Aethosphere Chronicles: Winds of Duty by Jeremiah D. Schmidt

settled into the wakeful drudgery of a man skirting through
consciousness by sheer will alone. He knew if he was to sit, even
for a moment, he’d nod off, but as long as he was standing—staring
at that resonance aura forever at the edge of the stone—he knew he
could manage until Moore relieved him. Bar had reason to hope.
Moore’s inquisition had ended just before Al appeared with his
noon-hour meal in hand, and word came with him that most of the
officers had been cleared, and were scheduled to return to duty
later that day. Bar hoped the change would come after the afternoon
watch. As it stood he’d almost made the full rotation, but he’d no
aspirations to actually pull it off.
    “ This is…civilian…Scarlet
Cloud……requesting…assistance…combat…” a static-filled voice
burst over the radio, startling everyone on bridge. At the control
panel Tiny nearly dumped his seat over as he tore the earphones off
and scooted away from the noise with his hands covering his
ears.
    “Lieutenant Briggs!” hollered Stowe,
bristling. “Why the devil is the audio-level cranked so high?”
    “Sorry, Chief Master, I…I was tracking what
I thought was a phantom frequency when the emergency broadcast
kicked onto the externals…thought I might have heard Dunshule being
spoken earlier—”
    “The Empire,” interrupted Bar,
concerned.
    Stowe stormed across the bridge and spun the
audio dial down, even as the Scarlet Cloud repeated her
initial distress call. The broken voice faded to a pleading
whimper. “That doesn’t sound like Dunshule to me, Mr. Briggs.”
    “No…no, sir,” agreed the plump radio
operator. He put his earphones back on and turned to his station,
adjusting the knobs and switches scattered in front of him. The
distress signal cleared and sharpened within the overhead-mounted
speaker system.
    “ This is the civilian airship Scarlet
Cloud, bound for Glenfindale, requesting immediate assistance from
any combat vessel. We have come under attack by an Iron
hunter-killer and have sustained damage to our rudder, limiting our
capacity to maneuver.” Bar felt his heart turn to ice and a
lump of coal form in his stomach. The Empire was in the Sargasso,
and now they could strike out anywhere in the Ascella Cluster. That
put the whole of the Unified Kingdoms in jeopardy, and if the
rumors of the northern defenses were true…. “ Our current
position is forty-two degrees, forty-three minutes,
fourteen-point-five-one seconds north; by eighty-two degrees,
twenty-one minutes, thirty-point-two-five west; on a heading of
north by north-east, forty-four-point-zero-one degrees; current
speed thirty kilometers per hour.”
    “Ensign Bazzon!” Stowe turned his ponderous
face towards the ensign. The walrus mustache hanging over his lips
quivered beneath the man’s intense scowl. Bar knew the ship’s
enforcer was looking to him for answers. “According to those
coordinates, that puts them about a hundred and twenty-two
kilometers to the west, not far off the Barrier Shoal… still just
beyond resonance detection.”
    Stowe turned his broad back to the ensign
and lumbered to the navigation station himself, and began charting
out the information on the maneuvering board. “ Hmm , we could
reach them in less than two hours at flank speed.”
    “I’ll plot an intercept course,” proposed
Gryph from the wheel.
    “This ship will do no such thing without my
direct order, Ensign Havalorne,” cut in Moore brusquely. The
captain had appeared at the back of the room and was glaring darkly
at the pilot. It was Stowe that made a reply, offering a throaty,
“yes sir,” as he backed away from the charts. “Now first off,”
continued Moore, taking up position in the compartment’s center,
“let’s identify this Scarlet Cloud first, shall we? Get me
the registry, Stowe, whose ship is that?” Obediently, the
master-at-arms reached down and pulled open the cabinet door
beneath his station, producing, a thick ledger