Clementine

Down the cargo stairs and over by the bottom left turret, Lamar stood beside Maria Boyd and hemmed uncertainly. “Ma’am,” he said, “I don’t know about this. You’ll hardly fit, wearing that.”

“Well I’m not going to strip, so I’ll have to fit. Is this a Gatling? A four-eighty model, with the automatic line feed? They must’ve modified it for air use. I’ve seen them on the ground, and been behind one-once or twice.”

Lamar’s brows knitted together to form a very puzzled V. “Yes…yes ma’am? I believe so? If it’s not a four- eighty, it’s a four-ninety-and they work pretty much the same way. So you…you know what to do with it?”

“I know what to do with it. One thing: Do you have a mask down here? Something to keep the heat off my face and the powder out of my eyes? I can operate one of these things just fine, but they make my eyes water like mad.”

Lamar nodded. “There’s a line of them, hanging around the corner. I’ll get you one,” he said, and he dashed to the row of pegs along the cargo wall. He grabbed the nearest mask as well as the gloves that were stuffed inside it, and he ran back to the low glass turret, where Maria Boyd had somehow managed to cram her entire bulk of skirts and corsetry into the chamber-but beside the chamber was a stack of undergarments.

The engineer handed her the mask while staring at the petticoats.

“I know I said I wasn’t going to strip, but I had to make room, you understand.”

“Yes ma’am,” he said, and if Maria Boyd had known him any better, she would’ve gathered that he was blushing.

Hainey hollered from the bridge. “Can you see all right down there?”

“Give me a moment!” she cried back.

“We don’t have a moment!”

“I’m getting my mask on!” she told him. “Now, all right. I’m ready and yes, I can see. Three o’clock, six o’clock, and…and I can’t see the third ship!”

“He’s in front of us, working up to playing chicken!” Hainey called. “Lamar, get yourself back here! We need you at your station.”

“Coming sir!”

“And woman, you can hear me all right?”

“If you yell, I can hear you!” But when she turned the crank and turned the switch to start the gun revving, she wasn’t sure she’d continue to communicate so easily. Inside the glass bubble, suspended over the earth, Maria tried not to gaze down too long or too hard at the shrinking service yard docks, or the tiny blocks of Kansas City that were dropping away underneath her. It made her dizzy and almost nauseous, though she wouldn’t have confessed it if her life had depended on it.

She stuffed her hands into the gloves and they were far too big, but they’d keep the gun from burning her. The bottom of the glass ball vibrated with the gun’s power as it cranked, rolled, and hummed in its slot.

She took a deep breath, pointed the gun as best she could, and opened fire.

The kick thrust her hands back, jerking at her elbows and shoulders and beating them in her joints; but she held the thing steady and pushed her weight against it-holding its aim true and correct, and splitting the gas dome of the second security detail ship.

The craft exploded into a fireball so fast and hot that it flashed like a magician’s trick, no sooner burning than falling, and no sooner alight than dropping in a gyre’s course, like a soap bubble circling the drain.

But that was the easy one.

The second ship, the Union cruiser, was gaining ground fast from the other direction, not quite meeting the Valkyrie’s altitude but matching its pace-and soon, it would be out of her gun’s range. The gun’s cylindrical barrel purred as it spun, waiting for the directive to shoot; but Maria didn’t know how much ammunition she had, and she didn’t want to waste it so she waited until the cruiser was right in her crosshairs before squeezing off another brutal spray.

The cruiser wouldn’t go down, not like the little security craft. Its armor plating wasn’t as dense and reliable as the Valkyrie’s outer hull; but the cruiser was lighter and more maneuverable, and it could take a bigger beating than anything else anywhere near them. It rocked under the assault of Maria’s firepower but it didn’t crack, split or fall out of the sky.

She scanned the thing for a weak point, but as she’d already confessed, she didn’t know anything about dirigibles so she shouted over the whirring rumble of the churning barrels, “Captain!”

“What?”

“What do I aim for?”

He yelled back, “Aim for the goddamned ship!”

“Be more specific! Does it have a weak spot?”

There was a pause. Then he yelled, “You won’t take their tanks; they’re covered up good. Crack for the engines, down underneath!”

“Got it!” she said, and she used her body’s weight to crank the gun around, back at the cruiser, which was winding itself up for a direct assault.

“Good! Now hang on-we’re going to have to ram that last little bastard! Keep shooting for the cruiser! Keep it off our tail so we can clear the other one out of the sky! It’s staying up too high for you to hit it from down there!”

She didn’t respond but she felt the surge of the ship taking some new path, coiling itself up again, building the inertia to crash the smaller craft down to earth, and back behind them. The underside ball turret teetered up, giving her a few seconds of a breathtaking stomach drop and a clear shot at the cruiser, so she took it-she shifted her weight and kicked the gun crossways with her knees, changing the aim to shoot for the cruiser’s protruding engines. They were mounted on its underside, thrusters that steered and powered the forward motion of the machine; and in front of those powerful machines, automatic guns were mounted on pivoting arms.

The cruiser’s guns cranked, twisted, and fired at the Valkyrie, and the Valkyrie shook off the shots with a grumpy spin and a dip, but then recovered. The pursuing ship unleashed another set of rapid-fire rounds, determined to force the bird back down to earth.

One of the birdshot rounds punched hard against the reinforced glass of the ball turret, striking to Maria’s left with a concussion that made her ears ring and her head pound. When her vision had cleared she wiggled the gun back and forth, making sure it was still solidly affixed; and then she spied the long chip and fine line of a split that was creaking its way along the glass. The round hadn’t penetrated, but it had broken the small dome and God only knew how much longer it’d hold.

But Maria had another good shot, and she took it.

She rocked the active switch and crushed her hands around the oversized triggers, throwing another dozen slugs at the cruiser-this time aiming lower. Though the gun was almost impossible to guide with any finesse, she did her damnedest and the gun responded better than she had any right to expect. The arc of the bullets dipped and cut a punctured line along the lower hull of the cruiser, and one of the last slugs clipped the bottom left thruster- lodging inside it, perhaps, or maybe only blasting through it.

The thruster sparked and smoked, but didn’t fail altogether…and she couldn’t tell if any real damage had been done because at that moment, the Valkyrie collided head-on with the second smaller vessel, and the sound of an explosion shook the bird hard from the far side, relative to Maria’s captive position in the ball turret.

She clung to the gun though the heat of it warmed her too much through her clothes and through the big gloves that flopped around on her fingers. The split on the glass stretched-she watched it widen like a smile, and she held her breath.

The weight of the automatic gun and the weight of the glass itself, not to mention the weight of Maria’s body suspended there, thighs clenched around a narrow seat meant for a man…how much would the wounded bubble hold? She closed her eyes and waited for the Valkyrie to settle, and as the ship rolled she saw the other small ship toppling down to earth in a widening ball of fire that drew a comet’s tail of soot and sparks down through the sky.

Had there been another ship? She couldn’t remember.

Too many things to keep track of at once.

But the cruiser was still there, hovering-she could see it again when the Valkyrie swung itself around, pulling out of the spin and righting itself. The cruiser was blowing smoke, but not very much of it. She’d nicked something important but it wasn’t enough to slow their pursuer so she rounded the gun again and,