Storm Dreams (The Cycle of Somnium Book 1)

by Jeb R. Sherrill

  The crew blanched in unison. “Why in God’s name would we do that?” asked Brewster.

  Banner’s fingers cracked as he gave them a sharp snap. “Glad you asked.” He pulled out a tiny model of Cassidy’s Fokker and positioned it beneath the Nubigena. “Karl’s outfitted it with an extra seat, just big enough for one passenger. You’ll be cramped, Ned.”

  Ned paled. He gripped the table to steady himself.

  “Our man Cassidy may need help, and you’re the lightest,” Banner said, without breaking speed. “Anyway, we slingshot you two without your engines on.”

  “Impossible,” Brewster said. Ned looked like he was going to throw up.

  Banner pretended not to notice. “Karl’s got those magnetos working like liquid lightning. Says it’ll start in a downpour. No armstronging involved.” He aimed the pointer at Cassidy. “Major, you’ll coast as far as the momentum will carry you. There’s little wind resistance in the Everdream and the gravity isn’t as severe, but that also means less lift for the wings. Start the prop at the last second. Fly it in. Grab the Scroll and get back in the air. We’ll pick you up on the other side.” He snapped the pointer on the map again and left it there. “We’ll be at full speed by the time they rally their ships and we’ll gate into the real world. Hell,” he said, clapping Cassidy on the back as he made his way around the room, “it’ll be good practice for us all. Keep us sharp.”

  He’s serious, Cassidy thought. Banner’s actually serious.

  Ned threw up.

  Chapter 11

  Cassidy ran his hand over the fuselage of the Fokker. It had been moved into the rear bay for the modifications necessary for the mission. Karl’s work was impressive. If Cassidy hadn’t known better, he’d never have guessed the craft hadn’t been built with an extended tail and small passenger seat right out of the factory. The plane looked new. The paint gleamed and Karl had written Valkyrie down both sides in electric blue.

  Cassidy climbed in and tested the resistance of the stick and pedals. Turned to watch the rudder and elevator flap move as he imagined pitching and rolling.

  “It will swoop like eagle,” Karl said. His voice came from the fighter’s starboard side. Cassidy looked up to see the engineer watching from the shadow of his tool shed.

  “Can’t believe it’s the same plane,” Cassidy said, running his hand over the Spandau guns.

  “Is not the same plane,” Karl said. “Is only yours now. Valkyrie. In our mythology, they are war goddesses who bear fallen warriors to Valhalla.”

  “Not sure that’s a good thing, but it’s beautiful,” Cassidy said, as he climbed down from the cockpit.

  Banner approached from the stairwell. “Ready to be the first dream in and out of the Armada stronghold?”

  Cassidy tried to grin. “No, I’m not, but I guess I’m earning my keep.”

  Banner blinked. After an awkward pause, he grinned and shook Cassidy by the arm. “Best damn flying I’ve ever seen. Knew you would be.”

  “How?” Asked Cassidy.

  “What?” Banner’s smile faded a hair.

  “How did you know who I was and where to come for me?” Cassidy asked, meeting Banner’s steel grey eyes. “And why don’t I just go back. The Everdream wants me. It’s always wanted me.”

  Banner’s smile vanished.

  “It was home,” Cassidy continued before he lost his nerve. “I’m not complaining, Captain, but I didn’t exactly ask to be rescued.”

  The skin around Banner’s eyes turned red, along with his cheeks. “I gave you a life, Airman.”

  “Then who’s my dreamer? I know you know, and I think I deserve something for this.”

  Banner put his hands on his hips and took a deep breath. “Make it back with that Scroll and we’ll talk. Believe me though, you’ll rather I’d never told you.”

  ***

  Fifteen minutes later, Cassidy sat in his cockpit, waiting. It seemed like an hour since they attached Valkyrie to the Nubigena’s belly and headed for the Everdream. Cassidy’s heart quickened as a black dot came into view in the distance. The Fokker trembled as the Everdream came closer. He tried not to show fear, if for no other reason than because Ned’s face looked green in the rear seat. Cassidy hoped the young man wouldn’t throw up again. If he did, hopefully it would be over the side. The fighter jolted as Ned adjusted himself in the seat. “You okay back there?” Cassidy asked.

  Ned slapped Cassidy’s shoulder and gripped hard.

  Cassidy patted the quivering fingers. “It’s gonna be alright, kiddo,” he said, keeping a tremor from his voice. He’d get either answers for doing this or a one way trip back to the Everdream. Banner wasn’t as sure about this as he pretended. That winning grin and overconfident attitude might work with the rest of the men, but Cassidy saw deeper. Knew the man was regretting his debt to the damned pirate. How many others would live to regret that debt remained to be seen, but Cassidy supposed that was the price of being crew to a man like Banner.

  “In and out,” the captain shouted from above. “We’ll pick you boys up in twenty minutes.” The wide smile flashing down at them, and Karl’s trademark frown, were the last things Cassidy saw as the hatch closed.

  The Nubigena accelerated through the mists. The long thin strands of solid fog twisted past and around the ship. It was beautiful, Cassidy thought, but was it part of the Twilight, or gasses given off by their destination?

  “You hanging in there?” Cassidy asked, as he glanced at Ned over his shoulder again. The young pilot had already donned his flight-cap and brought the huge goggles down over his eyes.

  “How do we know when to let go?” Ned asked through chattering teeth.

  “He said I’d know,” Cassidy hollered, trying to overcome the scream of the wind. It blew harder as the ship accelerated. Five engines hummed. The Jerry-rigged plane propeller buzzed as it tried to keep up with the others. A dark cloud morphed out of the streaming haze and grew fast.

  “Is that it?” Ned shouted. His voice sounded far off as rushing air tore most of the volume away.

  Cassidy didn’t have to answer. It was the Everdream if anything was. The mass of black contrasted with the Twilight as complete darkness, sucking in light so that a stringy haze surrounded the inner darkness. This had been the great purple shape he’d seen filtered through the atmosphere of the dream he’d gated from when he first escaped. This was the tugging presence that wanted him back. Wanted them all back. Would it speak to him again?

  The Nubigena headed for the mass as if on its way to puncture a lesion in the Twilight sky. Cassidy put his hand on the release. Ned squirmed in his seat. The Zeppelin accelerated until it almost tipped the outer layer, then banked hard in the kind of impossible manoeuvre only Banner was capable of coaxing from his ship.

  Cassidy’s stomach lurched as the belly of the Nubigena grazed the black nimbus surrounding the outer membrane. Banner said Cassidy would know. He did. He felt the apex of the climb. The very point where the momentum reached its perfect arc. A gentle tug and the plane fell away, his stomach still back on the ship.

  Valkyrie glided towards the cloud. The wind stopped when they touched the outer rim. Sight and sound dampened as the fighter slipped through the membrane with an audible pop which sealed once more after they passed through. Below, an island rose up to meet them. Not really a peninsula, per se. Instead, it looked cut off from the rest of the mass, though thin lines of shadow connected them. Bridges or tethers, he couldn’t be sure.

  Without the momentum gained from the airship the Valkyrie would have plunged into an instant dive, but Cassidy glided the fighter in the direction of the only structure in sight. It rose from the landscape like an arch growing from shadows. Not just a church. A cathedral, Cassidy thought.

  Ned screamed. They were losing altitude fast as the gentle gravity of the Everdream increased. Cassidy wound the magneto hard and hit the switch. The props spun. The engine roared to life. He pulled back on the stick and levelled the fighter just in time to ski
m the bumpy ground. It landed hard, but the landing gear absorbed the shock without shattering and he rolled the Valkyrie to a stop twenty feet from the cathedral door.

  Cassidy cut the engine and leapt to the ground.

  “Let’s hope like hell that didn’t alert them,” Ned said with a tremble in his voice, as he landed with a harsh thump beside Cassidy.

  “Let’s just assume it did,” Cassidy said, sprinting.

  Ned agreed with a nervous nod, his heavy boots thudding the ground at top speed. “We’re going to die, aren’t we?”

  A few fast strides took them to the mammoth entrance. The huge doors opened to a dusty sanctuary. Thin light streamed through the dull stained glass as they made their way down the main aisle to the altar. “I thought this was supposed to be empty,” Cassidy whispered, as they passed the silent pews. “Why are people here?”

  A few parishioners sat scattered through the otherwise empty pews. A group of nuns prayed near the altar. A priest stood silent in the shadows. “Perhaps they were left over from the dream. Got stuck with the church,” Ned said, as they reached the altar where the Scroll had been said to lay in a box in plain sight.

  Cassidy grabbed the young pilot’s shoulder and drew him back. “Why wouldn’t they carry dreams off that drifted into their borders? Or absorb them? A church I can understand. Perhaps it got stuck because it was a structure, but why leave the people?”

  Ned flicked his glance around the room. “I don’t know. Perhaps some dream people don’t have much consciousness,” he said, opening the box and plunging his hand in, “but let’s just get this and fly.” He withdrew a rolled-up piece of shining paper.

  “Leave it,” Cassidy said, glancing from one kneeling penitent to the other.

  Ned paused. Looked from Cassidy back to the box and shoved the Scroll into his jacket. Everyone in the cathedral looked up at the same moment.

  “Run,” Cassidy said, and bolted for the front door. He reached the far edge of the pews, but Ned screamed behind him. Cassidy turned to see two nuns tackle the young airman, each holding a leg as Ned fought to crawl away. Both nun’s eyes glowed a harsh hue of red.

  Cassidy drew his Mauser and fired off four rounds. The Everdream atmosphere dampened the sound, but the sharp cracks still resonated like thunder in the enclosed space.

  The first two shots took one nun in the face, jerking her back. The second two rounds vanished into the other nun’s habit. She froze for a moment, then fell to the side.

  Ned was on his feet and running before the second nun’s head struck the pew beside him. Cassidy dropped to one knee and spent no more than one shell on each as the others dove for their prey. Nuns and parishioners crumpled in heaps as bullets split open their skulls and tore through their chests, exposing colourless facsimiles of real organs. The bullets were doing far more damage than they should, as if the people were made of soft fruit. Did his own insides look like that?

  Ned rushed by in a mad dash and slammed the door open. Cassidy finished off the Mauser’s payload and ran. He leapt and was in the cockpit, pumping up the tank and revving the magnetos before the first Armada agent, a priest this time, cleared the doorway and started towards them.

  Ned fired off all six shots from his revolver. The bullets tore gaping holes in stony ground, but missed the priest by several feet. The magneto fired. The props spun as the engine turned over and Cassidy throttled forwards. Karl’s modifications had certainly changed the way the Fokker flew. The extra length made the action on the stick sluggish, slowing the pitch. He wouldn’t be able to manoeuvre as fast, but he would compensate by...by doing everything quicker.

  “He set us up. That old bastard set us up,” Ned shouted, as the fighter caught air and began its ascent. “Can we get back to the ship before the Armada brings in the cavalry?”

  “Before?” Cassidy shouted back. “They’ll already be there.” As they broke through the clouds, the Nubigena floated motionless, surrounded on all sides by hundreds of airships. It hadn’t even reached the rendezvous point, probably stopped minutes after he and Ned entered the Everdream.

  Cassidy cut the throttle, rolled to the side and pitched until they’d turned a full 180. He levelled out and gunned the engine again. “Dump that Scroll.”

  “Why?” Ned asked, as they slipped over the far edge of the cloud of Everdream. “It’s still got to be worth something.”

  “It’s probably made of some sort of dreamstuff they can track. Why else wait until you picked it up.”

  “How do you know,” Ned asked. His voice came out high and panicked.

  Cassidy growled. “Because they’re not following us,” he shouted glancing over his shoulder at the empty space between them and the shrinking Nubigena. “Probably think we’ll lead them to anyone we might have dropped off. Now dump the damned thing.”

  Ned tore the Scroll from his jacket and let it blow away. “We don’t have a chance now.”

  “Just tell me where we can go.”

  Ned was silent for a minute. “I don’t know this area.”

  Cassidy aimed the Valkyrie at the farthest point from the nebulous Everdream and throttled down to conserve fuel. The mists thinned and the Twilight returned to its usual clear skies of purple clouds and dim light. Floating islands pocketed the empty space and Cassidy looked for one that might provide rest and fuel.

  “I could sure use the hotel on Arcadia right about now,” Ned said. His speech had returned to its normal pitch, but Cassidy still heard a tinge of panic in his voice.

  “I’m shooting for something more low-key,” Cassidy said, as he steered towards a medium-sized island with only a few buildings. “We’ll have to hide this plane.”

  Ned groaned. “Just make sure we find a shower and someone who does laundry.”

  “Why?” asked Cassidy.

  “I think I wet myself coming out of that church.”

  Cassidy nodded. The tiny island grew as he neared. He tilted his fighter towards a good landing spot when two bi-plane fighters banked from behind the far edge, their wingtips marked purple and blue.

  Chapter 12

  The fighters looked like the Armada Albatrosses he’d fought after his rescue. There was no time to manoeuvre away. He would have to take them out of the sky before they could report him, assuming the Everdream didn’t already know.

  Cassidy checked his guns and moved to engage. Another Albatross breached the mountain’s peak, followed by a tri-wing Fokker. The Fokker rolled, burst between the other two and curved, cutting one off from firing.

  Cassidy throttled back. He knew that Fokker. It was burned into his broken dream memory the same way it was probably burned into every pilot on both sides in the Great War. The entire fighter was painted a shiny blood red with white trim and a black iron cross on its wings. Heat rose in his chest as the Fokker banked and dove, slipping between the other fighters again and again as it manoeuvred for a good shot. The goddamned Baron. He forced his thoughts through the anger. Is the enemy of my enemy my friend today? The same unnamed hatred for the German pilot flared like a flame across spilled gasoline. But, if the Armada ships downed Richthofen, they’d be on him and Ned in seconds.

  “Oh, for God’s sake, just help him,” Ned hollered from the rear seat. “They’ll kill us.”

  Cassidy seethed. He sped up and locked onto the closest Albatross. The fighter turned to make another go at the red Fokker. No time to play fair. Cassidy nosed down and opened fire, catching one Albatross’s tail rudder with a shower of rounds. It rolled out of control and fell out of the fight.

  The Baron’s tactics were amazing, Cassidy thought, in spite of himself. Not quite the pilot he might have expected though. Instead, the German made no overly intricate manoeuvres to outwit his opponents. Nothing spectacular or fancy. He stuck to smooth calculated moves that put him into position for firing where he couldn’t be hit. The Baron’s Spandaus let loose and a second Albatross fell into a nose dive.

  Despite the flawless execution of Richthofen�
��s flying, the Baron looked hesitant. Seemed to be taking several extra seconds to shoot. Cassidy throttled back, dove and fired on the third Albatross. The red fighter let loose both Spandaus again and their combined guns shredded it to bits of metal and canvas.

  Cassidy trained his guns on the Baron. The tri-wing flew in a slow steady arc and made for the island. The Spandau levers felt cold as the red Fokker crossed Cassidy’s sights, continued past and down to the flat surface.

  Cassidy put down and pulled his older modified Fokker up beside the newer tri-wing. He watched the German climb down. Richthofen looked older. Slower. Cassidy hopped to the ground. “Come on,” he said to Ned, and slapped the fuselage with his gloved hand. The younger pilot pried himself from the back seat. His head had been down, his entire body packed into the seat. He’d probably spent most of the battle with his nose between his knees.

  “Cassidy,” the Baron said. He’d already removed his leather gauntlet and extended his pale fingers.

  “Baron,” Cassidy said in a cool tone. He didn’t extend his hand.

  “Manfred, please,” the German said, withdrawing the handshake. “There are no Barons in Germany.”

  “What happened to your head?” Cassidy asked.

  Richthofen touched the white bandage that wrapped around his crown and extended below the flight cap. “I was wounded a few days ago. Is nothing.” The German brought a fist to his chest. “You and I fought as one. Let me buy you both a drink.”

  “I’ll buy myself a drink,” Cassidy said, pushing past.

  Richthofen shrugged.

  The two buildings on the small island turned out to be a very small hotel and a pub. Cassidy and Ned headed for a drink, and the Baron followed close on their heels. The pub looked like it had come straight out of New England, but like everything else in the Twilight, it was a patchwork of various decades crossed with truly foreign accents. Oil lamps stood beside arc lamps. The doors and windows opened automatically with exposed gears and pistons that made the decor both futuristic and archaic at the same time. Cassidy pulled up to the green coppered counter and ordered whisky on the rocks. Ned took a golden lager.