Storm Dreams (The Cycle of Somnium Book 1) (18 page)

Cassidy turned back.

“You dream of a great dogfight. Fighters clutter the sky. Then you see a dot in the distance. Among all the planes you pick it out as if a cord connects you both and it draws you in.” He paused, ashed his cigarette. “You are there for
him
. There to kill him. His fighter is red.”

Cassidy stumbled sideways. He fell against the wall. Pictures flooded his mind. He couldn’t breathe well.

“I have dreamed about you almost since we started the war,” Richthofen continued. His eyes looked distant. The lines around them crinkled and straightened.

In Cassidy’s mind, the guns of his Sopwith Camel rattled as the holes in his memory filled in. He dove and spun and banked. He manoeuvred between Fokkers, Albatrosses, Sopwiths and Nieuports. His guns rattled again as his target darted beyond his sights. The Sopwith stalled, began to smoke and dived. The red Fokker exploded into the ground in front of the many-spired castle.

“I always knew the Americans would enter the war. They were a myth with teeth. We didn’t know what to expect, but we knew they would come. And I dreamed of you. No,” Richthofen said, shaking his head, “not a dream. A nightmare. The pilot who would someday down me. Fly me to the edge, and over, and into the ground.”

Richthofen dropped the butt of his cigarette and crushed it into the damp grass. “Perhaps not a nightmare,” he said. “Perhaps a wish.”

Cassidy looked up. It was hard to make eye contact. “You told Banner. Told him about your dreams.”

The Baron shrugged. “He said the nightmare would go away. It did. I dreamed my dreams without dying. Next thing you know, he walks into the Arcadian lounge with my nightmare beside him. I thought I would die.” He paused. “I don’t have any answers for you, John Cassidy. I’m not a god.” The Baron turned and trudged away. The tips of his soggy grey coat vanished into the pouring rain as he left the dry space between the buildings.

Cassidy shook. He stumbled out into the rain. The dream was full in his mind. Every damned minute of it, right down to the point where three German fighters had combined their guns to bring him down, shredding his fighter. He’d brought his Sopwith down and bailed out just before the plane crashed. Hit the ground with a rolling thud. Survived by a hair.

The Baron’s Fokker had burned in front of him. The pilot had still been alive. On fire and alive. Screaming. Cursing. Cassidy remembered
all
the dreams. All the variations. All the nightmares in which he’d starred. The planes had changed. The battle. The ultimate fight. But the castle had been there each time. The castle and Richthofen’s burning plane. Tongues of fire leaping up around the crimson red paint and black iron crosses.

Not a dream, Cassidy thought. He’d been a bogeyman to the red pilot the Allies called Death.

Cassidy found a bi-wing Fokker VII that looked like it had just come out of the shop. He ran his hand over the smooth rounded fuselage, the tail rudder and elevator flap. The dual Spandaus looked pristine and fully loaded with chains of 7.8mm shells. He lifted the leather cover over the cockpit, exposing an immaculate interior, complete with leather trimming and chrome accents. The wings were as straight as a captain’s bars and water beaded against the sealed and stretched canvas that covered the wing frame.

The engine appeared to be at least a Mercedes D.III and he could probably push the fighter to no less than 110mph. Probably more. The prop was longer than Cassidy was tall, had been carved from a deep rich alder, rubbed and sanded smooth. The German adornments could be repainted, though in a strange way, the twin Iron Crosses felt familiar even as they revolted him other ways.

Cassidy climbed into the cockpit, pumped up the fuel tank pressure and switched the motor on. The fuel gauge read full. There were probably magnetos, but using them didn’t feel right. Not on the craft’s first flight. Instead, he hopped down, grabbed the prop in both hands and gave it a sharp, downward yank. The engine engaged immediately. Cassidy climbed back aboard, strapped in and taxied out to the runway.

If anyone heard the engine over the pounding rain, they didn’t seem to care. Probably assumed some pilot was taking one of the planes up for a test flight, and it wasn’t worth getting wet to check.

As Cassidy throttled forwards, several pilots glanced towards the fighter, but were unable to tell which airman sat in the cockpit.  He could have been any German pilot. When the Fokker reached flying speed and he felt the wings dancing with the rushing wind, he pulled back the stick and took to the air.

It handled better than anything he’d ever flown. The stick was so responsive. The pedals required no more than the slightest pressure to roll the fighter over. A thrill took over that could never have been described in words, but it cascaded over him in waves of intense heat. Something about having his own fighter. Not the government’s, like in his dream. Not the
Nubigena’s
that just anyone flew. Banner meant this to be
his
. John Cassidy’s.

John Cassidy. The name sounded both foreign and beautiful in his mind. The complete memory of the dream he’d come from made it even more solid. “John Cassidy,” he said out loud. The name was
his
, like the new Fokker was his. Richthofen had given him both in a way. True, the name was that of a nightmare and Banner had paid money for the plane, but the Baron himself had told him which kind to choose and had even helped design it.

Cassidy banked and dove and rolled, not caring that the rain covered his
real
goggles. The storm energies streamed through him. He felt the storm itself like some people felt sunshine. Perhaps the same way Banner did. Perhaps the feeling came from owning something
real
.

He took the Fokker into the clouds to see if he could do what Banner did. The fighter shook hard with turbulence, but Cassidy eased it into phase with the roll of the storm, which he felt in his blood now. The savage bolts of lightning. The pound of thunder in his chest as he slipped between the warring fronts. He’d caught the pulse of the storm and matched his heartbeat to it.

Cassidy moved through the harsh wind like a salmon twisting upstream, finning through the tremulous eddies and furious currents. His heart leapt and he laughed out loud. This was what it was like to be kin to the storm. To be natural to it. To be as much a part of it as air and accumulated moisture, and the raw blue energy and cracks of thunder.

Born of the storm
.

Nubigena
.

He didn’t know how he knew. Perhaps Richthofen’s classical schooling, or some grey knowledge he’d picked up from Banner, but
Nubigena
meant “born of the storm”, and this was why. Strangely, it didn’t explain how he understood perfect English. Richthofen spoke it well enough, but with a thick accent and Cassidy had more than once run into words the Baron didn’t know.

There had to be more to him than just his dreamer’s knowledge and memories. The Everdream must add some in to fill dreams out. It must draw on it vast repository of...of what? How much did it know? He’d have to talk about that one day with Brewster.

Cassidy nosed the fighter down below the clouds so he could see where the great Zeppelin moored. It rested against the ground like a half-bridled cloud, bucking at its moorings. And on the ground, standing with his feet apart, hands planted on his hips and his mouth open in raucous laughter, stood Banner, watching him. His white scarf whipped in the wind and he looked like a god scrutinizing his son as he rode a chariot of fire for the first time. Apollo? Prometheus? Where had he heard those names?

Cassidy landed. Jayce and Franz ran up, each checking the fighter out like a rider would a new filly.

“Ah, they have gotten better, I see,” Karl said, as he examined the engine. “BMW. I have never heard of that. Configuration looks brilliant, but I have to take a good look. Is beautiful.”

“Can you still work on her?” Cassidy asked the old German.

He looked indignant. “Of course I can work on her. I’ll make her even better. I still know things they don’t. I’ll always know things they don’t.”

Given his recent realization about the Everdream knowledge, Cassidy believed that. No telling how much had been pumped into Karl to make him the dream engineer of Graf Zeppelin.

“Those guns look like they can really spit out the lead,” Jayce said, running his hand along the barrel of one of the new Spandaus.

Banner regarded the fighter with distant fascination. His love was the
Nubigena
, but Cassidy could tell the captain was impressed with the Fokker by way he kept cocking his head as he eyed the smooth fuselage. “I guess Karl better put a new mooring on her,” Banner said.

Cassidy shook his head. “With your permission, Captain, I’d like to try landing and taking off up top.”

Banner narrowed his eyes. “
Land
on my baby?” He ran his eyes over the Zeppelin from stem to stern as if trying to imagine what that would do.

“I’ve heard they launch off large ships now. Why not the
Nubigena
?” Cassidy asked.

Banner gave a sceptical look and glanced at Karl.

Karl shrugged. “Landing would be very hard, but perhaps. I’ll get materials here, but it’ll have to be done in the Twilight.”

Banner nodded. “Do it. Later we can put two or three more down below again, like we used to.”

“What will you call her,” Jayce asked, as he examined the German decorations. “Can’t stick with the old crosses.”

Cassidy shrugged. “I don’t know yet.” He turned back to Banner. “Did we already get supplies?”

“Ha,” Banner said. “Franz and Karl saw the sights. Jayce and I got wine, liquor, game, sausage and a bunch of other things I can’t pronounce. We also appropriated more munitions than we can ever use.” Banner gave a dismissive gesture. “For the next few weeks anyway. See you in the air,” he said with a quick salute and everyone boarded except Cassidy, who mounted his new Fokker.

The magnetos brought it to life with a single crank. He lifted off ahead of the Zeppelin, eager to touch the storm clouds, which edged towards the brink of moving on. He banked into a steep climb.

The storm accepted him again. He slipped into it like an electric mantle and felt where the denser mass of energy had moved to. On instinct, he flew towards it, skimming once again the violent currents. He felt something else, too. A soft place. A field in the rolling clouds where they created a rippling vortex.

He neared the place and felt it throb and pulse. Green light exploded from its centre and radiated out in crackling waves. The smell of ozone increased.

Behind him, the
Nubigena
tore through the outer shell of a dark cumulous cloud. The ship appeared as if it had been a part of the cloud, shed its skin and left it behind to dissolve into the rest of the storm matter.

Cassidy banked and slowed so that he flew above the Zeppelin now. He knew where it was heading. He’d found the gate first. The round nose struck the wall of green light and branches of electric current ran along the length of ship and up to him so that it forked and arced over the controls and wings and down the tail.

Together the
Nubigena
and the Fokker VII gated into the Twilight. The clouds shifted from black to light purple. Cassidy half expected to find the Armada on the other side, but Banner continued to elude them with whatever sense or luck he possessed. Cassidy thought of The Dutchman. Banner hadn’t mentioned him yet, but surely knew he’d been betrayed. Was he just going to let the affront slide?

Cassidy scanned the skies for signs of fighters or airships. Perhaps he should do this more often. Fly scout when they gated and while they flew through uncertain territory. Cassidy took it upon himself to make his way out in front of the ship, then back and to the sides in an escort pattern.

A line floated above the horizon of clouds. He throttled forwards and flew over it. The line turned out to be a disc at least a few miles in diameter. It was solid water, a floating ocean with no earth mass to support it. He flew beneath, and, as he’d suspected, the water hovered without trench or basin. Reverse waves licked downward, rolling down and then up.

Cassidy flew back above the surface and came in close enough to see a platform floating on the water. A giant sheet of rusted metal with a variety of small buildings dotting its surface.

The
Nubigena
landed. There was no ground crew there to tether the ship, so Jayce and Franz leapt to the ground and tied it off.

Cassidy landed beside the Zeppelin. “Where’s this?” he asked, as Banner exited the gondola.

“The Water,” Banner said, holding his arms apart as if referring to the entire expanse of drifting ocean. “What else would they call it?”

“It’s safe?” Cassidy asked.

Banner shrugged. “Safe to the extent that no one is here. As far as I know, it’s been abandoned for years, but it’s great for repairs.”

Brewster hadn’t seen the new Fokker yet, so came down for a look. He examined it for several minutes, then nodded. “It’s a hell of a fighter.”

“Doesn’t anyone else get upset that I’m the only one who flies anymore?”

Brewster grinned. “We all had our turn,” the Englishman said. “They’d all rather be in the ship with Banner than out going one on one with the Armada.”

“I can’t imagine not wanting to fly,” said Cassidy. “Ever.”

Brewster shrugged. “Guess it depends on how we’re dreamed.”

“I met him,” Cassidy said. He folded his arms and stared at the fighter. “I know who he is now.”

Brewster cocked his head. “Met
him
, Old Boy?”

Cassidy took a deep breath. He laid a hand against the Fokker's body and leaned against the frame. “I ran into Richthofen at the airbase. I finally know why he looked at me the way he did the first time we met.” He gave Brewster a short version of the meeting.

Brewster sucked in on the tepid Twilight air. He leaned against the Fokker as well and seemed to lose himself in the paint design. “My God,” he finally said. “No wonder you can fly the way you do. Probably based you on everything he thought a Yank could do and everything his brother
could
do, and everything
he
can do. Also explains why you can shoot like that.”

Cassidy gave a slow nod. “I feel like I should have known. Every time I looked at him, I should have guessed.”

“Does it make you feel any different? I don’t even have inkling about mine. Is it like meeting…God?”

Cassidy turned around, leaned back against his new plane and looked out at the soft lavender clouds hovering over the gentle waves. “For a minute. I mean, I felt connected to something. Almost
real
.” He sighed. “Don’t know. It all just made sense, there in the storm. Now I’m back to thinking,
what was I really?
I mean, Richthofen must have had a thousand dreams in his life and I’m just a terror that haunted him since the war began. In the end, I’m just a random splinter of someone I barely know.”

Brewster wet his lips. “You could drive a bloke mad with all that thinking, you know?” He shook his head, turned around and stared out at the same clouds. “I mean, you’ve got to stop asking. Live life. If I got caught up thinking through all that, they’d have to scrape me off the floor of the asylum.”

“I guess I just wanted to be the result of someone’s purposeful creation. Instead, I’m a collection of random thoughts and fears.”

Brewster laughed and slapped Cassidy on the arm. “Come on, mate,” he said. “You’ve got to be your own man. Bring out your personal meaning. Besides, for all you know, people from the
real
world are just the dreams of some distant creatures they can’t even conceive of.”

Cassidy grinned. “I thought you weren’t into philosophy?”

Brewster smirked. “I think about it. I just don’t dwell on it.”