Her Majesty's Western Service (56 page)

“There’s no friendlies nearby, sir,” said Nolan.

“They don’t know that. Give them something to worry about, take their mind from what we’re
really
about to do to them.”

4-106 flew through the smoke above Dodge City, kicked and buffeted by heat columns,
the wind behind her as she rose on a T-bone course for the
Five Speed
as the
Pith and Vinegar
closed in at a right angle. Soon they’d be within missile range; the
Five Speed
would be in a position to turn and broadside Perry’s nose.

If 4-106 turned to face
Five Speed
with a broadside, they’d be exposing either the vulnerable nose or tail - without being able to shoot back with missiles - to the heavily-armed
Pith and Vinegar.

You didn’t need an Academy commission to know it was a bad situation.

“What’s he doing?” Airshipman Gilford asked as the purple airship closed on them. There was another ship to their twelve, that they had to be
racing
toward. Was Vice Perry
trying
to get them killed, were those rumors true about him being a traitor? Fires below would be a hell of a thing for a man to jump into…

“Have a piece of gum,”
said Rafferty, chewing on his own. The grin hadn’t left the Specialist Third’s face since he’d returned on the newly-recovered 4-106, and from what Gilford had been able to gather so far, there was reason for that - Raff had done some
crazy
shit.

He took the gum.

“Attention all stations,” came Lieutenant Swarovski over the ship intercom as, buffeted by the winds behind them,. “Here’s what you’re going to do…”

By the end of it,
Rafferty was grinning even more widely than he had before. He clapped Gilford on the shoulder.

“We got this one.”

Something impacted 4-106. Missile hit. They were closer to the ship on their twelve than Gilford had thought.

Those flames below. The whole industrial district of Dodge City burning.
Not to mention the airship park, the Boot District, everything you could see if you looked down.

It would be a hell of a thing for a man to
have to bail into.

“
Yes
, nose return fire!” Swarovski shouted.

“Damage report, sir!” said Martindale.

“Report,” said Perry. Calmly, his veins ice.

“
Four hits. Fore port fin damaged. Lost six sacs, nose compensated. Aerodynamics affected perhaps five percent.”

“We going to turn and engage that fucker,” Nolan asked plaintively, “or just let `em give us another volley right down the gullet likethat first one?”

The hissing vibrations below their feet began to jerk slightly; pressure-gun fire opened fire, one ball after the other firing at the smoke-darkened sky-blue airship that was now within a mile and a half, closing very fast to a mile.

Engines thrummed faster as 4-106 picked
up speed, redlining the boilers.

Perry
imagined the
Five Speed
’s missileers, mercenary trash for all their noisy celebrity, frantically reloading, calculating, aiming. They’d get a second volley. Maybe a third.

They wouldn’t get off a fourth, not in the time they had left.

“Estimate her at a mile, sir!” reported one of the bridge crew.

Perry turned to Nolan.

“We follow the plan, Signals.” Then to Ahle: “Prepare to turn.”

Followed
by the wind, 4-106 turned on her axis as the sky-blue airship came within a thousand yards; nine hundred, eight hundred, pushed hard by the wind and rocking, bumping back and forth from the unsteady fire-driven air currents below.

Another salvo of missiles from the
Five Speed
hit as it turned, some of them going wide. Others tore into the airship’s kevlar and aluminum plating, ripping apart sacs; ballast was automatically dropped to compensate, and the airship stayed as level as the firestorm-driven currents allowed.

As
4-106’s tail gun brought to bear, more fire poured into the
Five Speed
, wild shots but also hits, explosions amongst the gondola setting hydrogen bags alight. Ballast fell from her, too, and riggers danced to release flaming bags - some quite low, requiring the release of ones above before they could catch light and the burns spread - into the smoke-filled sky.

What
was
that insane Imperial doing, Captain Rowland thought, as a nervous crewman reported point after point of minor damage and 4-106 drew closer.

Four hundred yards. Less than the
Five Speed’s
own length. She could see missilers, nine-inch, and the coming broadside was going to
hurt
.

But then what? He’d only get one, with the wind blowing into her like this. Side-on collission.

“He’s crazy,” Rowland’s exec murmured from the helm. “He’s an Imperial. He’s supposed to be-”

“Men crack,” said Rowland. Raised her voice, spoke into the microphone.

“All hands! Prepare to repel boarders!”

“Missiles,” Perry said calmly to Swarovski, “you may fire. Ballast, release when they have.”

“Missiles free. Kick their asses, boys!” Swarovski cried into his microphone.

“Weapons,” said Perry mildly, “we’ve
spoken
about appropriate language on the bridge.”

“You heard the chief,” said Rafferty. “Do it.”

Standing clear, Airshipman Second Gilford hit the trigger of the already-aimed nine-inch missile launcher. Flaming backblast blew through their bay;the missile streaked out, along with eleven others, toward the huge sky-blue airship.

“Starboard side,” Rafferty yelled, bracing himself for what was about to happen. “Come on!”

A half-assed third volley of missiles crossed 4-106’s from the
Five Speed
, mostly wildly fired as that ship’s crew raced to draw cutlasses and prepare pistols. One shot hit the gondola, destroying four bags; ballast ditched automatically to compensate. There was no risk of fire with the inert helium bags;
only
those four had to be ripped open, not the dozens that a similar hit might have cost a hydrogen bird.

Another
missile scored a lucky direct hit on one of 4-106’s engines, blasting it - and its propeller - into whirling debris. A piece of the shattered propeller lanced up and ripped through two more hydrogen bags.

In his engine-hall station, Vescard swore as the report came in.

“Tell Bridge and reroute power,” he ordered Warrant Second Rodgers.

“Already rerouted. Telling Vid now,” said Rodgers.

The
Five Speed
wasn’t nearly so lucky. Missiles exploded along her gondola - not the series of direct cabin strikes that had smashed the bright-red
Vorpal
a couple of hours ago, but bad enough regardless. One hit did rip open a section of the cabin, hitting crew cabins and a missile bay; one missileer, stunned by the blast and teetering over the space where his balance had been, lost his balance and fell.

The revolver, which he’d drawn against the anticipated boarders,
dropped faster as that missileer yanked his parachute’s cord and hoped the flames wouldn’t get him; a moment later another man came past, a rigger knocked off balance by hits above.

4-106’
s other eleven missiles slammed into the
Five Speed
’s gondola, ripping apart hydrogen sacs and turning sections of the aircraft into brief infernos as her remaining riggers dashed to release hydrogen.

And then 4-106, still being swept broadside on what would have been a collision course,
jumped
.

Every man aboard had been expecting it, as almost a metric ton of inert ballast dropped from the ship. The kick still came as a surprise, the deck of the airship surging up toward them as the ship jumped a hundred feet in a couple of seconds.

“She’ll be right below us, sir!” Vidkowski reported - “Now!”

“Away,” Perry ordered curtly.

Another half-ton of ballast fell from 4-106. Unlike the ton from before, this load was
not
inert.

Four hundred pounds of blazing, ignited thermite fell onto the top of the
Five Speed
, ripping through the airship’s thin kevlar-aluminum armor in fractions of a second and falling through her gondola, lighting waves of bags as, burning at four thousand degrees Fahrenheit, the loads tore through the Armadillo airship like drops of molten steel through tissue paper.

Riggers screamed and one
recent recruit saw the writing on the wall, checked his parachute and bailed.

The rest were longer-term Armadillos who believed the legend, and most of them had been at Alamogordo the day they’d become one. They’d fight on regardless.

As 4-106 released helium bags to drop again, and her starboard-side missiles came to bear on the cripped and burning
Five Speed
, it was noble futility.

“Get `em, boys!” came Weapons Officer Swarovski’s voice into the starboard-side missile bay.

“My turn,” said Rafferty, and hit the missile they’d loaded and timed earlier.

Twelve more twenty-five pound, nine-inch missiles streaked out at the
Five Speed
.

Airships had a lot of buoyancy, and fighting airships kept plenty of refillable sacs and hydrogen cylinders in reserve. Damage like the
Five Speed
had taken could have been repaired - if the three strikes had occurred with minutes between them, rather than seconds.

With only a few seconds between the point-blank missile barrage, a bombload of thermite and a second point-blank barrage from the other side, the
Five Speed
had no chance. Experienced riggers realized this, as did the rig officer, who called a report into the bridge and then raised one of his paddles to wave in the pattern that meant Abandon Ship.

Below, on the bridge, Rowland cursed under her breath as more reports came in, feeling her ship begin to fall as the hydrogen that kept her flying, burned or was jettisoned.

Others on the bridge were looking at her, waiting for her to make the call. They were brave, not stupid, and they knew what it meant when a ship began dropping like this.

“Abandon ship,” she muttered. Raised her voice again: “We’ll fight again another day! Abandon ship!”

From a mile and a half away, Shirley Meier on the purple-gondola-ed
Pith and Vinegar
had watched in shock as the Imperial’s suicide charge had become an improbable, daring, deadly leap-frog of Peggey’s ship. Parachutes now bloomed as the wreckage of the
Five Speed
started to fall from the sky.

“They took hits,” Meier said aloud. That much was apparent; the Imperial’s sleek, shape was battered now, her armor pitted from chaingun damage, her maneuvrerable form that much less so.

“We’ll finish those dirtbags off, then,” said Borean, her helm officer. “Fuckers.”

“Turn to engage,” said Meier. “Weapons free to fire at will. Take them down.”

Cheers sounded across 4-106 as the burning wreckage of the
Five Speed
slowly fell out of the sky, through smoke plumes and up to where a lick of flame from a refinery stack licked her, brought her into the flames. Her crew in parachutes around, steered for the least flames and the best safety.

“Good job,crew,” Perry spoke through the intercom. “But there’s another one left, and we’re going to have to fight it out with her. Every
serviceperson will do their duty.”

“
Fire at will,” came Swarovski’s voice over the intercom to Rafferty and Gilford. They could see incoming missiles from the bright-purple ship, their trails of fire coming toward them.

Mercenary trash
, thought Rafferty with pride, as he and Gilford loaded a missile into its tube. Careful - yep, looked about nineteen hundred yards.

“
Bay clear? Fire!”

As rapidly as their crews could fire them, missiles ranged across the smoke-filled sky between 4-106 and the
Pith and Vinegar
, the two ships angled just off broadside to each other, slowly closing; nineteen hundred yards, eighteen hundred, a mile between them.