Rasmus startled from his armchair and painfully pulled himself up. He gently rocked backwards and forwards on his feet and blinked the haze from his eyes. “What's going on?”

  “Isla's gone to look,” Bridget said. “A thing – a boat, a ship, I don’t know what it is – appeared in the sky.”

  “Is it friendly?”

  “No,” Edevane said. “It's here to kill us. I explained that to the bird.” He sat propped up on Bridget's sofa with his hands still bound. For the last couple of days he’d been fed a steady stream of cake and tea, and had started to wonder if it was some kind of subtle, jam-laced torture. “The ship is called the Son of Albion. It belongs to a man named Parnell – it's a warship. If it’s here, then he won't leave anyone alive.”

  “Even you?” Rasmus asked.

  “His men won't differentiate. Orders are orders.”

  “And I suppose,” Bridget said. “You'll be wanting us to let you go?”

  “To be fair, I’d have killed me days ago, but yes, let me go.”

  ***

  Sarah ran her hands along the length of the control panel and struck every button she came across, sometimes twice for good measure. “We have to go back, we have to go back!” she screamed.

  “Turn me around, put me down,” protested Geddis, still firmly over Bosco's shoulder. Bosco set him down in front of the control panel. “I always said the controls for these things were far too complicated. Could have done all this with two buttons.” He clung tightly to the controls with one hand while the other danced across the buttons in a mostly misinformed fashion.

  “He'll be okay,” Danielle lied. “Just don't think about it, Sarah. We just have to get away for now.” Harry leant across and gently ran his finger through her hair, that always made him feel better, so maybe it would work on Sarah.

  “Where do we get away to?” Erica asked.

  “One thing at a time.”

  “Got it!” Geddis got so excited, he let go of the console to pump the air and nearly plummeted over the railing. The engines fired up with a warm hum and the lifeboat slowed down. Erica leant in towards Geddis. “Can we get it to go back up?”

  “Can't. It only does varying degrees of down, I’m afraid.”

  “Does nothing work properly where you're from?”

  “Clearly not, just hold on.”

  A shadow passed over the lifeboat, followed by another and then another. “Above us,” Bosco growled. The cradles descended upon the lifeboat like vultures on a carcass, and buzzed an erratic orbit that brought them close enough for Bosco to feel the hairs on his head curl up from the heat of the engines.

  Erica ducked away from the cradle that swung for her face. “Can't we go any faster?”

  “There's this or terminal velocity,” Geddis replied from the floor. The cradle swept back towards the lifeboat, which teetered unpleasantly as Bosco clumsily threw himself out of the cradle’s path. As it passed his head, the pilot adjusted his trajectory and darted back towards Erica for a second time – it struck her across the right shoulder and spun her up and over the railings with Harry still wrapped around her neck. Danielle lunged at the guardrail and seized Erica’s wrist with both hands, her stomach pressed painfully into the rail as she kicked her feet in a bid to adjust her centre of gravity – it wasn’t enough. A warm, reassuring pressure gripped her leg. “Got you,” Bosco said. With his free arm, he swatted at the cradles as they buzzed by.

  The cradle that struck Erica turned and took another sweep, but Bosco battered the flimsy platform and sent it into a dizzying spiral. The sudden movement of the lifeboat drove even more air from Danielle’s lungs and further increased the pressure on her stomach; her muscles started to tear and her vision spun, but still she held on for dear life.

  “Harry!” Erica cried. “Take Harry!”

  “What with?” Danielle groaned. “I only have two hands. He's gonna have to climb up my arms.”

  “Can't,” he said. “Scared.”

  “Grab my arm!” Sarah shouted. She ducked under the guardrail and leant out towards Harry. He gulped and closed his eyes, then he opened them again because it was really very silly to jump with them closed. And then he jumped. The wind rushed through his fur and pushed his jowls back against his cheeks, a cascade of saliva rained down upon Erica and elicited a disgusted grunt.

  The lifeboat shook as the cradle collided with it and hurled its dizzied pilot head-first over the side. He rolled arm-over-arm along the deck, his flailing did little to slow his momentum. His limbs lashed violently in every direction as he slid under the rail and off the other side of the lifeboat. An arm struck Harry across the face, the screaming body it was attached to quickly disappeared from view. Sarah drifted further and further away from Harry as he spun off to the side. He fell – end-over-end, arm-over-arm, leg-over-leg; he tumbled and twisted, and watched as the lifeboat came back into view every few seconds – usually upside-down. The wind buffeted his ears – he couldn't hear what they were saying, but they looked angry, all red-faced and wide-eyed, he thought. He hoped they weren't angry at him. His papa was howling, he could see by the look on his face. He let out an awoog and wondered if he noticed. The platform became smaller and smaller every time it rolled around, until it may as well have been a speck of dust in his eye. Then it vanished and all that was left was him, the sky, and the ground, which to this point had done a very good job sneaking up on him. He'd fallen from things before, but never this far. He began to cry. He hoped it wouldn't hurt, but at least he'd be home soon.

  ***

  “And,” Rasmus began, somehow managing to make a preposition sound like an accusation in and of itself. “Why should we trust you?”

  Bridget let out an angry snort. “He took my husband and my son. I don't wish to sound like a terrible person, Emmanuel, but he should be dead. He should be dead, and I should have done it. Instead I had to patch him up so he could sit and eat the cake I'd saved for my son and drink tea and watch me worry myself to death.”

  “You can't,” Edevane replied. “But there aren’t many choices; release me and I help you, release me and I kill you, don’t release me and I escape and kill you, don’t release me and we all die. In no scenario do you survive with me cuffed.”

  “It,” Tobias began from inside his shell. “Seems to me,” he continued lethargically. “That he has a point,” he finished thirty seconds later.

  “There's always a choice,” Bridget snapped. “Go back to sleep, Tobias.”

  “Okie dokie,” he said, then he went back to sleep.

  ***

  “Cooie!” Isla trilled as her sometimes-elegant form darted past the lifeboat. The cradles throttled down and lessened their orbit around the platform to avoid an otherwise bird-on collision. “Think you dropped something, silly.” Harry clung tightly to Isla's legs, his eyes spun and every hair on his body stood starch upright.

  “I'm gonna be sick,” he groaned.

  “Isla!” Erica shouted. “I bloody love you!”

  “Take him home to his mother. Tell her we're coming,” Bosco said.

  “Righty right. This is your captain speaking, hold on tight.”

  She started a slow, spiralling descent towards the ground; Isla only had two sorts of descent, and this was the better one. Danielle slumped against the rail, her lungs had forgotten how to work and were trying to save time by taking all of her remaining breaths for today at the same time. Sarah hugged her tightly around the waist, which didn't help with the breathing at all. “Do I not get a hug, then? I still have both arms, you know. Good hugger, me.” Geddis crawled to the side of the lifeboat and risked a glance towards the ground – it wouldn't be too long now, not at their rate of decent. It was a bloody forest and all. How was he supposed to hop through a forest?

  The back third of the Albion, now a borderline unidentifiable heap of wood and metal, lay in the middle of a clearing that it had violently carved for itself. There were beds and lockers strewn about the forest floor, while blankets and pieces of clothing hung from trees like tattered flags – and then there were the bodies. If the beds and the footlockers didn't let him know the back third of the ship was the barracks, the liberal shower of bodies, clothed or otherwise, would have made the point quite clearly. He counted a dozen men before he stopped; there were more, but he'd seen enough. He rolled over onto his back and stared at the passing clouds. “Can't remember the last time I saw a blue sky,” he thought aloud. “Spent so long looking at an orange one, a proper one comes along and it looks defective.”

  The shadows of the cradles passed across his vision, their orbit increased in distance to the point where they no longer directly threatened the lifeboat. “Got bored, I reckon. I've never seen a duck, but do you think that cloud looks like a duck? My old nan said she-”

  “-Do you think you could be serious for one moment, Doctor Geddis?” Erica scolded. She spun on the spot and tilted her head towards every little sound, like a small girl that was moonlighting as a radar dish.

  “Serious was for on the ship or with those cradles. Serious is for when we get back on the ground. Now isn't the time to be serious, now is the time to not drive ourselves crazy with- Oh, bollocks, spoke too soon!” Geddis sat upright, quite possibly the only sit-up he'd ever done in his life. He pointed as three coils of thick, black rope unfurled past the lifeboat and stretched down to the forest floor. Down each rope came a man that wore the familiar black armour, each with an assortment of armaments strapped across them and a rifle slung from their shoulder, followed a second later by three more.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  “Harry's still in danger!” Sarah cried. She looked over the rail as the men slid past and became specks. The ropes didn't quite touch the bottom by about ten or so feet, but it didn't bother them; they dropped, landed in a roll and came up to a standing position with their weapons drawn and aimed towards the cradle. “So, I don’t suppose they just disappeared, did they?” Geddis knew the answer to expect, but decided he’d better get up and do something before he could be disappointed by it all the same.

  While the lifeboats on the Son of Albion didn’t do up, and really only specialised in varrying degrees of down just below the speed of terminal velocity, they could, if you had a wanton disregard for survival and whatever you might land on, also do forward. Fuel was in very limited supply and because lifeboats tended to land in enemy territory anyway, the last thing you wanted was to let them have that fuel. The very economical and cunning way this was solved was to put next to no fuel in the tank and cross your fingers that it didn’t run out halfway down. Conveniently, this also cut down greatly on having to worry about prisoners of war. Geddis, however, knew none of this and pressed the buttons anyway.

  ***

  Harry skipped across the dirt like a brick across a pond and came to a stop with his bum nestled against his front door. His paper suit had been shredded into confetti and only clung to his body by static electricity and a shear force of will.

  “Um, sorry. Still not very good at this. You okay, dear?” Isla said from somewhere deep within the Tirren's hedge.

  “I am a peach,” Harry replied as he rattled the door with his feet. The door swung open, and in short order he was swept up and engulfed in the hugs and warm kisses of a grateful Bridget.

  “Have you got a blanket? He needs a blanket. Look what he's wearing. What did they do to my boy!?” Bridget fussed and fretted, turned one way and then another, remembered where things were and then immediately forgot what she wanted. She trembled as the adrenaline coursed around her body and she just wanted to burst into tears, which she then did, multiple times.

  “Fret not, Bridget,” Rasmus said. He guided her to the armchair he'd just been sitting in and gave her a gentle push. She flopped gratefully, but not gracefully, into it and closed her eyes. “I'll get you a blanket, just you enjoy the respite.”

  A thought occurred to her. “Where's your father!?” she panted. She unsuccessfully tried to slide herself out of the chair.

  “He's coming, mama. Don’t worry.” Harry disappeared under a ripple of patchwork as Rasmus passed by. Bridget let out a breath and sunk further down into the chair. Isla plodded into the living room and flapped various twigs, leaves, and irate insects out of her feathers.

  “I'm fine, too. Thanks for asking, very happy to be in your thoughts. I think we've got a teensy problem, though. More men are coming.”

  Edevane shuffled to the edge of his seat. “What did they look like, bird?”

  Isla giggled. “They didn't look like birds, silly. They looked a bit like you. Terrible style choice, like you, but all in black.”

  “How many?”

  “Six, probably. I saw six, anywho.” She tried to count on her fingers, then remembered she didn’t really have any.

  Edevane struggled valiantly against his restraints, but found them to be the most depressingly competent part of his kit. “You need to let me go. Now, please.” Rasmus gave Bridget an apologetic look, then reached into his pocket for the key.

  ***

  “There we go, back on the ground. I’ll admit, a few trees might have gotten in the way and we did think we were all going to die for the last thirty-feet, but it was a nice change of pace I find.”

  “If only that change of pace wasn’t directly towards the ground, Doctor Geddis.” Erica brushed the leaves from her hair and dragged Geddis to a seated position.

  “It looks so much better the right way up,” he muttered. “Do you have some place we can hide, Bosco? I’d say we maybe bought ourselves another half-hour; if they’re the last ones left, I don’t see them being in a particular hurry to get here, all things considered.”

  Bosco scooped Geddis up and threw him over his shoulder like a sack of grain. “I'm sick of hiding,” he said.

  “And I'm sick of running,” Danielle added. She hopped from the lifeboat, Sarah close behind her, and dropped into lock-step with Bosco.

  “If we do either now,” Erica said. “We'll be doing it forever. Doctor Geddis, the lifeboat definitely can't go back up, right?”

  “It’s a safety feature, believe it or not, but yeah, it's not going anywhere.”

  “Then I need one of those cradles.”

  “You can't be frigging serious,” Danielle said.

  “I’ve never been more serious. I need to know if- I just need to know. I'm not the only one. If he’s still, you know, then we have to save him. Either help us or keep out our way.”

  Danielle smiled. “I didn't say I wouldn't help, I just think it's stupid.”

  ***

  The cuffs fell to the carpet. Edevane flexed his wrists and stretched his shoulders, then stood and gave his legs a test walk to the window. The Son of Albion was considerably more on fire than he remembered. “The large one is here. Will you explain or shall I?”

  Rasmus moved awkwardly towards the front door. “Perhaps it's best if I meet them first.” Bosco took lead as they hurried down the garden path to the cottage, Geddis still unceremoniously draped over his shoulder. He rapped on the door once for the sake of courtesy, then pushed it open. Rasmus waited for them in the entry hall, stood in an awkward fashion with his cane tucked under his arm – not quite stood to attention, but as close as he could muster. “Bosco, my friend. Bridget has been beside herself with worry. She’s waiting for you in the den with young Harry. Girls, I'm glad to see you both safe. And you have guests – wonderful, that’ll segue nicely. We have a special one of our own.” Bosco tilted his head quizzically. “Now, it's very important, that you don't get upset,” Rasmus continued.

  “Upset about what?” Bosco asked.

  “Me,” Edevane answered as the kitchen door swung open. He stood in full regalia with his rifle slung over his shoulder. His own helmet had been violently decommissioned, so he wore Mason's; with all the padding strapped to his ears, it was an unpleasantly tight fit. It wouldn't protect him in the slightest, but a uniform was a uniform.

  “You!” Bosco bellowed. He panned around for a safe place to drop Geddis, but when one wasn't forthcoming, he slid him off his shoulder and chucked him at Danielle like a sack of flour.

  “Bloody hell, warn me!”

  Rasmus scuttled between the two men, his stick clattered to the ground as he raised his arms in a placating gesture. “The enemy of my enemy, Bosco. We need his help.”

  “Help?” Erica scoffed. “He's the swine that started all this. The enemy of my enemy is still my enemy, Mr. Rasmus. Why should we put up with this rubbish?”

  “He's already made quite a compelling point, Ms. Erica. I fear we don't have the time for him to make it again.”

  Erica clenched her fists. “So we just let him wander about the village willy-nilly and hope he doesn’t tell the others where we are? This is ridiculous!”

  “I’m going to check the perimeter. Let me know when you’ve gotten over whatever this is so you can pull your weight,” Edevane said.

  “You kidnapped my friends and brought a lunatic to our village, other than yourself, I mean. I’m sure even you can see the problem with that.”

  “No.” Edevane pushed past Bosco and headed out the front door.

  “That bloody man,” she growled. “We don’t need him, we can work something out ourselves. Where's Isla?” Isla flip-flopped through the kitchen and poked her head into the lobby. “Isla, could you maybe fetch me down your old washing line? I need it to do something unbecoming.”

  “S’pose I could just flap over and get it. As long as I get it back. Clothes won’t hang themselves, you know.”

  “If they knew what they looked like, yours probably would,” Erica muttered.

  Bosco waited until Edevane was out of the house and the door firmly shut behind him before he turned towards Erica. “What do we need that for?”

  “It’s something for much later, Mr. Tirren. And before that, I need some things. We’re going to pop to the workshop and scrounge up, hopefully, something.”

  ***

  The lights in the workshop click-clacked on in the same enjoyable sequence, but Erica didn’t wait at the top of the stairs until they’d finished; she galloped down them, thrust her arms into an open crate and began to pull an assortment of objects from it. “I don’t suppose you’re holding out on me? Found a tank and just didn’t tell me about it?”

  “You’d know if you took half as much interest in things as you do keeping me out of here,” Sarah replied, still at the top of the stairs.

  A voice drifted up from the crate maze. “Sir? Is that you, sir? I’ve been here two days, I have. Had to go in the crate, sir.”

  “Oh, what the bloody hell is it now?” Erica turned to face the source of the voice. “Who’s there?”

  “Oh, er, it’s Fenton. I’m in a crate. I don’t know which one, but there are packing peanuts. Did that help at all?”

  “Oddly, no. Just keep talking, Fenton.”

  “What do you want me to talk about?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Erica said. “How you got in that crate. I presume it was my father.” She picked her way towards the sound.

  “I’ll check the left side of the room,” Sarah said and skipped off.

  “Don’t really know, ma’am. Someone hit me in the head and stuffed me in a box. He didn’t say what his name was. Droned on a lot about his kids, though. Made me wish he’d just shot me.”

  “You and me both, Fenton. Sarah, come here. I think he’s in this one. Help me pull it over. And you, lean to one side.” Erica grabbed the lip of the crate and pulled. Not liking the idea of being crushed horribly, Sarah opted to push. The crate clattered to the ground and split open, narrowly missed Erica’s toes by an inch and forced a nervous tapdance. Fenton wormed out of what remained of the crate, his arms tied behind his back. “Oh great, another one of you,” Erica complained. “We’re not untying you like the other one.”

  “What other one?” Fenton asked.

  “Dressed like you, bit of a prick,” Sarah said.

  “Oh, Colonel Edevane,” he said with absolute certainty. “He’s not around is he? I think this might be a Court Marshal.”

  “I think he has a little more to worry about than you, no offence. Parnell is here, and your Edevane thinks his life is in danger along with ours.”

  “You and Uncle Parnell aren’t friends any more,” Sarah said. “Not sure he’s friends with anyone, really.”

  “You’re Parnell’s nieces?” Fenton’s voice cracked just a little more than usual, then it shattered, fell on the floor and blew away.

  “For our sins,” Erica replied. “And don’t you get any ideas. He cares about us as much as he cares about you.”

  “I can believe that.”

  “We haven’t got time for this,” Sarah said as she waved her arms at the sea of crates that surrounded them. “We need the extra hands.” Erica grunted disapprovingly, then she knelt next to Fenton and unbounded his hands. Fenton attempted a salute, but his arms had forgotten how to work, so he slapped himself in the face. After the third attempt, he just about managed it. Satisfied, he rolled to his feet, which thankfully remembered how to be feet.

  “Private Fenton reporting for duty, ma’am, um, ma’ams.”

  “Okay!” Sarah cheered. She saluted back. “Let’s get to work!”