Flying the Storm

30.





Heading Three-One-Four

Vika was sitting next to Fredrick in the cockpit, since Solomon had decided that it was her turn and had retreated down into the hold. She reached across to lay her hand on Fredrick’s knee. He smiled at her sideways, glancing at her before looking back out at the sea of clouds and blue sky ahead. The intercom was quiet. Aiden hadn’t spoken for a while, and Vika wondered if he had fallen asleep. Probably not, she decided, since he did seem to take some pride in his job.

The dark haired Scot was definitely cast from a different mould to Fredrick. He was quieter, less likely to be caught smiling. Surly. But then, she knew he’d been through a lot these last few days. More than Fredrick had, at least. Somehow he seemed to take the brunt of everything they did. It was as if his stockier build attracted violence more readily than Fredrick’s. Or maybe he was just less lucky. Whatever it was, she never felt quite at ease around him. She wouldn’t have gone so far as to say he was unstable, just...angry. She could sense it in him, coiled and compressed deep down, and she told herself she did not envy the person who finally set him off.

But a tiny part of her wanted to push him, just to see what happened. She knew she could. She had already seen the power she could have over men. The thought excited her. She’d felt his eyes on her, felt his desire like all the rest. But with Aiden there was jealousy too: envy for his friend. She knew she was only the stimulus that brought it bubbling to the surface.

That was where the trigger lay, she knew.

She squeezed Fredrick’s knee lightly, and smiled at him when he glanced over.

“Do you think she’ll be all right?” said Aiden suddenly, through the intercom.

Fredrick nodded to nobody in particular. “She is with her brother now, Aiden,” he reassured him. “She’ll be fine.”

That was unexpected, thought Vika.

She hadn’t imagined that Aiden really cared for the young girl. When they’d left her in Poti, he hadn’t even said so much as goodbye. He didn’t say a word to the girl’s brother, just kept his eyes on the ground or the aircraft or the ships, letting Solomon do the talking. Maybe it is just guilt, she thought. Guilt for getting the girl’s father killed.

And so they should feel guilty: he and Fredrick both. They had brought more death to Ashtarak than any raiders ever did. She was grateful for the part they had played in her rescue, but the price had been too high. Too many good people, her people, were dead. Ashtarak might never recover. For that, she cursed the westerners. She cursed them for the evil they had brought, and she cursed them for the debt she now owed them. How was she ever to pay them back, for one or the other?

Vika hoped that Solomon was telling the truth about the second ship, this Enkidu. If it existed, and it really could be used like he said it could, then she might just get the vengeance her people’s blood demanded.

She had dreamt the night before of the Gilgamesh, though she’d never seen it in reality. In her dream it looked like the drawings of the Enkidu, only larger and somehow darker. It had gone down in flames, falling like a limp, dead thing, to smash and shatter on the hard ground below. She’d known it was her doing as she’d watched it. She felt powerful again, alive, just like when she’d killed Koikov’s man with the tiny blade. The Gilgamesh would die just as easily, she knew, killed by something small and unseen. The Enkidu.

She mouthed it silently. Enkidu. It felt good on her tongue. She’d first heard the word only a few days ago, but to her it meant justice. Vengeance. Blood for blood.

Fredrick was leaning forward, looking out of the cockpit windows. He was searching for something. Soon a break in the cloud appeared, and through it he spotted what he wanted to see.

“The Strait of Kerch,” he announced. “We’ve reached the Sea of Azov. Time to change our course a little.”

The Iolaire banked right gently, and Vika watched as the horizon sloped and began to turn. It was strange how she couldn’t feel it.

“No satellites then?” said Aiden.

Fredrick glanced at one of the screens on the console. “None. I’m going to give the Crimea an extra wide berth I think, just to be sure.”

“You sure it’s Kerch below us?”

“Not at all. That’s why I’m turning wide.”

Vika leaned out then, craning to look up through the glass, as if she could spot a satellite by herself. She knew those machines flew much higher than aircraft: high above the air, always falling but never coming down. Her father had told her that once the sky had been full of them, before the war, blinking away in the dark and cold of the void. Most were still there but they were dead now, or else smashed into thousands of pieces and left to slowly kill those that still functioned. He’d told her that they were noble machines, put there to guide us and to connect us, but that like all things, often they were used to kill. Vika could see nothing as she gazed upwards; only featureless blue sky.


The novelty of flight had worn off some time ago. Boredom started to set in. When she’d been down in the hold with only a porthole to see out of, the cockpit had seemed like a much better prospect. Now that she was here the endless blue sky and white cloud was becoming dull. She found herself wishing that Fredrick didn’t have to be at the controls… that he could take her into his bunk again.

That would surely have grated on Aiden.

To pass the time, she thought of Armenia, of home. Her father had told her his visions, a long time ago, but it never seemed to have occurred to him to act on them. It was different now. Now her father was gathering Ashtarak’s strength, training its militia, branching out to the other towns to join him. Once there was unity, he could stamp out the pockets of raiders and rapists one at a time.

She knew that his sudden decision to act had had something to do with Azarian’s betrayal. Maybe if the council hadn’t tried to throw him down, things would have continued without change. It wasn’t a terrible thought, either. To Vika, the old, stable Ashtarak was a comforting memory. It was everything she’d ever known, and despite its failings, it had worked. She had never felt unsafe there; not until the day the slavers came. Her father had always been there to protect her, and the town had always been there to protect them both.

But she saw now that that had been a false comfort. Everybody did. They had learned the hard way that in order to have peace and safety, you must be ready for violence. Only through strength and integrity could Armenia really be safe again. Like soldiers in the old times, he’d told her, each shield should overlap the next, and the people beneath those shields must brace themselves to meet whatever may come.

Coming after her like he did, leading men for the first time since the war; it had awakened something in him. In all the years she had known him, he had never seemed so young, so full of life. She knew that this was the real Tovmas. Her father’s strength was plain for everyone to see, and he was stronger now than Vika had ever known. When she saw him talking, his words were more animated and his passion for the cause shone through. He believed whole-heartedly in what he was trying to achieve, and that rubbed off on everyone who heard him. He was a born leader.

She was proud to call him her father. Her fist coiled tightly by her side, and silently she swore she would make him proud of his daughter.