Then the crew opened fire. Lazarus immediately dropped as several bullets whistled overhead and ricocheted off the iron door, which was still under attack by the creature on the other side. He grabbed his gun from where it had fallen to the deck and fired twice, killing a lieutenant.
Katarina had also seized her own pistol and began firing like a demon. Two more fell, slumped over their control desks. Lazarus saw that the captain was already dead. He couldn’t remember how that had happened, but surmised that he must have caught one or both of the shots Lindholm had got off in the struggle. With the captain and three of his crew dead, landing the airship suddenly presented more of a challenge.
“No, don’t!” he yelled as Katarina felled yet another officer. “We need some of them alive!”
“Are you frightened of landing this thing on your own?” she said. “You did pretty well landing the Santa Bella, as I recall.”
“Do you really think this is the same thing? You don’t just toss a mooring rope around a church spire.”
“Have it your way. Look, there’s one left. Will he do?”
She indicated a youngish man cowering behind a desk and gibbering for mercy. There was a sizable wet patch seeping through the front of his grey breeches. He tossed his revolver towards them in surrender.
The incessant slams of the mummy against the door to the bridge showed no signs of relenting. “He’ll be through that in no time,” Lazarus said, eyeing the bending hinges and bulging of the iron. We might not have time to land before he’s upon us.”
“Then we’ll just have to convince the good doctor to dispatch new orders.”
“Can’t. He’s out cold.”
Katarina glanced at the unfamiliar controls all around her. “Then we’re in trouble.”
The door was bending further out of shape with every crashing jolt from the other side. Lindholm was passed out at their feet and the gibbering officer was in no fit state to help them.
“You know what this means,” Lazarus said.
“What?”
“Revert to plan A.”
“Oh, God.”
Lazarus aimed his pistol at a window and shot out the glass. Wind whipped in, sending razor shards all around the bridge. Lazarus poked his head out and looked along the length of the gondola. There was a horizontal ladder running along the roof, accessible via a series of iron rungs that passed by the window, close enough to reach.
He grabbed hold of one rung and swung himself out onto the ladder, not making the mistake of looking down this time. Katarina followed him and they made their way as quickly and as carefully as possible to the top of the gondola, shaded by the massive bulk of the balloon.
“We could sever the helium pipe that leads into the balloon,” Katarina suggested.
“That’s the ticket,” Lazarus replied. “It’ll be up at the other end, leading from the aft.”
They walked carefully along the top of the gondola, stepping between the iron rungs that promised a good handhold should either of them slip.
“Lazarus!” Katarina cried as a shape made its way up onto the walkway behind them. The mummy had finally broken through the door to the bridge and had followed them up.
“Walk quicker,” were Lazarus’s only words of advice. He didn’t fancy tangling with that thing up on the precarious walkway.
They could hear its metal feet stumbling and tripping over the rungs as it tried to catch up with them. It was too much to hope for, Lazarus supposed, that it might trip and slide off the gondola to perish hundreds of feet below. Would a fall like that even kill one of these things? Surely it would rupture the glass orb concealing its heart. They would have to hope so.
“Damn, how many of these things are up and running?” Katarina yelled, flinging out a finger at a second mechanical mummy scrambling up ahead of them. It was the one with the mechanized hindquarters of a jackal that they had encountered in the City of the Silver Aten.
“Now we’re for it!” said Lazarus, for they were trapped between the two advancing mummies and the gap was growing smaller with every juddering footstep.
“We’ll have to fight them here!” Katarina said, drawing her pistol and firing off a shot at their pursuer. “You keep that dog-man whatever it is off us!”
“It’s too far off for me to get a clear shot,” Lazarus replied, drawing his gun on Katarina’s target and squeezing off a round.
They both fired until their chambers were empty. They reloaded and started to fire some more. Bullets tore through decayed flesh, eliciting puffs of dust and powdered bandage which were instantly whipped away on the wind.
“Come on... come on...” urged Lazarus through gritted teeth. Surely one of them would get a lucky hit and pierce the heart. But all the while the jackal-man was loping closer and closer.
“Got it!” Katarina yelled.
Lazarus nearly whooped in the American fashion but remembered himself just in time. The modified form of Amenhotep the First stumbled backwards, green liquid spurting out of his ruptured orb. He fell back and hit the deck, rolled, and then slid down, his metal limbs scraping against the hull of the gondola and leaving deep scores as he vanished into the view below.
Lazarus was about to turn to assess the progress of their secondary threat, but realized how they had underestimated the speed of the steam-powered jackal legs as soon as the iron claw grasped his shoulder and wrenched him hard to the left, tearing his flesh.
In a panic, he caught the arm that had grasped him and held on for dear life as the soles of his feet slipped on the sleek metal deck. The creature tried to shake him free and, finding that his prey was reluctant to let go, took a step forwards.
“N... no! D... don’t!” Lazarus managed as the iron claws of the creature’s right foot slipped on the metal. Lazarus gargled a scream as the creature skidded and toppled forwards and they both began their descent to the distant desert below.
Something painfully hard caught Lazarus in the ribs and knocked the breath from him. He had given up his grip on the creature as soon as he realized that it too was going to take the plunge with him, but now they were both tangled against the stud on the side of the gondola that fastened the guy lines of the balloon to the vessel. Squirming to get free, Lazarus aimed his pistol at the stud and, gripping one line tightly, fired, blasting some of the lines free.
Instantly he was swept away by gravity, like the weight on a pendulum, and carried along the length of the gondola. Well, that’s one way to reach the aft in a hurry, he thought as the windows of the gondola rushed passed at a dizzying speed. But that creature had kept his hold on one of the lines as well and was dangling like a dog on the end of a piece of rope not far from Katarina’s position.
Had he the time, Lazarus would have undoubtedly thought of some better plan of action than the one he undertook. He was nearing the end of his terrifying swing and thought he might be able to grab hold of the ladder that led up to the top of the gondola, but then, what of Katarina? The creature would be making its own way topside and she would be standing all alone against it. She would want him to continue on with the mission; sever the helium pipe while she held the creature at bay. But he just couldn’t do that.
All these thoughts passed through his mind in the time it took for him to reach the point where momentum gave way to gravity and before he had completed his swing, he had made up his mind not to let go.
The dangling dog-on-a-rope grew larger as he hurtled towards it. He fired twice, missing wildly but drawing its attention. It twisted to face him. He stuck his feet out and rammed into it. It was like hitting an iron girder. His legs split and the torso of the thing hit him in the most painful area possible. He gasped in agony but wrapped his legs around his foe, determined not to let go.
Possibly confused by this tactic, the mummy tried to wriggle free, using its torso. Its claws were still tangled in the guy rope. Lazarus looked down. The green orb was inches from him. He had the target steady now. He pressed the muzzle of his pistol agains
t it. The contact made an audible ‘clink’ of metal touching glass. He squeezed the trigger.
The bullet tore through the creature’s body. It hurled its head back in a spasmodic death throe. Lazarus knew enough not to hold on and released his leg grip. The monster, still tangled in the ropes, relaxed and hung slack, twisting in the wind.
Katarina held out her hand to Lazarus as he scrambled up to the top of the gondola. He grasped it and she hauled him towards her. “That was unbelievable,” she said.
“Well, I couldn’t very well leave you to take it on alone,” he said.
“Your patronizing never ceases to infuriate me, but still. That was unbelievable.” Her eyes were wide as if she was suddenly seeing him in an entirely new light.
“Come on, let’s bring this bird down. I’ve seen all the clouds I want to today.”
Unhindered, they hurried aft and found the point where the pipe led up into the balloon. It was made from Indian rubber and was very flexible. Lazarus drew the new Bowie knife he had purchased in Cairo and began to saw through it. Helium began to escape with a hissing sound. He continued cutting until the pipe was completely severed and trailed in the wind.
“We’d better get down below,” he told Katarina. “It will take a while for the balloon to start deflating, but when it does, we don’t want to be on deck when we start to descend. It may be a bumpy landing.”
Chapter Sixteen
In which solid ground is reached a little quicker than desired
They scrambled down the iron ladder once more and Lazarus shot out a window in the aft that led into the engine room. They clambered onto an iron catwalk that led around a cavernous room filled with pumps, banks of dials and gauges and four gigantic steam turbines fed by sixteen forced circulation boilers. Several wide-eyed engineers looked up at the intruders as if they had just swung in from the moon.
“Everybody stay put!” Lazarus commanded, his gun sweeping the room. “This airship is going down and there’s nothing any of you can do about it. I suggest you all make yourselves comfortable. It might get a little rough.”
“Get that door bolted!” said Katarina, indicating the wheel-lock door that led to the rest of the ship.
One of the engineers moved to close it and ducked out suddenly, slamming it behind him.
“Stop!” Katarina cried futilely and fired a round that struck the bulkhead above the door frame.
“Well, that will bring the contingent of soldiers to us even if our escaped engineer doesn’t,” said Lazarus, descending the metal stairs to ground level. “Keep them covered.” He went to bolt the door himself.
They rounded up the rest of the engineers and herded them between one of the turbines and the wall of the engine room. It wasn’t long before the hammering on the door started.
“We’ve got you cornered!” shouted a Southern voice. “There’s no way out of the engine room but dead if you don’t throw down your weapons and surrender.”
“We only have to wait it out,” said Katarina. “How long until the balloon starts to deflate?”
“That’s not the issue,” said Lazarus. Once we’ve landed, we will still have the same problem. Us in here and them out there. And that’s if they don’t cut through the door to get to us first.”
“Fair point. There’s too many of them out there for us to fight. But I have an idea.” She raised her voice, shouting through the metal to the soldiers beyond. “You fellows, we’re going to come out, but will send out all our hostages save one, first! Get ready to receive them. We’re going to open the door but no treachery or we’ll open fire and kill them all!”
“All right, Missy,” said the voice on the other side. “There’ll be no treachery on our side.”
“Pass me that canister of helium,” Katarina whispered to Lazarus, indicating a rack where several yellow oval-shaped canisters were held.
“What’s your plan?” he asked, prizing one loose and passing it to her.
“You open the door and I’ll hurl this through at them and fire at it. It will rupture and knock them clean off their feet, maybe even kill a couple. Then we make our run for it, shooting our way free. I want to get back up to the bridge and keep Lindholm under supervision until we land.”
It wasn’t a bad plan. Although helium was not flammable, a pressurized canister would certainly go off with a pop loud enough give those Confederates a scare. And that might be just what was needed to get out alive.
“Ready?” Katarina said, swinging the canister back and forth in preparation.
“Ready,” Lazarus confirmed and spun the wheel lock. He could hear the shuffle of boots as the soldiers in the corridor beyond took two steps back. He hurled the door open and Katarina tossed the canister like a bowling ball at the human pins before her. As it cart wheeled past him, Lazarus suddenly had a horrible thought. There had been no markings on the canister that he had seen. They had assumed that it was helium because they were in a helium balloon.
Katarina fired twice in quick succession, aiming for the canister which had yet to strike the floor.
“Katarina, wait!” Lazarus yelled. “Are you sure...”
Her second bullet hit the canister before he could finish his sentence and there was an almighty explosion that confirmed his fears. He swung the door closed again and grasped the wheel just as the force of the blast hit it. The thick metal door protected him from the flames but the force of the explosion hurled it open and sent him nearly the length of the engine room.
The corridor was bathed in flame. The wall of the gondola had been ruptured by the blast and the flames were being sucked out into the sky. The force of the explosion had jarred something loose from the balloon, for now the floor began to tilt alarmingly under their feet. People and canisters and equipment began to slide to one end of the room. Were they falling?
“I owe you an apology, Lazarus,” said Katarina, clinging to his arm as he hung from a control bench with the other for dear life. “That wasn’t a helium canister. It was...”
“Oxygen. I know,” Lazarus replied through gritted teeth. Well, the plan had been successful in that it had most certainly taken care of the soldiers in the corridor. But the word ‘overkill’ did come to mind.
That the gondola was now swinging free from several of the cables that attached it to the balloon was apparent by the pitch of the room and the heap of squirming engineers Lazarus and Katarina landed in when the screaming muscles in Lazarus’s arm gave out.
The metal floor was un-scalable and they were forced to make themselves comfortable in the writhing mass of limbs that had broken their fall, groans of discomfort all around them.
Shadows of the clouds whirled past from the windows high above them and that told Lazarus that they were spinning wildly out of control. He wondered how fast they were descending. Katarina seemed to be thinking the same thing.
“The balloon must surely be running out of helium by now,” she said. “At least the explosion only broke a few of the guy lines. The remaining ones should ensure that the deflating balloon drops us fairly comfortably on a sand dune.”
As if she had jinxed the situation, there was a loud ‘twanging’ sound and the gondola suddenly dropped into free fall.
“Again, I apologies,” Katarina yelled over the wailing of the terrified engineers.
They must have been descending at a steady pace before the final guy lines snapped, for they hit the ground mere seconds later. It was anything but a soft landing. Lazarus, Katarina and the engineers were jumbled up and hurled down as if a god with a tennis racket had tossed them up into the air and performed a perfect smash to the applause of the crowd. A terrible grinding and tearing of metal filled the hull and would have made Lazarus cover his ears had his hands not been busy trying to keep somebody’s armpit out of his face.
Whatever the gondola had struck—sand dune, pyramid, who knew?—had held it fast for a moment and now it released its grip, letting the vast vessel sink slowly, but unstoppably backwards. They all cri
ed out once more as the terrifying feeling of falling without knowing what was below them or how far away it was seized them. But the ever-shifting sands of the desert did not fail in their almost animated properties. The gondola settled as if a giant cushion had been wedged beneath it. They held their breaths as the sand held fast and the gondola ceased to move altogether.
The engineers let out a whoop of joy at being spared death, but Lazarus and Katarina wasted no breath on such luxury. They were finally back on the ground, and many yards of corridors and soldiers stood between them and Dr. Lindholm.
They began their ascent through the forty-five degree-tilted engine room to where the door hung limply open above them. Clutching control banks and scrambling over fallen detritus, they finally made it. Lazarus helped Katarina up through the doorway into the corridor beyond, satisfied that the company of soldiers that had occupied it not long ago were now long dispersed across the desert.
“Uh, Lazarus,” said Katarina as she poked her head into the corridor.
“What is it?” he asked, grasping the doorframe and hauling himself up to join her.
“Where’s the rest of the gondola?”
A few yards of the corridor remained, blackened and scorched by the exploded oxygen canister. Beyond that lay blue sky above them, framed by a jagged edge of wood paneling and metal.
“The gondola must have snapped entirely in half!” Lazarus exclaimed.
“Rent open by the explosion?”
“Can’t have. That canister wasn’t enough to rip open the whole ship. The gondola must have snapped in half when we struck the sand. I’ve heard of sinking battleships breaking in half when the sunken end starts to lift the other up into the air.”
They climbed further and peered out of what was left of the aft of the gondola. All around them was desert, painfully bright by the glare of the burning sun. Below them, at not too much of a distance lay the rest of the gondola, flat on the sand, its fore draped by the deflated balloon which lay spread over many hundreds of square feet. The sand between the two halves was strewn with wreckage and bodies tossed free from the gaping aperture where the vessel had snapped in two like a bundle of dry twigs.
Silver Tomb (The Lazarus Longman Chronicles Book 2) Page 15