The warlord laughed. It sounded like obscene thunder. Then he said, “MILO HAZE DEAD? KILLED BY A CYBEROID? How VERY DROLL… SO NOW, GIRL, CEASE YOUR GAMES AND LET MY SHIP COME ALONGSIDE.”
Jan glanced at the monitor screens. Hundreds of the metal spiders were streaming out on to the upper hull. She saw swords flashing as the Japanese tried to defend themselves. She said to the warlord, “I have the means to destroy you. I have full control of the laser system. Unless you agree to my demands, I will open fire.”
The warlord was silent for a short time, then said, “YOU ARE BLUFFING, GIRL. AND AT ANY MOMENT NOW MY SAMURAI WILL BE IN YOUR CONTROL ROOM.”
“Your samurai are being defeated,” Jan told him. “There are robots on board this ship. Like the lasers, they are under my control. Will you listen to my demands now?”
Ashley said, “Why bother with demands? Let’s just blow him out of the sky.”
“I want Ceri, if she’s still alive.”
“Yeah, but you said yourself that if she was still alive she’d be on the other ship. So let’s start shooting. One laser beam and all that hydrogen will go up a real treat.”
“GIRL, YOU ARE AN ANNOYANCE. MY RETRIBUTION WILL SEEM EVERLASTING.”
Jan was tempted to do what Ashley suggested, but she couldn’t bring herself to give the order. For the second time she was unable to destroy the Lord Pangloth. “There are women and children on board. I can’t murder them,” she told Ashley. “Instead, I want you and Carl to start shooting at the Lord Pangloth’s thrusters. Destroy them all.”
“Awwww, that’s no fun.”
“Do as I say,” ordered Jan. Here was the first test. Who was really in control of the Sky Angel?
A thin line of turquoise light suddenly appeared between one of the Lord Pangloth’s thrusters and an unseen point above the Sky Angel’s control room. The metal casing of the thruster began to blacken and curl. More beams of light appeared. Other thrusters on the Lord Pangloth began to shrivel, like pieces of fruit thrown on a fire.
The warlord gave a scream of rage.
The Lord Pangloth began to go out of control. Neither its helmsmen nor computer could compensate for the sudden loss of so many thrusters along the port side. It went into a tight turn, while at the same time losing altitude.
The Sky Angel, manoeuvring with a speed and grace that the Sky Lords had lost centuries ago, followed the Lord Pangloth down. The turquoise lines continued to form in the air. More thrusters became twisted and dead.
“GIRL! GIRL!” bellowed the warlord. “I WILL TALK WITH YOU! CEASE YOUR FIRING. WE WILL BARGAIN TOGETHER! WHAT DO YOU WANT?”
“It’s too late for that now,” Jan told him coldly.
“That’s the lot,” Ashley informed her. “Every thruster is kaput. Now let’s take care of the rudders and elevators as well.”
Jan watched as the beams sliced through the Lord Pangloth’s great tailplane and side fins like knives. When they were finished the Lord Pangloth was completely helpless. It was now at the mercy of the winds. Nose drooping, it drifted over the city. The huge painted eyes on it bow, which had once created so much fear in Jan, now looked almost comical to her.
“TALK TO ME, WOMAN! I WILL LISTEN TO YOUR DEMANDS!”
“How are we doing with the samurai?” Jan asked Ashley.
“The ones who got inside are dead,” said Ashley. “Some on the hull escaped in their gliders; those who didn’t are dead too.”
So much killing, thought Jan bleakly, but there had been no choice. “Right,” she said. “Now let’s go and deal with the Perfumed Breeze.”
The commander of the Perfumed Breeze, on witnessing the fate of the Lord Pangloth, had turned his ship around and fled at top speed. But the Sky Angel, with the advantage of a full complement of working thrusters, caught up with it easily. Its commander, a Japanese, spoke no English but Carl was able to broadcast Jan’s demands for surrender in perfect Japanese. The commander refused at first, and fired off a few shells in the Sky Angel’s direction in a token show of resistance. But when the Sky Angel’s lasers incinerated the first of the irreplaceable thrusters the Japanese commander quickly gave in.
Accompanied by an escort of ten of the metal spiders, Jan went on board the Perfumed Breeze. She expected trouble, but there was none at all. The commander and his men were surprisingly submissive, and everywhere she went she was met with bowed heads and samurai offering her their swords. But the Americano captives from the Lord Pangloth, she quickly saw, had been living in terrible conditions under the Japanese; conditions that made her own period of slavery seem humane by comparison.
As she visited yet another stinking room that served as the living quarters for up to thirty starved-looking Americanos, she was surprised when a tall scarecrow of a man covered in sagging flesh pushed his way forward and fell on his knees in front of her. “My dear girl, save me, I beg you, from this living hell!” he cried, wringing his hands. “Remember how I helped you? How I fed and sheltered you … ?”
With a shock, she realized that the man before her was Guild Master Bannion. She touched the brand on her cheek. “Yes, I remember all right. And in gratitude for all you did for me I won’t order my metal friends here to dismember you on the spot.” Then she strode from the room. A teacher had told her once that getting one’s revenge on someone was always an unsatisfactory experience, but she discovered that it actually felt quite pleasant. …
She searched on and on through the Lord Pangloth, looking at the thin and drawn faces and asking the same question endlessly. Then finally, in the fiftieth or hundredth stinking, over-crowded room, she found her.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Physically, the warlord was sitting in his throne room, but his mind was elsewhere, lost in some mental cul-de-sac deep within his skull. The floor of the throne room was tilted both forward and to the starboard. The Lord Pangloth was listing badly and still losing altitude. It had first been carried in an easterly direction; then the wind had changed, and it was now drifting over the ocean. If the warlord had been aware of his surroundings he could have turned on his throne and seen, through the great slanted windows of the bow, the grey and choppy surface of the sea getting closer by the minute.
Equally ignored was the body of his chief pilot, which had slid, leaving a trail of lubricating blood, several feet from the spot in front of the throne where the warlord had carried out a crude trepanning operation on him with his long sword.
The pilot had had the unfortunate task of informing the warlord that there was no hope of saving the Lord Pangloth. Without the thrusters or the elevators there was no way of maintaining a safe altitude. The lift provided by the gas in the cells wasn’t sufficient, mainly because Cell number Seven had never been able to function at full capacity again. Everything that could be thrown overboard had been, including—on the warlord’s orders—three hundred ‘expendable’ people.
From that point on the warlord had retreated within himself and ignored all subsequent, nervous approaches from his anxious officers and servants. They had given up now, and waited for the inevitable with their customary stoicism. None of them even contemplated the dishonourable idea of making an escape from the doomed airship by means of their gliders.