by S A Shaffer
“And not just you,” David said after he punched another guard and sent him sprawling. “All of you will meet justice,” David said, projecting his voice so that it echoed across the assembly. “I presented the crime at your feet, and you chose to ignore it and condemn innocent blood.”
David faced the last three guards, but he positioned himself in such a way that only one of the guards could attack him at a time. The closest guard swung at him, but David caught the man’s forearm in his ebony hand. The guard screamed as David constricted his fingers and snapped the man’s wrist. He kicked the man and sent him sprawling into his fellows. But a strong hand grabbed David from behind, and a thick muscular arm snaked around his neck. David wriggled as Hans and Gerald each grabbed one of his arms, and Hans constricted David’s neck in a chokehold. David felt his vision blur in matter of seconds. He writhed and kicked Gerald’s leg. The huge man grunted with pain but maintained his grip. The three of them fell to their knees, and David could see Blythe leaning over the dais through his watery eyes.
The sight of that smirking face sickened him. David clenched his ebony iron fist and started bending it at the elbow. Gerald, big as he was, could not match the incredible strength of his mechanical arm, but time was short. Already David felt himself passing out. He could hardly hear the yells of the assembly. But he had enough wits about him to close his mechanical fingers around Gerald’s thick hand and squeeze. Several pops sounded in David’s ear followed by a wail. Gerald kicked himself free and cowered away from the inhuman appendage. Hans slacked his grip on David’s neck when he saw his partner’s fear. David used the opportunity to lean over and slam his ebony fist into Hans’ gut.
Han’s eyes widened, and he slumped to one side. David stood from the floor and rubbed his neck as he gasped for air. More guards had arrived and crowded around him, but none seemed interested in stepping within range of his unique arm. They didn’t need too. One of them pulled a pulse emitter from a holster.
David, sensing that his time grew short, pressed a button on the side of his mechanical arm, and a curious device rose from a compartment. It looked like a tiny ray-gun. He pointed it at the glass floor.
“You wouldn’t!” Hans said from where he sat massaging his stomach, and every other guard froze when they saw the ray gun attached to the side of his arm.
“I believe in the people of Alönia.” David said with a look at Blythe. Then he squeezed his fist and the curious device on his wrist buzzed and emitted a high-pitched sound.
Everything slowed down in David’s head. The glass flour below them dissolved into sand, and a breeze from the air below carried it away in an enormous cloud. Guards yelled and reached for the steel girders. Blythe screamed in fury.
But David, for his part, felt weightless, so weightless he thought he might be nauseous. He slipped through the floor as though he were made of water. He fell out the bottom of the assembly and saw the light of the room rising above him as he did so. His worst fears were realized. Panic took him as he flailed, gasped, and coughed on the cold, sandy air. He looked around and saw an endless expanse of night and cloud.
SACRIFICES
Francisco watched the torpedo as it streaked through the air directly toward the Barlet. Nobody had expected torpedoes, so no one had bothered to man the flack cannons or any of the other countermeasures. Crewmen stared dumbfounded as the deathly cylinder ate away the distance with a ravenous appetite, counting down the fathoms till it sank its teeth into airship hull. Every muscle in Francisco’s body braced for the impact, and he felt the back of his gunning chair press into his spine. But he was a warrior, and he’d seen and expected death for many cycles. One thing he knew for certain, he’d meet it in a fight. In one final act of defiance, he squeezed his emitter’s trigger and felt his entire body tingle with static. Then, he gritted his teeth and waited for the inevitable.
His aim was true, but the substanceless glowing wave of electricity passed through the torpedo like a wisp of cloud. The burner behind the torpedo shut off, but its momentum drove it on until it slammed into the side of the carriers’ hull with a solid thrum like a hammer on the side of a metal drum.
Francisco looked over the side of the ship and saw several torpedo pieces falling from the sky until they disappeared into the cloudbank. It took him a second to realize what had happened. His pulse emitter had shorted out the torpedo’s ignition sequence, and it struck the carrier’s thick armor with no more force than a cannonball. But circumstances did not permit him to ponder further as dozens more torpedoes launched at the ship.
“Shoot them!” Francisco yelled. “Short them out with your pulse emitters!”
The order sent the well-trained crew into action. They knew the danger of torpedoes well, and every available aeronaut manned flack cannons and chain guns and emitters alike. The other ships observed the effect of the emitter on the torpedo and followed suit. Within moments, the air roiled with exploding bursting flack canisters, golden tracer rounds, blue-tinged electricity and exploding torpedoes. Several more thrums of echoed through the ship as shorted torpedoes glanced harmlessly off their armor.
In addition, as the gunships released their torpedoes, they flew in range of the powerful emitters. Dozens of pulses crippled gunships and left them gliding on their last known trajectory until the crew awoke from their stupor and restarted the burner, something Bethany insisted would take at least ten minutes. That was all fine and good when they expected to face less than half as many gunships firing nothing larger than chain guns for a maximum of 30 minutes.
“Expect the unexpected!” Francisco said as his pulse emitter thrummed and sent another gunship gliding away for ten minutes of bliss.
That was the last thing David had told him before they each left for their separate missions. If he ever saw David again, he planned on punching him in the face. This was his crazy plan, and while he sat in a plush chair at the assembly, Francesco sat in an electric chair, hair full of static, and staring between the prongs of a fork at pursuing torpedoes. Yes, he and David would most certainly have words.
“I’m aiming with a bloody fork! Does that qualify as unexpected?”
Then, the inevitable happened. One of the many torpedoes slipped past the rear guards countermeasures and exploded into the side of a carrier’s hull. Francisco watched as an entire bay door blown free by the explosion tumbled through the sky in a cloud of smoke and burning debris. The carrier listed for a moment before resuming its course. The armor had absorbed most of the explosion, but another hit like that, and the carrier would come apart at the seams. The other carriers repositioned their formation placing their injured sister in the center, but the hit proved the inevitability of the battle.
Francisco checked his watch in between shots and winced when he realized it had only been twenty minutes. They had another forty minutes of flight time before they reached Armstad airspace. They weren’t going to make it, and if they didn’t last for another twenty minutes, neither were the other 500 carriers. If the rear guard fell, the gunships would catch and destroy the rest of the carriers in five minutes’ time. They needed a new plan.
“Airman!” Francisco called to one of the lookouts. “Take my position.”
Francisco jumped from his gun and did not turn to see if the airman had followed his order. He ran to the ship’s bridge as fast as he could. He burst through the door just in time to hear York speaking into his radio.
“Capital guard! This is Admiral York. You are using deadly force against my ships. If you do not cease immediately, I will be forced to do the same.”
A wash of static sounded in the speaker.
“Capital guard, do you read me?” York said. “We are carriers, and we will loose our skiffs on you if you force our hand.”
Francisco knew the last part was a bluff. They didn’t have enough men to man their 60 skiffs. Apparently, the guard knew that as well as static continued to rasp from the speaker. York replaced the microphone on the side of the radio and lea
ned over the map table with a sigh.
“I’m all ears, Francisco.” York said. “I’ve used my last bluff. We’ve just been caught with our trousers down.”
“I have one idea,” Francisco said. “But you’re not going to like it.” Francisco relayed his plan to York and watched the admiral’s face fall into a deep frown. He looked around at his ship with pursed lips, and then at its men. Then he nodded.
“Do it.” he said. “I’ll notify the other carriers.”
Francisco nodded and ran from the bridge, but he did not return to the top deck. He ran down a narrow corridor that led through the bowel of the airship. He found a very round chief engineer and several engineering assistants, and together they made their way to the ships generator. Francisco explained his plan to the chief as they ran.
“No!” the chief said once they’d reached the generator. “I can’t do that!”
As he spoke, Francisco heard the explosion of another torpedo impacting against a sister carrier. Time was running out. He drew his gas pistol and held it underneath the chief’s nose.
“I want you to listen very carefully.” Francisco said in a dangerous voice. “There are men dying out there, your friends and mine. I’ve got the ability to stop it from happening, but there’s a fat, idiot, engineer in my way. You can either help me, or I’ll see to it that your assistant gets a battlefield promotion.” The watching assistants gazed with expressions of shock.
The chief’s eyes crossed as he looked down the barrel of the pistol. He nodded vigorously.
“A wise choice,” Francisco said as he put his pistol away. “Now work quickly. In five minutes we will be nothing but ash an ember.”
The engineer ordered his two assistance to gather some supplies, and then he began welding sheets of metal to a space beside the generator and laying some power lines. Another explosion made Francisco shiver with fury. Had that one downed a ship, or just injured her? Within a few minutes the chief stood up and nodded to Francisco.
“Will it work?” Francisco asked.
“How should I know?” The chief said. “I didn’t come up with the bird-brained idea, and I put it together under gunpoint. It might just short out all the conductors and send us drifting across the night sky.”
“How do I start it?” Francisco asked.
The chief held up a small box that looked like a light switch with several cabled snaking out of its bottom. “Just flip this switch”
Francisco took the box in his hands and raised it up until the fathom long wires pulled taught. “You couldn’t have made it any longer?” he asked and then frowned.
The engineer scratched his head. “In hindsight, I suppose that might have been—”
“It will do.” Francisco said. “You.” He pointed a finger at one of the assistants who jumped with the motion. “Inform the Admiral that we are ready. And you two,” he pointed to the chief and the other assistant, “collect everyone else below deck and get to the hanger bay.”
After they’d left, Francisco picked up the switch and waited for the signal, but just then, a deafening explosion rocked the ship and sent him hurtling into the wall of the cramped engine room. It took him a moment to shake the stars from his vision and climb to his feet. Then he realized he no longer held the switch. He looked around the dimly lit space for a pair of heartbeats. In that time he heard the carriers bay doors opening. Spotting the switch on the opposite end of the room, he stooped and picked it up, only then realizing the wires were no longer attached.
“Typical!” Francisco said as he grabbed the wires from the floor and threaded them into the two holes on the back of the switch box where they’d once been. He had neither the tools nor the expertise to do any better than that. He bit off a curse when one of the wires fell out, and he stuffed it back into place. Then, the engines shut off, which was the admiral’s signal for the all clear. Francisco gritted his teeth and flipped the switch.
Nothing happened. He flipped it off and on a few times, but the box refused to work. He yelled into the silence and banged the box with a frustrated fist and used every curse he knew. Then the small space illuminated with the bright light of electricity, and he felt static course through the air. Bolts of energy arced around him and left black smudges on the walls.
Francisco dropped the box and ran down the hall as fast as he could. He didn’t slow as he bounded down the narrow corridor and careened around the tight turns. The whole ship began to buzz, and the air smelled of crisp ozone. When he reached the bay doors, he didn’t stop to look for a skiff. He grabbed a life balloon off the wall and jumped out the open bay doors without even fastening it around his shoulders.
Francisco tumbled through the air one hand clutching his life balloon, the other trying to find the shoulder restraints. All the while wind tugged at the life balloon and threatened to rip it from his grasp. He struggled with the straps, knowing he only had moments before he’d lose consciousness. Finally, his arm found the restraints, and he shouldered them on and snapped the clasp. He reached up and pulled the tabs of the balloon and felt the comforting tug against his restraints.
At the same moment, The Barlet, or what was left after it suffered two torpedoes, pulsed with a growing electrical surge that filled the night sky with a bright blue light. The surge arced out from the broken pieces of the Barlet and engulfed a majority of the gunships that were at that very moment swirling around the wounded carrier. Francisco smiled his warrior’s smirk as several more electrical surges exploded in the distance when several other rear-guard carriers followed suit. Then the pulsing energy reached him, and he screamed as it surged through his body and arced off his mechanical eye. The surge dissipated, and he hung as limp as a man at the gallows, dangling from his bobbing life balloon in the midst of falling wreckage and several hundred drifting gunships. His sacrifice had not been in vain. Away in the distance six battered carriers and a little less than 200 skiffs carrying the survivors of the other carriers soared through the night sky and passed into the free Armstadi airspace.
A WOMAN'S TOUCH
Bethany separated from the group and continued down one hallway while the others turned in the direction of the assembly room. Nobody ventured in this hall, and the only sound she heard was the echo of her own heel’s clicking on the ground. She had been rather peeved when David transferred her out of the switchboard team to come to the assembly with him and Mercy. She’d spent hours fiddling with her relay device so that even a blockheaded sneak couldn’t possibly mess up the connection with the Veteran Shipyard tower. Then she wrote several pages of possible responses she might use when guardsmen called into the switchboard.
Her current favorite was, Thank you for calling the manslaughter direct phonograph. If you are currently being slaughtered, press 1. To hear in Bergish, press 2. If you are being slaughtered, but are not a man, this line is not for you.
Bethany giggled to herself as she thought of all the fun she might have had at the switchboard, and yes, she had been very peeved at David until he explained exactly what it was he wanted her to do. Then, she’d decided that this would be twice as fun. Reaching a T at the end of the hallway, she checked a small napkin sized map David had drawn her the day before. This had been a last-minute addition to the plan, and there hadn’t been time to acquire anything other than a hodgepodge of materials. She frowned at the hand-drawn map and rotated it several times. She knew she was getting closer when she heard the rhythmic sound of machinery, but the map confused her. She chose right at the T, but after three steps, she turned the map around again and decided to go the left.
The longer she walked, the louder machines whirled and hissed in the distance, but she wasn’t looking for those particular machines, rather, some close by. Such machines were not her specialty. She had a pact with the underground: she would not touch anything that used grease or oil. She worked with electronics, and she knew them well.
She arrived at another turn and spied around its corner. A guard stood rigid beside a door
to one side of the hall. Unlike the rest of the Capital Guard, this hulking man looked as though he knew which was the dangerous end of a repeater. Bethany crossed her arms and huffed.
David, you mentioned one capital guard, she thought to herself, not a tall, muscular—she spied around the corner again—ruggedly good looking brute.
She removed her hat and touched up her hair. Looking in a pocket mirror, she checked her makeup and general appearance. Though she never said it to anyone, she was very disappointed in herself and the slightest bit jealous that Blythe had completely overlooked her in favor of Samille back in the Third District office. To the Third District she had only ever been a doe-eyed idiot. That had been a miscalculation on her part. She’d completely misjudged Blythe’s attractions and the extent of his depravity. Of course, Samille was an escort and also dead. It might have been the miscalculation that saved Bethany’s life.
But even David ignored her in favor of Mercy. She hadn’t actually wanted either David or Blythe’s affections. David talked too much, and Blythe was old, promiscuous, and perverted. But a girl does tend to wonder if any of the boys are noticing her. When she finally found a man, the man that made her heart throb, would she make his heart throb as well?
Bethany looked down at her white satin dress, tight through the bodice and lose through the skirts, a large bow over one shoulder. She snapped her mirror shut and replaced it in her purse along with her hat. Of course I will, Bethany said to herself. You’re gorgeous!
She took a few steps down the hall from whence she’d come, breathed a couple of deep breaths, and charged forward as fast as her heeled feet would allow. She skittered around the corner and collapsed against the wall with a gasp. She turned around, peeked down the hall, and breathed a sigh. She turned, yelped, and put a hand over her mouth when she faced the guard, acting as though it were the first time she’d noticed him. He still stood at his post, but he eyed her with stern curiosity.
