The Airship Aurelia (The Aurelian Archives)

by Courtney Grace Powers

  Clearing his throat, he reached and pulled the com link down to his mouth and switched it on to ship wide communication.

  “Everyone, get strapped in for reentry.” He hesitated, mouth open, and then decidedly hung the com back on its peg. He'd gone over this during last night's moot…the possibility of the strain of deceleration being too much for Aurelia's sick engine, the chance The Kreft might be not seconds behind them once the merged out of the Stream. They knew when he said get strapped in, what he meant was closer along the lines of here's hoping we don't blow up.

  His hands firm on the yoke, Reece eased up the bar under his feet. The Afterquin wearily whined, powering up to full speed without actually accelerating. As the whine reached its peak, he edged the yoke one gentle inch at a time to the right, leaning with it. The Stream rushed over the canopy window, rushed, and rushed, a streaking haze…

  Reece's stomach jerked as Aurelia was spat out of the Euclid, and he quickly loosed the yoke and let up on the leveler bar, his head jarring as the ship righted herself. It took his eyes a moment to focus. Dominating the canopy window was the planet Leto, a dim, grey sphere that looked smudged at its edges, cloudy. To Aurelia's left, the Euclid trickled on, seemingly infinite, while a second Stream glittered faintly a half day's flight to her right. The Perseus would bear The Aurelia almost all the way to The Ice Ring, assuming she wasn’t jumped by The Kreft between here and there. Reece urged her forward.

  Thump thump.

  He eyed Nivy sideways as she tapped insistently on her mouthpiece. She pointed at him, then laid her face on the side of her hands, closing her eyes. Well, they were an hour out of orbit. And the others wouldn't thank him if he fell asleep in the middle of trying to land Aurelia.

  “Thanks,” he said as she pulled up on the secondary yoke and took the controls. “Just let me know if there's any movement out there.”

  He'd meant to go to his loft and farm some Z's, but his feet carried him right past his ladder and into the back corridor. Shoulders hunched against the cold, he wandered, making a sharp turn when he heard Scarlet and Po's chatting voices coming from a room ahead. He needed the wandering time, maybe even more than sleep time; he needed to not think. Even sleeping, his brain didn't want to stop running, turning over fresh worries or reinventing old ones he'd thought he'd already dealt with. The Kreft. Owon. Liem.

  He arrived at his destination and was surprised to realize he'd meant to come here all along. Because Gid had the right of it, no matter how Reece told him otherwise. He'd tried to look at the situation from every angle—tried to consider things objectively, like Hayden might've—but the answer always came to him the same. He couldn't put his crew at risk because he wasn't hard enough to do the right thing.

  He paused and peered through the infirmary door's round window, frowning. Hayden was at his desk, his head bowed over a collage of notes. If Mordecai hadn't been there, relaxing on the cot next to the desk with his revolver in hand, Reece would've given him a talking-to for having his back to Owon. The Vee was likely only pretending to be engrossed in the book he held before his hawkish nose as he paced the room—unless he was secretly a Legends from The Voice of Space enthusiast.

  Hayden looked up as Reece opened the door and glanced over his shoulder at the still-reading Owon as if just remembering he was there. Which didn't exactly steady Reece's nerves.

  “Are we there?” Hayden asked.

  “Nearly. We're out of the Euclid, anyways.”

  “And still in one piece.”

  “For now.”

  Hayden surveyed him thoughtfully, then, as he turned back to his notes, said too lightly, “You missed breakfast.”

  With a snort, Reece propped himself on the cot next to Mordecai. “And who cooked, pray tell?”

  “Gideon.” Hayden grimaced. “Though I suppose it wasn't cooking so much as it was him putting a loaf of bread on the table and telling us to tuck in.”

  “It was as fine a loaf as I've ever seen,” Mordecai said, his mustache twitching as he smiled sideways at Reece. “But that ain't all you missed.” He pointed his head at Owon, who continued pacing, unperturbed. “Hayden tried to get One Thousand Two Hundred and One here to take some porridge. I expect Gideon's still down there scrubbin' the stuff outta his clothes. Never knew a bowl to fly so far, so fast.”

  Reece just shook his head, grim. One of these days, Hayden's niceness was going to land him with a knife stuck in his back, and Reece wouldn't forgive him for that when it happened. He thought he might develop a twitch without Hayden around to counterbalance the rest of the crew's moods. Hayden was blessedly normal. Or if not normal, at least transparent.

  “You should be sleeping,” Hayden said suddenly, studying Reece over the tops of his bifocals. “Did you need something?”

  Mordecai, Hayden, and Reece all looked up as Owon suddenly slammed his book shut, turning about slowly to face them. He smiled humorlessly, a bare twitch at the corners of his lips.

  “He is here for us.”

  There was an uneasy pause as Reece studied his hands, clenched into fists on his knees. The cold metal of his hob's barrel suddenly seemed to soak through his shirt, stinging where it touched his side.

  “Hayden,” Reece said, more quietly than he'd meant to, “wait outside. You too, Mordecai.”

  “But you don't mean to—”

  “Hayden.”

  After a pause, Hayden slowly stood, pointedly avoiding Reece's eye as he walked from the room. Even not looking at Reece, his expression screamed disapproval, and worse, disappointment.

  It wasn't till he'd gone that Mordecai took his turn standing and stretching unhurriedly. “You do what you think is right,” he said with a shrug. No matter his flippant tone, his blue eyes were sharp as they glanced over Owon, making the Vee's cool smile actually twitch. Nodding as if that was what he'd intended, Mordecai went out after Hayden, his thumbs hooked behind his belt. The sound of the infirmary door clicking closed seemed too loud in the silence left behind.

  Slowly but decisively, Reece stood, untucked his hob, and brought it around to face Owon. With his bold nose and his dark eyes, Owon looked like a bird as he cocked his head to one side and studied Reece. This would be easier if he was a bird. Reece had killed birds before. Then again, he'd killed Vees, too. Just not since…

  “We did not think you would do it,” Owon said, sitting down on the cot opposite Reece. “The Pan, yes…but you? You surprise us.”

  “You can stop trying to stall me. I've already made up my mind.”

  “Minds can be changed.”

  “Not this time, Owon.” Reece cocked the gun. Hesitating with his finger on the trigger, he admitted, “I'm a little surprised myself. I expected to have to shoot you before you had the chance to run.”

  Something close to real amusement crossed Owon's face before he could school it to haughtiness. “Would it rest easier with your conscience if we attacked first, Reece Sheppard?”

  “Maybe. As long as I have your word you'll throw the fight.” What was he bleeding doing? Now wasn't the time to go and get chummy with the Vee he'd decided to execute. He was already going to have difficulties smoothing this memory over in his head without digging for little proofs that Owon—no, the Vee; he had to stop calling him by his bleeding pet name!—had retained some of his old humanity, his old life. He had to remember. This wasn't Liem.

  He ground his teeth, lifted the hob, took aim…and froze as the Vee calmly murmured, “And so you destroy your one source of answers about your stepbrother.”

  Warning bells rang in Reece's head—the Vee was playing him, trying to make himself invaluable—but he still peeled his finger off the trigger, even if he didn't lower the gun. “I'm not looking for answers. I know what he was.”

  “Do you?”

  “He was becoming a Vee. Eldritch told me that in another year, his transformation would've been finished. He would've been just like you.”

  The Vee's voice was almost humanly wry as he said, “Not ju
st like us. But that is beside the point. A Veritas he might've been, but what does that mean? Are you not curious?”

  Considering, Reece lowered the hob. Chances were, anything Owon…that is, the Vee…fed him wouldn't be the truth anyways, just talk to keep Reece from putting a bullet to him, as Gid would've put it. Unfortunately, he was right—Reece was curious. The not-knowing was like an itch between his shoulder blades.

  “Give me one thing. One thing I can trust.” When the Vee continued to stare at him, he sighingly prompted, “You had to have once been like him. A normal person. Why did you become a Vee?”

  Wariness glittered in those black, black eyes; Reece was clearly encroaching on forbidden territory. “Before the serum…” Hesitating, Owon shook his head. “We were different.”

  His tone had a ring of finality, but Reece wasn't finished, even though he wished he could be. His next question wanted to stay in the pit of his stomach, where it'd been slowly fossilizing as he ignored it these past few months. It couldn't go unanswered forever.

  “Could you go back to how you were, now? Could Liem have gone back?”

  “It is inconceivable.” After a beat, the Vee admitted, “But not impossible.”

  Reece curled and uncurled his fingers around the grip of his hob, remembering Liem, scowling over the dinner table as Reece flicked peas at him, Liem, learning to ride a pushbike with Reece, angry when Reece learned faster. Liem, beaming as he graduated with highest marks from The Aurelian Academy…even beaming at Reece, for a second. All the memories Reece had of his stepbrother were the grudgingly happy kind, but there had been happiness there.

  “He might have gone back,” he muttered, half to himself.

  Owon chuckled a hoarse cough that sounded out of practice. “We very much doubt it. But continue deluding yourself, if it pleases you. We find your naiveté…amusing.” His arched one shaven eyebrow when Reece made his gun arm taut again, tut-tutting. “You still have not learned. The threat of death has no effect on us.”

  “But you do want to live. I've seen it.”

  “There is a difference between wanting life and fearing death. Life is preferable. But it only lasts so long, either way.”

  Reece sat there, staring blankly, until his raised arm grew tired and reminded him that he had a ship to tend to outside the infirmary. He wasn't sure when, but he'd made his choice, and even if there'd be bogrosh to pay for it later, the fact the troubled lump in his gut was ebbing away was proof enough it was the right one for now.

  As Owon watched him stand, he said in a gratingly satisfied voice, “You cannot kill us. We knew it.”

  “Nope,” Reece agreed, and sharply thrust the heel of his palm into the Vee's startled face with a grinding crack. “But we can break your nose. In two places, sounds like.” While Owon swiped uselessly at the blood dribbling down and off his chin, Reece took him by a fistful of his jacket and drew him closer than was strictly comfortable. “Let's be candid here. I'm dumping you the first chance I get, and if you make any trouble for me or my crew, any, I know a Pantedan who will kill you happily and creatively before then. But you owe me one, Owon. You—owe—me.”

  Owon spat blood to the side and rasped dangerously, “You threaten us when we could kill you in the space of the breath.”

  “I know.” And with that, Reece popped the Vee across the skull with the butt of his gun and took a quick step backward as he toppled bonelessly to the floor.

  Hayden and Mordecai straightened from leaning against the corridor wall as he opened the door and then closed it behind him.

  “I didn’t hear a gunshot. What happened?” Hayden asked, frowning concernedly. “Are you alright? We didn't mean to eavesdrop…and we didn't hear much,” he hurried to add when Reece leveled him with a look, “but we did hear him talking about…about Liem…”

  Slowly, staring off at nothing, Reece nodded. Answering once would've been as easy as saying yes or no, and letting Hayden clap him on the back or nod and go on like before. That was before he'd become captain, before life had gotten as complicated as rerouting a jumble of underengine wires.

  “Do you think I did the right thing?”

  “Yes,” Hayden immediately answered without blinking.

  “Good.” With a grin, Reece burrowed his hands in his pockets and turned towards the bridge. “Then I'll let you plead my case to Gideon. Make it good. Be sure to tell him I broke Owon's nose. That might help.”

  “You broke his—?”

  He heard Hayden fumbling for the door handle, heard the door creak open and a startled exclamation, and picked up his pace. His hand was throbbing; it felt like he'd hit someone wearing a helmet. Vees and their bleeding serum.

  On the bridge, Nivy was reclining in her chair with her feet propped on the flightpanel, playing cat's cradle with a bootlace. She looked up as he entered, grinned at his exasperated expression, and lifted her feet so he could slide in front of the helm and switch off the autopilot. Leto had absorbed the width of the canopy window, and if the tweeting sensors on the flightpanel were any indicator, Aurelia was beginning her descent through the planet's dark atmosphere.

  “I went to see Owon,” Reece admitted as he held the vibrating helm steady and peered intently at the green graph radar. He made a face when Nivy nodded at the corner of his eye, as if she'd guessed as much. “How'd you know?”

  After shooting him a flat stare, she rolled her eyes and shook her head.

  “Am I that predictable?”

  She gave him another look.

  “Yeah, well, just keep playing with your bootlace, Numpty,” he muttered as he returned his attention to flying. “I've got some surprises up my sleeve yet.”

  It was hard to tell where the atmospheric clouds stopped and the free air began; everything was as black as coal, so dark the light of the cockpit, even dimmed, stung Reece's eyes. At a nod from Reece, Nivy shut the light off completely, so only the controls on the flightpanel glowed, and those softly. Reece grunted when he opened up the com for outside logs and heard nothing. He'd expected to be hailed as soon as the Letoians saw The Aurelia breaking atmosphere.

  “No logs,” he muttered, and squinted out the window, “and no lights in sight. What's the green say?”

  Nivy bowed her head over the green and shook her head. Nothing. Which was both bad and good. Good, because it meant The Kreft weren't close. Bad, because it meant Reece could be getting ready to turn them into a hotcake against a mountainside.

  “See if you can map out a semi-level terrain. I want to put her down as soon as possible.”

  After a moment of scanning the radar's read of the planet, Nivy tapped at a point on the screen and nodded.

  “About thirty miles out. That's not bad,” Reece mused. He glared out the window again. “I don't get it. We're under the clouds. We should at least be able to make out some—”

  Suddenly the canopy window was filled with green, a silent flash of color so bright, he threw his forearm over his eyes and cursed.

  “What the bleeding bogrosh was that?” He blinked over at Nivy as she furiously rubbed her fists in her eyes. “It was like—”

  Another flash, this time red, but just as sudden and silent. It was lightning…colored lightning. Heart thumping, he started taking Aurelia down, turning her hard to starboard in a tight spiral. Better to land on uneven terrain than risk flying through an electrical storm, if that's what this was. He couldn't hear thunder, or wind, and there was no rain that he could see, but the air had the same eerie quietness of a late summer storm, and even inside the ship, he thought he could smell the damp humidity.

  He landed Aurelia and called for the crew to assemble in the cargo bay. Gideon was last to arrive, herding in Owon, who had a strip of bonding tape across the bridge of his crooked-looking nose, with harder-than-necessary prods to the back. Reece shook his head. It really would've been so much easier to get rid of the bleeding Vee before he did any real harm. Overturning a bowl of steaming hot porridge into Gideon's lap didn't, didn't
count, no matter what Gid said.

  Nivy slid down the stair railing to join the others as Reece assumed his normal position on the overhead bridge, his arms folded. As she reached the bottom of the stairs, she looked back and forth between Po and Scarlet, who had their heads together and were ominously giggling, and Hayden and Gideon, who were arguing on either side of Owon. She settled for sitting beside Mordecai where he was laying on the floor humming a campfire song.

  “Scarlet.”

  Scarlet looked up at Reece mid-laugh as Po dissolved into a fresh bout of giggles behind her. Reece shifted his feet. He was probably better off not knowing.

  “What can you tell us all about Leto?”

  Quirking an eyebrow at him—hey, he'd never denied she could be useful, not outright, anyways—Scarlet brushed down her skirts and sat on a crate, making it somehow look like a throne. “As much as anyone can. Their culture is limited to a single city capital, barely big enough to sustain their population—which fortunately hasn’t grown much in recent years.”

  “Because of their short life spans,” Reece guessed, and Scarlet favored him with a mildly impressed look from her crate-throne.

  “That’s right,” she said. “Between the planet’s harsh climate, and the Letoians’ practically archaic sanitation systems, most of the common folk don’t make it to their sixtieth birthdays. Several decades ago Leto City’s mayor attempted to transplant some of the population—settle them in villages, to help with the sanitation issue—but the settlements all failed. The desert was simply too severe. Thus why Leto City itself is underground. It—”

  “Explain the lightning.” At a dangerous look from Scarlet, Reece added in a moderated tone, “Please.”

  “The atmospheric lightning is Leto's main power source. I can't tell you much else. The Letoians' secrets are guarded with closed-mouths, even from their allies. They have never expressed interest in accepting Honora's help in advancing their…civilization.” Her mouth twisted around the word, as if she'd used it against her better judgment. “They have the weakest leadership structure of any planet I've studied. The smallest misstep could send it tumbling. Perhaps it would be prudent to—what?” she suddenly snapped, glancing sharply at Gideon, who coughed.