The workers slacked off the lines on the deck gun once it was in place. Moggs with heavy iron mauls circled the gun and pounded red-hot rivets into the weapon's pedestal. Sparks flew, and when other moggs threw cold water on the rivets to harden them in place, gouts of steam clouded the deck.
It was opportunity sent by the gods. Sivi frantically waved her men forward, and one by one they dropped from the crane to the vacant quarterdeck.
They crouched along the port bulwark and worked their way aft to some open hatches. They heard voices and sounds of work below.
Medd looked to their leader. "What now?"
"There must be flammables on a ship like this," she said. "Oil, niter, liquor, something. We'll search below decks until we find some, then phutt!" She tossed a hand in the air. The rebels nodded solemnly.
They were about to ease down the first open hatch when a dock worker popped out unexpectedly. He stared at the five Rathi soldiers huddled there.
"What?" was all he managed to say before the rebels dragged him out and pounded him unconscious. They shoved him in a scupper, out of sight.
Sivi unslung the toten-vec. With gestures she indicated she'd go first.
Step by step, she descended the wide ladder into the ship. The air was heavy with the smell of hot metal and freshly cut wood. Sivi let the knife head of her weapon dangle by a few inches of cord. A mogg came out of a side cabin, a bundle of reinforcing rods on his shoulder. He didn't see Sivi frozen like a statue a few feet behind him, so he kept going. She flattened against the bulkhead and peered around the open door. Two more moggs were working inside, bolting rods to the outer hull plating. Sivi waved for her companions to slip past. When they were clear, she boldly walked by the open door, whip hanging loosely from her hand.
They descended two decks and reached an open ventilator shaft above the engine compartment. The ventilator was four feet square, and the metal grating normally covering it was dismounted and leaning against the aft bulkhead. Hot, humid air rose from the quiescent motor. Sivi risked discovery to gaze down into the engine room. She counted five Dal workmen wiping down the powerstone accumulators with rags, polishing the brass fittings until they gleamed like gold. Sivi sniffed. Mineral spirits… that would burn nicely.
Where were they getting it from? She leaned out farther. The workmen were passing a tin bucket around, dipping their rags in and wringing out the excess. When the bucket was empty, they refilled it from a cask standing nearby. "This is it," she whispered. "Get ready."
They poised themselves around the hole. When four workmen were in sight, Sivi nodded, and they dropped one after the other on the unsuspecting men.
The unarmed rebels surprised the workmen and quickly pummeled them into submission. Sivi was hurling one man headfirst against the bulkhead when the fifth Dal returned with a bucketful of mineral spirits. He dropped the container and shouted for help. Engine noise drowned him out. He turned, but before he ran two steps Sivi unleashed the toten-vec. She made a single underhand cast. With a snap, the knife blade spun through the air at the end of its chain and took the fleeing man in the back. He froze, arms outstretched, as if turned to stone. Sivi yanked the totenvec, and the return impetus spun the man back to fall dead at her feet.
The other rebels looked on in awe. "Did you think it was a toy? Get that barrel over here," she said.
The group wrestled the heavy cask to the starboard side of the engine. Sivi leaned in, and the three of them toppled the barrel over. Brownish mineral spirits washed down the deck, filling the air with a pungent aroma.
Medd turned his head to avoid the fumes. "Someone will notice the smell,"
Someone did. The second after his sentence, a heavy wrench hurtled from above, catching one of the Dal in the forehead. He fell like a poleaxed kerl. The rebels looked up and saw the ventilator opening was lined with moggs, growling, gibbering, and waving hand tools.
A barrage of wrenches and mauls banged off the bulkhead and engine housing. Sivi and Medd leaped one way, Khalil and Langwin the other. A couple of moggs got carried away and jumped into the compartment. The floor was slick with spirits, and they slipped and fell heavily. This didn't prevent other moggs from leaping down on top of their friends. Two of them fell on the helpless Dal who had been hit by the wrench and clubbed him to death. The remaining rebels were divided by the massive engine and a growing swarm of moggs.
A mogg, covered in spirits, got up waving his maul. Sivi flicked the toten-vec blade into his warty chest. It hardly seemed to mind. She and Medd exchanged worried looks.
"They're tougher than they look," Medd observed.
Sivi frowned. "I just have to find a soft spot."
She did, burying the eight-inch iron blade in the mogg's left eye. It shrieked and fell, kicking the deck with its stumpy legs.
"Let's get out of here!" Medd shouted. "Khalil! Langwin! Try to make it to the main deck!"
Langwin dodged a blow and waved that he understood.
"We need a torch!" Sivi cried.
A wrench caromed off the bulkhead beside his head. The tool scraped against his borrowed helmet.
"Flint? Steel?"
"I thought this was a raid, not a camping trip!"
They backed out the forward hatch. Medd slammed shut the door. A thrown maul proved useful in jamming the latch.
Footsteps pounded on the deck above. Sivi and Medd ran forward, eyeing the ceiling.
"Sounds like a hundred," the Dal rebel said.
Sivi looked thoughtfully at the ceiling. "No more than sixty, I'd say." The passage ahead was still clear. "Watch that way!" she said. Medd hovered by the next door, dividing his attention between the corridor and what Liin Sivi was doing.
She spotted a lamp on the wall. It was on a pivot, to freely adjust to whatever attitude the airship assumed. Putting aside the toten-vec, she grabbed the lamp in both hands and succeeded in breaking it off. She adjusted the wick control and the lamp began to glow.
Volatile spirit was leaking under the engine room hatch. Predator was trimmed heavy at the bow because the deck gun had just been mounted, so the spill was slowly flowing forward. Sivi stood back and hurled the glowing lamp at the darkening pool seeping under the door. The lamp shattered. The light went out. "Damn! Their lamps don't use flame." Two workmen appeared in the passage. They ducked when the totenvec came whistling their way and quickly fled. "What now?" asked Medd. "We've got to do some damage," said Sivi. "Could we use the big crane outside? Batter the ship with it?" "That works for me. Let's go!" They ran down the long passage, crossing the hold on a narrow catwalk. The interior of the airship had the same zoological quality as the Citadel, and running through it was like traversing the belly of a great beast. The deck was planked with wood, but the bulkheads and ribs of the vessel were some sort of reddish alloy, between metal and bone.
At last the passage ended, and they found a metal ladder leading up. Sivi climbed. When she poked her head out, a crossbow bolt plunked into the deck. The fletching creased her cheek. She ducked so fast she knocked Medd off the ladder below her.
"Are we trapped?" asked Medd, rubbing his hip.
"Not yet."
She let the toten-vec dangle down the steps. With a quick flick, she tossed the knife head out the hatch and whipped it in the direction the arrow came from. It stuck in something. Sivi tugged; it resisted. She raised her head enough to see she'd killed the bowman, but the toten-vec's cord was entangled in the dead man's crossbow.
The deck was clear. They scrambled out and slammed the hatch. Khalil and Langwin were ahead on the main bridge, besieged by swarms of angry moggs.