The Frozen North – The Carpathia Battle

From: Memoires of a Wireless Officer by Captain A.R. Jenkins.

I remember it was somewhat after we received that mysterious message fragment when the sky pirates attacked. 

They appeared during one of the sporadic lulls in the devastating storms that held back our ship, the Carpathia from the Hildskal Mountains. Around a dozen or so small airships with some nasty looking armaments came about and headed straight for us! The captain ordered battle stations and the Carpathia banked sharply as she took evasive actions!

Myself and my old mentor Wireless Officer Burrage both watched from the signals office window as the pirates grew closer. Burrage set about with the signalling equipment to call in the attack while I continued to observe and relay events as they happened.

The sky pirates seamed strangely oblivious to the danger as our gun turrets locked on and blew the lead ship out of the sky! The small airship turned into a ball of flame that spiralled down into the fog below, no doubt taking its crew to a fiery death.

It was then that our luck took a turn for the worse as the remaining pirates found their sense and scattered, using the greater manoeuvrability of their airships to evade our turrets. They harried us with hastily aimed cannon fire as we fired back with shots that mostly missed their mark due to the pirates enhanced agility.

For a time the battle seamed stalemated, but then one of the pirates came overhead and deployed this nasty rake like firebomb device on a tow rope that almost connected with us! By the Builder that was a scary moment! We were only saved by the quick reactions of the helmsman!

Then the situation got considerably worse as two of the other pirate ships made ready with similar armaments as their comrades kept our gunners occupied.

Just as things were looking grim and we were expecting the end everything changed. I could see it clearly from the window, a bright blue airship swooped down from overhead and the gondola detached! It just fell away from the gas bag! Then there was this roaring screaming noise and the gondola shot away like a bullet on a plume of fire and smoke! The strange craft danced among the pirates with agility the likes of which I had never seen before! Then within the blink of an eye three of the attacking ships were in flames!

It was only later that we learnt the name of our saviour, Miss Ironside of the Lovelace Institute, a truly formidable woman if ever there were one!

The pirates appeared to be in a flat out panic with the remaining craft retreating rapidly into the gathering storms while the little blue fighter flitted among them.

Then something strange and truly horrible happened. Just as it seamed the battle was over the window exploded with a blast of steam! Shards of glass flying all over and this deafening noise like a swarm of the loudest and angriest hornets you could imagine!

It was as I recovered my senses with a ringing in my ears that I found Wireless Officer Burrage torn open by a hissing serrated disk shaped weapon that embedded itself half into the bulkhead wall behind him!

I lost a great mentor and good friend that day to those pirates. Though it was the savagery of that day that fuelled me towards my later pirate hunting adventures as Captain of the Vanguard.

But that is a story for another day...

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