Non-Cemented Back Cover Blurb: On an airship, a girl with a long lost gift lives on the outskirts of polite society. In the back streets of Barthal she runs into the infamous Brockmar, upper echelon's golden boy. Both are too talented for their own good, with zero desire to find each other even exists. However, a warehouse full of stolen property, and an undercover team of separatists have triggered fate to conspire and bring a generational secret to the surface.
Chapter One:
“Turn here...this is the street, I’m sure of it.” Pendle grabbed the hanging strap on the mail truck as it groaned around a corner way too fast for its geometrical shape.
“You said that last time,” grumbled Chris. He looked anxiously into the one surviving mirror in a government vehicle that had been retired and put out to pasture years ago. They weren’t exactly in the greatest part of town, and Pendle wouldn’t say where it was they were going, or even why they were going. He wished her to Sheol for the fiftieth time in as many minutes, because despite looking like a human sized tinkerbell, she was impossible to say no to when she was fired up and hopping around the airship like an agitated firefly.
“It was so much easier in my head,” she admitted ruefully, although not exactly apologetic. She craned her head out the window and scratched her head, peering at one side of the street then the other... none of which was instilling any confidence in her unlucky chauffeur. They trundled past an old falling over sign advertising “Cleaning Services” but the C had fallen off so it just said “Leaning Services”. Pendle bounced up and down and clapped her hands together, “No No, we’re going in the right direction. Go left, go left. This is definitely it. Won’t Dru be surprised?” She leaned forward in her seat. “The warehouse is right behind that loading dock.”
“Oh, he’ll be something, but I ain’t sure the Cap’ns gonna like being surprised.” Chris said, as the truck lurched over a driveway that had long since turned into a weed lot. He was beginning to think that maybe he hadn’t planned entirely properly for this expedition. Neither of them had ever been to Barthal before and the city looked like an old shoe that had been chewed up by a dog and left outside in the yard. “The cap’ns for real not gonna like where we tied down the airship.”
“I thought you did a brilliant job anchoring it,” Pendle said, purposely misunderstanding him. “And Lee and Serene are still there, so it’s not like it won’t be safe and well looked after.” Chris didn’t even bother to reply to this, he gave her a disgusted sideways look. They both knew that the captain had given everyone strict orders to stay on board and keep the ship out of the city, but Pendle had experienced one of her “visions”. It was either go with her or let her go by herself. Chris reflected that perhaps he should have tried harder to talk her out of it, but he’d gotten seriously startled when he saw her try to jam a loaded 560 RUF into her pants. When she started hitting the giant steel docking lock with a wrench, he’d had no choice but to intervene...and go with her. The only concession he’d won was he got to carry the 560. She’d taken them straight to a junkyard where she bought the first derelict vehicle she saw.
Personally, she was rather enjoying making Chris so uncomfortable. If it weren’t for how desperately crunched for time they were, she would have picked an even worse looking vehicle and had some real fun with it. As it was, both men stared at her slack jawed when she climbed into a vintage U.S. Postal Service truck that was four fifths of the way towards transforming back into the earth. She’d just purchased it for fifty bucks and started the engine with no problem. Mystified and not a little dubious, Chris had been reluctant to climb in next to her… so reluctant in fact, that they hadn’t gone two blocks before he loudly demanded she get out and let him drive lest she kill them both before Captain Dru had a chance to do so himself. When he got into the driver’s seat, he threw another hissy fit demanding to know how she’d started a vehicle that had no engine...or tires.
She’d complacently folded her hands in her lap and looked shyly up at the thundering bundle of scowls next to her. “I don’t know exactly...sometimes I just know something is supposed to be done and I find it done.”
To this very unsatisfactory answer, Chris gave a snort and focused on driving. It was bad enough to expect a professionally trained airship pilot like himself to babysit a munning girl, but it was going quite beyond tolerable to pilot around an antique dinosaur of a vehicle with no engine under the hood! He did not abide by this new magic everyone was obsessed with these days. They could all go to munning Sheol with his fervent well wishes.
He slammed the door, his boots crunching over the gravel as he stared up grimly at the “warehouse”. It had more broken windows than intact ones, and he would have expected it to be long abandoned except that there was a new sign on the front that said “Front office. By appointment only.”
Pendle, rather subdued, realized that maybe she’d bitten off more than she could chew. She didn’t know exactly what she was looking for in this warehouse, just that she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt she was supposed to find something important here. She unconsciously stepped closer to Chris, grateful he hadn’t let her leave on her own. Her heart was already pounding hard enough, she couldn’t imagine what it would be doing if she were standing here alone.
Chris looked down at Pendle, not at all impressed that she was nestling under his arm like some sort of munning baby bird. She barely reached up to his shoulder, and his biceps were almost bigger around than her whole body. If there was trouble in the warehouse, she was going to be completely useless. The only bright side, he thought grimly, was that she was small enough he could stand sideways and still shield her.
He definitely wasn’t getting paid well enough for this.
“You gotta plan or are you gonna crawl into my armpit and hide?”
Wrinkling her nose, Pendle stepped away and tossed her chin into the air. “We’ll be fine.” she said “It’s a rug and tapestry store...I looked it up. They don’t close til six.”
He snorted. “Don’t think you can convince me we’re here to rug shop.”
“Nooo….not exactly. I don’t think?” She said, sounding unsure of herself. He threw his eyes up to the heavens. She wasn’t sure if it was in a long lost plea to a higher being, or if he just felt more comfortable in the sky than on solid ground. Stupid men. She was sure if Serene were with her now, they’d already be chatting with the shopkeeper. Maybe.
“You can stay out here if you want,” she called over her shoulder as she pushed open the grimy glass doors.