Aethosphere Chronicles: Storm of Chains (9 page)

Cold mud was seeping through the
aristocrat’s fine clothing, it was in his mouth, he could taste the
ashen dirtiness of it, feel its grit on his lips and on his tongue.
An artillery blast thundered, and a piece of the building exploded
to dust and shrapnel. Pebbles pelted over the noble and when he
looked up he saw the flash of imperial uniforms storming through
the brick façade.

They had been followed… or did they know the
insurgents could be found here? Perhaps Arvis’s theory of a snitch
was correct. Regardless, they
were
discovered. Along with
the soldiers appeared Quadrupedal assault machines, and behind them
the squeal of ball bearings promised tread-rovers gathering in
mass. The empire had dedicated a sizable force.

Clatterbolt fire rattled and big guns
thundered, and in no time at all the furnace room was a hell of
debris and death. What insurgents remained were scrambling for
cover or returning fire, while somewhere nearby that woman
continued to scream. In the chaos, Drish dared to hunt out this
lamentable banshee, turning his head even though it brought the
fear that the bullets pealing through the chilled air around him
would be attracted to this movement, but he needed to know.

He was horrified to find it was Abigail
screaming. She was with Arvis, his head resting in her lap as she
held her hands to his chest. Even from his prone position in the
dirt, Drish could see that his father’s blood was pumping out from
between the girl’s slender fingers.

He’s shot!
Drish felt panic, and he
tried to get up, but the legs to an Iron war-machine clomped by,
freezing him with fear. It was Bar who appeared at Arvis’s side in
his stead, and through the distance that separated them, the son
could only watch in helpless despair, as his father sought comfort
in the arms of others in his last dying moment. There was no doubt
Drish felt nothing but hatred for the man who’d sired him, yet
sitting by and watching him die on the frozen ground tore out his
heart just the same. He could see the strength draining from the
senior Larken as he struggled to hold onto Bar Bazzon’s collar. He
could see Arvis coughing to get his last words out; could see how
they came up in foaming bubbles of blood instead. The intensity in
Bar’s face confessed he was committed to memorize it all, and only
when Arvis’s hand finally fell away did the pirate turn his eyes,
locking them on Drish. The look in the pirate’s face was a thing no
words could ever properly describe, and the collaborator could feel
those predatory yellow eyes burrowing into his very soul.

What has my father told him,
wondered
Drish,
has he told the pirate what I think of this
resistance…?
The muscles in Bar’s body tensed and he lunged
towards Drish like a wild animal, as though to prove that he did,
but a hail of bullets drove him back before he could reach the
fallen collaborator. One of the projectiles seemed to strike him,
but the man appeared unfazed, trying again to reach his prey.

Is Bar that determined to kill me?
Was he willing to die just so he could get the chance?

But then Abigail had the man by one arm, and
the youth from the truck, Fen, had the other. Together they tried
to haul Bar back, but the captain was a powerfully built man, tall
and lean, and strong, and their combined efforts would have been
for nothing had more pirates; Rook, O’Dylan, Tanner, and others
Drish had no names for; had they not arrived to help drag their
leader back behind the rim of the furnace, and out of sight from
the soldiers and machines turning the freshly fallen snow into a
tracked-up mud pit.

What happened after that was a mystery,
because Drish never saw the butt of the gun that knocked him out
cold in the muck.

When the young nobleman came to, he wasn’t on the
muddy ground or in the deserted foundry. He wasn’t even out in the
cold anymore, but instead on a soft bed, with clean white sheets. A
doctor and a nurse stood over him. Both wore surgical masks, and
white tunics. The nurse had just finished fastening an intravenous
jar to a rack, and was now checking the line that ran to a shunt
taped to Drish’s arm; while the doctor prodded and pocked at his
head and muttered medical jargon in between “
hmms
” and
“
ahs
”.

“He’s coming to,” the nurse explained, and
the doctor abruptly shifted his focus. A light came shining into
Drish’s eyes; one so intense that it sent a throbbing pain through
his skull and made his head feel like pudding. Combined with the
sickening smell of chemical sterilizer, it proved too much to cope,
and he nearly unleashed a torrent of sick except that the medical
examiner ceased his scrutiny of the noble’s pupils. The absence of
the light brought relief.

“Seems responsive,” muttered the doctor
through his mask.

“Excellent,” a familiar voice clapped
through the spacious room. “What’s his prognosis then?”

“A simple concussion most likely, and
nothing life-threatening. The X-ray showed no evidence of a skull
fracture, and his current condition is a positive sign, but that
doesn’t rule out additional swelling over the next twenty-four
hours or so. For now we’ll monitor him, keep him hydrated and on
pain medication, as well as an aggressive series of
anti-inflammatories.”

“What about questioning him?”

“That should be fine, so long as you keep
the session brief, and understand that there might be some
confusion or memory loss on the prisoner’s part.”

Memory loss
, thought Drish as though
it were a silly notion, but then he found the past shrouded in a
hazy sort of fog. It hurt to try and look beyond it, but he forced
himself to anyway. Something buried behind the gossamer veil of his
addled memory had deeply affected him, and the emotional scar was
freshly made and throbbed like a burn. He searched, beyond the
pain, beyond the fog, and found an image of his father laying in
the snow and the mud. That despicable pirate Bar Bazzon was there
too, and so was that trollop-somehow-turned-lady, Abigail. They
were both standing over his father, and there was blood
everywhere.

Arvis was dying
, he realized.

“My father,” muttered Drish, and he found
his voice strange to behold. It reminded him of Arvis’s handicapped
speech, and that sent a sudden pang of terror through him, thinking
that he would suffer a similar disability as his father.

An officer in an imperial uniform appeared,
standing over him, and at once Drish recognized the humorless face
of Colonel Graye, the night commander from the administrative
compound. The sight of him, however, only further complicated his
muddled memories, and he began to wonder if the fragments he
remembered had just been from some dream? It seemed too incredulous
to think back on; the clandestine meeting with
Dumount…no
Domaire
, delving into a seedy tavern that turned out to be an
insurgent strong-hold, kidnapped by pirates from his townhouse, a
high-speed escape to a burned out factory where a ground-battle had
raged…and his father dead. All of this was so far outside of
anything that Drish had ever experienced that it was easier to
chalk it up to a concussion-induced fantasy than an actual reality.
Maybe I slipped on the ice leaving the office…

“He was dead by the time my men secured the
ruins,” said the officer, unremorseful. And just like that the
gilded scenario Drish had created to wash away the terrible truth
of events crumbled to dust. However, instead of finding
debilitating sadness, Drish found his heart vacant. There was
nothing inside of him left to toll the bells of sorrow, and the
orphaned son simply lay passively in his medical bed, with his brow
furrowed in what could have simply been construed as confusion. The
officer must have believed as such.

“I’m sorry, it’s true, Mr. Larken,” he
offered more sympathetically.

“Where am I?” Drish tried to sit up, to
which the nurse laid a gentle hand to his chest while the doctor
advised him not to move. So the noble rested his head back against
the soft pillow and scanned with his eyes. He was in a medical
ward, no doubt, but it didn’t look a thing like any hospital he’d
ever been in. For one, an entire wall had been carved directly from
gray granite, which was streaked with veins of pink; and another,
its oppose was constructed of plaster and posts, with a ceiling of
open beams. Combined with the windows—tall and narrow—it all spoke
towards a style of construction more ancient than not, and one
Drish remembered from his studies as being favored by the old
Oberarch kings of a hundred years prior to the ratification of the
Ascellan Kingdom.

“In the safest place you could possibly be.”
Lt. Graye strolled to the window and parted the drapes to let the
outside world shine in. Snowcapped mountains came staring through
the leaded glass, with their summits lost above a sky of
wooly-gray. “You’re in Port Armageddon.”

“Port Armageddon…” Drish’s face fell into an
open gawk. Though he couldn’t see the cliffs below; or the
airdocks, or the platform parade grounds welded to their faces; the
tiered buildings or the cloistered causeways that tied it all
together; the ancient aesthetic to the construction, and the damp
chill to the air confirmed the truth of the Hierarch’s statement.
He was up in the mountains of the High Crown, in what used to be
the UKA’s Cloudfortress, Ragnarok.

Graye let the curtains fall closed. “So
everything is alright now,” the man paced to the sound of his own
hard soles echoing through the expansive space, “the Resistance
can’t touch you here. You know, I’m really quite glad it was I who
volunteered to lead the arrest squad, Mr. Larken, another officer
might not have insisted on such a thorough search of the premises,
not after the adrenaline rush of such a heated firefight with your
resistance. But I’m glad I did, because next to an overturned
wastebasket behind your desk I found this.” Graye pulled out a
crumbled document from a pocket inside his black trench coat.

There it was, the handwritten note Drish had
tried to dispose of when the pirates were pressing in around him.
The wrinkles had been smoothed somewhat flat and the vomit had
dried on the corner. On its bottom, his first name stared back at
him accusingly:
Drish La
.

In an instant the officer had the confession
turned back around so he could proudly examine it himself. “I must
say, though a bit farfetched and suspiciously conciliatory, given
the circumstances, it’s quite the extraordinary letter. My
investigators assure me—upon preliminary research—that enough of
your statement appears to be true to warrant, perhaps, a
higher-level of trust between us. Domaire’s…
confession
helped you substantially in that respect as well. And now I find
myself inclined to believe you, despite what prior accusations
would have me believe. It seems, in fact, that you
are
innocent, and have never willfully given aid to those troublesome
insurgents. Clearly, in your unfortunate case, you are a victim of
a dastardly scheme of embezzlement on your father’s part.

“One more charge to be heaped upon the dead,
I suppose,” added Graye. “Of course you are going to receive a
formal trial for associating with rebels—due to your capture on the
field of battle. That is unavoidable, but as your record is
thus-far exemplary, and your confession note so telling, I’m fairly
confident the Judge Advocate will recommend leniency; especially
with my sworn affidavit to back up your defense.”

Drish’s mood lightened slightly. This was
good news, despite everything that had happened he was spared.
However, his father’s death seemed to steal away any real zeal over
this victory.
But just as well, at least this nightmare is
over,
he reassured himself
.
And after the conclusion of
this whole trial business, he could go back to his home, hopefully
his job, and his life; and then maybe, someday, lament his father’s
death in peace.

“You see, the Empire’s not so bad after all,
is it?” remarked Graye pleasantly, smiling down on the
collaborator, but there was something in those white upon white
eyes that made Drish suddenly uncomfortable. “Just one more thing
however… I am curious, where did the rest of the insurgent fighters
retreat to? Intel suggests we engaged about two and half dozen, but
we were only able to recover the bodies of seven. The rest seemed
to have escaped like the rats they are. So, Mr. Larken, where is
this nest they’ve retreated to?”

“To tell you the truth, I don’t know,
Colonel.”

“
Hmm
…It seems everyone says that: ‘to
tell you the truth’.” Graye turned his icy eyes upon the noble, and
spoke with gentle reassurance. “Come, come, Mr. Larken, you owe
them nothing. The letter you wrote proves you held no great loyalty
towards them when it came to your own Candaran hide, so why protect
them now? And consider this as well, how they just up and abandoned
you in that foundry. So tell me true, where can I round up the rest
of this rabble and be done with this troubling nonsense.”

“I don’t know,” repeated Drish, gritting his
teeth in frustration, but it turned to a grimace of pain in his
jaw. He remembered when Bar Bazzon had struck him in the face, and
he wondered if the captain’s body was among those recovered. He
couldn’t say he was sorry if it had.

“That’s a pity? You had been so helpful up
until now. Are you sure you don’t
remember
?”

Remember?
Drish didn’t like the
implications of that allusion. “I
never
knew,” he snapped
back, straining against his bounds till they chafed his flesh.

Graye scowled in disappointment before
turning about abruptly on his heels. “When will the prisoner be fit
for transport to the stockades?”