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  Cloud Dancer

  Endless Skies, Volume 1

  J.G. Johnson

  Published by J.G. Johnson, 2019.

  This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

  CLOUD DANCER

  First edition. December 23, 2019.

  Copyright © 2019 J.G. Johnson.

  Written by J.G. Johnson.

  Table of Contents

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  DEDICATION

  CLOUD DRIFTER

  RASCAL

  MASTER

  SURVIVAL

  THE DIVINING

  NEW DAWN

  DEPARTURE

  VANDAL’S SKIES

  SMILES

  THE WAY THE GAME IS PLAYED

  PAINFUL STARTS

  COOKING LESSONS

  DANGEROUS PEOPLE

  SCHMOOZING

  WHAT LAYS BELOW

  POWER ENOUGH

  AERIAL KNIGHT

  FIRST LAND EVE

  PREP

  MEETING THE NEIGHBORS

  ROUND 1

  ROUND 2

  ROUND 3

  FIRE FORGED

  OPEN HAND

  AFTERWARD

  THE WORLD OF SPIRIA

  ALSO BY J.G. JOHNSON

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Dedication

  Many thanks to the people that have supported and encouraged me to chase my dreams and my heart. Without you, I never would have been able to go the places I have, seen the things I have seen, and learned just how big the world really is. This book is for you, and it is for everyone that still believes that dreams aren’t dead. Don't let anyone tell you what is impossible; only you know what is impossible for you. So, live your dream and follow your gut. Lastly, never fear chasing the squirrels and bunnies of your life. They may just lead you to your destiny, and even if they escape, you will have learned something. You have a brain, a heart, and a soul, never stop feeding them.

  Also, to my readers, thank you for your patronage. I write because there is a story crying out to be told, but what good is a story without a reader? Thank you for being that reader and taking time to share in the worlds that I have created. Please enjoy and drop a review if you enjoyed this story or if you have any comments.

  Cloud Drifter

  Teusren the 32ed of Argoth

  Year 837 of Revana

  “Remind me why I ever let you talk me into this?” Jesse grunted as he hoisted the hoses over the side of the skiff to trail in the blood-red laced swirling doom of the Eternal Storm, not nearly far enough away, below.

  There were only two of them in the light skiff, and it wasn’t because Spira crystal syphoning was a two-man job. In fact, they were breaking several laws and worse Taboos by engaging in it at all. Hence why they were out here in the dark, lurking around in the shadow of one of the low flying islands which was on its death drift.

  “Because you needed the cash,” Ben replied lazily from the tiller of the skiff, keeping them clear of the poisonous exhaust from the Storm they were leaving in their wake as the old steam pump wheezed like an asthmatic cat with a hairball in a catnip field, drawing the toxic soup from below and passing it through the catch. The soft tinkling sound of Spira crystals falling into the catch pan was music to their ears and Pel in their pockets. If they lived long enough to collect it. Even for a scoundrel like him, this was not a career, but a desperate gamble and Ben’s eyes never stopped scanning for ripples and other signs of a rise.

  Spira crystals were the lifeblood of the world. They literally kept the world floating. Most of the time you were supposed to mine them from one of the deserted rocks, but that was hard and dangerous work; not only did you have to dig for them, but you also had to worry that the next one you removed would send the rock you were on on a one-way trip into the Eternal Storm. And even with all that risk, the crystals usually weren’t high grade. Easier was what they were doing, but it was illegal for a good reason.

  The denizens of the Eternal Storm didn’t take kindly to those from above mucking up their domain. If a Kraken or Wyvern rose to meet them, they might be able to run away or beat it off with the swivel cannons, but if one of the others showed up, all they could hope for would be a quick end and to give it indigestion.

  “Right. The cash.” Jesse listened to the light tinkling as the hopper filled and focused on the Pel each clink represented.

  Tiamat’s Pestilence had hit his family’s farm hard just after what had looked to be a bumper crop when the government assayer had passed through, but before they could harvest it. Leaving them with only a pittance of their harvest. Worse still, the losses in their Rasp fruit orchards wouldn’t be recoverable for years, and their fields were going to need to be cleansed and replanted. Usually, they could have hunkered down and made it, but with the war on between the Orlan Federation and his own Salicia of the Russo Republic - and the Draft tax it entailed based on what the assayer had seen which couldn’t be adjusted, they had to either pay or provide the Draft to cover the tax.

  His family owned a good size chunk of land, but they weren’t a large family. There was only him, his brother, two sisters, and his mother. The war wasn’t going well, so if his brother and him went, it was doubtful they would ever return, and even the two of them wouldn’t have covered the tax which left his elder sister to make up the difference as a “support” troop, and the things he had heard about what was happening to the female draft as the war grew darker made his blood run cold.

  Unfortunately for common decency, they were one of the few backwaters as yet not fully engaged in the fight and that meant the garrison was made of the slimiest sort of weasels who were bound and determined to stay out of the fighting and were therefore highly motivated to provide the warm bodies needed at the front so as not to be called up themselves. They couldn’t draft beyond their draft quota, plus the few daft volunteers who still trickled in, but they were real sticklers for catching everyone that they could.

  Jesse adjusted the hose, prayed, and listened to the tinkling in the pan. Two hours, two kilos of Spira crystals split fifty-fifty, and my family will be safe with a little bit extra to help us get back on our feet. That is if Ben can sell them for what he says without getting caught. Not that any of this will be a problem for me if one of the lower creatures should take offense to our trespasses and end our worldly concerns.

  “Stupid, pointless war. Why can’t they see that we never stood a chance! All they are succeeding in doing is reducing us to poverty before the Orlandan gobble us up. Stupid Tiamat,” he grumbled, earning a withering glare from Ben, which he rightfully deserved. Siphoning was bad enough without dissing on the big’uns where they might hear you.

  Tiamat usually stayed in the Storm, or on the mythical lower lands, if you believed the loons, but one of the recent air battles had been closer than anyone had liked and when one of the ship’s magazines had the sheer gall to explode after the whole ship’s crew had already died to the Eternal Storm’s poison, Tiamat had made her ire known by wiping the skies of over half of the remaining vessels, most of them Russo, and spreading a path of crop-killing pestilence across the island as she overflew it.

  Ben had been born to this life, but, as a local, he understood Jesse’s angst well enough. But that wasn’t reason enough to be stupid, and there were some things you just didn’t do in this line of business. The Lawless Laws for the Lawless of the Skies were hard and uncaring, but they were the laws, and they were there for a reason. He was about to rip into Jesse when a ripple in the clouds below and almost out of his periphery caught his eye.

  Jesse started to say sorry, when he saw Ben’s head whip around so fast it should have cracked like a whip as he stared into the swirling abyss beneath them,
and his blood ran cold. “I’m so sorry,” he blubbered, but a warning glare from Ben made him shut-up right quick.

  “Watch the clouds and draw in the hoses. If you see anything rise, cut them loose, and pray it’s only a Kraken!”

  Jesse set to work as quickly and as quietly as possible, killing the pump - which seemed almost a mercy after an hour of its retched hacking - and started reeling in the hoses. The hopper wasn’t as full as he would have liked, but, if they lived, it was going to have to be enough. Worst case, I’ll go to cover the difference. It’s what I deserve for breaking the law anyway. He leaned out to grab a hose as it spooled only to freeze, seeing something in the dark depths below them. The night was deep and eerily cast with only the faint red and blue light of Salis and Bathor in the night sky, so it was hard for him to make out what he was seeing.

  Ben saw Jesse freeze and knew they were both dead men, but that didn’t mean he was one to go down without a fight. He rushed for the swivel and readied to give whatever came their way a one-kilo pinprick. He swung it around, tracking where Jesse was pointing as his finger tensioned the trigger.

  Jesse pointed at the... “I think it’s a boat!”

  Ben almost pulled the trigger as Jesse spoke, but his finger stopped a half gram short of sending a kilo of death through the small dinghy bobbing on the edge of the Eternal Storm. He carefully pulled his finger away from the trigger before letting out a jagged breath, taking a long look at the tiny dinghy bobbing beneath them. “So it is,” he agreed, looking around for any signs of where it may have come from. Except for the battle, he didn’t know of any ships going down recently. What’s more, they didn’t even carry dinghies, which were only used close to islands. “Throw the hoses back out. Since we are going down there anyway, we might as well risk a deep siphon while we are at it.”

  “We’re going down there?”

  “Of course, we are. There might be someone alive, but if we dawdle, they won’t be for long. The dinghy’s Liftrig or Charger must be about shot for it to be floating that low. I may be a smuggler and work outside the law, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have a heart. We are going, so pitch the hoses and let’s be about this!” Ben scowled, not having the time to give him a proper browbeating.

  Cowed, Jesse did as ordered, praying the whole way while listening to the quickening of the tinkling in the pan as they neared the edge of death.

  The keel hummed as it brushed against the Spira rich and deadly clouds of the Eternal Storm as they bobbed next to the dinghy. Ben quickly tied off the dinghy with a tow line and jumped across. The dinghy rocked lightly beneath his boots and sunk deep enough into the clouds to allow a little spillage, causing his skin to burn and itch. Moving quickly, he searched the boat from stem to stern. Except for some rags and a small bundle near the rudder, it seemed empty. Given the shattered stays and planks, it was clear that the dinghy had gone through some rough stuff before getting here, but there was nothing to say where it had come from or what had happened to it. It was less than he had expected to find, but it would make a good cover for what they were doing here if anyone happened across them. As he turned to jump back across, his hip bumped the bundle.

  A single squall of protest broke shattered the night.

  Jesse’s heart thundered as the indignant squawk added to the wheezing of their pump. “There’s a baby in those rags,” he stuttered, deeply ashamed that he had suggested they just cut and run.

  Ben crouched and opened the bundle, revealing a round, slightly drawn face with deep frowning brows set over jade green eyes laced with silver flecks. The frown held for just a moment, before the baby’s face split into a gurgling smile as the tightly wrapped bundle wobbled back and forth. Ben’s almost smile changed to a frown as he realized how much of a problem they had landed in. His grimaces only encouraged more gurgles from the stowaway, each one raising his anxiety. He gathered the bundle and passed it to Jesse. “Find somewhere secure to stow this.”

  Jesse took the baby while Ben hopped back over and pushed the dinghy free to drag on the tow line. “It’s a baby. Not a this,” he scolded, wiggling a finger in front of the baby’s face and making little cooing noises.

  “Stow that for the moment. Right now, it’s a noisemaker, and we need to be gone. This whole thing gives me the creeps. That boat was damaged in a battle but it ain’t from around here; the lines are all wrong,” Ben explained, flipping a bullet he’d fished out of one of the planks to Jesse as he went back to the rudder and fed the small steam prop some power to pull them away from the Eternal Storm. “Put it down and pull in the hoses!” he ordered, getting the feeling that they had worn out their welcome and luck.

  Jesse scowled. “If anything were around, we wouldn’t be here anymore.”

  Ben started to retort when the whole skiff bucked. Their forward momentum shuddered to a halt despite the droning efforts of their prop as it labored to push them forwards. They both looked back in time to see an enormous black hand, dwarfing their skiff, reach out of the storm and crush the little dinghy to splinters as a deep basso laugh like boulders being gargled boomed from the Storm and shook the very sky around them. There was only one creature that laughed like that.

  Knowing they were as good as dead but unwilling to roll over and die, Ben cut the tow line and dumped their steam pressure they had through a nozzle at the rear of the skiff in a last-ditch effort to get clear of Petrov.

  Jesse fell to the deck as they rocketed up into the sky but managed to land so as not to crush the baby. He could imagine the sound of tendons popping as he watched Ben straining against the logy rudder. The steam poured out for what felt like minutes but was only seconds as they rocketed up and around the small island they had been using for cover. They were still were using it for cover, but now it was in the opposite direction as they drifted up and away from it.

  The boat drifted to a near stop as their speed fell off, leaving them at the mercy of the winds. “Why are we stopping!” Jesse demanded, looking back at Ben and the island behind them while clutching the giggling bundle close to his chest. The baby, as all baby kind do, had a demented sense of humor.

  “That little maneuver used all the steam. It will take a few minutes to build a new head and get back underway,” Ben explained, looking behind them. His little trick was great for getting out of tight spots with customs boats and behind cover quickly, but if Petrov wanted them, they were as good as dead. All they could hope was that Petrov had a short attention span today.

  As if summoned by their very fears, Petrov’s hands lanced out of the clouds, biting into the sides of the small island below them, rending great fissures in the bedrock base of the island. Almost immediately, the island began to sink as The Touch of Petrov befell it.

  Of all the creatures of the Eternal Storm, he was the most feared. Where the others might bring death or some destruction, Petrov brought doom. His very touch drained Spira energy from the crystals keeping everything afloat, as it was doing to the island sinking below them. That island should have had at least another fifty to sixty-years before it sunk into the Eternal storm to be reborn, but not anymore. As the two men stared, wondering when the hands would return for them, the island disappeared silently into the Storm beneath them.

  The minutes dragged on in silence, and they both started to smile and relax as it looked like they were going to live. An indignant squall shattered the calm, making them jump as their hearts raced faster than a Rasslebock on a coffee farm. They glared at the wiggling bundle in Jesse’s arms before glancing at the calm clouds beneath them. One island was apparently enough to sate Petrov for now.

  Coming off the rush, they laughed - only slightly hysterically - shaking with adrenaline crashes that would have made a tweaking chihuahua look steady, hardly believing they were still alive.

  “Boy must have the luck of a smuggler,” Ben said, acknowledging the baby for the first time as it continued to squawk. “What’s wrong with him?” Luck may have shined on them today, but he didn’t w
ant to push it until they had a full head of steam and many leagues behind them.

  Jesse frowned, sharing Ben’s wish while he bounced the baby, trying to quiet it, but nothing seemed to be working. “I don’t know...” he started to say when the smell hit him. “Oh. I think he needs his diaper changed.”

  “Why are you looking at me. I’m a smuggler and cloud hopper. You’re the family man,” Ben argued, but his mind was latching on to other issues, like how the baby had come to be out here in the middle of nowhere with a diaper still in decent shape. Logic demanded that the baby should have been filthy and sopping wet if it had been out here for more than a few hours. He glanced around as his worry mounted, but there were no signs of anyone or anything else in the gloom surrounding them.

  Jesse frowned, but couldn’t argue with Ben’s logic as he got to the stinky work at hand. There were three heavy thuds in the bottom of the skiff as something fell out of the mummy-like wraps surrounding the baby.

  Curious and with nothing better to do while they built a new head of steam, Ben came over and picked up the objects. In the soft glow of the steam engine’s fires, he held up two daggers and a small but heavy pouch. “Practical parents,” he mused, checking the daggers. They had an elegant triangle geometry, about thirty centimeters long, and were well balanced for use as a thrusting or slashing weapon. They were also sharper than anything short of a woman’s tongue after catching you with her best friend, and the blade’s black steel with its pattern swirling from within like oil on water made him feel just as queasy as that thought of being that man. He shook off their mesmerizing effects and set them aside to check the hefty pouch accompanying them. Emptying the contents of the pouch, he almost suffered another heart attack as he found three heavy coins.

  Jesse’s eyes went wide as he looked from his efforts to un-swaddle the baby and lit on the flash of gold in the firelight. “Are those...” he gulped.