The cruiser wouldn’t go down, not like the little security craft. Its armor plating wasn’t as dense and reliable as the Valkyrie’s outer hull; but the cruiser was lighter and more maneuverable, and it could take a bigger beating than anything else anywhere near them. It rocked under the assault of Maria’s firepower but it didn’t crack, split or fall out of the sky.
She scanned the thing for a weak point, but as she’d already confessed, she didn’t know anything about dirigibles so she shouted over the whirring rumble of the churning barrels, “Captain!”
“What?”
“What do I aim for?”
He yelled back, “Aim for the goddamned ship!”
“Be more specific! Does it have a weak spot?”
There was a pause. Then he yelled, “You won’t take their tanks; they’re covered up good. Crack for the engines, down underneath!”
“Got it!” she said, and she used her body’s weight to crank the gun around, back at the cruiser, which was winding itself up for a direct assault.
“Good! Now hang on-we’re going to have to ram that last little bastard! Keep shooting for the cruiser! Keep it off our tail so we can clear the other one out of the sky! It’s staying up too high for you to hit it from down there!”
She didn’t respond but she felt the surge of the ship taking some new path, coiling itself up again, building the inertia to crash the smaller craft down to earth, and back behind them. The underside ball turret teetered up, giving her a few seconds of a breathtaking stomach drop and a clear shot at the cruiser, so she took it-she shifted her weight and kicked the gun crossways with her knees, changing the aim to shoot for the cruiser’s protruding engines. They were mounted on its underside, thrusters that steered and powered the forward motion of the machine; and in front of those powerful machines, automatic guns were mounted on pivoting arms.
The cruiser’s guns cranked, twisted, and fired at the Valkyrie, and the Valkyrieshook off the shots with a grumpy spin and a dip, but then recovered. The pursuing ship unleashed another set of rapid-fire rounds, determined to force the bird back down to earth.
One of the birdshot rounds punched hard against the reinforced glass of the ball turret, striking to Maria’s left with a concussion that made her ears ring and her head pound. When her vision had cleared she wiggled the gun back and forth, making sure it was still solidly affixed; and then she spied the long chip and fine line of a split that was creaking its way along the glass. The round hadn’t penetrated, but it had broken the small dome and God only knew how much longer it’d hold.
But Maria had another good shot, and she took it.
She rocked the active switch and crushed her hands around the oversized triggers, throwing another dozen slugs at the cruiser-this time aiming lower. Though the gun was almost impossible to guide with any finesse, she did her damnedest and the gun responded better than she had any right to expect. The arc of the bullets dipped and cut a punctured line along the lower hull of the cruiser, and one of the last slugs clipped the bottom left thruster-lodging inside it, perhaps, or maybe only blasting through it.
The thruster sparked and smoked, but didn’t fail altogether…and she couldn’t tell if any real damage had been done because at that moment, the Valkyriecollided head-on with the second smaller vessel, and the sound of an explosion shook the bird hard from the far side, relative to Maria’s captive position in the ball turret.
She clung to the gun though the heat of it warmed her too much through her clothes and through the big gloves that flopped around on her fingers. The split on the glass stretched-she watched it widen like a smile, and she held her breath.
The weight of the automatic gun and the weight of the glass itself, not to mention the weight of Maria’s body suspended there, thighs clenched around a narrow seat meant for a man…how much would the wounded bubble hold? She closed her eyes and waited for the Valkyrieto settle, and as the ship rolled she saw the other small ship toppling down to earth in a widening ball of fire that drew a comet’s tail of soot and sparks down through the sky.
Had there been another ship? She couldn’t remember.
Too many things to keep track of at once.
But the cruiser was still there, hovering-she could see it again when the Valkyrieswung itself around, pulling out of the spin and righting itself. The cruiser was blowing smoke, but not very much of it. She’d nicked something important but it wasn’t enough to slow their pursuer so she rounded the gun again and, praying she had enough ammunition to keep the threat coming, she clamped down on the triggers and blew more air-to-air birdshot slugs into the clouds.
The cruiser fired back, but it leaned backwards and the shots went too high to do more than graze the edge of the Valkyrie’s hull.
Along the glass the crack’s smile stretched all the longer, and now it was accompanied by the sickening, deep tinkle of ice that won’t hold for more than another few minutes.
“Captain!” she shouted.
“What now?”
“I have to…” The ball shifted and Maria’s seat dropped half an inch that nearly stopped her heart. She released her grip on the gun and scrambled backward, off the seat and in hurried retreat until she had one leather-booted foot on the edge.
A whistling hiss joined the slow shatter; air was entering from somewhere, and it was colder than ordinary winter. It smelled like water.
“Oh Jesus,” she swore as she got one hand up over the edge, but the gloves she wore were meant for a man more than twice her size and she lost her grip; she relaxed her fingers, swung her hand, and the gloves flew off, then she grabbed again at the edge and found it. She was suspended that way, using the width and breath of her reach to hoist herself above the glass ball with the rocking gun, and the glass ball was breaking beneath her. Hinges were stretching with unfamiliar unevenness and the pressure of the craft’s motion was tugging the turret apart.
The cruiser reared into view, once more, and much closer. It was coming in fast and high-its underbelly exposed, its lower engines and thrusters a target almost too sweet to resist. But the glass was splitting and the gun, which was mounted on a set of tracks, was drooping as the structure failed.
She braced her feet, pinning them against the curved rim of the glass bowl; she released one hand’s worth of grip, and when she put her fingertips on the back end of the gun’s firing mechanism, it was so frigid that she nearly stuck to it. The air that seeped and squirted into the ball and up against Maria’s face was bitterly cold but she worked against it, straining to feel her way up to the trigger paddle even from her precarious position.
The cruiser wouldn’t hold its position long, but she couldn’t hold her position long either and it was a war of time between her muscles, the glass ball turret, and the cruiser’s path.
With the cold air came cold water, condensing and freezing, and Maria’s buttressing hand slid. She grappled for her handhold and lost it, and was an instant shy of toppling down onto the increasingly fragile surface below her when an enormous black hand seized her scrambling fingers.
She whipped her head around to see Croggon Hainey, feet planted apart, and shortly with both hands wrapped around her wrist.
“Woman, are you mad?” he demanded.
She said, “Yes! Or no! Or look-” and she pointed at the cruiser with its upturned belly. “I can take it down!”