The Withered Land: Dragons and Marauders

Dragons and Marauders, Part Twenty-Nine

They could detect a hint of sulphury fire mixed with bronze and tin smelt on the air. In the distance, down the valleys between buildings, they could hear the faint sound of people arguing that soon ended in screams.

Rae'vynn Wyyng's descender-grapple harness was a relic from another age, a reconnaissance and climbing rig from a time before the Emperium's conquering expansion to colonize planets beyond the wobbly orbit of the moon, Pex Insava, and beyond Teshiwahur's boundaries of civilization. It was a pirate's tool, elegantly simple and compact, readily disposable if need be, and relatively easy to recreate from mechanical scrap parts and leather strapping. She and the synthetic twins, Pnoom-Ogg and Pnoom-Aig, rappeled down the curving side of one of Ometh Nastreq's less theatrically grandiose sky-towers, a triple turreted building some forty stories high, on the shadowed side facing away from the glare of the setting suns.

The increasingly brisk wind skating across the tower's surface buffeted them in unsettling surges that necessitated they use the magni-clamp soles on the climbing boots they had donned before leaving the safety of their small, rotor-bladed ornithopter skyship. The Aeriakon staging hangar's drop-tekk tubes created an optical slipcloak that masked the ornithopter skyship from visual detection and from electronic sensor pings as it fell below the larger warship into Ometh Natreqian airspace. For all practical purposes, the slipcloak made the small skyship invisible to detection. Leaving the confines of the highly maneuverable aircraft was where the main danger lay, however, inasmuch the skycraft was set to return via remote navigation to the Aerieakon's dock upon the trio's disembarkment.

Covered head to foot in a form-fitting, charcoal gray bodysuit fitted with protective tactical trauma-plate panels for protection, Rae'vynn felt that her overall range of motion was only minimally restricted, while the suit's points of articulation proved to be more flexible than she expected, and yet it was nonetheless cumbersome. Pnoom-Ogg and Pnoom-Aig had, through the semi-organic, liquidic nanotechnology of their own bodies, simply morphed their external surfaces into a ruggedized and anodized, armored sheath. Compressed CO2-cartridge bolt guns were used to plant their climbers' carabiners and palm-claw gloves allowed them gripping-purchase on the smoother surfaces of the lofty skyscraper. Despite the rushed planning, the Aerieakon's computer masterlink to the City-'Net was able to provide them a relatively untaxing, navigatable path down the tower to the fabricated cloudpad landing zone outside the building's executive terraces.

From their vantage point high over the city streets, the trio could see the dynamic structure of Ometh Nastreq's odd mix of mannered feudalism, economic mercantilism and computer cyber-nonconformism. Ornate robotic centaur-driven palanquins traveled majestically up and down the avenues, sharing the byways with sleek, metallic, multi-wheeled conveyances that resembled limousine motorcars. Traveling at a height of four to five stories above that were sharply defined lanes of aerial traffic through which fleets of short-distance aircars of assorted shapes and vintages crawled across the sky between extravagant, rococo-styled skyscrapers. Under more peaceful circumstances, any casual examination of the metropolis was a chance to enjoy a beautiful and exotic environment where High Etiquette and Baronial Manners still held sway, but should the observer pause and take a more in-depth accounting of the city, they were likely to see dark duplicity and deadly intrigue being played out on every street corner as the less privileged classes warred for power and dominance.

Rae'vynn Wyyng was a product of that culture, a native daughter of the graceful, neo-classicist sub-aristocracy of land-owning hereditary noblemen and ladies. Her parents had enrolled and boarded her at the federalized, coeducational Tri-Continental Hegemonic Naval Academy where she'd become an active duty midshipman and cross-commissioned into the Scientific Intelligence Services. She'd never really been much for socializing and fraternalization, but there had been a boy once, and there'd even been a hint of scandal about her brief romantic relationship, but she had reluctantly abandoned the love affair, at the insistence of her parents and her Upperclassmen mentors, in favor of a chance at higher placement among the elites of the Ensign-class at the Academy. Since that time, she'd only concerned herself with flirtations and the intricacies of passion with tepid and perfunctory efforts. She was, above all else, possessed of an unswervingly pragmatic nature.