Lightship Chronicles Chapter 1 : First Horizon Read online

they hire us, people like Jim, and you and me, to take care of them. The Bitani, they just look at them."

  "OK now you're losing me." Andee turns away.

  "Dude, the Bitani don't give a crap about farming, you should know that. We grow all their food. They grow plants up there just to make the place look pretty."

  Shaking his head in disbelief. "You know what, fine. If this is for real then maybe you'll get to see it with your own eyes, but I really don't care right now. I just want to watch the races and enjoy the evening."

  "Dude, you really have changed. You used to be a cool guy. Maybe Dirin is right... fine man. If you're not interested, then you're not interested. Have fun watching the races on your own." And with clear disappointment Gono walks away to rejoin his friends. Andee follows him with his eyes. He seems conflicted. He looks down at his foot. With the tip of his right toe he is mindlessly churning the dirt beneath it. He then looks up, takes a deep breath and glances at Gono and his friends. He was one of them once. He can still feel the times as if they all happened yesterday. With his foot still churning the dirt, he remembers a time when they had no worries, only dreams. Dreams of being lightship pilots and living up in Grand Bitania. Dreams. He looks back at his old group of friends and knows he can no longer dream like that.

  'The hell with it!' He hears the though as a yell in his own head, then turns, and looks up the cliff to his little brother's hideout. It's the perfect spot. Open to the southwest, it has a clear view right down the Old Road, or at least that's what it's called. Some believe that long ago it was a road that led right up the mountain into the city, but nobody respectable though, only the troublemakers think so. Maybe it was, maybe not. It certainly doesn't look like a road any more. Just an uneven rough stone trail, admittedly a very board trail, over 10 meters wide, heading up the side of the mountain starting on its south side. Whether it was a road once or not, doesn't matter. It is now one the first stages of the race. Andee remembered the race. That's why he was here... the race! It was one dream that he could still take comfort in. It didn't matter that he could never be a pilot. He already accepted that. But he could still watch races and see those amazing ships with his own eyes.

  He looks over the small crowd at the floating pylons over the old road. They are 10 meters above the ground, and one kilometer apart. Each vertical cylinder is two meters tall and half a meter wide, with antenna like projections extending horizontally from the top in all directions. The lower half of the cylinder has bands of colored lights. Only the band of bright red, around the middle, is currently glowing meaning there is no race in progress. There is a faint yellow band above which only lights up as a warning during crashes, or other issues. Below the red band there are several more from red to orange, yellow, white, soft green and then bright green at the very bottom which means the race is on.

  The pylons are in fact the race course. Pilots have to stick close to them. The further away a lightship veers from a pylon the more points are lost. Not only are they racing against opponents, but to guarantee a win a pilot has to pass under each pylon no further than 10 meters out on either side. More than once in past races, a pilot finished first only to lose the race because of veering too far off circuit, incurring penalty points. With every 10 meters out from a pylon, a point is lost per pylon, and with 500 to 600 pylons, depending on the circuit setup, that could equal to a lot of lost points. Even with the rule of 1 second for every 100 points, over a full race, especially a 10 lap championship race, many seconds could be lost on penalty points.

  As he walks through the crowd the red glow of the nearest pylon lights up a memory in his mind as fresh as the moment he lived it. It was the first time he saw a lightship up close. It happened four years earlier, at the West Market, when he was Mykee's age. Old Man Tom took him to see the races, and there, on the edge of the market, next to the official stands, the ship of Carpatia's greatest champion was on display. Hektor was a legend, but unfortunately for Andee the champion was long ago retired. For ten years running Hektor was the undisputed winner of every championship race. Now his actual lightship was there to be seen in the West Market. To thirteen year old Andee, it was a sight to behold.

  The old and now retired lightship was a work of art to Andee's eyes that seemed to be powered by magic itself. It floated on an green pillow of light. It was about four meters long and two wide, but only at the front. The front half was made of two parallel prongs that came together at the halfway point, and tapered to one prong at the back. It was shaped somewhat like a tuning fork. The pilot's bubble was hexagonal, made of flat panes of glass in metal frames, all around, top and bottom. It was attached to the ship in the center of the "tuning fork" by shock absorbers. The ship was black with green accents and racing stripes. It was one of the few lightships with hardly any curves, only hard angular edges. Most of the sharp edges were painted in bright green, some hard, some fading, and some jagged zig-zags.

  Andee can still see the ship in his mind's eye, as if physically right there, right now, on the outcrop, right in front of him--a man in a blue hood and a draping blue robe is standing on the other side of Hektor's ship, looking right at Andee. Startled, Andee shivers shaking his head and widening his eyes as he snaps out of his daydream, and when he refocuses on the spot... there's no one there. He concentrates on the area where he thought he saw the man, but there is no one near by. He nervously starts looking around the outcrop. Everyone is gathered near the southern edge for the best view. There is no one close enough to have stood where the man was just a fraction of a second before.

  "Wow! Weird." He mumbles out loud, his brow stiffening into a frown, as he continues looking around. After a moment he stops his search, takes a deep resigned breath, and shakes off the strange event. He looks up to Mykee's hidden spot. A smirk of a smile softens his face. He heads towards his brother. His mind quickly goes back to the awe he felt when he was thirteen. 'How could those ships float in the air like that?' His internal dialogue quickly takes over. He remembers trying to listen for some kind of engine noise that day, but there was nothing, only silence. 'And the light pillow? It was both beautiful and eerie, streaming down from the underside of the ship like green misty rain. It wasn't just plain light, it seemed to streak, to stream, to move and spark, so strange, yet so beautiful and amazing...' But a hard bump into Andee's left shoulder stops him in his tracks and snaps his mind back in focus, and as it does, he notices a faint blue-hooded images flash past him out of the corner of his left eye.

  "I'm sorry man, I..." Andee apologizes to the man he must have bumped into, while quickly turning towards him, only to be left stumped, stiff, and jaw-dropped. He looks at the spot where the man he bumped should be... but no one is there. In fact, there is no one anywhere close enough to have bumped into. He looks around bewildered.

  "What the hell?" Andee blurbs out loud as he spins three sixty on the spot looking baffled. 'OK, I swear I saw a guy in a blue hood. I just bumped into him.' He hears himself in his own head. He continues looking around while his internal dialogue goes berserk, struggling to figure out what happened. 'What the hell did I bump into? Am I crazy?' Andee's face contorts into a grimace of confusion. He is still looking around hoping to find the man in the blue hood. He looks at his shoulder. 'Did I imagine... No. The bump was hard. It stopped me. And the blue hood. I wasn't looking at it, but... damn-it, I saw it! I saw it out of the corner of my eye, just as I bumped into him. Where the hell is he?' Andee looks around a bit more, but nothing. No one on the outcrop has anything even resembling a blue hood, with a long blue robe.

  Flustered, he rushes to the stone wall and starts climbing up to Mykee. "Is there room for one more up there?" Andee's voice announces his presence a moment before he comes into Mykee's view.

  "Yeah there's room. What happened? Why aren't you hanging out with Gono and your old buddies?"

  "I want to hang out with you."

  "Yeah right, whatever."

  "Mykee do me a favor. Can you look down
over the crowd?"

  Mykee turns over his right shoulder. "Why?"

  "Can you see anyone wearing a bright blue hood, and robe, or something like that down there?"

  Mykee frowns at Andee, but then inspects the crowd below. There are between 50 and 60 people on the large outcrop. He looks and looks. Everyone's got variations of the typical Carpati style of pants and shirts. Most are earth toned, only a few are colorful, and most are made of a combination of rough lather and linen. Some are solid, but many are made of inch wide strips, that are cross-woven either in a horizontal mesh, or diagonal. Many are also wearing the typical desert jacket that's so common amongst the Carpati, which does have a hood, but a stiff wide hood that hangs flat against the upper back and shoulders. There is also a second under-layer, under the 'hood', that is in fact a cape, most reaching to the back of the legs. Almost all the jackets are in earth tones like the Alcama leather they are made from, and there's not a single blue robe with a hood in sight.

  "I don't see it. Who you looking for?"

  "I don't know. It's just... really strange, never mind."

  Mykee looks at him a bit perplexed, then shrugs his shoulders