Flying the Storm (23 page)

As he drove past them and off towards the town, Aiden started to laugh, too.
It felt good. Maybe it was relief.

Stepanavan seemed quite different to Ashtarak.
It was more bustling, more prosperous. There were more vehicles in the rebuilt streets, and it seemed that the day’s market was in full swing. People were flocking to the middle of the town, pushing animals and handcarts and children before them, where there stood stalls and shops selling everything from meat to machineguns. He had to drive slowly to avoid running anyone over.

Then an aircraft passed overhead, disap
pearing from sight to the north-west. It was small, twin-engine, maybe an old SABA. But the type didn’t matter: an aircraft had flown low and slow over the town. That could mean there was an airfield.

Aiden rushed to get out of the town, following the main road north.
Finally he left the buildings behind and was waved through another checkpoint. It seemed like the guards at the south checkpoint had been telling the truth about the north being more dangerous. There were twice as many guards and much heavier fortifications on this side of town.

The road continued to the
north west, following the wide plain and avoiding the mountains that pressed in from the north. Not far from the town, to the left of the road, sat an airfield.

But the
Iolaire
wasn’t there.

At Tbilisi, the
Iolaire
was called down. It was mandatory that aircraft stopped if they were flying through Tbilisi airspace, or so the tower said. A standard ‘shake-down or shoot-down’ policy. Most cities around Europe did the same thing, and it wasn’t normally a problem: the big airports had fuel and facilities, so landing was normally useful. But perhaps more importantly they had the surface-to-air missiles to force you to land. Fredrick had heard it explained that all the old highways, before the war, had service stations and truck stops for refuelling and so on, sort of like the airports nowadays.

The
difference was that they didn’t blow you up if you refused to stop and buy something from the gift shop.

It didn’t matter this time, Fredrick had little choice. Alarms were screaming at him about empty fuel tanks and combat damage. He had to land.

He had done so quickly, not wanting to be in vertical mode when the fuel ran out. His craft was battered and limping from the chase, but she’d gotten away. The city seemed well defended, well ordered. Koikov wouldn’t dare to follow them here.

Docking fees paid, Fredrick had requested an engineer to inspect the aircraft. Refuelling would wait until both wing tanks were operational.
As he returned to the craft, Fredrick found Vika sitting on the cargo ramp, staring across the tarmac at nothing in particular.

“They say the engineer
s will be here in a couple of hours,” he said, sitting down next to her. “I should have enough gold for the repairs.”

Vika nodded absently.
Fredrick looked at her. “You did great back there, you know. Saved my
arse
.”

She just nodded, still staring.

“I’m sur
e your father is fine,” he said. “Tough old bastard.”

“Yes,” said Vika. “I
am not worried for my father.”

It was Fredrick who was silent no
w. What was bothering her then?

“
I am worried for my town,” she said, reading him. “It was tearing itself apart.”

Fredrick tried to make light of it.
“I don’t know. It kind of looked like they were giving those marines hell.”

She snorted at this.
“Yes, maybe. But how many will be hurt?”

Fredrick couldn’t answer that. They sat for a moment, watching the airport around them.

“Let’s go and find something to eat. There’s no point in sitting around here all day.” Fredrick got to his feet and offered a hand to Vika. Once the
Iolaire
was repaired and refuelled, he’d take her back to Ashtarak. As nice as it might have been, he knew he couldn’t keep her forever.

And he had to find Aiden.
He hoped he was still alive.

Some
time later, Fredrick and Vika returned to the
Iolaire
. Three men were standing by the
Iolaire
’s closed ramp: two engineers in stained overalls and another man. Fredrick let the engineers on board, where they began prodding and prying at the
Iolaire
’s damage while discussing it loudly in Georgian, arguing over various things as they worked. The third man slowly approached Fredrick.

“Those are quite big
holes,” he said, nodding at the
Iolaire
. He was a thin man, not young, with a broad face and flat nose. He wore faded cargo trousers and a buttoned shirt with a breast tag that said
Deputy Dock Master
in English below its Georgian counterpart. “You were in a bit of a fight, yes?”

“You could say that,” replied Fred
rick, wary of the man’s intent.

“Yes.” He smoothed his shirt and peered into the hold at the engineers who had just begun lifting floor panels, still arguing loudly about something.
“The Dock Master would like to see you,” he said, turning to watch as a large hauler flared for landing, its engines roaring.

“What about?” asked Fred
rick, trying to hide his worry.

The man just shrugged and started walking away. He stopped after a few paces. “If you would follow me,” he said. Fredrick and Vika went with him across the
hot tarmac.

The interior of the administration building was cool, made so by big tortured conditioning units near the entrance.
The Deputy Dock Master led them past open offices and busy staff, to an elevator at the end of the building. It took them to another office, just one floor beneath the control tower, where the Dock Master welcomed them warmly.

“Good morning!” he said, standing over his desk to shake their hands, gesturing for them to take a seat. “Please.
That will be all, Goga.” The Deputy turned and meandered out of the office silently.

“That man…” said the Dock Master, shaking his head.
“I sent him to get you as soon as you landed, over an hour ago. Sometimes I wonder what I pay him for.” Unlike his deputy, the Dock Master was not a thin man. Even in the cool conditioned office he was sweating profusely. “Anyway, welcome to Tbilisi! I hope your flight here was not too boring, eh?” he said with a wink.

Fredrick was uneasy. He smiled politely.
A man entered the office from a side room, carrying a mug of coffee. He nodded in acknowledgement at Fredrick and Vika.

“Where are my manners? This is Solomon,” said the Dock Master, gesturing at the other man
, “and I am Teimuraz.”

“Vika
and Fredrick,” said Fredrick.

“Good names, good names,” he said, dabbing sweat from his brow with a stained handkerchief.
“I suppose you would like to know why I have brought you here.”

Fredrick nodded. “That would be useful
, Dock Master.”

“
Teimuraz, please,” the fat man replied. He cleared his throat loudly. “Yesterday, a high-importance alert was raised on the network, concerning the Sederek Trading Centre in Baku.” Teimuraz paused, eyeing the pair in front of him. Fredrick kept his face very still, and he hoped Vika was doing the same.

“
The network?” he heard her ask.

“Ah, my dear, the
network connects all recognised hubs of trade: land, sea and air, major and minor. It allows us to communicate, to share supply and demand information; to compare prices. It is a merely a shadow of what existed before the war, of course, patched together from old cables and masts, but it does allow us to share warnings. Warnings, say, about certain individuals who have been causing trouble. Criminals.”

He let that sink in for a moment.
Fredrick knew about the network –he’d flown a few repair runs to relay stations himself- though he hadn’t realised it might be used against him. An alarm pealed at the back of his mind. The conversation was not heading somewhere he wanted it to go.

“It seems that an auctioneer
and several security personnel were murdered, and a quantity of high-value goods were stolen from their rightful owner,” said Teimuraz. Fredrick sat very still and tried to keep his expression cool. Teimuraz knew it was them.

Fredrick could feel Vika fuming next to him. He really needed her to keep calm. There was no proof, yet, that they had been involved.

Teimuraz flipped open a monitor on his desk, and spun it around to show the pair. It was an image of the
Iolaire
, hurtling from the Sederek landing plaza with its tail gun blasting at security enforcers on the ground. “Tell me that this doesn’t look just like your aircraft,” he said.

Vika lost her temper. “They stole us from our homes!” she cried. “They murdered our people! We are not
goods, we are human!” She was on her feet. Teimuraz recoiled in his luxury chair.

Fredrick caught her wrist and tried to pull her back down. She was strong, though.

“So it
was
you then,” said Teimuraz finally, once Fredrick had pulled Vika back into her chair, whispering calming words in her ear. Teimuraz wiped fresh sweat from his brow. Solomon hadn’t moved the whole time. He just sat in the corner, sipping his coffee.

“Alright, if it was us -and I’m not saying it was us-
what would you do now? Have us arrested and flown back to Baku?” said Fredrick. There were no guards in the office or anywhere inside the administration building that he had seen. He glanced at Solomon. He was a strong looking man, but not insurmountable. Teimuraz probably kept a gun in his desk.

Order of escape:
flip the desk, deal with Solomon, finish Teimuraz and run.

“No, my friend, you have us all wrong,” said Teimuraz with a smile.
“We wish to offer you a job.”

“A job?”
Vika looked just as taken aback as Fredrick did.

“Yes.
A job. It takes a good deal of skill and, how do you westerners say,
balls
to do what you did. Liberating slaves from a slave market is no easy task. Liberating slaves from the private aircraft of Oleg Koikov, the slave baron of the north, is an entirely different beast! We could do with some of that skill and balls on a little expedition we are planning… That is, of course, if you are interested.”

“Well, it certainly interests me more than being arrested
does,” said Fredrick.

“
Excellent!” exclaimed Teimuraz. “You would be paid well, of course.” He paused, as if wondering whether he should continue. “You know, it has also reached my ears that a similar craft shot its way out of Sevastopol not a week ago, evading the
Gilgamesh
’s wrath and making them look very stupid. Not through the network, of course, the warship disrupts that sort of thing as often as it can. This story reached me by other means, and from several sources. The details vary, but the one constant is the aircraft type. An old Skua, with a terrific tail gun. Everybody seems to have clear memories of that. Surely the coincidence is too much…?”

Fredrick couldn’t help a little smile. His ego
was being stroked, but he didn’t mind. He was not a man to balk at praise, however loaded with motives it was. “It might have been us, I couldn’t possibly say.”

Vika looked at Fredrick then. “
Sevastopol? The
Gilgamesh
? Is that why those soldiers came to Ashtarak?” Fredrick could see the anger sparking in her green eyes once more.

Teimuraz raised an eyebrow. How could Fredrick defuse thi
s?

“
Yes…Yes it must have been. You saw they arrested Aiden-”

“And Nardos and Goriun.
Who knows who else? Maybe they will take my father too, no?” Vika cried.

“No, your father and the militi
a had it under control, we saw!”

“But what then, Fredrick?
Once the marines are all killed, will the
Gilgamesh
leave Ashtarak alone? I don’t think so!”

“No,” said Teimuraz, before Fredrick could answer. His face was serious suddenly. “The
Gilgamesh
will not stop. It has a reputation that must be maintained. If the word spread that their marines were slaughtered by untrained Armenian militia, do you think the
Gilgamesh
could hold on to the influence it has now?”

Vika was lost for words. She sat down.
Teimuraz was nodding slowly.

Solomon broke silence with a
deep, steady voice. “You see now that it must be stopped.”

Fredrick turned to look at Solomon.
He fixed Fredrick with his gaze, his eyes glinting in his dark face.

“So… you’re going to take on the
Gilgamesh
?” said Fredrick, a little incredulously.

“In not so many
words, yes,” said Solomon. “I know it must sound like an impossibility-”

“Stupid, is what it sounds like,” interrupted Fredrick.

“Yes, well, I suppose it would to someone unfamiliar with
the plan,” responded Solomon. “I must ask you if you truly want to stop the
Gilgamesh
, because if you don’t, then I can’t tell you any more.”

Fredrick looked at Vika. She nodded, her face filled with a new fierceness, more controlled.
God, she was beautiful.

“I think it’s safe to say we’re interested,” said Fredrick
. “Just no bullshit, please.”