Reaper 1.1
Thanks to the
Azure Horizon exiting the Dimensional Sea in a much more controlled manner then my last journey we got to enjoy the view as we flew down towards the planet. Which was a good thing because choosing where to land was important for my short term plans.
At some point I needed to head to Atlas in order to take advantage of their advanced manufacturing capabilities, both for repairs to the
Azure Horizon and for the personal equipment I wanted to build, but I needed to approach them slowly. Atlas was advanced, but they were also very militaristic and disciplined so I doubted they would welcome an unknown ship of an unknown design anywhere inside their kingdom without me answering several questions I simply wouldn't be able to answer to their satisfaction.
And from my understanding the 'kingdom' of Vacuo had the opposite problem. Being more of a loose coalition of desert city-states than a real kingdom. I wouldn't have an issue with people looking too closely at our paperwork – if we managed to get any – but at the same time I'd have to keep an eye out for anyone that thought they could steal my stuff and get away with it and then having to worry about whatever group backed up the would be thief.
Mistral was slightly better than its counterpart in the west simply because the government actually existed in more than name, but had the drawback of it being very culturally important about who you knew. You either were in the pocket of one of the upper class and had them open doors for you through favors or you were part of one of the criminal syndicates that ruled the underworld. Again, not exactly great if I wanted to keep my stuff without getting into a lot of fights.
Which left Vale.
Theoretically it was the best kingdom of the four for me to approach since it was more developed than Vacuo, less corrupt than Mistral, and less draconically bureaucratic than Atlas, but it also had the major drawback of being slated for destruction at some point depending where we entered in the timeline. And that wasn't even considering the body snatching, immortal wizard that was using the kingdom for his own whims in the background.
I really didn't need him poking his nose into my business while I was trying to get my ship repaired.
Unfortunately, it was starting to look like I wasn't going to have much of a choice.
*BANG!*
"What was that?!"
"We just lost our atmospheric stabilizers and half our engines." I said tersely as my hands flew over the control panel. "Looks like the last crash did some damage I didn't catch."
"What does that mean?!"
"Well, without the stabilizers we're eventually going to lose air pressure and oxygen, which means our maximum altitude is going to be severely limited for a while. As for the engines –"
"Short version, mistress!"
"Ah…we're slowly crashing and unless we touch down on dry land we're going to choke to death on stale air."
"Isn't that a bad thing?!"
"Yes, very!" I replied in a more cheerful tone. "But we're doing better than the last landing I made already and unless something else breaks, we should be able to walk away with minor injuries. Now strap yourself in and brace for impact!"
The
Azure Horizon started fighting me more and more the closer we got to the ground, but I was able to wrestle it into a mostly flat descent. Between that and the still functioning air brakes and thrusters it looked like it would be a comparatively soft landing…
The hull of my variant YT-1300 smashed into the ground and the cockpit started shaking as we bounced to a stop. Alarms shrieked even as the two of us struggled to untangle ourselves from our harnesses. Leona simply flopped to the floor while I at least managed to stay on my feet and peer out the viewport.
Green fields greeted me and honestly? I just considered it an improvement from the last landing since the front end was only partially buried instead of completely underground this time. Now I just needed to see what new issues popped up from another rough landing and add them to the list of things to fix.
-o-
"Well the good news is that nothing is too badly broken." I told Leona as we both settled in for lunch. "Mostly some plating that will need to be replaced and a few components that are a bit smashed up. Which we already had on the list."
"And the bad news?"
I shrugged. "Not that bad actually. We wont be sealing the ship any time soon or flying all that high, but it's functional and it moves. Which is better than I was expecting."
Which was an understatement.
Two crash landings in a row, a handcrafted replacement reactor, and several damaged parts and the
Horizon could still hover a few hundred feet in the air and move at what I estimated to be around 120 miles per hour before things got shaky showed exactly how tough my poor ship was. That it could move at all was already more than I could ask for.
"Now we just need to figure out where we are and where to go from here…"
My apprentice nodded and looked out into the distance while I turned my attention back towards my food, both of us content to just let the silence stretch out while we enjoyed the day and push off worrying about where we were going to go for later.
It was only several hours later when we had cleaned up both lunch and most of the ship's interior from the crash that we had any reason for discussion more serious than small talk. The reason for that was a pair of figures we saw walking towards us I happened to see through a viewport.
"Who do you suppose they are?" Leona asked.
"Depends how close we are to a town." I replied. "Most likely they are Huntsmen, but if we are close enough there might be some kind of town guard. We didn't see any major settlements on the way down so I doubt it's the military or anything like that."
"Right, the aura empowered individuals that hunt the shadow spirits." Leona said. I had given her a basic overview on the types of people we could expect to find on Remnant and it was always nice to know she listened to my lessons. "Hopefully they can point us towards a town. While we have plenty of water and your ship is an excellent shelter, we only have two days worth of food stored unless we go hunting soon."
"Well they seem friendly enough so far," they weren't running at us weapons drawn at any rate, "so I don't think that should be too much of a problem. Still, let's be careful just in case."
Leona nodded and sneakily palmed the modified spell pistol I had given her. Instead of a one use device that fired a bombardment spell, it was capable of shooting mana bullets as long as it had power. Not very useful for me, since even my Trace Bullets with normal weaponry were more powerful, but invaluable for Leona who had very little combat experience.
And it doesn't get much easier than point and shoot.
"Hello there!" I call out once they are close enough to hear. "Can we help you two?"
"'Ello yerself, Lass." The first man shouted back, a thick accent coloring his words. "We saw yer crash miles back. Any injured we can 'elp wif?"
"Who's asking?"
"Sean McIntyre and Dann DeLyon, we're Huntsmen out of Thornbell."
"Don't you think you're a little old to be Huntsmen?" I called back. And this wasn't me being snarky.
Sean was a pretty large man but from the look of his generous stomach and the fact his once black hair was mostly gray at this point, it was pretty obvious he was past his prime and while his partner was in better shape and his yellow hair hid the gray better, I could still clearly see that he wasn't much younger.
"Aye, nothin for it tho'. Thornbell aint like those fancy kingdom towns with Huntsmen crawlin all o'er the place. Long as we can fight we can at least make the rounds now and again."
I frowned at that. "Are you expecting a lot of Grimm?"
Because we hadn't seen any.
"Not Grimm. But we've heard rumors of bandits in the area." Dann clarified and I noticed he was lacking his partner's accent.
Bandits though, huh?
I had a bit of metaknowldge about one bandit group on Remnant, but that was mostly centered around its leader. I had very little idea about how widespread bandits were or how much of a threat they could be. But then again if Thornbell was only sending out two older Huntsmen to look for them I guess they couldn't be that big of a deal.
"Any signs of them?"
"Na' a one." Sean grumbled. "Spose they could be hidin out inna hole somewhere but ya could stir up a Grimm nest just as easily as finding them. But enough o' tha. You lasses need an escort into town? Ain' safe and yer ship looks like it landed rough. Ye get caught by a Nevermore or some such?"
"No, just equipment trouble. But she'll fly just fine if it's a short trip." I replied. "We can give you a ride if you can give us some directions?"
The two of them looked at eachother and had a sort of silent conversation before coming to an agreement and looking back to me.
"We'll take you up on that…"
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Support the Author at
Buy Azura a Coffee. ko-fi.com/azurawriting
or over at
https://patreon.com/AzuraWriting to read a few chapters ahead in the rotation
