“It’s safe.” She helped Gordon roll over onto his back, and again he cried out in pain. “Thank you,” she whispered to him, kneeling beside him.
Gordon looked up at her with leaking eyes. “Thank you for coming. But you shouldn’t have done that. I’m an old man.”
“What does that matter?” she asked him.
He smiled.
The ship started to list, so Willoughby rushed over to the flight controls and steadied it. “I hope you don’t mean you gave it to that Badlander.”
She jumped up. “What?” Hurrying over to Willoughby, she took in the pilot’s heads-up display.
Below them, Rowan ran through the snow. Apparently the cliff trick hadn’t worked, and he’d been forced to run. She didn’t see the helicopter in sight, but she hoped it was still out there to pick him up. A blast erupted from the other airship, blowing a crater in the dirt beside him. He dove to one side, barely escaping. The ship prepared to fire again. He wasn’t going to make it.
Willoughby wheeled the ship toward his location.
The second airship fired on Rowan again, striking a dead tree beside him. It erupted in flames, leveling a whole section of the slope. The snow slid downward, sweeping up Rowan with it. She saw him struggling to stay on top of the snow, his arms and legs flailing and kicking.
He neared a steep escarpment on the mountain, a sheer cliff face. The snow carried him hopelessly toward it.
“We have to help him!” H124 cried just as Rowan went over the edge, sailing out into the open air. He vanished from sight, plummeting downward.
Chapter 29
As the airship hovered over the cliff, she ran to the window, pressing her face against it. Relief flooded through her. The helicopter hovered just below the edge of the escarpment. She could see Rowan clinging to one of the landing skids. He swung his body up, into the cabin of the helicopter.
“He made it!” she shouted.
“The asteroid info is on him?” Willoughby asked.
She turned to him and nodded solemnly.
“Then we have to protect that helicopter at all costs.” He fired up the weapons panel. The helicopter dashed to one side, and when the second airship tried to maneuver close behind, it proved too unwieldy, banging into the cliff face. It wheeled on the helicopter, preparing to fire.
The helicopter veered sharply away from the cliff, but the airship followed and fired once more. The chopper dodged to the side, and the airship’s shot went wide, taking out a chunk of the cliff. Huge rocks rained down beneath them.
Willoughby sent a powerful blast at the second airship. It struck dead on, sending it off course. Flames erupted in the stern. The ship listed farther left. He fired again, blasting a hole in its center. This time it exploded, shuddering down to crash into the jagged rocks of the mountain. Another explosion wracked the air, and debris billowed up, filling the sky with ash and smoke.
Willoughby looked at the infrared display. “What the hell?” A line of bright red shapes was moving in, closing in on their location. “More airships!” Willoughby’s mouth fell open. “There must be at least fifteen. Damn it!”
He turned to H124. “I thought if there were only two, I could shoot down the other one. But this?” He looked helplessly at the display.
“Are they after me or Rowan?”
He turned to her. “You. After your pirate broadcast in Delta City, the power didn’t go back up. More and more people pulled away from their displays to send each other messages. They weren’t seeing to their task windows. The whole northern part of the city went dark, including all power to the PPC Tower. Getting it back up was a monumental task. The media had to debunk your story, going so far as to make up a silly meme about it to discredit you. Eventually power started returning to the city. People lost interest in your story. But the PPC structure was damaged. You undermined them. And they want to be sure it doesn’t happen again. I heard they were going after you, and I requested to be on the mission. They almost didn’t let me go, being from New Atlantic, as they blamed me for your escape. Said I was incompetent, that I had one shot to make up for it. Thankfully they didn’t suspect the real truth. Ideally they’d like to capture you and repurpose you so you can go on one of the chatter shows and say it was all a prank.”
The thought made her shiver.
“Can you order the ships back?” Gordon asked from the floor.
“I have no authority here. I’m just along for the ride.”
The line of airships closed in.
H124 watched the helicopter speeding away in the opposite direction. Just as she thought maybe they hadn’t seen it, the airships picked up speed, fanning out and flanking Rowan’s position. They caught up to them in seconds, surrounding the helicopter. She heard their voices come over the comm. “Land now and you will not be harmed.” She knew that was complete lie. “Don’t land, and we will shoot you down where you are.”
“They don’t know you’re aboard this airship,” Willoughby said. “That’s good. They think you’re on the helicopter.”
“That’s not good for the helicopter.”
Willoughby moved into position near the other airships. There was no way they could take on fifteen of them. Rowan and Marlowe were about to be shot out of the sky, along with all the information that the Rovers would need in order to have any chance of saving the planet.
H124’s mind struggled to comprehend what was happening. One second their airship was feet away from Rowan’s helicopter, and the next, it veered off wildly, picked up speed and shot away. She went off her feet, then stood up to see that they hovered several miles off, along with the other fifteen ships. She stood on the bridge, blinking quickly.
“What the . . . ?” she heard Willoughby murmur.
A flutter of confused messages came over the comm link, none of them making any sense. “Form up!” came a harsh voice.
The airships approached again en masse, closing in on Rowan. Willoughby followed them. Then once again the engines raced out of control, spinning the ships madly in the air and speeding them away so quickly that H124 had to grip Willoughby’s chair to keep from flying backward. When their ship slowed, she looked at the HUD. They were all even farther away, now five miles from the helicopter Willoughby checked and rechecked the controls.
“What’s going on?” H124 asked Willoughby.
“I have no idea!” He backed away from the controls. “But I’m no longer controlling the ship.”
“What’s happening here?” boomed a voice over the comm. “This is Commander Recht aboard Airship 503. Who is doing this?”
“No one, sir,” replied another voice. “It’s nothing we’re doing.”
“Close in on the target!” barked Recht.
Moving as one, the airships sped toward Rowan. They caught up with him in no time as he tried to flee south. Willoughby tried to blend in with the other ships, waiting for his chance to do something. “Get ready to fire!” ordered Recht.
“No!” shouted H124 as she saw a blast of fire emerge from the ships. Then their airship dipped, careening toward the ground. Then it veered upward, spinning out of control. She clenched her teeth and squeezed her eyes shut, gripping Willoughby’s chair. But she couldn’t hold on. She toppled over, sliding violently across the floor and colliding with a wall. All of a sudden the ship stopped moving.
She stood up on shaky legs, and struggled back to the control console. Her airship had been moved so far away, she couldn’t see any of the others.
“What the hell?” asked Willoughby.
H124 grabbed her PRD and sent a quick coded message to Rowan. “Are you okay?”
“H?” he replied. “How are you writing me? Are you free?”
“Yes. Did that blast hit you? What’s happening?”
“It did . . . we’re grounded. I have no idea what’s happening with the PPC airships. It look
ed like they all just went crazy and sped away.”
“We’re coming to your location.” She scanned the sky, then the infrared monitor for signs of the other fifteen ships. The fleet trundled inexorably back to Rowan’s location. “Unfortunately, we’re not the only ones.”
Willoughby turned the ship in Rowan’s direction, pushing the airship to such a high speed that she almost lost her footing again. When they got within sight, she saw that the helicopter had been hit. It rested on the ground, with Rowan and the pilot standing beside it. Willoughby set down the airship and opened the ramp. H124 ran down it.
Rowan rushed toward her, taking her in his embrace. “I didn’t think I’d ever see you again.” He kissed her, his lips warm in the cold air. Then they turned and started running back up the ramp.
Along the way Rowan lifted her tool bag off his shoulder and handed it to her. “I believe this is yours.”
The pilot caught up with them, a tall, lanky woman with a crop of short black hair and skin the color of mahogany. “This is Marlowe.”
Inside the ship, she shook H124’s hand, smiling at her with kind eyes.
“Thank you for risking your life,” H124 told her.
“All in a day’s work.”
From the look in Marlowe’s eyes, H124 didn’t doubt it.
Willoughby raised the ramp. Inside he pointed up at the infrared monitor. “See that? The airships are about five miles away. And that triangular formation? That’s why they brought fifteen of them.”
“Hold the formation!” shouted Recht over the comm.
“What is it?” H124 asked.
He fired up the engines and started accelerating. “It’s a weapon that requires all fifteen ships to power. It destroys any motorized or computer-aided equipment with a hundred-mile blast. But it doesn’t destroy that alone. Anything remotely near its target is utterly decimated. We’d never get far enough away from this ship or the helicopter to leave. We’ll get blasted sky-high along with everything else.”
He pushed them to maximum velocity. “Hold on!” The force of the acceleration threw H124 off her feet. She slid across the floor, grabbing onto one of the anchored chairs and hefting herself up into it.
“Power the weapon!” shouted Recht over the comm.
“How far are we?” H124 asked.
“Fifty miles out!”
“Prepare to fire!” came Recht’s harsh voice.
Willoughby pushed the airship, and she heard the engines screaming below her.
“Ninety miles out!” he shouted.
“Fire!”
A blast hit them violently, tumbling the ship end over end. Everything was chaos. She tried to hang onto the chair. Equipment and carpets and glasses flew past her. Gordon hovered weightless for a moment as the ship plummeted. Rowan grabbed her hand, and she held onto him desperately, her world upside down. She heard an explosion deep in the bowels of the ship, and a blistering wave of heat swept over her.
They hit with such force that she felt every bone in her body shatter. Her head slammed into something hard, and the engines stopped abruptly. A high-pitched whine filled the acrid air, and all went silent. She strained her ears, struggling to hold on to consciousness.
She could hear the blood thrumming in her ears, as well as someone breathing next to her. She opened her eyes, but everything was pitch black. Struggling to lift her head, she almost threw up. Someone groaned in the far part of the airship. She could smell burning circuitry. Something heavy had landed on top of her. She tried to push at it, but her body didn’t respond. She couldn’t move her arms. The crushing object lay across her legs and torso, pinning her down.
She tried to shift once more, but when she lifted her head, she blacked out.
H124 heard a distant mumbling. She felt warm light on her face. Slowly she opened her eyes. She was out of the airship, lying on the ground. A stand of dead trees rose around her. “I think she’s coming around,” said a woman’s voice.
Then a man, sounding near. “What about the others?”
“Still out,” the woman responded.
H124 closed her eyes again, then summoned her strength. She tried to sit up. Couldn’t even move.
“Easy now,” said the man beside her. She’d heard that voice before. Somewhere. She couldn’t quite place it. She lifted her eyelids and stared into the familiar face. It was Raven. But he was older. No longer a teen, but in his twenties. His long black hair hung past his shoulders, framing his tan face.
“It’s you,” she whispered with a sore throat. She swallowed. “I’ve been searching for you . . .”
“We were about to leave our camp in this area, but then we intercepted your message to the Badlanders and deciphered it. Said you were looking for us, something about how all might be lost if you didn’t find us.”
“Yes,” she said, fighting to keep her eyes open. Her whole body felt smashed. Every bone and muscle ached. She could barely move. She tried to lift her arm to her tool bag, but it didn’t respond. She could still feel the strap across her chest. “Take my tool bag,” she told him. “There’s information inside . . .”
“About what?”
“An asteroid . . . it’s on its way . . . and it’ll kill everything . . .”
His warm smile vanished. “What?” He gently unlatched the strap and took her tool bag. She tried to sit up, but a wave of knives went through her entire body.
He placed a soft hand on her shoulder. “Don’t try to move. You’ve got a lot of broken bones, but we’ll fix you.” He looked into the bag and pulled out the shiny discs, along with the small objects with the sockets.
“Onyx!” he called. In her peripheral vision, H124 saw a woman approach. “Get this back to base immediately. Give it to the encryption team. Looks like very old tech.”
“Right!” she heard the woman answer, and her footsteps faded into the distance.
“Rowan? . . . Gordon?” H124 called out.
Raven’s kind smile returned as he placed a warm hand on her forehead. “They’re both alive. So is the PPC exec. There were others, though, who weren’t so lucky. Three men in black, and the ship’s pilot. Lucky you were at the edge of that weapon’s range, or you’d be gone. Our medics are seeing to the survivors. I know this hurts now, but we’ll get you into a med pod as soon as we get you off the mountain.”
She glanced to her right, where she saw the great fiery wreck of the airship some distance away, a black plume of smoke snaking up into the sky.
He followed her gaze. “We pulled you out.”
“How did you get rid of those airships?” she asked him.
He smiled. “We have a few tricks the PPC doesn’t know about.”
“Can’t believe . . .” she said, taking a deep, painful breath. “Can’t believe we found you . . .”
She gazed up at the gray vault of the sky. Storm clouds roiled, bringing down a fresh dusting of snow. It started to collect in her eyelashes. Above those clouds lay the blackness of space. And out there in that void, hurtling ever closer, was the planet killer, intent on wiping out all that she knew.
But now they had a chance.
Acknowledgments
Huge thanks to my editor James Abbate for all of his great work and for believing in this book, and to Martin Biro for making it part of the new Rebel Base imprint.
A lot of research went into this book, and Dr. Patrick Bartlein, climatologist extraordinaire and Professor of Geography at the University of Oregon, was incredibly helpful in this. Many thanks to Joe Jordan, Sr., a great friend and pilot who lent his flight knowledge to the aviation scenes.
My former writing instructors, Joe and Penny, are inspiring teachers who deepened my love of the craft and have remained wonderful friends.
Deep thanks to Jason for being such a stalwart friend, for believing in me and being supportive of my writing, and to the
amazing Becky for being such a solid and delightful friend all these years.
Meet the Author
Alice Henderson is a writer of fiction, comics, and video game material. She was selected to attend Launchpad, a NASA-funded writing workshop aimed at bringing accurate science to fiction. Her love of wild places inspired her novel Voracious, which pits a lone hiker against a shapeshifting creature in the wilderness of Glacier National Park. Her novel Fresh Meat is set in the world of the hit TV series Supernatural. She also wrote the Buffy the Vampire Slayer novels Night Terrors and Portal Through Time. She has written short stories for numerous anthologies including Body Horror, Werewolves & Shapeshifters, and Mystery Date. While working at LucasArts, she wrote material for several Star Wars video games, including Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds and Star Wars: Battle for Naboo. She holds an interdisciplinary master’s degree in folklore and geography, and is a wildlife researcher and rehabilitator. Her novel Portal Through Time won the Scribe Award for Best Novel. Visit her online at www.AliceHenderson.com.
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