Flying the Storm

17.





Run

Aiden awoke to a knock at the door. He rubbed his eyes with his palms, remembering no dreams from the night. He had slept well; he could feel it. Sona was still fast asleep next to him, her lithe, bronze form naked under the sheet. The room was cool, but Aiden could see the first rays of sun piercing the gaps in the curtains. It would be hot soon.

The door knocked again. Aiden got out of bed and pulled on his underwear, before walking across the room to the front door. He unbolted it and opened it to the dawn light.

Squinting, he recognised Nardos standing before him, his foot on the front step.

“Morning,” croaked Aiden.

“Good morning,” said Nardos. Something was wrong. “Can I come in?”

Aiden looked back over towards the bed. Sona was awake, standing with the bed sheet wrapped around her. Her inky hair was a little wild, and her dark eyes glinted in the dim room. “Yeah, I suppose.”

Nardos climbed into the house and Aiden closed the door behind him. He stood in the tiny entrance hall as Aiden went to gather his scattered clothes from the floor. “You have a problem,” said Nardos.

“How’s that?” asked Aiden, pulling his trousers on. Sona stood watching. She said something in Armenian to Nardos. Nardos replied, and she shot him a glare.

“There are men looking for you.”

Aiden paused, one arm in his now sleeveless t-shirt. “What kind of men?”

“Militia and westerners. Soldiers, they looked like. I saw them in the square, while a man was giving orders. They were going to start a search at dawn.”

Aiden froze as he understood. Marines.

“No, no, no,” he mumbled, going to the window and peering around the curtain. The dusty street was empty. He went to the bedside and picked up his pistol, tucking it behind his belt. Then he pulled his boots on, lacing them up as fast as he could manage. Sona looked on fearfully. She asked Nardos something. Nardos simply nodded. Sona covered her mouth with her hand.

“Ay-dan,” she almost whispered, reaching for him. He grasped her hand in both of his, lifted it to his lips and kissed it.

“I’m sorry, Sona,” he said. “I have to go.”

Nardos translated for him. Sona asked Nardos something.

“She asks if you will come back to her.”

Aiden frowned. “I hope so,” he said, squeezing her hand one last time before he let it go. He turned to Nardos. “Let’s go.”

Nardos led Aiden back out onto the street, checking it was clear before they moved off. They headed away from the centre, following the road as it wound up the hill and the houses became sparser.

“So who are they?” asked Nardos eventually.

“Marines,” said Aiden. “Marines from the Gilgamesh. They’re after me and Fredrick for…getting into a fight with a couple of them in Sevastopol.”

“They came all the way from Sevastopol just for that?”

“Well, we had to shoot down one of their aircraft to escape, so I’m guessing they’re pretty pissed.”

“So that’s why you came all the way out to Armenia,” Nardos realised. “You’re fugitives.”

“If being wanted for killing pirates makes us fugitives, then yes we are.” Aiden stopped in the road. “So what, are you going to turn me in?” he demanded.

“My friend, if I wanted to turn you in I wouldn’t be having this conversation with you. You would already be in their custody.”

Aiden took this in, and then started walking up the hill once more.

“How did you know where I was?” he asked.

“I saw you leave with Sona,” Nardos looked at Aiden, eyebrows raised. “Everybody knows Sona.”

Aiden bristled at the implication. “What do you mean?”

“Besides the fact that this is a small town, where everybody knows everybody? And that I grew up with her?” asked Nardos, innocently. “I mean she is a beautiful girl. She gets a lot of attention.”

Aiden decided to let it lie. He still felt too good from the previous night to let himself get annoyed. “Where are we going?” he asked.

“To find your friend. He was with Vika, when I last saw him.”

Vika. Some of the sting had been taken from that name. He could only thank Sona for that. “Where does she live?” Aiden asked.

“Up north of town, in a little place called Ushi,” said Nardos. “That’s where the slavers landed, very close to her house.”

Aiden didn’t say anything. He rested his hand on the butt of the pistol, just to reassure himself that it was there. It was looking as if it might get some more use that day.

It was getting warm. Aiden knew he probably didn’t smell too great: his clothes had been through a lot over the last couple of days. The slope was starting to make him sweat. There were trees surrounding the houses, but the sun was too low for them to lend any shade.

“Not far now,” said Nardos, as if reading Aiden’s mind.

“Where did you learn English, by the way?”

Nardos was quiet for a moment. “Magar taught me,” he said.

“Magar?” asked Aiden.

“Yes. Magar more or less raised me. I never knew my father. He was killed in the war. My mother never really recovered. She died when I was ten. Magar took my sister and I in.” Nardos’ face was set; he looked angrily ahead.

“I’m sorry,” said Aiden. He knew too well that there were no words to be offered. None that meant much, anyway.

The pair’s pace quickened. Nardos pointed to a huddle of small cabins not far up the road. Aiden glanced over his shoulder. Nobody was following; the road was empty.

The sun had climbed clear above the distant mountains to Aiden’s right. He could see its light spilling across the eastern plains, casting long shadows from everything it touched. Even though they were only a little up the slope of the mountain, the view was beautiful. It would have been an idyllic place to have a home, if it wasn’t for the threat of raids. It was at least four kilometres from the centre of town, by Aiden’s reckoning. Just too far for the militia to protect it properly.

Nardos froze suddenly. Aiden stopped too, listening. Up ahead, he could hear the growl of a vehicle approaching. Nardos ran for the side of the road and Aiden followed, throwing himself into the deep ditch. The two men pressed themselves flat against the side of it. The engine was coming closer, quickly.

The crunch of fat tyres on the dusty road rolled past Aiden, and he risked a glance over the lip of the ditch. It was just a battered flatbed truck, loaded with crates and boxes, bouncing and squeaking its way down the road towards the town. “It’s just a lorry,” said Aiden, ducking back into the ditch. He still couldn’t afford to be seen by the driver.

The pair waited for a few moments, until the sound of the truck had almost faded entirely, before they clambered out of their hiding place and continued up the hill.

They reached the cabins in Ushi shortly afterwards. Parked by them was an open-topped, four-seat vehicle, with big off-road tyres and an exposed chassis. Aside from the lorry and the fuel tanker, it was one of the few vehicles Aiden had seen around the town. Nardos went straight up to the front door of the first cabin and knocked firmly. Aiden noticed its hinges were mismatched: one was shiny, the other old and rusted.


There was no sound inside the house, and the curtains were drawn. “I don’t think she’s in,” said Nardos. “Vika!” he shouted, knocking again. Aiden rubbed his wounded arm. It was beginning to ache.

Though the door of Vika’s cabin didn’t open, the door of the cabin opposite did. It was a tall, lanky man wearing an oil-stained overall. He said something to Nardos.

Nardos replied, pointing at Vika’s cabin door. The lanky man shook his head, saying something and nodding off down the hill, towards the town.

“What does he say?” asked Aiden.

“He says he was in town until late, at the celebrations. He came back, but Vika’s house was still empty. He doesn’t think she came back here at all.”

Aiden swore. He’d climbed that hill for nothing. “If she was with Fredrick...they might have gone back to the Iolaire.”

“Shit,” said Nardos. The pair looked south, squinting at the small grey shape amongst the fields in the distance. On the other side of town.

The lanky man spoke to Nardos, coming out of his doorway a little. Nardos grinned suddenly, and said something back. Both men looked at the battered four-by-four. Aiden was fairly sure he’d understood.

The exposed engine spluttered for a second, and then roared into life, bouncing and jumping on its mounts. Aiden looked around himself for a seatbelt, in vain. He was sitting in the back, praying that the car was sturdier than it looked, dreading the moment it started to move. Their driver passed the pair rags to tie over their faces, to cover their mouths and noses from grit.

The lanky Armenian pulled on some oil-smeared goggles. He grinned widely at his passengers, exposing a horrendous assortment of teeth, before crunching the car into gear and stamping on the accelerator. They were thrown back into their seats as the vehicle hurtled forwards, its wide tyres spraying grit and dust and pebbles out behind it. Instead of heading down the hill, however, it took a left turn and headed east along the road that cut across the side of the slope. A great gorge opened up before the car, and they crossed it by a narrow concrete bridge that was still more or less intact. Ahead in the distant east, Aiden could see the snowy, truncated volcanic peaks of the Geghama Mountains. Wherever the car was heading, it certainly wasn’t back into town.

“Where’s he taking us?” yelled Aiden.

“We can’t go through the town! He’s taking us around the long way!” replied Nardos over his shoulder.

Though this should have comforted Aiden, he found it didn’t. He’d be in that rusty death-trap for longer. He clung tightly to the metal rim of the car seat as they jolted and bounced along the uneven road, at what Aiden was sure was more than a hundred kilometres per hour. The wind howling past him smelled strongly of alcohol. He hoped it was an indicator of the engine’s fuel, and not the state of the driver.

Aiden tried shutting his eyes, but the motion was even more terrifying like that and he had to open them again. He wished he could have just walked.

Gradually, though, the jolting motion of the car became less and less startling. Aiden found himself relaxing a little. When you shook off the sense of imminent and violent death, the ride almost became… enjoyable.

The dusty track joined a wide, tarmacked road that ran past the outskirts of Ashtarak. Its surface was pockmarked and worn, and the car had to skirt around the edge of a massive crater that almost severed the road completely.

There were ruins to either side of the road: the current town was only a fraction of its pre-war size, its population tiny in comparison. The scale of the destruction was appalling. Why had the powers fought here? What was to be gained?

Aiden suddenly, inexplicably, felt ashamed. Was it for the part the West had played in ruining this country? He didn’t think so. He’d had nothing to do with it. Even his people had bitterly resisted joining the union  , so he’d been told. No, Aiden was sure he was ashamed for a different reason.

However accidentally it had been, he had exposed these innocent people to the dangerous attentions of the Gilgamesh. He had to put it right.

The car rounded a bend in the road. Up ahead, in a small paddock by the roadside sat a chunky aircraft with the ominously familiar markings of the Gilgamesh. A pair of marines was standing by the road, turned to face the oncoming vehicle. Aiden shrank back into his seat. He tightened the rag on his face and pulled the pistol from his belt, keeping it low between his legs. Here we go.

The marines waved the car down. As it squeaked to a halt, the pair approached. They were big men, just like all the other marines. Their armour looked cumbersome and uncomfortable in the building heat. Each had an assault rifle held across their front.

“Get out of the car,” ordered one of them. What’s his accent? American?

The driver, following Nardos’ example, opened his door and climbed out of the vehicle, his arms raised. Aiden stood up from his own seat, bringing the pistol up as quickly as he could. He shot the right-hand marine in the eye. The other marine jumped backwards, bringing his rifle to bear, just as Aiden shot him in the neck. Like his comrade, he slumped loosely to the ground, his neck hissing as blood jetted from the wound. Aiden shot him again. He jumped down from the car with his pistol levelled at the aircraft. Standing at the foot of the craft’s ramp was a third man, an unlit cigarette hanging from his lips. Aside from a holstered pistol, he was unarmed.

“Don’t move!” shouted Aiden, advancing towards him.

“Hold on!” cried the man, his hands held out before him as he backed up the ramp, “I’m just the pilot!”

“I said don’t move!” shouted Aiden again. The pilot froze at the top of the ramp, still with his arms outstretched. “Is there anyone else we should know about?” demanded Aiden, still advancing.

“Just me! Please, take what you want and go. I’m no threat!”

Hesitating, Aiden looked back over his shoulder at the car. They had to keep moving; the other marines had surely heard the shots.

Two shots cracked from Aiden’s right. He spun to see the pilot fall backwards, dead. He turned then to see Nardos: a marine’s assault rifle in his hands, the barrel smoking.

“He went for his gun,” said Nardos, lowering the rifle. Aiden just nodded. His ears were ringing.

Aiden and Nardos ran aboard the marine transport, past the dead pilot. He had been truthful: there was nobody else to be seen on board. Aiden went straight for the cockpit. Inside, he turned on the auxiliary power supply so that he could use the controls. Then he hit the emergency fuel jettison, and watched from the window as the stumpy wings sprayed fuel from their internal tanks, all over the dry grass beneath them. He ushered Nardos out of the cockpit as he put three pistol rounds into the central console, smashing the screen. His ears were ringing again.

Outside the aircraft, the pair ran back to the shocked driver and his car. Aiden scooped up the other assault rifle and climbed in while Nardos gently spoke to the lanky driver in Armenian, nudging him back towards the car. The man was clearly troubled by what he had seen. Even through the grease and grime he had gone pale. Aiden supposed he would have, too, if it had happened a week ago, but today he felt no sorrow for the marines.

Though his hands were shaking again.

The engine coughed into life and the car sped off once more, following the road around the outskirts of the ruined town. Aiden and Nardos kept the assault rifles to hand, nervously watching the side roads and tumbled-down streets for any sign of more marines. They couldn’t have had far to go to reach the Iolaire. Just a few more minutes.


The jostling and bumping was making Aiden’s arm more painful. What had begun as a dull ache was now a stabbing pain that seemed to cut right to the bone. It felt as if there was a hot knife wedged between his muscles, slowly working its way deeper into his flesh.

He needed more painkillers. There were still some aboard the Iolaire, assuming the aircraft hadn’t been ransacked by the marines yet. Aiden let go of the rifle with his left hand, resting it instead on a roll-bar. He laid his arm in his lap, trying to make it comfortable. The pain eased a little.

Soon the road turned sharply west, joining a straight main road of slightly better upkeep than the previous one, at the end of which Aiden could see the Iolaire. It was maybe a klick or so away, perched on the gentle slope up from the town. They were south of the town now: it sat in a depression to their right, straddling the deep Ashtarak gorge. Beyond it, to the north, sat the little cluster of hamlets they had set out from, and beyond that the sloping plains rose up to the distant Mount Aragats, its top crowned with cloud.

Aiden knew that somewhere down in the town, dangerous men were searching for him. He hoped he had done enough to give them the slip: now he needed Fredrick to be at the Iolaire. If he wasn’t, Aiden didn’t know what he’d do. Was it worth heading into town to find him, or should he just take the craft and run? He didn’t want to think about it.

The car crossed a smashed and crumbling highway and the driver crunched down the gears as the dusty track up to the Iolaire steepened. The aircraft had disappeared from view, hidden by the lip of the hill. All too soon, the car pulled onto the levelled pad of earth. The Iolaire, at least the starboard side facing Aiden, appeared untouched. The ramp was closed and the landing pad was deserted. Aiden remembered to breathe. He hadn’t realised he was tensing, his assault rifle held in a white-knuckled grip.

The driver, still solemn-faced and staring, switched off the engine. The quiet deafened Aiden for a moment. Both him and Nardos just sat, their stolen rifles shouldered.

Still nothing broke the quiet. Aiden gathered his courage. With a sudden start, both he and Nardos leapt from the vehicle. Aiden advanced on the Iolaire, his weapon up, his boots crunching loudly across the pad. He peeked around the raised cargo ramp, checking the port side of the aircraft. There was no one there. He saw the hole in the port wing: it was impressive. It had to have been an autocannon shell. They were lucky: if that shell had hit an engine, he very much doubted they’d have made it out of Azerbaijan.

He stood for a moment, listening as hard as he could through the rush of blood in his ears. The silence was almost profound. All he could hear was a distant bird’s call and the buzz of a fly as it lazily passed by his head.

Aiden lowered his rifle. He looked at Nardos, who was hunched as he peered around. Nardos looked at Aiden and nodded.

Aiden flipped open the covering panel for the keypad. He thumbed in the code and the ramp buzzed down slowly to the ground. He climbed into the cargo hold. Fredrick’s curtain was open, and the bunk was empty. There was no one in the head or the cockpit. Fredrick wasn’t there.

Shit.

Aiden stared out of the cockpit glass, angry. The bastard was never there when Aiden needed him to be.

“Aiden!” came a shout from outside, from Nardos. The tone of it made Aiden’s blood run cold. Without thinking he ran down across the cargo hold and out into the open.

He saw Nardos and two marines. One had a carbine pointed at Nardos. The other was aiming at Aiden. Before Aiden could react at all, someone hit him in the head, hard.

When the blackness receded, Aiden was on his face in the dust. His rifle was lying just ahead of him, but as he scrambled for it a boot kicked it out of his reach. The same boot then stamped on Aiden’s hand, grinding his fingers into the dust with its heel. Aiden ground his teeth to stop himself from crying out.

“Ah-ah-ah,” growled a deep voice above him. “Naughty.”

The boot was removed. “You stay very still now,” said the voice, “‘cause I’m just itching for an excuse.” A rifle cocked above him. Aiden lay very still.

“We’ve got one of them,” said another voice, not far from Aiden. “Dark hair…. Two locals with him…. Received.” Then the voice announced to its comrades, “We hold them here. Prosper is on his way.”

Aiden could feel the uncomfortable form of his pistol pressing against his pelvis. It was sandwiched between him and the ground, hidden from the marines. They still hadn’t searched him.

Why the hell weren’t they searching him? Shouldn’t they at least bind his hands? These guys were either amateurs, or they didn’t particularly feel the need. And why should they? He was thinner and lighter than even the puniest marine, and three of them had the drop on him, even before you factored in their weaponry. He was in a pretty hopeless position, with his face in the dirt and his hands nowhere near the gun. And now his head was aching. They’d hit him pretty hard.

Aiden felt his choler rise. Things had been going well. He’d only needed Fredrick to be in the Iolaire, and they could have just upped and run. Then he reminded himself that those marines had been waiting for them, hidden behind the bloody embankment or something. If Fredrick had been at the aircraft, they’d have both been caught, and things would no doubt have been a hell of a lot worse. From the marine’s radio call, he doubted that they had Fredrick yet. There was still hope that at least one of them might get away.

But not Aiden. He was caught like a dog in a trap, and it made him mad.

Then, from the town, came the stuttering thump of gunfire. Random and wild, it grew until it was a cacophony. It was intense. A battle had begun.