The Immortal Storm (Sky Chaser Book 1) (2 page)

2
The Monitor

A short distance from Hurts Deep the dunes opened up to wind-rubbed scabs of the ancient seabed. Brittle shells and fish bones littered the baked sediment. Kite treaded carefully, not wanting to announce his presence.

“Must be Gassers,” he whispered.

The Waste Witch squinted into the wind. “Hmm,” she said and pointed with her stick. “Go see what they're doing, boy.”

Kite hesitated. What if it
was
Gassers? They were always drilling for vents in the seabed. Worse, it might have been the Savage Salvage Company sawing up a new wreck. Both would sooner butcher scavvies than risk their secrets.

Ersa poked him. “It'll be dark soon,” she said.

Without much enthusiasm and rubbing his ribs Kite scaled the dune. The last few yards he flattened himself on the sand and wriggled using his elbows. Vibration from the drill numbed his ribs, so close and heavy now that it almost smothered his heartbeat. Reluctantly Kite pushed the goggles up under the hood. After all he didn't want the reflecting glass giving his presence away. Maybe he was taking a risk but in the half-light no-one would see his silver Askian eyes from this distance.

At first Kite couldn't see a thing. A hard swell had blown in from the Ashlands. Grains hissed against the dune in waves, tossed up by a dry tide channelling across the flats. Then the wind gusted and the dust thinned a little and there crouched an armoured liftship, long and low in the sand like a patient hunter.

Kite kept low and silent. He thought he knew all the salvage rigs, their livery and flags. But he'd never seen an airmachine like this before. Ten times the size of his sandboat the liftship was built for heavy weather, with a long tapering deck to cut the winds. The pilothouse bristled with all manner of dishes and antennas and at the stern twin turbines turned silently inside lozenge-shaped cowlings. She had a name. Emblazoned on a brass plate bolted to her serrated prow -
Monitor
.

Then Kite saw them.

Soldiers. Three of them. All in crimson greatcoats, faces hidden by mirrored visors glimmering like liquid mercury in the spill from the pilothouse lights. Each one had a forked shockgun. Kite swallowed a hard gulp of fear. He’d never seen these men in the flesh. But every Askian knew their name.

Weatherens.

The word alone chilled the sweat tight on Kite’s skin. His pulse throbbed in his throat, matching the endless stab of the drill. Weatherens. So close he could almost smell their hatred for him on the wind.

Kite began to wriggle back the way he'd come. Never once did his eyes leave the liftship. Never once did he hesitate. When he was certain he wouldn’t be seen or heard he rolled down the dune, the sand slapping against his hood.

“W-Weatherens,” Kite said, gasping for air and floundering to his feet. “They've found us, Ersa. The Foundation has found us.”

“Calm down, boy,” Ersa said. She was alert now, listening for the sound of men. “The Weatherens can't know we're here.”

Kite tried to calm himself, tried to convince himself that Ersa was right. Maybe she was. They’d kept themselves hidden well this last year after all. The Weatherens being here had to be a coincidence and nothing more.

Then the drilling stopped.

“Go see what's happening,” Ersa whispered.

Kite shook his head furiously. “What if they see me?”

“You're small.”

“But -”

“Get back up there, boy,” Ersa hissed. “I want to know what those Weatherens are up to. They've come here for a reason.”

Kite's defiance blew away on the wind. “Fine. I'll go,” he said and started up the dune again. “But if they catch me it'll be your fault.”

From his vantage point Kite counted six Weatheren soldiers, milling about near the liftship. The prong tips of their shockguns flickered in the darkness with a deadly vein of electrical mosfire. The others numbered five. An odd-looking crew in sterile urine-yellow coats and elbow length black rubber gloves and big bug-goggles. Scientists or engineers maybe. All of them from the city of Fairweather.

Fairweather.

Over the years he'd heard a hundred different rumours. Fairweather, the great city of the sun, sat protected behind the Dreadwall - a structure so vast it took a hundred years  and a thousand lives to build. And from there the Foundation ruled. The land and the sky and every soul between. Some even claimed the Foundation had created the Undercloud but Kite had never really believed that. How could you control a storm that covered the entire land?

Using a portable derrick the scientists had been lifting heavy-looking drilling equipment from the trench. One of the scientists carried a white box but Kite couldn't see what they'd found down there. Real treasure maybe. Salvors talked of old wrecks with hidden holds full of tobacco and oil. Somehow Kite didn't think the Weatherens had come all this way for filthy old scavenge. Whatever was in that box had to be valuable.

Without warning one of the Weatheren soldiers turned. His mirrored visor reflecting the flicker flash of the Undercloud’s lightning. Kite was certain he’d given himself away. He didn't dare move. Not even to blink. Then the soldier slowly turned away again.

Kite shivered, iced with cold and fear. He wouldn't be that lucky twice. So silently he slipped away. Back down the dune. Back to where Ersa was hiding and there he told her everything he'd seen.

The Waste Witch worked her gums and spat in the sand. “Scientists,” she said. “Always up to no good those lot. Always looking for things best left hidden.”

“Let's go, Ersa,” Kite said.

All at once the dunes shook around him. Engines roared. Searchlight beams lanced across the dune-tops, carving the dust. Kite dived to his belly and scooped sand over his patchcoat. The
Monitor
was above him now, turbines beating against his back. He covered his ears, choking on the exhaust fumes; greasy and metallic like old coins in his mouth.

Any second now Kite expected a lookout's call and the searing pain of electrocution. He covered his ears and scrunched his eyes shut and thought the noise would never end.

The engine noise changed pitch and faded with acceleration, soon replaced by the wind's hiss and the chaotic hammering of his pulse.

Something hard poked him rudely in the backside.

“You can get up now,” Ersa said.

Kite shook off the sand and spat the greasy chemicals from his mouth. The navigation lights of the
Monitor
were heading inland, sparkling over the darkening dunes. A sudden tide of relief washed over him. He almost cried.

“Pull yourself together, boy,” Ersa said, already shuffling back toward the sandboat. “They've gone back to their city. That’s the end of it. Now get us home.”

Three leagues east from Hurts Deep, near the skeletal markers of the Bone Roads, Kite was still a sack of nerves. Sat at the stern with his boots planted on the thwart he nudged the tiller, navigating the rackety sandboat between the dunes. His hands still shook. Everyone now and then he'd glance over his shoulder, fearing  the flicker of lights and the sound of deadly engines.

“Calm down, boy,” Ersa said. “They're long gone.”

How could he be calm? The First Light Foundation had been here.
Here
, barely a dozen leagues from Dusthaven. There was nothing in the Old Coast for the Foundation so Ersa had always told him. That's why she had them hiding there. But now Kite wasn't so sure. The sooner he got them back to the bothy the better.

Jawbone markers rattled on the dune-tops warning Kite to alter his course. The outrigger lifted a little in the crosswind, skimming the sand. The mainsail swelled in the westerly, giving the sandboat a satisfying kick. Soon she was doing a steady seven, maybe eight knots.

Tight in her seat near the bow, knuckles tensed white on her stick, Ersa huddled against the wind. She was always like this. Kite was certain she hated anything man-made. If it contained a cog or moved on a wheel the thing was possessed.

The sandboat crested the next dune. For a weightless, breathless moment the bow pointed to the endless Undercloud, studded wheels turning on the air. He imagined great skymetal wings sprouting from the sandboat's hull and catching the wind, he soared. Slicing away the clouds, rising into a star-flickering night... 

“Slow down, boy!”

Kite scrambled back to reality. He loosened the lines, spilling the wind from the mainsail. The sandboat slowed to a couple of knots, easing her way between the dunes. Sometimes he wished flying away from the Old Coast could be more than a dream...

“Your head's always in the clouds,” Ersa grumbled. “You think too much that's your problem.”

Kite stuck his tongue out.

Suddenly Ersa twisted in her seat, her eyes narrowed to slits. Did the old crow have eyes in the back of her head? But for once her fierce eyes weren't looking at him this time. “Curse them,” she said.

A moment later Kite heard it - the roar of engines rising on the wind. He twisted around. The Undercloud darkened over the Bone Roads and the storm cleaved apart, torn by an armoured keel. The First Light Foundation had found them.

3
The Weatheren

Kite swung the tiller, forcing the sandboat off the track. His heart rattled like the whale-bones markers on the dune-tops. Somehow he had to escape the Foundation airmachine. Their only chance was to lose them in the dunes.

Then the shriek of stuttering engines rose on the wind. And Kite could see through the swirling dust that the
Monitor
was losing altitude, bleeding smoke from her turbines. She was falling.

Kite veered between the dunes but the
Monitor
seemed to follow. Down and down the airmachine plunged, filling the sky with black metal, closing on them like a coffin lid. A blinding tide of hot sand and choking fumes flooded the deck. Kite screamed but the curdling roar of engines and backwash drowned his cry. And in the confusion, as Kite grappled to keep control, he heard a voice. The sweet sing-song voice of a child, repeating a rhyme:

“When stormy is the weather and thunder shakes the sky. The Children of the Sun will ask the question why.”

The engines stopped.

Kite stared in horror. The screams of the Weatheren crew filled the air. The airmachine began plunge from the sky, a slow fatal arc. Dead metal dropped bow-first into the ancient seabed, impacting with a titanic crunch.

The dunes shook. A furious ball of bright fire turned the Undercloud the colour of blood and bronze. There came a blast wave so fierce it sliced the dune-tops and sucked the mainsail inside out. The tiller snapped from Kite hands and the sandboat careened up the face of a dune, teetering on her wheels before pitching them both overboard. Over and over he rolled, gear and scavenge crashing all around him, until he finally came to shivering stop.

For a moment Kite lay in total darkness, ears full of sand and fizz. Then instinct seized him. He kicked and clawed, fighting himself upright. Wrenching back his hood and gasped for air, his heart rattling under his ribs.

The stink of hot burning oil filled his nostrils. A vile tower of oil-black smoke drifted low over the dunes, raining soot flecks that swirled in eddies around him. A short distance away the sandboat had ended up on her side, wheels still slowly turning. The day's haul had been scattered on the sand.

In a tumble of ropes and rigging the Waste Witch flailed like a stricken beetle, hollering for her boy. Hurriedly Kite found Ersa's stick and helped her to her feet.

“Quick, boy!” Ersa said, shoving him aside. “Might be something left for us!”

Kite followed the Waste Witch reluctantly, fearing what he might find. A whole dune had been levelled. A black crater scorched the sand in its place, scattered with smouldering wreckage. A black knot the size of a house lay flaking soot in its centre - all that remained of the
Monitor
's fuselage.

Kite stepped by blue-flame oil puddles, covering his mouth to block out the stench of burnt oil and treacled sand. A turbine cowling lay on its side, housing peeled open to reveal the undamaged props within. All else had been warped and shredded. The crew too. Bits of men had been scattered like a butcher's bad work. Shreds of scarlet and yellow flapped from jags of twisted metal. Kite pressed the scarf over his nose, swallowing down the urge to vomit.

Snip snip.

“Don't look at me like that, boy,” Ersa said, trimming buttons from a dead Weatheren soldier's uniform. “He won’t be needing brass where he's headed.”

Something wasn't right here. What had brought her down? Mechanical failure? Grit in the intakes? Even the salvor's mechanics had to deal with that menace.

Salvors.

“We'd better go,” he said, glancing about the dunes. “They'll see that smoke for leagues and -”

“Hello?”

Kite spun around. He quickly picked out a bloody hand waving limply from the far side of the wreckage.

Ersa was quick to her feet, her scissors held dagger-like.

The injured Weatheren called again. “Hello, is anyone there? I need help.”

Kite began checking his hood and goggles. “I might be able to help,” he said. “He won't be able to see who am I.”

“If he's not dead now he soon will be,” Ersa replied coldly. “Leave him to the Sand Eaters.”

Kite bunched his fists. “I might be able to help,” he said and broke into a run before the Waste Witch could stop him.

The Weatheren survivor was one of the yellow-coated scientists. Kite stepped between debris, showing the scuffed palms of his gloves.

“W-where are the Constables?” the Weatheren said, trying to sit up and collapsing back, clutching his side. Purple patches spread from a wound in his ribs. He'd crawled some distance and now slumped against a heat-blistered deck plate.

“They're dead,” Kite said.

The Weatheren chuckled painfully. “I-I admire your honesty but please don't come any closer,” he said. He was hugging a number of fire-singed objects. “What are you? One of those Murkers?”

Kite frowned behind his goggles. He’d heard that name whispered in Dusthaven. “I’m no terrorist if that’s what you’re thinking,” said Kite.

“No, you do not look like one,” the Weatheren said. “A skyless then?”

Skyless
. That's what the Fairweather folk called those who survived out outside the Dreadwalls. Those doomed to a slow death beneath the Undercloud. Kite tried not to show offence.

“Is that a water bottle?” the Weatheren asked. “May I? I am terribly thirsty. ”

Kite hesitated. Well water was ten royals a gallon after all. But the Weatheren looked as if he needed water more than Kite at this moment so he unhooked the tin water bottle from his belt and offered it across.

The Weatheren gulped from the water bottle. Kite crouched nearby and studied him. Blue eyes a shade brighter than his gaudy uniform. Skin bronzed by the mythical sun. Flesh and blood after all.

“Am I so fascinating?” the Weatheren asked.

“Never seen a Weatheren before,” Kite replied. “That's all.”

“No, I don't suspect you have,” the Weatheren said and coughed up a lip of blood. “Do you have any medicine in that bag?”

Kite shook his head.

“No, of-course not,” the Weatheren said. “Why would you?”

Did all Weatherens talk this way? Ersa had told him they had mechanical minds, raised by machine mothers to think and act to a rigid set of rules and instructions.

“What happened to the airmachine?” Kite asked.

“The oddest thing,” the Weatheren said, looking passed him at the fire and smoke. “The pilot began to lose all control when the rhyme started. Neither should have happened. Most unexpected.”

Kite recalled the song on the wind. “The rhyme?” he said.

“My daughter sings it,” the Weatheren said, shaking his head in disbelief. “My daughter...oh...w-where is the nearest settlement?”

Kite knew Dusthaven was ten leagues north-east of the Bone Roads. The Weatheren would never make it in his condition and Ersa would never let him on the sandboat. “Too far,” Kite said.

The Weatheren coughed more blood. “Yes,” he mumbled weakly. “It would…appear…so..”

Then the Weatheren exhaled with a soft sigh, eyes wide with bewilderment. The salvaged things slipped from his arms. After a moment Kite picked up the water bottle and reattached it to his belt. Death seemed a cruel reward for surviving that horror.

Scattered at his feet the Weatheren's things was an odd assortment: an empty leather document case, a rolled up tube of fine transparent film and a mechanikin, a fancy mechanical toy, with one of its eyes torn out.

“Boy?”

Kite licked his lips. That leather alone had to be worth thirty royals. The mechanikin, even fire-singed, could fetch ten. More money than he’d earn in a month of scavenging.

“Where are you, boy?”

After all, Kite reasoned, the Weatheren had no use for leather or toys where he was headed. Ersa had said the same about the buttons hadn’t she? If he didn't take them some other scavvy would.

“Hurry boy!” Ersa called again, this time with urgency.

Kite crouched and bundled the items into his canvas scavenge bag. Then he hurried back, but not before giving the dead scientist a respectful nod. Weatheren or not, somehow it seemed the right thing to do.

A salvage rig circled the crater. A squat, flat-bottomed airmachine with derricks fore and aft, rattling with hook-chains and the chatter of metal-hungry salvors. A Tom Skull flapped from her pilothouse.

Looking for a hiding place Kite found a door-sized radar dish which had, until a few minutes ago, been mounted on the
Monitor
's pilothouse. Ersa crouched beside him, scissors at the ready. Not that either of them could do much against sledgehammers and chains.

The first salvage rig swept down, curling the smoke in its wake. With alarm Kite recognised the patchwork hull and lopsided turbines. The pride of the Savage Salvage Company fleet - the
Highwrecker
.

“Gutter,” he whispered.

Along its keel four exhausts shimmered as the
Highwrecker
decelerated and crunched down on its runners. A ladder thumped on to the blackened sand. The Savages scrambled down like hungry dogs, whooping at their luck. Some hefted wrenches and sledgehammers while others dragged hook-ended chains.

Kite didn’t want to be here anymore. He pointed a way through the dunes. He hoped the Savages would be too busy tearing up the wreckage to notice a pair of scavvies this far across the crater. Luckily the Savages had other distractions. Another salvage rig rattled overhead. One carrying Hullgrave's crimson anchor on its flank. Crews from every port would be battling for every last rivet before the day was out.

Kite quickly gathered up the capsized cargo. With a mighty heave he set the sandboat upright. She rocked back and forth, spilling sand. When she'd settled he untangled the lines and checked the mainsail. A nasty rip but nothing a few well-placed stitches couldn't fix. Other than that she was undamaged.

“Here, help me up,” Ersa said.

Kite offered his hand. Without warning the Waste Witch clamped her nails down on his wrist, pulling his face close to hers.

“What did the Weatheren say, boy?” she hissed. “No lies you hear.”

“Just something about a voice and some fable,” Kite said with gritted teeth.

Ersa twisted his wrist, her nails biting in to his pale flesh. “What else?”

“Nothing! He's dead.”

She stared deep in to his watering eyes. “When I tell you to do something you do it, you hear?” she said and let him go. “I told you before - all it takes is one of them to find us. Then we're both dead as the whales.”

Kite kneaded the stinging pink semicircles. He tried to think of something defiant to say - one day he would - but for now he nodded stiffly and got them under way.