De Camino et Virtus Bellorum

"Greek officials? Not South Islanders?"

"You will pay what you did to my ship" Barbosa says almost to himself

The officer snorted, amused. "I'm positively shaking in my boots." he told Barbossa. Turning back to Phil: "Technically Greece is not a country. That makes this ship...rather illegal." He paused a moment to think.

Barbosa spat at the officer

The officer looked disdainfully down at the glob of saliva on the deck. "How endearing." He adjusted his tricorne. "This ship is now under the jurisdiction of the Royal Air Force. Since you are no longer capable of unassisted flight, my sloops will tow you along. Please try not to make a nuisance of yourself - it would terribly...unfortunate if you were to go down with those South Islanders."

"Well, it's not like we have much of a choice now do we?" Phil says.

The officer smiled. "True. If there are no more questions...?"

"Can you go to the local market place, grab some viagra and go F@#$ yourself?" Barbosa asks

Barbossa's head snapped forward as a marine smashed the stock of his rifle into it, his hat tumbling to the deck.

"No questions, then. Excellent. Off we go." With that, the officer left for his ship and the Greek airship was under way again, though this time escorted by an RAF fleet and towed by two sloops to make up for the destroyed engine.

The temperature was dropping rapidly - fairly expected, given that this was Norway in October. Pretty soon the ships lit great lamps to better keep track of each other in the clouds as snow swirled about them.

"Cold weather you have here"

"What'd you expect in the North Sea?" one of the airmen asked, Scottish by his accent. Greek airmen were few and far between with the lack of centralised government - the fledgling Hellenic Republic took volunteers wherever it could find them, and not all Britons were so colored by their nation's hatred for France.

Barbosa sat down enjoying the ride

"Well this makes little sense, a few minutes ago there was no snow, now there's alot of snow, what the hell?"

The Scot from earlier was looking at a thermometer, worried. "Tha's not good...This's colder than the ship's engines were designed for. Colder than it should be this time'a year, too. Freak storm's gonna put us down..."

The thermometer, interestingly, was full of frozen mercury now, not that you could see it well with the frost coating the tube. Speaking of frost, that was everywhere...unnaturally so as well - how was it forming so quickly?

A number of the airmen were taking up tools to knock the quickly-forming ice off the ship when a screech of breaking metal sounded. Looking up, the group saw flaming chunks of metal coming from the engines of one of the large battlecruisers, followed by a colossal crackling sound as the hydrogen in her portside ballast caught. Listing badly, with some men falling off the deck to their deaths, the ship plunged into the snow and clouds and out of sight.

"Yeah, tha's what happens to the engines in this kind'a cold. Makes the steel brittle like glass, an' then with all the movin' parts an' burnin' coal it's a matter of time 'til it goes out."

"Any safe landing locations?" Phil asks.

"Look over the side an' tell me if you see any, Cap." The Scot said drily. "Next bit o' ground we see'll be the first of 'em. Hell, we may even be still at sea, we're flyin' so blind right now."

"Well I hope we don't run into a mountain, it would be a shame for an air force as high and mighty as the British would run into such a blunder."

Whereupon the Exegeiroma jerked suddenly, colliding with a jagged slope. The remaining British airships were mostly lowering their engines so as not to explode as well, and had lost altitude in addition to that. A series of colossal crashes proceeded to take place as the better part of the severely damaged fleet collided with the slope of a mountain and tumbled down the far side of the peak.

"Oh look we crashed into a  mountain, who could have predicted that?" Phil says after grabbing onto a railinng on the ship to hang on to.

When the Exegeiroma settled at the bottom of the mountain it was essentially unflyable. Worse yet, looking around most of the British fleet seemed to be in the same state - those that had missed the mountain had been brought down by the cold, simply incapable of moving. The wind was still howling as it picked up snow - fortunately nobody was terribly cold with the airmen's gear.

"Everyone ok? Crew report."

"Fine, 'm fine." the Scot reported, standing on the wall - the ship had landed on its side.

Barbosa was on his side still handcuffed "Great landing"

"You can thank the royal air force for that one."

"SO the british can't trade well or fly well. I'm going to win that bet when I get back to Tortuga"