Cherie Priest - Clementine

The whine of the engine above was coming closer and soon she could see its shadow, like a swarm of birds or a cloud of insects, rising up over the treetops, and she felt a tremendous surge of joy to see that it was the Free Crow and not the Valkyrie ; and on the bridge, through the windshield glass she could see a hulking black figure clad in a blue coat.

“You there!” someone shouted behind her, and she spun ar-ound to see a Union soldier threatening her with a repeating rifle.

“Stop right there!” ordered another uniformed man, the second guard who she hadn’t spied after the commotion in the outbuilding. “Drop your weapon!”

She jerked her attention back and forth between them and for the first time yet, she was uncertain. Maria had no intention of dropping the Colt and even less intention of stopping where she was told; and when the Free Crow soared over the outbuilding even the soldiers who commanded her looked up, and were amazed.

Thusly distracted, she took one last look down the path and saw not the faintest trace of Edwin-so she ran the other direction, back to the trees.

Behind her, the soldiers began to shoot. Bullets bounced off tree trunks and split branches, sending leaves raining down on her escape. They were running, too, pursuing her across the clearing and nearing the woods; but another round of fire blew forth from the sky, cutting a dotted line across their chase and pegging one soldier to the earth with a hole in his chest.

From the corner of her eye, Maria spotted her carpetbag lying where she’d left it. She did not pause her pace, but swept it up by the handle in a jerking lift that just barely threw her cadence off. She staggered, recovered her balance and her rhythm, and kept running while the ship above threw fire to cover her wake.

“Well I’ll be damned,” the captain said from the bridge of the Free Crow . “That crazy little woman made it out in one piece.” He pointed down at the flat-roofed outbuilding, and the woman with the child on her hip. “That must be the boy she was talking about. Look, she’s sending him off.”

Simeon said, “Still no sign of Brink. Where’d you lose him?”

“Down there someplace.” Hainey swung his hand around, using his fingers to point out a general area to the east of the outbuilding. “He can’t have gone too far. I winged him, I’m pretty sure.”

“What bit of him did you wing?” Lamar asked.

“Shoulder, I think.”

The first mate shrugged and said, “He might run quite a ways with just a scratch on him. You should’ve aimed lower.”

“I was running,” Hainey groused. “Through a bunch of trees. You’ll have to pardon my lack of precision.”

“No one’s criticizing it,” Simeon said. “I was only saying, a winged kneecap would have dragged him a lot better.” He jammed his feet down on the pedals and slowed the craft, letting it pivot almost in place, the windshield scrolling a panorama of the scene.

The captain grumbled, “Too many goddamned trees. Too many goddamned leaves. I can’t see a thing on the ground except for her ,” he cocked his head down towards Maria.

“Speaking of her ,” Lamar said, drawing down a lever that would aim the engines at a slightly different tilt. “It looks like they’ve got her cornered.”

“Where? Who?” he asked, even as he spotted the blue uniforms scuttling out of the woods. “Oh hell .”

Simeon said with a small degree of pleasure, “They’re going to shoot her.”

“Or arrest her,” the captain halfway argued. “She’s been arrested plenty of times before. Maybe that’s all they’ll do.”

Then, as she turned tail and ran, even up inside the Free Crow he could hear the soldiers open fire.

“Well shit ,” Hainey swore.

“Captain,” Simeon said warily, “You’re not thinking…”

He said grouchily, “Yes, I’m thinking. Lamar, how are the front swivel guns?”

“Um…” the engineer squinted at a set of gauges and said, “Mostly full. Not totally full, but mostly. We’ve got enough shot to give her some cover, if that’s what you want.”

He struggled with something for a minute, then said, “Yes, that’s what I want. Strafe the strip behind her-keep them in the clearing, let her get a lead on them.”

“But sir!” Simeon objected.

“I asked her for one favor in parting, and she paid it. She turned Brink loose for me when she could’ve shot him and saved herself a little peril. The least we can do is cover her getaway while we look for the thief.”

“Fine,” Simeon sulked, and he pulled a panel with munitions controls into his lap. “Left front-gun, stable. Tilt forty-five degrees, set.”

Hainey yelled, “Fire!”

And the Free Crow gently bucked as its front gun strafed the clearing floor behind Belle Boyd, who was now nothing more than a pale streak dashing between the trees. One soldier went down immediately, caught in the path of descending bullets; and another dodged in time to fling himself on the grass and cover his head.

“Where’s she going?” Hainey asked no one in particular.

But Lamar answered, “She’s running toward the sanatorium. At least, she’s running in that direction.”

From their sky-high vantage point Hainey could see that this was going to work out poorly for the woman. The sanatorium was buzzing with activity…and with soldiers, yelling orders and herding each other out into a defensive formation. The spy was running straight for them, though none of her other options looked any good either. Behind her, the captain spotted a contingent of Union reinforcements coming up over the hill; they were fanning out as they closed in.

“She’s a dead woman,” Simeon observed.

Below, she stopped as if she’d heard him.

She gazed up directly at the Free Crow , waved her arms over her head, and pointed west with all her might.

“I don’t get it,” Hainey said. “What’s she trying to say?”

“That she wants a ride,” the first mate guessed.

“No, no. She’s saying…”

She held her hands over her mouth and shouted something, over and over, and then she resumed pointing west.

Hainey followed her gesture with his eyes. He said, “Well I’ll be damned.”

“Again?” asked Lamar.

“Yes, again. Look at that-look at what that crazy bastard is trying to do!”

West of the outbuilding, and west of the woods where Belle Boyd was about to meet some unpleasant fate, the Valkyrie was inching its way off the hill.

Simeon said, “Brink?” as if he could scarcely believe it. “He can’t fly that devil all by himself! He’s good, but he’s not that good.”

“Maybe not, but he’s trying ,” the captain observed. “Boyd must’ve heard him start the engines. She’s closer to him than we are.” And then he said, “Aw, hell.”

Lamar said, “Sir?”

“I mean, aw hell-there she goes again, making herself useful. I guess we’d better swing down and pick her up.”

Simeon swelled up in his seat, inflating and simmering with things he knew better than to say out loud to his captain, so he said, “Yes sir,” through tight lips. “You steer us down. I’ll hold us level.”

“Let’s hope she has the good sense to get on board,” Hainey said. “I’m going to take us back a few feet, and we can come up behind her. Position, set?”

“Position set,” Simeon confirmed. “Thrusters primed. You’d better run down to the bay and help her up, because Christ knows I’m not going to do it.”

“Nobody asked you to, Sim,” Hainey said, and he unbuckled himself from the seat. “Take us down, and drag us low and slow,” he ordered as he left the bridge.