Gaia's Brood

by Nick Travers

  Chapter 36

  Suddenly, I’m distracted from our impending deaths by a flapping noise near my head. A Reaver in free fall shoots past, then another. I can’t see it, but somewhere below I hear the unmistakable sound of a parachute popping. This is bad, very bad.

  I steer away from the Reavers and unclip the Whisper. A third Reaver rockets past us and I lose a couple of bolts into its backpack. The bolts bury themselves deep into the fabric, but I bet they haven’t penetrated right through the layers of parachute silk. Still, if the chute ever opens it will rip to shreds and I don’t see a reserve chute—it’s not in a Reaver’s nature to show caution.

  Cloud swirls over the doomed Reaver.

  Another Reaver zooms in towards me, goggles glaring like a demented machine. It reaches for its ripcord and a Whisper bolt pins the groping hand to its chest. With a howl of pain, it pulls the ripcord anyway—the feathered tail-end of the bolt tearing a bloody hole in the hand as the Reaver drags it away from its chest. Then in astonishment, the Reaver realizes the ripcord is no longer attached to the chute.

  I’ve fired off two more Whisper bolts and one of them sliced the ripcord.

  Frantically, the Reaver grasps for me, but it is already past and accelerating away from us.

  I turn us away again, heading in what I hope is a northerly direction, but I’m so disorientated I could be heading right back under the platform and out the other side. No more Reavers appear for the moment—perhaps they only had four parachutes. I must remember there are still two, possibly three, below us somewhere. Now I need to find the Shonti Bloom.

  Trent is limp with cold—I’m not losing altitude fast enough so I speed up our descent, hoping I don’t run into the Reavers below.

  As we break through the cloud cover, another Reaver shoots past, screaming like a banshee and disappears into the night. This one doesn’t even have a parachute.

  In the distance below I see the Shonti Bloom ablaze with lights and dangling a large scramble net—I was heading the wrong way. I correct our direction and rate of descent. We’re going to make it.

  But something is wrong: the scramble net is crawling with Reavers climbing up towards the Shonti’s hull.

  Izzy and Fernando lean over the side with crossbows trying to hit the Reavers, but they can’t depress their angle of fire enough to hit any targets. Soon it will be close quarter fighting and once those Reavers make it onto the deck, it’s game over.

  Four Reavers furiously scramble hand over fist up the net, all bristling with weapons. Some idiot is waving a compression pistol above their head. One shot through the Shonti’s gas filled blimp is all it will take to blow everything.

  I lift the whisper and take aim. I can take them, all of them, but I can’t save myself, or Trent.

  I take out the Reaver waving the pistol with the first bolt. Then the Whisper’s re-loader pumps into action and I spray the net with a deadly swarm of crossbow bolts as I glide past.

  My last victim leaps off the scramble net, arms flailing wildly, straight into our parachute. The chute collapses.

  Immediately, the three of us accelerate earthward. Me screaming, Trent unconsciously oblivious, and the wounded Reaver scrabbling up great handfuls of parachute silk in an attempt to get at me.

  We must look faintly ridiculous. Why my mind conjures up this image I can only guess—perhaps a reaction to extreme panic or my impending death.

  Suddenly, we jerk to a back-breaking halt. The surprise leaves me dumbfounded for a moment—I’m not going to die. Think, Nina, think.

  I glance up to find the Reaver, hidden under a mass of dangling dreadlocks, is now trying to support both my weight and Stitches weight, as well as real in the parachute to get to us. The Reaver is attached to the scramble net by a rope. Wow, forward thinking from a Reaver.

  The combined mass of Trent and I is too great for the wounded Reaver. The parachute is slipping through its fingers. In its determination to get at me the Reaver doesn’t even consider letting go of the silk.

  If I shoot the Reaver with the Whisper it will drop the parachute. If I do nothing, the Reaver will eventually tire and the chute will slip through its fingers, or more likely, it will just decide to let go. In any event, my impending death is back on track—it’s just a matter of time.

  When all else fails, relax, take in a deep breath, then let it out slowly, and pray.

  Something heavy hits my shoulder and falls past me: a sandbag. What idiot is throwing sandbags at me? Attached to the sandbag is a rope. Izzy, wonderful Izzy.

  When the time for action comes, act fast.

  I whip out my knife, slice off the sandbag, and tie the rope securely to the parachute harness. Reaching above my head I slice through the parachute strings freeing us from the Reaver’s grasp.

  The Reaver responds, quickly reaching for the new rope and producing their own knife, but I’m already retrieving my Whisper. Screaming out all my frustration and fear, I empty the whole magazine of bolts into the dangling Reaver. Given the power of the Whisper, at almost point—blank range, most of the bolts pass straight through the Reaver’s body, tearing great bloody holes in its flesh.

  The Reaver is dead long before all the bolts are used up, but once unleashed, and covered in the Reaver’s blood, I seem unable to reign in my aggression and unclench my trigger hand. I continue screaming my anger as the bow twangs on an the empty magazine. Then it hisses to a stop, the compressed air canister exhausted.

  The dangling Reaver, trailing it’s rope, falls past me and I look up to see Izzy at the bottom of the cargo net grinning and waving her own knife.

  Izzy scrambles up to the airship again, and together, she and Fernando haul us in. As soon as I reach the scramble net, I lend them my support and start to climb.

  My only thought is that we have to get the Shonti out of here before the Reaver attack ships find us.