"Things've been techy in the Bush for a while, now," Bass answered, seriously. "I wasn't always a grounded airman who's had to ride the rails and pack over the estuary on that blasted cat's cradle of a bridge; I had my own ship 'til barely a month ago."
His voice took on a tone of bitter nostalgia. "I don't suppose you heard about a merc packet named the Simba fightin' a runnin' battle with the pirate skycutter Buluwayo barely a month ago? It was big news down south of here, 'cause of the value of the cargo lost. Well, that was me an' my mates, runnin a cargo out o' the Walinga Station Aerodrome 'bout fifty miles upriver, out to the Capetown airfield. We was what passed for 'heavily armed' for packets in these parts in better days, two waist-mount Vickers an' fore-and-aft aimable Whippet Projector rocket tubes, but the Buluwayo 'ad twenty or more pom-poms and rocket tubes, liftable armor, an' ducted-fan propulsion, a damned Colonial Defense Force cutter gone rogue. She dogged us over the mountains, a real runnin, dodgin' scrappin' battle, across the grasslands, and all the way to the Witwatersrand gold mines, which is where they finally holed our engine room and broke our back. I don't surrender, but we finally had to jump off, me and the two mates what were left. I grabbed the one Vickers that was left; that and the Baron's settlement were all what was left of my Simba, and I traded the gun for the new one over there." He gestured at the varnished box, really a glorified crate, in which resided the double-barelled Villar Perosa. "At least now I can chop 'em up finer if they decide to tangle." Bass's voice took on a dark edge.
"That's the kind've pirates, or privateers, or whatever you want ter call 'em," He continued in a lighter, more bantery tone, "that we've got a bumper crop of these days, and then there's that curse business. It's gotten to where some o' the merchant airmen're makin' convoys to get through -- and half of 'em never make it past the floodplain even so. That Gorge where 'is Excellency has his mines, and places like Walinga, most of the fortified ports, they're relatively safe, but the airspace between can get hairy if the baddies decide you're slow or fat enough to be worth their while. Your hints at a conspiracy of some kind, if you'll allow me to read-in a bit," He winked, "fit right in with the level of organizatiion of those people; their intel is just a little too good, I'm thinking, for just run-of-the-mill brigands."
"Oddly enough, though, private or non-cargo craft, at least, seem to get less heat than the rest, that includes the passenger and sightseeing flights, long as they go right through and don't pry...usually..."
