dirigibles until it alone had a clear view of the clouds. “Keep us steady,” the captain said as he manned the prime steering paddles and the ship began a rotation that could’ve too easily toppled into a spin; but Simeon worked the fine steering and the ship stopped where the crew meant for it to-only to bring new trouble into the windscreen.
Lamar called it. “Two security detail flyers. Eleven and one o’clock. Sir, I think they’re-”
A spray of bullets grazed the
Hainey said, “Loaded. They’re loaded with birdshot, damn them all to hell.”
“Not enough to crack this egg,” Simeon said with less than his usual easy confidence.
“They’re rising fast. They’ll be on our flight level in half a minute or less,” Lamar warned. “Then their aim’ll be better. We’ve got to get out of their way; we don’t know how much shot they’re carrying.”
“Those are little birds,” Simeon insisted, though it was unclear who he meant to convince. “They can’t be carrying too much on board. They’re just security flyers; they’re meant to scare folks off, not shoot them down.”
But another rain of shot peppered the craft, higher on the hull as the other ships crested the service yard docks and neared the
“They’ve got some wiggle room,” Lamar argued. “There’s no telling how much. Higher, let’s get us higher; let’s hit some real thin air and then outrun them.”
“Heavy as this thing is?” Simeon groused. “We’ll do well to stay above them. It’d be one thing if we could return fire, but we barely have enough manpower to fly as it is. What’s the normal crew on this thing, anyway?” he asked Lamar.
The engineer answered, “Six, as a skeleton. Maybe we can bash ’em. The
Hainey said, “They’re only chasing us because they know we ain’t got enough men to fight ’em off properly.” He drew harder on the lever and the ship continued to rise, and with Simeon’s contribution from the thrusters it began to warm up to an eastern course.
“Where are you pointing us?” Hainey asked.
“Past town. But we’ve got to shake these things or knock ’em out of the sky. If they chase us too far we’ll only have unwanted company, wherever we arrive.”
From her seat near the glass gun turret Maria Boyd asked, “Where are we going? If you don’t mind my asking.”
“After my ship!” Hainey almost yelped as more gunfire strafed the ship, higher, and a couple of bullets went cracking against the windshield. Unlike the smaller bullets used on the ground, these were designed to break even the thickest glass, and even the hardest armor. Whether or not they could split the
“They’re only going to summon more help if we keep hovering here,” Lamar said.
Simeon shouted, “We ain’t hovering! We’re moving, just…we’re moving. Jesus, this thing is a cast-iron tank of a bastard. It’s none too easy to swing, I swear to God.”
“But she spins all right,” Hainey observed. “Let’s try this then, back us up.”
The first mate asked, “What?”
And the captain reiterated, “Back us up! Thrusters reverse, let’s retreat and make like a spinning top. We’ll charge them with a little backspin and knock them down, maybe. It won’t hurt us, no-how.”
“You’re truly daft,” Maria said, but no one answered her.
“All men buckle down,” Hainey ordered as he used his elbow to whack a steering paddle into place enough to make the ship spiral. “Simeon, kick that stabilizer-pump it, don’t hold it in place. We want to keep spinning, and cast ourselves at them like a knuckleball.“
Centrifugal force was straining the interior, and the men and woman who struggled to hold themselves upright in their seats. Lamar’s hands flew over the valves and buttons, and Simeon dutifully pumped the stabilizers to pitch the craft forward-on a course directly between the two smaller ships.
“We’re bowling for birds!” the captain said almost gleefully, then added, “Impact in ten, nine, eight…hang on everybody…six…oh shit, I might be off a count or two-”
They collided, but just barely between the two security birds-winging the one and knocking the other hard enough to rock it out of its altitude. The crash was loud and the squeal of metal on metal was hard to listen to; but smoke puffed from the right side engine of the one o’clock ship, and it careened in a crazy, sinking pattern, headed back down to earth.
“We didn’t get the both of them!” Maria said.
The captain said, “I know it, and I thought I told you to be quiet!”
“No,” she corrected him. “It was your first mate. But I’ll add that to your pile of suggestions.”
“Woman! Don’t you antagonize me! Can’t you see we’re busy?”
Lamar swallowed hard and said, “We’re about to get busier. Two more dirigibles-one official security detail, it looks like…and one…sir, it looks like a Union cruiser.”
“Goddamn,” the captain said. He gritted his teeth while he wrestled with the knobs to steady the craft, and drag it out of its spinning whirl. Then he said, “We might have to make a run for it. Those security tweeters can’t be holding much live freight, but a cruiser…we don’t know. If we had another three or four men handy, that’d be one thing. Lamar, you said the primary weapons systems were all working?”
“That’s right. Nothing wrong with any of them, and the secondaries are probably fine too-but we don’t have time to figure out how to work them, and anyway, it’s just the three of us.”
“Four of us,” Maria said from her seat.
“I beg your pardon?” Hainey asked, finally turning around to see what she was doing.
She was unbuckling herself.
“Four of us. You don’t have another three or four men, but you’ve got an able-bodied woman on board, and I’ve fired more kinds of guns in my day then most men have ever held.”
“You’ve lost your ever-loving mind,” Simeon swore at her, and said, “Get back down in your chair. Ain’t nobody here trusts you with a firearm, much less with a gun turret, you crazy woman.”
“She can shoot,” Hainey said. “I’ve heard about her. I know she can shoot.”
“Yes, she can shoot,” Maria said impatiently. “And she wants to get far enough out of town for you to set her down, so we can have a civilized conversation about how I’m bringing you home for justice’s sake-but she can’t very well do that if she dies up here in the clouds, now can she?”
Simeon almost laughed. He said, “Hey, Captain, she wants to save our hides so she can tan them later. What do you think of that?”
“I think we’re desperate and she wants to live long enough to have that conversation. Lamar?”
“Yes sir?”
“Which turret has the best range?”
“Sir, you can’t be serious?”
“He’s serious,” Maria answered for him. “Put me where I can make the most trouble.”
“Sir, the bottom left turret probably has the best range. The right one is pinned so it can’t take out the right engine, and it has less room to swivel. The left one’s mounted lower, so it won’t clip our own armor when it fires.”
“Then show her how it works. You know how it works, don’t you man?” Hainey was still lifting the ship, drawing it higher and higher, up into the sky, doing his best to show the intruders nothing but the underside of the craft.
“I know how it works,” he said, lifting himself out of the seat and with great trepidation, gesturing to Maria Boyd. “This way, over here. Down in the cargo bay.”
Simeon’s voice rose in disbelief. “You’re going to put that woman behind a powerful gun, someplace where you can’t even see her?”
“Any port in a storm, isn’t that what they say?” the captain responded. “She can’t shoot us from down there, anyway. She could’ve shot us better from her seat by the right turret.”
“Point taken,” Simeon said, but it was said with complaint.
