Gareth and th Lost Island (13 page)

The snipers took as good of aim as they were able to
considering they were bobbing along with the air currents. The
first two shots sailed harmlessly under the Glorious Dawn. The
second set of rounds managed to strike the wooden deck, causing the
crew to seek cover. This was perfectly acceptable for the
“snipers”. Their main job was to force the enemy to keep their
heads down to allow their fellow pirates easy approach routes.

Letting his hunting instincts take over, Henry ran
to the main mast. He waved his hand to grab Elizabeth’s attention
after she had taken cover by a barrel near the ship’s wheelhouse.
When she looked his way, Henry patted the two pistols tucked into
his kilt, and then pointed to the crow’s nest. Elizabeth nodded
with a feral grin, and then drew her attention back to the
approaching minnows. Henry tied the leather strap hanging off of
his frying pan to a fastener on his kilt, and climbed the mast like
only a Chim could.

After reaching the crow’s nest, Henry drew his first
pistol, and took careful aim. A slow and easy pull of the trigger
resulted in a thunderous boom with the sniper on the closest minnow
dropping his rifle to clutch his chest. Blood welled from beneath
the pirate’s fingers, and he soon slumped over in his seat. Henry
was pleasantly surprised at his shot, considering he had been
aiming for the sack of combustible gas suspended
above
the
pirate. He adjusted his aim, and fired his second pistol. The gas
sack above the second sniper manned minnow erupted in a spectacular
fireball as his bullet found its target.

The loud explosion of one of their minnows caused the
first member of the boarding party to mistime his jump. Instead of
landing on the deck, he slammed into the side, and scrambled to get
a handhold. The other nine pirates learned from his mistake, and
managed to land on the deck safely. With their passengers gone, the
remaining minnows spun around, and sped away as fast as they could
pedal. Their pilots were desperate to get out of range of whatever
had shot their cohorts.

Elizabeth snarled as she stood to face the invading
pirates. With a practiced motion, she drew her pistol, and took
quick aim at the first pirate she saw. Another pirate slammed into
her from behind, causing her shot to go wide. The bullet dug a
trough in the wooden railing across the deck from where she stood.
Her pistol fell out her hand, and skittered out of reach. Furious,
Elizabeth spun in place, and drove the end of her mechanical arm
into the pirate’s jaw with all of her weight. Blood and teeth flew
from the pirate’s ruined mouth. She followed up quickly by drawing
her sword, and running it through the pirate’s gut.

Elizabeth glanced up at the ship’s wheel, and saw
Pilot standing serenely behind it. He was waiting for Izzy to
perform some sort of miracle yo get them the power the ship needed
to escape. “Pilot, behind you!” Elizabeth screamed as a pirate
carrying a curved sword tried to sneak up behind him. The pirate
wasn’t sure what surprised him more, the fact that his sneak attack
on the Roehus had been ruined, or the handful of long black quills
that were suddenly, and quite painfully, embedded in his face. His
eyes rolled back in his head as the fast acting neuro-toxin on the
tips of the Roehus’ quills worked its way into his bloodstream.

Pilot’s remaining quills rattled as he shook his head
to get them to fall back in place. “Thank you, captain of the
Glorious Dawn,” Pilot called back before resuming his post.

A different pirate flew past her, and slammed into
the mast with the sickening snap of ribs breaking. “Don’t worry,
I’ll fix those ribs up later if you want,” Tralnis yelled to the
pirate who was lying in a heap. A second pirate followed the first,
his arms hanging useless from his shoulders. “Don’t worry, I can
fix those too!” Tralnis yelled.

Elizabeth looked back along the pirates’ flight
trajectory, and was very glad their usually peaceful doctor was on
their side. The Dwarf was wearing a set of mechanical fists which
connected to a metal exoskeleton that ran up his arms and across
his shoulders. Hydraulic pistons ran the entire length of his
forearms, and ended in black rubber hoses that ran to a pair of
cylindrical tanks he wore on his back. “Why are you offering to
help this scum?!” Elizabeth demanded.

Tralnis shrugged his shoulders apologetically, a
gesture magnified by the exoskeleton. “It’s the only way I can get
around my oath as a healer to do no harm. As long as I offer to fix
what I broke, it all equals out in the end,” he told her.

Elizabeth shook her head in disgust. “Whatever helps
you sleeps at night, Doctor. I just hope you can kill one of these
assholes if you need to,” she spat.

Tralnis looked slightly comical as he put his
oversized, mechanical fists on his hips in defiance. “Dammit
Captain, I’m a doctor, not an executioner!” he shouted back. At
that very moment, a pirate wearing a shirt made of billowy red
cotton accidently stepped in between Tralnis and another pirate who
had managed to pick up Elizabeth’s revolver. Blood poured out of
the red cotton clad pirate’s mouth an instant after the bullet
smashed through his spine on its way to his heart.

The angry howl of a Chim warrior came from above
them. An orange and black blur swung down from a rope attached to
one of the mast arms. Henry struck the deck a few feet in front of
the pirate who had taken a shot at Tralnis. The Chim’s momentum
made him slide along the deck between the feet of the pirate who
had taken a wide firing stance. On his way past, Henry slammed Mr.
Smashy squarely into the pirate’s family jewels. Every male on deck
paused to take in sharp breaths, wincing in imagined agony at the
horrible sound made when a cast iron frying pan meets a pirate’s
privates.

“Henry! The actions of one’s manservant reflect
directly upon the gentleman who employs him, and a gentleman does
NOT
scramble scrotums with a skillet!” Tralnis chided his
butler.

Below the fight raging on deck, Gareth stood in the
overheating engine room, wishing there was more that he could do to
help. He knew nothing about the levers Izzy flipped, or the valves
she would open and then shut a moment later. He couldn’t even offer
her words of encouragement. They were both wearing earmuffs to
block out the shrill screeching noise created by the magical
feedback. Along with the horrible noise, the magical feedback was
causing the Aetherium pumping engine to dangerously overheat.

Gareth took off his jacket in the ever growing heat,
and saw sweat pouring from Izzy’s brow as she ran around the engine
room. She was making sure the magical feedback wouldn’t permanently
damage any of the equipment that kept them flying. A cup and a jug
sitting on a crate in the corner drew Gareth’s attention. He
quickly poured whatever was in the jug into the cup. While holding
the cup in one hand, he tapped Izzy on the shoulder with the
other.

Izzy took the cup thankfully, and poured the contents
of the cup into her mouth. As soon as the liquid touched her
tongue, Izzy spat it back out. Using her sleeve, she tried to wipe
the taste off of her tongue. Gareth frowned, and picked up the jug.
He held it to his nose, and took a deep whiff. It took a mighty
effort on his part not to retch at the smell. The only way he could
describe the smell would be to say that if coffee could die, and
then somehow be brought back as zombie, this is what its ass would
smell like. He had no idea that the jug had been put down there and
forgotten about before Egite had left the ship.

Gareth stumbled towards the window, his senses
revolting. He undid the latch on the shutter that held it closed
from the inside, and swung the shutter wide open, letting in some
fresh air. After taking a deep breath of the salty sea air, Gareth
stormed back into the engine room, and grabbed the cup out of
Izzy’s hand. Without looking, he tossed the contents of both the
jug and cup out the open window.

Relief filled the pirate who had been clinging to the
side of the Leyship since the beginning of the battle. Just as he
began to wonder if he could hold on any longer, a window was
suddenly thrown open. With determination, he clawed his way over to
the window. As he pulled his head up to the open window, the pirate
briefly met the eyes of a woman he assumed was the ship’s engineer.
He saw her eyes widen before a black liquid that smelled like it
had been siphoned from one of the dankest hells’ latrines was
splashed in the pirate’s face. A combination of revulsion and
instinct made the pirate let go of his handholds to wipe the evil
substance from his eyes. The pirate instantly realized his mistake
as fell backwards to his death far below.

Gareth was looking at Izzy’s face as he tossed the
eldritch horror masquerading as coffee out the window. Her eyes
widened as if she saw something that frightened her. Gareth spun
around, and looked out the window at the beautiful horizon where
blue sky met the even deeper blue sea. He even went so far as to
stick his head out the window, and looked first right and then
left. Seeing nothing, he brought his head back into the engine room
to see Izzy moving her eyes from him, to the open window, and then
back to him again.

Thoughts of the window fled as the Glorious Dawn
rocked back and forth from multiple impacts. Izzy pointed up the
stairs towards the upper decks. Gareth nodded, and hurried up the
steps, taking them two at a time. He reached the top of the stairs
in record time, and threw open the door to the main deck. His
earmuffs blocked out the crunch of cartilage as he unknowingly
smashed the door into a pirate’s nose. The pirate stumbled
backwards with both hands on his bleeding nose. He tripped over one
of his fallen comrades, and fell over the railing.

Gareth stood holding the door open as he looked
around at the carnage that had been going on while he was below
decks. He rightly assumed that the large harpoons embedded in the
deck were the source of the impacts he and Izzy had felt. Each
harpoon was attached to a thick sturdy rope. Gareth followed the
ropes upwards with his eyes, and saw they led to a dirigible
painted white to blend in with the clouds. The dirigible was easily
twice the size the Glorious Dawn. He could see pirates queuing up
at their end of the ropes, ready to slide down and change the tide
of the battle raging on the Glorious Dawn’s deck.

Inspiration struck Gareth, and he ran back down the
stairs. The only thing he had recognized in the engine room was a
rune engraved on a large switch set aside from everything else in
the engine room. It was the Dwarvish rune for power. As soon as he
was in the engine room, Gareth dashed towards the main power
switch. Ignoring Izzy’s panicked look, he grabbed the switch, and
cut off the magical energy being fed to the Aetherium tubes from
the batteries.

Several things happened before Gareth managed to flip
the switch, and restore magic to the Aetherium tubes. As the
Glorious Dawn fell like a rock, the sturdy ropes attached to the
harpoons pulled on the hull of the pirate dirigible with a force no
one had expected. The fact that all of this force was focused on
one half of the hull caused the support cables running up to the
gas sack to snap. Pirates fell to their death as their ship now
hung sideways a half mile above the sea. Further strain from the
falling Glorious Dawn ripped the harpoon guns from their moorings,
severing the connection between the two airships.

The fall of the Glorious Dawn was paused momentarily
as it struck the blue painted air sack of the Leysapper directly
below them. The gas sack shifted into odd shapes as it tried to
compensate for the sudden extra pressure. Eventually, the pressure
was too much, and the gas sack popped like a child’s balloon. The
popping action shattered the crystal divining rods, ending the
magical feedback. The Leysapper continued to fall as the Glorious
Dawn slowed, and then stopped its decent after the now freely
flowing Ley energy filled its magical engines.

Izzy blinked rapidly as she tried to process the fact
that not only were they not dead, but the comforting low hum from
the magic engines meant that the sapper ship had somehow been dealt
with. “Gareth, I can’t decide if I want to kiss you, or kill you!”
she swore. Before he could argue which option he favored, Izzy
dashed up the stairs to see what was going on. Gareth followed
quickly on her heels.

They found Elizabeth and Henry leaning over the
railing looking at the sea which was now only a mere 200 feet below
them. Tralnis undid fasteners on the metal exoskeleton as he
slipped out of his mechanical fists. Gareth and Izzy joined
Elizabeth and Henry at the railing. Below them, they could see the
broken hull of the Leysapper and the figures of pirates swimming
around. The crew of the Glorious Dawn didn’t notice a falling body
from the capsized pirate ship above them until it made a huge
splash when it struck the water.

Tralnis fought back his fear of large bodies of
water, and joined the others at the railing, gripping the wooden
railing with such force that his knuckles turned white. He was the
first to notice the large black shape in the water headed towards
the Leysapper. The shape disappeared as it dove deep into the ocean
before it reached the fallen ship. A moment later, the Leysapper
rocketed upwards, caught in the jaws of a massive beast. The jaws
snapped shut, and shattered the Leysapper, sending shards of wood
flying in every direction. As quickly as it appeared, the leviathan
slipped back under the water, taking the Leysapper with it.

Tralnis stepped away from the railing until his back
was firmly against the wood of the wheelhouse. “Gareth, you know
how I said I would make the dive with you when we reached the dig
site?” he inquired. Gareth nodded once, still staring at where the
huge monster had been a moment ago. “I’ve changed my mind!” the
Dwarf announced.