Nymeria and Ned were commanding the deck...well, at least they knew it. Nobody was going to tell them otherwise. There was a headwind, and they tacked their way to the channel. Then it was a real headwind, and they dropped sails and lashed them, and Jiemba and a treekin sat at the wind crystals as it hit full blast. For a second, Captain Dirk at the wheel thought they were going to go airborne. The ship snuggled down in the water and then leapt forward. He estimated 20 knots at least. They cleared the channel in minutes, and he shouted back over his shoulder through the open door, "That will do it!"
A sail crewman shouted, "Sail ho, starboard side." When they looked, they could see a Zon flag flapping in the stiff headwind. Dirk shouted, "She's turning into the headwind." For all their shouting to each other, the Zon ship showed no sign that they had noticed the Sovereign yet. Thomas shouted, "We have her lined up, take the shot, Arya?" Arya nodded, and boom went the thunder box. The shot hit her in the aft at the waterline. It had arced up a little and was headed downward into the headwind. It punched through the back of the ship and shattered the keel as it went through. The whole bottom of the aft of the ship was gone, and she went down almost instantly. They couldn't even find survivors on the water after a few minutes. "Pretty sure that was a spy watching for us," Dirk said.
The Sovereign set sails and began tacking to the west. It would take them a week like this to get to the treekin homeland. But they were underway.
The three new Amani crew members were stunned by the thunder box's swift disposal of the Zon ship. Mangana the younger wanted full disclosure about the weapons' use, maintenance, loading, and aiming. The older Mangana whistled and went deep in thought at the destruction it wrought. Jiemba just hugged Nymeria a little closer as it happened.
Several council meetings were held to discuss what they should do after dropping Calancy off at her homeland port city. How exactly would it fulfill Arya's second task of fleshing out who and what the enemy was? Captain Springer and Portsmith wanted to capture a higher-ranking military Zon and take him and some of the mechanisms the Zon were using back home as quickly as possible. Arya turned to Captain Dirk, "Dirk, your thoughts?" Dirk had a faraway look in his eyes. He said, "We can't know what's in store for us yet. My thinking is we should allow for everything that's coming. We should still hold to the thought of getting back home alive with as much information as we can. The people we have encountered are about to be hard-pressed by the enemy we are here to study. Our own humanity may require further action to aid them."
Gendry, Thomas, and the younger Mangana were hard at work in the forge rooms making more hand catapults. They enlisted Jack and one of the archers to assist their efforts. Even Trevor was pulled into the mix as they discussed which woods that they had on hand could be best used to copy the Zon weapon. The archer said that they were called crossbows and that he had seen some of them at home, but none of those had the draw crank mechanism or the strength of this one. He gave them good advice on how to fashion the bow parts, and within a few days, they had four complete ones and a smattering of ammunition.
Arya was drilling with the battle group, honing her skills, when, during a break, she caught Nymeria on the fore castle with her nose in the air. She went over there, hugged the wolf, and said, "What is it, girl?" The wolf looked at her and whined.
Two days later, it was clear what the wolf already knew. The smell of wood smoke hung in the air, and the further west they went, the stronger it grew. Few things put fear into the treekin like fire in the trees, and they were pacing the deck now, worried about their homeland and what might be taking place there. By Caelan's reckoning, they were less than a day away from landing at the port city, and later that night, even at this distance, there were orange glows and thicker smoke in that direction. The treekin homeland was burning.
Early the next morning, the Sovereign pulled into port through a thick smoke. They ran silently so they could ascertain the situation clearly. As they pulled into the dock, a large Zon warship was already docked there, and fires and shouts were everywhere in the town in front of them.