Aethosphere Chronicles: Storm of Chains

by Jeremiah D. Schmidt

  “It doesn’t have to be a piece of art,” replied Bar, on the defensive. “It just has to pass for you long enough for us to get a head-start…which, I might add, is being wasting standing around criticizing this thing.”

  “So onto the gurney, Mr. Larken,” ordered Abigail, “you have a date with the morgue.”

  “The morgue?” That did little to assuage the trepidation burning through the aristocrat, but he lowered himself on the gurney anyway. “Why there…?”

  “Details,” she said throwing the sheet up over his head. “Just remember, you’re dead, and dead men don’t move; and dead men especially don’t talk.”

  “Yes, yes,” grumbled Drish from beneath the rough linen, getting the picture.

  “What did I just say?”

  “Dead—”

  She silenced him. “Yes, dead—remember that. And you two, don’t forget to grab his clothing on the way out. I don’t think Drish wants to make the hike back to the skiff in nothing but a breezy medical gown.”

  “Hike,” began Drish, but Abigail shooed him to silence.

  The gurney bounced and jerked its way over stone floors, making it nearly impossible for Drish to lay still as they pushed him down one long corridor after corridor. Beyond the thin veil of his ‘death shroud’ patches of light and dark streamed by, occupied by shadowy forms and the voices of men. Any moment Drish expected the curtain to be pulled away and some imperial with a gun to appear. An escape attempt from Port Armageddon would not only assure his guilt, but bring about a speedy execution; that is, if they didn’t just shoot him outright on sight. Even from the grave, his damnable father had ruined his chance at freedom once more, and Drish would have cried out for help, except, as demonstrated on the streets in front of his apartment, the scofflaws surrounding him had no qualms about negotiating with bullets. If it came down to that, no doubt the noble would find himself killed in such an exchange…and Abigail too. And for some reason, he couldn’t bear the thought of her dying. No, for all their sakes, it was best to keep quiet.

  The gurney skidded to a stop and Drish thought their dreadful moment had come, but rather than voices calling for surrender, there was the shuffle of elevator doors instead.

  “In you go,” whispered Abby, but just as Drish was pushed inside, the base’s siren screamed out in shrill warning.

  “Already?” Bar growled in frustration. “I’d hope we’d at least make it to Thresher’s Valley before they caught wind of our escape.”

  Suddenly Drish found the sheet covering him being torn away, leaving him blinking in the harsh light of an overhead arc-bulb. As the he sat up, Bar shoved a stack of crumbled clothing into his unsuspecting arms.

  “Get dressed,” ordered the pirate as the elevator rattled and screeched its way down the cliff walls.

  “Do you mind,” sneered the aristocrat, holding out his tailored shirt and giving it a temperamental snap to shake out the wrinkles, “this shirt is made of Moon Fall cotton and not be manhandled by the likes of you.”

  “I’m sure it is,” dully replied the pirate, appearing equally unimpressed.

  Beyond the metal cage that held them, a shaft of glass allowed the noble to gaze out over the Cloudfortress as the elevator descended and he dressed. He had never personally visited the facility himself when the UKA had controlled it, but it had been described to him time and time again as a closed valley lined in docks and buildings, but looking out on it now made him realize just how poor a description that was. Drish himself didn’t know if he could give the military complex proper justice, thinking that it reminded him simply of a vast stone coliseum, only more vertical, and filled with jetting balconies and observation boxes fashioned out of metal and stone and timber. A thousand points of twinkling lights lined the walls and dazzled the senses, while beams came lancing up from the valley floor to paint the underside of the clouds in moving circles of white; and all of it hauntingly beautiful; like when the lights of Throne used to shine, before war and conflict turned them dark.

  What industrial beauty he found though, was marred by black-hulled Iron warships, scores of them clustered along the multi-leveled airdocks, with dozens more drifting in and out from the blanket of low-lying clouds overhead; themselves stained in halos of crimson from the color-tinted atmium cores employed by those airships. From every building waved Iron flags, and combined with the glow of corrupt atmium, offered the only splash of color in a world seemingly turned to monochromatic shades of black and white. Here and there, on the multitude of outreaching platforms, grounds troops marched in orderly processions along the parade grounds, while in other places rows of machinery stood in geometric patterns. Drish spotted four-legged assault machines, like the ones patrolling the streets of Throne, and massive siege hulks, like those that had leveled the slums. He found tread-rovers and rotorcopters, and bi-fighters, and all of them gathered in waiting for the next call to war.

  Looking out over all that hardware had Drish more certain than ever that he’d made the right choice. Surrender was the only thing left to the Candaran species in light of all this Hierarch domination.

  “Hurry up,” grumbled Bar, having shed his own disguise to stand with his arms folded over the chest of his shaggy coat. He stood with his back to the city outside, almost as if refusing to acknowledge the truth.

  Drish was just finishing up with his jacket when the elevator came screeching to a halt about twelve-meters above the structure below.

  “They must have cut the power to the elevators,” Abigail blurted in the relative quiet that fell over the booth, and she anxiously slamming a hand against the caged wall. “We’re trapped!”

  “Nay, lass,” said Bar, before giving Fen a quick nod.

  “And just how do—” Drish began, but was stopped short when the two pirates grabbed hold of the elevator’s caged doors. Together they pulled. Metal groaned and then snapped and the doors sprang apart. They were still trapped in the shaft however, and the noble stood with condescending satisfaction in light of their failure. There was still nowhere to escape to. They were well above the building below, and the shaft held them trapped now more than ever, that is, until Bar braced himself against the elevator’s sidewall and kicked out the glass. With a crash, shards went tumbled out into the blustery winds, even as cold air came pouring into the elevator, smelling of bilge-oil smoke and wet rock.

  “Problem solved.” Bar flashed a toothy grin in satisfaction.

  “Is it,” countered Drish while observing the span of height still separating them from the roof-landing below.

  Captain Bazzon replied with a scoff before turning to his young accomplice. “Fen, the rope if you will.”

  “The rope,” asked the Hierarch dumbly.

  Bar’s face darkened beneath the raised hackles of his read hair. “Yes the rope! The one that I specifically told you to grab before we left the skiff.”

  “Oh…yeah,” Fen scratched at the stubble over his right ear, “yeah about that, Cap, figured it was more trouble than it was worth, so….I just left it behind.”

  Confounded, Bar slapped a meaty hand against his forehead, and slowly shook his head.

  “And Arvis always spoke so highly of you,” teased Abigail, before she hauled up and kicked out the elevator’s control panel. From amongst the wreckage, she reached in and grabbed hold of the main wiring, pulling until she’d managed a length nearly ten meters long. When she shouldn’t tug out anymore she shrugged apologetically. “Guess that’ll have to do. Hope you don’t have weak bones.”

  “My knees could be in better shape,” grumbled Bar. “But good job, Abby, you’ve given us a shot, so here’s how we’re going to do this. Fen, you go first, Abigail next, then Drish, and finally I’ll follow up the rear.”

  “What’s the destination, Cap?”

  “Same as it’s always been, Fen; the secret access tunnel. Now let’s move before they muster up the troops, and in a bad way for us.”

  Drish waited patiently as Fen and then Abby slip gr
acefully through the narrow opening and shimmied down the electrical wire, but when it came to his turn, the noble froze. “It’s too high,” he whispered with a resistant shudder, “I can’t make it.”

  “You can and you will, Drish.” The captain grabbed a length of wiring and placed it in the noble’s trembling hands. “I suggest you grip tightly…and oh, I’m sorry in advance for the rope burns you’re about it get. It’s going to sting like nothing else.” Bar flashed him a wicked grin.

  “What do you—”

  From behind Drish felt a shove, and suddenly he was tumbling out the elevator’s opening, though still managing to keep a toe-hold on the floor while the rest of his body stretched out over open sky.

  “You son of a—”

  But the noble’s words died a fast death when Bar kicked the man’s feet out from under him, sending Drish swinging into the air; that is, before his full weight dragged him down along the wire. In the terrorizing exhilaration of falling, the noble didn’t feel the flesh on his hands being stripped away, but he did feel the wire come to an abrupt end; felt as his blood slickened hands clung to nothing while he freefell two more meters.

  Drish slammed down onto the roof with enough force to dent the metal. His knees also buckled as he hit, pitching him forward to crash into Abigail, and together the pair toppled into a heap. Somehow in the landing, Drish managed to end up on the bottom; to stare up into the intoxicating saffron eyes of his female rescuer. They were just centimeters away. He could smell the mint on her breath too, and then he suddenly became cognoscente of her full weight pressing down on him. The feel of her softness made the noble turn a brilliant shade of red.

  “I…um…sorry,” he stammered while she just smiled down at him. It almost seemed as if her face lowered towards his; like their lips were destined to touch; but then Bar slammed down next to them, punching a hole straight through the corrugated metal.

  The pirate’s moans of pain had Abigail up and at the hole in an instant. “Are you alright,” she called down to the twilight he’d fallen into.

  “Just wounded my pride’s all,” Bar groaned from below. “Think something broke my fall…might have been a someone actually. But at least we’ve got a way into the morgue now.”

  One by one, the party dropped in next to Bar, finding that his landing had been broken by a corpse on a gurney, left waiting at the door to the cold storage room.

  Fen instantly burst into gleeful laughter, until someone screaming from down at the end of the hallway cut him off. Both Drish and Abigail turned in unison to find a red-faced Hierarch orderly pointing down at them, until Fen whipped out his pistol and fired. The sharp bark in a confined space was deafening, and Drish flinched in violent revolt, while the orderly fell dead to the ground with a hole punched neatly through his forehead.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing!” roared Bar.

  “Idiot child,” Drish snarled through the high-pitched buzzing in his ears. “What sort of moron fires off a gun in an enclosed space…Who even gave you a gun?”

  “Everyone in the damn port probably heard that,” finished Bar as he forced Fen’s readied gun barrel down, so it was pointing safely at the tiled floor.

  “Sorry, Cap,” apologized the young Hierarch. “I didn’t have much of a—”

  A soldier suddenly appeared over the orderly’s body, checking the vitals, but before he’d had a chance to look down the hall towards them, Fen shot him down as well, and after that, Bar looked absolutely incredulous, but all he could do was shake his head in disbelief as the teenager shrugged.

  “Instinct,” dismissed the Hierarch as though that were enough of a reason.

  Knowing the damage was done, Bar lead them, running, towards the doors at the hall’s end.

  “Come along, Mr. Larken,” urged Abby playfully, nudging him in the ribs as she skipped passed.

  Watching her go, Drish realized he’d follow her anywhere.

  By the time they reached the morgue the buzzing in Drish’s ears had relented to a dull whine, replaced by the shrill blat of the hospital’s alarm, but as they reached the stainless steel double-doors, the clap of a gunshot joined it in chorus, punching a hole straight through the metal. Another clap rang true immediately after and pulverized a tile on the wall next to Drish’s head, and when he ventured a glance back, he discovered a whole squad of Hierarch soldiers in pursuit, with their rifles raised at the ready.

  Drish could only laugh in the face of impending death, but then Bar had him around the chest, and together they were barreling through the doors.

  Gunfire followed.

  “Get ahold of yourself,” growled Bar as they took cover behind a tiled sink basin, built right into the center of the room. Drish hunkered in next to the pirate as the bullets zinged by and ricocheted off the tiles and stainless steel fixtures, and a feeling of profound weariness took hold, until he noticed Abigail was nowhere to be found.

  Where is she, he wondered in a panic.

  Chapter 7

  A vertical stream of endless imperial bullets whizzed and pinged off the basin tilework Bar and Drish had taken cover behind, sending bits of shrapnel raining down, and keeping the fugitive noble’s butt planted firmly in place; while next to him, the gruff pirate captain returned fire. Grim faced, Bar squeezed off the revolver’s trigger, launching one percussive shot after another to rattle the noble’s brain, but Drish didn’t care. He just needed to find Abigail. Desperately he scanned the room, daring, even, to poke his head out past the safety of his sink to see beyond the others that lined the chamber’s center; all the way to the room’s end. On his left, he found rows of stainless-steel morgue lockers, and to the right, a narrow strip of sunlight pouring down through a bank of high-set basement-style windows. There, crouched beneath the smoky debris and drifting dust motes, he spotted Abigail, and a sigh of relief escaped the noble’s lips. She was still alive, using a gurney as cover, while what light pouring down from the overhead windows cast her aglow. With her hair highlighted to flaxen and her skin warmed to honey, she reminded Drish of the pantheon goddesses of love; of Allura herself; and the one his grandmother had specifically taught him to be mindful of.

  “I’ll not have you succumb to a pretty face like your father did, grandson,” explained the Baroness Estonia Gernell-Larken on the day Drish had reached the rite of puberty. “I can’t bear the thought of our noble family’s bloodline being diluted any further. So be not tempted by the spawns of Allura, no matter how enticing they may be. Remember, we are followers of Yolanda, Drish, and Yolanda preaches order and reason; not the chaos of passions. Such pursuits are for the peasantry, but for us; it will only bring strife and ruin. You need only look to your father’s example, to see that. His love for your lowborn mother drove him away from us; might have ended the noble-line right then and there if not for divine providence. Oh, if only your mother and father stuck to their perspective stations, then maybe the King of the Gods might not have seen fit to punish them as he did. But they did not, and it was your mother who paid for their sins, with her life while giving birth to you. So let that be the reminder you need when considering your passions. Order, and the rule of law, grandson; that’s the Larken way.”

  Drish wanted to be mindful of his grandmother’s warning, but seeing Abigail left him full of doubt. He wanted to rush out and protect her, but he could only watch in dreadful anticipation in the danger of their predicament. They were trapped, and on Port Armageddon no less. Capture wasn’t a possibility, it was a certainty, and if Bar kept firing back, they would only be killed in the process. So Drish readied his throat to roar out a surrender, when he noticed Abigail readying herself to bolt from cover.

  “Abby, no,” he yelled instead, but it was too late to stop her; she was already running; and the bullet’s followed. Tile readily exploded under her scrambling feet, while wood from the overhead joists tumbled down in torrents to stick in her hair. When she neared the room’s opposite side, she went to her knees and skidded the rest
of the way, to slam into the stainless steel morgue lockers with her shoulder. She had made it that far, yet now there was nothing to shield her.

  “Run,” Drish tried to urge her, but she was fumbling with a locker door instead, trying to pull it open while gunshots punched through the metal around her. What is she doing? The noble was exasperated. There’s nothing but dead bodies in there, and soon to be out here, if she doesn’t take cover. And then the door swung open.

  It took the aristocrat a moment to understand what he was looking at within. Where he’d expected darkness and a slab housing a body, he instead found soft torchlight guttering from somewhere too deep to be real. It defied reason until it dawned on him. It’s a tunnel!

  “Come on,” urged Abigail, motioning with big arm movements in order to draw their attention. Fen was the first to scramble towards escape, displaying all the grace of a headless chicken when he came popping out from behind an autopsy table in a whirlwind of gangly teenage limbs.

  “You’re next, Mr. Larken,” ordered Bar Bazzon from beside the noble, before he gave Drish a rough shove, and sent him stumbling towards the lockers, whether he wanted to or not.

  Drish, however, managed only a few staggered steps before he faltered out in the open, torn between moving forward, through danger, or retreating back to safety. In that fleeting moment, he caught sight of Graye, standing out amongst a cluster of imperials at the rim of the ruined doors. The officer’s legendarily calm had crumbled to twisted red outrage, blasting angry orders to the surrounding troopers as rapidly as they fired off their rifles. Again, Drish felt a shove to his back, herding him forward, where he fell to his hands and knees at the threshold to the locker. After that, it seemed an easy decision for him to scramble in after Fen.

  Just a couple meters ahead, Drish could see that the back of the locker had been removed, and the brown brick making up the morgue wall had been pulled away, leaving a jagged hole just big enough for a man to squeeze through. So like a worm, Drish wriggled his way to safety, and spilled upon the stone floor of a small, dark chamber; a chamber painted orange in the flickering light of a fire. Within, he found Abigail kneeling next to the tunnel, waiting to assist, while Fen stood behind her, dusting off his britches; but they weren’t alone.