SkyCrest

Chapter 1

"Mister Gannan! Mister Gannan!" A stoic and distinctly robotic voice sounded over the coms. "Doctor Ridding is here to see you. He says it's of great importance."

William N. Gannan, better known as Liam Recluse, rolled his eyes. "Does this matter of great importance happen to be about that case of Ranger Black Walnut I ordered two weeks ago?"

A short click sounded from the coms, if the machine was capable of feeling emotions it would have been sincerely confused. "No?"

Liam folded his arms over his chest and leaned against the steel frame of his father's zeppelin. The cold pressing into his back in a way that brought him great comfort. "Than clearly it's not of great importance."

A wave of crackling static washed over the intercom, before a greatly annoyed, and rather squeaky, voice broke through. "For the love of the SkyCrest, would you just unlock the door, William."

Liam sighed. Why this man was bothering him all the time was beyond his understanding. "Anna, you can open the right wing port."

He didn't like when people pushed themselves into his life. He found things to be much more enjoyable when he did them by himself. Traveling with people made him feel responsible for them; he didn't like that kind of responsibility, or any responsibility for that matter.

"Uh!" Dr. Ridding staggered into the navigation room, his salt and pepper hair a wind blown mess. His left side seemed to lag behind his right as he walked. Maybe it was something that had come with the horrors of aging, or maybe the consequence of some past adventure. Liam didn't know because he had never cared enough to ask. 

Liam smiled at the bald spot that was revealed along his receding hairline. "The stress making you go bald, Doctor?"

The man's unsettling grey eyes burned into the boy. Cold and reflective like the Gannan zeppelin had once been long before Liam had inherited it   "Are your restless nights making you slow?"

Liam rubbed the back of his neck, stiff from another restless night. "Okay, okay. So I haven't been sleeping lately. It doesn't matter."

Dr. Ridding nodded and pulled a withered piece of parchment from the inside of his even more withered tunic. "No it doesn't. I've come to ask for your assistance."

Liam made a living shipping cargo from city to city in the SkyCrest region, trying to salvage what once was a thriving family business, back when the Ganna last name had been in plentiful supply. He claimed to not like making special trips for people, but for the right price, which was sadly amount no matter how puny, he was willing to listen.

"How much?" He asked in feigned cautiousness. He didn't want the doctor to think he had already agreed to his proposition, but in truth he would have taken any job in his current financial situation. For weeks he had been living off of stale bread and water of questionable quality. He could use a break, or at least something to keep him busy enough to forget the hunger pains.

Dr. Ridding paced the small room for a second before stopping before Laim with an outstretched hand. The withered parchment drooped downward like a sad flag of surrender. "I can pay you $20,000 after the excursion and a percentage of what the research makes me after that."

Liam narrowed his eyes at the sad flag. "Research?"

The doctor nodded, a strange gleam made his cold eyes glow a little brighter. "Yes. This would be a scientific mission. The demand for new technology has risen greatly in the past few years and the competition is stiff. I'll need something new and unique if I'm to exceed to greatness."

Liam shook his head. New technology? He didn't like the idea of new technology. People were advanced enough as it was. His father, and grandfather before him, had always believed the world would be better if humans kept a simple life. He had believed of a life on the ground and not in the cities that floated high in the sky. Technology was not reliable forever and when it failed them, the cities of SkyCrest would fall and the human race would also fall quite literally. While Liam had believed his father and supported the idea of a less technological expansion for the future, but he couldn't bring himself to think that all technology would fail them. For example, his father's zeppelin had never failed him and so long as Liam knew how to keep its gears running it would continue fly.

"No." He told Dr. Ridding, despite the desperate need for money, Liam could not betray his father by participating in something he would never approve of. "We don't need new technology. The human race is spoiled enough as it is."

The doctor rolled his eyes at the comment. "You sound just like your father. A man with no ambition; a man content to live his whole life as a currier."

Liam's hands balled into fists as an anger as hot as the zeppelin's running engines tour through him. "My father was a smart man. He didn't believe in... this." He waved his hand around the room and pointed to the city that could be seen through the smudged window behind the doctor.  "He didn't believe in cities that flew on turning gears and steam. He didn't believe we needed anymore advancements. Why fix something that's not broken?"

Dr. Ridding shook his head. An aged doctor new more than a drunken, young man. "My poor boy. Your father... was a good man, but he never looked into the future. He refused to believe in the things that could be. He didn't live a life of adventure."

The doctor hit Liam right where it hurt, the most notable similarity he carried from his father. The boy had always dreamed of adventure; a life of constant travel and no worry. He wanted to see the world. But not just all the cities in the sky, Liam truly wanted explore the ground and all the stories told about it.

Liam's mind drifted as he looked off at the city he had parked his zeppelin in. Dormander was its name, after the man that had created it, Samuel D. Dormander. It was a beautiful city, full of oil lights and brick buildings from simpler times. Men in finely pressed suits strolled the streets to go home from a long day of work. Some women were out in their evening best, dresses tied tight around their wastes with bodices. They all wore simple colors, neutral greys and whites with a few pale blues. If you just looked at the people, life seemed fairly normal and simple the way Liam's father had always talked about. No, it wasn't the normal city folk that made things complicated. It was the crazy scientists and mechanics. The people that made the steam technology to make cities airborne. People like Dr. Ridding.

"I'll do it." Liam said turning back to the man knowing he couldn't resist despite how his father would have felt on the matter. "The world's already lost its simplicity."

"Thank you." The doctor nodded and pressed the parchment into the young man's hand. I was damp in an uncomfortable way. "I'll be back at seven tonight, so be ready to leave by then. What you do in the time before that, I don't really care."

"Wait, I have a few questions." Liam stepped in front of the man. He needed answers to the many questions swirling around his mind. "Like, where are we going? And is anyone else coming with us?"

Dr. Ridding patted him on the back as he walked past him, gesturing to the parchment as he went. "There's some information on that paper there. As for the rest? Well  it's all in good time, boy. Just be ready to leave at seven and not a second later."

Once the doctor had left, Anna's robotic voice sounded over the intercom filling the dark chamber. "Did it go well, master Gannan?"

Liam shook his head and looked out the window. Speaking to the only friend he had and the only one who hadn't left with his father. "Honestly? I have no idea."

"Perhaps a nice evening in town might help you clear your mind?" Anna had a creepy way about her. She was a machine, but sometimes thought like a human. Or she at least always seemed to be reading Liam'd mind and he just didn't know what to make of that.

"Yeah." He mumbled grabbing his worn, leather jacket and slipping a gun into the holster on his belt for display, as if he even had the money to be carrying a loaded weapon. "Maybe just one drink to help me escape reality, couldn't hurt."