Flyboys, Part Twenty

[jeriendhal]

His wheels bumped the rim of the reservoir and he popped a few arms back into the air, before settling down again. Rolas gritted his teeth for the inevitable as the aeroplane sank down. The wheels touched the water and suddenly his craft's speed dropped dramatically. Then without warning it flipped nose forward and plunged into the water, turning onto its back as it sank towards the bottom. Oh, instead of burning up or dying from the crash, I'm going to drown, Rolas thought for a single lucid moment before panic set it. He struggled with the straps of his harness, ducking his head down into the cockpit as the aeroplane hit the muddy bottom. He was trapped.

Goddess no! Not like this! He was bent over, shoulders to knees, as he felt mud pushing into his back. Rolas succeeded in pulling the last strap loose, and he grabbed the bottom of his seat, pulling himself forward, underneath the instruments. Suddenly, his muzzle came out from under the water, and he breathed in greedily. There was a small pocket of air that had been trapped in the cockpit when it flipped over, the varnished canvas of the aeroplane's body acting like the lift bladder of an airship.

“That helps a bit,” he said to himself, bumping his head against the rudder pedals. “Now what?” He scratched at the canvas, blunt claws scraping against varnish. There was no way of ripping through it, the canvas was too thick. Rolas patted the pockets of his coat, hoping against hope that the little pocket tool kit he'd once always kept inside his breast pocket was there. Of course it wasn't, he'd stopped carrying the thing a couple of months after being confirmed as the new Lord Greycoat, after he'd realized he'd probably never have time to tinker again. “How's that for irony, Holy Den Mother?” he said to himself in the pitch darkness of the flooded cockpit. “Instead of drowning, breaking all my bones, or burning to death, I'm going to suffocate just because I stopped carrying a pocket knife.” He braced his shoulders against the bottom of the cockpit and tried to heave upward in an attempt to lift the aeroplane up enough to slip out underneath the rim of the cockpit. The Lady Samula didn't budge a fingerwidth and he only succeeded in driving his feet halfway into the mud.

Something thumped against the bottom of the aeroplane, and Rolas let out a surprised yelp as a large knife burst through the canvas, almost taking his left ear with it. He ducked down as it cut crossways along the upended floor of the cockpit, taking a deep breath as the pond's water poured in. Then a hand reached through and grabbed him, pulling him through the opening, and he was suddenly kicking upward towards the surface. He heard Bel cry out as he came up for air as Rulfen burst out of the water beside him.

“Rolas! Rolas,Blessed Goddess, are you all right?” Bel called out, as Artineth shouted, “Are you drowned, M'lord?”

He swallowed in a gulp of air and Rulfen started dragging him towards the shore. In a moment his feet touched bottom and he staggered out of the pond and into Bel's arms.

“Rolas, your face! Are you all right?” Bel demanded, holding onto him tightly..

“Eh, what?” Rolas touched his cheek and found blood on his fingers. Now that he was on solid ground it was starting to hurt something awful. “Oh, must have picked up a few splinters when the propeller exploded.” He touched his forehead gingerly, feeling the goose egg that was starting to form. “Bit of it must have hit me in the head. Ow.”

“Thank the Holy Den Mother you're all right,” Rulfen said. His brother's eyes were wide, and he looked almost ready to cry. “Goddess bless, Rolas, I'm so sorry. It was such a bloody stupid idea to build that damned thing and ask you to fly. What was I thinking!”

“Not your fault, Old Bean, not your fault. Must have hit a bird or something when I rolled the plane over,” Rolas said, as Bel helped him strip off his sopping wet coat. He sat down on the ground with a thump, his head still spinning a bit from his narrow escape.

“Didn't see an'thin' like tha', Sah,” Artineth said. “I was keepin' an eye upon y' the whole time wi' Master Rulfen's spyglass. Looked to be like y'r prop just cracked apart, like it struck somethin'. I know I think I saw a large bit of metal fly off. Most like from the engine.”

“I saw it too,” Bel said, as she daubed at his wounded face, picking out bits of wood from his fur and skin. “It landed in the fields just behind Rulf's house.”

“That doesn't make any sense,” Rolas said. He pressed his palms to his forehead, trying to will his headache, concussion more likely, into something manageable. “The engine was damaged for certain, and rattling something fierce because the prop was unbalanced, but it wasn't missing any major bits that I saw before I took that dip in the pond.”

“Well something fell off!” Rulfen said, pacing back and forth in agitation. “Damn it, nothing should have fallen off! I built that machine myself!”

“Stop kicking yourself, Rulf,” Rolas said. “By the Goddess's mercy you didn't mean for that to happen. It could have just been a bit of hidden rot in the prop's wood that was missed when it was lathed.”

“I carved it myself, Rollie. I tested it myself, ran it for at least six hours as I was making final adjustments on the engine. If it was going to fall apart it should have then.”

Rolas closed his eyes, wishing his head would stop pounding. “Look, why don't you and Artie look for that bit of metal that flew off? Artie, you think you can figure out which field it landed in?” At their old manservant's nod he went on. “Then we can figure what part of the engine it came from. We're not going to solve any of this until we drag the Samula from the pond anyway. In the meantime, I'll just sit here with Bel for a bit.”

“Right, Rollie,” Rulfen agreed. He went off with Artineth behind the house, leaving Rolas alone with Bel for a time.

“Beloved, remind me never to complain about simple things like waking up too early ever again,” he told her, as she sat behind him, wrapping her arms around his waist and resting her head on his shoulder.

“I shall,” Bel agreed.

“And never to think about flying again.”

She growled softly, arms tightening around him possessively. “Don't say such things. You think I didn't know what Rulf was building? I wanted to see you fly. I still want you to fly. Honestly, aside from the propeller exploding, everything went rather well.”

“Well, it did I'll admit,” Rolas said, brightening. “I swear to you, once I figured out the controls it felt like I had wings myself. It was so natural. It's nothing like an airship at all, I must tell you. The aeroplane felt alive under my hands.”

“Rolas! Bel! Come over this way!” they heard Rulfen shout from behind the house. Rolas groaned, leaning on Bel to steady himself as they came around the house to fields behind it. Rulfen and Artineth were standing in the middle of a newly planted field of cob stalks, by a small crater in the dirt.

“What did you find, Rulf, the poor bird I struck?”

“It's n' bird, Sah!” Artineth said. “It's li' nothin' I've ever seen, Sah!”

Rolas kneeled down in front of the crater, which was perhaps an arm in length and half as deep. At the bottom of it, half buried in the soil, was a strange, metallic, egg shaped object no bigger that his hand, painted a dull gray. The shell of the egg was cracked open, and he could see it was filled with wooden splinters and odd looking machinery. Or at least he had to assume it was machinery, not understanding why any anyone would fill an egg with random bits of metal and bakelite.

“Take a look at this bit on the front of it,” Rulfen said, pointing. Rolas looked closer, and saw what appeared to be the lens of a camera in the pointed end of the egg, assuming one could make a camera lens no bigger than the width of his pinky claw.

“All right, that was probably what hit my propeller, but what is it?” Rolas demanded. “How did it get so high in the air? What was it doing there?”

“Don't know,” Rulfen said, looking more frightened than when he had pulled Rolas from the lake. “I haven't the faintest idea.”

“Maybe it's some sort of strange artillery shell, fired into the air,” Bel speculated.

“Who'd be firing cannons on the manse?” Rolas pointed out. “Anyway, firing would have crushed all the... whatever that stuff is, inside of it.”

“Looks a bit li' an eye,” Artineth said. He reached down to touch it, but snatched his hand back when he got with a fingerlength. “By the Lady, Sah, it's hot!” Indeed, when Rolas glanced down the egg was glowing red, heated by some internal fire. Then they all took a step back from it as the heat intensified, boiling the air like an iron smelter. Rolas shielded his eyes as the egg turned a blinding white. By the time he was able to look at it safely again, it was gone. All that was left behind were a few rapidly cooling bits of metal, and a glass bowl at the bottom of the crater, made of superheated dirt.

“What, by the Holy Den Mother's busom was that thing?” Bellander asked.

“I think I know,” Artineth said, his voice barely a whisper. “'ve seen 'em before... in my dreams.”