Aethosphere Chronicles: Winds of Duty (3 page)

“Aye, Stowe may not have confirmed it but I
know the truth,” replied the skyman who’d earlier made mention of
the Admiralty’s plans. Bar listened in curiosity. If battle plans
were being drawn up, that could’ve been the reason for Moore’s
orders this morning; and as the Combat Systems Manager, it was
important to know if he’d have to be at the ready “I heard it
myself when Tiny was talking with Commander Hastings in the
ladderway outside the galley this morning. The first officer didn’t
sound too happy about it either.”

“Can’t blame him,” grumbled Gunnery
Technician Frasier, “It’s shit if it’s true…ain’t right not to post
a fleet to watch over our homes. I’ve got family on Glenfindale; a
wife, children, my parents; and they expect me to what…? Just
dedicate myself to watching over
crownies
and their southern
sycophants?”

“Well…strategically it makes sense,” offered
Egan Sato, Bar’s electronic technician, “Our fleet can’t hope to
match the Empire if it splits up, and King’s Isle is closest to the
Straight…more important—”

“More important!” snarled one of the other
gunners contentiously. The man reminded Bar of a wolf with shaggy
black hair swept back into hackles. He had a mouth full of sharp
teeth as well, flashing out as he drew up his lips in a snarl. “How
do you figure on that, Sato?”

“Whoa whoa! Easy, O’Dylan,” replied Sato,
lifting his hands up in apologetic surrender. “Meant no disrespect
to the north and all, but resources, mate. You know; population,
bilge-oil fields, factories, foundries, Ragnarok Cloudfortress—the
whole war effort?”

“So that’s it,” fired back the predatory
gunnery skyman in scolding, “and you’d just tell the north to
what…? Piss off?”

“It’s not like—”

“Actually, that seems about right to me,”
butted in Bar’s Fire Control Technician, Cecil Temberly, with a
crow-like cackle. “Nothing up there but peasants, muck, and
potatoes anyway.”

“Hey, ease up on that sort of talk,
especially with the company you’re keeping…petty officer,”
suggested Brandon Tanner, one of the old-timers, and a gunnery
skyman himself, as he hauled up a heavy barrel-swab to rest over
the corded muscles of his mahogany brown shoulders.

“You’re out of line,
Skyman
,” spat
Cecil. “I’ll damn-well talk anyway I please, especially when it
comes to wasting our time defending common born offlanders.”

“I’m a common born
offlander
,”
replied Tanner, throwing the Fire Control Technician Second Class a
contemptuous glare.

“As am I,” yelled out another greasy skyman
from the engineering ranks, covered in the day’s hard labor and
looking ill at ease. Cecil Temberly just smirked back at them all,
condescension outweighing any remorse, or regret, even when several
more men stood up, looking put off by his crass comments.

Bar could see the young Kinglander’s pride
starting to stir. The hothead had been assigned to his department,
and so Bar had the misfortune of experiencing that arrogance first
hand. Predictably, Cecil scoffed. “
Glenfindale
.” He shook
his head. “Doesn’t matter what the issue is, or how wrong one of
you might be. The capital is in danger, but do you think that
matters to any one of you? You cranked up
snowploggers
all
stick together, no matter what, don’t you?”

“
Snowplogger
!” Tanner dropped his
load and turned, snarling in anger. In an instant his magenta
irises turned fiery, and most of the skymen on the gun deck froze
at what they were doing, to turn and gaze on what would come of it.
Skyman Tanner added, “Perhaps you oughta take off those petty
officer stripes and try saying that again,
sir
.”

“Sir?” repeated Cecil glaring.

Abner Tolle stepped in, using the barrel of
his gut as a barrier between the two combative crewmen. “As much as
I like a good fight, unfortunately we all got places to be, and a
captain to kowtow to,” he tried explaining in good humor, offering
a placating smile to each man in turn.

But when it came to Cecil, he just couldn’t
let it go. “I ain’t afraid of this man,” he snarled back with a
challenging nod to Tanner. “If he wants to settle this outside our
naval rate so be it. I got no issues mopping the floor with this
ignorant
plogger
.”

“Oh Cecil, Cecil, Cecil. I’m trying to help
you, chum,” offered Tolle with a knowing smile, “I’d hate for
Tanner here to get all my guns dirty with your King’s Isle
blood—especially after the work it took to get them looking so
magnificent in the first place, you privy?”

“Last I knew the Combat Department overrides
Weapons, and that puts me a step above you; so stay outta this,
Roly Poly!”

“Roly Poly?” remarked the rotund peace-maker
in mock upset. “
Roly Poly
—why that’s so very clever of you,
Cec.” Abner Tolle backed up to stand beside his seething Glenfinner
subordinate. “Don’t you think he’s a clever one, Tanner?”

“Aye, that he is, Weapons Officer Second
Class.”

“I’m thinking maybe you should go ahead and
thank him for being so clever while I turn my back to maintain an
acceptable level of plausible deniability.”

“Yeah, teach this
crowny
prawn
a lesson in Finny manners, Tanner,” urged a disgruntled gunner.
“For my family and all the families of the north being left out to
dry by these selfish pricks.”

“Ease up, Frasier,” griped a skyman in an
engineering smock, “no need to start throwing around insults at us
all; we’ve got no quarrel with you Finnies.”

“Seems Cecil was throwing out insults left
and right and that didn’t seem to bother you none, Morgan,”
retorted the gunner. “
Psh
. Seems us
snowploggers
aren’t the only ones who stick together…eh,
crowny
?”

“That’s how you want to play it?”

“I got five coin says, our man Tanner kills
your
crowny
prince right here and now.”

And just like that, the situation looked to
be on the verge of boiling over into a full-blown fighting match.
Bar reached up for an overhead beam to lean in for a better view as
the rest of the men circled in to surround Tanner and Cecil. In the
center, the two enlistees began to strip off their uniforms. Now in
his striped service tank top, Tanner’s traditional Glenfindale
tattoos were plainly visible as an assortment of knots and tangled
designs, inked in white over rich brown skin. Bar weighed the
outcome of the fight as men around him began exchanging coin.

“You in, sir” offered Bar’s electronic
technician, but he just waved Egan Sato off. He hadn’t the coin,
nor did he think it would send the right message if he started
betting against a man in his own department. Cecil might have been
his
technician, and though he had youthful exuberance—and
was plainly all muscle—Bar’s bet was still on Tanner. He’d known
the Glenfinner too long, and beneath that hardened aeronaut’s
clothing was sinew likened to that of beef jerky left too long in
the sun; tough and unyielding.

“Lad,” whispered the cook, nudging his arm
to capture his attention.

“Not now, Al,” Bar waved away the old
codger. He didn’t want anything to distract him from what was sure
to be an epic dust-up.

“You might want to step in and show a little
authority down here,” countered the cook.

“
Ah
, don’t turn into a mother hen,
Al. Anyway, you know the “sacred right” below deck. We let the men
duke it out without interference.”

“Aye, no need to lecture me,” grumbled Al as
he rubbed a hand through a crop of wispy white hairs dangling over
the mangled fold of his ear. “But you might recall, that little
tradition has always held strict to two men in the ring at a
time.”

But Bar countered with a justifying sweep of
his hands. “What do you think this is?”

“This here’s something more…something real
ugly beneath it all, and looks to only get uglier no matter the
outcome.” Al made his own gesture towards the assembled skymen. In
the twilight, they’d crowded in close like wolves around a kill;
the frantic energy of impending violence stirring in their wide
eyes. “Look around, Bar, the men are on edge—have been—what with
the rumors flying about. So imagine how all these skymen hailing
from the north must feel…
hmm
, the men from Winterforge,
Cloudvale, Borada, Frostrise—hell, Bar, you even got family up on
Glenfindale, so you’ve got to understand the frustrations being
felt. It’s got inter-isles spats becoming the norm, aboard even
this ship, and that’d be awfully disappointing to Lockney. He
worked too long and too hard uniting this crew for it to come to
this…”

“I understand all that, Al, and I can
understand the frustration, but it’s still only rumor, and despite
Lockney’s efforts, the men have always been fighting about where
they come from, even back when I was just a wee fledgling swabbing
these decks. This ain’t nothing new, and the old captain let them
sort it out.”

“But this
is
different, Bar, they’re
splitting into isle factions like it’s the damn Kingdoms War all
over again. You were too young to know that conflict, but I lived
through it—”

“I ain’t ignorant to the old civil war, Al,
my father made sure of that.”

“Well great, then you should be keen on why
we can’t let it come to blows…not over this…and certainly not with
these rumors running rampant? Like it or not, you’re under
obligation to break it up anyway.”

“‘Under obligation’? Now what in the name of
Nekron are you talking about, Al?”

“Ensign, you’re the
godsdamn
ranking
officer down here, and you’re to keep the king’s discipline no
matter what.”

Incredulous, Bar held out his arms in
surrender. “You can’t expect me to break tradition beneath the
deck…”

“I ain’t
expecting
nothing, Bar,” the
old cook scowled deeply, setting the wrinkles crisscrossing the
leathery hide of his face to crease even deeper “I ain’t the
master-at-arms. I don’t enforce the rules, but I’m letting you
know, as a friend, you’ve got to put a stop to this pronto.
Remember, these aren’t your pals anymore, these are your
subordinates now.”

Bar looked over the cheering and jeering
skymen, saw Cecil and Tanner at the center starting to circle one
another with their hands poised at the ready. The first blow hadn’t
landed yet, but it promised to at any moment. After that, it might
prove impossible to stop. “Dammit, Al.” But the old cook was right
and Bar knew it. In all the excitement he’d forgotten that fighting
was a serious infraction, punishable by the whip and the brig, and
if he didn’t act to stop it that put him in dereliction of
duty—more so than any enlistee present.

“Alright, enough,” hollered the ensign,
though he might as well have been a church mouse asking the thunder
to quiet down for the effect it had. The combatants just continued
to circle like growling animals to the roaring of the crowd.
“Another time, fellows,” he tried again feebly.
What could
captain Lockney have been thinking making me an officer?

“Enough!” bellowed Alabrahm Muldaire,
surprising Bar with the booming crash of his craggy old voice. “The
Ensign’s got something to say, so listen up.”

Stunned by the cook’s outburst, it took Bar
a moment to realize that everyone had frozen, and now all eyes were
locked on him, expectant. “Aye…yeah, well…thanks, Al,” Bar stumbled
to find the words that Captain Lockney might have used in this
situation. He cleared his throat once, twice, and then a third time
before finally getting it out. “Anyway…now ain’t the time to be
trading knuckles, so let’s break this up. Captain Moore wants us on
deck, and I don’t know about you, but I don’t exactly want to feel
the sting of Stowe’s cat-o-nine for being late…but feel free to
make up your own minds about that…your choice.”

That seemed to pull the fangs from the
fight, but it didn’t stop the looks of contempt thrown Bar’s way by
a disappointed crowd. He’d broken a sacred right beneath the deck,
and now he was sure they’d hate him for it. After all, for a lot of
the old timers, Bar was probably still nothing more than that same
skyman apprentice who’d started onboard at the age of nine, and now
playing at being an officer changed nothing. “…so anyway…” Bar
swiped his vest and jacket off a crate and pulled them on over his
shirt. “All hands above deck…on the double.”

“Well…that’s a start anyway, lad,” offered
Al morosely, patting the ensign on the shoulder as he hobbled on
by. “Being a leader is never easy, and though you may not have
friends down here like you used to, at least in time you can gain
their respect.”

Bar didn’t take much comfort from the old
man’s words. Instead he just growled in frustration as he pulled
open the ladderwell door. After the early euphoria that had
fermented in the distillery of camaraderie, it’s loss was all the
more bitter, and left nothing but the sour burn of stale grog in
the pit of his stomach.

As Bar Bazzon ascended the ladder it quickly became
clear, by the sounds of yelling filtering down through the beams,
that something was deeply amiss. The shrill blat of the ship’s
warning klaxon was eerily silent, driving away any notion of an
imperial attack, and thus adding even more to the ensign’s
confusion.
It sounds a lot like the fight I just broke up.
It was clear that several men were angrily shouting over one
another, creating a guttural stream of noise that drifted though
the levels above.

Hastily, Ensign Bazzon took the ladder two
treads at a time and emerged in an empty galley. Outside the
windows was a chaotic sea of close-pressed bodies. Whatever was
going on was happening outside, under the awning of the airbladder
housing. Bar turned left, pushed his way through the hatch and out
onto the outlaying cargo deck, where the light of day washed over
what appeared to be most of the crew pressing forward into one
tangled herd. Curiosity marked those straining to see over the
crowd along the narrow path leading to the main deck at the bow,
and in front of them, each successive ring of aeronauts appeared
more agitated, more vocal, more violent than the last.