Chapter Six- Power

"EMP," Lawrence reported. "Main power is gone and some of our circuitry is burned out. Don't know if it's enough to lose all control." All of the control panels smelled heavily of burning rubber and silicone as little smoke trails came up from their keyboards and levers.

"Switch to secondary generator," David ordered, and the command was relayed down the talking-tube to engineering.

"Secondary's down too," Hans soon yelled up to the bridge. "We have no power, bridge! None."

Yeligar loomed directly overhead them, stretching out and charging up another gigantic attack. "Brace yourselves," Vyse said, grabbing a useless power console. Electricity fizzled around all the widows and viewports, but the insulated armor didn't let it flow in and they didn't take any damage.

"Hey, that thing can't hurt us while we're inside the Delphinus' armor, power or no," Vyse grinned. His smile melted away pretty fast as he thought about something. "Wait. We had a watchman up in the crows nest, right?"

"Yeah, Tikatika was... up.... oh my Moons."Aika glanced up towards the conning tower, but from this angle she couldn't see up onto the observation deck. She grabbed the talking-tube and said, "Tikatika, this is the bridge! Report! Hey, crows nest! Respond!" She got nothing but silence. "No..."

"No way he survived that on the outside," David said, laying back in the bed and feeling the ship shake ever so slightly from the next futile electrical attack. "That kind of voltage will cook a man like a piece of meat."

The Delphinus' first fatality of its pirate career. Many of its crew had sustained various severe and mild injuries, but Vyse realized with a yawning horror and shock that this was the first person directly under his command who was dead. Back on Pirate Isle one of the crew or a civilian would occasionally die, but he was mostly too young to fully comprehend it.

He felt like he was almost going to be sick, and suddenly turned around, moving towards the door. Aika gripped his shoulder and stopped him, shaking her head. "Don't do it, Vyse. Don't go up there..."

"He's up there," Vyse shook her off with ease. "We have to get to the crows nest and make sure, he could have survived..." A third blast of Yeligar's fury upon their hull made all of the people in the bridge turn to stare at him. "I need to... see it..."

"Not now," She protested. "If you go up there, you're dead!" She grabbed him again, abruptly pulling him into a tight hug. "Not now," She repeated, shaking her head, almost moved to tears by her own regret. "We can give him a burial after this is over."

Vyse jerked in her loving embrace, and he tried to get out, but his own strength was failing him. His adventures so far had brought him into contact with a lot of death. In a way that had insulated him from realizing its true darkness; it had always been other people, often enemies, that were killed. That softened the moral and mental impact of it, somehow. There was nothing to soften this, which was like a gunshot to the stomach.

They've achieved so much and come so far, but in the end they're still just teenagers, having to face something like this.... David stared out the viewports, narrowing his eyes. "What the hell was that?!" The others glanced up in time to see the Yelite airship dart past overhead. The ship was moving incredibly fast, and trailing little lines of yellow light that seemed to draw the Gigas' attention. It slowly turned to face the new threat, which was just coming around an a hard attack vector.

David didn't know if the Yelite ship had any weapons, and it became clear that their crew in it didn't know either, as they didn't shoot the Gigas, but just turned around again. Gigantic spheres of electricity shot out from Yeligar's eye and chased the ship, but its own armor was just as impervious as the Delphinus'.

Distracted for the moment, Vyse watched the superweapon as it almost looked angry, plodding over through the air back into the vast cave and continuing to shoot at the Yelite ship. The air was full of strands of electricity, but no matter how much sound and fury the thing tossed up it couldn't have any effect on its target.

Yeligar abruptly switched tactics, beginning to charge up a massive beam of energy in the center of its huge metal legs. The Yelite craft turned about yet again, engines blasting at full speed straight for the Delphinus, trying to get into the tunnel in case this new attack proved more deadly.

A massive flash made them all shield their eyes as the very ground around them shivered. The first person to look back up was Fina. She gasped, pointing towards what was once the top of the cave, which was now open sky. "It just... blasted..." The bottom of the cave had a huge crater in it, too, and the Gigas had just dug a new tunnel of almost a mile. "Isn't this where the Seal of Tartas was? That was thick Silvite battle plate, that just got... demolished..."

"This is him without the Moon Crystal? Damn," Vyse said. "I'm almost curious to see what he could do at full power." He wished the radios were operational, at least, so they could talk to the Yelite ship as it came back out into the cave once again. The annoyance ascended straight up into the sky, and Yeligar followed, letting out mechanical roars and summoning whole thunderstorms in an attempt to nail his foe.

The ancient craft continued to circle the Gigas despite its best attempts to knock it out of the sky. One time, as Yeligar was spinning around for a shot, it spotted lights on the distant horizon, in the darkness of the Valuan mountains at night. Realizing both of the ships were, for the moment, harmless, the completely uncontrolled superweapon began to head straight for it. The Yelite ship kept trying to draw attention, nearly ramming into it, but it ignored them.

On the lip of the underground tunnel, the crew of the Delphinus faced new tension and waiting, as the shock of death got stale and they began to mourn. Vyse finally convinced everyone to let him go up to the crows nest and get Tikatika.

He climbed up the long ladder through the conning tower, but when he got to the nest, he found himself stopped in his tracks. The dark-skinned Ixa'takan scout was sprawled on the ground, not moving at all. Vyse couldn't find his pulse, and crinkled his nose at the scent of horridly burned flesh. He was definitely dead.

The teenager was suddenly paralyzed, unable to make himself just pick up the body and retreat down the ladder. All he could do was stare. Tikatika was a part of his crew and had almost been forgotten, for the same reason he was now dead.

A rush of new wind blasted him and he looked up on instinct, seeing the Yelite ship pull up almost against the Crows Nest and Enrique emerge onto its deck. "Vyse, I-" He trailed off as he spotted the body. He gulped, but steeled himself and pressed on, "Yeligar is headed right for Paso de Montaña! That village has over ten thousand people living there, not to mention the other mining towns ringing the area!" It all clicked in the young captain's mind and his mouth hung open. "That's right. We think he'll be there within twenty minutes. We have to stop him at all costs!"

"The Delphinus is dead on the dirt," Vyse said, still seconds from gagging from the stench of cooked flesh. "That's why you couldn't raise us. It's up to that ancient ship... have you found any weapons?"

"As a matter of fact, we found something. It's not like any cannon or magic I've seen before but I think it'll work... if we can get a power source for it. Send for all the yellow stones aboard ship!"

Vyse nodded, went for the talking tube, and updated the bridge crew. "I'm going over to the Yelite ship," He announced. "Alone." The way he said that made it clear that was an order, and nobody, not even Aika, raised an objection. The engineering crew got dozens of large radiant yellow moonstones up to the crows nest, and Vyse took them along as he hopped aboard the Yelite ship.

Enrique and Vyse went into the bridge, and Vyse dumped the stones near what looked like the weapon control station. "Get it working," He said, and Fina and Enrique nodded, finding places to insert several of the moonstones. The console hummed to life as if it weren't an ancient rusted relic, and displays in an alien language flashed across the screens. "Good job," He said and managed a smile for them before making his way to the helm. "Sorry, Piastol, but you'd better let me fly this thing. I have more experience flying ships larger than skiffs." The former bounty hunter relinquished the seat and he perched on it, quickly getting familiar with the symbols and displays with her help.

He had them rising steadily out of the crater and into the open, dark and murky air when Fina gasped. A beam of coherent yellow light sprang from the bow of the ship and lanced into the yellow-tinted mucky dirt of the ground, burning a huge crater and tossing up plumes of superheated gravel and smoke. "Electro-particle laser technology! It's heavily inefficient and weak with such diluted moonstones, but it's still effective!"

"Nice," Vyse said. "Get ready, we're going after that thing. I hope one of you knows how to aim." He gunned the 'throttle' and felt the craft lurch and groan as it suddenly acquired great motion, like flicking a light switch. The controls felt so responsive because the ship literally responded to any command within a moment. Whatever propelled the craft didn't seem to be limited by many of the constraints of modern engines and aerodynamics. He did a few gentle maneuvers and then turned the nose until the titanic yellow metal beast loomed dead center in the viewscreens.

Fire with fire, you motherfucker, Vyse thought grimly. You made this personal, and I'm going to kill you with the technology they used to make you in the first place. He felt a sick hatred, a need for revenge, mix with his urgent desire to protect the townsfolk and innocents he had placed in danger by awakening the beast, as well as that of destroying a true menace to the world. It all pushed him on, and within a minute everything about flying the craft felt so natural, he could have sworn he was piloting the Albatross itself.

Somehow sensing the new potential for danger, the Gigas slowly turned around, lightning crackling around it like a shell and occasionally whipping out bursts of electricity at the old ship. These continued to have no effect, as far as the crew could tell. There had to be a limit to the tolerance of the ancient craft, though, so Vyse tried to evade as best he could as the range rapidly fell between them. "Fire!"

A particle beam appeared, connecting the two combatants in the air and heating a tiny spot on one of the creature's spidery arms for a half-second before the beam cut off. Vyse jerked the controls sideways and felt the craft leap to starboard just in time to avoid a head-on-collusion, jerking the ship around for a hard looping turn. "Keep firing as soon as you have him in your sights! Try to concentrate fire on that green eye!"

Following his instructions, the mages sent barb after barb of yellow light at the Gigas. Some were clean misses, burrowing craters in the rocky terrain beneath the fight, others sizzled ineffectively at the body and arms, but finally one burned straight and true, superheating the mechanical creature's eye. For a moment they thought they'd achieved something, as the behemoth paused and shook in the air, but ever so quickly it had recovered and coated the air with thick lightning that obscured visibility, proving it was still going at a hundred percent.

All they could do was keep attacking, both ironclads dancing in the crackling air and tossing attacks against each others' impervious armor. If nothing else, every minute they spent engaging the monster was a minute it wasn't spending slouching towards an inhabited region.

"We need more power," Enrique bemoaned as a third attack hit the green eye, and while it took a second or two longer than the last time to recover, it was clear the attack was mostly ineffective. Especially considering the groaning and shuddering of the craft had begun to get worse, and the crew suspected the old ship was near falling apart.

The prince looked over and met Fina's eyes, and the two of them shared a moment of understanding. "The next time we fire, we'll cast together," The Silvite said, and he nodded.

Vyse spun about to give them a firing angle yet again, and their voices merged together. "Moons, give me strength," They both cried as they cast their most powerful Yellow spells and opened fire on the Gigas. Their energy flowed through the console as though it were a sponge, super-powering the particle beam and turning it into an oblong sun as it closed the small gap between combatants.

It was impossible to see what had happened until Vyse brought them around again, revealing Yeligar's pain as it staggered in the air and looked on the verge of dropping. Vyse heard cheering behind him in the ancient bridge, and he couldn't contain a malicious grin. "This is going well."

Without warning, the sound of more thunder battered through the sealed compartments of the Yelite ship and they looked around to see Yeligar's newest attack. All they saw, however, was distant muzzle flashes followed by the pockmark explosions of cannon fire on the Gigas' armor. Vyse rotated the ship and zoomed in with his eyepiece, watching distant specks in the mountains leap forward and turn into Valuan warships, possibly as many as a dozen. "Oh, what the hell."

"Imperial ships," Enrique exclaimed. "It must be one of the patrols in this region. They usually don't come out this far, but the battle must have drawn their attention." They expected to start receiving fire themselves, but the Valuans seemed to be focusing on the Gigas, sending more rounds of fire through the air to little effect.

Well, that wasn't true. It did have one effect- annoying Yeligar. Despite whatever pain or damage it felt, the titan reared up and let out another mechanical roar that shook the frame of the Yelite ship. The Gigas turned with menacing slowness towards the new attackers, and began to summon up massive storm-clouds with crackling bands of lightning.

"They don't stand a chance," Rogers said, clutching her panel and watching the doomsday weapon go to work on the ignorant patrol fleet. "We have to warn them!"

Enrique was already going for the radio, but before he could hail the Valuans, he saw his countrymen get struck down with sickening ease. The lightning lanced across the metal ships, burning out electronics, shattering windows and lights, and melting human beings. One by one, the airships shuddered, rolled as their engines lost power, and smashed into the unforgiving dirt and rock below. Secondary explosions and fires lit up the crash areas, and thick choking smoke rose to join the dark clouds and smog already polluting the air.

Vyse jerked himself out of being a spectator and said, "Keep attacking!" He smacked the throttle to startle everyone out of their semi-trance. His crew went to work again, and the two mages started stabbing with their enhanced beam again. Several more shots were off-center or missed completely, but Yeligar seemed to be taking the smaller assailant more seriously, physically swinging its massive legs and trying to smash the craft when they came in close.

The teenager got too careless on one of his orbits, and grazed close enough to Yeligar to allow it to extend an appendage and glance the side of the ship. Rending, sheering metal screeched like nightmarish demons, the entire ship shook and rattled, and they were all tossed around as the armor plating and wing-tip on the port side came clean off, the sparks cooking off wiring and energy cells and causing the ship to sprout a small trail of smoke. Vyse cursed and wrestled the ship back on course, going further out this time before doubling back to return fire.

The jagged cracks in the ship's ages-old armor began to expand, from the blasting of the winds, stress of the battle maneuvers, and the wear and tear of action it hadn't seen for so many years. Popping and crackling noises assailed their ears and layers of supposedly invincible battle plate folded, wadded, and sheered off the craft like aluminum.

"This ship isn't going to last long," Brabham cautioned, doing what he could with the strange engineering controls. "Structural integrity is 'bad' at best, Cap'n!"

"Then we need to end this quick," Vyse said. "Fina, Enrique, we're counting on you! Put all of your power into the next attack!" He tried a gentler loop as he brought the ship around yet again and Yeligar loomed like a twisted old friend on all the screens.

Fina clamped her eyes shut, taking in several deep breaths and trying to calm her racing heart so she could focus. Enrique placed the targeting reticule directly on the glowing green eye, and said a quick prayer to the Yellow Moon. He was about to start his own spell, but his words were cut off as the viewscreens turned to pure white and the ship was enveloped in a massive particle beam that Yeligar had generated after studying his enemy's attack.

The blast melted through several layers of the weakening armor, but it just barely held, saving the Blue Rogues' lives. Sheer kinetic force from the particle streams moving at such high velocity smacked the ship like a sledgehammer, tossing it right into a dirty hillside.

The Yelite ship made the least graceful 'landing' Vyse had ever seen. The craft dug a trench at least fifteen meters big before screeching to a halt, stern buried in yellowish dirt. The ship had crumpled up, the hull bending and twisting under the final blow that the ship just couldn't take. The wings were gone, the engine cones had been taken off and the ship's power source had taken damage and was losing a charge it had worked for ages to keep. Everyone was thrown clear of their stations, strewn on the floor or laying over blinking instrument panels and controls. The silence in the cabin the moment after impact was deafening, before the cursing and yelling started.

The pirates picked themselves up, helping each other if possible, and everyone was more or less on their feet when Vyse said, "This fight is really pissing me off."

"What now?" Piastol asked, glowering at the viewports which showed the Gigas slowing advancing on them, its legs grinding together in preparation for what they would do to the dying ship and its crew.

Vyse looked over at Enrique, who looked like he was going to be sick again, and Fina, whose back still felt like it was on fire. "You have an angle for firing and the weapons are still online, for now. Take him out." The prince opened his mouth to protest, but couldn't think of anything to say, and so he nodded along with Fina and they went back to their post. Vyse took a random seat and allowed himself a few gulps of stale air, dealing with a sharp pain in his own head.

"Moons, give me strength!" The two mages yelled, filling the cabin with blinding magical light and watching the weapons panels light up in sympathy. The Yelite ship, buried and seemingly hapless, suddenly sprouted a bright flower, that bloomed out and whose bud stretched the distance to Yeligar and hit it dead-center in the eye.

The Gigas stopped, dead in its tracks, looking like it was trying to curl up and protect itself as smoke drifted up from the damaged electronic eye. It roared and crooned, shaking. Once again, the crew hoped that the damage they had given him had been sufficient to keep him in place, maybe even destroy him somehow. Once again, that hope was frustrated when Yeligar uncurled and kept coming for them, angry thunder booming a constant, deafening drone to show that the Gigas was angry, but not much impaired.

Fina was ready to faint, and she glanced over at Vyse. "Vyse.... I'm sorry...." She looked down, shame in her eyes, and the young captain felt sympathy for her, as well as Enrique, who didn't look any better after discharging so much magic. "We couldn't do it..."

Vyse worked his mouth, seeking something to say as the monster's massive shadow came over the craft, plunging them all into semi-darkness. For once, nothing heroic came to mind, and all he could do was look back and forth between his crew and the Gigas.

They waited for the final blow of the hammer, but it never came. Instead, the world was once again engulfed in light, this time with a blueish tint. The beam of energy penetrated the Gigas and went clean out the other side, turning it into a burning lighthouse for a split second of agony. Afterwards, Yeligar roared yet again, steam and debris falling off the penetrated 'chest' of the mammoth. It looked around for the newest assailant, and spotted something on the lip of the blast crater it had made in its escape.

The Delphinus, barely aloft, dirty and half-crippled from its dirt nap, rose unsteadily, with the pride of a brawler who had taken a beating and gotten back up to return it. Its prow was split open and the Moonstone Cannon smoldered from its firing. The pirate ship looked defiant and ready for more action.

Yeligar stabbed out with lightning, but with the range between them it had little effect. The Delphinus' cannon charged up again, and for the second time a Moonstone Cannon shot went directly into the Gigas. This time, the beam was angled slightly down, penetrating one of its spider arms, and then going straight through the electronic eye and the brain behind it, melting both of them, and continuing out into the sky.

The rogues aboard both ships watched with a shell-shocked amazement as the Gigas, dead, began to list like an airship that had taken too much damage, and then drift towards the ground, gaining speed as gravity clutched at it and took dominion. Chunks of armor and interior hull flew off, the structure falling apart even before the pieces hit the ground, throwing up clouds of dirt and dust that obscured Yeligar's body and its resting place for a good minute. The ground shook with the impact, and the clouds seemed to react, cords of lightning coming down and converging on the crashed, ruined hulk for a time before finally receding.

"Dead.... it's dead..." Fina found the strength to go over to Vyse, embracing and leaning against him. "We did it..."

"Yeah," Vyse confirmed, stroking her hair and holding her tightly. "We're done here."

0-0

Vyse stared down on the wreckage. His hands gripped the deck's guardrail and he felt Aika and Fina clinging close to him, and the surprisingly gentle Valuan breeze on his face. "Hans, you think we can salvage anything from that Yelite ship?" He asked the engineer, who, like most of the entire crew, were out on the deck.

Hans nodded. "That beam weapon definitely looks like something we could retrieve, patch up, and mount on the deck. Maybe we'll take apart one of the secondary guns to do it..." Vyse gave his permission and the engineer rounded up some help, going down to retrieve ancient computers, samples of armor plate, one of their power cells, and the weapon in question.

He felt someone new touch his shoulder and he turned his head as best he could, sandwiched between girls. "Domingo," He said, surprise coloring his otherwise dull voice. "Haven't seen you around a lot."

"Took me a while to get used to the ship and lifestyle, Captain," The explorer replied, his chipper voice sounding a bit forced. "Um. About Tikatika. I was already trading off with him in the nest, and I wouldn't mind taking all of his shifts. At least until we find someone else." He clearly didn't like broaching the subject, but was pushing himself to keep going.

Vyse frowned, then nodded. "Alright. Thanks, man." After another moment of silence, the orange-clad man retreated. "Hey, Fina," He spoke up to the Silvite whose eyes were still half-lidded. "You need to get to bed. You look quite beat."

She shook her head, stifling a yawn. "I'm fine as long as you two are up," The beautiful girl lied. She didn't want to leave them, she just wanted to stay there, holding her loves until the world ended.

Aika said, "You know, I think I'm ready to lay down, and Vyse looks tired too. Let's all go to sleep for now." The other teens agreed that was a great idea, and the three of them left the deck together, quickly leaving orders for the Delphinus to get moving once the salvage was done, and then retreating to their quarters.

Eight hours of glorious rest later, they awoke to find the Delphinus was already over open ocean and headed on a straight-line course for Crescent Island. Most of the crew were still sleeping, while Naomi stayed on watch with Don on the bridge. The ship's powerful hum and rhythm stuttered occasionally, like a fluttering heartbeat, and most of Engineering was still up and wrestling with their equipment keep the battleship afloat and moving forward.

Vyse looked out a window and noticed that the ship was, in fact, above the clouds. This was still something he could never quite get over, as the clouds had been the absolute barriers to flight for as long as he'd lived. If you tried to go above or below them, you didn't come home. All this changed the equation, at least for them. Very few creatures were above the clouds, and no ships, allowing them to pass completely unopposed, with only the need to dip down every once in a while to reorient themselves.

He looked over at the sound of footfalls on the metallic deck, and saw Robinson. The old veteran sailor had changed about as much as it was possible for a person to, since they'd rescued him from the Dark Rift. Now he looked professional, especially as pirates went, although his sailing tunic was still pocked and weathered and his hair was about as long as his own. A flintlock pistol was holstered at his side, the handle made of translucent red moonstone. "Hey, Vyse," The man said. "How're you holding up?"

"I dunno. I'm still just kinda numb, you know," He said. "Still can't believe it." He tried to find words to explain it, but failed and settled for shaking his head.

"Yeah, I do know," Robinson said thoughtfully. "Lost a lot of people in my day. Especially when we were all lining up to kill ourselves in the Dark Rift. Lost most all of my friends in there."

"Does it ever get any easier?" The teenager asked.

"No," Polly's husband replied, shaking his head. "At least, I never want to be in a time and a place where it does. It's all part of being human, man. We grieve our dead. We blame ourselves for it."

"We should have gotten Tikatika below decks before that thing attacked," Vyse objected. "We did that with the other battles, it's standard procedure. But we were so taken by surprise that we forgot to give the order, and he forgot to fall back."

Robinson nodded. "Yeah. But this sort of shit happens. People mess up, make mistakes. I know it's going to take more than my word, but as far as death goes this one wasn't no more your fault than mine or even his." He sighed. "You were gonna have to zone out a graveyard on Crescent Island anyway. Pirates' work is dangerous, especially the stuff we're all doing. It's pretty likely you're gonna lose more people."

Vyse fought back tears as he nodded. Pirate Isle had a little plot of its land devoted to graves and tombstones, stacked atop one another to save space and with corpses buried tens of meters into the dirt and rock. Every pirate base almost certainly had a similar place. "Let's put it near Gonzales," He said. "Might as well."

The man nodded. "Sounds good, I guess. I'll leave you alone now, Vyse, but just remember what I told you. Ain't your fault." With that, he took his leave, and Vyse was once again alone in the long hallway, with only the stuttering beat of the engines underfoot as company.

The news had obviously spread, but the crew thought it best not to tell Maria. The other kids, as well as Belle, had already found out and they'd reacted as expected-badly. It couldn't be kept from her forever, though, as Doc well knew.

He let out a sigh, leaning against his desk and considering his options. "I already talked with Maria a long time ago about death. Well, with her history, I thought that was warranted. I'm still not sure how she'll take it. I think she liked Tikatika, he came around the med bay a lot because his immune system couldn't handle all the extreme conditions and new germs we were giving him."

Piastol said, "I think we should just tell her. It's better to get it out of the way now, together, then to let it brood and make her angry by keeping her in the dark."

"Yeah, you're probably right," Doc said. "We'll talk to her together, then." He shuffled some papers, sorting them about and trying to divert his mind from grief with the menial actions. The older man paused and looked up at Piastol. "Hey, I don't say this enough, but I really appreciate having you around. You're great with assisting my practice and handling Maria."

She shook her head. "It's nothing." She felt embarrassed by being praised for something she felt it was only her duty to do, even if she enjoyed it.

"Then it's a damn good nothing," Doc said. "We'll tell her when we reach the island. Until then, we have a few patients with some injuries from the crashing we've done. Especially Osman, she fell on her face and it's not pretty." He paused. "Um. More than usual. You know." This elicited a small giggle, which was so completely unlike people assumed her to be and made him smile.

Although the route was relatively short, they took several days to make it back to Crescent Isle due to how messed up the ship was. Engineering reported that they had only just restored power by tearing out all the wiring in the engine room and replacing it with spares, and even then some of the actual machinery was fried. "Have to replace the entire moonstone processor when we get home," Brabham had chewed Vyse's ear off with it.

"So," David spoke up as Crescent Island came into view as a speck on the horizon, "We've got all the crystals now."

"Yeah," Don said. "That's awesome. We finally did it."

Aika said, "It seems like so long since we started out on this quest, and it's only been a year. I guess time flies when you're risking your life and battling the forces of evil, aka Valua. No offense, Enrique."

"None taken," The prince said with all the officiousness he could put into his voice without cracking up.

As the Delphinus got closer, they spotted a ship at anchor, bobbing placidly under mooring in the sky right next to the island. Its black sail pattern was unmistakable, and Domingo confirmed it. "It's the Claudia!" Everyone seemed cheered by the news that they were going to see Gilder again.

"Can't wait to tell him about everything that's happened," Vyse said. "Good and the bad." He glanced over at David, who merely nodded. "He might be kind of pissed at me. I did break his Vice Captain, after all."

"More like proud of you. He's been doing his damnedest to get me killed since we were six," David said, waving an arm in a dismissive manner. "And you made more progress these past months." Despite that, anyone could tell the wounded man was looking forward to seeing his lifelong friend again.

The Delphinus slid into its underground port, coming to rest with less grace than Don usually showed, even while totally drunk. "Not my fault," He said before anyone could criticize the rattling impact. "The throttle's been choppy and the controls aren't much better. You all are lucky I got this thing on the right course and me and Lawrence have had a hell of a time getting here."

Vyse laughed. "I'm sure we're all just glad we made it. Come on, guys." They laid out the platforms and began to debark. Vyse, Luke, and Piastol proved sufficient for hefting David's bed and carefully bringing it out of the ship, grunting and complaining about it the whole way while he laid back and mimicked fanning himself and eating grapes to get their ire up. For his smart-assery, he got dropped a bit rougher than was strictly necessary on the lift headed up to the briefing room.

As expected, Gilder was in the room, sitting at the head of the great table when they entered, his boots up and crossed on the table as he leaned back, a bottle of loqua nearby. "Long time no see," He remarked, and held up the bottle in salute. "I hear you've been up to all kinds of trouble. Couldn't be prouder of you guys."

Vyse said, "Hey, Gilder. We definitely have plenty to tell you, including..." He dragged the bed into sight, and David waved slightly. "This."

Gilder blinked several times and then stood up in surprise. "David? What happened?"

"Shot," David replied. "Would be dead if it wasn't for Fina. As it is, I'm merely crippled for a year or two." He passed it off so casually, but a certain awkwardness hung in the air.

"Wow," Gilder shook his head. "Well, at least you're still around! You always were the toughest SOB outside of myself wherever we went." He went over to David and clasped him on the shoulder. "That'll be one hell of a scar you can show to your kids with pride."

"Don't think I hadn't considered that," David replied cheerfully. "Come on, get me into the room." At his urging they finished the job, laying the bed down against the table. "I usually perch in here so I can help with the planning and stuff, even bedridden."

"Perfect," Gilder nodded. "So, now I'm even more curious about what you guys have been up to." He settled back into his chair and took another swig as Vyse and the others began their tale.