Storm Dreams (The Cycle of Somnium Book 1) (22 page)

Shea laughed. “What, with you here to protect me?” She gave a flippant gesture with her wrist. “Actually, I brought three body guards, and they had rifles on us the whole time.” She licked the commodore’s ear and smiled as he flinched away. “Commodore knows I’m not bluffing. Don’t you, Baby?” She gave him a savage elbow to the ribs and must have struck a nerve cluster because he doubled over and gagged.

Cassidy spotted a large shape beneath a canvas tarp. He walked over and dragged the heavy fabric away, revealing his Fokker VII in pristine condition. They’d probably been afraid to actually fly it. Either because they couldn’t, or for fear of becoming Armada targets.

“See you later, Mr. Cassidy,” Shea said, the Commodore’s hair still wrapped in her fingers.

“I’m not leaving you with him,” Cassidy said.

“You’ll have to,” Shea said, and pinched the Commodore behind the neck. “We have business still.”

Cassidy looked at the pirate captain, still doubled over in pain. “Are you going to kill him?” he asked Shea.

“Kill him? No,” Shea said, pulling the struggling captain towards the back of the hanger. “He just likes it rough. Pays extra.” She bent close and the Commodore whispered something. She touched a panel on the wall and the hanger swung open.

Cassidy nodded to her and climbed into the cockpit.

“By the way,” Shea called before he started the engine. “If you’re looking for your ship, someone saw a Zeppelin in The Starling.”

“Where’s that?” he hollered back.

“A ways from here, straight out,” she said, pointing beyond the open hanger. Cassidy nodded and started the engine. The Starling? he thought. Tell me that’s not a bird with teeth.

Cassidy felt good to be back in the sky again. Part of him wanted to return and lay waste to the Commodore’s small fleet of airships with a belt or two of
real
world solid Spandau rounds. The bastard had lost him time. On the other hand, he hadn’t known which way to find Banner until a few minutes before. Why hadn’t Shea just told him in the first place?

He tried to imagine what
a good ways
actually meant. Something in miles or metres would have been nice, but he assumed her units of measurement would be different from what the plane’s instruments read and without the sun, moon, stars or recognisable land masses, he had no way of figuring distance any other way. Cassidy hoped The Starling, whatever it was, would be easy to identify.

Flying cleared his mind. He had hardly attempted to process the last few months, and now it rushed in on him as the Twilight clouds flew by. Why did he feel almost
real
one moment, like in the heat of action, then like a ghost afterwards? How much of his thinking was Richthofen and how much was his own? Was any of it his own thinking or was everything in his head a combination of the Baron and the Everdream? Did John Cassidy really exist, or was he just a drifting concept with no concrete past or future, and nothing but a transient present? Was only the moment
real
?

He thought about Banner. How
real
the captain seemed. How solid. And Brewster. The man was capable of living life just to live it. Didn’t care about the future or the past. Didn’t dwell on constant questions of who and what he was. Cassidy wondered if the Twilights had philosophers and theologians. The demon with the umbrella had told him dreams didn’t have souls. What
was
a soul?

And Barnabas. The creature had given nothing but more questions, not the least of which being,
had anything he’d said been true
?

Cassidy checked his gauges. Checked the sky for signs of anything but clouds. Checked his tail for anyone following. Nothing. Empty. Cobalt and pink wisps.

Time stretched and shrank in his head. He tried to calculate how long it had been since Banner had rescued him from the dream. How long he had flown with the
Nubigena
crew? How long had he spent in the glass prison? How long since he’d eaten? He was starving, but starvation hadn’t killed him. Did he just
think
he was starving?

A small group of airships appeared in the distance like a cluster of stray balloons, standing out against the purple clouds in various primary colours. Despite being so dangerous, the Twilight was also beautiful. Cassidy kept his eye on them as he continued past, but instead of approaching, they drifted another direction.

The fuel gauge told him he’d only burned a quarter tank, but it vexed him that there was no assurance he could find another place to refuel. The Fokker was a fine plane, but it was meant for short-range sorties. Its engine was made for speed, not fuel economy.

Cassidy sat back and tried to relax as the soft vibrations of the control stick thrummed up his hand and into his body. He worried too much. He knew that.

***

The Starling was unmistakable. A large array of scaffolding, girders and beams had been shaped into the loose form of a bird, its wings outstretched. Cassidy guessed that at one time it had been some kind of artificial island, built perhaps as a half-way port between more natural islands. Now, it looked like a twisted skeleton. Whatever covering or platforms that existed once had long since fallen away, or been scavenged.

Cassidy flew among the juts and joints of naked metal, searching for any sign of the
Nubigena
or its crew. Up close, he never would have known the structure resembled anything like a bird, but calculated he must be somewhere around the left wing. At the very tip a grey mass stood out against the steel. He throttled towards it, and, as he neared, he made out the unmistakable shape of the
Nubigena
, drifting, moored only at the nose by a cable so long he didn’t notice it at first.

She looked derelict. Cassidy couldn’t help thinking of an expired animal floating in a stream. The landing platform on top had been finished. At least they hadn’t forgotten about him. Banner, with all his optimism, had probably just assumed they would meet again.

Cassidy had never landed on anything adrift before, but lined up, reduced speed as much as he could without stalling and pushed the button Karl had built into the console. A catch released on the bottom of the fuselage with an audible click.  He hoped it would do whatever it was supposed to do.

He guided the Fokker down over the
Nubigena’s
tail and cut the throttle completely. Cassidy glided down, touched the platform and felt the cable snag. It felt like slamming into a wall as the fighter lurched to a shuddering stop, just feet from the edge of the runway, which ended just short of the gun platform.

Cassidy hopped down and found mooring collars that easily attached to the landing gear. Karl was never anything but thorough when it came to design.

He entered the gun platform from the outside door and made his way down the ladder to the floor of the main cell. The silence disturbed him. He’d never noted how much noise the engines made. The ballasts. The gas bladders as they adjusted their buoyancy. It was as if the
Nubigena’s
voice, perhaps even her heart, had been crushed, and he was invading her derelict corpse.

Karl’s quarters stood empty. Cassidy made his way down into the gondola. His heart sank notch by notch as room after room proved empty. Brewster’s. Jayce’s. Banner’s. Everyone’s. His own looked the same as it always had and he moved on through the galley and main corridor to the bridge. The door stood open. The helm moved left and right between several spokes as the gentle wind moved the responsive rudder back and forth. The elevator flap was moving, too, because the pedals worked up and down as if a phantom was flying the dead ship.

Banner never left the helm without the safeties engaged. What in God’s name? Endless scenarios played out in this mind. Pirates. Bounty hunters. The Armada.

Cassidy wandered back through the ship. Food sat on the galley table, uneaten. Wine and coffee still undrunk. Cigarettes burned to grey cylinders of ash. He found Brewster’s pipe beside the chair in his quarters, packed, but unlit.

Silence closed in on him as the vacant ship drifted. It had become an abyss. An empty eggshell, unchipped, but having spilt its egg and yolk somewhere along the way. Cassidy clutched at his neck. He loosened his scarf which had been tied like a cravat and stuffed into his shirt. It didn’t help. His throat still constricted.

Cassidy stumbled to Banner’s quarters, pulled a thick vinyl disc of Beethoven from the bookshelf and wound the Edison talking machine. With trembling hands, he fit the disc over the pin in the turntable and placed the stylus on the edge. A flick of the switch and he adjusted the speed until “Ode to Joy” eked from the brass funnel as he fell to his knees and cried. He was asleep on the floor by the end of the second movement.

***

Cassidy woke to a silence even more barren than the one he’d fallen asleep to. The talking machine lay still, its spring unwound and spent hours before. He’d needed to see the
Nubigena
again so badly and hadn’t realised how much until now. Needed to see Banner and Brewster. Hear their voices. What little existence he had in this world was so tied up with them. Tied up with this ship itself, but even
she
refused to speak. He remembered looking up at her the first night at the hotel. The beautiful goddess of the storm, a half-tamed cloud that now lay dead around him.

He’d find them somehow. Cassidy stuffed thousands of Twilight and
real
banknotes from Banner’s desk into a canvas bag. No telling how far he’d have to go this time. How much information he’d have to buy. He climbed back up to his plane and shoved the bag behind the seat. After a deep sigh, he climbed back down to the gondola and took one last look around the ship.

Cassidy screamed down the row of cabins one last time. Something crashed at the end of the corridor. The sound had come from the aft section. He dashed for the stairs and up into the vast emptiness of the main cell. A shadow moved. He ran to it, grabbed its shoulders and turned it around.

Karl’s ancient features faced him, but the crazed eyes couldn’t focus. The old German pulled away, grabbed a spanner and began twisting nuts inside one of the strange machines he’d once showed Cassidy. Karl muttered to himself in German, but Cassidy couldn’t make out the words.

“Karl,” Cassidy said, running to him. “Karl. It’s Cassidy. Karl, it’s me.”

Karl looked up at him again, but went back to fiddling with anything he could get his hands on, though he didn’t seem to be actually
doing
anything. It was as if he were mimicking work without knowing what to do. Cassidy grabbed him by the shoulders again and locked eyes. “Karl,” he shouted. “Where’s Banner? Where’s everyone?”

The old man shrugged. “They are here,” he said, and tried to return to work.

“Where?” Cassidy asked, refusing to let him go. “Where are they?”

Karl flailed his arms as if pointing everywhere at once. “They are all over the place. I need to work. Fix everything,” he said, and pulled away. “So much work.”

Cassidy grabbed him again and pinned his back to one of the aluminium supports. “Karl. What happened here?” he said, trying to keep his voice calm and slow, but he knew he was still shouting. “What happened?”

Karl stopped struggling. He stared off as if watching something in the distance. “The Borealis. The colours. They come through like a storm,” he said. His face contorted as if he were re-experiencing the horror. “Not good storm. The colours,” he said, again. “The colours.”

Cassidy let him go. Karl sat down on the deck and looked catatonic. The last time Aurora Borealis had come through it had brought the ghosts. What had this one brought?

He considered restarting the engines and getting the
Nubigena
back in motion, but something inside told him that might be a bad idea. After all, where had Karl been all this time? He’d searched everywhere, including the hidden crawl ways where he’d once found Jayce.

Cassidy ran down the corridors, calling everyone’s name again. A gaunt shape stumbled out of a cabin he’d just checked. “Franz?” Cassidy said as the young German fell into his arms.

“Is Hell,” Franz said, trying to stand up. His wild eyes fluttered, then closed. He went limp for several seconds and he sat bolt upright. “They’re all in Hell.”

Jayce showed up on the bridge. Cassidy found him sitting at the navigation desk flipping switches on a dead console. Brewster sat smoking his pipe without lighting it.

Cassidy continued his back and forth search of the ship for hours. Exhausted, he sat down where Jayce had appeared. The young man was now fast asleep in his quarters. All of them were either asleep now or continuing pointless chores. None of them speaking much other than gibberish.

The helm still twisted back and forth, the pedals going up and down like a sea-saw. A hazy shadow materialized at the large wheel. It faded in and out of existence for several minutes before Cassidy could make out the concrete form of Banner, who clung to the spokes to keep himself upright.

Banner turned. Cassidy flinched. The captain’s face looked like nothing he’d ever seen. His normally cool grey eyes all but poked out of their sockets and red veins stood out against the white around his irises. “Banner,” Cassidy said, as the darting eyes tried to focus. “Banner! Dammit man, what happened?”

Banner blinked and shook his head. “How long?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Cassidy said. “I just found the ship.”

The captain nodded, as if half-remembering that Cassidy had been absent all this time. “The Borealis,” he said, and stopped, trying to find words. “There were others. Thousands. Dreams. Souls. I don’t know.”

He flexed his fingers on and off the spokes of the helm as if trying to milk reassurance from the solid wood. “It pulled us out to the fringes. Dragged us through...when it moved beyond, I guess we snapped back.” Banner shook his head. His eyes still appeared to be seeing other things. Other places. He seemed half on the
Nubigena
and half back in the Borealis. “Is anyone else—”

“You’re the last to show up,” Cassidy said, and gave Banner a squeeze on his shoulder. “They’re not well.”

Banner nodded. “It’ll happen again,” he said, and bit his lip as if trying to hold back what he was saying, even from himself. “We’ve got to get everyone off the ship.”