Nethereal (Soul Cycle Book 1)

by Brian Niemeier

  “We were at full strength when the demons boarded,” said Teg, “and they didn’t just crush us; they barely noticed us. Force size doesn’t matter if your weapons can’t do shit.”

  Sulaiman cleared the snow from a level slab of rock. “If you bear unworked arms, lay them before me,” he said.

  Jaren surrendered his zephyr. Teg and Mikelburg laid down their guns. Last of all, Stochman proffered his single-action pistol.

  The ancient priest bowed his head and stretched his hands out over the slab. “Oh Midras, who art the light and judge of souls,” he intoned, “grant us thy protection in the long night, and shed thy light upon our path.” His invocation finished, Sulaiman stepped back and motioned for the men to reclaim their weapons.

  Teg inspected one of his zephyrs. “It looks the same,” he said.

  “I have consecrated the steel to our purpose,” Sulaiman said. “Any demon struck by it will fall as surely as a man.”

  “You're delusional,” Stochman said. “That was no Working I've ever seen.”

  Jaren holstered his gun. “We'll find out soon enough,” he said.

  “Where's your weapon?” Deim asked Sulaiman.

  The priest had already started up the slope. He looked back over his shoulder and said, “My sword is the fire of justice which kindles only before my foes. Until then, I stoke it upon the coals of my heart. Come! The shadows lengthen.”

  Night was falling when the boarding party reached the summit cliffs. They’d climbed most of the way under clear skies, but Jaren saw black clouds gathering overhead. The wind drove against his skin like cold needles. “Storm’s blowing in,” he said.

  Teg leaned against the rock face and rubbed his lower back. “We were lucky the weather held this long,” he said through clenched teeth.

  Fat snowflakes started pelting the mountain in sheets. Jaren stared into the storm as if the clouds could reveal Gibeah’s machinations.

  A cacophony of human and inhuman cries echoed from far below and to the south. Jaren forgot the blizzard.

  “The baal has loosed his army!” Sulaiman yelled over the blustering wind.

  “It’s the best diversion we could ask for,” Jaren called back. “We need to reach the ship!”

  Deim jabbed a finger toward the peak. The Exodus loomed dark against the clouds far above, anchored to the sheer cliff by its grappling claw. “Easier said than done.”

  Sulaiman turned to Nakvin. “Climbing is vain. All now depends on you.”

  The Steersman brushed wind-whipped hair from her face and shook her head. “He'll just block me again.”

  “Gibeah spends his power on the storm,” said Sulaiman. “You can take him off guard.”

  “Even if I get us aboard, he’ll know the second we set foot up there,” Nakvin said.

  Jaren studied the great black hull above and noticed several rows of circles inscribed in the port wing’s ventral surface. “Would it be easier to go by yourself?” he asked Nakvin.

  “I think so,” she said reluctantly, “but what about you?”

  Jaren pointed to the circles. “Get into the hangar. Then airlift us up.”

  “No chance!” Stochman said. “I won’t risk being left behind.”

  “It’s our only chance,” said Jaren.

  Sulaiman brooded for a moment; then declared his judgment. “The Magus will go alone. Then she will bring us. All of us.”

  Jaren laid his hand on Nakvin’s shoulder. “I’m counting on you,” he said. What he thought was, This is our chance.

  All right, Nakvin thought back. I'll try. She closed her eyes.

  Jaren watched as the space where Nakvin stood warped like the surface of a rock-rippled pond. Then she was gone.

  33

  The hangar was blessedly quiet when Nakvin arrived. Though free of demons, the vast emptiness instilled her with existential fear. Eager to finish her errand, she hurried across the gleaming white deck to the airlift station.

  The smell of rancid blood warned her of what she would find.

  The airlift, with its dozen circular hatches arranged on the deck in three staggered rows, came into view. A red-brown crust caked the pearly circles and the slender pylon topped with an oblong console that stood close by.

  Nakvin crept forward. The sound of ringing metal made her hold her breath until she saw the shell casing rolling away from her foot. The small brass tube came to rest against one of countless others scattered around the lift. The sailors must’ve made a stand here, she thought.

  Luckily for Nakvin and her friends below, the airlift was easy to operate. Each circle projected a cylinder of invisible force that would seek out a target’s sending stud and draw him into the hangar.

  Nakvin approached the console. She wished that the sinking sensation she felt was the airlift lowering her from the ship, but what she saw made that scenario impossible. Two bullet holes punctured the blood-spattered screen. The sailors had done worse than waste their lives. They’d left everyone else as good as dead.

  Waiting below the blizzard-wracked cliffs, Teg kept close watch on the quickly deteriorating situation. The wind carried the roar of distant battle and a chill that pierced bone. Nakvin’s been gone too long, he thought with growing unease. Every second the pirates spent on the mountain brought their plan closer to failure.

  Teg, Deim, and Mikelburg huddled near Jaren. Stochman stuck close to Sulaiman. The boarding party had divided along predictable lines. It would be interesting to see who crossed them first.

  When Stochman trudged forward, Teg felt surprised even as he touched the grip of his zephyr. He’d been sure that Sulaiman would make the first offer—or threat.

  Stochman’s thin face turned inside his hood to fix narrowed eyes on Jaren. “What’s taking her so long?”

  Jaren betrayed no sentiment. “I don’t know.”

  “Why don’t you send up and ask?”

  “I don’t want to distract her,” Jaren said.

  “Our only eyes inside the ship are in that woman’s head,” said Stochman. “If she’s been caught or killed, we need to know. Make the call.”

  Jaren’s hand slowly rose to his ear. “Nakvin,” he said, “What’s your status?”

  A long moment passed in silence.

  “She must be having technical—” Jaren started to say, but Teg didn’t hear the rest. He was too busy drawing on Stochman, who’d leveled his own pistol at Jaren.

  “What cause have you to raise arms?” Sulaiman asked. His rigid composure gave Teg the impression that a statue had spoken.

  Stochman kept his gun trained on Jaren. “The Gen thinks he’s got the better of us because the Wheel only accepts the kid and his whore,” he said through lips twisted halfway between a sneer and a grin. “They’re scheming on a private channel.”

  Sulaiman’s eyes seemed to pierce Jaren’s mind. “Even now you would sow deceit?” said the priest.

  “You’re jumping to conclusions,” Jaren said. “Nakvin just needs time to work.”

  “I disagree,” Stochman said. “What she needs is the proper incentive.” He cocked his revolver. “She has ten seconds to lift me aboard. Tell her.”

  “Nice plan,” said Teg, looking at Stochman through his zephyr’s sights. “There’s only one problem. Anyone you kill will just get up again.”

  Stochman grinned and pointed his gun at Deim. “I doubt he will. All that god-bothering has to count for something. How about it, priest?”

  “The boy’s heart is pure,” said Sulaiman, “if not wholly his own.”

  Mikelburg drew on Stochman, who just laughed. “All the gods that ever were can go fuck themselves,” Stochman said. His gaze darted between the pirates and settled on Deim. “We can shoot each other all day. I just have to shoot him once.”

  Teg glanced at Deim. The kid looked almost as calm as Sulaiman, which was somehow worse than if he’d been panicking.

  “You need Deim as much as we do,” Jaren said.

  “Lucky for me, another Steersma
n is already aboard,” Stochman said. “She has five seconds to bring me on or start pulling double shifts.”

  Jaren glared at the commander and said, “Nakvin, bring Stochman up.”

  The next moment stretched into eternity. Teg kept his gun on Stochman, whose gun was trained on Deim. Between himself and Mikelburg, Stochman’s death was certain—not that it mattered. The commander twitched, and Teg’s trigger finger tightened.

  The blue stud in Deim's ear flashed and chimed. Seconds later, he was enveloped in what looked like a tube of immaculately clear glass. An instant after that, he was shooting upward. Mikelburg went next.

  Stochman was too busy muttering curses at the sky to see Jaren rush him. Jaren slapped the gun from his hand. It clattered over the ledge and vanished into the abyss.

  Jaren smiled at Stochman and Sulaiman. “You two can wait here,” he said a moment before he was taken up.

  “Bastard Gen!” Stochman raged.

  “Your captain has broken faith,” Sulaiman said.

  “Sorry,” said Teg. “It's for the best.”

  Sulaiman did something that Teg would've thought impossible. As the final tube descended, the priest reached out and deftly plucked the blue stud from Teg's ear. The column of force enveloped Sulaiman, launching him upward in a streak of crimson and silver.

  “You got my message,” Jaren said as he stepped from the airlift. “I’m glad I didn’t imagine yours.”

  “My other gifts are magnified here,” said Nakvin. “It stood to reason that we could share thoughts at a distance.”

  “I’m still wondering why we had to,” Jaren said. “Why didn’t you answer my sendings?”

  Nakvin pointed to the mostly dissembled airlift console. “I used my stud for spare parts.”

  “I’m just glad you brought me up first,” said Deim.

  “You’re welcome,” Nakvin said. “I almost feel bad for Sulaiman, though.”

  As if summoned by his name, the priest rose through the last open circle in the deck. Jaren’s eyes widened as the imperious figure strode toward him with the click of boot heels and the ring of mail. “Well met, friend,” Sulaiman said grimly. “Your cutthroat would have made me the fool, had he been quicker.”

  “Teg was too slow?” Nakvin marveled.

  Jaren met Sulaiman’s burning glare. The two of them stood silent for a long moment before Jaren spoke. “We can sort out our differences later. Right now, there’s work to do.”

  “Truly,” Sulaiman said, “and you know not how perilous a work it is.”

  “You’ve fought Gibeah before?”

  A haunted look passed over Sulaiman’s face. “Hell holds worse horrors than the baals.” He suddenly broke eye contact and wandered a short distance into the hangar. “I see that Stochman also deals falsely,” he said, “or else he is blinder than his manner suggests.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Nakvin.

  “Are you all so witless?” Sulaiman asked. “This is no vessel for men. It is a cage for…” Trailing off, he turned and started toward the main hull.

  “I think our hound’s caught a scent,” Jaren said.

  “What about Teg?” asked Deim.

  Jaren offered his stud to Mikelburg, who was fussing with the airlift console’s exposed guts. “Send this down to him,” he said.

  The engineer rubbed a hand over his bald head. “Sure,” he said, “if you’ve got a few hours. Sulaiman’s stunt burned out the tracking sensor, and the console’s rigged looser than a Byport doxy’s garters.”

  Nakvin rested a hand on her hip. “I had to improvise,” she said dryly.

  “Never mind,” Jaren said through gritted teeth. “Me and Deim will follow Sulaiman. Mike, get Nakvin to the bridge.”

  “For a man who’s never seen an ether-runner, Sulaiman sure knows his way around,” Deim said as he and Jaren caught up with the priest.

  Considering how the Exodus played havoc with direction and distance, Jaren had to agree. Maybe the man really is following some kind of divine guidance, he thought. But Jaren’s newfound faith wavered when he saw where Sulaiman’s god had led him.

  “The officers’ lounge?” Deim wondered aloud.

  Jaren grabbed Sulaiman’s arm before the priest could barge through the double doors. “What’s in there?” he asked.

  The look on Sulaiman’s face gave Jaren a start. He couldn’t say whether the man’s emerald eyes burned with zeal or madness. “Nothing is as it seems,” Sulaiman whispered. “The walls echo with cries of anguish.”

  Jaren’s confusion turned to fear. “I don’t hear anything,” he said. “Who is it?”

  “A multitude, greater even than this cursed ark could bear,” Sulaiman said. “The baal seeks them. They’ll not escape him long.”

  Jaren released Sulaiman and drew his rodcaster. “That’s all I needed to hear,” Jaren said. He strode through the lounge doors with Sulaiman beside him and Deim following behind.

  The room smelled of stale ashes. Most of the tables and part of the bar were reduced to cinders. The floor-to-ceiling windows facing the entrance were smashed, but instead of a storm-wracked mountain vista, the empty frames gave on a web of support struts and girders.

  Except for the middle one.

  A monolithic figure stood before the hatch that the middle window had once concealed. What little of his flesh wasn’t girded in stout leather armor had the texture of pumice stone.

  “Your foulness betrays your presence, Never-to-Rise,” Sulaiman said as he advanced from Jaren's left. “These freemen would take you to law on a charge of theft. I have come to serve sentence.”

  Unlike Sulaiman, Deim didn’t offer Gibeah the courtesy of a warning. The steersman hastily made the signs of the Compass. A blinding electrical arc leapt from his hand and struck Gibeah’s back.

  Sulaiman gave no indication of fashioning, but a sphere of crimson flame appeared in each of his hands. He hurled the fiery missiles, which burst against the demon’s armored hide.

  So much for talk, Jaren thought when he saw that his comrades had opened fire. He hefted his rodcaster and pressed the trigger.

  The blazing heat that burst from Jaren’s gun parted around Gibeah like a wave breaking against rock. The broken stream struck the hatch, which incredibly seemed unscathed.

  Gibeah loomed over Sulaiman, looking no more injured than the hatch. A heat haze wreathed the baal’s craggy face, and blue flames bled through his cracked flesh.

  “Well come, drudge of Midras,” said the baal. “But this meeting is no device of yours.”

  “That’s right,” Jaren said. “My bet’s on Zebel. Or didn’t your lackey tell you her daughter’s our friend?”

  The baal turned his gaze on Jaren, who found his mind stripped of every thought by fear. “You think that Zebel’s blood is proof against my wrath?” Gibeah said, “I will delight in her screams when she sees your ruin.” The baal waved his hand, and a curtain of fire swept across the room, cutting off the exit.

  Deim’s jaw dropped. “I didn’t even see him fashion that,” he said.

  “What men attain through toil comes easily as breathing to Gibeah’s ilk,” said Sulaiman.

  Blue fires flared behind Gibeah’s stony face. “You think yourself clever,” he said. “I will show you the depths of your folly.”

  “I still say we shouldn’t have split up,” Nakvin said to Mikelburg as they traversed the ship’s stuffy, red-tinted corridors.

  “J.P. said to get you to the bridge,” the engineer replied, as though Jaren were infallible.

  Seeing that argument was useless, Nakvin followed her escort down the hallway leading to the bridge. The scarred doors opened, disgorging an elephantine demon into the hall. The beast issued a deep bellow that rattled Nakvin’s teeth, and lowered its knobby head to charge.

  Mikelburg stood frozen before the demon’s onslaught. Sweat beaded on his bare scalp.

  Nakvin sang a melody that soared above the thunder of the beast’s approach and checked it in m
id-lunge. A second glamer woven into the song bolstered Mikelburg's courage. His hallowed zephyr tore ragged craters in the demon’s neck and shoulder. Nakvin ceased her song, and the beast fell lifeless to the deck.

  Mikelburg pulled ahead, leapt over the hulking carcass, and rushed through the door.

  I may have overdone it, Nakvin thought.

  There was a muffled explosion and a thud, followed by a troubling silence.

  Nakvin stole onto the bridge. Mikelburg lay slumped beside the door, reeking of burned wool and brimstone. Gibeah's clown stood in the shadow of the Wheel, gesticulating gleefully.

  It’s an early version of the Steersman’s Compass, Nakvin realized. Arrovet’s chanting and gestures were difficult to read, but he clearly meant to loose a greater Working.

  Simpler than the Compass, thought Nakvin, but slower than a song. Her own Working manifested as a burst of earsplitting sound that battered the baal's man to his knees.

  Arrovet lifted his head and sneered at the woman who'd spoiled his grisly work.

  “Leave the ship,” Nakvin said, adding a greater glamer to the command.

  Gibeah’s man frowned in confusion. He touched a hand to his ear and his fingers came away bloody. With a feral snarl, he drew a long thin dagger from his doublet and bolted forward.

  Caught off guard, Nakvin had no time to draw her own blade. The two Factors locked arms in a desperate struggle—Arrovet doubling his grip to force the dagger into his victim, and Nakvin exerting all her strength to deter him.

  “The shorter, the better,” Teg had advised her about knife fights. Nakvin racked her brain for a quick way to end the struggle. Looming on its pedestal before her was the Wheel, which had accepted none but Deim and herself.

  I hope Jaren’s distracting Gibeah, Nakvin thought. She ceased her physical struggle and reached out with her mind. The curved blade plunged toward her throat.

  Arrovet somersaulted backward as if plucked from the deck by an invisible giant. Nakvin fought to keep her concentration despite the shallow cut on her neck. She’d been forced to draw the fabric of the Fourth Circle onto the ship; then use it to move her foe to the Wheel. The effort proved too much, and Arrovet crashed down upon the railing.