Aethosphere Chronicles: Storm of Chains by Jeremiah D. Schmidt Read Free Book Online

conceal their guns and sabers beneath the folds of
their coats and jackets, while others didn’t bother with such a
formality in the least.
    “Oh, we ain’t here to rob you,” offered a
trim and wolfish looking man, leaning against Drish’s antique
bureau with nonchalant indifference. The sharp-toothed outlaw
appeared to hold more interest in picking at the grime under his
thumbnail then the whole crazy affair playing out in Larken’s
study.
    “Is this really the man we’re here to get?”
questioned the brute with the mangled face. Drish could hardly
stand to look at him. Whatever ruin had occurred had laid claim to
the brigand’s nose, lips, and even his eyelids, leaving him staring
out through two patches of puckered flesh shrunken around a pair of
goggles screwed directly into his head. Within the puss-yellow
fluid sloshing around behind the adornment’s glass, the brute’s
eyeballs seemed to float freely…or at least that’s how Drish
imagined it.
    After a moment it was plainly clear they
weren’t here to rob him. “I…are you…with the Bureau,” dared the
noble in a stammer.
    “Snitches? No we’re not snitches, so count
yourself lucky there, Mr. Larken,” offered a tall black-skinned
Candaran, whose heavily-tattooed flesh looked as tough as leather
and pulled taunt over ropes of lean muscle. Though he looked to be
the oldest man present, with black hair peppering to gray, he
seemed somehow hardier than the rest.
    A marauding kill squad then? Drish
quaked in his despair, flinching violently as the men shuffled in
around him. Would all these jangling buckles and chains; the flex
and groan of leather; the hard boots scraping over his wooden
floor; would these be his last memories of a cold, cruel world? The
accountant tried to keep tabs on those that circled around him; the
black man, the scarred brute…but he lost track in the shuffle of
bodies. A seemingly endless procession crowded into his small
study, their reek filling the room and turning his already weakened
stomach into a whirlwind. He felt drool fill his mouth, and knew he
was on the verge of throwing up again.
    Then all seemed to suddenly go still and
silent, and the men stopped moving. A moment passed, and then
Drish’s attention was grabbed by the lone clopping of boots. He
turned just as a man took center-stage over him; and what an
imposing man it was. Tall of stature and broadly built, this
newcomer wore a tricorne hat, fashioned from dark and greasy
leather. Draped over his frame was a long fur coat…a coat that
looked to have been pulled directly from a dead and rotting
shaghund, while peering out from just above the rim of its
scraggily collar, hawk-yellow eyes locked on the captive noble.
    This marauder nodded his apparent
satisfaction. “Good,” the voice rumbled through the floorboards,
and he turned to an oily scallywag following closely behind him.
This attendant was easily a head shorter than his master, even
though he already stood hunched under the pressing weight of some
mechanical apparatus. Strapped to his back, it looked rather like a
turtle-shell, made of metal and transistors, and bristling with
antennas. The face of the man beneath it looked pale and pained,
and despite the cold breezing in through the townhouse’s open door
downstairs, he was sweating profusely.
    “How much time do we got, Lance,” asked the
outlaw. His voice muffled by the collar.
    The pained underling maneuvered awkwardly
under the apparatus’s weight, to wrap an arm up around the side to
twist a series of dials. Drish heard the tell-tale squeal of a
radio crackling out from the rubberized earphones, which hung
clamped against the black curtain of this villain’s mangy hair.
    “Imperials have gone radio-silent,
Cap-i-tain,” he replied, his voice flowing like oil over gravel,
“I’ll try the other frequencies, but I’d say we don’t have much
more than a couple minutes before they make their move now—best
estimate given standard