By a Blue and Crimson Light - Book 2 in the Glass Darkly series: Glass Darkly, #2

By Peter Knyte

Betrayed and brought to the brink of destruction. . . 

The captain and crew of the great bronze airship Kubla Khan have finally managed to repair their ship and heal the crew enough to get back to their mission.

 

But in that deadly place they call the Miasmic Expanse, Captain Howard Hughes now discovers the path home is lost. The only world they know how to find, is the one they have just left.

 

Finding their way home could take years, but as the crew begin their search, they discover another world, a third copy of the world they call home. But unlike the world they have just left, this one has almost been overwhelmed by the creatures, and some of its inhabitants are desperate enough to try anything in order to save themselves.

 

Can Captain Hughes and the crew of the Kubla Khan help to save this world from the creatures which have so nearly overrun it, or will the lies and deceit of a few desperate people lead to the destruction of the Kubla Khan for a second time.

 

By a Blue and Crimson Light is the second volume in the 'Glass Darkly' diesel-punk series.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Peter Knyte
• Release date: Jan 14, 2018
• ISBN: 9781912367030

Peter Knyte

Peter was born and grew up in North Staffordshire, England, but now lives a bit further north in West Yorkshire, where by day he passes himself off as a mild mannered office worker, while by night he explores whole worlds of imagination as an intrepid writer. When not tapping away at my keyboard he spends his time gardening, walking, rock climbing, snowboarding and cooking. As for his writing, his time is currently divided between three projects: - The Flames of Time trilogy - A three volume vintage styled action adventure story set in the 1930s. Featuring hidden temples, lost secrets and mysterious religious organisations. Set against the backdrop of West Africa, Jerusalem, Athens, Rome, Istanbul and India - the third and final part of which is out in mid 2018. - The Glass Darkly series - A Retro science-fiction story set in a multiverse plagued by creatures form another dimension, where the characters from a world like our own, but not quite our own, explore the strange dimension between worlds in order to try and save their own world from a mysterious and potent invader. The first book 'Through Glass Darkly' and the second 'By a Blue and Crimson Light' are out now. - The Ghosts of Winter - The first tale within a period ghost story series (more H.P. Lovecraft or Algernon Blackwood than Stephen King). When the grainy photograph of a remote high-mountain valley comes into the hands of young wanderer, it ignites an inexplicable fascination within him to find the location shown in the picture, even though it is rumoured to be a dangerous place never touched by the warmth of summer, and which holds traces of antiquity and dreams of what once were. Also available for free to newsletter subscribers. For more information about me and writing visit: www.knytewrytng.com In summary Peter likes his vintage settings, from when the world was perhaps a slightly more innocent and stylish place, and writing stories that make you think. . . just a little bit.

Book preview

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Peter Knyte was born and grew up in North Staffordshire, England, where more by chance than design he first stumbled across the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, Arthur Ransome of Swallows & Amazons fame, David’s Gemmell and Eddings through their Legend and Belgariad series, and met Jonathan Livingstone Seagull through the eponymously named title by Richard Bach.

North Staffordshire and the Staffordshire Moorlands are also where Peter developed his love of walking and the countryside.

After leaving Staffordshire, Peter moved to Middlesbrough, Birmingham, London and Leeds during which time he grew to love Neil Gaiman’s Sandman comics, Asimov’s Foundation series, Rider Haggard’s tales of She Who Must be Obeyed and King Solomon’s Mines.

Peter still lives in Leeds, West Yorkshire, where he continues to enjoy walking and the countryside, as well as gardening, motorcycling, rock climbing, snowboarding and cooking.

Through Glass Darkly was his second novel and the first book in his Glass Darkly series.

For more information about Peter and the stories he is writing or reading please visit:

www.knytewrytng.com

OTHER TITLES

Other titles by Peter Knyte

The Flames of Time

The Embers of Time

The Ashes of Time

Through Glass Darkly

By a Blue and Crimson Light

A Shadow on the Sky

The Ghosts of Winter

Copyright © Peter Knyte 2017.

Peter Knyte asserts the right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved.

First paperback edition printed 2017 in the United Kingdom

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Paperback ISBN: 978-1-912367-02-3

eBook ISBN: 978-1-912367-03-0

Large Print ISBN: 978-1-912367-16-0

No part of this book shall be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information retrieval system without written permission of the publisher.

Published by Clandestine Books Limited

For more copies of this book, or report an error

please contact:

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Interior designed and set by Clandestine Books Limited

www.clandestine-books.co.uk

Cover art by Svar on 99Designs.com

By a Blue and Crimson Light

Clandestine Books Limited

Peter Knyte

DEDICATION

DEDICATION

For Michael Moorcock, Doris Lessing, A.E. Van Vogt, Neil Stephenson, George Lucas, Philip K. Dick, William Gibson, Miguel de Cervantes for the years of entertainment and inspiration.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

With thanks to John and Tasha Williamson, Lisa Bath, Karl Piper for providing the invaluable feedback and proofreading of this title, which has enabled me to improve it in countless ways.

I hope I can return the favour sometime.

DISCLAIMER

DISCLAIMER

This book is entirely a work of fiction, and while it plays fast and loose the names of historic figures, places and events, no part of this book should be viewed or understood to be factual, or attempting to be factual in any way. This story is set on other worlds of imagination, which at best may bear a coincidental similarity to our own, and in all probability will be wholly different and bear no resemblance to any actual people, personalities, locations, circumstances or events whatsoever.

THE EXPANSE

THE EMPTINESS OF THE EXPANSE surrounds me. Without my lenses it is pure starless darkness here, with neither land or sea, nor clouds or sky.

There is air to breathe, dry, lifeless air which has never been warmed by the sun or dampened by the rain. Cold dead air.

The bowsprit of the Kubla Khan, the mighty airship which is now my home, was once a cherished retreat from the crowded life aboard ship. But that was before the Expanse, when the cold could be kept at bay by a simple sheepskin coat. Not so the leaching cold of the Expanse, which we now realised was a place so void of energy it literally drained the life force from the cells in our bodies.

But I miss the escape which the bowsprit once offered, so I still come back up here occasionally, to the top of the ship, even if only for a short while.

We’d been back in the Expanse for a few weeks since departing from the planet we now called World Two, and the great city of New York, that had become our home away from home.

I’d raised the visor on my armoured marine suit in order to look upon the blankness of it all with my own eyes… and to think. But after even just a couple of minutes with the bare skin of my face exposed, I could already feel the tingling chill of the energy being drained from my skin.

My armoured suit, I’d discovered, provided an imperfect protection, that was almost akin to being inside the ship. Not in the core of the ship, where the power from the reactors seemed to saturate the atmosphere with enough energy to neutralise the leaching effect. But the suit was better than nothing, and after all the time I’d spent in it on the last world, I’d gradually become comfortable with its use, and was now able to adjust to wearing it almost instantly, much like changing the lenses through which I saw the world.

Flipping my visor back down, I unconsciously activated my default selection of optical filters and lenses, in the process revealing the hidden reality of the Expanse, the myriad shifting layers of subtle matter through which the ship was gliding, as we searched for our way home.

We were lost.

What we’d assumed to have been a short period of simple drifting, caused by the traitors after they’d seized control of the ship, had turned out to be something much more complex.

The ship had been in the hands of the traitors for perhaps half a day, but the currents in the Expanse were unpredictable, and the engines which would normally be adjusted every few minutes, even while we were trying to stay stationary, had just been left running.

It was a small point perhaps, and one which the traitors had clearly been unaware of. The problem was compounded by the lack of a capable lensman amongst their number, so when the currents had slowly turned the ship around, nobody had noticed. The engines still whirring away, no longer holding us in position, instead carrying us with the current, perhaps even out into the really strong currents that even all of our engines on full couldn’t hold us stationary against.

How long we had raced along, how far we’d travelled beyond the meagre area that we’d mapped, nobody knew.

So now, there was only one world we knew how to find, and while they had welcomed us with open arms, each time we went back to visit, we increased the chances of the creatures finding it also.

I scanned the Expanse around us for any sign of the familiar, any indication we might have been here before.

If we could just find a familiar landmark, but after weeks of sailing out from World Two in every direction, we’d found nothing that looked even vaguely familiar.

Every day we’d sailed out just one degree of the compass to the side of the direction we’d taken the day before, travelling as far as our engines could carry us in a day, before turning around to sail back.

Day after day we’d set out, mapping and documenting everything we found, no matter how trivial. Day after day we returned with nothing useful.

Everyone on board knew this kind of searching was too slow for us to use for long. At one day per degree on the compass it would take a whole year to search one flat slice through the Expanse. But of course, the Expanse was three dimensional, and searching all those vertical planes as well could take hundreds of years. Even this one degree at a time search pattern was still no guarantee of success though, as after a few hours sailing, that single degree of the compass still meant leaving gaps many miles wide in our search pattern.

Naturally, we could try a spiral or grid pattern instead of sailing along the lines of the compass, but these faster strategies also increased the chance of us losing our bearings on World Two.

We needed a new approach. Something, anything which would be a little less random. An idea that would give us a fighting chance.

Ariel was the only one who’d come up with anything so far. But it was a suggestion fraught with risk.

After her experience of being merged with one of the creatures from the Expanse, she’d been able to sense the presence or direction of that creature. But since being back in the Expanse, she’d informed both me and the captain that she now sensed other creatures too. Like the buzz and chatter that could occasionally be heard over a radio or on long distance telephone calls.

Self-preservation had prevented her from focussing on it yet. She knew only too well that when she’d formed a link with the creature on World Two, it had also made it easier for the creature to sense her in return.

The captain and the senior staff, of whom I was now a member, were reluctant to take the risk if we didn’t have to. But with each day that our radial search failed to deliver, the need to try something different grew.

After a month of searching with nothing to show for it, the captain asked me to put a plan together to mitigate the risks of Ariel using her unique sense.

So here I was, once more at the very tip of the ship, up on the bowsprit, suspended as far out into the Expanse as it was possible for anyone aboard to be while still being on the ship.

I’d asked Ariel to join me here at two o’clock in the afternoon, ship time, when we’d be at our furthest distance away from the co-ordinates above World Two. The point at which we’d normally turn around in order to head back to our starting point.

I heard the nearby hatch open and close behind me, as I gazed out upon the Expanse in front of us.

‘Hello, Ash,’ Ariel said from behind me as she stepped out onto the bowsprit.

‘Hello, Ariel,’ I replied, turning around to face her.

Unlike me, Ariel was wearing her usual service uniform with just a slightly oversized sheepskin jacket over the top.

‘I hope you’ll forgive me if I don’t lift my visor,’ I continued, by way of pre-amble.

‘Of course not. Can’t have you stumbling around in the dark when you’re wearing that thing, unless you want me to go and find some steel toe-capped shoes!’

‘And here I was about to ask you for a dance!’

‘Oh, my toes ache just thinking about it.’

‘Well, my bones ache just seeing you dressed so normally when you’re out here exposed to… this,’ I said, waving my gauntleted hand at the energy-sucking Expanse around us.

‘Mmm, I know, it still feels a bit odd to me too, being able to just stand around out here without feeling like my life is being sucked out of me, let alone being able to see without needing my lenses as much. But if it’s any consolation, Crow thinks he might finally have started to figure out what it is about my new physiology which protects me against it.’

‘That is good news. Is it something he can replicate for the rest of us, without having to stick us in a blender with a lamphrey?’

‘He did try and explain it to me,’ she replied, half gazing around at the Expanse out of habit. ‘Something about an odd compound of Strontium thingummy and Barium whatsitnot which he’s found in the outer layers of my skin, but the details went a little bit over my head. I ran into him just now on my way up here to meet you.’

‘And are you sure you still want to go ahead with this experiment?’ I asked, earnestly. ‘It’s still not too late to back out if you’re not sure.’

‘After all the trouble Bradbury and his men have been to, I couldn’t back out now even if I wanted to… Which, incidentally I don’t.’

The measures I’d suggested to the captain to reduce the risk to both World Two and ourselves, were twofold.

Firstly, we should not ask Ariel to do anything until we were a good distance away from the location of World Two, just in case we did end up inadvertently attracting an unmanageable number of creatures to us, and had no choice but to leave.

Secondly, I had suggested we should try and devise a way to leave a trail of beacons behind us. In that way we could more easily find our way back to these co-ordinates if we ended up having to leave the area in a hurry.

Bradbury, our ships engineer, as always had applied himself to the problem with a will, and in no time had come up with something which he’d nicknamed a ‘Spike’.

The beacon itself was the easy part, it was a simple phosphor bronze case with a couple of radio antenna sticking out the side. This would allow it to receive simple radio signals from the ship and then broadcast a pulse in response. In this way, the beacon could lie dormant in the Expanse, emitting no energy, and hence attracting no attention from the various miasmic creatures that might pass nearby.

The difficult bit was figuring out how we could keep the beacons in more or less the same place, considering the constantly shifting currents which even the ship struggled to maintain its position against sometimes.

The answer, when it came, was once again suggested by Fraser, one of the least technical people on the ship.

We’d already considered fitting the beacons with tiny engines of their own, of streamlining them to reduce the effect of the currents, even of trying to moor one beacon to another, so they could each act as a drag upon the others, in the hope that the conflicting currents would somehow just cancel one another out.

I’d just sat down to breakfast with Fraser one morning, which was a habit we’d gradually gotten into after striking up a friendship on World Two.

For some reason, I’d opted for a bowl of the thickest and least appetising porridge I’d ever had in my life. Made I was sure in the traditional Scottish manner, which as far as I could tell, used water straight out of a highland ditch, rather than the altogether more English version made with milk and a little golden syrup.

Fraser had shared his usual enthusiastic insights into the workings of the ship, before asking how things were going with me. At which point I’d slightly despondently outlined the various problems we were having in trying to figure out how to keep the beacons in position once we launched them.

‘I don’t suppose you could just weld it onto the fabric of reality,’ he asked, around some altogether tastier looking bacon and eggs. ‘You know, like you did with the carcass of that kraken, when you appeared above my home world?’

‘If only we could, James,’ I replied, without really listening. ‘But that only happened because we…

‘… Honestly, there’s something about the way your brain works!’ I conceded, standing up from our table, in order to go and have a word with Bradbury, and in the process leaping at the chance to abandon my porridge.

‘Well you should know by now, Ash, anything like this, just come to me first!’ he called, jokingly after me.

It was such a ludicrous idea, it might just work. We did after all use Arc energy to open and then re-seal rips in the fabric of the Expanse to allow us to enter and exit a world. So, what was to stop us doing that on a much smaller scale. Open a rip just big enough to insert the beacon and then seal it back up around it.

Bradbury and the captain agreed, and in no time a ten-foot-long spike had been added to the bottom of the beacon, with an Arc conductor running down the centre so we could channel just enough energy to create a miniscule tear in the fabric of space before hammering the spike through it, and reversing the flow of Arc energy to seal the breach.

He’d also rigged a small deployment mechanism at the back of the ship below the main rear facing gun battery. All that was required was the instruction to place the first beacon.

‘Mr Bradbury,’ I said by way of hailing him, on a ship wide intercom channel. ‘Are you ready to place the first beacon?’

‘Yes, Lieutenant Commander, we are,’ he replied simply. ‘On your mark.’

‘Very good, please deploy the beacon.’

Bradbury had briefed the senior staff a few days earlier about how the new beacon apparatus should work, and as part of that he’d explained that the Arc discharge was so small it was unlikely to create any significant sound or light, but I was still expecting some trace of it to be apparent, even at the other end of the ship.

‘Beacon away, Lieutenant Commander,’ he reported, a moment later.

‘Has he done it yet?’ Ariel mouthed, also clearly expecting a bit more of a show.

I did my best to shrug in my suit, which was definitely not an action I’d practiced in it before, but she seemed to get the message.

‘Thank you, Mr Bradbury,’ I finally replied, resisting the temptation to ask if that was it.

‘Can you confirm the beacon is securely moored and the transceiver is operational?’

‘Yes sir, the beacon is securely moored… and we are receiving a strong and clear signal from it.’

‘Very good, please stand by,’ I replied, hoping all other such exercises could go as smoothly.

‘Whenever you’re ready, Ariel,’ I said to her, with the intercom channel switched off.

Nodding her understanding, she stepped past me to go and stand at the tip of the bowsprit, looking out at the Expanse beyond.

‘I ignore it most of the time,’ she explained, as she settled herself into position, lowering her head slightly, and placing a hand on the railing, as though concentrating.

‘It’s like the hum of the engines,’ she continued. ‘After a few months aboard ship, you don’t notice them until they stop, or suddenly increase in power.

‘Nothing in particular is jumping out at me.

‘I’ll try focusing on just one direction…’ she added, pointing a hand out directly ahead of the ship.

‘No nothing there. Still nothing unusual. Nope, no, nothing,’ she continued, moving her hand to point a little to the side, then up a bit, then across again.

‘Wait… I think that might be something,’ she finally said, after almost an hour of pointing at different bits of the area ahead of the ship.

‘There are more voices in this direction,

‘Yes, I can see something now… Oh, there are hundreds of them, thousands. They’re all digging and clawing and scraping. Climbing over one another to try and get to the front.

‘It’s a big group trying to break through into a world, and there are so many of them.’

‘Keep pointing toward them, Ariel? And I’ll relay the direction to the bridge.’

Without hesitation, she did as I asked.

‘Captain,’ I called over the intercom. ‘Ariel has identified the co-ordinates of a large group of creatures attempting to claw their way into a world.

‘The co-ordinates are twenty-five degrees to port, forty degrees’ azimuth.’

‘Thank you, Mr Hall,’ the captain replied. ‘Changing course to intercept, please relay any refinements in our direction straight to the helm.’

The engines roared into life as the ship slowly turned toward where Ariel was pointing.

I asked her to try and maintain the link for the moment, until the ship was on exactly the right course, and then once she was pointing dead ahead of us, I let her know she could take a break while I took her place on point, and cranked up the lens magnification on my suit to as high as it would go in order to search out the creatures she’d spotted ahead of us.

FIRE

AWORLD IS IN FLAMES .

Pale-red light is visible from the planet below, through the rips which the creatures have opened up in the fabric of space.

Dozens, perhaps even hundreds of holes through which thousands of creatures from the Expanse are pouring, like hungry rats scrambling through a sewer grate to get at a meal beyond.

It is a nightmare from which everyone aboard the ship would like to awake. A horrific scene into which we are half-flying and half-falling, with angry eyes, pounding hearts, and every weapon array we have primed for killing.

But the Expanse is quiet despite the mayhem which is about to erupt. The steady throb of our engines unnoticed by the greedy horde of monsters, as they claw their way over one another to get into this world.

Is this our home world which they are clawing their way through into? Even the smallest of chances that this is our home they are attacking, our comrades in arms they are fighting, our friends and families they want to feed upon… It’s enough to banish any trace of mercy from our hearts.

We are the angel of death, falling upon our enemies with righteous wrath in our hearts, we descend upon them with a fury, in a halo of lightning which screams its way toward the unsuspected creatures as they ravage their way into this world.

We deliver death to thousands of these creatures, large and small as we enter the world over Japan to begin with. Raining down our destruction upon the mass of invaders, but moving back out into the Expanse in order to seal a handful of rips, before entering another that leads us over southern China to do the same. An hour later with more invaders turned to ash and embers we enter the familiar airspace of the Himalaya, travelling a few minutes in the Expanse to cover thousands of miles in the world below.

Perhaps sensing the carnage we have already delivered, the creatures attacking Kathmandu finally notice our arrival, and turn their attentions to the great bronze airship which is massacring them. But we are eager to embrace them. Marines occupy the ships fighting platforms in their armed and armoured suits, or behind portable deck mounted weapons. Which, while less powerful and with a shorter range than our main ships batteries, make up for it in their numbers. Nearly two hundred Marines are ready to greet any creature which survives the onslaught of the bigger guns.

It is then that we notice for the first time, there are no other airships entering the fray. The high Himalaya, our first and richest hunting ground, has not a single airship stationed there to defend it. We are alone.

Still we battle on, knowing that even the colossal power of the Kubla Khan cannot stand indefinitely against the legions of creatures from the Expanse.

We use our radio to call the surface below and let them know we have returned, but our messages go unanswered.

It is a fight to even make it through to the skies over Kathmandu, so many of the monsters are turned to greet us instead of trying to pour in through the holes they have created. But we fight our way in, and instead of airships, dozens of tiny single-man aircraft appear in the skies around us, showering the monsters with some kind of flaming shot. But as soon as they have arrived they are departing, followed by a second and third waves.

We chase the remaining creatures back to the Expanse, mending the holes in space behind us, before moving on.

But we are taking damage. Only small amounts at first, but all damage during a battle is significant. The injured are ferried into the centre of the ship, replaced by their comrades in arms. A gunnery arm fails and even as we head into the next battle, engineers are already swarming over it to bring it back on line. A second, third and fourth team of engineers are dispatched to other malfunctioning systems or weapons, to breaches in the hull, while their comrades work below decks to try and get more and more power out of the reactors, or to replace blown capacitors and relays.

For some of us this is a reminder of the life we lived in our first six months in the Expanse, before the betrayal by our fellow crew members that sent us crashing through the fabric of reality into a world which we had never even suspected had existed.

For others, those brave individuals who joined us from the same world we appeared above as a ragged wreck of a vessel, it is their first taste of a full-scale battle, rather than the countless small skirmishes we’d had since heading back into the Expanse. Our second bloody shake-down cruise.

The battle over the Caucasus mountains almost gave us time to catch our breath. Once more, we were aided by those fast little one-man craft, which together made the job possible.

From the Caucasus, we fought over the central Anatolian plateau and the remains of Ankara, then what looked like Athens, Barcelona, Nice, Bucharest, Budapest, Geneva, Lyon, and finally Paris.

Twenty hours later and we reach Paris, but the unimaginable power of our Aetheric reactors is almost spent, their resonance chambers in need of being completely re-energised. A third of the gunnery platforms are also down, some needing time and a break from the fighting to repair, others that would be active again before the fight was done.

We’d pushed the ship and the crew to their limits already, but we had no choice but to continue, hoping beyond hope that those small craft would again join the fight.

We fell like a stone to catch the creatures which had passed through the rip, hitting some of them quite literally like a hammer blow. Appearing in their midst with all weapons blazing, creating an almost perfect radius of destruction about us. Scorched carcasses fell to the ground below, while others of their kind attempted to fight back. The darts appeared once more, one wave