by Nathan Long
The guards with the wands of blue fire drew down on Kedac as the airman blasted out three short notes. Kedac jerked Wen-Jhai in front of him and stepped backward onto the ladder as it rose into the air. The guards didn’t have a clear shot.
The Aldhanan shouted up at Kedac. “Stand down, traitor. Release my daughter.”
Kedac laughed. “You command me no longer, tyrant! No more will you tax the Dhanans and steal our power.” He saluted the crowd. “Rise, Dhanans, rise! Our destiny is unaltered. The axe merely falls earlier than anticipated. Hold the despot here and the navy will hold the city within a crossing.”
The Aldhanan and his guards turned to see who he was talking to and were suddenly face to face with a sea of blades. All the naval officers and a lot more Dhanans than I expected were drawing steel and starting for the royal family.
Instant chaos. Everybody started fighting everybody else. The loyalists in the crowd tried to help the guards. Other guys were dragging their wives and children out of the way. The guards were trying to aim their magic death wands without hitting any of the good guys.
Kedac and Wen-Jhai were above the wall now. The bottom of the ladder dragged across it.
The guards with the wands were hanging fire. They couldn’t shoot at Kedac for fear of hitting Wen-Jhai, and they couldn’t gun down the big ship because the balloon would explode and the whole flaming mess would crash down on everybody. They couldn’t stop Kedac.
I could.
I pulled myself up and tested my sword arm. It hurt like dammit and was stiff from shock, but I could move it. I raced across the stage, jumped up on the altar, kicked off the scale model of the rocket-tower, and launched up for the last rungs of the rope ladder.
Unbelievably, with all the other shit he had to concentrate of, Kedac saw me coming. He kicked the ropes with his heel and made the ladder swing under his feet.
The rungs danced through my hands like a fumbled pass. I crashed down on top of the garden wall, knocking the wind out of myself, and slammed down onto my back behind the altar. I whited out for a second and sucked air like a ruptured hose. It felt like a truck had parked on my chest.
I needed a time out. Not a chance. Kedac’s bugle boy ran behind the altar and jumped at me, sword raised. I stuck a foot up and caught him in the nuts. He curled up like a hedgehog and crashed to the stage beyond me. I staggered up, trying to remember how to breath, and weaved out from behind the altar.
The temple garden was a moshpit with swords. Bodies slammed into bodies everywhere I looked. By the stage Lhan was pulling Sai to his feet. Sai shouted something I couldn’t hear and shook his fist as Kedac’s rising ship. I staggered to them.
Lhan looked up. “A noble attempt, mistress, but I believe ’tis time for our skelshas. We must catch Kedac before he reaches the naval base or all will be lost.”
He started for the door. I followed, groaning. The last thing I wanted to do was hop back on one of those fucking goony-birds, but if it would have got me another crack at Kedac I’d have hitched a ride on a bottle rocket.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
FREE FALL!
We ran down the steps to where Lhan had tied up the skelshas. My bird bitched and snapped at me, but I got on him at last and he looped up into the sky after Sai and Lhan like a wounded duck. I swear he was deliberately trying to make me lose my lunch.
Lhan spurred his skelsha straight for Kedac’s ship. It hadn’t got far. The wind was blowing from the direction of the naval base, so Kedac had to tack back and forth to make headway.
We caught up to him about halfway across the city. Lhan tried to bring us in high and out of the sun, but they still spotted us. As soon as we got within range crossbow bolts came spitting from the deck of the ship. They buzzed by like angry bees.
We angled off again, climbing up out of their line of sight. I jockeyed my bird alongside Lhan’s. It was spooky quiet that high up. I couldn’t hear any ground sounds at all. “Can we come down on top of them and poke a hole in their balloon?”
Sai yelped. “No! Do you mean to kill her?”
Lhan shook his head. “’Tis still too unpredictable. Sometimes a holed envelope rips wide and the ship plummets like a stone. Other times it takes hours to sink. The first we cannot risk, and the second would not serve us.”
“Okay, you tell me.”
Lhan pointed. “If we swoop down on all sides, one of us at least should gain the deck, and in the confusion that followed, the other two would find their chance.”
I made a face. “Sounds like suicide for the first one in, and not much better for everybody else.”
Lhan shrugged. “Kedac has not a full compliment of men. This was to be a honeymoon, not a raid. Besides, to save the nation and the Aldhanshai? Could a true Oran do less?” He caught himself. “Ah, but forgive me, Mistress. This is not your fight. You are welcome to retire.”
I laughed. “And let that fucker Kedac win? Not a chance, bucko. I just don’t want to die for nothing.”
Sai gasped and pointed across the city. “We are lost! Another ship comes to Kedac’s aid.”
Lhan and I turned. Sure enough, rising from the naval base was a sleek little cutter with the Oran colors flying.
Lhan tugged on his skelsha’s reins. “The we must act swiftly. Come.” He angled himself over Kedac’s ship. We joined him, circling like vultures over roadkill. Sai looked as gray as paste, but his jaw was set. I felt like he looked.
Lhan dropped his fist. “Now!”
Lhan and Sai jerked the reins of their skelshas down and back, forcing them into steep dives. I did the same, but my skelsha fought me for a second before I muscled his head down.
We whipped down past the airbag so close that I could see the individual strands in the ropes that held the balloon to the ship. I came down portside. Lhan was to starboard, and Sai tried to land on the back rail.
It didn’t work. They were ready. A whole fucking swarm of bolts shot at me as soon as I dropped below the balloon. My skelsha screamed as he took two in the chest and one through the left wing. He thrashed away and down, squealing and losing altitude fast. Ormolu pinwheeled up at me. I hauled on the reins. “Up, you bastard! Up!”
He leveled off a little, but he couldn’t climb. Flapping his wing hurt to much.
A shape streaked down past me, then arced up under. It was Lhan. He’d got off easier than I had. At least his skelsha had. The bird didn’t have a scratch. Lhan had a bolt through his thigh.
“Hold him steady, mistress.”
I tightened up on the reins as Lhan inched up under me. What was he thinking? I was lighter than I looked in Waar’s gravity, but there was no way a skelsha could carry the two of us—not in a dogfight, that was for damn sure. And what was he doing helping me? Where the hell was Sai?
I looked up. Sai’s skelsha was circling over the balloon again. They both seemed unwounded until I noticed a couple bolts dangling from his skelsha’s landing gear.
Lhan looked up, two yards below me. “Step down to me, mistress. Carefully now.”
“It won’t work. I’m too heavy.”
“’Twill work for long enough. Now hurry. Your bird is dying.”
He was right. I was dropping lower every second. My skelsha could barely hold his wings out anymore. If I didn’t go now I’d be crashlanding in some Ormolu backyard. I waved him closer. “Come up. Come up.”
Lhan eased his bird higher. He was practically carrying my skelsha piggyback. I threw my right leg over my bird’s neck, then slid off.
For a second I had that sick feeling like when you drop from a wall in the dark and don’t know how far it is to the ground, but then I landed square on the skelsha’s back, right behind Lhan. My bird’s cry of relief came right on top of Lhan’s bird’s squawk of surprise. We dropped fifteen feet in a second and I thought we weren’t going to stop, but then Lhan hauled on the reins. “Pull beloved! Pull!”
I held on to him like I was in the chick seat of a Harley. “What now? This poor bastard ain’t gonna l
ast two minutes.”
“Well I know it. We must land quickly.”
I looked down. “It’ll take too long. We’re gonna do the last thousand feet in nothing flat.”
“That is why we go up.”
Up? Was he going to fly us to one of the moons? “Whaddaya mean? Where are we going?”
He didn’t answer. I held on, terrified. Lhan stayed out of range of Kedac’s ship as we climbed. A couple guys took potshots at us, but the bolts arced down under our skelsha’s belly. The poor bastard flapped for all he was worth and we slowly climbed back into the sky. It was killing him. He was wheezing and gagging against his bit. My wounded skelsha spiraled down below us, barely flapping.
Finally we were over the balloon. Lhan waved to Sai and angled toward Kedac’s ship. I grabbed him. “What are you doing. That didn’t work the first time!”
But instead of diving for the deck, this time he aimed his bird for the top of the balloon. The poor thing almost collapsed as it landed. Sai’s skelsha did collapse. Its wounded legs couldn’t stick the landing and it crashed beak first, throwing Sai from the saddle.
Lhan bellowed, terrified, as Sai flew toward the slope. He hopped off his bird to try and catch Sai, and nearly fell himself as Sai hooked the netting with a one-hand grab. His bird bounced past him and tumbled off the balloon into freefall.
We watched as it threw out its wings, caught an updraft, and got riddled with crossbow bolts as it came back up to deck level. The poor fucker spun down toward the rooftops like a broken umbrella.
Sai and Lhan helped each other back up the curve of the balloon as I hopped off Lhan’s skelsha. I pulled them up the last few feet. “This is great. Now we got one skelsha for the three of us.”
Just then a screechy horn blew from below and Lhan’s skelsha raised its head. Lhan cursed and ran toward it, but before he could catch it, the thing spread its wings and dove down toward the deck.
I stared. “What the fuck?”
Lhan’s shoulders slumped. “The homing horn, to call back riderless birds in battle.”
I groaned. “Well, that narrows things down, don’t it? We’re stuck, and climbing down to rescue Princess Poo-Poo Pants is gonna get our asses stuck full of arrows. I think we gotta pop this puppy and take our chances with the drop.”
Sai yelped again. “No!”
Lhan glanced over the side. “’Tis too late for that. We are nearly over the base now. They will land in their own shipfield and we will be lost.”
I kicked the balloon. “Well, what the fuck do we do, then?”
He drew his sword, looking over my shoulder. “It seems we fight.”
I turned. Clambering up the netting like so many monkeys came a squad of marines.
Sai squeaked. “There are more here!”
We spun back. We were being surrounded.
Funny, for a second it cheered me up. You can’t fight ifs and maybes. You can’t kick a possibility in the nuts. At least these guys I could do something about.
Then the fuckers pulled out bows and ruined the whole thing. The marines stopped just high enough to watch us, but too far down for us to get at them without practically hanging off the balloon. Behind them, a line of crossbow guys drew down on us. Smart fucker, that Kedac. He wasn’t about to play king-of-the-hill with us. He’d just stay out of range and snipe at us.
Let me just take a second to say how much I fucking hate bows. And guns, and bombs, and all that long range stuff, stuff that makes it easy for some schmuck to kill you from far off without having to think about what he’s doing. A guy can drop a bomb from a plane and he doesn’t have to picture what’s going on below him. Imagine if the guys in the Enola Gay had had to personally chop the heads off all the people they killed in Hiroshima—even the little babies. You think they might have felt a little twinge after a while?
Lhan shouted, “Down!” as the first bolts zipped by us. I had a better plan. As Lhan and Sai fell flat I drew my sword, flipped it around and stuck it point down into the leather of the balloon. “Next guy who shoots, we all go down!”
The bowmen hesitated. They looked to their sergeants. I pushed the point a little deeper. “I got nothing to lose. I’ll rip it wide open, whether you hit me or not.”
The sergeants called down the balloon for new orders. A few seconds later, they waved at the bowmen. They lowered their crossbows, but kept them at the ready. The marines stayed where they were, watching us.
Sai and Lhan raised their heads. I motioned with my chin. “Get your swords out. We gotta make this look serious.”
They sat up and drew. There were some shouts from the marines, but nobody shot at us. Sai made cow eyes at me as the three of us knelt in a little circle, swords point-down like some picture from a King Arthur story. “Once again you save my miserable life, Mistress.”
Lhan grunted. “But for how long. This standoff ends once we land. They know all they have to do is wait.”
That was true. I hadn’t bought us much time. We were practically over the base now. The fortifications were slipping beneath the mass of the balloon. The other navy ship was below us too, turning our way but still a good thousand feet down. I grinned, queasy. “Well at least we don’t have to worry about that other ship. They can’t risk firing on us anymore than these guys can.”
Lhan didn’t return my smile. “Yes, but unless we can invent some new course of action, we will be dead regardless. The first casualties in a bloody civil war.”
I was only half listening. The other ship wasn’t rising. It was staying at its own level, passing under Kedak’s ship and out of my line of sight as it continued south. They weren’t coming for us at all. Why was that?
I stood and looked closer, not at the balloon, but at the deck. There were tiny faces peeking out from under, looking up. I spotted a flash of red. A short-cut red jacket. Kai-La! And there was Burly beside her. The old she-skelsha had managed to get out of the Navy camp after all.
My heart jumped. “The pirates!”
Sai and Lhan followed my gaze just as their ship vanished under ours, but they had seen too. I wanted to run to the side of the balloon and wave and shout. They were our rescue—the United States Marines coming over the hill in the nick of time—except they weren’t. They were heading for the horizon as fast as their little balloon could take them.
Not that I blamed them. If I’d just lifted off from a navy base in a stolen ship, the last thing I’d want to do would be to stop and chat with the flagship of the whole fleet. They didn’t know what was happening up here. And even if they did they wouldn’t come to the rescue. Sure, I’d busted them out of jail, but we weren’t exactly bosom buddies, were we?
A hissing burst from below snapped me back to the here and now. The airmen were venting gas. We were starting our drop. The only way out of this high-flying bucket of shit we were in was to get some help, and fast. If we could talk the pirates into teaming up with us we had a chance. But how? What I needed was a skelsha so I could fly down to them, or...
I pushed the idea away. Too crazy, even for me. But was it? They were directly below us. Their balloon was bigger than a trailerpark double-wide. Pretty good-sized target. Little fingers of fear started creeping up my neck and choking me. I shook them off. If I was going to do this I’d have to do it so fast my brain wouldn’t be able to catch up with me before it was too late.
I sheathed my sword and looked at Sai and Lhan. “Keep poking the balloon. I’m going for help.”
Sai frowned. “You go to do what?”
Lhan had figured it out. “No, Mistress Jae-En. ’Tis is too dangerous.”
“It’s better than wating to get picked off like a fish in a barrel. See you in a minute.” I turned to the left side of the balloon—the side Kai-La’s ship would be coming out from under—and started running. Sai and Lhan called after me. I ignored them. I had to keep moving.
The marines shouted as I charged toward them, and the archers raised their crossbows. The balloon started to slope d
own beneath my feet. I kicked off like a cliff diver and leapt over their heads, as flat and far out as I could with crossbow bolts whizzing all around me.
As the curve of the balloon dropped behind me and the whole city of Ormolu spread out below me like a satellite photo, my brain finally caught up with me.
What the fuck was I doing?
I was freefalling four thousand feet up without a goddamn parachute, that’s what I was doing. And the crazy part was, I hadn’t been able to see my target before I jumped. The bulk of Kedac’s balloon had been in the way. I’d jumped blind, and now I was fucked.
The pirates had sailed a lot further out than I’d thought. They weren’t below me. It was hard to judge at this height, but they seemed to be twenty or thirty feet beyond my fingertips and the gap was widening. There was nothing between me and the ground but air.
I fought off the impulse to curl up into a ball and scream. I’d been an Airborne Ranger, damn it. I’d trained for this. Chute failure was boot camp basics. I threw my arms and legs out wide and held myself rigid, trying to catch as much wind resistance as possible. The air beat at me like water from a fire hose. It forced my eyes closed and got under my heavy leather armor and made it flap like silk. I slowed up. Not much, but more than I expected. I forgot! I was lighter on this planet. I wasn’t falling as fast. I had maybe fifty seconds instead of forty before I went splat. Hooray.
I could feel the limits of my control like a skateboarder feeling how far she can lean into a turn before her wheels slip. I could even use my arms and legs and big fat ass to steer a little.
I aimed myself as best I could at Kai-La’s stolen ship. It worked. I angled closer. But fast enough? I rode the edge. If I didn’t push hard enough my dive would be too steep and I’d fall short. If I pushed too hard, I’d lose resistance and drop like a stone.
I arched my body like a bow. The gap was closing, but I was falling faster than I was turning. The ship rushed up to fill my vision like a speeding truck, blocking out half the city below it, but I wasn’t coming down on top of it. It was still off left. I could see faces. Faces was bad. That meant I could see under the balloon. I was too far out. I arched further. Reaching out with my hands.
