CHAPTER ONE

THE AIRSHIP

Tanya's airship took off from the Southern Water Tribe before dawn with a host of crewmembers, Water Tribe guards, and the woman herself.

She put on hot music that screamed with guitars and excessive drum beats and a singer who stretched their voice with reedy rocking volume. Ocean-kissed air swept in through the windows of her cabin. She sat on one of two benches that faced each other in the company of three guards. Their private room was framed with onyx-metal and steel. One access connected them to the rest of the airship via a spiral staircase made of grates and rails. It ascended to higher sections that were blocked from view by the solid ceiling. At the rearmost wall was an emergency cabinet labeled with a white and red cross.

She sipped an amber-colored drink that burned as she took each mouthful. Ice clinked against the glass.

A morning in Spring's weather warmed their chamber, their faces, and their fronts with sunlight. A thin cloud here or there floated above them. Water moved of its own pattern below them for miles and miles, pushing and pulling, ebbing and cresting, in constant motion.

The men wore blue and gray vests, collars with white fur, and boots made of brown hide with snow treads on their soles. A couple spears with tusks for points leaned on the seats. One man swayed a club between his knees that ended in a pearly orb for a head, and another man wrung his sling around both hands back and forth. None of them had more than peach fuzz on their chin and jawline – they couldn't even grow it.

A radio at their feet blasted rock music at its highest volume.

She caught the gaze of a guard over the top of her sunglasses.

He cleared his throat and sat straighter. He placed the club across his lap.

"Are you taking me somewhere to kill me?" She got their attentions, all three at once, for the first time since they boarded.

Their withdrawn expressions quirked with new caution.

"Seriously, I feel like I've done something to upset you guys. What did I do?"

"Take it easy on them. They're horny," said the one with empty hands. Their effeminate pitch contrasted with the bulk in their chest and shoulders.

"My spirits, you're a woman." Stunned, Tanya leaned flush against the back of her seat. "I never would have noticed by looking at you. I thought of you as a warrior, first. That's what we're going for, right?"

The boys, barely men, fidgeted in their seats, thinned their mouths, and looked opposite ways.

Tanya added, "I'm having a hard time not looking at you, now. You have excellent bone structure." She traced down her own jawline starting beneath her ears and moving down to her keen chin. "Have you had surgery?"

The guards chuffed with stifled laughter while grins broke across their faces.

"Go ahead! Laugh! It's funny. You think that's funny, you should've seen your faces."

The girl among them adjusted in her seat while she spoke. "Miss, I didn't realize until we met that your Mom's portrait is hanging up in the armory back home. You really do look like Mrs. Sato."

"Except your hair," said one guy who had his hand up halfway in an uncertain classroom gesture. "You have your other Mom's hair. It's really pretty."

"Of course it is. Don't forget who you're talking to." Tanya tipped her drink in his direction. "I can fuck your brains out and no one will believe you, so I hope you keep your pants on when you talk about my folks."

"Sorry, ma'am, I didn't mean to offend you or anything."

"Don't apologize, kiddo." She leaned forward to swat his knee.

"Ma'am, do you think we could get your autograph?" said the second guy as he put his sling down and opened his belt pouch.

"Sure, give it to me, daddy," she said, kneeling on the steel floor in front of him. She cozied up between his thighs, scrunching her shoulders to fit closer and closer. She took a notepad and ink pen that he handed her. Her stare and a foxy grin forced enough of her personality to pin him into his seat with his back straight. He gulped. The other two covered their faces and roamed their gazes for something – anything to avoid the presentation.

She plucked off the ink pen's cap with her lips, flattened the notepad over his lap, and signed her name in a flurry across the first blank page. The whole time, she grappled him in place with the stare of a mesmerist. His reaction lit her eyes with a thrill.

"I better not see this photocopied for sale tomorrow." She returned his things one by one into the pouch where they belonged, before she went to her seat.

"Nice," he panted.

"Please, no compliments." After a beat, she crossed one leg over the other in her charcoal-gray pants, pinching her thighs together. "I'm just kidding. I love compliments. Praise me, daddy. Tell me how much you love me?"

He opened his mouth to speak, but he did not have enough time to get it out.

An explosion went off in the distance.

Two warriors leapt to their feet. One of the guys to the spiral staircase while the girl snatched a spear. "Stay with Tanya," she said as she hurried with rustles of wool and clamor of boots on metal.

Footsteps pounded the ceiling overhead. Voices went back and forth. Crewmembers scrambled to respond. Havoc spewed above them.

Another explosion, this one closer, lurched their cabin.

The two of her three guards were gone. They left her with the one who fitted a pellet into his sling. He whipped it round and round, ready to fire at the stairs any moment.

Tanya clutched the second spear in both hands. "What's going on?"

Metal shrieked. Booms thundered again and again. Their cabin groaned with effort through its ceiling.

An explosion sent propellers, beams, and panels streaking to the ocean, and bodies flew with them. They plummeted, spun, whipped their limbs about, until they struck the water's surface like bugs against a windshield. White froth bloomed from each impact.

Their compartment tilted right.

Both of them staggered until they hit the wall.

He went to the stairs. "Damn it. Damn it!"

"What about me? Give me your sling." Ten feet of slanted floor separated them.

"Stay here, Miss Sato." he said.

"Give me your sling!"

"Stay here!" He struggled up the stairs.

Their cabin split on that side. Bolts and gears exploded outward. That half of the floor and wall blasted open and threw its contents: the stairs, the radio, the warrior. His shriek split the air. A drop hundreds, thousands of feet high pulled him to the ocean.

Tanya's spear skidded until it sailed out, because she dropped it to clutch her only anchor, the bench on which she had sat. A scratch was open on her brow. Her clothes were torn in a few spots where she had scuffed herself. Wind ripped at her hair and the loose pieces of her outfit. She fought gravity to keep her grip.

The airship turned in place out of control. Pieces of it and crewmembers alike dropped out of the sky. Distant screams went in one ear and out the other. Fire burned her nostrils.

At the back section of her cabin, she spotted the cabinet. She clawed with hands and feet up a steep slope. Streaks of her own blood left behind every move she made. She reached for the handle but came half a foot short.

She punched the metal door at its lowest corner. She struck again. She struck until she dented it enough to wiggle her fingers inside. From there, she yanked. She grunted with the effort when her fingers stung and the metal sliced her. She ripped the door off its hinges, almost lost her grip to drop it out of the way, because it smacked her on its way down.

Emergency kits spilled over and around. They bounced off her head, shoulders, and back. From their midst, she snatched a life-vest wrapped in plastic, while she hung by her fingers from the cabinet. Her shoulder throbbed with effort. Warmth let down her wrist and into the sleeve of her windbreaker where it stained red.

Someone shouted from the opposite end of the cabin.

A stranger in yellow, orange, and maroon somersaulted, pounced onto her bench, and whirled their arms in wide arcs. They wore a mask over their lower face. When they punched both hands in her direction, wint blasted her.

She crashed into the cabinet. Her back crunched against the edge.

Darkness stole her at once when she lost consciousness. She let go. They caught her in both arms, thrust off the seat aided by a cushion of air beneath their slippers, and took to the open sky with their captive.

Half a dozen partners in the same design of jumpsuits joined them with membranes between their limbs. They gathered in a V-shape and glided away from the airship.

A cloud zoomed out of place and banked downward to meet them.

Something the size of a mammoth swooped underneath. Its speed and mass roared in flight. Six legs were curled close to its belly. Cool umber-brown fur covered it from head to tail, except for a pattern of cream-colored tiger stripes on its face. Its tail slapped the air behind it.

Every stranger in the V-formation settled on its back, one after the other, with the same comfort of someone who steps through the threshold of their home. They alighted in a soft-backed saddle made of wood and leather.

A sky bison escorted them the rest of the way to safety.

Meanwhile, smoke heaped off the airship in char-black chimneys. The hull gaped in several spots. Fire spat out its windows and holes. Bits and pieces broke off, plummeted at top speed, and hit the ocean surface with booms of water.

The vehicle banked out of control in a roundabout turn as it followed its fragments to a watery grave.