Thinking of her flier, Taki became aware of an ominous clicking from the engine. Running down again – always at the worst possible moment! The fixed-wing was now coming back, fast, swooping low over the waters and then pulling up hard, trying to barrel in for her. She climbed and climbed, so that, with his rotary letting loose in a blaze of wasted ammunition, he passed in a blur below her. They had both left the heliopter well behind. Whilst it could balance and hover on a gnat’s ball, as the saying went, it had nothing for speed.

She had to wrap this up quickly and then get back to the ships, but at the same time she had to do something about the warning noises her engines were making. Time to do the usual.

Taki yanked the stick back one-handed, so that for a second the Esca was pointing straight at the apex of the sky, and then she flipped the craft on its wingtip and turned into a steep dive. She saw the fixed wing flash past her again, unable to compete. After all, the Esca Volenti was one of the nimblest machines over the Exalsee and she could even give dragonfly-riders a run for their money on the turns.

Releasing a catch, she felt the wood and canvas of the flier shudder as the parachute unfurled. This was her second, so if she didn’t close matters here before the engine ran down again, then it would mean a forced landing at best. Taki listened anxiously, above the rushing of the wind, and heard the clockwork mechanism that sat immediately behind her screaming with spinning gears as the drag of the ’chute rewound it. Sometimes, not often, that failed to happen, and at that point she really would have had a problem, for the world before her eyes now was already a sheer expanse of sea.