Wolf Who Rules

She kissed him on the strong line of his jaw. He turned his head and captured her mouth with his and kissed her deeply. He tasted of the enclave peaches; the sweetness poured through her like warm honey; she clung to him, letting the feeling push out the fear and worry.

Tinker realized that Stormsong was beside her. She burned with sudden embarrassment at the way she was acting. Knowing that neither elf would see it as wrong didn't help.

She broke the kiss but couldn't bring herself to let go of Pony. With one hand, she reached out to Stormsong to pull her into a three-way huddle. "And you too. I was worried sick about both of you."

"What? I don't get a kiss?" Stormsong teased.

Tinker laughed and kissed her quickly on the lips. Then holding them close, she whispered. "Is Windwolf all right? Where is he? What's happened?"

"We can not get close enough to the museum to look for Wolf," Pony said. "Malice, though, appears to be searching for something, so we think that Wolf has eluded him."

"The oni has stolen the dreadnaught and taken it downriver," Stormsong said. "Our greatest fear has been that while Malice kept us busy, the oni would push an army through the Ghostlands."

"Well, I stopped that." Tinker gave a weak laugh.

As Pony and Stormsong updated her, Cloudwalker, Rainlily and Little Egret joined them at the end of the bridge. She greeted them with hugs. It felt good to be surrounded by her people.

The sekasha shifted to face crewmembers picking their way around the edge of the ship. It was Esme with Jin and handful of the tengu crew members.

"It's okay. I've taken the tengu as my beholden."

"Are you sure that's wise?" Pony asked.

"Yes."

"Okay." She took a deep cleansing breath. She pressed her palms to her eyes and considered current obstacles and possible tools. If Malice was hunting Windwolf, then they would have to hunt Malice. The EMP spell that she used to clear the ship should work on Malice. They needed, however, a big gun to take advantage of it - a very big gun. She could think of only one place they could get such a gun. "Okay, we're going to need the dreadnaught."

"What's a dreadnaught?" Jin asked.

"I suppose you could call it an attack helicopter on steroids," Tinker said. "It's more a flying fortress. It's armed with a variety of heavy guns, from machine guns to cannons, and can carry a large number of troops into any location. The elves built them with magic in mind - so they're very low tech, and thus extremely clunky."

"And you want us to take it out?" Jin asked.

"No," Tinker said. "We need it to take on Malice."

"Take it over?" Stormsong said. "Are you fucking insane?"

She held up her hands to ward off Stormsong's objections. "While we were at Aum Renau, I got inside of the dreadnaughts. I think it was part of me being the pivot - they didn't know what I would need to stop the oni, so they told me anything I wanted to know - full access to everything."

"Yes," Stormsong hissed, her eyes going soft and vague. "The pivot keeps turning until the door is fully shut."

Tinker shivered. "Oh, that creeps me out. I took detailed notes and I scanned them into my datapad - I was thinking of making a few for the Wind Clan."

"You would," Jin murmured.

"The big question is - do we have anyone that knows how to fire the guns?" Tinker expected that they would need to track down some the Fire Clan crew. Surprisingly, all the sekasha pointed to themselves.

"We were all taught how when we were in Aum Renau," Pony explained. "After you showed an interest in the airship."

"They didn't miss a trick with me being the pivot, did they? How the hell did I miss-never mind, don't answer that."

"We will need a pilot," Stormsong said. "The oni killed the dreadnaught's crew."

"How close is it to Earth's aircraft?" Esme had worked her way down to the bridge. She spoke Elvish, which surprised Tinker and also made her realize that Jin had been speaking it too.

"The controls are modeled after a helicopter," Tinker said.

"I'm your pilot then." Esme noted Tinker's surprise. "I'm the best fucking pilot you're going to find. It's the magic. On Elfhome, I can fly blindfolded." Tinker remembered Stormsong's ability with the hoverbike and realized that Esme probably had the same type of talent. "Taking over controls mid-air might be tricky - but should be a piece of cake compared to some of the NASA simulations."

"You know," Durrack called out of the gathering twilight announcing the NSA's arrival. "We're going to have to reclassify you to force of nature."

"Oh good." Tinker said. "We're going to do an assault on the dreadnaught and we could use your help."

Briggs scoffed as she joined Durrack. "And she's not even trying to be scary."

***

Tinker kept losing count of their numbers. They would need a tengu to get every non-tengu up to the dreadnaught while it was in flight. The problem was that she kept forgetting to count herself, or she added herself to both elves and humans. It was really starting to bug her.