She looked across the deck. It was an expanse of flaming puddles of grease and smoking scraps of metal. Sophie left Tisker’s side to throw back the hatch on the second engine compartment, which was dented and blackened by its proximity to the blast of its twin. She could hear another malfunctioning part clattering within.
Dug climbed backward down the port-side ladder to the middle deck, and Talis followed, not waiting for him to clear it beneath her.
When the Number Two engine exploded, something heavy and hard slammed Talis forward. Her forehead struck one of the ladder steps, and she let go of the rails, falling the last few steps. Dug caught her under the arms and kept her from slumping into an undignified mess.
She struggled to her feet. Her head swam, but through the lights that swirled in her vision, she saw Sophie crumpled against the railing. Thrown by the blast. Red, where a dozen wounds bloomed, soaking the fabric of her coveralls.
Talis ran. The deck swung and lurched beneath her feet, forcing her to struggle for balance with every step. She felt the upward slide of her guts, which meant the ship was losing altitude, fast.
They needed to get to the lifeboats. They needed to abandon Wind Sabre.
Her heart wrenched, as much from the altitude loss as the thought of her dying ship.
She reached Sophie’s side. The girl was breathing. She moved. She feebly put her hands on the deck and tried to lift herself up, but Talis put a hand on her shoulder. Dug was right behind her. He bent and scooped Sophie up, and they turned to follow Tisker, who was already running for the aft port lifeboat.
The curving shape of Nexus slid upward across her field of vision. They wouldn’t have time to set up the small boat’s butane tank and get its hot air balloon filled. Wind Sabre was sinking, and she was going to take them down with her.
Maybe. Maybe Wind Sabre’s hull would protect them from the worst of a crash into flotsam. Maybe they could get the lifeboat running, get aloft again before they froze to death in the thin atmo. She tried to remember the steps necessary, and the order. Not like she’d thought to keep up on drills. They’d only used the lifeboats to fly undetected runs, and they’d never hurried.
“Talis, here!”
It took her longer to recognize the voice than to turn her head toward its source. She had forgotten all about Hankirk. As they ran clear of the central deckhouses, their starboard view opened up again. Either the lifeboat on that side of the ship was lifting up, or Wind Sabre’s deck was dropping away from it. Hankirk leaned out and motioned to them with his good hand, bracing his shoulder against one of the balloon’s lines to keep from tumbling out.
Tisker veered in that direction, running faster to reach the dinghy before it was out of reach. Hankirk tossed down a line, and Tisker fastened it to a cleat in the railing. The little balloon danced, struggling against the weight of the larger ship, and the rope went taut.
Talis and Dug reached their side as Tisker grabbed Hankirk’s offered hand and clambered up into the dinghy. Three arms reached down, pulling Sophie out of Dug’s arms and into the lifeboat. Tisker reached back for Talis. Dug lifted her up, and then Tisker’s bandaged hands were gripping her upper arms. She gripped back. He pulled as she scrambled to get her legs up over the side. Together they tumbled into it, Talis landing on top of Tisker. Their faces were inches away from Scrimshaw’s unconscious one. She spared a moment as she untangled herself, trying not to put her knees or hands down anywhere fragile, to marvel at how Hankirk had prepared the dinghy for launch and even managed to load the unconscious alien into it.
He might have saved them all.
Talis turned back to help Dug. She and Tisker leaned out, each grabbing one of his forearms. He gripped back, they hauled, he pulled up. And they were all aboard.
Dug used his boot knife to sever the line pulling them down with Wind Sabre. Sophie pushed her feet against the curved bottom of the dinghy, struggling to brace her elbows on the benches to either side of her. She bit her lip, pained by the movement, and Tisker helped her sit up. She twisted onto one hip, turned and got her arms on the railing of the dinghy, and rested her chin on her forearm.
The hot air balloon expanded again with a snap, and the little boat lifted away as they watched their ship drop to its grave.
There was only silence for a while, save for the puff of flame from the tank above them. Hankirk sat in the bow of the lifeboat, his eyes closed. His face was pale. The fingers peeking out from the sling across his chest were dark purple.
Tisker sat on the next bench, to one side. Sophie sat on the bottom of the dinghy beside Scrimshaw, her knees curled up and her head resting on Tisker’s leg. The blood on her coveralls was dull, dry. The wounds she’d sustained in the Number Two engine blast, thank the gods, were clotting.
Dug sat between Talis and Tisker. He picked a piece of shrapnel out of a wound in his arm and tossed it over the side of the dinghy. Talis almost stopped him, desperate to hold on to one piece of her lost ship, but she held her tongue. There was plenty of shrapnel between Dug and Sophie. Not really how she wanted to remember Wind Sabre, anyway.
Tisker adjusted the flame as they regained Horizon’s traveling altitude. Talis reached back to the miniature outboard engine and started flipping the switches to prime
