Blood On Borrowed Wings: A Dark Fantasy Thriller

by Darren Stapleton

  Gather ye a worthy crew,

  ‘Lest they all your undoings do.

  Old Zeppelin Crew Proverb

  CHAPTER 47

  The chrome rails had been polished and floors swept. Beaugent was concentrating on steering the Orca through troublesome but negotiable winds. Every now and then the Zeppelin swayed as if bounced, like a ball beneath a giant invisible hand. The lurches and dips were tangible, but not upsetting. They added to the feeling that one was at sea, cresting and surfing unfathomable waves of air in the encroaching dusk. The Orca took an age to travel anywhere. Flights assisted by prevailing winds were quicker but not without the associated problems of steering difficulties and altitude regulation. Beaugent navigated his way through the thermals and cyclonic breezes as if he were a mariner versed in the diagrams and sepia charts of a forgotten era. His descents were gradual, gentle and almost always on the mark. And tonight would be no exception despite the unhelpful weather.

  Cowlin emerged from quarters and stretched. His hands brushed the meshed mezzanine floor above him and let a clang ring out around the halls. Evidently he had felt confident enough that the threats to his charges were minimal at such an altitude and taken the opportunity to rest. In the galley, Loopes ferreted through the last of the grocery bags as he stowed the remaining few items away. He folded the bag flat and stowed it in a drawer that also contained an elasticated plastic sheet, the purpose for which totally escaped him. As he stood, a dense crusty roll hit him on the back of the head and comically bounced high and away. It elicited a satisfying enough thud to make Bronagh laugh out loud.

  ‘Ha Ha. Is that what you were looking for?’

  ‘What the... bread!’ shouted Loopes excitedly as he dived after it, successfully plucking it from the air like a fan catching a souvenir at an Angelbrawl bout.

  ‘Yes. Hmmmm bread. Great. Wow. I thought you had forgotten.’

  ‘Thought they would go down well. Now start cooking. I’ll go and tell our honoured guests to hitch their undergarments up and splash their hands 'fore lunch.’

  ‘What shall I do?’

  ‘Do a stew.’

  ‘But you said I couldn’t cook a stew to save my life.’

  Bronagh nodded.

  ‘You said my dumplings could be used as cannonballs and the meat was tough enough to fix the landing plank with.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Bronagh, who then went to the observation deck to inform the others stew would soon be served.

  *

  Loopes puffed and grunted as he brought lunch through to the crew and guests. Bronagh watched as Leonora looked nervously outside at a windshark gliding past. Normally around twenty to thirty feet in length, the windsharks rarely troubled a balloon, though they could. There had been many theories as to why, but the one that most balloon crews agreed with was that a balloon was slightly too large to ingest whole. A windshark’s wings were sharp, pointed and sat either side of the sleek missile design of its body. Aerodynamically, it could not be out flown, though if it were your day, it could be outmanoeuvred. It could smell blood on the wind and lived on the move, even giving birth whilst flying over water, where its progeny would grow then take to the air when the feathers were ready. They were the bruised colours of the underbelly of a raincloud, greys, blacks and dark mottled granite death. And you never, never heard them coming. Without them, the winged and wingless could have used personal or easier means to get from Nimbus City down or Lowlands up, but their existence meant Beaugent’s balloon and crews, and others like them, were needed. Bronagh wondered if the windsharks were aware of this strange symbiosis and that was why they were allowed to ply their trade, for the most part, untroubled. He doubted it. Once, when he was a child he had asked his father what the point of Windsharks was.

  ‘Point?’ his father had said. ‘Point?’ He tamped some Dankweed down into his pipe and replied, ‘Eatin’ n’ fuckin’, like the rest of us.’

  Its hulking shadow glided across the portholes on the starboard side and then was gone. Bronagh shuddered and smiled at the memory simultaneously; his dad had been right. Leonora looked around the table to see if anyone else had noticed and then looked embarrassed when her eyes met Bronagh’s.

  ‘Ain’t much between you and them, if you think about it?’ said Bronagh, referring to the window but aware of the double meaning.

  ‘I would rather not think about it, if it is all the same to you,’ she said.

  Bronagh smiled at Loopes and then picked something out of his bowl that he did not agree with.

  ‘So how do you boys make a living then, apart from doing well paid jobs like this?’ Leonora asked, trying to change the subject and breaking a crusty piece of bread off to dip in her stew. She stopped before eating it, noticing a hair stuck to the upper crust of the roll, and replaced it at the side of her bowl. She gave the stew her full attention as she peered into it for more surprises.

  ‘We run chartered flights and errands for part of your department, that’s how we know Marcus,’ said Bronagh. ‘Some of the time at least.’

  ‘No contraband then?’

  ‘Contra what?’ said Loopes.

  ‘It’s been tricky to fly anything anywhere since you passed the law restricting flights between the Lowlands and the Nimbus Edgelands,’ said Beaugent, who was spooning stew into his mouth so quickly that he was getting almost as much on his stubbly chin as in his mouth.

  ‘The law needed to be passed to restrict trade and illegal trafficking. They were putting a huge dent in the economy; lost revenue in taxes alone was astronomical.’

  ‘It’s nothing to do with trade. You know it. I know it,’ said Beaugent.

  Rose looked at Leonora.

  ‘It’s to keep Groundbounders where they belong so you can sit in your roost with your captive audience, your winged electorate, and create your perfect little gilded bird cage in the sky.’ Beaugent jabbed a spoon at the air as he spoke, as if trying to take the top off an imaginary egg.

  ‘I rely on those that dwell down there as much as I do up on Nimbus City proper, and they rely on me. I am the people’s Governor. That’s why I am on this trip: to get back in touch with everyone. It has to be so clandestine because I don’t want the publicity that landing a state-airship brings.’

  ‘You are a self-serving, greedy figurehead who has created a two tier world to serve her own one-track needs,’ said Beaugent.

  ‘Easy,’ said Cowlin. It was spoken like a warning.

  ‘This is my ship and I will speak as I please,’ Beaugent said. ‘Don’t like it, then get off.’

  Cowlin looked helplessly at his two charges, then redundantly went back to his meal.

  ‘Fair enough,’ said Leonora, ‘we are your guests. But I will thank you to keep a civil tongue in your head. We are dining after all, that is, unless your mother raised a total swamp pig for a son.’

  Beaugent wiped his chin with the back of his hand then huffed into his nearly empty bowl.

  ‘You have set about segregating this land for your own gain. People are not allowed to move freely outside of their own areas. They can visit only with express permission from your government or militia.’ He jabbed a gravy-soaked piece of bread towards Rose as he spoke, but his tone was lower and less aggressive. ‘And whilst the Groundbounders flap about in the mud and mangroves and neon pits and brothels and concrete towers, you give them glimpses of nirvana and say it is all theirs, that they are part of your world, one world; and worse, a bigger lie, that you are part of theirs.’

  Leonora removed something tough from her mouthful and placed it in a napkin. ‘People need something to believe in, though, Captain: monarchy, government, religion, money. Without it the masses are messes.’

  ‘This isn’t one of your commercial debates where a sound-bite is going to shut me up,’ said Beaugent. ‘You are on the verge of your re-election but cracks are starting to show. People want to travel up, want to know why the squalor and lawlessness is so rife, want to know what you have accomplished for
them, not yourself.’

  Rose put her wooden spoon down.

  ‘Some people have a very short memory. I cleaned up the carnage after Bethscape Field. Saw my friends, compatriots and elite reduced to little but remnants and rubble. I physically helped flatten those trees in the aftermath, where there now stands none. I passed the law that said nothing else must grow there. For eternity. Brought to an end the terrifying fights in the skies and uncertainty of outcome that had us all, and I mean ALL quaking in our boots and guessing at our futures.’

  ‘You cleaned it up? You? The Slayers made the sacrifices, not you. And for what? So you could employ the Blackwings to do your bidding anyway. The whole thing was orchestrated by you and every man and woman of the sky knows it.’

  ‘Now you wait a minute.’

  ‘No, you wait. I’m sick to my mangled teeth of being told where I can go. It’s like I work in limbo ferrying a privileged few backwards and forwards, whilst the rest rot in their own fetid stew.’

  ‘Hey!’ said Loopes.

  ‘And now I am having to work for you, and associate with those Blackwing bastards under the guise of public service.’

  Beaugent dropped his spoon into his empty bowl with a clatter.

  ‘I should do Nimbus a favour and divert my ship into the very thing you despise the most, the inconvenient, distant, dirty ground.’

  Leonora got out of her chair.

  ‘Don’t worry, I wouldn’t waste this ship on you. She’s more noble and public serving than you and your cronies will ever be.’

  Beaugent stood and removed his bowl and bread plate from the hooks that secured them to the table. ‘That kind of martydom is not necessary anyway, you’ll get your comeuppance soon enough, when people vote. Change is in the winds, Governor, can’t you feel it? It’s rocking the Orca right now and if you weren’t so removed from your public you would know that.’ He made his way to the galley and stopped in the doorway to address everyone: ‘We’ll be dropping in fifty minutes or so, make sure you are ready to disembark then.’

  Leonora sat back down.

  A deathly silence filled the void after Beaugent’s tirade. A gentle rattle of cutlery on bowl started up again, to break it.

  ‘Lovely stew,’ said Leonora.

  ‘I do a good version of fetid too,’ said Loopes, blushing.

  Bronagh shook his head.

  There is no mystery in nature; it leads to the dissolution of the whole into its tiny parts of matter and liquefied glue. And whilst we fear either the loss of sensation or the encroachment of an unknown sensation, rising up to meet us as we fragment, our decomposing remnants do not complain. They know their place in the world and rush out to meet nature knowingly.

  So find peace in nature and in doing so let death hold no fear or mystery in your warriors’ hearts. The mystery is life, my friends. Life. So spend it doing what you do best: living.

  Death, and our remnants, will take care of themselves.

  Incursions into Reality – Great Battlefield Speeches

  Woodes and Harper

  CHAPTER 48

  ‘You need to identify the body, but of course, it’s a formality. Desk Sergeant Bleecker has already confirmed the corpse’s name, rank and history, and as a ranking superior officer, that is enough,’ the coroner said.

  Corpse.

  The pallid man looked like a shadow of a human being, grey at the edges and economical to the extreme with movement and facial expression. His words, however, flowed more freely and I watched Bleecker as the coroner spat more pointless words, loaded with surreptitious vitriol, in our general direction.

  ‘The funeral is due to take place on Friday. Military, full, ahem, honours. Paid for, of course, by the Slayer consortium and state.’

  ‘Of course,’ I said.

  ‘You’ll need to sign here, and here, for his personal effects. And here for permission for incineration, as is standard with, erm, your kind.’ He passed me three forms with crosses neatly scribed next to the lines I had to sign on.

  ‘Your kind?’ said Bleecker.

  Here we go, I thought.

  ‘I meant Slayers, Sergeant, and intended no derision.’

  ‘Of course you didn’t,’ said Bleecker.

  I had been surprised I was not taken straight to the station, for statements, or for arrest. I had after all maimed an official employee and had maybe even been implicated in my brother’s death. Instead I had been brought here to Lowlands HQ, a building full of desk pilots, tactical visionaries and others who never got their hands dirty. It had it’s own morgue in the basement.

  I tried to stop thinking and signed the forms, then left them where they lay on the desk.

  ‘Can we go through?’ I said. I was already halfway through the morgue door before I heard his protested reply.

  I checked the toe tags on each gurney and stopped at the third one.

  ‘THERON, N’ it read, in neat, tall type.

  I looked around at the brushed steel tables, the cadmium arc lighting, the utensils and tiles and neatness of the place. Despite the scrubbed, antiseptic, shining cleanliness of it, the odours of death, bile and decay somehow managed to percolate through. No amount of scrubbing or wiping down would ever dispel it.

  A little like what I was about to see.

  I paused with my hand on the heavy bag’s zip, held the tag between my thumb and forefinger and felt how cold it was. I closed my eyes.

  It wasn’t until I heard the swing door swoosh on its efficient hinges that I opened them again.

  ‘Want some company?’

  ‘No,’ I barked.

  Bleecker recoiled, swallowed and turned to go.

  ‘Sir,’ I added. It was amazing how right it felt to call him that after so many years.

  I was glad he was here, just did not want him here for this.

  He nodded. ‘I’ll wait in my office upstairs,’ he said. Then he turned back and saluted.

  I could not tell if it was aimed at my brother or me.

  I saw the door swing closed and looked down.

  I eased the zip on the body bag down very slowly. It made a deep rumbling click, click, click as it descended. The smell hit me and made me shudder. Goosebumps stood proud on my forearms, the hairs on the back of my neck crackled with anticipation of foreboding, my flesh rippled and tightened. Dread in a waxy cloak.

  I took a deep breath.

  In through the mouth, out through the mouth.

  The zip reached the end.

  In through the mouth, out through the mouth.

  I took hold of the two grab handles and eased them over my brother’s chest.

  In through the mouth, out through the mouth.

  Ran my hands along the teeth of the zip to pull back the cover revealing his face.

  In through the mouth, out through the mouth.

  Under the lividity and necrotic slurry was Newt.

  There was a ragged, tattered hole where one of his eyes used to be. A pale waxy sheen was prominent on his brow and cheeks, but dark ridges of decay were blooming in his creases. His lips and nails were black. I noticed that there were crescent welts in his palms where his nails had dug in.

  In through the mouth, out through the mouth.

  Was this my brother?

  The shell my brother had used?

  The sum of all those fights, those aspirations, those soaring flights and rip roaring dances and fucks and good deeds and bad?

  Is this what it came to?

  Rotting in a bag, like some forgotten unwashed gym kit; putrefying like some Edgelands bird squashed underfoot.

  In through the mouth, out through the mouth.

  The bed of splayed feathers he would normally lay on was gone, his wings had been removed, nubbed. Maybe they were in animation storage, full of electrodes and ‘juice’ to keep them pliable for the richest Groundbounder to buy and stitch right on. That’s if they were usable. Bleecker had told me they had been brutally hacked off. ‘Probably to make some kind of a statemen
t,’ he’d said. Probably by the same Blackwings that were hunting me now, I thought.

  They had haunted me, us, since Bethscape Fields.

  I had given my wings freely, had them nubbed by Doc Carlow as soon as he was able, turned my back on the unit, on the Slayer way of life and the overwhelming, crushing, cloying duty and guilt that came with it. My brother had embraced his calling harder, found more meaning from fruitless altruism and chasing shadows for some distant Governor who did not give two flying, or flightless, fucks about any of it as long as she got paid, got polls, got policed.

  Then again, he had not killed a child.

  In through the mouth, out through the mouth.

  Bleecker knew that I was not responsible for this, for Newt, that it reeked of Blackwing. And I did not care what the rest of the world thought. My brother was gone. There was no room for anything else.

  He used to talk of retiring somewhere on the edge of our Nimbus state, somewhere near a lake so he could skirt with flying the cliffs and desert precipices forbidden by military and state law. He used to talk of family, his own family. Maybe even shunning the usual private security jobs all ex Slayers walk into after their military days are over; and trying art; travel; writing; anything.

  He used to talk.

  I kissed Newt gently on his forehead and said goodbye.

  I did not promise any retribution, wring my hands and ask some non-existent god for revenge or clemency. I turned off the lights and left quietly.

  As the door closed on my brother, I realised, for the first time since the Angelbrawl Arena had pulled me into this mess, that I knew exactly what I had to do.

  Stay low and keep moving.

  War whittles each man to the quick;

  An oak tree to a cocktail stick.

  Coming Home (After the War)

  Rodin Faitte

  CHAPTER 49