Esme indicated that they were at the one minute mark.
Tinker made sure her fingers on both hands were in the correct position, and then stood, waiting.
Esme held up her fingers then and counted the last ten seconds down silently. When she nodded, Jin — with Tinker’s right hand nearly touching his mouth — and Xiao Chen — on Tinker’s left — pronounced the activations words for the Wind and Stone Clans.
Magic flooded through the connection. Tinker let it run for thirty seconds by Esme’s silent count. She could feel the purity of it, but the edges were starting to tangle, caught by the magnetic field of the ship. She dropped her hands and the tengu went silent.
The activation word for the dragon spell was a simple. She spoke it into the tense silence.
The universe went dark and formless.
Gravity tumbled Tinker and the others into a pile of bodies. The “floor” now formed walls up to the matching bulkhead ceiling. They untangled themselves.
“It worked.” By the tone of her voice, Xiao Chen hadn’t expected it to.
Tinker wanted to say “Of course” but the way her life had been going, the mind boggled as to all the ways it might have screwed up. “We’re on a planet but which one?”
Esme glanced upwards to the window far over their heads. “Don’t know yet.”
“We landed well.” Jin headed up the ladder. Tinker followed.
“That was not a landing.” Esme called after them.
“We’re on the ground,” Tinker said. “Engines down, bridge up. That’s good enough for me.”
“You do realize that this ship is nearly a half mile long?” Esme said.
Oops.
Jin reached the window. He turned his head this way and that, studying the view intently, before announcing. “Trees. Nothing but trees.”
“It’s not Onihida or Earth then,” Tinker said. “I hope its Elfhome, or we ended up someplace totally new.”
“That was the point of the colonization program as far as the humans were concerned.” Someone said from below.
“There’s an airlock at mid-section.” Jin kept climbing upwards. “We might be able to get a better view.”
Tinker only gave the window a passing glance. The trees looked like ironwoods but it was difficult to tell. They were ten or twenty feet above the canopy. If this was Turtle Creek, then she just erected the tallest structure in Pittsburgh — for however long it remained standing.
The airlock opened to summer dusk. There was a narrow ridge that wrapped around the ship. Tinker carefully picked her way around and found what she most wanted to see — Pittsburgh. Clouds boiled over Oakland, but no lightening flashed from them. Was that a good sign or bad? Had Malice killed Windwolf?
They had “landed” in Turtle Creek, neatly replacing the Ghostlands with the massive bulk of the ship’s engines. The Dahe Hoa would have taken out the center section of the Westinghouse Bridge if it hadn’t already fallen. The remaining spans of the bridge butted up against the side of the ship just ten feet down from the ridge she stood on.
And like one of her impossible dreams, Pony stood on the bridge, looking up at her. He lifted up his arms and motioned for her to jump to him. Relief flooded through her like a weakness. Her legs started to buckle, so she leapt to him.
Pony caught her and pulled her close. “Domi.”
“Oh, Pony, I was so scared that you were killed.” She hugged him tightly, burying her face into the warmth of his neck, smelling his scent.
“I thought I lost you.” His voice was husky with emotion.
She kissed him on the strong line of his jaw. He turned his head and captured her mouth with his and kissed her deeply. He tasted of the enclave peaches; the sweetness poured through her like warm honey; she clung to him, letting the feeling push out the fear and worry.
Tinker realized that Stormsong was beside her. She burned with sudden embarrassment at the way she was acting. Knowing that neither elf would see it as wrong didn’t help.
She broke the kiss but couldn’t bring herself to let go of Pony. With one hand, she reached out to Stormsong to pull her into a three-way huddle. “And you too. I was worried sick about both of you.”
“What? I don’t get a kiss?” Stormsong teased.
Tinker laughed and kissed her quickly on the lips. Then holding them close, she whispered. “Is Windwolf all right? Where is he? What’s happened?”
“We can not get close enough to the museum to look for Wolf,” Pony said. “Malice, though, appears to be searching for something, so we think that Wolf has eluded him.”
“The oni has stolen the dreadnaught and taken it downriver,” Stormsong said. “Our greatest fear has been that while Malice kept us busy, the oni would push an army through the Ghostlands.”
“Well, I stopped that.” Tinker gave a weak laugh.
As Pony and Stormsong updated her, Cloudwalker, Rainlily and Little Egret joined them at the end of the bridge. She greeted them with hugs. It felt good to be surrounded by her people.
The sekasha shifted to face crewmembers picking their way around the edge of the ship. It was Esme with Jin and handful of the tengu crew members.
“It’s okay. I’ve taken the tengu as my beholden.”
“Are you sure that’s wise?” Pony asked.
“Yes.”
“Okay.” She took a deep cleansing breath. She pressed her palms to her eyes and considered current obstacles and possible tools. If Malice was hunting Windwolf, then they would have to hunt Malice. The EMP spell that she used to clear the ship should work on Malice. They needed, however, a big gun to take advantage of it — a very big gun. She could think of only one place they could get such a gun. “Okay, we’re going to need the dreadnaught.”
“What’s a dreadnaught?” Jin asked.
“I suppose you could call it an attack helicopter on steroids,” Tinker said. “It’s more a flying fortress. It’s armed with a variety of heavy guns, from machine guns to cannons, and can carry a large number of troops into any location. The elves built them with magic in mind — so they’re very low tech, and thus extremely clunky.”
“And you want us to take it out?” Jin asked.
“No,” Tinker said. “We need it to take on Malice.”
“Take it over?” Stormsong said. “Are you fucking insane?”
She held up her hands to ward off Stormsong’s objections. “While we were at Aum Renau, I got inside of the dreadnaughts. I think it was part of me being the pivot — they didn’t know what I would need to stop the oni, so they told me anything I wanted to know — full access to everything.”
“Yes,” Stormsong hissed, her eyes going soft and vague. “The pivot keeps turning until the door is fully shut.”
Tinker shivered. “Oh, that creeps me out. I took detailed notes and I scanned them into my datapad — I was thinking of making a few for the Wind Clan.”
“You would,” Jin murmured.
“The big question is — do we have anyone that knows how to fire the guns?” Tinker expected that they would need to track down some the Fire Clan crew. Surprisingly, all the sekasha pointed to themselves.
“We were all taught how when we were in Aum Renau,” Pony explained. “After you showed an interest in the airship.”
“They didn’t miss a trick with me being the pivot, did they? How the hell did I miss — never mind, don’t answer that.”
“We will need a pilot,” Stormsong said. “The oni killed the dreadnaught’s crew.”
“How close is it to Earth’s aircraft?” Esme had worked her way down to the bridge. She spoke Elvish, which surprised Tinker and also made her realize that Jin had been speaking it too.