The nacelles coughed and shuddered, and the Roslyn Dawn raced into the air. David’s ears popped and he clutched at the armrests. Kara Jade worked furiously at the controls, venting gas and releasing ballast, pushing the Roslyn Dawn as far as she dared.
“If you don’t get it right, the lack of air pressure can burst the gas bladders,” she said to no one in particular. “And that is not a good thing. Kill an Aerokin quick smart. Foolish man, entering the Roil like it’s his right.”
There was another flash, however, this time, they were much further from it. David watched the great ball of fire hurtle past then plummet back down into the Roil. Something else caught his eye, a distant glint in the sky to the south that shot from east to west.
“What’s that?” he asked, pointing south west with a shaking hand.
It rushed past again (or at least he thought it rushed past) and was gone.
“Your imagination,” Kara Jade said. “Now quiet all of you. I need to concentrate.”
“What did you see?” Margaret asked, her voice uneasy.
David looked at her suspiciously. Just what did she know?
“I’m not sure what it was, but it’s gone now.”
Still, David stared south, eyes straining to see through all that murk. But nothing passed that way again.
The shift from Roil to sunlight was abrupt.
David’s eyes watered as he looked out beyond the shuddering edge of the Obsidian Curtain. Rain fell on the hills a hundred miles north of Chapman. A little to the west of those low hills Lake Uhl gleamed. A normal day, an unthreatened day, until he turned his head and the Roil was there behind him.
Even when he did not turn, it remained. Sunshine failed to scour from him what he had seen, the darkness had poisoned his world.
A ball of fire burst from the Roil, sailing past the Roslyn Dawn , it described a steep arc that ended in the deserted suburbs where it struck a building setting it alight, then another and another followed until a whole block blazed.
“Those heat sinks, how did they build them so fast?” Margaret asked. “They weren’t there a few days ago.”
Cadell grinned darkly. “Disturbing, isn’t it? I have my suspicions, Margaret, but none of them are good. Nor are they helpful at this time.” He turned to Kara. “Land this as quickly as you can.”
Kara grunted in response.
“What does he mean?” David asked Margaret. “What does he mean that could make this more disturbing than it already is?”
“Vastkind,” Margaret said. “I think that’s where his thoughts lead him.”
“Vastkind?” Here was something David had never heard of, and Margaret seemed surprised. “Beneath the crust, where all is heat and even the stone melts and becomes a kind of liquid fire – the burning yolk of the world. There the old, old books say, dwells the Vastkind, a proto-roilbeast. An Ur-beast for it is from the fire that the Roil was sprung, whether through the dark designs of the Master Engineers or nature, the books do not know. But they’re big, terribly big.”
David nodded his head and shivered. “I don’t like the sound of that at all. At least, up here, we’re relatively safe.”
“We’re not safe yet, relative or otherwise,” Kara Jade said. “The bastards on the wall have started firing at us.”
She pointed behind her where flags hung from the wall. “Quick, the red and the grey flag and the green one two. Wave them out the port window.”
David grabbed the flags and did as he was told.
The firing stopped, but not before a shell glanced off the starboard nacelle. The Roslyn Dawn moaned.
Kara Jade cursed at that. “Whores of Argent Lane, if they’ve hurt my darling Dawn, the Council of Chapman will pay in blood.”
CHAPMAN FIELD OF FLIGHT ,TWO MILES NORTH OF THE ROIL
The Dawn landed gently in the Field of Flight followed by two military Aerokin, their big guns trained upon her as people below hosed cold water on her carapace. It was the longest part of their brief journey. Ships and Aerokin were still arriving for tomorrow’s launch and they had to wait their turn. When at last the Dawn had touched down, the Aerokin gave a great shuddering of relief.
“I know, I know, my darling,” Kara Jade said.
“We all know,” Cadell said.
Upon landing they were subjected to the ice test. David found it just as nerve wracking this time. How could you really know if the Witmoths had infected you? He had heard that the process was agony, but what if it had grown subtler? He was relieved when nothing more than a wet shirtsleeve resulted. Once given the all clear, the military Aerokin pulled away, swinging around to the perimeter of the city.
A crowd of Drifters waited, wide-eyed and cheering.
They think we are heroes, David thought. When all we did was drop in and run. Hero? I have never been more scared in my entire life. There is nothing I would rather be doing right now than running and not stopping until I am as far away from here as possible, and then running some more.
The moment the test was completed Cadell strode towards the city, pushing through the crowd as he went.
“Where are you going?” David shouted and Cadell stopped, his gaze dark and hard. David quailed beneath that glare, wished he had not asked.
“To the Tower of the Council of Engineers. I have seen what I needed to see, and more. The city must be evacuated, not tomorrow or the next day, but now. Get to the hotel and gather your things. We leave as soon as I return. And if I do not return within twenty four hours, leave without me. Get as far from this damn thing as you can, Kara Jade is paid to take you to Hardacre.”
The crowd closed around him and he was gone from sight.
“Be careful,” David said to Cadell’s back.
Kara Jade patted David on the shoulder, almost jovial. She’d just checked over the Aerokin’s wounds and they’d obviously proven not as bad as she’d feared. “He’s just going to the tower. He’ll be fine. It’s not as if he’s walking back into the Roil.”
No, David thought. He’s going to a different sort of trouble. Different but trouble nonetheless.
Blake and Steel came over from their own ships and both slapped Kara Jade’s back heartily.
“Never in my life have I seen such bravery and stupidity,” Blake said, tugging on his beard. “We went up a little and followed you with our scopes. Through the curtain, into the darkness and we thought you dead regardless of the Roslyn Dawn’s genotype. Bravery and stupidity I say, and in equal measure. But then we’ve learnt to expect it from you, and her.”
“We are all stupid being here,” Kara said as she guided the Dawn’s flagella to the docking bollards. David admired the care she used in looking after the Dawn. “It was both brave and stupid indeed, but we have learnt something. The Roil transforms what it touches, it’s what it does, and it has transformed my heart, magnified my fears.” She looked at her two friends and the next words that came were urgent and troubled. “The Roil has amassed a huge army, bigger than anything that I have seen. Just beyond the Obsidian Curtain, obscured in countless spores, is encamped Chapman’s doom.”
“An Army?” Blake shook his head and raised his hands as though to block out the memory of the words. “This is madness, what does the Roil need of an army? Its great cloud is potent enough, this is cruelty itself, when it starts imitating the ways of humans. Still Drift stands above it all, we are not overly threatened.”
Kara’s face tightened and she stabbed a finger at both of them.
“You are fools if you believe that. Without the Groundlings the city of Drift is nothing. Where will we get our food? With whom shall we trade? And when the Roil closes all the lower skies and swallows the entire earth; when there is naught but Roil beneath us, what shall we do?”
Blake’s eyes widened and his face reddened with shame and a little anger.
“You’re right and I know it. But do you have to be so blunt, girl? After all what can we do?”
Steel who had remained silent through all of this now met Kara’s eye and there was a look in her face, a kind of resolve that almost matched the pilot’s. “I think I know,” she said. “This festival should float.”