His incapacitated skimmer was resting amid a tangle of broken branches and trailing vines some twenty meters above the placid water, held aloft by trees whose bases and buttresses were submerged in at least another twenty meters of tannin-infused muck. A plethora of unpleasant possibilities rushed helter-skelter through his brain.
Then there was a loud crack, and the necessity to think was obviated by the need to grab onto something solid and unmoving. It was a futile gesture, because the entire skimmer was already moving—downward.
The supportive branches beneath it having finally given way under the weight of the intruder, the skimmer banged and bounced in an inglorious and quite noisy descent toward the water below, banging off trunks and smashing through branches at the astonishing rate of one irate invective per second. It landed stern-first with a great splash, its back end sinking halfway under the surface before it finally stabilized atop a pile of exhausted wood.
Breathing hard, teeth clenched, Hasa picked himself up off the slanting deck. An intermittent morbid gurgling continued to rise from the part of his craft that was now underwater. His initial reaction was to kick the console, the walls, the floors, everything around him. He wanted to hurt every corner of the craft that had so rudely betrayed his trust. But he didn’t dare, because further violent movement risked destabilizing his already precarious roost. Losing the skimmer didn’t worry him. If it sank, it sank. Fine and good riddance. Once safely back in town he would eagerly apply to collect the insurance. But it could not be allowed to sink before he had recovered and stowed somewhere safe and stable those few vital elements of survival he had mentally inventoried only moments earlier.