Four horses each were hitched to the wagons, with drivers ready to pull and run at the first sign of danger.
“We’ll have to watch out for those,” Simeon said. “We should let them get the Free Crow off the dock and moving. We can’t take a chance with the Rattler, not this close to the dock. One stray bullet and we’ll blow the whole thing to hell, ourselves included.”
The captain said, “I know, I know.” And he did know, but he hated letting the Free Crow rise-knowing that it was about to run again, and knowing he was so damn close and he might fail anyway. A plan snapped quickly together in his head, and he spit it out while it still sounded good. He said, “We’ll get up under them, and deploy our hooks. We’ll pin this boat to our bird, reverse the thrusters, and drag us both down.”
“You want to crash us all together?” Lamar nearly squeaked. “I don’t think this ship can take it.”
“I don’t either. But the Free Crow can, and that’s the only ship I’m worried about. If we both go to ground, we can take Brink and his boys apart, man to man.”
“Or man to Rattler,” Simeon grinned.
“Whatever it takes. We’ll clean them out of our bridge and take our bird back, and that’ll be the end of it.” He said the last part fast, because the nameless ship was closing in swift and low on the Free Crow, and Felton Brink was no doubt very, very aware that Croggon Hainey was incoming and unhappy.
Simeon’s half-smile deteriorated. He made a suggestion phrased as a question. “Shouldn’t we cut the thrusters? At this rate we’re going to ram them.”
“So we’ll ram them,” Hainey said. “My bird can take it. Ready the hooks, mate. We won’t have long to fire them. We’ll catch them on the ricochet.”
Lamar choked on one response and offered another. “You want to hit them, then grab them on the bounce?”
“Something like that, yeah. And buckle yourselves down, if you aren’t already. Something aboard this bird is just about bound to break.” He braced his legs against the underside of the console, setting his feet to the rudders and refusing to reach for the brake.
In those last few seconds, as the dirigible swooped down its interim captain watched his own craft shudder in the air, struggling to take to the clouds. He looked down at the plains and saw the portable gasworks beginning to fold under the panicked hands of the men who ran it. Below, they disengaged the frames and hollered at the horses to move, even before they were holding the reins; and Hainey understood. No man in his right mind wanted to get between a big set of hydrogen tanks and a firefight.
They were so close now, Hainey could see the horse’s mouths chomping against the bits, and the strain of their haunches as they surged to move the wagons. He could see the hasty streaks of a too-rushed paint job on the side of his former craft, covering up the silver painted words that said Free Crow.
It was a ridiculous thing that Brink had done, sillier than sticking a false nose or mustache on the president of the United States. No air pirate at any port on any coast would have mistaken the repurposed war dirigible for any other vessel.
“Sir-” Simeon said, but he had nothing to follow it.
“Hang on,” Hainey said to his first mate and engineer. His feet jammed against the pedals to turn the ship, and it turned, slowly, shifting midair and sliding sideways almost underneath the Free Crow-until the front deployment hooks were aimed at the only place where there wasn’t any armor. Then he ordered, “Fire hooks!”
Simeon didn’t ask questions. He jerked the console lever and a loud pop announced the hooks had been projected from their moorings. The hissing fuss of hydraulics filled the cabin but it wasn’t half so important as the scraping thunk of the hooks hitting home.
“Cut thrusters, and retract!” Hainey shouted. “Retract, retract, retract!”
Simeon flipped the winding crank out of its holding seam and turned it as fast as he could, his elbow pumping like a train’s pistons until the nameless ship’s shifting position became more than a tip-it was a tilt, and a firm, decided lean. “Got it sir,” he said, puffing hard and then gasping with surprise when his elbow was forced to stop. “That’s as far as we can bring them back.”
“It’s enough,” Hainey swore, and it must have been, because the nameless ship was swaying all but sideways, drawn up underneath the Free Crow.
The Free Crow’s left thruster fired up against the nameless ship’s hull, down at the cargo bay where it scorched a streak of peeling paint and straining, warping metal. The engine chewed hard at the unimportant bits of the latched-on ship, but the ships were bound together like bumblebees mating and now, they could only move together.
Hainey’s thrusters had been cut at the collision, and inertia pushed the ships together in a ballroom sway that made a wide arch away from the temporary docks. Locked as they were, the ships made half of a massive, terrible spiral until the right thrusters on the Free Crow blasted out a full-power explosion-jerking both the vessels and tightening the gyre until the ships were simply spinning together, a thousand feet above the plains.
Within the nameless ship all men grasped everything solid, and Simeon even closed his eyes. He said, “Sir, I don’t know if I can-”
“You can take it,” Hainey told him. “Hang on, and hang in there. We’re going down.”
“Down?” Lamar asked, as if saying it aloud might change the answer.
“Down,” the captain affirmed. “But it’s a carousel of the damned we’ve got here; it’s…hang on. Jesus, just hang on.”
The landscape rotated in the windshield, pirouetting first to the brown grasslands below, and then to the brilliant blue and white sky, and then back to the horizon line, which leaped alarmingly, and then again, to the earth that was coming up so fast.
In glimpses, in those awful seconds between spinning and falling and crashing, Hainey saw a tiny corner of the Free Crow’s front panel and he could spy, through the glass, a tumbling terror on the deck of his beloved ship-and it pleased him. He tried to count, in order to make something productive of the frantic moments; he saw the red-haired captain, and a long-haired man who might’ve been an Indian. He saw a helmeted fellow, he thought; and for a moment he believed he saw a second long-haired man, but he might’ve been wrong.
The ground lurched up and the nameless ship lurched down, until there was nothing else to be seen out through the windshield and the end was most certainly nigh. Hainey covered his head with his hands and Simeon propped his feet up on the console, locking his legs and ducking his own head too.
And a tearing, ripping, snapping noise was accompanied by a yanking sensation.
“What was that?” Lamar shrieked.
No one knew, so no one answered-not until the second loud breaking launched the nameless ship loose from the Free Crow, and flung it into the sky.
“The cables!” Hainey hollered, calling attention to the problem even as it was far too late to do anything about it. “Thrusters, air brakes, all of it, on, now!” He slapped at the buttons to ignite the thrusters again and tried to orient himself enough to steer, but the ship was light and it was flying as if clipped from a centrifuge and they were no longer falling, but destined to fall and to skid.