“I’m a dream,” Cassidy said. He still hadn’t touched his food and the champagne was going flat in his flute.
“Ghost. Dream.” The Russian shrugged. “You fly,” he said, giving a strong drunken laugh. “You fly to the stars.”
Cassidy poked his steak with the tines of his fork. The Russian got up and joined several others in a conversation in his mother tongue. Cassidy couldn’t shake the coldness the phantoms brought with them. Nobles, rogues, gypsies and escaped convicts, riding their own invisible vessel, whatever it was, through the coloured lights. They could be real, in a sense, within the floating rainbow. Here they stood talking and drinking aboard a ship just passing through as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
He looked up to see Banner staring at him from across the table. The boisterous captain lifted his flute in cheers. Cassidy lifted his and tried to match Banner’s smile. He sipped and let the silver bite of alcohol sting the back of his throat. Just be young, the captain seemed to be saying. Why do I feel so old? But he emptied the flute and dug into the steak. Damn the doubt, he thought and wiped his mouth with a linen napkin. He smiled and laughed a genuine guffaw.
Banner gestured wildly, slapping everyone who came near on the back. He motioned for Karl to bring more champagne. Banner’s appetite was as ravenous as his hunger for laughter and conversation. Though he never stopped talking, he still managed to down plate after plate of food. Not even Brewster, who seemed a bottomless pit when it came to pork chops, ate a tenth as much.
The coloured fog thinned and the phantom guests began departing. One by one, they bowed their farewells and whisked away through the back of the galley and off towards the tail of the Zeppelin and beyond, where they no doubt remained within their floating cloud as the Nubigena drifted out of its boundary.
Most of the crew returned to their duties as the crowd thinned, leaving only Cassidy, Banner, the thin haze of the outer Borealis and a lone man at the end of the table. The man stood, leaning on a pair of crutches. His brown jacket cast a sharp contrast to the blurring blues and greens slowly fading from the air. Even now, the reds and yellows washed from the surface of the table and chairs.
Banner stood, his face white.
The man in the brown coat wore an expression of indignation and pain, but as he opened his mouth, it turned to one of pleading. “Why did you leave me?” he asked. “Why?”
The skin at the edge of Banner’s eyes tightened and quivered. It was as if only the two of them existed now. Cassidy felt like a mere observer floating in the air. “I did what I had to do,” the captain said, but it came out as a whisper Cassidy could barely hear. “You gave me no choice.”
There was something familiar about the man Cassidy couldn’t put his finger on. Something in the eyes, perhaps, or just the general visage. The man clenched his fists against the crutch’s handles and wept as the colours faded completely, and the Borealis yanked him away with the rest of its ghostly prisoners.
Banner slumped to his chair, letting his elbows dangle over the arms. He looked up at Cassidy with desperate eyes that reminded him of the man’s eyes. “I’d no choice,” Banner repeated.
Cassidy nodded. “An old crew member?” he asked, trying to keep the bitterness from his voice, but it was probably true. Some dream that had been sacrificed for whatever was necessary at the time. He met Banner’s eyes though, and gazed into them, unblinking. For a moment he saw Banner for who and what he was. A wave of sadness ran through Cassidy and tears rolled down his cheeks. “I’m sorry,” he said, but didn’t know why.
Banner gave a deep sigh and forced a thin smile. “I think it’s time you saw the real world.”
Chapter 6
Cassidy stood by the girders, out of everyone’s way, or beside the helm where Banner pointed things out as they slipped between various layers of the Twilight. It was a region more vast then Cassidy had imagined at first.
Banner always wanted Cassidy on the bridge now, though he hadn’t been assigned any specific duties. Upside down worlds, crystal caverns and regions of pure light passed by as the ship moved from gate to gate. Thousands of floating islands like Arcadia dotted the landscape, but so did floating trees, giant boulders and buildings with no ground on which to stand. Other islands looked man made, dangling from a series of giant gas bladders that made them look beautiful but fragile, the taught lines all but invisible at a distance.
“We’re having to go a back way,” Banner explained, as the sky shifted hues and the crackles of the last portal faded. “Better for our situation.”
Something about the colours told Cassidy they’d gated into a dream. How these strange paths through the Twilight and the Everdream worked was still beyond him. “The Armada?” he asked.
“What else?” Franz said from one of the consoles.
Cassidy looked up to see if Banner had anything to say on the matter, but the steely eyes remained fixed on the horizon, his jaw set. He wasn’t smiling.
“At least it’s a pretty day,” Cassidy said sarcastically, trying to break the awkward silence.
“Dammit,” Banner shouted.
Cassidy thought he was being reprimanded, but a moment later the captain spun the wheel hard to the starboard and an Armada skyship banked beyond the port windows. Cassidy looked over at Franz as if to say, ‘how did he know?’ Franz shot back a look that seemed to reply, ‘he just does’.
“Shall I take out the Fokker?” Cassidy asked.
Banner shook his head. “Too late. This is an ambush.”
Cassidy glanced wildly out the windows as fighters banked and dove. Twenty. Perhaps forty. A fleet. “But how?”
“Someone tipped them off.” Banner’s tone was flat and even. He took a deep sigh and dipped the Nubigena’s nose. A fantastic city spread out across the world below. Its black spires and tall pyramids stretched towards the sky.
“How do we fight?” Cassidy asked.
“We don’t.” Banner gritted his teeth and motioned Franz to push the throttle all the way down. “There’s a sleeper dreaming now,” he said, and aimed the ship between two of the twisting spires. “One who has the same dream every night.”
Cassidy braced as the Zeppelin shuddered and the Armada’s guns rattled around the Gondola’s hull. “Won’t they follow us?”
“Damn right, they’ll follow us,” Banner said and slammed the right pedal to the floor, jerking the ship upwards again as it reached the two spires. It wasn’t enough. The trajectory still appeared to take them into the ground just past the towers. But as they slid between, the sky crackled and the world changed.
***
Blackness. Only blackness. Not dark. Not a lack of light, but thick tangible black.
Banner opened the flap on the speaking tube and addressed the crew, his voice loud but calm. “Gentlemen,” he said, as the Armada ripped its way into the reality around them. The bridge looked hazed, as if seen through a darkened lens. “I need you to listen carefully.” He glanced at Cassidy. Banner’s grey eyes looked like steel, but fear played behind them. He spoke into the tube again. “I need you all to close your eyes, lay flat on the floor and concentrate on anything you can, as hard as you can. Anything as solid and real as possible. Don’t let your mind become blank.” He nodded to Cassidy. Cassidy began lying down. “This will be bad,” he said. “I’ve been here before.”
Before Cassidy put his head to the floor, he noticed a man with a thick grey moustache which seemed to cover half his face floating out in the black void. The man floated in the murk naked, his grey skin wrinkled. His arms flailed, features twisted with fear. The expression on the old man’s face made Cassidy want to hide. He closed his eyes.
All sound spun through his ears and leaked away as his stomach sank to the bottom of an infinite well. Thinking felt like trying to climb a mountain of mud and every concept he tried to lock onto slipped out of his head. Planes. He thought of planes and sank his nails in. It was as though he were being dragged through the sky by the tail f
in, whipped left and right by an agile pilot who rolled and dove as though trying to shake the devil.
The control stick. Cassidy locked onto the control stick. He gripped it with both hands. Dug both feet into the pedals, not caring which way they steered him, only that they were real and solid.
Was anything real, or solid?
The plane vanished, and he spun through space without a body. Fingers gripped for ledges a thousand miles away and feet thrashed empty air for footing, but they were far below, fathoms down in a black sea.
Chess. He was a black knight on a wooden checkerboard. That image vanished as well. He flailed, his hand slipping from the chess piece, back to the control stick of his fighter, the handle of his Mauser. Like the brittle rungs of a ladder collapsing, he fell from one to the next. The Nubigena sailed off without him, leaving his consciousness spinning in space. Banner’s eyes stared back at him from somewhere in his recent memory. Steel. Grey steel. Something about the man was more real than anything he’d ever seen and the captain’s iron hands gripped his shoulders and slammed him downward. Cassidy’s feet struck ground. His boots met a solid floor.
He blinked, taking in the world with short shudders of sight from where he lay on the cool aluminium. Banner stood at the helm, fists gripping the wood spokes, knuckles white. His knees had buckled several inches and sweat poured down his face, but his gaze appeared to remain locked on some horizon far beyond the void.
Franz lay on the floor beside Cassidy, eyes closed, body fading to nothing, to solid, to nothing, to solid again. Everyone else on the bridge was gone. The Armada had vanished. The Void became a series of concentric circles that reminded him of rubbing his eyes through his eyelids.
Cassidy gripped the floor as the ship lurched from side to side, jerking at the helm and pedals. Banner yanked the wheel back to level, but he slumped forwards against the wooden spokes, having to use the force of his whole body to right the floundering vessel.
Cassidy stumbled towards him and caught the wheel with both hands. Banner glanced over, and blinked, his eyes raw and glassy. The eyes returned to a steel grey. He nodded and together they held the helm straight. Cassidy put his weight into the right pedal to keep the nose up as Banner put his on the left to keep it down.
The blackness broke around them, turning the sky crisp as the colours returned more vibrant than Cassidy had ever seen. The atmosphere crackled, and he realized they had just slid through another door and into the centre of a grey electric storm.
Banner collapsed to the floor. Cassidy belted the helm and set the pedals as he’d seen the captain do. He knelt and held Banner by the shoulders.
“Shouldn’t have cut through that dream,” Banner said. “How many did we lose?”
“I don’t know,” Cassidy said. “Franz is here.” He glanced back to make sure the young German had remained solid. “The Armada’s gone.”
Banner closed his eyes and opened them again. A tear ran down his cheek. “I’m sorry,” he said, and passed out.
***
“Nietzsche,” Brewster said. “German philosopher. Rough life, from what I hear. Deep fears. Probable madness.”
Cassidy nodded. “To think he dreams of that every night.” Clouds drifted in gentle strips across the sky like pieces of smooth silk rippling around the new gun platform atop the Zeppelin. It was Brewster’s turn at watch and Cassidy had come to keep him company.
“Not just that,” said Brewster, “he’s also dead. His fear, his dream was so strong that it burnt itself into the Everdream. The damned thing never went away when he woke up, and so it remained after his death.”
“Damn,” was all Cassidy could think to say. “But I saw him.”
Brewster grunted. “Dream ghost. Strange creatures. Solid as hell, but mostly mad.”
The Englishman fidgeted with the pair of Maxims Karl had fixed to a swivelling turret. Thank God the old engineer hadn’t been one of the crewmen lost to the void. Chester, Charlie and Jayce hadn’t been seen since the journey through Nietzsche’s dream. Ned had been presumed lost until they found him huddled beneath a table in the mess, babbling about “the darkness of his soul.”
“Are the others dead?” Cassidy asked as his friend searched the skies for any signs of Armada fighters through the narrow windows in the gun turret.
Brewster raised an eyebrow.
“I mean our guys,” Cassidy said.
“Wish I could say, Old Boy. Still back in the Void, for all I know.”
“Can’t we rescue them?” Cassidy asked. The thought of the three men drifting forever in someone’s nightmare made his stomach queasy. The darkness. The drifting isolation. He didn’t want to ever shut his eyes again.
Brewster shook his head. “You were there. It would be like sailing into a whirlpool to save someone already at the bottom.”
“But the point is, he’s leaving them,” Cassidy said, searching the sky along with his friend.
Brewster didn’t say anything. He kept peering into the grey sky as if hoping to see a bird, or some other form of life.
Cassidy pulled his cap down over his head. Perhaps he was being unfair to the captain. He’d seen the look in Banner’s eyes as they cleared the nightmare. It was the only thing that had ever visibly shaken the man, other than the strange ghost from the party in the Borealis. The clouds changed to cottony masses, reducing their visibility by hundreds of yards. “So where is he taking us now?”
“Don’t know, but he’s set on it like nothing I’ve ever seen. Once, I remember—” Brewster cut off as the distant clouds crackled with green electricity. “This isn’t just a stop. He’s after something. And we’re close to something.”
“Another gate?”
“Gate of all gates,” Brewster said. “Open the windows.”
Cassidy furrowed his brow, but opened the two windows in the boxy canopy Karl had constructed atop the gun platform to shield them from the wind. The smell of ozone hit him full in the face as wind gusted in. It brought his senses to full as the Nubigena struck the web of light. The aluminium structure shuddering as it pushed through. Other gates had been without turbulence, but this one rattled the struts and girders as if the Zeppelin were skimming the rift’s shockwave.
As the Nubigena passed through, reality brightened. It was difficult to explain, even to himself, but the dull grey of the canvas shone as if the light itself were more real. The ozone faded and fresh air filled the gun-box. It felt warm as his lungs filled with the new air. Cassidy’s head swam as if he’d never breathed oxygen before. “This is real,” he said, almost laughing. “It’s real.”
Brewster grinned. “It’s real, alright. More real than you or I will ever be, but it’s dangerous, too. If we don’t find a storm soon, the ship will continue, but we won’t. We need the energy or we’ll fade out.”
The Nubigena seemed to breathe the real air as well. It moved faster, almost joyous, like a schooner catching a quickening gale. Cassidy braced himself against the sudden acceleration. “She likes it.”
Brewster nodded. “It’s her world.”
The airship sliced through the cumulous formations, speeding towards a patch of darkness in the distance. “Why can’t the Armada follow us here?” Cassidy asked, as they neared the storm. The Nubigena picked up more speed as if anticipating the black clouds.
Brewster shrugged as they entered the nebulous mass. “Same reason we don’t do well here. If it weren’t for this ship—”
Thunder shattered the still air and lightning gave the clouds veins. The rumbling clouds enveloped the ship like a clutching hand. Cassidy felt the difference immediately. His skin livened. He felt solid. Strong. He felt like he could fly on his own.
“I need to head down,” Brewster shouted, over the rush of howling wind that gusted in the open windows.
Cassidy stopped him from closing the windows. “I’ll be there in a few,” he said. The wind brought a menagerie of new sensations. His skin was on fire with a kind of warmth he’d never felt, desp
ite the cold of the air. His mind felt alive. It was as if he’d been flying a crippled plane all this time. He laughed out loud. His thoughts were more detailed. The lines in his hands were deeper and more distinct. This is reality, Cassidy thought.
My God, I’m an alien here.
Chapter 7
The Nubigena broke out of the black clouds and made for land. Rain poured over the sides and drenched the windows with sheets of water. Even with the storm overhead, the energies still filled Cassidy with churning vigour.
“It’s a good storm,” Banner said, as he levelled out a hundred feet above the ground. “This one will last.”
There was nowhere to moor the ship, but Franz took the helm and dropped the Zeppelin down past fifty feet. The raging storm blotted out the sun, so Brewster, Cassidy and Ned accompanied Banner down the rope ladder in darkness as Karl turned the crank.
“Stay here,” Banner said, and trotted off into the rain.
A burst of lightning illuminated the ground and Cassidy realized they stood in a vast cemetery. Tombstones and statues stretched to the horizon. In the distance, Banner stood before one of the graves. Rain beat down on his flight coat, plastering his mat of dark hair to the sides of his head.
“What’s he doing?” Cassidy asked.
Ned shrugged.
Brewster squinted into the rain. He stuffed his hands deep into his pockets and pulled his shoulders up nearly to his ears as if it might stop the rain from getting in them. “I’ve only seen him here once before,” Brewster said with a dark grimace. “It must be the grave of his dreamer. The last time the captain came here, he was in pretty bad shape.”
Another bolt of lightning showed the captain kneeling before the grave. He shook the last few drops from what had been full bottle of brandy.
“What do we do?” asked Cassidy.
Storm Dreams (The Cycle of Somnium Book 1) Page 5
