Flying the Storm

33.





Bealach

“We should be right on it,” said Solomon, frustratedly.

“I don’t see anything,” said Fredrick.

Aiden squinted down at the slowly rotating landscape below. Big mountains, green with summer, hunched around the head of a sea loch. Looked pretty untouched to him. This landscape probably hadn’t seen much change since the last ice age.

“Nothing out here, either,” reported Aiden. He wasn’t going to admit it, but he was actually enjoying flying over Scotland. He’d never done it before. It was much more beautiful than he remembered.

“No roads,” Solomon muttered, “nothing.”

It didn’t seem too promising. It wasn’t the kind of place you would normally expect a warship to be built. No infrastructure, no workforce. Like Solomon said, nothing. The place looked pristine. Aiden would have been very surprised to learn that anything of any importance ever happened here.

“What if it’s hidden?” said Vika, on the spare headset.

“It will be hidden,” answered Solomon, as patiently as he could manage. “But you can’t hide everything with a project like this. There has to be something showing…”

The Iolaire’s four passengers sat in silence for a moment, watching the scenery. Aiden was conscious of the fact that they were wasting fuel quite heavily now, making wide circles around the head of the loch. He was sure Fredrick was aware of that as well.

“How are we for fuel?” Aiden asked.

“Two tonnes left.”

With two tonnes and an empty hold they could fly several hundred kilometres. It wasn’t quite time to worry, yet. It was the Scottish price of ‘nol he dreaded. The longer they loitered, the more it would end up costing them. Aiden had long since learned the value of being frugal.

“Try to the south,” suggested Solomon. Fredrick complied and the Iolaire levelled out heading south across the narrow loch. Aiden faced north now. He watched the mountains as they passed by beneath him. The sky was bright blue above him, but a humid haze blurred the mountains on the horizon. Why had there not been more weather like this when he’d lived here?

“Anything?” asked Fredrick.

“Not a thing,” replied Solomon. He didn’t sound angry, just disappointed.

Then something caught Aiden’s eye, to the north of the loch, where the layers of hills folded into one another. A little grey speck, lighter coloured than the rest of the landscape. Could have been nothing: a boulder or a ruined croft or something, but he was too far away to tell.

“I see something back to the north,” he reported. “Might just be a pile of rocks, though.”

Fredrick banked the Iolaire back around. Aiden unbuckled himself from his turret, clambered down into the hold and ran to the cockpit.

He squeezed past Vika at the door and pointed out of the glass. Fredrick and Solomon followed his finger. Fredrick gave him a thumbs-up and pointed the Iolaire at the tiny grey object.

Aiden headed back to his turret.

“It’s an aircraft,” Fredrick said.

Aiden could imagine Solomon sitting forwards in his seat. Someone got here before you. He wanted to laugh. It would serve the bastard right for going behind Fredrick’s back with Vika.

Though it would mean the chance of stopping the Gilgamesh had slipped away, Aiden might have liked it if the Enkidu wasn’t to be found. Let the bastard taste some disappointment. But then an uncomfortable thought crept up on him. Was he truly just angry for his friend, or was this still jealousy over Vika?

When he put it like that, he didn’t know.

The Iolaire reared and slowed, its engines vectoring upwards. “Bring us down tail-first so I can watch the bealach,” said Aiden.

“English, please,” returned Fredrick. He always enjoyed catching Aiden’s little slips.

“Sorry,” said Aiden. Maybe it was just something about being back in Scotland. “Bring us down so I can cover the aircraft in the pass.”

The Iolaire yawed about as it came to a hover, a few hundred metres above the aircraft sitting on the high saddle between two peaks. The Iolaire dropped below the level of the peaks then, and slowly, gently lowered itself to the saddle.

Aiden watched the aircraft closely all the way down. His crosshair did not leave its cockpit. It was a twin-engine transport, smaller than the Iolaire, repurposed from an old counter-insurgency strike craft. Aiden vaguely recognised the model. Something unmistakeable, however, was its markings.

“It belongs to the Gilgamesh,” he announced.

“I feared as much.” Solomon no longer sounded disappointed, only impatient. “At least this may mean we have the right place.”

“They know about the Enkidu?”

“Well, if I was able to work it out by myself, I’m sure with a big enough team even the bone-headed brass on the Gilgamesh could have.”

“But why right now?” asked Aiden. Twenty years the Enkidu had sat since the war, presumably with nobody uncovering it.

“Well…” started Solomon. “It may have something to do with a burst communication I sent recently. I had to find a working satellite and repurpose it for the transmission, broadcasting the command regularly as it orbited… status requests using old acceptance codes… but I got a response. A packet of data… telemetry, housekeeping… meaningless really. That wasn’t important. What was important was that I could pinpoint its source. Here. Within an error of a few kilometres.”

“So you got it to broadcast its location? To the whole bloody world?”

“Well yes, but… only if you were listening for it. I was listening for it.”

“And so was the bloody Gilgamesh, by the look of it!” Aiden was going to lose his temper. This was not good. The Gilgamesh knew where the Enkidu was. They’d sent a team to find it.

The Iolaire stopped descending. It hovered perfectly still, twenty metres or so above the wash-blasted grass.

“Do I land or not?” asked Fredrick.

“I don’t know,” answered Aiden. “There could be bloody marines around here for all we know. And if they’re within five klicks, they’ll have heard us coming.”

“Land and let me out,” said Solomon then. “I don’t expect anybody to come with me.”

Fredrick lowered the Iolaire the last little distance to the ground. The landing gear sank into the soft grass. Thankfully the wheels were oversized for just this kind of landing. The rotors started to spin down as Fredrick tested the surface, making sure the Iolaire didn’t sink in too far.

“How long do you reckon it’s been here?” Aiden asked as the engines stared to quieten. His gun still pointed at the aircraft a hundred metres across the saddle from them.

“Hard to say,” replied Solomon. “I don’t think they’ll have much of a head start on us… a week at most.”

“A week?” A week was a bloody long time. The Enkidu could be gone, off south to join the Gilgamesh. The consequences of that were hard to comprehend.


“Yes, I received the transmission not much longer than a week ago.”

“Well this just gets better and better.”

The cargo ramp opened, and Solomon went out. Vika followed behind him. They headed across the pass towards the other aircraft.

“I’m going with them,” said Aiden, standing at the door to the cockpit.

Fredrick looked at him then. He nodded finally. “I will stay with the Iolaire,” he said. He handed Aiden the portable radio. “Call if you need me.”

Aiden nodded to his friend, turned and left the cockpit. Into one pocket he stuffed the radio, switched off, and into the other he stuffed the silver pistol. He couldn’t say why he was going, exactly. Nobody would have blamed him if he stayed at the Iolaire. In fact, it would have been the sensible thing to do. Something in him, though, told him that he needed to see this thing through. He needed to finish this. He had to see if this Enkidu really existed. He had to know if it could really stop the Gilgamesh.

He caught the other two as they reached the Gilgamesh’s aircraft.

A crew hatch was open. Solomon poked his head inside and looked around, his large-calibre pistol in his hand. Vika stood with her own pistol out and ready. Aiden noted how she held it. Down and straight, probably just like her father had taught her.

Together, she and Aiden watched the surrounding slopes. They were strewn with boulders and scree: marines could have hidden anywhere. Aiden felt very exposed out on the pass.

A cool breeze was blowing up from the sea-loch side. Out to sea, dark clouds had formed on the horizon. The hazy, humid weather was brewing a storm out there, but above him the sky was blue and clear. He wished that he could have relaxed and appreciated the scenery just for a few minutes.

That would have been bloody nice.

“I don’t think it’s been here for very long,” said Solomon at last, ducking back out of the crew hatch.

Aiden just nodded, his eyes still on the slopes.

“Where is the crew?” asked Vika.

To that Solomon had no answer.

Aiden looked across the saddle to the opposite mountain. There were some truly massive boulders just where the saddle met the slope. A deer trail led its winding way across the saddle towards them.

It’s as good a bet as any.

“That way,” he said, pointing with his pistol. Solomon looked at the deer trail and the boulders then. They set off towards the rocks.

The rocks were larger close up. Some were bigger even than the Iolaire, wing tip to wing tip, Aiden reckoned. The deer trail ended at the base of one of the largest, where the rock seemed to overhang the slope a little. He squinted at it. Something about it didn’t look right.

Closer, he saw it. In at the back of the cave was a door. A bloody door in the mountain.

“I think I’ve found it,” he announced.

“Jesus Christ,” whispered Solomon when he saw. Vika grinned widely. She squeezed Aiden’s shoulders tightly. It felt good. Despite everything, it felt really good.

Solomon went first into the cave, ducking under the lip of the boulder so that his rucksack scraped against the rock. Vika went next, with Aiden last. He turned a final time before going under the rock, and took the radio from his pocket.

“We’ve found a bloody door,” he said.

“Wow,” replied Fredrick. “Maybe this isn’t all bullshit then.”

Inside, the ground dropped slightly so that Aiden could more or less stand up straight beneath the boulder. Solomon had prised the little door open and was shining a torch into the gloom beyond. It was a long, narrow corridor, cut straight into the rock. The torchlight didn’t show what lay at the end. They stepped into the darkness, following Solomon’s lead.

It took an unexpectedly long time to reach the other end, picking their way along the tunnel. When they did, Solomon fiddled with a keypad by a huge steel door. The door slid open quietly, and the trio went into the dark chamber beyond.

Suddenly there were lights: blue and only just bright enough to make out the layout of the chamber. It was tall and long, with many doors leading off to the sides and one at the far end; all closed. As if he knew where he was going, Solomon set off at a stride across the concrete floor. He put away his torch, but the big pistol stayed firmly in his hand. Aiden felt his own pistol, just to make sure it was still there.

By the faraway door, a dim monitor glowed in the wall. As they drew close, Aiden could read the message it was flashing.

Security Exception.

Over and over and over.

Solomon stood for a moment, considering the panel. “Well, this wasn’t us at least…” he murmured, before tapping at buttons on the screen. Aiden tried to catch a look over Solomon’s shoulder, but he’d hidden it too well.

After a few moments the door hissed open, sliding upwards like the other one. Beyond was darkness. Again, Solomon strode into it without wasting any time. The blue lights came on in the corridor beyond, and as Vika and Aiden followed the chamber behind them darkened.

It was stuffy in there. Warm and unpleasant-smelling… like an old subway tunnel. It reminded Aiden suddenly that he was inside a mountain. The smell and the warmth and the weight of all the rock above him were telling him that this was somewhere he did not want to be. But he followed Solomon’s lead and hurried after him, his ears straining past the sound of their footsteps to listen for anything that might indicate marines… or anything else that might be lurking in the depths.

The corridor began to spiral, following a big, wide corkscrew down deeper into the mountain. Solomon was almost jogging now, and Aiden was struggling to keep up. Vika’s legs were slightly shorter, so she was already more or less at a run next to him. He glanced over at her, noting how set her face was. She looked determined, her jaw set and her eyes almost glowing green. Looking at her then, he couldn’t imagine a face more perfect. She seemed more beautiful every time he saw her.

That wasn’t bloody fair.

And then they really were running. It started with Solomon, but the others fell into step almost immediately. It was a strange feeling as they pounded along the stone corridors, legs pumping. Aiden let the pace carry him. He forgot his misgivings. They were a pack then: a wolf-pack of three.

Suddenly there were more doors in front of them. All were closed. Solomon halted and flicked his head this way and that, looking at each in turn.

“If in doubt…” he said quietly, approaching the middle door. A press of a button and it slid open. There was a wash of stale, warm air. The smell was worse down here, but after the run Aiden had no choice except to pant it in. Solomon, he noticed, was not breathing any more heavily than before.

This tunnel twisted and turned infuriatingly. A few closed doors led off to the sides, but Solomon didn’t pay any more than a passing glance to them. With each turn, more blue lights came on, and the ones behind went out. It was a little unnerving and creepy. Energy efficient, though. Aiden supposed this place had to be, for the batteries to have lasted twenty years.

The corridor went straight all of a sudden. The blue lights flicked on. At the end was very definitely a body. Almost as one, the three pistols were raised. They advanced slowly along the corridor to where the corpse lay face-down by another door. The floor was scuffed in places with shallow gouges, ruining the polished surface. Bullet impacts.

Solomon squatted down by its side. The body had been dead for some time. The pool of blood under its head was dry and brown. Aiden wondered if the corpse was the source of the bad smell. Big, crusted holes gaped in its back. Solomon pinched the body’s shoulder patch, pulling it upwards a little to show Aiden and Vika.


Two badges. One the stars of the NAU, one that said NAUS Gilgamesh.

Nobody said a word.

Solomon dialled the door open. Immediately the stench worsened. As they stepped into the next corridor and the lights came on, they spotted more bodies at the end. From a distance, they didn’t look quite right. The proportions were wrong.

Closer up, he saw that they were mutilated.

For whatever reason, they had been blasted to pieces with large-calibre bullets. The wounds were not unlike those the Iolaire’s gun had inflicted on the bandits in Georgia. The head of the body propped against the wall was gone, mostly. Its stomach was swollen and burst, and the floor was stained black. That was where the stench was coming from, Aiden realised. He fought back a heave. What did this?

The monitor by the door was flashing. Security Exception. Over and over and over.

Glancing back the way they’d came, he noticed the lights in the previous corridor hadn’t gone out yet. That was odd. Maybe the corpse is keeping them on.

As he turned his head away, though, he could have sworn he caught some movement. Just at the crack of the doorway. He shivered. It was probably his imagination, he half-convinced himself.

He made himself edge around the bodies and the black stain, to where Solomon and Vika were standing by the monitor. Vika held one of her sleeves across her mouth and nose, but Solomon seemed unaffected. He was engrossed in whatever he was doing on the screen.

“Somebody screwed up here,” he said, tapping away. “This is where the exception was triggered.”

No shit, thought Aiden, eyeing the shredded corpses behind him.

“What…what did this?” asked Vika, her words muffled by her sleeve.

Solomon pointed above the door then, not even looking from the screen. “Automated turrets,” he replied. “They fold out of the wall.”

Solomon seemed to know a lot about this place for somebody who wasn’t sure what he was looking for just ten minutes ago. He’d been an engineer, he said, for the union  . Maybe this sort of thing was standard issue for top-secret factories.

Brutal.

“Think you can get in?” said Aiden, trying not to open his mouth too widely.

Solomon said nothing for a moment. “I think I can, yes.”

“Well, you know, quicker the better,” muttered Aiden, taking a leaf from Vika’s book and using his sleeve as a mask.

It seemed like forever before the door opened, standing in the silent, stinking tunnel with the dead men. But it did open, and beyond lay another corridor. It was short and straight this time, and beyond it Aiden could only see a black void.

Solomon was grinning. He set off almost at a run along the corridor, unafraid of the darkness at the other end. Vika and Aiden followed him, and the door stayed open behind them. That was good since Aiden didn’t like having his route out blocked.

The corridor ended at a metal walkway, beyond the railing of which nothing could be seen. From the lingering echoes of their footsteps on the metal grill, the chamber sounded huge. It was darker than Aiden thought possible, and the weak blue light from the corridor did nothing to push it back, seeming to stop short at the railing.

Solomon was tapping away at another wall-mounted monitor. Vika, pistol still held in front of her, gingerly stepped over to the railing and peered into the darkness. Aiden tried it himself, but he didn’t like the feeling. It was like an abyss out there, waiting to pull him over the edge. He shuddered.

“Let there be light,” said Solomon triumphantly, and just as he did the chamber flickered into startlingly bright shape, from huge strips of lights set in the high stone ceiling.

The chamber was even vaster than it had sounded. It stretched easily three hundred metres to its far end, where a huge set of rolling doors stood, but it was what lay in the middle of the chamber that drew Aiden’s gaze.

There, propped on massive struts, was the Enkidu.

It was gigantic. Not anywhere near as large as the Gilgamesh, but still impressively huge: it was easily half as long as the chamber, and a third as wide. The gantry that Aiden was standing on must have been fifty metres at least from the floor, but even then the Enkidu was a good few tens of metres taller than them. Its prow was sharpened, streamlined and faceted, and it gave the impression of some great beast of the sea; a leviathan or some monstrous whale. Just below the prow were two great holes cut in the skin of the craft. Railguns, Aiden knew. Their calibre must have been half a metre.

He realised he was gaping, and snapped his mouth closed.

Solomon gave a short laugh, and raised his arms out to the sides, as if basking in the huge machine’s presence. Vika was just as awestruck as Aiden had been, her pistol hanging almost forgotten by her side.

“She is beautiful,” exclaimed Solomon, letting his hands drop. “My god.”

Huge robotic arms were mounted to the walls and ceiling of the chamber. Each carried a range of smaller ones at its end, and all were folded back from the warship. Aiden realised then that one of the reasons no one had ever heard of the Enkidu was that it had been built almost entirely without people. At most, this place would only need a handful of engineers or overseers making sure the robots did their work correctly. It was possible that humans weren’t even involved in maintaining the robots: that could all be done with other robots. If he was going to build a top-secret stealth warship; that would be how Aiden wanted it done.

He was looking along the walkway, where to one side of the Enkidu it turned into a gangway that led aboard, when he noticed Solomon was facing him. The man was holding his big pistol out, pointing it casually at him.

“What…” Aiden started.

“I’m afraid this is as far as you go,” Solomon said. “Vika, could you kindly take the pistol from his pocket?”

Vika came forward then and fished the little silver pistol from Aiden’s baggy trousers. Her face was deadpan. She showed no emotions.

She was in on it.

“Well do it then,” hissed Aiden through clenched teeth. “Pull the bloody trigger.”

Solomon laughed. “Why? You are no threat, not now. You served your purpose, body-guarding us from any nasty marines. But now, you have done what you came to do. You have seen the Enkidu. Please leave.”

Leave. Why was he telling him to leave? What difference did it make if he was there or not?

“Why?”

“Because the Enkidu is mine, Aiden. I can’t have you meddling and ruining things. Go back, now.”

Then it dawned on Aiden. He wasn’t taking the Enkidu to go after the Gilgamesh. He was taking it for himself. It could be piloted by one man, he’d said. One man could wield all that power.

And Fredrick and Aiden had just handed it to him.

“All you said about destroying the Gilgamesh, it was all bullshit.”

“Not all bullshit, no. The Enkidu could certainly kill the Gilgamesh… but the two will never meet. This is too great an opportunity to risk on some fool’s mission. You can tell Teimuraz that he has my thanks. He won’t be seeing me again.”

“And you, Vika?” demanded Aiden. “You’re with him?”

“Get out, Aiden,” warned Solomon, “before I lose my patience.”

The only expression Vika showed was a little scorning raise of her eyebrows, like she was looking at a fool.

That made Aiden very angry. He was fighting to control himself. He wanted to snatch the big gun from Solomon’s hand and smash their smug faces to pulp with it.

Instead, he took a breath and backed out of the chamber, along the corridor to the dead men’s tunnel. Solomon kept the gun trained on him the whole way back and thumbed the wall monitor to close the door on Aiden.


The last thing Aiden saw of Solomon was a little sarcastic wave, with Vika standing infuriatingly by his side. She was still beautiful; still achingly perfect. But now Aiden knew she was a harpy. A she-devil.

A traitorous bitch.

The door slid closed and locked tight, and Aiden was alone with the corpses and the stink.

He stood there, fuming at what had just happened. He couldn’t quite process it. He had just let a second Gilgamesh loose on the world.

The bastard hadn’t even paid them fully. Aiden shouted a curse at the ceiling.

And suddenly he wasn’t alone in the tunnel any more. A creeping feeling at his back told him that. He spun on his heels, ready to fight.

There was a person standing timidly, just beyond the farthest corpse.

It was a boy, no older than fourteen, and small for that. Small and skinny. His thin frame was almost drowned in an oversized flight suit.

“Who the bloody hell are you?” cried Aiden.

The boy looked at him with surprise, like he hadn’t expected Aiden to talk.

“Hammit,” he said, his voice quavering with adolescence. “I’m Hammit.”