Aethosphere Chronicles: Winds of Duty (12 page)

“Bloody, Kinglanders,” yelled Deben and he
broke ranks and rushed towards the busted window. Jenner followed
suit behind him. The way became momentarily clear.

Not wasting a second Bar heaved himself up
and over the rail, landing with a
thud
on the deck. Solid
ground felt wonderful beneath him, but the newly minted commando
didn’t have the time to relish in it. He rushed the unguarded door,
reaching the hatch just as the men reached the shattered window.
Grabbing the wheel, he gave it a quick spin to disengage the latch
just as Jenner glanced back. Their eyes meet, at first Jenner
looked ready to salute. “Aye,” he cried out in his Glenfindale
accent. “Bar Bazzon, that you?”

Deben turned as well, saw the ensign pulling
open the door, and he brought up his knife, “Ninny, he’s a
Kinglander. You stop right there,
crowny
!”

Instead of stopping, Bar thrust open the
door and scrambled through, slamming it closed behind him in
relief. Out of the wind, his sweat-soaked hair collapsed over his
brow while he trembled with the exhilaration and adrenaline of the
endeavor. The ladderway would be through the door behind him. Bar
turned, and then he stopped…and then he froze still. In the galley
stood about a dozen Finnies, all with their eyes glued on him.
Three men moved to block the ladderwell door almost immediately
while others moved to surround him.

“
Curses
,” muttered the ensign in a
whispered exhale. Glenfinners were closing in from all angles,
knives pointing in his direction. He was caught, and he raised his
hands in defeat; hoping they accepted surrender.

“What are you doing here, Bazzon?” muttered
Max Watell as he came lumbering forward in a pair of loose fitting
coveralls, unbuttoned half way down his chest to reveal a greasy
patch of hair and a talisman of E’owyn. In his hands he was
wielding a large wrench as though it were a club. He observed the
ensign coolly with jaundice-yellow eyes. One of his pointed
Candaran ears drooped down towards his cheek. A decade ago a gear
had sprung loose and almost torn it from his head. Doc did his best
to stitch it back up, but the damage was done, and the result was
this unsightly dog-ear. Bar remembered the incident keenly, he’d
been there as a young able-body to clean up the mess.

“Chief,” replied Bar Bazzon with a nod.

The mechanic, Deben, suddenly appeared
behind him, having crawled through the window, and now held his
knife ready to strike, but Chief Max Watell stopped him with a wave
of his hand. “What business you got here,
crowny
?”

“Honestly?” Bar shrugged with cavalier
disregard. “I’m just passing through to free McVayne, and then
return a little order to this ship.”

Max chuckled, his broken teeth gleaming out
like a mouthful of jagged fangs. “Good luck with that, Ensign
Bazzon. I should think you’d have better luck defeating the Empire
at this point.”

Bar grinned awkwardly. “One thing at a time,
Chief…so you aim on stopping me?”

The leathery grease-monkey chuckled back
dryly. “Well, McVayne’s a good man—”

“Enough, Max, he’s a Kinglander and I want
his damn head!” roared a man standing behind Max. He was a younger
gent—younger than Bar by far—but his resemblance to Max was
uncanny. He was quivering with barely-restrained fury, looking like
a man staring at an animal he wanted to slaughter.

Max turned on the young man and brandished
his wrench menacingly, “you shut your damn mouth when I’m talking,
boy.” When he turned back to Bar it was almost apologetically,
“He’s my nephew, fresh off the training range, and with little
respect. But Kinglanders gave him hell back in Salizar, and now
he’s a bit…sensitive.” Bar looked to each man in turn, every one of
them known to him to a certain extent, and they seemed to shrink
under his scrutiny. “I know things went wild in the bladder. Used
you to cause a ruckus, I’ll admit it. I figured you were up there
to join us in Moore’s ‘luxury suites’, but I had to take the
opportunity given. However, things have changed, I know that—I
might even have been the cause even—but I got to know now, after
the melee on deck, who you’re running with, Bar. You with the
Kinglanders now.” Max relaxed the wrench and turned. His voice
dropped to nearly a whisper. “Wouldn’t blame you now, if you are.
Could even understand if you’ve made peace with that old brigand,
Moore, to save your—”

“Damn it, Max, I’m with the
Chimera
,
not with any of these crazy factions you got going on here! Sure
Moore is the captain, and I ain’t about to risk becoming a
mutineer, but what he done ain’t right either—not in the least—but
maybe, with McVayne on my side… Well, maybe we got a chance to
invoke Section Thirteen of the Officer’s Code of Conduct. Moore
killed Hastings without any semblance of a trial…maybe this whole
mutiny can be explained away after th—”

“
Hah!
Bar, you’re the only one still
playing by the rulebook, except you fail to see there are no rules
anymore. Code of Conduct,
psh
…” scoffed the chief engineer
as though it was the most detestable thing he’d ever heard. “You
think that’s going to make a lick of difference. And explaining
this mutiny away has about as much chance as the
Enox Unon
rising again. Moore’s not only the captain, but he’s a noble-born
working under wartime orders. That
Code
of yours amounts to
a pile of crawler-shit against that, and you know it. Nobles play
by a different set of rules. King’s Isle nobles more so. You want
to tell me how many of the admirals
aren’t
Kinglanders…? By
my last count not a damn-one, so it’s no wonder they’ve left the
north to the vultures of war. They’re too busy protecting their
hides. So I took a book from their manual and that’s what I’m doing
now; and I don’t care what that make me.”

“Lockney’s not a Kinglander,” said Bar
bitterly, not because he was angry at Max, but because what the
engineer had said made a whole lot of sense.

“Aye, but he ain’t here anymore either.
Godsdammit, Bar, ‘
with the ship’
…? What does that even
mean?” Max locked his tired eyes on the ensign. The engineer was
probably only a decade Bar’s senior, but at this moment he looked
as old as Al. “You know as well as I do that by not siding directly
with Moore now, that makes you just as guilty of mutiny as the rest
of us. We’re all ready to die for our convictions, but we’re going
to put right Moore’s wrong first…save some people before the
Admiralty strings us all up. So what about you, Bar? Can you say
the same thing?
Gods
,” the Chief sighed in exhaustion, “just
pick a side you spineless whelp.”

Bar hadn’t even contemplated the
repercussions of not going directly to the captain’s aid, and
ultimately Max was right. The captain was noble-born, he was
protected by a badge stronger than the truth, stronger than honor,
or conduct. No matter what Bar’s intentions, if he wasn’t actively
aiding the captain, than he was just as mutinous as the Glenfinners
standing around him; and no code of conduct could save him
otherwise; especially if it came down to Moore’s word against
his.

“Well?” Max barked, searching Bar’s eyes for
a response.

“I’m for the damn
ship
, Chief,” Bar
responded stubbornly. “I stand for protecting this crew, its honor,
and its prestige, and take what you will from that—I’m done
answering your questions.”

“Bar,” the chief engineer spoke softly, “I
don’t know what you’re hoping to do, but know that none of us are
getting out of this clean. There’ll be a price to be paid, that’s
for sure…and a terrible one. I’m a Glenfindale man, I’ve accepted
that, and it’s what I’m fighting for now, despite the cost. If you
really are for this ship, then you’re going to have to fight for
that
. You might think you’re doing the right thing now, but
when the time comes, your choice may be the hardest one of all.
Think well on that, Bar.” Max turned to the three men standing
sentry at the ladderwell door. “Let him pass.” A murmur of
discontent rose from the ill-tempered men crowding around them, but
not a one of them moved to stop the Kinglander.

“What… just like that?”

“Just like that, Bar, but make it
quick…before I change my mind.”

The surprised ensign nodded somberly, and
skirted past Max without turning to see the hope in the man’s
haunted eyes. Bar had every intention of looking strong and proud
before these men, but the adrenaline had him feeling jittery and
conscientious, more thankful to be allowed to go than anything
else.

When he’d reached the door, Max stopped him.
“Bazzon! Just…knock three times when you come back, two quick, one
slow. We’ll let you in. And Bar…I truly hope you accomplish
whatever it is you mean to accomplish. We’re just…we’re not bad
men, despite what the Kinglanders say, we’re just tired of our lot.
We don’t want to hurt nobody. We just want to save those civilians
Moore put in danger.”

“I know, Max,” replied Ensign Bazzon before
he disappeared through the door.

The ladderwell was a dark stinking pit of pungent
gunpowder and something resembling burnt meat. From deep below, the
relentless hammering of the ship’s engine beat like a heart,
disconcerting in its steady repetition as it washed out most other
noises. Nearly all the gas-lamps hung in ruins, their sconces
dashed to pieces within the bulkhead brackets, save one, burning
somewhere deeper in the well. Only a meager flicker of its sanguine
light rose up in greeting, but at times even that threatened to
gutter out to utter darkness. The walls around him were charred
black, and in places the boards had pulled away like dead flesh.
Bar coughed against the ashy soot choking the air in a hellish fog,
and only after shielding his nose and mouth in the crook of his arm
could he move on. This was a real mess. He hadn’t seen this sort of
devastation in a long time, not since the fuel fire all those years
back.

The Kinglanders must have succeeded in
creating their powder charges
, reasoned Bar with mounting
anger, carefully negotiating the damaged steps.
How could they
be so reckless? They risked setting the whole damn ship on
fire!

In places, slippery blood smears and missing
planks made it treacherous to descend; and someone had seen fit to
remove the railing completely, and with no sign of its whereabouts.
However, the worst had yet to come. As Bar reached the gun deck
landing, the full scope of this horror was revealed. In this
place—where the sole-surviving lamp clung sputtering wane light
from the ruined wall—the charred remains of a thing that had once
been human lay spread across the broken treads. At its sight, Bar’s
hardy constitution failed him and he vomited over the crux of his
arm, spilling sick down his shirt to splatter on the timbers
directly underfoot.

He’d seen dead men a plenty, and each had
affected him in its own way, but this was the worst of any by far
he’d been a witness to. He couldn’t even begin to identify the man.
The face had burned away and nothing remained of his clothing. In
death Kinglander and Glenfinner had become meaningless, but what
was certain, is the victim had been alive, crawling, no doubt, from
the inferno before the flames consumed him completely. Even in
death, his fleshless face stood locked in one last infernal scream.
The image burned itself into Bar’s stunned psyche, and it was a
long time after before that corpse stopped haunting his
nightmares.

Hugging the bulkhead, the stunned ensign
skirted the body as best he could, but was unable to take his eyes
away from the empty pits that stared back at him. The abyssal gaze
wouldn’t let him go, it drew him in, and threatened to overwhelm
his ability to reason. Bar wanted nothing more than to escape their
gaze, so he could begin to forget the terrible sight, and so
blindly he groped for the door. When he felt the latch he very
nearly threw it open in reckless abandon, but instinct stopped him
and left his fingers trembling.

This pit was a no-man’s land to be sure, and
if the gun deck were anything like the galley he’d left behind,
than there would most likely be a large contingent of guards
waiting just beyond the threshold. And judging by that awful
corpse, those men were probably quick with their explosive charges.
Open the door and he’d most likely join this man as a burned
specter to haunt over this ruined place. Thinking better of it, Bar
continued on, leaving the dead and the door behind him as he
descended deeper.

Rounding down another flight he found the
way thankfully clear of anyone…both living and dead, but at the
next level he found the door had been blown off its hinges and lay
uselessly in the passageway beyond. The distant thud of the engine
pounded up through the opening, but he could just make out the
sounds of yelling mixed in with it. Cautiously, Bar approached the
threshold, straining to hear what these men were saying.

“You best open this door, Roly Poly!” Cecil
hollered, and from the tone of his subordinate’s voice, Bar knew he
was on the verge of a full blown tantrum. “Makes no matter if you
support the Kinglanders or not, just open up! We want them supplies
and tools inside… I promise, ain’t none of you going to get hurt if
you just open up these doors.”

Tolle’s voice came back in a muted response.
“Well, sorry, mate, but I got the supply clerk, Sven Nilsson here,
and he’s telling me you haven’t filled out the proper requisition
forms for any of these supplies. So we’re just going to sit tight
on them until you get the proper paperwork all filled out, if it’s
all the same to you, Mr. Temberly.”

That did it, Cecil’s voice spewed forth a
stream of unrestrained hatred and bile. “I swear to the Leviathan
in the Pit of Örmungog, I will cut your head off, you fat bastard!
And any man with you! You wait and see! Once we get into the engine
room all bets are off. Chief’s lock won’t keep us out forever, I
swear this to you! This ship
will
be ours, and then I’m
coming for you… personally!” A series of heavy blows echoed through
the corridor as Cecil feebly pounded his fists against the
reinforced spruce doors, growling in frustration when they held
fast against him.