Encounter

That morning, the salty ocean fog was split by quilted patches of steel and iron. Massive metal towers rose from the docked naval fleet like naked trees in winter with branches made of salt-rusted turrets and cannon barrels. The sun began to warm the wharf with the faintest blue light. The horizon was clear, and none of the sailors stumbling back towards the dock could have expected such a storm coming their way.

The rising sun was higher now than it was then. Its golden rays were muffled under rows of black smoke and streaks of orange anti-air fire ripping from the crippled fleet. Cloudy columns of soot boiled up into the air from sinking ships as a dragons and gryphons dueled above.

Gadget’s leather-clad body hugged the rusted frame of her Skyraider. The open wind rushed over her back while steam bursted from the carrier’s pulley system. It vaulted her flying machine up and away from the flight deck. Her hips rode low in the saddle, and the famous 401st Air Cavalry Feathers painted onto the weathered Skyraider’s hull flanked her flexing thighs. Below the tail art - in fresh white paint - was a name: “Grace”.

Zzzcheew-zchew-zchew! A string of three super-heated lead slugs zipped by. Gadget’s eyes searched desperately beyond the blur of her forward-slung propellers for a open route as the whistles of another burst of enemy rounds whizzed by her wind-whipped orange hair yet again.

“He’s on you, Gadget! Break left, break left!”, Jim’s panicked voice commanded over the radio. Gadget’s heart was pulled into her stomach as the aircraft dipped its left wing and shuddered away from a yet another fiery line of lead. The Skyraider’s engine roared in protest like a warhorse whose own bit had sliced open its mouth. The pilot’s lungs rattled in her chest as she rode the whining machine into an inverted bank. Gadget’s hands were white-knuckled at the reins of her flying iron steed as she careened for the water. A white froth of water was cast into the air as she kicked out the end of the Skyraider and pointed the curved ‘beak’ of it’s nose inland at the last moment. The fleet was already lost, but this was no retreat from battle. It was a rushing charge to catch the Imperial airships headed toward the city.

A sleek black machine followed - it’s twin rearward propellers hissing as it sliced through one of the thick smoke columns slithering up from a dying ship. Seeing those short forward-swept wings and the wide, but razorlike front blade of the machine’s hammerhead-nose slicing through the sky was akin to seeing a shark fin in bloody water. This was no ordinary Imperial airman piloting a Ryu. The furious dragon made of speed, sheet metal, and rivets chasing her down was being ‘wielded’ by a Kurokaze Samurai.

“Get him off me, Jim.” She said, through gritted teeth. “Get me home to Grace.”

(497)