The Mark of the Dragonfly (28 page)

“They must be attacking the front too!” Anna cried as she ran back up the car. “Look—Trimble set off the smoke screens up there.” She pointed to the windows. The view out was obscured by plumes of thick white smoke that drifted from the front of the train.

“Let’s add more smoke, then,” Piper said. They needed to make it as hard as possible for the raiders to see the train and latch on to it with grappling hooks. She ran through Gee’s car and back to the defense room. She grabbed a red valve and twisted it left to release the smoke screen at the rear; then she pointed to the fire valve. “We have to keep them off the back car. They’ll try to board us on the observation platform. I’m going to lock the door back there. Can you start the fire?”

Wide-eyed, Anna nodded. Piper sprinted back to the observation deck and saw a glider approaching, its nose pointed directly at the space between the metal railing and the covered deck. One of the raiders leaned over the side of his craft and aimed a crossbow at Piper.

“Fire!” Piper yelled back at Anna.

At that moment, vents on either side of the door slid
open, and Piper heard the rush of the igniter. Flames burst from the vents, shooting out streams of fire. The raider swerved, but not far enough. The glider’s left wing caught fire. The man with the crossbow dropped his weapon and dove forward to try to put the flames out with his hands, but the fire had already consumed most of the silk covering the wings, leaving behind a blackened metal skeleton. The pilot dropped the controls and crash-landed the glider into the dirt.

“Great shot, Anna!” Piper charged back inside the car, locked the door, and ran to close off the fire vents.

Anna’s eyes were huge, her cheeks flushed. “How many of them do you think there are?” she asked.

“I don’t know.” Piper hated not being able to see what was going on. The smoke helped obscure the train from the gliders, but it also made it impossible to see what was coming out the windows. “I’m going to take a look topside.” Maybe she could get above the smoke.

She dragged the stool over beneath the trapdoor. Anna grabbed her arm as she jumped up on it. “Piper, don’t. If you can see them, they can see you, and they’ve got crossbows.”

“You’re right,” Piper said. Anna looked relieved until Piper added, “Hand me one of the crossbows.”

“You don’t know how to fire it!” Anna wailed. Piper pulled open the trapdoor and thick threads of smoke leaked in from outside. “What if another glider comes back here?”

“All the more reason to have a weapon. And I’ve fired one before—Dad showed me once—it’s just been a few years.” Piper attached the safety harness to her belt. Climbing onto the top of a moving train while raiders were attacking it might be the single craziest thing she’d ever done—and that was saying something, considering what she’d done so far on this trip—yet her hands trembled with as much excitement as fear. “You think you can load one of those bolts and get it ready for me?”

“Theoretically,” Anna said. “But, Piper—”

“You can do it.” Piper smiled. “Just don’t shoot yourself in the foot.”

“I’m more scared of what’ll happen to you!”

It was a fair point, Piper thought, but she had to take the risk. “Anna,” she said seriously, “it’s all right to be afraid, but you can’t let that stop you from doing what you have to do. I’ve seen you put that incredible brain to work under pressure, and I have faith in you. We can do this.”

Anna picked up the crossbow. She looked at the weapon and then back up at Piper. Finally, she nodded. “All right. I’ll get it ready.”

“Fantastic,” Piper said. “Well, here goes.” She hoisted her body through the opening in the ceiling. At first, all she could see was smoke. She coughed on the thick clouds, but then a gust of wind blew the white curtain back, and she gasped.

The sky was full of gliders.

Piper counted a dozen before the smoke obscured her view again. Just like the first glider she’d seen, each craft held at least two men, and the one in the rear was armed with a crossbow. Piper sat up on her knees, poking her head above the thick layer of smoke to get another look. Just as she peeked out of the cloud, a glider dove down, flying alongside the train two cars ahead of her. The man in the rear heaved something big and heavy over its side at the car nearest him, and Piper squinted to make it out as it bounced and clung to the roof of the train. A grappling hook!

Oh no you don’t
, Piper thought, her heart pounding. “Anna,” she called down, “give me darts!”

Almost as soon as she’d given the order, dozens of tiny vents slid back along the roof of the car, exposing sharpened metal tips, poised to fire. From his position hovering beside the train, the pilot swerved, almost dislodging the rear man as he was getting out of the craft to climb down the rope attached to the hook. The darts fired, slicing holes in the glider’s silk wings and sending the craft spinning away into the dirt.

Piper didn’t have time to celebrate the victory. Ahead of her, two gliders flew side by side, a large net dangling between them, headed toward the front of the train.

The net’s for Gee
, Piper realized. It had to be. Two more gliders fell in behind the first for what looked like a coordinated attack. Piper crawled forward to the limit
of her harness, trying to see if she could find Gee, but all the smoke made it impossible.

She knew she should get back inside the car. Every minute she spent exposed, she risked becoming a pincushion. Still, she lingered, crawling on her knees as close to either side of the car as she dared, looking for the chamelin.

As far as she could tell, he wasn’t flying next to the cars either. Anxiety flooded Piper as the minutes passed. Where was he? Gee had a world of trouble coming his way, and she couldn’t even warn him.

Finally, giving up the idea of finding him, Piper turned and crawled carefully back to the trapdoor. The canyon walls raced by in a blur of rock. She dropped into the car, balancing on the stool. “Anna, how are you doing loading that crossbow?” she asked.

“I’ve got it!” Anna ran over to her and held up the weapon, loaded and ready with a bolt fitted to the groove on the stock.

“Perfect.” Piper stood, cradling the crossbow in her hands. “I’m going up again.”

Anna bit her lip, but she didn’t argue. “Be careful.”

“I promise.” Piper smiled at Anna reassuringly. She checked the roof, but she couldn’t see anything from where she stood. She handed the crossbow back to Anna to hold while she hoisted herself up and out into the wind and the smoke and chaos.

This time, she caught a glimpse of Gee almost immediately. He was in the distance, perched on a rocky outcropping halfway up the canyon wall, his feet clutching the stone as he swiped at a glider passing by. She watched as his claws caught a wing and tore it to shreds, sending the craft spiraling away. The pilots abandoned the glider at the last minute and rolled onto the rocky ground.

Piper hadn’t realized she was holding her breath until she exhaled, relief flooding her. She smiled down at Anna and looked back up. Gee had pushed off the wall into empty air and was beating his wings hard to lift his body high above the train. And then Piper saw the gliders with the net. They’d circled and were headed right at him. Two other gliders approached from the opposite direction.

Quickly, Piper reached down and took the crossbow from Anna. Bracing herself, she hefted the crossbow and, squinting through its sight, aimed for the raiders with the net. Her arms shook under the weight of the bulky weapon, and the sighting tilted crazily. Piper strained to hold the crossbow steady against the wind. Maybe this wasn’t going to be as simple as she’d thought.

All you have to do is hit the glider
, Piper told herself.
Just hold it steady long enough …

Suddenly, one of the gliders dipped, putting its right wing directly in Piper’s sights. The pilot’s attention was
focused on Gee. He didn’t see her through the thinning smoke. Piper didn’t hesitate. She fired.

The bolt flew with a loud twang. The recoil was sharper than she expected. Piper almost dropped the weapon. She rocked back against the safety harness and ended up flat on her back beside the trapdoor. The sky tilted, and her stomach lurched. She grabbed the safety harness to reassure herself that she wasn’t going to fall off the side of the car. Carefully, she sat up, trying to see if her shot had hit anything, but the glider she’d been aiming at was gone. Piper had no idea if she’d hit its wing or not.

She was about to call down to Anna for another bolt when an engine growled directly behind her. Piper recognized that sound. A compact engine, modified with sarnun stretch coils to give it an extra power boost. She’d been working on one that sounded just like it for Arno Weir before she left Scrap Town Sixteen. Gee had said the raiders used the engines for supplementary power to the gliders.

Instinctively, Piper dropped flat on her stomach. She looked up to see the glider pass right over her. The pilot shouted to his partner, pointing at where she lay, and the glider turned in a wide arc and flew straight at her.

“Anna!” Piper screamed. “I need more darts!”

To her left was another set of vents, open, with the dart tips visible. Either Anna couldn’t hear Piper’s
shout above the roar of the train or the mechanism was jammed. Piper reached out and touched one of the dart tips gently, mindful of the wickedly sharp point.

Fire
, she told it silently. The glider’s shadow fell over her.
Fire!
she commanded, and jerked her hand back.

The darts exploded from the vents. Piper rolled away hastily. The glider bearing down on her swerved, managing to dodge all but a few of the darts. It was still airborne, but at least it was no longer aimed right at her. She was safe. Or so she thought, until the glider swerved and the man in the rear of it leaned out and reached for her.

Piper tried to roll away, but her harness tangled around her. She ripped the hook off her belt and scrambled for the safety of the trapdoor, but the man grabbed her arm and hauled her off her feet.

A second of terrifying weightlessness followed. Piper couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, until she felt her feet come down on the glider’s metal surface. She saw the train pass beneath her, and then a pair of hands pushed her roughly forward toward the pilot.

“Sit down!” a voice yelled in her ear, and sour breath hit her in the face.

Piper was pressed between the front and rear seats, her legs dangling free just behind the wings. The craft pulled sharply to the left, forcing her to fall forward and hug the glider’s body. The pilot cursed as he tried to steady the craft. The left wingtip skin had been shredded
by the darts. He could no longer control it properly, and the engine couldn’t compensate for Piper’s added weight.

Before she had time to think too much about the utter stupidity of what she was about to do, Piper leaned far to the left, letting her leg dangle off the side of the glider. She grabbed the left wing and leaned on it as hard as she could.

“Are you crazy?” the man behind her shrieked as he grabbed Piper by the shoulder and wrenched her back, but the damage was done. Both men screamed as the glider flipped in the air, launching the rear man out of his seat and toward the earth. Piper felt the weight of her body pulling her down as the pilot righted the glider. She held on to the wing, but her feet dangled in empty air.

They were flying toward the train again. Piper didn’t think the pilot intended to attack. The way he jerked the craft, he barely had control of the glider at all. The engine stalled, and Piper saw the train below her, tantalizingly close.

You really are crazy, scrapper
, she thought,
but if you’re going to do this, it’s now or never
.

Piper let go.

The train rushed up to meet her. Her feet hit the roof of the car, and Piper was immediately skittering backward, unable to find her balance on the moving surface. She threw her arms behind her, fingers searching for something to hold on to. When she felt a piece of smooth metal under her left hand, she grabbed it without thinking. The handgrip stopped her from toppling off the side of the train.

Piper turned to look at what had saved her and saw the blood. Then the pain hit her in a wave of agony.

She’d grabbed hold of one of the blades protruding from the train’s metal skin, barbs that protected it from raiders dropping onto the cars exactly as she’d just done. Looking around, Piper cringed. She sat in a nest of the blades—luck alone had saved her from impaling herself when she fell.

It felt like her hand was on fire. Warm blood filled her palm and spilled over. Gingerly, Piper let go of the blade and clutched her sleeve to try to staunch some of the bleeding. With her other hand, she braced herself against the roof of the car, acutely aware that there was no safety harness to keep her from falling.

Piper struggled to get her bearings. She was near the front of the train. The smoke had cleared somewhat, and she saw there were fewer gliders, but Gee had disappeared too. Behind her, toward the middle of the train, two gliders had managed to latch on to the cars with grappling hooks, and the raiders were swinging down the ropes.