“Long story! I sent you here. Hold on!” Asha warned, and Rick was suddenly forced to grab onto the rails of the ship nearby as it banked hard to starboard.
“Where is Seeka?” Rick asked, watching the massive boat spin freely in the open air and bank sharply away from the burning city.
“Dead,” Asha rattled off without emotion, her free hands working like a blur, pressing other buttons on consoles on either side of her.
“Dead?! What the fuck happened? Why did you leave me here?” Rick asked.
“We kind of need to get out of here, Rick. Hold on!” Asha impatiently blurted out, her teeth gritting as she stopped the wheel, held it firm, and then pulled a long lever in the floor. Instantly, the ship banked sharply upwards towards the stars, and then Asha turned and answered his questions. “The kull seers had somehow magically found out about our little plan to steal your djinn back, and right after I sedated you, they attacked my space sleigh. Poor Seeka was killed in the opening seconds of the exchange. I knew they were after the cap in your pocket, so I quickly put you and that cap through the dimensional transporter. I just managed to get you through when the seers destroyed my transporter, and then we had a little fight... It was no fun. I was outgunned, out-manned, and I barely escaped with my life. I lost both Seeka and my expensive space sleigh, but I wasn't about to lose you too, my love!”
“God!” Rick breathed, horrified by what he heard, but now at least understanding how he got to Manza-zar's capitol in the first place.
“I was never going to abandon you, my love. I had to put you where they wouldn't think to look for you,” Asha explained, her face pained.
“Right into their midst... in Manza-zar's capitol city,” Rick thought out loud, nodding his head and realizing it was a risky play but it inevitably worked out, thanks to Kitty, Darkness, and a little cleverness on his part.
“Yes, it was my hope that you'd find a way to rescue Jizabel on your own, and in the meantime, I needed to find a way to actually get to you because my sleigh and transporter were destroyed in the battle with the seers,” Asha continued, pulling another set of long levers sticking up from the floor of the ship. “Hold on!”
The next second, the ship momentarily buckled, and Rick again reached for the railing of the ship for support. Much to his amazement, on either side of the massive ship and even from directly underneath it, three more long masts appeared out of the hull of the shinny ship and mechanically extracted themselves out.
“What the hell?!” Rick breathed in disbelief, as he watched the ship slowly transform under his feet.
Though the ship looked like an antique ship from history, it was definitely a technological marvel in his book, and Rick continued to gawk at it as it lifted them off the desert floor.
“Where are we going, love?” Asha smiled for the first time and turned to him.
“I... I don't know?” Rick breathed, wondering why on Earth she was asking him. He had no idea where he even was! “ I don't know? Into space? Anywhere but here!”
Once all the masts had fully extended all the way out, a heartbeat later, Asha clicked some buttons on the consoles on either side of her, and numerous white, billowing sails immediately appeared out of thin air on all the masts. Once all the heavy sails puffed out, the ship suddenly jolted forward, picking up more speed by the second and driving them into the sky over the burning capitol.
“They are fueled by the cosmic winds. We should be out of here in no time,” Asha then confidently explained, to answer the unasked question that was painted on his face.
“Where did you get this giant ship?”
“Stole it from a merchant,” Asha simply answered with a sneaky smile.
“Stole it?!” Rick blurted out.
“I told you that I was an... acquirer of objects,” Asha innocently answered, and Rick couldn't help but chuckle a little and was happy to see her.
Suddenly feeling a lot more at ease even though explosions continued to rock the desert and the city they were now pulling away from, Rick still had one more question he didn't quite have an answer to or had figured out yet.
“How did you manage to find me? I mean, how did you know I had just escaped the city?” Rick asked.
“Easy! The utility belt I gave you had a tracking device on it. I had been circling the city high overhead for some time now and knew you were below it in the sewers. I could only hope you were finding a way to rescue Jizabel. I was just waiting for you to surface. Once I saw your ping outside the city, I dropped this baby out of the clouds I was hiding in,” Asha explained. “The only problem is, some idiot decided it was a good idea to let hell loose while you were down there in the city. Since then, night set in and the whole world has gone to shit!”
Immediately cringing at her words, Rick meekly began, “Oh, about that...”
“Meow! Meow!” Kitty suddenly called out then from the deck below, interrupting him.
Staring down at his feline companion, Rick saw her urgently pointing off the railing of the ship behind them, towards the city they were quickly leaving in their wake.
“What is it?” Asha immediately asked, her focus completely on steering the ship into a steep bank and directing it into the clouds high overhead.
Dashing to the back railing behind him, Rick stared out over the aft-railing at the city far below them. While explosions continued to pepper the city here and there and the sounds of screaming and battle could plainly be heard, Rick could distinctly see four, much smaller flying ships lifting out of the palace, clearly in pursuit of the enormous skyship.
“Fuck! We got problems!” Rick shouted out, feeling his chest cramping as he watched dozens of giant kull on each ship pointing and gesturing at them.
“Shit!” Asha breathed, glancing back over her shoulder and seeing the trailing ships for herself. “Hold on!”
Asha immediately pulled on one of the levers at her feet again, pulling it a few more inches towards the floor, and in response, the ship banked even steeper than before and almost at a forty-five degree angle. Hanging onto the railing and watching the kull ships still appearing to be gaining on them, Rick shouted out,“Can we outrun them?”
“No, they have schooner class sand sleighs. We have no chance in this lumbering bucket,” Asha replied, hitting more buttons on the consoles on either side of her which caused more white sails connected to the bowsprit to unfurl.
“Fuck!” Rick breathed, still hanging onto the railing for all its worth as the heavy ship continued to drive towards the clouds, leaving the sandy surface of the planet far behind them.
As the heavy ship continued its steep, but silent, climb, Rick felt the air suddenly get a little lighter and cooler, but the ships behind them corrected and were right back on the tail, inch by inch closing the gap by the minute.
“You're going to have to wake Jizabel up and have her wish us out of here or something,” Asha desperately told him. “There is no way we can outrun them, my love.”
“I can't! Jizzy is... not herself,” Rick shouted back in frustration.
“What do you mean? Tell me you have the bottle,” Asha shot back, her glowing eyes again glancing over her shoulder.
“I do! I do! But... Jizzy has been drugged. It is what the kull seers...” Rick started explaining, when he suddenly had a spark of an idea hit him. “Wait! Where is it dark on this boat?”
“What?! What are you talking about?” Asha asked, her attention going back to one of the consoles with some strange green hologram projecting over it displaying the four schooners on their tail.
“Is there any place where it is dark on this ship?” Rick repeated, carefully moving towards her and feeling like he might just fall right off the ship at any minute and plummet to the desert below.
“Yes, if you go into the Captains Quarters or down below deck...”
“Captains Quarters!? Is that just below us?” Rick quickly asked.
“Yes, why...?!”
“No time! I made a friend down there in the city, maybe she can help us escape?” Rick quickly explained, and then he started carefully back down the stairs onto the main deck of the ship where Kitty and Jizzy were.
As the ship was banked at a steep angle, Rick had to use the railing in order to secure his footing heading down to the main deck, but he managed it quicker than he honestly expected. Standing beside Jizzy, who still lay unconscious, was Kitty with the shotgun in her hands and a worried expression painted over her feline features.
“Did she wake yet?” Rick asked, looking down and seeing for himself that the genie was still completely out of it.
“Here, Kitty, give me hand. We'll take her into the Captain's Cabin,” Rick instructed, and Kitty slung the shotgun over her shoulder by the sling and picked up Jizzy's legs.
“What are you doing?! They will be here any minute! Hiding will do no good,” Asha shouted out in frustration, still behind the controls of the lumbering vessel, but already pulling out her futuristic-looking laser pistol and sword with two of her free hands.
“I'm not hiding. I got a plan,” Rick hurriedly answered. “Do what you can to hold them off and buy me some time. I'll get us out of this!”
“Very well, my love. I hope you know what you're doing,” Asha shouted back.
Finally opening the door to the Captain's Cabin, which was right below the aft-deck, Rick and Kitty carried the limp genie into the room and gently placed her on the great bed inside.
“All right! Kitty, take the shotgun and don't let them on the boat. Help Asha! I need time. Hopefully we'll all be out of this in a jiffy,” Rick instructed, unshouldering his bandoleer of shotgun shells and handing the belt to the petite feline.
“Meow?” Kitty asked, her sparkling eyes wide and frightened.
“Don't worry, Kitty. I think I can get us out of this...” Rick grabbed her two arms and held her for a moment.
“They are about to fire grappling hooks and attempt to board us! Do whatever you're going to do now, my love!” shouted Asha from above them on the aft-deck.
Hearing the urgency in Asha's voice, Kitty nodded her head and then skirted out of the cabin and onto the main deck of the ship, her face grim and set for battle.
Closing the door behind her, Rick was beginning to feel panicked, and he quickly turned off the light in the room. With it being night outside and a full moon, he could still see in the shadowy cabin just fine, as it had numerous wide windows all along the back wall. Remembering that Darkness had said if he needed help, she'd be there, Rick hoped she would be good to her word and get them out of this sticky situation they now found themselves in. If not, Rick still had that ace up his sleeve. He knew her true name. Licking his lips nervously, Rick then called for the devil.
“Darkness! Darkness, I need your help!”
Before he even saw her with his eyes, Rick felt his cock suddenly start filling with blood, and he distinctly felt her alluring presence in the room. Turning to the corner by the outside windows, Rick saw Darkness' intoxicating body, long bat-like wings, and those two burning eyes in her skull staring back at him.
“You called?” Darkness purred, her seductive voice almost always playful.
“Yes! We're in a bad jam, Darkness. I got Jizzy, but the kull are right behind us. They're going to catch...” Rick began before Asha's voice outside the cabin interrupted him.
“Don't let them board the ship, cat! Shoot them! Shoot them now before they step on-board!”
The next heartbeat, Rick heard his shotgun go off two times, accompanied by what sounded like an electrical sound, which he guessed came from Asha's pistol. Right after these explosive noises, Rick distinctly heard some painful screams that quickly faded away, as if they were falling from a great height.
“That's it, cat! Keep shooting them!” Asha encouraged.