by Leo Champion
“Fuckers are better than we figured on,” Halvorsen muttered to Perry, as the rocket hit the cargo grille and detonated. Only a light one, three or four inches, but enough to send some of 4-106's crew reeling across the way.
“Open the loading!” Perry yelled. They were above the range of the pirate's guns, although she was starting to lift herself.
Swarovski fired his rifle, two quick shots through the cage.
“Got one!”
“Attending the wounded!” Specialist Second Rogers - the medic - shouted.
Two of the riggers heaved the ten-foot-wide cargo door open. The grey bulk of the Jolly Rapist was coming to be below them, one of the riggers throwing himself flat and raising a pistol. Swarovski fired three times in quick succession, and the bullets sparked off the aluminum surface.
“Now! Go, go, go!” Perry shouted, as the Jolly Rapist ditched ballast and leapt up. Only ten feet down, no need for the rope as he fell, just roll and don't fall off the side...
The landing hurt, and he made a dent in the thin plating. Men were coming in behind him. The pirate rigger fired a shot and then took a bullet himself as Specialist Third Rafferty practically landed on top of him, firing down into him.
Blown by the wind, steering around and powering away, the Red Wasp was past them now, with only seven of the fourteen-man boarding party aboard.
Halvorsen was already at work with the crowbar he'd brought. He levered off one of the airship's plates and hacked open the hydrogen sac below.
“Get to it, you lot!” Perry yelled. “Cut their lift away or we don't have a damn chance!”
A hatch opened and a man with a submachinegun came up. Somebody fired at him and he ducked back.
One by one, the paper-thin, six-by-six-foot aluminum plates were levered off, the hydrogen bags below ripped open.
The man from the hatch raised his gun through it and fired a wild burst. A senior airshipwoman Perry didn't know yelled in pain and rolled, dropping her crowbar and clutching her chest.
This isn't fast enough, Perry thought. We're still rising – four hundred feet now, above the rippling yellow grass, and turning – and where the hell is–
“Knife,” he said to Rafferty, the nearest enlisted man. “Now.”
Rafferty yanked a stiletto from his boot and tossed it underhand to Perry.
“Two of you with blades?” Perry yelled, switching the pistol to his left hand. “Take a breath and follow me!”
Without waiting to see if anyone was, Perry leapt into the six-by-six gap that Halvorsen had opened. He fell, about five feet, before landing on the soft silk cushion of another hydrogen bag.
With the knife, he cut open the adjacent ones, ripping wide gaps into them. Hydrogen escaped. Then he slashed the one below, and almost immediately fell; slashing, cutting, opening the bags.
Next to him was Rafferty, slashing away with a long, heavy fighting knife. He cut his way through a hydrogen bag and into another, then lowered his face to breathe from the air between two bags. Hydrogen escaped up, not down; all the hydrogen from these ripped-open bags would be going up through the gaps his men were levering.
And I hope to God I don't come across anyone I have to shoot. Or that Rafferty or anyone else does, Perry thought. Breathing deeply himself, as he moved between two layers of hydrogen sacs, past a laddered access area. One spark and we all burn. Badly.
“They're inside his gondola,” Martindale muttered. “Swarovski, damn you, hold your fire!”
“They got our steering,” said Nolan. "We're fucked. They've got our damn steering, and they're just fine.”
“No, captain,” said Vescard, who'd come to the bridge. “They're fighting for buoyancy. Ditching ballast!”
“They're inside the gondola,” someone shouted to Mack. “And they’re Imperials! It’s an Imperial booby!”
“Imperials?” Mack shouted. Not unable to disbelieve – Pinks would never be so aggressive. Fucking Imperial bastards!
“Out of ballast!” Lenehan shouted. “We’re gonna drop unless we ditch cargo.”
“Get the gang together,” Mack yelled at Weaver. “Get Biff and the crew, get up into the gondola, and fucking kill them!”
“Spark in the gondola and we're dead,” said Weaver. “If they're in there, they're cutting away and there's loose hydrogen all over.”
“Kill them with knives, moron. Knives and pressure pistols whoever’s got `em. Now get rid of them bastards!”
Sub-Lieutenant Kent, flat on the surface of the gondola, trained his pistol at the hatch the submachinegunner had come from. The man - sure enough - popped his head out, gun ready; just like the last time, he began a momentary scan for where the nearest Imperials were, so he could fire his burst in that direction.
This time Kent shot him once in the head before he could do more than raise the gun.
I want that thing, he thought, as another plate - this one with a hydrogen sac attached - lifted free, floating up into the sky. Before the collapsing man's dead hand could pull the submachinegun back, Kent grabbed it.
It was a one-handed model, obviously; a .400 machine-pistol with a drum magazine that looked about half-full, maybe twelve of twenty-five rounds. He made sure it was loaded and then - as another pirate came up past the corpse of the first one - fired it at that man, a three-round burst at his chest. He fell down the ladder, and there was no third.
They’re coming up to get us, Kent thought. He could feel the airship itself, which had climbed to a peak of about five hundred feet, rolling hard, and starting to lose more and more height. They'll want Perry and Rafferty and those men who went down, first. Won't use guns for fear of sparking the hydrogen. I can fire down at them just fine, though.
Pointing the gun down the hatchway, he braced himself and waited.
The lower hydrogen sacs were loose and bumpy, and Perry's footing went from uncertain to practically nonexistent. He bounced between them, slashing with the knife, lowering his head to breathe where he thought he could.
The airship was falling. He could tell that. He, Rafferty and whoever the third man was, were definitely getting the work done.
Trying to move forward; he'd been about in the center of the airship when he'd gone down, but he was aiming for the bridge. Take control there...
The ship rocked, hard, and he found himself thrown against a structural vertical. And suddenly, on a ladder above him, was a pirate with a knife.
He saw the pirate first, but only by half an instant. The pirate was a wiry little red-haired man and his knife was long and jagged, and he threw himself down onto Perry with the knife aimed at Perry's throat.
Perry rolled sideways, or tried to. The smooth, unpressured silk had no particular traction, and wanted to lift anyways. What was meant to be a three-foot roll only moved him about six inches, and the pirate adjusted his knife accordingly. Desperately, Perry jerked his head and chest sideways, and the pirate's blade embedded itself in the sac they were on top of.
The pirate's teeth were half-gone, and his breath was foul, as he lay on top of Perry on the deflating hydrogen sac and pulled his knife out for another try.
Perry stabbed him in the kidney, then tried for the throat, getting him instead in the back of his shoulder. That was the pirate's knife-arm, though, and he was already twitching from the wound in his kidney. He screamed and arched, and Perry stabbed him in the throat, again and again, blood fountaining across his chest and face. Breathing hard. Desperate.
Somehow he became aware that they were no longer on hydrogen sacs; they were on hard ground, a walkway at the bottom of the gondola.
The airship was bucking hard, seemed to be tilted at about a thirty-degree angle, although in the confusion Perry had lost his sense of direction. Definitely falling, and he had no clue as to how far.
I'll get to the bridge, he decided. He had ten rounds in his gun, and that ought to be enough. The further down he was, the safer it was to use the gun.
Thankfully, along the walkway was a
mark, in faded white stencil six inches high: "30."
Thirty yards from the nose? He went in that direction, cutting open more hydrogen bags above him and to the sides. 25. An access way, and a hatch.
From somewhere he could hear shouting, then a gargling scream that abruptly ended.
On the hatch was marked, in the same faded white stencil, Bridge.
I open it. I shoot. I jump in. I shoot, and I reload, and I kill everyone there, he decided, and braced himself to yank it open.
“Where is that fucker?” Mack yelled. They were falling hard and fast, gods only knew how much lift they were down.
Gods only knew how many men they were down. There was fighting going on through the gondola, and for all Mack knew the ship was burning. If the man who would have reported a fire was dead, how could he know?
“Fifty feet and brace yourselves!” Weaver shouted from the balance console. Lenehan had gone to join the fight.
“Turn, damnit!” Mack shouted. Panicked. This was an Imperial trap, and he'd fallen into it, and if there were Imperials aboard his ship and there was that other ship, then they had to have come from somewhere.
There was an Imperial warship about, lying covered somewhere, or just out of sight. There must have been a signal.
Clear those ones off. Kill them. Reinflate, and go.
Reinflation took time, when you'd been hacked to pieces as solidly as the Roger seemed to have been from their descent. It would take at least half an hour, and the Imperials would be on them in less than that. Unless he could get a crew together to fight them, six or seven expendable men to delay them on the ground. They'd hang, but Mack and the good ones would – might – have enough time to get away.
“Land!” yelled Weaver, panicked, as the ground slammed them.
Knocking Mack off his feet, and Weaver against a bulkhead.
The Red Wasp touched down about three quarters of a mile from where the pirate ship was about to land, Nolan desperately releasing four hydrogen sacs in order to lose height before they got too far away.
“We can't fight from here,” said Martindale. “Weapons, you ready?”
“And finally!” said Swarovski.
“Then offload and assemble!” the XO called.
Within half a minute, the rest of the crew was on the ground, standing with pistols and knives.
“We go join the captain,” Martindale declared. “We shoot to kill, but be the hell careful not to get any of ours. We’re going to secure that thing. Do you people understand?”
“Let's kill the fuckers,” said Specialist First Singh.
The dozen or so unwounded crew started running through the waist-high grass, weapons raised.
“Get your shit together and fight them!” Mack screamed, fighting to get up from the impact of landing.
Lenehan came staggering back, blood streaming from wounds in his side and thigh.
“Got the engine room. They got the engine room. Jags tried to take control – they shot him in the face – we’re fucked! We’re fucked!”
The balance-man’s panic was infectuous, and Mack was already on the edge of it.
“I don't need this shit!” he snarled, and shot Lenehan through the head. Wounded man. No good to anyone anyhow. Fag asshole anyway.
“Captain?” another man cried from the entrance way, then screamed when he saw Lenehan. “What do we do?”
The upper hatch opened. Not more people demanding orders he didn’t have the information to give them?
No. The man was in Imperial officer's uniform, covered in blood and holding a pistol. He shot Weaver, somehow didn't see Mack, and jumped down.
Mack finally got to his feet. The man from the bridge entrance turned and ran. The Imperial officer, a black man, already had his gun pointed at Mack.
“Imperial Air Service,” the man snarled, in one of those effete upper-class Imperial accents. A nigger posing as a fag aristocrat. How cute. “You’re under arrest for piracy. Maybe you'll live if you answer a few questions.”
Mack extended his left hand placatingly.
“Whatever you want. I didn’t never kill nobody. Rape nobody, too. Code and all that shit and” – he flicked his left wrist and fired the derringer – “die, you fucker!”
The derringer's bullet hit Perry in the chest, but the chest of his uniform was kevlar and it was a low-caliber round. The shock of the impact made him stagger a half-step back, but he was already firing, emptying his gun into the pirate captain.
“I hoped you'd do that,” he said, breathing hard. Taking his spare magazine, shoving it into the automatic. Covering the door against more pirates. The captain was well and truly dead, as were the other two on the bridge. “I very sincerely much hoped you'd try something like that, you pirate bastard.”
“Sir,” Martindale reported about half an hour later. “I have the list.”
Perry grimaced. Acutely aware that he'd suffered no serious casualties during the loss of 4-106.
You didn't join the Service without being ready to put your life down. That didn't make it any easier when your men did.
“How bad is it?”
“Three dead, sir. Senior Airshipman Jeppesen, Airshipman First Wold, and Sub-Lieutenant Ross.”
Perry sighed, very deeply.
Fuck.
“And wounded?”
“Seven more, three when they got us with the missile in the cargo hold. And a few second-class injuries. Kent and Rafferty both got burned during that fight in the engine room, and Vescard's nursing five broken ribs from where his vest stopped a subgun burst.”
“Fuck,” said Perry.
“On the bright side, we got a pirate ship,” Martindale said. “And a nice prize, I must say! Cargo hold full of machine-parts.”
“To be returned to their owners,” Perry said sternly to Nolan. “For whatever their insurer's deal is, or the twenty-five percent standard fee.”
Nolan was grinning widely. His own crew was busily re-inflating the hydrogen sacs from the Red Wasp; the pirate, like most, had been loaded with spare sacs and hydrogen cylinders for lifting captured vessels. Perry's people were setting those up, re-inflating the gondola.
“Whatever you say, captain. But the ship? That ship is mine now?”
“Seventy-five percent of it is,” Perry said.
“The ship. What's the cargo worth? Your quarter can be the cargo and the rewards. The ship?”
“Maybe we'll get enough from the cargo that you can buy the ship at fair value,” said Perry. “My men will help bring it in, once it's been floated.”
I lost three of my crew, Perry thought. Now can you please shut up about your big score?
Nolan and his wife headed away, back toward the Red Wasp.
Damnit. He'd been hoping, really, to capture the pirate ship intact. He'd succeeded in doing that. But he'd also hoped to interrogate the captain, or any of the crew – none had survived – about where Captain Ahle might be found.
Go to Chicago, check in. Then take a captured pirate ship into the Black Hills, dressed like pirates, with Marines aboard... and get 4-106 back.
Next to that, the fact that he was probably a couple of months' pay richer himself from this capture – one eighth of the prize, by law, went to Marine officers, and he'd classified 4-106's crew as Marines for Nolan's purpose – was relatively unimportant.
Apprehend Ahle. Get 4-106 back.
Hands on her hips, Karen Ahle inspected the work that the Dodge City technicians - and her own crew - had done to disguise the airship that the Imperials had called 4-106, and that she'd renamed the Adestria, after a Greek goddess of vengeance.
There wasn't a lot you could do to disguise the multiply-finned gondola, short of removing the fore and central steering vanes. Those would be hard to remove and replace, and she didn't know how that would affect the handling. So she'd added a second and third set of dummies, instead; side-vanes at one-third and two-thirds along the ship's length. They consisted of nothing more than aluminum sheeti
ng on titanium struts that'd been attached to the gondola's framework, but they'd confuse anybody looking for a triple-vaned airship.
The rest had been relatively easy. Paint the gondola to an extent - messy streaks did the job, especially on the lower half - and blot out the identification number. People would be looking, and she knew the Imperials well enough to know they would search, for a warship, so she had the missile bays and the space between them covered with more aluminum sheeting, painted black. The hold of a particularly sleek high-value cargo ship, whose pressure-guns were pure self-defence.
The best part was that it would all drop away with a couple of minutes' work when she needed to clear for action. Her engineering education said that the dummy fins wouldn't be a major problem anyhow, but if they proved to be? The sheeting could be gotten rid of in under five minutes.
“Good job, people,” she said to her crew. The eight who'd boarded with her, the thirty-five who'd stayed on her main ship, the Aden, and the forty-two newbies hired to be split across the two. “We accomplished something impressive here today. Now, we're not in the Black Hills; this is Dodge City, and you all know what's a ninety-minute ride east of here.”
A couple of murmurs: Hugoton. Unavoidable – Dodge was the biggest town on the southern plains, in large part due to Hugoton. It was also the only place within her intended range that you could get repairs like this done. It really didn't hurt that, right now, there were more than forty ships docked amongst the concrete of the pads.
“So, I'm going to stay with the ships. Officers and I, and the new people, will stay with the ships while you go celebrate. We'll walk you through both ships and introduce you to your stations. Tomorrow, the new men can celebrate; my longstanding crew and officers will conduct ground drills with the new ship. And Thursday, I hope you people don't begrudge us captain and officers a few drinks!”
There were a few laughs and cheers.