Dandelion Iron Book One

by Aaron Michael Ritchey

  I couldn’t sit there and listen to her evil tongue wagging. I ran from her, found a porthole and looked out, trying to wipe what she had said from my mind. Mama and Wren weren’t alike. Never.

  Sure, Mama had left Cleveland ’cause she didn’t see eye to eye with her parents, but that didn’t mean she was a hollow-souled drunk like Wren.

  I tried to distract myself by focusing on the scenery, but there wasn’t much to see—just long stretches of flat nothing. Grass, sagebrush, and scrub. Occasionally, a farm or ranch broke up the monotony. Prettier than the ground was the sky, a heartbreaking blue.

  I finally sat back down, but Wren didn’t turn to talk to me. Good.

  Breakfast, lunch, and dinner were protein bars, a little fruit going bad, and water from the blue plastic barrels strapped to the walls. The day passed, twilight crept into the sky, and I finally crawled into a hammock to take a nap. The womp-womp rhythm of the engine and the gentle sway of the deck lulled me into a deep sleep.

  Until the first explosion rocked the zeppelin.

  Then Sketchy really started cursing.

  Chapter Seven

  I don’t tell my grandchildren ghost stories, and I don’t show them horror video. When I want to scare ’em good, I tell ’em about June Mai Angel. We all sleep with the lights on.

  —Former President Jack Kanton

  48th President of the United States

  February 17, 2058

  (i)

  I toppled out of the hammock and onto the deck. Another explosion thrashed the Moby Dick. Machine gun fire erupted. Bullets thunked into the Kevlar.

  Wren slung a seatbelt over her shoulder. She was still in one of the four seats behind Sketchy. Where I should’ve been.

  A voice, tinny and frightened, vibrated out of a voice tube above the captain’s chair. “A big Johnny zeppelin is coming in fast above us. Eleven o’clock. Pirates, I’ll bet. And under us on the ground, a Cargador with a grappling hook cannon.” First time I heard Peeperz talk. He sounded like a ten-year-old, voice squeaky with fear.

  Cargadors were vehicles built by Caterpillar Incorporated for the salvage monkeys back in the day. They were huge tractor-type rigs, bouncing around on gigantic rubber wheels, completely steam-powered.

  “Goddamn June Mai Angel!” Sketchy hollered into her voice tube. “Peeperz, stay in the crow’s basement, and no, you can’t use the Triple-X unless I say so.”

  Tech’s voice erupted from the tube. “They can’t pierce our armor, so they’re shooting high with their cannons, trying to get us low. They’re missing on purpose, but for how much longer?”

  “Goddamn June Mai Angel!” Sketchy cranked the steering yoke. The zeppelin swooped sideways, and I skittered across the deck to the bathroom.

  “Get yourself in a chair, Cavatica!” Sketchy yelled.

  The zeppelin careened to the side again, and I was thrown back against the bathroom door.

  Another explosion rocked us, and for a minute, the sky outside the windshield was full daylight with the blast. I heard the plunk of the shrapnel slapping the Moby Dick’s skin. The stink of the explosion struck my nose.

  From Tech, “If they get us any lower, you know what’ll happen!”

  “Can’t go up! That Johnny is above us!”

  Fear filled their voices. My stomach shrunk up inside me. Sticky sweat broke out over my body.

  Another tilt of the zeppelin sent me sliding over the floor until I caught hold of a hammock and held on tight.

  Sketchy furiously worked pedals, gears, knobs, and the yoke. “We’ve seen her Cargadors before. June Mai Angel anchors ’em to the rocks and she can pull zeppelins down with grappling hooks and winch cables. She forces you low and then her soldiers yank you right out of the sky, like how they done the Zoso, which was a good ship, an old Bobby, run by my friend Elisabeth Skylar, which is a good name for a zeppelin pilot.”

  There was a chunking sound, one great big chunk, and we jerked to a stop. The zeppelin’s nose rose up into the sky, which left me dangling on the hammock. The Cargador on the ground had snagged our back end with grappling hooks.

  “Damn that June Mai Angel!” Sketchy howled.

  “Pirates are coming!” More screaming fear from Tech.

  Wren snarled as she unbuckled herself. Nothing inscrutable about her now, ’cause her eyes blazed, almost gleeful. Finally, finally, Wren could fight as hard as she wanted, as hard as she could, as hard as her heart would let her. With a Colt .45 Terminator in each hand, she slid down the deck, boots first, until she hit a barrel strapped to the wall.

  Peeperz broke through again. “Oh gosh, that big Johnny zeppelin is gonna pull up on our starboard. She has her side doors wide open. Them pirates are gonna board us.”

  Sketchy caterwauled. “Don’t know how they think to get in, but we gotta blow up that Cargador down below to get free.” Then yelling to Tech. “Keep the engines hot! Once we pull away, we’ll have to clear out fast or they’ll kill us all just for the fun of it.”

  Or most of us. June Mai Angel always left one lone survivor to tell the tale, to warn the living.

  More explosions smacked us around followed by more chunking sounds, this time from the Johnny firing grappling hooks into our hull. June Mai’s pirates had us hogtied, leashed down stern and starboard. I was close enough to a porthole to see the cables connecting our two airships. Pirates zip-lined down toward us. They wore a mixture of black ninja clothes and ragged cowgirl outfits, cattling goggles, and on their backs, wicked MG21 rifles straight out of the Sino, big and brutal.

  I glanced down. Tech, a hundred meters away, wrestled open the weapons locker. She was arming up, and where was I? Clinging to a hammock, doing nothing. Mama would want me fighting. Still, I was paralyzed.

  A voice roared from outside, “Surrender now. June Mai Angel is offering you mercy. Give us your vessel and you will live. Fight us and you will die in pain.”

  It all got quiet for a minute. Sketchy and I locked eyes. Her face was white. “Sorry, Cavatica, but I can’t give up the Moby Dick. She’s all I got. We gotta fight ’em off even though the odds are against us. Always bad odds for us good people.”

  Wren steadied herself against a barrel while she wrapped an orange extension cord around her left wrist. She answered that outlaw in a howl reserved for gut-shot cougars. “You want some pain, you goddamn skank? I’ll show you pain!”

  As if to answer her, we heard a hiss, a click, and the foosh of blowtorches. The noxious smell of burning plastic filled the air. They were cutting through Neofiber around portholes on the starboard side of the Moby Dick to get in. Lord in Heaven, my sister smiled.

  Sketchy turned with a Saigia Streetsweeper, a drum-fed 12-gauge semi-automatic shotgun. She stuck her mouth near the voice tube. “Tech! We’ll take care of the pirates. You gotta blow us free from that Cargador. And Peeperz, you stay quiet ’til I say so. Then you’re gonna get your chance to use that Triple-X. Gonna have to light ’em up, but only when I say.”

  Everyone was getting ready to fight, and there I was, froze-up, scared solid.

  Tech opened the weapons locker, and by God, she pulled out a bazooka, more precisely, a Torrent 6, and a box of T13 thermite rockets. The zeppelin shivered, fighting the cables binding us. The box skittered away from Tech.

  The same voice from outside shouted orders, “Beta five, execute. Alpha two, execute.”

  At first, my head didn’t register what they were saying. Then it hit me. It was Sino military talk and they were about to execute a plan to get inside and murder us.

  “Gonna grenade us or gas us!” Sketchy shouted.

  A piece of Neofiber clattered onto the floor down from Wren. They had cut through, but my sister wasn’t close enough to shoot them, and besides, she had the wrong angle. But Wren had a plan. With the orange extension cord in one hand, she flung herself out across the floor of the bay, a .45 Terminator in her grip, firing steadily. She lined up perfectly with the opening and killed the pirate before she could throw a
nything inside.

  Tech tried to walk across the back cargo door to get to the box of rockets by the port wall, but the Moby Dick bucked around like an unbroke stallion. She tripped and couldn’t get to her feet.

  “Delta three, down.” More Sino military talk.

  I yelled at myself, “You keep jacking up, Cavvy, we’re all gonna die!” Same words my mama used during our battle with Queenie.

  I let go of the hammock and slid down the deck, aiming for the box of rockets so I could help Tech.

  “Come on, you dirty skanks!” Wren yowled. “Come and get me. I’m still waiting on that pain you promised!” She gripped the blue plastic barrels along the starboard wall, glancing around with wildcat eyes, looking for her next target.

  I glided past her to the box on the cargo door. The Moby Dick calmed for a moment, and despite the panic killing me, I lugged the box over to Tech at the starboard wall.

  More smoldering Neofiber pieces scattered across the floor. A woman’s voice called in. “Surrender now. We outnumber you. We outgun you.”

  Wren laughed. “Oh, you’re scarin’ me. I’m just so jackin’ scared.”

  “You will be. If we have to capture you, we’ll eat you, feet first, so you can watch us do it. Alpha four, go.”

  Wren’s Terminators thundered some more, and I prayed her aim was true. Please God.

  Tech pushed the Torrent 6 into me. “Cavvy, I can’t get to the mid-bay hatch, so I’m going to open up the cargo door. Hold on to something, and don’t let that box of rockets fly out.”

  I looked up. On the end of the orange extension cord, Wren swung back and forth across the bay like a spider. Her left hand gripped the cord, her right held a big pistol, and it roared something fierce, cutting down pirates as they tried to squeeze through the holes blowtorched in the side of our airship.

  “Come on!” Wren cackled. “Can’t you do better? Can’t you at least get inside, you dirty skanks? Then we can really play. I got my Betty knife, and she’s real thirsty.”

  Her next words lost in the din of the throaty thwock of machine guns firing into the Moby Dick’s bay. Tracer bullets flashed in the dim light. Wren would be killed for sure.

  “Cavvy, grab hold!” Tech warned. “The cargo door is opening!”

  I went to grab a handle on the wall, but couldn’t get to it. The Moby Dick flopped to the left, and I was thrown onto the cargo door. Just as it opened.

  Tech must have unhinged the hydraulics ’cause the rear cargo door snapped open and we all fell out—the bazooka, the box of rockets, and me.

  (ii)

  I slid down the cargo door on my back. At the last minute, the heel of my foot caught the lip at the very bottom of the door, and I fell against the chain holding the doors at an angle. I clung there, the cold wind blasting my skin numb.

  The Torrent 6 banged my shoulder, and I threw my head back to pin the bazooka to the bay door. The box of T13 rockets was long gone.

  Tech must’ve been hanging down like a monkey ’cause she grabbed the bazooka and propped it on my shoulder. I then felt her loading the Torrent 6. Somehow, she still had a thermite rocket.

  “No time to pull you up, Cavvy,” she said. “Besides, you’re safer out there. And you have the perfect angle to blow up the Cargador.”

  Sorry to say it, but I burst into tears.

  Wren would have yelled at me in disgust. Tech, though, got nice and gentle. “You have to free us, Cavvy. And you can. This Torrent 6 is just a machine, and you’re good with machines. I could tell that right away. Okay, you’re loaded.”

  “Just a machine,” I managed to say.

  More Sino talk from somewhere. “Omega eight, execute.”

  I didn’t need to wipe away the tears—the wind did that. The Torrent 6 now felt like a tool in my hands. I had my elbow hooked around the cargo door chain and held the two handles of the bazooka with numb hands. The tube rested heavily on my shoulder.

  “Arm it,” Tech said. “The switch is right by your thumb.”

  My thumb hit that switch. Manual, of course, no electricity, and I had to press with some force. Click. Armed.

  “Okay, Cavvy, aim for the sapropel lamps on the Cargador. We only have one shot. You can’t miss.”

  The pressure was unbearable, yet Tech was right. The Torrent 6 was just a tool, and I had a good angle. I looked down through the crosshairs on the bazooka’s sights with just enough light left in the evening sky for me to see. Below us, I followed the straining cables, thwacking and thrumming, down to the glow of the sapropel lamps on the Cargador, a big dump truck-looking thing.

  Behind me, the thunder of machineguns. June Mai’s pirates had overrun our zeppelin. Wren’s maniacal laughter came from close by, and from the sound of it, she had commandeered a machinegun of her own. From the cockpit, Sketchy’s shotgun coughed. All that noise muddied my concentration.

  Until Tech tapped my head. “Okay, Cavvy, you’re loaded. The rocket is armed. Gotta shoot now, Cavvy.”

  Aim. I knew how to aim. Mama had taught me. Suddenly, I was seven again, and Mama was teaching me to shoot my dad’s lever-action Winchester .22 rifle. Her face had been warm against my cheek, her arms strong around me.

  “Let it surprise you, Cavvy,” she had said. “You don’t jerk the trigger, you squeeze it slowly, right when a part of you knows it’s a good shot, but the other part is surprised you’re gonna shoot at all. You can do it.” Her voice, so gentle, whispered out of the past.

  Wren was far less patient. “Goddammit, Cavvy, will you jackin’ shoot already!”

  But Wren didn’t matter. Only Tech and my mama did. I altered the angle of the bazooka ’cause the rocket would spit fire behind it when it launched. Didn’t want to burn Tech with the back blast. I focused on steadying the jerk of the crosshairs on the dim glow below us.

  The crosshairs lined up on the Cargador, but only for an instant. That was when I slowly squeezed the trigger. Not jerked. Squeezed.

  Then the surprise—the tremendous whoosh of the missile firing and then the whistle of that rocket streaking through the air. The rocket struck the Cargador dead on. The explosion lit up the ground. The thermite burned like hellfire through both metal and rock, while June Mai’s outlaws scurried away.

  Our zeppelin tore loose, the severed cables dangling off the back. We shot up and leveled off, then hurtled to starboard. We were still connected to the Johnny.

  Tech heaved me inside.

  Wren was next to us, firing into the Moby Dick’s cargo bay, and I whirled to see June Mai’s pirates, shooting at us. Tech and I hit the deck while bullets whistled over our heads, making my teeth ache.

  Sketchy was behind the captain seat, her shotgun sticking out, spitting fire—she wasn’t going to hit anyone firing like that.

  But Wren was prone on her belly with an MG21 machinegun, resting on the floor, perfect for aiming. She picked them off until the last two charged forward, both armed with big knives. Wren ducked one and kicked her out the back door where she fell, silent, to her death. The other slammed into Wren like a maniac devil.

  Sketchy’s voice burst from a tube near me. “Still tied to the Johnny, and she’s a big one. Too big for us to pull away from.” Then to the boy in the crow’s basement, “Okay, Peeperz, light ’em up.”

  The boy didn’t think twice. The .50 caliber Triple-X machinegun started up in a thrumming rumble below. I darted over to one of the jagged holes the pirates had cut into the hull.

  The Triple-X’s tracers and bullets ripped through a cable. The recoil sounded like a whip crack. Not only was Peeperz keeping more pirates from zip-lining across, he was also aiming for the cables, trying to free us. Smart boy. But would it be enough?

  “Cavvy,” my sister grunted.

  I pivoted. Wren lay sprawled on her back, the last of the pirates on top of her. Both my sister and the red-faced woman gripped the handle of a Betty knife, their hands entwined.

  The tip of the blade hovered above Wren’s eye.

  (iii
)

  I stood there, stupidly watching as my sister strained to keep the Betty knife out of her skull even as the pirate pushed it down ever closer.

  Tech snatched the Torrent 6 away from me and dashed over to the weapons locker, digging for more rockets.

  Wren struggled, grunting. She huffed out three words. “Two … bullets … left.”

  It took me a second, but then I realized the Springfield 9 was still in my pocket. I fumbled the pistol out, tried to aim, but the Moby Dick jerked about, and I couldn’t get close enough to fire at point blank range. My hands were shaking as much as the zeppelin.

  Sweat coursed down my face. I looked down the sights of my gun, but everything was jumping, unsettled. My courage left me. Even if I had a thousand bullets, I couldn’t take that shot.

  The pirate glanced up at me as I held a wobbling pistol in an unsteady hand.

  The fury in her eyes promised that once she finished Wren, she’d come gunning for me.

  In that second, June Mai’s woman lost her focus. Wren jerked her own head to the side, letting the knife blade stab into the deck. My sister kneed the pirate right in her diaphragm, which left her gasping on the deck. Wren got to her feet, grabbed the woman by the hair, and threw her right out the back.

  Tech knelt at a hole in the Moby Dick’s side with the Torrent 6 resting on her shoulder. Loaded and armed, she pulled the trigger. The rocket struck the airship across from us. The explosion ignited the thermite and torched the Johnny-class zeppelin. It sank in a wicked display of white smoke from the busted steam engine and the black smoke of melting Neofiber. Pirates leapt to their death. Wren snickered like it was all just some kind of dirty joke.

  We’d done it. We’d tangled with June Mai Angel’s outlaws and lived to tell the tale. Not many could say that. Not one in a hundred. All ’cause Wren had unleashed the demons inside her.

  While I watched the spectacle, Wren snatched her Springfield 9 out of my hand in disgust, then marched over to the very edge of the deck.