Skye City: The Darkness of Emmilyn

Crash Landing

The airship has settled now. Only the Goddess knows where we landed. I force myself to my feet, slithering up through squirming bodies, dazed, unsure if I can even stand properly, if my bones are broken or my brain is injured. My insides feel like, like, I am unsure how they feel actually. Shaken maybe, achy, or numb. A bit of both. I feel so hot, winded, staring through the blurry, dusty chaos, the sloping, splintered deck of the airship where everything is scattered and torment is circulating and the lack of safety measures worsened the situation, the careless layout. Seems unbelievable that tables and chairs were not fixed to the floor. Perhaps someone felt his vessel was indestructible. Damn fool.

The bodies around me are rising, groaning, crying among upturned chairs and fragments of glass and spilt food and pools of fizzing drinks. I bend forwards, lift the child at my ankles, ask whether he is okay, kiss the head of my beautiful precious brother. Kyan is fine, I think, hope. We cushioned his impact as best we could. Mother rises to her feet. The bodies slowly separate, allowing room to breathe in our suffocating huddle. A handful are still lying, squirming. 'We need first aid.' I cannot believe I am first to say that. Where the fuck are the airship staff?

We step away from the bar, carefully navigating the pile of tables and chairs and the splintered ripples in the floor. I realise the tables were screwed down because many are still more or less attached, but the screws of others were ripped clean out from the impact. The longer chairs of the table booths must have been fixed down more securely because all of them are still in place. Mother sits Kyan on one of them, checks him over properly, makes him move his limbs, wriggle his fingers, turn his head. He silently follows every instruction.

An arm wraps around my waist. Nelson, he is okay. We hug and I just let my head linger on his shoulder, watching.

People are carrying the injured, sitting them down, checking them out, issuing inexpert advice. One man with a badly broken arm is whimpering, clenching his teeth, and the medical facilities on this place are not exactly great. I hope the poor bastard is not forced to accept amputation. Might have to be though. You would think captains of the twenty-forties would come better prepared for crises but apparently not. My guess is cost cutting.

'Is everyone okay?' Ooh look, the captain. Taiwo has finally arrived to ask his pointless question.

'First aid, Taiwo,' I snap, wondering why it took him minutes to climb the stairs when he seems perfectly unharmed. My guess is he had a special safety room to retreat to, a place to protect him from crash landings, a privilege the passengers were not given.

'The crew are on the way to get medical supplies. They should not be too long. Let's get the injured onto the chairs,' the captain says.

'Um, one step ahead of you there,' I say.

A couple of crew members arrive from the stairway, carrying medical boxes which were not even kept on the main deck. Nice preparation, guys. They run over to an unconscious, overweight, middle-aged man and kneel at his side to assess his condition. 'He's still breathing,' one of them says, holding some sort of scanner to his chest and then his brain.

'We have limited supplies. Make sure you save the nanites for those who are most seriously injured,' the captain says.

A few more crew members appear with stretchers and other supplies, running along the broken deck, swerving around the debris, separating to tend to the injured. 'Let's get them onto stretchers. They will be more comfortable in their cabins,' one of them says. And they stretcher the unconscious man, strapping him down, leading him to the steep and narrow, winding staircase. Seems unbelievable they do not have an elevator on this thing. Other people are stretchered off or bandaged up or given pain relief. The type of pain relief Samaire has been crying out for since the day she hacked off her own damn hand. Today I assume the treatment is free and it just makes the thought of paid for medical treatment seem all the more absurd.