… After the battle, the Wind Rider had taken extreme damage. Crippled and battered, it lost enough of its precious lifting gas to have to land for repairs. The riders of the dragons can do nothing, as their airship is running on less than enough to support both her and the Wind Rider. The plan is to descend below cloud cover and find a suitable island or shoal to use to make repairs…
Chapter 12: Shipwrecked
"Down ballast fifteen degrees. Rudders up two clicks. Won't go that far? Down one click then. Engines at fifty percent. Mr. Taylor, try and fix that boom, it will brain one of us if it swings the wrong direction. Where's my coffee?"
The first mate shouted orders around the control compartment as if the ship was in his commands. The captain of the ship was in the rear, explaining the situation to the petrified passengers. The airship was slowly descending and Martin could feel it dropping ever so slightly beneath his feet. The clouds loomed before the shattered windows of the car, blowing chilled mist across everyone present. Martin shivered because his long sleeved shirt had gone to patching a crewman's arm.
The clouds broke and Martin gasped along with many of the crewmen. Two thousand feet below them lay and endless expanse of the brightest blue water he had ever seen, marked here and there with green blots surrounded with bands of pure white. Pink smears indicated coral reefs and whales could be vaguely seen off the port side. It seemed to Martin that the world had been inverted, after having floated across a sea of white and a sky of blue.
"Coming on one thousand feet. Straighten out rudder. Level off. Set heading for two-o-eighty degrees. Spotters, look for an island that has a good sized beach."
"Sir, good island off the starboard side, set course two-o-sixty, Sir"
The first mate called out more commands and the bow of the ship swung around and the anchor needle pointed at the specific island. The ship kept sinking and the island came closer.
Suddenly there was a loud explosion and the ship lurched alarmingly to the side. Its falling speed increased and wind began to whistle through the broken windows. The mate leaped at the communications officer and grabbed the headset from off his head. His face turned pale and he rushed to the gas panel, where the statuses of the gas bags were displayed. Half way there, his head jerked back as he reached the end of the cord, and it would have been comical had the ship not been pointing seaward at an alarming angle. As he fell back, Martin saw that three of the precious ten bags had completely been whipped out, signaled by flashing red lights on the control board.
From outside, Matthias, Evander, and Carth circled the airship, watching emergency crews clambering over the silver sides like ants, patching any hole they found. Evander was watching Carth as he broke ice off his clothing, for he had been patrolling the clouds and was now covered in ice.
Suddenly, an explosion rent the calm just as an enormous gash in the Wind Rider's skin appeared. The two flaps waved wildly and Evander began to feel light headed from the escaping gas. Matthias was holding on to the saddle horn, the gas had blown him completely out of his seat. The ship began falling much faster and tilted to one side, away from the island they were heading for. The crewmen on the sides held onto their lifelines for dear life and bounced helplessly off the lower half of the airships bulge.
The dragons began to circle the airship, but because of its mass, there was nothing any of them could do. They watched the ship plummet toward an island densely covered in trees. Each pointed up like a deadly needle to the ship, waiting to pierce its skin and gas bags.
"Get back, I want to try something!" Matthias yelled over the noise of the distressed engines. Hoth swooped to the bow of the airship and distanced himself from the ship to give Matthias time. Matthias stood in his stirrups…
Martin glanced out the bow window at the land that was fast approaching. Things began to slide across the metal floor as the pitch of the ship increased. He clung to a pipe to avoid slipping. He noticed the white dragon placing itself into the path of the approaching bulk, beating its wings strongly to stay hovering.
Matthias held his right arm in front of him, his left held back for support. He shut his eyes, and then opened them with a snap. The ship began to slow as it ran into resistance in the sky, a wall of circulating wind. A vein began to show on his face as Matthias struggled to slow the ship. Little by little, it inched to a stop, and then began a slow decent onto into the canopy of trees as the wall shifted from in front to under the Wind Rider. Thirty feet above the trees, his strength gave out and he collapsed across the neck of Hoth. The airship plummeted again, but landed in the treetops with a dull thump.