The Immortal Storm (Sky Chaser Book 1)

by Wilkes, S. D.

  “Only one way to find out,” said Kite.

  A channel had been cleared at the end of the steps, down to a path of scuffed flagstones. Treading lightly they followed the flagstones until they came to a wall of ice beneath the dome. A towering doorway had been blasted open. The ice there still blackened with scorch marks.

  Kite picked up a splintered timber plank and brushed the snow from it. A ringed planet and fat stars and a playful comet with a smiling face had been expertly carved in the wood.

  “This is the place,” he said.

  44

  The Observatory

  The Observatory's great dome had caved in an age ago. Snow fluttered down in a shaft of metallic light, falling on the hollow frame of gigantic telescope. Cogwheels and lenses, some bigger than the stormwing, lay smashed into great chunks, reflecting Kite's goggled face from a hundred gleaming surfaces.

  Fleer pushed up her goggles. “Is this the Cloud Room?” she said, stepping between a scatter of tarnished bearings that sparkled jewel-like in the wreckage.

  “I don't think so,” Kite said, his breath fogging on the air. “Doesn't match what Ember said.”

  A strange smell tickled his noise. Almonds and spice. Somehow it seemed familiar but he couldn't quite place it.

  “In here,” Fleer said.

  There were three doors leading elsewhere inside the Observatory but only one had been recently forced. Kite followed to where a door lead to a ransacked workshop. The floor was littered with crushed tools and shattered equipment. Benches and tables had been toppled. Shelves torn down.

  Kite stepped with care. Brass rings and cogs and little ceramic body parts lay scattered at his feet. An eye. A hand. He spotted a complete mechanikin preserved in a slick of ice. Exactly how Ember must have been until eons of decay had taken its toll.

  “This is where the mechanikin was made,” he said.

  “But didn't the doll tell you the Cloud Room was here?” Fleer asked.

  Kite wasn't so sure now. “I think her memories are all mixed up,” he said. “Arcus sent her from here to find the Cloud Room.”

  “I knew we shouldn't have come here,” Fleer said.

  Kite squinted into the ice. A photograph was frozen in the slick but he could only pick out a man’s torso blotched with ice-burn. He picked up a chisel and began hacking at the ice.

  “Valkyrie,” Welkin said. “I'm picking up a source of EM signals above the city, over.”

  “Roger that, Frostbite, out,” Fleer said. “Sky Chaser, we're leaving.”

  Kite pulled off his gloves and with both hands worked free a chunk of ice.

  “We don't have time to add to your doll collection!” Fleer said.

  His fingers dug into the burning ice, scratching at the corner of the damp paper with his fingernails.

  “Valkyrie, something's very wrong out here, over,” Welkin said.

  “Sky Chaser?” Fleer said.

  “Almost...there...” Kite said, as he worked the photograph free. “Got it!”

  Ice-damage had warped much of the man's face, but what remained hinted of a kind-natured, practical scientist in overalls and spectacles. A man who studied the stars and planets. A man who constructed mechanical wonders.

  “It's Arcus the Starmaker,” Kite said.

  There was a girl in the photograph with him. She had ribbons of white hair and eyes like silver royals and a mischievous smile, that seemed at once sad and cruel. Kite recognised her at once.

  “If that's the Starmaker,” Fleer said, taking the photograph. “Then who's this girl?”

  Kite shivered with a different kind of chill. There was no doubt in his mind. The girl in the photograph was identical. The girl he'd seen on board the Phosphene, only days before.

  “It's Ember,” he said.

  Fleer stared at him. “Are you mad? The doll?” she said.

  But before Kite could answer the Observatory shuddered and the sound of cracking ice filled the air.

  45

  Escape from Skyzarke

  The Observatory shook again, more violently this time.

  Fleer folded the photograph into her pocket. “Move, now!” she said.

  Icicles snapped from the dome, shattering around them. The ancient telescope swayed, threatening to topple on they ran under it for the doors. Kite stumbled onto the flagstones. The whole hillside was shaking. Crusts of snow slumped off the fragile hillside.

  Kite stared up at the Undercloud. The storm swelled and pulsed; an infected wound flickering with sheet lightning. A terrible mechanical noise churned from within, building and building, like an engine powering up.

  “Get on!” Fleer shouted, clambering aboard the stormwing. “And watch where you put your hands!”

  Jumping on Kite locked his arms around Fleer's slender waist. Her body pressed against his. Kite tried to focus. Now wasn't the time to be bashful. The stormwing's Helicoil shrieked and they launched, the jolt nearly flinging Kite off the deck.

  “Hard to port, Sky Chaser,” Fleer said.

  With his weight the stormwing banked and skimmed the hillside. The promenade and harbour whipped by, ice mist coiling in the wake turbulence.

  Suddenly the mechanical din stopped and the Undercloud tore open. A column of light engulfed the hillside over the Observatory, instantly vaporising the snow into steam. A blast wave whipped across the lake, snapping the frozen masts.

  “Hold on!” Fleer cried, as the tiny stormwing rocked under them.

  Kite clung on while Fleer activated the booster and tore ahead of the swell. A wall of ice-mist swirled around them. The air cracked like lightning then faded to an eerie silence.

  Fleer brought them around. Kite wiped the ice from his google-glass and stared in disbelief at the hillside. A smoking crater a hundred feet wide had been sunk deep into the rock where Arcus's Observatory had once stood, leaving nothing but a black hollow.

  “Frostbite, what was that, over?” Fleer said.

  “An Atmospheric Munition, a Thermal Downblast most likely,” Welkin said, over a rush of air. “We used to call it the airquake, over.”

  The sky rumbled again, twanging Kite's nerves. The vast unseen airmachine that had obliterated Arcus's Observatory was on the move. The greenish clouds flickered. Once. Twice. Two bullet-shapes plummeted toward the lake, engines rumbling.

  Welkin swore. “Thundermoths,” he said.

  “Retreat to the ice-mines, over!” Fleer ordered. “Sky Chaser, follow my instructions or we're both dead as the whales!”

  Kite clipped his harness to Fleer's belt. He wasn't about to argue. “Roger that, Valkyrie.”

  The two thundermoths broke formation. One banked for the hill where Welkin was already in the air. The other came hunting for them, wing-mounted shockcannons flashing.

  “Hard to starboard!” Fleer shouted.

  Air-expanding bolts whipped by. With their combined weight the stormwing dodged and weaved, tearing across the frozen lake back to Skyzarke. Out here in the thin Hiemal air the stormwing sounded different. Clinker had tune them to account for the sub-zero temperature but Kite could sense the Helicoil was under strain.

  Behind them the thundermoth was gaining. Kite'd never seen a more brutal lump of flying metal. A dark-domed cockpit with fat engine pods at the rear, growling turbines churning the snow inside. The pot-bellied fuselage had shockcannons mounted under its stubby wings and a faded winged thunderbolt symbol emblazoned on its armour.

  “Forward, Sky Chaser!”

  Together Kite and Fleer dived beneath a frozen bridge, skimming between giant icicles the size of trees. The thundermoth airbraked to avoid crashing his airmachine and, sensing a chance to escape, Fleer activated the booster. The slats along the stormwing's leading edge snapped open and they rocketed toward the city skyline. The force tugged at Kite's grip, threatening to snatch him from the deck. Fleer's heartbeat hammered under her ribs, matching his own furious pulse.

  Kite chanced a look across the lake. Welkin had drawn the s
econd thundermoth into the hills, their vapour trails smeared on the ice-mist.

  “Look sharp, Sky Chaser!”

  Frozen buildings loomed ahead, glistening with dense slicks of ice. The thundermoth was now tearing across the rooftops to intercept them. Fleer dived into Skyzarke’s narrow silent streets. Kite began to match her movements instinctively, their bodies leaning and rocking in unison.

  The air cracked again. Bolts tore into a frozen tower, hurling debris into their path. Fleer dived for a tight gap between two buildings, barely wide enough to fit stormwing's wingspan. Kite caught sight of their reflection in a frosted windows moments before they tore once more into the open air above a district-wide crater.

  Snow swirled into the gaping hole. Half-buildings clung to edge, floors sliced and flapping with debris. For a moment Kite believed they had evaded their hunter. Then the air expanded with a crack over his head. Sparks hissed against his patchcoat. The thundermoth's turbines grew nearer and nearer, closing on their tail. Closing for the kill...

  “Airbrake, Sky Chaser!”

  With a gut-wrenching jolt the stormwing hurtled backward. Fleer's elbows slammed into his ribs. The thundermoth's cockpit screamed under the wings, startling the black-goggled Cloudtrooper hugging his controls. The pilot banked to avoid a collision and went hurtling chaotically across the crater, giving Fleer enough time to engage the booster. Out of the city and across the lake they flew, wrecks and phantoms an icy blur.

  “How close, Sky Chaser?”

  Kite glanced back. “A league and closing, over.”

  The thundermoth chased them into the hills where snow sponged up the engine noise. Rows of amber-eyed horned ghosts floated ahead of them, silent and deadly. Fleer dived for a gap between the ice-mines - too narrow for the thundermoth to follow. Kite braced himself. Together they weaved through the forest of chains. The thundermoth couldn't follow and quickly airbraked, ascending to a safe height. There the shockcannons took aim.

  “He's aiming for the ice-mines!” Kite shouted.

  A shockcannon bolt arced down, striking a mine in their path. The amber light flashed scarlet.

  Fleer plunged beneath the mine, seconds before it trilled like a boiling kettle. Grush! Quickening ice spewed from its horns. The force of it thumped against Kite’s back, but miraculously spared him. The great crystal ice-star formed by the detonation sank with the mine’s debris, the chain clattering on itself until it exploded on the snow-covered rocks - a thousand glistening daggers. Kite shuddered, realising how close they’d come to joining the ghosts of Skyzarke.

  The thundermoth had turned to take aim once again, keen to repeat the tactic. Kite spied a string of vapours expanding ahead of them - Welkin.

  The Weatheren came weaving between the swaying chains, letting off a stream of shockgun bolts. One skimmed the thundermoth’s fuselage. The two hit home, slicing into the thundermoth's nose cone, shattering the cockpit wind-glass. Down the thundermoth went, spinning into a fireball of shredding metal. Debris flew wide, raining into the ice-mines. Immediately the amber lights began to flash.

  Red. Red. Red.

  “Hold on!” Fleer cried.

  Fleer rocked on her heels. The booster kicked in and the stormwing burrowed in to the mines, barely a second ahead of the chain reaction of activating mines. Ice screamed and shattered around them. A cabbage-sized lump smacked against Kite's shoulder. His arm flailed but he kept his balance and bit on the pain.

  Fleer’s skill kept them ahead of the wave of detonations. Soon the gushes and faded and at a safe distance Fleer airbraked and they hovered among the floating mines, to catch their breath.

  “You hurt, Sky Chaser?” Fleer asked.

  Kite’s shoulder stung and his cheek flamed, but aside from that he’d been lucky. “Negative, Valkyrie.”

  “That was too close,” Fleer said. “Frostbite, report, over.”

  Silence.

  Kite scanned the forest of ice-mines. Filthy detonator smoke swirled around them. Dozens of gaps had appeared. Craters blackened the snow where the triggered devices had fallen. Fires from the wrecked thundermoth burned on the blackened hill. Nothing else moved.

  “Frostbite, report over?” Fleer said again.

  A hiss of static.

  Kite's skin tightened. He searched the mist of any sign of Welkin’s stormwing. “Frostbite?” he called. “Frost -”

  Then Kite saw it. A knot of ice and chains steaming amongst the concrete anchor blocks. The edge of a stubby wing stuck out of the snow. Kite pointed, his hand shaking.

  In silence Fleer descended. A short height from the snow Kite jumped down. The salt-pepper stink of the incendiary smoke burned his throat. An arm bent out the ice, twisted fingers dripping with pinkish melt-water. Kite turned away and shuddered.

  Fleer nudged passed him. She slipped her hunting knife from its sheath and began hacking at the ice. Crack! The stormwing thumped into the snow.

  “Hurry,” Fleer said. “They'll be here any second. Check the stormwing.”

  Numbly Kite chopped the ice from the stormwing. She had a few dents and a buckled rail but the damage was nothing Clinker couldn't patch up. He started her up. The Helicoil spluttered, spitting ice-water from its vents. At least it would fly. But for how long?

  “You'll need this,” Fleer said, pushing something cold and wet into Kite's glove. “If we get separated find your own way back.”

  Kite looked at what she’d salvaged from Welkin’s frozen body. His compass watch. The Foundation’s eye shone dully in the wintery half-light, speckled with beads of pinkish water.

  Fleer stood back from Welkin's body, giving him a quick salute. Kite wanted to say something meaningful but the words seemed glued to the back of his throat. He never imagined he could feel such remorse for a Weatheren.

  “For what it's worth Nayward, Welkin liked you,” Fleer said, slapping her boots onto the stormwing's pedals. “But now's not the time.”

  Behind them the second thundermoth's turbines rumbled, low and deadly.

  “Now, we fly or die,” Fleer said. “Got that?”

  Kite took one last look at Welkin's body. He squeezed the compass watch in his fist. “Roger that, Valkyrie,” he said.

  46

  Fly or Die

  “Watch your altitude, Sky Chaser!” Fleer yelled in his ears.

  Kite swore and pressed his boots down on the pedals. Snow-covered rocks hissed underneath the wings. The stormwing wasn't taking easily to her new master. Sometimes she wanted to launch him into the Undercloud, other times she was bent on tossing him into the snow. It was taking all his cold-numb concentration just to maintain this dangerous low altitude. But there were no second chances out here. One lapse in concentration, one tiny mistake, and he'd be joining Welkin.

  Beyond the rocks the Lethe cut the horizon. A vast slick of steel-blue ice. Bands of ice-fog shifted over a surface hatched with snow-yacht tracks. On the far side, almost invisible in the gloom, lay the jagged range of the Wildemark.

  Fleer drifted near the frozen shore, waiting for him to catch up. Kite brought the stormwing about, doing his best not to collide with her.

  “The Phosphene's northwest by west three hundred degrees,” Fleer said, pointing. “Once we're in range she'll signal us.”

  Kite brought out Welkin's compass watch but he didn't get chance to get his bearings. Thruster engines reverberated from shore to shore - the thundermoth.

  Fleer swore. “I'll lead the bogey upstream,” she said, adjusting her goggles. “Wait until he's taken the bait then get across to the other side.”

  Kite dragged his attention away from keeping his balance and stared across the ice. The distance seemed too far. He'd never make it alone.

  “Fleer, I don't think -”

  “Just remember what Welkin taught you,” Fleer said, cutting across him. “You can do this, Nayward. You have to. Go!”

  Then in a swirl of ice-mist Fleer accelerated away, zigzagging upstream in the direction of the thundermoth.
Watching her go he was struck by a sudden sickening fear that he might never see her again.

  “Go, Sky Chaser!” she yelled in his ear.

  Kite swore and kicked the pedals. The stormwing lurched onto the Lethe, rocking violently in a knife-edge crosswind. He veered to starboard, the wing skimming the frozen surface. Remembering his brief training, which now seemed all too full of gaps, he struggled to regain control. Again the stormwing was resisting him; refusing to accept this upstart with barely an hour of real flying experience in the Hangar Deck.

  Engine noise clashed in the distance. Out of the corner of his eye - he didn't dare turn his head - he glimpsed deadly flickers, followed by the crack of shockcannons. He tried not to think of Fleer under attack. Valkyrie could take care of herself. All that mattered now was getting to safety.

  The far shore began to take shape. Jetties and boathouses, memories of a kinder world, and ancient boats lay encrusted in the thick ice. Further still the crust of forest and low hills gave him renewed hope. Not far to go now. Fleer was right. He could do this...

  Another thundermoth burst from the mist.

  Kite veered out of its way, plunging into the ice mist. The thundermoth decelerated and yawed, aiming its shockcannons after him. Instinctively Kite dived for the surface of the frozen Lethe, a low angle of attack that gave him a violent burst of speed.

  The first bolts flashed by, puckering the ice ahead of him. He swerved to avoid the debris, and found himself heading downstream. Mimicking Fleer's tactics he swung to port and then to starboard, making himself a hard target. The thundermoth fell back but only for a second. Boosters burned. The nose-cone roared closer, shockguns with a clear shot. Kite didn't even have time to think. He just braced himself, expecting a sudden violent end. The air cracked. But again the bolt slashed wide of the wings.

  Kite breathed hard, his heart hammering madly. That wasn't luck this time. That was a warning shot. The Corrector wanted him alive.

  Once again the deafening bolts flung wide, trying to force him to surrender or die. Evasion wasn't going to work. He'd have to force the pilot on to the ice. Just as Fleer had done in Skyzarke.