Dawn Apocalypse Rising (The Windows of Heaven Book 1)

by K. G. Powderly Jr.

  By the time he got to where he thought he had last seen Loxal, the airship was forced to come about to avoid the mountain. The cannon crew had to switch off to the lights on the opposite side of the mezzanine and reacquire their target. Meanwhile Nu frantically scraped around in the dirt for some sign of the Assassin. His hand landed in something wet.

  The airship was about halfway through its turn, moving away from the slope. The lights danced back and forth more erratically.

  Nu hissed, “Loxal!”

  “Down here,” came a faint reply.

  A’Nu-Ahki poked his head over the steep slope at the edge of the trail. Directly below, the next leg of the path widened out to include a narrow stand of thorny shrubs about twenty cubits down.

  “Roll down the slope into the brush before they finish their turn!” Loxal’s voice cracked as if he was in pain.

  Nu tumbled over the side and slid into a cushion of thorns. He clenched his teeth to keep from crying out.

  The airship completed its turn, and began to interrogate the trail again with its lights from further out.

  “Where are you?” Nu whispered, too terrified to move despite the giant thorns sticking into every part of his backside.

  “Over here,” said a weak voice behind the bush Nu had landed on.

  The search light swept the trail just beyond the thorny row. Nu caught a glimpse of Loxal, laid out on his side with both hands clutching his leg. He also saw that the prickly hedge covered them both.

  Nu scrambled from his thorny nest on his hands and knees and slid over to his companion, who seemed to be more in the shelter of the bushes than inside one. That was when he felt more warm wetness.

  “You’re injured,” Nu said, as he patted around Loxal’s thigh.

  One of the cannon rounds had torn through the Assassin’s leg above the knee. Nu’s medicinal training took over. He slid out of his pack and sliced one of the straps off with his utility knife to make a tourniquet. Then he grabbed an extra tunic from inside the flap and used it as a compress, securing it with a second strap.

  The Assassin groaned. “They’ll have opium powders on the Firedrake. I’m okay.”

  “You’ve lost quite a bit of blood. Try to stay awake.”

  “No dragons in this den, Jek. I gutta get you home.”

  “I think our roles have just reversed.”

  Another sword of light swept along the trail outside the brush.

  “There wouldn’t be so many ships if they’d found the Firedrake,” Loxal said. “They’ll have to pull back from the mountains before the dawn winds. The canyon below is too narrow for them to navigate during the inversion shift. We’ll hole up here until then.”

  “I can carry you the rest of the way.”

  “Prob’ly won’t be necessary, Jek, but I ‘preciate the offer.”

  “You said the Guildsmen will have moved. How will we find them?”

  “They’ll find us.”

  “How will they know we’re here?”

  Loxal rifled through the pack he had stuffed behind his head and pulled out a tiny crystal pyramid. It reminded Nu of a smaller version of the devices he had watched the Guildsmen unload. “I left this with Telemnuk when we went south.”

  “What is it?”

  “A magic talisman.”

  “Don’t patronize me, Loxal. I really hate it when you people do that!”

  “No, that’s what we really call it. The crystal sings out across the spirit realm to the oracle aboard the Firedrake. The Guildies already know we’re nearby. They’ll be watching for us.

  “Can you speak to them through it?”

  “No. It just sings to the oracle.”

  Nu checked Loxal’s compress. The bleeding had slowed with the tourniquet.

  “How long till dawn?”

  Loxal squinted up through the brambles. “Less’n an hour. We’ll have the mountain shadows and the valley mists in our favor. We may just get out of this yet.”

  I

  nguska was incensed. “Cease fire! You’ll only waste your steel!”

  The Grenadier released his weapon. “I think I got him, sir.”

  “Then where is he?”

  The Titan of Second Sky-Lords leaned out into the night and followed one of the spot lights with his eyes. “He could have fallen down the slope and landed in that foliage down there. Even if he survived, he’s not going anywhere. Can we lower some men?”

  This was where Inguska really hated the fact that Titans did not need to work their way up through the lower officer ranks, and be intimately acquainted with the men and machines under their command.

  “There’s no time, my Lord. Soon we must pull away from the mountains. Our engines don’t have enough power to safely fight the inversion winds. We’ll be out of weapons range at least, possibly out of spy glass range too. Anybody on that slope will be in the mountain’s shadow.”

  “How far was the ground contact from the suspected hiding place of the enemy vehicle?”

  “At least two thousand cubits, Lord. We will have to pull out even beyond that, I’m afraid.”

  The Horned One scowled. “Will we still see it if it tries to move?”

  “We should, Lord. An all-terrain chariot is much larger than a man.”

  “Then we shall be prudent, my young Demigod, and pull back from the mountains with all eyes facing east.”

  With the sun’s glare rising over the peaks at us. Inguska kept the thought to himself.

  N

  u listened as the engine noises faded to the west.

  He made Loxal drink the rest of his water and chew a dried fig.

  “Ready to move?”

  “Yeah, just help me up and let me lean on you.”

  After two tries, the Assassin slumped down again and moaned.

  Nu said, “Looks like you’ll have to take me up on my offer.”

  “Guess so, Jek.”

  A’Nu-Ahki squatted down, draped his companion over his wide shoulders, and then lifted with his legs. They left the packs, except for Loxal’s singing crystal.

  As Nu stumbled from the thorn row, he saw six airships recede into the distance over the Gihunu low lands. The sun was already hitting them, which made them appear like gold and scarlet clouds of molten metal over the shadow-draped meadows and distant forest.

  The trail got steeper after the final switchback. A’Nu-Ahki slid down most of the last leg into the narrow ravine where the Firedrake had left them. He lurched along the tiny streamlet toward the clump of trees where Loxal had told the Guild crew to hide the vehicle. Just as he entered the small wood, two men appeared on either side of him, and lifted Loxal from his shoulders.

  “You both took your sweet time!” one of the drivers said. He looked grimy, wild-eyed, and unkempt.

  “We saw one of the ships attack the trail,” said the mechanic. “Not entirely without effect, it looks like.”

  They slipped under the camouflage canopy. The Firedrake sat in a small space under the trees at the opposite edge of the wood. Nu helped them lay Loxal near one of the side hatches.

  “Get him some opium powders. He’s in shock,” A’Nu-Ahki said.

  “So, what do you think, you’re in charge now ‘cause you were that big gryndel killer when you was young?” The mechanic laughed. “I think that sacred dragon-slaying stuff is just a load of manure!”

  “So do I; I’m a healer. I need to clean his wound and replace the compress or he’ll get infected.”

  “We gotta blow the dragon shell and fight our way outa here before they call in more gas bags!”

  “Why can’t we hole up until night? Let me bind him properly first.”

  “Bind him fast,” said the mechanic. “I think they’ve spotted us and they’re just waiting for the morning updrafts to lift so they can blast us out of here with rockets. They hung practically right over our heads all night and they ain’t never done that before—not so close anyway.”

  One of the drivers said, “We can’t drive
through this kind of terrain at night anyway. We’d need light and our head lanterns would draw them like moths now that they’re risking night patrols. Our only chance is to make an armed break-out. We’re in slightly better shape as a moving target.”

  The other driver tossed over the apothecary kit. Inside were clean bandages, grain spirits, and syringed vials of opium solution with additional powders. Nu worked quickly.

  The mechanic said, “I spent the whole night oiling the feed and swivel gears on the sky cannon mount.”

  Nu tightened Loxal’s new bandage and adjusted the tourniquet. “Can you shoot down that many gas bags with one cannon array?”

  “Sure. The question is, will we survive their first rocket barrage long enough to do it?”

  The drivers stowed the canopy and mounted the drake.

  “I’ll help you get him aboard,” offered the mechanic. “I’d say we have a half hour’s space before they pull back in toward the mountains. But they’ll see us long before that.”

  I

  nguska would not have been so sure. He chafed at the sunrise delay. The fiery gold on top of the mountains obscured the shadows of the foothill ravines on the west slopes. Even so, they trained all telescopes aftward at the clump of woods in the mouth of the small canyon where they were sure the intruders hid. At this distance, it looked like a darker spot in a rocky landscape of identical darker spots on a field almost as dark.

  “I think I’ve got some movement near the tree patch!” called one of the grenadiers.

  Inguska checked his wind direction flag and decided that the air could go either way, too rapidly to predict. He yelled, “Ready all rocket-clines and aerial cannons port and starboard!”

  The Titan of Second Sky-Lords said, “How soon can we engage?”

  “It’s too soon to sweep in so close. Maybe fifteen minutes at the earliest.” Then he ordered the pilot, “Stand by to come about on my signal and oracle the contact to the other ships.”

  T

  he Firedrake emerged from the trees in a weaving downhill dash. Nu jostled in the back with Loxal, who seemed to be coming back to himself on the painkiller.

  The mechanic asked the drivers, “Should I blow the cover charges yet?”

  The second driver hunched over a periscope that reached up through the false spike-tail plates.

  Loxal barked, “No!”

  Even the driver turned to look at the Assassin’s outburst.

  “No,” Loxal said in a quieter voice. “Let them be overconfident and draw in closer. Their clines can only aim rockets by crude line of sight. If they see we have an anti-drone mount, they’ll launch their missiles from farther out, maybe beyond our weapon range. They’ll get mostly misses, but all they need to do to cripple us is take out one of our treads.”

  “He’s right,” said the driver, who had turned back to his narrow recessed view-port. “They can expend their rockets, leave one ship high up to shadow us, and go home to reload. They can also oracle for more ships.”

  Loxal’s tactical analysis took a lot out of him. He flopped back onto a cushion of packs and groaned. Nu felt his forehead for fever and worried for the clamminess of the Assassin’s skin.

  Loxal grinned. “Wanna know why I call you Jek?”

  “Only if you want to tell me.”

  A weak chuckle, “A Jek is like a round cartouche in a square slot,—no, that’s not really it, either. In Kushtahar, Jeks don’t fit because they’re too good for the places they have to fit into. Centuries ago, our fathers called the faction that supported the Archon ‘Jeks’ because most of our people wanted to be independent from Sa-utar in those days. So instead, they followed Lumekkor. Yet the sons of Kush lived much better as the Archon’s vassals than they do as ‘Baul-qayin’s. Everybody old enough to remember knows it, but nobody wants to admit it.”

  “So you’re saying it’s a compliment?”

  Loxal grunted at a bump in the path that slammed a pack into his bad leg. “It depends on the inflection of my voice.”

  “You always seem to say it the same way.”

  “I guess you have to be from Kush to notice the difference.”

  Nu shook his head and laughed. “Well, thank you for clearing that up. Do you know any good scrolls on the unique voice inflections of the Kush dialect?”

  Loxal smiled. “Only a Jek would ask that.” His eyes closed.

  Nu took his pulse and found his respiration normal for sleep.

  “How close are they?” he asked.

  The second driver twisted with his periscope a full three-hundred and sixty degrees around. “They’re moving toward us. Make ready to blow the cover charges.”

  The mechanic clasped the charge controller. “Cover charges are armed and ready.”

  “Hold steady. They’re almost close enough.”

  “Watch their rocket-clines. Are they rotating?”

  “Launcher clines are moving! Blow the charges!”

  The mechanic mashed down on the contact. Nu felt the whole vehicle shudder as the dragon-assembly plates and their framework blasted away from the Firedrake in pieces. Light flooded through the firing slits.

  The second driver scrambled from his periscope up into the circular mount chair of the aerial cannons in the vehicle’s roof. The mechanic took his place at the periscope.

  “Target bearing at three-null-two, range; two thousand cubits,” said the mechanic.

  Nu heard the quickfire winch slew the circular cannon mount to face the first target.

  Fum-fum-fum! The first volley flew up at the approaching airship.

  Nu scrambled to one of the right-side firing slits to try to see the results. The white glare of the exploding airship flickered against the trees, rocks, and grass that sped by.

  “New target at two-five-four, range—two thousand twenty,” called the periscope watcher.

  Another longer burst of rapid fire issued from the quad mounts.

  Nu flung himself over to the left side, careful not to kick Loxal. This time he saw the airship erupt into a small sun and then tumble in on itself as it plowed toward the ground off to his south. But behind it was a third ship with flares smoking from the underside of its gondola. The rockets leaped from their rails, slanted down in the Firedrake’s general direction.

  “Steer right!” the mechanic ordered.

  Nu’s face pressed into the firing slit as the vehicle lurched hard the other direction. The rocket array slashed into the ground like flaming claws, so close to the drake that Nu felt the sting of debris hit his cheek as fire and flying earth enveloped his field of vision. The shock wave came a second later, tossing him on top of Loxal.

  More chatter broke from the quad cannon until the third airship exploded.

  “Rockets from two ships; steer hard left!”

  Nu huddled down with Loxal as two barrages crisscrossed over their heads and slammed into ground the Firedrake had just cleared.

  Again, the anti-drone mount spat burning steel and again one of the airships crashed and burned.

  T

  he smoke-filled sky slid through and around Inguska’s gondola.

  “Pull up! Pull up into the smoke!” he yelled to the pilot, who was already frantically flipping the valves to flood the airship’s auxiliary bladders with gas.

  The port aerial cannon chattered to answer its ground-based counterpart, until the cumbersome air leviathan lurched around and up on an escape course.

  “What happened?” shrieked the Commanding Titan of the Second Sky-Lords.

  Inguska took the con from his pilot and kept the airship behind the smoking pyres of its less fortunate sisters. He steered an escape vector designed to get them out of range of the enemy’s anti-drone cannons as fast as possible while using the smoke as a screen.

  “My Lord, the target shed its disguise. It unmasked an anti-drone mount! I’m taking us out of range to resume the attack from higher up. I recommend we call in more ships.”

  The Titan took that task on himself, while
the pilot continued to adjust the bladder valves.

  A minute later, they emerged from the southward drift of smoke well beyond enemy cannon range. One other airship to the northeast had also escaped destruction. It too kept its distance from the ground target.

  The Horned One looked up from the oracle set. “We’ll have reinforcements in a little over six hours. Until then, we shadow them.”

  N

  u listened to the grinding noise from the left tread assembly and tried to pretend it wasn’t serious. The worried crease on the mechanic’s face told him it was no time for make-believe, so instead he started to pray again.

  The second driver, who still manned the aerial cannon, said, “If it’s a shot bearing, we’re in for it.”

  The mechanic replied, “Sounds more like a partially thrown tread. How soon before the game trail hits some real forest?”

  The driver at the steering console answered, “It’s mostly rocky meadow until early tomorrow. If we stop to fix it, we become a stationary target. Even at high altitude the gas bags’ll be able to compute an easy firing solution.”

  “Can you see any trees at all?”

  “None worth the effort.”

  Nu checked Loxal’s forehead again. It was getting hot. The Assassin emitted a low groan.

  “I’m giving him another dose of opiate.”

  Nobody seemed to care, so Nu expended another of the syringe ampules into his patient’s good thigh.

  The noise from the tread remained steady, but grew no worse. The two airships kept their distance, but the Guildsman in the swivel cannon seat kept reporting on their positions. They hovered just out of weapons range and showed no sign of going away.

  Nu handed out some dried fruit and everybody ate something.

  Loxal shuddered and shouted. “Oracle!”

  A’Nu-Ahki bathed his forehead with a damp cloth. “What is it, Loxal?”

  “Get on the oracle and—and relay message to base… translators are up. Warn them Telemnuk’s route is compromised, but don’t say his name…”