Maledictus Aether (24 page)

“Some people won’t care,” he remarks, and I look at him
through the glass to
realise
that his stare is already directed at me through it. “In fact,
there is little to no importance on this matter to
some.”

I break the gaze, looking
towards the ship land bound and held to the ground by the sheets of
ice.

“Couldn’t sleep?” he questions,
and I happily take the change of subject as I shake my head,
letting him keep his arm around my shoulders and deciding to take
comfort in the touch.

Truthfully, I would be lying if
I said I did not find it at least a little reassuring and
comforting. Plus, it is a lot warmer than a metal limb.

“Too cold, I suppose,” I
remark, shrugging, and he laughs lightly as I cross my arms,
sighing to myself. “I am not made for this frozen wasteland, and I
much prefer London’s horrid weather to this sheer ice.”

“I’ll give you that,” he
concedes, and this time I join in his quiet laughter. “If it is any
consolation, your father is a very kind man, and we had an
interesting conversation after I’d shown him to his quarters.”

I look up to my companion, my
question written plainly on my face, and he shakes his head with a
light laugh.

“It was nothing you need concern yourself over,” he says,
and I click my tongue at him as I look away. “I do have a question
for you, though.”

“Which is…?” I prompt, looking
back at him and discarding my irritation. If he does not want to
tell me, I am certain that it is nothing important.

“It probably is none of my
concern, actually, but your father was curious as well but felt too
out of place since he has only just met you for the first time,” he
continues, and I frown at him this time.

“You are stalling,” I remark,
and the twenty-seven year old man laughs uneasily.

Shaking his head at a thought,
he looks at me.

“He was wondering if you had
actually ever had the chance to have a child – being your age and
everything, he admitted that he would not have been surprised.”

My eyebrows shoot up as the
words set in, and I actually have to work at keeping my jaw locked.
Instead, I press my lips together and look to the Aurora Australis
dancing in the sky, a beautiful display of lights and colours in
the passing night.

Sighing, I allow myself to lean
into the embrace his arm is offering me, looking down to the ice so
far below as I think.

I think for a while, never once
speaking a word, but the man does not prompt me; instead, he holds
me carefully, as if with one wrong move I will explode, and I do
not know how to feel about that information so I push it out of my
mind completely, deciding it is better to ignore the
observation.

“I was either used or abused,” I say after what feels like
centuries. Closing my eyes, I let myself fall back to those
suppressed memories, shuddering in his hold and screwing my eyes
shut even more. “I never fathered a child, of course – I never let
it get that far – but the women who said they loved me… well, I
quickly found out that each of them was interested in the heritage
my father had left in my name. Soon enough, perhaps after the
second time around, I simply gave up on that – and after my
surgery, I could not even trust those who expressed any sort of
fondness towards me, fully aware of the whispers around me, mocking
me for being a survivor.

“It has been a very, very long
time since I have felt at ease with anyone – at the very least,
enough to tell them half the things I tell you,” laughing bitterly,
I shake my head, “so I hope you realise that you have actually
managed to do something the majority never have, and ever
will.”

I run out of steam then,
opening my eyes again and forcing the images from my mind. The
scent of leather and tea is back in my nose, a hint of rum in the
mix, and I can’t help but smile to myself as I keep my head tipped
so that my expression is out of sight.

The thought comes to me before
I can bar it.

This is home.

“It sounds lonely,” he remarks
after a moment, and I shrug.

“You are only lonely when you
have someone to miss,” I counter, looking up to catch his
expression, and it is a mixture of sadness and resignation when I
do.

I wonder why.

“Although, lately, I suppose it
has been,” I admit, and Lucian looks at me curiously. I tear away
from the gaze, looking to the moon so bright and full in the night
sky, not a cloud to hide away the display of lights and the stars,
both painting the ice colours that would make a painter itch for
his brush. “It is not so bad right now.”

We stand in silence, the lights dancing in the sky, and I
find my eyes lowering of their own accord, sleep finally trying to
grace me with its presence. If Lucian notices, the man doesn’t
comment, but he does tighten his hold only slightly, and I smile
despite myself.

“I will let you sleep, then,”
he says quietly, and after hesitating another moment I nod. “Are
you sure the necessary changes are not causing difficulties?”

Nodding again, I put the man at
ease by pulling the shoulder of my robe and nightshirt off my
shoulder only enough to show him where metal meets skin, tubes
disappearing into my shoulder and rivets driven into my body. Aside
for a slight blue tinge to the closest area of skin, there is no
frostbite.

“The metal is quick to cool,
not so quick to warm, though, so the cold is not very pleasant,” I
remark, pulling my clothes back in place. His arm has fallen to his
side as I’ve done so, and he nods curtly.

“Right. Then… I will see you in
the morning?”

His statement seems to be torn between a question and an
affirmation, so I nod my assent as I wince, one of the scars on my
back pulling uncomfortably. Looking at each other briefly, we both
look away uneasily.

He leaves shortly thereafter,
and I sigh in relief, the tense atmosphere leaving with him. Orin’s
sitting on the couch, watching me almost in disbelief. I scowl at
the lizard.

“What?” I ask, but it simply
looks away. “Oh, what do you know? You are just a lizard.”

Just before I go to my
chambers, I catch sight of my reflection in the glass of the window
and sigh, frowning at the almost disgruntled expression I wear.

The dreams I have that night
are as confusing as the exchange.

Father shows me and the other engineers aboard my ship to
the engines the following morning, and I bring along the design
plans in order to facilitate making sense of the monstrosity. The
engines,
contrary to
suspicion, dominate the third level of the ship and take up almost
the entire level, and for a moment we remain awed at the sight of
the metal.

The problems are quickly found,
at least, but they are problems that are very costly indeed. The
oil has to be changed, the hydraulics replaced, pipes worked and
mended of their leaks, clockwork systems have to be repaired, and
of course some parts have been damaged by the ice – without
mentioning the damage done to the hull of the ship, of course,
thanks to years of ice clutching at the metal. It will be
relatively easy to remove the ice, just arduous.

Then, the helm has to be worked as well; the landing gear
has been damaged during the last landing, the electricity has to be
rewired and the ESDs replaced entirely. Furthermore, they need to
be replenished of their precious lightning; and finding enough
Aether to give this ship the ability to fly goes without
saying.

I mention all this to Lucian when I meet with him at the
helm of the
Atlas
, and his
response less coherence and more along the lines of a dying duck.
Afterwards, the man suggests we get a few crewmembers to fly back
to Dracia and obtain this supply, to which I agree; I give him
command of that journey, trusting my ship’s well-being to him, and
later that very same day the
Atlas
flies off, a
single engineer with her so the rest of us can begin the
repairs.

For a fortnight we work well
into the night, sometimes losing sleep entirely as we work. I take
responsibility for the clockwork system, as they are the ones I am
the best at working with, and work at replacing the gears and
pulleys while they mend the metal around me. Father works on the
hydraulics, opening the casings and changing the system almost in
its entirety.

He also entrusts me with a secret, one he shared with
Lucian just before he sailed for all the supplies we’ve requested:
this ship flies on Aether more than anything. The engine recycles
its own Aether, the precious substance in its purest form, liquid,
and does not fly on steam.

I almost choke at the
thought.

No wonder Tier has no match – no self-respecting engineer
would ever build an engine with such a costly fuel. Furthermore,
the science behind Aether is still sketchy at best, and as a result
not much is known about it save that it allows for flight, and can
be turned into a fine material used to cover buildings and
objects.

When the
Atlas
returns with the substance, I lock
myself in my quarters studying the plans while the others continue
working at the engines. Lucian comes and goes, keeping the crew
busy and also checking in on me to make sure I don’t skip sleep
entirely as I pour over the schematics.

There has to be something here. There
has
to
be.

The initial test drive of the engines is a failure. We do
not get so much as a splutter, this being almost an entire month
after we’ve begun working on them. They continue working away at it
as I remain up throughout the nights, leaning over the schematics
and looking at lines I have memorized, hands on my desk as I look
over these plans once more and ask myself
what are we missing
?

The
Alitis
will fly. It has flown before, and
it will sail the skies once more – even if it is the last thing I
ever do.

Despite Lucian’s insisting I
remain up throughout the night, getting little and oftentimes no
sleep – but when I do, my dreams are about the same dilemma, and I
find myself thinking up strategies in my sleep. Ideas that never
take flight.

Finally, after perhaps two
months in the arctic, I figure it out.

I grab a blank notebook and
start scribbling away, the one I had been using to sketch out rough
ideas and notes full from cover to cover. I spend another full
night filling the pages, Lucian coming in only to bring me a mug of
Earl Grey, sitting on the armrest of the couch and watching me work
silently while sipping his own tea. He gave up a while back on
forcing me to go to sleep, especially as he realised that once I
have a project in mind, I cannot be diverted.

When the sun crests the ice
caps, I put my pen down and lean back in my chair, finished at
last. Later, when I reveal my findings to my father and the other
engineers, they immediately get to work and I aid them.

We break the engines down to their barest bones, scraping
off whatever residue of old, warped Aether within and beginning to
do the wiring. A ship this old and immobile for this long will need
more than Aether powering it.

That is where the ESDs come in.

Setting the larger devices into the centre, we run the
wiring from these to a control panel we build, and after we run
different wiring to be later linked to the ESD storage we close the
engines. Then we reinforce the pipes and split the wires, running
them to the hydraulic pistons and the clockwork system I break
apart completely and build anew, adding a touch of
Kennedy
to it, so to speak, and giving it a new design as
well. This I then connect to the other clockwork systems that help
run the other engines.

During all this time, the rest
of the crew has begun working away at the ice holding the ship to
the ground and clearing the ice that has formed inside the ship as
well. As they uncover the ship they find some places where it has
gone through the hull entirely, but they get about fixing it as
soon as the breach is discovered.

Once the wiring is set for the
engines we work on the one connected to the rest of the ship, and
when we test this wiring we get results. My father and I work on
the landing gear soon afterwards, trusting the wiring to the other
engineers.

That becomes a little tricky.
The anchors are all damaged beyond repair, so we have to replace
those and fix the pulleys and gears that have been damaged during
landing. I imagine landing here was not very easy.

As we worked on this, I asked my father what happened to
Alexander, the pilot, and his response was chilling.

“When I came here for the first
time, I found his frozen corpse at the helm,” he had said as he
secured a rivet into place. His expression, when I had looked, was
unreadable. “I gave him a proper funeral, as is the custom in our
culture.”

Soon afterwards, the landing gear was repaired and the
wiring was fully functional. The other engineers worked at the
weaponry while my father and I double checked the restoration of
the hull before transferring the gallons of
Aether into the engines, satisfied with the
rest, and redesigned the propulsion system itself on a whim – and,
after having seen the state of the propellers, felt it was
justified.

The night before the launch is at hand. Four months of
work, almost five, rides on tomorrow’s test. If it does not work, I
do not know what to do.