“I think we're stuck here,” Jacob said.
“We go through or we give up,” Rommond replied. No one took that as a choice.
“I guess we go through then. I hope you've got better eyesight than I do.” The goggles helped with the glare of the sun, but they also dulled his vision. The clouds did a lot of that as well.
“There's that old eagle eye of the Hawk,” Armax said with great enthusiasm.
Rommond was less encouraging. “Tonight we're all bats. We're flying blind.”
“At least bats can fly,” Jacob commented. He had gained precious little confidence in the flying power of Brooklyn's machines. They might have been the engineer's designs, and those were not so bad, but they were finished by the Regime's engineers, and those were much worse.
They dived into the ocean of shadow and smog, adding to it with the fumes of their own aircraft. The goggles were useless now, but Jacob kept them on, in case there might be some break in the murky pool. It was fitting that the Worldwaker had passed through there, with the shark emblem painted on brightly. In those deep waters, it could not be seen. It almost felt like it had lured them in. The dolphins do not hunt the sharks.
“I'm not seeing anything,” Jacob said, trying to control the quiver in his voice as much as the gear sticks. It was difficult to tell where anything was, both the wings of his own plane and the wings of the others. It was impossible to tell what direction was up. It was more important to know what direction was down.
“Join the club,” Armax replied.
“Kind of want to leave it,” the smuggler retorted.
“Isn't it cool?” Whistler said, with not a hint of hesitation. “We could be anywhere.”
“Yeah,” Jacob said derisively, “like heading towards the ground.”
Static greeted him over the radio as the fliers focused on the flight. It only added to Jacob's anxiety, like the suffocating silence of the ocean depths.
“You're awfully quiet there, Rommond.”
“I'm concentrating,” the general drawled.
Nissi's voice crackled through. “Think we all should be.”
“Indeed.”
Jacob was not so sure. “I think I need to talk.”
“Evidently.”
“You still there, Whistler?” Jacob asked.
“Yeah, I'm here.” He sounded a lot closer, which was less comforting. It was not just too close for comfort in the skies; it was too close for living. He could almost feel the wings tipping each other, and hoped it was just his imagination. The heat was getting to him, but he could not blame his perspiration on the temperature alone.
They sailed through, but it was not entirely silent in the abyss of the sky. Just like the submarine that Jacob never wanted to return to, his new vessel groaned from the pressure of the air. He could hear the bolts straining, and he could feel the wood and steel quiver beneath his own quivering feet.
Then a new sound came.
It seemed like a low growl, as if there was a creature inside the clouds. It rumbled again, as if they had disturbed its nest. Once more it came, closer and louder, and from everywhere at once, as if they had strayed into the belly of a slumbering beast.
Then everything turned brilliant white for a second, and Jacob's eyes were stunned. The shock faded, but then another flash came, dulled by the darkness of the fog. Blades of lightning broke through the sea of smoke, accompanied by the violent clap of thunder, as if an angry god saw the storm devour them, and burst out into wild applause.
Jacob narrowly missed a lashing bolt. They struck so fast that it was virtually impossible to dodge them. They had to be predicted instead. There was a certain sizzle in the air, a kind of build up, like something was about to happen. Maybe it was just a hidden hint of science, or maybe it was something spiritual. Jacob did not care. He only cared that it helped save his life.
As the planes dashed and dodged, and the electric fingers reached out ever closer to them, the wind joined the fray, and then the rain, and it all stirred together in the cauldron of the storm. The wings and propellers were just another ingredient.
The sky rumbled in anger. The lightning crushed like teeth, and the black clouds tried to swallow them. What could not be eaten only seemed to upset the rolling, toiling monster of the air even more. As they battled against the winds and the rain, and fought with the controls of their own vessels, many of the pilots saw why the people of bygone times looked up to nature's marvels in the heavens and gave them the names of gods.
They pulled through the last of the dark clouds, and were blinded by the sun ahead. They regained control of their aircraft, and breathed a much-needed sigh of relief, though not all came out to breathe it. Two of Trokus' men were lost in the haze. It was unclear if they had plummeted to the ground or were simply swallowed whole by the billowing dragon.
Jacob tore off his steamed-up goggles, rubbed the sweat from his fringe, and cast an anxious glance around until he saw the number fourteen brightly emblazoned on one of the monoplanes ahead.
He was tempted to make some remark about their luck, but fought successfully against the urge. We're far too close to the fates right now, he thought.
The relief of the pilots must have been audible, because Rommond's foreboding voice crackled through on the radio. “Don't rest easy just yet.” They could not see him, but his tone almost pointed straight ahead. There, in the distance, unobscured by cloud and unhindered by hail, were a fleet of planes bearing the explosive emblem of the Armageddon Brigade.
The attack of the weather was over, but the onslaught of iron and steel was about to begin.
17 – THE BLACK FIELDS
Alex led Brooklyn out of the Dune Burrows and into the barren flatlands of Regime territory. There they found themselves faced with a large, seemingly endless, expanse of blackened sand and soil, through which a few solitary gnarled branches reached up, like the hands of the dead. It was a desolate place, more barren than even the red and yellow sands that smothered much of Altadas.
“They call these the B-b-black Fields,” Alex said.
“I see why,” Brooklyn replied.
Then he caught a glimpse of a small figure in the distance, as black as the land around it.
“There's someone out there,” Brooklyn said.
“There are many out there,” Alex corrected, pointing here and there to figures dotted periodically in the distance, whom at first could have been mistaken for those same gnarled branches. “This is where they come to d-die,” Alex explained.
Brooklyn looked at him, surprised.
“They are the Hopeless, the outcasts of the maran people. They committed some crime against the Iron Emperor. Who knows what? Maybe they did not do what they were t-t-told. Maybe they expressed an opinion. Maybe they suggested ending this war. Whatever their crime, they were denied the life-sustaining Hope as punishment, and left out here to rot and roam, until they w-wither away and become new black sand.”
As Alex spoke, Brooklyn could see the sick marans stumbling to and fro, some collapsing, some struggling to get back up. Others simply stood there, while many of them crumbled apart, some losing entire limbs, others dissolving into dust one little speck at a time.
Brooklyn could not hide his horror. “This land … is people?”
“Not so different than burying our own dead, if you ask me.”
“There are black sands in Uga Ludomu,” Brooklyn said. “They were blackened by Regime. We thought they used fire. Now … I'm not sure.”
“The Regime committed many atrocities when they came here,” Alex said, “and still do. It's how they k-k-keep us in check, and their own people in check. You should see what they did to some of the old archaeological sites. Desecration! But then our people do it too. You saw the stunts of statues in the Dune Burrows. The Resistance blew those up. But they're part of our history, our heritage, now.
They are monsters, but we're monsters too. In some ways, we d-deserve each other.”
That idea did not sit well with Brooklyn. He was as much a pacifist as Alex was, and yet he made tools of war, the kinds of machines that could—and probably did—blow up those statues. He knew why they were destroyed. They were not history, because the war was still happening. They were symbols. While they stood, the Iron Emperor stood. So the hope was that felling them might, like some kind of sympathetic magic, result in the Regime's leader falling too.
“Duck!” Alex cried suddenly.
Brooklyn hid in the brush, where he could hear the sound of an approaching steamtruck. It passed by swiftly, circling around the field. A soldier in the back prepped a rifle, before shooting one of the wandering Hopeless in the head.
“Almost a m-m-mercy,” Alex whispered, but it did not look merciful.
The truck continued on, zig-zagging through the black crops, taking out any of the stumbling marans, who collapsed and crumbled to the ground, making it a little blacker than before. The hum of its engine faded away, leaving behind a deathly silence, which even the wind dared not disturb.
“Onwards!” Alex said, seemingly unfazed by the grim graveyard he then strolled through. That he worked digging up the dead was perhaps an aid, a kind of protective sarcophagus for the heart, but Brooklyn found it difficult to conceive how anyone could not be moved to action at the sight of the Black Fields.
“If I was not in Resistance,” he said, “I would be now.”
“Well,” Alex replied. “You just w-w-wait till you see the Iron Emperor.”
18 – CONFLICT IN THE CLOUDS
“Incoming,” Trokus said.
They did not need the announcement. Even in their glass bubbles, they could hear the hum of the engines, and see the streams of smoke left behind as the Armageddon Brigade's fighter planes approached. All of them were black, which contrasted starkly with both the luminous yellow of the Dreamdevil, and the more earthy tones of the Regime's fleet. The yellow mushroom cloud emblazoned on the sides of those vessels stood out brightly. It was unsurprising that they had the word Nightmare stencilled beneath.
“Evasive tactics,” Rommond called out. “In three … two … one.”
Right on time, a hail of bullets came, and Rommond pulled sharply to the right. Jacob turned left, and the rest of the fleet spread apart in different directions, crossing over each other haphazardly. Everywhere Jacob wanted to go, there was someone else. He could hear the rattle of gunfire off the hull, and hoped he would not feel the patter of that same gunfire on his body.
He saw Whistler's plane spinning wildly, and thought for a moment he had been hit, until he saw it dive and duck, and somersault across the clouds with ease. Jacob could barely fly in a straight line, and was not confident enough that the clouds would let him attempt any acrobatics.
That the enemy fighters were clearly marked was a blessing, but Jacob found it difficult to aim while he was struggling to get out of the aim of others. It was not just the hail of the enemy he had to worry about, but the flying bullets of his comrades, criss-crossing over each other like their own planes.
Jacob rattled off a series of short spurts of gunfire, careful not to add more metal to the mayhem than was needed. Yet his conservatism with the trigger did not help his kill count, which stayed at zero, nor did it help much with the aerial battlefield, for the others made up for his reluctance with liberal sheets of iron rain.
Trokus and his men were not naturals like Whistler, but they were highly trained. The commander used a variety of codewords over the radio, which not even Rommond knew, and then broke apart in time, or flew in formation, or focused fire, until it seemed like they were all fingers of the same hand.
Elsewhere, Armax fired madly, Nissi played bait, and trigger-shy Whistler did not fire a single bullet. Rommond alone of the Resistance seemed to own the sky. He dove low, and came up at the Armageddon Brigade from beneath, firing in short, sharp spasms when he was just metres from crashing into them. It took a while for Jacob to figure out why the general chose this tactic. For him, it was not conservation; it was skill. From the bottom, the enemy's planes were a larger target. From up close, they were larger still.
The Desert Hawk earned his name in the sky that day, and undoubtedly benefited as much from Brooklyn's know-how as he did from his own. Time and time again he used the same dive and rise to bring about the permanent dive of a Nightmare. Even when the enemy pilots learned his manoeuvre, he faked a retreat, or led them on a wild goose chase while Trokus and the others copied his tactic from above.
Planes tumbled from the heavens left and right, leaving behind a slowly fading pillar of smoke. They heard the screams of one of Trokus' men over the radio as he veered towards the ground. Then they heard Cantro's muted cry as his bullet-riddled plane started to dive. It did not matter which side they were on. They all fell the same.
Jacob found success in staying alive, and hoped that would pay off later in the end, but every dodge seemed closer than the last, and though the Nightmares were fading quickly from the sky, it seemed like those that remained were focusing on the aircraft they deemed easier prey. Like him.
There were six Brigade vessels left, and four of them hunted Jacob, forcing him to break away from the others as he desperately tried to dodge the concentrated gunfire aimed his way. As he veered from the herd, and out of radio contact, he realised his error, but realised it too late.
Two of the Nightmares disappeared into the clouds, while the other two stayed on him from behind. There was some relief in seeing half the enemy vanish, but much dread in wondering where they had gone. He zig-zagged across the heavens, from side to side, and up and down, and every direction he could think of, and every angle his instincts bade him go.
Then the two other aircraft reappeared ahead, facing him diagonally. They fired, creating an intersecting lane of shrapnel straight ahead, which they pushed towards him. The two fighters at the rear copied this approach, until all four had boxed him in, unable to go anywhere but up or down. He tried up, but they reacted quick, and he tried down, but they were there as well. They pushed closer, caging him in, until he felt like it was inevitable that both he and his vessel would be ripped apart by the continuous spray of bullets. He found it hard to think that he would die to the bars of his cage.
As the planes came close enough that he could hear the explosion of the gunpowder in the barrels, he heard the zoom of another vessel overhead. He looked, but saw nothing, and then presumed that it was just another Nightmare. Then it passed again, but this time it came with a stream of bullets of its own. Jacob winced, thinking the cage had just been given a lid, but he heard the sound of an explosion outside, and opened his eyes in time to see one of the Brigade's aircraft hurtling downwards in a stream of smoke and flames.
The remaining Nightmares broke apart, turning to their attacker, which Jacob noted with a hint of pride, and then a lot of worry, had the number fourteen on its tail. Whistler turned sharply and came around, head on, blasting his guns, until a second Nightmare tumbled from the sky. He might not have been trigger-happy, but when he fired, he hit his target. He faced them like they were not flying arsenals, but nothing more than bad dreams.
Jacob tried to gain ground as he saw the other two vessels locking onto Whistler's plane from below and behind, but he feared he would not get there in time, or that his gunfire would miss the mark. Then the radio crackled, and he heard the clipped voice of Rommond, and the cackle of Armax, until he saw his comrades, human and maran, zooming by, blasting the nearest attacker apart, and tearing a hole in the wing of the remaining fighter.
“Phew!” Jacob cried, saluting the airborne cavalry.
But he spoke too soon. The smoke cleared a little, and the last of the fighter planes, engulfed in flames, came towards them. They broke apart again, but the fighter picked the closest target and turned his fireball towards
it with the determination of the vengeful dead.
19 – A LONG WAY DOWN
They watched in horror as the left wing of Markus' plane broke apart. They heard his voice for a moment, a stutter of panic, silenced by static. The nose of the biplane dipped suddenly, and the vehicle plunged towards the ground.
“My son!” Trokus screamed.
“Eject!” Rommond cried over the radio.
“I can't!” Markus exclaimed. They heard him frantically bashing buttons. They could hear his breath, his panic, his terror. Every sound was magnified through the lens of fear.
In that split second of a moment, when the teen's brief life must have been flashing swiftly before his eyes, Jacob could see the two potential outcomes: the one where Markus could not get out in time, and died; and the one where he managed to eject, but broke his back in the process, and spent the rest of his life paralysed, cared for by his loving mother and father, whose bodies were intact, but whose hearts were broken.
The plane hurtled past Jacob's position, and as it fell, he could see Markus inside the bubble of glass, his hands pressed against the pane, pushing and shoving, trying to get it open. It was a harrowing sight, just as the sounds were distressing. It was easier to know that someone was dying elsewhere than to watch and hear them falling towards their doom.
“Markus!” Trokus roared. In the anguish of that shout, Jacob could hear the love the Regime commander had for his son, and the loss it would mean. Though Jacob had heard the sounds of Markus careening towards death, he heard in Trokus that a part of him was falling too.
There was a moment when there was no sound, which was very noticeable after all the shouts and pants and thumps of before. Then they heard the radio crackle on, and the voice was muted, but it was unmistakable.
Worldwaker: A Steampunk Dystopian Action Adventure (The Great Iron War, Book 5) Page 8