The decision was made for me.
The zeppelin shuddered as something hit it. Smoke and debris boiled down the hallway, and I was overwhelmed in the cloud. The smell of burning plastic and sulfur drove me to my knees and shook my body into coughing. I stayed low so I wouldn’t inhale another lungful of the lethal gasses. Blinking away the dust, tears streamed down my cheeks.
I crawled to the cockpit. The windshield was long gone, most of the control panel had become a charred black gnarl of plastic. The yoke was nothing but a shattered stump. I wasn’t going to be able to steer. There went all my dreams of flying to Burlington. It had been a bad plan anyway. But how was I ever going to get to the ground? What if the zeppelin tore loose and floated away?
Couldn’t worry about any of that. God would provide or kill me. Either way, I had the work of the moment to do.
The wind blowing through the blasted windshield had cleared the air enough for me to run back to the ammo room and grab a box of grenades for the Panzerfaust. Dragging the box behind me, I pulled it into the wreckage of the cockpit. The four seats, by some miracle, had survived the blast.
Another gale flung the Kashmir to the side.
I was sent skittering into the seats, and they were hot to the touch. The box of grenades smashed against me. I hissed in pain but got to my feet. I noticed the AZ3 I’d brought aboard was still on the passenger seat.
With the controls destroyed, the Kashmir’s nose dipped dramatically, far more than forty-five degrees. I clung to the seats even though they burned my arms. Better that than falling out of the hole where the windshield used to be. The thirty-meter plummet to the ground would surely kill me.
Then I saw an Athapasca APC troop carrier and soldier girls, taking cover. I eased myself back on the floor, and I lashed the seatbelt around the crate—I’d had bad experiences before with ammo falling out of zeppelins during a firefight. Once I had the box secured, I tried to target the APC as the Kashmir spun away to the right. The landscape blurred. I couldn’t see, but I knew we’d go spinning around again so I could take my shot.
My fingers had gone numb from the cold now blasting through the ruins of the cockpit; falling snow hissed on scorched plastic, but I managed to get a good grip on the Panzerfaust and my finger around the trigger.
Turned. Perfect. The airship came spinning around, and I saw the troop carrier, and I pulled the trigger, praying rather than aiming. The grenade flashed through the air at three hundred meters per second and struck the troop carrier. The soldier girls were sent sprawling. A direct hit. What if Pilate and Micaiah were with them? Had I just accidentally killed them? And how did I feel about murdering again?
No time for guilt nor doubt. Not if I wanted to keep breathing. Yes, I’d hit the Regios hard, but now I was a target.
Bullets pinged around the cockpit. I ducked low. Until the Kashmir spun away, and I was tossed around as more bullets filled the air.
One chunk of lead hit my arm but didn’t have the velocity to break the skin. It would leave a bruise, doubtless. But I was lucky. Another round scratched my cheek. I touched and felt the blood.
I ducked back to the floor even as the Kashmir did another spin, the nose rising until I had to grab ahold of the seat or go plunging back down the hall. While clinging there, I saw the wires connected to the stump of the yoke sawing back and forth. If I could get a foot in there, I might be able to ease off some of the spinning. Might be able to control her some.
I skittered around and jammed my foot against the yoke’s nub. And pushed right. The slipper tore right off, but I kept pushing even as the metal bit into my skin.
The Kashmir IV swung around, but we leveled off—level enough for me to dig out another grenade and reload my Panzerfaust.
I didn’t know German, but you watch enough documentaries on World War II, you know what the word “panzer” means: it means tank. And Faust? I’d suffered through Goethe in English class. Faust meant devil. Put them together and you get a devil that can destroy tanks.
That was what I had to take out that Acevedo.
As I whirled around again, I pushed the stock into my shoulder, ready, and then I saw the tank.
This time I aimed and fired. Nope. The crater I’d made next to the Acevedo smoked, but the tank itself was fine. The turret lifted as I watched. Lifted higher and higher until it was clear I was its next target.
Incoming.
(ii)
The tank’s shell exploded in a fiery blast of red fire and charred the starboard side of my zeppelin.
Jackering skanks had missed, but I didn’t think I’d get lucky again.
I used to think I was a coward or stupid or just young during all the fighting I’d done. But the truth was my level of violence had been low, and I’d not had the training I’d needed.
Up in the Kashmir, what I did, I did out of necessity. It wasn’t about courage or fear, logic or stupidity, age or immaturity. It was about dealing with one issue at a time while trying to handle the adrenaline and panic. But I’d been living on the edge so long, I’d gotten used to it.
And that is a sad thing, to be so violent and so accustomed to fighting that it’s just another Tuesday and your life is on the line. No big deal.
Such a life, such trauma, leaves marks and leaves them deep.
There was only one thing I could do.
Sucking in breath, trying
