The Mercenaries’ Tale – 1.10 Airship to Galmanoc

An edifice is usually a term reserved for things that have the common decency to stay put and not move much unless suddenly motivated to by a large natural disturbance (earthquakes, hurricanes, etcetera). However, to behold one of the magnificently huge airships docking at port in the City of Light, you’d be forgiven for thinking that someone had strapped a couple of large air thrusters to the underside of a building just for a laugh.

The particular ship the mercs were boarding had all the hallmarks of being a ship in the conventional sense, in that it had a bow, decks and a keel, but somewhere along the way, over time, by transferring from a strictly water-only craft to a thing built for the air, some of the ship’s design had lost those characteristics one would associate with such a vehicle. There were square bits that poked out from the sides covered in vents, some of the decks weren’t quite symmetrical along the length, there weren’t any chimney stacks because the thing didn’t run on regular fuels. It was like someone had given the blueprints for the Titanic to some NASA and avionics engineers who’d been told “this is what you’ve got to work with, deal with it”.

The airship wasn’t particularly unusual; in fact it was mundanely normal. This is just what airships look like – stuck somewhere between the conventions of the past and the machinations and developments of the future. A bit like the people of Lusinia.

Rather than some sort of amazing retractable hard-light bridge trimmed with air boosters, the ramp up to the airship was simply made of wood and metal. It was cheaper and more practical¹ in the long run. The mercs shuffled aboard, faces among the crowd. They weren’t asked for ID, there were no body searches or X-ray machines; it’s hard to hijack a ship that’s autonomously controlled by a computer system, and if the passengers wanted to maim and kill each other that was their own business. A burly man at the top of the ramp in a ratty hand-me-down attendant’s uniform that was too small for him waited patiently next to a large robotic arm seated within a metal gate, preventing passengers from boarding right away.

“Galmanoc, 200Krz,” grunted the attendant at the passenger before the mercs. This was his only job, aside from ensuring that the arm was working. He’d requested that the arm have a voice unit fitted so he’d have less of a burden. The passenger, an older woman wearing the finest in rags, frowned and patted down her pockets.

“Hmpf,” she huffed, “I don’t have that kind of money. Why in my day, airships charged only-”

The attendant grunted, rolled his eyes, pushed a button on the arm unit and stood deadpan as the arm jolted to life, lifted the woman in one big swoop and unceremoniously dropped her over the side of the ramp. There was a brief scream followed by a dull thud. The mercs, who’d been watching intently, shuffled forward towards the gate.

“Bit harsh, wasn’t it?” asked Doug.

“Hff. There’s always a troublemaker,” replied the uninterested attendant. “Galmanoc, 200 Krz. You gonna be a wiseguy too?”

Doug removed a wad of cash from his jacket and flung it into the tray in the compartment under the arm. Green strips of light slid across the money for a few seconds, coming at it from vertical and horizontal angles, and then the tray slid back and the money disappeared down a cavity. The tray came back empty, and the gates opened as a buzzer sounded.

“Cool,” said Doug. He lifted his bionic arm up towards the large robotic arm. “High five?”

For a few seconds it didn’t respond, and then it jerked suddenly. Surprised, Doug leapt through the gate in fear of being flung from the ship. The arm turned to face him as the gates closed to, and through a complicated series of movements, formed a familiar shape.

“Is that thing-”

“Yes, Doug,” smirked Blaise as she moved up next on the ramp. “It’s flipping you the bird.”

“It does that,” murmured the attendant. “Some sorta glitch. Galmanoc, 200Krz.”

The side of the arm unit built into the gate spat out a ticket at Doug. He ripped it out and looked at it. It read “ROOM 95 DOOR CODE Ff-uC-K0-fF”.

“Everyone’s a comedian,” muttered Doug. “Especially the machines.”

Once the trio had stepped onto the deck, Blaise went about checking her ticket.

“I’m going to go find my room,” she told the others.

“Ok, I’ll join you-” Doug began to say.

“-I’d rather you didn’t,” she cut him off and began to walk towards the stairs to the lower decks.

“Oh,” he rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly, “you know if you want to talk about whatever’s botherin’ you then I’m here, right?” he offered, causing Blaise to pause at the top of the steps. She flashed him a calculating look.

“…I’m sorry for acting so stressed out in the car earlier but I could really use some time to myself, okay? I’ll catch up with you later,” she calmly explained to him before disappearing down the stairwell. Doug scratched his chin uncomfortably and took to leaning against the deck’s railing, Gratin observing him all the while.

“It appears Mistress Blaise is still feeling uncomfortable with our decision,” he offered. To the casual watcher, this would have been a bland statement but Doug knew Gratin wouldn’t have said anything unless he cared.

“Yeah, well I meant it when I said I’d go alone,” he replied.

“And I am also sure that she was being sincere when she expressed how she wouldn’t tolerate you going solo,” Gratin replied, enticing a smile from Doug.

“Yeah, guess so,” he agreed. The two stood in silence for a while and watched the other passengers boarding and going about their business, Doug relaxing against the railing whilst Gratin remained awkwardly stood in the middle of the deck, oblivious to his status as an obstacle to those wishing to proceed to the lower decks.

It didn’t take long for the ship to disembark and begin its journey to the desert and the city at its centre. As they moved further away from the City of Light, the cloud cover broke away, giving the sun a chance to beam down on the ship, turning the evening into a pleasantly warm one. People began emerging from the lower decks to enjoy the change in weather while they could. They milled about, claiming deckchairs, conversing with one another and laughing. Children ran from port to stern playing amongst themselves, their laughter being the most prominent of the background noise.

Gratin had taken to watching one of their games, which appeared to be a particularly chaotic game of Kick the Can, when he heard Doug scoff.

“You know it’s days like this when you forget that there’s a war going on,” he commented, fully attracting Gratin’s attention. “And yet if everybody looked up at the sky and squinted really hard they would be able to see it happening. Just look up there, behind that cloud. Sodding PSF airtank in a skirmish with a squad of Dark Skybikers.”

Doug pointed to the cloud in question, Gratin obediently following his directions. He could just about see a handful of tiny black dots buzzing around a bigger dot the size of an ant. Every few seconds they emitted a faint pulse of light which Gratin assumed was plasma fire.

“They’ll never come down here,” Doug continued, “but the point is that there are idiots all around us completely oblivious to the rest of the world. You know, the bigger picture. Human nature, I s’pose.”

Gratin continued to watch the battle far above them but otherwise remained motionless. What he was thinking of or if he was even still listening was hard to deduce through his mask. Realising Gratin was probably not paying him much attention, Doug sighed and turned to his robed companion.

“C’mon, I want to drop some things off in my room. Then I’ll buy us some beers. You can help me work out how to get back into Blaise’s good books,” he said, snapping Gratin out of his thoughts and leading him to the decks below.

***

Blaise had made herself comfortable in her tiny room. It was smaller than her caravan as it only allowed space for an uncomfortable single bed and a cheaply made dresser. She had removed her coat and hat and placed them on a hook on the door. She still wore her assortment of gun holsters though, preferring her weapons to be close to hand at all times.

Currently she was busying herself by cleaning her pistols with a portable cleaning kit which she usually kept tucked away in her coat. One of the pistols was currently in pieces as she cleaned the firing mechanism, making sure there were no stray metal fragments that would prevent it from working properly whilst keeping it well oiled.

Her thoughts were currently on the upcoming mission and Salmanic’s reputation. She always thought it was suspicious that the exact nature of the power source was kept hidden from the public. The official statement regarding the source was that it was completely natural and renewable, provoking some people such as news reporters to conclude that Salmanic must be using their own patented method of collecting solar power that they didn’t want competitor companies to steal. Why else hide the power plant out in the middle of the desert? Blaise never liked that theory as Salmanic was far too secretive. If they were using solar power, then why not say so? Why all the secrecy? She had heard conspiracy theorists posit that the actual power source was far more dangerous and that’s why it needed to be kept secret as the general populace wouldn’t be so willing to pay up if it was considered lethal. Secrecy could be tolerated so long as the product worked, but the moment there was a health scare, profits would plummet.

Blaise didn’t have a hard time believing the Salmanic family had it in them to pretend something dangerous was perfectly benign for fun and profit. The date the company first set themselves up helped to solidify this belief, not just for her but for every other Salmanic conspiracy theorist on Lusinia: there was barely a year between the company becoming the leading power supplier on Lusinia and the first Dark Worlder attack.

This led many a theorist to posit that Salmanic had a hand in the war, the most popular being that the process Salmanic used to meet Lusinia’s energy needs must create some form of toxic by-product that the company then proceeded to dump on the Dark Planet, causing enough outrage for the Dark Worlders to declare war. That was the theory Blaise favoured. She had little love for Salmanic Inc. She knew that they were involved in dirty politics even if proof was rarely – if ever – found. She could still remember their representatives from when she was growing up.

And the fire that followed.

She eventually finished cleaning the inner workings of her pistols and reassembled them. After giving their barrels a thorough polish, she replaced them in their holsters and reached for her coat and hat with the intent of rejoining the others.

She was aware that she owed Doug an explanation for her attitude problem from earlier. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust him enough to explain her thoughts on Salmanic – she trusted him with her life every time they worked together – but rather that confiding in him would indicate a closeness that she wasn’t prepared to have. It was better to keep their relationship a professional one. She told herself that it would result in less pain in the long run.

She disregarded the thoughts and focused on figuring out where the boys would have gotten to. Her watch told her that it was a little after half seven so she decided to head to the bar.

---

Post by Sean Patrick Payne | November 7, 2013 at 12:00 pm | The Mercenaries' Tale | No comment

Tags: airships, Blaise, Doug McCracken, Gratin, Salmanic Incorporated, The City of Light, the Mercs, vehicles and transport, war

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