Thread: The Secrets of Caelcelium [Kaybee & Lord Havelock]

I wonder how we could ever have lost something so damn big... Muttered the blonde as she slowly guided her craft towards the outdated docking ports. To call the thing a ship almost seemed like a disservice for the thing was the size of a small city but a ship it was, a massive feat of engineering that hung in the sky too high for the naked eye to see more than a speck of it's majesty. On the side in great brass letters was writ the name Caelcelium but in truth, the ship could hardly be anything else. The old baron had built something one of a kind when he created it and few people had managed to replicate even half of it's inner workings. The marvel of the mechanisms behind the craft was somewhat lost on Eileen however. Every adventuress and adventurer searched the skies for Caelcelium at some point or another in their careers, be it at the behest of another or for themselves, and all of them had different reasons. The baron had spent a fortune in the creation but there had been much more to his fortune and all of it had disappeared into the ship, withdrawn from banks and taken from private coffers and all of it loaded aboard. Hardly a fraction of it had ever returned in the form of payments for supplies and materials and the rest was somewhere aboard. It was that promise of riches she'd come for, that she'd searched the currents of the wind for so long to find. Her heartbeat hastened as she donned her coat, checking the pockets for the tools of her trade before she pulled fur-lined leather gloves over her hands and buttoned up the front of the garment against the cold of the upper atmosphere. She stepped out of her ship and onto a walkway, metal guardrails rimed with frost beneath her hands as the wind struck her, whistling in her ears and undercut by a faint buzzing. She stopped... Her first thought being an automated defense of some sort, or a trap, but the buzzing was maddeningly familiar, and a moment later she leapt forwards, away from her ship as a rattle of gunfire sounded harsh in the frozen air, great holes that spilled the lifting gas of the balloon with ease appearing in the envelope as a raucous laugh reached the soldier's ears, a two-engine plane speeding over her head with a roar. It had been too easy for Romana to sneak up and render the other woman's airship into an unflyable cabin and engines and as she hurtled overhead she saw that she hadn't managed to catch Eileen inside as a familiar head of blonde hair scrambled for the doors. The soldier would be inside before she could come around for another pass but she had been planning on entering the mad baron's sanctuary herself, intent on both the riches and the technology to be found within. She circled again, looking for a runway or a hangar she could make a landing in only to hear a 'thunk from the right wing as Eileen's grappling hook dug into the plane. The soldier couldn't hope that the cord would hold for very long but it would drag Romana's beloved craft off course and into the side of the larger ship. Of course things were never that easy, and a moment later an ejector seat crashed through the pilot's canopy. Above the Caelcelium Romana deployed a parachute, shaped by her own design to have rudimentary steering. She swooped in towards the larger ship, diving as best she could to avoid the fickle winds that blew in these high places and unstrapped herself as she swung in, rolling to a rest just inside the same entrance as Eileen had stepped through. The two of them stared at each other a moment and then both exclaimed. You blew up my ship!