The Clutch (A bar for airship pirates, ragamuffins and other law breakers)

[Alexis Voltaire]

Horatio steered a course for the direction Brantley had given, and in a few minutes another portal was visible far in the distance.

"Makes more sense than anything I've heard so far." He said after Brantley's explanation of the 'oddness' of the ship's design. "I've been on this ship for more than a few years and I still don't understand half of it."

He looked at Arthur for a moment before answering his earlier question, something between wariness and indecision in his expression. "Well, as far as where the device came from, there isn't really time for the full story. I hijacked the ship from a group of people that were trying to sell out to the martians. They were trying to convince people that the martians wanted peace, and it almost worked... Since then, mostly tried to keep from getting into enough trouble to be noticed by the authorities." He sounded casual enough, but there was a slightly awkward tone to his voice, as though he might be trying to avoid saying something, or saying too much.

They passed through the next portal much as they had through the first, and a new landscape appeared before them. The sky overhead was a dull overcast gray, the clouds low, but not dark enough to look like rain. The atmosphere was humid and autumn-like, and the slight breeze blowing through the broken window was not exactly cold or warm. The first odd thing Horatio noticed as he started to descend to find a place to land was a sickly sweet smell in the air, mixed with a sharp scent like old dry dust and decay.

Horatio watched the ground come steadily closer through the landing mirrors, but it was soon apparent that something wasn't right. The ground below had at first appeared to be gray from ash or simply dead plant life, but as they drew closer the smell became almost overpoweringly strong. Everything in sight, for miles in every direction, apparently, was covered in masses of threadlike filaments of mold.

Foot-tall stalklike structures stuck out of the gray in clusters, each topped by a large bulb. The wind bent and swayed them slightly, and spores could be seen drifting from them like misty smoke.

There were signs of green here and there, where a few stray strands of grass poked through the cottony mass, and a skeleton tree tried to put out a few pale leaves, but they were quickly succumbing to the growth of the mold. Even the nearby waterway was choked with thick soggy mats of the stuff. The shapes of what had once been a fence alongside a road, and a few buildings could be made out, but they too were fuzzy and indistinct.

"What the...?" he asked no one in general, pulling a lever back a bit too sharply as he checked the Wyvern's descent. The ship jolted upward and started to rise again, up toward the clouds...

[The Corsair]

He looked out at the parody of life that the mold sustained...

"I recognise that..." He began. He was cut off slightly by the sharp upward jolt, but he quickly resumed his statement.
"Back home I was doin' a bit o' work for a mobster that had something of a scientific facility. I was snoopin' a little and came across something just like that... It'd wiped the whole lab's worth of plants, and this was in a lab designing extra-durable plants... I destroyed it of course, he wasn't too pleased, but in this..." He struggled to find the right word, he settled for: "Dimension, it obviously wasn't destroyed..."

As the end of his tale trailed off they were just rising into the clouds. The first thing he saw was an outrageously large zeppelin airship. They were definitely in Germany it seemed. On top of the zeppelin was a large flat... runway?
His suspicion was confirmed when a Fokker biplane landed shakily on top of the zeppelin.
It was then that he noticed the sounds of battle around him. Having lived in slums until his late teens he'd seen his fair share of gunfights but nothing on this scale.
"The Great War..." he half-whispered.
His best guess was they were in some different history where the Great War was playing out in the skies. Diggin trenches down in the mold would have been a fruitless venture.

As he realised where they were a large explosion took place somewhere above them on their Starboard side, soon followed by a massive building shrouded in smoke and flames with copious amounts of propellers and airbags about its base plummeted past them close enough for it to rattle the Wyvern slightly.

It was The Great War and they had just found no-man's land.

[AlegrahEredschtadt]

She blinked, then jumped up, exclaiming, an odd outburst, "Germany! And a war! Ohh, there'll be deaths won't there? How absolutely lovely!" Her eyes grew wide with morbid fascination, her obsession with those who have passed beyond the mortal coil obvious.
After a moment, she blinked as if remembering herself. "Oh."

[The Corsair]

Her excitement was, in a way, cute, he thought.
I guess it'd make graverobbin' easier... he mused

He saw some men in bizarre flying suits swooping from a French ship to a German Zeppelin. A large flotilla of airships fought with machine guns and missiles, aiming for the envelopes of the enemy. On the flying buildings men ran and shouted in a cataclysmic street brawl, reduced to stabs and punches in many areas.

"my guess is we've found some French town-" he was cut off by a disembodied announcement in French
"the Germans will not have Verdun this day!"
"that solves that mystery. We should head away from the frontline before we go portal hoppin' again."

It was then he noticed the German squadron cross in front of them and come about to begin an attack run...

[Alexis Voltaire]

Horatio steered the ship out of the way of the turbulence that followed the falling structure, or most of it, anyway. He had little time to react when he noticed the German squadron turn for an attack, certainly no time to outmaneuver or outrun them.

He threw on of the levers on the far left side of the dash all the way forward, and a loud, high pitched whining hum started from somewhere below. A prickly feeling like static in the air indicated that a charge was building, and soon a faint electrical blue corona could be made out all around the edges of the ship. He reached automatically for the aiming apparatus, before remembering that it wasn't working. It might not matter anyway, this close and with a small, fast moving target.

The planes opened fire, the bright flash of their gun muzzles clearly visible. Any second he expected a storm of bullets to tear through the cabin, and he hoped that the planes would be just close enough to--

There was a blinding flash and a deafening crack half a second later, and a brilliant arc shot out from the ship and grounded on one of the planes in the squadron. Blue arcs could be seen momentarily on the wires between the wings, and the engine exploded into orange fire, leaving only fragments of wreckage.

There was a quick series of loud metallic thunks overhead, a few rounds hitting the deck above as the planes roared overhead. The electrical charge was building again, but not fast enough, and there was no way they could hope to take out the rest before the Wyvern was shot down... The planes circled around again, splitting up now and attacking from separate directions.

Burst of fire missed them by less than a few feet, and the arc again found one of the planes that came a bit too close, and jumped to another plane that was just a few yards away from it, causing the first to explode and setting the other on fire. The remaining planes drew back, but they had evidently realized that the Wyvern's strange weapon worked only at close range, and that the ship itself was not very fast or agile.

Horatio quickly started to turn the ship and angled the props forward as fast as he could, but just as the German planes began their attack, four more planes, these ones apparently French, roared overhead directly for the Germans, guns blazing. The German planes scattered, but not before another was hit and going down.

Horatio breathed a tense sigh of relief, pulling back the lever to power down the Wyvern's strange weapon. "That was close."

[MWBailey]

Brantley shoved past the others, struggling to get to the Travelling controls before the German fighters turned and opened fire again, but without knocking anyone down. "Beg your pardon, Arthur, OOPS, sorry, Cap'n Carton; Whoa! Mind you don't fall, Miss Alegrah!" He finally reached the blackbox conglomeration and flipped past two leaves of the cigarette case, just as the remainer of teh squadron banked and came around again, and thumbed a slider and flipped a toggle, and the sphere from the first portal transition popped into being around the ship just as two or three slugs hit the sides. The rest sparked and flashed ineffectually on the outside of the sphere, and a small hand-bomb bounced off and plummetted into the depths to explode in midair far below.

"Go ahead and shoot back, if you want to," Brantley said, breathing a bit heavily, "weapons fire from within can exit the sphere, as can any of us, but neither the bullets nor we can get in again unless I make a hole in the field. Just be sure you don't kill the leader, he's the one in the black triplane with the eagle on the rudder. Kill him and causality has to take another blind leap to who knows what end..."

CRASH! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEE...

The aforementioned Triplane crashed into the sphere just as Brantley finished his warning, throwing teh pilot clear...and down into the void...

"AW, Gawd." Brantley sighed, rolling his eyes, "Sally's gonna KILL me. AGAIN..."

[The Corsair]

He gave Brantley a somewhat puzzled look at his comment about having a supposed second death at the hands of 'Sally', though given recent events it didn't phase him too much.

"That was exciting! um... would you happen to have a pintle-mounted something anywhere on this thing? it might pay to have someone that runs to such an installment should another squad pop out of nowhere."

How did they think we were the enemy? Please tell me we don't look like Frenchmen

[AlegrahEredschtadt]

She quickly made sure to compose herself, frowning as her arms crossed. "I'd say we don't. And with our varying accents, I'd certainly hope they're not idiot enough to attack us."

[MWBailey]

"Depends on what we do in the next few minutes, I'd imagine, " Brantley said. "Capn Horatio, do we have a Union Jack or an American flag aboard somewhere?

[The Corsair]

"That'd mark us out as an enemy to the Germans though... Do you have a Swiss flag?"

[Alexis Voltaire]

"It might be a little late to be worried about looking like an enemy to the Germans," Horatio replied, looking out at the reforming French squadron. "we just blew up two of their planes and crashed another couple. But yes, I've got an American flag here somewhere..." He told where it was after a moment of thought, and in a few moments the stars and stripes were flying from the short angled flagpole at the rear of the upper deck.

By now most of the battle had moved to the east and north and away from the floating city. He slowed the ship to a steady hover, and waited to see what the others would do...

[CorneliaCarton]

Cornelia had barely payed attaention up until they mentioned that they were in Germany, and she perked up.
She spoke German.
"I can talk to them if you wish, tell them that we're just passing through. If you want..." She trailed off, looking shyly around.

[MWBailey]

"That might be useful, Cap'n Carton," Brantley said, "if we can't get them to converse in English or French. Does anybody here speak French?"

"Captain, if you have a wireless transceiver capable of doing so, please tune it to six hundred, twenty-seven Megahertz, and let us begin by broadcasting in English. Let us say that we are an experimental craft en route to a secret location, and that we only fired to defend ourselves. That's the literal truth, in fact, its just that our destination's on a different plane...

"Try English first, then French (if we have any french speakers), then let's give Cap'n Carton a chance with German, if they don't understand either of those. Their radio tech is probably low, so don't be surprised if there is no answer for a bit..."

[The Corsair]

"I have patchy French... the 'use in an emergency' sort..."

They were a fair way away from the air engagement by now, but were still above buildings with plenty of street fighting happening.
Every so often someone would find themselves up against the railing on a street edge in some fist fight before being pushed over. he couldn't hear the shouts but he'd heard them before and his mind filled in the blanks. The awful death scream of someone who's last experience of life is the sickening plummeting feeling combined with the inescapable reality that they are about to die. It never left your mind, especially if you had caused it before...

[AlegrahEredschtadt]

Alegrah nodded pertly. "I've got a bit of French up my sleeve, as well."

[Alexis Voltaire]

"I've got a radio that'll work for that, but the range isn't that good." Horatio said, reaching under the dash for a switch, and them leaning far to the right to turn on the rarely-used radio set.

Tuning it to the proper frequency, he sent out the message Brantley had suggested in english, and Arthur and Alegrah sent out something similar in French. Horatio knew a few words in most languages common in the air, but most of them not more than enough to sent a distress call.

Two planes from the french squadron circled them several times, but made no threatening moves, they seemed to be keeping watch until some one else appeared. Someone did a few minutes later, from the direction of the floating city. A small blimp, with fog-gray skin that hid it from view until it was almost underneath them, rose up out of the clouds. It appeared to be a simple scout craft.

Horatio sent the message again on the short range set. A response came quickly, in accented but understandable english, and the tone seemed friendly enough. "Understood, Wyvern. Do you require assistance or a place to dock?"

"Negative, will proceed on course... Just a moment." he turned off the switch, and turned to Brantley. "What is our course going to be, by the way? Should we ask about any enemy positions, so we don't run into more trouble?"

[MWBailey]

"That might be a good idea," Brantley said, "and if they have misgivings about sharing that information, add that this is an 'Aunt Sally' Mission. sometimes that works, sometimes not. If they've had dealings with an agent like me before, it might open a few doors."

[The Corsair]

"if we need to lay low for a little while I say we head to the Netherlands. I have decent dutch ad it's well clear of the fighting if our own history is anything to go by."

Collaboratively they seemed to have enough linguistic knowledge to start an international diplomatic organisation.

[MWBailey]

Only a few miles away, but aeons ahead in the future and several dimensions apart, A little gray-headed man rode a tiny elevator-type conveyance down what seemed like a collossally huge wall lined with file tomes, all of which seemed perfectly maintained and appeared perfectly identical, save for the alphanumeric codes on their spines.

Head Librarian Anton Rashid replaced one such tome in its proper place, and removed its neighbor from its cubbyhole, dropping it onto a brass-winged tray, to which he then securely strapped the tome. and said to it, "Committee Chair Sally, urgent." The tray spouted yellow metallic birdlike legs and feet and srang up from the deck of the elevator ladder, flapped its wings furiously, and vanished in a flash of green light and greyish smoke.

Most of the files in common everyday use had been datascoped years before, but here in the gigantically-deep antesubbasement annex of the Grand Library of the AUNTSALLI Committee resided the most ancient of files and texts, those whose relevant timelines had been decided and catalogued and set more or less in stone for decades, even centuries in some cases. These files details never changed, unless something happened that was  really drastic -- or, unless someone did something really, really stupid.

Suddenly, the entire stacks upon which the elevator ladder rode trembled and shook with a roar like an earthquake as an entire section of texts farther along the wall shimmered and seemed to rearrange themselves, before the greater part of them (millions upon millions) plummetted to the floor almost a mile below.

"WHAT?! not ANOTHER Causal quake?!" Rashid thundered as he threw caution to the wind and descended the wall at full speed, then raced the motorized ladder to the base of the gigantic pile of Texts concerning a certain dimension's version of WWI. leaping clear, remarkably agilely for such a decrepit old  fellow, Rashid ran over, picked up a text and read the Agents Particulars page, and then screamed louder than any human should be able to do: "NOT again!

BRANTLEEEEYYYYYYyyyyyyyy.....!!!"

Approximately twelve standard minutes later, several worlds away, Brantley's cigarette case began to ring loudly...

[The Corsair]

Brantleys cigarette case began ringing loudly again as it had done in the clutch some ridiculous number of years later and dimensions to the left.

He braced himself for more bizarre scenarios popping out of the cigarette case but was somewhat excited to possibly discover a little more of brantleys awkwardly indescribable profession

[MWBailey]

"Brantley. Marius." Sally's voice was quiet and at once placating and reproachful, a combination that any seasoned veteran of the AUNTSALLI organization knew was a very bad and possibly deadly sign. The fact that she wanted to conduct the reprimand in Conference Mode, i.e., so that Brantley as well as his companions could hear, just made it that much worse. "Please try and understand. The Grand Library is not like some tiny city branch location where the stacks are only eight feet tall. Our stacks are over three miles high, and stretch off into various RDHS's (Relative-Dimension Holding spaces). Over one hundred such RDHS's comprise the antesubbasement annex."

"Yes, I know how big the Grand Library and antesubbasement annex ar--!"

Did you also know that the Causal Timeline Tomes for the Earthly First World War take up ove rthree hundred whole sections of the ASB? did you know that not just the one whose collapse Rashid investigated were thrust bodily from their shelves? Did You Know That They Will All Have To Be De-Entropized Before We Can Restack Them?

"AH--"

"DID YOU KNOW THAT THAT MEANS WE CANNOT HELP YOU WITH THE CURRENT SITUATION?" Sally shouted through the connection. DO WHAT YOU CAN, HOWEVER YOU CAN, THEN PROCEED TO YOUR ORIGINAL OBJECTION!

"Er, you mean, er, Objective?"

"BLOODY YES! I DO! TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE! PUN INTENDED AND NOT AS WELL!"

Sally's voice returned to a girlish, almost apologetically silky normal an instant later.

"Brantley?"

"Y-yes, Sally?"

"Oh, dear, I did it again, didn't I? Brantley, dearest, please pick up the earpiece and cancel Conference Mode."

"Yes...I know you do, Sally, you just have such a heavy responsibility." Brantley said into th ecigarette case a bit later. "Yes, I do.... OK... I love you, too, Sally...I will...farewell fo rnow, Love...*click*

"Ahem..." Brantley composed himself, then, and said, "Right. Well, lets sit pat and wait. maybe the Leaders will come to us..."

[The Corsair]

A silence hung about them. The sort that seems to broadcast a 'what in god's name just happened' message.

With the minimal knowledge he had of Brantley's line of work and of his superior, or superiors, 'Sally' he could only really discern that something was wrong, Brantley had screwed something up and it was somehow related to something he'd down here, possibly the defence he had put up earlier.

"I'm happy with waiting" he sighed

[Alexis Voltaire]

Horatio turned the radio back on, and after a short discussion, the scout radioed to base, and agreed to give them information on the known layout of the enemy positions in the area. Horatio retrieved a pad of paper and a pencil from a drawer under the radio set, and began taking notes and making a rough map of a few of the places noted.

He gathered a few interesting bits of information as well, such as the fact that the low cloud layer between the floating cities and the ground was a semi-permanent formation over the 'infected' parts of Europe. It seemed that the most of the Americas were not yet as uninhabitable as the ground below them now, but the mold was already spreading there and as far as anyone knew, it was only a matter of time before it took over everything. The scout also told him that going below the cloud layer was dangerous for long periods of time, because of a strange sicknesses that seemed to come from the mold spores.

He finished writing everything down, at the same time listening to the end of the strange conversation Brantley was having.

"I'm good with waiting, but I'd rather we find a place to land, if it'll take a while. I'd like to make the fuel I've got last... Verdun isn't safe right now, but there's another town not far to the southwest of here," he consulted the notes he'd taken. "called Troyes. They said it's being used as a headquarters at the moment anyway..."

[MWBailey]

"let me check the instruments," Brantley said, and did so. He fiddled with several dials on the blackbox, picked it up (the case still attached), and flipped a toggle on the back, read the result on the dial on the front, and set the conglomeration of weirdness back down on the dashboard. He flipped back to a previous leaf on the cigarette case, and stared at the sweeping radar-like display, and said,

"No portal here now, or within a radius of 600 miles. I can make a portal, and even take us through time itself, but for our purposes, it's better to wait for the natural wormholes to open or close." He looked at the setup again. "Troyes sounds good. According to the instruments, it looks like a potential nexus or locus point as well, so setting down there just might have fortuitous results."

[The Corsair]

"I don't care where we're waiting, I need a pint..."