Aethosphere Chronicles: Winds of Duty (14 page)

Stowe skirted around the man, using the
barrel of his rifle, like a shepherd’s switch, to drive the flock
towards the ramp up to the gun deck. “Nay, the captain says he’ll
remain in the forecastle until we’ve secured the ship and restored
it to order.”

“That’s cowardice,” charged a skyman
impulsively, and that proved to be the last thing he said.

When the gun’s roar had faded, Stowe called
out, “Now everyone gather up onto the gun deck, let’s muster the
rest of you so called
loyal
Kinglanders. We’re to storm the
bridge. You too, Bazzon, for king and country.”

In grim procession, the men slipped through
the upper doors of the hold and onto the gun deck, where not long
ago, Bar and his men had toiled, polishing guns and turning over
the munitions. Ensign Bazzon was the last to enter, just ahead of
Stowe’s rifle. He was stunned by what he discovered. Powder lay
strewn across the deck like a fine black snow, and smudged into
paths where men had travelled heavily. Dozens of kegs of powder had
been dragged from the munitions locker and opened; even live shells
had been cracked apart, and everywhere sat piles of makeshift
explosives. They were packing it in whatever the
crownies
could find; cans, boxes, wool caps—even socks. Bar realized in
horror that if even one errant spark were to somehow ignite, it
could light up this room and kill them all—possibly taking the
whole ship in the ensuing blast.

As bad, and as dangerous as the situation on
the gun deck was, it was the dead and the dying that affected him
most. Half a dozen men lay in the powder with their blood turning
to brackish mud beneath them, and amongst them was McVayne. The
ship’s Second Office, and the man whom by all right should have
been in charge, sat further up near the bow, propped against the
armory door. McVayne was sitting, and appeared to be conscious,
though even from this distance, Bar could make out his cowed and
vacant expression.

“So this is all of you
Kinglanders
is
it?” mocked the master-at-arms, and the two men occupying the hold
stopped packing gunpowder into a pair of tin cans and looked on
Stowe with stunned terror. A wild grin crept out from behind the
Chief Master’s blood-encrusted mustache. “Now, I’m only going to
say this once, we’re retaking the ship. Every man here will be
pardoned for mutiny, and those that die will have their names
cleared as well. This is the only way to regain your honor…this is
the only choice you have, so it’s a fairly simple decision. We’ll
form up into a kill squad and cut down any, and all, mutineers we
find on our way to the bridge. You’ll offer absolutely no quarter
to the enemy, you hear—there will be no surrender—you cut them down
and move on to the next traitor, captain’s orders.”

It was clear by the wide, fearful looks that
no man supported the plan, but then no man was willing to face the
bite of Stowe’s machine gun by disagreeing either. Bar could see
them mulling over the hopelessness of their situation—fighting to
the death with better armed Glenfinners, or dying right here and
now. Many probably had no desire to fight at all, but found
themselves locked into a side simply because of the place they were
born. That’s certainly how Bar felt at the moment anyway,
gang-pressed into a war he wasn’t willing to fight. Just a short
time ago Max and his Glenfinners had done him a great service by
letting him through, but now Stowe expected him to return that
kindness in betrayal.

Looking around, Bar had no doubts that most
of these men would die, but then that might have been Stowe’s plan
all along, using these men as human shields so
he
could pick
off the mutineers with his clatterbolt. It made him wonder if Moore
had even issued the command or if this was Stowe’s own twisted idea
of restoring order. Bar needed to find a way to escape…get back to
the cargo hold and form another plan, now that he’d discovered
McVayne had been rendered hapless.

But all options were blown aside when Stowe
bellowed, “Move out!” Letting loose a barrage into the ceiling.
Like a Nequam demon of lore, he drove the men ahead, whipping them
into a mindless frenzy that even Bar found himself caught up in.
Thought melted to action; the sway of a mob united into violence.
With his heart pounding wildly against his ribcage, Bar flowed with
the tide up the ladderwell—trampling that mutilated body—arriving
to where Max and his men were waiting. Bar found himself at the
center of the flood when the first men hit the door. It rocked, but
held. The next man in line plowed into that one, then another and
another. The metal groaned, but held. Then more came damming
against it, urged on by Stowe’s murderous roar. Under the
relentless thrust, the first man at the barricade screamed before
blood sprayed from his mouth and his eyes popped from his skull.
Under his crushed body, the hinges tore free from the walls, and
the way burst open. Bar squinted in the late-afternoon light
washing out from the galley. Shadows were waiting for them—shadows
brandishing flashing steel. More screams marked the passing of
souls, but the tide spilled through heedless, until Kinglanders and
Glenfinners were once again mixed in a boiling sea of death.

And then an explosion tore through the guts
of the
Chimera
.

Baaaroooooom!

The galley flashed into an upheaval of
caustic smoke, roaring fire, and shattered wood. The ladder beneath
Bar collapsed away in an instant, surrendering to tendrils of
flames that were licking up from the depths below, bringing
unbearable heat and the stink of charred wood, meat, and sulfur.
Bar had fallen only a couple dozen centimeters; luckier than the
rest that plummeted, screaming, into the hellish inferno below, but
it was enough to knock the wind out of him as his abdomen caught
the ledge. Now left dangling, with flames biting at his legs, Bar
thrust out wildly for anything to grab hold of while struggling to
suck in smoldering air. All he could find though, in those panicked
moments, were splinters that stabbed and dug into his flesh.
Helpless, he continued to slide backwards towards the yawning mouth
of the fire raging below.

And then someone had him by the arm.

Wide-eyed, Bar looked up into the grimacing
face of the plumber, Jenner. His yellow-stained teeth gleamed
against his soot-blackened face as he snarled in strained
concentration. As small as he was, the man refused to let the
ensign fall. Yanking and pulling, Jenner muscled the much-larger
officer onto the landing, where Bar spilled over the scorched
floorboards beside him.

Bar had barely time to survey the ruin of
the galley; the collapsed floor, and the charred wreckage; the
scattered bodies looking like discarded dolls; when he heard the
unmistakable howl of a gunshot barreling towards the
Chimera
from somewhere outside.

“Are we under attack?” yelled Bar moments
before a high velocity impact rocked the wounded strata-frigate,
raining down bits of dust and dirt even as a section of the
flooring gave way in a torrent of noise. Struggling to his feet,
the ensign stared through the smoke, past the blown out starboard
wall, and out into the sky, where he observed a lumpy cylinder of
black iron eclipsing the orange flare of a dying sun.
The Iron
Empire’s arrived…

Feeling only dread, Bar wheeled around and
found a few other survivors shambling through the smoke and the ash
towards the open portal to the outside world. As to who of these
were Kinglanders and who were Glenfinners, it had become
meaningless; everyone was the same shade of scorched and
soot-blackened skin as Jenner.

“What are we going to do?” asked the
plumber’s mate in shocked-panic. Like a child, he stood clutching
Bar’s arm, but Bar didn’t know how to answer the question. What did
the distraught skyman expect him to do about an Iron hunter-killer
bearing down on them? All Bar wanted to do was lay down and sleep,
and barring that, at least a moment to recuperate; to let the
ringing in his ears settle; to let his lungs clear and his head
mend. But another shot shook the ship. “Ensign, everyone’s dead but
you, me, and a few others!”

“
Take the wheel, my son…”
Bar inhaled
deeply and held the frightened aeronaut with his eyes. There was no
one else to rely upon now. “We’re going to defend this ship, and to
do that we’ll need the bridge.” Jenner seemed to focus, nodding
back; hopeful. Bar looked to the others gathering like ghosts in
the apocalypse. “Forget whatever feud you thought mattered only a
few short moments ago. The men standing here around you are your
comrades—now more than ever…they’re your brothers-in-arms, and more
of them might be scattered about the
Chimera
…wounded,
trapped, or hiding. Seek them out; take no violence against those
who resist or bar the way against you…but you tell them Bar Baazon
has taken command—you tell them I’m for the ship, and any man who
comes to its aid is forgiven in my eyes! Can I count on you lot to
carry out
that
order?”

“Aye,” said one of the Kinglander thugs from
the hold. “For the ship then…you’ve got my loyalty,” agreed a Finny
mutineer standing next to him. A murmur of agreement rippled
through the half dozen other survivors lining the jagged chasm in
the deck’s center. “For the
Chimera
!”

As the men dispersed, Bar staggered out
through the missing bulkhead onto a windy skyscape of thick clouds
painted warmly in hues of yellow, orange, and toasted brown.
Shielding his eyes from the light, Bar caught sight of the Iron
hunter-killer, lurking just above the sun’s glare, her broad
profile resembling a spiked battering-ram trailing smoke.
A
terrible vessel, a nightmare out of the old legends. Is this how
the
Guardian Luminarium per Obscurum
felt looking
upon the endless hulks of the Nequam Basilicas?
Nearby, two
men—one Kinglander, the other Glenfinner—stood at the
Chimera’s
rails just staring out, confounded by the
approaching monster.

“You two,” called the ensign. “Over here, on
the double.” They were only too willing to obey. “Get that crane
operational and tear that cargo door off its hinges. We might have
men trapped down there. You find Tolle and Al—you tell them to get
to the gun deck and look for survivors. Check to see if we got any
guns that are still—” A flash across the gulf foretold another shot
from the Iron vessel, and Bar took cover behind the bulkhead. A
thunderous report followed, but went whistling by harmlessly.

Safe for the moment, the ensign leapt out
the hole in the wall as the other men rushed to obey orders.
Running for the ladder up to the quarterdeck, Bar found Skyman
Frasier—a northman from the gun deck—standing wobbly and
shell-shocked, but moving to block his way. “Stand aside,” he
ordered the man without slowing his stride. “And find your post!”
he reminded Frasier after pushing him out of the way. Tearing open
the bridge hatch, Bar blundered inside to discover Gryph manning
the helm. The rest of the compartment lay troublingly abandoned. No
one was manning the resonance stone, the radio, weapons systems, or
even the voice tubes.

“You napping in here, Gryph!” hollered Bar,
causing the small pilot to turn a wild eye to his direction. Gryph
just managed to gasp out the ensign’s name in fear before throwing
his arms up defensively. “Oh, piss off,” grumbled Bar as he rushed
into the compartment and took to the command station, “I ain’t here
to hurt you, you dimwit.”

The pilot raised a wooly gray-brown eyebrow
in skepticism, even as he maintained a defensive posture. “Even
after I told the Finnies you sided with the captain?”

“Hell…” Bar grinned ruefully. “It was the
truth when you were dragged away, but it didn’t much last long
after that, so let’s forget the whole sordid affair and focus on
the problems we got now…like how come you ain’t engaged in any
evasive maneuvers yet? Did the blast damage the engine—the
flaps?”

“Nothing like that,” admitted Gryph meekly,
his rosy eyes flashed with guilt above the thick black bags of
weariness hanging beneath them.

“Then what?”

“I…I don’t know what to do. I ain’t never
flown a strata-frigate in combat before… I’m just a fighter
pilot…”

“I don’t give a
wyvern’s-ass
what you
are, Gryph! If you’re a damn fighter-jock then just start flying
this ship like it’s an accursed spitshawk, you keen? Else we’re
nothing but an easy target for those imperial gunners!”

“A spitshawk…aye,” agreed Gryph, nodding
with a newfound enthusiasm. “I’ll fly her like my old,
Serendipity
that I will.” Bar wasn’t sure what he meant by
that; he just hoped it involved getting them the hell out of the
line of fire.

Suddenly the
Chimera
lurched beneath
him; banking hard—harder than Bar had ever thought possible.
Swooning under the sudden increase in g-force, he grabbed hold of
the command counsel just in time as loose items; pencils, paper—a
coffee cup—clattered or broke as it all tumbled to the floor.
Beyond the view port the world slid away in a blur, and then turned
dark in an instant. Water spots followed, blossoming over the glass
as rain pattered like marbles against the ship’s bronzsteel hull.
They’d found shelter, and in a storm cloud no less, but the
hunter-killer’s gunfire followed them in, unwilling to abandon the
hunt so easily.

Though the sightless shots whistled
harmlessly into the wind, Bar knew this sanctuary for what it was;
temporary and useless. In the dark their atmium core was like a
landlight beacon in the black, and in no time the imperials would
use its azure glow to home in on them. Lockney always said clouds
were good for a quick diversion…a moment’s reprieve, but it brought
the danger of complacency.