Centrifugal force was straining the interior, and the men and woman who struggled to hold themselves upright in their seats. Lamar’s hands flew over the valves and buttons, and Simeon dutifully pumped the stabilizers to pitch the craft forward-on a course directly between the two smaller ships.
“We’re bowling for birds!” the captain said almost gleefully, then added, “Impact in ten, nine, eight…hang on everybody…six…oh shit, I might be off a count or two-”
They collided, but just barely between the two security birds-winging the one and knocking the other hard enough to rock it out of its altitude. The crash was loud and the squeal of metal on metal was hard to listen to; but smoke puffed from the right side engine of the one o’clock ship, and it careened in a crazy, sinking pattern, headed back down to earth.
“We didn’t get the both of them!” Maria said.
The captain said, “I know it, and I thought I told you to be quiet!”
“No,” she corrected him. “It was your first mate. But I’ll add that to your pile of suggestions.”
“Woman! Don’t you antagonize me! Can’t you see we’re busy?”
Lamar swallowed hard and said, “We’re about to get busier. Two more dirigibles-one official security detail, it looks like…and one…sir, it looks like a Union cruiser.”
“Goddamn,” the captain said. He gritted his teeth while he wrestled with the knobs to steady the craft, and drag it out of its spinning whirl. Then he said, “We might have to make a run for it. Those security tweeters can’t be holding much live freight, but a cruiser…we don’t know. If we had another three or four men handy, that’d be one thing. Lamar, you said the primary weapons systems were all working?”
“That’s right. Nothing wrong with any of them, and the secondaries are probably fine too-but we don’t have time to figure out how to work them, and anyway, it’s just the three of us.”
“Four of us,” Maria said from her seat.
“I beg your pardon?” Hainey asked, finally turning around to see what she was doing.
She was unbuckling herself.
“Four of us. You don’t have another three or four men, but you’ve got an able-bodied woman on board, and I’ve fired more kinds of guns in my day then most men have ever held.”
“You’ve lost your ever-loving mind,” Simeon swore at her, and said, “Get back down in your chair. Ain’t nobody here trusts you with a firearm, much less with a gun turret, you crazy woman.”
“She can shoot,” Hainey said. “I’ve heard about her. I know she can shoot.”
“Yes, she can shoot,” Maria said impatiently. “And she wants to get far enough out of town for you to set her down, so we can have a civilized conversation about how I’m bringing you home for justice’s sake-but she can’t very well do that if she dies up here in the clouds, now can she?”
Simeon almost laughed. He said, “Hey, Captain, she wants to save our hides so she can tan them later. What do you think of that?”
“I think we’re desperate and she wants to live long enough to have that conversation. Lamar?”
“Yes sir?”
“Which turret has the best range?”
“Sir, you can’t be serious?”
“He’s serious,” Maria answered for him. “Put me where I can make the most trouble.”
“Sir, the bottom left turret probably has the best range. The right one is pinned so it can’t take out the right engine, and it has less room to swivel. The left one’s mounted lower, so it won’t clip our own armor when it fires.”
“Then show her how it works. You know how it works, don’t you man?” Hainey was still lifting the ship, drawing it higher and higher, up into the sky, doing his best to show the intruders nothing but the underside of the craft.
“I know how it works,” he said, lifting himself out of the seat and with great trepidation, gesturing to Maria Boyd. “This way, over here. Down in the cargo bay.”
Simeon’s voice rose in disbelief. “You’re going to put that woman behind a powerful gun, someplace where you can’t even see her?”
“Any port in a storm, isn’t that what they say?” the captain responded. “She can’t shoot us from down there, anyway. She could’ve shot us better from her seat by the right turret.”
“Point taken,” Simeon said, but it was said with complaint.
Down the cargo stairs and over by the bottom left turret, Lamar stood beside Maria Boyd and hemmed uncertainly. “Ma’am,” he said, “I don’t know about this. You’ll hardly fit, wearing that.”
“Well I’m not going to strip, so I’ll have to fit. Is this a Gatling? A four-eighty model, with the automatic line feed? They must’ve modified it for air use. I’ve seen them on the ground, and been behind one-once or twice.”
Lamar’s brows knitted together to form a very puzzled V. “Yes…yes ma’am? I believe so? If it’s not a four-eighty, it’s a four-ninety-and they work pretty much the same way. So you…you know what to do with it?”
“I know what to do with it. One thing: Do you have a mask down here? Something to keep the heat off my face and the powder out of my eyes? I can operate one of these things just fine, but they make my eyes water like mad.”
Lamar nodded. “There’s a line of them, hanging around the corner. I’ll get you one,” he said, and he dashed to the row of pegs along the cargo wall. He grabbed the nearest mask as well as the gloves that were stuffed inside it, and he ran back to the low glass turret, where Maria Boyd had somehow managed to cram her entire bulk of skirts and corsetry into the chamber-but beside the chamber was a stack of undergarments.
The engineer handed her the mask while staring at the petticoats.
“I know I said I wasn’t going to strip, but I had to make room, you understand.”
“Yes ma’am,” he said, and if Maria Boyd had known him any better, she would’ve gathered that he was blushing.
Hainey hollered from the bridge. “Can you see all right down there?”
“Give me a moment!” she cried back.
“We don’t have a moment!”
“I’m getting my mask on!” she told him. “Now, all right. I’m ready and yes, I can see. Three o’clock, six o’clock, and…and I can’t see the third ship!”
“He’s in front of us, working up to playing chicken!” Hainey called. “Lamar, get yourself back here! We need you at your station.”
“Coming sir!”
“And woman, you can hear me all right?”
“If you yell, I can hear you!” But when she turned the crank and turned the switch to start the gun revving, she wasn’t sure she’d continue to communicate so easily. Inside the glass bubble, suspended over the earth, Maria tried not to gaze down too long or too hard at the shrinking service yard docks, or the tiny blocks of Kansas City that were dropping away underneath her. It made her dizzy and almost nauseous, though she wouldn’t have confessed it if her life had depended on it.
She stuffed her hands into the gloves and they were far too big, but they’d keep the gun from burning her. The bottom of the glass ball vibrated with the gun’s power as it cranked, rolled, and hummed in its slot.
She took a deep breath, pointed the gun as best she could, and opened fire.
The kick thrust her hands back, jerking at her elbows and shoulders and beating them in her joints; but she held the thing steady and pushed her weight against it-holding its aim true and correct, and splitting the gas dome of the second security detail ship.
The craft exploded into a fireball so fast and hot that it flashed like a magician’s trick, no sooner burning than falling, and no sooner alight than dropping in a gyre’s course, like a soap bubble circling the drain.
But that was the easy one.
The second ship, the Union cruiser, was gaining ground fast from the other direction, not quite meeting the Valkyrie’s altitude but matching its pace-and soon, it would be out of her gun’s range. The gun’s cylindrical barrel purred as it spun, waiting for the directive to shoot; but Maria didn’t know how much ammunition she had, and she didn’t want to waste it so she waited until the cruiser was right in her crosshairs before squeezing off another brutal spray.