The Immortal Storm (Sky Chaser Book 1)

by Wilkes, S. D.

  Copyright

  First published by Petrichor Press 2015.

  Text copyright © S.D. Wilkes, 2015.

  Cover artwork copyright © S.D. Wilkes, 2015.

  The moral right of S.D. Wilkes to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in retrieval system, copied in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise transmitted without written permission from the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and events depicted in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  http://www.theimmortalstorm.com

  Contents

  Copyright

  Contents

  1 The Thirsty Sea

  2 The Monitor

  3 The Weatheren

  4 The Bothy

  5 Dusthaven

  6 The Voice

  7 Ember

  8 Mariner’s End

  9 Trust

  10 Stars

  11 A Bad Memory

  12 The Tunnel

  13 Gutter Savage

  14 The Corrector

  15 Buttons

  16 The Umbrella Man

  17 An Unlikely Ally

  18 Dice Clay Saves The Day

  19 The Murkers

  20 The Promise

  21 The Enemy of the Foundation

  22 Port Howling

  23 The Auction

  24 Austerman

  25 The Corpusant

  26 Valkyrie

  27 Dr.Nightborn

  28 The Phosphene

  29 Shelvocke

  30 Stormwings

  31 Fleer Nightborn

  32 The Mempod

  33 S-E-C-R-E-T

  34 Ghosts

  35 Distractions

  36 The Crawler

  37 Snow

  38 The Watchers

  39 The High Hollows

  40 Vox Memoria

  41 The Genetrix

  42 Preparations

  43 The Ghosts of Skyzarke

  44 The Observatory

  45 Escape from Skyzarke

  46 Fly or Die

  47 A Long Way From Home

  48 The Return

  49 Broken Promises

  50 Restored Memories

  51 Fleer's Tale

  52 One More Promise

  53 Into The Storm

  54 Metal Skies

  55 The Final Flight

  56 Deadly Games

  57 Any Machine With A Mind

  58 The Arrival

  59 No Way Back

  60 Into Darkness

  61 The Cloud Room

  62 The Eternal Light

  63 The Starmaker's Daughter

  64 The Escape

  65 Holding Room B

  66 The Falling Sky

  67 Sky Chaser

  With thanks…

  For my Dad

  1

  The Thirsty Sea

  Kite Nayward scratched the dust from his goggle-glass and squinted up at the wreck. Half-submerged in the side of the dune the bones of the ancient ship had long since been picked clean. The hull had been stripped. The decks gutted. Bulkheads of worthless rust were all that remained, arcing from the grey sand like the ribs of a long-dead whale.

  Kite huddled against the hot, chemical wind gusting from the dunes. Why had the Waste Witch brought them here? This close to dark they should have been heading east for Dusthaven and what passed as safety, not out on the hard fringes of the Thirsty Sea.

  Kite climbed closer to the dune-top, his boots sinking and sliding in the treacherous sand. Closer now he scanned the skeleton wreck again. First by salt-water then by the Thirsty Sea’s toxic air, the steel had blistered a sickly rainbow of corroded blues and oxide reds. Metal took forever to decay. After all that time Kite doubted an inch of decent scrap would be left for a scavvy like him. But the Waste Witch wasn’t often wrong. Maybe Kite’d find something valuable in there after all. Maybe he’d find treasure.

  Then something caught his eye. High up where wind-caught debris fluttered in the rusted beams. Something white as salt. Something grinning at him…

  A skull.

  Kite dropped to the sand, heart thumping. The jawless skull had been daubed on the bulkhead, a hacksaw and mallet crossed beneath. Kite swore silently. Every scavvy in the Old Coast knew that mark. The Tom Skull they called it - the mark of the Savage Salvage Company.

  Gingerly Kite lifted his head, searching the dunes for the tell-tale sign of salvors. The ocean of sand gave nothing away. No lantern lights or cutter sparks. No clang-clang of hammers. Nothing but the wind whistling by his patchcoat hood and the rumble of thunder from the Undercloud’s belly.

  Quick as he dared Kite slid back the way he’d come. Down to the cool shadows between the dunes where he’d moored the sandboat. The Waste Witch sat hunched on the deck, long waxy fingers drumming on the shaft of her bone-white stick.

  Kite tugged away the sandy folds of his scarf and wetted his salt-cracked lips. “It’s one of Gutter’s wrecks,” he said, tasting the familiar burn of the toxic air on his tongue. “The Savages’ll skin us both if they catch us out here.”

  Wheezing from the effort Ersa slowly rose to her feet, brushing away the sand that had gathered on her lap. “You’d better make sure the Savages don't catch us then,” she said, her scratchy voice dry as the air. “Get me down, boy.”

  Lightning spat into the distant dunes, turning the Undercloud a flickering purple. Kite hunched his shoulders. “Maybe we should head back, Ersa,” he said. “It’ll be dark soon.”

  “We’re here now aren’t we?” Ersa said, gesturing for him to approach.

  Kite grumbled his objection. Not that it’d do much use arguing with the Waste Witch. Once Ersa had her mind set, not even the wind could change it.

  “I suppose you're going to tell me there's treasure in that wreck?” he said, stooping beside the hull.

  Ersa clawed her way on to his back. “Treasure's where you least expect it, boy,” she said, a milky eye winking at him from under her hood.

  Kite lifted Ersa from the deck, the weight of her bones pressing his boots deeper in the sand. Gently he set her down on her sandals. For a moment Ersa steadied herself on his arm, wheezing like a punctured bellows.

  “Go on boy,” Ersa said and waved him away. “And don't forget your bucket.”

  Soon, bucket in hand, Kite laboured back up the dune, retracing his fading tracks. The furious wind crackled drifts of sand against the leather patchcoat, threatening to steal his hood. Thankfully Kite knew the weight of the bearings and bolts stitched into the seams would hold the hood low over his goggles. After all losing his hood could lose him his life.

  Before long Kite’s skin itched and his lungs burned and he wished he was back in the bothy with the Undercloud safely locked outside.

  Treasure.

  Kite snorted. What a joke. All scavvies hoped they'd find treasure one day. Some prize exposed by the shifting sands. Some small piece of luck, missed by a thousand grubbing hands, that would carry them to Port Howling and beyond. Kite was no different, but he was no fool either. If there was real treasure out here in the Thirsty Sea it would take more than a scavvy's luck to find it.

  Ersa was still some way behind him. Stabbing her stick in the sand, placing her sandals in his tracks. Every now and then she'd stop to catch her breath and rub at her ruined hip. Kite frowned, recalling how not so long ago he’d been the one placing his too-big boots in Ersa’s footprints. A lifetime of breathing the poisoned air that laced ea
ch hot, acid breath had taken its toll on the Waste Witch. Hollow bones and wet lungs. Man or child. The Undercloud showed no mercy.

  Kite paused in the shadow of the wreck and looked out over the Thirsty Sea. Beneath the endlessly churning storm of the Undercloud nothing living moved. Just dust devils corkscrewing into oblivion on distant dune-tops. Ever watchful of the encroaching darkness Kite remained alert.

  Compacted spoil heaps littered the shadows beneath the wreck, half-buried in the shifting sand. With the trowel Kite chipped free a fistful of scavenge the salvors had missed; a few fat bolts, a finger of copper piping and a rusted spring. Hardly the kind of treasure he had in mind but worth a few royals in Dusthaven’s market nonetheless. He dropped them into the bucket, adding the finds to the rest of the day's haul. Then he pressed on into the belly of the old ship and froze -

  A dozen blood-red eyes watched him.

  Nailbirds. Squalid, thumb-winged things with metal beaks curved like sickle blades and tempers to match. Kite began to creep sideways toward the bulkhead, trying not to intimidate them. The oily eyes followed him. Then something squished unpleasantly under his boot. Guano. A great slick of the stuff, glistening with rainbow puddles and raging with a communal stink. The nailbirds arched their backs and hinged their beaks, flashing gash-red gullets.

  “Rarh-rarh!” Kite yelled, flapping his arms and kicking sand at them. “Rarh-rarh! Go on get lost!”

  Striking their rusty feathers the nailbirds waddled indignantly into the litter-strewn bowels of the wreck, leaving their scar-pink eggs unattended. Kite tightened the scarf over his nose, fighting the urge to gag against the stench. He knew Ersa wasn't interested in filthy nailbird eggs. Woven from conducting wire and peppered with beads of solder and old circuit board chips the nests were worth more than a bucket of rivets. Treasure. Of a kind. Kite grinned. Maybe Ersa was a real witch after all.

  Just then the wind roiled, whipping up a swirl of gritty sand that crackled against his hood. A Tom Skull leered from its home on the blistered steel bulkhead opposite. Kite avoided its gaze. As if he needed a reminder of the risk they'd taken coming here.

  Waiting for the Waste Witch Kite guessed the length of the old ship. A hundred metres stern to bow and twenty wide at the shallow beam Kite reckoned. No space for containers or drums she must have been a cruise ship or a ferry. Maybe one of those luxury liners he'd heard stories about. Carrying fancy passengers from port to port. Kite often imagined how odd it must’ve been to sail on salt-water. He’d piloted his sandboat often enough to appreciate the skill of it. What must it have been like? Observing a clear horizon instead of the unbroken, bruise-coloured Undercloud. Navigating by the sun and stars instead of the rattle of bone markers...

  “Daydreaming again, boy?”

  Kite nearly jumped out of his sand-filled boots.

  “J-just thinking that's all,” he mumbled.

  Ersa laughed dryly. “Boys your age shouldn't be thinking,” she said, snatching up fallen nailbird feathers.

  Kite stiffened. “I keep telling you I'm not a boy,” he said. “I'm fifteen.”

  “Fifteen?” Ersa chuckled. “You're fourteen if you're a day. Probably...never can quite remember when I rescued you from those Sand Eaters. Oh look copper! Told you there was treasure here, boy.”

  Kite ground his teeth but said nothing. Fourteen or fifteen, what difference did it make? He wasn't a boy anymore that's for sure. Not that it seemed to matter to the Waste Witch. Do this, boy. Do that, boy. To her he'd always be boy. Sometimes he wondered if she even remembered his real name!

  “Don’t just stand there, go keep an eye out,” Ersa said, pointing her stick.

  After checking the structure Kite found a foothold on the bulkhead and began to climb. The wind haunted the heights, howling like a mariner’s ghost. Up and up, Kite climbed, up into the beams where rivetboys had chalked the steel with lewd graffiti.

  On a good day you could see twelve leagues in the half-light, maybe more. But this wasn’t a good day. Rippled on their windward flanks the dunes undulated in all directions like folds of old dry skin. Kite traced the sandboat's tracks, all the way back to where the pale line of the Bone Roads dissolved into the shadows. The shadows gave him an itch. The two of them still had a long journey back to Dusthaven. No scavvy wanted to be caught out after dark. Worse things were hiding in the Thirsty Sea than the Savage Salvage Company...

  Lantern lights flickered in the dunes.

  Kite leaned in, his heart beating a little faster. He watched the string of pale lights dipping through the gloom. A salvor's rig? A scavvy gang?

  A few seconds passed and the lights vanished and reappeared where the Bone Roads cut their way beneath the cliffs. Kite relaxed against the rusted steel, shifting a little to relieve his numb backside. Probably just a trading duneclipper heading east for Broken Beach or a saltbarge returning to Saltlick from the brine pools. Nothing to worry about.

  Then Kite heard the sound of drilling.

  He sat bolt upright. The noise seemed fixed on the wind and far too close. Metal on stone. Somewhere south of the wreck, out in Hurts Deep and, like the beating of his heart, steady, regular and gathering in speed.

  2

  The Monitor

  A short distance from Hurts Deep the dunes opened up to wind-rubbed scabs of the ancient seabed. Brittle shells and fish bones littered the baked sediment. Kite treaded carefully, not wanting to announce his presence.

  “Must be Gassers,” he whispered.

  The Waste Witch squinted into the wind. “Hmm,” she said and pointed with her stick. “Go see what they're doing, boy.”

  Kite hesitated. What if it was Gassers? They were always drilling for vents in the seabed. Worse, it might have been the Savage Salvage Company sawing up a new wreck. Both would sooner butcher scavvies than risk their secrets.

  Ersa poked him. “It'll be dark soon,” she said.

  Without much enthusiasm and rubbing his ribs Kite scaled the dune. The last few yards he flattened himself on the sand and wriggled using his elbows. Vibration from the drill numbed his ribs, so close and heavy now that it almost smothered his heartbeat. Reluctantly Kite pushed the goggles up under the hood. After all he didn't want the reflecting glass giving his presence away. Maybe he was taking a risk but in the half-light no-one would see his silver Askian eyes from this distance.

  At first Kite couldn't see a thing. A hard swell had blown in from the Ashlands. Grains hissed against the dune in waves, tossed up by a dry tide channelling across the flats. Then the wind gusted and the dust thinned a little and there crouched an armoured liftship, long and low in the sand like a patient hunter.

  Kite kept low and silent. He thought he knew all the salvage rigs, their livery and flags. But he'd never seen an airmachine like this before. Ten times the size of his sandboat the liftship was built for heavy weather, with a long tapering deck to cut the winds. The pilothouse bristled with all manner of dishes and antennas and at the stern twin turbines turned silently inside lozenge-shaped cowlings. She had a name. Emblazoned on a brass plate bolted to her serrated prow - Monitor.

  Then Kite saw them.

  Soldiers. Three of them. All in crimson greatcoats, faces hidden by mirrored visors glimmering like liquid mercury in the spill from the pilothouse lights. Each one had a forked shockgun. Kite swallowed a hard gulp of fear. He’d never seen these men in the flesh. But every Askian knew their name.

  Weatherens.

  The word alone chilled the sweat tight on Kite’s skin. His pulse throbbed in his throat, matching the endless stab of the drill. Weatherens. So close he could almost smell their hatred for him on the wind.

  Kite began to wriggle back the way he'd come. Never once did his eyes leave the liftship. Never once did he hesitate. When he was certain he wouldn’t be seen or heard he rolled down the dune, the sand slapping against his hood.

  “W-Weatherens,” Kite said, gasping for air and floundering to his feet. “They've found us, Ersa. The Foundation has fou
nd us.”

  “Calm down, boy,” Ersa said. She was alert now, listening for the sound of men. “The Weatherens can't know we're here.”

  Kite tried to calm himself, tried to convince himself that Ersa was right. Maybe she was. They’d kept themselves hidden well this last year after all. The Weatherens being here had to be a coincidence and nothing more.

  Then the drilling stopped.

  “Go see what's happening,” Ersa whispered.

  Kite shook his head furiously. “What if they see me?”

  “You're small.”

  “But -”

  “Get back up there, boy,” Ersa hissed. “I want to know what those Weatherens are up to. They've come here for a reason.”

  Kite's defiance blew away on the wind. “Fine. I'll go,” he said and started up the dune again. “But if they catch me it'll be your fault.”

  From his vantage point Kite counted six Weatheren soldiers, milling about near the liftship. The prong tips of their shockguns flickered in the darkness with a deadly vein of electrical mosfire. The others numbered five. An odd-looking crew in sterile urine-yellow coats and elbow length black rubber gloves and big bug-goggles. Scientists or engineers maybe. All of them from the city of Fairweather.

  Fairweather.

  Over the years he'd heard a hundred different rumours. Fairweather, the great city of the sun, sat protected behind the Dreadwall - a structure so vast it took a hundred years and a thousand lives to build. And from there the Foundation ruled. The land and the sky and every soul between. Some even claimed the Foundation had created the Undercloud but Kite had never really believed that. How could you control a storm that covered the entire land?

  Using a portable derrick the scientists had been lifting heavy-looking drilling equipment from the trench. One of the scientists carried a white box but Kite couldn't see what they'd found down there. Real treasure maybe. Salvors talked of old wrecks with hidden holds full of tobacco and oil. Somehow Kite didn't think the Weatherens had come all this way for filthy old scavenge. Whatever was in that box had to be valuable.

  Without warning one of the Weatheren soldiers turned. His mirrored visor reflecting the flicker flash of the Undercloud’s lightning. Kite was certain he’d given himself away. He didn't dare move. Not even to blink. Then the soldier slowly turned away again.