Disclaimer: this is a work of fiction. It is a draft; there are mistakes, many misspellings and sometimes long periods of no updates. copyright: ion fyr 2025
Nila had no time to link to the car’s wireless system and drove it entirely manually in the effort to evade the targeting of the skyship. She hadn’t even gotten a good look at it, so the classification was unknown—a fact which did not matter, because the longrange weaponry would be pretty much the same for any of the gargantuant ships.
Carreening over the grey lichen and stone landscape, aiming for the edge but the mountain between her and the ship was an effort, despite the car’s automatic assistance easing the unfamiliar jerkiness of her own control, Nila fumbled with the safety harness, while jerking the joystick left and right.
She managed to buckle the clasp of the harness, just as the rocks dropped beneath her. The nose of the car angled nearly straight down, and she felt the harness bite into her shoulders and hips as her body was pulled toward the roof of the car, then toward the front, before the downward acceleration pushed har back into the seat again,
Her friend’s airship, was completely unlike the sleak beast over the ridge. It was a 19th century dirigible, enclosed within the twenty facets of a unique invention. If she could make it there, before the skyship crested the mountain, she would be safe…probably.
Nila pushed the throttle to maximum. The carpet of treetops raced by 10 meters beneath her, too fast to see the sway. She was grateful for the proximity monitors that made it nearly impossible to nosedive into the forest. Manual diriving was not anything she did on a regular basis.
She shot a glance at the embedded rear screen. The upper conning tower of the skyship was just begining to rise over the peak. It would be a matter of seconds until either the railguns or the beam weapons would be targeting her again, and her friend’s airship along with it.
She could see the Hut lift off from the beach, as if it had been waiting for her. She was too focused on piloting the car evasively to contact them. The rings were still on her finger, but using them took concentration. Hopefully, they were aware of the skyship.
It seems they were. The bulk of the Hut had turned abruptly to port, raising it’s starboard flank, and exposing more of the cargo beneath to her. The dangling cargo door swung out towards her.
Just as Nila slowed, to angle upwards into the cargo bay—and Luc’s car didn’t really fit, only being able to enter at an uncomfortable angle—the car was filled with a sickening sound, of rent metal and plastic and composite…a scream of pain…
The car continued its trajectory up into the dark triangle in the ship’s gondola. Nila realised that it was her own scream she heard as burning pain shot through her arm and shoulder.
More screaming.
Somewhere someone screamed, “Gordon, now!”
Ion Fyr 