Flying the Storm (30 page)

Then, for the first time
since Stepanavan, Aiden laughed. He laughed long and loud, just because it felt good. A tear rolled down his creased cheek.

An awkward explanation was given, a joint effort by Fredrick and Aiden, all the while underpinned by Solomon’s giggling.

After it seemed like she understood, she said, “But why would he pay you for that?”

Aiden thought he would
die laughing.

Soon they reached Tbilisi, and Fredrick brought the
Iolaire
down. Teimuraz himself greeted them on the tarmac, sweating as usual in the humid weather. Where Armenia had been a dry heat, Georgia’s skies were dark with rain clouds and the closeness was oppressive.

“You survived, I see!” he announced, looking alternately at them and the weather above.
“Come inside, I fear it is about to rain!”

Ileana
seemed reluctant to leave the
Iolaire
and her father’s body. When the thunder started overhead she came along with Aiden, who had waited for her by the foot of the ramp.

They made it inside just as the first fat drops began to fall, and by the time they had
reached Teimuraz’ office several floors up, the rain was torrential. It fell straight down in curtains past the office window, obscuring the distant end of the airport in wet fuzz.

“Well, it’s about time we had some rain, I suppose,” said Teimuraz, gazing morosely out.
“It does make everything around here just a little bit more difficult, though.” He looked up at a freighter coming in to land vertically. Bright lights guided it down to the tarmac; shining beacons in the grey.

Teimuraz turned to the room then. He smiled warmly. “You must be
Ileana, my dear,” he said, coming forward. “I am Teimuraz.”

She nodded, and shook his outstretched hand.
She tried to smile, but it faltered. Aiden put a hand on her shoulder then. It must have all been terrifying for her; surrounded by strangers, her father gone.

“We have to contact her brother,” said Aiden. “He runs a freight ship to Poti.
Ileana and her father were on their way to meet him.”

“So he is in Poti?” asked Teimuraz.

“He might be.” Aiden looked at Ileana. She nodded.

“Then I
will contact the Poti harbour authority, and get a message to your brother. What is his name?”

“Marius
. Marius Capraru,” she said. “His ship is the
Cristina
.”

Teimuraz nodded and flipped open a monitor on his desk. He pressed a key and said something in Georgian,
repeating the name of the ship and passing the instructions on to somebody else. Then he closed the monitor over.

“We shall hear soon enough if your brother is there.”

Ileana nodded, and Aiden squeezed her shoulder.

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?”

“No
t 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 th
e 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 awa
kened 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.

Commander Petrus ha
d been gone for a long while. Hammit sat on his seat in the aircraft, looking out of the canopy at the giant green mountains that disappeared into the clouds. Big rocks were scattered all over their slopes, like somebody had thrown a strop and flung them there. Somebody strong. He squinted up at the high slopes, looking for where they’d come from. He couldn’t see anything, just white cloud.

It wasn’t
raining, really, it was just sort of wet anyway. When he’d been allowed outside to piss, the cold clouds seemed to find their way through his clothes, making his skin clammy. The thought of it made him smile to himself again. He’d stood on the
ground
. It had been soft and spongy, and the grass had rustled as he walked through it.

Weird
.

But now he had sat
on his own for a long time. His backside was aching, and his feet wanted to feel the grass again. Commander Petrus had told him to stay put, to watch the aircraft. He’d taken the two marines and the flight lieutenant with him, but he didn’t say how long he’d be gone for. Could be hours, could be days.

That got Hammit worrying.
Maybe Commander Petrus was in trouble, wherever he’d gone. Maybe one of those rocks had fallen on him and the others, and Hammit wouldn’t ever know about it. That frightened him more than a little. He didn’t know how to fly the aircraft. He didn’t even know where he was, only what Commander Petrus had told him:
north
. Suddenly he was all fluttered with worry.

Maybe, then, he should go and try to find them.
He’d watched them go, across the grass until they looked tiny as little bugs, and then they disappeared into the rocks. He reckoned he could remember which ones.
Those ones there
, he thought.
Or was it those ones there
?

He sat for a little while longer, staring hard at the rocks, waiting for them to appear. They didn’t. He sucked in some courage and opened the hatch.

It was colder outside than he remembered. The wind was stronger, and it seemed to cut through even the thick flight suit that Commander Petrus had given him.
Little drops of water settled on his sleeves. He shivered.

When he looked hard, he could still see the trampled
clumps of grass where Commander Petrus and the others had passed by earlier. He set off, following the tracks, stumbling on the soft, lumpy ground.

It took what seemed like a very long time to reach the rocks.
They were
huge
close up. Even just the sight of them made him a little bit scared. He glanced back at the aircraft. It looked so small and out of place, sitting on the hump between the mountains. He was tempted then just to hurry back to it, and forget about the whole thing.

But no.
Commander Petrus could be in trouble. Hammit had to find him.

The ground was harder near the rocks.
It felt drier under his feet. He couldn’t see the tracks any more, and there was no obvious way to follow. Slowly, he picked his way around the base of the huge rock.

And then, just when he thought he’d looked all
around it, he saw it. There,
under
one of the rocks, was a door. He had to be standing right in front of it to see it; it had been hidden so well. It looked so out of place, with its angles and squareness.

Hammit went in under the rock,
stepping down a little drop, one hand feeling the damp stone above him as he walked towards the door. Without the wide, bright sky above him, he felt almost at home.

The door was slightly open.
Steadying his breathing, he nudged it open wider. Inside was a long, dark corridor, a bit like the long engineering passages of the
Gilgamesh
. Hammit looked behind him at the daylight outside, and then back to the darkness. He wasn’t imagining it. The corridor was going
into the mountain
.

He shivered again
as he felt a draft blowing at him from the corridor. The air felt drier and even a bit warmer. Bunching his fists, he stepped in.

The floor was a metal grill, and he couldn’t see what was beneath it.
His footstep echoed faintly from the walls around him, and then a moment later from whatever was at the other end. The walls were almost close enough for him to touch when he reached both of his hands out. He picked the left one, and felt along it as he slowly made his way in. The wall was cold but dry compared to the stone outside.

There was a loud creak behind him.
He spun around, heart thumping in his throat, until he saw that the draught had just pushed the door almost closed again. It was darker with the door closed over, but the light hadn’t seemed to help much anyway. The corridor seemed to soak it up.

It took a long time feeling his way into the darkness to reach the end of the corridor.
He was going slowly and as quietly as he could, though he couldn’t say why. It was like he feared there was something there, waiting for him in the dark. And there could have been, for all he knew. There could have been savages and cannibals hiding in the mountain, waiting for a soft engineer to come along, just like the Chaplain had warned.

But Hammit could fight.
He was big compared to the other engineers. He’d held his own against Morley, until… well, he didn’t want to think about that. Hammit knew he could fight. That was what mattered. If he had to fight to save Commander Petrus, he would. Commander Petrus had been kind to him. Commander Petrus had taken him flying. He’d shown him the sky, and let him feel the ground. It was worth fighting for him, Hammit decided.

That steeled him up some.

The corridor ended suddenly with a cold metal surface. Hammit pressed his hands against it, then turned to look back the way he’d come. Way off in the distance he could see the thin slice of light where the door was. It seemed to just hang there in the blackness. The walls of the corridor reflected none of the light.

He turned back to the metal wall in front of him.
He felt out to his sides and found the stone walls. That meant that the metal had to be a door. Why would there be a corridor this length to a dead end?

Groping around blindly, he felt for anything that might show the door.
A crack, a hinge, a handle.

He found nothing.

Curses
.

It couldn’t be a dead end. It just couldn’t.

Out of ideas, he le
ant sideways against the stone wall. He slipped and fell to his backside when the metal suddenly groaned and lifted itself, sliding away into the ceiling. A bright blue dot had lit up on the wall where he’d leaned. A button. Even with the tiny light it shed, he could see the walls and ceiling and door as clear as day, compared to how it had been before. He could have laughed.

Hammit heaved himself to his feet and went through the door.
As he passed under it and into the dark space beyond, it slammed shut behind him, sealing off the light of the button and the far away day. But it wasn’t dark for long. When the echoes of the door closing had faded away, he took another step forward into the space. Suddenly the chamber lit up with long strips of light set in the stone ceiling, all blue and white and painful after the dark corridor.

When his eyes adjusted, he could see that he was in another, shorter corridor. This one was much wider and taller than the other had been, and the air here was warm and dry.
The walls and ceiling had been cut away from the stone by some machine, all smooth and arched like the chapel on the
Gilgamesh
. There were other doors, too, leading off to the sides of the corridor, but they all looked closed. At the end was another doorway, but the door was nowhere to be seen.

In the ceiling
, he thought,
like the other one went
.

So that was where he headed.
Commander Petrus must have gone through there. That would be why the door was open. Hammit’s boots squeaked on the polished floor as he crossed it. The floor looked to be made of stone or maybe ‘crete, but it was hard to tell in the fuzzy blue light. It didn’t ring or clank like the decks of the
Gilgamesh
. It felt solid. Really solid. He liked the feel of it, almost as much as he’d liked the feel of the grass.

Beyond the open door
the passage took a sharp right turn, and then began to wind downwards in a wide, smooth spiral. The long lights came on bit by bit as Hammit reached each section of corridor, going dark suddenly in the ones he left behind. He was hurrying along now. With every step he became more worried for Commander Petrus. He had to find him.

The spiral finally levelled off at a big intersection between corridors.
All the doors were open here, and Hammit stood breathing heavily for a while as he decided which one to try.

The middle one
.

The warm draft was coming stronger from this corridor.
Hammit even undid the zip of his flight suit a little bit, it was getting so hot. The air had a smell now too, really faint, but definitely a smell. Not pleasant, either.

Hammit slowed a little, as a pressing dread settled on him.
He’d never felt like this on the
Gilgamesh
. He was starting to think about the sheer weight of all the stone above him. Half a mountain. A mountain so tall he couldn’t see the top for cloud, when he’d been outside. He hunched his shoulders and tucked his head down as he walked. It didn’t help much.

The corridor took several turns; left, right, left, right, one after another.
Hammit started to wonder if it would ever end, or if it would just keep leading him deeper and deeper into the mountain. He couldn’t guess what lay at the end. Commander Petrus had never told him what they were looking for.
Something his superiors were very worried about
, Hammit remembered. But that could have been anything.

His imagination started to run.
If the brass were worried about it so much
… It must have been something the savages were doing. Something the evil folk down surface-side were up to that had given the brass a real fright. He didn’t want to know what that was. Something that frightened the
Gilgamesh
was not something Hammit wanted to run into.

Something his imagination wasn’t exaggerating was the smell. It was getti
ng stronger the deeper he went. On any sane day, Hammit would have stopped to reconsider. Everything about this place was telling him he didn’t want to be there. But today, there would be no going back until he’d done what he came to do. He wouldn’t turn back till he’d found Commander Petrus, and made sure he was all right.

If he was careful and quiet, he might even spot Commander Petrus before he saw him.
Then, if everything seemed fine, he could sneak back up and out to the aircraft. Yes, that’s what he would do. He’d be quiet as he could, walking on the outsides of his feet. Just like coming back from the brothel late, keeping from waking the next shift in their bunks so he didn’t get a belt round the head.

Finally the corridor straightened o
ut. It ran straight for a short distance, he could tell by the light cast from behind him. Then, with another step the long corridor’s lights came on, and at the end was a dark shape, sprawled on the floor.

Hammit’s stomach jumped right up into his throat.
It was a person. He couldn’t tell who. He just stood, frozen to the spot, not even daring to breathe. The person on the floor didn’t move.
It’s dead
, thought Hammit, the dread of the stone closing in around him.

He managed to make himself go on.
Silently, he crept up the passage. He reached the body, just short of the end of the corridor, where another open doorway led off to the right.

Hammit made himself look at the corpse.
It was face down in a dark pool of blood, but from the rusty coloured hair he knew it was the flight-lieutenant. He swallowed back a dry heave as he saw the huge, gaping holes in the man’s back. Punched right through, it looked like. Like somebody’d taken a presshammer to his back. A piece of white rib stood out under the blue light. Hammit had to turn away, hands on his knees, retching again.

Getting back some of his steel, Hammit stepped carefully around the corpse and went through the open doorway to the right. The corridor he stepped into now lit up as the one behind him went dark. At the end was another door, closed this time.

And by the foot of the door were three more bodies.

The two armoured forms of the marines lay sprawled closer to him than the third body. Fist-sized craters had been punched in the stone of the floor and walls. There had been a fight, it looked like.

The third body lay propped up against
the wall near the closed door. Hammit knew who it was even before it spoke.

“Engineer,” gurgled Commander Petrus, his head slugging round to look at him.
“Get out… Get out of here.”

“
Commander-” Hammit started to say, but the commander cut him off.