THE SECOND CRADLE - BOOK TWO OF THE IRON CRADLE SAGA Chapter 22: CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO - A species I'm no longer part of

Read chapter 22 of THE SECOND CRADLE - BOOK TWO OF THE IRON CRADLE SAGA by JE PAYNE on NovelPedia.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO A species I'm no longer part of The valley spread out before us as the airship rose to cheers from those who were staying behind at the keep. As an engineer, I could only marvel at the ingenuity behind these airships. These things weren't small. I hadn't spent a lot of time on boats, so my experience was limited, but my family had taken a trip to Europe once, and we got to cross the channel on one of those massive ferries. That was the closest thing my mind could compare the Hugo to. Not because it looked like a ferry, or because it was built the same way, but because of the sheer scale of it. The ferry had been huge enough to carry rows of cars, crowds of passengers, and enough weight that my younger self had trouble understanding how it moved through the water at all. The Hugo gave me that same feeling, except it was hanging in the sky. I looked down from the ship's superstructure and over the railing of the catwalk that wrapped around the bridge. Below us, an entire legion of kobolds and cohorts were camped across the deck, packed between cargo, equipment, and the heavy structures that held the ship together. "It's the air composition and the lower atmosphere, isn't it?" Kyle asked as he moved up to join me. "Yeah, they're actually taking advantage of all those heavy noble gases that hang around the surface," I said, still looking down at the deck below. "That's why they can't go very high." "Okay, I mean, I'm no engineer, Gavin, and that makes sense to me, but can you tell me how, even in three hundred years, these kobolds managed to build a liquid salt reactor small enough to fit on a ship?" "Yeah, I took a tour of the engine room earlier with ARi, and I was completely floored," I said, shaking my head as I thought back to it. "I mean, I guess it makes sense, Kyle. They did have access to everything we left them. It's not just that they built a reactor to power these ships, though. Instead of driving generators with steam, they're driving turbines directly. Kyle, the efficiency is incredible!" Kyle leaned against the railing and looked out over the valley as the airship continued to climb. "It's too bad we can't just fly all the way through the pass," Kyle said with an impish grin. "All that marching is going to be hell on my knees." "Dude.. Your dad jokes are awful." "I know, right? He said grinning ear to ear. "I've been saving that one up for like three days." "I'm still trying to get over the whole enhanced attributes thing myself though. Truth is, we're never really going to catch colds or get sick again. There'll be no arthritis or any other deterioration. If we survive this competition, we're going to live for a really long time, Kyle. Like a really long time," I said, slowly shaking my head as I continued to look out at the view below. "The entire concept of time doesn't even feel real anymore," Kyle said. "When you think about it, with all this back and forth between the cradles so far, what scale do we even use as a reference? If I would've asked myself that question a year ago, Gavin, I would've said Earth time, but after coming back to Adeya knowing that three hundred years have passed since the last time we were here, and knowing next time we go back to Earth that hundreds of years will have passed there as well, I don't know anymore." I looked over at Kyle. "I guess that's something that we're going to have to learn to come to grips with. And if Roslyn was successful and they managed to get all of those people scanned and into stasis, I think humanity as a whole is going to have to come to grips with it as well." "It really is impressive that they were able to achieve so much without iron or steel, or even electricity, for that matter," Kyle said, watching the deck crews moving below us. "It's really got me thinking about all of the other life out there. With so much happening with this competition and everything that's happening with Earth right now, we never really got a chance to bask i