Aethosphere Chronicles: Storm of Chains Read online

  “Anyway,” Abigale looked relieved, “I’m just glad we got to you first.”

  “First... for what?”

  “So we can get you out of here before the Empire comes. Your father’s filled me in on what you’ve done—”

  “Done?” Drish wasn’t exactly sure on what she meant by that. Could Arvis already know his plan to betray the Resistance? The man knew Drish held absolutely no sympathy for the insurgents, but he had only just written his confession… My confession. Drish felt a sudden upwelling of panic, and he clenched the note tightly. If just one of these bandits spotted it he was finished.

  “Yes,” she gently squeezed his free hand in appreciation. “And we owe you so much because of it. We were able to move key players in time; and now, let’s get you to safety.”

  Safety—he shook himself free. “No, I can’t go.” Drish backed away from the cluster of hooligans, and as he neared his desk, he dropped the note into the waste basket, but it hit the rim and fell to the floor. Drish was horrified when Abigail laughed.

  “What…” she said, holding out her arms, “do you have engaging plans you’re not telling us?” She scanned the pirates surrounding them, each chuckling back in a compulsory way. “Now if what your father told me is true, then you’re in grave danger, and you’d be a fool not to come with us. I thought you’d understood that by the way you flew from the tavern last night. You looked like a dead man after we talked.”

  “This is all very touching,” interrupted Bazzon, “but I really didn’t risk flying into King’s Isle, and sneaking into Throne for some sort of heartfelt reunion. Now pack up your crap, Drish, and let’s get the hell out of here.”

  “No…I’m not going,” stated the aristocrat defiantly. “You don’t understand.”

  Lance stepped in, jostling everyone aside with his cumbersome equipment. “Listen,” he explained breathless, “we can’t stick around here much longer. I’m starting to pick up some garbled radio-chatter that sounds an awfully lot like positional orders.”

  “Right,” agreed Bar. “Okay, we don’t have time for this anymore; I promised your father I’d get you out, so let’s get.”

  “Well, you’ll have to disappoint him then.”

  “Drish,” interjected Abigail. “Come on… Why are you being like this? I’m not leaving you.”

  “No,” argued the noble, beginning to back around his desk to put some distance between himself and these outlaws, but he backed into the tattooed old man instead, who stood like an immovable wall.

  “Cap-i-tain,” urged the radio-bearer, and that’s when Bar’s patience must have snapped.

  “That’s it,” he hollered, and as Drish took his attention off the Glenfinnan Candaran, he caught a brief glimpse of Bar charging at him, and then a burst of light exploded through his vision.

  In the darkness that came, Drish suddenly felt weightless, and the whole world turned upside-down. It seemed he was flying, and shapes and colors were swirling around him in dizzying circles. “Was that necessary,” he heard Abigail say faintly, but she sounded a hundred kilometers away, and as if speaking through a tin can. Everything felt strange. Drish could see the floor, the stairs; realized he was moving. Where am I going? I don’t feel like I’m walking… and why does my cheekbone hurt so much?

  The fact was, he wasn’t walking at all, and he could feel his legs dangling loosely beneath him, and the stench of something musky hung close to his face.

  “What are you doing,” Drish muttered through the fog swimming in his head.

  “He’s already coming to,” said a man, one of the pirates—or insurgents—or whatever they claimed to be, and Drish opened his eyes to the foyer stairs, and to him being carried down them.

  “Good, he can walk on his own if that be the case,” grumbled Bar Bazzon. “For a wiry guy he sure is heavy.”

  Drish was planted on his feet, upright on the floor, where he wobbled on unsteady legs until someone braced him under his armpit, and then wrapped a supporting arm around his waist.

  “You hit me,” Drish complained groggily, his indignity growing in time with the beating of his heart. He could feel it throbbing as he gently rubbed his swelling cheek. But his accusation was responded to with an unapologetic smirk from the pirate captain.

  Bar Bazzon pulled an antiquated revolver from the folds of his stinking coat. “Thought it was the easiest way to end that conversation,” the man offered sheepish, before taking a peek outside. “Coast seems clear enough, so let’s move out while the getting’s good. We got a lot to do, and I still want to make the Redoubt before nightfall; put out for Black Blood under the cover of darkness. In a couple-days’ time, we’ll all be back in the Notch, just like I promised, boys.”

  “Black Blood…” Drish’s jaw went slack, “so you really weren’t kidding when you said you were a pirate. And now you’re here to do what… kidnap me?” The noble recoiled under Abigail’s support, while the motley gathering chuckled at his expense.

  “He’s a real smart one ain’t he, Cap,” offered the disinterested Candaran with the feral face.

  “Seems so, O’Dylan,” muttered Bar out of the corner of his mouth.

  Drish found that to be an ironic statement indeed, suspecting he would be hard-pressed to squeeze a thimble-full of intelligence from this herd of dull-eyed thugs.

  “We need to get you to safety, Drish.” Abigail’s melodic voice whispered into his ear. “And Black Blood’s the place to do it. But don’t you worry about its reputation; the Ascellan Captains will make sure the son of Arvis Larken is well taken care of.”

  “That is quite alright…I can fend for myself here on King’s Isle—”

  “Geez, he’s like a chattering finch I want to crush within my bare hands—silence forever,” grumbled the scarred brute, snarling passed his missing lips and rotted black teeth.

  Bar Bazzon reached back from the doorway and grabbed Drish by the collar. “We’re leaving,” he punctuated his words with a tug, “so you best keep that yap of yours shut, or I’ll let Rook here carry through with that threat of his. We can talk later about how much of a pain in the ass you are, but until then, not another damn word out of your damn mouth—comprehend?”

  “Please, Drish,” urged Abigail softly, “I know this is a lot to take in right now, but I don’t understand why you’re being so resistant. Would you rather be scooped up by the Empire and thrown into a stockade?”

  All around him, Drish was met with hard stares from a crew of cutthroat pirates, so he held his tongue and swallowed back his anger in silence.

  “Alright, we go on three then,” explained Bar. “One, two, three.”

  Eight forms slipped out of the townhouse on Cooper Street and into a daytime twilight of snow and clouds. They stalked along quickly and quietly enough, but they’d hardly made it half a block when Drish heard the dreadful order for them to halt, yelled from a block down the street.

  What are we going to do…? He howled in internal dismay, too scared to even turn. How can we explain this away? There’s too many of us…we’ve already broken the gathering laws by at least four, and each of these men are armed.

  But while Drish was busy thinking and worrying about what to do next, the brigands around him pulled out their weapons and fired first. The gunshots crashed and thundered with startling reverberation, and not since the Siege of Throne had Drish experienced such violence; though in truth, he’d fled the Palace and had been safety tucked away in his family’s city manor when the ground fighting started. He’d been well away from any actual carnage, watching burning airships tumbling down through the southwestern skies. But when he first heard the Siege Hulks and tread-rovers, barking and roaring to the south and east, he fled to the wine cellar thereafter; spending the remainder of the battle curled up as the bottles rattled and clinked in time to the shelling.

  Drish dropped to the snowy ground as chaos ensued outside his home on Cooper Street. Percussive gunfire howled between the sullen brick-fronts, while stif
ling gunpowder coalesced into a rising cloud that hovered beneath the rooflines. Bullets whizzed close at hand, zipping over Drish’s head, striking parked cars and pinging off bricks and stone. The pirates around him roared and yelled, and someone dragged him to his feet and shoved him from behind, forcing him to a run. The snow and the slush sent Drish slipping and skidding along while he crouched and cowered and tried his best not to get shot. A pot next to his head shattered atop its stoop as he passed, causing the fleeing accountant to glance back, only to discover the end of the block swarming with imperial soldiers. Nearby, a kidnapper tumbled to the street in a crash, and the blood staining the snowbank beneath him confessed the man would never get back up. Drish baulked at the sight of death, and it stunned him into a walk until the wolf, O’Dylan, gave him a shove, just before he himself cried out and grabbed at his back. The pirate kept to his feet though, and together they fled.

  From behind, more soldiers came spewing around the block, like ants escaping from a nest, and even Drish realized there were far too many of them for a simple patrol. No, this was an entire squad he realized, and no doubt dispatched to 521 Cooper Street with orders to capture a dangerous insurgent. With pirates running amok, that’s exactly how he was being portrayed, and so sensing his only opportunity to salvage his reputation, Drish tried to break free and surrender, but someone thwarted his attempt, yelling, “Not that way!” Suddenly the fugitive noble was being pulled sideways down an alleyway, and when he turned, there was Bar Bazzon himself at the helm.

  They made all haste through a narrow canyon of stone foundations and brick walls, moving towards a dilapidated delivery truck waiting silently at the alley’s end. Drish took note that the snow around here had been trampled flat, presumably by the passing of these ruffians on their way to ruining his life. They’d befouled everything in sight; even the snow was stained gray by a film of soot and ash from the junker’s smokestack, which belched lazy tendrils of smoke. Everything was otherwise placid and the machine was still, like a slumbering animal. Its hood had been propped open too, and from it a pair of gangly legs dangled out as though being devoured by the rust-riddled, mechanized monster.

  “Damn it,” grumbled that crass captain as he jogged up ahead of the pack, “I specifically told that lazabout boy to keep it running—can’t so much as follow a simple order.” But Drish felt little sympathy for the pirate; not with the painful clicking in his jaw from where the captain had sucker-punched him hard. Every time he panted with exhaustion it hurt, making him wish evils upon that oaf the likes of which hadn’t been seen since the reign of the Enox Unon.

  As they neared the steamer-truck, the captive aristocrat was shoved towards the bed by the brute named Rook, while the other bandits took to piling in around him. As Abigail rushed past Drish, he called out to stop her. “Where are you going? You’re not going to leave me alone…with them…are you?”

  “Someone has to show these boys where to go, Drish,” said the woman, with a pleasant smile and a subtle shrug. “Don’t tell me you’re afraid of a couple of pirates.”

  Drish didn’t have the gumption to tell her he was. There were too many hostile faces for him to ever feel at ease.

  “Fen!” barked the captain from somewhere near the front of the truck.

  They should have been moving by now, so Drish leaned over the side to see what the hold might be.

  “Fen,” Bar bellowed the name a second time, “I told you to keep it running! We got less than thirty seconds before this alleyway’s crawling with tin-soldiers, so if that boiler’s gone cold you’re up the creek…and us right along with you!”

  From the hood appeared a boy with a face full of ache and the scant roughage of a pre-pubescent beard. “Hey, Cap, bout time,” he crooned in a broken voice, but what surprised Drish the most about this boy was in discovering he was a Hierarch, and one no older than fifteen or sixteen by the gangly build of him.

  A strange companion to be running with a crew of Candaran pirates, he thought. Is this the son of some local imperial overseer looking to rebel? Some sort of kidnap victim they’ve brainwashed into service? Some simpleton moron willing to sign up?

  Whatever the case, this boy was obviously an accomplice. Hopping down from the truck, Fen was in a shamefully dirty condition, covered from head to toe in soot, and Drish could almost smell the caked-grease on him from where he sat.

  “I’ve been freezing here waiting for you guys to show up,” complained the teenage pirate.

  “I don’t care, Fen, why ain’t this truck running?”

  “Dunno, it just sort of burned out while I was trying to get warm, Cap. It was the damnedest thing I ever saw,” relayed the juvenile Hierarch, scratching dumbly at his shaggy black hair. It was beyond obvious he’d no idea what he was doing.

  “Thought you told me you knew something about machinery?”

  “Do… sort of… scavenging it for valuable parts anyway…” shrugged back the dim-witted youth.

  “Well what the hell do I even have you working in the engine room for then?”

  “Ah, don’t get all bent out of shape, Cap, it ain’t my fault we stole the worst truck in the whole city. Thing just quit to no fault of my own; but I have been working hard to get it going again. Even kicked it a couple times…signature move that is—”

  “When we get back to the Chimera,” interrupted Bar in a frustrated snarl, “you’re in with the scrubbers.”

  “The scrubbers,” groaned the boy, “But Cap…why not fire control.”

  “Because, not only would Tollie have my head if I put a living disaster like you near the Chimera’s powder, but I don’t need you mucking up my bridge.”

  But their argument came to an abrupt end when troops began rounding the alleyway’s corner. Shooting almost immediately followed. And as bullets zinged off the truck’s metal exterior, Drish flung himself to the floorboards for cover. Not like this, he prayed bitterly into the grit, as hot bullet casings came raining down around him from the pirate’s return-fire. I’m not going to die like this; not on the floor of a filthy delivery truck; surrounded by lowborn savages from Black Blood.

  Visions of his townhouse flashed through Drish’s mind…of a comforting fire glowing hot in its hearth, a warm cup of tea held between his hands, a silk robe draped around him as he melted into soft sofa cushions. Maybe he’d have a book spread out across his lap; maybe the phonograph would be playing some light orchestra music; something from the early Oberarch Dynasty; nothing as vulgar as the modern dribble that had come spewing out from the slums last night.

  This is all my father’s fault, Drish accused bitterly, if I ever see that man again, I’ll save the Empire the trouble of executing him by doing it myself.

  And then, as though by divine providence, the truck trembled to life beneath him.

  Chapter 5

  The pirate delivery truck rattled and bounced down the cobbled backstreet before spilling across the main causeway with all the grace of a newborn moose. Wheels squalled and spun as they drifted through the slush sideways, sending two cars screeching and careening wildly out of control to avoid hitting them. From his spot, curled up in the dirt of the truck’s bed, like some newborn in the fetal position, Drish heard screaming people fleeing in terror. He could only assume that the madman-captain was putting everyone on the streets in danger with his reckless driving.

  “Hope you’re worth it,” grumbled Lance, and when Drish looked up, it was to the greasy man glaring out from beneath the crushing weight of his mechanical pack, while its antennas shook and waved in time to the truck’s bumpy ride. Above the man, Drish caught sight of the High Crown’s western edge, its mountainous terrain standing black against the gray clouds. The tethered isle seemed abuzz with Iron airship activity today; no doubt launched from the commandeered airdocks of the Ragnarok Cloudfortress in order to support the mission below.

  “All this for me,” whispered Drish as he pulled his astonished gaze away, only to find the pirates around him glaring har
d, as though they sensed his treacherous nature.

  Across from him, O’Dylan grimaced in pain as he held a hand to his bleeding back. His face had gone white and his wolfish appearance had waxed to haggard exhaustion. Drish made a halfhearted attempt to ask if he was okay, but the man just snarled and turned away. It appeared he preferred the unforgiving chill of the wind in his face than the nobleman’s attempt at sympathy. That set the tone for the deration of their high-speed escape; the worm in a mechanized turtle-shell, the wolf, the brute, the tattooed Glenfinner…he wouldn’t find any friends in this lot, and to prove his point, Lance’s earlier words were the only ones spoken to him from there on out.

  It was a bone-chilling drive to the Lordswater Lake Industrial Park on the southeastern outskirts of Throne. By the time they arrived Drish was sure that all his appendages had frozen solid. Even on the floor the wind had been cutting, pushing him past the point of shivering, to where he simply felt dead all over, much like the district surrounding him. This once thriving juggernaut of production was nothing more than a cold graveyard now. In a different time, the waterfall cascading off the Shield Veil Wall had powered the machines which provided for all the floating isle’s energy requirements. During that lost golden age it was impossible to have ever imagine a time would come when the machines sat silent and the falls roared for their own sake. How could anyone imagine, not when UKA warships commanded the skies of the Sargasso and the Borealis, and to some extent the Turquoise? When economic trade flowed freely across the Platinum Thread stretching between King’s Straight and the Breach? When the noble house Larken drew respect and admiration from the other house nobles. Back then, these broken husks of toppled smokestacks, scattered gears, and gutted buildings seemed as timeless as the Gods’ Bind, glowing blue with exposed atmium as it connected King’s Isle to the High Crown.

  But now, with it all smashed and heaped in piles around the truck, slowly winding a course deeper into their ruin, it painted a depressing picture of a hijacked glory, and one that Drish could only too-well sympathize with.