Hard Magic (47 page)

Once the Imperium train had spotted them, black smoke had puffed from their engines as they cranked up the RPMs. Southunder counteracted that so that the wind slammed right into the nose of the lead dirigible, slowing it, and rocking the crew. Within minutes they were passing through the oil vapor. Then they closed at terrific speed.

When they had gotten into range, a heavy machine gun had opened up from the rear dirigible. Southunder had calmly ordered the pom-pom gunner to silence it, and four solid one-pound shells later, it was done, leaving the cargo blimp’s back end a mess of tattered fabric and broken railing and the black dot of the gunner tumbling toward the sea. “We can’t use the bursting shells on the hydrogen ones,” Southunder had explained calmly. “Can’t sell burned cargo.”

They’d dropped altitude then, diving beneath the train. They needed to get alongside to board and this route exposed them to the fewest guns possible. Pirates armed with scoped rifles were tethered to the outer catwalks and they fired at anything that moved on the train above, and when they had a clean shot, they started shooting at the lead dirigible’s engines.

“This is the dangerous part,” Southunder had said. “We’ve got a very powerful Torch on the crew, and can control any fires that break out if we’re in range, but sometimes they’ll go suicidal and ignite the whole thing while we’re right under them.” He’d smiled, trying to be reassuring. “That can get exciting.”

Within minutes the engines had been destroyed and the blimps had started to blunder into each other like blinded whales. Southunder had spun his finger, the wings had been turned accordingly, and the outer engines were pointed straight down, driving them right toward the jumble of crashing behemoths.

“Now all we have to do is pull up alongside while they’re shooting at us and board,” Southunder told him. “Piece of cake.”

Barns was the helmsman, and he frowned as he pulled back on the controls. “By piece of cake, Capitan Southunder means that it’s just like elephants fucking while going a hundred miles an hour swinging on a trapeze . . .”

“Don’t forget the elephants are filled with explosive gas,” Sullivan responded. “Where do you want me?”

Southunder jerked his head. “Take that ladder up top. Boarding party is in position.”

“Aye aye, Cap’n.” Sullivan said. He’d always wanted to say that since he’d first read
Treasure Island
as a kid. He made sure all the pockets on his canvas vest were closed and that his automatic rifle was tightly slung, then started up the ladder.

“Sullivan,” Southunder called after him. “Just so you know, we’ll pick up the last piece of the Geo-Tel on our way home. It’s not far from here. I just thought we’d kill two birds with one stone this way.”

“About damn time.” Sullivan climbed up through a hole onto the next deck. Ten men were crowded into the tight space, packed between hot pipes in two teams of five. It was dark except for a pair of red light bulbs. He had to crouch to keep from hitting his head. They were armed with a variety of weapons, everything from old Bergman subguns with snail drums, to Winchester trench shotguns, to stolen Jap guns he didn’t recognize, and even a Mauser broomhandle machine-pistol with the shoulder stock. Beyond that they all had little axes or big knives on their belts. Parker was in the lead armed with a double-barreled shotgun that had been sawed off just ahead of the forearm.

“My team heads fore. Ken’s team heads aft.” Parker leaned around to see through the columns of ready pirates. “Ori, don’t let us all burn to death, right? If these things catch, we don’t have much time ’fore we’re all cooked.”

He had to be addressing the Torch. Sullivan turned. He had not seen the other Active tucked into the back of the room and he was surprised to see the serving girl from the previous night. “Okay, Mr. Parker. No fire.” She waved shyly when she saw Sullivan looking at her, then decided to study her feet.

“
That’s
your Torch?”

“Sullivan, meet Lady Origami, or at least that’s what we’ve taken to calling her since she didn’t have a name.”

“Twenty seconds!” Southunder’s voice came up the ladder. “We’re mid-starboard side, second vessel!” Parker started to count out loud. Sullivan took a deep breath and let it out through his nose. Two men held massive steel grappling hooks attached to long spools of rope. When he got to three, the Jap named Ken jerked up the locking bar, and at one, he shoved. Sunlight flooded in as the pirates charged out, screaming. For a second it reminded him of the trenches in France, but then the moment was gone, and he was bellowing along behind the others, running up the steel grate, coming out the very top-front end of the
Bulldog Marauder’
s cabin.

The hooks sailed through the air, both of them catching on railings on the Imperium ship. Barns was good. Sullivan only had to leap across a few feet of empty space before he was on the enemy’s craft. He didn’t have an assignment, so he followed Parker’s team down the catwalk. Gunfire erupted just around the curve of the hull, out of sight, but was answered with a thunder of two 12-gauge shells.

The pirates moved down the railing, shooting anyone that appeared ahead of them. As they reached a door to the interior, Parker signed for some to enter and clear it. They were followed by screams and the rapid chatter of a subgun. Parker kept going, so Sullivan followed. At the very end of the rail, a soldier in a brown uniform came tearing out from behind a spotlight, swinging a sword. He was screaming some war cry, and Parker shot him right in the face, dropping him clean. The pirate took cover behind the spotlight. Sullivan crouched next to him.

“See that bridge?” Parker asked as he broke open the shotgun and pulled out the spent shell. “We need to cross it and get to the next blimp.”

Sullivan peeked around the spotlight. The knotted mass of cable and short planks might have been a bridge at one point, but after the dirigibles’ crashing together, it was just a mess now that he didn’t particularly want to try to climb. A group of Imperium soldiers was running down the other catwalk, coming their way. “Company,” Sullivan said as he leaned out and shouldered the BAR. He lined up the peep sight, put the front sight on the lead man and squeezed the trigger. Bullets puckered the soldier’s chest, sailed through and struck the man behind him too. Both went down in a spray of blood. He worked the rifle over the rest as they took cover behind the pylons.

Parker had to shout to be heard over the rushing of wind and the return fire. “We didn’t expect this many. First blimp must’ve been transporting troops.”

Sullivan analyzed the situation. There were lots of them, few of him, and they had more guns. The glass shattered next to his head as he ducked lower. They were all along one side of the blimp railing. It was far, but he figured he could do it. This would be tough, but he wouldn’t need to hold it too long. The world faded to its physical bits. The lightness of the hydrogen offended him in an abstract way, but most everything was just matter when you got down to it, and everything answered to gravity. He Spiked.

For the Imperial soldiers on the lead blimp, down suddenly changed direction, and they found themselves falling away from the cover of the pylons. Many of them caught themselves on the railing, but the unlucky bounced off, spinning away into the empty sky. Sullivan cut his Power and those hanging by their fingertips fell to the grating where there was no cover.

Sullivan rose, firing the BAR, working it right down the opposite deck. The rate of fire was slow enough that he just gently worked it from body to body. It was a massacre. He dropped the empty mag, smoothly reloaded from a vest pocket, and put a single round into the last man still crawling.

“Damn . . .” Parker said, peering over the perforated spotlight. “You get them all?”

“No,” Sullivan said. Somebody had been out of his range and had ducked beyond the curve of the hull. It had been an officer, and it sounded like he might be screaming someth—

THOOM.

The explosion was muted as the officer committed suicide, but whatever device he’d touched off had been incendiary, intended to take everyone with him. Sudden fire licked around the curve of the bag, bright hideous orange, and it just consumed everything. The canvas began disappearing like dry grass, leaving a hideous skeleton of aluminum in its wake, and the fireball was coming right at
them
.

“Ax,” Sullivan said as he yanked the little hatchet from Parker’s belt. He ran down the grating, toward the fire, and slid to a halt at the end of the catwalk. The bridge was attached by rope running through several steel grommets. He started chopping, slicing through the rope with such fury that sparks rose from the plate.
Wouldn’t that be funny if a spark blew up this blimp while I was trying to—damn it—cut faster.
He kept swinging with speed born of desperation.

The wall of heat struck him, sucked the moisture from his eyes, burned his skin. The lead dirigible was curling into itself, forming a U, as the heaviest bit was in the center. Flames washed over his body as the last rope snapped free. He stumbled back with his shirt on fire, dropped the ax, and beat out the flames. The burning blimp spun downward, falling slowly, like the bright petals of a flower falling from a tree, and Sullivan swore as he realized his hair was on fire too.

He made it back to Parker just as he saw that the skin on the nose of his dirigible was smoking. “Aw hell . . .” Simultaneously tiny bits of hissing fire appeared all down the visible seams. They were at the wrong damn end to make it off this one. The entire nose instantly disintegrated in a jet of orange flame.

And then it just stopped.

Sullivan looked around in disbelief, somehow still alive. Parker was slowly uncovering his eyes. The fore section of the blimp was hanging in ragged tatters, beating in the breeze, and he could feel them tilting as they lost altitude. The Japanese Torch dame was coming down the railing toward them, her eyes glowing and hair whipping in the wind.

“Fire good!” she exclaimed, lowering her hands. The lights died and her eyes returned to normal.

“No, sweetheart, you’re good,” Parker shouted.

Sullivan couldn’t agree more.

***

The crew of the
Bulldog Marauder
was efficient. They quickly searched the damaged dirigible’s cargo hold, found a few chained slaves and some valuables, loaded them into the less damaged remaining blimps, and cut away the damaged blimp so that it could sink in the ocean. Southunder left five men to drive the remains of the train south to be sold in one of the Free Cities of New Guinea, where the resistance would surely appreciate the supplies. The slaves, mostly Chinese, were put to work with the promise they’d be set free as soon as they landed.

Sullivan joined Southunder in his stateroom, which was little more than a closet with a table sandwiched between armored bulkheads. He was getting tired of always having to duck to avoid hitting his head. There was a map on the table.

“I buried the piece on this atoll.” Southunder stabbed his finger into the map. “It’s in a chest, wrapped in enough cold iron to give any Finder fits, then sealed in wax. I put every ward and glyph in the
Rune Arcanium
on it, then I booby-trapped it the old-fashioned way with spike traps and a bunch of dynamite that’s probably unstable as hell by now.”

Sullivan studied the map. The atoll wasn’t that far from Banish Island. They’d probably flown over it to catch the train. “We should’ve went there first.”

“Not if we wanted to catch that train ahead of the storm front. I can steer the weather some, but I can’t board dirigibles in a hurricane, and I wasn’t about to let that cargo get away. I’ve been keeping watch over that blasted thing for twenty years, and unescorted trains are rare. Tesla could wait a few hours . . . No need to risk the traps, so we’ll just stand off and blast it with the pom-pom guns until the dynamite goes off. Then we’ll go down and pick up the pieces.”

“So you decided to believe me then?”

He shrugged. “You strike me as an honest man.”

There was a sudden pounding on the bulkhead. “Captain! Come quick!”

Southunder was surprisingly nimble. Sullivan had a hard time catching up as the captain ran down the passage and slid down a ladder to the command deck. By the time he got up to the control bubble he could see exactly what the commotion was about. To the north was a wall of black clouds, crackling with lightning, but more terrifying was what was to their west, several large Imperium airships, and even to Sullivan’s untrained eye, those did not look like cargo ships.

“There shouldn’t have been any navy in this area,” Barns said. “Could they have gotten here already from the train’s distress call?”

“Damn it. Kagas.” Southunder muttered. There was a large brass telescope mounted at the front of the cockpit and he swiveled it toward the ocean. Sullivan followed the direction it was aiming and noticed more black specks on the ocean, surface ships. “That’s not why they’re here.”

There was a terrible sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. “Is that the atoll?”

Southunder pulled away from the telescope, his face ashen. “Well, looks like you were right.”

“Hate to say I told you so,” Sullivan muttered.

The black ships were getting closer. Tiny dots dropped from their bellies as they released their parasitic fighters. “Orders, Captain?” Barns asked.

Southunder steadied himself against the telescope. Pushing for the atoll would mean certain death. If the fighters didn’t get them, the heavy antiaircraft guns on the surface ships would. “Run for the storm.”

Chapter 23

We’ve been warned about magic since the days of Adam. Wizards from Canaan and Babylon were always there to lead man astray. Why should now be any different? What if what we’re seeing in these times is a quickening of mankind, tempting us to stray one last time before the last days? This is nothing new. The serpent has just got himself a fancy new suit. Join with me, brethren, and demand that Washington round up these heathen wizards once and for all!