Prologue

A lone cloud drifted through the blue sky. A rare sight for the planet that has turned into a giant sand bowl. Dust devils rose into the sky at random in the desert. For the casual observer, there was nothing to note and one would think the place lifeless given how quiet the land appeared to be.

The thrum of an engine soon changed that as several planes flew through the air toward the cloud. Their propellers moving faster than the eye could follow. Another much louder sound followed behind them as a large vehicle moved on massive tracks through the sand at a much slower pace. The crawler, as was the popular term for the moving cities, was the only remote form of safety granted to humanoids on the planet.

This crawler was small, coming in at barely over four hundred meters long. It was considerably beaten down, but like its name, Fortitude, it kept going. With red and orange rusted metal being the main color. A few buildings graced the deck, but mostly it was left clear for the planes that were needed to scout the way for the moving city.

The noise only grew louder as one of the large turrets on the front of the crawler pointed at the cloud. With a boom, it fired three rounds into the condensed atmospheric water vapor. The gunner’s aim was spot on, and the rounds exploded into a spray of white chemicals. The chemicals quickly interacted with the cloud as it started to expand and turn black.

People could be seen running to and fore on the deck of the crawler as the pulled barrels, tarps, and anything else they could use to hold water. Before long the small cloud had turned into a massive rainstorm that cast its shadow over three or four kilometers worth of sand. A bolt of lightning lanced through the air signaling the planes.

Two of the aircraft released shoots out the back of their aircraft. They banked and began to make a pass through the storm cloud. Water droplets were collected by the tarps and fed into bottles. The pilots knew that each passed gained them another day of life in the unforgiving desert.

It appeared everything was going to be uneventful until the roar of new engines signaled that someone else had heard the thunderclap. Always one of the dangerous parts of cloud harvesting. The lookout soon spotted half a dozen fighters moving in their direction. He couldn’t make out their affiliation, but in the end, it usually didn’t matter.

Sure enough, the approaching aircraft banked and started heading for the storm. The spotter managed to make out the words, The Ascendency, and could only groan. They were a group of radical pirates in the area that never took no for an answer. Having confirmed that the approaching force was an enemy, the spotter signaled the alarm.

The side turrets, weapons from a now bygone era, twisted in the direction of the approaching force. They would need to deal with the aircraft before the crawler reached them. Everyone knew that a crawler was always right behind any aircraft spotted.

The two aircraft from Fortitude retracted their shoots and left the storm cloud. They didn’t have the firepower to dogfight with the pirates as the city was running low on Aserite, the ore that powers all the machines in the city and their vessels, as well as ammunition. If they could get out of fighting that would be the real win.

The pilots almost sighing in relief when they saw five of the enemy craft release shoots of their own. With only one other craft, they doubted they would be hunted and began to head back to the Fortitude to begin defense runs. They were only about a bit away from the cloud when one of the three aircraft went up in flames as it was riddled with bullet holes.

The two remaining aircraft immediately began evasive maneuvers as they saw the sixth pirate drop out of the storm cloud. The gunners swirled their guns toward the vessel but it was making its own movements to avoid incoming fire. The gunners growled in frustration as they tried to anticipate where the annoying pilot was going to go, but all of his movements were erratic and hard to track. Unable to afford wasting ammunition they had no choice but to hold their fire.

The pirate had enough playing around and revved his engine, the glow of the Aserite leaking from the front of the plane as it accelerated toward the left aircraft. The gunner unable to take it, pressed the trigger, and sent a hail of gunfire towards the pirate. The level of skill was just too different with all the rounds missing their target with the pirate pilot dodging the attack easily.

The pirate had played enough and lined up with the aircraft. With barely any destination, he sent his own hail of gunfire into the back of the aircraft and turned it into flaming wreckage that soon fell from the sky. The aircraft exploded once it hit the ground as the Aserite erupted from the impact. Even if the pilot had survived the crash, he wouldn’t have been able to survive that.

The remaining Fortitude aircraft were pushing their engines to get within range of the guns on the crawler, but they were still several hundred meters out. If the city fired their weapons now, there was a good chance they would get hit themselves. The gunner put on a grime face and held his fire. He was waiting for the opportune moment.

Fortunately for him, that moment never came. Just as he and the pirate were about to trade fire, a bolt of purple lightning arced from the storm cloud and sliced the pirate’s aircraft clean in half. The Aserite reacted to the energy and the aircraft exploded into a sphere of flames.

The gunner and pilot of the Fortitude aircraft honestly thought it was divine intervention. Both sighed in relief as they finally returned to the safer air of above the Fortitude. Linking hands, the gunner turned to the pilot and asked for her hand in marriage. Fifteen years passed in the blink of an eye.