“Oh god…” he groaned.
His stomach performed summersaults a professional tumbler from the Trembley and Paul circus would be proud of as the Twenty-Six, its fuselage shuddering and shaking, navigated the storm. Clasping a small silver pendant around his neck, he muttered prayers to Ceres, the goddess of the air as he listened to the structure of the plane groan overhead. Rymand Feldspar wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead and quietly swore to never make a deal with the Buckthorn Syndicate again, he couldn’t imagine having to make another trip like this one.
Casting a look around he hoped the other passengers were having as equally a rotten time as he was, misery loves company his old ma once told him. He spied a fellow passenger relieving themselves of their dinner into a paper bag, and allowed himself a brief smile, he wasn’t alone; it seemed everyone felt the same. He sat back in his seat and risked a glance outside; dark, streaming water was all he could see backed by flashes of lightning crawling in the clouds.
“Position lights off?” Brock asked as he checked the gauges to the number six engine.
“No, why would they be?” Lucy looked up from her notebook, a smirk on her face.
“Because we’re trying not to announce where we are.” he tapped the oil pressure gauge. She paused, allowing the smirk to leave her face and nodded “Good point.” and flipped a switch on the panel above her. Outside the aircraft, the lights blinked out.
“Reg you there?” Brock keyed the receiver.
“Aye cap, what’s up?” the engineer asked.
“I need a condition check on the right-wing oil lines.” Brock replied.
“Standby” the receiver went quiet as the engineer went to go check.
“Something up cap?” Lucy asked, sitting back, placing a foot on the center console, watching him.
“Not sure” he replied, he scrutinized the planes many dials and switches, there were no alarms, no caution lights blinking, the engine gauges were all nominal. He couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off. He tapped the fuel gauge quizzically, it remained steady.
“’ey cap” Reggie’s voice hissed through the intercom.
“Go ahead” Brock replied.
“Oil lines look good, pumps sound fine too” the engineer replied.
“Thanks Reggie” Brock sat down in his seat, still staring at the gauges.
“Cap… what’s wrong?” Lucy asked, she could sense the tension. Turning her head, she watched the gauges as well. Brock pulled a flask from his coat and took a swig.
“Probably nothing.” He swallowed, squinting as the burning liquid crawled down his throat, but experience taught him to listen to his gut and his gut was telling him something was wrong. Coughing as he put the flask away, he sat back quietly, eyes still locked on the number six engine gauges.
The plane started shaking violently, “S..s…s…sir?” Lucy asked.
“Just turbulence, this is a wicked storm.” Brock replied as he leaned forward, wrestling with the controls.
“Should see sunrise soon, hopefully the weather starts to clear out.” he grunted, the aircraft fighting with him every step of the way.
Elise Torion sat in her seat, seatbelt securely fastened around her waist; arms tightly grasping the bag to her chest, the last of her payment to the Rotwood Syndicate. The last time she’d have to make this miserable trip, but this was the first time she’d ever made in the middle of a bloody storm. The strict travel limitations to Whiteboar hadn’t made travel to the floating merchant hub the Syndicates called home easy.
Every government in every country was attempting to distance themselves from the floating city, this made soliciting rides difficult. Panic rose in her chest as turbulence lifted the plane up and dropped it suddenly. She squeaked and grasped her pack even tighter, afraid it was going to fly out of her hands as the plane continued its roller coaster ride. She tried to catch a glimpse out the window, but the man next to her was asleep against it, face plastered against the glass; snoring soundly, a thin spittle of drool running down his chin, she gagged.
Instead, she looked across the aisle attempting to get a view through that window, a flash of lightning illuminated an angry cloud bank followed by the rumble of thunder. “Okay… I don’t need to see anything” she reasoned to herself and tilted her gaze back down.
In the back, the man who’d thrown up before departure was now clinging to the toilet dry heaving, refusing to let go; Reggie stood behind him trying to remove him out of the bathroom. If he was concerned by the turbulence, he wasn’t showing it.
“Ey sir c’mon now, anymore and you’ll clog the damn thing.” he bent over and grabbed the man’s leg, struggling to pull him from the commode.
Suddenly the turbulence stopped as the aircraft crested the top of the storm, her flightpath leveling; flying as if the storm was nothing but a bad dream. The passengers looked up slowly, still ashen and groggy, more than half clutching bags of vomit, a sheen of sweat covered many a face. Reggie walked up the aisle between them and pulled a trash bag from a compartment in the back, then held it out to the last passenger in the left row.
“Pass it along, ain’t no way I’m grabbing those bags from you.” the man stared at him grumpily, burped, then grabbed the bag from the engineers hands, tossing his contribution in and passing it along.
“You” he pointed at man who’d been holding the toilet.
“There’s a bucket and a mop back there, grab it and clean up your mess.” he pointed at the pile of vomit that had now spread across the aisle.
The man stood up, straightening himself and clearing his throat.
“I’m not sure who you think you’re talking too but I didn’t pay for this flight to mop up vomit, do it yourself.” He brushed himself off haughtily.
“Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to wash up.” He turned on his heel back towards the bathroom before a callused and dirty hand grabbed his shoulder, a vice-like grip digging into his collar bone.
“Alright pretty man” Reggie stood behind him.
“I’m going to give you a second chance to rethink your choice.” the man cringed under his grip, protesting in pain.
“We’re not in your comfortable mansion in Gildshire.” Reggie continued.
“Are we clear?”
“These hands will not touch a single drop of that filth.” The man spat stubbornly, practically kneeling underneath the engineer’s grip, attempting to wrench himself away.
With the hand still firmly clamped to the man’s shoulder, Reggie dragged him backwards towards the front of the passenger cabin and pulled a receiver off the wall. “Ey cap?”
Brock had just stood up to stretch, leaving Lucy with the controls when the intercom buzzed. “Ey cap?” Reggie’s voice crackled through.
“Go ahead.” he replied.
“Got us a gentleman here to good to clean up his own mess.” the engineer sounded angry.
“Well… what do you need me for? Handle it!” Brock replied.
“Aye cap.” Lucy looked at Brock quizzically.
“He was just looking for permission” Brock grinned.
Somewhere below them a scuffle ensued,
“Clean…” CRASH…. “Your…” THUD “Mess…” CLANG.
“What the hell was that last sound?” Lucy asked looking over her shoulder as exclaims of surprise drifted up the crew ladder.
“Where’d he get a skillet?” a woman’s confused voice drifted up.
Brock slid down the ladder and walked into the passenger cabin, the engineer standing over a man sprawled down on the floor, his face inches from the vomit pile, his hat flattened and lying next to him
“Everything sorted?” Brock asked the engineer.
“Aye, when he comes to it’ll be handled.” Reggie twirled the heavy iron skillet in his hand.
Brock wrinkled his nose as he realized what it smelled like then stepped over the man and disappeared into the cargo bay. He returned shortly with a bucket of water and unceremoniously dumped it over the man who came to instantly, sputtering and coughing,
“What… I…. who dares…I never…” Brock didn’t give him time to finish, instead he pulled him up roughly by the back of his shirt.
“Alright… I don’t have time for this, you’re going to clean this mess.” He swiveled the man around and looked him in the face as he gripped him by the collar.
“Or I’m tossing your monied ass out that door” he gestured to the passenger door at the front of the plane.
“You’re not at home, we’re not your servants, we clear?” he growled. The man didn’t say anything,
“Answer me… now.” Brock stared at him. The man stared back defiantly before breaking and looking down. “Yes.” he whispered.
“Good!” Brock’s smile returned, “We got us a happy little crew here.”
He nodded to Reggie, “Show him where the mop and bucket are, anybody else not on board with cleaning their own mess?”
He fixed each person in the cabin with a stern glare. Nobody spoke, “No? Alright, enjoy the rest of the flight.”
He walked back to the galley. “Coffee reg?”
“That’d be great cap!” Reggie replied as he straightened the hat out and placed it on his own head.
“Get back there you” Reggie shoved the man towards the back of the plane to the cleaning supplies. He stumbled forward wobbily, rubbing the back of his head. “Hey that’s my…” The man tried to speak “The mop and bucket are back there” Reggie interrupted him and gave him a final push through the door.
“Yeeaaghh!” the man cried as he stumbled through the door, there was another crash as he fell into something. “And you’re cleaning that up too!” Reggie stood by the door, pointing at the shelf the man had stumbled into. Brock peered through the door, handing the engineer a steaming mug. Then he grabbed a second for Lucy and started back towards the flight deck.
Glancing out a porthole, he noticed the sun was just starting to peak over the horizon, a thin gray strip hovering over the massive storm system that extended to the horizon.
Returning to the flight deck, he held the mug out to Lucy, she accepted the proffered cup excitedly, “You read my mind.” She drunk deeply from the mug gratefully, wisps of steam curling up around her hair.
“I was dying up here.” she set the mug down next to her.
“Everything good down there?” she asked.
“Nothing more than the usual, always one thinks he’s better than the rest.” Brock replied as he sat down, the sunrise now a soft orange and blue strip and getting larger.
“How much time we have left?” she tapped a fuel gauge on the center console.
He looked at his watch then the map display that tracked their position. “Looks like we lost time on climb out, so we’re about an hour behind schedule, that was some nasty headwind.”
He took a drink, “Should put us into Whiteboar just after nine this morning.”
She nodded, flipped the auto pilot on, then leaned her seat back. “How long we in Whiteboar?” she asked, taking another drink and watching the myriad of gauges across the control panel.
He sat down with his mug, and propped a foot up on the dash, looking out the window. “I want to have a Mech Guild member inspect that number six engine, I’m not certain those blowhards at the Chiselton dry dock knew what they were doing, so a couple days probably.” Lucy looked up confused and looked over the gauges once again, “Seems fine to me” she replied.
“When you’ve done this as long as I have, you learn not to rely on gauges and indicators to tell you when something is wrong.”
He set the mug down. “Sounds, luce… when your aircraft has something wrong, she’ll speak it to you. She’ll stir something in your gut.” He looked down at the number six oil and rotation gauges. “But for now, the rest of the journey should be smooth…”
His mug suddenly exploded as bullets riddled the windshield. “What in the gods name…” he swore as they both dropped out of their seats. A small, single propeller driven aircraft screamed over the top of the plane, twin guns spitting fire across their ship as it arced away. Screams echoed up from the passenger cabin.
“Are you okay?!” he asked Lucy as they both looked up, the dash riddled with smoking bullet holes. “Aye cap, what the hell was that?” she asked as they both sat up and peered out the windows “We’re about to find out” he grabbed the receiver as he peered out the windows trying to spot the aircraft. “Reg!” he yelled into it. “Aye cap I heard it, I’m gonna issue the weapons, it’s the Scrims!”
