The Immortal Storm (Sky Chaser Book 1)

by Wilkes, S. D.

  “I-I thought you hated me,” he mumbled.

  “I keep trying to,” Fleer replied, her breath hot and clammy against his cheek.

  The cold room shook again, toppling more medicines from the shelves. The deck shifted, registering deep in Kite's bones. The Vorticity had begun to list.

  “We've got to get out of here,” Kite said, sliding an arm around Fleer's waist. “I’ll help you.”

  But Fleer pushed him away and dragged herself to the cabinets. “I'm not dead yet, Nayward,” she said, and began snatching medicine bottles from the shelf. She tore off a cap and slapped a handful of pills into her mouth.

  Hurriedly Kite tore off the prisoner clothes and pulled on his own gear, snapping off the labels as he did. The airworker suit, the rebreather mask, his boots and old patchcoat. Even his scarf and goggles. Pulling them on was strangely reassuring, like being reacquainted with old friends.

  “Can you walk?” Kite said, fixing the headphones around his neck.

  Fleer took an exploratory step toward him, grimacing to herself. She straightened her back and fixed him with a familiar stare. “Lead the way, Sky Chaser,” she said.

  Quick as he could Kite retraced the route to the Hangar Deck. Using the geolume he lit the way, along the sparkling corridors and down the stairwells. On the way he explained to Fleer what had happened. He told her about the Cloud Room, about Mercurius Lux and Ember and the Corrector too. Fleer didn't believe him at first. Kite didn't blame her, he could hardly believe it himself.

  When they reached the last stairwell a tremendous crunch sent them slamming against the railing. An explosion, somewhere close. Kite swore. The Ether Shield was already tearing itself apart.

  “You weren't lying were you,” Fleer murmured, following him down the steps.

  The sky harbour was skewed at an alarming angle. The Vorticity's holding clamps strained to hold the airmachine in place. The liftships rattled dangerously in their moorings, debris was sliding to the portside.

  Knowing they had only minutes to get airborne Kite hurriedly unhooked the stormwing from the banister. He checked the rebreather reserve. Quarter of a litre. Would that be enough? He didn't know. They'd have to chance it.

  “Here you take it,” Kite said, trying to clip the safety-line to Fleer's belt.

  “Nayward, s-stop,” she said.

  “It's all right, I can hold my breath,” Kite insisted.

  But Fleer caught his hand. “Stop,” she said, staring into his eyes. “E-even if we both had pressurised suits we'd still be dead in s-seconds. The altitude, Nayward.”

  Kite stared at her. He'd had forgotten what Clinker had told him about the altitude boiling his blood.

  “I-I told you this would be my last flight,” Fleer said, holding his hand tightly.

  The air was freezing, glass-sharp against the back of Kite’s throat. And each breath seemed to sap a little more of his strength. It was only the last gasps of the Ether Shield's support system keeping them from succumbing to the deathly cold. Kite knew Fleer was right. There was no hope for them.

  “I'm so glad you're here, Nayward,” Fleer sobbed, her body shivering against his. “But I wish you weren't. I've lost so many people I loved. I just wanted one of us to live.”

  Fleer smiled then, squeezing tears down her cheeks. Kite had often imagined that smile. A smile so beautiful and sad and full of promise that it made their fate seem so unfair.

  The Hangar Deck shifted and they lurched together in a shuddering knot. This was it. Any second now. He held Fleer close. Maybe it wasn't such a bad way to end things. The two of them together at last. Alone at the top of the world.

  Kite couldn't deny he was frightened of dying. He only hoped it would be swift. He could imagine it. The Ether Shield would fall and the Vorticity would fall with it and the two of them would…

  ...they would fall with the Vorticity.

  Hurriedly, clumsily, Kite threaded the safety-line under their belts. His hands were shaking. The cold. The fear. At this point he didn't know which.

  “W-what are you d-doing, Nayward?” Fleer said, watching him as if he'd gone mad.

  “T-this probably won't work and we'll die anyway,” Kite said, clipping the carabiner to the stormwing's rail and stepping onto the pedals. “But, on the odd chance it does work, you'd better hold on to me.”

  Fleer climbed on the deck behind him, locking her arms around his waist. Before fixing her rebreather mask in place Fleer leaned close, her lips brushing his cheek. She said something but in the chaos that followed Kite didn't hear them.

  With an ear-shredding scream of warping metal the docking clamps wrenched from the Vorticity's hull. Kite watched the sky harbour tearing away. He was suddenly weightless. Gravity itself seemed to fail. Debris floated up around him. He blinked at a silver rivet hovering in the air, spinning slowly in the eerie stillness.

  Then the world turned upside down...

  66

  The Falling Sky

  The Vorticity sank at a terrible speed.

  Torn from their mooring the liftships were sucked from the ramp doors. Hatch doors buckled and popped. Air cylinders, oil drums, tools and chairs went hurtling away. Incredible forces tore at Kite's body, rippling through his muscles. He was still holding his breath, lungs screaming for air. His vision blurred and shook. He could feel himself slipping into unconsciousness, but he fought against it. If he fell into a daze now that would be the end of them both.

  The stormwing rattled under Kites boots. The safety-line was rigid as a rod; the only thing stopping them from being dragged out the Hangar Deck and into the deadly sky. He'd angled his legs so the airmachine was pushing up against him, held in place by the magnetic pedals and Vorticity's descent.

  Wall panels ripped off the bulkheads. Deck plates tore from the outer hull. All of it went spinning away, joining the trail of debris in the ascender's wake. The Vorticity was approaching terminal velocity. Any second Kite expected the ascender to buckle into a mangle of metal. Trapped inside the two of them would be shredded. Breathable air or not, Kite knew they had to go now.

  Gulping for precious air Kite tried to unclip the safety-line from the stormwing's rail. He swore. The cable was a rod-tight. His clumsy glove fingers couldn't twist it free.

  A sickening jolt tore at Kite's muscles. The Vorticity struck a boundary in the sky, shifting the doomed airmachine in to a horizontal spin. The Hangar Deck blurred around him, making him dizzy and disorientated. Clouds whipped by the ramp.

  But the shift had given the cable slack. Desperately Kite reached for the carabiner, his fingers curling under it. He grit his teeth, precious air escaping from his mouth. Just a little further.

  Sensing it was time Fleer tightened her grip. As the cable slipped off the railing time seemed to slow to a crawl. Together they drifted upward, while the Hangar Deck twisted without them. Then an irresistible force grabbed them and sucked them into the open sky.

  A violent backwash of air whipped the stormwing into a barrel roll. The air slapped Kite's cheeks and screeched in his ears. He gulped for a breath. The dry air rushed over his mouth, leaving him gasping in panic. Fleer had him in a choking embrace, squeezing his ribs even tighter. Disorientated his mind swam with confused signals. He needed a marker, something to focus on.

  A column of dirty black smoke from the ascender’s turbines.

  Keeping it in his sights Kite swung his body in the opposite direction, breaking them out of the chaotic spin. For a second he had control, then the air resistance slammed against his chest, punching the air from his lungs. They were freefalling.

  Kite bent his knees and rocked on the pedals.

  Tunk-tunk.

  “No! Not now!” Kite cried out pointlessly, tearing his voice into a croak.

  He slammed his boots down again and again. A puff of dirty air spat from the vents and the engine shuddered into life.

  “Yes!”

  The thrust sent them hurtling upward for a brief moment, but Kite soon
brought the down in wide controlled arcs, into a safe altitude.

  Fleer gasped for air. “I think I’m going to be sick,” she mumbled.

  Kite laughed. He drank in the air until his lungs ached and his temples throbbed. The air was cold and chemical clean but he breathed deep, burning his bruised throat. But he didn't care. He'd survived and so had Fleer and that was all that mattered to him now.

  Sluggishly at first Kite became aware of heat spreading through his damp clothing and warming his numb cheeks. Bright as a hundred corpusants a vast orb of white-gold blazed in the sky. Kite squinted into it but found he couldn't look at the thing for more than a few seconds without burning a greenish blob on his vision.

  “What's that?” Fleer said.

  “I-I think it's the sun,” Kite said, but he couldn't be certain.

  Other wonders hung in the sky. The Ether Shield. Lux's weather machine was too vast take in all at once. The great rings, Kite counted at least twelve, shimmered like ripples in a vast, blue pond. Thousands of twisting turbines and propeller blades encrusted each and a rainbow haze floating about its chimneys. The structure was majestic and terrifying. But all Kite saw was Lux's arrogance written on the sky.

  And in its centre, like a bead of water caught in a silver cobweb, a great orb wavered. The Cloud Room, it had to be. Kite imagined Ember still up there looking down on the world, watching her revenge unfolding.

  A tiny metallic voice chattered from his headphones. He lifted them and listened.

  “...In Skyzarke I discovered a way to have as many lifetimes as I wanted without the threat of forgetting a single moment of each...”

  Kite twisted the tuner. Channel after channel was broadcasting Lux's treacherous words. Another act of revenge from Ember? Or maybe the Corrector had engineered it? Either way everyone would soon learn of Lux’s crimes. Even the Weatherens.

  A monstrous boom shook the air. Far below the stricken Vorticity had finally reached the earth. Kite followed the smoke trail, down Fairweather's fields hundreds of feet below. The ascender had vanished into hellish black crater, leaving a scatter of flaming wreckage. At least there'd been no crew on board. A small comfort compared to the destruction that would soon follow.

  Fleer dug her elbow into his ribs. “Look sharp, Sky Chaser!”

  The sky glimmered with silver sparkles. Rain? The Kite remembered it could never rain on Fairweather. Then something small shrieked by and punched a hole clean through the wing, sending a shiver through the airmachine.

  “Dive!” Fleer shouted in his ear.

  A house-sized lump of black metal hurtled by them, it’s wake sending the stormwing into a brief spin. A propeller blade scythed the air over their heads. Debris from the Ether shield was falling to earth, filling the sky with deadly shrapnel.

  Kite regained control and plunged for the emerald fields. Fat piebald oxen scattered at the scream of the stormwing's engine-noise. He skimmed by tree tops and farm-houses and followed arrow-straight tracks. Lethal wreckage was smacking into the hills, throwing up chunks of black earth. Tar-black smoke trails hung in the perfect sky.

  The Dreadwall loomed in the distance, its peak cutting a silver line against the Undercloud's black thunderheads. Beneath its fortifications Kite brought the stormwing to a hover. Though far from safe at least here in the cool, damp shadows were outside the Ether Shield's perimeter and clear of the wreckage churning the fields into mud.

  Kite could see the great gaps that had already opened up in the Ether Shield's sky-wide rings. Just as the scientist in the Control Room had warned, the turbines had begun to fail one by one and the outer rings had were buckling under their own weight. Jigsaw-piece sections fell in eerie slow motion, tumbling over and over.

  Already Fairweather was dying. The city’s great towers were full of ragged holes. Fires flickered in the streets and smoke wreathed its skyline. Again and again booms of powerful impacts rolled in like rounds of distant shockfire.

  Just as Skyzarke had died two centuries before.

  Unable to look anymore Kite turned away from the city, wishing he could scrub the images from his mind. Back in the High Hollows the Genetrix had warned him this was how it would end. He had the chance to stop Ember. Instead, he had encouraged her. Somehow he would have to live with that truth for the rest of his life.

  Then Kite spied a flotilla of airmachines crawling across the fields. Some with military patterns, others merchant livery. Others lifted off from airstrips and launch pads. A rescue fleet. All summoned to help the doomed city in its final moments.

  One liftship flew higher than the others. Smoke curling from her port side, her hull streaked with the scars of a recent sky battle. Kite recognised it at once.

  “Fleer, look it’s the Windspear,” Kite said.

  There was no response.

  “Fleer?”

  Fleer was silent. Her head lolled loosely against his shoulder. Her lips were a deathly purple. Kite could feel her rapid breaths against his back, shallow and weak. Kite fumbled for the rebreather mask.

  “Fleer answer me!”

  He pressed the mask awkwardly to her lips hoping it would revive her. But she was unconscious and fading fast.

  “Hold on, Fleer!”

  Kite dipped the stormwing into a furious dive. He swept low over the green hills and met the Windspear over a sparkling blue lake.

  “Windspear, this is Sky Chaser. Respond! Respond!”

  Sunlight glared across the pilothouse windows. Kite brought the stormwing level.

  “Valkyrie needs help, over!” he said, waving madly.

  Without warning the Windspear swerved at him, the armour sparking against the wing. Kite banked sharply to avoid a collision. He circled the Windspear at a safe distance, until he could see Shelvocke at the wheel, in his shabby disguise of overcoat and slouch hat.

  “You bastard Shelvocke,” Kite said.

  Shelvocke chuckled. “You want to kill me, Nayward?” he said, watching Kite fly across his bow. “Is that what you want?”

  Kite heard the distant clatter of warning klaxons. A Cloudguard fulgurtine in the rescue fleet had begun to turn, alerted to the Windspear’s presence.

  “The Weatherens'll do that soon enough,” Kite said.

  “I am ready to accept my fate, Nayward,” Shelvocke replied, without altering his course. “I will return a free man now that Fairweather has been purged of Mercurius Lux. Everyone knows the truth. We have changed history, Nayward. Us. The Murkers.”

  Anger seethed in Kite's veins and burst out of him. “You sent Fleer to die! Even after she spared your life,” he roared. “You're not a hero! You're a coward! And you’ll hang for what you’ve done!”

  A crackling silence, broken by the distant groans from the Ether Shield.

  “Have you finished, Nayward?” Shelvocke said, without an inch of emotion in his voice. “Then for once listen. Her life and yours depend on it - south south-east one-sixty degrees, eighteen leagues.”

  The radio fizzled out.

  Kite watched the Windspear accelerate away from him, a gut-swirl of emotions threatening to overcome him. Rage and regret and hollow disgust; a burrowing worm in his belly. Then Fleer shifted against his back. He knew what he had to do. He checked Welkin's compass watch and quickly got his bearings.

  “Don’t die, Fleer,” Kite whispered.

  Riding a rocket of vapour the stormwing flew skyward. The Dreadwall rushed by but Kite didn't look back. Even when the crump of shockcannons rolled over the air hissing by his ears and the explosive impacts that followed. Nothing else mattered except finding the Phosphene.

  Up and up Kite flew to where the thickening clouds enveloped them and shafts of sunlight flickered and he plunged back into the safety of the Undercloud.

  67

  Sky Chaser

  Standing silently at her grave Kite recalled those last desperate moments together. Could he have done more to save her life? Should he have been braver? He would never know. That dark day seemed lifeti
me ago now. So much had happened since then. Yet here he was, back where it all started.

  Overgrown tindergrass hissed in the gusting wind. Daubed with the Tom Skull’s jawless laugh the container's loading doors had been welded shut. The sandboat had long gone and in its place, a chalk cairn had been erected. Ersa's stick had been hammered to the sand, a few buttons scattered beneath. A fitting grave, Kite reckoned, for a life so full of secrets and mysteries.

  Kite wondered who’d built the grave. Not the Savages, that’s for sure. Maybe a Havener wracked with guilt then? Or some kind soul who had once bought one of Ersa's trinkets? It hardly mattered. One person in Dusthaven cared enough to give the Waste Witch a dignified burial and that meant more than any apology.

  The growl of engines snatched Kite from his thoughts. Over the container tops he spied the Tailwind, lifting from Ruster's Roost. Noon already. He'd been here too long. The skies were still far from safe.

  Kite took out the mempod from his pocket. Turning it in his hand he imagined Ember in the Cloud Room and thought again about the promise he'd made to her that day. The one he didn't know if he could keep.

  “Time to go, Ember,” he said.

  Hauling the bulky backpack onto his back Kite stepped onto the stormwing's deck. With all this extra weight he'd be a less agile than usual. But all this water and food was essential for the long flight ahead of him. After all the Ashlands were vast and he had no idea where the eastern enclave was. But he had the stormwing and a pocket full of royals. Three thousand nine hundred royals to be precise, give or take a few. Kite secretly smiled. He had the newly promoted Captain Nightborn to thank for that.

  The stormwing’s engine snapped out a column of vapour and Kite soared high. For a moment he let the airmachine hover, taking in one last look at the container town below. Dusthaven still bore its scars. Whole districts melted by mosfire, others still buried under the avalanche of chalk. But the town's defiant spirit had somehow survived. Everywhere Kite saw signs of recovery. Somehow even the rust seemed more vibrant. Funny how the world could change in a few short weeks.