Aethosphere Chronicles: Winds of Duty (9 page)

“That’s an order!” Bar called after him
impotently.

Rat-tat-tat-tat.
Glass and wood
rained down on the crowds.
Rat-tat-tat-tat.
The combatants
ceased their fighting and shuffled in unison back towards the
forecastle at the bow. Bar turned a wild eye up to the bridge where
Stowe appeared, standing alone on the quarterdeck with his smoking
clatterbolt pointing down into the hesitant crowds. Somehow the
master-at-arms had survived the airbladder, but his face was a
bloodied mess because of it. His nose looked to be bashed to a
pulp, and one eye hung swollen shut. The sagging walrus mustache
dripped blood along the hanging ends, and yet his one good eye
gleamed with that indelible malice he was so infamous for. And he
levelled his weapon on the crew to prove it.

“Stowe!” bellowed Bar Bazzon, “Turn away
your gun! We need to take this opportunity to restore order now!”
But the master-at-arms just locked his one good eye on the
subordinate officer; on a man who only minutes ago was his
prisoner; and when their eyes meant—golden yellow against burning
hazel—there was a moment of grim satisfaction. Bar held up his
hands and stepped back towards the pressing crowd behind him.
Stowe’s gun followed.

“He means to shoot us all down!” someone
yelled in a panic and that whipped the men back into a frenzy.

Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat.
Men fell in
droves as bullets chewed up the wooden decking in sweeping
lines—
rat-tat-tat-tat-tat
—first up and then back down. Bar
rolled away to avoid the fire, but what happened after was lost in
a hazy cloud of unconsciousness as something hard impacted the side
of his head.
Rat-tat-tat-tat. Rat-tat-tat-tat.
The sound of
that horrible weapon followed him into the turbulent seas of his
dreams.

Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat.
Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat.

Bar’s father pounded each nail into the board in one
or two precise and deliberate swings of his hammer. He made it look
so easy. That’s what it was like in his father’s dusty workshop,
with the light filtering through the floating motes, and the heavy
scent of spruce and pitch permeating the senses. It always looked
so easy. Bar tried to swing his father’s hammer, but found that his
child-hands were too small and too weak to wield it. Instead he
bent the first three nails and then smashed his thumb on the forth.
He threw the hammer away as tears filled his eyes and he sucked on
his throbbing thumb. It felt hot and swollen, and near to bursting
in his mouth. At the table, his father took up the hammer and
continued to drive the nails, but he smiled sympathetic at his son
as he did so.

Rat-tat-tat. Rat-tat-tat.

“You just got to mean it when you do it,
son,” he urged the boy, pausing so he could look directly into his
son’s eyes. This was a lesson he meant to stick. “You hesitated,
looked away, but you can’t do that when you’re swinging a hammer.
You got to keep your focus, push out the distractions—like thinking
about what
has
happened, or what
might
happen. It’s
either set in stone in the past or it’s something for the future to
decide. But for you, you got the present to worry about. We’re
creatures of the present you know, blessed with the ability to look
back and speculate ahead, but it’s always best to pay extra special
attention to where we are—to the
now
.

“But, Da, It’s too heavy. I just can’t do
it,” Bar protested, speaking around the throbbing thumb crammed in
his mouth. Where he stood, he was at eye-level with the surface of
the table, and could just make out the profile of what his father
was working on. Was it a wheel?

“Too heavy…? Can’t do it?” His father’s
hearty laugh filled the warm room with a glow that seemed to
intensify the colors. “That’s bloody nonsense and you know it, boy!
Gods, you’re a grown man after all—should be nothing for you to
swing a hammer.”

“A grown man?” protested Bar feebly, his
young voice cracking under the strain of indignation. “I’m not a
grown man.” And yet as he said it, he realized his voice had
deepened, and now he was looking down on the table instead of up at
it… and it
was
a wheel his father was working on, a ship’s
wheel.

“Aye, and a bigger man than I was in life,
I’ll wager.”

Rat-tat-tat. Rat-tat-tat.

“I’m dreaming, Da, aren’t I?”

Aye, that you are, my son.” His father
smiled, causing the creases in his stubbly cheeks to fold, yet that
smile quickly slipped away when his world-weary eyes filled with
something like sadness. “But it’s time to wake up, and it’s time to
swing that hammer like you mean it. And here, son.” Cuthbert turned
to the table, and heaved his work up with a labored groan. “This…I
made this for you.”

He brought it down to just a few centimeters
from his son’s face. At first Bar was terrified of it, terrified to
take the heavy object. It was too big, too important, but his
father wasn’t going to let him back out. No, Cuthbert simply held
it there, out to his son, keeping the boy with his unwavering gaze,
refusing to relent, not until the boy took the wheel. Finally, Bar
gave in and drew up the courage to take it from his father’s grip.
The wheel was heavy, extraordinarily heavy, but he managed to keep
it up…somehow, and that felt good.

Consciousness began to intrude. The
workshop, with its warm-hued wooden beams, lath walls, and dusty
shelves slipped into a blur of color. His father’s sturdy form,
strong arms, broad chest, square jaw, faded to a ghostly vapor and
then dissipated in a wind of gunpowder smoke. Cuthbert’s voice was
all that remained, raspy and faint, but it followed with him into
the light.
“Aye, and a bigger man than I was in life, I’ll
wager.”

Rat-tat-tat. Rat-tat-tat.

Bar snapped awake as though someone had
doused him in cold water. The clatterbolt still firing through his
mind, but that wasn’t the case at all. It
was
a hammer he
was hearing. Someone nearby was hammering. His heart reached out,
swimming through the River of Creation, desperate to see his father
once more, but the workshop was long gone, and instead Bar found
himself below deck, in one of the
Chimera’s
cargo holds.
There was soft light filtering down from the hatch high overhead,
and the chamber smelled strongly of spruce and pitch. Dust motes
lulled lazily through the air above his face, flashing and
disappearing in the strangled rays. With wakefulness came the full
spectrum of strained senses; heaviness, as though his body was made
of lead; skin slick with perspiration; nostrils filled with the
caustic aroma of sulfur; ears ringing; the iron taste of blood on
his tongue, and that
rat-tat-tat
again. Bar rolled his head
to the side, found stacked crates and loose boards, piled sacks of
grain and flanks of jerky meat hanging from chain and hooks.

“Good,” Al’s voice came from nearby, strong
and steadying. “He’s coming to.”

Rat-tat-tat. Rat-tat-tat.

Bar rolled his head in the opposite
direction and found it was the Supply Control Officer, Sven
Nilsson, making all that racket. The brawny petty officer was
pounding boards in place over the double doors leading to the
ship’s main passageway, barricading it against…well
what
,
Bar didn’t know? The dazed ensign couldn’t be sure, but as time
ticked away, marked by the impact of that hammer, the mutiny began
to manifest in his mind—the violence on deck—the mayhem and the
carnage— throngs of battling men—Moore most likely dead—and most of
all, Stowe with his fearsome clatterbolt, spraying death across the
main deck. And then, very dimly, Bar began to pick up on the
vestiges of that continuing conflict rumbling through the ship’s
timbers like a distant storm. Somewhere people were still fighting,
yelling, screaming… doors slamming shut, and glass breaking…
was
that an explosion?

The men arrayed throughout the spacious hold
made a scant crowd, but most were instantly recognizable. Men like
Weapons Officer Second Class Abner Tolle, Skyman Brandon Tanner,
Alabrahm Muldaire, his electronic technician Egan Sato, and Gunnery
Skyman Piter O’Dylan. There were others as well scattered through
the room, but Bar was too groggy to try and identify them all by
name. He had a pounding headache trying to split open his skull and
it made it nearly impossible to concentrate. Whoever had clubbed
him had turned his mind into a loose jumble of swimming chaos, with
hardly the mental focus to remember his own name let alone everyone
in the dusky twilight of the compartment.

“How long have I been out?” Bar asked
wincing as he tenderly explored the side of his head with gentle
fingertips. The bump he discovered was a testimony to the strength
of the blow he’d received. At nearly the size of an orange, it
pulsated with a life of its own. Even the simple act of touching it
caused a fresh bout of stinging pain, and his eyes teared-up
instantly as a result.

“Not long—an hour perhaps—give or take,”
replied Al while handing him a damp rag. Bar used it to dab the
wound, finding it stained in blood when he pulled it away.

Just great
,
concussed and open to
infection. Who knows the filth that rubbed into it lying on this
cargo-hold floor?
“What’s the ship’s status?” grumbled the
woozy officer as he attempted to heave himself up. He managed to
make it to his elbows before he was forced to stop. The deck
lurched below him, or so he thought. The result roiled his stomach
and he faltered on the verge of vomiting.

Al caught him. “Near as I can figure,”
explained Al as he and Tanner helped the shaky ensign to a crate
where he could sit and gather his wits, “all the fighting resumed
once Stowe was forced to retreat with an empty clatterbolt.
Disappeared into the ship’s bowels… Now it seems four factions have
broken out in the chaos. Pockets of Kinglanders and Glenfinners are
still brawling throughout the ship. Mostly, seems the Kinglanders
got the lower decks and the holds, and the Finnies hold everything
above… I’m guessing the bridge as well.”

From the back pocket of his cooking-stained
overalls, the squat old steward produced a tarnished flask,
unscrewed it and handed it off to the ensign. Bar nodded in
appreciation and hauled back on the liquid, expecting it to be
liquor, but damn near spat it out when he realized it was just
tepid water. Still, his throat was parched and the moisture did
much to ease his throbbing skull. When he tried to hand it back, Al
held up a hand, insisting that the officer finish it all.

“Where does that leave us?” Bar asked,
wiping his mouth across the sleeve of his bloodied undershirt.
Passing back the flask, he discovered his hand was trembling. Al
gently cupped it and pried the container from his uncooperative
fingers. For that, Bar was grateful. He had no way to tell how bad
the blow to his head had affected him, but he could only hope the
effects would diminish with time—and the sooner the better.

“It leaves us here in the port cargo hold,
lad, and in the process of barricading ourselves against them
all—till we figure out this whole mess anyway. Mostly, what we’ve
got gathered here is the old-guard,
Chimera
men, like
ourselves, whose allegiances are with each other and the ship, and
not with King’s Isle or Glenfindale specifically. As near I can
tell, ain’t none of us keen on the idea of using civilians as bait,
but neither are we much for open mutiny against the ship’s master;
and from what I understand, seems you’re of like mind as well. As
such, I prompted a few of the lads to bring you here, where it’s
safe…relatively speaking anyway. As soon as Sven’s done hammering,
we should all be as snug as a bedbug in here alright.”

“Indeed,” Bar glanced around, “where’s
Gryph?”

“Gryph…?” In puzzlement, Al scratched at the
gangly hairs of his beard. “Ah, the wee flyer…. I don’t right know
the answer to that.”

“He’s thrown his lot in with the Finny
mutineers,” offered the wolfish flyer.

Seeing this nefarious northman rule-breaker
in their midst surprised Bar. “And you didn’t, O’Dylan?” he
wondered aloud.

“I may be a northerner, but I’m no
Glenfinner…though in all honesty, I thought about jumping in for
the sake of a good dustup with some smug crownies, but after Max
and his crew took it too far by killing Thomas—and as good a lad as
they come—that pretty much took the lift from my wings. Realized
quick after that that nothing good would come from such unbridled
rage…and when I got clocked good by Tavish, well, that pretty much
sealed the deal for me.”

“Still, are you sure about Gryph, O’Dylan,”
pressed Technical Skyman Sato. His hair had turned shaggy in the
melee and now he looked more like a child than ever. “I mean him
siding with the Glenfinner mutineers doesn’t exactly make much
sense. The man was a Kinglander fighter-pilot during the Kingdoms
War. Here-tell he was shot down over Glenfindale and held as a
prisoner of war for nearly a year.” The electronic technician
looked to the other weary souls crowded expectantly around Bar,
looking for confirmation. “Can’t imagine him siding with those
people after that.”

“What you mean by, ‘those people’,” grumbled
Tanner, stepping into the light filtering down from the hatch
overhead.

“Aye, my apologies…I meant no
disrespect.”

Nearby, O’Dylan folded his sinewy arms
across his inverted chest, and frowned. “Gryph’s got his reasons,
and sure as shit I saw him shaking hands with Chief Watell as we
retreated into
this
prison—the man’s the de facto leader of
the Glenfinners…guess this whole ship now too. We changed course
shortly after that.”

Bar’s mind was still clouded in a fog of
hammering pain, but he noted the cook’s earlier comment. “Al, you
said there were four factions?”