Aethosphere Chronicles: Storm of Chains (13 page)

“Damn the Empire!” cursed Bar. “Alright,
Gryph, we’re going have to try and shake ‘em in the air traffic
over Throne, and then crash and ditch before they can close in… So
much for returning this ship in
as-is
condition.”

“Urt appens,” replied the pilot.

“Crash and ditch?” Drish didn’t like the
sound of that one bit. “But why not just break for open sky.”

“Listen, the day we take aerial combat
advice from a landstomper like you, is the day we all trade in our
wings for lead parachutes, you keen? So let me spell this out for
you; this bird doesn’t have the gumption to outrun a horsefly let
alone an imperial hunter, and the first shot she fires will go
straight through this barge like a hot knife through butter. So
leave the strategy—”

Rat-tat-tat-tat

As though to prove Bar’s points, a second
bi-fighter came soaring in at that very moment, strafing sidelong
and punching a line of bullets from the bow to the stern. In the
aftermath, a hundred beams of light steamed down through the cabin,
highlighting the danger.

“You couldn’t have found a better ship than
this!”

“This whole mission was supposed to be about
stealth,” Bar muttered, as he aided the pilot in final
preparations. “If it was about fighting our way in and out, you’d
still be tied to that medical bed, and I’d be flying back to Black
Blood aboard my own ship. Now barring hijacking an Iron vessel,
there ain’t an airship made in these skies that can go toe-to-toe
with the Empire anyway, so best synch your restraints up tight, and
hold on…this is bound to get hairy.”

Next to Bar, Gryph eased back the
accelerator, and the skiff’s props began groaning up to speed.

“I hate flying,” snapped the noble in
exasperation. “If I go a lifetime without ever having to step foot
on an airship again, it’ll be too soon.”

Drish was to choke on those words, however, almost in
a literal sense, when the small pilot with the big mustache
suddenly punched the accelerator to maximum. The props outside
responded with a roar, and beneath them, the skiff leapt from its
perch and plummeted down into the narrow canyon below. From there
things only got more harrowing.

Drish’s constitution spun in nauseating
circles as Gryph piloted the small airship like a child careening
down a slide, swinging it from side to side, while rocky
outcroppings zipped past the front viewport with mere inches to
spare. The noble held his breath and dug his nails into the arm of
his seat, finding he was unable to decide what was worse, the
likelihood of crashing into the mountainside, or the fact his
stomach had been left behind when the force of acceleration sucked
him back into the crumbling leather of his seat. The addition of
machinegun fire only added to that dread when it came bursting down
into the valley around them, blasting apart nearby rocks in a hail
of near-molten lead.

It drew Drish’s leery gaze, and he looked
out the porthole to his left, just as the ship’s starboard dipped
right, giving him a perfect view of the underside of the clouds.
Shockingly, they were peppered with circling bi-fighters, looking
like a stirred-up swarm of gnats, with more appearing by the
second. Those that came buzzing in took turns—one after the
other—dive-bombing their prey.
Rat-tat-tat-tat
, the
bi-fighters shrieked endlessly, and sometimes it was accompanied by
a dull
thwap
, or twangy rattle, when a bullet, or series of
bullets impacted the skiff’s flimsy hull.

Gryph was taking them towards the isle’s
edge, keeping as close to the valley floor as the madman dared, and
as the mountains raced past the windows, the noble couldn’t help
but howl his distress. “This is madness,” he cried mutely, his
voice lost beneath the strained scream of the propellers, and the
near-constant rain of gunfire.

The end of the High Crown came more abruptly
than the panicked noble could have wanted, and he missed the cover
it provided the instant it was gone. They were in the open now and
fully at the mercy of the swarming bi-fighters, and Gryph’s insane
piloting. When it came to their pursuers, the only saving-grace was
in the sheer number of them making it difficult to fly out of each
other’s way; but as for the pilot, there was nothing about his
erratic flight maneuvers that Drish found comforting.

Outside, two Iron aircraft collided in the
fray, bursting into flames, and tumbling through the overcast sky
in a smoking rain of wreckage. Drish watched in wide-eyed awe,
until the airship unexpectedly nosed down and he found the
Sovereignhelm Highlands of King’s Isle painted across the front
windshield.

From the port, the Gods’ Bind suddenly
appeared as Gryph put them almost vertical. The atmium feature’s
brilliant glow turned the cabin into a blue sun, forcing Drish to
shield his eyes from the glare, while screeching, “I can’t see!” He
was completely overwhelmed by the terror of this aerial
catastrophe.
Had these fools just left me back in
Armageddon
, he wished,
I’d be tucked safely in a bed; not
about to die…

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?”

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.”

“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.