Chapter Two Hundred and Forty - Cry Havod Let Slip the Lasers of War

  The Beaver swooped down towards the town, like a lunging down to nibble at some pnkton.

  “All sails!” Clive called out, and--across both decks--a bunch of us tugged ba ropes at the same time. All around the Beaver, the ship’s sails unfurled fully, snapping in the wind, and slowing the Beaver down enough that I suddenly felt a lot heavier, as if I was on aor shooting up.

  “Moohis is it,” I shouted. We were only a couple of hundred metres above the town, the pretty cry towers in the tre looming closer. I squinted, and could make out the bobbing blue forms of at least a dozen cry.

  “Take care, everyone,” Moonie said as they hovered by the edge of the deck. They had our makeshift parachute held in a telekiic grip, and around them was a satchel filled with the tubes Awen had jury-rigged. “You were enjoyable panions, and fair friends. Thank you.”

  I grinned. “Thank you too! It leasure having you aboard the Beaver Cleaver.”

  Moonie bobbed up and down one final time, then they slid off the side of the ship while we cheered them on.

  “I hope they remember your half-baked pn,” Amaryllis said.

  “It’s an excellent pn,” I tered before half-turning to Clive. “Let’s get some altitude!”

  “Aye-aye,” Clive said. He pulled a lever bad, as pnned, let the engine slow down, so that we were flying mostly on momentum and eed we could get from the engine idling. The wind, at least, was in our favour.

  Seeing as how there wasn’t much to do but wait, I hung off the side of the Beaver and looked down.

  The parachute was w. I could make out the big, rounded-ish tarp floating down a ways behind us. Moonie must have been using their h ability to aim it, because it seemed to be heading towards the five towers in the tre of town. Some of the cry h around there were grouping up, maybe curious about their new airdropped friend.

  “It’ll be fine,” Bastion said.

  “You think?” I asked.

  “The cry after us must have seen Moonie dropping; they’ll want to slow down if their goal is to recapture them. We’re no loheir target.”

  “But Moonie is, and we basically just threw them overboard,” I said.

  “We threw them into the hands of allies more capable of proteg them,” Bastion said. He patted me on the shoulder. “You’re a good person, Broccoli, and a surprisingly petent captain and leader, but you still ck a bit of experie be hard for an officer to learn that sometimes things are beyond your trol.”

  “I know that,” I said, and if I outing a bit as I said it, Bastion didn’t ent. “It just feels wrong.”

  Amaryllis moved over, looking fairly smug, or at least more smug than usual. “Moonie’s nded,” she said. “I think she’s handing out Awen’s little telescope devices.”

  “Really?” I asked. A gnce over the edge revealed that Amaryllis was right, at least as far as I could tell. We’d moved past the edge of the town already, and it was hard to make out details from so far away. “Great! Clive, circle us around!”

  Clive nodded, and with a spin of the helm, set the Beaver to making a big, wide turn. We’d be drawing huge circles in the sky by the edge of the town soon enough.

  “We could just keep going,” Amaryllis said. “In fact, that’s very much what we should be doing.”

  “I... maybe, but I want to see how things py themselves out.”

  Amaryllis shook her head, but she didn’t protest any more than that.

  I watched, biting my lower lip, as the distant cry airships became not-so-distant. On the ground, the cry were starting to hover back up around their towers, and I saw parts of those towers being moved aside to reveal the crystalline blue e cry within. More cry like Towerhidden then.

  The three cry ships split apart, two of them veering off towards ht, the third the left.

  A bell started to toll iown below, and I felt a pit in my tummy as I saw people running around in a panic. We had scared so many of them. Or, well, we had brought the things sg them with us. Same difference, I figured.

  One of the airships fired ahead, a thick red beam that zipped down towards the base of the towers only to be met by a shield wall.

  And then the cry on the ground fired back.

  It was easy to tell who had Awen’s oys. Those beams were tighter and faster while the more normal oeo dissipate in mid-air.

  I gasped as a few beams raked across the underside of one airship, leaving bed lines behind on the wood.

  The airships started to circle around the town, beams ng out towards the towers and bei with hastily thrown shields.

  And theowers opened fire.

  The magical sers they shot out were nothing like the little beams from the small cry. They were as thick around as I was tall, ears and all, and when they shot past, it was with a roar that made the air vibrate.

  Shields sprung up around the cry airships, gigantic crystalline snowfkes that instantly went from a pure, bright blue to a darkening purple as the beams impacted them. They reddened more and more, and even from afar I could see the clouds of superheated air wavering off of the shields.

  Then one of them broke, and the airship in the lead juked violently to the side as a ser rammed into its prow.

  The five beams from the five towers stopped, the air stilling once more with a quiet that was somehow louder thaack itself had been.

  The foremost cry airship had a hole in its prow that cut a tunnel all the way out to its opposite side, the edged bed and smoking. It was still able to fly though, and as it demonstrated a moment ter, it was able to fire back.

  “This is awful,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Amaryllis agreed simply.

  Another volley of sers were exged, with a few bur ione walls of the towers below, but it was the airships that suffered the most. The burns across their hulls caught fire in a few spots, and the lead ship’s engine seemed to explode as something important was hit.

  Rocket powered airships required rocket fuel to work. It seemed like a terrible idea, all of a sudden.

  Fortunately, the ship’s forward momentum carried it out past the edge of the town, where it plowed through the top of a hill before skidding to a fming stop.

  The other airships relit their engines and started tain some speed, but not before the towers returned fire again. The leftmost ship wasn’t prepared for it, a thick beam slig across its balloon before cutting into its ded burning a line across the side of the ship from top to bottom.

  The balloon, torn nearly entirely in half, spewed out gas into the sky even as it started to spin around.

  I would have called it a victory, only the ship was veering towards the Beaver.

  “Clive!” I screamed.

  The old harpy took one g the ships, then spun the wheel around and smmed the gas lever up to full. The Beaver turned sharply away from the town and the falling cry ship, our boost of speed giving us plenty of space to spare even as the falling ship dropped below our current altitude.

  And then a trip of beams shot up from the ship’s ded punctured through-and-through our balloon.

  “Oh no,” I said.

  “Captain!” Clive called. “We’re losing altitude.”

  I froze for a moment. We were going to crash? Like that ship?

  I imagined my friends being thrown around, the Beaver being dashed apart on the ground, wood tearing and our home being ripped apart.

  “Broccoli!” Amaryllis snapped.

  I shook my head. “Full power to the grav engine! Clive, slow us down. Awen! See if you ’t get the eo give us more time. Everyone, all sails out! Steve, check the balloon— we patch those holes?”

  I got a chorus of “aye ayes” and some “okay, Broccoli’s,” then I jumped to help my friends.

  With all of his sails ao act as parachutes, the Beaver was a fair bit slower in the air, and the gravity engine reduced our weight by a whole bunch, but that wasn’t enough to stay buoyant.

  A gnce off the side revealed the ground approag. Not too quickly, but approag all the same.

  Steve waved at me from across the ded shook his head. “Clive, we o nd. What are we looking for in a nding space?”

  “Something ft,” the harpy pilot said.

  I rushed to the side and started to look for just that, but the town was surrounded by hills and forests. There was some room between some patches of trees, but nothing that was eveely ft.

  I gnced back to the town, where the remaining cry airship was retreating with a plume of fire bursting out behind it. It wasn’t eveurning fire, just fog on keeping its shields up to weather the angry sers ing from the ground. I even noticed ic being flung up. Lightning bolts and fireballs and even the occasional arrow.

  The town was flinging everything it had at the cry, and the cry were scampering off as quickly as they could ma.

  I wao cheer them on, but I had more important things to do, like... like notig that the tre of town, where the five towers were, was mostly empty, with a rge paved area in the tre of the five towers that could very easily fit a ship the size of the Beaver.

  “Clive! tre of towhe towers. There’s a spa the middle. It’s all ft and paved. we nd there?”

  Clive ed his o see what I was talking about, then turhe helm a little bit, angling us more towards the tre of town.

  We were still losing altitude when Clive reversed the engine and we came to a geop in the middle of the towers. We soon dropped uhe tops of the towers, all five of them rising around the Beaver on all sides, like the fingers of a stone giant’s hands.

  “We’re dropping a bit faster than I’d like, Captain,” Clive said. “We o lose some mass.”

  “Weigh the anchors!” I called. Those were pretty heavy already. “And, uh... oh shoot, what else we do?”

  I ran to the side, and saw a few cry h closer, some of them with Awen’s ser focuses hem. Laser focuses aimed at us.

  “Hey!” I called out, an arm waving above me. “We o slow down more! you shield the ground?”

  That seemed to do the trick. People whoing to attack or something didn’t usually ask for help. At least, I hoped not.

  A few cry summoned shields that the Beaver rammed into, shattering them a moment ter. Still, the heavy lurch of it all did slow us down, even if I worried that it was causing a lot of damage to the keels.

  More cry came over, and soon a dozen of them hovered o the Beaver. I wasn’t sure what they were doing until I felt us slowing down.

  Telekinesis. One cry could lift a bit, so maybe with a dozen of them pushing back together...

  Then one of the tlowed from within and the Beaver’s dest slowed down even more.

  Carefully, with an almost gentle k, our airship touched down.

  And thearp of our balloon draped itself over all of us.

  gratutions! Captaining is now Rank E!

  ***

  RavensDagger