The Dragons of Heaven (20 page)

“We're flying across the Pacific in… that?”

I'll say this for Argent, they work their branding. Sylvia Dunbarton's cultivated studio-system glamour was just one facet of that marcasite jewel. There was Skyrocket's WWII charm, the Antiquarian's Howard Carter persona… and now this.

The
Kestrel
gleamed a burnished silver from the curve of her snub nose to the arch of her slender tail. Evenly-spaced rivets were the only interruption to her sleek lines. There weren't even engines tucked under the wings, or windows to mar the length of the fuselage. She looked like Howard Hughes's wet dream, and not at all air-worthy.

Tom, bless him, grinned at my skepticism. “She's a beauty, isn't she? Flies like a dream.”

“She… flies?” How?

He answered my unasked question with a shrug. “Same tech as my rocket pack. Stuff my grandpap helped develop, though they've gone way beyond that, now. Argent's tech people… those guys are whip smart. Could probably solve world hunger.” He frowned. “If world hunger could be solved with aviation technology, I guess.”

If there were more power in solving world hunger than in letting it strategically continue.
But a seam opened at the rear of the
Kestrel
, interrupting any sour comment I was inclined to make. A gangplank lowered to the ground. Tom hopped up the slope and held out a hand to help me up. I ignored it. I was old, not
decrepit
.

The ramp led to the cargo bay and jump deck. Tom gestured to a pile of gear held in place with netting.

“‘Chutes and suits are back here, plus a supply drop and an inflatable raft. You can suit up later, I reckon.” He opened a pressurized door and led us through a small cabin and to the cockpit. Everything was primed and lit. Maybe he'd done his pre-flight check before our arrival. Though I was still skeptical about the flight aspect. There were
no engines
. How could the blasted thing fly with no engines?

Tom sat in the padded flightseat and flicked switches on the console, doing lord-only-knew what. “Should have us in the air in about twenty minutes. It's pretty spacious back in the cabin. Just make yourself comfy. Have a drink. A snack. Grab a seat up here and chat if you feel like it. It's a milk run until we hit Chinese airspace. The company'd be nice.”

Tsung took the co-pilot's seat. I shook my head. Between the glances Tsung kept shooting at me and Tom's youthful vigor, I was beginning to feel every year of my presumed age. “Perhaps later, when things get interesting. I think I'll try to sleep just now.”

Tom chuckled as I returned to the passenger cabin. “Those old-guard types are all the same,” he told Tsung, as if I couldn't hear him. “Sleep when they can, cause who knows when they'll have the chance again, right?”

“So it would seem,” David Tsung murmured.

I settled into a chair I suspected was Sylvia's favorite and pulled my hat down over my face. I feared those words would prove to be prophetic.

“
S
o
, why did you leave Argent?”

I'd woken from my nap and headed back to pull my jumpsuit and parachute on over my clothes. I exchanged my fedora for a helmet, and stashed it in a bundle that included my trench coat and the knife. I'd jump with them, but be damned if I was taking that woodcarving knife to the leg because I'd landed wrong.

I took David Tsung's abandoned co-pilot seat while he went back to change. From the extended weight of silence that had descended as Tom and I watched the blue go by, he'd been trying to figure out how to blurt that question for a good while.

“Technically, I didn't.” Even more technically, I didn't know. There were gaps the size of the English Channel in Mr Mystic's journal entries regarding Argent. “I had matters to see to, and seeing to them took longer than expected. When I came back, I simply neglected to contact the agency. We'd both changed so much in the interim, there didn't seem to be a point.”

“But you don't like them.”

“‘Them' is a collective of individuals, some of whom I like very well. But no. On the whole I do not approve of the course that some of those individuals have charted for Argent.”

“But we do good work.” Tom had an earnestness that couldn't be feigned – another reason he made such a good spokesman. I had no doubt he believed in Argent's mission statement. “We do drives for charities, act as ambassadors and peacekeepers all over the world. And when some terrorist with a few magic tricks up his sleeve or a couple of fancy gadgets comes along, bent on world domination, we're there to stop him.”

“You know, there's some who argue that the existence of Argent invites such opposition. That if you didn't exist, neither would they, and the world would be a safer place all around.”

“Well, that's just stupid talk.”

I chuckled. Tom's eloquence was all the more effective for being homespun. “I'm inclined to agree.”

“I mean, what do those folks think? If we weren't around, those terrorists would still be out causing trouble, and we might not even know about it.”

I placed a steadying hand on his shoulder. “As I said, I agree. But the corollary to that argument is that as a result, Argent has been given broad, unchecked powers. They've become a force to be reckoned with, on a par with any nation. Witness the fact that in this current crisis, Argent has a seat at the table. A private corporation, with nobody to answer to, no mandate from any people. That is what troubles me.”

“There's shareholders.”

“Who care about the bottom line, which is hardly the kind of a line a hero should be drawing in the sand, wouldn't you agree?”

But Tom's strength as a spokesman was that he believed in his heart what he couldn't quantify in his head.

“We do good work,” he insisted. “And we get things done. You have to admit that, at least. You wouldn't be here now if it weren't true.”

“Lord, you're much like your grandfather,” I said, as much to change the topic as anything.

“Thanks. I – Jesus H!” The
Kestrel
rocked as a muffled
whump
sounded from somewhere outside. Tom pulled the control yoke, sending us into a steep climb. I tumbled from my seat. A cry and a thunk came from the back as David Tsung and gravity made their acquaintance.

“You all right, sir?” Tom's hand shot down to help me up. I waved it away.

“Fine. I'm fine. Keep… driving. Or what have you. Tsung, you all right?” I glanced back down the length of the windowless fuselage. David Tsung was suited-up and scowling. He crawled up the aisle and strapped in to the cushy seat I'd abandoned.

“I'm fine. What the hell was that?”

I had no clue, but Tsung's idea was a good one. I clambered back into the co-pilot's seat and strapped myself in. “Tom?”

“Hold on.” Seeing us safely belted, Tom nudged the
Kestrel
into a dive. My stomach flipped as I slammed into the restraints; I closed my eyes to fight back nausea. Correct that. Not a dive. A
Kestrel
dive. I wanted to demand what the tactical logic of that was, but I was too busy struggling to keep my lunch.

“We got two bogeys at six and eight.”

“Bogeys? Do you seriously call them that?”

“I'm old school.” Another grin. Another moment of stomach flipping terror as he did something that only belonged in an airshow. I recalled liking flying, once upon a time, and on a flimsier craft than this. But then, I'd trusted that pilot with my life. I barely knew Tom.

“Are they after us specifically, do you think?” I asked through gritted teeth, “Or just taking potshots at whatever they're running across?”

“Don't know.” He flicked some switches on the console. “They're speaking gobbledygook.” Another switch, and Mandarin poured from the cockpit speakers.

Perhaps Tom wasn't completely free of his grandfather's ethnocentrism.

“Shenyang J-15s off the
Liaoning
,” Tsung said for Tom's benefit as the pilots chattered with their controller. “Sounds like they've got orders to herd anything they see into an early demise.”

Tom shook his head. “They must have been blue water when the Wall went up. Can't get Argent command on the com. We're too close to the New Wall.”

Even worse. “How close?” The footage of that cargo hulk crunching into the Wall like a tin can had become one of the signifying images of the current crisis. What would the New Wall do to a plane?

A few more switches flipped, and another rocking
whump
from outside. The control yoke rattled in Tom's grip, and for a moment he struggled to keep it steady. “Closer than we were a few minutes ago. They're herding us toward it. Shit. Shit.”

“We have to jump,” I said.

Tsung, who'd been leaning as far forward as his restraints and our aerial acrobatics would allow, choked on a laugh. “Are you crazy, old man? What's to stop them from taking us out, chutes and all, and then herding the evidence into the ward?”

“I ain't abandoning ship,” Tom said with a firming of that lantern-jaw. “Not letting them get ahold of her tech.”

“You have to take us across to the Shadow Realms,” Tsung said to me.

“Who is the crazy one now?” If Tsung knew the Shadow Realms as well as I suspected he did, he had to know the effect they'd have on the
Kestrel
's engines. “We'll be dead in the water… sky… within a few moments.”

“We'll have long enough for all three of us to jump, nobody will get access to Argent's tech, and we can cross back over once we're on the ground.”

Assuming nothing found us and ate us first. “It's too dangerous.”

“This is more dangerous. Take us across.”

“You are mad if you think I'm going to.”

“Take. Us. Across.” And unspoken behind Tsung's glare:
If you don't, I will.

As much as I didn't wish to cross over, I wanted even less to be dragged across by someone else. What if he wasn't as powerful as I was? What if he lacked my control?

“Mr Masters, sir? I don't usually disrespect my elders, but if you don't do as the man says, I
will
pop you one when this is over. Assuming we survive.”

“Fine,” I snapped, leaving the rest of what I wanted to say hanging.
Don't say I didn't warn you.
“When I say go, put out the interior lights. You'll only have a few moments of power before the Realms start draining it. Can you make it to the bay to jump?”

“I'll make it. You two head back. I'll see what I can do to give us some space before pointing us in the right direction.”

Any further arguments I might have made were silenced by another
whump
and a burst of alarms from the console. Tom cursed and struggled with the yoke.

I unstrapped and followed David Tsung to the jump bay as the
Kestrel
bucked and swayed and threatened to send me bouncing back towards the cockpit.

“This is a seriously bad idea,” I muttered to Tsung, grabbing my little satchel and holding on to a carabiner so I wouldn't go hurtling out the back of the plane before I was ready to hurtle myself.

“You're just saying that because nobody likes us over there.”

“You fellas ready, or you want some private time?” Tom called.

“I just assumed you needed to kiss your girl goodbye,” I shouted back. “Give the word. We're ready when you are.”

“I'll remember you were making fun, Old Man. OK, go!”

The lights went out and the rear bay opened. I rocked back at the change in pressure and the wind, squinting my eyes as they started to water, and wishing I could cover my ears. The cold sunlight slanted into the jump bay, washing up the curve of one wall, but the rest of the windowless fuselage was in darkness. I gathered up all the shadow like net webbing, braced myself, and pulled.

It was like pulling on a brace holding back an avalanche. I didn't so much take us across as that the
Kestrel
barreled into the darkness.

The sunlight cut out, as did the deafening sound of the wind. We were cocooned in a void so absolute that for a moment I feared I'd somehow killed us all, and this was death.

No.
Cogito ergo sum
. I bolstered myself with that thought.

And then I didn't need to, because equilibrium made my stomach drop, like I was going over the edge of a roller coaster.

The carabiner strap cut into my wrist, keeping me from tumbling.

I drew in a breath, an incipient scream. It broke the silence, then more breathing from my right. Tsung.

“Are we falling?” My question came only a little higher than my usual tones. Darkness within, darkness without, and no sound of air or engines to explain the odd, weightless feeling. I gripped the strap, the only thing solid in this void.

The silence was broken by the sound of someone stumbling their way behind me. Tom. “We've lost power. No instruments. No engines. We make it across?”

“The darkness doesn't give it away?”

“The New Wall. We make it across the New Wall?”

“I've no way to tell.”

“Right-o. Follow me.” Another click, followed by an explosion of light. Skyrocket flashed past us, the flare of his rocketpack blinding me. But it also gave me a direction to follow. I released my grip on the strap and managed a graceless run into freefall. Pulled my chute immediately because who knew how much altitude we'd lost in the darkness. I clenched my eyes as wind and gravity returned. Something flapped above me. I looked up in case it was a raptor or something worse. It rippled and spread, a slightly paler shade of dark. Then it caught, and my stomach lurched as I was pulled up short.

I rocked back and forth under the pale cloud of darkness, like an infant in a rough cradle, falling through the void. No, not falling. At least, not entirely. Now that I could see in every direction, I spied the lambent curve of the horizon, a few pockets of luminescence dotting the shadow landscape below, and above me, the cloud resolved into the pale rectangle of a parachute.