The Guns of Casdagon

I am a sky captain. I was never born a sky captain, and I earned my title, my crew, and my ship through duty and sacrifice and experience. Some say I had won these things because of fate, because of luck; yet I was not one to rely or resent chance coincidences. Long have I believed that destiny was but deeds done by each person, predetermined, preordained, often randomly unexpected, yet consequently known. An ill-willed character, most would snide, for a dragoon to possess; we of the heavens firmly acknowledge the mysterious and the magical as we conquer the blue.

I confess that learned from the best: my parents, my previous captains when under their stewardship, the skies themselves, and the steam-powered ships which scour the high blue. There are few woman captains such as I, and thus my inception to the sky station was a rough storm to traverse; but I had weathered through storms before—literally, figuratively. After proving myself among the mid-elites, it was all sandballs down to becoming fully recognized to the alphas themselves. I had done my parents proud; I had done my friends proud. Soon, I would do all of Casdagon proud.

Then the day arrived when I could finally take command over my own vessel. Years spent on training, using puppet airships and blimps under simulated conditions in the testing domes miles to Casdagon. Years in study, physical exercise and mental capacity, commanding fake crews and a fake ship. Finally, practice became reality. The Casdagonian government had granted me absolute supervision over a ship, which, they had elaborated, ‘was a fine piece of steel and air.’ Now I hastened in excitement, struggling to maintain an aspect of formality, failing slightly as my enthusiasm made me bump into goers and comers in the hanging bay. To my right were the buildings which housed some of the biggest cargoships, skyships, frigateflies, cloudcorvettes, and an Aetherian Titan, where people came out, went in, repaired the machines, resuscitated them with more gases for float; to my left, the vast desert of Hafeer opened its wide face to the sun, irregular pimples of mountains and dunes bumped here, jagged scars of canyons and crevices slicing there. Then nearby, the shining city, Casdagon, beautiful, grand, powerful.

I found a bay guard who I presumed knew the vessels and the vessels’ captains.

“Evangerine Ishanteef, of the Firmamentu ju Casdagon. May I know where my ship docks?”

The guard had with him a bundle of papers with elegant scribbles; he scanned it.

“Evangerine Ishanteef…Yes…Yes, you are here indeed. Your ship, ma’am, is yonder.”

“Where?”

“There.” He pointed, and I frowned.

He guided me to my ship, and my frown deepened further as I recognized the frigatefly. A semi-rustic and slightly bent machine, the vessel was not truly a fine piece of steel and air, but it was close enough to that condition. The figurehead was that of a king draped in sari and with sword upraised. The guns, I inspected, were operational, heavy and light, long- and short-ranged. At least twelve people, including myself, could manage the frigatefly alongside several helperdroids. Be it as it may, the whole contraption required a sufficient clean job first, perchance engine replacement, gas canister refills, coal-to-steam processing systems check, the likes. Yet what apprehended me the most was the ship itself. Not its appearance, or firepower, or crewmembers whom I personally hand-picked for the coming venture. The ship.

“This must be some mistake.”

“It is not, captain. This is your ship, as offered by the Casdagonian government and Holy themselves. You have earned it, have you not?”

“This is King Dibumadoragnaman.”

The man cringed. “If you may, ma’am, but such a name must not be spoken anywhere, lest—“

“I know the name’s legends and its victims, and I honestly could not care less about the matter. I care only for my ship. Surely, there should be something…”

“Less nefarious, less unlucky?”

“In a manner.”

“Yet I have heard you were one to not believe in such things, ma’am, as you confessed before.”

“I do not. But such things may affect the morale of my crew, and I cannot abide to that.”

“Then take it up with the management, if you will.”

I did, and the higher echelon offered a kind explanation, a reasonable logic to their decision in bequeathing me the dubious frigatefly, sans malicious jests. I believed them, yes—believed them that this was no sleazy prank to affront a woman like me for earning high grades than most men, but instead considered King Dibumadoragnaman as a last test of my captaining for the greater ships. If I can handle a badly-reputable machine like the Dibumadoragnaman, then I will finally possess a bona fide aircraft of true grace and prowess.

But desert be damned, it would be a hard feat to accomplish. Hard as diamond rock.

Eleven of the best men and women I knew in academy and out succoured their individual responsibilities to the ship. We cleaned the hull, engines, the cogs and gears, the guns, the prow and back; we replaced most of the old gas canisters with higher-grade cylinders, upgraded our arsenal with a tesla-railgun and Sun-Summoner cannon, omitted the stale barrels of beer and the rotten coal reserves out. We installed two blueskippers in the ship’s bay (two among us were expert pilots, and we might need quick fly support for diversions). We also attached three escape pods for everyone to fit in. It took us five days within the port to fix the whole thing—we could have done it faster, but knowledge of the Dibumadoragnaman’s morbid history forced hesitancy and angst to slow us down. We all knew the ugly tales of the ancient king whose name christened our boat.

Except for the newbie.

A youth named Coul Urneesh would be stationed to our vessel as mandated by the Casdagonian hierarchy, to oversee our adventures and missions in the field. He seemed to be no one of exceptional significance, besides being the judge and critic of our boat, albeit an expendable one. We later learned, however, that he was an exceptionally skilled shot with a sniper and a shieldbreaker. That could be useful.

Soon we were thirteen in the King Dibumadoragnaman, excluding the helperdroids—and though I feared not the things inexplicable, this infamously unlucky number boded an ill-feeling to my bones. Oh, please let this be some perverse joke.

“Why do you find this ship unlucky? What happened here that this be a dangerous vessel?” the youth Coul asked us once.

“This ship is named after the cursed king of ancient Umanteesh,” told the crew. “You have heard of his story, yes?”

“I must say I have not. Please, tell me this tale.”

“Long story short, he had upset the gods with blasphemy and atrocity, thus the gods punished him and his subjects with oaths of misfortune. Those who speak the king’s name—yes, we dare not even speak the name of the king—would suffer great tragedy. Hence, the name of this ship does not appeal to our courage.”

“Yet surely, no horror struck this vessel yet.”

“But tragedy did strike here, two times! Four years ago, this ship set sail on the Phoenix Mountains south to rescue marooned allies from the Yarooks,” the crew orated. “It returned automatically, without crew, without captain, without anyone living. Only the bloodstains of friend and enemy remained. Then it went on another mission to protect our bases west beyond Hafeer. The only vessel which survived that massacre was this one, although the new crew itself was lost again. It is an unlucky ship, we tell you, unlucky.”

But I as captain refused to comply to sailors’ tall-tales. As we hoisted the sails in the sides, activated the turbines for synthetic wind, unmoored and sailed, I patted the wheels and whispered to the ship, “Don’t let me down, girl. Don’t let yourself down too. I don’t believe in this whole bad myth of you, regardless of what everyone claims; one day, you’ll do them proud by proving them wrong. I know you will.”

And the entire vessel shuddered, groaned like timber falling. A reply? Perhaps. I smiled and steered the wheels to starboard. Though I stubbornly disbelieved in the preconceptions of chance and fate and luck, I nevertheless followed its simple edicts—that a ship was alive; it had a soul of steel, a heart of controlled explosions and light gases for breath. It must be respected, like anyone.

Smiling still, feeling her hum and throb like a little sister in my arms. Though named a man, ships universally possess feminine qualities, thence for feminine pronouns.

Away we go, little sister; to the skies we go.

 

First, I tested the Dibumadoragnaman’s altitude limit before the pressure inside the balloons was greater than the outside: approximately five hundred kilometres from ground. Alright, so at least it could skim through most mountains without the balloons exploding too eagerly. Excellent. What about the container material itself? Is the polyester fiber of the balloons stalwart and malleable enough to withstand a single bullet? How many bullets would it require for one lucky missile to finally pierce through the slippery and solid sheet? What of the gas itself? The quality and quantity of gas? Is it adequately light enough for long flights? How many ounces of air are wasted in an hour, after an aerial mile? Eventually, after further dexterity check, the diagnostics was gathered and I was positive on the Dibumadoragnaman’s capabilities.

Second, speed. How fast does King Dibumadoragnaman travel? Its estimated speed limit was about eighty aerial miles per hour. Quite fast, actually, since a normal frigatefly’s top speed was sixty-five aerial miles per hour. A cloudcorvette’s—eighty like ours. An Aetherian Titan’s—forty at best. Which meant that the Dibumadoragnaman was a fast and deadly flier. Perfect.

Third, the blueskippers. These crafts lacked balloons or bubbles of gases for soaring, and instead needed merely turbines, an engine, and wings to fly. Now how fast do the blueskippers in my disposal go? When they drop from the ship’s bay, will they float and glide and soar as programmed? Are they easy or difficult to manoeuvre? Will my pilots, Hassana and Jerino, truly adopt these skippers with ease and aplomb? I learned later on, after seeing the twin blueskippers zip and zap, that the one flown by Hassana, dubbed Matanas, was slightly faster its brother, Ratanas; yet both the twins’ guns and gunners were perfectly adept in skirmishes.

Then fourth, guns. The Dibumadoragnaman was a frigatefly, thus it was equipped for aerial combat. On the portside and starboardside were the usual Gazateefs and rapid-fire cannons; on port was the Sun-Summoner, starboard one tesla-railgun. At the bow were twin flamethrower turrets and a shieldbreaker. Behind were a shieldbreaker, five harpoon projectors to haul in any catches, and another tesla-railgun. All appeared perfectly operational. The Gazateef guns fired three hundred bullets per minute, the rapid-fire cannons a single huge round every second. The Sun-Summoner obliterated a boulder from two miles, while the tesla-railguns disabled a dummy cloudcorvette’s shields for a good five minutes. Harpoons? Sharp and far-ranged and the wire would hold out. Shieldbreakers? We made a dozen bull’s-eyes on target, through Coul’s traits, and pierced through the polyester fiber of a gas balloon without trouble. Summary? All good.

There was no way to ascertain how durable the Dibumadoragnaman’s shields were. I watched the yellow shimmer circumscribing the ship at 100% power, then focused on the steel plates surrounding the vulnerable and important organs of the vessel—I wanted an answer to this. My first mate, Dreia, who knew the strengths and weaknesses of any ship as good as I did, hypothesized that the shields could survive at least one Sun-Summoner blasts and deflect at most a two out of five shieldbreaker shots. Then the two ship engineers, Kalladin and Urander, who knew the shieldweaver engine and its general abilities, argued that the shields were strong enough to withstand a fully-charged strike from a Mountain-Wiper, which held the wrath of three Sun-Summoner charges, before dissipating. We later pressed the young man Coul to offer an answer—he claimed that, possibly, the shield wouldn’t survive a Mountain-Wiper, but could definitely shrug off a shieldbreaker blow. Me?—I prefer to let experience tell me how defensive King Dibumadoragnaman was.

Hence why I quickly accepted our first real mission

The goal was to head due south-west and extract a stranded team of Casdagonian elite troopers in the Dead Sea, a huge valley pitted with sand and skeletons pinned between mammoth mountains. Since King Dibumadoragnaman was designed mainly for extraction duty instead of pitched sky battles, they sent us, the nearest and fastest boat, to complete the task. I was worried—perchance the Dibumadoragnaman was incapable of reaching the necessary altitude to jump over the mountains, what then? Yet when we arrived at the ranges, Lanteer the navigator found a passable crack between two low peaks.

As I steered the ship thataway, I ordered the robotics technicians, Rineef and Sareef (brothers), to ready our bronze warriors with engines instead of hearts for battle, in case we encountered Yarook hostiles. After commanding them further to prepare the helperdroids for coming repairs, I steadied the wheels and shifted gears to accelerate like a bird in the wind.

We entered the valley, the Dead Sea beckoning us in. Lanteer motioned from his viewing perch to where he spotted the reddish flare of a lost group. Scattered and shattered around this waiting troop were the carcasses of fallen warships—ours, and Yarook, smoke-tongues and flame-hands shifting. It was surprisingly cloudy this aye morning; I shivered, in cold, in worry. I had Coul commandeer the scanners with Lanteer for any signatures, but so far, nothing. Should I send the blueskippers to scout the site? No—best not risk the duo and their pilots.

The gases in the balloons retreated into their metal canisters, permitting gravity to pull the ship down.

I resumed my wary stance, watching, eyeing. Hands gripping the wheel, and I whispered to Dibumadoragnaman again, “Be ready for anything, girl. Be ready.”

The land—empty, save for the Casdagonian troops on the ground, waving with red smog. The mountains—bare, sheer and bare. Wait…did that piece of rock move? I gestured to my crew; they reported it to be nothing. A shadow, maybe. Descending deeper down, two miles from extraction, closing in. I could see the troops now, a few injured, twenty in total. Silence around. But…what of the cloudy sky? Why did certain regions swirl quicker than most? And why were the trails going towards…?

“Enemies, two hundred feet above us and behind!” cried Coul and Lanteer.

The underside of a metal vessel peeked out and descended. Yarooks. Years, we of Casdagon have been at war with the Yarooks of the south, beyond the great deserts and mountains. I knew their ships and colours well enough to prepare for battle. I shouted for defensive positions, to keep the ship descending for the waiting troops.

The crew need not have been shouted at further. Automatically, like well-oiled machines, they reacted to the surprise appearance of foes: my main gunwomen, Oleen and Caspagnada, operated the Sun-Summoner cannon and one of the tesla-railguns, respectively, while the gunbots all in flashing bronze and whirring cogs took the majority of weapons.

I adjusted the Dibumadoragnaman to be in range to the arsenal in port. I saw a flash from our main gun, Sun-Summoner, then a cloudcorvette fell flaming and screaming.

Grimly, I watched as three more silhouettes descended from the cloud coverage—two cloudcorvetttes and a frigatefly. From the enemy frigatefly, four blueskippers raced to intercept us. Urgh, just what we needed…

At that point I radioed to a hopefully nearby Casdagonian fleet for back-up. Should have done it sooner, but I thought I had the situation under control. Nope.

“This is the captain of the King Dibumadoragnaman.” I sensed no dark curse or bad mojo as I identified my ship. “We’ve got bogies on us and we’re taking heavy fire. Requesting assistance please,” I said, giving also our latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates. They replied, said that they would be arriving in half an hour. Perfect.

In the meantime, we had to survive.

While I nudged the Dibumadoragnaman far to port for Caspagnada and her gunbots to unleash hell on the blueskippers, I focused also on landing the ship besides the waiting troops. We landed just as our guns opened fire. Two of the Yarook blueskippers died. The others split, danced in the skies, mocked us by avoiding fire and firing back with peppering hails of lead.

“Keep firing!” Caspagnada ordered her gunbots on her side of the ship. “Aim far left!…We want them pinned in the air! That’s it! Got another one!”

“I got this one!” cried Oleen. She barely avoided a kamikaze run from the last blueskipper before her gunbots shredded it into smithereens.

“Oleen!” I cried. “You okay?”

“Yes captain. Just a scratch. We still good?”

“We’re good!”

Somehow, somewhat, without even looking at the screens to my right, I could feel the troops from the ground enter King Dibumadoragnaman, authenticating themselves to Dreia my first mate that they were indeed of Casdagon. I could strangely feel Dreia guide the weary team into the hull, and even when Coul reported that all was on board, I knew already. I patted the Dibumadoragnaman on her wheel and shifted the gears for ascension.

I ordered Coul to leave Lanteer’s station and support the gun battle. “Yes ma’am!” he said. I asked him also if any of the visitor-soldiers were willing to aid the struggle, and to summon Dreia up to serve too. “Of course, ma’am! I’ll go down and check!”

The three prime ships were closing in on us, and we needed more manpower.

I watched as Coul and Dreia with five Casdagonian warriors man the guns; I watched them, crewmembers and gunbots, shoot flames and bullets and cannonballs and energy blasts at the Yarooks. Yet still, their shields held strong.

Three more enemy blueskippers suddenly appeared—one barrelled to Oleen. The shield suffered the brunt, but the forced momentum of the suicide allowed shrapnel to bypass, hitting Oleen. Fortunately, Dreia stumbled in to haul Oleen to the med bay. I hope Oleen survives.

But other matters must be addressed first.

They were closing in. Time to run.

I could feel her inhale, the lungs of her balloons taking in light gases for lift; I felt, alongside her and her crew the rush of air in ascension. Lanteer the navigator pointed to a clear but high pass thirty degrees to starboard. I charted for that course, since rear was danger, and fore had only one exit.

We were in range of them, which, unfortunately, meant they were in range of us. The frontal guns of a cloudcorvette, the closest of the Yarook ships, ate at our shields. We were at 81% and decreasing. The Dibumadoragnaman was flying at sixty-eight aerial miles per hour, but the cloudcorvette was faster, and its frontal guns strong.

“Keep yourself together girl,” I gritted to her, patting her wheel, feeling the reverberation of blows upon her stoic frame. “We’re almost there. Don’t let any of us down. I believe.”

This time, I looked at the display of screens at my right, focused on the view behind. There, I saw Coul and one of the troops from the ground manage the shieldbreaker. They fired. They hit, and fired again. On another screen I saw the cloudcorvette descending slowly. Coul was striking at their balloons, I realized, and succeeding. I managed a smile.

We flew higher, faster. The pursuing cloudcorvette fell instead of descended, but replacing it was the other cloudcorvette. Irritably, this one definitely had shieldbreakers, for I espied a millisecond line streak through our shields, hit the balloon, make a dent through the armour coating. Four—no, five now—streams of steam leaked and howled to the vacuum out. The helperdroids scaled the vessel to seal the damage, but those frustrating shieldbreakers silenced them one by one.

We kept climbing, to exit, freedom, yet the pace was much too slow for comfort.

“Can someone please kill that butt fly behind us!?” I cried at the pipe beside me, my orders echoing across the ship.

“We’ve got it covered, captain!” responded Dreia. I checked the screens, saw her with Coul and the soldier handling the shieldbreaker and a harpoon turret. She was pointing at the Yarook cloudcorvette, or at a place on it; Coul shifted the shieldbreaker to where she pointed. He was shouting at the lone soldier on the harpoon—Get ready? What in these skies are they up to?

Then Coul fired two precise rounds at where Dreia had aimed to.

The yellow shimmering shields of the enemy fizzed and disappeared.

The soldier on the harpoon fired instantly, the hooked projectile sailing, penetrating, clinging, then pressing a button on the side the chains reeled back hastily to suck out a shattered piece of shieldbreaker.

Genius. Pure genius. Dreia knew every piece and part of any ship, and so knew where a shieldweaver engine would be situated; then Coul had disabled their shieldweaver with sheer accuracy, and finally the soldier pulled the annoying shieldbreaker out like a puss on skin. Genius.

The helperdroids had fixed the leakages. We ascended quickly. With the cloudcorvette’s shieldbreaker incognito, they used standard cannons and Gazateefs to irk our retreat.

Higher, higher. We were fifty feet to the slope of the mountain, three hundred feet in forty-five diagonal degrees to the exit. The cloudcorvette’s sniping gun was gone, but it still reached us with its normal rounds. With them, the hostile blueskippers buzzed in and out.

“We’re doing it,” I whispered, and patted the Dibumadoragnaman. “We’re almost there.”

Ascending, ascending, just a few hundred feet to skim that mountain pa—

King Dibumadoragnaman rumbled violently. I nearly fell. I heard alarmed screams, and before that, an explosion, like a whole world was doomed. I saw our shields fizz and die. I focused on the screen which watched the stern: Dreia was dragging Coul to safety; they were covered in soot and debris. Where was that soldier they were with? Dead? In the smoking back, through crackling and shifting screen damage, I saw the frigatefly rise above the cloudcorvette, the smoking barrel of a Sun-Summoner perched on its bow.

“Desert be damned.” I switched the pipe comms beside me to address the engineers. “Kalladin, Urander, can you fix our shields quickly?”

“Trying,” both replied.

“I’m busy cooling the turbine engines here, though,” complained Urander. “Don’t worry—Rineef and Sareef are helping Kalladin with the shieldweaver.”

“No! No, insert that over there! Pull that lever, yes! Good! No, wait! Don’t press that button yet!” complained Kalladin in the background. “Um, the auxiliary energy of the shields should be online in three minutes, captain,” Kalladin confirmed.

The Dibumadoragnaman shuddered again, four times. These weren’t regular gunshots. We were slowing down.

“We don’t have three minutes.” The cloudcorvette had harpooned us. Now the frigatefly would be gaining.

“Dreia, report!”

“Coul and one of the Casdagonian troopers are dazed, and Oleen’s under surgery, captain. I’m running back to the stern and try the tesla-railgun. We’ve still got some gunbots and helperdroids running about, captain; at least we’re not in total disarray.”

Loud pitter-patters of bullets rained down on the ship. The soldiers on the guns took cover, but the gunbots stayed in their posts, oblivious of their destruction.

“We’re in disarray now,” I said to Dreia. Thank the sands of Casdagon that Caspagnada ordered the surviving gunbots to hide. She should have responded earlier after the shields fell. Yet I became more focused on steering the sluggish and trapped Dibumadoragnaman up.

“Hassana, Jerino, get in your blueskippers and distract them!”

I was confirmed by their quick responses. Seconds later, I saw the twin birds swoop from the ship’s belly and zigzag to the frigatefly and the cloudcorvette. Unlike the enemy blueskipper’s, ours were more agile, dexterous, and our pilots more adept in harassment. They avoided all manner of firestorms from the enemy.

I shifted my concern from the Matanas and Ratanas, christened after the two sons of the ancient king of Umanteesh; I focused on our current dilemma.

We weren’t going to make it if the harpoons kept sticking. I commanded the helperdroids to cut the chains. On the screens I saw them crawl and saw their way through the strong lines. There, too, was Dreia, moving the tesla-railgun at the incoming frigatefly. I could have sent one of the gunbots, but those automatons were incapable of adapting to tactics unless ordered so. We needed someone like Dreia to handle the rear dilemma with flexibility.

The enemy wasn’t firing just yet. Besides the fact that our blueskippers were abusing them, they wanted to close the distance until all their firepower wiped us out.

“We’re so close.” After demanding Kalladin to divert all his attention to make the damn boat fly higher and faster, I told Caspagnada to ready the Sun-Summoner to fire. I twirled the wheel hard for starboard, then placed the Dibumadoragnaman on autopilot for home as it flew backward. Before going, I whispered to her again quickly and curtly: “Bring us to safety, girl. I’ll take care of those harpoons on your stern. Just keep us steady and flying.” I patted the wheel for good measure and hurried.

On my way, I past the soldiers we rescued. I heard their worried whispers, not because of the Yarooks, but because of where they were.

“The ancient king of Umanteesh, the name of this boat. Wickedness.”

“An accursed ship, this is, as was the king.”

“I heard anyone who captains or boards this vessel never lives to tell what ever truly happened here. It is a ghost ship, they say.”

“We won’t survive. This ship will kill us all.”

“This is no ship, my friend—it is our tomb.”

“Only the unlucky dare sail an unlucky ship.”

No. No, this cannot be, I swore. I will not dare let these rumours and ill legends faze me, distract me from my duties to country, countrymen, city, and crew. I am the captain of the Dibumadoragnaman; it will be my fault, not the ship’s, if anything happens to anyone on board.

I joined Dreia on the tesla-railgun; she was having difficulty moving the thing. Jammed. I unjammed it with two sharp kicks. The ship couldn’t completely face the two Yarook warships since the cloudcorvette had us by its two chains, yet the starboard side should be able to address the enemy completely when in position.

When they saw we were adjusting our side to them, the Yarooks opened fire.

Blessedly or blessed by the gods of the duneways, the yellow shimmer of our shields absorbed the affront. From a comms pipe above us, I heard Kalladin report that the new shields were at 48% and dropping rapidly. We needed to end this before the frigatefly’s Sun-Summoner was fully reloaded.

The tesla-railgun reached the limit of its turn, which was good enough. Dreia fired on my command. A streak of lightning arced to the frigatefly. We saw its shields reel back to where it belonged.

At that instant, three things occurred: first, the chains which imprisoned the ship were snapped off—now we could fly freely; second, our Sun-Summoner fired and struck the defenceless frigatefly, decimating its bow; third, before we could silently celebrate our victory, the cloudcorvette sped at us on full speed and rammed our lower side.

“Desert be damned!” Dreia exclaimed, sharing my sentiments. We rushed back to the quarterdeck, and I took the wheels, steered us back on course. I watched as our two blueskippers flew past us, circling and protecting. Then Dreia reported our injury:

“That cloudcorvette’s top skimmed our keel. It’s below us now, but not firing. The dent it made to our lower balloons is serious, but it could have been worse if it was a few feet higher. Still, we’re leaking too much gas now.”

“Can we still make it over that high knoll?” Our only getaway.

“I…”

“Report.”

“I’m not sure. Maybe.”

It needed to be more than maybe. I grabbed the pipe comms and ordered all personal to throw whatever heavy equipment there was which was useless and expendable. I demanded the helperdroids mend the wound to the keel balloons. Flight was paramount.

“We could land, captain, on that plateau there.” Dreia gestured to where it was, some meters to port. “Make quick repairs, maybe deal with the cloudcorvette below us with the blueskippers. It seems pretty crippled, and they can’t have that much troops compared to us.“

“True,” I nodded. Perhaps we did have this under control.

“Captain, incoming enemies a kilometer to our stern,” Lanteer reported.

“What?” I seized my spyglass, looked yonder.

Damn the desert, nothing is ever under anyone’s control. Five damnable frigateflies and at least several cloudcorvettes sailed in as reinforcements, out of the blue, or out of that infuriating cloud coverage. How could we have not seen them sooner? Why the hell would they be here? Wait a minute…I fixed my gaze at the swarm’s center…Oh, you really have to be kidding me. They have a fletching dreadnaught?

Damn me, damn the desert. There was no time to stop for repairs or wonder about the mysteries of the unexpected. We had to move.

“Prepare to ascend!” All our intentions were focused on making us light and forcing the surviving balloons to float up. The turbines which moved us rotated madly; I could hear the helperdroids clank and clink their tools to heal the injured balloons below. I radioed our two blueskippers to scout the skies in front for any ambushes—they couldn’t possibly help us with the problem behind. I just hoped our back-up fleet was waiting behind the ranges to scare the Yarook fleet away.

And I hoped, too, for the Dibumadoragnaman to keep going up. I prayed to it, begged it, ordered it, like a peasant petitioning for food from the king. I had the gears on full lift, held the wheels stable. Through gritted teeth, I whispered my sentiments, and spoke, “Come on, good girl. Prove them all wrong, just as I did. Prove us proud and right to be here, in the skies, up home where we belong. Come on and get up!”

The drilling trills of a dozen blueskippers raged behind. Detonations, shockwaves, tremors in the sky. Hell, pure and absolute hell in a blender. Several suns erupted spontaneously, lead insects buzzed past or though, yet no serious, direct impacts. They were damn close, and with the dreadnaught at this range, a Mountain-Wiper could clean us from the winds of the skies. We kept running.

Then came a roaring, the destruction, our doom maybe. Thunder rolled around us, a thousand thousand shouts from the heavens and the ground. The mountain itself was screaming, I thought, or we all were. My vision blurred, fatigue was realized; I waited for the heavens to welcome us to the final docks and become like stars. Instead, the sky was dusted with faint pieces of dirt, rock, minute fragments, nothing serious as it landed on the deck.

The dreadnaught had missed with its Mountain-Wiper, obliterating only a chilling chunk of mountain beside us. Still, too close. We needed to run.

“Come on, come on, we’re almost there. Keep going.

“I believe in you. Of all things strange and mysterious, I believe in you.”

Then finally, we reached escape—only just barely. What remained of our keel brushed the mountain. We scraped through the gateway. My crew, even a tiny smidge of myself, felt we were about to crash into something, or the deathly crawl would halt our retreat. Death. But ultimately, we made it.

We survived.

We were free.

The rescue fleet greeted us just before the Yarook vessels could intercept and destroy. We watched the enemy turn tail and flee from our superior numbers. My crew cheered and whooped, hugged and laughed; the warriors we rescued maintained a more discreet celebration, sighing, thanking us. But in their gratitude, I heard their whispers, almost as if the ship herself was letting me hear their remarks:

“I thought we were done for.”

“This ship saved us. Desert be damned, it saved us.”

“Guess I was wrong about this ship. Man, wait until I tell the kids about this.”

“Two cloudcorvettes and a frigatefly. Two cloudcrovettes, and a frigatefly. Then it outraced and outdistanced a whole fleet, dodged a Mountain-Wiper! Can you believe a ship like this can beat those odds?”

“Bless the great King Dibumadoragnaman; may the sand and the seas bless her.”

I smiled. I patted her on the wheel, rubbed her, and from somewhere, or everywhere, the whole vessel shuddered, like a purr.

We showed them, little sister; we showed them.

 

Nine.

We did nine missions on board King Dibumadoragnaman, for the Holy Queen of Casdagon, the country and its grand city and neighbouring towns, the people and their freedom, our comrades of the Firmamentu in ground and up high. Yet forget patriotism a moment, forget leaders, forget the citizens never acknowledged in person, friends who dwell in shadows, the soldier-brothers one rarely meets—we did these nine missions for ourselves, to excel beyond our limitations, to break the sky’s barrier and soar aboard Dibumadoragnaman. We thirteen enjoyed the tasks, the ordeals, the actions promised from the dangerous fields in war and work; we preferred to exercise our fellowship, brotherhood, and comradery in the heat of battle than in the cool rooms of a bar. It was us who saved the battered fleet in Kipeesh before the whole town could be conquered and its forces squandered. It was us who captured the Yarook mining fortress and cut-off one of their big suppliers of minerals and volcanic gases, things which made flight possible. When combat was rough and unrequited, the Dibumadoragnaman was one of the few vessels which survived the brunt of firepower. When situations posed dire outcomes, we helped tip the scale of skirmish in our favour. Nine missions…all paramount to the slow victory against the Yarooks. Between these exhilarating excursions, we upgraded our air boat with up-to-date gadgets and improved the defences supremely. Most of the harpoons in stern were superseded by spitfire-dragons, which shoot faster than the normal cannon, and whose ammunition was napalm. We now had two Sun-Summoners, for port, for starboard. The balloon’s protective coating was of stranger steel. Long story short, our arsenal got better. What was once a normal evacuation vessel became a battle-ready warship, primarily for medium-level skirmishes. We were not the most powerful ship, obviously, yet we were damn close to being as unbeatable as a single Aeatherian Titan. Us thirteen of King Dibumadoragnaman would make merry barbs and banter after the jobs were accomplished, patting backs, sharing experiences unnoticed in the fray, celebrating and acknowledging the triumphs. We were happy, to serve our Holy Queen of Casdagon, the country and its grand city and neighbouring towns, the people and their freedom, our comrades of the Firmamentu in ground and up high. But most importantly, we were happy for us, proving the Dibumadoragnaman worthy for flight and companionship, doing everyone proud.

Nine…nine missions without failure. What a streak.

Yet streaks were meant to be broken.

 

The day arrived when the Dibumadoragnaman would fly its last. How could one ever know the coordinates of doom? But even if I had known we were sailing to death, it would not have changed my course. I was a patriot to Queen and Casdagon—my crew behaved the same over the flying period. We would not drop down without a fight.

The Casdagonian spies and patrols in the borders had warned of a huge assault force of Yarook warships and ground legions amassing by the myriads. King Dibumadoragnaman was assigned, along with an entire fleet of eight legendary, elite warships, plus two dozen cloudcorvettes, frigateflies, some normal dreadnaughts and Aetherian Titans, to defend our primary mining quarries on Ring-Fire, which the enemy was said to be marching for. The whole smoking site has been the main hotspot for kill and capture, at one point possessed by the Yarooks, other occasions by us. Currently, we control the Ring-Fire.

Yet the paradigm of war may shift with the assault force’s campaign.

We rendezvoused with the allied contingents on the northern entrance to Ring-Fire. Here and there on their prospective altitudes soared ships whose titles inspired stories and whose crew spawned awe and honour. Most, however, were common cargoships for ground troops and artillery, gunbots and helperdroids. Yet here still flew a few greats. These grand vessels bore the names of icons and heroes and rulers old. Gohani, Mistress Kateem, The Lion Prince of Black Rock, Makonnagnani the Jester, Ocean Sea Seven, Iron Rooster Nimf. It would be a profound honour to sail wind to wind with these legends.

The Castagonian fleet entered Ring-Fire—a wide red and black patch of semi-dormant and semi-active volcanoes. This was the biggest reservoir and dig site for the requisite minerals needed to fuel a sky ship. Here were the rich metals, molten below, flowed upwards, then hardened by the cold and mined by axes or drills to build the flying ships and guns. Here, too, spewed the sulphuric gases from vents and fissures, gases so light that they were perfect for making a big hunk of metal float. Casdagon has had an edge on the war because of Ring-Fire. Yet should the Yarooks retake the volcanoes, then it would mean defeat for us in many fronts. Our scouts numbered the enemy attackers greater than any previous assaults summed together. This would be the great flood, many muttered fearfully, the flood from Yarook which would spill across Ring-Fire and engulf all of Casdagon. If we lose this battle, we lose the war. We must not lose.

From the south they would invade, and from there only three passes amidst towering mountains and funnels of smoke pose available to them. The majority of our legions would hold the two main chokepoints, while the remaining few would secure the smallest passage. King Dibumadoragnaman was assigned to this tiny gateway. To support would be three other ships, one dreadnaught called Jerino like our blueskipper flyer, two frigateflies named Ifanteef and Hasheesh.

I charted course to the defences there, our three allies soaring suit. Kalladin and Urander inspected the engines, treated them as one would children; Rineef and Sareef oiled and cleaned the helperdroids and gunbots below decks; Hassana and Jerino assisted everyone as much as they could before they could be ready for blueskipper flight. Dreia assisted Oleen and Caspagnada on the guns; I saw Coul hefting his own personal sniper rifle. Lanteer kept browsing at the map of the area, pinning down spots where we could easily defend, places we would have to avoid. On the radio comms I had constant conversations with our allies, sharing defensive and ambush tactics, adding some witty jokes to ease the tension. Everyone, even the ships, were getting jumpy.

Us four ships would deal with the Yarook war boats; the tower turrets positioned strategically on the mountain slopes to the side would chew up the smaller vessels like blueskippers and even lend helpful bullets on the bigger birds. Then the ground troops on the valley below would try and hold the coming armies. It was anticipated that the enemy wouldn’t send their elite vessels at our passage—most likely they’ll reserve the flower of their forces at more significant entrances. Since ours had arduous ground difficult for land armies to manoeuvre, and skies clogged almost completely in smog to conceal our harrowing traps, the enemy would be fools to send their alphas here, thus we would not experience extreme action. Still, we were taciturn and uptight as we gazed down the long barren, burning stretch to the south, where the foe assembled and marched.

Night, home of our dead fathers and mothers, and on the blackness sailed our ancestors, blinking their lights down on us.

Each one of us prayed privately or publically to our ancestors high above. Some were for advise, most for premonitions, others thanks. Yet all wondered: Would we make it? Would any of us make it tonight to see the dawn?

On my station, I saw unease settle on the troubled minds of my crew, their faces slack and bleached, shoulders slumped, frames shaking. If the any part of the body is ill, the whole person then will be ill-affected. Thus if my crew were worried, so would the ship, and a worried ship did not make for an effective fighter.

I summoned everyone to the quarterdeck. We all gathered, first to say a group prayer to the gods and the fathers and mothers old, to them the stars twinkling in the black tapestry up high. And after this, I spoke to my crew, hoping my words would pacify their distress.

“I’d like to share an event during our travels aboard King Dibumadoragnaman, an event which you were absent to witness. All of you were dining by the shabbiest and cheapest restaurant anyone has had the privilege of dining in, just after we defended the Sandcat Breach in the East. As you made merry your memories of adventure, I stayed alone on Dibumadoragnaman, inspecting her, admiring her. Then, an emissary of the Holy Queen and the leader of the Firmamentu approached me with a business offer. Because of our successful missions, the monarchy would grant us command over a new breed of dreadnaught, top of the line, equal to an Aetherian Titan. We would have to surrender the Dibumadoragnaman for this vessel of grandiose power. It was a good deal, I confess, a fine deal. And I declined it.

“Why? Why would I refute a warship which, admittedly, statistically, is classes superior to ours? Because, for once in my life, a life which constantly shunned the strange happenings of the world, I believe now in the magical and mysterious things soaring skyward; I believed in this ship—it has taken care of us more times than we can count, and we it. Maybe it is my fantasy alone which makes this vessel just as legendary as the ones beside us. Maybe luck or chance let the crew of Dibumadoragnaman taste victory and survival only for the hammer of abject defeat to fall. Yet that will not come to pass.

“We all share the thought: Will we make it? Will any of us live to see the dawn? I will not sugar-coat the facts, friends: this is no mere mission; this is war. This will be the hardest and most gruelling task we have ever done, a task which may cost us our lives. Is this, all of this, really worth it?

“It is. Our job here is worth the dozen great ships flying sail by sail, worth the soldiers below, the guns positioned, the men assembled now to protect not only this dig site, but all of Casagon. All of its people, our families and our loved ones, depend on our defence here. If we fail now, if the enemy breaches even a single chokepoint, then all is lost. We must stand steadfast and adamant for the brothers and sisters in the winds of Casdagon.”

Far along the stretch of volcanic skies, I could see the distant silhouettes of thronging warships, swarms of blueskippers, cloudcorvettes and frigateflies and dreadnaughts all, and maybe, hopefully not, an Aetherian Titan. The Yarooks. Would we really make it?

We had to.

“We must hold here, if not for country, for Holy Queen, for our people far home, then we must do it for ourselves. We must do this, our one last job, for the sister ships to our left and right, the sister ships on the other passages south. Forget patriotism, if you will, forget home, husband or wife, children, friends gone away, the gods and ancestors. Look to this ship, King Dibumadoragnaman, and remember who you are.

“We are the crew of King Dibumadoragnaman.

“We are the guns of Casdagon.”

In the distance, horns thundered, cannons roared to herald the storm.

“Prepare for battle.”

We readied ourselves indeed, every individual securing the narrow confines. Yet regardless of heavy preparations and pre-battle exercise, it was all for naught. Almost.

It began three hours before midnight, the Yarook ships sounding their calls on the chill night, rotten eggs reeking. I could not remember the exact particulars which transpired, what violent moments raged in intervals, what thoughts, what feelings, were unearthed to cry and weep over war. It was ineffable chaos, pure, unnatural, ungodly chaos. My vision swam in a blood-red sea of flames and bullets and shaking worlds. I circulated throughout the entire vessel, attending to matters of machinery, weaponry, crew, balloons. I encouraged and emboldened the crew with banter, action, and other brave fuels in hopes of maintaining both the ship and the line. Each horrendous hour spanned for what the mind could only cope as days, each second a hellish explosion, a roar of weapons, the fall of comrades. I witnessed dozens of enemy ships break and splatter in sprays of fire; in turn I witnessed a dozen more of our gun turrets on the mountain side and our ground troops being butchered from above. They hit us with cloudcorvettes and blueskippers and frigateflies; when those junior invaders were rendered inactive, they hurled us with dreadnaughts. At quarter to dawn our three unstoppable ally ships were completely destroyed—the only reason why we were partially alive was that the majority of the attack was wasted and focused on our three dead friends. The earth below us was a demonic field of broken ships, wrecked guns, moaning, dying men; here flowed lava from the sodden foundations to erase any trace of a massacre; here begged the poor souls of war calling for mercy, either from death, or from suffering. I watched the battle rage, then subside as the embers began to cool into desolate ashes of the aftermath.

Soon King Dibumadoragnaman was the only vessel able to fly, and just barely. Our balloons had suffered greatly—though now they were healed and in no time about to blow—and the helperdroids were all depleted to fix any future injuries; the auxiliary shields were nearly drained to extinction; ammunition had been burned-out in the last assault; the gunbots’ energy cells were immensely taxed to uselessness; the crewmembers themselves, all accounted for, were as shocked and exhausted as the King itself. We were, indeed, the only capable, battle-ready force in this chokepoint to stand against the last wave.

Yes, there was one final assault on this meager passage which we held. From the enemy’s camp there flew a monstrous creature of steel and fire, not flying or soaring like a normal bird, but storming, as of a hurricane, in the hopes of wiping us clean off the map. Our commanders were mistaken—the enemy was sending indeed a solo alpha to this one pass, a ship which would absolutely decimate us without a sweat.

An Aetherian Titan.

“Captain?”

I looked to see Coul addressing me, crewmate to captain. Behind him, the rest of the crew awaited.

“What do we do?” he asked, to represent all of their thoughts.

I concentrated on the Titan which lumbered slowly, then to my crew, my brothers and sisters, my friends.

“It’s time we run,” I said.

They stared at me, too fatigued to be shocked.

“The enemy has only one Aetherian Titan against us,” I explained. “It only means that the Yarooks are desperate; they have failed to breach the other passes, and so are trying desperately to breach this one. We do not rout here, rather retreat, to gather our strength on the wide field of Ring-Fire. There we will finish the enemy off. We hold here now, we die. We must live to fight another day.”

“Can King Dibumadoragnaman retreat from the Titan that quickly?” This from Caspagnada.

The engineers, even Dreia, knew my answer before saying it.

“No. I’m afraid not. We have to take the escape capsules to the ground, retreat with our forces there to outdistance the Titan. It’s time to abandon ship.”

We hurried to the three pods below decks. I made sure to stay awhile to ensure no one was left behind. The first pod was full, and it shot down to the ground, parachuted the rest of the way. Then the second had departed to safety. Finally, the third was prepared to go.

Except…

“Captain?” Dreia saw me standing there by the threshold. “What are you wai—?”

“I’m sorry.” I closed the hatch shut and pressed the button to eject. I could still hear their protests as I watched my crew disappear down.

“A captain must go down with her ship.”

I hastened my pace to the quarterdeck and took the wheels. I felt her groan, the ship vibrating, maybe in complaint to what I did, maybe happy to have me back. I caressed her wheels, sad, contented. There, emerging from a black cloud, the Aetherian Titan filled the space between the pass’ entrance. Gods, it was massive, foreboding, unbeatable.

It could not see me, I knew. King Dibumadoragnaman was shrouded by cloud, but the desert damned Titan would spot the three escape pods, notice and destroy the retreating forces. Hence why I had to do this, for everyone’s sake.

“You know what we have to do, girl,” I said to Dibumadoragnaman. I nudged her slightly forward, well above the Titan. ”I’m sorry it had to come to this, but we have to fight here to protect that. Do you understand how important that is?”

The ship didn’t shake as usual. Instead, it kept getting into position to the Aetherian Titan. I could see the enemy’s guns trained on my friends.

“We are the guns of Casdagon.”

I shifted gears to accelerate, aimed the ship dead-straight at the Titan.

It was too late for the enemy to change tactics. By the time the foe’s guns opened fire on the speeding Dibumadoragnaman, she rammed straight and true at the Titan.

Then my whole world was shaking, burning, and darkness.

 

An ancient king in garbs of olden times walked the steps of sandstone. Though man he was, she was woman nonetheless to her people, who were thirteen only in the blue kingdom called Umanteesh for which she ruled. Ah, how the thirteen people revere the king of Umanteesh, and how I loved her, treated her well, controlled the wheels and harnessed her unrivalled powers in the blue. Upon this odd present, she turns to me, and smiles, and I know the look for which she gives me thus. Then she ascends the steps of stairs to the stars, and flies.

But I do not fly with her…No one but her flies…and drops…and burns…

…I see…stars…then light…synthetic light?…I do not understand. I dream soon, dream the great king who was cursed by the gods, but is redeemed by me, by man and me. I dream of him, and of her.

Then, my eyes open.

I understood then that I was lying on a bed. First there was awareness, then there was pain. I groaned like a vibrating ship which hurt unbelievably. White linen wraps wound across my wounds. I was in a room, which I noticed, with medical gear and herbs beside me. Where in this damned desert was I?

How did I survive?

King Dibumadoragnaman…?

The door to the room opened. Out came the nurses, the doctors, and after they analysed my symptoms as healthy, they allowed a familiar face to appear.

“Coul,” I welcomed, and tried for a smile, which hurt.

“How you feeling, captain?”

“Fine. As fine as I can be here.”

He then elaborated the events produced after my sacrifice. He and the crew rendezvoused to the primary defence fortress on Ring-Fire with the remaining fleet. Apparently, the two main chokepoints had to be abandoned when the smaller one, our chokepoint, was lost. But because of my suicidal ram on the Aetherian Titan, which crippled it absolutely, that bought enough time for enough of our forces to batter the enemy from Ring-Fire. We won, Coul said, won the battle, won the day.

“I’m glad to hear that.” I stared up at the ceiling, gazing, wondering.

“The others are pissed off for what you did,” said Coul. “Dreia wanted to come here to smack you upside the head for leaving us to do your suicidal mission.”

“I’m sorry Coul. I really am.”

“We know. You don’t have to worry much, captain. You’ll be fine.”

“How?”

“What?”

“How did I survive?”

He shrugged. “Rescue teams found you in the quarterdeck, or what it had warped itno. Strange thing was, the whole room kind of caved in, or more accurately, morphed around you during the impact, sort of protecting you from the initial fall, then from the wreckages, then from the flames. Guess it was pure luck that you survived.”

“Luck.” I giggled, which summoned spikes of pain up my chest.

“Do you know what I am, Coul?”

“You should rest, captain. You need all the strength…”

“I am a sky captain,” I interrupted him. “I was never born a sky captain, and I earned my title, my crew, and my ship through duty and sacrifice and experience. Some say I had won these things because of fate, because of luck; yet I was not one to rely or resent chance coincidences. Long have I believed that destiny was but deeds done by each person, predetermined, preordained, often randomly unexpected, yet consequently known. An ill-willed character, most would snide, for a dragoon to possess; we of the heavens firmly acknowledge the mysterious and the magical as we conquer the blue.

“And in my term with my ship, with you, with those blue skies, I believed. I believed in the King Dibumadoragnaman; I still believe in her now. I abandoned you all because if I had gone with you, we’d all be dead. But in the end, it turned out well, didn’t it? She saved my life, Coul. She saved all of us.”

“And so did you, captain.”

I nodded, understanding.

“So what now, Coul?”

“We’ll figure it out. It’s just like what you said, about us, about who we are. Remember?”

I did.

We are the crew of King Dibumadoragnaman.

We are the guns of Casdagon.