Half a Soul Apart, page 12
Hessy’s stomach gave a twist as she realized that Maps was still onboard the Bluetip. She stood up, but Arky yanked her back down. “What are you doing?”
“I have to get Maps.”
Arky pointed over to the Bluetip. The sturdy, little aircraft had survived the attack without a scratch.
“Maps is safer in there than us right now.”
He was right. Hessy looked down at Nattie who had turned pale, but she was breathing and there was no visible blood. They had to get out of here, and fast.
Craggen seemed to have the upper hand as they fought both in the sky and from the ground, using their defensive cannons. Hessy was amazed at how good some of the Craggen pilots were, managing to outmaneuver the militia soldiers.
General Rudyard had been right to fear them, she thought with a rush of pride.
A battleship, smaller than the Darkturnalus had been, whirred above their heads casting a shadow over them as it sought a place to land.
“We have to move, now,” Arky said. Together they began to move Nattie, but they weren’t nearly fast enough. The battleship swung round and maneuvered down onto the hangar floor, or what was left of it. They tried their best to tuck themselves behind a broken pillar with the limp Nattie.
Through the smoke and destruction, Hessy could see movement. Soldiers marched quickly in the direction of their hiding place. An icy wind sliced into the smoke, blowing it away and Hessy saw men and women all dressed in ruby red uniforms search the area calmly, despite the surrounding danger.
Hessy and Arky kept still but their cover wasn’t enough. The soldiers began to get closer.
The terror got critical as General Rudyard himself stepped out from the middle of his soldiers and with his sharp green eyes, he spotted Hessy almost instantly.
“Miss Fairbird!” he hollered over to her as if greeting a friend. “You look so ghostly white to see me. I imagine you hoped I had perished in the state you left me in. So sorry to disappoint.”
Before she could do anything, Rudyard raised his pistol.
The loud bang made her flinch.
Hessy thought she had been shot. Her hands felt up and down her body to check for the bullet entry, so it surprised her when General Rudyard fell backwards, clutching his bleeding shoulder.
Mr. Arman came limping into sight, holding the longest pistol that Hessy had ever seen.
“Sorry to cut your conversation short,” he said just before the soldiers began to fire, covering their fallen general.
Mr. Arman aimed and fired almost lazily at the advancing soldiers, each bullet hitting their mark. He shot over Hessy and Arky’s heads like he forgot they were even there.
Well aimed bullets forced him to take cover by the other pillar.
“Mr. Arman!”
“You just stay down!” he shouted at her.
Arky was doing his best to get Nattie in a better position behind the pillar but as he was moving, a stray bullet found a place in his wide thigh. His legs buckled from underneath him and down he went. Hessy’s scream was muffled by the gun battle.
Blood was oozing out of his wounded leg. She ripped the scarf off her neck and began to tie a quick tourniquet over the bloody wound. Arky whimpered in agony.
“You’ll be okay,” she said, pressing her hands firmly against the tourniquet.
“The boy alive?” Mr. Arman bellowed across from her. Incoming bullets ricocheted from the pillar beside his old, wispy head, yet he barely seemed to notice.
“Leave him! Forget the old man! I want Fairbird! How hard is it, she’s just a damn girl!” General Rudyard thundered.
Hessy was not prepared for the soldier that came sprinting round the pillar at her.
She was knocked down by the soldier and as she landed flat on her back, she saw who was on top of her. It was Abe Hall. There was a snap in his sanity as he pulled a dagger from his belt. She pushed at his face, trying her best to get free.
The blade pressed hard against Hessy’s collarbone.
She grabbed his wrist in both hands, trying to stop him from slicing her throat.
“Abe, don’t!” Arky yelled, unable to recover from his bullet wound quick enough to reach her.
Abe’s eyes lifted, distracted as someone landed beside them. Abe was thrown off Hessy so hard, he hit his head against the bullet riddled pillar and fell in an unconscious heap.
Hessy caught sight of Raphael. He looked utterly murderous as he pulled her to her feet. He shocked her as he put a gentle a hand against her cut.
“You okay?” he demanded, breathing heavily.
“Hold your fire!” General Rudyard commanded. “Lieutenant Halcrow, is that you?”
Raphael tensed as he turned to face his former superior.
“You’re awake?” Rudyard said in wonder, his green eyes glittering excited. He looked at Raphael like he was looking at a son, but in a creepy way. “I wasn’t sure if it would work.”
Hessy looked to Mr. Arman. He looked back at her with uncertainty and shrugged his shoulders. The gunfire fell silent for a moment.
“What have you done to me?” Raphael said in a low voice, his fury intense.
“With you, I now have the perfect weapon,” General Rudyard said. He moved closer to Raphael but when he saw his normal amber eye, his wonder quickly turned to disgust.
“Damn that Vitzal,” he muttered, raising his pistol.
Mr. Arman raised his own and fired first. For a fraction of a second, Hessy thought he had missed but moments later she saw what he had intended to do. The bullet struck its intended mark, an aircraft’s burner. Raphael’s burly form shielded Hessy and the injured Nattie from the explosion. A thick black smoke gave them momentary cover.
Mr. Arman came limping over to them, wheezing out of breath. “Leave Craggen for now, we need to get off the mountain!”
“Not without Nattie,” Hessy said.
He whacked Arky with his cane. “Up boy, it’s just a flesh wound. Help me with Miss Song,” he said, nodding down at her. “We should regroup in the far north where our allies are. It’ll be safe.”
“Scerah?” Raphael said.
“Right you are, boy. Now dissipate! Take an aircraft out of here.”
The soldiers had somewhat recovered, and some began opening fire again.
Raphael flung Hessy forward. She went into a full out sprint, drawing the attention of the militia, hoping Arky and Mr. Arman had enough time to take Nattie to safety.
“Which craft!” Raphael yelled, hurrying to one of the few remaining ones left standing.
“That one! The Bluetip there!” Hessy said, pointing to the one that Maps was on. She saw the cub standing on his back legs, his nose pressed against the glass looking out at all the mayhem.
She leapt onto the wing and into the cockpit. She hurried past the navigation station and into the engine room. Maps gave a deafening yowl when he caught sight of her and started to scramble up her legs. Poor thing was shaking.
“It’s okay Maps, you’re okay,” she quickly soothed him.
Discarded tools lay sprawled on the floor, clearly someone had been trying to mend the craft previously and Hessy hoped that they had done a decent job. She flung her satchel down on the floor and began opening valves.
The engine made a horrid screech and spewed out a handful of smoke in Hessy’s face. The Bluetip jostled her from side to side as it began to lift.
Hessy crawled out of the engine room a little unsteadily and climbed the small ladder into the navigation station.
Raphael was hunched at the controls, but he didn’t look happy.
“What the hell is wrong with this thing?” he demanded as he fought the aircraft.
“I don’t know,” Hessy admitted. “It’s been here for years, we’ve all at one point been trying to mend it. It’ll fly.”
What sounded like hail started to hammer deafeningly off the roof and sides of the craft. She flinched when a bullet grazed the cockpit glass near her face.
“They’re on us!” Hessy yelled in a panic.
“I know,” Raphael muttered, glancing out the side window.
There was a blinding blaze as the fighter craft’s offensive cannons opened fire.
“Just hang on,” Raphael said as he swung the Bluetip in a spiraling downward circle that pushed Hessy back and made her stomach turn.
A sudden boom threw her into the control panel. With her nose to the pressure levels she could see that one something had just gone wrong with the engine.
“We have to set her down!” Hessy warned.
Raphael flew the Bluetip hard to the left, then right and back again. Just then a militia craft dove into their path and came head on at them, a definite collision. Raphael unexpectedly did something that made Hessy’s heart stop.
He steered the Bluetip in a steep nosedive.
It dipped slowly at first. They almost managed to evade the oncoming lifeboat. Unfortunately, it plowed straight through one of the main propellers, doing the damage.
“Hold on!” Raphael called, fighting with the controls, trying to avoid the dangerous spiral. They drifted off course, Craggen not even visible now. Strong northern winds were pushing them into a steadily evolving autumn storm. Raphael was trying his best to avoid the dark thunder clouds that they were being swept toward.
Hessy gripped the edges of the seat tightly, her nails bending against the old leather. “Great Jupiter.”
Raphael glanced at her, his scarred face twisted uneven. There was fear in his eye. “Hold on, Hessy.”
Lost
The power of the sky, so changeable from one second to the next, was something even the greatest airman couldn’t conquer. And against such a natural disaster, they were completely at the mercy of Jupiter’s Domain. The winds pushed their craft, now moving as light as a leaf, upwards into a cyclone. They began to spin and Hessy simply closed her eyes. She was just going from one nightmare to the next. There was only so much luck any one person could have and with a broken aircraft she just didn’t see any way out of this one, not unless Jupiter showed them mercy.
She braced her hand against the cockpit wall, her eyes still closed. The sensation of being caught in this made her head spin. She heard the craft groan and screech as the storm ripped at its metal exterior.
Hessy was relieved when the cyclone spat them out.
Raphael never gave up. Flying on instinct alone, he tried to put distance between them and the storm before the winds took them up once more. He began another descent and Hessy had to admit, despite the current situation that he was one hell of a pilot.
Thick grey clouds obscured their vision and the compass was spinning wildly so Hessy wasn’t sure where they had come out.
Maps clawed his way up her legs and into her arms, crying and hissing. Hessy had no time to comfort him as something large and green shot up in front of them, appearing from out of the clouds. She yelped as a second green object appeared, dangerously close. It dawned on her that they weren’t in the clouds at all but a thick mist.
“Watch out! They’re trees,” she yelled the warning too late.
Raphael cursed, trying in vain to pull up. “We’re too close to the ground!”
The next tree clipped the Bluetip’s side hard enough for the airboat to spin rapidly out of control. Hessy closed her eyes, tightly hanging onto Maps.
***
Hessy opened her eyes, everything was hurting. Something sharp was digging into her bare chest. She looked down, expecting the worst, like a shard of the airboat embedded there or a broken spanner but it was Maps. He had dug his little claws into her, breaking her skin to secure his landing. His fluffy belly moved in and out as he breathed heavily, blue eyes wide.
“Ow,” Hessy winced, prying him off.
“Little bugger,” she said, as tiny beads of blood appeared.
“Hessy!”
Raphael helped her to her feet and steadied her when she felt her head pound.
“Let’s not do that ever again,” she told him lightly.
They emerged together into a sticky; heavy atmosphere filled with the dense mist. She peeled off her winter coat, already sweating. She looked above her and saw green vines dripping from above through the mist.
“Where are we?”
“I have no idea,” Raphael said, uneasily.
“What happened to the others?”
“I think I saw Mr. Arman’s aircraft get away fine. At least we know where he’s going,” Raphael said. “We should head there too as soon as possible; I have a friend there that could help us.”
Hessy inhaled and nodded.
“We should get our bearings maybe look for a town or village. We’ll be needing another airship,” Hessy said, but she saw he was distracted as he looked about them.
Raphael was getting edgy. He strode ahead of Hessy so fast that she almost lost him in the mist, making her think back onto that time on Magian.
“Why do I feel like we’ve been going around in circles?” she asked.
“In this mist everything just looks the same,” Raphael said.
Hessy was used to engine heat, fire from the furnaces and she’d even been sunburnt on Craggen. But this heat in the jungle was heavy and sticky. Her clothes were practically wet against her skin and sweat was making her wound sting. She didn’t think it was possible for her hair to get any frizzier as she attempted to wrestle it into a tie.
“Starsland and Craggen are in the North. We didn’t travel that far in the Bluetip did we? We must have landed on the other side of the ranges.”
“Yes. I know all that. It doesn’t help us,” he said
“I’m only saying-”
“Sshh.”
Hessy gave him a look. “Maybe if we check my maps again-”
“Sssshhhh!” Raphael said more forcibly.
She waited, biting the inside of her cheek.
“I thought I heard something,” he mumbled.
The mist swirled around Raphael’s ankles as he walked, sending wisps of it toward Hessy like pale, ghostly snakes. She couldn’t hear much at all, the only sounds of living creatures in this jungle appeared to be the two of them and Maps.
The pygmy tiger cub trotted behind Hessy, his little ears constantly swiveling to sounds they couldn’t pick up on. His blue eyes darted all around him, his head twitching like a bird. She was too busy looking over her shoulder at Maps to notice that Raphael had come to a halt. She collided into the back of him and fell on her backside amongst the visible green roots.
Raphael barely seemed to notice as he tensed. “I definitely heard something then.”
Hessy got to her feet. “What?”
He cocked his head to the side. He turned and put his finger to his lips.
The mist turned even more spooky as Hessy thought of something lurking concealed in it, just out of their sight. Maps sat on her feet, ears up. She looked all around her, the mist deceiving her eyes as shadows formed and moved.
At first, she didn’t realize that Raphael had gone until she found herself completely alone, circled in the mist. Hessy picked up Maps and ran blindly.
She tripped on a root, but hands shot out to steady her.
“I was only ahead of you,” he whispered. “Just be alert. We don’t know a thing about this place.”
“What did you hear?”
“I don’t know for sure.”
“You know people go crazy in places like these and I’ve checked but I don’t think this place is on my map.”
She huffed, taking out her atlas of central Rultia for the third time.
“There are places undiscovered still, it won’t be that uncommon if you can’t find it on there. How old is it anyway?” he asked.
“Not that old,” Hessy said, turning it round for him to see. “See, this is Craggen, we couldn’t have travelled that far?”
Raphael didn’t say anything as he frowned down at the map.
“It’s strange, no?”
“Your map is maybe a tad outdated,” he said but he didn’t sound sure.
She folded it away. “I guess.”
“Normally, I would suggest splitting up to cover more ground and get our bearings, but with a mist this thick, there’s no chance we’d find each other again.”
“Agreed, no splitting up.” Hessy nodded, glancing down to make sure Maps was still with them.
They walked in silence for a while but Hessy couldn’t help bringing up the question Raphael kept avoiding.
“So, who is your friend? The one in Starsland?”
“Someone I grew up with. Someone I trust. Allies of your harbor town.”
“I can’t see people from Starsland going against the militia though, no offence,” she said.
“Well I do take offence. You like to judge quickly; you haven’t even been there and you’re judging us all.”
“Not them all, just the ones I’ve met,” she said thinking of the aristocrats that had docked at Craggen that one day. Their aircraft had been the only tolerable thing about them.
He turned towards her.
“Look,” he said firmly. “You don’t need to know everything about my past.”
Raphael didn’t wait for an answer and walked off. Maps loped after him a little wobbly on his paws, his copper tail twitching from side to side. She wondered if he had damaged it on landing. Hessy watched the cub, making a mental note to hurry and get started on another tail.
She took a step forward at the same moment Raphael and Maps vanished, the ground swallowing them whole.
Hessy carefully hurried along the red path until she reached a vast gaping hole twice the width of the Bluetip and even deeper. She walked to the edge of the hole and peered down into a dug-out pit.
Down at the bottom Raphael looked up at her covered in red dirt but he looked unharmed.
“Are you okay?” Hessy called down.
He attempted to scramble up the vertical edges. After a few tries and fails he thumped his fist into the compacted earth. Hessy thought she felt the ground shudder.
Maps yowled up at her.
“Hang on!” she called down to him. She stepped back from the hole. How in great damnation was she supposed to get him out of there? She looked at the surrounding jungle. Noises were steadily creeping closer with every second that passed. Eerie crickets played their sad songs and once or twice Hessy thought she heard a monkey call.
