literature

A Helping Hand

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“Aahh!  Stay back!”

He kicked out at nothing and flailed around.  He stopped when his flailing caused him to hit a tree with his head.  He groaned and curled up, clutching his skull when he finally noticed the scales.  He freaked out again, looking himself over.

“Don’t worry, you get used to them.”  I said from a nearby tree.

“Who’s there?  What do you want?  What did you do to me?”  He asked.

“I’m here,”  I said swing down from the tree and walking towards him, “I want to help you, and I didn’t do anything to you, someone else did.”

He scooted back up against a tree, “Stay back!”

“Alright.” I shrugged and say down on my haunches, “But I don’t want to hurt you, I just want to help you."

He looked confused.  Understandable considering he just woke up with scales wings and a tail.  His scales were blue, with an almost teal colored scutes and membranes.  He had two small white horns behind his frill ears, and his fingers were slightly webbed.  Definitely a water dragon.  

After a few minutes he spoke up, “What happened?”

“Now that, I have no answer to.  What I do know, is that someone put you here after your transformation, and I’m willing to give you a hand.”  I explained.

He looked at me again confused, “A hand with what?”

“Stand up.”

He tried to but stumbled and fell.

“A hand with that.  Now do you want that hand?”  I offered again.

“Sure.”

I walked over to him and put my clawed hand out to him.  He took it and I hoisted him up, quickly wrapping my arm under his arms to keep him from falling again.

“Hey, by the way,  I’m Edge.”  I said grunting.

“Alek.”  He replied, trying to get his feet to work.

I sighed and started to teach him to stand digitigrade.  It took him some time but in the end he was able to stand on his own. Now onto walking.

“Remember, all walking is, is just controlled falling.  Or at least, natural walking is.”  I said.

He had a little less trouble this time and he was eventually able to walk without my help. Now it was onto the more challenging part, the wings.  I held them out for him as he tested each muscle, getting a feel for what commands his brain was sending to them. He caught on quickly and was flapping in no time.  Flapping incorrectly but all I would need from him was the ability to keep them straight.

“Alright, I would say you’re pretty much good to go.”  I said a little proudly.

“Good to go where?”  He asked.

I thought for a second before answering, “Give me a second.”

He sat down on a fallen log and crossed his arms.  I had one of my radios on.  It was a sort of headset.  It came in two parts, the microphone was mounted on a sort of arm that always touched your neck to reduce ambient wind noise when flying.  The other part was the headphone which sat over the head and contained the speaker, receiver, transmitter, and battery for the whole thing.

I reached up and keyed it on to a preset frequency, “Hey Elsie, are you there?”

The radio crackled as Elsie responded, “I’m here, what do you need?”

“I found another one.”

“Another?  That makes what, three this week?  There’s something big going on here.”

“You got that right.  Listen, I’m gonna try and get him to the Jutland for a quick physical and to drop him off somewhere.  I’ll talk to you there.”  I said.

“Alright, I’ll see you there.”  She responded and the radio went silent.

I swung my small pack off of my back and started looking through it.  I pulled out a strange sort of harness and handed it to Alek.

“Here put this on.”  I commanded.

He held it up and stared at the strange arrangement of straps. I sighed and took it from him.

“Turn around.”  I told him.

“What?”

“Just do it please.”

He complied and turned around, I started undoing buckles and piece by piece threw it on him.  After I made sure to pull the straps tight I checked over the whole thing again.  He had what looked like a standard rock climbing harness modified for dragons around his waist and a special harness around his chest.

“What’s the point of this thing?”  Alek asked.

“Ok, so here’s the deal, you can’t fly, and I need to get you somewhere that you can’t reach by foot.”  I told him as I pulled out extra straps and buckles from my pack and put on a similar looking harness.

“And?”  He said still waiting for an answer.

I grabbed him and spun him around.  I got a grip on his harness and pulled him right up to my chest.  I held him there with one hand and with the other I started attaching parts of my harness to his.

“What the hell are you doing?!”  He yelled flailing his arms and opening his wings instinctually.

“Close your wings.”  I told him putting my goggles on.

“What?”

“I said close you wings!”

He closed them with a huff and I opened mine before jumping into the air.  I flapped hard, ignoring his screaming and trying to gain some altitude.  After a bit he calmed down and stopped moving around so much, realizing he wasn’t helping.  After we were high enough I stopped flapping and leveled off.

“Open your wings slowly.”  I told him.

He did, rather tentatively, feeling the wind and trying to position them right.  With a bit of prodding on my part we took on a rough biplane configuration.  I had to keep asking him to close his wings so I could flap and bring us higher before we could glide again.  After about an hour my radio crackled to life.

“We have you on radar, sir.  You need to adjust your heading 20° West to intercept.”

“Acknowledged. Be there soon.”  I replied and shut it off.

“What was that?”  Alek asked a bit worried.

“Our destination leading us in.  Don’t fret, I do own the place anyway.” I replied with a smile.

He gave me a weird look before staring down at the scenery again.  It was a little less than an hour when I spotted it.  The Jutland.  She’s what’s known as a ‘combat dirigible’, a helium filled mobile lighter-than-air base.  Consisting of two large cigar shaped balloons squashed together, the main working space is housed between and underneath them.

“What the hell is that thing?”  Alek asked me as he pointed to the Jutland.

“That, is our destination, the Edge Industries Dirigible Jutland.  We’re taking her on a maintenance run, she just got a few new engines.  We were flying over when we picked you and something else up on the radar.  Myself and a few others flew out and were scouring the area when I found you.”  I explained.

“Oh.”

“We have medical staff aboard.  You don’t really need any but I’m gonna have them check you over just in case, you never know with some of these transformations.”

“I see what you meant about not reaching it by foot.”

I smiled and the radio crackled in my ear, “We have a visual on you, sir.  Proceed to landing bay.”

“Copy that.  Also, have one of those E.A.G.A.’s ready to fire in the landing bay about one third of the way in.”  I added.

“Yes sir, see you on board.”  and the radio went dead again.

“What’s an E.A.G.A.?”  He asked.

“It won’t kill you if what’s what you're asking.”  I replied.

It was another 15 minutes before we were in place to land.  The landing bay was a small airstrip built into the back of the Jutland for dragons.  I saw the small E.A.G.A. pad right where I had requested it be placed and a few techs off to the side.

“Alright, listen up.  When I tell you to,I want you to bring your knees to your chest and wrap your arms around your legs.  Curl up your tail and fold your wings.  No matter what happens, keep that position.  I need you to be out of the way for me to land.”  I instructed.

He gave me a thumbs up in reply.  I aimed for one of the markers painted on the back of the landing bay and adjusted my speed.  A couple of seconds before we passed the threshold of the landing bay I gave the order for Alek to curl up.

“Have fun!” I said and pulled hard on a few straps.

the buckles released and Alek went falling through the air.  Luckily though there was the E.A.G.A.  It stood for Emergency Air Gell Arrestor and when activated, it explodes into a cube of what appears to be gelatin but soon dissolves into a non-toxic gas.  And as it was designed to do, it sensed an object, Alek in this case, activated, surrounded him in gelatin which slowed him to a stop, then dissolved and set him comfortably down on the ground.

I landed farther in but was able to see it work.  One of the techs came running up to me and handed me a tablet.

“Test successful, sir.  The gel acted as expected and brought him to a stop in the required time and at the projected Gee forces as well.”  She said.

“Excellent!  Get Alek an escort to the infirmary.  I want him checked for any adverse affects of the airgel then a once-over for any transformation anomalies.”  I said and handed the tablet back.

“Yes sir.”  She said and hurried off.

I went over to Alek and gave him a hand up, “Listen, sorry about that.  It was a last minute thing on my part and we needed the data.”

“No, it’s fine.  What was that stuff?  It was pretty cool.”  He said.

“A prototype gel arrestor.  A lot safer than some of the nets and other things they use to stop dragons and planes if we can get it into production.”

“Cool.”  He said and one of the nurses appeared to lead him to the infirmary.

I headed in the opposite direction to the cockpit.  I headed through the small hallway, greeting a few of the engineers who gave me a greeting in return or a quick status update of how the new engines were operating.  I eventually made it to the cockpit and keyed the sliding door open.  It opened silently and I stepped in.

The landscape slipped by at a leisurely pace outside of the windows, Flanking a center chair and console, sit two stations surrounded by a wraparound computer screen.  The one on the right is for the pilot and the left is for the navigator. Off to the side was the communications officers room, she needed her own sound proofed room or else she would drive everyone crazy with her constant talking.  In between the pilot and the navigator stood the captains chair and the captains console. The chair swiveled around and Elsie was sitting in it.

“So how is he?”  Elsie asked.

I unfolded a seat from one of the walls, “He’s fine.  He tested an E.A.G.A. for us to.”

She sighed and put her head in her hands.  I chuckled to myself as a tech ran in and gave both of us a tablet.  She didn’t say anything as she hurried back out and left us to digest what was on the tablets.  Once we finished reading, Elsie and I looked at eachother and I nodded to her.

She turned to the helmsman, “Take us to the nearest E.I. Airfield, Taylor.”

“Aye, ma’am.”  He responded and began changing the displays in front of him.

I stood up and motioned for Elsie to follow.  She got up and followed me out across the hallway to our private quarters.  Being the head of a company has its perks.  It wasn’t very fancy, and served as the captains quarters when neither of us were onboard.  A bed mounted to the wall could be folded up for extra space along with a desk.  There were a few chairs as well as a small bookshelf built into the far wall.We both entered and the door closed behind her as I leaned up against one of the bulkheads.  She sat down in one of the chairs and rescanned the information on the tablet.

“So it’s started.”  I said looking at her.

“It seems that way.  Not to mention Zorath and Kett are up to their muzzles in it.  Any word from Bryce?”  She asked.

“No, but there are reports of another big fire that may have been started by a dragon.  Here.”  I raised my tablet and keyed the file with the news story before flicking it off the screen towards Elsie.

Her tablet beeped as the file was received and she began reading.

“I think we should put all E.I. branches in the U.K. an alert.  If Zorath and Kett can get to a branch with a big enough hangar they can stay in one of them until we figure out a way to reverse it.  The same goes for Bryce if he’s in the same situation.”

“We taking a jet to England?”  She asked looking up.

I thought about it for a second, “No, there’s enough unwanted attention on the council as it is, we don’t want to add to it. I say we see what we can do from here and if worse comes to worse, then we go over the pond.”

“Sounds like a plan.  We’re a few hours out from the airfield-”

“Excuse me sir, we need you down in engineering ASAP.”  A voice said from the loudspeaker.

I bent over and hit the talk button on the intercom, “I’ll be there in a sec.”

“Go, I can get started on the paperwork.”  She said.

I bent down and kissed her as the door opened, “You’re the best.”

“I know.”  She replied and I headed towards engineering.
My part of Crazikc's continuing Council story. And we get to see what it's like being the head of Edge Industries and some of the fun toys that come with.
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"A lot safer than some of the nets and other things they use to stop dragons and planes if we can get it into production."

when you say "use to stop planes" do you mean the barricade on an aircraft carrier?