Prologue
This one was going to be trouble, the boy just felt it in his bones. He always knew when one of these damned things was going to pull some crazy stunt. The boy turned around to Steven, his partner at the aft harpoon station. “I have a very bad feeling about this!”
But Steven was lost in the heat of the moment, the successful catches they had already enjoyed that day blinding him to the very real danger they were in. He didn’t even listen, his mind focused on one thing in the world and one thing only: the huge red beast they pursued. Now, chances of a hunt turning deadly were not as high on this ship as on others the boy had been on. That was a fact he full was sure of. In aspects of safety, the captain enforced a strict adherence to protocol. Whatever bad you could say about the discipline of the crew in general, where it counted, they were as professional as anyone. They had even managed to out-shoot imperial ships-of-the-line on several occasions.
Still, hunting a dragon should never be taken lightly. Especially not when you are thousands of meters above the sea. People called them the kings of the sky for a reason: fast, nimble, ferocious, they posed a credible danger even to fortified settlements. For an airship, filled with thousands cubic meters of infamously inflammable hydrogen, every encounter with one of them might be the last. The only advantage the hunters had was that most dragons did not actually know that fact. A huge rigid hull airship pursuing them like an unshakeable leviathan seemed a very credible threat to them.
But every so often, one of them got lucky… or desperate. This one was such a case. He flipped around in mid-air, a maneuver no mechanical object could ever dream to match. In the blink of an eye, he had changed his direction of flight - right at them. Now Steven realized what danger they found themselves in, “Oh sh-” He tried to say something, but the gust of wind that came in the wake of the dragon robbed the words from his mouth. Still, the boy could tell what was meant. The monster was so close, they could smell his breath and feel it’s body warming the cold air around them. It hugged the airship’s hull, so none of the other harpooning stations could fire on it. The danger of ripping into the ship’s thin canvas skin and the gas cells beneath was to high.
Desperately, Steven fought to bring his harpoon around and aimed at the beast looming over them. But to no avail, with one quick movement of his neck the dragon nudged him out, into the unforgiving blue void. As the boy listened to his best friend’s scream vanish into the distance below, yet he could not do anything but stare into the eyes of the beast. They were the color of molten gold, with an Iris of pure crimson. He had never seen a dragon with eyes that looked so evil, so wrong. It was the first time he truly abhor a member of this ancient race.
They were a menace, made any travel on the great airstreams perilous. Dragoning had been his profession for as long as he had been away from his childhood home. That had only been a few years ago, true. And he was still not a man as far as the world down there was concerned. But in the wild skies every day you survived was sacred. In all this time it had never been personal. It had to be done, for the safety of their families, for the glory of the empire. The life of a dragoner was never easy but for many this was their only chance to escape whatever place they had the misfortune to be born.
The dragon stared into his eyes, directly into his soul. The boy could feel it’s ancient magic boiling in his blood. It burned his very essence. A roaring scream found it’s way to his ears but he could not tell if it was him or the dragon…
And then, everything went black. The roar was the only thing that was left in his world. It surrounded him, found every corner of his body, his soul.
“Captain, the engines are working without a fault. You will be ready to launch within the hour, I can assure you that.” His Imperial Majesty’s Captain Mark Blondergast opened his eyes and turned around, the deafening roar of Serendipity’s engines below him dying down. He had to take a moment to remember where he was: on a walkway high off the ground in His Imperial Majesty’s dockyards, overseeing the final engine test run for the airship the admiralty had deemed to entrust him with. The chief of the ground crew assigned to Serendipity stood there, serenely awaiting his reply.
Mark nodded. “Very well, convey my regards to your men. Back to your station, Mr. Muldoon.” he commanded and turned back towards Serendipity, not even listening to the groundhog officer’s reply. Now that the final test had gone through without any issues at last, they would be underway very soon.
“It can’t be soon enough for me, either. We have been on the ground long enough.” Came his first officer’s voice from next to him. How does he do that?
“Heading my mind again, Lieutenant Obee?” he said, turning only slightly towards his fellow officer.
That made the younger officer laugh. “No sir, your thoughts were obvious to anyone who knows you.”
“Well, who could not yearn to be the first to take this lady dancing?” His eyes took in the beauty of his majesty’s newest ship once more. Serendipity was amongst the smallest purpose build men-o-war in the fleet. To someone who was used only to the navy’s ubiquitous battleships-of-the-line, she looked almost comically small in an airship dock meant to house ships of more than twice her length. But what she lacks in shear size and firepower, she more than makes up in speed and agility. Frigates just weren’t meant for open combat with enemy ships and Blondergast wasn’t ashamed of the fact. “Let’s just hope she lives up to what we were promised by the design staff.” He could not help letting a bit of cynicism shine through. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn these armchair-admirals removed the showers to save weight.
“Well sir, we will just have to ride her up to the limit and see if she can take it.” Obee didn’t seem concerned at all. He is still all to trusting in the command structure and it’s ability to provide adequate materiel. This is a notion I have to disabuse him of. But there will be ample time for that once we are underway.
At that moment, they spotted an officer in the navy’s white dress uniform approaching them on the walkway.
Oh, this can’t be good. Blondergast immediately knew he was in some kind of trouble. It was common knowledge amongst His Imperial Majesty’s officers that whites always meant bad news. If it was up to them, most officers would abolish them and only keep the more practical fleet grey uniforms they wore day to day.
“Fleet command sending us a congratulation? Or considering our luck so far, I guess they are canceling our mission.” Blondergast was aprehensive.
Obee straightened as they turned to meet their visitor. “Whatever it is, we are going to have to live with it, captain.”
The officer was in talking distance, now. His rank insignia told them he was a major, so they saluted and both grunted “Sir!” in unison.
“Captain Blondergast. Lieutenant Obee.” he saluted back. “Good fortune to find you here, I am Major Thornton.” Blondergast glanced at Obee but did not see recognition in the Lieutenant’s eyes. The name isn’t familiar to him either, so probably outside our immediate superiors.
The Major went on to say, “Captain, you are to come with me to the Admiralty to receive new orders. Upon receiving them, you will return to your ship immediately and depart as soon as possible.”
“Yes, sir.” Blondergast turned to his second-in-command. “Get everything on board and stowed away. I won’t be long, so make her ready to launch rather sooner than later.”
Obee nodded and left Blondergast alone with the Major. “Captain, with me.”
They departed the walkway in silence. It was quite a distance to cross until they reached the hangar’s giant open doors and stepped into the sun, yet the Major did not deem to surrender any more clues as to what the purpose of all this was.
Outside, it was a beautiful day to fly: the sky was almost devoid of clouds, and there was only a slight breeze, caressing the huge tract of grass that made up most of His Imperial Majesty’s dockyard. Dozens of airships were lined up, attached to mooring masts so they wouldn’t drift of by themselves. That would be dangerous, not just to the ships and their crews but also to the imperial citizens living in the outskirts of Capital City, which seemed to grow even more rapidly around this artificial meadow in the midst of an artificial jungle.
On beautiful days like this, the common folk always came out in droves. Blondergast was one of those naval officers who were ever delighted to connect to the people whose taxes made all this possible and whom they had sworn to defend. As they passed picnicing families, he remembered how he had felt as a little boy, when one of the majestic leviathans had hovered above him full of grace. I have come a long way since then. And it was worth it.
At the edge of the field they found a car waiting for them. As the chauffeur drove, Blondergast turned around to take another look at the dockyards. From the distance, it looked as if the airships were cattle, serenely grassing on a pasture. He also saw several ships high in the sky. They represented a much less peaceful sentiment: they stood ever vigilant to protect Capital City from enemy attacks. Blondergast, like the majority of naval officers, still rued the day the fleet had not been fast enough to come to the defense of the old capital.
The buildings they passed grew ever taller, ever more bombastic. The center of town was dominated by the Imperial Palace, an entire sprawling district of skyscrapers interconnected with bridges hundreds of meters above the streets. There were no commoners here, all the business they had with the realm were tended to in town halls and district offices.
The Admiralty, in front of which they now stopped, was one of these giants. Blondergast saw more of these dreaded whites in the lobby alone than he would ever have liked to see in his entire life. Thick carpets and tapestry lined the hallways. Still ominously silent, Thornton led him through thick wooden doors and into luxurious offices. When they finally came to a halt and Blondergast read the name embossed in gold on the door, he could barely keep himself from shouting an obscenity had would surely have landed him in a court martial. Oh no, who have I offended to warrant this?
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So, here you have one of my NaNoWriMo projects from last november. It's just a hair over 19k words at the moment, not finished at all and practically every scene and theme could be expanded upon. This was supposed to be a short story and it grew by itself. I had no idea were it was going and rather large sections don't exist outside very rough ideas. Yet I have decided to start cleaning it up and publishing it, albeit just here.
Hopefully I can manage to wrangle a coherent and interesting story out of this. I am doing it for fun and to learn, so I have nothing to loose anyways. 
And a note of caution: copying it over to Firefox removes all formatting. So it might be that thoughts might not be in italics at some point. It should be obvious in context either way.
edit: And as always, no matter how often I check, I find an error immediately after posting.
edit: Reformatted to (hopefully) improve readability.
