Blood On Borrowed Wings: A Dark Fantasy Thriller (39 page)

Nothing, but nothing, is created without struggle.

The House on Dormant Street

Clarissa Took

Just listen to her, I thought, no need to come inside.

I could make out most of the voices and what they were saying.
Just leave the plane well alone for a few minutes and …

Cowlin’s large frame filled the cabin doorway.

I lay prone and near the door, in between the two rear rows of passenger seats, my head propped up against the interior of the plane, my feet in the aisle. I lunged out and kicked up, missing Cowlin’s jaw but connecting with the side of his head and ear. He tumbled back through the door, swearing. I then loaded my bow and stooped out onto the steps.

I pointed my bow straight at Governor Rose.

‘Just give me a reason someone. Anyone.’

Facing death in battle has a way of clearing your head of incidentals, so that it may

be lighter when it leaves your shoulders.

The Omega Machine

H. Morthread

The engineer finished refuelling the aircraft and unscrewed the heavy fuel - pump nozzle. It was made of old world brass and he did not want it scuffing on the floor or exposed to the elements. He was on his way over the wings of the aircraft when he saw Cowlin fall backwards out of the door, totally missing the stairs and crashing to the hangar floor.

He then saw a guard emerge from the plane and point a crossbow at the Governor.

Stephan Evers was a good engineer. Not destined for warfare or frontline skirmishes, he had immersed himself in academia and excelled in engineering mechanics and history. Fossil fuels had become his speciality and for years he had worked on a pioneering team that lead the way in those fuels’ synthesis and replication. Fossil fuel had been the main reason for the old world’s almost-demise. Today they devoted more resources, as a global community, towards solutions to the fossil fuel conundrum, than they did to curing cancer. After all, compared to cancer, had not fossil fuels, oil, caused more deaths? More wars? More geopolitical backstabs and sideswipes? More misery for those who did not have it and even more for those that did?

He was not a soldier, he was an engineer first, historian second. And being an engineer, especially on this project, had taught him that anything can be put together again but people. Being a historian he had also read that all evil needed to triumph was for good men to do nothing.

And Stephan Evers was more than a good engineer, he was a good man.

He took the only justifiable action a good man could and brought the brass nozzle down, collar first, onto the top of Drake’s head.

There is nothing more likely to keep you going than thinking of the consequences of giving up.

A Hero’s Tale

L. Dodsley
 

The daylight was drowned. Thunder rumbled and sounded like cannons firing barrages of booming doom at a distant shore. The wind was bellowing into the guts of the hangar and whined a clangourous din through rusted struts and loose rivets.

 
I felt, at first, as if I was rising from a deep and natural sleep, but then that gave way to disorientation and unease.

My senses were slowly fading in, consciousness wavering, teasing me from a distance just too far away to fully grasp. The whole world was happening at a sensory periphery; all but the sound of the elements at play, alien and indecipherable.

My head was down and I was seated.

The phonics told me I was inside a small space, though there was no distinct sound that gave it away; I just knew, like stepping into a small store cupboard or great hall or theatre with your ears open, even when the lights are off.

I tried to raise my hand to my nose and my banging head but found my hands were tethered.

I was not gagged.

I felt a strange twisting weight at my back, then remembered my wings. I tried to flex them, but as I was sitting upright and leaning back slightly, any kind of movement was negated by my own bodyweight. Pain still crawled out from my wing’s base warning against further exertion. The back of my head sang from its recent, unforeseen blow.

Someone I had not seen must have taken me out.

I strained my eyes open, blinked a few times until they became more accustomed and the instrument panel of the aeroplane swam vaguely into focus. Did they intend to take me up on this thing? Where were we going?

My hands were tied to the steering yoke, a metal column that disappeared into the console, with no discernible joins or weaknesses. I gave a tentative pull.

‘Going somewhere?’ a voice from beside me said.

I jumped and abruptly stopped my feeble struggling.

‘You’re in the co-pilot’s chair and, as the honorary passenger for the inaugural flight of this, erm, antiquated contraption, I encourage you to keep your seat.’

I said nothing and turned to face Governor Rose.

‘One of your eyes is swelling shut. Are you comfortable?’ she asked, smiling.

I said nothing.

‘Glad you could finally pay us a visit, Mr Theron, we have been waiting quite some time for you to join us.’

Leo squeezed between the gap of our chairs and, after checking her rear would not engage or flick something vital, she leaned back onto the pilot’s console. I looked at her, then beyond her, out of the windscreen and through the open hangar doors. The sky was imbued the colour of overripe plums. The clouds churned and roiled in a maelstrom, the down sides burgeoning and blood blister black. Fat with rain and malevolence, their pregnant underbellies seemed so low that a tree or sharp roof could at any moment prick their pressurised gut and bring the whole oceanic torrent of spume and crashing tides down, to wash us away.

Another cannon shot at a closer target, underscoring the dirge.

‘Remember me?’ Leonora asked.

I ignored her and instead addressed Rose. ‘This is the bit where you tell me the whys and the hows isn’t it? Where you gloat as you sum it all up for your absent audience and public?’

‘I have already done that, whilst you were sleeping. Talked about my vision for a unified people, for mass travel between the ground and the sky. I extolled the virtues of endeavour and triumph, our triumph, together through the ages. It was optimistic and it delivered Mr Theron.

‘It was a speech entitled ‘Bringing the Sky and Earth Together’, something I thought your friends at Horizon would appreciate.’

‘I don’t have any friends.’

‘Not anymore,’ Leonora said.

I had received a great deal of knocks and bumps in the last few weeks, throughout my life really. We all do, but nothing had ever hurt me more than the words that had just spilled out of her manicured, sneering mouth. Nothing. My brother. Pan. Doc.

A swarm of hatred rose up inside me and I glared at Leonora, from beneath my bruised and scowling brow.

Her gaze shrank away.

Rose continued as if nothing had been said, ‘I announced Nimbus’ progress with this flight, how it could open up links between Nimbus City and the Lowlands, that it could be the blueprint for a new way of life. A future shared, in the skies.’

‘New? Progress?’ I looked around at the shabby craft.

Rose was smiling. A smear of dark red lipstick clung to one of her canine teeth. ‘I am the old bringing in the new.’

Leonora was busy looking elsewhere.

‘Now ordinarily, I would oppose this,’ Rose went on, ‘I would loathe getting any closer to the scum that wander around in the swamps and sulphuric hovels down
here
.’ She screwed up her nose. ‘But this paints me as an …’

‘So this
is
where you give me the why’s and how’s’ I said.

Rose leaned over from her chair. ‘It’s more than your brother got.’

I was already numb, nothing she could say or do would affect me anymore. The smug expression slid slightly from her heavily made up face, when she did not get a reaction.

‘OK, have it your way. But I want you to go to your death knowing this, Mr Theron: Bethscape was me, I tipped them off, the Blackwings knew you were coming.’

‘I know,’ said Drake. ‘We all did.’

‘That’s why I had your brother killed in the end. He was still digging around about that, would not stop, and he was very good at his job. I can tell you are brothers. Sorry,
were
brothers.’

I said nothing.

‘Then I thought I could be rid of him and entangle you at the same time. Even frame you for it. For the whole mess, call it a family vendetta, and just think …’ She looked out of one of the side windows. ‘When your failed assassination plot against me is revealed to the nation, I would have overcome adversity, though once again, adversity engineered by me. A survivor for my people. Genius don’t you think?’

‘Do you think people down here care about what you do? About politics or which eyebrow you’ve plucked today? They just want...’

Governor Rose’s temper flared, ‘
My
people love me. Love me. What do you know about what people want? You don’t spend your time with anyone unless it suits you. I tell them what they want. Then I give it them.’

‘Or take it away.’ I said.

‘At Bethscape I created a crisis in the black void of public opinion and shone like a star. And I’m doing the self-same thing now. Blackwings and unhinged Slayers on the prowl, the perfect public and political backdrop to remind people of their history and of who was there for them back when things were this bad. Back when
your kind,
the last remnants of the flying freak show, thought you served your country, thought you served me.’

Her speech gathered momentum, she spoke faster, her face illuminated with excitement.

‘I will resurrect the glory days I had after Bethscape. Just think of it, the story of how I tried to unite Nimbus but got kidnapped, sabotaged by you. A madman mutant with his stolen, dead brother’s wings stitched to his back, a path of death and destruction in his wake. Perfect. And you have played along. How you have played along.’ She clapped her hands, with genuine smug satisfaction.

‘The Bethscape massacre, for which, in my opinion, you acted like you were culpable anyway, your brother, your funereal meltdown, your Doctor friend, your bottle through the Horizoneers window, Coyle. All of it. And now this plane crash, killing the hope of the Groundbound and taking this ludicrous notion of equality off the agenda. I do not want Nimbus united, but I want it to look like I tried.’

I looked at my trussed hands.

‘And I have tried Mr. Theron, and now the stage is set. And you have helped me do it. You will just be remembered, depicted, as a demented madman who, at every juncture has behaved psychotically, predictably and selfishly. And you have made it all possible Mr. Theron, so thank you …’ She dropped her voice to a whisper, I had to strain to hear the words above the storm outside, ‘Thank you.’

I was tired.

Leonora stepped forward and came over to me. ‘I only have one regret, just one.’ She leaned in, closer, closer still, her mouth almost touching my ear, whispering conspiratorially, as only thieves or lovers do: ‘That the Blackwings didn’t finish you off like they were supposed to, all those years ago.’

I spat blood onto the floor, right next to her feet.

‘Thanks for the kiss,’ I said.

She slapped me with a backhand across my face, then barged between the Governor and me towards the back of the plane; blood started to trickle down my cheek from Jackdaw’s reopened rake.

Rose stood to follow her. ‘Take comfort, Leonora, at least we will be right behind him, to watch the show.’

She looked back at me, pointing over her shoulder, ‘Our parachutes are back there.’

‘Ladies love silk,’ I said.

She glared.

‘So where are we going?’

‘Oh, it’s not ‘we’ at all Drake. Just you.

‘How are you going to explain me kidnapping you tied to a steering column?’

‘Aviation fuel burns very hot, Mr Theron, it will disintegrate your ties and pretty much everything else in this cabin. Even your blood-stained borrowed wings.’

She stood to follow Leonora, then stopped, leaned down and kissed me high on my cheek.

‘Nimbus thanks you, Slayer, for your sacrifice.’

‘Ex,’ I said.

The joys of all travel can be found in one solitary action of forward movement.

Ruminations: Canto 5

Vanda Smith

Cowlin climbed into the seat next to me, buckled a new but crudely made safety harness across his chest and waist, then thought about it and removed it. He opened a book in his lap. One side of his face was swollen, I had caught him a heavy blow, but he did not seem to be paying it any attention. Less than I was anyway. He mistook my attention as interest and started talking, tapping the book.

‘Got it from the Blackwings at the library near the old four point church. Lead a snatch and grab whilst they were out looking for you. Don’t even know we took it. Would have paid them more for this than for any of the half-arsed errands and goose chases we have been sending them on.’

I ignored his attempt at small talk and stared out of the hangar doorway. The clouds were rolling on, but the rain seemed lighter now, the wind had dropped, the afternoon sun trying to penetrate the clouds and succeeding in small pinholes that spread and shifted spotlights of day across the neglected, sodden airstrip.

Cowlin looked embarrassed to be in this position with me, seemed to be chattering nervously; he was not comfortable. It might be something I could use.

‘Soldier, what rank are you?’

‘Do not engage in conversation with this man.’ Leonora's voice came from behind us. ‘He is poison.’

Cowlin looked down, consulted his book then flicked a couple of ball switches. ‘A few more minutes and we will be ready for take-off. I have cross-checked the ’chutes, they are stowed and the fuel is topped.’

‘What about the crew?’ asked Leonora. At first I thought she meant cabin crew, like the plastic beautiful people that serve you wine on the larger, more luxurious Zeppelins, then I realised she meant camera crew. The four-seater aeroplane would be too small for anyone else.

‘In position, centre strip. Under strict instructions to roll when we level out, up there.’ Cowlin pointed at the sky as if a particular spot there denoted an exact position.

‘Can’t we put our parachutes on now?’ Rose whispered to an engineer who was doing a final check of something near the door.

‘Sorry, Governor. You must be strapped in correctly. The ride will be bumpy. Turbulence, especially in these atmospherics, it will be especially …’

‘Thank you, Evers,’ said Rose.

There was an eerie silence then as the wind dropped and the sun began to win its battle against the pandemic storm. The skies were not clear, but the raindrops fell fatter and less often. Sing-song drops smacked about the hangar floor in various places revealing where the holes in the roof were.

‘We’re ready,’ Cowlin said, then went back to close the aeroplane’s door.

I used the opportunity to test my ties, planted my feet firmly either side of the steering column then felt a pain prick in one of the cuts of my right cheek.

Leonora had a crossbow bolt resting delicately in my cut, she then brought it up and pointed it directly at my right eye. It was so close I was surprised it did not break the surface tension and striate my iris. The bolt head lost focus as I stared past it and at her. She ignored my insolence.

She put a finger to her lips in a shushing gesture then disappeared behind me again. I sat still. Cowlin found his seat and tucked the CESSNA manual into a gauze pocket by his side as Evers removed the steps.

‘Taxiing now, Governor.’

The plane lurched forward.