A sample
I've mentioned a few times that my lack of posts here is due to the ongoing work I'm putting into my novel. That said, here's a little taste of that novel, unedited, unpolished, and right out of my first draft.

***

When the glider was directly above the ornithopter, Cogwheel was forced to make up his mind quickly. He acted immediately, releasing the anchor rope from his harness, and running forward along the hull of the flying machine. Just before he reached the propellers, the glider was above him, and he leaped into the air, grabbing onto the straps which held the pilot in, gripping the strong fabric tightly with both hands. The glider pilot, surprised, fired the rocket and banked back hard, and the two of them shot rapidly into the sky.

Wire was all-but-blind. There was only glass facing forward in the ornithopter. The rest of the hull was necessarily solid metal, so Wire didn’t know that Cog had climbed on board the one glider, nor could he find the other. Not knowing that Cogwheel’s fate was now in his own hands, Wire was reluctant to pull any more dangerous manoeuvres, for fear of harming his smallish companion. Wire cursed Cog, first quietly, and then with more force. He glanced back over his shoulder, and saw the anchor line hanging limply, the end resting inside the mouth of the still-sleeping frog. The hatch had slammed shut, though loosely, and it rattled with the craft’s movement.

It was then, while Wire was looking back at the interior of the tail, that the other glider, the one he could not see – for it was directly behind the ornithopter, doing its best to match speed, activated its weapon: a smaller rocket, which launched from the top of the mechanical assembly of the glider.

The rocket roared to life and tore through the air at incredible velocity, and exploded upon impact with the ornithopter. It struck the tail of the craft just below the simple rudder, and the impact, though it didn’t manage to break the ornithopter’s reinforced hull, ruptured the steam engine. The ornithopter began bleeding: the gray-green biological matter that they used for fuel and the boiling water that rose to drive the beating wings and the twisting props sprayed around the interior of the rear compartment.

This had two immediate and terrible effects: Firstly, a quick glance at the gauges showed Wire that he was losing steam pressure rapidly, and the mechanical parts of the ornithopter were very quickly grinding to a stop. Secondly, the frog woke up, hung over, angry, scalded, and shaken.

Cogwheel was climbing the body of the glider pilot. The pilot, unsure of how to react to this small man scrambling over his torso, and unwilling to relinquish control of his vehicle, simply stared through his dark goggles in confusion. He shouted at Cog in a language that the latter did not recognize, and pulled the glider into a series of tight axial spins, trying to shake him. The small inventor clung tenaciously to the pilot’s body and harness, and took the opportunity to examine the controls of the glider more closely.

There were metal handles which descended from the top of the glider and it was these handles that the pilot used to tilt the glider on its axis to effect steering. Each handle also had a trigger, and when both were depressed, Cog noted, the rocket fired. The right-hand handle also had a thumb-switch. Curious to see more of the glider’s functioning, Cog began to slowly pull himself towards the front of the craft, over the body of the pilot. The frustrated and frightened pilot began shouting even louder, and tried to headbutt Cog as the inventor crawled over him. He again pulled the glider into a spin, causing Cog to cling to his face. The pilot’s shouts changed to screams, as Cog’s body completely blocked the pilot’s vision, and the glider levelled out.

Once he was able to grasp the front of the glider, Cog pulled hard, and slid his legs up the side of the pilot. “Hold still now!” he shouted back down to the panicking flyer, and anchored his feet against the man’s shoulders. He peered over the front of the glider at the mechanism of the rocket.

The rocket was made of four parts. The first was the rocket nozzle itself, a large metal reaction chamber. The other three, it seemed, were both fuel tanks. “Amazing!” Cogwheel shouted over his shoulder at the pilot. “You have a reactive fuel system? The parts mix and explode?” The pilot didn’t respond, though he did tilt the glider forward in another attempt to dislodge Cogwheel, who stubbornly clung to the craft.

“That’s really great!” Cog continued, nonplussed by the rapid descent. So each trigger must open one of the tanks, and… what about the third? Only when both are depressed? I wonder why that is?” he asked of himself. “Oh!” he exclaimed with a look of satisfaction. “Of course: tricky business flying about, so the two-trigger mechanism must be so you don’t fire the rocket by accident. Press one down, nothing, press both down, and you fire away. Great! Really, really great!”

Cog looked back, smiling. His smile quickly faded when he saw the trees of the English countryside rising up at him very, very quickly. “Oh, my. I quite forgot you were trying to kill me. Well, we can’t have that!”

The young adventurer, grinning like an ape again, gripped tightly to the frame of the glider, and reversed his grip. He then kicked off of the pilot’s shoulders, letting the inertia of the fall do the rest of the work. He rolled around until he was on top of the rocket engine, which was still warm from the last firing. He lay alongside one of the wings of the plummeting aircraft, holding tightly with only one hand, while he used the other to fish about in his pockets for a small wrench. Tool in hand, Cogwheel began loosening the bolts that connected the rocket engine from the frame, one by one.

The flyer leaned hard, forcing the glider back onto a path that was fairly level, relative to the ground, and banked hard. He fired the rocket in staccato bursts, hoping to burn Cog, but the nimble scientist rolled far out onto the edge of the wing to avoid the blasts. This had the effect of tilting the glider, and the pilot was forced to focus on maintaining his balance.

Once the bolts that held the rocket and the glider frame together were all half-loosed, Cog replaced the wrench and deftly produced a small penknife, which he used to cut a flap of canvas just above the pilot’s head. Then, holding tightly to the metal rods that connected the handles to the rocket, he replaced the knife, pulled the wrench back out, and clouted the pilot solidly in the back of the head.

The pilot fell forward, and the glider went with him. The Cog and the rocket, on the other hand, went in a different direction, coasting forward on the craft’s inertia. The unconscious pilot had let go of the rocket controls, and Cog gingerly slipped his body under the rocket and began to hastily attach the safety harness he had put on in the ornithopter to the frame which had previously held the rocket away from the skin of the glider. Once he felt moderately secure, he gripped the two handles, sighted for the ornithopter, and fired the rocket. The thunder of the engine was drowned out, however, by the boom left in the wake of a lightning bolt. “Oh dear,” said Cog. “Bad time for a storm.”

Meanwhile, Wire was in a panic. The ornithopter was dropping rapidly from the sky, its propellers and wings having stopped. The wings were wide enough to glide for a while, but if he was forced to land, it would be an ugly sight. Luckily, Wire knew his craft instinctively. He locked the controls in position to keep the vehicle as level as possible, and removed his safety harness. He jumped into the back of the craft, where the angry, burned frog lashed at him with its tongue, leaving trails of sickly saliva on Wire’s body, and slamming him up against the wall.

“I don’t really have time to beat you up again,” groaned Wire, but he dutifully leapt onto the frog and pounded it hard in the face with his fists. The frog was stunned, and Wire went back to work. He pulled the panel that covered the rotational function of the propellers away, and tossed it to the floor. Clambering over the again-stirring frog, he gathered tools and materials, and returned to the open panel.

With the materials he had available: magnets, tubing, bolts, and the rotation assembly of the props, Wire hastily assembled a small motor. He then began prying open the safety cover on the Galvano-Voltaic system that ran the internal lights. This is when Wire heard the thunder-crack, followed moments later by the sound of raindrops beating hard against the hull of the ornithopter, and then, the sound of heavy boots landing hard atop the craft.

The hatch popped open, and Wire saw a black hobnailed boot descend into the cabin, searching for purchase. He hefted the bit of copper pipe that he had in his hand and tested its weight, ready to swing.

The man dropped into the cabin, and landed atop the frog. He slipped, not suspecting the slimy surface, and fell forwards to where Wire stood, poised with his makeshift weapon. The bald man made the mistake of looking back to see what he tripped on, and Wire hit him hard in the collarbone with his pipe, and he heard a loud crack as the bone broke.

The attacker collapsed, unconscious, and the frog’s tongue shot out, licking at the strange pale figure. Wire returned to his work, attaching the Galvano-Voltaic system to the motor he had made. “I hope this works,” he said, and flipped the switch for the lights into the “on” position.

Cog saw the pilot from whom he had stolen the rocket crash into the ground below, and winced in empathy. He looked up in time to see the second glider landing atop the ornithopter, and he hoped as hard as he could hope that the fuel in the rocket – obviously designed only to be fired in short bursts – held out long enough for him to catch the ornithopter. As an afterthought, he also hoped to not be hit by lightning, as the storm around them intensified.