“I understand,” Taka said. And in his eyes, I saw a sense of wisdom well past the child’s age. Almost as if Sukina still lived inside him. As I felt she lived inside me sometimes – there to keep us both sane.
“We’ll get through this together,” I said.
“I’m sure we will. You protect me and I’ll protect you.”
I smiled. “Something like that. But in future, make sure you listen to Gerhaun and me. We tell you things for a reason.”
“I know. It’s just the voice was so strong.”
“We’ll work on it,” I said. Unfortunately, I’d have to put the poor child in the dark room with the spider automaton and teach him how to control his mind much earlier than I’d hoped. But Finesia had left me with no other choice.
“Don’t tell me you two are doing that meditation thing again,” Faso said. He had woken up to us and had stopped staring at the V-shaped line of dragons following us now.
“I’m merely having a heart to heart with your son,” I said. “And Faso, it’s about time you had one too.”
“But we don’t even know if we’ll survive today,” Faso said. Then he lowered his head in shame as he noticed my hard stare. “Okay,” he said like a scorned child. “You’re right. Taka, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have forgotten your birthday.”
Taka turned around to face him enthusiastically. “Is that all?”
“No,” Faso kept his head bowed down low as if afraid of his own son. “I’m sorry I didn’t let you in when you wanted me too. I wanted you to learn the technology and how to become a great inventor, but maybe you’re not ready yet. I guess you need time to discover yourself before you discover science.”
I shook my head. “That’s not it, Faso, when will you ever learn?” But Taka seemed to take this as a satisfactory apology.
“Apology accepted,” he said, and he turned back to me.
Faso’s jaw dropped in shock. He shook his head hard, and he looked unsure if he should chide Taka for insolence or laugh along with him. After a couple of seconds, he went with the latter and let out a nervous chuckle. “Right then, so I guess we have an hour or so to go.”
Darkness was almost upon us now and either there was no moon in the sky or it was concealed by the wall of volcanic ash behind us. Beneath it, I could see the red glow of lava streaking across the island. And the green phosphorescence of the sea seemed even brighter as night came closer. There was now a coolness to the air, unexpected in this part of the world, no doubt a side-effect of the eruption.
Taka, Faso and I spent the rest of the journey in silence, making no noise except the occasional rustle of clothing as we shifted in our hard metal seats trying to find a little comfort. Meanwhile, the roar of the volcano diminished with each furlong we flew, until all that could be heard was the howl of the wind and the flapping of the dragons wings behind.
Dragons, who were now invisible to the night. What they’d do when we reached our fleet, and the ambush that Alsie had told lay in wait for us, was anyone’s guess. They might act as our allies, but there was no way I would reach out to them and ask for their help in battle. There was no way I’d call on any of Finesia’s gifts.
Alongside the voice of Finesia, every so often I heard Colas’ voice, or one of the tribespeople’s, the tribal chief’s, or sometimes even Wiggea’s. They babbled nonsense now as if afflicted by madness. They certainly didn’t have the eloquence of myself, Charth, and Alsie.
“Ah, but that will change,” Finesia nattered at the back of my mind, “once this land becomes rich in secicao. The more they can draw from and twist the nature of the collective unconscious, the stronger their human form will become.”
“No,” I said. “These men are dead. They’ll never be human.”
“But if Dragonseer Sako was there among them. You’d maybe listen to her.”
I gritted my teeth. Why was I even letting the empress in? “Sukina would never succumb to your will, Finesia,” I said. And with those words, I shut her out of my head.
And that was the last I listened to anything other than the sounds of nature until another light came into view. The flashes of war accompanied by the roars of gunfire and cannon fire.
We had arrived at the end of what would become known as The Final Battle of Cadigan. And my stomach tightened as I realised that we’d got here too late.
23
I didn’t have to travel much further to taste the death on the collective unconscious. And then closer still, I caught sight of the husks of the sinking dragon carriers, and the corpses of dragons on the water, and The Saye Explorer still floating yet battered. All this I saw in speckled green after taking a swig of secicao oil from my hipflask.
We’d arrived just after the battle and all was calm. But it didn’t seem that the Saye Explorer had been raided yet, because I could see General Sako and Admiral Sandao standing in the centre of the lower deck, their backs to each other.
“We haven’t got a chance,” Faso said. Because of the heat signatures, I couldn’t quite see his facial features or the expression on his face.
“We’ve been through worse.”
“You’ve got to be kidding. Have you even seen those things?”
On closer examination, I noticed Faso was holding a telescope to his eye. I turned back and squinted into the distance to try and make out what he was looking at. Lo and behold, amidst the fading cloud of shrapnel flak, massive Hummingbird carriers, airships, and swarms of Hummingbirds, there was something else.
Not one but three of them…
Automatons large enough to be mammoths. Except they weren’t on the land or floating on the water, yet flying, lifted up by slow beating wings with a span three times the length of their body. They had long beaks with sharp ends that looked like they could pierce an ironclad’s hull. And even from this distance, it wasn’t hard to make out their evil glowing eyes – green in my augmented vision, but which I’m sure would have been red otherwise. Behind those eyes, the rest of their bulk also emitted a faint green glow.
“How much secicao is left in the armour?” I asked Faso.
“Why, I only brought enough for one resupply, and we used that. I hadn’t expected us to have many chances to refuel.”
I shook my head. So it was just Velos against what the king probably saw as his finest technology. Though we did have allies. I looked back at the black dragons who were taking a backseat. I could use them. I could reach out Finesia and call them into battle.
“No, Auntie,” Taka said in the collective unconscious as if reading my intent. “You said we mustn’t. There’s got to be a better way.”
“But what else can we do?” And it seemed for a moment I wasn’t talking to a young boy, but Sukina inside his head.
“We fly up to them and find out what the king wants,” he replied.
But Faso had other ideas. “We have to surrender,” he said. “This is it. King Cini has won.”
I bit my tongue to stop myself screaming at him for his negativity. I’d had quite enough of it. There was no way we were going to go down without a fight, not after everything we’d been through. “What are those automatons, anyway?” I asked, making sure we focused on the important stuff.
“Beasts of the sky,” Faso replied. “I had no idea the king had completed them. Years ago, I gave him the blueprints for an automaton I called the Roc. If he’s created them to my specifications, they’ll have more armour than a Mammoth and enough weaponry to sink three battleships at once.”
Fortunately, nothing seemed to have noticed us yet, or at least regarded us as dangerous. Then it occurred to me, the king was probably out there somewhere waiting for us to land on the Saye Explorer so he could finally come in and claim his prize. Dragonheats, he probably had an automaton on deck somewhere with a gun pointed at General Sako’s and Admiral Sandao’s head.
And indeed, as we got closer, I noticed that General Sako and Admiral Sandao were in fetters that had been welded into the floor of the ship. Their hands w
ere free, and they were throwing them up in the air and gesturing towards the front of the vessel. But they remained silent, presumably because they didn’t want to wake any guards.
I looked over the prow of the Saye Explorer, and I didn’t notice anything unusual, other than a bowsprit with a white flag handing off it, that I could swear hadn’t been there before.
“The cannon,” Faso said. “Dragonheats, I’d forgotten about it. Maybe, after all, we’ll stand a chance of taking one of the Rocs down.”
“Keep it down, Faso,” I snapped. We were still fortunately far enough away from the ship that nothing would be able to hear us. But we wouldn’t be for long. “And where’s the cannon? I can’t see it.”
“That’s because they disguised it as a flagpole,” Faso said a little quieter this time. “Whoever’s idea it was, I’ll have to commend them for their quick thinking.”
Indeed, now Faso had mentioned it, I recognised it. Our crew had simply pushed the trolley towards the front of the ship, angled the cannon upwards a little, and hung a white surrender flag off the gun to make it look as if it was part of the construction. It was ingenious.
I saluted General Sako and Admiral Sandao and pointed to the cannon to let them know we’d noticed it. Once they realised they’d got the message across, they stopped flailing their arms about and stood stock still on the deck as if nothing was happening. I couldn’t see any sign of any other guards, neither ours nor King Cini’s. But as we got closer, I noticed war automatons sitting dormant against the ship’s railing, as well as a crisscross latticework of green lines of light that stretched across the floor of the deck.
Probably, these were infrared, and I could only see them because of my augmented vision. And, no doubt, if we touched them, we’d trigger an alarm, waking up the war automatons. Then King Cini could come in, reclaim Taka, and order the public execution of Faso and myself. Giving us no choice but to get the cannon and try shooting the automatons down.
Fortunately, I recalled a while back how someone had told me that the cannon could be equipped from the air. But Velos would need to be incredibly accurate to pick it up, and we only had one shot at doing so.
Then I smiled because I remembered something. “Faso… Last time we were facing off against the king’s fleet, you told me Velos has a reserve tank. Have we used that yet?”
He paused a moment.
“Faso?”
“No,” he said. “But we might need it. And it only gives us five minutes.”
“Do it,” I said. “Faso, power on the reserve tank, and then Velos can pick up the cannon, shoot down one of those legendary Roc automatons, and after we’ve scared the king a little, we make our escape.”
“And then what?” Faso said.
I looked down at the Saye Explorer and Admiral Sandao and General Sako onboard. They would already know that they had nothing left, and both men would want us to take Taka to safety. I swallowed hard. “We’ll leave them if we have to.”
“Grandpa,” Taka said…
“He’ll be okay,” I said. And I immediately hated those words. I’d also told him the same about Sukina just before she’d died. If I were Taka, I wouldn’t trust me right now.
“Very well,” Faso said. “You’re the boss, but after this, we have absolutely no secicao left in the armour.”
I nodded. “Faso, I want you to use everything.”
“Everything?”
“Down to the last drop. We mustn’t fail at this.”
And so, he reached down to the spigot on Velos’ flank and turned it. The armour suddenly ghosted green and a little strength returned to Velos.
“Don’t roar,” I told him. And I sang a song to make sure he stayed calm. I flew him around in a circle and readied him to descend towards the faux flagpole at the Saye Explorer’s prow.
“We’ll need speed for this,” Faso said. “It takes a good bit of oomph to get that cannon on Velos.”
“Good thing he’s augmented,” I thought. And I took another swig from my hip flask as the see-in-the-dark effect had begun to fade a little. We only had one chance, and I could feel the power surging through my veins, a side-effect of my connection to Velos. I pushed down on his steering fin and urged him to edge a little closer to the ship. Meanwhile, I kept my eye on the cannon, or should I say bowsprit. I didn’t want to attempt equipping it yet. Instead, I wanted to fly over the Saye Explorer and see what we were up against.
As we passed overhead, I saw the worried expression on General Sako’s face as he looked up at me. It was as if he was saying, “I hope you know what you’re doing,” but of course he didn’t utter a word. I don’t know if he even saw Taka then, but hopefully, he’d at least catch a glance of him to know he was safe.
As well as the war automatons hiding on deck, several of the king’s redguards had been posted there too. They were propped up against the railings and all of them were asleep. The buffoons – they were so reliant on the technology that they didn’t even think to put a single man on watch.
I flew around in a circle once more and then I pushed on Velos’ steering fin to move him down towards the ship. He hurtled downwards at an intense speed, fueled by the secicao in his armour. The wind rushed passed us, and I wanted to scream out to express my joy of flying. But, of course, I didn’t want to attract attention to ourselves.
“Easy,” Faso said. “You need to be a little off to the left.”
“I know what I’m doing,” I said. This time, I hadn’t been hit by Alsie’s glamour spell or whatever she’d thrown at me all those days back in the Southlands. I could see perfectly. Plus, the secicao that I’d augmented with allowed me to compress time in my own mind.
Soon enough, we connected with the cannon, and I heard the clanking of machinery. If Velos’ claws even touched the deck, then the war automatons would wake up and King Cini would be alerted to our presence.
I pulled up as soon as Velos’ armour bucked, praying that he didn’t touch a single line of light the crisscrossed the floor. One swept ever so close to Velos’ feet, but he missed it by inches.
Then, we were up and back into the cool night. I looked over my shoulder, half expecting that the cannon would still be on the ship. We’d have failed and Velos wouldn’t have enough secicao left in his armour to have any chance of another successful pass. A guard stirred on deck, probably awoken by the noise, but I knew by the time he came to, we’d be long gone.
“You did it,” Faso shouted out. “First time, I’d never have expected.”
I snorted. “Well, I guess it’s time to go and deliver our message to King Cini.” He probably would expect us to emerge bruised and battered, and not in any state at all to fight back.
“That’s right,” Faso said. “And remember, we only have three shots.”
I nodded. Three shots. Three Roc automatons. Hopefully, I’d only have to use one before we made our escape. The king’s boat would try and stop us with shrapnel flak, of course. But by that time, we’d be long on our way to the Southlands. And we were so far from the volcano and the dangerous currents it had created, I could probably try taking Velos underneath the ships.
I pulled Velos over to the side and we flew towards the line of airships that I saw in the distance. They had their searchlights ready, watching the water. No doubt keeping watch if any of the captive crew of the Saye Explorer tried to escape in a lifeboat.
I could now see the flying automatons’ massive heads, turning from side to side and scanning the horizon. Their beaks were the most monstrous thing I’d ever seen on a bird or anything that resembled one. Their upper and lower beak had two sharp inner edges flecked with razors that looked like they would dash apart anything that got in their way.
Ratter now sat on Faso’s shoulder watching what I imagined the ferret automaton regarded as his nemeses. Now we’d destroyed the panthers on Colas’ island, the Rocs were perhaps the most impressive automaton known to mankind. Although Faso would claim they weren’t as intelligent as Ratter, I�
�m sure. And who knows what the inventor had in mind for his dragon automaton.
One of the Rocs turned its head to us as we approached. It let out a caw to the sky, just like a crow’s but a thousand times the volume. So loud, in fact, it seemed to rock the waves in front of it.
All of a sudden, some airship propellers began to hum in unison and a searchlight swung around to focus on us from the airship behind the Roc. Not long after that, King Cini’s voice emanated out of a loudspeaker. “Well, I never. Pontopa Wells, and indeed Alsie was right, you brought the boy. Taka… Long time no see, aye.”
“Dragonheats,” I said back to Faso. “I wish you’d brought along a loudspeaker so I could tell that idiot king to stuff his felt crown up his behind.”
“Pontopa… There’s a child present.”
“Yes, you’re right,” I said. “Taka don’t try that at home…”
And he smiled as if getting my joke. This boy, in many ways, was years past his age.
“Is the cannon ready?” I asked Faso. “We have a better way of showing the king our contempt.” I glanced over my shoulder at the two great hulking aerial automatons now following us. Under each wing, they had three massive guns all lined up next to each other, again with that faint secicao gleam running across the length of each one. While we flew ahead, the automatons tracked us with remarkable precision, their wings adjusting automatically to match any change in direction. Despite their size, they seemed quite mobile, although I guessed they weren’t quite equipped for aerobatics like Velos was capable of.
“Ready,” Faso said. “You won’t miss this time, will you?”
“Of course not.” I took another swig of my secicao oil just to make sure.
Ratter launched itself off Faso’s shoulder and onto the side of Velos where the special control panel was. I felt the armour thrum again, but this time it didn’t glow or emit heat. It wasn’t being powered by secicao, but rather the cannon beneath was gaining power. Meanwhile, I kept Velos steady and on course. We had about thirty seconds now before we’d pass the Roc, which I could see clearly now. It had a Gatling cannon on the top of its head, pointed right at us. Then, there was another much larger machine gun on its underbelly, connected to a long bandolier that coiled around its chest and tail, from where it hung off at the tip.
Dragonseers and Airships Page 56