Thursday, November 21, 2013

The Captain's Trophy - Part I






The captain stood at the fore of his longboat and looked down at the city, spread below him like a map. They'd been in the air for six days, not long, but long enough for the ground beneath the airship to turn from the fields of home to this smoke-choked wasteland they called a city. Perhaps it was the black clouds that filled the air with suffocating vapour, but no one seemed to know they were coming. The city had yet to send their own airships after the longboat, to battle the raiders back with every power available to them.



Perhaps they just didn't look up often enough.



The captain turned back too his crew, assembled on the deck before him, their war trophies clinking like so many bones. They looked like animals about to bolt, eyes darting down over the sides to the city.



“The men think it's an ambush.” His first mate muttered in his ear, unnecessarially. “They think we have a traitor on board.”



The captain grimaced. Of course the men did. He groped reflexively for his Elektrik pistol, feeling its comfortable weight at his side. If there were a traitor on board...
******


Story by  S.M. Smith. Read more by S.M. Smith here.

xo ~ Mad


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