Blue Sky Falling

Act 4

Chapter 59

Blue was woken up very early the next morning by a rather unpleasant smell. He opened his eyes to fine the Terrors had already gone to fetch their breakfast, and there was now a small pile of fish not far away from his nose, along with five small dragons waiting expectantly.

"You guys used to eat your fish raw; don't you remember?"

Blue roused the other Dragon Riders, who mostly just ignored him, and sent off the larger dragons to feed themselves. After tending to fire and fish, he sat down and leaned back on his saddle, removing his map from one of the saddlebags.

"How far do you think we'll go today?" Calla asked as she finally stirred.

"Well if you take into account the dragons have been out of their hidden underground caverns for a considerable time now, and are gradually getting used to flying long distances, I would hope we could make Greece by the end of the day if we can find a good tailwind."

"How far is that?"

"About fifteen hundred kilometres" Blue replied.

"You're kidding!" Calla gasped "It would have to be a tailwind of extraordinary magnitude."

His first night away from home had been rather uncomfortable for Gage, but he eventually arose when the aroma of freshly cooked fish made his mouth water. Blue wasted no time in getting their gear stowed as soon as everyone had eaten and by the time the sun had started to rise in the east, the Dragon Riders were already flying into it. Knowing how unpredictable a strong wind could be, Calla had suggested each rider take a Terror inside their jacket or saddlebag so they wouldn't be separated. This was fine for Rollo, who loved to snuggle himself away and sleep, but the others were a little restless at first until the dragons got well above the clouds. As the air started to thin, they all realised it was far easier to be tucked up as passengers, than it was to hang on to a Gronckles saddle by the tips of their claws.

"Blue... I'm beginning to feel a little woozy" Abigail called out.

"Everyone take deep breaths and make sure your saddle hooks are all secure; hopefully we shouldn't have to go too much higher" Blue encouraged them.

"But how much can the dragons themselves take?" Haley asked.

"Windstorm seems to be doing okay" Calla offered.

"I'm not really sure how high dragons can fly, but even though they're not really reptiles, they do have a lot of reptilian in them so I'm hoping they may be able to just slow their heart rates and glide" Blue responded.

"We'll soon find out I suppose" Gage shrugged.

"You doing okay Gage?" Blue asked.

"A little cold, a little scared, but apart from that I'm just fine" the young man smiled.

"Blue... look down; isn't that the island we spent last night on?" Calla pointed out.

"Yes we moved into a head wind about five minutes ago, so we have to try and go higher."

One of the odd things about flying in a strong wind, is if the air movement is steady and not erratic, it can feel no different to flying in a light breeze. So the dragons were happily flying along at a relative wind speed, while slowly going backwards. The Dragon Riders continued to follow Blues climbing directive to climb until they started getting buffeted by sudden squall bursts from all directions.

"We're crossing into a new layer" Blue called to the riders "Hold on tight and keep going up."

It was a rough ride for a few minutes but then, just as the buffeting had slowly built up, it once again started to slowly dissipate, and they were gliding free once more.

"Everyone, look down!" Abigail pointed.

They all barely caught sight of their island once again before it soon disappeared behind them.

"Hey we're going the right way at last" Calla laughed.

"And rather rapidly too" Abigail noted.

"Okay everyone; stop talking, settle down, breath deep and keep a close eye on your dragons. If they look like they can't handle the altitude, let me know and we'll go lower" Blue ordered.

"And keep an eye on each other too" Calla added.

"Yeah, what she said" Blue agreed.

Altitude sickness was not something to be taken lightly, but the Dragon Riders did have the advantage of not having to push themselves like a mountain climber woould. Ever since they had left the ground, they had all been sitting peacefully in their saddles. They wore every piece of warm clothing they possessed, and those who didn't have hoods or skull caps, wrapped scares around their heads.

The dragons appeared to be having no trouble at all, and even their Gronkle just continued to buzz along like a big round hummingbird taking full advantage of the wind at his back. After a few hours of watching Speedy, Blue suddenly noticed he had his left eye closed. A half hour later he saw the left one open the right one close. He looked around at the other dragons and saw that each one was also flying along with only one eye open at a time. Here was something new he had not seen in the Book of Dragons, or any of the other Berk writings. Just like some other animals, dragons could rest half their brain while the other side stayed alert. This was a truly amazing discovery; if the riders could endure, the dragons could effectively keep flying twenty four hours a day, only needing to take the occasional meal break. With this knowledge, he now intended to see how far he could push his fellow riders while trying not to endanger them.

'

'

It was often hard to tell what kind of mood General Neville Sage was currently in without speaking to him first, and by then it was usually too late. Today though was one of those rare times when everyone knew he was in a good mood and it was making the entire Launch Control Room quite nervous. Every person in the room knew that it would only take one unexpected problem to make this a very bad day.

Today was going to be a very bad day.

"Good morning Major. It's been months since we last spoke without the inconvenience of time delay" Sage smiled.

"Good morning Commander; MTV is standing by and ready to receive cargo capsules, and will be in position for first launch widow in seventeen minutes."

There wasn't any hint of pleasantry in Luis Dias's voice, which did not come as any surprise to Sage at all; the current captain of the MTV even refused to refer to Sage as general.

"I'm looking forward to seeing you again and renewing our friendship during the trip to Mars" Sage pushed for a reaction.

"Oh... yes... it's going to be a laugh a minute" Luis said with obvious undertones of sarcasm.

"Luis, it's Doctor Spencer here. We've got three supply capsules lined up at the end of the railgun and if all goes smoothly we'll launch them at two minute intervals. Are you ready to receive computer docking link information?"

"Standby... okay Doctor, computer is ready to receive" Luis answered.

The information transfer went on without a hitch for several minutes; the procedure was so much easier now they could talk with the MTV. During the fifteen years of lockdown and radio silence, the mission control room would often have to keep sending the information over and over until the MTV's computer sent a confirmation signal pulse. Now they were at last ready to launch, knowing that once the base computer had guided the capsules into low Earth orbit, the MTV could then take over for autonomous docking.

"First launch minus two minutes, power flow nominal" one of the technicians reported

"Capacitors at 20% and climbing" another added "new sectors all showing green, now at forty... ABORT ABORT ABORT!"

"What's wrong?" Sarah asked as the whole room, including Sage, suddenly got very tense.

"Major short at L-47" the answer came.

"L-47? But that's not one of the new sectors" Sarah looked confused.

"What's happening Doctor?" A very annoyed Sage demanded to know as his two guards stepped forward and readied their weapons.

"I don't know yet; can we get it up on camera?"

"Sorry Doctor Spencer, all power is down from L-47 all the way back to the end of the railgun."

"Do something Doctor" Sage growled insistently.

Without acknowledging the angry man, Sarah barked rapid orders to her people.

"Shut down all power to the railgun and run a full diagnostic, have a maintenance team meet me at the work tram in two minutes and notify the MTV of the delay; do you want to come along General?"

Undomesticated equines could not stop Neville Sage and his guards from accompanying Doctor Spencer on this investigation. Not only did he desperately want to know what had gone wrong, but he also did not want to give Sarah the opportunity to cover up any signs of sabotage. The tunnel tram was built to transport four technicians along with parts and tools, but with Sage and his party in the mix, they were only able to take two electrical engineers along; one crammed into the tool section and one standing on the rear step while holding on for his life. The journey to the end of the tunnel, many kilometres below the surface, took far longer than anyone was comfortable with considering the cramped conditions, but things eventually got far worse.

"What on earth is that smell?" Sage asked.

"It's weird how it seems to change from barbeque to cesspool" one of the guards noted.

"Oh no... I think I know what it is" Sarah sighed.

"A Macaque?" the engineer in the tool section asked.

"Or some other animal" Sarah agreed.

"Are you trying to tell me that smell is some kind of monkey?" Sage asked sceptically.

"Not anymore" Sarah replied "It's a rare occurrence but we have had Macaques fall down one of the air shafts in the past. Mostly they just jump around screaming, and we've even had a few find their way up the tunnel and cause all sort of havoc inside the complex, but I'd guess that this one started climbing up the cables and got fried when we turned the power on. The capacitors hold a charge of ten million watts at twelve thousand volts; so the last time this happened, the Macaque literally exploded."

"That's it, stop the tram" Sage ordered "We're going back and you can send a full team to clean up and fix this mess. And I want a full report of how long repairs will take in one hour."

Everyone was more than pleased when the tram started back up again, even the engineers. Although they both knew they would have to go back down later, at least they could go in hazmat suits with their own air supply next time.

'

'

"I must admit I'm getting hungry, but we are making good time" Calla admitted.

After several hours of flying, Blue was once more checking on the condition of the riders. Abigail and Gage said they had passed the time by trying to work out where they were based on what they could see far below them, and Haley had admitted to occasionally dozing in the saddle. As for the dragons, they just kept going and going with no apparent ill effects.

"I've noticed my hands are feeling a little tingly from the low air pressure, how are yours?" Blue asked.

"Err... well... a bit puffy" Calla replied.

"Okay that does it, we've stayed up long enough; okay everyone, let's start heading down."

Their descent went smoothly at first but they soon encountered the same opposing wind currents they had encountered during their ascent, but much worse. The buffeting only went on for about thirty seconds though, because the dragons ended up tumbling down through the rough layer, unable to keep steady. The riders saddle hooks kept them firmly in place and the dragons were able to regain control as soon as they were through the worst of it.

"Ugh... I feel sick now" Abigail said, turning a little green.

"Was it my imagination, or was that time worse than this morning?" Haley asked.

"I thought so too" Blue responded "The wind speed must have picked up during the journey. I guess we didn't notice because we were inside of it."

"So where are we?" Calla asked as they continued to glide down.

"I don't know" Blue replied "I was hoping to have made it to Italy by now but it looks pretty dry down there. We may have been blown a little further south which would put us over North Africa, possibly Tunisia. I suppose the best thing to do would be to look for a road sign."

Rather than dive down, Blue and Speedy led the dragons on a long slow glide until ground features started to come into clearer view. Desert tracks were numerous but Blue needed something more substantial, which came in the form of a four lane highway going north and south through some overgrown farmland. The Dragon Riders turned to follow the road south until they spotted an old sign showing destinations and distances. By the time they saw it, they had passed it so they pulled their dragons around to the north and came in to land twenty meters from the sign.

"Okay let's see what we got" Blue said s he remover him map from his saddle bag.

Speedy went off to play with the Terrors and the Gronckle while Boris and Windstorm stayed close to their riders, and Lucy and Ricky just lay down and dozed off.

"Zeytinli, four kilometres, Gaziantep, thirteen kilometres" Blue read from the sign.

He folded the map so the appropriate area showed, spread the map on the ground and began to search for the names on the signs.

"Can't find anything in Tunisia" Blue said as he started to check Algeria and Libya.

As he searched, Calla noticed here was information on both sides of the sign; so she walked around to see what was further to the south.

"Err... Blue... you may want to come and look at this" she suggested.

Blue got up and wandered over to join Calla, looked up and read the other side.

"Syrian border thirty one kilometres... ... ...SYRIA?! That means we must be..." Blue quickly re-checked the map "...in south central Turkey."

"Turkey, how did we get to Turkey?" Haley asked "That's almost two thousand kilometres from where we were this morning."

"We must have been higher than I thought and caught the lower edge of one of the jet streams" Blue realised.

"So where do we go from here?" Abigail wondered.

After checking the map one more time, Blue gave them a very basic answer.

"Okay there's a river about twenty klicks east of here, so I suggest we go there and let the dragons feed while I work out a new route."

And so poor Speedy had to cease his frolicking, and the Zippleback had to wake up for one more short journey of the morning.

'

'

Right now I am trying to work out what the next story in this series will be, and where will the characters end up? There are so many possibilities so I'm thinking of changing the whole flow by moving away from basing most of the story around the Dias family, although they will still play a big part, and instead having stories concentrating on various characters.

In the same way that some of my previous stories have had several Acts that would contain a specific part of the overall story, it may be possible to have different sections in the next tale that would be between 5 to 20 chapters in length. These sections would tell the individual stories of different areas on the Earth, the new direction of Mars, and the growth of the space colonies. Previous stories had to bring their individual arcs to a conclusion, but there seems to be no reason to do this next time. There can still be closure in a story without having to come to an absolute stop. After all, more stories end with "And they all lived happily ever after" rather than "And they all eventually grew old and died"; the first being open ended as life went on, while the second brings the tale to a grinding halt.

In the long run it will be interesting to find out if I can work this way, and what the results will be.

May life give you lots of Night Furys and very few Changewings, Marty.