Breeze Corinth (Book 1): Sky Shatter (10 page)

He shook his head. He couldn’t remember anything else.

He called out to Vermillion and Horton, but they didn’t respond. Puzzled as to what happened since he blacked out, he casually looked out the window and was stunned at how high they were flying. They had spent most of their journey flying at night, and at extremely low altitude to avoid detection. Now they were traveling in broad daylight amongst the clouds. Breeze marveled at the beauty of the crystal clear ocean below and could see the contours of the seabed with clusters of coral dotting the sandy bottom.

The smooth ocean surface merged into frothy whitecaps as an island came into view, its lush green surface a sharp contrast to the aquamarine ocean that surrounded it. The island stretched for several miles in length and was a few miles wide with a bay carved out of its eastern shore. There was a cluster of tall structures and buildings that hugged the shoreline of the bay. He noticed how its light blue waters merged into a dark blue as it streamed out into the ocean.

A strange feeling swept over him as he felt there was someone beneath the waves of the deep blue water. It was almost as if a young girl was calling his name...

The sudden high pitch whine of the engines broke his trance as the transport banked to port and began circling the island. As it descended from the clouds, he was able to get a better view of it. He could see a forest of palm trees that stretched from the lower center of the island to the west, where it ended at the edge of a landing facility. He could make out the shapes of various aerocraft spread out across the tarmac but wasn’t familiar with any of them. Like the transport, they were nothing at all like the aerocraft in Conception or any of the surrounding desert towns. Yet they all appeared to be decrepit and out of service despite their advanced designs and this intrigued him to no end.

The transport descended rapidly as the landing gear lowered, accompanied by the whine of hydraulic motors. Breeze gripped his seat as the ground rushed up to greet them when the engines throttled up, then feathered back down as the transport gently made contact with the ground. The ship shuddered as it settled down.

The engines came to a full stop, and the only sounds he could hear were the whistling of air from the vents as the air-conditioning struggled to pump cool air into the cabin, followed by the cargo door opening in the stern. He peered out the window and saw a dwarf walk quickly under the transport and out of sight.

He left his seat and headed to the cockpit to look for Vermillion and Horton. He opened the door and stepped inside. There was no one there, not even the pilot. He looked above the pilot’s seat and saw the hatch to his bunk was open. Breeze scrambled up the ladder and poked his head into the open hatchway. The moment he did, a soft, blue light flickered on.

He saw that the bunk was a tube with a metal slab for the pilot to lie on. There was no mattress or pillow. Where his head would lay was a metallic ring with wires streaming from it, and all were plugged into a console. The bunk was devoid of any pictures or decorations. Breeze knew the pilots back home would keep mementos and pictures of their sweethearts inside their cockpits. Here, there was nothing but cold steel, blue light and wires.

He felt uneasy and quickly climbed back down. He took one last look around the cockpit as a sense of déjà vu swept over him. He shook his head vigorously, hoping it would jog his memory and shed some more details about what had happened in here, then sighed as nothing was forthcoming. He stepped out of the cockpit and back into the cabin. He marched down the aisle towards the stern while scanning every row, half expecting to find the agents sleeping in the seats.

He arrived at the passenger compartments and stepped in his to retrieve his bag, then headed back to the bow of the ship. He was surprised to see sunlight pouring through an open hatch on the port side near the cockpit. He cautiously approached it and looked out. A set of stairs on wheels had been pushed up against the hull of the ship that lead down to the tarmac.

He took one step down and recoiled immediately. He never experienced such intense humidity, as he was accustomed to the dry heat of the desert. The air here felt like a thick and heavy soup in his lungs.

The sun was incredibly bright, and he raised a hand to shield his eyes to take in the surrounding landscape. The land was flat and stretched for a distance before it rose up sharply into the hills. The palm tree forest he saw earlier from the air was just beyond the edge of the landing facility. Gigantic white clouds that filled the sky were like mountains against a backdrop of brilliant blue. Off in the distance, an ominous storm was brewing on the horizon.

He scanned the tarmac and saw the odd shaped aerocraft he’d seen from the air. He ducked under the hull of the transport to get a closer look at them when he ran into a dwarf. The dwarf was not a pleasant sight to look at as he glared at Breeze with disgust.

Breeze was transfixed by his enormous eyes. When the dwarf would blink, it was as if the eyelids took an extra second or two to traverse the entire distance to the bottom and then back up. He wore coveralls that were shopworn and greasy, and his hair was a tangled mess with goggles that rested on his brow. For a second, Breeze thought he was looking at his father in miniature form.

The dwarf was supervising cargo that was being unloaded from the ship when Breeze bumped into him. Automated carts approached the transport while robotic arms mounted on the ceiling of the ship extended out and placed pallets of cargo onto them, and then the carts would scurry away to the hangars that lined the tarmac. The robotic arms retracted back into the cargo hold and reappeared with more pallets to be loaded onto the next automated cart.

The dwarf turned away from him and resumed removing boxes from one of the pallets and stacking them next to a pile of luggage. Breeze knew he had only brought his one bag. He assumed the luggage belonged to the agents, who were nowhere to be found.

“Could you possibly have any more bags, your highness?” the dwarf said in a gruff voice that sounded deeper than his actual size.

Breeze was stunned at how surreal everything felt. He had expected to be greeted by Oslo, but instead he was on a broiling hot tarmac talking to a dwarf. “Those are not mine,” he replied.

The dwarf grunted and continued to pull boxes from the pallet, stacking them in neat columns.

Breeze couldn’t help but stare. He had never seen anything at all like this dwarf. As he watched him pull box after box off the pallet, he began to realize how odd everything was. Why had he flown at night, then in what seemed like a snap of the fingers he landed on an island in broad daylight? He felt jittery and nervous when he held his hand up to his face and began waving it back and forth.

“Time dilation,” the dwarf said.

“Say again?”

The dwarf pulled down goggles with tinted lenses over his eyes. “We sometimes call it time stop. When you travel through the vortex, you get the sensation afterwards that time has ceased. Your mind and body have not caught up yet so you feel disjointed and out of place. Give yourself a little more time and your memory will catch up with you. Now get in the hover, I need to take you to the dormitories.” The dwarf grabbed the luggage and dragged it to a hover car that bobbed up and down with each gust of wind that swept in from the ocean.

Breeze stepped over to the vehicle and opened the door, almost pulling it off its hinges. The hover car was a rusting wreck, and it looked like it was barely operational. Breeze sat down inside, and the seat protested with a loud squeak. He pulled the door to close it, but it wouldn’t budge. He yanked hard to slam it shut.

“Don’t slam the doors! This hover is a classic,” the dwarf shouted angrily as he climbed into the vehicle, carefully closing his door. “Young people. No respect for anything. Oblivious to all your surroundings.” The dwarf continued grumbling as he mashed the throttle, sending them lurching forward.

“What’s your name?” Breeze asked as they accelerated down the tarmac.

“Excort,” the dwarf responded. He pushed down on the throttle until it hit the console. The hover leapt up and pinned Breeze into his seat

“Buckle up for safety!” Excort hollered above the roar of the slipstream.

Breeze pulled down on the harness straps and buckled in as the hover groaned and creaked with the motor whining at a full pitch.

He shouted at Excort. “Do we have to go this fast?”

The dwarf responded with a sharp turn to the right as the hover accelerated toward the forest of palm trees that lined the landing facility. The palms swayed wildly in the sea breeze as they approached.

Breeze gripped the handle that was bolted to the dashboard and shouted in surprise as the trees parted to clear a path for them when they raced into the palm forest. The hover creaked loudly as they bolted through the forest, though not one tree ever touched the car. He looked up and could barely see sunlight through the thick canopy, then glanced at Excort who had one hand on the steering wheel while the other hung lazily over the door. His goggles were pushed up and resting on his wide forehead and his eyes had a greenish glow to them.

Breeze looked forward and was overwhelmed with claustrophobia as the forest became denser. He almost passed out just as the hover flew out of the palm forest and into the brilliant sunshine.

He turned to say something to Excort, but stopped when he saw the grin on his face. The dwarf winked, then pulled his goggles down and shoved the steering wheel forward, sending the hover into a steep dive. Breeze heard a loud scream and realized it was coming from him as they plummeted straight down toward a lagoon, following the flow of a massive waterfall. The deafening sound of cascading water drowned out the whine of the engines as he held onto the handrail with a death grip.

The hover leveled out and they raced across the lagoon while trailing a rooster tail of water behind them. Breeze glared at the dwarf and saw how ridiculous the little man looked with his goggles over his eyes while sitting in an oversized seat with a booster under him so he could see over the console.

Up ahead was a sheer wall of rock with a surface pockmarked with craters. Excort mashed the throttles and the hover creaked and groaned faster toward it.

“What are you doing?” Breeze shouted.

Excort responded by whipping the steering wheel hard to the right, sending the hover into a barrel roll as it raced towards the rock face. The hover shuddered violently as bits of rusted metal peeled off and scattered across the lagoon.

The wall of rock swirled and formed a tunnel. They plunged into it, and Breeze closed his eyes as he gripped the handrail even tighter. When he dared to open them, he was greeted by inky blackness with brilliant stars high above. The rolling ceased, though he felt the same disorientation he experienced on the transport. Images of what happened just before he flew into the vortex with Vermillion and Horton came to the forefront of his mind as the fogginess in his head faded, and his memory returned.

The hover burst out of the tunnel as the dwarf threw the vehicle hard to the left, and descended along a road that hugged a hillside. Breeze leaned over to look down and was greeted by a spectacular view of the bay he had seen from the air. Its blue water was brilliant and the shoreline was dotted with a large tower surrounded by a cluster of smaller ones spread out across a campus. Majestic royal palms lined the avenues between the buildings.

Breeze couldn’t believe his eyes. He had never seen anything so beautiful before. He was used to buildings constructed from adobe and concrete as the desert was unforgiving and didn’t lend itself to amazing architecture.

“The campus is amazing,” he said to Excort.

The dwarf shrugged. “Looks can be deceiving.”

They drifted off the road and onto a path that seemed to stretch forever. Either side of it was lined with an impenetrable mixture of palm and ficus trees.

After several minutes, the hover coasted to a halt before a pair of massive gates. Breeze looked up at the canopy of sky high ficus that draped them from the glare of the sun. The powerful humidity made his skin feel as if it were steaming under his clothes, and sweat trickled down his face.

Excort pulled up to a console and typed in a series of codes onto a keypad. The gates didn’t budge.

“Shouldn’t you just get out and push them open?” Breeze said.

“I’ll do something better.” Excort eased the hover forward and pushed the nose of the vehicle against the gates. The gates bowed slightly inward, then sprang back, slamming into the hover and causing it to drift away.

Excort grumbled as he mashed down the throttle and bumped the gates repeatedly until they gave way with a squeal of grinding metal.

“Going to have to oil up the gears on that gate when I get the chance,” the dwarf muttered.

They whooshed down the path under an expansive canopy of towering ficus. Lining the path were statues and monuments nestled beneath heavy moss and vegetation.

The path merged into a wide boulevard lined with buildings, whose unique architecture lay hidden under a thick covering of ficus and vines. Breeze knew trying to enter any of them would require cutting equipment to hack through the heavy overgrowth just to get to the doors.

The boulevard broadened into a plaza with a brickwork surface overrun with weeds and littered with the remains of broken down machines

Ahead lay the majestic tower that Breeze had seen earlier. As the hover sped toward it, his disappointment grew with each passing second. The tower was a faded beauty, like the rest of the buildings on campus, with a limestone and coquina structure that was chipped and broken. Huge cracks rippled through the façade, and heavy moss was everywhere, growing in clumps and patches over the entire building.

The hover pulled up before the massive stairway the led up into the tower. Breeze unbuckled his harness and tried to open the door, but it wouldn’t budge. He stood up on his seat and jumped out.

“What kind of place is this? Is it a school or an abandoned city? And where is everybody? Did they run away after getting a good look at this place?” Breeze said as he looked around.