Storming: A Dieselpunk Adventure (40 page)

Thirty

ON A FULL tank and with minimal headwind, Hitch gunned the Hisso for all it was worth. The prop chewed through the air and spat the miles back out behind them. He flew low, staying beneath the cloud ceiling and coasting over the ground. He kept one eye on the road, as a guide back to the correct field, and another on the sky. As he cut across the lake, the Jenny bounced a little in the air currents. And then—there she was.

The amputated wing fluttered, a red blot against the clouds.
Schturming
’s keel separated itself from the gray as he raced in close. The wooden planks and their flaking blue paint materialized through the haze. He passed beneath the silent propellers and headed for the bow, where the cargo doors were located.

Over his head, the huge ship swung gently on its cables. High above, the envelope melded into the clouds. She was barely moving, just letting the wind take her. But she must have had some kind of engine running because a heavy thud reverberated through his chest, audible even above his own engine.

He slowed the Jenny to try to match pace enough to stay hidden beneath the ship. The Hisso choked a little at his tight hold on the reins. She’d stall out completely if he slowed her to under forty-five miles per hour, and from the looks of
Schturming
’s hull racing by overhead, the dirigible wasn’t going anywhere near that fast. He would run out of cover in less than a minute.

A few drops of oil spattered against the forward windshield, and one splatted back against his cheek. Apparently, Earl hadn’t done such a great job with the oil leak. They’d filled it up last night, so Hitch would have enough oil to last him a while yet. And as fast as this job was going to have to be finished, it probably wouldn’t matter anyway. In the meantime, it just stunk worse than usual.

He was only going to get one chance at this. If Zlo and his mugs didn’t take the bait first thing, it’d be too late to get
Schturming
turned around to face Livingstone’s ambush—such as it was. That would be the end of that.

Just a few more seconds and the Jenny would outstrip
Schturming
’s meandering pace. He glanced to the left. Out across the lake, two dozen planes tore toward him, their gaudy colors silhouetted in the silver water. Great. With throttles wide open, they’d be here in less than a minute. It was now or never.

With a whoop, he gunned the throttle, shot out in front of
Schturming
’s prow, and lifted the Jenny’s nose to the sky. As soon as he had enough clearance, he flipped her back over and around—headed straight for the bay, where they sure enough couldn’t miss seeing him.

The doors stood wide open, a gaping hole in the lowest level of the ship’s front end.

That was the good news.

The bad news was that several burly, whiskery, rather astonished men wearing bowler hats and long coats were standing in the hole. Even before the Jenny bobbed into view, they had their arms extended, mouths open, pointing straight toward Livingstone’s horde.

Their attention switched over to Hitch in a flash. Their open mouths got even rounder, and they started scrambling to close the doors.

In the two levels of portholes above the bay doors, faces—some of them women and children—stared out at him. Bringing this thing down was the top priority, but somehow he had to do it without endangering all these folks.

From the looks of things, there would be only two ways to bring this beast down. Either force her to ground from the outside—which hadn’t worked out so well yesterday—or bring her down from the inside.

That would mean threading the needle to land in the big bay that seemed to run down the length of the ship’s lowest level. And then what? He’d extract himself from the wreckage and pummel two dozen guys? Great plan. Except it really wasn’t a plan. Earl was right. He seriously needed to work on his thinking-things-through skills.

At any rate, the door slammed closed too fast for even a botched crash landing and left the Jenny skidding straight for a solid wall.

His battle scream turned into the real thing. He fought to pull the Jenny’s nose into a sharp turn to swerve away from the doors before he slammed into it. The Hisso screeched all the way.

“Just do it!” he hollered into the wind. “I’ll apologize later!”

If the Jenny had really been a woman, she would have crossed her arms and poked her nose into the air. Only at the last second did she deign to duck her propeller away from the doors. The wheels barely cleared
Schturming
’s hull.

Far away at the stern, the two vast propellers started inching into motion.

He leveled out and looked around just in time to see Livingstone’s private flying corps howl in, headed straight toward him. He looped up and over in an Immelmann turn and matched speed and direction with them.

Livingstone’s plane—white fuselage, red wings, blue engine cowl and tail—dropped into the airspace next to his. Livingstone grinned through his mustache and took his hands off the stick long enough to clasp them together in a victory shake.

Durn fool.

Hitch clenched his teeth. But then again, under the circumstances, it was just as well they were all here. He sure wasn’t going to be bringing
Schturming
down from the inside today. The trick was going to be getting all these glory-hungry boomers to somehow work together. And he sure as Moses wasn’t the ideal person to show them how to do that. Neither was Livingstone, come to that.

In front of him,
Schturming
strained ponderously forward. The propellers were taking their sweet time getting under way—and no wonder from the size of them. If she couldn’t move, she couldn’t maneuver. That gave the pilots a precious few minutes to hold the upper hand.

Fine. Great. Then what?

The propellers were the big enemy here. If he could bring them down, he could bring the whole thing down. He split away from Livingstone, headed toward the tail end of the ship. Luckily, for the moment, the cannon’s track around the envelope hung empty.

Movement caught the corner of his eye, and he winced. That hadn’t taken long. He turned to look.

It wasn’t the cannon at all. Somebody was running on top
of the envelope.

He swung in for a closer look. A walkway—made of a different material from the rest of the envelope, judging from its slightly darker color—ran the whole length of the gasbag. Cross-hatched railings guarded either side.

Huh. Missed that in all the excitement yesterday.

The man stopped in the center of the walkway and lifted a megaphone. An eagle circled his head.

Well, well. The dirty buzzard himself.

Hitch dove low, wheels centered over the walkway, and opened the throttle. The front half of the plane blocked him from seeing anything, so he kept her straight on faith alone.

Zlo failed to appear mangled in the propeller—which was probably for the better, since that would surely have wrecked Earl’s repair job for good. When Hitch shot clear of the envelope, he looked back over his shoulder.

The bird had plunged down the port side. For a second, Zlo lay spread-eagled on the walkway, only to bounce back up. He leaned over the railing, shouting at his men through the megaphone.

Whoops, went and made him mad.

The cannon, on its track, trundled into view around the front end of the envelope. Almost before it stopped moving, orange flashed in its mouth. The ball ripped directly through the opening between Hitch’s port wings. Way yonder too close for comfort.

He spun the Jenny around in another Immelmann turn, headed straight back for the dirigible. A cannonball was untold times faster than he was. But he was probably that much faster than the cannon itself. The safest place in the sky right now was directly behind the thing.

As he crossed over, Zlo followed his motion with his megaphone.

Right over the top of him, Hitch slacked off on the throttle. That cut the engine noise just enough for him to catch the bare outline of two bellowed words.

“—
weather now
—”

The first dash of rain hit his forward windshield like a handful of pebbles.

Oh, great. His throat tightened. That stupid
dawsedometer
. And Livingstone wanted Hitch to think it would be a good idea to add that to his show?

Since yesterday, Zlo had seemed content to leave the worst of the storms along the borders of the valley. Now, the wind grabbed the Jenny. One minute, the air was smooth as glass. The next, it yanked the plane like a dog on the end of a chain. The fuel got jerked out of the carburetor, and the engine sputtered for the longest second ever. Hitch’s head snapped back, his vision blacking around the edges.

Then, just like that, the wind released the plane back into smooth air. He resettled his feet on the rudder pedals—and the wind smashed into him again. A torrent of rain washed over the windshield and peppered back against his face, too hard and needle-fine to feel damp. The roar of the rain against the wings thundered even above the engine chatter.

A crack of lightning lit up clouds that had gone dark purple. This was not good. Not good at all. The wind by itself was enough to do him in. If Zlo somehow managed to conjure hail, that would be about as lethal as if he started firing grapeshot out of that cannon of his.

All around, the planes scattered. They’d been willing enough to charge in and help
start
the storm. But they weren’t about to stick around during it. The dirigible might be able to weather the turbulence, but the biplanes were sitting ducks out here in the weather.

The Jenny’s stick had a mind of its own and kept trying to pull right out of his hand. He clamped it in both fists and gritted his teeth. Truth was, he had to get out of here too. Even his modified Jenny with its reinforced frame wasn’t any kind of match for a crazed airship captain with a magic weather-maker.

He turned his head and squinted through the deluge. The rain, at least, had swept away the oil splatters and shined up his goggles.

Had to be a way to keep this day from being a total loss. He could always crash the Jenny into the envelope. The whole thing would probably blow up. The leather skin would melt away and the spars would crumble. Whatever was left would plummet to the ground. He grimaced.

Noble, but maybe a tiny bit extreme, especially considering all the supposedly innocent people in there.

He turned the Jenny in closer to the dirigible for one more pass. The protection of the hulking envelope shielded him from the rain for a bit. Ahead, the cannon came clanking around the bow end of its track, headed straight for him.

He reacted almost without thinking. Throttle open, right foot on the right rudder pedal. The Jenny ducked sideways. She sailed in between the bottom of the envelope and the top of the ship. There was exactly no space to spare. His heart quit beating for a good long second.

Beneath him, a four-foot railing bordered a flat deck, loaded down with boxes and barrels of supplies, all of them lashed together. A few crouched men stared up at him, open-mouthed. One of them held a seven-foot stick; another squatted beside a pile of cannonballs; a third stood, with arms raised, hanging onto a rope that ran through a pulley system over his head.

A pulley system. That was how they were moving the cannon. He scooted the Jenny to the left. A few feet was all it took for him to line up the handkerchief hook on his bottom wing. As the Jenny screamed out the other side of the dirigible, back into the full force of the storm, he snagged the rope in the hook. A slight tug to the left told him it was secure.

His heart still refused to start beating. This here was the tricky part. If he’d snagged the wrong part of the rope, he’d catch the full weight of the cannon. He’d probably succeed in pulling it off the track—right before it jerked him out of the sky.

The wind pounded the Jenny sideways, and with every muscle in his body, he held her course steady. He watched over his shoulder. Through the cloud and the haze of rain, the rope unfurled behind him. Then, just as fast, it pulled loose. With a zip of spraying rain, it sped all the way free of the hook.

Time to get out of here and right
now
. His breathing came almost too hard to give him any oxygen. Push his luck any further, and he’d be a goner for sure. He turned the Jenny all the way around and zoomed over the top of
Schturming
for a look.

The cannon still sat on its track, solid as could be. Maybe that fool trick of his hadn’t done a lick of good, except to give him a few gray hairs.

But the cannon wasn’t moving. Beneath it, something dangled.

The pulley system.

He’d completely unthreaded it. For the time being at least, Zlo’s men couldn’t move the cannon. That was something anyway.

As he whipped on past, something else caught his eye: the orange glare of a spark at the cannon’s breech.

It was loaded, and it was lit, and without the pulley, they’d lost their ability to readjust its aim.

A heartbeat later, he was over the top of the envelope and out of sight of the cannon. An explosion tore through the storm.