Nine Sailed Star (Aether Spheres Book 1) by Glynn Stewart

Author:Glynn Stewart [Stewart, Glynn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Faolan's Pen Publishing
Published: 2023-03-20T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter

Twenty-Eight

Brushfire had spent the vast majority of her adult life on aether ships. The dimensions and realities of intersphere travel were burned into her brain, and they were all, by and large, pretty standard.

Most air-possessing worldlets were between a thousand and two thousand leagues across. Most spheres were between ten and twenty thousand leagues across, with the distance between aether straits usually somewhere between eight and ten thousand leagues.

Based on her experience, the journey from Blueswallow to the Monastery of the First Digger in Brokenwright should have been around forty clock-days, averaging a bit under a league a minute once they were fully into the aether.

By the third time Greentrees walked out onto the forecastle, held a hand out into the aether, and adjusted their course based on some factor Brushfire couldn’t see, they were starting to come up on the aether strait out of Birdsbreath.

“Hold this course until we hit the strait,” Greentrees instructed her and Streamwater. “Once we’re through, I’ll take a look at the currents in Shatterlight.”

“Of course, Captain.”

Brushfire checked the log and did mental math. Across four thousand leagues, their captain’s instinctive course adjustments had cut four full hours off their trip. Over forty-five thousand leagues remained of their journey, and if Greentrees kept up this rate, he’d carve multiple full clock-days off the journey.

That did make it easier to handle when he simply nodded to the two of them and walked away, leaving flying the ship to them. He’d taken his turn at the helm, but it very much felt like she and Streamwater were carrying the main weight of flying the ship.

Brushfire had never been an officer before, though. Spherefox had handled most of the key moments of the journeys aboard Skyfish, though she presumed the other officers had handled moments like the long trips between worldlets and straits.

Giving her head a small shake, Brushfire turned her attention back to the wheel. Keeping the ship on a given angle was easy enough, after all. Once the ship was on the course, the wheel was locked in position, anyway. It would take effort to cause a problem.

Brushfire was there in case the watchvar spotted something requiring immediate response. Streamwater…was there because she chose to be.

The ninesail’s second officer had her own shift watching the wheel, but she always seemed to be either on the forecastle or nearby while Brushfire had the watch. The gobvar hadn’t minded the first two clock-days.

Now they were on the third clock-day of their journey and Brushfire had held down her watches without any issues. She’d made a minor mistake handling the ascent, but that had been her first ascent ever.

But still, every time she was on watch, the second officer was there.

Despite her spike of irritation, Brushfire had long before learned to control her actual actions and expressions—anything else would have ended poorly for a gobvar serving on elvar ships.

She kept her attention on the wheel, checking and rechecking the locks.

“Stop poking at it,” Streamwater suddenly snapped. “You’ll unlock it and make an ass of yourself again.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.