Peacemaker (The Flash Gold Chronicles, #3) (5 page)

“
The artillery man is
protected inside the turret,” Cedar yelled, “and I can’t see
anybody else up there from this angle.”

Kali increased the speed again. It was only
two more miles to Moosehide. Maybe they could—

Another boom sounded. This time the
cannonball tore a hole in the riverbank, and the trail ahead of
them disappeared in a rock slide. Dirt and stone sloughed into the
river, and Kali had to brake again. They’d be lucky if they could
climb past that. Driving was out of the question.

She stopped the bicycle and jumped off.

The airship had descended from the clouds,
and Kali could see people in the turrets now, though the window
slits protected them while allowing them to fire out. A few pirates
scurried across the deck, though they were careful not to remain in
sight for long. From the ground, the angle was poor for shooting at
anyone up there. That didn’t keep Cedar from trying to keep them
busy. He fired his Winchester, aiming for a slit in the closest
turret.

Kali considered the wooden hull of the ship,
wondering if she could find a weakness. The engines were protected,
but twin ducted fans on the bottom propelled and steered the craft.
Scenarios for disabling them ran through her mind, but she didn’t
see how she could do anything from the ground.

Cedar fired another shot, but it only
chipped at the wood on the turret.

Kali laid a hand on his arm. “That’s not
going to do anything.”

“
You have a
plan?”

“
I have some
grenades.”

“
Even better.” Cedar
shouldered the rifle and held out his hand.

While Kali dug into her saddlebag, she kept
an eye toward the ship. The gunner had to have them in his sights,
but he did not fire again. A few men appeared at the railing, and
one peered down with a spyglass held to his eye. Cedar promptly
readied the Winchester again and fired.

The man ducked out of sight, and Kali
imagined she could hear his cursing. A heartbeat later, he popped
up again, this time with a rifle of his own. It cracked, and shards
of rock sheared away from a towering boulder behind Cedar.

He grabbed Kali around the waist and pulled
her behind the rock. Fortunately, she had what she needed in hand
when he did it.

“
What are those?” Cedar
asked when she held up the fist-sized bronze balls.

“
Grenades.”

“
They don’t look like
military issue.”

“
No, they’re Kali issue.
You press this, and it creates a spark, like with a flintlock
and—”

Something clinked to the ground on the other
side of the boulder. Kali leaned out, intending to check it out,
but Cedar pushed her back. He was closer to whatever it was and had
a better view.

“
Smoke,” he said. “Up the
hill.”

Though she debated on the wisdom of leaving
cover, Kali figured he had more experience with being attacked, so
she scrambled in the direction he pointed. The steep slope made it
hard to keep her footing, and she had to stuff the grenades into
her pockets. They clinked against tools, and she hoped she had made
the triggers hard enough to pull that they couldn’t bump against
something and go off.

“
Faster,” Cedar urged, a
hand on her back.

“
I’d be faster if I knew
where we were going,” Kali shot over her shoulder. The airship
hovered in her periphery, no more than ten meters above them. Its
engines thrummed, reverberating through the earth, and the fans
stirred the ferns and grass on the hillside. “And if we weren’t
leaving my bicycle behind,” she added under her breath.

“
Just get away from—”
Cedar coughed and pulled his shirt over his nose. He paused to
loose another rifle shot at the airship, though it thudded
harmlessly off a turret.

A sweet stench like burned honey trailed
them up the hill. Not trusting it, Kali held her breath.

A copse of evergreens rose at the crest of
the hill, and it seemed like as good a place as any to make a
stand. The airship wouldn’t be able to maneuver through the trees,
and Kali could throw a grenade at anyone who tried to steal the
SAB.

A giant metal claw on a chain clanked onto
the rocks to the left.

“
Uh?” Kali said, for lack
of anything more intelligent.

A second claw landed to her right, then a
third one struck down a few feet ahead. As one, the devices swung
toward her.

“
Uh!” she blurted and
scrambled backward.

Kali bumped into Cedar and was surprised he
wasn’t moving more quickly. A glaze dulled his eyes, and confusion
crinkled his brow.

“
Move!” Kali tried to
shove him out of the path of the claws, but he was heavy and didn’t
help her at all. She didn’t seem to have her usual strength either.
A strange heaviness filled her limbs, and numbness made her fingers
tingle.

That honey smell. It had to be some kind of
sedative.

The nearest claw scraped closer. It swung
in, angling for Kali’s torso. She ducked and dove beneath it, but
the lethargy in her limbs stole her agility, and she landed in an
ungainly pile and skidded down the slope. Mud spattered her, and
rocks dug at her through her clothing.

Something landed on her. Rope?

Kali tried to bat it away, but it was
everywhere. Not just rope, she realized. A net.

Before she could reach for a folding knife
in her pocket, the ropes tightened about her, scooping her up like
a fish in the river.

“
Kali!” Cedar
shouted.

Now, he woke up. Great.

The net constricted movement, and Kali
couldn’t get an arm free to dig into her pockets. It swung her into
the air. In fits and jerks, a rope slowly pulled her up. Clanks
sounded above her—someone winding a winch.

Kali snarled and thrashed without any
strategy, aside from an overriding desire to damage something. She
was angry at herself for running up the hill without a plan, and
for being captured like some dumb animal. Her thrashes did nothing;
the net merely tightened.

Then something rammed into her from
behind.

“
Tarnation! What now?”
Kali demanded.

“
Sorry,” Cedar said from
behind her ear.

Kali twisted her neck—even that was an
effort in the suffocating rope cocoon. Cedar clung to the outside
like a spider. His eyes still had a glazed cast to them, but his
jaw was clenched with determination.

He drew a knife and started sawing at her
ropes. “I thought you might like to get down.”

“
Yes, thank you.” Kali
could be calm and polite when someone was working to set her free.
So long as he finished before whoever was working the winch got
them on board. Already, they were nearly twenty feet from the
ground. The fall would not be pleasant.

“
Get him off!” a man
yelled from somewhere above. “Shoot him!”

“
I believe someone is
making plans for you,” Kali said.

Cedar’s swift cuts were opening up her
prison, and she gripped the ropes above her head with both hands so
she wouldn’t fall free when the support disappeared.

“
Not plans I’m partial
to,” Cedar said. “I’ll have you down in a second.”

Wood creaked above them, and Kali looked up,
fearing they might weigh too much for whatever winch was operating
up there. She wanted freedom, yes, but she didn’t fancy the idea of
a long drop while still entangled in the ropes. A man wearing a
black bandana around his head and holding a shiny steel six-shooter
leaned out through a trapdoor.

“
Look out,” Kali barked,
afraid Cedar, intent on cutting her ropes, hadn’t seen the
man.

But he was already in motion, not jumping
free to escape the gun like a sane person would do, but shimmying
up the rope. The pirate’s finger tightened on the trigger, but
Cedar was already pumping an arm to throw his knife. The blade spun
upward and lodged in the man’s chest.

The revolver fired anyway.

Kali buried her head beneath her arms, but
no bullet pierced her flesh. Before she could lift her eyes to see
if Cedar had also avoided being hit, something slammed into her.
The force snapped the remaining ropes still binding her into the
net, and her legs flew free. Twine seared her palms, and she almost
lost her grip, but she clenched her fingers tighter around the
rope. The dead pirate tumbled past her and smashed into the rocky
shoreline below. Cedar had disappeared into the airship.

Gunshots sounded above, followed by a clash
of steel. That meant Cedar had his sword out. He might need help,
but storming a fortress wasn’t anything Kali was trained for. She’d
have to try something else.

Kali swung her legs up and found a toehold
in part of the netting that had not been cut. She climbed a few
feet up the rope, but stopped well below the trapdoor. Twenty feet
away, mounted on the bottom of the hull, the twin-ducted fans
hummed along.

While gripping the rope with one hand, Kali
dropped the other into a pocket and withdrew a grenade. Wind
battered her, whipping her hair free of its braid and into her
eyes. She squinted, trying to judge the distance for a toss to the
closest fan.

“
Cedar!” Kali yelled. He
would be better at this.

A battle cry—it might have been his—and
another long clash of steel answered her. Kali took that to mean
she was on her own.

She took a deep breath, thumbed the trigger
on the grenade, and watched for the spark. Yes, there it was. She
counted to two and tossed the weapon.

It sailed through the air, clanked off the
fan casing and dropped. It exploded uselessly a few feet above the
river. A couple of men rowing a fishing boat and gawking up at the
airship screamed and threw themselves into the water.

“
Not good,” Kali
muttered.

She had one more grenade, but only one. She
gripped the cold metal, felt the grooves dig into her hand,
imagined the hours she had spent patching the exterior together
from scrap and carefully measuring out gunpowder and even more
carefully building the trigger device…. She resolved not to waste
this one.

Kali thumbed the trigger, held the grenade
half a second longer than the first, and lofted it toward the
fan.

This time it clanked into the horizontal
cylinder containing the propeller. Kali held her breath. The
grenade bumped against the inside of the casing and skidded toward
the fan. She cringed at the idea of it sliding past the blades and
falling out on other side.

Before the grenade came close to that fate,
it exploded with an echoing boom. Orange flashed, gray smoke filled
the air, and shards of metal flew.

One whistled toward her face, and Kali
ducked, throwing up her free hand. Her other hand slipped, and she
lost her foothold and zipped down the rope. Fire seared her palm,
tearing into her skin, but she growled and forced herself to hold
on. She caught the bottom of the half-destroyed net, but her feet
dangled free, swinging thirty feet above the earth.

On the hull above, the only thing left of
the fan was a singed stump of metal. Holes and charred wood marked
the hull as well. If it were a sea-going vessel, it’d be leaking
faster than the bilge pumps could bail, but up here, holes just
meant poorer aerodynamics. Already, though, the airship was listing
to one side, heading out over the river. With one working
propeller, it’d simply float around in wide circles until someone
fixed it. That meant they’d have a hard time chasing anybody.

“
Cedar,” Kali called
again. “It’s time to go!”

She scanned the countryside below,
ostensibly looking for her bicycle and to see how far upstream they
had floated, but a part of her had to admire the view, a view
usually reserved for the birds. One day, she would sail in the
skies with her own ship.

A boom sounded above, not rifle fire this
time, but a shell gun or cannon. What in tarnation was Cedar doing
up there?

Kali was debating whether to climb up and
join him—whatever he was doing, he might be getting himself in
trouble—when a familiar shout pulled her eye to the side.

“
Man overboard!” It was
Cedar, leaping over the deck railing. He clutched a bag in one hand
and his sword in the other. “Let’s go, Kali!” he added before he
splashed into the river below.

“
Someone stole that man’s
rudder,” she muttered.

Above her, a man with a bloody face leaned
out of the trapdoor. From the pained snarl on his lips and the gun
in his hand, Kali decided it was indeed time to go. After a quick
check to make sure she was over water, she released the rope.

She dropped thirty feet and plunged into
depths so icy they shocked her to the core. The calendar might say
summer, but this water came straight out of mountains still
smothered with snow. Her feet brushed the bottom, and she pushed
off. She popped above the surface and tried to suck in a breath of
air, but her lungs, stunned from the cold, scarcely worked. An icy
wave washed into her eyes.

A hand gripped Kali’s arm, helping her stay
up.

“
That was brilliant!”
Cedar exclaimed. The water dripping into his eyes couldn’t dull
their gleam.

Kali shook her head and swam for the shore
with frenzied strokes, hoping to warm her already-numb limbs. She
only paused long enough to make sure she was swimming in the right
direction. It was a testament to how cold she was that she reached
the shore before Cedar. She was tempted to jog back to the SAB—and
rip dry clothes and Cedar’s bedroll off the back—but she figured
she had best wait and see if he was injured or needed help. She
wouldn’t put it past him to race into battle and roar with
excitement while having a life-threatening wound.