The Cloud Knights: Knights of the Air, #1

The Cloud Knights

By

Gerard Whittaker

Started

21 May 2011

The Cloud Knights

By Gerard Whittaker

Smashwords edition.

Copyright by Gerard Whittaker, 2011

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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Prologue

Castle Cromarty crouched across the mountains of Iase Benerant, protecting the Eastern most of the Western Islands from the perpetually war ravaged continent. It had shielded the West for so many thousands of years no-one could even guess when it had been built, and had slowly spread across the island, changing and mutating as the needs and fortunes of the Clan Cromarty waxed and waned, and the threat of invasion from the East came and went with international political expediency. Without a moon to light the night, or stir the tides, the seas were black and still, with three lighthouses warning off ships, both nautical and aeronautical, for the cliffs and mountains would claim any craft that came unawares.

Built deep into the black cliffs the great guns poked their bright and shiny barrels towards the continent, warning off warships from any hostile nation, while tourists and scholars roamed the art galleries and displays of the Cromarty Museum above, for despite the fortress's ferocious reputation it was a place of learning second to none. There was much unknown of the world's past, errors and inconsistencies that most people tended to ignore. Most civilisations across the world had plotted the rise of mankind from living in caves to the giant airships and planes that were destined to dominate warfare, and were content to believe that human history was only a few thousands years old. The few anomalies, like Castle Cromarty, tended to be ignored by archaeologists who wanted to keep their funding. The few who had, over the centuries, claimed that there had been an advanced civilisation far in the distant past soon had to learn that life outside academia was hard, brutal and often short.

There were only a few traces left that could be proven to be from an earlier time, like the four mountainous stone heads carved on the far Eastern continent, but these were dismissed as accidents of nature caused by freak winds or carved by primitives with stone tools. To be fair, after untold thousands of years being tossed around by nature even a qualified observer had to strain his imagination to see faces in the weather worn rocks, and after months of struggling across the savage lands of fire and ice, humid jungles and scorching deserts, fighting with mutated animals and men, starving and coming down with all kinds of interesting illnesses, the fevered explorer could be expected to be seeing purple fairies, and often did.

Alexander, son of Benes the plane builder first saw Castle Cromarty when his father was offered a job on the airfield that took up most of the central plain between the various wings of the Cromarty Museum. He was a sturdy five year old, who glanced across the airfield with fascination, seeing a passenger blimp being eased in to dock with the tower pylon, and about fifty private biplanes standing in neat rows across from the road that had been converted into an improvised runway. Benes was semi tall and stocky, in his early forties with a sandy blond kind of hair that could never either be accurately described or kept neat. His eyes seemed to see everything that interested him, and ignored that which did not live up to his intellectual ideals.

You'll get your fill of this my lad, Benes laughed, but you'll also get more than your share of the castle as well.

You managed to enrol him in the school then, Jances gasped happily. She was slightly taller than her life mate, in her late twenties, with a graceful figure and dark complexion, dark grey hair and glittering steel eyes. She could have had any man, so instead she fell for a dreamer who took more attention of his flying machines than her. But he never took attention of any other woman either. In a world without religion or superstition there was no divine being to make promises too, and so the term marriage was unknown, couples lived together, or not, if they were of compatible social and financial status.

Ay Jances, Benes grinned happily, Alex'll need to study if he wants to follow me into the business.

You had plenty of work in Raghnaile, I don't understand why we had to come all this way from the capitol. She struggled with her infant daughter, Iaana, who was looking around her new home dubiously, all she could see was biplanes in front of her and a grim looking fortress crouched on the surrounding cliffs, and not an ice-cream in sight.

It's too dark and windy that far North, I need more sunlight to charge the capacitors, at least on the new models.

Then you're serious about the defence contract, she sighed with disproval.

That's where the cutting edge is sharpest. If I can sell planes to the Air Ministry we'll be made for life.

Well, personally, I like those dinky little racers you build.

So do I, but I only sell about three a year, how many can afford to race planes? Only the Aristocracy. Now if I can persuade one of my old customers to try the Swift fighter, I might even start providing the Cloud Knights with their aerial steeds, he laughed whimsically.

The big contractors like the Macintyres won't like that, Jances warned him.

They haven't had a new idea in two hundred years, the Swift will run rings around the standard issue Argo.

As they were talking an Argo came in to land, the biplane was covered in a black solar absorbent skin that would charge the capacitors for the thrusters on each side of the dumpy looking craft. The pilot sat at the very front of the craft, with a twin mounted machine gun virtually on his lap. In combat the pilot had to fly it with one hand and shoot the double machine gun with the other. It was like rubbing your tummy and patting your head at the same time. However, the Cloud Knights were truly a breed apart, the finest pilots in the world with a legendary status going back to knights in armour riding horses and carrying oversized spears. Each was a lord, or the son of a noble, and had been trained from birth to carry chivalry through the skies.

The cargo crane on the blimp hosted the crate from the hold, and Benes had the prototype Swift towed to his new hanger. He still had to work servicing and repairing the local planes, and could only work on his own invention in his own time, but as his customers grew to know him, and start to value the quality of his work, they took notice of the Swift slowly growing in the corner of the hanger. No-one had ever seen a monoplane before, or any plane that looked as sleek and deadly, with metal wings blended into the fuselage, each carrying four machineguns, and a fully covered cabin of Perspex.

On Alexandra's first day at school Benes rolled the Swift from the hanger for her maiden flight, and attracted quite a crowd from all over the island of Iase Benerant. Even the Laird of Cromarty, Jaxmount, came to see what the fuss was about. His second son Johan was a keen aviator, and hoped to join the Cloud Knights when he was older, as only the sons of nobility could.

Benes slipped into the cabin and slammed the canopy shut, checking that the capacitors were fully charged, and directed the three thrusters into take off position, and let rip leaping into the air in a bare hundred meters. The Swift shot almost straight up, climbing to a thousand meters inside a minute. He went tearing over the island with unheard of speed, and climbing through the hills and valleys that made up the lower mountain slopes, then looping back towards the fortress that covered the entire cliff face on two sides of the sharp triangular island, and buzzing the airfield at about sixty feet, before lowering the landing gear to touch down with a bumpy landing, as he swung the thrusters forward to slow him to a stop.

The test flight was over in five minutes of sheer exultation and Benes brought the Swift down to land before his hanger, as the crowd went wild.

Laird Earl Jaxmount had watched the flight from the safety of his six wheel drive truck, and walked over examining the Swift as though it was something that might decide to bite his head off. He was tall and handsome, in a sort of put upon kind of way, as though he hadn't volunteered to be the Laird of Iase Benerant, and didn't consider it much of an honour. This is all your own work Benes?

From the inspiration to the flight my Laird. I've handcrafted every part myself.

And the whole island has watched you building it with great interest my man. The only problem I can see is that it's too good! Can you explain how you get that much power without blowing your tail off?

I've a testing rig by the hanger my Laird. The testing rig was a sturdy table bolted firmly to the floor. A section of glittering wing hung on the wall in direct sunlight, seeming to sparkle as it soaked up the sun's power. A cable led from the solar collector to the capacitor that looked like an oval ball of translucent crystal, and then onto the cylindrical thruster that was on a gimbal mounting that could be turned anywhere in a hundred and eighty degrees.

I'm familiar with the basics, Jaxmount pointed out, to avoid being given a child's primer. Solar power is collected by the wing, stored in the capacitor, and directed by the thrusters in some kind of gravetic beam. Luckily the Western Isles has a monopoly on the technology, and so the rest are using internal combustion engines and propellers. But why the gimbal mount? And how can you build the thruster inside a plane, instead of on the fuselage?

Benes grinned as he turned the thruster on, and they could hear the steady thrumming of the gravetic beam. Like this my Laird, and pushed his hand right into the beam directly behind the humming thruster.

Laird Jaxmount gasped in horror, expecting Benes's arm to be blown off. But instead nothing happened. All right Benes, I'm impressed, but won't that be a distinct disadvantage when you're trying to take off?

Benes withdrew his hand and bent to pick up a three foot long piece of wood, holding it firmly with a thick leather glove. Sorry about that Laird Jaxmount, I guess I still haven't grown up, he said with a grin. I've managed to focus the gavetic beam, rather like a search light beam, so that it only becomes tangible at a certain distance from the thruster, and can be widened or narrowed at will; it uses less power and gives more thrust. He pushed the wood into the beam where his hand had just been, and waived it around freely, and then slowly moved it down the insubstantial beam, and still nothing happened, until he was six feet from the thruster, and the piece of wood began to vibrate in ever increasing tremors. At ten feet the wood was dragged from Benes's hand and vanished from sight in an instant, flying across the airfield towards the rocky base of Castle Cromarty a hundred yards away. So as you can see, it's possible to build an airframe inside the beam, and alter the direction, to provide extra lift or manoeuvrability. Given time I might be able to do away with runways, he laughed. But we'll never have that amount of control.

Jaxmount used the controls to move the thruster on the gimbal mount, waiving the beam around like a torch light. You've records of every item in the plane? Plans?

Yes my Lord, Benes replied in confusion.

Then I want you to make six copies of everything, and I'll have my steward get written statements of all the witnesses here, and I'll stamp it with enough sealing wax to send to the patent office myself. There's no way you'll be tricked out of this.

You really think they would do that?

Some of the main defence contractors, like that Macintyre lot, would steal your hind teeth while you were smiling, if you'd let them. So don't sign anything until it's been checked out by my lawyers, I pay them enough, they might as well do some bloody work. Pity I can't promise anyone will buy this contraption.

Why are you doing this my Laird?

Have you noticed my home is a fortress? Every time there's a war we're always hit first. To take the Western Isles they have to come through my front door, and they always knock with artillery, Jaxmount grumbled and stalked off. Don't forget the plans, I'll have them sent off first light tomorrow, he called back.

CHAPTER ONE

Surprise attack

Alexander had turned ten when the Expeditionary Force set sail to free a friendly nation on the continent from the encroachment of the Empire of Bruss, and the self styled Emperor Choominger the Incorrigible. A bull of a man who's only seemingly perfect talent was to pick the right general for the right battle, and execute him if he lost. Unfortunately Choominger had picked the right general this time and the Western army was beaten back in a bloody rout towards the beaches. And the successful general would be feted as the luckiest man in the world, with nothing denied him, until the next battle.

Alex and his classmates watched from high on the battlements that overlooked the narrow channel separating freedom from a corrupt Empire as the besieged army was rescued from the beaches by ships and airships, fishing boats and even private leisure craft, some barely larger than rowboats. It seemed as if the entire nation went to rescue the embattled army, without thought for their own safety.

The armada struggled to off load wounded soldiers on Iase Benerant, before rushing back to the beaches, risking all against artillery fire and strafing aircraft, while the attacking army drove the Western Isles army into the sea.

The Iase Benerant main battery opened fire lobbing shells over thirty miles into the Bruss army, delaying them long enough to rescue a few more hundred soldiers. But all equipment had to be abandoned on the bloody beaches, very few soldiers even managed to rescue their own personal weapons. None of the armoured crawlers made it back to base, so the crews torched their own machines before trying to swim for the rescue craft.

The air was soon full of a hundred pyres spitting high columns of dense black smoke into the hazy upper reaches, where the Cloud Knights met in personal duels the finest pilots of the Bruss Empire. And far below swarms of tiny ants fled the debacle, swimming for dear life towards the over loaded boats.

A squadron of Bruss dive-bombers, long stretched out biplanes carrying a dozen bombs, led an attack on the main battery, pounding the fortress in an attempt to bury the coastal guns with falling masonry.

Then the Cloud Knights swept in with their ancient Argo biplanes, diving for the Membh bombers as the Bruss pilots lined up for their bombing runs on the fortress.

The Argos were faster and far more agile, and the pilots sprayed the Menbh's with machine-gun fire, forcing them to break off the attack.

With a scream of overworked engines and whirring propellers, a squadron of SK Bruss fighters swept in over the channel, giving support to the bombers. They dove through the Cloud Knights with machineguns blazing, scattering them across the island. The SKs were short stubby biplanes, very agile and armed with a couple of forward firing machine guns, they were fast and far more deadly than the ancient Argos. But operating so far from base had a limited loiter time, and so the Argos stood a good chance as their Cloud Knight pilots only had to tie them up for a few minutes and they would crash in the sea on the way home with empty tanks.

The Membhs banked and flew back to continue the bombing run, aiming for the fortress as Alex and his class mates were dragged inside to relative safety, as the battlements were raked by machinegun fire and falling fifty pound bombs.

Lord Johan, the son of Laird Jaxmount, and second in line to the island of Iase Benerant, ran through the battle as the planes clashed overhead; staggering towards the Benes hanger as a spare bomb blew a crater ten feet deep only fifty yards away. Is she ready to fly? he gasped.

Benes was uncoupling the mains power cable from the Swift's thrusters, gasping, Ready as ever! Are you sure? You've only just gained your wings. I was about to have a go myself.

You're a good pilot, but they'll never let a peasant fight in the air. I'm sorry Benes, I know this hurts, but they'd kill you and burn the Swift.

Stupid rule. And I don't consider myself a peasant, he sighed. Get in boy, and good luck.

Johan started the thrusters while still in the hanger, and the monoplane was airborne almost as soon as the Swift hit the tarmac outside. He pulled back on the stick and turned his nose straight up, climbing through the battle with a speed surprising to those used to Biplanes.

The bombers were almost over the fortress, seconds away from dropping their thousand's of pounds of bombs on his home, and Johan kicked in his thrusters, diving after the Membhs at twice their top speed.

The Argos were still engaging the Bruss fighters, relying on agility over speed.

The first Membh bomber seemed to rush towards the Swift, as though it was flying backwards. Johan aimed at the base of the extended lower wings and opened fire, and the bomber erupted in flames as the incendiary bombs exploded with the furnace heat of white phosphorus, and the plane crashed into the age darkened walls of Castle Cromarty. He tore through the cloud of blazing smoke to see a second bomber, and lined up on the fuselage with eight machineguns firing from tail to the whirring engine, tearing the pilot in two and the plane fell from the sky.

A burst of tracer flashed past the open cockpit, he glanced back to see a SK fighter sweeping towards him. Pulling the stick to the right the Swift barrel rolled underneath the fighter and Johan managed to hit the engine with a tight burst, and as the plane tumbled from the sky he dove after the bombers, hitting three more with precise bursts which detonated their bomb loads in mid air.

The Argos disengaged to reform, and the SKs turned to protect the bombers.

Johan found himself surrounded nearly a dozen SKs, dodging bursts of fire from all around. He set the thrusters to maximum lift and shot above the battle, turning towards the swarm of Argos, that only now were getting over the shock of the Swift's attack.

He tore between the Cloud Knights, followed by the SKs, and then changed the thrusters to maximum manoeuvrability, coming around almost on the spot, and darting below the SKs to hit them from behind with lethal force.

With the swarm of SKs in total chaos the Argos hit them hard.

Johan glanced around to see the bombers hightailing back to base. He was almost out of ammunition and disengaged to let the Cloud Knights finish off the SKs.

He let the Cloud Knights land first and then glided in next to them, shutting the Swift down, as his heart was pounding so hard with fear he thought it would burst.

When Alex made it down from the fortress Johan was an Ace and his dad a hero. However the survivors of the battle were still being off loaded at every beach and dock on Iase Benerant, and the airships were landing at the airfield with the worst casualties. There was no time to waste on parties, the medical teams were going all out sorting the dieing from those who might live.

As soon as one airship was full of the patched up wounded she would lift off and rush to the hospitals around the Western Isles. While the air battle had been a victory the war was a catastrophe, most of the army had been decimated, and it would take years to build it up again. It was an hour later that Johan learned that of the few bombs that had made it through to the fortress one had hit his families quarters, killing his mother and brother, and that he was now heir to the island of the Cromarty, and would one day be the Laird of Iase Benerant.

The only thing that now stood between the Western Islands and imminent invasion was the Cloud Knights, and even the politicians had to admit that the days of the Argos were over.

Benes was invited to demonstrate the Swift for the Air Ministry, and pretty soon the Macintyre factory started turning them out by the hundred, and occasionally forgot not to pay Benes for all his hard work.

Laird Jaxmount made a formal complaint to the Copywrite office, only to be told that this was a national emergency and that no-one had time to listen to a tiny little inventor with sour grapes. Or something like that, the official document was a thousand pages of bureaucratese, that mentioned on page 729 that a typing error in Benes's original copywrite application had invalidated his ownership of the Swift. A mistake that was not reported to Benes until after the battle at Iase Benerant, and nor had it stopped Lord Macintyre from pushing through with his own copywrite application on a plane he had never seen. The case would trickle through the court system for years, but the Air Ministry and the Cloud Knights were getting the much needed Swifts. And Lord Macintyre was getting even richer.

As the years fled past Alex spent as much time studying in the Cromarty Museum as he did flying. At fourteen he gained his wings, and at sixteen he started his first real job, flying replacement Swifts to and from the Defence contractors who were trying to swindle his father. They wouldn't even let Benes work on the planes he had designed, and so the family struggled for years. As a reward to his father Lord Jaxmount had waived all tuition fees in the Cromarty Museum, and so Alex had the chance to study anything he liked, and he liked a lot of courses that were too unusual for a common education, even for the nobility.

His kid sister, Iaana, was now at school too, picking up an attitude all her own, and had about as much interest in flying as your average worm. It was strictly for the birds

Alex had his first crush with one of the girls in his class, Priss, the daughter of Lord Jaxmount's younger brother. And no-one took it serious at first, except the young couple, but they were only allowed out together with a chaperone, Priss's teenage bondsgirl, Cara.

At seventeen Alex was well over six feet tall, and showed no sign of slowing down, he was well built, handsome and intelligent, and had even picked up good manors from his tutors and the pilots he mixed with. However, he was still considered a peasant, and the Cloud Knights treated him with condescension, almost as though he was a trained parrot that had learned to talk.

Alex and Priss spent their little spare time hiking through the hills of Iase Benerant, and even venturing into the uncharted maze of dusty tunnels that seemed to reach between the fortress and the Cromarty Museum, and through the solid rock towards the airfield; trying to understand how it had been built and by what race of men. Far below the fortress they found chambers with stalactites growing feet long from the buttressed ceilings, hinting that it had been built far earlier than previously thought. And while most of it was seemingly cut from the solid rock, some of the fortress should have succumbed to entropy millennia ago.

Every year Laird Jaxmount would organise a pageant, with actors and scholars bringing to life for a whole week a particular section of history, utilising genuine artefacts and costumes from the Cromarty Museum's copious supply chambers. Tourists and academics came from all over the world for the spectacle, bringing in much needed cash for the fortress island.

The civilisation of Ailish, circa five hundred years ago, had been chosen for the next spectacle; concentrating on the period when the Ailish nobles had run out of external enemies and had to resort to ever increasing barbarity to cull the hundreds of over enthusiastic young hot headed lords who threatened to tear the land into confetti sized kingdoms. Soon half the Iase Benerant peasants were wearing homemade Ailish costumes, that didn't seem to consist of much at all, just a few gaudy silken wraps. Ailish, after all, was a very hot country, and the general population, at that time all the none general population were already dead, were tall, dark and very fit. Those who weren't soon joined the none general population.

The culture, manors and habits were being taught in night classes, and only those who passed the course would be allowed to demonstrate before the paying customers. For a fortress island with little arable land, this was a boon to the locals who took more in that week than in a year of farming.

A troupe of Ailish performers had been found, who had been giving re-enactments across the continent of the ceremonial death duel that would settle the right of succession between feuding brothers. The idea was to be pulled in a light weight chariot by all the young men's concubines, with the desperate lordling and his chief bodygurd holding whips and lances, and try to disable your brother's chariot, by whipping his girls until they stumbled and fell, and then a little brotherly love, killing him as painlessly as possible. At least the barbarous event never had to be repeated, unless there was more than one brother in contention. It was hinted that most of the whipped girls would join the surviving bother's harem, and produce yet more brothers who would be fighting to the death twenty years later, and an ever increasing supply of young girls to pull the chariots. The over bred lords of the Ailish empire took the term sisterly love to the extreme.

What would have been a hundred screaming terrified girls, historically, was now down to ten professionals a side, who made their living putting on displays, and the young blond woman who managed the troupe took great pains that none of her girls would be harmed.

The year before there had been a full scale battle re-enactment between a thousand armoured warriors, and Alex still had a loose tooth after a miss timed blow a mace almost took his head off.

And the year before was some dreary pageant where the ancestors of the current ruling family of the Western Isles had been poisoning each other right left and centre. It did get a little overenthusiastic, and the professional poisoners were quite quite good if a little mercenary, with the result than an entire feast was poisoned because one assassin had been paid by three different families. So he compromised and poisoned the lot of them. They still had a Regent while the succession of very minor members of the royal family was being sorted out. But who wanted a rabbit farmer for king?

Wasn't history fun?

Alex walked back from the Cromarty Museum, he'd clocked up too much flight time lately, ferrying Swifts to and from the factories for servicing, and so had missed out on the festival. The airfield was full of stalls, selling 'authentic' Ailish handcrafts and foods to the punters who really should have known better. The ceremonial death duel was going through the third performance near the Cromarty Museum entrance, with scholars betting on the winner; they at least should have known that the fight was fixed.

The air traffic centre, overlooking from the cliff face, was busy keeping track of the hundreds of planes and airships that were ferrying yet more punters from around the world. Alex walked up the stone steps and into the crowded chamber, seeing, Laird Jaxmount, now Wing Commander (it was his island) looking frantic. Ah, there you are my boy, he sighed with relief. I thought you'd be enjoying the festivities.

"'I've just flown the X31 back