The Infernal Aether

by Oxley, Peter

  “Makes you feel alive, does it not?” Freddie yelled.

  “Are you insane?” shouted back Maxwell, finally finding his voice.

  “Possibly,” replied Freddie. “You are not the first person to ask me that. What would you say, young Augustus?”

  “Definitely insane,” I replied.

  We climbed into the sky, leaving the sound of battle behind us and hoping that the distraction had been of some assistance to Lieutenant Pearce and his men. Freddie levelled us off and pointed us in a northerly direction, whilst the rest of us brought our racing heartbeats back under control.

  We stood in silence and watched as the ground became a distant memory below us, the clouds welcoming us as their peers. My many years serving as the crew of The Old Lady had inured me to the rather particular circumstances of powered flight, although enough time had passed since my last voyage to allow me to experience that same sense of wonder and uncertainty from when I first ventured into that strange new world. There was an almost hysterical wonder at finding oneself soaring, like a rather bulbous and overweight eagle, in that great blue sea which lay above our heads. I looked to my companions; Kate shared my wonderment but multiplied a thousand-fold, her station and resources meaning that she had never before had the opportunity to fly. Maxwell was, predictably, more interested in the mechanics than the base sensations of our situation, scrutinising intently the various instruments and implements ranged around the room. Freddie, meanwhile, had descended into a blissful reverie, clearly relishing the chance to be airborne once more. As I watched him, I wondered how often he managed to take to the skies those days, particularly without a crew to assist him.

  An hour or so passed in this companionable but stunned silence before Maxwell cocked his head. “The port engine sounds a bit off,” he said. “I suspect a bullet may have become lodged in there.”

  “Very probably,” said Freddie. “If you fancy attempting some repairs from the inside, I should be much obliged.”

  Maxwell nodded. “I could do with some assistance; Kate, would you mind?”

  She nodded and they both filed out with a backward glance.

  I busied myself round the cockpit, checking that the various dials were in order. “Looks like Max has a point,” I said. “The port engine valve is showing less pressure than the other.”

  “Of course he did,” said Freddie. “Smart man, your brother.”

  “He is,” I said. “Sometimes a bit too smart.”

  “Ah. They can be the worst type. Seems like a nice fellow, though.”

  “Mmm.” I stared intently at the dial, feeling the tension looming between us like a deep fog.

  “Well,” said Freddie before I could prevaricate any further, “we will soon run out of puff. You know what to do.”

  I clenched my fists and glared at him, but he was oblivious or uncaring of my frustration. “I am no longer your damned cabin boy!” I wanted to shout at him, but I knew full well what his rejoinder would have been: there was no one else available to shovel coal. I turned and stomped toward the engine room in as affronted a manner I could achieve in the limited space available.

  Night fell, and we took up residence in the cramped but serviceable cabins, resting sore limbs and trying to preserve some strength for the trials which lay ahead; all of us except for Freddie who, as always, maintained an unwavering vigil at the helm. I fell into a deep slumber as soon as I collapsed into my old cot, only to wake with a start what could only have been a few hours later.

  It was still dark and the engines spluttered in their familiar rhythm, the only sound beyond a faint snoring from the cabin next to mine. I lay there in the darkness, pondering the events of the past few days and marvelling at how strange it felt to find myself back in the familiar surroundings of The Old Lady. My thoughts drifted to Freddie and the way he had gleefully jumped to our aid, which in turn presaged a feeling of guilt as I recalled the surliness with which I had treated him. I was justified in being angry at him, but many clouds had flown past us both since that distant betrayal and I was now his guest; indeed, we owed him our lives.

  I jumped out of my cot and made my way to the bridge, wincing each time my foot clanged against the metal footway. I reached the door to the bridge and stepped through into its chaotic calm, Freddie’s high-backed chair silhouetted against the half-light from the front viewing window.

  He was dozing gently as he sat, his hand resting on the wheel, which was in turn fixed in place by a length of rope. He looked every one of his advanced years, the faint illumination picking out each line and crease on his sagging, weather-worn face. His arms were frail and stick-like, a pale memory of the wiry and muscular limbs which had beaten me and many others over the years. I wondered at the cruelness of time, that it could rob such a man of his health and vitality.

  Freddie sputtered and then opened his eyes, regarding me with mild amusement, wakefulness returning some of his alert roguishness and, whilst not exactly peeling back the years, at least masking them somewhat. “Couldn’t sleep, eh?” he asked. “You always were a light sleeper.”

  “Had to be,” I said. “It was an important survival mechanism, flying with you. There was no telling what would go awry if I was incapacitated for too long.”

  He chuckled. “Like that time in China, when we were boarded by those pirates. I shall never forget the look on your face when you stumbled out of bed, straight into all those swords.”

  “Mmm,” I said, reliving the terror for a brief moment. “I still bear the scars.”

  “Pah! You always had a low tolerance for pain, always moaning at the slightest inconvenience.”

  “Slightest inconvenience?” I protested. “Like those months I spent as little more than your slave? Trapped on board this craft and forced to do your bidding?”

  “It was character-building,” he shrugged. “I needed to teach you the importance of humility. In any case, if I had not taken you into my care, you would have been torn to pieces by all those jealous husbands you had insulted with your care-free attitude about where you stuck your member.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “And you were such a good example for me to follow? I do not recall many referring to you as the chaste gentleman of the skies.”

  He laughed, that infectious bellow which never failed to put a smile on my face, regardless of the situation. “Ah, you’ve missed all this, admit it.”

  “Maybe,” I said, watching as the cold fingers of dawn began to stretch toward us. “I have certainly led a... complicated life as of late.”

  “So I gather.”

  I looked at him, picking up on a hint of jealousy in his tone. “How about you? What have you been up to since we parted ways?”

  “Oh, this and that. After I left India I headed over to the Americas for a few years and did a few runs with Colin the Texan. After a little while, the strangest thing happened; I actually found myself missing England. That’s the problem with age, old boy—plays all sort of tricks on the mind.”

  “So you finally settled down? Never thought I would see the day.”

  “Oh, I still get out and about. They keep dragging me down to London to sit in the Lords.”

  I grinned at the thought of this bedraggled old pirate sitting in ermine robes in the House of Lords along with all the other lawmakers. “Making up for lost time, eh?”

  “Something like that. Although I’m not the first peer to spend most of his time avoiding the damned place, and I’d wager I won’t be the last. Not that it matters; most of those who turn up spend most of the time asleep. Good bar, though.”

  “So that is why you were so keen to up sticks and ferry us north,” I said. “Missing the old life of adventure.”

  “And a deep, abiding love for all mankind,” he said. “You know that I would never pass up an opportunity to help out my fellow man.”

  We both laughed, and for a moment I could almost imagine that things were as they used to be and that we were the unlikely travelling companions of old:
the Kings of the Skies.

  Almost. As the laughter subsided and, as I looked at him, I still remembered that final, bitter parting. The pain was still as raw as it had been all those years ago, when I had forced my way into his cabin to find him in bed with the one woman I had been able to bring myself to love after so many years of mourning the loss of Rachel. The taste of betrayal was still as bitter as it ever had been.

  “So what happened to Priya?” I asked, my eyes burning into him.

  “I dropped her off in Bombay. She didn’t fancy leaving India, and I was damned if I was going to stay there.”

  I blinked away tears. “Why did you do it? You knew I loved her.”

  “You thought you loved her,” he said. “You were a love-struck little boy and I saved you from making a huge mistake. What would you have done? Become a goatherd, scraping a living from the dust while she grew fat and sired you an endless line of brats which would die in poverty?”

  “So instead you slept with her and then threw me out of the ship, leaving me penniless and in the middle of nowhere? For all you knew I could have perished out in the wastelands. In point of fact, I very nearly did.”

  “And yet here you are, alive and well. Really, Augustus, you always did have too much of a sense of the dramatic. Life is a series of experiences to learn from; I thought I at least taught you that much.”

  I shook my head in disbelief, partly at my own naïveté for thinking that I might get some sense or even an apology from this man.

  For a moment we sat in awkward silence, before he sighed. “If you want to know the truth, I did come back for you. Thought I’d leave you for a day or so to let you come to your senses. Didn’t expect you to wander off as much as you did.”

  I looked at him, searching for any sign of deception, wanting desperately to believe him. “I stumbled across a caravan of traders and managed to persuade them to take me with them.”

  “There you go,” he said. “Resourceful as ever. Wait a moment, what’s that?”

  “What?” I asked, following his gaze out of the window. At first, I could see nothing but dark, grey shadows of clouds in the slowly lifting light, but then something flitted across the view. Something large and with wings. “A bat?” I chanced. “Or a bird?”

  “Damned if I’ve seen a bird like that before,” he muttered. “Take a look below.”

  I nodded and pulled up the hatch which led down to the glass viewing dome in the belly of the craft. I hung upside down and cast around for any sight of what it was that seemed to be trailing us. After a few minutes I was rewarded with a glimpse of something large and scaly which heaved into view with preternatural speed, glaring up at me with burning red eyes. It wheeled round and bore straight at me, a demonic vision of teeth and talons and sheer malice. Before I could react, it threw itself at the glass dome, glancing away but leaving behind a web of cracks in the structure.

  I scrambled out of the viewing dome and slammed the hatch shut beneath me. “Trouble,” I said. “Big, scaly, teeth, claws.”

  He nodded. “I’m taking us down. We’re above the Lake District, if I’m not mistaken. That should be Bassenthwaite Lake down there; as good a landing site as any. You’d better wake the others and get them up here—this could get messy.”

  I did as I was ordered, gathering Maxwell, Kate and our weapons. I hastily apprised the others of the situation, whilst strapping my sword to my back and encouraging them to do likewise with their weapons. Maxwell studied the Aetheric Sensor. “I am picking up strong Aetheric readings,” he said. “There is a rather large demon circling this craft.”

  “You think?” asked Kate, pointing out of the window at the creature which was once more bearing straight at us with determined malice, leathery wings beating with impossible slowness. It hit with a force which made us stumble, glanced off the glass and then scrambled up the craft and out of sight.

  “It is heading for the balloon,” I said.

  Freddie nodded, face fixed in concentration as he aimed us downwards. “Get yourselves secured,” he shouted. “This is not going to be my smoothest landing.”

  We complied, our attempts hindered by a sudden drop which made my stomach feel as though it had jumped out to the roof. “What was that?” yelled Kate.

  “It has punctured the balloon,” said Maxwell. “We are losing buoyancy.”

  “That doesn’t sound good,” she said.

  “There are plenty of pockets,” said Freddie. “It would need to go through a fair few more before we were in real trouble.” The ship lurched again, as another pocket was breached. “Anyway, we’re going down there.” He nodded.

  “Are you sure?” asked Kate. “Wouldn’t we be better to try outrunning it? If we’re on the ground we’ll be sitting ducks.”

  “The balloon’s filled with hydrogen,” said Maxwell. She shrugged and so he elaborated. “Highly flammable.”

  Kate looked to me for explanation. “If a spark manages to get into the gas escaping from the balloon right now,” I said. “We will become the most spectacular fireworks display that anyone round here has ever seen.”

  “Oh,” said Kate, wedging herself against a bulkhead as our descent gathered speed.

  A whump heralded the ignition of a thousand flames above our heads, accompanied by a scream from the very depths of Hell. The floor fell away once more as the demon released us. The view from the front window wheeled round once more, this time revealing a large body of water below and before us.

  Maxwell had made his way over to Freddie, grimly holding on to the Captain’s chair. “How long do we have?” he shouted.

  “What, before the flames reach us and the engines? Probably a minute, maybe less.” He wrenched the wheel round so we were pointing directly at the lake. “Time to empty the fuel tanks, throw everything into the engines. Hold on tight!” he shouted, pulling down on a lever. We jerked forwards, howling straight down toward the water.

  CHAPTER 34

  We each held our breath as the front window filled with blue and then cracked with the impact of us hitting the water head-on. We bounced and skidded along the surface for a few moments and then spun to a halt before lurching down under the water. A series of crackling noises like the sound of tiny gunfire filled the room as the window fractured and, before I could check on the health and whereabouts of the others, we were pushed back by a deluge of water.

  I lost all sense of perspective, any idea of what was up or down or where the walls or window were. I had managed to pull in a good lungful of air before we were immersed and I resolved not to waste it. A hand touched mine and I spun round to see Maxwell, his cheeks bulging as he pointed toward the hole which had once been the window. I nodded and then turned, looking for the others. Kate was thrashing around not too far away and we both grabbed her and pushed her forward. I let Maxwell guide her out and then looked round for Freddie in the murky darkness. I saw a form by the rear bulkhead and kicked toward it, rewarded by the sight of my old friend’s limp form. I looped an arm round his chest and then kicked us toward the window and out of the craft.

  My lungs were burning as I pushed us through the window, in my desperation ignoring the shards of glass which threatened to rip us apart as we passed through. I kicked up as soon as we were clear, panicked by the lack of light. Was I heading in the right direction? Was I actually swimming down, away from the surface? Or maybe we were trapped underneath the craft, doomed to waste our last breaths futilely trying to claw our way around it.

  My cheeks felt as though they would burst and finally I could take no more, expelling the contents of my lungs and reflexively gasping, taking in water. I clamped my mouth shut as the liquid hit my throat, but there was nothing for my body to feed on and I started to kick around, panicking.

  My hand waved out into something cold and free and then, mercifully, my head broke the surface. I coughed out water and sucked in sweet, cool air, treading water to keep myself from sinking below again. Somehow I had managed to keep hold of Freddie in
spite of my thrashing around and I pulled his head up, holding his mouth out of the water. It was only then that I registered the deep gash in his skull, with half of his head missing. I had no time to feel sorrow but instead kicked toward the shore before the last of my strength ran out, dragging the corpse behind me.

  Thankfully we had crashed not too far out from the shore and in no time I felt stones beneath my feet. I pulled Freddie’s body up so that it was not in danger of washing back out and then threw myself onto my back, letting my tired muscles relax.

  I looked up at a frantic splashing sound to see Maxwell’s head bobbing toward me. I waded out and helped him with Kate’s immobile form. “Dear God, no,” I muttered. “Not her too.”

  We pushed and pulled her body onto the shore, noticing how she did not even flinch as we dragged her over the hard stones. I bent over her, listening. There was a faint pulse but no breathing. I put my lips over hers and blew into her mouth; one, two, three. One, two, three.

  I lost count of the number of times I repeated the pattern. At some point I felt Maxwell’s hand on my shoulder but I ignored it and continued with my labours.

  Her lips twitched and then she started to cough. I slumped back, panting, suddenly aware of how tired I was.

  After a few minutes of retching she sat up and gave me a weary smile. “I s’pose that means we’re even.”

  I laughed and fell to my back with sheer exhaustion, staring up at the blue sky above. A malevolent shadow fell across us and my heart sank. “Oh, no,” I groaned as the demon dived toward us. “Move!” I shouted at Kate and Maxwell and threw myself into a roll, ignoring the stones which cut into me as I reached for my sword.

  In one fluid, exultant movement I jumped to my feet and drew my sword, my heart singing with the joy of swinging the steel free at last. I saw the creature’s attack not with my eyes but with something much more primal, my whole body sensing and moving as one, the sword an extension of me. I swung the blade in a glorious arc, cutting the air around me with the line of steel and was rewarded with a slight pressure as it connected with the demon.