She squinted at the toy-like shapes on the ground. There were the jetties and the building, which seemed to extend well out into the water away from the beach. She followed the line of the building across the water and saw another, larger gray shape. It was a ship, rounded at the rear and slender at the bow, but she couldn’t tell what was scattered across its deck. “Nothing special, Kenan. Just a boat.”
“Right. But captain, it’s huge.”
“What?” Taziri looked again and saw a few flashing specks nearby that might have been fishing boats. The trawlers were pale dots beside the whale-like creature sitting at anchor beyond the long black docks. “It is huge. Wake the major. I’m going to go down and make a pass over it.”
Taziri took the controls with a hot flush in her palms. She didn’t know much about ships except that the old steamers used engines almost identical to the old airships, and when they exploded the crews drowned instead of falling hundreds of feet to their deaths. And she had grown up in Tingis, watching the Mazigh ships chugging in and out of the harbor. She knew how large a cargo ship should be, and this ship below them was much, much larger.
Kenan dropped back into his seat as Syfax shoved his head into the cockpit and squinted out the windscreen. “What’s up, Ziri? The kid’s acting all squirrelly again.” He tousled the lieutenant’s oily hair, glared at his hand, and then wiped the grease on Kenan’s jacket sleeve.
Taziri had already brought them down several hundred feet and circled around to approach the strange ship from the east. “Take a look at that boat. Notice anything?”
The major nodded and drawled, “It’s freaking huge. What the hell is on the deck? Those pointy things there and there? They look like cannons.”
“We’re about to find out. I can only make one pass before we need to get back on course, or we’re going to run into fuel troubles. Kenan.”
The lieutenant blushed and nodded and went back to his charts and calculations.
“Is everything all right, captain?” asked Nicola. “I see that we are quite close to the water now. Is that Marrakesh just up ahead?”
“No, this is still Espana. We’re just taking a quick pass over Valencia before continuing south,” Taziri called back over her shoulder. “If you look out your window, you may see some of the famed Espani cathedrals.” She saw the amusement in Syfax’s eyes and muttered, “I had to say something.”
The large gray ship was very close now, only a quarter of a mile ahead and five hundred feet below them. Taziri tried to keep her eyes on her instruments, but the closer they came to the ship the more she glanced down at it.
“Holy hell, that’s a big ironclad.” The major crammed against her shoulder to get a better look over her head. “And those are guns on the deck. Big ones. Six in front and four more in the back. Artillery. Machine guns.”
“The entire housing is mechanized. Look how they swivel,” said Kenan.
Taziri saw them swiveling all too well. One pair of the huge cannons was rotating toward them and they were close enough now to see the men scrambling across the deck, rallying around the smaller gun batteries. “I’m pulling up. We’ve seen enough.”
A distant metallic chatter echoed under their feet and they saw the first faint flashes from the muzzles of the mechanized rifles along the deck railing. The heavy cannon were still turning, turning, turning, and rising to follow the climbing plane. And then they fired. Taziri was looking down at just that moment when the two enormous barrels vanished behind a flash of fire and blossom of smoke. She pushed the yoke to the right and felt the Halcyon slice off to the side far out of the ship’s firing solution, and she exhaled, momentarily relieved at having cleared the first disaster.
And then the shells exploded.
Both shells detonated less than thirty yards behind them and the plane bucked and juked as the shockwave struck the tail. Taziri wrestled with the controls, stomping on the pedals, and cursing the brace on her left arm that kept her hand from bending and twisting the way she needed it to. The engine roared on without a sputter and she almost thought she had the clumsy bird level when a hailstorm of shrapnel tore through the rear of the cabin. The passengers all reflexively curled into balls, covering their heads and trying to huddle down in their seats. Tiny pin pricks of sunlight pierced the cabin in a dozen tiny rays from the holes in the walls.
Taziri could barely breathe around the weight in her chest. “Is everyone all right? Everyone say something!”
“I’m fine,” Shahera said, her hands still clasped over her head.
“As am I,” said Nicola, straightening up and peering back at the holes in the plane.
“Goddamnit, woman, what the hell is going on!” snapped Dante. “Are you trying to kill us all? Do something!”
“Shut up!” roared Syfax.
Through all the shaking of the frame and the whistling of the wind through the holes, Taziri managed to focus on the fuel gauge. Please stay full, please God save the fuel. She counted to ten, then twenty, then thirty, but the fuel gauge stayed high.
“We’re all right,” she said. “We’ll bear south and be back on course in a few minutes. Everything is fine. Kenan, give me a heading for Tingis.”
“Bearing…two-three-zero. Repeat, two-three-zero.”
Taziri nodded and turned the yoke as she pressed the pedals to make the turn. The Halcyon banked left, but did not turn. She held the controls for a moment, but the plane only shivered at its precarious angle, still bearing due west. She kicked the pedals, and again, and again.
“Captain?” Kenan looked down at her feet.
“We’ve lost the tail. I can’t turn.”
“What do we do?”
Taziri straightened the yoke and the plane leveled out. The city of Valencia spread out below them, and beyond the church spires and watchtowers lay the snowy fields and hills of Espana. “We’ll have to land. Somewhere.”
“What do you mean, somewhere?” Syfax pointed at the broken landscape below. “Look at that.”
“Maybe we can find a lake or a river.”
The major glared. “It’ll be frozen.”
“It’ll be fine.” She pressed her lips tightly and didn’t say, As long as it happens to lie east-west directly below us.
For half an hour they cruised west, slowly slipping lower and lower so Taziri could study the ground below. An entire country frozen in ice and snow, and not a single strip of water to land on? They passed a high ridge with a second one just ahead, and between the two crests she saw a flat white expanse below. “There!”
Kenan frowned at the frozen lake. “It’s running to the north-west. We won’t have much space to put down.”
“It’ll have to do.” Taziri tightened her safety harness. “Everyone, we’re going to land in a minute. Please hold on. This might be a little rough.”
Syfax went back to his own seat, pretending to stumble by Dante to slap the Italian in the head as he passed.
Taziri eased back the throttle as she brought the plane down, and the engine purred softer and softer.
“Captain?” Kenan tapped the air speed meter. “We’re close to stalling.”
“I see it,” she snapped. The entire plane was shivering now as the crosswind from the valley began driving them south. The soldier pines studding the lower slopes snapped into focus in the clear afternoon light. The sun’s glare had the entire frozen lake blazing with sparkling white light and she hastily clawed her goggles down over her eyes. Taziri lifted the nose and cut the throttle, and the Halcyon fell out of the sky.
The metal pontoons crashed into the ice and screamed across the frozen lake. The wheels underneath whistled and squeaked as the plane raced toward the far bank. Taziri slammed the flaps down and the wings roared in the wind as the elemental forces of air and ice clawed at the poor metal bird.
Over the shaking console, Taziri watched the line of trees on the far bank grow closer and closer. The plane was slowing, but not slowing enough. “Get down!” She grabbed Kenan’s head and pushed him down below the height of the console just as the Halcyon struck the tree line. A leafless branch speared through the windscreen and into Kenan’s shoulder and the lieutenant cried out. The passengers shouted and screamed, and a handful of small
