As he came ever lower Jan was gripped by an atavistic fear that she’d experienced before on these occasions. It seemed that the Lord Pangloth was going to settle right on top of the town, crushing them and their buildings under his weight. Jan fought to control a growing sense of panic. Martha’s high-pitched keening didn’t help.
The Lord Pangloth stopped descending. He remained suspended some fifteen hundred feet above Minerva, his great eyes staring down. As usual Jan believed they were staring straight at her.
There was a loud hiss, then a crackling sound. Then a voice that boomed like thunder began to speak: “I AM THE LORD PANGLOTH, MASTER OF THE SKIES AND ALL THAT LIES BENEATH MY SHADOW. SEE ME AND TREMBLE! (Click!) You ARE MY SUBJECTS TO DO WITH AS I PLEASE! I COULD DESTROY YOU LIKE THE EARTHWORMS THAT YOU ARE BUT I AM MERCIFUL.(Click!) IN RETURN FOR THE TRIBUTE YOU ARE ABOUT TO OFFER UP TO ME I SHALL SPARE YOUR LIVES. THEREFORE MAKE THE SIGNAL THAT YOU ARE READY TO OFFER UP THAT WHICH IS RIGHTFULLY MINE. (Click! Crackle!) FAIL TO DO SO AND MY RETRIBUTION WILL BE SWIFT AND TERRIBLE … TERRIBLE … TERRIBLE. …” The voice stopped abruptly.
Jan frowned. Lord Pangloth’s ultimatum was the same as usual but the clicks and crackling sounds, as well as the repetition of the last word, were new. These additional changes from the normal pattern of events bothered her as well.
She tore her gaze away from the Sky Lord’s frightening mass and watched Avedon light the fire on the dais that was the signal to the Lord Pangloth that the tribute was ready to be picked up. Her heart began to pound. Not long now.
As the smoke rose from the symbolic pyre she returned her gaze to the Lord Pangloth. She tried to remember what her mother had told her, that first time when she was a little girclass="underline" “Don’t be scared, dear. It’s only an airship. A left-over toy from the Age of Man’s Wickedness. It looks big and powerful but there’s hardly anything inside it—just a few men and a lot of gas.”
It’s only an airship. Jan repeated those words to herself. But in vain. The Lord Pangloth may have been only an airship but it was an airship over five thousand feet long and nearly a thousand feet wide. Jan knew its dimensions only too well. And telling herself that its awesome bulk was a kind of illusion—that it was mostly filled with gas—didn’t help. It had when she was a child but no longer.
An airship? No, it was a floating city. A floating fortified city. She could see the barrels of the death machines called cannons protruding from various points of the hull like stubble on a giant’s chin. She could see rows of windows, decks, hatchways—and the barrel-shaped engines, each one the size of a wheat silo, which made a powerful, disturbing hum that was almost like the rumble of distant thunder. How many sky people lived within that monstrous flying machine? No one knew for sure. A thousand, perhaps. Or even two thousand.
The sound from the Lord Pangloth’s engines changed pitch. Jan saw the engines suspended beneath the great stabilizing fins at the rear swivel round on their axis. …
The Sky Lord stopped descending. Jan estimated it was now at an altitude of only six hundred or so feet. Well within the range of the rockets. She glanced down at the dais again. Any moment now.
“Get ready,” she told her team. Her voice sounded like a stranger’s. “Martha, shut up.”
“Here it comes!” cried Lisa. Jan looked up. A large section of the Lord Pangloth’s hull had become detached and was being lowered towards the ground on cables attached to its sides. Jan knew that it was the ‘tribute’ cradle. She also knew that it would contain a squad of armed Sky Warriors whose job it was to search all the bales of grain before they were hoisted upwards. She could see one of them leaning over the rail and looking down. The cradle appeared to be dead on target for the centre of the square even though it was swaying about in a stiff breeze that had sprung up. Jan hoped the wind wouldn’t affect the rockets. It certainly had no apparent affect on the Sky Lord, who hung rock-steady above the town. She guessed its many engines served to compensate for all but the strongest of winds.
The descending cradle was now only about a hundred and fifty feet above the ground. The Sky Warriors, looking like giant crustaceans in their layered, carapace-like black armour, could be plainly seen. Jan glanced anxiously at the dais. What was her mother waiting for? Had she lost her nerve …?
There was a flash on the dais and then something was rising into the air trailing red smoke. For a few seconds Jan just stared at it, her body paralysed, then she managed to turn and scream at her team: “Now! Now!…”
They ripped away the camouflaged cover and hauled the launching frame upright while Jan worked frantically at her flint wheel, trying to get a good spark. “Ready, Mistress!” cried Paula. Just then Jan succeeded in setting light to her taper, to her intense relief. Shielding the flame with her hand she knelt down at the base of the tubes and applied the taper to each fuse in turn. When she was sure all three were spluttering she yelled, “Take cover!”
The others, including Martha, were already huddled behind the wooden barrier at the far end of the roof as Jan skidded round its corner and flung herself flat.
For a few long moments nothing at all, and then came a deafening whoosh!
As the sound faded away Jan, ignoring the sparks that were showering down on the roof, got to her feet and looked up. The air seemed filled with rockets as they rose from every part of Minerva. Hundreds and hundreds of them, and all heading directly for the Sky Lord.
She saw two of the rockets hit the bottom of the cargo cradle. They exploded and suddenly the cradle was on fire.
We’re going to win! she told herself joyfully. We really are!
Chapter Four
They made their final stand at the hospital.
Partly because it was the only sizable building in Minerva still more or less intact but mainly because it was where all the survivors had automatically headed after the bombing.
Strategically, it was an ideal place to stage a last stand, if the word ‘ideal’ could be applied in such circumstances. It was set in its own grounds—one of the few buildings in Minerva to enjoy that luxury—and surrounded by a low wall; both hangovers from the bad old days when quarantines had been necessary.
Altogether there were eighty-six Minervans within the hospital and its grounds. Forty-seven of them were suffering serious injuries and were unable to fight. Of the remaining thirty-nine, all of whom bore injuries of varying degrees of severity, eleven were men who couldn’t be depended upon to fight. That left twenty-eight women, of whom only eighteen were professional warriors. One of the latter was Jan.
She stood at the hospital wall watching the Sky Warriors approach up the avenue. She held a loaded cross-bow. Blood was running down the side of her face from a gash on her head and there were lacerations on her arms and legs. Her ears were still ringing from the explosion that had sent her falling through the roof of the tavern, so she didn’t hear the warning yelled by the woman next to her. It was only when the woman yanked sharply on her elbow that she turned and saw that everyone else had taken cover behind the low wall. Slowly Jan sunk to her knees and rested the cross-bow on top of the wall. Everything seemed unreal. So much had happened during the last hour that her senses had become overloaded. The series of shocks had left her numb and feeling disconnected from what was going on around her. She felt no fear as the front line of advancing Sky Warriors halted and aimed their long-barrelled, single-shot rifles at the Minervan defenders. Jan knew about guns and was well aware of their destructive power but it was only when the woman beside her gave her arm another hard jerk that she lowered her head beneath the wall.