The Open Clouds
Several sky ships hung in the obsidian abyss. Dark clouds stretched in every direction, the only light coming from torches on the ships' decks. At the centre, stood a glorious flagship, easily large enough for a hundred crew members. Although the air was deathly still and silent, every ship proudly wore black sails, emblazoned with green flames, the mark of the Jade Pirates. Colonies on skylands for miles around recognised it as a symbol of death for anyone not prepared to surrender their every possession at the end of a sword or crossbow.
Concealed in the blackness above, a solitary figure descended, ghost-like from the clouds, the wind blowing silently under the wings of a black hang-glider protruding from their backpack. Under their pilot's goggles, their gaze fixed like a predator on its prey, on the large flagship. The only signs of life visible from the sky were three crew members patrolling the deck, crossbows armed, and a fourth in the crow's nest, all draped in black and green rags.
When the stealthy invader hung directly above the ship, their hang-glider vanished into their backpack with a quiet creaking of folding wood. The pirate manning the crow's nest looked up, just in time to see the sole of a heavy combat boot as it made its acquaintance with his already crooked nose. The invader skilfully back-flipped into the crow's nest in time to seize the unconscious pirate's collar before he fell from the crow's nest and onto the deck.
Setting the pirate silently onto the wooden floor beneath her, Lisa Swift lifted her goggles towards her deep, purple hair and scowled at the deck beneath her, her orange eyes sparkling in the moonlight. This was far from being her first one-woman siege on a heavily staffed battleship. Usually, much to the exasperation of her partners, she enjoyed dropping on decks in broad daylight and loudly asking which pansy-ass deuchebag wanted to die first. This was not going to be one of those times... The Jade Pirates were a force to be reckoned with, and if a single one of them sounded an alarm, she'd have the full force of the surrounding armada on top of her, and even with her over-inflated ego, she knew she wasn't that good.
After five full minutes of carefully watching the guards' patrol, Lisa leapt gracefully into her calculated blind spot and over the side of the ship, her long coat billowing, bat-like behind her. A compressed rope shot from a device strapped to her forearm and latched onto the side of the ship like a barnacle on a sky whale. Lisa bent her legs on impact with the hull, but cringed as, despite her best efforts, the wood beneath her feet creaked audibly.
"Did you hear that?" Came a gruff voice from the deck. Pirates who worked under Captain Fate were jumpy with good reason.
The three pirates ran to the ship's railing and looked over the edge, to find it bare. They looked at each other, worriedly.
"It's an old ship..." One reasoned. "It happens..."
The pirates were quickly reassured that the ship hadn't creaked of its own accord, however, as Lisa, having detached from the ship and reattached her grapple to its belly, swung up towards the other side of the deck and landed on the railing with the grace of someone in far more sensible footwear. Before the pirates could turn around, Lisa drew a small crossbow from within her coat and swiftly fired an arrow into the skull of the pirate leaning most precariously over the opposite railing. With no time to reload, Lisa launched her grapple at the deck and retracted at full force, sending her shooting, foot first towards the second pirate's shins. As he toppled towards her, Lisa reached forwards and snapped his neck before he had a chance to scream. By this point, the third pirate had his crossbow targeted at Lisa's head. She shoved her second fatality of the night between them to meet the incoming arrow, and quickly silenced the final guard with a throwing knife from one of her many pockets.
Lisa stood up and frowned at her two victims who hadn't fallen over the railing, reloading her crossbow as she did. This would complicate the operation slightly. Hauling the remaining corpses into the abyss beneath her, Lisa decided to continue as planned. Hopefully the missing guards would be presumed to be slacking off somewhere, although it was unlikely, since they worked for a man who would kill his employees for looking at him funny.
Reattaching her grapple to the railing, Lisa abseiled down the ship's hull, to where the rather crude schematics her crew had acquired claimed the engine room was. She produced from her pockets a small, cylindrical device and, with the flick of a switch, a ball of light, like a tiny star, illuminated at its tip. Lisa huddled over the device to shield its light from adjacent ships, to which she'd otherwise be invisible, and held the ball of light to the four bolts securing the nearest sheet of metal on the ship's hull. After a few short minutes, with blissfully little sound coming from the deck, the bolts were melted away and, with some strenuous persuasion from Lisa, the plate tore from the ship and plummeted silently into the abyss. Most ships hid their engine rooms underneath floorboards or in concealed compartments to keep them hidden from casual stowaways, which presented the flaw of also hiding professional stowaways like Lisa while they wreaked havoc. This ship, a crestfallen Lisa realised, as she climbed through the hole she had made, was not one of them.
The engine room was lined with cores, large, metal machines housing glowing balls of electric blue light, which dissuaded gravity from dragging ships to a cloudy grave. Dozens were needed to keep a ship this size afloat. Amidst the cores, were three engineers, decked in grey overalls and welding masks, standing by to correct any malfunctions in the cores and, as it turned out, report intruders. As soon as Lisa climbed into the ship, they quickly went about doing just that.
"Shit!" Lisa cursed as she realised she wasn't alone.
Drawing her crossbow, she fired an arrow into the wrist of the engineer who was about to press a red button on the wall. Although she cried out in pain, the determined pirate pushed the pierced limb forwards and a shrill bell sounded throughout the ship.
Lisa's entire plan went to hell. She had barely planned for this contingency, which, in hindsight was probably not too smart. Counting her blessings though, Lisa noted the engineers running for the door to the engine room. Evidently they hadn't been hired for their combat prowess. Lisa sprinted towards the door as well, but not in pursuit. She pulled from her pocket a small metal dome- a core, identical to the ones keeping the ship afloat, in every way except size and power. She clasped it onto a large tool cabinet, causing it to drift into the air like a balloon, and effortlessly pushed it in front of the door. She removed the core just in time for the cabinet to take the weight of the door being pushed from the other side. The frantic threats and curses of the pirates on the other side followed.
Valuing what little time she had, Lisa started pulling small, spherical bombs from a belt strapped across her chest. She placed each one on a core, where a touch of a button caused it to seal into place with the hiss of fusing metal. Lisa sealed the last bomb in place just as the tool cabinet crashed to the floor and six more pirates came clambering through the resulting gap, weapons in hand.
Cathy spun around and held up a small, metal object in her hand.
"WHOA WHOA HEY! DEAD MAN'S TRIGGER, BITCHES!" She waved the device at them. Their terrified expressions and the fact that they were lowering their weapons told Lisa that they knew what she meant, but she continued anyway. Her partner would say it was just because she loved the sound of her own voice. "I let go of this and BOOM! We all die. If you understand, then drop your weapons and run for the lifeboats."
The pirates lowered their weapons further until they were pointing at the floor, but they didn't dare drop them. Lisa pulled at her collar mockingly.
"Phew, is it hot in here? Because my hands are so sweaty!"
Taking the message, four of the pirates immediately dropped their weapons and ran, the remaining two backed away from the door, but took their weapons with them. Although she walked towards the engine room door calmly, Lisa's heart pounded against her chest. As she walked through the ship, she heard echoed cries of,
"She's got a dead man's trigger!"
"Run!"
"Nobody shoot her!"
But at the same time, Lisa saw pirates around every corner, crossbows armed for an opportunity. As she ascended the stairs to the deck of the ship, she was greeted by a circle of at least two dozen pirates, all in the Jade Pirates' symbolic black and green and brandishing weapons threateningly, albeit with uncertain looks on their faces. All around the ship, lifeboats packed with the less courageous of the crew, were floating towards the rest of the fleet, as per Lisa's instructions. In the centre of the deck, stood a man who's face was well known across over a thousand skylands. Not just because he had slaughtered countless innocent men and women, but because he had a beard that could ensnare manta rays.
Unlike his crew, Captain Fate was decked out in an expensive black suit, with emerald green flames tastefully stitched on in various places. He greeted Lisa with a sword and a stare that could sink ships.
"Lisa Swift..." He growled menacingly. He had the rasping voice of someone who'd swallowed one too many bugs, while standing on deck.
"Always nice to meet a fan." Lisa goaded, holding up her trigger threateningly.
"You should know you're not the first bounty hunter to sneak past my fleet. You'd be the first who's stupid enough to blow themselves to hell to take me down. Not about the money is it? Satisfied ridding the clouds of a bad old man like me?" He jeered mockingly. Some of the crew laughed nervously.
Lisa notice the Captain's use of the future tense. "Would be? Not convinced this is legit?" She wiggled the trigger, making several nearby pirates flinch. "One way to find out!"
Hurried steps sounded behind her, and one of the overall-clad engineers hurried up the steps.
"C... Captain!" He cried nervously. "The bombs! They're set on a timer... there's no time to remove them!"
"A timer!?" Fate snarled angrily. "What about the trigger?"
While the engineer was talking, Lisa had taken a packet of cigarettes from her pocket and pulled one out with her lips, then held up what turned out to be a cigarette lighter in her other hand, and put it to use. Blowing smoke thoughtlessly, she offered the packet to the engineer, who stared motionlessly through his welding mask, and then to the Captain, who furiously knocked it from her hand.
"Do you know how hard those are to find these days?" She asked irritably through her clenched teeth.
The Captain's face had turned a deep purple, and he looked ready to detonate the ship before the bombs got a chance. "HOW LONG UNTIL THE BOMBS DETONATE!?" He bellowed.
"W... w... well, it's... the..." The engineer babbled incoherently, and was probably grateful that he had a mask to hide his identity.
As an act of mercy, Lisa exhaled a lung full of smoke and took over. "Thing about big jobs like this, mate, is that you synchronise aspects like that with good clear signals that everyone can see." She flicked open a pocket watch, checked it and looked towards the edge of the ship. A few seconds later, she continued. "For example..."
As if on cue (which, of course, it was) the glow of first light began to shine through the thickest regions of the clouds below the ship. With perfect timing, an ear-splitting explosion, acompanied by the sound of splintering wood and warping metal rang out, and the ship dropped beneath their feet like a stone. Ready and waiting, Lisa deployed her hang-glider and soared in the direction of the nearest ship in the fleet, holding her cigarette in her triumphant grin. Behind her, she heard the sound of several other hang-gliders being deployed.
"YOU STUPID BITCH!" Fate thundered over the wind in Lisa's ears. "YOU'LL NEVER GET OUT OF THIS REGION ALIVE!"
Sure enough, Jade Pirates were lining up on the ship she was floating towards, swords, crossbows and cannons ready to end her as violently as possible.
Lisa laughed as much as she could without dropping her cigarette. "WERE YOU EVEN LISTENING..." She called back. "WHEN I SAID "SYNCHRONISE"?"
A sharp whistle cut through the morning air, and rose in pitch until it was punctuated by a cannonball thundering into one of the Jade Pirate ships. As the sun rose further, it cast light onto a second armada. A fleet of no fewer than twenty pitch black sky ships, led by a flagship almost the size of the one Lisa had just destroyed. Every ship bore the crescent moon emblem of the Midnight Marauders, one of many alliances battling the Jade Pirates for territory, and would pay (and had paid) a large some of money for a chance to wipe them out of the sky.
As soon as the cannonball impacted, the army of Jade Pirates waiting to kill Lisa immediately re-evaluated their priorities and fled to their posts, as the fleet charged forwards, with the roar of turbine engines. Lisa grappled onto the ship before it flew out of reach, and slingshot herself towards the Marauders' ships and into the chaotic exchange of hang-gliders and cannonballs. Lisa quickly spotted the ship that offered her her only salvation. The Nimble Nimbus (not named by Lisa) was easily distinguished not only because it was grey and blue, but because if had the erratic piloting of someone who wanted to avoid damage and escape unscathed as soon as possible.
Not far behind her, one of the life boats had returned for Captain Fate, before his hang-glider had run out of momentum. He had responded by massacring everyone aboard in a matter of seconds, all the while roaring at the top of his lungs. Ever the realist, Fate knew that the Jade Pirates were finished. Even without his flagship, his remaining fire-power was enough to give them a chance, but with no way to co-ordinate his fleet, that quickly faded away. He gripped the joystick of the small boat's gyroscopic controls so hard it bent in his grip. Looking towards the battle, he almost instantly spotted the Nimbus in the same way Lisa had, and noticed the lone hang-glider headed towards it. Thanks to the bounty hunter, he had nothing left (he pushed the controls forwards at full speed) except revenge...
Lisa's glider snapped into her backpack and, as her boots thumped onto the Nimble Nimbus' deck, she was greeted by the whoops and cheers of its two other crew members. Alex Miles, the seventeen-year-old, nerdy mechanic who had all but build the Nimbus from scratch, lifted Lisa off her feet with a hug almost as soon as she landed.
"That. Was. AWESOME!" He cheered, in between exhilarated giggles. "Did you get to do the dead man's trigger thing?" He asked, with a broad grin.
Lisa gave a joke scowl and held up her lighter. "Ooh, I don't know, but if you still haven't straightened out the cargo hold, I swear to god I will use this thing!"
They both broke out in hysterics, temporarily oblivious to the battle they were still in the middle of.
"Settle down children!" Called Magdalene from the helm, her orange hair billowing behind her in the wind, as if symbolising her sternness. "Let's rule out "death" as an option for today, and then hug it out! Alex, get back on the rear cannon, Lis, get ready for stragglers with your crossbow."
Magdalene was the self-appointed captain/"mum" of the Nimbus, despite being Alex's elder sister by a year, and Lisa's girlfriend. Her leadership and planning were generally what kept them alive, and neither Lisa nor Alex were keen to take on her responsibilities or pressures.
As Magdalene expertly ducked and weaved the Nimbus through the battle, Alex and Lisa went about their assigned roles. The ship's cannon, small as it was, made the Nimbus an unpleasant ship to pursue, and Lisa's skilled archery kept them safe from victims of the ships plummeting into the void all around them. As the chaos thinned, it almost looked as if they would escape worry-free.
"So did we get paid?" Lisa asked, somewhat breathlessly. Sadly, in a bounty hunter's line of work, doing what you were hired to do didn't always guarantee that.
"Yep. Chief Emo Boy paid us in full when the flagship dropped out of the sky." Magdalene smiled, slowing down the Nimbus' turbines as they approached safety. "Job well done."
The crew sighed in relief. Alex reclined in his cannon's chair mount, and made the life-saving decision to look skywards.
"INCOMING!" Alex screamed the first word that came to mind.
A Jade Pirate life boat plummeted from the sky and ploughed into the starboard side of the Nimbus' deck, tearing away a good deal of the wooden planks and sending the starboard turbine spiralling into the abyss, taking a chunk of the ship with it. The Nimble Nimbus lurched steadily over to one side and slowly began to descend towards the abyss.
"Maggie!" Alex shouted over the sound of splintering wood. "One of the cores is damaged! We have to make an emergency landing!"
"Where!?" Magdalene cried.
"Keep heading South South East! There's a skyland that should be big enough!"
Magdalene looked at the compass mounted to the control console and her heart sank. South South East was slightly opposite to their missing turbine. The Nimbus struggled downwards for just a few seconds before Magdalene found her solution.
"Alex, point the cannon slightly to Port and fire when I say!"
With the force of the cannon counteracting the turn from the solitary turbine, the Nimbus slowly hobbled forwards. But as Magdalene and Alex had talked, Captain Fate's menacing boots pounded onto what was left of the ship's deck. He shrugged off his backpack with the hang-glider still deployed and threw it furiously at his feet, snapping it in half. He stormed towards Lisa, who was still struggling to her feet after the impact.
"You ruined... EVERYTHING!" He roared. "Half of my life GONE! AND FOR WHAT!?" He swung one of his meaty arms at Lisa, which she quickly ducked under and stepped around him. "Do you really think the Marauders will run my territory any different to me!? YOU THINK YOU'VE MADE ANY DIFFERENCE!?"
Lisa scoffed. "No, we just did it for the money." True or not, Lisa only said this to make Fate angry, which it certainly did.
Captain Fate charged at Lisa like a bull. Lisa was about to step aside and even had another quip prepared, when a fresh cannon blast shook the Nimbus, disorientating her, allowing Fate to tackle her to the ground.
"Lisa!" Magdalene cried out in a panic.
"It's fine! Keep flying!" Lisa insisted, using a somewhat generous word to describe the means by which the Nimbus hurtled towards the large, floating landmass, now faintly visible through the clouds.
Fate forced a meaty hand on Lisa's neck, pinning her to the floor. She choked feebly, trying to punch or kick him off her in vain, suffering a significant size disadvantage.
"No more stupid tricks up your sleeve now then, bitch?" Fate grinned through his beard.
With what air Lisa still had in her lungs, she laughed weakly.
"What? What's so funny?" Fate demanded.
Still smiling, Lisa mouthed the word "Phrasing."
She bent her left wrist backwards and slammed her forearm into the arm that was choking her. A single arrow shot from Lisa's sleeve and embedded itself in Captain Fate's torso. The Captain roared in pain and recoiled from Lisa, scrambling backwards on his knees, hands hovering near the wooden shaft protruding from the centre of his chest. Quickly regaining her breath, Lisa drew her crossbow and prepared a more fatal shot, but the sound of tree branches rapidly scratching past the hull preceded a significant distraction in the form of the Nimbus crash-landing in a forest.
-x-x-x-
The landing was not one of Magdalene's best, but then again, not many pilots could land at all when piloting two thirds of a ship with one turbine. The crew of three stood mostly unharmed, surveying the smouldering wreckage, sitting at the end of its trail of broken trees and churned up dirt.
Lisa turned to Alex, "Can you fix it?"
"Well... this would be one of those cases where you need to find the line between "Fixing" and "Rebuilding"..." He turned to Lisa and Magdalene, both were looking at him condescendingly. "But yeah, she'll fly. I'll just need a week or so."
"Ok, get started." Magdalene instructed. She pulled a small cutting tool, identical to Lisa's, from her pocket. "I'll start gathering resources. And Lisa? Don't you have "loose ends" to tie up, or something?"
Lisa pushed her goggles over her eyes and frowned menacingly. She would have preferred to put on sunglasses, but she didn't have a pair to hand. Magdalene giggled anyway. Drawing her crossbow, Lisa made her way along the Nimbus' trail of destruction. Fate hadn't gone far with his injuries. Lisa found him slumped against a tree, overlooking the dirt trail. He looked up at her, a combination of loathing and pain on his face. Lisa pushed back the sleeve on her left arm, revealing a small, metal box with a hole at the end, facing her wrist, strapped to her forearm.
"Portable arrow dispenser." She gloated. "Never mess with the friend of a genius."
"Good... life lesson..." Fate spluttered. "Maybe... I'll tell my grandkids... one day."
Lisa frowned. "You think maybe I should pass that one along for you?"
Captain Fate smiled, with some apparent effort. "Figures. You gonna sit here are talk me to death? Knew you didn't have the stones to kill a man in cold blood."
Lisa cocking her head mockingly. "What, you think I wouldn't waste time making fun of guy I'm about to kill? Maybe you don't know me very well, but I just love the sound of my own voice."
And with that, Lisa rose her crossbow and fired.