Chapter Three Hundred and Forty - Redemption Arc

“Awa, the, um, Smooth Sailing,” Awen proposed.

I thought about it for a moment. It wasn’t a bad name. Very sweet. Cute, even! But I wasn’t entirely sure if it fit the ship. It was too metallic and sharp for that name, maybe.

“And here I thought you’d ask to name it something like the Rose’s Lips, or something,” Amaryllis said.

Awen blushed while a storm of denying “awas!” escaped her.

“Am I missing something there?” Calamity asked. “By the way, clearly this beauty ought to be called something properly enticing. The Dagger or maybe the Sky Meowderer.”

“I’m not sure about that last one,” I said. “What about the Friend-Ship?” I asked.

“Vetoed,” Amaryllis said. “We won’t abide pun names. We could call it something like the... hmm, it’s a warship. The Strongly Worded Letter?”

Awen made a noise that was very close to being a huff. Was she trying to get back at Amaryllis? “That’s too long. It wouldn’t fit on the side. And Broccoli, this is a boat more than a ship.”

“I’m guessing the Friendboat is out too?” I asked.

I got three nods in reply.

“We need something a bit more fierce than that,” Calamity said. “Like some sorta predatory animal?”

“The Angry Moose?” I tried.

Amaryllis frowned. “What in the World is a moose?”

“Is it like a mouse?” Awen asked.

I shook my head and gave up on the name. “No, nevermind.”

“Well, how about the Hermeowne?” Calamity asked. “It’s the name of this girl I was sweet on for a while.”

“Let’s not name our new boat after one of your no doubt many failed romantic conquests,” Amaryllis said.

“Maybe we can name it after something it is?” I asked. I trimmed the sails a bit. We were picking up some speed, but I was pretty sure we didn’t want to be moving quite so quickly.

Awen clapped her hands. “Ah! I know. It was a pirate boat before, wasn’t it? And now it’s ours, and we’re the opposite of pirates. Or near enough. So the vessel’s being reformed. We could call it the Redemption!”

“That’s properly intimidating,” Calamity said. “I vote aye on that one.”

Amaryllis considered it for a moment before replying. “It’s suitable.”

“I like it!” I chimed in. It was also nice that everyone seemed to agree about the ship’s name too.

With that done, we got back to work piloting the newly named Redemptionacross the grassy plains. Awen stood fixed at the back of the wheel for a while while testing the various controls, but eventually she called me over to take the wheel. I had the Captaining skill, which was the only airship-related skill anyone in our group had, at least as far as piloting a ship went.

It didn’t take long for me to get a hang of the controls. They reminded me a bit of a car’s, actually, but without the foot-pedals. There were airbrakes in the form of flaps that could be pulled up, and the throttle wasn’t any more complicated than the throttle on a riding lawn-mower.

Amaryllis and Awen checked our position, with Calamity giving a few pointers towards local landmarks, and then we turned south and west a bit, straight towards the hunter’s camp.

If we were going to keep the ship, we obviously needed to get the ponies somewhere safe, and we’d need supplies in any case. Once we were prepared, we could head back out and meet our sylph friends up in the air and figure out where to go from there.

I was a smidge worried about that last part, actually.

The diplomats had been taken by pirates. Actual, hardened pirates. They hadn’t issued any ransoms that I knew of, which was worrisome. Were they being treated well? They’d better be! Pirates were cool and all, but only the nice sort who worked to destabilise mean governments and spread art that was otherwise unavailable.

The Redemption was a pretty nice boat. It didn’t fly as evenly as the Beaver Cleaver. I had to fight it to stay even, and every big gust of wind sent us flying off track. Once we skimmed a bit close to the top of a hill which had us dialling back the speed, just in case.

Still, it made up for its strange flight characteristics by being pretty zippy and manouvrable. With a practised pilot at the wheel and a few good crewmates, I was certain the Redemption could fly circles around some of the larger airships I’d seen.

“Smoke ahead and... uh, which one is right?” Calamity asked.

“Starboard,” Amaryllis replied. “I see it. About forty degrees, three klicks as the harpy flies. We might want to slow down. I imagine the hunters below would rather we come in slowly and peacefully rather than spook their horses.”

“A few of them are pretty good shots,” Calamity said. “Might turn us into pincushions before we have time to complain.”

I pulled back on the throttle until we were basically only moving on momentum. I turned us so that we weren’t pointing right at the hunter’s camp, which meant I could actually see it. The Redeemed’s bow was too tall for me to see out ahead, which was maybe something of a design flaw. As we turned a smidge, Icould make out the camp. Dozens of tents, some carts, and plenty of people moving around, most of them atop a wide hill surrounded by pressed-down grass.

“Ahoy!” Calamity called as he hung off the side of the boat and waved his hat about.

His pals below shouted back, some waving, others masking their eyes from the sun to see us better as we circled the camp in a tight loop and settled down next to the camp. Awen undid the latch on the anchor and a pair of chains rattled out of the Redeemed’s rear to hold us in place.

We lowered the landing gear and gently reduced the strength on the gravity generator until the boat touched down with a lurch. “I think that went pretty well, for a maiden flight,” I said.

“It wasn’t a maiden flight,” Amaryllis said. “Unless you consider it this crew’s in which case... it still wouldn’t count.”

I puffed my cheeks out. “Well, I don’t know what it is then, but it went well. The boat handled things with no trouble.”

“We burned a lot of fuel,” Awen said. She closed one of the engine compartments with a hard thump. “We wouldn’t have been able to fly for much longer. Maybe another hour or two?”

“We’ll have to see about that,” Calamity said with a grin. Then he glanced over the railings and grinned. “Heya there, Savan! Come to see my brand new ship?”

A familiar cat-like head poked up from the edge of the ship. Savan was gripping onto the railing, her legs around one of the anchor chains. “Pretty,” she said. “But you can’t eat ships, Calamity.”

“I know, but I bet you can hunt all sorts of things from the skies,” he replied. “Is everyone at the camp?”

Saven rolled up onto the edge, then bounced to her feet. She looked about as she spoke, obviously curious, “Two of the teams aren’t back yet. We lost a pony to a cockatrice. It stared into its eyes and Mey was catapulted off when it dropped. But she’s fine.”

“Hah! I’d’ve loved to see that,” Calamity said. “Too bad about the pony. Speaking of which, want to help me unload these three?”

With Savan helping us, then the other catpeople and cervid from the camp who came to loiter around, it wasn’t too complicated to unload the ponies. Calamity was the hero of the hour. He told a greatly exaggerated story about us braving the storm and discovering huge destroyed airships, then the four of us valiantly working together to piece the Redemption back into working order.

The story was mostly truthful, at least in the broad strokes. I would have complained, but Calamity was having fun, and his hunter friends seemed happy to rib and call him out for exaggerating.

I turned to Amaryllis and Awen once we were all back on firm ground. “Now what?” I asked.

“Now we ensure that no one steals our ship from us without proper remuneration,” Amaryllis said. “And we need to relay our location to the sylph again. They might not want to meet in a place with so many strangers.”

“We could hunt for more clues,” Awen suggested.

We turned to her, and she squirmed.

"We know the diplomats were attacked by pirates, but at that point the trail goes cold."

“That seems like a good idea to me,” I said. “We need supplies, too.”

“I can help with that.” The three of us jumped and turned to find Savan standing really close to us. She grinned. “I know where to find all the stuff. What are you looking for?”

“Uh, fuel, mostly,” Awen said.

Savan blinked. “I don’t know how to find that stuff,” she admitted. “But I know the people to ask. Come on!”

With that, Savan led us towards the camp proper. It was a loose collection of tents, some large, some small, with a few buildings made of wood and tarps set up here and there and some carriages parked on the flatter ground that had little homes built atop them. It looked like a few of those more temporary buildings had been knocked down by the storm, but they were being fixed in quick order.

There was a large grazing area to one side surrounded by a picket-and-rope fence where horses and ponies were plucking at the grass, and a few roads cut through the camp. They were all made of stomped dirt, packed down by hundreds of passing hunters.
A few of the temporary buildings stood out. One had a mobile forge in it where a pair of cervid were working the bellows while another held tongs clenching a red-hot bit of metal. Next to that was a small shop with a cat person on a carpet surrounded by things for sale. Finally, Savan brought us to a small general store of sorts. She pushed the tent-flap door aside and stuck her head in. “Hello? Do you sell fuel?”

We ended up meeting a nice elderly human of all things who didn’t have much airship fuel, but who did have some oils that Awen said would work in a pinch.

Then we crossed over to a set of tents set downwind of the camp where hunters were working at butchering their catch. They were more than willing to sell us a few tankfuls of grease and fat which Awen had some use for.

“We won’t have enough to get far, but this is more than what we had to begin with,” Awen said as we lugged the tanks back to the airship.

On our way back, we met with Calamity who seemed to have tired out his buddies with his stories. “Heya. So, are we heading out again?”

“Not quite yet,” Amaryllis said. “We wanted to see if anyone here knows anything about the pirates.”

“You’ll want to chat with old lady Three Hooves then,” he said with confidence. “Come on, she knows everything and everyone. If anyone knows anything, it’ll be her.”

We finished storing what we’d picked up on the ship, and Awen volunteered to stay behind. She wanted to turn some of the blubber we’d bought into oil, which meant she needed to create a little machine to get everything going.

Calamity led us up the camp’s hill towards the topmost part where the nicer carriages were parked. One of those had its sides open to reveal an old cervid woman resting on three legs atop a stack of well-worn cushions and blankets. For all her age, she looked like a tough old cookie, especially with the eyepatch covering half her face.

“What sorta trouble did you bring me here today, Calamity?” she asked.

“Hello, Three Hooves,” he said with a bit of a bow. “Just wanted to introduce my new friends. This is Broccoli, and this is Amaryllis. They had a few questions you might be able to get to the bottom of.”

***