Paragaea (11 page)

Approaching from the west were large creatures on leathery wings, with long vicious beaks, and bony crests atop their narrow heads. Each was nearly twelve meters from wing tip to wing tip, and carried on its back one or two men, wearing goggles and wide-brimmed hats, with heavy scarves wrapped around their heads from neck to nose.

“Sky Raiders,” Balam rumbled, unsheathing his claws, amber eyes narrowing.

“Dragons,” Hieronymus said, hands tightening into white-knuckled fists at his side.

Leena had heard tavern talk about the men and women called Sky Raiders, but had dismissed it as the kind of stories one shared over spirits and wine. Evidently they were real, but she knew these were no dragons. These were pterosaurs, extinct on Earth since the age of the dinosaurs, but through ill fortune still surviving here on Paragaea into the age of man. She'd never imagined they could grow so large, but she'd learned that few things in this place were as she would have imagined.

Hieronymus turned from the railing, all his acrophobia forgotten.

“We'll need our weapons,” he said, his tone clipped.

“Locked in a secured locker in the control gondola,” Balam answered, his eyes fixed on the approaching pterosaurs. They were drawing nearer, perhaps just minutes away.

“I'll take care of that,” Hieronymus said. “Little sister, get our employer to safety.”

Leena nodded, and took Vorin by the right hand, his left clutching the leather case. She didn't bother to mutter soothing words or platitudes. There simply wasn't time.

Leena led Jophar Vorin into the control gondola, past crewmen who bustled past them, their attention solely focused on their duties. Vorin would not be safe in the passenger gondola or the crew areas. The ship would simply be too dangerous once the Sky Raider boarding party had come aboard, even if the crew were ultimately successful in repelling the attack. Vorin's best chance was to safely wait out the attack, hidden away and secure.

Leena had paid careful attention as they'd boarded the
Rukh
the previous morning. She'd lost too many friends on launchpads and in flight to ever climb aboard any sort of plane, rocket, or aerostat without knowing all the contingencies. She led Vorin in a beeline to a side room off the main passageway, and opened the hatch overhead. A rope ladder unspooled, from the ceiling to their feet.

“Vlezt',” Leena said in Russian, then quickly added in English, “Climb!”

Vorin looked at her, nervous and confused.

Leena pointed up towards the hatchway, then grabbed Vorin's shoulder and shoved him towards the rope ladder. Understanding dawned in his small eyes, and he clambered inelegantly up the ladder. Leena followed.

Within the envelope of the airship, things were much as Leena had anticipated, which was some small blessing. The curve of the keel overhead like the spine of a cathedral, the large lunglike shapes of the helium-filled containers pressing against either side of the envelope, and at either side the deflated air-filled ballonets. These last, small bladders that would fill with air from outside the ship when the
Rukh
descended, were used to help maintain pressure on the envelope when the helium bags were deflated. At full pressure height, with the helium at near-full expansion, the ballonets were little more than partially inflated sacks of breathable air.

Leena took Vorin by the elbow and dragged him to the nearest of the ballonets. There was an airtight access panel near the seam that held the ballonet in place, and it was the work of only a few quick moments to wrest the panel open. It was only a meter or so square, just large enough for a grown man to climb through.

“Inside,” Leena said, pointing. “We'll come back when it is safe.”

Vorin looked from her to the limp air sack, and back again.

“Ka utok,” Leena said, struggling, trying to piece together what little Sakrian she knew.
Through this.
She paused, then added, “Uksalke.”
Safe.

Vorin at last nodded, understanding. Clutching the leather case to his chest, he wriggled his ponderous bulk through the access panel, and looked out forlornly as Leena closed it up behind him.

“Just wait,” she said, trying to sound reassuring. “You'll be fine. Uksalke. I promise.”

Leena rejoined Hieronymus and Balam on the platform of the open-air deck. They were surrounded by crewmen armed with poleaxes, clubs, and bayonets, half a dozen men ready to repel the boarders.

Hieronymus had his heavy cavalry saber hanging from his belt, his holstered Mauser C96 pistol at his hip. He handed Balam his knives and sling, and Leena her chrome-plated Makarov semiautomatic pistol, snugged in its nylon holster, and the short sword he'd insisted she start carrying. She tucked the blade into her belt, distastefully, and checked that the magazine on the Makarov was full.

“Take care with your firearm,” Hieronymus warned, eyeing Leena's grip on her pistol. “We've precious little ammunition as it is, and besides, I've no desire to go plummeting down to our doom if you start shooting holes in this thing.” He jerked a thumb at the curve of the envelope overhead.

“Not to worry,” Leena answered. “Pressure inside the envelope is low, only a fraction of kilogram per square centimeter. If we were to punch hole in the fabric, it could take hours, even days before we noticed any change.”

“I think we'll have more pressing matters to engage us, in the meantime,” rumbled Balam, baring his teeth.

Leena and Hieronymus followed his gaze to the west.

The Sky Raiders were almost upon them.

The first wave of the Raiders was intended to disorient their prey, the pterosaurs sweeping in close, the Raiders riding pillion letting fly with spears and crossbow bolts at the defenders on the platform.

Leena was glad that firearms were so scarce in Paragaea, or their resistance might have proven futile. As it was, between her pistol and Hieronymus's, they were able to pick off three of the pterosaurs and their riders in the first two passes. But Leena's marksmanship had never been anything but journeyman at best, and Hieronymus had only limited ammunition for his Mauser, so by the time the Raiders began their boarding run, their best hope lay in fist, and club, and blade.

The Sky Raiders drew near the
Rukh
, just beyond the reach of the crew's poleaxes, matching the airship's speed. The pillion riders unfastened themselves from the saddle harness, drew a cutlass in one hand and a war-axe in the other, and with a bloodcurdling whoop leapt across the open air, crashing headfirst into the serried defenders on the platform of the open-air deck.

Balam met the boarders with tooth and claw, Hieronymus with a fierce grin and his cavalry saber in hand. Leena tried to draw a bead on one with her Makarov, but in the melee her shot went wide, and she came near to shooting one of the defending crewmen in the back, the shot instead ricocheting off the deckplates, sent zinging up and into the fabric of the envelope. With great reluctance, she holstered her pistol, and drew the short sword tucked in her belt, better suited for close quarters.

Leena watched as one of the crewmen went over the side, pitched head over heels by a Raider. That same Raider was an instant later brained by a heavy club, his teeth crunching together with a sickening crack, his eyes rolling up sightless in his skull as he fell insensate to the deck. Another Raider surged into the breach, and was caught up in the arms of the outlaw prince of the Sinaa, Balam, whose claws drew red rills of blood across the Raider's chest as the jaguar man threw the Raider overboard. Hieronymus's saber flashed in his hand, and Leena took up position at his back, handling the short blade as best she could, covering his rear while he mowed through the attackers.

The crew and the three companions made a valiant show of defending the ship from the boarders, but in the end, the Raiders' numbers were simply too great. Wave after wave of pterosaurs and riders came at the airship, another and another and another, until the defenders were near buried under attackers. In the end, the odds were simply too overwhelming, and the defenders had no choice but to lay down their arms and surrender.

The Raiders howled in celebration. The ship was theirs.

The Raiders left a prize crew onboard as the pterosaurs wheeled off back to the west. A dozen men were enough to hold the ship, with the
defenders left dead, injured, or merely disarmed. They were under the command of an old Raider with a long scar running along the left side of his face from forehead to chin, his nose broken and bent out of true. On his orders, the ship was steered off course towards the western Rim Mountains, and the secret hideaway of the Raiders. The surviving passengers would no doubt be sold off into slavery, the ship's cargo parceled out and fenced, and the
Rukh
itself broken down into constituent elements and sold at the best price, the metal components not least of which.

Hieronymus, Balam, and Leena bided their time. They were gathered in a mass along with the rest of the passengers and the surviving crew in the observation lounge, under the watchful eye of three Raiders armed with swords and crossbows loaded and primed. The Bent Nose leader of the Raiders and the rest of the prize crew were busy steering the ship, or rummaging through the cargo holds and cabins looking for plunder.

Leaning in close, the three companions whispered together in English, a language no one else onboard shared.

“We can take these three,” Balam purred low. “They are cautious, but we have speed and strength on our side.”

“And what of the nine more beyond the passageway?” Hieronymus asked quietly. “They've taken our arms away, and we're left with only our bare hands to defend ourselves.”

“Not all of our hands are quite so bare,” Balam answered, popping one of his claws out and grinning mercilessly.

“I think we have other things to worry about,” Leena said, glancing over nervously at the three guards.

“Yes, you're right, of course,” Hieronymus said apologetically. “Our first priority must be to secure the safety of Jophar Vorin.”

“Well,” Leena said, nodding slowly, “that's certainly correct, and something we should definitely look after, but that's not what I was thinking of.”

Balam and Hieronymus looked at her, their expressions confused.

“During the attack, I fired a shot that went wide, and punched a hole in the envelope.”

“Do the Raiders know?” Balam asked.

“No,” Leena answered. “I don't think anyone else has noticed. It will be some time before the ship is affected, but sooner or later we will begin to lose altitude, and if that should come on quickly enough, we could all be in for a shorter trip than we had intended.”

Hieronymus glanced behind them, to the wide reinforced-glass windows of the observation lounge, the purple mountains in the distant west and the hint of patchwork farmlands far below them.

“I hate flying,” he said, closing his eyes tightly against the view.

They continued to the west, the Raiders in the flight deck of the control gondola laying on speed, the hum of the engine nacelles rising to a piercing wail as the screws turned faster and faster.

In their whispered conference, hidden from the guards' attentions by the terrified masses of huddled businessmen, missionaries, and artisans, the three companions worked out their most likely plan for success. They would wait until the ship neared the Raiders' hideaway, just before reaching the foothills of the western Rim Mountains. By that point, the
Rukh
should have dropped low enough that they could descend safely to the ground below. They would overpower the prize crew, and drop lines off the side of the gondola to lower themselves, Vorin, and whatever other passengers had the nerve down to the ground. They could lose the Raiders in the thick forests of Altrusia, which spread out like a carpet all along the eastern slope of the Rim Mountains, and make a clear getaway.

Their plan hinged on the slim hope that the prize crew would become overconfident as they drew near their journey's end, with their home clearly in view. Hieronymus had been in similar situations on
sailing vessels during the Napoleonic War, though, and he assured the other two that he was convinced of success. They had only to bide their time, and all would work out to their best advantage.

Still, timing would be crucial, and there was the constant threat that the
Rukh
's envelope would lose pressure too quickly, and send them crashing to earth. If they made their move too soon, the chances of the Raiders repelling their insurrection was far, far greater; if they waited until too late, though, the airship might reach the Raiders' base before the companions could effect their escape, and they'd have the amassed might of the Raiders against them. They'd be sold into slavery, or tortured for sport, or worse.

The three companions huddled together, their watchful eyes on their captors, their thoughts on the actions before them.

The forest of towering conifers spread beneath them, as far as the eye could see to the north, east, and south, while to the west the snow-capped peaks of the Rim Mountains grew ever larger. They had just hours to go before it would be time to make their move, and the three companions were tensed and ready.

The sound of the fat man wailing from the passageway signaled the end of all their plans.

Bent Nose, the leader of the Raiders, came into the observation lounge dragging Jophar Vorin by the scruff of the neck, a half-dozen Raiders crowding the passageway behind him.

“Damn,” Hieronymus breathed, his hands tightening to fists.

Leena had almost risen to her feet when Balam laid a heavy hand on her shoulder.

“Not now, little sister,” the jaguar man whispered, holding a finger up before his black lips. “Bide awhile.”

Bent Nose threw Vorin to the deckplates, the heavyset Laxarian businessman still clutching the leather case chained to his wrist. The Raider commander then turned his scarred face to the assembled prisoners, and began to spit a steady stream of invective. His words, strained through the skein of his mountain accent, were impossible for Leena to follow.

“What is he saying?” Leena whispered to Hieronymus.

The passengers and crew looked to one another nervously as Bent Nose raged on.

“They found Vorin in the ballonet, while they were looking for hidden treasures,” Hieronymus explained. “With the case chained to his wrist, the Raiders suspect him of being some kind of intelligencer for the Hegemon of Laxaria. They are going to cut off his wrist if he doesn't unlock the case for them. They are calling for his coconspirators to present themselves.”

None of the prisoners spoke, but one by one their gazes began to turn towards the three companions, crouched together against the far windows.

“I don't like this,” Balam rumbled.

Bent Nose left off ranting, and followed the gaze of the dozen or so passengers and crew who had looked at the three companions they'd all seen with the man trembling on the deckplates.

“Be ready,” Hieronymus said in a harsh whisper.

“Ready for what?” Leena began to ask, but then it was too late, and her answer was before her.

Before Bent Nose could signal to the Raiders behind him in the passageway to come forward and take the three companions in hand, Hieronymus leapt to his feet and, with a wild cry, rushed at the Raider commander with his arms flung wide. Balam was just steps behind, his claws unsheathed, an unsettling roar bellowing from between his vicious jaws.

Leena didn't hesitate, but jumped up and followed after, running low with her arms held in a ready stance, her military training coming back to her like high water just beginning to seep over a low dam.