Alien Pirate Pann (Chapter 10)

The land cruiser the crew had acquired and the few supplies they brought with them would get them to wherever Pacno was to lead them, however they first needed to head back to the ship to load the flying pods onto the cruiser's attached hauling unit without being too noticed.

Zoic tried to ignore the one thing that was gnawing at his thoughts. "Was there a wizard that betrayed anyone at Stee?" Zoic finally asked Pacno.

"Yeah that," he laughed. "It's a long story, but there was a spacecraft that was bound for Arcan, long time ago now. I was on that ship though I was much younger then. When the people who had hoped to live here without the death-grip of the Evil One and found that it was actually worse here or had gotten worse, they wanted to use the starship to search for another world."

Zoic was suddenly aware that this was the ship Khom had mentioned as never returning.

"From Arca the ship came here, and with it more survivors as it were..." Zoic stated.

"Yes," Pacno answered. "They know that the ship was hidden away, something like that was already a target. Many of the craft of the Great Three Worlds were being seized by the Evil One. And had begun to be gathered and used to do evil deeds. The wizard was the ship's last pilot. He was often, in his day, among the Elders of Fiod. Your home world."

"There's only one question that remains then," Zoic mused. "Why would those folk back there believe you to be the wizard and why do they feel betrayed?"

 

The air was still and barely stirred with a breeze. They would go quietly to retrieve the pods and get them covered well and head out. Standing and looking out from the lookout point they lingered and waited at, they readied themselves to move under the blanket of night.

Finally Pacno gave clarity to the crew's restless thoughts.

"The last pilot of the ship that never returned to Arca, was my father. And when we landed and all the passengers left to form new colonies and such, we stayed with the ship as my father knew there was something amiss. This escape world became the focus of the Evil One and his elemental goons. So my dad hid the ship. And when the people realized what was happening and that what they escaped just followed, they wanted to board the ship that bore them here, to escape again. But by then it wasn't possible."

 

Zoic, with these new revelations, asked calmly. "What about the core element of the ship?"

"The stone you're looking for is where I'm leading you to, minus the ship for I, myself, don't know its whereabouts. But I can take you to what you seek." Pacno smiled.

"If the ship is still to be found, that would also come in helpful." Rainier said.

"Indeed it would." Zoic agreed.

There were layers to Arca 748. There was the outer layer where the seas and solid country were settled. But there were other layers in the geometric sphere of this planet that was never present to any of the crew's own worlds. Pacno spoke of the spaceships able to travel between worlds for the lack of the layers and outer shell that eventually came to prevent any further outside travel. And as the crew already knew, rare it was traveling between worlds of their own.

Nackendara and Ackea were used to traveling across landscapes and settled into the cruiser that emitted the voices from some isolated base, reporting on weather conditions in the area. Pacno and the crew were soon on their way. They were heading for another destination that went over a mountain range and to another sea port. A more vast and brutal sea than the one they had sailed. But it was the mountain range that Zoic honed in on and through a series of recalled instructions and the detailed accounts of his fellow sages, the lone dwelling of stone and tree had an ever burning fire pit within its walls. And as they stopped short outside its line of sight, Zoic knew the elemental stone was there. Taking out the flying pods, they arranged a line-up of who would follow, who would be the distraction, and who would retrieve the stone. The dwelling shown to be abandoned but it was watched.

 

Flying in formation of three, Zoic swooped in and Nackendara disembarked from the second pod as it positioned ahead to keep a visual line for their escape. Nackendara hastened to the cabin and quickly threw open the gate and then the door which were both non-functional. The single fire at a far end wall was the treasure they sought. Covered in white ash and crumbling, charred wood she quickly scooped it up, and wrapped it in the warm over-covering of her gear, securing it as the guards in land vehicles rushed to the perimeters. By then Nackendara was already pulled up into the third pod as they made their hasty escape. The guards ran out and opened fire at the tiny ships in the sky. The crew had obtained something that was still under guard after many thousands of years. They were stunned at how easily they pulled it off.

Pacno gestured a salute and pointed at Zoic. "You really are at full capacity here, while this world yet stumbles around in half life and half death."

"We'll fly over the mass ocean of Hebbura to avoid the desolation of the Hollow Flats, a complete dead zone where any living being ends up never heard from again. It's can be seen from a distance but getting near it, you'd best stay clear of any droning beats, humming or otherwise. It's called a dead zone for a reason." Pacno instructed. "The only ones of legend known to survive it, brought stories to speak out into its inverted space, or a song, and even the ocean we must cross can facilitate any thought or spoken lament. Even a simple greeting is manifested and if these places, these waters, find any apprehension it won't be good." The crew knew all too well of the energies of the planets, and the living rhythms within them. This was no different except in this world, it was almost completely taken over by the dark forces of Dokk's draining design. Everywhere seemed to be shaped and built in a way as to take life. Not give it.

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Crash and lost crew members. (edited now, adjusted storyline a tad, finish typing out later)

 

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"What would you tell, from such a ship as this? Such a hopeless quest this? Pacno asked, in the vein of reflection of what all she and the crew had heard. And after such a harrowing experience. "Tell the story of the sea, in all its enormity. Give it a proper log of events and its spiritual essence. Speak words that may echo and give it a sense of surrender and honest lament that will grant us passage."

"What does it mean?" Zoic began. "The nice man said that we made it through thousands of years of empires and rebellions and revolutions. And here we are. Then I recalled the promises of things to be then. And that the ghosts of ghouls still found a way to crawl back up through the ground..."

 

Nackendara picked up the line of thought. "The deep and the dark wasn't gone. I could find ways to defeat that entity if only given the opportunity. Alas, the shell of me that has sailed through many years, and the thousand years I've wandered as a fire-ghost, finds me on a driftwood ship of little yard and mast. Hopeful words, still just thin air through seas harsh and stirred-up. And the wild evil still utters words to fall on all ears as they ever do. And the wooden planks and rusty iron holding fraying ropes and an anchor lost forty meters down, I cast off the last line. I am bracing."

Rainier spoke up. "There is no star under the waves of cloud and haze. And I've noticed before the coral and mineral deposits have grown around my feet and knees. The blade failed to free me from the nature of these waters. And failed to chip away what has clung to me and formed to me like a second skin. And I have wondered how would I move through now?"

 

Nackendara continued. "The deformation of such a time that turns always back to this. The escape of dreams never holds long. I struggle with the grip of this rigidity, well-accustomed-to torment. The ship sinks further into the endless, the unknown that I have spoken of during that same thousand years."

 

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