Aethosphere Chronicles: Winds of Duty

by Jeremiah D. Schmidt

  “Ease up on that kind of talk, lieutenant,” challenged the ship’s yeoman, from somewhere beyond Bar’s field of vision. “It doesn’t do us any good.”

  “Why? You know as well as I that he’s locked himself in the arms locker and refuses to see any of us. It’s clear we only have each other now, and it’s also clear we’ve lost this fight. Surrender is the only way to get out of this alive.”

  “Come on, Ordenza,” spanned Cecil as he stepped into the center and stole the attention away from the smaller-statured officer. “Surrender…? That’s the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard.”

  “We’ve nothing to defend ourselves with,” justified the lieutenant, turning imploringly to the men arrayed in the dimly lit hold. “The Finnies have the kitchen knives and mechanics tools…what do we have? It’s only by the merciful grace of Deyja that we’re still even standing around to debate this. If Max meant to kill us, he’d have done so by now. So the fact we’re still alive proves we can talk this out.”

  “I’ll be damned if I’m putting my life in the hands of snowploggers,” hollered Cecil, “so I’ll tell you what we should do instead. We’ll take the cargo hold. In there’s all sorts of carpentry tools we can arm ourselves with; saws, chisels, punches—you name it. Hell, if we can retake the main deck, we just might be able to disconnect the fifty calibers and turn them loose…”

  “That’s your plan, Petty Officer?” countered the lieutenant, incredulous. “Escalation? You’d have us battle to the death?”

  “Damn straight I would, and well worth it given the alternatives. Time we send a message. This ship, and what they’ve done to it, is just the tip of it all. I’ve seen what’s becoming of this country—I’ve experienced it firsthand. These filthy snowploggers have been eroding away our proper national identity for years, and the low-born of the south have been helping them do it. You know I was passed up for officer’s school…? Me, a Temberly, because they gave the position to some Winterian, a slusheatin’ Winterian!”

  “Are these really our only two options?” blurted Tiny Briggs, trembling as he hugged himself in a self-comforting embrace. He’d already been given a black eye, and there was a line of blood tricking down from his left ear. “Fight or surrender…? There’s got to be something else…some other way to resolve this.”

  “I said surrender ain’t even an option, so that leaves nothing else but fighting,” snarled Cecil with contempt.

  “But I don’t want to fight anyone,” protested the overweight radioman.

  Cecil’s face flashed with anger, and he wheeled around and punched Tiny square in the face. The overweight officer cried out as he stumbled backwards into the medic, clutching his bleeding nose with both hands.

  “You’re out of line, Cecil,” yelled the boatswain. “Striking a senior ranking officer is—”

  “Piss off with that senior officer crap!” roared Cecil, charging up to the lieutenant and shoving a finger in his face. “My uncle’s Viscount Ephron Temberly of Brasstown, and Captain Moore knows that. So by virtue of my birthright, and in the absence of clear leadership here, I’m taking charge.”

  “You…a noble? Don’t make me laugh!” mocked Lieutenant Ordenza, “You’re nothing but the bastard son of Lord Temberly’s brother, and by my accounts that makes you noble squat.”

  “Others would disagree.” Cecil scoffed, and an evil smirk twisted up his brutish face. “Boys!” From the spaces outside of Bar’s field of vision half a dozen able-bodies came pressing in.

  “What’s this, Cecil?” muttered Corporal Henley, backing away from the encircling skyman.

  Temberly shrugged nonchalantly. “Why these good men here are to ensure that no one interferes with my orders.”

  “This here is mutiny!” charged Lieutenant Ordenza.

  “Mutiny?” Cecil smirked with his signature brand of arrogance. He turned and looked to the men arrayed around him in challenge. “Not a one of you asses has given a straight order yet, sirs, and it’s clear that it’s not about to happen anytime soon either. So as far as I’m concerned, me and my men here are really the only ones willing to obey the captain’s last order.”

  “Last order?” scoffed Ordenza, “what are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about ridding the Chimera of every last Finny mutineer.”

  “You mean the captain’s insane rant over the intercom?” baulked the boatswain, “That was mad rambling…and you know it.”

  “What the captain says goes, and when this is all over that’s all that’s going to matter to the Admiralty.” As Cecil finished he gestured to his strongmen with the wag of a finger. Obediently they closed in and began seizing the various committee members who didn’t back away. The boatswain, however, swept a board up from the ground and held one of the brutes at bay, but two more enforcers pounced from the sides like wyverns. Desperately, Ordenza swung his makeshift weapon in defense, but the men swarmed in from all directions and overpowered him. In the next instant, Cecil stepped up to the subdued prisoner. Exactly what Cecil did to the boatswain, Bar never saw, but the man crumbled to the ground and ceased to move.

  When the fire control technician turned around, he was wiping blood from his chin on the sleeve of his shirt. “Anyone else have an objection to this change in leadership?”

  There was no audible response from the committee members. “Good,” said Cecil with smug satisfaction.

  Suddenly Bar froze in place as he felt what could only be the barrel of a gun jammed into the small of his back. He raised his arms slowly in surrender.

  “Don’t bother turning around, Ensign,” muttered Stowe in a harsh whisper. “Just do as I say and move into the room.”

  “You want me to what,” Bar protested, but the Chief Master shoved him forward to crash through the double doors and into the starboard hold, where the Kinglander faction wheeled around in response to this unexpected intrusion.

  “Bar Bazzon,” snapped Cecil in puzzlement, but when Stowe shuffled in behind—holding the clatterbolt at his hip—fear broke out openly across his face. The effect was like a wave passing through each man in the hold. No one knew just what to do now that Stowe had appeared in their midst, ushering Bar at the point of his terrible weapon. Those holding the committee members released their prisoners and backed away with their hands held high.

  “Stowe,” mumbled Cecil, trying to control his expression so as not to reveal how obviously terrified he was.

  “Aye, Cecil, words reached me that you plan on gutting me. Well, here I am.”

  Cecil must have sensed Stowe’s murderous intent because he moved to flee, but the bark of the clatterbolt proved faster, lighting him up with its explosive bursts. Those nearby dropped to the ground—Bar including—shielding their ears from the percussive power. Cecil made it only a step or two before toppling to the ground. What little momentum he’d worked up carried him crashing into a pile of hay, near to the cow stall he’d attempted to escape towards. Four holes could be seen just in his right side alone, and who knows how many others had riddled his body. In addition, one of the ship’s cows, lay crumpled on the ground, struck several times in the rear and mooing in distress. Stowe pulled the trigger again, and a short burst put the bovine to rest. A young calf in another stall seemed unperturbed by the event and continued to chew enthusiastically at her cud. The rest of the men in the room stood—or sat—in stunned silence.

  “As for the rest of you,” Stowe barked out. “Cecil was right about keeping with the orders relayed to me by Captain Moore.”

  “But Captain Moore’s not fit for dut—”

  Rat-tat-tat-tat! The Chief Master opened fire again, and this time Lieutenant Briggs, the ship’s radio specialist, died with his protest still clinging to his lips. “Time is imperative if we’re to accomplish our mission, so I’ve orders to shoot any man who refuses or delays.”

  “Yes, sir,” yelled the marine corporal as he climbed to his feet and saluted. His attention was so rigid he could have served as a support
beam for the deck above.

  “Will Captain Moore be leading us then?” asked Rogert timidly, as though that simple question could be misconstrued as disobedience.

  Stowe skirted around the man, using the barrel of his rifle, like a shepherd’s switch, to drive the flock towards the ramp up to the gun deck. “Nay, the captain says he’ll remain in the forecastle until we’ve secured the ship and restored it to order.”

  “That’s cowardice,” charged a skyman impulsively, and that proved to be the last thing he said.

  When the gun’s roar had faded, Stowe called out, “Now everyone gather up onto the gun deck, let’s muster the rest of you so called loyal Kinglanders. We’re to storm the bridge. You too, Bazzon, for king and country.”

  In grim procession, the men slipped through the upper doors of the hold and onto the gun deck, where not long ago, Bar and his men had toiled, polishing guns and turning over the munitions. Ensign Bazzon was the last to enter, just ahead of Stowe’s rifle. He was stunned by what he discovered. Powder lay strewn across the deck like a fine black snow, and smudged into paths where men had travelled heavily. Dozens of kegs of powder had been dragged from the munitions locker and opened; even live shells had been cracked apart, and everywhere sat piles of makeshift explosives. They were packing it in whatever the crownies could find; cans, boxes, wool caps—even socks. Bar realized in horror that if even one errant spark were to somehow ignite, it could light up this room and kill them all—possibly taking the whole ship in the ensuing blast.

  As bad, and as dangerous as the situation on the gun deck was, it was the dead and the dying that affected him most. Half a dozen men lay in the powder with their blood turning to brackish mud beneath them, and amongst them was McVayne. The ship’s Second Office, and the man whom by all right should have been in charge, sat further up near the bow, propped against the armory door. McVayne was sitting, and appeared to be conscious, though even from this distance, Bar could make out his cowed and vacant expression.

  “So this is all of you Kinglanders is it?” mocked the master-at-arms, and the two men occupying the hold stopped packing gunpowder into a pair of tin cans and looked on Stowe with stunned terror. A wild grin crept out from behind the Chief Master’s blood-encrusted mustache. “Now, I’m only going to say this once, we’re retaking the ship. Every man here will be pardoned for mutiny, and those that die will have their names cleared as well. This is the only way to regain your honor…this is the only choice you have, so it’s a fairly simple decision. We’ll form up into a kill squad and cut down any, and all, mutineers we find on our way to the bridge. You’ll offer absolutely no quarter to the enemy, you hear—there will be no surrender—you cut them down and move on to the next traitor, captain’s orders.”

  It was clear by the wide, fearful looks that no man supported the plan, but then no man was willing to face the bite of Stowe’s machine gun by disagreeing either. Bar could see them mulling over the hopelessness of their situation—fighting to the death with better armed Glenfinners, or dying right here and now. Many probably had no desire to fight at all, but found themselves locked into a side simply because of the place they were born. That’s certainly how Bar felt at the moment anyway, gang-pressed into a war he wasn’t willing to fight. Just a short time ago Max and his Glenfinners had done him a great service by letting him through, but now Stowe expected him to return that kindness in betrayal.

  Looking around, Bar had no doubts that most of these men would die, but then that might have been Stowe’s plan all along, using these men as human shields so he could pick off the mutineers with his clatterbolt. It made him wonder if Moore had even issued the command or if this was Stowe’s own twisted idea of restoring order. Bar needed to find a way to escape…get back to the cargo hold and form another plan, now that he’d discovered McVayne had been rendered hapless.

  But all options were blown aside when Stowe bellowed, “Move out!” Letting loose a barrage into the ceiling. Like a Nequam demon of lore, he drove the men ahead, whipping them into a mindless frenzy that even Bar found himself caught up in. Thought melted to action; the sway of a mob united into violence. With his heart pounding wildly against his ribcage, Bar flowed with the tide up the ladderwell—trampling that mutilated body—arriving to where Max and his men were waiting. Bar found himself at the center of the flood when the first men hit the door. It rocked, but held. The next man in line plowed into that one, then another and another. The metal groaned, but held. Then more came damming against it, urged on by Stowe’s murderous roar. Under the relentless thrust, the first man at the barricade screamed before blood sprayed from his mouth and his eyes popped from his skull. Under his crushed body, the hinges tore free from the walls, and the way burst open. Bar squinted in the late-afternoon light washing out from the galley. Shadows were waiting for them—shadows brandishing flashing steel. More screams marked the passing of souls, but the tide spilled through heedless, until Kinglanders and Glenfinners were once again mixed in a boiling sea of death.

  And then an explosion tore through the guts of the Chimera.

  Chapter 10: The Engagement

  Baaaroooooom!

  The galley flashed into an upheaval of caustic smoke, roaring fire, and shattered wood. The ladder beneath Bar collapsed away in an instant, surrendering to tendrils of flames that were licking up from the depths below, bringing unbearable heat and the stink of charred wood, meat, and sulfur. Bar had fallen only a couple dozen centimeters; luckier than the rest that plummeted, screaming, into the hellish inferno below, but it was enough to knock the wind out of him as his abdomen caught the ledge. Now left dangling, with flames biting at his legs, Bar thrust out wildly for anything to grab hold of while struggling to suck in smoldering air. All he could find though, in those panicked moments, were splinters that stabbed and dug into his flesh. Helpless, he continued to slide backwards towards the yawning mouth of the fire raging below.

  And then someone had him by the arm.

  Wide-eyed, Bar looked up into the grimacing face of the plumber, Jenner. His yellow-stained teeth gleamed against his soot-blackened face as he snarled in strained concentration. As small as he was, the man refused to let the ensign fall. Yanking and pulling, Jenner muscled the much-larger officer onto the landing, where Bar spilled over the scorched floorboards beside him.

  Bar had barely time to survey the ruin of the galley; the collapsed floor, and the charred wreckage; the scattered bodies looking like discarded dolls; when he heard the unmistakable howl of a gunshot barreling towards the Chimera from somewhere outside.

  “Are we under attack?” yelled Bar moments before a high velocity impact rocked the wounded strata-frigate, raining down bits of dust and dirt even as a section of the flooring gave way in a torrent of noise. Struggling to his feet, the ensign stared through the smoke, past the blown out starboard wall, and out into the sky, where he observed a lumpy cylinder of black iron eclipsing the orange flare of a dying sun. The Iron Empire’s arrived…

  Feeling only dread, Bar wheeled around and found a few other survivors shambling through the smoke and the ash towards the open portal to the outside world. As to who of these were Kinglanders and who were Glenfinners, it had become meaningless; everyone was the same shade of scorched and soot-blackened skin as Jenner.

  “What are we going to do?” asked the plumber’s mate in shocked-panic. Like a child, he stood clutching Bar’s arm, but Bar didn’t know how to answer the question. What did the distraught skyman expect him to do about an Iron hunter-killer bearing down on them? All Bar wanted to do was lay down and sleep, and barring that, at least a moment to recuperate; to let the ringing in his ears settle; to let his lungs clear and his head mend. But another shot shook the ship. “Ensign, everyone’s dead but you, me, and a few others!”

  “Take the wheel, my son…” Bar inhaled deeply and held the frightened aeronaut with his eyes. There was no one else to rely upon now. “We’re going to defend this ship, and to do that we’ll need the bridge.�
� Jenner seemed to focus, nodding back; hopeful. Bar looked to the others gathering like ghosts in the apocalypse. “Forget whatever feud you thought mattered only a few short moments ago. The men standing here around you are your comrades—now more than ever…they’re your brothers-in-arms, and more of them might be scattered about the Chimera…wounded, trapped, or hiding. Seek them out; take no violence against those who resist or bar the way against you…but you tell them Bar Baazon has taken command—you tell them I’m for the ship, and any man who comes to its aid is forgiven in my eyes! Can I count on you lot to carry out that order?”

  “Aye,” said one of the Kinglander thugs from the hold. “For the ship then…you’ve got my loyalty,” agreed a Finny mutineer standing next to him. A murmur of agreement rippled through the half dozen other survivors lining the jagged chasm in the deck’s center. “For the Chimera!”

  As the men dispersed, Bar staggered out through the missing bulkhead onto a windy skyscape of thick clouds painted warmly in hues of yellow, orange, and toasted brown. Shielding his eyes from the light, Bar caught sight of the Iron hunter-killer, lurking just above the sun’s glare, her broad profile resembling a spiked battering-ram trailing smoke. A terrible vessel, a nightmare out of the old legends. Is this how the Guardian Luminarium per Obscurum felt looking upon the endless hulks of the Nequam Basilicas? Nearby, two men—one Kinglander, the other Glenfinner—stood at the Chimera’s rails just staring out, confounded by the approaching monster.

  “You two,” called the ensign. “Over here, on the double.” They were only too willing to obey. “Get that crane operational and tear that cargo door off its hinges. We might have men trapped down there. You find Tolle and Al—you tell them to get to the gun deck and look for survivors. Check to see if we got any guns that are still—” A flash across the gulf foretold another shot from the Iron vessel, and Bar took cover behind the bulkhead. A thunderous report followed, but went whistling by harmlessly.