Rhys watched the gentle shifting of the cloud sea from the side of the Endeavour. He’d locked the course in place and was leaning against the railing at the rear of the ship. He’d always been fascinated by the cloud sea and all the byproducts that were made using the resources harvested from it.

A particulate was found in the cloud sea, a reagent called Morca that was key to so many things. Skraa and striss rays fed on the morca from what they could tell, which helped them maintain their incredible buoyancy.

Special ships called Skimmers would harvest the cloud sea, passing it through special filters to extract the morca. Once extracted, it could be heated until it fused and formed into cloud quartz or overheated until it melted to form morcal fluid.

Morcal fluid was the single best medium for energy transfer that they’d come across, to such a point that akast crystal broke down on contact with it. That reaction between the two materials formed the premise for everything that their civilisation was built on.

Staring down into the fluffy clouds and the few rays that were in sight, Rhys wondered just how that discovery had first been made. How had his ancestors first harvested the cloud sea, how did they discover morcal fluid and the reaction it caused.

The history of their technology had always fascinated him. Since he’d met Zaxx, that fascination had only deepened.

‘I think we’re far enough out of everyone’s way now. I’m going to find us a nice spire to set down on and do the upgrade,’ Rhys said, leaning back from the rail and turning back to the helm.

‘Of course, I look forward to your choice of what upgrade to take,’ Zaxx said. However, his whisper went entirely ignored as Rhys had stopped still and was staring into the distance behind them with wide eyes. ‘Wait, I can sense your distress. What is wrong?’

‘Shit, shit, shit,’ Rhys said, rushing to the helm and unlocking the wheel while at the same time pushing the thrusters to the maximum. ‘There’s a ship following us.’

‘Pirates?’

‘I think so,’ Rhys said, glancing back over his shoulder and looking at the other ship that he’d noticed. It was a fair distance behind them but was closing steadily on a direct course. From what he could see, it seemed slightly smaller than the Endeavour but was undoubtedly packed with bloodthirsty pirates.

‘I would like to offer once more to steer the ship. If I control the helm, you can then use the aft cannon.’

‘Look, how would that even work? You can’t see, so how would you keep us aloft?’ Rhys asked, fear and anger boiling over into frustration at Zaxx.

‘You will need to get us into a spire-free area. I can then respond to vocal commands and steer accordingly. The choice is yours,’ Zaxx said, the whisper barely louder than the sound of Rhys’s heart as it pounded in his chest.

‘Fine. When the other ship gets closer, we’ll move to vocal command, but no changes without my say-so!’ Rhys gritted his teeth as he spoke, he disliked giving Zaxx more control of the ship, but he had no choice.

For now, he focused on keeping them on course for Arn Gol and moving as fast as possible. They were almost a full day out from Arn Bolear, which meant they were halfway back. He’d had the Endeavour at a cruising speed to save on crystal, which had allowed the pirates to build up quite the speed advantage.

By going straight to full thrust, he’d slowed down the rate at which they were catching up to them. The Endeavour just wasn’t fast enough to stop it altogether. Pirate ships were built for speed, after all.

At this point, there was no doubt in his mind that they were pirates. The few encounters they’d had with other ships had been fleeting at best. There was more than enough sky to go around. There was no need for two vessels to be on the exact same heading. Just in case, he’d slightly adjust their course, the ship to their aft matching them a few moments later.

The problem was that a stern chase like this favoured the faster ship, which was definitely the pirates. That meant that, sooner or later, they were going to catch up with them. Once they did, Rhys doubted his meagre efforts with a single swivel cannon would do more than piss them off.

He had no crew, no backup, just him and Zaxx versus an entire ship of pirates. He was starting to understand the reactions he’d been getting at the guild. A crew would be handy right now for ideas if nothing else.

Fighting down his rising sense of panic, Rhys focused on what he could do. There was no way to stop the pirates from catching up as it was, so they needed to change the situation.

Pulling his map over, Rhys scanned what was ahead, trailing his finger up the map on their course to Arn Gol.

‘Yes, there it is,’ Rhys said, a flicker of hope rising in his chest as he tapped a marker on his map. It was a marker for a forest that was fairly close by to their current position.

A forest was a grouping of spires, usually quite dense together, but none of them was big enough to warrant an outpost or settlement.

Any forest came with additional dangers due to the lack of civilisation. They were prime nesting grounds for beasts like venak, pirate caves and all sorts of hidden activities.

If they could find a cave large enough to hide the Endeavour, they could lose the pirates there. If they couldn’t find shelter, well, maybe they could get the pirates turned around enough to gain some distance on them.

It wasn’t the best plan Rhys had ever thought of, but it was all he had. From the scale on the map, the forest was around five hours away at full thrust. Looking back at the distant pirates, Rhys saw that they were a little more visible than before. At this point, five hours might be asking for too much.

-**-

The next three hours passed tortuously slowly for Rhys. There was nothing he could do to make them go any faster, so all he was able to do was watch the pirates get ever closer.

The approaching ship was narrow and had a shallow keel, giving it a pointed shape that made it easily cut through the air. It was a ship designed for speed, unlike the Endeavour.

With little option, Rhys went to the aft swivel cannon and tapped the activation rune. The cannon hummed to life, drawing on the ship’s energy to power the complicated runes within its interior.

The cannon would conjure a ball of energy and project it from the cannon’s barrel at speed. Energy shots had no mass, but some of their power bled out into momentum when they impacted the target.

Against a human, a swivel cannon could blow them off their feet, if not kill them outright. Against a ship, the same weapon was little more than an annoyance. It would take repeated shots on the same spot to puncture through even the standard exterior that the Endeavour sported.

Sadly, Rhys had no personal weapons to use instead, so he was restricted to the cannon. They had two hours to go yet, and he had to do what he could to buy them that time.

The pirate ship was inching ever closer. They were less than a mile away now and steadily approaching the range of his cannon. A bigger, stronger weapon could no doubt range on them now, but what Rhys had could shoot a few hundred feet at most. It was a short-range defence weapon at its heart.

Rhys could see the dark shapes of cannons along the side of the pirate ship. It looked like they had three culverins per side. A broadside of three cannons wasn’t a huge armament, but more than enough against what he had. Culverins were the next step up from swivel cannons in every way. The energy balls they generated could travel up to a thousand feet before starting to lose coherence and hit a lot harder.

So far, the pirates were showing no aggressive moves, apart from the way they were bearing down on him.

With a trembling hand, Rhys tilted the cannon back and depressed the firing stud. The weapon gave off an audible humming sound, followed by a loud crack as the cannon spat a violet ball of energy.

True to his aim, the ball of energy sailed past the other ship with no incident, giving them the final warning to stand off. Unsurprisingly, the pirates didn’t react at all, their ship slowly closing with the Endeavour.

Correcting his aim this time, Rhys aimed for the prow of the ship, where he could see a few figures watching him.

The swivel cannon was mainly ironwood, with quartz running through it in key places to enable the creation of the shot inside it. Along the top of the barrel were four protruding pieces of quartz the size of Rhys’s fingernail. Each piece of quartz was covered with a layer of sap for protection, and three of them were glowing with steady violet light.

Tapping the rune three times in quick succession, Rhys fired three more balls at the same area. His aim was roughly right, but the other ship’s crew took cover behind the half-wall that ran around their deck. The violet energy balls struck the wall and left behind a heavy scorch mark but were far from enough to punch through ironwood.

All four quartz indicators were dull and empty now, a mere flicker of violet starting to show as the cannon recharged.

‘From your reaction, I believe the cannon was insufficient to damage them?’

‘Yes, we’d need something a lot stronger. At this point, I’m simply hoping for a lucky hit to kill one of them,’ Rhys said. Cold sweat was trickling down his back as he saw the ship coming ever closer. Soon enough, they would be within boarding range.

He had to do something. He just didn’t know what. Turning to the front of the ship, he saw the forest of spires up ahead. They were minutes away at full thrust, minutes they didn’t have. The pirate ship was slightly higher than them and closing in, slowly descending toward their height at the same time.

Descending. That was it.

Abandoning the swivel cannon without a second thought, Rhys sprinted back to the helm and switched off the ventral thrusters. He hesitated a second before turning off the weight-reduction runes as well. In for a bit, in for a sovereign.

As their weight increased, the Endeavour started to drop down towards the clouds below them. Rhys gripped the ship as they fell, his stomach churning as they went.

The pirate ship was quick to chase after them, but the sudden change in velocity threw them off and gave Rhys a few precious moments to work with.

He waited until they were just about to hit the upper edge of the clouds before re-engaging the rune and ventral thruster. Rhys felt the pressure from the change in speed push him down toward the deck, the force of it lessening as they slowed down.

One moment he was surrounded by blue skies, the next by billowing white clouds. Rhys immediately felt damp as the slight amount of moisture in the clouds covered everything. The thrusters were causing vapour trails to form in the cloud, but Rhys couldn’t risk lowering them just yet.

Angling them slightly to the right of where they’d been heading before, Rhys crossed his fingers and hoped that the pirates were thrown off.

A few moments later, the surrounding clouds rippled and moved as though something large was heading nearby. Acting on instinct, Rhys cut the aft thruster and reduced the ventral to a mere third of its power.

With no vapour trail to agitate their surroundings, the clouds closed in on the ship as the Endeavour slowly sank further down.

The sea flowed and moved around him, opening and closing in places to give glimpses of what was around them. A few skaa rays crossed over the deck, scaring the life out of Rhys, but that was it. He could see maybe a hundred to two feet around him as it was, sometimes less, sometimes more.

Rhys frowned as he saw the cloudstuff on the deck around him get pushed down and out, a faint pressure hitting him from above. Looking up, he saw a plume of cloudstuff pushing down through the sea.

The passage of the plume drew in the surrounding clouds, giving Rhys a glimpse of a large dark shape, slightly pointed at the front. The pirates were directly above him.

The other ship cruised through the sea like a venak patrolling its territory. They must have guessed he was trying to hide rather than flee. He was just lucky that they were higher up.

The dark shape started to turn to the right, but the plumes from the vapour thrusters were too far away now. The surrounding parts of the sea rushed back in to fill the empty space.

They could have been adjusting course, or they might have spotted the Endeavour just before the clouds concealed him. He had no way of knowing.

They were still slowly descending. Rhys had been just thinking of bringing it to a halt when he saw the pirates overhead. Sweating nervously and trying to ignore his pounding heart, Rhys took his hand off the ventral thruster control and let them carry on dropping.

After a moment of consideration, he inched the aft thruster forwards, setting it so they were gently moving forward. If the pirates had seen where they were simply going down might not be enough.

Rhys kept a steady hand on the ship’s wheel, keeping the movement slow to stop from being noticed. It was difficult to stop himself from powering up the thrusters and making a run for it. Only the knowledge that the pirates were faster was stopping him.

A vague hint of a dark shape among the clouds off to their left was enough to make Rhys’s heart pound, it could have been a striss ray for all he knew, but it could equally be the pirates.

A loud cracking sound from up ahead made Rhys curse and jerk his hand to one side, the Endeavour slewing to the right for a brief moment. A moment later, there was another, then a third.

It took until the fifth repetition for Rhys to figure it out. The pirates were shooting blind into the clouds, hoping to drive him out. A much louder crack came from up ahead, and a ball of blue energy shot past the prow of the Endeavour, missing the ship by maybe ten feet at most. This was bad.

‘Nope, nope, nope,’ Rhys said, keeping as quiet as he could as he panicked. It would only take one lucky hit before they’d know where he was. The fact that they hadn’t moved on meant that they must have seen him at some point. This was bad, really bad.

‘I can feel you panicking. What’s wrong?’ Zaxx asked, his whispers seeming almost concerned.

‘We didn’t get away, they’re still around here looking for us, and we must be near the bottom of the sea right now. They’re going to find us,’ Rhys said, hissing the words out as quietly as he could as he changed course to throw things off a bit.

‘Then you need to go deeper.’

The words were simple, but they sent a shiver of cold dread through Rhys. There were stories about the Misting and the Abyss, bad stories. It was already bad enough that they were this far down into the sea. To go below it altogether was inviting trouble.

The distant crack of a cannon firing blindly into the sea was enough to make up Rhys’s mind. A trembling hand went to the ventral thrusters. Easing the lever back, they started to fall further into the clouds.