Above The Clouds

by Richard Roberts

fastened on his hat and visor, and told me, "No more talking. This is our duty." His hand took hold of the accelerator, and we slid forward, rounding up the side of the Eye.

  I felt utterly helpless. We cruised over the top of the Eye, ahead of the squadron and picking up speed. Circling around like this gave the convoy time to reach the Eye. As we crested the top I saw them below us, flying right by the cloud wall and blind go our presence.

  They wouldn't be for long. We dived, and Father pressed the accelerator higher. My propellers blared, and I switched lift tanks to ballast one by one, until we shook from the air drag as we hurtled towards our victims. I reeled back our wings and laid flat all our control surfaces.

  It worked like I knew Father intended. They saw us coming, scattered, and started firing. We were going too fast. The scatter gave us a path to slide through right between the three big barges, while the guard airships fired harpoons and shells that came nowhere near us.

  Underneath our opponents now, Father yanked back on the wheel. I reversed the tanks, extended my wings, spread my flaps, and ached from the strain as we turned a sharper corner than I was meant to endure, leaving another salvo flying past behind us.

  They'd wasted two rounds on me and Father. They'd watched us, and not the rest of the squadron diving on them. Like with the whale it had worked, and now my fellow airships were firing on the guards, snagging two, and punching holes in two more who had no chance to fight back.

  We circled up, and I used the drag to slow us down to something more reasonable. The convoy was a tangled melee of dogfights now. Only one guard wasn't involved, still hanging out on the fringe. Father tilted the wheel, and we banked, turned, swooped down on it. It looked like a combat airship, but it couldn't really be. It turned away from us too slowly. Father let go of the wheel to grab the harpoon handles with both hands. I slid us down beside the awkward Traitor airship. When its own cannon swiveled, I flipped from lift to ballast again, jolted as we dropped for a second. The Traitor airship fired, even though its aim wasn't even close.

  This wasn't a fight. Father fired the harpoons, one and then the other, and they punched into the sides of the other aircraft. I leaned away, pulling the lines straight, pinning it in place for a precious second where we could aim at it but it couldn't aim at us. It didn't look as clumsy as it was. From underneath I could see fresh new whalebone struts, and the legend 'Rosy Fingered Dawn'.

  I jerked, veering away by reflex as the shock ran through me. I was still attached to Rosie, and I only succeeded in yanking her along with me. Father couldn't aim from this angle. Neither could Rosie, but her cannon fired anyway. Her pilot was incompetent.

  I should roll back and give Father a clear shot. I should. I didn't want to. "Father, wait! Not this ship! She's not dangerous!" I pleaded.

  He didn't even argue. He tilted the wheel gently, and held the cannon steady. We rolled around the other way to bring Rosie into his sites, and us right into the path of a stray cannon shell.

  It had to be a stray. Random, bad luck. That's all I could think as the force hit me in the side and the pain lanced through me. My propellers stopped spinning and my lift tanks went inert, and I started to fall.

  I picked back up. My propellers still had power. My switches worked. I had lift, they'd just been shocked to neutral. Father…

  …lay at an ugly angle in one corner of the cockpit, covered in his own blood. It came from his head, but he was still breathing. He was. He was!

  He stopped.

  I had no time to grieve, or figure out if I wanted to grieve.

  "Rosie! Rosie! Rosie! Rosie!" I yelled, swinging up and down the nearby Chatter bands.

  "Red?" her voice came back from one of them.

  "Red Baron," I corrected her. My name was on my cockpit like hers. My bright red paint job might be enough.

  "We're leaving. I don't want to fight, and neither do you," I informed her.

  "I can't disobey my mother," she reminded me. As bad a pilot as her mother was, she was already angling Rosie to pull away from me and bringing her cannon around to fire.

  "You don't have to," I promised Rosie, and stopped trying to recover. I flipped my tanks to ballast. I shut off my propellers. I pretended to be a dead airplane.

  I fell like one.

  There was a painful yank when my harpoon chains went tight, but they held. Rosie fell with me, dragging against my weight but falling more helplessly every second. Wind whistled painfully through the hole in my cockpit, but I'd been built sturdier than my poor older brother and survived the hit.

  As I expected, Rosie's hatch opened and her mother leaped out, hovering away awkwardly on her emergency wings.

  Rosie and I hit the clouds underneath.

  "Red, our parents…?" Rosie asked as white and grey flew past us, obscuring everything. I could feel her on the other end of my harpoons, even if I couldn't see her.

  "They're not our business anymore," I promised. Father was gone, and I didn't care what happened to Rosie's mother, or to the squadron.

  "Where can we go?" Rosie asked me. Hope. That was hope creeping into her voice.

  "Where you always wanted to go. We'll find out what's on the other side of the clouds," I answered.

  As I did, the clouds vanished. I eased my lift tanks back up, sped up my propellers. Our descent slowed, and still chained side by side we evened out.

  The clouds hung above us. Below us was the bottom of the sky, like I'd never thought existed. It stretched out in green and blue and red and brown from horizon to horizon.

  "I didn't think it would be so beautiful," Rosie laughed.