as a disclaimer: this is a work of fiction. It is a draft; there are mistakes, many misspellings and sometimes long periods of no updates. copyright: me 2025
It must have been a highrolling move on the part of Capt Gordon, thought Etelka: she ran, with Luc propping her, or her propping Luc, across the sand, across the strand…toward the airship…
BYH[side to baba yaga’s butt] sat on the western strand, gondola–within the arcane icosahedron outer shell–waiting for them.
The descent down the mountain was way quicker than the ascent. Skittering down gravel slides and racing through the birch groves, scattering nesting sea birds.
As far as they were aware, the Parsian tech camouflage would keep them safe and their passage hidden. Baba Yaga’s Hut, however, had no such camouflage to blend its appearance into the surroundings.
“Do you think they will see the Hut? The skyship?” Etelka, nearly out of breath, asked Luc as they paused for a moment under a copse of trees. She leaned against the mottled white trunk, her camouflage taking own the appearance, but making the tree look slightly less slender.
“They probably are looking for tech signatures, the echos of Naskadev drives and the like. Your airship will likely look like a anomaly at the very least.” Luc answered.
“I suggested to Captain Gordon, that under such unusual circumstances he land her.”
“Then the skyship will think she’s just a wreck on the beach,” he laughed.
Taking a tone of mock indignation, which was hard to convey given the camouflage, she responded, “The Hut would never look like a wrecked ship!” Etelka did not continue, fearing Nila could somehow listen in on their shared internal comms link, and accuse her of flirting with Luc. Etelka certainly felt like she was flirting.
They continued down the mountain.
…
Above, Nila ran from the shattering site where the AI had been located. Bits of aluminum and brass rained down. She sheltered behind a granite outcrop as larger pieces fell around her. She still could not see it, but knew it was located just beyond that rise. It had to have a line-of -sight target to fire. Just like me, she thought.
The car, Luc’s car, hopefully was still hidden. Beach or the car?
Car it was.
Nila knew the moment the car took off it would be targeted, so long as it was in view of the sky ship, and she also knew that the sky ship may very well have drones out, scouting and range-finding.
Still, Luc’s car was fast and maneuverable. She wasn’t sure, but it might even have countermeasures.
She didn’t see any drones where she was. The car was in a hollow depression that would escape any but top-down views.
When she got there she scrambled over the boulders, and hoped the opening of the door wouldn’t be considered “powering up” (though it probably would.)
>connect-system
CONNECTED
>systemPower -minimal
>identify countermeasures present
COUNTERMEASURES AVAILABLE
Then, using the rings, her secret weapons:
>open-doors -local
Like magic, the doors opened…without drawing power.
Nila tossed her rucksack in and crawled in after it.
>close-doors -local
Then back to the wireless connection with the car’s computer:
>prime -countermeasures
>power up
>set-destination…
…she set the destination for sea level in the opposite direction from the encroaching sky ship.
Looking at the rear screen as the car erupted from the depression on the mountain, Nila felt a knot in her throat at the sight of the massive bulk hanging in the sky. Like an elongated disk, convex on both top and bottom and possessing massive conning towers above and below, the ship loomed.
Nila couldn’t see the molten blobs of steel bearing on her. While, technically, railgun projectiles did arc, in this case the arc was negligable. The rear of Luc’s car, along with the undercarriage, suffered penetration. Fragents of rock and metal and plastic sprayed upwards.
Nila clasped her hand to her head and felt the warmth of her blood through her hair as the Kopf-Heckler bounced around the near vertical interior.
The primed countermeasures fired off, drawing the focus of the energy beams which suddenly targeted her and the car.
The danger was short lived, however, as the car dropped, with a stomach churning descent, down the other side of the mountain, beyond the smoldering wreckage of the the thinking machine’s hidden facility.
The car was programmed for road hazards and navigating streets, so the steep sloop of the decline was a bit much for it. As it was a small, personal vehicle, it was not outfitted with inertial buffers or the like; every birch in the way either bent or broke, and the front of the car began to resemble the rear.
Nila could still see blazing hot globs of railgun seed flying by. The car was beneath the profile of the landscape, leaving the smoking mountain cleft behind, above. She descended to the beach, intent upon reaching the open sea, where—if fate were kind—she would burn the air on her return to Europa.
The monitor in front of her had taken some shrapnel and was glitching:
Sitting on the beach below, through a flurry of birch fragments and scattering birds, was Baba Yaga’s Hut!
The airship.
Ion Fyr 