Aethosphere Chronicles: Winds of Duty (8 page)

He must know by now that I’ve sided with
him,
mulled the ensign bitterly. Bar may not have come to the
small pilot’s aid when it mattered, but in the end, he’d chosen his
side, just like he’d been urged, and now the least Gryph could do
was acknowledge that fact.

“I never thought I’d live to see the day
you’d betrayed your honor,” accused Chief Engineer Max Watell, as
the new arrivals stepped onto the suspended balcony where the
prisoners sat gathered on the roughhewn decking. “But a
crowny’s
always a
crowny
first, aye, Bazzon?”

Unbelievable! Can’t these fools see
Stowe’s gun is plainly in my back, and yet they still think me a
villain…?
“Is that what you think I’ve done, Max—”

“Keep that forked-tongue in your mouth. Its
waggling offends me.” Max sneered as he folded his arms over his
coveralls and hunkered down cantankerously on his haunches.
“Gryph’s already filled us in on your treachery, so no use making
yourself look the fool as well. You’re just as vile as Stowe.”

“Enough talk,” rumbled the
master-at-arms.

“Or else what, you disloyal mistdrake?” Max
spat on the floor next to his chains, “I can almost forgive
this
crowny
whelp for siding against us, but you,
Stowe, you’ve betrayed your own motherland, and you’d have shamed
that clan of yours too, were they not a horde of notorious
turncoats to begin with.”

“Taken from a Watell, I’d call that a
compliment,” sneered Stowe.

The burly engineer rubbed at the course
stubble of his auburn beard, before scoffing. “And that’s not the
worst of it either. Let’s take your own family for example—”

“Watch yourself,” threatened the Chief
Master as he shoved Bar aside and stepped towards the prone
mechanic with his teeth bared and clenched in snarl.

The other man just sat bow-legged and
indifferent. “Touched a sore spot, have I, Chief Master? Perhaps
feeling a bit defensive…what with your wife being a
crowny
who—”

Stowe thrust out with the butt of his
clatterbolt, catching Chief Watell full in the face. The man
grunted as blood sprayed from his nose and a shattered tooth
dripped out between his lips.

And then a Glenfinner jumped from the floor
in the next instant, seizing hold of the master-at-arms’ gun-arm.
Forcing the weapon upwards it discharged with a clattering roar
into the rafters above just as another man came leaping up from the
left, and others from the right, then more, and more. It seemed
half the Glenfinners had sprang to foot, and as for their bonds,
the chains that once tethered them, clattered uselessly to the
ground.

How?
Bar wondered, but the
clatterbolt interrupted any further investigations as it coughed
again over the throng, bullets chewed into the wooden joists
overhead raining down splinters. Ducking, Bar staggered back from
the chaos, putting as much distance between himself and the
fighting, even as Stowe struggled to fight off the men piling atop
him, so many they got in their own way. The few Glenfinners along
the periphery then turned their murderous eyes on the hapless
ensign. Bar searched for escape, but the catwalk back to the
ladderway stood blocked by three stout deckhands, each every bit—if
not more—brawny than he.

“I got no quarrel with you,” he tried to
reason, but that only seemed to spur the mad-pack into lunging.
Throwing out a fist, Bar struck one in the face while the others
swooped in and tackled him. Kicking and punching, he tried to fend
them off as they rolled in a heap across the floor, snarling as
they went. The bedlam of combat echoed through the vast chamber,
punctuated by the Chief Master’s clatterbolt. Bar saw more men
coming to subdue him, but he slipped away from the tussle and
skittered back on his elbows, finding the platform’s edge suddenly
beneath him. A Glenfinner grabbed for his feet and he kicked the
man’s teeth in. Another swung a heavy chain down, crashing against
the boards beside his head, but Bar rolled away, catching sight of
the interwoven joists a couple meters down, and pitched himself
over.

Falling, his legs struck off one beam,
sending him summersaulting backwards, then off another, setting him
to barrel-rolling as well.
Umph!
Bar struck a joist with his
back,
Ugh!
Another with his shoulder, further and further he
descended like a ragdoll tossed down a well, bouncing off the sides
until he struck one with his gut. Gasping for breath, he clung
fast, wrapping his arms tightly around the thick wooden shaft for
safety, even as his legs dangled out in the open. Battered,
bruised, Bar heaved and pulled himself onto the narrow
cross-section, where he planted himself on his butt and took a
moment to stare out in a daze at his surroundings. There was no way
to tell how far he’d fallen, his body told him a long way, but the
airbladder’s reinforced superstructure revealed nothing. Instead it
just stretched over, under, and around him like a thick web, making
him the fly caught in its middle.

Overhead the men could still be heard
yelling and cursing, even as the clatterbolt continued blasting
away, interrupting the core’s constant blue haze with bursts of its
own volatile white light. And then came the noise that Bar feared,
boots, and scores of them. He could just make out the ladder off to
his right now, quivering under the combined weight of their
stampede.

The Glenfinners will make for the
bridge,
he reasoned, climbing up to his feet to balance on the
narrow beam he found himself on. As Bar teetered towards the well,
he pondered whether that outcome would be for the best.
If the
Glenfinners take the bridge they’ll most likely set a course to
help that beleaguered transport, and certainly a noble act, but
afterwards, then what?
Bar didn’t think they’d just fold
themselves back into the Royal Air Navy—not whilst a man lived who
could tell what had happened aboard the
Chimera
.
Will
they kill everyone else—could they—to ensure silence before they
put into Ragnarok.
But Bar knew for certain that no man in the
Admiralty could be expected to believe—at face value—that every
Kinglander just happened to be killed on patrol. So the most likely
outcome was desertion for the Glenfinners,
Back to Glenfindale,
perhaps join the pirates in their Guild? Still then, what happens
to the rest of us should that come to be?
His mind spiraled
back towards death, but these men…he’d served with quite a few of
them for decades.
Could they…would they…? I’m not their
enemy,
he tried to tell himself as he neared the ladderwell
just ahead of the mutineers,
I understand their plight, joined
in protest even…but this open mutiny changes everything. It’s a far
more serious affair then simply refusing to follow orders under
conscientious objection. No court will hold leniency for any man
who’s lifted up arms against his commanding officers or fellow
aeronauts. Every one of those men must realize it now, and the
things they’ll do to survive…
Bar had to reach the bridge first
and barricade it; if nothing more than to protect the ship and her
inhabitants until some sort of truce could be struck.

Down the ladder, through the ghostly light
housing, Bar descended ahead of the Finny mob, reaching the bridge
landing before the rest. Trying the latch, he found the door
locked. No doubt the machinegun fire had tipped off the bridge crew
and they’d barricaded the way. From the other side of the sturdy
iron door, Bar heard a gruff voice call out in challenge, “Identify
yourself!” But Bar thought better of it. As far as Moore was
concerned he was just a turncoat on the loose now, so instead he
decided to make for the galley first, perhaps to find Alabrahm and
inform him of the events in the airbladder housing. If any man
could broker a truce now, it was the wizened old cook. No man could
hold a grudge against him.

Bar reached the galley, just as he heard the
Glenfinners reach the bridge door one level above. They hammered
against the metal, shouting curses and threats, and then he heard
metal groan and Max’s voice rose above the din. “You got to set
that lever lower if you aim to pry her open…and the rest of you
other lot, get to the main deck…should a
crowny
show his
face you blacken it straight away till we can sort out who we can
trust. Now move!”

They’re coming.
Bar pushed his way
through the galley door, only to find it teeming with anxious
crewmen. “Bazzon!” yelled Cecil almost immediately, and in a flash
he came shoving through the gathered southerners huddled in the
mess. “Captain’s issued an all hands, said we got
snowploggers
wreaking havoc on the ship. Told us to fight
them off using any means necessary.”

“Bar, you young sprig!” He heard Al’s deep
voice say before it became lost in a tide of panicked
murmuring.

“Is that
them
I’m hearing,” hollered
a flyer. “What’s our orders?” asked a wide-eyed boy.

“What’s going on, lad,” the cook cut above
them all, “you can see the men are on edge…could use some light
shed on this situation before it spirals out of control—”

But it was too late. The first Glenfinner, a
brute by the name of Tavish; a decent enough fellow, if you were on
his good side, but with wits to rival a bull’s; came bursting
through the door behind him. The brute paused in the entry, only
for a moment to catch his bearings, but it was long enough for an
impetuous Kinglander to crack a stein across his forehead. With
blood running down along his eyebrows, Tavish roared and blindly
thrust a hammer-blow into the nearest Kinglander; a young skyman by
the name of Thomas. The boy crumpled in a heap, and then all hell
broke loose. Using Tavish as a plow, the rest of the Glenfinners
came swarming in from behind, and after that, the chaos turned
rampant almost instantly.

Dizzied, Bar tried not to get caught up in
the violence, but instead staggered back making for Al, but the
melee swirled in around him, and suddenly he was being jostled and
knocked about. Fists flew past him, one even striking him in the
kidney, and then another came glancing off the side of his face.
The table at the center of the room screeched over the decking and
slammed into the wall. Several windows shattered. Bar hadn’t wanted
to fight back for fear of escalating the violence, but the moment
stirred his blood into a frenzy, and he thrust out his coiled fist
as readily as the next man. It didn’t matter who got in his way
after that, he just punched at them all the same, until someone
tackled him through the galley’s forward window. Glass exploded and
Bar flailed backwards. In a daze he slammed down onto the main deck
with a Glenfinner wrapped around his torso, so he brought an elbow
down on the man’s spine, stilling him instantly.

How could it come to this?
Bar
thought vaguely as he lay on his back, looking up in shock at the
Chimera’s
glimmering core poking out from the airbladder
overhead. Then a tide of men came washing out around him like a
stirred up nest of ants. He shoved his prone attacker aside and
climbed back to his feet to avoid the worst of it, when he spotted
Captain Moore up on the quarterdeck. He was moving in Bar’s
direction, backwards down the ladder to the main deck, while his
marine guard formed a protective wall, holding back the angry mob
with swinging rifles. A second wave of Glenfinners appeared after
that, swarming in from the portside outdeck.

All semblance of cohesion toppled after
that, mixing into a chaotic maelstrom of intra-kingdom warfare. Bar
tried to find an oasis near the rails, but the turbulent crowds
swept him up and forced him deeper to the fight. That’s when Moore
rose up as a pillar of rage at the main deck’s center, just below
the core, with a crashing wave of snarling Finnies converged
towards him, and all of them wrapped in atmium blue. Then the
captain’s gun appeared—instantly belching fire and smoke, but that
only spurred the mob to greater violence, and suddenly the ship’s
master fell beneath the tide.

Pushing through flailing bodies, Bazzon
reached the site where Moore had last stood and found it empty.
Only a pool of smeared blood remained, and a greasy drag-mark that
led to the starboard railing. He searched the melee for any sign of
the captain, but Bar easily speculated what had probably happened.
The loathed master of the
Chimera
, no doubt, had been
pitched over the side and into the embrace of the Shrouded
Abyss.

Cecil appeared after that with his fists
smeared in blood and a savage grin worn across his face. “Us
Kinglanders are making for the bridge, sir, we’re banding together
to retake this ship from this Finny uprising. Godsdamn
snowploggering
traitors! By the gods, we’ll put them right
back in their place!”

“This is ridiculous,” roared Bar, pushing
the man out of his way, “This ain’t the Kingdoms War…this is just
self-inflicted lunacy rung out by fear and fueled by this violence!
We’ve got to calm the men, Temberly… So stand down!”

But the truth was the Unity was fractured,
the strains of war had seen to that. Whatever fragile bond glued
the shattered pieces of the kingdoms back together after the civil
war was crumbling away. Island loyalty once again rose to trump
loyalty to the crown. Bar was a fool to think otherwise. Each man
tasted the end of the UKA in the gunpowder billowing from the Iron
Empire’s guns, in the constant stream of reports proclaiming the
Empire was drawing nearer and nearer, in the rumors of abandonment.
So why follow Kinglanders or Finnies when each cared nothing for
the other? Why follow either of those bitter rivals when the
Unified Kingdoms was near defeat anyway?

“And you call yourself a Kinglander?” spat
Cecil in disgust before disappearing back into the battle.