With Eyes Turned Skyward

by Gregory Stravinski

  “My God . . . Sage is that you?”

  Chet’s face drops even more. “It’s Sage!” he yells into the cockpit.

  Chet jumps down from the struts as the side panel door opens. A flight cap barely hides a thatch of brunette hair as Katz looks out. Closing my eyes, I begin losing consciousness, leaning back into the water. I hear a gasp from the cockpit. The cold has a good grip now. I let my guard down.

  The young gunner reaches out, catching my shoulder before I submerge. “No, no, no. Wait a second.”

  His arm sweeps under my shoulder, pulling me up from the abyss. I keep my hold on Cass as Katz’s feet splash through the water to us.

  “Baz . . . ” she says quietly, covering her mouth when she sees Cass.

  Her worried eyes flash up to Chet.

  I see her mouth. “Is she . . . ”

  I know the answer to that question, but I can’t say it.

  Cass is still clutched tightly to my chest as the gunner tries securing me.

  “I’m not letting go,” I say firmly.

  The gunner leans down. “You don’t have to,” he assures me.

  I fight to keep my throat from closing as I look up to him. “Please don’t make me let go of her.”

  His concerned blue eyes meet mine. He reaches down to my hand, helping me wrap it around her even tighter. “I wouldn’t do that,” he says. “Keep her close, ok?"

  Ripples spread out across the pond. Katz leans down, hooking her hand underneath my other arm. The ripples seem to go on forever, separating what’s actually sky and what’s an impostor. They span out from Cass and me as we’re dragged to the ship. An explosion materializes out in the distance ahead of us. It seems so natural now.

  “Hey! We need to get moving,” another voice chimes in. “They’re not the only wounded, and we’re a big fuckin’ bullseye down here!”

  The voice originates from the cockpit. Frustrated with our sluggish progress, the pilot fidgets over the controls. Sasha would’ve never done that. She was tough on her crew, but she always treated the recovered like the people they were. That treatment was sometimes the only thing keeping them together.

  “The patients are almost secured,” Chet answers back as we reach the struts.

  Squatting down, Chet looks me in the eye quietly. I stare back at him without saying a word.

  “Sage, could I please see Miss Dawson?” he asks gently.

  My throat tightens, my eyes welling up at her name. Staying silent, I nod as best I can.

  Chet leans down, carefully taking Cass from my arms. Red droplets collect at Chet’s elbow, dripping as he cradles her delicately. She looks so small in comparison to him.

  As Chet climbs into the cabin with her, the gunner turns to me. “We’re gonna have to get you up there with that leg. Are you ready?” he asks.

  I nod. Both he and Katz support me from below as I climb in.

  Pain immediately shoots through my body now that the water’s no longer there to support my mangled leg. A grunt of pain escapes as I hit the floor. The smell of vomit and blood rise to greet me as sand flares out across the floor next to my nostril. Five other recovered litter the cabin. Three lie prone, and one is propped up against the cabin window. The last pilot sits in her chair, watching us with hollow eyes. Water drips from her stringy, auburn hair. She makes no attempt to move.

  The gunner and Katz pick me up by the shoulder straps, easing me into the back next to Cassandra. Lying on the floor of the cabin, my body tries shutting down. I fight to clear my vision. I can’t go yet.

  Pressing a hand on my shoulder, Katz leans down. “You’re safe with us now, Baz. You don’t have to worry anymore,” she whispers.

  She stands up, moving back to the cockpit as Chet puts on his stethoscope and turns Cass over. I already know he won’t find a heartbeat, but I don’t have the strength to say it.

  Katz’s door slams and the gunner settles back into his seat as the engines rev from above. My vision becomes a tunnel as I turn my head to look at Cass. All I can see is the dark of her ear. A brunette shock of hair covers the top of it, but not enough to shut me out completely.

  My neck muscles strain as I lean over. “I’m sorry,” I whisper.

  Then the blackness takes me.

  26

  White bleeds in. The sound of an unseen medical device compressing is the only clue that I haven’t made it to the other side yet. I try blinking the whiteness away, but it’s structural rather than physiological. A stark overhead light bathes the room in an uncomfortable glow. I let my chest rise and fall a few times, just to appreciate the fact that it still can.

  “You know . . . We find ourselves in the medical bay far too often.”

  The gruff, familiar voice almost brings a smile to my lips. Turning my head, I see the red, grizzled face of Olan. He looks tired. Blood’s still spattered across his uniform and the smell of his sweat permeates the room. The fight’s over, otherwise he’d still be out there.

  I close my eyes, focusing on my breathing. “I’m so glad you’re alive,” I manage. “You have no idea.”

  He raises his eyebrows, turning his head to window. “Me too.”

  Yeti, Ja’el, Diz, Baltier. Where are they?

  Olan stops me as I open my mouth. “You and I have already seen enough hell today. There needn’t be any reason to go adding to the list by talking about it,” he says.

  I suck in another breath instead. One of the perks of having a friend like Olan is always knowing where the other stands.

  I don’t want to talk about our dead friends. I don’t want to think about the blood, the smell. There will be a time for that, but it’s not right now.

  I don’t want to think about how I failed Cass.

  “Where are we?” I ask.

  Stick with the facts. Never speculate on what could have been.

  Olan clears his throat. “We’re on the frigate Namazu.”

  I rest my head back on the pillow.

  “The Japanese made it,” Olan continues, “and so did the Irani.”

  “The Persians?” I ask.

  Olan huffs. “Whatever. The Sorhab’s crew’s so mixed you probably couldn’t pick ‘em out in a pub in Glasgow.” He scratches at his beard. “The Bastille’s still burning in the snow, the Agincourt was rammed in half at the start of the fight and . . ”, he pauses, taking in a deep breath, “The Artemis is scattered over the drifts below us.”

  “So it did fall,” I say without emotion.

  It’s just a new piece of information. That’s all it needs to be at this moment. Out of the corner of my eye, a shaggy tuft of red bobs silently.

  “We don’t need to talk about that right now,” he states again.

  The deep dark of the night sky mirrors the mood in the room. I’ve been unconscious for several hours.

  “I do, however,” Olan mentions, “have to talk with you about this.”

  I raise my head as he leans over holding a blinking object. A small dark shape lies in Olan’s palm. The keepsake the Admiral gave me before the assault! My hand gropes over my breast pocket, only to find the device missing.

  Olan waggles the blinking rectangle. “I had to convince the nurses that you hadn’t armed yourself with some sort of booby-trapped grenade,”, he says, his exhausted eyes meeting mine. “Took a big risk believing that wasn’t the situation so they could operate on you.”

  The tightness curls in my left leg. A cast cements it in place as the residual pain throbs from within. The incisions are fresh.

  “So . . . ”, Olan leans in looking around the facility before asking, “What is it?”

  The green overlay pings once more against the black casing.

  It all comes together.

  “That’s exactly what it is,” I whisper.

  It wasn’t pulsing green before I fell unconscious, which means it wasn’t pulsing before the Artemis hit ground.

  Olan creases his eyebrows. “Well, what is it?”

  Something akin to adrenaline f
ills me, struggling to roll back the pain.

  “Help me up,” I say, trying to push myself from the bed.

  “Where are you going? It’s three in the morning,” Olan asks.

  Paying him no mind, I continue trying to right myself. “It doesn’t matter. We need to find it right away . . . Before someone else does,” I say to the pillow.

  Olan leans back in. “Find what?” he growls.

  I dodge the question, asking one of my own. It doesn’t feel good, but the Admiral entrusted this task to me alone. “Can you pull together a crew large enough to man a Helios? We need to go now,” I urge.

  Olan fixes me with a glare.

  “Is he awake?” a voice from outside asks.

  Before Olan can answer, a bloodied Yeti leans through the door.

  “Oh my God! He’s awake. Now we just need Sleeping Beauty to do the same down the hall,” Yeti says, hugging me too hard.

  I cry out in pain, but two words force me to ask a question instead of preserve my recovery. “Sleeping Beauty?” I ask, tinged with hope.

  Yeti sighs. “Ah . . . I’m sorry man. Listen to my dumb mouth going off like that. Stenia! Stenia made it out thanks to this guy,” he says, gesturing to Olan.

  Olan nods slowly. “We wouldn’t have made it out if you hadn’t pulled me back to earth . . . again. Thank you for giving us that chance Sage.”

  “She’s still unconscious, but the docs say she’s out of critical condition for now,”, Yeti says. He kneels to my side, taking my hand. “Sage, I’m so sorry about Cass. She was an amazing woman.”

  Olan clears his throat. “And we don’t have to discuss her passing right now. I would tell the lad to heal mind and body first, but it just so happens that Baz won’t rest until he finds himself a pilot.”

  Yeti’s eyes turn between us. “Yeah? Where we going?” he asks.

  I finally succeed in sitting upright. “Can you two trust me on this?” I ask.

  Olan’s blue, angry eyes study mine. “You do realize, that if you leave that bed, God’s liable to take you up to his kingdom just from the exertion alone?”

  I light my own fire from within.

  “If I can do this one last thing . . . I’ll let him.”

  The wind rifles through my hair as I watch the sun rise from the open door. After a few hours, we were able to assemble a skeleton crew to sneak out a Helios for an unapproved mission. Looking into the cockpit, I see the red reflection of Diz’s hair from the co-pilot’s seat. We found her while searching for folks who, instead of sleeping, were willing to entertain the wishes of a red-headed giant, an animated Mexican, and a cripple.

  The market was very sparse.

  With Diz’s help and with the proper persuasion, we were eventually able to recruit friends of friends to join us. Extra rations of cigarettes were our currency of choice. Another reason I don’t smoke: extra bargaining power. Luckily for us, Helios crews are still running search missions to retrieve stricken crew from the area.

  We can’t stay much longer. With this many Zeppelin wrecks, and whatever treasures the hulking carcass of the Ark holds, bandits and pirates will be coming to take their share soon. We can’t be here when that happens.

  The green blip draws my eyes back down to the device in my hand. The pulse moves further and stronger down the sides of the slate now. It’s working just the way I thought it would. We’re moving in the right direction. A shiver runs down my spine and through my hands. I can’t tell if it’s from the cold or the anticipation. As always, probably both.

  The crest of the sun bleeds a beautiful red.

  Smoke billows up from below, countering the winter wind with fumes and flames still burning from the wreckage. The once proud Artemis is now a forgotten jigsaw puzzle, spread across the face of the white world underneath us. We’re not interested in most of these pieces. We need the Bridge, hopefully intact. It would certainly make our job much easier. If I’m right, it will be hidden somewhere there. The image of the shell hitting the Admiral’s Quarters flashes to mind. Maybe we’ll find Sanjar too…

  As we crest a hill, a sea of shattered glass rises to meet us. The two halves of the Bridge remain intact, but the glass plating of the cockpit must have ruptured when the Artemis hit ground. I shudder, thinking of the doomed crew still trapped inside on impact.

  I tug my comm to the side of my mouth. “Set it down here, please.”

  “You got it,” Yeti yawns back, wiping sleep from his eyes.

  Olan clutches his rifle to his chest, lurching as the Helios begins its descent. He never liked traveling in small ships.

  When our feet touch the ground, it’s a surreal sight. Pylons of oblong plate glass litter the field, dotted with the dark uniforms of flung bodies. Yeti stays with the ship, along with two other guards. As I hobble along with one hand on the crutch supporting me, and the other on the flashing device, the rest of my crew takes the time to retrieve dog tags from the prone forms.

  There’s a job to do. Formalities can come later. The pinging from my slate becomes more rapid, increasing in strength as we approach the bottom half of the forward Bridge.

  “We’re almost there!” I shout, careful not to alert anyone other than my handpicked group.

  Arriving at the side of the dented hull, I zero in on the source. Abandoning my crutch, I drag my leg over to the side of the ship. Following the lights, I push aside the glass and snow, kneeling down to a nearly buried section. A perfect green circle blossoms out from the center of the tablet.

  The hackles on my neck raise. “It’s here!” I wave.

  Diz steps over the tinkling wreckage to where I kneel. Donning her welding gear, she lights her torch.

  “Are you sure?, she asks, doubtful of the position.

  “It’s right here,” I say, pointing into the hull and crossing my fingers in the shape of an ‘x’. “Can you get it?” I ask.

  Diz gives me a rare smile. “You bet your sweet arse.”

  Flipping down her mask, she begins cutting through the hull. A shower of sparks rains out from her torch as it sears against the metal, motivating the rest of our small crew to give her space. Only Olan perches nearby, keeping a close eye on our surroundings as Diz makes her incisions. The extra illumination will make us vulnerable to any surviving remnants.

  Time passes. The rest of the recruited crew takes to searching the bodies deposited in the landscape around us. I’d warn them not to wander too far, but I’m too fixated on Diz’s progress to care.

  Finally, the torch makes it all the way through. With a gentle push, a sizable chunk of the hull falls to the ground, immediately melting the snow around it. I hold my breath against the fumes as I reach into the hole. My fingers search around the blackness, but find nothing. My pulse spikes. It has to be here. There’s no other way. I stand on my toes, careful not to touch the glowing edges of the freshly cut steel framing my arm.

  I graze a heavy object.

  Exhaling, I get as strong a hold as I can on the case, dragging it from the inside the Bridge’s hull.

  The black case crashes to the ground, sending up a shower of glass laden snow.

  Diz’s wide eyes dart over the case. “That’s the Artemis’s black box . . . Isn’t it?” she asks.

  Nodding slowly, I move my hands along its side. “It’s the whole story of everybody who lived and died on it. So people can know what happened here,” I say.

  Olan keeps his eyes on the horizon. “Do you really think we did it?” he says, blowing out a thick cloud of breath. “Saved the world?” he clarifies, turning in our direction. “I mean, we took down the Ark and all. But every one of us saw that beam shoot from its top.” Olan eyes me. “Baz, you were in the middle of it for fuck sake. You of all people know it wasn’t firing for a short ticker.”

  The dull thud of a bullet burrowing into Raltz echos in my ear. I shake my head, trying rid myself of it. “I know. It’s what I chose to believe.”

  Diz sits down on the newly shorn chunk of metal. “Well, I
suppose there’s only one way to find out,” she says. “Worse comes to worse, if there is another Drowning . . . at least we’ll be ready for it, right?”

  I run my hand along the edge of the crate. My pulse pounds as I find what I’ve been looking for. The recess of a small, concealed keyhole presses up against the point of my finger.

  “Only time will tell,” I say, popping the Admiral’s key from his tablet. “That’s about all we can do.” I insert the key into the hole, listening to it click as I turn it. Taking a deep breath, I use both hands on either side of the lid to open it.

  The lid gives way.

  What greets my eyes leaves me dumbfounded.

  The actual size of the black box isn’t even close to the dimensions of the dark crate protecting it. The rest of the space is taken up by band after band of hundred dollar bills. There are so many, so tightly packed. I can’t even comprehend the amount of currency set out in front of me.

  The Admiral hid his wealth here. He knew this fight would be his last, so he prepared accordingly. But his wealth isn’t the only thing he placed alongside the black box. Laying on top of the sea of bills is one single picture.

  I pick it up, taking in its sepia coloring. Two men stand next to one another, an arm across each shoulder, smiling at the lens. The Admiral’s grinning face looks up at me, thirty years younger, full of possibility. The man next to him startles me. My father, in his old flight suit, grins back as well.

  They were friends from the beginning. When the Artemis was just a concept. When the Admiral was just starting out, and my father had just begun flying. Holding my breath, I turn the picture over. Two words are scrawled against a fingerprinted white.

  Start again.

  Exhaling, I let myself rock back onto the ground. I look up at Diz. She’s not paying attention. Instead, she’s looking at the sunrise with Olan in foreground. Olan continues scanning the outlying woods. Neither of them realize what I’ve discovered. My hand drops back into the case with the picture still clutched inside.