Knight or Knave

You don't need money, don't take fame

Don't need no credit card to ride this train

~ Huey Lewis

Chapter 2

I will not be revenged, and this I owe to my enemy; but I will remember, and this I owe to myself. ~ Charles Caleb Colton

After several weeks accompanied only by AIs and elves, Leon had almost forgotten what dealing with other humans was like. Fortunately or unfortunately, registering with the Adventurer's Guild had given him a chance to renew his acquaintance with the experience.

"You've expended considerable effort bargaining with those individuals," Luxion observed as the weary Leon reboarded the skyship.

"I noticed," he replied, more sharply than he usually would.

"You are aware I can provide you with gold and other materials valued by this worthless kingdom beyond any possible need you would have."

"I'm keeping that option in reserve for if I decide to crash the economy," Leon told the AI as he stood at the top of the gangway and waited for it to fully retract. It wasn't entirely impossible for anyone to get aboard without that, but it was harder. Of course, if he didn't want anyone to realise that the skyship was fully automated, he had to appear to be doing some of the work himself, such as stowing the gangway.

Luxion's new drone danced in the air for the moment. "What a pleasant prospect, master. However, there was still no need to spend hours wearing down their claims of what a fair share of the treasure you claim to have found they could take. Their initial offer was completely within our reach."

"Yes, but then they'd have known that I was lowballing what I could afford to pay and they'd have gotten curious." Leon rubbed his forehead. "I'm getting quite a bit of attention as it is. But as long as they think I'm just some dumbass who got lucky, they'll assume that the usual premise of a fool and his money will play out and that I'm not a problem for the rest of the kingdom."

"As opposed to a dumbass who got lucky and is going to be a problem for the rest of the kingdom?" asked Luxion hopefully.

At last the gangway was fully retracted and Leon went through the motions of securing it. "I'll cop to being lucky and to being a future problem for the kingdom of Holfort. And dealing with those tax-men masquerading as Guildsmen was certainly a motivation to kick over the traces."

Officially the Guild of Adventurers was an entirely independent organisation dedicated to supporting those brave souls who went out looking for dungeons and other relics of prehistoric civilisation. The flying continent that was the core of the kingdom had been explored, mapped and exploited by the founder of the Holfort dynasty and his closest supporters… possibly along with a few others who had been quietly excised from history when Holfort established his kingdom there. As such, the Kingdom idolised adventurers and any noble who expected to garner any respect was supposed to have the basic skills of the trade, even if they didn't use them.

In practise, the guild's independence was a joke and everyone knew that it was one of the many tools the crown wielded to try to keep control of the fractious lords that ruled the many islands incorporated into their sprawling kingdom. The twenty or thirty percent claimed by the guild from the finds of registered adventurers wasn't just the price paid by adventurers for the legal right to own what they found, it was also part of the crown's revenue stream and a way of learning what adventurers had turned up. After all, no small number of finds involved tools or weapons that could catapult the lucky discoverer up to being at least a local warlord. Knowing about such things before they happened was something of a priority for the royal dynasty.

A second drone approached them. "Master Leon," the drone greeted him in Cleare's voice. "Welcome back aboard."

"Master?" Leon enquired.

Cleare didn't habitually refer to him with that much respect (if any). Unlike Luxion, he wasn't the AI's registered operator, after all.

"I have wonderful news," the drone burbled. "While comparing your DNA to that of our other candidates, you possess essentially none of the active gene sequences distinctive of new humanity."

Leon blinked. "Um… good?" Presumably that would explain why he'd never managed to do anything magical.

Luxion bobbled in the air. "Share your data for evaluation," it demanded.

There was a bleeping and crackling which Leon took to be Cleare over-dramatically letting him know that the data transfer was taking place.

"Remarkable," Luxion conceded after a moment. "Cleare's findings do seem to be valid. While you are a carrier for the genes of the new humanity, your contamination is no further along than the old humans unfortunate enough to parent such deviants."

"So I'm… not a new human in your eyes?"

"Indeed!" Cleare seemed to be all but sparkly-eyed at the prospect. "Master is to all practical purposes an old human. And as he was born to new human parents, the potential exists for a biological solution to the conflict between new humans and old humans. Or would if I still had access to my original laboratory. However, the facilities can be rebuilt."

"Given the fine history of biological warfare so far - such as the elves - I'm going to take that optimism with a pinch of salt," Leon told them. "And if I'm following your plan correctly, we'd leave a generation without the magic to use their parents' tools and weapons but with no alternative solutions to the very real problems of maintaining civilization on flying islands. Recreating old humanity while dropping them back into the stone age isn't precisely the ideal solution."

The light making Luxion's drone dimmed perceptibly. "Your objections are noted, master. Please consider any future reproductive activities in light of maintaining your genetic heritage, however."

"I can't exactly control which chromosomes and whatnot combine, Luxion."

"If we encounter another old human…"

"If," Leon cut him off, "that happens then we will consider that possibility then. While this is a pleasant discovery, how is the main project going, Cleare?"

To his great relief, the AI took the hint. "Progress is on schedule. I can hardly guarantee that a new human will be able to use their methods to replicate my results, but I am confident that the data supports your proposal."

A hatch opened and Yumeria looked out. She'd adapted fairly well to living on the skyship, even though the metal construction must have been entirely alien to her. Even human ships were mostly made of wood since the lesser weight was of considerable importance when keeping a vessel in the air was considered. Admittedly, she had taken to placing potted plants around the skyship, moving them around occasionally for reasons Leon admitted he had no clue about. Where she'd got the seeds or soil he hadn't asked, but the pots were presumably of Luxion's making.

"Uh, captain Leon," she greeted him as Kyle followed her out on deck. "Is everything alright?"

"Everything is progressing in a positive direction," Cleare asserted loudly. "There are no problems."

Everyone stared at the drone.

"I will return to my work," the AI declared after an awkward moment.

Leon nodded and watched the drone depart, then turned to the other - identical save for the colour of the indicator light - drone hovering next to him.

"Can we rid ourselves of that one?" Luxion asked plaintively.

"I'm not deleting her but if you can move her onto a separate… server? Then I think we can arrange something," Leon promised.

"Thank you," the drone declared in satisfaction.

Leon shook his head and then turned towards Yumeria. "To answer your question, Miss Yumeria, actually things are going fairly well. Now that I'm legally registered with the guild, the legalities are more or less where I need them to be. One more little errand and I should be able to arrange a safe place for you and Kyle to live and work without too many perils… well beyond those normal for daily life."

"Thank you, captain," the green-haired elf said, clasping her hands before her. Leon tried not to look at the way her upper arms pressed against the quite ridiculous top-heaviness constrained within her dress. "What errand do you have in mind?"

"The usual. I'm going to kill some people and take their stuff." He paused. "Well, for a given value of people - I'm talking about pirates, after all."

"Are you sure you're not talking about piracy?" Kyle grumbled. "It sounds like piracy."

"Pirating pirates doesn't count as piracy. The two sides cancel out," Leon claimed piously. "They've placed themselves outside of the law so it isn't illegal to target them."

"I think there's a flaw in your logic," Kyle grumbled, "Or maybe your morals."

Yumeria looked around. "Um, captain Leon, who will you fight the pirates with? Aren't you alone?"

"Luxion is with me, that should be more than enough."

The AI's light brightened. "At last, a cause I can support wholeheartedly."

The elf woman looked nervous, "Just the two of you against… How many pirates?"

"I know it's a little unfair," agreed Leon. "How about Kyle comes along so we're handicapped.?"

"Hey!" the boy protested.

"You can't do that," his mother protested. "It's dangerous. And I think it's illegal for elves to pilot knight's armour in Holfort." Mounting knights on horses would be fairly pointless in this world of flying islands, so instead they piloted magical robots two or three times the size of a grown man.

"That is correct, Master," Luxion admitted. "Hazarding elves in this fashion is apparently prohibited."

"Does the law prohibit half-elves?" asked Leon curiously.

"There is no legal recognition of half-elves as a concept under Holfort law," the AI informed him. "My understanding is that it is believed that the two species are not cross-fertile at all."

"Well on the one hand, that sounds like Kyle isn't actually barred from it, but since we don't currently have proof that he's not an elf it could be tricky if anyone notices…" Leon tilted his hand back and forth. "I tell you what, how about you stay aboard the skyship and if things go badly you can take your mother away to safety and abandon me to my grisly fate."

"You say that as if I wouldn't do that anyway," the little elf muttered rebelliously.

There were in fact rather more pirates than Leon had been expecting, enough ships and knight armours to have taken on a good sized barony. That was probably a large part of their business model really, capturing ships was tricky unless you knew where they would be going and the destinations were generally guarded. Striking at an outlying town, overwhelming its defenders and making off with the portable wealth was rather more practical.

On the other hand, Leon's skyship had several advantages over the pirates, some obvious and others not. They had wooden vessels firing a broadside of not very large cannon as their primary means of attack. Luxion's armament was focused on a pair of turreted cannon very significantly larger and had much better fields of fire.

Leon's knight armour launched from the deck in very much the same way it had in scores of simulations aboard the skyship. Without the magic to activate a knight armour, he'd had no opportunity to use his father's at home but Luxion had been able to construct a mechanical alternative that would be highly competitive. The question was whether his crash course would make up for significantly greater experience of the pirates.

Spiralling through the air, Leon saw more than a dozen pirate armours trying to approach the skyship. "Looks as if they plan to board."

"With only a single knight armour launched, they likely see the skyship as a valuable addition to their fleet," the AI advised. "An unthinkable prospect."

Scanning the impromptu squadron, Leon concluded that none of them looked like the leader of the entire fleet - while he didn't recall any specifics for the pirate's knight armour, it would be expected for him to be flashily equipped to stand out among his minions. None of these met that grade, they probably weren't even taking this seriously.

"Feel free to open fire on them," he ordered, bringing up his knight armour's rifle.

Out of the corner of his eyes he saw first one and then another knight armour blasted apart as metal slugs fired from his skyship's main guns scored direct hits. Normally hitting a single knight armour with a ship's guns would be remarkable luck, but Luxion had access to targeting systems vastly superior to anyone else's. He might only have four guns, but he didn't need to fire dozens of shots to generate a few hits.

Leon's own first shot was for centre mass on one of the knight armours, but it moved aside at the last moment. Spiraling sideways, Leon avoided return fire from pirates who hadn't yet realised they had more to fear from the skyship's guns than they expected, and while they were reloading he aimed again.

The knight armour dodged again, though only barely - it seemed that they hadn't expected him to be using an automatic loading rifle. Most of the knights were relying on lever-arch or even having to breach-load their next round before they could fire. However, Leon hadn't really been aiming for that pirate, he'd also moved his sights aside at the last moment and his shot smashed into a second pirate, catching it squarely in the cockpit.

The armour fell out of the sky and Leon felt a chill. I just killed someone.

Another shot came his way though, the round fortunately glancing off the rounded plating on his forearm. One less person trying to kill me, he realised grimly.

Only four of the original knight-armours were still in the sky, all of them now moving back from the skyship and trying to focus on him. "Luxion, take out some of their smaller ships," Leon ordered, seeming more knight armours taking off. The more reinforcements taken out before they joined the fight the better - not to mention the fewer ships throwing cannon fire in his direction.

"Understood, master."

Leon had only a fleeting glance or two at the result of that order as he twisted and turned through the sky, keeping the four pirates from closing in with melee weapons and catching him between them. What he saw was brutal enough - one of the pirate ships had taken a shot or shots that had smashed its masts and rigging. While sail power was more for long distance travel and it had engines for close range work, the effects of many tons of rigging, masts and spars - not to mention the sails - on the deck and hanging over the gunports down one side would leave the ship out of action for a while.

A second vessel had been much less fortunate. One moment the pirate ship had been cruising confidently up into what was considered optimal firing position against Leon's skyship, able to fire down with little chance of conventional cannon reaching up to hit it back… and then something (Leon suspected a cannon shell heated near red-hot before being fired from Luxion's guns) had ignited its powder magazines.

The explosion had rocked everything in the sky nearby.

Leon saw one of the pirates draw ahead - perhaps a little faster than the others? It was a chance to take the numbers down and he broke his evasions. For a moment the pirate may have thought that he'd got ahead of his opponent, then he realised that Leon was closing intentionally.

One axe-strike wrecked the arm holding the pirate armour's sword. Another caved in the head. Perhaps the pirate inside was killed or perhaps not - either way, he fell out of the sky.

And that was when the other three closed in around Leon. A part of him wondered if it had been the plan all along, using one of their number as bait, or if they were just taking the opportunity. Not that it mattered.

Leon's axe came up and he blocked one sword sweeping towards him. With his other hand he fired his rifle into the chest of another armour.

The third knight armour was about to skewer Leon with a spear through the chest when the left arm and that side of its torso came apart. Leon got to see the man inside carved apart for a gruesome moment, but he had no time to dwell on it. His last opponent brought his sword back.

With a kick, the young adventurer sent the other knight armour off balance. It took a precious moment for the pirate to stabilise himself and the instant he'd done so enough to be a predictable target, Leon squeezed the trigger of his rifle three times. Feeding directly from a magazine, the rifle could fire as fast as that. At least one hit something critical and Leon was alone in the sky.

He gulped for air - images of the last few moments, of the very real possibility he could have died in the last few seconds, flooding through his mind. Then he saw more knight-armours coming in and tightened his grip on the controls. There was no time to fall apart.

"Luxion. I think the one with the crest is the leader's knight armour," he identified. "That armour and the ship it came from are off limits, but you can open up on any of the others."

"I hope that your objective is worthwhile, master."

"Everything has checked out so far," he told the AI. "Unfortunately."

What Leon wasn't sure of was whether the necklace he was after was being worn by the leader or left aboard the ship. Still, if there were any incriminating documents then they were likely aboard the pirates' flagship.

Leaving the knight armours scattered and dodging wildly to try to evade the guns of his skyship, Leon dropped low, skimming the waves of the ocean, and then pulled up into a rapid ascent towards the skyship that had launched the leader's armour.

"The marked suit is coming after you," warned Luxion.

"Understood." Well, that puts everyone in the same place. Could be good, could be bad…

Leon stowed his rifle and held the axe in both hands of his knight armour. Arriving beneath the ship he drove the heavy beak of the axe up into the timbers, hoping he'd guessed the internal layout correction. Hitting the suspension stone would likely send the ship into freefall with himself beneath it.

Fortunately that didn't happen and the axe crashed through thick wooden planking before impacting the propeller shafts that extended to the stern of the vessel. One of the wide propellers was visibly skewed off of true.

Breaking away, Leon aimed towards the ship's other propeller but before he could strike, a shadow was his only warning before the crested knight armour came around the skyship and ploughed into him.

Rocked in his cockpit, Leon gritted his teeth and flung his armour into a roll. Steadying himself would just leave him vulnerable. The spinning made him feel nauseous, but it kept him alive long enough to get one limb free of the other knight armour.

Unfortunately, the enemy leader also had a hand free and he got a pepperbox pistol free. All four chambers fired as one and Leon felt blood inside his mouth as his armour was rocked by the impacts.

A moment's examination revealed him to be alive, which he hadn't really expected.

Fortunately the enemy seemed just as surprised and Leon took the opportunity to sheer away one of its legs with a blow from his axe.

"Really, master. Do you think I would place a rare old human in armour not proof against such feeble munitions."

"It's still good to avoid getting hit if I can," Leon countered weakly as the pirate broke away from his grip, barely flying now that it was missing one leg. For that reason, he assumed, the suit made for the deck of the ship that he'd just disabled.

Ignoring fire from the deck - small arms really weren't a concern against a knight armour - Leon finished off the disabling of the propulsion and looked around to see that the other two pirate ships were flying the white flags of surrender instead of the black flags of no quarter that they'd flown when the engagement began.

"How adorable," he muttered and followed his erstwhile adversary up to land on the deck of the skyship. Pirates scattered around him as he landed and stalked over to the knight armour that was staying upright only by leaning on the mast. "Luxion, hold off on shooting the ships for a moment."

There was no verbal response but the heavy guns of his skyship ceased to fire. I really need to name her, he thought. Something Luxion won't complain about, but that won't ruffle feathers here either.

Almost casually he batted aside the sword held by the pirate armour, then seized the arm holding it and twisted it until the elbow joint failed catastrophically.

The leader must have realised that surrender wasn't an option whatever the other ships thought. Piracy came with a death sentence so even the slightest chance of victory was appealing. On the other hand, he did seem to be out of weapons.

Leon lopped the head off the armour with his axe, giving him the first sight of the pirate leader, blinking up out of the hole which had been the neck. And what was that around his neck… well, excellent.

"Kyle, I have something for you to collect," he ordered.

"So you're done showing off?" the elf asked.

"I'm not sure they won't shoot anyway," the teenager warned, watching as a second armour took off from his skyship. This one was white with blue trim, rather than his own red with black trim. It was also being mostly piloted remotely by Luxion, so why not give the boy a treat? "But catch this one and hang on him for me would you?"

Then he smashed the knight's remaining limbs and flung what remained casually off the pirate skyship. It plummeted, but the white armour was already diving to intercept it.

"I don't make a habit of sparing pirates," Leon announced to the remaining crew of the flagship. "But if you take the airboats over to the other ships then you might live just a little bit longer. Don't stop for valuables or anything else though - I have limited patience."

He watched as a desire to live won out. The airboats left aboard weren't really much but the crew wasn't more than a couple of hundred anyway. They'd be horribly overloaded to get far, but just to cross to the remaining ships was doable.

"Luxion, do I have thermal sensors?" he asked and on confirmation he scanned the ship for any signs of someone staying behind. Stupidity was always a possibility.

Finally convinced he was alone aboard the pirate ship, Leon scanned the sky. There were no more knight armors in evidence save for Kyle hauling the wrecked one back aboard Leon's ship. And only the two pirate skyships remained besides this one, each bringing pirates aboard from the airboats.

Eying them, Leon reconsidered his plan once more but then steeled himself. He'd weighed this up a dozen times and it tasted no better and yet… it was necessary for the next stages. However little he liked it, he liked the consequences of the alternatives less.

"Luxion, no survivors."

There was a roar of cannon fire from his own skyship, followed by screams clearly audible from the two pirate skyships. He saw the blur of hypersonic projectiles rip into sterns that had been left vulnerable as the two ships had tried to put distance between themselves and their assailant. And he saw the projectiles emerge upwards surrounded by shards of deck and fragments of bodies.

"What are you doing?" demanded Kyle. "Didn't you say you'd let them live?"

"Just for a little longer." Leon forced all emotion out of his voice, dismounting from his armour.

One of the skyships fell tumbling from the sky, people visibly flung out into their own descents as it rolled - the suspension stone must have been shattered by a direct hit.

"Not very long at all," Leon continued, and then cut off communications as he knelt on the deck, shaking and dry heaving in the privacy of the abandoned vessel.

Kyle had avoided Leon since the battle's end. Leon didn't mind that much. He'd taken over the post-battle salvage, picking up what wreckage still floated on the ocean below for use as raw materials by Luxion's fabricators. Wood was of limited value to the AI, but it floated and a great deal could be salvaged… and wood wasn't entirely useless.

The captured vessel was meeting a similar fate, currently half-devoured by Leon's skyship. After some consideration, the teenager had decided to dub his vessel the Dreadnought. He'd taken the one bottle of wine aboard and smashed it against the prow in a private ceremony… and to remove the temptation.

Wine might serve as a short term cure to his dreams, but it was no habit he wanted to fall into.

Curiously, Yumeria hadn't raised his actions at all afterwards. He wasn't sure if she just didn't know about the way the battle had ended or if she took a different view from Kyle. She was older than Leon, and this wasn't a kind world, but she was also naive in some ways.

It didn't really matter. Hopefully the little family didn't think he'd dispose of them the same way. He really had no such plans and the only grounds he had to exterminate the pirate fleet to the last man was to ensure that none of them reported this battle to their backers.

Ultimately, an elf woman and a child wouldn't have any credibility if they reported this. Later, once the pirates were known to be gone, assumptions might be made but Leon had a narrative in mind to explain the deaths that would keep his secrets. Probably. But right now, he'd be showing cards he very much didn't want to.

And really, he wouldn't have been saving their lives if he'd taken them prisoners. Hanging by slow strangulation was the legally mandated punishment. What else was he to do? Turn them loose to prey on more targets in the future

It all made sense inside his head. When he was being rational. When he wasn't dreaming about being one of the people falling from dying ships onto water that would have been about as welcoming as granite blocks when falling at terminal velocity.

"So how are you doing?" he asked out loud, looking at the laboratory buried in this corner of the Dreadnought.

"This isn't really what I'm programmed for studying," Cleare confessed, "However, it is a fascinating and previously unexplored factor in this magic that the new humans use."

Suspended in an isolation tank, a silver necklace was being bombarded by various energies from a pair of projectors. Leon had the sneaking suspicion that if he was inside the tank he'd have been fried like an egg. "So there is something there?"

"Very definitely," the AI agreed.

"And you can remove and isolate it?"

Leon was interrupted by a horrible shrieking sound from the tank. Something black and cloudy spilled up out of the jewellery, and outside he heard a crash of glass, metal and ceramics.

"...excuse me," he said politely and opened the door of the lab.

Yumeria was sprawled on the floor, a tray of food in front of her on the floor. Given the broken glass and plate, Leon didn't fancy trying to eat that meal right now.

"Are you alright?" he asked her.

"I-I should ask you that?" the green-haired elf exclaimed, trying and failing to stand up. The teenager winced as she got her ankles crossed somehow and fell again, fortunately not onto the tray. "There w-was the most terrible scream!"

"Ah, yes." He reached down and helped her to her feet. "We were doing science and, well, you know."

"What's science and why was it screaming?"

"Science is a process and in this case we had an unexpected result." Leon ushered her to the door and gestured to the isolation tank. "It came from there, you see."

"Indeed." Luxion sounded satisfied. "I believe that we have the desired result for you, master."

"Really?" Looking closer, Leon saw that the black smoke had been drawn aside, despite its efforts to get back to the necklace. A robot arm moved the jewelry through a hatch and out of the tank, leaving the smog to swirl with incoherent anger. "Hmm, you're right. That looks very much like what was described."

Yumeria was trembling as she leaned against him. "What - no, who is that?" she asked tremulously. "The magic, I've never seen anything like it before."

"I'd be surprised if you had."

The smoke seemed to become aware of them and as they watched, it coalesced somewhat. Still translucent, more smoke than solid, but now it had a shape - an identity.

A woman looked at them out of the tank. "Lia!" she exclaimed. "Lia!" Then she glared at Yumeria and demanded: "Get your hands off my man, you skank!"

"Eep?" the elf exclaimed, trying to hide behind Leon.

Leon folded his arms. "Lia has been dead for centuries, you brain-damaged yandere." He turned his head to the woman behind him. "Miss Yumeria, permit me to introduce Ann. She's the saint that the Holforts built their national religion about."

The spectre screamed and dissolved, apparently unable to keep focus when presented with that hated name.

"S-saint?" Yumeria asked, evidently bemused. "But isn't she supposed to be sweet, pure and holy?"

Leon nodded. "Look, I never said that Holfort's religion made any sense in the first place."

"Clear evidence of the psychological unfitness of the new humans," Luxion offered.

"A whole new field of science to explore." That was Cleare, unsurprisingly.

Yumeria blinked at them and then realised something. "Oh no, I dropped your dinner."

"I think it's a lost cause," Leon told her. Then he offered her his arm. "Why don't we go back to the kitchen and sort that out. Luxion, if you wouldn't mind getting the mess cleaned up?"

"No, Lia, come back!" he heard the ghost shrieking as the two of them left the laboratory.

Now he had something new to have nightmares about. Hopefully the two AIs could keep it confined.