A bolt of lightning split the sky in the distance, striking the Nubigena dead centre. Cassidy waited for the flames to spread across the canvas, but, instead, the surface glowed the same electric blue as the lightning. “But the ship is real,” Cassidy said as the light glowed brighter. “How?”
“Hell, yes, she’s real,” Banner said, without breaking gait, and he said it like a man speaking of his lover. Another bolt of lightning struck the ship, arcing across the vast main cell. “She was a German experiment to harness electricity and control the storm. I didn’t name her Nubigena. Karl was a brilliant engineer Graff von Zeppelin used to dream about before I got to him. Knew more about this ship than the people who put her together. Told me there was copper wiring wound around the main supports of the frame. Beyond me. Something about Tesla’s inventions. Problem is, Karl couldn’t use any of it because the damned thing never worked. Government gave up on it.”
The hatch arced blue light as they opened it and the static heat ignited a madness in Banner’s eyes. “That mad German’s gone and done it. Karl’s made it work somehow. I could fly around the world ten times without a storm after that burst of electricity. And perhaps make a storm myself.”
“We can fly without storms?” Cassidy asked. He closed the hatch, shutting out the rain, but the sound of it and the wind and the thunder continued.
“I think so,” said Banner, his eyes flashing, “now that Karl’s got it working. God, if only…” His voice drifted off and he seemed to remember the oncoming Aurora Borealis.
Karl came rushing down the corridor. “Did you see, Captain? Did you see?”
“I saw,” Banner said. “It’s beautiful.”
“I had repairs to do,” Karl said. “I had repairs and I repair.” He turned and ran back for the engine room. “Better,” he yelled over his shoulder. “I make better.”
Banner ran for the helm with Cassidy close on his heels. They lifted into the hurricane, Banner’s influence somehow keeping the ship from shredding in the torrential winds, though Cassidy suspected something about the Zeppelin’s experimental nature might be part of the reason, too. What all had it been designed to withstand in its quest for energy?
Cassidy remembered the way the eye of the storm had stuttered. It had been unstable because the ship had taken over. He imagined what it must look like to anyone who glimpsed the Nubigena now, the glowing blue light of an airship bigger than most buildings. They’ll think we’re from Mars, he thought.
Banner gated at the edge of the hurricane and slipped out into the Twilight. “We’re going to have to scuttle her,” Banner said. Tears welled at his eyes again, but he held them back. “Karl’s just got it all working and we’re going to have to scuttle her and run like bandits now that the Borealis has our scent.” He ordered Cassidy to throttle the ship all the way forwards and glanced left and right for an island to crash into.
“Won’t we all die?” Cassidy asked, though he already suspected the answer. He’d known the answer since he decided not to stay with the rest of the crew in the asylum.
“Might have a chance,” Banner said. “Wouldn’t count on it though.” He spun the wheel, searching for a better heading. “No,” he said, as he glanced out the bow windows. “Not already.”
Cassidy stood. Banner’s face was white and something like a swatch of rainbow ripped out of the drifting clouds in the distance. “Can’t we run?” Cassidy asked.
Banner shook his head. “It’s too big. I’m sorry, Major,” he said, turning back to the windows. “I can’t get us out of this one.”
Cassidy considered cutting the throttle and saving them what time he could, but it felt wrong. This was death best faced head on and at full speed. Death, or whatever madness the Borealis would bring.
Chapter 28
The Nubigena slammed into the wall of colour at full speed, knocking Cassidy against his seat. Shaking his head, Cassidy saw a shadow appear at the bridge door. Sweat poured down Banner’s face as the shape entered the helm. A man. Cassidy had seen him before. The ghost from the first Borealis. The one who’d remained after the others left. He wore the same brown coat and his face looked just as gaunt and sunken.
“You,” Banner said, his voice distant with terror.
“Who is he?” Cassidy asked, pointing to the ghost who stood, unmoving, his dead gaze locked on the captain.
“The dream of a god of a man,” Banner said in a far off tone. He turned to Cassidy. “It was a good story, wasn’t it? Kept the men going.”
Cassidy was silent. He looked from Banner to the ghost. Dead on, Cassidy could see the strained features better. The phantom looked like Banner. Like a shell of him. Aged a thousand years, but definitely Banner.
“Dreamed my whole life of being an officer like my father instead of a cripple,” Banner said. “Dreamed it every night.” Tears streamed down his face again, but he made no sound of sobbing. “Then one night, I don’t know, I was twenty or so, I woke up in one of my dreams. I mean, I realised I was dreaming. I looked around at a world my own mind had created for me. I was strong. I was standing tall in the uniform of sea captain.” Banner’s eyes remained locked on the ghost. Cassidy wasn’t sure whom Banner was speaking to, Cassidy or the wraith. “I did take control of a galleon. That part was true.”
Banner turned to Cassidy. “I decided to leave. What did I have in the real world; a broken, lame body? A father who loathed the sight of me? So I left. I sailed out of my own dream and into another and another. I didn’t know where I was going. I didn’t have any idea where or how to get anywhere, but I sailed. I struck the black void for the first time. It almost swallowed me. But I believed. I believed so strongly. I wanted my dream to be real.”
The wraith moved closer as if fighting its way through sand. The closer it came, the more it looked like Banner, but still ancient and haggard. “I made it through,” Banner continued. “I sailed through the Nietzschian void on nothing but raw hope, sinking my mind into my own reality, and then I hit a gate. I don’t know how, but I called it to me somehow. It’s something I can do because my mind is real, but my body is a dream. Born of both worlds in a way. A dreamer in the body of a dream.” He said it as if it were a mantra he’d said to himself before. Perhaps over and over in the mirror. Cassidy tried to imagine what the captain had had to do to his mind to keep himself sane. What had it been like to straddle both worlds for so long?
“I wound up in an ocean in the real world,” Banner continued as the ghost pushed itself nearer, “and my ship of dreams faded around me. Reality was dissolving my body as well, but my real mind anchored me. Kept me from losing myself. If it hadn’t been for the part of me that was a dreamer, I would have evaporated in moments. Rotted to dream clay.”
“And the Dutchman?” Cassidy asked. “Was that true?”
Banner nodded. The ghost had stopped. It seemed to be listening. It wanted to know this story. “Falkenberg found me clinging to a piece of wood. The energy in his cursed ship kept my body from becoming mush. Then, somehow I learned to travel outside the storms. Willed myself to remain solid. Kept me together.”
The ghostly man pushed closer again, clawing through whatever invisible barrier stood between him and his goal. “I visited myself,” Banner said. He couldn’t seem to take his eyes off the ghost, or move from where he braced himself against the helm. “I slipped into my house and found my body in a coma.” The ghost stopped again, listening more intently. “I watched it for days. Without me inside, it withered away and died. I guess my spirit moved on. I’m sorry,” he said as the ghost pushed closer again. “I had to leave. I couldn’t live my life in that bed.”
“Could I have walked the real world without a storm?” Cassidy asked.
Banner crushed himself against the helm as the ghost, his spirit, came within a few feet. “Yes. You very well could,” Banner said. “I’ve never met anyone as solid as you. Richthofen dreamed of you so often. Nightmares are always the most solid.” He put up a hand as if trying to hold th
e ghost at bay. “Get in your plane, John Cassidy. You’ve done your duty. Any debt you’ve ever had to me is repaid a hundred times.” The ghost touched Banner and they began to meld together. The captain screamed. “Karl and I have to go down with the Nubigena. She’s our love, but you—” he broke off screaming as the ghost and he melted together, twisting his features like clay. He fought to speak. “Fly against the Borealis. My spirit has something do with this field. I’ll hold it back as long as I can.”
There was a burst of light as Banner and his soul became a solid being. It still looked like a young Banner, but so much more him. His eyes shone and he looked taller than before. “Now,” he said, his voice echoing. “I can’t control the Borealis, but I can influence it a little.”
Cassidy paused, but Banner snapped a gesture towards the door. Cassidy ran, tearing his way through to a hatch that took him into the main cell and up to the ladder that led to the gun platform. Colours filled the cell, thickening as he forced himself up to the turret. He fought to keep his mind from dissolving as the rushing colours tore at him, trying to drag him into the kaleidoscopic vortex. This must be what the others had faced. Liquid madness in the air. His mind tried to leak out as he crawled along the makeshift runway on top of the Nubigena. The colours swarmed, thicker than down in the main cell. Karl had re-moored his plane near the tail, and it took him precious minutes to unlatch the landing gear.
Cassidy felt himself floating away, off the deck and into the rainbow vastness. He gripped the Fokker, letting its reality anchor him as he pulled himself into the cockpit. Closing his eyes, he tried to shut out the colours and the maddening scrape inside his head.
The magnetos started the props without trouble. He throttled forwards into the Borealis and pulled the stick back. The Fokker lifted off, clearing the gun platform by inches. Feet? Yards? He couldn’t feel the distance. Cassidy kept his eyes shut, blinking them open only for moments to try getting his bearings, but the world was nothing but gaseous reds and liquid purples. The Fokker’s dials and gauges twitched and whirled. Useless. He felt as if he were fighting through water.
Cassidy pushed the throttle all the way forwards, finding he could only concentrate on one control at a time, stick, throttle or pedals. Blinking, a crackling gate opened up a hundred yards ahead. Banner must have opened, or sent it. How? Cassidy fought his way forwards, but as he neared, the force of the Borealis increased.
To hell with this, Cassidy thought. He opened his eyes and let the colours flood over his senses. This wasn’t about the Fokker’s engines. It was about his will to fight. If there was nothing else Banner had taught him, it was that belief and hope counted for more than all the mechanical power and luck in the world.
Cassidy’s awareness snapped into focus. He realized he hadn’t throttled forwards at all, but back. The props barely spun and the engine was close to choking out. The Fokker floated more than flew. He willed his hand forwards and the throttle moved, fraction of an inch by fraction of an inch. The engine roared as the fighter fought the colours and made for the crackling green square.
Roaring his rage into the Borealis, Cassidy felt the gate break over him, setting the Fokker aflame with arcing energies. Cassidy looked back as the Nubigena shimmered, awash with colours that imbued themselves to the grey exterior. Blue energy rose up the ship’s belly, fought for dominance and overcame the rainbow sheen for a moment before the ship vanished again into the sea of gasses.
The gate faded behind Cassidy as the raging reds and greens washed out of his vision. The sky was cobalt clouds again. He sighed. Banner was whole now. A dream that had never really been a dream. No wonder the worlds had both bent to his will and never accepted him at the same time. Could the ship, a hybrid of real and electric dream just like its captain, survive?
Perhaps. Perhaps there might even be some form of natural existence there for them.
Cassidy fought back tears. The man was gone, along with the great ship. The only place he had ever called home.
Silence closed in. He reached out to the Fokker. Ran his mind down the stick and through the pedals, to the engine, prop and down the tail of the plane. This is what Banner had done with his own craft. Connected to it like another soul to stay the loneliness of traipsing through a world never quite your own.
The fighter purred back in response. The dull hum of the engine shuddered through him and Cassidy saw the gates. They were everywhere, like ghosts. No, not gates. Potential gates. It must been Banner’s bond to the ship all along. A real object of travel melded to his dreamself that made this possible. This was what had happened that first time Cassidy had flown this plane in the storm. It had enabled him to see…to see…
Cassidy fought to understand what it was he saw. The hazy windows between worlds looked back at him like the distant eyes of time. What made a potential gate an open gate?
He thought of Arcadia, one of the few places he could picture perfectly in his mind. A square of crackling green solidified as the rest receded into the background. Cassidy turned and slipped the Fokker through.
Arcadia floated in the distance, its snow-capped mountains set against a lavender backdrop. It was beautiful. Almost shining now. The familiar place looked like an oasis in a desert.
Cassidy landed and came to a stop a few feet from the same grease-covered mechanic from before. The props spun to a stop and he leapt down. The young man cowered. Cassidy ignored him. There was no point in a threat. If anything happened to his plane this time—he ran his hand over the Mauser on his side so the man could see. Reaching back into the cockpit for his provisions pack, he found a large canvas bag instead. Banner’s money. More money than he could spend in a lifetime. At least he’d be able to get a room.
A shape caught his eye just off the runway as he climbed back down. Another fighter stood covered in a canvas tarp. He stepped over, peeked beneath a corner and bit back a curse.
***
The lounge looked more inviting than before. The barkeep nodded to him as he took a stool and leaned on his elbows. “Still on Banner’s tab?” the elven man asked.
“No,” Cassidy said, and exhaled a sharp breath. “Start one up for me.” He slid a large Twilight banknote across the bar, then returned it to his jacket. The barkeep nodded.
Despite the memory of Barnabas, the thought of another real glass of single malt Scotch warmed him. “Whisky on the rocks,” he said, and clenched his hand into a tight fist.
“Back to the old favourite, eh?” the barkeep said.
Cassidy gritted his teeth and gave a defeated nod.
The blended whisky did taste good, despite not being Scotch, or real. He nursed it with grim resolve.
Only a few other customers dotted the lounge, but the barkeep leaned in close. “Heard you got your fighter back from the Commodore.”
Cassidy nodded.
“They say he still wants to dangle you off the edge of the island and let his men use you for musket practice.”
Cassidy scoffed.
“Word is, he won’t come near you because of Shea’s bodyguards, but I heard from someone else he’s actually scared of you.”
“You hear a lot,” Cassidy said, and finished his drink. He sucked a piece of ice into his mouth and chewed the slightly-alcoholic coldness.
The barkeep grinned and put his hands up in surrender. He slid a brothel token over the bar. “Shea told me to give you this next time you were in. Good for her or anyone else you please.”
Cassidy let the shiny disk sit next to his glass. He dug April’s silver dollar from his pocket and set it next to the token. They were both about the same size, though the dull shine of the tarnished silver still looked brighter than the polished token. He picked up the dollar and gripped it hard, letting a few drops of April’s pain eke into him. Where was she now? Had April even thought of him since, or was he no more than a ghostly memory to her now?
In the mirror, Cassidy watched a young man and woman come down the stairway arm in arm.
; “You’re coming back tomorrow night, aren’t you,” the woman said, dragging the young man towards the bar. She was obviously one of the many brothel girls, trying hard to turn a return trick.
“Of course.” The young man leaned in, kissed her deeply, then laughed. His laugh cut off in mid-guffaw as he looked in the direction of the mirror.
“How’s the plane handling?” Cassidy asked, without turning around.
The young man stammered. “Cassidy,” Ned said, after three half started sentences, “am I glad to see you. I thought you were dead.” He slipped away from the woman and bellied up several stools down. “I brought the Valkyrie in.” He paused and studied Cassidy in the mirror, his eyes darting towards the back exit. “I hope you don’t mind,” he continued. “I couldn’t leave it at the observatory.”
Cassidy glanced over at Ned and went back to sucking whisky off the last piece of ice.
“Is Banner okay?” Ned continued. “I mean, did you get them out alright?”
Cassidy pushed his glass away and turned to look at Ned. “I’m going to ask you one question. If you lie, I’m going to kill you.”
Ned paled. He opened his mouth to speak, but just nodded.
Cassidy bore into him with his gaze. “I need to know if you sold them out.”
“What?” Ned asked, his eyes glancing down at Cassidy’s pistol.
“Someone sent one hell of a lot of trouble the captain’s way and they must have known the places we liked to hide.” Cassidy leaned closer. “Was it you?”
Ned’s chin jutted out. “I’m not a good fighter,” he rasped, as if his mouth were dry. “My stomach turns over when I get scared, and I start passing out, but I’m not a traitor.” He shook his head. “I just wouldn’t do that.”
Cassidy turned back to the barkeep. “I’m thirsty,” he said. “One more.”
“I’m sorry,” Ned repeated. “I wanted to help. If there’s ever anything else...”
Storm Dreams (The Cycle of Somnium Book 1) Page 22