City Sector Uplift part 6
#58 of The Life and Times of Jarzyl Mintaka (Slice of Life Stories)
Jarzyl and Atlas go for a ride
For the first moment, Recursive Grey dropped so fast that Atlas felt light on his paws--that familiar sensation of falling made his wings instinctually flick to half open, but then the airship's decent rate stabilized and momentum slammed him down against Jarzyl's back.
Atlas remembered then what he was going to say. "Jarzyl!!!"
"Woooaahh! Ahhhhahahaa!" Jarzyl yelled too, though with glee instead of terror. She laughed as Atlas clutched onto her, lying on top of her body as she clung onto the airship. "We're riding hull-top!"
Cool, humid air buffeted them from varying directions as the airship continued to descend through the dark skies. The immense structure of the city was visible as a mass of lights and metal above them, but the airship itself was mostly dark. The airship's navigation lights flashed at regular intervals, briefly illuminating areas of the fuselage surrounding them.
A deep thrum continued to roll through the airship, speaking to the intense energies flowing out from its power cores to keep it aloft. Even as Atlas lay on top of Jarzyl, hanging onto her for dear life, he could feel that powerful rumble shake them both. As fledglings they were certainly no stranger to the skies, and regular training hunts and field trips made flying out from the city a routine event, but that was always either flying out on their own wings or riding inside an airship. They'd certainly never left the city like this. "Jarzyl!" Atlas yelled again.
"Haha_ha_!" Jarzyl laughed with mad, joyous delight. "Yess! Oh yes, oh yes!"
"Is this safe?!" Atlas demanded.
"Hehe, it's not unsafe," Jarzyl replied, which was an entirely unsatisfactory response.
"Jarzyl!!"
"Relax! There are plenty of airships with open decks or external galleries for passengers to stand about on and be exposed to the air. Just imagine that we're riding on one of those?"
Atlas shook his head. "But we're not. We're on the hull."
"It'll be fine. Just enjoy the ride. And remember, this was your idea!"
That statement was sufficiently provocative to displace Atlas's fear and replace it with indignation. "Excuse me, my idea? How was any of this my idea?!"
Jarzyl laughed, and she bumped her snout against Atlas's chin. "This wasn't on me! I didn't want to step back onto the airship after they called condition two in the hangar! I was going to just sit on the mezzanine and watch them leave. You were the one who wanted to get back aboard."
Atlas gave Jarzyl an incredulous expression, but the dark morning skies she probably couldn't see his face. "I... I didn't know they were about to launch so soon! And I was ready to jump off onto the mezzanine when they opened the hangar doors. You were all to ready to hang onto that hatch and ride this airship down!"
Jarzyl laughed. "Haha. Enjoy the ride!" She shifted her position into a more comfortable one, rubbing her body against his in the process. "Look, the storm shields are up!"
Atlas looked around to try and get a better sense of the airspace. Avaeria was still an immense, illuminated sight above them. And as Jarzyl had pointed out, at some time while they had been indoors in the airship hangar docks, the city's storm shield had been powered up. Weaving tendrils of energy poured out from spires located at numerous points across Avaeria, stretching out into the sky all around. There were hundreds of shield spires that pointed out in all directions from every single city sector--each one fed out a stream of bluish energy which flattened out into a huge hexagonal patch of energy in the sky, with all those hexagon segments tiling together to form a vast translucent spheroid that surrounded the city like a soap bubble.
As the airship continued to descend, it was now approaching the lower part of the city's shields. As they came closer, Atlas could see that the bluish colour of the shields occasionally shimmered to green or purple at particular spots in the hexagonal grid. And rather than just being a stationary projection out from the city, each huge hexagonal segment was pulsing inwards and outwards slowly, flowing in smooth interconnected waves that rippled through the shield.
More concerning was that through the city's storm shields, was the storm. The sky had been partially clouded earlier in the morning when Atlas had first arrived at Jarzyl's home, but now all around the city there were thick dark clouds forming a vast, unfriendly skyscape. Colossal bolts of lightning flashed from the clouds, lighting up entire sections of the sky before they struck the flying city's shield segments--segments would flare to brilliant light when they were struck, and the flow of power reversed as the City of Wings harvested energy from the storm.
From classes in school, Atlas factually knew how Avaeria harnessed energy from storms to keep itself airborne, but now they were seeing it up close. Jarzyl said something again, but her words were covered by the booming rumble of thunder coming with a delay from a lightning strike to the shield.
"What?!" Atlas yelled.
"I said sometimes I envy you!" Jarzyl replied. "It's great to fly in the day, but sometimes I wish I was a nocturnal so I could see into the dark."
Atlas wasn't in the mood for a deep, contemplative discussion about the merits and drawbacks of being a nocturnal dragon versus being a diurnal. "What are we doing here?!" He partially unfurled his wings, but didn't open them fully. "Should we just jump free? And fly back to the city?"
"No way. We're riding this airship all the way down to sector forty-nine! Hehaha!" Jarzyl let out a cackle of laughter, and she entwined her tail tip with Atlas's. He could feel the radio antenna wire which was still strapped along the length of Jarzyl's tail, and at that moment her radio buzzed to life.
The first few words were impossible to make out, but then Jarzyl adjusted the volume until it was audible despite the winds. "--on whistle. Phase as follows: mark three, three, zero, one. Mark, five, eight, five, seven. Call for readback, Rec Grey."
"Recursive Grey copies. Whistle is four, seven, two--" This transmission through the radio set was much clearer and less distorted because it was coming from the airship they were still riding atop of, but the gusting wind still managed to snatch away some of the words. "--three... zero... one..."
Atlas shook Jarzyl's shoulder, which he was still clutching onto as he lay on top of her. "What are all the numbers? What do they mean?"
Jarzyl made a slight shrug. "Something to do with the city shields, I think? We have to get through the shield to make it down to sector forty-nine, so maybe they'll shut down a shield tile so we can pass through?"
The radio continued. "Readback confir--ssccchhhrt! Rec Grey you are cleared to energize, and cleared for a resonant departure via nadir gateway one."
Jarzyl's neck frill perked up a little, bumping against Atlas's chin. "Oh, never mind. I forgot this is a stormrider-class clipper! They won't shut down the city shields, we'll just phase right through them."
"How...?" Atlas started to ask, but then his question was immediately answered. He had to hold on tight to Jarzyl as the airship suddenly picked up speed, pushing forward through the air even as it kept descending--they weren't actually moving too quickly compared to how fast a dragon could try to fly with their wings, but it was a clear acceleration. Atlas also felt the rumbling of the hull intensify sharply, then abruptly came a bright whitish glow from the front of Recursive Grey. A tendril of energy shot straight out from the airship but then it blunted against the oncoming airflow and smeared out into an expanding sheet of translucent, ethereal power that folded backwards until it had encompassed the entire airship.
"Oh, that is pretty!" Jarzyl chirped happily. Her pupils contracted slightly, as the shield glow offset the stormy dark. "What a sight!"
Atlas nodded, and he glanced around in awe. All around them was now a shimmering, glowing film of energy that surrounded the airship like a bubble twice the size of the airship itself--Recursive Grey had activated its own shields. The shield shifted and then its colour changed to a similar shade of blue as the city's shields had been. The world around them was still visible, but now it looked slightly distorted and significantly discoloured. The rushing winds also suddenly calmed down and the air around them went still.
"Stormrider-class airship, designed for all weather operation! That's Mintaka shipbuilding for you. We're good. We're so good!" Jarzyl chirped.
"Wow," Atlas murmured. "What would happen if we... touched the shield?"
Jarzyl flipped out her wing and tried to reach out for the shield, but it was a significant height around the airship's hull. "Hmm, it depends on the shield strength. The city shields are strong enough that you'd get repelled back and you can't touch them, but I think airship shields are weak enough that you can pass right through. They only stop lightning bolts and air."
The radio buzzed again. "Bzsch grey. Contact long-range airspace control on wavelength chann--twenty--wssscchhh! Good luck with that sector. Local control out."
"Dang it!" Jarzyl exclaimed in response. "I didn't catch the wavelength."
Atlas sighed, but he did it quickly and quietly, because this wasn't the time for a dramatic prolonged sigh. "What? Jarzyl, explain to me what's going on."
"Uhh, we've leaving the city so the airship will change over to a different radio range. There are different wavelengths for being in the hangar, or being close to the city, or for the open skies and down to the new sector," Jarzyl explained. "I could tune the radio, but I didn't hear which channel they are using. Maybe I'll just try all of them."
Atlas squinted, but it was hard to tell exactly how close Recursive Grey was getting to the city's shields because the airship's shields were the same colour. What he could see was the thick, dark, ominous storm clouds that were being held back by the city shields, and which were now getting very close. "Jarz?"
Jarzyl had been fiddling with her radio set, spinning a knob as she tried to tune it. She paused and glanced up at Atlas, who was still lying on top of her, hanging onto her shoulder. "Yes?"
"The storm looks pretty bad."
Jarzyl nodded. "Definitely. It's a horrendous storm, which is excellent. We need lots and lots of lightning to harvest enough energy to raise the new sector."
Atlas had been about to ask if this whole excursion was therefore a good idea, but then at that exact moment, Recursive Grey passed through the city's huge shield grid and his question was immediately answered, exactly as expected.
Torrential rain pounded the airship from all directions. Some of it was deflected by the airship's shield, but plenty of raindrops still pierced through and splattered against the metallic hull. Atlas flicked out his wings and mantled them to cover his body against the rain, but his tail and back were still left exposed.
"Oh!" Jarzyl let out a surprised yelp, but she was mostly protected against the elements by Atlas's body and wings as he lay over her. The young drake winced as freezing water rapidly drenched him. Intense turbulence jostled the airship, shoving it in unpredictable directions as they pushed through layers of violently swirling air. All around them were flashes of illumination as lightning carved through the skies from cloud to cloud--but then a lightning bolt shot towards the airship.
Recursive Grey's shields caught the bolt and they rippled with a tremendous flash of light and sound. Atlas blinked his eyes shut as the shield flared as brightly as if it were day, and he could feel the air itself rumble from the tremendous crack of thunder.
At least he hadn't been deafened, because he heard Jarzyl yell, "Cursed nullfire, that was so cool! We caught a lightning bolt!"
"Why did I let myself get dragged into this?" Atlas muttered. He hesitantly opened his eyes, only for yet another lightning bolt to lance out from a nearby cloud column and towards the airship. Once more the airship's shields flashed with energy, and Atlas found his senses assaulted--the thunder was intensely loud, and the sound waves echoed between the hull and the shield, making all the raindrops ripple. The air rumbled against the sensitive flight surfaces of his wings, like he was flying through the worst turbulence in his life--which in a way, was true. The surge of electromagnetic energy from the lightning bolt made his internal compass spin widely, briefly disrupting his sense of direction.
And as energy poured into the shield, it glowed brilliantly--even with his eyes closed Atlas could still see the light, and faint afterimages of the lightning bolt danced in his visual field. A nocturnal dragon's eyes were extremely sensitive to give night vision, and daylight was too bright to tolerate without some protection. Now it was still early morning and the sun wasn't even up yet, but the lightning was bright enough to hurt. Atlas briefly let go of Jarzyl's shoulder to reach into his harness shoulder pouch and take out his dark goggles, then with a quick, well-practiced motion he slipped them over his head and over his eyes. The goggles had heavily darkened lenses that he normally used at day, though increasingly now they didn't fit him so well.
His lenses were sized only for a smaller fledgling, and now he had started to outgrow them. The design had one strap that went under the chin and one strap that went behind his head, but his horns were increasingly getting in the way of the second strap as they grew in. Sooner or later he'd have to somehow find the money to buy a new pair of goggles, but for now they still barely fit and successfully reduced the brightness of the lightning and shields, allowing him to hesitantly open his eyes.
Even with his eyes protected, it was still a rough ride. Atlas was cold and wet as raindrops continued to splatter his body, soaking into his scales and stealing his body heat. At least the wind was somewhat blocked by the airship's shields, or the wind chill would have made it even worse. Then came a buzzing, droning sound from all around. "What's that now?!" Atlas yelled.
"Hmm. I think that's hail hitting the shields!" Jarzyl replied. She sounded curious and still cheery, possibly because Atlas's wings and body were shielding her from the miserable blunt of the rain.
"Hail?" Atlas muttered. Something cold and wet struck the side of his neck, making him flinch--had that been a tiny chunk of hailstone, punching through the airship shields? Or had it just been a large droplet of water, at freezing temperatures but still liquid? Either was not a fun experience.
Dragons were meant to fly--it was in their culture, in their technology, even in their biology and in their instincts that the sky was their natural home. To have air under the wings was a natural pleasure, but you were not supposed to fly in such conditions. When the sky was thick with cloud and the air grew turbulent and unstable, flying was dangerous. Of course, drakken airships flew by entirely different principles compared to dragons on the wing--airships were powered by crystals, magnets, resonance, and sheer technological arrogance.
But Atlas still felt a stab of instinctual panic from having a storm all around. That primal fear of harsh weather came from a deep part of his mind, because a dragon who did not fear flying in a storm was a dragon who would crash, and crashing was not a good way to ensure your genes were passed on to the next generation. Anyone with reasonable flight instincts feared storms. It was an innate fear, and an entirely reasonable fear even in the modern age.
"Wooooh! This is intense!" Jarzyl cheered, sounding fascinated and thrilled. She didn't sound fearful at all. Or perhaps the fear just made her more excited. She bumped her snout against Atlas's chin and squirmed about under his weight. "You don't get to experience this from a viewing gallery, do you?"
Atlas would have sighed, but he was controlling his breathing to try and keep from shivering. He felt cold all around, except his underside as he lay on top of Jarzyl--she felt warm against him, and instinctually he just wanted to huddle down and hold her. But then abruptly he noticed that the colour of the shields had changed again, going from its previous blue to become a lighter shade of green. "Did... did the colour change?"
"Huh? Oh! Yeah, it did. If they've changed the shield frequency, that means that--" Before Jarzyl even finished her sentence, abruptly all the rain, wind, and even the lightning seemed to stop, as abruptly as it had started. There was only the rumble of the airship as it continued to power along. "Woah. That's it. That's it!" Jarzyl exclaimed.
"What? Explain!!" Atlas demanded.
"We've made it. We're in sector forty-nine. The airship just phased through the sector forty-nine shield!" The rumble of the airship's power cores changed again, and then the shield faded away to reveal the surroundings. Wind washed over them. They were no longer up high in the sky, but were near the ground.
Atlas lifted his dark goggles from his eyes and looked around, at a truly incredible sight. They were in a valley, surrounded by incredibly tall mountains on most sides. But they weren't just normal mountains. "Mizalin-on-Sky!" Jarzyl declared.
While their home was officially called Avaeria, or the City of Wings, it also had an old nickname--the lost mountain--because the flying city resembled a mountain, albeit one that had torn out of the ground to roam amongst the clouds. But here, in Mizalin-on-Sky, was where that was not an abnormal occurrence. Here, mountains were expected to fly.
Past the faint greenish distortion of the new sector's dome shield, the mountainside was formed in jagged, fractal shapes that defied gravity. Normal rock would have collapsed into a pile of rubble, but the mountains contained natural needlemir crystals that let them levitate. As lightning flashed repeatedly and lit up the sky, Atlas saw the huge, imposing shapes of floating hills and mountains. Whenever lightning struck the ground, rocks exploded outwards and floated away into the sky.
Atlas, Jarzyl, and the rest of their schoolmates had been here around a year ago, visiting the floating mountains on an excursion. This was the place where the city had first taken flight many generations ago, and now it had a new piece to be added. Raising his head, Atlas turned his attention from the wild natural landscape to the sight of sector forty-nine below them.
A vast hexagon of shiny metal and grey stone was below them--sector forty-nine, covered in tall buildings and curving streets, all illuminated by the steady glow of artificial lights. The sector was a mere fraction the size of the whole city, but it was still so huge that individual buildings looked like toys. On the roofs of some of the tallest buildings there were spires pouring energy upwards, forming a shield dome to protect against the storm that still raged above, keeping out the rain and hail which poured off the shield's surface in waves.
There was so much activity. Dozens and dozens of airships were in the nearby area, concentrated around the edge of the sector--most had landed and were being connected with the sector via support struts and thick cables, while others were still hovering in the air and waiting for their turn. Teams of dragons moved around with professional precision, working on the landed airships or signalling other airships as they manoeuvred to their own landing locations. With the distance, they looked so small.
It was an operation of astonishing scale. Atlas had known that building a new city sector wasn't easy, but now he saw up the sheer _size_of the construction with his own eyes, and it was breathtaking. "Wow." He couldn't even begin to imagine how much coordination, logistics, and planning went into such a project. So much cost, so much time.
Meanwhile, a passenger transport circled around slowly with dragons eagerly peering through the rows of glass windows of both sides, and another passenger transport was hovering low in a large, open area near the centre of the sector. That area had greenery--presumably a park or garden. As Recursive Grey flew close by the larger transport, Atlas wondered if any of passengers could see the two fledglings as they clung onto the back of the airship. Even if they were spotted, it wouldn't be immediately obvious from afar that they weren't crewmembers.
"What a ride. Did you enjoy it? I enjoyed it." Jarzyl caught his attention when she let go of the hatch handle and abruptly rolled about underneath him so that they were belly to belly, and she was staring up at him. She casually tapped his face with her paw. "Oh wow, you're really wet," she casually noted.
Sometimes--more than sometimes, honestly--quite frequently, Atlas pondered why he let himself get dragged into Jarzyl's wild adventures. He could have insisted they get off this airship before it had launched from the hangar, and even after it had launched, there was plenty of time for them to just jump off and fly away before they'd left the city and entered the storm. Or even further--if he had turned down Jarzyl's invitation to attend the sector launch viewing, his would instead have spent his morning working his part-time job as a librarian, sorting books and updating records. That would have been quiet, peaceful, productive, and earned him some money, but instead he'd ridden the hull of an airship through a storm and gotten thoroughly soaked and chilled. And Jarzyl wouldn't even have hitched a ride onto the airship if he hadn't been there. She would just have been sitting bored in the viewing gallery, probably napping beside her parents.
Atlas lowered his gaze to glare silently. He was very wet. Because his usual habit was to meticulously lick his scales clean, he didn't usually shower, so it had been a long time since he had been quite this soaked. A droplet of water dripped from his chin and landed on Jarzyl's neck.
Jarzyl unsuccessfully held back a chuckle when she saw his expression. "Haha. Hey! I'm wet too."
"Not as wet as me," Atlas said. "I am wet, and I am cold. And this is your fault."
Jarzyl let her neck frill droop, and she gave a wide-eyed, innocent expression. "Why is it my fault?"
Atlas was not swayed. "Because it was your terrible idea to hitch a ride on an airship."
"Hmm, but it was fun. And isn't it worth it to see the sector?" Jarzyl replied. She grinned that deviously mischievous smile of hers, and her neck frill perked up.
Again Atlas contemplated his life choices. Overall, Jarzyl's adventurous curiosity often led to fun and excitement, and a good friendship was something to be treasured, but there definitely ought to be limits on what was considered sensible--he just wasn't sure what those limits were. Yet when she smiled at him, something about her joy was strangely contagious.
Jarzyl interrupted his thoughts when she idly ran her forepaws down his sides, making him shiver slightly--not from the cold, but from the tickle of her claws against his scales. "Hmmrr... Ok, let's get a closer look." Still lying on her back, she used all four paws and pushed Atlas up into a standing position on top of her, then she squirmed downwards, sliding against the smooth metal airship hull to slip right between his hindlegs and out from under him.
Hopping up to a stand, Jarzyl flicked her wings open and glanced around. "Let's go take a closer look at the sector. I want to walk on the streets and perch on the buildings." She pointed at one building that was slightly taller than the surrounding structures. "That, there. Let's go there." Jarzyl scampered forward with wings open, then she glanced back to make sure Atlas was following her.
Atlas continued to provide his mildly disapproving glare for a few more seconds, then he stood up and shook himself all over. He didn't normally like to shake, but he didn't have a towel so it was the only way to get himself at least slightly more dry. Despite a good attempt, his scales still felt heavy from all the moisture clinging to them as he spread his wings.
Together, the two fledglings leapt off from the airship and quickly flew down towards the new city sector.
TO BE CONTINUED