Blood On Borrowed Wings: A Dark Fantasy Thriller

by Darren Stapleton

  ‘Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit there, Blackwing, and you will do well to remember you are a guest on my vessel.’

  ‘As you will do well to remember that I do not enjoy being called Blackwing. My name is Croel and I will remind you but once to use it.’

  ‘Sarcasm is not the lowest form of wit. It is always current, it assumes intelligence.’ Loopes was trying to make the atmosphere more relaxed and not succeeding.

  ‘Well, you should know better than to come aboard my ship and assume anything,’ said Beaugent.

  ‘Especially intelligence,’ said Croel.

  ‘Where is she?’ shouted Bronagh from the next floor up.

  ‘On its way,’ replied Loopes through cupped hands, beckoning again for Mckeever and Croel to follow him. Beaugent stood to one side as Mckeever and Croel passed through the door to go up and return the weapon to Bronagh. He did not take his eyes off Croel, even as he climbed the stairs to the next deck, where Bronagh waited.

  ‘She bent or bowed?’

  ‘No, but she, ah, it… is heavy enough to warrant redesigning. It is way to heavy to be practical.’

  ‘She’s made to be housed on a ship’s bow or stern, not for hauling around on land by two…’

  ‘Choose your next words carefully,’ said Croel, eyes narrowing.

  ‘I was going to say mercenaries,’ said Bronagh.

  ‘That’s care enough,’ said Mckeever.

  ‘How many harpoons were deployed?’

  ‘Just the one. I do not miss.'

  Bronagh looked uneasily at Loopes.

  'It’s been cleaned and stowed as specified,’ Mckeever finished.

  ‘Cleaned?’ said Bronagh.

  ‘And stowed,’ added Mckeever.

  Bronagh removed the harpoon gun from its casing to check its integrity. He held each limb up and looked down its length, with one eye closed.

  ‘This one’s kinked. Must have been dropped or shunted.’

  ‘You’ve received ample remuneration which should cover wear and tear,’ said Mckeever.

  ‘It isn’t the credits,’ said Loopes. ‘We only did this job because it came straight from someone on high. No one usually touches our equipment, but they threatened to take our licence.’

  ‘And our ship,’ said Beaugent, who had entered the deck via some other portal, patting one of the internal support struts as if the ship could feel it.

  ‘Here are your credits,’ said Croel, tossing the money into the empty harpoon gun bag. ‘Why not go and buy yourselves a new plank to land on, or walk?’

  Beaugent walked over to the money, picked up one credit, a small note and folded it in his hand. ‘Now I do not know what kind of business you are into, nor do I want to, but I’ve heard of you and I do not like what I hear. Do not come here again, because threats or not, from viewing deck to Planche de Vol, you are not welcome.’

  Croel walked over to Beaugent and stood facing him, inches away. He sneered and rasped a heavy low breath through his teeth. It was a look that emanated loathing, as dark as the wings that rose at his shoulders to frame it. Mckeever had seen the look before and readied himself for combat. Loopes took a step backward and Bronagh looked up from the harpoon gun with concern and trepidation, fumbling at the crossbow clasp at his belt.

  But Beaugent did not move.

  Did not blink.

  He turned to toss Mckeever the screwed up credit.

  ‘Here,’ he said, ‘after you have left, and if you make it back, go and get yourself a decent eye-patch, it would really suit you.’ He chuckled to himself as he walked off towards the bridge and the upper deck.

  ‘Now that’s sarcasm,’ said Loopes.

  It is more prudent to underestimate your own ability than that of your adversary.

  Many men have fallen from arrogance and over-extension; never humility.

  Combative Correlations: The Fight Before the Fight

  I.N. Smitherson

  CHAPTER 17

  I grabbed Pan’s hand and led her down the dark corridor, through the internal door, came to stop at the external door where I scanned it for alarm sensors. Satisfied our escape would not be impeded by klaxons or sirens of any description, I turned and signalled for her to take off her night-vision goggles. I removed mine and slung them on my belt. I had no idea what time of day it was, I did not intend to emerge into the splintering diamond sunlight wearing them or into a Deadland Swamp darkness without them nearby.

  I put my hand on the security bar and wavered. Nausea washed over me again, as much a come down from the recent adrenalin surge as a lingering side effect from the toxins still in my bloodstream.

  ‘Drake, you OK?’ Pan had moved closer.

  ‘Fine. Just the drugs. Queasy.’

  She took my hand again. It felt cool and very small in my meaty palm.

  I rested my forehead on the cold, painted door and closed my eyes. I blew a deep breath out and hoped that the door was not chained or restricted from the other side. I pushed down on the bar. The latch disengaged and the door swung outwards allowing a brilliant golden tsunami of light to flood in. We were temporarily blinded but the breeze felt good; a chilled kiss colliding with the warm, clammy rainforest of my brow.

  ‘Let’s go back inside. Get our eyes accustomed. We would be like sun blinded moles if we went out now.’

  ‘I want to get out. Away.’

  Her speech sounded a little different, like I’d knocked the record player off centre with that thunderous uppercut.

  ‘And we will. I promise, just go back down the corridor a few steps and try to use your peripheral vision to pull focus and adjust to the light.’

  A white hot bleaching pain pierced through to the scratchy screen of my retina, planting a nuclear seed for an Armageddon headache I could feel mushrooming by the second. I tilted forward and vomited. It was a dry retch, a barking epileptic cough. Nothing but noise came out.

  I gradually forced my eyes open and watched the world swim into a monochromatic bluish green haze, not unlike the night-vision tint, and looked down the corridor towards Pan. I could make out the bloodstains and dirt on her red dress, even in my current state and was forced to smile as I watched her attempt to smooth out the creases and neaten the straps. Getting ready to go out.

  She caught me smiling.

  ‘A working gal like me has got to look her best, you know.’

  ‘Does that include swollen jaw lines and crusty blood matted hair?’

  ‘Blood is this season’s black,’ she said.

  We both laughed, the sound was hollow.

  My stomach ached.

  ‘That is going to hurt in the morning you know,’ I said, tapping my own, non-swollen jaw.

  ‘It hurts now.’

  ‘Then maybe it is morning.’

  ‘Maybe you’re right.’

  I checked back outside. Deadlands reeds cast long shadows. The sun’s angle was low and the temperature coupled to the too-early feel of the day foisted dawn onto my weary shoulders, like a ton of small potatoes in a large Hessian sack.

  I blinked at our surroundings through still narrowing eyes. The reeds swayed lazily backwards and forwards in the early morning breeze, like some dispassionate god was stirring them with a massive flat palm. Golden hues of amber sunlight fought with the bland khaki beiges of the grit and sand to offer up a stone bedecked land full of glimmers and winks. Vermillion shades clung to the underbellies of rocks and flaking fallen trees like a snake hiding in the remnants of night, refusing to acknowledge the presence of day. The Deadland swamps began off to the West. Puddled discs of matt, lacklustre water punctuated the dirt and became more prevalent off and into the distance. Mangroves of twisted, tortured roots and branches rose, entwined in a noodle mess that obscured the horizon and barred passage beyond with folded, knotted arms.

  I looked to the East, towards the Edgelands of Nimbus City and the huge disc-shaped city in the sky. The impenetrable rock and metallic ore central column that supported it was cast from
nature but looked fantastically engineered and implausible, as if in defiance of the laws of the physics and indeed nature itself. A massive squat column dominating the skyline.

  ‘Let’s go,’ I said.

  Pan shimmied to straighten her dress, letting it fall neatly on a line just above her knees, then she followed me out.

  ‘Thank you for staying at Hotel Hostility,’ said Pan. ‘Room with no view, staff that cater to your every whim, with a boot and the latest technology offering concrete mattresses, night vision porters and a smell potent enough to knock a Deadland swamp fly off a hot bucket of crap.’

  ‘You’ve got a way with words,’ I said.

  ‘I’ve got away with all sorts.’ Pan winked.

  It sent a twanging shudder down the length of my back and it took great resolve not to retch again. I felt a kind of companionship starting to develop and I didn’t like it. Not where it had come from or where it would go.

  ‘Don’t you ever get tired of the innuendo? The bullshit cheerfulness? The endless flirtation? I mean, you have just nearly had your jaw broken?’

  She recoiled as if I’d hit her again.

  I carried on.

  ‘If things had gone differently, they could be dribbling all over you right now in that concrete coffin, while my dead body looked on, neither of us seeing the light of day again. And you want to stand there and make light?’ I waited for tears to fill her eyes but they never came.

  ‘Goes with the territory,’ she said.

  ‘I suppose you have been worse places.’

  ‘You can say that again.’

  She stared off to somewhere so far away, the naked eye would never see.

  ‘Pan, look, I’m sorry you’ve been dragged into this but I do not want you thinking that this is some kind of love story where we talk about our close scrapes, develop a rapport, some kind of relationship and then you hang up your knickers and try and settle down with me, riding off into the sunset or sunrise or a night-vision twilight world full of truth or dare and games of find-the finger.’

  ‘You finished?’

  ‘You’ll get your credits, and then some. I just need to find my bearings, work out what is going on and then we can be on our separate ways.’

  ‘Fair enough. But don’t expect me to sulk just because you got caught with your dick out at the Angelbrawl. I’m just going with the flow. OK?’

  I deserved that one. I nodded, ‘OK.’

  ‘And anyway, what the hell is “find-the-finger”?’

  She was good.

  Used to handling men, in whatever capacity.

  My head ached even more, from trying to think about it.

  A vaguely sulphuric miasma crawled into my senses at the edge of my consciousness, and for an instant I felt like I was a journeyman, a spent, sinful traveller just a short boat ride across the River Styx away from purgatory, from the hell of understanding. The nausea rippled through my stomach muscles again and I fought to keep the retching at bay.

  I closed my eyes.

  *

  The child rested his small hatchet down and smiled, wiping the hair from his eyes. Two small chunks of log tumbled, the yellow sap of the stump hurling damp splinters onto dry pine needles. He picked the logs up, dropped them onto a pile and placed another onto the stump. He raised the hatchet and chopped again. Far too young to be used to work, but I could see it in his eyes; in the creases of his eyelids and the encrusted dirt sat on his collar and high on his cheek. He belonged here, we didn’t.

  He bent to pick up the next two logs and tossed them onto the pile. One of them rolled off the pile and came to rest a couple of yards from my feet. He looked at me and smiled the disarming, innocent smile of youth and I bent to pick up the log. The Slayer uniform did not faze him, I was just another soldier en route to disappear into the annals of history, with a medal on my chest or a hole in my head, or both. He took a red bandana out of his pocket and wiped the beads of sweat from his top lip and forehead. I threw the log onto the pile for him…

  *

  ‘That stinks,’ said Pan. ‘Was that you?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Eggy farts.’

  I tried to shake myself more awake. ‘It’s the sulphur from current volcanic activity. It’s emitted through the bubbling waters and fissures of the crust. If you travel far enough that way,’ I pointed to flat black plains in the distance, ‘you come to the grey and black wastelands of magma and ash. They’re like charred rivers of rock and stone, caught in mid-flow, twisting and turning runnels and eddies, edified, petrified memories of the red hot stream that once flowed.’

  ‘Not eggy farts then.’

  I tried not to laugh, but the earlier tension was diffused, as much by the diverse beauty and starkness of our surroundings as the nonchalance with which the situation had dripped off her.

  ‘I never understood why they call this the Deadlands?’ she said.

  ‘It’s a strange place. Anomalous really.’

  ‘Anal what?’

  I shot her a look that said she should know better.

  ‘There are three different kinds of geological phenomena here, all within a bolt’s distance: the reed grass, the ash plains and the swamp. It is a very unusual place. I think its name intimates at its distance from Nimbus City, the world’s nucleus. It says that life is not sustainable here, commerce not viable, travel not easy, unless of course you have wings. But everywhere you look you can see life affirming itself, nature flourishing, as it always does. Life will find a way.’

  ‘Like we have.’

  I nodded. ‘Even out there, where the scorched layers of newly formed terra baked the land and vegetation to a whispering crisp, green ferns struggle for footholds in crumbling seas, lizards and insects make the most of each crevasse and chasm and birds make the most of them.’

  ‘You make it sound like a holiday camp.’

  ‘Not for the insects.’

  ‘Or lizards.’

  ‘Or us.’

  I looked back at the building we had just exited. It was a small, low level, military looking installation, free from the dust and sun-bleached appearance that most other buildings in this part of Nimbus have. It must have been a new build, possibly even purpose built for us. It was low and solid, far too clean to have been a long-standing part of the landscape, far too angular and neat to ever really belong here at all. The concrete looked like it had been poured and set recently. I bent down and looked at the snapped reed grasses heading off to the volcanic plains in the distance. There had been heavy activity down here that could be seen in the dirt-track’s compact constitution. Withering grass had been trodden flat by men and in some places rolled over by machinery of some description. It looked like they had passed through, on their way to the black fields or beyond. I could come back and search the surrounding area for clues another time. There were more pressing priorities: escape before anyone came by, drinkable water and a safe way home.

  ‘Time to go,’ said Pan, like she’d read my mind.

  I stood in agreement.

  As we headed East, across the dirt and towards the ascending sun, the shadow of Nimbus City loomed on the distant horizon. It looked like a shimmering, rancid apparition of the dark life I had before. I shivered and stared at the city in the clouds, the ever-present monument of my history. I felt like a man looking at a black desert from the haze of an oasis mirage, knowing he would soon have to leave the green illusion to tread, once again, the arid, desolate midnight black of his own soul.

  ‘Time to go,’ I whispered.

  How easily hands are forced when they are in empty pockets.

  Life in Neon

  Mimi Porter

  CHAPTER 18

  The yellow canvas of the Zeppelin was stretched taut, gases expanded and the adapted motor at the stern propelled it forward. In the solid blue of the morning sky it looked like a fat sun orbiting too low and too fast. Beaugent turned from the viewing window and looked at Loopes and Bronagh. They were eating breakfast
and embroiled in a conversation:

  ‘We should not have got involved with them in the first place,’ said Bronagh.

  ‘We had no choice,’ Loopes whined.

  ‘There’s always a choice.’

  Loopes broke more bread off the loaf and spooned a generous helping of honey onto it. ‘I love this stuff, especially when the bread is warm. You can’t beat warm bread for breakfast.’

  ‘How’s the gun?’ asked Beaugent.

  ‘She’s repairable,’ said Bronagh.

  ‘You’ll have time to calibrate it tomorrow when we dock in Nimbus City for provisions. Might even have some cargo to ferry.’

  ‘Whilst we are there, can we get some more of this bread?’ Loopes asked.

  ‘What kind of cargo?’ asked Bronagh.

  ‘We’ll find out when we dock,’ said Beaugent.

  Loopes stuffed another mouthful in. ‘A bread one hopefully.’

  ‘Well if it’s anything to do with those two, count me out,’ Bronagh said.

  ‘Who, Mckeever and Croel?’ Beaugent leaned forward and placed both hands flat on the substantial wooden table. It was pegged to the floor with thick wooden bolts, to stop it sliding around the galley when airborne, but it still rocked when it was leaned on.

  ‘They are bad news,’ said Bronagh.

  ‘You just hate all flying types,’ said Beaugent.

  ‘I’m glad none of us has wings,’ said Loopes.

  ‘No this is different, there’s something... something wrong with them,’ said Bronagh.

  ‘With a capital Ruh,’ said Loopes, ‘I don’t like them. Mckeever’s massive and he has got a face like a moon, I wouldn’t like to spill his drink. And Croel, well, he reminds me of a weasel. He’s just… just…’

  ‘Wrong,’ said Bronagh.

  ‘With a capital…’

  ‘Yeah, I heard you the first time,’ said Bronagh.

  ‘I know,’ said Beaugent, ‘I know. I trust them about as far as I could spit into the Edgelands wind, but what the Governor says goes. Without her backing we’re just a decommissioned crew, tomorrow’s weather balloon, and I am not risking the Orca because you don’t like working with the Blackwings. Their credits spend just the same.’