What Dwells (Wickedly Winged Book 1) Read online

  What Dwells

  Jeanette Lynn

  Copyright © 2019 Jeanette Lynn

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  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events, or locales, is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author's imagination and used fictitiously.

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  Table of Contents

  Title

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Epilogue

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  WHAT DWELLS

  Jeanette Lynn

  CHAPTER ONE

  My schooner was just skimming along, hovering as it sped through The Drift, when the first alarm went off. Pulled from the book I’d been too engrossed in to honestly pay attention, my job akin to watching paint dry, I glanced up in surprise. ALERT! ALERT! The bright red flashing alarms on either side of my screen warned. “Well, hells,” I muttered, setting my book aside in a rush to lean over the console.

  I’d been monitoring this particular section of The Drift for going on five years this half planetary rotation, four and a half rotes currently, to be exact. Never, had I ever in all the years I’d piloted The Drift, period—and I was pushing ten at that—had I gotten an alert that wasn’t of a minor mechanical malfunction, not an outright failure. These lined buckets, old as some of them were, namely the ones belonging to this unit, were pretty damn sturdy.

  Pulling up the glowing notification on my holo screen, dragging it to my main screen with my fingertip, I pushed my fingers out, spreading them until the alert opened, popping wider to automatically expand.

  “A what to the how?” I mumbled on a grumble, squinting and leaning forward. My chair creaked with the action, my plump figure hunched over my console. A frisson of alarm had me jolting, those tendril like fingers of fear wrapping around my throat to take hold. Reading the missive closer, I paused, a moment of stunned stupefaction overtaking me. “We’re what now?” I found myself blurting numbly.

  Glancing to my nav com and command patch to find them blank, a small, constantly spinning circle symbol indicating they were trying to reconnect, it swiftly sank in that not only was something slowing my schooner down to a gear grinding whir, dragging me deeper into this thick, cloudy sludge, but I was completely on my own in this predicament. How long until something else went wrong and it went from slowly dragging down to a nose dive dead drop? Or, with my luck, the gravity modulator, the one wonky thing on these blasted, indestructible beasts, would choose this moment to take a dump in this older than dirt rig.

  Pulling up the control panel frame, tapping at it to find it frozen and twitching in and out, stuck on the main frame, useless as fuck, I cursed the fearful sound I made in my throat. Muffling a heartfelt expletive to a garbled hiss through gritted teeth, I smacked the side of my head with the flat of my hand. Ferk. Ferk. Ferk. Ferk! The alternative curse pinged around in my brain pan, in a very distinct voice not unlike my mother’s that time she’d dropped a jar of jam on her foot and broken three of her toes.

  Right now didn’t call for ferks, this was a fuck kinda moment. “Fuck!” I barked, but nothing Croc crap damned happened—no odd sense of release filled me. If anything, the fact I was reduced to cussing in the first place seemed to give way to the gravity of the situation, because my ass was kinda, “Fucked!” at the moment.

  Shaking myself out of it, I spun in my seat. “Manual... Manual...” I needed the actual manual-manual, the stupid assed book I or they, depending on who’d been mucking about in my shit last, the stupid outfitter rearranging my schooner to suit their ‘standards’ and I used that term loosely, those check list, clipboard hugging arse hats liked to put shit in some of the most inconspicuous places. Me? I shoved it wherever it would fit, that I could easily remember, and didn’t get in my way, usually the bottom left cupboard we kept the med kit in, because who the hells ever actually needed it? The control panel was supposed to be golden. When did anyone ever need that doorstop when the panel could pull it right up? When a strange force is dragging you down, fucking up your plane! That’s when! “I’m gonna die,” I muttered absently, shaking my head. “I’m gonna feckin’ die.”

  Punching the release below the panel, the compartment beneath slowly sliding open, creaking from having barely ever been used, freaking ever, I had to jerk it the rest of the way open. “Ugh. Sticky.” Gross. Wiping my hand on my pant leg, I shook my head. Frye had admitted he’d dumped a drink in here when I’d finally been given leave and he’d taken over my post, though he’d sworn he’d paid to have it detailed. Missed a spot, Frye boy. I survived this, he was the first person going to hear it from me.

  Ignoring Frye and his bullshit and sticky drawers for just a moment here, I tugged at the release holding the manual settings, turning off Auto Navigate. A slender handle finally shot forward and I wiggled the hand control loose. The thing looked like a big old grey dick, complete with a balls-looking squishy base. “For wrist support!” I proclaimed just like the bitch in the vid had. Hah.

  Going to die and you’re joking, Vara? Classy. “Gwog... I hate my life sometimes.” Grabbing the big old dick stick, giving an experimental jerk forward, I frowned. Really? Nothing? Nothing at all? Finally given something sizeable worth holding, and you’re not even going to give a little jolt to this hunk of metal’s frame? Nothin’? Not a dick then, ‘cause if this were a real life penis grab situation he’d either be asking me if I was ‘ready to do this yet or what?’ Or asking me to put it in my mouth, you know, because the ladies get off on that stuff, don’t they? Shaking my head, I snorted. Ugh. “Come on, honey, be nice to mama and I’ll be so good to you,” I muttered under my breath, double checking to make sure there wasn’t some kind of release button or lever that needed pressing or flipping.

  Old school. This was very old school, but I’d trained for this when I’d been drafted. Pulling back on the control stick, again, nothing happened. Forward, back, left, right, the gwog damned thing was loose. What the- What was I missing? Rechecking the control, manual on, auto off, I tried again. Nothing.

  “Shit on me, why don’t cha,” I growled out in exasperation at the blasted hunk of scrap heap I found myself trapped in. Forward, back, left, right, still nothing. And downward I continued to creep, gliding on thick cloud-soup.

  Sliding the compartment next to the one housing the manual joystick free, I flipped the com switch. “This is NC66673-364, Novara Celestine commanding The Krull Attar. Experiencing mechanical malfunction, lost control, in need of immediate assistance. Do you copy?”

  Nothing. Complete and utter silence. Not even the buzz of static greeted me.

  “Not good. Really, real
ly not good.” I totally might actually eat shit and die in this flying hunk of crap. The realization thawed me from my stunned stupor, sending me into action.

  Swiveling in my chair, I bent forward and began yanking open cubby doors, tugging out my emergency pack, which I unbuckled from my seat and stood to slide on. Tugging the thick straps over my shoulders, securing the many buckles attached, I willed my pounding heart to cease but it couldn’t be helped. Next was my personal pack and various random junk it held, helpful in the event of, uhm, such an event as this, or otherwise. The book I’d been reading before shit went wonky joined the bag. Zipping the small black pack, I strapped it on backwards, securing it to my ‘chute pack over the buckles digging into my plush belly.

  Gwog damn it, I was getting sucked into the Under, the below, whatever the fuck it was that was actually below Up Top, as we called our claimed bit on this spinning rock. No one really knew what the Under, as most informally referred to it, held. Another dimension? A secret world? A portal to gwog knew where...? Gwog himself? Acid rain fog crap that never ended, demolishing everything in its wake, seemed the most viable hypothesis, though there was no way to actually tell. What went into the fog, stayed with the fog.

  My helmet was three cubbies down, covered in a layer of dust. Hat and goggles inside the helmet, neatly tucked up, I pulled those out, then my heavy head gear, which was useless, honestly, because who would I be using it to communicate with? And then came the neck guard. I left the hat and head gear behind. In full gear, minus com tech, it really hit me, the full weight of what was going on, past that numbing flight response—I had to get moving.

  By this point I was clean into the soup-like fog I’d regularly patrolled for so many damn years, hovering right above this shit on the daily. No one had ever gone into an Under cloud bank, the fog bog, and come out, though many had been dumb enough to try. Presumably, no one had lived to tell about it. Nobody actually knew what went down. There was never a single trace of them left behind. I reiterate, what went into the fog bog became the fog bog’s.

  Acid clouds were the most prominently theorized idea about Under. A cloud of acid that dissolved whatever entered it—a misty black hole, sucking anything in its path clean into it to dissolve it to nothing.

  Getting real with myself, if I hadn’t been lost to my reading, I might’ve noticed the unusually high cloud bank that had caught me, too high for comfort and right damned there. The thing grabbed me up and sucked me right in. There’d never been one this high, and naturally, I certainly hadn’t expected it. This was the clusterfuck of clusterfucks. Thinking of the clouds rising to do to others what it was doing to me, slowly engulfing me, ship and all, what would that mean for everyone Up Top? Was this the beginning of the end? Or, The End, like the Apenems fervently believed? Was this the great big one their religion had prophesized would culminate the beginning of the end of everything? Had The Great Gwiggin Gwog of Grog forsaken them?

  My hands were shaking, throat working. That lump of an organ in my chest started to race frantically. Feck. Fuck. Fuckity damn feckin’ fuck! “Cool ya rig, Novara, this is not the time!” The words hissed through my clenched teeth, teeth that had begun chattering. I was so wrecked.

  This was not the time for panicking. I’d watched dozens of training vids about what ifs and crash scenarios, the same vids for years, every year during annual training conventions—I should be one of those cocky assholes acting like I’ve got this. The first thing they tell you in training, panicking helps no one. It sure as shit wasn’t doing me any favors right now, that was for sure! But who the fuck prepares to perish in a monster fog bank that’s been ominously hovering below the cliffs in your world since long before you were conceived? Huh?! No feckin’ one!

  “Where’s the training vid for that, I’d like to know,” I snarled, grabbing the back of my seat as the schooner jolted, banking hard to the right. “Oh- Hells!” I shouted as I shot forward, almost tripping over my seat, before dropping to the floor in search of my boots, which I’d conveniently taken off to prop my thick-sock covered feet onto the side of the console as I read. “Worst employee ever,” I muttered absently, crunching down into the small space, bending at a funny angle, shoving my feet into my boots to slap the side straps into place.

  A strange crackling, followed by popping hisses, had my eyes widening, gaze darting around the small space. The bubble shaped dome top layer of my schooner’s thick hide was starting to literally fizzle and sizzle. Bubbles were forming along the slowly melting top. The thing was made to withstand just about anything, high heat, like space travel reentry feckin’ hot, and it was melting like a plastic bag over a camp fire? Acid fog? ACID?! Fast melting super acid! It really was exactly like that annoying guy at The Under symposiums every year had said.

  I knew it was the most plausible, and I’d said as much in the many conversations between myself and other pilots, but- but... “Acid?!” Oh gwog. Oh great gwiggin’ gwog. I don’t wanna die! “Help!” I called out weakly, shocked when my voice croaked out barely above a squeak.

  The engines started to make a not so funny to me grinding, whirring noise. The systems malfunctions warning system at this point had, well, completely malfunctioned. The wonky, warbling alarms that suddenly kicked on were cutting off as the lights flickered and shut off, eclipsing me in fog and dark grey and white speckled darkness. More pops, hisses, of a different nature, and a loud chirping echoed throughout the small cabin. Emergency lights began to flicker on and off like I was at some kind of messed up wannabe rave. The warbling alarm only added to this effect, the weep, weep, woooooop, wee-oooh of the dysfunctional alarms reminding me of that time Tarbin, a fellow pilot and rowdy Apenem, had tried his hand at DJ’ing and wrangled everyone on our unit into attending his first gig. He’d royally sucked at it. Apenem music was not for everyone.

  This was all kinds of hysterical. Or I was hysterical? “Why am I laughing?” I burst out, a burble of a laugh catching in my throat. Was there gas in here? A leak? It wasn’t like the alarms were going to let me know, the way the wonky assed things were going.

  Desperate, I started slapping at the flashing buttons on my console, flipping switches at random. Fuck calm! And fuck alternative cussing! This was a shit, fuck, gwog damn it, motherfucker kind of situation, gwog fucking damn it. I was down to just panic at this point—flat out panicking—that’s what my ass was doing.

  My descent wasn’t so smooth going, my craft picking up speed, the farther into this muggy muck I got. I had no clue if this was a good development or a bad one. The flickering buttons certainly weren’t of any gwog damned help. Faster through the fog meant less time for it to eat through the hull. There was that.

  More crackling and crinkling as bubbles formed and popped overhead, the wet crap in the fog covering the plane’s dome working its way towards Krull’s contents, namely me, one layer by thick assed layer at a time. The rate it was going, the thick shell was turning into a wall of butter, the fog easily eating through it bit by bit to roll down the sides like butter on breakfast jacks.

  I’m going to have my skin slowly stripped from my frame several epidermal layers at a time once that dome gives and Krull, my AT8 NV Class Skimmer, spills me out of it like the dumped insides of a cracked nut. “What a fucking send off!” Never thought I’d end up resembling spilled soup, but life had a funny way of trying to give me the finger, then shove it up my ass.

  A loud creak, the sound of metal groaning, was just the icing on the cake I needed to fulfill this nightmarish fantasy. “Why the hells not!” I shouted at no one. Alright, so I’ve lost my shit and I’m all out full on panicking—so sue me. These are my last damn moments, I’ll shit my pants right here, right now, should I want to, gwog fuck it all! “I- Ah!” And now I was tipping backwards. “R-r-r-r-rol-l-l-l-eeeee-ing!”

  The plant I kept as company, strapped into a cup holder I never used, smacked into the top cubby doors. The pot smashed, leaving poor Captain Nemo to fend for himself. Crap on a dorfleck! I
liked that damn plant. Scooping up my little friend, I tucked him, moist roots and all, inside the inner pocket of my flight suit’s thick coveralls.

  “We die together, old friend,” I told the tentacle looking plant I’d picked up on the way to work from a street vendor one dull morning. I’d been on my way to my first day at this stupid job, mandatory drafted academy training. It had been an impulse buy, but I’d been feeling rather impulsive that day. Lack of control over your own life, forced into the forces for tuition debt, had put me into a funky mindset. Good old Nemo the tentaplant was the only thing thus far in my life that’d yet to disappoint me.

  We were vibrating now, not a pleasant feeling when your head shook so hard you worried your brains were congealing. More mental me-into-soup images. Lovely.

  One of the engines sputtered, smoke to my left and sparks as whatever that misty melting acid crap was caught it and lit, sending heated sprinkles shooting off over the side. Awesome, that’d just help the blasted thing melt faster—or the entire thing would catch fire and I’d go down in this rig in a burning ball of flames. Another fun mental image.

  As if the universe had intended to offer me one you were right, Vara, Krull’s left wing caught, bursting into thick, wild blue flames. Smoke soon surrounded the entire vessel, thick black plumes it. Smoke seeped inside, black smoke and heat creeping in. Streaks of orange and blue flame licked up the sides of my craft until it rippled over the domed top like it was dancing, slapping at it, wild to get to me.

  “Vivid,” I muttered absently.

  Normally not one for conversation, a rather quiet sort—that’s what I’d become since being drafted for those pesky student loans—get it done, no need to chit chat, Vara—I sure was catching up for lost time today.

  My hands gripped the seat where I crouched and I slipped my undershirt over my mouth. The attachment for my face mask, the only piece of my headgear besides my com not present I could actually use right now was back on base in my locker. The replacement part was supposed to be in end of the week. Fat lot of good that was doing me.