Flying the Storm

38.





Delta-V

Something, and Vika didn’t quite understand what, had cut two holes in her cabin: one high in the corner of the ceiling, and the other through the door monitor that had been refusing to let her out. The patronising female voice was gone. The screen was gone. All that remained was a perfectly round, smouldering hole that she could see the outside corridor through.

She’d been at the little sink in the corner, driven there by the ship’s juddering and bucking. As she’d bent to vomit there was a deafening bang that had scared her lunch right back down into her stomach. Her ears were still ringing from it.

The air smelled of smoke and had a metallic tang, and Vika could see that something had definitely passed right through the cabin. The slight outwards bend of the metal and ceramic around the ceiling-hole suggested that. Her sickness had saved her. A line between the two holes would have most definitely passed through where she’d previously stood by the door, thumping the little screen and arguing with the woman’s voice.

Without hesitating long enough to let that worry her, she went to the door and found that it slid open quite easily now when she pushed on it.

She was in the corridor. Something small, noisy and made of metal zoomed along the corridor to the hole in the floor, where whatever had passed through her cabin had apparently kept going, and began spraying the glowing edges with water. Then it stopped spraying water and started spraying some kind of foam into the hole, filling it and sealing it over. A repair drone, she thought. Solomon had said that the Enkidu could repair itself.

The drone scurried into her room then and climbed the wall to the ceiling hole, going through the same process as in the corridor. Vika watched it for a moment. She turned to the hole in the floor then and prodded the foam with her foot. It was spongy on top, but beneath it she could feel more resistance. Gingerly she pressed some more of her weight down on it, and found that it didn’t budge. It was solid.

She started heading back along the corridor the way she’d come. The ship rolled again and Vika stumbled into the wall, but she kept going. She had a purpose.


Unlike the others, Vika had spent a large part of the few days in Tbilisi studying every document Solomon had on that little monitor of his. One of them had been a full three-dimensional schematic of the insides of the warship, so she knew exactly where she had to go. Her destination was right ahead of her at the end of the main crew corridor.

Getting there, when the ship itself seemed to be throwing itself around just to spite her, was going to be harder than it had looked in those drawings. Part of her wanted to run back to the little sink in her cabin, throw up and then strap herself into the bunk and wait for it all to be over.

But that wasn’t an option. Whatever Solomon was doing with the Enkidu was damaging it. It was damaging her ship. She had to stop that.

Somehow she had fought her way to the bridge door without vomiting. More repair drones scuttled past her along the corridor, and a series of shuddering bangs reverberated throughout the ship. She dreaded to think what the noise was.

The little panel by the door showed green: it was unlocked. Tapping it with her finger slid the door silently open. Then she was inside, at the foot of a short stairway. The tall seat at the top wasn’t facing her, but it didn’t have to be for her to know who was in it.

Quietly Vika crept up the stairs, pulling her pistol out from behind her trousers’ waistband. The bridge was the inside of a huge ball, the walls of which were filled with blurred images that moved and flashed uncomfortably. She blinked them away and focused on the back of the chair.

“Commodore, the Gilgamesh appears to be turning to the north. It is likely that it is attempting to bring its broadside batteries to bear.” It was the same woman’s voice that Vika had heard in her cabin, telling her that the door was locked and that she should brace for ‘manoeuvres’. It was the voice of the Enkidu.

“Thank you, Enkidu,” replied Solomon. His voice sounded strained, like he was forcing himself to be calm. “Hold fire until I say.”

“Yes, Commodore.”

“When the Gilgamesh fires its full broadside, wait until the last possible opportunity to evade.”

“Yes, Commodore.”

The Enkidu was flying fairly smoothly now. The swaying and jolting had stopped for the moment, but the ship must have been accelerating because the stairs suddenly seemed to stretch away from her. Carefully finding her balance, Vika climbed the last few steps to the back of the chair. She reached around the headrest and pressed the pistol to Solomon’s temple. She felt him jump.

“Tell it that I am Commodore, too.” She’d heard it call him that. She needed it to listen to her.

“Vika, it doesn’t work like-”

“Tell it,” she hissed, pressing the gun hard into his skull.

Solomon hesitated for a moment. “All right, okay. Enkidu, this is... Commander Veronika Naroyan. She has... auxiliary command of the ship.”

‘Commander’ sounded like ‘commodore’. Maybe she had misheard the voice...

“Yes, Commodore.” Then, “The Gilgamesh is firing, Commodore.”

No, it was definitely ‘commodore’.

“You rat. You gave me a different rank!”

“No I didn’t!”

She was angry. She had the power here, with a gun to his head, and yet he still defied her.

“Yes you did! I heard-”

The ship seemed to fall away beneath her and she slammed into the ceiling of the bridge, pinned there for a moment. Huge bangs, much louder than before, rocked the ship. Then she fell. She missed the podium and the domed floor below came rushing up to meet her, flickering with nonsense images. She hit it hard, the pistol skittering from her grip to lie in the shadows by the foot of the podium.

She was dazed and everything hurt. She reached for the pistol, but drew her arm back at the stab of pain in her ribs. She rolled painfully on to her side to look back up towards the podium.

“Fire,” said Solomon. The warship juddered and the walls of the bridge flashed white for a moment before returning to a blurred mess of colours. How could Solomon see anything in it? She tried to sit up, but found she couldn’t, and instead lay on her back on the curved floor trying to get her breath back. Frustration seeped into her then. She had been so close. It had all seemed so easy.

“Secondary propulsion ready, Commodore.”

“Take us east, then.”

“Yes, Commodore.”

Suddenly there was a high-pitched howl that seemed to ring from the structure of the ship. Just as it passed out of range of hearing it turned to a deep roar, and the ship seemed to lurch forwards, throwing Vika hard against the rear wall of the bridge. It was as if the direction of down had changed, now somewhere behind her towards the stern, and her own weight pinned her helplessly against the wall. It was crushing her, she was sure. It was so hard to breathe. She managed to lift her hand a pathetic few centimetres before her arm collapsed again.

Vika closed her eyes and waited for it to be over.

It seemed like forever before the weight disappeared. Minutes or hours, she couldn’t tell. In the painful haze left by her fall she could have passed out for all she knew.

“We have reached propulsion cut-out, Commodore. Altitude sixty-seven kilometres, ground-speed six kilometres per second. Repulsion envelope has exceeded maximum altitude: repulsor is set to idle.”

“Thank you Enkidu.”

Vika heard Solomon unbuckle himself from his chair.

She pushed gently from the wall then and her head swam at the sudden feeling of freefall. She floated there, not falling, just gently drifting away from the back wall of the dome. It was horribly disorientating. Before, the direction of down had changed: now there was no down, no up. She clenched her throat tightly against the wave of nausea that washed over her.

What is happening?

Her trousers rustled against the bottom of the dome where she’d landed after the fall. She tried to bring herself to rest by thrusting her knee down into the floor, but instead of stopping she managed to knock herself into a tumbling spin along her length. She flailed her hands out and slowed the spin, eventually managing to plant them far apart and firmly enough on the cool wall to come to rest. Then, slowly getting her bearings back, she turned to look back at the captain’s chair.

Solomon was clinging to a railing, looking at her. His legs floated ridiculously above his head. With a smile he pushed off of the railing, legs first, towards what used to be the top of the dome.

He kicked from the top of the dome and came flying straight at Vika.

Even as he hurtled towards her, she could see the murder in his eyes. He wanted her dead. There would be no negotiations now.

Panicking she kicked out with both her legs. They found something solid and she slid across the floor of the dome, stopping herself with her hands once she was sure he would miss. Solomon landed in a crouch as if he’d expected to stop. Instead he just bounced, and finding nothing to grab hold of flailed back into the air.

The smile was gone. Now he snarled as he kicked off from the bottom of the podium, coming for Vika again.

Vika curled her legs underneath her body. She knew Solomon was too strong for her. She couldn’t let him get close. Her best hope was the pistol she had dropped, which now floated from the shadows beneath the podium. Waiting until the last moment, she kicked off.

Solomon flew past her, his outstretched hand missing her ankle by only centimetres. He collided hard with the wall, swearing.

All around Vika on the walls the confusing images still played. They were softer and steadier now, and seemed to either be deep black above or blue-green below near the bottom of the podium. Still they made no sense, too blurry and shifting to show anything recognisable. But there, hovering in the blue-green light was the pistol. Its muzzle was pointed towards her, so she caught it as carefully as she could, making sure to keep her fingers far from the trigger. She knew it was cocked and loaded.


Though she couldn’t see what Solomon was doing behind her, she kicked from the floor anyway, not wanting to stay still in case he was already onto her. As she pushed she twisted too, coming around to face backwards while she flew towards the black ceiling. There was Solomon, crouched and ready to push off after her. She aimed and started to squeeze the trigger.

The nausea came back just as she finished the trigger pull. The pistol barked and kicked but she saw the bullet went wide, ricocheting from the curved floor with a puff of dust. The kick had pushed her even faster towards the wall, so much so that when she hit it back-first she cried out at the sudden winding pain. It felt like somebody had driven a knife between her ribs. They must have been broken by the fall.

Fighting to clear the nausea and pain from her head, she aimed the pistol at Solomon again. He pushed himself sideways, ducking into the cover of the podium.

He was too slow. The second bullet caught him in his lower leg. Blood fountained from the wound, spreading out into a mass of shimmering round droplets that reflected the light of the wall-images. The sound of the shot echoed madly around the bridge, but Vika heard Solomon make no noise. He was hidden from her now, beneath the podium. She didn’t dare move to get a better view.

Then she saw Solomon’s own pistol floating in the air at the far side of the bridge, half-hidden by the blackness of the wall. He must have tucked it away under the chair or something, but now it was loose. It was closer to him than it was to her. She would have had to get very close to him to reach it. She stayed put, preferring to cover the second pistol and Solomon’s hiding place from where she was. Vika didn’t think she could face hurting her ribs like that again, either.

“It looks like you have me,” said Solomon, as if through gritted teeth. “Congratulations.”

“Come out slowly and I’ll let you live,” Vika found herself saying, though she didn’t rightly know how she would manage that. To simply kill him and be done with it would be much simpler.

“Vika, we both know that can’t happen.”

“It’s your choice,” she said, her voice steadier than she felt.

“Yes,” his laugh was threaded with pain, “I do believe it is. Enkidu, zenith evasive now!”

There was a loud, sharp bang and then Vika was falling to the floor again, fast. As she fell she saw the other pistol fall too, straight down into Solomon’s waiting hand. It all happened so quickly and yet Vika found herself pointing her own pistol and firing, again and again, her shots battling with the louder bark of Solomon’s pistol. Something white-hot sliced the side of her thigh just before she hit the floor and all went black.

She came-to in a blur of hot pain all over her body. It felt like every muscle and bone she had was on fire, and as she opened her eyes she saw she was floating again near the level of the captain’s seat. Below her, near the floor, Solomon’s body hovered in a shimmering cloud of crimson droplets.

She’d hit him. Somehow, she’d hit him. He wasn’t moving or even breathing. He was dead.

Somehow that numbed the pain a little.

Now she had nothing to kick off from. She was floating almost perfectly still in the centre of the huge spherical room, and the closest thing to her was the captain’s chair, though it was still a long way out of reach. Stretching her arm out had the same painful result as before, so she drew it back and searched about for another solution.

Her pistol still had rounds in it. With the pistol pointed away from the chair, she squeezed the trigger.

The gunshot pushed her right into the seat. Grabbing it tightly and slowly moving herself around, she strapped in, though loosely to avoid hurting her ribs. She left a little trail of droplets from the long bullet graze on her leg, but it was much less blood than had been gushing from the holes in Solomon. She took some reassurance from that: she was losing less blood than the dead man.

“Enkidu, the Commodore is gone,” Vika announced. “I have command now.”

“Yes, Commander Naroyan. Welcome to the bridge.”

Suddenly all the images on the walls were thrown into staggering clarity and depth, as if she were sitting on top of the warship instead of deep inside it. It must have been how Solomon had seen it, when all it had appeared to Vika was a messy blur.

And the view took her breath away.

All around and above her was the blackest night Vika had ever seen. Countless stars shone from the great dome, and right above her was the sun. But beneath her... beneath her was the Earth. It filled much of the lower half of the bridge-sphere, and through the blue haze of atmosphere she could see white cloud and the faded green outlines of landmasses. She recognised the huge peninsula beneath her as Denmark. Somehow she was over Denmark already.

Suddenly the stories her father had told her of the satellites and rockets, falling endlessly through the void, were real. She was in space, she knew. There was no other explanation.

“Enkidu, where are we going?”

“We are currently on a sub-orbital trajectory terminating in the vicinity of Beijing, China. ETA twenty minutes.”

Vika thought for a moment. “I need you to change course.”

“Certainly, Commander,” said the Enkidu. “Where to?”

Each shield will overlap the next, and my shield will cover them all.



39. Light and Dark

Aiden fired through a blurry haze of blood and tears. He could only see a red glow where his tracers burned, and he fired indiscriminately at everything that moved outside his turret. The gunsight was gone. He couldn’t tell if he was hitting anything. He doubted he was.

Trying to protect the Iolaire was keeping his mind off of the burning sensation in his brow, but when the blood filled his vision and trickled into his mouth it became hard to ignore. He hadn’t even taken a hand from the control sticks to feel the wound: it didn’t matter right then. What mattered was getting the Iolaire and its passengers out of there alive.

An explosion somewhere above the Iolaire jolted Aiden in his seat. That was when he noticed the damage to his leg. The sudden stab of pain in his thigh was almost overwhelming. He groaned aloud.

“Aiden! Are you okay?” shouted Fredrick.

It took him a moment to respond. “I’m hit in my leg, Fred. It hurts bad.”

“Jesus. Hammit, go and check him.”

“No, I’m okay. I’m fine.”

“Aiden-”

“I said I’m fine.” He wasn’t sure he really was.

He wiped the blood from his eyes as best he could.

That’s better.

The gunsight was still gone, but at least now he could see. He could aim with the tracers if he had to.

Outside, the scene was still chaos. Though there were fewer aircraft still flying, the survivors were fighting all the more fiercely. Aircraft spiralled and dived, rattling off bursts of tracer now and again. The mountains below were littered with the burning pyres of downed aircraft, belching out great columns of smoke that were carried east by the wind.

Fredrick had been unable to escape the melee. Every time he made a run, something would attack them and he would have to break and turn back towards the fight.

Fuel had to be getting low, too. All this time at maximum throttle would be draining the tanks fast. There probably wasn’t enough to reach a city any more. They’d need to settle for whatever options presented themselves, assuming they could get away from the bloody dogfight.

A little interceptor streaked diagonally across Aiden’s vision, followed closely by a drone. He loosed a burst at them, unable to decide which he’d prefer to hit. He clipped the drone, tearing off the tip of one of its wings. It spun then, losing control and arcing back down towards the ground.


“Got one,” he said.

“Can you see anything following us, Aiden?”

“No.”

“Okay, I’ll try to make another run to the south. Hold on.”

The Iolaire banked sharply. Nothing seemed to follow it through the turn. It stayed low, undulating with the terrain.

Slowly the fighting seemed to fall behind them. The huge, burning form of the Gilgamesh hovered in the north, just beneath the black clouds. It was fading now too, behind curtains of rain.

The turret was getting very cold. The holes in the glass were letting in a violent little breeze that made Aiden shiver. The sky was getting darker too.

It was so very dark and cold now. He let go of the control sticks and drew his arms across his chest for warmth. The darkness filled his vision.

He was fading then, he realised calmly. Fading away, burned and spent like the ‘nol in the tanks.

As his mind teetered on the brink, his last thoughts were of the Iolaire. She would keep flying. He’d done his duty. He’d done his best for her.

She was safe now.

She would forgive him, he knew. He could see her face, just, through the rain, and she smiled. Everything would be okay. Now she would carry him on. She would carry him home.

Something half-remembered whispered to him from the edge of the dark, something she used to sing to him. He let himself fall.

Fhir a' bhàta, na hóro eile,

Mo shoraidh slàn leat 's gach àit' an déid thu.

Oh my boatman, na hóro eile,

My farewell to you wherever you go.

*

“What do you want to do, now?”

“I... I just want to fly.”

“You don’t want to go back? I mean, I’m not sure exactly how you would do that, but...”

“No.”

“You’re sure?”

“Aye. I can’t go back. Not now. Seen too much.”

“Well, I’m sure we can find space for you if you want to stay. You’ve been a real help.”

“...No, I was just... I was just doing what was needed. That’s all.”

“What we needed, yes. You went against the Gilgamesh, though. Why did you do that?”

“It... felt... like the right thing to do. No friends of mine on that thing.”

“None at all?”

“None. Don’t think I ever proper fit there.”

Aiden’s eyes opened. He was in a bright, very bright white room. Hammit and Fredrick were sitting near him. Hammit was fidgeting uncomfortably, and Fredrick was sitting forwards with his elbows on his knees. Fredrick spotted him first.

“Aiden!” he said. “Welcome back.”

Aiden nodded groggily. He was lying on a bed - a hospital bed - with a blanket up to his chest. He didn’t try to move. Something told him he shouldn’t.

“We’ve just been discussing what to do next. It seems Hammit here is easy pleased, so long as we let him fly with us.”

Aiden nodded again.

“I just want to fly,” said Hammit then.

“I agree with the engineer,” tried Aiden, testing his voice. It was hoarse. It sounded like he hadn’t spoken in a long time. “Flying is good.”

“Well, you’ll be here for a few days yet,” said Fredrick. “You were in a bad way. That drone really gave you a thumping.”

He started to remember then. The battle. The little drones with the blue tracers. The Gilgamesh in flames, and the Enkidu running.

“Where are we?”

“Glasgow. We found a surgery that would take you.”

Glasgow. He was still in Scotland. Funny, it didn’t feel too bad. Until he tried to move. Then it was all aches and deep throbbing pains in his left leg, chest and upper arm. It almost knocked the wind out of him.

“Jesus,” he muttered. “Did I get thrown through a prop?”

“Looked a bit like it. You lost a lot of blood.”

“That would explain the passing out.” He carefully laid himself back down onto the pillows, but no matter which way he tried it just wasn’t as comfortable as before. He’d noticed the drip in his arm now, too, which started to itch.

“Since you’re awake now, it might be a good idea to show you this.” Fredrick picked from the bedside table what looked like a pair of chopsticks glued together. He carefully pulled them apart, and between them stretched a fine transparent membrane, like a thin plastic scroll. Then the membrane went rigid, and he tapped at it a couple of times before passing the membrane monitor to Aiden. He took it with his apparently uninjured right arm.

Suddenly an image of a ‘play’ arrow loaded up, and Aiden tapped it.

“Aiden and Fredrick of the Iolaire,” said Teimuraz’ voice, “this message is at once an apology, an explanation and... an invitation.”

Aiden looked over at Fredrick. His friend nodded at the monitor: listen.

“First, I apologise for what you have undoubtedly been through. Solomon will have betrayed you and stolen the Enkidu for his own purposes, which, I am sorry to say, I saw coming. When he first approached me, I admit I was taken in by his professions of justice, and hatred for the Gilgamesh: the warship had been a thorn in my side for almost twenty years, and when Solomon offered a solution I jumped at it. However, I performed a little research of my own and slowly came to the realisation that he perhaps was not all he said he was... In fact, he was a great deal more.

“He is no engineer; he is Commodore Solomon Archer of the North Atlantic union   Navy. Before the Armistice, he had been promised the command of a new aerial warship. The war ended days before the NAUS Enkidu was scheduled for launch. Solomon was left without his command, and he felt cheated. He dedicated the next twenty years of his life to tracking down the Enkidu.

“It was at Solomon’s request that I found a crewed aircraft to take him to the Enkidu. I chose you because I knew you would have no love for the Gilgamesh and would, given your natures, jump at the opportunity for justice. Initially I floundered, since I could see no easy way to prevent Solomon from taking possession of the Enkidu. I doubted that you would be able to convince him to take one of you on-board the warship... And so you see, when I first met Vika, I saw our chance.

“I spoke to Vika in private. She told me of her father’s plans, and I was convinced by them. Patriotism had little to do with it, though we Georgians have always been friends of Armenia. Rather, I know from experience that peace and unity are good for the kind of business I run... and that a unified Caucasus, given its location, would be a mercantile powerhouse. Vika and Tovmas would have their peace and I would have my prosperity. Vika would take the Enkidu and bring it back to us.

“As for the matter of the Gilgamesh... I leaked the Enkidu’s possible location to it, several days before you arrived here in Tbilisi. Perhaps this was foolish, since it endangered your lives. In my defence, I had not met Vika at this point, so my best plan was to try and force Solomon to engage the Gilgamesh.

“I am pleased to tell you that, so far, all has gone according to the new plan and she is coming to me. I invite you to do the same. You have truly proven your worth, and if you choose to help us, you will be rewarded richly. There will be plenty of work for you here.”

The recording rustled slightly. “I hope to see you soon. Teimuraz out.”

Aiden sat in silence for a moment, his mind reeling. The whole damned thing had been a set-up. Vika’s betrayal, the Gilgamesh, everything. He had almost been killed for it. They had nearly unleashed a second Gilgamesh on the world, and everything had hung by a thread. So much more could have gone wrong.


He was furious. Giddy that he had survived, but furious. And he didn’t think he liked the thought of the Enkidu being used to ‘unify’ the Caucasus, either. Not one bit.

“So,” said Fredrick, “What do you think?”

Aiden turned and considered his friend. His expression didn’t lean either way. Not that it mattered.

“We should go to Tbilisi just so I can punch him in his big, fat face.”

Fredrick let out a roar of laughter and slapped his knees.

“Not Denmark then?” he said.

Aiden smiled at that. Denmark did sound good. Fredrick’s father was an excellent cook.

“So we are decided,” Fredrick continued. “We are going to Tbilisi to beat Teimuraz.”

Aiden’s smile widened. He had a warm, fuzzy feeling that may or may not have been the morphine. Everything would be fine. They had work. They had the Iolaire. She would keep flying. That was all that mattered.

The three of them sat in contented quiet for a few moments. Aiden wondered if Hammit had a clue what they had been talking about. Aiden himself was having trouble digesting Teimuraz’ message. A question boiled up out of the confusion.

“Will she take it to him?” he asked then. “To Teimuraz?”

Fredrick shook his head slowly, his smile disappearing. “If he really believes she will do as he says, he is as foolish as he is fat.” He breathed deeply through his nose and got to his feet. “That woman is loyal only to her father,” he said quietly.

There was still pain there, clearly. Fredrick picked the monitor from Aiden’s lap and folded it away. As he leaned close, Aiden saw creases in his friend’s face: lines that hadn’t been there before. A toll had been taken on everybody.

“That airport Teimuraz loves so much?” Fredrick continued, a mirthless smile touching his lips. “I don’t think it’s going to stay his for very long. I think Armenia is about to become much, much bigger.”

That made sense. The warship would give Tovmas the power he needed and then some. Aiden tried to piece out the consequences of that, but the soft haze of the pain drugs were making it difficult to think past the present. He leaned back onto the pillows and let his eyes close for a moment.

There was a shout outside the room, and running footsteps along the corridor. Another shout. Someone talking quickly, urgently. Aiden opened his eyes.

Fredrick went to the door then, slipping out. Hammit was on his feet, his fists balled by his sides.

A few seconds passed and Fredrick returned.

“The window,” he said, pointing. He reached it and tugged the blind open.

Aiden turned his head to look. The white daylight was painfully bright for a moment, but his eyes slowly adjusted to it and the glow faded. The window looked out over the city; northwards, he reckoned by the line of hills in the distance. It was in the north that something looked wrong. A cloud darker than the rest, maybe, above the hills. He squinted and let his eyes focus.

Fear, so sudden and strong that it caught the breath in his throat.

High above the hills, wreathed in smoke, the Gilgamesh was coming.

###