John Ringo - Emerald Sea

To take her mind off of it, she decided to brave the dragon’s wrath.

“Joanna!” she yelled. “Can you hear me?”

“Yes,” the dragon rumbled in reply, without turning her head. “But if you think I’m going to look you in the eye you need to stop reading fantasies. Flying is hard enough without having to look backwards!”

“That’s fine,” Rachel shouted back. “Can I ask you a personal question?”

“You can ask,” the dragon said.

“Are you always this touchy or is there something in particular that has you pissed off?”

Rachel felt the seat under her shaking and clutched at the grab-straps, but after a moment she realized that it was just the dragon laughing.

“A little of both,” Joanna admitted. “I’ve been called a bitch before, plenty of times. But this mission has me ticked in a major way.”

“Why?” Rachel yelled. “Southern skies, warm seas, tropical sun…”

“Long damned flight,” Joanna admitted. “We don’t get to go on a pleasure cruise. The ship’s supposedly set up to let us land from, but my guess is we’re going to have to fly most of the way. That’s like doing a five, six, ten day marathon . We can do it, but it’s still a pain in the ass.”

“Oh.”

“And that’s not all,” Joanna said, warming to the subject. “What the hell are we going to eat? The ship we’re meeting can’t possibly carry enough fresh meat for us for the whole trip. So that means, what? Salt beef? Fish? Raw fish? I hate sushi!”

“Sorry!”

“Not your fault,” Joanna said. “I hate this Fallen world. I want to be able to Change . Any time I want. I want to eat chocolate .”

Rachel just nodded at that; she felt the same way.

For that matter, if she was in the pre-Fall days, even riding like this, she could have her gas bypassed rather than be impolite. Oh, well, at least geneticists had long ago fixed the smell problem.

“Damn thing,” Joanna muttered.

“What?” Rachel shouted back. Due to the rush of the wind, Rachel had to shout but any statement from the dragon was fairly clear.

“Oh, nothing,” the dragon replied. “Your boyfriend’s mount is riding my slipstream. It’s just an extra weight to pull.”

Rachel looked from side to side and noticed that the other dragons had spread out in a v, with the exception of Herzer.

“He’s not controlling his mount!” she pointed out.

“I know, it’s just Chauncey being lazy. Doesn’t mean I have to like it.”

“Why are the other ones in a v?” Rachel yelled. “They look like they’re going to run into each other.”

“Slipstream again,” Joanna answered. “There’s a low-pressure area that passes out to either side. Ever see geese fly over?”

“Plenty of times.”

“Same thing. That doesn’t drag directly on me, though, like Chauncey is. Damn idiot wyvern.”

They continued in a slow spiral upward, riding the thermal and the power of the slowly flapping wings for what seemed half the morning. But by the rise of the sun it couldn’t have been more than a half an hour. Finally, Rachel felt a drop, more a feeling of lightness.

“Top of the thermal,” Joanna said, banking to the east. “I got at least three thousand meters out of it, which is pretty good for a morning in October.”

Rachel had been avidly looking at the view in the distance but at those words she looked down. And then screwed her eyes tight shut and grabbed at the straps.

“Don’t look down,” Joanna chuckled.

“Too late,” Rachel replied.

“Oh, what the hell is that idiot doing?” Joanna growled.

Herzer had realized during the climb-out that Chauncey was riding the bigger dragon’s slipstream. But he for sure wasn’t going to try to mess with a spiraling climb. However, when the dragons lined out and glided into the sun, he decided that it was worth seeing if he could shift down the line. The worst that was going to happen was that he would release Chauncey and the wyvern would go back to his accustomed place.

There remained one problem. He was directly behind Joanna, no more than twenty meters. Her tail actually whipped back and forth past Chauncey’s nose, close enough to nearly hit it. The tail end of the extended V formation of the wyverns was actually behind his present position. Which meant that he would have to slow down, then catch back up. He knew neither command.

Going on a hunch, he slowly pulled back on the climbing reins until the slack was out, then pulled back on those and the diving reins, very slightly. His clamp held the reins snugly but he was always careful not to flex too hard lest he cut the reins like snapping a twig.

Herzer wasn’t even sure what Chauncey did, but they began to drift backwards from the larger dragon, while staying more or less at the same height. He was actually dropping slightly below her, but staying on an even keel, not in a “dive” or whatever.

Herzer let back out on the reins and then pulled, ever so slightly, on the left rein. Obediently, Chauncey entered a slight bank to the left, but they also began to lose height. Herzer loosened up on the rein, pulled a bit to the right, and shortly found himself just outside the left-most of the riders on more or less the same heading. Unfortunately, he was about sixty meters below the wyvern and nearly a hundred behind.

Oh, well.

The rider just happened to be Vickie and he could hear her shouting at him, but he wasn’t sure what she could do about his experimentation.

The problem was simple. He had to get up to their level and get Chauncey to speed up so that he could enter the proper formation. They were now, steadily, pulling ahead of him and either gaining altitude or he was losing it in comparison. But Chauncey seemed content to obey orders and follow the present course. Despite the fact that it was the wrong one.

He pulled, gently, on both up reins. All that did was cause him to lose more ground, but they did gain some height, briefly. Then Chauncey pulled against the reins and reentered the glide. Herzer suddenly remembered a term “stall speed” and wondered, briefly, just how close he had come to making the dragon “crash.” If such a thing was possible.

He suddenly had a very clear vision of a tree limb in his face. Shortly after the Fall he had been one of the people chosen, because he had some limited riding experience, to “help out” with a round-up of feral animals. While he had been trying to keep a boar from killing a female friend, Diablo had jumped over the spitted boar and Herzer’s forehead had impacted a tree limb at nearly a full gallop.

The recovery had been slow and painful. But if he screwed up this ride, he was looking at a several-thousand-meter fall. That was not even vaguely survivable.

But he really needed to catch up to the formation.

“Up, Chauncey,” he yelled. “Go! Forward! Hut! Hut!” There didn’t seem to be any way to beat at him. He’d never really seen the riders make any motions except small rein movements.

But. His boot was actually over skin, not on the saddle. He doubted that was unintentional.

“Hi, Chauncey,” he yelled, digging his boot into the side of the dragon as hard as he could.

The startled wyvern began flapping its wings, rapidly gaining speed. So rapidly that the formation was coming up much too quickly. And he was still slightly below it.

“Up!” he called, pulling back on the reins. At the last moment he checked his instinctive reaction to yank back and instead applied a gentle pressure, as if he was trying to get Diablo to go to a moderately slower gallop.

The control worked, Chauncey adjusted his angle of flight and went upward, losing some forward speed at the same time, but when they returned to level flight, by simply letting out on the reins, they were above and past the formation. Also slightly farther out to the left and he had no idea how that had happened.