Bar didn’t take much comfort from the old man’s words. Instead he just growled in frustration as he pulled open the ladderwell door. After the early euphoria that had fermented in the distillery of camaraderie, it’s loss was all the more bitter, and left nothing but the sour burn of stale grog in the pit of his stomach.
Chapter 2: A Swing Towards Sinister
As Bar Bazzon ascended the ladder it quickly became clear, by the sounds of yelling filtering down through the beams, that something was deeply amiss. The shrill blat of the ship’s warning klaxon was eerily silent, driving away any notion of an imperial attack, and thus adding even more to the ensign’s confusion. It sounds a lot like the fight I just broke up. It was clear that several men were angrily shouting over one another, creating a guttural stream of noise that drifted though the levels above.
Hastily, Ensign Bazzon took the ladder two treads at a time and emerged in an empty galley. Outside the windows was a chaotic sea of close-pressed bodies. Whatever was going on was happening outside, under the awning of the airbladder housing. Bar turned left, pushed his way through the hatch and out onto the outlaying cargo deck, where the light of day washed over what appeared to be most of the crew pressing forward into one tangled herd. Curiosity marked those straining to see over the crowd along the narrow path leading to the main deck at the bow, and in front of them, each successive ring of aeronauts appeared more agitated, more vocal, more violent than the last.
“What’s going on,” Bar shouted, grabbing hold of the closest man by the shoulder. The man jumped under the ensign’s touch, wrenching away to spin about. A wild look stretched across his glassy-eyed expression, and though Bar instantly recognized Morgan Dunkirk as one of the junior mechanics fresh out of the engineering academy at Salizar, the fledgling ducked away as though he’d never seen the ensign before. “Whoa, easy, Morgan,” he reassured the jumpy grease-monkey.
“Gods, Bar, I thought you were Stowe!” The younger man breathed a sigh of relief.
“What’s going on?” repeated Bar over the chaos of wind and yelling, as more crew crowded onto the deck, pushing him forward.
“Not quite sure yet…just got here myself and heard the yelling up near the quarterdeck ladderway. From what I’ve gathered the Glenfinners and the other northmen are angry about something; a rumor that’s got to do with not defending their home isles; though now it seems like some quarrel between the captain and the first officer has that issue sidelined.”
“Some quarrel…strange,” muttered Bar, “it’s not like either man to argue in front of the crew…or to tolerate this sort of chaos. Do you know what it’s about, Skyman Dunkirk?”
“No…sir.”
Leaving Morgan behind, Bar shoved his way through the throngs of aeronauts, each loath to make room where there was none to give, but Bar moved them aside anyhow, pressing forward until he couldn’t press anymore. Teetering just at the edge of the main deck, Bar found the crowd had congealed into a mass simply too thick to wade through any further. Tucking in close to the galley hull, he peered around the curve of the ladderwell up to the pilot house, where he could just make out Captain Moore, with his wide face flushed red, yelling into the face of another man with his back to Bar. Judging by the hair, which was both blond and curly, it had to be the first officer, Commander Hastings. But what in the devil could have the captain yelling in his face regardless of the skymen gathered on deck? The ship’s old captain would never have made such a scene.
Only snippets of the ship master’s damning voice made it down to Bar over the din of discontent that hung in the air like a hot and damp cloud; but he caught a few words: “…traitors…orders…your mutinous rabble…”
Mutinous? That wasn’t the sort of word to be tossed about casually aboard ship. It was a grave accusation. The old captain, Bernard Lockney, wouldn’t have approved of Moore spitting it out in front of the men, but then Lockney was sometimes as flexible as a feathered wing, and when enough men spoke as one, he tended to listen. Had Lockney been too soft, as Moore was often fond of saying? Perhaps. But then with Zavier Moore on the other hand, rigid took on a whole new meaning. In even his day-to-day interactions with those under his command, there was no room for any sort of negotiation or leeway. He regularly hounded the men, even during moments of rest, with surprise inspections. He withheld shore leave for those he felt unworthy, and he made harsh examples out of minor infractions. And those were only a few of his harassing practices. Whippings were a daily affair, and most seemed to affirm that Chief Master Stowe’s right arm had swelled to twice its normal size from wielding the cat-o-nine-tails so often.
“So this is what it’s come down to, Captain?” pleaded the first officer. “No, there’s got to be another way—”
“It’s not up for negotiation!” roared Moore. His whole being shook with restrained violence, teeth clenched in a snarl, spittle dribbling down through the cleft of his broad chin. “The King’s rule has been usurped, and the admiralty has deemed that airship a priority target.”
“I thought we were at war with the Empire…not with each other.” Commander Hastings stood in opposition, refusing to budge, even in the face of Captain Moore’s authoritarian wrath, and now the skymen around them were growing more anxious by the second.
“That was before this civil mutiny! So you will follow through with my orders, or face the consequences, sir, and I will only give you this one last chance to comply, is that understood, Hastings?” In their stunned curiosity, the men further crushed in around Bar, squeezing him into a knot.
“I will not be a party to murder, orders or not.” The first officer’s words were strangely calming, and the crowd eased back and grew still. “I’m a Glenfinner first, Captain, you’ve demonstrated that’s all that matters anymore, and so I will refuse you.”
“By the Gods, Mr. Hastings,” the Captain’s voice rose shrill. “I shall not stand for this any longer…” And then the captain produced his service pistol and leveled it at the first officer’s head. Bar fell back stunned. Seeing an officer of the Royal Air Navy holding a gun to the head of another officer was beyond surreal, this was a mockery of the sensibilities that governed the people of Ascella. Things like this simply did not happen aboard a royal airship. They were supposed to be fighting the Empire for god-sakes, not each other. “…As the sole authority aboard this vessel, and in adherence to the king’s law, I charge you with failure to follow the Admiralty’s orders in a time of war, and of sympathizing with the enemy, as well as inciting mutinous sentiment aboard this vessel, Mr. Hastings! These charges are all punishable by death!”
“That won’t deter me, Captain, my responsibility is to the people of the Unified Kingdoms, no matter what event might have spurred the Admiralty into ordering such an irrational and bloodthirsty act. Until such time as the King himself personally addresses the subject at hand, and issues a call to arms, I will not follow through with this senseless slaughter. So if you think threats will dissuade me—”
“May the Gods of the Pantheon have mercy on your soul!” Over the whoosh of the wind flowing across deck, Bar thought he heard the hammer fall, which was in strange contrast to the short bark issued from the revolver. He expected a thunderous report; a life shattering cry; some sort of high-drama marking the end of a life, but instead there was a soft and brief pop, almost harmless sounding. There was no rebuttal cry from the first officer either. Hastings simply crumpled to the ground, as though someone had cut the strings holding him up. The wild-eyed captain, alone, remained standing on the quarter deck. All around Bar, the men stood frozen, looking up in shock.
Moore stepped forward, placed his hands on the rail, and glared down over the crew. “May this be a lesson to the rest of you!” he challenged. “I am an extension of His Majesty’s authority aboard this vessel, and thus my word is law—a law that shall not be broken without dire repercussions. Mr. Hastings disregarded that law; challenged it quite beyond its breaking point, and no man present can say otherwise. He
was fairly punished!”
Murmuring rolled through the ranks of the crew like water boiling in a kettle. To shoot Hastings in cold blood—and right in front of the men like that—was a step towards the abyss from which no man could claw his way back out.
“I will have silence! In addition, I’ve heard enough about this rumor and the complaints you have over it! Lieutenant Commander McVayne,” bellowed Moore, “order the crew to muster,” but the aristocratic-looking second officer appeared unsure of what to do as the crowd rolled back around him. It then occurred to Bar that McVayne and Hastings had been close friends under Lockney. “McVayne,” snarled the Captain. “I’ve given you an order.”
The second officer’s face sharpened into steely resolve as he stepped forward. “Captain Moore,” he responded, “with all due respect, it is you who must stand down, sir, until we’ve had an opportunity to properly hold an inquiry into the event that has transpired here this day.”
Seeming to sense something sinister drifting on the wind, men backed further away from the scene, pressing to the very railings of the vessel. McVayne suddenly found himself alone beneath the atmium core, with only the howling wind to break the newfound silence hushed over them all. Bar felt a dread fester in his guts, and then he saw the second officer’s hand come to rest on the wooden grip of a pistol hanging at his side. Trouble was coming…
And then in an instant Chief Master Stowe came barreling out of nowhere, a cudgel brandished high over his boar-shaped head. Crack! Bar heard it smash off the back of McVayne’s skull, and the second officer went staggering across the deck. Stunned, aeronauts recoiled from him as he drew near, as though the grievously wounded officer was rife with the Necrosis Plague. Even Bar found himself repelled, locked in morbid fascination as the man’s eyes rolled around uselessly in their sockets. Part of his scalp flapped against the back of his head as blood pulsated in thick sheets down his neck and over the collar of his uniform. The second officer groaned, a terrible, drawn out thing that seemed to plead with inaudible horror. And then his iris flipped back and he began to tremble. He hit the deck with a heavy thud.
“Back away, he’s seizing,” yelled the hospital corpsman. “Do not touch him…leave him be or you may cause injury.” On the ground, McVayne’s arms and legs flopped and clattered against the deck boards as his whole body was racked by terrible convulsions.
“Stowe, I want him taken below decks,” ordered the captain, unconcerned.
“Sir,” interrupted the ship’s medic, “it’s unwise to move him until I’ve—”
“I want him below decks now! Do you understand, corpsman?”
The crew stood silent and frozen, watching in grim anxiousness as the master-at-arms and the ship’s doctor set about dragging the still-twitching McVayne by the arms, and hauling him below decks as instructed.
“In addition,” the captain bellowed from his perch, “all personal are ordered to the crew compartments, effective immediately. There you will remain until further instructions. Corporal Henley, take your marine fire squad and make sure every aeronaut aboard this ship is where he’s supposed to be—shoot any man who’s not.”
Chapter 3: Put to the Question
“Come in, Ensign Bazzon,” hollered Captain Moore as the door to his cabin creaked opened, and a fear-stricken crewman came scuttling out. For hours, after the incident on deck, men—from the highest-ranking officer right down to the lowliest deck-scrubber—came filtering in and out of the captain’s cabin, called in every ten minutes or so to answer Moore’s questions. Despite the fact the Chimera was steaming south at half speed under full combat readiness, no one had seen fit to explain the situation as of yet, and as Bar passed the latest man interrogated, the young able-body didn’t so much as glance up as they breezed by one another in the narrow passageway. Instead, the enlistee scurried away faster, leaving a musty haze of stress-sweat to choke the threshold with its nebulous stink.
What’s going on, wondered Bar, while a hurricane of other questions spiraled around his thoughts. He tried not to dwell too long on any one of them, least he meet the captain’s summons distracted. Whatever was going on, it clearly had the crew agitated, and waiting at the captain’s threshold with three armed marines standing guard around him, had him feeling it too. Danger lurked on the other side of this interrogation, and Bar needed to navigate it carefully.
“Sir,” urged one of the stony soldiers, directing him towards the waiting captain.
Reluctantly Bar complied. On occasion, those who went in, never returned to the berth deck, and rumor circulated that Moore had started some sort of interment brig in the empty cavities of the airbladder, but in the uncertain atmosphere plaguing the ship, rampant rumors abound. Some believed Moore was set to skinning those who never returned and using the carcasses in offering to the fell beast Örmungog, but then again, the superstitious men had come to believe that Hastings’s spirit had returned from the Halls of the Dead as well, lingering as a vapor ghoul feeding off the living in the darkest reaches of the ship.
Bar’s boots clomped noisily across the deck’s loose boards, marking his progress through the modest stateroom; a low-ceilinged compartment crowned by a four-poster bed, lined in cherry-wood shelves stacked full of books, and aeronautical relics scattered about in decoration. To the portside wall sat an old armchair upholstered in red leather, while Bernard Lockney’s stout ironwood desk occupied the other side of the room. Behind that desk sat Moore, and Bar maneuvered between the two waiting chairs to stand at attention before him.
Glancing down, he braced in anger on how his old mentor’s hallowed seat now sat occupied by an intruder. The Lord Captain may have been ship’s master for over three months, but Lockney’s scent still permeated the room, smelling something like mild cigar smoke mixed with old books. But Moore’s own pungent perfume, a heady mixture of spices reminding Bar of overcooked sugar and rotting flowers, stood posed to someday rub it out altogether, and on a day not that far off either it seemed. Under the bright wash of an arc-bulb table lamp, bolted directly to the desk, Moore worked. A series of small leather sleeves laid scattered from one end of the desk to the other, while at the center sat a large ledger, which the captain hastily scrawled into with some final note. Bar attempted to read it, but the flowery cursive proved impossible to discern from upside down. When Moore failed to take notice of his presence, Bar simply waited at silent attention—just as protocol dictated—fixing his blind-stare forward, to where the port behind Moore’s head held a sky of dusky orange and a promise of fresh air.
“Mr. Bazzon, please, take a seat,” eventually offered the captain with a polite gesture, before bothering to glance up through the trimmed hairs of his wooly gray eyebrows. After Bar seated himself, Moore leaned back and folded his hands over his round belly, seeming to take in the young ensign as he scratched at the stubble shadowing his cheeks. After a moment in thought, he gave the guards a single nod that sent them from the room. “Quite an interesting day,” remarked Moore as the door latch closed with a click. Somehow the captain’s perfume seemed to intensify.
Bar responded with a nod, not sure his voice could work in the captain’s suffocating scent.
“I’ve been looking over your record here and I was very impressed to see that you were only recently promoted to the rank of ensign. Even more impressive considering you’re not of noble birth, or even from an affluent merchant family for that matter. You must excuse me for being so blunt, but a common born obtaining the rank of a commissioned officer is highly unusual. You must have impressed our esteemed former captain, Bernard Lockney…though in truth, I find the man more trouble than he’s worth…and the worth of his family held in higher esteem than is perhaps warranted, but such is the way of the principalities outside King’s Isle these days, I suppose.”
“On that, I have only your word to go on, sir.” Bristling, Bar had found his voice, but he could taste the captain on his tongue now, and it made him feel ill. “I assure you the rank was earned. I�
��ve been aboard for nearly two decades now, and I’ve striven to perform my duty to the best of my abilities over the course of that time.”
“Some of the men on this ship have been skyman for twice that without such a notable promotion…as it should be; after all, this is the Royal Air Navy and not some Pantheon charity institution. We have social rank for a reason. So for one such as you, to go from skyman to ensign, is quite a leap indeed. I can only assume you must be something special.”
“Nay, sir, just a flyer who knows how to obey orders.”
“Hmm, ‘obey orders’,” pondered Moore aloud. His tone seemed to suggest the opposite of pleased. “At times like this that’s exactly what we need. You know I’m something of a stickler for orders myself. It’s why I was placed in command of the Chimera in the first place, after Lockney’s promotion—though in truth the man should’ve been court-marshaled. Regardless, I digress; my point being, in these dire days—what with the Empire pushing into the Ascella—we need every men to adhere to their oaths…and to follow their orders without question. It’s the only way we’ll ever push through this conflict—especially in light of recent political events. It may mean tough choices are coming in the days ahead, but such is our lot, I suppose. After all, ours is not to question.”
“I understand, Captain.” Bar wished he could spit out the tangy taste of that over-pungent perfume. A bank of pristine clouds, kissed red by a setting sun, passed outside, promising fresh air just beyond the cabin’s hull. He only needed to finish this discussion and freedom was his.
“It also says here, in your file, that you’re a Kinglander orphan, says you requested special enlistment under the Orphan Placement Initiative.”
“That I did.”
“A bold move…considering you lied.”
Bar coughed in the cloying atmosphere. “With all due respect, sir, I didn’t lie.” He had to fight back the urge to get angry, or to start yelling even though his word, and his honor, had been called into question. It was enough to stir any good man’s blood towards boiling, and Bar was no different. “My father died in a scaffolding collapse while restoring the old Opera House on Silver Star Avenue, and my mother died of the fever years before that, while I was still just a child.”
Aethosphere Chronicles: Winds of Duty Page 3