The League of Seven (22 page)

Hachi slid into the coat and pulled the goggles over her head. “We haven't got time. If Edison homes in on that signal—”

“Too late,” Fergus said. He had climbed out from under the console and was pointing at something through the
Hesperus'
big front window.

Up through the pink clouds it came: a massive black dirigible. Two big propellers flanked its tail fins, and a passenger cabin twenty times as big as the
Hesperus
hung beneath its rigid, cigar-shaped gas envelope. The airship broke the surface of the sea of clouds like a whale coming up for air and kept coming, turning its needle nose into the wind. Along its side, Archie could see a large letter “E” crossed by a lightning bolt: the logo of Edison Labs.

“The
Black Maria
,” Fergus told them. “I've been on it before, when we flew to Florida and back. It's bigger and badder than the
Hesperus
. Much badder,” he told them.

“Maybe we can outrun them,” Hachi said.

“Nae,” Fergus told them. “The
Black Maria
's got twin lektric generators hooked up to a pair of Tecumseh aeroprops. He doesn't even have them up to full spin, from the looks of it. But that's not the worst of it. That thing's got a lektric cannon. He can shoot lightning.”

“What's its range?” Hachi asked.

“I dunno, but it's not going to matter in a minute.” The
Black Maria
was already bearing down on them. Archie and Fergus looked to Hachi for ideas. As much as Archie wanted to be the leader of their little League, Hachi was clearly the war chief of their misfit tribe.

“Where are we?” Hachi asked Mr. Rivets.

“We just crossed into the old Georgia colony, miss,” the machine man told her. “Cherokee territory.”

“Head for Standing Peachtree. If we can make it there, we can hide out at Lady Josephine's.”

“Where?” Archie asked.

“Lady Josephine's Academy. I went to school there.”

“What is it, a school to teach girls how to kick brass?” Fergus asked.

“Something like that,” Hachi said. She didn't look like she wanted to explain. “Mr. Rivets, drop us low where the winds are lighter and make for Standing Peachtree, best possible speed. That should give us a little advantage over that big airship out there.”

“Very good, miss.”

CHUNK. CHUNK. CHUNK.
The
Hesperus
rocked and the floor tilted. Archie glanced out a porthole.

“Grappling hooks!” he said. “Three lines. They're sending people over!”

“Prepare to repel boarders!” Hachi said. She tossed an oscillating rifle to Fergus and gave Archie an aether pistol, making sure to activate the aggregators on each so they'd be ready to fire. She kept the personal wave cannon for herself. She was up the ladder and out the hatch to the conning tower before Archie and Fergus knew what was going on.

“I'm glad you brought her along,” Fergus told Archie.

“Yeah,” said Archie. “Do you think I should put Mr. Rivets' Protector card back in?”

“If he's going to keep us flying, you'd better leave his Airship Pilot card in.”

“I concur, sir. But do be careful,” said Mr. Rivets.

Archie tied the white bearskin pelt around his shoulders. “Careful is my middle name,” he muttered.

Fergus laughed. “That's all right. Mine's ‘Coward.'”

Wom-wom-wom-wom-wom
. They could already hear Hachi's wave cannon outside. Archie and Fergus followed as quickly as they could up the ladder. One of Edison's three attackers was already gone, blasted over the side by Hachi. Now she was tangled up with another man wielding a lektric prod. The tip of it crackled and sparked. Hachi dodged back and forth on the sloped airship hull, held on only by a safety line clipped to the conning tower.

“She's insane, that one!” Fergus called over the wind.

The third Edison goon appeared at the conning tower rail. Archie raised his aether pistol and squeezed the trigger.
Bwaaat!
He missed wildly. Worse, the recoil knocked him back into the rail. He tipped over, lost his balance, and fell, sliding backward down the hull toward the ten-thousand-foot drop. He reached out helplessly for Fergus in the conning tower, slipping away too fast to even scream.

But there was Hachi again. She sprinted around the hull of the ship and grabbed him, her safety line saving them both. She had already taken care of the second Edison goon.

“Hook your safety line,” she told Archie over the wind. “Don't fall off.”

“Right,” he said, his heart still racing from his near-death experience. “Don't fall off. I'll remember that. Look out! Fergus!”

Archie pointed to the conning tower. Fergus was watching them and not the third Edison goon who had climbed up behind him. Fergus turned in time to watch the man jab a crackling lektric prod right into his stomach.

Nothing happened.

The man frowned and pushed it into Fergus' body again, and suddenly Archie understood. Fergus was absorbing the lektricity from the prod. Three more pokes and it flickered dead, drained of its dark, forbidden energy.

Fergus and the goon stared at the spent lektric prod, then looked up at each other. Fergus put a hand to the man's chest and—
Kazaaack!—
lightning blasted the goon over the rail and off the side of the
Hesperus
.

Fergus was still staring at the inky lines on his hand when Archie and Hachi climbed back into the conning tower.

“I barely had to think about it, and I just—
boom
.” he said.

Across the gulf between the airships, Archie saw Edison ordering more men over to the
Hesperus
. Fergus' old boss stood on the top deck of his airship, just below the great rigid envelope of the
Black Maria
, his black hair and black suit whipping in the wind. Goons hurried around the deck putting on harnesses, handing out oscillating rifles and lektric prods, and cranking up the platform with the lektric cannon. Edison stood still and calm among them, his eyes focused completely on Fergus.

“Oh, crivens,” Fergus said. “He's seen what I can do now.”

“There's more coming!” Archie said. Three more of Edison's men were zipping down the lines that connected the
Black Maria
to the
Hesperus
. He clipped his safety line to the rail, braced his feet, and took aim at the grappling hooks with his aether pistol.
Bwaaat. Bwaat. Bwaat.
He didn't go flying this time, but he didn't come close to hitting the ropes either. Two of his shots went beaming harmlessly into the sky. The third hit the
Hesperus
, knocking off a piece of the outer hull.

Hachi pulled Archie's raygun away. “Stop,” she told him. She hefted her wave cannon into Fergus' arms and jumped over the rail. Hachi slid down to where the grappling hooks had punched into the
Hesperus'
hull and pulled out her dagger.
Snik-snik-snik—
she cut the ropes that linked the two airships, and the men on the lines fell screaming and flailing into the clouds.

“Maybe we should just make some popcorn and watch,” Fergus said.

Poom.
One of the gas airbags above them exploded in a fireball. The floor beneath Archie and Fergus dropped, and the
Hesperus
lurched. Edison's men were shooting at the airbags that kept the
Hesperus
aloft.

“I thought they wanted me alive!” Fergus yelled.

Hachi climbed back into the conning tower and took the wave cannon from Fergus. “They're just trying to bring us down. They won't shoot all of them.”

Poom
. Another gasbag exploded, and Archie felt the searing heat on his skin. He grabbed the railing of the
Hesperus
as they listed and dropped again.

“Give us the lektric boy,”
Edison called through a speaking trumpet,
“and we will let the rest of you go in peace.”

Hachi put a hand to Fergus' chest. “We won't let you turn yourself in to save us.”

“I wasn't offering!” said Fergus.

Another oscillator ray crackled past the gasbags above.

“The pelt!” Archie said. “The Great Bear's pelt! We can use it protect the gasbags!”

“Go,” Hachi told him. “I'll cover you.” She leveled her massive wave cannon at the deck of the
Black Maria
.
Wom-wom-wom-wom-wom
. The wave pulse rippled the deck, popping rivets and tearing the metal sheathing away. Goons went spilling over the sides of the airship.

Archie climbed into the
Hesperus'
rigging and tried to fluff the pelt out to cover as many of the gasbags as he could. The wind kept catching it and making the end flutter.

On the prow of the
Black Maria
, a goon brought Edison's lektric cannon to bear on the
Hesperus
.

“If he shoots that thing, it's all over!” Fergus yelled. She nodded and shifted her aim to the man in the cannon's command chair.
Wom-wom-wom-wom-wom
. When the debris cleared there was an empty spot where the operator and his chair used to be.

“Remind me never to get on your bad side,” Fergus said.

A goon on Edison's ship leveled his raygun at the
Hesperus'
balloons and fired.
Poom
. Another gasbag exploded beside Archie, and he and the pelt went flying.

“Archie!”
Hachi cried.

The safety rope connecting Archie to the conning tower rail caught him, and he slammed into the hull of the
Hesperus
. Dazed, Archie looked back up the length of the rope and saw a tear in it popping and uncoiling. If the rope split, he would slide off the edge. He grabbed frantically at the smooth, sloped surface of the airship with one hand, his other hand clutching the white pelt that flapped in the emptiness below the airship.

Don't fall off,
he told himself.
Don't fall don't fall don't fall—

Hachi jumped over the rail of the conning tower headfirst and slid toward him. Her safety rope jerked tight just close enough for her to grab Archie's hand.

“Circus! Showtime!” she cried. Her clockwork menagerie scuttled out from under her and took flight, fighting the wind. “Grab him! Don't let go!”

Four little brass creatures grabbed Archie—his shirt, his arm, his hair, anywhere they could—and pulled for all they were worth.

Archie's legs swung like pendulums over the side. “If I can just get my feet up. Just—” His free hand squelched on the slick metal hull as he tried to gain purchase.

“Let go of the pelt!” Hachi said. “Use both hands!”

“No! I've almost got it. Almost—” His foot caught the edge. Yes! Now if he could just get his other leg up over the side—

Archie felt it more than heard it.
Pop!
The safety line snapped. His foot swung off the edge, and his hand slipped from Hachi's fingers. Archie's stomach leaped into his throat, and he dropped over the side.

“Hachiiiii!” Archie cried, and he was gone.

 

21

Fergus couldn't believe his eyes. Archie had just fallen over the side of the
Hesperus
.

“Archieeeeeee!”
Hachi cried. Her clockwork animals fluttered up around her, but Archie was well and truly gone.

When the shock wore off, Fergus hurried to the other side of the conning tower rail to look down. Archie had to be okay. He had to have grabbed onto the mooring anchor. A landing strut. An open porthole.
Anything
.

But no. Fergus felt his good leg go weak as he watched Archie and the white pelt tumble through the air, down and down and down, five thousand feet or more. He hit the ground with a poof of dust and was still.

Fergus slumped against the rail.
He
had done this. Fergus was the reason Edison had come after them, and now Archie was—Archie was—

Hachi climbed over the conn tower rail, looking frantic.

“A longer rope!” she yelled. “I need a longer rope. I have to go underneath and see if—”

Fergus shook his head. “I saw him fall. He's gone.”

Hachi slumped to her knees.

KSSSSH-KSSSSH-KSSSSH-KISSSH.
Edison's repaired lightning cannon shot lektricity across the sky at them. It arced to the metal
Hesperus
, blasting hull panels away and lektrifying everything metal. Fergus didn't feel a thing, but Hachi arched and lurched as the volts coursed through her.

“Nae. Nae!” Fergus screamed. With every drop of black blood in his body he willed the lektricity away from the ship and into him, turning himself into a human lightning rod. Light as bright as the sun lit him up as the lektric arc shifted from the hull to his body, lashing like a snake with its fangs dug into his skin. Hachi, released from the lektricity's grip but now unconscious, slid down through the hatch into the
Hesperus
.