Page 28 of The Naga Inventor's Clever Mate

“Ah, Corin! Thank the stars. How quickly can you make it back here? Haven’s systems have gone completely crazy. We need your help,” Artek rushed out as soon as he laid eyes on me. He didn’t even glance at how I was holding Min-Ji beneath one arm and a cleaning bot beneath the other. “I think Vrash got into the main control hub, but I can’t figure out how to get him out. You’re the only one who might.”

It was exactly as I’d feared: Vrash was back. I rolled a helpless shoulder and looked from my Shaman friend to my mentor. Even if we moved as fast as we could, we were without a dragon to hitch a ride, and it would take at least a week, maybe longer. They could send Zsekhet back for us as soon as they returned to Haven, but that came with the risk of the dragon missing us entirely. The other option was to wait, but if the situation was as dire as Artek’s worried eyes seemed to indicate…

“Have you tried a complete shutdown?” I asked, and Artek launched into a hurried spiel of what he’d tried and the troubles that were happening. Doors were locking people in, the lights and water had turned off entirely, and even the greenhouse was off, with plants already withering inside it. As a precaution, Zathar had moved everyone to tents outside. The med bay was off-limits, and Artek was of half a mind to move Vera down to his own home so he could better monitor her. She was having such trouble with nausea, and it made Zathar absolutely frantic with worry.

“I tried everything. But you are the one who knows this place. You know it, Corin. Chen,” Artek aimed his next words at the elder near my elbow, “can’t you spare a ship to send them? A shuttle would only take, what, half an hour to bring them here? Corin is the only one with the knowledge to take care of this Revenant once and for all.” Whew, no pressure at all. It was daunting to realize that Artek knew less of Haven than I did, that he thought only I could solve this problem. At the same time, I knew he was right. I had sunk so many hours into figuring out its systems. I knew it inside and out. Artek’s primary focus had always been healing.

“A ship? I can’t spare any pilots,” Chen harrumphed. Pilots? He was using the word that Min-Ji had called herself: pilot. There was an obvious solution to this problem, but I was afraid to utter it out loud. Asking the elders here to borrow a shuttle and expose that kind of knowledge to a new, unknown Clan of former outcasts was a big ask. That the Sacred Training Grounds were made up of functioning skyships was knowledge only Shamans, Shamans-in-training, and Queens knew.

Chen was wearing a thoughtful expression on his face, tapping his chin horn with a claw as he pondered the situation. “I agree that a ship would be the best solution. This Revenant is a serious threat we cannot allow to spread. If it keeps control of a hub like Haven, who knows what other systems it could take over?” I had not even considered that yet, but he was right. Haven had a communications hub, currently only able to access Artek’s home. But if it hopped to Artek’s systems, it could spread to any other system from there.

Min-Ji shuffled her feet, one of her small hands landing on my forearm. I felt her blunt nails dig into my scales just before she opened her mouth and announced boldly, “I’m a pilot. If you can spare a ship, I can fly it.”

A stunned silence filled the communication shuttle’s interior, all eyes turning to my tiny mate to stare—two sharp pairs of blue eyes and mine. Even Triff seemed to spin his lights to look at her, blinking rapidly. “You can?” Chen said carefully. “Interesting.”

He gave a nod to Artek on the screen. “Expect them soon. We’ll arrange something.” Then he closed the connection and moved to rise on his tail in front of us, arms crossed over his chest. Only a braided leather cord with a disk just like the one I wore hung from his neck. They had not taken mine yet, but I was certain my old master would not forget about it before we left.

“I am spread thin this autumn,” Chen said. “More Shamans than usual have needed to be dispatched to Clans around the planet, and more skyships than ever seem to fall from the stars. I have sent my best male to investigate that problem. I can’t spare a pilot, because that would mean too few to care for the sick and to teach the young. You understand that?” I nodded before glancing at Min-Ji. She was smiling; that was her natural way of protecting herself. Strain tinted the corners of her eyes—I could see it now that I knew her as intimately as I did, now that I had a mating bond to guide my instincts.”

“So that leaves you, my dear,” Chen sounded much kinder than he usually did when he offered Min-Ji those words. Her breathing shuddered out of her, her ribs trembling against my side from the forceful expelling of her breath. “A Naga vessel is not the same as one of your human ships, I am sure. Are you certain you can do this?”

Min-Ji’s bright spirit rallied under that challenge, as I knew it would. Her brown eyes sparkled when she pointed a blunt, clawless finger at the front of the shuttle we were in. “I see a yoke; I can fly that. Someone just needs to give me a rundown real quick. I can do it. Small craft like this were all I flew for five years straight. Trust me.”

I did, but would my mentor? My clever mate was certainly looking at him like he didn’t have a choice; we were lucky my mentor seemed to find that amusing rather than offensive. “Very well, this way.” Min-Ji seemed eager as she slipped from beneath my arm and followed Chen out of the shuttle and across the clearing.

I spared a quick look at Avrish beneath the central tent, inside the main classroom. She had only a handful of students at the moment; the rest were paired off with other teachers in small groups around the clearing. I saw several bright heads bent over the guts of a machine under Altare’s watchful eye, and younglings practicing with handheld healing devices beside cages of rescued animals under Erish’s supervision.

Chen led us to a shuttle hitched with tethers to the back of one of the larger cargo vessels; I remembered it. Some of the older Naga had been allowed to practice their flying skills in that ship. I hadn’t been old enough yet to try, and I’d been so envious of them. It was a much smaller skyship than it seemed in my recollection; it was barely big enough to fit two Naga sitting behind one another.

“Oh,” Min-Ji exclaimed. “It looks like a fighter jet. How quaint. It’s adorable.” I didn’t have to look to know that she was clutching at her chest again; she really couldn’t help herself. I looked because she was mine now, and all that cuteness belonged to me. Chen was staring at her with a similarly bemused look on his craggy face, likely just as unused to that kind of behavior from a female as I was.

Then he looked at me. “Right. I’ll give you the rundown, and I’ll set your navigational system for the right course. As soon as I have a male to spare, I’ll send him to retrieve the ship. Understood? It’s not for keeping. We need it.” He repeated that a few more times because Min-Ji was caught up staring, full of admiration, at the small and clearly old ship. Her hand ran reverently along the nearest wingtip.

“I’ll make sure it’s understood,” I told my old master when he snapped his mouth shut and shook his head. “She knows, sir.”

Chapter 22

Min-Ji

I didn’t think I’d ever lay eyes on a functional ship again, and this past day had been a joy in that regard. To be allowed to fly one was like a dream I hadn’t even dared to dream. It was so pretty too, sleek, silver, and with all these swirling carved lines along the wings and the lower body of the ship. Were they functional or simply decorative? What was it going to be like to fly a ship of Naga design? It was mind-blowing to even discover they existed.

“Listen closely,” the blue-robed Shaman said from where he’d half-curled his long body into the cockpit of the jet. Corin had to pick me up so I could see what the male was pointing at, and I held my breath and dutifully repeated what each button did back to the Shaman. There weren’t any surprises; some of it was more simplified than what I was used to. I didn’t think this ship was going to give me any trouble at all. It made my heart race with joy to think about being up in the airmyway, but I wasn’t going to let anyone down by a lack of attention.

“Now,” Chen said firmly, and he waited until I’d lifted my eyes to his. “You must watch the altitude meter at all times. The shuttle can never climb beyond this red line, understood?” He tapped a display with red paint applied in a thick smear. It wasn’t part of the original system; that line was a manual, crude addition. I couldn’t read the Naga numbers on the display, but it was somewhere below the mid-range of the display, so it couldn’t be all that high.

Intuitively, my brain leaped to what it could mean, and I raised my eyes to the sky as if that would confirm it. I saw the violet streaking the heavens here, the soft, fluffy pink and white clouds, and nothing that could give me any indication. “Higher and we’ll crash? Why? What’s causing the skyships to fall?” Look at me—now I was calling them skyships too. Although the Shamans here didn’t seem to call their own ships skyships.

“A very unpredictable, heavily fluctuating EM field,” Chen said, his eyes narrowed. This was a test. I knew it was. Corin seemed confused; he didn’t know what EM meant, but I did. It was confusing, though, because while I knew there were definitely planets that naturally had them, they were usually either due to electrical storms or a permanent addition—not something that fluctuated.

An electromagnetic field, is it natural?” Such a field could disrupt electrical parts and definitely confuse sensor readings. It explained why ships crashed here when they intended to simply pass by Serant. If the phenomenon existed mostly in the upper stratosphere, it explained why ships could still fly at low altitudes. Or maybe they could manage if they had the appropriate shielding.

“Natural,” Chen agreed, a smile spreading. “You’ll do. Let me set the navigation while you two fetch your things. We’ll keep Reid here until he’s better—it should be weeks—and send word when he can be retrieved.” I felt like I’d just scored an A on my report when Corin led me back toward our tent so we could gather what little we’d brought with us. The Shaman was going to trust me to fly that ancient fighter jet; it was going to be so awesome. I knew it.

It was easier to think about the fun flying part than to worry about what was waiting for us at Haven. That sounded bad, and I could tell it was weighing heavily on Corin’s mind. “I’m sure we can figure this out. We’ll beat that stupid robot, and then everything will go back to normal.”

I was bouncing on my feet with excitement when we returned to the waiting and now-prepped little ship a short while later. Altare and two more Shamans I didn’t know had worked with the elder Chen to free the jet from its tethers, and now its nose was angled free and clear in the direction of Ahoshaga. Or I assumed it was aimed at Ahoshaga, because, despite it being a tall mountain, we couldn’t see it from here.

“This is the stowage hatch. Come put your stuff in here,” Chen said, prompting Corin to take my satchel from my hand and hurry ahead. Triff raced after him, bumping and careening crazily over the mossy terrain. I admired Corin’s silvery-blue shimmer against the darker silver of the ship. They looked good together, and I couldn't wait to see what Corin would think of flying in an actual 'skyship.'

---