The Dogs of War (SkyLine 3)

“Most of it is, far as I understand,” Sophia recalled from her previous assignment. She clicked her helmet onto the collar of the suit on her shoulders. “But the Pillar’s still under construction. The lower floors are exposed. I figure the Dragon base has to be below those, or we’d have known about it sooner.”

“Fair enough,” Kalus considered. He locked his suit on, along with his Captain and comrades. Together, the four headed down the stairs.

Aside from the brass rail that spiraled down alongside the stairs, most of Deepcloud Tower was made from the same condensed yellow-orange alloys as the rest of Nimbus. The occasional imported steel support jutted out from the wall, but most of it had been forged from local sources. In the dim service lights every eight steps or so, the place had an eerie feel somewhere between sickly and ancient, despite the fact that it was unfinished.

“So…” Kalus made it ten stories deep, counting by tall, thick window panes, without exercising his muscle of conversation. At the first note of his voice, Sophia and Demi sighed. Both of them had been waiting for his patience to expire. “What?”

“No…please, Kalus, fill the eerily empty Pillar with the music of your voice,” Sophia groaned.

“Gladly. Count me off, Howard,” Kalus shot back.

“Er… One, two, three, four?” Howard answered instinctually. Demi and Sophia stifled any urge to chuckle. They were just glad Kalus didn’t actually sing, when he started again.

“How far does this thing go down?”

“Last time I was here, eight miles,” Sophia told him. Her voice weighed heavy with the revelation it carried, with how far they still had to go. “It probably goes deeper now.” A groan climbed from Kalus’ throat before he could smother it.

Kalus bit his tongue, both literally and figuratively. He kept himself quiet as long as he could, which was about an hour. In that time, they descended countless identical floors watching the swirling wall of clouds climb outside the windows. They gazed down the boundless throat of darkness that swallowed the space in the center of the spiral stairs as they pattered their way through cones of yellow light, into shadow and back again. Even when they passed the first smear of blood down the wall, they hardly spared a gasp. At the second, third and every one after, they were quiet, solemn. Every one of the Dogs was surprised by the voice that eventually broke the silence of it.

“Mist in the air!” Howard shouted. The unprecedented volume and urgency made everyone jump in place. He covered his mouth with his shirt in one hand, flinging a pointing finger from the other. Howard pointed at a yellow light cone, which swam with twisting blackness. “Machaeus! Cover your helmet vents!”

“Yes, do. So you’re more apt to listen than speak,” said Sophia, in a voice that was only half her own. Layered with the uncertain authority and genuine loyalty of her usual voice was a baritone frequency that belonged to something else. The rest of the Dogs turned in toward her. They found her eyes swirling with black fog around the rims.

“Machaeus,” Demi growled through his blocking hand.

“The Dogs of War,” Machaeus greeted in turn, “We’ve met once before, through a mutual associate we share. King of the Dragons, Donellanus.”

“Right, he invited us for drinks,” Kalu

s snapped. He jerked up his arm with the inscribed location of the Dragon base. Machaeus smiled, with Sophia’s lips.

“It turns out our mutual acquaintance miscalculated just how much drink we have to share. We can no longer accommodate all of you.” The dark, twisted voice fell from her lips with a drip of thick tar; “The rest of you are welcome to join the rest of my associates at our new facility on Mercury.”

“Mercury? The hell is there?” Kalus barked. He took an instinctual step toward Sophia, hand outstretched to pull her away from the rail. That only pushed the girl another step back. Her hips touched the brass rail.

“You’ll have to attend to know. To facilitate your dispersion to one facility or the other, I present the Dogs of War a choice. What will you save?” Machaeus asked, even while it made Sophia lean slightly back. “A friend? Or everything?” Sophia’s darkened eyes closed. She slipped backward, over the rail.

“Sophia!” Demi screamed. He jerked forward, a grasping hand inches behind the collar of her survival suit. Sophia plunged straight down the throat of Deepcloud Pillar. Could Kalus have stopped to think on what he was doing, he wouldn’t have believed himself. His feet launched without thought for why. His lips moved without knowing what would come out of them.

“Go to Mercury,” Kalus said. He tucked his feet up to heave himself over the rail. Demi and Howard’s chests shot over to watch him fall. They stopped only in respect of the last thing Kalus had said. They might well have been his last words. Go to Mercury.

“Kalus…” Demi whimpered to the darkness that swallowed him.

Hundreds of cascading feet below, Kalus grappled with what he’d just done. He flung down past floor after floor of stony spirals. Light and darkness flashed by in a merging, diverging blur. In the disorienting chaos, he thought to reach for his boots all while searching for Sophia and swallowing his own mortality. Either he was going to feel a tiny switch on the heels of his boots, or they would die in Jupiter’s storm below. Kalus shut his eyes while he groped with his fingers. Where… is… dammit… he whimpered while he flung down through the air.

“There! Yes!” Kalus chirped when he felt the rock grips. He flipped the switch. Ten razor-sharp arrowheads spiked out from the bottom of each of his boots. Kalus turned his nose down. He tucked his arms and legs in tight to zip down faster. He closed the stony, spiral gap between himself and Sophia just before the two shot through the exposed, unfinished bottom of Deepcloud Pillar. The massive tower spat out two black specks into Jupiter’s infinite storm.

Kalus cradled Sophia in the tight curl of both arms. He straightened his legs out beneath him as a sail, to guide them through the thick, yellow-tinged air. When even the slightest shape rose from the gas storm, he pointed them toward it. Kalus hardly had time to glance the structure before it zipped past him. He just managed to dig his heels into the rocky base beneath it. Kalus’ rock grips bit into the stone. They chewed ten trenches down the side of an island floating in a yellow substance somewhere between gas and liquid, or perhaps both. This slowed his fall just enough to deposit Sophia on a passing staircase. Kalus kicked off the wall to aim his backside for a platform at the bottom of those same stairs.

He struck hard. His head bucked back to cough out the breath he’d been holding since he leaped. Kalus laid out on his back, searching the storm for the bottom of Deepcloud Pillar. Jupiter’s smog, however, was too thick. Instead, he crawled to the bottom of the staircase. He dragged himself halfway to Sophia before the building on top of the island towered into view through the thick haze. In his delirium and fear, Kalus thought it looked almost like a temple.

Chapter Eighteen: Gods and Men

“Kalus…” Demi mumbled into the darkness that had swallowed Kalus.

He stared straight down, world shaken too wildly to decide if he should jump, run down or wait for them to somehow rise back up. He wouldn’t have jumped without a plan…not for Sophia… Demi’s instincts told him. Then again, this wasn’t the same Kalus who left Earth wet behind the ears. Still, in seconds, his unit had halved itself. Now he was supposed to, what - leave? Demi didn’t realize how hard he gripped the brass guard rail until Howard touched his shoulder. He wheeled on the man, ready to trade fists. All that stopped him, that returned a fraction of his Captain’s composure, was the sudden clarity in Howard’s eyes. The eerie fusion of horror and focus in his face told of experience. He’d been in spots like this before. Times when right and wrong were reduced to weights on a scale of decision.

“He wouldn’t have jumped…without some idea of what to do,” said Howard. With that, the first weight thunked down on the scale. On one side: pursue their lost crew. On the other: heed Machaeus’ suggestion to save everything on Mercury.