Life as a New Hire Ch. 38

I also find the edge of a Jian blade against my throat.

[Mandarin] "How did you get here?" Zhen seethed.

[Mandarin] "I'm here to fly the plane."

[Mandarin] "The controls are dead. All the systems are fried. Even if they did work, I've never flown something this big. No, I repeat, what are you doing here ... and since when do you speak our language?"

[Mandarin] "Controls ... ah hah ..." I looked over the darkened controls. The dagger!

Why the fuck would she leave it there? I looked at the non-Tsu ... whose blood was draining away at a too rapid rate. I placed my hand on the dagger. The lights came on. The instruments weren't at 100% - Hell, they were barely at 50%, but it was better than several seconds ago. Zhen had one hand on the co-pilot's joy stick. She had some minimal level of control.

By the look on her face, she couldn't believe my hand on the dagger and the controls coming back was anything more than a coincidence. I let go. The lights went out again.

[Mandarin] "By all means," I offered her the chance to grab the dagger hilt. "What? Did you seriously believe that yours was the only mythology that mattered? You sent some sick fuck to rip my soul out of my body and hadn't thought that my deities would protest?"

She twisted the sword around in a rapid flourish, then drove it into Non-Tsu's chest. She grabbed the arcane dagger, but nothing happened. She looked pissed. As for Tsu, he was already missing his right arm at the elbow, his left arm was gone at the shoulder, his right leg was off at the knee and his skull was partially split and then he'd been decapitated. His blood/ichor was rushing off elsewhere. I didn't have time to worry about where.

A quick look at his ruined face showed one haunted eye staring back. His soul was still trapped inside his ruined mortal clay. Good for him. In my panic, I had zoned on the two necklaces with the bone reliquaries. The plane began to nose over to the left. If there was any positive news going on it was that we'd dropped under 7 km.

[Mandarin] "Do something," Zhen demanded as she yanked her hand away. I put my hand on the dagger and we had power once again. My other hand rested on the pilot's joy stick. The basics like airspeed, altitude and direction were easy enough. Things like 'thrust ratios' and 'engine temperatures' were something I was still trying to decipher.

[Mandarin] "Okay. I have some conditions before I save any of you," I looked at her.

[Mandarin] "You will die before we do," Zhen threatened. I laughed. She looked furious so I laughed harder.

[Mandarin] "Listen you stupid cunt ..." and she aimed a hand-chop at my Adam's apple. I let go of the dagger and we began to spiral out of control once more.

[Mandarin] "Put your hand back on the dagger," she yelled.

[Mandarin] "Why?" I shifted back in my seat and relaxed. "In case you missed it, you gave me over to a cretin who was going to take my soul and sell it to some demon as if it was Gatorade (I was making that up). This doesn't not inspire me to place my life in your hands."

[Mandarin] "The girl will die too," she tried to get clever. She was scared and it was clawing like a wild animal behind her eyes.

[Mandarin] "So will your brother," I grinned. "Under your tender mercies, you were going to try and pervert a smart, wonderful little girl and turn her into one of you sex slaves. We are both better off dead than putting our lives back in your hands."

[Mandarin] "Very well," she mulled that over hurriedly. "I will give you my word that we will return the girl alive and unharmed to her people if you put this plane down in one piece. You must still come with us." I was distracted by something.

'Wakko, SzélAnya tells me there is an island about 20 kilometers away. You can get there before this cyclone tears this craft out of the sky,' Dot told me. I even got a visual of the landing strip.

Honolulu it wasn't. In fact, it looked like a big slab of concrete at one end of a lagoon; a tiny speck in a hugely angry sea. Problem: the runway ran from North-northeast to South-southwest and we were approaching form the Southeast. I'd have to circle the landing strip in this POS, battered by 80+ km winds ... out of the Southwest.

The Alal-pilot strongly suggested I wanted to come around from the North, into the wind as opposed to it pushing me down the runway as a tail wind ... since the North end of the concrete was awash in the waters from the lagoon. The South end was awash in waters form the Ocean. Choices – choices.

[Mandarin] "You are a woman in the Seven Pillars – your word is useless. The only people who value you are your brother – definitely – and possibly your father, since you have some skills and you aren't a brood mare for a man thirty years your senior. You are on the right track with you and yours making a pledge though," I finished the first round of emotional Ping-Pong.

[Mandarin] "What is going on?" Mu staggered into the cockpit, stumbling over Tsu's mangled corpse. He was back to being Tsu since Sarrat Irkalli had slithered her bloody ooze elsewhere.

[Mandarin] "If he doesn't touch that dagger, we are going to slam into the Ocean, Brother," she snarled.

[Mandarin] "Put your hand on the dagger," Mu demanded.

[Mandarin] "Fuck you," I laughed at him. "Where's Aya?" Mu's hands went for the back of my neck and my right elbow. Bad move. I twisted, and as I did so, I brought my QCW-05 around and fired off a round into his thigh right above the knee.

Since it had been in my lap, he hadn't perceived it as a threat until it was too late. Mu manned up and didn't scream. He certainly had a nasty, bleeding wound. He did slump back toward the cabin door.

[Mandarin] "Brother!" Zhen exclaimed. She went for her sword. I pointed the gun at her.

[Mandarin] "Do it and I'll put a bullet in you too," I challenged her. She was about to say something. "The only person coming into this cabin before we land is Aya and your brother isn't leaving until I say so."

[Mandarin] "He'll bleed out," Zhen pointed out. Mu was busy turning his sash into a tourniquet.

[Mandarin] "You catch on quick," I glared. "Mu, if you patch up that one, I'll shoot you in your other leg, or your stomach. Either Aya comes in here alone with a medical kit ..." I grabbed the dagger because Alal-pilot was STRONGLY suggesting we were about to be entering a dive too steep for this crate to recover from ... or maybe for a DC-7 to ...

[Mandarin] "What is going on?" Mu grimaced.

[Mandarin] "Brother, as I told you ... when he touches the dagger, we have power for controls," she was caught between concern for her brother and a desire to establish some power. "Give the hostage a medical kit and send her to the cockpit. Mu has been shot."

[Mandarin] "Duan Mu; what are your orders," came the response. I was right. If Mu was dead, or incapacitated, the Seven Pillars troops wouldn't be looking to her for leadership.

[Mandarin] "Hold on," Mu rumbled to his troops. "Why shouldn't I have you killed now and be done with it – let us die as true warriors of the Seven Pillars?"

[Mandarin] "Because all you will succeed in doing is killing Aya, Mu". I was keeping it civil for the nonce because I had renewed faith that I could save Aya. "My Goddesses are here, with me. The storm? She's mine. Your buddy lying on the ground? Take a good look into his left eye and wait for it to blink. Comrade Tsu brought a toothpick to an ICBM exchange and now the rest of you are paying the price."

[Mandarin] "His eye moved ..." Mu mumbled. He really need to get that leg looked at.

[Mandarin] "Brother, let them send the girl in. You are bleeding out."

[Mandarin] "One condition, Mu," I stopped him from doing as his sister requested. "You and everyone else on the plane who works for you is going to swear an Oath to my Goddess."

Mu sneered over the reference to my 'Pagan' Goddess.

[Mandarin] "Do it, or I'll knee-cap your sister. We'll still land the plan, but she's going to be getting around on one leg for the rest of her life ~ as short as that may be. Swear by Ishara that neither you, nor anyone you command will lay one finger on Aya; not harm, or restrain her in any manner ... and you won't shoot at me either."

[Mandarin] "And if we do?" Zhen asked. Oh, I like clever people. I much more prefer people who think they are far cleverer than I. I was a liberal arts major and knew the value of proper word placement. They thought they would both lie to me and trick me even if they didn't lie. I hadn't ask them to not attack me ~ I hated butchering defenseless foes.

No, I wanted Aya safe – my main goal. They assumed I had missed out on not completely guaranteeing my own safety. They were also forgetting that Aya could still kill them and I doubted she had my overly-masculine honorable inclinations.

[Mandarin] "I'll get your brother medical attention.

[Mandarin] "Fine," Mu grunted. "We swear."

[Mandarin] "Order your men to say these exact words: 'Swear by Ishara that neither you, nor anyone you command will lay one finger on Aya; not harm, or restrain her in any manner ... and you won't shoot at me either'."

[Mandarin] "This a magical oath," Mu hissed out his pain.

[Mandarin] "Brother, do it ... please," Zhen begged her twin. Mu relented, the order went out and the oaths of every Seven Pillars of Heaven society members was duly noted by my Goddess. None of the Goddesses could be around too much longer. The Gong tau threat had been neutralized.

The Weave would want to shut this running sore and fix this fuckup Tsu had created. Good Guys – Bad Guys – the Weave didn't care. Currently, the fear that they were close by was my greatest tool. Aya came forward. She was about to leap into my cluttered arms when she noted Mu looking in a bad way.

"Mr. Mu, it is not too late to say you're sorry," Aya counseled him. "Cáel is a wonderful Father and I'm sure if you really mean it, despite all you've done to us, he'll spare you." She opened her kit and got to work using her basic Amazon First Aid skills. While Zhen and I formulated a plan ... all our communications were gone and our avionics was unreliable, Mu helped Aya tend to his wounds.

"Aya," I spoke to her when she'd finished up by giving Mu a strong dose of a pain killer, "Now go back to the galley and find the nice medic-lady there. She has a bottle filled with some of those kick-ass sedatives. Inject everyone else but me, you, Zhen here and Mu ... Mu's had enough drugs for one day."

"Okay," she popped up. She turned fearlessly to face her former tormentors and jailors.

"I had them all swear an oath to Ishara to not kill, harm, or restrain you in any manner, so have fun hunting them down. You've got about thirty minutes."

"Is Dot with us right now?" she gave me a bone-tired smile. I nodded. "This is going to be fun," she shouted and off she went.

'I'll be by her side', Dot whispered to me. She rose forth from the seat within me and followed Aya out into Seven Pillars Hell. Technically, I believed it was the Diyu of the Fiendish Child. Those malicious bastards suffered every accident, misfortune, and nearly-impossible odds malfunction in the process of being subdued by a 9 year old Amazon.

Four of them died in the process of trying to kill her, when stopping her became obviously impossible. Two had their guns blow up when they tried to shoot her, dismembering their hands and wrists. One guy was strangled in his emergency oxygen supply mask. The last guy lunged forward, slipped on a cup and broke his neck when his head was caught in a folded armrest.

Twenty-eight nerve wracking minutes later.

"All done," she gave me an exhausted yet triumphant chirp. "Should I strap Mr. Mu into a chair? He's passed out."

[Mandarin] "Zhen, buckle your brother into a chair and hurry back. I'll hold us steady until you get back."

Remember, I had only the use of my left hand. My right had to stay on the dagger to keep things powered up.

"Buckle-up after you've gotten Duan Mu secured, Aya. That's his proper name."

"I know that. I was trying to keep them irritated so they would act irrationally. You taught me that," Aya bathed me in her sinister ways and means.

Finally, it was down to me and Zhen.

[Mandarin] "Do you think we will succeed, Cáel Wakko Ishara?"

[Mandarin] "I'm giving it my best shot."

[Mandarin] "The little girl was right," Zhen groaned. "She told us we'd regret not killing you in New York when we had the chance. I thought she was being a annoying spoiled brat. I was wrong." Pause. "I know you have no reason to answer me truthfully ... but when we – the rest of us – die ... could you make sure my brother's body is returned to my father so that he can join our ancestors in the family grave?"

[Mandarin] "Why do you think I would lie to you now that we are alone?" That was a loaded question. I did the majority of my lying when I was alone with a woman.

[Mandarin] "I ... will you give me your Oath, in your Goddess's name?"

[Mandarin] "Nope. My Goddess has pretty much been exhausted by your boys trying to break their vows to me and Aya. I'll tell you what I will do ..."

[Mandarin] "What?"

[Mandarin] "Show me your tits and I'll promise to do my best."

[Mandarin] "What? You want to see me naked?" she grew indignant. "NO!" It was her being a vaginal virgin (I knew the type ~ good oral technique and bed play, but no 'go-uppy' the pussy, or ass) and me not being Han Chinese, therefore being a 'Stinky Barbarian'.

[Mandarin] "Listen, I've never flown a commercial jet before and neither have you. Odds are we are both going to be dead in the next ten minutes. After all the hell you have put me through, can you at least give me some fucking inspiration. No one will ever know. Besides, imagining the perfect swell of your breast and the smooth tautness of your stomach ... well, you are so damn perfect it is distracting!" I protested against the World's grand injustice (me not being Han and thus not worthy of seeing her goodies).

[Mandarin] "Do you really think we are all about to die?" she studied me.

[Mandarin] "I'm doing my best ... but, yes, I believe we are," I stared deep into her dark brown orbs.

'You are despicable,' Ishara chortled. 'I promise you – plant your seed and she will bear you a son.'

[Mandarin] "Very well ... hold onto the controls," she said as she released her joystick. She rolled up her padded (high-tech body-weave) shirt carefully. I was a past master of looking while pretending not too look. Still ...

[Mandarin] "Can I look yet?" I hesitantly questioned. Sure, we were about to slam an Airbus-350 into the Pacific Ocean, or a concrete runway – no lights – in a cyclone, but she was 'working it'. For all she knew, this striptease would be her last living memory.

[Mandarin] "No." A few seconds passed.

[Mandarin] "Now?"

[Mandarin] "No." Oh, her top was just cresting her highly aroused nipples – she had tiny, erect nipples. The smallest I had ever seen, but long ... almost like tiny awls. Finally she'd played it out as long as possible.

[Mandarin] "Okay."

[Mandarin] "No, wait," I begged. "Let me make sure everything is stable. I want to look at you for as long as I can. This will probably be the last happy moment of my life, so I want to make the most of it." That made her happy. I puttered around for five seconds, then pivoted around to take in her full, topless view. I didn't say anything for the longest time.

[Mandarin] "Aren't you done yet," she grumbled. "We are about to crash."

[Mandarin] "Oh ... sorry," I turned away. She rolled her top down quickly and we returned to trying to keep the people we loved most in life alive. I sensed as sense of disappointment in her nonetheless.

"Perfect," I whispered. She caught it.

[Mandarin] "What did you say? Is something wrong?" she worried, studying her crippled command console for any errors she might have missed.

[Mandarin] "I said 'perfect'. I knew it, your body is perfect," I confessed. Pause.

[Mandarin] "Oh ..."

[Mandarin] "Now I have something to live for," I declared.

[Mandarin] "I will never let you see me naked again. This was a one-time thing!"

[Mandarin] "That's two things I have to live for then," I countered.

[Mandarin] "Bringing us in alive and seeing me naked once more?" she had to be sure.

[Mandarin] "I was going to say 'seeing you naked again' and 'living', but I can see that your priorities make more sense," I conceded.

[Mandarin] "Ah, you are right ... that I am right." Pause. "Good luck."

[Mandarin] "On seeing you naked again, or surviving our landing."

[Mandarin] "Let's start out by landing the plane.

[Mandarin] "And then, Duan Zhen?"

[Mandarin] "We will see, Cáel Ishara."