Date: 9th Month, 478th Year AOP

Location: The D.M.S. Iron Rook; Upper Troposphere 25 nautical miles from Slate Sky City.

Time: 1755 Hours

“They have the engine room, Sir. It’s over.”

Gage’s footsteps faltered at his companion’s quiet statement and his hand dropped from the handle leading to the engine room door of the D.M.S. Iron Rook, despair sinking into his black steel-lined leather boots like molten lead. The door, emblazoned with the blood-red shield and white sun of the Protectorate and the words “ENGINE ROOM: APT AND AETHER-TRAINED PERSONNEL ONLY” seemed to mock him. So near, and yet so far. The sleek copper-inlaid walnut stock of the 440 Special cylinder-action arc pistol he clutched in his left hand creaked in protest as his grip tightened with enough force to break bones.

Gage glanced over his shoulder to see a sandy-haired freckled young man of about nineteen crouching behind a steel airship bulkhead. Ace Tinner was a journeyman tinker, and an Apt to boot. Even though he had never officially been in combat prior to today or had any real training with Aether shaping, he was the best qualified individual to set off a charge in the Iron Rook’s engine room - an action that would send the massive air cruiser blazing to the surface with all hands aboard. His large canvas tinker’s bag was slung across the shoulder of his worn yellow airmen's leathers, the protruding ends of various tools and explosives just visible beneath the flap at the top.

Gage’s heart sank as he took in Ace’s expression. Only moments before it had been filled with a combination of terror and resolve as they had infiltrated the air cruiser on a suicide mission. Now it showed only a quiet resignation. “It’s over sir. We’ve lost” the airman repeated in his slightly-too-high voice. “The Protectorate have taken the Liberty Torch.”

Gage drew in a slow breath, inhaling air heavy with the stink of grease, sweat, and the ozone from discharged arc weapons. He ran a shaking hand through the sweaty tangles of his shoulder-length black hair and short beard. A lick of his dry, cracked lips had him tasting the ashen copper tang of vaporized blood, and he glanced down to see the front of his gray midshipman’s uniform was covered in dark red and brown splashes where his knee-length leather battle coat hadn’t covered him from the worst of the gore.

“What happened, Ace?” Gage's voice, normally a smooth baritone, emerged in a hoarse croak. No immediate reply was forthcoming, as the airman’s eyes were glazed over as he listened intently to the network chatter through the quarter-inch emerald linkstone nestled against the bone behind his ear. The flare of jealousy that Gage normally experienced when watching others use aether devices that most took for granted now flickered weakly in his stomach as though starved of oxygen, his self-pity forgotten in the wake of the utter devastation that was unfolding on the other end of the link. After a few moments, Ace nodded and pressed a finger to the linkstone. “Yes ma’am. Acknowledged. I’ll let him know.”

The freckled young man turned to face Gage. “We have no idea how they got into the engine room, Sir. One second we were holding, the next an Arbiter with three dreadnoughts was in the middle of the room ripping the place to shreds.” Gage felt a cold stone drop into his gut. How did an Arbiter get aboard the ship without someone noticing, much less three dreadnoughts? They tend to stand out when there are Apt using aether in the area… Aloud he said, “What are the Commander’s orders?” He was glad to hear his voice emerge a little stronger than before. “Do we proceed with the plan?” Ace shook his head, and the cold feeling in Gage’s gut intensified. “Her orders are to stand down.”

Gage stood incredulous as the airman opened his mouth to speak, but before he could, a disembodied voice echoed through the steel deck plates above his head, its aether-enhanced tone deep and commanding. “This is Grand Admiral Karcas Flint, commander of the D.M.S. Iron Rook and the D.M.S. Flying Sun in service to the Chief Protector. To all the terrorists who call themselves the Sons of Liberty aboard the Liberty Torch, we have your ship’s engine room. At this point, you have two choices.” The voice paused. Probably for dramatic effect, Gage thought, the soil-crusted old fossil.

The voice continued. “The first choice: You accept my mercy. Drop to your knees, throw aside your weapons, and do not resist as my men take you into custody. You will be given quarter, a fair trial in the capitol, and my word as a soldier that you will be treated with dignity. The second:” the voice dropped to a threatening growl that reverberated through the walls of the airship, “I signal my men in your engine room to destroy your ship’s Animus crystal, and you accept the mercies of gravity; and the survivors - if any - the mercies of the beasts of the Surface.”

Fair terms, if they had extended beyond just the journey back to the capitol. Grand Admiral Karcas was well-known as a tyrant, a hard-as-nails commander, a brilliant tactician, and a gentleman. He would be as good as his word; Gage and everyone else listening, however, knew the truth of the matter. As soon as they entered Celestial City, the Arbiters would come to collect the “terrorists” from the Admiral, place them into quarters “befitting” their crimes - also known as torture chambers - and arrange for “trial”. Those with connections within the higher ranks of the Protectorate, or that were Apt, and therefore “valuable”, would often have someone willing to speak in their defense, and thus stood a reasonable chance of being allowed to “atone” for their crimes. The others…

Well, the others would be made a public example. And they all knew it.

Gage gripped his pistol more firmly. The Grand Admiral’s offer served to divide the Apt from the Knackless, which was business as usual when dealing with the Protectorate. The Apt had the hope of release and eventual freedom, while the Knackless were resigned to die like dogs in a cage.

…Which also made the Liberty Torch's Commander’s orders to Ace for them to stand down all the more confusing to Gage, since Commander Auria Grace was not just a Knackless, but a Spurned - one who was so hated by aether that it refused to even inhabit their bodies.

Just like me.

His eyes drifted back to where Ace stood listening. His finger pressed to the jewel at his temple as he replied, “Understood, ma’am. Give me a moment.” He holstered his arc pistol, reaching into his tinker’s bag to retrieve a small brass disc with copper-inlaid engravings upon its surface - an Audisc. It was similar to, although much smaller than, the one just used by the Grand Marshal to project his voice to the crew of the Liberty Torch.

“Commander wants to talk to you, Sir.” Ace said hesitantly. Gage nodded, his mouth suddenly as dry as a lump of coal. Ace held the Audisc out, a soft blue glow surrounding first his hand, then the disc, and the brass disc began to vibrate almost imperceptibly. Ace put a hand to his temple again. “Go ahead ma’am.”

There was a pause, and then a cheerful female voice spoke from the disc. “Gage? You there sweetie?” Insufferable woman. She can’t even have the decency to sound depressed. “Yes, Commander. We are at the door to the engine room now. With your leave, we stand ready to complete the mission and send these self-righteous piles of…” “Denied, soldier.” She sounded like a bored parent telling their child they weren’t allowed to play in traffic. “As soon as you do that, I lose two good men for no reason other than selfish petty revenge.”

Her tone became cheerful again, as though they were suddenly strolling hand-in-hand through the Roseate Gardens on a sunny day. “They’re doing their duty, Gage, just like you’re going to do yours and listen to what I have to say.” Gage swore loudly and turned to slam a fist into the bulkhead next to him. The inch-thick steel buckled into a rough imprint of his knuckles with a shriek of protest, and he heard shouts of alarm from behind the door leading to the engine room.

Commander Auria sighed. “Feel better now, sweetie?” “No.” Gage growled. He glanced down at his knuckles as the matte-black carbon that had formed protectively over his knuckles to create a layer of armor five hundred times harder than steel faded back into smooth dark coffee-colored skin. Auria’s voice softened. “Okay sweetie, I understand you’re unhappy with this, but I really need you to listen now. I’m sure that someone probably noticed your little objection.” The urgency beneath her otherwise chipper attitude made him focus. He took a deep breath, clenched his fist again, then released it. “Go ahead Commander.”

“Gage, we have only one set of cards to play, and this is the best play I know. You and Journeyman Tinner need to get yourselves somewhere private on the Flying Sun. They’ll want to store all the Apt and the important political prisoners on the Iron Rook, SO…” her tone rose as she cut off Gage’s attempts to protest, “I need you on that ship Gage. The Apt will get a trial and punishment, but nothing… permanent. My father is the Chief Arbiter, so they don’t dare touch me, and the same could be said for Jeremiah, Mozac, and Tiri since they all have connections. The Knackless among us though…” she sighed heavily, and Gage could almost see her hazel eyes softening with worry.

“Gage,” her voice became pleading, almost begging. “The Avians will ensure that the Knackless will all go to trial with nothing more than a Citizen’s Intercessor. They’ll all walk the Endless Bridge-” her voice dropped almost to a whisper, ”...or worse.” Gage shuddered. Little was known about the experiments that the mad alchemists performed on the unfortunate souls given to them by their Protectorate overlords. While wild speculations abounded regarding their "research" deep in the bowels of the sky cities, Gage was one of the few who had witnessed it. It haunted his nightmares to this day.

“Fine, Auria. Fine. I’ll go.” Gage threw up his hands with a sigh of exasperation. “Just promise me you’ll take care of yourself, yeah?” Her cheerful tone returned, all traces of prior tension vanishing like clouds evaporating before the sun. “You know I will, sweetie. Hey, I love you.” Her words were like a gentle rain falling on a sea of embers, quieting the roar of the flames of desperation and ruin that were his world. “I love you more” he growled back.

“Hey, Ace?” The young journeyman perked up as Auria addressed him directly. “Yes, Commander?” “Give us a sec, will you?” “Yes, ma’am!” Ace's freckled cheeks bore a telltale pink flush as he set the Audisc down on the ground and slotted a thin crystalline rod into its side. The rod began to glow, casting a faint blue light across the dark corridor. Gage nodded appreciatively at Ace for leaving the aether crystal, since Gage was unable to power the device himself. Ace straightened and saluted Gage smartly in response before moving back up the hallway to stand guard at the door at its far end. Gage crouched next to the Audisc that Ace had left behind. “Auria, we’re alone now.”

“Gage, this is important.” Her tone sent the blood pumping in his ears as he sensed the sudden tension and raw anger in her voice. “The Arbiter and his dreadnoughts in our engine room did not force their way in. Gage, they were already inside. Someone let them in and hid them!” Her words hissed from the device like one of the Surface snakes, and Gage felt the blood drain from his face. They had been betrayed.

“Trust no-one, Gage. Find out who did this, and once I get out of prison I’ll try to see if my family has any contacts that know who it was or how this happened.” Gage frowned, tugging at his beard as was his habit when thinking. “I will. We need to-”

“Sir! Someone’s coming!” Ace’s face was pale with fear, and he clutched his copper-inlaid arc pistol in a white-knuckled grip. In the distance, Gage could hear rapid footsteps approaching. “Soil and Stone!” he cursed loudly. “Language, sweetie!” Auria purred almost lazily, her tone suddenly reverting to its former relaxed state. “Now get out of there and save our folks. I’m counting on you…”

Gage closed his eyes for a moment, took a deep breath, and opened them again. “I love you” he said simply, before nodding to Ace. The boy reached out and scooped up the Audisc, sliding the aether crystal out of its side and dropping both crystal and device into his tinker’s bag. Footsteps were now audible on the other side of the engine room door, and his… other… senses began to tingle, the aether within the living body present on the other side flickering like a torch's flame in the back of his mind. Ace brought his arc pistol to bear on the far door with shaky hands. “What do we do, sir?”

What to do, what to do.

Gage wasn’t feeling like hiding.

In fact, he still had half a mind to ignore Auria’s last request and just blow this whole soil-crusted airship straight to the Surface before they could bring the captives aboard. As he contemplated his options, the door to the engine room was yanked open, spilling bright light from the light crystals in the engine room beyond spilling into the dark hallway where Gage stood. Oh well. Compromises were good too, right?

The Protectorate soldiers’ armored helmets were encased in an opaque diamond-alchemy glass that blended seamlessly with their smooth blood red armor, leading the public to unofficially dub them the “Faceless”. He found it ironic to see the soldier's expression of abject terror as Gage’s matte-black razor-tipped fingers pierced through the blackened film of his visor and straight into the man's brain.

Gage withdrew his hand from the corpse’s head with a squelching sound as the body slumped to the side of the hall, the two-inch razor blades at the tips of his fingers re-forming into proper human fingernails. Behind him, Ace retched and coughed, before managing to choke out, “Behind us, sir!” Gage had already heard the sound of the opening door at the far end of the hallway through which entered three forms wearing the red armor of the Protectorate soldiers, each clutching arc pistols and arcblades for close-quarters fighting. A fourth, wearing the white robes and cowl of an Arbiter was just visible behind them. The leader let out a shout as he saw the two intruders and brought his pistol to bear.

Time slowed for Gage as he let his instincts take over. Not completely, for it would be counteractive for him to lose himself and accidentally devour poor Ace. Yes. Definitely counteractive. No matter how good the aether inside the young Apt might smell. No, he had other prey, and the Arbiter cowering at the rear of the quartet of their small patrol smelled simply delicious.

The lead soldier’s fingers squeezed the trigger of his arc pistol, and the deafening buzz-crack of electricity and plasma ripped through the corridor. A bolt of blue-white condensed aether energy as bright as the sun snapped out faster than an eyeblink to slam into Gage’s upraised palm, and vanished as he absorbed its energy.

Gage’s eyesight sharpened as his predator’s focus kicked in, every shadow on the red armor of the three soldiers and every speck of dust on the white duster and cowl of the Arbiter’s uniform standing out in stark detail. His enhanced senses were able to glimpse the outline of the lead soldier’s face through the dark one-way glass of the man’s helmet, the thin-lipped soldier’s mouth dropping open in horror as he took in the monster before him and the complete and utter inefficacy of his otherwise powerful weapon.

Gage gathered his steel-plate booted feet beneath himself and leapt, crossing the twenty feet of hallway in less than the blink of an eye to take the leader with a clawed spear hand through his chest. Bracing a foot against the man’s body, he kicked him into his companions who scattered like bowling pins, the white-cloaked Arbiter striking his head against the door frame behind him and slumping into unconsciousness. Two down.

Flexing his dripping fingers, Gage strode past the still-twitching body of the first soldier towards the other two red-armored figures who had managed to struggle to their feet as they fumbled to activate their arcblades for close-quarters combat. The orange-white blades glowed with crystal-trapped lightning as one soldier made a wild, threatening swipe at him from over six feet away, an amateurish attempt at intimidation. The blade sparked as it sheared through a two-inch thick steel glowstone truncheon on the wall like butter, and the hunk of smoking metal dropped to the deck plates with a loud clang.

Gage raised an eyebrow at him, then lifted his arc pistol and shot both men through the chest.

He stepped across the smoking corpses to the Arbiter, who was just beginning to stir. Bending down he grabbed the Arbiter by the throat, swiftly and brutally cutting off any attempts to use any Aethermancy. The Arbiter scrabbled weakly at his hand, Gage’s grip stronger than a steel-forged vice. He was careful to keep the airway cut off, but not to crush it, lest his prey expire before he could partake of their bounty. And this Arbiter’s aura was positively mouthwatering; at least a Master-level sage-trained Apt, possibly even forming her final aether circle. This would be a meal to...

The cowl slipped sideways to reveal the Arbiter’s face and he felt his pupils dilate in shock as he wrestled to bring his savage instincts under control. “Claudette Hersch? What in the Spurned Soils are you doing here?” he exploded. His fellow rebel’s glowing green eyes were glazed over, her face an ashen shade of purplish blue, and her mouth opened and closed like one of the fish at the capitol aquarium as she pawed weakly at the hand that was still wrapped about her slender neck. Gage stared at the offending appendage as though it did not belong to him, and then immediately lowered the young woman to the ground.

The beautiful Apt coughed and choked, her stolen Arbiter’s cowl falling back to reveal a slender face only a year younger than his own with fiery orange hair that had been pinned up with the three long solid gold hairpins of a Master Arbiter. Her face, now red as a tomato, began to slowly fade into its more natural pale white, revealing a thick dusting of freckles along her high cheekbones and across the bridge of her nose. She glared up accusingly at Gage from beneath thick lashes, her hands rubbing her throat and tears streaming down her face as she gasped for breath.

“I’m…” she gasped, then coughed again. “I’m supposed to be in field training!” she managed, her voice ragged. “Field training?" Gage snarled, his fury palpable, "Really, Claudette? Your last report said your assignment was to complete your tour at the capitol. This is serious! I could have killed you! ” A wave of fury swept through him. “No, it’s worse than that. I could have drained you!”

Her face paled slightly, and she refused to meet his gaze. “I know, but I didn’t think it would be you down here… I just…” her eyes widened. “Oh, right! They know you’re down here! You have to get out of here now! My squad was sent down to investigate some strange banging sounds, and the Grand Admiral suspected some sort of infiltrator was aboard.”

Gage cursed. “Ace and I have to get across to the Flying Sun. Can you help us?” Claudette’s green eyes narrowed, and her lips pursed as she scowled. “Ace is here?” “Sorry, Claudette, your fiance was the only one that could make the run with me that could analyze an engine room.” Gage watched as the full implications of his statement hit her, and her eyes widened as she realized that she had narrowly escaped death not once, but twice today.

“Claudie?” Ace’s voice sounded from behind Gage, and he turned to see the journeyman give his fiance an incredulous look. “Claudie, what in the-” “You have to go, now!” Claudette interrupted. “I’ll have to give them a report since Tall, Dark and Scary here sort of wasted my team…” She lifted an eyebrow at Gage with a look that was probably intended to communicate exasperation, but he didn’t miss the the tremble in her hand as she tucked a stray strand of fiery hair behind her ear. Soils of ruin. She’s not going to forget this. Nobody ever did. Not when they’d seen him like… that.

Claudette placed a white-gloved hand to the emerald linkstone at her temple, hers artfully arranged to look like a piece of elegant jewelry rather than the utilitarian shard her fiance sported. “Arbiter Hersch reporting. Sir, there’s a rebel team aboard. They appear to have been on an engine room infiltration and fled when we cut off their attempt. My team is dead, and I am in pursuit. Orders?”

Gage stood tense, Ace clenching and unclenching his fists at his side as Claudette listened to whomever was on the other end of her linkstone. After a moment she nodded. “Copy that sir.” Her glance flickered to Gage for a moment before focusing forward again, and Gage inwardly winced at her obvious fear. “There’s… there’s a Draug among them, sir.”

She glanced apologetically at Gage, who nodded in understanding. The Arbiters did not take kindly to failure, and Claudette would have to have an excellent and plausible explanation for why her team was dead and the enemy had taken no casualties. She continued speaking “They’re headed towards the stern. Maybe they hope to take one of the harriers. I’ll contact you once I spot them again sir.”

Her gloved hand fell to rest on her hip and glanced at Gage, her eyes still not meeting his. “Well, if you’re headed for the Flying Sun then I suggest you stow aboard one of the transport lifts in the cargo bay and ride over with the prisoners. It will only fit one person each in the emergency supply hold, so you’ll need to take two transports." She gestured back up the hallway from which she had come. "I’ll have to run the other way so I can say that I lost you around the harrier launch. That should keep them searching cockpits for a while anyway.”

Gage nodded. “I’ve made do with worse.” He glanced at Ace. “Ready to go?” Ace nodded dumbly, but Gage did not miss the strange look that flickered across his features as he gave his fiance a brief hug. It unsettled him for some reason that he couldn’t quite explain.

They waved goodbye to Claudette, who raised her Arbiter’s cowl over her head, the red sun on the back of the cowl smeared with dark blood from the body of the first soldier. She turned and began jogging back up the corridor towards the stern of the Iron Rook, the clang of her footsteps on the metal decking fading into the distance.

“Well, that was unexpected, but let’s take advantage.” Gage turned to jog in the opposite direction up the corridor toward the engine room. “Alright, Ace” he said to the pale-faced and sweaty young man beside him. “You’re the journeyman. How do we get to the cargo bay from here?”