Steemjammer: The Deeper Truth (15 page)

Peering through a viewport, Giselle saw a white flag pop out of the top of that steemtrap. Hatches opened, and the crew hung white strips of fabric over the sides.

“Cobee!” she cried. “Didn’t you say the white flag disqualifies you?”

“How many times,” Donell barked, “do we have tah say this isn’t a game?”

“But if we’re disqualified, no one’s allowed to attack.”

Cobee’s eyes opened wide. “She’s right! Quick! Where’s the lever?”

***

One by one, the seven remaining destroyers stopped crushing and poking each other as a large, green ball carrier rolled between them with a white flag waving from a pole on its center. Several teenagers leaned out its hatches, draping white cloths over the sides.

Hatches popped open on the destroyers, and the male and female crew members stuck their heads out, shouting questions and angry accusations in Dutch.

“Sorry!” Kate said. “It’s an emergency!”

“Young lady,” the captain of the closest destroyer called, “are you mad? You could get killed!”

“Hoy!” shouted a man. “You’re no Green Guard!”

With a sudden crash, the crane-like arm on the front fell and landed well short of the ball. As luck would have it, Cobee had missed it so badly that none of the others realized the Green Dragon was trying to steal it.

“Do you have any idea,” another destroyer captain cried, “of the harm you’re causing? When your parents find out, you’ll be in a B’verlt of trouble!”

“My parents were murdered,” Cobee snarled through a viewport, pointing back, “by them – Rasmussen scum! If you have any sense, you’ll help us!”

Heads turned, but the crew members could see little through the dust and smoke. Using the distraction, Donell inched the Green Dragon forward, and again Cobee lowered the head-shaped device. This time it landed perfectly, clamping down like a mouth on the one-ton bronze ball.

“Got it!” Cobee shouted.

The carrier’s crane strained to lift the ball up, and the Green Dragon lumbered forward.

“What’s the meaning of this?” a crewman shouted.

“Stop them!” another cried, outraged.

The captains and destroyer crews craned their necks to see the referee, Robert Axworthy, swooping down in his airship.

“Axworthy,” one called, “what can we do? We want to stop them, but they’ve got the white flag.”

“And children,” added another.

“Stop them,” the referee shouted. “No crushers. Just use pokers and hackers, and aim at the wheels only.”

“Right,” a destroyer captain shouted. “After them!”

“If one child gets hurt, it’s a lifetime game ban.”

The destroyer captain swallowed hard. “After them,
carefully
.”

Chapter 12

DRAGON’S FLIGHT

“I’ve had it,” Waverly Norman muttered to no one in particular, “with all this ridiculous nonsense.”

Standing in the front yard, she glared across the street at the offensive hodgepodge house. At least, she reflected, the horrid smoke had stopped. Ron had gone into town to fight with the insurance company over their dead automobiles, and her mother napped. Waverly had been left alone with several hours to think things over, and her blood seemed to boil with fury.

“I know what you little devils are up to,” she sneered. “Thirty-seven years experience has given me radar. You kids opened our car hoods that night and did something to the engines, and then you somehow got into our attic and cut all the electric wires. Well, I’ve been duped long enough. It’s time for Waverly Norman to take matters into her own hands.”

Steeling herself, she strode confidently across the street toward Beverkenhaas and through the rows of wheat.

“Ow!” she shrieked.

She caught her foot on a garden gnome – made of painted concrete – and tripped, scraping her hands and knees as she landed on the hard ground. The offending object seemed to grin mockingly at her, so she got to her feet, picked it up, and hurled it with all her might. It broke a window.

“Let that be a lesson to you,” she huffed.

THUNK THUNK THUNK! A sudden, loud noise from the melting igloo made her freeze up in panic. Remembering the strange creatures that had chased her the other day, she feared for a moment that she’d been wrong, that maybe alien monsters actually did inhabit this place. TAP TAP!

“I know what’s going on,” she called. “That was you children in purple monster suits, wasn’t it? Well, you had your fun, but not any longer. I hope you’re good and cold in there - and come down with pneumonia!”

The tapping on the igloo’s wooden door got louder and more frantic, but Waverly put it out of her mind as she marched to the front door. Still blocked with clutter and furniture, she saw a crawlspace.

She hesitated. In high school she’d earned medals in girl’s track by throwing the discus and shot-putting, but she’d never been particularly nimble. If she got inside, however, and found proof that this was all just a vicious, criminal prank perpetuated by those nasty foreign children, then her suffering would be over. Ron would at last be proven the fool, and she’d finally have her future property and home secured.

“I’m coming in,” she bellowed, “whether you like it or not!”

***

In Tante Klazee’s house, Angelica stared anxiously at the little mechanical beaver pond.

“Fifteen minutes,” she said, “if I read it right. I noticed a tiny fish moving in the water. It works like the big hand on a regular clock face, right?”

“Flink kint,” Tante Klazee smiled. “It may be a little longer than that, too, before it opens. We don’t know the precise moment.”

“Shouldn’t they be here?”

“Cobee, Giselle and Will? I imagine they’re on their way in the back of a steemwagon. Stefana wrote that Donell himself will escort them.”

“Tante Klazee?”

“Yes?” her great aunt said.

Looking down, Angelica thought over her question.

“Well, out with it,” Klazee urged.

“I wish Tante Stefana could have been here the other night, when Will came back from Texel.”

“If she were seen, it would have caused a lot of suspicion.”

“Did you at least invite her by letter? She sent you one, so you could have secretly sent one to her, right?”

Klazee studied her for a moment, and concern spread across her face.

“No, I didn’t,” she said, staring away.

“I think it hurt her feelings,” Angelica said.

A pained expression crossed her great aunt’s face.

“We told her,” Angelica continued guiltily, “that first day in the Museum, that we’d never heard of her. I still remember the look on her face. I feel so bad.”

“Kint, it wasn’t anything you did.”

“It doesn’t matter. I feel bad because her own family won’t see her or even admit she exists. She’s so lonely. Is what she did really so bad?”

Klazee sighed and had to get up and move around to relieve agitation. “You mean marrying Ton Rasmussen?”

Angelica nodded.

“No,” she admitted, “at least not now. Then? Yes. It was quite reckless.”

She cracked open a curtain and peered out.

“Listen,” Klazee said, trying to sound brighter, “we have to take care of current matters, first. What’s that name your father uses for his house?”

“Beverkenhaas.”

“Ya, that thing. Once we’re in Beverkenhaas on Old Earth, we’ll find a way to reach her.”

She hugged her little grand niece tightly.

“You see things very deeply, kint,” she said, “just like your brother. You may have to help me, because Stefana and I had cross words with each other, long ago. Very cross. Of course this is a wound we need to heal.”

Angelica smiled, feeling much better.

“Come on,” Tante Klazee said. “You go up and watch for the verltgaat, and I’ll keep checking the window. I bet they’re almost here.”

***

With the Incendium bricks blazing in the firebox, the Green Dragon raced at an unbelievably fast speed for such a huge, heavily armored ball carrier. It sped across the park and away from the slow destroyers. The fast scout traps, however, were closing in. Not only that, the massive heat was turning the Green Dragon’s crew cabin into an almost unbearable sauna.

“Verdoor!” Cobee groaned as he realized something.

“How do we get out?”

“Huh?” Will asked.

“He’s right,” Kate said. “The park’s surrounded by a stone wall.”

“Didn’t you people plan this out?” Jack said, shocked.

“No time,” Will explained. “We’re making this up was we go. Donell, what can we do?”

“Brace yerselves,” the short man warned, making an abrupt right turn.

Putting his eyes to a periscope, Will spotted a large, wooden gate in the wall dead ahead.

“Donell,” he asked worriedly, “are you doing what I think you’re doing?”

“Grab something,” Donell called, “just not a hot pipe!”

“Wait!” Cobee shouted, suddenly realizing what was going on. “That gate’s made of heavy oak with thick reinforcing beams. I don’t know if we can make it.”

“We’ll soon find out. RA-A-AMMING SPEED!”

***

At that moment, about five hundred feet above them, the
Skyshadow
swooped down and began quickly overtaking the speeding green ball carrier.

“In these gaming traps,” Clyve asked the captain, “is the crew’s air intake filtered?”

“I wouldn’t think so,” he speculated.

“Then, we have them. Pull just ahead and lay down a barrage of gas bombs. Not the fatal kind, mind you. I just want them knocked out or paralyzed.”

“Sir, we have no such bombs on board.”

Clyve turned on the man and glared.

“What?” he barked.

The captain winced. “Sir, I was ordered to fly here with all possible speed. That meant leaving all unnecessary weight behind.”

“At Texel you should have reloaded.”

“There was no time. With all due respect, you ordered this action immediately after landing. We were barely able to take on fuel and water.”

“Then, the ground units will have to perform.”

Clyve studied the park below through a telescope.

“Signal again,” he ordered. “Make sure our pursuit knows where to go.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You do have armed men aboard?”

“A dozen.”

Clyve returned his gaze to the telescope, grinning as he scanned events below. “Our job may be done for us. It looks like they’re going to ram a heavy gate.”

***

“Donell, stop!” Giselle cried.

The short man glanced back and saw the young Steemjammer girl peering into a periscope.

“Och, lass, sit down!” he yelled.

“Please, stop! We won’t make it!”

“Grab somethin’ now!” Ignoring her, he turned to Cobee, who struggled with the controls for the Green Dragon’s neck and head. “Retract!”

“I can’t!” Cobee shouted.

“Turn it, then! The ball’s still stickin’ out front! It’ll get smashed loose!”

“It’s jammed! No, wait. I can do it!”

Finding the right control, he made the crane spin around to face backwards.

“Donell, you have to stop!” Giselle screamed.

“Listen to her,” Will said. “Please!”

“The gate’s too tough to ram,” Giselle explained, eyes pressed to the periscope. “We’d be destroyed. Besides, it’s held shut by a
steel bar
.”

“Aye, lass,” Donell growled, trying to make the Green Dragon go faster. “It’s very heavy and has to be lifted from its braces with a powerful crane. Our only way out is tah ram it open and hope for the best.”

“No,” she said, clutching the periscope and spinning around. “The ball grabber. Isn’t it a crane?”

They were all thrown forward by the sudden deceleration as Donell decided to bring the Green Dragon to a halt. Air-compression brakes squealed, and they shook to a stop just in front of the gate. Donell shoved open a hatch to look out. He studied the gate’s steel locking bar and the heavy crane.

“Well, I’ll be!” Donell said with amazement. “Cobee, swing it back front and raise it up.”

“No, make it go down!” Kate said.

“Huh?” Cobee said.

“These controls must be backwards to the ones you learned on. Make the head go
down
!”

Shrugging, he jerked a lever. The dragon head went up and lifted the heavy steel bar out of its brackets. With a clang, it fell to the side, and Donell drove the Green Dragon forward, gently shoving the gates open.

“Here they come!” Jack called from the back.

Two fast scout traps from the blue and orange teams came up from behind as the Green Dragon rolled through the tunnel-like gate house. The ball carrier was so wide that their pursuers couldn’t get around it, so the scouts attacked the back section. Spinning saw blades cut at their rear wheels while fast-poking rods did the same. Looking out a back view port, Will realized they wouldn’t be able to take too much of this.

“Hoy!” he shouted, opening the rear hatch and climbing out. “You’ve got to stop! This isn’t what you think!”

The scouts pressed on, hacking away. Bits chipped off, and one tried grinding at the rear axle.

“Listen!” he cried. “My name is Wilhelmus Anselm Steemjammer. My father is Hendrelmus Steemjammer. This is an emergency. You must help us, please!”

Either they couldn’t hear or didn’t believe him, because they continued attacking. To Will’s horror the Green Dragon stopped at the end of the gatehouse tunnel, still blocking it. He wondered if their propulsion had been ruined, and right then, the scouts backed up so the lead destroyer could go through the gatehouse and attack.

“Donell!” Will shouted desperately. “We got a guddle coming up fast! A really huge one! Please, do something!”

The Green Dragon cleared the gatehouse tunnel on the other side and stopped. The crane quickly swung around to face backwards and extended while the destroyer closed, bristling with powerful pokers and crushers. A few seconds, Will thought, of their fury would surely destroy their back wheels.

Just as the destroyer stopped and began to strike with pokers, a noise came from above. The Green Dragon’s head, which was over the attacking trap,
clicked
. Its jaws opened, and the one ton bronze ball fell. KA-WHANG!

It landed on the rear-center part of the destroyer, badly denting it and causing internal damage. A geyser of steam shot out a crack in the armor, and hatches flew open while the crew hurried out to safety, unharmed.

“Hoyza!” Will cried exuberantly.

“Get ready tah roll!” Donell cried, and Will glanced down to see that he and Cobee had changed seats: Donell was now in charge of the crane.

In seconds the steemball was back in the Green Dragon’s jaws, and they went forward onto a New Amsterdam city street, gathering speed. Behind them, the ruined destroyer blocked the gate, so no other traps could get out. Will went back inside and shut the hatch.

“We did it!” Kate shouted triumphantly.

“Dinna be so sure,” Donell groused, taking back the driver’s seat from Cobee. “There’s miles yet tah go, and who knows how many Raz are on our tails!”

***