was kind of flat and squished looking, with lots of rigging wrapped around it and the ship below.

"Can someone identify the make?" I called out. Amaryllis stomped over and after taking my spyglass, she chuffed.

"You're lucky I'm here. That's a Mantanese Skyshark. Most people wouldn't know what it is, however."

"Why is that?" I asked.

"It's from the Endless Swells. Their capital, Manta. There's a small airship manufacturer there, but the Swells love their seagoing ships more than anything, so they only ever produce smaller skiffs and patrol vessels. You won't see any back home."

"Alright," I said.

"What does that tell us about them, though?"

"Manta isn't that far from here. They'd be able to buy a better ship in the Harpy Mountains, however. Even Mattergrove might have better on the second-hand market. That skiff is two generations behind."

"As old as Abraham's ship?" I asked.

"Nothing is that old that still flies," Amaryllis said.

"But it's definitely not a younger vessel." Well, there was nothing for it. We had the wind at our back, and with a bit more sail deployed, were starting to make good time. I think we were even widening the gap a little. We'd have to see if they caught up to us before we discovered what was in the middle of the storm.