Steampunk Part XI

[icarus_chained]

Apologies for the long wait, but this one is basically all battle, and that was a problem for me. Plus, I had to do something ... terrible, at the end. You have been warned.

On a slightly brighter note, though ... y'all remember the Lexwing from the Batman/Superman animated movie? Well, not to brag or anything, but Steampunk Luthor has much better taste.

Title: The Wind At Midnight
Rating: PG-13 overall, I think.
Characters/Pairings: Bruce/Clark. Bruce, Clark, Tim, Luthor this chapter.
Summary: Almost a quarter of a century ago, the cities of Earth were torn from the earth by some mystic upheaval and set flying, before threatening to fall back. To prevent the incredible loss of life if they fell, structures known as Ramparts were rapidly constructed, containing the material apparently most susceptible to the new mystical gravities of earth: silver. A new world order was built, as the deserts created on the surface during the Upheaval denied cultivation, based on Cities and flightpaths and park-grown food, a world in tentative political and physical balance. And now that balance is threatened.
Chapter summary: You realise, of course, that this means war? Really.
Disclaimer: Characters are not mine. Conceit inspired by James Blish's 'Cities in Flight'. Rest is mine.
 

The Wind At Midnight

Part XI


 

For a moment, they just stared out at it. Hanging in midair. Just watching the distant battle rage over the seas around Gotham, listening to the cackle of the madman beneath them. For a moment, Clark just drifted, feeling Bruce slowly freeze over in his arms, feeling the rage coalescese inside the man. Maybe it was shock. Maybe it was fear. But whatever it was, a moment was all it could hold them for.

Bruce turned his head to look at him, his eyes bleak and coldly furious. He said nothing. But Clark understood anyway.

Together, they flew into the maelstrom.

Luthor's boats, definitely. Clones of the boat they had just sent to the dunes, though probably not piloted by similar men. Clark doubted there were many like John Corben. And against them, Gotham's forces. Elegant, functional boats, smaller and more maneuverable that Luthor's. And outnumbered, by the looks of things.

Clark flew them into the midst of the battle, dodging and weaving through the beams and roar of boats. He was clumsier than normal, unused to flying quite like this. It nearly cost them. One of Gotham's boats screamed past them, an inch shy, the slipstream buffetting them away, almost into the beam from the pursuing ship. It took every ounce of Clark's skill to pull them up out of range, and he was sweating in raw terror at the miss. So close. Too close. He needed to be better than this. He had to be, or they were both dead.

"Left," Bruce yelled hoarsely in his ear, struggling to be heard over the cacophony of battle. Clark dodged instantly to the left, not questioning him. No time for that. Only time to trust him. The beam lanced through two feet to their right, and Clark instinctively darted up and back to get clear of the following boat. Another warning from Bruce, and they wove rapidly to the side to avoid a rain of debris. And then again, shying away from twin cannon beams. And down and through, around a sinking Luthoran ship.

Battle was more difficult without a boat, he was discovering. Easier to maneuver, sure, but one hit ...

"There," Bruce growled, pointing through a gap in the fighting where two boats had taken each other out. The dark bulk of Gotham's rock base was visible as a black silhouette just ahead, framed by the dazzle of the rising sun. Bruce had raised one hand to shield his eyes. Clark didn't need to.

Destination in sight, a new determination came over Clark. He was tired of drifting and floundering, fighting just to find his way. He was Commander of MADF. He'd made his name in the skies, in battles just like this one. The mere fact that he hadn't a boat this time around was no excuse. It was time to see what the limits of this new ability were.

He dove for the gap, all at once, feeling more than hearing Bruce suppress a gasp. The Nightlord wrapped himself tighter against him, pulled his cloak in close to reduce the drag. Clark smiled grimly, firming his own grip around the man as he felt power rush through him. He turned his face into the sun, felt energy pour over him like molten light, and arrowed himself along its path to safety.

The wind pulled against them, stealing breath. Fast. He could fly so fast, like this. So free ... A ship, thundering past to his left, and he rolled aside without thinking, curling Bruce into his chest, and dove low to avoid the sweep of her sail. He rushed down over the surface of the Atlantic, seeing a wake, a wake, part the water beneath them at the force of his passing. He felt a sudden, ridiculous urge to whoop with joy, lunging with ease through skies dark with boats and beams and debris, a wall of noise pressing around them, roar and crackle and shriek, and laughter. His, he realised abruptly. He was laughing. He hadn't even noticed.

Then Bruce stiffened in his arms, as they swept into Gotham's shadow. Something catching his eye, the Nightlord looked straight up, his sharp eyes piercing the darkness beneath her bulk. He turned his head to catch Clark's eye, jerking it in a sharp motion to go up, straight up. They were moving too fast for him to pull his arm free to gesture. Clark obeyed, his trust implicit, pulling up in one rushing movement to spiral skyward into the press of battle.

Bruce kept his eyes on whatever had caught his attention, tracking his prize with glittering intensity as they rose, and without looking he tugged at Clark to show him the way, to direct left a little, higher, all so fast, so ready. And Clark went with it, went with him, his eyes struggling in the sudden dimness to see what it was that Bruce saw. And then, suddenly, the Nightlord turned in his arms. Turned into him, stared right into his eyes, and pulled his hands around to rest against Clark's chest. The Commander had all of a second to blink at him in confusion, before every ounce of strength in that hardened frame pulsed through those braced arms, and Bruce spun away from him in a whirl of wind.

Clark stared in shock.

The Nightlord turned in the air, facing back down towards the sea that waited below, wrapping his cloak tight around him to plunge through the sky at speed, then snapping it out to slow his descent, looking for a second like the Bat of his emblem. Clark shook his head, snapping out of it, but before he could move to dive after him, a ship rushed in from the side, just beneath the wayward Nightlord. A Luthoran ship. And without a second's hesitation that Clark could see, as if he'd been aiming for that exact circumstance, Bruce pulled the cloak tight again to drop like a hawk feet-first onto the upper slope of the boat's spine. Then, as Clark watched in something like awe, he caught his balance and skidded down the spine to the cannon, wrenching it off its path just as the pilot fired.

The beam lanced out from the misdirected weapon, and missed a Gothamite ship by bare millimeters. The startled pilot of the saved vessel started to pull her into a turn, but Clark wasn't watching him.

Job done, the Nightlord slipped a hand inside his cloak, pulled out something small and black to plant it inside the cannon's casing, and looked up. Straight at Clark, his eyes boring into the Commander's thirty feet above, and Clark swore he could see that faint, familiar smile on those distant features. He was moving before he even realised it, diving through the air, and Bruce was already leaping, plunging free of the ship as the device inside the cannon exploded. The heat wrapped around Clark like a blanket as he ploughed into it, the concussion sweeping out from the stricken ship to catch the Nightlord and tumble him through the air, and then Clark had him, caught his flailing hand, wrapped his arms around him through the tangle of cloak.

They had pulled up, a bare twenty feet from the surface of the sea, before he remembered how to breathe again. There was a moment of shock, of hollow silence, and then the fury hit him. Anger so deep and powerful it blinded him, and it was all he could do not to shake the Nightlord like a ragdoll, not to crush Bruce against him in trembling terror.

"Don't you ever do that to me again!" he roared, pushing the sound past the ringing in his ears, and felt Bruce laugh against his chest. He tried to shake the man, infuriated, but his arms were too tangled in the cloak and Bruce's hands, and Bruce was looking up at him and smiling, defiant, the excitement and power in every line of his face, and Clark couldn't remember why he was angry, and Bruce had disentangled a hand to reach up towards his face ...

"BRUCE! Bruce!?"

A young voice battered its way through the roar to reach them, slicing through the moment, and Clark came back to reality with a hollow thud. He looked up, Bruce already watching the skies, to see the Gothamite ship the Nightlord had just saved sweeping low to hover above them, her sails pulling wide and level to catch her. A boy stood at the hatch, a young man wearing the uniform of an Air Commander, in Gotham's black and silver, an expression of relief and residual battle-detachment on his face. Clark blinked at him.

"Bruce?" the boy asked again, staring hard at the figure in Clark's arms.

"Mind your back, Tim!" the Nightlord bellowed back, so suddenly Clark almost dropped him. "How many times do I have to tell you!" And Clark wondered how many people would have thought him angry, who didn't know him. But he could hear the fear and relief in Bruce's voice, echoes of everything he had just felt in his turn, and he realised that this boy, this Tim, was someone who meant quite a bit to his Nightlord. And on the tails of that realisation, he pulled the man close to him and darted up to meet the descending ship.

He pulled up just opposite the hatch, hovering in empty space ten feet out from the boat's hull with the Nightlord in his arms, and watched the boy's expression go from surprise to wariness to readiness, all in a few seconds. Oh yes. He could see Bruce's training in him already, and he hadn't even met him yet.

"Bruce?" Tim asked, for the third time, but this one was different. More of a 'are you in the hands of an enemy, Bruce?' than a 'Bruce, is that you?'. Clark smiled at him, and watched him blink uncertainly. Bruce looked from one to the other of them, and his smile had definitely edged into smirk. Clark frowned down at him, but it made little dent in the expression.

The Nightlord turned to his Air Commander as one of those strange lulls dropped over the battlefield. "Timothy Drake," he said, with a wry smile. "Commander of the Gotham Aerial Forces. Meet Clark Kent, Commander of the Metropolis Aerial Defense Forces. My friend."

Tim looked at him, his expression unreadable, and then at Clark, who almost dropped Bruce before he could check the impulse to offer his hand. Then, with an air of one who had gotten used to the vagaries of his Lord, the boy shook his head in exasperation, and offered Clark a smile of his own.

"Pleased to meet you, Mr Kent," he smiled, and muttered in an aside to Bruce, "You always manage to find the weird ones, don't you?" Clark blinked at him.

"Ah, pleased to meet you too?" he asked, frowning slightly, and Bruce laughed. Low and delighted, almost drowned by an explosion above their heads. The eye had passed, brief and fluttering, and the storm of fighting wrapped itself around them again. Tim never hesitated, already leaping back inside his ship, the sails pulling through the air beneath Clark's feet as his copilot pulled her around to bank upwards. Clark dodged back from her wake, darting high and swift to anticipate her path and keep pace.

And as they turned upwards into the fighting, ready to rejoin the battle, a flash of light to the east caught all eyes not yet preoccupied with impending death. Clark turned his head, echoed by every pilot and fighter in range, and stared out across the sunlit Atlantic at the majestic shape that hove into view.

A ship, flanked by swarming allies. No. Bigger than that. She was huge, Clark realised, a great hulking shape in the air, lean for her length, with engine after engine along the sweeping lines of her wings. His mind searched for a name for her, searched for something to describe the size of what he was seeing, and from the dim recesses of his memory came one word, from the ships that had once sailed the seas. A battlecruiser. Such a thing ... she was impossible, she couldn't be. Nothing like this existed anymore, nothing since before the Upheaval, and never in the air. She shouldn't fly, the sheer bulk of her impossible ...

"Silver," Bruce said, quietly, beside him, and Clark looked at him sharply. The Nightlord nodded out at the graceful giantess bearing serenely down on them. "Along the hull. Look."

Clark turned his eyes back to her, focusing, wishing idly for a LongGlass. But as she neared, as the great bulk of her came into clear view, he saw what Bruce meant. Scrolled over her hull, gleaming in the sunlight, were the narrow veins of silver that had to be the only thing keeping her in the air. Woven and interwoven, almost delicate looking, spread far and narrow to make the weight count for distance, the tracery was almost a work of art. Craftsmanship of the highest order, beautiful and functional ... and completely illegal. Because every spare scrap of silver that could be found on the planet had been channeled into the Ramparts of the Cities, and for this vessel to carry so much so proudly, it had to have been stolen, siphoned from the Ramparts, taken from the only things keeping thousands of lives in the air ...

She was monstrous, he thought. Beautiful, wonderful, and utterly monstrous. And there was only one man he knew who would fly such a thing as this wicked beauty.

"Luthor," he said softly, and wondered how Lois had missed this. Beside him, Bruce smiled sharply, his eyes quietly blazing. "It's Luthor." And in blithe confirmation of his statement, a huge radio crackled into life somewhere inside that bulk, and the familiar urbane voice of Lex Luthor poured like honey out over the battlefield.

"This is Lex Luthor, Lord of Metropolis," the man said calmly, and Clark could imagine him, somewhere inside that thing, gazing out at his enemy's City with a determined and faintly sad expression. He felt sick that he had ever been taken in by it. "I realise that you've all got other problems at the minute, but if you could take a moment to listen to me, I'd be grateful."

"Hah!" Bruce barked beside him, derision and pain in his voice, a bitter smirk twisting his features. He shook his head. "Who does he think he's fooling?"

Clark looked at the Lord in his arms, and out at the beautiful ship that bore down on them, and up at the black bulk of Gotham behind them. He felt suddenly old, and terribly sad. "Everyone," he said, quietly. "He's always fooled everyone. Everyone who thought they knew him." And Bruce looked at him, shaking his head helplessly, sadness in his eyes as if he felt Clark's pain. Clark hugged him close, and nearly cried as the man winced. Not healed yet, and why did he keep forgetting? But Luthor was continuing, and everyone stopped to listen, the silence complete save for that honeyed voice, and the groans as damaged ships sank gracelessly into the sea.

"I did not want this war," that smooth voice went on, gentle and sad. "I had hoped for a peaceful union between the Day and the Night. But the Nightlord has forced my hand." His voice rose, passion coming into it, anger. A faint glimpse of the madness that lurked beneath. "The Nightlord came to my City helpless, was brought back to health by the efforts of my people. And in return, he has turned my City to ruin! Even now, Metropolis lies behind me, in the grips of rebel forces swayed by his black influence, traitors. Fighters of Metropolis, I come to tell you that your City has fallen! Metropolis has fallen!"

A horrified silence swept out at those words. Clark drifted numb, vaguely aware that what Luthor said was good, that it meant Lois had succeeded, but somewhere deeper than that, where he held the faith that had carried him through the last two decades, all he heard were those words. Metropolis has fallen. Metropolis has fallen. His City, his life ... Luthor was good, he thought, absently. He knew right where to hit people so it hurt. Exactly how to wound ...

And then, a soft, wounded voice cut through the daze, and he turned to look at the man in his arms. Bruce stared up at him, face carefully composed, but for the eyes that shone with tears at the stark pain they found in his face. "I'm sorry," the Nightlord said again, and his voice broke gently on the words. And something shattered in Clark's heart, some fog, and he saw clear at last. Clear of the spell that for years Luthor had woven over his City, clear of the corruption that had slipped unknowing into his heart, disguised as faith. He felt his eyes harden, felt the glare as it formed and arrowed out to the beauty and sadness that masked a monster.

Metropolis had not fallen. She had been freed. Reborn, after years under this man's thumb. After years of blindness deeper than any Night, Clark finally saw her for what she had been, and what she now was. Metropolis was free, and Luthor deserved no part of her!

And no part of Gotham, either. He looked down again into the Nightlord's eyes, into Bruce's eyes, and smiled. Free and clear and determined, and there was the answering smile, surprised and loving and fierce. They had a mission yet, a battle left to fight. This man, this gentle monster, would not lay another hand on either of their Cities. They would make sure of it.

If they could.

"That is why," Luthor continued, his voice once again returned to its calm, sorrowful cadence, "I have been forced to take this final, unfortunate action. I do not want this. I have never been a man of war. But Metropolis will be avenged!"

And at those words, a great hiss and clang carried out over the wind from his battlecruiser, as all along her spine and bows ports flared open. Clark darted higher without thought, instinct driving him, and Bruce stiffened in his arms as a roar shuddered through Luthor's vessel. There was a stillness beneath the thunder, as if thousands had drawn in their collective breath, and then a scream as the first of Luthor's weapons roared forth. They had time for a glimpse of it, for a second of confused incomprehension as the object rushed towards them at a deceptively fast pace, and then the battlecruiser convulsed, and dozens spilled forth to tear towards them in a cloud of death.

"Missiles!" Bruce roared in disbelief beside him. "Those are missiles!" But Clark was already moving, already spinning away from the advancing cloud, hearing the tearing groans around him as boats struggled to turn. Beams lanced out sporadically as a number of Gothamite pilots attempted to stem to tide, and behind them explosions roared as missiles, whatever Bruce meant by that, were picked out of the air, but it wasn't enough. It wasn't enough.

And then Bruce was tugging at his arm, roaring in his ear, and he couldn't hear it but the desperation demanded that he try, and Tim pulled alongside as they flew blindly, and there was a moment of panicked maneuvering before he managed to pull them in through the hatch, and Bruce was already clambering desperately forward to the cockpit, reaching for the radio ...

"All Gotham boats, turn and fight!" he roared, his voice crackling out over the airwaves through the chaos of harried retreat. "I repeat, turn and fight. Take them out! The target is Gotham. Turn! Turn!"

Clark gasped in horror, echoed by Tim, and the pilot was already turning, already trying, and through the hatch he could see them react, see it as every slim, elegant boat bearing the Bat emblem fought to turn, sails sweeping out blindly, uncaringly. A missile swept past the opening, and Clark caught the glimpse of it, of the slim brass cylinder with its fragile solar fins, and it was gone again before he could make sense of it. Bruce was barking orders, and beams lanced out from ships half-turned, firing broadside, and then a beam hit the boat above and to their right, and Clark remembered the other battle, the older battle, remembered Luthor's ships ...

They had no chance. He knew that immediately. He'd seen so many battles, fought in the air so many times, and even if he had seen nothing like this, he knew defeat when it was staring them in the face. He felt it coming, as the boats fell around them, and beams hissed through the air, and the missiles screamed on their way, and Bruce roared out into the ether, and the Gotham ships were fighting, focusing all their efforts on stopping the missiles, even as enemy vessels tore them from the air, and they were turning again themselves, racing towards the City, trying to catch the ones that had slipped through, desperate to be in time ...

And then, it happened. As it had to. As he'd sensed it would, as Bruce had felt it would. They were facing her, looking right into her silent, dark majesty as the fire-flowers bloomed on her flanks, as the missiles even the valiant efforts of dozens of doomed pilots couldn't stop impacted. They hit the rock of her base, her Ramparts, maybe fifteen explosions ...

Gotham shuddered, blind and stunned by the assault on her person. A stillness fell as they watched her, as the dust and debris rained almost silently from behind the clouds of smoke, and then, with a groan that seemed to vibrate out from her very core, she started to sink. Clark watched, his hand at his mouth, his heart screaming in his chest, as Gotham, City of the Night, rolled strikenly sideways towards the shore. He gasped, biting his hand until the blood flowed, as the tip of her underspire tore through the waves with a booming crash, and she lolled drunkenly, striving to hold herself above the earth, striving to keep herself in the air. She teetered, on the verge of falling so that she'd never get up again ... and stopped as steam screamed out from the vents just beneath the Ramparts on the leaning side, halting the fall.

She stopped, holding herself back from the final fall, the Black Lady standing wounded but not dead. Not yet.

Clark turned to Bruce, to the Nightlord as he stood silent as if carved from stone behind them. The radioglass had fallen unremarked from his hand, his fists clenched as he watched the fall of his City, his mouth thin and bloodless. His eyes ... his eyes were desolate.

"Bruce?" Clark asked, softly, gently. Blue eyes snapped around to meet his, the pain and rage in them freezing the air between them, but Clark didn't care. He reached out, stretched out his hand from where he was lying on the floor of the boat, and took that cold, shaking fist in his. "My Lord?"

The Nightlord stared down at him, as the shock cleared from his features, and all that was left was pained determination. "Clark," he rasped, and shook his head as if to clear it. "Clark," he said again, and it was firmer. "Take me to my City, Clark. Now. Plea ... please."

Clark stood without a word, held out his arms, and pulled the Nightlord out into the silent, screaming air.


Part XII: http://icarus-chained.livejournal.com/43595.html#cutid1