Wolf braced himself as he flicked through a fire burst. The oni bullets chewed through the other side of the restaurant. Apparently between Wolf’s sudden attack and Tommy clouding their minds, the oni were disoriented to where Wolf was really standing. The fire burst went off, igniting three of the oni into columns of flame.
Wolf slammed a force strike at the last oni. A second bloody star joined the first.
“What the fuck was that?” Tommy screamed. “She was dead! This does nothing but make you feel better! All those women and children are now dead because you had to be a hero!”
Someone as young as the half-oni couldn’t understand that to be immortal was to have forever to regret. Wolf knew if he had let the oni walk away unpunished, he would not be able to live with himself. But Tommy was right. He brought danger down on the rest — the human mothers and half-oni children.
“I’ll see that they’re safe until this is done.”
“Yeah, that will make the kids safe! Until you kill them for no other reason than their mothers were raped by the wrong species.”
“I give you my word — they will not be harmed.”
Tommy caught himself from saying anything else, and stood, fists balled, panting.
“Windwolf?” Oilcan murmured in Wolf’s ear. “If you’re the one that just took out the Chang’s restaurant, Malice is coming your way.”
Wolf glanced out in the street where the oni still burned like massive candles. “Malice is coming. Get the others. We need to move to someplace safe.”
Tommy’s cat ears flicked. “Oh fuck. He is.” Tommy went off to gather the women and children.
Wolf gazed again the wreckage he was leaving behind. Tinker was rubbing off on him.
Chapter 22: End Of The Rainbow
Briggs drove in the front while the rest of them sat in the back. Tinker had grabbed a flex screen from the ship and now spread it out on the floor. Downloading the dreadnaught’s layout and defenses, they planned the assault.
“The dreadnaught’s biggest weakness is that it wasn’t built with an aerial attack in mind. It’s like a turtle, with lots of service hatches down in through its shell. Also it tends to be blind in the butt. I was going to fix that with a turret on top.”
“Prince True Flame said that it was useless fighting the dragon because it couldn’t defend from attacks above.” Pony said.
“That’s true,” Tinker said. “So we’re going to have to kill Malice before he has a chance to close.”
“Oh, fun.” Esme muttered.
“But the airship is vulnerable to the tengu,” Tinker said. “I think if we fly up behind it, we can approach it unseen — but it leaves a very choppy wake.”
“We can handle it, domi.” Jin waved off the worry.
Domi. That drove her commitment to them home and left her a little breathless. I’m responsible for them — and I’m taking them straight into danger. But what recourse did she have? Just as the elves were not about to let the oni live, the oni couldn’t leave any of the elves alive either.
“We need three things.” Tinker forced herself to focus on the plan and not how badly it might end. “We need to keep the ship in the air, pick where it goes, and fire the cannons. So, that means, we need to secure the fore and aft engine compartments, the cannon turrets, and the bridge.”
Pony gazed at the plan for a moment, and then pointed to the access hatch nearest to the rear which opened to the aft engine compartment. “We’ll enter here. Once we’ve secured it, we’ll break into teams. These tengu are good with machines — yes?” Getting a nod from Tinker, Pony continued. “There are three doors to this area including the hatch, so Little Erget and four tengu will stay.”
Jin assigned Xiao Chen and two of the other tengu to the aft team.
“The rest of us will then move to the fore engine compartment and take it.” Pony traced a route across the top of the airship to the forward-most service hatch. “Four doors open to this area, but we’ll control what’s beyond these two doors. Rainlily and four of the tengu will hold this position. We split here. Domi and Cloudwalker will take the bridge with Esme, Jin and Durrack — which should be lightly manned and will have only one door not controlled by us. Stormsong and Briggs will come with me. We’ll take the main cannon turret — which will be heavily manned.”
Tinker explained how she planned to kill Malice. “Now when this spell goes off, you’re going to lose your shields and it might take a minute or two before normal level of magic is restored.” She warned her Hand. “Your beads should be protected from the spell effects, so if you save the power in them, you can recast your shields immediately.”
The sekasha nodded, indicating that they understood.
Durrack pressed his hand to his ear and listened to it intently. “Okay. Understand.” He knocked on the partition to the driver’s cabin. “Briggs? Where are we?”
“Nearly to McKees Rocks Bridge,” Briggs answered.
“The dreadnaught is here.” Durrack tapped the map just down river of Neville’s Island, and then ran a finger up the Ohio River towards Pittsburgh. “They’re following the river.”
“If we’re carrying others, we won’t be able to climb fast.” Jin said. “We should start high, like the edge of a cliff or on top of a building.”
“They’ll come over the bridge,” Pony pointed to the bridge. “We can wait on the supports. The bridge will give us cover, and then the tengu can take us aloft.”
“That will work.” Jin said.
Nearly a mile and a half long, the McKees Rocks Bridge stretched across the wide, flat Ohio River valley in a complex string of structures — more a chain of bridges than one single bridge. The part that actually sat above the river was a seven hundred plus foot trussed arch bridge. On both sides of the elegant steel curve were two massive stone pylons. They hid the truck in the shadows of the western pylons.
The cloudy night was on their side — it cloaked them in darkness.
“I hear it,” Jin put out a hand to Tinker. “I’ll take you up.”
The other eight tengu paired off with the humans and elves.
It was short spring up to the arching steel. They crouched down, tucking themselves in the crossbeams.
The roar of the dreadnaught grew louder.
“There! See it?” Jin whispered.
Twin searchlights appeared in the distance, slashing downwards. The cockpit was a pale gleam between them. The dreadnaught moved up the broad valley, keeping between the hills that flanked the Ohio River. The searchlights played back and forth in a narrow arc, directly in front of the airship.
Durrack glanced up river toward the darkened city and then back to the oncoming dreadnaught. “They’re probably following the river because it’s the most recognizable landmark they can see with the power out.”
“Lucky for us,” Jin said. “They’re going slow so they don’t hit anything. That will make it easier for us to get to it.”
In the dark, the true size of the dreadnaught was lost. It was a wedge of darkness behind the searchlights’ brilliance. They crouched in the bridge’s shadows as the gleaming spots moved across the shimmer of the water, encountered the bridge, and played up and over the network of steel struts. Tinker held still, heart hammering, trying not to think about the machine gun cannons. Her luck on this kind of thing had been so bad lately.
The cockpit slid overhead, and the belly of the dreadnaught followed, the air throbbing. Ushi with Pony leapt upwards, the rustle of his black wings spreading lost under the rumble of the dreadnaught’s engines. As he took his first downstroke, Xiao Chen with Stormsong vaulted after him. Niu and Zan rose together. Tinker lost sight of them in the dreadnaught’s eclipse.