With a confused Khuwelsa following, Harry rushed to the collapsed pylon.
“Can you grab the wire?” shouted Harry above the storm. She was wet through.
“It’s as thick as your arm!” Khuwelsa shouted in return.
“We need to tie it to the Zeppelin!”
Khuwelsa peered through the pouring rain at the broken wood. They searched until they found the end, still connected to a metal bracket and bolted to a broken piece of wood. Together they lifted the wood and hauled the end of the wire towards the stricken airship.
Bullets and tracers ripped up the ground around them.
Harry looked up. She had forgotten the third plane. It shot over. At least it couldn’t hover and would have to make runs in order to attack them. Ignore it.
They struggled on. There was a flash from a gun and the sound a moment later. Harry looked at Khuwelsa, who shrugged. Harry fired off a round from her shotgun in the general direction of the shot. It would be nonlethal at that range but she would almost certainly scare whoever had fired at them, and if she’d hit it would hurt. Perhaps he would be sufficiently discouraged.
A flash of lightning showed they had nearly reached their objective, but it was becoming harder and harder to shift the wire as they stretched it out. And it kept catching on broken pieces of wood and stone.
“See if you can get it attached,” Harry said in her ear. “Doesn’t have to be good, just so it won’t pull free.”
Khuwelsa nodded. She had given up shouting, as the wind and rain along with the rolling thunder made conversation all but impossible.
Harry went round the outside of the Zeppelin. It was tied down with ropes. She tried to undo the first one but it was too wet and slippery. So she lined up the shotgun and blasted through it. Her father would have been horrified. Harry glanced back at Khuwelsa who was staring in her direction, probably wondering about the shot. Harry gave her a thumbs-up and a lightning flash illuminated it.
There were three more ropes. Harry disposed of them in the same fashion, reloading twice. Once she had disposed of the penultimate one the airship began to move, blown by the wind. It swung towards her; she had to throw herself out of the way before it smashed into some rocks. The wooden part of the hull splintered.
The plane came back and shot at them but seemed to want to avoid hitting the Zeppelin. If he had realised the truth, the balloon would have been his target.
Harry got back to Khuwelsa, who had managed to loop the wire around the engine mount and passed the wooden piece through the loop, making an effective knot.
Harry unlimbered the shotgun again. Khuwelsa placed her hand on Harry’s arm.
“May I?”
Harry withdrew and swept her hand in the direction of the final rope. Khuwelsa lined up the gun and blasted it. The airship hung for moment; then the wind pushed it towards Harry and Khuwelsa, who dropped to the ground as it went over them, rising slowly.
They jumped to their feet and ran back to the Pegasus.
Dripping wet, Harry climbed into her chair as Khuwelsa locked the door. There was a terrific metal clang and the ship jerked to the side. Metal scraped across the top of the ship. They followed the sound with their eyes as if they could see the airship moving across them.
Harry engaged the Faraday and launched them into the air.
The Zeppelin was about twenty feet up when the third German plane flew out of the black, shooting at it.
“Damn it!” shouted Harry. “He can’t do that now.”
She drove the Pegasus round in a circle and let fly with her machine gun as the German came around for another pass. He ignored her as the tracers showed her missing him by a mile. Harry cursed her inexperience.
The thunder cloud was directly overhead now. None of them should be in the air in these conditions. But the German did not fire his machine guns; something detached itself from the body of his plane and shot across the gap, leaving a trail of smoke. It passed the Zeppelin’s balloon and exploded when it hit the ground on the far side.
“He’s got rockets,” said Harry. “If he hits the envelope with one of those he’ll definitely bring it down.”
She tried to follow his course but in the dark and the rain she lost him. She pulled the Pegasus up to give herself some height. He would probably come around and try the same thing again. The rockets did not look to be very accurate, so he would have to get close.
Making small circles she gained height keeping her eyes peeled. A flash of lightning finally revealed him coming in as slow as he could. Harry dived and then remembered to whistle five short blasts.
There was a crash. “Too late, Harry!”
Harry had just one thought: get him out of the sky. She hoped Sellie wasn’t looking. The gun just wasn’t good enough—or, more truthfully, she wasn’t good enough with the gun. That first shot had been beginner’s luck.
They were descending fast. She adjusted her angle and came down right on top of him, just as he fired the second rocket. She switched off the Faraday. Though parts of the Pegasus were now in his field, a lot of it wasn’t and was now subject to gravity. With the extra weight, the planes plummeted.
The cabin was lit up by an explosion above them. In the light Harry saw the ground coming up at them, re-energised the Faraday, and took them up on powerful wings. The downward momentum of the German plane forced it into the ground, where it lay crumpled and broken.
Harry stared in despair at the flames on the Zeppelin, and then watched as part of its gondola detached itself and fell to the ground. Whether it was due to her attack or that the German pilot had simply missed, the rocket must have hit the body, not the envelope, and the now much lighter airship climbed into the sky trailing the metal wire.
Harry gunned the propeller and shot away through the rain. There was a tremendous flash from behind them. She glanced into the mirror to see the entire airship falling to earth. Explosions were erupting from different locations around the base, as well as from within the great skeletal ship itself.
Even as she watched, more bolts of lightning struck the Zeppelin as it fell. She had no idea what damage might have been done beyond the explosions, but with the collapsed pylons, crashed ships, and lightning damage the ship they had been building would be useless for a long time to come. Long enough for the British to arrive and deal with it.
Harry sighed. She was exhausted.
Minutes later they were out from under the thunderstorm and heading for the opposite coast of the lake in bright sunshine.
xxix
It was lunch time when they reached the valley where they had encountered the Zeppelin the first time. The smoke of several small fires curled into the sky around boxes of cargo and reflective piles of honey-coloured metal.
The sisters peered down trying to determine the situation. What had first appeared to be random boxes revealed itself to be a defensive circle. Twelve artillery pieces pointed outward in all directions and Sellie counted fifteen men within the circle. Some were on guard within the perimeter, while others sat nearer the center.
Although Bakari and his men had to be there somewhere, neither of the girls could see them. They were too well hidden.
“Can’t say I really want to do this,” said Harry.
“We can’t leave them,” said Khuwelsa. “Despite what we’ve done they’ll probably be able to send reinforcements soon. Then they’ll have all the copper and ivory.”
Harry sighed. She knew her sister was right, but she was tired.
“It’ll be like shooting fish in a barrel,” Khuwelsa said.
“You’re too blood-thirsty.”
“Perhaps you’re not blood-thirsty enough.”
Harry folded in the wings and went into a curving dive. Khuwelsa was thrown to the side. “That blood-thirsty enough?” shouted Harry.
She picked up the gun trigger. “This needs to be part of the main control,” she said as she lined up on the circle.
The Maxim spat bullets that threw up fountains o
f earth as she strafed the defences—careful not to aim directly at any of the sailors trapped in the middle.
They dived for cover on the far side of the circle.
Harry back-winged hard. The nose came up and with the prop roaring she landed. She kept the Faraday energised and walked the Pegasus closer to the wall of cargo, artillery, and copper ingots.
A couple of sailors fired their guns at her. She discouraged them with a barrage from the Maxim. It went straight over their heads and they dived for cover once more. They did not know that if she hit them it would be an accident.
Harry got a wing under one of the guns and flicked it upward. The gun lifted and toppled on its side. She punched a hole in the nearest crate and tossed it into the air. It ripped open and hippo teeth rained down on the sailors.
Like some stalking dragon she made the Pegasus turn along the wall and smash it down. She tossed the next gun into the air. It landed a dozen yards away.
She turned back towards the space in the middle. The sailors were cowering at the display of steam-powered destruction, their eyes fixed on the ship, waiting for her to unleash its power on them.
Harry looked up, beyond the men, and saw Bakari and a dozen warriors running fast in their direction. They must have found reinforcements sooner than expected. She just needed to hold the Germans’ attention a few moments longer.
She powered up the propeller as she prepared to take flight again. She thrashed the wings and, like an avenging angel, the Pegasus reared up. It lifted into the air, the wind from the down strokes knocking the men to the ground and holding them there.
Harry executed a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn in the air and rose away from the circle with the air stream from the propeller pummelling them.
In the mirror she saw them falling away, and by the time they had recovered Bakari and his men were on them.
Harry brought the Pegasus down once more. Bakari had tied up his prisoners and was happy enough to hand them over to Harry. He had the one person he was chasing.
* * *
They went home via the town of Ndungu where they dropped off the Germans and provided the mayor with instructions as where to find his copper.
While some facts were not forthcoming from the prisoners, Harry and Khuwelsa were at least able to get answers to their most pressing questions. The sailor Harry had discovered was a thief who had fallen when he escaped from his original confinement. The other men had indicated they were not happy with the treatment of the town, for which they had been treated as mutineers and were immediately disposed of. ”Immediately” still had given them time to partially disable one of the engines.
And with that the sisters headed home. By evening the Mombasa coast had come into view and Harry brought the Pegasus in for a gentle landing on the front lawn of their father’s house.
The French windows of the lower part of the house opened and the menacing form of Jonathan Edgbaston emerged, flanked by Mrs Hemingway on one side and the butler, Raynes, on the other.
“What are we going to say?” asked Khuwelsa.
“I thought I might try ‘We had a lovely time, wish you could have been there’.”
“We’re doomed.”
What to read next
Iron Pegasus #3: Harry Gets Her Wings
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Steve Turnbull has been a geek and a nerd longer than those words have had their modern meaning.
Born in the heart of London to book-loving working class parents in 1958, he lived with his parents and two much older sisters lived in two rooms with gas lighting and no hot water. In his fifth year, a change in his father's fortunes took them out to a detached house in the suburbs. That was the year Dr Who first aired on British TV and Steve watched it avidly from behind the sofa. It was the beginning of his love of science fiction.
Academically Steve always went for the science side but he also had his imagination and that took him everywhere. He read through his local library's entire science fiction and fantasy selection, plus his father's 1950s Astounding Science Fiction magazines. As he got older he also ate his way through TV SF like Star Trek, Dr Who and Blake's 7.
However it was when he was 15 he discovered something new. Bored with a Maths lesson he noticed a book from the school library: Cider with Rosie by Laurie Lee. From the first page he was captivated by the beauty of the language. As a result he wrote a story longhand and then spent evenings at home on his father's electric typewriter pounding out a second draft, expanding it. Then he wrote a second book. After that he switched to poetry and turned out dozens, mostly not involving teenage angst.
After receiving excellent science and maths results he went on to study Computer Science. There he teamed up with another student and they wrote songs for their band - Steve writing the lyrics. Though they admit their best song was the other way around, with Steve writing the music.
After graduation Steve moved into contract programming but was snapped up a couple of years later by a computer magazine looking for someone with technical knowledge. It was in the magazine industry that Steve learned how to write to length, to deadline and to style. Within a couple of years he was editor and stayed there for many years.
During that time he married Pam (who also became a magazine editor) who he'd met at a student party.
Though he continued to write poetry all prose work stopped. He created his own magazine publishing company which at one point produced the subscription magazine for the Robot Wars TV show. The company evolved into a design agency but after six years of working very hard and not seeing his family—now including a daughter and son—he gave it all up.
He spent a year working on miscellaneous projects including writing 300 pages for a website until he started back where he had begun, contract programming.
With security and success on the job front, the writing began again. This time it was scriptwriting: features scripts, TV scripts and radio scripts. During this time he met a director Chris Payne, who wanted to create steampunk stories and between them they created the Voidships universe, a place very similar to ours but with specific scientific changes.
With a whole universe to play with Steve wrote a web series, a feature film and then books all in the same Steampunk world and, behind the scenes, all connected.
You hold the first finished product in your hands.
Join the mailing list at http://bit.ly/voidships
Table of Contents
Cover
Copyright
Dedication
i
ii
iii
iv
v
vi
vii
viii
ix
x
xi
xii
xiii
xiv
xv
xvi
xvii
xviii
xix
xx
xxi
xxii
xxiii
xxiv
xxv
xxvi
xxvii
xxviii
xxix
What to read next
About the Author
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Harry in the Wild: Astounding Stories of Adventure (Iron Pegasus Book 2) Page 11