“The starboard side, miss,” Benny Stringfellow said helpfully. “Three of the clock, Captain, hauling around to broadside.”
“Those cheating scoundrels,” Alice said, apparently not much bothered. “I’m getting tired of this shabby treatment. We shall bob for apples, Mr. McTavish, when they line up.”
To Evan’s dismay, through the viewing ports he could see the ships take up positions on either side of Swan, a thousand feet off her fuselage. Metal glinted in the sun as even he could see guns being brought to bear.
“Vanes vertical in five—four—three—two—one!”
The deck dropped out from under Evan’s boots and he found himself ten feet in the air in less time than it took to think about it. Gloria shrieked and collided violently with him, whereupon he clasped her around the waist to prevent her from hitting a bulkhead.
Swan dropped like a stone and in her wake, the volleys of missiles the two pirate airships had loosed arced toward one another, the sounds of the blasts deafening in the thin air.
“Bloody fools,” Alice said, hanging on to the helm with both arms while her feet slowly settled back to the deck. “Who uses cannon in this day and age?”
Evan rapidly calculated the angle of their dive and predicted the effects of returning gravity with such accuracy that Gloria’s knees only got a little bit bumped as they landed on the deck. Gently, he released her and untangled their lines.
“Thank you, Evan,” she said breathlessly. “That was—quite unexpected.”
He was not sure if she meant the dive, or his attempt to assist her. In any case, her thanks were more precious to him than any treasure, and his face glowed red with gratification.
“We’re not out of the clouds yet,” Alice warned them. “I won’t be able to get away with that a second time.”
“No, since we are now a quarter mile from the surface of the mesa,” Jake agreed. “Vanes thirty degrees, please, and engines, slow to five knots, ready for landing.”
The throaty hum of the great Daimler engines in the rear of the gondola obediently changed their pitch. Evan had not realized that one could automate an engine to the point where it responded to vocal commands, and his admiration for Alice’s skill went up another few degrees.
“Look, that one is going down,” Benny said, pointing to one of their attackers.
It dove toward the desert floor with all the grace of an injured pelican, wallowing and jerking and sending a plume of black smoke spiraling up to smudge the sky.
But where had the second ship had got to?
Alice evidently wondered the same thing. “Mr. Stringfellow, I want a report on the whereabouts of our other friends.”
He scampered up into the catwalks in the fuselage, and ten minutes later returned, his eager young face reddened with the wind. “It’s backed off, Captain, and seems to have lost one of its engines. It’s lame, but we haven’t shook it, following five hundred yards to the stern, where it thinks we can’t see it.”
“As long as it has no guns in its bow, it can stay there.”
“No sign of ports, but that doesn’t mean anything.” His voice held disdain. “Pirates.”
“My old ship had projectile tubes in its fuselage,” Alice said. “I wouldn’t put anything past Ned Mose. He’s got a bottomless bag of tricks.”
The words were no sooner out of her mouth than Evan heard the howl of a projectile. This time, they hadn’t been able to see the warning puff of steam, and there was no time to react. With a sound partway between an explosion and a ringing clang, something large, heavy, and deadly struck the gondola in the stern, and the impact knocked Evan clear off his feet.
CHAPTER 5
“M y engines!” Alice shrieked. “Vanes vertical—take her up!”
She dashed into the stern, fighting down panic as the frigid cold of high altitude swirled along the corridor and told her they’d been breached. The pressure under her boots assured her that the automatons had obeyed her command—making her doubly thankful that the central intelligence was housed just below the helm, where it was most difficult to hit, and not in the stern where the engines were.
Of course, if something had happened to her beloved Daimlers, no amount of commanding anything was going to help.
She burst into the engine room and saw at once what had happened. Her knees practically buckled in relief and gratitude for the engineer who had reinforced the gondola with iron plates—for there, within a hand’s breadth of the starboard propeller, the wall had been stove in. It still held the rounded shape of a foot-wide ball, and the plate had warped away from its rivets—hence the frigid wind blowing in.
“Are the engines all right?” Evan ran into the room, his stride a little uneven as he favored his left leg.
“They’re unharmed. We took a shot, but it seems to have mostly bounced off us. Are you all right?”
“Perfectly all right. I landed awkwardly when it hit, that is all. How may I assist?”
“Help me wedge this canvas into that crack in the plating, or we’ll all be wishing we had Esquimaux coats before long.”
“Will they fire again?” Evan wrestled with the heavy canvas, but he was no schoolboy noodle, all brains and no brawn. For a scientist, he was surprisingly strong, and Alice found the task done much more efficiently and neatly than if she had been alone.
“They will if they can, but it seems my navigator is using evasive tactics to prevent it. Come. I need to take the helm and show that lot how to mind their manners.”
No other projectiles had been fired, which told Alice that either they only had the one, or that Jake had outmaneuvered them. And when she gained the navigation room once again, she realized immediately what he’d done.
With a delighted chuckle, she clapped him on the back. “If we were dancing, we would call this the dos-à-dos. Well done, Mr. McTavish.”
For Jake had taken Swan straight up, waited for the enemy ship to pass helplessly below, and then come down upon her stern, where she presented as fat and lumbering a target as any onetime pirate could wish.
“You may fire at will, Mr. Stringfellow,” she said pleasantly to Benny.
“Me, Captain?” the boy squeaked, his face turning red in case she was funning with him.
She was not. Their target would make a perfect first lesson for a young gunner. “Yes, you. Into the gunner’s pod, if you please, and make it count. Don’t forget your lessons in the mathematics of trajectory and arc.”
“Yes, Captain!”
He was so elated his feet barely touched the rungs of the ladder as he dropped into the pod below. In a moment, the hum of the Daimlers was joined by a tenor contrapunto. Alice could practically feel in her bones the moment the grand lightning rifle she had built reached its firing charge and the hum took on a businesslike tone, as if to say, I’m ready, mate—get on with it.
A bolt of white energy sizzled across the air between the ships. The tub ahead of them was doing its best to pull away, and not maintaining a steady altitude. It dipped and bobbed, but sadly, whoever was at the helm did not realize he had fallen into a pattern.
The bolt caught them on the low end of a dip, passing harmlessly through the fuselage and part of a gas bag. The fuselage folded in on the injured portion, flapping mightily in the wind, but it wasn’t enough to bring them down.
“Try again, Mr. Stringfellow,” Alice murmured. “Don’t be dismayed.”
A second bolt arced across the space—too high again—but no! The ship came out of its dip and attempted a bob, just in time to meet the bolt square on the stern. Benny followed it up immediately with a third salvo, and wriggling feelers of energy crawled up the gondola from the stern, sparking and sizzling everything they touched in a web of blue-white light that was as deadly as it was beautiful.
Gloria cheered.
“Merciful heavens,” Evan breathed. “I have never seen its like.”
“You may thank Dr. Rosemary Craig,” Alice said with satisfaction. “She bequeathed the knowl
edge of how to build the energy cells to Claire, who shared it with me.” Something in his face—the awe, the appreciation—made her say impulsively, “I would be happy to share it with you, too, if we ever get a moment of leisure.”
In his gaze, Alice saw that somehow she had passed the mighty portals of scientific acceptance, and become not merely a peer, but someone whom Evan Douglas respected.
“I would consider it a great honor.” And he actually bent his neck in a bow.
“Captain, you can have the tea party later,” Jake said tersely from his controls. “They’re going down. Do we follow?”
“The vanes can be operated manually, so they have some steering. Once they run aground, I expect they can take care of themselves. We’ll proceed to Resolution. I’m willing to bet my stepfather is still so tight-fisted that he won’t waste another ship on us.”
When Benny shut down the rifle and emerged from the gunner’s pod, she breached the protocols of rank just long enough to give him a hard hug.
“Well done, sir. You’re a credit to your ship.”
“Thank you, Captain,” he mumbled, blushing scarlet. “I remembered what you told me about the trajectory, but that vessel were bobbing about like a duck in a bath. It were a bit tricky.”
She held him away from her with both hands on his shoulders. “Do you know what today is, Mr. Stringfellow?”
“Monday, the twentieth of January, 1895, Captain.”
Alice fought down a smile and kept her face sober. “Remember that date, for it is the date we will tell the Admiralty that Benjamin Stringfellow, midshipman, was promoted to the rank of gunner, second class.”
Benny gasped. “Captain, you don’t mean it!”
“I do,” she said stoutly. “Congratulations, Benny. Well done.”
She took the helm while Jake and the others added their congratulations, and finally allowed herself a smile. Despite the smell of cordite and burned air, and the repairs that would have to be made, they had managed their approach respectably well.
For below were the red cliffs, dusky green pines, and treacherous sands of her godforsaken childhood. As the disabled pirate ship fell ahead of them, in the initial stages of a long, slow descent and a soft landing, she could see the shabby wood-and-stone shacks of Resolution, there in the middle of the flood plain.
The place she’d left under fire while stealing an airship, the guns in the hands of the man she had once called her pa.
* * *
ONCE JAKE HAD TRIANGULATED the approximate landfalls of each of their disabled attackers, Alice could choose her own landing site.
“We’ll moor there, on that basalt outcropping on the northwest side,” she said, pointing it out. “Close enough to get back to the ship if we’re chased out of town, and far enough away that anyone thinking to harvest my engines is going to be painfully visible before he gets near them.”
Jake took a moment to mark the landing site on the navigator’s map, and then they brought her gently down. Benny and Evan jumped out to secure the mooring ropes on the rocks.
When Jake’s repeated glances clearly indicated he wondered why she was not going astern to bank the boilers, but remained at the viewing ports watching the town a quarter mile off, Alice relented.
“I don’t want the boilers going cold,” she said, though he had not been so bold as to question her. “And I want a watch posted around the clock while we’re here. I know Ned Mose and the men in this town well enough to predict that even if he welcomes me with open arms—er, arm—that won’t stop the more enterprising from taking their chances.”
“I’ll stay,” Jake said briefly. “I’ve got no wish to be anywhere near that place. I’ll keep Benny here with me and we’ll start on repairs to the hull.”
“We seem to be rather high off this rock pile,” Gloria observed from her post at the other viewing port. “We shall have to use a rope ladder to get down, will we not?”
“Clever boys,” Alice said with some satisfaction. “The gunner’s pod will be high enough that Benny can maneuver the barrel to greet any unexpected company.”
Evan climbed back through the gangway, closely followed by the young gunner.
“Well done, you two,” Alice said. “Good thinking—though I hope it doesn’t come to a full-on assault. Old repeating rifles for one or two men are more likely.”
Jake briefly gave Benny his orders, and Evan looked from him to Alice as though expecting his as well. “Shall I stay too?” he asked. “And Miss Meriwether-Astor certainly must.”
“She certainly must not,” that young lady said with some spirit. “Someone has to go with Alice.”
“Someone who isn’t worth a fortune and is easy to catch and hold for ransom,” Alice told her with no little regret. “I’m afraid I must beg you to stay with the ship, Gloria. If they find out about you, they’ll lose interest in capturing Swan. With the ransom they’d get, they could buy half Count von Zeppelin’s fleet—and then you’d have nothing but a bankrupt company to run when you got home.”
“I may have that anyway. I want to come with you—and of course I wouldn’t tell them who I am. I shall use the sobriquet that I used before, and be Miss Meredith Aster.”
“We’ll have to tell them about the shipment in order to bribe them into doing this, and your real name’s bound to come up. If you respond by accident, it could tip them off. Better for all of us that you stay at a distance.”
Gloria was clearly not used to anyone arguing with her, but the thought of her being captured and at Ned Mose’s mercy made Alice feel ill.
“Please, dear,” she said softly. “I admire you for your courage, and for your desire to beard the lion with me. But we have come too far to risk everything on a misstep now.”
“I wish Captain Hollys were here to go with you,” Jake said.
“You’re not the only one.” Alice had wished it many a time since they’d pulled up ropes in London, but never more so than now. “But he isn’t, so we must do what we can on our own.”
“I am not the captain,” Evan Douglas said humbly, “but nor do I have any value that would put anyone in danger. If you will have me, Captain Chalmers, I will do what I can to help you accomplish your purpose and return to the ship unharmed.”
She had known since they’d crossed the Atlantic that it would have to be this way. Jake was the obvious first choice, but she needed him to make the repairs and keep the ship ready to lift at a moment’s notice—a task that would be beyond Benny working alone. Taking Gloria into that nest of cranky vipers and cutthroats was out of the question. Which, no matter how you sliced it, left only Evan.
So she gave the awkward, lanky scientist a companionable smile. “I will have you, and gladly, Mr. Douglas. Come. Let us arm ourselves to the teeth. It’s too much to hope that all we’ll get is an invitation to tea.”
CHAPTER 6
A lice knew from experience that when Ned was in a temper, the best way to get through to him was via her mother.
So, feeling a little like a walking armory with two lightning pistols tucked into the waistband of her pants, a set of strangulating irons such as Benny wore draped around his neck in each outer pocket of her flight jacket, and her trusty revolver in its special pocket inside, she walked the dusty track that the river had carved out of the hardpan to the house on the edge of town that the desert flowers called home.
“Alice!” Bonita Suarez exclaimed in astonishment when Alice and Evan walked into the sitting room, where at this time of day the girls were lounging on the sofas, chattering and brushing their hair before the sun went down and business opened for the evening. “We never thought to see you again—we thought you were dead.”
“Not me.” Alice hugged her, catching the girl’s hand before—out of habit—it slipped into her pocket. She gave it a squeeze to show there were no hard feelings. “I always turn up, like a bad penny.”
“No such thing.” A blond woman nearly her mother’s age smiled from the sofa, but didn’t get
up. “How are you, honey? And who’s this handsome man? You looking for a tumble on the house?”
Poor Evan blushed six shades of red before Alice took pity on him. “Don’t mind them. They’ve got no reason to use fancy language to hide the truth, unlike some.”
The blond, Lorraine, raised her painted brows. “Ooh. Is this your man, Alice? What’s his name?”
“No, ma’am, it’s not. Evan Douglas is a friend of mine, and I’d take it kindly if you considered him a friend of yours, too.”
“I can be plenty friendly.” Bonita caressed his sleeve and batted her lashes. “Friends get a discount.”
“No, thank you, miss.” Evan hardly knew where to look. “We’re here on business.”
Lorraine laughed. “Everyone who comes in here is, darling.” Then her faded gaze sharpened on Alice. “What is it, honey? If you’re looking for your mama, I have to tell you she’s not here.”
Alice felt a clutch under her breastbone that she had not expected to feel. “Not here, as in over at Ned’s place? Or not here, as in out under the mesa?” The town’s burial plots lay on higher ground, up under the monolith of stone that formed its own marker.
“Oh, she’s not dead and buried, honey—at least, she wasn’t last we heard.”
“She done eloped, Alice!” one of the other girls burst out.
“Hey, I was going to tell her.” Lorraine frowned at the girl in a way that told Alice who was in charge of the Desert Rose now.
“Eloped! With whom?”
“With a man from up north.”
“No,” Alice said in tones of disbelief. “Not Mike Embry?”
“The very one,” Lorraine told her, nodding. “Big man. Has his own saloon in the Northern Light. Came in a company airship and took Nellie away, as romantical as all get out.”
“Just like in the flickers,” Bonita sighed.
So her mother had given up being Ned Mose’s wife and the madam of the house, and started over with a good man who would look after her.
Fields of Air: A steampunk adventure novel (Magnificent Devices Book 10) Page 6
