Rinkaiel: Kidnappers

[Jack Rothwell]

Chaos didn't cover it.

If Jade had been involved in a more frantic scramble to stay alive it wasn't within recent memory. She dodged, rolled, staggered as mechanical arms and buzzing saws decended and rose, swiped and thrust. The blacksmith spit a stream of curses at a tearing noise which announced her beloved duster had been torn open by an errant appendage. Ace and leo were not faring much better, but at least the guardians of the mad house were encountering some serious difficulties. As Jade stumbled away from a flailing limb which would have opened her up like a cantelope she spotted a mech-soldier being pinned down and skewered by a device which resembled a pneumatic drill.

There were three of them left now, and the treadmill was beginning to shudder under the combined weight of their assailants and the damage it was taking from it's attempted assembly on things which didn't require it.

"Hang on!" She yelled to the men. "If we can keep avoiding them we can..."

She didn't get to finish the sentence. Suddenly the air left the mercenaries lungs in a rush as an iron bar thudded into her ribs and lifted her clean off the conveyor belt. Jade landed, flat on her back and dazed, some fifteen feet down on the floor below.

[Graybeard]

"Watch Zacky for me," Layla told her mother as she handed off her son.

"And you don't do anything stupid," Faye counseled her daughter. "I love this child immensely, but I don't want to raise him alone."

These pleasantries exchanged, Layla fixed the rope to the top of the air vent, trying simultaneously to ignore the disagreeable noises beneath her and to use them to home in on Ace, and started to rappel.

[Jack Rothwell]

"No!"

Jade's eyes fluttered as she managed to win the war against unconsciousness. The blacksmith saw a huge outline above her, a huge outline descending fast.

Panic seized her, galvanised her into action. The golem's blade came down where her head had been a moment before, Jade kicked forward into a roll which took her under the construct as it began to buck to free it's embedded limb.

"Get out of there!"

Leo's voice, and the rattle of gunfire as he shot his revolver dry to no effect. His girlfriend pulled herself to her feet behind the thing, grogily staring at its back.

"Give me a second."

"Jade!"

The construct was nearly free, but the blacksmith had spotted something more interesting that fleeing like a little girl to safety. Above her, Ace and Leo began climbing down, accompanied by the noise of the last of the machine's compadres taking a tumble from the conveyor belt with an iron squeal of protest.

She gritted her teeth, coiled her legs and leapt.

The wind nearly left her lungs for the second time in a minute as she landed awkwardly on the shoulders of the thing. She hung on grimly as it twisted and squirmed, finally freeing its arm and flailing ineffectually at it's new passenger. A dozen feet away, Leo was fairly dancing on the spot with anxiety.

"What in the seven hells are you doing!?"

She ignored him. Had to. She reached forward with her free arm towards the back of the creature's neck and waited for it to lean forward. A moment later it did. Jade's arm snapped whiplash quick, seized something which resembled a length of wire between it's temporarily exposed plates, and pulled.

There was a breif buzzing noise, and the mechanism froze on the spot.

In the silence that followed, jade dismounted from her perch and walked towards the men with an adrenalin fueled grin on her face.

"Now..." She said quietly. "...we just have to figure out a way to get this thing out of here."

[Graybeard]

It didn't do wonders for Layla's optimism to see a swarm of researchers pouring from the main entrance, and running for their lives, as she started down the ventilation shaft. Well, that might not be so bad; at least her group would have the pickings to themselves ... if they survived.

On that count, signs were getting more promising. As she slithered into the shaft, the mechanical noises seemed to be diminishing. Better yet, there were recognizable human voices down there ... and then the buzzing stopped altogether.

"...we just have to figure out a way to get this thing out of here."

"Hi," Layla smiled weakly, dropping the last ten feet or so through the shaft and rather startling her party, twenty feet or so away. "Just thought I'd drop in and help. Can you fit it up this shaft? Have rope, will travel ..." She smiled weakly again.

Ace's attention, however, wasn't on the golems any more.

---------------

Meanwhile, a few miles out, another airship was moving slowly and cautiously in the general direction of the dig -- making wide circles as though looking for something, or as though wary of something, or possibly, as though its navigator and helmsman didn't have a clue what they were doing, as indeed was the case.

[Jack Rothwell]

"Just thought I'd drop in and help. Can you fit it up this shaft? Have rope, will travel ..."

"Hey gorgeous." Jade replied, her voice a tremble from the exertion of a near death experience and from the enthusiasm of being able to get back to the control panel of the assembly room. The blacksmith eyes darted back and forth across the strange symbols and buttons, looking for a clue which could help their situation.

A nudge came at her elbow. She turned and saw Leo's smiling wanly with a slim leather book in his hand. A glance over his shoulder at the prone body of their guide confirmed that her boyfriend had liberated the item from his pockets. She took the gift hungrily and began pawing through the pages like a woman possessed.

"I might be able to get us away with the prize after all." She intoned. "I should be able to get that lifting thing moving again if our companion's notes contain the info."

"Of course. There's a teenie, tiny, possibility that the other survey team might not take well to us stealing the stuff we found instead of doing the job we were given." Leo added.

[Graybeard]

Up above, the unfamiliar airship was coming in for a landing -- a rather clumsy landing.

[OOC: Sorry, not much for Layla to say downstairs at this juncture. Incidentally, I vote we NOT transact the Bonny Read stuff in this thread, but rather, do it in the Goriel one(s). That'll save people some reading to get up to speed here, on things that generally don't matter to what happens at the destination.]

[Jack Rothwell]

Several minutes and much grunting and cursing later the disabled mech was loaded onto the floor of the lift, laying on a more co-operative and, non-sentient, device, a thing of wheels with a flat, iron bed balanced across it's top. Jade punched a last few instructions into the control panel of the construction line and made her hurried way to re-join the rest of the group, as she ran her deep pockets fairly jingled with 'salvaged' materials.

She skidded inside the chamber just as the doors rolled closed and tipped a wink at Leo, who grunted and readjusted his grip on the bars of the iron stretcher.

"This thing weighs a tonne."

"Then it's good that you and Ace volunteered to share the burden. Many hands make light work, so they say."

"I don't recall volunteering for anything." Was Ace's faintly surly reply.

"Well someone's got to get us out of here!" Jade said brightly, fairly skipping over to the controls for the lift with the ledger still in her hand.

"Right... if THAT symbol represents descent... that one rise... this one... sky? No..." She turned a page. "Roof! Roof level! Right! Hopefully this'll work."

"And if it doesn't?"

"Best case... nothing happens."

"Right."

"Worst case... we rise, accelerate, smash into the ceiling of the structure then fall, screaming, to our deaths."

"Can I wait here?"

"No."

Jade pushed the switch.

[Graybeard]

Layla was about to yell something at her boyfriend, to the effect of "drop the swag and climb this damned rope, you idiot," when she was distracted by commotion topside. What now? she wondered, exasperated, and shinnied back up the rope; Ace could follow if things got hairy enough to require it.

Whatever had happened, she got to the surface too late to see it. However, there was still plenty of chaos. Back toward town, she could see robed figures running toward the airship terminal, where a large, unfamiliar airship had just lifted off. Offensive magic was snapping in the air, but the ship had gained enough altitude, fast enough, to be out of range.

Well, at least they're not paying attention to us, she thought. She hunkered down and tried to remain inconspicuous while things happened both above and beneath her position.

[OOC: In case it isn't obvious, this corresponds to this moment in the Goriel threads.]

[Jack Rothwell]

A moment after Layla and Ace's arrival, a panel slid back on the cover of the excavation site and delivered the blacksmith and her companion to the surface. Jade stumbled in surprise as she and Leo pushed the chassis containing the mech out the lift and saw the battle overhead. After a few seconds of gaping she caught her breath.

"...well." She managed.

"To the airship?"

Jade nodded, not trusting herself to speak. She cast around until she saw Layla and made a motion to her that said 'let's get the hell out of here'.

[Graybeard]

Layla nodded. This was a good time for an escape; the locals were so busy dealing with the pirate airship and the looting that had just gone on in town, that they wouldn't be paying attention to the dwarven site or an airship escaping in the opposite direction. She was less sure that they'd actually found something that Faye could booby-trap to kill Reverend Orpiment, but her mother was creative about such things ...

A few minutes later, the group was skimming over the treetops, bound for Rinkaiel. [OOC: I presume this was what you had in mind. If not, retcon is possible.]