Aethosphere Chronicles: Storm of Chains

by Jeremiah D. Schmidt

  On his hand, the horrified noble felt the comforting warmth of fingers crawling across his skin and then intertwining with his own, and when he dared to peek out, he found Abigail’s angelic face. It was hued in the color of tulips, and smiling at him with affection. Drish had never seen such an expression directed at him before, and even as his heart raced and fluttered, he felt a sort of calm enter over him.

  “Hold on,” Bar’s thundering voice shattered the still of that moment, “Only way to lose these pests is around the glare of the Bind, you clear, Gryph?”

  “Aye.”

  Drish felt his body pulled hard to the starboard, and his head grew dizzier with each passing second, and while the fiery atmium glow locked its gaze to the portside windows, out the starboard, the surrounding skyscape swung around in nauseating circles. The fighters buzzed in confused patterns, approaching and then braking off, to circle out and around, and try back in again.

  “Ah, they’re too fast for their own good,” Drish heard the captain bark to the short Candaran sitting at the helm next to him.

  The skiff continued around the Bind until Drish was sure his brain would liquefy from the centrifugal force, and just when he thought he couldn’t stand it anymore, Gryph straightened out their flight. He took them low over the stony summits of the Sovereignhelm Highlands soon after, then down into their forested valleys. The city of Throne appeared a couple dozen kilometers ahead after that, to look like a net of red-brick and black streets cast over the rolling hills of a snowy landscape.

  From this distance, Drish could almost imagine what the city looked like before the Empire came; back when it was the jewel of the Ascella; when fleets of trade ships soared in coursing streams, to and from the airdocks that lined the Lordswater Lake; back when the city was home to a quarter-million Ascellans. He found himself missing the way the city used to be, how the steamerlimos and opened-topped sedans navigated the broad avenues, how the citizenry enjoyed fine-dining and a robust nightlife; the Opera House; the Great Temple; the gardens and the museums… but the broken towers of the Palace were plainly visible, even at this distance, and the patchy black stain of the slum ruins, running along the Goldenthread River to end at the peninsula of the Industrial District, reminded him that all of it was gone.

  The piercing crack and sharp sizzle of flak brought Drish back to the present, and outside the airship’s viewports appeared blossoms of sooty-black death. There was nothing for Drish to do, but sit there and pray as artillery fire came pounding in at them from the big guns of the Iron warships that had joined in the pursuit.

  The skiff lunged and lurched, as once more, Gryph took them dangerously close to the mountainsides, but unlike those of the High Crown, the Sovereignhelm’s looked soft by comparison, rolling with more gentle contours, and covered in barren, leafless trees. Drish could hear their tops striking and snapping along the airship’s keel, even as the hum of bi-fighters rose back up in chorus. Machinegun fire followed, punctuated occasionally by the throaty cough of a hunter-killer’s gun. Around, and beneath the skiff, the forest exploded into fire and splinters; birds scattered in startled flocks; and Drish felt his nerves beginning to fail. They were caught out in the open, being chased by fighters and warships, and with nowhere to escape to, not that the mad-pilot seemed inclined. He’d mindlessly locked them on course with King’s Isle’s capital, seeming to use the ruined Palace as his reference point, and deviating only enough to throw off the Empire’s shots.

  From the left and right, bi-fighters roared by, their speed taking them by in a breathless flash, where they made big looping circles to come back around. Off in the distance, additional airships were closing in, while above Throne, the air had turned suspiciously empty. There wasn’t a transport, or trade vessels to be found, and it almost looked as if the entire city had been abandoned.

  “Take us in lower, Gryph,” ordered Bar, and Drish baulked in disbelief as the tiny pilot eagerly nodded.

  “Lower,” the noble cried out, “We can’t go any lower.”

  But lower they went, and as the first of the city’s outlying buildings passed beneath the ship, Drish heard and felt it when they tore away their roofs. The airship was still trembling from the impact when the Goldenthread appeared below, and then disappeared just as fast. Buildings were racing by at suicidal speeds; taller buildings clipped at the sides of their propeller mountings; and the aristocrat’s already fearful eyes turned even wider when the Great Temple came charging towards their front viewport on a direct collision course.

  “We’re never going to—”

  Drish’s last word was pulled back into his throat as Gryph jerked the vessel onto its side, leaving the street streaking just past the starboard portholes. An explosion thundered like lightning over the city, and Drish snapped his head up and around to a fireball of wreckage arcing out into the surrounding upscale townhouses; wreckage that had once belonged to the Temple’s topmost spire and an unlucky Iron bi-fighter.

  Gryph climbed and then leveled them out, following along Meadowlark Boulevard, where Drish’s heart leapt as Cooper Street came and went in a flash outside the window past Abigail’s head. Very soon after, the Administrative Square appeared below, and there, the pilot swung them back towards the Palace, flying around it in a tight circle as though to survey the destruction below. Bi-fighters continued to harass them, zipping in and then flinging away as the skiff turned.

  When the cliffs of the Shield Veil Wall appeared below, Gryph dipped them towards the Lordswater Lake, sending them skipping off the waves in a spray of water, and while Drish watched the beads shed from his window, the skiff looped along the surface to put the Wall back in its front viewport.

  “We’re going back to Throne?” The prospect defied all reason. The capital was crawling with imperial ground forces, and Drish could see the Iron Stratafleet descending over the city.

  “No choice,” Bar replied through his gritted teeth, “Our way off this isle lays down there.”

  “Off…but how?”

  Chapter 9

  Just as Gryph had taken them soaring down Meadowlark Boulevard, he next sent them hurdling up Mercy Avenue, a course that squeezed them between the high-rises of the Commercial district, toward Glenside hospital. As Drish sat with his nails digging into the seat arms, his heart hammering, and his eyes wide in stunned disbelief, office windows flashed past his porthole in rhythmic pulses. In some he caught faces staring back out and filled with equal measures of disbelief.

  Insanity did not even begin to describe the nature of this venture. They were flying through the heart of Throne, with squadrons of bi-fighters buzzing in chase, and Iron warships descending down from the clouds with thunderous artillery reports. Amongst the hulking black airships, Drish even spied a Dreadnaught class monstrosity on approach to deliver absolute death; and still the worst had yet to come.

  “Brace for impact,” hollered Bar as the airship dipped sharply, but even with the warning, Drish grimaced in pain when the skiff slammed down onto the unyielding pavement in a shriek of steel and a hellfire rain of sparks. They plowed aside motor vehicles, parked or otherwise, and sent pedestrians screaming in flight; and all while the noble felt his bones rattling to chalk.

  Stopping came as a blessed relief, but rest was not to be had. The pirates around Drish were already throwing off their restraints and staggered through the smoke towards the skiff’s portside exit, all while the noble sat groaning in pain and struggling for a just a single breath of clean air.

  “Come on, Drish,” encouraged Abigail as she hauled herself up and pulled a rucksack out from the overhead storage bin, but the noble just waved a feeble hand and closed his eyes. His head was throbbing, his jaw hurt, and everywhere was pain. He just needed to rest, but the resistance fighter had other ideas. Abigail undid his belts for him and then seized Drish by the collar, trying to tug him up to his feet.

  “Leave me,” he snarled, slapping her hands away, “I can’t anymore…I won’t…no more running.”<
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  “We’re almost there, just a few blocks to the escape route,” she wrapped her arms around his waist, “Up and at’em, soldier.” Drish was too exhausted to fight her off anymore, especially after Bar appeared, eager to help.

  “Is he injured?” the pirate asked, wrapping a muscled arm underneath the noble’s shoulder.

  I don’t think so,” grunted Abigail as they heaved up Drish’s limp body together.

  Realizing they just weren’t going to leave him alone, and would instead continue manhandling his bruised body, Drish surrendered to their will and stood up on his own. “Fine,” he grumbled, wobbling on unsteady legs, “lead the way.”

  Drish let himself be pulled from the mangled skiff into the crisp, cool breeze of the outside world. At some point snow had started to fall, to hiss and sizzle to steam over the smoldering wreckage around him, and the weary noble tilted back his head to let the cool flakes gather over his face. He might have laid down right then and there on the cold streets, had the deep bellow of a powerful horn not brought his eyes snapping open instead. With awe, he watched as an imperial dreadnaught parted down through the low-laying clouds, staining everything red with its blood-eyed atmium core. It dwarfed the buildings it floated over, and from the bow and stern, floodlights lanced out between its bristling armaments, probing the skiff’s carnage in search of survivors.

  From the side streets to the south and east, the wail of sirens rose up on the wind, screaming in on approach.

  Along the newly abandoned roadway, the pirates gathering at the smashed bow of their escape craft, collecting their wits and inventorying their injuries as the shock of the crash began to give away to the awareness of an airship tracking them from above. Within their midst, Drish already stood agape, shielding his eyes from the glare of the searchlights as they fell over them.

  The groan of parting metal blasted down, revealing a hatch opening up in the airship’s belly, within which, a host of tread-rovers could be seen poised for lowering via cranes.

  “By order of the Iron Empire you are to lay down arms and surrender! Failure to do so will result in immediate death!”

  The dreadnaughts horn issued another challenging bellow that rattled the surrounding windows. Suddenly scores of lines came tumbling down from the hatch, landing in amongst the street rubble surrounding the pirates. Immediately after, Iron soldiers could be seen lining the bay’s edge, readying themselves to repel down in mass.

  The pirates, for their part, met the Empire’s challenge by hightailing it out of there.

  Beyond exhausted and nearly crippled with pain, Drish was loath to follow after them, but when he heard Abigail’s voice screaming to him over the boots clomping on pavement, he turned, finding her saffron eyes locked on him and pleadingly for him to follow. The gaze drew him forward, until he was running after her.

  This is the Healthcare District, the fugitive realized, laboring for breath and feeling a stitch of pain growing in his side. One after another, they passed various specialty clinical buildings. We’re heading for Glenside Hospital, and he spotted the modern structure of glass, steel, and concrete, standing at the end of the avenue. Behind Drish, the streets rumbled beneath the heavy impact of landing tread-rovers, and soon after rifle fire shadowed their course.

  They fled down the street under a barrage of bullets, Bar diverting at the last second towards an ambulance landing pad adjacent to the medical facility, before a lower wall segment of the building itself exploded beside them beneath the thunderous report of a tread-rover’s artillery salvo. Smoky debris crashed down into the gardens and walkways, just as a second bombardment clapped violently between the buildings. Glass shattered, and concrete was pulverized into dust. Drish slowed, horrified by the wanton destruction, and yet the pirates didn’t stop running; no matter the futility of their escape at this point. It had become impossible. The pirates were hemmed in. The airship overhead had them sighted, the tread-rovers were zeroing them in, troopers were on foot in pursuit, and Drish could see quadrupedal assault machines hammering down the various side streets in an effort to block any alternate escape routes.

  All that was left to them was a small utility shed behind the hospital’s airstrip, and that’s precisely where Bar lead his merry band of ne’er-do-wells. They skidded to a halt at the threshold of this innocuous looking out-building, and Bar wasted no time kicking in the doorway to the repellant stench of raw sewage. The pirate captain stepped aside and drew his gun. “In,” he demanded.

  Drish looking past Bar, into the gloom. “All of us,” countered the leery noble, plugging his nose to the offense odor. The building was no bigger than an outhouse, smelled like one too, and held but a single manhole cover in its floor. The noble turned away in abject disgust until he heard the cover being slid away. Curiosity snapped his gaze back, where he found a head sticking up through the opening.

  “You certainly know how to make a ruckus, Bazzon,” this sewer-dwelling creature hollered up at them, “The airwaves are blowing up with imperial chatter concerning you guys.” The man’s heavily-boned face, and boxer’s nose, made him look like an ogre straight out of a fairytale. Fitting given his position.

  “You know me,” said Bar with a shrug, “I’ve never been one to pass up an opportunity to make a statement.”

  “I can definitely see that,” the sewer ogre nodded past the gathered pirates, out to a street rapidly filling with imperial hardware.

  “Come on, come on. In, in.” The disembodied head popped back down to whatever hell it crawled out of, and the pirates scrambled to follow, one after the other. When it came down to just Fen, Drish, Abigail, and Bar, the young Hierarch went first, and then Bar ordered Drish to follow. About halfway in, the noble realized neither Abby nor Bar had motioned to join his escape.

  “You better not be planning to make a stand like that Admiral Lockney of yours, Bar,” Drish heard Abigail say sternly, and watching closely, that’s exactly what is seemed like Captain Bazzon intended to do. He’d planted himself behind the open doorframe, with his revolver at the ready. On the other side, Abigail planted herself and pulled a pistol from her waistband. The captain’s devil-be-damned eyes looked tired beyond measure, and he opened his mouth as if to protest, when someone grabbed Drish by his loafs and tugged him down in to the rancid abyss. He never heard Bar’s response, but instead came crashing to the hard ground on his tailbone, entering into a world of torchlight and heavy shadows.

  “Hope you didn’t mind,” Fen’s face appeared inches away from his. Drish could see the adolescent’s whiteheads glowing sour in the murky light, and it made him feel sick. “But we don’t got time for you to sightsee.”

  Rook and O’Dylan were there to haul the noble to his feet, while someone spoke nearby in a deep and melodious voice. “…was a good friend,” he was saying, “and a good leader to the Resistance, and it’s my pleasure to help his son wherever I can.”

  It took a moment for Drish to realize the voice was directed at him, but as he patted the dirt from his knees and his elbows, he eventually noted the anticipatory silence surrounding him, and when Drish looked up he found a host of man lining the sewer. They’d parted to either wall, leaving a single man standing out in the tunnel’s center. It was the ogre that had directed them down here in the first place. With no neck to speak of, and an unruly black beard of curly hair, he looked like some wilderness beast, and yet his words were spoken with elegance.

  “Oh yes, well…thank you,” responded the noble.

  “Please, know that he’ll be sorely missed,” the beast added with a firm candor. “You have my deepest condolences, sir.”

  Up on the surface, artillery shells pounded the streets, sending dirt tumbling down from the ceiling in cascades.

  “Yes, yes, yes,” dismissed Drish in sudden distraction. Abigail had yet to appear, and the fact this brute was still jabbering on annoyed him to no end; even more so, he begun to worry.

  “Indeed.” The Candaran insurgent cocked an eyebrow.
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  When Abigail appeared beside Drish at that moment he was beyond relieved, and he might have reached out and embraced her except that Bar had also appeared, squeezing in between them on course for the ranks of his pirate crew. “All present and accounted for,” he growled in somnolent brevity, to which he was treated back to a grumbling wave of acknowledgement.

  “Come along,” ordered the ogre, while the rest of his men disappeared into the gloom. “We’ll regroup further down,” he hollered over his shoulder, and when viewed from behind he looked as broad and imposing as a hairy, Ushakaron gargorul. “Once we’re beyond the range of those pounders to can talk.”

  Under a shuffling of boots, the beleaguered fugitives, and their insurgency escort, marched in single file, using a lone torch held far ahead to guide their way; while back on the streets of Throne, the Empire continued its voracious shelling. In time though, each impact seemed to grow more distant, and the debris it sent tumbling down slackened to a trickle, until none fell at all.

  “Who is that man,” Drish eventually dared to ask, but Abigail was unhelpful.

  She shrugged back. “Dunno.”

  “You don’t know…? But this is your Resistance.”

  “Different cell.”

  “It’s Mace Portman,” whispered Fen as though it was supposed to mean something to Drish (which it didn’t). But it did capture Abigail’s attention.

  “Portman? The Mace Portman…? Leader of the Smuggler’s Redoubt—that Mace Portman?”

  “The one and only,” said Fen with an eager grin; one that looked a little too eager for Drish’s liking. And he didn’t particularly care how close the Hierarch was walking next to Abigail either. And if he didn’t know better, he thought the gangly youth might be trying to peek down the woman’s loose halter-top; as despicable a notion as that was.

  Chapter 10

  “It’s just a little further to the service junctions,” the man Fen had called Mace crooned back to those who followed. But where they were didn’t particularly matter to Drish, unless it was a way out in this hell of unimaginable stench, otherwise a service junction was no more interesting or relevant than the tube they were currently shuffling down. However, it did hasten the pirates’ marching, and that set their swaying equipment into a jangling din.