Shadow War: Book 3 of the Shadows Rising Trilogy (WIP Rough Draft)

49. Falling

20th of Arrestre, Continued

The General's corpse lay in the hallway.

It was out of sight of the control room windows, but I could still see it, the shine of his boots catching in the corner of my eye as I sat at the operator's station and began trying to learn the controls.

I kept half-expecting him to reanimate and come up off the floor shooting at me. It took several long moments spent repeating desperately to myself that I had seen the deep slashes that laid his ribs open — and the slick pool by the map table where he had bled out all over the floor — in order to calm the frantic hitch in my heartbeat.

Abruptly, the ceiling sconces blinked back on, then the porthole fuzzed and flickered above me, and the deep hum of the engines started up.

Because Arramy was down in the propulsion room, bringing the airship back to life.

But not the General. The General won't be coming back to life... Focus, ninny. We are stealing the General's ship... Now you're smiling. Why are you smiling? There is something wrong with you, in your head... I bit my lower lip and scanned the control panel, making myself read the neat little placards above each toggle and dial and lever.

The listening device was the same as the one in the General's old office, at least, and had the earpiece and mouthpiece, but I had never seen an array of controls quite like this one before. 'Wave in.' 'Wave out.' Those were for the sonulator. Good. Fine. Then there were several dials that seemed to involve 'tethering' and 'wave sources,' with a small porthole that sported crosshairs hovering over a rolling coordinate grid that spun crazily when I touched the toggles marked 'altitude,' 'longitude,' 'latitude,' 'pitch,' and 'yaw.' I didn't have any idea what that meant, but the operators had used those dials when they were speaking to the other airships.

There was also the message tape machine, which I had seen plenty of times in the Headquarters, but never used. With no one to collect the messages, screeds of tape had been spooling out of the machine uninterrupted for several minutes, and a pile had grown beneath the machine.

I had just started scanning through the movement reports from the forces on the ground when the quiet tread of boots in the hall had me snapping around, my pulse leaping all over again.

Arramy came to a stop in the doorway, a pensive look on his face, his eyes following my reaction, noting the way I dropped everything and jerked myself up out of the operator's seat, well-ready to bolt.

I blinked, then slowly sat back down, trying to hide the shaking of my fingers in the cuffs of my jumpsuit sleeves. It was still so painfully new, seeing him there. It felt like I was dreaming.

"Do you know how to work that?"

I flinched again, his husky brogue doing something dangerous to my heart. He had asked a question and was waiting for an answer. I couldn't make my voice work. At all. My mouth refused to even move, so I settled for nodding hesitantly, and ran a hand through my hair. For the first time since it had been shaved off, I truly felt the change the Paradazh had written on me, unable to keep from seeing me through his eyes. Small. Filthy. Skinny. Wild, boyish hair, skeletal fingers, boney wrists, hollow eyes...

He was quiet for another few seconds, just watching me. Then he took a breath and let it out, that muscle flickering in his cheek again as he looked down at the floor, his throat bobbing visibly. Then he shook his head once as if coming to a decision, straightened, and stepped into the room, striding to the map table. "I need you to tell the airship approaching us to come about."

I pursed my lips and turned back to the controls. I had seen the operator working them. All I had to do was recreate what she had done. Simple. Yes. I closed my eyes. She had taken the mouthpiece out of its holster... then used the toggles on the rolling grid to... "Can you give me the airship's coordinates?" I asked, wincing at the sound of my own dry, scratchy words.