XXI

“Gods damnit,” he growled as he held on for dear life, he closed his eyes and attempted to not think about the ground receding bellow him, but that was a difficult task, actually getting to the small little air dirigible had been easy enough, seeing as there were technicians and others practically swarming around the thing, one more man simply blended in with the crowd of people. The real issues came when he actually got to the dirigible, those issues being two-fold…

The first was the fact that he was well, surrounded by people, meaning actually sneaking onto the thing would be hard, not impossible, but hard, and the second was attempting to find a place to hide. He couldn't hide in the cabin, so the only option had been to get onto the rather small luggage rack, which he had accomplished by picking up some of the luggage that had needed to be loaded and had proceeded to load both it and himself, with himself as the occupant of the back corner behind a rather large leather case. It was a rather cramped position, but one that he had felt had been safe enough, especially seeing as the luggage had been netted into place by the white coats. What had followed had been a twenty-minute wait as the staff that would actually be riding the damned thing had loaded up, and then a five-minute check of everything, before they had truly taken off.

That first moment of liftoff had been exhilarating, up to the point Adrian had opened his eyes and watched as the ground had fallen away from him. Now he couldn't look away even if he wanted to, and he really really wanted to, either that or be nice and cozy in the cabin. Carefully he laced his fingers through the mesh netting and made sure to hold on, one had on the cold metal of the railing that made the luggage rack at the back of the dirigible and another on the mesh, both already starting to ache as they rose. A part of him was terrified, but the rest of him watched in amazement as the world bellow stretched out below him like a map drawn by the gods themselves. Adrian practically didn't notice the twenty minutes it took to get to the proper height to start the docking process onto the ship proper. However, the sudden jolt of movement and the soft hiss of something mechanical seemed to break him out of the trance he was in and bring him back to reality, quickly he removed his stiff fingers from their death grip, of the netting and bars and crouched down, blowing on them to warm the chilled digits up. A winch of some sort lifted the small craft and brought it up, until it fit in an area of metal mesh decking, through which the sky could be seen, crouching deeper into the rack of the luggage he reached into the inner pocket of his white coat, pulling out the tin that held his reagents, as well as a blade half the length of his arm.

With numbed fingers, he popped open the top of the tin and reached in to get some more Solisur and Nitre, but before he could a man exited out of the side to the airship and walked back towards the cargo-holding are, obviously there to unload it. It was then and there that Adrian realized the mistake, he was currently boxed in, held in place by not only the luggage but also a net, and if anything was clear then it was that things in nets were the prey, nets meant death… the man reached up to undo the first clasp holding the netting and before he even so much as shout Adrian rushed forward, pressing the point of his blade into the man’s neck with the entire weight of his body.

The sharp steel slid into the man like it was nothing, sliding through both skin and muscle deep, possibly even severing the windpipe. Partway through he hit the bone of the spine and the blade slid right, exiting out the back side of the man’s neck, just behind the jugular. He opened his mouth to scream, but all that came out was a gurgling as the blood filled his throat and lungs, he stumbled back, clutching at the dagger sheathed there in his neck, in some vain attempt to pull it out, but as he stumbled back he hit the walkway’s railing. For a few brief moments he stood there, arms cartwheeling eyes wide with fear as he attempted to keep his balance, but then he was gone, over the edge, thousands of feet up in the air, falling back to the earth from whence he came, streaming red along behind him like a ribbon as the muscles in his neck tightened and spasmed.

Damn, what a way to go…

And he had taken Adrian’s knife with him as well, shaking himself out of the horror-stricken trance that had caused he moved to remove himself from the netting. After all, he had enough of a handicap, now that he was practically without any weapons save his magic, aboard an enemy vessel alone, thousands of feet above the ground. He looked around, it would seem as though the general and other officers that had taken the airship up had exited and used a door several feet down and on a different catwalk than the one where he was, but that was fine, seeing as any location they were at was likely going to be heavily guarded. Instead, he decided to see where the white coat who had decided to hold onto his knife had come from...

The interior of the airship was like nothing he had ever seen before, the floors were loosely jointed wood planks, except where they were grates of metal with holes punched out, likely to lighten the overall weight. The walls sloped outwards, a gentle curve of canvas that rippled slightly as the wind outside pushed against them, light bled through the off white cloth, creating a sort of soft defused lighting that was augmented with several other light sources, some even of the electric variety, a commodity that rarely made it’s way into Helheim. Immediately to his right was a metallic tank, around five feet long and two or three high, supported above the ground and off to the side of the walkway by steel latticework beams that seemed to make up the majority of the interior structure and frame of the airship. Roaps dangled from the scaffolding overhead and if he looked down he could see through the gaps in the floorboards down several levels, though it was hard to make out anything.

The ship rocked back and forth, rolling around like a boat on water, the motion putting his mind at ease, seeing as that was much more comforting to simply trick himself that he was on water than being gods know how many miles above the ground with no way to safely get down, at least in water you could swim…

Slowly he walked forward, and turned left, he crept over to the door and peered through the porthole, from what he could see there was no one on the other side so carefully he opened the door and stuck his head through, looking first left then right. This room was massive, easily five or six times the size of the previous one. From this vantage point, Adrian could see all the way from the front to the back of the airship which allowed him to figure something out that he had been wondering since he had entered the ship. If he was in the massive balloon-like section of the ship which was supposed to be filled with hydrogen why was the air still breathable? As it turned out the massive structure of the airship was simply made that way to be aerodynamic, instead of inside the balloon-like structure were rooms, catwalks, walkways, and other areas, all crisscrossing above and bellow. The devices that actually provided the lift, and allowed the area inside to remain breathable resided in the upper half of the structure. There were actually several large balloons, a total of 18 that he could see, each one much much larger than the average aviation ballon, and each hooked up to a series of piping that led deeper into the depths of the ship.

Each of these 18 ballons provided the lift for the airship, and each of them needed to be filled with hydrogen...

“So each of these...” he reached out a hand but could not reach the canvas siding of the nearest ballon. He could simply light this one, he had the reagents for it, but there were two issues with that, the first being the fact that if he lit this one then people would notice, and there was no telling whether that would take out all of the ballons, or rather enough of them to take the ship down. As tempting as it was to simply light the place on fire he had no way of getting off at the moment, which was an issue. A better plan would be to find out where the hydrogen was piped in from and then to set off the fire at the source, provided that he didn't cook himself alive doing so. Which was going to be a tall order if what little he knew about the substance was true, it was so flammable that he was really not looking forward to setting it ablaze and then trying to find a way off.

“I really didn't think this one through did I?” he sighed and shook his head at his own lack of insight. “Oh well, I am committed now...” So he had to follow the pipes that fed to the ballons deeper into the ship. Adrian looked over the edge of his platform looking at the multitude of other platforms bellow, some were enclosed with walls and ceilings and the likes, but others were like his and were nothing more than a platform suspended with latticework beams and taut cable wires. A defused greyish light bleed through the canvas, providing most of the illumination in the large room, but several electric lights had been strung up around the place to allow for an easier time seeing one’s surroundings.

Well, there was nothing for it, the only thing to do was to go deeper…