“It’s open. We can go in by thrusting ourselves through the membrane here.” Tikaya pushed her hand through a section of the hull to demonstrate. “We just have to climb up.”
Oh, right, Amaranthe should have mentioned that. She’d walked out a door like that during her escape.
“Let’s get to climbing then,” Maldynado said. “That black butt sniffer is getting closer.”
Butt sniffer? Basilard signed.
“That’s not quite how the original word translates.” Tikaya’s fingers disappeared into the hull as she gripped something behind the barrier-membrane, that’s what she’d called it. “Give me a boost, please, Mister Maldynado.”
“Yes, my lady.” Maldynado grabbed the bottoms of her feet and hoisted her up, perhaps with more vigor than expected, for a startled squawk floated down.
Tikaya made it inside though, her body disappearing in segments as she squirmed over the ledge.
“That looks so odd,” Maldynado said.
“Hoist her daughter up next,” Amaranthe said. “We should-”
“My bow!” came Tikaya’s voice from above. “Throw up my bow and my rucksack.”
Mahliki hissed. Maldynado snatched the longbow from where it leaned against the hull, threw it at the membrane, then reached for the pack. But Mahliki had it between her knees as she pawed through the contents.
“Here, we’ll throw the whole thing up.” Maldynado reached for it.
“No.” Mahliki pulled it back. “I know what she needs.” She yanked out a ceramic jar. “Mother, I have it. Can you catch it?”
A beam of red streaked out of the hull, out of the door-membrane.
Mahliki spat a Kyattese curse.
Basilard grabbed the jar in one arm and scrambled up a surprised Maldynado, launching himself from the bigger man’s shoulders. The force sent Maldynado tumbling backward into the snow, but Basilard reached the door and hauled himself inside.
“Me next,” Amaranthe barked, waving for Maldynado to hurry up and stand so he could give her a boost. Though curved, the Behemoth’s hull was too sheer for her to climb.
“Look out!” a man cried from the edge of the field. A rifle cracked.
Amaranthe crouched, her back to the Behemoth. She spotted two soldiers-two of the men who’d accompanied her team over here-one with a lantern, one holding a smoking rifle.
She assumed he was firing at the cube, but, no, it had drifted off to her left, toward the lake. There were more men in the shadows at the edge of the field, and something bulky with a-
“Down,” Maldynado barked, grabbing her leg.
In the same second that he yanked her from her feet, a thunderous boom sounded. Something head-sized hammered into the hull a few feet above them. Not head-sized, Amaranthe realized, cannonball-sized. Some idiots were trying to blow their way into the Behemoth.
The cannonball clanged off with as much force as it’d struck, taking off at an angle and sailing toward the lake, landing with a distant crack-splash. Amaranthe rolled from her back to her belly, pulling out her pistol again.
Excited chatter came from the direction of what she now recognized as a mobile field cannon.
“…why’d you shoot, dolt… they found a way in.”
“Can’t let others get in first… treasure…”
“Watch out for the…”
The pair of soldiers were charging toward the people manning the cannon. The snow slowed them down, and they didn’t cross the distance as quickly as they would have liked. A couple of the dark figures turned toward them. Nobody over there was holding a lamp, though someone held a burning brand, ready to load and light the cannon again. Amaranthe cut out their own remaining lantern and aimed her pistol at the brand. She didn’t want to hit anyone, but she did want to keep them from shooting at her allies.
“Owph,” Maldynado grunted, enduring a slap from Mahliki.
“Get up, and throw me up there. Mother’s in trouble, and your friend too.”
“Do it,” Amaranthe said, though she didn’t take her eye from her target. She fired.
The short-barreled pistol lacked the accuracy of the rifles, and there must have been fifty, sixty meters between them and the cannon, but the brand flew to the snow behind the shadowy figures. She’d either struck true or surprised the man enough for him to drop it.
Someone over there fired anyway, not at her, but at the approaching soldiers.
The two men dropped to their bellies in the snow. They were controlled drops, Amaranthe thought, not like one might see if a man received a rifle ball to the chest.
“Get rid of your lantern,” she called to the soldiers. The light made them easy to target.
The soldiers must have been thinking the same thing, for the lantern was extinguished immediately.
Another shot fired from the group by the cannon-they’d crouched down and were now using the big artillery piece for cover. The bullet clanged off the hull high overhead. Maldynado swore. It must have come close to hitting him. He was standing, having lifted Mahliki into the ship.
Amaranthe pulled ammo and powder out of her belt pouches, wondering how she hadn’t managed to retain any of Forge’s repeating firearms for herself.
A shot boomed not far from her ear, Maldynado unleashing a round at the relic raiders or whatever they were. For all she knew, they were some of Ravido’s soldiers, trying to recover tools or devices from within the Behemoth for his allies. No, the Forge people would have known enough to instruct those men on the proper way to enter the ship. A cannon. What idiots.
They continued to exchange fire with the pair of soldiers, who continued to shoot from their bellies. One of the men by the cannon cried out and flopped to his back. His fall didn’t stop his comrades from shooting.
“We might want to find better cover, boss,” Maldynado said, “if we’re staying out here.”
Amaranthe didn’t want to stay out there. She wanted to fling herself into the Behemoth and help the others with what had to be more of those cubes, cubes that might not be as defective as the one roaming about out here. A cannon could kill her just as dead as a beam of energy though.
As if to remind her of the fact, someone fired in their direction. She ducked her head. The rifle ball skimmed across the snow six inches to her right and ricocheted off the hull. She didn’t know where it went, but heard it whistle by her ear. Far too close for her tastes.
“Cover, where?” Amaranthe tried to wriggle deeper into the snow. “There aren’t any trees left around-there isn’t any anything left around.”
“Uhm-oh, those’ll be frozen solid.”
Without rising from his stomach, Maldynado grabbed one of the corpses and dragged it toward them. Amaranthe couldn’t squelch her grimace-or her squeamish repulsion at the idea of using dead human beings for cover.
Less squeamish, Maldynado did the work, piling the three corpses up in front of them. Before he’d finished, a rifle ball slammed into one, proving his words true. Frozen solid, indeed.
“Gruesome, but effective,” Maldynado said.
“I’ll say. All we’ve bought ourselves is a stand-off though. Those people probably brought tons of ammo to lay siege to the ship.”
“I could thump them all into the nearest snow drift if I could make it over there without being shot.” Maldynado pounded a fist into his gloved hand for emphasis.
He probably could if given the opportunity to hurl himself into the middle of the pack.
“So you need a distraction,” Amaranthe mused. “Where’d that cube go?”
Maldynado pointed far to their left, toward a couple of trees by the lake with the tops shorn off. “It’s been incinerating the fallen needles, one at a time, around the base of that pine.”
“Its job is to clean things, I understand.”