Blood On Borrowed Wings: A Dark Fantasy Thriller (27 page)

A man’s got to stand for something other than to piss.

Old Nautical Saying

‘You struggling to sleep, Cap?’ Bronagh had found Beaugent near one of the aft engines. ‘It’s a little late to be up and checking propeller oil or anything else for that matter.’

Beaugent twisted the oil cap back on and wiped a greasy hand down the front of his shirt. ‘Well, you’re up, checking on me.’

Bronagh gave him a reproachful glare, like a schoolteacher not believing the version of events and asking the class miscreant for a more credible, honest account. Beaugent ignored him and dropped the oil container back into the fireproof hold.

‘You’ve got to look after these engines, Bronagh. Ain’t many left and spares are harder to come by than a windshark’s tooth.’

Bronagh put his hands up in submission, choosing to overlook the implication that he may not have been doing his job with regular oil-checks, or that he did not know the value or rarity of the engines he so dutifully, lovingly maintained. He was fully aware that he was one of the best engineers in the sky and he knew that Beaugent knew that too.

‘Drink?’ he asked.

‘You pouring?’

‘There’s some cane rum needs finishing off.’

‘Be rude not to.’

‘You know what they say:
pour rum, snores come.’
Bronagh climbed the rope ladder up to the main walkway and then down into the living quarters from there. Beaugent followed him, walked through the galley and watched as he took two wooden beakers from a store box and a bottle of rum from the drinks cabinet.

‘I hate these wooden beakers.’ Bronagh shuddered as he poured a double measure into each beaker.

‘It’s what’s in them that counts. Besides, glass doesn’t do too well up here.’

Bronagh looked at Beaugent, then added another measure into the stubby, opaque receptacles.

‘There’s only a finger left in the bottle, B, pour it.’

Bronagh upended the bottle and made a mock wringing gesture on the neck as if trying to squeeze out a last drop.

‘Take a sip straight away, Beaugent, it’s full.’

‘Sipping is for hummingbirds.’ He gulped half of his rum straight down. Bronagh did the same, and they both offered up a mild shudder to the God of undiluted liquor.

‘Thought it might get rid of the bad taste in your mouth, Chief.’

‘Take more than a hogshead of this stuff to do that.’

‘You angry because we’ve been cancelled for the return drop?’

‘Nah. I expected that. We can’t speak our minds, such as we did, and not lose the return leg. In fact, in retrospect, we were lucky that was all we lost.’

‘Still, a credit’s a credit.’

‘Yeah, and a bad taste is a bad taste.’

‘Especially when Loopes has cooked it.’

Beaugent grunted, ‘Don’t sit right, is all. Shouldn’t have took this job in the first place.’ He looked out of the galley window, the view was thick with cloying rainclouds that drew shifting gauze veils across the glass. ‘Some things are more important than credits.’

‘Women?’

‘Obviously,’ said Beaugent. They drank a silent toast. Bronagh shuddered again. ‘There’s something more, though. And it runs deeper than the male urges and wants we don’t get met whilst we’re cloud bumping up here.’ Beaugent was staring out of the window again.

Bronagh sat back in his chair with an exaggerated sigh. ‘It’s been a long time since we’ve moored proper, or I’ve moored proper, if you catch my meaning.’

Beaugent continued as if Bronagh had not spoken, ‘I’m talking about honour, a code.’

‘But what we cart for business ain’t our business, you always say that. It’s one of our selling points.’

‘I believe it too,’ Beaugent emptied his beaker, ‘but something’s under my skin on this one, and it’s crawling around and chewing on my insides B, it feels like…’ Beaugent let the thought train derail, placed his beaker in the wooden wash bucket and turned to face Bronagh.

‘...like a storm’s brewing,’ finished Bronagh, who upended his drink and threw his beaker into the wooden bucket from where he sat. Wooden receptacles have their advantages.

Beaugent turned and walked over to the portal, resting his head up against the thick glass. ‘I know. And I’m trying to work out if we should moor up until it passes or fly straight into the heart of it to see where it spits us out.’

‘Things will look better in the morning,’ said Bronagh, ‘cept old whores and new bruises, right?’

Beaugent ignored him, the reflection of his frown was dark against the night sky. For a moment he looked like an apparition, a brow furrowed spirit, as malevolent and ill at rest as any haunted home, vessel or cloud.

Bronagh walked over to a different porthole, half expecting a windshark to glissade slickly from the murky gloom, baring teeth and intent, or possibly a confluence of ominous clouds amassing, conspiring to displace the moon, portentous and potent.

Above the building rain clouds, all Bronagh could see was a sky of limpid, empty, crystalline black. It seemed more foreboding than anything else he could have imagined.

‘Storm’s brewing,’ said Beaugent again. He muttered a ‘night’ then retreated to his quarters off the main deck.

Bronagh walked the length of the lower corridor to the back of the Zeppelin, his footfalls sounded flat and scuffed along, his cadence slow and beaten. He climbed the steps up to the axial corridor and walked further back into the heart of the airship. He felt painfully aware of the massive hydrogen cells hanging above him, titanic gas pockets keeping them suspended in the sky. A swoosh of air whispered down the ventilation shafts and ran cool pirouettes alongside him as he walked. He was glad of the refreshment, it felt like a frigid splash of water across the burning skin of an embarrassed face.

He stopped at the foot of the main climbing shaft and looked up. It ran vertical and tenebrous to the upper observation post, the wooden steps barely reflecting any ambient light from the night sky above. As he ascended the whir of the motors and inevitable creaks and groans of their living space receded until all he could hear was the sound of himself, painfully loud in the small, dingy confines of the sheer shaft. He emerged into the viewing dome at the top of the Zeppelin and sat on the small wooden bench set at its centre.

The rum made him swoon and bolstered the feeling that he was sat amidst the clouds and somewhere distant stars. He had never suffered from vertigo, but this view, so unhindered by anything on any side, made him feel dwarfed, humble and irrelevant.

As the engines working silently beneath propelled him and his colleagues high above the Nimbus populace, he was struck by the wonders of life, the nightmares that lurked in dimly lit corners and the laws of science that kept them all up there.

The sky was his home, his place of work and solace. Deeper than any ocean, full of threat, mystery and promise, it was the expansive backdrop for his life and the only place he ever really wanted to be. A three dimensional nowhere, unmapped and forever changing.

But tonight only an oppressing vastness loomed in his dimly lit corner.

He made his way back to the galley to look for more rum.

Three trivial things are the cure to all of man’s ails and woes: wine, wit and cleavage. And how many of our ills and woes have been caused by those three self-same things?

Consul Hollmitte

(on his arrest in a Lowlands brothel.)

I felt rested and eager to make a start but the moment the cell lights went out, under the thin cover of my blanket and thinner dark, my escape plan seemed flawed and naive. Coyle would not come and I would have to spend the night reconsidering and scratching at my empty head and the dull, boring ache that ran across my chest. Then something scraped outside my door; scarcely discernible, but there, someone or something outside. I swallowed my nerves and slowed my breathing down. This time would be very different from my previous cell escape. This time I was meant to be staying put. The number of shadows dancing across the gap underneath the door were indeterminate, but I made out two or more muffled voices. Coyle had not come alone. Men like Coyle never did.

I flexed my arms to get ready and turned my back to the door, bracing my feet against the wall my bunk abutted.

The door opened, I heard their heavy shoes on the stone floor of my cell, then my door softly closed. I steadied myself anticipating their first blow.

Ready to shove back and into them…

‘Lights on in Number 3,’ someone shouted.

My cell light came on.

Confused and blinking in the brightness, I turned to see Riley and another officer I had not seen before.

‘Up,’ barked Riley.

I edged to the end of my bed and swung my legs round and down to the floor, my cuffs doing their best to hamper my progress and blood’s circulation.

‘You’re free to go. Charges dropped,’ said the other officer.

‘What?’

‘You heard. Now turn around.’ He held a small key out and I turned to show him my secured hands and he unlocked my cuffs.

‘We’ll give you your personal effects on the way out. Cooper, get the door.’

Cooper hitched the cuffs onto his belt and opened my cell door.

I rubbed at the deep pink grooves at my wrists where the cuffs had bitten.

I had to have more time here. Had to think. My plan was evaporating. I shook my head.

‘Out.’ Riley pointed.

It had hinged on Coyle coming to see me. A struggle. An escape into the guts of the station was what I wanted. Not this.

I stepped out into the corridor and they led me through the locked doors, past the interview rooms and out to the lockers.

‘You can get changed here.’ Cooper opened my locker and threw me my clothes and meagre possessions. I signed the return slip before stooping to get my belongings.

My back to them, I took off the boiler suit, and as I bent to disentangle my legs I deliberately rent the cut in my chest open. I hissed. I stooped to gather my belt, trousers, shoes, jacket and blood soaked shirt that had still somehow managed to stay damp from the earlier Lowlands drizzle. As I climbed into my trousers I stood quickly and feigned a swoon, blinked slowly a couple of times, staggered and held on to the wall for support.

‘He’s bleeding Riley, pretty bad.’

‘Not our problem.’

I ignored them and continued pulling on my trousers.

‘Fuck he isn’t. He’s going to look like we done a number on him.’

Riley stared at me and shook his head.

‘And we’ve got enough internal investigation crawling all over here as it is with… well you know.’

Coyle.
I thought.

‘Look,’ I said, ‘Is there any way you can get me a dry shirt, anything, and get me cleaned up, maybe help stop the bleeding? There is not a Lowlands taxi out there going to take me looking like this, funeral outfit or not.’

‘You’re in the wrong place to be asking for favours,’ said Riley.

‘I know, but think about it. Obviously someone high up, for whatever reason, wants me out. How’s it going to appear me showing up for the welcoming committee looking like a spare rib?’

Riley looked at Cooper.

‘Especially with liability Coyle on your watch.’

‘He is not my concern,’ said Riley.

It amused me that Coyle, despite his absence, was still helping me get what I wanted.

Riley’s shoulders dropped. ‘Fuck, OK, but Cooper, you do it, our medic is not in until morning and I want him out of here before Coyle gets back.’

‘Where has he gone?’ I asked.

Riley ignored the question and pushed me along the corridor to the first aid room, as if I was still incarcerated and cuffed.

He swiped a card to open it and we all went inside.

The medical room smelled of bleach and unused, metallic surfaces reflected the bright overhead strip-lights and bounced gleams and glints into every corner, as if germs could hide in shadows and the light added that final level of sterility. Cooper pulled half a dozen paper towels from a dispenser mounted on the rear wall and threw them at me. I wet them at a small sink and started to wipe myself down. Riley opened cupboards and doors until he found the one containing bandages, dressings and swabs and searched through them, looking for something suitable.

‘You know, I cannot work out if you are really lucky or in deep, deep shit,’ he said.

I sat on the treatment chair with my wad of dark, used towels.

‘You’ve got the Horizoneers not wanting the bad publicity of dragging you through the system they hate so much, dropping the charges and actually claiming to the media this has done them good, you know, showing how low the government will stoop.’

I shrugged again, fresh blood dripped down my chest and pooled in my navel to gather at my waistband. I still carried my belt.

‘Then you’ve got her Ladyship Leonora, prissier than boudoir lace, saying pretty much the same thing.’

‘Apart from the good publicity element,’ added the younger Mudhead.

‘And that’s not to mention, Sergeant, what did you call him, ah yes,
Liability
baying for your blood.’

‘Where is he? I would like to say goodbye properly before I leave,’ I said.

Riley laid out a pair of small scissors, dressings, swabs and a few alcohol wipes.

‘I’m sure you would.’ He laughed. ‘I sent him to eat, convinced him he should have a break before coming to see you. He’s in the canteen right now grabbing handfuls of whatever it is that keeps him so sour. Reckon we’ve got about twenty minutes respite left. And counting.’ He passed me the wipes, ‘Now clean yourself up properly, then Cooper will stick you a dressing on. I ain’t paid enough to rub another man’s chest.’

Cooper looked annoyed, then rummaged for adhesive tape in one of the many drawers, found some and pulled up a small footstool to sit opposite me.

‘So you’d do it for more money?’ I asked.

Cooper blurted a laugh and a wry smile crept across Riley’s face.

‘You should be so lucky.’

I missed the banter of camaraderie that came with being part of a unit. Any unit. The back and forth of jousting jokes and sharp derision, the jibes that honed your wit and diffused the horrors and honours that everyday life could bestow. It is part of being a man, I think, to be able to equip yourself with a quick wit and thick skin, the give and take, the revealing of self through the intelligence and self-deprecation found in the wit and grace of daily conversation.

It reminded me of who I was.

It reminded me of my brother.

It had been a long time since I had laughed but feelings about my brother’s death rose to squash any amusement. I thought of him, of Doc, of the occasions when we were all caught up in the frenetic fire fights and dogged drudgery of battle, when, at the time, misery and reminders of mortality seemed to percolate every action, mundane or heroic. Yet, looking back, they were the best days of my life. Had I ever felt more alive? Been more happy at making it through another night? Celebrated living more?

I doubted it.

Why was I thinking about this now?

I snapped myself back into the room and onto the problem of exiting with what I had come for.

I wadded up the dirty paper towels, heavy with water, sweat and blood, and dropped them into a lined bin marked ‘Medical Waste’.

‘How’d you get this anyway?’ Cooper asked, dragging the antiseptic wipe across the rim of the cut.

I quietly hissed but said nothing.

‘Coyle do it bringing you in?’

I did not respond.

‘Well, it looks swollen but clean and by the way it keeps pissing out blood, relatively new too.’ Cooper bent to examine the cut closer.

I had started to get on with these men, find an affinity with them that made what I was about to do to them even harder. They found the honour in their duty and let it underscore everything they did. They were good people.

But even good people get hurt in war.

‘Is there something in there?’ Cooper asked.

Riley came over to look into the cut.

‘Get some tweezers.’ Riley did not look up as he spoke.

Cooper removed some tweezers from a small drawer and tossed them to Riley.

‘Now Theron, this is going to smart a bit.’

I gritted my teeth and nodded. Felt the muscles and tendons in my arms and legs go rigid, my teeth clench until my jaw ached. My hands tightened around my belt. My eyes open.

‘Relax, I’ve done my share of this, you know, taking foreign bodies out of foreign bodies. I worked the Deluvian riots.’ He placed the ends of the tweezers into the cut and slowly moved them deeper into the wound. ‘Should have seen some of the things we pulled out of…’

His voice faded out. I thought I was ready, could handle the sharp pain, use it, but I was wrong. My body, unaware of my intent, had been doing its level best to reject the card since its subcutaneous insertion. My chest was inflamed and there was a hot redness along the gashed edge that was tender and hyper sensitive. Rather than using the pain as a beam of light to focus my thoughts and crystallise my actions, like I had been trained, it became a white-hot sun, scorching at the centre of my subconscious and blinding me to anything else other than to its own obliterating existence. I felt exposed and vulnerable. The excruciation was unbearable.

‘Nearly,’ said Riley, whose tongue projected comically from between his front teeth.

Cooper looked simultaneously sickened and interested, his eyes wide with curiosity as his mouth turned out a grimace of repugnant dismay.

Riley pushed the tweezers deeper, I could see them moving beneath the taut pink cloth of my skin.

I balked and nausea washed over me.

‘Got it,’ Riley said.

He slid the card out slowly, as if he were extracting a tooth from a poorly sedated lion.

I held on to consciousness, knowing that I had to get that card then get out of this room fast. I stayed with the pain, had no choice anyway.

‘What the fuck?’ said Riley, turning it over with the tweezers. Thick gelled clots and a small lump of fibrous tissue clung to it. Cooper came closer.

‘Theron, you OK? Riley, I think he’s greying out.’

Riley looked up from his newly found, exhumed treasure and gave my face a short sharp slap.

‘You’re looking like a wax dummy of yourself. Cooper, help me lay him down, get his legs in the air; he’s going into shock.’

‘I’m fine. Leave me.’ I released the clamping pressure in my jaw. My teeth ached and my heart sounded cacophonous inside the echoing drum of my head, my chest thumping out fresh blood on each throbbing beat.

Riley’s concern was palpable but he listened and turned his attention back to the extricated item.

‘Looks like a credit card. Some kind of blank swiper.’ He stood and walked to the sink to wash it clean.

Cooper handed me more paper towels, I quickly wiped myself down again and he stuck thick swathes of bandages and gauze across the cut. He was continuing to rip and stick thick lengths of adhesive over the dressing when Riley came back to where I sat.

‘That will do, Cooper.’

Cooper stopped and stepped back to admire his handiwork.

Riley held the card aloft in front of my face. ‘It looks like a swipe card of sorts. Mind telling me what this is for and how the flying fuck it crawled into your chest without you knowing about it?’

‘I’m not feeling too good,’ I said.

Riley looked at the card again.

‘Come on,’ said Cooper. ‘This does not end up inside a man without him having some kind of inkling as to how it got there.’

I let my left arm drop slowly to my side, the belt buckle held firmly in my palm, the leather strap trailed down the side of my chair to the floor. They did not notice.

Riley’s stance became more confrontational, he held the card closer to my nose. I tensed my grip on the buckle.

‘He put it there himself,’ Riley said.

‘But why…?’ Cooper’s question trailed off as he realised what the card was and why I had brought it here.

He went for his baton.