Breeze Corinth (Book 1): Sky Shatter

by Olson, Michael John

  Breeze looked out his window and watched as the forest abruptly ended at the shoreline of a vast stretch of water. It was the ocean. He had never seen it before, and it was breathtaking to behold. It was just like the desert to him, a featureless landscape that stretched in all directions seemingly forever, broken up only by waves rolling across its surface the way sand dunes broke up the monotony of the desert landscape.

  Breeze pressed closer to the window and strained to see the coastline as they raced away from it when he saw human figures with glowing eyes running out of the tree line and onto the beach. A bright flash illuminated the area as a glowing orb rose up and hovered above them, then leapt toward the ship.

  Breeze unbuckled his lap belt and headed to the stern of the ship. There was a window he saw earlier on a cargo hatch where he could watch the glowing orb as it hurtled towards them.

  He ran down the aisle and crashed into Vermillion, who was dashing towards the cockpit. “Breeze, you must sit down and strap yourself in, things are about to get pretty bumpy,” the agent said.

  “I just saw a glowing ball of light launch from the coast. It’s heading toward us!”

  “Yes, I know. No worries. Just sit down.” The agent emphasized his point by firmly placing his hands on Breeze’s shoulders and herding him to an empty seat, then continued toward the cockpit.

  Breeze leapt up and followed him. Vermillion flung open the cockpit door and stepped in, unaware that Breeze slipped in behind him.

  The cockpit was filled with the sound of wailing alarms and warning chimes. He sat down in a jump seat behind the pilot who abruptly turned and gave Breeze a hard stare with his bright, glowing eyes.

  Horton was giving orders to the pilot while looking out the window. He turned to address him and was astonished to see Breeze. “How did you get in? You need to leave immediately!”

  “No time for that now,” Vermillion said, “just plug in the codes. We need to get into the box.” He pointed at the screen in the center of the console. It pulsated bright blue while the warning chimes became frequent and more intense when a globe of light suddenly appeared off to the port side of the transport, filling the cockpit with a bright glow.

  “What is that?” Breeze yelled.

  “Never mind and strap yourself in,” Horton said as he punched in a series of codes into a console next to the screen.

  The globe kept pace with the ship. It stayed solid white for several seconds, then began pulsating bright blue, yellow, and orange hues seemingly at random. The pilot banked the ship to starboard, and the globe followed it. He banked hard to port, and then threw the ship back to starboard. The globe effortlessly mirrored the ship’s movements.

  The globe began to pulsate and flash wildly as it leapt in front of the ship while matching its speed and course. It then jumped to the ship’s starboard, flashing a variety of colors at various tempos before abruptly vanishing.

  They all looked out the cockpit windows and tried to locate it. It was nowhere to be found.

  Breeze leaned back and took in a deep breath. It reminded him of the globes of light he saw over the White Mountain. He wondered if they were the same.

  The cabin suddenly exploded with brilliant white light as the globe re-appeared and was hovering above them. Breeze hardly could see its outline as he looked up through the sky roof while shielding his eyes from the bright glow. The globe began to split itself into two, and then subdivided into four, and finally eight. They formed a loop around the ship and began to rotate slowly in unison, then accelerated into a high-speed frenzy.

  The pilot’s hands flew up to a series of switches and levers above him. He yanked down on a lever and the ship came to a sudden halt. Breeze could feel the straps barely restraining him as he was thrown violently forward.

  The globes continued their forward motion, and then stopped to turn back and retake the ship. The pilot hit a switch above him and a humming sound filled the cockpit. Breeze could feel a vibration reverberate through the ship as the hull groaned and the floor of the cockpit rattled, culminating into a flash of dark blue lightning that lashed out from the ship and struck the rotating globes. The globes exploded and arced away from the ship.

  The pilot mashed down on the throttles and the ship accelerated instantaneously, slamming Breeze back into his seat.

  Horton pointed at the display screen and shouted at the pilot. “Aim for the center of the box!”

  The illuminated box on the display screen pulsated faster and faster with each passing second. The pilot steered the ship while taking quick glances at it, when an icon suddenly appeared in the shape of a bull’s eye and floated above and to the right of the box. As the pilot steered through turbulence that buffeted the ship, each course correction made the bull’s eye drop closer to the box. Lights flashed on the console as alarms wailed throughout the cockpit.

  “Vortex rotation ahead.” Horton announced as he silenced the alarms.

  The pilot continued steering the ship with the bull’s eye drifting to the center of the box when the display glowed a solid green.

  “Contact,” the pilot said.

  Clouds of fluorescent green emerged before them and enveloped the ship. A tunnel formed within the clouds and rotated as they flew into it. The rotation became more intense as the tunnel narrowed and lightning crackled along its length. The ship’s engines whined, and the metal skin of the hull began to glow.

  Breeze was pinned to his seat and felt overwhelmed with a sense of displacement. The voices of Horton and Vermillion became faint and disembodied as the alarms that echoed throughout the cockpit faded away. His vision blurred as everything around him appeared to stretch like a rubber band. The tunnel constricted until it pressed against the hull of the ship as lightning crackled viciously all around.

  Then, complete silence.

  Breeze tried to look around, but it was like moving in slow motion. The pilot and the agents seemed to be standing still as he looked toward the cockpit windscreen, a feat that felt like it took minutes rather than seconds, to do. The tunnel ceased its rotation and collapsed to a single point in space. The silence was gradually replaced by the growing crescendo of static.

  He blacked out.

  Breeze woke up in the passenger cabin and the soothing hum of the engines allowed him to focus and get his bearings back. He looked around, noting the brilliant sunshine pouring through the windows. He rubbed the back of his head, wondering how he got back into his seat. He couldn’t recall ever leaving the cockpit. The last thing he remembered was flying at night while under attack by globes of light, followed by the transport entering a tunnel made of swirling clouds and the static that drowned out all other sound, and then…

  He shook his head. He couldn’t remember anything else.

  He called out to Vermillion and Horton, but they didn’t respond. Puzzled as to what happened since he blacked out, he casually looked out the window and was stunned at how high they were flying. They had spent most of their journey flying at night, and at extremely low altitude to avoid detection. Now they were traveling in broad daylight amongst the clouds. Breeze marveled at the beauty of the crystal clear ocean below and could see the contours of the seabed with clusters of coral dotting the sandy bottom.

  The smooth ocean surface merged into frothy whitecaps as an island came into view, its lush green surface a sharp contrast to the aquamarine ocean that surrounded it. The island stretched for several miles in length and was a few miles wide with a bay carved out of its eastern shore. There was a cluster of tall structures and buildings that hugged the shoreline of the bay. He noticed how its light blue waters merged into a dark blue as it streamed out into the ocean.

  A strange feeling swept over him as he felt there was someone beneath the waves of the deep blue water. It was almost as if a young girl was calling his name...

  The sudden high pit
ch whine of the engines broke his trance as the transport banked to port and began circling the island. As it descended from the clouds, he was able to get a better view of it. He could see a forest of palm trees that stretched from the lower center of the island to the west, where it ended at the edge of a landing facility. He could make out the shapes of various aerocraft spread out across the tarmac but wasn’t familiar with any of them. Like the transport, they were nothing at all like the aerocraft in Conception or any of the surrounding desert towns. Yet they all appeared to be decrepit and out of service despite their advanced designs and this intrigued him to no end.

  The transport descended rapidly as the landing gear lowered, accompanied by the whine of hydraulic motors. Breeze gripped his seat as the ground rushed up to greet them when the engines throttled up, then feathered back down as the transport gently made contact with the ground. The ship shuddered as it settled down.

  The engines came to a full stop, and the only sounds he could hear were the whistling of air from the vents as the air-conditioning struggled to pump cool air into the cabin, followed by the cargo door opening in the stern. He peered out the window and saw a dwarf walk quickly under the transport and out of sight.

  He left his seat and headed to the cockpit to look for Vermillion and Horton. He opened the door and stepped inside. There was no one there, not even the pilot. He looked above the pilot’s seat and saw the hatch to his bunk was open. Breeze scrambled up the ladder and poked his head into the open hatchway. The moment he did, a soft, blue light flickered on.

  He saw that the bunk was a tube with a metal slab for the pilot to lie on. There was no mattress or pillow. Where his head would lay was a metallic ring with wires streaming from it, and all were plugged into a console. The bunk was devoid of any pictures or decorations. Breeze knew the pilots back home would keep mementos and pictures of their sweethearts inside their cockpits. Here, there was nothing but cold steel, blue light and wires.

  He felt uneasy and quickly climbed back down. He took one last look around the cockpit as a sense of déjà vu swept over him. He shook his head vigorously, hoping it would jog his memory and shed some more details about what had happened in here, then sighed as nothing was forthcoming. He stepped out of the cockpit and back into the cabin. He marched down the aisle towards the stern while scanning every row, half expecting to find the agents sleeping in the seats.

  He arrived at the passenger compartments and stepped in his to retrieve his bag, then headed back to the bow of the ship. He was surprised to see sunlight pouring through an open hatch on the port side near the cockpit. He cautiously approached it and looked out. A set of stairs on wheels had been pushed up against the hull of the ship that lead down to the tarmac.

  He took one step down and recoiled immediately. He never experienced such intense humidity, as he was accustomed to the dry heat of the desert. The air here felt like a thick and heavy soup in his lungs.

  The sun was incredibly bright, and he raised a hand to shield his eyes to take in the surrounding landscape. The land was flat and stretched for a distance before it rose up sharply into the hills. The palm tree forest he saw earlier from the air was just beyond the edge of the landing facility. Gigantic white clouds that filled the sky were like mountains against a backdrop of brilliant blue. Off in the distance, an ominous storm was brewing on the horizon.

  He scanned the tarmac and saw the odd shaped aerocraft he’d seen from the air. He ducked under the hull of the transport to get a closer look at them when he ran into a dwarf. The dwarf was not a pleasant sight to look at as he glared at Breeze with disgust.

  Breeze was transfixed by his enormous eyes. When the dwarf would blink, it was as if the eyelids took an extra second or two to traverse the entire distance to the bottom and then back up. He wore coveralls that were shopworn and greasy, and his hair was a tangled mess with goggles that rested on his brow. For a second, Breeze thought he was looking at his father in miniature form.

  The dwarf was supervising cargo that was being unloaded from the ship when Breeze bumped into him. Automated carts approached the transport while robotic arms mounted on the ceiling of the ship extended out and placed pallets of cargo onto them, and then the carts would scurry away to the hangars that lined the tarmac. The robotic arms retracted back into the cargo hold and reappeared with more pallets to be loaded onto the next automated cart.

  The dwarf turned away from him and resumed removing boxes from one of the pallets and stacking them next to a pile of luggage. Breeze knew he had only brought his one bag. He assumed the luggage belonged to the agents, who were nowhere to be found.

  “Could you possibly have any more bags, your highness?” the dwarf said in a gruff voice that sounded deeper than his actual size.

  Breeze was stunned at how surreal everything felt. He had expected to be greeted by Oslo, but instead he was on a broiling hot tarmac talking to a dwarf. “Those are not mine,” he replied.

  The dwarf grunted and continued to pull boxes from the pallet, stacking them in neat columns.

  Breeze couldn’t help but stare. He had never seen anything at all like this dwarf. As he watched him pull box after box off the pallet, he began to realize how odd everything was. Why had he flown at night, then in what seemed like a snap of the fingers he landed on an island in broad daylight? He felt jittery and nervous when he held his hand up to his face and began waving it back and forth.

  “Time dilation,” the dwarf said.

  “Say again?”

  The dwarf pulled down goggles with tinted lenses over his eyes. “We sometimes call it time stop. When you travel through the vortex, you get the sensation afterwards that time has ceased. Your mind and body have not caught up yet so you feel disjointed and out of place. Give yourself a little more time and your memory will catch up with you. Now get in the hover, I need to take you to the dormitories.” The dwarf grabbed the luggage and dragged it to a hover car that bobbed up and down with each gust of wind that swept in from the ocean.

  Breeze stepped over to the vehicle and opened the door, almost pulling it off its hinges. The hover car was a rusting wreck, and it looked like it was barely operational. Breeze sat down inside, and the seat protested with a loud squeak. He pulled the door to close it, but it wouldn’t budge. He yanked hard to slam it shut.

  “Don’t slam the doors! This hover is a classic,” the dwarf shouted angrily as he climbed into the vehicle, carefully closing his door. “Young people. No respect for anything. Oblivious to all your surroundings.” The dwarf continued grumbling as he mashed the throttle, sending them lurching forward.

  “What’s your name?” Breeze asked as they accelerated down the tarmac.

  “Excort,” the dwarf responded. He pushed down on the throttle until it hit the console. The hover leapt up and pinned Breeze into his seat

  “Buckle up for safety!” Excort hollered above the roar of the slipstream.

  Breeze pulled down on the harness straps and buckled in as the hover groaned and creaked with the motor whining at a full pitch.

  He shouted at Excort. “Do we have to go this fast?”

  The dwarf responded with a sharp turn to the right as the hover accelerated toward the forest of palm trees that lined the landing facility. The palms swayed wildly in the sea breeze as they approached.

  Breeze gripped the handle that was bolted to the dashboard and shouted in surprise as the trees parted to clear a path for them when they raced into the palm forest. The hover creaked loudly as they bolted through the forest, though not one tree ever touched the car. He looked up and could barely see sunlight through the thick canopy, then glanced at Excort who had one hand on the steering wheel while the other hung lazily over the door. His goggles were pushed up and resting on his wide forehead and his eyes had a greenish glow to them.

  Breeze looked forward and was overwhelmed with claustrophobia as the fore
st became denser. He almost passed out just as the hover flew out of the palm forest and into the brilliant sunshine.

  He turned to say something to Excort, but stopped when he saw the grin on his face. The dwarf winked, then pulled his goggles down and shoved the steering wheel forward, sending the hover into a steep dive. Breeze heard a loud scream and realized it was coming from him as they plummeted straight down toward a lagoon, following the flow of a massive waterfall. The deafening sound of cascading water drowned out the whine of the engines as he held onto the handrail with a death grip.

  The hover leveled out and they raced across the lagoon while trailing a rooster tail of water behind them. Breeze glared at the dwarf and saw how ridiculous the little man looked with his goggles over his eyes while sitting in an oversized seat with a booster under him so he could see over the console.

  Up ahead was a sheer wall of rock with a surface pockmarked with craters. Excort mashed the throttles and the hover creaked and groaned faster toward it.

  “What are you doing?” Breeze shouted.

  Excort responded by whipping the steering wheel hard to the right, sending the hover into a barrel roll as it raced towards the rock face. The hover shuddered violently as bits of rusted metal peeled off and scattered across the lagoon.

  The wall of rock swirled and formed a tunnel. They plunged into it, and Breeze closed his eyes as he gripped the handrail even tighter. When he dared to open them, he was greeted by inky blackness with brilliant stars high above. The rolling ceased, though he felt the same disorientation he experienced on the transport. Images of what happened just before he flew into the vortex with Vermillion and Horton came to the forefront of his mind as the fogginess in his head faded, and his memory returned.

  The hover burst out of the tunnel as the dwarf threw the vehicle hard to the left, and descended along a road that hugged a hillside. Breeze leaned over to look down and was greeted by a spectacular view of the bay he had seen from the air. Its blue water was brilliant and the shoreline was dotted with a large tower surrounded by a cluster of smaller ones spread out across a campus. Majestic royal palms lined the avenues between the buildings.