“What if we were inside?” She still didn’t want to go inside the envelope, but if it meant she didn’t have to drop another bomb….
“If you cut through to the gas in an enclosed space, you’d poison yourself.”
“Could we use the guns?” Taya glanced at the two she’d pulled from their tripods. “If we shot through—”
An Alzanan oath startled them. She started to turn, but Cristof shoved her aside. She caught herself on the platform rail and saw an Alzanan soldier halfway out of the access hatch, tugging a revolver from his holster.
Cristof grabbed one of the dismounted weapons and swung it across the soldier’s face. Bone crunched and blood spattered over the silver envelope. The soldier reeled. Her husband dropped the firearm and grabbed the man’s uniform, but the Alzanan seized Cristof’s leg and yanked, sending her husband sprawling on his counterweighted back. The scarf around his forehead slipped over one eye and he clawed it off, letting the wind snatch it from his gloved fingers.
Taya jumped forward, clutching the soldier’s gun arm. His gun fired into the air. Cristof rolled over and wrapped a hand around the weapon’s cylinder. The soldier jerked, and both of them skidded across the silver envelope.
Cristof twisted, forcing the revolver from the young man’s grasp. It came loose, and the soldier barely had time to swear before the exalted pointed the gun at the Alzanan’s face and fired.
Taya scrambled backward, sickened by the bloody mess.
“Help me,” Cristof gasped, trying to wrestle the soldier’s body out of the hatch with one arm. Taya edged around the gore and grabbed the young man’s jacket. Together they hauled the corpse onto the top of the envelope, smearing blood and brains everywhere.
Taya looked away, nauseous.
Cristof pointed the revolver down the access hatch, then cautiously peered inside. His long black hair blew into his eyes and he impatiently raked it aside.
“I think he was alone. Either someone did see you, or they sent him up to scout.”
“Do you think they heard the shot?”
“Probably not. The engines are louder down there than they are up here.”
“How many soldiers are there?”
“Eight in the front gondola, counting Neuillan and me. Five, now. Another six in the rear gondola — engineers, mostly — but there won’t be much they can do to us.” He cocked his head, considering the ship’s expanse. “Even if there’s a crawlway through the envelope to the front gondola, they’d be easy targets coming down the stairs.”
“Then you’re going down?”
“I have to, now.”
“I can’t climb down that hatch. Even if I folded my wings—”
“I know.” He pushed up his glasses with the back of his gloved wrist. “Why don’t you stay up here and fly down in twenty minutes? I’ll leave the hatchway open for you.”
“So you can do all the killing before I get there.”
“I’m trying to spare you, Taya. You’ve already done enough. Too much.” He popped open the cylinder. “Five rounds left. I’ll have to kill the two remaining gunners. Maybe not the pilot and the bombardier. I don’t know what General Credero will do. Alzanans take their honor seriously. He may prefer to die than be captured.”
“Was— was Mazzoletti with you?”
“No.” Cristof glanced at her. “He’s the captain of one of the other ships.”
“Which one?”
“I don’t know.”
She took a deep breath, wondering if it had been Number Four. Not that it mattered. Cristof was right. They couldn’t let the Alzanans reach Patimbrium.
“You’re right. I don’t like killing. But I don’t want you going down there alone, either, so I’ll watch your back and try to shoot the other ships’ gas envelopes.”
“Are you sure?”
She held out a hand. “Give me the needler. I’ll give it back to you down below.”
He dug the pistol out of his pocket and handed it to her, his gray eyes studying her face.
“I’ll have to go slowly,” he said, “so give me ten minutes or so.”
“Be careful.”
He touched a feather on her wing and descended into the access hatch.
Taya crouched next to the bloodstained hatch door and pulled out her watch. She didn’t want to close the door; it would be dark down there, even if the air was safe. Instead, she dug out the spare compressed-air cartridge and extra magazine and reloaded the needle gun. Then she checked to make certain the safety was off and reholstered it.
After five minutes, she slipped her arms into her wings and walked across the top of the ship. The Alzanan soldier was still sprawled next to the gunnery platform. There didn’t seem any reason to move him.
She kicked off.
The first thing she noticed on her descent were the signal flags hanging from the gondolas on the ships. They said something about the explosion, she guessed— and maybe about her.
She flew forward, keeping the envelope between herself and any lookouts on the other ships.
The Alzanans were flying through a steep-sided, narrow mountain pass that showed no signs of habitation. Taya looked for the gleaming lines of a railway but didn’t see any indication that the area was ever traveled. A flash of light on one of the peaks caught her attention. She squinted through her goggles but couldn’t make out what had caused it.
Ice? A signal station? An icarus on reconnaissance?
She rocked her wings back and forth.
Another icarus would know an ally was with the ships.
She hoped it was an icarus and not a patch of ice.
Hitting the struts that supported the control gondola was tricky. Her feet struck a horizontal strut sideways, halting her forward motion with a jar, but unlike a wireferry tower, this strut moved. She dropped her feet to the vertical crossbar, tottered, her tailset scraping the supports, and threw her weight forward. Yanking an arm out of its wing, she steadied herself.
Close. If she hadn’t had plenty of experience weaving through Ondinium’s wireferry lines, she didn’t think she’d have made it. She locked her wings and kicked up her tailset, then clambered through the support framework to the ladder. Securing her safety line, she pulled out the needle gun and opened the hatch at the bottom of the envelope.
Nobody was in there, either. She stepped back and waited, deafened by the sound of the engines.
At last a boot emerged, and the hem of a coat, and Cristof climbed down. Taya grabbed his arm as the wind caught him. He shot her a grateful look.
Something pinged against the support girder closest to them. Taya frowned as she saw a fresh scar in the paint. Her eyes rose past Cristof’s shoulder to the gondola behind them.
An Alzanan soldier was leaning out the window, aiming his rifle.
With an inaudible shout, she pulled Cristof down to the roof of the gondola. A muffled zipping sound passed close to her ear. Her husband twisted around, reaching into his pocket for the pistol. Taya yanked on his arm, getting his attention, and pointed down the open hatch.
Another bullet whined past. A small hole appeared in the flapping tail of Cristof’s borrowed military coat.
He gave up reaching for the pistol, thrust his legs through the hatch, and dropped inside.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Taya squeezed into the gondola after him, her metal wings catching in the narrow hatch. Gripping the ladder with one hand, she yanked on her wings with the other, pulling them inside with a grating she felt all the way through her armature.
Two sharp, dull bangs punctuated the roar of the engines. Cristof was halfway down the next set of stairs, his back pressed against the wall, firing the revolver he’d taken from the young soldier.
Someone inside the lower level of the gondola fired back.
Taya backpedaled, nea
rly tripping over Neuillan’s extended arm. His body was still on the floor. She supposed that if the Alzanans hadn’t looked for him during the assault on Glasgar, Number Four’s explosion would have driven his absence from their minds.
Cristof fired two more shots in rapid succession, then backed up the stairs and dropped the revolver.
“Gun!” he shouted, holding out his hand.
Taya dug out the needler and slapped it into his palm. He ducked back down the stairs, shooting a short, hissing burst, then darted out of her sight.
She pushed up her goggles and edged down the stairs after him, tensely anticipating a bullet.
Two soldiers had fallen over the big guns. Cristof crouched next to the foremost gun on the right side of the gondola, using one of the metal weapon locker doors as cover while he shot a burst of needles over the top.
One of the dead soldiers was only a couple of yards away, beside the rear left gun. Taya steeled herself and darted into the gondola, throwing herself down next to the corpse. Bullets tore into the stairwell wall where she’d been standing.
She tugged the revolver out of the soldier’s holster.
“Do you need another gun?” she shouted over the roar of the engines.
“Yes, please!”
She sent the revolver spinning across the gondola floor. Cristof grabbed it and snapped off a shot at the doorway.
“Exalted Forlore!”
The general’s voice was louder then either of theirs and seemed to come from all around them. Taya spotted the flared cone of a speaking tube tucked into one corner of the gondola.
“General Credero!” her husband shouted back.
“You’ve shot our pilot,” the general said in Alzanan.
Taya grimaced. That wasn’t good.
“Are you ready to surrender?” Cristof asked in the same language as he rummaged through the locker, pulling out ammunition and filling his pockets. The cartridges were the wrong size for his pistol; he was weighing himself down, trying to compensate for the zeroing-out of the ondium safety harness.
“I was going to ask you the same thing,” the general said.
“I’m the one with the big guns, General.”
Reminded, Taya turned her attention to the big gun nearest her. Like the weapons on top of the ship, it was swivel-mounted. Unlike the guns on top, it was also set on rails that could be slid forward to thrust the barrel out the window. In addition, it had a belt of ammunition running out of one side.
Carefully nudging the dead soldier out of the way, Taya swiveled the gun toward the control room door. It rotated 45 degrees before stopping. Not quite far enough.
Another shot made her duck and press against the cabin wall.
“You won’t find those guns much use inside, Exalted.”
“Then it seems we’re at a stalemate, General.” Cristof fumbled in his weighed-down pockets and unearthed his toolkit.
“I have the advantage.”
“But I have you pinned down. Let’s see which one of us gets tired first.” Cristof studied the tripod mount, pushing his glasses high on his forehead as he squinted.
With a sense of inevitability, Taya fished into her flight suit until her fingers closed on his clockwright’s headpiece.
“Cris! Here.”
She tossed it to him.
He stared at it a moment, then dropped his glasses back down on his nose and transferred his stare to her. She shrugged.
Blowing her a kiss, he slid the headpiece on and flipped down the lenses. In seconds he was leaning over the tripod again and pulling out his tools.
Taya checked the soldier next to her. Dead. Her gaze rose to the soldier farther forward, sprawled across from Cristof. He was dead, too.
Three soldiers, the general, the pilot, the bombardier. And six more soldiers in back.
Her eyes widened as she remembered Cristof’s comment about them climbing through the envelope. No wonder the general was biding his time. All he had to do was wait for reinforcements.
She grabbed one of the handles on the back of the gun and rotated the weapon in the opposite direction. Again, the barrel didn’t quite point all the way back. It could send bullets into the wall next to the stairs, but not up the stairs.
Good enough. She didn’t want to kill anybody— just keep them away. She looked for the trigger. It wasn’t in the conventional place, but when she tested another lever, the gun went off with a deafening burst, shaking on its tripod and throwing brass shells everywhere.
Taya yelped and jerked her hand back and the gun stopped firing. It was like a needler, then— it fired more than one shot if you kept the trigger pulled.
The empty brass bounced on the gondola floor a few times and fell still. She looked over her shoulder. Cristof was staring at her again.
“Sorry,” she shouted, her ears still ringing.
“Please be careful, Exalted,” the general said through the speaking tube. “Those are powder-burning weapons.”
“Dangerous choice for a ship like this,” Cristof called back, returning to his work. “I thought you were buying steam-powered cannon.”
“We were,” the general replied. “Unfortunately, our departure time was unexpectedly pushed up.”
The wood wall by the stairwell was riddled with holes, revealing open sky beyond. Taya scowled. They were going to use these guns against icarii?
Cristof groaned as he lifted his gun off its tripod and dropped it with a thump. He pulled off the headpiece and wiped his forehead, his face pale and covered with sweat. Taya wondered if the morphine was wearing off.
“General,” he shouted. “I now have one of the guns pointed directly at the control cabin. It won’t serve either of us if I have to use it.”
Silence. Taya shot a glance back at the stairs, making sure nobody was descending.
“Very well, Exalted,” the general said at last. “Hold your fire.”
The Alzanan general appeared in the doorway. Fresh blood spattered one side of his military coat and trickled down the side of his face. He held his ornate sword in one gloved hand, and his gun holster was empty.
Taya stood. “I’ll do it.”
“I have you covered.”
The general studied her with interest as she walked through the cabin past her husband.
“Number Five reported seeing an icarus,” he said. “Are you the one who destroyed Number Four?”
“Yes. I’m sorry about that.” She held out her hand. “Do you surrender, General?”
His gaze flickered past her to Cristof.
“Shouldn’t I surrender to him?”
“Business with an exalted is traditionally carried out through an icarus.”
“But this exalted speaks. Surely he can also take my sword.”
“I’d rather he keep his hands on the gun. He’s a better shot than I am.”
The general bowed and handed her his sword. She lifted his coat, checking for any other weapons he might be carrying, and found none.
“Thank you. What should we do with him?” she asked, stepping away and glancing over her shoulder. Cristof had released the big gun but was keeping the soldier’s revolver trained on the general. “Please don’t say kill him.”
“If you’ll go upstairs, General, my cuffs are still locked to the pole there.”
The Alzanan opened his mouth to protest and Cristof cocked the gun.
“If it was good enough for an exalted, it should be good enough for a general.”
The general shrugged. Cristof fell in behind him. They were halfway up the stairs when a burst of gunfire met them.
Cristof tumbled down the stairs and hit the ground with the lightness of someone who weighed only as much as the contents of his coat pockets. Taya’s heart was in her mouth as he rolled to his right. His face was spattered with blood.
/> “Shoot! Shoot!” he shouted, flattening himself next to the cabin wall.
Taya dropped the sword and ran to the big gun. The weapon began its staccato firing, brass spraying out one side and clattering everywhere. Bullets tore up the gondola’s wall.
She released the lever, deafened. Cristof shouted something, but she couldn’t make it out.
An Alzanan soldier stormed down the stairs, firing a rifle. Bullets whined through the cabin. Taya only got a glimpse of his pale, frightened-looking face before Cristof shot him twice in the chest. The soldier staggered and slumped, his rifle sliding down the stairs.
Taya made an involuntary noise. The soldier was Durante, the one with an upset fiancée back home.
Cristof scrambled back to her.
“There are three more up there!” he shouted. “They killed the general!”
Taya was glad Cristof hadn’t gone up the stairs first.
“I’ll get the loose gun,” she said. A minute later, she had propped it on an overturned chair and aimed it up the stairs. Cristof fired a short burst up into the stairwell and through the gondola roof. The gun shook itself off the chair. He grimaced as he tried to pick it up.
“I’ll fire it,” she volunteered, replacing it on the chair for him.
“No. Go check on the pilot. Make sure someone’s still driving.”
“Oh, scrap,” she muttered. She ran to the front cabin, half-expecting to see a cliff face looming before them through the windows. The sky was clear, but a body lay on the floor, and another was slumped in a chair next to a wheel. The seated Alzanan rolled his head to one side, looking at her, and raised a trembling hand. His face was colorless, and blood had pooled beneath his chair.
“I surrender,” he said, in Alzanan.
“Are you still in control of the ship?”
“For a while,” he said, bleakly. She lifted the lapel of his heavy coat. Blood stained the front of his uniform.
“Got me in the stomach,” he said, his voice strained. “Lucky for you. Slow way to die.”
“Do you have any medical supplies on board?”
“Up top.”
“I’ll be back in a minute. Keep the ship in the air. Some of your men are still alive.”
Clockwork Lies: Iron Wind (Clockwork Heart trilogy) Page 34